Metaphorosis 2021 Read online

  “I’m going to answer.”

  “With the beacon? Is it moveable? I thought you couldn’t redirect the beam.”

  “I can do it. I just never had to before.”

  “Okay. Okay. But D., listen. This is not a conversation with a person. Sentience is not the same thing as a brain. I’ve been studying this thing. It evolves faster than its components, faster even than some viruses, but it also started pulsing all at once, like a single organism… If this is intelligence, it’s clearly distributed—spread out in the body of the Bloom, coordinated, but not centralized. It is nothing like us.”

  “What is it like?”

  “God. Fuck. I don’t know. An octopus?” She’s close to tears. “Who knows what it would do if it recognized another intelligence? And you want to give away your position, before we even know what will happen! What if it takes the signal as a threat? What if it answers?”

  Her voice is so plaintive, so childish, that I half want to shout at her. There is no other option! But I can’t say that. She knows.

  For a moment I consider telling her I was planning to come see her when my contract was up, but even thinking the words makes me want to howl.

  Instead, I tell K. I love her, and then I hang up in a hurry so I don’t have to hear her sob.

  In the evening, I trek north. I weave among my discarded shipping containers, most twice my height, their steel now coated in the rich green of a kudzu infestation at least a foot deep on every face. The vines are flowering on the southeast side where I approach; I breathe in clouds of grape-like perfume as I pass each cluster of white and purple blossoms.

  The place steams with life. Between the blocks and everywhere the vines haven’t claimed lies a thick carpet of mosses in varying shades, from pine-green to chartreuse and golden yellow. Already, beneath my boots, the fragile stalks of a bryophyte have been crushed into wet salad.

  I need my flashlight to find the ladder on the far side of the tower. I hover on the bottom rung, waiting for the doubts to come; but my wonderful brain is silent, and I hear nothing but the wind through the leaves. The top rung is covered in seagull scat, so I have to haul myself onto the platform beneath the beacon like a sea lion. I turn off my light and recover there for a few moments, with my back against the thin railing, staring upward.

  The sky is clear now. The compound lens of the beacon looms over me, its outer rings glittering with reflected stars. The pieces are arranged in concentric circles, like a slice of a giant black onion. Each layer is made of two to thirty segments of gadolinite glass.

  It is impossible to tell by sight that the signal is firing. I pass my hand over the opening in the center of the onion slice, and imagine that I can feel it, a sort of metaphysical buzz; but I know I can’t actually feel anything, as surely as I know the signal exists. The beam, even concentrated by my lens, is both silent and invisible to me.

  I pull myself up with a groan and stretch upward to run my hands along one of the rings. The dark glass is warmer than I remembered. The smaller rings are closely nested and hard to differentiate by starlight, so I work my way inward by feel. Just below the innermost ring, attached to the pole that supports the beacon’s weight, there is a latched metal box, unlocked.

  The terminal inside is still charged. I power it up and it chirps softly, as though it recognizes me. Black letters appear against the green-grey field: I N P U T ?

  My mind is empty. I turn away from the beacon and nearly lose my balance. The railing, rusted from the salt spray, groans but holds steady for now. How is it up to me to decide what to say to an alien from my own planet?

  It has stopped glowing, I realize as I stare into the sea, so it’s possible I’ve missed my chance, but somehow, inexplicably, I feel that it is actually aware of what I am doing and has simply paused to wait for my answer. Impossible! I can almost hear K. say in response.

  I picture her on the other side of the world and feel my spine straighten a bit.

  I take great, gulping breaths of the briny air. I reprogram the beacon.

  I fiddle with latches in the dark. The lens is twice my wingspan and half my weight, but at least the whole thing comes off its mount without so much as a screwdriver. I hoist it onto my shoulder like a parasol and then lower the circular end to the platform, feeling my long trek across the island screaming in my kneecaps. When I stand up, the beam is pointing just below the horizon, its waves colliding with a distant section of the Bloom’s vast body.

  The Bloom is still as stone. In the silvery light, the world looks primordial, as though made of just-cooled magma, unmarred by soil or water. But I know the Bloom is there and watching me, in its own way; it holds its breath as I hold mine.

  We watch each other.

  Just where the beam hits, a part of the Bloom begins to rise. But this is an illusion: it is simply luminescing, first there and then all over, the whole field of it suddenly turning white with light—far brighter than before. In seconds I’m forced to cover my eyes with my arm, but it’s not enough.

  I wake up on the beach a few meters from the tower, my whole body aching from the fall. The world is still flashing around me, so bright I can almost hear the new pattern: the same one I chose moments or hours ago.

  Long, short, long. K, the Bloom is saying, shouting, singing, to me and to her, and I can feel her amazement radiating straight through the center of the Earth.

  See Lynne Peskoe-Yang’s story “Superbloom” online at Metaphorosis.

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  About the story

  I wrote this in an attempt to relate to a kind of organism I find unfathomable. I think I'm jealous of lichen, the way it smoothly integrates two distinct sets of DNA into a single body, without conflict or suspicion. I wanted to fuse with something like that, so I wrote about someone who I thought would understand that impulse.

  A question for the author

  Q: What are you currently reading?

  A: Uzumaki, the graphic horror novel by Junji Ito.

  About the author

  Lynne Peskoe-Yang is a science fiction writer and tech journalist living in the Northeast US.

  lynnepeskoeyang.com, @lynnepeskoeyang

  All We Ever Look For

  Cécile Cristofari

  When I opened the window this morning, three parrots were perched in a tree hanging over a deserted beach of pure white sand that stretched towards a dazzling horizon. I’d never seen anything so lovely. I leaned out, just enough to feel the caress of the breeze, the salty coolness of the surf that helped me brace myself for the day ahead. Not long after closing the window, I opened the front door with a deep breath, stepping into the rumble of traffic and the dappled shadow of a maple, in the damp heat of Québec summer.

  The memory of that shore and gentle seaside wind stayed with me for the entire bus ride. It was gone now, I knew. What happened when I closed my window I could only guess; the wonders it let me glimpse vanished as soon as the latch clicked shut, and never came back. Now, watching my own world scroll past the bus, I wished I had left my window open a little longer.

  When I reached the office, the two secretaries were talking about the latest missing person cases in town. I stared at them for longer than should have. They waved, a little awkwardly.

  My desk was in a corner of the office, out of sight, just under a mercifully powerful fan. I wiped my brow, and exchanged perfunctory greetings with my neighbours. I had never been good at making friends at the office. Neither was I cut out for the increasingly heavy heat waves these days, it seemed, and I had another fleeting thought of how lovely and cool that beach had seemed.

  From across the office, Marie-Ange interrupted my train of thought with a wave and a conspiratorial gesture, placing a folded bit of paper on the corner of her desk. I answered with an uncertain smile.

  The heat had not abated when I returned hom
e. I still held Marie-Ange’s crumpled note in my fist. Saturday? it simply read. I had waited for her break to leave the office so I wouldn’t have to respond.

  I wondered if this was what guilt felt like.

  I sat, or rather dropped, in the armchair facing the window, to scratch Toutou’s ears as Tilou mewed in protest at being woken up. I stared at the maple billowing outside—when the window was closed it never showed anything but the maple outside the building, its branches stretched far and wide like a challenge to the concrete and cars and heat and fires and everything humans could throw at its kind. It was only when I opened it that the magic began.

  I had never figured out how or why this treasure had fallen into my hands. I never heard reports of other portals opening elsewhere in the world, and the question of what I had done to deserve this one was never answered. One day I’d opened the window in my living room, hoping to get some fresh air while I read the news as usual with a cat peering over my shoulder—and instead of the customary drone of the street, I’d gazed over a cliff, snow-capped mountains dotting the horizon under an uncanny white sky. I’d banged the window shut in shock, only to open it again, seconds later. This time it was a desert, red sands stretching as far as I could see. The dance had begun then, opening and closing, never knowing what strangeness would lie beyond, only that it would be new, and odd, and marvellous—and that as soon as I closed the window, it would disappear forever.

  At first I had sworn to myself that I would never let anyone else see it, but soon that had felt petty, and I’d begun to bring people in. The first few times, it had been simple, even made me a little proud for the first time in years. An act of sharing and compassion, inviting unhappy acquaintances to sit with me and gaze at the wonders beyond my window before walking back home with a lighter heart. They must have thought it was nothing more than a clever display; so had I, at first, and so did most people until the very last second. The truth was too extraordinary to entertain.

  The first time someone asked to step through, I had only gaped. The possibility of it had never occurred to me. Her name was Angélique, I recall, and she was a widow, just about my age, with an estranged son. Two days after I’d agreed to her request (it hadn’t occurred to me that I might do otherwise), I’d watched her step over the window ledge and on the grassy slope of a mountain meadow. She’d secured her backpack and blown me a kiss, and only when the window pane clicked shut had I fully realised that the door to her world was now gone, and she would never be able to come out again.

  After Angélique, there were others. I had a knack for light friendships, the seemingly shallow ones, acquaintances that would not disturb the quiet of my home. They almost always started in the same way: an exchange of glances on the bus or a café, a smile, a few minutes of conversation that usually led to a farewell, after a moment of companionship I’d enjoy but wouldn’t miss. And then sometimes the conversation lasted longer, until I sensed that sadness, that longing I’d come to know so well, until I realised that I held the key to the one thing these people wanted.

  It had been easy at first, watching them step through and waving farewell, sometimes wiping a little tear, telling myself I’d brought someone more happiness than anyone else ever could have. I only had to pretend that these people were just like me, lonely and stranded, with no one to miss them. It was only when the first missing person reports came up in the newspaper that I had to face the facts. There are many ways to be lonely, and not all of them are irreparable.

  “How did you pick such a silly auntie?” I asked Tilou out loud. She rubbed her head against my cheek.

  I petted her and stared ahead until, as always happened after sitting alone with my thoughts for too long, I felt compelled to get up. After some hesitation, I opened the window.

  Outside, a deep rainforest was alive with whistles and fluted sounds, the songs of birds and beasts I had no name for. I leaned out and closed my eyes as the mist from a waterfall cooled my face, spraying scents of moss and orchids. My smile slowly returned, and for a very long time I stood there, trying to catch the sight of monkeys or tree frogs behind every rustling leaf.

  My cats, the only companions I had, would be just as happy with any other owner, I suddenly thought. I would miss them for a while, but it would be nothing to make sure they spent the rest of their lives in a home that would be just as good as mine. There was nothing holding me here. The notion was unexpectedly comforting. My life was my own. Whatever I chose to do with it, however foolhardy, I would not hurt anyone else. One day, I decided, I would go too. But today was not the right time; I was out of cat food, and anyway, I was already too weary of the summer heat to enjoy a rainforest for long.

  As always, eventually, I closed the window, and I could hear once again the endless drone of the cars in the street, as clouds gathered overhead for the evening storm.

  Wednesday morning sailed by in its customary haze of boredom, until a shadow loomed at the edge of my desk.

  “Got time for a sandwich?”

  I jumped, startled from yet another reverie. Marie-Ange was standing in front of me, her bag already slung over her shoulder. “Come on. The falafel ones. You know you love those.”

  My eyes darted around my desk for an excuse not to go out. The blank file staring at me from the computer screen was enough of an answer. The prospect of going out was not that unappealing, come to think of it. I got up, groaned when my back protested, and stayed in place just long enough for Marie-Ange to drag me by the arm, waving to everybody that was left in the office.

  The space outside the building was not a particularly scenic one: a large car park with a few maples and a couple of grassy banks on the side, where we sat in what shade we could find. Marie-Ange finished her salad in a couple of bites, then sprawled in the grass on her back, grinning.

  “Look at how gorgeous that tree is,” she said.

  I smiled. In truth, it wasn’t much of a tree, just a sapling they’d replanted as a token gesture after they’d razed the field to make way for cars. But Marie-Ange’s enthusiasm never deserted her. No one else would have convinced me, for the third time this week, to take a break and breathe the outside air when I could instead have got rid of my work and ridden back home half an hour earlier. It still surprised me, sometimes, that she not only talked me into it, but made me want to do it. Now that I looked at the sunlight splintering through the maple leaves, I, too, began to see some beauty in that gracile, tenacious little tree.

  Marie-Ange propped herself up on her elbow.

  “So. About Saturday.”

  My heart sank at once.

  “Saturday?”

  “You promised you’d show me. Remember?”

  I did, very well. It had happened at the start of summer, on a day when Marie-Ange had decided to drag me out of the city for ice cream after work. I’d grumbled and wondered why she would bother with me. But as we drove across the bridge to Orleans Island, she’d pointed to the waterfall on the other side of the channel, and started gushing in the way she sometimes did about the most mundane little things, and I’d felt something unexpected—a flicker of girlish delight, the simple pleasure of feeling the damp heat on my face and the smells of the blooming forest stretching in front of us. It was a long time since I’d felt that way outside of my living room. And then I’d felt something even stronger: gratitude, pure joy at being with someone who would so casually offer this sense of wonder to me.

  I’d wanted to offer something else in return. I had told her about the one thing I’d ever had that mattered. And now I wished I hadn’t.

  “All right,’ I muttered. ‘Just one look. Don’t tell anyone about it, okay?”

  She agreed, still grinning. It was time to go back to work. On the way back in, she changed the subject, and my mood lightened. If she thought I was only going to show her an amusing trick, so much the better.

  On the bus ride back home, someone was reading the headlines out loud, and the lady behind her burst into tears. Her fri
end comforted her, saying something about the uplifting notes all these people had left, that they couldn’t have been taken by force or ended up in a bad place. I swallowed and moved to the back of the bus.

  Québec City officials overwhelmed by missing persons epidemic, I read on my phone later in the night. Three more in a month. A secret cult, underground experiments, theories were blooming all over the place. I shoved the device back in my pocket.

  Missing persons epidemic, indeed, I thought to myself, as if facing a crowd of haunted relatives demanding justice. What if I told you that they wanted to go? That they made this decision by themselves, knowing fully well what it would do to you? Would you blame me?

  I stopped as I realised that I was starting to mouth the words out loud. From their place on the sofa, Toutou and Tilou were gazing at me, green eyes and yellow eyes indolently blinking in a pool of sunlight. I had been living on my own for too long.

  I leaned out of the window one last time before going to bed, to breathe in the smell of salty wind. Tilou had jumped off the sofa, and with a soft thud, landed herself on the sill; she didn’t complain when I gently picked her off and held her against my chest so she could watch safely. A marble balcony hung over a rocky coast with pines and aloes tumbling into the sea. Underneath, the waters shimmered, light and deep blue interlocking towards the horizon. A fish leapt up below me, sending a flash of silver over the water. When a seagull dove, missed, and flew back up with a cry of frustration, Tilou tensed, and at last wriggled free and strolled back to the sofa, all interest in other universes gone. I watched the bird until it disappeared over a clump of dark green trees, knowing that I could follow it if I wanted to. I thought once more of all those who had gone through, of the felicity they had seized for themselves, the mourning they had left behind.