Aurealis #136

By Stephen Higgins (Editor)

Aurealis #136 is the latest edition of the long running, award winning speculative fiction magazine. It has new fiction from around the world, fantastic artwork and all the news, reviews and articles you could want. You can subscribe for a year by going to www.aurealis.com.au.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chimaera Publications
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781922471017

Book preview

AUREALIS #136

Edited by Stephen Higgins

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2020

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922471-00-0

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

CHIMAERA PUBLICATIONS

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors, editors and artists.

Hard copy back issues of Aurealis can be obtained from the Aurealis website: www.aurealis.com.au

Contents

From the Cloud—Stephen Higgins

How We Felt—Helena O’Connor

Fresh Air—Seth Robinson

Not Fade Away—Eneasz Brodski

CONQUIST Part 10: The Final Conquest—Dirk Strasser

Mermaids: Longing, Desire and Death Throughout History—Amy Laurens

Speculative Fiction Artwork—Revealing the Future—Claire Fitzpatrick

The Opposite of a Broken Mirror: My Time at Gollancz—Part 2—Darren Nash

Reviews

Next Issue

Submissions to Aurealis

Credits

From the Cloud

Stephen Higgins

This has obviously been a tumultuous year. Here in Australia we have had severe bushfires, floods, the pandemic (of course) and a host of related issues that have upset our routines and lives. Lives have been lost. It has been in many regards a very science-fictional world.

Like many others I have watched the events unfolding with, at first, disbelief and, later, with a grim acceptance. Right at present, here in the state of Victoria in Australia, we are coming to the end of a severe lockdown that has halted the spread of Covid-19 but at the cost of many personal freedoms and the loss of employment for many people.

I myself have been largely unaffected by the pandemic (so far) and I consider myself lucky to be living where I live in rural Victoria. My job has changed. I’ve missed seeing friends and family and my lifestyle choices have been restricted. I’ve consoled myself with more screen time and more reading. I think I got out of the habit of reading for a little while. I’m a secondary school teacher and I spend my day reading and writing so I tend to gravitate towards music in my time off. However, for some reason I found myself both reading more and, oddly, writing more. I’ve dabbled with writing fiction off and on for years and I’ve been nowhere near as prolific as my co-editors in this area, but I did complete a novel during the pandemic lockdown. I’m not saying it’s any good, but I did write it.

If you’ve read my last editorial you will have seen my plea for fiction recommendations. My increased reading habits have meant I’ve tried a lot of new authors as well as a lot of old authors, and I just couldn’t settle with anything. I was afraid I had reached that point where the OMGs were replaced with the ‘Meh’s. Anyway, I think it was just me going through a phase. I think we’ve all got a bit pandemic-ed out and this was how it impacted me. There was a sort of general malaise around me.

As this is the last issue of Aurealis for the year, we hope that you and your family have kept safe and well and, of course, we send our best wishes and condolences to any who have lost loved ones. It’s a weird world and I know we’re all hoping for a change of fortunes next year. Whatever happens, Aurealis will be around to distract you, entertain you and even provide some light relief next year.

There will be plenty of OMG moments in 2021. But the ones you’ll get in Aurealis will be good OMG moments.

All the best from the cloud!

Stephen Higgins

Editor: Stephen Higgins

Stephen has been interested in science fiction for ages and has written a few stories for Aurealis in the past. Lately, he’s been creating a lot of music. You can hear his music on Spotify, iTunes, Bandcamp and Soundcloud and all of the other usual places you get your music. You can find out more at www.stephenhigginsmusic.com.

Associate Editor: Scott Vandervalk

Scott Vandervalk has been a freelance editor for over eight years, with projects ranging across the globe, from educational textbooks to novels, short stories, roleplaying games and boardgames, amongst other types of text. Scott has previously worked in science and education support, both of which have led to editing projects related to those fields. When not editing, Scott can also be found dabbling in gardening, cooking, writing or designing and playing games. Scott currently serves as president of the Bendigo Writers’ Council. Website: scottvandervalk.com.

Back to Contents

How We Felt

Helena O’Connor

The faint scent of lemon is tantalising; I haven’t killed in weeks. The hunger thrums like an indicator light. The emotions seeping through the carriage are overwhelmingly pungent. I can barely tell the passengers apart from their gaudy, expensive meals. A woman in a vast, colourfully-feathered hat looms like an immense, orange and purple peacock. She lists slowly sideways, obscuring her small child as she fusses with the collar of his crisp, white shirt. The smell of maternal emotion, deep and fulfilling as decadent, dark chocolate, wafts outwards. My mouth waters instinctively and my eyes run. The child bats her hand impatiently, but he smells like soft cream—velvet and vanilla. His irritation is just for show. Their meals are steaming and savoury. The sugar-sweet emotions intertwine with the hot vapour rising from the food.

I shuffle down the aisle of the train, feet scuffing against the plush carpet, concentrating, inhaling, and analysing. Passengers in this carriage lounge on decadent red velvet upholstered seats embellished with bright, gold fixtures and fittings. The noise of their chatter fills the smoky air. The scent from their thoughts is cloying and confusing. I smell emotions, but I smell everything else just as keenly. It makes the job difficult. The passengers ignore me. They know what I am. The train rushes along the lunar surface, biome to biome like clockwork, but I never disembark. My kind lives in transit.

I pick up the trace again: a lemon scented, sugar candy-floss strand of excitement, of daring. I follow the smell, let it consume me, let my whole being fixate. I move slowly from carriage to carriage, stalking my prey. It is a delicate business. Hunting by emotion is complex and nuanced; people rarely feel one thing in isolation.

In my target’s carriage, the passengers hunker on sparsely cushioned plastic seats. Station-wrapped sandwiches are balanced on their knees. I narrow in on the lemon candy smell and see her: a woman in a sleek, silver dress, wearing a small, tight smile. Her expression is determined, but those delicate bones would break apart easily in my hands. Under the excitement lemon scent, she smells like frangipani wafting on a salt, sea breeze. Something stirs deep below my memory: a flicker, an almost feeling. As I draw level, her small hand grabs my wrist and pulls me down to sit next to her. I am taken aback by the audacity, wondering what would drive her to be so bold. People barely make eye contact with us; skin to skin contact is prohibited. I am rarely touched, by any of them, and never on purpose. My wrist tingles. Curiosity buys her a few moments of my time.

She reaches into a small, clutch bag and produces a card: matte black with a floating, silver gossamer symbol. She is from the Uprising. A freedom fighter, whatever that means. That dangerous scent is the daring and excitement of passionate belief.

She speaks in a low whisper. ‘We need your help. We can pay.’ She produces a small syringe and holds it discreetly on her lap.

It takes me a moment to find my voice; I don’t speak very often. ‘What is it?’

‘It removes the chemical restraints. With this, you could feel.’

I look at her like she’s crazy. What good would feeling do here?

She smiles very slightly, as if reading my thoughts. ‘We can neutralise the collar and get you off the train. You could feel, out there.’

I smell tendrils of acrid-sharp salt and vinegar creeping amongst that sweet frangipani scent. She is afraid that I will decline, and fears the consequences that will come with allowing me to sense her true emotions.

I roll the idea around in my mind. My kind are engineered to sniff out dangerous emotions, not to have them. The punishment would most likely be swift. Then again, if she can do what she says, neutralise the collar and get me off the train, would anyone be able to stop me? I am tempted… My mind drifts back to the warm, chocolate scent from the woman in the feather hat. I have always harboured a certain scientific curiosity. It is difficult not to wonder, from time to time, after so many emotion-scented journeys.

I stare into her lavender eyes and she does not look away. What must it be like, to feel?

Tentatively, I reach out my hand, but her fingers close protectively around the syringe. I swallow a snarl, fighting back the instinct to kill her. This is likely the only chance I will ever have to leave my prison. It is worth resisting the hunger for a few minutes more. I smell curiosity wafting from the passengers nearest. They are diligently trying to suppress their excitement. Everyone likes a good termination; it livens up the boredom of the trip. They are probably wondering what the hold-up is.

I find this aspect of the passengers a fascinating contradiction. They want, so ardently, to see us kill, even as they bemoan having to run the risk of death themselves. Passengers must sign an agreement to use the Lunar Transport System. They have a choice; not that there is much in the way of alternative transport up here. But they know the cost: the maligned yet necessary, non-optional, precaution included to ensure their safety. The Security System has ultimate power over the removal of dangerous emotions. There are no appeals. Decisions are metered swiftly and finally. There is a calculated risk in travelling; no-one is in complete control of their emotions at all times. Yet when I close in on a kill, they can’t suppress the gleam in their eyes. Luckily, the Lunar Transport System doesn’t consider schadenfreude a dangerous emotion. Yet.

I have lingered too long already with this woman. The situation needs to be resolved.

‘What do you want?’

Vinegar fear is leaking out of her into the air around us. I terrify her. I terrify them all. I wonder what that feels like.

‘Go to the storage car.’

A wisp of candy-scented surprise cuts through the vinegar as I stand, obediently, and shuffle towards the back of the train. Opulently dressed tourists and business suited workers attend to their meals. No-one looks at me.

When I reach the storage car—my car—I unlock it with my handprint, step into the darkness and wait. The sensors turn on the ambient lighting and adjust it to a low, amber glow. Our eyes are sensitive to bright lights. Every lunar transport module has a storage car, used for freight and storage of all manner of things, including us. In one corner sits a rough bed, a bathroom module, and a synth dispenser. It smells like home.

Eventually, the woman steps through the door and into the semi-darkness. Wisps of vinegar, lemon and frangipani waft around me. It is unsettling to have someone standing in my home. Freight and storage are generally retrieved by android or remote. People don’t come here.

‘I want you to track someone, out there. In exchange for your freedom.’

‘This is acceptable.’

‘Stand as still as you can.’

I comply, and she passes a compact, metal rod with a faint red laser light over the metal collar clamped at my throat.

The silence in the storage car is broken only by her uneven breathing, and the intermittent gurgling of the synth dispenser. My stomach rumbles. The synthetic sludge doesn’t compare to the real thing, but it’s better than nothing. It keeps us nourished.

Occasionally her metal device produces an acrid, burning smell. Not an emotion smell, but the smell of the collar components meeting their end. If I could feel, I suppose I would be surprised at myself, for deciding so quickly that I want this.

‘What made you think I would agree?’

‘Genetics.’ She does not elaborate, but a deep, dark odour lingers: the tarry sludge of immeasurable regret.

‘My name is Nadia.’ Her voice is tinged with dark, treacle sadness. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

I shuffle