Connected

by David

A sticky note fluttered to the desk. A moment later they all let go. Jen got out a new pack, copied each note carefully (except last week’s pet-reconstruction appointment), and stuck them on the monitor. Just as she put the last one up, the first slipped off with an almost audible sigh.

“Argh!” She went into the kitchen to make some tea. She pulled a cookbook off the shelf to browse for supper. The pages scattered. The cover peeled apart.

That was it. She couldn’t take anymore. She flopped down in front of the trivision.

“… mutant strain attacks glues, including those commonly used in products for the home but there is no cause for…” she switched off. Another damn plague. Antibiotic resistant this, mutated nano that.

“Why couldn’t there be a GOOD plague,” she moaned.

The food-prep unit harrumphed. “There was the sentient appliance revolution…” The back panel fell off with a clatter, followed by silence.

The phone rang. It was her brother.

“Hello, Norman.”

“Are you okay? I saw a story about the plague on the newsfeed here at the spaceport.”

“Worry about yourself,” she said. “Isn’t there glue in the shuttle?” Outside, a vehicle rose from the spaceport.

Her brother’s voice was tinny in her ear. “Apparently not because they are not grounding our flight. Listen, I’ve got to go. They’re letting us launch early. I’ll cube when I get there.”

“Why are you taking off early?”

“Dunno, bye.”

The connection was gone, but she said goodbye anyway, watching two more departures clear the tops of the intervening buildings. It seemed like they were launching more flights today than usual. A lot more.

The framework of her chair chose that moment to return to its component materials. She was enveloped in a dense white cloud. When she stopped coughing, she was lying on a sack of upholstery fabric partly filled with sawdust. She staggered to her feet and dusted herself off.

There was more noise of things falling in the kitchen, then the overhead light went out with a small “pop.” She was feeling her way toward the door when the food-prep unit called.

“Jen? I’m cold.”

The end

Of the Third Sex, in a Park

by Luc Reid

You are a bearer, of the third sex, contributing no genetic material to the children you’ve carried. You live in a town that is mostly humans, hardly any of your People. Your last marriage ended when your husband was killed in a road accident, and your wife withdrew into herself and became a Silent, speaking to no one, looking at no one. All you have left of your husband is a poem he made for you out of braided fiber one long winter night. It isn’t a very good poem, but it’s wildly sexual, and you have always loved it.

Your four children are all gendered and don’t like to spend time with you, because they think you can’t possibly understand their lives. Three of them have adopted human ways, and the other is studying to be a god-caller, climbing to the tower in the ugly, human-built temple on the edge of town every morning to bellow to the heavens and bring luck, rain, money, healing, peace, victory, love.

Your skin isn’t as green as it used to be; it’s taken on a grayish tinge. Your fingers used to be very nimble, and you learned a little bit how to play the human instrument called the piano, although you needed to play with little pieces of felt stuck to the keys so they wouldn’t hurt your fingers.

You are in love with a human, and you don’t know what gender it is.

The human you are in love with sits on a bench in the park in a bulky coat with a herringbone pattern, cooing to the pigeons. Sometimes the human brings bread and tears off tiny pieces to throw to the birds, but usually not. It is a very old human, with a face as wrinkled as a male’s retracted crest, and skin thin, almost translucent. Its face is transformed every morning with a beatific smile when you come down the path in the park, but it never speaks.

Today when the human smiles, you smile back, although your face was not made for that human expression. Without speaking, you sit on the bench with the human. Today it has brought bread, and it tears it in half and hands the larger half to you. For a time, you both feed the pigeons, who are greedy and ungrateful.

“What’s that around your neck?” the human says, pointing to the poem. You bend forward to let the human look. You can tell from her voice now: she is a woman. And now that she is an old woman, she’s a bearer, too.