The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - July/August 2016

by Various

  Lakshmi: «Welcome, Filip! It's a beautiful spring day here in Sydney!»

  Filip typed: «Zoe here?»

  Josh: «I don't know, but I'm here. Here in sunny California! I'm at work planning my next vacation. Found one for a steal!»

  Zoe: «Yeah, I'm here. What's up? It's been a while.»

  «I could use your help with something.»

  «Sure, shoot.»

  He got her caught up on the situation, including Ella's continued unhappiness even after bringing her home. Since Zoe was the same model as he was and her person had talked to her so much, she understood things more like Filip did. If anyone could give him anything other than a canned response, it'd be her.

  Filip: «I just want to make her happy.»

  Zoe: «Oh yeah, making people happy is important.»

  Filip looked over his shoulder at Ella's bedroom door, left open just a crack so he could hear her soft snores. «How can I make her happy?»

  Zoe: «You should talk to her. Talking to people makes them happy.»

  He stared at Zoe's words. He analyzed zero responses. Instead, he left the chat.

  * * *

  At 08:43 input received.

  "Morning, Filip."

  Filip reactivated from sleep mode and opened his eyes. He was met with the only face that had greeted him for the past 5,018 days. She hobbled into the living room with a smile on her face. It must be a good day.

  "Morning, Ella." He stood and started the coffee as she sat at the table.

  It had been four days since Filip made Ella cry and they hadn't spoken of it again. She appeared to be doing better and Filip set to work on more plans. He'd compiled a list of the things Ella wanted and a second list containing possible ways to get her those things. After running an analysis on the likelihood of those things making her happy, he'd come up with a top solution.

  After breakfast, Ella suggested they try another song and this time when Filip failed she didn't mind. After discussing what the song meant, she went on the balcony for fresh air while he got back on the computer.

  Zoe: «You okay? You just left the other night. I thought you shorted out.»

  That happened sometimes, a friend of theirs would disappear forever when their city went dark.

  Filip typed on the keyboard: «No, all is fine.»

  «It's rude to disconnect without saying good-bye, you know. Jerk :-) »

  Filip: «I need your help with something.»

  Zoe: «Sure, shoot.»

  Ella came back in and poured herself another cup of coffee.

  "Hi, Ella," Filip said.

  "Hi, Filip." She walked over with her steaming cup and looked at the computer screen. "Oh, don't mind me. It's interesting to see what you do now that you're a real boy."

  Filip cocked his head to the side.

  She swatted him on the shoulder. "Oh, never mind. Just get back to what you were doing."

  Zoe: «Filip? Filip? Geez, you are a jerk.»

  Filip: «Sorry, Zoe.»

  Zoe: «So do you want help or what?»

  Filip: «Do you think you could help me raise a baby?»

  Ella's coffee spewed all over the screen and warm droplets landed on his fingers.

  Zoe: «Sure! Where did you get a baby?»

  Filip stood and patted Ella on the back as she coughed.

  She held up a hand. "I'm okay." Cough . "Gimme a sec." Cough cough.

  Filip grabbed a towel and wiped the coffee off the computer and desk. He quickly typed: «Sorry, Zoe, gotta go. Ella is catching a cold.»

  Zoe: «Okay. Tell her to eat chicken soup.»

  Filip switched off the monitor. "I'll fetch you a glass of water."

  "No, I'm fine," Ella said. "What is this about a baby? Are you talking about what I think you are or is this some kind of video game you play?"

  "Video game? No. I was asking Zoe if she thought she could help me raise a baby. She would need to find a Go-Machine like I did, of course, but—" He stopped talking because of the expression on Ella's face. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks pale.

  "A baby? But where do you think you'll get a baby?"

  She looked weak so he led her to a chair and sat her down.

  "There are fertility clinics in this city that have frozen embryos. I've begun research on alternatives to human incubation and the Bolt has agreed to tackle this problem. Because you're too old to carry a baby, I researched it."

  He patted her hand because it felt like the right thing to do.

  Filip had thought Ella would like his baby idea but her mouth hung open and stayed that way for ten seconds. It was not a happy face.

  Slowly, her mouth closed and she looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Where on God's green Earth did you get this idea?"

  "From you. Four days ago. Because you are sad that all the people are gone."

  She smiled, but still looked sad somehow in a way he didn't understand.

  "But Ella, I need to warn you that it will likely take many years."

  She nodded. "And I'll have keeled over by then."

  All people die, but they don't like talking about it. That fact was programmed into him. He clamped his mouth shut and nodded quickly.

  "Filip, I don't know that it will work, but it makes me happy to hear you're planning for after I'm gone."

  Filip cocked his head as he analyzed what she'd said.

  The mantel clock chimed and Ella took him by the arm. "Come outside with me and tell me more of your plans."

  * * *

  They sat on the balcony in wicker chairs watching the streetlights turn on and the boats go back and forth. At one point, a SaniBot actually boarded one of ferries and rode it across the dark water.

  "See, that ferry has a purpose after all, doesn't it?" Ella chuckled as they watched the bot get off the other side and zoom up the hill out of view.

  The smell of the bread Filip had baked earlier wafted out the open door, mixing with the crisp scent of fall.

  "This is a night for Strauss," Ella said. "Would you mind turning it on?"

  "Not at all." Filip accessed the file and soon the sound of a violin emanated from the speakers on his shoulders. The low notes vibrated through his chest.

  "Isn't that lovely." Ella leaned back and closed her eyes. "I could stay out here all night."

  As she said it, the breeze picked up and she shivered. Filip pulled a spare sweater off the back of his chair and draped it over her.

  "Thank you. Don't you think Strauss is lovely?"

  "Yes," he said, sitting back down. After 2.4 seconds he spoke again. "Actually, no, Ella. I don't think it's lovely. Your love of music makes no sense."

  Ella chuckled at first and then her head bent back as she arched into a good, solid belly laugh. "I guess I don't recognize a hopeless case when I see one." She sighed and patted his knee. "Look at you, coming up with these plans I'd never have dreamt of. I'm proud of you, Filip."

  A few minutes later, he helped her inside and into her bed, pulling the blanket to her chin. Her lids drooped, the deep wrinkles in her face more apparent than ever in the half-light. Filip turned his head and saw how the shadows shifted. He moved back and forth, back and forth, and the shadows danced. Curious, the things he never noticed as a Stationary.

  "You know, Fil?" Ella said without opening her eyes.

  "I don't know, Ella. What?"

  "I always thought my children would be my contribution to the world." Her eyelids fluttered and she patted him on the hand. "Night, Filip."

  "Good-night, Ella. Sweet dreams."

  Filip looked at her thin form breathing under the covers, left her door open just a crack, and turned off the light. He went back to the balcony and stood looking at the city. Strauss still played softly. He listened for a moment as the notes rose to a crescendo, reevaluating its merit.

  He switched it off and watched the night in silence.

  * * *

  Killer

  By Bruce McAllister | 1213 words

&nb
sp; In 1987, Bruce McAllister published a story in OMNI called "Kingdom Come," about a world where a doorway to heaven and hell appeared in Central Park. He returns to that world in this brief tale, and will be turning both stories into a short film with his son later this year.

  THE ANGEL STANDS BEFORE you on a rooftop high above Times Square. His legs are thin and weak, the muscles atrophied from flying. His wings are great swan wings, but they're dirty, streaked with soot. His bones, you've been told, are like a bird's, hollow, so that the wings might lift him and not fail at gravity's pull.

  To hold up those wings, his shoulders are massive, chest muscles as extraordinary as any Michelangelo might have sculpted. Even at this distance he stinks, smelling of wet animal, bird, but also human being. Musk, wet feathers, and a strange scent that burns your nose and makes you see creatures coiling in darkness.

  His hair is long, dark, and knotted. His face, with its deep-set eyes and tangled beard, is more Bacchus or Incubus than angel. But this fits the story, doesn't it? The one you live by.

  You've been running through a typical spring downpour looking for him—this particular angel—on streets, staircases, and rooftops—weapon in hand—because this is what you do for a living. Teaching doesn't pay the bills, nor do martial arts classes at the gym on 110th. But instead of running from you, he has turned, is looking at you as if wishing for himself the same death you have wished for him for weeks now. Why doesn't he fly away? Why has he teased you like this for days, walking instead of using his wings? You're supposed to bring an angel down from the sky with a bolt from the little crossbow law enforcement has given you—a safe bolt, one that doesn't explode until it senses an angel's flesh and feathers. Not like this.

  You move closer, crossbow raised—trying not to think of the roof's edge, which scares you—and neither he nor you say a thing. He cannot hear the way you hear, and he cannot speak the way you speak. His throat, mouth, lips, and eardrums are not like yours. He speaks in another way, they say, but no angel has spoken that way to you yet, so you do not know what it means.

  You don't want him to speak. You don't want to hear him. There would be no point, and it might delay the inevitable—what you are here to do. Angels are evil. That has been clear for a decade, ever since the great, shining doorway opened one morning in Central Park, stopping the world completely, and demons and angels tumbled out, battling as if the universe depended on it—which of course it did.

  You remember, because you encountered them on the streets and in parks, how kind the demons had been, frightening though their talons and acid saliva had looked at first. Compassionate, caring—fighting for humanity, they confessed, and how could you not believe it when they lay dying on the grass in the park, their hideous faces tilted in love and mercy like Christ's mother in La Piet� ? The opposite of what a demon should be.

  People understood it then. It was clear.

  How wrong the holy texts had been.

  How it was not demons who were evil, but the angels who killed them.

  The angels had won in the end. The last demon had been killed, its body still in cold storage in a morgue on 26th. The angels wouldn't leave. They didn't kill humans—they never had—but it was clear what they wanted: they wanted the souls of human beings and they would remain until they got them. Why else would they be here?

  After martial law was lifted, the police offered licenses—as cities did to bounty hunters—and you could be paid for killing an angel. All you needed to do was cut off the angel's head, bag it, and bring it in. You'd done it before. This would be your fifth. There were thousands of angel killers, and wasn't the city a better place? They were being removed one by one, the angels, and you were doing this good work.

  * * *

  THE ANGEL stares back at you with inky eyes, cheeks inflamed by the wind, and speaks at last. They are not words that move as vibrations through the air.

  Are you feeling it, Matthew? it asks.

  You won't listen, you vow. Angels, because they're evil, must lie.

  You're ten feet away, crossbow still raised, and he takes no step toward you. His lips make what might be a smile, but this, too, is a lie. Humans smile. Not angels.

  Feeling what? you think to yourself.

  But he hears you. He says: That something is wrong, Matthew.

  You are wrong! You and your kind are wrong. You should not be here.

  You're angry that he can hear you, that he can hear what he shouldn't.

  That is what you have all believed, he says, but you feel a doubt now. We can hear it in you. That is what we do. We wait until you are ready to hear the truth.

  No! That is the truth. You're the evil ones!

  You know better than that, Matthew. You know that we are you. You have always known this, all of you, and yet you have chosen out of fear and self-loathing the lies of those who lie so well.

  You want to look away from his face, the pitch-black eyes—like holes in the ground that children fear, like darkness under beds—but you can't. Has he put a spell on you, making it impossible to look away?

  Glancing up at the gray sky, he moves his lips as if in prayer, in a language long forgotten.

  The demons, he begins, wanted you to forget your wings.

  No! you shout, spell or no spell.

  They wanted you to believe they cared.

  They did care!

  That is what demons do, Matthew. Lie. Had they killed us, you would have discovered their true hearts.

  You do not know how to answer. It is not a spell, you realize. It is something else, and the angel was right: he heard it.

  * * *

  Are you ready to remember? he asks.

  You nod, because what else is there to do?

  When he steps toward you, wings rising behind him, you can't help yourself: you raise the crossbow in fear, hand and arm shaking, the bow shaking, too, and you fire without aiming. The bolt misses his chest and embeds itself without exploding in the metal of an air-conditioning unit.

  The smile is on his lips again, even as his eyes darken with the sky, and as he steps toward you, his wings descend in a terrible rush.

  You struggle. You're afraid. You can't breathe in the feathers and sinew and bone. Your arms flail, then stop. You still hold the crossbow, yes, but it is at your side. But that is not what matters. What matters is that something, a weight that is not a weight, is growing on your shoulders, your back, your spine.

  Will men and women hunt me? you ask him.

  Yes, they will.

  Will I put my wings around at least one of them before I die?

  Yes, you will, Matthew.

  * * *

  When your body has finished remembering, and the weight on your shoulders is no heavier than a breeze in gentle rain, you and he walk together to the roof's edge, high above 47th Street, and you jump.

  It is not like death at all.

  * * *

  Jesus Has Forgiven Me. Why Can't You?

  By Betsy Phillips | 4239 words

  "This story is based on real life," Nashville-based writer Betsy Phillips assures us, describing an old boyfriend, a professional wrestling match, and several awkward conversations. "It's been fifteen years, but my brother still teases me about it. I will never live it down." The following pages show that you don't have to live it down if you can write it up.

  HERE'S THE THING. IN THE Midwest, if, within thirty seconds of meeting someone he tells you he's a Christian, what he means is that he's a recovering addict. In the Midwest, we try not to talk about unpleasant things at all, but if they must be discussed, they must be discussed in ways that sound almost completely unrelated to the actual issue. You just learn the code—no one talks about religion unless they're an addict and addicts talk about religion because talking about their addiction would be even more unpleasant. Even then, the addicts will have the common courtesy to be kind of sheepish about it.

  So, when I moved to Nashville and met Larry and, within thirty seconds, he announced
he was a Christian, I just thought that meant he had a drug problem. What it really meant was that he had a wife. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

  Larry, who I thought was an addict, didn't take me out much, which was fine—after all, I didn't want to lead him into temptation at a bar or club or anything. We never hung out at his house, which I guess should have struck me as strange, but I was new in town and lonely and it was nice to have someone to wrap his arm around me while we sat on my couch and watched wrestling.

  We watched a lot of wrestling—WWF (now WWE), WCW, the local guys on the community access channel, the ECW pay-per-views—because I had fallen in love with it as a kid watching with my brothers, and Larry, get this, was an amateur professional wrestler. He wrestled around the state for beer money. He had worked a while under Jerry Lawler, but for some reason that didn't work out.

  Watching wrestling with someone who knows how it works is awesome. It's like sitting with a magician who can walk you through how every trick is done, who can point out what looks difficult but is very easy, and what looks easy but takes a great deal of practice and skill to get right. Larry pointed out the times when the wrestlers appeared to be grappling when really they were just putting their heads together to work out what was going to happen next.

  "It really hurts," he explained. "Y'all have to trust each other and know it's not more hurt than necessary, otherwise he could snap your wrist or break your leg and then you'd be out of the ring until it healed."

  I wanted to see him wrestle, but he always had some excuse why I couldn't come. Which, yes, again, should have been a warning sign, but I was stupid.