by R. T. Kaelin
Colonel Bannister had the good sense to look abashed. He swallowed. “Let’s just pretend this never happened.” He pulled the slip of white paper with Gwen’s star-fortune from his pocket and made to tear it up.
Gwen, more sober than he and therefore quicker, grabbed the piece of paper from his fingers and clutched it to her chest. “This is my fortune, you old fool. Whether I’m a whore or not, I’ll go to the stars if I like. Just you wait and see!” She knew the words were ridiculous as she said them; preposterous even. She was a woman, a commoner…and worse. The life of an aeronaut can never be mine.
“You’d better watch out for autos on the walk back to your spaceship,” she spat, turning on her heel and marching away. Behind her, she heard the old man sigh and sink to the curb with a wuff. Then she heard the clicking of the not-a-watch, his nervous tic only exacerbating her fury.
The fortune seemed a small comfort as she stomped down the sidewalk. The anger drained from her, replaced by disappointment, bitterness, sadness. So many emotions came, all at once, that they threatened to overflow her eyes and run down her cheeks. She held in the tears until she made it around the corner, and there she stood on the sidewalk and sobbed.
A loud sound made her look up. An automobile careened around the street corner and into view, charging right toward her. Her eyes shot wide. She only just had time to leap out of the way. The vehicle’s driver shrieked something unintelligible and sounded the horn, a loud and wailing honk piercing the quiet night, before disappearing down Tolliver Street.
Gwen heard the crash: glass shattering and metal tearing. She stood paralyzed for an instant, disbelieving, and then ran toward the wreck. She knew exactly what she would find.
The auto had slammed into a shop window, but not before striking Colonel Bannister. He lay on the sidewalk, broken and bent in unnatural ways. Blood stained the street, rapidly pooling around him. Gwen ran to him, throwing herself down beside him so hard the cobbles bruised her knees. The air smelled of motor oil and blood.
“Tacitus?” It was the first time she’d used his given name, in all their long acquaintance. “Tacitus?” She laid her fingers against his cheek.
His eyelids fluttered and he looked up at her with eyes that were, she noticed for the first time, green. How had she not noticed they were so green? Then they closed and his head lolled to the side. One last gasp of air escaped his lips, ending with a telltale rattle that Gwen knew all too well.
In his left hand, flopped against the sidewalk, was the other fortune, the one he had drawn for her—the harbinger of his demise.
When his body stilled, Gwen started to turn away. Though the night was eerily silent in the aftermath of the wreck, blood rushed through her ears, thudding and pounding with each heartbeat. A soft metallic click made her turn back. The Colonel’s right hand had relaxed and from his dead fingers had fallen the watch that wasn’t a pocket watch. It was remarkably intact, gleaming in the dim light of the streetlamps.
Gwen still clutched the fortune about star-travel in her fist. Somewhere, a siren sounded as the constables made their way to the scene of the accident.
Swallowing hard, Gwen picked up the not-a-watch and held it up to the light. She still remembered the codes the Colonel had recited so many times in his drunken stupors. He was so eager to impress her with his aeronautical genius that it overwhelmed his better sense. Everyone thought this device was merely the Colonel’s favorite and most elaborate watch. But Gwen knew better.
This was the launch key to the Daedalus.
In the dim lantern light, the key’s brass workings sparkled with stars. Gwen saw, for a moment, the vastness of space and the incredible possibilities that were out there. She saw in that intricate device the escape from her life as an object of men’s use.
You’re just a whore.
She turned and sprinted away, gripping the launch key in one hand and her fortune in the other. She ran toward fate.
Neptune, Jupiter, Venus, Mars
You shall perish among the stars
*
Sergeant Argent’s Moment in the Sun
by Rob Rogers
The first time my best friend Mike died was on a band trip to Devil’s Cape, Louisiana.
Mr. Trevathan, the band teacher, picked Devil’s Cape because it was cheap and less than a day’s drive from Fort Dire and the camp had some kind of drum corps savant. Also, my dad said, because Mr. Trevathan thinks the slots in Devil’s Cape are looser than in Shreveport, but that’s my dad for you. Camp in Devil’s Cape was cheap for a reason, though. With its crime rate, nobody wants to send their kids there. Except Mr. Trevathan, my dad says.
Anyway, the story goes that Mike was sneaking off to see some girl he met down there and he left the camp after hours and was attacked by one of the local gangs—they’ve got names like the Concrete Executioners and the Hombres Asesinos—and stabbed to death. Except that sounded like baloney to me because Mike was scared of girls and even more scared of doing things like sneaking out of band camp. For a Star Trek convention or to see Doctor Camelot, maybe, but not for a girl. And, you know, he wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man. Mike had been pudgy since the fourth grade, he had zits like a pepperoni pizza, and I was pretty sure his mom still laid his clothes out for him every night.
So, yeah, I knew something wasn’t right about the story even before Mike had a chance to tell me how he really died.
Another weird thing: They got Mike’s body back to Fort Dire fast. Devil’s Cape is famous for pirates and crime and stuff like that, not for being efficient. But it took them just two days to find him, ID him, autopsy him, pack him up, and ship him home to Texas. I didn’t think anything about it at first (to be honest, I wasn’t thinking about anything except how it sucked that my best friend died halfway through sophomore year), but now I figure somebody down there knew something and wanted to get poor Mike out of reach as soon as possible.
I cried at Mike’s funeral. He had an open casket and his body was paler and thinner and didn’t have that little smirk Mike always had. It was like a Palace of Wax version of Mike in that box.
Yeah, I cried. And only a little of that was me hoping Nikol Boudreaux would notice and give me a hug. Mike would have understood that, anyway. He would have totally respected the pursuit of the sympathy hug.
After the funeral, I thought about Mike all the time. I fantasized about going down to Devil’s Cape and kicking the asses of the punks who killed him. Or that I played oboe or something and was on the trip with Mike and we went all Han Solo and Chewbacca on them. Or that I could send a message back in time to warn him. It pretty much sucked not having a best friend. Not having much of any friend, to be honest.
* *** *
Three weeks after Mike died, I got seriously freaked out.
I had WDFTV on in my room—live coverage of a superhero battle downtown in Sundance Square, El Sol and Peacemaker trying to capture Darkwitch and her shadow monsters. I was glued to it because, well, Peacemaker’s kind of hot, and Darkwitch, wow. She’s what? Sixteen? With that short dress and those legs and that whole bad girl thing she has going on? They showed El Sol surrounded by a dozen shadow things—like a cross between gorillas and wolverines and xenomorphs—and Peacemaker was zipping around on her flying saddle, blasting away with her six-shooters. Then Darkwitch came straight at the screen, a smile on her face and her chest pushed out and she waved her wand and BOOM! The coverage went out and they cut to a Chevrolet commercial.
So I fired up Facebook to see if anyone else was watching and there was Mike. He was on my chat list, like I could just click his face and start talking with him. I forgot all about Darkwitch.
I paced around my room, trying to figure it out. I guessed maybe it was his mom or dad, logging on to Mike’s account to see the tribute stuff people had written on Mike’s wall. But it’s not like they were real Internet savvy. One time I started talking to Mr. Pittenger—Mike’s dad—about social media, and he got real excited, like we were finally talking on the same wave
length after all these years. But it turned out he thought I meant socialist media and was ragging on CNN like he usually does, and it got kind of awkward. So: not very much into the Facebook scene, Mr. and Mrs. Pittenger.
El Sol and Peacemaker were back on the TV and the anchors were saying that the news reporter and cameraman were all right, that Darkwitch had just shorted out the camera, but it was only background noise to me anyway. I was thinking about Mike.
Mike and I had our webcams networked so we could look at each other and turn on each other’s cams when we wanted. I thought about it a second and then a second more and then I popped up Mike’s cam. There was nobody there, just an empty chair in Mike’s basement. But the lights were on, and about five seconds after I’d done it, Mike’s cam and his Facebook chat status turned off, bam, like someone had flipped the power switch off real fast or Darkwitch used her wand on it. I couldn’t reach Mike’s webcam after that.
* *** *
It was two weeks later when I saw him.
I was in my room with the lights off, logged on to Capes Online, a superhero MMORPG. Capes is definitely like the second- or third-class superhero MMORPG out there, but Mike and I liked it anyway. The monthly fees were five bucks cheaper than the others, and you didn’t need to deal with as many campers or noobs.
I’d been staying away from Capes since it was something Mike and I had done together, but I was bored and lonely and figured blasting a few dozen mooks might cheer me up.
My main character is a level-61 energy blaster/mutant named Element 99 and I was flying him to one of the evil agent spawning points in the Blood Hole quadrant when I spotted Mike jumping from one rooftop to another chasing a pack of Doc Moreau’s flying Dobermans.
When I say I saw Mike, I mean I saw his character, Sergeant Argent.
In Capes, you get your real simple costumes from people who don’t care what they look like, you get some original designs, and you get your knockoffs of real superheroes. Tons of Vanguards and Blue Bullets. Miss Chance. Argonaut got popular not long ago, and I’ve spotted El Sols and Lone Stars.
But Mike’s Sergeant Argent was in a league of his own. All that silver in his costume, with the bits of bling and those purple highlights so light they look almost pink. It was like a twelve-year-old robot girl’s Facebook timeline puked on him. Nobody else had a costume like that.
I stared at it awhile, then moused over it so the name and stats would pop up. I figured it was a copycat. Someone had aped his character and the name would be Sergeant Silver or Seargant Argent or Serge@nt @rgent or something like that.
It was him.
I stood up, dumping a bowlful of M&Ms on the floor. I slapped the light switch on and stood with my back to the wall, watching Sergeant Argent sweep through those flying Dobermans and move on to a group of mutant thugs.
Maybe someone stole his account, I figured. Maybe Mr. Pittenger was trying it out.
I slowly sat back at my desk, opened a Sergeant Argent chat window and typed, “Mike?”
Sergeant Argent backed away from the battle with the thugs, turned around, and waved at Element 99.
“yo, jim,” he typed back, “wassup? roflmao! i leveled up!”
I jammed my thumb down on the power button of my computer until the whole thing went black. My hands were shaking. I swept up the M&Ms and tossed them in the trash, then went to the bathroom and tried really hard to throw up, but couldn’t. My mom came and asked me if I was okay and I lied and told her I was fine.
* *** *
I still had my lights on a little past two, lying in bed, throwing a tennis ball up in the air, catching it, throwing it again, dropping it pretty often, wired.
The chat message sounded just like Mike.
I pictured Mike in class. Mike over for dinner, sitting on my beanbag chair and reading a comic book. Mike in his coffin.
I wasn’t too surprised when I heard him tapping on my window, but I still jumped up so fast I hit my head. He was on the roof ledge, crouched and smiling, a little thinner than I remembered, his skin paler. He had on jeans and a black Doctor Who T-shirt he wore all the time. His eyes were covered by shadows.
“Hey, Jim,” he said. “Can I come in?”
I reached forward automatically to unlock the window, then stopped myself. “Mike,” I said.
He spread his hands. “It’s me, man.”
I swallowed, then opened the window, popped open the screen. He’d come to my window a few times before, clambering up the trellis around the corner from my room. I had a feeling somehow he hadn’t climbed up the trellis this time, though.
I stepped back and he leaned forward like he was going to step through the window, but he hesitated. “Um, is it okay if I come in?” he asked again.
It was cold outside and a breeze started sweeping inside. I stared at him. “Oh, shit, Mike,” I said.
He shrugged and smiled. “Yeah, I kind of need an invitation,” he said. He looked down and pushed his hair back like I’d seen him do a million times. “It’s like a thing.”
I crossed my arms. I was shivering. I wondered if I should get my dad.
He looked me in the face. “It’s still me,” he said. He did a Vulcan salute, then rapped his fingers twice against his left arm, then flashed an okay symbol, then a thumbs up. It was a little faux-gang geek salute we’d worked up that summer. We’d been half ironic, half dead earnest. “I swear by the Squad of Two and Sergeant Argent’s right fist that I mean no harm to you or your family,” he said solemnly.
I could see his eyes now. They were amused and shy, and they glittered with red.
My mouth was dry. “What about Sergeant Argent’s right nut?” I asked.
He laughed. “That, too,” he said.
I was staring at his mouth when he laughed, looking for fangs, and sure enough, there they were.
My friend, the vampire.
“Okay,” I said. “Come on in.”
* *** *
Mike didn’t remember much about the night he died. The official story was mostly bullshit, of course. He hadn’t gone out to meet anyone. He hadn’t gone out at all. The day’s activities were over and Mr. Trevathan headed out for some personal time at a riverboat casino and most of the kids went out for a late-night pizza. Nobody invited Mike.
He stayed in his room, reading a Jim Butcher, and then all of a sudden someone knocked on his window from the fire escape. It was a girl, about our age, dark-haired and pretty, and she asked if she could use the bathroom.
“So, I mean, why come to my room to use the bathroom?” he said. “But, you know, she was pretty and I wasn’t thinking much. I said okay, and a millisecond later she popped the window open, shoved me down, and bit my neck. I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up.”
Woke up in the graveyard, he meant, the little family plot next to the Pittengers’ house. Woke up from being dead. I pictured him waking up in the coffin, in the dark, wondered how he’d gotten out. I decided I’d be better off not thinking about it too much.
“Did it hurt?” I asked quietly.
He started to raise his hand toward his neck, then dropped it to the beanbag. “Yeah,” he said.
I sighed. “So how are your folks?”
He shrugged. “They’re pretty freaked out, I guess. They’re glad to have me back, but it’s weird. It’s like they’re afraid I’ll break or something. I had to sneak out tonight. They didn’t want me to tell you.”
“Oh,” I said. I was looking at his hands. They were really, really pale.
“I thought you might call or something after you busted me with the webcam.” He said it a little sad, like I’d let him down.
I looked at his face.
“Busted you?”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “The red light came on when you turned it on.”
“There wasn’t anybody there.”
“It was right in front of me,” he insisted. Then, “Oh, wow.”
We jumped up at the same time and turned on my we
bcam, not broadcasting anywhere, just the in-room view. I crouched by it and he stuck his head next to mine and draped an arm over my shoulder, mugging for the camera. His cheek felt cold.
He wasn’t in the picture. There was just me, my face a little squished where he pressed against me. He ruffled my hair and flicked my earlobe, and on the webcam, my hair and ear seemed to move for no reason.
I pulled away and shut the webcam off. “I just saw an empty room,” I said softly. “I didn’t know.”
He nodded. “I knew I didn’t show up in a mirror,” he said. “I hadn’t thought about cameras.” He shook his head. “This is all so weird.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can’t imagine.”
He grinned. “I have a plan,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He flexed his arms. “I can bench press five hundred pounds now,” he said. “I can run forty miles an hour. I figure I’m pretty much bulletproof.” His eyes gleamed red in the light. “What does that sound like to you?”
“Well, you know,” I said. I didn’t want to say the “v” word out loud.
He shook his head. “No, man, you’re thinking in the box,” he said. “Super-strong, super-fast, super-tough. Think outside the coffin.”
I blinked. “Are you shitting me?”
“No,” he said, smiling wide, the tips of his fangs sparkling. “I’m going to be a superhero.”
* *** *
I couldn’t make up a story about visiting another friend because I really didn’t have any, so Mike’s mom called my mom the next day to ask me over for dinner so I could help sort through Mike’s stuff.
Mike’s dad met me at the door and walked me over to the living room so he and I could have a talk. Their living room had always been off limits, like a museum—a showcase for guests. It had a sofa with silk pillows and a bunch of sparkling brass and polished chestnut and a wet bar and books by T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other initial guys like that, with dust at the edges of the spines where Mrs. Pittinger’s feather duster didn’t reach. Mike had told me he only went to the living room when he was in trouble and his dad needed to give him “a serious talk,” and I was sweating when I sat down on the sofa, running my hands along my jeans.
