Silvia Moreno-Garcia - Future Lovecraft

That had been yesterday. Or, so her calendar had told her. In a room where true time does not exist, she could never tell. She only told true time by what the planets told her. And the moons, the moons told true time. She rarely looked outside, mostly within. So, for the most part, time did not exist.

maria got up. Outside, the blue dawn had risen and the planets were aligning. The man, the muse, the Council representative, he of the short stature and nondescript face, of the unhealthy tint to his skin and the follower’s demeanour, was really going to do this. She knew that those on the inside, those who lived as her followers, those who were her children, past and future subjects, her characters and those she gave birth to, would appreciate her escape. From the tall filter window of the light-yellow room in which she worked, she could see the rest of her world. In the streets below, an army surrounded her tower. They had been there from the day she started to write. The day she took up residence in the six-story, grey-stone tower, with the single flight of stairs, spiralling inside and outside, they had appeared. The sound of their boots was enough to alert her to their presence; otherwise they never made direct contact. Sometimes, she’d catch a few of them looking up at the tower, at its strange construction and its pointed dome, much like the spindle of an old-fashioned sewing wheel. Perhaps she’d dreamed it up from some photographs of Old India that Great-Grandmother Mallika kept for her children. Or, from books that her own mother read to her when she was very young. Some stories about a little, evil creature who kept a king’s daughter imprisoned in a tower. Eventually, she had dreamed up her prison and there she sat. She felt that the Council would never understand her intention and for this she was grateful. Being free—of the Council, of expectation—was something she greatly craved.

The Council knew that a woman from this part of the world, writing, was a greater threat than any other they had yet faced. She had the bloods to prove it and her bio told them that history could repeat itself. After all, it was women who wanted to unseat them. It was women who tried to rewrite the balance of power. It was women that the Old Countries went to war for, in Ancient Times. They had all the excuses to keep women away from knowledge and a better way to lead, and read, the world they lived in. Rather a docile system of Womanhood, anywhere in the world, than any form of a unified and strong Womanhood, in many parts of the known world. Keep them different, docile, weak, and dis-unified.

As the moons carved a trajectory across the sky, and the light from the ships let it be known that another imposed day was upon the planet, she felt that her people would contact her. And they did. Without knowing how much time had passed, she felt surrounded by a warm energy. She was on the floor, lying down, without remembering how this came to be.

Soon, one of her own whispered to her. Then, all she could see was a woman dressed in white, opening the filter window. maria got up from the floor and scrambled after the woman, who was clearly about to jump. All maria could grab was cloth and then, finally, a slim hand, as the woman in white slipped from her grasp. Before she let her hand go, on the very ledge from which maria watched the world below, the woman said, “You are everything. I had to die to let you know. Don’t let them stop you. Keep writing in yellow. Then send in red. The colour of life.” And then she let go, her long, dark hair billowing around her, but her body pliant and ready, not angled in fear. She smiled as her body met the pavement. maria had used the ternary glasses she kept for just such an occasion, to see everything that happened. Below, her follower was the colour of life in seconds, and was immediately surrounded by soldiers. Some looked up. The man appeared to her a short while later. He held handcuffs and talked to her about inspiration.

“You inspire us to make this more difficult for you,” he said to her, his eyes almost catching light, almost becoming alive.

“You inspire me to write. She died for a reason. The part of me that never dies, dies in this world. On another, freer world, she is everlasting. My Followers do not weep for this. We rejoice, because we know Freedom is soon coming.”

“You’re naïve. Who will you go to? You know your voice cannot carry beyond these walls. We made sure of that. Only the Followers in your head, when they appear, know of you.”

“If I told you my plans, I would not live beyond the three moons, and beyond this world. There are many who wait for my shape to enter its chosen space. This is what frightens you. And the more I write, the more ready my chosen space. For you to keep appearing, it means I am close to my goal.”

“I have the plug right here, little queen with a small m. What would you tell your followers if I were to pull it? What then would your imprint be like, incomplete, not ready to take shape?”

“You forget I have allies outside of this yellow, cold room. And that sitting, writing all day is an exercise in creation. You forget many things when it comes to women from my part of the world. You forget our power.”

“You talk a lot. The Council has agreed. It is time to say goodbye.”

The planets were in alignment; the three moons rose that day. Outside the tower, red scarves appeared around the necks and mouths of some soldiers. They started to scale the tower, to the only room it housed, on the top floor.

Ada Hoffmannis a graduate student in computing who commutes to southern Ontario from an obscure globular cluster populated mostly by elves. Her short fiction has appeared in Expanded Horizons , Basement Stories , and One Buck Horror , among others.

THERE’S ONLY SO much paper on this ship. I shouldn’t be wasting it on a diary, even with my thumbtop gone. But I have to write this somewhere, before the songs of the stars drown it out and I forget.

I found blood on the walls today.

I was lugging garbage from the mess hall out to the recycler. Thumbtop in my pocket, piping kwaito music into my ears. Humming along, so I wouldn’t hear the stars at the edge of my mind. I kept my eyes on the white-tiled floors, avoiding the windows. The current song ended and I picked up the rectangular screen of my thumbtop with one hand, using my thumb to scroll through to a song I wasn’t tired of yet. I settled on a homemade audio file: my sister, Onalenna, back Earthside, laughing and singing a song we’d invented as children.

Then I looked up and saw it: the red-brown streaks marring the wall’s white tile, just opposite the window. Angry, dripping Mandarin characters. I dropped my thumbtop with a crash.

I can get by in a Mandarin conversation, but the writing still eludes me. I don’t know what the characters said. Normally, I would have needed to use the detector on my thumbtop even to know what they were. But I’ve got a PhD, same as everyone, and I knew what it would have said if it hadn’t just broken. Organic material. No bacteria. Dissipated proteins. Glucose. Platelets. Erythrocytes.

Blood.

I wanted to pretend I didn’t know why anyone would have done such a thing. But I knew. After all, I’ve been avoiding the stars with all my might since we passed the Oort cloud. They’ve looked different since then. When I’m not talking or listening to music, I hear them whispering, just past the edge of comprehension. Blood is one of their favourite words.