Helix apologized for the end of the world first thing in the morning. Of course he knew something had to be done about it, and of course he felt badly about it, but also, he also wanted to watch the M*A*S*H* marathon on 227 without having to think about the imminent end of civilization as it was generally known. In the back of his head, he was aware that there was something pitiful about seven hours of M*A*S*H* on a Saturday night, a pitiful that was compounded by Helix’s tumbling black curls, his easy laugh, and his apocalyptic smile. There was no doubt that he could have been doing anything or anyone on any Saturday night, and instead: M*A*S*H*.

Mostly, he wanted to someone to ask him what he was doing, so that he could tell them. But no one called, and so he was left with M*A*S*H* and looming Armageddon until dawn.

Trillium didn’t accept his apology. (Trillium was not really her name. Actually, Helix was not really his name either. The names of gods are impossible for humans to spell, much less pronounce. Our lips and voice boxes aren’t made for it. Curiously enough, the lips and voice boxes of the Madagascar Aye-Aye, a specialized lemur that retrieves grubs from trees by means of an elongated middle finger, are made for it, but no one asks them). Trillium told Helix that she’d been thinking, and she had this theory that Helix had only triggered the end of the world to get attention.

“That’s ridiculous,” Helix replied. He was in his pajamas. Not pajamas like you or I wear, but the original paijama, from West Asia. He’d paired the trousers with a hideous bright blue calf-length sherwani that he liked because a mortal had once told him it brought out the blue in his eyes. His eyes were no longer blue, but the memory of the flattery remained.

Trillium, on the other end of the phone, said, “You’re like a puppy. Even negative attention will please you.” keep reading…

This is a story.

This is a story about two girls who lived alone with their mother on the end of a road at the edge of a forest. It was not a tame forest. The trees grew too close together for walking and by summer, the ground between the trunks was fast set with violent green thorns, rotted branches, and aborted saplings. It was not a pretty forest. There were too many trees in too small of space, all hedged in by foul-scented locust trees at the edges. The locusts were new. Tall and skinny, with leaves only at the top, like a broom, they grew ten and fifteen feet in a year and quickly hid anything the forest had to recommend it.

But the two girls were lovely: Rose and Lark-Louise were their names. You wouldn’t have thought they were sisters to look at them. I thought they were merely friends when I first met them, or possibly cousins. Twice removed, if cousins. They were that different. People expected Lark-Louise to be the wild one by her name, but she was slow and quiet as ripples in a pond. Dark-haired Rose was the fiend. The thorns in the forest had nothing on her for sharpness. Both of the sisters lived alone with their mother — I said that, didn’t I? — in a rambler at the edge of the trees. The house had four beds in it. Two twin beds in a shared room for the girls, an air mattress in the basement, and a queen bed that used to hold two. I know all this because I’ve slept in two of those beds. There was no father because a beast ate him. The girls don’t know, but he was trying to cut down the locusts behind the house to make the forest less ugly. It was easy for the beast to reach him from the snarl of thorns. When Rose and Lark-Louise’s mother found him, their father had a twelve foot spear run through him long-wise, and one of the beast’s pronged feet buried into his chest. Their father had managed to cut it off, you see, but the foot was still alive and angry and digging.

The beast was the most frightening thing you could imagine. keep reading…

“Is there even the grossest possibility this process could be more efficient?” I asked. “I’m supposed to be in about fourteen different places right now.”

The bearded tech assistant gave a little laugh. “Well,” he said, “If I don’t do this right, you will be in fourteen different places.”

It was the laugh that annoyed me, actually. It wasn’t a laugh that indicated any particular deference or uncertainty. It was a — dare I say it? — yes, chuckle. It was the sort of gentle chuckle that bearded young men tended to give when they were around other bearded young men of the same social status and educational background. It was a chuckle that said we all know what’s going on here, man, and it’s that we’re getting the shaft by fate, so let’s have a beer and let it work itself out.

Only I was not a similarly statused bearded young man. I was August Mowbray, son of Justice Mowbray, who, for all intents and purposes, was the closest thing to fate this assistant would ever touch. And I had, as I mentioned before, fourteen other places to be besides this gymnasium-sized greenhouse full of corn. The entire room smelled like chemicals, modified soil, and, beneath it all, possibly, plants.

“I would laugh,” I said, “But the intricacies of elevator humor escape me.”

“Elevator!” the assistant said. “If this was just an elevator, you’d be out of here and I’d be kicking back, man.”

Using every bit of my personal fortitude, I managed to avoid wincing at the word ‘man.’ “Enlighten me.” My father has an incredible fondness for technology and gadgets and, as County Principal, he was always looking for new ways to implement them in his benevolent rule. As his son, he’s exhorted me to show some interest.

This was me, showing interest.

The bearded tech assistant chuckled again. I could see it, the word, ‘chuckle.’ He said, “This greenhouse is forty-seven miles away from the building you came from. When you got into that ‘elevator’ back in the library, your molecules were dis-assembled, transmitted across the hi-4 wires your dad was so nice to lay out here to Meadville, and then put back together in the same configuration that you like ‘em in. Then the doors opened and you got out to look at some corn.”
keep reading…