Clockwork Canada

by Dominik Parisien

  He had me follow him downstairs.

  “The immigrations will start soon. You’re the first. You volunteered. Once, upon a time, you were my wife – we worked together,” he said, his voice trailing off. Then, “Do you hear that?” he asked, his finger pointed to the dark corner of the cellar.

  He moved to a trough where water trickled through a dark half-pipe. He rolled up his sleeve. “Stand close, but don’t touch the water.” He hung his fingers over the water – slowly dipped them in, then his palm and wrist. “Look into the stream.”

  I did and, of course, his hand was still there. Then he dipped his forearm up to his elbow into the stream.

  I reached toward the water.

  “Don’t!” He held me back with his free hand.

  “What’s going on?” I asked half in wonder, half in fear.

  “You’ll get wet,” he said, laughing. “There’s an underground stream here, actually, several of them, and I’ve rerouted them to feed my creation. I require a great deal of water. For effect.” Then he pulled his hand from the water and licked the tips of his fingers. He touched my cheek with his cooled hand. “Don’t be afraid. You knew once – about the search – for a place to move populations. We found just the right planet with plenty of water, and that world is massive.”

  “What is this all about?” I asked, feeling again a little fearful, even though I wanted to be brave.

  “Your three wishes. I’m here to give you the last one, like we’d agreed.”

  * * *

  “Why am I in Port Ingles, of all places, if I’m an immigrant from the future?” I asked, feeling distraught. “What about my memories? My childhood?”

  “You chose those,” he said, “from a book. You made three wishes. Port Ingles was your first wish.”

  “I…’ Of course I didn’t believe him and he saw that.

  “And my second wish?” I asked in disbelief.

  “A barn,” he said without hesitation. “You wanted children, boys and a barn. We – you and I have no children. It’s not done,” he said, more subdued.

  “Not done? No children?”

  “Very few are allowed.”

  I mulled these revelations. “My third wish must have been to be a teacher?” I guessed.

  “No!” He laughed loudly. “In the future you were much less practical.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “You can imagine. Remember, I know you’re having some memories. You have to fight for them.”

  Grant was right. Things about him – us, felt as if they’d happened last week, or only yesterday. He was becoming as familiar as the annuals in my garden.

  I crinkled my face at him. All this talk in the cellar full of shadows.

  “If you can’t remember then I’ll show you,” he said.

  I hesitated.

  “Is it possible to ride to a star – I mean in the future – where we’re from?” I asked.

  He turned to me; a look of astonishment.

  “Yes,” he said,” but—”

  “But?”

  “You don’t get to come back.”

  * * *

  On the last evening of that weekend, at the barn, a hot summer night, we stared up at the black sky. We lingered in the dry grassy field and lay down to count shooting stars. I made more idle wishes. As I lay there finding faces in the star patterns, I felt something move beneath me.

  A long, low slide like a giant serpent gliding, vibrating under the earth’s surface.

  “Don’t you feel it?” I asked.

  The Earth groaned and moved for a long time. I stared at Grant. He smiled back at me, as if he knew all along what was going on.

  “He’s awake,” he said. “Your final wish.”

  * * *

  “The barn is a hypercube,” he explained as we walked back to it. “New settlers will arrive through it. This isn’t the only ‘barn’ and this isn’t the only place in time they’ll arrive at, but this is the only one you must attend to.”

  Thrilled and terrified at the prospect, I asked, “What will they look like?” The possibility of hoards of strangers arriving on Port Ingles’ doorstep frightened and overwhelmed me.

  “Not to worry. They’ll look like everyone here. They’ll forget who they were and where they’re from. The veil does that. Their old lives will become a déjà vu of dreams and nightmares. They’ll fit in. The way you have. They’ll arrive with little and make their way. You’ll teach and help them.”

  “And you? What will you attend to? Why don’t you forget the future as I have?” I asked, not wanting to know answers.

  “We loved each other in the future, but we had a – a decision to make – you and I. I’m a builder – an inventor and a maker, and it is my job – and yours – to try and save the human race, or as many as possible. You are, were, a field biologist, an organic chemist and a specialist in genetically modified organisms. Some of that knowledge remains with you, but you wanted a chance to be – a mother.”

  My heart shifted in my chest. My eyes stung.

  He continued. “I’m one of the few allowed the resources and energy to transfer my entire memory at full strength. I need my mind, my memories, but there’s a price—”

  I took his hand.

  “This is our last time – forever,” he said.

  A small tremor under our feet made us both freeze a moment.

  “…he makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like bars of iron.”

  * * *

  The beast rose out from under the ground where it existed in stasis, its girth gurgled in the wet tanks of water under the barn, fed by the ample Port Ingles springs.

  We ran up the short flight of stairs from the barn’s cellar to the surface, then burst through a small side door, raced across the fields, stumbled, fell, and scrambled to stay upright in the uneven earth.

  “Watch the stars,” he said over and over, between breaths. But I noticed the swells of the field moving slowly, snaking ahead of us. Astounded, I believed I was running for my life, yet, for some reason, laughed joyfully. We took a quick glance at each other then ran until we came to the next road between fields.

  * * *

  Over two fields the beast’s body emerged black and serpentine. When it first broke through from the underground lair it rose like a wet, articulated eel; it had lain coiled and kinked underneath the fields. Its iron and bronze and brass and steel penetrated the horizon with an endless roar. We watched it squeeze itself from its earthy sheath, heard its metal girth groan and clank. It shed massive clots of dirt like a serpent sheds an old skin, and ascended and then rocketed rapidly into the night sky. When its wings unfurled and flapped for the first time, a hurricane of wind snatched Grant’s hat, and my bonnet. The beast eclipsed the Milky Way, a dark, sinew of cloud. The dragon breathed its fire once, lighting up the Earth’s corona as if a million shooting stars exploded there. Then the creature pierced the atmosphere, boomed like a mountain tearing down a valley, and shed the pull of Earth’s gravity.

  Gone, through the veil.

  “How can it do that?” I asked.

  “Fission – lots of uranium in this part of the world, at this time. You love the old-timey energy stuff, so I put it all to work in your Steam Dragon.”

  “Will it return?” I asked.

  “That’s what it was designed to do. Once the bugs are worked out, Emergence will take only the immigrants from each temporal-hub on its generational voyage. It will return – to collect those waiting here.”

  “And you’ll ride it?”

  “Yes, as many will ride it to the stars as those who come through the barns to immigrate, and they need me to keep it all working. Eventually, hopefully, a population will make it to the planet. I can’t come back. I oversee what goes on up there, as you will here – that was your wish.”

  He put an arm around my shoulders.

  * * *

  I asked Grant
if I’d ever really remember him, my life from the future and all that had transpired between us there. He said I would not; the real memories would always be a struggle. “You might start collecting little dragons, or something obsessive like that,” he’d said. We were at school, cleaning out his desk. The time had come for him to leave. The steam dragon waited for him somewhere in orbit. He planned to go to it and search for this new world, with a new future. He stopped his tidying, reached for me. “Close your eyes. Hold out your hand.” When I opened my eyes, another small, black glass dragon sat in my palm. Exquisitely detailed, it shimmered when I passed it through the sun shining in the window, its tail in its mouth.

  * * *

  Now, decades after my sons have grown into adults, their childhoods forgotten, and their father long dead, after I’ve helped thousands find their way in this new world of old ways, I often take the wagon out to the pristine red barn, then to the edge of the long fields. I park and stare out at the sparkling night. I place my dragons beside me on the seat, make a wish, and watch the Milky Way for a long time. Once in a while a dark shadow eclipses the powdery spill of stardust. I hope that somewhere in the future Grant wishes upon the same stars.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Colleen Anderson of Vancouver has published over 200 pieces of fiction and poetry. She co-edited Tesseracts 17, and co-edited with Ursula Pflug the previous anthology in this series, Playground of Lost Toys. Twice nominated for the Aurora Award, she has also been longlisted for the Stoker Award, and has received honourable mentions in the Year’s Best anthologies. Some of her new and forthcoming works are in nEvermore!: Tales of Murder, Mystery and the Macabre, Best of Horror Library, Exile Book of New Canadian Noir, On Spec, Second Contact, The Beauty of Death anthology, Polu Texni, and Blood in the Rain. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com

  Charlotte Ashley of Toronto is a writer, editor, critic, and bookseller. Her work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Sockdolager, Kaleidotrope, and a number of anthologies. www.once-and-future.com

  Chantal Boudreau lives by the ocean in Nova Scotia with her husband and two children. She is an accountant by day and an author/illustrator during evenings and weekends. In addition to being a CMA-MBA, she has a BA with a major in English from Dalhousie University. A writer of all varieties of speculative fiction, she has had several of her stories published in a variety of anthologies, online journals and magazines. Her more recent publications include stories in the anthologies My Favorite Apocalypse, Strangely Funny 2, and Return to Deathlehem. www.chantellyb.wordpress.com

  Terri Favro of Toronto grew up in “immigrant Niagara” (Ontario) in the shadow of Laura Secord, Sir Isaac Brock, the Catholic Church and Buffalo TV stations. She is the author of the novella The Proxy Bride and co-creator of the Bella comic books. Her work has appeared in Prism, Geist, Humber Literary Review and Room, among others, and shortlisted for the CBC Literary Prize in Non-Fiction and Broken Pencil Indie Death Match. Two new novels, Sputnik’s Daughter and Once Upon a Time in West Toronto, will be published in 2017. www.terrifavro.ca

  Kate Heartfield of Ottawa is a newspaper journalist and fiction writer. Her short stories, many of which explore some aspect of Canadian history, have appeared in publications like Strange Horizons, Podcastle, Daily Science Fiction and Lackington’s. www.heartfieldfiction.com www.twitter.com/kateheartfield

  Claire Humphrey of Toronto works in the book business. She has had stories appear in many magazines, including Apex, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Strange Horizons, as well as anthologies including the World-Fantasy-Award-nominated Long Hidden. Her first novel, Spells of Blood and Kin, is coming out in June 2016. www.clairehumphrey.ca www.twitter.com/clairebmused

  Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. Her first novel Warchild won the 2001 Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. Both Warchild (2002) and her third novel Cagebird (2005) were finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award. Cagebird won the Prix Aurora Award in 2006 for Best Long-Form Work in English. Her books have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies edited by Julie Czerneda, Nalo Hopkinson, John Joseph Adams and Ann VanderMeer. www.karinlowachee.com www.twitter.com/karinlow

  Rati Mehrotra is a Toronto-based speculative fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in AE–The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Apex Magazine, Abyss & Apex, Inscription Magazine, and more. Her debut novel, Marks-woman, is based in a post-apocalyptic, alternative version of Asia, and will be published in early 2018. www.ratiwrites.com www.twitter.com/Rati_Mehrotra

  Brent Nichols of Calgary is a science fiction and fantasy writer and man about town. He likes good beer, bad puns, high adventure, and low comedy. He is a member of the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association and is the author of the Gears of a Mad God steampunk/Lovecraft novellas and the War of the Necromancer trilogy of sword and sorcery novels. His stories have appeared in anthologies like Shanghai Steam and Capes and Clockwork. www.steampunch.com

  Dominik Parisien (the editor) of Toronto is a poet and writer. He is the co-editor, with Navah Wolfe, of The Starlit Wood and several other anthologies forthcoming from Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press. He has worked on anthologies with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, including The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, and The Bestiary. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, Shock Totem, Lackington’s, Imaginarium 2013, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, the anthology Playground of Lost Toys, and other venues. www.dominikparisien.wordpress.com www.twitter.com/domparisien

  Tony Pi of Toronto was shortlisted for the 2009 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and is a frequent finalist for the Aurora Awards. His work appears in many anthologies and magazines, and further adventures of Professor Voss can be found in Ages of Wonder (DAW anthology), Abyss & Apex Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine. >www.tonypi.com

  Rhea Rose of Vancouver has published speculative fiction and poetry in Evolve, Tesseracts 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 17, On Spec, Talebones, Northwest Passages, Masked Mosaic, and Exile Editions’ Dead North. She has received honourable mentions in the 2014, 2010 and 2007 Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy anthologies, appeared in Christmas Forever, twice made the preliminaries for the Nebula Award, and was twice an Aurora nomine. She is a teacher of creative writing, holds an MFA in creative writing, has edited poetry for Edge Press, and hosted the Vancouver Science Fiction and Fantasy (V-Con) writers’ workshops. Her most recent works include Second Contact, Art Song Lab, and three Indie novels, The Final Catch: A Tarot Sorceress series. www.twitter.com/rheaerose1

  Holly Schofield lives in rural British Columbia and has had fiction published in Lightspeed, Crossed Genres, Tesseracts 17, and many other venues throughout the world. Her stories recently appeared in the anthologies Second Contacts, Coulrophobia and Scarecrow. www.hollyschofield.wordpress.com

  Kate Story of Peterborough, Ontario, is a writer and performer originally from Newfoundland, and she was the 2015 recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for her work in theatre. Her first novel, Blasted, received a Sunburst Award honourable mention for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and was longlisted for a ReLit Award. Wrecked Upon This Shore is her second novel. Recent publications include stories in Carbide Tipped Pens, the 21st-century bestiary Gods, Memes, and Monsters, Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, and in Exile Editions’ Playground of Lost Toys. www.katestory.com

  Harold R. Thompson of Nova Scotia is the author of the Empire and Honor series of historical adventure novels, which include Dudley’s Fusiliers, Guns of Sevastopol, and Sword of the Mogul. He also writes short science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction, and occasional combinations of these genres. www.haroldrossthompson.com

  Michal Wojcik of Whitehorse, Yukon, was born in Poland, raised in the Yukon territory, and educated in Edmonton and Montreal. He holds an MA in history from McGill University, where he studied witchcraft trials, medieval necromancers
, and, occasionally, 17th-century texts about enchanted wheels of cheese. His short fiction has appeared in On Spec, The Book Smugglers, Pornokitsch, and Daily Science Fiction.

  Steve Menard (cover) is from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

  wwwFineArtAmerica.com – under Putterhug Studio

  www.RedBubble.com – under Shutterbug2010

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First, I would like to thank the authors who submitted the terrific stories that make up this book. Thanks to Ann & Jeff VanderMeer for many wonderful opportunities, to the steampunk communities around the world, to Helen Marshall for introductions, and to Michael Callaghan and the people at Exile Editions for believing in this book. Thanks to friends and loved ones for their support, especially Nicole Kornher-Stace, Mike Allen, Derek Newman-Stille, John O’Neill, the PstD folks, Kaitlin Tremblay, and my family. Thanks to Marianne LeBreton for her support over the years. Thanks to Kelsi Morris for listening to me ramble on about this project over and over, and for her many great thoughts. Finally, thanks to my frequent collaborator, Navah Wolfe, for her invaluable insight.

  Dominik Parisien