Dark Tomorrows, Second Edition

by Amanda Hocking; Joel Arnold; J. L. Bryan; Michael Crane; S. W. Benefiel; Daniel Pyle; Robert J. Duperre; Vicki Keire

  The little man turned a crank, lifting Micah on the chains, away from the platform. A mechanical arm holding all four spools of chain swung Micah deeper into the truck. The man folded Micah's wooden platform back against the wall and locked it in place.

  The chains pulled Micah into a standing position, then lowered him into a vertical silver-colored tube, which was currently split in half to reveal the brass clockwork machinery inside. Rings of light bulbs were mounted on the outside—red, blue and yellow rings, in an alternating sequence.

  The little man screwed Micah's knees to a frame inside the tube, and then drove more long screws between Micah's ribs. The pain overwhelmed Micah, and the world turned dark.

  Micah floated up a long, dark tunnel towards a distant spot of light. The spot grew larger, and then Micah spilled out into the bottle-glass sphere. Everything in the truck looked distorted through the thick glass, as if it were all underwater. Micah tried to push against the glass, but he had no hands. He looked around for an opening through which he could escape, but the glass was solid.

  Below him, he watched the man mount his body in the cylinder, and then screw a long strip of metal to Micah's spine. This kept Micah's body in an upright posture. The man threaded wires through the brackets at Micah's wrists and shoulders, then down along his spine, finally hooking them into wheels in the machinery inside the cylinder.

  He screwed more mounts and wires into Micah's jaw, and then into the bone by each of his eye sockets.

  Micah felt no pain, and that frightened him.

  The man opened a drawer in one of his tool racks, and he brought out a pair of porcelain eyeballs that each had a tiny gear train mounted on the back.

  “I had to paint these special,” the man said to Micah's corpse. “For the black light. What do you think?”

  Micah's corpse didn't reply.

  The man slapped Micah's face. Then he looked up at the glass sphere. “Oh, there you are. Good.” He screwed a nozzle in the tube shut, then took the mask from Micah's face and let it dangle loose. Then he mounted the mechanical eyeballs over Micah's eyes.

  The little man dressed Micah in aluminum-colored robes with electric-blue fiber optic threads. From his costume rack, he picked out a white turban with a big green chunk of costume jewelry on the front, and a long white beard. He fitted these onto Micah's head, then looked up at the glass sphere. “What do you think?”

  Micah had no voice, and no way to answer.

  ***

  The man installed him one night at a video arcade in Put in Bay, Ohio, on Lake Erie. Micah had a tinted glass dome over him, so he would remain in shadow until someone fed in money. The man had constructed and painted a plaster face over his real one, dressed him in the turban, beard, and fiber-optic robe, and then painted “Dr. Futuro” in glowing paint on the front of the cylinder.

  A tiny glass bulb in each of the mechanical eyes held a puff of Micah's ectoplasm, so he could look out. The impish little man plugged him in, presented the arcade manager with an invoice, and left.

  The arcade closed shortly after that, and Micah spent the whole night looking at the flickering video screens of dance games and stock car simulators.

  The next day, customers checked out the new Dr. Futuro machine.

  A record inside the cylinder played advertisements: “Come witness the wonders of Dr. Futuro!” and “Who dares to learn their future?” The voice came out through a black mesh square that looked like a modern amplifier, but concealed behind it was an old phonograph horn.

  His first customers were a couple of teenage girls wearing fanny packs, clearly tourists.

  “I want to know my future!” one of them said. She fished out a dollar and fed it into a slot on the front of the silver cylinder. The cylinder was like Madam Rosetta's cabinet, concealing the lower half of Micah's body, as well as all the mechanisms.

  A black light switched on inside the dome. Micah's turban, eyes, beard and robes glowed in ghostly greens, as did the crystal ball mounted on the black felt—officially, the crystal ball was the "quantum reflector," another bit of marketing nonsense, and the little demon-man had even painted an atom on the front of the glowing glass ball.

  Inside the cylinder, a mechanical arm changed records, and then the needle dropped again.

  “I am Dr. Futuro!” the voice boomed over the speaker. “Ask your question and press the gold button!”

  The two girls laughed, then whispered to each other.

  After ten seconds, the record repeated: “Ask your question!”

  “Okay, chill out, Doctor Futuro!” one of the girls said, and her friend laughed.

  “Hey, I know,” said the girl who'd fed in the dollar. “Am I going to make out with that Joey guy or not?”

  She pressed the gold button.

  Inside the cylinder, a circle of gold pressed against Micah's heart. A weak current flowed from the girl's fingertips to his heart, enabling him to get a slight flash from her.

  His mechanical hands waved up and down around the glowing green crystal ball, while his eyes and mouth moved, and his head turned a bit from side to side. On the hidden record player, the needle lifted, then dropped into the second groove. An array of laser-beam sound effects and rapid techno music played.

  She wasn't going to make out with Joey, because Joey was going to make out with her friend instead. She would be mad about it for months. Their friendship would deteriorate, especially when school started in the fall.

  Micah had ten pre-recorded answers from which to choose, include three variants each of “yes” and “no.”

  The needle dropped into the fifth groove.

  “You will not get your wish!” the voice of Dr. Futuro boomed. “The opposite will come true!”

  “Pfff, whatever,” the girl said. “I'm totally getting that guy.”

  “Yeah,” her friend said. “We totally are.”

  They walked away.

  Micah remained where he was.

  The arcade grew busier over the months, as summer tourist season swelled. Dr. Futuro developed a reputation for uncanny accuracy, and a base of regular customers.

  One day in July, he heard a familiar voice boom across the arcade. Through the crowd, he could see the big cop with the goatee, much of his bald eagle tattoo visible between the straps of his tank top. He was playing Zombie UFO, a game that involved standing on a platform that tracked your movement, holding a huge plastic gun, and shooting zombie aliens on a big screen. Ashley the cop had just splattered an alien that looked like a glowing green octopus. Its tentacles wriggled in pools of blood all over the chrome floor of a space station repair bay.

  “Ho-yeah!” Ashley barked.

  “Are you done yet?” Livvie stood at the side of the platform with her arms folded.

  “Go play ski-ball again, baby!” Ashley yelled. He was blasting his way through a morgue full of slobbering alien zombies. “I'm busy!”

  “I'm sick of ski-ball. And I'm sick of pinball, too. This is a crappy way to spend our vacation.”

  “Then go play whack-a-mole.”

  “I'll play whack-a-mole on your dick.” She stalked away.

  “Shit, you better!” he yelled after her. This caused him to miss the little gray alien with the giant shark teeth, which ripped off his character's head.

  “Game over!” his screen announced. “Insert two dollars to continue!”

  Livvie wandered up to the Dr. Futuro machine. Micah watched her through the tinted glass, feeling a terrible ache at being unable to move or speak to her. Once, they'd been meant to be together, but now he could barely recall those visions.

  “Dr. Futuro,” Livvie said.

  “Dr. Futuro knows your future!” the record announced.

  “Does he?” Livvie asked. She leaned close, peering through the tinted glass at his face.

  “Hey, babe, want your fortune?” Ashley pulled out a dollar.

  “No. I hate these things.” Livvie stepped back.

  “Aw, don't be a scared
y-cat.” Ashley fed a dollar into Dr. Futuro.

  The black light flared, and Dr. Futuro raised his head and looked at Livvie. “Ask your question!”

  “Go on, baby,” Ashley said. "Ask whatever you want." He grabbed Livvie's ass, and she smiled.

  “Dr. Futuro," Livvie said, "Do Ashley and I have a happy future together?”

  Livvie pushed the gold button, and Micah had a weak taste of her energy. For a moment, he could almost remember how she felt against him, how she smelled.

  He sent the record needle to groove thirteen, the last and innermost groove, which held Dr. Futuro's most bombastic answer.

  “That will never happen, you fool!” the recorded voice boomed, and Livvie took a step back. She glanced uncertainly at Ashley.

  With all his willpower, Micah seized complete control of the record mechanism. He raised the needle, then bashed it down, scratching the record. Then he dropped the needle into the thirteenth groove again.

  “Never—never—never—“ the skipping record repeated. He made the black light flare until his eyes and beard seemed to burn with bright green fire. He turned his upper body directly at Livvie, his jaw moving up and down in time with the record, his hands pounding up and down on the felt. "Never—never—never—"

  “Let's go,” Ashley said. “That thing's creepy.”

  “Yeah.” Livvie kept staring at Micah's burning green eyes.

  “Never—never—never—" the record played.

  Dr. Futuro's hand lifted high, then he smashed his own crystal ball. A jet of sparks shot up inside the dome, casting fiery red and yellow light across his face. One of his shifting-hologram "Space Tarot" cards caught fire. It was a Major Arcana card, The Black Hole.

  “Come on!” Ashley grabbed Livvie's hand and hauled her away. Dr. Futuro turned to watch after them, and the volume of his voice rose, filling the entire arcade, while game system after game system crashed and turned black.

  “Never—never—never—" Dr. Futuro predicted.

  The Officefrau

  by JL Bryan

  I found myself hiding in the break room supply closet, staring out through the door vent at the refrigerator, for perfectly logical reasons.

  First, understand I'm really a keep-to-myself type. I do better with machines than humans, unless those humans are communicating to me via machine. The IT department at Deuschenhoffer Doorknobs (Minneapolis) consists mostly of guys like me, pale from lifetimes parked indoors in front of glowing monitors. We're either skinny or chubby, no in-between, but we all eat the same diet: corn chips, Little Debbies, and colas caffeinated to the legal limit.

  Stacy Klingerschmidt was the exception. Everybody pretended not to notice she was a tall, blond, uncomfortably attractive female, an exotic Jane Goodall among us apes. We pretended not to drool over the short hippie dresses she wore on Fridays. She was a good network admin, so it was easy to talk to her on a professional level, at least, provided you did it by email and not in person. In person, it was hard to look at her and work your mouth at the same time.

  Within a month of her start date at Deuschenhoffer, Stacy began bringing me all her complaints about the job. I don't know why. I don't have any influence. I’d like to say it was because of my charm, wit, and good looks, but it wasn't. I was twenty-three and hadn't had a girlfriend since Myra Chadwick in the tenth grade, who kissed me but left me three weeks later, when Bret Kjertsen won the Twin Cities Chess-Off.

  Maybe Stacy liked that I just sat there nodding my head, never losing interest in her face or voice. I just blinked and grinned like an idiot, no matter how much she rambled on and on and on—mostly about her lunch.

  "My Carbless Cuisine's gone again," she might say, usually around twelve-fifteen. She'd walk into my cube and sit on my desk when she talked to me, her yoga-toned thigh dangerously close to my mouse hand. "I can't believe they took the Turkey and Pea Pizzazz. That's the grossest one."

  "I'm sorry," I'd say. Once, I suggested she get a Pop-Tart from the break room vending machine. That brought a look of disgust from her, followed by a long rant about corn syrup and bleached flour, so I stopped offering advice.

  "Six days," she said on that particular Tuesday, the day before I ended up in the closet. "They took my lunch six days in a row. They're ruining my diet, Dave! I starve all day and end up binging at night, and now my butt's blimping up. Look at that."

  Stacey hopped off my desk and turned her back to me. Her butt looked amazing to me, under her stretchy black slacks, but I didn't know if I should tell her that. She could file a sexual harassment claim. It was in the employee manual.

  "You look...okay," I finally said. “I mean I don't think you look bad.” I felt stupid.

  "Thanks," she said, but it was an automatic response. She looked at me with miserable, glistening eyes. "I appreciate that, but…"

  I could guess the rest of her sentence: ...I'm not really trying to impress guys who probably get off just looking at a hot chick in a video game. (Which I don't, by the way. It was just the one time in high school, and I never played Tomb Raider again.)

  Hoping to win Stacy's heart with my courage and chivalry, I decided to hide in the break room supply closet the next day and keep watch on her lunch. I didn't mention the idea to her, in case it failed.

  My supervisor happened to be out of town, and I wasn't assigned to the help desk until Thursday. Really, I don't know if anybody would have noticed if I hadn't showed up to work at all.

  So I arrived early Wednesday morning and took up my post. I knelt in the supply closet, watching the break room through a slotted vent panel in the lower third of the door. I had a good bead on the fridge, and I'd already topped up the bins of creamer, sugar, stirrers and napkins on the counter, so nobody would need to open the supply closet and discover me huddled inside.

  People began trickling through at about seven-thirty, stowing lunches in the fridge, pouring a cup of coffee, then either stopping to chat or hurrying out of the room. Somebody dropped off a half-full box of donuts. Somebody else, a leftover hunk of birthday cake.

  I held my breath when Stacy entered. Her butt really was a little bigger. For the first time, I considered maybe she hadn't always been gorgeous. Maybe in high school, she'd been an acne-blighted porker like me. The thought filled me with hope, and a renewed sense of responsibility for her microwaveable lunch.

  Stacy stashed her purple Carbless Cuisine box at the back of the freezer. She'd written her name on it in fat black marker.

  She cast a suspicious glance at a pair of pudgy, balding accountants eating donuts by the coffee machine, then shifted a few other microwaveable lunches over to hide her Cuisine. She closed the freezer, then glared at an overweight administrative assistant who entered the break room as Stacy left.

  After nine, the room fell silent. I tried to shift from my painful kneeling position to a hopefully-less-painful squatting position, but my legs had fallen asleep and were as weak as spaghetti noodles.

  The smaller second-coffee crowd started arriving about ten, and they were all gone by ten-thirty. I remained in the closet, feeling stupid, hoping nobody had noticed I wasn't in my cube. I considered how best to regain my feet, given the numb state of my legs. I grabbed a shelf loaded with boxes of plastic spoons and began pulling myself up.

  Then Gerta arrived.

  At the time, I didn't yet know her name was Gerta, but I did recognize her from around the office. When there was birthday cake, she strove for a frosting-rich corner piece. When there was a holiday party, she walked along the buffet heaping food onto an overloaded paper plate, constructing a massive pyramid of potato salad and bread rolls.

  Gerta was a remarkably obese woman who looked to be in her mid-fifties, with layers of chins and jowls puddled around her mouth. She favored sweaters inset with beadwork depicting kittens, bunnies, and/or teddy bears. Today, it was teddy bears. Her hair was dyed an unnatural dark red and set into a perm. She could occasionally be heard complaining about the builder's heaters, or the ai
r conditioning, or the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars.

  Deuschenhoffer Doorknobs was the world's third-largest doorknob manufacturer, proud to still make their products in the USA--except, of course, for the components. They had over a thousand employees in Minneapolis. At least ninety of these more or less matched Gerta's description. She was a standard office type. You could find her ilk in any department—administrative, accounting, human resources—the more bureaucratic the environment, the better they thrived.

  On the cubicle farm, Gerta was just one more native species, the kind you hoped didn't sit next to you at the office picnic to regale you with the long, tortured history of her troubles with the podiatrist.

  I froze in place, unsteady on my numb feet, half-squatting behind the closet door, clinging to the shelf for balance. I didn't want to make a sound.

  Gerta approached the fridge. Her hands were empty, so I knew she'd be making a withdrawal, not a deposit. She glanced back at the break room door several times, then opened the freezer and rummaged through the contents.

  There was definitely something shifty happening here.

  Gerta looked to the door again, then back at the frozen meals, and then she puckered her lips. They stretched forward more than an inch from her face. And they kept stretching, drawing the flesh of her face out into a long hose. Her many chins and jowls unfolded and stretched taut as the tube grew longer and longer.

  The tube, now two feet long, probed like an elephant's trunk among the frozen meals. It coiled around the purple Carbless Cuisine box, lifted it, tore it in half.

  Her lips, at the tip of the fleshy trunk, peeled the clear film from the purple plastic dish. She sucked up the frozen puck of beefsteak, then the icy cauliflower/broccoli lump.

  The frozen food slurped back through her trunk, cracking to pieces along the way, as if she had teeth or vise-like muscles in there. She swallowed them down into her vast body.

  After devouring Stacy's lunch, Gerta's mouth tube pried open a box of Girl School cookies. She vacuumed up two rows of Thin Mints. I could see them travel up through the long tube to her face. It sounded like a cement mixer full of pebbles.