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

He sits down at the little deal table under the lantern, pushed up against the wall, and picks up the penknife. He has a cracked cup stuck full of the right kind of feathers, and he takes one, strips the barbs off with the knife, and plunges the tip into the hot ash under the logs in the hearth.

No, Canada’s no paradise. His neighbors aren’t as friendly with a colored man as they might be with a white one, for sure, but Americans are worse, apart from a few, and he’s had much to endure. Only for that—bad usage—and he’d still be in America, though he does not regret coming here. No, he was forced away. He pulls the quill out and sets to cleaning the end, softened now, with the dull back edge of his knife. Then he polishes it with a bit of brick he keeps for that purpose.

He’s well contented here, yes, a man now as God intended that he should be—that is, born equal and free, a wholesome law unlike the southern laws that put men, made in the image of God, on a level with brutes. O what will become of my people—for a moment all the sickness of his own thoughts bears down on him—where will they stand on that day? Let the oppressed go free, go free.

He is staring blankly at the fire, his task forgotten.

And I will come near to you in judgment, a swift witness against the false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow (his mother was a widow, she never spoke of it but he knew why), and the fatherless (a blankness).

He looks down at his hands, at the quill, the knife: a choice to be made.

But he knows that he will not meet those men again in this life; and, indeed, despite his anger, he hopes that they might still repent of their evil, and let their property go free. He does still hope for their salvation, but he does not believe they will.

He trims the lower third of the quill, twists it round in his fingers, cuts off the tip at a slope, then turns it again and slits it. He nicks the sides and trims them off, tests the tip against his thumb, and trims a little more. Placing the tip on his thumbnail, the knife somewhat aslant, he cuts the end of the nib not quite off, nimbly flips it around, and pulls the blade clean through. He inspects the new pen and, satisfied, lays it down.

He opens the bottle of ink he bought in town; an extravagance, perhaps, but in the past summer, besides having a good kitchen garden, he raised (for cash sale) 316 bushels potatoes, 120 bushels corn, forty-one bushels buckwheat, a small crop of oats (for the hogs), seventeen hogs, and seventy chickens (whose eggs he sells at the weekly market, while the occasional ailing hen goes into the pot). His rent for his cabin this year is fifty dollars, and next year he hopes to build and so avoid that expense. If he’d known how well he’d get along, he’d have left America ten years sooner.

He dips his pen.

Deer , he writes. Is that right? It’s a word, sure, but something about it seems not exactly as it should be. Writing comes hard to him, having been learned late, and his lines frequently blot and his pen breaks and the paper tears and he brushes his sleeve against wet ink; every literate mishap there can be, there is. But he tries: that’s important; he tries, and perhaps he improves day by day.

He found a route north, and he found a teacher to help him to read, and reading’s easier for him now than ever before, and surely he’ll find his path here too. We are all wayward pilgrims, having lost our names and our friends, and many of us our lives, with little chance, stumbling towards Zion-land; and though we may not know the clear path, still we shall reach our home. Someday. Perhaps someday. Pray that it be soon.

He picks up his pen again and writes:

Deer Friend Stutlee

(July 1881. Report of the Signal Service officer at the port of Erie City:

(At 5:30 in the morning the air was calm. At 6 o’clock, a slight breeze. To the northward a dark cloud appeared like a curtain, and at the same time a rumbling sound and a strong wind. At 6:20, a single, large green wave, about nine feet above the normal level of the lake, with no crest, approached from the northwest with great rapidity. The cloud, wave, and wind seemed to travel together. Soon after the passage of the wave, the wind subsided and the cloud dispersed.)

Admit it. You went back in time and killed Baby Hitler.

Official reason, to avert the Holocaust and World War II.

But the truth? Averting the Holocaust and World War II, that was more like an additional upside.

Your mission’s core driver was brand recognition.

That’s definitely the way Toni felt about things. What better way to roll out the universe’s first linearity disruptor start-up than to kill Baby Hitler?

When you say to people in the street “time travel” they say “kill Baby Hitler.” It’s something people are already comfortable with. That is so important, because with time travel, the negative narratives are out there already.

Killing Baby Hitler is an amazing way to introduce sceptics to where your tech is going to fit into their lives. What could be more memorable than—

Yeah, okay, in a way it wouldn’t have been that memorable. Even if it had worked like it was supposed to. Because if it had worked, then everybody would have been like, ‘You killed who ? And this person was a, a baby? That doesn’t sound very ethical. You should go to jail. We hate this press conference.’

Still. Umeko said it best. ‘Going back in time and killing Baby Hitler. It just has to be done. You can’t not .’

Umeko volunteered, in a big way, and the first thing she said when she blinked back to the lab in 2015 was, ‘So like how many people would you say were killed by wars in the Twentieth Century? Ballpark? Asking for a friend. Shit, do you guys speak English?’

‘You didn’t get your guy,’ Toni said bluntly. ‘Am I speaking English yet?’

Umeko stared wildly. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ she told Toni. ‘But speaking personally? I just went back in time and killed Baby Hitler.’

Toni shrugged. ‘Hitler lived. Nothing’s changed.’

‘I don’t want to get too graphic,’ said Umeko. ‘Is “I beheaded Baby Hitler” too graphic?’

‘Okay,’ said Toni thoughtfully. ‘Did you bring back the head?’

Umeko released her straps. Ambient cerulean refulgence shifted to teal. ‘Could our memories have—no, never mind. You guys, if this is some kind of troll, I have had the worst —’

‘I knew it!’ yelled Belle, to no one in particular. ‘We all knew it, deep down! Great Man Theory is bullshit! It’s all about the economics, you guys. History has a structure. If Hitler wasn’t Hitler, someone else had to become Hitler!’

The room was filling with other people’s feelings. You felt your usual urge to fade into the furnishings. But you did take this moment to murmur, ‘Or just the torso, Umeko? No?’

Because you felt that was important.

‘You guys, we’re not going back,’ Umeko moaned. ‘ Never return to the scene of the crime, especially if you’re already still there!’

‘About a hundred and sixty million,’ Liz said in that same monotone she always uses, but which is particularly good for announcing numbingly large numbers of dead. ‘To answer your original question. Fifty-five people million died in World War II. Depending on methodology.’

‘Those sound like they might be the offensive estimates,’ Belle said. ‘Might want to check if those are the offensive ones.’