UNIDENTIFIED FUNNY OBJECTS 2
Edited by Alex Shvartsman
PUBLISHED BY:
UFO Publishing
1685 E 15th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11229
www.ufopub.com
Copyright © 2013 by UFO Publishing
Stories copyright © 2013 by the authors
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-0-9884328-2-6
All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
Cover art: Arnie Swekel
Interior art: Barry Munden
Interior design: Windhaven Press (www.windhaven.com)
E-book design: Elizabeth Campbell
Graphics design: Emerson Matsuuchi
Logo design: Martin Dare
Copyeditor: Elektra Hammond
Associate editors: James Aquilone, Cyd Athens, James Beamon, Anatoly Belilovsky, Frank Dutkiewicz, Michael Haynes, Nathaniel Lee, Fran Wilde
Visit us on the web
www.ufopub.com
Table of Contents
Alex Shvartsman
FOREWORD
Ken Liu
THE MSG GOLEM
Esther Friesner
SERVICE CHARGE
J. W. Alden
ITEM NOT AS DESCRIBED
Jim C. Hines
STRANGER VS. THE MALEVOLENT MALIGNANCY
Fran Wilde
HOW TO FEED YOUR PYROKINETIC TODDLER
Matt Mikalatos
A STIFF BARGAIN
Josh Vogt
THE GIRL WITH THE DAGON TATTOO
M.C.A. Hogarth
IMPROVED CUBICLE DOOR
Mike Resnick
ON SAFARI
Konstantine Paradias
HOW YOU RUINED EVERYTHING
Jody Lynn Nye
INSIDER INFORMATION
K.G. Jewell
THE HAUNTED BLENDER
Tim Pratt
THE RETGUN
Heather Lindsley
THE DIPLOMAT’S HOLIDAY
Michelle Ann King
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR APOTHEOSIS
Desmond Warzel
ONE THING LEADS TO YOUR MOTHER
James Beamon
CLASS ACTION ORC
Wade Albert White
THE WIGGY TURPIN AFFAIR
Robert Silverberg
HANNIBAL’S ELEPHANTS
About the Editor
FOREWORD
by Alex Shvartsman
How do you follow a hit?
In 2012, I set out to create something that wasn’t available in the speculative anthology space—a collection of humorous short stories. As a reader, I was frustrated with the dearth of science fiction and fantasy venues for such material. This kind of book was something I’d welcome, and I was betting there were enough fans of the lighter fare who wanted it, too. And thus, Unidentified Funny Objects was born.
The book was a success, well-received by both critics and the reading public. But my ambitions extended beyond creating a single hit. I envisioned UFO as an annual series of anthologies, providing a consistent outlet for the type of light-hearted, optimistic short story that is seldom seen elsewhere. But how do you provide that consistent experience and yet keep things fresh? UFO2 is my attempt to answer this question with:
New headliners: Robert Silverberg and Esther Friesner are among the exciting group of well-known authors to lend their talents to the UFO series.
Familiar worlds: Jody Lynn Nye, K.G. Jewell, and Matt Mikalatos revisit the characters and settings they created for the first UFO volume. Each story is a stand-alone and can be enjoyed without having read the previous installment, but it’s a nice bit of continuity, and an extra reason for new readers to seek out the inaugural anthology.
Different lengths: UFO was packed with twenty-nine shorter stories. UFO2 includes nineteen mostly-longer tales.
Picture it: This book includes original illustrations for nine of the stories, drawn by Barry Munden.
Bring the wacky: UFO stories are often about outrageous settings and characters. From madcap time travelers to orc lawyers to alien beasts in Central Park, this book turns the wacky setting up to eleven.
Please enjoy the stories collected here. If I did my job right, this book will not only be a worthy successor to the previous volume, but will also have you marking your calendar for the release date of UFO3. And while you wait, be sure to check out several additional free stories posted at www.ufopub.com
THE MSG GOLEM
by Ken Liu
On the second day after the spaceship Princess of the Nebulae left Earth, God spoke to Rebecca.
“Rebecca Lau, listen to me. I need you.”
The ten-year-old girl took off her headphones. The cabin was silent save for the faint rumble of the spaceship’s engines. “Dad, did you say something?”
“It’s me, God.”
“Right.” Rebecca climbed onto a chair to examine the speakers in the ceiling. The voice did not seem to be coming out of them.
She climbed down and peered closely at her computer. “If I find out you had anything to do with this, Bobby Lee…” she muttered darkly. Bobby had been jealous when he heard that her family was going on this cruise to the vacation colony on New Haifa for winter break. It was entirely possible that he decided to play a trick on her by programming her computer.
“Bobby has nothing to do with this,” God said, slightly miffed.
“So which god are you?”
“The God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Your God! Jason Engelman explained me to you over lunch last semester.”
“Oh, so you’re Jason’s god. The Jewish one.”
“You are a Jew.”
“Um.” Rebecca sat down on her bed. “I’m Chinese. We live in New York. You must have confused me with my friend Yael Wasserstein. Now I know we’re the same age and we both have long dark hair, but—”
“Be quiet! I need you to make a golem and catch all the rats on this ship. I’ll explain everything.”
BACK IN THE NINTH CENTURY, Jewish merchants from Persia settled in Kaifeng, the capital of China. The community grew so numerous that they built a synagogue in 1163. The Kaifeng Jews became known to their Chinese neighbors, who always paid lots of attention to food, as the “People Who Remove Sinew.”
For a thousand years, this community on the fringe of the Diaspora flourished and prospered. But over time, the Kaifeng Jews intermarried and gradually forgot most of their traditions. Many of them even forgot about God.
But God never forgot about them.
“SO I’M DESCENDED FROM ONE of these Kaifeng Jews?” Rebecca asked. “How come Mom never told me about this?”
“She doesn’t know either. I haven’t… er…”
“You haven’t needed to look us up,” Rebecca said, “until now.”
“I’ve been busy,” God said, a little stiffly. “You try to keep an eye on every molecule in the universe for a few days.”
Rebecca tried out the idea of being a Jew. Her eyes gradually lit up. “I get Hanukkah? And all the presents?”
“You get to celebrate Hanukkah, yes. The presents are up to your parents, not me.”
“Can I keep Christmas? And Chinese New Year?”
“That’s up to you,” God said. “I’m not—”
“Deal! But You need to make your presentation a bit punchier. That history lecture needed visual aids.”
Rebecca strained her ears and swore she h
eard God muttering. “What I have to work with… the closest thing to…”
“Hey!” Rebecca was hurt. “You came to me, remember?”
“Yes,” God said. “Don’t remind me. Can you get some mud?”
“Back up a minute. Why are there rats on this cruise ship? And what’s the big deal about rats? Aren’t they Your creatures, too?”
“Some family snuck aboard a pair of pet rats on the last cruise,” God said. “They escaped and multiplied. And now a hundred and fifty of them live in the walls of the ship. Ordinarily, I neither favor nor disfavor rats. But if these rats get to New Haifa, it’ll be a disaster.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing in the ecosystem there to keep the rats in check. They’ll eat everything in sight, grains, crops, the eggs of songbirds, and baby chicks. Worst of all, there’s a virus on New Haifa that normally doesn’t affect people. But if the rats get there, the virus will infect them, and I can already see how the virus will mutate into new forms that will be very dangerous to people. It’s just one of those unforeseen interactions when you bring species across the galaxy together.”
“That sounds like a planning error on Your part.”
“Don’t start that again,” God groaned. “Everyone wants to blame me. You try to create all these worlds all by yourself, on the first try, no mistakes or oversights allowed.”
THE PRINCESS OF THE NEBULAE had a number of restaurants. Rebecca’s family favored the Chinese buffet, which had a good selection. But since Rebecca wasn’t sure exactly which foods were kosher (she knew that pork and shellfish were no good, but that was where certainty ended), she took only a plate of rice and bamboo shoots.
God was no help at all.
“I’m used to looking the other way at Chinese restaurants,” He declared, and refused to say anything more.
At their table, Rebecca made the announcement to her parents. David Lau and his wife Helen looked at each other and turned back towards their daughter.
“Is this like when you said you wanted to be Italian when you were seven?” Helen asked, cautiously. “Because you wanted to sing opera?”
“I don’t remember that. But no, it’s not.”
“You know,” Helen continued, struggling to keep her tone even, “when people say that the overseas Chinese are the ‘Jews of the Orient,’ it’s not meant to be taken literally.”
“Mom, I really am Jewish. So are you.”
“And God wants you to catch rats on this ship because they’re about to destroy an ecosystem? That’s not some metaphor I’m too old to understand?”
“No metaphors. God wants to protect the beaches and animals of New Haifa. And to prevent a plague.”
“Can I speak to God about this? He’s taking my daughter and I don’t get a say?”
“No,” God hissed at Rebecca. “Jewish mothers are bad enough. Chinese-Jewish mothers are worse. You deal with her.”
“God only talks to me,” Rebecca said. “He chose me to be his helper. You’ll have to ask a rabbi how this works.”
“Rebecca, you have an overactive imagination. If you invested one-tenth the energy you spend acting crazy on your school work—”
“Mom, I’m telling you the truth.”
“Aiya, David, are you listening to this? Talk to her.”
“What am I supposed to say?” David Lau shrugged. “According to her, she’s Jewish because of your side of the family. You read all the books on child development and psychology. Don’t they have chapters about stuff like this?”
“Don’t make fun of me. None of this would have happened if you paid more attention to her instead of always working.”
“Hey!”
Rebecca excused herself and quietly slipped out of the dining room.
REBECCA SCOURED THE DECKS and the halls, peeking into the theaters and dining spaces. The ficuses were in hydroponic planters, not soil. The flowers were fake. Metal, wood, and plastic gleamed everywhere. Not a smidgeon of mud in sight.
“Didn’t You realize that with all the cleaning robots running around, it’s impossible to find mud on a spaceship? You’re God. You’re supposed to know these things.”
“It would help if I had a more competent assistant. You could have questioned my plan ahead of time and saved both of us from wasting time.”
“As if! What would You have said if I had expressed doubts about Your plan?”
“I would have told you to not question me,” God admitted.
REBECCA TOOK ADVANTAGE OF God’s temporary silence to go to the library. The cruise ship’s collection on religious studies was rather sparse. The Children’s Guide to Judaism was the best that she could find.
“Have you thought more about how to get mud?” God interrupted.
“Shhhh. I’m reading about how to be Jewish.”
“Can you do that later? We need to focus on acquiring mud.”
“Mud, mud, mud. I’m sure we’ll come up with something. It’s more important that I study. Do You want Your helper to make silly mistakes and be laughed at?”
It exasperated her mother to no end that Rebecca was all or nothing about everything. If she had no interest in something—piano, calligraphy, the spelling bee—she refused to spend even one minute thinking about it. But if she was interested in something—computers, baking, the history of gunpowder—she would spend every waking moment studying it, neglecting everything else.
She had decided that she was interested in being a good—no, a great—helper of God.
“But we don’t have time! It’s already Friday, and the ship docks tomorrow. You need to get out there and find mud.”
The ship’s lights dimmed as God spoke. It was now evening, ship’s time.
“Wait,” Rebecca said. “Explain to me exactly how we go about making a golem. It’s Shabbat. I don’t want to break any rules.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Very serious. A helper of God must be a role model. Eek, I forgot to light the candles. Please forgive me.”
“. . .”
“God, I couldn’t understand a word You just said there. It sounded like You were choking, or maybe You gurgled ‘like a convert.’”
“Trust me, no rules will be broken. First, you gather the mud—”
“Gathering is one of the melakhot,” Rebecca said, looking at the list in her book.
“Only if the produce gathered is in its natural place. And we know that there is naturally no mud on this ship, so what we gather won’t violate the rule. I cannot believe I’m even debating this with you. Anyway, next, you form the golem out of mud, much like how I once shaped Adam—”
“That sounds like kneading, another melakha.”
“Only if you do the mixing on Shabbat. All right, so we’ll focus on getting pre-mixed mud. After you shape the golem, make it smooth—”
“Smoothing is—”
“Fine, FINE! Leave it rough, what do I care? As long as it can walk. Finally, after you’ve made the golem, you must write emet, truth, on—oh.”
“Writing is—”
“I know. Forbidden.” God sounded so dejected that Rebecca stayed quiet.
After a moment, God brightened. “If the rats get to New Haifa, there’ll be a plague. The Shabbat laws can be broken to save lives.”
“Doesn’t it take a while for the virus to mutate? If we don’t catch the rats, can’t we evacuate the people in time?”
“Well, yes, that probably can be done. But convincing people will be a lot more work.”
“More work later is not a reason to break the rules now.”
“Wait, there’s a more immediate threat. The rats will eat all the stored grains.”
“People will starve?”
“Well, no. They have lots of freeze-dried foods that the rats won’t touch. But they will have to go without whole grain bagels for a while.”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, flipping through her book again. “The connection seems too tenuous. I think You’re stre
tching that saving-lives loophole beyond the breaking point.”
“You’re arguing against me based on some rules you read in a book?”
“I’m studying to be a good Jew. Don’t You want this?”
“But I’m telling you to do this! I command you.”
“But You can’t just make an arbitrary, random exception against all Your settled commandments and rules. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not? I’m God.”
“I thought we’re way past the stage where You act like a despot now.”
The argument went on for an hour. Rebecca’s zeal was implacable.
FINALLY, GOD NOTICED THE GLOBe on Rebecca’s nightstand. He would have slapped His forehead if He had a forehead (and hands).
“Rebecca Lau, listen to me. It’s not Shabbat.”
“What?”
“Shabbat begins at sundown, not the dimming of the ship’s electric lights.”
“It must be sundown somewhere on Earth now though.”
“Good thinking, except that due to relativistic effects, the ship is in a different frame of reference than Earth. By my calculations—let’s see, carry the one, add the ten—it’s Tuesday or Wednesday on Earth. And it’s not Shabbat anywhere.”
“You sure about this?”
“You can argue with me, but you can’t argue with Einstein.”
“So we’re allowed to do what we need to do.”
“No restrictions. Let’s get to it.”
Rebecca would have high-fived God at that moment if God was into high-fives (or had hands).
Rebecca begged to accompany her mother to the ship’s spa in the morning.
Helen was touched. She hadn’t felt close to her daughter for some time now. She seemed to be always yelling at her daughter, pushing her to do this or that, to be more disciplined, to try harder. It would be nice to relax together in the spa.
At Rebecca’s insistence, Helen ordered both of them mud facials.
With her eyes closed, Helen found it easier to talk to her daughter. She wasn’t constantly reminded of what a bad mother she was by Rebecca’s unfocused ways. All her friends’ daughters could play at least two instruments and never got less than a 99 out of a 100 on tests. The feeling that Rebecca’s lack of accomplishments was her fault gnawed at her.
Unidentified Funny Objects 2 Page 1