The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!

by Lake, Jay

  IMMEDIATELY. AND SO I REPEAT THE CYCLE.

  And as my fingers moved slowly over the keyboard, I tried to picture someone like Liane Bertrand actually skulking about, trying to score black market prescription pills. Liane, with her dark sad eyes, dignified bearing, and BFA hanging in a neat frame on her studio wall. Liane, who already was familiar with hospitals doctors and an infinite number of treatments, choosing to spurn traditional help—legal help—in favor of a blender full of pills and cakey white binder. She wouldn’t have had to settle for a health-plan-assigned shrink, either; her parents made good money, she had the potential to make good money; anyone would’ve bought her artwork for her name alone...

  Not her name, I reminded myself. No matter how good she was, there just wasn’t any way she would let herself enjoy such a success—

  Just like she wasn’t about to make things easy for me. There was no change on the grid or the icon, but apparently she wanted to share another poem...even if it meant rejecting my response. Did she anticipate my waffling on the subject, or just input the fragmented poem to pop out at random?

  RESPONSE NOT TRUTHFUL; INPUT TRUE FACTS

  RESPONSE NOT COMPLETE; INPUT ADDITIONAL FACTS

  There greater than

  white band

  Takes the shape of a zero

  inside that circle,

  Inside the of my

  The goes on.

  Tien

  from “White

  There was something ominous about her choice of which line in the poem to leave whole: zero could mean nothingness, and it could also mean an ending. Regardless of the why behind her choice of screen-filler, I recognized the partial name as Vietnamese. I’d gone to grade school with a couple of kids who’d shared that name.

  “Okay. Okay, Liane. You showed me your other favorite poem. At least you were well read. But did you leave off the other parts because you were scrambled, or because you just forgot?” Letting my annoyance course through my body down to my fingertips, I pounded out:

  THERE ISN’T ANY WAY TO MAKE THE HURT REALLY GO AWAY. EATING SATES IT FOR A WHILE, BUT ONLY FOR A SHORT, SHORT WHILE. AND EATING BRINGS MORE HURT, MORE NEED TO STIFLE THAT ACHE, BUT NO MATTER HOW I GORGE MYSELF, THERE IS ALWAYS MORE FOOD WAITING FOR ME...LIKE IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR ME, FROM THE TIME I WAS SMALL, AND IT HURT WHEN THE OTHER KIDS TAUNTED ME, TOLD ME THEY’D CATCH ME AT RECESS AND BROIL ME FOR THEIR NEW YEAR’S FEAST. THEY SAID THEY WERE ONLY JOKING WHEN THE TEACHER HEARD THEM SAY THAT, BUT THE TEACHERS WENT EASY ON THE VIETNAMESE KIDS BECAUSE THEIR CULTURE, THEIR LANGUAGE, WAS SO DIFFERENT EVEN AFTER THEY’D BEEN HERE FOR A FEW DECADES.. .BUT THE TEACHER DIDN’T TELL THEM THAT I WASN’T A . PIG, THAT I WASN’T FAT. MAKING THEM APOLOGIZE DIDN’T MAKE UP FOR THE TEACHER NOT MAKING THEM TAKE BACK WHAT THEY’D SAID. AND SO I ATE AND ATE AT LUNCH TIME, BECAUSE THE TEACHER NEVER TOLD ME I WASN’T A PIG, WASN’T FAT LIKE ONE.

  THE HURT DOESN’T ACTUALLY COME BACK, SINCE IT NEVER REALLY GOES AWAY. “SOON” HAS NO MEANING WHEN DEALING WITH AN “ALWAYS.” ONLY VERY OCCASIONALLY IN DREAMS DOES IT SOMETIMES GO AWAY. UNTIL I WAKE UP AND BEGIN ROOTING FOR MY NEXT FIX, NOSING OUT MY POISON IN THE FRIDGE, IN THE CUPBOARDS, WHEREVER. ALWAYS SEARCHING, SEARCHING, FOR A STOPPER TO PLUG UP THE GAPING HOLE INSIDE MY PSYCHE. ONLY...I THINK I’VE SUCKED THE STOPPER INSIDE MYSELF AND DIGESTED IT ALREADY.

  I closed my eyes while breathing raggedly; only when I was able to breathe with my mouth closed did I open my eyes...and saw the paired RESPONSE ACCEPTEDs. Which then segued into:

  Nothing can make my pain leave me for good, but after I saw the first recipe for blend on the web, I thought, “Perhaps, if I tailor this for me, for my individual needs, maybe...just maybe this might ease the hurt, make it recede, make room for other thoughts, other, better, feelings.” And it was something I could do for me; not something some doctor dreamed up, or wanted to try on a guineaPP(ig)H. And not something my parents felt would be good for me, might help them deal with what I was going through. And it was easy to make, once I found the right combination.. .there is danger in blend only if one is too eager, too anxious for the massive hit, the take-it-all-away score. Until I was overtaken by that enemy within, blend soothed some of the hurt, let me do that which was expected of me. I never used anything too dangerous; nothing like that CAT garbage made from paint thinner, lye, and ephedrine. Not one thing that might have killed me by itself. I only used what I needed. Only that.

  Yet, despite my precautions, my prudent self-limitation on the number of hits I stirred up for myself, I gradually needed more and more blend, in stronger doses.. .but always safe recipes. Always ingredients meant to be ingested, not stuff I’d use to clean my paint brushes, or my bathroom. But being careful soon wasn’t enough; the blend would only place a thin veil over the pain, not a comforting blanket. Or a smothering blanket. For me, comfort had become one with permanent consolation. However, no amount of blend could ever mask the intruder, the ingrained opponent.. .she who will not be silenced, she who will not stop peeking at my thoughts through wide-fanned fingers that only partially cover her far too familiar face, the face I’ve grown to loathe. |

  “Oh...God,” I said in a voice that was all breath and sorrow. Whoever Liane thought this “enemy” was, she had to have been like a living demon twisting through the young woman’s brain, eroding what little was left of her sanity, her ability to cope on even the most basic level. Liane had mentioned a fifth columnist earlier, but only in connection with her last, most “successful” treatment. Just what had she endured while lying helpless in that coma?

  What was really happening in her mind, as she unprotestingly listened to those subliminal “healing” messages? Exactly what was taking

  the place of her need for blend?

  Liane’s words lingered on that screen long enough for me to enter them into the small palm-sized PC I should’ve been using all along, if my mind had really been clear and not carbo-drugged with candy and almost a quarter of my fridge’s contents.

  The words stung me even as I recorded them; over and over I asked myself, “Was her using blend as bad as diving into a pile of flaming imagery?” Using didn’t kill her, quitting did.

  Then, as if Liane had somehow glommed onto my thoughts:

  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE OR BEEN FORCED TO DO ABOUT IT?

  WHY DIDN’T IT WORK?

  INPUT TRUE FACTS ■

  Glancing first at the grid—which had diminished by four numbers this time—then at the now armless icon, I wondered if there were many more “dolls” left in this particular matryoshki. Liane was starting to run low on letters and numbers...even as she grew more particular in her on-screen demands. As if guessing I’d rather lie than write the truth. As only one who empathizes with the pain can realize.

  Yet, I wanted to know what she had left in her next file so badly, my fingers began tapping the keys with a painful urgency:

  I’VE TRIED TO DIET, TRIED TO TELL MYSELF THAT PEOPLE WOULD STOP WITH THE JIBES, STOP WITH THE “WERE YOU PERCHANCE BORN IN THE YEAR OF THE PIG?” CRACKS. JUST AS PEOPLE HAVE SUGGESTED IT TO ME, ALWAYS WITH THAT SMIRKY TACIT RESERVE IN THEIR VOICES. AS IF BY ME NOT EATING WOULD THEIR BRAINS AND HEARTS START WORKING.

  IT COULDN’T WORK BECAUSE THE FREEDOM TO EAT IS INTRINSIC TO ME: I CAN’T REALLY STOP “COLD TURKEY” BECAUSE IF I DID, I’D DIE. AND BECAUSE THE FAT IS A SHIELD, A RATIONALE FOR ALL OF MY OTHER FAULTS: MY LAZINESS, MY SLOPPINESS, MY INABILITY TO REALLY RELATE TO OTHERS VERY WELL. IF IT IS GONE, AND THE RESULTING THIN ME STILL HAS THOSE FAULTS, THEY’LL FINALLY BE BLAMED ON ME, NOT ON MY BODY, ON MY APPETITES.

  “Satisfied?” I asked the screen, but it was a split decision.

  “C’mon, girl, no fair,” I hissed, as I gave the side of the poly-drive PC a reflexive thump. The image on the screen wavered then resolved into that same maddening jumble of tip-topped instructions, half-e
mpty grids, and Oriental ornamentation.

  RESPONSE NOT SUFFICIENT; INPUT AGAIN

  RESPONSE ACCEPTED

  But she did ask me to input again...

  SO I’VE GONE SO FAR AS TO THROW OUT PERFECTLY GOOD FOOD IN THE DUMPSTER OUT BACK ONLY TO GO ROOTING THROUGH IT COME 2 A.M. WHEN I CAN’T STOP SHAKING INSIDE FROM THE SHEER WANTING OF FOOD. OF SOMETHING TO GIVE LIFE TO THE VACUUM WITHIN, TO MAKE THE EMPTINESS A WHOLENESS. I’VE EVEN TRIED THE PILLS, LIVED WITH THE JITTERS THEY CAUSE, AND THE SLEEPLESSNESS. I’D WIRE MY JAWS SHUT, IF NOT FOR THE THOUGHT OF THE LOOKS ON THE FACES OF THOSE WHO WOULD DO IT. THEIR SMUG, “FIGURED THAT” EXPRESSIONS. AND THEIR EVEN SMUGGER SIDE WINKS TO EACH OTHER WHEN I’D BEG THEM TO TAKE THE WIRES OFF SO I COULD LIVE AGAIN.

  Holding the sides of the monitor with palms-flat hands, I waited:

  God knows I never would’ve done this to myself. The blend was a choice, perhaps a bad one from a legal/moral standpoint, but nonetheless my decision. All mine. Never would I have chosen nearly a year of dying life, of will robbed from me and replaced with a faux existence...the time of her gestation, of her ascendency within my brain. The time of my slow, slow dying, choice by need by desire by option by simple human right to do with myself as I wished. Just as they’d driven out my sickness in the heart, the lungs, with someone else’s marrow and someone else’s genetic material, so now they had purged me of myself, of my ability to err, my birthright of individuality.

  Using blend had been my way of soothing the hurt, of trying to rectify my own problems myself, without the further meddling of the doctors, of my parents, to prevent what was so unfortunately hot-wired within my own body. Their effort to prevent the eventual, or delay it to suit their own notions of proper mortal order. Without the need to listen to the words of those who considered themselves expert in the workings of my own mind, without the post-graduate residency within that mind.

  Living post-cure simply has not been life. How can one be truly alive when one is no longer one in one’s mind? Can anyone remain sane with a traitior harbored in the blood, in the very cells of one’s brain? Especially a traitor who makes it impossible for me to seek out the solace of my former addiction, my former—albeit temporary—sanity? ■

  Closing my eyes, as if that simple physical act could somehow blot out what my eyes had just seen, I kept thinking about those letters I’d scribbled, the ones that had comprised that strange icon. But was it more than an icon? The letters somehow connected to the grids, which in turn probably related to whatever it was that Liane had been working on before her death. Before her final, wholly physical death.

  Unable to reread what she’d stored in her hard drive, not wanting those words to echo too much in my mind, I turned my chair around and began inputting the letters into my palm-PC, then tapped in the demand CREATE ANAGRAMS:

  DIVING QUILUNKS

  NUNS DIG QUICK LIV

  VIDKUN QUISLING

  I could understand the need for the computer to draw upon nonsense words to fill out the anagrams (“quilunks” was at least pronounceable, if nonsensical), but what the heck was a “vidkun quisling”?

  I was about to begin asking the PC to search and find whatever this “quisling” thing was in its memory files when the doorbell chimed, its liquid bell-tone somehow jarring and unfamiliar to my ears. So much so that I sent my chair slamming to the floor as I jerked to my feet.

  When I opened the door, a FedEx guy was standing there, little barcode reader in one hand and a smallish box in the other, with his ubiquitous “sign here, please” clipboard and lined piece of paper resting on the railing next to my stoop. He was polite enough not to avert his eyes in disdain from my bulk while I signed the form. But I could feel the derision in his pursed lips, his just slightly jutting jawline. An instinctive thing, I suppose...

  On both our parts.

  Still ignoring the plaintive words on that monitor, I carried the neatly re-taped square box into my living room, sat down on the edge of my folded futon, and began peeling off the loose end of the clear strapping tape that surrounded the box flaps. I didn’t recognize the return address, save for the name of the city where Liane died, and while there was no name listed there, I knew from the sadly elegant, subtly slanting print on the address labels that either Mr. or Mrs. Bertrand had addressed this box. No doubt working from Cyber’s phoned or faxed instructions. Only Cyber would’ve had them add “Ms.” before my name. An appellation I’d never bothered to use myself—after all, my being single was considered to be a given.

  Inside was a folded nesting of bubble-wrap surrounding something almost equally clear and translucent...save for the suspended flakes and chunks and blobby fragments of what looked like carbon within. And the peel-off numbers affixed to the top and bottom of the cube, which vaguely resembled the ghost of Rubik’s rack-stretched cube, in that it had started out as a square, composed of sixteen smaller squares per side, only those on the top and bottom had been pulled away from the supporting grid-work, so that they’d need to be pushed back into the cube for the whole thing to be flush again.

  But attached to the end of each pulled-out smaller “cube” inside the liquid-filled cube was one of those oddly shaped fragments of carbonaceous material. A quick glance at the numbers (printed on clear plastic film, and simply pressed into place) told me that I was holding the unfinished grid from the matryoshki program. And instinct now told me that the smaller squares would have to be pushed into the surrounding fluid in a certain order, or else they might crash up against each other and break off the attached dark globules. It was cunningly constructed; not a drop of whatever sloshed around inside the thing was oozing out, yet I couldn’t see what sort of gasket she’d used around each sliding piece to stop the fluid from leaking out.

  Hadn’t that tabloid article mentioned great physical labor in regard to her unspecified “interactive” art project? Perhaps not so much prolonged, strength-intensive labor, but surely a taxing feat nevertheless. The thing looked like a snowdome created by aliens—only, perhaps, the comparison was more apt than fanciful. Liane had mentioned that other within, the fifth columnist—

  “Quisling!” Memories of an old high school history class crashed into my mind in foot-high letters scrawled on a mental greenboard. That Norwegian head of the State Council during World War II...the guy who betrayed his own country and ended up dying for his troubles back in 1945 as the war itself ended. His first name was too odd-sounding to become a household word, but the last name had this...evil ring to it...

  Gently cradling the lucite and lubricant artifice against my cushioning middle, I carried Liane’s last project back to the monitor, where I checked it against the remaining numbers in the two grids on the lower left hand of the screen. I forced myself to ignore her actual words; I kept telling myself that they were only a means to an end, a way to allow whoever it was who found her PC and her odd bauble to complete that which she was either incapable of finishing or...afraid to finish. Once I figured out which was the top and which was the bottom, I gently set the glittering, darkness-suspended construction on its side, so that the top end was facing me as I worked. I was reluctant to touch it too much; while its surfaces looked polished, I knew that somewhere on those shining surfaces Liane’s fingerprints—her last remaining essence—still lingered, like fading memories in the minds of the anonymous.

  It was only as the next file came on-screen that it came to me her parents hadn’t even included a note in the box...

  WERE YOU SATISFIED WHEN IT FINALLY DID?

  HOW DID IT CHANGE YOU?

  RESPONSE REQUIRED BEFORE MENU WILL ADVANCE ■

  “How can I ever answer that?” I found myself asking the inanimate block of shaped plastic and viscid carbon, as if its maker could somehow provide me with the sort of guidance even she couldn’t find in her own life. The question presupposed a cure, a sense of satisfaction
on my part...or at least the possibility of such a feeling. Would it automatically prejudge my inevitable negative answer as a RESPONSE NOT TRUTHFUL?

  I was only four letters/numbers away from solving the puzzle, or at least I was in theory...there was only one four on either grid, which had to be the “D” in “vidkun,” but then again there were still two fourteens for “N” and if I perchance chose the wrong one...

  Blend-head or not, Liane had been most clever...perhaps desperately so. Considering how fragile the carbonaceous material within the cube looked, I simply couldn’t risk breaking off the wrong piece of it...not if this work of art-in-progress was even remotely like the much larger, air-surrounded pieces her mother routinely made.

  Pieces like that sign for Edan Westmisley’s Genius Productions Ltd.: ostensibly a crescent-shaped assemblage of Coptic and Christian crosses, set at random on the sun-baked lawn

  of the studio, until one went past it and looked at the thing in one’s rear-view mirror—and the spaces between the seemingly random angular Crosses spelled out the name of the recording company. In reverse. There was literally only one spot on the freeway where the message on the sign was visible. Someone once spray-painted that place on the freeway, but word has it the freak Westmisley had the Highway Department black-top the spray-painting over. Just to maintain the elusive nature of the elder Bertrand’s creation. And his investment in said artwork.

  So if the Bertrand artistic tradition held true here, there was only one way to “assemble” this creation—anything less would forever render it a useless hunk of tooled lucite and carbon, a snow globe not even Citizen Kane could love...

  Cyber never would have left the thing intact; I could easily picture him hunched over it, greenish-blue eyes narrowed even further than they normally were, lips pulled inward by his bearing-down teeth, poking and prying the thing with his screwdriver...until the plasmalike liquid within sloshed all over his worktable and shorted out his surge protector when the stuff dripped off his table. Maybe then he might notice he’d screwed up...