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The Plague of Plagues Incident
by Jeremiah Tolbert
In the early years, the passengers of the generation starship Open Waters had nothing but time on their hands. The ships systems were self-sufficient and fully functional. Traveling at two percent the speed of light, they were not arriving at their destination any time soon. The complete tools and knowledge of mankind were at their disposal, as well as all the works of art. Every film, every album, and every book had been uploaded to the ship’s network. But those things had no meaning or relevance for those born on the ship. Perhaps it was inevitable that they would make their own entertainment. The Designers had failed to take into account just how dangerous boredom could be.
It began with the Gen-4 in their biotech class. They were assigned the task of creating the genome of custom bacteria. They did their homework, but something about the work sparked a sadistic streak of creativity in some. Those children spent their free time making their creations fight one another for dominance of a Petri dish. Gen-2 and Gen-3 turned a blind eye to the games. Then one of the more precocious children discovered retroviruses and the plague fights began.
The viruses were impressively creative but mostly harmless. One plague turned girls, and only girls, bright pink. Another caused the infected to lose all their hair. One particularly popular virus mimicked the effects of Tourettes Syndrome. Each day, something new popped up in the ship’s populace and spread from family clade to family clade. Gen-4 found the plagues hilarious. The bald, sometimes pink, and uncontrollably swearing adults failed to see the humor in the outbreaks.
Gen-2 launched a crackdown. Sequencers were locked up. The genetics database was password protected and access only given to Gen-2 and Gen-3 adults. Agar became a controlled substance, harder to find than a bottle of whiskey from the ship’s stills. Possession of a petri dish was punishable by four weeks hard labor in the fertilizer plant.
The ship’s medical team created vaccines against the most embarrassing infections, and with time, the plague fights were forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until curious Gen-12 children found mentions of the debacle in the archives and decided to start their own plague fights. This time, things were not nearly so harmless…
--From Open Waters: A History of the Grand Failure by Mark Claude Tobin Speers-Grubin IX.
Ghost Writer
by Jeremiah Tolbert
A late 20s Arts & Crafts bungalow sits on the corner in a disused neighborhood, its yard overrun with weeds. The shingled roof sags in the middle and the windows are boarded up with plywood. The porch stretches wide like a smile with missing teeth.
They already tell stories about this place. It is a perfect canvas on which to work your craft.
You break in through a basement window to do your work. The beams are exposed here, and your ink seeps deep into the grain of the wood. You write the ghost's story from north to south, using each crosswise beam as your carriage return. You write:
Susan Beech was an old maid who went mad and strangled neighborhood children in her attic. She lured them into her home with the promise of cookies and sweets. The neighborhood caught on to Susan's hobby and murdered her in the attic among the bones of her victims.
The backstory is set simply, and the plaster walls shiver with anticipation. Now, the postscript, so to speak.
The ghost is dowdy, cold, white, with long bony fingers that make frost on glass and chill the spines of the young with an invisible touch. Her doors open at midnight and the smell of fresh baked goods beckon to the late night passerby. The scent comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. When a passerby steps through the threshold, the doors close, and the ghost does her dark work. Hair whitens, hands tremble, evermore.
The ghost is a variation on a theme, the woman driven mad by a lack of love. All ghost writers have a theme, and this is yours. Write what you know, they say.
The pain fades with each haunting story until one day when the hurt is all but gone, you will write yourself into the hard oak frame of an ancient Colonial. You will lay down beneath the foundation in the sandy clay and write no more. Your bones will rest. Your words will wander the rooms above. The only afterlife is the one we write for ourselves.
Fishermen
by Jeremiah Tolbert
My father wakes me before he has stoked the fire. I pull on my clothes as quickly as I can, then my boots and helmet. While my father checks the line and tackle, I put a log under the chimney and stir the coals. I have a minute or two to warm my hands before he coughs to me. I put on my gloves.
Today, we go fishing.
We walk the snaking path down the mountainside. The rising sun glints off the rapids below, dazzling me, and I nearly trip. My father steadies me with a bear paw of a hand. I feel embarrassed.
We reach the rocky banks, out of breath. We do not speak. We can barely hear our voices over water raging against the rocks. Our breath makes white clouds. I buckle my helmet and cinch my gloves tighter.
The sun rises another hand’s width into the sky before we begin. My father weaves the line through my harness, knots it. I pull away as hard as I can. His knot holds. I look out at the fast-moving water as he feeds the rope through the pulleys that hang from the pines. I plan my steps.
He gives me a nod, and I walk into the river. The cold shocks me. It numbs first my short legs, my scrotum, then my chest. My father feeds out more line. The current sweeps me from my feet, and I play out into the deep middle. I pray we don’t wait long for a bite.
Minutes pass. I dimly feel hands grasp my leg, and then I feel as warm as if I am sitting by the largest fire I can build. I shout wordlessly, and my father begins to haul on the rope. The hands walk up my leg. Thin arms wrap around my waist. We’ve hooked our catch deeply. She fights the line, but my father is stronger.
I breach the water onto the bank. The mother clings to me still. I examine the catch. She is beautiful. Sleek black hair, long graceful limbs, and cherry red lips.
“Can’t we keep her?” I ask, shouting, as I always ask.
“Ah, this one will fetch far too much at market,” my father says. As he always says. He begins to pry open her fingers, and the warmth fades. I shiver as my father dresses the mother in a simple robe and binds her to the leading line.
He shouts, “Ready?” I am already walking back into the water. Maybe he will let us keep next one.
A Lamu Story
by Jeremiah Tolbert
Once, in Lamu, a small island off the coast of Kenya, I stopped for lunch in a small restaurant near the center of the island. The place was empty, except for a stern looking Islamic man with a grey-streaked beard who I took to be the proprietor. I took a seat, and he joined me in at my table and smiled. “I would like to tell you a story,” he said.
“That would be nice, thank you,” I said. It is not often that strangers approach you and offer such a thing. I was curious.
“When I was a boy, I traveled to a neighboring island as part of a football team. We sailed in three dhows down the coast, for three days. It was a big deal then, to go so far from home. I had never left our island before.”
“On the second night, we beached our boats on a tiny island, not much bigger than my shop, and built a campfire from driftwood. We slept under the stars, and talked about the victory we were sure to have when we arrived the next day.”
“I was the last one awake. The ocean was calm, so when I heard splashing, I knew it wasn’t just waves. I searched for the sound. In the starlight, I could just make out the shape of some thing, large as a man, heaving itself out of the water and onto the beach.”
‘Its shape was like no shape I’ve ever seen. It had eyes in places where eyes should not be. And the breeze brought its smell to me; like a rotting corpse. Yet it moved, like a living thing, towards our camp.”
‘I could not scream, or shout at the sight of it. It paralyzed me. Do you know what happened next?” He smiled at me again, but this time, the smile did not look friendly at all.
“What are you doing here again?” suddenly shouted a young man, beardless, from the door of the kitchen. Before I could utter a word, the old man was up from the table and darting out into the hot street, laughing madly. The young man apologized to me for taking so long in the kitchen, and asked what I would like to have. I had forgotten to read the menu.
“Who was he?” I asked.
“A mad man,” was all he would say on the subject. “A very sick person.” He pretended not to understand any of my further questions. I searched the island for the remainder of my stay, looking for the old man. I needed to hear how his story ended. I never found him. I was left to imagine how such a strange story would end. What troubles me is, have I imagined something worse, or less so, than the truth?
We Can Forget It For You
by Jeremiah Tolbert
My father came home from the war with a hole in his head, but not the kind that you can see. After his four years of touring, he opted for a wipe. There’s a big blank space where memories of the war should be.
“I knew guys who didn’t take a wipe. Half of them killed themselves. The rest are screwed up in ways you can’t imagine. Me, I can sleep at night. I sleep just fine,” he said often. He talked about his wipe every couple of days like that. I wasn’t sure how much of it was true, because of the crying.
One night, I heard a sound coming from his room. It sounded like crying, sobbing. I had never heard an adult make that sound. I tried to open the door, but it was locked as always. I asked my father about it at breakfast. He stared at me and then said quietly that he didn’t remember anything about it. Then he told me to get ready for school.
I think it was the crying that drove Mom away.
I worry that the hole in his head is growing. He’s already forgotten Mom. She writes me sometimes, but he never asks about her. She’s fallen into the hole, just like those four years.
Some day, will I fall into the hole too?
Paranormal Kansas: The Cretaceous Ghosts
by Jeremiah Tolbert
Sixty-five million years ago, Kansas was at the bottom of a vast sea known as the Western Interior Seaway, which stretched north to south across the entire northern continent. It was a shallow sea, at most little more than two thousand feet deep. But this sea was filled with dangerous beasts--from the massive sharks, to the long-necked pleisosaurs, to the most deadly of sea predators: the mosasaurs. It is the mosasaurs whose spirits do not rest peacefully, and can be seen in the right conditions.
Start your search in the wheat fields out West, where the fence posts are cut from limestone. Near Hays is always a good bet. Camp out under a full moon, and you can sometimes see their sinuous forms cutting through the air as if they were back in the calm and placid waters of that long-gone ocean. Their jaws stretch and snap at apparitions of cuttlefish. Even in death, they are pure killing instinct.
Should one spot you with its dinner-plate-sized eyes, you will run. Your own instincts will take over, and you will run from this creature that is like a crocodile from hell, thirty feet long and faster than sharks, faster than any predator that ever killed in the water.
You will be too slow. Perhaps you will stumble and fall to the ground. In any case, the mosasaur's ghost will snap its jaws around you. All you will feel is a cold mist, a shiver. And then the spirit will be gone. You might doubt that anything has happened at all. But you'll remember the experience for the rest of your life. And you might want to make plans. Be sure that when you die, you are as far away from Kansas as you can get.
Why Duos are Better than Monos
by Jeremiah Tolbert
By Jimmy Clark Bragg
4th Period Composition
Duos are better than monos for many reasons. First, duos can do more things at the same time. This is called multitasking. Monos can do two or maybe three things at the same time, but only with two hands and eyes. Duos can do twice as much as that because they have two whole bodies.
Duos have redundancy. If something happens to a mono's body, and they die, they are dead for good. Duos can lose one half of themselves and still live. They become a mono then, which is sad, but it is better than being dead.
Duos can remember twice as much as a mono. This is useful for geography tests, because duos can memorize and study twice as fast as monos. Duos are smarter than monos.
There are some bad things about being a duo. Duos have to buy twice as many clothes and twice as much food. It costs twice as much to go to the cinema. It can be very expensive to be a duo.
It is against the law for grown-up duos to have more than one job, so it can be hard to pay for the extra food and clothes. To make enough money, duos sometimes have to take dangerous jobs in space.
Worst of all, it is not acceptable for duos marry or date monos, no matter how much a duo boy likes a mono girl. I don't know why this is true, but my mother says so.
In conclusion, there are some downsides to being a duo, but the advantages outweigh them. I would not want to be a mono for all the money in the world, but I might if it meant I could take Missy Callahan to the movies. She could sit between me and hold my hands. But that doesn't matter too much. Some day, I will meet a duo girl and we can go to the movies while we do our homework at the same time. That would be even better.
Paranormal Kansas: Garden of Eden
by Jeremiah Tolbert
In 1905, a retired Civil War veteran named Samuel Dinsmoor began to build a sculpture garden out of concrete in Lucas, Kansas. Incorporating both religious and political motifs, his labors continued until his death in 1933, at which point his body was prepared and placed inside of a glass-sided coffin within a limestone mausoleum on the garden grounds. Today, thousands of tourists visit the gardens each year, ending their trip with a viewing of it's creator's corpse, which even 74 years after death, remains remarkably well preserved. It was this preservation that first drew my suspicions.
Few locals visit the garden, and even fewer tourists return more than once to view the monochrome spectacle. This accounts for why few have noticed that construction within the sculpture garden continues. New pieces representing Lot and his wife have appeared in the northwest corner within the last year, fashioned in Dinsmoor's characteristically crude style. The non-profit group responsible for the upkeep of the site claims they are the product of local pranksters, but if that were so, would they not remove them? They have thus far refused to answer any further questions on the matter, and I suspect they have blocked my email address, as so many do when my lines of query draw close to the truth!
Twice, I snuck within Dinsmoor's crypt to take samples only to find his body missing. And I have heard the rumble of a cement mixer outside, somewhere among the statues, but always the sound vanishes if I approach.
The third and final time I attempted to sneak within the garden, I climbed over a fence at the perimeter. Arriving within, I felt a fear that I could not explain. I glanced up and saw the silhouette of a thin figure standing among the statues built atop a concrete tree, a figure that had not been there in the day. It was as motionless as the sculptures, but I could feel it watching me. I departed with haste, and I have never returned, not even in the day. When I pass the gardens occasionally on business, the statues seem to gaze out at me in hostility. I leave the gardens' mystery for some other researcher to uncover.
Paranormal Sites of Kansas: The Big Well & Meteorite
by Jeremiah Tolbert
It is no coincidence that the world's largest hand-dug well and one of the world's largest pallasite meteorites are both found in Greensburg, Kansas. And it is no coincidence that a recent tornado flattened the prairie town and everything within it.
The official stories of these two artifacts do not intertwine. But a town of the size of Greensburg, Kansas had no need for a 109 foot deep, 32 foot wide well. The hole's use as a well is an old cover-up, as is the story of a Hutchison man locating the meteorite in the 1900s with a primitive metal detector.
Local stories tell that the simple farmers and ranchers of Greensburg found themselves compelled to dig the well for no reason that any could speak of in the spring of 1887. They dug for days on end, in shifts, each man and woman confused as the other. Only the children were spared from the compulsion. After 90 feet, they discovered the stone, which weighed over 1,000 pounds. My source, the great-grandaughter of one of the well's architects, claims, that as soon as the townspeople touched the stone, it floated into the air like a balloon, and the diggers were able to gently guide it up the shaft and into the light of the moon. Once it arrived at the surface, its weight and mass returned just as the compulsion to dig disappeared.
The meteorite remained undisturbed, and the real story of its discovery mostly forgotten, until 2006, when the largest tornado to strike Kansas in 30 years touched down within Greensburg, destroying thousands of homes. The town is only just beginning to rebuild. And while you can still see a meteorite on display at the Big Well, it is not the meteorite from before. Local officials have replaced it with a fake made from plaster; after the twister, the original meteorite was never found.
My Cell Phone is a Slut
by Jeremiah Tolbert
Seriously, my phone screws anything its ports are compatible with, and it's only a week old, so it's compatible with everything. It's constantly skittering off to copulate with other consumer gadgets, which is annoying, because I've been waiting for this girl to call that I met at a skin-PAN party a few days ago. She had the most complete collection of Dr. Who episodes in her files I have ever seen--even the reconstructed episodes with the original audio and stills from production. I dropped my vCard, and I know she acked it. I'm afraid that while my phone is humping the cappuchino machine, it gets poor reception, and my voice mail has iterated out pretty far recently and it asks for instructions in Esperanto right now. My Esperanto isn't very good. I've tethered it to my PAN for now, but that just pisses it off and I'm afraid it might start dropping calls on purpose.
I mean, I understand the whole principle of evolutionary processes in iterative product design, and the eggs that the phone lays usually net me enough credit to pay my carrier bills, but I think there's something wrong with this one. Nobody else I know has a phone that screws so much. I tried calling technical support yesterday, but all I got was a calm voice of a woman telling me that the problem that I was calling about had already been diagnosed and a hotfix was being deployed promptly. There's something a little unsettling about technical support that knows what you're calling about before you even dial the number.
#
Now my phone seems a little depressed, and I'm wondering if I should have made that call after all. The touch display doesn't seem as bright, and the ring tones that normally match my mood towards the caller are all break-up songs from the 80s that I barely even recognize. I promise the phone that I'll let it off its tether at the next skin-PAN party, and that seems to cheer it up a little bit, but it's still not the same. I think I kind of miss my slutty phone. So I call technical support again. All I get is an error message, saying that my problem can't be diagnosed, in a tone of voice that implies that I don't really have a problem, and then it gives me the URL for a dating site I haven't tried yet. I use my phone to upload a profile to the site, and I wonder if maybe I shouldn't just set this phone free and upgrade to something from the next hatch.
Okay, so maybe not. This phone is black, and that color isn't trending well lately, so my chances of getting a new one in the color I like is pretty slim. I'll wait a couple more days and see if black comes back. It's usually popular on Wednesdays.
Summer Dare
by Jeremiah Tolbert
You wait in the bushes while the cicadas sing all around you, and you wait so long that the fireflies begin their lazy dance above the meadow weeds. You wait until the stars come out and the moon rises and the coyotes howl on the hill.
You wait because your friends swore that a ghost walks through this meadow on warm summer nights just like this one, and you called them liars, and they dared you to watch and see. You won't be called a coward. You're the son of a soldier fighting the Communists. You're not afraid of ghosts, or anything else, except, well... maybe you're just a little scared that your Dad won't come home, but you wouldn't admit that to anyone. A year ago, and the idea would have never crossed your mind, because you believed your father was invincible, as all young boys do. But you've watched the news. You have seen the flag-covered coffins. And now you're not so sure.
Now you have waited so long that that the whippoorwills cry, and the bushes have become slick and wet. You're cold, and that is why you shiver. Not because you are afraid. Most certainly not. Oh, the lies young boys tell themselves.
To me, you look like a little baby rabbit I found once, huddled in a hollow of leaves and grass. You shudder now and your eyes roll in all directions. Is it because you can sense me drawing near you? Or is it just your imagination?
I won't stroll through the meadow tonight. I won't moan the name of my lost beloved or scream my death rattle. It is my singular purpose now, to deal with your sort. But I can see that were I to use any of my usual tricks, they would only comfort you, little rabbit. And I am not in the business of providing comfort.
You do not fall asleep like the others. You stay watchful until the sun begins to rise, and then you head home. You have earned a badge of courage among your friends, and I do resent that just a little, but you have earned it. Faced your own fears, if not vanquished them. I fade, unsatisfied, but knowing that your seeming success will only embolden others, and they will not be so complex. The thought provides the tiniest bit of warmth in my cold existence.
Regarding Moth Pixies and Browncaps
by Jeremiah Tolbert
I returned to the small forrest of brown caps after a week of working within my laboratory to discover that a family of moth pixies had made homes of the mushrooms--or at least, had tasked some other tiny beast to make homes out of it for them. Moth pixies, according to my field guides, are noxious pests that delight in uprooting gardens and spreading aphids (which they eat, but apparently in not very large quantities). The addition of chimneys to their homes was a proper shock--it is not in the published literature that moth pixies can wield fire! The discovery immediately set my mind racing.
I collected one of the browncap homes for dissection, much to their consernation, and I received a tiny bite for my trouble. The bite is healing very badly, despite being doused in poultices of my own creation. I'm not sure it was worth my trouble. The chimneys serve no function and are not connected to the inner dwelling. They are decorative in nature only. My theory is that they construct them in a mimicry of the rows of brownstones that line the streets just outside the Park. Despite folklore, this variety at least are far from intelligent creatures, I believe. Their intelligence seems more akin to that of a parrot, if parrots were so gleefully malicious.
There are such wonderful discoveries here. My heart runs wild imaging what more lies in wait for me out there in the brambles.
Frag Satan!
by Jeremiah Tolbert
"Satan, I summon you for a pwning!" I shouted, completing the incantation from within my circle of USB cables and hubs. There was a flash of green light, and then a sound like all the air was being sucked out of the LAN party.
"You dare challenge me?" Satan roared. He had a voice like, what if James Earl Jones and Tom Waits made a baby, but he looked about 15 years old, covered in acne with a purple Mohawk so sharp it was cutting my eyes from across the room. He strolled angrily to our table and sat down, taking a computer out of a messenger bag slung over his shoulder.
No cloven feet, no horns, no tail, but his sweet-ass laptop had a red sticker on it that said PITCHFORK in a devilish font. It emitted a blue glow and throbbed gently like a living thing. Ahh--my prize. I had to have it.
G.R., my best friend and clanmate, fell out of his ergonomic chair and onto his ass when Satan appeared. I continued with my challenge terms as the ritual required.
"One round of Counter-Strike. My soul against your computer," I said.
Satan drew a cat-5e cable out a pocket to Hell in thin air. It made a sound like a thousand souls screaming for all eternity, but they shut up when he plugged into our hub. "Gamers are always so fucking cocky," he said. "You're on."
Five sweaty minutes later, I put a bullet through Satan's avatar's head. He vanished in a cloud of acrid smoke, wailing and gnashing his teeth, but leaving the laptop behind.
"Dude,' said G.R. "I can't believe you just used wall haxx against Satan."
I sniffed. "Not my fault he's a total noob. I'm going to Hell in the end anyway, so I might as well have a totally sweet laptop until then."
Dude," G.R. said, clearly impressed. "What's that summoning spell again?"
First Time
by Jeremiah Tolbert
So I met this girl at a "meatspace" party the summer between high school and college. I was hanging out with a lot of BBS people back then, before the Internet. And I asked everyone at the party, but no one knew what her screen name was, and they got a little nervous when I brought it up, which only made me more interested. I spent the night watching her across the room. Some time after midnight, she walked out onto a balcony just off the main room where my fellow nerds were arguing about the X-Files. I followed her.
"What's the weirdest thing you have ever seen?" she turned and asked me before I could figure out what I wanted to say. She lit a Marlboro with a cheap Bic lighter, and the end glowed like the moon on fire.
I paused for a moment before answering. "I saw a ghost of a jogger on the Fourth of July, running in the road. I could see through him and everything. You?"
"Flying saucers practicing their landing on a hillside in Arkansas. They darted up into the clouds sometimes, and then floated back down like a feather. I was bored after an hour."
I laughed. "I know what you mean. It like, when you see things that lie outside of the realm of the normal, you aren't aware, in the moment, just how unusual they are. And then you spend a lot of time trying to come up with explanations that put the event squarely inside normal."
"Lovecraft thought those kinds of things would drive people mad, but I think that human brains are too elastic for that," she said. When she took a drag from the cigarette, her face lit up. Her eyes were green.
"Is that why I am not gibbering right now?" I asked.
"You mean, because of my tentacles?"
I shrugged. I hadn't meant to draw attention to them directly, but they were kind of hard not to notice.
"Beats me," she said. She paused, and took a long drag off of her cigarette. "You want to make out?"
"Sure."
So that's how I lost my virginity. I have a suspicion that if I had answered her opening question with "you," something much worse would have happened to me.
A Sandwich Shop in Chicago, 1 AM
by Jeremiah Tolbert
The door of the sandwich shop blew open in the harsh Chicago wind. Something darted, low to the floor, through the gap and inside. James couldn't make out the blur of the shape, but it had four legs. A small cat or dog. It happened sometimes. Strays took shelter wherever they could from the cold winter. His boss had once found a raccoon in the backroom near the bread ovens.
"Shit, what was that?" said Toby. James was supposed to be training Toby on the register, but it was too cold for customers.
"Dunno," James said.
"It ran behind the drinks into the corner," Toby said. "You want me to go kill it?"
"No way," James said. "I've got seniority. I'll get it." He stretched yellow rubber gloves that they used when cleaning the baking sheets over his hands and lower arms. Armed himself with a broom, and opened the half-door out in the lobby. He approached the corner cautiously.
"Damn, man, I hope it don' have rabies or nothing," said Toby.
A small silver and brown dog was curled up between the wall and the drink fountain. It looked strange, stretched out and longer than any dog James had ever seen. There was blood, from some unseen wound.
"Please don't kill me," it said. "I'll be dead soon enough without your help."
"Why did you come in here?" James asked.
"It's just some dumbass dog, it can't answer you," Toby said from over James' shoulder. James didn't take his eyes off the coyote.
"I want what everyone wants," it said.
"What does everyone want?"
"To get high," Toby said, wandering back to the register. "And for their shift to end."
"To not die alone," said the coyote.
"I could call a vet or something," James said.
"Just push it out onto the sidewalk, it looks all fucked up anyway," Toby said.
"It's too late for that," it said. "Please."
James crouched down beside it. Its eyes were the same color of the gloves. Brilliant yellow, like sunflowers. He reached out to pet the coyote's fur. It whimpered softly.
"Can I leave early?" Toby asked.
"Yeah," James said without moving. "Leave whenever you want. I'll stay here."
The coyote closed its eyes. Toby clocked out.
The Only One For Me
by Jeremiah Tolbert
An elderly couple lay on their stomachs in the grass of a hillside under a starry sky. The air is warm and moist, not like it is these days; dry and brittle like old glass. The wife sighs in contentment and they press against one another in a sideways embrace.
"Jessica left James yesterday," she says.
"James always was a jerk," he mumbles. A firefly bobs past overhead. "Anyway, why?"
"He was using the machine to cheat on her," she says. "With her."
He chuckles. She slides an inch away from him.
"You wouldn't ever do something like that, would you?"
He laughs louder. She swats him gently.
"No, no. It's a damn fool thing to do. I can't see the attraction of it, to be honest."
"Why not? A younger me, prettier..."
He thinks for a moment. "Pretty might have mattered to me back then, and sure, I'll look at a finely shaped woman at any age, but if pretty was all I cared about, we wouldn't have lasted ten years, let alone thirty."
"Thirty-one," she corrected.
"Ah, right. Sure, I could travel back to meet you before, and you might even be willing, but... to be honest, my dear, you were terrible in bed then."
"So were you!"
"Exactly. That was before you learned how to do that thing with your tongue, and..."
"I see the point. Now shh. Here we come."
A small blue convertible pulls onto the shoulder of the road below the hill and parks. The top is down. A much younger version of the couple tumble out of the vehicle, laughing, chasing one another. Minutes pass, and the younger couple spread a blanket in the grass.
"My, but you were handsome then," she whispers from their hiding spot on the hill.
He nods. "And energetic too," he says and presses record on the video camera.
Bullet Ride
by Jeremiah Tolbert
Our reentry pods skip across the over Africa to South America in a handful of seconds and Jessie is screaming like she did when we snuck off to ride the Dubai coasters while my parents negotiated treaties with her parents in Geneva. The Mission Control people are chuckling over the comm, so I guess it's not uncommon for return trippers to treat the whole thing like just another amusement park ride.
I hated the coasters. The only reason I ever rode them was because Jessie would let me feel her up afterwards. I hate this just as much, and I am pretty sure I just wet myself or worse. My heart is bouncing off my rib cages like a raver on E-plus.
"The problem with you," Jessie said to me below the coaster while I puked my lunch onto the sizzling-hot pavement, "is that you just can't let go. You need to conquer your fear of death and make it work for you."
Hence our trip back from the L5 station as bullets fired at the Earth's atmosphere inside goo-filled pods.
She's going to fuck me when we land.
So it's probably worth it.
"Parachutes to deploy in t-minus eight," a woman's voice says through my comm. "There will be a slight bump."
I feel the bump, only it's more like a maglev train crashing into a brick wall. Jessie stops screaming. The silence scares me more than the screaming.
I'm surrounded by impact, g-resistant gel, so I can barely move my fingers to text: Jessie?
No answer. I hit my panic button.
"Remain calm," says the woman's voice. "Your reentry pod is functioning normally." I can hear frantic argument behind her, but I can't make out the words.
What about Jessie? I text as fast as I can. The pressure is letting up. I can feel gravity's pull at my feet again, and the pod is swaying gently.
No answer.
I'm not dumb. I know what's happened. Jessie was my best friend, maybe my only friend. But all I can think is, Shit. Now I'm never going to lose my virginity.
My Job
by Jeremiah Tolbert
I don't mind telling you that I am great at what I do. All it takes is a little creativity and a seething hatred of the rich and powerful. I was born with an eye for composition, and I inherited a propensity for the second. My parents were French immigrants. As a child, my mother told stories of the Revolution that had been passed down to her by her mother, all the way back to France. She said Robespierre was the great, great grand uncle of her father's father. My childhood toy was a miniature guillotine. I held trials for my sister's dolls.
An uncle bought me a camera. I liked it better. Liked taking pictures of people at their worst. I was there when Jacko dangled that baby out of a balcony. I was there when Lady Di bought it in the limo. Got some great low-angle shots of that one. Someone offered me a job. I don't know who. The paychecks are deposited directly into my account. Anonymous email delivers my week's targets. I have my theories as to who my bosses are, but it doesn't matter, and I don't actually care.
They gave me a computer with the job. The computer has a database containing the contact information for everyone connected to the entertainment industry. Even people that are supposed to be dead. Yeah, even him.
Most celebrities are dull. They work long hours pretending to be someone else, so much that they don't even know why they are themselves. Not one of them has anything interesting to say that hasn't been written down for them.
Stupid primates, we are. We're conditioned to respect and admire the beautiful people. They're our alpha apes. That they're boring and shallow is what makes them dangerous. A clever bastard can manipulate celebrities, use them as pretty mouthpieces. The rest listen to what the pretty people say.
So? I destroy their respectability. Spread rumors. Upload sex tapes. The only rule is that I can't do anything to affect their profitability. I'm sure you've seen my work. The hamster story? Mine. That last sex tape? I leaked it. Gay rumors? Always true, but I'm responsible for you hearing about them. America is desperate for royalty, and it's my job to make sure nobody is suitable for the title.
And I fucking love my job.
From One Building Super to Another
by Jeremiah Tolbert
Hey Marty,
This is kind of crazy, but I think the new tenants in 3C are mad scientists. I can’t prove it, but I’ve made a list of things that I have noticed lately. Tell me what you think.
- I bumped into Velma (that’s the wife) in the hall. She complimented me on my sense of decoration. They have never been inside my apartment.
- Ben, the husband, wears goggles all the time.
- I never hear them having sex.
- There is now a giant robot head stuck in the stairwell between the second and third floor. No idea where that came from.
- Their mailbox is always full of Sharper Image catalogs. And nothing else.
- Their cat shoots laser beams out of its eyes. I saw it kill a pigeon on the fire escape while I was having a smoke.
- They drive a zeppelin. It’s moored to the top of the building. Is that even legal?
Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but the last couple in 3C turned out to worship some kind of giant squid. It took forever to mop up the slime after they skipped town.
--Hank