IGMS Issue 34

by IGMS

  Trung picked up the newspaper clipping and stuffed it into his pocket. McElvy had admitted that he had nothing else he could tell him about the whereabouts of his father. If he left now, he could at least get back to a road that might still be clear of snow. Yet, Trung had crossed the world to learn everything he could about his father. Was there anything else McElvy could tell him? If there was anything more, no matter how small, he could not leave.

  Trung stopped at the doorway through which McElvy had disappeared. Cold air, like that from a meat locker, blew out the opening and sent a violent shiver through his entire body. After several long seconds, his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the narrow room, its windows covered with thick oil cloths to block out the light.

  McElvy stood before a bank of file cabinets. The mist from his breath swirled around his head as he spoke.

  I spent a month in a hospital in Saigon; then I left Vietnam. I gave my film to the AP, and told them I was done. When I got home, I put my camera in a box and tried to go about my life, but you don't just go back to life after that. You don't just shower away that kind of filth.

  I started hearing voices, soldiers, women, crying babies, English and Vietnamese and God knows what else. I thought I was going crazy. They were coming from my closet. When I opened the door, I would hear them like they were hiding in the pockets of my shirts. I pulled my closet apart, looking everywhere for them. My shoes. The pockets of my pants. The boxes of junk. Then I found my Nikon. The voices were coming out of it. I opened the back and inside was a roll of film.

  I'm sure I gave the AP all my film, every last bloody roll of it. Yet there it was, and as I held it in my hands, I could hear the voices so loud in my head, all talking at me so I couldn't separate any single one, like I was in a huge crowd, and all of them were clamoring for my attention.

  I cleared off my dark room and developed the roll, but the film was blank, until I started making prints. Then I saw the faces. The first one was Lance Corporal Stillman. When I touched his print, I heard his voice in my head, clear as if he was standing next me and speaking into my ear. He told me about how much he missed his wife, and how sorry he was that he would never see his baby grow up. He begged me to find them and tell them that he loved them. He begged me to take him home.

  I promised him I would.

  I printed photo after photo, hundreds of 'em, all from that blank roll of film. Each portrait spoke to me as I printed it and hung it to dry. There were more faces than I remembered from that room, there were soldiers, both American and Vietnamese, more civilians, more children, more women and men. Hundreds upon hundreds like everyone who died at Hue had lined up for their portrait.

  Sometimes they asked me to find their parents or husbands or wives. Sometimes they begged me to tell their story. Sometimes they just cried, and I couldn't understand what they wanted. Most I couldn't understand, 'cause I don't speak Vietnamese.

  I kept my promise to Stillman. It took me months to find his widow. When I told her why I was there, she slapped me across the face and slammed the door on me. I slipped the portrait underneath. As I let it go, I felt Stillman's presence leave in peace. He was home, and he seemed to know it.

  As I walked away, the door opened, and she stood there, tears on her face, holding my picture in one hand, Stillman's baby in the other. She didn't say anything to me, but I could see everything I needed to see in her eyes.

  McElvy pulled open a drawer of the file cabinet. Stuffed inside were old manila envelopes.

  Trung came forward, as if reeled into the dark room by a string. He felt an energy emanating from the drawer. At first it rose up from the tattered envelopes like a murmur, but as he drew nearer, it grew louder, like a crowd awakening from a long sleep. In the noise, Trung heard voices, jumbled together like noodles.

  "I tried to find them all," McElvy said, "but I didn't even know where to start. In '76, I went back to Saigon -- Ho Chí Mihn City -- not an easy thing to do at that time. With the help of a Vietnamese art dealer, I hung pictures in some galleries, hoping someone would recognize them, hoping someone would hear something and believe me. Your daddy's picture was one of them. But I got nothing."

  Trung's hand hovered over the envelopes. Goosebumps rose on the back. Without thought, he reached into the drawer and pulled out an envelope. It took both hands to work it free.

  "I took good care of them," McElvy said, "as well as I could, but they want to go home. They need to go home."

  Trung's fingers shook so much he had difficulty unwinding the thread that held the flap closed. He slid a glossy print halfway out. His father's eyes, stared at him. He looked younger than he ever imagined.

  "I --" Trung's voice cracked in his throat. He pressed the photograph against his cheek, unable to speak. The picture smelled of mildew and age, but it was warm against his skin, like a parent's comforting hand. Trung closed his eyes and imagined what his life would have been like with his father. His uncle had done as well as he could, but sometimes a boy simply needed his father.

  "It's me; it's Trung," he whispered in Vietnamese.

  "I'm sorry," his father said gently into his ear.

  Trung held the picture out and looked again into the eyes. They were crisp and clear, the edges pulled with sadness.

  "If only I had obeyed, I would have been there for you," his father said.

  In his father's eyes, Trung saw the room in Hue, the hundreds of unarmed people kneeling with their backs to a line of Vietnamese soldiers. Over the crying children and women, a Vietnamese officer screamed at the soldiers to rid Vietnam of the imperialist sympathizers. When the soldiers hesitated, the officer drew his pistol and shot the soldier nearest him who had lowered his rifle. As he bullet ripped through his father's head, the line of rifles popped and rattled.

  Trung screamed out, the picture crumpling in his hand. He pressed it to his forehead and wept.

  The photo in Trung's shirt pocket warmed his chest as he loaded the last of the sealed boxes into the back of the rental car. As he let go of it, the voices faded but did not go away.

  Trung turned to McElvy standing in the snow to the side. He bowed to the old man. "I owe you --"

  McElvy took his hand. "No," he said, and pressed a wad of green bills into Trung's palm. "To help."

  Trung looked at the money. He had done nothing to deserve it, but to give it back would be an insult. He would earn the money then, he decided. "I will find their families," Trung said, knowing it was what McElvy needed to hear.

  The lines around the old man's eyes softened.

  As Trung pulled out onto the snowy road, the murmuring in the back of the car grew animated. The dead knew their journey home had finally begun.

  Three Seconds

  by Jonas David

  Artwork by Jin Han

  * * *

  We'd all been sitting around that table for so long we'd forgotten most of our lives before or where we'd come from. We just had our names, some vague memories of a place before all this, and an endless white void to stare into.

  Or sometimes a black void. We spent a lot of time arguing about which was better.

  "Today, we should make something," said Tessa. Her brown, curled hair floated around a face that had too many angles to be called attractive by most. But looks can grow on you after . . . well, however long we'd been there. "The . . . air, is ripe for it," she continued. "I can feel it, can't you?"

  "Every day you ask this in some fashion," said Alec, his voice plodding and tedious. "You must know the answer by now." Alec didn't look like Alec anymore. He'd sort of devolved into a shapeless floating . . . thing, with no mouth or face or limbs or hair. His voice seemed to appear in front of him, with no source.

  Day - the cycle of dark-colored void and light-colored void. Tessa liked it light, Alec liked it dark. Every once in a while one would give in to the other and the void would change color. Neither ever took the time to seek out my opinion on the matter.

  Tessa glared at Alec, ages of frustr
ation boiling behind her dark eyes.

  "But this is so boring!" Her voice boomed, her words flying out in an explosive wave of sound that shattered the table into a billion tiny splinters, which then burned to embers and faded to nothing. A moment later it reformed between us, a cloud of smoke swirling up into the shape of the table, then hardening.

  I scooted my chair forward and reformed my ears, which I'd sealed off in case of a following outburst. I rebuilt my mug of tea, one of the few things I was allowed to create, and took a sip.

  "Existence only leads to suffering," said Alec in his floating monotonous voice. The void was his place, his legacy. Not that he'd created it -- it had been ages since Alec had lifted a finger to create even a chair to sit in. He was, though, the one that kept it empty. "Pure peace," he continued, "can only be reached through the absence of all action. The absence of being."

  I once mentioned to him that he was technically creating words and sound waves, and thus bringing something into existence, when he spoke. That shut him up for a while. Now whenever he spoke he made his voice as simple and utilitarian as possible.

  "Your arguments aren't going to have different effects on me the more you use them, Alec," said Tessa.

  There was silence for a moment. Or an aeon, it was hard to tell anymore. I drank my tea, Tessa fumed, and Alec did nothing. As usual. Then, Tessa struck out.

  I could almost feel what she was trying to do; I sensed an impression -- a vague form trying to come into existence below us, a wide swath of . . . something. But Alec reached out and stopped her, suppressing the creation before it could be completed.

  Tessa let out a sigh, deflating in her chair. Some unspoken agreement passed between the two, and the void faded to black. Another "day" was over.

  Sometimes -- maybe every thousand days or so -- Tessa would run, flying off into the darkness at seemingly impossible speed. But Alec always took off a split second later, keeping right behind her and stopping whatever she tried to do. I'd be left to sit at the table until I got bored enough to come find them. Alec knew not to worry about me creating anything. And I always destroyed the table before I left.

  I created my candle, the flickering light brightening my section of the table. I enjoyed watching the wax melt down, dripping in patterns over the dark wood grain. Tessa created an elaborate floating lantern with flapping golden wings. It hovered above her head, giving off a pale green light. Alec sat in darkness, a vague, shifting form.

  It took us a while, when we first got here, to figure out what we could do.

  In the early years (centuries? millennia?) we didn't have a care. We created worlds far and wide: great, sweeping terrains of jagged crystal mountains and frozen skies, or infinitely fractaling flowers the size of galaxies. Anything we could imagine was ours.

  It soon became apparent that Tessa was the best. Her creations were more detailed and precise, more vast and organized and coherent. Mine tended to fall apart quickly, and Alec worried so much about doing it just right that he rarely did anything at all.

  Then, as I cleared away one of Tessa's forgotten galaxies for her, I discovered my true passion.

  Destruction.

  There were so many ways to destroy -- infinite ways, all of them fun in their own right. I could crush a planet like it was being squeezed in a fist. I could explode it or melt it or shatter it into dust. I could tweak gently with the rotation and let it fall apart on its own. I could send it crashing into a sun or a black hole. I could turn it into a hundred trillion doves and watch them die in the cold vacuum of space before crushing them into a singularity.

  Sometimes I liked to see how much I could destroy with the least influence. If you were careful, a single chemical reaction could unbalance entire ecosystems, or a single quake or eruption could shatter a continent. Removing a single carbon atom could cause a perfectly balanced structure to collapse.

  It was endless entertainment. I set about destroying Tessa's creations with a relish I'd never felt for anything.

  For a time, it was perfect. Tessa's creations came faster and larger and more detailed and brilliant. And I was always right behind her, destroying what she left behind. I used care and precision and delicacy as much as she did, enjoying my destructions like one would a well-orchestrated symphony. We found an equilibrium, she and I. The pace of her creation and my destruction were such that I ended up reaching her creations just as she got bored with them.

  Soon, I began finding that her imaginings were prepared for me. Thick walls blocked me out, or bizarre beings attacked me. Intricate traps tested my reflexes, triggered by my very destruction of them. As I learned her tricks and defeated her minions, she devised more and improved ones. She got better as I got better -- we sharpened ourselves on each other.

  Then Alec caught up to us.

  I'm not sure what he'd been doing away from us for all that time -- probably fretting over a single leaf while trying to make a forest. But he found us and started his meddling.

  Alec had no skill or passion for creating or destroying, but he did possess a talent for stopping us from doing those things.

  It started as he watched Tessa building a new world, curious of her methods. She was crafting a giant disk that rotated precisely on a pinpointed spire. Beings were to live on the center of the disk, and the farther they wandered out to explore, the more likely the disk would tip and fall. Unless, of course, they worked together, coordinating their exploration.

  Alec didn't like this idea; he said it caused too much needless suffering for the creatures, that she was playing games with them. They argued. Tessa told him to mind his own business, but he was incensed. So when Tessa began to mold the beings, Alec stopped her, suppressing her creative ability.

  From then on it was all downhill. He didn't like the way I destroyed things, so he forced me to make it clean and quick. He didn't like the worlds that Tessa created, so he forced her to make them simple and lifeless. This was his passion: asserting his authority over us, holding us back unless we did what he approved of.

  But Alec was not infinitely strong; he could only hold one of us back at a time. So as he stopped me from slowly raising the temperature on a planet to boil the life out of the seas, Tessa was free to produce more worlds full of beings and structures that were imperfect and unbalanced, yet beautiful for their flaws. As he switched back to stopping her from creating, I was free to push a populated planet into a black hole.

  Finally, Alec made a decision. He held Tessa back completely, letting me run rampant in my destruction. He knew I couldn't resist. I razed our worlds with abandon, until nothing remained but void, and us.

  And now, this table and chairs.

  Time passed. We sat in darkness, then light, then darkness. Few words were spoken. I drank my hot tea and Tessa fidgeted, manufacturing new clothes and hair so fast that she sometimes seemed as much of a shapeless blob as Alec. Alec sat watching, prepared to stop anything we might do.

  "Let's play a game," Tessa eventually said to me. "I need to do something or I'll go mad."

  I grunted ascension and she brought a deck of cards into existence -- another of the brutally-fought-for objects that Alec let her have. She fanned the cards out on the table, face down.

  "Pick a card," she said. "Any card you like, don't be shy." She looked at me, but instead of the usual cryptic grin or wink, she simply leaned with her arms on the table and waited.

  The game, I was certain, would be all in her head as she watched how I reacted. Tessa's mind was a labyrinth of plots within schemes within plans, and without worlds to design, she liked to spend her time outsmarting me with clever puzzles or riddles.

  Subtlety was never my strong suit.

  I raised my hand halfheartedly and destroyed the cards one by one. Some curled and blackened, collapsing into little piles of ash. Some I shredded into little tufts of paper, some I sliced in halves until they were composed of individual atoms, some I crushed into miniature black holes and tossed away into the void. I took
my time -- days, weeks perhaps -- destroying each card individually and meticulously. Alec and Tessa watched, silent.

  Finally, one card remained.

  "Is it the ace of spades?" asked Tessa. Again, her face seemed honest, earnest. I did not detect the mocking glint in her eye as I usually did moments before she caught me in some puzzle, proving once again her mental superiority.

  I picked up the card. The face was white, with three words written on it. Please destroy him. I glanced up at her briefly. Her eyes were still serious, almost pleading.

  "No," I said after a moment, and the card crumbled like sand, pouring out of my palm to hiss over the table.

  I shot a glance at Alec; he seemed oblivious, though it was hard to tell with him. He couldn't read minds -- none of us could, even those of our creations -- but what Tessa and I were doing was not exactly inconspicuous.

  I'd tried to destroy Alec twice before, both ages ago. The first time I may have been hesitant. I'd thought long and hard about it, weighing the consequences of killing one of only two people in existence for me to talk to, against the lust for my destructive freedom. I'd finally decided I had to be free, and struck. He'd stopped me, but during the few seconds his guard was down Tessa managed to create hundreds of thousands of worlds, all strange and intricate and beautiful. I destroyed them, one by one, as Alec held her down.

  The second time I didn't even expect to succeed -- I only hoped to give Tessa another chance to build more things for me to knock down. But Alec had gotten stronger after so many centuries holding us back; he was able to stop me from destroying him and Tessa from creating anything meaningful.

  Now, I didn't see the point. There was a possibility, I thought, that maybe he'd grown weaker over the years; we barely struggled against him anymore. But then, we also might have grown weaker.

  "Let me try once more, I know I can get it this time," Tessa said.