Fiction

The Day the Sky Split Open

The day the sky split open was the day my mother died, and I couldn’t help but think that it split open because of her, or maybe because of me. Maybe both.

When I walked into the hospital that morning, the sky was fine. Intact but overcast. We went to her room, and we waited for her to do what people often do in hospitals. What we expected her to do in this hospital.

When I walked out, shaking, my cheeks wet with slimy tears, the massive rent stretched from the sun to the horizon. It was like fire, but air. It was like feathers, but light. Everything wore a reddish orange cast that danced like the northern lights. It was something I didn’t just see with my eyes. Could I have assumed anything different than heaven had opened to accept her in?

I was only 10, led by my father’s hand out from the lobby. I wasn’t the hand holding type with him normally, but mom was dead. We stopped in a lane meant for ambulances, stood on peeling diagonal lines. Dad’s jaw slacked. He didn’t believe, but he believed then, whispering “Sweet mother of Christ.” We stood there and stared for I don’t know how long. I think part of us both expected the world to end because the world had just ended.

The next morning was the strangest. How do you wake up in the morning and eat cornflakes when the world was over? But that’s just what we did. The placemats were the same plaid they were the last time we’d eaten on them. There is a sound to the first milk striking the dry cornflakes that you know in your bones, that crunch of the first bite that has yet to accept the decay of absorption.

Afterward, dad lay on the couch and didn’t get up for four days. At the time, it didn’t strike me as odd. I just assumed that’s what people did when their family members died. I tried not to get up either, but I would get hungry and thirsty, and I had to go to the bathroom. Dad went to the bathroom on the couch and the living room stank so horribly. He hardly spoke, but then again, it was really hard to tell if he was asleep or awake.

When my Aunt Liz finally arrived, she broke into gasping sobs in the doorway. I guess my mom had called her on the way into the ER, but Liz hadn’t known mom was gone. She shepherded me out onto the walk, and I gaped at the tear in the sky while she screamed obscenities six or more words deep at my dad. Several things broke. Bottles. Cups. Picture frames. While dad cleaned himself up, Aunt Liz and I cleaned the wreckage. At one point, she pressed her hand to my cheek and told me to remember that I was loved. It would have been really sweet, but a glass pebble was stuck to her palm and it drew blood just past the corner of my lip.

The funeral was a couple days later. A few people came, but no one I knew. We didn’t have much family to begin with, and everyone was busy putting their lives in order because the sky had torn open and feathery filaments had begun to extend outwards from the rift. Folk with high magnification cameras and telescopes said that whenever the filaments wafted, they caught glimpses of wild and glazed eyes behind them. On the news, they said fistfights were breaking out in the offices of attorneys who dealt in last wills and testaments. Churches were busy as the Superbowl. So were bars. Supermarkets shelves cleared within the day. Distant gunshots woke me regularly, but none ever hit my house.

Aunt Liz stayed a couple more days, but she kept stopping and crying, her shoulders jolting with sob in the middle of the hall or on the third step or while reaching up to put away a dish. On the fourth day after the funeral, she left while I was taking a shower. She didn’t leave a note, but she left all the dining chairs on the front porch. I tried to get dad to call her, but he said “No, go to school,” even though school hours were long over and no one was really going to school anyway.

Instead, I sat on one of the dining chairs on the porch and ate some pasta in tomato sauce straight from the can. It was cold and kind of gelatinous. The filaments formed elaborate patterns, and from each extended filaments in miniature versions of those patterns. I had no doubt that the filaments’ filaments would also have the same patterns. The living fractal undulated like a gliding jellyfish, now almost long enough to brush the mountains on the horizon.

That night, Dad and I swiped through the photographs on the tablet one after another. Pictures of me, pictures of him, pictures of mom. Pictures of meals we’d eaten and pictures I’d drawn. We’d stopped at a pet store the week before her stroke and taken a picture of me holding every animal they let me. She’d been thinking of repainting the bathroom, so she took pictures of every single paint swatch in the shore because it was less wasteful than bringing them home.

Dad ran to the bathroom and threw up. He came back brushing his teeth, and he dropped the toothbrush on the floor when he was done. He swallowed the toothpaste I suppose, which makes sense, because it’s not like a little fluoride would matter that much at this point. I wanted to put the tablet down, but dad gave my shoulder such a fierce squeeze when I made to do so that I knew that was not an option.

The next morning, the filaments ripped a mountain from the ground and pulled it into the sky. I was still asleep when it started, but the sound and concussion through the bedrock of the breakage shook everything with earthquake force, taking all the books off my shelves. The trip down my hall was like walking above decks on a schooner in a storm. I made it outside in the cold in my boxers as boulders the size of houses plummeted down on the farmlands outside of town and crushed several families. Dad bellowed for me to go back inside, but it was the kind of thing that you might as well watch because you were getting crushed inside your house or out if it was your time.

After a moment, dad took my hand. I felt like I should say something. This seemed like the time to have an adult conversation. Maybe we should talk about sex. Or why I shouldn’t do drugs or smoke cigarettes. Maybe this was the time to ask dad if he had any secret stash of drugs or cigarettes.

The macro filaments wrapped around the mountain with an ethereal embrace. The smaller filaments burrowed into the surface as gentle as can be, boulders tumbling away from their probes like rain.

“Your mom’s cancer was like that,” Dad whispered. “Burrowed all through her organs, breaking things as it went.”

I nodded though he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes never left that massive tear.

“Why didn’t she ever tell me,” I asked.

“She wanted your last memories with her to be free of it,” he said.

Across the streets a couple kids with stuffed animals came out onto their porch. Marty and June. Marty made shooting sounds and pretended like his plush giraffe was a rifle he could shoot the rift with. June kicked a soccer ball through her father’s garden and let her ladybug pillow watch.

“When she collapsed in the park,” I said, “I wet myself. I didn’t know what to do.”

“No one ever really does,” Dad said. He reached behind the dining chairs and picked up a push broom that had been left against the siding. He began sweeping dirt and dust from the porch planks. “Not in the end, anyway.”

Marty squawked something at June. Marty was staring at dad and I. Marty was six and June eight. I didn’t play with them much because June didn’t like any of the shows I liked and Marty was just too little to be fun for me. All his games were excuses for explosions and to punch the other players in the shoulder. June told Marty to mind his own business.

Marty scowled, walked to June and punched her in the shoulder. June grabbed her shoulder and then decked Marty straight in the forehead. The boy took one step back and then his legs stopped moving while his butt continued. He fell on his butt with a jolt, looking up at June with a dazed expression. Down the street, a car pulled out of a driveway and turned towards the main intersection.

“Should we be driving away from here?” I said, pointing to the sky, where the mountain was disintegrating. Large chunks still fell, the ground vibrating with each of their thuds, but most of them had began to ascend into the rift of their own accord with the same languid drift as the filaments.

“I’m not of the mind that that is something we can escape,” he said. “Mom couldn’t drive away from her cancer either.”

“I don’t think that thing in the sky means anything like that, dad,” I said.

He shrugged and continued cleaning the decking.

“Might as well make it mean something,” he said.

Marty and June started to argue. Pointing at us frequently. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the urgency in their tones was clear. Squinting, it occurred to me that their faces were pretty dirty. Their clothes too.

The Memory Exchange

Meghan Lee smiled into the camera, awaiting Dan’s signal to begin and trying not to look too much like the enthusiastic newbie she was. But gah! Her very own segment! She was young. She was pretty. She was on fire!

“You’re go in five, four…” Dan held up three fingers, then two, then pointed at her.

“Hello,” Meghan said, intentionally letting her smile falter somewhat. “This is Meghan Lee reporting to you from Central Park where masses of empty shells are…” Meghan paused, thoughtfully. “Should I go with empty shells or human husks?”

“What?” Dan wasn’t paying attention to her; he had the camera pointed toward a hauntingly lovely young woman with dark hair, bronzed skin, and dull, empty eyes.

“Empty shells or human husks?” Meghan asked impatiently. “I need this first segment to be perfect. Some people are calling them zombies, but–”

“That’s offensive,” Dan replied.

“Exactly, so empty shells or human husks?”

“Have you ever known one?” He looked annoyed, suggesting he had. But he’d been a cameraman a lot longer than she’d been a reporter.

“I talked to some of these yesterday, before I pitched the segment.” Meghan waved vaguely at the people behind her. It hadn’t been precisely these people, although she thought she recognized a white-haired man sitting on a bench, but they’d all had more or less the same things to say: Can you spare some change for the memory exchange?

Creepy.

“My brother ended up like this,” Dan said with a scowl. “Kept trading up his memories for better memories until there was nothing left of him.”

“That’s why we’re doing the segment, to warn people away from disreputable memory brokers.”

Dan scowled again. He never seemed to approve of Meghan, no matter what she did, and he acted like he was at least a decade older than her when in fact, he was barely twenty-five. Maybe he’d gone to a disreputable memory exchange, too, and was remembering what it felt like to be an eighty-year-old man.

The thought made her smile.

“All right, let’s start over.” Meghan stood tall and stared at the camera.

“Go with lost souls,” Dan said as he reset the shot.

“A bit poetic, but…” Meghan shrugged. Maybe. She started rehearsing possible lines in her head as Dan once again cued her to begin.

“Hello, this is Meghan Lee reporting to you from Central Park where the scourge of lost souls continues to grow by the day. These people were once our brothers and sisters, moms and dads, daughters and sons, but now they wander aimlessly on errands not even they comprehend for they have forgotten even that which drives them.”

Meghan stared into the camera for another few heartbeats, then began walking along the path toward the white-haired man she was pretty sure she’d seen yesterday. He was particularly gruesome, and would punctuate her segment nicely.

“Excuse me, sir, may I have your name?”

He looked up at her vaguely, his eyes struggling but finally finding focus on her face. “Do you have some spare change? I’ve run out of memories to exchange.”

“Do you even know your name?”

“It might be Tom. Or Donald. Or Beth.”

“Which memory exchange do you use?”

“Do you have some change?” he asked again.

Meghan had been expecting this. She motioned to Dan to cut the recording while she passed a fistful of bills to the old man, knowing exactly what he would do with them. As soon as he had his cash in hand, he stood up from the bench and began to walk across the park.

Meghan and Dan followed.

Sky-Caster

I sharpened my hook against my whetstone and cast my line into the inky blackness.

Three tries later, I hooked a star.

I was a novice sky-caster and those slippery points of light liked eluding me. We seemed to have developed a relationship, though; if I practiced with good-natured patience, eventually the stars allowed me to catch them. Then I set them free.

The stars were drawing other casters, as well. Holding a slender casting pole, a boy the age of my young grandson approached me. “You’re not very good at that,” he said, with the innocent bluntness of youth.

His observation didn’t bother me. It was accurate, after all! “I’m sure I’ll get better, in time.” I reeled in my line, accidentally tangling it again. The little star broke free from my hook and sailed back up into the sky. A pang went through my heart—I would have enjoyed admiring its glimmer up close for a moment. How easily some things slipped away from us when we weren’t ready to let them go.

“It got away!” A girl a little older than the boy joined us, holding a banged-up tackle box and gripping another pole. Her eyes seemed hungrier for the stars than the boy’s. Some of us casters needed more wishes and dreams than others. I wondered what dreams she needed, and why.

But I only said, “I’m learning from the experience. I’ll eventually figure it out.” I finished untangling my line and cast again. Glorious stars lay strewn across tonight’s meteor-filled sky, creating a double glory—a sky begging for admiration.

“How can you be learning if you’re doing it wrong?” the girl asked.

“I untangled the line, didn’t I?”

Silence.

“Aren’t you awfully old to just be learning now?” The girl set down her tackle box next to me, opened it, and chose a hook. The boy rummaged through the box’s contents and selected a hook, too.

They were brother and sister, I guessed. They had the same soulful eyes. I considered my answer to her question, since I was the oldest woman I’d seen casting, so far. “I don’t think it’s a matter of age. It’s about caring about what you’re doing.”

The girl studied her pole as if she hoped it would capture things far bigger and even finer than stars.

A minute later, I caught another star, a tiny, graceful one that perched on the tip of my hook like a finely crafted diamond. “Beautiful.” I gently pulled it in—no tangles this time—and let it rest on my palm so my new companions could see it. We all admired its sparkle, and then I nudged it free of the hook. It flew back up into the sky with a brilliant arc of light, the kind that sends hope into your soul and makes you smile after a dark day.

“You let it go already!” the boy cried in dismay.

“I couldn’t keep it,” I said, my curiosity rising about their method of sky-casting. But I didn’t want to spoil our new friendship with too many questions. “Look how brightly it shines up there. It wouldn’t be content down here with me. In fact, it’s light might go out.”

“But it’s gone….” the boy murmured. “Not everyone can see them when they’re so far away—”

The girl nudged him, and he stopped talking.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We all see differently.”

The girl and boy looked at each other, as if swiftly judging me. Then, she said to me in a low voice, “Mama can’t see the stars anymore. She says she’s going blind. The stars used to make her so happy. Now, she can only see them when they’re up real close. When she can hold them. So, we like bringing them home to her. Then she’s happy…for a little while.”

“I think I understand.” A longtime friend of mine had also lost his sight, and he’d loved the joy of the sky. “That’s a very loving thing for you to do for her.”

The girl glanced down at her tackle box. “Does their light really go out?”

“I’ve never kept a star for that long, but yes, I’m told so.”

“Do you always let them go?”

“Well, I’ve often wanted to keep them,” I admitted, sensing the need to be a co-conspirator. “It’s very tempting, but they’d be lost without their sky. And if everyone took one….” I didn’t need to finish.

“That’s what mama says sometimes.” The boy quietly wiped an eye, then gripped his pole. He tugged at his line, staring up at the sky’s brilliant display. A meteor shot past us. A smile flickered over his face, like a ghost.

Cold Blooded

There was nothing else for it. I pushed myself into the pile of ice that Glen had tipped onto the sidewalk and tried to get comfortable for the night. The weather bureau was predicting sub-zero temperatures overnight and a heavy frost in the morning. There was no chance the ice would melt.

The soothing cold of the ice slowed my heart rate. My worries unwound as cool blood pulsed into my brain with each measured heartbeat.

Being a kitchen hand at a cafe in suburban Canberra wasn’t a great job. I wasn’t sorry that the arse-hat who owned it went broke. I hated schnitzel Tuesday and making fifty bowls of chips a night.

But he had invested in a proper industrial kitchen. And the second-rate chef, Glen, made sure there was a good old-fashioned hierarchy. Being the lowest of the low meant I had to stay late and clean up. When everyone was gone, and after I’d screwed up my eyes and cleaned the hot ovens with hydrochloric acid, I slid into the generous cool room, closed the door, and relaxed in the cold dark.

That apartment sized freezer made it the best job I’d ever had. But it was taken from me that night. The freezer had been turned off and the door had been propped open to slow the buildup of mildew. All the stock that could be sold had been sold. The rest was in a dumpster. Even the ice had been tipped onto the footpath.


My mother used to say that she remembered me trying to climb into the freezers at supermarkets when I was a toddler. Those were the old-style ones where frozen goods were presented to buyers in a frost lined trough filled with cardboard packs of fish filetsfillets and tubs of Neapolitan ice cream.

I complained about being too warm growing up and threw off constricting heavy woolen jumpers in winter at the first chance I got.

After child me begged my mother to let me roll in a pile of hail that had pooled on the footpath on the way to our local shops, I’d never told anyone about what made me happy. I learnt disapproval easily and early.

And as I got older, I also learnt to camouflage my needs, like my teenaged friends with un-obvious desires or frowned upon addictions. Even though I yearned for cold and dreamed of running away to the arctic, I got by in my teens by stealing time in my parents’ chest freezer, the pride of the house, when they went out to dinner.

I never wanted to know why I craved the cold. As far as I was concerned, I was just built that way, and I didn’t care to change. Even if it made a marriage, career, and children impossible.

Ice on a street wasn’t my preferred sleeping place, but the bar had shut quickly, and I couldn’t make other arrangements. I was kind of excited to be sleeping rough again, even if it was only in an inner north suburb of the nation’s Capital. I pushed myself into the ice. It felt even colder than Glen’s cool room. I drifted off into a deep sleep.


I was woken by a sharp prod on my foot, and a high-pitched scream. I felt a hot spot on my left heel. Someone had started to pull on the foot which must have slipped out of my ice bed.

“Don’t do that, we should leave it for the police.”

“But he might still be alive. Maybe we can help.”

There was another hand on my foot. It was pulling down my sock and gently feeling my ankle.

“No, he’s pretty cold. There’s not much we can do. Let’s just call the police.”

I needed to get out of there. I tensed and un-tensed my muscles. I knew from experience that a deep cool sleep could make my movements stilted when I woke up, and I didn’t want to jerk about like Frankenstein’s monster when I first emerged from the ice pile.

My graceful exit from the embrace of my ice bed was greeted by another scream.

“Umm, hi. It’s okay. I was just fooling around, hiding from my mates.” I looked down at my tatty jeans and cheap cotton windcheater. The ice hadn’t melted, so they weren’t soaked with water. No one could believe that someone would sleep out overnight in jeans and a thin top,so it was plausible that I’d only been there a couple of minutes.

A young woman in active wear, with a pink viscose headband and gloves, stared back at me, phone in one hand dog lead in the other. She looked uncertainly at an older woman dressed in a more dignified manner, who was standing just to my left. The dog, a generic brown fluff ball, just sniffed the ice.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” said the older woman. “Your foot was very cold.”

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“So I shouldn’t call the police?” The younger woman was concentrating on the older one, not me. The older woman had gray hair, a thick jumper, long red woolen scarf, and woolen pants. Who has woolen pants anymore? I thought. She took a step towards me and without asking for permission, put her hot hand on my forehead.

“I work at the hospital,” she said, as if that excused anything that she might do next. I twisted away from her hand, and she grimaced.

“You should really see a doctor,” she said, looking me over with light blue eyes. “We could call an ambulance for you.”

“You’re being very kind,” I said. “But I’m really all right. Just a bit of a practical joke. My friends will be along soon looking for me, I expect.” Of course, I had no friends, but I was hoping that the conversation wouldn’t go on long enough for the old duck to find out.

“You’re as cold as ice,” she responded. “I hate the cold. It’s the source of most illness in winter, you know.” I looked at her thick jumper, pants, scarf, and heavy leather boots. I could see that she did indeed hate the cold and was determined to defeat it by any means possible.

I turned to her companion with acrylic cold protection. “Look, I’m really grateful that you are both so concerned for me, but I’ll be alright. I promise.” I started to walk away. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I charted a path that didn’t involve trying to barge past the two women and possibly inflaming their concern for me by brushing a cold limb against their insulated bodies.

I felt a warm and surprisingly strong hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, but I really must insist,” said the older woman. “Narelle, call an ambulance. Young man, if you’re worried about the cost, I’ll pay for the ambulance. But we really need to get you to a doctor. People who let their core temperature drop as low as you have can die, you know.”

At that point, I started to run. I knew I wouldn’t get far before my legs warmed up and cramped. But I didn’t think that I had to go very far to get away from Narelle’s bossy companion. Narelle might have been able to outpace me, but she didn’t really look like she was that interested.

The Cradle

We have a rule: once a kid reaches the age of ten, we don’t use them to spread the fire anymore.

I took my son to the cradle the day after his ninth birthday. Nine is a good age for this. When kids are little, they have no comprehension of how the world works, relying on you for guidance. They trust you. Tell them they’ll be okay, and they’ll believe it. The youngest one we’ve ever used was four, a boy, and he gave me a thumbs-up right before he ran towards the fascists’ checkpoint. A thumbs-up and a trusting smile. I’ll never forget it.

The sacrifices one must make to free our country. I know what history will say about us, but history has a lot to talk about. Sooner or later, we’ll be a footnote against the course-changers like the second world war or the DC Incident.

The DC Incident. I’m using the fascists’ term for it but it’s our term too, we’ve adopted it. The DC Incident.

My son wasn’t afraid. I waited until he was nine because I don’t want him going in completely ignorant. I want him to experience the world the fascists have given us–shape his understanding of our mission. This isn’t an excuse to kill and maim; it’s a fight for freedom.

It’s a fight for our lives.

The fascists maintain a ten mile perimeter around the cradle. Only authorized personnel are allowed through, and authorized personnel include security and scientists. The fascists make grand claims about restoring law and order to our country, but enough cash helps the perimeter guards look the other way. I’ve been coming here for years.

It was the first time for my son. Lanky like me when I was his age, Ryan took after his mother in other respects. He had a curious, determined gaze, and he perched on one knee, overlooking the cradle. His gaze peering back through history to the charred ruins of a once great capital. The DC Incident, indeed.

“Careful,” I said, the air filter deepening my voice. “You don’t want to rip your suit.”

The radiation suits were top of the line, surplus stolen from a truck. There are hot spots all over the country but the cradle is the worst.

“Did you check your geiger?” I asked.

He ignored me for a few moments. Such a contemplative boy. I wondered then if he would go through with it. Little kids are easier to fool, true, but even they have second thoughts. Our primal nature sometimes defies even our trusted authority figures. A five-year-old girl refused to go at the last minute. We feared the opportunity was lost, until I procured a Hershey bar. Kids are still kids, and she annihilated a convoy.

He raised his geiger. “Ten.”

I smiled inside my suit. The filter blessed him with an authoritative voice—a man’s voice. What he could have become. If not for the fascists.

“Can we proceed any further?” I asked.

“No. The cradle’s too dangerous.”

“Good.” I shuffled up beside him, looking out over the cradle. I carried a pack on my shoulders—supplies for both of us—and I pulled out a pair of binoculars. I handed them to him. “Careful, don’t press it on your screen.” I waited for him to get the binos in position. “What do you see?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Ruins.”

“Tell me what the blast center looks like.”

Again, no hesitation. “Dark.”

I didn’t take the binos from him. I’ve seen the cradle so often I dream of it, both what it is now and what it was before the DC Incident. The blast radius isn’t dark, it’s a scar, a black scar on the earth. Outward, some ruins linger. The Washington Monument lost most of its inside like a bomb blast ripping tissue from one’s calf. It tilts to this day over a dry pool, charred and reflecting nothing, and year by year the monument inches towards collapse.

“How many people died that day?” I asked.

“Over 200,000.”

“How many died later?” I took a step towards the cradle and my geiger clicked. “And why?”

“Over 10,000,” Ryan said, still peering through the binos. “Radiation.”

I crouched beside him. The streets leading to the cradle were cracked, hardened puddles of melted asphalt. When the DC Incident occurred, it blinded witnesses for miles.

I pointed towards the wastes. Where the halls of Congress once stood, close to the blast center. Vaporized in seconds and they were the lucky ones. “Do you know why they did it?” I asked.

“Because they’re fascists.”

I smiled again. The simplicity with which a child views the world. Older, wiser…but not jaded. Nine is the perfect age to spread the fire.

“But do you know why?” I gave him no time to answer. “They wanted to blame us.”

“So they’ll be the heroes and we’ll be the bad guys.”

“Yes,” I whispered, my air filter changing my whisper into a growl.

I didn’t ask if he was done. I gave Ryan all the time he needed. It is impossible to understand our fight until you come to the cradle and see for yourself—I should know. I puttered around in my youth, engaging in mischief against the fascists. I thought stealing tires and ammo counted as a strike against them. I had no clue who I was dealing with until I came here, and glimpsed their work for myself.

At last, Ryan lowered the binos and said the words a little kid wouldn’t think to say and in that moment I knew I would never have to bribe him with a Hershey bar.

“I’m ready.”

The Way to Robot City

At recess, when other seventh graders called Nina a weirdo again, she knew there was no hope for her to make friends among her fellow humans. In math class, she drew sketches of robot cities, shading and highlighting their sleek metal structures, glass domes, and tidy squares where robots socialized through short-range wireless connections. She’d never been to any such places, but dreamed of finding friends there, even if they were synthetic.

At the end of the school day, she decided to skip soccer practice and try to sneak into Robot City 6724, the nearest to her town. If she timed it right, she’d be back before her robocar arrived to take her home at fifteen-thirty.

She wore a T-shirt and shorts, like most students leaving the school that afternoon, but she worried she might attract attention somehow. Standing out had always been her thing. For years, she’d required special treatment at school because of her rare genetic disorder that made her prone to fractures. She was always in a cast of some sort, which no one wanted to write on or decorate because they were told to be careful around her. In third grade, she’d undergone multiple surgeries for the titanium implants and the genetic enhancement, to become the only student in school who wore an exoskeleton that year, while she recovered. By the time Nina was free of it, her social life was dead. It didn’t help that she was now faster and stronger than everyone else in her class.

As she waited at the crosswalk outside the campus entrance, she told herself she was part-robot anyway, so it made sense to look for friends among her own kind.

A squeaky voice calling from above startled her. “Where’re you going? You’re supposed to be in soccer.”

Nina swung around to see a fourth grader sitting crisscross on the big rock engraved with the name of their school. She had a round face, curly hair, and a strange name. Something like a plant, but Nina couldn’t remember.

“What do you want?” Nina said.

“To come with you?” the girl said.

Nina looked around. “Why are you out here alone?”

“My dad forgot to pick me up. I’m sure he thinks it’s my mom’s turn.” She shrugged like she didn’t care, but Nina didn’t buy it. “They’ll figure it out by dinner. Can I come with you?”

“Sorry,” Nina said. “I can’t take care of a little kid.”

“I’m not a little kid, and if you don’t take me with you…” She squinted for a moment. “I’ll tell the admin you skipped soccer.”

So much for feeling sorry for that brat.

“Please, Nina.” She even knew Nina’s name. “I don’t want to wait around here for hours until one of them remembers to come get me. All my friends have already gone home.”

At least she had friends.

Nina was about to make a run for it, but she worried the brat would go to the admin, as threatened. Nina’s adventure could be over before it even started. “What’s your name?”

“Clover.”

Clover, right. “Listen, Clover, I’m in a hurry and—”

“Oh, I’m fast.” Clover slid off the big rock and was at Nina’s side in an instant.

Nina was impressed but wouldn’t advertise it.

“Where are we going?” Clover said. She didn’t have a backpack, but Nina didn’t care to ask what had happened to it.

“You can come. But only if you stay quiet and do exactly as I say.”

Clover sealed her mouth and tossed the key.

Nina led the way by half a step. Drones buzzed overhead, robocars zoomed by, some people rolled in their special lane on smart scooters. It wasn’t so bad having someone to walk with, Nina thought. The two of them looked like a team with a purpose, so adults didn’t stop them to ask questions. But after a while, Clover began to pant, and Nina realized they were walking too fast. Enhanced bone and muscle tended to do that.

She slowed down, watching Clover catch her breath. Of course Clover wouldn’t complain, not after bragging about being fast.

“You could’ve asked me to slow down,” Nina said.

Clover pointed at her sealed lips.

Nina laughed. “You can speak.”

“Do you have your phone with you?”

“I left it in my locker. My parents track it, so it’ll look like I’m at school.”

“I wish I had a phone,” Clover said, “but my mom says my dad should buy it, and he says she should.” She had a funny way of speaking with her hands, not just her mouth.

Nina didn’t know what to say or how to help. “Sorry, Clover, but I’m not your friend.”

Clover shrugged. “Duh. We’ve just met.”

“No, I mean I’m not trying to make friends.” They turned the corner into a busy boulevard. “Not in this city, anyway.”

“Then where? Robot City?”

Nina didn’t answer, annoyed she’d been so easy to figure out.

“I knew it!” Clover grinned with satisfaction. “Wait, have you ever seen a robot in real life?”

“They’re really cool,” Nina said.

“But are they friendly?” Clover said.

“They’re not unfriendly, and that’s good enough for me.”

“My dad says caretaker robots killed people years ago.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “That was before they broke off with us and built their own cities. Robots are super peaceful now. They’re good neighbors. No more synth caretakers to worry about because now they have the same rights as we do.”

Clover shrugged as if bored with the sudden middle school history lesson, and remained quiet. But she had a strange way of skipping when she walked, sometimes bumping into people, and after a while, Nina switched places with her so Clover wouldn’t be in danger of falling off the sidewalk into traffic.

“What will we do inside their city?” Clover said.

Nina didn’t know. She was too anxious to get there. “I have a plan, don’t worry.”

My Android Mother

Growing up, I didn’t really get how my mother was different from the other moms. And I never questioned her love for me. She made picture-perfect pancakes with strawberries and whipped-cream in the morning, strolled with me through a park or a museum in the afternoon, read me fairy tales before bed, and told me she loved me before she planted a dry kiss on my cheek and cooed, “Good night, honey-bunny”.

I took her quirks for granted—her phobia of water, the faint scent of rubbing alcohol on her skin, the way she lifted the fridge with ease when a pea rolled behind it, the quiet whirring when I put my head against her chest.

Maybe I was slow for not putting two and two together. But I never gave any of it a second thought. It was just the way Mom was.


Summer, I sat in the pool with my best friend, Betty. Shrill squeals of laughter erupted from mouths with missing milk teeth. The sun bounced off sunglasses and soda pop bottles. My mother lounged on a chair in capri pants and a white turtleneck, a lifestyle magazine flicked open to the same page for hours. Now I think back on it, I bet she was ‘reading’ hundreds of books at the same time, while keeping her eyes on me.

“Why isn’t your mommy wearing a swimsuit?” Betty asked.

“She can’t swim.”

“Isn’t she hot?”

I shrugged. The temperature never seemed to affect my mom. When icicles hung from the eaves like teeth, and I pretended every breath out was a puff of cigar smoke, she’d run to the store without a coat. She’d be forgetful like that.

But she balked at going out into the rain. If we were in town, we’d wait outside the bakery and listen to the pitter-patter on the striped awning. I craned my neck and stuck out my tongue to catch the rain drops that dribbled from the scalloped border. On our way home, I splashed into puddles, delighting in Mom’s horror.

Old Girl

He lets me ride up front all the way to the clinic, lets me hang my head out the window and feel the breeze rush through my hair the way he knows I like but seldom lets me do.

He doesn’t talk to me the way he usually does. Even when we’re sitting in the waiting room, he just stares at the tacky sail boat wallpaper and runs his fingers through my hair. I’m not sure what’s wrong. None of this feels the way it did the other times we came to the clinic.

I try to nestle in close to him. To comfort him, even though I’m not sure what it is that’s bothering him. He pushes me down and there’s no brightness to his eyes when he looks at me.

I feel the weight of his sadness on my heart and I too sit and stare and wait.

The doctor comes in and lays a blanket on the metal examination table. It’s a dingy pink with cartoon characters from an old movie for kids.

Master stands and helps me sit on the table. It’s hard to sit on, even with the blanket there, and it hurts my butt to sit still. The doctor puts a hand on my back to steady me, looks down at me with a smile plastered on his face. Doing his best to help me feel at ease.

But why shouldn’t I feel at ease? I’ve had shots and vaccinations so many times before.

The doctor looks over to master.

“How old is she?”

“Eighty Seven.”

Doc makes a low whistling sound. “She’s an old girl. What’s wrong with her?” He glances at my arms and legs, turns my face with his hand.

“She’s not been herself. Doesn’t have the energy she used to. Spends most of the day laying around.”

“Well that’s pretty normal, especially at her age. Has she been getting sick?”

“Yeah. She’s been throwing up a lot. Blood in her stool. I can tell she doesn’t feel good.”

My heart skips a beat. I’d wondered why he’d spent so much time looking at me the last few days. I swore it was just something I ate. Did he really think something more was wrong with me?

“Well at her age, this kind of animal, you usually see the liver and kidneys go first. A lot of what you’ll see is that sort of sickness before the end.”

“I know. I put it off as long as I could. I just don’t want her suffering.”

“You did the right thing bringing her in. Its the hardest part of pet ownership,” the doctor says.

So that’s what this was about. Dread tingles my spine. Cold clutches my heart.

“Do you want to be in the room?”

Master looks at me with those sad, dim eyes.

“Yeah.”

The doctor nods and turns his back to us, opening one of the cabinet drawers and grabbing a prepackaged disposable syringe and a vial of clear fluid.

I breathe out a ragged sigh. I don’t blame my master. I’m not what I was. My health degrades each day. I did feel sick, I wasn’t myself.

Master pets me gently. Holds me firmly on the table.

I start to shake. Tears form in my eyes.

The Doctor grabs my arm, turns it over, exposing the veins. He sticks the needle in, flushing the reservoir.

Master looks away, to the wall behind me.

A smile twitches at the corners of my lips. He’s an old robot. But always kind to me. I felt his love. We’d had a good run together. I hope, as the chilly fluid swirls through my veins, that he finds another human to help comfort him in this lonely world.

Eric Fomley’s stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and elsewhere. More of his stores can be found at ericfomley.com.

Making the Most of Our Moonlight

Ash hugged the bark of the nearest tree as her nerves got the better of her. Some wood flaked off against her palms, leaving them sticky and gritty. It had only been an hour or so that she’d been hiking northward up the small hill, heading toward the cottage at the top. The lamp of the cottage shone ahead of her, almost as bright as the full moon—although there was no moon tonight. Maybe a full moon would’ve been a better night to try this, but Ash couldn’t wait that long. Her boss Breaker wanted her to come home with a good score tonight, and the guards in the fancy neighborhoods in town knew her. Ash didn’t dare show her face near any of the homes she used to burgle. Now—desperate, hungry, trembling with nerves—she was picking her way up the hill to rob the maiden of the moon.

Not the best idea she’d ever had, but then Ash didn’t have many good ideas to her name anyway. If she returned empty handed, well, she probably wouldn’t even have hands after that. Breaker was all out of patience with her screw ups. He’d said as much.

She moved quiet-quick through the brush, her soft, small feet making no sounds as she crept up on the cottage. The lady of the house was not asleep in her bed as any respectable woman should be at this time of night. Instead she stood on her balcony, a robe of slippery silver fabric spilling off her shoulders. Her clothes were very fine, but they were old-fashioned robes and nothing like the blouse and cotton skirt Ash was shivering in. The woman’s hair was silver, but not grizzled like an old woman’s usually was. It hung in a shining curtain down her back. Her face was young too, unlined, serene as she stared at the sky, the starlight bathing her like a benediction.

Ash’s stomach twisted as she gazed at the silver lady. An ache started in her gut that had everything to do with hunger, but nothing to do with food.

Foolish. Ash rubbed her fingers together, nerves itching as she watched and waited. The silver-haired woman showed no signs of moving, no sign of retiring to her bed. It made Ash’s job harder but not impossible. She would just have to be very quiet—

“What are you looking at?” The woman’s voice was not silver, but a high, clear tone, like a fingernail clinking against glass. She turned her head, gazing into the line of trees where Ash stood.

Ash froze, her heart hammering, and bounced on the balls of her feet. She should run, but there was nowhere to run back to, dammit. She needed this score. Breaker’s patience for her was at an end. She might hide from him for a few days in the city, but all her friends worked for Breaker too. Tears pricked her eyes.

The woman lifted one hand, beckoning. “Come, sit with me awhile. I don’t often have visitors. And you are cold and hungry.”

Ash hesitated, blinking and shocked. Did the maiden not understand? How sheltered and naive was she? Ash and her friends had seen her sometimes in town on dark nights, nights with no moon in the sky, and always looking a little lost and alone. But just because the maiden had been to town that didn’t mean she was worldly. Would she recognize a thief if one walked up to her front door to rob her?

Ash shrugged. Ah, what the hell. Maybe the maiden would have some bauble Ash could snatch and run off with. Grab and dash wasn’t Ash’s usual style, but her usual style had spectacularly failed to keep her fed and safe. Maybe it was time to try something new.

She crunched her way out of the brush, purposefully being loud. The balcony’s floor where the maiden waited was a little above Ash’s head when she stood underneath it. She hooked a hand around one of the posts and pulled herself up. Hanging onto on the outer side of the balcony, she gazed into the calm face of the silver lady as the railing stood between them.

The maiden was very beautiful up close, her face a study of sharp lines and shadows. Ash was embarrassed by her own dirty face, her ratty clothes. The woman’s skin seemed to glow.

That’s what comes of proper hygiene, I suppose. Ash cleared her throat and forced herself to meet the moon maiden’s silver-blue eyes.

The maiden tilted her head sideways, her eyes crinkling with something that might have been a smile. “You’ve come a long way to visit with me.” The maiden held a hand out to her over the railing. Ash’s mouth went a little dry at the thought of touching that silky, glowing skin. She shook her head and boosted herself over the balcony railing so she could stand beside the moon maiden.

The maiden’s eyes fluttered. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Little Thief.”

Ash puffed her chest out, trying to look offended. “Thief? I’m…I didn’t…”

The woman snorted, and raised one eyebrow.

Ash found a laugh wheezing out almost against her will. “All right. Yes. I’m here to rob you.”

“Why me? Why tonight?” The maiden led the way to a small cache of pillows and furs piled close to the balcony doors. She reclined among the plush silk and gazed up at Ash. Curiosity made her face open, her beautiful eyes wide.

Ash tried not to be too flattered by that interest, by the fact the moon maiden was even talking to her, but it was hard not to be.

Ash sat and folded her feet underneath herself trader-style. “Well, my boss is fed up with me. I bungled a big job the other week and now the city watch knows what I look like. I can’t do my usual work in the rich neighborhoods anymore—or at least not for awhile. And I, well, I knew you were all alone out here in this fancy cottage with no guards. I thought…” Ash’s cheeks burned, and she looked away.

A soft touch on her cheek made Ash jerk, startled as the maiden cradled her face.

“I’m sorry, little thief,” the maiden murmured, “I have nothing to offer you but my warmth. Perhaps you could share some of yours as well?”

She heard the purr of invitation in the maiden’s voice, and Ash’s heart hammered. “I, oh. Um.” Was this a trick? A trap?

The maiden threaded her fingers into Ash’s hair, fingers deliciously tickling at her scalp. “Don’t overthink things, my lovely thief.”

Ash swallowed and eased back, searching the maiden’s face, still unsure even as heat began to coil in her belly.

The maiden snorted and leaned closer, her eyes hooded as she brushed her lips across Ash’s mouth. “I don’t get many visitors.”

Ah.” Ash shoved her doubts away and eased toward the beautiful silver woman, draping her arms around the moon maiden’s shoulders. “And the night is rather cold, isn’t it?”

“Exactly.”

The Status of Your Refund

Carl goes line by line through the bank statement with his trusty lime green highlighter. He’s known for his detailed work. The last performance review he had called him “eagle-eyed.” It’s been seven years now since he was evaluated, but he did not become an auditor for the recognition.

He’s alone in the office again today. It’s been a long time since the other cubicles held the bodies of his colleagues. There are plenty of coworkers he doesn’t miss seeing, but there are other times when he wishes he could catch up with Greg and discuss highlights of the last Chargers game. But that’s just the way it is. People come and go.

Carl congratulates himself for a thorough, months-long investigation. After going through a string of 15 complaints about this financial institution, he determined that this small regional bank owed almost $6500 back to its customers for improper charges. He was sure it was more, but with the computers down, he was relying on the mailed complaints only. That wasn’t gonna stop him from slapping their ass with another $3000 fine, too. That’ll show this greedy bank not to mess with the general public, he thought, signing his name on a strongly-worded letter to the bank’s compliance department. He’ll have to figure out the address later.

The corporate fridge still has a few Cokes in it, even though the collection jar for snack purchases has been empty for months. Carl has been trying to avoid soda, but this is a special occasion. He cracks open the can of lukewarm cola and allows himself a ten minute break to look at the family photos on his desk.

He re-reads the complaint that kickstarted his audit of this bank. Mrs. Lolamae Harrison, 85, Wilmington, Nebraska, claimed she was overcharged for her checking account monthly fee. She kindly asked for help in getting her $15 back.

There was a bit of a backlog, of course, in processing the complaints. The Bureau was understaffed these days, and Carl’s specialty was accuracy, not speed. Mrs. Harrison’s mailed-in bank statements were from a few years ago, the coffee stain on page 3 long dry. Carl’s job was to audit, not to pass judgment, but he still noted her $600 monthly donation to her church. He had wondered if $600 per month had been enough to buy her way into a better place.

He assumes Mrs. Harrison is probably dead now. She could have survived, he chides himself, it’s possible. But, she was elderly, and everyone knew Nebraska had been a hot mess. Almost nobody had made it out of Omaha alive. Most likely, the virus didn’t spare her. And if she had made it, well, Carl figures she probably had more pressing issues than collecting a $15 refund from a bank with no branches left standing.

What justice is there against sickness? He can’t punish the antibodies of the dead for their failures. He can’t cite a disease; can’t slap a fine on the plague. But he can still audit.

The virus took his wife. His son. It took away football games and potlucks and normalcy. Every day, he looked out the window in the corner office he’d finally commandeered after four years of waiting for his boss to come back, he saw the city where he’d grown up and lived a humble, good life falling around him in decay.

He pens a handwritten note to Mrs. Harrison, informing her that he has put in the request for the $15 refund from her bank. He thanks her for taking the time to write to the Bureau and apologizes for the lengthy delay in remedying her concern. He tells her that wherever she is, however she is doing, she was absolutely 100% correct that the bank overcharged her, and that he hopes that this truth brings her comfort in these uncertain times.

Carl peels a Forever stamp off the roll. Once, the roll seemed infinite, but now, after all these years, the stamps are dwindling. He pushes the thought out of his mind. He doesn’t want to imagine a day when the stamp roll is empty, his highlighters have dried up, and there is not a single goddamn complaint left.

He puts on his respirator, goes outside, and crams the letter into the overflowing mailbox.

Gracie Beaver-Kairis is a Pacific Northwest based humor and fiction writer. Her work has been published in McSweneeys, The Hard Times, Slackjaw, and other outlets. You can find her on Twitter @beaverkairis.