StarShipSofa Stories: Volume 3

By Tony C. Smith

For those of you who are already rabid fans of StarShipSofa, this volume needs no introduction. This foreword is for the rest of you, the yet-to-be-converted. (And man, do I envy you who have yet to experience all the ‘Sofa’s episodes for the first time!)
StarShipSofa is not your typical podcast – it’s a fully-fledged audio magazine. Every episode (or issue, if you prefer) features editorials, interviews, nonfiction articles, recurring columns, just like paper and pixel magazines. But in my mind – and I think many of the ‘Sofa’s fans will agree – the real stars of the podcast are the stories.
Under the able command of Captain-Editor Tony C. Smith, StarShipSofa has featured many of the best and the brightest authors working in the Science Fiction and fantasy genres today. But the captain doesn’t just go for the big names you are already familiar with – and don’t get me wrong, he presents plenty of those – but he also brings you the up-and-comers you might not already be familiar with, the writers who may turn out to be the big names of tomorrow. Just take a look at the contents of this volume: you’ve got long-established authors such as Tad Williams, David Brin, Karen Joy Fowler, Kevin J. Anderson, and Joe Haldeman alongside exciting new talent like Catherynne M. Valente, Aliette de Bodard, Will McIntosh, and Saladin Ahmed. That’s quite a lineup!
And, of course, since the ‘Sofa is open to all kinds of Science Fiction and fantasy, every episode (and all three volumes collecting the fiction) presents a very wide range of topics and themes. By listening to the ‘Sofa (and reading this anthology), you really get an overview of what’s happening in genre short fiction today.
But StarShipSofa is more than an audio magazine – it’s a community. The ‘Sofa is not just a monolithic publication that drops every week; it’s a conversation between the ‘Sofa’s contributors and its listeners. If you just read the stories in this anthology, you’ll appreciate why people love the ‘Sofa, but you might not grok what really sets it apart and inspires the kind of devotion that made the ‘Sofa the first podcast in history to win a Hugo Award. But if you listen to the podcast, it’ll immediately become clear: It’s the good captain, Tony C. Smith. His enthusiasm for Science Fiction and fantasy, his tireless efforts to promote short fiction, and his ability to engage with the listeners... those are the real reasons people tune into StarShipSofa... and what’s made StarShipSofa the flagship of SF podcasts.

John Joseph Adams
California, October 2011

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony C. Smith
• Release date: Nov 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465711458

Book preview

When I sat down to write the introduction to StarShipSofa Stories: Volume 1, I thought time moved at a steady pace. I no longer believe that. No sooner had Dee and I put Volume 1 to bed, than we were discussing what we could do differently with Volume 2. And now, before I know it, I’m sitting down to write the introduction to Volume 3. What just happened? Time is a very strange and exciting concept; no wonder it’s a very popular theme in SF.

I remember being all excited with Volume 2; we’d been nominated for a Hugo Award and had won, and now a few short months have passed, and StarShipSofa has been nominated a second time (but sadly did not win!). How about that?

I wanted to talk about what I was looking forward to with Volume 3, but I guess as you read this, it’s here, you’ve found out, and I already know. (I hope you like it – Editor from future.) Like I say, time is rather an exciting thing, no more so than with StarShipSofa’s podcast. The podcast really shows time has no limits. I often get emails from listeners who are just starting their own journeys on board StarShipSofa, listening at the very beginning with show No 1 (a show recorded years ago), while I write notes for show No... I’ll not mention the show number here, as that might cause time to wobble. Suffice to say that we are all still here, and with time being what it is, I’ll see you at the end of this book, or the end of the next show, or twenty years into the future as you discover this book. Wherever you are along the road of time, jump on board StarShipSofa – you’ll be made very welcome.

I would just like to say... Goodnight from me!

Tony C. Smith

Whitburn, October 2011

Introduction

For those of you who are already rabid fans of StarShipSofa, this volume needs no introduction. This foreword is for the rest of you, the yet-to-be-converted. (And man, do I envy you who have yet to experience all the ‘Sofa’s episodes for the first time!)

StarShipSofa is not your typical podcast – it’s a fully-fledged audio magazine. Every episode (or issue, if you prefer) features editorials, interviews, nonfiction articles, recurring columns, just like paper and pixel magazines. But in my mind – and I think many of the ‘Sofa’s fans will agree – the real stars of the podcast are the stories.

Under the able command of Captain-Editor Tony C. Smith, StarShipSofa has featured many of the best and the brightest authors working in the Science Fiction and fantasy genres today. But the captain doesn’t just go for the big names you are already familiar with – and don’t get me wrong, he presents plenty of those – but he also brings you the up-and-comers you might not already be familiar with, the writers who may turn out to be the big names of tomorrow. Just take a look at the contents of this volume: you’ve got long-established authors such as Tad Williams, David Brin, Karen Joy Fowler, Kevin J. Anderson, and Joe Haldeman alongside exciting new talent like Catherynne M. Valente, Aliette de Bodard, Will McIntosh, and Saladin Ahmed. That’s quite a lineup!

And, of course, since the ‘Sofa is open to all kinds of Science Fiction and fantasy, every episode (and all three volumes collecting the fiction) presents a very wide range of topics and themes. By listening to the ‘Sofa (and reading this anthology), you really get an overview of what’s happening in genre short fiction today.

But StarShipSofa is more than an audio magazine – it’s a community. The ‘Sofa is not just a monolithic publication that drops every week; it’s a conversation between the ‘Sofa’s contributors and its listeners. If you just read the stories in this anthology, you’ll appreciate why people love the ‘Sofa, but you might not grok what really sets it apart and inspires the kind of devotion that made the ‘Sofa the first podcast in history to win a Hugo Award. But if you listen to the podcast, it’ll immediately become clear: It’s the good captain, Tony C. Smith. His enthusiasm for Science Fiction and fantasy, his tireless efforts to promote short fiction, and his ability to engage with the listeners... those are the real reasons people tune into StarShipSofa... and what’s made StarShipSofa the flagship of SF podcasts.

John Joseph Adams

California, October 2011

Electric Ladyland

Matthew Sanborn Smith

Iridescence, the most pretentiously named city on this shitball colony, erupted around me like a belch from Hell, and I, man-genius that I am, decided to dive off of the last ship out of Dodge before it took off.

You name it, it was going against me: 1) I’d just had my belly and blood reworked by Her Classy Honour’s escapee adjusters at the hotel so that every morsel of edible on this planet was now poisonous to my fragile self again. 2) Because I’d over-stayed my jungle welcome in Mara’s warm arms, Clyde, the probly stitched into my forearm, was getting whacky with old age (advanced quantum senility). 3) The undeodourised masses had suddenly risen in a mental resonance of advanced war-marketing that cracked the city in three. 4) Reality boiled into chaos all around this spaceport as gravity benders came up hacked and 5) Twelve carnival side-shows worth of smidges crawled, limped and flapped their ways all over the landing field. It was into this that I leapt and the door of that last escape ship shut with a boom behind me.

Goddamned women.

They say all that men know is red-eyed violence and barking for territory and most combinations thereof. But if it wasn’t for the lady-folk stirring us up with those exquisite scents, I bet we’d be a pretty sedate bunch.

I half swam through the spaceport’s humid air when some unitard fired a warning shot at lovable me. If you can see the lightning flash of one of the Guard’s Misstricity weapons then you know it missed, but try and tell that to my pants. The world went white and blinked purple for too long afterward. My soldier friends had held this field in a well-muscled hug since the revolution had begun just hours ago. Now the war-marketers had gotten into their heads.

We’re all on one side! I yiked. My feet made molasses, though the plastic road to the hotel was wide open when last I could see.

An order howled and I froze, squinting through the foggy after-image to see if trigger-finger had been ordered, or I had. Another thwacking bolt and my heart did funny things. Every muscle in my left arm, my Clyde arm, tightened to burst. The pain burned sharp and fast, like some gainer swinging a cricket bat from a bike’s backseat had made contact with me from shoulder to tip. Clyde screamed Browning’s How Do I Love Thee in two and a half seconds flat and I counted myself lucky for the only-glancing blow from that second shot. Through the haze, I saw my attacker’s own mini-sortie pounce on him. He fired once more for what-have-I-got-to-lose. An electrical discharge that would have blown one man to heaven ended up shared alike by four close friends. The able-bodied rest of them tore his bolt-thrower from his heaving chest and surely enjoyed giving it back butt first into his skull even as the creepy little manling smidges overwhelmed them all. The last good-bye ship out of this godforsaken country rose overhead on a wall of sound like seven-hundred and forty-one Viking battle horns.

Escaping me never ultimate, Clyde shouted from my needly arm. And I could hardly argue with that.

A pricey yacht crushed itself above a faulty gravity bender, reminding me to catch up with my running. My soft soles slapped blood-smeared plaz, dodging smidges who seemed to enjoy the flavour of a uniform more than my casual wear.

Clearing the spaceport, I looked back and spotted my old drunking pal Ronyo, of the Mayoral guard with six friends, all running my way. That they weren’t firing at me was a plus, but even if they were still on my side, I couldn’t let them catch me. They’d detain me, claiming safety reasons. I had to get back to Mara in the jungle and make sure she was all right. I had to lose the bunch of them before I keeled over dead from all this sudden exercise.

All I had going for me was my stride, engineered offworld and longer than anyone else’s on the colony. The Grand Mayoral was just across from the spaceport. I’d use the gravity benders at the bubble pond adjoining the hotel to my advantage. I was so clever!

People I had gotten to know in my month and half stay here struggled in the streets, beating the hell out of each other, husbands and wives wrapped around each other’s throats. Jee, our own clearance-priced Che, had promised a bloodless coup through madvertising. His war-marketers had placed psych-triggers and associative meme-bombs throughout the city. Witnessing so much as a formula dance could grow ideas in your brain that you never knew you had the soil to sprout. Revolution came inspired from without but fabricated in one’s head with all the logic and passion of a nicotine-filled, alcohol-drenched, chocolate-sprinkled ball of caffeinated heroin craving. The plan: The oppressors of the people would come around without a weapon being fired. But it seemed you put too much salt in the batter, Jee. Way to go.

The Mayor had been caught off guard, but only by a little. She had her own mental munitions thanks to a couple of Jee’s students. The disgruntled kind. People switched sides like kittens in a hurricane.

Every grand hotel on every backwater colony sports a bubble pond nowadays. Gravity benders (really space-time benders, but they made gravity do neat tricks) lined the dry pond bed ahead of me, floating massive globes of water a few meters above them. That the water spheres still existed meant these benders hadn’t been jacked like the ones at the spaceport. My best and only plan was that the benders would multiply my leggy advantage and get me out of everyone’s sight. I dove in.

Not thinking through the change of gravity (Did I say clever?), I didn’t go down but blew through the entire seven meters of the closest water bubble and shot out the other side. Clyde burbled some language that hadn’t been invented. He was waterproof anyhow, though I sometimes wished he wasn’t. Like this time.

I peered down through open air and my bowels did a little dance. Though my front part was outside of the bender’s field, my lighter than air rear-end (and how often do we get to say that?) made the drop relatively painless. Splashes heralded the arrival of a one-man police pursuit. Little water bubbles broke from their momma and wobbled in the air. Stupid cops, always chasing people.

I leapt onto the next bender and fired myself skyward. Already I huffed and the surprise of going so very up made for inhaling, not exhaling, as my head inserted itself into an inconveniently overhead water bubble. My sinuses went burny and the one bubble broke into hundreds of smaller ones in the panic of my eggbeater arms. I coughed and sputtered my way down. The guard seemed stuck in the sky, not having cleared his field. Now fortified with experience, I pushed forward with my two long feet and left the little guy in the spray. The pond bed didn’t seem so mighty at this speed and soon I’d made the distance. Rather than scale the sandy side, a squat and a spring got me back in the sensibly curved space of Iridescence. I took a head-first digger into the black, grassy shore and first saw nothing but a dead smidge up ahead as I got to my feet.

Smidges were living tools. You scraped some of your cells into your kitchen incubator, tinkered with an array of parameters and fed it table scraps. In a few months, viola, mutant slave labour for the peasants, free of any pesky human legal status and just enough brain to manage a few preprogrammed tasks. What mental pervert conceived of such a thing? They put the iri in Iridescence. At least this one wasn’t spastically flapping and slapping like the rest of its oven-baked mutant kin. It wasn’t made for farm work or any other kind of work by its looks. It was an enormous melon head on a tiny baby body. What the hell was –

But then I didn’t care. Beyond it strode Ronyo and his men.

Shi- *huff* I said. It went so well I said it again: Shi- *huff*, before the nice man helped me.

Shit, shouted my old pal, Ronyo. Yes. Shit, indeed.

How-?

We just drove around the pond. Kind of stupid of you not to think of that.

Well... okay. My hands went up. Clyde’s display fizzed rainbow oily just centimetres from my face.

The smidge stirred as they passed it. Not so dead, it opened its big brown eyes now as if for the first time. In the split second that I saw its adorable open face, I fell in love. There was a crack and a flash as if the world was a channel that had cut out and all of those six men fell down dead, nearly as charred as the smidge, which looked like a burnt marshmallow with a bite taken out (head first, like a chocolate rabbit). They’d been struck with an electrical weapon, but more like a cannon than anything hand held. Misstricity was one hell of a harsh misstrice. I looked around, trying to figure out what had happened.

Run, idiot! Clyde said. Maybe he wasn’t so broken after all. I ran.

-------------------------------------------

The jungle made itself easy to get to by being in everyone’s backyard. The fear I’d felt my first time in had long since evaporated. It looked like large and looming death to fresh eyes, black leaves dripping everywhere, black grasses and bush. It all absorbed the sunlight swell, but to us children of green worlds came visions of rot and burn and blackest night. Anti-life on every score. A little time with Mara, though, and it felt like sweet home.

I survey by trade. Reality glutton. Although my own brain doesn’t benefit, I record sights, smells, hears, tastes, touches, the flow of time, mass and the quantum half-states of everything my hot little sensors can wrap their mouths around. All I experience in my tiny little corner of existence gets insta-bipped over to Littleverse HQ in old Oslo. They make the problies, those little guys like Clyde who model the universe, for prediction, communication, what have you. You need a lot of eyes for universe modelling and given that we aren’t in the entire universe, it’s still not a proper job. Pays well, though. You get to travel. Participate in revolutions.

I’m just one surveyor of millions, not the hero of anything. But right now, anyone out in the civilized worlds with a probly had their ear to the glass to the wall of Iridescence because I was here. If they could catch me, the rebs might want to use me to get their message out. The Mayor, nice as she’d been to me up to this point, might want me dead to keep the word from getting out. Of course, with meme warfare, you couldn’t tell who was on what side by the costumes. Even the Mayor might not be on the Mayor’s side anymore.

Down low was the place to be. Frolic in the jungle. If I reached sweet Mara, I maybe could bunk with her and her dear old dad and cousins and uncles and whatnot. Great Deus, why did she have to be related to half of her village? But how else you gonna pass the time in the country? There was work by the barrowfull out here in the little farms they carved fresh from wet jungle but one got the feeling, though I hadn’t the nads to say it to any faces as yet, that children were made to be supersmart smidges and little else.

Before the current party – No, just after, once the mind riots broke into full blown and the sun rose red, I’d gone to her, my little Mara.

-------------------------------------------

I’d been south when Clyde tipped me, and although I didn’t believe his whole babbling mouth, better to believe the country’s upheaving than otherwise. In a tortoise blink, Mara’s smooth, soft smile found itself safely cupped twixt my paws.

Let us make, I’d said. I had not paper one to just skip sideways border-wise. I can get you on a ship. We can off-world before the place bursts.

I can’t leave my family!

Your family would want you safe.

I have to think about everybody, Mara said in her long Mara way. I have to think about you too. I want you to go.

I can’t leave you behind, Mara-Maiden.

They’re going to come after foreigners first, she said as a little nephew scaled her to rest in an arm crook. Especially one in your line of work. They probably won’t even bother us, Vidi. We live out in the middle of the jungle. No one pays attention to us out here. My father’s lived through three revolutions already. Maybe she’d evoked the oldster. Or maybe he was spooky like Misstricity because he appeared and said:

You have to go. Come back after this has resettled and find Mara.

I can’t forgo this one, I said. He expected a look in the eye and a coward’s decision as well?

The old one jabbed me in the forehead, a fingering so thin and strong it should have egg-cracked my braincase. When they kill you a couple of days from now, you’ll be leaving her forever. You get off-world now and at least you can come back.

Mara nodded. She squished me in thin arms, her nephew moaned gurgly for dramatics. Mara pulled back, pressed her hand flat into me and shoved. Such strong small people. Or pathetic me?

Go, Mara said. Hurry!

I looked their lot over one last time. Little hard faces. I swept toward the spacefield.

-------------------------------------------

If they could live safe as unshucked clams, maybe I could live life on their outskirts. On what though? A diet of water and water? The very filtered brand was all that wouldn’t kill me dead on this world now. Maybe Mara had a doctor cousin who could make my belly local again.

Maybe a ferret would jump out of my wee-wee.

When I bolted off that ship, I had visions of protecting Mara and family and village and maybe the whole colony and anyone else who got in my way. But now? Let’s be real. If I protected myself, I’d impress me.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me. Mara’s village sat empty. The electric fence around the perimeter that kept out the big biters stood strong. I called around, looked into a couple of huts. Everyone had bugged and taken essentials. Just this early morning the place had been full. I shouldn’t have gone. They knew fear, they just wanted to get rid of me. Where was sweet Mara and her sour family?

Clyde?

Mens comed, Clyde said. Hounded m up.

Gibberish. Why’d they pack then?

Mans wall of it. To smell it.

What men? Clyde? Who men?

I... don’t now. Mabe should off mine, Clyde said.

Just shut up, Clyde. So old, Clyde. Problies knew. They always knew, even when they didn’t. Little cogitating egos. They weren’t reliable after two weeks old. They spun off into error and madness from there. Clyde was moving into week seven, a living experiment in a patch on my wrist.

I should off him. But, much like people, you off him and he’ll never on again. He’d failed as a predictor early on, a communicator soon after and now he couldn’t so much as calculate. If I was home, yes, I would’ve recycled him weeks ago. Here, I had no choice. But a brain-damaged Clyde beat no Clyde at all. Besides, he was currently my only friend in this dumpy world.

The earth was soft beneath me where the black leaves had lost their shine and gotten mulched to dust. What to do?

Vidi!

I spun, shaken and happy. Where, where? There! Running my way.

Mara!

Why didn’t you leave? she asked. She fell into a hug with me and smooched my big filthy self. She swatted a fat, juicy bug on the back of her neck. No bites for me since my chemistry had been toggled back to normal. The bugs didn’t find me tasty anymore, nor I them. Having been a favourite chew toy, it hurt a little.

I couldn’t step off Mara-less. What happened here? The family okay?

They’re fine, Vidi. They went south. C’mon, we have to hurry. She took my hand(le) and drew me to her father’s hut.

South? Bonri City was the ignition point. They’ll be snuffed!

They’re joining a farmers’ army massing there. Some of them will be killed, yes.

What? Why are you here then?

For you, she said.

You’ve got a probly? Someone knew my whereabouts. Hell, a lot of someones must have.

Someone high up does, Mara said. I was told you hadn’t left. Let me... There’s just too much to explain and too little time. We need to head deeper into the jungle but I have to grab my pack.

In the old man’s hut she yoinked a backpack from the floor and we were off, headed to the edge of the village, in a direction opposite from the one I’d come. Mara pulled out a radio and turned it on. Scary mariachi played, new to me. She sang out of tune and tempo, LA LA LA!

Travelling music is supposed to bring joy, not sorrow, I said.

Mara popped the battery from radio and it shut up.

Many thank-yous, I said.

You don’t want to listen to that, she said. Associative propaganda. It’ll make you the slave of the state.

Or the slave of Jee, I said.

Or that, she said with a nod. She handed over the battery, a little dull grey rod.

Casus belli, yes? I asked. Iridescence Electrical gets rich off the little people who make these. Jee’s had enough. Your basic class uprising. Mara wasn’t an employee, but plenty like her were. Poor people spread all over the colony. No ordinary batteries, these. They never ran out of juice.

Mostly, she said. Mara reached back into bag and pulled out a nut, still in the shell. She stuck it in my face.

Nut, I said, to make her stop. With that, she shoved it into the radio. The return of scary mariachi.

LA LA LA!

What in hell? I took the radio, pulled the nut from its springy hold. It went dead and I handed it back. My eager thumbnails bit into the nutshell and split it. My face got scrunchy. Colour my mind thoroughly blown.

Inside the shell sat a tiny red feather.

The electricity is already in the radio, I said, engineering conspiracy. Never really had the head for that. Surveying encompassed the extent of my skills, and those consisted of hanging around and breathing. Mara shook her head, poor bastard style.

We jumped the fence and moved into black wilderness. Battery, nut and radio dropped back into her pack. We headed away from Iridescence. Away from Bonri City.

Where are we going?I asked.

There’s another army to the west. I have to get you there. My empty stomach churned.

I don’t want to do this, Mara. Not one bit of this. I came back for only you. Let’s run elsewhere and avoid everything.

You won’t have to fight, she said. You’re too valuable for fighting anyway.

I didn’t know what to say, never having been too valuable for anything. We upped our walk to brisk. My mind boiled with too many unknowns.

So are you going to explain the nut? I asked.

That’s Misstricity, she said.

The local Voodoo goddess.

How do you explain what you just saw?

I can’t, I admitted

Misstricity is real. She’s a field. We personify her, yes, but she’s real. We’ve found a way to tap into this field. Those batteries don’t hold any charge. They draw electricity from the field. That’s why they never go dead. It’s just a piece of metal. We can do the same thing with a rock off the ground, or a feather, or anything else.

Insane! How could that work?

You want the truth? We don’t really know. We just know that it does. We can make them out here in the jungle more easily than they can in the city.

Why? We waved through a cloud of gnatty things, which reminded me of my unaltered state. Which re-reminded me... You have water in that pack of wonders? She did, thank Oslo.

Maybe it has something to do with the trees, She said. Or maybe it’s the pace of life out here. It takes some concentration to make a battery, there’s a trick to it.

Concentration with these bugs?

I don’t know, I’m hypothesizing. I can do it, but a lot of people can’t. You’ve got to hold a thing in your hand and you put everything else out of your mind. Sooner or later, the universe falls away and that thing is the only thing left, until you’re dreaming of it while you’re still awake. That’s when Misstricity comes. It’s not a science, these batteries. It’s an art. We entice Misstricity with gifts, and she gives a little of her love for us. The nicer the gift, the more the love.

Misstricity sounds kinda slutty to me, I said.

You should watch what you say about her. I don’t want anything to happen to you.

It’s senseless, Mara, I said.

It makes about as much sense as Clyde does.

Tushy, I said.

Touché, she said.

Problies were practical magic to most concerned. They let you talk instantly to folks light years away based on what the other guy was probably saying, given the current state of the universe. Even my data, which fed the maw in Oslo, was only guessed into existence by their problies. The whole of civilization ran on hunch-power. I tried not to think about it. I liked sleeping at night.

How is Clyde? she asked, taking my left hand and stroking him as we trudged off to somewhere. He galloped. Somehow.

Deep scrambled. I can’t believe he’s lasted this long.

I think he hears us. I think he’s trying to talk to Misstricity, poor Clyde.

Poor everyone, I said, thinking on the shitblizzard back in the city. Try not to mention that slut thing on meeting her, Clyde.

Her Honour sent a cargo ship full of our batteries to sell offworld, Mara said.

But offworld they’d be useless if Misstricity only works here.

I know. She knows too.

But –

She only needs one sale. We’re pretty sure she’s trading for problies. This whole war began as an experiment in war-marketing, Vid. Jee’s doing it, the Mayor’s doing it. They’re proving it works and with a shipment of problies, they can spread their memes offworld. Whoever wins can infect the worlds out there with their political ideologies and get support from the rich worlds that wouldn’t give us a second look otherwise.

Holy McAfee. Never would that even occur to me. Hence, I survey and not revolutionize.

Jee set out wanting peace, Mara. Her Honour wants stability. But those smidges... There’s that third side, Mara. We both knew who I meant. Why all the violence from the third side?

We can’t let it happen, Vidi. Jee talks peace now, but what happens when he’s in charge? Grec knows Jee. He’s not fooled by him. They grew up together

Grec? Your cousin, Grec? He did all this?

He’s kind of paranoid, you know. He’s been making contingency plans for a long, long time. If Jee hadn’t acted, Grec would still be quiet.

But he’s in a family way.

Violence is the only vote the disenfranchised have, she said.

That sounds fresh from the rally.

The other army, the one my family’s with is attacking Iridescence from the south, from Bonri City. It’ll be decided there.

They’ll be massacred! What have they got, machetes?

And bows, she said.

The Mayoral Guard sports bolt throwers! They’ll fry them up! Your family included!

I know, she said, cold as a stopped heart.

I don’t believe this. You’re not Mara. The whole world is upside down.

Don’t say that.

My left arm felt like it stopped. I looked, knowing what I wouldn’t see.

Oh, Clyde. Shit. I dropped to the ground on the seat of my pants. I felt so tired. Mara closed and held me. I didn’t care enough to pull away.

He’s not gone, Vidi. I can feel him in there. He’s just changing.

That’s right, I said. He’s a fucking Hindu caterpillar. What do you care anyway?

I care.

I looked up at her and my acid stomach burned. Beyond Mara’s face, obscured by leaves, someone sat in the tree. I pointed over her.

We have to get going, she said. I put my finger to my lips, eyes wide. Shut the hell up, Mara! I searched the branches all about. A second one was up there, mere meters from the first. Mara’s friends? Had we stumbled into the Great Farmers’ Army of the West? More sinister, I thought. They didn’t move. I leaned to my left, peered around a big black frond.

Those weren’t men up there.

Two smidges. Giant heads on baby bodies, eyes and mouths closed, serene as Prince Siddhartha. Somewhere far off, Ronyo and his boys still smouldered. I imagined how fast it might come, how searing the hurt might be. Then I had another bad thought. I got up as quietly as I could. Mara tugged at me, her eyes full of misery, but I gently moved her aside. I stepped carefully and watched the treetops. There was another. Another. More. Evenly spaced. They didn’t seem to end. There may have been hundreds of them. Thousands. If they burst, if they drew Misstricity to them...

Jesus Edgar Hoover Christ, I whispered. If they all exploded at the same time the entire jungle would erupt into a firestorm.

I heard a rumbling in the distance.

We have to go, Vidi, Mara said. Her sudden voice made me jump. The smidges hadn’t budged.

Wait, I said, holding up a hand. Something was coming to me. Clear even to this dull surveyor. The rumbling grew. Vehicles. Here? ATVs maybe. The Mayoral Guard. Mara sunk her fingers into my arms.

We have to go now, Vidi! she shouted into my face.

No, no, no... You told me – Everything you told me was meant to be heard by someone else.

No.

What’s gonna happen when those soldier-cops come? Huh?

You don’t want to find out. We have to get the hell out of here.

This entire area is going up with the equivalent of a hundred lightning strikes. They all die, yeah, but better than that, with Misstricity concentrated here, the Guardsmen meeting your family and friends near Bonri, their bolt-throwers will be useless for, what, seconds? Long enough for a few hundred arrows and machetes to make a difference. That’s scary brilliant. Bravo, Grec.

Okay, fine, Mara said. You figured it out. If we don’t run now, we’re going to die too.

So what? You’re done with me, aren’t you? Or do you need me to lure more people to their deaths?

I came back for you!

To use me!

I love you, you asshole!

In the not so distance, through the maze of trees, I glimpsed a motorcycle.

Just go, I said. Run. I can’t have all this death on my hands. I’m going to run back, maybe lead them away or stop them. I made to run.

No! Goddammit! she grabbed my arm and I pulled her whole body with me. I hadn’t known I could.

Clyde! she yelled. Clyde! It felt like my arm came alive again. I stopped.

Misstricity, Mara said, wrapping her hands around Clyde. Her voice went softer. Clyde, I need Misstricity. I need to talk to Misstricity. Mara stared into the distance as she spoke. Not toward the bikes which were coming uncomfortably close. My arm got hot, and I felt goosebumps everywhere. Mara’s eyes rolled up in her head. Her hair spread out like ten balloons had just been rubbed all over it. Some voice, like Clyde’s and Mara’s fused and amplified, made a low electronic moan. Misstricity filled the three of us. Life went white. My hair tried climbing off my head.

Mara? I asked but couldn’t even hear my squeak, never you mind the bikes or the roar of kabooming smidges. The sensors all over my body sizzled joy and I felt Iridescence. I felt Mara and her genuine love for me. I felt Grec and Jee and the Mayor as well as their paltry machinations. Thought is just electricity skipping across neurons. If the electricity is willing, there’s no rule that says all the neurons have to be in the same head. I felt everyone else and everything else, even Clyde, every little bit of conductive what-have-you on the planet. All of it coalesced into this magnificent female force in the white on white form of one of the locals. Think Mara times one-hundred and six.

Golly, I think I said.

Grec seriously underestimated the power of this goddess. She didn’t speak or at least not vocally. She radiated question. In answer, I told her about recent happenings, the nice restaurant at the hotel and my sincere wish not to die in a firestorm. Turns out there was a consensus on this point. We all agreed we didn’t want to die, firestorm or not. Who would have thought?

More question from Misstricity and my sensors tingled. I explained the sensors and the glamour life of surveyors. She eyed me, she eared Clyde, she tasted Jee. Ideas bubbled in that fiery hot head of hers. I knew those ideas and felt sick to my stomach.

No, no, no! I shouted. Misstricity danced a new formula dance for me and closing my eyes didn’t do a damned bit of good. Not when every bit of me was an eye, a tongue, an unclogged nostril. Misstricity sent her message out through me whether or not I liked playing conduit. I was still a tool, even to the local demigods. She began to fade. I ran at her.

No! You owe me for what you took, you bitch!

Vidi, don’t make her mad! Mara yelled.

What about making me mad? I demand fair compensation!

Misstricity questioned me again. I told her what I wanted even as I tackled her and exploded with pain.

-------------------------------------------

Colour oozed back into our lives. It was over and we lay on the jungle floor pretty much where we’d left off, if a bit singed and smoky. I watched the soldiers among us, each one I now knew by name, hop back on their bikes and scuttle off.

You want a ride? asked a couple of stragglers. I did. I wanted to hustle back to the city, get my belly done and eat two horses and a radish. The little smidges still sat in the trees, contemplating... something. None of us wanted to fight anymore. I never did, but everyone else suddenly saw it my way.

Mara, I said. I’m sorry.

Don’t be, she said, her hand running down my body. I’m sorry. You were right. I’m glad we were able to prevent all those deaths. How are you Clyde?

I feel fantastic! said Clyde with an accent it took me a moment to place.

You’re back, Clyde? I asked. You’re normal?

Perhaps more normal than I’ve ever been. The idea of a more normal Clyde actually saddened me a bit.

Where’d you pickup the old English accent? I asked.

Old England, I believe. She got her message out, Misstricity. Clyde diddled my nerves, optic and otherwise. I experienced lightning dancing on two-hundred and seventy-three worlds. Machines selectively powered down across civilization. Random everythings from rocks to breakfast cereals threw brilliant sparks into the air and entire societies communed with themselves just as we had. On at least one planet, a gargantuan female figure of light with native features very different from Misstricity’s strode across a confused and chaotic landscape. It was my second revolution that day.

Clyde showed me one more thing. Oslo’s problies, the best there were, said sensor feeds from Iridescence had collapsed. Misstricity had paid in full. My personal network fried crispy. I was unimportant again.

Every world with its own little Miss, I said to Mara. I’m out of the surveying business, by the way.

Really?

I ran her hand over my bare skin. Lost all my equipment. There goes the deposit. Maybe you could teach me that battery trick, though. The market for that sort of thing has recently opened up.

That Blissful Height

Gregory Frost

Populus vult decipi... decipiatur!

I. Post Trance

Think of me, the child’s voice fades, as you do a gentle moonbeam. The medium’s arms spread as wide as her dark hoop skirt and she sinks down until her head presses against the rosewood breakfast table. Its tip-up top wobbles slightly from palm to palm as if the securing bolt has loosened and is about to flip it vertically. Mercifully – not for the woman, but for the couple who hang upon her every gesture – it does not.

They are young, early in their twenties, still struggling to make their way in the world of 1850. The loss of their six-year-old daughter has been as cruel as anything can be; as cruel, thinks Robert Hare, as the loss of his own sister so long ago. Their misery has driven the poor couple, named Howitt, out of the objective sphere: their need to believe become their universe. Is it truly the voice of their daughter that has emerged from the seemingly unconscious medium? How can anyone be certain when the girl has been dead so many months?

Hare recalls the words of the great Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton: Is it unreasonable to confess that we believe in God, not by reason of Nature which conceals Him, but by reason of the supernatural in Man which alone reveals and proves Him to exist?

If that question needs proving, here the proof lies. The weeping wife supplicating the Deity while her husband, pale and teary-eyed but determined to be the rock against which she can lean, gathers her up. The shoulder seam of his coat has begun to unthread.

At the sound of rustling skirts, the medium stirs. Her hands slide together and she pushes herself upright, dishevelled hair wisping her forehead, her eyes shifting as if to re-establish her surroundings. Hare watches her with a sceptical eye. She composes herself in time to collect her fee from the dazed Mr Howitt before he can manoeuvre his wife through the door.

Once she has led the couple from the room, Hare glances at his friend, Joseph Hazard, positioned opposite him on the far side of the table in order to have a clearer view of the medium during the performance. Hazard cocks an eyebrow and shakes his head sadly as if to say, Those pitiable people.

Hare rises from the mahogany side chair, what they call a wheelback chair, although the design it has pressed into his frock coat looks more like a spider’s web than a wheel. All the chairs in the room bear this design.

The medium, Margaret Fox, returns from the foyer. She’s a small woman, of shy and genteel character – not a low-class trickster as many of her peers seem to be. Because of this alone he finds it hard to dismiss her. Her colour has lost its flush. She is composed as she takes her seat at the table, and smiles to both men with a sympathetic serenity. They know now, she says, that their girl is well and they need not be concerned. She clasps her hands, Praise God, and it’s as much as I ever hope for.

You’ve helped them, you mean, says Hare.

Can I do less, Professor Hare? Her blue eyes sparkle.

Retired, ma’am, near six years, he corrects her, although it’s nice to hear the title now and again.

I think it a good thing that such as yourself – a scientist, one who seeks for great truths – should open yourself to our small society.

"The society of spirits? Well, and I wish to believe, Miss Fox, that all this which Mr Hazard and I have witnessed is real."

Her brow creases for a moment, no more. You entertain doubts even now.

He bows slightly, his knees stiff from so long being seated. He is over seventy. As you say, Miss Fox, I’m a scientist. For me there can be no absolutes.

What about death, sir? Is that not an absolute – the certainty of death?

Yet, interjects Hazard, while he must play the sceptic, I know he was moved, as was I, Miss Fox, and I’m certain he will return for another session with you.

As will you? she asks, a hint of coquetry beneath the words, so slight as to be disregarded given the absolute decorum she has maintained. She is so young, her gentle tease is but a trick played upon old men’s vanities.

Mayhaps, ma’am, another day. He adds, "Alas, I am not retired, and still must perform."

For an instant Hare stands apart from these two, and seems to hear them speaking some cloaked language, full of amatory import; but he knows better than to act on such indistinct supposition. He wouldn’t even ask. Hazard would be shocked, and what can Hare know but that what he has inferred comes from within himself and not without? No, he can say nothing.

Robert, come, I’ve my afternoon appointments yet to keep. Hazard turns.

The two men are shown out onto Arch Street. It’s warm in the sun, positively an August heat on this late April day in Philadelphia. The door closes behind them and they climb down the five steps to the walk, as a carriage passes. Hazard signals to one further up the street and its reins flash. He won’t allow Hare to walk anywhere, so concerned is he over his friend’s condition. He is, Hare thinks, more like a mother hen than a lawyer.

Hazard turns to him. Now you must tell me, you suspect what of Miss Fox?

"Everything. The spiritualist is artful, perhaps by nature. Whether or not deceitful has yet to be established, but when I witness such a performance, when I see her come to her senses before her clients can elude her in their misery, what am I to make of it? I cannot help but suspect. There’s not enough here to trust."

Hazard nods. "I tell you, Robert, I have seen tables caper, and ghosts display impossible knowledge through the use of alphabetic cards such as she manipulates, but in the face of it all remains the niggling doubt that some cunning is at work. I can prove nothing. Nothing in Margaret Fox’s actions evinced deception. How, other than by supernatural means, did she know so much about the daughter, when I could find nothing near as much about the child through legal process? Yet I began to wonder in the midst of the child’s appearance if those people would have confirmed anything she said, however far it might be from true. Out of their suffering. And so –"

Hare takes hold of his arm. Precisely, Joseph. What can you know from a woman pointing her fingers at a card full of letters? He smiles conspiratorially. To which end I have ordered materials for construction.

The carriage rolls to a stop before them. Hazard turns to help his friend, but Hare grabs hold of the splashboard rail and pulls himself up. Materials? What would you do, Robert – box in your spirits?

Hare takes his seat. What would I do? Know absolutely the fate of – his smile falls slack – of them all. The carriage jerks forward and Hazard drops into the seat beside him.

-------------------------------------------

It’s the age of the supernatural. Ever since Walpole’s Otranto ninety years earlier, Gothic subjects have freighted the literature, and matters wholly fantastic have been embraced by the greatest minds. Hare knows well that he’s in good company.

As Man is enveloped in systems of weather, he may also be surrounded by invisible and wondrous forces, most as yet undetermined save that their presence is detected. Mesmer’s magnetic fluid, Franklin and Kinnersley’s electricities; somnambulism, clairvoyance, mediumship – all are squintings into the inexpressible. Hare’s own concentration – chemistry – promises similar revelations one day, and perhaps will tie the disparate elements of mind, body and energies together. Not simple-minded alchemical transubstantiation, no. More remarkable discoveries, which a generation other than his will behold – energies he can but imagine. And who knows but that a doorway will open between the corporeal and spirit realms? Are they alive who have gone before? Is his sister there, waiting for him? Dear, dear Anna – he must know.

He thinks: As Mrs Crowe argued in her wonderful book, The Night Side of Nature – all phenomena must be open to the proofs of science, even if the means to prove do not yet exist. Not yet. But I have within me the capacity to change that. When I return to the world of the spiritualists, I will shake that world till the truth falls out. One way or the other, I will know.

Enquiries thus far have already estranged former colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, where he once chaired the School of Chemistry. What he proposes to investigate is deemed unworthy of serious contemplation. Not, mind you, blind acceptance; on the contrary, the mere contemplation of possibility.

When he plunged concentric coils of copper and zinc into troughs of muriatic acid, producing not only electricity but a heat intense enough to consume charcoal, they were not shocked, although the specifics of what was happening and why were not immediately known. Yet, when he turns to something that may be no less explicable, they turn their backs. Well, he’s old, and has pried at one time or other into everything from chemistry to meteorology to banking, and don’t forget the brewing of porter. He’ll address former colleagues as he does the Christians, who have no trouble swallowing the camels of Scripture, yet dismiss Spiritualism, about which they know nothing. In the end, in print he’ll declare his findings and let the findings speak. Proof he will offer, the requirement of science.

Of those scientists who once called him friend, only Seybert and Silliman remain allies. Seybert inadvertently pushed him in this direction years ago with questions regarding the afterlife. To the extent that Hare refuses to countenance divine revelation, he has regrettably alienated Silliman: How can anyone – Silliman in particular – accept on blind faith the validity of his religious inclinations while demanding absolute proofs about everything else? There can be no dichotomy of thought. Everything must submit to testing. Still, for all that they differ and will neither yield, he loves and respects Silliman. Though they don’t speak any longer, it’s to Silliman that his proof will be, however obliquely, proffered. Whatever the outcome, he must sway someone.

-------------------------------------------

In the carriage, he surprises Joseph Hazard as he suddenly blurts out, It’s precisely as you say: The cards by which these guides communicate with their audience are unreliable under the best of conditions. Pushing a finger from letter to letter to spell out any word one chooses – how can rational men such as we countenance that? It requires a leap of faith across too vast a chasm. No more defensible than Bechworth’s absurd argument that six to eight people gathered around a table produce an electric current capable of causing everything that’s attributable to spirit phenomena. He laughs. "Do you think Bechworth ever in his life beheld an electric current? ‘A dry wooden table,’ I responded in my letter in the Inquirer, ‘is very nearly a perfect nonconductor.’ That fool."

Hazard agrees, somewhat edgily.

You mention table motion – I’ll tell you the substance of table motion: accumulated muscular force. It’s as Faraday suggests: The hands upon the table do the actual moving. So long as there are hands upon the table, you and I and the rest will harbour doubts. I say: No hands upon the table then, no fingers upon a card. He waggles his own finger to emphasize.

Hazard ponders, lulled by the clopping of the horse’s hooves. He remarks, "You would think, on the face of it, that Christians would wish the afterlife legitimized, wouldn’t you?"

"Fah. The truth is they only want it to conform to what, without a shred of evidence, they already hold that it is. If anything, the Christians are worse than Bechworth. They ascribe all these goings on to Old Nick. If there is anything imaginary in the whole of these proceedings, it is the supposition that the phenomena are brought on by the interference of the devil. That – that is the sage opinion of a church that extirpated the Canaanites, the Albigenses, that created the auto da fé, the inquisition, the massacre of St. Bartholemew, set the fires of Smithfield, roasted Servetus, and have persecuted even here Quakers and witches! He could list many more examples, but speaks to the point: What could be more devilish than for God the creator to have created the Devil? The Devil is nothing more than a means for small men to disavow their own evil passions and disguise their own villainous handiwork.

Jumping from thought to thought like a child leaping stones to ford a stream, he then abruptly announces, Comté is a fool to think that reliance upon scripture will magically shrink as science grows. Science would have developed already on this ghostly front and resolved it had not the entanglements of Biblical intolerance confounded every effort. He falls then into silence, his features apoplectic.

Hazard keeps still, but gives his friend a sidelong glance.

Hare’s keen dark eyes smoulder with the inner fire of his contemplation. His chin juts, the jaw clenches. It’s a formidable profile – one befitting a Roman statue – and that has kept more than a few men from voicing unworthy opinions. Hazard knows him well enough to know such fear is groundless.

He has been friends with Robert Hare for many years. No less hostile or arrogant man exists. Hare has always been so vivacious and agreeable in his conversation that he willingly gives opponents any opportunity for rebuttal while he soundly defeats their every objection as though he had run through it all before them. After which the opponent is respected for his attempt to scale the heights. There seems to be no subject with which he is unacquainted; but this one is different. This dark investigation stirs the old man’s blood in ways that voltaic chemistry does not.

Hare has had his enemies – the early ones, like the Englishmen Clarke and Maugham, who tried to appropriate credit for his oxyhydrogen blowpipe, were thieves and ultimately revealed as such. Hare had only to hold his ground and let others vindicate him. That won’t work here, Hazard knows.

This time, the people on his side are the ones about whom there are questions.

II. The First Device

On a hot June morning two men unload from the back of their wagon a canvas-draped object that ends in four beautifully turned table legs. Unlike a table it bulges on one side, where the canvas is pushed up in an off-centre hump. A woman holds open the door at 178 North Tenth Street to let them carry it up the steps and into the rowhouse.

Mrs Margaret B. Gourlay is of medium height, with dark hair pulled back into a large bun. She has a broad, handsome face just beginning to lose its definition. Her eyes are brown and warm: gentle and honest eyes. She is dressed very plainly in dark green, although the fullness of her brown skirt over cage-crinoline requires her to retreat from the door far enough to let the freightmen inside. They carry their burden into the parlour where her clients come.

Her husband, Dr Gourlay, stands in the doorway from the dining room and looks on in some bewilderment as the twine is untied and the canvas lifted, revealing an arcanely cobbled device. He watches the men tie a sinker weight to a vertical cord so that it hangs a few inches above the floor. A second, larger weight they tie to the end of a second line and set forward of the table like a small iron doorstop, the line stretched taut.

Finished, the men gather up the canvas and ropes, then wait for money, although Hare has paid them at the loading. Dr Gourlay reluctantly tips them, not generously by any means, and, feigning indignation, they depart. His wife’s voice echoes from the foyer.

He approaches the device with grave caution.

It is a lovely satinwood needlework table – or once was. Now, attached to the top, marring more than half of the veneer, sits a tall metal box with a steeply angled lid, a kind of enormous bread box. From the back of this emerges the cord on which the sinker weight ultimately dangles, but first the cord