Never Never Stories

by Jason Sanford

  “So what happens now?” Milli asks.

  “You'll be quietly killed. My fellow lords and lady lords can't learn about the phage. Not yet. Not when I have work to do.”

  Milli nods. She is simply a guinea pig. No doubt the Lady Lord will continue her experiments, using whatever data she can glean from Milli's body.

  “If you want,” the Lady Lord says, “I'll ask His Lordship to be as humane as possible.”

  If Lady Amanza Collins expects thanks, she doesn't receive it. The Lady Lord stands and knocks on the cell door to leave.

  Once she's gone, Milli rolls over and cries, wishing Alessa was here to hold her.

  * * *

  When Lady Amanza Collins returns to her husband's throne room, he is in a nasty mood. She keeps her face passive and non-emotional, although she wants to laugh at the shock she's granted him. Because of her, His Lordship's wealth has been cut by a third. But once he recovers his senses he'll see the need to continue her experiments. After all, if her defective phage can accomplish such chaos, someday a person with more resources will create a better phage to destroy all time-debt. Far better if such a creation comes from His Lordship's wife, which will allow them both to benefit when the world changes yet again.

  But none of that needs be said right now. His Lordship glances at the Lady Lord, and she at him, and they sit on their thrones as the first visitor of the day enters their presence.

  Alessa strides forward, bowing as deep as he can.

  “You are no longer my vassal,” His Lordship says distastefully. “Your debt is…gone.”

  “I realize that, my Lord. But I have a proposition.”

  “I can't release her. You know that.”

  “I do, my Lord. But I hope to see her one final time. And I believe I can make it worth your while.”

  His Lordship listens as Alessa proposes a live performance of his unquestioned singing ability. Alessa will grant all debts from the performance to His Lordship, along with taking on a new twenty-year debt, meaning he'll once again be His Lordship's vassal.

  “And the catch?” His Lordship asks.

  “I want Milli to play viola while I sing. Her final performance.”

  Lady Amanza Collins instantly says the idea is out of the question, but His Lordship waves her quiet. Yes, he reasons, they have to silence Milli. He knows what his wife was trying to prove – that their world isn't as secure as everyone believes. All he need do is turn a blind eye to her activities for a few more decades and she'll no doubt craft a phage to recreate the world, all while enriching the two of them.

  But Alessa's idea intrigues His Lordship. The young singer is the most dynamic performer he's ever seen. To have him back as a vassal is worth any risk. His Lordship glances longingly at his wife, remembering her face before she molded it into that unmoving mask. He once loved her so much. If Alessa feels even a fraction of such love for Millisent Ka, their final performance might be a true work of art.

  “I don't know,” he says. “There are already rumors about Milli spreading across the nets.”

  “As long as rumor remains only rumor,” Alessa says, “the only thing they'll do is ensure a large audience for our performance.”

  His Lordship chuckles at Alessa's boldness. “Agreed,” he says as his wife shouts objections, but he's made his decision and he is, after all, the lord of this realm.

  Unable to change His Lordship's mind, Lady Amanza Collins steps from her throne and storms over to Alessa. “Be under no illusions,” she whispers to the young singer. “Millisent Ka dies. If either of you mentions my phage, I'll personally hold your eyes open so you witness her bloody death.”

  * * *

  For the performance, Milli is given a shimmer-sparkle dress which flows a cascade of stars and milky ways across her hips and legs. Her viola comes from His Lordship's personal collection and is three hundred years old if a day. His Lordship even sends a Doc – but not his old Doc, who still can't be located – to fix her busted eyes and heal her bruises.

  Milli walks into the Tonal Hall to the applause of friends and family. Her mom and dad wipe tears from their eyes. Milli's friends seem similarly moved. When she spots JinJin and the other freeloaders in the back of the audience, JinJin nods her way as if impressed by the sacrifice she's making.

  Alessa waits for her in the middle of the hall, his black tuxedo a perfect wrap to the hall's golden Egyptian-Pharaoh spotlights. Milli steps up to him and, holding the viola to her side, kisses Alessa deeply. The entire audience swoons.

  “This is a bad idea,” Lady Amanza Collins tells her husband.

  “No,” he whispers back. “Your experiment was the bad idea. This is art, and it's perfect. My avatars and techs monitor everything. If they attempt to mention the phage, the performance ends.”

  With that, His Lordship motions for the broadcast to start. He welcomes everyone to the tonal hall, site of many of the world's greatest musical achievements. He then directs the audience to Alessa and Milli, young lovers kept apart by the cruel dictates of fate.

  As the spotlight falls on her, Milli plays her first notes, her bow dancing across the strings to far more than the mere proficiency she's always given her music. Standing beside Alessa, knowing this might be the last time she sees him, she wraps herself into the performance in ways she'd never known possible. She feels each note vibrate perfectly off the strings. Feels her parents sitting nearby. Feels the entire audience – both those in the Tonal Hall and those watching around the world. Feels all her music could – and should – ever be.

  Alessa joins in, singing an old 20th century love song which flows in new and exciting ways to both the sound of his voice and Milli's viola. His Lordship smiles approvingly when the song ends. Alessa and Milli bow before playing another song, and another, each more beautiful than the last.

  His Lordship is stunned. He's never witnessed music on such a pure, emotional level. When Alessa and Milli pause for an intermission, His Lordship is the first to stand and clap and clap until his hands feel like they've fallen from his body.

  When he sits back down, Lady Amanza Collins grabs his arm. “Look,” she hisses.

  His Lordship glances to the rear of the Tonal Hall, where his accountant, techs and guards sit. Or, where they used to sit. Now they're fighting with a group of freeloaders, who quickly overwhelm his people and tie them up. One freeloader, his eye glistening to the genetic pinkness of recent regeneration, gives His Lordship the finger.

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” Lady Amanza Collins mutters.

  His Lordship sighs. Alessa and Milli are preparing to speak. No doubt the first words from their mouths will be about the phage. But their plan is doomed to failure. All he has to do is tell his avatar to shut down the broadcast and summon the extra guards from their hiding places throughout the castle. That will be the end of both Alessa and Milli. His wife's horrible experiment will continue to be nothing more than rumor.

  But as His Lordship watches Alessa and Milli hug each other, he remembers what first attracted him to Lady Amanza Collins. How her daring dreams of changing the world excited him. How she worried about her life's work turning out as poorly as the world she wanted to replace.

  Before Alessa and Milli speak, His Lordship motions for silence.

  “With everyone watching,” His Lordship says, “I want to thank you for that beautiful performance.” Then, wondering if his vassals feel this giddy each time they perform in realtime, he winks at Alessa and Milli. “Unless I'm mistaken, isn't there something you need to tell us?”

  Lady Amanza Collins calls His Lordship an idiot but his avatar cuts her words from the broadcast, bringing a smile to the faces of Alessa and Milli. As His Lordship leans back on his gold-illusion throne, Alessa and Milli tell the entire world about the phage before continuing to play for no one but themselves.

  * * *

  When the performance ends, Alessa and Milli kiss as the audience jumps into a standing ovation. Even His Lordship joins in. The p
erformance has been amazing. The best he's ever witnessed.

  “So what happens now?” Milli asks His Lordship, well aware her words are still being broadcast around the world.

  “You two live your lives,” His Lordship says. “And maybe what you've revealed makes a little difference.”

  Lady Amanza Collins frowns at His Lordship's words, but the crowd of vassals and freeloaders surrounding Milli and Alessa laugh and cheer as they lead the couple into the hot, humid L.A. night.

  Once the crowd is gone, the Lady Lord informs His Lordship that he's been made the fool. That he needs to stand up for himself. That he should have made an example out of Milli and Alessa.

  “Perhaps I did,” he says. “And perhaps that's exactly what the world needs.”

  Lady Amanza Collins curses so loudly her unmovable face moves, collapsing into the wrinkles of age and anger. She storms off to her room as His Lordship unties his guards and accountant.

  “What are the debt options for divorce?” he asks his accountant as Alessa and Milli's haunting love songs tone in and out of his mind.

  And that should be, could be, our end. Except with the future, there's never truly an end.

  Milli and Alessa keep performing and keep loving. Alessa honors his new debt to His Lordship by not allowing Milli to erase it, but that doesn't stop a steady stream of others from seeking her help. Milli erases the debt of all who ask. In return, those she helps protect her from the wrath of the lords and lady lords who like their world as it is.

  And already there are rumors. Of new experiments. Of others infected with the phage. Of the world changing again, in ways no one can foresee.

  This isn't the way the future should be. But as Milli tells Alessa on a not-so distant night, the two of them snuggling in their double bed, “This is the only future we have. Might as well make the best of it.”

  The Fantasies

  An Essay on Archeology and Fantasy

  To understand the importance of fantasy, know there are stories which only appear while doing archeology in the August heat of Alabama. Stories you only taste when the hot-burn air drips sweat off your forehead in consistent, even drops. Tales which only arise in symmetry to the decaying scent of new-dug clays.

  To understand the importance of fantasy, join me almost two decades ago as I excavate a burial in an ancient village near the Tallapoosa River. I'm practicing what's called salvage archeology. A rock quarry is destroying this archeology site because there is gravel below the top soil and clay – and gravel sells for a million dollars per square acre.

  There will not be time to excavate much of what lays below. When the bulldozers and excavators pass over unexcavated ground, we archeologists follow behind looking for anything which remains. The tractors always leave a littering of broken pots and smashed bottles and bones crushed to powder.

  Every time I see these destroyed remnants of peoples' lives – scooped away or crushed because they are worth less than gravel – I want to scream.

  On this particular day so long ago I'm the only archeologist at the site. I'm excavating a burial. Even though I've excavated any number of graves, this one slams my emotions. I try telling myself it's only the isolation which has me stepping away every few minutes to cry. But the truth is the tears are there because I'm excavating the burial of a young child.

  I've always found it difficult to excavate the graves of children. With adults, you know the bones and artifacts you touch belonged to someone who likely lived a complete life. But with children you know this didn't happen. While children may have lived a loving and full life, and may have touched so many people, they were still children with so much living left to do. In a perfect world every child would be allowed to grow up and embrace a long, healthy future.

  But that's not how life goes.

  This child's grave is very well preserved – the bones are mostly intact and there are a thousand beads scattered throughout the burial, indicating the child was lovingly placed on an elaborate blanket or cloth. However, what truly shakes my emotions is the limestone discoidal I uncover in the child's hand.

  A discoidal is a round toy the size of your palm. It's flat on both sides and slanted on the edge. The child would have rolled this stone toy across the ground, making the discoidal turn in a large circle as the child and other kids played games only kids can play.

  Imagine your favorite toy growing up. Imagine the favorite toys of your brothers and sisters and cousins and friends. As a child these toys were more than toys – they were life itself. The child before me likely loved this toy discoidal as much as I loved the toys of my own youth. And when the child died his or her parents lovingly placed the discoidal in the child's hand.

  Of course, I can't prove in the harsh glare of reality's spotlight that this is exactly how everything happened. The bones are so decayed I can't even say whether this child was a boy or girl. All I have is the evidence of this burial and where that evidence takes me.

  Beyond that, I must dream. I must fantasize.

  For several millennia people lived on this site, but within a few years little will remain because of the gravel quarry. If you didn't know what truly lay below this ground you could even be forgiven for thinking the gravel here is all that matters.

  In the same way, fantasies reside within us. Like the gravel below this burial, our fantasies of how life might have been and how it could still be support all our dreams and ideals. Fantasies are similar to archeology, revealing truth once the surface has been removed. Everything created leaves its mark on humanity's ground – the dark outlines of births and burials; the foundations of homes and dreams long gone; the despair and hopes and trials we all experience.

  Fantasy is the exploration of what rests below.

  Throughout human history, in every culture and time, there have been fantasies whose excavations dug deep into human life – The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, The Ramayana, One Thousand and One Nights, along with countless other fantasies from the Arthurian legends to tall tales told around campfires to the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Fantasies such as these both revealed the buried pillars of our world and became the new supports of our ever-changing lives.

  It's been almost twenty years since I excavated that child's burial yet the awe and sadness I felt that day will never leave me. I wish I could travel back in time to meet that child. To be there as the child's family and friends mourned. To say that their child will never be forgotten.

  But I'm a bad liar, so maybe it's good that time only flows forward. After all, we forget so many things each and every day. I'm sure forgetting is the only way the people who owned that gravel quarry could rationalize destroying the history of a people.

  Time carries away the old lands we knew as surely as a quarry carries away gravel piece by tiny piece. All that remains are the people who live on through us and the stories we tell. It doesn't matter that things may not have happened exactly as our fantasies spin them. What matters is that we dream of what could have been and what might one day be.

  What matters is that we carry humanity's fantasies forward, long after everyone who originally told those stories is gone and forgotten by all.

  Into the Depths of Illuminated Seas

  The names of dying sailors washed across Amber Tolester in a sea of rainbow-lit letters. When the ships of Windspur languished in port during the doldrums of summer, the names lay cold-blue and exhausted on her skin. When autumn's gales churned the seas to crash and foam, the names burned red in response. And when a sailor on any of Windspur's ships was washed away, or crushed by tackle, or drowned in the endless depths, Amber screamed as that sailor's white-hot name burned into her body, leaving the other names to wonder which would fall next into the sea's slippery embrace.

  No one in Windspur could explain Amber's fate. The port's more pious citizens proclaimed Amber a warning to sinners that life was short and damnation eternal. The less pious whispered that Amber paid for the sins of her parents, who had been shop kee
ps until their untimely deaths a decade before. Depending on the tale, Amber's mother had either spurned a sailor's true love – cheating on him even as he drowned in a great hurricane – or Amber's father had jumped ship at the last minute. For want of a full crew, his ship was lost.

  Once every month, Amber walked to the church rectory, where she disrobed in front of Mrs. Andercoust, the town's oldest widow. Mrs. Andercoust wrote down the names on Amber's skin, compared them with previous lists, and noted with sadness any missing names. Captains used this information to balance their crews, never wanting too many named sailors on any one ship. And woe be to any sailor who asked for his true love's hand in marriage without first confessing that he was among the named.

  And so Amber Tolester grew to hate her life. She covered herself in long dresses and gloves and prayed every day for the names to disappear. More than once she walked to the harbor breakwater and considered jumping into the churning ocean waves. All that stopped her was the ironic knowledge that without being named on her skin, she wasn't fated to die at sea.

  * * *

  Shortly after Amber turned twenty-five, a new name appeared on her skin: David Sahr. Mrs. Andercoust discovered the name glowing in cold blue light across the middle of Amber's back. As Amber pulled her clothes back on, shivering from the rectory's chilly drafts, Mrs. Andercoust cackled about the discovery.

  “No David Sahr has been born in the last month,” Mrs. Andercoust said, leafing through the church's baptismal record. “And the only David Sahr I remember left Windspur when he was a child.”

  Amber buttoned the front of her dress, smiling as the name of Billy Martin swam across her right breast. As a teenager she'd often dreamed of Billy caressing her breasts, although obviously not in this manner. She watched Billy's name until a cough from Mrs. Andercoust brought her back to the issue at hand. “Perhaps this David Sahr changed his name,” Amber suggested.