by Milo James
Cover art: “The Kelpie’s Revenge” by Tias Teng
Staff:
Editor-in-Chief, Richard Flores IV
Assistant Editor, Amy Flores
Assistant Editor, Molly Moss
Assistant Editor, Vacant
Assistant Editor, Alex Sidles
Assistant Editor, JT Howard
Assistant Editor, Alexis Hunter
Marketing and Advertising, Vacant
Art Editor, Vacant
Plasma Frequency ISSN 2168-1309 (Print) and ISSN 2168-1317 (Electronic), Issue 13 September/October 2014. Published bimonthly by Plasma Spyglass Press, Auburn, Washington
Annual subscription available at www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com. Print edition $32.99 for US residents for one year. Electronic edition $9.99 for one year.
Printed by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform under ISBN: 978-1500765415
Copyright © 2014 by Plasma Spyglass Press. All Rights Reserved.
www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com
www.plasmaspyglass.com
In This Issue
From the Editor
“So How Can it be a Faux Pas If Everybody Does It?” by Milo James Fowler
“The Woman Who Was More Than a Wrench” by
D.A. D’Amico
“The Great Exodus: Into the Wasteland” by Steve Coate
“They Never Remember” by CJ Jessop
“The Glamour Man” by Michael A. Pignatella
“Bitter Remedy” By Krystal Claxton
“Maker, Oppressor, Memory” by Blaize M. Kaye
“The Aluminum Curtain” by Tory Hoke
“Scent of Night” By Gutavo Bondoni
“Day of Reckoning” by Brian K. Lowe
“Familiarity” by DJ Daniels
From the Editor
When you start a magazine you hope for success. You are doing it for fun, but you are also doing it because you want to be a success. I don’t think anyone gets into publishing because it is easy. There is a special satisfaction to publishing the hard work of writers; putting story-tellers in touch with those that want to read them. Each issue brings me a special satisfaction, and that is why I put in all the work to get this magazine together.
But, just because you want success doesn’t mean you get it. Each year so many publications fold for a variety of reasons. Some don’t even make it past the first issue, fewer make it past the first year, and even less seem to get to three year. So I consider it a great blessing to have made it to our third publication year with Issue 13.
You may have already noticed but I am high on life right now, and that comes from my recent return from DetCon1, the NASFiC held in Detroit. I was able to speak on several panels, including a panel on what editors were looking for. This was a panel with some big names, including Neil Clarke from Clarkesworld. He and his magazine are a big inspiration for me and the starting of this magazine. The convention was a great time, and just like last year at LonStarCon 3, I came home ready to make Plasma Frequency the best magazine. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.
So what is coming for our third year? Well, for one, we have decided to go back to our roots. We will be mixing up our issues with shorter and longer fiction. You will see a mixture of flash, short, and longer fiction. We are also going back to our free to read days. You may even be reading this from our website. Don’t worry, if you still like to read from your eReader or in print, those editions will remain.
And while our survey is still going on, it seems clear that raising author pay rates is a huge priority for our readers. However this relies on more money, and I already put all my spare income (is there such a thing) into this magazine. So we are asking for a little support from you. There are all kinds of ways to support. We launched a Patreon page. This is a great way to donate a small amount of money monthly, and we have set defined goals so you can see what it will take for us to raise our pay rates. You can also do a onetime donation from our website, or advertise a product or service. Can’t spare any money right now? I understand that, but there are still ways to help. Share our Patreon page. Share your favorite stories. Review an issue on Amazon. Anything to help tell people we are here is appreciated.
Also new this year, we will be publishing Steve Coate’s fiction serial The Great Exodus. This six part serial will be released over the six issues of year three, starting with this issue. This gives our readers a chance to enjoy something longer than our 7,000 word limit, and we are excited about that.
It is also time to vote for the Year Two Anthology. For those that don’t know, we publish an anthology of reader and editor chosen stories each year. You can visit our website to get all the details and to vote on your favorite stories from each issue. As I mentioned above, there is a short survey about our magazine before voting. The deadline to vote is September 16th. The Year Two Anthology is expected to be released in the fall, just in time for Christmas.
We have a lot of other plans in motion. So watch future issues, Facebook, and Twitter for more information on the things we have planned for this magazine. For now, let me step aside and let the work of our authors shine.
Richard Flores IV
Editor-in-Chief
So How Can it be a Faux Pas If Everybody Does It?
By Milo James Fowler
Mom says it's like pointing when she was a kid, only nobody points anymore—not with their fingers, anyway. She had to demonstrate so I'd know what she was talking about, her index finger dangling in midair. It was just the two of us in the kitchen, and she was programming dinner at the cooktop.
I guess it's a bad habit, but I can't help myself. Maybe I'm too curious.
"Curiosity killed the cats," she tells me.
She had a cat when she was my age, before they all died out. Sometimes animals just become extinct, she says, like the panda and the polar bear and all the others I've only seen online.
"You're pointing with your eyes, and it's rude," she told me after we returned from the gym. Mom likes us to go at least three times a week so her butt will look good. I go to people-watch, and when she found out about that, I earned this present scolding. "You wouldn't pick your nose in public, would you?"
"They're all staring at their slates. They never catch me looking."
"If they did, Bo, it would be so awkward. I just want to spare you from that."
She must have figured that being fourteen, I was already prone to enough awkwardness.
"We look at each other, you and me." I bug out my eyes at her as she sets down our dinner on the table. My favorite meal: extra-cheesy macaroni with diced jalapeños. "Why isn't it rude at home?"
She glances at me and almost smiles, returning her almond eyes to the spork she stabs into her dinner. She's thirty-two but looks ten years younger, though I'd never tell her that. You don't tell your mom she's the prettiest lady in the complex unless she's having an extra-bad day or you're okay with getting a lecture on why it's rude to look at other ladies for comparison—pointing my eyes where they shouldn't be pointing.
"It's different. You know that." She sighs before taking a bite. "How many followers on your FanFare now?"
"23,000-ish," I mumble around a mouthful.
"See? You're well on your way. Now what if word got out that you were looking at people? What'll come next? Will you start talking to them?" She chuckles.
"We talk."
She shakes her head. "People do whatever they want at home. And besides, I'm your mom. You don't have to impress me with your manners. But I do appreciate them."
"Maybe I don't want to impress other people, either."
"Typical teenage rebellion, is that what this is?" Another sigh. "Do you wan
t to be a typical teenager?"
Heck no. But I'd never tell her that.
~
At school, I know better than to press my luck. The teachers are trained to look up from their slates at unpredictable intervals to make sure we're not doing the same. All of our lessons, assignments, discussions, and group projects are done via slate. We could stay home and accomplish just as much—which is actually a lot; don't be fooled by the tone of my teenage angst-driven narrative. But my mom, who was a teacher before she started interviewing celebrities and making a decent living at it, explains that part of the hidden curriculum in school teaches us how to behave socially. So they cram me and a hundred of my closest friends into a classroom six hours a day, and the teachers rotate through every period to make sure we remain glued to our slates instead of looking around and actually talking to each other.
None of it is very hidden, if you ask me.
But you didn't. Nor did you ask what we do during our lunch breaks or PE periods, but I'll tell you anyway. During lunch, we link up for multiplayer games or chat, and during PE, we pack our slates into our lockers—which feels like amputating a limb and leaving it behind—and climb aboard cross-training machines with built-in screens, like at the gym. The conditioning continues, training our eyes never to wander from what matters most: whatever is on the screen.
Mom once told me that when she was a kid, they used to play outside. It's a wonder her entire generation didn't die from skin cancer.
"Things were different then," she says.
Right. They had cats. And they probably looked at each other all the time. Animals and social customs are both subject to extinction.
~
She's got her bag packed, ready to go as soon as I step off the bus and dash upstairs to our unit. Another gym trip is in our immediate future.
"Can I trust you to be polite this time?"
The alternative? I'd have to stay home alone with my slate. Give me a room full of people over that any day.
"Sure."
They never catch me. Their eyes are always focused on their screens, and they never consider the fact that a fourteen-year-old boy would find them more interesting than a game of Carnal Bludgeon II.
But now we come to the crux of the story, that which the entire tale hinges upon. And not to disappoint my literature teacher, Ms. Aspen, it involves a bit of irony: Why do people bother going to the gym if nobody's looking at them anyway? Sure, there are health reasons, but why does my mom care about the shape of her rear end?
I called her on this once.
"I'm your mother," she said. "Don't embarrass me."
I can't be the only citizen in our sector who likes to people-watch, and someday soon, I'm sure I'll catch somebody else looking around who's not as careful as I am. We'll just see how awkward that moment is. It might even be kind of fun. Won't know until it happens, right?
But I don't contradict Mom. The last thing I want is her to leave me behind. Maybe because I'm afraid of missing out. Mostly because she's good company.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day and a speculative fictioneer by night. When he's not grading papers, he's imagining what the world might be like in a dozen alternate realities. He is an active SFWA member, and his work has appeared in more than 70 publications, including AE SciFi, Cosmos, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and Shimmer. His novel Captain Bartholomew Quasar and the Space-Time Displacement Conundrum is forthcoming from Every Day Publishing. www.milojamesfowler.com
The Woman Who Was More Than a Wrench
By D.A. D’Amico
I was born into a world that had put fear and delight behind it, sacrificing hope for a release from anguish. Men no longer fought each other over money or pride. Both had been eradicated. Because of the scorching, London ticked like a finely made pocket watch.
Through some subtle inner defect, a flaw in the scorching process no doubt, I could feel a vestigial dollop of compassion. It allowed me the luxury of melancholy. I endeavored to deny it, but it had never been more apparent than when the new steam Omni struck the girl.
She'd stumbled into one of the many ruts between the cobbles and the wide metal rails that guided the trams, catching her ankle in the soft red clay. The morning commuters never slowed. Carriages rumbled by, hooves clopping on the rough brick. The reek of manure and the subtler tang of ozone filled the air as the electric bus rounded the corner and barreled down on her. Still, none would acknowledge the girl as she tugged at her tiny black boot.
Diffuse sunlight poked through high drifting clouds. Stray beams illuminated her burgundy dress. She appeared like an actress taking the stage, a tragic heroine about to perform her closing number.
"Sensibility says there's nothing to be done." A tall gentleman in a long woolen frock coat mumbled as the trolley closed the last few yards to its target. "Risking help would be madness."
The scorching had cleansed us of the need to waste life and limb in futile heroics. The template burned into our minds as toddlers removed doubt, negating the nagging cowardice of inaction. Had I been a man, I might have felt a stronger urge to act. Instead, I merely stared.
My gaze met hers, but briefly. Her small brown eyes widened in a momentary rush of passion, then dulled as the scorching forced her to accept the certainty of her fate. She lowered her head. The iron beast rolled over her, obliterating the girl in a tempest of steam and squealing metal.
I turned away, adjusting my long skirts as if concerned by nothing more than the wind. Around me, the ordered bustle of morning commuters continued unabated.
An ancient man, shriveled in a threadbare navy bluecoat two sizes too large for him, limped by with a peck of apples under a piston-driven metal arm. A troop of four boys pushed into the street, carefully tending a metal hoop. They chased it with controlled precision, and with none of the ruckus of days gone by. The scorching had checked unruly behavior.
The man who'd spoken earlier turned to me, tilting his tall hat as if it were just another morning. "Would you care to share a Handsome?"
I smiled, but declined. "I'm afraid it would be a very short ride."
I pointed down the street to the old Milliners building. The red-brick structure had been rescued from collapse, pressed into service as a scorching center. The gentleman nodded. His smile faded as he turned away without another word.
~
Enormous windows did little to let sunlight into the white-washed brick nursery. Cascading banks of giant vacuum tubes, each glowing with a jaundiced internal radiance, filled the near wall like glass pipe organs and fought the morning sun for shadows. I stood with the other scorch mothers beside a row of steel spanners, awaiting the siren that would begin our day.
I'd often thought of those wrenches, and what they might do to the delicate machinery. I could picture myself clutching an iron haft, hurling it into those glowing bulbs and shining gears. Might it destroy the scorching machines, I couldn't say. But it would be action, protest in a world that had voided dissent.
But those were just dreams, wraiths conjured from my improper scorching. I was no more capable of anger than the iron spanners themselves. Like the girl who'd been killed by the Onmi, passivity had been burned into my brain and seared onto my personality by the great machines. I was as much a tool as the toddler-sized carriages rolling slowly across the polished linoleum floor.
~
"Today's shipment is from the Old Nichol, as fine a lot as any, despite their sorry history."
I had my suspicions the warden had also been improperly scorched. She paced the floor as if digging a trench with her conservative black shoes, her boney arms jutting like the struts of an umbrella from beneath her pressed white smock, slender lips bent in a perpetual frown. Her even temper seemed a thinly controlled veil, a facade that might burst at any moment.
"As always, mind the bonnets." She marched past, her long arms escaping her smock like damaged pistons.
She often spoke of the "bonnets"
, the scorching mechanisms, as the important thing, relegating children to second position. It was this indifference that proved the process had succeeded in her. How I longed to find such proof in myself.
"Is there a problem, young lady?" The warden had stopped in front of me, regarding me without a hint of feeling.
"Mam, should there be?" I curtsied, but my gaze never left her pale blue eyes.
I felt no anxiety. I didn't tremble with nervousness, fearful she'd divine my secret. The scorching had excised those emotions. If she would ask, I'd tell her readily I thought myself flawed. There were no prisons. Asylums no longer tortured the insane and unbalanced. There'd be no penalty, because punishment was as alien a concept as fear. Both had been dispatched at the hands of scorch mothers just like me.
"Bonnet number three's been acting a bit wonky," she said. "I'm giving it to your charge until an engineer can be sent from the academy. Take care nothing happens."
"I will, warden."
I glanced back at the spanners. I can't say I yearned to clutch one. I no longer had the force of passion necessary to feel such desire, but I wondered how the world might have been, how it might be if human liberty were once again set free.
The incident with the Omni proved to me heroes no longer existed. The scorching had excised the basest of human emotions, but it had also leveled our noblest desires. If I could hate, my wrath would turn on those men of science who'd felt the need to meddle with the human spirit.
~
The siren sounded. Eleven women adjusted their powder grey smocks, and shuffled past tiny carriages to their posts. I lingered a moment longer, hoping the will to act would spontaneously burst upon me, a caged animal set free. But I remained unmoved.
I turned as a shrill cry echoed through the high-walled chamber, a sound both familiar and alien. The children, all toddlers between the age of one and two years, had been given a mild dose of laudanum to calm them, but the process had not yet contained their emotions. Occasional outbursts were tolerated.