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

Tyrone breathes the air, slowly, once more and makes his goodbyes to himself as he is now.

And then he enters the conversion center.

The process is simple. He needs only to choose an empty conversion bay, strap himself in, close the door, and give his final consent.

A few other people, more stragglers, are in the center too. Some look scared, some excited. Some trudge toward their future, some affect a stately pace, and a few practically bounce along to the shedding of their bodies.

Tyrone walks a few circuits around the conversion hall. No bay is any different from another, but he still wants to find the one that “feels right.”

When he does, he reaches out a hand to touch it and, finally, begins to feel excited. Now he is ready. Exploring the universe with Kelee. Immortality. All the future days.

He straps in and gives his final consent.

A voice says: “Hello, and welcome to your upload experie…” The voice is cut off mid-word. A monitor goes blank.

A quiet envelopes Tyrone as the hum that had permeated the center largely ceases.

His phone rings, and Tyrone jerks in surprise.

He answers it, and Kelee is there.

“Why did you have to wait?” she says.

“What’s going on, Kelee?”

“You’re one of the last, Tyrone.”

“So?”

“You’re one of The Last .” Capital T, capital L. “It’s been agreed that the final 500 people in each region will be left behind.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me!”

“It was agreed we wouldn’t.”

“I’m your husband!”

“It was agreed.”

“Kelee.”

“You are now part of the first great project of the new era: The preservation of the natural species.”

“We’re being left out?”

“You’re carrying on with natural evolution and physical existence. A monument to what we were. We’ll go forth as the uploaded. We’ll look in on you, but you’ll walk without us.”

“Kelee.”

“I’m sorry, love. Please enjoy the first day of the rest of your life.”

The pod cracks open, and Tyrone takes a deep breath of air that feels ever so slightly stale, and used.

Originally published by The Dark in August 2015

The children’s fight punctured the cordial atmosphere of the old woman’s funeral. Two small boys, opposite sides of the family, had gotten into a full-blown quarrel. And because they had not yet learned to keep their mouths shut, that meant it became a spiderfight.

The old woman had not been that old, but that was the way people saw her. She had a crone’s mean temperament and a grandmother’s failing health, although she was neither. While alive she had made it clear to Sook Yee, her sole daughter-in-law, that the latter was entirely her fault. Hypertension and diabetes had played tug-of-war over the old woman’s body, but it was cancer that had finally gotten her. The house was filled with her brothers and sisters and their families, and her widower’s brothers and sisters and their families. People tripped over each other in the bungalow’s cluttered confines and spilled into the weedy garden, fighting for asylum from conversations gone on for too long. The covered tentage where the body lay got a wide berth.

By the time Sook Yee got to the garden the fight was over, even if the screams were not. The winner was a round-faced boy from the widower’s side, his chest braced in defiance. The loser, a gangly-limbed scion of the deceased’s family, squealed an incoherent string of sounds. A ring of adults demarcated the two combatants in the garden, and one middle-aged auntie held the screaming child still, ring-encrusted fingers scrabbling at his jaw, trying hold his mouth open. "Let me see!"

Between the two children lay the fight arena, an old sweets-tin on an IKEA table. On its surface were two spiders the size of thumbnails, striped black and white. One still paraded back and forth, puffed up like its owner, but the other had been torn apart. Its remaining legs twitched in a mockery of life.

"What happened?" Sook Yee asked them. What she lacked in authority from blood relation she had to make up in loudness of voice.

The victor picked up his spider carefully. The creature ran up his hand, up his arm, and onto his face, little legs tapping at his lips. The boy opened his mouth wide and triumphant, lifting his tongue, and the spider scuttled home.

His voice returned, the victor turned to Sook Yee. "He called me fatty bom-bom."

The loser made a series of angry, wordless noises, a slurred concoction of mouth-formed vowels. His mother seized the chance and stuck her fingers in. The child squawked, but she managed to prise his jaw open. The boy’s tongue flopped around in his mouth like a dead fish. His mother bent it back to reveal the empty space underneath, between the salivary glands, where the limp muscle anchored to bone. Around the vacated spider’s nest tiny eggs swelled round and pearlescent under membrane. She prodded one with a finger and declared, "Nevermind! Another one will hatch soon."

The boy struggled free and pointed at the victor, yowling, but his spider was dead and his tongue useless. Drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.

That was the whole problem. Lose an argument, lose your voice. You learned quick enough to keep your opinions muted, your anger in a bottle. In school Sook Yee and the other debate kids had turned spider-fighting into a bloodless sport, staying back and squabbling over small things like peace in the Middle East and the benefits of minimum wage. It was simple: Make a stand, argue in increasingly illogical statements until the mouth spiders emerged, ready to do battle. But small ones. You didn’t want the fight to become real. Sook Yee liked debating evolutionary theory. Abortion rights were a popular topic amongst the boys. The dusty steps of her school stairwells had borne witness to an endless number of sixteen-legged quarrels. Sook Yee’s memories of childhood were still infused with the phantom taste of chalk-covered arachnid in her mouth.

That schoolgirl spider was long gone, of course. Sixteen-year-old Sook Yee had lost it in an argument with her mother. Never argue with an adult. Particularly not your mother. Particularly not about grades. These were valuable lessons all children learned.

"It’s your own fault," Sook Yee told the squalling loser. What was his name? Ah Guan? "Who asked you to fight?"

The boy’s mother pulled the child closer, looking at Sook Yee like she was a small dog yapping at a pedestrian crossing. "What did you say to my son?"

Sook Yee’s stomach sank, a liquid feeling. She recalled this relative’s name and place: Cecilia, the youngest of the her mother-in-law’s siblings, coming at the tail end of three brothers and three sisters where the old woman had been the head. Like all of them, she had a temper.

The circle of onlookers shifted and Sook Yee’s sister-in-law entered the fray. She had a slight figure and lightly freckled skin that made people privately, and wrongly, guess that she was still in her early forties. The white she wore, head to toe, gave her the appearance of a ruling politician, or a holy person. The peanut-gallery chatter that had sprung up between the onlookers quietened at the sight of her. Kathy’s viciousness, surpassing that of her mother’s, was legendary.

Kathy’s eyes scanned the scene, taking in the gladiatorial setting, the mute drooling child, the sweets tin. Her mouth shrank in displeasure. "Who was fighting? This is my mother’s funeral. You want to fight?"

Cecilia gestured to the other boy, arms tight around her child’s shoulders. "You ask that one lah!"