"Look, you can go quietly, or you can go to Psychiatry, I don't care which.” She flicked the sheet up over Chris's head. It took a while for me to detach myself. He didn't want to let go. I patted his knuckles, and told him I'd be back, or some such thing, and walked away.
* * * *
Even though it was late, I went back to the office. I'd stashed the money there, and wanted to find it a safer place. Even halfway up the stairs I could tell from the tiny gap left between the door and the jamb that the place had been done over. Professionally. It would take a professional to get past the lock I'd installed. That at least meant there wouldn't be much damage.
Hands in my pockets, I walked in and looked around. No, no damage. But the mox plants were gone, and so, I found, was the money. Probably the plants had been the target, the money a bonus. Probably the woman that morning, Anna's mother, had been sent in to scout the place. Those the new mox-eaters? Yes, please help yourself.
I swore under my breath. Didn't I know better than that? No wonder she'd been surprised when I'd used the name she'd given me.
The sparrow lay among my plants, still incomprehensibly alive.
I wondered if Chris would be cremated, still living, and if that would end his pain. Slowly, I sat down, and got the paperwork for the mox-eaters out of the drawer. The forty-two-page contract didn't specify the penalties for losing the plants to a competitor, though it did state they would be ‘severe'.
A shiny green fly buzzed over and settled on the sparrow's eye. The bird didn't blink.
It's hard to tell when something's dead, and when it's alive.
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Cosmonaut's Last Day by Jamie Dee Galey
(art)
* * * *
* * * *
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Painsharing by John Walters
In a transparent protective cocoon, twenty-four met to mourn the dying Earth. The bloated sun above them cast its pale red light on the charred landscape.
The invitation had been sent to members of all the outer colonies, but most had ignored it, or scorned it, or been unable to understand it.
The mourners came from many different worlds, and had adapted themselves to suit the environment in which they lived; no common ground could be found, therefore, until they agreed, in honor of the occasion, to assume classic human form, half of them female and half male.
"What requiem can we offer?” one said.
Many ideas were proposed.
"We can close the Earth in sealant, protecting it for all eternity."
"But look at what is left. Is it really worth preserving?"
"We can dance! We can create a multi-sensory display and each of us can perform a farewell ballet."
But several said that they did not know how to dance, nor did they desire to.
"We can inject antimatter into the core, causing a tremendous explosion, and send copies of the event to all the outer colonies as memorials."
"But such an action could be misinterpreted. It is one thing to allow the Earth to die; it is another to kill it ourselves."
"We can commit suicide one by one, each in our own unique aesthetic manner, thus symbolizing the death of the Earth."
"But we have not come here to end our lives, but only to offer our respect to the planet that gave birth to our ancestors."
They argued back and forth but could reach no agreement, until one of them who had decided to call herself Hileila said, “We are missing the point. The importance of Earth to us is not the ball of matter itself, but the people who once called it their home. We have a database of everyone who has lived and died on this planet since records were kept. I propose that we slip through time and find them one by one and show them appreciation by loving them."
"All of them?"
"How else can we be impartial? How can we judge one more important than another?"
"Do you mean have sex with them?"
"With some, yes. But many died while still under-aged, and many equated love with activities other than sex."
"But we are so few. It would take hundreds of thousands of years of subjective time to accomplish such a task."
"Some have suggested elaborate suicides. Why should we not instead stay alive and offer ourselves in this way? Consider the significance of what we are commemorating. The requiem needs to be worthy of it."
Finally they agreed to try Hileila's plan and meet again after a certain period of time to assess their progress.
So they divided up the names in the database according to chronological and geographical location, and slipped back.
* * * *
Veracrystal, who had been given the list for North America in the early millennia, chose her first person at random. His name was Samuel Cantor. He was born in 1926, grew up in the Great Depression, fought in World War II (and since then, said the medical records, had suffered from nightmares about gutting a German with a bayonet), married and raised four children, died in 1980.
Veracrystal made contact with him in 1971, three years after his wife had died. His children were all grown and gone, and he lived alone in a small apartment.
It was not difficult for her to seduce him, though she wasn't too sure of what she was doing and he was incredulous that she should be doing it. They walked, they talked, he invited her home.
It wasn't long before they were holding each other, and then in bed together.
"The world confuses me,” he said. “I used to be self-assured, when I had my family to support and everything was going smoothly. Now I don't understand anymore.” Then later, when they were making love, he said, “Why are you doing this? Why?"
She said, “Because I love you."
And when he accepted her love, let go of his loneliness and frustration and fear, the emotional surge was so strong she momentarily stopped breathing, and felt like a hand was squeezing and twisting her . She clung to him and wept, and thought to herself, It hurts, oh it hurts; I didn't know it would hurt like this....
"I love you, I love you.... “he said, over and over.
She knew that time would fold back on itself and erase this snippet she had spent with him; it was the way history had of maintaining its continuity. But she hoped that somehow the remainder of his life would be brightened by what they had shared.
Perhaps it's not always like this, she thought. Perhaps the next one will be easier.
But it wasn't.
* * * *
Morphalendus found himself in Rwanda in 1994, picking his way along a road crimson with blood through bodies that had been shot, clubbed, machete-slashed. Some corpses were dismembered; some were beheaded; some were not recognizable as human.
He heard a whimper. In the back of a thatched mud hut he found a naked little boy, stick-thin, with bloated belly. Morphalendus sat on the dirt floor and took the boy up into his arms and held him. As he did, the boy looked at him with large frightened eyes, then buried his face in Morphalendus's chest and clung to him with all of his negligible strength. Morphalendus wanted to talk to him, to tell him that it was all right, that he didn't have to be afraid, but he was so overwhelmed by the boy's heartache and terror that he couldn't speak.
Soon afterwards the boy died in his arms.
It seemed there were endless numbers of children in many times, in many places, who had been caught up in war or natural disasters or abject poverty. They just wanted to be held, to know someone was there for them. So he would hold them, while their grief and loneliness and fear burst from within in shuddering throbs, until they had spent it all and would lie quietly in his arms.
* * * *
Shelada walked slowly down the aisle past rows of cots on which lay dying women in plain white cotton gowns. The plaster wall was whitewashed; the cement floor was spotless; the beams under the corrugated metal roof were free of dust or cobwebs. The silence was punctuated only by the shuffle of her sandaled feet, the quiet clicking of the overhead fan, an occasional cough, the rasping sound of s
omeone laboring to breathe. I'll come back earlier for these, she thought.
Alone in a tiny room in the back, a white-robed woman knelt, her wrinkled hands clasped together, her eyes closed, her lips moving. Before her on the wall was a picture of a woman in blue holding a baby; both of them had faint mysterious smiles and golden halos around their heads.
Eventually the woman raised her head, opened her eyes, turned.
She does not want to have sex, Shelada thought. Nor does she want to be held.
"Who are you?” the woman said.
"I have come from beyond,” Shelada said. “To love you."
The woman's expression changed from puzzlement to wonder and relief. Shelada moved forward and placed the fingertips of her right hand on the woman's brow. The force of the woman's emotional release almost caused Shelada to faint.
* * * *
At the agreed-upon time, the twenty-four met.
"I can't do it anymore. No matter who I love it's always the same. It hurts too much. And then they forget."
"It's frustrating."
"It's discouraging."
"It's pointless. If they remembered it would be different."
For a time they were silent, in the light of the bloated red sun that shone on the empty world. Then Hileila said, “I know they won't remember us, but I have to believe that they'll remember the love."
Seventeen of them gave up and left for the outer colonies. After they were gone, Hileila said, “With so few of us, we will never complete our task. But I don't care anymore. Our ancestors need us more than I ever thought they would. Compared to them we are immortal; I will use this gift. I will continue to love them until my energy and substance dissipate."
Each of the rest of the seven agreed with her. So they again slipped back into the past, this time without hope of ever returning to the lives they had once lived.
* * * *
From those early millennia, they moved forward through human history: through the period of nuclear warfare, the decimation of the population, and the rebuilding; through the period of first contact and interstellar exploration; through the wars with extraterrestrials, the discovery of time-slipping, the gradual abandonment of Earth for other worlds.
Though each period of history was unique, reactions to their love never changed.
But there came a day, far in the future in objective time, when every human being in their database had been found and loved. And they met together again, in their transparent protective cocoon on barren Earth. The ruby sun had swollen further and had become so large that it had almost swallowed Mercury.
Their ancestors had equated the heart with love. Blood was red, too....
They looked at each other and they saw the pain that each of them had absorbed, the pain that in their past lives they had all but forgotten.
They could do nothing but love one another, and share it. Otherwise it would overwhelm them.
Then they departed, to share the love and pain of humanity with the outer colonies.
No one was there when the sun consumed the Earth and then shrank to an insignificant white dwarf.
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A Yellow Sun with a Purple Crayon by Michelle Garren Flye
"Draw me a yellow sun,” you say, handing me a purple crayon.
It's an impossible request, of course, but I try anyway. I draw a large ball of purple fire with rays of purple light shooting out. I even add purple clouds and a royal purple bird with long tail feathers and graceful wings.
You frown, first at the paper, then at me. “I said yellow,” you say.
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A Problem with the Law by Neil Davies
1.
I am hiding in the judge's cupboard.
I am behind a bag of sugar.
I am behind a bag of a sugar in the cupboard hiding.
It is the judge's cupboard.
I am hiding.
I am hiding in the judge's cupboard behind a bag of sugar because I
do not want the judge to see me.
2.
Today the judge has been in court and I have been in the judge's cupboard.
Now the judge is back in his house and I am in the judge's cupboard.
I am in the judge's cupboard hiding.
Behind a bag of sugar.
The judge was in the court today and he was judging while I was hiding in his cupboard.
He did not know that I was in his cupboard behind a bag of sugar because I was hiding.
He was judging and I was hiding.
He was judging.
3.
He was judging about a fight.
There had been a fight and he was asked to make a judgement on it.
The fight needed a judgement.
The judgement needed a judge.
The judge went to court to make a judgement on the fight.
While the judge was in court he made a judgement on the fight and I was hiding in his cupboard.
I was hiding in his cupboard behind a bag of sugar and he was in court making a judgement on the fight.
The fight needed a judgement.
There had been a fight.
4.
Two men were in the fight.
There was a fight between two men and one of the men was bad.
Two men were in the fight and one of the men was good.
The judge went to court to judge on the fight between the good man and the bad man.
At this point I was in his cupboard hiding.
A good man and a bad man had a fight and the judge had to make a judgement in court.
The judge was not at the fight because he was at court.
I was not at the fight when the fight happened but I was not in the judge's cupboard either.
Today I have been in the judge's cupboard.
Only today have I been in the judge's cupboard hiding behind a bag of sugar.
Today the judge has been in court but he was not at the fight.
5.
Now the judge is at his home.
I am in the judge's cupboard and the judge is in his home.
The judge is in his home and he is talking to his wife.
I am in the judge's cupboard, hiding behind a bag of sugar, and I can hear the judge talking to his wife.
The judge's wife is at home now.
Now the judge is at home.
Now I am in the judge's cupboard.
The judge's is wife is listening to the judge talk about the judgement in court.
I am listening to the judge talk to his wife about the judgement in court.
There was a judgement in court today about a fight.
There was a judgement about a fight.
The fight was between a good man and a bad man.
The judge was in court to make the judgement on the fight today and now he is talking to his wife about it.
I am listening to them as I hide in the cupboard.
6.
The judge tells his wife that there was a problem with the law.
In the court today there was a problem with the law and this affected the judgement about the fight.
The problem with the law affected the judgement about the fight between the good man and the bad man.
The judge is telling his wife that in court today there was a problem with the law.
Because of the problem with the law the judge made a judgement on the fight between the good man and the bad man.
The judge made a judgement and it meant that the good man went to jail.
The good man went to jail and the bad man walked away free.
The bad man was free and the good man went to jail.
The good man and the bad man had a fight and the good man went to jail.
There was a fight between a good man and a bad man and they went to court so that the judge could make a judgement today and the bad man walked free.
The bad man walked free and the good man went to jail and thi
s was because of a problem with the law.
The judge is at home telling his wife about the problem with the law and the good man going to jail.
I am in the judge's cupboard.
I am hiding behind a bag of sugar.
7.
I am listening to the judge tell his wife about the problem with the law and the bad man walking free.
The judge's wife does not like this.
The judge's wife does not like the problem with the law.
The judge does not like the problem with the law.
The problem with the law meant that the good man went to jail and the bad man walked free.
The judgement was that the good man went to jail and the bad man walked free and this was made by the judge in court today.
The judge was in court today and I was in his cupboard hiding.
Now the judge is at home and is talking to his wife and I am in the judge's cupboard hiding behind a bag of sugar.
8.
The judge was talking to his wife about the problem with the law and now he is talking about having a drink of tea.
I am listening to this in the cupboard hiding.
I am listening to the judge's wife making a cup of tea while the judge talks about the problem with the law.
It is a long story.
There was a fight between a good man and a bad man.
The fight needed a judgement in court today.
The judge was in court today making a judgement and I was in the cupboard hiding and I don't know where the judge's wife was.
In court today there was a problem with the law and the judge made a judgement based on the problem with the law.
Are you following this?
The problem with the law meant the good man went to jail.
The good man went to jail.
The good man went to jail and the bad man walked free.
The judge made this judgement in court today.
While the judge was in court today I was in the cupboard hiding behind a bag of sugar.
Now the judge is at home and he is telling his wife about the problem with the law and the judge's wife is making tea to drink and I am in the cupboard hiding behind a bag of sugar.
9.
I have listened to the judge tell his wife about the problem with the law and the bad man walking free and now they are making tea.
GUD Magazine Issue 0 :: Spring 2007 Page 3