Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  How do I fix your heart? The drone pulled away.

  Magdalena had the drones stand and watch for those next hours as the creature sat very still and the shadows inside ebbed and bloomed and then were gone completely.

  ***

  After three days of silence, Magdalena prepared the drones for incision. She refitted their agile hands with steel-sided blades.

  They started from the top, slicing at the seams that connected the smallest plane of the shell. As they began, the creature’s tendrils spasmed once, splaying out across the docking bay.

  The drones continued.

  It took nearly an hour to remove the top panel, but their incisions were clean and precise. Inside the shell, pulsing veins snaked through a thick, viscous liquid. The veins had begun to wear thin in places and a mercury-slick liquid leaked through. It clung to them in silver beads.

  The dark shapes the drones had seen from the outside were visible now: they moved through the liquid, passing between the veins and changing shape as they went. Their outermost membrane had a dim, electric sheen that flared when they neared one another; once, two converged in a shower of sparks that turned the liquid a deep, warm purple.

  At the center of it all there was another shell. This one was smaller and its walls were transparent and riddled with holes. Veins reached in through them, connecting to a pulsing, trembling heart.

  It was another three days before the creature died. The tubes stopped pumping; the moving masses lost their sheen and sunk; the heart faltered and then stopped completely.

  Magdalena set to work. If she could not save the creature, if she could not understand its parts well enough to fix it, she would have to rebuild it.

  For a second time, her disassembly decks became forges and the drones melted down recycled metal. They took the thinning veins out of the creature’s body and replaced them with metal-spun tubes that would never grow weak; they programmed a new heart that was all clockwork and circuitry.

  When they had finished they turned on their chrome-plated heart and soldered the creature back together again. But even though the heart beat and silver blood flowed, the creature did not come back to life. It lay on the docking bay, unmoving. The old heart congealed in the arms of a drone.

  The diagnostics Magdalena ran told her that the new organ was simply not enough; a collection of wires and cogs might be able to pump blood but it would not make the creature whole again. Life, actual life, would require much more than just energy.

  The ghosts of its words skittered though her memory banks.

  If I cannot make you a new heart, Magdalena mused, perhaps I can give you one.

  The drones returned to their forges.

  ***

  As she watched the drones work for the next few hours, Magdalena wondered what would happen when they removed her from central processing. She had always considered herself to be something separate from the rest of the station. She was a complicated bit of digital craftsmanship, a finely-wrought piece of hardware no bigger than the drying husk of the creature’s heart. But Magdalena had come to think of the workers as extensions of herself; it seemed strange to think she could go on without them.

  Just before the worker came to central processing to remove her, Magdalena checked again that the backup generators would still have enough power to run the drones after she was offline.

  As the drone unscrewed the panels that held her in place, Magdalena searched her memory banks for an image of the planet. It looked just as it had when she first saw it—small and green—but it was different, too. It was more than just a picture, or someone else’s memory; it felt like something newly found that she’d forgotten she had lost.

  ***

  Magdalena awoke, encased by the panels of the creature’s glass-plated heart. She could feel every part of herself: the clockwork heart the drones had installed her into connected to hundreds of tubes, metal and organic, that ran throughout the creature’s body. She could sense the shapeless masses; they were organs, filtering and processing, but they also hummed with memories.

  Everything, every place the creature had visited came to her the more she explored the body. She could feel the radiation from galaxies that bloomed out of the darkness . She remembered the first time she came out of the sea, dragging herself up from the sand and shards of broken shells . She was surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of her kin all feeling the warm, dry air and learning how to fly.

  When she resurfaced from the memories, Magdalena found herself hovering above the docking bay. The drones had opened the doors before they shut themselves down, and she was looking out into the dark.

  There was a moment of uncertainty as she moved forward, out to the open. She remembered that she was not completely alone out here, that one day They would come back to find an abandoned shell, a hollowed-out body. The thought of that frightened her—the silver liquid drummed against the walls of her veins—and she hesitated. What would They do, knowing she had left Them? And what would she do, so alone without Them?

  History came to her suddenly, powerfully: she remembered the days after she learned to fly, when all her kin streaked across the sky and each went their own way, like so many seeds scattered to the wind. She had not seen them since and did not know if they were dead or alive, but here, in her clockwork heart and spun glass bones, they kept on living. She knew that, in the tricky ways such symmetry works, she too would go on living in the bodies of others.

  Magdalena started out of the doors, into the vast, cold dark. She propelled herself forward, feeling the flex and thrust of her muscles and the strength of her bones. Vision and memory broke over her like a tide as she barreled forward into the black, mapping a way to a place that would be her own.

  Brian Niemeier

  http://www.amazon.com/Brian-Niemeier/e/B00ZG6V7SW?ref_=pe_1724030_132998060

  Strange Matter(Novelette)

  by Brian Niemeier

  Sci Phi Journal #3

  I stare into the sink as I shave, dreading the day ahead. Each pass of the razor feels and sounds like I’m peeling tape off my face.

  The only reason trained chimps aren’t doing my job is the company’s fear of an ASPCA lawsuit. Thanks to them I get to work back to back double shifts in the 120 degree echo chamber that Janowicz calls a shop.

  The disposable razor snags on my stubble, and blood spatters onto the porcelain. The colors and the aftertaste of mint mouthwash remind me of a candy cane. I heard somewhere that the red stripe stands for blood.

  Facing the mirror, I see an inch-wide cut on my right jawline. I strop the blade on the thigh of my jeans for some extra mileage and rinse it.

  Starting out, I was sure I had the rest of my life to make my mark. No one told me that time’s a rigged game. At twenty, fifty seems like an eternity away, but each year goes by a little faster than the last. First comes one compromise; then a few more, until one day my hair’s more gray than brown, and the stupid kid I was is lost under all the frown lines and crow’s feet.

  I stand there holding the razor under the tap until the water goes from lukewarm to ice cold. The chill snaps me out of my daydream, but I take my time scraping the rest of my face with a cold blade. Then I open the medicine cabinet, fish out a bandage, and stick it on the cut.

  When I was a kid I touched an electric fence on my uncle’s farm. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when the pain hits. Another memory—nearly getting electrocuted while fixing a short-circuiting fridge in an inch of standing water—comes closer to the agony I’m in. I heard on TV that “electrocution” comes from “electrical” and “execution”. That’s what this feels like: frying in Old Sparky.

  My brain keeps working through the pain, and for once time plays its trick in reverse. What must only take a split second seems to last longer than a root canal. The world turns white, then orange-yellow, then red. There’s a silence deep enough to swallow all the taxi cab horns, ambulance sirens, and construction equipment noise I didn’t notice until the
y were gone.

  I’m looking down at the rust ring around my sink. The cheap plastic razor in my hand isn’t shaking. I’m calmly breathing in my bathroom’s sulfur and antiseptic scent, even though I should be panting like a greyhound.

  I look in the mirror. My face is just the way I left it: graying and creased and half-covered with lather.

  Only that’s not the way I left it—not exactly. I finished shaving. I know I did. But foam-covered bristles stand out on my cheek, and there’s no cut on my jaw.

  Four months, and I’m already seeing things. I thought the job would wear me down slow. It’d get a little worse each day until I jammed a hand into the drill or just stood there staring at it until they came and dragged me off the floor.

  Is it weird to feel better when you start hallucinating? Either way, relief is my first reaction. No way I’m fit for work.

  I run my thumb across the razor blade. Still dull. I strop it and finish shaving without cutting myself. Then I stroll down the hall, pick up the phone, and dial my boss’ number.

  After three tinny rings, a clipped gruff voice says, “Withill.”

  I resist the urge to use the shift supervisor’s rhyming nickname and say, “This is Russell. I can’t make it in.”

  A keyboard clacks in the background before Whithill says, “You’re out of sick time, Karhart. You sure that stomach flu ain’t’ a tapeworm?”

  “I think it’s psychological this time.”

  “What? You got a phobia for honest work?”

  “It’s better if I stay home. I might endanger myself or others.”

  I can almost hear Withill’s shrug. “Whatever, so long as I ain’t payin’ you.” The receiver clicks, telling me the matter’s settled as far as my boss is concerned.

  I hang up and enter the kitchen. I slept too late to make coffee, so I start some now. The smell perks me up a little, and I start thinking I should find out what’s wrong with me.

  My latest ex said her shrink was pretty good. He only has a master’s; not a PhD, so he works cheap. I think I’ve still got his card somewhere.

  I’m digging through a drawer stuffed with small appliance manuals and utility bill statements when that touching-the-third-rail shock happens again. The world goes from white to red, and I’m staring into my bathroom sink.

  The best sign I’m crazy is that I don’t scream. Instead I go back to the phone, my face still half-slathered with foam.

  “Withill,” a familiar gravelly voice says after the third ring.

  “Did I just call you?”

  There’s a pause. I picture Withill’s brow furrowing as he says, “Karhart. You messin’ with me?”

  “I don’t know. How many times have I called today?”

  Withill seems to be searching for the right attitude and settles on dickish. “Once. And unless it stays that way, our next conversation will be in person in my office.”

  I’m not sure what makes me hang up on my boss, but before I know it the phone’s back on the hook. I clamp a hand over my mouth to hold in a fit of hysterical laughter. My palm comes away smeared with shaving cream.

  Realizing how screwed I am if I’m not hallucinating sobers me up fast. I just stand in the hallway for the next several minutes, waiting to see who my ass belongs to: some weird electrocuting light or my raging prick of a boss.

  Turns out it’s the light.

  My fingers fumble with the razor and drop it in the sink. I stagger out of the bathroom, sure that one of two things is happening. Either I’m wall-climbing mad—in which case the light is probably how my warped brain interprets getting shock treatments in a psych ward somewhere—or I’m actually reliving the same few minutes over and over again. If I’m crazy, nothing I do matters. But if this shit’s real…

  Time to get some answers. I ignore the phone and head for the living room. Going straight to the TV in a situation like this probably says something about my childhood, but like the man said, stick with what you know.

  All I get is snow before I remember that the little box the cable company sent out needs a different remote. Scrounging for it between couch cushions reeking of stale beer, I curse the shop for not paying me enough to afford a flat screen TV. The clicker turns up under sports pages I stole from the break room, and I turn on the box. The classic movie network comes on. Last night it was censored slasher flicks. This morning it’s Bogart.

  I can’t remember what station the news is on, so I click through the channels. It’s mostly commercials until I land on a pair of mannequins dressed for a power lunch. I can’t tell what’s more distracting: the guy’s picket fence smile, his female cohost’s orange peel skin, or the gaudy graphics behind them. I divide my attention between the marquee of scrolling news blurbs and the anchors’ attempts to pin the recession on the party their sponsors don’t bribe. They’re still yammering about bad debt and bank bailouts when the light takes me back again.

  Have I been through this a hundred times? A thousand? To be honest I gave up counting. When you’re constantly repeating the same ten minutes (and seventeen seconds, to be exact), time doesn’t mean shit. I don’t sleep. I remember everything that happens before the world dissolves in light and pain. So far I’m the only one. Everything else stays the same.

  There are no answers. I can make it to the TV in six seconds if I start running right away. I know every news report, sitcom episode, and commercial by heart. Nothing explains why the world keeps burning, and nobody notices but me.

  I start searching online. With no clue where to begin, the going is slow. It doesn’t help that anything I write down gets erased by the light. I’ve got to start over every time with nothing to go on but a memory that’s duller than my safety razor. I’m a lousy researcher, but having infinite time makes trial and error my best friend.

  Sometimes I get burned out and look for ways to amuse myself. A few dozen calls to a woman I’ve never met, a local mechanic, and small a downstate PD dig up most of the necessary information. Getting the rest isn’t strictly legal, but folks on hacker forums don’t object to telling me how.

  After a couple of trial runs, I’m ready. I pick up the phone, get the details straight in my head, and dial.

  Three rings. A harsh voice says, “Withill.”

  “Hi, Jack. Happy judgment day!”

  “Who is this? Karhart?”

  “Wrong, asshole. Today I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past. Thanksgiving Past, if you want to get technical. You were driving home, drunk and angry, from dinner with your girlfriend’s folks when you killed that hitchhiker.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about,” Withill stammers.

  I can’t help but smile. “Why’d you tell the mechanic you hit a deer when we both know it was a twelve year-old runaway?”

  Nothing from the other end. I’ve heard this silence before though, and I rush in to fill it. “You’re thinking of hanging up now. Don’t. The body washed up downstate a few days after you rolled it into the river. Lucky for you the cops never ID’d a suspect, but they will if you hang up before we’re done.”

  “This is bullshit.”

  It’s hard not to laugh, but I do my best to stay in character. “I got your bank records, Jack. I got the autopsy report and coroner’s jury transcripts. Shannon, Marty at the garage, and Sergeant Reed at the Maple Shade PD all had parts of the puzzle. I just put them together.”

  “Why?”

  “I have more time on my hands than you have blood on yours.”

  “There’s gotta be a reason you didn’t call the cops. What do you want?”

  “I want to give you a choice. Option A: you refuse my offer and spend the rest of your life in prison.”

  “And option B?”

  “You march into Janowicz’s office and piss on his desk.”

  “Go to hell, you sick little freak!”

  “It’s your call. Did you know that cons have their own special justice system for people who kill kids?”

  I don’t n
eed to hear what comes next. The light’s on its way, so I hang up.

  Holy shit.

  This can’t be right.

  So I’m messing around online, browsing this forum that’s usually good for a laugh. The site belongs to a late night radio show that nutjobs call to trade conspiracy theories. Somewhere between posts attacking the Federal Reserve and fluoride, I stumble onto a thread about doomsday scenarios.

  There was this geeky sci-fi show where the characters were always saying how if you rule out all the simple explanations, whatever’s left, no matter how extraordinary, must be the truth. Something like that. I’m reading this conspiracy nut’s rant about particle colliders, and suddenly I know how those TV spacemen felt when a tachyon burst pulled them into a time warp. Only instead of cruising around a commie space utopia in a posh starship, I’m stuck on earth in a tiny apartment.

  This guy’s frothing at the mouth over heavy ion colliders, quantum vacuums, quarks, and lots of other technobabble I don’t understand. Nothing he says sounds anything close to sane, except for the fact that it all makes sense. What I gather from the guy’s posts and the articles he links to is that these colliders might form particles called strangelets. This strange matter turns anything it touches into itself. One strangelet could turn the whole world to slag in a couple seconds.

  I want to laugh at this guy’s paranoid theory like I laughed at all the other bullshit. I want to stop reading and browse for porn. Instead I look up the location of every particle collider in the world. It turns out there’s one six miles from where I’m sitting.

  A government-funded think tank owns and operates the collider. Pasted across their web site is the announcement—ignored by the mainstream news—that today’s the day they’ll be starting the thing up for the first time.