“Sir, if I may, the operative is one of the few with extensive experience in the Void. She’ll be the key for any search and rescue mission.”
“Sergeant, I barely want to consider it,” Taylor said, staring down at Anna. “I think these girls became lax, and now one is missing. You tell me that you can’t wake her, and that she’s been under three weeks already. Why should we risk another one?”
“If a group has seized Michelle or if an AI is holding her, Anna should be able to deal with them. She’s shown remarkable resilience on all of her missions up to this point,” said Vishnu.
Anna used her fingers to wipe her tears across her cheeks. “I can do it. Just get me in. I’ll find her.”
“Fine. Sergeant, we don’t know who has Michelle. As far as I’m concerned this project may be compromised. Hook Anna up, and this time young lady, no stopping to smell the roses.”
* * *
Anna looked at the sky from which she fell. Slinky toy type creatures were being corralled and eaten by screeching rabbits, AI-created programs designed to consume data. She thought of her surroundings as clay, to be sculpted and destroyed, reshaped and re-purposed into new forms. Anna felt she was looking at the Void closely for the first time. Vishnu was right, linear thinking would not get you far here — being an artist helped. You needed to improvise, be flexible, and once you could do that, the Void was yours.
Taylor had been correct as well. Eating was the easiest way to absorb information.
You needed to be fearless and willing, but to be those things, you also needed to have anger. Years of taunting, loathing, and sadness, compensated through food. Anna never talked about the anger with Michelle, but knew it was there; it always was. Jealousy for the women flaunted on magazine covers, for the couples holding hands in the park, for their friends who managed to keep the weight off.
They’d been given a purpose, and with it, Anna realized she could shape her anger. It could motivate or control, and her outlet could be food or creation. She would find Michelle. The Void was clay, something to be shaped. Some of it was fired and hard, and Michelle would be where the pottery was kept.
Looking above, Anna aimed her pistol and fired. “Silly rabbits, information wants to be free.”
* * *
Had it been a day or more? She could only describe her journey as kaleidoscopes on acid, dizzying as she pushed through the Void.
Coming to a city, Anna thought she’d been kicked up to the Grid. But its empty street convinced her otherwise. Following the faint sounds of music, she allowed herself to drift, keeping her eyes on the windows. Entering a small park, Anna saw a singer, snapping her fingers in time to the band. As their eyes met, the music stopped, and the band dissolved.
Michelle’s appearance had changed, but Anna knew it was her. She was beautiful.
“Michelle? I’m here to rescue you.”
“Anna?”
“What happened?”
“I got caught by an AI. It controls me, and makes me sing to confuse the other programs. Help.”
Michelle’s body expanded and contracted, blinked and reappeared. She rolled her eyes, “I don’t need to go back to that body anymore. I’m free.” Looking at Anna, she tilted her head to one side in consideration. “You know, you should join me here. You can finally be who want to be, you can look the way you want, the way you deserve.”
“This isn’t real,” Anna said to herself, to the AI. “Let her go.”
“You know, she drank from that stream, she completed that mission,” said Michelle strolling towards Anna. “Unfortunately for her, she drank a little quickly and didn’t notice the virus we sent her.”
“There are more of us in the brigade. We’ll come for you.”
“And bite us too? Our strongest obstacles, our deepest information can’t be overcome through eating. A clever, silly gambit to be sure, but we adapt. I don’t think you’ll taste too many more programs. Your brigade wanted you because you’re fat, it’s the only thing they’ll let you be, and now that you are obsolete, I’m sure they’ll let you go.”
Michelle’s body moved quickly, landing a punch to Anna’s jaw.Anna tried to move back as the blows came. She considered drawing her pistol, but she couldn’t remove her hands away from protecting her head. Looking up she realized that she was on her back, Michelle laughing as she stood over her. “You’re a big target, why don’t you give me a fight? There are things I want to show you.”
Michelle raised her arms. Tusks split through her skin, her hair lengthened, a swirl of red wrapping around Anna’s ankle. “I can be what I want here, can’t you understand? Your friend is mine.”
Anna kicked her boot off, leaving it wrapped in hair, and let her body turn into mist as Michelle lunged forward. Anna re-formed, her body enormous, growing, taller than trees and buildings. Her body pushed out, as she towered over Michelle.
“What are you doing?” said Michelle as Anna lifted her between fingers.
“Bringing Michelle back, the only way I can think of,” Anna said, opening her mouth and then closing it around the screaming woman. Once inside her body, she was able to disassemble Michelle from the AI. She collapsed, weakened, back to her normal size, and dry heaved as Michelle and the AI were ejected from her body.
The AI looked weakened as well, but it had been inside her, it knew things now. “Is that all you can do? I could have given you happiness here. You think they’ll take you back? You’ll both be obsolete soon, all you can do is eat.” It started to laugh, before imploring, “I can make you into whatever you want to be. You can be free, you can beautiful.”
Anna winked at Michelle who began a soft hum. She closed her eyes and focused, liquid sculptures flowing, breaking across colors and ideas. “You may be right. We do enjoy a nice cake now and then, but we accept who we are,” said Anna. Patterns weaving and solidifying, pulling the Void, cutting through its surface. Trace lines etching themselves along the sky. “And we are who we want to be already.”
Anna held a small vase in her hand, and looked towards the AI. She smiled after sensing its understanding. This section of the Void was tangled and supported by her structures. Her sculpture encased them, pushing the AI forward as it began to collapse. Michelle’s song wrapped itself around Anna’s creation, defending it from the AI’s attacks as it attempted to flee.
Sucked into Anna’s creation, she placed a lid on the vase, before crushing it to dust. “Who’s obsolete, now?”
Anna woke to see Michelle crying as she was escorted away. She cried too, having internalized a part of the AI, the pain it had caused. Her secret hurts and humiliations had been devoured, stolen by the program which had an anger to mirror her own. She looked to see Vish beaming as Taylor gave her a curt salute. A rueful smile settled on her face as she looked at her body. Digital operative, intelligence agent, spook, sculptor, artist, eater, fat girl, one woman wrecking crew.
Brian Jungwiwattanaporn lives in Thailand with a shadow theatre artist and a myna bird. He loves reading, writing, and his day job. He can also fight with sticks. This is his first sale.
Tangwystl the Unwanted
by Katharine Elmer
* * *
Today’s cake wore sugared violets. Glittering, white icing twisted into a peak atop a sponge cake dotted with berries. Sweetened, purple decorations clung to the edges like flowers braving the snowy slopes of a mountain to spread their petals for a winter sun. One of the prettier ones, admired Tanny.
“Matches your eyes,” grunted Aberfa from a stool in the corner.
“It does,” agreed Tanny, violet eyes sparkling at the thought of sharing even a simple trait with something so sweet. The white icing too swirled and shone like the curls of her silvery hair, while the cake resembled Tanny’s skin: soft and spongy, its golden tone scattered with streaks and splotches of blue.
“Will you wait til I am gone to have it?” asked Aberfa.
“Cakes from the fairies should be eaten alone,” recited Tanny, like
a piece of ancient wisdom.
She placed her cake alongside other provisions on the table. This was routine. Aberfa came with a basket of food and water at dawn. She visited Tanny until daylight penetrated the tower’s east window. When the sun came through the bed chamber window in the west, Aberfa helped Tanny light the candles.
And every day there was fairy cake. The cakes were not from Aberfa. The idea of her guardian providing Tanny with something non-essential was laughable. The wizened woman had always called them “fairy cakes.” So Tanny, from the time she was little, had always assumed they came from the fairies. Not that she ever saw fairies — not real ones — but she read about them. Her home had many books and Tanny had plenty of time to read. There was little else to do in a three-room tower.
Tanny could draw, paint or write, but what was there to draw, paint or write about? She had two windows, but no view. Aberfa surrounded the tower with a magical shield which only sun and moonlight penetrated. If she sat by a window ledge, Tanny could feel and smell fresh air, but only see a vague hodgepodge of blue, green and gold — like clouded stained glass. Tanny did not really have the imagination to be a painter or writer regardless. She was, generally speaking, a practical young lady who dealt only with the problems in front of her and thought only of how to fill an afternoon (rather than a lifetime). Being a practical person, Tanny devoted her time and creative energies to sewing. She made tapestries for the walls, quilts for the bed, cushions for the chairs and all her own clothes.
“Any message from Mother?” asked Tanny in a voice like a deflated balloon. This was more of their routine.
“You expecting one?” barked Aberfa in a voice like disgruntled sandpaper. Tanny shrugged. The witch went on: “She don’t want nothing to do with you.” Tanny told herself Aberfa did not say this to be cruel. Her guardian was simply stating fact; giving her charge the best advice under the circumstance. Because Tangwystl, Princess of Caertraeth, was unwanted.
Many years ago, her mother, Queen Bregus, stole from the sacred fruit tree. Aberfa promised a curse so powerful that her family would feel its destructive effects for nine generations…unless the Queen could appease her. Placing a warm, shrivelled hand on her majesty’s swollen belly, Aberfa ignored offers of riches and power which leaked from Bregus’ lips. Aberfa wanted the child. Give her the child, and all would be forgiven. When the Queen delivered a girl, to the King’s disappointment, Bregus surrendered her first born. She named her daughter Tangwystl: a peace offering to Aberfa, who left Caertraeth amicably with her gurgling prize.
Aberfa never lied to Tanny about how she came to be in her custody. A romantic lie might have been preferable. Tanny’s life was a sacrifice her mother had been willing to make, although that did not explain the tower. Aberfa argued that someone loyal to Queen Bregus, unaware of their bargain, might attempt to rescue Princess Tangwystl from Witch Aberfa. For the moment Tanny’s feet touched Caertraeth soil, Aberfa’s curse would crash down on the royal family. In moments when she felt hard done by (and there were many such moments) Tanny considered doing just that: climb out of her tower, swim across the surrounding river, march over the mountains beyond and stick her big toe on royal ground — because her family deserved a reign of crashing curses!
But a lifetime spent in confined spaces with no opportunity for exercise and a diet which included daily cake had not prepared Tanny for a rigorous journey. Tanny would be hard pressed to fit through the window, much less scale the tower (and that before she got to the river or the mountains). Tanny was stuck: trapped by her mother’s bargain, trapped by her guardian’s magic and trapped by her own body.
“No,” Tanny finally admitted to Aberfa. “I am not expecting anything.”
Morning duties completed, Aberfa crawled with enviable dexterity through the window’s barricade as if it did not exist. She drifted weightlessly down from the tower to land on the island below. How she crossed the river, Tanny didn’t know. Aberfa often described the dangers of the outside world to discourage her foster daughter from attempting an impossible escape. Fat chance of that, thought Tanny. She began to embroider purple violets along the edge of a heavily decorated coverlet.
Tanny usually napped in the afternoon, knowing Aberfa would wake her. But instead of the sharp prod of a walking stick in her soft side, Tanny was roused by something tickling her nose. She brushed it away, but it kept coming back. Half asleep, Tanny grabbed the offender. She held it to the crack of her eye lids for a vague inspection, then wriggled upright. In her hand billowed a delicate, orange flower.
“Where did you come from?” she asked. “Oh! You brought friends.” Tanny’s entire bed was festooned with orange flowers. “How did you get in here?” Before she could ponder the mystery, two more drifted through the bright blue of the open window.
Through the window!
“Nothing comes through this window!” Tanny shouted at the misbehaving bloom. She threw the intruder out. Then she screamed and leapt back onto the bed. The shield was down! Cautiously, Tanny approached the window, eased her fingers onto the ledge and squinted at the view from her tower for the first time.
The glare of the low sun blinded her at first. Then she saw gold glinting on blue river water, which surrounded the tower like a moat. Tanny looked down to the island — not as far away as she had imagined, though still a fair distance. There was a green garden and a brown tree releasing orange blossoms. Tanny knew colour from fabrics and threads and paints, but seeing it live was incredible: a different world that had always been right there. She sighed against the edge of the window as the red sun set behind purple mountains…certain the world was showing off just to impress her.
Sunset gave way to twilight then darkness, and still Aberfa did not come. Tanny worried. The routine never varied. Why hadn’t she come? Tanny lit the candles alone that night. Last of all, she lit the solid chunk of beeswax on the table. The violet fairy cake was still there, un-eaten. Aberfa’s words came back to her: will you wait til I am gone to eat it?
Oh! Aberfa wasn’t coming back. Was she dead? Imprisoned? Perhaps weary of the unwanted Princess? She wasn’t coming back.
Tanny picked off the sugared violets and popped them in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. She licked along the icing swirls, thinking. When only naked cake remained, Tanny concluded that she was in serious trouble. Aberfa brought food and water every day. Aberfa was not going to do that anymore. A few provisions remained, but not enough. There was still a jug of water. Tanny knew that was the most important thing. She could probably live cannibalistically off her own stores of fat, but for how long?
Three choices: stay here and die slowly; wait for rescue (an unlikely possibility); or leave the tower. And go where? Home to Caertraeth? They didn’t want her. But where else was there? Tanny groaned out of her chair and crossed the chamber to the eastern window. Moonlight on already pale skin made her ample flesh glow silver. It was too dark to attempt an escape tonight, but not too dark to plan a way to do it.
Two days after Aberfa’s barrier melted, Tanny sat on the western window ledge (after complicated manoeuvring). With her stubby legs dangling vertiginously into empty space, she examined the sheer sides of her tower wall. Reddened fingers moved to the knotted fabrics at her round waist. Tanny had never been so aware of her own size before. She had never needed to be. Now, with gravity daring her to test its legal rights, she was keenly aware of just how large and heavy she really was.
“I can’t stay like this,” Tanny decided, eyes closed to the wide open world. “No one is coming for me. I will not survive without food or water. I must find another way to live. This is an inescapable truth.”
She turned, eyes still closed and belly flopped across the ledge. Fingers dug stubbornly into the stone window frame, clinging to the only world she had known. She shifted one hand to clutch at the knotted collection of former tapestries, ex-dresses and beautifully embroidered blankets-as-were. One end of the twined textiles was secured to her sturdy bed, the other abo
ut her stout waist. She moved her remaining hand to the rope, thrust her feet against the rough stone tower façade and, after a bit of wriggling to un-wedge, Tanny pushed herself out the window.
“Bless you, hefty iron bed,” Tanny called out to the window above. “This is working,” she crowed. “So far.” So far… It’s so far. One question had occupied Tanny’s mind for the last two days. It returned to plague her now: will the rope be long enough? No. Tanny was half-way down the tower, panting and sweating with effort and fear, when she ran out of tapestry-dress-blanket twine.
“Stuck again,” she muttered to herself. “Trapped on the tower rather than in the tower, but is this really an improvement?”
“Why not fly down?” chirped a voice from her shoulder. If Tanny could have jumped, she would have. As it was, she could only think of one response.
“No wings,” she puffed.
“Hmm,” the voice appraised critically from behind. “Wings wouldn’t work for you.”
“They’d have to be made of strong stuff,” agreed Tanny, swaying slightly at the end of her rope.
“Didn’t that witch teach you any tricks?” snapped the impatient voice in her ear. Then the voice became a face and body. At first, he/she/it looked like another wayward orange flower, but with wings instead of petals. In the centre of the blossoming wings, a slender, naked figure with pistil-like arms and legs and… Oh! Definitely male.
Fat Girl in a Strange Land Page 8
