Lightspeed Magazine Issue 35

by Nina Allan

  Working in-studio on animated films seems like such a collaborative experience, with constant close association with many other artists and creatives. What is that like and how do you compare it to personal projects where it is just you working on your idea (i.e., Collidescape Chronicles)? Is there a difference in how you come up with ideas (and problem-solve) when you are working on one vs. the other?

  The foundation of working on large-scale endeavors like films and a personal project like my book is the same. That is to say, designing and creating in service to the story. In film, I’m serving the vision and story of the director, but with additional guidance by individuals that he or she has placed their trust in, namely the production designer and the art directors. It is uniquely collaborative. In my own project, I must serve the story and vision I’ve laid out for the book. In one sense, it’s easier, but in another, it is more difficult, because all of the responsibility falls on me. Writing, designing, and illustrating are demanding disciplines to coordinate together and I am my own worst critic! I’ve found working for myself on my own projects to be the most rewarding and, at times, challenging experience.

  Your painting, Death of the King, is featured as our cover art this month. What an intriguing piece of visual storytelling it is! The woman in white, the Beast stabbed in the back. Where did the concept for this one begin? (And will we be seeing more of the story at some point?)

  It is part of a short story … a kind of dark little fairy tale I’ve been kicking around for a few years. It is a story about a princess and her two brothers, who venture into the dark woods where their father the King had disappeared many years before. There is strife with the neighboring kingdom, as people there have gone missing … apparently a mysterious creature has made its home there … I’d been reading about how certain addictions changed people into monsters, making them unrecognizable to their own families. I used that as the basis for my dark and tragic little tale. I hope to complete new art and finish the story after the first Collidescape book is completed, so stay tuned.

  Who are some of the artists that have influenced and inspired you?

  There are many and with great diversity, here are some I look at all the time. N.C. Wyeth, Sergio Topi, Moebius, Frank Frazetta, Edward Austin Abbey, John Singer Sargent, Ilya Repin, Joseph Clement Cole, Frank Booth, Phil Hale, J.C. Leyendecker, J.W. Waterhouse, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt … too many to list here!

  With your diverse background, what is your advice to young artists embarking on their education and/or careers?

  Know that if this path has chosen you, it will be one wrought with challenges and hard work. Though I’ve been fortunate to have found some success, success is not the end goal. Creating the art that makes you happy and fulfilled is! That is what propels you through the challenges and makes the hard work feel more like play in hindsight. The truth is, the cliché is absolutely right: “It’s the journey that counts!”

  What are you working on right now?

  I’m working on a new animated feature for Pixar and I am working diligently to finish my first illustrated adventure that one day I hope to share with you all!

  Thank you, Armand! It was a pleasure talking with you.

  Galen Dara likes to sit in the dark with her sketchbook, but sometimes she emerges to illustrate for books and magazines, dabble in comics, and hatch wild collaborations with friends and associates. Galen has done art for Edge Publishing, Dagan Books, Apex, Scapezine, Tales to Terrify, Peculiar Pages, Sunstone, and the LovecraftZine. She is on the staff of BookLifeNow, blogs for the Inkpunks, and writes the Art Nerd column at the Functional Nerds. When Galen is not online you can find her on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, climbing mountains or hanging out with a loving assortment of human and animal companions. Follow her on Twitter @galendara.

  Deus Ex Arca

  Desirina Boskovich

  It was a crystalline morning in early June, and the sky was wide as a saucer.

  It was a beautiful day for the arrival of the box.

  Ferocious rains had come the night before, leaving the air fresh with dew. The Greater Springfield Farmers’ Market was swinging into gear outside the mall. At the far end of the blacktop parking lot, an array of tents and tables had been erected, staffed by vendors from across southwest Missouri.

  Mr. and Mrs. Yamamoto were there, with radishes, cucumbers, yellow squash, and salad greens. Their teenage son helped bag the vegetables, and Mrs. Yamamoto’s mother made change. Jeff Finley, of Finley Farms, sold grass-fed beef and unpasteurized milk from a freezer in the back of his Chevy pickup. Miss Amelia offered hand-poured candles, and herbs in plastic pots. A Mennonite family sold fresh produce from their sixteen-acre farm. Their sons wore suspenders and broad-brimmed hats; their daughters wore ankle-length dresses and bonnets sewn from stiff white mesh. There were red potatoes, green tomatoes, fist-sized strawberries, and fresh baked bread.

  Jackson Smith, aged seven, also happened to be at the farmers’ market that day. He was there with his parents, and his little sister Emily, aged two. Their father pushed Emily in the stroller; their mother held Jackson’s hand, as they wandered from table to table.

  Jackson was in the second grade. His bowl-cut hair was straight and fine, so blond it was almost white. His eyes were round and blue. There was a gap between his two front teeth; his parents assumed the gap would disappear as he grew up, but in fact it never did. He played Little League and collected rocks. He had a special bond with the family cat, Scottie—a fat lazy tom who purred and slobbered when you picked him up.

  Jackson waited patiently while his mother talked to Miss Amelia, who loved to talk about her candles.

  Then he saw it: the box.

  The box was sitting on the asphalt, just to the left of Miss Amelia’s folding table.

  Jackson couldn’t remember ever seeing a box like this before. He broke away from his mother’s grasp, and, wiping his palm on his jeans, he went over to inspect the box.

  It was about the size of a shoebox. It was matte charcoal in hue, a name-evading shade that hovered indistinctly between black and gray. Jackson squatted in front of the box. He poked it, then laid his palm flat on top. Nothing happened, although his fingers left faintly visible prints of moisture. These quickly evaporated.

  He picked it up. It was heavy, but not unexpectedly so.

  “Mom, look what I found,” he said, and hoisted the box onto Miss Amelia’s table.

  What happened next is hard to describe. Except that, in the instant it was happening, it felt like the most natural thing imaginable.

  The table, along with all the candles and herbs carefully arranged upon it, simply disappeared. It didn’t fade. It didn’t crumble. It just popped out of existence. Where there had been a table, there was now something else, and that something else was air.

  When the table disappeared, the box sat on the ground. It didn’t fall to the ground. There was no slam, no thud, no clunk. The box sat on the ground as if it had been sitting there all along.

  Jackson’s mother screamed. Jackson’s father rushed over, still pushing Emily, who cackled with glee at the bumpy ride.

  Miss Amelia gazed in shock at where her table had been. “Well, I never,” she said. She bent over to pick up the box …

  … and turned into a giant celery stalk.

  Where there had been Miss Amelia, there was now something else, and that something else was a column of celery, measuring approximately five feet and five inches, its limpid green fronds rustling gently in the breeze.

  The box sat beside it.

  The Yamamoto’s teenage son, who’d seen the whole thing, rushed over. He joined Jackson and Jackson’s parents, who were staring down at the box. Then, before anyone could stop him, he nudged the box with his foot.

  Nothing happened.

  He touched it with the tips of his fingers.

  Nothing happened.

  Mr. Yamamoto ran over, yelling. He grabbed his reckless teenage son by the shoulder and hauled him
back toward the safety of their tent, lecturing him in Japanese about the importance of thinking before one acts.

  They were almost there when Mr. Yamamoto simply disappeared. His son turned into a toaster.

  The box didn’t move.

  Mrs. Yamamoto and her mother tottered over to the spot where Mr. Yamamoto and his courageous son had been standing just a moment before. Mrs. Yamamoto began to wail. Her mother shouted warningly at everyone who tried to come near them. The toaster just sat there.

  Jackson’s parents backed away a few steps—and then a few steps further. When Jackson finally noticed, he backed away, too.

  Jeff Finley came over to see if he could lend a hand. He’d pulled hapless cars out of the mud in his Chevy pickup and he’d helped countless cows through labor. And—though no one knew about this but his wife and his two teenage stepdaughters, certainly not Jackson—he’d even built a survival shelter in his own backyard and stocked it with bottled water, canned tuna, and guns. He was so rightwing he was liberal, and so leftwing he was conservative. Ever since his first wife and only son had died in a car accident eleven years ago, he’d considered himself immune to pain. In short, he assumed he was prepared to deal with any eventuality.

  But he’d never imagined anything like the box.

  He picked it up, of course; it was impossible to believe that the box had anything to do with the things that were happening at the farmers’ market. In fact, it was impossible to believe those things were happening at all.

  The moment he picked it up, he winked out of existence. The box remained on the ground, as it always had.

  Jeff appeared a moment later, standing on top of the mall. According to observer measurement, approximately 1.7 seconds had passed since he’d disappeared from the parking lot. But according to Jeff’s measurement, he’d been gone much longer. He’d seen things no human should ever see, perhaps things no human had ever seen. He stumbled over to the edge of the roof.

  “Look! On the roof!” someone shouted, from down in the parking lot. Just then, Jeff jumped.

  It was not a very big mall. The fall broke his bones, but didn’t kill him—at least not right away.

  Meanwhile, pandemonium ruled the parking lot. Shoppers rushed around, screaming and crying. A Mennonite girl sprinted toward the sidewalk, white tennis shoes flashing beneath her dress. A loose dog ran among the cars, barking frantically, trailing a useless leash. Vendors leaped into their cars and sped away, leaving behind their tables and tents without a second thought. Already, a major car accident had jammed the nearest intersection. Something, somewhere, was on fire; smoke billowed toward the sky. The intertwined wail of sirens rose and fell in the distance, and a fire truck’s horn blared like an oncoming train.

  Jackson picked up the box and cradled it close to his chest. His father comforted his mother, and his mother comforted Emily, who’d begun to cry.

  They didn’t run to the car. They walked. Jackson’s father, holding the stroller. Jackson’s mother, holding Emily. Jackson, walking five paces behind them, holding the box.

  They climbed into their station wagon, exercising the utmost calm. Jackson’s father navigated carefully through the chaos of the parking lot, then out into the traffic jam of the street. Jackson’s mother sat beside him, reciting a nursery rhyme that Emily loved. Her breath was jagged, but her voice was soft.

  In the backseat, Emily sat in her car seat and cried. Jackson sat next to her, the box on his lap. He wore his seatbelt, even though no one had reminded him. He watched out the window as telephone poles and brick buildings and gas stations flew by.

  By the time they had returned home and pulled into their driveway, Jackson’s mother had stopped saying the nursery rhyme, and Emily had stopped crying.

  As they got out of the car, Jackson realized something.

  Neither of his parents had touched the box. And neither of his parents had touched him.

  He walked carefully up the stairs, still holding the box, and placed it gently beneath the bed.

  They came for the box the next day, as Jackson assumed they would. (He’d seen movies, after all.) A procession of unmarked black SUVs squealed into the cul-de-sac and screeched to a halt outside Jackson’s house. Before the vehicles even stopped, soldiers in black body armor piled out. They’d been briefed to expect the worst.

  Jackson’s mother and father opened the door for the soldiers, so they wouldn’t have to kick it down. They stood aside as the soldiers rushed up the stairs.

  Jackson stood open-mouthed in the middle of his bedroom, as the shouting soldiers piled in. He pointed silently: underneath the bed.

  The first soldier got on his knees and reached underneath. He turned into a bobby pin the size of a trumpet. The second soldier followed his lead. He turned into a yellow toy pickup truck. The third soldier disappeared. The fourth dissolved into a puddle of gray goo. The fifth also disappeared. The sixth became a tuna sandwich.

  The seventh fished out the box.

  He stood, transfixed, holding the box at arm’s length. His mask obscured his face, making it hard to be sure, but he seemed shocked.

  Jackson sat on the bed and crossed his arms.

  The seventh soldier handed the box to an eighth soldier, who promptly exploded: a fountain of blood, guts, and brain matter, misting across the room like hairspray. The seventh soldier let out a strangled scream, and picked up the box again. He carried the box down the stairs, flanked by the soldiers who’d survived.

  After they left, the house was deadly quiet. In fact, the entire neighborhood fell into a soundless stupor, a stillness it hadn’t known in years.

  Jackson sat alone in his room and played with the yellow truck, pushing it across the rug. A few hours passed. He curled up on the bed and fell into a dreamless sleep until he woke to the sounds of his family eating dinner downstairs without him.

  He took a bite of the tuna sandwich, but it tasted bland, and the crust was stale.

  He missed the box.

  The black SUVs returned a week later. This time, they were coming for Jackson.

  They brought a man with them. The man was reedy and balding; he wore a pink collared shirt and a turquoise striped tie. He looked like a math teacher, but he was actually a psychologist. His job was to explain things to Jackson’s parents.

  In soothing tones, he clarified that this was nothing less than a matter of national security. The box was incredibly powerful, with untold applications. The box could wipe out entire foreign armies, but it was impossible to control. And so far, Jackson was the only one who’d been able to reliably interact with the box without suffering any ill effects.

  The phenomenon was astonishing and inexplicable, but their scientists would get to the bottom of it. In a way, it was for Jackson’s own good.

  Of course, if Jackson’s parents weren’t amenable to reason, there was always the army.

  Jackson’s mother cried hysterically, clawing her face and dragging her fingers through her hair. But Jackson’s father appeared surprisingly stoic. He said, “That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it has to be.” He said it again and again.

  The man who looked like a math teacher climbed the stairs to collect Jackson, followed by the soldiers in body armor. Jackson’s father restrained Jackson’s mother. He held onto her even when Jackson emerged at the bottom of the stairs, escorted by his entourage. Jackson’s mother fought Jackson’s father, biting him and scratching him, calling him awful names that Jackson had never heard before, not even on television.

  Jackson stood awkwardly to the side, next to the man who looked like a math teacher, flanked by the soldiers in body armor.

  His mother broke away from his father’s grasp, and dashed over to Jackson.

  “No!” his father shouted.

  So Jackson knew for sure what he’d suspected ever since the day in the station wagon.

  His mother threw her arms around him, touched his face, mussed his hair, kissed his forehead, and rubbed her snotty tears a
ll over his neck. “I’m sorry for being such a terrible mommy,” she hiccupped.

  The soldiers yanked her away, and the man who looked like a math teacher pulled Jackson through the house, toward the front door.

  Jackson looked over his shoulder all the way to the car. They stuffed him into a black SUV that looked like all the others. As they pulled away from the curb, his mother stood in the front yard, sobbing. Other than the hysterical crying, she seemed fine.

  Later that week, the man who looked like a math teacher was transformed into a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

  They took Jackson to a strange place full of cramped rooms with stainless steel tables and glaring white walls. They tried to run tests on the box, but it was dangerous, so they ran tests on Jackson instead. They pricked his finger. They took samples from his skin and hair and stools. They gave him shots, with long glistening needles thin as thread, liquid glistening at their tips. They strapped him down so he couldn’t move, and put him inside an MRI machine for hours at a time. It was terrible inside the machine; he closed his eyes and imagined that he was inside a spaceship instead, on his way to a distant star. They gave him new shots and did it again. They attached electrodes to his skull; they wrote down number after number. No one talked to him except the psychologist. (Not the same one who’d become a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.) The psychologist interrogated him for hours, trying to make him recount everything he could remember since birth.