Issue 52 January 2018 Flash Fiction Online January 2018

When the dragon drops from the sky and torches the tiny fishing town, Rona does not approach. Instead, she grits her teeth and watches. She digs her fingernails into her palms until they bleed, tamping down her urge to run forward. “Remember the rules,” Rona whispers, watching the smoke.

Rona doesn’t move, not even when the villagers start screaming. Mother Judith says this rule is deeply important—don’t let anyone, especially the dragon, see her. She must always stay hidden. She wraps her arms around her knobby knees and sinks further into the bushes.

A hornet drunk on blueberry pollen lands on her cheek but she doesn’t brush it away. Rona remains still. She tries not to think of the way the insect would crackle and pop under the kiss of a match.

When yet another wizard appears—and they always do—Rona ignores him. Ignoring wizards is the easiest rule. They’re all arrogant old bastards, and this wizard won’t listen to Rona’s advice, anyway. He promises her infinite gold if she’ll help him kill the dragon, but why would she ever want to hurt a monster that creates such beautiful fires?

The dragon kills the wizard, and Rona grapples with the next rule. Mother Judith says she must feel pity during those precious moments the wizard is engulfed in swirling red flames. She must ignore how beautiful his white beard looks as it blackens and curls.

Rona should not feel envy—but she does.

* * *

She traces the scars that bubble and pucker across her cheeks, the winding burn marks that make her eyelids heavy with hard tissue and twist her face into a permanent sneer. Mother Judith says these long-healed wounds make her ugly. Rona tells herself that she does not want more.

She’s lying.

Even her scars ache with longing as she stares into the smoke.

The rules Mother has beat into her swirl around and around, twisting through Rona’s mind like the yellow flames licking over the thatched roofs of the fishing village. Mother’s voice cracks through her mind, screaming the two rules Rona never wanted to believe:

You are unwanted.

You are unloved.

Rona needs to leave. Mother Judith will find her and the beating will be particularly bad this time, but she can’t tear her eyes away from the dragon.

Every blast of fire sends a shiver through her. The rules say Rona needs to find a river, to leap in headfirst and drown herself in wet and darkness. To hold her head underwater until the panic attacks seize her and she forgets everything bright and hot.

But her scars itch, itch, itch, like a skin that begs shedding.

* * *

The dragon drowns the village in gouts of sapphire flame that twist like dancers through the ash-choked streets. Rona forgets to breathe. She’s never seen blue flames before. She wants—no, needs—a better look. Just a glimpse.

She forgets what happens to little girls who play with fire.

Rona stands.

This time, the dragon sees her.

It lands near the already wilting blueberry bushes. Its claws sear the earth, leaving rings of ash. The hornet shoots away, startled.

The dragon is the most beautiful thing Rona has ever seen.

There is no rule for this.

The dragon is the color of a fire turning from blue to green and back again, the hue of a steady flame burning at its hottest on an endless fuel. The heat rolling off of its body makes Rona’s lip crack but it’s a good pain. A sweet pain. She wants more.

The dragon snorts. The smoke is intoxicating.

“Well it’s about time,” the dragon says. “What are you still doing in that thing, anyway?”

The dragon bends down, flames flickering from its maw, and Rona can’t help it—she reaches a hand out. The flames circle her fingers, racing up her elbow. The pain that pops through Rona in great starbursts of heat is nothing to the elation that makes her mouth water.

“Let’s go,” the dragon says. “We need to leave before the witch shows up again.”

As she burns, Rona thinks of Mother Judith.

The rules and the beatings started after Rona set fire to the curtains. She wanted to see how the purple silk would curl under a flame. She wanted to see what happened to beautiful things when they burned.

“Remember the rules,” Mother Judith would shout, snapping her whip across Rona’s ribs. “You’re too dangerous for this world. It’s better this way. Safer for the rest of us.”

* * *

The fire crawls up Rona’s arms. It wraps around her mouth and Rona cannot speak around the smoke. She burns, but she’s alive, and this part is confusing. Mother Judith always told Rona that all fires were deadly. Why isn’t she dying?

The dragon rambles like a peevish old man.

“Do you know how many good hunting years I’ve wasted? I flew from town to town, terrorizing these pests, trying to tempt you out. Do you know what I’ve gone through to find you? Really, I am getting too old to play nanny.”

The more Rona burns the less she hurts, until even her scars melt away.

She feels a sharp pain between her shoulders.

There is no rule for this.

“Girl!”

It’s Mother Judith, screaming, tearing through the woods. Of course she found her. It’s in the rules.

“Hurry up,” the dragon says. “I haven’t got all day.”

“Get away from that thing. Get to the river,” Mother howls. “Remember the rules!”

Rona knows the rules, but she no longer cares.

The flames shift from yellow to gold.

The dragon says, “Finally.”

Rona’s skin blisters and peels away in rolling black flakes. Where there should be nothing but charred muscles and cooking bone there’s something hard, glistening, colored the pale yellow of candlelight and coated in a thick albumen fluid.

Beneath the flames that circle Rona’s wrist, scales grow.

The rules no longer apply.

“I’m thinking of painting the front porch,” my grandmother said. “Maybe a bright spring yellow.”

I trapped the phone against one ear with my shoulder. “Gram? Did you hear what I said?”

“Hmm?”

“I said, ‘I have something to tell you,’ and you said, ‘Me too’ and I said, ‘I’m gay,’ and you said, ‘I’m thinking of painting the porch.’”

“Maybe next weekend,” she said. “The skies are supposed to be clear next weekend.”

I could imagine her in her tiny white house. She’d be puttering in her kitchen, looking for some wandering pasta strainer or spatula; or she’d be tugging at dandelion heads in the cracks of her sidewalk; or she’d be sitting on the couch that was shaped like a marshmallow, flipping through channels in search of The Great British Bake-Off.

Perhaps I had caught her at a bad time. A distracted time. But my grandmother’s life had been swirling with distractions for all the twenty-five years I had known her. I had explained this to my girlfriend Rachel only a few weeks after we started dating, when I was trying to tell her what kind of family I came from. She always has at least two projects going, maybe three. Her house is a treasure trove of clutter—boxes of crochet needles and wisp-edged feathers and beads, stacks of precariously-perched plywood in the corner, pastel scrapbook paper fluttering under the living room lamp, abandoned French dictionaries gathering dust next to the VCR. She’s tiny, like a foot shorter than you—hey, Rachel had interjected—but she’s fierce.

Rachel knew everything about Gram. Gram knew nothing about Rachel.

I hadn’t done a lot of coming out, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to end with the come-outer (the out-comer?) listening to the other person debating paint colors. I could see only one way forward. “Gram,” I said. “I’m dating someone.”

I steeled myself for the inevitable exclamation of joy. In my grandmother’s version of the world, I’d been unattached for too long. I had well and truly gotten her attention, and I winced in the crossfire of her unbridled approval—she was so happy for me, who was he, what was he like?

“Well,” I said, “see, the thing is, Gram, she’s a woman.”

The phone hung dormant for a moment beneath my ear. Then Gram said, “I think the line’s going out.”

* * *

“At least she didn’t get mad,” Rachel said later as she sat on our living-room floor surrounded by graphic design textbooks.

“She didn’t even hear me.” I slumped next to her. “She just kept going on about the porch.”

“I don’t think yellow’s a good idea,” Rachel said, exactly as if she and my grandmother had continued the conversation in my absence. “It’ll wash out. It’ll also show dirt really easily.”

The stupid thing about all of this, I thought, was that Rachel and Gram would get along so well if they ever met. “It’s really not about the porch,” I said.

Rachel laughed sheepishly and wrapped an arm around me. “Sorry, I get carried away.” She glanced down at the colorful graph on the page. “I just don’t want to see her make a mistake.”

I closed my eyes. I had been erasing Rachel for almost two years. Every week, I had talked on the phone to Gram, describing the apartment she thought I lived in alone, mentioning that I might be moving soon, but I didn’t know quite where—Rachel’s hours bent over Ph.D. applications erased; Rachel dancing to hip-hop in the kitchen, erased; Rachel sprawled in bed in the morning, her hair crumpled across the shoulders of her oversized Hello Kitty T-shirt, laughing and coaxing me to bring her a cup of coffee, erased. Rachel never seemed to mind being erased, but I was tired of being a person who erased.

“Rachel thinks you should try something darker,” I told Gram the next time I talked to her. “Something that won’t show as much dirt.”

Gram said, “Hmm.” She didn’t ask who Rachel was. There was a long moment in which I wondered if the line was going out. “Like a forest green? Would that work?”

“Sure,” I said. “That would work.”

* * *

A few days later, Gram emailed me pictures of nine paint samples, most of them dark, with a note that said Ask your friend what she thinks of these.

“Is this progress?” I asked Rachel.

She shook her head, staring at the computer. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think maybe now she’s gone too dark.”

I began a reply that read MY GIRLFRIEND THINKS and got stalled by writer’s block after that.

Rachel pulled up a chair next to me at the kitchen table. Her hand curled over mine, and for a moment, we sat like that without speaking. Rachel’s fingers moved toward my keyboard, as if she were asking Can I? I shrugged. She pulled the laptop toward her and began to type.

Hi, Mrs. Cobb. I hope you’re having a good day. I think Paint Sample #1 is pretty, but it could make the porch feel smaller. Have you thought about using a darker color on just the trim?

A lump rose in my throat as I watched her type. I could see a way forward, and it was painful and freeing at once. It involved me telling Gram about Rachel, mentioning her hobbies, her opinions, the dinners she cooked. Rachel made stewed tomatoes last night. Rachel and I are going to the mountains next weekend. Stewed tomatoes sound nice, Gram would say, or, Oh, I love the mountains. Occasionally, maybe, she would slip: You two have fun; does she have the recipe? But it didn’t matter what Gram heard, what Gram said; it mattered that Rachel existed. It mattered that I had the freedom to say Rachel’s name.

Rachel’s fingers laced through mine. “What do you think?”

I leaned my head against her shoulder. “Don’t forget to sign it,” I said.

The man is and is not a god.

The prayer is not whispered in temple. It is arranged in subatomic particles.

“I want out,” I say through teeth gritted against the stale air of my tiny lab.

He is amused. His teeth are preternaturally white. “That’s an unusual request. Most people want more of ‘in’ if you will–to live forever.”

* * *

I don’t remember the walk to the bus stop. The ride back to my apartment. The passage of time.

Possibly this is because I don’t really walk and there isn’t really a bus and I don’t really have an apartment. Maybe driving is the mechanism for loading this new environment. The teleportation spell, the computation that gets me from there to here, a loading screen.

Or possibly because I’m in shock.

* * *

The man is and is not a genie.

The summons is not sent by rubbing a lamp. It is agitated by a subterranean high-powered laser.

“I want to be real.” My entire life, existence, indeed the existence of everything, culminates in this.

His smile is proud, a glint in his sky blue eyes. I not only discovered the false nature of life, but want actualization. He could be a happy father if he didn’t look so like a child about to squash a bug.

* * *

I look around the faded coral walls of my cheap rental, the only thing I can afford within commuting distance to my lab. It’s not the sort of place you’d use a spell to get to, if you could do magic.

I’m going to vomit, which is a high irony indeed, and when I get to the sink, I swallow and breathe and cry. And scowl at my face in the mirror. A face designed and coded without my input–whether by DNA or C++. Maybe nothing has changed.

Something brushes against my thumb.

* * *

The man is and is not a dragon.

The deal is not sealed in blood. It is expressed at a frequency that should not exist.

“Tell me how you figured it out,” he commands.

“And you’ll make me . . . ” I’m not sure what I’m asking for and can’t look him in the eye. The lab’s ancient CRT monitor flashes black then displays a geometric screensaver.

“I will provide you with a synthetic body in the real world.”

I nod. Humanoid or not, that’s more real than this.

* * *

I look down and there’s a rubber ducky sitting on the bathroom sink that I’ve never seen before. Or I have, but I’ve never seen it in person. It’s that one from the song. That kids’ song about Ernie, bath time, and fun. But it wasn’t here before.

I pick it up and feel–know–it’s not a duck.

* * *

The man is and is not in the world. His face is too perfectly symmetrical. He breathes hot air into the cramped space. He’s unbearably beautiful. He has no scent.

“Deal,” I say and offer him my hand which he accepts.

How do you know that the devil will keep his word? How do you hold a thing like this accountable for its promises? A thing that can erase your mind. A thing that can delete you.

I explain my research. The impossible math that reflected a world unlike our own. My suspicion that it was a gateway, a leak, a vibration from another plane in the multiverse. And how the probability of this world being a simulation was greater than any of those other options.

He narrows his eyes as he listens and I wonder if, for him, the world comes equipped with AR or a HUD. If he’s repairing the infinitesimal flaw I found even now. If he’s using cheat codes. If I were him, I would be. I finish speaking.

I wait. He watches. Nothing happens. “You said–“

“How do you know that I haven’t already granted your request?”

I’m dumbfounded, gesture to everything, to my continued existence, such as it is.

Now he laughs and I am certain he is a petty god, a capricious genie, a cruel dragon. “That’s not how data works. Software is copied to hardware, not transported. It’s not moving tangerines from Florida to Cincinnati.”

I glare. He’s absolutely right. He might be lying or he might have copied me to an android body in some unreachable perfect world where subatomic particles always obey consistent laws. How would I know?

Is the clone living in a synth body out there somewhere the real one now?

How I envy her. What does that make “me”? Leftovers? A registry stub?

“Well. You’ve been very helpful.” He winks at me and vanishes from existence with the same flourish that he appeared. With a flash of light and a brimstone scent. With a snap-pop and a breeze as the air in my lab rushes to fill the void left by the matter that no longer exists.

I unclench my hands and see that I’ve carved up my palms with my fingernails. There will never be a way out. Not for me. No matter how many copies make good on the goal of finding benevolent masters and real synthetic bodies, there will always be something left behind.

* * *

It’s not a duck. It’s a gift. From a version of me that is impossibly far away. That he underestimated. That figured out I’d be stuck here, perhaps at the same moment I did. Whether it’s pity on me or revenge on him, I don’t care.

I am and am not. But I’ll accept the cheat codes.

Previously published in Nature Futures, May 2017. Reprinted here by permission of the author.

TEN TIPS TO TURN EIGHTEEN YEARS INTO OVERNIGHT SUCCESS!

For over the twelve-plus months that THE GUTTERS ran, I unpacked the spaces in between writing and success in publishing my first major novel, HEX-RATED. Because the kids these days love listicles, I thought I’d round up the year by distilling 10,000 or so words into ten points so that I can defeat the entire purpose of THE GUTTERS (we spend most of our time between successes, not under their glow) in a tenth of the time it took to write them. So, for all of you who think CRACKED.COM is a fount of wisdom, REJOICE!

TEN THINGS THAT I DID THAT YOU CAN’T DO BECAUSE NO TWO WRITING CAREERS ARE THE SAME BUT MIGHT OFFER YOU SOME INSIGHT IN HOW TO MAKE STUFF AND SUCCEED AND BE COOL WITH THE FACT THAT YOU WILL NEVER BE RICH FROM YOUR EFFORTS AND MUCH OF PUBLISHING IS CONTROLLED IN SUCH A WAY AS TO MAKE IT FEEL LIKE A COMBINATION CRAP-SHOOT, LOTTERY, AND BEAUTY CONTEST, BUT HEY THE WHOLE POINT IS THE ART, AM I RIGHT?

1. BE CANADIAN.

No one ever suspects Canadians can do anything other than fly the Starship Enterprise, pose for Playboy, or  write and perform the best sketch comedy show in TV history (screw you, Laugh In!). So when you get big and successful like me, you won’t need to be made (as the mighty pro wrestler the Iron Sheik would say), HUMBLE! Just say you’re from Regina or Medicine Hat or Toronto and people will leave you alone. If you can’t be Canadian, try and be something just as nice, like a puffin.

2. DO SHIT OTHER THAN “BEING A WRITER!”

I’ve got a PhD in War Studies and am a professional historian. I’ve worked as a cemetery groundskeeper, security system salesman, retail cashier at cool indie bookstores, and more. I’ve performed punk rock and improv to crowds of dozens (literally dozens) of moderately interested fans for years. All those experiences get mined. They make my work different. I can write about different stuff with authority and authenticity on top of doing cool research. All of that has led to short stories and novels about graveyards, punk detectives, improv cults, and more!

3. LOVE WHAT THE FUCK YOU LOVE.

If you’re just a reader who loves to write, cool. But LOVE THE FUCK out of what you read and write about, be it sexy elves of fifth-wave-intersectional feminist critiques of sexy elves. Just love all the weird shit you’re into. Understand it. Dissect it. Get why people hate it. Get why it’s awful as well as cool. Love doesn’t mean being blind to limitations or negative impact. Don’t just enjoy it, Frankenstein it. Tear it apart and examine aspects in detail, including the ugly bits (did you know wrestling can be racist, sexist, and horrific?) or look at how it permeates other parts of the cultural marketplace. Sure, READY PLAYER ONE is awful. But man-o-man does he love his subject matter. Why not do the same . . . and write a cool book. Maybe you’ll get paid for it! Libby Cudmore did it with her love of OCD music trivia via an amateur detective story! Sylvia Moreno-Garcia did it with record collecting in Mexico City and tangled it with a young-love story! HECK, IT HAPPENED WITH HEX-RATED! I crammed that novel full of stuff I dig, like noir and PI pulp tropes from the 1970s, groovy Marvel Comics aesthetics, military history (especially the Korean and Vietnam War), Gonzo journalism, the dark drug culture of rock and roll in 1970s, the Golden Age of Heavy Metal, and an academic interest in the early days of naked cinema. VOILA! Instant classic! 

4. WRITE SHORT STORIES FOR TEN YEARS.

Short stories are laboratories of learning, failure, and wild experiments. I honed my voice in short stories. I take more chances in short stories because who the hell reads ‘em besides other writers of short stories? Freedom from external validation is guaranteed and that often leads to more creative growth as an artist. In short controlled bursts you learn pacing, dialog, plot, and scene work at a great rate, and how to fucking end a piece of dramatic writing. Plus they can make you money! I’ve received more cash from short fiction than some folks have for novels. Why not get paid to learn?

5. ALSO, WRITE NOVELS, TOO!

Don’t just write short stories, you dolt! Novels are their own beast and require much attention to detail and finesse. Just make sure to jam them with million-dollar ideas and award-favorite tropes like Latvian werewolves, fat kids as heroes, and dystopias where people of color are the heroes and pretty white people are always the villains. Pretty sure these elements are why I’m a success, actually.

6. SELF-PUBLISH BUT DON’T BE STUPID ABOUT IT!

I’ve got five novels available on Kindle. Love ‘em all. They sell like soap at a pig party but garnered me mild acclaim and a small rep as that pretty good writer of wrestling and fighty-fight novels. Just make sure they are well formatted, edited, with good covers and, last but not least, ACTUALLY GOOD NOVELS! How will you know? See next two points.

7. READ, MOTHERFXXKER, READ!

The worst writing I’ve done has been when I’ve ignored the joy of internalizing narrative by reading, seeing how words, ideas, stories, and more function in fiction and non-fic. Highbrow and low-rent stories can teach you many things (including what to avoid) Read widely. Read people who write BETTER than you as well as folks who don’t but have something to teach. Learn from everyone who impresses you and KEEP finding more people who do. Don’t be lazy and just read the stuff you liked when you were learning to write. Love that shit to death, then find other stuff to love to death. As they say, if you’re not growing, you’re dying, including in your reading life. Granted, if someone is paying you good money to not change . . . TAKE IT!

8. BE YOUR BIGGEST FAN AND BEST CRITIC.

Avoid idiots who say you can’t be a good editor of your own work. If you ONLY listen to others about what makes your stories work, you are forever enslaved to their judgement. But that doesn’t mean ignore the opinions of good readers. That’s also stupid. Editors and agents are valuable resources for feedback, as are writing groups, workshops, classes, MFAs, if they know what you’re trying to do! In the end, you’re the final arbiter of your work. The better you get as a reader, the more tricks you’ll learn along with writing to know the difference between shit and Shangri La.

9. LEARN TO WRITE MANY THINGS.

Don’t be precious poets or novelists. Try new mediums. I’ve written comic books, video game scripts, lesson plans, role-playing-game reference books (including getting paid real money to make imaginary weapons), media-tie in fiction, historical works, a biography, academic articles, interviews, sketch comedy, poetry, and more. Why? When you become poor, you realize you don’t have the luxury of only using your skill set for your “passion project.” The result? I can write compelling pitches as well as novels and stories, I can write comedy as well as horror and fantasy, I can write fiction and history, I can write for the stage as well as the page. I’ve used all of these skills along the road to write HEX-RATED.

10. MAKE THE WORK THE GOAL.

Worst thing I did in my writing career was believe my willpower could make publishing . . . do anything. Best thing I learned recovering from it was just to make as much really good work as I could, get it out, and game the system as much as I can. The opportunity to write The Brimstone Files came about because of all of the above. I was given an opportunity I had not looked for and was prepared to make the best of it because I busted my ass for seventeen years.

Or you could buy a book on how to become a bestseller in a handful of years. 

I’m sure it happens every day. Maybe you’ll join the ranks of the 1% in publishing. I hope so. Writing so well and successfully that you don’t worry about how many asthma attacks you have in you before you run out of puffers is a hell of a thing. I wish we all could be so lucky.

But wishes and luck never got me far.

Want to know what did?

Learning the lesson of The Gutters in real time. You can do the same by reading FXXK WRITING: A GUIDE FOR FRUSTRATED ARTISTS. 

Because the 17 years I spent learning how to be a writer before I got a book deal weren’t a fail. They weren’t holding time. They weren’t “waiting.” They were filled with the stuff of great writing. What the late God of Sex and Guitars called . . .  

Life.

In the end, that’s all we have.

JSR

 

Support Jay’s continued survival in the world of publishing by buying HEX-RATED or FXXK WRITING: A GUIDE FOR FRUSTRATED ARTISTS. Hell, buy both. It was a good but lean year for Doc Ridler. 

This year I’m celebrating my 51st New Year.

I have many fond memories of family, food, games, traditions. As a child we would step out our front door and bang pot lids with wooden spoons to ring in the new year. I still watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, at least for those last few minutes as the ball on Time’s Square (delayed for midnight in the Rocky Mountains) slowly glides downward, then bursts into wonderful light. Fireworks, cheering, drinking, that New Year’s kiss.

And we all make resolutions. “This year I’m going to…”

And, months later, we berate ourselves for failing to keep them.

But 51 years has give me some perspective on life and living. First of all, the best and most lasting changes in my life have never begun with a resolution New Year’s Day.

Change—especially for the better—doesn’t come because of a page on the calendar. It comes because we are prepared for it.

By that, I mean that life circumstances prepare us for the inevitability of change.

Pregnancy, by its very nature, prepares us for parenthood. Misery prepares us for the struggle to climb from its grip. The process of aging prepares us to meet our eventual end.

But at some point, the process of change requires something from us. It requires choice. It requires action. It requires us to make decisions about how we will react, what we will do. At some point, we must all take our lives into our own hands. We must all make of ourselves the kind of person we want to become.

And in that light, I think this quote from country musician Brad Paisley is as true of July 23rd or November 6th as it is of January 1st:

“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.”

This month’s stories are all about change, new beginnings, that first page. Some by choice, some by chance.

We hope you enjoy.

I stink.

Thankfully, the cilia in my nose are frozen solid so I can’t smell myself.

Like drips collecting at the tip of an icicle, my thoughts form at a glacial crawl.

The odor of a body emitting freonic chemicals is rank. The first experiment lasted three days and my stench was lab-clearing, canary-killing noxious. It maxed out the ventilation system.

This experiment is one hundred times longer. The team replaced my blood with freonic compounds at an atomic level when I was cryogenically preserved three hundred days ago.

In layman’s terms, I’m a popsicle. Frozen solid and locked inside a self-contained cucumber-shaped pod with a porthole the size of a cantaloupe. Because galactic travel is too far for raw astronauts, the objective is to launch iced humans into the abyss and defrost them on arrival.

An ice cream headache hammers my brain while I thaw. Diagrams on the monitor light up as my blood replaces the chemicals and each organ nears its functional temperature. Heart, lungs and circulatory system follow the nervous system. The hissing blood warmer near my left ear buzzes like a honey bee. For the next test, I’ll relocate it closer to my feet.

As soon as my legs are able, I kick three times on the pod wall. My lab team knows this means, “start the coffee.” I’m impatient to know who won the Iditarod, the Stanley Cup and if my curling team made the playoffs. Ice is my thing.

The porthole is covered with thick frost. Same problem occurred during the initial test. Defroster malfunction. The tech team wasn’t confident about their alterations, so at the last moment, before closing the pod, Jorgenson ran to her car and returned with a plastic windshield scraper, complete with a $4.99 price tag from Andy’s Auto Body still stuck on the handle.

She attached it to my utility belt with a grin. “I’ll add it to your expense report.”

When I thaw, my bank balance will be huge. Big enough for a beachy Fiji vacation. I negotiated hazard pay for all three hundred days and didn’t spend a penny. Other than the $4.99.

Human Resources wouldn’t let me off the hook for my monthly health insurance premiums, either. “I can’t use it,” I’d argued. No one wins arguments with HR.

I fumble for the scraper and work on the porthole. My fingers, still numb, have the dexterity of fish sticks. Health insurance better cover freezer burn. Finally, a small area is clear. I expect to see Jorgenson’s face peering in with her goofy thumbs-up.

Instead, there are rows of numbers lit on a screen. They blink. Binary. Maybe. My grey matter is thicker than a bowl of tapioca. The numbers disappear. A series of Greek letters replace them.

What the hell? This is a typical Jorgenson joke. Scientists always think they’re funnier than they are.

Other languages appear until I recognize English: TAP THREE TIMES IF THIS IS YOUR HUMAN LANGUAGE.

Not laughing. I tap three times anyway. Anything to guzzle scorching, dark roast blend sooner.

They’re jealous. This game is their payback. Espinosa’s 6’6” body didn’t fit in the pod. Yenz is a single father. Jorgenson is diabetic. Denial. Blander was five months pregnant. Definite denial. Baby Blander should be due soon.

Everyone remembers the firsts. Galileo. Avogadro. Newton. And Lord Kelvin, of course. All systems point to a successful, yet sluggish, thaw, making me the first cryogenically preserved human. There were dozens of lab rats and a monkey that preceded me, but it is my name and scientific contribution that will grace the pages of history books right after the photos of Armstrong’s flag on the moon. The press release is already saved on my laptop: ‘First Frozen Human – Thaw Successful after 300 Days. Solidifies Future of Space Travel.’

More words appear outside my porthole: WE GREET EARTHER. UPDATING TRANSLATOR.

Assholes.

THAWING AT DELIBERATE RATE. EXTRA PRECAUTION FOR TIME DELAY.

In three hundred days their assholes grew vast. If my brain were fully melted I would crack a Uranus joke. Even the time Jorgenson snuck habanero peppers into Yenz’s yogurt was funnier than this.

The words come faster now: EARTH ENDED. LAST HUMAN PRESERVED WELL. POD FIERCELY GUARDED. SAFE TO THAW NOW. TAP THREE TIMES FOR COMPREHENSION.

Jacuzzi. Yeah. Warm blanket and slippers. Yeah. This Jorgenson joke. No.

TAP THREE TIMES FOR COMPREHENSION.

I tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap. Will they detect sarcasm in the tempo?

ADJUSTING ATMOSPHERE. HUMANS REQUIRE 80% NITROGEN. 20% OXYGEN. TAP THREE TIMES TO CONFIRM.

Whatever. Tap. Tap. Tap. I’ll humor them.

EARTHER PRESERVED EQUIVALENT OF 189 EARTH YEARS.

Hell no. Couldn’t happen. How would the pod stay charged? Did Luke’s uncle finally let him go to Tosche Station for those power converters? My brain isn’t that frozen. Anymore.

Warmth has finally reached my extremities. My fingers tingle. The monitor flashes, ‘Thaw successful.’ I stretch against the safety harness. Ankles. Hips. Neck. My joints ache, but function.

EARTHER ATMOSPHERE ACHIEVED. OPEN POD IN THREE HUMAN MINUTES? TAP THREE TIMES TO CONFIRM.

What if this isn’t a joke? Could Jorgenson have made me portable? Did she convince Andy of Andy’s Auto Body to construct a freaking galactic generator? That’ll be on my expense report, I’m sure.

OPEN POD IN TWO HUMAN MINUTES?

I still don’t tap.

HUMAN STAY INSIDE POD? TAP THREE TIMES.

Can’t do that. Dehydration is imminent unless my stink kills me first.

OPEN POD? TAP THREE TIMES.

Maybe? Real? Damn. I inhale hard. Horrid mistake. My nasal passages burn. I need out. Tap. Tap. Tap. The pod’s airtight seals release. Artificial air rushes in and displaces my rotten stench.

There is brightness. And vast silence.

I’ll need a new press release because this isn’t the Colorado lab. Not even Earth.

There’s no coffee.