If the blast had been just a few hands closer, it would have rent her body in two. Instead, the force of the detonation had sent her rolling like a child’s marble down a steep incline. Dry, red earth coated the segmented leather plates of her cuirass. There, it mixed with fresh blood, forming a dark paste smelling of iron.

Blood, she thought. Slowly, deliberately, she removed a leather gauntlet and inspected her side. She knew from experience she would not feel pain until a little after the wound had been produced. It took a few moments of inspection, but finally the dreaded spasm of churning agony lanced through her, travelling like quickened lightning through her spine and between her ears. The cut was deep, the blood flow staunched only by her undershirt and the accumulated dust.

Shrapnel. The gunner exhaled. Coppery blood welled in her mouth. Something was broken inside. Perhaps a rib? She sat up, leaning on her healthy side, using her jezail like a staff to support her weight. A dull ache arced through her shell shocked limbs.

Women endure pain better than men; women endure pain better than men; women— the inane litany helped her concentrate long enough to stand. That was what they told her when she volunteered to join the Order. The Grand Mistress’s seneschal herself had pressed a half-mark of silver into her palm. You will serve us and see the world.

The ringing in the gunner’s ears had stopped. The bitter taste of bile mingled with blood coated her mouth. She knew that if she was to survive, she had to move. Her company had been scattered and she had left a blood trail. With nightfall, it would attract predators. Tawny dire wolves or even the scorpion-tailed wyverns that cried each night from lonely hilltop nests.

The gunner hastened across the scorched earth, only slightly cooler in the early evening than it had been in the torrid inferno of the afternoon. Each step renewed the agonising twitch in her side. She pulled her tattered yellow cloak tight over her shoulder, instinctively shielding her wound. Memories began to bubble through the red haze of her thoughts.

The sandalwood perfume of her jezail’s grip; the hard, metallic tang of its silvered barrel, longer than she was tall. It reminded her why each step was vital. Hildr—the scent of leather and metal and the starched sheets of an officer’s tent. Starched sheets cocooned her, held her close to Hildr’s sleeping form at the first light of early morning. Counting hairs, counting red-flecked blonde hairs on Hildr’s wiry arms. I know every single hair on your body – I know when even a single one is stirred by the wind or by my somnolent touch.

One, two, three, four- the gunner bit her lip and forced herself to stay alert. Her mind wandered to the leathern pouch strapped close to her belt. She estimated she had enough powder for two, maybe three shots. Should a beast or Inhuman scout cross her path, all she needed was one clean strike. It was her calling; the art she knew best, her aim truer than a veteran of seven campaigns. She had always known her jezail would become her life. The Order would never have allowed one like her to become a squire, much less a cavalrywoman. The gleaming breastplates and heavy labrys axes with platinum filigree belonged to those like Hildr – pure Ortho ascendancy, bloodline traceable fifteen generations back.

The gunner forced her burning muscles to a quick march. In direction of the setting sun, she spied a thick cluster of low, spiny bushes interspersed with the fleshy, spiked plants that thrived on a soil of cracked stone and shale. She knew they would bear fruit at this time of the year and that their fleshy leaves could be split open and pressed for water. She had been in Southlands long enough to learn its rhythms. After all, such was the art of a gunner: observe, learn and apply.

The sun had almost finished its descent into the trackless edge of the world. Slumped by the rough trunk of a silver-leafed tree, the gunner paused to flush her wound with the warm, brackish remnants of her water skin. The bleeding had subsided, but dry blood now crusted her belly and thigh. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand and found her spittle flecked with pink.

In that instant, a cold, creeping fear seized her. It was not the prospect of death—for she knew that accepting the inevitability of death came with being a soldier—but the acute terror of disappointing Hildr. Hildr had ordered her to return and a good soldier always followed orders. Her mother’s platitudes bubbled like fermenting liquid in the back of her mind: work hard—harder than they imagine possible and one day you’ll see them eye to eye. In a literal sense, the gunner mused, that was unlikely. Careful breeding by Hildr’s ancestors had ensured optimal height and musculature, so that she stood at least a head above the rank and file.

Still, Hildr had chosen her. Chosen her above statuesque, highborn cavalrywomen; above fierce, impeccably elegant Southern condottiere. Me, the gunner thought, with enough bravado and a bit of luck I could bluff my way through a brigade of Inhumans. Just say: I am Sevastie—I mean Basti, First Adjutant of the Arquebusiers of the Order of the Radiant Path. Whatever you do to me, you can be sure Lady Hildr will make you pay sevenfold. The line between irony and reality, she hoped, was very thin indeed.

The sun had set and the milky curtain of the Cosmic Sea now draped itself over the darkening sky. Selene loomed radiant overhead, though her sister was still half-obscured, presenting only an ochre crescent behind the veil of night. The gunner forced herself to steady her breathing. The sharp spasms in her side had become a mere state of mind. If she could survive the night, a patrol by early light would find her. If the Vigilant Maiden held her in favour, her wound would not become putrid.

Far away, an intermittent clicking echoed behind ranks of ancient trees lining the hills like decrepit legionaries. Clicking like the metallic ring of her jezail’s intricate wheel-lock mechanism each time she fired it. She clutched the gun closer to her, forefinger pressed against its trigger, its butt propped against the roots of the tree. Her position was defensible. Anything in her field of vision at three hundred paces could be brought down with reasonable accuracy.

In training she had been the best. Sharp vision and a steady hand were two of the few gifts her bastard bloodline had bequeathed her. Like other aldi from the marches in the deep north, her heritage was fey-marked by mingling with wild Wood Elves. If her sharp, elfin features did not betray her, then her eyes and hair would—nightbloom dark and a colour no pure human, whether Northwoman or Southlander could possess.

Why did you take up the Path? Hildr’s sonorous contralto echoed silently. The gunner remembered she had studiously declined to answer. She felt she needed to defend the sanctity of the intimacy she shared with Hildr – the warmth of bodies and voices still exultant after needful, rough and tumble passion. But then Hildr had insisted – a soft, but authoritative question demanding an answer: Basti?

To have the privilege of dying on my feet, rather than living on my knees, the gunner mouthed the words into a darkness that was, in her mind, both the darkness of Hildr’s tent and the crepuscular penumbra of the sun-baked maquis. Living on my knees – the gunner thought of her mother, thin and haggard at the sky-burial, worldly possessions all bundled up tight with worn linen, washed countless times over.

Her reverie thinned out into darkness and was replaced with the sensation of wind stirring, bringing with it a damp, rotten scent and an ever-louder clicking. The gunner sat up, eyes alert, piercing the shadowy night. With practised patience she slipped forward, balancing herself on one knee, her jezail sliding into its familiar position perpendicular to her body. Something had tracked her; followed her over expanses of stone and baked earth, trailing behind streaks of dried blood seeping into the soil like the blood of a sacrifice seeped into the altars of a hecatomb.

The clicking intensified. The gunner reached for her powder and loaded the black dust into the priming pan. Her breath had slowed to the methodical rhythm she knew from many a battle. Long, deft fingers slipped into her bullet pouch and touched cold, alchemical silver. Shimmering in the dull light, she placed the bullet into its chamber and the mechanism locked it in position.

One shot – the gunner pondered. She knew her sudden movement had opened the wound again. Fresh, hot blood trickled down her side, thick and malignant, drawing life force away from her. Life, the gunner inhaled. The familiar scent of gunpowder, metal, leather – familiar, comforting scents. The neutral scent of Hildr’s soap, the taste of her skin, all leather and metal, her hungry lips, her cunt like sea-salt. Live for her, the gunner’s mind raced and with each memory the clicking drew closer.

Something uncoiled, dark and serpentine in the dusty earth perhaps four hundred paces from the gunner’s position. Propped up on a multitude of legs it moved in an eccentric, winding pattern, as if inking Elven calligraphy on the earth itself.

As it neared, a rush of memories welled in the gunner’s mind. Thoughts roiled like an angry sea, drawn out by an unseen storm. A phantom wing of silver armoured cavalrywomen streaked onto a battlefield riddled with smoke and ash. She saw Hildr gallop by, stern blue eyes ardent like those of the golden water-nymphs engraved on her helm.

The gunner fought to distance the fountain of images flooding her mind. The logophage closed in, obsidian-sharp mandibles snapping, drawing closer to the wellspring of thoughts it hoped to consume.

Remember the firing range, the gunner’s thoughts centred on an image of her kneeling, striking each distant cymbal, Hildr’s approving hand on her shoulder. Just one shot. The logophage was at seventy paces. The gunner released the wheel mechanism and pulled the trigger.

A sharp report pierced the night, followed almost instantly by the tearing crack of metal against chitin. The logophage faltered, slumped forward, and lunged, a dark liquid, bitter as gall, streaming from its armoured flank. The gunner dropped her jezail and drew the cinquedea hanging from her belt. She waited till the logophage was almost upon her and then struck, thrusting the broad, triangular blade into the nest of the beast’s eyes. The clicking came to an abrupt end.

The gunner slumped back and everything coalesced into a single point of swiftly expanding darkness.

When she awoke, night had passed its peak. A clean, white cloak was draped over her. Her mouth felt dry, but the taste of blood was almost gone. Her side felt stiff, but the pain had subsided and was now a manageable, dull throb. She reached under the cloak and felt dry bandages drawn tight against her belly.

A crackling campfire burned at the centre of the clearing where she lay. Lambent flames pure like starlight. A dark figure moved from the gnarled trees into the light. The gunner recognised the fine, light leather armour worn by the fierce skirmishers of the Southlands near where the Pillars of the World marked the boundary of the realm of mortals.

“You must be thirsty,” a serene, female voice whispered, “Come, I have brought water.” The strange woman knelt by the gunner’s side and placed a water skin to the wounded woman’s lips. Water, cold and sweet soothed and calmed the bitter heat in the gunner’s mouth.

The gunner felt herself propped up by strong arms. The strange woman was slender, but her body was hard and built like a runner’s. Olive skin pressed against the gunner’s pale hand, eyes like the core of pure jade flashed under long, dark lashes.

“Easy, Basti,” the woman chided and drew away the water skin, “you can drink all you want later. You fought well and earned your rest.”

“Was I delirious?” the gunner asked. Her head felt light, yet she felt her fatigue fading with each passing moment.

“Have no fear,” the woman said with a musical laugh, “you gave nothing away. I have known your name for a long time.”

“And how should I address you?”

“Pallas—I think.”

“You think?” Basti leaned forward, supporting herself on her elbow, seeking to meet the stranger’s gaze.

“It will do for now.”

“I have to rejoin my unit. They’ll send scouts out in the morning to see if there were any survivors from the ambush.”

“Yes,” Pallas agreed, “with me that is a choice you may make.”

“A choice?” Basti mustered the strength to pull herself up to a sitting position. The pain in her side had all but disappeared and her muscles felt light, almost weightless.

Pallas nodded and remained silent. She was armed. Basti noted the sharp, double-edged Southern shortsword at Pallas’s side. The image of the blade burned bright in Basti’s mind. The new sensation she felt was not fear, but a sense of attachment that put her at ease. The seeds of the same fervent loyalty she felt for Hildr.

They sat in silence. Pallas remained kneeling, watching over Basti with tender reverence, almost as if she were praying at a firelight vigil.

Then Pallas spoke, her voice lilting with the intonation of the Southlands, “Are you hungry?”

Basti shook her head. Her belly felt as tight as a drum. Her thoughts occupied themselves not with food but with battle and sacrifice. Hildr called to her.

“I must return to my encampment,” Basti insisted, “she needs me. Hildr needs me.”

“She is your commander,” Pallas said, not questioning, but stating a fact.

“Yes, and much else besides.”

“So you fight for those who hold you in disdain,” Pallas mused, “loyal unto death to women who confuse purity of blood with valour.”

“No. I fight for her. If she were to die, I would die by her side.”

“She is not the Order,” Pallas’s eyes seemed to look beyond Basti, reaching into the recesses of memory, coaxing out that which the logophage had sought to force.

“To me she is,” Basti replied, “the Order, my homeland – these are all principles that exist in abstract. Words on paper, or drawings on map-parchment. She is real; in her reside all the virtue and the goodness of the Order. She and it cannot exist independently of one another. So yes, I fight for those who despise me because the one I love cannot exist separate from them.”

Pallas lowered her gaze. She stroked Basti’s cheek with a deft hand. It was the kind of airy caress that quickened Basti’s blood.

Then Pallas rose to her feet, “Your faith is powerful,” she said, “I feel its fire. Will you not at least rest here until first light?”

“Yes,” Basti conceded, “your hospitality honours me“. The reflection of the fire dancing over the oiled leather of Pallas’s armour entranced her. The workmanship was flawless and not a single scratch marred its surface. Where did this woman come from? And how did she avoid battle here on the borderlands? Basti thought it best not to ask, lest additional cryptic answers inflame her thoughts.

Pallas turned to face the fire. She loosened her cuirass with the knowing dexterity of a warrior and set it down by her travelling pack. Where Pallas lay down her armour, Basti now saw her jezail and cinquedea, cleaned and oiled, lying like temple offerings at the far end of the clearing.

Once the quiet ritual of laying down her arms was completed, Pallas stripped off her loose undershirt and folded it with ceremonial precision. The tremulous firelight played over her skin. Between the sharp peaks of Pallas’s shoulderblades, Basti could make out a mark, a single rune tinted a red so dark it seemed like arterial blood.

Sigel. Victory. Basti exhaled. Her heart battered her chest. She searched for words but her throat closed up, allowing her to exhale only a plaintive breath. Pallas rose and returned to kneel beside Basti.

Basti cleared her throat. The thirst for battle and glory simmered in her and fused with the same ineffable need she felt for Hildr. Love forged in blood. Her heart seemed to beat in unison with Pallas’s breath, exalting the profound sisterhood that bound Basti to her unit and to the Order.

“Are you a Chooser of the Slain?” Basti croaked. Her voice trembled with emotion.

“That is my name amongst your people, yes.”

“A spirit?”

“No,” Pallas’s eyes flashed with quiet indignation. “No, here, feel.” Her hands reached for Basti’s, “Touch my cheeks, know that I am flesh.”

Basti touched warm, smooth skin with her fingers. The powder stains left a grey streak on Pallas’ cheek – a dark tear. Her touch grazed the delicate outline of Pallas’s jaw, her thumb arching to trace the shape of the dark woman’s lips. Soft lips, moist and alive with heat, parted. Basti let her thumb be drawn into Pallas’s mouth. A sensuous heat and then Pallas’s tongue, soft as ripe plums, dancing over her skin.

Basti heard a dim echo like clashing metal in the fevered chambers of her mind. Her touch strayed lower. The swift pulse of Pallas’s heartbeat danced beneath the skin of her neck, strong shoulders and small, taut breasts, crowned with big, dark nipples, plump and swollen, ready to be plucked by hungry lips.

“Is this the choice you offer,” Basti breathed, “the choice I should accept?”

“My body and soul are yours for an eternity you could not even dream of,” Pallas replied, her voice now a soft sigh, “but all that binds you to this world, your name, your memories, everything—this you must set aside.”

“But if you were dead, surely you could not be of flesh,” Basti said, even as her forefinger traced the tight turtle-shell pattern of muscle on Pallas’s belly. She paused at the leather girdle holding the white half-tunic wreathing Pallas’s thighs in place.

“I am of another flesh, but I breathe, speak and love all the same.”

“Why?” Basti edged closer. The familiar perfume of metal and musky desire surrounded her. No spirit would excite the same raw passion now throbbing in Basti’s breeches, aching and wet against dampening leather.

“There are other worlds above and below this one where we fight for the glory of the Vigilant Maiden and, should we fall, we will be restored to continue our crusade until time itself comes to an end. I have known your soul and have judged it worthy. I will give myself to you, but you must give yourself to me, body and spirit.”

Pallas cradled Basti’s wandering hand in her own and pressed the gunner’s fingers against the buckle of her girdle. “I yearn for your mouth and your hand, just as my tongue burns to taste you. Take me and our bond will never be broken.”

Basti mastered the fires of her need long enough to speak, “Did you have one you loved when you still lived on this plane?”

Pallas paused, her gaze distant and pensive. “I think so.”

“Do you remember her?”

“No – sometimes I see a phantasm. A silhouette of light traced in the darkness and then my mind falls silent. Perhaps – if she ever existed at all – she has joined me in the Vigilant Maiden‘s eternal service, but bonds made in this world cannot be brought into others.”

“Has my time come?” The icy grip of the plunging unknown gripped Basti’s heart.

“Do you think you would be offered a choice if it had come?”

“So if I chose to remain—” Basti trailed off.

“Such a choice would be honoured, but know that in time we will meet again. In worlds that lie beside this one, time is immaterial. I witnessed your first breath and I have already witnessed your last.”

“In battle?” Basti breathed.

“I would not have come otherwise.”

“Then I have chosen.”

“So be it,” Pallas rose and pressed her lips against Basti’s forehead. A chaste kiss of parting, but with a fondness that made Basti realise their separation would only be temporary.

The clear flames of the campfire danced and then faded, dying like the last glimmer of the stars as their brightness was overwhelmed by the burning visage of the sun. First morning was coloured a sombre blue, infused with the redness of the new dawn.

Basti scrambled to her feet, her first steps hesitant. In the distance, hoofbeats battered the parched earth and familiar banners floated through the canopy of the low trees.

THE END

© MARIA DI GIROLAMO

Thank you for your inspiring and insightful writing. I hope that this email finds you well and doesn’t serve to disrupt you too much from your dreams and nightmares.

I wanted to drop you a quick note in praise of your collections Some Dreams are Nightmares and The End of the Dreams. To be more precise because I’ve only just now finished “The Cave of the Night,” to praise your introductory essays in your collections. Your introductions to these two collections, especially the introduction in your collection Some Dreams are Nightmares, were inspirational, refreshing, and still valid.

First, I agree with your statement that “The ideal length for science fiction is the novelette…” and that it “…is not true of other genres…” (SDN, ix).  Too much focus, it seems to me, has been placed on the novel because it is easier for a publisher to market. Consumers, over the years have been trained – by publishers – to buy and respect the novel over other the shorter forms. Considering the novel, I truly enjoyed your observations regarding the genres two final out comes as demonstrated through your summary of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain (SDN, xi). The presupposition that in science fiction (or truly science disaster fiction) either a noble group of heroes and heroines think through a problem and save the day or humanity is lost, simply rings false. Which is why I truly love the shorter forms that need not live up to the promise of finality, but they can instead probe, issue and ask questions but provide no answers.

Second, I hope to adopt “…Gunn’s first law for freelance writers: nothing is worth writing if you can’t use it at least twice” (SND, xvi). The more I think about his rule, the more I feel its strength. To see your rule in action, I’m going to start by finishing both collections mentioned here and then looking for the novels the stories inspired. I’m going post this law where I can see while I write with the hope that it will inspire me to revisit old ideas and stories and re-purpose them.

Thirdly, I’ve just begun to discover your stories. I read “The Cave of the Night” this afternoon while my wife and I waited for the winery to open for tasting and tours. The winery opened before I’d finished. However, and to the consternation of my wife, I had to finish before we started our vacation adventures. I loved the ending. I was just as enthralled and committed to Rev’s liberation from the cave as the rest of the earth bound were that I didn’t see the ending coming, which is rare and a joy. Thank you!

Finally, this email is a thank you letter of sorts. I’m a fledgling short story author dabbling mostly in science fiction (speculative fiction, really), and I wanted to reach out to you to let you know that I have been inspired by your words. I look forward to discovering more of your writings in the days to come.

Sincerely,

Aaron M. Wilson

P.S. I’m considering publishing this letter at The Hive Mind. If you respond, which is in no way necessary, I would like permission to include your reply in the posting.

—– James Gunn’s Reply—–

Dear Aaron,

It is always the hope of a writer to influence the reader, at least to pleasure, sometimes to thought, and at best to action.  So your message is triply welcome.  Writing is a lonely business.  That’s not a cry for sympathy; the writer’s life has its own rewards.  But you can only do it alone and seldom see a response, so the one that comes, that gives evidence that there are readers out there who sometimes understand what a writer has been trying to communicate, is a delight. Thanks.

If you reach the point in your own writing where you are submitting stories for publication and need some help in making your stories publishable, you might try one of the several good writers workshops that specialize in science fiction and fantasy, including my own (which starts next Monday).

Sure, you can post this.

James Gunn
Let’s save the world through science fiction

 
This is one of those questions that, well, while it doesn’t keep me awake at night, does occupy a great deal of my thinking time, especially after I’ve read another of those big fat SF novels that has left me wondering why the author even bothered, having failed to deliver on both the premise and the promise. Or, more to the point, why the publisher ever consider it was good science fiction to begin with? I really think I have come to abhor the modern version of the big-ideas SF novel, the ones that span galaxies, include way too many characters for you to care about even one, who is big on either prophesying or expounding on the authors in topic but that always leave you feeling like you’ve eaten a bad chinese take-away, hungry for more not five minutes later.

Whatever happened to the Golden Era of science fiction, when the likes of Le Guin, Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke took us on grand tours of inner and outer space. What happened to humanity’s dream of the future? Did we arrive in that future too soon? Is that the problem? Or is it that big business and corporations are only interested in consuming Earth’s dwindling resources, rather than conquering the very stars themselves? Is my generation the last of the dreamers, the last of those who really did hope we would have flying cars, shuttles to a Moon base and Mars by now, and that robotics would be closer to needing Asimov’s Three Laws than it is now?

It’s not like we even have Le Guin’s usual dystopian future to contend with. Sure, we’re constantly lingering on the verge of having an almost suppressive Big Brother society, and not just here in the US but elsewhere too.

So what happened? What happened to the future? Where is it and can we get it back, before we lose it forever?

Here’s an easier question for you all to answer.

Name me your favourite book(s) of the future and where you see current science fiction writers taking us next, if anywhere.

“The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.” —Thomas Hardy

Prologue: Pentagon, 2160

“Now that we have it, what should we do with it?”

“File it along with everything else.”

“You sure? Any special classification?”

“No.”

“Sir?”

“If we label it TOP SECRET, it will have to be read again at some point to determine if it can be declassified.”

“I follow. Hide it in the open.”

The Interviews: 10/25/2150 — Tessa Roy

TR: I didn’t choose this.

M1: None of us did. Tell me when you realized your gift.

TR: Gift? We’re been rounded up and numbered. How could you?

M1: It will be easier for both of us if you answer without the hostility. Please. Tell me when you realized your gift.

TR: I hate you. I really do.

M1: I know. Please.

TR: It was my fortieth birthday party. My father and a few friends knew that I loved old cars. The tail fins. The stripes. The leather bench seats made for sex. My father picked me up at 3:30. It was going to be just him and me. I had just divorced my second husband. The paperwork had gone though two days earlier. My father surprised me by pulling up in a classic black 1956 Cadillac El Dorado Seville with chrome rails and a pearl hardtop. We drove up the PCH along the coast until we got to a lookout, and he parked the car and got out.

M1: So he told you?

TR: He had pictures from my twenty-fifth birthday. Close ups.

M1: That’s not unusual. Most parents took pictures so that they could sue if the results were not what they desired.

TR: As you can see, it worked.

M1: How old are you?

TR: Fuck you!

M1: I have questions that I have to ask everyone. How old are you?

TR: They already know. So, fuck you.

M1: Says here you were born in 2054.

TR: Yeah, that’s right.

M1: Have you used aliases?

TR: Of course.

M1: Can you list them for me?

TR: I have to, right?

M1: Good behavior helps.

TR: Susan Bradshaw, Kelsey Thompson, Anaya Hout. Anaya Hout was my favorite. She knew how to live.

M1: Did you have investments?

TR: Yes. I think that when you realize what is ahead of you, at some point you decide working is for the birds.

M1: That’s the truth.

TR: How’d they catch you? You were supposed to be a myth.

M1: Answer the rest of my questions and I’ll tell you.

TR: Deal.

M1: Did you have any children?

TR: Two. Why?

M1: How are they?

TR: Dead.

M1: It is a known side effect.

The Roundups: Miami, 2148

Sarah knew that they would come. She had thought it through several years before, when she had found out that she was one of them. Sarah kept her head down and did not look at the others. She tried not to rattle her own chains. She just did not think that it would have been today. Not that today was less likely than any other day; it was just that she had expected a sign or portent like darkening skies, strong winds, salt brine in the air, signals that a hurricane is near. At the very least, a breaking news brief, something that would have said, run, Sarah, run.

Sarah had a plan. She kept the trunk of her Lincoln fully stocked: tent, clothes, food and water enough for a week, fake IDs, and ten thousand in cash. When she spotted the first dark cloud on the horizon, she would set fire to her beach house and drive into the sunset, as she made her way into the memories of those she had known, to start again somewhere in the Midwest. She had thought that this time she would try being the wife of a Baptist minister, living on the straight and narrow. She loved gospel music so it wouldn’t be that big of a stretch. She had learned that she had to reinvent herself every ten to twenty years anyway.

The reality was that there had been no warning. She had just finished making breakfast, eggs over easy on wheat toast with real maple syrup. She settled down on the porch, watching the surf break against the sand and the spring-break-bodies strip down to muscle and lotion. Which one today? Perhaps the blond with blue trunks. He couldn’t be more than twenty-two. Sarah watched as his buddies pulled up their surfboards and made their way into the water, lean and stiff. If there was one thing that life had taught her, it was that you took what you wanted when you wanted it. It might not be there at second glance.

She put her food down half-eaten. She stripped down to a string bikini with red and white hearts. She let her auburn hair fall down her tan shoulders and back. Leaving her flip-flops on her deck, Sarah could feel eyes follow her as she made her way down to where the water kissed the beach. Men were so easy. She pointed at her prey, “You there.”

Straddling his board, he pointed at his chest.

Sarah nodded and waved him in. She could see him look to his friends for support. The longhaired skinny one splashed him. He started to paddle in. She watched the muscles in his arms and back work.

He came out of the water. “Hey.”

“I think you’re what I want for breakfast.” She held out her hand to him as she had to so many others.

He took a step back and looked over his shoulders. His friends whistled and shouted. “Do I know you?” he asked.

She took his hand and started back up the beach. She looked over her shoulder at him. She’d picked well. “Do you want to?”

“Sure. I’m Robert.”

“Nice to meet you Robert,” she kissed the tips of his fingers.

He squirmed a little. “And you are?”

“Does it matter?” She bit his pinky finger.

“No, I guess not.”

She smiled. She’d chosen well.

“It’s just a little…” He planted his board at in front of her porch, “this never happens to me.”

“Oh sure,” she ran her nails down his chest, “you can’t fool me.” She led him by the hand up to her house. Sarah opened the door and stepped through. She felt a sharp strike at the base of her neck before slumping forward onto the floor.

The Decisions: Project Future, Southern Texas, 2156

You stand in a row in a crowd of people that you have never met, but with whom you share a singular fate. As you look around, no one looks a day older than thirty. They seem to have accepted their lot as if this were inevitable from the beginning, a long game of choices and chances. Some hang their heads and slump their shoulders. Others stand straight, heads held high as if they were royalty being led to the guillotine. There are more than you thought there would have been. Someone said there were fifteen hundred or more.

The one you know as M1 takes the stage. He was kind enough when interviewing you. He knew all the right questions. He had on a dark purple uniform with strange symbols and markings. The only thing familiar about it was the strand of five gold stars on each lapel.

“You all stand accused of a crime you had no choice in committing.”

You listen to him as he goes on about how his father had wanted to live forever, witness history and be history. He claims to be have been born in the late twentieth century, which doesn’t seem possible.

“Each and every one of you is at least fifty years or older, but you look no older than twenty-five. In fifty, even two-hundred years from now, you will still look no older than you do today. Even though your parents were well-meaning and had the best of intentions for you when they signed up for the Methuselah Project, they did not, could not, see the true scope of what would happen to you. Some of you know this by experience, never being able to grow old with a loved one, not being able to have children, having to move and reinvent yourself every 20 to 30 years.”

You’re still too young to know these pains, just turning fifty a few days ago. You never felt it necessary to settle down anywhere or with any one woman. It didn’t feel natural to stay in one place. You never thought about your health and your looks in that way before.

“Some of us have learned to use the system to our advantage. Invest safe, invest a lot. Wait. We have the time. But now, a religious government that believes we are living-blasphemies against their god, has rounded us up to be executed. They blame us for the weather, failed crops, the Great Flood of 2110.”

You’d seen something on TV once about the growing animosity of the religious and their belief that genetic engineering was the greatest sin man had ever conceived. Something about Genesis 6:30 and God’s decree that man shouldn’t live longer than 120 years. If this guy is who he says he is, he’d be more than 150 years old, but he doesn’t look any older than you.

“However, we cannot die. You may not know this. I have been forced to work with the government. Tests were run, trying to find a way kill me, our kind, and to exterminate our race. They went as far as to incinerate my body. Nothing works. Eventually, I was again, alive.”

You don’t believe it.

“Once the government determined without a doubt our impervious nature, they gave me a choice. To that end, I have helped the government track you all down and bring you here to Project Future. If we are truly immortal, as my father had hoped, we have a responsibility to the future and to the past. I’m asking for your help…”

You don’t believe it.

The Beginnings: Ceresco, Nebraska, 1982

“It works?”

Harold Johns nodded his head. “Subjects nine through the end of the series are now two years old and showing no signs of aging.” Harold was nervous. He didn’t have the words to make things sound good. It was always just the facts. He knew he had to make his research sound exciting or it could mean his job.

“Two years?”

Harold pushed up his glasses, “The fruit fly lives an average life of 20 to 30 days depending on environmental conditions. Here,” Harold flourished his arm indicating the jars, “I have more than a hundred examples proving that my research works.” He let his arm fall to the side.

“It says in your report that that there are side effects.”

Harold smiled. The side effects were going to make him rich even if no one wanted the intended effect. He watched the man in uniform carefully. He could see that he was interested. His eyes were fully dilated. “Here, let me show you.” Harold took jar number thirty-four off the shelf. He opened the lid. Using a swab coated with honey he trapped the fly on the tip. “Now watch closely.”

“What am I looking for?”

Harold killed the fly using his thumb and index finger.

“Hey. Those are valuable.”

Harold dropped the fly back into the jar and handed it over. “Just watch. Here.” He handed the uniform a magnified glass. “Watch closely.”

“I see a fly.”

Harold pushed a needle into the tube piercing the fly through its back. He then jabbed it a few more times just to make sure.

“You killed it.”

“Keep watching, please.”

The fly lay there for a few seconds more before its wings started to twitch. Then it was up and flying about again.

“How is that possible?” The uniform’s jaw hung slack.

Harold took the jar and placed it back on the shelf among the others. “It has to do with the body’s electro…”

“Keep it simple!”

“The spark of life.”

“Spark?”

Harold slipped a small wire into jar twenty-nine. “Watch.” The tiny fly touched the wire for just a second and a small bulb lit up at the other end. “Their genetic makeup has been enhanced with nanites.”

“You mean they have living machines in them.”

“Well,” Harold winced, “Yes and no.” He folded his hands across his chest. “I like to think of them as…”

“Yes or no, living machines.”

Harold made a choice. “No.”

“Good. Can’t have machines replace humans, now can we?”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No time.”

Harold watched him walk toward the door. It was time to be bold. “Can I expect further funding?”

“You’ll be seeing me again, Dr. Johns.”

The Methuselahs: Lincoln, Nebraska, 1991

“Isn’t he cute?” Maggie Johns said, trying to keep her eyes open and to catch her breath. She was wrapped in white, her red hair damp with sweat.

The nurse asked, “What’s his name?” pen in hand.

Maggie looked up at her husband. “Harold?” She knew already what he would say. His obsession with longevity and living forever demanded it. It still surprised her to hear him say it out loud.

“Harold Methuselah Johns.”

“Very nice,” said the nurse. “I’ll give you two a couple of minutes, but then we need little Harold to run some tests.”

Maggie smiled and touched his little nose. “So, we’ll call him Junior.”

“I was thinking M1.”

“You shit.” Maggie tried to sit up. She was so tired. “Tell me you didn’t!”

“He’ll live forever Maggie. I gave him a gift that can never be taken away. It is all that I have to offer.”

“You didn’t. You fucking didn’t.” Maggie began to sob. “When? When did you curse our child?”

“It’s not a curse.”

“When, damn it!”

“That night you came crying back to me. Said, you wanted a family.”

“Two years ago?” She looked at Junior. “We weren’t pregnant then?”

“The serum needs to be infused with ovum before encountering sperm for the effects to take hold.”

She watched him take a step forward. He removed a syringe from his lab coat. He pricked her arm.

“This will purge the Methuselah serum from your system.”

Maggie watched as he put the empty syringe in to the medial and biohazard waste bin. “Fuck you Harold. I’ll expose you!”

“Maggie, please. He will be the future. He will fix everything that with our short lives we could never see through.”

Maggie screamed. The monitors went wild and people rushed into the room.

“What’s happening? Help her!”

Maggie felt Junior being lifted out of her hands. As her body shook, she saw Junior running though an alley. His pursuers wore fatigues and carried rifles. He had an unkempt-bushy red beard and wore tattered clothing. As she slipped into unconsciousness, she vowed to herself to take Junior away from Harold, far away.

THE END

© AARON M. WILSON

Note: Hardy, Thomas. “Appendix.” Selected Poems. New York: Penguin, 1998. p. 203

Elise didn’t think it was odd that violent imagery, murder, and alcohol helped take the edge off an exhausting day. Instead of the gore, and if you asked her, the gore did bother her, she focused on the sexy, smart detectives and the workplace drama that empathized right and wrong – catching the bad guys. Everyone, including the crime scene cleanup crews, were nothing but smiles. Elise’s work place was full of ambiguity and sullen expressions.

About half way into her first mystery, a reporter interrupted. “Sorry for the interruption. We go live, now, to the White House for coverage of what we have been told will be a turning point in American history. No wait, world history.” The reporter looked pale and ill prepared. “We’ve been told that in just a few seconds we will be addressed by the president.” There was a strange pause as the reporter listened, putting his hand over his left ear. He looked into the camera and sternly said, “We go live to the White House.”

Elise didn’t believe that anything this president had to say was important enough to interrupt her mysteries. As she waited on the couch, too tired to get up, too depressed to even try and change the channel, she started thinking about work. What was going to happen? Should she apply for her boss’s job when her boss got the promotion? She didn’t want to have to work under anyone else. Her current boss was a good boss. She listened to Elise’s input and took it seriously. Elise thought they worked well together and did not want the team to separate. Besides, it had been a long time since Elise had had a good boss, and she felt she’d had her fair share of terrible ones.

The president sat in the oval office, but Elise had tuned him out. He wasn’t her president. Her president would have respected the sanctity of evening mysteries. However, she sat up and paid attention when she heard the words, “gas prices,” because she commuted an hour each direction, to and from work, and the trip was too expensive at $2.75 a gallon now.

The president continued: “OPEC and the oil industry, either in an attempt to keep the junkie hooked up or in ignorance so complete, have lied to the American people. They have lied to the world. I deeply wish that I had better news, but we – the human race – have come to ahead…”

In her pajamas, Elise pushed aside her popcorn and grabbed the keys to her car. She was seeing an environmental economist a couple times a week. He was cutie, but he was depressing and overly serious about the state of the world’s natural capital, whatever that was. What he did have going for him, besides his looks, was a deep voice that cause Elise to dream of better tomorrows on sandy beaches. She hung on every word he spoke. One night, he had told her over dinner that if the president ever said “OPEC” and “lied” in a national address, she’d only have a few minutes to act.

Elise couldn’t believe that her boyfriend was right about all this fossil fuel mumbo-jumbo. She had wanted to stick around and listen to the end of the presidential address, but she had taken her boyfriend’s advice and driven to the nearest store. She felt lucky as she stood in line at Wal-Mart that Wal-Mart was only just down the street. She was drawing attention from other shoppers, but she knew what she was doing was right.

The cashier asked, “How many? I can just scan one, if that’s all you got in your cart.”

“Twenty. I could only fit twenty in the cart.” Elise put hand over her mouth. “What if twenty isn’t enough?”

“Ma’am, I’ve never seen anyone buy more than one at a time.”

Elise nodded and paid with her credit card. She hated credit cards and used it only for absolute emergencies. She couldn’t think of a bigger emergency than this one, but she still hated the feeling of the potential interest accruing if she didn’t pay it all off at once.

After loading her car, Elise noticed that the streets were still quiet. She was having a hard time understanding why no one was on the move. Was she just that far ahead of everyone else? When she saw her boyfriend again, she would have to thank him. She was sure that he was out doing the same thing right now. She thought of calling him until she realized that as she hurried out of the house she’d left her cell phone on the coffee table in front of the TV. Elise pulled into the first gas station she came across.

The Shell station was empty. Elise didn’t understand what was taking everyone so long, but it was in her favor. First, she filled up her car. Then, she slowly, carefully filled up each of the twenty, four-gallon tanks she’d just bought from Wal-Mart. Filling all twenty went faster than Elise had expected. After replacing the pump, she watched the small gray and black screen. When the screen was finished asking her if she’d like a carwash, coffee, or cheap cigarettes, and she selected “Yes” for a receipt. Her receipt read as she expected it would read: $2.75 per gallon.

After loading her car and pulling out into the street, she stopped at the light. Elise could see down the hill into the valley headlights pulling out from driveways. She thought she could hear angry car horns in the distance. Still waiting for the light to turn, she happened to looked in her review mirror. The Shell sign that had just read $2.75 per gallon, now read: “Closed. Gas Reserved. Homeland Security.”

THE END

© AARON M. WILSON