It seems impossible, but I’ve never had to choose between them until now.
5
Arthur is in the rear airlock, cycling through to the lunar surface. Beyond the viewing blister, the misshapen, half-buried Eagle waits stubbornly as it has for fifteen decades.
“This is wrong,” I say, thumbing open the secure channel between the cabin and his headset. “What are we going to get out of this? Another museum piece, another hunk of old hardware functionally identical to half a dozen others?”
“It’s the first one,” he says, the helmet microphone adding a scratchy sound to his voice. His tone is as though he is speaking to a child. “Man’s desire to see what’s out there moulded into metal, literally made real. It’s like the Wright Flyer. Or Glamorous Glennis—”
“It’s like the Marie Celeste, Art. We shouldn’t be here.”
“I get it,” he says, his white suit lumbering into view outside with that strange gait of everyone who has ever visited this little grey world. “But, there’s a reason I wanted you along. It’s the least I can do for her; to honour her. She should be here to see this but she’s not.”
“It’d break her to see this. Which just goes to prove that no, you don’t get it. You think in terms of things, Arthur, of objects with trajectories you can calculate. Desires moulded into metal? Lena never cared about the matter, she cared about the idea.”
I can see him outside, taking measurements and photographs. Confirming the find. “What do you want me to do?” he asks, raising his sun visor. He is looking straight in at me through the cockpit glass.
“Bury it,” I say, thinking fast. “Like we did with the model in the haystack. Only this time we direct the ship’s thrusters at the surface. You saw the dust they sent up during landing. We turn them on full belt and they’ll throw up a cloud big enough to bury the module. We can tell the Archaeological Council there’s nothing here, that their calculations were wrong.”
“Don’t be an eejit.”
I smile; that takes me back. An odd thrill to be chastised in such a childish Irish idiom again.
“The ship’s already recorded everything,” he says, poised before the derelict Eagle like Armstrong or Aldrin, had things worked out differently.
“I’ve spent my life writing the kind of software that runs these sensors. I can make them forget. This can work.” My fingers are already moving across the controls. It’s been years since I’ve flown a spacecraft but the interface is so intuitive it hardly matters. With the engines still warm, start-up takes only seconds.
Beyond the blister, Art bounces two steps towards me and stops. “What are you doing?” The screens monitoring his biorhythms all show elevated readings: heart-rate, breathing, adrenal levels… “This is idiotic,” he says. “This won’t bring her back.”
“No,” I say, “it won’t. But it’ll allow her life to keep its meaning.” Gently I raise the ship from the surface of the mare and rotate it so the engine exhausts aim toward the wreckage. As I turn, Arthur falls out of view but I can still hear him on the radio.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “So do you intend burying me too, is that it? Turn me into another one of Lena’s ghosts?”
“I’d rather not.”
There is a burst of static, EM wash from the thruster assemblies. “…want to,” Art says, “but you’re going to have to.”
“Arthur, please move.”
“No.”
“I’m going to do this Arthur.” My hand hovers over the touchpad marked initiate. “If you’re buried under all that dust, your suit won’t be able to radiate excess heat. You’ll die.”
“And how will you explain that?”
“Arthur, just move. Please?” Closing my eyes I can see Lena on the balcony in summertime, her back turned to me, her hair caught in the breeze.
Art says something but I’ve already touched the control.
His last words are the greatest mystery of all.
* * * * *
Val Nolan lectures on literature at National University of Ireland, Galway. A graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop (2009), his fiction has appeared in Cosmos, Electric Velocipede, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year (Volume 8), and on the ‘Futures’ page of Nature. He is a regular book critic for the Irish Examiner and is a past winner of the Penguin Ireland Short Story Competition and the Daily Telegraph Travel Writing Contest.
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE
OLIVER BUCKRAM
GIRL MEETS BOY
The midnight ocean was as black and enigmatic as an unlabeled videocassette. You swam ashore and stumbled over jagged rocks towards my fire. I fed you marshmallows and dabbed ineffectually at your bloody feet with paper towels.
(1) Two truths and a lie is a fun getting-to-know-you game, perfect for breaking the ice at corporate mixers.
(2) I make three statements and you guess which one is false.
(3) I love playing it.
DRAMATIC LIGHTING
The fire consisted of my ex-husband’s clothes, the sheets he’d slept on, our glossy wedding album, all marinated in lighter fluid. I welcomed your company, however unexpected, and made s’mores. Soon your beard was speckled with graham cracker crumbs. We lay on the beach and admired the meteors streaking across the night sky in surprising colors: legal pad yellow, candy heart pink, gas burner blue. The Perseid meteor shower had never been so vivid.
(1) We made love on my striped beach towel.
(2) There are 51 weeks in a year.
(3) I was on the rebound.
CLUES THAT A NEW BOYFRIEND IS NOT NECESSARILY HUMAN
You’re anatomically correct, of that I am sure.
(1) You had no photo ID.
(2) When I kissed you, your face dissolved into a swarm of somnolent hornets, wafting languidly out to sea.
(3) Your sweat smelled like almonds.
SEX ON THE BEACH, POTENTIAL OBSERVERS OF
Indifferent foxes with luminescent eyes. Tenure-craving extraterrestrial scientists using powerful infrared telescopes. An assembly of prurient ghosts who perished at sea. Irate clams. In any event, the next day you moved into my apartment.
(1) On the way home, you drove.
(2) We stopped for gas.
(3) I didn’t see you drinking premium unleaded from the nozzle, nor licking your lips afterwards.
TIME’S ARROW
A physical law is said to be time reversal symmetric (T-symmetric) if it holds even when time runs in reverse. Newton’s laws of motion are T-symmetric. Consider a pool table. After the cue ball hits the eight ball, we can run the video in reverse and watch the eight ball hitting the cue ball. In idealized form, the green felt surface is a T-symmetric system, invariant to time reversal. Which ball rebounds off the other? Depends how we watch the video. Consider a meteor plunging to earth. If we run the video backward, we see molecules of atmospheric dust coalesce into a solid chunk of superheated rock that roars upward. It’s improbable that molecules would arrange themselves thusly, but not impossible. Consider the success of the Apollo program. Consider the unlikely configuration of your own internal organs. Consider your pancreas, if you have one. Your pancreas: sinister, baroque, quivering even now, luxuriating in the unfathomable intricacy of its secretions. Are you certain you have one? Have you seen it?
(1) The Perseid meteor shower occurs every August.
(2) It’s caused by Earth passing through debris left by the comet Swift-Tuttle.
(3) Astronomers believe the comet’s “dirty snowball” nucleus consists of ice, rock, frozen carbon monoxide, and a crystalline chamber wherein slumbers a race of beautiful men (nude, bearded, an assortment of ethnicities, smelling of cough drops and turpentine).
DIDO’S LAMENT AS A T-SYMMETRIC SYSTEM
After the fall of Troy, Aeneas fled to Carthage and became Queen Dido’s lover. But the gods commanded Aeneas to abandon his new love and sail to Italy to become the progenitor of Rome. When he left, Dido became distraught and threw herself
on a funeral pyre. From the deck of his ship, Aeneas saw flames on the distant shore. That’s the traditional story. Now run the video backwards. Aeneas was navigating by starlight when he spied a burning woman on the beach. He hurried ashore to rescue her, pausing only to grab his fire extinguisher. Seeing a handsome stranger approaching, Dido leapt from her pyre, unharmed. They became lovers. Eventually his charms waned, so Dido banished him.
(1) I was not troubled by the incident at the planetarium.
(2) During a thunderstorm, you climbed up one of the radio towers by the highway.
(3) Your obsession with snowflakes was charming, at first.
I WISH I MAY, I WISH I MIGHT
Our yearlong attempt at cohabitation was unsuccessful. The ice cubes in the freezer turned grey and gritty. For 52 weeks you lived in my apartment, but you never mastered the kitchen’s organization. I labeled everything with little yellow notes, but eventually they curled up and fell to the linoleum floor like autumn leaves.
(1) I spent hours crying in the bathtub.
(2) I never suspected you were alien/magical/imaginary.
(3) You frequently ate baking soda.
PERPETUAL HATE AND MORTAL WARS PROCLAIM
Surprise! When he said “I’ll love you forever” he really meant “until I move to Italy and marry a younger woman.” What to do with the crap he left behind? To achieve proper closure, hurl his possessions into an inferno of cleansing flame. Next, declare endless war against any civilization he might establish. You’ll roar with laughter when his new home is overrun by Carthaginian war elephants. Remember: If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. Pluck that sucker right out. You’ll feel good and look great! Consider your pancreas, if you haven’t already. Has it offended thee lately?
(1) While visiting the underworld, Aeneas (alive) encountered Dido (deceased).
(2) She refused to look at him.
(3) I’m sure this incident made her feel much better.
HOW DID DIDO DIE, DAD? SEASIDE SUICIDE — SO SAD
Aeneas eventually married an Italian princess and fathered a son, Silvius. One day, while looking through a manila envelope of old photographs, Silvius discovered a snapshot of Dido and Aeneas laughing together and drinking Margaritas on the beach.
(1) I have many close friends but you refused to meet them.
(2) Your apology for breaking my snow globe was insufficiently sincere.
(3) You failed to return astronomy books obtained using my library card.
PEACE AND I ARE STRANGERS GROWN
Consider the following scenario. A man consults the weather forecast and leaves his house carrying an umbrella. Later, it rains. Did the umbrella cause the rain? Of course not. If event A precedes event B, that doesn’t imply that A causes B. The umbrella example illustrates the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (a phrase from the civilization founded by Aeneas – thanks, Aeneas!). Consider a different scenario. Aeneas, after consulting the gods, deserts Dido. Later, she commits suicide. Did the desertion cause the suicide? Of course not.
(1) The following August, we returned to the seaside.
(2) At the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, we took a midnight stroll.
(3) I had no hidden agenda.
AN ATTEMPT AT CLOSURE
You waded into the water and swam toward the place where the sea meets the sky. I sat on a rock and watched.
(1) You never loved me.
(2) I never loved you.
(3) There are 52 weeks in a year.
* * * * *
Oliver Buckram, PhD, lives under an assumed name in the Boston area where he teaches social science to undergraduates. While he has many publications in academic journals, his unambiguously fictional work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, F&SF, Shimmer, and other places. He urges you to keep watching the skies.
A BRIEF LIGHT
CLAIRE HUMPHREY
ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD WAGNER
Richard woke me by leaning across to shut the window over the bed. “Why the hell did you open that?” he said. “It’s freezing in here.”
I blinked my eyes open against the cashmere of his coat. “Wasn’t me. Maybe it was Benjamin Livingston.”
He shifted back, his tie trailing past my cheek. “Benjamin Livingston doesn’t open windows.”
“Does now,” I mumbled, closing my eyes again.
“I’ve got to go. Presenting to a new account today,” Richard said. “We’re out of coffee.”
“I’ll pick some up,” I said, huddling further into the duvet. Richard was right, it was freezing.
“I might be late,” he said, as if that would be unusual. I heard the crisp snap of his watch-clasp, the rustle of a scarf as he draped it around his neck, the creak of the floorboards under his footsteps, receding.
Sliding back toward sleep, I thought I felt him kiss my cheek, a fresh touch of cold like he’d already been outdoors; it had been forever since he’d kissed me so sweetly.
That thought brought me wide awake, jolting up, hands to my face. I could see my breath. I was alone.
Across the doorway, just under the lintel, a pale bird floated. It always went a little too quickly for me to see, but the wings looked to be tipped with grey, like a seagull’s, although it never made a cry.
“Benjamin,” I said, grabbing the duvet and holding it up to my throat. “Come on, stop being creepy.”
The bird didn’t come back, but I still didn’t know if he could watch invisibly, or if there were others like him about. I skipped my shower and changed beneath the duvet, struggling into jeans, a silk undershirt, a wool henley, a sweater.
“Well? I’m dressed now. You can come out,” I said to Benjamin, but he didn’t appear again. “I’m going to get some coffee,” I continued, tossing back the covers, making for the front hall where my down vest and my purse hung.
Cold breath on my cheek, or maybe that was just the weather. I stepped outside and locked the door.
* * *
My coffee shop was only a couple of blocks away, on Ossington. I went there first, so that I wouldn’t have been lying to Benjamin. I fumbled out some change to give to the homeless guy who always hung out in the nearby doorway. He had a couple of buddies with him today, all three of them grey with dirt and age, hands in ragged gloves wrapped around coffee cups, faces downturned over the warmth. The regular guy accepted a toonie and thanked me, but the other two didn’t even reach out for the money. Ghosts, or just not interested in charity? Whatever; I gave their share to my usual guy and hurried on into the warmth.
It was packed today. I got in line, and checked my phone. Nothing much in my inbox: a sale at Allsaints, an evite for a baby shower, a cancellation from the one client I’d had lined up today, a forward from my grandmother about her latest theory on the hauntings (most people went with “unfinished business”, but Grandma seemed to like “dimensional portal”). No new Twitter mentions.
I fought with my conscience for about thirty seconds and then I gave up and called Jo. She picked up right away. “Pumpkin spice with whipped cream,” she said. “I have a new one.”
“Sideburns Dude has a buddy?” I said. Her ghost was an old white guy, very corporeal, unlike Benjamin. He usually just sat by the radiator, running his hands over an old book.
“Not exactly,” Jo said. “You’ll see when you get here.”
* * *
Jo was hanging extra dreamcatchers in all of her windows when I got to her apartment. I handed over her coffee, and sipped at mine, double soy latte with a sprinkle of nutmeg. “Do those things work on ghosts?”
Jo shrugged. “They work on white hippies,” she said. “I just got an order for another hundred from that place in the Market. But come on, how many of us know shit about ghosts?”
“We know a lot more than we did a few weeks ago,” I said, slipping out of my down vest. It was warm here. Jo was warm. I sat down right beside her, close enough for our thighs to brush.
She grinned, and laid her free hand on my k
nee. I held still and kept on talking. “I think I’m pretty much used to them already—”
A great big pelican flapped across the room, right in front of me. I flinched and yelped and slopped latte over my hand. The pelican turned into a woman, a middle-aged black woman with a long elegant build and hollow cheeks. She stood in the doorway to Jo’s kitchenette and lifted her hands, beseeching, unbuttoned cuffs sliding down bony wrists.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Guess the dreamcatchers are a bust,” Jo said, but she didn’t move to take them back down. Sideburns Dude phased in just then, in his usual spot, head bent over this dark old book that might have been a Bible.
The woman in the doorway turned back into a pelican, and flew upward through the ceiling.
“Great. Now she’s in my bedroom,” Jo groused. “I was hoping to take you up there.”
“I think being haunted is kind of a mood-killer,” I said shakily.
“There’s always something,” Jo said. “Fine. No, no, it’s really fine. Give me a hug to hold me over until you can make up your damn mind.”
So I straddled her sturdy lap and wrapped my hands into her coarse black hair and pressed my cheek against hers until the pelican flew in again, calling hoarsely with the force of its wings, and then I just clung to her, chills chasing up my back as I watched, over Jo’s shoulder, the woman lifting her hands, the terrible grief in her eyes and the lines of her body.
“Come hang out at my place,” I said, pulling away. “Richard’s got a big presentation today, he won’t be home until late.”
“Your ghost is creepy,” Jo said. “And freezing.”
“We have lots of blankets—”
“From the bed you share with Richard,” Jo said. “I haven’t been doing this whole other-woman thing very long, but I’m pretty sure that’s not cool.”
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