by Nino Cipri
“I wanted to say a few words,” she boomed. Ray noticed that diners in other booths and tables were craning their heads to look at her. Aliens came in all shapes and forms, he thought. They were all situational aliens.
“As some of you know, this project is one I’ve been dreaming of for close to a year. I won’t say that it’s a dream come true, because most of my dreams are disturbing and unsettling. I’m very glad that my dreams remained false.” She slowly and purposefully pinched herself on the arm, as if in ritual. Ray shot a quick look of alarm at Damian and Min. Damian was staring fixedly at his plate, very obviously trying not to laugh. Min was filming the whole thing on her phone, probably so she could Snapchat it to her mother.
Annika continued, “I want to thank you. Each of you. All of you.” Ray sighed, and submitted himself to the intensity of her stare as she made another forcible round of eye contact.
He, Damian, and Min didn’t linger after dinner was finished. The crew had already started making plans to go bar-hopping, but Min waved them off, telling Kamal she’d text him and meet them somewhere in an hour. “We’ve got an appointment first.”
Min cooed at the sight of Ray’s truck like she was reuniting with a long-lost pet. “Aw, I’ve missed the Buttsmobile.”
“Burtsmobile, damn it,” muttered Ray. He really should have made his nephew pay to fix that leather. That was the problem with making more money than your siblings, though. Nobody could afford for you to be vindictive.
“Just accept that it’s the Buttsmobile,” Damian said, “and always will be.”
“Shotgun!” Min called, and then narrowly beat Damian to the door.
Damian clambered into the middle of the bench seat, squirming to get his seatbelt on. “I hate being short. I always get volunteered to sit in the middle,” he grumped. Still, his leg was a comforting weight against Ray’s. Heat seeped from his skin where they were pressed together. Min propped one of her boots up on the dash and stretched her other leg down into the footwell. “Window,” Ray said as she pulled out her vape.
“It’s not even smoke,” she complained as she cranked down the window.
“It smells like you’re standing between a Garrett’s Popcorn and a Claire’s Boutique in the mall,” Damian said. “That might be worse.”
It had been Min’s idea to get the tattoos. They’d argued for a while about which of the twenty-nine logograms from the oracles to get, until Ray pointed out that they really didn’t need to get matching ones anyway. The tattoos were a reminder.
“A reminder of what?” Damian asked.
“Whatever you want to be reminded of,” Ray said.
Min had eventually chosen two mirrored crescents. Damian wanted the fern. Ray picked the lopsided triangle shape that he thought was a bird’s wing but Min argued was actually an abstracted symbol.
The tattoo shop was grotty, with stained ceilings and an ugly linoleum floor, and both Damian and Min looked a little squeamish. But the woman behind the counter was using proper sterilization procedures, and that was good enough for Ray.
“What are these from, anyway?” she asked, once she’d started inking Ray’s forearm. “Do they mean something?”
“Probably ‘thanks for the gift of shiny stones,’” said Min.
“We don’t know,” Damian answered. “Probably never will. But we know they meant something.”
“At the very least, it means that someone was there,” Ray said. Then he smirked at Damian and added, “Before they flew off into space, anyway.”
“Cool cool,” replied the artist, who had probably heard much weirder things in her shop. “That’s about all any artist can hope for, I guess.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nino Cipri is a queer and nonbinary/transgender writer, currently at work on an MFA at the University of Kansas. A multidisciplinary artist, Nino has also written plays, screenplays, and radio features; performed as a dancer, actor, and puppeteer; and worked as a stagehand, bookseller, bike mechanic, and labor organizer. Their fiction has been published by Tor.com, Fireside Fiction, Nightmare Magazine, and other fine venues. One time, an angry person called Nino a verbal terrorist, which was pretty cool.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book contains about seven years of my writing, but is the result of decades of help, teaching, and support from a dozen different directions. This list is long, sorry not sorry.
Thanks first to Michelle Dotter, Dan Wickett, Catherine Sinow, and everyone else at Dzanc, who chose this from a mountain of submissions for their annual contest. I’m so thrilled that my first book was with people who recognized what I was trying to do and helped me do it better. Michelle in particular was kind, patient, and constantly encouraging throughout the process.
My agent, DongWon Song, is the actual best, and I’m lucky to have him. Thank you for your insight, humor, and for gently suggesting replacements for my terrible titles.
Most of these stories were first published in various SF/F literary magazines, whose editors are absolute champions of the genre and its writers. I’d like to specially shout out John Joseph Adams at Nightmare/Lightspeed, Ann VanderMeer of Tor.com, and Brian White and Julia Rios of Fireside. It’s been such a pleasure working with you all.
I’ve had so many wonderful writing teachers, starting from when I was an insufferable teenager convinced of my own genius. In roughly chronological order, I’d like to thank Jay Craven, Rob Williams, Burgess Clark, Walter Eugene Grodzik, Gail Tremblay, Gregory Frost, Geoff Ryman, Catherynne Valente, Nora Jemisin, Ann VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer, Kij Johnson, Laura Moriarty, Darren Canady, and Giselle Anatol.
Writing is lonely sometimes, but I’m lucky to have family and friends who make it less so. Ellen and Leah Cipri, and the whole Cipri clan; Nibedita Sen, best of boos; the best-ever Aunt Squad of Anne Brunelle and Cathy MacIntyre; queerplatonic life-partner k8 Walton; my classmates and cohort at the University of Kansas, especially Hannah Warren, Maria Dones, Kyle Teller, and Jason Baltazar; my classmates at the 2014 Clarion Writing Workshop, who taught me as much as the teachers; and the amazing queer and trans writing family that I’ve come to know, who are always reminding me to drink more water and believe in my work.
Particular to “Before We Disperse like Star Stuff,” which was the last story to be written: Darcie Little Badger was kind enough to talk to me about being an Indigenous scientist. Sisi Jiang, Angeline Rodriguez, and Kyna Horten provided amazing and insightful sensitivity reads. In my research, I came across a lot of work by critics, scientists, researchers, and writers that had a profound impact on the story, including Kim Tallbear, Kara Stewart, Debbie Reese, Adrienne Keene, and Adrienne Mayor.
Lastly, gratitude to various trees in Vermont, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, Kansas, and elsewhere for existing so awesomely that I would stand beneath them and go, Trees! Wow! and feel a little better about the world.