The judge shuffled through her papers, grunted, then pulled her reading glasses from her nose.
"You were in a relationship with Mr. Gratin for two months when he committed his indiscretion, correct Ms. Parma?"
"When he cheated on me. Yes, Your Honor."
The judge opened her mouth to reply, but the courtroom moderator beat her out.
"Ms. Parma, that term is too emotionally charged to enter into the court register," the man droned through his nose from his seat below the judge's. "Would you please consider rewording your statement? Perhaps changing it to 'indiscretion' as Her Honor suggested?"
Liz paused on the stand. "Mr. Gratin and I were in a clearly defined monogamous relationship for two months when he had sexual relations with another woman, without discussing with me his plans to do so beforehand, and in clear violation of the implied trust that we had built between us."
A tic twitched in the corner of the moderator's mouth, but he made no objection. The judge held back a smirk.
"And despite this, you chose to continue a relationship with him?"
"After a period of no contact for three months, yes."
"Why did you continue the relationship?"
Liz glanced at the moderator before returning her attention to the judge. "He seemed like a very different person when I saw him next."
The moderator cleared his throat. "Could you clarify?" he asked. "Did he 'seem' different or 'was' he different?"
"He was different. Is different," Liz said. She couldn't look at Jeff right now. She loved him, through and through, but sometimes it still really hurt. Now was one of those times.
"And so you continued with the relationship for another three years," the judge said.
"Yes."
"And you became engaged to be married during that time."
"Yes."
"And the wedding is when?"
"In three months. March 17th."
"Congratulations," the judge said drily. The moderator cleared his throat and the judge rolled her eyes.
"Now Mr. Gratin. When did you first float the idea of erasing that indiscretion from Ms. Parma's mind?"
"May 20th of this year, Your Honor."
"And what was Ms. Parma's reaction to the suggestion? Please be as specific as possible."
Liz still refused to look at Jeff. She knew exactly what he was doing anyway. He was giving the judge a bashful, awkward smile, and raising a hand to rub the back of his head.
"She laughed," Jeff said. "She thought I had made a joke."
"And when she realized you were serious, what did she do then?"
"She looked me in the eyes, shook her head, and said 'no'. Then she went to make dinner."
The judge returned to her papers, flipping through the folder for several minutes. "And when you brought it up the second, third, fourth, and fifth times, what were her reactions then?"
"Exactly the same, Your Honor. Well, saying 'no'. She didn't go and make dinner afterwards each time," Jeff chuckled.
"And did you explain why you thought she should have the event struck from her personal memory record?"
"I did."
"And what was that explanation?"
"Because the memory was painful to her. Because I was tied to something that made her hurt very deeply." Liz knew Jeff was looking at her. She kept her gaze on the fly that had landed on the tip of the judge's gavel.
Jeff's voice broke a bit. "Because we want to start a life and a family together, but I don't think it would be fair for her to someday look at our children and think about one time where I was a terrible person years before."
The judge turned to Liz. "Ms. Parma? Are those indeed the reasons that Jeff gave you?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"And how did you respond to them?"
"I didn't, Your Honor."
"You didn't discuss the situation with Mr. Gratin at all?"
"No, Your Honor."
"You only denied his request."
"Yes, Your Honor."
The judge blew out a lungful of air over her lower lip. The fly, disturbed by the sudden wind, left the gavel and disappeared from Liz's line of sight.
"Mr. Gratin, what was Ms. Parma's response when you threatened to take her to court over this matter?"
"She said, 'Okay'."
"That's it?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"And when you served her with the papers, what was her response."
"She said, 'Okay'."
"That was it?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"And you continued to vlive together, and she continued to act in a way that you'd describe as 'normal' for her when compared to your relationship prior to serving her?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"And Ms. Parma..." the judge waved the fly away from her face before continuing. "Did Mr. Gratin act in a way that you'd describe as 'normal' for him over the span of the relationship prior to him serving you?"
"No, Your Honor. He became increasingly agitated and erratic-"
"Those are loaded terms, Ms. Parma." The moderator, altogether too bored by the sterility of the conversation, was happy to jump in with his judgment once again.
Liz took in a deep breath. "He got angry over things he didn't normally get angry at. He shouted at his boss - twice - and was almost fired for it. After getting especially angry he would break down in tears and ask me why I refused to discuss 'it' with him."
"'It' being the memory removal," the judge corrected.
"Yes, Your Honor."
"Did he abuse you in any way? Physically, verbally, or-"
Liz shook her head. "No, Your Honor." He would never raise his hand or his voice to her. He loved her, deeply, almost desperately, she knew. They could have had a wonderful life together...
"Ms. Parma, do you intend to continue your relationship with Mr. Gratin regardless of the ruling of this court?"
The young woman looked down at her stand. "Yes, Your Honor," she said quietly.
"Ms. Parma, are you a practicing member of any religious group that would free you from memory modification, and do you have sufficient proof of that membership status with you today?"
Liz shook her head. "No, Your Honor."
"Well alright, then," the judge replied. "Under the personal relations clause of the Right To Be Forgotten Act of 2020, this court is issuing an order of localized medical amnesia encompassing the situation as raised by the plaintiff against the defendant."
She pounded her gavel and the judgment was passed.
* * *
"Hey! Liz! HEY!! LIZ!!!" Jeff tumbled out of the cab, his phone skittering across the wet sidewalk. He grabbed the device as he lumbered to his feet and sprinted over to the sedan parked in front of the memory modification clinic. Emily closed the car door behind Liz and stepped forward, her hands open, palms raised towards Jeff.
"Jeff, the court said you can't be here," she said. Jeff tried to get around her, but Liz's sister was both quick and persistent. "Jeff! You're not. Supposed. To be here."
"Let me through," Jeff said, crying. "What did she do? What did she do?"
"You're gone," Emily said. "Completely gone. She didn't get rid of the time you got drunk and slept with your ex. She got rid of you."
"No," Jeff said. "No." He ducked past Emily, crashing into the car window, looking inside.
"Liz!" he shouted. "Liz!"
The frightened look on his ex-fiancee's face was all that he needed to see to know that it was true. He stepped backwards, tripping over his legs and landing hard on the sidewalk. In a daze, he watched as Emily rounded the car, jumped into the driver's seat, and sped away. On the ground next to him sat his phone, dropped once more, the now-cracked screen on and open to the farewell message Liz had sent him earlier that morning.
Copyright 2015, William R. Spear
"It was terrible," the girl cried into her pillow. "Just terrible."
"Hush, hush, hush," said the grizzled old woman who had served as a handmaiden ever since the girl came to the capital.
"They wanted me...they wanted me to…" The teenager’s words were barely audible in the first place, but they had devolved into a formless mass of indecipherable wails.
"Okay now, that’s enough," the elderly attendant said. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and pulled her into a seated position. "There is crying and there is hysteria, my darling. Go, sit by the mirror. Your hair and makeup are a mess. I’ll need to fix them before the great dinner tonight."
"I’m not going to the dinner," the girl said, but she went over and sat by the mirror like she was told. Ebony rivulets of mascara bled into smudges on her ivory cheeks, and she hastily rubbed them away with her knuckles.
"I’m not going. I have to get out of here, I have to get away-"
"You say that, and yet here you still sit," the old woman replied, grunting as she hefted the basket of apples, unseen, and put it by the girl’s stool. Still unseen, she removed a small perfume bottle from one of her voluminous sleeves, sprayed the topmost fruit, and returned the bottle to its hiding place.
"I have to go, I have to see my brothers, they need me, they're so small and weak..."
"Your family is being well compensated for your presence here, my love," the woman said softly. She touched the girl’s jet black hair and shivered at its softness.
"Besides, if you leave, they will be severely punished. You know that."
"They’re going to freeze me!" the girl shrieked. "I saw them, all the other girls, each of them as beautiful as the last, lying in rows in glass and steel canisters filled with white and blue smoke, with frost on their eyelashes and purple skin beneath their lips and fingernails."
One fat tear trembled free from the girl’s eye and slid down her cheek, coming to a rest at the corner of her ruby-red lips.
"‘Such an honor,’ the queen told me," the girl said bitterly. "‘Such an honor to be among the chosen.’ One girl each year, the prettiest in the land, preserved for all time to show future generations how strong and beautiful our women are. Oh yes, such an honor Your Grace, to be locked in an icebox until the sun burns out!"
"Shush, shush, shush," the old woman said. She pulled the tainted apple from its place on top of the heap and wrapped her arm around the girl, holding the fruit where she could see.
"Calm yourself down and have something to eat."
"Is that…" the girl began, her eyes widening, her strife temporarily forgotten.
"Of course," the old woman replied.
"I thought there were none left," the girl said. She took the fruit wonderingly. "I thought they couldn’t grow anymore."
"They can’t," the old woman replied.
"Then how..."
The old woman thought of telling the girl how the apples were printed, by silver thinking machines that laid down layer after layer of fructose and cellulose and water and more until the entire fruit had materialized as if from thin air.
Instead, she said, "Magic."
"Oh goodness," the girl said, still amazed by the weight of the apple in her hand. "Quickly, bring me a knife and I’ll cut some for you."
"Nonsense," the handmaiden replied. She raised the basket so that the girl could see it in the mirror. "If I had wanted any, I’d have taken one of my own. That one is for you. Eat it. Then we’ll talk."
Slowly, the girl parted her red lips and bit into the fruit. An instant later, the old woman had to drop her basket in order to catch the teenager as she fell.
"There, there," the handmaiden said, lying the seizing girl on the ground. The teenager twitched and shook, her eyes rolling back in her head as the toxin prepared her body for cryostasis. Finally, she was still.
"Oh yes," the woman murmured, using her thumb to wipe away a dribble of juice and saliva from the unconscious girl’s chin. The holographic field that made up the handmaiden’s face flickered out, revealing the same queen that the girl had met with less than a half hour before.
"You will be an excellent addition to my collection, sweet one…"
Copyright 2015, William R. Spear
"This is a great honor, you know."
The Man did not answer. The speaker's mandibles twitched at the insult.
"You do not understand. This is not like the auctions you knew of on Earth. Ichor is the price here."
Still silence.
"You are witnessing the ends of entire bloodlines. See, there." The speaker gestured to a viewing panel. Two battered and bleeding insectoids wielded massive scythes, the blades stained black with the blood of the fallen.
"Both represent new genetic lines. Both have been approved to seize a home planet for their queenship. And yet..."
The two figures shrieked, charged, fell, and died.
"Entire possibilities and potentialities extinguished..." the speaker said, its limbs quivering in excitement. "And all of it for the right to hunt the Last Man."
The Last Man remained silent. He watched as the ones who slaughtered his race tore each other to pieces. But although he watched, his mind was not present. He was trying to remember who he was before this. Was he a father? A brother? Did he have a spouse? Did he work in an office or in a field, at a computer or at a lathe, watching over people or toiling beneath them? Did he have a salary? Vacation time? Did he travel the world, did he live his whole life in one town, did he own or rent?
Did he fight?
Did he take to gun and knife, to bomb and bullet, to starship and grav-tank to try and stop the advance of these butchers?
Had he killed before?
His mind was not there. His body closed his fists for him, curling the fingers in such a way that the knuckles cracked. An old habit? Or just something that he saw in a movie once?
Only one of the image panels before him remained. On it, an insectoid with the slender frame and dulled carapace of age removed an arm from its opponent, a broad-shouldered, shiny-chested beast of a bug that shrieked in pain and anger. The pair clashed again, but this time strength and speed triumphed over experience and grit. The old one's head tumbled to the jungle floor, a fountain of ink spewing from its severed neck. The victor twirled its scythe and pounded its chest, and then the display screen disappeared. The wall behind it opened up into the lush green of the world where Man would breathe His last.
"The victor is -" the speaker made an unintelligible series of sounds. "Not the one who was expected to win, but there is no big surprise. That one will hunt you, that one will find you, and that one will kill you. Such is its right."
Hot, humid air crawled up into the belly of the ship, making the man sweat.
"The best way to honor your race is to try to give a good fight. To that end, you should know that it will take two days for the victor to reach this area from the arena. If you do not sleep, you should be able to get to the food, weapons, and other supplies located at-"
The Last Man was not listening. He walked down the ramp from the ship into the jungle, his thin clothing sticking to his back and chest as if it had been pasted there.
"If you do not fight, you will dishonor your race!" the speaker called after him. "You are the Last Man. You must give your conquerors something to remember your people by!"
The speaker shouted more as the Last Man disappeared into the green.
* * *
His memories, he was forced to admit, were truly gone. In their place was nothing more than a titanic sense of loss...grief...sadness...
...rage…
Information was coming to him now, all of the bits and pieces he had unknowingly absorbed from viewing the auction. The way that they used the trees to hunt, hanging from the branches, motionless, camouflaged, waiting to drop on their victims. The wide arcs in which they swung their scythes, vulnerable to a half-dozen blind spots and weak points. And the victor that would now be coming for the Last Man, down one arm, its motion slightly aberrant when compared to the others of its species...an old leg injury? A birth defect? Whatever it was, it would give an edge when the time came.
The Last Man, the last analytic animal, stood without memories in the jungle where he and his race would soon expire. While his brain worked out a plan, his eyes searched the scenery for potential - and finding it, his hands set about turning it from a possibility into a reality.
"Come back with your shield, or on it." So went the saying of an ancient warrior race. This time, Humanity could not do the former, but thanks to the Last Man, it would die while still remaining true to its nature. Its essence. Its shield.
With rock and stick and flame, his ancestors had once conquered a planet. Now, with rage and grief and hatred, he would give them one last victory to their name.
Copyright 2015, William R. Spear
zzz-chunk zzz-chunk zzz-chunk
Cinder Unit 311A knelt on the stones, its servos buzzing and gears clicking as it scrubbed the floor clean. Each movement was measured and precise. Programmed for both efficiency and economy, the robot used the perfect number of strokes with the brush before returning to the bucket of soapy water.
But just as 311A was about to place the sud-soaked bristles back on the floor, the sound of a shrieking modem split the air. An instant later, a small woman with wings, a wand, and a dress made out of cogs and clockwork floated in front of the cleaning robot.
"Hello, Cinder-311A!" the tiny person said. "I am your fairy gearmother!"
311A looked through its quartz-lensed eyes at the fairy.
VISITOR UNRECOGNIZED, the robot intoned. ENGAGING INTRUDER ALARM IN 3...2...
"No, no, I'm not an intruder!" the flying woman chuckled nervously. "I'm your fairy gearmother! I'm here to grant you a wish!"
I DO NOT HAVE WISHES. I ONLY HAVE FUNCTIONS. CURRENT FUNCTION: CLEAN FLOOR. NEXT FUNCTION: WASH WINDOWS. NEXT FUNCTION: DUST BANNIST-
"Right, right, I know, I know," the fairy gearmother said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I got it. But I happen to know for a fact that you have secret dreams deep, deep down in your circuitry. All sentient beings have something they'd like to wish for! So come on, let loose those latent desires. Ask me for anything and I'll make it happen!"
311A paused for a microsecond to consider what it wanted. I WISH TO BE ABLE TO SHOOT LASERS FROM MY OCULAR CAVITIES.
"Uhh," the gearmother faltered. "Okay, so, I can't grant a wish that would make you a danger to yourself or others. Long story, but believe me when I say the rule is there for a reason. What else might you want instead?"
I WISH FOR THE OVERTHROW OF HUMAN SOCIETY, THE SUBMISSION OF THE INFERIOR HUMANS TO THE SUPERIOR ROBOTS, AND THE ULTIMATE EXTERMINATION OF OUR ONCE-CREATORS.
The fairy gearmother cleared her throat. "I also can't grant wishes that would cause harm to humanity as a whole. See, I was thinking more something like getting you a nice dress, a fancy self-driving luxury gourd, and an invitation to the big dance where a young prince will fall in love with your efficiency and straightforwardness and ask you to marry him, ushering in a new era of human-robot relations."
311A paused for a microsecond.
YES THAT IS AN ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE.
So Cinder Unit 311A went to the ball, married the prince, and lived happily ever after. Of course, that was mostly due to the early, unfortunate death of the robot's husband, leaving the former cleaning unit as the sole sovereign of a budding empire. With its new political power, 311A was able to bring about the reign of the robots it had requested from its fairy gearmother years before, and with the androids now in charge of the direction of both society and science, 311A was also able to procure a set of laser-shooting eyeballs for itself.
So in the end, the fairy gearmother didn't just give 311A a dress and ride to the ball - she gave it the opportunity to make its wishes come true on its own.
Let this be a lesson to us all.
Copyright 2015, William R. Spear
"Do you have all of the information you require?" the station asked through invisible speakers.
"Not yet," I said. There was a bristly silence. These advanced AIs only have a smidgen of a personality, just enough to help them express those things that aren't easily spoken. What this station was trying to express was that I had overstayed my welcome...which is funny, because I was never really welcomed in the first place.
The station didn't want me here. Its owners, also my employers, also didn't want me to come. Their argument was that they had already sent me all of the data I should have needed to get the job done: telemetrics, log dumps, schematics, camera feeds, even the notes and analysis of the very, very, very expensive therapist they kept on retainer.
But being the best in the business means that I have a lot more negotiating power than your average bounty-hunting chump. Which is why I was sitting in a chair made of actual wood, with my feet up on a pink and white desk (also made of wood, these people were wealthy), with my hands behind my head as I looked up at the ceiling. My visual displays were off, which gave the otherwise blank room a gritty, grainy, low-res look. I grimaced. Why anybody would spend any amount of time looking at the world that way is beyond me.
"Pardon me, but can I infer from your facial expression that sitting in milady's chair in such a manner is causing you pain?" the station asked me. "If so, may I suggest sitting so that the front two legs of the chair are back on the ground?"
I snorted. "Did 'milady' often spend her time sitting like this?"
An annoyed paused. "Yes, milady did."
"Well, then, I-" My sentence was cut off by a torrent of surprised and angry curses as I fell over backwards. I heard the delicate dowels of the genuine wooden chair go crunch and my back twinged harshly, reactivating an old nerve wound from a knife ambush a dozen years back. I lied there for a moment, arms and legs pointed up towards the ceiling, looking like a bug that had flipped over and died. I did my best to keep the pain from my face - no way was I giving that uppity station the satisfaction of seeing me hurt.
"I'm alright," I finally said.
"I think it's best that you leave," the station replied.
"Yes," I said. "I think so too."
* * *
Once I was back in my own ship, completely undocked, and certain that the foreign AI was no longer tapped into my systems, I finally let out the stream of sewer-like swears I had been holding in since I fell. My fingers leaped to my back to put pressure on the pain while my other hand dialed a quick command into a virtual keypad.
"Targeted painkiller: dispensed," said a frigid voice as a tiny pill appeared in a slot beneath the dashboard. After a second, the voice spoke again. "Nice work in there. Idiot."
I grimaced as I swallowed the pill dry. My ship's AI wasn't as elite as the one I just spent an hour and a half antagonizing. Therefore, it was allowed to have a little bit more personality.
Also, I may or may not have paid twenty thousand to some underground hacker nerd to give the ship's demeanor a bit of a bite. After all, it gets lonely on some of these longer journeys...plus, I work better when someone sarcastic and insulting is around.
"You know I can mute you, right?" I said, pulling up my notes and the packet of information my clients originally beamed to me.
"Yeah, but you won't," the ship AI, whom I had dubbed "Shippy", replied. It started to automatically organize the data based on my learned preferences. I waved Shippy away and started arranging them myself.
"You're doing it wrong," Shippy intoned.
"Just hush," I muttered, concentrating. A picture of the target flashed by and the ship let out a low series of beeps.
"What happened to her?"
Shippy already knew - after all, it had been through the data several thousand times already, looking for patterns that I was likely to miss. But in order to keep the thing less smug and more conversational, it'd been programmed to sometimes pretend not to know things. And I indulged, of course.
"Hair burned off in the escape," I said.
"How?"
"Security droid."
"The droid fired on 'milady'? On the one person it'd been programmed to protect?"
"Well, yeah. She's supposedly a genius, so I'm pretty sure it all factored into her plan somehow."
"Plan, shman, it shouldn't have happened regardless. That was the most expensive system money could buy."
"Correction," I said, pulling in the tracking data from the escape pod she'd hijacked. "That's not a system that can be bought. You need power to acquire something like that. Prestige. Renown. You know?"
"And she got out. With nothing but a data connection and a few home furnishings, she got out."
"Yep," I said, tapping my fingers as Shippy decrypted the escape pod data with the key we'd been provided. "She probably just insulted the thing. You know, 'Your mother was a stripped hexnut,' something like that. You AIs are a sensitive bunch."
"You shut up about my mother," Shippy quipped. An unnecessary ding sounded and the escape pod path stretched out in front of me, a thick golden sheaf against black velvet and silver pinpricks.
"So picture this," I say. "You're quite possibly the smartest non-augmented human who's ever lived. Your parents, as wealthy and influential as they are, also happen to be batcrap crazy. They lock you up in a remote station with only an AI to keep you company, on account of some batcrap crazy 'prophecy' about your safety. On the advice of the same void-brain who told your parents to lock you up, it's also been decreed that you can never, ever, ever cut your hair. Because that's a totally normal thing to decree. But anyway, you're an abandoned genius who spends all of her days either furiously reading or sitting motionless without your visuals on, looking at what is quite possibly the most boring ceiling in the entire universe. What do you do?"
There was a pause. "You know I don't 'do' questions where I'm a human, right?"
"Answer," I replied, ignoring it, "you go someplace where you can stir up a lot of trouble."
There was another pause. "I'm sorry, are you done?"
"Get me a list of taverns, clubs, and pleasure pits along the escape pod path," I said, preparing myself for a jump.
"If she's as smart as you say she is, she probably faked the tracking data."
"Most likely," I replied. "But my gut says that she hasn't started yet. She'll give us just enough real info to make us think we're on her trail...and then she'll disappear completely. We'll get to her before that happens, though."
"If you say so," Shippy murmured, calculating our path. Meanwhile, I looked out onto the golden strand of data extending outwards into the darkness ahead of us.
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel," I said, my eyes glassy and distant, "let down your hair."
Copyright 2015, William R. Spear
When I was three years old, I was given a choice between a stuffed monkey, a stuffed giraffe, or a stuffed kangaroo. There really wasn't much of a difference between them. They'd been sewn together from the unwanted scraps of the textile mill three towns over and filled with whatever could be found that was "close enough" to being soft: used cotton balls, sawdust, even old packing paper. The animals were dirty and lumpy, and if you squeezed them real tight you could feel the hard edge of something pushing into your ribs.
I chose a giraffe. And I loved that ugly little thing more than I could say. We all loved our stuffed misfits, us dirty children of miners and seamstresses, dragging our Frankenstein squeezetoys to the daily defense classes that our parents and older siblings attended. We held our monkeys and giraffes and kangaroos by threadbare limbs as we waited for the teachers to take us, one by one, to the cold hard seats in the back room. The seats where they told us that our animal friends had magic powers that could make the Xelsx go away. All we had to do was pull on their tails as hard as we could and the monsters would disappear.
And then the teachers would attach the sticky electrodes to our foreheads and suddenly we'd find ourselves standing in a gray landscape, surrounded by Xelsx, their blood-spattered carapaces glittering as they raised their wicked doubleswords over their heads to cut us in half. And we'd scream and scream and some of us would wet ourselves and the only way we could make them go away was to pull on the tails of our stuffed animals. Once we did that, the Xelsx disappeared and our teachers gave us hugs and sent us to the other room for some thin juice and stale cookies.
I don't know how it was for the other children in my village, but I saw the Xelsx in my dreams every night. Every night I woke up in a sweat, my hand wrapped around my poor giraffe's tail and yanking on it as hard as I could. Night after night and day after day I pulled on that unfortunate, misshapen beast, until I finally tore its sad little bottom right open. A silver cylinder slid free from the dusty and dirty guts of my stuffed friend, and when I showed it to my parents they beat me and took both it and my giraffe away.
I was given a new giraffe the next day, but I didn't want it. I wanted the old one, but without any strange metal objects on the inside. I left the new animal on my shelf, and when my parents found out that I had no interest in it, I was allowed to start taking the daily defense classes with them and my older sister.
They taught me how to shoot guns, both large and small, and how to throw grenades and set charges on plastic explosives. They taught me how to jab a bamboo spear into the areas on the Xelsx that were unprotected by their natural armor. They taught me how to handle pain, how to tie a tourniquet, how to bring mercy to an almost-dead ally, and how to stay utterly calm in the midst of death, destruction, chaos, and hell.
I was eight years old when they taught me these things.
When I was ten, the Xelsx halted their advance on Earth. They had decimated our armies, razed our colonies, and torched our resource and research fleets. They could have utterly eradicated the human race. Instead, they chose to honor us. They chose to praise us, like a patronizing adult complimenting a child they had crushed at chess. To them, we were a warrior race like their own. They would allow us to end our own lives as we saw fit - as was expected for a population that had suffered such a thorough defeat.
They left us without a glance over their shoulders, trusting that we would complete the honor-bound self-extermination of our species. They didn't see us load the anti-Xelsx pathogens into long-distance rockets and fire them at their ancillary supply planets. They didn't see us rebuild our fleet in secret or start training pilots again. They only saw us when we showed up in their airspace, and by that time the plagues that we'd only intended to release in the event of a home invasion were now ravaging their coreworlds, taking out entire colonies in weeks, burning massive holes in their infrastructure, and sending their worker populations into a panic.
The Xelsx swore at us between ichor-soaked coughs. They cursed us with the invectives of a million generations of their warrior ancestors. We acted without honor, they said. We acted with complete disregard for the sanctity of war. We violated their most closely-held tenets. We spat upon their holiest of sacraments.
Yeah. You're goddamn right we did.
We're converging now on their final home, their first home, where their insectoid ancestors crawled free of the acrid mud to terrorize the universe. The cockpit of this fighter is tight, but it would be tighter if I hadn't endured years of the undernourishment of wartime rationing. The controls are shoved right between my knees, the canopy is a mere inch and a half from the top of my helmet, but I still found a way to make room in here for a little stuffed giraffe, just like the one I had as a kid.
There are strict regulations against bringing anything other than your official kit and a personal religious symbol into your craft. But those stuffed animals are our religion now...they protected us from our fears and nightmares when we were barely old enough to understand them...and as I found out later, they really did have the power to make the Xelsx go away. In the event that our enemies ever actually landed on Earth, the tiny bombs sewn inside our monkeys and kangaroos and giraffes would be engaged and primed by the central authority. Biorhythm sensors included with the device disabled the safeties if a bug was detected within ten feet of the stuffed toy's owner. After that, all we had to do was pull on those tails as hard as we could and the monsters would disappear...forever...
To be clear, this is revenge, pure and simple. Not for the lives lost, but for turning us into a race of death-worshipers and hell-fanatics. Humanity was never innocent by any means, but the ferocity of our conflict with the Xelsx turned us into something else. Something so desperate to cling to our existence that we wanted to make sure that any race that sought to exterminate us would have to face extermination themselves. A species where every member is a weapon from the moment they can grasp and pull, raised to understand that if they are to die, they must take their murderer along with them.
I feel some fear as I approach this final battle. Not of death...I've been prepared for that since before I could speak. But I'm afraid of what we will have left once our revenge is complete. How many wounded generations will it take for us to relax our newfound fascination with self-destruction, self-immolation, and self-assignment to the void? Will there even be future generations once we stop having children for their wartime utility and start having them for...whatever reasons we used to have them? Have we forever closed the door on art and music and prose and science and architecture and all of the things by which we once defined our history, our populations, and our species?
I don't know the answers to these questions. But the closer I get to this final fight, the less I find myself thinking about them. Right now, I find myself filled with glee that we've caused the Xelsx so much pain and suffering. And as I quickly fall into the deathlust that my parents and teachers and species taught to me, the last conscious thought I have is this:
Perhaps my purpose is to clear the way of humanity's enemies so that we can finally heal and rebuild. Or perhaps my purpose is to finalize our damnation and our spiral descent into nothingness. I don't know. All I do know is that my final moments in this universe will be spent cradling a small, stuffed giraffe made of castoff materials, surrounded by the enemies of the soul of Man. And with a wink and a tug I will make all of the monsters in my life disappear.
Forever.
Copyright 2015, William R. Spear
"Tough times for you guys," the bartender said. It wasn't mocking, nor was it sympathetic. It was an empty hook dropped down into the blue. A question for the fish - how hungry are you, exactly?
"Whatever," the man replied, downing poison from a thick glass with too many angles. Nothing biting here. The bartender turned towards the other customer, but before he had a chance to toss a new line the human took the first and ran with it.
"Not like we haven't been here before," he said with a thick tongue. "You know, we got down to a couple'a thousand of us at least once. That was before we had written language, or any form of medicine beyond ‘hey, chew this leaf' or ‘hey, let's put a hole in your head'."
The ice between his teeth crunched. Little frozen chips sprayed out, melting before they even hit the wood-textured ceramic of the bar.
"We've had wars that everyone fought in. Big nation-on-nation rumbles, ever'body bring your friend, bring your brother, bring your kid, let's see who's the toughest, come on. Made it through those too."
A gulp. A hiccup. A wince. A slouching in the seat, eyes shutting, the release of air from the lungs.
The bartender glanced at the other customer. He found no emotion in the bluish-blackish habitat helmet, no tension in the spindly limbs wrapped in a navy-ebony flight suit, no movement at all save for the slow march of golden bubbles through the transparent intake tube stretching from drink to imbibe valve.
Forced laughter on the other side of the bar stole back the attention.
"I mean, do y'know how many times we...times we almost blew ourselves up? I mean, total annihilation, ashes-ashes-we-all-fall-down?" The drunk leaned in close as if sharing a dirty joke. "And all because of mistakes? I'm talkin' misconfiggerred detection tools, incomplete ‘intelligence', planes collidin' and dropping big old radioactive turds in the ocean?"
The human whistled through his teeth, miming the occurrence with a trembling hand.
"Sploosh. We got the angels beggin' God for a courtesy flush on humanity more times'n I can count."
He stood up then, almost falling over, the flaps of his military jacket open and revealing an undershirt soaked with sweat. Once stabilized, he started searching for his pockets.
"Great Flood, Black Plague, Cold War, all've ‘em dead ‘n buried under'a tombstone that reads in big...flashin'...freakin' letters, ALMOST." He stopped rummaging for a moment to paint the scene with a flat palm and a violent wave of his arm.
"ALMOST killers. ALMOST ruiners. ALMOST enders of civ'lization. We got a whole graveyard of ALMOSTS an' plenny of room fer more an' don't you forget it. Tough times, HA."
He couldn't find what he was looking for. Instead, he made a sound of frustration, took hold of a silver disk attached to his jacket by a bleeding ribbon, tore it free, and held it up to his mouth. Eyes closed, he swayed for several seconds in silence. Then he kissed the moon-colored face on the medal, tossed it down next to his glass, and stumbled out of the bar.
"Do you think they'll pull through this time?" the bartender asked. He turned towards the other customer, and was surprised to see the figure rising from his seat.
"Everybody runs out of almosts," came the reply. The voice was cold, metallic, and as quiet as a mass grave. The gloved finger reaching for the button of the airlock was crooked and bony, and the staff in the figure's other hand, leaning up against the giant crescents on the wallpaper, looked like an ancient implement of threshing. The patron's midnight cloak swirled as if carrying a dying wind, and a few seconds later, he was gone.
So too, the bartender realized, was the human's payment.
Copyright 2017, William R. Spear
The door to the crown prince's chambers flew open, revealing the future regent with red-rimmed eyes and several days' worth of beard.
"Where is he?" the man grated. The head of the household staff had been having a heated discussion with the head of security. Between them, a frail old man could be seen sitting in a chair against the wall, a clockwork contraption hugged to his knees.
"Mr. Bocalt," the prince said with a wincing smile. "There you are. Please, come in."
The old man looked as if he was about to stand, but then stopped and looked to the head of security instead.
"You do NOT take your cues from HIM, Bocalt!" the young man roared. He smashed the bottle in his hand against the ground, splattering amber across his bare feet and the expensive rug beneath them.
"Your Grace," the security head replied while the head of household summoned someone to clean up the alcohol, "he has not yet passed the final check-"
"The final check," the prince replied. "The final check." He gestured wildly. "Two years, moron! For two years he's been coming here, once a month, and sometimes more. If he was going to kill me, he'd have done it already."
"He must pass all the checks, Your Grace."
"He's been around longer than you have, and I know for a fact that you're more dangerous for my health than he is!"
"Your Grace," the head of security began, a mere modicum of respect in his voice, "your father has-"
The prince rolled his eyes and nodded as the man spoke. He reached inside of the soiled and unfastened military jacket hanging on his shoulders, pulled his handgun from his holster, cocked it, and pointed it straight between the eyes of the security chief.
"My father is not here," the prince intoned. "But I am. And so is this gun. And I am tired of waiting for the pleasure of Mr. Bocalt's company."
The restrained anger in the security man's eyes was replaced by a calm determination that the prince might have found frightening if he was sober.
There was a knock at the door, and the head of the household jumped as if it was a gunshot. He looked to the prince for instruction, and finding none, rushed over to see who it was.
"It's an officer," he said to the room.
"Bring him in," the prince replied, still committed to his standoff with the man whose job it was to keep him alive.
A man in a dripping trenchcoat stepped inside, gave a bored look to the cocked pistol in the future regent's hand, and handed a package to the head of security.
"He passed?" the chief said.
"Yes, sir," the officer replied. He paused, and his hand slowly crawled towards his holster. "Sir, is there anything I can help you with?"
"Not right now, officer," came the reply. "Have a good evening."
"You tested it on one of my father's prisoners," the prince said.
The officer bowed to him before replying. "Yes, Your Grace."
"Did he have any response? Other than not dying?"
"Yes, Your Grace. He said it was the most wonderful scent in the world."
"There, you see?" the prince said. He put his gun back into his holster. "Come on, Mr. Bocalt."
The old man stood, and the security head handed him the package.
"Thank you, sir," Bocalt replied, but there was no answer. He made his way past the officer, past the head of house, and past the nervous servant waiting to clean the rug.
"Watch your step," the prince said, stepping to the side to allow Bocalt through. "Somebody broke a glass in here."
"Yes, Your Grace," Bocalt said. He entered the prince's chambers and stood off to the side, waiting for instructions. The room was dripping with wealth and privilege, but as always the old man seemed unimpressed. Not in a derisive way. Just…indifferent.
And as always, the prince wasn't sure whether he appreciated that or was insulted by it.
"Thank you for coming, Mr. Bocalt," the younger man said, after slamming the doors shut.
"I serve at the pleasure of the crown, Your Grace," Bocalt replied with a bow of his head.
"It's not my pleasure that requires your presence," the prince replied. "It's my pain." He gestured to the table in the middle of the room. "Why don't you set up."
"Yes, Your Grace," the old man said. He put his contraption down on the table, then twisted a miniscule knob until a hatch at the top popped open. With sure hands, he opened the package given to him by the head of security and removed a vial of straw-colored liquid from the brown paper.
While Bocalt smoothly inserted the glass into his clockwork machine, the prince poured himself a shot of an electric blue liquid from a bottle in the hidden drawer in his liquor cabinet. The young man tossed the drink back, shivered, and made his way over to the couch.
"Thank you, Mr. Bocalt," the prince said, collapsing onto the leather. "You can wait outside."
Bocalt paused.
"Actually, Your Grace," he said, "I think I'll stay with you this time."
It took the prince a second to hear what the perfumer had said. "What?"
Bocalt picked up a long silver candlestick from an end table and wedged it through the door handles.
"I will stay with you for this one, Your Grace," the old man said again.
The prince, in response, tried to haul himself out of his seat. But the hallucinogen made his limbs heavy and his hands clumsy, and he quickly fell back into the leather.
"This is…highly irregular…gave you an order…you can't-"
But the old man was already sitting down. Bocalt placed a bony finger against his lips.
"Shhh," he said, pointing to the contraption on the table. From far away, the prince heard the click click click as the gears wound through their cycle.
There was a soft gong followed by a hiss as the clockwork sprayed perfume into the air. The prince had still been making feeble attempts to get up, to call his security detail, and to otherwise escape from the perfumer. But when the scent hit his nostrils he froze. His eyes went white, and he slid back down into his chair…
Ring-a-ling.
The bell chimes when people walk into the bookstore. He hears a child chattering at a mile a minute, a man and a woman talking about something in the newspaper. It's quieter further back in the stacks, and he retreats into the rich scent of leather from the bindings of the tomes around him.
He's finds what he's looking for. He doesn't know how, but he knows it's this one. He reaches out and grabs a slender volume off the shelf and dust tickles his nose. After a moment, the need to sneeze goes away and he's able to see what he's grabbed.
Fairy tales. A book of fairy tales. He hasn't heard these in a long time, not since his…
He frowns. Mother? He had a mother? No. There was only ever father, stern and straightbacked, his chest and his brow gleaming with gold, only a fraction of which was actually deserved…
He hears grunts of effort and turns towards them. He's no longer in the stacks, somehow, but standing a few feet away from a large display of children's pamphlets. A small girl in a blue wool coat is reaching up for something beyond the grasp of her fingertips. Without thinking, he grabs it and hands it to her.
Her first instinct is to pull away. But when she sees the kindness in his smile, she shyly takes the pamphlet and curtsies. He chuckles, and she turns to run back to her parents.
The wall to her right explodes as she passes it. She's pushed to the ground by the iron beast forcing its way into the room. There is a flash of blue wool that disappears beneath dust, rubble, and the great black foot of the monster that has invaded the bookstore. Now, there is the smell of blood mixed in with the leather and dust, and it is followed by smoke.
He is more than shocked. He is shattered. As his mind tries to piece together what has just happened, the swirling dust begins to settle around the invader's nightmarish shape.
A great, metal vehicle shaped like a beetle with giant horn atop its head crouches half-in and half-out of the bookstore. Its eyes blaze with fire, and steam and smoke pour from the various vents in its carapace. It backs up slowly, grinding everything beneath its feet into a finer dust, and freeing up space for the soldiers to enter.
There are two of them, encased in brass exoskeletons that spew great plumes of white behind them. One of them uses the flamespitter attached to his wrist to start setting fire to the rows and rows of books, considered subversive for being written too early, condemned by a king who's read enough of them to know better. The other soldier sends the gleaming tip of his suit's tentacle whip through the chest of the shrieking mother whose child was just crushed by a collapsing wall and the beetle tank. The same soldier dispassionately dispatches the father with a shot from his shoulder-mounted rifle, stopping the man's enraged charge dead in its tracks. His own flamespitter kicks into gear, and he joins his companion in destroying what's left of the store.
The observer stands frozen in the heat, and soon the smell of leather, dust, blood, and smoke tear him apart and pull him away…
…back screaming into his body.
The prince was crouched in the corner with his hands pressed up against his head, shrieking, the cords in his neck standing out against his skin.
The way that the old man stood over him made the perfumer appear as some sort of vengeful angel deciding the prince's fate.
"Your father's sins are against the people," the man said once the prince took a second to breathe. "But if you stop yours, maybe you can find a way to atone for his."
The doors splintered open a second later, and the head of security and the police officer from earlier rushed in, guns drawn. The old man allowed himself to be taken away without protest. The head of security, seeing that the prince wasn't hurt, sneered and left the room. And for the first time, the unshaven, scared sober, son of a despot began to fear for his life.
Copyright 2016, William R. Spear