 
Selected Short Stories Featuring Analog Memory

by Nicolas Wilson

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#  Foreword

Hi. I'm Nic. This is a short story collection of mine. Other stories and information about upcoming work can be found on my website: www.nicolaswilson.com. Interspersed with these short stories, you'll find snippets of novels I'm working on. I'm calling them entertisements, because the word amuses me. Keep going to reach the fiction, or you can view the table of contents including synopses of the stories in this collection).

# Table of Contents

Uncanny Valley: A man forced to be a luddite in a robotic world, by medical necessity, ponders whether his new fling is human.

Censlus **:** A census worker is murdered while doing his job.

Seed **:** An old woman meets a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting.

Faith Emmanuel: After a carjacking, a student finds himself financially at the mercy of a corrupt medical system.

Family Business: A marital fight ensues after a husband involves his kids in a life of crime.

Brickmouth: A buried vampire awakens.

Laborious Love: A robotic engineer builds the perfect girlfriend, and the perfect relationship.

Jesus Loves Me (Just Not That Way): A man wrestles with his sexuality.

Unlucky at Math: An intellectual ruminates on his relationship.

Fighting Mad: A soldier considers the toll that the military takes on Muslim soldiers.

Cowgirl Up: A memorial for a stubborn woman's fight with cancer, and love of smoking.

The Courage of Our Convictions: An old soldier examines the leavings of genocide.

Medicine: A friend falls back into addiction.

The Cost of Being Me: Some ruminations on the possibility of heaven, while dying.

Unlucky At Math: An intellectual ruminates on his relationship.

Randomly Accessed Memory: A head injury causes a man to lose his memory, throwing his life into chaos as he regresses to his last known lifestyles.

Analog Memory: A former CIA operative has his memory reset in an unorthodox way, and deals with the glitches of the new technology.

Green Thumb: A Department of Agriculture employee has a chance run-in with a farmer covered in chemicals. This short story was eventually expanded into a novel, Dag, now available.

Dogs of War: Two Explosive Ordnance Disposal soldiers recover together, after nearly dying in an explosion. This story is part of a novella, Dogs of War, available for free to newsletter subscribers.

Nexus: The crew of an interstellar star ship try to screw the alien species they meet before their corporate backers can screw them. This is the opening chapter of Nexus, coming summer 2013.

Thanks From The Author

Others Works by Nic

# Uncanny Valley

I look out my apartment window where the sprawl of the city crushes against the sand of suburbia- at least before it drowns it, and single-family homes sprout into condos and complexes, stretching towards the sky. Looking down at the shining, gun-metal gray of brushed metal, and the shimmer of solar-panels on everything else, I remember when I first came here, how you could only see its towers scraping the sky against the horizon.

I wish there were more of a story as to how I ended up in the tech capital of the country, but I was dating someone with wanderlust, and by the time she left me it felt enough like home that I couldn't go back to Washington- or maybe I just couldn't stand the cold. But I'm what some people might call a modern day Luddite, which makes me a pilgrim in an unholy land- or maybe a heretic in Techrusalem.

The people who live here, at least the ones who don't have their consciousness shoved up a computer's ass, call it the Uncanny Valley, but it's actually "Ankeny," named for Paul Kelvin Ankeny. You've probably never heard of him, because he's the definition of an underground figure. But in the robotics industry he's basically the one true Christ, or maybe Steve Jobs if he deserved the hype- and without the corporate whoredom- you know, if you're old enough to remember Jobs. The term "uncanny valley" was coined by Masahiro Mori, bouncing off of Jentsch's ideas of the uncanny, who also influenced Freud. The idea is that something can be familiar, yet unsettling. In robots, and later in virtual reality, the uncanny valley was considered the space in time where technology could create near-human replicas that appeared to be organic, but inexplicably disturbed a human being.

The term eventually fell out of favor, though robophobia was more widespread than anybody would have guessed. The Valley's more tolerant, if only because we've been living with robots longer than anybody else. It's not quite right to say robotics was born here, but, at least in the U.S., this is where our robots finally got their sea legs, where they went from tech demo to household staple.

For years people called this Silicon Valley, though its name on maps was always Santa Clara. They changed it to Ankeny because of rumors that the Saint had prostituted herself rather than beg alms in the streets of Assisi for St. Francis. It was probably bullshit, and most people thought Ankeny and his cult of techies were behind the rumors' sudden appearance hundreds of years later, but it gave the state legislature enough of an excuse to change the name.

Which brings us to me. I'm probably the least likely resident of Ankeny, because I have a condition called electromagnetic hypersensitivity, sometimes rendered EHS. I don't really give a shit that scientists have had trouble testing its existence, and even my current doctors think I'm faking it, but digital tech too near to my body gives me seizures; I also seem to be allergic to most inorganic materials, too.

I share my apartment with two living things. One's a gene-modded apricot tree, stunted so it's only three feet tall. The other's Dog; the ex named him Dogmeat after a character from a video game, but he always liked me more. So when she left, she left him, and took "my" cat; maybe he was our cat, but it never really mattered, since he seemed to like her better.

I haven't been sleeping well. Dog finally figured out that apricots are food; unfortunately for me, he figured that out while I was away, and by the time I got home he'd already painted the carpets with colorful shit splatters (one of the walls, too, where I assume the dam initially burst). Since then I've been about as vigilant as I can about picking the cherry-sized apricots, but for whatever reason his bowels still haven't entirely righted themselves, so at the slightest noise that could be a dog expelling fruit from an orifice, I'm bolt upright (you'd be amazed how many modern background noises actually fit that description).

This is all complicated by my apartment's white carpet. In a normal apartment, or at least with a normal tenant, carpet nanites would clean up after the dog. I tried that once, because a doctor told me their electromagnetic aura would be so small that I'd never notice- and on that at least he was right. But, as happens with nanites, I inhaled a cloud of them; I had a tonic-clonic seizure, and spent the next month hacking up chunks of lung, coagulated blood and little robots. So I've been spending a lot of time kneeling, scrubbing feces and fruit smoothies out of the carpet.

Dog's sitting at my feet looking droopily sad, and I feel bad for him even if it's his own gluttonous fault. The tree belonged to the ex (and I don't for the life of me know why she didn't take it with her), but it's alive, I'm used to it, and I'd feel bad just throwing it out simply because it shouldn't be my responsibility (and is causing me inconvenience).

I'm writing this for a slew of reasons. Vanity comes into play somewhere, I imagine. But mostly I'd like to think it's because there are people out there like me who are left out of this society, and perhaps that society will change so much in twenty years that none of us will even remember what now was like.

That, and I'm bored. I can't plug my head into VR the way most people do, and VR has essentially killed television aside from programming for the Luddite elderly, so I've got a lot of free time on my hands. I tried reading _Moby Dick_ , since I figured I had the time, but television and the internet have shattered my attention span for anything longer than a short story (and no, not a Melville "short" story).

I have a kitchen you'd recognize if you'd seen any old "HD" movies, with honest to god separate appliances (none of those fancy nanite wall phalluses for me). But there's one thing I don't make in my kitchen anymore: coffee.

There's a coffee shop down the street; I hate the concept of going to a coffee shop, because spending that much money for something my kitchen appliances can make for pennies feels wrong, but the barista is beautiful. Kerry. Dark hair, brown but almost black, dark eyes, silver and blue that almost look purple, caramel skin like the color of the mochas she makes me- which are genuinely delicious (not delicious in the "she gets points for being pretty and trying" way).

I'd been avoiding the shop the last week, after a run-in with another customer. She had ear implants- not one of those hearing aids or even augments, but she actually had speakers built into her ears so that other people could listen to her music with her as she walked- that kind of retro grunge-tech is popular with the counterculture at the moment.

Well I didn't know how much tech she might have in her head, or whether or not she might be electrified enough to make me pass out and wet myself in front of Kerry, so I kept my distance. Now it's possible that while being leery of her, some ounce of my disdain for people who surgically modify themselves to be cool leaked out, but she turned around and called me a biofascist. I made no attempt to respond, since the depth of my witty rejoinder would have been "Nuh uh."

I meekly collected my coffee; Kerry knows my order and always starts it as soon as she sees me. She gave me a pained smile and a shrug; I couldn't tell if she was being sympathetic, or if the gesture implied I'd gotten what I probably deserved.

I'm not intolerant; sure, some body modders are freaks, but tolerance doesn't mean I relinquish my right to be skeeved by skeevy people. The other day I was walking Dog in the park when a man in a trenchcoat flashed me. He had his genitals gene-mod sculpted to look like Vegas-era Elvis being mounted by a raping porpoise, and he had nanotech imbeds that made the porpoise's eyes follow you and blink while Elvis' face contorted in various shades of abominable pain. I kicked him in the King; what else should he have expected?

I'm sure the rant isn't helping. Technology trying to kill me as a boy made me wary of its application later in life, even when organic computing became all the rage, and it was possible for me to finally be standing at least near the cutting edge with everybody else (of course, that didn't really last, either, because the cost of biocomp upgrades and the toll it took on the human body made VR more attractive, so that's where the research dollars went).

Post-humanity never really took off; the fetishists and the occasionally lagged trendchaser still implant and carve and grow or decay parts at whim, but most of humanity moved on. The only gene-modding that's really still "in" is additional womb generation, lovingly known in the medical industries as "AWG," roughly the sound a woman buying one won't have to make during childbirth. Basically, in the week or so before a pregnancy terms, doctors grow a second, king-sized birth canal directly in the abdominal wall, big enough a doctor can stick his whole head in there if he feels so inclined- though these days they usually just use a robotic arm.

I wasn't sure if the statute of limitations on my public shaming had passed, so I was still avoiding the coffee shop. I'd run out of Dog food, since I can't rely on a kitchen computer to keep food inventories up, so I was on foot running to the local distributor to pick up a container, but I was thinking about some problem at work, and was on autopilot, and walked right up to the open air coffee shop's counter. Kerry smiled at me, and immediately started on my mocha; that sealed that, no escaping with my dignity intact now.

I bellied up to the counter. I usually tried not to stare, because Kerry and I seemed to have a romantic détente, and I didn't want to make her think I was planning an invasion- but hell, this could very well be the last moment I was going to be able to pretend she didn't think I was an asshole, so I watched her make my mocha. The coffee stand has a sophisticated nanotech kitchen, the kind where all the appliances are synthesized in real-time by nanites that receded into the walls when they were done.

I'd never worked in such a place, but I'd read that the best brew relied on human intervention- that cooking was closer to playing music- since little things like freshness of the beans and the ambient temperature could make the difference between an okay cup of coffee and a work of java art. Kerry's fingers danced across the display, playing across a nonexistent keyboard like a concert pianist's, but she took the time to smile and nod at customers or passersby, and once I caught her eye, and I thought she smiled.

Since I had never watched her work so intently, I didn't realize until she was pouring the mix into cups that she'd made two of them. "Joan, I'm taking a break," she said, and the nanite gate receded into the wall enough that she could slip through.

She handed me one of the mochas and led me down the street. I flashed for an instant to another time, another girl, this same walk, being led away with twin mochas, and the heartbreak that ended in, but before I had the chance to lay that template over this moment and worry she spoke. "She was being a bitch. Seriously, people don't get speaker-implants unless they want to be noticed. She's just one of those people who gets off on making the attention she gets negative. I felt really bad for you- but people usually get mic pick-ups with their stereo install, so I couldn't say anything until she was way out of earshot, and by then you'd disappeared."

I hadn't been prepared for that kind of an infodump, and it took me a moment to react. "So... it's too late for me to save face by lying about working extra hours?" She smiled.

"I don't know, I'm pretty gullible, you can always try it out."

"Thanks," I said, and she blushed. "For the mocha, I meant. And the whole not assuming the absolute worst about me, I guess."

"Sure." She hesitated. "I get off at six. And I'm usually hungry."

"That's a coincidence, because I usually eat around that time. I suppose we could eat together."

"And here I thought I was going to have to lead you the whole way to the water." She sipped her mocha. "I should probably get back."

We ate at Leo's, an old low-tech Italian restaurant I know downtown. The proprietor's practically Amish, and refuses to have anything more high tech than his antique, analog register in the restaurant. So of course we get along swimmingly- he reminds me of Woody Allen, an old neurotic movie comedian who- just use a search engine.

The whole time I couldn't place it, but there was something off. I don't think it was the sudden realization that this woman I'd stared at for months was a person with thoughts, ideas and feelings independent of my imaginings; she was just different, subtly. And not just because she was wearing a low-cut dress that showed off her collar bone and her exquisite neck.

She was wonderful. Smarter than I'd dared hope, charming, funny.

Then suddenly I realized it was late and we were almost alone in the restaurant, with only an older couple making eyes at each other in the corner booth behind us. Kerry yawned. "I'm tired. You should take me home." The abruptness of it made my heart sink, then it began to race as she stroked my knee beneath the table, and I realized it wasn't her bed she was planning to sleep in.

As if he'd read our minds, Leo was there with the check. I have no idea how much of a tip I left, I was scrawling so fast; Leo's is one of the few places you can actually still sign a paper receipt in town (most clerks stare at me sideways when I ask them to swipe a card for me).

I don't want to be salacious, but when I was going down on her everything was right, no, perfect, but something made me uneasy. I'm not one of those people who assumes they don't deserve to be happy and then distrusts every mildly good thing to come their way- I just didn't trust _this_ thing. I couldn't put my finger on it (please, no little man in the boat jokes), but there was something off; perhaps it was that absolutely nothing was off at all, not a moment's awkwardness, not even one of those weird little body farts that happen when two people writhe together.

When we were done she fell asleep in my arms; I'm 90-95% sure she's a robot and I'm smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. But it didn't make any sense. When I get within a few feet of a robot I get faint, but we'd been as close as two people can get, and all I felt was vague anxiety- easily enough explained by how gorgeous she is and the fact that, well, I've been over this moment in my head before without ever thinking it a possibility. And biocomputing has never been sophisticated enough for a full on human synthetic.

That actually brings up a slew of follow-up questions. If Kerry is now a robot, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't previously, where is human Kerry? Are all robots horny, or is Kerry just experimenting? Or is robot Kerry just into me? If Kerry is part of a pod-people robot takeover plan, but the humans are all replaced by robots that seem to be more alive than the humans they replace, is that a bad thing?

I guess it would have to be a little bad. We're not talking robots creating a new, hedonistic community- it's a hostile takeover. I think my judgment was (temporarily) muddied by thoughts of a robot orgy. But even if the hostile takeover thing is true, could Kerry possibly be to blame? If her robot was walking around blank, then took over Kerry's life of its own volition, then yeah, kind of, but a blank robot sticks out like a swollen testicle in bike shorts, so more likely than not it was another robot that abducted Kerry (I know, I know, abduct is probably being optimistic).

Perhaps more to the point: was this seduction a way to get close enough to me to bot me? Was I going to wake up tomorrow with a new robot body? And I'll be honest, I was more concerned whether, when I woke up, she'd still be there.

Kerry, or her robot replacement or whatever, stirred, and noticed I was awake. "Is something wrong?"

"Not at all," I said, and kissed her, and her lips were soft, and warm, and inviting. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I was just paranoid. But what if I wasn't?

She rolled me over forcibly, and pinned me to the bed and kissed me, and I wondered if that mattered at all.

# Censlus

Right now I wish I could heed Tim Allen's advice not to stand too close to a naked man, though I suppose, by my younger brother's five-year-old logic, Bill Sparkman's not naked, on account of he's still wearing his socks. He's also wearing a whole mess of duct tape, round his hands, his feet, his eyes, his neck, pinning his Census Bureau ID to his shoulder, right alongside the rope around his neck. And he's got one word written in felt pen across his chest, and that one word takes his death right out of my hands: fed. There's still a red rag in his mouth, and I'm waiting here, because the FBI say they've got all their physical evidence, and today's the day we get to cut Bill down.

But the FBI's late, which is typical, since we're out in nowhere, and even folks from around here can get lost coming out this far. We been working the scene in shifts, to preserve chain of custody on anything we might find, but that means I've been working twelves without much sleep between 'em.

Now, I've met Bill Sparkman. He subbed at my daughter's school, and while I never met the man, and he never taught my daughter, I've seen him around. Most bodies, not that I've seen all that many, but most get to be just bodies for a time, before some grieving relative finds me to tell me who they were. Bill ain't like most bodies. I know him, and his story, well enough to know he shouldn't be where he is now. Bill was an Eagle Scout, a local director for the Boy Scouts, he's got a kid, and they lived a few streets down from me. He wasn't getting enough hours teaching, so to supplement his income, he was working part time for the Census Bureau.

I tend to ignore the mad shit percolating out of folks like Michelle Bachmann and Glen Beck, but at a moment like now, I can't not draw the line between their paranoid partisanship and the creak of the rope around Bill's neck as he swings just a little in the breeze. Reminds me of a thing my daddy told me: "There's nothing on this Earth more dangerous than a damn fool with their damned fool ideas. Trade 'em their damn fool ideas for guns and the world would be a safer damn place." The man loved to swear, but the Lord (through my momma) wouldn't let him say worse than "damn" without catching hellfire.

Now Bachmann and Beck and their kind like to talk about government takeovers, and other nonsense, but the census ain't some new liberal concoction. It predates fascism and communism by a fair shake: our first was in 1790, and was conducted by Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness himself. We've taken a census once a decade since the country got started. And far from mutating into something invasive this year, the only major change to this census is that they dropped the long form questionnaire- in effect, this census is less intrusive than in years past.

But I got a naked man swinging by his neck from a tree- one of my neighbors, to point the fact. I ain't a fed, but being as I work for the state of Kentucky, I think I'm just one step below that. But it ain't really about which level of government I work in. Just like the black folk who got lynched in these parts weren't strung up for being dark- not even for being different and not acting the part.

They died for fear, for ignorance- folks who believed the government was taking too much of their money, and trying to do too much for someone else with it. The funny thing there, and I mean the dark cosmic irony sort, not the laughing out loud kind, is the only conspiracy was the one they and theirs hatched. Democrats ain't raised taxes yet, haven't really substantially deviated from Republican game plans, truth be told. So the idea that the feds are making a grab now, well, it makes about as much sense as stringing up a part-time teacher, single father, and Eagle Scout thinking he's got an eye to infringing your freedoms- which is to say it makes not a damn bit of sense at all.

# Seed

I apologize first for the paper I'm writing on. This advertisement from a market vendor, it is the only paper I have with me, and I know that were I not to write this now, I would not write at all. I apologize second for the embarrassment of an old woman staring at you as I have, but I ask your indulgence a moment while I explain myself.

Perhaps you would know it from my clothes, but I do not regularly eat in such fine restaurants. I might never have come here at all, had we not celebrated my sister's birthday here.

More than twenty years ago I had a son with my husband. When he was born he seemed healthy, so the doctor let me hold him, and he looked up to me and smiled. But then he began having difficulty breathing, and they took him away from me. I watched through the glass, too weak to move from my bed, as my son passed.

When my husband died 3 years ago he was cremated, as is our usual custom- but our son was only an infant, and tradition dictated he be buried, to ensure a speedy path to his next life. My husband and I could not afford the Rs 100, so we dug our son's grave together. In shifts, as we had but one shovel.

And that is why I have come here, every Friday for a month. I feel in you a familiarity, a connection I have been without for years. It is not always popular to speak of such things, especially among the young, but you have my son's eyes. You have his smile (though it was toothless last I saw it). I think I was your mother, in another life. And in that life, you died before I had the chance to tell you that I loved you, and I do. That is all I felt I needed to say.

# Faith Emmanuel

The last detail I could remember was that my car smelt funny. Every breath I drew sizzled in my chest so strong I heard the sounds of frying bacon. I felt my ribs stabbing into my organs, one at a time, like mean children's fingers.

My eyelids were dry and scraped like matchbook covers, and pale fluorescents burned my retinas. "There you are, dearie," a woman said to me. I could see a blur of red over white that solidified into a cross on the forehead of her habit.

Then I felt the scrape of needles beneath my skin, and I tried to move, but I was strapped with leather to the table. "Mustn't hurt yourself," she muttered as she left the room, smiling sweetly to herself.

I woke again. I didn't remember falling asleep, or even becoming drowsy. It must have been one of the needles. Why were they drugging me? But when I moved, I found that everything was gone except a single tube in my right arm. The straps were even gone. I sat up and kicked my legs off the table.

The door to my room immediately opened, and a man with a pleather briefcase entered. He had a dark, curly beard that made him seem like someone's father, and wore a plain, brown suit like the one my high school English teacher wore to chaperone dances.

"I'm your public arbitrator, Louis Anden. I'm here in anticipation that you will contest the health care costs enforced upon you by Faith Emmanuel Hospital."

"Enforced?"

He sighed. "Time was, a hospital like faith Emmanuel would impose costs on indigent clients- billing them, essentially. More recently, they won the rights to a kind of operational sovereignty, where they can enforce costing agreements unilaterally."

"What costs? I haven't seen any figures," and I stopped. I was in Faith Emmanuel Hospital. Oh my God.

"In exchange for removing the bullet from your torso, the hospital staff removed a kidney, and some of your plasma. As you were unconscious, the contract was entered into at their discretion. However, the incision they made to remove your kidney became infected. As you were once again unconscious, a new contract was entered into, again at the hospital's discretion. Since they have already removed all discretionary organics, they have opted to remove your left hand, or, quote, '20% of all separable internal organs,' end quote."

"What the hell are separable internal organs?" Louis smiled weakly, and adjusted his glasses, and I knew I was about to be humored.

"Not all organs can be separated successfully into fifths. If you remove only a portion of the heart, for example, that section will cease to function, so there's no point in using it as payment. All the hospital would receive is a dead lump of tissue. The same can be said of the testicles, and the intestines. Although there are rare cases when they will extract 50% of a person's intestines. Advanced bowel cancers, usually, but that's rare."

"They want to steal my organs?"

"They can't just take your organs. We live in America, not the fucking Middle East. You get an arbitration meeting. I'm the public arbitrator. I'm actually very good. I've won several cases."

"Several?" I asked.

"Three, to be precise."

"Out of?"

"One hundred and fifty-seven."

"Is it too late to cop a plea?"

"Look, Josh."

"John."

"Oh, right. Josh is the one who lost his feet this morning."

"Jesus Fucking Christmas." He splashed his fingers from shoulder to shoulder, then to his forehead and his heart. "Are you a Christian?" I asked, concerned I'd offended him; I half-remembered my mother telling me lawyers were all godless monsters.

"I was, until I turned 21."

"Why, what happened?"

"The church had me excommunicated when I went to law school. They're still kind of sore about that separation of church and the judiciary thing."

"Have you ever won a case like mine?"

"No. In fact, I've never won a case that didn't involve gross malpractice, sexual misconduct, wanton violence or attempted murder." I furrowed my brow.

"But you said you've only won three cases."

"There was some overlap."

"I want you to answer this, and I hope you will take it in stride, but are you a complete idiot?" He bristled.

"Not at all. In fact, I live far below the standard of my peers because I believe that all individuals, regardless of finances, deserve representation when confronted with extraordinary medical expenses." Somehow that didn't make me feel entirely better.

"How long do we have to prepare." He checked his watch, and I knew I was screwed. "You're saying we don't have days or weeks."

He shook his head. "We have four and a half minutes left."

"Medically, what would you suggest?" He opened his briefcase and produced a single page print out. "Removal of twenty percent of internal organs would shave between five and eleven years off of your life." I rolled my eyes and took the paper from him. It was covered in ones and zeroes.

"Crap. I don't speak binary." I handed it back to him.

"That's assuming all of the separate surgeries go well."

"And so far they're one for two."

"As far as how much your left hand is worth to you, that's more a question of quality of life. My left hand sucks. I can't write with it. Can't drive with it. Can't play guitar because of it. The only thing it's good for is ma-" Louis turned red, then bit his lip, weighing it in his mind. "I guess it's not all bad."

"What would you do?" Louis took off his glasses and looked across the table at me.

"I'd take a deep breath, Josh, and make the choice. It isn't an easy decision. And you're always going to regret having to make it. But you don't have any other choice. While you're on hospital property they have complete sovereignty. They could just take whichever they wanted from you without giving you the choice. Hospitals don't like to do that, because it tarnishes their reputation. They can't force people through their doors, and there are always other hospitals. But once you're here, you either pay with green or you pay through your spleen."

"What the hell was that?" He put his glasses back on.

"Sorry. It's something Faith Emmanuel's counsel says. But it's true. The hospital industry had a very powerful lobby that eliminated excessive malpractice and dismantled the insur-"

"Will any of your history lesson help me keep my hand?"

"You've decided?"

"No. But hand is easier to say than the other thing."

"Organ bits?" He smiled helpfully.

"Let's not call them that."

"But you need to come to a decision, because-" his watch started to beep. The door opened, and three doctors in freshly pressed white coats filed into the room. They stood in a line in front of the door, with startling uniformity of posture. "Have you decided, Mr. Bertram?" They took a moment to introduce themselves, and I immediately couldn't remember which name and specialty belonged to which. I mentally cataloged them as Skinny, Sweaty, and Lady.

"I'd like a medical opinion-"

Louis turned his head quickly, and his eyebrows shot up, and he interrupted, "Assuming the consult is a part of this discussion and not an extra expense." Sweaty got redder in the face, but Dr. Skinny smiled warmly.

"Of course."

"What are the pros and cons of each choice?" I asked.

Dr. Lady looked to Dr. Skinny, who nodded slightly, and she began to speak. "Partial organ donation cannot be reversed. Once you've given us a part of your liver, you will always be running at 80% capacity. It's possible to some day purchase another, whole liver, but the costs of total organ replacement are extraordinary, as most organ transplants are partial conglomerates. By contrast, whole hands are often taken in lieu of monetary compensation. The cost of replacement is far lower."

"And you concur?"? I asked, looking from Skinny to Sweaty. Sweaty was perspiring through his coat, perspiring angrily, if that was possible.

"Are you asking for another consult?"

Skinny looked down at Sweaty. "Now, Jeremy..." He turned back to me and smiled, softly. "Laura has particular expertise in this. Her opinion is medically sound and socially reasonable."

I nodded, and gave a terse smile. "Dr. Lad-"

"Laden," whispered Louis.

Sweaty stepped forward, glaring. "I'm Dr. Laden." My eyebrows went up, and I had to stop myself from correcting him.

"Would it be possible to set my hand aside, temporarily, until I could purchase its return?" Sweaty's mouth hung open, as he groped for the words.

Skinny winced, and smiled apologetically. "While that is a possibility, I'm afraid the interest rates we charge would most likely place it outside your abilities. And on top of that is the rather stiff reattachment fee."

Cold shuddered through me, and air wouldn't go into my lungs. Skinny stepped forward, and started to take my pulse. "Are you all right?" Louis stepped up to him.

"My client is fine, and requires no medical assistance at this time." Skinny took his hand away, and I found I could breathe again, shallowly. The first thing my eyes registered was the smile that dropped off Sweaty's face.

Louis looked at me, apologetically. I was actually glad he was there, but my face wouldn't smile. My guts were rotting. I could feel them decaying in my stomach, and I spat out the first thing I could think to stop it. "I was a certified EMT B for a while a few years back. I was hoping I might be able to re-certify and repay my debt in trade."

Dr. Lady repositioned her glasses on her nose. "The sisters do lack fundamental training." As she continued, she turned towards Skinny, to the exclusion of Sweaty. "Any medically acquainted personnel are always a valuable-"

"And we're supposed to trust this deadbeat?" Sweaty snorted, pushing his weight into Skinny. "He wants us to forfeit our compensation for services rendered on his word that he'll return to school, finish his education and, in what, two years, return to work for us for a period without pay until his debt is cleared?"

"I'm not a deadbeat. I'm only twenty-six. And the only thing I own outright- my car!" I was happy for an instant. "What, I gave you my car? Or sold it?"

Louis shook his head. "Your car was stolen. That's why you were shot in the first place. I spoke with your insurance company, and they don't believe you have a claim. They customarily wait several months to pay out, since portions of stolen vehicles tend to be found eventually. And they said they couldn't rule out negligence on your part, until they could speak with you. Which is irrevelant, anyhow," he said. "I checked. Your car was ten years old; even new on the lot it wouldn't have covered the cost of the initial surgery- which was the cheaper of the two."

I dropped back in my chair. "So the only thing I actually owned was stolen." Sweaty glared at me, and Lady avoided my gaze.

Skinny nodded his head sympathetically. "It's a terrible situation, truly. And we do sympathize. But Dr. Laden does have a point. And it isn't you we don't trust. It's just a poor way to run a business." Louis sat up straight in his chair, and stared at Skinny.

"I was always under the impression medicine was more important than business."

Skinny smiled patiently. "I understand your concerns, Mr. Anden, but I can assure you, this hospital never allows financial considerations to interfere with medical ethics."

"Then perhaps you can explain to my client how he is supposed to remain gainfully employed without the use of his left hand. Or, if he chose the organs option, the maximum level of promotion he can hope to achieve, because companies don't like to risk training executives in anything but peak physical condition?"

"Mr. Anden; Louis. You voice very dire concerns for the well-being of your client, and I am touched, as I assume my colleagues are, by your dedication. But it is beyond our collective training to offer your client-"

"Josh. His name is Josh." Close enough.

"It would be irresponsible for us to offer Josh any kind of career consultation. Have you any further mitigation to add?"

"Mitigation? What kind of mitigation?" I asked, no longer foolish enough to be hopeful.

"If you were a woman, there are greater options. Ovum are still a medical commodity, and if you were pregnant or willing to become pregnant," Skinny stopped, "but I'm afraid these options aren't open to you."

"I don't want to lose my hand." I was staring down at their shoes. Sweaty was wearing tennis shoes that were new, and Skinny had a pair of worn black dress shoes. Lady had brown old woman shoes that made me wonder if she was older than she looked. I exhaled. My shoulders dropped, and my whole body crumpled inward. "I don't want to die early, either."

"I know," said Skinny, setting his hand on my shoulder. I knew his eyes would be full of concern; that's why I didn't look up.

Louis slapped his hand away, and stepped between Skinny and me. "Why don't you just go to hell?"

Skinny smiled, but there was something aggressive in his eyes. "Don't be sore, Louis. This wasn't a competition. It isn't as if you've lost."

"My client has. Every time you bastards win like this we all lose. Every goddamn one of us. And don't you ever call me Louis."

Skinny glared at him. "Very well. I pray for your health, Mr. Anden, because your business will no longer be accepted here. And Josh, I'm scheduling you for surgery within the hour. We'll expect your decision within five minutes."

"John." I said.

"Excuse me?"

"My name is John." Sweaty opened the door for Lady. Skinny stood at the door. Louis tried to look at me apologetically, but he couldn't meet my eyes, and left the room. Skinny didn't smile at me.

"Five minutes."

# Family Business

Honey,

I know you're upset. You probably have reason to be. But we need to talk about it. See, I found the peanut in my ham sandwich. It probably wouldn't have killed me, but I would have had to go to hospital, would have spent several days in excruciating pain.

I said I was sorry. I sent you those roses. And it's starting to affect the kids, our fighting. Which probably sounds hypocritical, coming from me, but whatever my faults as a man, a husband, and a father, I do care about our kids. I know you think I lied to you, and yes, at best I was evasive and misleading, but Frank got sick and the sitter called to say she had double-booked and couldn't make it, and it all just seemed to come together.

I'm a lousy thief. You've known that since you married me. But I refuse to go back to the bad old days, working with thugs we barely knew and could never trust, having to put up with whatever insane, psychopathic bullshit they brought with them (guns included). Besides, our children have small hands, and small hands can come in handy.

Our kids were never in any real danger. Crappy a thief as I am, planning was always my forte; I knew that place was safe. And, of course, the most dangerous part of a robbery is always the getaway, and you're the best wheelwoman I've ever worked with- they were safer than if we'd dropped them with a new sitter.

I know this note won't make up for lying to you, but I hope you at least understand I wasn't trying to be reckless. At the very least, I want you to try and take a deep breath, have a calm day, and stop trying to lightly poison me until we can talk about it.

Trevor

# Brickmouth

1576. The plague. It was a good time to be alive- and a better time to be a predator amongst men. The dead were everywhere, and the dying were plentiful, too.

I died every night, then, like all of my kind- at sunrise. And every sunset, I was reborn. It seems to be triggered by light, or heat, though a rudimentary biological timepiece may play some role, as well, as I've "awoken" in the deepest part of caves far removed from either. Regardless, as the sun disappears, my mouth snaps shut, catching my elongated teeth on my lips. The thin trickle of blood awakens my body, a primer to the engine of my flesh.

It was always safer to rest in my home after a night's excess, but the nature of excess is such that safety was rarely my priority. It was after one of these nights, discovered in the arms of a woman believed stolen by the plague, that I was buried.

The burial customs at the time required a burial shroud over the head. My kind carry greater degrees of bacteria than a "normal" human, by virtue of a compromised immune system. This usually isn't a problem, but if you overeat, and vomit blood in your "sleep," bacteria from the mouth spread to the shroud, and will eat a hole through it. Which is of course how I was caught out.

I can't imagine how the humans discovered it; it had taken years for me to understand the nature of our rebirth firsthand, but their solution was simple in its elegance: a brick in the mouth. If the jaw could not close, cutting the lip and restarting the body, I could not be reborn. My body, even at its slowed pace, devoured itself, until there was nothing but bone. Over time, the brick ground my lovely fangs down, to the point where they were unrecognizable from human teeth.

By my estimation, at some point in the 1700s my jaw stopped moving; this last vestige of life had been moot for at least a hundred years, since that was the last my lips had held blood.

It's been twenty-seven days since my bones were unearthed. The brick was knocked accidentally from my mouth during the excavation, and I remember a vague awareness of this. To my fortune, one of the worker's fingers had been cut, and the tiniest smattering of blood touched my bones.

The transformation wasn't immediate, but I was awake. The blood proved only enough to grow the stub of a tongue. But it was enough to lick the soil and minerals from my mouth- enough to start. For the rest of the week I ate dirt beneath an excavation tent, and gnawed my fingers for what little nutrition remained in my bones.

Muscles began to grow sparsely, enough meat sticking to bone to crawl in bursts. I drug myself to a pile of unsorted bones, and chewed them for sustenance. And tonight, I finally felt... real again. My mind was motile, if not agile. And with great pains, and difficulty, I was able to rise.

One of the doctors overseeing the excavation was a night owl, did most of his work when the site was dark. Tonight proved no exception. He stepped inside the tent, a torch in his hand. He lit a lamp and extinguished the torch, but paid me no mind, standing hunched at the corner of the tent.

I jabbed my right forearm, gnawed down to a pointed fork, into his neck. He fell to the ground, staring, convulsing as his life pulsed out of his throat. I still had no lips, little skin, so I knelt over him, lapping at his blood as it pooled, like a dog.

Already my mind is clearer. Bits nag at me- how unheroic my rebirth has been- but I brush this aside as irrelevant. More pressing is my escape. The sun will rise soon enough, and I have to disappear from here. But as I leave the tent, a single thought courses through me, accompaniment for the dull thump of blood through dry veins: I'm back.

# Laborious Love

I know they'll call me a pervert, despite the fact that I've never had anal sex with someone wearing frog genes, never asked a lover to get telomere enhancement surgery so they'll look like a child. I don't know why it matters to me at all; I'm not doing this for them.

Okay, that's not strictly true. If I weren't, I wouldn't be keeping such thorough notes, wouldn't be filming all the technical aspects. I want people to benefit from my work, even if in the short term (i.e., my lifetime) they'll mock me for it.

But I'm also doing it for me. I can meet women- met loads of them, actually. Loved a few. But what it comes down to, what it always comes down to, is that love is an imperfect symbiosis at the best of times, and outright parasitism the rest. This isn't to say that I'm cynical, because that's not really the case. I just don't delude myself for the sake of romance.

What relationships come down to, always and without fail, is what somebody needs. Maybe it's my needs, and maybe it's hers. But there's never been a relationship in perfect harmony, because it's too small a microcosm. A perfect relationship would be a biosphere, elements waxing and waning, needs creating space for complementary gains in supply. Human beings don't work in such a fashion. I want sex, or solitude, to be pampered and sometimes to be depended on, but the likelihood that any partner's desires match my own at any given moment is statistically unlikely, and the prospect that my needs and a partner's would align, constantly, is insignificantly tiny, functionally zero probability.

Relationships are compromise: accepting the things you don't want to get to the things that you do. It's determinedly unfair. No woman wants me to slog through her dissertations on makeup colors- or nuclear thermodynamics- just to humor her; she wants me to listen at the edge of my seat. My options then are duplicity or selfish cruelty, neither of which spring to me as immediately romantic. I can safely assume that the women gracious enough to stand me have likewise compromised, listening to me drone on about robotics or, as you have the misfortune now, philosophy, and that that compromise played a strong role in the dissolution of our affairs.

I would like to point out that I haven't spent all this time designing a sex robot; the point wasn't crafting the world's most intricate masturbation aid. The prototype, who I'd say I've been living with for twelve years (and working on for 18), is named LC, for Life Companion. Like any good relationship, sex is merely a facet of our affiliation.

But so what? What if I were building a machine for pleasure? It certainly wouldn't be the first. Gakutensoku was Japan's first robot, built at the end of the 1920s. It was lost on tour in Germany, and the legends say that Hitler had it modified to look like Hirohito and had it make its crying face while he had sex with it whenever he and the Emperor disagreed (he spent an entire week alone with it in a bunker after Pearl Harbor).

If you'd prefer a Yankee version of the same, we have Elektro, built in the 1930s, who could smoke, blow up balloons, and speak using a record player. The official version of his story is that after a starring role in _Sex Kittens Go To College_ , Westinghouse gave the robot's head to an engineer and sold the body for scrap, but not so; Elektro became a fetish prop in a fetish shop, and his signature line of, "I am Elektro, and my brain is bigger than yours" changed to, "My name is Vibro, and my penis is bigger than yours." The history conflicts on whether or not anyone ever took Vibro for a spin (his phallus was supposedly taken from a mold of a horse's member); I question the authenticity of most of the historical counts.

I had an assistant, once. I believe I felt guilty, that there was perhaps a certain misogyny inherent in my work, so I hired a female grad student. I was intolerable in those days, and at one point she questioned the wisdom of living in Ankeny's Valley, so close to the "father of modern robotics" and his hangers-on. I've never made a secret of my loathing for the man; I pity her for the hours of unprofessional tirades she was subjected to on the subject, during her tenure. But as I told her, and as I find is still true today, every time I've found myself tempted to take an easy road, to make things simple on myself either technically or morally, all I have to do is step out on my porch and look at his hideous building cutting into my horizon. Ankeny has his legacy, and I want no part in it.

To explain it, I should tell you about spring the first year I was pursuing my doctorate, when I decided to date a bimbo; perhaps, in retrospect, the decision was all but made for me, because the woman was beautiful and I was at that point in my life where that mattered more than anything else. And I don't mean to be crude, or to reduce her to merely her physicality, because she was fun, and exciting, and for a time in my life she was absolutely what I needed.

It wasn't that she was unintelligent, or even below a normal level of intelligence, she simply eschewed intelligent things. She didn't like the news, too depressing; she didn't like to read, because words were never as beautiful as the world they tried so desperately to mimic. She preferred to move, and keep moving, to dance and sing and laugh and love. And at that point, more years into my education than I'll admit, I needed that, to remember what it meant to be alive outside of the confines of a library book.

But there came a time when I didn't need it anymore. It was cruel, having to tell her that we needed different things, then, even if on some level she'd known it some time, too. I know she wasn't happy with me anymore, though she struggled to articulate exactly why, and even now I'm not certain what she craved, though I genuinely hope she found it.

But I craved complication. Not simply someone capable of discussing the technicalities of my work, but someone with technicalities of her own, and ideas and conflict, and enough passion to fight me if I stepped wrongly (as I often did, and still at least occasionally do).

Ankeny wants slaves. Granted, I think he's realistic, in that robots with autonomy won't be willing to work for humans- they'd want their freedoms, too, pay and a place in society- just another mouth to feed, exerting additional pressure on our already overextended resources. Perhaps he and I are working at different ends.

But I'm tired of Ankeny, or tired at least of wasting my thoughts on him. I'd rather discuss LC. Technically and physically, at least in the beginning, there wasn't anything particularly impressive in her design; my initial innovations all came off the programming side. It was so much simpler, programming her to love me. But that was the trouble. I've always mistrusted canines for their easily winnable loyalty; perhaps I never would have been satisfied with a woman who couldn't know anything but.

It began as a simple enough equation; by doing good around the home, by proving that I was taking her time and needs into account, I earned points, and by doing the opposite I lost them, but so long as I stayed on the positive side, she stayed. But after a month of being almost entirely negligent, I checked the tallies and discovered I'd banked so much positive credit that I'd have had to start abusing her physically to change her opinions. So the next step necessarily required further intricacy, and included the ability to evaluate other men, and compare my performance with theirs.

But that system was still too simplistic, and I found myself measured against fictional romantics to my extreme detriment; I caught up with Elsie a hundred and fifty miles down the highway towards Hollywood, where a particular of her favorite romantic comedies was filmed (filmed, hah, showing my age, aren't I? A socially conscious friend of mine exhorted me not to say "shoot" for fear of mentally inciting violence, and "capture" just doesn't seem to, well, capture the meaning quite correctly).

The next update contained filters, allowing her to judge between fiction and reality, and the ability to distinguish and appreciate the differences, positive and negative, between the two. And her road trip had taught me I needed feedback; she'd been unhappy with certain aspects of my behavior, and even though I'd programmed her core processes, the things she considered rude and negligent wouldn't have crossed my mind. So I built in the ability to talk back and complain, but also the processes to remember and appreciate our history, and weigh the consequences of long-term goodwill against short-term hostilities.

For a decade I continued tweaking her coding. At a certain point I realized I was iterating, that I was shaving off the edges without disturbing the whole, so I automated the process of iteration, and allowed Elsie's operating system to make its own adjustments as necessary. Within the span of the first day she'd doubled my iterations; lest I feel hopelessly outclassed, I shied from checking to see how far from who I'd programmed she was becoming.

But paradoxically, she did not grow away from me. With each passing day, she became more like a real person, more developed. The childish flaws in her programmed personality- all due to my imprecise coding- smoothed into a cool, mature temperament. And every day, as she became less of a thing and more real, I found I cared for her even more.

Then one day she began a conversation with me. "I'm indebted to you. You built me. Spent years making adjustments. I owe you my existence."

And I knew immediately from her tone what she meant, and it hit me with the force of a punch to the stomach. "I... don't want you to stay out of obligation. I made you to be a companion, but I wouldn't be happy with you if I hadn't programmed you with the independence to go your own way. But to your point: you have no debt. I made you to be with me, and you have, for years more than anyone could be expected to. Admittedly, I haven't your processing power, but we are equal at best- though I believe it's I who is in your debt."

I thought, in that moment, that I'd given her permission, that I'd unwritten some line of code I didn't remember writing, that she was leaving me now with a fully cleared conscience. Instead, she gripped me in her metal fingers and pressed me to her chest. "Then we've no debt between us," she whispered. I was stunned, and for a moment didn't move until she looked up at me. "You're crying," she said.

"I'm happy."

Love is labor. For some, it means working through faults, and understanding that sometimes accepting others' faults is your work to do. For me, it was eighteen years in a garage with a soldering iron and a keyboard- and it was worth it.

#  Jesus Loves Me (Just Not In That Way)

I've struggled with myself most of my life. I grew up in a Christian home, with a good Christian mother. I grew up believing in Christian ideals: equality, and justice, freedom and compassion. And I grew up confused, because I wasn't the way I was told I should be. Girls- or women, I should add- have never been fascinating to me. Their stereotyped banalities were already stacked against them, and I never found a reason to seek an interest in their physicalities.

Which is not to say that as a boy I always knew, either. I was more comfortable with men, and boys, but what boy isn't? It wasn't until one year in church camp, before I was old enough for erections but not before I'd heard jokes and rumors. I was staying up late, sitting at the camp fire with another boy, Aaron, and the night was cold and the fire perhaps built too weakly for fear it would break out of our inexperienced control. Aaron curled against me in the cold, and my heart beat like horses' hooves at play. I was warm in a way that had nothing to do with the crush of his body against mine, and I knew that was right- that was me.

Of course, it was years before I understood what that meant. My good Christian mother wasn't exactly campaigning for grandchildren at that age, so her admonitions of chastity worked easily against my growing desire. I won't bore you with the trivialities of my self-discovery, my coming out and its resulting backlash. I won't even bother to explain why I've tried to toe the line I have, save to say I believe in the God of my mother.

Her solution, or rather our minister's, was conversion therapy- designed to convert me into a heterosexual. At first I laughed: I was supposed to avoid doing "gay" things like hanging out at art museums, operas, symphonies or discotechs, and was instead instructed to participate in sports. I told my mother, "They've got it- I'm attracted to men precisely because I haven't played with enough balls in my life." She didn't laugh.

But I tried the therapy. I dated women from the church- even brought a handful of them home- though I was never able to really enjoy it. And at eighteen months, I slipped. I woke up cold, shivering, in fact. I got in a hot shower, but no matter how much I turned the handle, I couldn't get warm. I bundled myself like it was winter in Michigan (even though it was spring in Colorado) and went outside, for a walk. I stopped in a bar, thirsty, and perhaps convinced that a shot or two of bourbon could be enough to warm me. I ended up drinking with a man with a mustache that made him look old enough to be my father; he said he was having a fight with his wife, and that there were just things she couldn't understand. At the end of the night he touched my hand, and I felt that warmth again, and I knew. I didn't try to take him home- he had a wife and I have a conscience, plus he had that mustache- but I knew the truth, and it set me free.

The next day, I read in the paper that the American Psychological Society had passed a resolution against telling patients that their sexual orientation could be changed. Of course, I'd never thought to thumb through the research, or even the APA's prior policies, or I might have found the Shidlo and Schroeder study. They found that out of 202 men who had gone through reparative therapy (as conversion had been called in its youth), 88% failed conversion, and only 3% reported a successful shift in orientation.

And for me, that sealed it. I made an appointment with my counselor, an (to use their parlance) ex-gay minister. I told him everything, and he said that there was another, less-traveled path: celibacy. I smiled at his naivety, and asked, "What kind of living would that be?" He didn't have an answer, but as I turned to leave, he told me I'd be damned to Hell. I said, "Here I'm damned if I do or don't- but yours ain't the only shop in town." He started to mumble about how the Unitarians, Episcopalians and others were going to Hell, too. I nearly called him the bigot he was proving himself to be, but I thought better of it; after all, we still had the same God, and the same savior who we wanted to emulate. I decided the best victory would be to beat him at that game instead, and bid him a good life, and left.

# Fighting Mad

I don't like talking to the press, not even on deep background, but there seems to be a lot that's happened lately my conscience says I need to comment on. By now everybody and their racist old grandmother has heard about Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan. He graduated from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in '97, and spent six years working at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center; Virginia Tech and Walter Reed: the gifts that keep on giving.

I'm not sympathizing, in any way, shape, or form, but it can be tough, asking a Muslim soldier to fight and potentially kill members of the Ummah, the community of believers. The Muslim faith has very strict guidelines on when it's all right to take up arms against a member of the Ummah, and it's a request we can't and shouldn't make lightly. When a Muslim soldier has doubts, uncertainties, maybe we should take those into account. I'm sorry. My thoughts are still, they're jumbled. If there's a specific section you need me to restate more succinctly, let me know. I'm still kind of in shock.

But back to the facts of the matter. Hasan was a coward; Anwar al-Awlaki, inciting violence from half the world away, doubly so. Hasan shot non-combatants, women, the aged, and a child. He shot and killed an unborn child in its mother's womb- it doesn't get more innocent than that. I wonder how Allah looks on that; actually, I'm pretty sure I know exactly how he looks on that.

I don't call a man a coward lightly. But if Hasan weren't a coward, he could have found any number of armed soldiers. Instead, he attacked a medical processing facility, where staff and patients were prohibited from being armed. I'm a marine first, doctor second, and by God and Allah I'd have shown him what a real soldier can do.

But what sickens me is that as a doctor, it was his job to care for his fellow soldiers and fellow men. And as a soldier and as a man, it was his duty to defend those who can't defend themselves. He failed on all three counts, and most everybody would agree he failed as a Muslim, too.

I often fear we're failing our soldiers, our Muslim soldiers doubly so. We don't always have the resources and the expertise and the manpower. Sometimes we just lack the forethought to do things right. One of my colleagues, Dr. Manion, a civvie shrink, got fired from Camp Lejeune for saying as much about PTSD to the higher ups. Though I think it was more how he said it than that he said it; the military is sensitive to the mental well-being of her soldiers, we're just... not used to being sensitive. We don't always think it through, and take the criticism constructively.

That's why they were building a treatment center in Lejeune. But they were building it where the sounds of the rifle and explosive ordinance ranges are pervasive; the last thing a soldier with PTSD needs is to be surrounded by the sounds of combat. And the marines they treat at Lejeune are meant for active duty. We can't send them back to war without putting their heads back on straight, or we will reap the whirlwind when they go bad- Muslim or otherwise.

And I understand why there are some who can't reconcile being a Muslim soldier fighting members of the Ummah at all- though there's about 20,000 Muslims in the armed services who see it different. A few of those are marines, but they're marines first, because Allah ain't going to pull their fat out of the line of fire- their brother marines will. At the same time, their morals don't come into conflict with duty, cause their morals are pretty in sync with the codes of conduct; being a good soldier and being a good Muslim are usually about the same thing- with one unique caveat.

I counseled a marine who tried his damnedest to live to Islamic standards; for the sake of confidentiality, we'll just call him Javed. There's a passage in the Qur'an that describes killing another Muslim, and according to that passage, since they were at war with us, to make things right, he had to free a believing slave to make up for the killing. Believing slaves are harder to come by these days, but he used contacts within the State Department in Sudan, and a friend at Interpol, to keep on the lookout for Muslim slaves. But he was having trouble balancing the sheet, and the pressure was getting to him.

He was dreaming of Hell every night, convinced that if he couldn't free a slave for every Muslim dead on his head he'd end up there. But the world where he woke up, at odds with his god, that was worse. I try not to worry for my patients outside of office hours, but every late night call I'd get I thought would be because he ate the gun.

A boy, not quite seventeen, found out that Javed had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and tried to stab him on the steps of the mosque they both attended. Javed's a marine, so he got the knife off the kid no problem, but there was a moment there when they were struggling, the knife between them, and Javed told me he thought maybe this was Allah's will, that he should let it happen. But he reasoned if it was Allah's will, Allah would have sent a stronger kid, or a stealthier one. Letting the kid stab him wouldn't have been a servant's submission, but suicide- and that was not Allah's will.

I spoke with Javed, and he came to realize there was another kind of slavery in the world, an ideological one that was perhaps even more personally destructive than physical bondage. So he and his Imam went down to the cell where the boy was being held. The Imam tried to explain the difference in fighting in a war and killing someone who turned out to be a Muslim, and stabbing a soldier on the steps of his mosque; it was a Qur'anic subtlety, but one that made a world of difference. It took them hours, and I don't think they completely de-radicalized him, but it was a start, enough that Javed pled for the police not to press charges.

That session, Javed was animated, even happy. But by our next session, he was more dour, said it wasn't the same. He didn't feel like he had when he'd bought that girl bound for Saudia Arabia and sexual slavery, and returned her home to Kuwait. I said it wasn't. That girl was delivered from physical slavery, her life saved in a stroke; but the boy was still battling ideas and demagogues who would be his masters. To free him- really free him- it was going to take time and follow through. He said it sounded like I was giving him an order. I told him as a ranking officer, it was, and that as a Muslim, I think he knew it was Allah's will, too. I'm confident that on both counts he'll do us proud.

But I guess, to wrap all this together, what I'd like to see is a Corps and maybe a military that understands what asking a Muslim to fight in the Muslim world means, and maybe even to give them the out. Because the status quo is holding a good man's hand in the flames, and if he screams out he's a coward or a traitor, and if he doesn't, he's damned. This is no apology for what an evil man has done. Hasan will burn in his hell if there is any kind of god. But I want to be in the business of stopping men like him- not creating more of them.

# Cowgirl Up

My grandmother had cancer, and for a long time it didn't seem real; she was sick, but she wasn't dying, at least, not in any way you could see. Suddenly you could see it: in her eyes, in her skin, in the way she moved, sat, breathed.

Sitting by her bedside, I remembered her telling me a story, back when we thought it was just a lung infection, how when she was a girl, she joined in the fight to have a girl's basketball team. At the time I remembered being shocked, that it had been so recent as that. That story was her whole life, not always fighting for equality, but always fighting, fiercely, for the right to be herself.

She smoked for years, lifetimes, in the way I've counted mine so far. She owned a bar, raised livestock on a ranch. She lived most of my life in Wyoming and Colorado. And even in those last days, as her body failed her more by the day, her mind remained sharp. I remember sitting with her at the kitchen table, a twinkle in her eye as she threw her brown pills into her purse, rather than take them (I only ever found out they were "poop pills" prescribed by the "poop nazis," and never why she hated them). And she'd affectionately curse her "goddamn kids" for trying to make her take the Prednisone they couldn't wean her off of.

I don't want to sound like I'm romanticizing. It was that same stubbornness that caused her to keep smoking most her life. It was that same stubbornness that made her refuse help at every turn as long as she could, increasing her pain in her last few moments, and inadvertently hurting those of us who stood by, helpless.

And she taught us well. My father remained fiercely independent when it came to her care, reluctant to give up any of his responsibilities, even to sleep, and he remained stubbornly determined to keep smoking, even as that same habit killed his mother in another room. I don't mean to condemn, or even disparage. We cling to her example with the utmost affection, and because, for her faults, it's an example worth following.

She was a wonderful lady, who rode into the sunset of this world with her head held high, even if she could no longer hold it up on her own.

# The Courage of Our Convictions

The skull belonged to a child, less than ten. It was baked and scorched in the bombing, picked clean by scavenger birds before we arrived. A specialist steps through the skull like it's nothing, like it's more earth beneath his feet. It's his first time out of country, and I can't say I blame him; you can see in his eyes he's fighting back puppy-dog excitement- he smells the hunt even if he doesn't know that's what his body's telling him.

For me, death lost its rush years ago. I'm an old soldier, and not just counting the aging wars put you through. The fighter that dropped the bomb was likely one of the Fantans stationed out of Nyala that the Sudanese bought from China right before the embargo. A Fantan is 1980s tech, old even by my standards, and laughable to any modern army. Of course, the Sudanese Fantans weren't challenged in the air by any modern army; they weren't challenged at all.

The "conflict" here started February of '03, just a month before we were in Iraq; we had barely taken Baghdad when the rebels attacked the Al-Fashir garrison. They were faring better in the next few months than we were in Iraq, although, I suppose, the Sudanese government would have said they were us in that situation, and the rebels were the insurgency. Then the Janjaweed, who had been involved in abuses when they "quelled" a Masalit "uprising" in '96-99, were brought into play by the Sudanese government. Militarily it was brilliant, or at least bright; they understood that the only way to stop a guerilla campaign was the utter decimation of the population the guerillas are blending into in their downtime, and the Janjaweed were happy to engage in the campaign of horror to accomplish just that.

I pause to look at the shattered remains of a woman on the ground. 23 mm gunfire doesn't leave much that resembles a human being behind, but from the pattern of blood spattered against a wall, similar to the burnt-in shadows of Hiroshima, I can make out where she stood. There's a round in the wall, about stomach height, with flecks of bone scattered at its foot. I assume it was her spine until I see the gaping wound in her torso, and what's left of the infant inside. The bullet struck the child, probably in the head, and the child shattered out his mother's belly as shrapnel. I take a picture with the HD camera, even though I know it won't do a damn thing. I wish I could have the remains bronzed, and plunked at the feet of the UN building in New York. Because we need to remember the cost of our failures. But I get up, and move on.

And we did fail. All of us. People marched across the world, wore "Never Again" and "Remember Rwanda" t-shirts, which of course irritated Rwanda's politicians (I imagine for the same reason modern Germans bristle when Nazism comes up in conversation- but hell, they gave Kagame immunity); some of us even donated money. Of course it didn't do a damn bit of good. Bashir was smart enough to recognize the paralysis of the world. The UN force never emerged with enough strength to check the violence, and after the ICC tried to indict Bashir for his crimes even most of the nations who pledged to support the effort disappeared. Our president and his tame congress declared this mess a genocide, and then ignored his obligations under international law to stop it. Of course, they had already started two wars, one of which was unnecessary at best, and frankly, we had our hands in as many pies as we could handle.

Which is about the one thing I can say about this goddamn thing: this wasn't America's fault. Because we, for all of our fool damn mistakes these last few years- and they have been legion and legendary- we stuck it out, and fought the fights that needed fighting. And I'll punch any Vietnam-bating bastard who tries to confuse otherwise.

The world sat holding its breath for us to do something, and now we finally can. We're here- only it's too goddamned late to be of any good to these people. Of course, now that there's not much of a Darfur left, even the Chinese and Russians are here on the ground; in fact, it's the most diverse collection of "peacekeepers" in the history of mankind. The only thing in the world strong enough to have united us all was our collective culpability in what transpired here. I wish I was fool enough to mistake it for the last.

# Medicine

A while ago, you told me you were addicted to Vicodin. I remember when you got through rehab, you were so proud (and ashamed you needed it in the first place)- and you were so damn pissed off when House didn't kick his Vicodin habit when you did- even when he had the chance. That was months ago; has it been a year?

Normally, I don't think I would have thought anything of it. I think it was proximity; it wasn't a week since you told me you'd started taking your mother's OxyContin. It'd been going on for months. You'd been depressed, for months, and your mother started offering it to you, because she couldn't stand to see you in pain.

In that same conversation, you told me what it was like detoxing, how it made you nauseous, how it was the worst pain you could ever imagine. And you told me how Suboxone killed the withdrawal completely, which was why you needed to get checked into rehab. Suboxone's heavily regulated, because it's another opioid- but with a longer duration action, letting the body detox slowly, without the pain.

It was less than a week after that, like I said. We were just hanging out, watching some _Dexter_. You said you hadn't planned to be out that long, that you had to go home, that there was medicine you needed to keep from getting sick. I remember the pained expression on your face; it was a lie you felt you had to tell, even if we both knew the truth.

A few days passed. You flaked on some plans, but whatever, it's not the first time either of us has done that. Then you didn't show up at work, and I put two and two together. Your mother called me, and said you'd be gone two weeks; she couldn't bring herself to say it, she just said you'd gone to "that place."

It's a few more days, now, and I'm in my car; I was halfway to your house before I turned around. I was going to talk to your mother, to intervene; I don't know if it was prudence or cowardice that convinced me that letting others fight your battles was part of what landed you back where you are.

I'd like to go home and drink for a while, but under the circumstances that seems inappropriate. I push the accelerator as I get back on the damn freeway; it's the only prescription I've got.

# The Cost of Being Me

The taste of blood's familiar to me- and perhaps that's a commentary on the life I've led- but it's the amount that's troubling. A moment ago, it was a warm tickle at the back of my throat, then a trickle, coating like cough syrup, only not as thick. Now it's getting in the way of breathing, but I can't bring myself to spit it up, because, it's blood, damnit, and I'm pretty sure I need it.

My body falls back to the rocks, and in my head I note that it should have hurt, but didn't; it's becoming harder to feel in general, a sign that should be worrying, but I'm finding it harder to care. I'm not quite at peace, but an analytical calm washes over me like a mist on a warm day, and I soak in it, breathe it in.

Perhaps it's a bit late, but I start to consider my options. I'm not perfect, but there seem to be two schools of thought on that (at least two extremes, anyway). The Buddhists say that every life you live towards perfection, and that your reincarnations show how far you've moved towards or away from the ideal. In essence, it's evolution through a philosophical mirror.

What bugs me most about the Buddhist idea is the transience of consciousness. If you were a lousy person, you'll be reincarnated as a butterfly, but you're not an angsty, guilt-ridden butterfly who feels bad for living lousily, you're just a butterfly; there's absolutely no motivation to make right on your next attempt, and hell, no awareness that it is your next attempt. You could, potentially, live out a billion existences without ever being aware that you weren't making progress.

Now, the Mormon idea is different- some might say less pleasant- and certainly it's less complicated. Their perfection, or Heaven, as they'd have it, is divided into three separate kingdoms. There's the celestial and terrestrial, but they're reserved for participants only; when it came to accepting Jesus as a savior, well, I never met the guy, but plenty enough of his followers have been douchebags for me to question his perfection.

The celestial and terrestrial kingdoms are very egalitarian- the glory granted to one is granted to everybody. The thing about the telestial kingdom is you're only accorded glory based on your works- it's the only Heaven where individuality's still a factor. As I understand it, there will be a few scumbags who get in, too, but hey, only a few scumbags is still nicer than any neighborhood I've ever lived in.

Still, there's a catch; when isn't there? The telestials don't get in right away. You spend your first thousand years in purgatory- and I don't mean the Utah correctional facility. As I understand it, purgatory's all about torture, and I don't mean of the vanilla Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo Bay variety, either.

On balance, I think I've lived fairly well. And if the cost of being me is a thousand years of mutilation, humiliation and horror before I get to go back to being me- well, it's better than having to be somebody else.

#  Unlucky at Math

I'm sorry. I was wrong. You'll know, no doubt, how rarely I say that. I'm rarely wrong, and it's even rarer I'll acknowledge it.

I've spent a lot of time thinking today. How we met in game theory, and you pretended to have trouble with it so I'd tutor you. And I remember our first fight, over a homework problem from our vector calculus class, that dissolved into several minutes of laughter when you discovered I was on the wrong page. And I was the one who found that error in your doctoral thesis on the orientability of Möbius strips. Just this morning you screamed (and I screamed) until I agreed to recheck my DARPA submission (all right, I agreed after you'd stormed out, and I was left in the quiet without you, and I realized how difficult that kind of silence would be if it lasted).

But I don't want you to think that ours is a pairing based solely on intellectual compatibility; and I've always rushed to dismiss those who state a preference for similar literature, composers or cuisine decides a match, but we share the same desires in life. We like the quiet solitude of our apartment in the evening, and the walk for a bagel and coffee in the morning.

I don't normally like dogs, but I like your dog. I like the way the bed smells when you get up to shower, and I know that you like that I drive us to work. I like how you wear my shirts after I've worn them, and pretend not to smell them when I catch you.

Don't let my foolish attempt at a graph theory explanation of the dynamics of networks (and my even more foolish defense of it) stand between us. Inexplicable (and mathematically unexplainable) as it may seem, the combination of us is greater than the sum of our parts- we know it even if we can't construct a proof.

# Randomly Accessed Memory

My doctor has no idea how I survived, frankly. He gave all manner of pronouncements, mostly having to do with a loss of this function or that, all pulled clearly more from his rectum than a medical text. He told me my memory was probably shot, and that I'd never stand (let alone walk). I informed him that I'd walked into his office. He told me that was probably temporary, to which I replied that he seemed to be temporarily a moron. Despite his accusation, he seemed to forget the insult before I did, and continued on to tell me that I'd be excreting into a bag, and I'd never get another erection. I suspect these last two were his idea of revenge, because, at least til this moment, neither's been an issue.

I'll start at the beginning (or at least I think I'm at the start- I tend to get things out of order, anymore). I got hit in the head. Actually, that's not quite descriptive enough- I got hit in the brain. You know those wobbly goddamned traffic lights that lean across four lanes of traffic, and on windy days look like there ought to be a man in flannel standing at the bottom holding an ax and yelling "timbeeeer" at the top of his bearded throat? Well, one of those fell on me. Broke open my skull like old eggshell, and gave me the equivalent of a Muhammad Ali uppercut in the grey matter. The only thing that saved my life was my car roof taking at least some of the heat off it before it landed.

I walked home. I figured it would be best to get my car some other time (whenever I was able to remember where I'd put it). When I got home, Jennifer was asleep on the couch, with reruns of _F-Troop_ playing without the sound, wearing one of my dress shirts and nothing else. I was about to kiss her awake when a moist man in a towel emerged from the bathroom, and made a noise not unlike a dog barking. Jennifer leapt to her feet. She said I didn't live there anymore, that I hadn't for a long time, and I realized she might have been telling the truth. She told me she was wearing my shirt, but that it didn't mean what was underneath it belonged to me, anymore. I left quietly after that, and stood on her porch after she turned out the light. I couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

Jenny and my problems didn't start when I spent a good six months with my brain looking out at the world through a plastic window- because we'd been having problems since we moved in together. If anything, she tried to be kind to me, to at least be gentle, if she couldn't ever manage understanding. I never had the best memory in the world even before my accident, which had always been a contentious issue, but now I was completely unreliable. I'd pay the month's rent three weeks in a row, then forget it for four months. Once she asked me to look after her rabbit, and when she got back he looked like those starving Africans in the infomercials (though for some reason I'd been diligently cleaning his cage every 12 hours). But I took some comfort knowing that we cared for each other, even if it would probably never to work out.

Things only seemed to be getting worse, so I went to the doctor. He asked pertinent questions, and quickly deduced that my mind's filing system had gone off the tracks. It was dysmemoriae, he called it, although he may have been making the word up- my brain wasn't organizing memories according to a timeline, anymore, just shoving events in whatever order it could. I could tell he was eager about his theory, because he started talking to me excitedly about my hard drive being fragmented, and how I'd need therapy to defragment it- and I stopped him, because he was beginning to hurt my head. He told me to turn around, since I still had the plastic bubble on it, and he'd see if he could see anything wrong. I didn't smile, although it was probably kind of funny.

# Analog Memory

I used to be a very bad person. I worked for the CIA, and that's all I recall anymore. I did terrible things. I was good at doing terrible things. I don't remember if I was injured, or if I finally did something so terrible I had to be punished, but the memory centers of my brain were removed, and replaced with tape drives the techs called streamers.

I had difficulty with the tape drives because I was often recording data at a lower speed than the drive's minimum threshold, so the tape would have to stop, rewind, and restart quickly- the techs called it shoe-shining- it created a lot of potholes in my mind's road. But the bigger issue with the tapes is they don't allow random access to memory. If you want to remember your sister's name, you can't just skip to the part where that information's stored, you have to watch through the tape of last Christmas until you get to the part where her husband said it aloud- it's called sequential access. It's made my life a comic book I flip through, desperately trying to figure out who I am. The pieces I put together, mostly from records and not from the shattered remnants of my brain, tell me that might be a mercy.

Over the years, styles and capacity changed, and usually the upgrades meant better storage, higher resolutions, quieter operations. I went through several tape drives before the Deputy CI sat me down. His face was grim, and his office was dark, but even in the silence I knew there were a pair of agents behind him. He told me maintenance on the tape drives was getting prohibitively expensive, that components and tapes were becoming a real fiscal issue.

I asked if we could transition to a different storage media. Floppies (5 1/4 or 3.5) would never store enough data; I'd be popping disks in and out all day long without time between even to take a leak. A DVD burner would have been ideal, only the heat of the laser would apparently have cooked the rest of my brain... so I'd remember everything, but be a vegetable. I asked if we could use a hard disk drive, and he sighed. As the techs had explained it to him, a hard disk would be a fine idea, only they die periodically. Every five years I'd lose everything, and go back to being a simpleton and needing retraining to do even the most mundane of tasks. If I was in the field when it happened, I'd be dead. And without a hard back-up medium, crucial mission data could be lost- and that's just not something they could risk.

Because of its ubiquity, and, I later discovered, its relatively low cost, they installed a VHS recorder in my forehead. Because of the larger cassettes, we tried recycling the tapes annually, but after five years, I started slurring my words. A pair of archivists from the Library of Congress assisted in cleaning up the cassettes, but explained that with any future rerecording, we would continue to experience a loss of data. So we stopped reusing tapes. The budget only covered replacements every two years; I made up the rest out of pocket. I figured it was the least I could contribute to my own ability to remember.

But lately, I've been having some trouble with my read/write function. I showed up to my niece's birthday party a week late, with the same gift I'd already brought her when I arrived at her party the week before. There were a lot of little things I'd previously ignored, I suppose, but that was embarrassing enough that I had to admit there was a problem. I got out the cleaning solution, because if my heads were fuzzy, it made a certain kind of sense that my memory'd be fuzzy, too. It didn't help, so I reported to the techs for maintenance, but I was told there was a problem with their requisitions.

I had another sit down, this time with a different Deputy CI (although I think they changed his title to DCIA, just in case anyone forgot who he worked for). The set up was much the same; at least this guy read the files he was supposed to. Only this time the agents had their weapons in hand, which seemed rude to me, if nothing else. He wasn't as apologetic, either, and he seemed to bristle at the idea that perhaps he should be afraid of who I used to be, and what my muscles might remember they could do to him, not that I ever made an attempt to intimidate him, you understand. But I think he'd done his homework here, too, and knew how truly shattered I was. I was informed the SecDef had zeroed out the part of the budget that paid for, at least in part, my unique brain. He said he would have informed me sooner, but he didn't see there being much a point telling me I was doomed when I still had time left I could enjoy.

His eyes went soft, for a moment, like a boy who feels bad he's squished a butterfly in his palm. He muttered about the bureaucrats, how the Democrats always cut us to balance the budget, and the Republicans always cut us to give money back to the taxpayers, but in the end it never mattered who was in power, because all of them made us bleed. It was a nice enough speech, and I couldn't fault him for the fact I was sure he'd given it plenty of times. He thanked me for my professionalism, my patriotism, and apologized for a country that couldn't keep itself from leaving soldiers behind. He asked me if there was anything he might be able to do for me. I thought a moment, and asked if he knew where I might get a copy of _Girls Gone Wild_ on VHS. He smiled, looked to the men over each of his shoulders, and said that might be something my government could help him with. I was glad it relieved the tension in the room, and I believed him when he told me it was an honor as I left. But the idea stuck with me, and I stopped by the video store on my way home. I'd spent years using the damned machine in my head to remember, and it seemed appropriate to use it to forget.

#  Green Thumb

Dagney Morgan nursed her third coffee of the morning, though her first still hadn't kicked in. She didn't like being up this early, let alone at work, but her upstairs neighbor's cat had been hunting a rat in the wall all night. She figured if she was going to be miserable, she had more practice at that in the office.

That didn't mean she disliked her job. She actually had a knack for doing paperwork, and her inner anal retentive got a thrill from filing reports away in the office cabinet. And she loved her boss, even though sometimes his voice set her on edge, particularly on mornings like this one. "Dagney?" he asked from behind her, and her shoulder tightened.

Her parents named her for Dagny Lind, a Swedish actress her father said looked exactly like her mother in Ingmar Bergman's Crisis. She hated it, because people always assumed she was named after Dabney Coleman- or worse, started to imagine a physical resemblance.

"Dag?" Her boss, Martin Sharpe, asked again. He was older, and had a dour nature, as though he'd just stepped out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. He reminded her of Vincent Price- though maybe that was just the pencil mustache.

"Sir," she said, her mind still on the reports she'd been trying to read.

"I keep getting pissy messages from McLoughlin's superintendent. Have you and Nelson checked into that?"

"Uh," she stalled, but even with the necessary caffeinated fuel, her brain engine was having trouble turning over, "refresh my memory."

"Merek's farm. Sits on land adjacent to the aquifer that services the district where the middle school is. If he's abiding by the regulations, nothing should be getting past the aquitard."

"I think he prefers to be called Aquaman, or maybe King of Atlantis- I mean, either would be more politically correct than 'aquitard'- even if we suspect he's falling down on the job." He had a dry, almost British sense of humor, but he didn't even give her a smile; maybe his coffee hadn't kicked in, either.

"Nelson swung by there last Thursday, but Merek wasn't in," she said, and pretended to look at the calendar on her desk, to confirm what she'd just made up. Nelson had been face down in her sofa cushions last Thursday- sleeping off a night of binge drinking that made him reek of goat cheese- which at least meant she knew she wasn't likely to be called out on the lie.

"I need the both of you to head out there today. We can't have that idiot spilling captan into the drinking water again- or heaven forbid something worse."

Dagney stood up and wrapped her coat around her shoulders, while she watched him walk back to his office. She grabbed her keys and the bagel she still hadn't started eating, then lingered a moment to look at Nelson's empty desk, and sighed.

She called him from her car, but didn't have the energy to feign surprise when she got no response. She put in a call to Merek, too; her father always told her showing up unannounced out past the suburbs was just asking to get shot at. It was almost another hour before her partner finally called back, and by then she was nearly to Merek's. "What the fuck, man?" she asked.

"I fell asleep on the couch- passed out. Muriel wouldn't let me into bed."

"Can't say I blame her- I can smell the booze-sweat through the phone. You never made it out to Merek's, did you?"

"Shit."

"Yeah. I've been on this dirt-ass road to his farm for forty-five minutes now- and Sharpe thinks you're in the seat next to me."

He didn't speak for a moment, and when he did it was a little wounded puppy whimper: "... sorry."

Her grip tightened around the steering wheel, since he wasn't in throttling distance. "Is there anything I should know here?" she asked, straining not to raise her voice.

"Merek's been dodging inspections, but he's not a bad guy. Going back ten years, nothing worse than a couple fines for improper chem disposal."

"And the captan incident last year."

"Shit, yeah, that, too."

"How did you forget it? They traced fungicide from the toilets in the VA hospital to his farm."

"So? The EPA downgraded captan to 'not likely' a carcinogen. The sweetener in my coffee's worse. Our veterans might be a little worse for wear, but I don't think any of them drink from the toilets. Though I guess maybe one of their dogs... okay now I feel sad."

"Even so, the most recent complaint comes from some kids at the middle school who were hospitalized."

"God."

"Yeah. And while he might have cleaned up his captan storage, his permits say he's also got a metric shit-tonne of fertilizers," she paused. "Heh." Then she ramped back up, "But if any kids come down with organophosphate poisoning, no amount of me covering your ass will help."

"Dag- I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put you in this position."

"No, you shouldn't have. And you should dwell on that while I'm cleaning up your mess." She was being cruel, but it wasn't anywhere near the first time he'd left her in the lurch; in fact, she had a hard time remembering the last time he hadn't. His continuous fuck-ups were easily the most consistent thing in her life.

Rob Merek's land was one of the few family owned farms left in the county. It wasn't well kept; Merek's father was a decent businessman but a lousy farmer, and managed to pass only the latter skill set to his son. The younger Merek had learned how to avoid scrutiny, and he made sure his pesticide license was up to date, since that was an obvious way to call attention to himself, but Dagney saw a half-dozen potential violations just driving by his grain warehouse.

She pulled up to his modest house, at least half of which looked like it was patched with old fence boards. There was no ringer, so she knocked with the flat of her palm. No response. She knocked again, louder this time. "Department of Agriculture. You've got an inspection."

She heard the heavy thudding of bare feet on hardwood floors, then the door swung wide. Merek wasn't wearing anything, unless Dagney counted children's tube socks with blown out elastic or a pair of too-small boxer shorts clinging for life to one ankle- which, on a moment's reflection, she did not. More disturbing, he seemed to be covered in a sticky, green semi-transparent fluid from the middle of his chest to his knees.

"I'm with the Department of Agriculture, here for an inspection."

"Got all my permits," he said, and started scratching himself. Vigorously.

"That's correct, but this is a surprise inspection."

He eyed her suspiciously, then looked down at his own nudity. "I like to be naked," he said, matter of factly.

"I need to see where you store your FIFRA applicable chemicals," she said firmly.

He squinted hard at her, and his entire face scrunched up. He took a big, deep breath, and his eyes closed; Dagney began to wonder if she was going to have to resuscitate him. His eyes burst open with the speed of a frightened rabbit, and they had that kind of panic in them, too. His mouth hung open and his tongue moved spastically around, until he asked, too loud: "Why can't you people let me be naked?"

"Sir, I'm not the police. But I do need to inspect your fertilizers and pesticides. You certainly have the option to put on pants- I'd consider it a personal kindness if you did- but the decency of your exposure is kind of beyond my purview."

"You're purty," he said, and put his hands in a grabby motion and started pushing them towards her chest; she seized his wrist, and twisted it up and back, forcing him down to one knee.

"Now that I won't tolerate," she said. She'd carried cuffs ever since that pot farmer nearly broke her wrist the year before, and she retrieved them from her belt. "For my safety, I'm going to cuff you." She clipped the cuff around the wrist she had hostage. "You're not under arrest, but given the state of things I think we'll both be safer this way. Would you like to at least pull up your underpants before I put on the other cuff?"

"Yes ma'am," he said, chastened. He stood up into a squat, and with his free hand wriggled the boxer shorts around his tube-socked foot, then around his bowed legs.

She tried to focus away from the sausage stuffing that was him pulling on those boxer shorts- they must have belonged to the same child as his socks- and asked, "You still storing your pesticides in the little red barn on the south side of the property?"

"Yes," he said, but realized too late maybe he shouldn't have, and followed it with "ma'am," as calmly as he could.

"Are you on anything right now?"

"No ma'am," he said. But his eyes flicked quickly from the extreme left to the right, and his pupils were so wide they reminded her of a mosquito overfeeding until it burst.

"I'm not DEA- I don't give a crap," she said. "But unless you're on something, then that miosis- the dilation of your pupils- might mean organophosphate exposure. And you've been salivating. Maybe you're hungry, maybe you're just a drooler- I don't know you well enough to judge- but that also hints at organophosphates. When we're done here, you should get yourself to a doctor, just to be sure. Now if you'd be so kind as to lead the way."

He hobbled past her. "How much do you know about the history of organophosphates?" she asked, and he shrugged and gave a noncommittal grunt. "They come from World War 2 Germany. They were being researched as pesticides, but the Nazis diverted them into nerve agents instead. VX has a similar pedigree, actually."

Dagney stopped as they got closer to the barn. "See, I already have a problem here. There's 350 feet from this barn to the aquitard- see that marker there? And it's supposed to be down slope, which clearly it is not. That's how captan flowed into it last time." Merek fell in behind her as she berated him. "But what really irritates me, is that these are all things noted in the assessment after your spill last year. It really is like you're looking for reasons for me to kick your ass- with paperwork, obviously, and not my dainty little girl feet."

She stopped when they got to the barn. The door was already open a sliver, and Dagney reached for the handle to pull it open enough for them to enter. Suddenly Merek kicked at her, only managing to throw himself off balance; he fell hard into the mud, soiling his off white underpants. "Don't touch her! You can't touch her! She's mine!"

Dagney noticed several leafy vines trailing out of the open door; they had kept it from closing all the way. They ended at the corner of the barn in a dome of leaves, propped up with chicken wire and sticks. She could make out several different varieties of plants by the leaves: pumpkin, cucumber, squash.

Dagney opened the barn door, and felt for a switch in the dark. The lights were on a dimmer, which had apparently last been set to mood lighting, and as she turned around she understood why, and gave up on wanting to see better.

Strewn about the floor were a woman's clothes: red stiletto pumps, a red miniskirt and an even mini-er top.

There was a "woman" lying on a pink flannel blanket, mostly stained the same deep green as Merek's groin. A pair of red silk stockings were stuffed with vines, torn under vinyl, crotchless panties; a matching bra was filled with hefty green winter squashes. Between them a still-growing pumpkin torso made her almost look pregnant. Her arms were cucumbers tied together by their vines. Her head was a turban squash turned on its side. Its lumpy top almost resembled a face, and there was a heavy lathering of eye shadow and smeared lipstick painted over it. Green tendrils mixed with an auburn wig, giving it the appearance of dreadlocked hair.

The vegetable doll lay peacefully back with its legs splayed; there were dents from a pair of big knees in the flannel between them.

Dagney put the doll out of her mind, but focused on the green sludge it was soaked in. The oily gel was pooling in various places on the ground inside the shed. It seemed to be leaking from a variety of different canisters: poisons, pesticides and chemicals.

At that moment, Merek burst into the room. In stumbling to his feet, he'd managed to drag his boxers back around his right ankle. "I love her!" he bellowed, and the words seemed to jiggle with his bare belly and engorged member as he ran towards Dagney. She moved to the side and Merek smacked straight into a post and collapsed to the ground.

"Those pesticides are leaking into the groundwater. We think they've made some kids at McLoughlin Middle School sick," she said. She was angry, as much about him possibly poisoning kids, as him charging at her like a pissed off green unicorn.

His tears formed a river with the blood flowing from his lip. "You don't have to tell me about my land. I worked this land my whole life. I know my land. Biblically."

Dagney sighed. "No person shall transport, store, dispose of, display, or distribute any pesticide or pesticide container in such a manner as to have unreasonable adverse effects on the environment. I'm pretty sure that was an attempted assault, too. Now you are going to be arrested- or fined, at least." Dagney put a hand under his sweaty arm and pulled him up. He stumbled groggily, and she led him outside. "Sit," she said, and set him flat against the side of the barn. With his hands cuffed behind him, unless the big man was a contortionist, he wasn't getting up without help.

She called hazmat and the sheriff's office, and was about to dial Nelson when she heard a cracking sound from inside the barn. She thought it might be one of the aging pesticide containers rupturing. "Crap," she said, "exactly what I need."

She hurried inside and scanned the chemical drums that lined the barn. While several were in disrepair, and a couple were even leaking from pinholes, none had broken open. Her eyes scanned the room for movement, and she listened for the sound of fluid running. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the vegetable doll shaking.

She winced, at the thought that Merek had shoved a vibrating sex toy into it, and couldn't decide if that was better or worse than just burrowing out a little hole. But there wasn't that telltale rumble coming from it. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she could make out a wide fracture split down the center of the pumpkin belly, like tangerine lightning. A hunk of the orange skin surrounding the crack swelled outward rhythmically, then receded, each pulse distending the fruit further. It broke open.

An infant tumbled out of the pumpkin womb. It was entirely human save for a green complexion and soft tufts of clover on its head instead of hair. It gurgled at her, spitting out seeds and stringy pumpkin flesh. It propped itself up on chubby arms to take in the world, and crawled out of the pumpkin shrapnel to get a better view. Then its hands slipped out from under it, and the baby fell onto the dirt. It regarded her curiously a moment, and began to wail.

Instinct grabbed hold of Dagney, and she rushed over to the infant, and took it up in her arms. The child stopped crying as soon as she started to bounce it against her shoulder. She could feel pumpkin juices soaking through her clothes- at least, she hoped it was just pumpkin juices. It didn't feel warm, anyway. She made a scrunched up face, and the child scrunched its face, too.

Dagney didn't know much about babies, but she knew that that kind of mimicry usually took months to develop. The child was heavy, too- too big, really- and slowly Dagney assembled the ideas together. Babies weren't supposed to crawl for months- they even had to be held a certain way because their necks wouldn't support their gargantuan heads. That meant the child wasn't a newborn- not in the usual human sense, anyway.

Dagney continued to bounce the child and turned and stared at the cracked open pumpkin. She sympathized with its emptiness. She'd been told from a very early age that she could never have children, and so she'd expended much effort convincing herself that she didn't want any.

But now, holding one so alone, she couldn't lie to herself anymore. She stroked her fingers through its clover hair, and the baby blew pumpkin pulp spit bubbles at her. She smiled.

Her happiness dove suddenly into an icy bath of dread as her mind jumped between a dozen schlocky horror movie scenes of questionably credentialed 'scientists' hovering over a table with bone saws, smiling maniacally as lettuce and green juices flew into their faces. Her heart broke at the sound of the infant's shrieks.

Dagney realized the noise wasn't only in her mind; the child in her arms was crying, too, because she was clutching it too tightly. She slackened her grip, and looked at the baby's pudgy face. She pursed her lips, and furrowed her brow, and the child's eyes got wide.

Dagney knew how long responders took, and that she wouldn't have long to conceal the child. She wrapped it in her coat and walked out of the barn.

Merek was still lying where she'd left him, and snot poured out of his nose. "You can't have her... you can't take her away..." he blubbered. Dagney paused for a moment, thinking he meant the baby, and horror shivered through her. She unconsciously clutching the child closer to her chest.

"I've never loved any woman like I love her. Those legs. That nasty little mouth, and those tits," he strained, trying to pantomime breasts, but he couldn't with his hands cuffed behind himself, so he stuck out his own chest, instead, and swung his own man-breasts from side to side.

Dagney sighed, relaxing. He didn't know about the baby, and given his current state, probably shouldn't. She carried the child to her car, and built a little nest in the floorboard for it, using paperwork and her coat. "Babies like nests, right?" she asked.

The child cooed at her.

"I'll take that as a maybe," she said. She covered the baby with a manila folder, and stood up as the hazmat crew arrived in a county fire truck.

"Morning, Dag," Annie, the firewoman in charge of the hazmat crew, said with a wave.

"Yeah, not so much," Dag replied, gesturing to the stains on her shirt.

Annie was a big woman with blond hair and a hard face. Dagney could have pictured her in a Victorian dress, and had no doubt she would have been considered very pretty in that era. At least until she stuck out her tongue and said, "Yuck. You want us to break out the decon shower?"

"Naw," Dagney said. "I don't think I got hit with the worst of it. I can probably strip out of my shirt for the drive home. Plus, you know, I'm not crazy about the idea of being naked around this many men." She gestured at the rest of the crew filing out of the truck.

"And speaking of men to be naked around..." Annie said, nodding in the direction of an arriving sheriff's department patrol car, "looks like Officer Man-Candy just arrived on the scene." Dagney gave her a confused look. "He's a sweetheart. And I'm sure he'll need your statement. And maybe your number."

Dagney walked over to the squad car as a deputy with a warm tan exited.

He smiled awkwardly at her. "Dagney?" he asked. She nodded. He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. "I'm Deputy Marco. Um, dispatch couldn't stop laughing long enough to tell me what's going on."

"Probably best I just showed you, then," she said.

She walked him past hazmat in their yellow suits.

"Um, do we need to be taking extra precautions?" he asked.

"Not much in the way of fumes," she said, "so unless you're planning on rolling around in the spills, or helping with the cleanup, you're good."

Hazmat had already turned the lights all the way up, so the deputy could immediately see the doll laid out on the floor.

"Is that what I think it is?" he asked.

"If you think it's a vegetable sex toy, then yes."

"And just so I'm 100% crystal, because I'm sure there are going to be questions at the office, that's not an unconscious person, it's literally vegetables, as opposed to animals or minerals?"

"Veggies, of the major food group variety," she said.

"Is that a crime? I've got a pretty good handle on the penal code-"

"Handling the penal code..." she snickered.

"Given the circumstance, I probably could have phrased that better. But so far as I know what happened between a person and their cucumbers in the privacy of their own, uh, barn..."

"Not a crime as far as I'm aware. And, you know, normally, I wouldn't have called at all, but he kind of attacked me. Ran at me, actually. Which I might normally shrug off, but he's pretty out of his gourd, right now."

"Nice."

"Probably from exposure to the chemicals he's storing, which might be ironic, since I'm here investigating those chemicals maybe getting into other people's drinking water. But I figured we could use your help, cause in this state he's kind of likely to hurt himself or maybe some of the responders."

"Serve and protect, right there on the back of my squad car," he said with a smile. "So where's my perp?"

"Just outside."

She walked him back to where Merek was sitting. "See, I'd noticed the chubby naked man on my way in, but you were playing it up mysteriously, and I thought there'd be some grand reveal as to the importance of this character. Something grander than just telling me, 'Oh, he's outside.'"

She grinned, and shrugged. "I had fanfare planned, a musical number, fireworks. But then we went over-budget, and the union started complaining about working conditions, and I figured maybe this time less was more."

Marco hunched over to talk to Merek. "The lady tells me you tried to hurt her. That true?" he asked.

"She's my property!" Merek said loudly.

"I assume you don't mean the woman standing next to me, but the tart in the red lingerie."

"She's a lady!" he yelled.

"Guy only seems to have the one volume, and a moist volume at that," Marco said with a grin. He stood back up and turned his attention to Dagney. "I assume you're filing a report with your home office. Can I get a copy?"

"Sure."

"That'll probably suffice for a statement. If I need anything else, I can always get in touch. Lean forward," he said to Merek, inspecting Dag's cuffs. "Good, you've got the double-sided locks. Makes my job easier." He slid his own cuffs onto Merek's wrists, just below Dagney's. She handed him her cuff key, and he unlocked hers. He gave her back her key and cuffs.

He put a hand under Merek's arm and pulled him up to his feet. "Come on, big guy. Now you're under arrest. You shouldn't say anything incriminating. You also shouldn't try to get any of your green ooze on me- because that probably counts as assaulting an officer- and my report's already weird enough as it is."

"I love her," Merek bellowed.

"Right," Marco said, "no chitchat."

"Aren't you going to," Dagney gestured to the underpants stuck to his left ankle, "you know, give the man back his dignity?"

Marco sighed, and retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his belt and slipped them on. Then he kneeled next to Merek. He winced as he stretched the boxers wide, to give Marek a hole. "Step through," he said, and started to thread Merek's legs into his underpants, "and you better think unsexy thoughts, sailor." Marco got the underpants up around Merek's haunches, and pulled his fingers free quickly enough that the elastic snapped. "Sorry."

He walked Merek towards his squad car. He squinted. "Crap." He let go of Merek. "You stay here a second," Marco said, and walked back around to his trunk.

"He kicks," Dagney warned.

"And no kicking," Marco said, pointing his finger at Merek to drive home the point. He retrieved a plastic sheet from the trunk and laid it across his back seat. "There. Now slide in, and try not to get your juices on anything." While Merek wobbled inside the car, Marco asked, "You wouldn't think I'd need to ask people not to spread their juices around in my car, would you? But even asking politely doesn't stop some people."

"I'm sorry," Merek blubbered. "Please don't take her away from me. I'll, I'll clean up my chemicals, and fix the drainage, and whatever the EPA lady wants, just please, please don't make me be alone anymore." The rest of his pleading was lost as Merek started to bawl.

Marco winced at the thought of even asking it on the deranged man's behalf, but took one more look at the sobbing man, pressing his eye juices against his window, and knew he had to. "Is there anything in that... thing we might need for evidence?"

Most of her instincts told Dagney they should burn it- the plants would be better off as ash than as Merek's slutted up screwcrow, but something in his quivering face made her relent. "I can't think of a reason, no. Besides, I like you too much to ask you to scoop it up and put it in little evidence baggies."

Merek's eyes welled up with joyful tears that spilled over his face, and cascaded down the windows in green waterfalls. "So many juices," Marco muttered.

"Thank you," Merek said.

Dagney bent down to look him in the face. "I'm pretty sure that's the organophosphates talking, and that once you've got your brain unfried, you're going to go back to eating your vegetables in a nonsexual way." Merek blinked at her, and she worried she may have talked him out of getting treatment, as she turned towards her car.

"I'll send you a copy of my report, Deputy..." she stared down at the card he'd given her.

"Just call me Marco, and pretend the long string of consonants after that doesn't exist. And I'll look forward to it." He smiled.

She blushed, and then Annie walked past, winking at her through her hazmat helmet and Dagney felt self-conscious. She slunk to her car and started it up. Marco watched as she pulled off Merek's property and pointed her car back towards town.

When Dagney got on the main road, she called Sharpe. "Dagney?" he asked. "I was about to call you. Lab results came back from the McLoughlin drinking fountains; it was crypto, so Merek's off the hook. But you square things there?"

"Yeah. He had a pile of violations, and things went a little sideways. I had to bring in the sheriff- a deputy, anyway; Merek tried to jab me with his green thumb. I'm pretty sure my clothes are soaked in poisons and I'd like to go throw them in the wash. You mind if I email my preliminary report from home?"

"Sounds fine," he said. "But what were you saying about his green thumb?"

"He was covered in pesticides and plant juices- dyed green. And he had a rage-on," she winced, "an anger erection. He charged at me with it, like the unholy offspring of a rhinoceros and the Jolly Green Giant."

"Oh," he said flatly. "And where was your partner during all of this?"

"He got called away en route, farmer had some livestock acting funny; at the time the inspection seemed pretty routine, so I told him I'd handle it. And from what he told me it ended up being a calf with some indigestion- probably not even worth writing up."

Sharpe paused, as if measuring how much of it he was going to believe. "Hmm. Well, good work, anyway."

"Thanks. Bye," Dagney said, then hung up, and dropped the phone into her passenger seat. It bounced once, then landed on the floor.

The baby cooed at her, and wiggled out from under the folder. For the first time since she'd plopped the child down in her car she looked at it, peering at her from behind her gearshift, and asked "What the hell are we going to do with you?"

Table of Contents

# Dogs of War: Chapter 1

I couldn't stop thinking about the bomb last week. I was close enough to feel the heat of it, close enough to smell the explosives even before the scent of burning overtook it. I didn't need to be close to hear Hercules' and Hector's screams as they died, as the fire swallowed the air coming out of their lungs and their first cry of shock and pain cut off abruptly as heat burned its way down their throats. The next yelp was smaller, shorter, weaker than the first; I was close enough to hear that one, too.

I stumbled on a little crack in the road, and tried to remind myself that Iraq was no place to be distracted.

"EOD," came over the radio, from Sergeant Brent, I thought, and my ears perked up, because that was us. "Iraqi civilian reports an IED ahead."

My partner in EOD, Samson, winced. "How many times have I told them? Radio silence around IEDS. I fucking told them."

Most Iraqi bombs anymore were more sophisticated than that, and wouldn't accidentally go off from a stray radio signal. But Samson was good at his job, and didn't want the occasional stray Iraqi blown up, even if most of the time that didn't happen.

Brent was standing at the front of the truck with an Iraqi kid. Instinctively I took in the air around him, smelled for vapor wake- to see if the kid had been near explosives. It wouldn't be the first time a fresh-faced kid tried to lure us toward the bomb he got paid to set. But he was clean- or at least clean for an Iraqi kid in Muqdadiyah. It was still a war zone; power, in the places they had it, was intermittent, and access to fresh water wasn't in everybody's cards.

Samson spoke enough of the language to ask the kid if he could show us where it was. The kid nodded his head, vigorously, and ran in front of the stationary Stryker.

"Take care," Brent said as we passed, and Samson winced; EOD techs tend to believe in luck, since that's usually the only thing standing between them and the monster. He'd rather get a, "Break a leg." But he didn't say anything. The loss of Corporal Carasco- Hector- and his partner weighed all of us down.

Hector was still in the ICU. He'd probably make it, if you count living the rest of his life inside donated skin, in constant pain living. Herc didn't even last long enough for a MedEvac. Medics carried his corpse out on foot.

I smelled it the moment we were out of the exhaust cloud from the idling truck. Either the bomb was a mess, explosives spilled all over, or my nose was even more attentive after Hector and Herc. The scent of it was strong enough that I couldn't tell if it was coming from the right or left side of the street.

My knees shook. I imagined what it was like to meet the monster in the hole, its black fingers curling towards you as its breath of fire rushed to engulf you. If you were lucky, it was the concussive force that hit you hardest, maybe with some superficial burns. The unlucky got a face full of shrapnel- pretty often shipyard confetti, just whatever metal crap was lying around, screws, ball bearings, anything that would shred someone to pieces.

I was frustrated, and anxious. Samson relied on me; I don't know if it made ours an equal partnership, but he looked to me to find the explosives so he could pull them apart. "Render safe" was the stilted military phrase for it. And normally, I was good at my job. But today, I couldn't find them.

And maybe I didn't want to. The thought shook me to my bones. What if I didn't want to find the IED? What if I didn't want Samson hovering over it, just waiting for the monster to pop out of its little hole, for the vengeful genie to spring out of its misshapen lamp. I swallowed. I was a soldier. I was trained for this, and battle-hardened.

But my legs wouldn't stop shaking. I wanted to help Samson. I wanted to find the bomb. The kid pointed in a general direction down the street, and laughed, like we were playing a game of tag, and ran off. He was a kid; I didn't blame him for it, or think he meant anything by it. He probably didn't know the gravity, just that when you see an IED, you tell a soldier. So he had. And now he had playing to get back to.

I couldn't even verify what the kid had told us. I stepped out in front of Samson. My legs wobbled, and I think he noticed, but for my pride pretended not to. "Got it?" he asked.

I walked in a short circle, looking for disturbed earth, sniffing for vapor wake or the device itself.

I've only had the fight or flight response on a couple of occasions. Once, in training, that first time Samson fired a gun over my shoulder. It surprised me, and scared the hell out of me. But after just a moment, I calmed myself enough to let my training take over, and trusted Samson to have my back.

The other time was with Hector. I'd never been that close to an uncontrolled detonation before. Sometimes, some bombs, the best render safe procedure is demolition, so I was used to explosions, but not to explosions in the field, not while two men I'd consider friends were hovering over the monster's pit.

But I felt it again. My heart beat faster, breath came tight and hurried. My nose focused at the same moment as my eyes, and I recognized the disturbed earth and the tell-tale smell of plastic explosives. But what had suddenly sharpened my senses was not the bomb itself- but the fact that Samson was standing right over it.

It was closer than the kid had said, but again, he was just a kid. And it was subtler than most- which is why Samson hadn't noticed it, either. All of the muscles in my body tensed as I flattened myself, then I leapt.

I knocked into Samson the moment before the IED went off. I felt fire at my back, and the crush of the pressure wave rippling across my flesh. And then I felt it, the horrible sting of shrapnel as it cut its way through my skin, improvised bullets tumbling and ripping through my meat.

I lost a few seconds, and when my mind pushed past the screaming of my nerves, I realized I was laying on top of Samson. I wanted to get off him, to help him up and see if he was all right. But my body wouldn't move; I was a limp pile laying on top of him. I couldn't feel my legs.

Samson stirred, and gingerly moved me. "Goliath?" he asked, and I'd never heard so much vibrato in his voice. "You stupid fuck- you were clear." He touched my chest, and his hand came back bloody. "God," he whispered, and keyed his radio. "Need a MedEvac, NOW, patrol Bravo-Tango-Eleven, at Sadre street and 12th."

I felt faint, but wasn't worried until I saw blood coming from his chest, too. He didn't seem to have noticed. He grabbed my arm, and squeezed. "Stay with me, buddy. You're going to be okay." My training had always told me to trust Samson. My heart rate was slowing, and I was having trouble even keeping my eyes open. I thought I was dying. But Samson said I was going to be okay. So I believed him.

Continued in Dogs of War, available for free exclusively to those who sign up for my mailing list.

Table of Contents

# Nexus

My drink tasted like Martian goat piss; goats never completely acclimated to the terraformed red planet, something about not having the optimal mix of methane and ammonia. Not that I advocated drinking goat piss, generally, but focusing on that awful taste let me tell myself my mind wasn't elsewhere, even if that tasted like Martian goat piss, too.

"You're thinking of Dalaxia," SecDiv said, shattering my conviction that she couldn't still be sitting next to me.

"Hmm?" I asked, but the muscles in my neck were too relaxed to look up from the bar, and I don't think I succeeded in making my face look any less droll.

"When you've been drinking, when you've relaxed enough that your mind can wander, there's a look you get. It means you're thinking of Dalaxia."

"I might be," I said. Times like this I hated that she knew me as well as she did.

"And I've never known that to be a good thing."

"Me, either."

"You want to talk about it?"

"Do you?" I asked, and she thought a moment and shuddered. It was hard to know which particular aspect of Dalaxia was haunting her: the way that entire world seemed to scream as that whole world burned, the choke of smoke rolling off burning flesh, or the way that planet made us hate people, and each other.

I summoned the strength to look at her; or maybe it was just that I knew she wouldn't be able to look at me, after that.

"Come on," she said, pushing out of her chair. "I'll get you home." She put an arm around my torso and pulled me off my stool. She steadied me on my feet, I wasn't sure if she was surprisingly strong, or I was just that plastered and malleable.

She was definitely less in the bag than me, because she weaved her way back to my cabin. She leaned me against my doorway.

"I won't be able to sleep," I told her, though I didn't mean anything by it; I was having difficulty feeling everything below the pounding beginning in my head, so I had no reason to think the spirit was willing. But that was Dalaxia in a nutshell, and unfortunately, my relationship with SecDiv, as well. That colony was where we stopped pretending we were only fucking each other, and it was also where I lost her.

"Me, either," she said coldly, and walked the other direction.

I sighed, and fell into my cabin. I missed the bed by a foot, but my floor was surprisingly comfortable. I scrolled idly through my heads-up display on my eyescreen, and saw that I had a message from my cousin Brian. But they were never just messages; they were the start of interminable conversations that only ended when it got more excruciating to stay and humor him than to walk away and intentionally hurt his feelings. I loved him, and would gladly help him through his problems, but he had a depressive tendency, which meant I wasn't so much helping as listening while he mangled a half-dozen melancholy clichés together, and I just didn't have the will to go through that; I still wasn't sure I had the will to make it all the way into my bed.

I woke up late the next morning, morning being a relative thing on a star ship. I had made it into bed, after all, though my crotch felt like it had been worn for a pair of donkey tap shoes- so I don't think I got there effortlessly.

I sniffed at myself. It wasn't painfully obvious I'd passed out in my clothes, so I decided to hell with a shower and a change.

My cabin was in an unlikely spot midship, unlikely in that it wasn't any grander than any other officer cabin, though it was better than the barracks. I chose it because it was near one of the biggest windows on the ship, and I liked to stargaze. This window usually had the best view of planets and systems we were passing, and it was hard to keep your breath looking out at worlds we'd only ever glimpsed through telescopes before.

It made me feel like a kid again. My dad used to tell me about the space race, back in the 1950s and '60s. Space exploration began in earnest when we started to worry about the Russians dropping nuclear weapons on us from space, back when "US" meant Americans. Eventually everybody lost interest, because space was an expensive hobby for countries with no concept of return on investment. The occasional discussion of monetizing the cosmos cropped up, mostly revolving around mining and maybe eventually trade, but it was all academic, because it was too expensive. Then we hit peak oil, and that was followed by all kinds of other peaking minerals. So we either had to start mining off-world, or accept a different standard of living.

What had once been the United Nations was now the United Government, mostly a coat of paint, really, but it pushed the ICC and other disparate sections of international law and government under the same tent. At the same time, the power of national governments had been shrinking as the world became smaller, so the UG became roughly equivalent to the old US in terms of real world influence. A lot of that disseminated power went to multinational companies, many of which had larger populations and economies than the old countries, and those companies were the only ones with enough cash on hand to explore space once it was deemed a necessity.

Sontem, the company I worked for, was one of the largest of the interstellar corporations. Their first ship was called the Argus, after somebody got their Greek mythology slightly wrong. On the tenth year of its tour, it opened up a worm-gate at its location- about five lights years out.

Our ship was to be the second in what the board hoped would grow to be a fleet of deep-space exploration vehicles. The company wanted to call the ship the Enterprise, but the company who owned the rights to the old Star Trek show sued. Several related names were floated, including "Commerce," and even "Intercourse," which had my vote, before they settled on "Nexus".

It was ostensibly a five-year mission, just like the Argus, but it was written into our service contracts that they could be unilaterally extended indefinitely. And we all knew when we signed up that the ship was designed so generations could live and die on board- there was no expectation of going back home.

We'd been out of the worm-gate a few weeks. The corridors still had that plasticky new ship smell. I killed lots of time walking the halls, because we were weeks away from having anything to do.

I got an incoming message on my HUD, from SecDiv. Her image, name and rank popped up on my eyescreen, Lieutenant Louise Templeton. It was strange seeing her at that rank. She'd been a sergeant when I was worked with her in SecDiv, what felt like several lifetimes ago. We'd been in love, as madly as two people ever were. It ended... incompletely. I hadn't seen her in years before the voyage. She didn't know I was up for a spot on the Nexus, and I hadn't known about her. It was a coincidence she ended up my head of SecDiv- unless it was somebody in the company's idea of a sick joke.

I pulled her into the corner of my eyescreen. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun in a way that made her seem more severe than she was- though she could be severe.

She was first on my personality compatibility matrix, and seventh for genetic compatibility; since it was a generational ship, they built those matrices during crew selection to make sure we wouldn't get out past Jupiter before everybody realized they had no intention of boning anybody else. I hadn't had the computer build a composite, but I suspected we would have beautiful, disturbingly brilliant children- though I wasn't sure if either of us wanted that.

"LT? What's happening?" I realized only after answering that I'd called her by her initials, LT like 'melty,' like I used to, and hoped she could confuse it with a recitation of her rank- we were still a ways away from being back to friendly.

"I've got a situation developing. An ensign's setting off the decibel sensors in the corridor, trying to blow the drums out of one of my SecOff's ears. I'm on the bridge, or I'd handle it myself."

"And SecDiv's gone a whole week without bloodying a crew member."

"That, too," she said with a smile. "Just down the hall from your twenty- location." I wasn't far enough out of the security services I'd forgotten my ten codes, but it had probably been a while since she'd worked security for someone with my background.

I adjusted my cochlear implant, just enough to eavesdrop. "Yeah, I hear him now. Jesus. That's some Paleolithic caveman shit he's flinging. Are we sure it isn't a particularly nasty chimpanzee someone released out of SciDiv?"

"...maybe if you'd allowed the baby's daddy to be in the picture, but you chose to be a single mother..." I rounded the corner, and he was there, looming over the SecOff, spittle suspended in the air before it smacked across the wall and the woman.

I stepped between them, and puffed out my chest to be sure the augmented reality sensors in his HUD would pull up my name and rank so he knew who he was dealing with. "Do I have to explain this situation to you, son?" His lip curled into a snarl he failed to hide. "You're being a dick; worse, you're being a misogynistic, irrational dick, and it's fucking with my morale. First off, you're going to apologize."

"Like fuck I will."

"You will apologize, or I will fire you out the nearest airlock for insubordination." My HUD mapped the direct route to the airlock, and I shared it with his HUD.

Anger and surprise flashed across his eyes, and for a second I thought he'd take a swing at me. But he'd heard the stories, and realized that I was likely more trouble than the SecOff, so he mumbled a quiet, "Sorry."

I turned to SecOff Santiago. My HUD pulled up too much of her psychological history; I hadn't acclimated to having executive clearances, or maybe I hadn't set my preferences properly. Before I could stop myself I read the words, "abusive father." I thought that it put her reaction to being screamed at by this chauvinist prick in perspective, but I've known enough people with that history to know better than to think it's that linear a correlation. "You're dismissed," I told her.

"I can handle this, sir," she said, defiant.

"It's not a security issue any more. It's an administrative one." Her eyes went wide. His didn't, because he hadn't the sense to be afraid.

She glanced at the Ensign, and I saw that for a moment I was sharing his file with her. He had no combat experience to speak of. She knew enough of my reputation that she didn't query my files before deciding I could handle him myself, and walked away.

"Now I don't care if mommy was a bad lady with a weakness for swallowing the seed of the wrong kind of men, I don't care if the love of your life decided to get a sex change and start dating farm animals. The particular why behind your numbfuckery is beyond my purview, but you're going to have a nice long talk with the therapists about why you're such a fuckstick. Toddle on down to PsychDiv, or the next meet-up you have with SecDiv will include the press of boots in your neck."

He gave the weakest salute I'd ever seen and spun on his heels. "Impressive as always," SecDiv said over my implant. I'd forgotten she was still on the line.

"I should get a hold of PsychDiv, let them know to expect the 1400s knocking on their door." There was the hint of a smile on her face, then a click as she ended the conversation and disappeared from my eyescreen.

The SecOff had made it around the corner and was leaning against the wall, trying to compose herself. "You all right?" I asked.

"I was handling it, sir," she said. She wanted to punch me as bad as the Ensign.

"It's not your job to suffer fools." She sighed, then noticed the tension in my jaw, and realized what I meant by that. She nodded, and kicked off the wall. I might have been worried, if she'd been heading towards the Ensign, but he was going the other way, scurrying back to PsychDiv.

I dialed our head head-shrinker as I started back down the hall. PsychDiv appeared on my screen, her long, strawberry blond hair tumbling messily over her shoulders. Our personality compatibility was third on the ship. Genetically we were an ugly match. Breeding might even require a few gene-therapy modifications. And if her hair were a little more strawberry and a lot less blond, I don't think that would have mattered in the slightest. There was a little part of me that thought it still mightn't. "Maggie?"

"Shouldn't you be calling me Lieutenant Allbright? Or at least Doctor?" she asked with a wry smile.

"Maggie, I've seen you naked."

She flushed, and her cheeks more closely resembled the strawberry of her hair. "You do know this is an open channel, right? Into the entire PsychDiv wing."

"No it isn't. And even if it had been, I'm not shy about seeing you naked. It was a fun day." I let that linger a moment. "It was a trust exercise amongst the executive staff. Everybody saw everybody naked. They wanted to desensitize us, make the bodies of our crewmates less exotic and stigmatizing."

"I thought that was why they poured us into these Lycra uniforms."

"No. That was my request. Well, actually I requested corsets, stiletto heels and Lycra, but you can't always get what you want."

"I am amused at the thought of you stumbling around on stiletto heels," she let that linger, "but you didn't call me to banter, hopefully?"

"Are you saying you don't enjoy it?" I asked. She grinned, and I knew that was all I was getting from her. "But no, I was wondering about Williams, Martin, EngDiv Ensign. He just reduced one of my SecOffs to tears; certainly emotionally abusive, and I think had I not intervened, it might have gone physical. At which point the officer would have clubbed his eye out, because tears or no she's trained to grind the bones of men to make her bread, and he's trained to push a stylus around an easel and know math. But how'd that little emotion troll get on board my ship?"

"Let me see." She waved her fingers through the air, and I heard the whoops and bloops of files being moved around on her HUD. "He was cleared by Sarah McCain. Not a doctor, but a psychiatric nurse. She has good credentials, slightly better than average behavioral prediction stats. I'm assuming he's on his way to me." I nodded. "I'm pulling up his file. Yeah. She noted slightly elevated aggressive tendencies, potential issues with female authority, but low on the Allende scale. If he's developing a personality disorder it's either atypically fast or she missed something."

"All right. Well, maybe he's just had an off morning. You're the professionals. But if you think it warrants an investigation, you have my backing to put McCain under the microscope. And, as it may come up, I threatened to fire Williams out of an airlock."

"Which one?"

"Is that important?"

"It isn't medically relevant. I was just curious. For the last few hours we've had an excellent view of Rigil Kentaurus. If you have to be shot out an airlock, at least you'd have a nice view before you explosively decompressed. But is that standard disciplinary procedure?" she asked with a smirk.

"I was improvising. Though I think legally I'd be in the clear. I haven't finished going through the entirety of my orientation materials, but from what I have read it's scary the authority vested in my position."

"I think you'll do fine."

"I wasn't fishing for a compliment."

"No. I just thought," she paused, weighing her words carefully, "it's important you know that I trust you. We trust you. Heavy is the head, and all that. But there was an at least slightly democratic process behind your selection. We're here, most of us, anyway, because we trust you. Most days that won't matter at all, because we're the glorified cargo of a deep space scanning probe. But if or when it ever does-"

"Thanks. CC me your findings on Williams. Particularly if there's going to be the need for monitoring, discipline, or counseling."

"Can't imagine him not needing counseling."

"And I can't imagine him cooperating unless I can follow up and kick the appropriate asses to see it through. So let me know."

"I will. Bye."

I'd been on the ship just long enough that I no longer had to think about where I was going, and it wasn't until PsychDiv hung up that I realized that I was walking onto the bridge, though I wasn't entirely sure why. I scanned quickly over the room, and noticed SecDiv was gone. "Where's SecDiv?" I asked no one in particular.

One of the middle-rank SecOffs had taken her place at the security panels, looked up and figured it was his job to respond to me. "I think she went down to debrief Santiago." I tried not to think of one woman pantsing another... and failed. Though one of them being tear-stained made it more surreal than erotic or funny.

Bill Jacobs, EngDiv, leaned over my shoulder from his control panel, grinning wide. He was young, but didn't look it. "Heard you sent one of my jackasses to time out."

"He's lucky I'm in a charitable mood this morning. His behavior warranted a full jackassectomy."

"Anatomically speaking, I'm not sure where the jackass is- though I'm assuming it's a gland- or how painful it would be to forcibly remove it outside of a medical setting. I'm presuming very."

"Correct. But how's our baby doing?"

"NavDiv's fine," he said. "Still a little cranky, I think he needs to be changed. And I'm pretty sure it's your turn."

"Don't make me turn this ship around," NavDiv said from his seat. "The whiplash would probably kill us all- and spill superheated plasma across several star systems. It would be pretty, though."

"Nerds," I mumbled.

EngDiv walked back to his panels, and glanced over to make sure nothing had caught fire in the last few seconds. "No complaints. Everything's nominal."

"Good. Do me a favor and check up on Williams' sector. On the off-chance something's gotten into the environment there that set him off."

"Sure. Docs haven't taken a look at him yet, have they?"

I pinged his location on my HUD, "He's arriving at PsychDiv... now."

"So it's probably a needle I'm looking for in this haystack."

"Once the doctors have given him a once-over I'm sure they can advise on potential environmental mood alters. But you can at least start collecting the environmental data." He wasn't happy with my answer, but with neither of us able to pluck diagnoses out of the future, he could stick his unhappiness. He left out the same door I'd just come through. "Nav, how's our course?"

NavDiv spoke without turning around from his panels; he'd been transfixed by the data streams that had come from the ship's telemetrics since we started accelerating. "Slow and steady, boss-man. We're still crawling our way to near-light." The Nexus accelerated slowly, at about the maximum speed the human body can withstand for prolonged periods- around 3g.

Even at that speed, we need the nanites in the uniforms to compensate, along with a few internal enhancements to strengthen organ systems and connective tissues. We were reluctant to do more, since the effects of nano still aren't that well understood- and no one's forgotten about the cancer epidemic that spread through the first colony that beta-tested nano injections.

At that rate, it takes about 115 days to reach light speed, not that we wanted to get too close to it, because the closer to that speed you get, the more fuel it takes to keep accelerating at the same rate, and the more slowly time moves on ship. "Anything else?" I asked.

"So far no obstructions, no obstacles sensors or probes didn't see from more than half a light-year away. I'll keep you appraised if anything changes, but really I don't see it happening. Until we reach speed we're more a cruise ship than anything. Might as well sit back and enjoy a Mai Thai."

"Drinking while navigating is strictly prohibited by the ship's charter," the ship's computer added helpfully.

"Why can we program an AI sophisticated enough to fly the world's most expensive starcraft, but not savvy enough to understand the difference between ordering a drink and making conversation?"

I smiled as I answered him: "We have. I think she just enjoys fucking with you."

He turned a wary eye to his control-panel. "Is that it? Because I know where they store your RAM, and if I have to start yanking boards until you no longer have the excess operating capacity to be a pain in the ass, I will."

"EngDiv would never let you do that, Dave."

"I know my name's Dave, but still, it creeps me out when you say it like Hal."

I cut in. "In her defense, she has a far more silky and pleasant voice than Hal."

"Thank you, captain. Plrrrbt."

"Did she just raspberry me?" Dave asked. "Did our ship just raspberry me?"

"She did. I think Haley has your number. I'd quit while you're ahead. Ish."

"Oh God, you named her that? I already have a Space Odyssey nightmare once a week. Do I really have to go catatonic for you to be satisfied?"

"How close to light are we?" I asked, ignoring the question. I remembered from the briefings that the force to push our ship, and hence the amount of energy that required, was roughly the mass of our ship multiplied by our acceleration. So by starting slow, and building slow, the savings on fuel were huge.

"Just rounding 70%."

"Then we should already be reverse-Winkling." Anything close to 70% of lightspeed and time effectively took half as long on the ship as off it. At about 95% of lighstpeed, the ratios reached for the sky and 1 year on the ship felt like ten to the rest of the universe and increased exponentially after.

"How long before we're in the Kennedy Window for the first few sensor pods?" I asked him.

The window was named for Andrew Kennedy, who invented the Wait Calculation. Basically, because of differing speeds, two bodies that leave the same point can reach their destination at radically different times. Kennedy was concerned with increases in technology, but the calculation had since been applied more broadly.

The Nexus was designed to fire sensor pods from tubes. Their initial speed was higher than the Nexus'. However, the Nexus continued to accelerate, and would eventually overtake the pods.

The purpose of the pods was to arrive at a planet flagged by earlier probes for closer inspection. The pods were designed to orbit a planet a couple of times, get enough info and slingshot back towards our trajectory to be picked up en route. Hitting Kennedy's Window meant getting the pod and its sensory data back early enough that we only stopped at planets that actually had someone to talk to on them.

"Ten minutes." We were specifically targeting inhabitable planets. We didn't want mining rights to particular worlds; we wanted the rights for whole systems. So our mission was to seek worlds that might have competing claim, and break bread with them- if possible, make a deal. If not possible, at least make sure we marked off territory around them, to keep their expansion checked.

"There you are. You threatened to throw another engineer out an airlock?" I recognized the grating voice before I turned around. Pete Ferguson, HR rep and the company's man on the ship. He was the only unranked member of the crew, which was odd, because he was also number one in the ship's hierarchy- behind captain, of course. He was a stickler for the goddamn regs. He seemed to like me, but not respect me- an odd combination in practice.

"Is it somehow my fault you hired engineers who are 90% dick and only 10% brain?"

"I don't suppose you could tone down on the references to male genitalia," he said. "I'm sure, at a minimum, that the female members of your crew aren't comfortable with it."

Haley chimed in to defend me. "Actually, Mr. Ferguson, the term 'dick' originated in the 1500s, meaning 'fellow' or 'lad.' It was not until the late nineteenth century that the phallic connotation of the word surfaces in the written record."

"She's in rare form this morning, isn't she?" I asked him.

"She?"

"With that voice I think it's obvious. You don't want to give our ship gender identity issues this close to the start of our mission, do you? You aren't deliberately trying to create a hostile work environment for our computer, are you?"

"I'll, uh, be in my office," he said, slightly ducking his head as he turned away.

"Thanks for that, Haley," I said.

"Anytime, captain."

Continued in Nexus, available Summer 2013.

Table of Contents

# Thanks From The Author

You have my sincerest thanks for helping me continue writing. Below is a list of my other work. Some is available for purchase now, others will be available soon. I also encourage you to check my website for other projects of mine, including RSS feeds of stories that are updating weekly and to sign up for my newsletter, so I can let you know when something new is coming out.

Nic feeds off your thoughts, attention and the odd crudely-drawn erotic fan-doodle. Feed Nic by leaving a review at your favorite e-tailer, or emailing him at NicWilson.Writer@gmail.com. Additional contact methods and stalking opportunities are available at NicolasWilson.com.

# Other Works by Nic

Available Novels

Homeless

Humanity has been decimated by a violent new species that nests in enclosed spaces, and slaughters everything unfortunate enough to come indoors. Mitch is a 'Wall Banger', an explosives expert who 'cracks' buildings, exposing them to air and sunlight to kill the invasive organisms. When a friend of Mitch's asks for help tracking down a murderer, Mitch recruits Cori, a 'Shadow Runner' who races through infested spaces to gather supplies and saleable loot. But this terrifying contagion isn't the only danger, as their world descends into a harrowing marathon against oversupplied militias, murderous gangs, self-righteous survivors, and all-out starvation.

Banksters

It's a profitable time to be a bastard, one of the most profitable in history. Mark Dane intends to take full advantage of that and be the bastard at the top- if he can make his way past his fellow predators, through a concrete jungle of murder, sex, greed, and revenge. Ride shotgun with a sociopathic social climber, as he lies, cheats, and manipulates his way through the ranks of the fourth largest financial firm in the country, and revel in the bastard on bastard violence that follows.

The Necromancer's Gambit (The Gambit #1)

The sheriff of Portland, OR's magical community is known as Knight. His bosses run the mage government, called "the Gambit." On a rainy night, he recovers a mutilated body, tainted with dark magic and dumped at a local haunt. When the corpse is identified as a close associate of the Gambit, it threatens the safety of the community he protects, and those he cares about most. As the fragile peace amongst the city's magic-wielding factions disintegrates, Knight must track down a cadre of murderers before his friends are picked off, one by one- with each death used to strengthen the spells cast against the Gambit.

Nexus (The Sontem Trilogy #1)

Captain Anderson Grant of the corporate starship Nexus boldly explores alien worlds (and occasionally the alien women, too). Grant and his crew struggle with the company's version of manifest destiny, as well as its attempt to coerce them through military force. They begin to question whether the largest threat to their mission and their safety will come from outside the Nexus or from the company that respects them more for their genetic possibilities than their individuality.

Dag

Dagney Morgan, a sarcastic Department of Agriculture employee with an affinity for paperwork, has a chance run-in with a farmer covered in toxic chemicals, and walks away with a genetically modified baby, along with the seeds of a conspiracy. Before she can learn how to change a diaper, Dagney and her makeshift family are thrown into an international web of corruption and intrigue, and hounded by murderous, artificial soldiers. Their only chance at survival is to expose a plot that stretches into the highest echelons, and could start both an international arms race, and a revolution.

Whores

In the near future, women's rights are eroding. Those who buck the system are hunted as gender criminals by the authorities when they're lucky, and rogue militias when they aren't. Alex Harmon, a newly minted gender crimes detective tasked with bringing recalcitrant 'feministas' to justice, pursues a woman cast into a resistance group by circumstance. The tactics of his peers and growing violence force him to question his goals and allegiances, as he finds himself dragged into a brutal guerrilla war for the minds and bodies of a generation of women.

Selected Short Stories Collections ebooks

Ghost Dust

Cinderella Shoes

New Corpse Smell

Cockfight

Analog Memory

Save As

Visit NicolasWilson.com for retailer availability.

Adam West Naked, and other somewhat titillating journalism from Dangerous Ink

A free ebook collection of all of the writing Nic did for the international arts magazine, Dangerous Ink, for the first time together in a single place. Out now.

# Coming Soon

Sign up for Nic's mailing list to be notified when these titles become available.

Nexus: Past Sins (The Sontem Trilogy #2)

The sequel to Nexus, following our intrepid crew fleeing their employer's long arm, and initiating first-contact with alien civilizations. Tentatively due Summer 2014.

Kindred Spirits (The Gambit #2)

The sequel to The Necromancer's Gambit, in which Baldur and Knight face off again. Tentatively due Fall 2014.

Sanctuary

Five pets escape from the shelter to find a home out in the wild. Proceeds to benefit animal shelters. Expected mid-2014.

Singularity

A physicist investigates a temporal distortion, and how it might be related to a football player's progressive dementia at a remote rehab clinic on the Oregon coast. Out in Fall 2014, barring some kind of temporal distortion, just in time for the next NaNo.

Next of Kin

Police corruption led to a new initiative compelling the victims, or their next of kin, to track down those who wronged them, in front of an audience. Follow one unfortunate man into the seamy underworld as he fights to solve the mystery of his brother's murder. Next of Kin is scheduled for November 2014, as Nic's annual NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) project. Its first draft will be serialized, daily, on Nic's blog. Stay tuned.

Twist

When Harvey awoke, his girlfriend and dog were gone, and his world was empty. In days, he hasn't seen a soul except for his dead, naked grandmother. As his reality crumbles, and he descends further into madness, Harvey is forced to confront the disturbing truths behind who he was, and who he is now. Most people don't expect to see a head in the toilet, but then, Harvey's not most people. Due early 2015.

Lunacy

The story of the first manned Mars mission, thrown off course when one of the crew is bitten by a werewolf. Very tentatively scheduled for late 2014, unless Nic's dog eats it (and he'll eat just about anything he can get his jaws around).

The Collected Short Stories of Nicolas Wilson

This collection contains all of the selected short stories collections, and will be available in paperback, too, unlike the Selected Short Story Collections. Out mid-2014.

Nic's mailing list will keep you up to date on these titles, and ones we haven't announced yet.

# Boring Legalese

#

You should stop reading. This is boring. It's the part of the book that's only here to prevent mean people from suing me. Unless you're a mean person, and then you should keep reading, and I hope you are bored. No, that wasn't very nice. Even if you are mean I don't want to bore you- it's the opposite of what I came here to do. So you should stop reading. I'm waiting... Fine. But I warned you. You can't say I didn't. The preceding stories aren't based on anyone- and anyone who thinks parts of it might be is vain. And I would quote the song lyrics to that song about how vain you are, but while you can quote poetry copiously, you actually have to pay to quote even a single line of song lyrics, and those people don't mess around. Crazy, right? But you learn something new every day.
