Community of Magic Pens

by Community of Magic Pens (epub)

  As she worked Rivka’s mind wandered, with pride, through memories of raising her family in Chelevka. Of Shayna, from age 7, helping her father Zocha with simple sums in the shop. Of Shayna, from age 9, learning from her cousin Moshe, each night, everything he’d learned at yeshiva that day. Of her husband Zocha asking their daughter Shayna, age 25 and with her own husband and little baby girl, to take over keeping the books in the shop. Of Shayna, age 29, agreeing to teach Hebrew letters to the little boys of Chelevka when Rabbi Altschuler retired, if (and only if) she could also teach the little girls of Chelevka. Of Adinah, age 10, studying torah alongside the boys of Chelevka. Of taking over the shop when Zocha died. She thumbed the notches she’d carved in the leg of her workbench every year on Shayna’s birthday to show how tall she had grown, until she was taller than the workbench, and the notches she’d carved in another leg of her workbench on Adinah’s birthday, and the notches she’d carved in a third leg, rising only partway up the leg, on Malka’s birthdays.

  Rivka Pippik paid little mind to choosing the wood; the first blank on which her hand rested was the one she chose. She asked her granddaughter Adinah to work the treadles, and she turned a simple, functional body and cap. Rivka applied a wax that would protect the wood but not add much in the way of beauty, and assembled the pen. “Now we can go.”

  “Bubbe,” asked Rivka’s granddaughter Adinah as they walked to the old delivery truck Shayna had borrowed, “who did you make that pen for?”

  “For myself,” answered Rivka Pippik. “Today, I am a fountain pen.” Rivka did not look back as they drove away.

  Lawrence Miller (he/him) grew up in Tampa, spending most of his formative years attending Trek, Comic, and Anime conventions, and playing D&D in the living room as there are no basements in Tampa. He currently lives in Pennsylvania with his spouse, two children, and a dog, and spends his weekdays writing software to help physicians become better physicians. His hobbies include folk dancing, knitting, and when time allows, snow skiing and small-boat sailing. Lawrence has personally said hello (and received a response) to Terry Gross on 5 separate occasions. He can be found on Twitter at @ldpm.

  A Pencil Golden and Rich

  Rai Rocca

  Maria looked at her husband, saw his shame, and cried, “Why don’t you breathe a little?”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Drink some water.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Alright, what are you missing?”

  Carlos Jiménez recalled two thousand dollars. He recalled the house he painted and fixed and polished. The house was not for him but rather for a man he knew as John. The man had greeted Carlos with a smile and had gone on to point at all the things that needed fixing. Three weeks had passed, Carlos had perfected the house, and John refused to pay for the work.

  “How could he take advantage of us? It’s winter. Doesn’t he know winter is the worst time for workers like me?”

  For the first time in Maryland, Carlos started to cry. Maria held him, and the tears made them feel young as though they were in Peru again. Carlos did not think that injustice like this would follow them to this country.

  “Baby, he threatened me. He told me he would call the police if I kept asking for my money. He’d call ICE!”

  Carlos would not have cried if he had known that his seventeen-year-old daughter was not sleeping but rather listening to every detail from her room. His daughter, Isabella, began to shake. Her father’s crying transformed her and silently, she began to cry as well.

  Her room was light blue—her father had painted it. He was everything on her mind when she began to have a vision. There in that vision, she saw her father conjuring up John’s empty house with paint and carpet and light bulbs—the most beautiful blue light. Carlos, floating tall and happy, then invited her in saying, “Come, hija! Come see the house I made,” so she walked in to see the beauty made by her father’s hands. She looked at his hands and in them were a yellow pen and a black notebook. “Oh, this? This is where I add up the cost of all the work and material to give the man the total price. Here, it’s yours.”

  Isabella, now in her room, stopped weeping and looked at her hands. In them were the pen and notebook. Amazed, she took them to her desk and opened the binding. Contrary to what her father had said, the pages were empty. She took the pen, went to the first page, and wrote, “Two Thousand Dollars”.

  The pen glowed. Smiling, she continued writing, “The man owes my father, Carlos Jiménez, two thousand dollars.”

  She looked at the pen and it started growing in size, started changing shape and color until it was unquestionably golden and rich. The weight was golden, and as she continued to write, she began to realize she could write truth to power and power to reality. The pen became timeless, and she wrote as time snapped around her.

  She began to see her ancestors’ complete lives and realized the images were not imaginations but rather right in front of her. They began to ask her to see them for who they were, the people that again and once again slid, stumbled, wept, and slayed their way into the new world. The Incas, the Catholic kings and queens, the Chinese—the characters were her and she was the character. Isabella, still in her room, was someplace else now. Questioning the origin of the pen, she started to fear the newness of everything. Isabella tried to dismantle the device.

  Instead, the pen stuck to her hand and transported her to shopping centers all across Latin America. Centers in Buenos Aires, Quito, Lima, Cochabamba—they were beautiful and the people there spoke her root languages. Holding her pen, Isabella cried again, “Is this really mine? Are you with me, amigo?” The pen replied, “These are your peoples, this is your ground! Look around you. Please, take it all in before I have to go.”

  She moved through those Latin American cities and saw the houses. She saw the houses and knew this was a place constructed by people like her father. She waved at the construction workers. One of them looked, smiled, and whispered, “recém-chegada”. She did not know Portuguese but knew the man had said, “newly arrived”.

  “Come with me,” the pen said. She looked up and was suddenly a baby again. She saw her mother and father, now in their twenties, happy in Peru. It took seconds to realize she was at a birthday party. Her own party—the cake stated she was turning two. She looked around to see her aunts and uncles and grandparents, and she realized the only word coming out of their mouths was “Love”. Love in different tones, but it was all love. Isabella looked to her right and saw the pen, now small enough for her baby hands. In that moment, Isabella was the happiest baby. “One last stop,” the pen whispered.

  The pen transformed her back into a seventeen-year-old and she stood there in the middle of one more Latin American market. She looked up and in the middle of the mall was the man, John. The man looked at the girl and laughed. “No matter what you do, your father will always suffer. He will never have documents. He will never breathe again until he is dead.”

  Isabella listened but did not cry. There in Buenos Aires, there in Quito, and there in her room, Isabella looked away from the ugly man and started writing a letter. She did not stop writing until every detail came pouring from her memory. As she finished, the golden pen melted into a regular, yellow pencil. She was in her room again, and she wished she could have taken pictures of all she had seen across America in those fifteen minutes. She wished she could magically create documents for her father, magically make their small house as big as the houses he worked, but for now she breathed.

  With the notebook in her hand, Isabella would go on to take her words to every street of the Maryland city until the people would finally listen. Until she found a lawyer she could trust, until she could see her father standing proud in the mornings while preparing himself for another house, she would never stop. For now, she walked to the kitchen where she found her parents calmer. She hugged her father. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

  “I know, Isabella.”

  Isabella went to s
leep. The next day, she woke up and the pencil remained regular, yellow, and fragile. She went to school and knew that she could not fly anymore, could not teleport anymore, but as she saw the hundreds of faces that surrounded the halls, she saw the blue light of her room, she saw the houses constructed, and she saw love. She held her pencil tight.

  Rai Rocca (he/him) is a sophomore at William and Mary studying Government and Hispanic Studies. I immigrated to the US from Lima, Peru when I was two years old and since then have found that writing is one of many ways to reclaim and reconsider the identities given to us. Feel free to contact or follow me on Twitter @Rai_Rocca and lastly, injustices like the man taking advantage of the father in my story are commonplace in America, and not enough magical pens exist. Make it known!

  MaterialSkin

  Tlotlo Tsamaase

  She2 future-stitched her name, a virtual umbilical cord still leaping between now and sometime-then. Future-stitched and still sore, my static thickens the air with tension. The buzzer fuses its noise into my warm studio apartment. I hobble to the door, check the peephole. Sign in: Emelia Tladi, your alias, after all this apartment is in your name; it makes it easier if I’m not here. The voice comes through as code, not Morse. She2 grows past-ward, time slow and languid. They say she’s good at finding people. I need her, but I can’t trust her yet. I censor my identity. The door unlocks, She2 steps in, logged into my room now. I must run a scan in case she leaves something behind. The air can’t differentiate us, seesawing reality.

  “Where have you been?” She2, a swirl of perfume energy and virtual dissonance. “What happened? Did you get it?”

  “It’s in the cloakroom,” I whisper, nothing but blurry melanin and brown eyes. Your MaterialSkin. You must have been in a hurry when you left, leaving a smudge of your MaterialSkin behind, like a fingerprint on a mug.

  She2 swishes by, click-collects the encrypted skin-coat, a taut alias with a past to run to. “No one must know. We can only change the past if the future wants it altered. I’ll be back once I find anything about her.” She pauses. “Reneilwe, you don’t want her to see you like this. Take care, take a shower. Sleep, joh.”

  “Just do everything you can to find her.”

  Where’d you go? Did you leave of your own volition? Did someone take you?

  * She2 has left the room.

  I’m left alone with silence, blinding daylight, and a sleeping skin slowly coming to, forming identity in the hazy hours of the morning. I took your MaterialSkin in the mild, midnight mornings, the internet-intoxicated owner passed out, still logged-in, but timed-out. They had some of your stuff in their home. I found your favourite mug with a piece of you still clinging to its handle. When he woke up from his hangover, I shook him, but no answers fell from his lips.

  In here, we were like dolls trapped in boxes, our minds floating, staring out from our box at fluorescent-lit faces wearing thick headphones, in crooked bodies, crooked fingers tapping at the keyboard and their gamer sets, twisting us into stories. That’s what other people thought. But this was heaven for us. Freedom. But for you to earn money, you must stay a mute doll. These are the things I’ve come to learn once you’ve disappeared: your body became taboo, unless it was slovenly spread across their screens, like butter to bread, a toast for their hunger.

  But what remained important was that we were together, for years. Sometimes the online current wished to separate us, the sinews of the oceans flowing in and out of us, our love-grimed bones ecstatic in the dark. And now I’ve lost you, your MaterialSkin non-existent in our future. I have to swim back to the past. Swim back or else lose you forever. But it’s hard to ease into the past. The past is a tsunami, fast overwhelming me.

  I’m not a smoker, but my lungs cry for a smoke. I sit in the hammock, knee brought up to my chest. I borrow fire from the sun, the smoke wavers in the garden. I stay there quietly, thoughts stewing, thighs freezing, daylight and smoke entangling, red roses blushing in the heat.

  “If I change the past, then she can remain in my future. Or stay in the past, for that is where she is and will always be,” I whisper to nothing, but to something. The air shrinks, notices something in itself; translucence is deception, even it can tell. See-through materials hide things, things it can’t decipher.

  “I’m bugged,” I whisper to herself. “I’m bugged. Is that how they took you?” My head falls forward, thoughts brimming with plans to find you.

  * Reneilwe has left the room.

  I’m out of the box. I keep on thinking what I could have done better, but I know I wouldn’t have met you without the iBona. Eight months back, my brother Thamiso took me to a department store, said he had something that might interest me, the iBona, a VR sim game with its immersive login set. “You used to love these life simulation games before they became VR,” he’d said, tapping the glamorous human-sized box. “It’s the rave nowadays.”

  “Ja, but it’s so expensive. I owe medical aid, last month’s rent. I haven’t paid internet—and this needs internet.” I shuffled the shiny box back into its row in the aisle we were in, pushed the trolley as we moved further through the department store.

  But later that week, Thamiso dropped by home with the iBona loaded into the back of the department store’s truck, the driver and assistant wheeling it into my bachelor pad and connecting it, with the landlord peering through her kitchen window, eyeing it in such a way that would prompt her to raise the rent because “the electricity bill is too high.”

  He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, smiling. “This is your Christmas, birthday, and New Year’s gifts all wrapped up into one gift: the iBona. I’m done for the year.”

  I jumped and hugged him, always appreciative of any gifts. “You know you could have just given me the money to pay expenses, right?”

  “There is more to life than just paying bills and working, sis,” he said, hugging me tighter. “Have fun with it, mate.” He worked at a bank, something to do with fraud risk management and counterfeit-something, so money flowed in easily, and that’s how he took care of our family. He had dreadlocks, with the lower part of his hair shaved. He somehow managed to carry that off professionally.

  Thamiso squeezed my shoulder, his expression suddenly solemn. “I hope this cheers you up.” I’d started my first dose of anti-depressants and the first two weeks were rough, exhausting, nauseous—they stole my appetite. “Apparently the iBona can be used as a dating site, too” he said, winking.

  I was so excited to get the iBona started that night, even though I had a long shift at the newspaper the following day. But it was a life simulation game where you see everything, feel everything, just as in the real world. I used to be addicted to these sim games long ago, being in charge of an avatar’s life, being able to start life from scratch to success, and if it didn’t work out, start again.

  The café, slow jazz. My cappuccino is turning cold. Thamiso enters, walks through with a swagger that has the women at the table across from ours staring at him.

  He fist-bumps me before sitting down. He’s wearing jeans, a jean jacket, and a retro shirt. “What’s up, ma? You look . . . terrible.”

  “I met this girl online,” I say, my sadness watering me. “Through the iBona.”

  He laughs. “Joh, here I thought you lost your job.”

  “You don’t understand,” I whisper, eyes wet. “We’ve been chatting for eight months. She’s great. Funny. We lived in this sim city, in this studio apartment that we decorated together. We’d stay up late watching movies, changing night to sun to read novels out in our backyard, swimming in the cold—anything and everything we wanted. We ruled the night, we ruled the day. It was the only thing that’s been keeping me alive this year. An escape from this job. My horrible job. Then one day I logged into our home: radio silence. I looked through the cupboards, our filing system for recent logins into our home, recent activities, the history. There was no whisper of her. She was gone.”

  Thamiso knuckles his forehead, eyebrows fu
rrowed. “You never thought to get her number, joh?”

  “It never worked.” I stifle a sob.

  “I hope you never gave her money,” he says, sniffing a scam.

  “No, she’s not like that. She’s never asked for money, or made strange requests. I keep thinking that something bad happened to her. I just don’t know what to do.”

  Thamiso reaches for my hand and takes care of everything as I disappear from the world.

  * Reneilwe has entered the room.

  Emelia Tladi, that was her alias. I can’t find her anywhere, only other Tladi’s. I step into the box, our home, not necessarily with form—with mind, with soul. I built our home when I joined the sim game. Initially when I logged in, it had only a green landscape and hills lulled by the soft blue of sky. It started with the construction, a handful of contractors who I instructed to road-stitch lanes and highways, to densify neighborhoods with residential towers, to build factories, malls, recreational areas. I picked an area for a suite of multi-residential units, one of which I’d live in. Our studio apartment’s on the lower ground floor with a spacious garden. If we had a dog, this would be its playground.

  As an avatar, now that I had or was building the city, I had other tasks to complete, like getting a degree, opening up a business. That’s how I met you. At the university that overlooked a river. I still remember you, before all else went: blue-flamed Afro, eyes lined in night, mouth of drug. You were wearing black shorts, boots, a crop top. In class, with your friends, you’d laugh and knock your head back. My eyes would travel the length of your braids, thinking about wrapping my hand around them and yanking hard.