Apex Magazine Issue 13

By Apex Book Company

Apex Magazine is an online zine of genre short fiction.

FICTION
Laika’s Dreams by Holly Hight
Sol Asleep by Naomi Libicki
Long Eyes by Jeff Carlson (removed by request of author)
The Thing in the Refrigerator That Could Stop Time by Matthew Kressel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apex Book Company
• Release date: Jun 8, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452364186

Book preview

Apex Magazine Issue 13

Holly Hight Naomi Libicki Matthew Kressel

Apex Publications

Laika's Dream Copyright © 2010 by Holly Hight

Sol Asleep Copyright © 2010 by Naomi Libicki

The Thing in the Refrigerator That Could Stop Time Copyright © 2005 by Matthew Kressel (Originally published in Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, Apex Publications, issue 3)

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Cover art by Lukas Hahn

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Publisher/Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore

Senior Editor—Gill Ainsworth

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Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

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ISSN: 2157-1406

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Apex Publications

PO Box 24323

Lexington, KY 40524

Contents

Laika’s Dream

Holly Hight

Sol Asleep

Naomi Libicki

The Thing in the Refrigerator That Could Stop Time

Matthew Kressel

Laika’s Dream

Holly Hight

Holly Hight majored in Criminology and Political Science, working in government before deciding to quit her job and write full-time. She got her start writing nonfiction in 2008 and has since sold stories to Running Times, Competitor Northwest, Cosmos Magazine, and Analog. She lives in Oregon with her husband and son.

I think back to a night on a moonlit beach, the crash of breakers loud in our ears. Mara is beautiful in a floral sundress, her dark hair pulled back into a windblown braid. It’s the end of the term, a time for celebration. Situated crookedly in the sand is a bottle of red wine, two glasses, half-empty, perched next to it. We are barefoot and my pants are rolled up to my knees, Mara’s sundress riffling against my bare skin as we dance.

She whispers that she loves me, but we are drunk — and careless.

Two weeks later, we’ve created one of the most stable forms in the universe, a tiny sphere that will one day turn into our beloved Anna. On the ultrasound, Mara’s pregnancy is nothing more than a pea-sized shadow. Fluid shows up black while tissue glows white. The amniotic sac isn’t much larger than a bean.

You’re due in March, the doctor tells her.

When he leaves, she starts to cry.

I tell her not to worry — but, to my surprise, she looks at me and says fate has dealt her a different hand.

I think of this as it relates to quantum physics. Why didn’t I see it coming? In theory, we should remember the future as we remember the past, but something in our mammalian brains prevents us from taking a peek at our fates before they blindside us. I tell myself it makes sense, that a will to live must come from not knowing what happens next.

As an astronomer, I try to answer life’s most unfathomable questions. I always thought I wanted to know about such things as supersymmetries and flop transitions. Now my questions, though couched in physics, revolve around what happens to us after we die.

We are always able to go back to the beginning, watching as our blueprints unfold in a cramped darkness, as I once watched Anna’s month by month. Only scientists haven’t yet been able to see the universe’s conception. They know down to a hundredth of a second or so what happened, that first brilliant flash of light, when everything blossomed, but the nanosecond before, the force that ignited the spark, is still man’s biggest mystery.

It’s no different for the giants than it is for the dwarves. Like each of us, the universe was conceived. All of nature’s little spheres,