by Unknown
He should be with his mother.
I can’t leave him with Candice.
She scrabbled faster through socks, underwear and camisoles. No jeans.
Candice wouldn’t hurt him.
She’d control him.
Deciding this for him isn’t control? You can’t be a parent. This isn’t your life.
Hands shaking, she dragged the jumper out of its tangle with a t-shirt and her headphones. She must have left the jeans at Candice’s. She tied the jumper around her hips.
I’d be better than she would. Julie would want this.
Would she? Would Sam? Or is this just what you want?
This was ridiculous. She’d made the decision. She wasn’t going to unmake it. She shoved the escaping underwear back in, hauled the laptop out and set it up on the table with the typewriter pieces and the gravy-sodden notebook. Her fingers jittered on the keys. Sometimes distractions were necessary.
The program took less time than she’d expected. Components just fit, like something guided her code, pulling it into a prototype effortlessly. She could almost smell her father’s aftershave on the keyboard.
Gripped with a frenzy, she snatched some napkins from the table, hammered the broken key through the ribbon onto them as fast as she could and held them up to the webcam, tapping the keyboard impotently while the program churned up the translation. Next to her, Sam rolled on his bag in his sleep, curling around it.
There it was: the astronaut’s team had been colonising Titan when unfriendly ships arrived from outside the system. He stole one and escaped, largely by jabbing everything to see what it did, and broadcast his distress call until the American shuttles turned up.
Sam was right, this guy had her father’s attitude. Poke it with a stick. Never let ignorance or fear stand in the way of trying.
Don’t let her beat that out of you again.
Dawn crept over the horizon of the runway. Becca’s hands ached. The program struggled with words not in the dictionary, and she paused to decipher them by hand.
“Dear Grandma and Grandpa,
I don’t know how this’ll reach you, I think their tech latches onto whatever it can. I set the ship to do a data dump at the end of this transmission; hopefully there’s something Uncle Sam can use. I’m taking a lot on faith, you know, with your stories. Tell Mum I love her, and say hi to Uncle Sam.”
Becca frowned. Was Uncle Sam actually a person?
There was an address before the message, like a letter: Rebecca Willoway and Michael Oaks, 275 Tempus Terrace.
Her name. Candice’s address.
Becca hugged the laptop to herself and pressed the ‘A’ key a few more times against the last napkin. It wrote ‘A’. She wasn’t surprised.
But it couldn’t be her, if it was “Uncle” Sam. Sam would be a cousin to any grandchild of hers. And she wasn’t staying here.
Except Sam was her son, now. If she had any other children, he’d be more brother to them than anything else.
The dawn sun soaked through the window into her spine with the realisation, sickeningly warm. Becca slumped as her life collapsed back inside the walls of Candice’s rule.
Even if you believe in magic typewriters from the future, it doesn’t mean that future’s going to happen.
No, but it’s possible. I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought something good might come of it.
The warmth roiled in her chest.
It’s not possible, because you’re taking Sam away from that. For his own good.
Maybe I just don’t want to give up my life. My friends, Rick.
You’re doing the right thing for Sam.
Am I, though? Or am I just doing the easy thing for me?
The thought slammed down like stone. Becca shut the lid of the laptop, fighting the urge to curl up around her knees.
Forget the stupid typewriter a minute. What’s best for him? That’s my job, now. That’s what Julie wanted.
The plastic seat squeaked softly—Becca stopped herself from rocking.
I stood up to her once. I can stand up to her again. Maybe I could make some happiness here.
She unfolded herself from the seat and stoked Sam’s hair from his face.
He deserves to have his mother—his real mother—in his life.
You’ll have to keep fighting for it. Keep fighting her, every moment.
oOo
In the carport of Candice’s house, Becca gathered the last of the scrawled-on napkins from the back seat. Sam, finally awake, had scampered off to tell the whole thing to Julie as soon as the engine had stopped. Hands full, Becca flicked the door closed with her knee as another car pulled up in the drive.
A young man in blue scrubs and coiffed black hair stepped out, hospital-branded duffel bag slung across one muscular shoulder. He gave her a wave, smile gracing perfect cheekbones, and Becca was suddenly acutely aware that she stood in the front garden wearing a tied-on jumper and a child’s dressing gown, hands clutching stained napkins and sticky with gravy, face still swollen with tears.
“How’re you doing?” he called out with a rich burr from one of the southern states of America. He held out his hand. “Oakes, Michael Oakes. I’m your sister’s physio-nurse.”
“Oh, yes. They—they said.” Becca stammered, trying to wind the robe more tightly against herself. “I’m sorry, it’s been a bit of a night. Michael, was it?” Belatedly, she offered her hand to shake, still full of napkins. His warm fingers wrapped over hers securely. A small scar bisected his left eyebrow, giving him a permanent inquisitive expression. He didn’t even flinch at the gravy.
“Oakes, yes. It’s okay. It’s like that.” He stepped closer, professional manner softening for a moment. “It gets easier, I promise.”
Becca looked back down at the address on the napkins. “Are you sure?” she said, not entirely to him.
He smiled again, and extended his arm to lead her toward the house. “Trust me,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”
THE SPIEL OF THE GLOCKEN
by Laura Resnick
I first suspected something was amiss when I exited the coffee shop on Greenup Street and was knocked down by a herd of bison.
As I stepped out of the shop, I heard the city’s clock tower chiming in the distance—and then, bam!, a smelly thousand-pound beast came out of nowhere and ran right into me. I hit the ground so hard that I couldn’t breathe, and I instinctively curled up into a fetal position, arms shielding my head, when I saw more hooves coming at me and more massive, shaggy bodies lumbering above me. After a few moments of shock, confusion, and terror, I realized the buffalo might not all be polite enough to keep stepping over me rather than on me, so I somehow managed to throw myself out of their path and halfway back into the coffee shop, collapsing on the threshold.
“Oh, my God! Are you okay?” the barista cried.
Stronger than she looked, she dragged me the rest of the way through the door, slammed it shut, then knelt beside my prone body and briefly checked me for injuries.
“Are you hurt?”
“N … no.” I gasped for air as I shook my head. “Wh … wha … what …”
“What’s going on?” She rose to her feet and looked through the glass door, out at the street where the buffalo still roamed.
Panting in reaction, I rolled over to watch the spectacle of those enormous beasts pounding thunderously on the pavement as they headed downhill toward the Ohio River. There were dozens of them. We stared in stunned silence, watching them dash past the coffee shop.
A buffalo stampede really wasn’t the sort of thing that happened in Covington, Kentucky.
Well, not anymore, I mean. Once upon a time, sure, the section of the river that separates us from Cincinnati wasn’t nearly as deep as it is now. Bison herds used to ford the Ohio River here, heading north to Ohio State in time for the college football season—or perhaps, as some people claim, migrating to fresh grazing grounds. (I’m an IT guy. I can fix your computer, but I’
m fuzzy on the habits of wild nomadic beasts.) Native Americans would hunt them here, since the water slowed them down enough to make them easy prey. Down on the riverfront, a couple of blocks from this spot, there was a mural of that scene painted on the flood wall.
But it must be centuries since buffalo had stampeded down this street on their way to the river. In fact, the last time something like this had happened, there probably hadn’t been a street.
“Where did they come from?” the barista asked in bewilderment after the last bison finally trotted past and the building stopped shaking. “And where are they going?”
“Good questions,” I said breathlessly.
I could still hear their thundering hooves, though they were past us now. So why hadn’t I heard a thing as they approached? It was almost as if they’d simply popped into existence a scant moment before I collided with them.
I crawled to the door. Still on my hands and knees, too shaken to try standing up yet, I peered through the glass, wondering who was crazy enough to run a herd of bison through these narrow, crowded streets.
“Are those buffalo being loaded onto a river barge or something?” the barista wondered, still standing at the window and looking north toward the river.
“I hope so.” Surely the bison would drown if they tried to ford the river these days, what with water depth and current.
“Shouldn’t there be cowboys or herders?” she asked, glancing down at me. “Someone in charge of them?”
I looked up at her—and instantly regretted my decision to stay on all fours. The barista was pretty, vivacious, and sexy, and she was the reason I had recently been coming daily to this shop for my morning cup of carry-out, even though it meant a detour of several blocks on my walk to work.
And crouching on my hands and knees in lingering fear was not how I wanted to present myself, now that we were talking for the first time.
I started to get up off the floor, felt dizzy, and almost keeled over.
She grabbed me before I fell and hauled me over to a chair. “You should sit down.”
“Thanks.” I felt embarrassed.
She went behind the coffee bar, then came back a moment later with a glass of water. “Here, drink this.”
We were alone, which was unusual. In truth, a lot of guys came here for their morning coffee. A few of them … well, no, almost all of them were smoother than me and way ahead of my game. They talked and flirted with her, and a couple of them had asked her out. I hadn’t heard her say “yes” to anyone yet, but they were working on it.
In fact, I’d been getting up earlier this past week because I was trying to get here before those other guys poured through the door, so I’d have a chance to talk to her. But the last couple of days, including today, I’d been the first one here, arriving right after she opened the shop … and I still hadn’t worked up the nerve to talk to her.
I took a gulp of the water she’d just given me. “Thanks,” I said again. “I appreciate it, um …”
I realized I’d been coming here regularly for three weeks without even managing to learn her name—or managing to speak in complete sentences.
She went back to the window and looked outside again. “It looks like it’s safe to go out there now and see what’s happening.”
While I sat in clumsy silence, trying to think of a more engaging response than telling her I wasn’t ready for that, she opened the door and stuck her head outside. Then she looked over her shoulder at me. “Can you watch the shop for a couple of minutes? I want to go find out what’s going on.”
“Uh, sure. Okay.”
The clock tower in Mainstrasse, a neighborhood a few blocks away, started chiming again as she exited, and then the door closed behind her. Watching her go, I supposed that as long as we were behind the herd now, rather than in its path, she would be all right.
A nanosecond later, I was proved wrong.
“Watch out!” I shouted as I shot to my feet and dived for the door while a sword-waving guy on a horse galloped straight past the shop window.
I opened the door in time to hear the barista’s stifled scream as the waving sword barely missed her head. She fell to her knees to avoid the blade, and the horseman rode on, not even glancing at her, never mind stopping to apologize.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted after him. And then I asked her, “Are you okay?”
While I was helping her rise, I heard a rumbling, thundering noise behind me that suddenly seemed to fill the whole street. Still holding onto the girl, I turned around and saw an army column heading straight for us—foot soldiers with bayonets, officers on horseback, a canon on wheels. … They were moving along at a brisk clip, filling the street, and they seemed no more worried about trampling us than the bison or the horseman had been.
“Get inside!” I shouted.
But the barista was well ahead of me, already dragging me through the door, which she slammed shut behind us.
Dozens of armed men marched right past us a split second later, followed by hundreds more.
“That’s the Union Army,” I said blankly, recognizing the uniforms and the weapons of the era. “Is there a Civil War reenactment or something going on today?”
As I said this, I realized that the sword-waving guy on horseback had been wearing the gray uniform of a Confederate officer.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, you mean they’re reenacting the story about that guy?”
“What guy?”
The Union Army was still marching past the coffee shop. A historical parade through the city streets seemed as out of place here on a regular weekday morning as, oh, a buffalo herd.
“I took that local ghost tour at Halloween,” she said. “You know the one I mean?”
I didn’t, but I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“And I learned a lot about the city’s history. Such as, when the Union Army crossed the river to occupy Covington, it totally surprised a Confederate officer who was visiting a wealthy family here at the time, in one of those old mansions down the street—well, they’re old now.” She continued, “So the guy ran out back, hopped on his horse, and rode it straight through the house and out the front window, then went galloping down the street—a feat that his ghost still reenacts on dark nights—and he didn’t stop until he reached New Orleans.”
I suspected there was a fair bit of hyperbole in that story, but it accounted (in a manner of speaking) for a Confederate officer galloping down the street and a battalion of Union soldiers marching behind him.
“Okay, I guess they’re replaying that scene,” I said with a nod. “But it doesn’t explain the buffalo.”
“This all must have something to do with the bicentennial,” she said. “I know the committee has been planning all kinds of activities. It’s always getting mentioned in the local news.”
Founded in 1815, Covington was celebrating its 200th birthday this year. I hadn’t really paid much attention, though I knew there were “big things” in the works.
“I don’t remember the news mentioning this,” I said.
“It didn’t.” She shook her head. “They really ought to warn people before filling the streets with hundreds of armed guys, a galloping horse, and buffalo. Don’t you think?”
“Definitely.”
“Oh, well. Since they’re here, why don’t we go outside and watch?” she said, mustering some enthusiasm. “This seems like a pretty big deal.”
That sounded like she was inviting me—me!—to join her, so I agreed, even though I was due at work soon.
And since she had just asked me out, sort of, I worked up the courage to ask her name.
“Jeff,” she said.
“Jeff?”
“Uh-huh.”
I wanted to say it was a pretty name, but since it wasn’t, I asked, “Is that short for something?”
“Jeffrey.”
“Really?” When she didn’t respond, I said, “Oh.”
I started to feel like maybe I’d been
doing better when I was too nervous to talk to her.
“And you?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“What’s your name?”
“Oh!” I probably should have realized she’d ask. “Aristhosthenes.”
An understandable reluctance to introduce myself to people is one of the reasons I’m shy. I waited for the inevitable questions.
“Oh, right. Like the ancient astronomer,” said the barista. “Cool.”
“Wow. No one ever—”
“I think I’ll lock the door,” Jeff said. “In case we want to follow the parade or go see what else is going on out there.”
I followed her outside, where we stood on the sidewalk, our backs pressed against the shop window, and watched the parade that filled the street. The “soldiers” marching past us looked deadly serious, not very clean—and, to my surprise, they stank.
Jeff wrinkled her nose. “Is that them? Or is it the sewers?”
The odor had a tinge of Covington’s aged sewer system toward the end of a heat wave, but I thought the smell of unwashed sweat emanating from the costumed men was pretty unmistakable.
“It’s them,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the racket of their marching feet and wagon wheels. “Reenacting the smell of a nineteenth century army on the move seems a little obsessive.”
And that’s when things got really strange. As I was finishing my sentence (now that I had learned to speak in complete sentences around Jeff), the entire battalion—or brigade, or whatever it was … simply disappeared.
Hundreds of men, a number of horses, equipment, weapons, wagons … all vanished in an instant and without a trace. It was as quick and complete as a light being switched off.