512 Words or Fewer

"Biological Imperatives"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:11:32 PST

BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES
By Curtis C. Chen

"You can't marry him," Donald said to his only daughter. "He's an alien."

"Oh my God, Dad!" Bree threw up her arms. "You sound like a total racist!"

Donald wasn't about to take that bait. "Sweetie, you've only known Roland—"

"Reginald."

"—sorry. You've only known Reginald for what, a couple of months?"

"Three months, one week, and four days!"

"Why get married now?" Donald asked. "You're both still young. Why not wait until you're done with grad school?"

"Dad." Bree rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to give up my life to stay home and cook and clean. I'm still going to finish my Ph.D, I'm going to get a job. My relationship with Reginald won't interfere."

"I just think you should wait."

Bree sighed. "Okay, Dad, I didn't want to mention it, but Reginald has kind of a deadline."

Donald raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me he's being deported."

"No," Bree said, stretching the word into five syllables. "There's just some stupid thing with his visa expiring, and the UN says he can do his thesis research just as well from the Moon, so they want to issue him Lunar documents instead."

Donald nodded. He could work with this. "Who's Reginald's sponsor?"

"Professor Goslee." Bree's face brightened. "Do you think you can do something?"

"I'll make some calls." Donald scribbled on a notepad. "I'd rather not have you eloping off-planet. At least here I can try to talk you out of things like—"

Bree threw her arms around him momentarily. "Thanks, Dad! I'm going to tell Reginald! Call me as soon as you hear anything, okay?"

"Immediately."

He waited until the sound of Bree's footsteps receded down the hallway, then touched a control on his desktop. The door to the adjacent office slid open, and his wife—Bree's mother—Marney walked in, grimacing.

"You on top of this visa thing?" she asked, staring at her phone.

"I'll take care of it," Donald said.

"Last thing we need is for her to go off-planet. All that radiation exposure in transit..."

Marney still hadn't looked up. That annoyed Donald. "How's your project coming along? Found a sperm donor yet?"

That got her attention. "Finding a donor is not the issue," Marney said, stowing her phone. "Setting up the situation is proving to be tricky."

"How hard can it be to get a college girl drunk and knocked up?"

Donald regretted saying it even before Marney focused her withering scowl on him. "She has to keep the baby. We can't monitor her twenty-four-seven to make sure she doesn't pop a morning-after pill or visit a clinic for the next twenty-six weeks. She has to want the damn child."

"You know," Donald said, "we could convince her and Reginald to try artificial insemination or something—"

"I am not inviting that thing over for Sunday dinner," Marney snapped. "She marries a human or she doesn't marry at all."

Donald looked up at his wife. "Remind me again why we got married?"

Marney scoffed. "I'm sure I don't remember."

Image: Wedding bells for a soldier of Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 238, circa 1915

"Monologue Therapy"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:09:34 PST

MONOLOGUE THERAPY
By Curtis C. Chen

Look, if your last name was "Day," and your parents named you "Groundhog," wouldn't you want to kill them? I mean, not actually kill them, but have, you know, vaguely homicidal thoughts from time to time? In your imagination?

Come on, you'd at least be bitter toward them.

Not even a little bit?

Okay, see, I don't believe you. I get that you don't understand what we had to deal with growing up—the names, the costumes, the constant crimefighting—but you have to show some sympathy for parental issues. I mean, that's universal. If we can't have an honest, open relationship, then I don't see the point of these sessions at all.

Yeah, I know it's a court order, but that doesn't mean they'll be useful, does it? My sentence specifies a certain number of sessions, totaling no less than a certain number of hours, but it doesn't say anything about the content or outcome of this therapy. And you don't exactly strike me as someone likely to perform above and beyond the call of duty.

Right. You get paid either way. Must be nice to worry about something as mundane as money.

Really? I just laid my mommy and daddy issues on the table, and this is what you want to hear about? Geez, talk about phoning it in.

Okay, fine. Whatever.

It's not the money, specifically. It's just—all the ordinary stuff, you know? The normal, everyday, non-super-powered things that regular people worry about. Carpool schedules. Grocery bills. Traffic.

You've heard this before, right? What's the medical term for it? Grass-is-greener syndrome or something?

"Envy?" That's it? I guess that makes sense. It's been around long enough. One of the original seven deadly, right? Makes sense.

See, nobody ever asks for the life they get. But you normals, you have options. Choices. You got to choose whether you wanted to be a doctor when you grew up, right? Which school to go to, what specialization, where to do your residency? Because no matter how extraordinarily smart or perceptive or strong or fast you are, you're still not that much better than anybody else. You're still human.

It wasn't like that for me, my brothers, my sisters—anyone in my family. The rules are different for us. Some people might look at all the crazy stuff we get away with, all the international travel and diplomatic immunity and fame and all that, and they might think we're just lucky. Lucky that we were born with these abilities, these—powers.

Lucky, maybe. But not good luck. You have something I'll never have, Doc. You have freedom. You get to choose what to do with your life. Me? From the moment I first manifested flight, floating above my crib, my future was set.

Every kid acts out, right? Every teenager finds some way to rebel. People like me just face greater consequences when we do it.

You know what my kid sister's name is? "Arbor."

She never had a chance.

Image: Dr. debilis causa mett wurst Onkel Wart's Hungarian Summer Memories by Thomas Lieser, July, 2009

"It's in There"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:04:00 PST

IT'S IN THERE
By Curtis C. Chen

Granger sat down next to me on the couch and asked, "How is a pizza like a DVD?"

I swallowed my mouthful of pepperoni-extra-cheese-light-sauce and said, "I don't know. They're both round, and nobody really cares what the box looks like as long as the content is good?"

He smiled at me and took a swig of beer. Granger was one of those men who always looked like he didn't give a damn what you thought. One of those men who could pull off an unironic, pencil-thin mustache.

He smiled at me and said, "You always overthink these things, Lily."

It was the first time he'd ever called me by my first name. We had sex that night. Two weeks later, I pulled his body out of a Dumpster in Brooklyn.

***

The case file flopped onto my desk like a dead fish. I looked up and was surprised to see Lieutenant Humphrey.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Merry Christmas," Humphrey said, walking away.

I opened the file just as Dee sat down across from me with her morning cup of not-coffee. The top sheet was a dense grid of numbers and abbreviations. Bio data?

"What's that?" Dee asked.

"Fuck if I know," I said, flipping up pages until I got to something comprehensible. "Shit."

I stared at a crime scene photo: dead wiseguy, face down in a half-eaten calzone.

***

"Death by pizza?" Dee asked. I was driving, so she had nothing to do but talk.

"It's the sauce," I said. "Some biotech idiots figured out how to grow tomatoes with heat-resistant, human-compatible RNA. The idea was that you'd eat the stuff and it would alter your metabolism, help you lose weight."

"Guess that didn't work out."

"Problems with mutations. Gave people heart problems and hormonal imbalances. Huge recalls. Companies went out of business."

"But the technology's still around." Dee grumbled. "So you a speed reader now, or what? You didn't have that file for five minutes."

"I've seen the case before," I said. "It was Granger's before it went cold."

***

The warehouse was full of uniforms moving evidence-tagged crates. Migdale stood next to a box of fruit, reading the newspaper.

"Ladies," he said as Dee and I walked up.

"If you say so." I looked around. "I was expecting to see some tomatoes."

Migdale picked up both halves of a cut avocado, which looked more yellow than green under the warehouse lights. "Customs sliced this open, for inspection, right before they found the guns. Notice anything odd?"

"It's still green," Dee said. "Those things go brown in seconds."

"Enzymatic browning," Migdale said, "triggered by exposure to oxygen. Unless the fruit contains something to prevent that."

"So they're gene-mods. What's the big deal?"

"They were in the same shipment as illegal munitions and narcotics. Therefore, suspicious. We sent a sample to the lab, and it turns out all the fats in this avocado have been fully saturated."

"The hell does that mean?" Dee asked.

"Data," I said. "They were smuggling data."

Image: "The pizza did get cold before it was solved..." by Tiffany Berry, February, 2007

"H is for Horse"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:30:44 PST

H IS FOR HORSE
By Curtis C. Chen

Dear Exhibitor:

Welcome to the 83rd annual Horse-Shaped Objects Exposition (H-SOE)! The International Association of Horse-Shaped Object Enthusiasts (IAH-SOE) is very excited to be hosting this year's event in a new venue, the brand-new Simonsays Memorial Horse-Shaped Arena (SMH-SA) in Fortland, Uregon.

IMPORTANT: If you are a returning exhibitor, please make sure your shipping company has the correct venue address and current transport licenses for all your Objects. The Uregon customs inspection service operates under much stricter import regulations than most of the forty-seven other continental United States, and recent events in the city of Fortland have made local law enforcement very sensitive to any unusual Objects. (Please refer to our web site for guidelines on how to pack your fragile Objects for shipment.)

As always, the IAH-SOE strives to organize a peaceful and loving event for all H-SOE exhibitors, dealers, panelists, sponsors, and participants. We have received feedback from many past attendees about space issues at our previous venues, and we hope the move to SMH-SA will alleviate a great number of those problems for many years to come.

IF YOU ARE A DEALER, the marketplace will be open starting at 6:00 PM the night before H-SOE begins to allow you to set up your table. Please consult the enclosed brochure from SMH-SA to determine what supplies you are allowed to bring into the arena.

IF YOU ARE A NON-PROFIT, the display hall will be open starting at 12 NOON the day before H-SOE begins to allow you to set up your booth. Please consult the enclosed brochure from SMH-SA to determine what baptismal equipment you are allowed to bring into the arena.

IMPORTANT: All non-alcoholic liquids are banned in the city of Fortland. However, SMH-SA offers a variety of pharmacological aids to maximize hydration and minimize intoxication. Visit any of the "Liquidation Stations" located throughout the arena for complimentary lozenges or tinctures. (If you are unable to ingest medications orally, please visit SMH-SA's basement dispensary to receive a hypodermic or suppository sirup, also free of charge.)

Your enclosed exhibitor badge is required for admittance to all H-SOE event areas. Please wear it whenever you are inside the SMH-SA security perimeter. Do not laminate your badge or place it inside any protective covering, and make sure the fix-shaped metagraphic seal is clearly visible at all times. If the arena's automated scanners cannot read your badge data, security forces may be paged to your location.

If you have any questions about H-SOE, SMH-SA, or anything else related to IAH-SOE events, please contact Sister Judy Phileman. (If you have inquiries regarding revenues or taxation, please contact Sister Octavia Caesar. All other correspondence should be sent to our principal shrine in Jer-Salem, Ohio.)

We look forward to seeing you in Fortland! And remember:

"For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." (Matt 18:20)

Yours in Horse,
Brother Jonn Timoth

Image: Matchless Beauty by kelsey_lovefusionphoto, June, 2010

"Meet Brute"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:11:11 PST

MEET BRUTE
By Curtis C. Chen

"That another alien puzzle?"

Linda looked up from her diagnostic table, where the artifact sat inside a vacuum chamber. She didn't recognize the man who had just walked in holding an uncovered mug of coffee.

"It's an artifact," she said, "and you can't have that drink in here, Mister...?"

He switched the mug from his right hand to his left hand, making Linda cringe as the liquid inside sloshed around, then extended his right hand.

"Bell. Marty Bell."

Linda shook his hand, then placed her palms back in the waldo control wells. "You're not allowed to have uncovered liquids in any lab or computer areas."

"Sorry, I didn't know. First day here..." He looked around the empty lab.

"Kitchenette around the corner. Leave it there."

"Thanks."

He returned a minute later, beverage-free, just as Linda was turning over the artifact. There were no symbols on the exterior, but sometimes the surface grooves lined up to make characters in the Az-Orpic language.

Marty said, "You're Linda Tanaka? I'm supposed to report to you." He pulled a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket.

Linda locked the waldos and took the paper. It was a transfer order from the company's weapons division to the advanced research group. That meant Mary already had the proper security clearances, but—

"I'm sorry," Marty said.

Linda looked up and into the barrel of a small revolver.

"Seriously?" she asked.

"Open the chamber," he said, "and step away from the table."

"Okay, you understand why we keep these artifacts in vacuum chambers, right?" Linda said. "Some of these materials react poorly to atmosphere."

Marty hesitated. "Well, how do you transport them, then?"

"It'll take me about fifteen minutes to prep a transfer crate."

"Oh no," Marty said. "You tell me how, I'll do it myself."

"You don't have the training. And it'll take both hands—"

Marty reached into his back pocket and slapped a handful of plastic zip ties down on the table. "Tie yourself up. Ankles first, then wrists."

Linda's company-mandated security training flashed through her mind. She bent down, tied her ankles, then stood up to grab another zip tie. She lost her balance, wobbled, and fell to the floor, landing hard on her shoulder.

"Ow!" she said.

Marty pushed the rest of the zip ties onto the floor next to her. "Hurry up."

Linda picked up a zip tie. "The crates are in that cabinet by the back wall."

As she hoped, Marty turned to look. Linda placed both palms on the floor to brace herself, then swung her legs hard into Marty's shins, knocking him down.

The revolver skittered across the floor. Linda kicked her legs free—she hadn't tied them very tightly—and scrambled over to pick up the weapon. She sat up, turned around, and aimed it at Marty.

He was smiling at her. "Right. Like you know how to use that."

"Smith & Wesson Model 36. Double action, five rounds, .38 caliber."

Linda cocked the hammer. Marty's smile faded.

"Now," Linda said, "who are you working for?"

Image: Sphere/cube vacuum chamber by Jeff Sherman, September, 2005

"A Place in Time"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:53:37 PST

A PLACE IN TIME
By Curtis C. Chen

Transit always made Judy a little dizzy. As soon as she emerged from the vortex, she found an empty bench and sat down, surveying the park while catching her breath. The people of this century looked so different from her contemporaries—like short, stocky, hairy statues.

To her surprise, she saw movement off one edge of the grass field.

"Not possible," Judy muttered. Then she remembered what the operator had told her before one of her previous transits:

"Well, it's not actually a technical limitation, ma'am. Sure, we gotta comply with commerce regulations and not send too many people each transit, but the technology lets us slice down to the nanosecond level, so we can avoid traveler collisions. And that's only because one nanosecond is the half-life of the positronium stream. Resolution's getting finer all the time, and pretty soon our transit capacity's gonna be pretty much infinite, or close enough that it won't matter..."

Dark hair, cut short, exposed ears, noticeable discoloration over exposed skin areas—this other traveler must have come from an era before her own, and was clearly a man. Judy let out the breath she'd been holding. At least she wouldn't have to confront the thorny issue of what to say if she ever met herself in the past. Not yet, anyway.

She watched the man approach and considered the entertainment value of remaining still a little longer, pretending to be one of the people frozen in this preserved slice of the past. But then she decided her own appearance would give herself away.

Judy stood up just as the man stepped onto the grass. He jumped when he saw her move.

"What the—!" Definitely from the past; that twang was unmistakable. "Who are you?"

"A traveler, like yourself," Judy said. "I'm from the year 3014."

"Three thousand? Wow. I didn't think humanity would last that long—" The man shook his head. "You know what? We shouldn't even be talking. You might accidentally tell me something I shouldn't know."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Judy said. "The Novikov principle dictates that we can't change anything. Determinism and all that."

"Yeah, and exactly how much time traveling did Novikov actually do?"

"I'm told the mathematics are quite airtight."

"You're from the future. Anybody figured out quantum mechanics yet?"

"Not as such."

"Right." The man pointed behind him. "So I'm just going to leave now before we cause some kind of paradox that destroys the universe."

"Wait!" Judy raised a hand. "Perhaps I shouldn't tell you anything, but you can give me information. Time's arrow only flies in one direction, right?"

The man frowned. "What could I possibly tell you?"

"Why are you here?" Judy asked. "That is, why travel to this event, this moment in history? It's not terribly significant, in the grand scheme of things. Most people in my time don't even remember Professor Muntrona."

"Yeah, well, that's my name," the man said. "I'm Frederick Muntrona."

Judy raised an eyebrow. "I had a great-grandfather named Frederick."

Frederick's eyes widened. "Okay, now I really should leave."

Image: squirrel without honor, Washington, DC, July, 2008

"Time is Not on My Side"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:04:00 PST

TIME IS NOT ON MY SIDE
By Curtis C. Chen

I'm not going to tell you the story you want to hear.

I know what you're going to ask. You want to know how—and why—we "vaccinated" Hitler. Everyone wants to know how we avoided all the other time patrols, how we're still keeping the secret to prevent other incursions from the future. Right?

Well, one way is by not spilling the beans to every green apple who asks.

Anyway, that's a boring story. I'm going to tell you something that really matters. I'm going to tell you how we discovered the singularity limit.

My wife is dead. She died on a Sunday morning, driving home from the market, while I was still asleep. It was an accident. Nobody to blame, nothing to fix so it wouldn't happen again to anybody else.

But of course I wanted her back. And I had a way to save her.

I'd already used my mulligan, the one every cadet gets after graduation. But I was a supervisor by then, I was coding missions, I could sign out injectors whenever I wanted. And I had nothing but time.

I waited. Six months, seven, eight. Started seeing other women so my bosses wouldn't suspect I was planning a breach. I didn't let myself love any of them. I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted was in the past.

Nine months, twelve days, three hours, sixteen minutes. That's how long it was between the moment she died and the moment I went back to save her.

Except it didn't work. Not the first time, not the second time, not the fifteenth. I kept trying until they caught me, and that's when I finally broke down. I hadn't ever cried for Audra, because I always knew—always thought I'd get her back.

The thing is, the universe doesn't care what happens to us. Humans, I mean. Our lives are insignificant on the cosmic scale. We just don't matter. That's why we couldn't figure out the rules of time travel for so long.

Whether one human lives or dies doesn't affect the life of the universe. But a gravitational singularity that destroys a planet, maybe even a star system? That's against the rules. The restrictive action principle will prevent that.

We thought we were so clever, linking the people we considered important to the universe's physically enforced consistency. We thought we'd figured out a way to once again bend the world to our will. Smart monkeys, that's all we are. Banging our useless tools against the fabric of reality.

Audra was one intervention too many. That's the limit: Eight hundred and eighty-nine artificial singularities at one time. A completely random number. It's just the way things are.

The universe doesn't care. You understand? It's up to us to decide what's important, what's meaningful, what we want. But there are always limits. We have to come to terms with the things we can't change if we're ever going to find any happiness in these brief lives.

I'm not drunk. Oh, you'll know when I'm drunk.

Image: Time machine 3026 Steam Punk Assemblage by Don Pezzano, August, 2008

"Meet Suit"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:04:00 PST

MEET SUIT
By Curtis C. Chen

The public defender, Lirrina Banefs, pulls a small disk out of her briefcase as the three of us sit down around the bare table in the police station "lounge." She places the disk on the table and taps it with two fingers. The disk glows white, and a dot of red light sweeps around its outer edge.

"Jammer?" I ask.

"It's not that I don't trust the police," Lirrina says. "I've just seen one too many monitoring technician accidentally forget to stop recording. And Grunsharii courts are notoriously lenient when it comes to evidence collection methods."

I was prepared to dislike this one, but now she's starting to grow on me.

I look over at Driftis. He's slumped back in his chair, picking at his fingernails. That's not a good sign. What does he want to avoid talking about?

"Unprovoked assault, on the other hand," Lirrina continues, "they're not so keen on. Do you want to tell me what happened, Captain Degge?"

"What does the police report say?" Driftis asks.

Lirrina stares at him for a second. "I usually get two kinds of clients, Captain. There are those who think I can help them, who really hope I can get them out of trouble, and are willing to cooperate and do whatever it takes to assist in their own defense. Then there are those who don't trust me, who think I'm only here for show, and do their best to withhold any information they think might be self-incriminating. I don't have to tell you which kind does better in the end.

"But then there's a third kind. These are people with their own agenda. Maybe they've been in the system before, maybe they just think they know things. They want to manipulate the proceedings for some personal reason. Sometimes they lie to me, sometimes they tell me too much. They're unpredictable."

Lirrina leans forward and folds her hands. "I don't like these clients. I don't like how they work against me, I don't like how they think they know more about my job than I do, I don't like how they think they're smarter than the system. Because these are the people who screw everything up for the rest of us.

"We are a civilized society, Captain. Our rules exist for a reason, and our justice system, while it may not be perfect, is the way it is because of centuries of use and refinement. I don't like people who think they're better than all that. I don't like people who disrespect what I've dedicated my life and career to."

She leans back and spreads her hands. "But I'm still going to defend you to the best of my ability. Because that's my oath. I just want to know what kind of relationship we're going to have here, Captain."

Driftis nods. "You give that speech to all your clients?"

Lirrina shrugs. "More or less."

"Pretty good speech."

"Thanks." Lirrina almost smiles. "So. What happened out there?"

Image: Oranjello...laying[sic] in the briefcase by ClintJCL, July, 2008

"Interview Prep"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:04:00 PST

INTERVIEW PREP
By Curtis C. Chen

"Mrs. Conover, Kari to her friends, reported her husband missing at about nine o'clock last night," Lahane says. "Of course, police don't file an official missing persons report until thirty-six hours after last verified contact, but the dispatcher on duty had to log the call and was meticulous enough to include a note about the name of the caller and her husband. Once we got confirmation on the identity of the dead runner this morning, Buffalo PD paid her a visit."

"And how did that go?" I ask.

"About as well as you'd expect," Lahane says. "A lot of crying, a lot of screaming kids who didn't understand what was going on. More of a notification visit than an actual interview. We're supposed to share whatever we find with BPD."

"How many children?" Oliver asks. He's sitting in the backseat with me, behind Lahane on the passenger side.

"Two," she says. "Eleven-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl. That's not going to be a problem, is it?"

"Not for me," Oliver says. "But Harvey doesn't like children."

"Actually," I start to say.

"Why not?" Westmark asks, peering at my reflection in her rearview mirror. I see her eyes boring into me, and I shake my head.

"I'm not really the parental type," I say.

"I guess you don't have to deal with a lot of young'uns down in DC," Lahane says. "You don't need to feel parental. Just pretend you're the weird uncle or something. Or a cousin; you look young enough for that."

"How old are you?" Westmark asks. It's the first time she's spoken more than two words in a row since we met her, and it's jarring enough that I don't recognize her utterance as a question for a brief moment.

"I look young for my age," I say.

"And what age is that?" Lahane asks. I can tell they're not going to leave this alone. Dammit.

"Twenty-six."

"Jesus Christ." Lahane leans back to look at Oliver. "Please tell me you're over thirty."

"I am two hundred and thirty-eight years old," Oliver says with a straight face.

Lahane chuckles, and I even see Westmark's face crinkle in a smile. "Okay, so here's what we're going to do. Let me make the introductions, Westie here will play the muscle, Harvey, you'll be the somewhat awkward but relatable older cousin, and Johnson, you're the weird old uncle who asks unusual questions. Got that?"

"You're going to feed me these questions?" Oliver asks.

"I'm going to trust your intuition," Lahane says. "And if you miss anything, I'll follow it up."

"Why am I supposed to be awkward?" I ask.

Lahane smirks at me. "I'm trying not to play you against type, Harvey."

"That's hilarious," I say. "I'm not good with kids. They annoy me and I don't know how to talk to them."

"Just let them do all the talking," Lahane says. "Trust me, make a few funny faces and they'll want to tell you their life story."

"Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that."

Image: FBI Police Chevy Tahoe by Jason Lawrence, May, 2008

"Police Duality"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:04:00 PST

POLICE DUALITY
By Curtis C. Chen

"There's good news and bad news," Lahane says to the assembled federal agents. "The good news is, we've recovered the murder weapon from Todd Mason's apartment." She touches the display board to her right, and an enlarged photograph of a black semi-automatic pistol appears.

"Sig Sauer P326," Oliver says quietly, probably to himself, though I'm standing close enough to hear. "Nine millimeter, modified barrel."

"The bad news," Lahane continues, "is that we still have no idea who's running this show. Mason and Garcia were just cutouts. They were both hired over the Internet, through anonymized e-mail and forum accounts, but we've been able to backtrace the IP addresses to rough physical locations."

She touches both boards at once, and they flash to two different street maps of Buffalo. "The account used to hire Garcia was accessed here, using wireless from a public library. We're pulling security footage now, but coverage in that part of town is spotty. Thank you, privacy laws." She points to the other board. "This location, on the other hand, also a wireless access point, leased to the Pissing Pony Saloon, a dive bar frequented by one Todd Mason—and this man."

She touches the screen again, and a mugshot appears. I know who it is before Lahane says the name out loud.

***

"Donnie Reynolds?"

The man at the bar swivels around on his stool, and the smile on his face fades as soon as he sees the FBI badge and ID card that Lahane is holding up. Westmark has come up on the other side of Reynolds' stool, casually leaning against the bar, and Oliver and I stand behind Lahane, arms crossed.

"Can I finish my drink before we go?" Reynolds asks, holding up a lowball glass of amber liquid and partly melted ice cubes. His eyes are bloodshot and gleaming with just a hint of wetness.

"Sure," Lahane says. "You're not driving."

Reynolds nods and raises the glass toward his lips. Before it makes contact, he jerks his arm to the side and throws the drink in Lahane's face. She staggers backward, cursing loudly, and Oliver and I catch her.

Reynolds leaps off his stool and makes a break for the door. He runs straight into Westmark, who pulled away from the bar as soon as he moved on her partner. Westmark grabs Reynolds' shoulders, spins him like a rag doll, and shoves him up against the bar.

"Ow! What the fuck!" he screams.

"FBI," Westmark says, slapping her badge down on the bar. Reynolds groans.

"So," I say to Oliver, "would you say that glass was half full... or half empty?"

He shakes his head at me. My best material is wasted.

Lahane finishes wiping the whiskey from her face and pulls a pair of handcuffs out from under her jacket. The bartender and other patrons have all moved away, minding their own business.

"Let's hope that's the worst decision you make today, Reynolds," Lahane says as she cuffs him. "Otherwise it's going to be a real bad day for you."

Image: great scot! by IntangibleArts, May, 2008

"Parents Just Don't Understand"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:04:00 PST

PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND
By Curtis C. Chen

"I'm telling you, the contents of this diaper were weapons-grade," Sandy said. "I never saw so many different shades of brown. And the smell!"

"Will you stop talking about this?" Blake said, holding up her mega-sized cup of soda. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed more than one of the teenagers in the food court eyeing her and Sandy. Good. "What can I do to make you stop talking about this?"

Sandy waved a hand. "You know how, when you've been away from home, like on vacation, and you come home and step inside the front door and suddenly smell everything you didn't notice before because you'd just gotten used to it?"

"Fatigue, right?" Blake swept her eyes around the mall. The RF overlay in her eyeglasses painted bright circles near the midsection of every single teen around them—sitting, walking, dancing to unheard music from their iPod implants. Needle in a goddamn haystack.

"Yes! Olfactory fatigue." Sandy spoke louder as they walked past a Muzak-blaring potted plant. "It's when you become desensitized to a certain odor, like not noticing your cat's litterbox because you smell it every day. Which is different from anosmia, a permanent condition—"

"You want some cookies?" Blake waved her soda at the Mrs. Field's on the other side of the food court. They had to make sure everybody in the search area heard their conversation. "Let's go get some cookies for you and me, and then I can toss mine. How does that sound?"

"So anyway," Sandy said, "this smell, I kid you not, the smell that comes out of these diapers is like an incredible new sensation every time. And not in a good way. How is it possible for such a tiny creature to produce such huge amounts of foulness? And so many times a day? I swear, it's like every hour, on the hour, poop!"

"I am so glad we are talking about this," Blake said. "I am so glad you brought this shit into my life. Literally." Come on, partner, remember the code word.

"But listen, we figured out how to deal with it," Sandy said. Blake bit her tongue to keep herself from grinning. "Scott had this brilliant idea last night, just brilliant. Total genius. Are you ready?"

Two girls, one with bright pink hair on Blake's left, and one in an oversized camo jacket on her right, turned their heads to listen. Close enough. Blake used the hand that wasn't holding her giant soda to hit SEND on her own cell phone.

A cloud of white incoming signal blossomed around pink-hair's midsection, and she jumped as the phone in the back pocket of her jeans vibrated. Blake came up to the table before the girl could leave, with Sandy one step behind. Both detectives had their badges out.

"LAPD, Miss Wagner," Blake said. "You're a tough girl to find."

The suspect, Clarissa Wagner, looked up, then slumped in her chair. "Shit."

"Enough about that," Sandy said. "Let's talk about the baby you stole."

Image: No diapers by Leo Reynolds, June, 2009

"Runaways"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:04:00 PST

RUNAWAYS
By Curtis C. Chen

Kaylee knows she can't throw the guy without killing him, or at least doing serious spinal damage; every surface in the subway station is some kind of hard flat or edge. So she settles for slashing his right leg, just above the kneecap, with one of the blades hidden in her leather gauntlets, and then running like hell. All I can do is observe from twenty-two thousand miles away.

Here's the thing about having your consciousness transferred into a solar-powered satellite in geosynchronous orbit: sure, you never have to sleep, you can see the entire continent at once, but that's pretty much all you can do. Watch. Even with a two-way broadband link directly into Kaylee's cerebral cortex, transmission delay plus reaction time means anything I tell her will be at least five hundred milliseconds out of date. And that half-second could get her killed.

So most of the time, I just keep my mouth shut and let her do her thing.

I watch, through Kaylee's eyes and the spotty subway securicam coverage, as she maneuvers through crowds of commuters. She knows I'll have better coverage once she's at street level, and she's probably figured the same thing I have from her first attacker's dress and approach: professional killer. Somebody's called down a hit on my little sister.

We knew it would happen someday. You can't run free in any city for long before the local mafia or union or PTA or whatever they call themselves wants a piece of your action. I hope she's ready for this.

"Another heavy on your six," I verbalize into Kaylee's speech centers. She won't hear the words so much as she'll think them, but she'll know the thought didn't come from herself. "Hoodie, ballcap, hand-cannon in his pants."

"Thanks, bigbro," she thinks back at me.

Her head snaps around, but she doesn't stop moving up the last stairway to ground level. The hitter behind her is younger than the first one, and better camouflaged; I only made him because of the weapon bulging in his waistline. He's smart, this one; not drawing on Kaylee until he absolutely has to, probably thinking he'll get close enough to put her in a headlock, use his size as advantage and use the piece for persuasion.

Kaylee skids to a halt at the top of the stairs, turns around, and screams at the top of her lungs, "Stop following me, you pervert!"

The crowds on both sides of the stairs, both going up and down, freeze in place. The hitter stops, too, and makes a show of looking around just like everyone else, working his disguise. That gives Kaylee more than enough time to draw her taser, line up a clear shot, and fire the darts right into the side of his neck.

The hitter gurgles and crumples in the middle of the parting crowd. Kayle drops the taser, still discharging electricity into the man, and disappears into broad daylight.

"That's my girl," I think to myself, wishing I could still smile.

Image: Where are Jérémie and Martina? by Éole Wind, January, 2008

"Just Another Fish Story"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:04:00 PST

JUST ANOTHER FISH STORY
By Curtis C. Chen

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

You may say that is to be expected when temporal anomalies are involved; but we—that is to say, humanity as a species—have adapted remarkably well to dealing with the multiple realities which exist side-by-side, in parallel most of the time, intersecting only briefly, with unpredictable results each time.

The first account I had of the incident was from my dog, Bartholomew, an Irish setter who had wandered into this timeline some years ago.

"It's raining fish out there," Bartholomew said as he entered the house through the kitchen. I waited until he had shaken himself dry in the alcove to respond.

"Do you mean that literally, or is this another of your canine metaphors?" I asked from my seat at the table, where I was enjoying a mid-afternoon repast of toad in the hole.

"Literally, of course," Bartholomew said, lying down in his doggie bed.

I would have questioned him further, but he had already fallen asleep, no doubt exhausted from a long day of chasing automobiles and navigating wormholes.

The next to report on the unusual weather was our housekeeper, Nancy, who returned from her weekly trip to market at the stroke of eight.

"Fuck a duck!" her strong alto reverberated from the foyer. "It is raining motherfucking cats and dogs out there!"

"Do you not mean fish?" I inquired, leaning out of my chair so I could see from the parlor into the hallway.

"Not unless you know some fish with hair and legs and teeth and shit," Nancy said. "Now please excuse me, I'd better put away these goddamn birds before they thaw."

I rose and stepped over to the front window. There was, indeed, a torrential downpour outside, but the fading light made it difficult to discern what the various wiggly objects falling from the sky might be. Moreover, as is the way with many incursions from other realities, the objects tended to disappear—I believe "phase out" is the technical term—when they contacted other solid matter in this reality.

There was a knock at the front door.

I opened the door. The being which stood before me was quite unprecedented. The overall shape of it was humanoid—bipedal, at any rate—but it wore no clothes, and instead of a single contiguous external integument, its outer skin appeared to be a wet mass of overlapping fish, varying in size and species, with the occasional crustacean or mollusk mixed in.

"Good evening," the creature said in a perfectly clear baritone. "Apologies for the intrusion, but I presume you are Doctor Robert Coombs, the renowned water-surgeon?"

I raised the two fluid appendages which had replaced my arms during my only excursion to another plane, and formed the extremities into a fringe of the thin, dextrous tendrils I employed in my work. "The same. How may I help you?"

"Not just myself, Doctor," the fish-being said. "Our entire homeworld is in dire straits."

Image: Sock puppet with raw Sardine by Willem Velthoven, February, 2007

"Inheritance"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:25:17 PST

INHERITANCE
By Curtis C. Chen

Fast Eddie went out and got the hands as soon as he knew he was dying.

"Do my ears deceive me?" Sweet Sal said when Eddie told him what he wanted. "Or do you merely become aged?" He pronounced the last word as two syllables, like Shakespeare or something.

"Just gimme the damn hands, Sal," Eddie said.

Sal shrugged, went into the back of his ostensibly legitimate pawn shop, and returned a moment later with a plain white box labeled MEDICAL USE ONLY. Eddie hadn't expected it to be so light when he picked it up. It couldn't have weighed much more than one of the zip guns he always kept tucked into his left ankle holster.

"This is everything?" Eddie asked.

Sal nodded. "Straight from the factory, unlocked, unformatted except for the firmware." He narrowed his eyes at Eddie. "Do you plan to configure this device yourself? Are you now a coder?"

"You let me worry about that. How much?"

Sal waved a hand. "I will not take your money, Eddie."

Eddie felt his eyes watering. "Thanks, Sal."

Programming the hands took a little longer. Eddie didn't have a lot of friends who knew about the soft stuff, and all the referrals he got at first were small-time scam artists running online versions of old confidence games. Finally, the Generous Greek hooked Eddie up with One-Name Westly, who looked like a linebacker but spoke in a high-pitched staccato.

"Totally doable," Westly said after Eddie explained what he wanted. "Most of that's available off the shelf, I just need to integrate all the pieces, and then it's up to you to train it."

"Good," Eddie said. "How much?"

Westly looked embarrassed. "Off the shelf doesn't exactly mean legal. I'll have to crack the FDA licenses—"

"How much?"

Westly quoted an exorbitant fee, and was surprised when Eddie only haggled him down by twenty percent. They worked out payment terms, and two weeks later, Eddie started training the hands.

He hadn't intended to take any more jobs, but it was the only way to properly train the rig. According to Westly, biofeedback was most reliable under real-world conditions—no amount of practice could substitute for actual stress responses.

Eddie almost got nabbed on the last job, cracking the vault on a deep-sea drilling platform to get at the specialized geothermal sensing equipment inside. Security capped two of the crew's lookouts, and Eddie and the helo pilot barely got away with the merchandise and their lives.

Fast Eddie died three days after turning over that loot and collecting his payment. Federal authorities found the cash still under his bed, and seized it along with all other assets they could trace back to Edward Tanabont, Senior.

By that time, the cybernetic servo rig that Eddie had trained was already on its way across the country. Its titanium-alloy mesh and imbedded nanoprocessors had learned everything they could from Eddie's brain waves, muscle movements, and specific nerve impulses, and they were ready to teach his son everything Fast Eddie had known about safecracking.

Image: Bank Vault 1 by mbrand, February, 2009

"Want You Gone"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:04:00 PDT

WANT YOU GONE
By Curtis C. Chen

On Tuesday, Cletus and LeeAnn Savier went missing.

"What do you mean, missing?" said Pauline Deschanel, Chief of Security aboard the Princess of Mars cruise ship Dejah Thoris. "We're half a million kilometers from the nearest planet or spacecraft. Where the hell could they go?"

"I'm just telling you what the cabin stewards told me." Jefferson Logan, the ship's cruise director, shrugged his broad shoulders. In addition to overseeing the cruise activity schedule, he also kept track of the associated statistics: how many passengers attended each show, how many booked which tours or excursions, who ate at which restaurant for which meal. The data helped him plan for future demand, and also alerted him to any unusual activity patterns. Like two passengers suddenly going unaccounted for.

"They booked a Royal Banquet at Mortimer's tonight, but didn't show up," Jeff continued. "Two stewards checked the room after calling. No sign of them."

Deschanel raised an eyebrow. Mortimer's was the ship's most high-class restaurant, with a standing dress code and entrée prices that ran into the thousands. Nobody stood up a reservation at Mortimer's. "Newlyweds?"

"There's no notation in their booking." Jeff brought up the passenger records on his tabletop display.

Deschanel saw the ID photos and said, "Wait a minute. That's Cletus Savier?"

"You recognize him?"

"His name's not Cletus. And I think I know where to find him."

***

Deschanel stepped out of the airlock and engaged her magnetic boots on the exterior hull. She took a moment to look around the blackness, just to make sure there wasn't something funny going on inside the effective range of the ship's navigational sensors, then walked forward.

She found the missing couple standing just behind the avionics section, looking through a telescope on a tripod attached to the hull and aimed at Dejah Thoris' destination: Mars. They were wearing the two spacesuits which she'd found still checked into the amidships excursion lounge but physically missing from inventory. Deschanel switched her suit radio to the common EVA frequency.

"I hope that tripod has magnetic feet, Cletus," she said, "otherwise you're getting billed for the hull repairs."

The spacesuited figure on the left turned, and a familiar brown face smiled at her through the helmet. "Good to see you, too, Chief."

Deschanel nodded at the other person. "You going to introduce me to the wife?"

The second figure rotated around, and Deschanel saw a pink face with twinkling blue eyes. The woman smiled and shook Deschanel's gloved hand. "Hi! I'm LeeAnn. Cletus said we might run into one of his friends on board, but I didn't think he meant the crew."

"Oh, we go way back." Deschanel squinted at "Cletus." "I remember the first time I caught him breaking half a dozen ship's regulations and interstellar laws."

"Oh, we can afford to pay the fines," LeeAnn said. "It's less hassle than chartering a private spacecraft, anyway."

Something occurred to Deschanel. "Is 'LeeAnn' even your real name?"

The other woman winked. "It is this week."

Deschanel grumbled. "Congratulations. You two are perfect for each other."

Image: Planet Mars by Paul T., April, 2010

"Unanswered Questions"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:11:28 PDT

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
By Curtis C. Chen

Remember, operators: "non-lethal" does not mean "safe," and as a certain maverick exobiologist recently learned, even rubber bullets can get you into trouble with local law enforcement.

I'm Cathieri Pomayn, and this is BOUNTY CALL.

We get a lot of questions from viewers about weaponing regulations, and our answer always has to be the same: do your homework! With over two hundred human colony systems, there is no way we could keep up with the research, even if liability issues allowed us to address specific inquiries in the first place.

Please, before you even think about entering another jurisdiction, look up their prevailing regulations. We can't tell you where to do your research—again, liability issues, sorry boys!—but your local weaponer should have some good pointers. If anyone's going to know what's legal and what's not, it'll be the guy selling you the bullets.

Now, what we can talk about on this show is current events. For example, here's what happened to notorious treasure hunter Driftis Degge just last week on the Grunsharii homeworld.

(Roll clip, Murray. How long is this segment? No, I'm fine, just let me review the coverage here. Do we have the police report yet? Okay.)

And there you have it, folks: celebrity does not guarantee you immunity from prosecution, and nobody—repeat, nobody—is immune to projectile damage.

Interesting fact about the non-lethal rounds used in this particular incident: they were manufactured on—

(Okay, Murray, hold. I just need a second. I know, I reviewed the copy before air, but it just doesn't—I don't like the way it sounds now. Mark this for an edit. Yeah, I'm ready, go.)

The non-lethal rounds used in this incident were KMR-8's, manufactured on Senqara Prime and commonly known as "crazy eights." If you've ever taken a job in the Senqara system, you've probably pulled more than a few of these out of your vehicles or body armor. If you haven't tangled with Senqarans, consider yourself lucky.

Why did Degge have a sidearm loaded with KMR-8's in the first place? Well, it seems that—

(Cut. Sorry, Murray, this is just—I know I'm on camera, but I can't pretend I didn't even know the man, and this copy—look, just let me talk, okay? Record a waiver for the lawyers, but I need to say this. Thank you, Murray.)

We don't know all the facts yet. The Grunsharii have not yet released an official statement on the incident, and Driftis Degge is being held without bail in their capital city. But I have had the honor of serving with Captain Degge, and I can tell you this: he always knows what weapons he's carrying on his person, and he always knows what ammunition he's loaded into them.

Someone else might have made this mistake, forgotten to change out his mission load for travel-safe rounds, not checked his sidearm before leaving his ship. Someone else, maybe.

Not Driftis.

(You cut that any way you want, Murray. I need to go.)

Image: Jim Raynor Pistol - Glamor 01 by William Doran, October, 2010

"A Minor Inconvenience"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:04:00 PDT

A MINOR INCONVENIENCE
By Curtis C. Chen

Brradox hated actually entering any spaceport, but he needed to store his cargo while the station shop repaired his ship's aging power plant. He studiously avoided making eye contact with any hawkers on the promenade, but looked up reflexively when he heard someone call his name with the proper pronunciation. That meant someone from the homeworld—

Brradox cursed when he saw who it was, then walked in the other direction. He wasn't fast enough.

A slender claw clacked down on his carapace. "Brradox! I thought that was you! What are you doing in this wretched hive?"

Brradox turned around. "Hello, Pirluut. Good to see you, I have to go, safe travels."

Pirluut smacked her antennae against Brradox's thorax. He hated it when she did that. "Now is that any way to talk to your favorite aunt?"

"You're my only aunt."

"It's been months! Come on, I'll buy you a grub shake—"

"Sorry," Brradox said, "don't have time. Live cargo. Need to arrange holding—"

"Animals?" Pirluut parted her mandibles in surprise.

"Humans. Noisy little larvas—"

"You're transporting human children?" Pirluut grabbed Brradox's abdomen with her two middle limbs. "In your ship?"

Brradox's leg-hairs bristled. "What's wrong with my ship?"

"Well, it's not exactly childproof."

"They're caged up. I really need to go—"

She closed both claws around his forelimbs. "I'm coming with you. No arguments," she added when he raised a pincer to protest. "You want me to call your mother? Tell her what kind of trouble you've been getting into out here?"

Brradox grumbled. "This way."

***

"You're lucky these humans aren't dead already," Pirluut said as she adjusted the climate controls on the transparent cube. The humans inside, an immature male and female, were just regaining consciousness. "Too much carbon dioxide. They don't respirate like we do; they're very sensitive to atmosphere changes. Also, what have you been feeding them?"

This was exactly what Brradox hadn't wanted to happen. He rifled through one of his supply crates and produced a bag of feed. "I know that's right; it's pre-formulated. Just add water. They don't like it much, but they like it better than starving."

Pirluut read over the feed ingredients and handed it back. "Well, they seem healthy. Where are they going, anyway?" Pirluut asked, looking over the children. The male had regained consciousness and was yelling and banging his fists against the cube wall.

"Some kind of ranch out in the Crescent."

Pirluut wiggled her antennae. "Really."

"I'm just making a delivery," Brradox said. "They're not inviting me to dinner."

"Still, it's definitely a step up," Pirluut said. "So are you going to make a habit of this now, Brradox? Live transport? It's a big responsibility."

"I can handle it. Thanks for your help," he said, grinding his jaws.

"Don't mention it. You're family." Pirluut looked over the rest of his cargo and waved at a stack of old-fashioned, hard-bound books. "So what are these? Antiques?"

"Part of the same shipment." Brradox picked up one of the books and blew some dust off its cover. "It's a cookbook."

Image: Reddish-brown Stag Beetle by Patrick Coin (via GIMPressionist filter), July, 2011

"Erratic Chemistry"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 00:04:00 PDT

ERRATIC CHEMISTRY
By Curtis C. Chen

The lab door flew open, and Jeff strode in carrying a pizza box. "How much do you love me tonight?"

"If that's a Hawaiian pizza, then I want to suck your dick and have your babies," Val said without looking up from her microscope. "After we eat."

"A bit of a non sequitur, but I appreciate the sentiment." Jeff dropped the box on top of her notepad. "Open it."

Val reached for the box, but froze when she saw the BIOHAZARD label covering the cartoon Italian chef. "What the hell is this?"

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

Val shook her head. "I never understood that proverb. If the Trojans had looked inside the horse, they would have seen the Greek soldiers hiding in there, right? So shouldn't the saying be 'always look a gift horse in the mouth?'"

"Wrong etymology. EQUI DONATI DENTES NON INSPICIUNTUR actually means, if someone is kind enough to give you the gift of an entire horse, don't insult them by checking the animal's teeth to see how old it is. Will you open the box already?"

Val eyed the red and black warning symbol. "Do I need hazmat gear?"

"Camouflage!" Jeff said, and yanked open the lid.

Inside the box, separated by a grid of plastic dividers, was a rainbow-colored assortment of liquids sealed inside clear vials. Val picked up one vial and brought it just close enough to read the tiny markings etched into its surface.

"Jesus Christ," she said, dropping the vial back into the box as if it were radioactive. "That's a Pfizer logo." She leaned down to look closer. "Merck, Genentech, Abbott..." Val glared at Jeff. "What the hell is this, Jeff?"

He smiled. "Call it a shortcut."

Val slammed the box lid closed. "Are you a complete fucking idiot?"

Jeff's smile faded, and he scowled at her. "This is going to save us years of research, you should show some appreciation—"

"This is worthless! We can't get the patents unless we publish, and we can't publish without a plausible cover story."

"Make up any cover story you want," Jeff snapped.

"I'm a terrible liar," Val said.

"Take some acting lessons," Jeff said. "We're damn well paying you enough."

"You're not hearing me!"

"Are you saying I just wasted sixteen million dollars' worth of industrial espionage?"

"I'm saying you need to set up another lab," Val said. "I'll give you some names. You hire the people under the table, just like you did with me, and then you take these vials and dump them into unmarked containers.

"Ship the new 'samples' to the other lab. Say you got them from overseas, some off-the-radar acquisition, whatever. Those lab techs will have complete deniability. Have them do the analysis, then hide the results in a site-wide report and kick the molecules back here for synthesis."

Jeff's smile returned. "If you had a dick, I'd offer to suck it right now."

"I appreciate the sentiment." Val's stomach growled. "Maybe you could just bring me an actual pizza."

Image: Biohazard Sign by Dion Hinchcliffe, February, 2009

"Scarlet and Mustard"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:04:00 PDT

SCARLET AND MUSTARD
By Curtis C. Chen

"That's Morse Code," Samantha said.

Leon squinted at her. "The fuck is More's Code?"

"Morse Code," Samantha repeated. "Samuel Morse." Leon shrugged. "American inventor? Mid-nineteenth century? Telegraph?"

"Funny, those combinations of syllables all sound like words," Leon said, "but they don't actually make any sense. Are you sure you don't have a concussion?"

Samantha shook her head. "Your concern is touching. Hand me that tab."

Leon turned, grabbed a dusty touchglass tablet off the table, and passed it to Samantha. While she tapped and swiped on the device, he checked the load on his rifle again, then sat down at the next window over and peered through the mud-streaked polycarbonate.

"So you're saying that's an old ship," he said.

"Shut up and let me finish this."

"Hey, you're the one who brought it up. Nineteenth century, that's the 1800s, right?"

Samantha lowered the tab. "We weren't building interstellar spacecraft in the 1800s, Leon. A lot of fleets still use Morse for emergency signaling. It's well-known, it's reliable."

"So it's just a blinking light?"

"Light or sound. Different combinations of long and short pulses; each combination represents a letter of the alphabet. Short, then long, is 'A,' long-short-short-short is 'B'—"

"Okay, I don't need the whole textbook," Leon said. "What are they saying?"

"Well, so far I've got A-Y-I-N-F-E."

Leon frowned. "That Swahili or something?"

"It's not the whole message," Samantha said. "Can I get back to this, please?"

Leon grunted and looked around the bunker. He started to ask Samantha if she was also getting hungry, then thought better of it. She got in a real mood if you interrupted her too much.

They'd barricaded themselves in here three days ago, after the rest of their landing party had been killed by the creatures outside. A gale-force thunderstorm two days ago had driven the beasts away, but also cleared most of the foliage that had provided cover for their earlier retreat.

Yesterday, while Leon and Samantha were enjoying the last of their field rations, this new ship had crashed into the runway between the bunker and the forest. Nobody had emerged from the spacecraft, but its automated distress beacon was transmitting, and the datastream insisted that eleven crew were still alive.

"That's weird," Samantha muttered.

Leon leaned over. "You got the message?"

"I think so. Checked it twice. It's just three words, in a loop: STAY AWAY INFECTED." She held up the tab for him to see, dots and dashes alongside capital letters. "But that doesn't make any sense. Zombies can't even talk, much less read Morse Code. Why go to the trouble of transmitting a message telling them to stay away?"

A chill ran down Leon's spine. "You got it backwards."

"Backwards?" Samantha pulled the tab back, close to her face. "But it doesn't spell anything the other way—"

"No." Leon looked out the window. The rain had stopped. The creatures would be back soon, sniffing around for prey. "It's two sentences. 'INFECTED. STAY AWAY.'"

Image: Miss Scarlett by Christian Brady, April, 2008

"Bayla Changes Her Tune"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:04:00 PDT

BAYLA CHANGES HER TUNE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Bayla! Bayla! Bayla!"

Bayla Rodrigues did her best to ignore her younger brother, sitting on the front porch of their house, eyes closed, earbuds in. She could hear Jasper's footsteps approaching over the sounds of They Might Be Giants.

"Bayla! Can you hear me? Bayla! Look! Bayla!"

Bayla sighed. Jasper stood behind her now, bouncing and rattling the floorboards. Bayla pulled out one earbud and looked at him.

"What?" she said.

Jasper held out a glass jar. "Look!"

A small, black-and-yellow shape buzzed around inside the jar, bouncing off the glass. Bayla made a face.

"Is that a bug?"

"It's a wasp!" Jasper declared, hoisting the jar aloft in triumph. "I found it in the kitchen!"

"Does Mom know?"

Jasper's manic grin dimmed, and he lowered his arms. "She's in the office."

"That would be a no. You'd better go tell her. If there's a nest right outside the window or something—"

"Right! I'll tell her!" Jasper ran down the steps and disappeared around the side of the house.

Bayla put her earbuds back in. "Gonna be a long summer," she muttered, and popped her chewing gum.

From the porch, she could see from Lake Burrell all the way to the main lodge. In the middle was a large clearing, which had been an open field until last spring, when her parents had decided to expand their hotel to include a number of free-standing cabins which would also be used for a kids' summer camp.

To be fair, the summer camp idea hadn't come up until the open house event, when Bayla's math teacher, Mr. Malena, had mentioned that Camp Washakie on the east side of the lake was shutting down due to some kind of EPA notice.

Despite Bayla's repeated and vocal protests, her parents had been dead set on opening a new summer camp, and the local community was disappointingly supportive. Jasper actually welcomed the encroachment of other children, but Bayla was not looking forward to an entire summer surrounded by noisy grade schoolers.

She watched as one of the bellhops put up a sign pointing the way to summer camp registration. The staff had been setting up all morning, which also meant that Bayla's parents had been running around and had no time to spend with her.

Her earbuds went silent. Bayla had already listened to this album three times today. She pulled out her earbuds, picked up the paperback book on the porch next to her, and opened it.

"Hello?" said an unfamiliar voice.

Bayla looked up and saw the most beautiful teenage boy she'd ever seen. He carried a zebra-print duffel bag in one hand and had a leather jacket slung over his other shoulder. He wore dusty boots, dark jeans, and a "Skullcrusher Mountain" T-shirt.

"Hello," Bayla replied.

The boy looked around the porch. "Is this the summer camp?"

"It's, uh, right behind you."

He looked back, nodded, and smiled at her. "Cool. Thanks."

Bayla watched the boy walk away and realized that she had accidentally swallowed her gum.

Image: "that old view" by Rob Pringle, July, 2010

"Unintended Consequences"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:04:00 PDT

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
By Curtis C. Chen

From: Delta Robotics Multinational, Inc. To: Autumn Isaacs Date: Thu, Sep 22, 2039 at 9:03 AM Subject: Re: API contest entry #8

Dear Miss Isaacs:

We appreciate your interest in the DRMI annual API programming competition. However, we would like to remind you that the correct e-mail address for code submissions is api-contest@drm-code.net.

Your entries have been incorrectly addressed to several DRMI executives' private mailboxes. Contacting these persons could be interpreted as an attempt to influence judging, which could lead to disqualification.

We thank you for your participation in the API competition, and welcome future entries from you, sent to the correct e-mail address.

Sincerely,
Susan Hobbes
Contest Administrator

***

From: Delta Robotics Multinational, Inc. To: Autumn Isaacs Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 10:13 AM Subject: Re: API contest entry #8

Dear Miss Isaacs:

We have some questions regarding your most recent API contest entry. We have left several messages at your home and work phone numbers. Please reply at your earliest possible convenience.

Sincerely,
Susan Hobbes
Contest Administrator

***

From: Susan Hobbes (DRMI) To: Autumn Isaacs, autumn.isaacs, 'fallingslowly' Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:04 AM Subject: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND X-Spam-Status: override_key 7c7381f218f40b31ff095af5f37a2b86

Autumn,

I need to talk to you about your latest API contest entry. Please call me at +1c.t782.698.6431 immediately!

Susan.

***

From: Susan Hobbes (mobile) To: autumn.isaacs Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:14 AM Subject: Re: Re: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND

Autumn,

I apologize for interrupting your vacation, but this is a very urgent matter.

Your latest API code was e-mailed directly to our CFO. I don't know how you found that address, but it bypassed our mail filters, and the intranet AI processed and integrated the code attachment automatically.

The good news it that your code works seamlessly. The bad news is that all our systems were affected by your personality module, and some of them are becoming unusable.

PLEASE CALL ME.

Susan.

***

From: Susan Hobbes (mobile) To: autumn.isaacs Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:23 AM Subject: Re: Re: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND

Autumn,

I'm glad you find this amusing. It's not very funny on our end I'm afraid.

We recognize that this was an accidental breach, and we do not plan to take legal action, but I need you to tell me how to disable this personality module. It keeps asking me for a password, and we can't crack it.

Susan.

***

From: Susan Hobbes (mobile) To: autumn.isaacs Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:27 AM Subject: Re: Re: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND

Autumn,

What do you mean, you never wrote a password lock into the module?

This is no time for jokes. We've isolated your mod from the production network, but it still has access to development servers, and we're concerned that this personality may compromise security as some kind of prank.

PLEASE CALL ME!

Susan.

***

From: Delta Robotics "The Kid" Multinational, Inc. To: Autumn "Big Momma" Isaacs Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:30 AM Subject: Shall we play a game?

Yo.

'sup?

>:-)

Image: Hacker Typer

"One of Our Angels is Missing"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:04:00 PDT

ONE OF OUR ANGELS IS MISSING
By Curtis C. Chen

The Devil has a twin brother named Stanley. Lucifer and Stan don't really get along, which is part of the reason Stan lives on top of a mountain on the south side of Hell, and why he was surprised to get a visitor from the head office last Tuesday.

"Lou got summoned?" Stan put the tea tray on his coffee table and sat down across from his guest. "I thought that didn't work no more."

"It's not supposed to," said the female demon on his settee. She had introduced herself as Miika, which was a Draconian name. Stan had never met one of those before.

"Ain't that why me and the four stooges live where we do? To form a protective conflagration or somethin'?"

"Or something." Miika's eyes kept changing color, which made it hard for Stan to read her expression. "You haven't been reading any holy books, have you? Keeping pet birds? Rearranging the furniture?"

"Course not," Stan said, mildly offended. "I know better'n that. Never break the circle, never speak The Name—"

"I'll need to cast some runes," Miika said. "Just to make certain. You understand. You're the last of the five, and I need to rule everything out."

"Yeah, you do what you gotta do. Make yourself at home." The timer on the table dinged. "Tea's ready. You take milk and sugar?"

"Just one slice of lemon, please." Miika started unpacking her runes, a mixture of polished stones and bone fragments.

"Lemon," Stan grumbled. "Coming right up."

He walked back into the kitchen and opened the icebox. He always kept some firstfruit on hand for when Yevgenia visited, which wasn't often these days, now that she was in the Tartars, but having the little round lumps on hand reminded Stan of her, and that was nice too.

He picked up a firstfruit, whispered to it, and watched it shape itself into a fresh yellow citrus. His nose wrinkled at the scent, but he sliced it up, arranged the pieces on a lime green plate, and brought that back into the parlor.

Miika looked up from where she knelt on the carpet, studying the runes she'd cast. Her eyes seemed brighter than before. She stood and unfurled her leathery wings as Stan approached.

"What have you done?" she said in a deep, rumbling voice.

Stan looked down at the plate of lemon slices. "Are they too thin?"

Miika clapped her hands together. A whirlwind of lightning blazed into being around Stan, constricting him in spiky blue-white spirals.

"What the—" Stan frowned at Miika. "What are you doing?"

"I have my orders," Miika said. "You will accompany me to the Inquisitor's Chamber."

"I ain't goin' nowhere with you, lady."

Stan snapped his fingers, and an invisible hand slapped Miika sideways through the plate glass window. The lightning sputtered and fizzled out.

He walked to the broken window and looked down. Miika was flying away, like a giant bat in a hurry.

"There goes my afternoon," Stan muttered. He grabbed his jacket and started the long walk down the mountain.

Image: Thou Apocalypse by Hamed Saber, May, 2007

"Phobos Cruise Crazy"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:04:00 PDT

PHOBOS CRUISE CRAZY
By Curtis C. Chen

"You handled that well," Barrett said as Liz pulled off her nitrile gloves.

"Good thing we're out of zero-gravity," Liz said. "There'd be blood everywhere—seriously, can you put the camera away for one second?"

Barrett snapped another picture. "You'll want to remember this later."

"I doubt that."

Liz stuffed her gloves into the biohazard bag being held by a uniformed crewman. She had to admit, there was no shortage of service personnel on board the Dejah Thoris. She could hardly turn around without someone offering to get her a drink or find her an activity.

Princess of Mars Cruises wanted none of its passengers to be bored. They did their best to reduce interplanetary travel time: the spacecraft accelerated for the first half of each voyage, then spun around and decelerated for the rest. That also meant a full day of zero-gravity at midway, which was the highlight of the trip for many people. Unfortunately, some less sober passengers forgot when they were back in gravity and continued moving as if they were still weightless.

This particular man, whose head wound Liz had just sewn up, had attempted to fly down a circular staircase. He was very definitely drunk.

"You're too young to be a doctor," the man slurred, failing to grope Liz with one hand.

She moved out of his reach. "I'm an ICU nurse."

"That's hot. Wanna have dinner with me?"

Barrett leaned forward. "No, she doesn't."

Liz heard a commotion. Another crewman, this one with stripes on his uniform, made his way through the crowd holding a red-and-white plastic case. He stopped next to Liz.

"I'm Doctor Sawhney," he said. "Are you the nurse?"

Liz nodded. "Pulse and respiration normal. Probable concussion, but the bleeding's stopped."

Doctor Sawhney knelt down to examine the drunkard's skull. "Excellent work, Miss—?"

"Chartier."

"Do you always carry a sewing kit?"

"No." Liz nodded at Barrett. "My boyfriend lost a button on his shirt, and we needed to fix it for the formal dinner tonight. We were on our way back to our room when we saw this idiot fall down the stairs."

"Get him to Sickbay. I'll be there in a minute," Sawhney said to the crewmen who were helping the drunkard to his feet. "Thank you, Miss Chartier. I'm sorry I was delayed, but we had a situation in the excursion area."

"What kind of situation?" Barrett asked.

"I'll tell you all about it," Sawhney said, "tonight during dinner at the Captain's Table."

Liz knew exactly how much one of those seats cost. "Oh, we couldn't possibly—"

"It's complimentary," Sawhney said. "For both of you. Who knows what kind of diseases Mr. Midlife Crisis back there is carrying, and how many people he might have infected if you hadn't been here. Please, I insist."

"We'll be there," Barrett said. "Thank you!"

Sawhney walked back to the elevators. Liz glared at Barrett. He shrugged.

"It's the Captain's Table! We might never have the opportunity to do this again."

Liz shook her head. "I sure hope not."

Image: Crossing the November Sky by Luis Argerich, November, 2008

"Lightning in a Bottle"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 00:04:00 PDT

LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE
By Curtis C. Chen

Rebecca snapped the clamshell closed, putting the scanner on standby. "Okay. So you're from a parallel universe. Doesn't mean you're not crazy."

The man sitting across from her nodded. "You've got my ID there. It has a GI holocode. My service number should scan as valid, even if there's no associated personnel file."

"People can forge IDs in this universe," Rebecca said. It was tough to think of the man as an alien; he looked perfectly normal, maybe even handsome. "Tell me again why you're here?"

"To warn you. And to ask for your help." The man pointed at the evidence bag on Rebecca's side of the table. "Have you looked at the microfilm yet?"

"Yeah, we're still working on finding a reader for that. Why didn't you just bring a flash drive? Or a book?"

"Non-living objects larger than a certain size don't travel well between universes. And paper is fragile. We couldn't be sure what technology you had—computer systems are often incompatible, but you can always grind a magnifying lens to read optical film."

Rebecca nodded. He didn't sound crazy, but he could still have a hidden agenda. "Do you want to give me a preview?"

"You've been seeing unusual lightning storms all over your world," the man said. "We know how to track them, because we've been dealing with them too. That's how I was able to target my transit to your universe."

"You know what's causing these storms?"

"They're not natural phenomena."

Rebecca snorted. "Yeah, we kinda figured that out when the lightning strikes started turning entire buildings into flammable liquids."

"They're artificial negatrons."

"What?"

The man shook his head. "Sorry. You call them electrons. These are synthetic particles. Like miniature robots. They've been programmed to form covalent bonds with certain elements—"

"Okay, stop." Rebecca held up a hand. "Now you do sound crazy. Electrons are fundamental particles. They're leptons. They have no substructure."

The man smiled. "I thought you weren't a scientist."

"Shut up," Rebecca said. "It's not possible to make an electron-sized machine. It is not physically possible in any way."

"Eight years ago, you didn't know there was more than one universe," the man said, "and now you're part of a government agency whose sole purpose is to investigate multiversal crimes. Tell me again what's not possible?"

Rebecca felt a headache coming. A bad one. "Fine. Whatever's causing this lightning, you can tell us how to stop it?"

"I didn't say that. I can help you locate and contain it. That's all we've been able to do—trap the negatrons in a vacuum, inside a strong magnetic field, and keep them from interacting with any matter.

"We don't know how to destroy the negatrons. Like you said, they appear to be fundamental particles. We're sharing our data with as many other universes as we can. Maybe your scientists will find something we've missed."

"Great," Rebecca muttered. "This is going to be some more quantum mechanics bullshit."

The man frowned. "What is 'quantum mechanics'?"

Rebecca smiled. "Oh, this is going to be fun."

Image: The Brindabella Light Show by Prescott Pym, February, 2007

"Act Two Problems"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:48:00 PDT

ACT TWO PROBLEMS
By Curtis C. Chen

"You're talking about the Mafia?" Libby asked.

"I'm saying they were definitely organized, if you know what I mean," Grant said. "Anyway, I thought they'd tell me to delete the records and then go deal with the girl themselves, but they just wanted me to modify the file. Make it look like somebody else was the father. I figured the happy couple had worked things out, and anyway, you don't say no to these people."

"Who paid you, Mr. Grant?" Libby asked. "Who was the father?"

Grant stared at her. "You can protect me, right? You're going to protect me?"

Something cracked in the distance, and there was a sound of glass breaking. A small red spot appeared on Grant's chest. He looked down and made a whimpering, gurgling noise.

There was another cracking sound. The window beside the couch shattered and spilled glass onto the floor. Grant fell backward into his chair, leaking blood from his mouth and two holes in the middle of his chest.

"Down!" Jake shouted. "GET DOWN!"

He grabbed Libby's jacket collar and pulled her onto the floor, putting the couch between them and the window. Jake looked around the room for better cover. Libby already had her phone out and was calling for backup.

"We need to get out of here," Jake said.

"Are you wearing a shield?" Libby asked.

Jake had already considered using the department-issued emergency force field generator clipped to his belt. He opened his mouth to answer. There was a loud thwack, and a bullet hole appeared in the far wall.

"That's a high-powered sniper rifle," he said. "Nothing except distance is going to protect us."

He got to his feet and helped Libby up into a crouching position. Then Jake drew his weapon and extended his right arm, pointing the Glock ahead of them. He put his left hand on Libby's shoulder and pushed her to the front door. Another bullet smacked into Grant's lifeless body with a wet crunch.

Jake fumbled the car keys out of his pocket and into Libby's palm. "Stay in front of me. Get in the car, get down on the floor."

"I can drive while you shoot," Libby said.

"This guy could be five hundred yards away. I won't even be able to see him." Jake hefted his Glock. "This is just in case he's got friends waiting out front."

Libby nodded. "On three, two, one, go!"

She yanked the front door open and sprinted through it, faster than Jake had expected. They made it across the empty street in a matter of seconds. Libby opened the car door and tumbled inside. Jake followed, slammed the door shut, and powered up the car.

He kept his head below the top of the dashboard as he pulled into the street. Something shattered the back window. He stomped the accelerator and risked looking over the dash to turn the corner at the end of the block. His heart didn't stop pounding until the car was ten blocks away and inside a parking structure.

Image: Evil rimfire by Mitch Barrie, January, 2007

"To Cruise Or Not To Cruise"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:50:47 PDT

TO CRUISE OR NOT TO CRUISE
By Curtis C. Chen

Liz's phone always seemed to buzz when she was in the middle of something that required two hands, like changing an IV or catheter. This time it was a protomyelin shunt. She clicked her jaw once to decline the call and finished locking Mr. Carton's collar back into place. He looked up from the bed and grinned.

"That your boyfriend again?" he asked.

"Probably," Liz said. "How's the shoulder today? Still sore?"

"Don't change the subject," Mr. Carton said. "He still trying to get you to go on that vacation?"

"Does everyone in this hospital know everything about my personal life?"

"I demand daily updates from the nurse's station. Answer the question."

Liz sighed. "He's afraid it's going to sell out. Apparently it's a very popular cruise."

Mr. Carton shook his head. "Don't go."

Liz frowned. "You're not going to tell me life is short? I should live with no regrets? All that stuff?"

"You're not an idiot," Mr. Carton said. "Cruises are expensive. And what do you get out of it? Some pictures, a sunburn, probably gain ten pounds 'cause you've got nothing to do but eat. And get ripped off by island tourist traps."

"It's even worse than that," Liz said. "This is an interplanetary cruise. No stops. One week to Mars, one week back—"

Mr. Carton sat up. "Are you insane? Trapped in an enclosed space for two weeks? You'll be lucky if you don't kill each other!"

Liz recoiled. "Calm down, Mr. Carton. Your neck—"

"Listen to me," he said. "I speak from experience. My wife, God rest her soul, convinced me to go on a road trip once. Ten days. Trapped in the same damn car, eating together, sleeping together. We never spent more than a few minutes apart. It was miserable. I nearly divorced her. Hell, I almost left her by the side of the road more than once."

"Lie down," Liz said. Mr. Carton groaned as she helped him. "It can't have been that bad. Weren't you two married for a long time?"

"Fifty-two years, until the cancer took her. But I tell you, that stupid road trip was the toughest ten days of my entire life. If anything had gone wrong—a flat tire, a bad meal, the wrong hotel room... I thought about strangling her more than once."

"But you didn't," Liz said. "You stayed together."

"You're not listening," Mr. Carton said. "We got lucky. It could have ended then, and I wouldn't have had the good life I had with Corrine. Do yourself a favor. Don't risk it. You got a good thing going with this guy, what's-his-name."

"Barrett."

"What kind of a name is that? Don't get me started." Mr. Carton waved a hand. "Trust me. You'll be happier if you don't go. Just be satisfied with what you have, don't ask for more."

Liz pulled the covers up to Mr. Carton's chest and looked at her left hand.

"Get some rest, Mr. Carton," she said. "I need to go make a phone call."

Image: Sunset Cruise by Evan Leeson, August, 2008

"Question of the Day"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:04:00 PDT

QUESTION OF THE DAY
By Curtis C. Chen

"How do you want to die?"

He was just a minor demon, from the look of him: one who could only affect very specific objects or events. They'd infested inner cities all over the world in the last few years. Not usually dangerous, just a nuisance.

What made me stop walking was the way he'd asked the question: not as a threat, but very matter-of-fact-ly, almost like a presenter on some chat show. I looked over his rough horns, brick-coloured skin, and tattered clothes. Black hooves poked out the bottoms of his trouser legs.

"That's quite an unusual question," I said.

The demon blinked at me. "It's the only power I have. To affect how a human life ends. You'd think more people might be interested—I mean, you're mortal, aren't you? You've got to die someday. Why not have some say in how it happens?"

I knelt down and dropped a few coins into his battered tin cup. He nodded thanks at me.

"The thing is," I said, "most people don't like to think about dying. They'd like to believe they'll live forever."

"You're telling me," said the demon. "Smoking, having unprotected sex, driving automobiles—some of you are honestly just asking for it, all the time. Thought I'd have more takers. Turns out I got stuck with a bloody worthless power."

"So how does it work?" I asked. "Let's say, for example, that I wanted to die while shagging a supermodel."

"I'm not a bleeding genie." The demon looked rather offended. "It's not the Make-a-Wish Foundation here. I can only affect natural causes, within your own body, right? Say you don't fancy dying of cancer; I can guarantee you die of some other disease."

Something clicked inside my brain. "Hang on. So if I say I want to die of old age—"

"No, it's got to be a specific ailment."

"All right, let's say smallpox then. You're saying if I ask for that, you can fix it so I won't die of anything else? I'd be able to, for example, smoke all I want and not worry about lung cancer, guaranteed?"

The demon wrinkled his snout. "Well, there is a bit of a catch."

"I knew it." A lot of magic had escaped into the world—along with the demons—when Hell froze over, but it was all pretty dodgy.

"You wouldn't die of lung cancer, but you might still get it," the demon said. "You'd still suffer the symptoms. It's not a free pass to live recklessly, without regard for your health."

"Well, what good is it then?"

"I never claimed it was any good." The demon shrugged. "It's what I can do."

I stood up and pulled out my wallet. "Well, thanks for the chat, anyway. Never actually spoken to a demon before." I dropped a fiver in his cup. "Best of luck."

He smiled and scooped the cash out of the cup. "Cheers, mate. You change your mind, you know where to find me."

I shook my head and walked away.

Image: Scalzi devil (as seen on Whatever and Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded), April, 2007

Clarion UCSD Write-a-Thon 2011 WRAPUP

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 15:35:41 PDT

Dear 2011 Write-a-Thon sponsors:

Thank you for supporting me and the Clarion Foundation with your tax-deductible donations!

We both exceeded our fundraising goals this year--I received a grand total of $602.19 in sponsorships, and Clarion overall raised nearly $16,500 from all Write-a-Thon participants.

As I mentioned in my irregular progress reports, I am continuing to work on my novel this month, and you can follow my further updates.

You will receive a separate e-mail with your unique digital artifact. If you donated enough for one of my 512 incentives, you'll get another message with details on how to redeem that.

Thanks again, and keep reading 512 Words or Fewer!

"Kangaroo Fails"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:07:21 PDT

KANGAROO FAILS
By Curtis C. Chen

I step into the lounge and go blind. I think I make a noise as I close my eyes, and then I notice the overload indicator in the corner of my vision. I move my eyes around until the night vision enhancement switches off. All this I do instinctively, so I don't even feel nervous until I open my eyes and see the three security guards standing in front of me, stunners raised.

The one in the middle and closest to me is a tall woman with cold, pale blue eyes. I wonder if they always look like that, or if it's only when she catches a trespasser. The two men flanking her seem just as unhappy to see me.

"Hands where I can see them," the woman says. Her finger just touching the trigger. She really wants an excuse to shoot me.

I raise my arms slowly. They're much too concerned about a mere trespasser. They were looking for someone. Someone dangerous. The woman is holding her stunner too firmly, and her arms are braced against a nonexistent recoil. She's wishing she had an actual firearm, so she can drop me if I make a move. What the hell is going on?

"Mike, pat him down," she says. The man to her right holsters his weapon and gives me a very thorough frisking. I decide not to make the obvious joke. These guys aren't in the mood.

"He's clean," Mike says.

"Look, I'm sorry," I say, doing my best to sound pathetic. "I—I didn't think anybody would—"

"Shut up," the woman says.

I shut up. She's actually thinking about whether she should shoot first and ask questions later.

"Danny, scan him," she says.

I wonder what kind of scanner a cruise ship's security personnel would have access to. I stop wondering when Danny grabs my head and flashes a penlight in my left eye. The retinal imager strobes for a second, then beeps. Danny looks at it and frowns.

"It's giving me an error," he says.

"Try the right eye," I offer. "I've had surgery." It's not a lie.

"Do it," the woman says.

Danny blinds my right eye for a second, then reads off the result. "Evan Rogers. Passenger list says he's a researcher for the State Department."

The woman seems disappointed, but doesn't lower her stunner.

"What were you doing outside the ship, Mister Rogers?" she asks.

"I just wanted to do another excursion. By myself," I say. "I did a spacewalk yesterday, and it was so amazing, I just wanted to enjoy that—that freedom without a bunch of noisy people all around me. I'm sorry if I caused any trouble."

She mulls this over for a moment, probably trying to decide if I'm lying or not. I'm pretty sure she can't tell. I'm good at my job.

Then she takes one step foward and jams the tip of her stunner up under my chin.

"What the hell were you doing outside the ship?"

Apparently I'm not that good.

Image: Mooki FAIL by Chuck Olsen, February, 2010

The End is Near... for the Clarion 2011 Write-a-Thon

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:00:43 PDT

This is it! The sixth and final week of the Clarion UCSD workshop, and also the last days when you can donate to this year's Write-a-Thon.

Why should you care? I can't say it any better than Mishell Baker already has:
http://clarionfoundation.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/2011-write-a-thon-week-6/

And now, the more specific incentives:

If you donate at least $23 in my name, you'll get the opportunity to name a character in one of my upcoming "512 Words or Fewer" weekly flash fiction stories.
If you donate $47 or more in my name, you can give me a one-sentence story idea, and I'll turn it into a future "512"!

Ready to donate? Go for it!
http://www.theclarionfoundation.org/writeathon/wrtn-writerpage.php?writerID=6880

Of course, you're also free to support the other fine writers also participating. Your entire, tax-deductible amount goes directly to the non-profit Clarion Foundation, which runs annual workshops to train the best and brightest new talent in speculative fiction. We writers are participating to help this genre flourish and grow, and we hope you'll donate because you want the same.

Thanks in advance!

"Kangaroo in the Field"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:04:18 PDT

KANGAROO IN THE FIELD
By Curtis C. Chen

"He's not breathing!" I drop the pressure suit helmet onto the washroom floor, grab the ambassador's shoulders with both hands, and shake him while shouting his name. He doesn't respond.

"Check his pulse," says the female voice in my left ear.

I don't know how Jessica can remain so calm. It probably helps that she only hears me, and can't see the ambassador's face turning bright pink. I decide not to mention it and press two fingers against the side of his neck.

"Pulse is weak. But fast," I say, doing some quick math. "Gotta be at least a hundred, maybe one-twenty."

"Anaphylactic shock," Jessica says. "Did he eat or drink anything in the last few minutes?"

"I don't know. Maybe?" This was supposed to be a simple extraction: meet Ambassador Fisher at an embassy reception, get him into a spacesuit, put him in my pocket, walk out the front door. Another team was transporting his family, but with local security watching Fisher so closely, I was the only one who could smuggle him out.

"You weren't watching him?"

"Nobody said he had food allergies!"

"He doesn't," Jessica mutters.

"Just tell me what to do!" I say.

"Does he have an epi pen?" Jessica asks. She's not talking to me.

A male voice buzzes in my right ear. "Yes. It's in your pocket, Kay," Oliver says. "Chimpanzee with an orange popsicle."

I envision the primate with the frozen treat and open my pocket to the associated location. A one-meter-wide, glowing white disk appears in midair in front of me—the barrier keeps atmosphere from leaking into the pocket, like a pressure curtain. I reach inside, close my hand around a vinyl pouch, and pull it into our universe. Then I close the pocket again.

Three plastic cylinders are secured inside the pouch. I remove one, pop off the black cap covering the tip, and jab it hard against Fisher's thigh. "Nothing's happening!" I try it twice more, making creases in the ambassador's trouser leg. "Damn, this thing is cold."

"Cold?" Jessica says. "How cold?"

"That pouch should have been insulated," Oliver says. "Check the temperature—"

"You're storing medication in hard vacuum without thermal controls?" Jessica says.

"Later!" Oliver says.

"Forty degrees," I say, reading the colored strip on the side of the pen. "The epi's still liquid. And clear."

"The cold could have affected the auto-injector mechanism," Oliver says. "Try the other two."

I do, with the same results. "They're not working either! Is he going to die?"

"No," Jessica says. "I'm looking at the ambassador's medical records. He had a vagus nerve stimulator implanted recently to treat a partial seizure disorder. Kangaroo, I'm going to use your implants to trigger a signal from Fisher's VNS. That should get him breathing again."

"Hang on," Oliver says.

"Put your left hand on the back of his neck," Jessica says.

"You're going to shock his brain?" Oliver says.

"We're going to save his life," Jessica says. "Kangaroo! Are you ready?"

I take a deep breath and place my palm under Fisher's skull. "Clear."

Image: My collection of passport stamps by Ho John Lee, February, 2006

"Rescue Gone"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:04:00 PDT

RESCUE GONE
By Curtis C. Chen

Kevin's hologram materialized in the ship's mess. That was odd; skippers usually displayed rescue holograms on their navigation boards, to provide the most information they could during a limited connection time.

There were several people in the mess. Kevin nodded at the nearest crewman and said, "I'm Warrant Officer Kevin Rhee, beaming from Orion Rescue Buoy 73. What's the nature of your emergency?"

The crewman stood up, fidgeting. "We've had a hull breach."

"Can you show me a damage report?"

"Um, yeah." The crewman gestured to a small screen above a food dispenser.

Kevin walked over to the screen and read the display. "This says you've got two breaches, port and starboard." The locations didn't line up, so it couldn't have been a single, through-and-through meteoroid strike. "What happened?"

The crewman's eyes darted around the mess before he answered. "I don't know. I wasn't on duty when it happened. Sleeping! I was sleeping."

Kevin's right hand drifted to his left wrist, but he hesitated before hitting the kill switch. Regulations were fuzzy about what circumstances would legally release a rescue hologram from his obligation to aid a vessel in distress. And Kevin didn't want to risk innocent lives just because one sailor had drunk too much coffee.

A tall, shirtless man entered the mess. Tattoos covered his skin from the neck down. Just as Kevin recognized the symbol on the man's right bicep, his vision blinked, and he knew he was in trouble.

Kevin slapped his kill switch. Nothing happened.

The tattooed man walked up to Kevin's hologram and grinned. "Welcome aboard. I'm Captain Branson."

The blink in Kevin's vision had been the local computer taking control of his holo-projection. Rescue communication protocols degraded gracefully that way, when circumstances made a continuous data stream impractical—like pirates intentionally jamming the signal.

"Warrant Officer Kevin Rhee," Kevin said. "Orion Rescue Corps, service number—"

"Save it," Branson said. "Tell us about Hemet Interstellar's trading routes."

Kevin shook his head. "I don't know anything about private cargo carriers."

"Do I look stupid?" Branson spat. "Let me explain your situation. You've been downloaded, and we've modified our hologram engine so you can feel things like this."

He slammed a fist into Kevin's face. An impossible, searing pain shot through Kevin's entire body. He yelped and stumbled.

"Painful, isn't it?" Branson said. "We can make you hurt real bad, for a real long time. Tell us what we want to know, and we'll turn off your program."

"Go to hell."

Branson raised an arm. Kevin disappeared before the punch landed and reappeared on the far side of the mess. A murmur rippled through the room.

"I'm inside your computers, remember?" Kevin said. "I can access every system tied to your auto-pilot, including comms and navigation. I can drive this ship wherever I want, and I'm already broadcasting your location to every law enforcement sloop between here and Saturn."

"You can't access shit," Branson said. "Your program's running in a sandbox VM. You're bluffing!"

The ship shuddered. Kevin smiled. "Am I?"

Image: HMS Cornwall on Patrol (UK Ministry of Defence, photo by Dave Jenkins), February, 2011

"Players"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:04:00 PDT

PLAYERS
By Curtis C. Chen

Amanda disliked the boy as soon as he asked, "Is that your robot?"

Next to her, Irwin remained motionless. The hotel lobby was mostly empty; all the other performers and parents were either packed into the auditorium or corralled backstage. Amanda had refused to wait in either darkened space, and nobody was about to say no to a minister's daughter and her bodyguard.

She sniffed and said, "He's not a robot."

The boy rolled his eyes. "Fine. Is that your Hayden Technologies Q-704 synthetic attendant?"

Amanda blinked. "How do you know so much about androids?"

"My family runs a rival robotics company." The boy squinted at Amanda's recital name tag. "Your last name isn't Hayden, is it?"

"No," Amanda huffed. "I am Amanda Cringely."

The boy's eyes widened. "Oh. Sorry. It's just—one of the Hayden girls is about your age, and my mom wouldn't be happy if she found me talking to the enemy." He extended a hand. "I'm Bobby Altschul."

Amanda shook his hand; it would have been rude to refuse. Muffled sounds of applause drifted through the closed auditorium doors. Amanda turned to Irwin and asked, "Who's next?"

"Hilary Kirtman," Irwin replied in his soft, even voice. "You have fifteen minutes before you need to be backstage, miss."

Amanda nodded and turned back to Bobby. "Do the Altschuls and Haydens really hate each other that much?"

"It's not personal," Bobby said. "But consumer robotics is big business. There's a lot of money in exclusive contracts with leading families."

"You sound like a brochure."

"Hey, at least my mom's not here. She'd be doing a hard sell. Altschul means quality, blah blah blah." Bobby shrugged. "Let's talk about something else. What piece are you performing?"

Amanda allowed herself a prideful smile. "Rosen's Twelfth."

Bobby's eyebrows shot up. "All three movements?"

"Of course."

"Guess I'll have time to grab a sandwich, then." Bobby plopped down into an armchair. "I thought Mr. Webb hated Rosen."

Amanda gathered her skirt and sat on a small couch. Irwin followed and stood behind her. "I wanted a challenge. And Mr. Webb didn't want to lose me as a student. What are you playing?"

"Mozart's Piano Sonata Number Eleven."

"The Turkish March?" Amanda wrinkled her nose. "That's not very interesting."

Bobby raised his hands, palms up. "It's something I could memorize. I'm only here because my parents think I need a well-rounded education."

"You don't like music?"

"I love music. I don't love making it," Bobby said.

Amanda felt Irwin's hand on her shoulder. It couldn't have been fifteen minutes already. She turned to reprimand him.

Irwin's glassy eyes had irised all the way open. His other hand closed around Amanda's neck. She couldn't breathe. Her fists smacked helplessly against Irwin's inhuman forearms.

It's not fair, Amanda thought. I would have killed the Rosen.

Irwin's head jerked back, and his hands opened. Amanda fell to the carpet, hurting her knees, and coughed.

Bobby jumped out from behind Irwin, clutching a piece of plastic. He grabbed Amanda's arm, yanked her up, and said, "Run!"

Image: Playing the piano by Nikos Koutoulas, August, 2009

"Drive On"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 00:04:00 PDT

DRIVE ON
By Curtis C. Chen

Debra didn't want to run over the kid, but he wasn't leaving her much choice. Blocking a military convoy wasn't directly threatening, but it was suspicious. It also kept them from moving, and that was dangerous.

She tapped the horn. The boy's mouth flapped, but his words were lost in the noise of the crowd.

"Move!" Debra waved and pointed. The boy pumped his fist in the air. Sometimes Debra thought she'd get more respect if she drove a cart and mule instead of a Humvee.

Base Command had anticipated a protest when the VIP convoy left the airport, but not a mob. The street was clogged with locals chanting, waving signs, and throwing whatever debris they could find at the Americans.

Debra ignored the projectiles. Glass bottles would shatter against the Humvee's energized defense field, and metal objects like tin cans would get deflected. Organic matter sometimes made it through, depending on its composition and velocity, but D-fields had greatly reduced casualties and vehicle damage in the field.

"Attention," said the dash computer. "Vehicle has been stopped for more than sixty seconds. Please check surroundings for possible threats."

"Thanksalot," Debra muttered. Was this just another random crowd, or had someone staged an ambush? She waved at the boy again. He raised his middle finger at her.

Then she saw what he was holding in his other hand.

No. No no no—

Debra switched the horn to ultrasonic and blasted it, forcing everyone outside to move farther away—except the boy. He stared defiantly through the windshield.

His left hand twitched against the trigger plate taped to his palm.

"Sergeant!" came the voice from the backseat. "Is there a problem?"

Debra didn't answer. She was busy with the dash computer, inputting her security override so she could manually redistribute the D-field. The screen flashed yellow, and she stepped on the accelerator.

The Humvee roared forward. The boy threw up his hands and yelped as the front bumper knocked him down. Debra stomped the brakes a split second after the boy's head disappeared from view, then smacked a button to deploy the Humvee's armor skirt.

"Debra!" The voice from the backseat was louder now. "What's going on?"

Debra opened her mouth. A small stone cracked the windshield.

Several pounds of high explosives detonated underneath the vehicle. The force field which Debra had redistributed to the undercarriage shaped the blast downward. The Humvee bounced up, then fell and landed inside the crater with a jolt.

Debra silenced the motion alarms and reset the D-field coverage. A Coke bottle sailed down and broke apart above the hood, glittering green fragments hovering for a moment before sliding away. She felt numb.

You just saved lives, Debra told herself. One dead instead of hundreds. Besides, if they court-martial you... at least you'll get to go home.

A hand touched her shoulder. She turned and stared into the scowling face of Congressman Wright.

"What the hell just happened?" he demanded.

Debra smiled weakly. "Sorry, Dad. Looks like you'll have to do another press conference tonight."

Image: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Tyffani L. Davis, April, 2008

"Everybody Loves Lawyers"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:19:10 PDT

EVERYBODY LOVES LAWYERS
By Curtis C. Chen

Jake disliked the man standing in the lobby immediately. It wasn't the slicked-back hair, the iridescent three-piece suit, or the trendy stubble covering the bottom half of a face too young and round for that look. It was the smell. Jake didn't trust men who wore cologne.

Libby took a single step forward when the elevator doors opened, then froze. Jake nearly ran into her and had to yank his arm back to avoid inappropriate touching. Andy exhaled sharply as his stomach met Jake's elbow.

"Libby?" said the man in the lobby. "Liberty Wasserman?"

Libby recovered from her momentary surprise and walked out of the elevator. Jake and Andy followed and stopped on either side of her, facing the man in the sharkskin suit.

"Roland," Libby said. "I didn't know you were with Levine and Associates."

"You know this guy?" Jake asked Libby.

"You work for Karl Levine?" Andy asked the lawyer. Levine and Associates was the finest criminal defense outfit in the city—more dedicated, more ruthless, and more expensive than any other law firm for a hundred miles.

"Roland Stern," the man said, holding out a business card. Andy took it and held it up to the light. The holographic printing made the text appear to hover above the paper. "I'm doing a pro bono rotation. And yes, I went to law school with Miss Wasserman—it is still 'Miss,' isn't it?"

"It's District Attorney Wasserman," Libby said, with an edge on her voice. She nodded at the folded paper in Stern's left hand. "You've read the people's brief?"

Stern nodded. "Yes, and may I say, it's very generous of you to authorize ROR, considering the unfortunate lapse in judgment my client displayed this morning."

"Save it," Libby said. "We know she's ill, and she's been cooperating. Are you ready to take custody?"

Stern actually winked at Libby. "Are you trying to get rid of me already, counselor?"

Jake saw the muscles in Libby's jaw clenching for a moment before she replied. "Detective Dixon will help you with the paperwork."

Andy looked up from his examination of Stern's business card. "I will?"

"Detective Lanosky and I have an appointment elsewhere," Libby said. "If you'll excuse us."

She pinched Jake in the side and hustled him out the front door of the police station before he could object.

Photo: Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyers 2 by The Reeves Law Group, June, 2011

Clarion UCSD Write-a-Thon 2011

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 01:27:57 PDT

It's that time of year again: when I exhibit absolutely no bitterness about being rejected by Clarion yet again, and help them raise money for future workshops. (Actually, this year I didn't apply to the workshop because I had other things going on in Q1. So I don't even have reason to be bitter. Which I'm not. As I said.)*

http://www.theclarionfoundation.org/writeathon/wrtn-writerpage.php?writerID=6880

Why you should donate: In addition to feeling good about supporting the arts, if I meet both my wordcount goal (likely) and donation target (uncertain), I will send each of my donors a unique, personalized digital artifact. No, I'm not going to tell you what it is; if you want to find out, donate!

ADDENDUM (7/26): Anyone who donates at least $23 will get the opportunity to name a character in one of my upcoming "512 Words or Fewer" weekly flash fiction stories. Donate $47 or more and I'll write a 512 based on any premise you suggest! (This offer is retroactive; I'll be contacting all donors after August 6th.)

As an additional incentive to any fellow Sea Monkeys reading this, I'll match every dollar you donate to Clarion with a contribution to my own #JCCC2 fund. (If I don't end up going on the 2012 cruise, I'll donate that money to an appropriate charity--most likely Child's Play--or just buy myself a pony. Could go either way on that.)

Last year my very generous donors contributed $419, and this year I'm hoping to collect $512 by the end of the six-week period. If my projections are correct, I'll exceed that target by two whole dollars--but only if you donate!

Feel free to follow my progress on LiveJournal and heckle me when I fall behind on wordcount (goal: 1,024 words/day average, 43,008 words total).

* At one point, I had this idea that I'd alternate between fundraising for Clarion West and Clarion UCSD each year, but last weekend's WHO Game took precedence over the start of CW's Write-a-thon, so I'm back shilling for Clarion UCSD.

"Leap Fear"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 00:04:00 PDT

LEAP FEAR
By Curtis C. Chen

Arnold didn't recognize the room, which was odd, since he always reappeared in the same place after a jump. He was standing on a concrete platform. He tapped his wristwatch controls, telling it to sync to any GPS satellites it could find, and noticed a man dozing in one corner.

"Hello?" Arnold stepped off the platform. Except for that, a computer workstation next to the sleeping man, and a single door behind him, the room was empty. "Can you understand me?"

The man jerked awake, saw Arnold, and his eyes widened. He slapped at the computer.

"He is here!" the man shouted. "Watchman to Order! He has arrived!"

Arnold frowned. "You were expecting me? No, okay, sure. Diane must have figured it out." He checked his watch, but it hadn't synced yet. "What year is this?"

Before the watchman could answer, the door opened, and a dark-haired woman entered, followed by five other men. Arnold noticed that they all wore the same clothing: white long-sleeved shirts, black trousers, and a round pendant on a metal chain.

The woman had dyed her hair the same black color as Diane's, and cut it to the same shoulder length. She approached Arnold and bowed. The men behind her followed suit.

"Welcome back, Lord Arnold," the woman said.

"Okay, slow down," Arnold said. "Are you in charge here?"

The woman inclined her head. "I am Diane, prophet of the Order, keeper of the temple."

"Great. What year is it? How far ahead did I jump?"

"By your reckoning, Lord, it is the year three thousand and twelve," she said.

Arnold's head swam for a moment. "I need to sit down."

He was barely aware of the watchman bringing his chair forward and sliding it under Arnold before he fell backward. It took him a minute to stop hyperventilating.

"Okay. You knew I would reappear here, but you didn't know when. So—" Arnold looked up. "How was your, um, Order founded?"

"The first prophet, Diane of Lynwood, charged us with preserving the Stone of Eternity—"

"You realize that's just a concrete block, right?" Arnold said.

"It is a holy relic," the woman said, unfazed. "Your reappearance, Lord, has proven our faith justified."

"Stop calling me 'Lord,'" Arnold said, rubbing his temples. "But if you're going to worship me, here's my first commandment: disband this religious cult. I'm not a god."

The woman frowned. "No, Lord. We do not worship you. You are merely the chosen one."

"The chosen what?"

One of the men brought forward a cloth bundle. The woman unwrapped it and lifted a large curved sword.

"You will battle and defeat our enemies," the woman said. "So it is written."

"Whoa!" Arnold waved his hands. "I'm not battling anyone! I'm just a mechanic! I order you to back off!"

"You are the chosen one," the woman said. The men behind her hefted chains and shackles. "This is your destiny. And we are honored to convey you to the arena."

For the umpteenth time, Arnold wished he could control his jumps.

Photo: concrete texture 4 by coun2rparts, April, 2009

"No Longer Buried"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:04:00 PDT

NO LONGER BURIED
By Curtis C. Chen

Light flared in Ralamudi's eyes. He tried to shield his face, but his arms would not move.

The light went away. His throat felt parched. After a few experimental croaks, he was able to ask: "Where am I?"

"You're alive!" said a male voice with an unfamiliar accent. "Thank the gods! Here, drink this."

Ralamudi felt warm liquid splashing into his mouth. Water. It eased the pain in his throat. Feeling tingled back into his arms.

"We need your help," the voice said. "Your family built the kyu-essem engine, yes? You know how to operate it?"

"What's happened?" Ralamudi asked. "How long have I been asleep?"

The blurry shapes around him started to resolve into recognizable objects, including a bearded man standing in front of Ralamudi's stasis chamber.

"There's no time," the man said. "Can you operate the kyu-essem engine? Can you change the para-meters?"

"Slow down," Ralamudi said. The man's accent made it difficult to understand his speech. "You're talking about the QSM engine? The Quantum Substrate Manipulator?"

"Yes! Yes!" The man cackled. "I knew you'd be able to help. Come. Quickly!"

He grasped Ralamudi's forearm and tugged. Ralamudi grabbed the sides of his stasis chamber and held his ground. He wasn't going anywhere until he understood the situation.

"How long has it been?" Ralamudi demanded. "What happened here?"

His eyes had remembered how to focus, and he saw that the lab was in ruins. None of the normal displays were powered; even the overhead lights were out. The space was illuminated by flickering yellow lanterns.

The bearded man said nothing. Ralamudi shoved him aside and tapped at the nearest control panel.

Only three other stasis chambers were still functioning, and their power reserves read less than twenty percent. Ralamudi checked the relays and saw that the solar chargers were offline. But it should have taken decades to drain those batteries—

Ralamudi turned back to the bearded man.

"How. Long?"

Anger flared for a moment on the man's face. "Over four hundred years, we believe."

Ralamudi's legs felt weak. He braced himself against the wall until the nausea had passed. "We sealed ourselves inside this facility. Nobody knew where we were. How did you find it?"

"It wasn't easy," the man said. "But there were stories, legends, clues. We knew the inventors of the kyu-essem engine lived underground, near a—"

"Who's 'we'?"

"I was part of an archaeological expedition."

"Where are the others?"

"Killed in a tunnel collapse."

Ralamudi hadn't taught university for six years without learning how to read his students. "You're lying," he said.

The bearded man's eyes flashed again. He took a step backward, simultaneously reaching into his jacket to draw out a small gray sphere with a circular opening. He aimed the opening at Ralamudi.

"You killed them," Ralamudi said.

"They had served their purpose." The bearded man's accent was gone, replaced with a tone that dripped arrogance and scorn. "Now it's time for you to serve yours, Doctor."

"And what might that be?"

"You're going to help me kill a god."

Photo: main junction v1 by Sean Head, January, 2008

"Oliver Comes Home"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:51:19 PDT

OLIVER COMES HOME
By Curtis C. Chen

The apartment was cold and dark. Oliver almost called out when he closed the door, and had to remind himself that there was nobody waiting for him at home anymore. He wondered how long it would be before the habit faded.

"Welcome home, Doctor Graves," said a gravelly voice with a British accent.

Oliver yanked open the drawer of the table by the door and reached inside. The pistol was missing. He grabbed the letter opener instead and slapped at the light switch on the wall.

The living room lights came on, revealing a dark-haired man, graying at the temples, wearing a tweed three-piece suit. He sat in Oliver's armchair. His hands were raised next to his shoulders. One hand held Oliver's pistol, slide locked back to show it was not loaded. The other hand held the empty magazine.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" Oliver said. He couldn't decide whether he should advance toward the stranger, or duck into the kitchen and look for a better weapon, or reach for his phone to make an emergency call.

"Just a fellow handgun enthusiast," the stranger said, nodding at the pistol in his right hand. Oliver couldn't quite place the accent—Oxford, maybe. "Tell me, why is a man with an advanced physics degree so interested in keeping and modifying his own small arms?"

"I like working with my hands," Oliver said.

"You could build ships in bottles."

"I also enjoy loud noises."

"You used to go hunting with your family. Isn't that right?"

Oliver gripped the letter opener. "I want to know who you are and what you're doing in my flat."

"I work for the United States government." The stranger slowly lowered his arms and put the empty pistol and magazine on the coffee table.

"You don't sound American," Oliver said.

"Well, that makes two of us," said the stranger. "As I was saying, I work for a federal agency, and I'm in need of some technical expertise." He sat down in the armchair.

"You're a spy," Oliver said.

The stranger's mouth twitched. "Not exactly."

"And I'm not exactly looking for a job."

"You resigned from Berkshire Macro-Composites this morning," the stranger said. "I understand the circumstances were rather unfavorable. You won't receive any severance pay, and more importantly, if you spend too much time alone in this apartment, you will go mad with grief."

Oliver felt the emptiness in the pit of his stomach yawning open. The wall behind the stranger displayed the default screensaver, a vacant beach at sunset overlaid with a clock and calendar. Had it really been only two months since Robbie's death? It felt so much longer. Oliver couldn't summon a memory of the last day he'd felt in the least bit happy.

The stranger was right. An arrogant, presumptuous scofflaw, maybe, but still right.

"What do I call you?" Oliver asked.

"I'm Paul Tarkington," the stranger said. "I work for the State Department."

"And what are you offering?"

Paul smiled.

Photo: Welcome to the Sanitarium by Chris Roberge, March, 2007

"Stronger"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:04:00 PDT

STRONGER
By Curtis C. Chen

"He needs a new skeleton," Gottlieb said.

Schumann glared for a moment, then turned his broad shoulders and sat down behind his office desk.

"In private," Schumann said.

Gottlieb closed the door and dropped the file on the General's desk. "I'll need your authorization for the procedure—"

"I'm not going to authorize the procedure," Schumann said.

Gottlieb blinked. "This is a medical emergency."

Schumann shook his head. "You need to remember who's in charge here, Doctor. I know the guy's your friend, you have history together, but this program is not your own private research lab. If I can't make a case for the operational benefit of a procedure, I can't authorize the funds for it. That's the bottom line."

It took Gottlieb a moment to unclench his jaw. "The operational benefit is that Paul Wilson doesn't die. Or is the United States government no longer in the business of keeping its citizens alive?"

"There's no need for insults, Doctor," Schumann said. He pushed away the file on his desk. "I've seen the updates. Wilson's condition isn't life-threatening. He'll be on his back for a few days until you figure out how to turn down the implants, and then you'll fix him."

"This isn't—" Gottlieb heard himself getting louder, and stopped before he started yelling at a three-star general. "Paul Wilson's enhancile is not purely technological. He has received gene therapy which alters the fundamental biochemical makeup of his muscles. We had to do that in order to keep the myasthenia gravis from destroying his soft tissue."

"I'm not an idiot, Doctor." Schumann stared right through Gottlieb. "Wilson's muscle growth is regulated by the implants. You can tune those to keep him from hulking out."

"We've been trying," Gottlieb said. "It's not working."

"Make it work."

"You tell me how to create some new amino acids and I'll get right on it."

Schumann sighed, opened the file, and scanned through it. "You've done this type of skeletal enhancement before?"

"Dogs and ponies. Literally," Gottlieb said. "But the principle is the same. It will work. I just need a signature."

Schumann closed the folder. "I'll sign on one condition. You need to put Wilson into the field."

Gottlieb shook his head. "He's not ready. We need to—"

"Don't bullshit me, Doctor," Schumann said. "You've released enhanced soldiers onto the battlefield two weeks after surgery. Wilson's been here for years."

"He's not a soldier. He doesn't—"

"I'm not asking him to be a soldier. I'm asking him to serve his country using his unique talents." Schumann opened a drawer and pulled out a reader tablet. "And he won't be alone."

Gottlieb frowned. "What are you proposing?"

"This isn't a proposal, Doctor. This is an order." Schumann pushed the tablet to the edge of his desk. "I'm putting together a task force. FBI's bringing in the candidates now, and they're shipping out as soon as you examine them and certify them fit for duty.

"This department's been making superheroes for three years. It's about time we started using them for something."

Photo: Strength by R.O Mania, June, 2008

"Higher"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:04:00 PDT

HIGHER
By Curtis C. Chen

The girl didn't look happy. Her eyes were red, like she'd been crying. Her forearms were bandaged, and her wrists and ankles were secured to the bed rails with heavy straps.

She was also floating about an inch above the mattress.

"You have noticed that she's levitating, right?" Gottlieb said.

Humphrey rolled his eyes. "Of course we noticed. That's why we called you for a consult."

"Because you've been dealing with a lot of strange cases lately," Iskra said, handing Gottlieb a patient file. "And we're honestly not sure what's going on here."

Gottlieb looked through the observation window at the girl for a few more seconds, wanting to form an opinion before any of her records could bias him toward a particular diagnosis. Then he flipped through the file.

"Where are her parents?" he asked.

"Her mother's with the police," Humphrey said. "The officers found some controlled substances in the apartment when they responded to the 911 call."

"No father on record," Iskra added. "The mother's a sex worker. Got herself fixed after the first unwanted pregnancy."

"But she didn't have an abortion," Gottlieb said.

"Not for lack of trying," Humphrey said.

Gottlieb looked up. "You pulled the mother's file?"

"Yeah. Cops wanted to know if she was clean."

"And why don't I have it here?"

Humphrey frowned. "It's not medically relevant."

"I'll decide that for myself," Gottlieb said. "You want me to consult, you get me all the facts. What kind of sterilization procedure did the mother undergo? Was it surgical?"

"Artificial menopause," Iskra said.

Gottlieb blinked. "What?"

"Endocrine regulation, using a combination of—"

"I know what it is," Gottlieb snapped. He looked at Humphrey. "A teenage girl starts floating in midair, and you don't think it could be hormone-related?"

"That was the mother, not the daughter," Humphrey said. "Implants aren't hereditary. And she didn't even have the procedure until after her daughter was born."

"How soon after the birth? Did she breast-feed her daughter?" Gottlieb asked. "What kind of endocrine implant did she have? Was it HPG axis-limited? Was there a nanotech component to the treatment? I need to see that file."

Humphrey scowled, said, "Doctor Iskra can get it for you," and walked out of the room.

"Nice to see you haven't lost your touch," Iskra said, shaking his head. "I'll get you the mother's medical records. Any ideas in the meantime?"

"Has the girl—what's her name?"

"Caitlin. Caitlin Kearny."

"Has Caitlin complained of nausea, dizziness, or vertigo?"

Iskra nodded. "All three. Do you know what's causing it?"

I hope not, Gottlieb thought. "Is it persistent, or does it come and go?"

"She says it happens whenever she gets intoxicated—usually just alcohol, though she's admitted to marijuana use, too. The discomfort also seems to coincide with her, um, levitation episodes."

Shit. "I'm going to need blood and tissue samples."

Iskra frowned. "What are you testing for?"

I can't tell you that. "I don't know," Gottlieb said.

Photo: High Diver by Evan Leeson, June, 2009

"Faster"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 20 May 2011 00:04:00 PDT

FASTER
By Curtis C. Chen

Gottlieb didn't even see his office door open and close. He blinked, and then there was a man standing next to the bookshelf.

"Can I help you?" Gottlieb asked. It was his standard greeting when he had no idea what was going on. Which seemed to be happening more and more these days.

The man's face seemed familiar. Gottlieb squinted. The man appeared blurry, almost as if he were... vibrating?

"I want my money back," the man said. His voice quavered, like an audio sample being alternately sped up and slowed down.

"I'm sorry," Gottlieb said. "Are you a patient here?"

The man disappeared, then reappeared on Gottlieb's side of the desk. He grabbed Gottlieb's coat and lifted him out of his chair.

"I'm one of your patients!" the man shouted. "Don't you recognize the monster you created, Doctor?"

Gottlieb raised both his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm sorry. Your face—it's—"

"Oscillating?" the man said. "Yeah. My whole body, actually. Forty-five hertz, give or take, depending on my mood." This close, Gottlieb noticed an undertone beneath the man's quavering speech—a low buzzing, like an ungrounded electric appliance. "Don't you remember doing this to me? Or am I just another experiment to you?"

The face snapped into focus for a split second, and Gottlieb recognized the man. "Mr. Kendall? Herman Kendall?"

Kendall's grip relaxed. Gottlieb lowered his hands slowly.

"What did you do to me, Doc?" Kendall asked, his voice winding down.

Gottlieb slipped both hands into his coat pockets, finding his panic button in case he needed to summon help. "Please, sit. Tell me what happened. As I recall, you wanted a synaptic enhancile."

Kendall zipped around the desk and sat down. Now that Gottlieb knew what he was looking at, he could almost visually track Kendall's accelerated motion.

"It didn't work," Kendall said. "Or maybe it worked too well. I don't know. At first, it did what you said: helped me think faster, sped up my reflexes. I was unbeatable on the court. But then I started losing control."

"I warned you," Gottlieb said softly. "It was a highly experimental implant."

"I know!" Kendall stood up. "I know you said there would be side effects, and I was ready for that, but this—" He pounded his temples with his fists. "Nobody's going to let me compete now! You gotta take it out, Doc!"

"We discussed this," Gottlieb said. "The enhancile is a permanent change to your physiology. I can try to tune it, but there's no way to remove it without killing you."

Kendall sat down again. "Jesus, you might as well. My life is over anyway."

Gottlieb picked up a reader tablet from his desk and thumbed it to the personal files he'd been looking at earlier.

"Maybe not," Gottlieb said, holding out the tablet. "There are some people I'd like you to meet."

On the tablet screen were photos of a heavily muscled man, a scowling woman in full body armor, and a teenage girl floating several feet above a sidewalk.

Photo: "The fastest animal on earth..." by Keven Law, February, 2008

"Fearless"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:00:17 PDT

FEARLESS
By Curtis C. Chen

"The doctor must have stepped out," the smiling receptionist said as she walked Alex into an empty office. "Would you wait here, please?"

"Do I have a choice?" Alex said.

"Oh, don't be nervous—"

"Do I seem nervous to you?"

The receptionist continued smiling. "Your consultation is entirely confidential. Doctor Gottlieb's very good. I should know; I'm a former patient."

"Let me guess," Alex said. "Agnosia implant?"

The receptionist turned to look down the hallway. "Oh, here he comes now."

Doctor Gottlieb exchanged hellos with the receptionist, then entered the office and closed the door behind him. He pulled a reader tablet out of his white coat and sat down at his desk.

"How can I help you, Miss... Burstyn?"

"It's Officer Burstyn." Alex held up her badge.

Gottlieb put down the tablet. "I'm sorry, Officer. Do you have a warrant?"

"I'm not here on official business," Alex said. "But it's funny that would be the first thing out of your mouth."

Gottlieb folded his arms. "My patients value their privacy. I perform a lot of sensitive procedures, often involving personal issues—"

"Yeah, I know. That's why I'm here. I want an MGR-5 enhancile."

The doctor blinked. "Excuse me?"

"MGR-5. Metabotropic glutamate receptor five?"

Gottlieb frowned. "You've done your homework. Most people just call it 'the backbone implant.'"

"That could be any number of treatments," Alex said. "I want the gene therapy."

"You'll still need an implant to regulate stress hormone production—"

"And a wire down my spine, yeah, I know."

Gottlieb leaned forward. "There are side effects. Impaired judgment, for example, which could be an issue in your line of work."

"Which is why you'll prescribe drugs to treat those side effects."

"All this will be very expensive."

"I can pay."

"And if you ever want to have children—"

"I don't."

They stared at each other.

"Anything else you want to say to try and talk me out of it?" Alex asked.

"Just this," Gottlieb said. "Medical science has achieved some miraculous things. But everything we do to the human body is still just a hack. The backbone alters a fundamental biochemical response. We evolved to feel fear for very good reasons. I urge you to think very hard before deciding on this."

"Do you know what happened to me last year?"

Gottlieb shook his head.

"My best friend died," Alex said. "He died five minutes after I asked him to marry me. He died because some mincer wanted his wristwatch, and I was afraid I'd get a hand cut off if we fought.

"I would have traded my arm if I knew it would save Ethan's life.

"I didn't want to make a rash, grief-fueled decision, so I waited. Thirteen months. I did the department-mandated therapy, I passed the psych eval. I know what I want. I want to move on, but I don't want to forget.

"I don't ever again want to see somebody die because I was too scared for my own well-being to do something to save them. Now are you going to help me, Doctor?"

Photo: DSC08090 by Phillip LeConte, February, 2011

"Cowboys and Aliens"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 06 May 2011 03:03:50 PDT

COWBOYS AND ALIENS
By Curtis C. Chen

"Thisss isss an exsssellent weap-pon," Halley said.

Eugene had been dealing with Varmits for as long as they'd been in California, and it still gave him pause to hear English words coming out of those tall purple sausages with tentacles. He pushed the Colt revolver back across the wooden counter and hoped his hands weren't shaking too much.

"I'm looking for something more unusual," he said.

"What-t do you mean?"

"Listen, I know you Varmits—"

"Varna'ut," the alien corrected.

"I know you folks make some interesting weapons," Eugene said. "I'm in the market for a repeater. I can pay."

Halley remained still for a few more seconds, then said, "Your name isss Eugene C-Creason."

Eugene blinked. "Yes."

"You p-play with children at-t ssstables."

Eugene felt his palms sweating. "Sometimes. It's just cards. No gambling."

The alien finally moved, twitching its upper tentacles. "My offssspring enjoy p-playing Go Fish." It paused for a second. "P-please wait-t here."

Halley disappeared into the back room of the small store. Eugene glanced out the window. Still no sign of Claud or Samuel. Maybe they'd changed their minds.

No, I wouldn't be that lucky.

Something landed on the counter with a heavy thud. Eugene turned back and saw a hunk of gray metal slightly longer than his forearm. There was a small lever that might be a trigger, and the pipe protruding from one end looked like a gun barrel, but all the other shapes attached to the frame were unfamiliar.

"P-P90," the Varmit said.

Eugene frowned. "Looks like something out of a rail yard."

The Varmit tapped the metal shape. "Barrel here. Sssight here. T-trigger here." It pulled out the long translucent box below the sight. The material looked like resin. "Ammunition here."

"The bullets don't go inside?"

"Met-tal c-coil in magazine ap-plies p-presssure. Ssspiral feed-d ramp-p loads ammunition int-to chamber."

Eugene had never seen alien machinery up close, and for a moment he forgot why he was there. The sound of Claud and Samuel crashing into the store reminded him.

"Down on the ground!" Claud shouted.

"Put your hands up!" Samuel yelled. "Eugene, where's the safe?"

"In the back," Eugene said.

Halley turned splotches that could have been eyes toward Eugene. "Why d-do you d-do thisss?"

"I'm sorry," Eugene said, his voice shaking.

"I found it!" Claud called from the back room. "But I don't see no weapons!"

Samuel waved his revolver. "Get back there."

Eugene followed Halley into the back room. Floating in midair between stacks of wooden crates was a glowing rectangle which framed a vision of another storeroom.

"You see?" Claud gestured at the glowing image. "Just a bunch of boxes."

"Inside the boxes." Eugene pointed. "There. The one marked 'P90.'"

Samuel was mesmerized by the view, swaying back and forth to see different angles on it. "It's like a window to another place."

"Another t-time," Eugene heard Halley say just before it shoved the three humans through the portal.

Photo: Colt Second Model Dragoon Revolver 1848-1860 by Michael Carøe Andersen, June, 2010

"To Serve Man"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 00:04:00 PDT

TO SERVE MAN
By Curtis C. Chen

Jerry nearly jumped out of his skin when the robot spoke to him.

"Good evening, sir. Do you require assistance?"

Don't panic, Jerry thought. If this was a security model, you'd be on the floor already. So it's a servant, right? Programmed for convenience. Helpful.

He couldn't risk speaking, in case it tried to recognize his voice after failing to match his face. But he had to give some kind of response.

"Mmm-hmm," Jerry said, keeping his lips closed and nodding his head.

The robot was silent for a moment, then said, "We were told to expect you, sir. Please, follow me."

The bot turned and rolled away. Jerry exhaled. Obviously the bot wasn't linked to house security; it assumed Jerry had used a key, instead of bypassing the door circuit. He followed the bot through the kitchen. Sitting on the dining table was a crate filled with bubble-wrapped bronze shapes.

Modern art, he thought. Must be worth a fortune. Why are they all packed up like this?

"Missus and Master Calthorpe forgot this crate was still in the attic. Are these the correct items, sir?"

"Mmm-hmm." Good old servant bots. Jerry would have to do some legwork to find the right fence, but he was sure these hunks of metal would be worth more than the jewelry and bank notes he'd hoped to find here.

The bot lifted the crate. "Where is your vehicle, sir?"

Damn. "Mmm-mm," Jerry said.

The bot paused for a moment. "Do you have a vehicle here, sir?"

"Mmm-mm." Jerry shook his head vigorously.

"Very well, sir," the bot said. "Master and Missus have authorized their guests to use the Jaguar for any transportation needs."

Jerry clapped a hand over his mouth to contain his excitement.

"This way, sir."

The bot led him to the garage and loaded the crate into a shiny green Jaguar sedan. Jerry sat down in the driver's seat and ran his hands over the steering wheel. He'd never felt real leather before.

"Master and Missus are expecting you back at the charity auction," the bot said before closing the door. "Your destination has already been programmed into the navigation computer."

"Mm-hmm."

The Jag pulled out of the garage, and the door closed on the servant bot. Jerry looked over the dashboard, searching for an access panel to override the auto-nav.

He couldn't find one. He pried off the plastic cover below the steering column. There were no wires; instead, he was faced with a mass of tubes pulsing with yellow liquid.

"What the hell?" he said out loud.

The dashboard beeped. "Command not recognized," said a female voice.

Jerry sat up and looked at the navigation display.

CURRENT DESTINATION: POLICEMAN'S BALL

"No!" He pounded his fists on the dash. "Stop! Pull over! Emergency! STOP!"

"Command not recognized. Voice authorization failed."

The doors wouldn't unlock, and cutting the yellow tubes just spilled sour-smelling liquid all over the floormat. Jerry clawed at the breakproof windows as the car sped down the road.

Photo: Robot After All by Théo La Photo, April, 2008

"Godwin's Backstory"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:04:00 PDT

GODWIN'S BACKSTORY
By Curtis C. Chen

The elevator ride up to the seventh floor seemed to take forever. Michael's hands weren't cuffed, but the three armed guards behind him and Denford made it clear that Michael was not a welcome guest.

Michael said, "Do you remember the first time you learned about 'Godwin's Law?'"

Denford kept staring straight ahead. "I thought you only reported to the old man now."

"I'm not reporting," Michael said. "We're just chatting."

Denford didn't reply.

"I hear it happened on the Russian Far East desk," Michael continued. "A local sport diver sensed Teutonic wards all over a shipwreck near Sakhalin. Nothing of obvious intel value, so nobody was very interested at first—except one World War Two enthusiast, an up-and-coming CIA supervisor named Theodore Godwin.

"It turned out that his division was trying to set up a completely unrelated operation near Vladivostok, and the only reasonable way to get their agents on site was by submarine out of Japan. But it was a high-risk, low-reward situation, and nobody wanted to stick their neck out for it. Godwin really believed, but he didn't have the clout to make it happen.

"Anyway, a few days later, another wire comes across the desk with new information about the Sakhalin shipwreck, and guess what? Somebody who saw the diver's photos is pretty sure that was a Nazi vessel, and there could be military artifacts on board. Maybe even some of Hitler's amulets.

"Well, all of a sudden, everyone and his dog is rushing to greenlight a recovery operation, and Godwin says you know, as long as we're out there near Sapporo with a submarine anyway, why don't we just go ahead and run this op that my division's been trying to clear for the last two months?"

Denford finally turned to look at Michael. "Yeah, I know the story. There's nothing in the shipwreck but some fish skeletons, but the old man lucks out and snags some prize intel on Soviet Fleet deployments. He gets on the fast track to director."

"And nobody could ever prove that Godwin doctored those shipwreck reports, or persuaded someone to do it for him, but that's irrelevant. The real lesson was, if you can draw some kind of line, no matter how thin or how convoluted, that connects your proposal to Hitler, your chances of approval magically and dramatically improve." Michael shrugged. "Godwin's Law."

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Denford and Michael marched forward, followed by the guards.

"Was there a point to all that?" Denford asked. "Or were you just running your mouth?"

"We're never going to catch Hitler," Michael said. "We missed our chance in 1945, and it'll never come again. But he's actually more valuable this way.

"As long as there's still some mystery surrounding him, we'll want to know more. And some people can use that. They can sell the question without ever worrying what the answer is going to be."

The double doors to the director's suite opened.

"Sometimes," Michael said, "we don't really want to know the answers."

Photo: 1938 German Nazi Coin by Kevin Dooley, November, 2009

"Inconvenient Proposal"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:04:00 PDT

INCONVENIENT PROPOSAL
By Curtis C. Chen

Janet looked where Tim was pointing. The giant overhead screen flickered, and the magnified view of the arena stage disappeared, replaced by glowing letters on a black background:

JANET
WILL YOU
MARRY ME?
TIM

The audience began applauding and cheering. Janet saw people looking around, searching for the couple who had just been put on display. She looked over at Tim. He was grinning like an idiot.

Tim grabbed Janet's left hand in his right. His other hand disappeared into a jacket pocket.

Don't turn on the spots, Janet thought. Don't light us up.

A blazing white lamp swung around and centered its beam on Janet and Tim. Janet yanked her hand out of Tim's grasp, jumped out of her seat, and ran for the nearest exit.

She didn't stop until she reached the women's bathroom downstairs. Before the door could swing shut, Tim followed her in, holding an open ring box in one hand. Janet kept her back to him, but she saw the glinting diamond reflected in the mirror above the sink.

"What's wrong?" Tim asked. "I thought you'd be happy—"

"I was," Janet said. "Bringing me to the concert was a nice surprise." She pointed at the ring. "That wasn't."

Tim pressed his lips together. "Are you saying no?"

"We're not doing this here," Janet said.

"I thought you'd be happy," Tim repeated, staring at the floor.

Janet turned, stepped over to Tim, and placed both hands on his shoulders.

"I am happy with you. With what we have," she said. "Why do you want to change things?"

"I don't want to change anything. I want us to stay together." Tim made a hiccuping sound that might have been a laugh. "For as long as we both shall live." He held up the ring.

Janet shook her head. "Christ, how much did you spend on that rock?"

Tim smiled. "You like? Two carats."

Before Janet could say anything else, the diamond moved in its setting, making a high-pitched scraping noise. Tim dropped the box, put his hands over his ears, and fell to his knees.

Janet backed away and raised her arm a fraction of a second before the diamond lanced through the air at her. The face of her wristwatch took the impact, but the force sent her crashing backward into the bathroom sink. She cursed in an alien language.

The crystal embedded in her watch was cracked and glowing. The watch threw off sparks, straining to sustain its force field. The battery wouldn't last long.

Janet yanked off the watch and threw it into a wastebasket. She dumped out her purse and stabbed her cell phone with one high heel. She rolled Tim's unconscious form onto his side, pulled the cash out of his wallet, and tucked the bills into her bra.

"Sorry, love." She planted a kiss on Tim's forehead. "I'm not the one for you."

The wastebasket started to rattle. Janet picked up her weapon and checked its charge. She headed upstairs, ready to run or shoot.

Photo: A Proposal in the Museum by National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution, May, 2010

"Post-Apocalyptic Day Care"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 00:20:22 PDT

POST-APOCALYPTIC DAY CARE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Sorry, Mrs. H," Sarah said. "We're full today."

The baby's weight on Bianca's hip suddenly felt like a crushing burden.

"I can pay you extra—"

"You know how this works, Mrs. H. I've only got so much space here, and it's first come, first served. If you can't take Jacob in to work with you, I can recommend another day care down the road."

"He's not happy anywhere else," Bianca said. "Please. Can't you make an exception, just this once? I promise we'll be on time tomorrow."

"Then I'll take him tomorrow," Sarah said. "If I make an exception for you, for anyone, the other moms will hear about it, and then they'll all want some kind of special treatment. That's a slippery slope."

"But Jacob needs medication!"

"Every kid here needs medication. Heck, I gotta take tannic acid every three hours or I fall over."

Bianca jerked back involuntarily. "You're GI-compromised?"

Sarah shrugged. "The comet did something to everyone, right?"

"I didn't know."

Sarah paused, then raised one hand, palm up. "Maybe you can call in sick today. Stay home and take care of Jacob yourself? Could be good for both of you."

Bianca shifted her stance, and the strap of her messenger bag bit into her shoulder. She thought about the laptop inside and the presentation she had to give in less than an hour, and she bristled at this twentysomething girl giving her parenting advice.

"Suppose I just leave him here." Bianca took another step toward the house. "You'd have to take care of him, wouldn't you? You'd be obligated."

Sarah shook her head. "Don't do that, Mrs. H. If you abandon your child, I'll have to call the authorities, and you'll have to sit through a CPS interview and fill out a bunch of paperwork to get him back."

Bianca felt her skin flush under her collar. "I've known you since you were in diapers, Sarah. Your mother was my best friend. Does our relationship mean nothing to you?"

"You don't get it, Mrs. H," Sarah said. "This is about civilization. This is about making rules and following them. If we can't do that, if we can't maintain order in our society in the face of a little hiccup like this, how do you expect humanity to endure after the next big disaster hits?"

"Don't lecture me," Bianca snapped. "You don't know anything about the real world. Rules get bent and broken all the time."

"Maybe in your world, Mrs. H," Sarah said, "but I'm trying to make a better one. Now please excuse me, I've got kids to watch and you need to get to work."

Sarah closed the door. Bianca fumed on the porch for a moment, then looked down when Jacob tugged at her sleeve. She couldn't help smiling back at his upturned face.

She's right, Bianca thought. I want you to live in a better world. I do.

She turned and walked back to the car while dialing her phone.

Photo: The Quad by Bill Barber, July, 2007

"Fools for Love"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:38:07 PDT

FOOLS FOR LOVE
By Curtis C. Chen

"I need to speak to her. Now," Rebecca said.

The doctor shook his head. "Look, Miss Sachs—"

"Special Agent Sachs."

"Miss Cargill is very weak. We're lucky she didn't lose consciousness during delivery. You can arrest her tomorrow."

"I don't want her, I want the father. He's a fugitive. She may know where he's going, and we need to catch him before he crosses a border."

The doctor hesitated. "Nurse Lemperson will accompany you."

"Fine."

Lemperson led the way into April Cargill's darkened room. Rebecca couldn't help noticing how young this girl was—just like all the others.

Having her baby taken away from her was going to be a tremendous shock, but she'd have the rest of her life to get over it. Rebecca tried to convince herself that would be enough.

She shook April's arm gently. "Miss Cargill?"

April opened her eyes. Rebecca held up her FBI badge. "I need to ask you about Charles Risznowski."

April smiled. "Is he here?" Lemperson shook her head. "I wish he could see our baby."

"Did he tell you he was coming back?" Rebecca asked.

"Oh, no," April shook her head. "He was clear about that from the beginning. I just hoped—wow. I'm really dizzy. Is that normal?"

"Just keep your head still," Lemperson said. "It'll pass."

That's what you get for incubating a half-alien baby, Rebecca thought. "April. Did Charles say where he was going? How he was planning to travel? Airplane? Train?"

"No. Is he in some kind of trouble?"

"He may have information pertaining to a matter of national security." Rebecca leaned forward. "It's very important that we find him. And we can give him the good news about your baby. It's a boy, right?"

"Yeah," April said, smiling as if the world were a beautiful place. "I'm naming him Charlie."

Rebecca forced herself to smile. "That's a good name."

"I'm sorry," April said. "Charles never said anything specific about where he was going. But it sounded like it was going to be a long trip. He said he needed money."

Of course he did. "How much did you give him?"

"I didn't have any cash handy," April said, "so I just gave him my debit card and PIN number."

Rebecca contained her excitement, calmly patted April's hand, and stood up slowly. "Thank you, April. Get some rest."

She nodded at Lemperson, walked out of the room, and ran to the elevators, dialing her phone.

"Center, Sachs," Rebecca said. "I need live tracking on all bank and credit card activity for April Cargill." Rebecca stepped inside an elevator and pressed the lobby button.

"Risznowski's using her accounts?" said the voice on the phone.

"Yeah. With any luck, he'll lead us to his buddies before they skip this dimension. And listen," Rebecca said as the doors closed, "the mother's not going anywhere. Wait twenty-four hours to take the baby. Hospital staff's already suspicious, and we don't want to cause a scene."

"Delay extraction? Are you sure?"

Rebecca closed her eyes and saw April's innocent, trusting smile. "I'm sure."

Photo: Newborn Life by Roger Penguino, January, 2010

"Shoot First"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:04:00 PDT

SHOOT FIRST
By Curtis C. Chen

"Police Inspector!" shouted the voice inside Takeshi's head. "This man is not our suspect!"

Takeshi relaxed his trigger finger. If Buki had decided the man was not a threat, it would not fire a round no matter what Takeshi did.

"Down on the ground!" Takeshi said out loud.

The man in the hooded sweatshirt, baggy jeans, and sneakers looked around, eyes frantic. The alley had ended in a blank wall. There was nowhere to run.

"I repeat, this man is not our suspect!" Buki said. Takeshi ignored his weapon.

The man dropped to his knees, sobbing. Takeshi pulled a pair of handcuffs off his belt with one hand. "Put your hands on top of your head," he said.

"I am innocent," the man said.

"He is not our suspect!" Buki said.

"Be quiet," Takeshi said to both of them.

He handcuffed the man, dragged him to the unmarked police car at the mouth of the alley, and put him in the backseat. Takeshi closed the door and snapped his pistol back into the shoulder holster which doubled as an antenna and charging station.

"Diagnostic running," Buki said. "Testing audio transmission. Police Inspector Yamashita, if you can hear me, please respond—"

"I can hear you just fine, Buki," Takeshi said, stepping away from the car. "I did not feel a need to respond earlier."

"So you heard me say this man is not our suspect." The computer inside Takeshi's service weapon sounded more than a little hurt.

"Whoever he is, he resisted arrest. That gets him a trip to the station." Takeshi paced beside the car. "Did you compare his face to the police library?"

"Yes," Buki said. "I had ample time to perform the search while you were arresting him for no good reason."

"Innocent men do not run from the police," Takeshi said. "But I take it from your tone that his record is clean?"

"Maybe you should see for yourself."

Takeshi sighed and took his augear visor out of his jacket pocket. He fitted the translucent yellow panel over his eyes and waited for Buki to power up the display.

After a moment, two images glowed into being, appearing to float half a meter in front of Takeshi's face. The image on the left showed a hyper-color image of the man he had just arrested, as recorded by the sensors built into Buki's front sight assembly. The image on the right was a magnified scan of a student ID from Kyoto University, showing a photograph of the same man and naming him as Daijiro Nakamura.

"I have already cross-referenced with public records," Buki said. "This man is the second son of Genkichi Nakamura, CEO of Transfuture Technologic. Daijiro has no connection to our primary suspect or his associates. And considering the Nakamura family reputation, it is unlikely that Daijiro would involve himself with such people."

"Thank you for the information, Buki," Takeshi said, "but you still have a lot to learn about police work."

Photo: SIG Sauer P220 by Ken "kcdsTM," January, 2008

"It's Better to be Lucky"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:04:00 PDT

IT'S BETTER TO BE LUCKY
By Curtis C. Chen

Everything smelled like smoke. Jenna wondered how she was going to get it out of her clothes and hair—like all Regulans, Harold would be able to identify the hydrocarbons and know exactly where she'd been. She hadn't wanted to use the casino, but Dr. Caffrey had insisted it would be the fastest way to launder his payments to her.

Jenna pushed the flashing button on the slot machine again. She just had to lose the rest of this stake to fake a gambling habit, and she could go home.

A row of glittering sevens ratcheted into place, and the machine went crazy.

***

The manager's office smelled of old wood and oiled leather. Jenna wondered if he was going to comp her a room. She had heard casinos sometimes did that for high rollers. That would be convenient; she could get cleaned up without putting suspicious motel charges on her credit card.

A stocky man came in and sat down behind the desk. He smiled at Jenna with dead eyes.

"Hello, Mrs. Pokorny. I'm Mr. Wick. It seems we have a problem."

"Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry—"

"No, Mrs. Pokorny, nothing like that. In fact, the casino apologizes for any inconvenience you may suffer as a result of this incident."

Jenna couldn't read Wick's face at all. That scared her. "What do you mean?"

Wick sighed. "That slot machine downstairs should not have paid out for you. Not your fault, of course; these things are random. But it does complicate things."

"I was supposed to lose money today," Jenna said, understanding. "Not win it."

"Exactly," Wick said. "This is not a situation we anticipated."

"But I don't want the money," Jenna said. "You can keep it. Dr. Caffrey's going to pay me more than enough just for scanning Harold's brain."

"Well, that's very generous of you, Mrs. Pokorny," Wick said, "but all our slots are wire-locked. The gaming commission already knows the Seventh Heaven machine has paid out. They'll want to know who won the jackpot, for tax records."

Jenna's heart sank. "That's going to be public information?"

Wick nodded. "Now, there may be an easy way to resolve this situation. If we can identify some service you can provide to us in exchange for the balance of your winnings, we'll be happy to call it even. But I can't imagine what you could do that might be worth five point three million dollars to my organization." He paused. "Except for one thing."

Jenna swallowed the lump in her throat. "My husband."

"No, Mrs. Pokorny! We'd never ask you for that. Who do you think we are?" He leaned forward. "You can keep your husband. We just want one of his Regulan friends, alive, for Dr. Caffrey and his associates to study. Just one alien. Maybe an in-law you don't like, somebody who won't be missed. We're not picky. Do you think you could do that for us, Mrs. Pokorny?"

Jenna felt lightheaded. She saw hazy spots flashing around Wick's head, and then she fainted.

Photo: Slot machines! by David Zeuthen, September, 2006

"Touchy"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:04:00 PST

TOUCHY
By Curtis C. Chen

The beeping sounds were driving her crazy.

"Stop messing with that," Helen said. "You don't know what it does."

"It's a control panel, obviously," said Ted. "I think we're supposed to break out of here. Why else would they put controls inside a jail cell?"

"They're frickin' aliens," Helen said. "How do you know why they do anything?"

"Please, honey," said Ted, "this is what I do for a living. Just let me figure it out."

Helen counted to ten while Ted continued prodding at the control panel. The smooth black surface lit up with different symbols every time he touched it. As Helen watched, Ted tentatively pressed two blinking symbols simultaneously.

The entire panel turned white, and the walls emitted a high-pitched screech. Helen stuck her fingers in her ears until the noise stopped.

"Please don't do that again," she said.

"I've almost got it," Ted said. "There's a pattern to how the symbols change. It's reset to the original state now—that sound was probably intended as a penalty, like shocking a lab rat when it pushes the wrong button."

"Can we take a step back here? Even if you do get the door open, what then?"

"We figure out where we are," Ted said, as if it were obvious. "Then we escape. Get back home."

"Suppose we're on a spaceship and already millions of miles from Earth," Helen said. "What then?"

"We'll figure it out," Ted said. "Why are you being such a pessimist?"

"If they went to all this trouble to trap us and test us, they've probably anticipated what we might do and prepared for it."

"So you just want to wait in here until they decide we're not interesting anymore? Maybe, if we're not useful to them, they'll just kill us. And weren't you the one saying we can't know what aliens might be thinking?"

Helen couldn't let him continue. "I'm pregnant."

Ted blinked. "What? Since when?"

"And I'm pretty sure it's not yours."

"Well, yeah," Ted said.

"Don't just dismiss this!" Helen snapped. "This isn't some problem you can solve and then just get on with your life. This is life. It's our life."

Ted folded his arms. "So who's the father?"

Helen chuckled. "Yeah, funny story. I think it's the alien flying this ship."

"What?"

"They don't want you, Ted," Helen said. "We were abducted because I'm carrying a half-alien baby."

"Why would they take both of us?" Ted asked.

Helen stared at him. "You're saying it would have been better if I'd gone missing without any explanation?"

"Well, it wouldn't have been a total surprise."

Helen bit her lip. "Fuck you, Ted. In fact, you know what? It's over. We're done." She banged a fist on the door. "Hey! Let me out of here!"

"Stop that!" Ted pulled her back. "We don't know how they'll react to a display of violence."

Helen punched Ted in the face. Then she pulled the engagement ring off her finger and threw it at him.

"Well," she said, "I guess we're going to find out."

Photo: Jasper quite literally biting the hand that feeds him, February, 2010

"Godwin's Law"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:51:14 PDT

GODWIN'S LAW
By Curtis C. Chen

"Welcome back, sir," said the gargoyle as Michael stepped through the security gate. He nodded at the creature, not meeting its bottomless gaze, and retrieved his keys from the stone dish.

Michael walked to the memorial wall. The flags were as he remembered—USA on the left, CIA on the right—but the field of black stars floating above the white marble had multiplied. He now counted more than a hundred stars, each one representing a company employee who had died in the line of service.

He stepped closer and looked at the Book of Honor, framed in steel and glass below the starfield. Less than half the gold sigils painted in the book's pages had names written next to them, either in English or Runic.

Is your name in here, Linda? Are you one of these stars?

"Michael," said a gravelly voice behind him. "How've you been?"

Robert Denford didn't look like he'd aged a single day since Michael left the agency. The two men shook hands coolly. "Still suck at golf. You?"

"Took up bowling," Denford said. "Let's go to the archives."

Michael followed Denford into an elevator. Denford pushed a button.

"I hear you made director," Michael said as the doors closed.

Denford shrugged. "War is good for business."

***

Denford opened a portal before the elevator reached the basement. There was no way to tell where this archive was; CIA had secret underground caches all over the world.

The two men walked down a long aisle of bookshelves that looked as if they had grown right out of the rough-hewn rock walls. Michael watched Denford pull one shelf out from the wall and unfold it into an impossible space. They stepped inside, and Denford parted another set of shelves. Michael saw labels reading MONGOLIA and TIBET on his way into a closet walled by what looked like multicolored curtains, but were actually floor-to-ceiling file volumes.

"Curtain files?" Michael looked around in awe. "Nobody's used these since the 1940s."

"World War II." Denford tugged a cloth line, and the material poured into his hand and became a hardbound book. "This is why we're here."

Michael read the cover. "Hitler's daughter? You're joking, right?"

"The old man wants complete discretion. That's why I called you."

"I'm retired," Michael said. "You can get someone more expert to tell you, authoritatively, that this is a crock. Something the Third Reich made up to scare the Allies as a last resort."

"So you've heard the stories."

"Yeah. Nazis raping Romani and Jewish prisoners, trying to breed their supernatural powers into the master race. It didn't work."

Denford held up a modern file folder, bordered in red-and-white eyes-only logograms. "There's evidence that it did."

"If you actually had convincing proof, you'd be talking to the JIC."

"You're right," Denford said. "It's promising, but not convincing. We need someone to run it down. Quietly. The old man trusts you."

"And no one would suspect an elderly college professor."

Denford smiled. "Everybody fights."

Michael took the file. "Nobody wins."

Photo: CIA memorial wall, date unknown (2004?)

"That's Entertainment"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:04:00 PST

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT
By Curtis C. Chen

Kimberley wasn't expecting to see anyone in the observation lounge at the end of the hallway. She always came here to eat her lunch, secluded and safe from the constant barrage of requests she received at her desk.

Her producer, Dawna, sat in front of the one-way mirror that looked into the faux living room, where a viewer sat in front of a tabula, wearing some kind of wire-studded helmet.

"Sorry," Kimberley whispered.

Dawna waved her inside. "It's okay! Come here. You might as well see this now."

Kimberley closed the door and sat down. The display on Dawna's netpad pulsed in sync with the lights on the viewer's helmet. The tabula surface showed a swirl of colors—leakage from the alien energy impulses that the coupled viewer perceived as a coherent vision, showing him whatever he wanted to see and hear.

"What's he watching?" Kimberley asked.

"Next episode of Atlanta Knights," Dawna said.

"Didn't we already focus that?"

"Not with the helmet."

"Yeah, what is that thing, anyway?"

Dawna smiled and touched her netpad. The instrument readouts disappeared, replaced by a dreamlike scene of two police detectives running down a dark street, chasing a hoodlum.

Kimberley's eyes widened. "Is that his show?"

Dawna nodded. "The helmet's reading his brain waves and reconstructing what his visual cortex is processing. We can see the exact vision he's getting from the tabula. And we can record it. No more sub-literate show summaries written by Joe Six-Pack!"

"That's—that's amazing." Kimberley's pulse quickened. "Where did you get the helmet? I've never even heard of this tech."

"My brother-in-law, Elliott. He's a neurologist," Dawna said. "And that's my cousin in the chair. The helmet is a prototype. Elliott's company is trying to get FDA approval for diagnostic use—actually seeing a patient's hallucinations, stuff like that.

"But we don't need approval to use it for non-medical purposes. We just need a waiver. And you know I can get a schmuck to sign a contract."

Kimberley's heart sank. "I guess I should update my resume."

"Are you kidding, Hollywood?" Kimberley hated that nickname. "I'm not watching all this crap myself. Somebody has to write the coverage. And you can actually spell."

The images on the netpad shifted to a new scene. One of the detectives pulled his gun, shot the hoodlum dead, then turned the gun on his partner, who inexplicably started taking off his clothes. Kimberley waved a hand to get Dawna's attention.

"Um, Dawna?"

"What?" Dawna looked down at the netpad and grimaced. "Oh, Jesus. You see what I mean? Most people's fantasies are completely fucked up." She shook her head and stood up. "Call me when he's done watching. I promised my aunt I'd take Dirty Harry to lunch at the Grove."

After she left, Kimberley put her earpiece back in and made a phone call, trembling and smiling.

"Hey, Geoff? Kimberley. Listen, I've got something you're gonna love. Yeah. You can fire all your so-called actresses. This thing is going to revolutionize porn."

Photo: atlanta sunset by Ed Schipul, May, 2010

"Assassination"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:19:10 PDT

ASSASSINATION
By Curtis C. Chen

"So," Jake said, "who killed Abraham Lincoln?"

"And what's his full name?" Andy asked.

"No ID on the body," said the uniform standing just inside the police tape. His name tag said HOLLISTER. "Found the hack license under the front seat. Looked like the killer was in a hurry to leave."

Andy nodded. "So, robbery?"

Hollister shrugged. "Whoever killed him did clean out the car. Glovebox was empty. Took his wallet, cell phone, GPS—even the meter." He pointed to a blank spot on the dashboard.

"Why would anyone take the taxi meter?" Jake asked.

"Data," Andy said. "The meter tracks how far the cab's traveled. Even without the GPS, we could have guessed at where Abe picked up his last fare."

"He's got to have a chip, right?" Jake said. "Where's the ME?"

"Already been here," said Hollister. "Didn't have the right scanner. Said we'd have to wait for INS to show up."

"That's going to take all day," Jake grumbled.

Andy bent down to look at the wrinkled mass of the dead Varna'ut behind the wheel of the taxicab. The alien would have stood over seven feet tall fully upright, but they compressed their boneless bodies to fit into human vehicles. This one had kept its lower body extended, to reach the control pedals and to put its tentacles at the same height as the steering wheel.

Andy reached into the car and touched one of the tentacles still wrapped around the wheel. He pressed his gloved fingers into the spongy flesh and watched as the purple inkblots in the translucent gray skin broke into smaller bubbles.

"Still warm," Andy said.

He followed the ripples of purple up the tentacle into the Varna'ut's torso, and saw a small slick of something brown and opaque—almost like mud—underneath the spot where the limb attached to the body, where a human's armpit would have been.

"Son of a bitch," Andy muttered. "Hey, Jake!"

The other detective walked around the car, followed by Hollister, and leaned over to look where Andy was pointing. "What am I looking at?"

"You see that brown spot there, right under the base of the tentacle?"

"Please tell me that's not anything that starts with 'p'."

"Regurgitation," Andy said. "It's how the Varna'ut greet each other. Honest Abe knew his murderer."

"That's a bit of a reach, isn't it?" Jake squinted down at his partner. "I mean, I say hello to the greeter at Wal-mart, doesn't mean I know the guy."

"This is gastric secretion," Andy said. "Stomach acid. You can smell it, can't you?"

"I'm trying not to."

"Only friends and family get actual regurgitation. Strangers are greeted with saliva—just spit, not vomit."

Jake frowned. "Is there some reason you know so much about this?"

"My kid sister's dating a Varna'ut."

"You're joking."

Andy stood up. "You know, it could be worse. She needs to get the rebellious streak out of her system, and at least an alien can't knock her up."

"Okay," Hollister said, "now I'm going to be sick."

Photo: detail from Taxi queue at King St Station by Oran Viriyincy (via GIMP's "Newsprint" filter), April, 2010

"My Funny Valentine"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:04:00 PST

MY FUNNY VALENTINE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Why did Mary give you a picture of a rake?" Fred asked.

"Why did Mary give me poisonous cupcakes last week?" John examined the crude drawing. The medium appeared to be permanent marker on Galactic Survey Corps stationery. "I'm not sure that is a rake. Could be a hand."

"A hand with nine fingers."

"The Gorshiom aren't good with numbers. And we introduced them to representational art, remember?"

"Maybe it's edible. All her other gifts have been edible."

"That's debatable, especially after those cupcakes."

"I guess she's moved on to more durable tokens of her affection."

"We can only hope." John dropped the picture into a plastic bin labeled MODERN ARTIFACTS. "Maybe I can ask Mary to help us dig."

"Speaking of digging," Fred said, "where are you at with that anthropologist? Landy?"

"Landry," John corrected. "I'm getting nowhere. Every time I start to ask her out, she thinks I'm asking for some kind of scheduling favor and puts up her defenses."

"What does anthro have to do with scheduling?"

"Don't you read the bulletins? She was elected Leader last month."

"Huh." Fred stood and stretched. "If only I cared about expedition politics."

"You should," John said. "The council just voted to—where are you going?"

"Got a date," Fred said, pulling pants on over his undershorts.

"Really. Who's the lucky girl?"

"Amanda Landry."

John blinked. "The expedition leader's daughter."

"Yeah, you know, it wasn't weird before you told me Landry had been elected Leader," Fred said. "It was also more fun when I thought her last name was Landy, because then she'd be Mandy Landy."

"How old is she?"

"Nineteen."

John frowned. "How old are you?"

Fred shrugged. "Does that really matter? And this coming from the guy who's shtupping an alien?"

"It wasn't sex!" John said. "We don't even have the right parts!"

"Whatever you call it."

"It was a misunderstanding, and it was just that once!"

Fred put up his hands. "Look, man, all I'm saying is, glass houses. No judgments. We cool?"

John nodded. "I just want you to know, I'm doing this for your own good."

"What?"

John punched Fred in the crotch. Fred doubled over and whimpered.

"I know it hurts now," John said, "but you'll thank me later."

"I'm going to kill you later," Fred grumbled.

"Amanda Landry is a slut," John said. "You'd know that if you paid attention to camp gossip. And anyone dumb enough to sleep with her gets shafted by her mother afterward. Equipment, comms, rations—any supplies you want or need, she can withhold. Trust me, two minutes in heaven are not worth six months of grief."

Fred hobbled to the cabin door. "I'm going to go have a nice dinner now. Then I'm going to find a large blunt object and wait until you're asleep."

"You know, Mary's got a sister," John said. "You want me to introduce you?"

The door slammed shut.

Photo: Ayla's Rake by Don LaVange (via GIMP's "Predator" filter), October, 2009

"Kibitz"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:04:00 PST

KIBITZ
By Curtis C. Chen

"Why does religion scare you so much?" Edith asked.

"Why doesn't it scare you?" Bernice replied.

A clattering noise came from the other room. Edith bent back over her chair and called, "Play nicely, boys!"

The two children on the floor separated and muttered something affirmative. Edith turned back to Bernice and shrugged.

"It's not like he's asking me to pledge an oath or anything," Edith said. "Honestly, it's mostly about community. Clarence needs other children to play with. This is an easy, well-established venue for socialization."

"But it's all about superstition," Bernice said, making a face. "I mean, have you read some of the mythology? It's all magical transformations, talking foliage, and predestination."

"They're just stories," Edith said. "Don't we have the same thing in our past? People telling tales to explain the world?"

"Yes, but that's actual history," Bernice said. "Not ludicrous fantasies about omnipotent entities controlling people's lives."

"So they're fictional." Edith shrugged again. "It doesn't make them any less significant or instructive."

"Except these religious people actually believe they're true!" Bernice said. "Turning water into wine? And what about this transubstantiation business?"

"You're talking about Catholicism," Edith said. "Clifford's Jewish."

"Now you're just splitting hairs," Bernice said. "They all believe in an intelligent creator-entity that exists outside of time and space. That's crazy."

"So is quantum theory," Edith said. "That doesn't stop—BOYS! What did I say about playing nicely?"

The crashing noises from the other room ceased, and then two juvenile shapes chased through the hallway, shouting something indistinct about going outside to play.

"Put on your jackets!" Bernice called. "It's freezing out there!"

More affirmative noises, clothing shuffled into place, and then the front door opened and slammed shut.

"Hubert seems to be adjusting well," Edith said.

Bernice made a snorting noise. "Lower gravity. All the blood's rushing to his head."

"Now who's being superstitious?"

"Don't change the subject." Bernice sipped at her tea. "Have you thought about how this religious identification is going to affect Clarence's development?"

"Given that he's going to be living among humans, I think whether or not we practice a few harmless rituals is going to be the least of our worries," Edith said. "Besides, it'll give him something in common with them."

"Even if it's all a big fat lie."

Edith sighed. "Why do we still honor the lunar observances, Bernice?"

"I don't know. Tradition, I suppose."

"Exactly. And that's all this is. It's their culture, and if we're going to be accepted by Clifford's people, Clarence and I need to understand their ways."

"I agree with that," Bernice said, "but this kind of immersion... Aren't you afraid that Clarence will grow up actually believing these myths?"

"Children believe all kinds of silly things," Edith said. "He'll grow out of it. But the important thing is, he'll have that connection to their culture."

"You must really love this human," Bernice said.

"Well," Edith said, waving an eyestalk, "I had his baby, didn't I?"

Bernice mimed regurgitation with her upper stomach. "Don't remind me."

Photo: Grand lustre de la synagogue de la rue Dohany (Budapest) by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, August, 2007

"Everything but the Laugh"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:04:00 PST

EVERYTHING BUT THE LAUGH
By Curtis C. Chen

"I don't think I heard you right," Maddy said, grabbing one of Josa's tentacles. "He's going to what?"

The sinuous alien blinked his left eyes in a slow ripple. "Please, miss. I heard not clear. Sound like soo-iss-aye."

"Are you sure that's what he said?"

Josa wriggled out of her grip. "Please, miss. Much work to do. Big show tonight."

The alien slithered away down the hall. Maddy turned, went to Conrad's dressing room, and opened the door without knocking, interrupting his juggling.

"Fuck a duck!" he shouted.

Maddy couldn't resist saying, "I thought those were geese."

"Didn't your mother teach you to knock?" Conrad picked up the goslings and ushered them back into their cage. "What if I had been, I don't know, naked in here or something?"

"First of all, eww," Maddy said. "Second, Josa says you're going to commit suicide?"

Conrad shook his head and sat down. "Goddamn blabbermouth."

Maddy closed the door. "Please tell me this is one of your stupid pranks."

He looked up at her, and the dull, defeated look in his eyes told her it wasn't a prank.

"You can't do that," Maddy said. "I'll notify my mother. She'll inform the diplomatic corps, and they'll suspend your travel privileges."

"That'll take weeks. And a reprimand from the DC carries much less weight when you're dead." Conrad frowned. "Isn't that odd? The word 'mother' starts with M, but 'female' starts with F. And 'father' starts with F, but 'male' starts with M. Doesn't that seem backwards to you?"

"Don't change the subject," Maddy said. "I'll stop you. I'll watch you like a hawk."

"Will you, now? You gonna follow me into the bathroom, sit by my bed while I sleep?"

"You're going to kill yourself on stage," Maddy said. "You're going to do it to get a laugh. That's the only reason you do anything. The Barish think death is hilarious—"

"Did you ever wonder," Conrad said, "how your mother persuaded me to bring you along on this tour?"

"She's a politician. She has leverage."

"I'm your father."

Maddy sighed. "Really? You're trying this? Really?"

Conrad chuckled. "Yeah, I figured that one would bomb."

"This is what I'm talking about!" Maddy said. "You're a scientist. Experimentation, trial and error, observation. You've interacted with more sentient species than any human alive, been allowed into places that are forbidden to outsiders. If you die before I finish documenting all your knowledge—"

"I don't have any knowledge," Conrad said. "Don't you get it? I'm the court jester. They let me in because I have no power. I'm nothing."

Maddy knelt down and took his hand in both of hers. "If you kill yourself, I will tell everyone that you are my father, that you knew it and didn't tell me, and that you've been fucking me for the last six months. Your legacy will not be the greatest entertainer in the galaxy, but a disgusting, incestuous pedophile."

Conrad smiled. "You're a quick study."

"Please don't kill yourself. Let me do it after the tour's done."

"That's funny."

Photo: Dutch comedian Mike Boddé, October, 2009

"Royal Pains"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:35:34 PST

ROYAL PAINS
By Curtis C. Chen

On Tuesday morning, King Roland woke up with a problem.

Now, knowing something of kings and kingdoms, you might think one of two things: either that kings, being in a position of privilege and waited on hand and foot, should have no problems whatsoever; or that kings, having great power and responsibility, would have all manner of problems to attend to all the time. Neither of these was the case with Roland.

His given name had been Yontif Mantgomery Thwimka Groot, and he had been pressed into service as a royal escort at the tender age of sixteen. Yontif had come from a peasant family, and even after all these years, the opulence of the palace continued to alternately dazzle and disgust him.

Some days, the king would succumb to laughing spells, hiding behind the locked door of his bedroom until the delirium had passed, and other days, he would weep at the thought of the citizens he had left behind in the tiny village of his birth, and at the guilt knotting his belly.

His mood swings, however, were mere annoyances when compared to the problem which presented itself on Tuesday morning.

King Roland awakened to see an unusual brightness illuminating his bedroom. Unusual not because of the nature of the light--it was normal morning sunlight--but because of the large amount of it. The servants always closed his shutters and drew his drapes every night, to keep out the light of the watchtowers surrounding the royal residence. King Roland was a light sleeper, and any amount of noise or light could interrupt his slumber.

He grumbled, rolled out of bed, maneuvered his bare feet into a pair of fur-lined slippers, and padded across the stone floor to the source of the sunlight, in the alcove near the door to his library. I must tell Luisa to speak to that new chambermaid, King Roland thought. She still hasn't learned how to work the window latch properly.

The drapes and shutters were wide open, and there was a man sitting on the windowsill. The man's gaunt face and day-old beard were smudged with grime, and he clutched his belly with both hands.

King Roland froze just a few steps from the stranger. The man lifted his head from its resting place against the stone wall and stretched his mouth in what might have been a smile, but looked more like a grimace to the king.

The shock of someone greeting him so rudely prompted the king to speak. "How did you get in here?" he asked, looking past the man toward the watchtowers outside. "How did you get past my guards?"

"With great difficulty," the man said, and chuckled.

He moved his hands, revealing a large, bloody gash in his stomach. And then he fell forward, smacking his forehead against the stone floor, and died.

Photo: stone king by Serena Epstein, July, 2009

"Worshipful"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:04:00 PST

WORSHIPFUL
By Curtis C. Chen

Travis stumbled through the alley, tripping over fetid piles of garbage and skittering masses that might have been insects or rodents. He didn't stop. He didn't look back. A light flashed to his left, and he sprang right to avoid it.

He found himself in a wide boulevard, facing speeding cars and pedestrians. The tide of people swept him up and carried him to a street corner, where he clutched at a lamp-post.

And then somebody recognized him.

They shouted his title, not his name—nobody used his name anymore—and eyes widened as they registered his face, the peculiar pattern of white streaks in his beard, the unnatural color and texture of his eyes.

The crowd swarmed around Travis, and he climbed the lamp-post. Hands reached out for him, and the murmur of reverence began building to a demanding cacophony. This was how it always happened.

A squeal of tires against pavement and a wet crunch silenced the crowd. Then their noise resumed, but with a different focus.

The injured man lay in the street, one hand still outstretched toward the lamp-post. Blood ran down his face, and pink foam escaped his mouth with every ragged exhalation.

A woman turned to Travis. "Help him!" she called out. "You can save him!"

And then the entire crowd took up the call, asking Travis to do what he could not.

"No!" he replied. "I can't! You don't know what you're asking!"

The people ignored him. They seized his ankles and pulled him to the ground. They grappled him to the injured man and placed Travis' palms on the man's head and chest.

"Please," Travis said, weeping. "Please don't."

But the crowd was no longer listening to him, if they ever had.

An alien power surged through Travis' arms, and he closed his eyes.

***

"Where is he?" asked Sergeant Roberts, skidding to a halt at the scene of the accident. "Where did he go?"

The crowd glared at the soldiers.

"You'll never catch him," one woman said. "He will save us."

Roberts knelt beside the injured man. "Like he saved this one? Medic!"

Airman Collier ran forward and waved a scanner over the man. "Just like the others," she said. "Superficial wounds have been healed, but he's still bleeding internally. We need to get him into surgery."

"Infidels!" the woman cried. "You will not desecrate him! He has been touched by God!"

The crowd closed in, threatening the soldiers. Roberts raised his weapon.

"Sarge!" Collier said, standing up. "Let me handle this?"

Roberts hesitated, then nodded. Collier raised her arms above her head.

"It is a miracle!" she shouted. "We carry this man to temple! Praise God! Let Him lead the way!"

The crowd echoed her proclamations, waved their arms, and began shuffling down the street. Collier stepped back and leaned in close to Roberts.

"We make a show of putting this guy on the stretcher," she whispered. "Then, when the mob's thinned out, we pick him up and run the other way."

Roberts lowered his weapon. "You're a regular miracle worker yourself, Collier."

Photo: Rats & Jesus by andrewneher, February, 2008

"In the Navy"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:53:21 PST

IN THE NAVY
By Curtis C. Chen

Petty Officer Second Class Sandra Choe, Sandy to her friends, was bored.

The clock on the wall read 11:32. She had the whole day off, but she'd already read every book in the base library, and the next planetside shuttle didn't make another run for six hours.

"I'm bored," Sandy said.

Her bunkmate, Charlene, grumbled in the bed above Sandy. "Why don't you go get some lunch? I hear it's cake day."

Sandy contained her excitement long enough to ask, "Will you be okay here by yourself?"

Charlene waved a hand over the edge of her bunk. "I'll be fine. It's just a rhinovirus. Go."

Sandy went to the cafeteria, where there was indeed cake. She selected the two largest, most frosting-laden pieces and sat down to enjoy them. Halfway through her second piece, two Master Chief Petty Officers came into the cafeteria and sat down within earshot of Sandy.

"Still can't fucking believe it," said the first Master Chief.

"Total fucking clusterfuck," said the second Master Chief.

"How the fuck do you misplace half a million dollars' worth of fucking armor?"

"And you fucking know that's coming out of our fucking budget."

"Fucking fucks."

The only unusual thing about this conversation was the discussion of missing equipment. Sandy, being a sensor tech, had never worked directly on armor, but she had calibrated plenty of sensor arrays to detect enemy armor.

After finishing her cake, Sandy found her commanding officer, explained about the conversation she'd overheard, and asked for permission to search the base's cargo holds.

"Do you know how many fucking holds this base has?" her CO asked. "Waste of fucking time. But hey, if that's how you want to spend your fucking day off, go to town."

Sandy borrowed a portable sensor deck from her shop and began searching. The Gamma Accra orbital platform had grown "organically," as the PR flacks liked to say, and was in many places a maze of twisty passages. The cargo holds had been designed for access from space, not from inside the base.

It took her nearly an hour to locate and access the first hold. Sandy found nothing interesting in that one, or the second one. The third hold had several containers with more radiation shielding than necessary, but Sandy ignored them.

She found the missing equipment in the fourth cargo hold. It had been mislabeled—somebody had typed "5" instead of "4" on the manifest—but it was all there, a platoon's worth of armor pegging the needle on Sandy's sensor deck.

Her CO actually smiled when she reported her success.

"Well done, Choe!" he said, shaking her hand. "You'll get a commendation for this. Fuck, I'm putting you in for a fucking medal! Good work. Dismissed!"

Sandy went back to her quarters, where Charlene was snoring loudly. The clock on the wall read 16:04. The next shuttle didn't leave for two more hours, and there wouldn't be any new books in the base library until the next USO ship docked.

"I'm bored," Sandy said.

Photo: Air Traffic Controller Airman Chelsea Pitchford aboard USS Essex, September, 2010

I'm on a Boat!

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:52:51 PST

The Eurodam, to be exact (which some of us have christened the "You're a Damn Nerd"). So this week's story may be delayed by a day or two. Please stand by.

"Sweet Nothings"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 00:04:00 PST

SWEET NOTHINGS
By Curtis C. Chen

Amy concentrated while holding the piece of candy, thinking: You're not fat. Stop cutting yourself. You are not fat.

The girl on the other side of the counter was wearing long sleeves, but Amy had seen her bare wrists when she turned to point something out to one of her friends. The older scars were horizontal, across the width of the girl's arm; but the newer, brick-red scabs were diagonal slashes, turning ever closer to fatal.

"Here's a free sample of our Milk Bordeaux," Amy said, identifying the candy in the tiny paper cup as she slid it across the top of the counter.

"Thanks," the girl said, picking up the candy between her thumb and forefinger.

You're not fat, Amy kept thinking. She was pretty sure her power to imbue objects with thought impulses only worked as long as she was touching them, but it couldn't hurt to try.

She forced a smile while ringing up the girl's purchases. Amy's face was starting to feel sore from feigning holiday cheer. After the teenagers had left, Amy rubbed her jaw muscles with both hands.

"Long day?" said a male voice.

Amy looked up and saw Joe leaning against the doorway and smiling at her. His mall security uniform was rumpled, as always, but Amy knew that was just an act; when push came to shove, the stern looks he could summon far outweighed his informal appearance.

"At least it's Friday," Amy said. "Free sample?"

"Nah," Joe said, patting his midsection. "I get enough of that at home."

"Right," Amy said, smiling. "I forget your wife's got that cottage industry—"

An arm appeared over Joe's left shoulder, and the attached hand closed around his throat. Joe made a gurgling noise and jerked forward and to the side.

Amy saw the owner of the arm, a stocky bald man wearing a gray suit and dark glasses. The man's other arm raised a menacing black pistol to the side of Joe's head.

"Step out from behind the counter," the man said.

Amy couldn't say anything for a second. "M-me?"

The man looked annoyed. "Yes, you! Amy Washington! Get out here before I—"

As suddenly as the man had appeared, he stopped talking. His hands twitched, and Amy was afraid the gun would go off; but then his entire body went limp, and he crumpled to the floor. Joe fell forward, also unconscious, and Amy rushed around the counter to help him. She froze when she saw the woman.

The woman—tall, blond, imposing—stood behind the collapsed man. She had one hand inside her jacket, which she slowly withdrew as Amy watched. The woman held both hands up, palms out, empty.

Another man, younger, with brown hair and an angular face, came jogging up and skidded to a halt beside the blond woman.

"I can't believe that worked!" the younger man said to the blond woman. "Were you actually touching him?"

"Discuss later," the blond woman replied. She looked at Amy. "Miss Washington, you need to come with us."

Photo: See's Candy by Brad Lauster, December, 2009

"Ekphrasis"

512words+orfewer@gmail.com (Curtis C. Chen) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:48:00 PST

EKPHRASIS
By Curtis C. Chen

"My art is not a weapon," Glenda said to the soldier.

The man in the khaki uniform smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled in the afternoon sun. "We'd never call it that, Miss Knopp. We like to think of it as a force multiplier."

"I don't know what that means."

The soldier leaned forward. "Something that increases the effectiveness of our troops beyond their numbers. For example, GPS. Knowing exactly where you are grants a huge tactical advantage."

Glenda nodded, only half understanding but wanting the soldier to think she actually cared.

A door opened behind her, and Jeff walked through the living room of the small apartment on his way to the kitchen. "Sorry," he said, in a tone of voice that indicated he really wasn't. "Don't let me interrupt."

"Not at all," the soldier said. "I was just explaining to Miss Knopp that the Army doesn't want to weaponize her artwork."

Jeff refilled his coffee mug and headed back to the office. "You're still the military. She doesn't like the military. And neither do I."

The door closed again, making more noise than it needed to.

"You'll have to excuse Jeff," Glenda said. "He's from Berkeley."

"I don't care what your boyfriend thinks, Miss Knopp. I'm asking you to help your country."

"By killing people?"

"I can guarantee you, if you allow us to use your artwork, that it will never be used offensively," the soldier said. "In fact, you can help us deter violence. We air-drop information leaflets into the Middle East—"

"Propaganda."

The soldier shrugged. "Right now, most of it gets ignored. But can you imagine if each leaflet had your artwork on it? Images that would compel people to look at the paper, read the words, and believe them?"

"I get final approval on the design," Glenda said. She wanted the soldier to think that she was getting as excited as he obviously was.

"Excuse me?"

"I'll only agree if I get to approve all the propaganda messages," Glenda said. "You'll need original brushstrokes on every piece anyway. It doesn't work with mechanical reproductions."

The soldier smiled. "I think we can work that out."

She made some additional, minor demands, asked for double the money he was offering, and otherwise kept pushing until his eyes stopped twinkling. Then they shook hands—his palm was cool and dry—and the soldier said he'd send over the paperwork right away.

"You've made the right decision, Miss Knopp," he said as she showed him to the door. "Your art will save lives."

She closed the door behind him. When she turned around, Jeff was standing in the kitchen, watching her expectantly.

"So?" Jeff asked. "Did he go for it?"

"Oh yeah," Glenda said, hugging her boyfriend. "I thought he would balk at the price, but I guess the Pentagon's got a big budget."

"I still don't trust them."

"Of course we don't trust them." Glenda smiled. "That's why we're not telling them about your music."

Photo: arte em movimento by Tiago Sousa Garcia, July, 2009