by Stephen R. Smith | May 13, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Queen Louise XVI’s afternoon reading was interrupted by the message ‘Governess LaPointe requests audience’ scrolling across the page of text which hung in space before her.
“Granted,” she spoke aloud, waving the texts into the ether.
The comfortable silence was shattered by the staccato barrage of heel on stone as a woman swept through the doors of the Great Hall, past the Imperial Guard, and past the Royal Family; sixteen pairs of twins in dresses and curls sitting at chess boards, or on couches reading or talking quietly.
She covered the length of the room in quick, steady strides, stopping barely a meter from her Queen and dropping to one knee, her eyes downcast. “Your Majesty,” her voice dripped of something foul; condescension? contempt?
“Rise,” the Queen commanded. “Speak.”
The Governess stood, eying the Queen. “Your Majesty, there has been unauthorized access of the library data, of the forbidden tomes.” She paused, glancing sideways as Clara and Cloë straightened as one, suddenly interested.
The Queen folded her hands. “And that concerns you how?” Accusation, that was the tone.
“The data in question details the time before the Whyjean Complex, the Time of Men.” The Governess straightened. “I believe that you know of these intrusions, that they are made on your command.”
The Queen smiled cooly. “And what interest have I in the Time of Men?”
LaPointe smiled, thin lipped and cruel. “You desire a male of your own, not a eunuch but a breeding male. I have proof of your deceit, and when I present my proof to the Council of Creation, they will surely have your throne.”
“Fascinating.” The Queen gazed about the room; Alice and Alexandra lost in a game, Trinity and Tari napping, Salena and Sami reading together. “Why accuse me here, why not go straight to council?”
The Governess folded her arms. “I’m giving you a chance to confess, to banish yourself quietly.”
“And leave you to succeed me? You’re very sure of yourself.” The Queen drew her finger along an elaborate carved cross set into the arm of her throne. “Would you swear to the Holy Mother on the existence of this proof?”  The Queen released the cross from it’s mooring and held it out to the Governess, who grasped it white knuckled as she spoke, eyes locked on the Queen’s. “I swear, on the Holy Mother…”
The Queen pulled back on the cross, leaving the Governess holding the thin tapered dagger that had been concealed inside.
“Guards, she’s come to kill me!” The Queen yelled, stirring the Imperial Guard to action.
“What? No, no, I didn’t…” the Governess stepped back, raising her hands, the shining dagger catching the light as the Guard flanked the Queen, weapons discharging in unison, the woman thrown backwards to the floor.
The Queen raised her hand, and the Guard held fast as she moved to the fallen Governess, kneeled at her side and cupping the dying woman’s face in her hands, turned her towards her startled children.
“I don’t intend to breed a man,” she hissed in her ear. “Look at them, Cloë and Clara, Clarence. Alice and Alexandra, Alexander. Sixteen perfect princesses, sixteen perfect princes. Plumped and primped, curled hair and dresses, hidden in plain sight to one day redefine this matriarchy and restore the monarchy.”
She placed a finger on quivering lips, watched the horror in her eyes as life left her.
Rising, she addressed the Guard. “She was stricken with a plague of madness. Cremate her, incinerate her quarters. Let there be no trace of her disease.”
Disease, she thought, they were desperate for genetic disorder.
by Stephen R. Smith | May 2, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Carson lay still, blood oozing from his battered mouth onto the playground, his ears ringing as they laughed.
“Come on freak, get up and fight.” Quentin Taylor, the quarterback had landed the last blow, arm ratcheted back in a hail mary that had exploded into Carson’s jaw.
“For the extra point.” Carson turned just in time to see Petrov the kicker closing the distance in a brisk measured sprint, his geared and sprung hip winding noisily. He tried to roll to one side, but Petrov’s boot caught him full in the ribs, flipping him over with the crunch of fracturing bone.
“Stand him up, knock him down, kiiiiick his ass!”  The Yonge twins pranced around, making lift and punch gestures with their hands before stopping to jump up and down, finger tips exploding into long coloured streamers, wrists spinning in pinwheels of colour.
Carson could barely breathe. For a moment, he drifted out of consciousness, the voice of his father and the smell of the ethanol fields replacing the dust and jeering of the schoolyard.
“I know you’ll play in here,” his fathers hand on his shoulder, cellulose stalks rising skyward in neat rows stretching to the horizon, “but you must mind the harvesters.” The voice gentle, but firm. “There’s no driver watching out for you, they’re just dumb machines following each other, and they’ll run you down without a thought.”
Rough hands shook Carson back to the present, pulling him to his feet and pushing him back into the circle.
“Present for ya, farm boy.” Bennie, the boxer had his hands off, and his gloves on. The sun shone dully off the polished chrome of his forearms, shirt sleeves rolled up over bulging biceps. “Smile farm boy.” The material was supple, but not soft, the first impact snapping Carson’s head back viciously, his vision blinding white.
“If you get caught, and the harvesters are on you, remember you can’t run around them, they stick too close together.”
The shuffle of feet, a glimmer of blue sky and then another sharp blow to the face sent him reeling again.
“If you’re quick, run away, but if you’re trapped,” he could feel his father squeezing his shoulder, “remember your safety son, otherwise they’ll cut you up like last nights dinner.”
“Had enough yet freak?” Carson could feel gravel bite through his pant legs into the flesh of his knees. Quentin’s face again, so close he could feel him spit the words. “Never enough for you freak.” Two of the wresting team coiled elastic arms around his chest, pulling him up and holding him fast. “If your parents can’t buy you parts, how’s about we rip a few off ourselves. Maybe Medicaid will screw a rake on for you, eh farm boy?”
“Please… don’t…” He felt it then, the heat in his chest triggered by the rising levels of adrenaline and cortisol in his system.
He knew if he let them, they’d tear him apart.
“I’m sorry.”
There was a rushing sound, like a wave crashing a shoreline, then for a long moment there was nothing. The arms holding him disappeared, dropping him to the ground. Carson squeezed his eyes shut as he heard the stunned silence replaced with screaming; scared, angry, helpless.
He forced himself up, unsteady as he looked at the scattered bullies and spectators littering the ground; powered arms and twirling streamers stunned motionless, once powerful limbs stilled.
Carson ignored the wailing, retrieved his backpack and set off on the long walk home.
He’d need to charge his safety before visiting the fields again; before he changed schools, again.
by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 21, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Two hours ago, Pete had been pulled gasping from a tank of jelly. Now he sat in an immaculate office, wearing borrowed clothes with his employer staring him down from the far side of a granite slab desk top.
“Welcome back, Pete.” Terrence Carter, syndicate heavyweight and the man Pete ran data packets for. “I must say, you look better than you did the last time I saw you.”
Pete sat straight in his chair, tentatively rolling and flexing muscle that remembered thirty eight years of abusive mileage, but didn’t feel a days wear and tear. “What happened Terry, what’s going on?”
“You were running a very special package for me Pete, one we couldn’t copy, one we had to risk transporting as original data.” Terry paused, pulling at each of his white shirt cuffs in turn, evening their length against the dark fabric of his suit. “You had an incident Pete, for some reason you seem to have hidden my package from me. I don’t know exactly what went wrong in your head, Pete, but when we finally… recovered you, what remained of you no longer had my package installed. We want it back, Pete, I want it back.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t remember that, I’m not on an assignment yet.” Pete shook his head, his face a puzzled frown. Sometimes he had episodes if he stored data too long, there could be cross talk, and data fragments without context drifting in his head caused all sorts of unpredictable things, some unpleasant, but he couldn’t remember anything about this.
“Of course you don’t remember, you’re not the Pete that carried. We just finished growing you from the backup sample we took before we briefed the original you.” Terry pushed himself back from his desk, steepling his fingers. “We keep insurance in case things like this happen, in case we lose a good carrier, especially one with a package installed.
“So I’m a snapshot of myself, from before I left?”
“You’re a cleaned up version of the old you, rechipped and hot-wired to carry. You were the best we had Pete, so I was a little disappointed when you betrayed me.”
Pete ran a hand across the fresh stubble on his head. “What do you want from me now?”
Terry’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I want you to figure out where you put my package Pete, I want it delivered.”
“Wait a minute, if I’m a snapshot from before the briefing, I don’t have any memory of what happened later. That knowledge died with the original Pete,” he shuddered involuntarily, “I mean the original me.”
“True. You don’t know exactly what you did, but you can figure it out. Situational familiarity, behavioral predispositions, pattern predicability. Faced with the same objective, and in the same circumstances, you’ll know what you would have done, where you would have gone. Quite frankly, you’re the only one who can figure out what the hell you’ve done with my package, and I suggest you put some effort into doing just that if you want to get another day older.”
Pete regarded his employer as he weighed his options. He couldn’t help but wonder what bled out of the package he’d been carrying to make him want to risk crossing the syndicate. He also wondered whether he’d been dead when they’d found him, or if death had come later.
One thing was certain, he was being given a second chance, and a short leash. He’d better be very careful not to slip up again, one way or the other.
by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 25, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
“What is it that’s troubling you?” The doctor could clearly see the discomfort in the young mans face as he wrote ‘Anxiety’ on his steno pad.
“It’s getting harder and harder to go outside. It’s wide open spaces, they terrify me.” He clutched at the seat cushion beneath him, head down, eyes haggard beneath rough cut bangs, “I had to hide under an umbrella to get to the subway, and I picked you because you’re in a tower over the tube station, isn’t that weird?”
He noted the cloudless sky through the window. ‘Agoraphobia,’ he wrote on his pad, ‘possible Anablephobia’. “How long has this been affecting you?”
“All my life, but not like this. The older I get, the more debilitating it’s become.”
“How old are you exactly?” he asked, adding ‘Progressive’ to his notes.
“Nineteen.” He released the chair only briefly with one hand to rub at his nose, “Twenty on the twenty eighth of September.”
The doctor scribbled ‘Libra’ as he continued. “Born here in St.Louis?”
“I was. I moved to Phoenix when I was seven to live with my aunt, but I’ve been moving towards home for a while now. Trains mostly, buses. Not sure why exactly, I guess I just wanted to go home.”
“Come home,” the doctor corrected him. “So – you’re a blackout baby then?”
“Yeah, parents bored in the dark when the comet hit.” He shifted, uncomfortable. “I guess there were a lot of September babies in twenty nine.”
“Why not fly home? Surely that would have been faster?” ‘Possible aerophobia’ he noted.
“It’s not just being outside,” he hooked one sneaker behind the chair leg, “it’s hard to explain. I’m afraid of falling.”
“Ah, Philophobia,” he spoke out-loud as he added the word to his notes, “it’s the fear of falling. Not uncommon.”
“Well, not falling the way you think. If I look up, I’m quite sure I’ll fall into the sky.”
The doctor paused. “Falling up? That is unusual,” he clicked the pen against his lip, “anything else unusual? Strange dreams, other notable triggers?”
“Sometimes I dream that I’m alone in a field, and the sky closes around me and swallows me up. It get’s really dark, then really bright. I usually wake up soaked. I think I scream out-loud.”
“Are you staying with family here?” He struggled trying to find a word for ‘fear of falling into the sky’, finally giving up and writing that down instead.
“I’m staying with my mom, out by Forest Park.”
“Your father…?”
“I never knew my dad, never even seen a picture. Mom used to say the comet made me, before she stopped talking about it.”
“Hmm.” He wrote ‘abandonment issues’ before continuing. “You’ve talked about this with your mom?”
“My mom doesn’t talk. That’s why I went to live with my aunt. When I showed back up at my mom’s house she wrote ‘go home’ on the wall and hasn’t so much as looked at me since. She stays in her room, mostly, drawing pictures on the walls.”
“Pictures of what, exactly?” He stopped writing and looked up.
“I don’t know, planets and stars and stuff. She’s a bit of a nutter, but she is my mum, you know?”
“Well then,” putting down his pad, “we’re out of time, but come next week at the same time, and if you can get your mother to join you, I’ll see if I can’t block off two sessions.”
“Next week?” He met the doctors gaze for just a moment before looking back at the floor, slumping. “Somehow I think I might be gone by then.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 19, 2008 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Kurtis leaned back in the broad oak chair, his head gently throbbing. He let his gaze wander from the ordered stacks of papers on his desk to the expanse of woodland visible through the loft window. God he loved this place. So many memorable things had started here, filing his patents, launching his business, even his lovely wife Meg had come to him here, at a chance meeting during the open house when he’d bought the place.
“I’m making tea dear,” his wife’s voice drifted in from the kitchenette, “would you like a cup?”
“Yes sweetheart, that would be lovely.” Opening his desk drawer, Kurtis reached past the Band-Aids and his EpiPen to the bottle of Tylenol, of which he dry swallowed two before replacing it and closing the drawer.
He couldn’t help but think how things would have been different if Martin Lockman had gotten to that open house first. Kurtis smiled at the memory, moving around to the front of the desk and leaning against the wood top. He thought of Martin’s excitement at having found this place, and his plans to purchase it. If he hadn’t had that ‘accident’, he’d have made it on time. He could picture Martin’s face, fuming over the mess of ruined metal that had been his car after the blowout.
“I always liked this place Kurtis,” the voice startled him, making him jump off the desk, “it should have been mine years ago.”
Kurtis wheeled to the figure seated behind him, speaking comfortably from the black high back mesh chair behind the metal and glass that was the desktop now between them.
“Martin?” Kurtis stammered. “What the hell are you doing here, and what have you done to my desk?”
“Oh come now Kurtis, you know very well that this place is mine, has always been mine.” It was Martin smiling now, with the sympathetic look one reserved for lost children or stray dogs.
“You get the hell out, I don’t know what game you’re playing Martin, but I’m having none of it. Get out.”
“I don’t play games, Kurtis, I never did. It took almost a lifetime to find a way back to where it all started, and to set things right. No accident this time Kurtis, no accident at all.”
“What the hell are you talking about, what’s happening?” The room about him was changing, nauseating him as book cases changed to glass doored cupboards, the couch morphing into two easy chairs and a reading stand.
“I mean you didn’t sabotage my car this time Kurtis. Honey in your coffee instead, anaphylactic shock. Shame, really, you could have done so many good things.
Kurtis shook with anger and fear. “Get – Out – Of – My – House.”
“It’s not yours anymore, so you’ll be leaving in a moment, not me. You see you took my life once, and it’s taken some time, but now I’m returning the gesture. I’ve simply taken it back.
“You’re not taking anything, I’m sure as hell not leaving and in a moment I’m going to call the police.”
“Oh Kurtis, you really don’t get it, do you? I’m not going to take–I’ve already taken, and as you’ve already left, I’m merely humoring you while reality catches up.”
“What’s all the yelling about?” Meg padded gracefully into the room, carrying a tray with coffee and cookies to the desk and setting it down. “Are you going to work in here all day?”
Martin pulled his wife close to him, wrapping his arms around her lithe waist. “No my dear, I think I’ve done enough for today.”
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