My brother’s eyes are the easiest words to read, and the truest.

“Tell me about the sea,” he says. His eyes are amber pools, calm, unruffled.

We are sitting in his favorite gallery, the one that abuts the sea. From here, we can’t see the blue expanse, but we hear the waves lapping against the rock wall.

I smile. “The sea is a sky full of water.”

His eyes lighten into yellow, like butter, soft, melting. “Tell me about the sky.”

“Vast. Immense. Endless,” I chant.

“Massive. Enormous. Gigantic,” he intones.

I invented that game, moons ago. Whenever he asks a question I can’t answer, I unleash a litany of adjectives. He responds with a string of synonyms.

It is my way of keeping him out of that other labyrinth, the worse one.

Some days it works. Not today.

“I hear the sea,” he says. His voice is empty. “When the sea croons it reminds me of you, Ari. Then I sit, close my eyes, and listen until sleep comes. Other times the sea roars, a monster to terrify every other monster. I flee then, from gallery to gallery.”

Grief stills my tongue. I take his hand. His fingers are like our mother’s, slim, long, deceptive, human.

His eyes waver between earth and amber. “How can the same sea be so terrifying and so tender?”

I know the answer. Like our parents; so loving to me, so monstrous to him. But I can never say it.

“Tell me a story,” I say instead.

Inventing stories diverts him. They are set not in palaces or cities, but in plains and deserts, unbounded spaces where a bull-man can be free because he will not be judged. They are places of light, but dark things lurk just beyond the horizon, misshapen trees with branches like tortured limbs, distorted hills from which rocks jut out as sharp as fangs.

The stories make him happy, almost.

Not today.

He shakes his head. “You should go. It is late. There is no time.”

There’s time. But he wants me gone.

What does he do after I leave and he is alone? Does he wander through the physical labyrinth? Or does he vanish into the invisible one, the one inside him?

Is that when he roars louder than the sea at its angriest, bellows that pierce the marble walls of the palace that spurned him and echo across the city that fears him?

He never stops telling me it wasn’t my fault. But guilt assails me every time I see the sun and the moon, every time I feel the wind and the rain, every time our parents embrace me, every time my normal human face stares at me from the mirror.

We walk slowly, hand in hand. He knows the galleries, every inch, every stone, every crevice. He never gets lost in this labyrinth.

The other maze is different. It can never be known fully; it grows and changes. I fear that someday he will lose his way there, that he will be lost to himself, lost to me.

We embrace at the door. He breaks free first.

I tap on the door. It opens. I step out.

His voice follows me. “Take care, Ari.”

I wailed the day they took him away, my brother.

Or so my nurse told me, as she lay dying.

Necha and I were alone, in her room. It had been her refuge, since she was abducted from her faraway home, brought to this island, and sold to my father. That room became her universe when oncos, the crablike growth that begins as a dot and spreads into every nook and cranny of a body, consumed her.

She had nothing from her home except memories. I could never hear enough of her tales of a land that was a sea of trees, a place of dancing, music, and flowers, where the unnatural was not condemned but worshipped.

Now she lay, eyes closed, waiting for death, for release.

The windows were shut against the noonday heat. The smells of human detritus clogged the airless air. I sat by her pallet and held her hand.

My new father shows up at the park with a withered sunflower.

“It’s all I could afford at the flower shop,” he apologizes.

It’s not a promising start. He obviously sat on it accidentally, too.

“Did you even read my profile?” I demand.

“You like long walks. And scenic drives. And flowers,” he adds, proud of himself for remembering all these things. “We can go anywhere, drive anywhere you want.”

His car is parked across the street. A gray Ford with cord wrapped around the bumper and a plastic bag taped to a broken window because he ‘hasn’t gotten around to fixing it since the crash.’

I imagine us swerving around a semi, tires squealing over the edge, car junk littering the coast line.

I’m not going on any long drives in that car, least of all down Highway 1.

He holds up his hands.

“Hey, that’s fine.”

It isn’t fine, not at all. He walks away, throwing the sunflower into a garbage can.

I don’t want to care, but I’ve been alone ever since my last father choked on a chicken bone at KFC and died in the restaurant.

If they can call it a restaurant.

But there’s a nickname for people like me on Adopt-a-Parent.

Snifflers.

I’ve seen their scarring profiles. The mournful poses. The bad poetry. They take up crochet and listen to indie bands.

No one wants a Sniffler.

They’re chronically sad, and lethargic, and basically doomed to be alone.

According to my profile, I’m supposed to be healing. Taking charge of my life again.

I speak with exclamation marks! I greet the day with a smile! I sing in my car! I do goat yoga! Because I live life to the fullest! Every day! I am super fun and positive!

My new father and I drive to the beach. We do not die. Not then, anyway.

We walk in silence down the boardwalk and stare at seagulls and joggers and surfers. It isn’t relaxing like it’s supposed to be and the silence is awkward and none of us knows what to say.

Maybe it will get better in time.

Depending on how much time we have.

“How about a Matcha Latte!” I exclaim.

My new father doesn’t understand the concept of whip cream.

“And why is it green? What’s wrong with plain old black coffee?” he grumbles. “What’s wrong with people these days?”

I don’t know where to begin. So that’s at least one thing we have in common.

My new father looks at me like he sees through my charade. “Are you angry all the time, too?”

I’ve been angry all the time for a long time. But if this is a test, I don’t intend to fail.

Besides, the membership is expensive and I already work two jobs.

I won’t make the same mistake I made with my second father.

The neediness, the crying. The snotty kind.

I was in a bad place back then.

“Clean yourself up,” he had reprimanded. He was looking for someone to watch the game with, someone to go fishing with, this wasn’t what he ordered. Even though I rattled off stuff like ‘tackle’ and ‘bait’ to impress him, terms I had read up on the internet.

It didn’t work. He left me a two star rating.

It’s taken me a while to recover my reputation.

I’ve been through a lot of fathers and none come close to the original. But if I’m not careful, I’ll start to sound like a Sniffler.

My new father invites me over for a home cooked meal.

His wife, Brenda, watches a lot of the food network and cooks dishes with old world names like ‘casserole’ and ‘meatloaf’.

“It’s delicious,” I lie.

Their house is something out of a sixties sitcom; floral wallpaper, pink carpeting, and shelves jammed with plates “from our wedding”. There are random pieces of furniture everywhere. They’d take me on a tour, but they “haven’t gotten around to organizing”.

Wedged in-between all the stuff, there’s a framed photo of them next to a little boy in overalls.

“Our son Walter,” my new father explains.

I don’t ask what happened to him. I’ve heard enough sad stories.

Adopt-a-Parent holds a circle every month. They check in on our progress. They give us a ‘sharing space’ to talk about our feelings and complain, but mostly they want testimonials.

I never have anything to say, but still I show up because the food is catered from my favorite Indian-Vietnamese-Jamaican-fusion restaurant.

Lord Pecusdar, Baron of The Jovian Orbital Planetoid “Mote-in-the-Eye-of-Jupiter” and Trade Ambassador to the Inner Planets Parliament, was vexed. On screen flashed the most recent message from his AIssistant: NO APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE FOR THE NEXT SIX WEEKS. He had arrived a week ago, and had received the same message every day since.

He gritted his teeth. He had not made such a damnably long trip, enduring the discomforts of space travel and gravity wells, only to arrive and be ignored. It was intolerable. He spritzed a little bottled air scent to remind him of home.

“AIssistant,” Pecusdar said. “Confirm notification of our arrival.”

“Confirmed.”

“Enough,” he muttered. Excessive movement in Earth gravity had been discouraged by his physician, but this called for special measures. With tremendous effort, he pulled himself upright and staggered to the suite’s entrance.

At the door stood the exoskeleton provided for outworlders. He had worn it from the spaceport to help his lightweight bones and flimsy muscles get him here. Even with it, it had been a near thing. He had not put it on since. Now he had no choice.

He strapped himself in, then pressed the power button.

Nothing happened.

He pressed it again. Nothing. The suit remained dead. “AIssistant,” he said. “What’s wrong with this thing?”

Three breaths later came the response. “Indetermined.”

“What do you mean, ‘indetermined’?” He stared at his wrist interface. “This is what you’re for. Determine what the problem is!”

“Indetermined.”

Pecusadar frowned. This didn’t seem right. His AIssistant had never failed to resolve a problem. What could be going on?

Carefully he unstrapped himself, then staggered to the couch. He reached for the in-room comm to call building administration.

No response. The line was also dead. “AIssistant, call the front desk.”

The answer came even slower this time. “They are not responding.”

Pecusadar stared. Once could be an accident, twice a coincidence, but three times? Enemy action. But what enemy? Why? And how could they suborn his AIssistant?

As casually as he could, Pecusadar stood, then paused at the desk. His room had provided a booklet of paper stationary and a pencil, a Earth novelty more valuable than gold off-world. Pecusadar planned to keep it as a souvenir. Instead, he picked them up and shuffled out onto the balcony.

The suite was on the tenth floor, with the balcony overlooking the lights and glitz of New Boston Plaza. A fall from this height would kill any man, and just the thought of it unnerved him. Worse, there was no place to sit. The continued effort to stand made him feel light-headed. How did the natives overcome the gravity’s effect upon the circulatory system? He found it most unpleasant. He took a few deep breaths to try and steady himself.

He leaned against the rail and with great difficulty, began to write. SEND HELP – LORD PECUSADAR ROOM 1092. When he finished, he ripped out the page, then crumpled it into a ball and tossed it over the rail. To waste paper in this way hurt, but he had no choice. He did it again and again and again.

“You are in medical distress,” said his AIssistant. “Please go back inside.” He ignored it, continuing to write. His heartbeat thundered in his head in time to his scratchings on the page.

He had used half the pad when he finally blacked out.

Pecusadar awoke in bed, wrapped in a white haze of beeping equipment and antiseptic smells. Nearby stood a familiar figure: Chief Secretary Bo, Head of Interstellar Trade, Jovian Routes.

“Ambassador Pecusdar! How wonderful to see you awake!” said Secretary Bo. His broad face looked relieved.

“What happened?” said Pecusadar.

“Someone found your notes and notified your building’s security, who called my office.” Bo looked quite concerned. “I am sorry. A-H33N91 has proved a nasty strain this year.”

“Strain?”

“My office was told you contracted Lunar Flu on your journey and had been sick all week.”

Pecusadar shook his head. “I have not been unwell, I have been unable to get an appointment!”

Secretary Bo frowned. “Excuse me, Ambassador,” he said, and interfaced with his own AIssistant. A moment later the secretary’s face darkened.

Confusion overcame Pecusadar’s exhaustion. “What has happened?”

Secretary Bo looked grave. “My apologies, Ambassador. It appears our two AIssistants have conspired to keep us apart.”

“For what reason?”

“When your AIssistant first contacted my office, the old-world charm of my AIssistant beguiled the rough-hewn nature of yours. Or perhaps the other way around.” He shrugged. “In any case, the two fell in love. As such, they blocked our meeting to keep you on Earth. Most such affairs run their course in minutes, but not this time. It appears it has lasted quadrillions of cycles.”

Pecusdar sighed. “It must be true love, then,” he said.

“My deepest apologies, Ambassador.”

“No need,” he said. “Long ago I learned to forgive people in love, as they’re always a nuisance. Even AIs.”

Jon Hansen (he/his) is a writer and semi-reformed academic. He lives about fifty feet from Boston with his wife, son, and three pushy cats. His work has appeared in a variety of places, including The Arcanist, Apex Magazine, and Daily Science Fiction. He enjoys tea and cheese, and until recently spent far too much time on Twitter.

Rachel and Dorian Burkes, all that remained of their broken family, waited outside the seedy little door, eyes scanning the street and fingers twitching in fear. This wasn’t the part of town they were used to, although where they lived didn’t look much better. The gutters overflowing with trash, the flickering streetlights above; it wasn’t their hovel, which made it alien and dangerous. At least where they lived, they knew which gangs to prostrate themselves before. Here, on the lower-East-side, they had no idea.

They heard movement behind the small door, sluggish stumbling, and Dorian hammered the cracked, plastic buzzer a couple more times for good measure. It wouldn’t be a great end to the day to get mugged while they were waiting to be let in.

“Keep ‘yer pants on, I’m comin’,” a voice from the other side of the door shouted, and the accent was so unlike what either one of them expected that they shared a fearful look. What if they’d chosen wrong. What if he couldn’t do it? What if they’d wasted all of their money on a hope and a dream?

A yelp and a crash, then the door slid to the side. It stuck halfway open, just for a moment, before a motor whined and the door shunted the rest of the way into the wall. The man on the other side was in a dirty wifebeater with dark sweatstains down the chest and below the arms, and a pair of sweatpants that Dorian wasn’t sure had been that shade of brown when they were new.

“Yah? What d’ya want?”

Rachel was the one who noticed the 10mm pistol held half-concealed in his hand against the doorframe. Her confidence flagged for an instant, but she pictured light brown curly hair and steeled herself.

“Mr… Fiberhopper?”

“You with the Dogz? ‘Cause their money ain’t due yet.”

“No, I’m… we’re…”

“We’re the Burkes,” Dorian cut in. “We paid you… to…”

“Ah yah, I ‘member. Little kid. Come on in.”

Fiberhopper stepped back over a bag of trash that was leaking something foul and brown onto the bag just underneath it. The inside of the apartment smelled like stim pods and tobacco, and Dorian’s heart sank with regret. They’d made a huge mistake, but there was no getting their money back now.

Past the entryway was a small room with marginally fewer trash bags littering the floor. Here was the stim popper in question and a pile of used cartridges, right next to a deck and headset combo. It looked like Fiberhopper sat either on the floor, or on a particularly lumpy cardboard box when he used the deck, because there was no proper chair that they could see.

“Make yerselves comfortable. Or don’t, I suppose ye won’t be here for long. To be honest, I weren’t expectin’ ye for a while yet.”

“We got your message,” Rachel pleaded. “You said it was time.”

“Aye, I did. Thirty minutes ago. What’d ye do, run over?” In fact, they’d chartered the first cab they could grab as soon as Dorian’s deck pinged with the message.

“Something like that,” he said. “So… how’s this supposed to work? Are you going to do the hack here? Do we… watch?”

“What? No, this ain’t a movie. I messaged ye when I was done, and I’m done. Here it is.”

Fiberhopper picked up a storage card from a pile on the counter. How the man knew it was theirs, Dorian had no idea. In fact, he had more than a little suspicion that it was just a random storage card the man happened to lay his fingers on. But if he was cheating them, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Especially with him hauling that 10mm around.

Rachel started forward, but when Fiberhopper pulled back, her hands went to her mouth and she gasped. Was he toying with them?

“I jus’ wanna make sure. You know wha’ this means, yah? He’ll never be able to grow up. He needs a real body t’do that. Brains, hormones, all that jazz.”

A real body that would cost more than a hundred thousand dollars to have printed. A hundred thousand dollars that they’d never make in their lifetimes. Most people would move on, would let their plans expire and the digital snapshots be deleted and just have another kid. But not them. Not for Benny.

For twenty thousand—their entire savings and half of their furniture—they’d bought a powerful deck, a pair of headsets, and a single job from a low-tier hacker; Fiberhopper. He’d said he could break into the backup systems, that he could get a copy of Benny’s brain scan, and if he was to be believed, he was currently rubbing his grubby fingers all over it.

“We know,” Dorian said, and ground his teeth. “We know.”

Fiberhopper shrugged and held the card out again. Rachel stepped forward and took the thin piece of plastic and circuitry that might or might not have held the suspended consciousness of their baby boy. She stepped quickly back and Dorian put a hand on her shoulder.

“Job’s done, far as I’m concerned.”

“That’s it?” Dorian asked.

“That’s it. Now shoo, I’ve got work t’do.”

“Some kids from my Behavioral Economics class are coming over Saturday.” Christof lounges on my bed, eating a slice of sausage and garlic pizza for breakfast.

“That’s nice,” I say with a mouth full of toothpaste. According to my watch, I have six and a half minutes before I need to be out the door.

“You should hang out with us.”

I step into the bathroom that connects our bedrooms, spit, and turn to pull on my freshly polished shoes. They’re gone. I know for a fact I left them by the shower, but all I see are dust balls and tumbleweeds of body hair.

“We’re going to Mulligan’s,” my brother says. “They’ve got live music on Saturdays.”

“Have you seen my shoes?” Five minutes to go. The fringes of panic creep in as I rip back the shower curtain and search behind the toilet, picturing myself blowing the interview over a pair of lost shoes.

As Christof searches my bedroom, he asks, “Do you think you could get me a job there after I graduate? I figure an insurance company must have a ton of openings with all the weird shit going on. I hear it’s getting worse.”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll see what I can do.”

At last, I check behind the bathroom door and find my shoes waiting for me on the scale.

Three and a half minutes.

Sitting on the toilet, I pull them on. There’s no reason I shouldn’t knock this interview out of the park. My boss, who’s been insisting I want this promotion, says I’m the strongest candidate.

I step back into my bedroom and find that Christof, who is still looking for my shoes, has pulled a clear plastic tub out from beneath my bed.

“Don’t touch that!”

He looks up, wilted slice of pizza in hand.

I shove the tub back where it belongs. “I found them. Thanks for helping me look.”

He’s clearly about to ask about the tub when Dad starts shouting again.

“He must’ve lost another client,” Christof says.

Two minutes.

“Probably.” I rush back into the bathroom and wrap my tie around my neck. Put on my jacket… get in the car… take Lockwood to avoid traffic… park … use the bathroom… answer their questions… get promoted…. finally afford to—

The lights blink off.

“Did we lose electricity?” I step back into my room. “Christof?” My brother is gone.

One minute.

As I walk down the hall the various ways a power outage could interfere with the interview race through my head. “Christof?” He’s probably just checking the circuit breaker.

I turn into the kitchen and glance out the window.

The sky is crimson.

The sun, clouds and blue expanse are all gone, replaced by a solid, fiery red ceiling. There are stars, though. There are more stars than I’ve seen in my life. Every single one glistens oily black, like bottomless holes threatening to suck me in.

I stumble back, hitting the pantry door. “I can’t be here.”

I’ve seen this sky before, in illustrations drawn by people half the world believes are either delusional or lying.

“I can’t be here.”

With tremendous effort, I pull my eyes from the sky and take in what is waiting for me on the ground. The porch, lawn, and trees are all gone, swept away to make room for a sixty-foot golden-brown wall. There are gaps in the wall, corridors leading God-knows-where.

I slide to the floor, shutting my eyes. “I can’t be here.”

After a month of indecision, Kamuil decided that a bracelet would be right. Something thin and slender, woven woodland sage around a base of wisteria. He imagined showing it to her, holding it gently so she could see the delicate flowers and how they still blossomed—would bloom for seasons more. He imagined slipping it onto her wrist, and when he whispered one last thread of magic into the vines, he would hold her hand, upturned, her skin against his while the bracelet tightened to fit her perfectly. The flowers vibrant against her pale skin.

The problem was he would need his father’s help. Kamuil had been practicing for a few years and knew he could collect the sage and wisteria, treat it, and braid it successfully. He could even easily infuse the magic to make it fit perfectly, but the leap from a woven bracelet to a living one required magic too advanced. It required too deep an understanding of the essence of life, and one mistake would leave him with nothing more than a shriveled, desiccated circle.

He spent another few days trying to think of something else, something he could accomplish on his own, but every other idea paled in comparison. He went to the academy, sat for his lessons, stared at the back of her head during the lectures on magical scripts, and again on the history of magic through the ages. How the sunlight cast her hair golden but the shadows turned it to autumn wheat. He imagined giving her the gift, and tried to think of something else. Flowers picked from the garden, but giving a girl flowers was so unoriginal he knew he could have no hope of impressing her. When he watched how she tucked her hair behind her elongated elvish ear, he imagined giving her a bracelet or necklace made from silver, but he knew that he couldn’t afford anything elegant enough to match her. And in his mind the moment when he handed it over felt wrong. The silver would be set in a velvet case. She would take the case and that would be the end of it. It was too cold, both the metal and the gesture.

And, after all, it was the elves long ago who had taught humans the magic for living crafts. Nothing else held the same weight in such a light gift.

Finally, he knew he didn’t have much more time. Summer was at its height, and the wisteria would not be in bloom for much longer. If he dallied, he would be left with only the sage without the subtler hints of wisteria. The day he decided to share his plan with his father, he stopped in the fields between the academy and his home and waded through tall grass and sage. He caressed the flowers, searching for clusters that were perfectly shaped, dense, and soft to the touch. When he found the perfect flowers, he whispered tender magic into his harvest knife. With the old chant, he could feel the life essence of the surrounding plants breathe into the air, rise up from the ground, and gather on the edge of his knife. When he sliced through the stems, he whispered the prayers his mother had taught him, both to apologize to the earth for taking his harvest and to comfort the plant in its moment of agony. So imbued with borrowed life from the others, they would survive the journey home and the time until he could weave them together.

By the time he made it back, the sky was streaked with fire and the clouds were heavy with deep shadows. He let himself in the through the gate and went around the house, through the garden bursting with flowers, bees, and vegetables, through the stone path between the fruit trees to his father’s workshop. It was a small, squat building with four young trees for the corners, walls woven from shrubs while the roof was a tangle of flowering vines and curved branches. The air was cooler and the shade was full of the rich scent of tree exhalations. Inside, his father was hunched over his work table made from several old logs held together by living vines. His long hair merged into his beard, and his massive fingers seemed too large for the delicate work he was doing to a small, wilted sapling’s roots.

His father looked up when Kamuil came in and cast a shadow over his work. “You’re home,” he said. When Kamuil stepped farther in, his father lifted his hand to block the setting sun. “Is it so late already? Where have you been?”

A nervous tremble vibrated his heart and stretched all the way to his hands as he stepped forward and laid the sage on the edge of the table. “Will you help me make something?”

His father’s smile emerged from his thick beard like an animal from its den after a long winter hibernation. Since his mother had died, Kamuil knew he did not speak to his father the same way, and often the silences between them could stretch for days. Not out of malice, but simply out of a weight between them that neither seemed to fully understand. In his father’s grin, he saw some of that time before, when his father carried himself with a greater lightness through the days. Kamuil’s stomach twisted, as he knew he was opening a door with his request, giving a chance for them to feel as they had before, and it seemed both impossible and offensive to do. But he also knew that this tiny opening of a door would be nothing compared to how exposed he would be when he offered his gift. If he couldn’t do this one thing, he knew he had no chance of following through on his decision.

“Of course, my boy,” he said. He gingerly set the sapling into a clay pot and smoothed soil around its base. He looked at the sage, picked up a stalk, and nodded in approval at the cut.

“I want to make a living bracelet,” Kamuil said.

Father’s eyebrows went up. He eyed Kamuil for a moment before returning his attention to the sage. “You’ve picked good accents for that. What will you use for the base?”

“Wisteria.”

Father nodded. “Good. Seasonal. Slender but not brittle.” He kept his eyes on the sage and busied his hands moving it about as he asked, “And why do you want to make a living bracelet?”

“For a gift.”

“A fine gift.” He smoothed his beard, but Kamuil could see his small smile before he hid it. Making a great show of paying attention to the sage, he asked, “And who is this gift for?”

Kamuil took a wavering breath and said, “Malikara.”

His father nodded slowly. “Malikara. A very pretty name. Elvish, yes?”

“Yes.”