by Anthology
Vivian opened her bag, withdrawing a rare paperback copy of one of her favorite books, hoping her mother would enjoy listening to it. The book, a gift from her mother for her thirteenth birthday. Bringing it to her nose, she inhaled the musty smell. Then Vivian leaned over her mother, placing the book near her face.
“Breathe in, Mom. Remember what was. Remember my joy when you gave this to me.”
Her mother blinked once.
For the next hour, Vivian read to her mother, stroking her hair, stopping every few pages to look at her mother’s frozen profile. Jenna pulled a chair to the other side of the bed and held her nana’s hand.
Pausing, Vivian tore a page out of the book. She folded it and tucked it into a pocket in her mother’s nightgown. Quoting a line from that page, she whispered:
And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.
Her mother blinked.
“I’m leaving Edgar Allen Poe to keep you company. Goodbye, Mommy. I love you.”
“Goodbye, Nana,” Jenna said softly. “I’ll miss you. Be happy.”
Then Jenna turned away, not able to watch.
Dr. Vivian Toujours injected her mother in the arm, pushing the plunger filled with sweet release. Janice’s body caved into itself, freeing the tortured person within. One last breath and it was over.
Ninety-five years of hell were over.
“What will you do now, Mom?” Jenna asked.
Vivian turned to her daughter, who still seemed to be eight years old. Years ago, she had wanted Jenna to remain small forever, to cuddle with her, to depend on her. Part of that was still true—Jenna did still depend on her.
So did a lot of other people.
“Keep working,” Vivian said. “I’m going to keep working.”
Zach Chapman
http://chappyfiction.com/
Between Screens(Short story)
by Zach Chapman
Originally published by Galaxy Press
I was fourteen when I first skipped across the galaxy, trying to fit in, trailing the older boys who had ditched class. Cox, the grunge leader of the group, tattooed and modified, ran the skipper code hacker with one hand and shoved me through the portal with the other. One moment I could hear the others laughing, the next I was in an empty station on my hands and knees, picking myself off the cold floor, heart racing. I didn’t know much about skipping, or space travel—I had only been off Earth for a week—but I knew it wasn’t cheap. A moment later I heard the others stumbling in after me, shouting in fear and excitement.
“We’re caught.”
“By who?”
“The pigs!”
“They tracing us?”
“’Course. Gotta skip. And trip the pigs. Lose ’em, yeah?”
“Sure, sure.”
I was shoved by three other boys through another skipper, and like that, I was across the universe, in another grey skipper station, running from the pigs who were light years behind.
They never did catch us, not that first time. Cox made sure of that, rerouting stations with his hand hacker to throw them off. We skipped, racing down long hallways in abandoned stations. We skipped, shoving through dense crowds of business drones. We skipped, diving past upkeep bots. We skipped until my world spun and nausea swelled inside me.
When we arrived at our final destination—a claustrophobic, cold room—a dozen boys were touching-up a rigged cacophony of gerrymandered technology. Some of the boys I recognized from school. Their stares jarred me. I was foreign to them, tan Earth skin, natural brown eyes and hair, a stark contrast to their pale features.
A screen that looked scarcely different from a threadbare bed sheet was draped on one side of the room, a blindingly bright projector shone on it from the other side. Wires and ancient technology, a haze of smoke, the stink of synthetic bliss, and worn blankets and pillows filled the cold room.
Cox bumped and pounded two tall, thin, pimply boys who were entering some final calibrations on the projector, “Ready, ready? The telescope spitting what we need?”
“Sure, sure,” the two answered in unison and returned to their work. Their complexions were more corpse-like than the other spaceboys, and their greasy light hair curled at their shoulders.
An image flickered on the screen. It was a black canvas speckled with burning white stars. The projector clicked several times, then the image zoomed in on a planet, green and blue, much like Earth, but with strange-shaped continents. All the boys quieted. Cox pushed me to the blanket-covered floor and stuck a warm drink in my hand, “Drink up, new kiddie, the lightshow’s starting.”
“What’s so special about it?” I asked, taking a sip of the burning elixir. A boy next to me hushed me as if I were speaking over some audio, but there was no other sound in the station.
“Boys projectin’ the light. That’s a planet, this ain’t no movie. There’s a telescope outside of this station. Boys hacked it. Boys real smart with equations.” Cox tapped a finger to his temple. “Real sharp. Taller one’s name Timmet, other’s Trager. Real ugly, but so sharp they’re smarter than the teaches we ditched. Sure, sure.”
“That’s another planet out there, hundred light-years away?” I asked.
Cox nodded, irritated, then punched my shoulder, “Just watch. I ain’t seen it at this angle yet.”
Sitting, I began to watch, but nothing seemed to happen. I gradually became aware of a hand on my back, slowly rubbing as if to annoy. I turned to look, but the light from the projector distorted my vision. I could make out the shape of a girl, narrow with long synthetic dark hair. In the dimness and blinding projector glare, I thought I saw her wink. She hissed, “Don’t lose your lunch, new kiddie.”
Before I could respond to her, a gasp from all the boys brought my attention back to the screen.
A meteor hurdled for the planet, brown and jagged. The two masses collided. Breaths hissed in. A shockwave slowly spread from the impact, followed by a wall of ocean. Cox turned toward the projector and yelled over the silence, “Timmet, Trager! Zoom in! Can’t see nothing.”
The brothers tapped away with their hackers, the telescope zoomed in, and our projector followed the shockwave as it ate forests, deserts and mountains, obliterating all to dust and magma. It zoomed in further. A city came to view, quaking, buildings falling, ants scrambling. Then it was dust too. And then a wall of water. The projector flicked to several other dying cities before the visible half of the planet was devoured and dead. When it was over, the entire room fell silent. The telescope flicked back to the impact site—a circle of red-orange magma, glowing as the tectonic cracks slowly tendrilled across the planet like stretching skeletal fingers. The nausea from skipping returned. I accidently tipped my drink over, but no one seemed to notice, their eyes were nailed to the dying world.
“Why?” I managed to utter, “Why did those people stay? They must have known their planet would die.”
“Misguided principals.” Cox shrugged. “Or just too poor to leave. Not like you, new kiddie.”
“If I was rich, I’d still be on Earth,” I began, but something buzzing on Cox’s hip took precedence. He fumbled at the device, brought it up to his face. His eyes widened. Pointing his finger toward the skipper gate, Cox started to shout. Boys began to clear the skip station, running, packing up pillows and synthetic smokers and hard drinks, spilling their possessions everywhere as they jumped through the skipper. Cox jerked me to my feet, “Move, new kiddie—the pigs’ve found us.”
I turned to look for the girl, but she was gone. Cox shoved me forward. “You hear me? No time.”
Then I was skipping again, Cox at my heels, more boys chasing after, hooting. Instantly through space we ran: Abandoned comet drill site. Packed synth-steak meat house. Sliding living quarters. Busy commercial district, grey and dull. And a hundred skip stations between. The boys began to split, skipping off to different stations.
Pigs in pale suits popped up
here and there, never able to crack us with their electric batons, though once, right before we lost them for good, one dove for Cox, catching his ankle. I kicked the fat man in his teeth, stomped the hand that had captured Cox, and shoved us both through the portal. When we finally lost them it was just Cox, Todd, and I.
Cox swung a tattooed arm over my shoulders and squeezed, “Kiddie, you did good. Respect, respect. Did good watching that planet blow for the first time, too. I’ve seen it five times now. First time was the hardest. But it hooks you, yeah? It’s a day later and you want to keep watchin’. Skip to new stations where the light ain’t passed through just yet. See it again, at a new angle.”
Yes. This is what I wanted. Right?
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
Cox laughed and pushed me forward. “You’ll see. Go on home. See you at school tomorrow.”
***
When I finally found the way back to my living quarters, I could hear mom crying in her room. She was still grieving over dad, though she claimed that the sudden weeping outbursts were due to the artificial days and nights, or the synthetic smell of life in space, or some other lie. Luckily, she didn’t notice me slip in, nor did she complain when I drowned out her moans by blaring music in my cramped room while I struggled to sleep.
The next morning I ate synth-meat for breakfast, rushed out the door before mom could bring up dad, and used my school pass to skip to the school station. My first three periods I drifted off, day-dreaming of skipping, kicking a faceless patrol officer in the teeth, but mostly about the dying planet. In my daydreams I could hear the peoples’ cries. Why hadn’t they left? Surely they weren’t so poor that they couldn’t leave. Who would choose death on a planet over life across the million space stations?
At first I sat by myself at lunch, sure that no one would want a tan Earther sitting with them, but, to my surprise, Cox grabbed my shoulder and gestured over to a table where Todd, Timmet, Trager and a few others from the night before sat.
As I joined them, I heard discussion of last night’s exploits—rehashing, bragging, hyperbolizing. Cox cut in, explaining how heroic I was when I smashed officer piggy’s teeth in. After that the other boys seemed more accepting of me, listening when I spoke, giving the occasional nod.
By the time lunch was dismissed, they had begun planning another show, but this one was something new, not the same dying planet from another angle.
Reluctantly, I ambled to class, a dark boy in a scuffed hallway full of skulking corpses, my mind fixed on skipping, wondering what the new show might be—Cox, Timmet and Trager had kept me out of the loop. In class I sat in a listing chair, impatiently leaning back from my desk, not listening to some teach chew the side of her mouth. Suddenly, I felt a kick on my tailbone, hard enough to sting. I glanced back; it took me a second, but I recognized the girl from last night’s show.
She winked a pale-blue eye. Her hair was dyed darker than my natural color; it shimmered purple if the light caught it just right. She wore a splash of cherry lipstick, and I spotted tattoos swirling up the side of her neck: a few colorful planets, some stylized stars and a spiraling galaxy—not the sort of ink you’d find on Earth.
I raised my eyebrows. Her complexion didn’t seem as grey as the others’. With a quirked smile, she passed me a folded note on synth-paper. It read: u planning on going to the next show? Shit, did I really want to go? I wrote back: sure, sure, what’s your name? And tossed it back to her while the teach wasn’t looking. She responded with: Name’s Lem, next time you better sit next to me. When I looked back at her, I could tell just from her crooked smirk that she was aggressive, cocky, vivacious.
Though I had lived on Earth for fourteen years, and breathed real air, drank real water, and ate real food, she somehow had lived more than me.
I sent back: sure, sure.
After we received the notification to switch classes, Lem followed me to the science hall. I didn’t know what to say, so I awkwardly smiled as she complained about the dearth of girls at last night’s show. I nodded like a fool, bumping into other students in between gawking glances. She must have been late to her next class, because I had hardly entered mine before the tardy notification appeared on the cracked screen of my tablet.
I remembered nothing of the rest of the school-day. I assume I spent it scribbling sketches of dying planets on synth-paper, ignoring teachers. After school I roamed the halls looking for Cox, Todd, Lem, or any of the gang, but those who hadn’t ditched earlier in the day, hadn’t stuck around after school. When I got home, I was already irritated. Mom—her eyes rimmed red—put on a smile for me. That irritated me more.
I left after dinner, ignoring mom’s silent pleas to be comforted.
I paced our sector, subconsciously moving toward the skip station, but without the handy hacker Cox had, I was marooned, unless I wanted to pay.
As I roamed I passed silicon flowers and earthen landscape murals so awful they only could have been painted by someone who’d never stepped foot on Earth’s surface. The bleak, artificial lighting did nothing to uplift my brooding.
Why had they stayed? They were ants on our cosmic threadbare screen, scurrying, helpless. Too poor? After father had died, mom and I were too poor to live anywhere but the stations.
Could it have been different long ago? I asked myself as I studied the awful perspective of a different earthen mural. None of the shadows looked right, and the trees were far too thin. Was Cox’s gang where I should try to fit in? The mountains looked like triangles, completely inorganic, completely wrong. How long could they go ditching school and skip-hacking before a pig bashed them? The sun was a brighter orange than that, the sky more blue—this painting belonged on a wasted planet, full of frantic ants. What happens if I got stranded on some station a billion light years away? Trees don’t grow in concentric rows, and there’s no patterns to the way leaves sprout from branches. Why did they stay? Why didn’t they just leave?
***
Over the following weeks I grew closer to Cox and his gang; we were vines twisting together, using each other to reach a sunspot, not that any of my new friends would get the metaphor. We poured hours of work into discussing plans over half-eaten synthetic lunch food, spreading the news only by word of mouth to those we knew wouldn’t rat, hunting down potential show sites: the station had to have a powerful telescope that the brothers could hack, and it couldn’t be in a high-traffic area.
I hardly saw Lem in class—I think she ditched more than not—but when I did, her cherry smile brought my thoughts away from indecision. Cox’s gang was the key to the lightshows, and lightshows were the key to her. She was the most attractive space girl I’d seen, and I’d chase her to far-off galaxies if given the chance.
One day between the first show I’d seen and the second, Lem and I ditched before Earth History class. Using a battered old skip-hacker Cox had graciously given me, I took her to stations we’d never seen. We walked through offices—stealing idle hand tablets, synth-papers, and whatever would fit in our pockets, ran through cafeterias—snatching genuine planet-baked cinnamon bread and rolls with real butter, laughed in game rooms as we played VRs with what little money we had. In the cold, bleak expanse of our galaxy, I had found light.
Back home I would lie awake on my thin mattress thinking of Lem’s dark hair with its purple shimmer, wondering if she was thinking of me too. It was a nice change from my brain replaying my father’s babbling death as fast-acting poison ate his body. I never saw it, the leak at his station was far above Earth, but that hadn’t stopped my mind from speculating about his final minutes.
Hell, I was beginning to be able to ignore my mom, too—but it wasn’t all wonderful amongst the bleak stars. I still second-guessed myself. Joining Cox’s cohorts could lead down a strange path. I’d never run with a crowd like that back on Earth. But the stations were different from Earth. To fit in here, I told myself, I had to run with these guys.
***
On the day we set up the show roo
m, I ditched class entirely. My whole body trembled in anticipation. This room yawned bigger than the last, and I was one of the first to arrive.
Cox unsuccessfully attempted to hang the screen while Trager and Timmet worked on the projector and hacked a nearby space telescope. Cox caught sight of me. “Damn Earther, you scared? Your skin’s white as mine. Relax. Come here, help me hang this damn thing.”
“Sure, sure. Not scared—excited.”
“Don’t drop the screen. Your fingers shakin’ too much.”
“No worries.”
By the time we finished setting up, a dozen boys lay about the floor on insta-inflate mattresses and backpacks, smoking paper soaked in colorful synthetics, drinking delicious toxins from recycled bottles, playing the knockout game.
More came skipping in. And girls. Three girls, then four, awkwardly watching the boys. But Lem wasn’t there.
She’d come, I knew, unless she got caught by the pigs. I shook off the thought; she was too quick and determined to be caught.
Someone slapped a bottle to my chest. I drank, spilling the burning, icy liquid down my chin. Todd slammed me on the back, hooting. My head buzzed, harmonizing with the hum of the station’s electronics. The lights dimmed, hacked. Yet, it felt too early to start, more people were passing through the portal every minute, Lem wasn’t with them.
An uproar of murmurs met the flicker of the projector. Too soon, the murmurs said. Friends on their way, it complained. An image flashed, a volcano bleeding orange and red. More complaints. But what could we do? There’s no rewind button on telescopes.
Cox stood, “Ease, ease. This is a preshow. Settle your pretty heads. Staunch those flowing tears.”
Tension in the crowd dissolved as we realized that the best was yet to come. A wet pinch on my neck startled me. I turned to see Lem, she’d snuck in and bit me on the neck, playfully, “So tense. Need to relax, Earther. Let me work on your shoulders.”
She massaged my back. I could smell the synthetic sweetness of a hand-rolled cigarette between her cherry lips. She pulled me to her, touched my lips to hers, and exhaled a remedy, a toxin, a delight into my lungs. My world spun for the moment, her tongue in my mouth, fingers running through hair.