Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #1

by Ken Liu

  Tyler was still cleaning up the last few paper plates and napkins and popped balloons in the living room left over from the birthday party earlier. He walked downstairs and into the garage. The garage door was open, and through it he could see Lydia lying on the front lawn, looking up at the winter evening sky.

  "Hey kiddo," he said as he walked up next to her, "time for dinner."

  "Just a couple minutes more, please?"

  He lowered himself and sat on the grass next to her. "It's getting cold. What are you waiting for?"

  "I'm looking at Sirius. It's eight-point-six light years away, so the light we are seeing now left Sirius eight years and seven months ago. I'm eight today, and Mom said I was born nine weeks premature, in the evening. I want to catch the light that left Sirius the moment I was conceived."

  "The moment you were conceived?"

  "You gave me the book, remember?"

  He was going to point out that although she was born in the evening it didn't necessarily mean that she was "conceived" in the evening. Then he stopped himself. Some details could wait.

  "That is worth waiting for," he said.

  They waited together, shivering a little. It was still early winter, but you could already tell that it was going to be a cold one. Tyler sometimes missed the warm California winters.

  "I think I've figured out why my bed has so much dust under it," Lydia said.

  "Why is that?"

  "I read that dust is made up from meteors burning up in the sky. Since my room is in the attic, it's closer to the stars than the rest of the house, so it makes sense that I get more dust than you and mom."

  He looked at her, and was overwhelmed by his love for her. She was so like him, rational, clear-headed, not afraid of the facts. Her fairy tales had star dust, but not the magic kind. She did not believe in God, and he was glad of that. Like him, she would be immune to single-bit errors.

  "If I have to tell the two of you to get in here one more time, no one is getting dinner tonight."

  Jess was standing in the garage door, the light from the hallway behind her made her luminous.

  "Look, mom looks like an angel." Lydia got up and ran towards the light.

  Tyler stayed where he was a moment longer. He looked at Sirius, the Dog Star, and the other burning, exploding stars in the sky, all that light coming at him from different distances and therefore from different times. He realized that he was being bombarded simultaneously by protons and photons generated at the moment Lydia was conceived, at the moment Lydia, that other Lydia, had died, at the moment he was born, at the moment Saint Augustine stole his pear, and at the moment Christ was crucified. He felt a little lightheaded.

  Ambriel chose that moment to visit him.

  So this is what it feels like .

  Tyler was filled with such love for God that he trembled. The beauty of God's design made him weep. He understood why he met Lydia, why she had died, and why he had failed to come to Him before that moment. He yearned to feel that light forever. He longed to be in Heaven. It was the happiest moment of his life because by experiencing what Lydia did, he was finally with her. To remember what it was like when he was in love with Lydia was better even than falling in love in the first place. The type system was breaking down.

  But one detail was wrong.

  He remembered looking at Sirius just before Ambriel appeared. For a fraction of a second Sirius appeared to glow a little brighter, barely perceptibly. It was a very slight twinkle. It could have been anything: an atmospheric distortion, a wisp of cloud passing, a trick of the eye.

  Or maybe it was a solar flare on Sirius at the moment, eight-point-seven-five years ago, when Lydia was conceived. Maybe a proton from that explosion travelled through the emptiness of space for those years, paying nary a mind to anything in its path. Wasn't it possible that it had plunged through the earth's ionosphere, its stratosphere, its clouds and the wings of birds? Wasn't it possible that it finally entered Tyler's eye on that winter evening, piercing him to the depth of his being, and, while passing by the hypothalamus, decided to knock some electrons out of it?

  It was a small error, just a bit off from the usual. But it was enough. It was enough for him to tell reality apart from illusions.

  As soon as he realized it, Ambriel was gone. The type system held.

  Tyler knew then that he was doomed. For the rest of his life to remember that feeling of rapture, that love for God, that sweetness of being. He had believed, even if only for a moment. He had been with Lydia, but then he had looked. And then there was the absence of God.

  He would always have that moment in his memory, and he would always know it was a single-bit error that had both given him the memory and then taken its reality away from him.

  He lived, sometimes even happily, until the day he died.

  © 2009 by Ken Liu

  First published in Thoughtcrime Experiments, edited by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson, 2009.

  Reprinted by permission of the author.

  [Author's Note: "Three sources inspired this story: Ted Chiang's short story, "Hell is the Absence of God"; Heather O'Neill's prose-poem, "Before It Had a Name," which she performed on This American Life; and Sudhakar Govindavajhala and Andrew W. Appel's paper, "Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine" (available at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~sudhakar/papers/memerr.pdf). Because this story addresses themes similar to those explored in Ted Chiang's story, I sought and obtained Chiang's permission before publication."]

  * * *

  Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation awards, and been nominated for the Sturgeon and the Locus. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  The Unforgiving Minute

  Seth Chambers

  If and I were kicking back in the garage loft, what a lot of people would call a "man cave." My wife, Dee, used to call it my tree house, 'cause you gotta climb a ladder to get to it. Maybe she still calls it that. I don't know.

  Dee never breached the sanctity of the cave. But she did climb the ladder once to tape a crayon-written sign on the door: NO GURLZ ALOUD.

  Cave or tree house, I got everything I need in the loft. Milk crate chairs, an icebox, and stacks of books: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Poe, Hawthorne, and Faulkner. Classic American literature is my passion and what I teach. There's also a slew of mysteries and a few Westerns. Oh, and If even got me reading SF.

  "Toss me a brew," I said to If.

  It was late night and Dee had gone to bed hours ago. If dug through the icebox and pulled forth a bottle. I sometimes thought about getting a mini fridge for my cave, but there's something about a cooler full of ice that I like.

  "Last one."

  If tossed me the bottle. That's another thing I like: bottles. Not cans. Beer from a can tastes like metal.

  I caught the bottle, twisted the cap. Foam spewed. I sucked at the foam, not about to let good beer go to waste.

  If made his usual homoerotic comment: "Suck that head, baby. Get it all."

  "Ha, ha."

  We lapsed into the comfortable silence of two men who've known each other forever, until If had to go and break it: "Don't you ever wonder how I do that?"

  "Do what?"

  "Throw you a beer like that."

  "Yeah, real Olympian feat there. You want a gold medal?"

  "You know what I mean."

  I looked at If as if for the first time. His appearance changes slightly, depending on my mood. Sometimes he looks like how I remember my dad. Other times more like a character out of Hemingway. He's always a manly man, but with an easy way about him. A guy's guy.

  Oh, I knew he wasn't real. I'm not stupid. I knew that "If" stood for Imaginary Friend, a little pun my subconscious mi
nd coughed up way back when I was eight years old. But damnit, we grew up together and he stuck around long after childhood. We were friends.

  So why did he have to go and spoil things by reminding me of what he was? We sat in silence again, but this time it was very uncomfortable.

  "I'm waiting for an answer," If said.

  I killed my beer and got up to fish through the ice for another.

  "That was the last brew. The one I threw you. And you haven't answered my question: how could somebody like me, who is purely a pigment of your imagination-"

  "Figment."

  "A pigment of your imagination, throw a physical object from Point A, the icebox, to Point B, your open and eagerly waiting hand?"

  I glared at If. My good mood was ruined and the beer was gone. Time to call it a night. I headed for the door.

  Then two solid-as-anything hands clamped down on my shoulders. I stopped and turned back toward If.

  As I said, we grew up together. If showed up shortly after my father left. I was walking home from school one day when an older boy ran up to me.

  "Hi. My name's If."

  "Stupid name," I said, and kept right on walking.

  If walked with me and kept talking.

  "Go away," I said.

  "Why? What'd I do?"

  "Just go away."

  I got to my front door.

  "Who are you talking to?" my mother wanted to know.

  "Nobody," I said.

  And sure enough, If was nowhere in sight.

  But now, many years later, he was standing right smack in front of me. I looked at him. Really looked at him. He seemed as real and solid as anybody I ever knew.

  Only he couldn't be.

  "Okay," I said. "To answer your question of how you threw me a beer. In short: you didn't. I went over to the box, grabbed myself a brew, and sat back down with it. Then I blanked out the memory of me getting the beer, and filled in the blank with the false memory of you tossing it."

  "Dr. Z. would be proud. You explained it all nice and neat with a pretty little bow on top. And all without resorting to psychobabble."

  "Whatever."

  "One thing, though. If I didn't throw the beer, why did it foam up like it did?"

  I opened the door and looked at the NO GURLZ ALOUD sign. I knew Dee had meant it as a joke but was she also trying to say I had never really grown up? Hell, she was probably right. While she was snug in bed, I was in the garage loft arguing with my imaginary friend.

  "I must have shaken the damn thing," I said. "Just so it would foam up. I've been fooling myself for a long time. I've gotten pretty good at it."

  I stepped through the door and climbed down the ladder.

  The next night I started for the loft out of habit and made it as far as the ladder before thinking about If. I turned around, returned to the house, and plopped down next to Dee on the couch.

  "Get lost on the way to the tree house?" she asked.

  "Thought I'd hang out here," I said. "Or we could catch a movie."

  "Good plan. Give me five minutes to get ready."

  We hit a Stallone action flick, stopped for coffee on the way back, and stayed up talking, way past our bedtimes. It was a fun night.

  When I sat on the couch the next day after work, Dee was confused. I told her I wanted to spend more time with her. So for the next few nights we dined out, went for long walks, and talked for hours on end. When Friday came, we stayed in, went to bed early, and made love all night.

  At one point Dee breathed, "Do you love me?"

  "Why would you ask me that? Of course I do."

  I wanted to say more but there is a wall inside that I can't get past. I felt like one of Hemingway's stoic characters and it pained me because Dee deserves so much more.

  We got up Saturday afternoon and I suggested we go out for pancakes. Dee looked at me kind of funny. "What, the man cave broken now?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Don't get me wrong. I like all this attention. I just want to make sure you're getting your man time."

  "I'm full up on man time. Now it's time for some woman time."

  I threw her to the bed and we wrestled playfully.

  "I just hope If doesn't start to feel neglected," Dee said.

  I froze. Yes, Dee knew about If. But we hadn't discussed him for a long time. Sometimes I'd think about something If said but I never talked about him.

  Dee wrapped her legs around me, trying to restart our little romp, but it wasn't working. I wasn't feeling it.

  "If isn't real." I snapped.

  "Oh, I know. I know. I just thought, well, I don't know what I thought."

  "He isn't real. I'm a grown man and I don't need him."

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought him up."

  "It's okay. Really. I'm just being weird."

  "Weird is fine."

  "You're upset."

  "It's just that you have this whole other life up in your tree house. And he's part of it. And I'm not. So maybe I'm jealous."

  "Well he's not real, so there's nothing to be jealous of."

  We wrestled a bit more, but the spark had gone out.

  We never did get those pancakes.

  That night, after Dee went to sleep, I slipped out of bed and up to the loft. If was waiting.

  "No beer?" he called out.

  "I came here to be alone. Not to drink beer with somebody who doesn't even exist."

  "Okay, okay! I'll shut my mouth."

  "That's not the same thing! You're still here!"

  "Except I'm not. As you so graciously keep reminding me."

  "You know, for an imaginary friend, you can be a real pain in the ass."

  "I try my best."

  "Well hell."

  We got to bullshitting around, like always.

  "You do know," If said after a while. "That I'm jealous of you. Jealous of your life."

  "Oh, that's just great! Everybody's jealous. Dee is jealous of you and now you're jealous."

  "Hell yeah! I'm stuck up here in the loft all the time."

  "How tragic for you, stuck up here with all these books and all this free time. No job and no responsibility."

  "No wife and no social life."

  "No social life? What am I, Swiss cheese?"

  "Pretty much."

  "Asshole."

  "Fucktard."

  We laughed and lapsed into another comfortable silence until If broke it: "We could do with a few beers."

  "What am I, your serving wench?"

  "Yup."

  "The serving wench is on strike. There's a six-pack in the fridge downstairs. Get it yourself."

  We looked at each other for a long time. Then If whispered a single word: "Okay."

  He headed for the door.

  "Where are you going?"

  "You told me to get the beer. So that's where I'm going. You gave me permission."

  "You need permission? What are you, five years old?"

  "You know I need permission. Don't you remember? Back when you built this cave you said you could no longer be seen in public talking to an imaginary friend. That if I wanted to continue existing it had to be up here. In the loft and nowhere else."

  I remembered.

  "So yes. I need permission. Do I have it?"

  "What if Dee sees you?"

  "Do you want me to get the beer or not?"

  I thought about it for a long time. What was happening here? Would I get the beer then wipe my own memory and convince myself that If had done it? Or was he now actually capable of interacting with the physical world?

  "One minute. No more. Go down, get the beer, and come back in one minute."

  "Ah, the unforgiving minute," said If.

  Something stirred in me when he said those words.

  If stepped out the door. I watched him climb down the ladder, smiling like a lunatic. He opened the door leading to the kitchen and stepped out of my sight. Seconds later he stepped back in the garage, the beer in hand. He made his way u
p the ladder, six-pack tucked securely under one arm.

  He stepped back into the loft, set down the beer, and held out his hand. We shook and his memory of that brief excursion flooded my brain and I saw the world through his eyes. That menial task of retrieving a sixer of beer had been one minute of pure freedom and wonder.

  Every year I embark on some wild adventure that I call my Annual Expedition: Sailing, whitewater rafting, sea kayaking, zip lining, that sort of thing. One time, I even descended in a shark cage. If's trip to the fridge was as thrilling for him as all my Expeditions compressed into a single minute.

  I love my job.

  I love pontificating about how Hemingway compresses so much into a single sentence and how Poe's distilled fears powered his stories. But mostly I love it when the students "get it," when they truly understand that reading the Classics is a pleasure to be savored over a lifetime. Yes, sometimes I get on my soapbox until everyone thinks Hemingway and I should get a room, but usually my enthusiasm is contagious.

  But every now and then I get an entire classroom of students who just don't care. They are there for nothing but the credits and their apathy is as palpable as a dead fish.

  I understand that my passion isn't everybody's passion. Truly, I do. But that doesn't make it easier when I'm peering out over a sea of disinterested faces.

  Fall came and fate threw me an entire semester of zombies. Zombies interested only in circling the right answers on the test so they can get the grade and move onto something else.

  "I don't want to go to work tomorrow," I told If one night. "Don't suppose you want to sub for me."

  If took a long chug on his beer.

  "Don't tempt me like that."

  "But you couldn't anyway. Nobody can see you or hear you. Right?"

  "Maybe and maybe not."

  "People used to think I was talking to myself when they saw me with you. So no, people don't see you or hear you."

  "Unless things have changed. I've become more real to you, haven't I? I can toss beers and open books. I read when you're away. I feel real."