SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

I hear my mother say, “You just had to let him eat all that junk, didn’t you?”

The toilet expresses a milky foam that bonds with the vomit, then it vacuums both away. I wipe Tommy’s mouth with a tissue as the scent of vanilla fills the room.

"Smells like Mommy," he says.

“Yea.” I loved her vanilla perfume, which is why she stopped wearing it. Afterwards she seemed invisible. "I could set the vents to vanilla too."

"No, I want Mommy."

"I know." I rub his back.

"Why didn’t she come?” Tommy slams the toilet lid down. "Where is she?"

I take his wrists and turn him so I can look him in the eyes. "Do you love her?"

He nods.

"Then she’s always nearby."

"Like in the shower?"

“Ha! Exactly. Come on. Let’s get a new shirt on you."

I pick Tommy up and bring him to his room. While he paws through a drawer, I hear her footstep outside. I smell the vanilla again, my stomach twists, and, despite everything, I want her to rush in and grab us both. So when the front door clicks, I’m horribly relieved, like someone watching his terminal partner finally die.

Tommy pulls out his Batman t-shirt. I bend him into it. We go to the living room and flop down in a heap before the TV. The first commercial is for vanilla air fresheners.

It’s on every channel.

First publishing in AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review

At first the emails from SearchBot were merely aggravating. Although Joan marked them as spam, they still appeared in her inbox three times a day, then five. She created a rule to delete them on receipt. They nonetheless appeared, and their frequency increased. Like killing the ringer whenever VA B calls because answering only encourages the weasels, Joan gritted her teeth and deleted. Then the subject lines started getting personal.

JOAN HALL SEARCHBOT HAS RESULTS FOR YOU became JOAN HALL CORNELL 2000 and JOAN HALL AGE 37. Joan figured the spammers, after so many deletions, were trying to attract her attention by adding information from whatever databases they’d gotten her email from. That would explain how they knew her actual alma mater and age, not the ones she told people.

When the subject lines included OPEN NOW and VITAL, Joan googled SearchBot to see if others had had the same problem. Oddly, SearchBot seemed to be a reputable commercial tool one step up from Google News. According to various forums, collectors used it find objects their owners mentioned online, but hadn’t put up for sale. It enabled companies to suss out information about their competitors. For many it helped fill in genealogies. Although spammers use web robots to harvest email addresses, SB Tech’s site claimed they didn’t market by mass email.

So who was sending her the spam? Why did deleting one make another appear? And while she supposed the spammers could use SearchBot to find out her cat’s name and add it to a subject line, how did SearchBot know her only phone was a burner?

After a week Joan was considering cancelling her email account when a subject line said ELLIE PLEASE. Joan went cold. She nearly vomited. She had to open this email, viruses be damned. Joan stood up in a fighting stance and tapped.

Outside her house in a rental car, Klinsmen watched Ellie stand up and tap her tablet. Five stars, SearchBot. He was glad he’d paid for the premium service. A week ago SearchBot gave up “Joan Hall”; three days ago, her address. He never would’ve found her with that name, although he knew immediately where it had come from: the mother who’d disowned her and the first school she’d been expelled from. To hear her tell it.

SearchBot couldn’t distinguish truth from lies. It only dealt in data and how it was related. He envied SearchBot. You could avoid a lot of bullshit with that attitude.

As a bonus, SearchBot didn’t have to question people who might then alert her. Nor did it require travel expenses. He can’t imagine how much those would have built up during the past six years.

Klinsmen looked around the street: modest, quiet, comfortable. Neat yards. No kids. She probably had a couple old guys vying to be her handyman. And her job as a restaurant manager would let her stretch the money she stole from him a long way; longer, if the restaurant owners haven’t caught on to what she’s probably stealing from them. Smart moves, but he’d given her so much more than this.

Sure, he understood her need for freedom. He’d been nearly locked up half a dozen times. What he couldn’t grasp was her belief that he should fund her freedom without recompense.

Klinsmen checked his gun, buttoned his jacket over it and opened the door. He had people for this sort of thing, but he wanted to speak with Ellie first. He was a reasonable man. He knew he couldn’t get much of his money back, nor did he need it. Frankly, he’d rather have her back. He loved her smarts. They’d made a good team. Maybe they could work things out.

Klinsmen grabbed the bouquet he’d bought at the airport and headed for Ellie’s door.

SearchBot’s email contained two images, the results of a derived search, whatever that was, but Gmail blocked them. Did she want to see? In for a penny , she thought and revealed a Google Maps screen cap of her house and an AP photo of Noah Klinsmen after a recent acquittal.

As Joan tried to breathe, another email arrived from SearchBot. The subject line read: NOW. The mail contained a shortened URL. She clicked it. Up came her neighbor’s website.

Mr. Better was a sweet old man who hated only three things: dogs, dog poop and people whose dogs pooped on his lawn. He’d put a webcam in his front window to publicly shame them. At the moment, its livestream showed Noah carrying a bouquet up her walk.

Her breath came back as a laugh. Did he really think he could make up with her?

With his wife and cats dead, Mr. Better had one thing left to love: his neighbour, Joan. He mowed her lawn, fixed her plumbing and generally let her make him feel useful. He even insisted, after she’d admired his wife’s jewelry, that she take the nicest pieces for putting up with him. She’s like a daughter , he told himself while sitting at his computer, and so innocent .

Mr. Better watched Klinsmen knock on Joan’s door. He didn’t know she had a boyfriend, and he didn’t like the look of him. If he were expected, why not park in front of her house, not two doors down in front of his?

While Noah knocked, Joan slashed open her padded headboard and pulled out her money belts. She grabbed her go bag from under the bed, her purse from the dresser, and slipped down the hall to the back door. Dammit. Her car was in the driveway. She couldn’t get to it, let alone get away without Noah getting her.

Her cat wandered in. “Sorry, Cora,” she said and slipped out the back door.

Joan crept to the other side of the house, an alley shadowed by the six-foot stockade fence surrounding her back yard. She’d considered it an ideal feature when she moved in, never suspecting that Noah would use the front door. She crouched behind her AC unit, took her tablet from her go bag and pulled up Mr. Better’s cam.

Noah paced her stoop. He shook the flowers and kept opening his mouth, wanting to yell. Undeterred Mr. Better crossed the street. Joan heard him call from the sidewalk, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Joan.” Noah held up the half-bent flowers.

“I don’t think she’s home,” Mr. Better said.

“How would you know?” Noah said.

“This is a nice street. People look out for each other.”