Community of Magic Pens

by Community of Magic Pens (epub)

  “It’s beautiful.” B turned back towards Sibill. “Do you know its history?”

  “The piece was created two centuries ago on planet Haunt,” Sibill replied. “It was based on a visual entertainment show that, at the time, never reached the popularity the makers had hoped for. Still, someone clearly cared enough about Excellent Premonitions to depict its two main characters in their art. Only a few standard years ago, the show was picked up again and became successful throughout the entire galaxy.”

  “You bet it did.” B grinned. “I became obsessed with it. When I saw this statue in the Raddert & Deabun catalogue, I wanted it immediately.”

  “And here we are,” Sibill said. “The price you mentioned in your communications before I arrived on Mysta sounded more than acceptable. Is there anything else you would like to know before we move on to the paperwork?”

  “I think I’m ready to sign the credits over to you,” B answered.

  “Then please excuse me for a moment while I go and alert the transportation bots, so you won’t have to wait too long once we’re done.”

  “Of course.” B sat quietly while Sibill left the office, the door sliding shut behind him.

  Then they jumped off their chair. Sibill was amazing! His summary of the artwork’s history had been perfectly correct. He was polite to Mystan standards, knowledgeable about the merchandise; nothing had indicated his lack of long-term memory. Raddert and Deabun could be assured that hiring Sibill had been a good choice. B would make sure of that in their report.

  But the question remained how Sibill had accomplished it. Somehow, Raddert and Deabun didn’t seem curious; as long as the results were good, they didn’t really care whether the work had been done with or without a functional storage drive. But after having seen Sibill in action, B needed to know.

  They quickly rounded the desk and smoothed a hand over its surface. There was no hidden tablet that could have aided Sibill. The desk drawer didn’t offer any explanations either; it only held a bag of Narbuvian marbles, probably meant for sale or trade.

  B scanned the office thoughtfully, their gaze passing by the bookshelf thrice before they realised that some species used thick objects like that to hide secrets. Secrets like a device that could transmit information directly into Sibill’s short-term memory!

  They grabbed the nearest book, opened it carefully . . . But there was no room to hide anything inside. Page upon page was filled with ink. B couldn’t read most of the text, as it hadn’t been written in their language, but they recognised just enough species names to realise that the neat, square handwriting was listing traits, customs, and economic backgrounds.

  “I’m afraid those aren’t for sale,” Sibill said from the doorway.

  B had been so amazed by the book that they hadn’t even heard him enter. “I . . . I’m sorry for snooping. I just wanted to understand how you’re working your magic.”

  Sibill pointed at the decorated sticks in the showcase. “Analogue pens. Most androids don’t hold them in high esteem, but they truly are wonderful filing tools.”

  “I see. So all of these books are . . . your long-term storage?”

  “I haven’t written in all of them yet, but yes, that is their function,” Sibill said. “I use an intricate system so I can quickly find every necessary piece of information and read up on what I need before meeting a client.”

  “Well, you passed with flying colours!” B reverently put the book back on the shelf. “I better come clean with you now. You see, I befriended Raddert and Deabun quite a while ago. They’re also Excellent Premonitions fans and we got talking online. When you signed your contract, they sent you to me first so they would be able to get some feedback on how you were doing. From their Mysta-ry shopper, as they called me.”

  Sibill let out an amused snort. “I understand there wouldn’t have been much mystery if they’d checked whether I was okay with them telling you about my memory, but I better remind them they owe me that particular conversation.”

  “It wasn’t just a test, though,” B hastened to say. “I really do want to buy the statue.”

  “I see,” Sibill said, smiling. “Would you do me a favour, B?”

  “It’s the least I can do after sort of tricking you.”

  “Don’t worry about that. But would you please not tell anyone else how I remember everything? I rather enjoy the speculations that I may be the only android who performs through witchcraft rather than technology.”

  B grinned. “Let’s make you into a legend.”

  Minerva Cerridwen (she/her) is a queer writer and pharmacist from Belgium. Without her to-do lists, she would forget half of the things she’s supposed to do. Pens feature heavily in some of her hobbies, like handlettering and drawing, and less so in others, like yoga and baking (except when writing recipes). She co-wrote a story in Five Minutes at Hotel Stormcove, and the revised version of her novella The Dragon of Ynys will appear in 2020. For news, keep an eye on her website: minervacerridwen.wordpress.com.

  Shared Space

  A. P. Howell

  Tracey spent a third of her day in the cubicle, so she thought of it as hers.

  Decorating her apartment was overwhelming. But a cubicle? That was a manageable amount of space. A chunk of wall was dedicated to a coat hanger, and much of the rest was covered with printed out procedures and codes, regularly consulted and frequently annotated. The free space on the walls and the doors on the built-in shelves housed cat pictures and art cards, Impressionist landscapes and Escher architecture and nature photos. Her wall calendar depicted European castles, heavy gray stone fortresses to mountaintop Schlösser.

  Tracey put some poetry magnets on one of the drawers. At first, she’d tried to come up with a poem every day; then she aimed for Haiku Friday, which only lasted two weeks. Every once in a while, she came up with something new, but though they were terribly neglected she refused to take the magnets down.

  She could have gotten a plant, but she tended to kill houseplants. At least, she had when she was younger; as a responsible adult, she might have better luck. But it would be humiliating to have an audience for her incompetence, and depressing to watch a plant die in her space.

  Baseball was boring, basketball too squeaky, football a bloodsport, and women’s professional soccer a faded dream, so Tracey had a Buffalo Beauts team pennant hanging up. If the goal was fitting in, the effort was only a qualified success. Rooting interest in a sport generally went over well, but the Beauts weren’t a popular hometown team or players of a nationally televised sport. At least she’d educated people about the existence of women’s hockey, and that counted for something.

  Tracey wasn’t especially neat by nature, certainly not in the privacy of her own home. But for all the personalized touches, the cubicle was not private. People who warranted offices might be able to joke about stratified piles of paperwork, but Tracey knew there was a short, direct line from “messy” to “disorganized” to “unprofessional” to “unreliable” for a woman who only warranted a cubicle. And it was nice to have clear space to spread out when necessary, without having to do the work of making space before doing the work that had to be done.

  The cubicle looked pretty much exactly like the last cubicle she’d had in this office, except this one was closer to the water cooler and farther from the bathroom. More importantly, from the perspective of office geography, she and a few of her colleagues were now a few steps closer to their respective managers’ offices.

  Since the move, neatness had become a matter of courtesy. Her new cubicle was one that the call center team used when making evening and weekend calls. Tracey found the shared space irksome, like a secret demotion, even though it had no real impact upon her. She worked nine-to-five, only overlapping with a few of the call center staffers who started early. Listening to them reciting their scripts made her feel a little better about days spent manipulating spreadsheets and reporting queries. At least she didn’t have to talk to random people on the phon
e. Tracey had no idea how they maintained a pleasant phone voice throughout their shift; she could barely avoid embarrassing herself ordering a pizza.

  So her response to the secret demotion was secret solidarity with her unseen counterpart. She made sure the desk was clean, her hand cream and other personal items unobtrusively stashed, pens and sharpened pencils and Post-It notes plentiful. She wasn’t sure exactly what, if anything, the call center folks used aside from the phone and the computer, but Tracey wanted to be a good hostess and helpful colleague.

  Her efforts were silently appreciated, or perhaps unperceived, for some time. But one morning, she was greeted by a single Post-It note stuck below her keyboard. She expected a routine note—“Come see me when you get in” or the like—but there were no words.

  The Post-It had become a canvas. One of her landscape images—an impressive rock formation—had been rendered in blue ballpoint. Tracey was impressed. The cross-hatched lines were preternaturally parallel. Had the artist used a straight-edge? She moved the blue-on-yellow image to a safe part of her desk; it was too charming to risk crumpling.

  New sketches appeared each morning: soulful kitten eyes, impossible geometries. Soon her red and black pens entered the fray. Tracey was particularly impressed by a sunset of red sky, blue sea, and black shore. She didn’t even mind that the pens weren’t making their way back into the desk organizer, but were instead scattered around the desk.

  The following Monday, Tracey found her soft green editing pencil near the keyboard. The number 2 graphite pencils—one pinprick-sharp, thanks to the electric sharpener by the copier, and one thin-leaded mechanical pencil—flanked her open notebook.

  Her notebook. She’d bought it at the drug store so she’d have something other than the legal pads from the office supply closet. It was always tucked away in a corner because she wanted to be polite to her unseen deskmate—who apparently poked around and flipped through her informal meeting minutes and semi-legible task reminders and didn’t value even an illusion of privacy. Tracey should have felt offended.

  And yet . . . the picture was beautiful. It was a rendering of Caernarvon, this month’s castle, beautifully detailed and textured. Most of the work was in graphite, with just hints of green incorporated for depth and the illusion of life. Tracey wished the artist hadn’t used notebook paper. The blue lines made the image less frame-worthy (though Tracey pinned it up on the cubicle wall). Before she left for the day, she grabbed a few letter sized sheets of paper from a printer tray and left them next to her keyboard.

  Throughout the week, Tracey’s deskmate made good use of the paper. Hands drew a fluffy kitten, a buffalo roamed the coast of Northern Ireland, and carefully smudged pencil rendered water lilies in monochrome. A single Post-It note was covered with interlocking swans, but the letter-sized sheets were the clear favorite.

  Tracey refreshed the paper every night as a courtesy. She assumed the call center staff could find the printer—maybe they even used the printer—but maybe they sat down and stayed chained to their desks by their headsets. She wanted to make life easier for the unseen artist. The world, and her little corner of it, needed more art.

  It brightened her day as the company ramped up for crunch time, the point in the business cycle when everything hit at once and tasks seemed to take forever to deal with or manifested in unexpected ways. Leaving at 5:30 became a challenge; 5:00 was right out. From experience, Tracey knew the days would continue to stretch for a few weeks, but she didn’t have kids or dogs or any other obligations that made it difficult to stay until 6:00 or 7:00 or later. No need for workload conversations with her manager or anyone else, which was good, because Tracey disliked confrontation and liked having a job.

  On Friday, a woman Tracey didn’t recognize approached her cubicle. “I’m Ellie.” She had a nice smile: even white teeth and cheeks that reminded her of a chipmunk. “I’ll just be in the kitchen until you’re done.”

  The words took a second to register. “Oh, right. Nice to meet you. Tracey,” she added, even though her own name was on the cubicle. “I’ll try to wrap up quickly.”

  She supposed she ought to resent having to rush, that her company didn’t give her the time and space to complete the work they told her to do. She ought to feel resentful on her own behalf, and Ellie’s: regardless of how much time she was forced to spend twiddling her thumbs, Ellie’s nightly call quota would doubtless remain unchanged. She could, if she were particularly uncharitable and illogical, feel resentful of Ellie herself.

  But instead, she felt a rush of gratitude for their clashing schedules. Her unseen deskmate now had a name and a face.

  “I was curious,” Ellie nodded at the Beauts pennant, “so I went down the NWHL rabbit hole.”

  “Oh?” Most people stopped at the revelation that women played professional hockey.

  “I think I could parrot back most of the stats, which isn’t really saying much since the league hasn’t been around that long,” Ellie said. “But I was even more interested in the ownership drama. Plus the trademark stuff. And the strike! I really hope the player’s union gets what they want, but I’m nervous. Women’s leagues come and go so fast, I’m afraid it’s just about to go the way of the Canadian league . . . ”

  “They’re so undercapitalized.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, if that was like a cultural decision to treat sports as games, but men’s sports are so ridiculously overcapitalized. And the public expenditures—” Ellie paused and grinned sheepishly. “I talk a lot. I talk as my job. But my calls aren’t nearly as interesting.”

  “Glad I can help.”

  “I love your cube, too.”

  “It’s our cube, really. You spend as much time here as I do.”

  “But you’ve done a great job decorating it.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Tracey gestured at the sketches. “They’re beautiful.”

  Ellie cocked her head. “I didn’t make those. I haven’t been scheduled for a week—I took a few days off before crunch time. I assumed you drew them. They really are lovely. Whoever made them is quite the artist.”

  “Yes,” Tracey agreed. She had the sense that this was a mystery to be solved, but she couldn’t muster much interest. She’d wondered about her deskmate, and she was learning about her deskmate, and that was enough for now. “Maybe I’ll join you in the kitchen before I head out, hit up the vending machine. One candy bar for the road.”

  “Just not E5,” Ellie warned. “Things always get stuck in E5. But I’ve learned the trick for feeding the machine dimes. I could just use dollars, but I wanted to keep trying. There’s always something new to figure out.”

  Maybe Ellie would figure out the answer to the artwork; but for someone who conquered a vending machine’s quirks, she didn’t seem too worked up about it. Tracey saved her spreadsheet, logged off, and stood up. The work could wait until tomorrow, when her desk might be graced by a new piece of artwork not created by Ellie. It was a reason to look forward to another day in their shared space.

  A. P. Howell (she/her) was raised in upstate New York, moved to Pennsylvania to attend Bryn Mawr College, met a boy Scottish Country Dancing, and lives happily with him and their two children. Her handwriting is atrocious, somehow reminiscent of both Palmer Method and the Richter Scale, so she is more likely to type than write longhand. She fondly remembers doodling ballpoint pen marginalia in college and the India ink stain on her finger in high school. She currently works in a cubicle, which she does not share with anyone else, and can be found online at aphowell.com and tweeting @APHowell.

  Mystical Woo

  Victoria Hollis

  Seeing the pen in Annemarie’s hand the week before he went to Chicago shocked him.

  “Peanut, where did you find that?” He took it from her hands; the “Michael” stenciled into the cap was rough against his fingers.

  “In a briefcase. I can’t get it to draw.”

  Fountain pens were always finicky, and this one might still have a w
ill of its own. “Where did you find it?”

  Annemarie led the way to the briefcase and a black leather journal. Mike sat on the floor, journal on his lap while Annemarie peered over his shoulder. “This is a magic pen, and anything I write with it comes true in a day. Watch.” He wrote in his distinctive script on the first blank page. I love Annemarie more than anything. He felt it—the sparkling in his stomach—yes, Annemarie is the best thing in my world.

  She frowned. “We can’t see that, Daddy, and I know that anyway. Do something real.”

  “Okay, smarty-pants, what should I write?”

  She fidgeted. “I got a math test tomorrow . . . Can I have my leopard coat if I get an A?”

  She’d been eyeing that jacket for weeks. “I did math in college. Maybe you’ve got some of my talent,” he said with a little poke. “And we can open a department store with your clothes—”

  “Please?”

  Mike laughed. “Okay, fine.” He put pen to paper again. Annemarie will do well on her math test and get her leopard coat.

  “Now we wait.” He closed the cap before sticking it into his shirt pocket. Annemarie’s dubious look made him pause—does it still work?—but he poked her again. “After we eat, we’ll study for your test. We can help the magic, right?” He pulled her across his lap for a ferocious tickle fight. Her giggles were their own form of magic—

  “Playing around?”

  Aleja stood in the doorframe, just a hint of warmth in her eyes.

  “We do that sometimes, you know,” he said with his voice perfectly neutral.

  Her lips pursed. “Gavin and I are going to MOMA. Put Annemarie to bed at a reasonable hour.”