A Hatful of Rabbits
By Benjamin Jacobson
Content Copyright © 2011 Benjamin Jacobson (unless otherwise noted)
Smashwords Edition
"A Hatful of Rabbits" First Published July 2009 Crossed Genres
"The Apple Tree" First Published April 2009 Every Day Fiction
"I Don't Believe in Fairies" First Published August 2010 Big Pulp
"Held Up" First Published March 2009 Ruthless Peoples Magazine
"Paradigm Shift" First Published January 2009 AlienSkin Magazine
"Alchemy" First Published April 2009 Everyday Weirdness
"Brother, Can You Spare the Time?" First Published January 2011 Kasma Science Fiction
"Poddle Jumper," "Solar Shell: A Space Opus" and "The Beautiful" First Published February 2011 A Hatful of Rabbits
Cover Art © Benjamin Jacobson 2011
The Cover was created using the free programs Tesselmania and Gimp. The author wishes to acknowledge the debt he owes to those who contribute to the global community through open source software.
This book is a product of Screaming Argonaut. Please visit ScreamingArgonaut.com for more information.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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For my son.
Table of Contents
Brother, Can You Spare the Time
Kendra lifted the mug to her lips. Only a well-timed sniff kept her from attempting to drink the rabbit fecal pellets inside. Magic bunnies were odd in that way. They littered her apartment, hiding in her slippers and chewing holes in her grandmother’s quilt, but they all took turns using her drinkware as a latrine. She didn’t know if this was a silver lining or just a cup of shit.
Kendra replaced the mug on her coffee table sending the bunny tribe that had nested there hopping off like ripples in a pond. She squinted and shook her head. Biting her lip, she raised to her feet. A mother rabbit and her litter reclaimed their sofa warren. Making her way from the living room to the kitchen proved difficult as she interrupted all manner of lagomorph culture, from jumping and playing to the ever popular fornication. It took her two minutes to traverse the twenty feet and reach the large yellow tome on the counter.
She flipped open the Universal Telepathic Directory, as its cover proclaimed it, and quickly turned to the section titled “Magical Support.” Pulling her cell path out of her pocket, she placed the round object directly in front of her forehead, where it floated. She looked down at the book, the cell path following the movement of her head, and just managed to think the name of her target before a young kit laid down in the middle of the page.
A moment passed, as Kendra stared out at her living room, a sea of white fur. She wished at the very least they had been different colors. Then she could have named them, recognized them, cared for them, but no, all white rabbits.
“Hello?” Kendra talked through her telepathic calls, partially to direct her thought and partly to drown out the ever present static of nibbling and padded feet. “Yes, I have a problem with my I-Mage.” At that point she realized that she might need the product in question to fix it. She eyed it sitting back on that coffee table next to the mug of poop. She began a delicate tip-toeing dance across the room as she spoke. “Well, I set it to rabbit during a performance and it worked alright…” She tried to stretch out the story as she crossed the room. “I mean, I placed the I-Mage in the hat and tapped it when it was time for the rabbit to come.” A misplaced foot led to an unpleasant bunny squeal. The resulting trip left her close enough to the table to stretch for the device. “And I got a rabbit, but then it wouldn’t stop.” Kneeling on the ground, stretching for little white rectangle, rabbit fur tickled her underarm. She fought off a giggle. “Don’t apologize, the show went great. No one had ever seen that many rabbits come out of a hat. The problem is…it’s still going.”
Just as her fingers touched the plastic edge, a rabbit hopped up and seized the device in its forepaws. They had become increasingly, disturbingly anthropomorphic. She saw a glint in its red eye and perhaps a smile on its snout as it turned and walked off the table. “Um, okay,” she responded to her telepathic directions, as she strained to follow the walking rabbit through the sea of white in her living room. “Yeah, I tried that.” Her study door opened and closed. Kendra had trouble figuring how.
The study, of course it would go there. That’s where they first started to congregate, when they were just a cute annoyance. Kendra stood and began another journey. “Okay and that will get rid of them.” As she approached it, she remembered when she had first closed the study door. She had thought to put the problem off and it had only gotten worse. She’d let it go and stopped using the study. She hadn’t fed her doves in days. She hadn’t heard them coo since this morning. She noticed hats on some of the bunnies, musketeer hats made from the same checkered fabric as her study sofa. Out of some of these hat’s, every tenth one, stood a white feather.
“Well then how do I get rid of the…” she placed her hand on the door as her thoughts were interrupted by the magician on the other end of her call. This gave her occasion to notice how strange the bunnies were acting. They were no longer around her feet. They had cleared a place for her to stand. While none were looking at her directly, she got the impression that she was being watched. She looked around for the behatted ones only to find them missing. “Okay, thank you,” she said as she grabbed the cell path from the air and placed it in her back pocket.
The door opened without a creak, and, surprisingly, without resistance. The room she had known was gone. None of her furniture or pictures were visible. The walls themselves, once papered, now stood naked except for tiny scratches. The room was not, however, empty. The same, familiar sea of fur greeted her here, but it was different, mannered, civilized. Central to the room stood a tower. After a moment she recognized parts from her, now vanished, IKEA desk in the tower’s walls. The mystery unlocked she identified scraps of upholstery, piece of wallpaper, and tangled wires that had once been bird cages within the mammoth, yet miniature, structure. She glance back at the floor and realized that not a single red eye could be seen. Her entrance had been unobserved. The bunnies all faced the tower. Few of them moved at all, no hopping, or humping, or playing. Those that did move seemed to be bowing toward the tower temple.
Suddenly, a rabbit appeared at the apex of the structure, a small dove’s skull strapped to his head by a thread. Feathers cascaded down his back. In his paws he held the small, rectangular I-Mage. He lifted it above his head and the remaining standing bunnies bowed at its presence. With a speed of movement Kendra had not allowed herself in a week she leaped forward. She snatched the magical device from the hands of the skull head.
“Sorry guys, but now you’re just really creeping me out.” Following the instructions of the magician she held down the central button for five seconds to reset the device. The horde at her feet began to stir and convulse with movement. A gentle chime signaled the I-Mage’s reawakening. She slid the touchpad menu to “Conjure>Animals” as she had done many times before, but not to “Rabbit” this time, perhaps never again. Instead she scrolled to the final option, one she wouldn’t have considered without some professional advice.
She pushed the lock on and tossed the device into the middle of the growing tumult. She headed back to the door and glanced back just in time to see a green circle grow into a great snake. She closed the door behind her to find a similar commotion had gripped the whole bunny assemblage. The sea of fur had grown into a tumbling tempest. Kendra flew to the front door. As she reached it she contemplated what use she had for a giant python in her act.
At eight years old, Ashley learned her first real swear word. The lexicon of the playground had long since been encoded into her vocabulary. Variations on poop and fart and potty, usually combined with head, face or butt, were all part of her daily routine. Of course in third grade saying these things, even in class, wouldn’t get you sent to the principal’s office. They were second nature, old hat, until Ashley learned a new word.
She had wandered near the fence, which divided the lower grades from the high when she heard it. Like the sounding of Gabriel’s horn, the sky’s opened up and blessed her ear with the glorious gift. Instantly she felt its power, without even seeing the reactions it caused among the sixth graders who dared utter it. She knew it had strength unlike any word she had ever known before. As she turned it over in her mind it pulsated.
In the back of her brain she thought that perhaps, this was not her first encounter with the word. That it had traced a pattern through her life, hopping around furtively in adult conversations or lying idle in restroom graffiti. It had been there, calling out to her, waiting for her to find it.
It didn’t take the fistfight now being fought among those same sixth graders to teach her its power. This word could wound. It could destroy. What power now rested in her young voice box? It intoxicated her. She could even guess at its meaning, but wrapping her head around that mystery proved too daunting. Clues abounded, she knew, but the answer eluded her.
Ashley turned back to her own play area to weigh her options. A power like this demanded testing. Her eyes fell on her best friend Kari jumping rope. How sweet and innocent she seemed now. A word like Ashley’s could obliterate that. She could pull Kari kicking and screaming into the bigger world that Ashley had entered so willingly. Ideas of right and wrong swirled until they seemed indistinguishable. A new thought joined the others. Rather than use this power she could secretly lord it over her friend. She would always be the mature one. No amount of boy-kissing or underwear could bridge the gap. The knowledge would be kept safe so that she could pull it out whenever it seemed most necessary. She would never be the baby. The power grew stronger even in her refusal to use it.
The pulsating in her brain became a beating. The word itself was pounding in her mind. Its single hypnotic syllable repeated, demanding to be let loose. In the distance she saw Ms. Stanch, her teacher. The scene flashed through her mind in an instant.
Ms. Stanch stands before the class and demands Ashley’s homework. Ashley fires off her verbal cannon. Ms. Stanch falls back in shock, unable to recover. The awed faces of her classmates stare on. Ms. Stanch must be taken to the nurse, unable to speak, unable to ever teach again. Ashley’s class would have free choice from then on.
A flaw occurred to Ashley. Ms. Stanch loved her. She was sure of this. While in all her favorite shows teachers were cruel tyrants to undermine or overthrow, Ashley thought of Ms. Stanch as almost a second mother, and she would never, ever say this word to her mother.
The time for the bell to end recess drew near. A quick evaluation of potential targets seemed to dismiss any as candidates. Most kids, she thought, wouldn’t even know the word, just as she had been so recently innocent. This ignorance protected them from Ashley’s power unless an adult heard it, which had consequences of its own. She was outgunned in an arms race. Still the word pounded.
Ashley took the last option, the failsafe. As Ms. Stanch glanced off in another direction, Ashley snuck through the side fence squishing her body through the tight opening between the pole and the wall. She jogged out to the front lawn, looking about to ensure her invisibility.
She squatted beneath her favorite apple tree, the one under which she waited for her mother each day. She cupped her hands and brought them to her face. Her sweet breath mixed with her raspberry lip balm and wafted into her nose. She had to release the power inside her before it consumed her. In the tiniest of whispers, she said the word.
Ashley looked up to the screeching of tires and the smell of burnt rubber. The world seemed to slow as two cars collided on the street in front of her. Metal screamed. Smoke and steam shot from the wreck like a misplaced firecracker. The sudden loss of momentum made her brain skip. It felt unnatural.
My fault, she thought. She had let loose the awful power and it had done its job. Yet it still pounded in her head. In fact, it infected the drivers of the cars, who now exited their vehicles. One bled badly from the forehead. His face coated in crimson as he screamed. Every second word they yelled was that word. Ashley blinked and swallowed hard. Frightened of being sighted she turned and ran back to the school.
The power still pulsed, but she knew she would never use it again. She wished to forget it, to go back to this morning, to be like Kari. It was impossible. This gift, the power had become a burden for her to bear ever thumping in her brain. She could never go back. As she entered the building the bell ending recess rang.
In line at Starbucks, Roxy shifted from foot to foot, perturbed with the Centaur in front of her. The long line and interminable wait had given her a headache, that or the lack of caffeine in her system. Unfortunately, when standing behind a Centaur you get a straight-on view of their asshole. If you are really unlucky you get a whiff. And if you are just spectacularly cursed then you get a nice framed view of their genitals. Roxy was really unlucky.
She tapped her foot as the Horse/Man clomped up to the counter. When he sidled slightly back to peruse the menu Roxy let out a deep exasperated sigh in his direction. He did not notice or notably speed his selection.
While staring at the horse’s ass still very much in front of her, Roxy recalled the thrill she felt when the magical creatures unveiled themselves to the world. She had been a typical twelve-year-old girl with drawings of Unicorns adorning her bedroom. Photographs replaced those drawings within weeks.
She remembered the news conference, when that darling Leprechaun had address the people of the world in his high-pitched, Elmo voice.
“Greetings Humans,” the green man said while tipping his hat to the crowd. “My name is Seamus O’Puddle and I would like to thank you all for letting me speak here today. As you may know, my people, the Fairies, have lived secretly among your kind for millennia. Frightened by your power and intellect, we chose to live just beyond your world in the shadows and cracks. We attempted to hide from you.”
“Those attempts were not always successful. Word of our existence spread, but through mutual, unspoken agreement we were declared legendary, mythical, nonsense. We, your people and mine, lived this way for a long time with much success.”
“Unfortunately, this situation will no longer keep. The rising populations of both our kinds have limited the habitats we can split. You may have heard of our dear friend Glimmer, the Unicorn killed last week in Tennessee. Glimmer was a friend of mine and he will be dearly missed, but his death can signal something besides a ghastly interspecies murder. Glimmer’s death can be the door through which our peoples enter a new age of understanding and cooperation. So I ask my brothers now, reveal yourself to the world. Let them know you. Let them see you.”
At this the press conference grew instantly crowded as mythical creatures of all shapes and sizes stepped out of the shadows to take a place on the podium. However, twelve-year-old Roxy only knew this from later replays. At that moment, a tribe of cobbler elves emerged from under her bed. She squealed as the little people marched out in their tiny overalls, miniature tools in hand. She continued to squeal as they covered their ears and she squealed even longer as they marched right back under the bed, shaking their heads as if telling someone, perhaps Seamus O’Puddle, I told you so.
Fifteen years later and Roxy still wanted to scream, but for far different reasons. The centaur had finished his order and now stood at one of the tall tables. Roxy stepped up to the counter. The stubborn centaur had so commanded her attention that it was only at this moment that Roxy realized the register was being manned by a Pixie. He, or she, it was so hard to tell, wore a little hat, woven from coffee stirrers, and shoes that curled up at the toes. A flower bloomed in the Pixie’s hair and a modified acorn served as a shirt. A tiny name tag read, “Pussywillow.” Without hesitation Roxy ordered a vente cappuccino with whip cream.
Next came a comedy of errors that pained Roxy to watch. The Pixie flapped its wings and landed on the cash register. For each element of the order the Pixie would jump on the appropriate key. Three out of four times Pussywillow’s weight was not enough to depress the button. Eventually the register beeped signaling the sprite to move on. Once this ballet concluded the Pixie flew back to center stage.
“How will you be paying?” asked Pussywillow in his/her sweet tinkling voice.
“Card.” Roxy replied without the tinkle. She brandished the plastic rectangle. Pussywillow approached and took the card that matched her size. As Roxy released it, the sprite tumbled backward, scattering explosions of Fairy dust. Roxy almost laughed at the sight, until she realized Pussywillow was trying to be cute. Pixies had an awful tendency to be cute in inappropriate contexts, in all contexts really. She sneered at the memory of the Pixie jugglers that danced on her grandmother’s casket during the funeral. Stupid Pixies. A similar display of adorable behavior accompanied the running of the card through the machine. By the time Roxy received her receipt Pussywillow beamed with pride at her precious presentation. With a stern face, Roxy took her receipt and headed to the corner to wait for her drink.
Roxy picked up a newspaper; it was written in Runes. She did her best to peruse the articles by the pictures. Most of the images were woodcuts of once odd juxtapositions: a Goblin in a business suit, a Mermaid giving a news conference and a Griffin wedged into a subway car. Advertisements placed by Human companies were the only pieces written in English. Gap-Fey advertised innocuous clothes in all kinds of sizes from Pixie to Behemoth. The models looked uncomfortable in regular clothes, like they would much rather be wearing a loincloth or cavorting in the nude. Roxy put down their paper and picked up an English paper that had been buried beneath it. “Record Unemployment,” read the headline. Roxy glanced around and noticed that all the employees of the coffee shop were Fey. By no means was she an economist, but she figured that the sudden appearance of hundreds of thousands of heretofore unemployed people willing to work literally for peanuts, or flowers, or raindrops, might have something to do with this frightening statistic. A further skim of the article confirmed her assessment.
“Roxy,” came a voice announcing the arrival of her cappuccino accompanied, as always, by a faint tinkling. Roxy rolled up the paper and approached the counter. A diminutive Elf, clad in a turtle shell hefted her drink across the counter while the hands of a Goblin could be seen reaching up to deliver another beverage. Roxy took her drink without speaking. The Elf smiled wide and bowed deep as if he had just completed a performance. Roxy fought the urge to swat him with the newspaper. To complete his little show the Elf did a triple backward somersault. It was a tiny wonder, but the Elf couldn’t stick the landing. Instead he tumbled into the Goblin’s next drink causing it to fall forward. A tsunami of scalding liquid shot toward Roxy, soaking her blouse. She screamed.
Every eye, even the asshole Centaur’s, turned to Roxy, as if she was the problem. Roxy brushed her front in an effort to ease the pain and clean the shirt. She fought back her rage. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of a scene. Fairies seemed to love to frustrate humans.
“No problem,” she said. “No problem.” She wasn’t sure if she meant to assure the audience or herself. She barely kept her anger in check. She pulled a napkin from the holder and blotted her dress. The paper square was not up to the task. Roxy pulled a few more, one at a time, until in frustration she pinched a stack and pulled it through the metal birth canal. Her hand came back with an embarrassing number of napkins. She took them and her drink to a corner booth, away from the lingering eyes.
Once situated, Roxy rubbed her blouse until the moisture dissipated. An ugly, brown, Rorschach stain remained. She resigned herself to this and turned her attention back to the paper, noticing that it too had suffered the deluge. The bottom half was drenched and brown. She tried to open it. The pages stuck and ripped. Brown-gray liquid spilled to the ground. She managed to separate the top half of the paper from the bottom. She considered taking the bottom half to the garbage, but decided to leave it on the table for them to pick up. This petty revenge made her smile. She opened the remaining top half to locate her article. It had been destroyed in the flood. She silently cursed the Fairies and turned to the entertainment section.
The article she could read detailed a revival of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan playing at a local theatre. There had been an upswing in the cache of all things Faerie after their arrival. As it became a distant memory interest waned. The article confirmed this through the director’s flat affect. He had staged Peter Pan over three hundred times in the last ten years. The accompanying picture showed the toll this had taken on him. He could play the Tick-Tock Croc without a costume. Roxy thought of her own experiences with the play. She had seen it once before the coming, and probably ten times since. First she went voluntarily, but subsequent viewings had been obligatory for school or family outings. An incongruity occurred to her. Something from that first performance had locked away in the back of her brain, something missing from all the subsequent productions. Her mood and the article seemed to have knocked it loose. She struggled to recall the detail until it caught like a bullet loading into a chamber. Her eyes opened wide. She looked around to see if anyone noticed, to see if anyone could read her thoughts. No one looked. Everyone went about their business.
With a squint and a smile she raised her cup to her lips, but did not drink. Instead she whispered a line she had heard long ago, but not much since.
“I don’t believe in Fairies.”
A crash sounded behind the counter. Patrons and employees rushed to see the cause. Roxy stayed seated. The ambulance arrived in record time, but not fast enough. Pussywillow had died, cause unknown. As the EMTs loaded her onto a mini-gurney with a pair of tongs, Roxy slipped out the back door.
She created the site within the week: www.dontbelieveinfairies.net. Web-surfers from around the world came to complain about the Fair Folk. First, it had an air of legitimacy. People rumbled about unemployment. They groused about the Fairies’ unfair advantages: flight, magic, strength and luck. Had a non-Leprechaun won the lottery since they arrived? No one could recall. Were there any Human window washer’s left? They’d all been forced out. Even the unions had sided with the Fairies. After all, they paid their dues with gold.
Soon the discourse devolved. The jokes came first. People recycled old Polish and Blonde gags with just a few replacement words. How many Goblins does it take to screw in a light bulb? Did you hear the one about the Human, the Martian and the Fairy? They got worse from there. Eventually the punch lines became punches, meant to wound with no humor.
Then the rhetoric began. Who are these creatures? What rights do they have? Who asked them to come? A Centaur assaulted my daughter. A Gobling bullied my kid at school. They’re taking over my neighborhood, the country, the government. It got nasty, but none of this mattered as much as the underlying message. The idea that words could kill them and the words came easy. I don’t believe in Fairies.
The slogan became a meme, a valueless bit of internet flotsam spread quickly and without context. The screen-printers found it first, with millions of shirts pumped out in a few months. Posters, bumper stickers and pop songs followed each carrying a sudden repeatable death sentence. In this arms race, sticks and stones were outmatched by five little words.
Within a month the Fey population had dropped significantly. The police investigated, but many of their own had been Fair Folk. Fairies had used their magic to make the work easier. With those tools gone, the old methods had to be relearned and with less staff. It took six-months for them to find the site and by that time the ranks of Fairies had been decimated. When they arrested Roxy they had to duct tape her mouth. The media dubbed her the Fairie-hating Hitler. Genocide becomes local in the mouth of a young woman.
In court, she wore shackles. The system rushed her case to trial. The tape on her mouth couldn’t stop the intent or the message and these killed more each day. During her first arraignment the judge and the prosecuting Sprite died suddenly, if not unexpectedly. Roxy’s status changed from criminal to terrorist. Due process was suspended and they sent her to a hole in the ground reserved for traitors and tax-evaders.
The deaths continued until few Fairies survived. These retreated into the remaining wilderness, no longer as crowded as they once were. Employment rose. The economy improved and then something else happened. People began to forget. They forgot that the Fairies ever existed at all. Without the ongoing magical influence of the Folk in their midst, the logical minds of the common Human rebelled and rewrote memories. It hadn’t been a Centaur in the parade that day, but a man on horseback. It wasn’t a Gremlin that stole my keys it was that annoying little neighbor kid. I never killed a Fairy; I just grew up and stopped pretending.
Few had been prosecuted for the prevalent crime of Fairy murder, just the ringleaders. Those that sat in jail were released because of lack of evidence and apologized to with reddened faces, but not Roxy.
Roxy sat in a cell with a newspaper and a cup of coffee reading about the logical ways of the world. Her appeals had gone unheard. Though no one could remember why she was in such a horrible place, everyone was sure she deserved it. No lawyers could assist her, no court could find her. She was displaced.
She too began to forget the Fair Folk and the reason behind her imprisonment. She forgot the phrase that got her there. Besides, it wasn’t so bad. She could still get a paper and a cup of coffee. And everyday a little green man named Seamus came to discuss the news with her. She was really lucky.
War fleets from each of the twelve galactic prefectures clustered in space topwise to Captain Shen. He crouched on the Solar Shell, bracing for launch and considering for just a moment the fate of his planet, hidden for millennia inside the light-year-wide disk. Shen’s 2Skin boots propelled him into space, a one-man starfighter. As he drifted in silence, he glanced shellward. Below him, his regiment had formed up, the last of humanity, each brandishing a friction cannon.
“You sons of bitches,” his breathy voice crackled over coms, “You know this is suicide.” His heads-up display recorded ten-thousand responses that read simply, “Yes, sir!”
Gofo guns on the Droma mothership targeted clumps of the floating soldiers. The long war ended here, but humanity had one last surprise for the universe. Before a gun fired, the Solar Shell cracked and shattered, releasing the energy of a Sun gone Nova. Captain Shen smiled.
How does one write a hold-up note? This was the question Trent pondered as he stood in line at his local AmeriBank branch. He'd never been much of a writer and when he'd planned this heist he had neglected to think that far ahead. He stood a blank deposit slip in hand, and waited for his Muse to strike.
She had last struck when he was on strike, back at the factory: “Better pay for better workers!” He had written that sign. It had been effective. He could have just written, "Strike!" like so many of his buddies had, but he came up with a slogan instead. Where was that inspiration now?
The line moved quicker than his brain and he found himself at the front with the blank slip. He moved toward the open window and chickened out. He shrugged and gestured with the slip and pen. The teller, a man with a pie face and a watermelon body, smiled back and then looked on to the next customer. Trent had to duck between two blue jump-suited technicians as they raised something large and heavy to the roof. He returned to the side counter where he had picked up the slip.
He leaned over his work as he wrote, trying to pour himself onto the paper. He wouldn't get in line until he had a note, he decided. He wrote out these words:
“Better pay or I'll batter your workers!”
Not bad. It had menace. It built on past success. He underlined "batter" for emphasis but then questioned the spelling. “Batter” like pancakes, or like baseball?
He crumpled the paper and dropped it in the tiny counter-top garbage can.
He looked around to make sure he wasn't being watched. His eyes caught the workmen again. They stood on reinforced ladders installing a giant weight in the ceiling directly above the teller window. The weight was cartoonish and someone had stenciled a giant “10 TONS” on the side. A single cable through a sculpted O-ring held up the massive load. Trent wondered if they were hiring. The work looked semi-technical, his specialty. Would they try to stop him as he ran out with the money? Probably not. Not for what they make.
Trent rubbed the gun in his pocket, hoping to feel the confidence it usually brought him. Yep, it was there. If he got away with this, the note would be his only chance to let people know why. His severance package let him pay his mortgage for four months before this bank took his home away. His fault, he knew: he hadn't really understood the terms, or that he couldn't afford them. He didn't blame the bank then, but when the bank failed and the bailout saved it that bothered him. Trent had always paid his taxes. That was his money the bank had now, as well as his house and his job. He just needed it all back.
He wasn't stealing it; he was reclaiming it. His attempt to sum up his thought sprawled across four deposit slips before he realized how stupid it would be to hand the teller a book. What would he do while it was being read? He pictured himself standing awkwardly at the counter worried the teller might bring out a red pen and start correcting the grammar. He crumpled and dropped again and took out another piece.
He looked down the counter at another man filling out a deposit slip. He stretched his arm around the paper to shield it from onlookers. It felt like fourth grade: trying to compose under time pressure, hoping to create something awesome that would impress the teacher and the class and then being upstaged by Suzy Turner who always got A’s and used wonderful adjectives. Trent could use Suzy now, but he hadn't seen her since she left town for college.
Trent glanced up at the teller. He caught a glimpse of the man's pie-face between blue jumpsuits and ladders. Trent had gone to school with him, he realized. A friend of Suzy's maybe? A couple years behind him, no doubt. Trent thought his name might be John. He imagined pulling the gun on John, threatening him, even shooting him if he had to. AmeriBank was evil, but this guy was just another kid who went through Coach Selznick's locker room, just a guy who was lucky enough to have a job and house.
Trent couldn't do it, not to someone he knew — or ought to have known. But he still needed the money. He wrote "I need a loan" on the deposit slip. Odd perhaps, but after all this he couldn't just walk out and maybe John would give him a loan to get him through.
As Trent waited again in the line, he watched John converse with the workmen, who seemed to have completed their task. They talked about security measures and the workman pointed to a large button on the counter and the cable and pulley system connecting it to the weight. Trent still had flop sweat dripping down his brow and he tried in vain to wipe it on his jacket.
As his turn came, he walked forward and reached into the pocket he had stuck the slip into. When he pulled it out his sleeve caught on something small and heavy. The gun tumbled to the ground. John looked at Trent, sweaty, note-holding Trent who had just dropped a gun at the bank. John hit the shiny, new button in front of him. A siren sounded and the whir of cables sung out. In the moments it took for Trent to be crushed, a new thought occurred to him. Maybe people were evil after all, or at least too stupid to deserve pity.
The crumpled paper fell gracefully into the waste bin, the sides untouched, another perfect swish. As it settled gently onto the stack of unclaimed lottery tickets, Jordan rose from his seat.
Letters ten feet high plastered on the wall of his spacious top floor loft announced, "What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?" He stood and stared at the words. Walking over to his bar he sorted through the glass constructs finally selecting a bottle of red wine. He inserted the corkscrew with a subtle unpracticed grace. With a gentle pop the cork slid from the bottle. The aroma of perfectly timed wine wafted up to Jordan's senses. Unmoved, he poured the wine into his glass. As he sipped it he reconsidered the aphorism.
In a flash he hurled his glass toward the great stone wall. The shatter was the music of chimes. The liquor splashed from the wall in beautiful parabolic arcs. As the stain formed he could not deny that it added to the composition. It was a perfect piece of destruction.
Enraged Jordan took revenge on his home. He snatched one of the giant novelty checks that littered the apartment. This one bore the message "Congratulations to Caravan's 10,000 customer" and was written out for $10,000. Using all his strength he blindly tore at the marketing device, and bisected it precisely. Unsated he seized a chair and threw it into a nearby wall. Drywall dust flew into the air as the wall, its weak point pierced, fell in several pieces to the ground. Between the remaining studs thousands of dollars in hidden cash stood revealed.
Jordan refocused his fear and marched to a cabinet. Inside he found a gold plated automatic handgun. A tag reading, "Thanks for being a High-Roller with Hyatt Casino," still hung from the handle. He inserted the clip. Bringing the nozzle to his temple, Jordan immediately pulled the trigger.
Click. The gun jammed.
He pointed it toward the giant letters.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Two bullet holes dotted the i's and the third placed a period under the question mark.
He pitched the gun away from him. It spun like a helicopter's blades shattering the picture window that framed his $10 million view. It began to whistle melodically as it accelerated downward to the street 30 stories below.
Jordan approached the window and watched it fall. The gun landed in the cushioned seat of his convertible and did not fire or misfire. The wind blew through the new aperture and tussled his hair. Again he contemplated. Finally, he smiled...and jumped.
His sinister smile continued as he plummeted toward the street. He executed a perfect diving form. As the ground flew ever closer, no miracle appeared. His smile grew. The moment seemed frozen in time. He closed his eyes.
Moments later he reopened them. The street was no closer. He hovered in the air in a way that nothing ever did. He pitched about to right himself. Still he floated. He looked around. His eyes widened. A natural, joyous smile crossed his lips. Like a bullet out of a gun, he shot into the sky. The howl of a freed man followed his disappearing form.
As Steven withdrew the knife from the torso of the limp kitten, he noticed the lack of noise. Gone were the fevered hisses and limp mews of only a few seconds earlier. In their place now blood and viscera spilled into his lap. How odd, thought Steven before chucking the carcass to the ground.
Steven had always been interested in transmutation, the turning of one thing into another. He considered himself an alchemist. Like most alchemists, he was primarily unsuccessful. Things had an unfortunate habit of remaining themselves.
It wasn’t a big change he was looking for. Not yet. No need to turn lead into gold. He would settle easily for transforming Swiss cheese into Brie or milk into water. What harm could it do for a man to have such power? Not much surely. Not enough for God to take this away from him.
Steven considered the kitten on the floor. Had it changed? It breathed. It screamed and then that noise had turned into this gore before him. He nudged the body with his foot. There was no response. It had energy. It had life and now it was liquid and dead flesh, basic, elemental matter. Energy to matter?
Physics wasn’t his thing, but alchemy sprang from science. The ultimate achievement of science was to create energy from matter. Alchemy could reverse the process.
Converting energy to matter was the most basic transformation, the most primal. It is how the universe was born in the fires of the big bang. Energy to matter was the ultimate alchemy and he had mastered it.
He kicked the kitten as he rose from his chair. He stripped himself naked. Manipulating the knife he turned it on himself. He placed the point of the blade just before his larynx. He took several deep breaths. Finally, he let loose with a sustained note. The most basic beauty a human voice was capable of.
He pressed the blade into his neck. As it entered his esophagus the note weakened noticeably. He pulled downward but his ribs protected the chest too well. Dragging the blade over the sternum he created a red line down his torso. As it cleared his ribs it plunged into his abdomen, piercing a lung. The note gave out completely. Now the knife moved with force and momentum through his organs. Steven’s concentration began to flicker. He could feel it now, but it was not pain, he told himself. It was transformation, the fire that creates. When he got to his groin he had lost all focus and collapsed to the ground. His entrails poured out onto the floor. Still he could feel it. He was changing. He was becoming. Though he had stopped singing he could still hear the note. It enveloped him and made him a new thing. He was not himself anymore.
Splork adjusted the temporal variance inhibitor as his tiny spacecraft entered the outer orbit of the turquoise orb. He gritted his proboscis and adjusted his left shoulder buttock against the confining straps of his cosmopod. Soon he would encounter the planet’s outer field.
Luminadio contact with his fellow podonauts ceased as they began their descent. He could only monitor their existence through his own four, hi-vi optics. It had been 33 orbal revolutions since his crew had left the momopod. Thousands of his companions drifted around him. Each revolution a legion descended toward the orb. None had ever made contact again.
Their peaceful mission to bring greater knowledge to the orbites seemed hopeless. Splork worried as his cosmopod sparked through the orbital field. Podonauts never cease. Having achieved perfect universal understanding what choice had they but to share it. He knew that should he fail another thousand crews would be deposited in his place ready to spread the word to the orbites.
The field seemed impenetrable. Splork’s fifth feeler, the one burned as a child on the fissionator, reached out for the coolcon. His desperate groping succeeded in releasing a true-zero cool through the pod’s skin, but the field had other plans. Panicky condensation coated his globules. Through his panes he perceived his companions bursting violet and then vanishing. At that moment he knew what he had feared: that this is how they all fell. All his people for countless cycles incinerated in the skies of the orb, along with their message of peace.
“Shit!” he cognisensed as he and his pod purpled out of existence.
In mid-November each year the skies above Earth are illuminated with the beautiful lights of the Leonid meteor shower.
At night, I fight the rain.
It's not a bad gig if you can get it and it's worth vodka down at Traktir. It's nice to bask in the adoration of the elderly and the superstitious. In the old country I would be known as a zduhac, a mystic, one who falls in a trance to hold the forces of evil at bay. But here I'm mostly known as Krasimira, or Kras, just another unemployed Serb in a dying neighborhood. But at night, I fight the rain.
"Kkkkkracck!" the clouds roar out their onslaught and the sky is split by white fire. My spirit self evades at speeds quicker than light. She is a thing of beauty, no doubt, so I call her Beautiful. She out races the lightning and out roars the thunder. The glow of her golden skin repels the clouds and protects my home, my hovel.
Vasilisa is the first to tell me the news. They've condemned the Milankovic building. It's one of our last working centers. Yes, it's mostly sweatshops, but here in our little Serbian neighborhood it's work and that's what matters. Most of the business have already left, the buildings condemned. Many of the apartments and tenements have also started to go.
They pushed us into the corner and then when they have nowhere else to spread, they take the corner from us. This is my neighborhood. I protect it. But it's dying anyway, and there is nothing I can do.
On the good nights I just fly. It exhilarates me to feel the wind on my golden skin, to commune with the moon. As Beautiful, I feel the stars. They and I are one, as she and I are one. It's a great feeling to be connected, to be in tune with your universe, to be at home.
They closed my shop today. It was inevitable. It is no longer my job to quality check the button snaps on men's trousers. At first we just stood there, looking at the sign on the door, "Closed for Business." Of course we knew they had been bought out. They were big fish in our pond, but now they were guppies in a giant's pocket. We can't blame them, but we do. We complain. We grouse. Then slowly, one by one, we leave back to the homes that won't be ours much longer.
Walking home I pass it, the first new building. It is sleek and gray and modern but to me it's a knife sticking through the heart of our community. We are the blood running in the streets purged of our vital purpose. There used to be homes here. There used to be jobs. Now there are towers of finance and fashion. I stop walking.
I've never tried it before, but I must fight back and I've been given a gift. I find a crack in the chain link and plywood perimeter and enter the building site. The building is complete yet it stands on the torn flesh of my home. They have not yet laid the cement that will disguise the scar. Cosmetic architecture.
I find a spot to sit. I close my eyes. I let my mind swallow my body. I go deeper. I let my spirit swallow my mind. I go deeper. I let her essence swallow my spirit then I am...Beautiful.
I rise. My fingertips are fire; my feet are jets. I am the golden guardian of this place. I am the savior of my people. The power rises within me as I call to my sister stars. Mother moon shines on my efforts. The earth herself lends me her strength. I place my hands on the structure that has invaded my land. These hands have caught lighting. These hands have held back mountains. With these hands I push.
I wait to hear the crack of foundation, the crumple of mortar. I wait to hear the tear of metal, the screams of onlookers. I wait to hear, but it doesn't come. My hands are still.
The trespasser stands unmoved. You are nothing it says to me and it is correct.
I am a being of super-nature. I battle the evil that ever encroaches upon man. But this is not an act of supernatural evil. This is the act of man, worse in its way than a devil could ever be. This is an act of nature and it is not my power to stop it.
I am the Beautiful and there is no place for me here.
Brother, Can You Spare the Time?
Levi Kepplinger stared at the chronometer on his wrist as it counted down his last hour of life. His head throbbed in time with the seconds. His heart raced to a quicker rhythm. He tried to breathe deeply in an attempt to calm himself. Hands shaking, he verified the condition of the device. Fumbling with the buttons, he found all the usual controls in order. He ran the diagnostic, which rewarded him with a cheerful ping.
He thought back over his recent deposits. The last had been his timecheck made on the previous Thursday. His employer, Worldwide ByProxy, Inc., deposited five weeks into his account. It wasn’t a lot but it kept him going. Plus, he had been a careful spender. Ever since his inheritance at eighteen he had been stockpiling every extra minute. His parents could only afford to give him two years, but he managed it. He worked two or three jobs at a time while attending Accountancy training. Some were only subsistence jobs, barely paying a day for a day’s work. He did what he had to, to make ends meet. The tuition almost killed him.
Since becoming an Accountant his stock rose. He had the time for an occasional vacation with his wife, though he fussed about taking them. He would rather keep his time on hand. At his last count he had saved up almost three years of buffer. He always felt that some big disaster could occur at any moment and all their time would be spent dealing with it. He wasn’t ready to die.
So how did he end up here, unconscious in an alley with a throbbing head and one hour to live? His memory failed him spectacularly. He struggled to recall recent details. His memories all crowded in and demanded to be heard, each declaring itself vital. His wife’s face, his drinks in the bar some nights back, his first kiss, the name of his last Proxy; all of these thoughts and sensations flooded his mind, but where had the time gone?
A dark thought occurred to him. He checked his traditional timepiece. August, 20th 2113. Yesterday, the day he remembered, had been the 19th, so he had not blacked out and wasted the time. That meant only one thing. He must have spent it. He looked back up at the chronometer. Five minutes wasted just thinking. Five minutes he couldn’t afford. He contemplated his best solution. His wife would have plenty of time left; she always carried her half of their time together. Without delay, he ran out of the alley on his way home.
When he hit the street, he took a moment to orient himself. The downtown had looked the same for the last fifty years. He recognized it instantly. Experts said that since man had unlocked the immortality gene, human progress had slowed to a pre-industrial rate. No one felt rushed to complete anything or move forward without that eternal deadline hanging over them. The government developed the chronometers for just that reason, to keep people motivated to grow and change. Immortality, man’s ultimate achievement, threatened the very mechanisms that kept humans alive for millennia. Of course, there was the ever present fear of overpopulation as well. No one wanted to live long enough to starve to death. The chronometers, partnered with the unlocking, seemed the ideal solution. At this moment, Levi deeply resented it. He thought to flag a cab.
It took two minutes of fervent waving to attract one of the electric taxis. He jumped inside as it pulled to a stop.
“687 Montvale, please, and I’m in a hurry.”
“Sure, sure,” replied the cabby waving in no general direction. “Just wrist link and we’ll be on our way.” Levi looked at the black plastic tentacle that hung from the paneled glass dividing the front seat from the rear. A cuff hung off the end. “What’s a matter?” chimed in the cabby, “You’ve never been in a cab before.”
“Look…uh…can I pay you when we get there? I’m a little short on time right now.”
“C’mon, it’s not going to kill you. This cab is purely pay as you go.”
“Please? Look my wife can pay the fare. I just need to get to her.”
“Listen, time-waster. You’ve already taken two minutes of my life I can’t afford. Either pony up or get out.” Levi pressed his wrist against the glass divider. It read fifty minutes. The taxi driver balked, “Double digits? What are you trying to do to me here? I don’t need any suicides? Get out of my cab, low-life.” Levi felt the anger rising in him, but also knew his time was too short for arguing. He hopped out of the cab and slammed the door.
Once again he stood in town center, four miles from home. He briefly considered the bus, but realized that whatever he saved in time-currency he would lose in actual time. With his options limited, he focused his rage and began to run, without slowing, without stopping, without looking back.
Fifteen minutes in, Levi entered the business district. He huffed and puffed. He cursed himself for not keeping in better shape. He had forever put it off. When he had more time he would go to the gym. Around him men and woman in suits milled about. Each one meandered off in their own direction, ignoring each other, talking on cell phones to men and women in suits milling somewhere else. Levi had a new thought as his side began to ache from the strain of running. He looked around for a familiar face. If he could find a friend or colleague, even an acquaintance they might loan him some time. He just needed another hour, or half hour to get home. He would pay them back double. No known faces appeared.
A kind stranger, perhaps a Good Samaritan, could help him. He wasn’t asking for much. He approached a man, physically his own age with a similar demeanor.
“Sir, please,” the man looked up from his cell phone conversation but did not stop talking. “Can you spare a couple minutes? Maybe a half-hour?” The man’s attitude changed though his actions didn’t. He walked through Levi carrying on his distant conversation uninterrupted. Levi turned to another talker, a woman this time.
“Miss? There’s been a mistake. If you could just give me the time, I can pay you back?” She cast a disgusted glance at him and attempted to walk through as the man had. Levi grabbed her arm. “I need help!” he cried his voice straining now. This gathered some notice. The woman struggled from his grasp and ran into the crowd who now gave him a wide berth. One man stepped forward to confront him.
The big, dark man in a fine silk suit slid his cell phone into his jacket pocket before speaking. In a flash, Levi thought he knew him, or at least knew his type. His deep voice carried great authority. “Son,” he said in a way that instantly made Levi feel childish, despite his years, “This is not the way to go.” Tears of exhaustion and shame and fear welled in Levi’s eyes. “There is a hospice, just up the street. Let me take you there.” Levi’s accountant brain jumped again to the calculation. The time it would take this man to walk him to hospice, if he would just give it to Levi, would be enough to save his life.
“Please, just give me the time.” Levi pleaded, but the man was unmoved. For a moment Levi daydreamed or hallucinated. He imagined grabbing a rock and smashing the dark man’s head in. He saw time flow out of his wounds and into a river from which he could sup. It would fill him full and he wouldn’t have to worry about this anymore. The dream passed quickly. The cold reality imposed itself from his logical mind. There could be no stolen moments. Time could only be given freely. It could not be taken by force or coercion. The adrenalin and hormones accompanying such events temporarily shut down the chronometers for transfers. He knew this, just as he knew that his own desperate situation could not be the result of theft. Such things just didn’t happen anymore. The dark man moved forward, hand extended. Levi flew into the crowd breaking a path just as the woman had done moments earlier. He just needed to find a friend, a friend with time for him.
He headed toward his own office. It wasn’t too far off the path home and might provide that redemption. Still the faces flashed by unrecognized. How many people in this city did he not know? With twenty minutes on his chronometer, he reached the middle size spire that housed Worldwide ByProxy. He ran to the doors and pulled. They did not give. As an established company, WB held to the old traditions and had closed for the Sunday. Levi himself had argued against this continued tradition. People wanted to work. Business needed to happen. Why stop all that just for a creaky idea about a day of rest? Levi knew very few people who took the day off, and no one who did it for religious reasons. Most would work a second or third job, just to keep up with the time. Levi caught his frenzied reflection in the mirror and better understood the woman’s reaction to him. His mussed hair and ripped suit, with missing jacket, looked like someone at the end of their life, with nothing more to give to society. Turning away, Levi ran.
He got ten paces before he stopped. Finally, he had found someone whom he knew, someone who would help. The tall man with aquiline features went by Bill and worked as his newest corporate Proxy. After passing the proxy exams, Bill had just begun to carry large sums for Worldwide ByProxy. Time couldn’t be saved in a bottle. The last two centuries with the old currency had shown that. Any attempt to take something so vital and abstract it only resulted in chaos, confusion, recession and depression. How many times had that cycle been repeated with the old paper system? Lifetime may not have been invented to solve economic problems, but it had a great way of stabilizing them. Since only people could carry time, new struggles did arise. An immortality spent paying invoices would be more of a hell than dying. A new job class arose, Proxies. Proxies would carry the funds of individuals or companies to other individuals. Their vital function lubricated the new economic realities. Selected for their trustworthiness, they delivered time sums that no man had ever accrued alone. They suffered the tediousness of the job in exchange for generous compensation.
Levi trotted in Bill’s direction, calling out, but trying not to be the frantic man reflected in the door.
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