Waking Up: Stories for the New Millennium

By Matt Spangler

A deep space mission in the future wrestling with what to do with an extraordinary find. A man unable to escape his struggle with seeing the social or environmental cost of every decision he makes. A dating app that's designed to prevent sexual assault, but has a fatal flaw.

These are just three of the dozen stories that make up Matt Spangler's debut work of fiction, Waking Up. The collection zigzags across a breathtaking range of genres, from historical fiction to literary horror, dystopian scifi, and even an homage to the 1980s subgenre of video game novelizations. Threading the stories together is Spangler's exploration of "wakefulness," and his head-on confrontation with some of the provocative questions raised by 21st century identity debates.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667806198

Book preview

The Counselor

His gaze drifted past the unblinking eyes of the other applicants to a gardening magazine centered on a table in the waiting room. He saw the finish stripping off, wood fibers reassembling on the unsanded top and legs, which then separated from one another, the wood pieces sailing backwards down a conveyor belt, a tractor hauling logs in reverse down a South American highway, a mahogany tree standing up to meet a chainsaw gripped by a man in a hardhat, and the man gunning down an indigenous activist in a rainforest. He shook his head and tried not to focus on the trees ground into pulp so that uptown socialites could stay abreast of the latest trends in Scandinavian home décor.

The counselor emerged into the waiting room, which appeared to have been ripped from the pages of the magazine, and he knew right away it was her, the polished skin and chiseled cheeks and blonde pixie cut, and he wondered, as she approached the front desk, why he, as a white man, deserved to be here. She bent over the receptionist, a black woman, probably hourly with no benefits, and complained that the air conditioning wasn’t working, and for a moment the counselor was clothed in a bodice and hoop skirt, cooling herself with an embroidered hand fan, as her servant dutifully lowered her gaze.

Mr. Evans? He stood up and walked past the eyes, fixed forward, never fluttering, and followed the counselor past the desk and into the hall. I’m Marlena. Did you find us alright? And apologies about the air; I’ve been complaining about it for weeks.

Thanks. Doesn’t bother me at all.

Right in here.

She seated herself across the desk and locked her gaze with his, his eyes only straying to the digital frame rotating photos of her and the perfect family with the whitest teeth and beautiful homes and cars and vacations.

Her eyes merged with the computer screen. Just taking a look at your file. The delicate alabaster joints fingered the mouse. You’ve been unemployed for over two years. And before that, click, you were in sustainable finance, click. You want to tell me what happened?

The air cut off and he suddenly noticed there had been a crane being raised onto an office building outside the window. He had a recollection of sweat pooling on his back from another visit to another office like this one. But not a single bead formed on his skin.

I had a bit of a breakdown, so I went on disability. He forced himself not to look down.

I see that. That ran out after a year, and since then you’ve been collecting workers’ compensation from the state. Food, transportation, rent –

I’m eating less, and I got a smaller place. And I barely turn on the air or lights.

There was pity behind the eyes. Pity, not sympathy. Because it should have been easier for him. Nevertheless, your state benefits will be terminated in about six weeks. The fingers formed a triangle. Now, do you want to tell me what’s going on?

He thought of sighing, but then decided it was better to pause. I’ve been doing some research online.

And?

Shift the legs. And, well, I think I may have developed a disorder.

The brows may have fluttered an instant. What sort of disorder?

How far should he go with it? He needed to share his findings. I noticed that my worldview had started to darken, become more polarized. So I did some digging online, and from everything I read, the symptoms I was experiencing matched perfectly with cognitive distortion disorder.

Okay. I’m a social worker, not a psychiatrist, so please explain what you mean.

Well, the condition is a sort of warping of environmental cues that leads to negative thinking and anxiety. So, you might make a simple mistake at work and think your career is over. Only in my case, I think I have a disorder that has yet to be defined by science. One where I see everything in life as a sort of transaction in which somebody, or something, has been exploited for the benefit of another.

The ice thawed. She sat back in her chair. Can you give an example?

He couldn’t stop himself. Oh, I suppose, at the risk of getting personal, one could take a social worker who helps struggling people transition into the work world. But if you peel back the layers, you see a white woman whose expensive private school education was underwritten by old wealth, which was in turn generated by land stolen from natives and then worked for centuries after that by slaves.

The lips pursed slightly. If you’re referring to me and my family –

Not at all. I don’t know your family. I’m just giving you a hypothetical for how the disorder works.

Interesting choice. She leaned forward again. Have you tried to reason through it? That maybe life is inherently unfair and our society is doing the best it can with the historical hand it was dealt? That you were in sustainable finance, which ultimately makes the world a better place?

Certainly. But then you start turning it over in your head, how you’re printing everything on paper, supplies are delivered to your office in diesel trucks, you fly around the world for meetings, you make a quarter of a million while the people you’re supposed to be helping have no running water and only scraps of food to eat. He noticed his heart pounding, and it surprised him. It seems pointless to continue.

She looked up and reflected on his predicament. I see what you mean. She opened her desk drawer, removed a small Mylar package, and he thought of a seal choking on it. I don’t ordinarily recommend this for my cases, but I have an advanced strength benzodiazepine that I can administer. It should help alleviate your symptoms within a few hours, and if you feel like it’s working, we can see about getting you on a more long-term course.

The animals they tested it on, the poor people who couldn’t afford it, the beaches the syringe washed up on swirled before him. But if it could normalize his thinking … Alright, let’s give it a try.

He rolled up his sleeve and watched as the needle plunged into the vein. Usually people look the other way, she observed.

It should only be a few minutes now. Her words slowed and a veil came down between him and the office and her words. He recalled how nice it once was to sleep and dream.

He slumped in the chair, and hands gripped his arms, hairy hands attached to arms in white sleeves. I think he’s a Class II WC model. Her words seemed to come from far away. The hands and white sleeves helped him into a wheelchair. The low food consumption and lack of temperature regulation suggest it to me anyway. We’ll get him into the lab for further tests, and if I’m right, with a little antivirus treatment he should be back in the office within a few weeks.

They wheeled him down the hall and other counselors and their assistants regarded him knowingly but he didn’t care. He drifted past the eyes in the waiting room, which stared straight ahead without blinking.

The Rocks

A boom, followed by another, echoed across the vermilion sky as the cylinder penetrated the atmosphere of the rocky planet. It shook off the ball of flame that had engulfed it and, steadying as it descended toward the line severing the light and dark sides of the planet, began slithering forward just above the chasms. For a few minutes the gleaming vessel seemed coiled in a mortal struggle with the craggy landscape, before it settled on a flat expanse just large enough to land on.

The hiss of the cylinder faded, and then it stood motionless on the span of weathered sandstone. After some time, an opening appeared on the side of the craft. Through the darkness a figure materialized, clad in a gray shell that shrouded its body, save for a globe atop its neck that reflected the rugged topography and gave it the suggestion of an insect. The figure cautiously scaled down a ladder, which protruded from the hatch, to the rocky terrain below. Another body, hoisting a container, emerged from the vessel and followed down the steps. They clung to the ladder for a moment, turned towards one another, then shuffled forward.

Reaching a small pool of water that flooded from a crack in the surface, they drew a sample into the container. Doubling back toward the cylinder, they paused to survey the vast stretch of canyons and mesas and buttes, and the dark clouds hanging in the blood-red firmament, then strode to the craft and dissolved once more into the shadows.

Beneath the shade of the cylinder the emptiness seemed to stretch to the horizon, broken only by the life-giving water. The vial of clear liquid tremored slightly in Cassen’s gloved hands as he handled it through the glass encasement. He squeezed a couple drops of phenolphthalein into the vial. The liquid remained clear, just as he had suspected. He knew clean water when saw it. Water clean enough to splash on your face. Water pure enough to –

But is it good enough to chase this?

It was Dixon. The habitat’s pilot – a decorated pilot, having flown hundreds of combat missions in Lebanon and Yemen – dangled a packet of SynFood before Cassen, powerless to receive it with his hands buried in the glovebox. Cassen considered for a moment, before he tested for hardness, bacteria content, and so forth, why not, in fact, let Dixon dump the powdered mix of synthetic nutrients into a glass, stir in some water that the lips of a human being had never touched, and sit back and see what happens?

It’s got about eight parts per million of dissolved oxygen, but I haven’t measured the pH, said Cassen, so you better steer clear of it after you jump off the 360-treadmill. But, he added, it might allow you to get that quarterly shampoo in.

Or you a shave, right, Cassen? said Dixon, a toothy grin spreading across his pale visage. Cassen reflexively patted the months-old growth that had sprouted from his own face. He thought of the beard matting as water dripped from it in slow motion.

Have you ever tried to use shears in zero gravity? asked Cassen.

The grin expanded so widely that it seemed to fall off the edges of Dixon’s face. Not without a vacuum cleaner, my friend. His cheeks slowly folded back into place. Maybe we can fill the tank with it anyway.

If we can find enough of it, sure, said Cassen.

Dixon inspected the twin computer monitors above the glove box. If it registers normal pH balance and low turbidity, you think that would indicate there was life on this planet at some point?

Before Cassen could chime in with a nothing-above-the-microbial-level musing, his skepticism was usurped by a voice behind them. Not in the Opiochus constellation there wasn’t.

Garret was an avowed proponent of the school of thought that, despite a century of effort by private and public research organizations, the failure to locate life in so-called habitable systems such as Proxima Centauri and Trappist-1 – or, for that matter, to identify a single Dyson sphere in over 200,000 galaxies – was incontrovertible proof that humans would never find another advanced civilization close enough to be reached by the 22nd century’s solar propulsion spacecraft.

This is a snipe hunt, drawled the flight engineer, who joined Cassen and Dixon behind the glove box. No infrared, no little green men.

Or brown, said Cassen.

Science fiction isn’t part of our operational directives, gentlemen, rang the familiarly assertive voice of Commander Ford. His shoulders back, jaw square, hair high and tight, and eyes locked with whoever he engaged, Ford not only looked like what the space agency was after, but had the pedigree to match: third in his class at the Academy; instructor and test pilot at Schriever; commander of the 545th wing of Space Corps; time behind the consoles at Cape Canaveral; and even an Eagle Scout with 85 merit badges.

But as you know, Ford continued, assembling with them at the console, dispatching an unmanned aircraft system to perform a routine survey of the landscape when we have detected a water source on one of our target planets is.

Garret snapped to attention. I’ll get ‘er online, Commander.

You better let me help you find the on switch, quipped Dixon. They disappeared down the white corridor together.

Ford’s eyes returned to the console. Cassen knew what the ask would be. Let me know what you turn up on the mineral content in that water, Cassen.

I’m on it, sir.

Thanks. Ford turned on his heels and filed down the passageway, fingers curled at his sides.

The blades protruding from the mechanical insect began spinning furiously, and it whipped the surrounding dirt into a storm as it lifted from the ground next to the ship. One of the gray-sheathed figures, his head no longer topped with a globe, sat below, his arms stretched to another machine. He watched the insect ascend to the height of a mature pinyon pine. The device, legs extended from it like a spider, emitted a loud pestilent whirr as it crept across the sky.

Harrington was more reclusive than the other crew members of the habitat, often seeming to blend into the consoles and control panels of the sterile white interior. But his cohorts were keenly interested at the moment in what the soft-spoken archaeologist, the first such specialist to ever accompany a deep space mission, had to say as they gathered around his computer monitor.

"Now, the UAS laser scan covered an area of 31 square kilometers,