MASTHEAD
R. Leigh Hennig, Editor-in-Chief
Brooke Johnson, Senior Editor
Clear Menser, Assistant Editor
Zod, Social
Nick Lazzaro, Slush Reader
Gabrielle Vicari, Slush Reader
Lauren Jane Shipley, Slush Reader
Madison Abshire, Slush Reader
CONTRIBUTORS
“Two Gentlemen”, Copyright ©2014 by Kurt Bachard
“Past Imperfect”, Copyright ©2014 by Dominic Dulley
“The Tree”, Copyright ©2014 by Benjamin Sperduto
“Miracle of Asteroid Camp 88”, Copyright ©2014 by Michael Andre-Driussi
“Bartleby, the Robot Killer: A Story of Difference Street”, Copyright ©2014 by Alex Livingston
“Compile Sensory Information and Extrapolate”, Copyright ©2014 by Jenna Bilbrey
“The Broken Places”, Copyright ©2014 by Melanie Marttila
Cover image courtesy Milan Jaram.
Bastion Publications
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Bastion Science Fiction Magazine publishes original short stories on the first of every month. As a new publication, we’re working hard to build up our readership. We’d appreciate it if you would help us out by letting your friends know about us. Thanks for your support and happy reading.
Contents
Editorial
R. Leigh Hennig
Two Gentlemen
Kurt Bachard
Past Imperfect
Dominic Dulley
The Tree
Benjamin Sperduto
Miracle of Asteroid Camp 88
Michael Andre-Driussi
Bartleby, the Robot Killer: A Story of Difference Street
Alex Livingston
Compile Sensory Information and Extrapolate
Jenna Bilbrey
The Broken Places
Melanie Marttila
Editorial
R. Leigh Hennig
I’ve spent a lot of time this month talking with people, requesting reviews, generating interest, and participating in interviews. I’d like to thank everyone that’s given Bastion a chance. As I’ve repeated many times before, we’re a contributor oriented publication. That means, among other things, that a big part of our mission is to help promote our authors. When someone gives me an opportunity to speak about the magazine, or when they provide us with a (honest) review, it’s not just Bastion they’re helping out, it’s the people whose stories we publish. That means something to us, and I know that both the Bastion staff and our authors are grateful.
I don’t want to spend too much time talking about things not entirely unique to May’s issue, so I’ll go on.
I’ve been reading a lot of themed anthologies lately, not by any conscious decision on my part to read themed collections, but just because the things I’ve picked up that appeared interesting just happened to be themed. It’s funny how things like that sometimes work out by themselves. June’s issue has turned out a bit like that: unintentionally themed. There’s still a good bit of variety in this issue, but I don’t think you’ll be able to read this issue and not conclude that “broken people” is something that comes up repeatedly.
It’s not that the staff is blind to the balance of the issue, however. In between some of the darker pieces, we’ve managed to find and insert some really charming stories about life. Even with these, you still won’t need to look hard to find the reoccurrence of “broken people.” I believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
This month, Kurt Bachard (appearing in Bastion for the second time – you may recall “That World Up There” from April’s issue) deftly relates the consequences of isolation in “Two Gentlemen.” Jenna Bilbrey has her own take on isolation, or rather, the unexpected connections that things can make in “Compile Sensory Information and Extrapolate.” Melanie Marttila’s perfectly visceral descriptions of one species trying to reach out to another are expertly told in “The Broken Places.” In keeping with communication and relating to other people (or things), Benjamin Sperduto’s “The Tree” is as touching as it is thoughtful. If you’re the kind of person who appreciates action and working with your hands, then “Bartleby, the Robot Killer: A Story of Difference Street” by Alex Livingston won’t let you down. “Miracle of Asteroid Camp 88” by Michael Andre-Driussi is a more optimistic rendition of the transformative powers of new life, and an excellent break from some of the grittier tales we have. Finally, in “Past Imperfect”, Dominic Dulley explores responsibility, and how deep the connections go between who we are and who we might have been.
I think that’s enough for now. Enjoy!
Two Gentlemen
Kurt Bachard
He walks through a blizzard on a mountainous frozen landscape, snow clinging to the padded shoulders of his environmental suit.
Modelled after the fashion of his long-deceased creator, wearing a brown tweed blazer beneath the suit, a frostbitten handlebar moustache behind the visor, Hanson Fuller resembles a noble Victorian whose missives once saved the sanity of lonely men. As he makes the long trek back, clutching two envelopes with indifferent determination, something inside him turns over and changes. He feels a strange stirring as light and insubstantial as the kiss of a departing ghost.
#
I had been waiting eagerly inside the warm dome, and immediately I noticed something different in the android’s demeanour.
"What happened?”
As the visor hissed open, a shivering Hanson sighed, his steam of breath melting the icicles hanging from the tip of his pointed nose. "These are yours," he said, ignoring the question.
He shoved the two yellow plastic envelopes at my midsection, before leaving a palpable misery lingering in his wake.
Hanson's odd, irascible manner was farthest from my mind once I held the envelopes. As I read the familiar, informal address I had grown to love, I remembered the final words of my latest epistle, the one Hanson had so recently dispatched. I had written "With love, your friend, David", which seemed to me as poignant as Amen at the end of a Psalm.
#
Troubled by Hanson's apparent change, I sought him out.
I found him standing on the bridge over the treatment tanks, staring down moodily into frothing waters. Somewhere turbines whined their dying notes.
"Why did you shove the envelopes at me earlier?"
After a long pause, when it seemed I might have to repeat myself, Hanson tried to explain his unusual conduct.
"I've been thinking about all the people I knew here. Dr. Weller, Dr. Clair, Nurse Goldsmith. I miss them all." His sigh sounded as earnest as that of any human.
I stared at him thoughtfully, wondering if the android's loneliness could ever be real. Even if not, Hanson's mental equilibrium mattered. Without him, the mail bullet was lost. I would never find it out there in those vast unforgiving white wastes. The cold would freeze my heart while I wandered in vain, forever searching. I mulled this over a moment.
"I have a proposal," I said at last. "Why don't I give you one of my old letters to read? You could imagine it's addressed to you and when you read it, I'm sure you'll feel better."
This seemed a most compassionate and clever solution, and I was grinning proudly at my high-mindedness until Hanson replied with cold ingratitude.
"No. That won't do," he said. "I would prefer that you let me have one
of your unopened letters."
"That's out of the question."
"Please," begged Hanson, forming a steeple with his hands.
Frowning at the gesture I felt he had no right to use, I walked away, disgusted and annoyed.
#
By evening, plagued by my conscience and the vivid memory of Hanson's impassioned plea, I decided I would submit to the android’s request, but just this once.
One letter only. Just this once.
Informing a friend back home of the event, I wrote at my desk in my quarters, and ended by writing:
"With concern, David."
Days later, the mail bullet conveyed my words back to Earth.
#
Almost perversely, the day began routinely. After my usual stroll around the decaying dome, I wandered down to the gardens during mid-morning. Here, I sat in the wilting grass, close by the sputtering fountain, to compose a letter I had been putting off for some time.
Later, in the evening, I told Hanson of my decision to let him have one of my letters in the next post, and together we took the trip down to the airlock to watch the powdery sky for the mail bullet's arrival. We talked little along the way, forced pleasantries, but Hanson stuttered, barely able to contain his excitement at the prospect of receiving mail.
Presently the bullet arrived, a spangled blue blur amid the white. Hanson, grasping my most recently composed letter in hand, dashed off, as excited as a child let out to play after being cooped up all winter.
He returned hours later from the caldera of the bullet's crash landing, grinning behind the visor, and panting to catch his breath.
He was holding two envelopes, one he offered to me, the other he kept back for himself.
Sticking to our agreement, I resisted the urge to demand both letters. Even so, it was more difficult than I had anticipated. I had not expected to feel such an overwhelming sense of loss, a burning tightness in my chest like bereavement. Long after Hanson had returned to his room, I stood in the airlock, looking out at the vast bleached emptiness, worried and depressed.
#
I found it impossible to settle. Agitated, I rose from my bunk, the letter from a friend crumpled in my hand.
Having read the letter enough times to grow tired of it, I put it aside and left the room, heading down the deserted halls to the android’s quarters.
Hanson was reposing on his bunk, leisurely reading the letter from the other half of the week's mail.
I coughed self-consciously from the doorway: "Well, what does it say?"
Hanson did not lift his head to look up; instead, he slowly lowered the letter, face down, to his chest and held it there.
His actions seem almost childish, I thought, unable to resist grinding my teeth; and yet more, Hanson looked stupidly sheepish, an embarrassed teenager fawning over a lover's note, his eyes languid, dreamy.
"Well?" I demanded hotly.
"It's personal," said Hanson.
I had a sudden disturbing flash of intuition that Hanson wanted the letter only because he knew I needed it.
Dog in the Manger, I thought, and, squinting, decided to try a little reverse-psychology on my adversary. I shrugged noncommittally, pretending indifference.
"Well, okay," I said, but my voice cracked. "I thought it might give us something to talk about, but anyway..."
The trouble was I cared. I cared obsessively. I had read my letter twenty times; I knew it by memory. Only then, I realized (with an awful gut-aching species of shock) that for all my proud independence, once boasting I could live alone at the edge of the universe, my survival depended on the missives I received.
Replete with joyful or sorrowful sentiments, with thrilling words of affection or hope, they saved me from a soul-destroying isolation. I knew men had been saved by messages in bottles. Well, these were my messages in my bottles. Hanson had no claim on them.
I gripped the doorframe with blazing emotion, shaking. It no longer mattered if that other letter contained bad news, or even platitudes of the commonest kind. No, what mattered was that I had it, read it, and knew what it contained.
"It is absolutely imperative that I read what is in that letter." My words felt like metal balls in my mouth, heavy, dull. I wanted to sound firm, with a note of command, yet not desperate. "Hanson, my well-being depends on my reading that letter."
The logic in Hanson's retort was faultless. "My well-being depends upon it too. Besides, I cannot return the letter to you, nor can I tell you what is written in it, since that would defeat the purpose, aside from breaking our agreement." As he stood, he folded the letter neatly, reverently, and slipped it back into its plastic envelope, which he placed with equal solemn reverence into his outside jacket pocket.
I stood dumfounded as he pushed by me on his way out of the room.
#
Perplexed, and like a sailor drunk at sea, I lurched along the corridor, returning to my quarters in frustration.
I kept all of my old letters in a trunk, which I pulled out and threw open. The letters, on green, blue, pink, and white parchment looked as tender as a bird’s wings. I pulled them out, one by one, and, reclining on my bunk, went through them, attempting to read them methodically, from the first heart-warming words of "Dear David" to their last.
Nevertheless, I could not reabsorb their love or their life; a letter once read is like a small death. My eyes passed blindly over the words, my mind hazing over, thinking back to that other letter and of what it might contain.
Perhaps the letter was from Sandra, a wretched confession at last that she no longer wanted to wait for me on Earth; in her last letter, reading between the lines, I had sensed her coming close to refuting our love, that in the absence of her lover, love's tide had grown weaker.
If the letter was from Maugham, perhaps he had revealed the reason for his dismissal from his university post, about which he too had hinted.
Perhaps the letter was one of those heart-breaking little efforts I received from time to time from Flic, the word Daddy scribbled in primary-colored crayons that she would soon outgrow, sadly, beyond my sight.
Losing touch with them would prove to be an intolerable misery. Knowing this, I threw my old letters down on the bed and got up determinedly to find Hanson.
#
I discovered him in the wilting gardens, sitting by the fountain.
He was deeply engrossed in the beautiful act of reading the missive, a faraway look in his grey eyes as he saw far beyond the words on the paper, to Earth in the blink of an eye.
Jealously, I was seized by an overpowering sense of propriety, a feeling so strong it made me tremble. "Hand it over, robot. Give it to me. Right now!"
The threat in my voice broke the android's enchantment. He stood up, alert and defensive. “No,” he said, and refusing to relinquish his treasure, returned it to the envelope stowed away in his jacket pocket.
"Fuller, listen to me." I was menacingly calm, falsely diplomatic, and desperate. "After that dumb mail-runner bot broke down, you were programmed to locate the mail bullet, ordered to deposit and retrieve mail from it, but that's all there is to it. That is all. Your job is to maintain that lifeline. For me. Not for you. For me. Do you understand me? You're exceeding your orders. Your cogs are spinning so fast I can almost see the steam. Now, do what you're duty bound to do and hand over that letter to me."
"The letter belongs to me," said Hanson with inarguable simplicity.
But I had moved beyond argument. Almost blindly, and quivering in every muscle, I stepped forward and reached into the android’s pocket, my fingers rooting for the envelope.
Hanson grabbed hold of my wrist and held it. Though not designed for strength, the force in his grip made me wince.
His eyes glowed, glassy with madness or spite. "You are attempting to steal mail," he said, "which means I am within my rights as a postal officer, since Earth law operates here by proxy, to carry out a citizen's arrest."
<
br /> “Let go of my wrist, Hanson.”
Hanson began to quote the ancient postal regulation with great deliberation, all the time increasing the pressure of his grip.
A bone in my wrist cracked. I cried out, struggled to escape. By twisting, I contrived to push Hanson’s forearm up under his chin, forcing his head back.
Then I leaned against his windpipe. I held my position. We fought silently, merely grunting, for about a minute, until, by degrees, the grip on my wrist began to loosen. The pain of the break faded to a dull throb. I become aware of the sharp edge of the plastic envelope against the fingertips of my other hand.
I snatched the envelope out of Hanson’s pocket…and held my prize for mere seconds before Hanson clawed for it, forcing me to let go.
With renewed determination, I clamped my hands around his throat and shoved him back against the fountain wall.
Hanson's attempt to throw off his attacker, by bucking his body against the weight, served only to madden me further. My grip tightened. I forced Hanson back farther, pushing his head into the fountain's pool.
Spluttering, the android clawed for my eyes, but my reach protected me, and soon Hanson's resistance died.
As his arms flopped limply by his sides, I released him.
Hanson's body hung backwards over the fountain wall. His wet eyes stared up blindly, lifelessly, from the water, which lapped at the swollen tongue protruding from his open mouth.
Forgotten in the fight, and having fallen from its envelope, the letter floated beside the android's face.
Panting, and feeling no horror, only triumph, I fished the soggy paper out of the water and made an effort to unfold it with hands that would not remain still.
Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 3, June 2014 Page 1
