12/28/99

by Susannah Mandel

“So have you decided yet?” Becca asked. “What you’re doing Friday?”

“Oh, God knows. Last-minute house party with the boys, probably.” Selwyn rubbed absently at her temples. “At least if the apocalypse comes there’ll be plenty of gin in the house. You’re invited, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Becca.

“And you? First Night again?”

Becca snorted. “Once was enough, thanks,” she said. “Especially this year, with freezing rain as a bonus!”

“You think it’ll still be coming down on Friday?”

“It’s been two weeks, hasn’t it?” said Becca. She nodded toward the window. “Does it look to you like it’s planning to let up by then?”

Selwyn considered the thick, cottony light filtering through the glass. “Not likely,” she admitted.

Becca watched her rise and walk to the window, watched her face shade into silhouette. Behind it, runnels of rain made bright worms on the pane.

“Do you think,” Becca said, quietly, “that everything’s really going to blow up?”

The shadowed face was silent. “Depends what you mean by that,” it said at last.

“You know what I mean. Everything really stopping working. Lights going out all over the world.”

“A technological apocalypse,” Selwyn said, slowly, “seems to me unlikely.” She paused. “What people do, of course, that’s more unpredictable.”

“There’s all kinds of doomsday predictions going round,” said Becca. “I’ve never felt so medieval.” She hesitated. “I could almost believe, at moments, that it really is going to end.”

“Do you really think that will happen?” Selwyn asked in her low voice.

“I don’t know,” said Becca. “I – you know I wouldn’t, ordinarily. But this is such a strange time. What if something really is coming that will change the world? Again?”

“A singularity,” said Selwyn. “You can’t see it coming, but before and after it, history is different.”

“Yes, like that,” said Becca. She shuddered a little. “You think you’re in the real world, and then something impossible happens. And you say, Oh! The world was like that, all along.”

Selwyn came over to her, touched her gently on the head. “Don’t kill yourself over this. You’ll find out in three days what the end of the story is.”

“I guess we will,” said Becca. Her hand closed and opened upon the desk. “Stay a little longer, please.”

Selwyn leaned one hip on the edge of the desk, and stroked Becca’s hair again. They stayed there together some time, in silence, looking out at the rain.

Hypocrite Écrivain, Hypocrite Lecteur: a Letter to the Editors of DailyCabal.com

by Trent Walters

Note: This fictional creative-nonfiction comments on the underlying aspect in the Anan Muss series [click this link].

Dear editors,

Since its christening, I have faithfully read your zine. Its vessel has at times thrust itself into amazing worlds and has at times scraped its barnacled hull through narrow wormholes. SF Poet Anan Muss, however, has shipwrecked and should no longer captain your masthead (or even swab the decks).

His themes tend to be Darwinist variations on the idealistically fit who are actually unfit because of their idealistic naïveté, which causes them to be buffeted by the supposedly unfit (according to standards humanity claims to uphold) but who are truly fit because they obey an unspoken social Darwinism. While the themes should disturb the blithe and, indeed, deserve to be heard, it appears the poet himself does not abide by his implicit ideals: All have worth and ought to be treated as such.

Last year, I paid to attend a benefit for the SF Poet Society because Anan, a man of self-purportedly high principle, was the guest of horror–pardon, honor–teleported in from Jac-Sun V. He spent the late afternoon swilling a dozen Chardonnay and swallowing more than his share of salmon. Many tried to discuss literature, to stroke his ego discussing his work. He actually glared when I brought up his thematic disposition. He had eyes and words only for a third-rate poetess a third his age. One might surmise where he spent that night.

I do hope you’ll take a billy club and knock that man between his lustful, blue-speckled eyes.

Humbly yours,

Nobody the Poet

#

Dear Nobody,

Thank you for writing. My first reaction is “That’s not me.” But how many times have we gazed in the mirror–especially as we age–and been deluged in a self agnosia?

I could make excuses: Dionysia dissed me again, and I desired revenge (but that’s petty and not me). You or whoever else appeared sycophantic (but that’s egotistical since we all start somewhere). My only hope lies–hope springs–in misperception:

1) It wasn’t me you saw, or

2) you saw me but my mind was elsewhere (if we trust your version, we cannot but be disappointed in any writer who claims objectivity, to see all angles, to peer into the hearts of all characters with equanimity), or

3) my identity was mistranslated through quantum entanglement–maybe the distance between a good person and a bad takes very little leap (a quantum leap, if you will–another perennial concern).

You do realize your perspective is hopelessly idealistic: Most would merely blink after getting kicked in the teeth by someone bigger than they. That is why I thanked you. People should hold more mirrors and, using their senses, stand up to their own standards.

Bless you, dear poet of incorporeality. Let’s pray the slitters made his death excruciating.

Anan