Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 44

By Small Beer Press

Who is ready for the fourty-eleventh issue of LCRW? It has stories, poems, a cooking column, & a bonus novel excerpt.

Cometh the hour
cometh the zine
but wait
it is written
that a zine
must sometimes be delay’d

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 44, December 2021. Edited by Gavin J. Grant & Kelly Link. Proofreader: Franchesca Viaud. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732033. Print edition text: Bodoni Book. Titles: Imprint MT Shadow. LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $24/4 issues. Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c. Contents © 2021 the authors. All rights reserved. Cover illustration "Mother Cat" © 2021 by Ashley Wong (ashlwong.com). Thank you authors, artists, and readers. Celebrating! Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria appearing on NPR’s 50 Favorite SF&F Books of the Past Decade; Kim Scott’s Taboo receiving a Kate Challis Ruth Adeney Koori Award (RAKA) commendation; and Vandana Singh being selected as a Climate Imagination Fellows by ASU’s Center for Science. Petra Mayer, RIP. Please send submissions (we are always especially seeking weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781618732033

Book preview

LCRW_44.jpg

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #44

Made by

Gavin J. Grant

& Kelly Link.

Proofreader: Franchesca Viaud

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet issue number 44, December 2021. ISSN 1544-7782. Ebook ISBN: 9781618732033.

LCRW is (usually) published in June and November by Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027 · [e-mail] · smallbeerpress.com/lcrw. twitter.com/smallbeerpress · Paper edtion printed at Paradise Copies (paradisecopies.com · 413-585-0414). Subscriptions: $24/4 issues (see page 31 of the paper edition for options). Please make checks to Small Beer Press. Library & institutional subscriptions: EBSCO. LCRW is available as a DRM-free ebook through weightlessbooks.com, &c.

Contents © 2021 the authors. All rights reserved.

Cover illustration Mother Cat © 2021 by Ashley Wong (ashlwong.com).

Thank you authors, artists, and readers.

Celebrating: Celebrating! Isabel Yap’s Never Have I Ever appearing on the NYPL Best Books for Adults list; Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria appearing on NPR’s 50 Favorite SF&F Books of the Past Decade; Kim Scott’s Taboo receiving a Kate Challis Ruth Adeney Koori Award (RAKA) commendation; and Vandana Singh being selected as a Climate Imagination Fellows by ASU’s Center for Science.

We’re a little behind on reading, sorry, (maybe we are just part of the great supply chain slowdown) but we did find half a dozen fab chocolate bars this time including a turmeric one. That is something. Please send submissions (especially weird and interesting work from women writers and writers of color), guideline requests, &c. to the address above. Thanks again, authors, artists, readers.

Napier’s Constant

ArLynn Leiber Presser

At the end of this universe, the bride’s uncle apparently fell into an implacable sleep in the pew next to Napier. His head—hairless, pink, and freckled with sweat—drooped onto Napier’s shoulder as he exhaled a braying snort that competed with the Bach Concerto No. 36 Prelude. Napier’s phone vibrated in his pants pocket. He shifted and turned but could not get to the phone without disturbing the uncle.

Napier decided to wait.

Abbie—Napier’s on again off again girlfriend of two and a half years—was the seventh of eight bridesmaids who had processioned to the alter on the arms of eight identically tuxedoed groomsmen. Eight lavender gowns, eight orchids fastened into hair, eight lavender and orchid bouquets and seven gazes of wonder directed towards the back of the church where the bride and her father stood.

There were an infinite number of explanations for Abbie’s decidedly unbridesmaid-like expression directed at Napier, with the four most likely explanations being—

She wanted Napier to wake the uncle and, by waking him, prevent the ruination by snore of the perfectly romantic wedding of her best friend, Maisie.

She suffered from physical distress in the wake of too much champagne imbibed at the rehearsal dinner.

She had noticed Napier’s attention to the bridesmaid standing immediately to her left. This bridesmaid, introduced at the rehearsal dinner to the bridal party as Sharon from New York, was the only bridesmaid who hadn’t been a member of the Phi Beta Gamma sorority at Indiana University. Sharon from New York worked at the art gallery in SoHo where Maisie had interned the summer she met the groom.

She was festering with the ultimatum she had delivered to Napier three weeks before. If you can’t put a ring on it by my birthday, I’m going to have to explore other options because I’m not getting any younger, she said. It was exactly the sort of play she advised for readers of her GalPal magazine column. A corollary of her advice was that such a pronouncement should be delivered and then not mentioned again until the expiration dated whereupon the relationship was terminated. The gentleman would either a) realize what a mistake he was making and would crawl on broken glass with a box from Tiffany’s in his outstretched hand or b) would be relegated to a negligible part of one’s history with the preface jerk. This advice, of course, was one that she was not able to follow and there had been angry confrontations, strained goodbyes, packing and unpacking of Abbie’s things in Napier’s apartment. It was for this reason that Abbie and a not very well closeted groomsman had been paired up and Napier reassigned to the job of sitting with the uncle who was known to drink.

Not having perfect information and confining his actions to these four possibilities, Napier mouthed I love you. She turned away. Napier patted his suit jacket’s breast pocket to remind himself that he had extra Pepcids to give to her after the ceremony, made an unsuccessful attempt to rouse the uncle, and not once let his eyes stray in the direction of Sharon from New York while all eight bridesmaids were facing the congregation. His phone vibrated again.

It was when he realized that he could not wake the uncle that he concluded that the end of the universe was happening, had happened, would happen during all the foreseeable and the unforeseeable futures.

The end of the universe would not stop the wedding ceremony although some guests noticed a dimming of the light in the church. Some thought it was just another rolling brownout or perhaps the effects on one’s senses brought on by the pre-ceremony champagne served in plastic flutes in the foyer. A lot of champagne had been consumed over the course of the past few days and not many guests had paced themselves.

The end of the universe was/is/always would be happening and the Smith-Bresson wedding was timed at roughly forty-five minutes. Napier maneuvered the uncle and retrieved his phone. Four missed calls from the lab. One text from his research assistant Damian. A single word.

SEISMIC

Yep, Napier concluded, it was the end of the universe and not just the universe comprised of his relationship with Abbie.

The bride’s uncle, drooling on his left shoulder, missed Maisie Smith promising to love, honor, and cherish Paul Bresson who promised roughly the same in return. To be fair, even if one were not a physicist such as Napier or a women’s magazine advice columnist such as Abbie, one could still imagine an infinite number of endings to the Smith-Bresson marriage aside from death doing them part.

Another text from Damian.

SIGNING OFF e

The number e is a mathematical constant much like pi (circumference of a circle divided by its diameter) or the imaginary number I (the square root of negative 1). e is irrational and transcendent as all the most important natural logarithms are. It has many applications, including calculations of compound interest rates which the uncle gently snoring would understand and including Napier’s research into the accelerative nature of the end of the universe which said uncle would not understand even if he were awake, sober, and paying attention.

e is sometimes referred to as Napier’s constant which became the basis of Napier’s nickname at the lab.

Napier texted back.

GODSPEED

He considered the multiverse opening before him, including the following:

The wedding concludes with the usual laughter and tears as if this were the Romance of the Century. The reception at the Saddle and Cycle Club is elegant and festive and as the first course—a regrettable beet salad—is presented, Abbie can’t stop herself from asking if Napier thought the couple looked happy. His answer being an unsatisfactory sure, a sotto voice argument ensues which includes the words pressure, commitment, wasting time, and ultimatum. Napier learns that the narcoleptic uncle was taken to Northwestern Hospital after the rector came upon him still sleeping several hours after the ceremony’s conclusion. The uncle is part of the lucky first wave of people swept away.

After the wedding ceremony, Napier alerts the bride’s father Winfield Smith II that the uncle can’t be awakened. As the bride and groom have their pictures taken on the church steps, Napier and Mr. Smith carry the uncle into an alcove of the church. The rector calls an ambulance. Arriving at the reception, WSII tells his guests that the uncle suffered a stroke which almost all will attribute to the uncle’s excesses. Knowing it is the end of the universe, Napier asks Abbie to marry him. She says yes, she says no, she says maybe. Those are some extra universes, only a few of them of the possible compounding outcomes described by e.

At the reception, Sharon from New York steps onto the balcony overlooking the Saddle and Cycle tennis courts. On said balcony, Napier is calling Damian to ask what disturbances in the atmosphere he was observing—although if the end of the universe is really the end why would he be interested is almost a Schrödinger’s Cat Puzzle of its own. Sharon from New York allows as how weddings make her a bit weepy. Hanging up the phone, Napier comforts her. It is, after all, the end of the universe and the usual rules of morality, of civility, of consequence, do not apply. The couple is discovered by Abbie on the couch in the ladies’ tea room and Abbie reiterates a longstanding contention that Napier cannot be faithful. Or perhaps there is no tea room, perhaps no tryst, ergo no discovery. It is, in any imaginable universe, Napier’s fondest hope that there would be no discovery.

Napier had always had a difficulty with choosing one course of action to the exclusion of another—with committing to a plan that didn’t allow for one, two, three, so many midgame corrections, with picking a universe in which he would take the consequences of existence and choice. So, as the uncle wheezed at this shoulder, Napier simply shifted his body a bit and waited for what would be presented to him in this universe, in this time, in this dimension

There are knowns. There are unknowns. There are unknowns Napier didn’t even know he didn’t know. And there are the unknowns he truly did know.

He knew he loved Abbie, even if he couldn’t stop himself from staring at Sharon from New York, thinking of how it would feel to reach up under her lavender gown and push aside the thong she wore—or he imagined she wore.

He wondered if he should contact his parents and then concluded that he wouldn’t. Not because he was heartless but because he didn’t want to alarm anyone and, besides, the end of the universe would still be happening for hours after the bride and groom had exchanged their vows. That’s just the nature of time that the end of the universe was happening now at the far reaches of space but that meant there was still plenty of time for vows, tears, rice to be thrown, and Abbie’s ultimatum to be presented and to be answered.

Seconds are, of course, not the smallest units of time. There are Planck units, part of the simplification of dimensionality proposed by physicist Max Planck in 1899. At every Planck unit, there is a universe in which one event happens and another in which it does not so that by the time a second has passed, there are ten to the forty-fourth power number of alternatives—each shooting off into dimensions that could be explained in a Napier algorithm but not in metaphor.

For reasons that even a physicist with a Harvard grad degree such as Napier couldn’t explain, the end of the universe had an immediate effect on his earth. Namely that anybody who was asleep at this moment would never wake up and anybody who fell asleep would remain so.

The uncle was first amongst sleepers. But as the different zones presented their populace with sleeping pills, lavender and chamomile teas, and leonine yawns, seven billion more people would eventually, ultimately say goodnight.

Napier’s parents were Baptists—and didn’t name him for the Scottish mathematician John Napier, but rather for an uncle he never met. They raised him to have a good sense of scripture. He would never have confided this to any of his own colleagues but the sleep, the deadening predicted by Einstein’s Gemini Twins thought experiment, reminded Napier of St. Paul’s description of the Rapture in his first letter to the Thessalonians.

Only the most insomniacal would actually experience the true End Times.

Because of this bias of thinking the first to sleep were the first transported to heaven, Napier felt a tenderness towards the sleeping uncle who would miss the rest of the end of the universe. The uncle would never know the countless accidents that would be caused by people—cab drivers, airline pilots, surgeons, mothers—nodding off at this dangerous time. And he would miss the horror of realizing that sleep would bring not death but not life either. The Pentagon, the Kremlin, and the Chinese had been training an elite group of soldiers to go without sleep for weeks in the belief that somehow they would be able to figure out a solution when the end of the universe came. Napier felt most sorry for those.

This was the universe that Napier felt as the uncle drooled on his lapel. Maisie’s older sister who was said to have been trained in opera, wherever and whatever that meant, sang Ave Maria in just shy of a flat vibrato. Sort of like the fan in his bedroom. His bedroom with the shades against the western sky, the flannel sheets so soft and worn.

He yawned.

He felt the