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Plasma Frequency Magazine

Issue 7: August/September 2013

Cover Art by Laura Givens inspired by "The Clone in Sector 7"

eReader Edition

Editor-in-Chief, Richard Flores IV

Assistant Editor, Amy Flores

Assistant Editor, Molly Moss

Assistant Editor, Christa Knott-Dufresne

Assistant Editor, Alex Sidles

Assistant Editor, JT Howard

Marketing and Advertising, Vacant

Art Editor, Vacant

Plasma Frequency ISSN 2168-1309 (Print) and ISSN 2168-1317 (Electronic), Issue 7 August/September 2013. Published bimonthly by Plasma Spyglass Press, Vacaville, California

Annual subscription available at www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com. Print edition $56 for US residents for one year. Electronic edition available free.

Printed by HP Magcloud in the U.S.A.

Copyright © 2013 by Plasma Spyglass Press. All Rights Reserved.

www.plasmafrequencymagazine.com

www.plasmaspyglass.com

# In This Issue

Cover Art by Laura Giviens

From the Editor

Rift

By Eleanor Wood

Inconstant Light

By Steve Simpson

Battle Lines

By J. W. Alden

Different in Blood

By Julie Frost

Book Review

Mermaid

Litany for Compassion

By K. S. O'Neill

Memory Lane

By Milo James Fowler

The Clone in Sector 7

By Nanci Schwartz

T3

By J. S. Watts

#  From the Editor

Life is about milestones. We track a lot of them in our life; our birth, our first love, the day we get a driver's license, our marriage, the birth of kids, the list can go on. _Plasma Frequency_ is now one year old, and in that first year we hit some major milestones. From our first issue, to welcoming three new editors to our staff. All of these represent huge milestones for us. Issue 7 is another big milestone; our second year of publication.

Life is also about growth. And we know we are growing quickly. We have more submissions than we've ever had. We have grown in the way we handle the submission, the way we select stories, the way we publish them, and the way we operate as a company. Year two will be no different. We have some growing left to do, and we have some major plans for year two.

We held a reader survey and we got a lot of valuable information from that. Based on that we have, and will be making some great changes to our magazine. The two biggest will be reducing the cost of the print edition, the second will be to increase the rate we pay authors and artists. You will soon see our Magazine available on Amazon.

The cost to run this magazine is staggering. And with the hope of paying more authors, it raises the important question of how to pay them. As our long term readers know, we don't work on this magazine to make a profit. We do it to publish writers, and pay them for their hard work, and that is what makes putting this together so much fun. We also do this for our readers. Writers want readers, and we love our audience.

This is why we are asking for your help. We are looking for donations through the reputable funding website, IndieGoGo. For as little as $5 to as much as you want to spare, you can help us work to increase our author pay, artist pay, and the overall quality of magazine we put together. Everything you put in goes to paying authors, artist, and the production of this magazine. If we reach our goal, we plan to triple our pay rates for writers, and increase artist pay by as much as fifty percent.

To donate you can visit our website for more information, or go directly to: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/plasma-frequency-magazine-year-2-funding/

We'd appreciate the support. We also look forward to the talents we will bring you in our second publication year. Now let me step aside and let the work of our authors and artists shine.

Richard Flores IV

Editor-in-Chief

#  Rift

# By Eleanor Wood

Lily set the plastic box beside the door even though Omri had never entered that way and never would. Leaving it on the table was too painful. She'd still been angry when she'd thrown everything in, but now the borrowed music and familiar clothes only rubbed salt on her torn heart.

She had sobbed her way through a whole box of tissues last night, but she was determined not to cry in front of him. She made some ginger tea and sat beside the window to wait. He said he'd collect his things (and drop off hers) today, but 'today' could be any time before tomorrow. They'd never managed to coordinate time, slippery and unpredictable as it was.

So she tormented herself with memories and questions she couldn't answer.

"Is there... someone else?" she had asked. "Someone easier to be with?"

"Lily. No." His sorrowful eyes met hers. "I love you. No one else."

"Then why, Omri?" She fought the lump squeezing her throat. "We've managed more than a year. A year!"

He looked away from her. "And what then? What's next for us? We've agreed living together isn't an option. What kind of future does that allow us?"

"You could live here!" It was a feeble protest and she knew it. "It's much simpler for you. You can journey back and forth as often as you like."

"Just because I don't get sick doesn't mean it's simple! I'm about to lose my job. My friends have given up making plans with me because I never show up on time. My family doesn't understand at all. Moving here would devastate my mum." His voice broke. "I have to make a choice, Lil. I can't keep doing this."

She had turned away from him then. She turned her memory away now.

They'd visited the mountains a few months ago and spent two whole weeks with no one but each other. It was bliss. For the first time, she could pretend they were a normal couple with a life together. They cooked and ate and hiked and swam and made love and talked late into the night. They'd stood, staring up at the stars together, his arms around her waist.

"Can't we just save this moment, like in a computer sim, and come back here whenever we like?"

She smiled. "We call them computer 'games'."

"I know." He laughed into her hair. "But we're not playing at this, are we?"

She turned to face him, suddenly earnest. "No. And I know it's crazy and impossible, but I'm so glad I found you. I mean... what we have, it's incredible, isn't it? Just the odds of us finding each other..."

"Yet we did," he finished. "Like our distance was a challenge from the universe, daring us to be together."

She laughed. "You can be so over the top sometimes."

He grinned and kissed her.

~

Her tea was almost cold and her face was wet with tears again. She grabbed the fresh box of tissues and blew her nose. Omri was her soulmate. Wasn't he? She longed for their impossible gap to close and knew it couldn't. He was right, and she hated him for it. She could brave the gut-wrenching nausea and go back with him, but she'd have to leave her life behind. She could lose Omri, or she could lose everything else. A challenge from the universe, he had said. More like a torment.

A rush of air announced his sudden arrival. She turned to see the vortex opening, bright light and a clap of pressure in her ears as colours blurred and space rent open to let him through. Omri stepped into her apartment, his red hair roughed up in the wind. The strange fabric of his clothes maintained their shape as the air was sucked past him and the vortex closed with a snap. Lily yawned to unpop her ears.

He placed her returned belongings on the table.

"Yours are by the door," she said.

He regarded her with such sadness that she turned her gaze back to the window before her eyes could fill up again. He went to the door and retrieved his box. She heard him rummaging in it.

"Lily... keep this."

"What?" She turned back to see him holding the RiftOpener he had given her on their one-month anniversary. She shook her head. "No. What's the use of it now?"

He fought tears of his own as he looked at the remote control-shaped object in his hand. "You might need it. You never know. I'm not..." he seemed to struggle. "I don't want to lose you forever, Lil. I don't want to close that vortex knowing you can never open it if you need to. Even if you never use this, it'd make things easier knowing you had it."

She didn't trust her voice for several moments. "Omri, you're ending things. Not me. I don't want to lose you at all. But if it's over, it's over. You can't keep me in some kind of limbo."

"That's not what I meant."

"Besides, that's your world's tech. It doesn't belong here."

"It belongs with you. I gave it to you."

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. "Please, just take your things and go."

"Lily—" "Please, Omri!"

He stood there for another moment. She kept her eyes shut as he opened the vortex again. Kept them shut as the portal whooshed closed, leaving her alone. Kept them shut against the shuddering sobs that assailed her.

Long minutes later, she opened them. She wiped away her tears to face the box of items he had returned.

Beside it, on the table, lay the RiftOpener. Omri's parting gift.

Lily smiled through her heartbreak.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Eleanor Wood has been writing since childhood, although she no longer staples her stories' pages together into little books complete with hand-drawn cover illustrations. She's also a qualified proofreader and copy editor in order to realise her utopian (pipe)dream of perfect grammar and punctuation for all. She lives on the south coast of England with her husband, two dogs, a multitude of tropical fish, and a ready supply of vegetable juice.

#  Inconstant Light

# By Steve Simpson

#

His mother had called him to come to the Nove de Julho Hospital, and his sister Cora was already there when he arrived. The three of them stood around the bed in silence, because his father's ending had begun.

Edison was eighteen, and his unspoken assumption had been that his father was a fixture in his life, for better or worse, until the diagnosis two months before. _Physician, heal thyself_ , except that his father himself had declared the brain tumor inoperable.

The nurses had removed his oxygen tubes, and now there was a mist of luminous particles drifting from his father's mouth and nose, like dust motes in a shaft of sunlight, swirling in tight vortices with each shallow breath.

He understood its meaning, that the final traces of hope had to be let go, that death was inevitable, but still Edison was entranced. The flux increased, currents of the glowing particles streamed out through the window, always left open by tradition, and any passersby on the street outside would have seen the markers of his father's soul, rising and fading into São Paulo's electric night skyline, and known that someone no longer needed palliative care.

The next night, he saw his father standing in the rain on the front lawn of their house in Jardim América, beckoning to him, and for a moment after he woke up, not realizing that he'd done so, he thought that his father had visited him. But the first visitation came on the following Sunday.

It was the maid's day off and she'd left prepared meals in the refrigerator, but his mother decided to make dinner. "Best to keep busy. Could you help me, _filho_?"

She was standing at the stove when it happened. He looked up at the clatter of a ladle falling into a pot, and for an instant saw his father's flame, a suggestion of brightness in a halo around his mother's head.

For the person visited, it was as if the departed family member was standing in front of them, and they talked in their temporary copy of the world, said what they needed to say and perhaps hadn't been able to if the death was unforeseen. After a passing there were only ever a few visitations, all within a week, and the deceased never talked about where they'd come from, or gave reasons why they didn't.

In a few minutes his mother awoke from her trance, smiling. "Your father says he's fine. He wishes you all the best, Edison. He wants you to study hard at school."

His father visited his sister, Cora, as well, in her advanced biology class. But he never visited Edison, never had parting words with his son.

Despite what his father had thought of him, that his son was already a failure because his grades wouldn't get him admitted to university to study anything, let alone medicine, Edison had always looked up to his father's light, had done his best in his studies, and loved him.

With his heart torn open, Edison could find no forgiveness. A month later he dropped out of college, found work as an apprentice electrician, and left the family home to live in a small apartment in Jardim Ângela.

~

He'd rung Cora, it was the last year of her medical degree, and she'd said she had to study like she always did. Edison told her she needed a break. _He's a friend of mine_ , how proud he was to say that, _You have to hear him play_.

— _I'm sorry,_ irmão _, I really don't think I can make it_.

But she did come to the tiny, smoky bar off Avenida Paulista, and they watched Orfeu meander through sweet samba songs with his slender fingers caressing the keyboard and his scratchy voice hinting at the lyrics. Orfeu was living off tips, and more often than not, slept on a floor rug in Edison's apartment, but Edison knew he was going places.

"He's amazing isn't he? The dynamics; he has a beautiful touch."

His sister said very little, just watched and sipped mineral water.

Afterward, Orfeu came over to their table, and Edison introduced his sister, the soon-to-be doctor.

"Edison, what are you thinking? You bring such a beauty to the Jamundá and give her water to drink," and Orfeu offered his sister a cocktail, which she accepted, although she'd earlier refused anything alcoholic when Edison had suggested it.

Later in the evening, someone came over and invited Orfeu to their table. "Could you excuse us, _amigos_? There are some people Orfeu should meet."

"Cora, do you know who that was?" Edison whispered. "It was Ivo Lins."

~

He knew from what his mother had said, Orfeu had turned up in São Paulo, but it was still a shock when he opened the door and saw him standing there.

His brother-in-law seemed a little remote, backed away when Edison went to embrace him. Something was different about him, but he accepted a drink and rolled himself a cigarette, left it hanging off his lips like he always did.

"So none of the news reports were true. _Um milagro_."

There had been an accident at Bariloche on their honeymoon, a ski lift cable had detached in high winds and the chair carrying Orfeu and Cora had swung into a support pole. Cora, in a coma, was airlifted to a local clinic and eventually back to a hospital in São Paulo. The news from Argentina was that Orfeu was too critical to transport, and later, that he had passed away.

Orfeu grinned. "No miracle, _compadre_ , everything is science."

"You know there was a retrospective on Rede Globo. Ivo Lins said your passing was a great loss to Brazilian music."

"They look through pink lenses once you're dead."

"You visited Cora?"

Orfeu nodded, stared into his spirits. "I spoke to the doctors. Four months and there's been no change. They aren't optimistic."

It wasn't news to Edison. As often as he could, he went to the hospital and sat beside his mother, gazed at his sister's body in the bed, pale and fragile, as if she'd drowned and been carried back to shore on the tide. In the first few weeks, he'd watched for a sign, the quiver of an eyelash, a change in the rise and fall of her breathing, and after that, waiting, and nothing more.

There was silence for a time, neither of them wanting to raise it. Orfeu spoke first. "They're talking about disconnecting her."

"What do you think?"

He took a moment to answer. "It might be for the best."

Edison couldn't quite put his finger on what was different about him. Orfeu's face was gaunt and angular, thinner that it had been—that was to be expected—olive skin and straight black hair left long, another part of his trademark, but his lips were too red and his cheeks were flushed, as if he was wearing rouge.

He topped up Orfeu's glass, and in the sunlight streaming through the apartment windows, he saw three cockroaches scurrying across the floorboards towards him. Then he knew, and Orfeu saw them too, and must have known that he knew.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He shrugged. "I was going to. The makeup's better in the street, that's all."

The news stories had been accurate. Orfeu had died in the hospital from his injuries. But before he did, he'd chosen the debaptism, the immersion. At the moment of death he'd been underwater, and the flame of his soul, unable to leave, had been locked inside his body, tied to the world. Now his trapped soul was burning inside his corpse, animating it, and would stay there until his bones crumbled to powder.

Living creatures were attracted to the exposed flame of a soul, and a soul that was not concealed in living flesh was obscenely naked. In the city, the stigmata of the _debatizados_ were cockroaches and rats, pigeons and sparrows.

Orfeu was the role model that Edison had admired and looked up to. He'd helped him when he was a struggling unknown, even taken up guitar and shyly played for him. How could he choose the unholy, become a _debatizado_ , when the human soul was almost palpable in the world, and an afterlife beyond doubt?

For the sake of their friendship, which was in the past now, Edison said none of this. "I don't understand, _compadre_. Why did you do it?"

"Because I wasn't ready to leave. Because there are still so many things that I want to do in this world," and Orfeu talked about his plans, made his new existence sound bright and exciting.

Edison knew what the first step in Orfeu's plans would have to be. Soon his flesh and organs would decay, and if nothing were done, his soul flame would be wrapped in decomposing flesh, and he would be blind. He would have to undergo _decarnação_ , a soaking in caustic solutions to dissolve all flesh. After that, his flame, his self, would be able to see directly, and reciprocally, it would be luminous through his eye sockets, and through his ribs when he was unclothed. He would have no voice of his own, and would have to use a small keyboard to speak by computer emulation.

"Are you going to perform again?"

"If God has given me a talent, I have a duty to put it to use, to give something back to the people of Brazil. I won't perform, that part of my life is over, but I'm going to compose a symphony, and I'm going to travel with Cora, seek out inspiration. She'll like that."

"Cora?" Snowflakes began falling inside Edison's chest.

"Yes, I want her to be disconnected and immersed. She has no life now."

"I don't think—"

"It's my decision, Edison, not yours. You'll come to understand it's the right one."

~

"You remember that big accident, city-bound on the Marginal Tietê, I told you about?" She assumed affirmation. "Well, it turns out it was caused by a truck driver who had a visitation while he was driving. He was supposed to be on compulsory leave, it was within a week of his father passing away. But he kept on working, and all those people died."

It was part of her daily routine, holding her daughter's hand and the quiet one-way conversation. She grasped her hope as tightly as she could, and every day her doubts tried to wrest it away from her. Did the sound vibrating the tiny hairs in her ears shape a voice in her mind? Was she aware of her mother's touch, or the sunlight shining through the window warming her skin? And the despairing thought that she couldn't banish, that Cora was far from the hospital room, that her daughter wandered through an endless dream from which she could never be awakened.

~

The mall was almost deserted, just a few people scuttling along the walkways under the ripple of the fluorescent lights. It was so much better to shop late than fight through the crowds in lunch hour, so much more relaxed.

She strolled past a cleaner sweeping sand along the tiled floor with a scissor broom. His overalls were mustard and seaweed green, and she wondered why anyone would choose such a ghastly color combination.

At the entrance to the bookstore, there was a motionless run of salmon, the stacked pyramid of a new release, 'The Lady of the Lake,' with fish on the covers. She'd already done her shopping and she had all the time in the world, so Cora decided to browse the shelves.

~

Over the next few days, Edison tried to understand, to put himself in Orfeu's shoes, but again and again the same image came unwanted to his mind: the expression of horror that would appear on Cora's face when she found out she'd been brought back as a _debatizada_ , had not been allowed to die naturally.

For Edison, the debaptism was cowardly and selfish, no matter how noble the aims of the _debatizado_ might be. He'd seen them at night in the streets downtown, eyes glowing in the darkness, followed by rats like Pied Pipers, stopping strangers and pointing at their wrists to find out the time, or typing to ask directions. Cora wouldn't want it, he was certain of that.

His mother had rung him in the morning, told him they'd moved a tank into Cora's room ready for the immersion, that it would happen tomorrow. _He's decided,_ querido, _and perhaps he's right. Who are we to judge?_

Orfeu, whom once he idolized, had betrayed him, but what could be done? He could go to the hospital that night and take his sister's life, but even if he could bring himself to do it, the alarms on the monitors would bring the nurses running, and Cora would be immersed.

"Are you alright, _senhor_?"

Edison worked at Gustavo Electronics in Santa Efigênia, and was in the process of installing a security system at a customer's house.

"I'm perfectly fine, _senhorinha_. We can test the system in a minute."

"Of course you are, _senhor_. Please forgive me for asking. It's just that I thought your tears might cause an electrical problem in the wiring. May I offer you a coffee?"

Edison accepted, and there were introductions. Inema's eyes were the color of jungle camouflage, and there was a gentleness, a kindness in them. He found himself telling her about Cora, his fears and his helplessness. When he'd finished his story, she didn't comfort or console him.

"Leave your coffee, Senhor Edison. We don't have time."

"What do you mean?"

"There is only way to save your sister from the debaptism, isn't there? You have to wake her from her coma before tomorrow. We will visit my mother. She's a holy woman, and she will help us."

~

With Inema giving directions, Edison drove to a small house in Socorro. Inema's mother greeted them warmly and served more coffee while Inema told her about Cora.

Her mother, who had close cropped gray hair and wore a Palmeiras football jersey, was thoughtful for a moment. "I understand. I have something that might help your sister, Edison."

She went to a sideboard displaying a number of religious icons and took out a plastic container filled with stems that were covered in ferny leaves and small buds.

A radio in another room was broadcasting a match, and now there was a shout of _gol_. "They're playing like little old ladies," she commented to no one in particular.

"Jurema leaves," Inema said, and her mother nodded. She saw that Edison didn't understand.

"Before the Portuguese came to Brazil, the women of the Tupi tribes dived for _muiraquitãs_ , powerful amulets, in a deep lake known as Jacyuaruá, the Moon Mirror. But some of the women were taken by Boiúna, the great river serpent, and never returned to the surface.

"Your sister is drifting deep in the waters of Jacyuaruá. She is living in a reflection, an empty echo of the world. When you scatter the leaves of the sacred Jurema on her body, Guaraci, the Sun Mother who gives life to all creatures, will come, and she can bring her back.

"But there is something else I must tell you." The mother had the same air of kindness as the daughter, but Edison sensed that this was not going to be good news.

"Guaraci cannot draw her here unless she wants to return, and she doesn't even remember this place. There is neither joy nor sorrow beneath the waves of Jacyuaruá, and she is content in her submerged existence.

"Your sister must remember the real world, and for that she must know the light of Guaraci again. I know you will do anything to save her, but I can't help you with that. I'm sorry, _senhor_."

~

Cora stopped at a travel agency, closed of course, because in the mall, at night, no one thinks about a Caribbean holiday. In the window there was a poster eel, a bright green moray with dead painted eyes, and when she walked on, it vanished into the slick darkness beyond the glass.

~

Making decisions was hard for Edison, he needed to be told what to do. He remembered his mother's words when he'd left home, after his father had died and he could no longer bear to live in the family house. _Some people are born to face the sea, and some are born to face the lighthouse. Always look to the lighthouse, Edison, that is your way_.

But once he'd decided, it was easy. He joined cables to the power lines in his apartment and ran them through a switch. At the output, he connected bare copper wires, and wound them tightly over cotton pads he'd soaked in salt water and pressed against his wrists.

_Look to the lighthouse_. But there were no more lighthouses, and he was staring at the ocean that flowed into forever, at the last waters.

He threw the switch.

~

"Edison, what are you doing here?" Cora embraced her brother.

"I wanted to pay you a visit, _irmã_ , to catch up."

"I'm just doing a little late-night shopping."

It was transformed, submerged in clear water, but Edison recognized the mall near the family home in Jardim América. " _Irmã_ , do you remember when I took you up onto the roof?"

"How could I forget? _Mamãe_ was beside herself. They were calling our names over the P.A. You were grounded for a week."

"You were the one who suggested it."

She laughed. "And you took the blame. She said you should have known better."

"Cora, why don't we go up there now, for old time's sake, look at the stars?" He saw reluctance in his sister's eyes. She felt safe where she was, deep in the dull safety of the mall.

"Come on," and he put his arm around her shoulders and guided her through a door marked 'No Entry,' up the stairs and out onto the roof.

Cora looked to the east, where the luminous breath of dawn was on the horizon. "How could it be so late?"

"You've been here longer than you think, _irmã_. It's going to be a beautiful sunrise though."

~

On the last night before the disconnection and immersion, Cora's mother had stayed over at the hospital and fallen asleep. She woke up to sunlight streaming through the window, and idly picked up a fern leaf from the white tiles, to save the cleaners the trouble.

Edison was sweet, and gullible. It had been so like her son to bring that foliage and scatter it all over the bed just because some old Indian woman told him it was a good idea.

But picking up the Jurema leaf had been a waste of time. Now they were tumbling off the bed and showering onto the floor as Cora, returned to the world by her brother's sacrifice, stirred and woke up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Steve Simpson lives in Sydney, Australia mostly. He decided to become a writer when he realized you could claim to be 'researching a story' no matter what you were caught doing. His hobbies include experimentation with time travel and negative illumination, and on a personal note, he likes to finish his bio with his web page, inconstantlight.com.

#  Battle Lines

# By J. W. Alden

A band of alabaster orbs slipped through his fingers and into the night. His eyes traced their arc as they soared away and melted into the sea of shadows below. He wanted to see where they would land, who they would find, but the auburn seraph at his side beckoned. Laughter and melody enveloped them as her arms slipped around his shoulders. She was lovely. He was happy.

"Aidan?" said a voice, not hers, and his eyes were open.

For a fleeting instant, he thought he was back home in bed. The fetid taste of recycled air and the faint warble of the aft pressure alarm brought his mind back to bearing. No, this was not home. Not here.

"Hello? You there?"

He shambled toward the airlock, negotiating a web of peculiar shadows cast by the emergency lights above. His thumb found the call button as he leaned toward the speaker next to the door. "Yeah, Dez, I'm here. Wide awake and back in the land of gray walls and empty stomachs. Much appreciated."

"Sorry, man. Didn't yank you away from any Earthside dreamscapes, I hope."

"New Orleans, as a matter of fact." He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the girl had looked like. "Mardi Gras. What's up?"

There was a pause. "Rourke is gone. I hate to wake you up for that, but I thought you might want to know."

A stale breath caught in Aidan's throat. For a moment, he contemplated turning the speaker off and trying to find his way back to New Orleans. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Listen, don't stir on it. Remember what we talked about yesterday. We knew we might have to eat a bullet or two for the pleasure of coming aboard, and there wasn't nobody on my team that wasn't square with that. You did your job, soldier."

Aidan ran a hand down the lines of his forehead and wrung the drowsy eyes beneath. "I'm still sorry to hear it. You guys were just following orders like the rest of us. Rourke seemed like a nice guy."

"He was. But it could have been you, just the same. We weren't exactly firing warning shots, you know. Almost took your head off myself before the blast doors came down."

"Yeah, but you gave us a chance to skedaddle long before it came to that. You made it clear what you were after. If I had parked my ass on a lifeboat with the others, you wouldn't have had a reason to open fire in the first place. A few strings of data on a hard drive ain't worth dying for—or killing for."

"I wish you'd listen to those words tumbling out of your mouth so you'd realize how stupid they sound. This is your ship, Aidan. You didn't ask for this war, and you damn sure didn't ask for a boarding party. You were doing your job. Rourke knew that."

"I hear you. Doesn't make me feel any better about it. It's not often you learn a mook's name after trading fire, learn what his laugh sounds like. I appreciate you saying what you're saying. I do. But we'll see where that kind of talk goes when the cavalry arrives and you get the chance to pay me back."

"I suppose we will," he said, "assuming my people get here first."

"Won't matter who it is. First thing they'll do is restore main power. When these fire doors open, we'll have to get reacquainted whether we like it or not. And I don't think the brass on either side would be very happy to find us sitting here playing patty cake like old buddies."

A strange gust of static came from the speaker, likely a sigh. "You can cut the tough talk, man. I just watched a friend of mine die over a couple of ones and zeros, so excuse me if I ain't exactly itching for another gunfight. In fact, I'd rather have another round of chess. We need a tie-breaker."

"My mind's too weary for that shit. I just want sleep. No more chess for me, Dez. No more gunfights, either. Hell, I don't even have any ammo left."

A long silence replaced the subtle hiss of the open intercom. Dez must have taken his finger from the button. When it returned, his voice was faint. "That was stupid, Aidan. You shouldn't have told me that."

"I know."

Aidan stepped away from the intercom and flopped back down into the officer's chair, hoping to dream of mirth and music again. As his breath slowed and his muscles began to ease, he couldn't help but wonder what had brought him to this side of the door and Dez the other. In another life, they might have been ringing up each other's groceries.

After a few somber moments, his mind finally began to recede into the dark of sleep again. Just as he was drifting into the abyss, an abrupt hum filled his ears and the light behind his eyelids swelled. As he embraced his auburn beauty once more, he could almost swear he heard the telltale hiss of an airlock sliding open.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

J.W. Alden lives in South Florida with a loving fiancee and a spoiled mutt. He's a graduate of the 2013 class of Odyssey Writing Workshop. Read more from him at AuthorAlden.com.

# Different in Blood

# By Julie Frost

#

"Routine" cheating-husband cases never, ever are.

The client was in her mid-fifties and wearing a fox stole that cost more than my annual salary, along with an unusual necklace made up of teardrop-shaped amber beads. Even for Los Angeles, she was ostentatious. She perched in the chair across from my desk like some kind of hungry but nervous raptor. "Mr. Lockwood, I trust your discretion will be complete. Robert can't know I suspect anything."

"This is what we do, Mrs. Hockney. Your secret and your prenup are both safe." I could smell the anxiety and upset coming off her in waves through the expensive perfume, which covered a faint underlying odor of wetland, hemlock, and sex. It made my inner wolf perk up, but I tamped it down impatiently. A case this close to the moon was probably a bad idea, but we were swamped and this one fell to me. Awesome.

"Thank you." She handed a file across. "This is his schedule for the next two weeks." A sigh. "I really do love him, you know. I thought he loved me too."

"Well, ma'am, that's what we're finding out, right? You could be mistaken, and the course of true love never did run smooth."

She gave me a sharp, knowing look. "But either it was different in blood—"

"Or else misgraffèd in respect of years." Robert was a good two and a half decades his wife's junior. About my age, in fact. "We'll get your evidence either way."

"I leave it in your capable hands, my Shakespeare-quoting young friend." She rose and left, the scent of stress wafting in her elegant wake.

Pam Coughlin, my boss and mother-in-law, strode out of her office a few moments later. She propped a hip on my desk and looked over the file I'd opened. "So, Ben, what d'you think?" Her Texas accent was less thick than normal; since business was good, money wasn't the worry it sometimes ended up being.

"Too early to tell, is what I think. I hope she's wrong, honestly." Sometimes the ugly side of the work got to me.

"Well, baby boy—" Pam had me by three inches and fifty pounds. If she wanted to call me that, I wouldn't argue, even if I was a big bad wolf and she was a squishy human. "Go find out."

"Yes, ma'am." I stood up, checked my pockets for my wallet, phone, and Micro Desert Eagle, and pecked her on her _cafe-au-lait_ cheek as I walked past. Being her daughter's husband had its perks. "I'll call as soon as I have anything."

~

I took Pam's car, a nondescript white sedan far more suited to surveillance than my bright yellow Jeep Wrangler. Three hours later, I was parked in front of an upscale hair salon, shooting a photograph of everyone going in to compare with Robert's other appointments. I huffed out an impatient breath. He was keeping to his schedule like clockwork. Boring.

But most of the PI biz is dull as dirt. When it gets exciting, something has usually gone to shit. And I'd no sooner had my "boring" thought than it stopped being boring. I should know better, really.

Shouts and screams. I bolted out of the car, gun in hand, before I quite knew what I was doing. People flooded out of the salon, hairpins and clips flying, some of them still in their drapes with wet hair. I had to fight a crush to get inside. Once in, the scent of rotting swamp assaulted my sensitive nose, and I staggered a little.

One of the older stylists sat on the floor with her hand clutched over her chest. Her breathing, or what there was of it, came in labored gasps, and I wondered if she was having a heart attack. Robert was frozen in a swivel chair, wearing a drape, half a haircut, and a stunned expression. I muttered a curse and squatted in front of the stylist. "Breathe, ma'am. Two in, hold three, two out. You can do it." But she seemed just as freaked by me as by whatever had transpired, and I realized I was a scruffy little stranger holding a gun. I stuffed it into my pocket. "What happened?"

A male stylist with the vapors gestured toward the rear. "Some...thing. I think it was a...really ugly dog. Maybe a Shar Pei mix? Came in here and... _growled_ at that guy." He pointed at Robert. It figured. "Scared the crap...out of all of us."

"OK. Call an ambulance for the lady. I'm gonna follow your thing." He nodded rapidly, already dialing, and I headed out the back door, following a trail that blazed as brightly to a wolf as a beacon would to human eyes.

But the trail stopped abruptly, replaced by the smell of burning rubber. A pair of tire tracks testified that whatever it had been, it hadn't wasted any time getting out of there. Sirens sounded, police and ambulances arriving, and I headed back in.

Spencer Winslow, my friend on the force, pulled me aside a few minutes later. He was big, black, and bald, and knew about my lycanthropy. He also looked incredibly disgruntled. "I can't believe they called us out here for this. I'm homicide, not damn animal control."

I shook my head. "I don't know what smells like that, Spence. And it either drove away itself or was driven away." I gave a rough shrug. "What did the witnesses say?"

"Not much." He snorted. "Basically, a large, revolting, and smelly creature burst in from the back, snarled loudly at Half-a-Haircut over there, and made everyone wet their pants before escaping. No one tried to stop it, for obvious reasons."

"Mmph. The Half-a-Haircut guy is someone I'm following. If our thing picked him to growl at, it might have something to do with my job." I raked a hand through my hair, which never failed to muss it thoroughly. Not that I was carefully-coiffed to begin with; some of the stylists, even now, were giving me rather jaundiced stares. "Awesome."

One of the uniforms was haranguing the shop owner about being dragged away from his coffee for something so stupidly minor. Spence shook his head. "I've got real cases to get back to. But if this turns into one, let me know."

"Will do." And with that I headed back to the office to apprise Pam of the situation.

"Sounds like it got a little ugly," she said.

"Uglier, anyway. This is a whole lot more complicated than Mrs. Hockney is letting on. We should get her back in here and find out what's really happening." I growled and bared a fang. "And if I catch the _thing_ , it'll be sorry."

"You be careful. I know you're in soldier mode right now, Ben, and I don't blame you overmuch, but you don't need to get hurt or killed over this deal. Ain't no case worth that."

My gaze slid down to the handcuff scars ringing my wrists, a gift from Afghani insurgents in a war halfway across the world. "That poor lady nearly had a heart attack. I don't like women getting hurt on my watch, Pam." A female soldier had survived the ambush of our unit, but an insurgent had cut her throat in front of me, and I still had the occasional flashback. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. "It pushes the bad button." This close to the moon, everything was amplified. _Everything_.

"You ain't there anymore, Ben. Breathe." Her voice was gentle. "Whyn't you take the rest of the day off? Or go home and have a look into the husband's financials from there."

I nodded, eyes still closed. "It's a good idea. I'll let you know what I find out."

And at home, I could have beer. Werewolf metabolism meant that it took vast quantities of alcohol to actually affect me much, but there was a certain beneficial psychological effect, anyway. My wife Janni came home from her catering job to find me sitting on the sofa, stocking feet up on the coffee table, pounding away at my laptop. She plopped down beside me and gave me a smooch. "Hey, sweetie. Bad day?"

I put the comp aside and wrapped an arm around her, burying my nose in her riot of curly, dark hair and inhaling the scent of Pack and Mate. "Better now that you're here. I really don't like walking in on the aftermath of a mysterious monster. It sucks." I gave her a summary of what had happened and then gestured at the computer. "Better yet, I'm pretty sure this guy is dirty. Lots of money disappears from his personal account on a fairly regular schedule with no indication where it's going. Mrs. Hockney gives him a generous allowance, and he tends to make cash withdrawals instead of using his debit card. He's nearly broke."

Janni's mouth turned down at one corner. "Well, damn. I know you hate these cases."

"I'm a werewolf who mates for life. I don't _get_ cheating, Hermia." I called her that because she was little and fierce. "I don't get it on a fundamental level."

She kissed me soundly. "And that's part of the reason I love you. Even before the werewolf thing you were good that way, Ben."

"Aw, shucks, honey." I felt my face get a little hot. "But it's not looking good for the guy. Unless he's got a damn good explanation for this, I'll have to tell his missus that she has a problem."

"Maybe there's an innocent explanation. Maybe he buys...I don't know, books, or antiques, or _stuff_ , and just likes to pay cash."

"I'll ask Mrs. Hockney if he collects anything. I hope you're right."

~

He didn't. So that was awesome. This case made me tired and cranky and I wanted to punch Robert in the face just on general principle.

Because I'd been the one to burst into the salon when the commotion happened, I could question him without revealing that his wife had hired me. I corralled him outside a restaurant the next day. When he saw me, he flinched violently and acted like he wanted to turn around and run. Considering the fact that, like most men, he had over six inches and eighty pounds on me, it was a ridiculous reaction—but some people twig to the wolf without even realizing it.

I tried to be good. Kept the fangs covered and the claws where they belonged. "I see you remember me." My nostrils couldn't help but flare, though, when I smelled that same swamp-and-hemlock odor that had become an integral part of this case. It was faint, however, and...not quite right, and my brow creased a little.

"How would I not remember you? You ran _in_ while everyone else ran _away_."

"Not soon enough to catch the critter. Any notion who sent it or what it was?" I cocked my head and hoped I looked more like a curious collie than a starving wolf. "I mean, it growled at you. Specifically. What was that about?"

His expression was acutely uncomfortable. "It was my wife's ex. He's blackmailing me."

"Your wife's ex is a...thing?" I pinched the bridge of my nose, completely unable to match the elegant Mrs. Hockney up with something that looked like a Shar Pei. "What's he blackmailing you with, Robert?"

His jaw tightened. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

"Man, you have no idea. None." My tone was desert-dry. "Try me."

He was clearly a man who needed to talk about this with someone, but—"If I'm going to discuss any of this, I need vodka. Lots. Of vodka."

I gestured at the restaurant. "Well, they serve it. So why don't we go in, order some booze, and you tell me what you think I won't believe."

Five minutes later, we were sitting at a corner table with drinks. He grasped his glass like a drowning man and wouldn't look at me. "This is ridiculous," he muttered, before squaring his shoulders. "Do you know what a squonk is?"

"A what? No." That was a new one. Vampires and werewolves, I was intimately familiar with. What the hell was a squonk? "Why don't you tell me?"

"Oh, God." He raised his glass to his lips, and about half the drink disappeared. He still wouldn't look at me. "It's a creature that can literally dissolve in its own tears because it knows how hideous it is. Native to Pennsylvania."

"O-K." I eyed him up and down. "Clearly, not you." He had the chiseled look of a gym rat, and, while he wasn't movie-star handsome, he was good-looking enough, so far as I could tell from the strictly aesthetic point of view of a very married heterosexual werewolf. "What's that got to do with this?"

He let out a massive, heavy sigh, and the rest of his drink disappeared. "My wife is a were-squonk."

It all came out as one mumbled word, and I took a few seconds to parse it. It's not often that I'm left speechless. "She's a what now?"

"Her moon form is human. But she can Change anytime she wants, and so she just...stays human, all the time. Well. Wouldn't you?"

A headache started to pound right between my eyes. "So, the thing that burst into the salon..."

He nodded wearily and gestured for another round. "Was one as well. Like I said. Her ex."

"And that's what the swamp smell is?" I made mine a triple.

His new drink bid fair to follow the first one. "Yeah. But it gets better."

"Do I want to know?" No, I did not. But it was essential to my case. Both my cases.

"I told her that I'm a were-squonk too." And there went the rest of his drink. "I'm faking it."

All the facepalms. All of them. "How. How the hell do you fake something like that." Questions as statements. I was getting stressed. More stressed. "I can smell it on you, Robert."

He lifted an eyebrow, and I realized that I'd probably just outed myself as not quite human either. "I know an alchemist. He set me up with the right formula." He reached across the table and grasped my wrist desperately. "But you can't tell her. Please." And that's when he noticed that his sudden move toward me caused me to pop my two-inch-long, razor-sharp claws, and he recoiled. "What are you?"

"Oh, dammit." I put them back. "Werewolf. I won't eat you."

"Dude, no way." Robert edged away slightly.

"You're married to a were-squonk and faking it yourself, and balking at the idea of a werewolf? Get real."

"I meant, no way you're not gonna eat me. I know how your kind is."

"Do you." That wasn't a question either, and Alpha Stare was a go for launch. "Because I thought I did too—until it actually happened to me and I found out that everything I 'knew' was _wrong_." I toned it down a little. "But this isn't about me. It's about you and your relationship with your wife. Man, you have to tell her."

"I can't. She won't love me if I'm just human."

I gave him a Look worthy of the one Janni would give me when I'd just said or done something monumentally stupid.

"You're an idiot. She married you. Unless it was for ridiculous reasons, she loves you and will love you no matter what. Although I gotta say, that's a pretty big lie, man."

The rest of his drink went the way of the others. "You think I don't know that? I'm not that much of an idiot." He stared at the table and moved his fingertip absently through the water ring his glass had left. "Except when it comes to her, I guess." His speech was beginning to slur.

"And you're not cheating on her, are you?" I had to ask, although I already knew the answer. Mrs. Hockney's suspicions were unfounded, although Robert's actions were odd enough to arouse them.

He nearly took a swing at me before he remembered what I was. "I would never cheat on Kathleen."

"I figured. I had to ask though, man, don't get offended that it's part of my gig. I'm a PI, it's what I do."

"Fine." New drinks arrived. "But I can't tell her. And I can't let that asshole tell her either." An expression of wild hope crossed his drunken face. "You can help me! You're a werewolf, you're way tougher than him. You can tell him to cease and desist, and if he doesn't, then you can eat him."

"Again, for the cheap seats: I don't eat people. They taste terrible." I was only half-kidding. "I can only imagine how a were-squonk would taste. If it's anything like they smell, I'll pass." I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Where does this guy hang his hat? You gotta drop point for the money you're paying him to keep his mouth shut?"

"He calls me. But as soon as he does, I can come and get you, or whatever, tell you where he wants me."

"How the hell is this my life?" I delved into my wallet for a business card. "Fine. Do that. And for God's sake, call a cab to take you home. You're crocked off your ass." I called one myself, because I didn't drive with any alcohol in my system at all.

On the way home, I leaned back on the seat, put my hand over my face, and shook my head.

~

I let Mrs. Squonk know that I still needed to solidify some things in her case, but that it appeared her suspicions were unfounded. Robert called me in a panic early the next morning. "He wants me to leave ten thousand dollars under a bench in Griffith Park this afternoon. I don't have that kind of money right now and he knows it!"

"He's setting you up to fail. That's all right. It means he's confident and also sloppy." I grabbed Janni's big hand mirror out of the bathroom drawer and shoved it into the backpack I always had with me, filled with a change of clothes in case of accidental wolfing. Going back to human, naked in a crowd of people, had taught me my lesson the first time.

I hit up one of my more esoteric contacts for some liquid hemlock. After doing some research, I thought I knew how to stop this guy from exploiting Robert anymore, and if being a werewolf taught me anything, it was that mystical crap loved a play on words. Since squonks were native to hemlock forests, then the coniine from hemlock _flowers_ would turn our were forcibly back to his squonk form.

At least, that was my theory. I was ready to be proved wrong. Probably would be, because that was the way this case was going.

I grumped over to Griffith Park in my Jeep, parked, and slung my pack of supplies over my back. Robert waited for me, pacing next to an isolated bench, and he practically pounced when he saw me coming. "What do you think?"

"I think we're taking this guy down. And if you have a problem with my methodology, you should probably go home now."

"Did I tell you how long he's been bleeding me dry? Whatever you have to do."

I took a breath. "OK. It might go bad. And you still have to tell your wife, man, or I will."

"Fine. At this point, I don't care."

I wasn't so sure that he'd have this lack of squeamishness when the rubber hit the road. His funeral. Maybe literally. I handed him a bottle of the hemlock extract. "You need to throw this on the guy. Think you can do that?"

"Will it stop him from blackmailing me?"

"It will turn him back into a squonk. And then we can stop him blackmailing you."

"OK." He jerked his chin. "Here he comes."

The blackmailer didn't hide his inner squonk as well as Mrs. Hockney. He was amazingly repellent, even in human form, and his expression turned gleeful when he saw us waiting. "You've broken the agreement, Bobby-boy. I'm going to tell her _everything_."

"You're not going to tell her anything, Percy. You're going to get out of our lives and stay out." And Robert uncapped the bottle of hemlock and flicked his wrist, flinging the contents all over the guy.

Percy howled and fell to the ground, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. The reports from the salon had said that the squonk was about the size of a big German Shepherd, but he grew instead of shrinking, tearing out of his clothes and ending up about twice the size of a _lion_ instead. I really should have expected unexpected results. We were dealing with mystical shit, after all.

I also wasn't ready for the sheer, mind-numbing _ugly_ up close and personal. The squonk's skin was far too big for its body, and covered in warts and tufts of disorganized hair. Even the color was unpleasant, a diseased-looking grayish green shot through with muddy brown. No wonder Mrs. Hockney stayed human all the time.

As Percy leaped toward him, Robert let out an undignified squeak and backpedaled, but he tripped over a grass hummock and landed on his ass. The zipper on my backpack picked right then to get stuck, and I struggled and snarled at it in an effort to get at the mirror inside, finally just ripping the pack itself open with my claws. Robert scrambled backward, but Percy lunged at him and fastened his square, flat-topped teeth around Robert's upthrust arm. Now it was Robert's turn to howl, and blood sprayed as Percy wrenched his head, let go, and lunged again.

That was when the Change took me. Too much adrenaline, coupled with the smell of blood and the fact that it was nearly moon time, made it inevitable, really. The mirror fell to the ground as I tore out of my clothes and hands changed to paws. Now Percy was only two times my size rather than five. I t-boned him right in the ribcage, knocking him off-balance and away from the bleeding human, and he turned his attention to me, baring his teeth—

And Robert, with remarkable presence of mind, scooped the mirror up and shoved it into his face.

Percy shrieked, a sound filled with sorrow and horror rather than rage this time. Then he flopped down on his haunches and burst into tears.

And, holy shit, what tears. He wailed his heartbreak to the sky in an outpouring of brokenhearted sorrow the likes of which I had never seen before, not even in Afghanistan where horrible things were a way of life. And I found out that Robert hadn't exaggerated when he said that a squonk could literally dissolve from crying. Percy got smaller and smaller as the pool of tears got bigger and bigger, and before long he was completely gone, leaving just the puddle soaking the grass.

I had issues of my own. I was triple my human size now, my clothes in shreds on the ground. Going back to human meant being naked, at least momentarily, out in the open and in front of a relative stranger. Robert eyed me as if he thought I'd attack him at any moment, and he edged away, oozing a fearful prey response that made the wolf prick up his ears and want to stalk closer to him.

I tamped the impulse down and grabbed my backpack in my jaws. A wooded area lay a little ways off, so I headed into it to Change and get dressed. By the time I got back to Robert, he was seated on the bench and staring at his bloodstained arm.

...Which had healed without leaving a single mark. Oh, boy. He clearly had no idea how to take that, and his expression was lost as he looked from me to his arm and back. "Ben, what?"

I lifted an eyebrow in a shrug and sat beside him. "Well, at least you're not lying about being a were-squonk anymore? Except your normal form is human and the moon form is squonk." He blinked several times, and I snapped my fingers sharply at him. "Don't you dare start crying on me. I do not want to explain to your wife why her husband is a squonk puddle."

"I don't...how? How do you do this?"

I shrugged. "It's not so bad. Three nights a month I grow fangs and fur and run with my Pack. Sometimes we stay in and have pizza and beer with the human members instead. But you're going to have to talk to her, man. I have no idea what you do to get your squonk on, but she'd know."

"Come with me," he burst out. "Please. You can help me explain."

"Seriously? What are you, twelve? She's your wife, not your mother." Although she was old enough to be his mother. I tactfully left that out.

"Yeah, well. She's...formidable. You'll know when you meet her."

I needed to talk to her anyway, after all. "I suppose so."

~

Half an hour later, he and I sat in a richly-appointed living room, or maybe it was a parlor, surrounded by expensive bric-a-brac and sipping soft drinks from heavy crystal glasses. Mrs. Hockney came in, saw Robert, and froze.

Her scent changed as well, to something a lot less swampy and a lot more predatory and loaded with sex pheromones, and my eyebrows went up. She noticed me noticing and twitched her head as she sat down. "Mr. Lockwood. I see you've met my husband."

Robert shrank back from me. "You know each other?"

I scrubbed a hand over my face. "Your wife hired me. She thought you were cheating on her. You know? The private phone calls. The money disappearing. The fact that you'd leave and flat refuse to tell her where you were going for long stretches of time." I held a hand up. "He was being blackmailed, Mrs. Hockney, not cheating on you. And the blackmailer won't bother anyone ever again. He was your ex, and we left him in the park as a puddle."

She went a little pensive at that information. "Percy always was the clingy type. I suppose he thought that if he could get rid of Robert somehow, I'd take him back. Not likely." She turned to Robert. "Oh, Robbie. What was he blackmailing you _with_ , for Heaven's sake?"

His eyes bored a hole in the carpet, and his voice was low and ashamed. "I've been lying to you. I'm not a were-squonk. Or. Well. I wasn't. Percy bit me, so I guess I am now. But I loved you and I figured you wouldn't love me if I wasn't...like you."

"Is that all? Of course I knew. It is part of why I love you, Robert, you silly man. You knew what I was and didn't care. Or—" And she gave a tiny shrug as sex pheromones filled the room. I don't know if Robert could smell them, but I sure as hell could. "You thought you knew what I was. I've been keeping a little secret of my own."

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed a hand over my face. "The fact that you're a succubus is not a 'little' secret, Mrs. Hockney."

Robert frowned and recoiled a little. "A succu—Like, a demon who preys on men via sex?"

"In a manner of speaking," she answered. "But I won't hurt you, Robbie. I can only prey on certain supernatural creatures. Predators themselves."

He relaxed, and I wondered if she was doing something squonk-specific to him. "Then I'm safe?"

"My 'fox' fur is actually a rumptifusel and that amber necklace is made from the crystallized tears of a hodag. But they died happy. Squonks are herbivores. Part of the reason I love you is because I _can't_ hurt you." That didn't stop her from shooting a blast of pure sex appeal my way with a wicked little smile.

It bounced off. "I'm a werewolf who mates for life, ma'am. Don't even try."

"I can't help what I am, Mr. Lockwood."

"Maybe not. But you can sure help what you do with it. Also, if I hear about you causing harm to humans, we're gonna have words. More than words. So keep your nose clean, Mrs. Hockney." I rose. "You've both clearly got a lot to talk about, and I'm intruding. I'll see myself out."

Robert made a desperate grab for me and missed. "Please don't!"

"'Marriage counselor' is not in my job description, Robert." I rolled my eyes. "Fine. You still love her even though she's a soul-sucking demoness?" He nodded, and I turned to Mrs. Hockney. "You still love him even though he's been lying to you all this time?" She nodded, and I threw up my hands. "There. Everything else is just details. You're both grown-ups, work it out."

"Thank you, Mr. Lockwood," Mrs. Hockney said. "You've been very helpful."

"You'll get my bill." A corner of my mouth turned up. "All is well ended, if this suit be won. Right?"

Mrs. Hockey got up and sat beside Robert, grasping his fingers. "Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts."

"Awesome. You two crazy kids live happily, or squonkily, or whatever, ever after. OK?"

I left. A thought struck me as I started my Jeep. "...the hell is a rumptifusel?"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Julie Frost lives in the beautiful Salt Lake Valley in a house full of Oaxacan carvings and anteaters, some of which intersect. Her work has appeared in Cosmos, Azure Valley, Stupefying Stories, and Plasma Frequency. She whines about writing at http://agilebrit.livejournal.com/, or you can follow her on Twitter via @JulieCFrost.

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# Book Review

# Mermaid

From the Amazon.com Book Description:

"When genetically engineered sea drone Coral saved two drowning humans, she didn't expect to end up questioning the foundations of her world... but humans don't seem as different as she's always been told. With nothing ahead of her but mindless days of harvesting seaweed for World Food Co., she has to know why humans are free to choose and drones aren't.

Coral's only hope of transforming her future lies in taking on a battle her people gave up a century ago. However, each step nearer to drone freedom brings her closer to falling in love with Rob, the man she saved and heir to the company she is fighting to change.

Struggling to unravel politics and passion, Coral begins to realize that she stands to lose more than just a chance at being human. Both her life and Rob's may just balance on whether or not they can create a world where drones can be free."

Selecting the next great book to read can be difficult, and it is no different with books to review. This time around I chose a Mermaid by Kate O'Connor (http://kateoconnor3.wordpress.com/) because I know the author's work. O'Connor is no stranger to the pages of Plasma Frequency, or to our readers who selected her story "Hell and Back" for our Year One Anthology. A chance to read and review a work of O'Connor's was an easy choice for me.

This story follows Coral, who later changes to Cora, who is a maintenance drone in the seaweed farms of the oceans. Coral is the curious type, and her curiosity gets her in a bit of trouble. Coral finds herself longing to be human. She gets that wish, and finds in the world of humans, love, corporate greed, and heart break.

You can tell right away, as the book title implies, what story is being retold here. And in the beginning the similarities are so strong I found myself predicting the next events before they happened. But Coral is a strong character and that kept me going for the first half of this book. The story has an original spin on it and when we get to the main conflict, it isn't so predictable anymore.

I liked Coral better as Cora the human. And I really found myself rooting for her. If I had the chance to meet Cora, I would. I imagined her as beautiful, stunning really, and so sweet. She was strong willed in her goal but so fragile in her human nature that I really connected with her. If I had to pick the greatest aspect of this book, it is Cora. All the other characters are really ancillary to Cora.

The story opens with a rescue. This sparks all the interest Coral needs in the humans. The other drones don't care much about humans, and they really don't like Coral's interest in them. She finds a man who can help her, but at a price. Once human, the story really takes off.

As I mentioned above, there is a level of predictability in this story line. The beginning makes it a bit rough, and I had no problem putting it down. Not because the story was bad, but because the "what happens next" suspense wasn't there. But by the second half of the book I was interested in knowing where all this was going.

I can't talk much about the ending. I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I will say I was shattered by the ending. So much so, that I still don't know if that is a good or bad thing. It isn't what I expected and I was shocked by it. Perhaps when I recover, I'll better know what to think of it.

The conflict doesn't really ramp up until the end. It ramps up suddenly, then just as quickly the book is over. I certainly had a desire for more. Again, some things stay with you and the ending of this book has stuck in my head. Overall, the story is told with enough originality to make it fun and easy to read.

This is a really short read. You can probably easily read it in a day. Once again I find myself looking at the price point. At $2.99, I don't know what to think. The words on the page are worth it, but the length is not. If I had paid, I would have felt a bit cheated. I wanted more, and perhaps that is where that comes from. As best I can tell there is no paperback version available on Amazon.com.

Overall, the book is intriguing if not a bit predictable. But just when you think you know what will happen the ending will have you stunned. O'Connor's talent combined with Coral's strong character make for a story you won't forget.

The summary:

Mermaid

By Kate O'Connor

Published March 21, 2013

ASIN B00BYLQWWY

Available on Kindle at Amazon.com:

US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BYLQWWY/

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BYLQWWY/

My ratings:

Prose: Good

Characters: Excellent

Story: Good

Value: Okay

Overall: Good

O'Connor is a talented story teller, as our readers already know. She brings new life to an old tale. The story is great, but a bit predictable. Just don't count on that predictability to last until the end. Some stories you don't forget, this is one of them.

#  Litany for Compassion

# By K. S. O'Neill

I stand at the doorway with a gallon of methanol in my hand. Susan is upset. Susan is my roommate. She is sitting on the sofa facing away from the door. I think she's crying. I have to change plans. I got six extra hours of database work this week at the university, so I had some extra money. I was going to surprise her with the gallon of fuel. We could run the air conditioner all weekend. I tell myself the Litany for Compassion before I put the fuel down.

My litanies are all based on the Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear. I read Dune when I was twelve. I've read Dune about ten times. I don't like any of the movie adaptations though.

Litany for Compassion:

Compassion is hearing. I will not solve every problem. I will not assume that I can fix every situation. I will listen. Other people are smart too. I don't need to take over every time someone else is upset. I will listen, and I will not make the discussion about what I can do. When I have listened there will be silence, and that's OK. I do not have to talk. Silence is OK.

I put the gallon down by the door and sit down in the little chair facing the sofa. I usually sit on the sofa.

"Ginger is gone." She sniffs and looks at me. "He's been gone since yesterday. I don't know where he is, but he got out and then..." She trailed off.

Ginger is a cat. He's a big, orange cat. I like Ginger. OK. I don't have to solve every problem. I just have to listen.

"I'm sorry about Ginger," I tell her. "I'm sure he's OK. Do you want to go look for him?" Dammit. I don't have to—

"Yes! Yes, I do. Thank you. I was hoping you'd say that, I don't want to walk around by myself."

Dammit. What good is a Litany for Compassion if ignoring it produces better success than following it? She puts her shoes on, and we go look for the cat.

Doctor Lister helped me with my litanies. Doctor Lister was my therapist at the college. She helped me when I was in school, then we did an outliving plan, and she helped me get a supplemental grant to pay someone to live with me. She helped me in the interviews and we developed a way to discuss where I am on the spectrum without me getting upset talking about it repeatedly.

The grant doesn't actually pay Susan to live with me directly, but our rent is subsidized by the grant foundation so it seems like the same thing to me. Money is fungible. Doctor Lister says I should consider that all roommates come with advantages and disadvantages, and this is just one of my advantages, but it seems equivalent to a direct payment to me. A direct payment for living with me. But Doctor Lister says that's not the same thing. I have to think about that some more.

We walk around the block and look for Ginger. There are a lot of bushes outside people's houses that look like they could hide a cat. Susan looks under some bushes near the road. I look at the data-wiki on my phone for something relevant. The data-wiki has a lot of raw user data that I can search. It helps me feel in control of a situation. Doctor Lister says that's fine if I remember that I'm only getting a partial picture from the data and don't ignore what's around me. I do a search and find a distribution analysis that says that the mean distance from home a lost cat is found on the first day is less than two hundred yards,  =60 yards. It's a big data set, n=421. I tell Susan this.

"We should go back," I tell her. "He's probably near the house."

"How can the database know where he is though?" She's still walking away from the house, so I walk with her.

"It doesn't. It's empirical data. Most cats are found near home."

"But you don't know where he is, right?"

I'm stuck. I don't know where Ginger is. But I know where Ginger probably is.

Susan is making a mistake. I open my mouth to say something. I close my mouth.

Litany against Certainty:

The world is a complicated place. When I attempt to place simplistic overlays on the world I make a map that does not conform to reality. I will resist the urge to place a simplistic overlay on the world, even if that means I have no map at all. A lack of understanding is better than a wrong understanding. Early commitment to an incorrect theory blinds me to further data gathering. I will let the illusion of certainty go, and when it is gone I will be able to see what is around me.

We walk down our street and then around the corner onto South Clover. South Clover is a big street, two lanes in each direction. The traffic roars and surges chaotically, scooters and rickshaws battling with mini-diesel delivery trucks for lane space. The smell of methanol fuel is overwhelming.

I realize Susan is thinking that Ginger may have wandered this far and been hit by a scooter or a truck, since there is more traffic here. I'm pleased with my insight. I tell myself to observe the Litany against Certainty and actually see what's going on.

Susan is not looking at traffic. She turns. We're walking past the gas station.

Now I get it.

The gas station is run by a little man from Mexico named Raul. It's a hard, dirty job. He has big tanks in the back. When I first saw them I calculated the volume in my head: about three meters across, about three meters high. Volume about 7 cubic meters, or about 21 cubic meters, or about 5,500 gallons. It takes two weeks to cook up a batch of methanol. The cooking to product ratio is about 10:1. So about 275 gallons a week. That's how much he's selling. He's standing in front of the station as we walk by.

"Hello, Raul," I say, and we keep walking. Susan doesn't say anything or look at him, but she sort of tries to sneak a look back at the station as we walk by.

Raul gives us credit for grass clippings I take him when I mow the yard, and I throw in tree trimmings and other stuff too. Kitchen scraps, chicken bones and salad and plate scrapings. He gets truckloads of tree trimmings and grease from restaurants and first-run sewage skimmings. Anything organic. The ratio for the fungus-bacteria hybrid process is about what the corn ethanol process was once, but that took corn or something else high in sugar. The methanol tanks take anything, anything organic. That's a good thing, I think. Now anything organic can turn directly into fuel. Anything at all.

We turn a corner around the block and start back in the direction of home, but we're one street over. We're more than half a mile from home in a straight line. I look at the data-wiki distribution on my phone. There's less than a one percent chance the cat is this far from home. Susan is still looking under bushes. She seems angry we haven't found Ginger yet.

When we get back home I turn the TV to the newsfeed and watch the coverage of the congressional hearings on freighter regulation in the North Atlantic. More Russian freighter fuelers have been boarded for skimming. The news shows the fine screens the fuelers tow behind them, and the huge tanks they dump everything they scoop up into. The screens pick up everything bigger than a pencil lead. They cook the fuel out and sell it to freighters crossing the Atlantic. The screen shows satellite photos of long, thin lines of dead zones in the ocean, scribbled in circles like kindergarteners' drawings. They look like pencil tracings on the map. Where the pencil tracings are close together the ocean changes color. There's a time lapse, and algae blooms follow the fueler paths and fill in the dead zones in dark red lines.

I look up from the news and see Susan in the kitchen watching too. I want to tell her that I will go look for Ginger in our yard and look around next door, but it feels like I would be criticizing her for our long walk around the block.

It's hot in the house, and I think about putting the fuel in the AC and starting it, but I don't want to do that after Susan took us by the fuel station looking for Ginger. I leave the gallon of methanol where it is and go out to the back yard instead.

Ginger is not in the back yard. I sit down with my phone on the edge of the patio. The data-wiki has a lot of datasets on decreasing populations of stray cats and dogs across the US. There are links to articles commenting on the data. The decline corresponds to increasing use of methanol fuel and refining stations like Raul's station on South Clover. Correlation is not causality, and I tell myself the Litany against Certainty.

I look at some forum articles and some op-ed pieces that talk about spaying and neutering programs, and about other control mechanisms, which try to make the case that declining numbers of strays are due to those things, not to fuel stations dumping stray animals in their, tanks. I scroll down to the comments. There is a lot of disagreement. "If spaying and neutering worked it would have worked in the 90s" one person wrote. "All this is just a whitewash. There are fewer stray cats and dogs now because a 50 lb dog is a gallon of fuel, period." That's not really right, a fifty pound dog is only five pounds of fuel. About sixty percent of a gallon. Still, the argument seems sound to me.

I go back inside.

Tim is sitting on the couch. Tim is Susan's boyfriend. Doctor Lister was concerned about me living with Susan while she had a boyfriend. She asked me if I needed a litany against sexual jealousy. I don't think I do. I don't think Susan and I are going to become sexually involved.

I don't think Tim likes me very much. He seems like someone who views a person like me as mentally deficient. I find him hard to talk to and tell myself a litany that I only seem to use when he's around.

Litany of the Larger Game:

There is always a larger game being played. I will not win the small game and lose the larger game. The decision to play the small game is a move in a larger game. I will look for the larger game. I will not define myself as someone who only sees the smallest level of game being played. To defend an attack is to validate that attack. To deny an inferred assertion is to make it explicit. I will see the larger game and let the smaller games pass me by.

"Hello, Tim," I say, and walk past him into the kitchen where Susan is cooking dinner.

"Oh, John, hi. I only made dinner for us..." Her words trail off, and she looks hot and tired. Tim did not come over to help her look for Ginger. I walked around the block with her, not Tim. I was quiet when she looked in unlikely places for the cat instead of listening to me.

"It's all right, I have some pizza." I dismiss her concerns. That's a trick. I learned it from people who do it to me. If you're concerned about something, and someone addresses it, they validate the concern. This seems to relate to the Litany of the Larger Game.

I get my pizza and put it in the microwave.

"Do you mind if I watch TV?" This is another trick. I think of it as Make a Reasonable Request. It's really part of the Litany to Engage, but I don't use the Litany to Engage much anymore. Doctor Lister says that's good, that I've internalized it so I no longer need to tell it to myself.

Susan and Tim eat at the table, and he's mostly talking so I don't think they're talking about Ginger. I watch the news.

I scroll through the newsfeed until I find a show about the Russian fuel freighters, and the dead patch in the North Atlantic, and the algae blooms there, and what skimming technology and the methanol tanks in the rainforest are doing to the environment. I think Susan might hear that so I change the channel, but the next show is also about methanol fuel, this one about missing pets and missing homeless people in cities and it's louder and seems a little far-fetched. It's one of those shows that I think will likely be debunked on the data-wiki pretty quickly, but I don't want Susan to hear it so I try to mash the 'mute' button but I miss and the volume shoots up for a second.

"THOUSANDS OF DOGS EVERY YEAR MISSING AROUND THE..." blasts out before I hit mute. Susan doesn't say anything to me from the other room, but when I look, Tim is twisting to look at me, and scowling, so I guess maybe she did tell him about Ginger after all.

It's still hot in the house. I decide that Tim can put the methanol in the AC if they want to run it.

I turn off the TV and go back out in the back yard and sit on the edge of the patio. It's getting dark but I can still read my phone. The data-wiki is pretty harsh on the idea that pets and homeless people are being kidnapped to dump into fuel stations. There's a good long post from a data-wiki journal, by someone called StatsDoc, about the risks and payoffs of kidnapping a pet or a homeless person, which seems pretty convincing. Part of me says, well, it would work if you don't get caught. I wonder how long remains could be identified in a tank. The cops don't like to look in tanks if they can avoid it. It's a dirty job and they have to get all bio-suited up. They'd rather fly drones around and watch people from an office.

Ginger wanders up to me and head-butts my leg. I scratch his head. He was in the back yard all the time, I bet.

I read more about the deforestation in Brazil and how the fuel boom there is cutting into the old growth rainforest. It sounds like the algae blooms in the Atlantic. StatsDoc has a post about how dumb rich Americans and Europeans are being when they go all hysterical and email each other stories about missing pets or bodies missing from morgues, when those stories are mostly fake and at the same time the methanol fuel tanks are eating the rainforest and the ecosystems in the ocean which we all need to live.

Ginger bumps my leg again. He's hungry. I should take him in, but I don't know what to say to Susan. I want to talk about the fuel stories I've been reading and about how missing cats aren't really the problem. I should wait until Tim is gone. Tim may spend the night. When Tim spends the night I wear my headphones all night and listen to music, but I can't roll over in bed or I knock the headphones off.

Susan will be happy that Ginger is back, but I want to tell her about this other stuff too. I should just take the cat inside. I wonder if I need to tell myself the Litany against Certainty, but I don't feel certain, I feel torn between really wanting to talk about the stuff from the data-wiki and just wanting to be the one who found the cat and brought him back.

He bumps my leg again, then walks off a little. I let him go. I can find him again when I want to go in. I sit and look at my phone as it gets dark. I just have to figure out what to say.

The back door opens and Susan sticks her head out to look at me.

"Hey, you OK out here?"

"I'm fine," I tell her.

"Well, thanks for walking around with me. I appreciate it. Do you want some ice cream? We've got plenty."

"Sure," I say, and get up, and look around for Ginger. He's nowhere in sight. I don't want to tell Susan that I had him and let him wander off, and besides he's around, he'll come back, so I go inside.

Tim hands me a bowl of cold vanilla ice cream and we all sit down. I start to talk about the newsfeed show about the Russian fuelers, but in the middle of talking about it I remember that Susan doesn't know that Ginger is back yet so I shouldn't bring this up yet, but she seems OK.

"It's really a problem, huh?" Tim asks me and looks up at me from under his lowered eyebrows. He sometimes seems like he's testing me to see if I can follow what he's saying. I want to tell him what my IQ is and what my GPA was at the college, but I eat a bite of ice cream and tell myself the Litany of the Larger Game. If I tell him my GPA, I lose the larger game.

"It's all a problem," I tell him, ignoring the feeling that we're sparring about something. "The rainforest and the oceans are most of the oxygen producing regions on earth. If we burn them up in scooter motors and freighter engines to ship stuff back and forth..." I don't know how to finish that, so I eat a bite of ice cream. I want to say, "That would be bad," but I've learned to avoid obvious summaries.

"They should stop," I finally say, which seems lame, but at least I'm done talking.

"I'm sure they would stop if they had another way to make more than a dollar a day," he says.

"What?"

"The people. There are people in the rainforest, right? They're the ones who are running the methanol stills."

I stare at him for a minute. Tim is brown. His skin is pretty dark brown. I don't know what his ethnicity is. He has an odd last name, I heard it once but forgot it. I don't know where he's from, where his family is from. He has brown skin and straight hair. Why does it matter? Why does it matter where he's from if we're talking about turning the rainforest into fuel?

"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, they're people. They want to be able to live here in twenty years too, right?" But I'm not sure that's the right thing to say, and I take my bowl to the kitchen and say I'm tired, and I go to bed and put my headphones on and put some music on.

Later I hear the back door open and I hear Susan's voice, and I know Ginger is back. I should be happy he's back inside and safe, but I'm all tangled up in being mad at Tim and in not knowing what I should have said to him.

But I should be happy Ginger is back. So I tell myself the Litany for Compassion and I try to go to sleep.

I dream about the Russian freighters, and about the maps and the traces of red that look like tangles of string, something dangerous to walk across or ride a scooter over because it might catch your legs or trip you and you would drown in the ocean. I wake up sweaty and tangled in the covers. The AC is still not on. I change out of my sweaty t-shirt and lie back down on the bed.

Later Ginger pushes my door open and jumps up to the bed and curls up next to me. I put my hand on his side and he purrs under my palm.

I knew you were close, I tell him. I knew it. And I'm not mad anymore. I'm just glad he's back. He leans up against me and his chest rumbles happily, and we fall asleep together, and I don't dream about anything.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

K. S. O'Neill teaches math at a small college on the Texas coast. His fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction and The Mad Scientist Journal.

#  Memory Lane

# By Milo James Fowler

On the afternoon of June 16th, Hermann Neville started screaming.

No one saw it coming. Not even his coworkers who found him hyper-multitasking regularly at Montgomery High School where he taught freshman English and journalism; those who knew for a fact that he never took work home; those who saw him at his desk long after hours, with music playing from the ceiling speakers and two or more programs running on his desktop computer screen, his mobile vibrating with incoming messages while various social media sites glowed from his latest-version Slate.

On June 16th, Hermann was sitting in the teachers' lounge grading papers between bites of lunch when, without warning, he gave a bloodcurdling shriek and clapped both hands over his ears.

"Is it something we said?" asked one of his coworkers, an elderly woman who somehow managed to mention the horrors of past pregnancies in just about every conversation—though she hadn't been close to a childbearing age in decades.

"I can't take any more!" Hermann yelled. "There's no room!"

It was a lot like his Slate; he'd recently upgraded to a two-terabyte model after maxing out his earlier version. Deleting files in order to make room for new ones had quickly become a tedious chore, and he'd welcomed the additional memory with open arms.

But now, having reached maximum brain capacity, he had to do the same thing with his mind. The problem was, he didn't know where—or even _how_ —to begin.

~

Doctor Sneed wasn't much help—recommended by Hermann's principal, a fellow Central Health member.

"It's a myth that we utilize only ten percent of our brains, an idea promulgated by the psychic phenomena establishment, the paranormal want-to-believers. The truth of the matter is that we use every portion of our brains—just not all at the same time." He cleared his throat, a goggle-eyed stork of a man with a pencil-thin neck and an Adam's apple big as an egg, like something he swallowed once, still making its way down his esophagus. "You, however..."

He directed the jittery red dot of his laser-enabled ballpoint toward the multicolored brain scans displayed on his office wallscreen. "You are currently utilizing every quadrant of every lobe, and all at the same time. It's astounding, really."

Hermann couldn't watch. Or listen. Or respond. He cringed on the sofa, knees pulled tight to his chest, eyes squeezed shut, rubber plugs jammed deep into his ears, as he screamed with all his might.

"What does it mean, Doctor?" Mrs. Neville, Hermann's devoted helpmate, stood beside her cowering husband with a frown ensconced on her alabaster brow and a gentle hand upon his shoulder.

"What's that he's doing?" Sneed appeared to notice Hermann's clamor for the first time.

"He can't take any more input—visual or auditory stimulation of any kind."

"He's closed himself off from the world." Sneed nodded slowly. "Fascinating."

"What can we do?"

Sneed blinked at her, seeming to remember something very important. "We must place him into a sensory deprivation chamber until his neural impulses settle down. Right now, they're firing on all cylinders, so to speak, and his mind can't take the barrage of information. He has the right idea at the moment—although I'm sure his voice will give out eventually. He can't scream like this indefinitely."

"He teaches high school."

Sneed blinked again. "Oh. Well then."

Mrs. Neville glanced at her husband with concern. "He keeps saying there's no room, that he needs to free up some memory."

"He's thinking of his brain as a computer hard drive." Sneed chuckled. "Or his Slate." He nodded to himself, pinching absently at his well-endowed Adam's apple. "Some time in the chamber should definitely remedy matters."

"How long will he have to...stay in there?"

Sneed smiled, baring white picket fences, as he escorted her to the door. "We'll be in touch."

~

It turned out to be three days and three nights. And when Hermann Neville finally emerged from his sightless, soundless tomb, Sneed and his nurses were there with towels and a thick robe to warm him.

"I'm hungry." Hermann shivered, and in that moment he realized that his mind had cleared. Whatever they'd done to him, it had worked.

"You're bound to be," Sneed said with a hearty laugh. "You've been fasting since Friday."

"Starving's more like it," Hermann muttered. But going without sensory stimulation—as well as food—had obviously done the trick. Hydration hadn't been an issue; they'd hooked him up to some kind of IV drip. And certain awkward measures had been taken to deal with his excrement—now in the removal process by the nurses. He didn't envy them the job.

"We'll of course need to run another series of scans to be certain your brain is functioning within normal parameters," said the good doctor. "But everything appears to be in fine working order at present."

"Where's my wife?" Hermann thought for sure she'd be there to greet him.

Sneed blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"My wife." Hermann coughed. He could see his own breath in the sterile, icy room.

The nurses glanced at each other. Sneed dismissed them, and they carried away Hermann's catheter and bags of urine and feces.

Doctor Sneed cleared his throat. His Adam's apple leapt and fell. "Mister Neville, you need to understand. Your time in the chamber may have resulted in certain...psychological side effects."

Hermann sniffed, wiped at his nose. "How's that?"

"Think of it this way, the life you thought you knew is no longer yours. Today, you begin a brand new chapter."

Hermann stared at the doctor. "Are you some kind of quack?" He tugged off the robe and threw it at him. "Where are my clothes?"

"Clean slate, Mister Neville. You'll need to start from scratch. And that includes your clothing. Obsolete memories no longer have any place in your life."

Hermann glanced down at his alert gooseflesh and grabbed the robe. Tugging it back on, he demanded, "You'd better start talking sense."

Sneed nodded with an appeasing smile. "You came to us with a rare condition, Mister Neville: maximum brain capacity. There is only one known cure and that's total reformatting."

"Reformatting." Herman shook his head. This man sounded more like a computer repairman than a medical doctor.

"That's right. While you were in the chamber, we performed a complete brain reformat. Your verbal processing and psychomotor skills were not affected—only the regions of your brain designed for memory storage. They have been wiped clean." He brightened, grinning. "So now you have plenty of room for all that multitasking you're known for. Speaking of which, would you like your Slate so you can get back online? You've missed three entire days of social networking, you know!"

Hermann raised a shaky finger to point at Sneed. "You're insane. You're out of your freaking mind." He staggered backward, bare feet numb against the slick linoleum. "I'm getting the heck out of here!"

"Where will you go?" Sneed called as Hermann jerked open the door to flee the premises.

"Home!"

~

The problem, home wasn't exactly where Hermann had left it. The house was there, a modest two-story with a porch and a well-groomed lawn in a nice enough neighborhood, but the place was empty, locked up tight with one of those steel boxes on the front doorknob and a real estate sign planted in the middle of the grass. Hermann's home was for sale.

"Hey-uh..." He didn't know his neighbors' names, neither the ones on each side or across the street, but the guy on the right—a silver-haired gent with wire-rimmed spectacles—had glanced his way while retrieving the evening post, probably wondering what Hermann was doing in a bathrobe and nothing else. "You seen anybody around here?"

"The place is for sale." He gave Hermann another cursory glance and returned to his own porch with the day's junk mail.

Hermann scurried after him, struggling to keep the hospital robe closed in front. His bare feet swished through the man's grass. "I don't think we've met. I'm Hermann. Neville." The man stared at him blankly, looking about ready to charge into his house and call the police. "I'm your _neighbor_!" Hermann gesticulated back at his empty house. "I live right there!"

Mister Silver frowned. "The place is for sale," he repeated.

"Since when?"

The man parted his lips, half-turning toward his house. "If you'll excuse me—"

"Don't you recognize me? Even a little?"

The man swallowed. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave, sir."

Hermann threw up his arms and uttered what could only be translated as "Gah!" He wiped his hands down his face. "OK, I'll go, but can I borrow your mobile? Please, I just need to call my wife and get things sorted out. I'll just be a minute."

The man stared at him, then glanced at the taxicab waiting at the curb with its motor running. He proceeded to reach into his back pocket. "Then you will go." It wasn't a question as he handed over the device.

"Thanks." Hermann fumbled with it, tapping seven digits into the touchscreen. "Thanks a million."

The first number he dialed—his wife's mobile—bleeped in his ear, but next came the standard, "the number you have reached is no longer in service," message, instead of her voice.

"What the—" He ended the call and tried another, his wife's work number. Same message. "It doesn't make sense."

Mister Silver held out his hand for the device. "You'd better go." As an afterthought, he added, "You don't want to make a cab wait like that. They'll adjust the meter when you're not looking."

~

Hermann's second stop was his place of employment, but Agnes at the front desk looked like she'd never seen him before, and he knew as soon as he stepped inside that they wouldn't let him through, not dressed as he was.

"C'mon Agnes, it's _me_. Neville! Has everybody lost their minds?"

"Only you, sir, by all appearances. Please leave right this moment. I have already notified campus security, and they're on their way."

"Who's teaching my classes? Tell me that. Who have you replaced me with? Spafford? The guy's an illiterate!"

"Do not raise your voice to me, sir." Agnes's eyes bulged with the reprimand. "Leave now, or I will call the _police_."

Hermann blew out a forceful sigh. "Listen, the world's turning the wrong way or something today. I just need to make a call. May I use your phone? Please, Agnes."

She pursed her wrinkled lips, watching him. "Who do you need to call?"

"My parents. They live on the other side of town—I've got to make sure they're okay, that whatever's going on hasn't gotten to them too."

Two overweight men with buzz cuts, and uniforms that looked more like stripper costumes, came in the campus end of the office, leaving the string of sleigh bells on the glass door to jangle behind them. They went straight for Hermann. It was easy to tell who they'd been summoned for, the crazy in the hospital robe.

But Agnes held up a crinkled hand and they stopped; the hard look in her watery eyes had softened.

"One call. Then you leave." She pressed a button on the phone's cradle and handed Hermann the wireless receiver.

"Thanks." He narrated the number and watched her fingers, making sure she got it right. "Please pick up," he murmured. His folks had a habit of screening their calls through an old-fashioned answering machine.

But not this time. Instead, a familiar voice answered telling him the line had been disconnected and was no longer in use.

"Gah!" He slammed the receiver down on the desk.

"This way, sir." The security goons escorted him out.

"Spafford's an idiot!" Hermann hollered over his shoulder. "Those kids will never pass their SATs with him in there! I'll be back!"

"No. You won't." One of the goons shoved him outside.

~

Sharon Neville woke up on the morning of June 20th with her heart racing. The stress of the past few days had finally caught up to her.

"None of this is right," she moaned aloud, sitting up on the edge of the lumpy hotel mattress with her head in her hands. She hadn't been sleeping well at all since she'd dropped Hermann off at the Central Health medical center, and last night she'd finally broken down and taken an over-the-counter sleeping aid. It had knocked her out within minutes, but now she was paying the price. Nauseated and disoriented, she grabbed the digital clock on the nightstand and squinted at it. Almost noon.

So much time had been lost. At first, she'd agreed with Doctor Sneed that the only way to help her husband's brain overload was to clear his mind of all memories and allow him to restart, to rebuild without all the clutter. The idea was to take away his past so that his present would be able to reassert itself. Over time, residual memories would return, and she—along with every other member of his past—would be allowed to resurface and reconnect with him.

But for now, Doctor Sneed said they would just jeopardize Hermann's already fragile state of mind. Central Health was involved in all aspects of society, at all levels across the entire United States and its protectorates. It was a small matter for them to erase Hermann's past and relocate his family. They'd done it before with other cases, Doctor Sneed had said.

"It's all for his own good," he'd told her. "When the time is right, we'll contact you."

"How long will that be?" Sharon had demanded.

"Could be days. Could be months. You must be patient, Mrs. Neville. You want your husband to get well, don't you?"

Of course she did. But four days after abandoning Hermann at Central Health, and with no word from Sneed, not even a progress report, Sharon was beginning to think she'd made an enormous mistake. Something had to be done, and she was the only one to do it.

~

The cab driver was far from happy.

"Listen, buddy, I don't mind driving you all over town, but sooner or later, you're gonna have to pay up. So I ain't going anywhere else until I know I'm getting my money. Maybe I should take you back to Central Health, cuz I'm thinkin' you might need some serious help."

Hermann scrubbed at his stubble-covered face. "No, you're right. You should be paid. I'm sorry, I just don't have my wallet with me—but if we could stop at the bank—"

"Now we're talkin!'" The driver grinned, easing away from the curb.

Hermann didn't share his optimism. If some supernatural force or government power had successfully managed to get rid of Mrs. Neville, the Neville estate, parents Neville, as well as Mister Neville's English class, couldn't they—whoever "they" were—just as easily have also cancelled his bank accounts?

But to what end? What the hell was going on here?

~

Doctor Sneed couldn't help wondering the same thing. As a devoted practitioner of self-talk, he mused aloud in his empty office, "Chalk it up as a failure, or try again? Aye, there's the rub."

Nursing a latte in an enormous mug with WORLD'S BEST NEUROSCIENTIST printed in bold lettering on the side, he blinked at the brain scans of Hermann Neville displayed on his wallscreen.

The intercom buzzed and he tapped a corner of his desktop. "Yes?"

"He is attempting to withdraw funds from their joint bank account, Doctor. Should we nullify this transaction?"

Sneed sighed heavily and set down his mug. Obviously, the brain-reformat hadn't taken. "Of course. And we'll need to collect him for another session."

"Right away, Doctor."

Sneed returned to his mug, savoring every sip as he regarded Neville's scans. It was a rare case, but not unheard of—maybe one in a million in the past three years since the introduction of the hidden data stream. Incorporated into every free, web-based social network in the country, and designed by Central Health at the bidding of the federal government, its purpose was to placate the masses and keep them distracted from world events and the economy, to stimulate mental optimism about the future—whether or not such a positive outlook was warranted.

"For the good of the many," Sneed mused.

But there were always exceptional cases, isolated incidents, such as this Neville. With a brain like his, it was virtually impossible to ignore the concealed data. While his conscious mind probably had no idea it was there, his subconscious and unconscious mind had been storing up all of it, even without any apparent use for it. Neville had what was called "perfect recall," which explained how he could make so many phone calls from memory when the majority of the populace relied solely on the numbers stored in their mobiles.

Unfortunately, Doctor Sneed couldn't just go digging into Neville's mind and remove the stored data from "Operation Mass Opiate"—as the government affectionately referred to it. No, Sneed and the other Central Health neuroscientists across the country, with situations similar to Neville's, had to perform a complete brain reformatting. They induced total amnesia, in other words.

With Neville, Sneed had hoped this wouldn't become necessary. But the current situation argued differently.

"We'll have to make it stick this time, Mister Neville," Sneed said aloud. "But we'll provide you with a whole new life this time so you won't go bothering all those nice people from your past." The emotional strain of pretending not to recognize him—for his own good, of course—was something those people couldn't be expected to continue indefinitely.

The good doctor frowned, recalling his conversation four days ago with Neville's wife, at which time he'd alluded to Neville's memories resurfacing with time. After what had been going on for the past twenty-four hours, such would not, could not, ever be the case. For his own good, the next brain reformatting would have to leave Hermann Neville as a stranger even to himself.

~

Hermann didn't want to face the cab driver. He kept his back to the curb as he attempted to reenter his pin number, then his account number, at the ATM in front of his bank. Good thing: he had a photographic memory. Bad thing: his bank account, like everything else in his life today, was no longer in existence.

"I'm sorry, I seem to be out of cash." he muttered aloud, rehearsing how he'd break the news to the driver. The cab's meter had to be reading hundreds and hundreds of dollars by this point. "Any chance I could work off what I owe? Wash all the vehicles in the depot maybe?"

Hermann had no idea what would happen, but he had a sneaking suspicion there would be a collections agency involved in the near future, followed by union/mafia types who would break every bone in his body, starting with his little toes and moving on up from there.

So it was almost with a sense of relief that he greeted the Central Health ambulance that pulled squealing to the curb with muscled paramedics charging straight for him.

"Hermann Neville?" one of them demanded.

"Yeah?" He stared back at them.

One plunged a hypodermic needle into his neck and squeezed, and the other threw him over his massive shoulder.

"What's going on here?" the cab driver protested. "That's my fare!"

"Not anymore, pal," grunted the paramedic. His partner threw open the rear doors of the ambulance to deposit Hermann inside.

Light all around him dimmed as the world tilted strangely on its axis. Hermann smiled pleasantly. Soon there would be only impenetrable darkness.

But not before he heard the voice of his wife call out, "Don't you forget me, Baby!"

~

Sharon Neville stopped short, having run full-tilt at the ambulance before the paramedic slammed both doors shut with his partner and Hermann inside. Her mobile had alerted her of an unauthorized attempted transaction on their joint bank account, and she'd gotten there as fast as she could.

"Move along, ma'am. This man is not your concern."

"I'm his _wife_!"

"Not anymore." The paramedic stepped toward her with menace tightening his frame.

"What the heck is going on here?" The cab driver ambled forward.

"Don't try following us." The paramedic jabbed an index finger at her to make his point, then turned to climb behind the wheel.

"It's not like I don't know where you're taking him!" Sharon shouted as the ambulance tires squealed to reenter traffic. "Central Health Nazis!"

The cab driver cleared his throat. "You-uh know that guy? The one they took?"

She already had her credit card out of her purse. "Scan it," she muttered, watching with glassy eyes as the ambulance disappeared into the distance.

~

Doctor Sneed was ecstatic. The post-sensory-deprivation-chamber scans had come back much better this time. There were absolutely no pockets of residual memory in Hermann Neville's mind. He was now a proverbial clean slate.

"This will be your new life coach," Sneed introduced the man formerly known as Hermann to the angular, graying, chocolate-colored woman in a white lab coat. "Coach Jackie, meet Herbert Johnson."

The man formerly known as Hermann blinked at the name. "Herbert...that's my name."

Coach Jackie smiled warmly and took his pale hand in both of hers. "That's right, son. And don't you worry. We'll get everything sorted out. It'll just take a little time is all."

"Jackie's got plenty to spend on you, Herb. She's helped dozens of folks find their way after bouts of temporary amnesia."

"Amnesia?" Herbert repeated, uncertain.

"That's right—and _temporary_ ," Jackie emphasized. She glanced at Sneed, who only nodded.

Of course he wouldn't tell her the effects in this case would be irreversible, unlike previous patients. She would have her work cut out for her, building a new life from scratch for this man.

As Coach Jackie escorted Mister Johnson out of his office, Sneed reclined in his plush nubuck desk chair and clasped lanky-fingered hands behind his head.

"Ah yes," he sighed. "Another situation contained."

The intercom buzzed. Stifling a well-deserved yawn, Sneed tapped the corner of his desktop.

"You have an incoming call, Doctor," said the attractive secretary, smiling at him on the screen.

"The Health Czar congratulating me for a job well done, perchance?" Sneed chuckled.

The secretary's smile faltered. "I'm sorry, Doctor. It's a woman named Sharon Neville—"

"Put her through." Sneed sat up, his expression wiped clean of anything resembling satisfaction.

Mrs. Neville's face, haggard with alabaster brow furrowed, greeted him full-screen. "Doctor Sneed, I demand to know what you've done with my husband. It's been over a week now since we came to see you, and I can't get a straight answer from any of your staff. They won't even let me in the building! What have you done with Hermann?"

"Mrs. Neville, I understand this has been a difficult time for you—"

"When can we go _home_? When will Hermann be ready?"

Sneed nodded slowly. "I regret to inform you that Hermann will not be returning to the life you once shared, Mrs. Neville. The operation necessary to reverse the damage done to his mind required a complete brain reformatting. He no longer retains any residual memories of his life with you. But the good news is that _you_ can now go back to your home. Your husband, however—the man you knew as your husband—has begun a new life." He reached to end the call, creasing portions of his face to show due pity for the woman. "Please do not attempt to contact me again or visit our center, Mrs. Neville. If you do, I will be forced to notify the authorities."

He tapped the corner of the screen and the woman's stunned face faded to black.

Sneed sighed, reclining again as he awaited the Health Czar's congratulatory call. It wasn't every day a Central Health doctor saved the government's "Opiate" program from discovery by the masses. Sneed shuddered to think what could have happened if Neville had been sent to one of those private sector medical centers. If the hidden data stream were ever detected, the populace would likely revolt, refusing to use social media of any kind. And then the federal government would actually have to _govern_!

Sneed dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand as he reached for his WORLD'S BEST NEUROSCIENTIST coffee mug.

~

Coach Jackie patiently gave Herbert Johnson a tour of his home, guiding him to his workstation—he was a modestly renowned author, by all appearances—and logging him into his social network where hundreds of unfamiliar faces waited, filling the screen of his Slate.

"Who are all these people?" Herbert said with a perplexed frown.

"They're the important people in your life, Herb." She smiled at him like a mother would have. "Fellow writers, editors, publishers, agents—the folks who've helped you get to where you are today."

He nodded. "And my...family?"

Coach Jackie rose. "Come with me," she said quietly.

Down the long hallway of his two-story, well-furnished, rustic home, Herbert found lines of photographs framed in artificial mahogany, people of all ages posed both indoors and out at parties and celebrations, barbeques and weddings. But unfortunately, Coach Jackie told him, they were all dead.

"It's probably best you don't remember it. Tragic, so very tragic."

"What happened to them?"

She bit her lip, weighing her words. "You were scheduled to go to a big family reunion on the island of Maui. But fortunately for you, your agent had already scheduled a meeting with a publisher that you couldn't postpone, so you'd planned to book a later flight." She paused. "You never had to."

"You mean..." He swallowed, staring at all the smiling faces.

"A flock of seagulls—or was it geese?—happened to be migrating at the time and took out two of the plane's engines. The pilot did what he could, but the plane broke apart on impact. Rescue crews spent months retrieving all their remains from the Pacific."

"That's awful." Herbert trailed off.

"It truly is." Coach Jackie looked away and cleared her throat.

~

Herbert Johnson waited until his live-in life coach was sound asleep and sawing enough wood to warrant her arrest before he crept out of his room and sneaked downstairs, passing the photos of strangers he was fairly certain had come with the price of the frames themselves. He'd retrieved Coach Jackie's mobile, knowing his own was probably bugged by Central Health. Paranoid? Justly so, he figured.

He called up a local taxi service and met the driver at the curb outside before the man could start honking his horn and wake up the neighborhood.

"Not you again!" The driver shook his head as Herb slid into the backseat. "No, uh-uh. You get out right now. I don't want any more to do with—"

Herb handed him Coach Jackie's credit card.

He'd asked for this driver by number. A photographic memory had its benefits, after all, and he'd recalled the ID tag dangling from the rearview mirror with crystal mental clarity.

"OK." The driver scanned the card without a moment's hesitation, looking Herb over as he returned it. "You clean up all right, Mister."

Herb smiled. His slacks and sweater were a far cry from that hospital robe he'd worn before. "Drive."

The cab pulled away from the curb and into the night. "Where to?"

Herb winked at him in the rearview. "Memory Lane."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day and a speculative fictioneer by night. His work has appeared in AE Science Fiction, Cosmos, and Shimmer, and many of his stories are now available on Amazon for Kindle readers. When he's not grading papers, he's imagining what the world might be like in a few dozen alternate realities. www.milojamesfowler.com

#  The Clone in Sector 7

# By Nanci Schwartz

# Cover Art By: Laura Givens

I first saw the raven-haired woman on a cold winter morning in the coffee shop I frequented. Usually the line of customers wound out the front door, but today the shop was almost empty. When she shuffled into the pick-up line, my breath nearly caught in my throat at her beauty: milk chocolate-colored skin, wide-set eyes, and short hair perfectly framing her face.

I couldn't miss the downward curve of her lips or how the baristas kept their eyes averted and didn't speak to her outside of the normal business transaction. As I made my way toward the counter I casually peered around the shop, taking in the handful of other customers. The mother behind me clutched her children's hands tightly, keeping them firmly in place beside her. Two businessmen left the shop without even ordering, muttering that the owners should be stricter about who they serve. A woman in her mid-twenties snatched her coffee and narrowed her eyes at the woman scornfully.

What the hell was going on?

The raven-haired woman accepted her cappuccino, shoved the vacuum-sealed mug in her purse, and brushed by me on her way out the door. My skin grew hot as I noticed the wetness in her eyes and the tightness of her jaw.

I'd be a prize idiot if I didn't go after her. Then again, if you listened to my soon-to-be ex-boss, I already was a prize idiot. He'd had it in for me ever since I screwed up my last investigation.

Time to prove him wrong.

Fumbling, I grabbed my order, stuffed the mug into my bag, and left the shop. The woman hadn't gotten very far down the sidewalk, and I hurried to catch up. Before I could do so, she whirled on me, brandishing a small card. "Here's my ID card. I'm allowed to be here."

I took a step back, eyes darting from her face to the card and back again. "I'm sorry?"

"My ID card," she repeated. "Satisfied?"

I froze in place, feeling my eyes widen. _ID card?_ That could only mean...

My gaze drifted to the right side of her bare neck, and there it was: the circular brand that marked her as a clone.

The strange atmosphere in the coffee shop suddenly made perfect sense, and my thoughts shifted from attraction to curiosity. A clone roaming around a well-to-do sector normally meant violence wasn't far behind. I was surprised nobody had called for an agent yet.

I blew out a breath, feeling a knot grow in the pit of my stomach, and forced my attention to her card. I drank in her information—name, age, address, and employer—wanting to know more about her. She worked at a nearby factory, but that didn't explain why she'd chosen to patronize this shop instead of one operated by other clones.

Maybe she just really liked their cappuccinos.

Maybe not.

"See?" she prodded. "Will you stop following me now?"

"Oh," I said, pushing down the card with my hand. "No, I just wanted to make sure you were OK."

She placed the card back in her purse, looking me up and down. "Why?"

"Would you believe me if I said it was because you were pretty?"

She just stood there, staring at me like I'd grown a second head.

Time for a new tactic. "I'm Brian," I said, holding out my hand. "It's nice to meet you."

Warily, she accepted my hand. "Emma." She paused. "Although I guess you already knew that."

"So, Emma..." I shifted awkwardly, unsure of what to say. "Do you come here often?"

I mentally slapped myself for using such an awful line. Emma didn't even bat an eye. "No, but I heard it was a nice place." She snorted. "Guess I was wrong."

I glanced back to the shop, grimacing slightly when another customer caught sight of us and hurried in the other direction. "I'm sorry for all that. It was unnecessary."

"What do you care? You're one of them."

She was right, but the accusation felt like a kick to the gut. I didn't hate clones anymore than I hated originals like myself. Most of them were content to stick to their own and keep the peace—especially since their failed revolution.

Or so I'd heard. Despite my occupation, coming face-to-face with clones outside their own sectors wasn't something I did on a daily basis.

I shook my head. "I still don't like it."

"Imagine how I must feel." Without another word, she pushed past me and continued down the sidewalk.

I should've let her go. I should've walked away and forgotten I'd ever met her. She was a clone, and I was an original. Case closed.

But I couldn't let her slip away. Not yet. "Will you be here tomorrow?" I called, before she could get out of earshot. "I'll buy you a cappuccino for your troubles."

She turned around, eyebrows raised. "I don't think that's a very good idea."

I shrugged. "Why not? Last I checked, friendly conversation wasn't against the law."

" _Friendly_ conversation? You obviously haven't spent much time around clones."

"Maybe you can change that," I murmured. "Tomorrow?" I added hopefully.

"Fine," she said after a long pause. "Tomorrow."

I watched her leave, torn between emotion and duty, between compassion for a fellow human being and getting back in my boss's good graces after the debacle in Sector 11. Emma had been genuinely upset, that was obvious...and I had the distinct feeling she wouldn't put herself through such horrible treatment for something so simple as a cappuccino.

Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, my hand felt like lead as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "This is Agent Thames," I said when my boss's assistant picked up. I caught sight of Emma again, just getting onto the bus. "Tell Director Jones I found a lead on the case. Something big's going on in Sector 7."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nanci Schwartz is a writer of speculative fiction for all audiences. Her hobbies include visiting Orlando's theme parks, reading, and--to quote Owen Lars--wasting time with her friends when her chores are done. She also co-hosts Tosche Station Radio, a weekly geek culture podcast, and writes news and opinion pieces for the blog. You can find her personal website at nancipants.com.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Laura Givens is a Denver Based artist and author. Her art has graced the covers of numerous publishers' books and magazines. She has provided story illustrations for _Orson_ _Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, Jim Baen's Universe, Talebones, Science Fiction Trails and Tales of the Talisman,_ among others. Her work may be viewed at www.lauragivens-artist.com . In 2010 she naively decided she could probably write stories as good as many she had illustrated. She has sold tales ranging from zombie stories to space operas. She was co-editor and contributor to _Six-Guns Straight From Hell_ , a weird western anthology, and is art director for _Tales of the Talisman_ magazine.

#  T3

# By J. S. Watts

Fifteen years ago...

The girl has had rather too much to drink. She is swaying slightly, standing far too near the edge of the swimming pool. A group of rowdy dancers swings uncomfortably close and she takes a step back to avoid them. Her foot treads down on nothing, and she falls backwards towards deep water, ending up suspended horizontally, a centimetre or so above the pool's surface, arms spread out like a crucifix, a broad grin on her face.

~

Six years ago...

A boy of about seven is playing in his back yard, juggling tennis balls without using his hands. His mother catches sight of his fun and angrily yells at him to come inside this instant.

~

Less than a year ago...

A small girl with a mop of soft, mousey-brown hair, not long away from being a baby, is sitting on a table top, happily playing with brightly coloured plastic blocks. She appears unconcerned by the white-coated scientists and be-medalled military types scrutinizing and recording her every move. They stare at her impassively until three of the blocks start to rise from the table and circle the child's head. The watchers grow positively excited as the child herself starts to levitate, the blocks continuing to circle her head like a plastic rainbow halo. The blocks accelerate in their orbit until they spin outwards and smack a white coat and two of the more senior military types in their respective faces. The little girl giggles in delight and disappears in mid air.

~

The present (or soon after)...

The Minister flicked an imagined speck of something from his expensive silk tie, managing to look simultaneously uncomfortable and incredulous with minimum effort.

"So why, exactly, do I need to know all of this now?"

His companion responded, "Because the next stage of T3 is about to commence, and given its potential sensitivity, we thought it proper the minister nominally in charge of the project should know about it in advance."

"In other words, I'm the fall guy if it all goes horribly wrong."

"I wouldn't put it quite like that, Minister." This time it was General de Montfort's turn to look uncomfortable. His naturally impassive and craggy features were even more rigidly rocky than usual.

"So how exactly would you put it, General?"

A vein pulsed ever so slightly in the general's solid neck. "We are proactively responding to perceived, possible political sensitivities in advance of any actual need to do so." The General looked quite pleased with himself, but the Minister slowly shook his head.

"As I said, General, I'm the sacrificial lamb should roast dinner prove desirable. I assume the Prime Minister has decided he doesn't need to be aware of the next stage of T3?"

"I couldn't say, Minister, as the prime minister isn't aware of the next stage of T3."

The minister shrugged his shoulders and gave up. He knew when the cage door had already clanged shut.

"So when does it all kick off?" he said.

"Reclamation units are getting into place now, and the main stage of the operation will commence in forty three minutes, precisely." The general's rigid demeanour had ever so slightly relaxed back to its normal granite condition.

The minister continued to articulate his current line of thought. "What do we do in the meantime? I've never been party to child kidnapping before."

"I would remind the minister that the ten subjects are all highly dangerous..."

"Two and three year olds. Yes, I do recall you saying that."

There was a long and uneasy silence. The general was first to break it.

"Perhaps you would care to meet some of the project's key staff? They will be able to put T3 into context for you, and as one of them's a telepath herself, she should be able to reassure you what we do here isn't that monstrous."

The minister wished there hadn't been a "that" in the general's last sentence.

~

The first white coat wheeled out in front of him offered a technically detailed, but remarkably boring, breakdown of the telesomething shielding around the project area which would prevent the ten new subjects from simply teleporting back to mummy whenever they felt like it, as some of their predecessors had been wont to do. It also prevented them from communicating telepathically with anyone outside of the project. If necessary, the shield direction could be inverted and used to control the subjects themselves, stopping them from unleashing the full force of their toddler tantrums on anyone else within the project.

"But we are talking about two and three year olds." The minister couldn't restrain his sarcasm. "What harm is a toddler going to do to military personnel, bite your ankles?"

The white coat apparently didn't do sarcasm. He continued without hesitation, "These are third cohort telepaths, Minister. Latent telepathic ability increases exponentially with each new cohort. The first cohort could barely levitate themselves, let alone teleport other objects. These kids can teleport themselves, their toys, large objects and—"

"And that is, of course, one of the reasons we want to understand their power a whole lot better than we currently do," interrupted General de Montfort. "The military potential is sizeable, as you might imagine."

The image of a press-ganged army of toddlers filled the minister's mind. He was starting to seriously dislike General de Montfort. The white coat resumed his monologue long enough to introduce his colleague, Doctor Fuller, who was going to talk about the history of T3.

Doctor Fuller was tall, blonde, female and very attractive in an icily frightening sort of way. The minister found himself worrying how many of his thoughts she might be able to read. With a sense of rising panic, he focussed on not focussing on the ample breasts concealed beneath her crisp, white lab coat.

"I assume you are aware, Minister, the first telepaths started to emerge thirteen years ago. Mostly in their teens, their telepathic abilities usually manifested at puberty. The number of telepaths in any population segment was proportional to the size of the population, thus countries like China boasted over a thousand, and we had precisely five. All the telepaths, however, appeared quite weak, with feeble abilities compared to later cohorts. The appearance of their abilities emotionally destabilised them and their families, and the project offered structured support whilst studying their aptitudes, such as they were. We were not able, however, to determine the cause of their abilities within the time available to us, although it has been rumoured those countries able to utilise more rigorous research methods came closer to understanding the nature of the power."

The minister did not want to think too deeply about what "more rigorous research methods" actually meant, but he got the feeling Doctor Fuller regretted her inability to use them. Presumably, she wasn't the female telepath General de Montfort had mentioned. He wasn't sure if that was reassuring or not.

Doctor Fuller was pressing ahead with her historical résumé. "T2 commenced when the second cohort of telepaths emerged."

The minister coughed pointedly. "Before we move on to T2, what happened to the first five telepaths? I thought the general implied at least one was still working for the project."

Dr Fuller crisply enunciated their fates like key data from a failed experiment. "Three suicides—all male. One female left with mental health issues and subsequently disappeared—presumed dead. One female remained to provide what limited help she could with T2 and T3." The word "limited" was emphasised. Doctor Fuller did not appear to hold the surviving first cohort telepath in particularly high regard.

"When the second crop of telepaths emerged almost seven years after the first, there were more of them, and it was obvious their earlier-flowering aptitudes were far stronger than those of the first cohort. They were also better adjusted to their abilities. Given their youth, however, their parents were resistant to them being resident in the project. We obtained limited voluntary participation but came little nearer to finding the cause of the sudden global emergence of telepathic abilities.

"We still couldn't be absolutely sure if it was genetics or upbringing that caused these anomalies. Stateside experienced similar frustrations. They became impatient and started a programme of forcible collection of any child showing an indication of telepathic ability. You will be aware, Minister, of the uproar this caused, both in the States and Europe. At home, families withdrew their children from the T2 tests and the project effectively closed down. It was all most distressing." Doctor Fuller's distress appeared to relate to the closure of T2 rather than the fate of innocent children abducted and experimented upon by their own government.

"Rather than wait until nature deigned to produce another crop of telepaths, we began conducting our own breeding experiments. Just over a year ago we produced another cohort of telepaths with even stronger powers than the previous batches. This presented its own difficulties, but we are now ready to harvest our subjects for continuous study."

"Harvest?" The minister's eyebrows seemingly levitated. "In other words, you're adopting the gung ho American approach, despite the catastrophic failure of previous strong-arm tactics."

The general was too quick to rebut this. "Come come, Minister. It's hardly like that. The test subjects have been in the project since before birth. Their host families are fully cognizant of that. The little nippers themselves are a bit too young to understand, so the telecogshielding is for their own welfare and safety. For similar reasons, we are collecting them simultaneously to stop them panicking one another like turkeys—they appear to have developed pre-verbal telepathic communication amongst themselves. We also need to protect ourselves. They may be tiny, but they pack a good deal of telepathic firepower, so to speak. Martha here will be able to reassure you better than me."

Another white coat stepped forward. The minister hadn't noticed her before, although she must have been in the room all along. She was the antithesis of Doctor Fuller: short, mousey, unimposing, and quite forgettable.

"Tell the minister about the welfare programme for the children, Martha."

"General de Montfort has personally assured me the children's welfare is paramount. We have a care plan constructed around the needs of each individual child, as well as the collective requirements of the group. Home-based studies to date, would indicate the children have telepathic abilities way beyond those my generation demonstrated, and this has been taken into account in their collective care plan." The first sentence was said with some enthusiasm, the last sounded as if it had been spoken by rote as she ran out of verbal momentum. The woman looked dejected and browbeaten. Perhaps it came with being the only surviving member of T1. The minister found himself wanting to make it up to her somehow.

Out of character, he found himself leaning forward and saying, "And you can have my personal assurance, as well as the general's, that the wellbeing of the children will be of utmost priority." He saw a brief ambiguous smile flash across her face before it resumed its hangdog expression. He wanted to ask her about her experiences in T1, but the general firmly ushered him away from Martha and into the control room to await the roll out of T3.

~

The collection of the children, although the minister still instinctively felt it was more akin to kidnapping, went smoothly. The children and their families were unaware until the last minute that it was happening, and the late evening timing meant the children were naturally drowsy, even before strong sleeping drugs were administered. More importantly, the British public remained totally unaware of T3's commencement. There would be no nasty headlines the following day and the minister could remain safely ministerial for a few crises more.

The minister couldn't deny his sense of relief. Nevertheless, the whole project continued to worry him. The general and the Doctor Fullers of this world scared him and the drab, dejected, unmemorable Martha was, ironically, playing on his mind. The minister decided to keep an eye on T3. A return visit was arranged for two weeks time.

~

The outside of the building was as plain and non-descript as he remembered it, a 1960s brick and concrete construct of outstanding mediocrity. Only the increased military presence around its bland perimeter indicated something interesting might be going on inside.

The previous calm anticipation of the project team had been replaced by frantic activity. Somewhere in the back of the building the muffled drone of an alarm was doing its best to indicate that not all was well. The minister was swiftly and unceremoniously shown into a windowless meeting room where General de Montfort and a slightly sweaty and dishevelled looking Doctor Fuller were waiting.

Doctor Fuller was brusque to the point of rudeness, "What do you need to know today, Minister? I can only spare you a few minutes."

"I just wanted to see for myself how things were going. Is there some sort of issue I should know about?"

Doctor Fuller flushed, but it was the General who responded. "It's a need to know thing, Minister; paragraph four, section seven and all that."

"Quite right too, General, and I rather think I need to know. As you pointed out only a fortnight ago, I am nominally in charge of this project." The general coughed and seemed to be on the point of sidestepping matters once more, so the minister continued, "An unofficial update will be fine. It will save me having to seek through formal channels."

General de Montfort grudgingly indicated Doctor Fuller should provide the minister with what he wanted.

She began reciting in a rapid monotone, "As you know, Minister, T3 commenced well. The subjects were initially happy and compliant, but a recent experiment didn't go to plan and a subject was damaged. The other nine became upset and wouldn't continue.

"We are on a tight timeline and need to control costs, so pushed ahead with other activities, but the subjects were unsettled and became increasingly non-compliant. We tried to force the issue, but the subjects reacted unexpectedly. We have now reached something of an impasse. Quite ridiculously, the children have withdrawn co-operation and have, in effect, gone on strike." Doctor Fuller had the grace to look embarrassed as a flush returned to her clammy face. "Yesterday we tried to invert the telecogshielding to stop them communicating with one another, but something happened. There was an accident involving Doctor Matheson. We are still looking into the cause."

"Can't Doctor Matheson shed any light on the matter?"

"Not unless you happen to know a good medium, Minister."

"Ah, I see. What about Martha? Can't she help with the children? I thought she was involved with their welfare."

"Too involved in my opinion," retorted Doctor Fuller, "but she's only a T1. She can't do much."

"So what happens next?"

"We have been considering utilization of the thirteenth protocol," this from General de Montfort, "but, you know how it is, formal channels can be unwieldy and... Reluctant. Time is of the essence. Perhaps it is fortuitous, Minister, that you are so willing to engage informally with us."

There was a long silence in the room.

The Minister considered a fleck of whitish lint on his otherwise immaculate tie. He was aware of the thirteenth protocol. He rather wished he wasn't, but he was. Normally the military sought retrospective approval for its use, if at all. An image of well-roasted lamb with a mint sauce dressing drifted before him.

"A bit drastic, surely? They are only children."

"But highly dangerous and increasingly out of control children," replied the General.

"Do you really require my authorisation?"

"Well, now we've requested it..."

"And if I don't give it?"

"At best T3 will grind to an inglorious halt. Reports will be written—huge amounts spent for so little outcome. The minister in charge will almost certainly have to resign."

The minister was not a bad man, but he was weak. If in doubt, his own hide came first, even if it meant others came well behind last. He dabbed his own slowly dampening forehead with a lawn-cotton handkerchief and spoke, "Fine. I am reluctantly prepared to consider protocol thirteen, but on the understanding that one last attempt to resolve things in a low key fashion is first made using the Martha woman." There she was again. She just kept popping into his thoughts.

Doctor Fuller's usually smooth forehead was creased. She was clearly unhappy with this compromise. "I am not willing to re-introduce Martha into the situation. She's a weak T1 and became far too emotional the last time she was exposed to the children. Her low level abilities make her as vulnerable, if not more so, than the rest of us. I also suspect some residual empathy with the subjects."

"Residual empathy?"

"She was the egg donor for this batch. You don't ask the hen whether the eggs should be fried or scrambled."

The Minister felt queasy. "She's the children's mother?"

"Only genetically speaking."

Another thought made its way into the Minister's head. It had taken a long time coming, unlike his recent thoughts of Martha, but it got there eventually. He grabbed at it.

"What about inverting the tele-thing shielding?"

Doctor Fuller snorted, "Doctor Matheson's accident damaged the inversion system. The shield's in place around the project, but we can no longer invert it. We might, however, be able to reduce it to contain the children in a smaller, more controllable area, once we have the all clear to use the thirteenth protocol in relation to the subjects."

"Children," corrected the minister.

"I prefer to think of them as ten little weapons of mass destruction. I find it helps," said the general.

A white coat entered the room rapidly without knocking and addressed Doctor Fuller.

"Sorry to interrupt, ma'am, but things are getting out of hand. Subjects are teleporting all over the project and heavy objects are moving unpredictably. We've sustained casualties. Some serious."

The minister heard the metaphoric sound of the cage door swinging shut, as well as the actual sounds of heavy, blunt objects striking vulnerable, yielding flesh.

"Minister?" said the general.

The minister could hear the alarm still sounding in the distance, along with less distant human screams. "Get on with it, then. I authorise your use of protocol thirteen." He dabbed ineffectually at his now rather sweaty forehead.

~

In the end it was not as bad as the minister feared. Gas was used and it was not long before ten tiny, unconscious bodies were safely sealed within a transparent glass bubble at the centre of the project; the telecogshielding concentrated around the bubble, preventing anything from getting out by telekinetic or other telepathic means. The minister, General De Montfort, Doctor Fuller and assorted T3 personnel were surveying the now peaceful nursery-like scene from the control area outside the bubble.

"Thank you, Minister," the general said. "I think we can take it from here."

"What will you do now?"

"Ah well, now we have the thirteenth protocol in place, I rather think we should escalate invasive experimental elements. We may yet have something to learn from the experiments started by our American cousins at the time of T2."

The minister was supremely grateful he did not know what this meant. An impressive array of shiny and sharp metal implements was already being lined up outside the bubble and several white coats were donning surgical gloves.

The minister cast a brief, guilty look back at the tranquilly sleeping infants before he started to exit the control room, a little too quickly to maintain a sense of decorum. What was done was done. No point in lingering. If he wasn't there, there would be a better chance of denying things at a later date. His flight was halted, however, by the sound of a chair being hurled with some violence at the inside of the bubble wall. The children slept peacefully on.

All eyes, including the minister's, were now on the bubble, as any object not containing a child started to batter away at the inside of the plasti-glass casing. The sound of safety catches coming off weapons was strikingly loud.

General de Montfort turned to the minister, "Think you should go now, Sir. It could get a little messy."

The minister needed no second telling, but the door from the control room was jammed shut and neither his own panic stricken tugging, nor those of his aides and assorted military personnel managed to release it. Inside the bubble, the children were still quietly asleep, but the air was full of spinning, hammering objects. The general offered some small reassurance.

"The bubble is designed to take a battering. Nothing is going to get out unless we want it to."

The minister could have sworn he heard a soft voice say, "Then it's time for you to go in," just before the world imploded around him and he and the general found themselves looking out from the bubble into the control area.

The sudden teleportation was frightening enough, but it was less shocking than what was now going on in the control room. Inanimate objects were whizzing around it faster than their counterparts had been in the dome, and there were rather a lot of shiny, sharp, and pointy objects to whiz about. Their impact on human beings and their soft body parts was extremely unpleasant. In panic, the soldiers in the room started firing and added considerably to the collateral damage. The minister saw Doctor Fuller's bloodied body crumple like a stained and torn paper doll. It was not long, though it seemed like forever, before everything human in the room was wetly motionless on the floor, and a final sharp rain of surgical implements ensured they stayed so.

The general looked at the minister. The minister looked at the general and threw up. As he recovered himself, the door into the control room slowly opened and Martha walked into the carnage, looking smaller and more vulnerable than ever.

"Get out. Get out!" The Minister recognised the voice. It was his own shouting uselessly within the muffled confines of the bubble. He saw Martha's lips move but couldn't make out what she was saying. Then he heard a buzz as an intercom began to work.

"General, we seem to have a problem." It was Martha's understated tones.

"Get out, woman, get out! It's not safe," this again from the minister rather than the general, who seemed to have temporarily lost the power of speech. "Look what the children have done."

"Not the children, Minister. They are still innocent."

Was the woman blind? She must be standing in a puddle of her co-workers' bodily fluids.

"Good God, woman! Look at what your innocents have done."

"No. Look at what you have done."

"I don't understand."

"You should though. Both of you gave me your personal assurances no harm would come to the children. I would never have participated in the project if the general hadn't promised me he would look after my children like his own. General, tell me, would you have let that little pervert Matheson use his probe on one of your offspring? Then you went and had the children gassed and drugged. You brought this holding to account on yourselves."

"Martha, we can discuss moral culpability later, but right now you are as much at risk as we are." The general had regained his voice. "The brats have done all this in an unconscious state. Just think what they'll be capable of when fully awake. Get us out of here and then we'll talk about it."

Martha's tone of voice remained low and impassive, "Sorry, sir, the shielding allows things into the bubble, but not out."

"Just open the bloody doors manually, will you?"

"You are not getting it, sir, are you? I put you in there. I'm really not going to let you out that easily."

The true nature of the situation finally dawned on the general, although the minister, still in shock, remained confused.

The general flexed his fingers and lunged at one of the still sleeping children. A broken chair leg and a blood stained scalpel suddenly appeared in the air in front of him.

"Stop! Touch a child and I will kill you. Matheson's shield only prevents brain activity penetrating out beyond the bubble. It doesn't prevent external power being used within it." The blunt chair leg started to rotate slowly around the general. The sharp scalpel remained aimed at the vein pulsing in his pale throat.

"Explain to me how a weak T1 can be doing all this?" Despite his predicament, the general still managed to sound supercilious.

"There you go again, sir. Not being able to see what is right in front of your own face." The chair leg paused briefly in its orbit, directly in front of the General's nose.

"You were all so sold on each generation being stronger than the one before and the military potential this created, you never stopped to consider us as individuals, or that one individual might have different or stronger powers than another. A very strong telepath, for instance, might be able to mask the full extent of her abilities if she chose."

The minister finally overcame his shock to work out what was going on. As he started to sidle towards the hostage potential of a sleepy child, the blood stained scalpel flicked towards him and began to circle his fleshy midriff. He stopped dead.

"I'd had my powers for some years before you found me. I'd had a whale of a time with them, not always to my own or others' benefit, I admit. I had to learn the hard way, and by myself, what I could and could not do. When T1 came along, I thought it was an opportunity to learn more and do something for the common good. How wrong could I be? In the end I couldn't keep the others from hurting themselves, but I promised myself I wouldn't let it happen again. You didn't think those little ones popped right back to surrogate Mummy and Daddy without a little help, did you?"

The chair leg and the scalpel accelerated in their respective orbits around the two men.

"Two grown men and one weak little female T1. What were you planning on doing with all those sharp, pointy medical implements, General? And you, Minister, what happened to your personal promise to look after my little ones?"

The general apparently thought he was still somehow in control, "Don't do anything you might regret later, Martha. I know you. You wouldn't be able to live with yourself."

"I've done a lot of things, General, I told you, and I've lived equitably with them all. I had a great time, and I don't regret a thing, apart from no longer being able to have children naturally. Everything has a price, I guess. So no, you don't know me, or what I can do. I even became a mother, got there in the end despite everything, and here's you looking for military strength in infants. You forgot that, in nature, the most ferocious killers are mothers protecting their young."

The chair leg and the scalpel spun suddenly inwards from their orbits, directly towards their human targets. The minister was the luckier of the two; at least the scalpel was sharp and made a clean entrance and exit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

J.S.Watts is a British writer. Her work appears in diverse publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and America and has been broadcast on BBC and Independent Radio. She has published three books: a poetry collection, "Cats and Other Myths", a multi-award nominated poetry pamphlet, "Songs of Steelyard Sue", (both published by Lapwing Publications) and a novel, "A Darker Moon" - a dark literary fantasy, (published by Vagabondage Press). Further details at: www.jswatts.co.uk and Facebook: www.facebook.com/J.S.Watts.page

