by Various
“Totem”: “In the beginning, before the city, there was a creature. Genderless, ageless. The city flies on its back. We hear it, all of us, in one way or another. It demands sacrifices. But it can only eat what we give it.” Benson strokes the DA’s hair. “Where did you hear that story?” she asks. The DA bites her lip. “From someone who always seemed to be right,” she says.
“Reparations”: Stabler and his wife talk it over. They decide to take the girls and go far, far away. “A new place,” he says, “where we can have any names we want. Any histories.”
“Bang”: A bomb goes off in Central Park. It was beneath a park bench the whole time. No one is sitting on the bench when it detonates, and the only casualty is a passing pigeon. The serial killer sends a note to Benson and Stabler. All it says is “Oops.”
“Delinquent”: Benson and the DA are both late to work, and smell like each other. Stabler sends in his resignation by express post.
“Smoked”: The DA and Benson roast vegetables on the grill, laughing. The smoke rises up and up, drifts over the trees, curls past birds and rot and blooms. The city smells it. The city takes a breath.
Executive Producer
DICK WOLF
The preceding story was fictional. No actual person or event was depicted.
WE WERE NEVER ALONE IN SPACE
by Carmen Maria Machado
First published in Shimmer (Oct. 2013), edited by E. Catherine Tobler
• • • •
LAST, IT WAS ADELAIDE, up to her chest in the inky water, waiting as the light dropped away.
Before that, the sky went from peach to violet to almost black. She could barely distinguish it from the horizon. There would be no stars, not with the clouds. She could not tell if she was moving toward the shore or away from it. Terror sluiced through every mile of her veins. Was that the outline of a person, bobbing in the water near her, or was she imagining it?
Before that, it was still Adelaide, running to the water, the hard tidal sand knocking her footsteps up into her kneecaps. It hurt, but she kept going. She could see it. The jetty. The sea beyond it, its frothy curls and unseen currents. She hurtled into the water and nothing but its increasing depth could slow her down.
But before that, there was a woman in the dead-end street, an old woman who had just been in the red city where she had felt so young, but now she was back, she was back. Her body ached like it hadn’t in the other place. She distantly remembered how she had fallen here, in this street, before. She remembered the sound of her cane chattering on the cobblestone as it rolled down the incline toward the beach. As her eyes followed where her cane had once tumbled, she saw a teenaged girl streaking over the sand like a greyhound.
But before the old woman in the street, with her aches and her confusion, there was a little boy, aged seven, hair dreadlocked from the saltwater, who climbed out of the crawlspace beneath the pier where that man had left him so long ago. Adelaide saw him come out, remembered the stories that she’d heard about the pier, about the boy whose body was found there before she was born. This child looked a little cold and a little wet but alive, he was alive.
Before that, Adelaide left Emily standing in the kitchen. “I have to go,” she said through the slamming screen door. She walked fast and then jogged, then broke into a run, going faster and faster.
Before that, a woman on the television, bright lipstick on her teeth, talked about the people who were appearing. “All over,” she said. “The dead, they are coming back. Appearing where they died.” She tore the microphone from her lapel and stumbled off the set, the camera still rolling on an empty chair as Adelaide stood up from the couch. She could not feel her legs.
Before that, Amal was calling her boss, leaving voicemail after voicemail. When he finally got there, he found her sitting next to her desk, not looking at the screen full of ghostly human faces. “It’s us,” she said in a raw voice. “It’s us.”
Before that, a silver rover rumbled over the landscape, blindly touching the shadowy figures that drifted through the red city. When it touched them, there was a delicate popping sound: less than an undone soap bubble, even softer than the wet oah of a lover’s mouth opening for the first time. After the touch, and after that sound, they vanished from the surface of Mars and reappeared in the last place on earth where they had been afraid.
Before that, Adelaide watched her father lay on the couch in a darkened living room, his toenails an electric green where he had permitted Baby Margaret, who was not such a baby anymore, to paint them. He was asleep, his hand open, the remote resting upon it like an offering. Baby Margaret was curled up next to him. Gentle snores ripped through the rubble of her stuffy nose. In front of them, the TV continued its breathless report. “This is what we’re looking at now,” someone was saying, as they showed the black-and-white footage. “There’s never been anything like this before.” Adelaide could see, through the snowy haze of static, the outline of a city in the Martian dust.
Before that, Adelaide walked into the kitchen and dug around for Cokes in the fridge. The air conditioning chilled her wet hair, but her body was still so warm. She pressed one can against the back of her neck and dropped the other into Emily’s hand. Adelaide’s heart was knocking behind her ribs like it wanted out. Emily had already cracked the top of another Coke and was sucking foam from the metal rim. Adelaide couldn’t stop watching her. The TV prattled from the living room. Something about the Mars rover. “You see this?” Emily said from the doorway. Adelaide shook her head. She hated all this talk about Mars. She had read years ago that once an object is launched in space, it will keep going forever and ever. A person in space, floating away from everything, would do so until she died. And even then, she’d still keep floating through nothing. Emily looked back at her, and the inconstant light from the television created a kaleidoscopic aura around her body. “Adelaide, are you seeing this?”
Before that, many millions of miles away, a rover rumbled over a previously unexplored hill on the surface of Mars. The red city was peaceful. No one realized how far the living could really come.
Before that, Adelaide found the mouth of a girl named Emily, the daughter of a summer family who was leaving at the end of August. She tasted salty with sweat and bitter from bug spray, which was layered over her mosquito bites. Seized by the heat of them, Adelaide kissed each bite, the string of them moving down her neck like a constellation. Kissing Emily made her feel twitchy, like she needed to run down the shore until all the nervous energy was pounded away. They sat on the strip of beach outside of the house. Adelaide dug a rut for her feet. It was too narrow and she had to fold one foot over the other. The great numbers of jellyfish that had strayed ashore glittered like polished stones across the sand.
Before that, Adelaide got older. She found breasts beneath her shirt. Her hair grew long. She developed a snarl so fierce that she went at it with a pair of scissors, and ended up giving herself a haircut. Her hair grew long again.
Before that, Adelaide’s mother woke up in heap on a bright red street on a distant planet, the fear sliding out of her body like hot oil. Others helped her to her feet. For the first time in recent memory, her mind felt clear. She understood.
Before that, Adelaide’s mother walked into the water near a jetty at the northernmost part of town. She drowned.
She had left a long trail around the house of all of the house’s dried goods—wild rice, wheat flour, white flour, sugar and lentils. A riddle for her daughters to solve. Those smart girls, those wonderful girls, they would figure it out. When she was sinking, horror shot out through the cloudy haze of her mind like a sunburst. As she died, she thought, a puzzle for them, upon their waking, my girls, alone, my girls, alone.
Before that, a woman named Amal was put in charge of the biggest project of her career—an unmanned rover to Mars. Her boss told her this from her office doorway, smiling with a piece of kale in his teeth. The night of the announcement, she came home to her husband with a bottle
of wine. “Let’s do the bear thing,” she said, pushing him down into the couch. “Whatever you want, let’s do it.”
Before that, Adelaide’s father told her that her mother was very sick. He pressed a can of soda against the lump on the back of her head and kissed her hair. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said.
Before that, Adelaide came home to her mother standing with her forehead pressed against the solid oak bathroom door, rolling it over and over like she was in pain. When Adelaide said, “Mom?” her mother cried, “Does he think he can salt my earth? Does he think he can salt my earth?” and Adelaide ran to her mother, grabbed her hand, and her mother pushed her into the far wall. Her mother kept rolling, screaming louder and louder, and Adelaide would hear those words for the rest of her life, burned into the place where she dropped off to sleep, does he think he can salt my earth, salt my earth, my earth, mine?
Before that, Adelaide’s mother was sitting on the porch facing the ocean, weeping when she thought that Adelaide couldn’t hear.
Before that, Baby Margaret was born. She was the color of the midday sky and all folds. A doctor knocked life into her tiny chest. Adelaide’s mother showed Adelaide every inch of the baby. “You were this small, once,” she said, lying. No one was ever that small.
Before that, Adelaide’s mother was as round as a planet, again.
Before that, Adelaide was little.
Before that, Adelaide was littler.
Before that, Adelaide’s mother gave birth. She howled and whispered in alternating waves. “I feel like an animal, I’m an animal!” she screamed, yanking on her husband’s hand. Then, quiet as a secret: “The cosmos are coming.”
Before that, Adelaide’s mother was as round as a planet. She and Adelaide’s father listened to her belly in the still of the early morning. “She’s come from somewhere else, this one,” Adelaide’s mother said, touching the curve of her stomach.
Before that, the woman who would become Adelaide’s mother sat up beneath the sheets, making a tent. She straddled the man who would become Adelaide’s father. He said he loved her. He didn’t, not yet, but he would one day.
But first, it was Adelaide, unborn, floating through a city as red as dirt.
Marshall Ryan Maresca became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “Jump the Black” in Rayguns Over Texas (2013), edited by Rick Klaw.
Visit his website at www.mrmaresca.com.
* * *
Short Story: “Jump the Black” ••••
JUMP THE BLACK
by Marshall Ryan Maresca
First published in Rayguns Over Texas (2013), edited by Rick Klaw
• • • •
“THE EMIGRATION OFFICES will be closing in 23 minutes.”
The tinny speakers hissed out four alien languages before giving the message in English. Miller only recognized two of them, and only understood a few words in either.
“If you have not had your number called by closing, you will have to return tomorrow. If you are not present when called, you will forfeit your meeting, and rescheduling will be required.”
Miller had already spent three days, from open to close, waiting for his number to be called. If he had to, he’d wait another three. Whatever it took.
The Xoninet he had spent the better part of the day sitting next to nudged him, making a few gurgling noises. The dwarven, sharkskinned alien had tried to start up conversation earlier, but the mutual language barrier had proven far too inconvenient. Despite that, Miller responded, “You and me both, brother.”
“Chre-ya-pou!” a human caseworker called out. Miller had a chance, still. His number was chre-ya-qeay. Even if his alien language skills were poor, he could count in Coalition Standard. Only two to go.
The Xoninet pointed to Miller’s ticket and gurgled some more.
“Yeah, I’m almost up,” Miller said.
“Chre-ya-pou!” The caseworker looked around the room, coughing as she called out the numbers.
The Xoninet knocked Miller on the arm, which hurt like hell. Those little guys were strong. “Chre-ya-pou, keth fa!” he called out, pointing to Miller.
The caseworker came over. “You’re chre-ya-pou?”
Miller held up his ticket. “Chre-ya-qeay.”
She shook her head, tapping her bony finger on the ticket. “That’s pou. Come on.”
Miller grabbed his application pad and followed after her, cursing himself for looking at a pou for three days and thinking it was a qeay. At least it wasn’t a fatal mistake. She led him to a cubicle in the back of the emigration offices complex, past several other people having translator-aided sessions with alien caseworkers. It was a minor blessing that he had managed to get a fellow human. Miller took this as a good sign.
“Let’s see what we have,” she said, taking his application pad and laying it on her desk. A display of his various documents appeared, which she cycled through with weary rapidity.
“Hmm, yes,” she said. “You’re looking for a X-Theta student visa to Carawkai?”
“That’s correct,” Miller said. “I’ve got a scholarship—”
“I see that,” she cut him off. “Yes, that all seems to be in order, good.” Of course everything was in order. After four failed visa applications, Miller made sure he’d jumped every hoop perfectly this time.
She scanned through more pages, her eyes never once making contact with him. “You grew up in San Antonio?”
“We spent a few years there when I was a kid,” Miller said. Most of his childhood had been a blur of moving around, wherever his father had found work.
“Specifically, you were there in ’54.”
“I suppose,” Miller said. “The year sounds right.”
“In ’54, San Antonio was reclassified an Orange zone.”
That didn’t sound right. He knew the jobs his father had gotten usually put them on the edge—there simply were more jobs near the hot zones—but even then, he knew they never lived in an Orange. “No, it was Yellow. We never lived deeper than Yellow.”
She nodded, face still buried in her pages. “I’m sure it was Yellow at the time. Unfortunately, everything south of the 30th parallel has been retroactively designated Orange from ’54 on.”
“Wait—”
She finally looked at him, putting on a practiced expression of false sympathy. “I’m terribly sorry, but spending any time in an Orange Zone flags you as an unsuitable candidate for an exit visa.”
“What?” Miller asked. He had never heard that before. “No, that can’t be right. I have my medical records there, you can see, my rad levels are nominal, my viral counts are in tolerance…”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” she said. “But that is the policy. Many species in the Coalition are far too sensitive to risk potential exposure.”
“Exposure to what, exactly?” Miller asked. “I already went through nine rounds of immunization, not to mention—”
“I’m very sorry, sir,” she repeated, pointedly. “There’s nothing I can do about policy. Emigration is denied.”
• • •
Power was in brown mode when Miller returned to his tenement. That meant waiting until the elevator was at capacity—seventy humans—before it would ascend to his block. It was midafternoon, and very few people were returning home. Those with jobs wouldn’t be back until nightfall, and the rest either stayed in or were out in the thoroughfare shaking their hats.
Fifteen people sat in the elevator. Miller’s blockmate, Emile, sat closest to the doors.
“You have a day?” Emile asked when he saw Miller.
Miller joined him on the elevator floor. “The day had me.”
“I told you, brother, I told you. They don’t let you off the rock for nothing.”
“It’s not right,” Miller said. “I’ve got the scholarship. I did everything right this time.”
“What was the hustle they gave you?”
“Time in an Orange Zone.�
�
“You lived in an Orange Zone?”
“No!” Miller said. “That’s the guff of it!”
“That’s what I told you. They’ll always spin some hustle at you. What did you have? Bug? Crab?”
“Not even. She was human!” The whole business wouldn’t have stung as bad if it had come from an alien.
“Traitor,” Emile said, his voice weary with contempt. “The whole business with that office is a joke, I told you. You see that now?”
“Yeah,” Miller said. He had tried the right way. He had done everything like he should have, and it did him no damn good. He glanced about at the rest of the folks in the elevator: the usual crowd of shiftless blanks, just like him and Emile. No one to be worried about. He leaned in close to Emile. “So, let’s do it your way.”
Emile nodded. “You wanna Jump the Black?”
“No work, no schools, and staying here will kill us one way or another.” Dad died at thirty-eight. Mom only a couple years older. Every blank in the elevator had the same story. “Gotta get off the damned Earth. A better life isn’t gonna start here, you know?”
“I know,” Emile said.
“And there’s no other way, is there?”
“Nope. But that ain’t much of a way, either.” Emile had gone to Jump the Black three times. So he said. Miller always wondered how far he had really gotten.
“It’s a way.” A few more people wandered into the elevator and slumped to the floor. They were all used to brown mode. “Worst case, get caught, end up back here again, right? Like you?”
Emile looked at him sideways. “That ain’t the worst.”
“But you’re gonna try again, right?”
“Gotta try,” Emile said. “Or die trying.” Emile’s wife and brother had both gone and Jumped the Black. Were working—actual, honest work—on some ship or station or something.
“So,” Miller said. “I’m in.”