Bards and Sages Quarterly (January 2023)

By Julie Ann Dawson, Peter M. Floyd, David Rich and 7 more

For over a decade, the Bards and Sages Quarterly has been a showcase for both new and established authors to share their speculative works. The short stories presented in each issue serve as a delightful sampler of the speculative genres. Whether your preference is sword and sorcery, time-travel, space exploration, gothic horror, urban fantasy, or any of the speculative genres, you are sure to find something to love in the pages of this magazine.

 

A sample of what is in this issue:

 

The employees of a no-kill animal shelter must content with an influx of magical creatures in The Week of Floofy Hell.

 

The residents of the former penal colony of Drought find themselves in a fight for survival against raiders from another colony in The Mutineers of Starvation.

 

A pair of siblings engaged in some time-travel tourism to see the Beatles perform live discover they may have been sold a dangerous deal in The Farther One Travels.

 

Special notification: Though we avoid publishing stories we deem gratuitous in nature, as a journal of speculative fiction, some stories may content dark subject matter. Some stories may contain strong or offensive language, depictions of violence, and child and animal endangerment.

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bards and Sages Publishing
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215380178

Julie Ann Dawson

Julie Ann Dawson is an author, editor, publisher, RPG designer, and advocate for writers who may occasionally require the services of someone with access to Force Lightning (and in case it was not obvious, a bit of a geek). Her work has appeared in a variety of print and digital media, including such diverse publications as the New Jersey Review of Literature, Lucidity, Black Bough, Poetry Magazine, Gareth Blackmore’s Unusual Tales, Demonground, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. In 2002 she started her own publishing company, Bards and Sages. The company has gone from having two titles to over one hundred titles between their print and digital products. In 2009, she launched the Bards and Sages Quarterly, a literary journal of speculative fiction. Since 2012, she has served as a judge for the IBPA's Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Book preview

Bank Shot Requiem

by R. J. Novotney

K. 1

Marlanna chooses cryogenic Morpheus.

Which means Marlanna never sees Mars, misses the glimmering sphere of the wormhole chrononauts have been jumping through for decades. Passes unaware Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus. Wakes to lonely Neptune. There Marlanna floats. A porthole opens Marlanna’s gaze to white wisps of hydrogen and helium, jetting beneath a methane glaze of bright blue. Mozart’s mournful G Minor Quintet spools from Marlanna’s palmtop while she feasts on the spectacle. This kind of space travel isn’t so bad.

Enough mooning at Neptune. Marlanna reviews her mission brief one final time, but even after a long sleep her orders still make no sense.

Here, near Neptune’s orbit, an extraterrestrial artifact appeared six months ago. But what is INASA asking for? A xenobiologist? A linguist? More engineers? No. Of all things they want a time-traveler. Specifically, they want Marlanna Hirsch, the chrononaut who once visited Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

K. 2

Marlanna discovers cryogenic hangovers linger for days. Aches, nausea. She’s relieved to vacate her transit vessel for the marine destroyer ISS Lloyd Austin, which offers her a cabin in a swirling superstructure with artificial gravity, full g. Minutes later she’s escorted into the Captain’s office, also with gravity. Sadly, the nausea comes with her.

No, maybe it’s not a hangover, maybe it’s the panoramic porthole in front of her. A giant latticed tower caroms clockwise past the window every five seconds. Beyond it another superstructure rotates counterclockwise every three seconds. Yes, idiotically she’s timing it. Chrononauts time everything. Beyond these spins a black planet. No, not Neptune. Neptune, she figures, is somewhere behind her. This black thing? The alien artifact. All this spinning defies common sense, defies gravity, defies her stomach, because she keeps reminding herself that she and this office are spinning too. Her reflection in the window doesn’t help—washed out straggly hair and a face sickly pale.

She forestalls her growing nausea by putting the whirling panorama to her back, discovers this captain is some kind of antiquarian bibliomaniac. Out here, in deep space, on a destroyer, this commander has collected four shelves of actual bound books.

Chrononauts love old style books.

What do we have here? Histories—African, Asian. A lexicographical collection of dictionaries in multiple languages. Crazy. Poetry. Philosophy. Cosmology. Physics. Eclectic to the point of eccentric—

The cabin’s hatch swishes open, a woman’s rough voice barks a command, Saskia, the following exchange is classified as Secret. Got that?

In stalks a tall black woman sporting a practical protective hairstyle of tight box braids. An impassive, focused stare. Gray flight suit, unadorned.

Saskia is evidently the captain’s disembodied AI. It answers, Understood, Colonel.

Ah, not Captain, but Colonel.

The Colonel rounds her desk, blocking part of the window. Captain Marlanna Hirsch, chrononaut?

Yes. And you’re Colonel...?

Butler. You’re the one who visited Mozart?

Certainly, this Colonel received Marlanna’s privileged file. Isn’t that what INASA requested?

"I requested it. INASA’s no longer in charge. As to you, I need it straight from your lips. If you’re not the one, there’s no sense in going any further."

Is everything in this conversation confidential?

I’m going to assume you’re not deaf or an imbecile, that it’s the cryogenics. As you just heard, I informed my AI this is secret. Allow me to translate. That’s military code for categorically, indubitably confidential. Colonel Butler sweeps her arm like a boom over her desk. Furthermore, every soul on this ship—well, three ships—is on a strictly need-to-know basis. Your time-travel cabal are all clutched up over which chrononaut visits which historical figure. Acknowledged. But we, the International Marines, are inordinately serious about what sensitive information we share.

Fine. I’m the chrononaut who visited Mozart. Why’s that important? Out here?

Butler flashes a wide, toothy smile, transforming her face from scowl to gregarious. Sits behind her desk. Marlanna doesn’t wait to be asked and sits also. We need an expert on Mozart.

Colonel, I wouldn’t call myself an expert. Not a musicologist or musical historian.

Butler seems to bite down on something. "Hirsch, I’m not your adversary. Please confirm you’ve interacted with the real Mozart."

Yes.

And you speak German? Unaided?

Unaided? By that you mean?

Without a subcutaneous implant.

Is Butler asking this for a valid reason, or does her antiquarian zeal mean she’s also some kind of space-faring Luddite? I can if I have to.

Don’t weasel me, Hirsch. On my ship I tolerate zero equivocation.

Yes.

There you go. Butler gargles a laugh. "Going forward no more hedging. I get the chrononaut incertitude over, well, everything. I know about your ‘Do not Engage the Subject.’ I know you temporal Brahmins do in fact engage your historical subjects. You’re what one of my marines would call crackerjack. We need that jack here."

An icy dread, over the nausea, bleeds up Marlanna’s throat. She swallows something like bile. "Mozart is here?"

The fog clears! Butler horses another laugh, points out the window behind her. Mozart’s in that alien sphere.

Marlanna says nothing.

Butler barrels on. The artifact appears abandoned. Don’t be fooled. Many systems are active. We’ve acquired access but have met a roadblock. The farthest chamber in houses an AI holographic construct. Guarding further advance. The incarnation of the scatological prince of the sublime, Mozart himself.

"Extraterrestrials created this?"

I see where you’re heading. You recall our first interstellar probes launched almost two hundred fifty years ago? The Voyagers. Those craft carried discs with sounds, including two minutes, fifty-five seconds of Mozart.

This Colonel has done her research, or rather is some kind of book-toting polymath, but still jumps to conclusions. Colonel, as I recall there were a lot of other selections on those discs. Why Mozart? Why not Beethoven? Honestly, is a snippet of music going to give aliens enough information to create a whole replica of an actual composer?

No, but we’re guessing it gave them something to latch on to.

Your theory’s pretty slim.

The only theory we’ve got.

Think of another.

"You think of another—after you go inside and interact with it. That’s your mission."

Alright.

I can see the fear on your face like spilled milk on—well, ice. You need more sun, Hirsch. Regardless, don’t worry, you’re not going alone. I respect your institute’s concerns. Your pontificating sophomaniac of a Director condescended me frontwards and backwards about not revealing the identities of time-jumpers who meet specific historical figures. So I’m assigning you a partner. They’re an accomplished astrophysics engineer and an ace pilot. They’ll accompany you into the artifact. I assure you: any intelligence you collect won’t be shared with anyone except your partner and me.

My partner have a name?

Marine Lieutenant Li Dobashi. Butler peers up at the ceiling. Saskia, summon the Lieutenant.

Oh, and Hirsch?

Yes?

Dobashi goes by they/them/their. But as a marine they’ll be too polite to ever tell you.

K. 3

In thirty seconds, Dobashi enters. Or in six rotations of the giant tower behind Butler.

Dobashi salutes. Decidedly slim of frame, either clean-shaven or not growing facial hair. Piercing black eyes, typical Marine crewcut.

At ease, Dobashi. Spare us the usual chin-wagging. This is Captain Marlanna Hirsch from the Chrononautical Institute.

Dobashi takes the other chair, nods a greeting. An actual time-traveler? Dobashi’s voice is tenor, clipped, controlled.

Yes. We call ourselves chrononauts.

Chrononauts? Pleased to meet you and work with you. So whom have you visited?

Sorry, I can’t say.

Dobashi offers a pursed smile. Well, at least Mozart, right? When do we start?

I’m unpacked, assigned a cabin. I’m ready now.

For seven rotations Butler’s remained silent, and it must be her limit. One last word you two. Dobashi, see to it Hirsch doesn’t accidently depressurize herself. Provide support. And if our extraterrestrial guests wake up and become antagonistic, aggressive, or carnivorous, protect her. Otherwise, do anything she says.

Sir?

"Assume her chrononaut rank of Captain is a marine rank."

Sir!

Butler isn’t finished, serves Marlanna a command too: But Hirsch, if the situation degrades, your partner takes over. Understood?

K. 4

The marines on Hanger Deck B seem to understand where Marlanna’s going, and how can they not? The whole reason the Lloyd Austin is out here is the artifact. But there’s nary a question about who Marlanna is or where she’s from. She suffers no small talk, no impediments. Except for the impediments of getting fitted with the correct marine vac suit. Learning how not to suffocate or aspirate in your helmet. How to walk in zero-g with magnetized boots. How to urinate in a suit. How to strap yourself into one of their mini shuttles, so tiny they’re called ‘tin cups.’ Dobashi’s tin cup is the size of an elevator car, docked to the hatch of an airlock.

Squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder next to Dobashi, who pilots them into blackness, Marlanna finds herself closer to vacuum than she cares for. Narrow navigational portholes hang just an arm’s length in front of her.

Lieutenant Dobashi, I’m assuming our comm channel here is private?

Yes. Colonel’s ordered radio silence for any approaches to the artifact.

There’s atmosphere in that artifact?

Yes, breathable.

Contaminants?

Nothing detectable. That airlock we passed through will irradiate us when we return.

That’s comforting.

"The Lloyd Austin has a full lab. We also had the INASA kids analyze samples."

"INASA kids?"

What we marines call them. Because they act like children.

What do you call chrononauts?

Don’t know, most of us have never met one.

That you know of.

If Dobashi has a response, they swallow it.

The Lloyd Austin fills the portholes, so unexpectedly Marlanna lurches against the straps of her seat.

Don’t worry, I’ve piloted tin cups once or twice.

No AI pilot?

Yes, but Colonel’s disabled the AI. We’ve encountered an unusual dampening field emanating from the artifact. Like a planetary electromagnetic field. As you know, AI’s log everything. In a high security environment like this, Colonel dislikes that. Add to that, this dampening field interferes with sophisticated circuitry. So no AI.

A massive black sphere rises from the bottom of the left porthole. This is what Marlanna saw from Butler’s window. The artifact.

Tell me, because the news services haven’t. How or when was this thing discovered?

As Dobashi speaks, Marlanna edges forward against her straps, trying to detect details in the black surface of the artifact. Utterly featureless.

Triton Station on Neptune’s major moon first detected massive gravitational and electromagnetic disruptions. Not unlike the gyrations we see around the wormhole you chrononauts use. That’s when they realized something huge had entered the solar system. The artifact—as you can see—is the size of a small planet. Creating its own gravity well, about ten percent of Earth’s. Diameter of thirty-nine thousand kilometers.

Christ. We’re going to land on it? Do an extravehicular exit?

No EVA. The artifact seems to recognize our approach and it’ll open a bay.

You guys flew right in?

We’re Marines.

Why’d they build this thing so big?

It’s evidently traveled a vast distance. Storage? Fuel? Uncertain. Dobashi leans into their controls, a joystick and an array of old-school readouts. No holo displays? Then Marlanna remembers the dampening field.

Your tin cup been retrofitted?

Yes.

Indeed, Dobashi’s flying them manually, like Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Good Lord.

Marlanna leans back in her seat, focuses on her breathing. The artifact looms ever larger until its obsidian surface fills both portholes. She can’t understand how Dobashi is differentiating anything as the artifact is only visible as an absence of stars. It’s as if they’re going to fly headfirst into an alien hull. Then it happens: Light breaks upon the surface of blackness. A pit yawns open, illuminated with hundreds of starlike points. They descend. The tin cup yaws about until the portholes face a shaft wall. Dobashi cranes their neck, using a video feed that peers up from below to navigate.

Bump. They’ve landed.

Dobashi powers down the tin cup. Turns to her. So a few more things before we walk in.

My God, they’re saving the worst for last.

There’s some things Colonel neglected to emphasize: That dampening field? Inside here it’s like a blanket. None of our devices work. My bet is your chrononaut palmtop won’t function. You’ll have to remember everything, take notes. Here, I’ve 3-D’d some old-fashioned pads and pens. Dobashi opens a compartment, pulls out an actual pad and two pens. Ridiculous.

This is why she asked me if I could speak unaided German.

Yes, that’s been the other challenge. There’s only one person on three ships or Triton that speaks fluent German unaided. Colonel wouldn’t let her in.

Mozart also spoke French and Italian, some English. Smatterings of others. Did the Colonel check for those?

Colonel insisted fluency in Mozart’s mother tongue. And none of them would be knowledgeable about Mozart. And none of them have clearance. Colonel wants a bona fide expert.

Ha! That’s too bad.

K. 5

Wet rain in a forest: that’s the smell of the place.

Vac suits off, Marlanna and Dobashi exit the back hatch of the tin cup in marine flight suits. She carries a satchel with her pad, pens and, yes, her palmtop, which she refuses to leave behind. Dobashi hoists a backpack.

Marlanna considered dragging along an eighteenth-century costume dress, but this isn’t the real Mozart, is it? No, she’ll have to greet him as is.

The same pinpoint lights Marlanna saw above from the tin cup illuminate the base of the shaft. She gazes up, realizes the top is still open to outer space. Or, if it’s closed, its hatch is transparent.

She breathes deep. The fresh sweetness of a forest rain. Her nausea’s gone. Are they welcoming us? Is this the scent of their home world?

There, Dobashi points. An aperture irises open at the base of the shaft. Dobashi advances, she follows.

The aperture descends into a curving ramp, or at least that’s the sensation. Marlanna realizes the gravity she feels is pulling them toward the artifact’s interior, as if this truly were a planet.

The downward ramp glows with an ambience of honeyed light. No discernible sources. Niches along either wall bleed into view. Each niche runs about two and half meters long, a meter high. Sealed, frameless. As the light grows, or as her eyesight adjusts, she realizes the seals are transparent and the niches aren’t empty.

They’re bodies.

She kneels at one, slips out her palmtop. Peels off a glove, presses her palm against its titanium case, but it doesn’t open. It does nothing. Manually she pries open her palmtop, revealing an old-style Qwerty keyboard. But its emitter bar, from which its holographic display should shine, is dead.

Dammit.

Dobashi, standing beside her, says, The dampening field.

Odd.

What’s odd?

You manually flew the tin cup in, yet I’ve got to believe that shuttle has thousands of micro circuits, even without an AI piloting.

You’d be correct.

This dampening field isn’t the nature of this place, per se. It’s intentional and selective.

An astute observation.

It’s a shame. Never, in all my trips, has my palmtop failed. If it’d only work, I could scan this body inside and out.

I guess you chrononauts love your toys.

Better than guns.

Well, in here we’re both down to pens and paper.

Marlanna nods at the body. You think it’s alive?

Here. Our supply sergeant jury-rigged a light with no circuitry. Dobashi clicks a small black cylinder. A cone of white light spills into the glassed niche.

The extraterrestrial lies supine beneath a gossamer-like sheet. Coffee brown flesh gleams hairless, without blemish, so much so as to almost shine. Like porcelain. Wait, not unblemished, it’s tattooed. Or at least that’s what Marlanna guesses. Intricate ribbons of color braid the face, head, throat, shoulders, like rows of sedimental rock. The eyes are shut, but apparently beneath these lashless lids they must be large. The ear, the one she can see, is petaled with a flowery lobe. The nose is narrow, two nostrils like humans. Below the nose...nothing. No mouth. The head appears jawed, with a chin, but nothing.

They have no mouths.

So we’ve noted.

Modest breasts suggest themselves beneath the sheet. Further down the abdomen, also beneath the sheet, some kind of genitalia crowds the groin.

This one appears to carry indications of both genders— Marlanna stops herself, remembering Butler’s comment about Dobashi’s use of pronouns. But she doesn’t know what that really indicates.

Dobashi doesn’t seem to notice, or maybe doesn’t care, says, The INASA scientists, who previously were allowed in, are calling them gynandrous. All of them appear to have both male and female characteristics.

Marlanna changes the subject. They all this tall? This one must be over two meters.

Yes.

Might their home world have less gravity than ours?

A reasonable hypothesis.

Look, you can see— Marlanna pauses an instant, then choses her pronoun. their hand. Five digits. Long digits, but still five just like humans. What are the chances?

That I don’t know.

And look, this tattooing or coloring, on the hands and fingers too.

All of them, to the last one, are tattooed, as you say. It might be actual skin pigmentation.

All of them, you say? How many of these niches are there?

Seven hundred forty-three.

Marlanna stands. That’s a pretty exact number.

INASA manually counted three times.

A prime number. Odd. So they’re not paired up.

Well, we don’t know how they reproduce.

Enough of this. Where is Herr Mozart?

Well, we’re going to have to walk past all seven hundred forty-three.

Marlanna starts hiking down the corkscrew ramp. This many just can’t be dead. Have you figured out what’s powering this artifact?

No.

When Marlanna and Dobashi pass the seven hundred forty-third niche, they do not find Mozart.

K. 6

After the final niche, the corkscrew bottoms out into a spectacle. Marlanna thinks she’s gazing out a window back toward Sol from their Neptunian orbit, then almost as quickly understands that can’t be correct. For every planet of the solar system is clearly visible, proportionally sized. Indeed, the distant pinpoints of Venus and Mercury glow brighter than natural. She approaches, discovering she’s able to walk between Saturn and Jupiter.

It’s a holographic planetarium.

Beyond the solar system awaits Orion’s Belt. She meanders away from the Sun, her home yellow dwarf, into a constellation. What’s this? Another Orion’s Belt? No, she must be mistaken. Just arms of the Milky Way, spirals that go on and on.

A panoply of celestial objects seduces her into a roaming stroll for a good ten minutes. Gorgeous red misted nebulas riddled as if with diamonds, ring nebulas, bubble nebulas, the exploding variegated brilliance of super novas, clouds of infant stars, strands of star corpses, cosmological wisps of dust, whole galaxies, whiteish whorls, now gold, now red. Is this still the Milky Way? Not likely. Star-eating black holes, galactic gas bubbles, debris tendrilled like fog. Distant galaxies? Whole galaxies paired? Both. Now galaxies attenuated like taffy.

The planetarium fades out. She reaches some kind of end, where a few speckled stars float in blackness.

Behind her Dobashi whispers, If only we could scan all this. For a week Colonel had INASA people in here trying to hand-draw sketches. It’s no use.

You think this is more than decorative?

They think it’s a navigational chart of sorts. The aliens’ way of telling us where they’re from.

Marlanna waves her arms about the darkness. If so, they must be from the edge of the known universe, from a galaxy that was created shortly after the Big Bang. That’d be billions of light years from us, right?

A hundred billion, give or take.

So faster-than-light travel?

That’s our best guess. Combined with some form of cryogenic statis. Because a faster-than-light vessel that travels billions of light years at, say, a velocity exponentially faster than light, would still take thousands of years to cross distances so vast.

"This just doesn’t make sense. Why come here?"

The answer’s in that next room.

K. 7

Dobashi clicks on their jury-rigged light, directs it ahead. Floating in blackness stands a wooden door.

Well, that’s certainly out of place.

We thought so too. Making it an irresistible invite.

Marlanna’s guts flip. Through that door, eh?

Yes.

Marlanna’s traveled over four billion kilometers–admittedly not much compared to the aliens–and now, with only two meters to go, regrets coming. Final question: Who else has talked to Mozart?

No one really because of the language barrier. Several INASA scientists tried to interact before Colonel shut it down. She says if this is first contact, we can’t bungle it up. Well, she used several words. Mismanage. Mar. Foozle, which I’d never heard before.

Marlanna sucks in a steadying breath, marches to the door, grabs the handle, pulls. The door opens into light. And in the distance, the music of a fortepiano.  

Marlanna, Dobashi at her shoulder, steps into the sights and smells of an eighteenth-century kitchen: woodsmoke, the sweetness of baked bread, herbs. Rosemary? Basil?

A narrow hearth with a chimney, its embers smoldering beneath a cast iron kettle. Tables hold pots, skillets, stacked silver dishes, bowls, wooden spoons. Baskets.

Marlanna crosses to a door on the right toward the distant music. Into a dining room. Table, chairs, candlesticks, crystal. She pauses at a set of double windows, squares paned in watery glass. Tall three- and four-story residential buildings shoulder a narrow thoroughfare. Domgasse Street, which means this must be one of Wolfgang and Constanze’s apartments in Vienna. A bright blue sky mantles gabled rooftops. What a magnificent illusion. She reminds herself she’s in a gigantic obsidian sphere sharing an orbit with Neptune.

Marlanna follows the music. She knows it’s one of his piano sonatas but isn’t certain which one. The fortepiano, predecessor to the contemporary piano, sounds strange, bright, light without the sonorous quality of the more modern instrument. She takes a doorway through a bedroom. Two poster beds, one for the parents and one for one or two children. Uncertain, Marlanna doesn’t know what year this is supposed to be.

The next room holds a billiards table, an eighteenth century one. Mozart was a billiards fanatic. This style of billiards is odd to modern players, only three balls, two white, one red. Six pockets. Only recently had cue sticks come into fashion, replacing awkward mallets. A tangle of sticks leans against the wall between two sets of windows. In this room, like the two before it, ivory gypsum plaster covers the walls, framed with tall rectangles of narrow molding. The floors, likely oak or walnut, are gloriously lacquered. An upscale place.

Toward the music, through a modest bedroom, probably a servant’s room.

Through a vestibule with an outside door. Then into the room with the fortepiano. Crafted of rich wood, a tad longer than two meters, a meter wide. At the keys plays the maestro himself.

The pianoforte’s cover is up, exposing its soundboard and strings. Handwritten scores cover the music stand, about to spill over onto the keys. When Marlanna saw all this in reality, ten years ago, it solved a great mystery of music: Mozart did indeed scratch out his compositions almost fully realized. Myriad revisions and corrections he carried in his head. Now? An amazing facsimile. Done by aliens. How? Why?

Next to the scores, an ink bottle, quills.

No powdered wig on Mozart, just a tangle of straw hair. He wears a breezy blouse, the cuffs rolled up. She wants to circle around, see him, watch him as he plays; just as she remembers doing a decade ago.

She balks. On a table next to Mozart stands a metronome. This she doesn’t recall. No matter, she steps around to the far end of the fortepiano. When Mozart sees her, his music stumbles to a halt.

He greets her not in German, but French: Mon tres cher amie!

It’s wrong. No, not the French, Mozart spoke that too. It’s his voice: not his raspy, scratchy tenor. His is moderate, almost monotone. And his face. Christ. The heavy lids and bags around the eyes are there, the long nose, puckered lips, dimpled chin, all there. But they’re crudely immobile, no better than the plasticine face of an android.

Marlanna sputters, says nothing.

Mon amie?

Marlanna barks at Dobashi in English, who’s standing behind the Mozart thing: We need to leave.

Marlanna marches back out, yanking Dobashi by the arm. Out the apartment she stomps, while the Mozart thing tosses a farewell, this time in German: I kiss your hand a thousand times!

They exit into the abject darkness of the planetarium, door slammed shut. Dobashi says, Captain, what’s going on?

That’s not Mozart. She points back. That’s some crude simulacrum. You people dragged the wrong expert billions of kilometers out here for the wrong task. Find yourself a xenobiologist. Please tell the Colonel to send me home.

K. 8

Back in the tin cup, after a silent stalk through the expansive constellations and up the corkscrew ramp past seven hundred odd corpses–yes, Marlanna now figures they’re corpses–Dobashi speaks.

Captain, you sure about this? We can still go back.

Question. Why the Hell didn’t you tell me this thing was a half-baked approximation?

I was under orders to keep silent.

With good reason, it seems. Indeed, mysteries abound here. But I’m not the specialist you need. I deal with historical authenticity. There’s none of that here.

Colonel isn’t going to like this.

Too bad.

We’re still under secret orders, with no comms. When we get back, you’ll have to tell her to her face.

Lovely.

K. 9

After a bathroom break and a chance for Marlanna to make certain the alien dampening field didn’t damage her palmtop, she and Dobashi sit in the Colonel’s office. Marlanna can’t keep her eyes off the rotating structures outside Butler’s window. It draws bile up her throat, enough to make her want to spit.

The hatch behind them hisses open and Butler barks as she enters, Well, that was quick. Butler rounds around her desk, sits.

Marlanna doesn’t wait. Colonel, that simulacrum is a crude copy. My area of expertise is actual history. There’s no actual history here.

There’s abundant history here. Inaccuracies notwithstanding, these extraterrestrials have obviously studied our history, have obviously gone to great lengths to replicate it to the best of their abilities. Go back and find out why.

Again, I study history. Real history. Please book me passage back on the next transport.

I will do no such thing. I expect more than an injured sense of entitlement over some so-called historical purity. I expect scientific curiosity and facts.

Facts? I have facts. Marlanna whips out her palmtop, thumps it on Butler’s desk, lays her hand on its petite titanium case. The case butterflies open. Marlanna swipes her finger along a blue bar, which now glows like it should. A holographic display forms over Butler’s desk, revealing a wooden four-sided pyramid about thirty centimeters tall, with a wagging pendulum pointing up.

That a metronome?

Yes. A nineteenth-century one. One of the first ones ever used by a musician. These things go all way back to ancient Greece, but musical ones? Beethoven was the first. Inexplicably, there’s one sitting next to the ersatz Mozart. Two decades too early. These aliens not only jacked up Mozart’s face and voice, but they’ve also messed up their dates. By a good twenty years. Find yourself a xenobiologist. And a decent holographic programmer.

Marlanna snaps shut her palmtop, stands, pivots to the office hatch. It doesn’t open.

Hirsch, the fact you recognized this discrepancy is all the more reason you need to stay.

The aliens botched Mozart, and Marlanna can see she’s, well, foozling this. She pivots back to address Butler’s scowling face: "Colonel, you called in a chrononaut. Honestly, I’m no different than a spy. We snoop. Into history. This isn’t history. Like I’ve said, this job calls for a programming wizard. And a biologist ready to study xenomorphs. If I continue to muck about in there, I’m certainly going to make things worse. Look, I get how big of deal this is, which is precisely why I shouldn’t help. I sincerely with I could, I really do. I can’t."

Were you on a forensics team, Hirsch? Still, not buying it. Chrononauts as spies? I’ve known spies, and you only wish you were. You’re a petulant child. Your puerile squealing is the last thing I need out here. You talk of history? This is history right now, and you apparently want to blow your chance to be part of it. Remove your cowardly, paper-thin, privileged, little girl snivels out of my sight.

K. 10

An ensign informs Marlanna the next transport isn’t for thirteen Earth days. Super. Informs Marlanna she’s confined to her cabin, the mess, and the gym. That night Marlanna can’t sleep. The next day, in the mess, every Marine distances themselves from Marlanna like she’s radioactive. Until Lieutenant Dobashi spots her. They sit, scootching next to her.

The mess hall clinks with tableware, chit-chat, the constant hum that permeates all of the Lloyd Austin. It’s easy for Dobashi to privately whisper, You look like Hell.

Thanks, can’t sleep.

Why’s that?

"The rotating. The constant hum.