Future Lovecraft (8 page)

PHOENIX WOMAN

By Kelda Crich

Kelda Crich
is a new-born entity. She’s been lurking in her host’s mind for some time, but now, she wants her own credits. Find her in the intestines of London, laughing at the status quo, or on her blog, (It’s about time she got one of her own): 
http://keldacrichblog.blogspot.com/
.

Rising phoenix, garmented in

plumed rust-red feathers,

groomed with persistent

nano-mites.  

Gene-modded eyes stretched endlessly

into infinity’s seeing vision.

Iron talons flexed,

a promise of rendition.

Warrior-women-bird.

See dust-eyed, endless men

chant and dance

to bone flutes’ tunes.

The priest masked in yellow silk

on a gold throne,

spanning altar stone.

Phoenix arch over

dust-dry plains,

sucked dry by thirty, thirsty gods.

Shapes of chaos, crawling slowly,

digesting our colony bones.

Metallic-bird-woman,

seek the wind-walkers,

seek crowded chaos,

the ocean’s spawning flesh,

rise over jungles’ colossal shapes,

ancient teeth,

fed by fluttering mouths

grown in marrow-wood stars.

Seek the space of things.

Fly, phoenix,

born in our end of days.

Hosanna hunting song

that will not be stilled.

Over endless factories,

Where our recurring flesh

quivers in Fibonacci sequence,

Mandelbrot tentacles around our necks.

Rise, phoenix.

With down-blind-cast eyes, we watch you.

POSTFLESH

By Paul Jessup

Paul Jessup:
Published in a slew of magazines(in print & online) and a mess of anthologies. Has a short story collection out (
Glass Coffin Girls
) published in the UK by PS Publishing. Have a novella published by Apex Books (
Open Your Eyes
) and a graphic novel published by Chronicle Books.

1. Captain Found Us a Ghost World

SHADRIM. IT WAS a grave of space, a planet of bones. It was the endless all and everything. Shadrim. When we discovered it, we found it full of ruins and corpses. Shadrim. When it discovered us, it was thinking. Shadrim. It had the grave thoughts. Thoughts that only the dead could or would want to think. Filtering through the entire planet.

When we found it, we were lost. It sent out beacons, psychic signals across the radio waves. Old Gray Mack thought it was perverse. We all laughed at his thoughts. Mack could fly the darkness like no one else. But he didn’t know anything about the human mind- the world between the waves.

When we landed, we saw the big, bronze skull-city-states; we saw the machines they had left behind. Large spider beasts. Evolved, transfigured. Machines with alien skin stuck to the grindbones, scuttling through those ruins and making the corpses dance. First time we saw that sight, we wanted to leave. Big alien bones with zombie skin still stuck on them, prancing around in nightmare waltzes. We ran like hell away from them. They didn’t follow. They stayed behind, dancing and staring with ghost eyes.

When we got back to the ship, it was dead. Buried in the ground with a grave on top. All that was left was ash and skeleton. A breathing thing that sustained us, gone and dead now. Like Manhome, itself.

Carit wept and Sunday Jay said a prayer in Pascal. It was the way Sunday Jay talked to the onboard systems. Through Pascal. Sure, it was an old language, but we are an old people, wandering the restless void of space and searching for ourselves in the reflection of the cosmos.

The next day, we found that dog that did our ship in. Giant machine thing that kept piecing itself together out of the ruins of the world around us. It was a sea of corpses and machinery. It looked at us with alien eyes, and Good Day just smiled at it and offered it a smoke.

Carit cursed it. Claimed it killed the ship and kept us trapped here. We couldn’t look at that alien thing, covered in ship blood and the strings of organic machinery. It kept trying to talk to us, talk to us over the radio sounds of the dead. It was so lonely.

But we couldn’t. Not now. Even though it promised us so much. Faster-than-light travel. Becoming transhuman. Existing beyond the realm of mortality. We couldn’t let it know how we felt. How it hurt us and stranded us in the depth of space. The Captain even went out and got the zox box and shocked it around. This machine seemed to love it. It squealed with delight and then asked us if we had anything yet for dinner.

Good Day stepped forward and told it we were all starving. The creature had a few nanokin whip us up some good stuff. It tasted all right, for alien metal food. And we thought, this giant postflesh spacecat couldn’t be all that bad. Sure it killed our ship, but that space trawler was dying anyway. Maybe it was a mercy killing.

Later that night, we slept under the frozen, purple light of 14 distant suns. They were moon-sized in the distance, spread across the sky and shouting out the light of the stars. The pull of this world was dizzying and complex. It weaved through the orbits of so many planets and suns. It was like a drunk, fractal nightmare of astronomical physics.

When we dreamed, we dreamed in ghost voices. We dreamed of ghost algebra on a ghost planet. This world, it spoke in our sleep and screamed in our waking hours through the radio towers broadcasting around us. The bones were restless, dancing. When the last hour of sleep washed away, we were greeted with the beating of techno drums and the dancing of the alien corpses.

And this time, they sang.

2. We Discuss Ghost Dreams

Spillgal was the first to do it. She just sat up like a white cat with black eyes, stretched out her tail and started talking. Her voice meandered at first, wandering over our heads. But then we realised what she was talking about, and we leaned in and listened.

Even that big A.I., that giant shipkiller corpse-monster, it bent the massive head down, dripping with columns and garbage and rotting, alien flesh, and listened. We had to filter out the screams of the dead in order to hear her properly.

Her voice was like static, noise in the broadcast of Shadrim. “I dreamt of endless space, and vacuum tubes. I dreamt of a doll without eyes and a lady without teeth. I dreamt that I licked the feet of secrets and they gave me bones to pay for a ship. I think I dreamt memories, but I can’t be sure. So many voices, lost in my head. Even as I am awake now, I am almost certain I am still dreaming.”

We talked about her dream for a bit, discussing its contents but coming to no conclusion. Whisper Kid went next, talking about smoke and a guy named ‘Kagaratz’. Each of us went in turn, and each dream was discussed, but without any answers. Finally, at the end, the Captain sat up and proclaimed that he would build us a new space ship, one to take us home.

The dead aliens scuttled away, screaming. Our dreams were a gift. They felt insulted that the Captain would not stay and experience more of them. The giant machine that was our host ticked his head to the side and sighed, getting the nanokin to make us a meal of tin and scraskin. It tasted worse than it looked, but we ate it.

After that, we were less welcome on the planet of the dead. Our host kept ignoring us and the broadcast screams of the lost world got so loud that we became just static and noise in the background. It was hard to think like that, but we had to. It was a learning process, a way of filtering ourselves out from the void that tried to swallow us.

3. Skullchic Finds Material

We scavenged the world for parts and pieces, but of course, we couldn’t go too far. There were a lot of alien machines, but we couldn’t make sense out of any of it. And our host wasn’t talking to us, anymore. He kept towering over us, watching and recording us with thousands of nanocams. We could see them scuttle about his massive body like living dust.

And the corpses—they were mad. They hung on the edge of our vision, running through the ruined city and howling in a dead tongue, their voices projected just barely above that load broadcast of ghost voices and ghost memories.

And we starved. Hunger laced through our veins, spilling over into our thoughts. All we dwelled on was the memory of food. Of great things like pancakes and waffles and syrup and strawberries and tomatoes. No vegetation was on this planet, nor any living meat we could kill and fry up.

In the hour of our greatest hunger, Skullgirl found some parts. At first, we weren’t sure what she had—it looked like some skeleton from an alien body, with a glowing, orange heart. But metallic, and carved with cold, foreign pictographs.

The Captain knew what it was, knew what to do with it.

He kissed her in joy and we all screamed. The voices got louder and that AI started to crumble into smaller pieces around us. We fitted each part in and assembled it right and proper. The Captain got Old Grey Mack to study the controls and then to figure out a way for us to interface with it.

Old Grey Mack was great at that sort of thing. He was a xenoarcheologist, a regular alien retrofitter. He could sew these things into the right pieces of his mind, find out exactly how their propulsion system differed from our ion drives. He was used to this sort of thing—rearranging his mind into alien shapes and geometry.

Soon, we had a working model up and running. Time for a test drive and then off to freedom.

4. We Gasp, We Sigh, We Say Goodbye

It was a rough-looking space vessel, made from the alien boneparts we found and some old stuff from our ship, strapped on so that Old Grey Mack could pilot it without a problem. More like a shambling, half-dead animal than a cruiser, it spun around the atmosphere and screamed as it flew in chaotic, messy lines. Our host watched, his body slinking into sludge parts, the air filtered with his nanodust. He tried to get the alien corpses to dance a goodbye dance, but he could not get them to come near us.

In the moment of the test departure, those dancing corpses came out again, screaming and running towards us. Mack was flying low in the sky, looking down. The machine worked, leaving trails of blue light behind it in whirling vapours. Mack smiled and gave us the thumbs up to say that everything was okay. He flew a little lower, getting ready to find some open ground to land on.

Our host collapsed into thousands of tiny bodies, trying to restrain the living dead’s nanosystems. They surged and came forward, crying out and scurrying across the floors of the world, with many thin and angular limbs. Like undead spiders, with big, bulging eyes and tiny, puckered lips.

The planet shook; the radio systems picked up. It was all one voice now, the voice of Shadrim, that zombie planet that wanted us to stay here and be assimilated into its nightmarish ecosystem. The voice of the planet spoke in strange tongues and the nanomachines obeyed. We tried to get Mack to land, to drop down something we could cling onto and escape. He only hovered low, a look of shock and horror on his face.

The dust of the world poured into us. Living things, tiny AIs, pieces of that host that kept us here for so long. Mack just circled about and watched as we were disassembled, our parts and pieces connected to the ruins, now. They strung up our bodies like art, our intestines and bones collected with bacterial computers and small nanomachines, that somehow preserved us and made us do what the world told us to.

In our minds, we could hear it all the time. The thought, running through our veins like the whispers of space. Commanding us. Telling us what to do. Our We had gotten bigger, engulfed us. We had one mind now, the mind of the world. The mind of the ghost planet. It sang in our skin, set our nerves on fire.

And now we danced. We danced and our voices broadcast from those old radio waves. This was the radio song, the voice of Planet Shadrim. This was us and who we were. Mack sped off and we would have, too. But now we were dancing, our corpseskin cold. Soon, we would transcend. Transcend and be like our host, postflesh.

THE LIBRARY TWINS AND THE NEKROBEES

By Martha Hubbard

Martha Hubbard
lives on an island in the North Baltic Sea. For thousands of years a place of strange gods, mysteries, tragedies, and wonder, Saaremaa Island provides the perfect bedrock for a writer of dark fantasy. Previously, she has been a teacher, cook, stage manager, dramaturg in New York City’s Off-Off Broadway community, a parking lot company bookkeeper, and a community development worker. Recently, she put aside some of these activities to concentrate on her writing, but is still the Consulting Chef for the local Organic Farmers Union. Her story, “The Good Bishop Pays the Price”, appeared in Innsmouth Free Press’s anthology,
Historical Lovecraft
, and “I Tarocchi Dei d’Este” is in their
Candle in the Attic Window
.

For Catie

ALL AROUND THEIR hiding place, towering stacks of books careened upwards, their tops vanishing into murky darkness. Iris and Thyme Carter were on a late-night stakeout in the National Library of France because something was disturbing
their
books after hours, making them whimper and cry like hurt children. During the day, automatic lights flashed on if any moving object larger than a butterfly intercepted the infrared sensors. At night, these were switched off to save money, which meant that any creature entering these cathedrals of dust and paper then had to navigate in the dark. This was no problem for the ‘library twins’, as one of their genetic abnormalities was ultra-keen night vision; darkness was their friend. Now, at almost 23:00, the twins were hiding in a section reserved for French and Italian fiction.

One of Iris’s sometimes-disturbing genetic gifts was the ability to hear the voices of inanimate objects. Chairs, plants, street lamps, and bridges had, at one time or another, spoken directly to her. The pitiful moaning of tortured books had been disturbing Iris’ dreams for days. When the painful cries of her precious charges finally made sleep impossible, she insisted that Thyme join her in uncovering what was distressing them.

Iris was slumped on the floor, her back against a shelf of Italian mysteries, a first edition of Emile Zola’s
Thérèse Raquin
on her lap. Wearing disposable, white, cotton gloves, she was turning the brittle pages one by one, trying to discern any changes in the text as she remembered it. Lately, some of her favourite novels had begun to seem strangely...
different.

 ***

By the end of the 21st century, most reading material was read on electronic devices, when it wasn’t injected directly into the neurological pathways via learning tubes. Real books, of cloth and paper, were the cherished artefacts of a vanished era. To preserve these, librarians had gathered most of them into a scant handful of libraries in the Western world. The BNFP (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris) held works from Continental Europe: France, Italy, the Low Countries, Greece, and Germany. Harvard held American and Canadian literature, and technical and early medical texts. Berkeley—Micronesia and Australia, Maori and Aboriginal; The British Library—British and Russian—a bow to Karl Marx; the National Library of San Paolo—South American, Mexican and Spanish. There were smaller collections in Helsinki for Nordic works and Budapest for Central European. Reprieved from destruction at the last possible moment, these were considered the foundation blocks of Western thought.

Human hands were not normally allowed near any of the books protected in these specialised archives. Scholars who had been able to demonstrate a need to consult the originals used hermetically-sealed, climate-and-light-controlled boxes. Inside these, internal robotic fingers turned the pages, when instructed via touch pad. It wasn’t like holding a real book in your hands, but it was better than having the pages disintegrate from careless handling.

Curator of this section, Iris was one of the few allowed to touch these books. While they waited for intruders, she methodically reread the pages of
her children
for anomalies. Possessing photographic recall, she remembered by ‘seeing’ things—pages of books for example—in her mind-viewer, and could instantly detect any textural alterations. As the minutes ticked towards midnight, she was wondering if it had all been a bad dream. “Great Goddess, how did we get here?” she whispered to her sister.

 ***

Good question. As the famous frog once said, “It’s not easy being green.” While not green in appearance, the twins had grown up profoundly committed to the repair and protection of the environment.

By the middle of the 21st century, any thinking person, by then a declining species, understood that the pernicious effects of extensive agribusiness farming was transforming the residents of wealthy countries into slow-moving, cancer-ridden, dull-minded robots. The proliferation of foodstuffs assembled from refined corn syrup had created a sub-class of citizenry no longer able to discriminate healthy food from toxic. Soya derivatives mixed with reconfigured corn syrup, flavoured by e-numbers, were mashed and extruded into an endless variety of products. Diets consisting of little more than sugar, cellulose and food colouring made consumers sluggish and unhealthy. Sugar-induced torpor meant that, as people moved less and less, bones became dangerously brittle. Physical education programs in schools had long been abandoned because even the youngest children could not run or jump or risk the fractures that ensued from the smallest of accidents.

Early on, some people had developed Multiple Chemical Sensibilities (MCS)—in other words, they had become allergic to almost everything in their surroundings. Forced by their illnesses to escape the dangers presented by polluted water, air, soil, and food, many had retreated to guarded rural enclaves, as far from the centres of toxicity as possible, where they produced their own food, tried to live more sensible lives, and campaigned for more sensible farming and food production practices. America had become that dreaded hydra—a two-tierd society: one part, physically and mentally active and healthy; the other, physically incapable, diabetes-ridden and mentally incompetent.

Others, recognising the dangers before irreversible damage had been done to their biosystems, voluntarily removed themselves from the locations of greatest pollution.

Iris and Thyme’s parents had been among the first wave to recognise these growing environmental hazards. When Mama Carter learned she was carrying twins, she insisted they move to an island off the coast of Maine to gestate their babies. There, with other like-minded families, the community grew its own vegetables, raised sheep and chickens, and fished. Mama had been determined that her children’s minds and bodies would not be compromised by the toxicity of American supermarket offerings. As with so many well-laid plans, there had been a glitch. The elder Carters and their community had not anticipated the changes wrought in the seas by agricultural run-off.

When the twins were born, they seemed perfect: healthy bodies, smiling faces, prodigious lungs, which they demonstrated when annoyed or hungry. However, as they grew, they began to display some unusual abilities. For one thing, they could talk to each other without words across vast distances. They could also change their shapes and, in the form of any winged creature, could fly. A call of distress from Thyme would produce Iris leading a swarm of threatening birds in seconds.

They had other skills, as well. Iris could see events in the past, and project herself and her sister into them, while Thyme seemed able to project into the future. Papa Carter had been so concerned about the twins getting lost, injured, or trapped in other time periods that he made them promise to not use these powers—at all—until they were older and, hopefully, wiser. They loved their Papa, so they promised. Safe on their beloved island, the twins grew up convinced of the need to respect and protect their world. The environment responded by making them tall, beautiful and clever. “If only they weren’t twins and could have had individual styles, their lives would have been perfect,” they said but only to each other.

Time passed. Outside their secluded enclave, awareness of the need for healthier food and respect for the environment had increased in some places, so it became safe to leave Maine. Besides, the twins needed more of an education than their isolated haven could provide. Iris chose to study at USC Berkeley, while Thyme remained on the East Coast and went to Harvard. When both elected to study Library Science, no one was surprised. During their years on the island, books, real paper books—not electronic tablets—had been their dearest companions.

While they were studying on opposing coasts, their parents, worn out by coping with an earth in turmoil, elected to take BDL (Bodily Life Cessation). The twins were alone. When both were offered positions at the BNFP, they accepted.
What a lark,
they thought. They were 24 years old and had never left the States.

 ***

Relocation to France was blinding—a full-on blast. As so often in her past, Paris in the late decades of the 21st century had become a mecca for the world’s wannabe creatives and misfits. Not that these incomers were incapable—far from it. The variety of physical presentations and unusual abilities that had made them outcasts in societies composed mainly of sugar-munching trolls, made them ideally suited for life in 21st century Paris. These genetic newbies, who were too active, too lively, too noisy—too alive to be comfortable neighbours back home, found a warm welcome on the
rues
and
boulevards
of Paris.

Paris has always attracted a diverse collection of colourful immigrants. In the 20th century, refugees from France’s colonial past, from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, from Viet Nam and Cambodia, had transformed certain
arrondissements
of the often-stuffy city into vibrant bazaars. Now, again, the streets teemed with a visual, aural and olfactory cacophony of colours, styles, foods, and music. Not since the 1920’s had Parisian cafés vibrated with such a glittering array of gorgeous people and lively discussions. Her throbbing heart was the seedy, graffiti-decorated rue Belleville—far from the staid bourgeoisie of the riverbanks. Within a week, Iris and Thyme had an apartment on a high floor overlooking the
parc
, its creaky, wrought-iron-curlicue cage lift operated by state-of-the art computers. They dove into their new life, ugly ducklings transforming into swans as they fell.

Work-wise, it was perfect. The library most called the “TGB” (
Très Grand Bibliothèque
), Mitterrand’s monument to his ego, was also in the east of Paris, so required only one line change on the Metro. These were much less crowded than in the past, as so many people, unable to deal with stairs and walking long distances, worked from home. Mitterrand’s
Very Big Library
had tottered along into the future, its concrete towers chipped and mouldering, without losing its cachet amongst scholars, or any of its over twenty million volumes. This became their second home, its books their
raison d’être
.

 ***

Midnight found them sharing a sandwich. “Maybe we should give up,” said Thyme. “If I don’t get at least a little sleep, I’ll be comatose during Monsieur le Directeur’s scintillating presentation tomorrow.”

“That’s okay,” said Iris. “You go home and catch up on your beauty sleep. I’ll stand guard here.”

“No way. Whatever this is, we’re facing it together.”

“That’s the sister I know and love.” Iris beamed her most radiant smile.

“You stay here. I’m going to take a quick flit around.”

By down-shifting until she was as weightless as a hummingbird, Thyme could fly. Darting from shelf to shelf, up and down lightless rows of books, she was virtually invisible. Speeding round a corner, she had to backpedal her wings furiously to keep from colliding with a lighted flying object. Ducking into a space between two books of differing heights, she exclaimed, “What the...blathers is that?”

The glimmering purple thing buzzed and growled as it explored the shelves. It seemed unaware of her. Stopping near the end of the row she had just exited, it turned and hung, briefly motionless, before emitting a piercing, saw-like whistle. Out of the gloom behind, a phalanx of glowing, flying creatures appeared, moving up the rows and fanning out in groups, violet lights flickering on and off inside their rotund bodies. Clearly, they were looking for something—a book, perhaps.
I’ll be damned,
thought Thyme.
They’re bees—sentient, purple, light-producing bees.

As soon as the last of the platoon had passed her, their buzzing communication mode and regimented behaviour marking them as soldiers on a reconnaissance mission, Thyme headed back to Iris as quickly and soundlessly as her tiny wings could take her. “Iris, Iris, wake up. We’re being invaded by bees.”

“Huh! Killer bees?...I wasn’t asleep.”

“I don’t know about the ‘killer part’, but they’re purple, smart, and they’re looking for something.”

“Our books! They’re after our books.
Merde!
Those...those….” Iris couldn’t think of an expletive harsh enough. “Thyme, we have to stop them.”

“Shh...quiet! You’re right, but let’s think about this before we rush in like Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral.”

“No rushing, there—it was a standoff, one gunman against another.”

“That’s just what we could be facing—a standoff between a regiment of killer bees and two defenceless young women,” said Thyme.

“With special powers—don’t forget our special powers.”

“They have special powers, too. Have you ever looked at that book they keep locked up in M. le Directeur’s safe?”

“The one we’re not supposed to know is there...the
Necronomicon
?”

“That one. I think they have something to do with it. I have the feeling these flying terrorists are Nekrobees.”

“If that’s the case, we could be in way over our heads.” Iris flopped onto the floor, her head in her hands.