by Douglas Lain
For the briefest of instants, I was one with everything in the market: the earth, the air, flesh and bone. As my being tore through theirs, it was as though I could taste them, sorting the blood from wood and dirt without a thought. I could hear the people’s screams inside me, though I had no ears, and could feel their lives ending as I punctured each with a million different fragments of me. The world was alive with ruin, a crimson cloud holding court amidst the carnage.
My momentum carried my discorporate particles out to a radius of about a thousand feet. My essence slowed at last as it burst through the surrounding obstacles of shops and homes and the remnants of my energies drained away. I could feel gravity’s return, its gentle tug pulling the whole of me toward the ground. The sense of separation began to ease, clarity drawing closer like a ship approaching shore. Now came the hard part.
There weren’t adequate words to describe the pain that came with reintegration, but as the pieces of me slammed together, becoming one again on a genetic level, no agony could steal my satisfaction away. As they had with us, I had brought the war to our enemy in a way they had never imagined.
Flesh and feeling returned with an acid bath rage, pieces of a puzzle set upon the surface of the sun. I could feel myself knitting back together, and recognized every molecule as it wove itself into the whole. Sense congealed while muscles and tendons stretched and returned to their natural shapes, growing over thickening bone. The smell of char filled my developing nose, and tears spilled from newborn eyes. I was nearly me again.
Close to two blocks from the market, I was reborn, huddled naked on a mattress of wreckage brought about by my righteous fury. My skin sizzled, gray tendrils of smoke wafting about me as the energies inside slowly cooled. I drew myself up and heard my joints creak, the pain and stiffness of my transformation ebbing.
All around me I could hear the cries of the wounded, those too far from the epicenter of the blast to have met their end with a merciful swiftness. There was no time to revel in my satisfaction.
Men shouted, and the morning air was filled with the crackle of flames and the sounds of panic. Black smoke swirled through the streets and alleys, obscuring the world from my eyes, and me from the men that swarmed nearby. It was only a taste of the ruin they’d brought.
I swallowed my smile and rubbed dirt and ashes across my skin, nicking my flesh in a number of places with a sharpened piece of debris, and then slathering blood across my body. For all my success, I had yet to escape. So far behind enemy lines as to be unreachable by my allies, it was up to me to find my way out.
Deep in the throes of adrenal fatigue, I had no need to fake the appearance of the walking wounded. Every step was an anchor drawn through sand as I emerged from the sheltering alley where I’d coalesced and stumbled out on the street. Mournful wails rose up as chaos began to break, the truth of what I’d wrought coming to light. I could only imagine what they saw. Flickering images of the moment twisted and tangled inside my throbbing head.
I staggered toward the desert, hoping to remain unseen, but I’d done my job too well. All of Mir Ali was in the streets, drawn by my release of power. A man shouted, his gnarled finger pointed at me, a dozen more taking up his cry. I looked about, seeking a clear path to run, but there was none. What wasn’t blocked by a cluster of onlookers was made impassable by the fires set by my conflagration. My heart sank for an instant, but I remembered my guise. All of those who’d heard me speak were gone, red stains about the market floor.
Only one outward sign remained to betray my true origins. I crumpled to the ground and curled fetal, moaning incoherent. The men rushed to my side with heavy steps, but there was no anger in their voices; only concern.
I told them as they closed. Help me.
Words of comfort filled my ears. They believed I was one of them.
Rough hands pulled me into the air, the largest of the men cradling me in his arms as though I were a child. His eyes narrowed as his nostrils flared as the stench of burnt flesh drifted up to assail his nose. I let my hands fall to my groin as he blinked away tears, covering my genitals from sight. None had noticed my circumcision.
I let the man carry me, burying my face in his chest to muffle my barked laughter, turning it into a cough. He jarred me about as he ran, shouting to clear the path ahead. His footsteps slapped as they struck the packed dirt roadway. A few moments later he slowed, his breath loud in his lungs as he called out for assistance. More hands clutched at me, pulling me from his arms. I was a set upon a makeshift gurney, a woolen blanket laid overtop, only helping to hide the truth of who they had helped.
I could hear their chattered voices as they scrambled for direction, the gurney raised unsteadily beneath me. Daring a glance ahead, I saw the doors of a medical center looming before me, the Red Crescent emblem emblazoned above in chipped and peeling paint. Men in white met us at the threshold, taking the gurney from those in the street and transferring me to a rolling cart. As they wheeled me down the hall, flickering lights flashing above my eyes, they asked in clipped voices where I was hurt.
I gave them only one answer, “My heart,” then I asked for the time. They looked at me strangely, but one of the interns glanced at his watch, thinking perhaps he was granting a dying man’s wish by answering.
9:02.
I smiled in thanks, meeting his dark eyes as we burst through the inner doors of the hospital, the room busy with people. With a deep breath, I mustered my will once more and drew upon the fire.
9:03.
K. Tempest Bradford is a speculative fiction writer and well-known blogger. Her work has been published by Strange Horizons, Electric Velocipede, and Diverse Energies. Bradford was featured on CNN in March 2014 in a piece by John Blake about multiracial heroes on television, and on NPR for a piece entitled “The Lure of Literary Time Travel.”
“Until Forgiveness Comes” is a story about a yearly ritual done in remembrance of a 9/11-style attack. Told as a fictional news report, it exposes the power and problems of repetition while tantalizing the reader with the promise of an alternate world that is hidden away, just out of view. Strange Horizons fiction editor Julia Rios has proclaimed this story as her favorite Strange Horizons story yet.
UNTIL FORGIVENESS COMES
K. Tempest Bradford
National Radio News
Mourners Gather at New Central Terminal for Twelfth-Anniversary Haitai
by Sylvia Aloli
Audio for this story will be available at approx. 1900 KNT
Morning Edition, Akhet, Thuthi 19, 4511 The ceremony started at exactly six o’clock this morning when the clerics of Anpu, Iset, Seker, and Nebet-het stood at the four corners to create the sanctified square. Inside New Central Terminal, families and participants listened to the invocations and chants on loudspeakers while frankincense-infused smoke hovered over the still and silent mourners. Once the square was established, Sadana Manu, under-cleric of Iset, gave the sign for mourners to station themselves near the main blast sites for their glimpses of loved ones long gone.
In the twelve years since Red Seteshday, the clerics have perfected the haitai ritual to the point where participants know the script by heart and no longer need much direction on where to go and when. Still, Sadana manages a rotating roster of family members and survivors, reminding them of the correct verses to chant while invoking the highlights of that tragic day. Every year she stands on the memorial dais at the center of the Main Concourse, marking the time for prayers and the time for reading the names of the dead. Even if she weren’t an officiant, Sadana says she would find some way to participate.
“Having something to do gets me through the day every year. It’s my way of honoring Beke.”
She lost her partner of four years that morning. Both seminary students at the time, they were planning to spend their lives serving Iset together. Bekeshe was on her way back to Nubia to spend time with family before her acolyteship began. Every year Sadana watches a faint trace of her stride across the
concourse with her bags, searching for the train to the airport, just as the bombing began.
Though the day is painful, Sadana feels that her dual role as mourner and officiant has helped her minister to the families over the years.
“I know exactly how everyone feels. We all lost someone we loved. Had them ripped away by hate. We share a bond.”
She helps eleven-year-old Marcus KichiAkak up on the dais. This is his first year as a reader, though he has attended every anniversary haitai. His mother, Decima, was eight months pregnant the day her husband Titus died on his way in to work. Marcus has only seen his father’s face in pictures and on the anniversaries when Titus’s ghost returns to relive those final moments.
“My mom brought me to the station each time, but I didn’t get to go down to the platform until I was seven and told her I was ready.”
Titus Nootau died next to train number 710 that morning. He was in the car with bomber number one, who waited until the train came to a full stop before setting off the explosives strapped to his body. Several passengers in the car were blown out onto the platforms, and that is where Marcus has watched his father struggle for breath and expire every year for five years.
“It’s hard to watch. But at least I get to see him this way.”
Sadana chimes a bell at 7:07 and then thirty seconds later to mark the first two bomb blasts, both from trains arriving in the station. One long, silent minute later a third bell signals the moment when bomber number three detonated in the middle of a large, confused crowd of commuters on the concourse.
Most family members stand on the balconies above the main floor. Even from a distance, the invocation of this moment stirs feelings of claustrophobia. The entire hall, filled with faint, translucent shades of the dead, suddenly feels crowded as the ghosts snap into focus. Panic erupts as some are thrown several feet through the air while others, dying from their injuries, scramble to escape. Many victims were trampled, or trapped by falling debris.
“That moment . . . It’s very hard.”
Aemilia Nebibi lost her sister to the chaos that bomber number three unleashed.
“The first year, you didn’t really get a sense of it. They had these platforms we could stand on in the middle of the excavation, but you couldn’t follow people the way you can now. When the reconstruction was finally done and we did the invocation, people nearly panicked when it happened. The immediacy of that moment never goes away, even though you know you’re not in danger.
“I used to feel sort of bitter about the people who didn’t stop to help the injured and, basically, stepped on them to get out. After that ritual I understood. It was hard not to bolt myself.”
Sadana leads a group of incense-bearing acolytes downstairs where Hannadotter Frida and J. C. Granger stand on opposite ends of the Dining Concourse and ring bells simultaneously to mark the point when bombers number four and five blew themselves up on the main stairways, killing dozens instantly and trapping hundreds more.
“This is my last year, I think. I’ve seen this too many times. I don’t want to see again.”
When asked why she came this year, Hannadotter says she did it for her mother.
“I promised her before she died that I would come. She knew, because of the cancer, she would not make it this time. It was important to her, so I am here.”
Hannadotter is one of the few who didn’t have to wait for the anniversaries to see the details of her father’s death. His video camera was recovered from the rubble two days after the attack. The original tape showed bomber number five blocking the stairwell and a view from the floor of the aftermath. The archived version, with the bomber’s face and name removed, is now part of the Red Seteshday memorial.
“I ask my mother every year why we come. We had seen his last moments. He even spoke to us in the camera. He said he loved us. I want to honor him, but maybe this is not the way.”
Others have also raised concerns over the ongoing nature of the haitai ritual. Though performing it after the first or second anniversary isn’t unheard of, most clerics don’t recommend it. Wassirian cleric Anes Mshai is an outspoken opponent of further Red Seteshday haitai.
“Bringing closure and allowing family members to say goodbye is healthy. Especially in the case of such a massive disaster. But reliving and recreating the event over and over again every year may be keeping them from moving on.”
Anes works closely with Bel-Leuken of the Interfaith Coalition to quell the violence that inevitably arises as the anniversary approaches.
“Doing this ritual every year, long after the event, is like ripping a scab off a wound so it can’t heal. It’s not just the families, either. Twelve cities from here to Khmet to Britannia effectively stand still on this day, and the anger comes fresh again and again.”
Leuken says a year has not gone by without a member of his congregation reporting an altercation or worse.
“People still don’t understand the difference between Paesdan Belnos cultists and the average Auvergni. Everyone in Auvergne shares a desire to have Gergovie under sovereign rule, but the majority is against the use of violence to achieve that end.”
Anes agrees that the ritual is what sparks the fresh wave of conflicts, rather than the anniversary itself.
“Of course we should never forget those who died and why they’re gone. But the haitai is not the way.”
The families in attendance mostly disagree with her assessment, but a few have expressed similar sentiments.
“I come here every year to mark the day, but I only went downstairs once.”
Mihram Rivera survived the blast upstairs only to find out later that her daughter died when the ceiling collapsed on the Dining Concourse.
“I saw her and I said goodbye and I was done. And that was hard enough. I lived through this. I don’t want to experience it again, even if it’s just shades and shadows. Why do we have to call up the past? Just commemorate it.”
Since the third anniversary, members of the sect of Yeshua-Horu have protested the haitai. Standing silently outside of the station until the ritual is over, they hold signs or wear shirts embroidered with the ancient sign for ba.
“By forcing the ba back into this world we’re denying these people the ability to pass through the door into the next life.”
The group echoes an old belief that the ghosts the ritual invokes aren’t just shades, but the actual ba of the deceased. Out of respect for the dead, they refuse to interfere with the haitai, but they petition the clerics to refuse the request each year.
“We don’t know—we can’t know the effect this has on the dead. Are we making them relive the pain and fear and anguish of dying all over again? The Father and Son wait for them on the other side of the door. How long are these people going to keep the dead from the next life? I mean, no one can undo what was done, so what’s the point in reliving it?”
Sadana has heard all of these objections before, but dismisses them.
“They completely misinterpret the fundamentals of the haitai. The ba can travel back and forth, yes, but it’s the sheut we invoke. An imprint left on this world, nothing more.”
She also contends that closure can never come until the source of the victims’ pain is eliminated. Years after the coordinated bombings in twelve cities, Khmet has still never brought Arverni Vercingetor to justice. Paesdan Belnos still operates, though in a weakened state. And the military is on the eve of invading another Gaelic country accused of providing aid to the organization.
For some families it isn’t about global concerns, but about their own personal grief.
“My son struggled to hang on to life.”
Nadie Tanafriti leaned against Sadana for support as she rang the sixth bell on the subway platform where bomber number six, a transit employee, delivered the final blow.
“Claudius crawled into a nook and tried to stop the bleeding. But he was alone and the shrapnel cut him too deep and his life just slipped away. Before he died, he said, ‘I’
m sorry, Mom. I love you.’ I had a lip reader come the year after I finally found him. He said it over and over to make sure I’d be able to see and understand. How can I not come every year and be witness to that? He needed me to know.
“There was a young lady who died right over there, trapped under these big chunks of . . . Sorry. It breaks my heart because I saw her for two or three years, then she just faded. There was no one here to invoke her, to bring her back and remember her. So now she’s gone, maybe forgotten, forever.”
Others who died have also faded from the ritual over the years—most notably the bombers themselves, who were often the target of fruitless attacks by grieving survivors. All but one are gone from the square now. Only bomber number two remains. His widow, Deirdre, stands in front of the place where he appears each year, flanked by three Mawt-Kom City police officers. She never speaks and has never taken part in reading the names or ringing the bells.
In earlier years, some families and survivors protested her right to take part in the haitai, making well-publicized threats. Sadana has advocated on her behalf since the beginning, finally bringing about an uneasy peace between the mourners. Deirdre’s grief is private, some families concede, and of a different measure than theirs.
Each year she stands close enough to see into her husband’s eyes, to mark the moment when he went from partner and father to martyr and murderer. When asked, six years ago, why she came, she said she was looking for a way to forgive him. And she’ll keep attending, she says, until that forgiveness comes.
Sylvia Aloli, National Radio News.
Brian Aldiss is a Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award-winner. His first published science fiction story appeared in The Observer newspaper in 1954 and was entitled “Not for an Age.” His short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” was the basis for the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg motion picture A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and his 1973 nonfiction book Trillion Year Spree is perhaps the definitive history of the science fiction genre.