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

I wish I could say we were rescued, but that hasn’t happened yet and probably never will. I still wind the generator on the emergency beacon every morning and spend a few moments with my crew.

My sweet child grew into a young woman with a brilliant smile. Then her hair streaked with gray and her body began to bend to the will of Nova. One day, she didn’t move when I called her in the morning, and I knew I was alone.

I thought I knew grief when Lila passed away or when Evan faded away in the night, but it was nothing compared to the black hole in my battered robot torso when my Polly left me. I wanted to swan dive into the darkness and never come out again.

In the end, my programming saved me. Without even realizing it, I dug a grave, put Polly’s remains in the ground, and piled the spot with the gray rocks of Nova. Then I sat, letting the afternoon sun wash golden over me and my dead friends.

Why did the robot cross the road?

I can hear Polly say the words of our favorite joke and the shrieks of laughter that follow every time I reply, To get to the other side .

The sun touches the horizon. I am destined to live with these memories. Alone. Every sound and flicker of movement, preserved in perfect digital form, will haunt me for the rest of my days. The blackness inside me beckons again and I teeter on the edge of sanity.

Why did the robot cross the road? The sweet laughter turns mocking in my mind.

Maybe there is another way…maybe I should be like the chicken. I can delete these memories, make the record of these emotions disappear. It is my choice.

The horizon takes a bite from the orange sun.

I begin with John, the man who died of a broken heart. One flicker in my neural net and his existence is reduced to a data file, stripped of all meaning.

I almost lose my nerve with Lila, my first true friend, but I steel myself…and in the blink of an eye, she’s gone.

The darkness inside me lightens a shade, and the pull I feel to disappear inside my programming lessens the tiniest bit.

The sun is three-quarters gone, and the heat against my back dissipates.

Maybe I should stop here .

But it’s too late. Without Lila, the remaining recordings are just random bits of unconnected emotions. My memories of my human friends are all linked together. The joy, the sorrow, the laughter and the grief—they’re all part of life. I cannot experience one without the other. Nothing makes any sense now.

I must go on .

Evan, the man who made me and then refused to acknowledge me as a being, flashes in my memory, and then he ceases to exist.

And, finally, my darling Polly, only you are left. All our years together stretch out in my mind in perfect digital clarity—every day, every moment, every heartbeat.

The air around me turns purple as the sun slips below the horizon.

Caroline, why did the robot cross the road? I can hear the giggle in the voice, the laughter just under the surface waiting to break free.

“She didn’t,” I whisper.

I am Caretaker 176. I am alone.

Originally Published by Nightmare Magazine

He was the kid who looked at the sun too long. He hunted for lighters like sharks hunted for blood. Christ intrigued him for all the wrong reasons.

He only ate smoke.

Cigarette smoke. Wood smoke. Car exhaust. Incense. Liquid nitrogen on rare occasions.

Smoke.

I raised my mother and my sister. I took boxing lessons for the day my father came back sober. I was lean as a whip, and sharp as a viper.

I kept a gun under my pillow. Four bullets: Headcase. Heartshot. Just In Case. Special Occasion.

I would have had friends if I weren’t so busy being alone.

I saw him with the Nicotine Kickers, thin greasy scum of the earth leather jacket junkies who’d beat the shit out of you for a smoke.

My pack was empty. I stared down a pale scarecrow named Derrick who was itching for some sweet burning.

That’s when I saw him, sucking out cigarette smoke from burnt tips like soda through a straw. His eyes were wide, colorless gas puddles. His teeth were rotten and black.

Those flammable eyes watched as I snapped my fist into Derrick’s throat, who crumpled and fell to the concrete, gasping.

“You knocked Derrick on his ass,” the smoke eater said later, sitting behind me in class.

I shrugged. His breath was a humidifier on the back on my neck. “Good,” I said.

“He’ll do the same to you,” he said. “He’s going to after school. I heard them talking about it.”

“Then he’ll end up in traction.” I looked over my shoulder, dead in his saucepan eyes. “I don’t play games.”

“I do,” he said, his voice flat. “But not right now.” He extended a hand. “Smokey.”

I should have turned back around. I should have ignored the black-toothed boy with his lungs full of smoke. But I knew in my heart, that if I pulled back my hand, the smoke eater would continue to fall. He would have nothing to grab on to.

So I shook his hand. “Obvious name,” I said.

“Got a better one?” he countered.

I smirked. “Not right now, Smokey.”

I turned back around as the teacher walked in the room. “Don’t you have a name?” he asked me, quiet.

“Yup.”

I heard him lean back in the chair. I could almost hear him smile.

“This is the only time I ever feel close to being human,” Smokey said, letting out a puff of breath that swirled and swam away in the late winter air. Empty of breath, he took a hit of the Evergreen incense sticks he had lit earlier.

“Why’s that?” I asked, half interested.

Smokey breathed deep, began tapping his fingers on the concrete sidewalk. His highest was forty.

Thirty. Thirty-four. Thirty-Seven. Forty-One. Forty-Five.

I glanced over at Smokey. His cheeks were strained and fit to split down the middle. His eyes began to roll back into his skull. The tapping was picking up speed.

“Smokey. You have to breathe,” I said, picking at a hangnail.

The tapping became faster. It was his heart screaming through his fingers:

- beatbeatbeatbeatbeathelpmehelpmehelpmebeatbeatbeat -

I punched him in the shoulder. “Goddamn it, Smokey, you need to breathe!” His clear eyes found me under their lids and he shook his head, frantic.

This was the fourth time this week. I rapped him on his distended, fleshy stomach, again and again until he broke and snapped like the little rubber band he was. His breath came screaming out of him like dragon fire. He fell onto his side, crying, as he watched it float away.

“Stop fucking doing that,” I said.

“I don’t want to lose it,” whimpered Smokey.

“The hell are you talking about?” I said, getting to my feet.

He was on his back and I saw starlight in his eyes. In his hand, the Evergreen incense sticks were dying. “Breath is the soul, friend,” he said, breathless. “All year ‘round, only I see smoke for what is, the breath of things, the drifting away of it all. Only in the winter, when the world’s so cold, we can all see each other dying, do I feel human. When everyone sees through my eyes, that’s when I feel normal. But tomorrow is spring. Tomorrow I lose it all.”

“So why hold your breath?” I asked.

He looked at me, tears standing on the brim of his eyelids. “I didn’t want you to see me dying.”

I stared back, waited for the words behind his words. Smokey always had words behind his words. He rolled over as he spoke though, away from me, so all I could hear next was: “That comes later.”