Mari smiled. She stared at the bandages on Lucy’s hand. “You should keep that elevated.”
“Yeah, the nurse said that.” She raised her hand and even from outside I could see that blood was already beginning to seep through the gauze — the red spreading out across the white like some living ink blot test.
“Raise your hand if you’re happy.” Mari said. I remembered that this was an ongoing joke between them. Lucy explained it to me once when I asked why Mari said it so often. It was a question one of their teachers asked after they received their grades on a particularly difficult exam.
I watched as Lucy lowered her hand.
Lucy
At my grandmother’s funeral I stared at the woman in the coffin and felt that the worst part of death was how empty your body seemed afterward. It was like you had never been in there at all.
“Are you scared of dying?” I asked Mari.
“I’m not. You don’t fear death when you live forever,” Mari said. Her voice was lower than usual — a thing I had never imagined impossible — and there was none of its normal laughing quality. At eighteen, she already seemed so old. I wondered sometimes what she would be like when she was ninety, but I thought she’d probably always be the same.
“No, really, are you?”
“Are you, Lucy?”
I thought about it, the sudden not knowing that must come with death. “I think so.”
“Don’t be. Imagine death as a door. We’re in one room for our entire lives, and there is this door on the wall. We’re not allowed to peek behind it, so we think about it constantly. But it’s really just a door. It opens. It closes. It takes us to another room.”
“But what if we don’t like the next room?”
“Then there’s probably another door,” Mari said and almost smiled at me.
Mari
The prognosis was that Lucy wouldn’t live. Her doctor seemed genuinely shocked at the ferocity of the illness.
I could feel it moving inside her body. It felt like the disease had tiny paws encrusted with ice. From miles and miles away, I could feel it in her. Always that link between us.
I could hear her thinking as I came to her. Her thoughts were clearer then they had ever been to me.
She lay in the hospital bed and waited for death. Her life had been a string of things that she hadn’t gotten quite right. She wondered what it would be like if she could start over. Would she make the same mistakes in an endless repetitive loop like a glitch in a computer game?
I opened the door to her room. She looked up. I walked in. Lucy looked older than ever before. She had always seemed so perpetually young to me, but no human stays that way forever.
“Mari, how did you know I was here?”
“I always know where to find you.” I sat down in a chair by the bed. This was the first time she had ever seen me with my hair down, let loose from its bun and coiled over my shoulders.
“I never knew how long your hair was.” Lucy said. She stared at my hair as if it seemed to go on forever, as if it were growing before her eyes.
“I’ve never cut it,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like my next visitor will be the Grim Reaper.” Lucy tried to grin. She couldn’t.
I glanced at the door and shook my head. “I doubt that.”
“What’s it like to live forever?” Lucy asked. She smiled as if she still thought of it as a long-running joke between us.
I sighed, unsure how to say it so she would understand instantly. “It’s like being on the bus for a very long time, and everyone keeps getting off at their stops but yours never comes up. A long book helps, but not forever.”
“That sounds kind of boring, actually.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes the scenery is beautiful.”
“Mari, I think I could’ve done better.”
I stared at her for a moment. I had never before so wanted to hug a person.
“If you could, Lucy, would you want to live forever?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Lucy always hated how she could never answer a question directly. “But, I’m not sure about death, either.”
“Then how about just living?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
Lucy nodded. She closed her eyes. I touched her shoulders softly, as if I were about to pick up a newborn child. And the years fell backward until Lucy was free of them.
~~~~~
~~~~~
Chloe N. Clark is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing & Environment. Her work has appeared such places as Booth, Menacing Hedge, Bookanista, and more. For her rants on cake, magicians, Supernatural, and more, follow her on Twitter.
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Against the Dying of the Light
by Cyn Bermudez; published September 30, 2014
Esmy attached a second arm to the latest construct, a titanium coil wrapped in a thick synthetic skin. She pierced the skin impatiently with jagged stitches sewn like a lopsided smile. The needle penetrated with ease, and she hoped this time the sutures wouldn’t rip before The Wakening.
The variable sun sat low in the sky. A deep red light poured in through the small rectangular window at the top of the hub — a river of blood and dust that sparkled in its rusted age. The light reflected off the metal band that wrapped around the neck of the construct, its reflection cut by the shadows that moved along the band like dark splinters on zipper teeth. She called them humans, though the constructs needed more than the preservation modules could provide, and she needed to conserve parts. Compromises needed to be made.
“Almost finished, Solly,” Esmy said. She liked the name Solly, even on the nine-hundredth incarnation of its use. “Simple Solly.” Esmy sang as she mounted the lips.
The eyes were an opaque patchwork of cornea and circuits and wires; faux lashes fluttered around the ruby red pupils of stone and glass; they shone like fire in the night, rivaling the crimson glow of the ancient sun. Esmy prepared afternoon tea as she decided on whether hair was an attribute important enough to have. She strived where she could for authenticity.
“Well, it’s not like the theory was widely accepted, Solly.” She tossed strings of twisted fiber to the side. The whistle of the teapot grew louder, roaring as if answering the dry heat that banged against the hub walls. Esmy loved to make tea, though she didn’t drink any. Dried green leaves swirled in hot liquid while vapors of salty-sweet iron and tar escaped into the air, leaves sinking in a whirlpool to the bottom. Esmy bent over, her long metal torso arched high above the kettle, her hand waving to scatter and lift the steam to her nose, the warmth enveloping her spindly fingers.
Esmy propped the construct up; its frame was crooked, one leg longer than the other. Corkscrew fingers scraped along the table.
“There,” she said. “Now you can see.” Esmy opened up the hub enclosure, curved doors that covered windows on the ceiling that overlooked a barren sky, no longer matted by atmosphere. Its firmament was unshielded and angry, matching the parched surface below that cracked and crumbled. “You should have seen it, Solly, the Great Blue in its time. At least I think it was blue.” Esmy rested her chin in the palm of her hand, her fingertips tapped dreamily on the top of her head as they nestled between rooted tendrils of gold and silver.
Esmy had seen a bird once. A large black bird whose eyes were curved around its face like a string of onyx; its black feathers bent light in an oily rainbow reflection. The bird broke through a layer of clouds as it soared through the sky. Esmy had etched the image of the glorious black bird in the partitions of her memory she reserved for such things. Though the memory of the sky and the bird’s fate had eroded away.
She fumbled over a plastic corrugated hose, her three fingers juggling to catch it. She placed the hose into a long, narrow aperture in Solly’s back. Esmy listened with a stethoscope, the ear tips dangled from her neck, the bell rested on the back of Solly’s hand.
“E
verything sounds great,” Esmy said. Solly’s chest wobbled, collapsing and expanding as the air pump hissed. “It’s time.”
The sun quaked in the distance. Lights flickered within the hub as parts of ceiling fell to the ground. Esmy hummed. She swept through the building making her preparations, checking the pressure and atmosphere within the hub walls, placing the new construct with the others in a circular room adjacent to Esmy’s lab. Tiered seats nearly reached the vaulted ceiling.
The Wakening began.
Esmy pushed buttons and flipped switches. A chorus of recorded sounds circulated around the room — sounds of woodwind and brass, of percussion and laughter. An ocean of chatter, ghostly and fragmented, echoed in the halls. The Sollys rattled. But just as it started, the celebration waned, and Esmy found herself once again in the quiet aftermath of The Wakening.
In the solitude of her lab, Esmy rummaged for parts to begin again. She hummed her song, “Simple Solly,” when movement caught her attention. One of the earlier constructs wiggled its way toward her, its gangly body twisting as it moved.
“What am I?” The construct reached out for Esmy, its dilapidated hand a mess of metal and faux skin.
“You are Solly.”
Solly fell forward into Esmy’s arms. The curvature of the room wove around them, a parody of the living — fabricated plant life strewn across the walls, models of the human machine shaped in mockery of its evolution. Esmy lifted Solly to her feet.
“Who are you?”
“I am Esmy. Would you like some tea?” She held her hand out, gesturing to the teapot, while Solly tottered around the room — a child-beast. “I preserve. I protect. I awaken.” Esmy answered as if Solly had asked the question.
“Do you understand what’s happening, Esmy?” Memory files pre-programmed to load began slowly permeating Solly’s cybernetic brain.
“I preserve. I protect. I awake—”
“There’s nothing left to preserve.” Solly shifted Esmy’s gaze toward the red sun, to the lonely giant whose last breaths remain long into the night, far beyond the age of humankind. Esmy looked up above the sun to the arid sky and sighed.
“The Great Blue. You should’ve seen it in its time, Solly.” A black bird soared through Esmy’s memory — she knew nothing of the sun and its fuel, of hydrogen depleting in its core, fusing, instead, furiously in its outer layers. “How do you take your tea?” Esmy placed a cup in front of Solly.
Solly trembled quietly, pushing the teacup away.
“Memories of water and sky, of traversing the stars ... names and faces and things of my long life — they hold no deeper meaning for me.”
“Did your memory files not fully load?”
“These eyes have not seen the sun, not really, not when it adorned the world in its youth instead of this red monstrosity raging in its old age. I haven’t truly seen the sky when it was blue or when the Earth flowed with oceans and life.”
“You should have seen it in its time, the Great—”
“Why did you do this, Esmy? Why did you create me ... only for me to be alone here at the end?”
“Solly, you’re not alone. You have kin.” Esmy pointed her long metal finger toward the room that held the other Sollys, unanimated and empty of life, hundreds upon hundreds of Sollys crafted from parts of the station and scraps of bio-materials and cybernetics left behind in the preservation modules.
“We’re friends,” Solly said. “I remember you now. I made you.” Solly reached up and put her hand on Esmy’s elbow, jagged metal piercing her artificial skin. Her mouth stretched upward into an uneven smile.
“Solly?” Esmy’s eyes sparkled with recognition, and her mouth curved, matching her maker’s. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Solly’s balance wavered. She tumbled forward, her arms haphazardly out to the side, pumping up and down as she tried to stand straight. Esmy grabbed Solly under her arms and dragged her to the assembly table.
“I want to live, Esmy.” Solly’s eyes fluttered, her breathing slowed, her light dimmed.
“Solly?” Esmy inspected Solly’s body. She pumped her chest, hooked and unhooked devices, replaced parts of heart and cranium, of vestigial kidneys and dross.
The room fell silent. Esmy stood over Solly, pink fluid dripping from her fingers. She stared at down Solly’s form, which mirrored her own — head bowed, body curved. She stayed unmoving, still like the movement of the Earth, until the tea she had poured hardened in its cup, black layers caked into the porcelain interior. Then quietly, she cleared the construct from the table, placing Solly with her kin.
~~~~~
Esmy filled the kettle with water and placed it on the stovetop before moving to the assembly table. She reached into her box of scraps and started on a new construct, first attaching a makeshift spine to a rib cage fashioned out of small drainage pipes. She sewed on the limbs — legs too long for the torso, arms that swung loosely, knuckles that touched the ground. She poked her finger with a needle, pinpoint pressure radiated outwardly. The sutures that held the construct together ripped near one of the arms, baring a shoulder of alloy and wires and fleshy innards, muscles littered with golden spokes.
“Simple Solly,” Esmy sang. She hummed. The teapot whistled, and the ground shook. The variable sun sat low in the sky, a large red star that towered over the horizon, kingly in its girth and age, its red heart raging.
~~~~~
~~~~~
Cyn Bermudez is a contemporary and speculative fiction author. Her work is published or forthcoming in Vines Literary Journal, The Red Line, The Milo Review, and Hemingway's Playpen. She is also the editor-in-chief of The Riding Light Review. Cyn graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a degree in Physics. She is an avid consumer of science fiction and fantasy, an astronomy nerd, and comic con enthusiast. Her bucket list goals include tree camping in Germany.
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About Fiction Vortex
Fiction Vortex, let’s see …
A fiction vortex is a tornado of stories that pick you up and hurl you through a barn to find enlightenment on the other side. It’s a whirlpool of fascinating tales so compelling that they suck you in, drag you down to the bottom of your mind, and drown you with incessant waves of glorious imagery and believable characters.
Nope.
A fiction vortex is an online speculative fiction magazine focused on publishing great science fiction and fantasy, and is run by incredibly attractive and intelligent people with great taste in literature and formidable writing prowess.
Not that either. But we’re getting closer.
Founded in the 277th year of the Takolatchni Dynasty, Fiction Vortex set out to encourage people to write and publish great speculative fiction. It sprang fully formed from the elbow of TWOS, retaining none of TWOS’s form but most of its spirit. And the patron god of writers, the insecure, the depressed, and the mentally ill regarded Fiction Vortex in his magic mirror of self-loathing and declared it good, insofar as something that gives writer’s undue hope can be declared good. Thereafter, he charged the Rear Admiral of the Galactic 5th Fleet to defend Fiction Vortex down to the last robot warrior.
Now we’re talking.
Take your pick. We don’t care how you characterize us or the site.
Fiction Vortex focuses on publishing speculative fiction. That means science fiction and fantasy (with a light smattering of horror and a few other subgenres), be it light, heavy, deep, flighty, spaceflighty, cerebral, visceral, epic, or mundane. But mundane in a my-local-gas-station-has-elf-mechanics-but-it’s-not-really-a-big-deal-around-here kind of way. Got it?
Basically, we want imaginative stories that are well written, but not full of supercilious floridity.
There’s a long-standing belief that science fiction and fantasy stories aren’t as good as purely literary fare. We want you to prove that mindset wrong (not just wrong, but a steaming pile of griffin dung wrong) with every story we publish. It’s alm
ost like we’re saying, "I do not bite my thumb at you, literary snobs, but I do bite my thumb," but in a completely polite and non-confrontational way.
We've got more great stories online, with a new story twice a week. Visit our website FictionVortex.com, follow us on Twitter: @FictionVortex, and like us on Facebook: FictionVortex.
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