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

“Mr. Taylor,” said Jimmy, perhaps a little sharply. “You have mentioned Munich twice, but according to your file you’ve never been there. Could you please try a little harder to concentrate on what actually happened rather than on what you wish had happened?”

“Who are you?” asked Taylor abruptly. “Who are you to talk to me like that?”

“I’m your retirement counselor, Mr. Taylor,” said Jimmy calmly. They had reached ground zero. The key was to stay matter-of-fact, a little weary, disengaged. “I’m here to help you make the transition to civilian life.”

“Civilian life?”

“Yes, Mr. Taylor, civilian life. It happens to everyone eventually: death and taxes and returning to the land of the living, and so on and so forth. Now could you please start concentrating again? When did you first notice yourself indulging in violent and anti-social fantasies?”

“Fantasies?”

“Yes, Mr. Taylor: fantasies. When precisely did you begin to feel dissatisfied with your career path here at Ultimate Outcomes?”

Taylor frowned. “It is true that we were raging angels once,” he began. “That we had ripped down the curtains of the mundane and stood illuminated in the blinding intensity of being.”

Taylor paused, looking meditative, and Jimmy waited with his pen poised.

“It is true. But repetition is death,” Taylor continued and at once Jimmy began scribbling away. “Repetition is death. Somehow that blinding intensity dimmed. Where there were once dizzying heights and demonic depths, glorious contradictions resolved in ecstasy, there was eventually nothing but a flat horizon and featureless ground.

“I still fought the Revolution in the streets of the city of time, I still fought the anarchists and the communists and the degenerates. I still fought, but the raging hammer of my heart no longer threatened to blow my ribs apart.”

“Yes. Exactly, Mr. Taylor, that sort of thing exactly,” Jimmy looked up encouragingly from his doodles. “You became bored with your work and distracted. You started to daydream. You started to have these inappropriate ideas about destiny and soil and blood. The ideas your liaison officer reported to us.”

“Bored?” asked Taylor.

“Yes,” Jimmy reminded himself to control his exasperation, to feel pity for his client rather than irritation. “Bored.”

“It’s true,” said Taylor. “It’s true. I am so bored.”

And Jimmy knew that Taylor understood. Taylor knew his beautiful blue eyes no longer shone like twin lightning strikes.

“I’m so bored,” he repeated, and they both knew his shadow no longer leapt so far ahead of him that it fell across the icy moons of Jupiter.

“I’m so bored.” And no longer would the limbs of shattered men and women and children be swept up into the hurricane of his will.

“It’s all been done to death,” he groaned and threw himself back into his chair. “The car bombs, the knifings, the light bulbs filled with acid.”

Jimmy cringed. He did hate it when they mentioned operational details. Mike had loved that stuff of course, lived for it.

“It’s not murder if they’re already dead.” Mike had laughed at Jimmy’s qualms. “You can’t kill someone who’s never been born.”

But that was Mike. He had two flags on his desk: the stars-and-stripes and Ultimate Outcome’s yellow-and-black. And his office walls were plastered with campy old posters: “Epic Solutions for Epic Problems,” “Have you ever chanced to dream a dream?” “Make some history to make some profits!”

Every year at the Christmas party, Mike had tried to convince that public relations guy Meyers to talk to the men upstairs about commissioning him to write a book about the company. But Jimmy wasn’t so gung-ho as Mike; he liked his job fine: good pay and good benefits. But when he thought about what actually happened out there, in what the men who had been in it called “the fog,” he felt a touch of squeamishness.

“It’s all been done to death, and I’m so bored,” said Taylor. “I have become what I hate; I am tiresome; I am banal; I am dull. I am repetition.”

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” said Jimmy brightly, and he gathered himself together to start closing the deal. “But on the other hand you might think of this as a chance to start afresh. You’ve fought for freedom for so long, now you can finally start to enjoy it.

“Ultimate Outcomes has some wonderful retirement packages. Your friend Ed Heines for instance, has a condominium in Palm Springs and, from what I hear, he has become an excellent tennis player and golfer. Apparently, he’s even started dating.

“But if we could get back to determining when you first began to feel bored, Mr. Taylor. For the insurance company, you see. It helps us determine appropriate numbers. To decide what’s best for your future.” Jimmy cleared his throat and smiled weakly. “To decide what is your best ultimate outcome.”

Jimmy was trying to be reassuring and calm. He looked earnestly into Taylor’s eyes, but there was no need; there was nothing there, the light had gone out of them.

Another day, another victim, Jimmy thought, and his mood began to lift. Poor, pathetic bastard.

“Ride of the Valkyries” began to run through his head and it was everything he could do not to start whistling along. He started to think about lunch. He thought maybe he would call up Mike, maybe go to the buffet at the Montcalm Hotel and watch the strippers, maybe even risk the sleepiness and have a beer. Maybe.

He opened the drawer to get out the immediate voluntary retirement and disability insurance paperwork. Taylor sat across the table from him, slightly slumped, hands on his lap, staring at the desk. It was as if, Jimmy thought, someone had switched him off, or a puppeteer had dropped the strings.

Originally published by Blue Monday Review

Problem Solving Astronaut lives in the future and enjoys finding square roots, engaging in free enterprise, and coitus with Hot Chick.

In the future Hot Chick always has Cool Job. Cool Job could be CEO, Xenobiologist, or even Problem Solving Astronaut. Whatever her Cool Job, Hot Chick is sortable by hair color and temperament: Fiery Redhead (dresses in green), Icy Blonde (blue), Loyal Brunette (who cares). For Problem Solving Astronaut coitus with Hot Chick is never just coitus: it is also always overcoming an obstacle, always a victory.

An example: Hot Chick is Loyal Brunette and wears something form-fitting but of an indifferent color. Hot Chick is attracted to Problem Solving Astronaut, but she is also Head of Government Department. Government Department is an obstacle that prevents Problem Solving Astronaut from solving problems.

Coitus takes place and the obstacle is removed.

There is always Imminent Danger in the future:

Asteroids and Comets

Spaceships that run out of air/heat/food/fuel

Clones

Nanotechnology that goes crazy

Super Computer that goes crazy

Problem Solving Astronaut who goes crazy

Aliens/Robots/Modified Humans

Pandemics

Strange objects appearing

Environmental Catastrophe

Fiscal Responsibility

Once identified Problem Solving Astronaut can remove all these Imminent Dangers—and more—with the correct reorganization of capital and technology.

An example: Problem Solving Astronaut meets Fiery Redhead to address Imminent Danger. Coitus is inevitable, but there must be tension in order for flirtatious banter and obstacle removal to occur. Fiery Red Head is the CEO of Tech Firm, and Problem Solving Astronaut needs money from Tech Firm so he can build Big Engine to Save-The-Day. But Fiery Redhead does not like Problem Solving Astronaut’s fiscally irresponsible approach to problem solving. Their conversation must perforce, go something like this: