Whyte Boyz
Jay Lake

HAPLOID COMES THE FUTURE.

Blood arcs, the flight of a gutshot bird. Obsidian-weighted piano wire sings a bright-mad death song as the boyz dance through the flails of one another’s arms, threshing and harvesting the cullz. Smartroad bounces beneath their feet, so much foam now that the wits and money have departed for warmer, darker climes beyond high orbit. There is little left for these boyz save the dance which is in and upon their blood.

They are whyte niggaz in the Darkman’s world.

Somewhere the Darkman laughs, thunder rolling off his lips in an echo of pristine granite valleys lost to both access and imagination. Somewhere the Darkman’s eyes glimmer beetle-winged and shadowed, pools of power set with rolling bounds of epicanthic fat. Somewhere the Darkman thinks a wish and his wish is brought to truth in the electron rush of a gleaming moment, his steel-honed and mirror-sharp world bent to the devices of his desire.

Somewhere trees shiver with the wind of his passage and the very soil fountains forth. Somewhere is peace, the simple architecture of contentment, even perhaps justice.

But not here, not where the boyz dance.

The Doom That Came to Smallmouth
Joe Murphy

THERE IS IN MNAR COUNTY a vast still lake fed by no stream, from which no stream flows. At least, that’s what Old Man Ackerman had told Rusty’s pa. Rusty had heard the old fart rambling about the tournament, and watched the gleam harden in Pa’s eyes.

“You know,” Rusty said the next day as he and Pa sat in their old pickup, staring out at the water beyond. “That Ackerman is a lying sack of shit.”

“Language, boy. Don’t talk about him that way.” A frown creased his father’s face, another deeply seamed wrinkle added to a thousand others. He reached across the ice chest and flicked Rusty’s ear with thumb and forefinger. “That old guy’s a serious fisherman.”

Rusty shrugged then squinted in the bright Texas sunlight, and studied what was supposed to be Smallmouth Lake. ‘Vast’ was hardly the word, even for a nearsighted old cuss like Ackerman. Five skips of a stone would cross the whole damn thing. He could run clear around it and barely break a sweat.

But then again, ‘still’ was an understatement. As they pulled up on the muddy shore beside an ancient hovel of a boathouse and a rotting pier that wouldn’t support his baby sister, Rusty cocked his head and stared. The lake, a perfect mirror, reflected the high thin clouds, washed-out blue sky, and a fireball July sun. Low-growing mesquite trees doubled into the water on the far shore. Even the dilapidated silhouette of Smallmouth proper, Mnar County’s only town, stood out near the western edge.

Lupercalia
Rita Oakes

AFTER THEY SKINNED HIM, Marcus shifted back to man-shape. He lay limp upon the grass in the peristyle garden, the stench of his own blood, pain, and urine thick in his nostrils. The moon bathed him with healing light. The agony of his stripped muscles diminished, from fire to a sting, and then to a shuddersome itch, like a million ants crawling over bare flesh. New skin covered him, blessedly cool.

The men drew close again. Marcus tensed. Perhaps they wanted his man-pelt, too, though it would never be as warm as the fur of his wolf-shape. Why had the Mistress ordered him punished? Perhaps the wine he had spilled when the scent of a rabbit in the garden distracted him? A gift of Caligula, and costly.

Marcus resolved not be so clumsy again. The Mistress would forgive him, wouldn’t she? Even though she had another Mutaro to play with now?

The new Mutaro, Julius, had only hatred for the Human masters, and contempt for Marcus. Why did they not strip Julius of his pelt? Julius never tried to please, but had to be drugged and beaten before submitting.

Marcus shuddered. When no knife touched him again, he opened his eyes. The play of moonlight and shadow on the leaves of the fig trees drew him from the memory of pain. Sweet-scented roses twined about the colonnade. Grapes hung heavy, so ripe they nearly burst their skins. Ivy trailed from the central fountain and its image of Venus. The plash of water was pleasant, and the grass cool beneath him. Above, the dark rectangle of sky sparkled with stars and a moon three-quarters full.

N+1
Stephen Couch

JULY 21

In prison, you find yourself existing day by day. Then you get out and enter a world where all the days seem to be happening at once.

I hadn’t seen a computer for the last twenty years, not since the Feds locked me away for hacking into the NORAD network. (Well, they shouldn’t make claims like ‘intrusion-proof’ if they don’t want intruders, right?) I came out of prison to find the world got along just fine without me; tech evolution continued on its merry way, and what greeted me upon my release was something I’d heard about non-stop in stir, but had never been in contact with: the Internet.

A far cry from the chain of isolated BBS islands I had left behind; let me tell you. This was a continent, a world—a solar system of data. A universe, if you bought the hype.

I bought it; what I’d seen of technology in the couple of days since my release made me believe every claim about the Internet I’d heard. But I couldn’t experience it for myself. Conditions of my release stipulated that I not use a computer for another five-year probationary period.

In a world like this 21st Century I found myself in, where computers seemed integrated with every aspect of life, they should have just kept me behind bars. They even used computers behind the counter at fast food restaurants now. According to my probation officer, there was a rewarding career in the assembly-line field in my future.

I hoped to God they didn’t use computers for that, too.

The Passion: A Western
Bruce McAllister

CLINT STARES OUT THE WINDOW at a town of red dust and adobe. He’s seventy-five years old, for God’s sake, and hasn’t made a western in years, but it’s a western. He’s younger--he can feel it in his bones--and though he can’t see Leone’s bright blue chair or hear Morricone’s score, it’s a western. It’;s got to be.

This is Mantos, a voice says suddenly. It’s the script, of course. They never used voice-over in films like this.

It’s a quaint but somehow disturbing town, the voice adds. How pretentious. It’s got to be Sergio’s. Who else would write like this?

He’s waiting for someone. He can feel it. They’re in this town on a mission. The script doesn’t have to tell him. But what mission?

He’ll have to wait for clarification--and his partner. Is it Paul? Bob? Hank? Lee? John? Someone new? He squints—it’s one of his trademarks—but he can’t remember.

He keeps staring through the broken glass, not knowing what else to do.

The Ile of Dogges
Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette

THE LIGHT WOULD LAST LONG ENOUGH.

Sir Edmund Tylney, in pain and reeking from rotting teeth, stood before the sideboard and crumbled sugar into his sack, causing a sandy yellowish grit to settle at the bottom of the cup. He swirled the drink to sweeten it, then bore it back to his reading table where an unruly stack of quarto pages waited, slit along the folds with a pen-knife.

He set the cup on the table in the sunlight and drew up his stool, its short legs rasping over the rush mats as he squared it and sat. He reached left-handed for the wine, right-handed for the playscript, drawing both to him over the pegged tabletop. And then he riffled the sheets of Speilman’s cheapest laid with his nail.

Bending into the light, wincing as the sweetened wine ached across his teeth with every sip, he read.

He turned over the last leaf, part-covered in secretary’s script, as he drank the last gritty swallow in his cup, the square of sun spilling over the table-edge to spot the floor. Tylney drew out his own pen knife, cut a new point on a quill, and--on a fresh quarter-sheet--began to write the necessary document. The Jonson fellow was inexperienced, it was true. But Tom Nashe should have known better.

The Ile of Dogges was a good play. Lively, witty. Very clever, as one would expect from Tom Nashe and the newcomer Jonson. And Tylney’s long-practiced and discerning eye saw the satire on every page, making mock of--among a host of other, lesser targets--Elizabeth, her Privy Council, and the Lord Chamberlain.

It could never be performed.

Here There Be Humans
Ken Rand

WHEN ADMINISTRATOR FIRST SLON M’LAY disappeared, his comrades blamed extinct humans. A joke, of course. “Maybe he ruptured his throat pouch calling one in his dreams,” they said, laughing.

Two days later, M’lay was still missing in the jungle, the Bureau sent investigators from orbital, and the laughter stopped.

“No nestlings’ tale,” Chief Detective Sula A’com said. “Whatever happened to your First, it wasn’t phantom humans.”;

Animals, then? Or outlaws?

Everyone had heard stories about escaped convicts out there in the dense, alien Brazilian jungle, using stolen and makeshift breathers, no exosuits, existing like savages. Gone native. If they could kidnap the Administrator then they were near, and they could take anybody from the Bureau’s South America main research base on the Amazon River. Anybody. Any time.

Security at the base was cursory. Perimeter smartwire kept undergrowth, insects, pests, and the infrequent carnivore out. Other threats--outlaws bent on murder?--had been ill considered. But M’lay had gone afield, past the wire.