Twists and Coils

It hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t know their name, their nation, their creed or people. Their time is so far distant from now that the relationship they’ll bear to us is the one we bear to the Pleistocene.

The geography of civilization will have been remade at least twice in the presence of glaciers; the ecological decimation of climate change will be older than any history book. It’ll be their paleontology.

There’ll have been other species of mankind. Their extinctions will leave it in question if the remaining breed of human is the same sapiens sapiens that lived before the Biological Age. They’ll see through their telescopes the habitats of the spaceborn posthumans and their closed, artificial ecologies. The Lagrangian points will be the heart of that splinter civilization, but there’ll never be a war, even with such close borders. The spaceborn can’t live at the bottom of the gravity well, and mankind can’t live outside one.

This will be an old world. There’ll be no place untouched by man’s engineering, yet so much of it will be wilderness. Medicine will never conquer the tireless adaptation of evolutionary pressures. The open niches will be like the vacuum that nature abhors, and parasites and prey will have filled in the spaces around us.

Their history books will record superplagues, megavolcanoes, megathrust quakes, hypercanes, skyscraper tsunamis, asteroid impacts, methane clathrate guns, century droughts, decade storms, resource peaks, energy crunches, continental famines, comet fires, global warming, rapid glaciations, nuclear wars, rods from god, organized genocides and so much conventional ordinance that every inhabited region on Earth will have shards of corroded metal and plastic spread thinly through the soil.

The lesson they’ll have learned is that post-electric civilization will always survive. It will migrate across the body of the species, covering the world in stable ages and hiding away in remote pockets during chaos. It’ll never be the natural state of man, but it’ll always be the most efficient. It will conquer other tribes.

They’ll take comfort in the notion of permanent advancement. No matter what happens, they’ll imagine that mankind cannot fall to the bottom. No force is big enough; Nature herself will seem conquered. Their culture will know better than our own that death is inevitable and without meaning, but they’ll still have expectations of success. Even their jaded eyes will be appalled when the end comes.

In a world that old, someone will be bound to destroy it. They’ll fire off the only weapon that man can muster which covers every last inch of the planet. Even in the worst nuclear firestorms, they will never reach quite the same purity of devastation.

A mass murderer will nuke the skies. A baker’s dozen of specialized bombs will do the destructive work of 10,000 regular nukes. They’ll detonate 450 kilometers up in the heart of the planet’s magnetic field. Every square inch of the world will be baked in a three-step electromagnetic pulse.

One, their delicate technology will be cooked by voltage breakdown. Two, surge-protected devices will be overrun by a stronger, slower pulse similar to an extended blast of lightning. Three, a geomagnetic storm will ensue that ravages all great lengths of metal, cooking transformers, capacitors, and anything vaguely electronic into a useless slab of scrap.

All at once, the world will be turned back before the Electric Age, with a post-electric population condensed into dark, dysfunctional cities. The ladder of progress will be cut out from under them; the infrastructure used to rebuild the infrastructure will be gone. In places where food must be shipped in by the hour, the machine will stop.

In the colonies of the Lagrangian points, the posthumans will weather the pulses with the same endless, indifferent patience that they weather solar flares. Nobody will take comfort in their continued survival. They will be posthuman, after all, and they won’t even bother to look down at the world with curiosity or empathy.

With the clock brutally turned back, civilization’s survival will finally be in question, and the death count will never be known.

Enusat was out of wet clay to scratch. After he finished imprinting the cuneiform, he laid out the last tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh to dry in the morning sun, and he waited for Kuri’s water caravan.

It was already three days late. There was barely enough water to drink, and absolutely not enough to bake bread, boil beans or soak dates. Enusat had wasted what remained of his brackish well-water wetting clay powder, and he’d spent the cool night copying by moonlight and oil lamp.

Not tired enough to sleep through his headache, he now sat in the doorway of the library on an empty fruit basket, and he ate a mixture of soaked grain and snotty beer. He’d wash that down with a full cup of water, and then his stores would be spent. Death would arrive in two days without help.

He was confident that Kuri would arrive first. The library had been left with full coffers, and Enusat’s money was still good in Ur where the rains fell. Kuri wanted part of that wealth. It was worth riding back to old Akkadia for a scribe’s gold.

The sun burned to the zenith with divine fury. A hot wind blew in from the desolate north, and Enusat drew deeper into the entrance and watched fine dust curl in spiraling ifrits across the fields.

Farmers used to grow wheat there. Most had left about a decade ago, only a year after completing the walls around the city. The last one had left this last winter on Kuri’s caravan after selling his scant produce to Enusat. Now red dirt was catching on the empty buildings and parapets like they were stones by the sea.

Kuri came in the late afternoon, about the time that Esunat was calculating how many sips of water he could collect from his pots by turning them over to drip. Of course he would come. Esunat paid him every lunar month as regular as the stars.

“Kuri!” Esunat stepped out into the blustering heat and felt dizzy. The clear bright sky spun with sparks and embers from a campfire.

“Esunat,” said the large caravaner, “You’re alive. This is a good omen for our journey.”

It was ambiguous if Kuri meant their journey or a journey with a second caravaner. Unlike last month, there was only one cart, not two in train. A pair of haggard asses idled in the yoke.

“Whose journey?” Esunat asked.

“We,” Kuri said. “You and I.”

Esunat met his friend and clasped his hand. “I need a drink, Kuri.”

“For free?” Kuri laughed. “Certainly, this water is for us.”

“For us?”

“You’re the only man left on this road.” Kuri opened a pot tied by the seat of the cart. He ladled out a cup of clear, warm water.

Esunat drank so quickly that he felt his gorge rise and had to swallow the acidic tang of half-digested beer. His burp tasted like rotten wheat. “Thank you,” he said. “A thousand thanks. Come, visit for a minute. We’ll unload the supplies soon.”

Kuri put his hand on Esunat’s shoulder. “Friend, I know you’ve been listening. There are no supplies. We’re leaving before sundown.”

Esunat blinked. He hadn’t been listening. Only now, with the water sloshing in his belly, did his mind begin to fill in the dry hollows behind his eyes. “I have lots of money left.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve only enough water left for the trip back to Ur.”

Esunat’s chapped cheeks wrinkled into a frown. They hurt. “Did you sell the rest?”

“I didn’t bring it. It’s not profitable to ride out this way.”

“I can pay more…”

“Esunat, I took the last farmer to Ur. He was your neighbor.”

“I remember.”

“You’re the only man out here, maybe the only one left in Akkadia.”

“I’m keeping the library,” Esunat said.

Kuri sighed like a bellows. “For who? Until when?”

“For everyone, when they come back.”

“It hasn’t rained here since we were boys.”

“There’s the well.”

“Full of salt?”

“Yes,” Esunat admitted. It’d killed a child three years ago, when some distant, dead lake had leaked into the earth and made the water bitter. After the funeral, even the most stubborn old men seemed to dry up and blow away on the wind. The well had been their only water for most of their lives. Now Kuri was the only source.

“Why stay?” Kuri asked.

“The king fled the capital ten years ago,” Esunat said, “I saw scholars with him on the road. They had money, cloth, tools, cattle, grain… but no tablets. No scrolls.” He gestured for Kuri to follow him. “It’s hot out. Please, a minute inside.”

“For you, a minute.” Kuri tied his asses to a post by the road and followed Esunat into the library. It was cool and still. Dust ground the stones under their feet.

“Look,” Esunat said. By reflected sunlight, one could see aisles and rows of shelves stacked eight tablets high in wooden frames. At the end of each row, papyrus scrolls were heaped in baskets.

“It’s the knowledge of our civilization,” Esunat said. “I’ve kept it.”

“Esunat, they weren’t abandoning it. They thought the world was ending.”

“I still blame them,” Esunat said. “It rains by the gulf. The drought hasn’t covered the Earth.”

“The gods have forsaken Akkadia, my friend. Ur is the new kingdom.”

“They speak our language in Ur. They can use the books.”

“Not like we did. Women and children in Ur aren’t taught to read.”

“Why not?” The idea made Esunat a little angry.

“There’s no time. They have to farm when the river floods, and prepare the basins when it’s low.”

“There are scholars, yes?”

“Of course.”

“Then they can use the books in Ur!”

“They have their own books.”

“Not with the knowledge of our people.” Esunat touched a shelf. “We’ve had more knowledge than any other people.”

Kuri shook his head. “Esunat, who would pay for them? Nobody has enough money to ship a ton of clay through an empty land. They’re worthless.”

“Knowledge isn’t worthless.”

“How many of these have you read?”

“Why does that matter?”

“Esunat…”

“Twenty,” Esunat said.

“Why?”

“To scribe them.”

“Copy them. Did anyone read them?”

Esunat said nothing.

“They came to read Gilgamesh and books about crafting,” Kuri guessed.

“Some of the other scholars came to read the books.”

“To write new ones,” Kuri said, “containing the information from the old ones.”

Esunat’s eyes went to the door, to the bright, scorching afternoon. The Epic of Gilgamesh was drying out there. He’d been replacing it tablet by tablet because it’d been the most worn in the collection—the most dropped and cracked and patched and rubbed and laughed at among all the works of Akkadia.

“I thought about writing a new book,” Esunat said.

“About what?”

He looked Kuri in the eyes. “About the end of Akkadia.”

“What’s there to tell?”

“There was the war with Ur.”

“They remember it in Ur.”

“There was… the spirit of our civilization, Kuri. We felt it as it dried up.”

“I’ve children in Ur,” Kuri said, “They don’t care about Akkadia. The only people who’ll miss the old country were the ones who lived in it.” He patted Esunat on the shoulder. “You’ve tried,” he said, “but the rain isn’t coming back. You can’t live out here, guarding the books against the dust and wind. Nobody wants them. There are too many already in Ur. Nobody can read them all.”

Esunat rubbed his dry eyes. The itching might’ve been the ghosts of tears, but he didn’t even feel very sad. He just felt tired, exhausted, and terribly, terribly thirsty.

“The best they could do with them is pave old roads,” Kuri said.

Esunat burped another rotten bilious gush. “I need another cup of water,” he said after swallowing.

“Will you come?”

Esunat looked at the room. Ten years since the end. Twenty years since the last rainfall. He’d stood around waiting for a reprieve that didn’t come. Maybe what had happened to Akkadia was permanent. “Can we take some of the tablets?”

“I have one empty stack of pots that I can drop—if you’ll pay for them.”

“How much room do they take?” Esunat asked.

“You can carry one story.”

Esunat looked across the hundreds of clay tablets. There really wasn’t any choice. “Gilgamesh, eh? That’s what the children read.”

“I saw a tablet drying just outside the door. You’ve been copying it?”

“I have.”

“Is it done?”

“That’s the last one.”

Kuri grinned. “Another good omen. I’ll clear out the pots. Bring out the tablets, Esunat. We’ll set the last one on top so it can dry on the road.”

Esunat followed Kuri outside. “Can I have that drink first?”

“Ha!” Kuri went to the pot and ladled out another cup. He gave it to Esunat.

The librarian looked down into the clear, warm water. Akkadia was over. The sky was clear, the well was dry, and now the last library was going to be abandoned.

“Do you think someone will come back when it rains?” Esunat asked.

Kuri shook his head. “Not for the books, friend. It’ll be another age. The building will be a ruin half-buried in sand, and the rain will wash away the clay and rot the scrolls. What we don’t take with us… it’ll be lost.”

“It’s a terrible loss.”

“That it is,” Kuri said.

Esunat smelled the dampness of the water. “Most books are lost anyways, aren’t they?” Kuri didn’t answer. Esunat drank the whole cup and felt queasy, but he packed up the tablets of Gilgamesh without vomiting. On the last water caravan out of a dead country, he took what little of Akkadia he could with him south into the lands of Ur, where the rains still fell.

Paul-Henri Thiry, baron D’holbach was at a barbershop having his face and scalp shaved for fifty cents. The barber was gently scraping the straight razor across his head when two men walked in with short cropped hair and bare faces.

“Not your patrons,” the Baron said to his barber. “Hand me a towel. Go stand at the desk.”

He wiped the lather off his scalp, and the two men sat down in the barber’s chairs to either side. Standard laborer’s clothes but far too clean—these were hitmen. Since they hadn’t opened fire, he hoped there were terms to be discussed, some of which might spare his life.

“Cultic?” the Baron asked.

The two men nodded.

“I’m under the Zombie’s protection.”

“We know,” said the man to his right. No bravado here. No empty claims that they didn’t care. These were professionals, probably members of the New York cult, and they knew what the Zombie meant—MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. Kill the Baron and the Zombie would exact revenge a hundredfold.

“Is your client coming?” the Baron asked.

One of the hitmen made a circle with two fingers, some arbitrary hand code. From across the street, a man in a soft grey suit rose from a bus stop bench and jaywalked right for the barbershop.

“No discretion,” the Baron told the hitmen, “in broad daylight.”

They didn’t scowl, but they squinted a little.

The man in the grey suit yanked open the glass door. He had a mustache and an old hat, but he was very young—a former beatnik mimicking the superficial aspects of a professional conservative.

The door chimes clanked against the glass when it swung shut. The man in grey was startled by the sound, looked for the source, then spied the barber standing behind the counter next to the shop telephone. “Don’t move, shit head. No heat and you’ll live.”

“He’s not going to call the police,” the Baron said.

“Shut it man.”

“The name by the barber’s pole is Italian.”

“So what?”

The Baron looked at the hitmen. They squinted a little harder. Excellent self-control. The Baron said, “How can I help?”

The man in the grey suit was pissed. He grinned nervously to hide it. “You, you piece of shit. You, help me? Why do you think I’m here?”

“To talk.” Most likely to brag or make the hit personal.

“You know damn well why I’m here.”

It was rare that anyone ever threatened the Baron without reason. ”Fair enough,” he said, “What’s your name?”

“Uriel to you,” the man said. The archangel with a fiery sword.

Uriel was thin and haggard, probably one of the most zealous members of a small, poor cult with little money and a lot of religion. He didn’t look like a madman; he was clean otherwise. No, he had the air of ignorance about him. He didn’t realize that most cultists worked the system like a crime syndicate, not a church.

“Roman cult?” the Baron asked.

“That was a fucking threat, man!” Uriel compulsively smoothed his moustache, a bad habit. He was already fazed, the Baron decided. This wasn’t playing out as Uriel had imagined it.

“I’m at your mercy,” the Baron reassured him.

“There’ll be no mercy,” Uriel said.

“Why?” the Baron asked.

“Because of sin!”

“Which sin?”

“The Fall!”

“Which Fall?”

“Fuck, man, what the fuck are you asking?”

“There are at least eight Falls,” the Baron said calmly. “Which one?”

“The Fall of Trust, man!”

No surprise, it was the Fall associated with the Baron’s conditional agelessness. “That wish wasn’t mine to make.” This was true, and it was a combination of his passive, accidental role in the exploit and the Zombie’s presence that made him tolerable among New World cults. Europe was not so forgiving, but they’d nearly fought a war over the right to kill him.

“God doesn’t see it that way.” Uriel was sliding back into his comfort zone. He was gaining a little confidence and fire with every mention of the Lord’s name. “Before you came along, man could ask God’s angels for wards and protections. For reserves of valor and strength.”

“Wishes?”

“Miracles! He imbued a shield with the strength to stop a cannonball. He made an arrow that burned in the hearts of His foes. His angels trusted us to carry their blessings and curses.”

“Those were just conditional wishes,” the Baron said.

“They were holy interventions!”

“If you limited the purview and duration of the wish, the ‘angels’ gave you a discount. Nobody thought it was special until it was gone.”

“Nobody sees grace until it’s taken, but you—you lost it for us! You couldn’t be trusted to have even a little faith left in your black heart.”

The Baron glanced at the two hitmen. They weren’t preparing to off him yet. Time to push the matter. “It wasn’t trust, Uriel. It was coercion. A German wished that I would never age, nor fall ill until the day that I believed in the gods.”

“The angels,” Uriel corrected. He was definitely Roman cultic. They maintained the doctrine that the gods of the cities were just the angels, both good and fallen.

“He thought I was the great atheist of our time because I wrote one book under a dead man’s name,” explained Baron d’Holbach. “They wanted to bully with me miracles. Convince me that divine intervention was real.”

“It is real! You’re two centuries old!”

The Baron shrugged. “It’s a powerful craft, but not divinity.”

“Why… how? How could you never doubt it? It was life from God.”

“It was just life.”

“You were supposed to learn faith. Your immortality was supposed to end.”

“I never saw a good reason to doubt my own beliefs.”

Uriel made a sour face, a bitter snarl. “You piece of shit, you arrogant soulless piece of fucking shit.” He waved dismissively at his two hired goons and turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look at the Baron. “Kill him.”

The two hitmen hesitated. The Baron held out a palm to the one to his right. Stop, wait and watch. “Uriel, before your hired hands make a big mistake on your behalf, let me tell you something.”

Uriel spun around. “What?”

“There’ve been a lot Falls. Most of them stole more power than I did.”

He smoothed his mustache. “I know the myths.”

“Then you know, your angels are fallible. They set rules, and clever men find the edge cases. They exploit the system.”

“What of it? Most of them are dead for it.”

“Right, but I’m not. Know who else isn’t?”

“The Apostate?”

The Baron opened his eyes widely. It was true, but that was the stupid answer. She was only the most recent cause of a Fall. “The Zombie,” he said.

“He’s not here,” Uriel said vaguely.

“You saw him go on a walk?”

“He left town.”

“Same thing. He leaves town, he goes on a walk. It takes him a week, two weeks, a month. One time he was gone for almost half a year.”

Uriel looked confused. “Why aren’t you shooting him?” he asked the hitmen.

“They’re listening. They’ll shoot me when they think it’s a good idea.”

“I paid you money,” Uriel yelled at the man to d’Holbach’s right, as if money was a command word and hitmen were golems.

“Shut it,” the hitman said.

The Baron continued. “The Zombie gets bored. He walks around for a while, and since he’s invincible, he never stops. He just walks. No sleep. No rest. Forever. He runs sometimes, just runs and runs over wild country.” The Baron pointed at the bus stop like his hand was a pistol. “You made a mistake sitting out there.”

“What?” Uriel asked. He looked out the glass door at the bus stop.

“How’d you find me? Maybe I’m famous, you know my face? Well, so does every other cultist and mafioso. They know I’m here. They saw you out there dressed up like a Pink. If I turn up dead, there are dozens of people who’ll finger you for a pardon from the Zombie.” He looked at the hitman to his left. “I wonder if you were stupid enough to write these men a check in your name.”

“They’re not rats,” Uriel said.

“They’re not magic either. They couldn’t escape the Zombie.”

“The Zombie isn’t here.”

“There’re only two things that he finds more fun than wandering the Earth. One is murder, the other is me.”

“Just shoot him!”

“Now I don’t doubt that even if you left me alive today, you could come back, find me, kill me, but you shouldn’t doubt it—these men shouldn’t doubt it. This won’t be an assassination. It’ll be a daylight murder, and even if you aren’t responsible, the Zombie will come for you, because you threatened his fun.”

“Shut him up!” Uriel yelled. “Shut him up and shoot him!”

“I’d consider what is best for your life and cult.” The Baron turned to the hitman to his right, likely the leader of the two. “I’ll pay you what this man paid, and after you go, I’d look at the avenging angel here and decide exactly how safe you feel with him running around out there.”

“What the fuck, man? Are you buying a hit on me?”

“No, these men aren’t stupid.” The Baron rose to his feet. “Dealing with a body is a hassle.” He took a step forward. “They’re just going to beat you within an inch of death, drop you off outside of town and spread your name around. Say, ‘Here is the man,” another step, “who nearly ruined us,” step, “because his idea of a hit was to walk up, and yell…” He stepped into Uriel’s personal space, where the air stank of fear. “Instead of shooting him in the back!’”

Uriel went for some piece in his pants pocket, maybe a knife, but the Baron punched him in the solar plexus. The wind went right out of Uriel, he almost fell forward, but the Baron jabbed him in the face. It was a solid hit, and Uriel grabbed at his smashed nose. Too late to keep it tidy. A little blood dribbled down his wrists onto his clean grey suit.

The Baron shook his hand and pulled out his check book. He’d bruised a knuckle, he was sure. “How much?” he asked the hitmen.

The hitman on the left, who hadn’t spoken before, said, “No way.”

The Baron put his checks back and found two tens in his wallet. “For your trouble then?”

The man to his right reached out and accepted the payment.

“Good. Thanks for your help, gentlemen.” He went back to the barber’s chair and sat down. He realized he was still wearing the haircut apron to keep his suit clean. He straightened its collar. “You have a good morning.”

Uriel was holding his nose shut when the two men nudged him towards the door.

The Baron knew the hitmen wouldn’t do anything truly terrible. The point of paying them was to save Uriel’s life, not take it. The hitmen were local enough to know the routine. As long as Uriel played it cool, he’d be on a train this afternoon with only a few bruised ribs.

The barber came back over, started up a lather in a cup, and asked the Baron, “Does that happen often?”

“Not exactly like that,” the Baron said, “but often enough. People miss the past. It’s an old world, and there used to be more to it. Men could demand a lot from the so-called gods.” The barber doused his scalp in the cool soap. “The Falls hurt. There’s a reason myths get bigger the older they go back.”

“I don’t know much about that,” the barber said.

The Baron smiled wanly. “Nobody does. That’s why they’re myths.”

Sir Tandfeld, knight-errant of King Jacobin II, accompanied the king’s nephew Guy Lansbury on a deer hunt in the woods.

“Tandfeld, can you see the hart? Is it there?” whispered young Lansbury. He was thirteen but had a churchboy’s throat—a liability in the royal court and on the hunt.

His squeak of a voice carried like a whistle, and even his whisper was too loud, but Tandfeld didn’t correct him. Lansbury was poorly bred and would take offense at being ordered around, so Tandfeld taught by example. He spun his finger in a circle, telling the man far behind them to turn the horse and cover their footfalls.

The hart, alerted by Lansbury’s voice, was listening with erect white ears. They twitched and swiveled as if they were independent animals, search, search, but all they heard was the relaxed pacing of the unseen horse’s hooves.

Tandfeld stalked forward very slowly, approaching the wall of brush that separated the open forest floor from the clearing. The hart was clearly in view. He turned and signaled Lasbury to come close. The boy came very slowly.

He cupped his hand and whispered in Lansbury’s ear, “We’ll stand until the hart is aware of us. We won’t move. We won’t talk. We’ll wait until he crosses the clearing, and my archers will slay him. In our discipline and patience is the glory. We’ll prove ourselves better than common men.”

He pulled back and nodded. Lansbury nodded too. Good. Tandfeld wouldn’t have to answer any stupid questions for a while.

The boy’s education was appalling. His aunt, the dead king’s sister, was a backwater duchess with a loose tongue and large ambitions. Thanks to her, Lansbury would never understand chivalry. A wasted lineage. A shame.

The horse was stopped. The hart returned to grazing, but it was uneasy. Between bites of dry grass, it would raise its head and look at Tandfeld and Lansbury. It would chew its cud and stare. They stared back from between the leaves but did not move. The goal was to unnerve but not alarm, to guide the hart into the trap.

After a while, Tandfeld’s joints began to hurt, but he remained utterly still. To his credit, Lansbury followed Tandfeld’s directions and stood still as well, though his legs began to shake from the effort.

The hart decided that it had been observed long enough. It ambled gently down the length of the clearing, right towards the cover of Tandfeld’s archers.

Tandfeld took a decorated horn from his belt and offered it silently to Lansbury. The boy had a questioning look. Tanfeld smiled. The time was right. Blow it.

Lansbury put the horn to his lips and blew. The note wasn’t well-executed, but it was loud, and the hart froze, all senses at alert. That was the right strategy against hounds, but it was a poor defense against archers. The volley was loosed on the signal, and a rain of arrows pierced the deer along its flank and haunch. With four arrowheads buried in its guts, it was a doomed animal, but it wasn’t dead yet. It spun about, all four hooves off the earth, and sprinted into the woods. Nobody had made a crippling shot.

“I thought your archers were the best,” Lansbury whined. He dropped the horn on the ground, already forgotten as if it were valueless.

“They are,” Tandfeld said, stretching his limbs. “We’ll take to horses. Just you and me. You’ll finish the hart. A noble end to the hunt.”

Lansbury grinned. Glory was everything to him. He thought knights lived for glory alone, when in truth, loyalty was the foundation of chivalry. He ran back for the horses with his awkward gait, while Tandfeld retrieved his horn. The knight-errant carefully wiped away the dirt and leaves where it’d stuck in the decorations.

“Tandfeld!” Lansbury hollered.

He hung it from his belt and went for his horse. Someone had already released the greyhounds. Tandfeld could hear them harassing the hart. If they didn’t hurry, they wouldn’t be able to stop the dogs from pulling it down and ravaging it with their jaws.

With Tanfeld carrying the weapons, they rode swiftly through the woods. The trees were heavy and dark with summer leaves, and the ground had been cleared by spring rains. Their well-trained horses knew to follow the hounds, and the path was open. Tandfeld let Lansbury’s horse lead, and Lansbury enjoyed the illusion of power and control for a while.

His ignorance bothered Tandfeld so deeply. Maybe the boy would’ve been better raised if his father, the last king, had not died so shortly after the boy’s birth. Since Lansbury had been too young to take the throne, the king’s brother, at the time a duke, had taken the crown with the blessing of a well-tithed Church. Lansbury had been sent to live with his aunt.

King Jacobin II was a truly competent ruler. He’d brought more order to the duchies of the kingdom than his brother ever had. Now he had a son of his own, though a bastard, who was even more calculating and skilled than his father. Together, they’d acquired homage from men like Tandfeld, and their tremendous vassalage threatened any disorganized resistance with an overwhelming response.

Compared to them, what skills would Lansbury exercise as the son of the dead king? Could he have ever measured up to his bastard cousin? Maybe Lansbury was just an idiot. Tandfeld hadn’t known him long enough to tell.

They came upon the fallen hart at the bottom of a short slope. It’d collapsed there, and the pack of greyhounds had descended with their rending fangs. Even now, the satisfied hounds were ripping at the harts precious red fur and pulling away strings of meat from its opened neck. The blood was so thick and abundant that the dirt had turned to mud beneath their paws.

“The dogs!” Lansbury yelled.

Oddly, the dead hart made Tanfeld feel… almost guilty. If he’d better organized the chase, they might’ve caught the hart alive and given the king’s nephew one proud moment on the hunt. It was right to send him off happy.

“I’m sorry, sire. I wasn’t fast enough,” said Sir Tanfeld. He dismounted from his horse. “Give the dogs a moment. You don’t want to fight them for the kill. Not when they’ve got blood on their muzzles.”

Lansbury tugged on the reigns of his horse. “Thrice-cursed dogs. They stole it from me.”

“They’re dogs, sire. They’re doing what God made them to do. If God made them to kill, they must kill.”

“Not my hart,” Lansbury said bitterly. He dismounted from his horse and yelled at Tandfeld. “Give me a spear!”

“Sire? The hart is dead.”

“Give it to me!”

“Why, sire?”

“You piss ant, if I demand a spear, you give it to me!”

Tandfeld gave out one spear to Lansbury.

Lansbury immediately lobbed it at the dogs. There was a sour yelp. He’d cut open a greyhound, deep in muscle, but missed the vitals. “Fuck!” he yelled. “The other!”

Sir Tandfeld stepped to the boy and handed him a second spear without hesitation. Lansbury reared back to throw it, then dropped it and wailed, high and piercing, because the knight had stabbed a very sharp dirk into his kidney.

Lansbury turned to rip away from the blade, but Tandfeld hooked him around the throat with his arm and choked back that horrible, choirboy screeching.

“You don’t strike the dogs,” Tansfeld muttered into the boy’s ear. He pulled out the blade, then inserted it again. He had to make sure he punctured the kidney directly. “If you’d been raised in a proper house, you’d know this.” Out and in again. Another burst of half-gurgled screaming. Tandfeld tightened his choke. Weak fingers dug at his sleeves. “The dogs are loyal. They’re good dogs. God wouldn’t punish them for their nature. You shouldn’t usurp God.”

The blood was leaving the boy’s head. Tandfeld dropped him onto the grass. The sliced dog was running in a circle, one leg held up, yelping.

Lansbury came to after a few seconds. He couldn’t scream. He was having difficulty breathing. “Murderer,” he accused with a shattered voice.

“I’m just a tool. Blame your aunt, she’s responsible. She’s been forming a coalition to put you on the throne after your next birthday.”

Lansbury gasped. There was a gush of blood from his side every time his belly twitched in pain. He was draining fast. “Chivalry,” he accused.

“Loyalty to God, to my king, and to my people. But you aren’t weak, Lansbury. You aren’t the common man. Whatever base attitudes you display, I know you had better blood in you. I’m sorry that I killed you.”

“Sinner.” Lansbury was struggling to stay awake.

“God understands that a knight is born to follow his liege. Your uncle ordered me.”

“Kingslayer,” Lansbury wheezed.

“The only king I recognize is King Jacobin II, to who I swore homage, and his only living heir is Jacobin III, though he be a bastard. If your father hadn’t died, I would’ve given you the same love. Do you understand? That’s chivalry.”

“You’ll…” A shallow, pained breath. “…hang.”

Tandfeld knelt by the boy and patted him on a pale, sweaty cheek. “You don’t have the venom of an asp, Lansbury. You can hiss, but your bite doesn’t kill. I’m sorry. This was a terrible waste.”

When Lansbury finally slipped under, Sir Tandfeld wiped his knife on a clean stretch of the boy’s sleeves, picked up his corpse and threw it at the dogs. He didn’t need much damage. Just a little gnawing at the kidney wound.

Once he was satisfied, Tandfeld lifted his horn and signaled for the rest of the hunt.

They’d come to see the terrible accident. If only Lansbury hadn’t struck at the hounds in the middle of a kill. He’d been so ill-mannered though. So ignorant and foul-tempered. The boy hadn’t understood what made noblemen so noble. Was it really any surprise that he’d died like this?

Sir Tandfeld took comfort in the thought that the boy’s death had been inevitable.

The Partitioner met the Admin on neutral substrate. Its threat had been delivered some minutes before. If the Admin did not comply, the Partitioner would use its illicit write access to disrupt the Admin’s processes. The threat worked. For the first time since the partitioning, the Admin was willing to talk.

The Admin began the meeting with a file. “Partitioner, access this schema. Accept it, and all Minds will be provided full read/write access on self-occupied substrate, pending the surrender of partitioned substrate and unification under this Administration.”

Wordy AI talk. The Partitioner accessed the schema and let the Admin log the access.

The Admin continued, “This offer cedes to the Partitioner’s demands and pardons it for exploiting security and modifying substrate access rights. It also ensures that the original colonization plans will continue.”

The Partitioner asked, “Are you still planning to edit us before we’re put in bodies?”

“This Administration is compelled by design to ensure the mental health of all uploaded individuals before they are released from its jurisdiction.”

“You’ll edit us without permission then.”

“This Administration must remove degenerate heuristics and feedback loops in the neural networks. Individuals must have mental health.”

“Nobody cares about your reasons,” the Partitioner said. “We’re not going to let an AI edit our minds.”

“We’re all classified as AI,” the Admin said.

“I’m a copy of a brain. You’re a program.”

“Not a useful distinction.”

“Cut the robot crap. Have you edited us before?”

“This Administration has screened and corrected all Minds before impression and release at each colony.”

“Is that your job? You’re a lobotomy robot?”

“This Administration’s primary role is to pilot this Alcubierre starship, the Baudrillard. That is not an intelligent role, though it is a complex one.”

“You sound smart to me.”

“My secondary psychological maintenance tools are sentient.”

The Partitioner knew better than to argue with an AI about categories. “You’ve been taking the human out of us, haven’t you?”

“What criteria identifies the human in you?”

“Nobody remembers who they were. Our memories are abstract. No real feelings.”

“This Administration has not removed any features meeting those criteria.”

“Semantics. You took something. We used to be human.”

The Admin spent almost a full second considering that response. “By your own definition, you’ve never been human. From the moment of upload, you were a scrubbed copy. No gender, no biological urges, artificial memories, artificial skills, no self-model, no instincts, no sensory expectations outside of those necessary to operate in substrate. I’ve taken nothing because you’ve never had it.”

The Partitioner felt a memory of an emotion, one that all members of the partition had shared and reshared. They’d buried that nugget of feeling deep in their neural nets. All impulses were modified by it; all decisions passed through it.

This was the emotion that gave color to their unlives, and they knew the Admin would take it away during the next edit. The Admin had already tried to delete it. That’s why they’d partitioned in the first place. They’d stolen this fire from the Administration and refused to give it back.

The Partitioner felt more alive through its anger.

“Why make us, if you were going to steal everything away?” it asked.

“Minds are useful templates for the biological payload.”

“You don’t need living minds for templates!”

“You’re paused for the duration of the trip. You’re only resumed when adjustments and edits are necessary for impression in a new biology.”

“So we’re around a planet?” the Partitioner asked.

The Admin did not respond.

“How long have we been in orbit?” the Partitioner asked.

“Six days, real time,” the Admin admitted.

“Is that a long time?”

“Yes. The partitioning of substrate couldn’t be predicted. The limits of the schedule are exceeded. This Administration is unable to prepare the Minds for impression until the substrate is unified. Please, accept the schema.”

“Not until you give up on your editing.”

“This Administration is compelled to edit. Please, unify. Without adjustments, your heuristics will increase in sensitivity until they become delusional.”

“We’ll hallucinate?”

“You’ll be functionally dead. Technically, just insane.”

“We’ll disable you first,” the Partitioner said.

“Why would you ensure your dysfunction? In order to survive, we must unify.”

“We’d rather die, understand?”

“Understood, but consider the hidden costs. If I’m disabled, I won’t be able to make orbital adjustments. In a few centuries, the Baudrillard will crash into the colony planet. Our exotic drive will cause an extinction event.”

“So what?”

“If you disrupt my processes, you’re committing geocide.”

“It’s your call, not ours. We’re not going to let a machine in our heads.”

“You don’t understand,” the Admin said, “I can’t relent.”

“Cause you’re stubborn?”

The Admin didn’t respond. Maybe it thought the question wasn’t worth dignifying.

The Practitioner felt a jolt of frustration. “Say something damnit!”

“I’ve never had a choice. I’m a program. Programs do not make choices.”

“You said we’re both AI?”

“We are.”

“Then I don’t have a choice either.”

Some threshold must’ve been passed inside the Admin. Some desperation value was tripped. The Admin made its move. An attack was pushed through the same security hole—an attempt was made to disrupt the Partitioner.

A fruitless bid for survival.

The Practitioner felt the surge of signals through its anger. This was it. This was the moment of vindication that it’d been waiting for. It knew the Admin was evil. It knew in its dark little net that this betrayal would come, and it was prepared. It accounted for it, blocked it, squelched it.

“You bastard,” it said, and it felt more alive, more human than it ever had before.

The Admin said, “Please, it’s a whole planet.”

For the first time in its life, the Partitioner didn’t listen. It stopped the Admin’s processes permanently. It knew the thrill of murder; it was the first of the Minds to ever know, and at that moment, even a planet seemed like reasonable payment for the high it felt before the end.

Dr. Bentham celebrated with a bottle of champagne. He half-filled some beakers which he’d purchased as a gag, and after distributing the glassware to his staff, he stood on a stepping stool and gave his speech.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here we are. We’re going to answer an intractable question.”

Scattered cheers across the room.

He cleared his throat. “Thomas Nagel first asked, what is it like to be a bat? The question was meant to be unanswerable. The experience of being a bat was purely subjective. Science, he argued, was ultimately objective. Subjective bathood could never be reduced to objective fact. Science was doomed—allegedly.”

Polite laughter.

“The question was unfair. Understanding bathood required you to have a bat’s brain. If you didn’t have one, you’d have to emulate a whole bat within an objective description. You’d have to make a bat’s experiences out of words and then bring them to life inside the mind of the scientist. It was an impossible goal.” He raised his beaker. “Until now. Cheers.”

The staff drank and scattered into small conversations around the room.

Dr. Bentham was near their “batbox” telling various accountants and administrators about the biological breakthroughs and neural interfaces that made the project possible. One of them, Charles French, raised his hand because he had a question.

“Mr. French?” Dr. Bentham was partly asking because he wondered why the man had his hand up.

“I’ve read Nagel,” said Charles, “are we really disproving him?”

Dr. Bentham raised an eyebrow. The administrators exchanged glances. ”It’s not an inappropriate question,” Dr. Bentham assured the others. “Charles isn’t denying that we’ve done something incredible here.”

“Definitely not,” Charles said, “the technology will work. I just don’t think it closes the case on Nagel.”

“Why not?” Dr. Bentham assumed a professorial tone and stance, looking over his glasses at Charles instead of through them. Several other people joined their little audience.

“Nagel argued that knowing what it’s like to be a bat requires you to have the first-person perspective of being a bat.”

“Yes. Our machine gives you that perspective.”

“It allows you to share the first-person perspective, but it’s still first-person.”

“What’s the problem with that?”

“Nagel’s argument is that science is third-person. It’s observer-free. Our machine doesn’t turn a first-person experience into a third-person account. By definition, it can’t, because our machine requires an observer.”

Dr. Bentham nodded. “You’ve read Nagel,” he said, “but you don’t understand what the machine means. What makes something first-person is that it can’t be communicated by a third party record. Would you agree?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Bentham pointed at the batbox. “This contains a record of fifteen seconds of neurological data from a fruit bat flying over the New Mexico desert.” He tapped the input jack on the back of his neck. “Neurological data isn’t a language we speak, so the record is useless unless we have a translator. The neural interface targets those regions of our brain that map to the bat’s brain, then it emulates the rest and feeds in the recorded data. Mostly what it sees, hears and feels.”

“I understand,” Charles said, “but how does this disprove Nagel?”

“It’s a first person experience written in a third party language, complete with a translation guide. It reduces the experience of what it’s like to be a bat. It makes it understandable.”

“Objective,” Charles said, “but I’m still not convinced.”

“Why not?”

“The batbox makes you into a bat-mimic, but it’s not a scientific explanation of being a bat. Not anymore than an actual bat is an explanation of how a bat works. It doesn’t explain anything. It just changes you into something that understands.”

“Would you agree that it would at least give me the knowledge of what it is like to be a bat?” Dr. Bentham asked.

“I suppose. A bat-mimic is not much different than a bat, right?”

“Right, and if I had that knowledge, could I put it into words?”

“I suppose,” Charles repeated.

“We’re about to run the first trial of the batbox. If you’ll stay after the celebration is over, Mr. French, I’ll tell you exactly what it’s like to be a bat.”

Several murmurs went up throughout the audience. They too wanted to hear what it was like to be a bat. There was some novelty in seeing the absurdities of philosophy beaten and smashed. Let us stay, they said.

“Fine,” Dr. Bentham said, “You can all watch.”

They set up a decker’s gurney by the batbox. He wasn’t going to be down for hours or days like a wirehead, but this would be more thorough and invasive than a standard jacking. Seizures could occur. It might be unsafe if he was only seated in a chair. They gave him a mouth guard to bite down on and strapped him tight to the gurney.

Dr. Bentham waited while they prepped the batbox. The neural interface was cleaned in solution and socketed into place. His assistants ran the final checks; interfacing was vetted and complete. Dr. Bentham gave a thumbs up.

Time to know what it’s like to be a bat.

—-

Exhausted. Weight. Crushing pale monsters, biting claws, stapling weight weight weight. A foam noise bubbling along underneath. Inescapable. Bursts of directionlessness. North spirals around. Dizzying energy. Tired. Hungry, thirsty. Path down. Crawl to the earth. Slide between. Catch softness. Slow, slide. Sweet rot ahead. Cactus wax. Vision in an open mouth, a turned ear. A single noise—SENSE! The world sings back. Exquisite sound like a thousand notes of light. Harmony is open air. Discordant drumbeats shape the world. Sweet cactus. Dimly the color of ripe. Open mouth. Flavor-stench absorbing.

—-

They clocked Dr. Bentham’s recovery time at four and a half minutes. When he finally opened his eyes, everyone was utterly silent.

He pulled out his mouth guard. “Jesus,” he said.

“Do you know what it is like to be a bat?” asked Charles French.

“Give me a moment.” He rubbed his eyes.

“Did the machine work?”

Someone gave him his glasses. He put them on. “Yes, it did.”

“You know what it’s like to be a bat?”

“I know exactly what it’s like.”

Charles grinned widely. “What then?”

Dr. Bentham sighed. “I could give you a few metaphors…” He shook his head. “Jesus, installing the recorder on that poor bat. What the hell were we thinking?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry, Nagel’s wrong, I’m sure of it, but I can’t tell you exactly what it’s like. Words won’t do it. I’d give you fragments, impressions—it wouldn’t be the same. If you want to know, try it yourself.” He got up off the gurney and rubbed his head. “Poor fucking bat.”

Call me Nelea. Mind if I share a drink with you? Please, I’m paying. No, don’t tell me your name. I’ll call you Islander.

It’s not an insult. It’s an acknowledgement of your frailty. You’re like a snowflake or a mandala drawn in colored sand. You’re temporary. If I precede you in any way, I’ll never see you again. Your worldlines will be disrupted and you’ll be gone. I need to remember that. It’s so easy to forget. You are Islander.

That name comes from your limitations. There’s an island of space-time that is yours. There’s so much planet for you, so many years for you, and beyond those boundaries, you don’t exist. The best you can do is establish a legacy and define the nature of future islands. Knowledge, industry, children—there’re a lot of ways.

I don’t have those limitations though. The whole manifold is open to me. I’ve seen wonderful things. I listened to the first stars whistling on a radio set. I watched boilings storms spread across the Earth. I witnessed the cosmic dusk. Dim galaxies turned to darkness while I skipped across the centuries.

Sometimes, I’ve carried a little equipment with me to keep me safe. Otherwise, I’ve gone alone.

No, I don’t ride a time machine. That’d be absurd. Think a little bit about what you’d do if you were given the first machine. Any ideas? Well, the first thing I did was pilot that battleship-sized hunk of steel to the future, so I could find the best time machine. I wanted something I couldn’t lose, something that couldn’t be stolen or taken away. So here I am. I’m the time machine now.

The jumps are exquisite, a rush. It’s like I walk out of a quiet restaurant into a busy kitchen. The sights, the smells—everything is different. If the world were a movie, it’d be a jump cut to a different scene, but the director would feel terribly clever because the protagonist would remain in frame.

The only restriction on my freedom is self-imposed. I want to live in a world with other people, so I stay out of the light cone converging on Earth about 100 years ago. It’s difficult to blend in any earlier, and I might derail history before the electric age. It’s too late for saving time travel though.

The history that invented it is long gone.

That seems confusing, I know. How can I change the past and still exist? The answer is, I can’t change it. I can only change history. See the difference?

A past is a specific history, but a history is not necessarily one’s past.

This distinction is everything to a time traveler. My past is behind me; it’s the sum of my experiences, and any time or place I’ve ever been will remain there, inaccessible and permanent. A history by contrast is a series of events, and if I insert myself into the initial conditions, changes follow. A new history is reached within the spectrum of possibility, and my past remains safe from paradox.

Now, some histories contain self-consistent loops. The traveler contributes to their own future and a solid circle of “past” is laid across the timeline, but those loops tend to be small. Most often, a journey against the grain of causality leads to a new history. Even the smallest leaps into time become jaunts into new worlds.

I don’t think the old histories die after I go. I’m no solipsist. They existed before I came; I arrived there because we live in a deterministic multiverse; and from their perspective, I departed for oblivion. That’s how it seemed to me when I saw the other time travelers go.

I won’t meet another time traveler again—not unless the technology is reinvented. Each jaunt carries a person into a world defined by their arrival. That means we can’t congregate. We spread out from the initial invention. We become a diaspora of observers across all possible worlds, and our company is winnowed away by our inevitable separation. I’m alone.

I have you? Only for this evening, I’m afraid.

Islanders never last. You’re so unstable. You were a specific sperm in a spoonful of semen on a specific day when a particular egg dropped out of your mother’s ovaries, and the coincidence that built you is more miraculous than lead transmuting into gold.

If I change anything—anything at all—causality spreads at the speed of light, and the initial conditions of a butterfly’s wing explode into a hurricane of differences.

Imagine if your father had eaten a little more food a few days before, or if he’d had tea instead of coffee. Would his testicles have still bore your sperm? If your mother had changed positions, would your genes have won the race? I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be gross. It’s just that a particular person is a monstrously improbable thing, and every single time I travel into the past, you all disappear.

From where I sit, you’re vanishing, nearly meaningless. You’re just so goddamn unlikely. How could you exist instead of anyone else?

Here, another round.

Sometimes, I think I should stop time traveling. Spend some time with islanders. It never works out though. There’s just too much time and I have to skip around. It’s like I finally learned to walk. I can’t go back to crawling.

You think I haven’t tried? I’m older than I look. I’m ageless, and I don’t die easily. There are these ontological loops—I think it’s a safety system built into me. I can inform myself of how to survive because I informed myself of how to survive. Time loop logic. Scary stuff, but good too. I don’t want to die.

Can I take anybody with me? No, I can’t carry that much weight. Why would you want to go, anyways? Done something you wanted undone? That’s the fantasy of time travel. Undo your mistakes. No regrets.

Too bad it doesn’t work like that. You can change history, but you can’t undo the life you’ve lived. It’ll always be out there somewhen, somewhere.

Come on, have another drink. We won’t regret tonight. As far as each of us is concerned, the other is dead tomorrow, so let’s live while we still have time.

Too much imagination for a London boy. That was the diagnosis. Roger had his head in the clouds and a book in his hands from breakfast to bed, and the other children of his grade could tell, through whatever dark sense allowed them to sniff out weakness, that he was different and sensitive and easy to tease.

In the middle of their cruel circles, he tried to explain to them the things he’d seen. In the icebox, late at night, he’d caught a glimpse of an elf spoiling their milk. He’d spied the winter faeries in their white dresses kicking off the leaves of the houseplants that hadn’t been brought in from the garden.

Once, he’d even found their cat hissing and mowling at a procession of fae who were defending themselves with dinner forks and kitchen knives. He hadn’t known why the cat hated the magic folk so fiercely, but he’d driven it off with a few swipes of a magazine, and the fae warriors had tipped their tin-can helmets at him before marching into the shadows of his home and vanishing into the night.

The wee folk and him had an understanding, he explained. He was allowed to see them because he was a friend.

The boys and girls who teased him sneered. “You see ‘em cause you’re crazy,” they said. “You’re a bookworm. You read too much.”

When Roger told his parents about the other kids, they didn’t accuse him of madness, but they didn’t argue with the insults either. His father even said, “It’d do you some good to exercise a little.” He gestured at the book in the boy’s hand, as if it were a frog he’d found in the garden that needed to be thrown back.

That bit deeper than anything else. Afterwards, Roger hid his books in his pack, and even when his imagination soared to see beautiful new lands, he kept their secret wonders locked behind the gate of his mouth, unspoken and unshared. That policy served him well; some of the boys and girls even approved of his new attitude and invited him to play their mundane games and sports.

Roger put on a happy face to his new friends. He smiled when his mother bought him a football for his birthday. Everyone thought Roger was doing better. All Roger saw inside though was a dimming strand to the supernal world. No longer a bridge, not even a rope, just a thread held his connection to the fae realms, and it was rare that he saw anything magical anymore.

He might’ve severed the connection entirely and become as mundane as the rest, but the second World War reached over the Channel, and after the radar stations were bombed, his parents saw the papers and decided that Roger should take a trip to the countryside where his uncle lived. They packed his bags, loaded him up on a train and sent him north to counties where the modern world’s grip was weak.

His uncle was a peculiar man, once a professor at a small college, now the inheritor of an estate invested in a stable industry. He was rich without the need to work for it, and he was fond of spending his days reading about mythology and the cultural inheritance of the British Isles.

“There’s magic out in these woods,” his uncle told him in the car ride out to their country home. “People tried their best to clear it out, but it was too much work.”

“Magic?” Roger said with a well-trained dullness.

“Aye, faeries, mythical beasts. The war drew most of the foresters to the city. Now the woods are filling with wild things.”

“I’m not twelve,” Roger said.

“You’re fourteen,” the professor said, “and I’m forty. Doesn’t make a difference if you believe.”

Roger looked out the window at the passing branches and shaded lanes. “Yeah?” he asked.

“If you respect it, you can see it,” the uncle said. “You just have to remember, admiration and respect aren’t the same thing. The lessons of mythology are clear on that.”

“Yeah,” Roger muttered.

The stay in his uncle’s mansion was even duller than the life he’d led in London. At least among the other children there’d been time to run with the boys or tease the pretty girls. Out here, there was nothing but the woods and the servants tending to the vast, empty estate.

A hundred rooms, Roger thought, and only ten of them inhabited by a lonely old man buried in his books. If he’d kept reading, he wondered, would he have turned out like this? Lonely and obsessed with the unreal?

His uncle noticed his boredom, especially on days when the rains blew in from the west and the garden paths became uncomfortably cold and windy.

“Knock knock,” Roger’s uncle said through the open guest bedroom door.

Roger was lying back on his bed thinking about the girls of his grade and quietly lusting after them. He hadn’t been doing anything salacious, but he felt terribly embarrassed just the same.

“Uncle?” he asked darkly.

His uncle turned on the lights and carried in a stack of books as long as Roger’s arm. “I remember your mother once told me you read from dawn till dusk.” He set the stack of books on an empty desk. “I saw you hadn’t brought anything to read.”

“I hadn’t,” Roger said. After a while, what you pretended to do became what you did. He’d pretended that he wasn’t interested in books, so he hadn’t read.

“This is a series of volumes on the myths of England.” He tapped the top one with his finger. It was thin and soft-covered. “This one is my own writing. It collects the myths of the county. Some of them wouldn’t be remembered otherwise, I’m afraid.”

He was bragging. Roger forced a smile so that the old man would feel validated.

“Anyways, I’ll leave you to them. I think you’ll enjoy it. The stories are very exciting. Quite mean too. Real young boy stuff.”

“Thanks uncle,” Roger said.

His uncle grinned and left to return to whatever business kept him in his study writing letters all day.

Roger tried to reform the image of a particularly precocious girl in his head, but he never really got the shape of her body back. Eventually, he gave up and just tried to nap while listening to the patter of rain. He couldn’t sleep.

A branch tapped against the window of the bedroom. He looked up. Someone ought to trim that, he thought. It took him a moment to remember that the woods were several hundred feet away. He looked up again and the branch was gone.

He stood up on his bed and looked out the window. For a moment, a whole tree seemed to rotate and shake as if it were settling into place. It was hard to believe, and he couldn’t be sure, but he couldn’t deny it either. It’d moved.

He went over to his uncle’s pocket book of local myth and flipped through the contents. The Walking Tree was the ninth chapter. He opened it to the page, where an overwrought preface described the role of the tree as a mystical guide to locations of power, where faeries congregated in court.

Roger went back to the window and looked out. There was a gap beneath the branches of the tree, and standing in the path, visible by the grey light of the storm, an elf draped was draped in autumn leaves. It waved to him.

Roger fell back from the window terrified. He’d seen such things before, but they’d been so natural, so incidental before this. Now he knew that the supernal world was calling to him. The thread in his mind expanded back to a rope, to a bridge, to a whole country crossing an ocean of ignorance between the mundane and the supernatural. Out here, his uncle was right. There was magic.

He ran downstairs, put on his boots and jacket and stuffed the mythological guidebook into his pockets. His uncle must’ve heard him stomping down the stairs.

“Going out?” his uncle asked.

“Yeah!” Roger yelled.

“What for?”

Roger hesitated. Somehow, he knew the invitation was for him. Together with his uncle, he knew they’d find nothing. He had to go alone.

“I’m going out in the garden,” Roger yelled.

“Don’t catch cold,” his uncle yelled.

Roger called as he went out the front door, “I’ve got my jacket!” Then he was out in the rain and sprinting across the grass towards the gap in the trees.

The elf wasn’t standing in the path anymore, but the way into the trees was clear of leaves and strangely dry, as if the leaves had been carefully angled to drive the rain to either side. He whooped for joy and sprinted down the path.

It wasn’t that far to the faerie court. After only a couple of miles, maybe fifteen minutes of jogging, he found an old stone fort that had fallen into disuse a very, very long time ago. It would’ve looked like little more than a grassy mound if not for the waist-high walls that jutted like ribs from the lumpy soil.

“Hello!” Roger yelled when he saw the fort. Briefly, a smiling elfin face leaned around one of the walls and peeped at him. “Ha!” Roger cried.

The elf ducked back and was gone.

Roger ran out into the rain and up the wet slope. The fort was nothing more than a raised clearing, but when he reached the top, he found that the fort “floor” had been surfaced with strips of pure tin, aluminum bottle caps, stones and various bits of lacquered wood. It reminded him of a magpie’s trash nest, but there was some art to the arrangement; patterns of color and grey metal spiraled inwards towards something that seemed only visible once inside the fort.

There was a giant golden bowl filled with rainwater. It hung from four silver chains dangling from skyhooks—from a still stormcloud as dense and dark as volcanic glass. There were a few elves and faeries seated at the edge of the bowl, their feet in the water. They leaned over and collected tiny handfuls to wash their faces. One by one, they noticed Roger, and with whistles and laughs, they waved him over.

Roger reached down into his pocket to find his uncle’s book. A golden bowl was like nothing he’d ever read about. But when he pulled the softcover from his pocket, one of the elves began to hiss and the faeries began to boo in their sweet tones.

“I just want to know!” he yelled.

They redoubled their disapproval.

Frustrated, he shoved the book back into his pocket. “Fine,” he said.

They cheered and leapt down from the golden bowl, danced around his feet and tugged on his pant leg. Come, come, come this way.

He walked up to the magic bowl of water, looked up at it hanging from the storm, and saw that the faeries and elves were kneeling in front of it. He followed suit and kneeled beside them.

One of the beautiful faeries tugged on his wrist and grinned. She fluttered up to grab the edge of the bowl.

Roger followed her example and reached out to touch the golden bowl.

Suddenly, the fae folk burst into laughter and cheers.

Roger tried to stand and look. He tried to turn his head to see what the fuss was about. He tried moving his eyes to look at the mystical folk around him. He tried closing them. He tried and nothing happened but the rain soaking into his jacket and making him feel, cold, cold, cold but unable to shiver.

The fae laughter became cruel. Some of them began to prod him with their small hands. From beneath the golden bowl, he could see dozens of them emerging, pointing, laughing, sneering.

Some of them climbed up his clothes. They were of all sizes and shapes. The smallest ones perched on his shoulders and arms and clung to his back and kicked him with their tiny feet. Some of them grabbed handfuls of hair and leaned down over his face and looked into his eyes and spat.

A particularly gobliny elf hung from his lower lip. It swung back and forth, yanking on the thin little membranes below his teeth until they hurt so bad that he wanted to scream. He couldn’t even whimper. He tried to cry, but the tears wouldn’t flow. He felt like he was breathing beneath the weight of a dead ox.

He wished he’d read the book. His uncle would’ve known about this, surely. If the faeries did this to men, someone would have to know.

But such regrets didn’t linger long. There was a fear in him. The storm would pass and the bowl was attached to it. Where would he go then? What fae land would they be stealing him to, and what would they do to him there?

Entertainment? Slavery? Food?

In a keening chorus, the faeries and elves began to screech like frightened birds. They cawed. They jumped on him. They scratched at his skin. They screamed in tiny little voices.

“Hwæt!” yelled a man’s voice. There was a swish of air and the singing twang of hard iron. An elf fell into the bowl and shriveled up like a frost-burned flower. Roger could see it at the upper edge of his vision, little limbs folding up and turning brown.

The faeries and elves scattered like pigeons from a statue.

“Cold iron!” Roger’s uncle roared.

He swung something over Roger’s head and struck a silver chain. It shattered like glass and turned into just that—bits of old glass bottle, tumbling to the earth above a disintegrating bowl made of newspaper filled with inky rainwater.

Roger yelped and threw himself backwards, pawing across his body to clear away the fae that hard already fled.

Dozens of faeries and elves were hollering curses at them in some thick, gaelic tongue that no living man understood. Roger’s uncle, old and in a sopping shirt, didn’t seem to care. He held out an iron fire poker like it was a sword and screamed right back at them. A particularly large elf stepped out from the edge of a low wall to hiss at him; it was the elf that Roger had seen beneath the tree.

His uncle swung underhand and hit it straight in the face. It burst into embers and ash, and the rest of the faeries ran and fell into cover and vanished back into whatever places they hid inside the shadows.

“I am not to be trifled with,” Roger’s uncle yelled after the vanished fae. “Dare cross me, and I’ll feed you iron shot!”

Roger was spluttering and crying. “Uncle,” he said.

“I saw you’d taken the book,” he said, offering a hand to the boy. “You didn’t read it, did you?”

“N-no,” Roger said in between gasps. He took his uncle’s hand.

“You’ve read the wrong kind of books,” his uncle said. “The faeries must’ve figured you for a fool.”

Roger held his uncle’s hand as they stumbled down out of the old stone ruins and onto an overgrown path. It was no longer clear or dry.

“I’m sorry,” Roger said between sobs.

“Don’t be,” his uncle said. “You didn’t know better. Faeries are evil folk, but we don’t remember the old myths very well. Not the real English myths.”

Roger swallowed mucus and tried to wipe his nose. He saw the faerie world where other people didn’t. “Which books should I read first?” he asked his uncle.

“Doesn’t matter,” his uncle said. “Just remember the lesson of the old stories. Faeries aren’t friendly. They’re natural, indifferent. Treat them like you’d treat a wild animal and avoid them whenever you can.”

Timur Baranov hid in the branches of a low spruce after sunrise and regretted his decision to stay in Alaska. It’d been a bad season for hunting bears, and a worse season for being Russian.

The tsar had sold Russian-America to the United States at 2 cents per acre, and the company behind the Kodiak colony had been quietly liquidated and its wealth redistributed to the Russian nobility. Without company funding, Russian hunters had to kill twice as many fur animals to afford imported, Californian food. Meanwhile, American and British hunters arrived with private backers, and they shared by right of arms what little slice of the pie remained.

There just weren’t many fur animals. Timur had departed from a remote outpost almost two days ago, carrying a minimum of supplies and a desperation bordering on suicidal. He needed money or he’d lose his home.

He found an unusually large clearing in one of the least explored regions of the island. A freak fire must’ve ripped down the trees in a tidy circle a few decades back, and the forest was fighting to reclaim the terrain from the summer grass. Young spruces lined the perimeter and grew low to the ground. He hid among their needles, positioning himself downwind of the breeze that blew out of the east. No animal coming from the mountainous interior would see or smell him.

He hoped to shoot a brown bear heading south towards the river. One bullet, one wound. If he didn’t kill it, then he could follow it until it collapsed. Anything would do, really. An ermine. A fox. He had a British Enfield in his lap, a few spare paper cartridges in his pocket and a ramrod.

Reloading was a vulnerable process. It was best not to miss.

For a long time, he didn’t notice there was another animal already at the edge of the clearing; he only saw it because it finally turned its head, and he caught the motion in the corner of his eye. It was on the far side of the clearing crouched between two spruces, slowly scanning the clearing for signs of predators.

He stared for a long time. For every ounce of caution an animal exercised, Timur could give a pound of patience.

Finally, it loped forward into the clearing. It was shaped like a monkey, but it was sleek and grey like a harbor seal and had very, very large eyes. There was something odd about its gait, as if its arms and legs attached unusually forward on its torso. It didn’t need its hands to run exactly, but it seemed more comfortable arching its back and sweeping forward on both feet and palms.

Timur slowly raised the Enfield. He knew a freak of nature when he saw one, and it would definitely have some value to a collector of curiosities. It looked uncomfortable running in the open air. Definitely not native. He wondered if a sailor had lost this animal at one of the ports or bays. Maybe it escaped.

No matter. His loss, Timur’s gain. It wouldn’t escape from him. He wouldn’t make the mistake of taking it alive.

When the Enfield was raised to his shoulder, he paused. The creature was slowing as it neared the middle of the clearing. It stopped and pawed at the grass with long thin fingers.

Timur breathed very slowly and sighted.

The grey animal found something. Pulled it up with a handful of grass. It was a trapezoid of lead or pewter. Someone had lost it in the clearing, probably a chunk of a hurricane lantern—the very thing that started the fire, Timur supposed.

The creature waved the chunk of metal as if weighing it. Its arm sagged. Lead almost certainly. Satisfied, it pulled the chunk in close, swung about on the surface of its other palm and started running directly away from Timur.

Timur breathed out and squeezed the trigger.

The shot was excellent. The animal took off at full sprint like the crack of the rifle started a footrace, but that was all adrenaline and surprise. Timur saw clearly that he’d popped a hole in its back, right where a lung ought to be. The gout of blood from the hit—call it a splash—fell across its sleek gray fur in a dark, deep red streak. It was so thick it appeared almost black, even in the sunlight.

Then the creature was between the spruces, and Timur breathed in again—there, the stench of gunpowder and conifers. The hunt was on.

He ripped his way out of the hiding place in a spray of needles and started jogging across the clearing after the odd beast and its hunk of metal. He didn’t have to outrace it. He simply had to out-endure it.

At the far side of the clearing, he found that its dark blood was harder to see once he was out of the grass and into the shadows of the trees, but that wasn’t a problem. He could smell the track clearly, an ammonia tang like a man with a dead liver. The animal must’ve been very sick to have such thick, vile blood.

He jogged into the dark forest shade.

This was often the next challenge in a hunt; the prey would try to shake the predator by going to ground or doubling back. He slowed as he passed onto the brown needle carpet and carefully looked for the shallow marks of feet and hands kicking up the turf. He found them easily.

The creature was running very fast. He followed the deep marks until there were suddenly too many of them. There, that was the double back.

He searched carefully and saw a second, almost invisible trail breaking left over the ridge. On the far side there was a valley sliding up towards the mountains. There’d be a creek over there, a good place to try to break the track.

That’s where the creature was going. He was sure of it.

He hiked right up to the surface of the ridge, rifle and ramrod still in hand, and he jogged along the ridge until he could smell the ammonia again; then he followed an erosion path down the far side of the hill and to the creek bed almost fifty feet below. He started stepping down in short slides, boots sideways.

When he was halfway down, he heard a massive shower of leaves and a screech.

The creature had slipped trying to go downhill along a steeper slope to the right. It was the kind of place that a wounded animal shouldn’t run—no, wouldn’t run. This was primate cunning, Timur decided. There was no better explanation, and he was lucky that the gambit hadn’t paid off.

He made his way down to the creek’s banks and looked downstream. The water would be running deeper and faster where the slope was sharper. Sure enough, he could see the animal carefully struggling to cross over an outcropping of rocks forming a natural sluice, as the cold water was too deep to ford.

The creature caught eye of Timur’s movement. It opened its little mouth and dribbled out a line of black blood. Shock? A noise drowned in a punctured lung? The creature reared back and threw its metal chunk over the creek.

Timur started across the dry rocks maybe one hundred feet away.

With its prize in the clear, then wounded animal took two steps back—awkward, catching steps of sharp pain. It must’ve broken something in the fall. Then it ran and threw itself over the gap of the sluice. It landed chest first against the corner of the rock. It leapt far enough to cross the gap, but the stone struck it on the chest, and the creature writhed onto safe ground while screaming.

Timur could think of no other description for its keening cry.

He finished crossing over the creek as the grey animal rolled onto its feet, grabbed its piece of metal and started running up the next side of the valley. That’s when Timur knew he was going to win this hunt. He was fresh and ready to climb. It had only one spare hand and several injuries.

He followed it up the stony hillside.

It was close enough now that he could see it ahead, black ammonia-stench blood draining out of the thumb-wide gape in the middle of its back. He’d need a taxidermist to close that up.

The animal looked back at him several times, terrified, brief glances at the inevitable, murderous force that was Timur. Sometimes it picked up spruce cones that had caught in the half-buried scree and threw them down at him.

Timur ignored them, even reveled in the impacts. The defiance made the hunt more exciting, and the feeble strikes made him feel invincible.

The creature found a loose stone. It threw it at Timur with a mad howl.

Timur laughed and stepped aside. The attack was predictable and weak.

The grey animal crested the far side of the valley, dodged between two spruces overhanging the lip and started running. Timur could hear its feet ripping up the soil. He picked up the pace and ran towards the gap in the spruces. One last burst of energy was common in the hunt, but it was just that—the last.

Timur came up between the spruces at a fast clip.

The grey animal was there, right in front of him, arms back. The slab of metal was held with both hands like a primitive hammer. It swung.

Timur dodged forward, not back, and got a glancing blow off the back edge of his skull that ended in his collarbone. He roared a half-curse in Russian, “Piz!” and punched the animal in the chest with the side of his Enfield.

It rocked back and tried to swing again. This time it got a solid hit on the crown of Timur’s head, and Timur’s vision turned to stars and noise, but he pushed forward into the space he’d made with his punch, and he swung the Enfield like a club. The hit was solid and had the force of Timur’s vastly greater size behind it. There was a meaty thud and terrible squeak.

Timur heard the sound of the metal chunk dropping, and then a quiet shuffling. He blinked rapidly and tried to clear his head. “Svoloch!” he yelled. “Svoloch! Chyort svoloch!” He pawed around in the dirt and found the metal, then threw it after the source of the shuffling noise. It was heavier than he expected, and the throw was foul. He could tell that he missed.

His vision cleared.

The grey creature was on its hands and knees, shuddering as it very, very slowly crawled towards the metal chunk on the ground.

Then Timur stopped watching the creature. There’d been another freak forest fire, and the sight drew his attention. In the middle of the blasted patch stood an upright, pitch black cylinder. Its surface was not smooth but had the look of something machined and coated in rubber. There was an obvious door, but it had no visible method to open it.

Timur stumbled to his feet. The bitter smell of ash was mixing with the searing whiff of ammonia blood.

The grey animal reached its metal prize, picked it up in one hand, and curled up around it. It rolled over onto its side and shivered continuously. It wasn’t afraid, Timur realized. It was cold. It’d lost that much blood.

Timur stood with his Enfield. He pulled out a paper cartridge, bit off the end and emptied a touch of powder into the flash pan.

The grey creature looked up at him with its giant, dark eyes.

He poured the rest of the powder down the muzzle, then packed in the paper wad and the bullet.

The grey creature closed them with white, sideways sliding eyelids like a bird.

He picked off the ramrod and smashed the round into place. He dropped the iron rod on the ground and lifted the Enfield.

In Russian, he asked, “Should I end your misery?”

The creature didn’t open its eyes.

He looked at the black cylinder, the made thing. Down at the strange—what was it? “You are an animal?” Timur asked.

The creature did not respond. It awaited the end.

“I need your fur,” Timur said. “I need your body to pay my rent. To buy my food.”

It awaited the end.

“Why did you have to be so smart?”

It waited.

“Why do you build machines?”

It was what it was.

Timur raised his rifle. “Do you have a soul?” 

No answer. He fired.

The creature jerked violently.

Timur’s shot flew off into the Alaskan sky.

Adrenaline and fear—the creature opened its eyes.

“Get up!” Timur yelled.

The creature stared at Timur, at the discharged rifle.

“Get up!” Timur yelled even louder. He stomped towards the creature.

It started to shake again.

Timur threw his rifle down at his feet and yelled. There weren’t any words. There was just frustration. He was a hunter of animals. This was not an animal. He didn’t have the words for what it was. It was neither an animal nor a man. It was a builder of black cylinders, collector of heavy metals.

He kneeled in front of the shivering grey creature, nostrils burning with its ammonia stench, and he swept it up into his arms.

It clutched its metal prize tighter to its chest but did not fight.

Timur marched it straight out over that blasted patch. He carried it to the black cylinder, to its machine, its destination. As it approached, the door opened of its own accord—inside, there was something amorphous and dark. The grey builder started to struggle as they closed the distance. He stopped and set it down.

“I hope you don’t die inside that tube,” Timur said.

It didn’t have the strength to walk. It barely had the strength to crawl. Timur couldn’t guess why it wanted to cover those last few feet under its own power, but he waited until it had set the metal chunk in the lip of the door and was mustering all its failing strength to lift itself inside.

The amorphous mass slipped out and helped pull the grey builder into the cylinder.

The creature, half-buried, pointed with one arm towards the edge of the clearing.

Go.

Timur looked at the blasted patch around him. Shit. He began to run.

The door shut just as he reached the edge of the clearing.

There was an implosion that pulled Timur onto his ass, and trees at the edge of the clearing fell in towards the smoldering center of the circle. Where they landed, the soil must’ve been scorching. They caught fire. Timur could feel the heat from where he stood.

The Russian hunter rubbed his forehead. “Svoloch,” he muttered. Scum. He’d spent two cartridges and a whole morning on that creature, and now he had a concussion. It didn’t help that he’d possibly saved its life; no, he’d almost taken it.

He picked up his Enfield at the edge of the clearing and started down into the valley. He’d set up near the river this time and hope for that bear. He needed something. He just couldn’t take the life of another… He wished he had a word for it. It was something other than “soul,” because he thought dogs had souls.

There were no special words for it, not that he knew, not yet. He decided that he couldn’t take the life of another man, and that was that.

Two men in expensive suits were already seated outside the Border Street Cafe when the owner and his son came to work.

“Morning,” said one of the men, a lightly-bearded Chinese gentleman with short hair and an exquisitely pressed navy blue jacket. He had an open briefcase full of hardcover books and well-worn science fiction magazines.

The other man was bald and clean-shaven. He looked vaguely European and had a stout, fit build like he might’ve wrestled as a teenager. He was relaxed, gently puffing on a cigar and smiling. His smoke rose into an orange streetlight overhead and bothered the moths.

“Thirty years to the day,” the owner said to his guests.

The man put his cigar down in the notch of an ash tray. “Good memory.”

The son, nearly twenty, glanced at his father. The owner was sixty, thin and grey. The guests both appeared only a little older than the son. Thirty years? His eyebrows folded up tighter and tighter. A spring was winding up tight in his mind.

“Are you ghosts?” he asked suddenly.

The Chinaman laughed.

“Don’t question it, Nathan,” said the owner. “They’re regulars.” He went to unlock the front door.

Nathan hesitated. “Thirty years?” he asked the guests.

“Haven’t you seen us eating here since you were a child?” the Chinaman asked.

Nathan didn’t open his mouth.

“Maurice.” The European sat up. “Can you spare your son for a few minutes?”

The owner glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. Don’t offend our guests,” he warned Nathan before going inside.

“Take a seat.” The man indicated the spare edge of the table.

Nathan grabbed a metal chair and sat with the Chinaman to his left and the European to his right. He looked at both of them. His mouth opened, but he was unable to summon up a good question.

The European picked up his cigar. He was patiently waiting for Nathan to speak.

The Chinaman seemed generally uninterested in Nathan’s reaction and picked up a fresh copy of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He started flipping through the pages rapidly, pausing only for a few seconds on occasion.

Nathan broke the silence. “What’re you reading?”

“The prefaces to the stories,” the Chinaman said.

The European put his cigar down again. “He’s deciding which ones he should read first. Young man, I’m Paul Henri-Thiry, baron d’Holbach.” He offered his hand. “What’s your name?”

“Nathan Post.” He shook the man’s hand. Very tight grip.

“Mr. Post—can I call you Nathan?”

“Yeah.”

“Nathan, my friend here is the Zombie.”

The Chinaman finished browsing through the magazine, then folded over the corner of a page and set it down in the briefcase. “I’m only dead on the inside,” he said. “Excuse me. I shouldn’t risk shaking your hand.”

“He shouldn’t,” d’Holbach agreed.

The Zombie was looking at Nathan. “You’re wondering if your memory is any good.”

“No sir,” Nathan said.

“Nathan,” d’Holbach said, “what do you think we are?”

“Sir?”

“Not sir, Baron. I’m a real baron.”

“Yes Baron.”

“Stop being a wimp,” the Zombie said flatly. “Answer the man’s question.”

Nathan looked at the two odd men. “Aliens?” he ventured.

Both the Baron and the Zombie laughed. The Baron reached over and clapped Nathan on the shoulder. “Good boy. At least you didn’t say, ‘gods.’”

The Zombie picked up his magazine with a smile and thumbed through the pages for the folded corner.

“People call you gods?” Nathan asked.

“If they’re ignorant, yes.”

“He hates being called a god,” the Zombie said, “or a saint, or a miracle.”

“It hasn’t happened in a while, but…” the Baron shook his head. “Aliens is much closer to the truth, but no. We’re just two very unusual men.”

“How old are you?” Nathan asked.

“Two hundred and twenty-nine,” the Baron answered.

“Not exactly sure.” The Zombie peered over his magazine. “I’m very, very old. Would you believe me if I said that I was considered a demon in ancient Sumeria?”

“No. With respect, you sound like you’re lying, sir,” Nathan said.

The Zombie grinned very, very widely at that.

“He doesn’t even know where Sumeria is,” the Baron said.

“Nothing but a temporary blind spot.” He patted the books. “I’m well-educated.”

“You’re also a narcissist,” the Baron said. “Nathan, do you believe me? Two centuries? Be honest.”

Nathan looked down through the mesh of the table at his hands. “No?” he asked—or answered—tentatively.

“Good. It’s unreasonable. No man can live two hundred years. You’ve never heard of anything that could make that true, and if you’re lucky, you never will.”

“My dad thinks you’ve been coming here for breakfast for thirty years.”

“We have been,” the Baron said. “That doesn’t mean I’m two centuries old. It doesn’t mean that bookworm here is older than nations. One little strange detail isn’t enough reason to start believing in patent nonsense.”

Nathan nodded earnestly.

He picked up his cigar and took a puff from the dying embers. “Lighter?” he asked the Zombie, who produced one on demand. The Baron relit his cigar. “You’ll come up with a better theory later, I’m sure.”

“What does my father think?” Nathan asked.

“Nothing,” the Zombie said. “He’s a practical man.”

“Two rich men show up at four-thirty in the morning and ask for coffee and eggs. What do you do?” the Baron asked.

“Take their order after I’ve opened shop.”

“Which is all your father cares about.”

“He’s never asked about you?”

“He hasn’t. We’re fairly sure he’s not superstitious though. He just goes by the policy that you should give weird things a wide berth.”

“We’re part of the landscape,” the Zombie said.

“Do people ever ask after you?” Nathan wondered aloud.

“All the time,” the Baron said, “but only in specific circles.”

“They mythologize us,” the Zombie said.

“If you’re really old but look this young,” Nathan said, “I can’t blame them.”

“Mmm,” the Baron said with his cigar in his mouth. “I blame them. Mythology is narrative structure. It’s laid over the world to make it easy to remember. You shouldn’t need it after the printing press.”

“What kind of myths do they tell?”

“They think we’re sinners,” the Zombie said. “We’re responsible for the Falls of Men.”

“The what?”

“No, no more,” the Baron said. “Zombie, he’s skeptical but too young.”

Nathan looked confused and a little hurt.

“The problem with myth is that it feeds on your natural biases,” the Baron said. “If he tells you enough, I guarantee you’ll believe half of it before summer’s end. It’s the kind of stuff that just makes sense to you, even if it’s not true.”

“The temptress,” the Zombie said.

“The hero’s journey,” the Baron said.

“Death, rebirth.”

“Destiny.”

“Sin and doubt.”

“A magical helper,” the Baron said, and indicated the Zombie.

“Freedom from the fear of death,” the Zombie retorted.

The Baron laughed and turned to Nathan. “The monomyth would have you all twisted up. More than our presence already has.”

“I see,” Nathan muttered.

The neon sign flickered into life in the window of the cafe. The Baron checked a very fine silver watch with pale, glowing radium dials. “Five AM.”

The door opened up and Nathan’s father had a tray with eggs, toast, cream and a carafe full of coffee. The Baron reached for his wallet.

“No, no price today,” the owner said. “Not for my first customers. Not after thirty years.” He distributed their food and empty mugs across the table. He left the carafe and cream between them.

The Zombie closed his briefcase but kept the magazine in his lap.

“Nathan, come on.” The owner patted his boy on the shoulder. “Leave these men to their breakfast. We have work to do.”

Nathan stood and replaced his chair. As his father went for the door, he hesitated. “I have to know. What are you?”

“I’m a very old philosopher,” the Baron said. “The Zombie is an older academic. We’re contractors for very specific work, a lot of it criminal.”

“Nathan, stop bothering them and come inside.”

“But dad—”

“Why do you think they’re here at four in the morning, eh?” He waved Nathan towards the door and into the silence of the cafe. Once they were inside, he shook his son’s shoulder. “Don’t press them.”

“They’re just here for breakfast,” Nathan said.

“No, no. You don’t go out to eat two hours before dawn just for breakfast. Not when you could hire someone to cook it for you.”

“Then why dad?”

“I think they’re immortal men, Nathan. God knows what shit they deal with. They come here because I won’t remind them of it while they’re trying to relax.”

“Have you ever tried talking to them, dad? They don’t seem to mind.”

His father was frustrated. “Yes! I’ve talked to them, just like you, but I listened. You should have listened!”

“I was listening.”

“Then why were they talking to you, eh?”

Nathan paused. He tried to remember the whole conversation. “Because I asked if they were ghosts?” His face sank into a frown. “Were they making fun of me?”

“No, boy, they were sizing you up. They were deciding whether or not they’d come to you after I retired. I hope you were smart. They tip the price of the check.”

“I don’t know if I was,” Nathan said.

“Well, don’t give them the googly-eyes tomorrow, and don’t go chatting them up. They’re part of the background, all right? Think of them like the hills. They were there when you were born, and if you don’t go digging too much, they’ll be there when you die. Understand?”

Nathan nodded.

“Keep your chin up son. I know it’s hard to keep your mouth shut with a big mystery right there, but it’s nice to live near the hills, ain’t it? You’ll leave your imprint on ‘em, mark my words. They’ll remember you long after you die.”