Now Mosquitos Live There

by Luc Reid

I’d only been gone for two days and already the mosquitoes had taken over. I’d had to come back because of the rain: all the boxes I’d left out for the Box People had turned half to mush and now had to be broken down for the Pulp People instead. I strode into the boxes at dusk, unaware of the new owners at first, slashing with my knife and trampling the cardboard. The Pulp People would like that.

There were touches, pinpricks on my legs. The drenched tangle of grass, product of the recent antidrought, was alive with mosquitoes.

“When did you move in?” I shouted, sweeping at them with my hands. “I just left!”

“It looked like you were going away forever,” one of the mosquitoes began, but another cut her off.

“We don’t need to explain anything to him,” she said.

Well, I assume it was another. You can never tell who’s talking, with mosquitoes. They’re all Mosquito.

I fought my way through their dodging hordes, slashing at the boxes, dancing the dance that scares the mosquitoes off for a moment at a time. People passing by on the Pirate’s Road stared. One carriage of Box People slowed, looked long and longingly at the boxes, and then drove away.

“I’m killing you,” I said, because I had swatted at least two dozen already.

“We’re drinking your blood and using it to make babies who will drink more of your blood,” said Mosquito. “It all evens out.”

They continued to feed. I continued to kill and slash and trample.

When I left, there had been many, many boxes left over. I’d known from the day I moved in that that place wasn’t home, so I’d saved boxes. There were boxes with the names of people I hadn’t lived with for years, boxes in which things had been shipped that were now broken and discarded. It was bad enough to have to throw them away once, but now I had to come back to be reminded again of things that were gone. Yet I was growing numb.

As I finished the boxes, the bats began to swoop in, diving and spiraling and snatching the mosquitoes out of the air. I grinned as I stomped the last of the soggy cardboard.

“They’re just doing the same as we are,” said Mosquito. “Eating what they’re made to eat. Their way just suits you better!”

I was still grinning as I stepped clear of the pulped boxes and slapped my legs, killing two last mosquitoes. It did suit me.

I left for home.

Welcome to the Future!

by Edd

Introduction

You have stepped from your rightful place and time into this rude world of the here and now. It is my duty and solemn pleasure to introduce to you the rudiments of life as it is now lived.

First, a word on why you are here. These men of the future are consumed with making. They are crafters of the first water, but users of a most inferior kind. Their automobiles smash one into another with abandon; their airplanes, with all the sky in which to fly, do the same; and their neglect of the world in which they live bids fair to bring it crashing down around their ankles.

More to the point, they build machines that hurtle them back in time at will. Haply, due to some quirk of nature, the traveler finds his mental essence exchanged with some denizen of the past while his respective bodies remain bound to his own time. When he returns, if he returns, the exchange is reversed.

Sometimes the he is a she but most often not. Women prefer to remain rooted to their own bodies.

If he dies in the past he does not return to reclaim his present body. If he chooses to remain in the past, he does not return. If the machinery he needs loses its connection to your host, he does not return. In that case you will be awakened from your imposed sleep, be given citizenship papers, and be turned out on the street with a copy of this book.

Therefore, welcome! Make of the future what you will, and beware the sudden drowsiness that presages your being taken by some resident of the even more distant future.

Coffee will help.

-WS