Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 4, July 2014 Read online

  I sprang at him and grabbed the guy's wrist, forcing the gun lower until it pointed at the ground. I thumped him on the head and shoulders with my free hand. The gunman began spazzing out, high on adrenaline and oblivious to the blows. He fought me with everything he had; he scratched at my ears with dirty fingernails and shook all over like a dog, trying to regain control of the hand still wrapped around his pistol. I looked at the gun and saw that the moron still had the safety on, but I wasn't too relieved. He'd already given me some kind of disease, I was sure of it.

  Here's what's crazy: Cliff wanted to talk to the guy. He said, "Mister, I'm really sorry, but you know we can't do that. Lemme explain."

  Lorena tried to keep the situation from veering too far into the ridiculous. "Clifford!" she yelled, "He's a luddite, don't talk with him!"

  But Clifford went on. "We don't call them 'ghosts' because it's not so much a them as an it. We use the term 'residual life force.' It's not ectoplasm. There's no such thing as ectoplasm. Let's say you make an engine that runs on burning wood. There’s heat, right? This is like a machine that doesn't harness the heat, but harnesses the smoke. The sign of having been. Does that make sense?"

  Lorena: "Clifford! You can't reason with these people!"

  The nut: "My boy, my boy…"

  Me: "Doctors, please stand back. I'm trying to break his wrist, so, uh…"

  Clifford, undaunted: "And this stuff, it's all moving around. So maybe the idea is more like tidal energy. And just like the tide's stronger in some places, so is the SR—the spiritual residue. "Residue" isn't quite right, but we named it before we knew how it works. Not that we fully understand it yet! Lots of work to be done, work for younger… Anyway, the plant here in Quebec doesn’t pull in that much juice, whereas all of Europe is powered by a single plant in Northern Poland. Or how the Hiroshima plant could do most of China, if they ever figure out some kind of agreement. They—I mean it—tends to stay concentrated in certain locations like that." Cliff sighed, a deflated sound you only ever hear from those who are very old, who have done all they set out to do and can do no more. "It's not your boy. How would we even find him?"

  I got the gun out of the crazy guy's hands and kicked him behind the knee. When he went down I gave him another in the neck for good measure. He sobbed and sobbed, "I want to speak to my boy."

  Cliff said, "I'm sorry."

  Lorena said, "Don't be."

  In the car, Cliff was breathing hard. I asked if he was okay. He said he was tired of lying. Lorena elbowed Cliff in the ribs and told me to drive.

  #

  Wiscasset. Lorena flashed an ID that got us inside the plant. She wouldn't let me carry the box. She wouldn't let me help her up the shaking maintenance ladder, either. And on the roof, she wouldn't take my arm as she hobbled over to the nearest of the purring turbines. You can't see the SR, obviously, but the turbines are still spooky. The spectral remains of the planet's dead blowing like silent wind through the tunnels.

  I tucked my fingers in my armpits and watched Lorena put on the headphones. She opened the box and unfolded a long black microphone. There was a tiny control panel inside the box, a device not unlike a miniature soundboard. She stood very close to the turbine, and for a moment I was scared a sleeve or the bottom of her jacket might get caught and tug in her. She twisted a couple of knobs and held out the box. When she spoke, I was scared for a whole different reason.

  "Clifford," she said. "Clifford, can you hear me?" A pause. When Dr. Hannish spoke again, her voice trembled. She was no longer the compact, cantankerous mad scientist who defended her work from so-called ‘Spiritualists’ in interviews. She sounded afraid. "I know, I know we said we wouldn't do this… No, it's just me. Well, and the driver. Heh… It's nephritis, Clifford. The doctor is talking about dialysis, but I am so tired. You know, it's not fair. We were the ones who figured it out. They billed us as geniuses, and here I am reduced to the same stupid questions as anybody. Can you tell me…is it going to hurt? Am I still going to be me?"

  I backed away from Dr. Hannish until the purr of other turbines on the roof drowned out the sound of her voice. I didn't need to hear this. From the roof of the plant, I could see little Wiscasset shining a few miles away. No one turns off the lights any more. No reason to. The spiritual residue never diminishes, never goes still.

  Sometime later, I couldn't say when, the doctor touched me on the shoulder. She was ready to go. I went down the ladder before Dr. Hannish. I was sure she was going to fall.

  I'd left the car running. Once we were back on the highway I asked, "What did he say?"

  Dr. Hannish's voice was dry, stripped of the impatience I'd always known from her. "He said it doesn't hurt. It's not the Elysian Fields, but it feels right, he said, even if you can't quite stop moving around. He said it makes everything before feel like…practice."

  She got a flight back to Florida the next morning. It was only when I came back to the car that I saw she'd left her box in the front seat. It was surprisingly light in my hands, like it was made of leaves. I jammed it back under the seat and pulled onto the Pike and wondered if there was anybody I wanted to hear.

  ###

  Peter Medeiros is only employed in the most disreputable of professions: he is a writer, a teacher, and a barista. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. Most recently, his work has been featured in Spark IV in January, and July's issue of Outposts of Beyond.

  Remember Prometheus

  Eleanor R. Wood

  Damian inhaled the aroma of coffee to calm his nerves. He had arrived at The Roasted Bean well before he was due to meet Anna. It was their favourite haunt, and had hardly changed in the years since he last sat here. The walls were a different shade–less terracotta, more burgundy–and the once-trendy, iron-backed chairs had been replaced with ultra-ergonomic memory cushioned seats, but the layout was the same and the menu had hardly altered. For the first time since he rejoined the world, Damian could pretend no time had passed.

  They hadn’t yet seen each other since his return the week before. He knew why Anna hadn’t been there when he awoke, but her absence still stung. Her phobia prevented her from facing his pale, clammy form as he was brought back from the cold, just as it had prevented her from accompanying him to the Institute on the day he was frozen.

  He tried to quell his anxiety with two cups of coffee while he waited, but the caffeine rush only increased his anticipation at seeing her face again. Would he recognise her after eight years? She would have aged a little. She might have changed her hair, and the clothes she used to favour were surely out of fashion now. The bell on the shop door tinkled. He looked up, and relief flooded him. He would still know that gentle, bright face if a hundred years had passed.

  “Anna!” He stood and waved to her as she crossed the shop. In a moment, she was in his arms.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she breathed in his ear before he let go.

  “You too,” he said as they sat down.

  Her hair was shorter, but still the same shimmery caramel colour that so complemented her dark eyes. And yes, there were lines around those eyes that hadn’t been there when they parted, but he told himself they suited her.

  “So…how are you?” she asked, swallowing an awkward pause.

  He brushed a strand of loose hair out of his eyes and met her gaze. “How do I look?”

  “Happy, healthy and handsome, of course. But you always did.”

  He heard the hidden statement in her words. He’d appeared just as healthy when he was diagnosed. It didn’t change the fact that there was a fault in his genes. But he didn’t want to have that conversation yet. Or maybe ever.

  She seemed to sense the change in his mood, and reached over to take his hand. “I’ve missed you. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”

  He clasped her hand in return. “Neither did I.” Even the specialist’s certainty that a cure was just around the corner could have meant months or decades. He
paused. “Was it too long, Anna?” The question had been on his mind for a week. He still wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know the answer.

  Anna looked away, as though she didn’t know where to begin with it either. She took back her hand and smiled up at a passing waiter, who stopped to take their order.

  When he had gone, she took a breath and answered him. “I let you go, Day. I had to. How could we have a future when I’d have lived my life while yours was on hold? How could I live my life, waiting and pinning all my hopes on something that might never happen?”

  His heart ached, but he managed a weak smile. “I knew you would…I hoped you would. Get on with your life, I mean. Bu–tell me it wasn’t because you were still angry with me?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment. “No. No, of course not. Look, I’ve been wanting to tell you this for so long, and wondering if I’d ever get the chance to. I know you were ill. I never questioned that. I was just afraid for you, freezing yourself so young with no guarantee that you’d ever be reanimated. I wished you’d just considered living your life first, at least a little. With me.”

  Damian shook his head. “You know I put off the decision as long as I could. I spent days debating whether to delay my freeze so I could spend more time with you, despite knowing that it could lessen my chances of recovery.” She knew all this. Had the years reshaped her memories that much? He took a calming breath and met her gaze.

  “I’m so sorry if you felt like I was choosing cryo over you. But it paid off! I’m here, my final course of treatment starts next week, and I get to live my life now.”

  “You know, when I heard on the news that they’d perfected the cure for Parkinson’s, I had to pull my car over to take it in. Not just that you’d be cured, but that you’d be back. I’d get to tell you these things after all. See you again, eight years on.”

  Damian’s third cup of coffee arrived with Anna’s first, and they sat in silence for a few moments, stirring and sipping. The lull allowed Damian to work himself up to the next question that was plaguing him.

  “So, has any of this altered your feelings about cryonics?”

  She sighed. “I’d love to say yes. Everyone kept asking me the same thing last year. It was the twenty-fifth anniversary of Europe’s last natural death. But the answer’s still the same. I just don’t feel right about it.”

  He had always respected the careful reasoning behind her aversion, but Damian no longer had the unbiased luxury of complying with her. He’d heard her arguments so many times he could recite them by heart. No matter how many eminent scientists and doctors continued to affirm it, or how many people now accepted it as a part of their lives as normal as marriage or retirement, Anna stood firm in her belief that cryonics was wrong.

  “Remember Prometheus? Life is supposed to end in death.”

  Damian rolled his eyes. He couldn’t help it. “You’re starting to sound like one of the Anticry Brigade.”

  “Come on, Day. I may want nothing to do with cryonics myself, but I’m not out to rid the world of it.”

  He tried to keep the tension from his voice, but they weren’t debating coursework or passing judgement on faceless strangers any more. “Well, I’m here having coffee with you now because of it. So maybe you should ask yourself whether you’d rather I was dying from natural causes instead.”

  It had been like this between them in the days leading up to his preservation. He knew Anna was recalling those dark times too. She bit her lip and closed her eyes before reaching out to take his hand again.

  “Please, let’s not do this. I missed you, and I’m so relieved you’re back. Can we talk about something else?”

  He squeezed her hand, his heart racing as he considered the final big question on his mind. “Well, I could ask you if you’re seeing anyone. But I’d understand if you don’t want to talk about that either.”

  She waited for him to look at her before she answered. “No. I’m not seeing anyone right now.”

  “Right now? As in, maybe you will be next week?”

  She laughed. “As in, I was seeing someone a couple of years ago, but it’s over.”

  Damian grimaced. A couple of years ago for him, they were talking about moving in together. He buried his mixed feelings and ploughed on. “So…can we see each other again?”

  She sighed. “I’d like to, Day, but…I need some time to think about it.”

  He wanted to ask her what there was to think about, but he wasn’t that insensitive. He knew this was hard for her, too.

  Instead they changed the subject and drank coffee for two hours, catching up on Anna’s life and Damian’s plans. But unspoken questions remained between them, and Damian noted that Anna didn’t ask him how cryo had felt or whether he had been aware of his surroundings. And he didn’t tell her his anxieties of the unknown were gone, and he now welcomed his next cryopreservation; the one he would enter, like everyone else, before he was seventy years old in the hope of someone eventually finding a cure for old age.

  Although her beliefs still chafed, the first week of his return allowed Damian to grasp some of Anna’s fears. The world had changed a lot in eight years. Unfamiliar technology abounded. Governments had changed. Damian didn’t understand recent pop culture references and had nothing to discuss with friends aside from his cryonics experience. Everybody knew someone stored at the Institute, but not many people knew someone who had been reanimated, so he was a source of endless fascination. His friends had thriving careers while he still had the limited qualifications and experience of a guy in his mid-twenties. Most of them were married with children. Their lives had moved on without him.

  The same could be said of his family.

  His sister and her husband had offered to support him through the early months. Phyllis still took her relaxed approach to life and hadn’t lost her playful sense of humour, but she now exuded an air of settled responsibility. It surprised Damian how much that complemented her. It would take a while to get used to seeing her without glasses, though. The laser surgery she had always promised herself had clearly been a success.

  “It’s weird. I’m five years younger than you now,” he said one evening as he helped clear the table. He had been her big brother.

  She flicked him with a tea towel. “Don’t rub it in! You’ve already made me feel old enough for being a mother of three.”

  “Well, Ben was just a kicking bump the last time I saw him. I knew you’d have one growing, energetic kid; I didn’t expect there to be two more. But it suits you.” He smiled as he loaded the dishwasher. “I wonder how old they’ll be before Mum and Dad get to meet them?”

  Phyllis put down her cloth. “Damian, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  Her tone made him stop what he was doing. She sat down and gestured for him to do the same. “What?” he asked, suddenly anxious.

  “Mum isn’t in cryo with Dad.” Phyllis took a breath. “She died in a traffic accident four years ago.”

  He stared at her in silence for a long moment. “No. She was due to enter the programme the year after me! She…” His throat constricted. Phyllis came over and knelt beside him.

  “I know, Day. I was so glad you got to say goodbye to her before you went. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I thought it was better to let you settle in first.”

  He couldn’t speak. Settle in? How could he ‘settle in’ to the idea that his mother was dead?

  “What…what about Dad?” he eventually managed, wiping away tears. “He’ll be brought back without her. They always believed cryo meant they’d never lose each other.”

  “I know.” Phyllis’ eyes were welling too, her old grief returning with his new loss. “But it doesn’t always work that way. I miss her every day, just like I miss Dad, and missed you. But you’re back, and he’ll be back one day. It’s still hard to accept she won’t be.”

  Damian felt his new world closing in on him. He was alive. His illness was
gone. But nothing had waited for him to catch up. If this was how it felt for him, how bewildering would it be for his father? His poor dad, waking up to a world where his never-met grandchildren were as old as he was, themselves waking up from decades in the cold…and the one person he had counted on as his constant would be absent–long dead, and not yet mourned.

  #

  Damian checked his phone for the umpteenth time since he met Anna at the coffee shop. Phyllis caught him putting it down with a sigh.

  “Why don’t you just call her?” she asked.

  “She said she needed time to think. I don’t want to hassle her.”

  “But ignoring her is hardly going to help her adjust to your return. Ask her to a holofilm with you–or dinner. Invite her for dinner here, if you don’t want it to seem like a date.”

  Damian smiled. “That’s a lovely offer, Phyll. But…I don’t know. I don’t expect her to pick up where we left off, but I can’t even assume she still wants me in her life. I feel like the ball’s in her court.”

  “Think about it, at least. I know it’s killing you to be so distant from her.” Phyllis reached out to squeeze his shoulder. “I can only imagine what it’s like to have lost so much time with someone you love…and for it to feel like no time at all for you.”

  Indeed, Anna had lived a quarter of her life while he was on the long, quiet journey to his recovery. He couldn’t just come back to life and start interfering with hers. So when she finally called him, ten days after their first meeting, he could hardly keep the delight out of his voice.

  “Anna!” he greeted her.