Seeds of Change

by John Joseph Adams

  While I Made plants, the other arties Made more little animals. Some that flew in the air, and some that could squeeze into tiny little cracks. This time, the little animals didn’t die. They grew bigger too, like the plants had to come first for them to work. Niles said it was a secret why, and wouldn’t tell me, which made me angry, but the ache was staying away so long as I made my plants, so I couldn’t fight him over it.

  Boo spent more time with me, too, when I was Making plants. She loved their shapes and would smile and point and smile whenever we found another one growing up in the cracks out on the street. One night, I even woke up and saw her toying with one of the silver disks when she thought no one was watching. The shapes on the screen were colorful, but they had no coherence, no pattern. Sad, sad little Boo. She wanted to Make plants and animals too, but she was just a melodie and she couldn’t Make.

  * * * *

  I WAS IN the white of Making when I heard the shouts coming down the stairs. “Tin men coming! Tin men!” they cried. “There’s a brainiac with them!” Zinger shouted.

  Everyone scattered like moss-dust on the breeze, no direction to go, just bumping around in the station. Only one way out, up, and the tin men had it blocked. I took the silver disk I was using and one of the factories and pushed them into the flooded part of the station, then tried to run for the door.

  The tin men galomped down the steps carefully, using their long arms to steady themselves on the uneven steps. They had three brainiacs with them. Each held their big heads in their hands and moaned from all the effort of walking. Brainiacs didn’t like to do that if they could help it.

  The tin man corralled us arties up into a tight bunch and others stole away with the disks and factories. One sheriff tin man, gold-coated and round, prodded the brainiacs, and they pointed at Niles, all three at the same time. Then the tin men took Niles too. We arties tried to fight then, and Boo did too. But we’re not made for fighting, and we all hurt ourselves on the cold sleek shells of the tin men. When Niles was gone, they let us a-go, and left following the sheriff.

  We wailed and cried. “Doomed,” Topps moaned. “Doomed.” The ache wasn’t over us yet, but it would be now.

  “Every time we find something new to Make, they take it away,” Tess said, dabbing tears from her eyes.

  “The tin men don’t care,” Zinger said.

  “Of course they don’t,” I said. “They only do what the Elderfolk tell them to do. And the Elderfolk don’t care. They don’t care about anything but themselves.”

  “We have to get Niles back,” Topps said, starting to cry again. “Arties are too dumb on their own. Too dumb!”

  I snapped up at that. “No!” I said. “Arties aren’t dumb! Niles said!”

  “Doesn’t matter anymore,” Zinger said. “Niles is gone to the pokey-pokey. They’ll never let him out.”

  “Then we get him out,” said a tiny voice I had never heard before. It half-sung the words, just like a melodie did whenever it talked, but the sound was wrong, harsh around the edges. It was a bad Make.

  Boo didn’t look scared. She was younger than all of us, but she wasn’t scared. Everyone tried to wipe up tears then, just so they didn’t look like little babies when the real baby didn’t even cry.

  “Boo can talk!” Zinger said after a long silence.

  “Of course she can talk,” I snapped. “But she didn’t want to before now. This is important.”

  Boo nodded. “Hurts. My—” she touched her throat, “not made right.” She winced from the effort of talking. I grabbed her and held her close.

  “Boo is right,” I said. “We arties have to get Niles back.”

  “But how?” asked Tess.

  I didn’t know. I looked at Boo. Boo didn’t know.

  “We’ll ask the brainiacs,” I said then. It was what Niles had done, and they owed us after turning Niles in.

  * * * *

  THE BRAINIACS SPENT most of their times at the libraries, and there was one on P-Street that I had remembered because it had pretty statues on each side of its big doors. Boo and I marched inside, past the tin men that watched the door, and inside, before they could get a good sniff of us. The first brainiac we saw, we cornered against a shelf. She was locked into her little wheelchair and couldn’t move very fast.

  “Tell us how to rescue Niles,” I demanded. Boo made menacing gestures with her hands that she must have learned from watching thicknecks.

  “Who?” said the brainiac. “Oh, that arty kid with the stolen gengineering kits? He’s gone up-tower to see Council. The Elderfolk are real pissed about that little scheme of his. Not even a platoon of thicknecks could get in there. The Tower is crawling with tin men.”

  I shuddered. The Council were the Elderfolk to the Elderfolk. They told everyone what to do. If they had Niles, then there really was no hope. The aching bent me over in two like a folded piece of paper.

  Boo shook her head and pointed at the brainiac. I guessed at what she was trying to say, and fought through my pains.

  “You’re smarter than arties and the just-plains. The Council is just a bunch of just-plains all grown up. You can help us rescue him,” I said, not really believing but hoping.

  The brainiac sighed and nodded. “I can think of dozens, thousands, of ways to free your friend, but logistically, you arties can’t manage it.”

  “What’s logistically?” I said.

  “Tools, resources,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re just a bunch of stupid beatniks. Maybe if you still had some gengineering factories, you could make something, but—”

  “I hid one,” I said quickly. “Under the water. When the tin men came.”

  “Well then, you’ve ruined it. It’s no good.”

  “But you could fix it,” Boo rasped in sing-song. The brainiac nodded.

  “I could fix it, but then you’d need to make something that could get you into the Tower without having to fight tin men, and that’d be almost impossible,” said the brainiac.

  “Making is what arties do. You fix the factory, and we’ll do the rest,” I said. I could see the shapes forming already. My fingers itched to work the disk.

  “Fine, but this makes the arties and the brainiacs even,” she said.

  “Deal,” I said.

  * * * *

  THE TIN MEN were killing all the animals and plants in the city with ick. Someone must have changed their orders. They weren’t supposed to do that. It hurt us arties to know, but it kept the tin men busy while we Made in shifts with the factory. We had a plan, one that the brainiacs thought would get us all tossed in the pokey, but Boo and I both believed it would work. The other arties made animals that would go into the Tower and distract, and I worked on special plants with exploding seeds. Weapons, like thicknecks used on one another. We tested the seeds on a lone tin man, and it stunned it. We smashed it up good while it was down.

  The brainiac who repaired our factory met us in the shadows outside the Tower before we launched our attack. She pressed a sheet of paper into my hands. “One last little bit of help,” the brainiac said. “This will show you where they’re keeping your friend.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  The brainiac laughed. “You have no idea how bored we are. Your little creations are an ad-hoc ecosystem springing up all over the city. We’ve been studying things. Your creations are immensely complex and function cohesively, even though they are artificial. This bit of information has vast implications on issues such as the Jungian overmind—” The brainiac blinked and cut off her speech. I hadn’t understood a word of it, only that they liked our Makes. That made me feel good. “Sorry. Anyway, we hope you can make more.”

  “It was Niles’ idea,” I said. “Without him, we arties are too stupid to figure anything out.”

  The brainiac frowned. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. This plan of yours might actually work. And it looks like your friends are ready.”

  Us arties were gathering from all over the city. Each had a wil
d little animal, frantic and tugging at a leash of plant-rope. Each carried a satchel of bomb-seeds. Across the corner, a few thicknecks had gathered. They made catcalls and threats, but none dared to cross the street. I could hardly believe my eyes.

  Everyone waited for my command. I hesitated. If I said so, we arties would all go home to our Elderfolk. Maybe some would get supplies to ease the ache, and maybe some wouldn’t and they might die. Or we could attack the Tower and some would die and the rest would end up in the pokey-pokey or we might win and get back Niles and all his crazy ideas for Making. And it was my decision. Little Mona, whose art nobody understood.

  Nobody but Niles.

  I gave the word. The arties rushed the tower. Tin men spilled out from the doors, and seeds flew from everywhere. They crashed to the ground in beautiful purple sparks, and we swept past them inside. We arties freed the frantic little animals, and they ran free. The tin men couldn’t decide whether to chase us or chase the animals and split up. I led us arties up, up, following the drawings on the paper.

  We pushed past many many tin men, leaving them smoking behind us, and finally we got to the end place, and it was a place we all remembered, a birthing lab, cold, white and metal. And there were just-plains, the birthers, watching Niles, and he was sleeping in the tank, just like a baby arty. We scared away the just-plains. They tried to tell us to stop, that they needed Niles, but we needed him more. So we took him, and we left. We didn’t go back to the station. We found a new hiding place, in the basement of a power station, and there, we waited for Niles to wake up, and we cried, all of us arties, all as one.

  We’d done it, but Niles wouldn’t wake up.

  * * * *

  HE WASN’T DEAD, we knew that, because he was breathing. At first, no one would leave him, but even arties get hungry, and so we started watching in shifts, taking turns. Every one wanted to be the arty who was there when he woke, but it was me that was there, and it was Boo that woke him up.

  She sang; it was beautiful, even if it was broken. The pattern in the sound reminded me of the colors on her screen. The sound grew louder as she continued, and then I saw that little flying animals had come from the sky and joined her, together adding their voices and fixing where hers was broken. It must have been the best sound in the world, because then finally, Niles woke up, and he smiled.

  “Hey-a, Boo,” he said. “You can sing.” As if he had always known, and it wasn’t a surprise to him. And maybe he did. Niles was smart, especially for an arty. Then he turned and smiled at me.

  “Hey-a, Mona. You rescued me.”

  “We did,” I said. “And the brainiacs hardly helped at all.”

  He laughed. “That’s good. But I been thinking about what you said. You right. We should ask the brainiacs for help more often. Arties can’t do everything.”

  I cried, and hugged, and cried some more.

  Niles is getting better. He told me the secret of how the animals work, and at first, it made me sad. But we can eat the plants, and the animals too, so we don’t have to go back to the Elderfolk for chits. We’re staying here in our hiding places, and we’re sharing what we know with the brainiacs. They’re slipping away from their Elderfolk, too. We need the thicknecks’ help too, and the brainiacs are talking to them for us. Thicknecks listen to them, at least sometimes.

  There are plants and animals everywhere now, and they grow too fast for the tin men to stop them. And the little flying ones, they all sing such sweet songs. Boo, and Niles, and I sit and listen to them for hours. Boo says that she only Made some of them, and doesn’t know where the rest of them come from. The brainiacs have theories, but we don’t understand them.

  And we still Make, more plants and more animals each day with more stolen factories. The ache is still there, but it’s not the same. It’s the ache you feel when things are good, not when things are bad. And that’s the kind of ache that makes you feel good. Niles says he understands it, but I don’t believe him. Nobody understands that, not even the smartest brainiac of them all.

  * * *

  Afterword

  In this story, Arties spend their time dodging the tin men and trying to Make. As an artist of sorts myself, I know a little bit about what it's like to be compelled to Make.

  The genesis for “Arties Aren’t Stupid” was a news story about people making graffiti with moss by mixing blendered moss in water and then using it as paint. The idea of living graffiti struck me, and the story was born from that. The other ideas in the story really just came from the daily research I do by reading a lot of weird news websites. My daily information gathering functions as research for much of my work.

  My primary challenges writing this one was trying to capture the unique perspective of someone who is essentially autistic, and in fact, a society of people who are autistic. Trying to understand how they would think as a group, and what would drive them.

  FACELESS IN GETHSEMANE

  Mark Budz

  ON THE WAY home from work I swung by the library. Part of the reason for the detour was avoidance—I hadn’t yet told my wife that my sister was coming to town. But mostly it was fear.

  The police had set up a temporary chain link fence around the side and back parking lots. The only way in was through the front entrance. No razor wire that I could see. No protestors, either. The place was eerily calm.

  The Faceless Art Exhibit would be at the library’s cultural arts center for a week. The show was one of several that were touring the country in an effort to inform people about Voluntary Fusiform Prosopagnosia. During the week a number of artists, doctors, anthropologists, and celebrities would take part in lectures, interviews, and panel discussions about face blindness. Keeley, who had several pieces in the art exhibit, was coming to help kick things off.

  My wife and my sister had never gotten along. From the time we were kids, going through school, to the time Fran and I got married, they never liked each other. I’d hoped with time things would get better between them. Instead, they were like two magnets pushing at each other. The closer they got, the stronger their mutual aversion. It seemed inevitable one of them would leave.

  “She doesn’t like me,” Fran complained from the beginning, less than a week after we started going out. “She never has.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “She always looks at me funny.”

  “Funny how?”

  Fran hitched up her chin. “Intense. You know that look she has. I always get the feeling she’s judging me.”

  “About what?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I don’t think it’s on purpose. It’s just the way she is.”

  “She likes making people uncomfortable,” Fran went on. “That’s why she says the crap she does. Do you know what she told me the other day? She said, ‘Your heart has been scarred by the moon.’ What is that supposed to mean?”

  I had no idea. Keeley sometimes came out with stuff like that. It made people squirm. To be honest, I never totally understood her, either. Early on, we went our separate ways. Like any older brother, I ditched her whenever I could. Who wants a little sister tagging along, getting in the way and slowing you down?

  Most people were glad when Keeley left town and even happier to have her out of their lives when they found out she’d gone VFP.

  * * * *

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” Fran fumed. “I can’t believe you agreed to let her stay here without discussing it first.”

  I backed out of her way in the narrow kitchen. “We’re discussing it now.”

  “No, this is you asking for forgiveness.” She shoved a casserole dish in the oven, then slammed the door hard enough to rattle the empty pots on the stove. “What the hell were you thinking? I don’t understand what’s gotten into you.”

  “She’s my sister, for Christ’s sake. I haven’t seen her in years.”

  “Why can’t she stay in a hotel?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Fran rep
laced a pot on a burner. “All I can say is I’m glad we don’t have kids yet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Fran pinched the bridge of her nose. “Come on. Can you see your sister around children? They’d be traumatized for life.”

  “She might have changed,” I said. The same reasoning I’d used when I agreed to put her up.

  “Of course she’s changed.” Fran slipped off the oven mitts and flung them onto the counter.

  “It might be for the better,” I said. “I mean, anything’s possible. She might even like you, now that she sees people differently.”

  “So you’re hoping we’ll become friends. Is that it?”

  “All I’m saying is give it a chance. Please. It’s only for one night. She’s leaving tomorrow, after the opening ceremony.”

  Fran turned to me, her arms folded. “What if she doesn’t recognize you?”

  I blinked. The thought hadn’t occurred to me. How could my sister not know me? “I don’t think it works like that.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever talked to anyone who’s face blind?”

  She knew damn well I hadn’t. I’d seen a few drawings, though. Everybody had. The artwork was all over the news. Nothing by Keeley, but I had a pretty good idea what to expect. You couldn’t escape the brouhaha, the video clips of burning cars and broken windows. “Now’s our chance to really find out how it works,” I said.

  “I don’t want to find out.”

  “Aren’t you at least curious?”

  “If you want to know the God’s honest truth, I’m not all that interested in how she sees the world. As far as I’m concerned, this whole thing is a circus. A freak show. The less I know the better.”

  “Look,” I said. I spread my hands imploringly. “The least we can do is make her comfortable.”

  “I don’t want her to be comfortable,” Fran said. “I want her to be as uncomfortable as the rest of us.”

  * * * *

  IT STARTED OUT as a game, the way most regrets do.