Editorial
…Tansy Rayner Roberts
There have been some interesting questions floating around the Australian 
speculative fiction community in the last year.
Are there too many markets for short fiction, and does this mean a lower 
standard of fiction is being published.
Is Australian speculative fiction good enough. 
What is “good” speculative fiction anyway.
I should point out that these questions are coming from writers and editors 
— but mostly writers. Readers have much simpler criteria for “good” fiction 
— Do I like it. Did I enjoy reading it. Would I read it again. And, most 
importantly — Where can I find more like it.
The question of whether too much speculative fiction is finding 
publication in Australia surprised me. The writer in me says, “More, 
more markets! More magazines, more anthologies! Maybe they’ll publish 
meeeee!” The editor in me thinks, “Hmm. More competition. But still, that 
means a wider audience coming to Australian speculative fiction, right. And 
that means more subscribers for ASIM!” The reader in me says, “Bring it on! 
The more the merrier. Maybe I won’t read all of them, but at least I’ll have a 
choice.”
I think “choice” is the operative word here. Readers of Australian 
speculative fiction have never had so much choice before. Between Voyager, 
Allen and Unwin, ASIM, Agog! Press, Aurealis, Ticonderoga Online, 
Shadowed Realms, Chimaera Press, Mirrordanse, Prime Books, Orbit, and a 
host of other publications/publishers here and overseas, you can now choose 
between epic fantasy, urban fantasy, literary fantasy, YA fantasy, space opera, 
hard SF, soft SF, funny SF, dark horror, medium horror, light horror and a 
host of other possibilities.
If you only like one of those kinds of speculative fiction, then something 
by an Australian author that you will enjoy was published last year. If you 

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like many different kinds of speculative fiction, then roll on up. It’s your lucky 
year. Let’s hope you have more of them.
In his most recent Year’s Best Science Fiction (in which ASIM scored 6 
recommended reading mentions!) Gardner Dozois lamented that ASIM’s content 
wasn’t a little more serious, while at the same time wishing that Canadian 
magazine On Spec would “lighten up a little”. While I respect and enjoy Mr 
Dozois’ editorial taste, that sounds a lot like wishing all icecream was chocolate. 
I’m a big fan of chocolate icecream, but sometimes I want vanilla. And 
sometimes, I want pineapple.
So here’s to ASIM, the pineapple icecream of the spaceways, offering 
something different: entertaining, well-written speculative fiction that allows 
(and even encourages!) its authors to have fun with the genre — to just relax and 
tell stories, without worrying about how literary they are, or whether they fit into 
current marketing trends.
There’s a mixture in this issue of the light-hearted and action-packed, the 
dark, the very dark, the outright silly and even a touch of elegance here and there. 
I really enjoyed this mix of stories from up-and-coming and established writers, 
and I hope you will too.
But whether you enjoy the stories or not — either way, we’d love to get some 
feedback from you. Write us a letter or an email — review the issue on your 
website or blog, and send us the link. Sometimes the writers and editors and 
publishers are talking so loudly about what matters to them that they forget to 
listen to the readers. And we’d really like to hear what you have to say.
Tansy RR
Editor, Issue 22
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cassiphone/

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ANDROMEDA SPACEWAYS Inflight Magazine
Vol. 4/Issue 4 
Next Issue Available
January February 2006 
March/April 2006
Fiction
4      The Sun King. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adam Browne
10     Blake the God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lee Battersby
16     Marco’s Tooth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trent Jamieson
29     The Last Cyberpunk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Will McIntosh
42     It’s Only Rock and Roll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hannah Strom-Martin
57     Mail Chauvinism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G Scott Huggins
65     Tiny Sapphire & the Big Bad Virus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Josh Rountree
70     The Once and Future Creepy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Hindle
82     Love in the Land of The Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Special FEatures
84     Interview — Trent Jamieson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tansy Rayner Roberts
87     The Mainstreaming of SF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cory Daniells
Regular Features
92     Reviews. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Various contributors
96     Acknowledgements
Editor Tansy Rayner Roberts
Non-fiction Editor Ben Cook
Art Director Alisa Krasnostein
Reviews Editor Ian Nichols
Poetry Editor Ian Nichols
Editor-in-chief Robbie Matthews
Layout 
Zara Baxter
Subscriptions Simon Haynes
Advertising Tehani Wesseley
Cover Art Conny Valentina 
Copyright 2005
Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op Ltd
c/- Simon Haynes, PO Box 127 Belmont, Western 
Australia, 6984. 
http://www.andromedaspaceways.com
Published bimonthly by Andromeda Spaceways 
Publishing Co-op. RRP A$7.95. Subscription rates 
are are available from the website.
Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-op actively 
encourages literary and artistic contributions. 
Submissions should be made online by emailing:
submissions@andromedaspaceways.com
Submission guidelines are available from the 
website. Please read them.
ISSN 1446–781X

The Sun King
…Adam Browne
 
January/February 2006
The sun King
5
On the occasion of his twenty-fifth birthday, Louis XIV, Le Grand Monarque de 
France, was promoted to the position of God, that office having been vacated by 
its previous tenant for reasons of death. 
As this was an inevitable advancement in the monarch’s career, the 
announcement of his ascension caught exactly no-one by surprise. Even Louis, 
who normally enjoyed a bit of pomp, felt the deification ceremony was something 
to be got through as swiftly as possible. No sooner had he been coronated, 
anointed with sacramental oil and handed a parchment affording him authority 
over the Deep and Secret Machineries of the Universe, than he was hurrying out 
the great doors of the Notre-Dames de Rheimes Cathedral and into the sunshine 
for which he was now responsible. 
Nor did he pause when he reached the square outside the cathedral. He 
strode across the flagstones, outpacing the ragged crowd of his attendants (his 
fatly panting Valet de Chambre; his Nanny with her immense whaleboned gown 
creaking like the rigging of a tall ship; his First Physician and First Surgeon, both 
weighed down by hairpieces of a size more often associated with civil engineering 
than wig-making), until he came to the northern corner of the courtyard where 
the reason for his impatience stood demurely awaiting him.
Her name was Mademoiselle Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart. 
As a deity, Louis was now officially a divine being of pure spirit, perfect in power, 
wisdom, and goodness; but he fancied the pretty ladies as much as ever. And the 
Mademoiselle was most uncommon pretty. She was his petit divertissement, his 
little dimpled plumpling, the one upon whom the royal eye, but not yet the royal 
lips, had alighted. 
“May I offer my congratulations on your ascension, Sire,” she said — rather 
stiffly, he thought. 
“You may indeed,” he replied. “And as my first official act, I shall present you 
with a token of my esteem.”
He gestured as is sometimes seen in ecclesiastical art; an elegant, holy figuration 
of his fingertips; and from nowhere (or, more accurately, from the pregnant fizzing 

The Sun King
…Adam Browne
 
January/February 2006
The sun King
5
Nothing that underlies all Creation) there appeared a gigantic bunch of roses, their 
scent miraculously identical to the Eau de Admirable of the Florentine perfumier 
Giovani Paolo Feminis. Louis nodded to acknowledge the scattered applause from his 
assembled courtiers, but really, privately, he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. 
Miracles were a doddle once you had the trick of them. 
He bowed to the Mademoiselle, his robes (a gold-scintillated explosion of ostrich 
feathers) rustling about him as he proffered his gift. The Mademoiselle accepted the 
flowers, but Louis could not help but think there was something of sufferance to her 
manner. “Eau de Admirable,” she sighed, “it was all the fashion, was it not, a few months 
ago.” She gave him a perfunctory curtsy, then tossed the flowers to her maid.
Louis smiled indulgently. True, she was spoiled, but whom in Louis’s court was not. 
Having grown up in the infinitely brattish context of Versailles, where even the boy 
who wiped your arse of a morning conducted himself with the hauteur of a peer of the 
realm, what else could she be but a brat. 
And indeed, apart from her beauty, her opulent thighs, sumptuous upper arms and 
succulent bosom, it was her very resistance to his charms that had attracted him at 
the first. In a society where the battle to win his heart had reached such a pitch that 
ladies were known to consult sorcerers for love spells and philtres, the Mademoiselle’s 
disinclination piqued his interest, as did the hint of shyness he seemed to detect 
behind her prickly manner.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “I am about to conduct a survey of my new kingdom, being 
the Universe-at-large.” He indicated a nearby sedan-chair (his gesture accidentally 
causing a small miracle in a nearby farm, where a goat surprised itself by giving birth 
to a toad). “I hope you would not think it too forward if I invited you to join me.” 
In reply, she indicated with the slightest but most expressive arch of an eyebrow 
that she did think it a little forward, but that as he was now her Lord in both senses of 
the word, she would do as she was bid within, of course, limits dictated by propriety.
In his turn, Louis quirked his own eyebrows (being quite as eloquent in the idiom 
as she) to assure her that his motivations were entirely honourable; but that if she 
were ever to stumble outside the bounds of propriety, he would stoutly follow, if only 
to keep her company.
So she took his arm and they repaired to the sedan-chair where, by royal decree, he 
repealed the law of gravity (which was the invention of an Englishman after all). The 
little vessel swifted upwards, beyond the clouds, splashing out of the atmosphere on a 
fountain of air, a rarefied chandelier that flash-froze then dissipated into a thousand 
lights to mark the beginning of their voyage.
They swung away from the Earth. The sedan-chair moved smoothly through 
space, an excellently beautiful vessel in which to ride, adorned all over with rich 
architectural exuberations, its gold-chased surfaces everywhere inlayed with silver and 
living mother-of-pearl. Nevertheless, the ambiance within was not an easy one. The 

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Mademoiselle sat with a rigid back and responded to Louis’s conversational gambits 
with little more than an occasional stiff nod.
She was the coyest of mistresses; but unlike Marvell, Louis did have ‘worlds 
enough, and time’. He was patient, or at least not entirely impatient. Even as a 
mortal, a mere lieutenant of God, he had been ‘prudent, and fully possessed of the 
self-restraint one might expect of a divinity’, as his minister the Duc de Saint-Simon 
had phrased it. An appraisal now doubly true; and more’s the pity, thought Louis as 
with divine forbearance he forced a smile and continued their rather one-sided chat, 
proving that light conversation can be heavy going indeed.
Still, he was pleased to show off his newly acquired knowledge of the heavens 
(having felt obliged in recent weeks to learn a little of the universe over which 
he had been about to take control). With proprietorial pride, he explained to the 
Mademoiselle the wonders of the cosmos passing by outside. “Here, milady, you see 
the Moon,” he said. “Note the seas of ivory dust. Note too its rilles, like veins running 
dark through the features called maria; impact basins created four billion years ago.”
“It is dreary,” was her observation. “Like a skull.” 
“In truth it is, Mademoiselle,” he replied without hesitation, and caused the craters 
to flow with flowers, the plains to run and chuckle with merry freshets, and the lunar 
atmosphere to blow with spring breezes scented with jonquils.
 “Is that more to your liking, my dear.” he whispered, contriving to brush his lips 
against her ear.
“Certainly it is…improved,” she said, shrugging him off with a brusqueness 
bordering on lèse majesté. Or is it sacrilege. he thought crossly. 
On they flew, bucketing upward, his Highness now higher than ever. 
They flew past Mars (“an atrocious, utilitarian world,” as the Mademoiselle later 
recalled to her sister, “its colour a déclassé shade of cerise…”), and onward into the 
Asteroid Belt. Louis pointed out its various features: “Observe, my dear, the pretty 
planetesimals and meteoroids atumble in their multitudinous orbits.” He rested a 
hopeful hand upon her knee. She shifted the leg out of reach. “If you will but look 
closely,” he continued, hiding his disappointment, “you may mark faint maculations 
indicating the presence of strange fossils, suggesting that once the asteroids were 
fragments of a world where living things roamed and roared.”
But it was clear to Louis that, in the eyes of Mademoiselle Françoise (used to the 
gilded orangeries, the Parterre des Fleurs, the terraced symmetries of the Versailles 
gardens), the asteroids were ugly and frightening. She pulled down her blind with a 
snap, refusing to open it again until Louis had bettered the view.
Which he did without demur, miracling the Belt into a ring of sapphires where flew 
orbital nightingales and iridescent butterflies with looking-glass wings. She accepted 
all this without a smile (it must be said in her defence that smiles were unfashionable 
among the ladies of Louis’s court, as their makeup, a paste of white lead, duck eggs 

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and puppy’s urine, made for a hard shiny finish that cracked when stressed by facial 
expressions).
Their journey continued. They came to Jupiter, and not even that splendid planet 
with its numerous luminous moons, its god-tossed lightnings flashing athwart its 
storm-swirled sky, sufficed to soften the Mademoiselle’s heart (“a gross old man of a 
world,” as she put it later, “its red spot staring at me like a lecher’s eye, its radiation 
frizzing my hair…”). Louis began to suspect his cause was lost. In desperation, he 
tried to improve the view with the addition of several immense kittens (all ladies love 
kittens, do they not.): colossal things, their fur a furlong long; an entire litter of them 
playing in Jupiter’s upper airs.
“Aren’t they darling.” said Louis, although he privately feared that grotesque or 
monstrous might more aptly serve to describe the creatures. “See how they make sport 
with the moons. Oh, ha ha!, that one shall knock Callisto out of orbit if he’s not 
careful!”
But when he turned he saw she was not even looking.
He sighed. The game was over, and he had scored not a point. “Ah well,” he 
said glumly. “Perhaps we should return home.” Beneath his makeup (thick layerings 
of cochineal, maquillage, lotions, powders and unguents) his cheeks were pale with 
sorrow.
A pause. And then the Mademoiselle surprised him by laying her hand on his. He 
looked up, and saw (miracle of miracles!) compassion in her eyes. For, at heart, and 
despite all the callousness trained into her at Versailles, she was by nature a sweet girl 
who could not stand to see suffering for long.
He shaped one of his eyebrows into a query.
She arched her own in reply, indicating with the merest virtuoso twitch, executed 
just so, that she was sorry to have saddened him, but that he had annoyed her with his 
blithe certainty that he could have her so easily — and, furthermore, though she was 
too coy to have ever said so aloud, that she really thought him rather dashing. 
Her eyebrows went on to suggest they should let bygones be bygones and continue 
the journey on happier terms. 
Louis’s eyebrows, for their part, were in complete agreement.
“After all,” he said aloud, “we have not yet seen Saturn. My astronomers assure me 
it is a planet of such beauty that it would melt the gold in one’s teeth to see it.”
Their little vehicle flung itself outward, into the deep end of the Solar System.
But the journey to Saturn was a long one, and bleak, and when they got there 
even Louis had to admit the planet was disappointing, the great Rings a mere rubble, 
the atmosphere a foul congregation of stinks. The king found the atmosphere within 
the sedan-chair no less disagreeable, a strange unease having descended over him. He 
could not account for it. Now, with intimacy between them a real possibility, he felt 
oddly glum, while the Mademoiselle had become bubbly and talkative.

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“What is that one called, Sire.”
“I believe it is Iapetus, Mademoiselle,” he murmured.
“A funny name. I seem to see forests on it.”
“They are crystal formations,” he replied, brusquely, “not alive, but mineral.”
“They are very pretty. And who is to say that minerals cannot be alive.”
So it went on. Louis shook his head. It was as if their roles had reversed, as if 
she had taken control of the situation. But how. It had happened so quickly, almost 
without transition. It baffled him. She was a woman, he thought, a mere girl, while 
he…he was emperor!, he was king; he was god, for goodness sake!
They were drifting out near the moon Titan when she said, “Is that a comet I spy, 
Sire.”
“I think not, Mademoiselle,” he said without looking. “They are rare in these 
regions.”
“It is getting closer!” she said. “Please look, Sire!
“If you insist.” 
He turned — and gasped. It loomed towards them, its gaseous envelope swelling 
and billowing outside the windows. He saw the sizzle of it, the otter and slink of it; 
and now the core, a glacial, mountainous thing sloping through thickly slurring mists; 
and now the tail, immense and terrible, a miasmic gush, dark and wretched like the 
smoke from a burning orphanage.
He had time to say, “Mademoiselle, you were right. I stand corrected…” — and 
a moment later he was no longer standing at all, for the sedan-chair had been struck 
a blow. Cometary vapour and ice battered the hull. There was a scream, perhaps a 
woman’s. All was confusion; the little vessel pitching wildly; everything a-tumble; 
flashes of light and dark; furnishings toppling; glasses smashing…
The floor tipped again, and of a sudden the Mademoiselle fell on top of Louis 
(but did she fall., Louis wondered later — in retrospect it seemed more a leap than 
anything else.)
Then she kissed him.
In the moments that followed (a period whose deliciousness was only enhanced by 
the danger) there was a part of Louis’s mind that remained sufficiently detached to 
ruminate on his first lesson as a god-king. Or perhaps there were two lessons: the first, 
that even absolute power is not absolute when it comes to women; and the second, 
that a man will never win a lady’s love through force or burdensome shows of largesse. 
A fellow must trust the woman he loves to find her own way to him, he thought, or 
else lose her for good…and then even that part of his mind was lost to the general 
pleasurable tumult as they were tossed about by the storms within and without; finding 
themselves now on the floor, now on a couch, now tumbling up against a wall…
And later, in the account of Louis’s career that came to be called The Brand-New 
Testament, the Duc de Saint-Simon wrote: “Plato stated that all things are produced by 

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the gods or by human skill; the greatest and most lovely by the former; the lesser and 
most imperfect by the latter. The love that Louis and Mlle Rochechouart made that 
day was plainly of the former variety. It was a tireless firework visible all the way down 
to Versailles, flickering with the rhythms of vigorous fornication, its colours outshining 
the Sun and persisting throughout the afternoon and well into night. After which it 
faded for a time…and then began again and continued ever after, a steady love-light 
by which mariners may faithfully steer forevermore.”
Passenger Dossier
Name: Adam Browne
History and Writing Credits: Adam Browne lives in Melbourne with his wife Julie Turner, also a 
writer, and their 16-month foetus tentatively named Harriet. This story comes from one of Adam’s 
dreams, in which God revealed Himself to be the Dauphin — and also proved to be an excellent 
chef, incidentally, putting on a fine spread for his guests (though even a dream cannot compete 
with the insanely lavish 240-course dinners the real Louis used to preside over).

Blake the God
…Lee Battersby
 
January February 2006
blake the god
11
“Somebody’s been stealing!” 
Blake’s indignation is palpable. I wipe soap suds from my arms and turn towards 
him, happy for any excuse to stop regretting the sale of the dishwasher.
“Stealing what.”
“Come and see.” He stands in the doorway, almost vibrating. Of course, with 
my stepson, that’s normal. “Half of them are gone!”
I dry my hands on my t-shirt and follow him into the courtyard that serves as 
back yard until I get a job and a bigger place. I’m not even out the door before the 
object of Blake’s ire becomes apparent.
“What the hell.”
We only have half a patio. Last time I looked, bricks spread out in patterns 
from the house to the garden beds ringing the fence. Now it’s all yellow sand and 
topsoil. Only a thin walkway remains, the bricks pressed up against the wall as if 
terrified of whatever consumed their brothers.
“Someone’s been stealing!” Blake repeats in a tone of high righteousness.
“So I see.” I walk to the corner, peering around to discover the extent of the 
thievery. I blink, and blink again.
“No,” I say, blinking a third time just to make sure my eyes are free of soap and 
I’m really seeing what I’m seeing. “Not stealing. Re-arranging.”
“What. Hey, cool.” Blake says from under my elbow. “Looks just like me.”
Indeed it does. An eight foot tall relief of my stepson’s face has been erected 
against the rear fence. Someone has broken a lot of bricks to get the planes and 
ridges of his face correct. I hope the insurance covers stolen brick art breakage. 
Blake’s visage stares back at me with an altogether too noble gaze. It’s an expression 
alien to his hyperactive features, as if someone had created an idealised version of 
Blake for the National Gallery.
“What the hell is going on here.” 
I run my hands over the statue, looking for a clue as to its origin.
“It’s cool.”

Blake the God
…Lee Battersby
 
January February 2006
blake the god
11
“It’s the work of a seriously deranged stalker.” I circle the backyard, peering at 
every stray peg and weed as if they might provide a vital scrap of evidence I can use 
to nab the vandal. At least I’m pretty sure it’s a crime. I mean, it has to be. I picture 
myself confronting some previously unregarded local, uttering Poirot-esque bon mots 
and instructing an bobby to take the poor fool away. Then I remember that my last 
contact with the police was a failed attempt to evade a speeding fine, and that I had 
to shave the last time I tried to wax my moustache. The image shatters, leaving me 
gaping before Blake’s bemused stare. I peer at the caps atop our fences, noting their 
complete lack of fingerprints, and shrug.
“How about we call the real police.” Blake suggests. I retain my dignity by not 
answering. I still ring them. The cop who comes is as far from my image of a local bobby 
as he could get. My Mum used to tell me that the first sign of age is when authority 
figures start to look younger than you. This guy makes me feel like Tutankhamen, or 
worse, Monty Burns. He’s full of the arrogance of youth. Too full. He strides around 
like the Blue-Shirt Avenger, tutting and tch-ing at our explanations, calling Blake 
‘Matey’ every time he tries to point something out. He stares long and hard at our 
unwelcome sculpture, then at its model, before leading us back to our front door.
“Just put the bricks back, I reckon.” 
“Do I glue them back together first, or just be content with crazy paving.”
He flicks his notebook shut with a twist of his wrist and snaps it back into his chest 
pocket.
 “We’re a very busy station, Mister Bellington. I don’t think your culprit is a 
stranger.” He favours Blake with another long glare. 
We’ve brought Blake up to be polite, so I resist the temptation to poke out my 
tongue. Even so, I stifle a giggle when he tells our zealous crime fighter to say hi to 
Constable Care. The policeman looks as if he wants to charge me with something, 
anything. My poker face persuades him to fight the forces of evil elsewhere. He departs, 
and I turn back to my stepson and his personal shrine. Blake is back outside, kneeling 
before the brick face.
“Jim,” he says as I approach, “Does it look different to you.”
It does, and it takes me a moment to realise why. Blake has brushed his hair since 
we rang the police. Now the statue reflects his rare neat-headed state. I stare around 
us in sudden alarm.
“Go inside, Blake. Make sure all the doors and windows are locked.” 
Blake looks as if he wants to argue, but obeys. Once he’s out of earshot I call out 
to the surrounding fences and whoever may be crouching on the other side, waiting 
for us to turn our backs.

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“I’m dismantling this sick little message. And I’ll be watching. You do not want me 
to catch you. You understand, pal.”
I grab the uppermost brick fragment of Blake’s neatly brushed fringe. It is no more 
than five or six inches removed when a tiny creature crawls from between the bust’s 
eyebrows and raises something in my direction. A beam of light shoots out and strikes 
me on the wrist.
“Aagh!” Raw heat envelopes my hand. I drop the chip. It clatters to the ground. I 
suck at my wrist. More beings swarm out of the statue’s mouth. The brick is lifted up 
and transported back to its resting place, sliding up Blake’s face like a tear in reverse 
before nestling back into place with a satisfied ‘chink’. My minuscule attackers melt 
back inside the structure, leaving me alone with the pain in my hand and the faint 
aroma of burnt ozone.
“I’m guessing they’re not insects, then,” says a voice behind me. I turn to see Blake, 
two glasses of cordial in his hands. His eyes are fixed upon his effigy, and are as wide 
as I’ve ever seen them. I reach out and take a glass.
“No,” I say. “Not insects.”
We repair to the dining room to drink in silence. I can sense the face watching 
us, countless figures waiting for Blake to reappear so they can recreate his every 
expression. Like worshippers waiting for a God. The nine year old deity dunks a biscuit 
into his cordial, face creased with the effort of his internal thoughts. He drains the last 
of his glass and asks the question I had been hoping to avoid.
“What do we tell Mum.”
Blake’s mother is an important woman, very busy, very logical, with only one crack 
in her efficient and businesslike facade: she loves me and trusts me with the care 
of her only child. She will not be impressed by talk of burning light, and worshipful 
creatures with a jones for the fruit of her career-minded loins. Blake and I share a 
sombre stare. Both of us can do without the lecture, not to mention that we’re both 
far more frightened of his Mum than any alien bearing a death ray. I place my glass on 
the table with resolve.
“We need to finish this,” I say, glancing at the clock. “Really, really quickly.”
Blake follows my gaze and leaps to his feet. “I’ll get dinner organised. You…” he 
flails a hand at the backyard, “do something.”
“Oh, thanks.” I’d object, but Blake’s a much better cook than I am. Tonight is roast 
chicken, his specialty. I leave him to it and go outside to contemplate the creatures. 
The face has changed again. The mouth is open, and as I watch a small mound of dirt 
creeps across the ground and disappears inside. The mouth closes.
“Blake.” I call out, watching the statue chew and swallow.
“Yeah.”

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“Stop eating the stuffing.”
“How did you…hey!” The penny drops, and I can’t help but smile. Obeisance takes 
many forms, and not all of them are helpful. A thought strikes me. If imitation is the 
key to worship…
“Hey, Blakey!”
“Yeah.”
“Poke your tongue out.”
“What. Oh, okay.”
In front of me, a brick tongue appears and waggles back and forth, before 
retreating.
“Do that thing with your eyelids that makes your Mum feel sick.”
“The statue’s lower lids fold up and in, tucking themselves underneath the blank 
stare. I suppress a shudder. 
“Stop it, stop it. That’ll do.”
The face resumes a normal appearance, and grins. Its mouth moves ever so slightly 
behind the voice in the kitchen, like a badly dubbed Hong Kong movie.
“What now.”
I look at the statue for long seconds, measuring my stepson’s face in a way I rarely 
do in the flesh. I note the alignment of his eyes and nose; the way his ears poke out 
at right angles, making them look so much bigger than they really are; the drop of his 
fringe just above his eyebrows, hair falling in lines down the side of his elfin features. 
Somewhere inside this head, weird and scary things lurk. The statue is no different. If 
I want to get them out, I have to get inside. I don’t think his Mum would appreciate 
me lopping off the top of Blake’s head. But maybe I don’t need to, at least, not the 
whole skull. I swallow, and offer a little prayer to my own gods. If they’re listening, 
what I’m about to do might actually work.
“Blakey boy.” I call out. “You know where your Mum keeps the hair clippers.”
I explain what I want him to do. When I’m finished there is a long silence from the 
house. The effigy’s expression tells me exactly what Blake thinks of the idea.
“Are you sure.”
“Sort of.”
“Oh, wow,” he replies, voice thick with sarcasm. “That fills me with confidence.”
I glance down at my watch. “Mum will be home in just under an hour.”
“On my way.”
I hear him thunder into the bathroom, and the clatter of toiletries being pushed 
aside as he pulls the clippers from the cabinet. Buzzing flows through the window. 
Lumps fall away from the statue to lie in folds at its base. Slowly, the top is shorn 
of hair. A dome appears, glinting silver in the afternoon sun. Lights pulse across its 

Issue 22
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January February 2006
blake the god
15
surface in bursts. I see rows of windows, each one centred by a miniscule head. I sit 
transfixed, any idea of what to do next vacant in the revelation of what I’m seeing. 
A queue of creatures emerges from the brickwork to line the creases and crevices of 
Blake’s face. Hundreds of tiny tubes point up at me. My wrist begins to throb. The 
final lock of hair falls away. The buzzing ceases.
“Jim.”
“Yeah.” 
“What do I do now.”
“Just stay there, mate. Um,” I tear my eyes away from the little army, dropping my 
gaze to the shavings at the statue’s base. “You might want to clean up.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Okay.”
I raise a hand. The array of tubes follows it. I show them my open palm. Feeling like 
a fool I place my index and third fingers together, then my ring finger and pinkie.
“Um. Live long and prosper.”
I’m not sure what I expect, but utter indifference seems to be the result. My Vulcan 
greeting hangs in the air between us. The creatures point their weapons at me. I’m 
fresh out of ideas. It’s pathetic, really. I thought I’d have more.
“Jim.”
Blake stands behind me, gazing at the alien ship. He looks utterly unlike the 
boy his mother left behind this morning. I realise that no matter the result of this 
confrontation he and I are going to be in an awful lot of trouble. Blake doesn’t seem 
to understand this. He sports a huge grin.
“Aliens!” he cries. “That is so cool!” He looks at me as if I’ve caused them to 
appear all by myself. In the face of his adoration I don’t have the heart to correct the 
impression. The effect of Blake’s arrival upon his subjects, however, is impressive. As 
one the tubes vanish. The creatures fall to their knees, bowing what must be their 
faces to the ground. They begin to squeak, voices like Tibetan monks on helium. I’m 
stunned. I didn’t think people that small would need knees. Blake, raised on a diet of 
bad SF films, takes it all in his stride.
“This is so cool,” he repeats. “Can I show them my room.”
“Your….” I manage, and then pause. The aliens raise their heads and gaze at me like 
so many miniature, begging children. I can almost hear the cry of “Pleeeaaassse.” 
Suddenly it occurs: why not. When was the last time I’d heard of worshippers 
harming their God. Okay, I’m an atheist, but I’m sure I’d have heard something about 
it. And what had they done, anyway. Nothing more than show love for him. Hell, 
they probably had toilets on that ship, which made them preferable to the puppy Blake 
wants. I shrug, not quite believing what I’m about to say.
“Okay.” 

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15
Blake and his new friends cheer in unison. Blake gives me a hug. I’m a sucker for 
hugs. Even so, I manage to peel myself from his embrace and favour him with my best 
approximation of a frown. 
“But.” I raise a take-me-seriously finger, “No mucking about, no weird alien warp 
stuff or whatever, and they hide if your Mum comes in, got it.”
“Got it. Love you, Jim.”
“Love you too, mate. Go play.”
“Come on, you guys.” He takes off. The aliens surge forward. I’m caught off guard 
by the movement, and yelp as they swarm over me. I fully expect to be eaten, or at 
least covered in goo. It takes me half a second to realise they are also giving me a hug 
of thanks.
“Um, well, all right then,” I say. “Just…be good. Don’t lay an egg in his chest or 
anything, okay.”
They slide off me like a departing wave, then slip up the face of their effigy and 
into their spaceship in a silent, happy rush. It lifts from its mount, and turns in mid-air. 
Before I can change my mind it dips its front end to acknowledge me, and glides off in 
pursuit of their God. I’m left behind, kneeling in the empty yard. I exhale once.
“Well,” I say to nobody in particular. 
Then the key rattles in the front door. Blake cries “Mum!” as he roars down the 
hallway for his customary embrace. I hear Lyn shriek. Helen Keller could hear Lyn 
shriek.
“Your hair!” she cries, then moments later, “My patio!”
The love of my life appears at the corner of the house, five-foot-nothing of business 
suit-clad fury. She takes one look at the brick idol, then turns her eyes upon me.
“Just what the hell is going on here.”
Alien hordes have nothing on this woman. I smile my most innocent smile.
“Hi, honey,” I say, as if I might just survive the rest of the evening. “How was your day.”
Passenger Dossier
Name: Lee Battersby
History: Born in 1970, died in 1984, 1987, 1993, and 2000. Could do better.
Writing Credits: Over 40 sales in Australia, the US, and Europe, including issues 6, 10, 16, and 
22 of this magazine. His first collection The Divergence Tree, due to appear any moment now 
from Prime Books. Will be a tutor for Clarion South 2007, which he takes as proof that you can 
fool some of the people some of the time. Has an unhealthy attraction to Daleks. The truth is 
revealed regularly at http://battersblog.blogspot.com

Marco’s Tooth
…Trent Jamieson
 
January/February 2006
Marco’s tooth
17
“Surely you’re not frightened of death, Padre,” Galley shouted down at me, 
pitching his voice to cut through the white noise clouding every transmission. He 
gestured mockingly with one hand and leant into the terrible pull of the planet.
I ignored him, gritted my teeth and kept climbing. Afraid, no. Terrified. Death 
drove me on, and it had led me here.
I scrambled for the next handhold and, reassured by my grip, stared down into 
Styron’s storm-wracked atmosphere.
Big mistake.
Vertigo welled within me. Bank upon bank of grey clouds scudded beneath my 
feet. Lightning flashed about a hundred kilometres below; everything lit up stark 
and awful. For a moment I felt terribly and utterly alone. Then Galley kicked me 
in the head; my helmet clanged like a bell.
“Look up, idiot!” Galley grinned down at me, completely trusting the magpads 
that melded him to the tooth. My fingers — even sheathed in the suit, its micro-
motors whining — burned with the strain. My back ached, too: a constant 
reminder of its secret cargo.
Any issues Galley had with death had obviously passed. “Long way up,” I said. 
“And a long, long way down.”
“Deal with it. You’re the priest, trust in your God.”
“How much further.”
Galley’s smile broadened. “Another thirty metres. Not far.”
We had been climbing for what felt like hours, and this was the most we had 
spoken.
Our ship was docked about a kilometre below: a silver fish jutting from the 
bottom of the Tooth, as close as it could get to the entrance without the Tooth’s 
K-P field doing major damage.
We could have used gliders, but from what Galley told me, they were far more 
dangerous than the climb. Styron’s Winds delighted in tearing to pieces anything 
more fragile than a starcruiser. Combine that with the odd effects of the Tooth’s 

Marco’s Tooth
…Trent Jamieson
 
January/February 2006
Marco’s tooth
17
K-P field — gravitational flex, spatial distortion — and climbing was the only remotely 
safe way of reaching the entrance.
“So why am I here.” I asked again, curious and anxious for any distraction from the 
mind-numbing scale of the planet around me.
“Like I told you, Marco wants to see a priest.”
“Doesn’t seem to me Marco would have much need for one.”
Galley laughed. We had spent a week together on the flight here. The man was 
taciturn, but he liked to laugh.
He reminded me of me as a young man, before things went wrong.
“Shows what you know,” Galley said. “Marco is in a bad way and he doesn’t want 
a comeback. Resurrection tech isn’t allowed on the Tooth. He just wants a priest. And 
Marco gets what he wants. Now shut up and climb or I might kick you off and get me 
a less loquacious holy man.”
“From the sound of things there’s not enough time.”
“Don’t you talk to me about time,” he said. “I know all about that.”
I didn’t feel cocky enough to continue the banter. I was too close and too scared.
K
Galley pulled me onto the ledge. “You can take off your helmet now.” He pressed 
a stud on a nearby wall.
A rail sprang up behind us. I stared over it, into the clouds. In the distance hovered 
a tooth, identical to this one, and beyond it another both corposant in the storm. I 
couldn’t help but think of Sophie. Styron’s teeth had been an obsession of hers. There 
were more than seventy thousand of them, almost identical, running above Styron’s 
equator. They floated, nacreous and enigmatic, shrieking at the heavens, a vast wall 
of radio waves.
Even here I could not escape memories of home: Vargis and the grand cathedral 
Amon. I had spent the last twenty years of my life, trying to drive away the memory 
of my sister as I rose in the ranks of the priesthood. I went from tending the funereal 
lilies as a young acolyte to whispering away sins. All the while fighting the sin brewing 
in my own blood, the desire for revenge.
Galley had come to me, and my Prefect recommended me for the job.
I had tried so hard not to end up in this place and yet everything had conspired 
to pull me here. 
A door opened in the side of the tooth. Galley dipped his head. “After you.”
I walked inside and left the storms behind. I never expected to see home again.

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f
The door shut behind us. My ears popped as the air pressure equalised. 
“Where’s Marco.” 
“I’ll take you to him soon, don’t you worry. Thought I’d show you to your rooms 
first.”
We left the vestibule and walked into another hallway. The floor was carpeted, 
the walls the stony material of the artefact, covered in places by tapestries and murals 
depicting old scenes of the colonisation of the Vargis Sector.
I had asked where Marco was, but in truth he was everywhere here. His face was 
woven into every scene, just as his presence was woven in history.
Marco from two hundred years earlier, leading the raids on the Nagatelle Trade 
Initiative. He stood, a giant of a man, sword in one hand (actually a very specialised 
Electromagnetic Pulse generator), rifle in the other.
Marco at the head of the Iowa Congress, negotiating the peace treaty, just before 
he staged the Barnatile Coup. I noted the absence of any celebration of Marco’s drug 
wars, or of the millions of executions served out in his name. Fields of dead, each 
corpse with a single bullet in the brain.
Finally, a great fresco of Marco’s last flight. The one which ended here and allowed 
him to fade away from history. As much as a man like Marco can. 
All these images stirred so many emotions in me that the vertigo returned in a 
wave. I’d given my life to the church to escape this meeting. And yet I was here, 
regardless of all that I done to avoid it.
Marco got what he wanted. And he wanted a priest. 
e
I stared out the window of my room, slowly sipping my whisky. The aches in my 
fingers and my back were fading. So much pain to get here. But it was worth it; it had 
to be.
Here, everything was writ large. Storms the size of continents played out beneath 
me. Great bands of cloud, alternating grey and white, streaked from East to West. 
Below, winds hurtled around the planet at over 500 metres a second. To the south a 
vast tempest had raged for centuries. Radiation crowded the sky. It was beautiful. 
Styron was like nothing I had ever experienced. Carvel and Vargis with their 
eighty-three diamond towers apiece, and Covar where smoke and fire reigned; those 
muddy, rocky worlds were insipid in comparison. From a distance, as we approached 
her, Styron possessed the majesty given only to Gas Giants, seething and quiet all at 

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once. Up close, she still inspired awe. Lightning crackled and lit the sky, burst after 
magnificent burst. 
Marco had chosen a planet of fury and mystery. Styron was not the only Gas Giant 
to possess Teeth. Maupin and Atwood were also braceleted with them, but they were 
situated at the other end of the galaxy. 
I wondered what Marco might have discovered about this place. He had been 
living here as a recluse for a quarter of a century. 
All that the rest of the galaxy understood was that the Teeth produced a very 
powerful electro-magnetic field, their flotation created by the generation of a Koczor-
Podkletnov stabilisation — antigravity of a type we had never perfected. 
The Teeth were alien artefacts almost as enigmatic as the day they were first 
encountered, and one of only thirty or so such artefacts discovered in the known 
galaxy in this time. Of course, discoveries were happening every day. The galaxy was in 
a constant state of catch up. There was so much going on; so much being catalogued 
that even artefacts like the Teeth were given the barest scrutiny.
I did a swift self-diagnostic. The weapon was quiescent — coiling in my spine, 
beating softly in time with my heart — but I could arm it with a word.
There was a knock on my door.
“Hope you’re decent, Father,” Galley said.
“I’m fine,” I said and he entered.
“It’s Marco. He wants to see you.”
h
His room was sparely furnished, just a bed and a single huge window perfectly 
framing the next tooth along. 
The temperature was set a little high for comfort and the air smelt of lavender. 
I was reminded of Sophie. She’d fill her rooms with that fragrance. The smell and 
heat were smothering. I clenched my fists and took a deep breath, driving thoughts of 
Sophie back down. 
Marco measured me in a single gaze as I walked through the door. He smiled, 
mistaking my rage for something else. “Don’t look so shocked, Father. You knew I was 
dying.”
“I would prefer it if you called me Simon.”
“Simon, eh. Simon, even the great Marco dies.”
“Do you fear it.”
“What do you think.”

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I almost said, “I think you should. I think you will burn in hell.” But I held that 
inside. “I think you look tired.”
Indeed, as the anger passed, Marco’s appearance shocked me. He had withered; 
gone was the near giant of the murals and the histories. He lay in a nest of life support. 
Sentient med-units crawled over his skin. Tubes drained and fed him. Despite all this, 
his voice remained strong and his eyes bright and hard.
“More tired than you will ever know,” he said. “Live long enough and you can no 
longer endure the cancer treatments and analeptics, nor the ceaseless little agonies 
of life. Comfort lies in the past and I move away from it at the speed of sixty seconds 
in a minute.” He gazed out the window then and took a deep breath. “I’ve been the 
architect of so many awful things. Terrible things. I’ve even enjoyed some of them.”
“Do you want me to absolve you of all your sins.”
Marco laughed until he coughed, bringing up blood-speckled spit. One of the 
machines attached to his body chirruped for a second. Respirators whined and renal 
engines engaged.
“Not at all. I am in no way a religious man. Do not be offended, but an afterlife 
does not interest me. Indeed, I would be disappointed to find that such a thing exists. 
But I was raised to the church. An orphan taught by priests, who became a tyrant 
— what does that say of God, eh.”
His eyes locked with mine. I did not look away. At last his gaze softened, and he 
gave a wry smile. “I think the orphan boy in me wants a piece of my childhood here. 
A piece I know will listen.” He wiped the blood from his lips. Cracks ran deep and red 
over their surface. “Your church had a lot of support from me during the War. I helped 
fill its ranks, you could say.”
I knew that. I also knew that we’d done a lot of work to wear away the guilt of 
that Faustian bargain. The Church had been instrumental in several battles, virtually 
handing victory over to Marco. There was blood on our hands; Marco did not need to 
remind me of it. And there would be blood once more.
But what of it, I thought. The Church has known blood since the days of St Paul. 
The Church was born in blood.
“You know, I once toyed with becoming a priest.”
“What happened.” I asked him.
Marco’s sharp face darkened. “Things changed. I gave into temptation.” He 
coughed again and paled, more tubes and infusers came alive around his bed. “We’ll 
talk in a little while, Father. There is plenty of time left. This death is a controlled one. 
I may not want a comeback, but I do not wish to die just yet. Now I need sleep. This 
time, this first time, all I wanted was to meet you.”

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i
Galley waited at the door to escort me to my quarters. I was shaking as we left the 
room, my back burning. I could have killed Marco then, released the triggers and sent 
us all to hell. But I wanted him to know. Otherwise I was just doing the old man a 
service. It had to happen at the right moment. God how I hated him, hated the life he 
had made of mine. I would not destroy him until he knew.
j
The next week passed swiftly, my mornings spent with Marco. His past was related 
to me in non-linear fragments. He boasted of his achievements: the seeding of the 
outer system with harbour habitats, the construction of The Parliament of Liberation, 
the government he tore down when it turned against him, and a dozen other tales I 
already knew from the history files. He explained how he escaped from the Oligarchy’s 
prison, mud and blood. It was all mud and blood.
There were murders and executions. These he would often boast about, before 
growing defensive — eyes narrowing — and sending me from his room, whispering, 
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t know what I’ve been through.”
His heart rate rose as he cried out his innocence, machines all around him moving 
into action, soothing him.
“I’m not here to judge you,” I said, after a tale of one particularly grizzly execution. 
“That is no priest’s job.”
Marco smiled, his eyes softening as the drugs came into effect. “Leave it to your 
boss, eh.”
“That’s right,” I said.
But the truth was, I had judged him. Two decades ago. I judged him worthy of 
death and, against all the odds, I had the opportunity to mete out punishment. 
Yet the right moment never presented itself. Truth thickened my tongue and, every 
day, terror grew inside me. The guilt of not doing it. The guilt of wanting to.
And the tooth was always around me. The constant hum of its machinery and 
beneath it, some deeper sensation: a movement or a sound that was intermittent but 
potent. It seeped into me and I found myself waiting for it, cursing its irregularity. Just 
when I thought I had its rhythms understood it would change. 
After one particular session with Marco, Galley was waiting for me.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said. “A word of warning though, the K-P 
field’s a little weaker there.” He laughed. “I spent so long there as a child, Marco says 
it stunted my growth. I’m half the man I should have been.”

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“We are all our own men,” I said. “No matter the shape of the pitcher, it is filled 
with all that we need to live fully.”
Galley looked at me. “Do you really believe that.” 
“If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be here.” 
Galley led me to a north-facing balcony. Not another tooth in sight, just the 
turbulent curvature of the horizon and so much of it! Styron had grown somehow 
larger. I felt its vastness, its deep pull in my bones, and was again overwhelmed. 
I held the balcony rail and squeezed until my hands ached.
I had to do it soon. But killing did not come naturally to me even if my victims 
were a monster and his lackey.
“This is my favourite place. I do most of my thinking, staring out into the storms.” 
Galley smiled. “You can’t see the stars from here. Styron’s auroras are just a little too 
bright. There are twenty-eight moons up there, but beyond the great shadows of their 
passage, all you get are these clouds of ammonia-ice and the secrets that lightning 
exposes.”
Here, not clinging for grim life, I could appreciate the beauty of each lightning 
burst, the bruised and subtle colours they revealed in the racing air.
“Marco isn’t the bad man you thought he was,” Galley said, and I took a step back.
“What do you mean.”
“Most people think Marco is evil. Well, he’s looked after me. Raised me. I would 
not exist if it weren’t for him. None of us would.”
I smiled, grimly. “A lot of people don’t exist because of him.”
Galley laughed. “Marco’s a much better man than he was. People change, otherwise 
he wouldn’t have sent for you.” He hesitated, then frowned. I have spent hundreds 
of hours in the confessionals of Vargis’ Cathedral Complex: I know such pauses, and 
waited for the revelation to come. But the moment passed and Galley shook his head. 
“Enough of this, time to cook dinner,” he said.
Galley opened the door behind us and we walked back into the tooth.
L
I had been but two weeks in the priesthood. One of those damn ecclesiastical types 
as Sophie liked to call me. 
A bored cop, smelling so thickly of cigarettes that I felt sick, met me at the morgue.
“You ready,” he said. 
“Yes,” I said, as though I could ever be ready.
“Sorry for your loss,” he muttered as an afterthought.

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There wasn’t much left of her — the Biter weaponry was brutally efficient. Bullet-
borne nano-chewers had torn through her nervous system, turning it to goo, then 
started on the outer limbs. No comebacks with the damage she had sustained, even if 
we could have afforded the technology. 
Her eyes snapped open, and I saw the ruined empty orbits where her eyes should 
be. Kill him. Her voice was at once pained and petulant. Why isn’t he dead. 
Soon. 
The morgue shuddered and groaned, masonry smashing at our feet.
“Earthquake,” the cop said, and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke in my face. I 
coughed and woke up.
 The tooth jolted again, almost throwing me from the mattress. The shuddering 
increased and machinery roared. The bed flexed, extruding limbs and holding me tight 
until the shaking stopped. After a few moments it released its grip.
I rolled out of bed. My inner ear had had enough changes in pressure and gravity 
over the past few weeks. I staggered to the bathroom and threw up.
It was all too much. For all I knew the Tooth was about to drop us into the crushing 
weight of the atmosphere beneath the storms. At least the ending would be quick.
The shaking stopped with my third round of vomiting.
A hand gripped my shoulder and I looked up, wiping spit and bile from my lips, at 
a wan-faced Galley.
“Storm flared up. Strong one, just as the tooth was dipping. It happens.” He patted 
my back. “Just came to see if you were all right.”
“Yes, for the most part.”
“My cooking doesn’t agree with you.”
“Being shaken to within an inch of my life doesn’t agree with me. I was never good 
at fairground rides — anything more vigorous than a Ferris wheel made me sick.”
“Well, you’ve bought tickets on the wrong ride now, haven’t you, Father.”
o
By morning, with Styron’s weak sun a dim stain on the huge storm-gripped horizon, 
I felt better: doubts discarded. The tooth across from us appeared to have dipped a 
little in the night.
“Nothing unusual there. If one moves, they all move,” Galley explained, pouring 
me a coffee. He laughed. “When I was a kid I called them toothquakes. Sometimes 
they’ll all drop a kilometre or so. Marco knows the pattern far better than I do, but 
they even catch him out sometimes. 

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“I’m heading down to the ship, checking for damage. Can’t imagine there will be 
much, we’ve experienced a lot worse.”
“How long have you been working for Marco.”
Galley grinned. “A long time, Father.” He paused as his earlet beeped, and listened. 
His grin widened. “Marco wants to see you.”
n
“I trust last night’s tremors didn’t disturb you too much,” Marco said. He was out 
of bed, sitting in a wicker chair by the window. When he turned his head towards 
me his skin lost its opacity, making his face nothing more than bone and vein and 
penetrating eyes. 
“My stomach didn’t appreciate it. But I’m okay.”
“Styron doesn’t like these teeth. She struggles in their grip, I think. But we all have 
our cross to bear, father, even planets. Styron sends her petulant storms. The shaking 
almost always makes me feel better.” Marco smiled. “It is one thing over which I have 
no control. I choose the moment of my death — the cancers in me are held in perfect 
stasis — and this entire tooth is fitted out to serve my every whim. But when Styron 
rages, there is nothing I can do.”
He spoke then of his childhood in Vargis: the beatings, the blistering sun whose 
bite was almost as cruel as the Oligarchy’s Guard. And then his own rise through the 
Guard, becoming what he had most hated. 
“If it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else. It was a powder keg and 
the Oligarchy was too blind to see that they might be under threat. They’d stopped 
thinking about their citizenry as anything but commodities.
“When one of the overseers killed my sister it just drove me to seek revenge. Fools, 
they thought it would drive me into submission.”
I blinked. 
They killed his sister. Like Marco’s soldiers had killed mine.
I clenched and unclenched my fists a moment until I realised Marco had stopped 
speaking, and was staring at me. “Are you all right.”
“Yes,” I said, keeping my voice slow and calm. “I lost my sister too. But it didn’t 
mean I went out and — I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“I had the information suppressed,” Marco said. “It still hurts, but not as much as 
th—”
The tooth shook, once, twice. 
Hard. 

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I fell to the ground. Marco crashed from his chair, broken med-tubes jutted from 
his skin, writhing shrill and stupid in the absence of signals. 
I lay there, the wind knocked from me.
Now. Now.
Marco stared at me a moment, his gaze almost expectant, and then he started 
crawling back to the bed. I told myself that he wanted to die, he wanted me to kill him. 
He coughed, and this time blood flowed from his mouth. A dozen machines screamed 
out, their tendrils swinging in his direction but unable to reach. 
I got to my feet, and stepped towards him.
“Is everyone all right.” Galley asked, his face pale. He looked from me, to Marco 
and back again, his green eyes flaring.
“Quick,” I said. “Help me get him to his machines.”
We carried Marco back onto the bed and there his life support sought him out, 
syringes and tubes sliding back into his body.
“He’ll be out for a while,” Galley said. The last quake was bad. I nearly fell.” He 
shivered, his face lit with a sickly pallor. “The air just gets thicker, and here at the 
equator the winds are strongest. I’d be long gone and long dead. Either burnt up in 
the fall — because there’s a lot of mass here and you pick up a huge amount of speed 
going down — or crushed. It would have been quick.”
“And a comeback.”
“Like I said, we don’t do them here, no brain scans, no rebuilders. Marco doesn’t 
want the temptation. One slip and you’re dead.”
m
The next day Marco called me early. I could not tell if his fall had injured him. He 
looked the same to me, in his nest of machinery.
“Do you know what all this is.” Marco asked, without preamble. “The Teeth, why 
they’re here.”
“Nobody knows,” I said, pouring a little tea for Marco. Gramil tea, strong and 
bitter — from the Harmian system eight light years away. The revolutions that rocked 
Gramil may have already destroyed it. Despite death and tyrants, they still produced 
some of the finest tea in the sector. In part their wars were about that very thing. 
Maybe they don’t make tea in Gramil any more.
Still it was good. We drank in silence for a while — Marco leaving tiny red stains 
on his fine china cup.
“I know,” Marco said. “It’s a clock. Its engineers were ostentatious, no doubt, but 
it is ostentation laden with melancholy. Styron’s teeth are linked with Attwood and 

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Maupin. It’s little more than a very accurate timepiece. Each tooth is in constant 
communication with the others.” He chuckled. “Its signals are sent at light speed. A 
very long wind up for a clock, don’t you think.
“I am sure this civilisation had faster than light tech — even we possess FTL 
drives! So why build a clock that would not have started working until after its 
engineers were long gone. I have my own theories and they boil down to this: these 
teeth are a testament that time passes for all things.
“No matter how many comebacks you have, how great your empire. It all ends. 
These teeth dance, following commands almost a million years old, and respond with 
signals that will, in turn, not be answered for twice that.” He patted his bed. “All of 
this will be less than the memory of dust, by then. Only the teeth will remain, until 
even they wear down. It’s a great feat of engineering, and a greater lesson. It humbled 
me, in time.” He chuckled and took another sip of his tea.
Sophie was eighteen when agents of Marco killed her. She’d walked in the way 
of a bullet and it ate her life out. Marco’s empire was on the wane then. Tyrants fall 
eventually, and his decline had been dramatic. 
Marco smiled. “But that is not the true mystery here, is it. I suppose you’re ready 
to kill me now.”
“What. Of course not!” I spluttered and reddened and Marco ignored me.
“I hope you’re not relying on those explosives in your spine. They were disarmed 
before you had them implanted. I’ve been watching you, Simon, like all the others. 
I owned the surgeon who did the work.” Marco sighed. “All my clones come here to 
kill me, each with inbuilt reasons for hating me. My reasons for hating someone else. 
Sophie’s real name is Kyreen. She was my sister.”
I roared and threw myself towards him.
“Cadmus,” Marco said. I froze, unable to even lift a finger. “A simple voice trigger, 
like the voice trigger for your suicide bomb. We think alike, wouldn’t you say. Kyreen 
loved these teeth, she was utterly fascinated by them.”
Sophie had loved them, too. I wanted to beat his face into a pulp. I wanted to kill 
him, slowly and terribly.
Marco saw my hatred unveiled in my eyes, and he responded with such a look of 
compassion. This monster whom I had longed to destroy.
“I am sorry to have filled you with such hatred. I really am, but I needed something 
to keep you all focused. Hatred is so much easier than love, and less obvious to 
spies.”
He shuffled towards me, his machinery trailing behind him, and brushed my face 
with a brittle old hand. “Are you familiar with the concept of Spartoi. I’ve locked you 
there but you can speak.”

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I said nothing.
“Very well, then,” Marco said. “They were warrior clones, the Dragon’s Teeth of 
legend.
“Ancient Greece. A little pagan for your tastes, no doubt. The warrior Cadmus 
slayed a dragon and then, on advice from a god — never the best thing — he planted 
its teeth and from them sprung the Spartoi. Sown men. A band of warriors.
“After my fall, I trusted no-one. Of course, I’d never really trusted anyone. I 
surrounded myself with machines. And I created an army of clones — sleepers, of 
course — all modified so they didn’t bear any resemblance to their maker, and fed false 
memories that had them obsessed with me. Truth is you’re nothing but a cipher.”
“You’re lying.”
Marco smiled. “When I was a young man, not much older than you, I used to 
dream of my sister: the morgue they took her to, the police officer and his damn 
cigarettes. And her eyes, the hate in her eyes. It took me a long time to realise that 
hate was mine.”
“Why did you do this.”
“After my empire collapsed I wanted to rule again, and this time do it right.” Marco 
sighed. “It was a fool’s dream. A sickness. As the years passed and I watched you all 
grow into twisted ruined things, I realised it would never work. That it couldn’t work. 
I am a monster, yes. But I am also a man and I feared the horrible thing I’d done. 
“So I called you all back, one by one, hundreds of you, waiting to be activated 
without realising it. Waiting for my return. They are dead. All I could do was end their 
suffering. All of them, all of my dragon’s teeth came but for you.”
“And now you’ll kill me,” I said.
“No. I’ve had enough of killing, Simon. You do not deserve it. You’ve struggled with 
this and it hasn’t consumed you. I’ve murdered too many people. 
“If you must hate me, hate me for the lie I made of your life. But there is more to 
you than hatred.” He walked back to his bed and lay down. “I’ll be dead soon, and with 
my death you’ll find you can move. Leave me here, it’s all I ask. My bones will fall to 
dust just as this Tooth will one day fall, and all that I have done will be forgotten.”
He tapped a code into the master med-unit and the machines fell from his flesh. 
“It is so good to be free of these shackles.” Marco turned his head away from me and 
stared out at the window, laughter on his lips, his voice the barest whisper. “It’s funny, 
you know. Cadmus’s Spartoi wanted to kill him, too.” He looked at me once again. 
“Please look after Galley for me — another clone, a brother to us both though I did 
not drive him mad with false memories. You are a better man than me. There is no 
death in your life, for all that you may have wished otherwise. You have never killed 
and I respect you for it.” 

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In a little while his breathing stilled, and I found that I was no longer frozen. I 
walked to his bed and did not know whether to weep or rage. I did neither. I just stood 
there, staring down at the old man’s corpse.
“So it is done,” Galley said behind me. I turned. His eyes were wet with tears. 
Today we had both lost so much, and gained as well…
“There are no comebacks for him,” I said. “Where do we go now.”
“Back to the ship. Marco’s ghosts haunt this place. I don’t ever want to see these 
teeth again.”
k
Styron shrank behind us, banded with storms, wild flaring dots and ovals. I stared 
down at her. Marco was dead and there would be no more killing there. Just the teeth, 
responding and replying to signals eight hundred thousand years old. An ancient clock 
with a message that all things pass. Even hatred.
My head spun. Who was I. What was real and what was not. My rage-filled life 
had been a lie. I couldn’t return to Vargis now. I didn’t want to. Galley patted my back, 
startling me.
“Going to engage the FTL now,” he said. “Are you ready.”
“Yes.” I paused. “Galley.”
He looked at me.
“Who am I.”
“You’re Simon. You’re a priest, and you are my brother.” 
“Where are we going.”
“Far away,” Galley said. “We’re going to find a place where Marco’s name is not 
even a whisper of a memory.”
“And what will we do there.”
Galley smiled. “We will live our lives, brother.”
Passenger Dossier
Name: Trent Jamieson
History: Trent lives in Brisbane with his wife Diana.
Writing Credits: Trent has had fiction published in Aurealis, Eidolon and Nemonymous. His 
collection Reserved for Travelling Shows is available through Prime books.

The Last Cyberpunk
…Will McIntosh
Somebody had flooded Bit-Town. The Milkman — all seven-foot five of him, 
dapper in crisp white uniform and dark aviation glasses — bodysurfed down Broad 
Street in the floodwater rather than take the time to find the source and close the 
spigot. This sort of thing happened all the time, ever since everyone shifted from 
digital to organic and the big corporations shut down their security.
The Milkman spotted a couple of live jack-ins in black jumpsuits; they were 
behind him on water scooters. He didn’t recognize them — must be retro-freaks 
having a look around. They sped up to overtake him, probably planning to boot 
him out for a laugh. They were in for a surprise: no newbie retro-freaks were going 
to boot The Milkman.
A steep drop loomed in the street ahead. The Milkman hooked a street lamp 
and hung a sharp right, picking up a current running through the front doors of 
Skinny’s cyber-brothel. The retro-freaks followed. Unwise. The floodwater ripped 
him through the building’s main hallway like a bug flushed down a toilet, and he 
ate it up. He rode the roaring torrent around a corner, into an open stairwell and 
down the spiraling rapids. 
The retro-freaks burst into the stairwell above, engines howling. The clown in 
the lead didn’t cut sharp enough to make the first turn. His scooter plowed into 
the concrete wall and he followed, face-first. He disappeared. The scooter, now 
a piece of detritus twisting in the current, tripped the second rider, who tumbled 
head over ass down the stairs and slammed into the wall at the bottom. She also 
disappeared. As easy as that, the retro-freaks were gone.
The Milkman exited on the ground floor, rode the swell down the narrow 
street till he spotted an entrance to the sky track, then hopped a sky car. The 
sleek steel bullet whisked up the track which wound above and through Bit-Town 
like a reckless rollercoaster. The Milkman relished the ride. He stared up at the 
Bit-Town skyline, admiring the skyscrapers that reached impossibly high in the 
cloudless vermillion sky, sometimes merging, twisting together like electrical wires, 
then shooting off again in different directions. Amazing what you could do with 

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architecture when gravity was nothing more than an agreed-upon abstraction. The 
Milkman climbed—j
“Grandpa. Hey, live person here!” Bruce felt a gentle squeeze on his shoulder. He 
jacked out, removed his goggles and earphones, and pressed the heels of his hands 
against his eyes. 
“Who’s that.” he said. Long sessions left him disoriented lately, like he was just 
waking up. He shook his head vigorously. “Hey Jess.” His granddaughter stood over 
him. 
“Hey Pop.” She frowned. “You need a haircut. Jesus, you look like Albert Einstein!” 
She brushed at his hair until he swatted her hand away. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. But get 
it cut.” 
Bruce mumbled noncommitally, struggled to his feet and stretched.
“You ready to go.” Jess asked.
Bruce sighed, slumped his shoulders. “All my friends are dying on me.”
Jess nodded sympathetically. 
“Thanks for coming with. Let me just put something on,” he said.
Navigating through piles of old hardware, he led Jessica out of his store and into 
the adjoining apartment, trying to ignore an ache in his left knee. “So how are you.”
Jessica caught her foot on an ancient holovid game player. It skittered across the 
floor. “Jeeze Grandpa, why don’t you get someone to haul away all this crap and make 
this your living room.” He didn’t answer — it was an old argument. “I’m great. Busy 
at work, but great.”
Bruce dug through clothes piled on the kitchen table. Jessica looked intently at her 
hands, turning them over and back, then scanning her legs and feet, front and back.
“I can confirm you’ve still got all your limbs if you like. Shall we count them 
together.” Bruce said.
Jessica smiled. “I’ve got to perform a ‘visual surveillance of extremities’ every half 
hour. I’ve got my pain receptors turned completely off. I have to make sure I haven’t 
injured myself without knowing it.”
Bruce furrowed his wiry brows in concern. “Why did you have to turn them off.”
Jessica grasped the bottom of her white t-shirt, smiled sheepishly. “I’ll show you. 
Get ready.” She pulled the shirt up to reveal her belly. A sensuous, full-lipped mouth 
smiled at him from where her navel should have been.
“AAHH! Shit!” he cried, jerking. He shielded his eyes with his hand for a second, 
then dropped the hand and gaped. 

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“You like it.” Jessica asked. The lips parted, displaying perfect white teeth. Then it 
stuck out a pink tongue. “Isn’t it great.”
“Jesus Christ, Jessica. Are you trying to give me a heart attack. What the hell did 
you get a mod for. You’re thirty-five years old, not nineteen!”
“Thirty-seven. You trying to tell me I’m old. Now ninety-three, that’s old.” 
Mercifully she let the t-shirt drop. 
He eyed her midsection suspiciously “I just don’t get it. I will never understand why 
anyone would want to distort themselves like that.”
Jessica came over and tugged up the right sleeve of Bruce’s t-shirt, revealing a 
faded tattoo: a skeleton with an old USB connector running from its head to a PC. 
Underneath, it read “permanently jacked.” Once colorful, the tattoo was now shades 
of grey and green. To drive her point home she playfully flicked one of his four gold 
stud earrings.
“It’s not the same thing,” he protested. “That’s an extra mouth. Do you have to feed 
it, like your car and your house and your computer.”
“No Grandpa, I don’t have to feed it. It doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s only ornamental. 
Why are you so stuck in the past.” She spread her hands to indicate the room’s decor 
— just about everything in it was pre-2050. “Everyone else your age adjusted to the 
new technology just fine.”
“Everyone else my age is dead.” 
She stopped smiling and looked at him seriously. “Grandpa, I worry about you. You 
haven’t had a customer in your store in years. You spend all your time jacked into that 
antique system. I’m not asking you to move. Just install some organics in this place. A 
physio monitor that can alert the hospital if anything happens to you. A net hookup 
so you can talk to live people…”
“I can talk to people on the hard net.”
“There are no people on the hard net.”
“Sure there are. How would you know anyway. Hard tech is making a comeback. 
Retro-freaks are popping up all over. Just now when I was jacked in there were two 
retros I had to give an ass-whooping.”
“I’m sure you did, Milkman. At least consider getting an organic hookup for 
emergencies, even if you don’t use it, okay.”
Bruce nodded. Sure, he’d consider it. Then he’d decide against it.
“You ready to go.” she asked. 
At the top of the stoop she put one hand under his arm and helped him down the 
steps. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t complain. He took them one at a time.

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X
There were eight people at Neal’s funeral. Just eight people to honor one of the 
greatest cyber-architects who ever lived. Bruce eyed the freshly turned soil that was 
about to be piled on top of Neal. He was wearing his full hard-tech outfit in Neal’s 
honor — sleeveless skunker T, fiber-cable finger wrap, soft-soled boots. People shot 
glances his way, amused by the old-fashioned garb, but he was used to that. 
Bruce felt a clap on his back, and turned. He smiled broadly when he saw who it 
was. Make that nine people. “I thought I was gonna be the only person here who had 
any appreciation of who was being buried,” he said. Bruce had only met Bill a handful 
of times in the flesh, but they’d had a lot of adventures together in Bit-Town, many 
of them with Neal.
“That’s a great man lying in that box,” Bill said. He looked good for ninety or so 
— his back relatively straight, his eyes alert. His long white hair was pulled back in a 
ponytail, and he was wearing a black t-shirt that swam with constantly shifting 0’s and 
1’s. “You see the obituary in the Times.”
“No,” Bruce said. “Any good.”
“It didn’t even mention that he was one of the architects of Bit-Town,” Bill said in 
disgust. “All this shit about the loved ones he left behind, like his primary contribution 
to mankind was his ability to breed.”
Bruce hissed in disgust. They stared at the coffin. A wren hopped in the dirt 
nearby, pecking idly. 
“Haven’t seen you in Bit-Town in quite a while,” Bruce said.
“Too depressing,” Bill said. “All those empty streets.” He frowned, shook his head. 
“It’s too much like this graveyard. I want to remember it like it was in the past. I try 
to live in the present as best I can.”
“Please, don’t tell me you’ve bought into this organic crap!” 
“Well, I haven’t ‘bought in’ — I’m not happy about it. Give me a fucking Hydro-
Cycle over one of these squirt things any day,” Bill said, waving his hand. “But I use 
it. You’ve got to admit, organic has its pluses. No pollution, no repairs…” Bruce just 
stared at him. Bill talked faster. “I mean, you’ve gotta use it for the medical whether 
you like it or not. The cholesterol cleansing, anti-clotting… I’d be dead of colon 
cancer if it wasn’t for organics.”
“Well, maybe you’ve gotta use it for medical,” Bruce spat, “I don’t let those fucking 
tubes anywhere near me.” 
Bill shrugged. “Well, like I said, I’m not happy about it.” 

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j
When Bruce got home, he propped his feet on the coffee table and turned on the 
flat-TV. There were only three stations left, run by holdouts and retro-freaks. They 
only showed reruns of old pre-2050 shows, and that was fine with him. The crap that 
passed for entertainment these days was intolerable.
He watched old commercials for a while, but they didn’t hold his interest, and he 
nodded off. When he woke, he wasn’t sure where he was. He stared blankly at the TV, 
then around his living room, slowly getting his bearings. 
The walls were decorated with weathered posters and pictures — Skunk-rock 
legends, skyboarders, Hackers, Cyber-architects. Most people today wouldn’t even 
recognize them. Propped on a shelf by the TV, among video games and CD software, 
was a photo of his wife Andrea. It had been taken when she was in her thirties, dressed 
to kill in a cyber-chic cerulean blue outfit. The anguish he used to feel when he looked 
at her picture had long ago morphed into a warm, nostalgic longing. Just like the 
feeling he got when he jacked in and skated the deserted streets of Bit-Town. 
Bruce struggled to get to his feet. On the third try he got his feet under him, and 
nearly tumbled forward into the table. Cursing, he headed back to the store. Staring 
down at his black Nikes as they shuffled along, he tried to remember when he had 
stopped walking normally, started taking little-old-man steps. He eased himself into 
his tattered recliner, and jacked in.
X
In the hours since he’d jacked out, someone had hacked into Bit-Town’s core 
programming and fucked the place up good. A few entire blocks had been erased 
— ink blankness spotted the landscape. Worse, some of the remaining buildings were 
sprouting hair. He could not even see the bricks of the Three Penny Pub — it was 
covered with long blonde hair. A red crew-cut bristled out of the Bit-Town Security 
Building. Many windows were now fat, rectangular eyes, bulging obscenely from the 
slick surfaces, blinking occasionally. 
The Milkman trembled with rage. Fucking vandals. Someone was going to pay for 
this. In the distance he heard the snarl of engines. He hopped in his milk truck and 
sped off. 
He found them at the pinball park, power-skating up and down the curved steel 
sides of the park, blatantly violating virtual gravity etiquette. Both sported flat, 
featureless faces and wore black jumpsuits, same as last time.

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He left his truck and snuck into the park, staying in the shadow of bumpers 
and ramps. He squatted behind a flipper and waited. The woman jetted down the 
backflash, kicked off a drop target and shot across the glossy horizontal playing 
surface. The Milkman sprang forward as she sped by, and knocked the power-board 
out from under her with his foot. She took the hit on her shoulder and rolled, avoiding 
being jacked out. Good. He wanted a word before booting her ass out of Bit-Town. The 
other newbie was coming right at him. The Milkman pivoted, dropped to one knee 
and whipped his arm around, planning to cut the newbie at the knees.
The arm did not extend, and the skater flew by untouched. The Milkman’s arm 
was numb. One side of his face curled in an involuntary rictus snarl. What the hell 
was happening. He dropped to the ground and lay there, unable to move. This wasn’t 
possible. Nobody alive could hack The Milkman’s system, certainly not a couple of 
newbie retro-freaks. 
“What’s the matter dick-wad ice-cream man.” The faceless man stood over him, 
hands on hips. Lifting one of his pointed black boots, he stomped The Milkman in the 
ribs, once, twice. Then he took a step back, cocked his foot like a punter and kicked 
The Milkman’s face.
j
“Pop.” Jessica’s voice came through a thick haze. He didn’t want to find it, wanted 
to sink back into blackness. “Pop. You need to wake up.” Her voice was snuffly, as if 
she’d been crying. Bruce struggled to shake off the thick stupor. One eye popped open. 
Jessica stood over him, blurry. “Oh God, he’s awake.” She started to cry.
“Pop. It’s Evan. Your son.” Evan. Evan lived in Vancouver. What was he doing 
here. And why did he find it necessary to specify their genealogy. Bruce knew his 
own damned son’s voice. Jessica’s husband Joel was there as well, standing in the 
background. “Pop, listen to me,” said Evan. “You’ve had a pretty bad stroke.” 
Bruce tried to sit up. He managed to lift his head off the pillow, but that was all. 
The right side of his body felt like it was submerged in wet cement.
Jessica cupped the back of his head and gently pushed his forehead till he sank 
back into the pillow. “Lie back, Pop, don’t try to move yet.” Tears were pouring down 
her cheeks. She brushed hair off his face. He sank back into unconsciousness. 
X

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Andrea was with him. They were both jacked in like old times: laughing, cursing, 
cranking skunker music too loud, visiting the old haunts in Bit-Town. It felt very real, 
and when he woke he was horribly disappointed to find himself lying in a hospital 
bed. As his senses cleared he noticed the thing pressed against his left ear. A pink 
intestine was connected to his ear, probably sticking something fleshy right into his 
ear canal, something that sprouted smaller tendrils that had crawled into his nasal 
cavity, down his throat into his lungs, up into his brain. He swallowed. He could feel 
the soft tendrils lying in the back of his throat. He tried to scream. A weak, warbling, 
dry croak came out.
“Pop.” Jessica ran into the room from the hall. “You awake.” She touched his 
forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, I was getting something to drink. Dad 
and Joel are at dinner. How do you feel.”
“Get this thing out of me,” he said, his speech a mumbled slur. “Jesus, this is 
miserable, get it the hell out of me.” 
“Try to relax. I know how you feel about organic technology, but if it wasn’t for this 
you’d be brain-damaged, or dead.”
“I’d rather be dead,” he moaned. 
“Shhh, you don’t mean that. I’ll get the nurse to program the medi-probe to 
stimulate an endorphin release for you—” 
“I don’t want fucking endorphins! Get it out of me and give me a damned shot of 
morphine!”
“They don’t have morphine any more. You’ll see, you’ll feel better. And you’ll be 
out of here in a day.”
j
Two days later Bruce stood in front of his new apartment and watched Jessica shoot 
down the street, hugged inside a squirt. She looked like she was floating on air inside 
the transparent tube that ran along the sidewalk, but it was actually fluid. It was eerie 
how quiet the streets were since the squirt had replaced most of the fuel-cell vehicles. 
She disappeared around the corner, behind one of the hundreds of colorful, identical 
assisted-living cubes that lined the streets. 
As Bruce turned to go inside the apartment, he heard Jessica’s voice in his mind, 
reminding him that organic technology was not alive, had no consciousness, was only 
specialized tissue. But when he pressed his palm against the door of his apartment and 
the door sort of stretched to form an opening for him to walk through, her words were 
not reassuring. He felt like he was being watched as he walked down the hallway on 

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the fleshy floor. It felt like he was walking on corpses. The house sensed the weakness 
on his right side, and the floor lifted slightly to meet his right foot as it came down.
His furniture looked awkward here — too solid. He unpacked boxes. His hard 
tech stuff would have to wait until he recovered enough to drive — he hadn’t wanted 
anyone touching it but him.
Every time he touched a wall he flinched, sickened by the warmth of it and the way 
it gave under his touch. The whole fucking place was alive. 
The first thing he did was put up his posters. He didn’t have any stick-em, only 
thumb tacks. Blood seeped onto the backs of his posters when he pushed the tacks into 
the wall. He felt a little better when the posters were up. It gave him something that 
was not alive to focus on, and insulated him from those walls. That gave him an idea.
He pulled two big rolls of oversized, heavy-duty printer paper out of a box, and set 
about covering the floor and the remaining bare spots on the walls with it. Better.
It was late afternoon when he finished putting his stuff away. He was tired, but not 
nearly as bad as he’d expected. Jessica had told him that the thing at the hospital had 
done some work on him beyond treating the stroke, but he preferred to believe he was 
feeling good because he was finally out of that freak-show hospital.
He sat on his couch and closed his eyes. He could not see the blood vessels in the 
walls, floor, fridge and heating vents, but he knew they were there. It made his skin 
crawl.
It had taken hours of arguing for Jessica to get him here. Like her grandmother, she 
didn’t fight fair. Instead of making rational points she used tears. How the hell was he 
supposed to counter tears. 
The truth was, she was right. He was too old and too sick to live on his own.
He looked around the place again, trying to muster some dribble of affection for 
his new home. Maybe when he had his system up, and his TV, it would be better. He 
sat, increasingly bored with no system to jack into, no TV or vids to watch. His right 
hand ached.
His gaze fell on the apartment’s built-in system — a rounded mound of cobalt-blue 
flesh with one of those arteries snaking from it, curled neatly on a wheel affixed to the 
desk, like a living water hose. He knew that inside that mound of flesh was tissue a 
whole lot like brain tissue. 
Twice in his life he’d tried jacking into an organic system. He hadn’t liked it. 
Granted, that had been a long time ago. And it would be nice to have something to 
do, other people to talk to. 
He sat down in front of it. For a moment he tried to find the on/off switch, then 
remembered that they didn’t have one. They didn’t run on power. You fed them.

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He uncoiled the jack, trying to ignore how much it felt like holding a long, flaccid 
penis. A soft hiss of air whispered out of the end of the jack, as if it were waking up. He 
pressed it against the side of his head, felt it gently grip the outside of his ear, then felt 
tickling as thin coils made their way into his ear canal. He tried to relax his bunched 
shoulders, to breathe evenly, to go with it. He closed his eyes.
Images flashed past. Soft ocean waves, then a menu. He backhanded sweat from 
his brow and whispered, “search.” What did he want to try. Something familiar. 
“Sulphur Dioxide, skunk-rock band.” suggested an inner voice that sounded like 
his, but was not. The system was pulling likely possibilities out of his mind before he 
thought them. A light breeze drifted through his mind, then he saw Sulphur Dioxide’s 
lead singer, Ewen Googan. A rush of angry energy coursed through him. Raking guitar 
licks pounded his ears. Foreign thoughts — technical music thoughts — filled his 
mind.
“No,” he said out loud. The image blanked. “Pre-2050 television shows,” he 
thought, “The Uncouplers.” He wasn’t sure if he had thought it, or the system had. An 
episode of The Uncouplers began, only it was three-dimensional and he was standing 
right in the middle of the action. China Beele strutted right by him. Aden Cole sat 
nearby, feet propped on a chipped desk. 
“We have to assume something’s gone wrong,” Bruce said.
“So what do we do about it.” China Beele asked, turning to look at him. Jesus, he 
recognized this episode. He had just said one of Rando Coyle’s lines. Rando’s thoughts 
circled in Bruce’s head, mixing with his own.
“Jack out! Jack out!” he screamed. 
As soon as the system beeped clear he yanked the jack from his ear, threw it 
aside, and lurched away from the desk, nearly falling down as his still weak right leg 
foundered. Stumbling to the couch, he sank into it and buried his face in his hands.
X
The sun was barely up, and Bruce was already sitting behind the wheel of his car. 
The vinyl steering wheel, its finish pitted and cracked, felt solid under his palms. Hard, 
cool, and dead. He started the ignition, pulled a CD out of the storage bin — The 
Snowmen — popped it in and cranked the volume. It took two tries to put the car in 
drive with his weak right hand. He steered with his left — it felt peculiar.
After the drive and the strain of loading the car, he was exhausted. If the couch 
had still been at his old place he would have taken a nap, but there were only piles 
of unsalvageable hard-tech machinery and dust bunnies. He headed back to the new 
apartment.

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Halfway there he stopped for fuel, pulling around back where they kept the fuel 
cell pump, enjoying the curious glances. As he pulled the pump out of the cradle he 
noticed a note posted on it. It was to “our valued customers,” and said they were 
discontinuing the sale of hydrogen fuel due to low demand. Organic feed only from 
now on. 
As far as Bruce knew this was the last fuel station in the area that sold hydrogen. 
He sat down on the concrete lip of the pump island and stared blindly at one of his bald 
black tires. A cold dread filled him at the thought of going back to that apartment.
The Snowmen blaring, the engine roaring, he drove. He turned left instead of 
right, going nowhere in particular, using up his precious hydrogen. Picking up speed, 
he put his right hand on the wheel at twelve o’clock, and took his left hand off. That 
felt more natural, though he could barely feel the wheel. It occurred to him that it 
would not be surprising if a ninety-three year old man who had just suffered a stroke 
were to lose control of his vehicle.
But eventually he pulled up in front of the slab of meat. Leaving everything in his 
car, he dragged himself inside and crawled into bed.
“Bruce, your hydration level is quite low,” the house said in its mellifluous voice. 
Bruce jolted upright. There was a tit of sorts jutting from the wall. It was close enough 
that he could have leaned right over and had a good suck if he was so inclined.
“Get that thing out of my face, and don’t talk to me,” he snapped. The house didn’t 
reply. The tit receded into the wall.
The next time he woke, he found three tentacles trailing up into his bed. One 
covered his mouth and nose, and was pumping air in and out of him — breathing 
him. The other two disappeared under the sheets. Feeling sick, he lifted the sheet and 
peered. One tube ended in three fingers pressing against the center of his chest. The 
other disappeared up his ass. 
“Get off of me!” He howled. The tubes slithered off the bed and retracted into the 
wall. “Do not touch me, do not do anything to me! Leave me alone!” No response. He 
pulled the sheet over his head, hugged his legs to his chest and closed his eyes.
j
The house told him Jessica was at the door, but he pretended he was sleeping. 
Eventually she talked the house into letting her in. 
He heard her crackling footsteps on the paper, then felt a hand lightly brush his 
forehead. He kept his breathing even and didn’t open his eyes. Eventually she went 
away.

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She came back the next day, and this time she sat by the bed for a long time. 
Finally, she said, “You’re not really sleeping, are you.”
Reluctantly Bruce opened his eyes. “Don’t take it personally.” His throat was so 
dry he couldn’t swallow. 
“When’s the last time you ate.” 
“When I get hungry I just lean over and gnaw on the wall.”
Jessica smiled sadly, and brushed his cheek. “The apartment is going to get sick if 
you cover all the surfaces like this.”
“That would be terrible,” he said.
Jessica started to speak, but her eyes welled up and she stopped, trying to regain 
her composure. “I know what you’re doing. If this is what you want, I won’t try to stop 
you.” A tear started to roll. “But, Pop, you’re better than this.”
He didn’t say anything, but looked at Jessica and saw so much Andrea.
Eventually she leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll come by later to see how 
you’re doing.” 
He lay there for hours, staring at the ceiling and thinking. 
Eventually, he pulled himself out of bed. It wasn’t Jessica’s tears that had swayed 
him, at least not completely. She’d made a good point.
He drank two cans of Jolt, wondering how long until they discontinued it because 
of low demand, and he would be forced to drink a synthesized version out of the 
house’s tits. He set up his computer, and fixed it to alert him when two retro-freaks in 
black jumpsuits showed up in Bit-town. 
He only had to wait six hours. Maybe they were looking for him.
X
The Milkman drove the milk truck to his loft, a glass-walled space at the top of 
a cylindrical building resembling a lighthouse. He stayed on back roads — he wasn’t 
ready to meet Jack and Jill retro-freak just yet. They had been busy. Tower Center was 
now a giant udder, spewing milk high into the sky. There was a giant cow in the sky, 
mooing plaintively. These two had no respect for their elders. 
Inside the loft he jacked into his virtual system and hacked Bit-town’s programming. 
It took thirty seconds to identify the two outside lines. Both came from the same 
address — looked like his visitors were a married couple from Vancouver. He made a 
few adjustments to their preferences. Then he went looking for them.
They weren’t hard to find — they were sky-diving off a skyscraper into a pool of 
Jell-o they’d built in the middle of Broad Street. He pulled his truck to within a block 
of them, then walked, limping only slightly, down the middle of the street.

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“Hey honey, it’s the ice-cream man again,” Jeremy Dalton of Vancouver said. “I’ll 
take a toasted-almond. No, make that a creamsickle. What’s that you got there, your 
cow’s lead.” The Milkman just kept walking, eyes locked on his prey. One hundred 
meters away he began spinning the bolo in his hand. It circled his head slowly at first, 
and built speed until it was a whistling blur. Jeremy opened his mouth to make another 
wisecrack, and The Milkman let fly. The bolo ripped Jeremy off his feet and hurled 
him ten meters. He hit the pavement with an audible thud. 
Alyx Dalton tried to fly away. The Milkman got his other bolo swinging and hurled 
it at her. She fell out of the sky like a shattered skeet, landing hard on the pavement. 
The Milkman pulled his sword from his belt and limped toward her. 
Her eyes opened wide when she realized she hadn’t been booted by the fall. “Okay, 
enough is enough!” she said. The Milkman raised the sword in both hands. Alyx 
closed her eyes and screamed as he brought it down, cleanly severing her head. There 
was no blood — the exposed wounds were flat crimson planes. Alyx’s mouth formed a 
big “O” as her head rolled to a stop a few feet from her body. “Jesus, what’s going on. 
Why haven’t I jacked out.”
The Milkman grabbed her head and headed toward her husband.
“Jeremy, what’s going on.” Alyx’s head said. Before Jeremy could answer, the 
Milkman hacked off his head as well. Carrying one head under each arm and whistling 
tunelessly, he headed for his truck.
“Why haven’t we jacked out.” Jeremy’s head said to Alyx’s head.
“I don’t know. He must have done something to our programming.”
“You prick!” Jeremy shouted. “Who the hell do you think you are. This is public 
space, you can’t stop us from using it!” He looked at his wife. “Come on honey, let’s 
jack-out manually.” 
“You don’t respect this space,” The Milkman growled. The heads disappeared. 
Fine. He didn’t think they’d be back. Bit-town got a little too scary for tourists when 
they discovered the rules could be changed.
He hopped into the milk truck and threw it into reverse.
“Where to now.”
The Milkman jumped. The Milk Maid was in the passenger’s seat, dressed in white 
leather and chrome, goggle-shades masking almond eyes. Andrea, he thought for a 
split-second. Then he caught on. “Hey Jess. How long have you been watching.” He 
backed up, pointed uptown and peeled out.
“I saw one bolo throw, both decapitations. I noticed you were jacked in, thought 
I’d join you. You don’t mind me using Grandma’s avatar, do you.”
“Nah. Thanks for slumming with the old man.” 
“You are one sick bastard when you’re in here, you know that.”

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Passenger Dossier
Name: Will McIntosh
History and Writing Credits: Will is a 2003 Clarion graduate, and a psychology professor at 
Georgia Southern University, in the U.S.
Writing Credits: This is Will’s second sale to ASIM.  He has also sold stories to Interzone, 
CHIZINE, Black Static, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, On Spec, Abyss & Apex, Futurismic, 
Challenging Destiny, Fictitious Force, Albedo One, and others.
He smirked. “Nobody fucks with the Milkman. Used to be everyone knew that.” 
They hit a block that had been erased; he drove right through it.
“You ready to jack out now.” 
The Milkman shook his head. “I’m gonna stick around.” He pulled up in front of 
his loft. “Will you jack in once in a while and check out my progress.”
“Progress on what.” the Milk Maid asked.
“On this place. It’s a work of art, the record of an era and a paradigm shift in 
science, all rolled into one. It shouldn’t be abandoned and left to die.” 
“You’re gonna rebuild it.” The Milk Maid smiled.
The Milkman nodded. “I’m going to turn it into a museum. In honor of people 
like Neal, so they won’t be forgotten. Maybe you can help me get the word out once 
I’m finished.”
“Promise me you’ll come out to eat.”
The Milkman nodded. “I promise. And I’ll come out when you visit. But that’s it. 
Deal.”
“Deal.” The Milk Maid leaned over, kissed his cheek, and jacked out. 
The Milkman got to work.

It’s Only Rock and Roll
…Hannah Strom-Martin
 
January/February 2006
it’s only rock and roll
43
I was a little nervous about coming back to Humboldt. It was here, after all: the 
same gateway I had slipped through only one mortal year ago. Mother would be 
looking for me. Mother’s network would be looking for me. I wondered if any of 
them would be at the show. 
From backstage the crowd was a formless sea, a scent like summer and smoke. 
Out on the beach the glow of cigarettes lit the dusk — a thousand cherry red coals 
blazing beneath the greater red of the setting sun. The breeze lifted off the river, 
and the babes and Rasta-men pulled their t-shirts back on over bikini tops and bare 
chests. As I sauntered onto the stage a shriek went up and I passed into a cloud of 
cloves and nicotine, the scent of opium and marijuana buzzing my senses.
Ah, Mortalia. In the last rays of light I was a sun-child: my hair tinted with 
fire, crazy spirals curling against my golden, leather-clad breasts. No one, not the 
young rock-eager crowd, nor my band of hearty mates, would have guessed that 
beneath my scintillating rock chick body lurked a moon-bathed immortal. I had 
hidden myself well. There wasn’t a trace of Gwyllion the Watcher, bound and 
bored in the starry groves. Not a hint of Gwyllion the sweet-voiced or spider-
limbed. I was of mortal flesh now, hot and aching with every mortal need. And I 
sang like a demon.
The crowd roared as we began. They rushed the stage with waving arms and 
offerings. Rog got a girl’s thong, and Cat and Morris were pelted with roses. By 
the first chorus everyone was mine and I was nearly laughing too hard to wrap my 
tongue around the lyrics. 
I was still a bit paranoid, but with the sole exception of my cousin Magda — 
and the legions of rock gods she swore came straight from the Greenwood — all 
the faey I’d ever met were squares. They wouldn’t be combing Rolling Stone for the 
latest chart toppers. The gossip rags where they might read my mortal name were 
as alien to them as a virgin in Goblinland. My paranoia turned into pelvic thrusts 
and each thrust into a grind and the evening barreled on over the heads of the 
crowd, streaked with flashing lights and curling tendrils of smoke.

It’s Only Rock and Roll
…Hannah Strom-Martin
 
January/February 2006
it’s only rock and roll
43
“Oh, my babies!” I screamed, opening my arms, throwing my head back in offering. 
They reached for me, some nearly eluding security. I laughed, finished my high note 
in one torturous soprano wail, ran my fingers over the sleekness of my exposed midriff 
and:
“Good night Humboldt County! Thank yew!”
<
Backstage, the champagne was pink, of course. Oysters and shrimp straight from 
Humboldt Bay sat on ice. The food was getting more exotic as the end of the tour 
drew near — there was baklava and curry, pesto and delicate white wine. The mates 
hurried to be with their girlfriends and boy-toys and I sat laughing on the buffet table, 
drinking Coca-cola.
With all apologies to goblin fruit, there has never been a substance to equal Coke. 
The chilled, liquid sugar pounding in my adrenalized veins made any other pleasure, 
mortal or faey, seem trite. I sat and guzzled, and it was then I saw Cedric Moss for the 
first time.
As my eyes fell on him I realized I’d been feeling his stare for some time. Green eyes 
had Cedric. Green and slanting and filled with light. His t-shirt hugged his slender 
torso with cloth the color of weak tea, and he’d clad his fingers in silver. There were 
more beautiful men milling around but he was the only one wearing skintight jeans 
with a blue star sewn on the crotch.
“Hi,” he said, approaching me.
“Hi,” I returned.
“Cedric Moss.”
His fingers were warm, his rings cold. I felt a tingle at the base of my spine as we 
shook, but I was too intent on that blue star to wonder at it. I liked that star. Why did 
it seem so familiar.
 “Eradia,” I said
He smiled. “I know.” His lips were thin, like the rest of him, a paler caramel than 
his skin. His waist was smaller than mine and I was keen to know how it would feel 
with my legs around it.
“Like the show.” I asked, letting my knees fall open so he could stand between 
them.
“Very much,” he said. “Would you like another Coke.”
I looked at the pile of cans that had accumulated around my perch. “Sure,” I said. 

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Cedric retrieved another can from the ice chest, cracking it open with his back 
turned. Handing it over, he spilled a little, and the sweet, sticky liquid ran down 
between my breasts. His smile turned devilish. I drained the Coke in two gulps. 
“Had a lot to drink, have we.” Cedric asked when I stopped laughing.
“I don’t get drunk,” I said. But even as I said it I realized it might not be true. 
Everything around me felt decadent: Cedric, the Coke, the warmth of the pot in my 
lungs. There was so much flesh wandering around backstage, so much noise. The 
distant rumble of the house music came to me, and my eyes began to roll up in my 
head. This all felt vaguely familiar, like Cedric’s blue star, but I’d be damned if I could 
bring myself to care.
“Do you have a dressing room.” Cedric asked. His hands were resting on my 
thighs. 
“Yes,” I mumbled.
“Why don’t we go there.”
“Yeah.”
I slid off the table, falling against him, all breasts and naked arms. He caught me 
around the waist, supporting me as we lurched through the crowd.
There was hardly enough space in my dressing room to make love but Cedric’s 
mouth was on mine the moment I slammed the door. Tubes of lipstick and powder 
brushes clattered against the mirror as he set me on the make-up table. His mouth 
tasted of cloves, and his fingers were warm as they pulled apart the lacings of my 
bodice. It was lovely, and yet…
“Wait,” I said. 
He abandoned his slow nibble of my neck. “Yes.” 
I put a hand to my throat. There was a curious tightness there. Beyond the slant 
of Cedric’s shoulder, the room was a smear of revolving yellow light.
“I feel…” I said, but the words drifted away from me. Somewhere, the jangle of the 
paranoia bell sounded.
Cedric ripped my shirt open.
“Hey,” I began, but his mouth found mine and the ensuing wrestling match was as 
much a struggle against my own desire as his wiry strength. By the time I could gather 
my wits enough to free myself, my hands were forcing his head to my breast of their 
own accord.
“Wait!” I squeaked as he tugged at my pants. Having adopted a mortal’s body, I 
had taken on all its inconveniences. “Condom,” I demanded. “Need. Didn’t…take…
pills… Oh!”
Cedric sunk his teeth into my earlobe, his husky laughter tickling me as he 
breathed. Trying to concentrate, I reached for my purse. “Condom!” I said again.

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Cedric batted my hand away.
“Hey…” I slurred. The ache was creeping into my jaw. Shades of gray encroached 
on the dressing room. My hand was on Cedric’s ass, my desire pulsing inside me like 
coals fanned by a breeze. I was aware of every touch, every wisp of breath. I could feel 
the love bites Cedric was lavishing in a steadily downhill progression upon my body. I 
had to take several deep breaths before I could bring myself to stop him. 
“Didn’t take—” I began, pulling him up. But then his face came into view and the 
words died.
His eyes were far too green. His skin had graduated from alluring to ethereal 
and his hair was like fire. Cedric Moss. It wasn’t a mortal’s name, and his was not a 
mortal’s smile. “You are mine,” that smile said. And for the first time since I’d flown 
the Greenwood, it was true.
“Oh no,” I said. And then: “The Coke…”
My eyelids fluttered. Through a haze, Cedric brushed a strand of hair from my 
forehead.
“I see why you took off,” he said, his mortal voice slipping into the dulcet tones of 
faerie. “This mortal life is very…rock and roll.’” He pressed his hips to mine. “It’d be 
a shame not to enjoy these bodies, don’t you think.”
I tried to fight, but the drug had me. As the world slipped away in a mess of sex 
and swirling faerie power, I bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. His yelp gave me 
satisfaction. As I succumbed to whatever web the faey spiders had woven, I found 
myself regretting that I wouldn’t be conscious long enough to enjoy the big finish.
<
When I woke I was sore and horny, bound hand and foot in the back of a 
Volkswagon. Redwood trees flashed past the window, giving the filtered sunlight a 
hint of green. It hurt my eyes, making the cottony mass in my head throb. Cedric was 
at the wheel, humming. The music coming from the radio was full of jolly cymbals and 
playful backbeat. The Monkees. 
So this was hell.
As soon as I could think I whispered an incantation that would sever my bonds 
and whisk me back to my dressing room. The power bloomed on my lips…and fizzled 
against the ropes like water on a griddle. I swore and lowered my throbbing head 
against the seat. Whatever Cedric had dosed me with was giving me one bitch of a 
hangover. And the ropes were spelled.
“That wasn’t very good,” said Cedric, smiling at me in the rearview mirror. “I 
thought a child of The Lady would be stronger.” 

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I ignored him. Mother had probably given him the ropes herself. Cedric Moss. 
Why did that sound so familiar. The song ended and the DJ came on. “Here’s a little 
rock and roll news for ya. Eradia Parsons, lead singer of Beautiful Pornography, was 
abducted last night after performing at the Rock on the River Music Festival in our 
very own Humboldt county. Eradia was last seen in the company of an unknown man 
as they headed away from the post-show party. In a bizarre twist, a lifesize replica of 
the singer was found in her dressing room by guitarist Roger Farraday. Apparently it 
was made out of Coke cans. Pretty weird.”
If he hadn’t been talking about me I would have laughed. But when Cedric winked 
at me, my blood ran cold. Thee were plenty of faeries who liked to leave things in place 
of the maidens they lured or the babies they stole. But it took a special aptitude to pull 
a stunt this big. Mother had hired out for this job.
A changeling.
Cedric Moss. I’d been an idiot. The legend of House Moss was a faery’s faerie tale 
long before I was born. A notorious bunch of glamour spinners, House Moss. Mother 
had banished them eons ago to prevent them from spoiling her carefully cultivated 
state of boredom. The blue star of the Moss pennant had five points to represent the 
multifaceted nature of their kin. Cedric wasn’t the worst of them, but there were some 
who said he hadn’t shown his real face since birth. Dimly I recalled Lady Gwynefar 
of Lesh mixing dream wine with wormwood at a henking party. It was a dodgy habit, 
one she’d formed after Cedric married her as one man and turned into quite another 
on their wedding night.
I twisted against the ropes. The Stones were playing now and Cedric’s fingers 
were tapping along with them. His hair had changed color again — something dark 
highlighted in gold. Oh, he was pretty, all right. Pretty and evil. The stupid bastard 
was about as rock and roll as you could get. 
There had to be a way out of this, but I was too dizzy to think. Cedric would be 
taking me to the gateway — to Mother. Mother had clearly let him out of wherever 
she’d been keeping him…
 “What did she offer you.” I demanded. Somehow I couldn’t see him wanting to 
twitch at the end of Mother’s tether. “Was it a pardon. A restored place at court.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Cedric said pleasantly.
“Let me guess: you’re going to marry some white trash nixie and revive your fallen 
House.”
“You could say that.” 
It took a moment for the full sleaziness of his tone to hit me. “No,” I said. “She 
wouldn’t.”

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“I believe the date is set for May.” He laughed the wispy little laugh that had 
sounded so good the night before. I felt the car lurch, bushes snapping past the 
window as we veered into the forest.
“Already.” I hadn’t meant to say it. And I certainly hadn’t meant to sound so 
frightened. Cedric turned up the radio which was now, horribly, playing Van Halen. 
Golden-brown hair bobbed in the light as Cedric did a little head bang.
Then, he brought the Bug to a screeching halt.
When he flipped his seat up to get at me, I flung myself into the far corner. This 
only resulted in my being face up when he snatched me, but I had passed the point 
of dignity. I’d been caught by a changeling hired by my own Mother and now he was 
going to drag me back to the Twilight Zone, marry me, and sire a passle of brats.
“You might as well give over,” Cedric said, lowering me out of the car onto a pile 
of damp leaves. “You won’t get free of those ropes.”
“What about a bargain.” I tried. Even from the ground I could see the spectral 
glow of faeryland, shimmering just beyond the next bush. Less than fifty feet lay 
between me and an eternity as Cedric’s bitch. A rockless eternity. In Mortalia they 
would think I had simply vanished, borne up to the great gig in the sky with Joplin, 
Cobain, Hendrix. Which was actually, now that I thought it, pretty cool, but still… 
“Please,” I said. “There must be something you want.”
A pair of booted feet planted themselves on either side of me. I looked up the 
length of Cedric Moss’s perfect, frail body and realized he was wearing leather pants.
“There’s nothing you can give me that isn’t already mine,” he said. The strains of 
an Eddie Van Halen solo floated around us. Cedric had left the radio on so he could 
hear it.
“My God,” I said, the idea hitting me like a burst of light. “You could do it.”
“Do what.” Cedric asked.
I jerked my head at the Bug. “That,” I said. “That music.”
Cedric scowled.
“Listen,” I said. “It could all be yours. You were made for it, Cedric. The crowds, 
the girls. You don’t even have to be talented. Just be yourself. There’s nothing Mortalia 
won’t give you if you’re a rock star.”
Cedric’s scowl grew deepened and I knew I’d planted my seed. He raised one hand 
and the music blared through the clearing: Eddie freaking out, crusty ole David Lee 
raving about the exceptional attributes of his high school teacher.
Come on, Cedric, I willed him. You can have it made. Just let me go and embrace your 
inner Roth!
Van Halen gave up the ghost and became AC/DC and still Cedric stood, listening. 
He seemed to like Angus better than Eddie, his lips moving faintly as though trying to 

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follow the notes. As I watched, the barest hint of silver glinted beneath his coffee and 
cream skin. As Angus jerked his strings for their last ounce of mayhem, a foggy halo 
grew behind Cedric’s head. 
I blinked and it was gone. Cedric lowered his arm and sighed. “I like how fast 
it is,” he said, almost to himself. “It suits me.” He sighed again. “But there are 
complications.”
I didn’t care for the foxy way his eyebrows arched at me.
“Complications.” I asked.
He laughed and it was a slow laugh. A dark, wispy contralto that unfurled like a 
red carpet leading straight to hell.
“What complications.” I demanded.
In the summery light of Mortalia, Cedric Moss’s eyes glinted like ice. “Oh, Eradia,” 
he said, laughing. “We must think of the child.”
<
There’s nothing like learning you’re pregnant with changeling spawn to dry up all 
thoughts of rebellion. I hardly noticed when Cedric untied my feet so I could walk. 
I plodded forward like a wooden thing, the shiver of the gateway passing through 
me. One minute Cedric and I were stumbling through the California redwoods in 
broad daylight, then twilight descended. The sound of birdsong was sucked away and 
crickets rose in their place. An evening wind, murmuring in the silver-blue grass, set 
ghost lights to dancing. I shivered. 
We kept walking. Now and again I heard a rustling noise, or glimpsed the ragged 
end of a goblin coat as its owner scuttled into the undergrowth. I heard the gentle 
sweep of wings overhead and the sigh of elemental spirits. Our presence would be 
announced long before we arrived. 
At last, my feet sore in their snakeskin boots, my bare arms clammy with dew, 
Cedric led me beneath the bough of a willow tree and we came upon the court.
Here, at least, there was light. Moonlight radiated in the faces of a thousand willowy 
immortals, playing in tresses of frosted blond and nightmare black. There were faey 
from every House here: cagey-looking knockers, imposing elf-lords and miniscule pixies 
who moved so fast their presence was a blur of light. In a pool far to my right were the 
Undine Houses: nyad, nixie, and visiting Merrow. On any other night, this collection 
would have made for a pleasant bash. Tonight there wasn’t a smile to be seen.
My favourite cousin Magda stood at the front of the gathering, her coal black hair 
hanging against her Kinks t-shirt in ragged waves. Next to her, holding the neck of a 
Gibson Les Paul in one willow-fine hand, was Mother.

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“Mom.” I said. 
Mother raised silver eyes. “Gwyllion.” Her voice was a whisper. I found myself 
sitting on my knees in the damp. I huffed, struggling with my ropes — until they fell 
away beneath Mother’s stare. 
“Hello to you too,” I said. I wrestled myself to my feet. It wasn’t enough that I was 
going to bear Cedric Moss’s brat — she had to make me look like an idiot. “What the 
hell do you think you’re doing.” 
Mother bristled, and Magda winced as if pricked. I wondered how Mother had 
dragged my whereabouts out of her. Magda’s credo was “won’t get fooled again.”
“You betrayed me,” Mother said. 
“Betrayed.” I was shouting. “I’m not the one who sent a changeling to knock up 
her only child!”
“You betrayed me,” Mother repeated. “You shirked your duty and honor for this.” 
The Gibson flew from her hand and thumped down at my feet. “How could you do it, 
Gwyllion.” she asked.
As my true name left her mouth I felt a wave of shame. Oh, she was a charmer all 
right. In the faery-glow she looked younger than I did, her beautiful face so pained and 
innocent that Bon Scott himself would have had to back down. The court murmured 
their sympathy and I ground my teeth.
“I don’t understand you,” she continued. “If I hadn’t brought you home, you’d be 
mortal by now.”
“That was the idea,” I said.
Mother froze. “A child of mine,” she whispered.
“A mother of mine,” I said.
She drew herself up, her beauty a burst of twilight silver. “You left me no choice,” 
she said. “A child was the only way to tie you here, to make you accept your place.”
“A child of his.” I asked. “A changeling demon who’ll be a bastard the moment its 
father finds something with nicer legs.”
“Hey—!” Cedric said behind me. I ignored him. Magda was shaking her head in 
wordless warning. 
“What did you do to Mags.” I demanded, my hands on my hips. “Tell me that at 
least.”
“Magdaline has been rendered dumb,” Mother said. “You should take care I don’t 
do the same to you.”
Behind me, Cedric was chuckling. I could just see the shimmy of his hip from the 
corner of my eye.

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“You took her voice.” I asked. Mother’s face was implacable, her mouth as hard 
and silent as chiseled marble. “But, Mom,” I said when I could breathe again, “it’s only 
rock and roll.”
“It is mortal music,” Mother said. “Loud and coarse like their machines. And it 
took you away from me.”
The grove was very still. A spell rose on my tongue. Steal Magda’s voice, would 
she. Marry me off to Cedric the Cock would she. I raised my hand—
And found myself smote to the ground.
Cedric laughed uproariously.
“Good one, majesty,” he chortled. “I like her even better this way.” 
I leapt to my feet, discovering on the way up that I wasn’t wearing clothes.
“What the hell is wrong with you.” I yelled. I didn’t know if the words were for 
Cedric or Mother. At least I could still talk.
“You can’t escape this, Gwyllion,” Mother said. “If you think I’d let you spell me, 
you are sorely mistaken.”
Cedric was still laughing. I covered my breasts. Weird. They didn’t feel right, 
somehow. How could I have lost two cup sizes and not noticed.
I looked down and screamed.
The body I’d come in with was gone. In place of everything golden there was silver; 
goodbye Eradia, hello Gwyllion. For a moment, I was incapable of speech. When 
finally I could gather myself, Mother’s face had assumed its look of regal authority
“Gwyllion of the Fair Folk,” she said, raising her arms and voice to address the whole 
court. “I hereby strip you of your magic and glamour. You will not set foot outside the 
Greenwood. You will know no lover but Cedric of House Moss. For your treason, your 
cousin Magdaline shall remain hostage to my will, voiceless and imprisoned—”
“Wait!” I shrieked. Magda was looking at me in horror, shaking her head. Cedric 
was rocking back and forth on his heels in delight.
“Wait,” I repeated. My brain was racing. “You can’t do this. Even captive mortals 
get to bargain.”
 “You dare speak to me of bargains.” Mother said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Give me an impossible task, a mission of goodwill. If I solve it, you 
let me and Magda go.”
“And let you raise my grandchild in Mortalia.” 
“You have to!” I said. “By your own laws!”
“I won’t bargain with you,” Mother said. “You forfeited that chance when you 
abandoned your honor.”
“Then for Magda.” If I could get Magda free, there was a chance she could help. 
A small chance, but I wasn’t picky.

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“I weary of this,” Mother said. Her silver sheen was closer to gray, as if the act of 
stripping me had worn her out. “Very well,” she agreed finally. “For Magda.” A bitter 
smile touched her lips. “Hear my judgement. If you can show me the true face of 
Cedric Moss, I will release your cousin from her penalty.”
The words drifted from her lips and settled in my stomach like stone. As I gawked 
at my own idiocy, Cedric broke into another peal of laughter. I thought about being 
married to him, how the bad-boy persona was already wearing thin. He would have 
made a killing as a rocker.
I recalled him standing by the Bug, AC/DC pumping into the woods. For a moment 
I had thought he might bite. A shimmer and a screech of guitar.
Show me the true face of Cedric Moss.
I sucked in a breath, the barest glimmer of hope stirring in my Gwyllion-clad soul.I 
met Mother’s silver gaze. “Okay,” I said. “But you have to lend me Magda.”
<
Mother gave me a week. Ever try to form a band in the Greenwood. To be sure, 
faeryland has plenty of hell raisers, but theirs is by and large an old hell, spawned in the 
days when exchanging gold for lead was the epitome of cool. The concept of getting 
your groove on with anything racier than a dulcimer is, frankly, beyond the grasp of 
most faey. 
It was Magda’s idea to use a troll drummer. Trolls are a slow, menacing lot, but in 
a rudimentary sign language known only to the two of us, Magda swore Bruno could 
keep a beat. Bruno obliged her by smashing some rocks. Then he smashed her second 
best drums. He smashed them in rhythm with her guitar solo, so I really couldn’t 
complain. I had only to promise him Magda’s best drum kit (provided it still existed 
when we were done), and keep him from killing our bassist.
An elf’s deft fingers would have been perfect for the bass, but no self respecting 
high-elf would dare lend aide to Mother’s rebel daughter and her blacklisted cousin. 
We tried the dark elves, poking around in every foul hole a day’s trek would afford. 
But even evil was keeping its head down. A pair of pixies could pull the bass strings 
with gusto but not rhythm. A swarm of knockers nearly stole the bass when we gave 
them a shot. Finally, Magda remembered Sheená — her chain smoking, goblin dating, 
crevasse-dwelling former auntie (a hell of a story) and managed to secure her talents 
in exchange for an autographed copy of “New York.” When she passed the audition, 
Sheená whooped like a co-ed on a tequilla blitz and Bruno snapped his drum sticks. 
Trolls hate nyads.

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<
The day of the gig didn’t dawn bright and clear — or even at all. It was the same 
old twilight when me and my new mates made our way to court. Cedric and Mother 
were seated in front, with everyone else stern and silent behind them. If Cedric had 
looked one tick more amused, I think I might have stolen Magda’s Gibson and bashed 
his face in.
“You look swell, Eradia,” he called as I mounted the stage. “See you after the 
show!” I ignored him. In the middle of some last minute tuning, Magda flipped him 
off. Her smile was a rictus. Crazy nyads and temperamental trolls aside, she knew what 
we were playing for. I had never thought my desire to “rock for life” would manifest 
in quite this way. 
“Is this thing on.” I asked, tapping the mic. One of my goblin roadies chittered at 
his friends and the mic crackled to life. My next “check” made the court hold their 
ears. I winced. Cedric laughed.
I turned to my mates. “Ready.” 
Magda did a quick Hendrix riff and grinned at me. Sheená, cackling under her 
breath, gave the thumbs up. Bruno bashed the cymbols and I flinched, convinced he’d 
killed them once and for all.
Fenris Rockbottom, King of Goblinland, made his entrance with numerous 
relations in tow. Sheená hadn’t lied to me about her connections. Most of Fenris’s 
crew crashed at the front of the stage, but some followed my request and fanned out. 
The Rockbottom boys would help me get this party started or I wasn’t fit to wear 
leather.
I nodded to my band. “Hit ‘em hard.” 
Magda nodded back. I counted off.
Later, I could never remember how the court reacted. I had a vague impression of 
something frail bending under the strain of something heavy. Perhaps I should have 
played something softer: something Zeppy from the days when mortals were trying to 
be more like faeries than the other way around. But I didn’t have time for universality 
and when you come right down to it, neither does rock. Rockers like to brag that 
rock is the universal language, but mostly, it just has a way of saying things that don’t 
sound the same any other way. And what I had to say, I sure as hell couldn’t say with 
flowers.
 At first it looked like nothing had changed. Cedric sat there, gloating. Mother 
sat next to him, remote as an iceberg, even as Fenris and his goblin progeny began to 
boogie at the foot of the stage. Little pockets of the court were jiving with them, but 
most were grimacing. We were playing AC/DC after all. 

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When we kicked off the second song, Cedric began to frown. Magda was doing her 
best Angus impression: running from one side of the stage to the other while walking 
down a billion notes per square inch. I think it might have been that, and not the 
savagery of my thrusting hips, that really got things going. 
It took root mid song, that faint glow flickering behind Cedric’s head. He set his 
jaw, trying to sit still. His head nodded of its own accord. It stopped when Mother 
glared at him, but resumed when she looked away. The glow expanded, his hair 
shimmering. His expression grew pained, but he couldn’t stop moving to the beat.
Keeping time with my hips, I nodded to Magda. We’d discussed this. As Cedric 
bounded to his feet, searching for a way out of crowd of goblins, Mags and I went into 
attack position, leaning on each other back to back like a horny producer’s wet dream. 
It had worked for every rock duo you could name.
And baby, it worked for us.
I heard a scream that I thought was my own. Even lolling in hyper-sexual abandon, 
Mags and I were still teasing our instruments for every last drop. But when a current 
of magic stirred my hair I knew it wasn’t me. 
It was Cedric.
I abandoned my swoon, letting the song die. Mags followed suit and, after a 
moment, so did Sheená. Only Bruno kept playing, delighted with the hollow pop as 
he finally smashed through the surface of one of Mags’s drums. He wrecked the rest 
with a good natured roar, then stood there beaming like a child.
I couldn’t find Cedric. The court was murmuring, heads turning towards the 
canopied sky. The glade seemed lighter.
“No!” someone howled. With a clunking of bootheels, Magda trotted to my side 
and pointed. Confused, I followed her finger and burst out laughing.
I don’t know what I had expected to see. A hideous fiend would have satisfied me. 
A satyr with goat feet and inadequete sex organs would have explained a lot. 
I looked at Cedric Moss and laughed until my sides hurt. They said he hadn’t 
shown his real face since birth; if you’ve built yourself a reputation that hinges on 
everyone thinking you’re David Lee Roth, the last thing you want them to know is 
that you’re really the chick from Sixpence None the Richer.
Yeah. Cedric Moss was a girl.
I laughed in hilarity and relief. If this was Cedric’s true face I couldn’t be pregnant. 
Light was spreading through the glade now, weird but comforting for its long absence. 
I wasn’t the only one taking pleasure in the sight of the shivering, ringleted girl-child 
who stood naked by my Mother’s side.
“And that’s why this place blows!” someone crowed. I squeaked as Magda flung 
her arms around me. “Hey, Gwil,” she said. Over my shoulder she addressed Mother. 

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“Don’t you just hate that, majesty. Don’t you hate never knowing what you’re going 
to get.”
We swaggered to the front of the stage. Mother, who had been regarding Cedric 
with the air of Bruno sizing up his next drum set, turned her coldest stare on me. I 
utterly failed to be phazed. Mother’s long, wearied sigh filled the glade, whispering 
over the heads of the fair folk and evaporating in the golden beginnings of light. The 
sunrise made her look several centuries too tired. Her defeat gave me no pleasure. She 
had no child to make me raise, no husband to bind me and, through her own folly, no 
inducement for me to stay. I felt sorry for her — for anyone tied to a realm of twilight 
through an honor and duty more outdated than it had any right to be.
And yet, there was light…
The Cedric girl squared her shoulders for the coming storm.
“You betrayed me,” Mother said. 
“Well, yeah,” Cedric said in an indignant voice. “It’s what I do. Changeling and 
all.”
“You would have made me wait for years,” Mother said. “For a child who would 
never be born.”
“You locked me up for thousands,” Cedric replied. “That was jolly fun.”
Mother turned her face to the sky as if to ask who had ordered this strange new 
reality. Then she hung her head.
“Do you know why I wanted your child so badly.” she asked me. “This place needs 
children more desperately than you need music. Imagine that, Gwyllion. It is enough 
to drive me mad.”
Somewhere nearby, a bird twittered. The court shifted, their whispers like the 
scraping of dried leaves. Mother seemed smaller with every minute, uncertain in the 
face of day. Gone was her stately faery wrath. As the birdsong rose sweet and clear 
through the dissipating gloom I realized that the answers she had sought through 
deceit (and one truly lousy one night stand) were there for the taking. I held them in 
my hand.
Or, at least, my throat.
“Mom.” I said softly. “Can I show you something.”
<
My second concert with Magda, minus the jarring ministrations of Bruno and 
Sheená, came off much better than the first. Unless, of course, you happened to be 
Cedric. Still naked, she spent the entirety of my Joni Mitchell medley squirming on 
the grass, trying to free herself of her invisible bonds. As the light grew and the courtly 

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faces blossomed into smiles, she looked ready to vomit. Inner rocker or no, she would 
always belong to the shadows.
She rallied a bit when we played “The Battle of Evermore.” The pagan warbling of 
voice and guitar was a combination no faey could resist. I think that’s when the light 
really came on. When the song was over, Mother rose from the grass and came to me, 
her face open with disbelief.
“This is mortal music.” she asked.
Magda and I shared a quick glance, not about to reveal our suspicions as to the 
true origin of one Robert Anthony Plant.
“Sure,” I said. “Half those songs were written by a Canadian.”
Mother pursed her lips. “This is valuable knowledge,” she said.
“Yeah,” Magda said. “Notice anything different around here.”
Mother turned, the sunlight catching the coils of her hair. For a long moment she 
stood still, taking in the sounds of bird and the far off running of water. There were 
smiles in the crowd now. Only Cedric was scowling, and I couldn’t blame her. As 
glorious as the Greenwood was now, I was still hungry for Mortalia. The mates would 
be looking for me. There was a tour to finish.
“If I let you go,” said Mother, “will it last.”
“I think so,” I said. “As long as you’re open to it.”
“And you.” Mother said. “What of you, Gwyllion.”
I squirmed under the longing of her gaze. “Well,” I said, “as long as you stop trying 
to play matchmaker I think Mags and I could visit sometimes. Show you a few tunes 
to keep the sun shining.”
For a wonder, Mother smiled. “That would be nice,” she said. She folded her arms, 
regarding Cedric with some of her old malice. “Is there anything you want me to do 
to…her.”
“Actually,” I said, “I think you ought to let her go.”
“What.” The cry came from two throats.
I spread my hands. “If you keep her here,” I said, “she’ll just be that much worse 
the next time she gets free. Besides, I think I can guarantee she won’t be bothering 
the Greenwood again.”
“And why is that, Eradia.” Cedric asked, leaning on her hip.
“Because,” I said, “your beef’s with me now. I beat you. Don’t you want to get me 
back.”
Cedric considered this. “You mean out there, don’t you.” she said. “You still think 
I like your filthy music.”
“I know you do.” 
“I’ll mop the floor with you,” Cedric spat.

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“I surely hope so. Mother.”
Mother nodded and it was done. Magda and I watched Cedric stalk away in her 
restored male glory. 
“You won’t have a groupie left to screw by the time I’m done with you!” he 
thundered, pushing through a throng of giggling goblin women as he strode towards 
the gateway.
“We’ll see about that,” I called. 
“Ah, Gwil,” Magda said, head swinging a little as she followed the movements of 
Cedric’s leather-clad derriere. “Do you really know what you’re doing with that one.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But the music is sure going to rock.”
Passenger Dossier
Name: Hannah Strom-Martin
History and Writing Credits: Hannah is a graduate of Bennington College and the Odyssey 
Fantasy Writer’s Workshop (both ‘03).
Writing Credits: Hannah has appeared in ASIM 11, Scared Naked Magazine and writes 
regularly for the North Bay Bohemian of CA. Her erotic short story, “Sex With Ducks” will appear 
in the upcoming anthology Amazons: Sexy Tales of Strong Women (06).

Mail Chauvinism
…G Scott Huggins
It was the day they issued us the chainmail that I really began to regret a career in 
retail bookselling. Oh, it kept me in shape, and it was challenging enough. But the 
glamour was an illusion. As a girl, when I’d watched episodes of Combat Retailers 
and seen them snagging shoplifters with varistaffs, striding through malls in vinyl 
boots and shockjackets, it had all seemed so dashing. They hadn’t worn chainmail. 
It grated on my skin as badly as the voice behind me did on my ears.
“Miss. Oh, Miss…Fry.”
“Not unless it’s impractical to eat it raw,” I said automatically. The name is 
Friday, because Dad was an unregenerate Heinlein fan. Fri to my friends and if you 
have to ask, you’re not one. I hate it when customers try to read my name badge. 
Fortunately, most of them can’t read.
This one could, which made her unusual for a customer in Silos and Dukes 
Booksellers. She was also the size of a baby elephant, which didn’t.
“Yes, ma’am.” I sighed.
“Well!” she sniffed, and I could tell I’d let my attitude show. Doubtless she 
was already logging a complaint about it through her implant to the store’s inbox. 
I’d get written up in about a week, by which point I’d be used to the chainmail 
anyway, so why was I bitching now. 
I’d bitched at the boss this morning when the stupid things arrived. The 
shockjackets we already had were impervious to electrical shock, corrosives, and 
most bullets.
“So what are we trying to accomplish with chainmail, Lily.”
“You know full well that Silos And Dukes’ Internal Salespersons’ Training 
department did a study correlating the wearing of mail shirts and the prevention 
of injuries among its staff.”
“SADIST doesn’t have to wear them,” I shot back. “Besides, that wasn’t a 
study, it was that airhead Mary Jo Finkelstein coming to work in Renaissance Faire 
garb and having a fight with her boyfriend in front of the registers. Didn’t she get 
fired for that.”

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“Yes, but the chainmail saved her life when he tried to stab her with that vibraknife. 
Now be a dear and shut up. I’d think someone with a Consumer Retail Ancillary 
Management Personnel degree could figure out a medieval shirt.”
And of course, anyone with a CRAMP was also expected to figure out how to 
placate angered customers. “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” I cooed now. “How may I have the 
privilege of helping you.”
“Oh, my dear,” she simpered. Apparently, all was forgiven. “Can you help me find 
that book, you know, the one that was on that lovely show with that woman last 
week.”
Without pause or thought, I swung into the Litany of the Bookseller:
Friday: “Do you know the title.” 
Customer: “No, I don’t remember.” 
Friday: “Do you know the author.”
Customer: “Oh, it was that tall lawyer man.” 
Friday: “Do you know any words in the title.”
Customer: “It was ‘The’ something.” 
Friday: “Can you remember what show it was.”
Customer: “I think it was Oprah’s daughter. You know, the thin one.” 
The thin one, yeah, the one that weighed under 150 kilos. I reversed the pommel of 
my varistaff, typed in the show and did a search for her guests of the past week. Sure 
enough, an appearance by John Grisham IV promoting his latest legal bodice-ripper. 
“The Firm Client.” I asked the customer.
“Oh, you’re so clever, how do you do it.” she burbled as I extended the varistaff’s 
tip out six meters and used its static-charged head to grab a copy off the far display 
table. It took me two tries; the chainmail, stuffed as it was between my shirt and 
shockjacket, threw all my moves off. 
“How gifted you are,” the customer giggled. “I’m sorry my nephew didn’t see that 
trick. Now where did he go.” She looked around. The import of her gesture hit me. 
“Your nephew. Um, how old is he.” I tried to sound nonchalant even though my 
knuckles were white around the varistaff.
“He’s thirteen; a dear boy.” Oh no. Surely she couldn’t be that stupid.
“Ma’am, perhaps you weren’t aware—” because you didn’t read the twenty-foot high 
red sign with white lettering hanging over both entrances “—that we ask all minors to be 
kept under a guardian’s direct supervision at all times.” I scanned the floor as I spoke. 
Nothing.
“Oh, really. Well, he’s harmless…”
“Liability, ma’am, foryourownprotectionexcuseme,” I said as I vaulted down the 
escalator to the children’s department. I took the steps two at a time while calling Lily.

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“Did you mention our Readers’ Ultimate Benefits Exchange card.” Lily asked as 
she picked up the phone. 
“RUBE will have to wait, Lily. We’ve got code ADAM.”
 “Tell me you’re kidding. Adult Dereliction: Abandoned Minor.”
“Another Damned Adolescent Menace.” 
“Dammit, this is no time for jokes!” Lily yelled. “You remember what happened to 
Edd Miller.”
I shuddered. One day, Edd Miller out in Denver got Code ADAM. Little girl who’d 
seen one too many episodes of My Little Hulkster gets away from Mommy and lays a 
copy of Counting With Hulky (plush, like all children’s books — can’t have kids exposed 
to paper cuts) on the basement floor, then rides the escalator up to the top floor. Edd 
spots her just as she goes over the railings with a squeal of delight in anticipation of 
the ride she’ll get when she bounces back up, Just Like On TV. Luckily for the kid, 
Edd plucks her out of the air with his varistaff about two feet before impact, neat as 
you please. Kid gets a dislocated shoulder instead of a broken skull, and Edd recovers 
from a mild heart attack. 
Of course, Mommy is jailed for Neglect, and after doing six months, she sues Edd 
and Silos And Dukes for ten million dollars for Pain and Suffering, Loss of Childhood 
Innocence, and Emotional Trauma. She wins handily on the basis that Edd used a Tool 
In A Manner Likely To Cause Harm to her daughter. Edd’s fired and the last I heard 
he was Selling a Kidney to Stay Out of Debtor’s Prison.
I wanted some action in my job, but not that badly, so I was already halfway down 
the stairs when the skidrom fell on my head. I hear from my grandfather that skidroms 
(or “compact discs,” as the old man calls them) used to weigh just a few grams. That 
was before they decided to encase each of them in five centimeters of polymer with a 
hardness of 9.8 on the Mohs’ scale, so people couldn’t scratch them. Ah, the good old 
days. Why couldn’t SADIST, in its finite wisdom, have sent us helms.
I staggered under the blow and looked up just in time to hear the laughter of 
a pimply towhead as he ducked back from the railing. I dialed the varistaff to its 
maximum extension of four meters and vaulted across to the up escalator. Another 
skidrom came at me and I batted at it. The scratchproof, silvery disc arced away. 
Normally, 
I’d have tried to catch it on the end of the ’staff for easier resorting, but this wasn’t 
a weekend game of skidrom frisbee with a bunch of high college kids. This was an 
actual child. There was no greater danger to the store, or to my job.
The shelves were silent, glittering with the silver edges of skidroms. Their title 
holograms sought out my eyes, turning the shelves into a forest of three-dimensional 
figures gesturing for my attention. A MiG-37 jet dove at my head, breaking off right 

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before flying through a woman with a torn bodice and a longing expression. Titles 
flashed over and around the images. It takes some customers awhile to get through 
the shelves, but you learn to filter it out. 
This was stupid; the kid knew I was after him. I could hear Lily’s voice somewhere 
above me, remonstrating with the aunt. “I’m afraid your nephew is causing a bit of a 
disturbance, Ma’am, throwing skidroms…”
“Well really! Donald’s not hurting your store or your skidroms! They’re very 
durable, I know. He’s a sweet young man…”
Yeah, sweet with an aim that had almost brained me. I’d have a knot on my temple; 
my own fault but no one had gotten the drop on me like that since the neohippie chick 
with the prehensile hair a couple of years ago, and she’d been a professional.
“Donald,” I called softly. “Your aunt is looking for you. Can I help you find 
anything.” Like the exit. At high velocity.
I heard a contemptuous snort, and running feet. He burst from the shelves, 
sprinting. He was thin and well-muscled for a thirteen-year-old. I’d been expecting 
him to look like his aunt. He was already down the escalator to the bottom floor. I 
followed him at a measured stride, leaping over a roll of skidroms he’d set up in the 
aisle to trip me. I nearly fell over Ron the Resident Wino just beyond them. As I 
cleared Ron’s head by centimeters, he growled, “Have some respect for the homeless, 
ya leather-plated slut,” and swiped at me.
Some planning ability, this kid. What was downstairs — the children’s department. 
What would he want with readable pillows.
It was at the bottom of the escalator that I heard paper tearing, and my blood ran 
cold. He was in among the oldboox. I strode into the section: a maze of twisty little 
bookshelves, all alike. It was an atmosphere that appealed to the oldboox crowd. No 
holograms, and the layers of shelves dampened the sound from the electronic parts of 
the store. Everything in here was extremely expensive, and mostly irreplaceable.
A paper airplane sailed around a corner and I caught it on the sharp tip of the 
varistaff. Page 421 of The Lord of the Rings. All right. Now I was mad. The varistaff 
changed as I twisted the control rings. Lily would freak if she saw this, and part of me 
was gibbering as well. I’d hacked the varistaff’s program for just such an occasion as 
this. 
Electropolyfiber is a wonderful thing. Sometimes a short, sharp shock is the best 
way to deal with these kids, so long as you don’t touch them. My special setting 
was one molecule wide at the edges, with a one-meter extension. For all practical 
purposes, a broadsword.
Another folded page shot past me. With a long “Ki-yai!” I sliced it in half in midair, 
and leapt into the corridor. I had the pleasure of seeing the kid standing there, holding 

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the thick, red leather-bound book, his eyes open wide in shock. What the hell, the 
little shit had already ruined it. My follow-up stroke sliced the book in two and placed 
the blade point just a centimeter from his eye as the sheared pages tumbled from his 
hands.
“Sir, for your own safety, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the store.” 
Gods, that felt good!
The kid’s mouth opened in a wide, saucy grin. “Pretty cool, book babe, but I 
don’t think so.” He raised both hands. There was a thick glove on the left one. To 
my disbelief, he carefully pinched the tip of the ‘staff’s blade with the glove, two 
centimeters behind the point.
Pain arced up my wrists and into my body, and the world tilted away, taking me 
with it. 
.
Dark clouds swirled through my head. I was lying on the floor, my head mashed 
up against a bookshelf. 
And the kid held my varistaff!
“Rap on!” he said. I watched him take Walden off the shelf and toss it in the air. 
A casual flick of his wrists bisected the book. My hands twitched. What the hell had 
happened. And then I knew. A taserglove. Good self-defense weapon: street legal 
and everything. My shockjacket would have shrugged it off, but the varistaff was 
conductive. And now he had it. Shit.
He noticed my movement and stuck the point of the thing in my face. I stayed very 
still. Monomolecular edges are much sharper than anyone who’s not an expert can 
guess, and this kid was certainly no expert. He probably didn’t realize he could cut my 
head off with just one nervous twitch. No murderer, this; just a boy drunk on power. 
After all, he’d beaten a combat retailer.
“I don’t wanna leave,” he said with a smirk. “I wanna stay right here.”
“That’s all you want.” My mind raced. I was in about as much trouble as I could 
possibly be in. If I hadn’t jiggered the staff to produce that kind of sharpness…if I 
hadn’t actually dialed it in like a damned show-off…Edd Miller move over, the new 
Legendary Dumbass Bookseller is here.
I was at the mercy of a thirteen-year old with an infinitely sharp blade, and I was 
the one who had given it to him. If Lily chose this moment to appear, I’d be more 
canned than the plot of the average skidrom. That was assuming I survived. The 
varistaff wouldn’t cut the single-crystal titanium chainmail, for which I was grateful, 

Issue 22
G Scott Huggins
62
 
January/February 2006
mail chauvinism
63
but that wouldn’t help me if he jiggled the blade a little too close to my neck or my 
head.
“Naw, that’s not all I want,” said the kid. “First, I’d like to have you help me make 
some more paper airplanes out of these fossilicious books. Then I want a picture of 
you kissing my foot, to put on my website.” He giggled, pulling a pocket camera out 
of his pants. “Then I want…” He seemed to think about it. “Then I think I wanna 
see your tits.”
Three years of working retail have given me excellent self control. But I must have 
flushed red at that point, because he laughed and brought the ‘staff down to my neck. 
“Let’s head further into this maze. Wouldn’t want auntie disturbing us,” he said.
Or my manager, for that matter. The walk through the bookshelves to the far corner 
seemed to take forever, made worse by the periodic sight of my staff’s tip flashing out 
ahead of me as we walked. The little bastard had figured out the extension controls.
“Okay, off with the shirt.” I guess the excitement had gotten to be too much for 
him. 
“No airplanes.” I asked, playing for time.
“Screw that. Take off the shirt.” 
I reached under my shirt for the clasps of my chainmail. My metal chainmail. I gave 
him my best seductive smile. “You just want to look.” 
“Huh.” the kid said.
“You sure you wouldn’t rather touch.” I purred. Great Ghu, it was so easy; the kid’s 
whole face lit up.
“Really.”
“Sure, you’re cute enough. Most guys I see weigh 100 kilos and bury themselves down 
here. I just…I just don’t like cameras. Wouldn’t you rather have me cooperative.” 
The camera disappeared. “Way cool,” said the kid. He put the ‘staff down carefully 
behind him, out of my reach. I considered jumping him, but couldn’t count on 
grabbing the glove before he touched, say, my hand. 
The hand with the taserglove tentatively reached for my right breast. Slowly, I 
picked up his other hand and put it on my left breast.
“Let me show you,” I crooned, “Like this.” Then I pressed the fingertips of the 
glove up against myself. Hard.
“NNNNNNNNNNGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!” said the kid as the taserglove’s 
20,000 volts coursed over the chainmail, bounced off my shockjacket and went back 
through his body via his other hand. And he couldn’t let go. He just stood there, both 
fists full of chainmail and…well, me…and twitching.
“I know you find conversation difficult right now,” I said. “So we’ll keep it simple. 
Try one ‘nngh’ for yes and two ‘nnghh’s’ for no, okay.”

Issue 22
G Scott Huggins
62
 
January/February 2006
mail chauvinism
63
“NNGH!” He was frightened and in pain, but not in real danger. Volts don’t kill; 
amps do, and the taserglove was decidedly sublethal.
“Good. Now you’re fairly smart, so I’ll make this quick. After I knock you away 
from me, I keep your taserglove and you leave. Agreed.”
“NNGH!”
“Also, I look at your wallet and find out who you are, and if I should somehow lose 
my job because of this, I kill you, okay.”
“NNGH!”
“Good, because sometimes electrical shock can have the strangest effects on the 
body; certain muscles just…” My nose told me that those “certain muscles” had indeed 
let go. I had all I needed on this kid. Besides, his hands were pinching. Grinning, I 
socked him in the stomach as hard as I could, breaking the contact.
It took almost no time to pick the kid’s pockets as well as retrieve my ‘staff and his 
glove. He lay there groaning, a very impressive urine stain spreading down his jeans. 
He flapped his arms feebly as I snapped a couple of pictures and downloaded them 
into the ‘staff.
“Call it a souvenir, Mr. Donald Hillich of 1307 Lilac. Now let’s get you back to your 
aunt. I suggest you tell her the truth.”
“What.” He was ashen.
“You sneaked down here to look at a porn skidrom and you forgot you had on the 
taserglove while you were…busy.”
“Oh no…please…”
“Or I could show her these, tell her the real truth, and these pictures could find 
their way onto a number of fascinating websites.”
“You can’t…I mean, please don’t…” 
“The choice is entirely yours.” I dumped him in a chair and sat back down.
He said in a small voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”
“You’d get caught. None of you ever do. That’s what they pay me for.”
A different fire caught in the kid’s eyes. Curiosity. “How’d you do that.”
“Trade secret, kid.” I wasn’t about to admit that an elementary knowledge of 
electric currents would have told him why a taserglove isn’t the best of weapons. Nor 
was I going to cop to wearing chainmail. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all. 
“That’s what being a Combat Retailer is all about.”
“Shit, you mean being that much of a badass is really part of your job. I thought 
that was just on WV.” He was impressed. Actually, I was impressed. Finding a kid who 
doubts the awful truth of all things on WebVision is rare. 
“Oh, yeah, kid, it’s a great job. Excitement. You meet all sorts of people, and you 
do tend to get that little extra bit of respect on the street.”

Issue 22
G Scott Huggins
64
“Cool. Do you think, that is, um…” He looked guiltily at me. “Do you think I 
could learn to do it. My mom and dad want me to be a lawyer, but that’s so, y’know, 
boring.”
He was waiting for my approval. This kid, who a minute ago had been threatening 
me with my own weapon was now waiting for me to change his life. To say: yes, you 
may join this elite siblinghood that guards consumers everywhere from belligerent 
drunks, lowlife shoplifters, and flying skidroms.
“Well,” I said with exaggerated care, “you might. If you worked hard and got into 
the right three-year college, I don’t see why not.” He probably could, at that. He’d 
caught me out, after all. “I might even write you a recommendation when you’re ready 
to apply. In five years, you could be right where I am.” 
Doing what I do. I could see him now, varistaff at the ready, chasing after three 
screaming kids while their parents sipped Chokacino in the autocafe.
His eyes got big at my offer, and he stammered thanks. My smile in response was 
warm and genuine. And why not. Revenge is a thing of beauty.
Passenger Dossier
Name: G Scott Huggins
History: Scott was born in California and raised in Kansas, which explains his profound personality 
conflicts as well as his tendency to violently attack people who make Wizard of Oz references 
around him. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife, Katie, who will shortly be a veterinarian. When he 
is not working his day job, he commits various acts of literature and cat maintenance.
Writing Credits: “Bearing the Pattern.” Writers of The Future Vol. XV. 1999. “Requiem With 
Interruptions,” Amazing Stories 2000. “Bovine Intervention,” “When the Fleet Comes,” MOTA 3: 
Courage. “Abandoned Responsibility,” Fantastic Visions IV (forthcoming)

Tiny Sapphire and the
Big Bad Virus
…Josh Rountree
“Scarlet.” Her mother’s voice entered her head by direct MindFi transfer.
God, nobody uses that technology anymore. She is so yesterday.
“What, Mom.” Scarlet’s response traveled through the regional synapnet. She 
hoped her mother could process it. The old lady was so out of touch, she probably 
didn’t even have the latest chipset.
“Your grandmother’s experiencing some system failure again,” said her mother. 
Apparently she was hip enough to use the synapnet after all. Shock.
“Why am I not surprised.”
“Enough of that tone, Scarlet. A few of her memory partitions have damaged 
files. She may have contracted a virus. She’s running an older software rev, and 
she’s pretty susceptible to that sort of thing. My fault. I should have installed the 
latest rev last week.”
“And this has what to do with me.”
“I want you to install the update. Shouldn’t take long.”
“Mom! I’m interfacing with like five different people right now. Plus, I’m 
scanning the subwebs for German history information so I can construct a file 
report for school. I don’t have time for this.”
“Make time. You haven’t interfaced with your grandmother once since she 
died. You might even enjoy it.”
“Mom, she’s an archive. Nothing but old memories.”
“I don’t care. She’s your grandmother. No more arguments. Here’s the software.”
“Fine!” Scarlet opened a port in her firewall to receive the download. “I guess 
I’ll just flunk history class and drop out of school.”
Her mother didn’t respond. A quick ping told Scarlet that she’d unjacked. 
Why was she always doing that. She might miss something. Scarlet would never 
understand old people.
Okay. Let’s get this done.

Issue 22
Josh Rountree
66
 
january/february 2006
tiny sapphire and the big bad virus
67
Scarlet left the surface web, rerouting to one of the regional sub nets — 
BLACKWOOD 4.3. It was used for nothing but memory archives of the deceased, and 
the net traffic was all but nonexistent. She gave her web persona shape, and found 
herself standing amid a forest of digitized trees. Crisp leaves showered the winding 
path at her feet, and the branches overhead hid all but the slimmest rays of sunlight. 
The scene was so perfectly rendered that only an occasional motion artifact betrayed 
the fact that this was a pix-gen environment and not the real thing.
Scarlet wore her customary red sweater and jeans, blonde hair pulled back into a tail 
and tied with lace. A lot of people liked to trade web personas every other day, but not 
Scarlet. She was happy with hers — TINY_SAPPHIRE16. Why mess with perfection.
She followed the path into the forest, hoping it was the one that led to her 
grandmother’s files. If she got lost and had to backtrack through a drive’s worth of 
directory trees, she’d never finish that report.
At length, the path wound around an outcropping of thorny bushes, and Scarlet 
stifled a gasp. A man blocked her way. He had a bushy orange beard, unkempt hair and 
clothes that looked like they’d been plucked from the garbage. Thick hair carpeted his 
hands, and his fingers curled into sharpened claws. Why would anyone look like that 
when they could take on whatever image they chose.
“Hello, little one,” he said. “Visiting someone.”
“Jeez, you scared the crap out of me. How’d you sneak up like that. I didn’t even 
feel a ping.”
“Maybe I have a newer firmware revision that you do. Or maybe your virus 
definitions are a tad outdated. Can’t be lazy with that sort of thing, you know.”
Scarlet snorted. “You’re not a virus. You’ve got a persona ID — BBGRIMMWOLF99. 
I just scanned your info.”
The man laughed, and Scarlet noticed twin rows of pointed teeth growing from 
his gums. What was this guy supposed to be, some kind of monster. A werewolf. He 
had enough hair.
“Sure, kid. I’m not a virus. They don’t have persona IDs, right.”
“Nope,” said Scarlet, trying to sound braver than she felt. They appeared to be 
the only two users accessing the subnet, and she didn’t like being alone with some 
wolf-guy. Sure, it was just an avatar, but Scarlet had heard plenty of stories about users 
who’d been hacked while accessing subnets alone. “I need to go now.”
“Who’s stopping you. Your grandma’s files are that way.” He pointed to a leaning 
cottage just a few paces down the path. Scarlet hadn’t noticed it before, but she could 
tell by the system ID that it was the place.
“How’d you know I was here to visit my grandmother.” Scarlet was getting worried. 
There was no way another user could know that. She hadn’t logged a network path.

Issue 22
Josh Rountree
66
 
january/february 2006
tiny sapphire and the big bad virus
67
“Why else would anyone come here. Nothing but dead memories, right.” He 
chuckled, then dissolved into a whirling cloud of pixels. 
Thank god he logged out.
He couldn’t be a virus, but he’d certainly acted like one. Scarlet didn’t want to 
admit it, but she was a little scared. This place was weird and lonely. Nothing but fake 
trees and dead people. She hurried to the cottage, eager to be done with her chore.
It was a fairy tale cottage with stone walls and a groaning millwheel that was urged 
forward by a silver brook. Ivy climbed the walls and the smell of fresh bread carried 
through the open windows. Scarlet knocked. When no one answered, she opened the 
door and stepped inside.
“Grandma. It’s me, Scarlet.”
“In here, darling.” Grandma called from the bedroom, her voice crackling with 
electronic interference. It was like that sometimes with older files.
Scarlet walked to the bedroom. Her grandmother sat up in bed wearing a cotton 
nightdress, her gray hair stuffed into a sleeping cap. She looked very much like she had 
the last time Scarlet had seen her alive. Scarlet smiled. Her grandmother was dead, 
but the archives almost made it seem like she wasn’t.
“Hello, stranger,” said Grandma, her face lit with pleasure. “Haven’t seen you in a 
hound’s age.”
“Sorry, Grandma. I guess I’ve been kind of busy.”
“That’s the way with children. Always run, run, run. Come, child. Take a seat with 
me on the bed and tell me why you’re here.”
Scarlet did as asked. The bed sagged beneath her weight, and Grandma placed a 
cold, bony hand over hers.
“I need to update your software,” said Scarlet. “I scan you at 11.6 but you need to 
be at rev 12.2.”
“You’re a good girl. Taking care of an old lady. I never was much good with this 
computer stuff.”
“That’s okay, Grandma. I’ll get you up to speed.” Scarlet was preparing to upload 
the new code when she noticed a single strand of orange hair escape from her 
grandmother’s cap and fall down past her shoulder. It was coarse and curled, and it 
reminded her at once of the wolf-guy.
“Grandma,” she said, halting the interface process before the data transfer could 
begin. “You have an orange hair. Where’d it come from.”
“This is a place of memories, child. When I was your age, my hair was an orange 
bonfire. The older files mingle with the new at times.”
Of course. But still.

Issue 22
Josh Rountree
68
 
january/february 2006
tiny sapphire and the big bad virus
69
“Your eyes,” said Scarlet, feeling her grandmother’s digital pulse against the back of 
her hand. “They don’t look like they used to. They’re all black and shiny.”
“Just some file damage, dear. Bad sectors. That’s what you’ve come to fix, isn’t it.”
“Yes,” said Scarlet, feeling foolish. The wolf-guy had unsettled her, and now she 
was looking for threats where they didn’t exist. “I’ll transfer the new code and it’ll fix 
all the bugs.”
Scarlet accessed her grandmother’s central file bank and began the upload, loving 
the way the bit transfer made her hair stand on end. Her grandmother smiled. Scarlet 
saw her teeth.
“Grandma.” Scarlet began to panic. Her grandmother was seriously beginning to 
look like the wolf-guy. Scarlet tried to abort the upload, but she couldn’t break the 
connection.
“Yes, dear.” Grandma’s voice was an electronic buzz.
“Something’s wrong with your teeth. They’re huge.”
“So they are,” said the wolf-guy, at last casting off Grandma’s persona. His feral-
man persona flickered away as well, and a new avatar crouched on the bed — a mangy, 
orange-coated wolf. “All the better to infect you with, my dear.”
The wolf lunged, sank his teeth into TINY_SAPPHIRE16’s shoulder, and began 
to devour her. Scarlet felt a sudden loss of information and functionality. The wolf 
was undoubtedly a virus, but she couldn’t imagine how he’d functioned as a web 
persona. She tried again to break the connection, but her files were being corrupted, 
fragmented, deleted. She tried to perform an emergency unjack, but the wolf’s hold 
was strong. It wasn’t just TINY_SAPPHIRE16 that was in trouble. Scarlet — the real 
Scarlet — was as well.
She could feel the wolf probing at her RAM bank and the gigaprocess chips 
planted in her brain. He’d penetrated her firewall like it was nothing, and it wouldn’t 
take him long to scramble her synapses. She screamed. Nothing came out of TINY_
SAPPHIRE16’s mouth but broken static. Scarlet wondered if her body was screaming 
in her room, or if it remained silent as her brain slowly burned away.
She heard a sound like snapping wood. It echoed in her head with the same buzzes 
and hums that the wolf emitted. Images exploded behind her eyelids as the virus 
sapped away sights, sounds, experiences. Scarlet was only vaguely aware of a burly man 
with a plaid work shirt forcing his way through the chaos — a shimmering avatar that 
she was certain hadn’t been in her memory banks before.
As quickly as the wolf’s attack had begun, it was over.
Scarlet tumbled from the bed, her persona flickering but intact. The wolf shrieked 
in simulated pain as the stranger struck him repeatedly with an axe. Seconds later, the 
wolf avatar vanished, and nothing remained of the virus but fractured bits of data.

Issue 22
Josh Rountree
68
 
january/february 2006
tiny sapphire and the big bad virus
69
“Are you okay.” asked the stranger. He dropped the axe and climbed down from 
the bed. He wore tan work boots and a dirty knit cap that covered his ears. Kneeling, 
he examined TINY_SAPPHIRE16 with concerned eyes.
Scarlet recovered quickly, rebooting several of her central systems and locking 
down the firewall. TINY_SAPPHIRE16 reformed to her normal shape, and Scarlet 
mumbled a shaken thank you to the man who’d saved her life.
Instinctively, she scanned his user info. WOODSMAN41 — an avatar registered 
to Marilyn Rogers.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Mom.”
“Are you okay.” her mother asked again, shedding her male persona and taking the 
form of her standard avatar. MARILYN895, a younger version of herself.
“I’m fine,” Scarlet said. “What was that thing.”
“One of those next generation viruses I was warning you about last week. They 
use random bits of chaos code to acquire persona IDs and hack vulnerable users. We 
talked about this, Scarlet. Do you even listen when I speak.”
“You’re always going on about something, Mom. It’s too much to process.”
Her mother sighed. “I want you to logout and unjack until you update your virus 
definitions. We’re getting you a level 4 firewall too. No more web life until we do.”
“Okay,” said Scarlet, embarrassed that her mother had been the one to rescue her. 
Maybe Mom wasn’t totally useless with computers after all. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
“So what’s with the woodsman persona, anyway.”
MARILYN895’s eyes grew wistful. “Just something from a story. The cottage, the 
wolf. It all reminded me of a book your grandmother used to read to me when I was 
a kid.”
“A book.” said Scarlet. “Mom, you’re such a dork.”
Passenger Dossier
Name: Josh Rountree
History: Josh’s short fiction has been appearing in small press and professional markets for the 
past few years.  This is his first appearance in ASIM.
Writing Credits: More of his fiction can be found in Realms of Fantasy, Shadowed Realms, Lone 
Star Stories and plenty of other cool places.  His story, “Wood on Bone,” received honorable 
mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror Volume 17. 

The Once and Future
Creepy
…Andrew Hindle
 
january/february 2006
the once and future creepy
71
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve told Creepy that it’s not possible to build a time 
machine out of an old exercise bike, three coat hangers and a clock radio, I’d have 
seven dollars and fifty cents.
I was halfway through telling him for the eighth time when he actually managed 
to do it. Although if you ask me, assuming you were going to build a time machine 
at some point in the future, then just sitting back and waiting for your future self 
to travel back and show you how it was done — that, to me, seems like cheating. 
But that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Cheating is Creepy’s way.
Creepy is my housemate, and in this story I have the dubious pleasure of 
introducing you to not just one Creepy, but two Creepies. The one from the 
present day is skinny, with long hair and a fondness for Coca-Cola and the colour 
green. The Creepy who arrived from the future was much the same, except he 
wore a glittery silver rubber suit with green piping, and a helmet made out of 
aluminium foil. He materialised with a whunk, right in the middle of our living 
room.
“Hey,” I said as he dismounted from the hissing, popping, steaming vehicle, 
“you’re blocking the TV.”
Future-Creepy whipped off his helmet and raised a hand in swashbuckling 
camaraderie.
“Greetings, citizens of the past!” he intoned. “I mean you no harm!”
Having heard this sentiment from Creepy on more than one occasion — often 
shortly before being harmed — I took the opportunity to arm myself with a couch-
pillow and a stale cheese straw. It might not seem like much, but you’d be amazed 
how much those pillows can absorb, and a cheese straw in the right squidgy region 
can put a stop to even the most dastardly villain’s machinations. Creepy, sadly, 
has fewer squidgy regions than your average human. Truth be known, Creepy has 
fewer squidgy regions than your average cutlery drawer.

The Once and Future
Creepy
…Andrew Hindle
 
january/february 2006
the once and future creepy
71
“What are you doing here.” I asked, craning my neck in vain. The TV was 
thoroughly obscured.
“I think he’s proving you wrong, Hatboy old chum,” Present-Creepy said, raising 
his glass to salute his future self. “And making an impressive entry in the process.”
Future-Creepy folded his helmet carefully and looked around with clinical distaste. 
“It seems to have worked,” he muttered, holding the square of aluminium foil in front 
of his mouth like a small recording device. “I have successfully navigated the currents 
of time and arrived in the distant past…”
“Why didn’t you bring me with you.” I demanded.
Future-Creepy dealt with this question in the manner Creepy always dealt with 
questions when he didn’t know the answer or didn’t want to share it with me — he 
didn’t answer it.
“Hatboy,” he said, eyeing me up and down. “Have you lost weight.” He smacked 
his forehead lightly. “Of course you have! This is almost a year ago.”
“Thanks,” I said dryly. “So much for that diet.”
“Ah, but if I hadn’t mentioned it, you might not have given up on the diet, and 
therefore you might actually have lost weight in the future, in which case I would not 
have mentioned the phenomenon in the first place.” Creepy looked at his present-
day self with an inscrutable expression that was eerily similar to his smug expression. 
“Causality and paradox,” he said. “You have to know about this sort of thing, when 
you’re a time traveller.”
“Astounding,” Present-Creepy circled the time machine. Future-Creepy looked 
around again, and gave a quiet laugh. “Amazing, the way we used to live.”
“It must seem so primitive to you now,” gushed Present-Creepy, his eyes bright 
with admiration.
“He’s only from a year in the future,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but who knows what sort of advances they’ve made in that time.” replied 
Present-Creepy.
“The secret of time-travel, for example,” said Future-Creepy with a smirk.
“Exactly!” Present-Creepy hurried towards the kitchen door while I ground my 
teeth. “Can I offer you a drink. Are you able to take liquid refreshment, or do you 
regenerate in an alcove.”
“I imagine he’s a lot like his ancient one-year-earlier precursor,” I said, “and gathers 
his energy by annoying me.”
Creepies ignored this.
“I shall take one-and-a-half units of Coca-Cola,” Future-Creepy announced, 
unfolding his hat into a rumpled conical shape. “You may place it in my poly-gamma-
cyber-hydro…”

Issue 22
Andrew Hindle
72
 
january/february 2006
the once and future creepy
73
He was still telling Present-Creepy the name of his helmet when I got back to the 
living room with a bottle of Coke and a handful of paper towels.
“…fiber-phosphate-flexi-flonko—”
“You made that up,” I accused, putting the paper towels on the floor before pouring 
him a drink. A thin drizzle of coke immediately began to leak out of the bottom of his 
gadget and on to the paper towels. Neither Creepy noticed.
“I can’t expect you to know what flonko is,” Future-Creepy sighed. “Not in this 
bygone millennium, just centuries after the invention of food.”
 Present-Creepy got a question in before I could rally. “So now that you’re here, 
what are we going to do.”
“There’s that pioneering spirit!” Future-Creepy clapped Present-Creepy on the 
back. Coke slopped well beyond my preventative measures. “What we’re going to do 
is, we’re going to get onto my amazing chronomobile and solve the greatest mystery 
of them all!”
“How a person who drinks coke out of a rolled-up bit of aluminium foil ever 
managed to make a time machine.” I suggested.
Creepies looked at each other. “Does he get funnier as the aeons go by.” Present-
Creepy asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
I pointed my cheese-straw at Present-Creepy. “If I kill him, will you both cease to 
exist.”
“If you were going to do that, I never would have arrived in the first place,” Future-
Creepy said, as if this was somehow meant to discourage me. “No, you see, when I 
started out on my life of adventure, I had hoped to answer those ultimate questions 
about the nature of existence.” He spread his hands dramatically, spilling more Coke. 
“When did it start. Where is it headed. When will I rule it.”
“That’s easy enough,” I said. “It started at the beginning, it’s going to Hell in a 
hand-basket and you’ll rule it when it gets there.”
Future-Creepy ignored me. “But then I found something disturbing, and it led to 
the most pressing mystery of all.” He paused, and looked broodingly out from under 
his eyebrows. “My friends, the universe is in terrible danger!”
“And you expect to save it by gambolling up and down the timeline of this 
living room, do you.” I was genuinely curious. “Or will you be expecting us to walk 
somewhere.”
“‘Us’.” Future-Creepy blinked. “Who said you were coming.”
“Oh,” I sat back down on the couch and looked suspiciously at Creepies. If 
something seems too good to be true, my motto goes, Creepy’s probably not telling 
you something. “Okay then. Hurry up and go, you’re blocking the screen.”

Issue 22
Andrew Hindle
72
 
january/february 2006
the once and future creepy
73
 Future-Creepy finished his drink, folded his foil back into a soggy little square, and 
consulted it. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go,” he protested. “I’m supposed to tell 
you that we don’t want you along, and you’re supposed to beg us and then we finally 
relent, after getting you to agree to do all the hard work.”
“I see.” I topped up my glass and looked at the silver-clad chrononaut. “And what 
colour was the sky on the planet where that plan worked.”
“It’s just…well, okay, we’ll need you.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. Somebody has to pedal.”
I studied the coat-hanger-festooned exercise bike. “Pedal.”
“It runs on pedal-power.”
“That part makes sense. I’m stuck on the bit where I have to pedal. Why can’t you 
pedal. Didn’t you pedal on the way here.”
“I didn’t need to. It was all downhill.”
“What.”
“I only needed to pedal enough to get the swirly vortex of wibbliness active, and I 
could coast from there,” Future-Creepy explained. “Future to past. And I didn’t even 
have to pedal to do that, because I used a battery.” He reached into a small hole in the 
bike frame and pulled out a little cylinder. “Now it’s all used up.”
“We have more of those.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, my australopithecine friend. Only this is a type of battery 
unavailable in this era.”
I squinted. “Looks like a normal double-A to me.”
“Ha!”
“Okay, why can’t you or…you pedal.” I looked from one Creepy to the other.
“I wish I could, old chum,” said Future-Creepy with a cavernous absence of regret. 
“But since I don’t technically exist yet in this timeline, my pedalling would have no 
effect.”
“Him, then.”
Both Creepies chuckled at my foolishness. “Obviously, getting my past self to do 
something which I can’t do in this time-stream would cause a temporal implosion,” 
said Future-Creepy, “thus bringing the entire space-time continuum to the premature 
end from which we’re trying to save it.” 
 “Let me make sure I’ve understood this.” I stood up and pointed at the contraption 
with my cheese straw. “If I don’t get on that thing and pedal, I’ll be stuck with two of 
you.”
“Yeah.”
“Forever.”

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“Yeah.”
“I’ll get on that thing and pedal.”
We climbed awkwardly onto the machine. I perched myself on the seat, and a 
Creepy stood on either side with his sneakers hooked around the base. I noticed that 
Future-Creepy had not just the same sneakers as Present-Creepy, but also the same 
socks beneath the cuffs of his squeaky futuristic costume.
“Why do we have an exercise bike in the house anyway.” grumbled Present-
Creepy. “Its very name is redolent of exercise.”
“Don’t you remember.” I nudged him. “Halloween ’93.”
“Oh yes, your Chamber of Horrors thing. It wasn’t a bad one — but why is it still 
here for me to make an amazing chronomobile out of.”
“You threw it into the oubliette.”
“I forgot we had one of them.”
“I think that’s sort of the point.”
“Touché.”
“You were going to take it apart and make a Modern Art snack bowl out of it 
one day,” I went on. “Might be a bit difficult now that it’s been made into a time 
machine—”
“Chronomobile,” Future-Creepy corrected. “And for us to get anywhen, you have 
to pedal.”
“When are we going to.” I asked, putting my feet reluctantly onto the pedals.
Future-Creepy twiddled a hanger. “The Lower Psychotropic era.”
“How are we going to save the universe in the Lower Psychotropic era.” I wasn’t 
even sure there had been such an era as the Lower Psychotropic. “Why don’t we 
go forwards and buy some more of those batteries.” I answered my own question: 
“Because that would cause another implosion and destroy everything, right.”
“Egad, he’s learning!”
I rolled my eyes and pedalled. Future-Creepy fiddled with the clock radio. The 
hangers jangled. Cold white steam curled up from the handlebars. The swirly vortex 
of wibbliness coalesced around us like nothing that hasn’t already been covered in 
the name ‘swirly vortex of wibbliness’. Everything went grey. Future-Creepy slapped 
my back and urged me to keep pedalling for the sake of the space-time continuum. I 
wondered, not for the first time, just what the space-time continuum had done for me 
lately. The chronomobile went whunk.
I looked around.
The Lower Psychotropic era was a lot hotter and sandier than I’d predicted. I’d 
imagined a sort of ferny jungle with mood lighting and a bunch of dinosaurs talking 
about pinstripe as an emotion. Instead we were on a hillside that turned out to be, on 

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second glance, a huge sand dune. It sloped down quite sharply into the ocean, which 
was a good deal closer to the site of our house than it would be in a few million years’ 
time. A glance at the clock radio’s dial didn’t tell me much — it was a big nonsense 
jumble of numbers and letters.
I elbowed Future-Creepy, although technically they were now both Future-
Creepies and I didn’t want to think about that. “Can I stop now.” 
“What. Oh, oh yes, all right.”
I slowed, then stopped, and leaned back with relish. “And who exactly is going to 
do the pedalling from now on.”
Creepies paused in the act of disembarking.
“What do you mean.”
“Well, the way I see it, we’re all from the future now, and none of us exist in this 
time-stream, so none of us can pedal.”
“Ah,” Future-Creepy got that radiant look that told me he was pregnant with an 
asinine excuse. “Ah, but there’s only one of you, not two, so paradox will self-repair 
and causality—”
“I think maybe you could risk trying to pedal on the way back, just to see if it 
works,” I suggested.
“Too risky.” Future-Creepy shook his head.
“Just as risky as me doing it.”
“Wilderness law,” spoke up Present-Creepy.
“What.”
“Wilderness law. We’re alone in the wilderness, we have to survive on our wits 
and act as a team. Therefore, we put all life-and-death decisions to a vote.” Present-
Creepy raised his hand. “I vote that Hatboy pedals.”
“I hate you.”
Future-Creepy raised his hand. “I vote that Hatboy pedals and that he apologises 
for those smarmy remarks he made earlier.”
“Seconded,” Present-Creepy chirped.
“I can’t apologise for smarmy remarks another version of me made in another 
timeline,” I protested. “It might unravel the space-time whatever.”
Future-Creepy jumped off the chronomobile and began walking along the slope of 
the dune. I stared at him suspiciously. Was he measuring out paces. Yes he was!
“What are you doing.” I demanded.
“Quiet,” he called, turning at right angles and pantomiming the opening of a door. 
“Two, three, four, stairs…”
“You’re not saving the universe at all, are you.”

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“Of course I am. Take my word for it, my every action is performed with nothing 
in mind but the welfare of the cosmos.”
“How do you know the universe is going to come to an end.” I jumped off the 
chronomobile and moon-walked through the sliding sand to where Future-Creepy 
was now kneeling. 
Present-Creepy disembarked and headed straight down towards the beach. 
“If you came straight to our time-frame with your battery,” I continued, “how could 
you know what’s going to happen in the future.” I looked down at the spindly shape of 
Present-Creepy, who was examining the high-tide line with great interest. “Don’t step 
on any fish that might be trying to walk out of the sea,” I advised him, then turned 
back to his future counterpart. “Well.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Future-Creepy was digging now.
I was beginning to fear that I understood only too well. “Where’s the Hatboy from 
your time.” I asked, glaring down at the silver-clad figure as he toiled in the dry sand. 
“He built the damn machine, didn’t he. And you decided to go for a test drive, and 
of course he pedalled, didn’t he. You went into the future somewhere, and something 
happened, and the universe was put in fatal jeopardy because of some stupid thing 
you did. And Hatboy stayed there, and you used a battery to coast back to the time 
you came from, only you overshot and ended up a year in the past, and you were too 
lazy to pedal back.”
Future-Creepy looked up at me. “That’s not even close to being exactly what 
happened!”
“Only two things still puzzle me.”
“Yeah.”
“One: why you’re wearing that stupid outfit and foil hat,” I continued loudly before 
Future-Creepy could explain, “and two: why we’re in the Lower Psychotropic era and 
you’re digging a hole in the sand just outside where our front door will be in however 
many millions of years.”
“I don’t know why you keep referring to this as the past,” Future-Creepy said 
querulously. “It’s not.”
“It’s not.”
“Since when was there ever such a prehistoric era as the Lower Psychotropic.”
“Oh.” I blinked and watched Creepy dig for a few moments, then said grudgingly, 
“I suppose I can still pedal, then.”
Future-Creepy looked up. “Huh.”
“Do you even listen to your stupid rules while you’re making them up. If we’d gone 
backwards to a time when I didn’t technically exist…hang on,” I looked around. “How 
far in the future are we.”

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“Couple of million years.”
“I thought you said the universe was coming to an end!”
“It is.” Future-Creepy sat back on his heels and rested a moment. “It was. It ended 
about a hundred years back.”
 “Looks like it’s still here to me,” I said.
“Look up,” suggested Future-Creepy, going back to his digging.
I complied, dubiously. The sky, a much paler blue than I’d ever seen, seemed 
otherwise normal, and the clouds were…clouds were…clouds…
“Pretty weird, huh.”
“Pretty weird,” I agreed faintly.
“If you like those, listen to this.” Future-Creepy jumped to his feet, holding 
something lumpy and vaguely remote-control-sized in his hand, and went back to the 
chronomobile. He leaned over, switched on the clock radio, and tuned it to Jazz FM.
“Okay, switch it off,” I said after about three seconds. Creepy obliged me, and 
the cold moaning sound was silenced. I had no doubt the sound I’d heard had been 
coming from the things in the sky. “What are they.”
“Holes,” shrugged Creepy. “I guess. Or static. It’s all falling apart, see. The universe 
has already ended. This is just a fading picture. The TV has been switched off, but 
the screen’s still glowing.” He looked up. “Not much longer now, and those holes 
will spread out, the Lower Psychotropic will become the Higher Psychotropic, and 
everything goes very quickly indeed. We’re right on the edge of it, old chum.”
I suppressed a shiver, and changed the subject. “What was that thing you just dug 
up, and why did we come all the way here to get it.”
Future-Creepy held his prize up with a grin. It wasn’t a remote control, not that it 
would have surprised me if it had been. It looked like a corroded piece of grey metal.
“This,” he said, “is a piece of firmament.”
“You’re being silly.”
“No I’m not. It’s actually firm-a-ment, a special metallic element created about a 
thousand years ago, used as a form of concrete. It has a half-life of two million years. 
This used to be a block about yay big.” He demonstrated ‘yay’ by holding his hands a 
few inches apart.
“If it was discovered a thousand years ago, and it’s dissolved that much, this piece 
must have been buried…” I wrapped my head around the stupidity of time-travel, 
“…about the time you arrived in our living room.”
“That’s right,” Future-Creepy beamed. “It had to be, because if it’d been buried 
after Hatboy was locked up, the universe would have been long gone before the half-
life was over. So I had to have faith that—”

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“Don’t think for a minute I missed that ‘Hatboy was locked up’ bit,” I said, “but 
how do you know all this. How do you know about those holes, and the radio, and 
the firmament and when it was invented.”
“Well, obviously you told me,” Future-Creepy said patiently, and pointed towards 
the seaside. Down on the beach, Present-Creepy was sifting excitedly through a pile of 
bubbly seaweed. “I was busy down there, so I didn’t find out any of it for myself until 
you explained it later.” He hefted the lump of firmament. “As for this, I just had to 
have faith that it was buried where you said you’d buried it.”
“You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Come on,” he climbed onto the railing of the exercise bike. “We should get out 
of here before they arrive.”
“Who arrive.”
“Nobody.”
“We can’t leave Creepy here.”
“We only need one of us.”
“I’m not leaving him here to get swallowed by those holes in the sky, even if he 
does survive the arrival of those people you won’t tell me about.”
“I never said they were people.”
“Look, set the machine and I’ll go and get him. I assume we’re going back to when 
Hatboy was locked up and the universe was doomed.”
I clambered down the sand dune and took a moment to look at Present-Creepy. 
I’d never seen him at the beach before, and I’d never seen a person who belonged at 
the beach less.
“There are little wormy things that have discovered fire,” he said excitedly. “They 
rub two bits of seaweed together, but every time a wave comes it puts out the fire, 
and—”
“We’re leaving,” I said.
“What’s going on.” He stood up and dusted off his pants.
“I’ll explain it to you as soon as I find some way of doing so that doesn’t cause a 
temporal paradox.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“This time I mean it.”
Both Creepies were grumbling as I clambered onto the seat and began to pedal. 
The chronomobile went whunk.
The not-quite-as-distant-as-before future was a dingy sort of place. It might 
have been a house, or an angular cave with classically well-placed phosphorescent 
mushrooms.
“Are there people here.” I whispered.

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“No.” Future-Creepy rolled his eyes. “Hatboy found himself guilty of wanton 
desecration of holy ground, and imprisoned himself with a firmament device.”
“No need to be sarcastic. Are they human.”
“No way. Humans were all mutated away to nothing after the Biogenic Wars, and 
then the Twisted Ones came along.”
“Right.”
“Then the Twisted Ones were hunted down and eaten as a delicacy by the 
Loathsome Bugs.”
“Oh.”
“And I think the Loathsome Bugs were all ground up and rubbed on the skin of 
the Really Gross Beings.”
“Ew.”
“Then these guys turned up, and the Really Gross Beings thought they were 
disgusting, so they left.” Future-Creepy led the way through the shadowy passage, and 
finally stopped. “Here it is.”
He pushed the lump of metal into a slot in the wall. There was a deep rumble.
“It analyses the block’s age and opens if it’s past the right point,” Future-Creepy 
said. “I think.”
“And it was two million years for me.” 
“Yeah.” Future-Creepy’s grin was visible in the gloom. “But only because they liked 
you.”
The rumble faded, and there was a door. I’d expected a door, but it was still a 
surprise to suddenly see one there. It swung open, and I found myself face to face with 
a version of me from one year in my future.
He wasn’t noticeably fatter than I was.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, stepping into the passageway. “They’ve all gone to 
do something disgusting, but they’ll be back. It’s just lucky they didn’t find out about 
the chronomobile.” He eyed Future-Creepy up and down. “I see you’re still dressed 
up like a dork.” He turned to me. “I know this won’t do any good, but for future 
reference, when you tell him you’ve built a time machine and you’re going to see what 
the future’s like, don’t give him time to get changed.”
“I knew it was me who built it,” I grunted as we headed back the way we’d come.
“Hang on,” said Future-Creepy, “what about the universe.”
“We’ll get these two back to their proper time-frame, and then we’ll deal with the 
dread menace of destruction.” Future-Hatboy leaned closer to me, and lowered his 
voice so the Creepies couldn’t hear. “I had to tell him something in the time they gave 
me before sentencing was carried out,” he said, “and I knew he wouldn’t bother doing 
anything unless the universe itself was in danger.”

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I wondered if causality would allow me to not build a time machine, and to pretend 
none of this had ever happened. “But the universe is in danger,” I said. “We were just 
there. It comes to an end in about a thousand years.”
“Oh yeah, these guys play around with all sorts of stupid machines, it wouldn’t 
surprise me at all if they manage to end the universe. But the question you have to 
ask is, who really cares.” He patted my shoulder. “You’ll see them for yourself in a year 
or so, and then you’ll understand. The universe is no big loss, if it takes them with it 
when it goes.”
An alarm was going off in some distant part of the warren. I assumed it was an 
alarm. Nothing should make a noise that disturbing by accident.
We reached the amazing chronomobile, and spent a few quality moments figuring 
out just how much larger a group of people could be with one added Hatboy. Then the 
alarm entered a more urgent and even more nauseating phase, and we all miraculously 
managed to crowd aboard. I pedalled with one leg while Future-Hatboy pedalled with 
one of his, and the Creepies clung on for dear life and tried not to bend the coat-
hangers which Future-Hatboy adjusted with a few deft twists. The swirly vortex of 
wibbliness leapt up around us and the chronomobile went whunk.
“Back in the misty dawn of time!” Future-Creepy said happily, jumping off the 
handlebars and pulling out his foil communicator-hat-cup. “I have never been so 
relieved to breathe the fetid, unhygienic air of…”
I tumbled off my own side of the exercise bike, and looked around the familiar 
living room. We hadn’t even missed any of the TV show. “You got us back with 
pinpoint accuracy,” I complimented myself.
“I should hope so,” I replied. “One tiny mistake, and we would have arrived a 
fraction of a second early or late, and there would have been another set of us.”
“Good point.”
Future-Hatboy nudged Future-Creepy. “I’ll just have a word with me, and then 
we’ll get right on with saving that universe,” he said, giving me a solemn wink and 
jerking his head in the direction of the door. “You two behave yourselves.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to leave them in the same room with the chronomobile.” I 
asked as we left the house and wandered down the front steps.
“Perfectly safe. No batteries.” Hatboy reached into the pocket of his bulky jacket 
— I was glad to see that faithful friend had not changed in the ensuing year — and 
pulled out a gleaming block of metal exactly yay-big. “You’ll want to bury this under 
the loose slab, and make sure Creepy remembers where it is in relation to the living 
room rug.”
“The firmament key,” I said, hefting it. “They put it inside the cell with you.”

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“It’s more fun for them this way. There’s a slot on the inside as well as the outside, 
but it wouldn’t open until the metal was two million years old. Like I said, those guys 
won’t be any big loss, and if they take the universe with them, I’d call it a fair deal.”
I winced as a crash came from inside. “They’ll be fighting over the remote.”
“I’d better be off,” said Future-Hatboy, and headed inside.
“Hey,” I called after him.
“What.”
“I was just wondering.”
“How Creepy could tell you all that stuff which you apparently told him, but 
there’s nobody who could possibly have told you except for me, and that would lead 
to a paradox that might erase the space-time whatever.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s simple,” Hatboy grinned. “Make it up. Use words like psychotropic and 
biogenic and he’ll believe anything you tell him.”
After Future-Creepy and Future-Hatboy departed from our living room, I buried 
the block of metal under the loose slab, making sure that Creepy watched me do it. 
“I wonder if they managed to save the universe,” Creepy said when we were back 
on the couch.
“I guess we’ll find out in a year or so,” I said, pouring myself a Coke. “With me to 
do the pedalling and you to wear the stupid rubber outfit, I don’t see how we can go 
wrong.”
Passenger Dossier
Name: Andrew Hindle
History and Writing Credits: Born and bred in Western Australia, Andrew went north one winter 
and never came back. He now lives in Finland with his wife Janica, and has given up the heady 
life of a migrant steel mill worker for the even headier life of a migrant technical writer for Nokia 
and other vast corporate empires.
Writing Credits: Aside from the obligatory university journals and a number of utterly 
incomprehensible instruction manuals (and knowing modern creative writing, there really isn’t 
much difference between the two), this is Andrew’s first publication.

Love in the Land
of the Dead
…Shane Jiraiya Cummings
 
january/february 2006
Love in the Land of the dead
83
I ate her brains out of love, but there was more to it than that.
For months it was just the two of us, along with the zombie hordes. Apocalypse 
was a bastard like that, a great gore-spattered lottery. When the city, then the 
suburb, and then the mall survivors dwindled down to just Laura and I, I felt like 
I’d won that lottery. Laura was a babe — sassy, and a bullseye with a shotgun.
Life became a blur of eating out of tins, running hand-in-hand, and adrenalin-
charged sex. I came to love Laura, and she loved me, but we hit tough times when 
the ammo ran out.
There were so few safe places to hide. So many zombies. Knots of them clogged 
every street. As Laura and I eked out a life in the cracks and shadows, I had my 
realisation.
We were rushing around, exhausted, in a state somewhere between life and 
death. But the zombies were different, well, except for the life and death thing. 
Sure, some of their limbs were missing, and they stunk to high heaven, but by God 
they were serene. They had such a laid-back lifestyle — never in a hurry, never 
needing to be anywhere.
In the end, I really dug their Zen attitude.
Laura wasn’t as supportive of my change of heart as I’d hoped.
We fought repeatedly; she wanted to look for survivors, while I found myself 
increasingly fascinated by the zombies lurking at our every turn. Soon enough, 
our arguments led to carelessness. The zombies found a way into the warehouse 
where we were holed up.
Their shambling line encircled us. True to her nature, Laura took to them with 
a chunk of wood. Her last stand was beautiful to watch — a flurry of bludgeoning 
and desperation. I loved her more in that moment than I ever had before.

Love in the Land
of the Dead
…Shane Jiraiya Cummings
 
january/february 2006
Love in the Land of the dead
83
But even that wasn’t enough. The zombies were inexorable — a groaning, stinking 
tide of arms and teeth. Laura was thrown to the ground, bleeding and unconscious.
Fascination held me as the zombies moved in. I knew they were hungry but with 
typical suave they took their time.
I got to her first. I had to.
That’s when I ate Laura’s brain. Her skull was already cracked, her life already 
ebbing, and I’d seen enough blood and gore not to get all skittish about it. She tasted 
salty, like jelly with a hint of chicken. I found out why the zombies hankered for the 
taste so much. Laura’s brain was ambrosia, food for the soul.
I ate her brains out of love, but there was more to it than that. I’d been feeling it 
build for weeks. All those eyes watching me, all that expectation. Peer pressure was 
a bitch.
I didn’t know how else to show my zombie brothers and sisters I really did belong.
They left me alone from then on. It’s a Zen thing, I guess. 
Zombies are cool like that.
Passenger Dossier
Name: Shane Jiraiya Cummings
History and Writing Credits: Shane is a graduate of Clarion South and a member of the Horror 
Writers Association. Aside from writing, he’s been editing anthologies, including Shadow Box, 
Robots and Time, and the forthcoming Australian Dark Fantasy: The Best of 2005. He is also 
the Australian columnist for Hellnotes and the Managing Editor of HorrorScope: The Australian 
Horror Web Log. Shane lives in Perth with his partner, one of two step-daughters, and Sahma 
the poodle. He thinks zombies are cool.
Writing Credits: He has had more than thirty stories published/accepted by such publications 
as Aurealis, Shadowed Realms, Borderlands, Ticonderoga Online, Daikaiju 2, Book of Dark 
Wisdom, and more.

Issue 22
Interview
84
 
January/February 2006
Interview
85
Trent Jamieson has sold over fifty short stories in the last ten years. His work has 
appeared in various magazines and anthologies, most recently Aurealis, Daikaiju, The 
Devil in Brisbane and Encounters. He also edited the acclaimed dark fiction magazine 
Redzine. Trent’s story “The Catling God” was published in the very first issue of 
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and “Marco’s Tooth” appears earlier in this 
issue. His collection of short fiction, Reserved for Travelling Shows, will be available 
from Prime Books early in 2006.
Where did “Marco’s Tooth” come from.
Basically the opening image. I had two people climbing up this thing floating in the 
air, and I just wanted to know why they were there. It took me a long time to find out. I 
wrote the first scene about six or seven years ago, and I kept going back to it, and, one 
sentence at a time, it was revealed to me. I’m an extremely slow writer — extremely 
slow — something not to be confused with careful. 
Seriously, it took me three years to discover it was set on a gas giant, and almost 
five years to get to the secret of the teeth, and my protagonist’s life.
So is that a common thing for you — to eke a story out gradually over many years.
Yes. A story grows slowly inside me. “Slow and Ache,” which is currently short listed 
for an Aurealis Award, I started around five years ago, sitting out the back of work 
on my lunchbreak. Another recently published story, “Tumble,” which was published 
by Ideomancer Online and has been picked up by The Year’s Best Australian Horror and 
Dark Fantasy, is as old as “Marco’s Tooth” and began with a snippet of dialogue that 
kept playing at my mind. I’m slow, slow, slow. Fortunately, I have a least ten or twelve 
stories going at one time, and another twenty or so sitting in the background, not to 
mention the literally hundreds of notebooks I have with ideas and opening sentences. 
I do a lot of writing on the train to work, which can be hard if you don’t get a seat, but 
I tend to find it gives the writing a sort of rhythm that is different to what I get when 
I’m sitting in front of the computer screen.
“Marco’s Tooth” quite an emotionally exhausting story — was it difficult to write.
I’m glad that it is emotionally exhausting, I was trying for that. I kind of see this 
story as a bookend to “Clockwork,” another story of mine. Both deal with loss, time, 
and, I suppose, father son relationships. Family is something very important to me.
Trent Jamieson
...interviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Issue 22
Interview
84
 
January/February 2006
Interview
85
Love and loss are themes that permeate most of your short fiction — do you 
deliberately write to certain themes, or do they just appear in your fiction.
I wish I could say I chose my themes deliberately. I am in awe of authors who do 
that. I’ve never sat down and thought, “Now I’m going to explore this theme in this 
story.” I suppose those themes are just reflections of thoughts that I’m exploring in my 
own life. I fear losing those I love, I dread it. And there has been some serious illness 
recently in my family, which I am tending to see crop up in the stuff I’m writing now. 
Love is such a flawed, but wonderful, wonderful thing. And it is so fleeting, because 
our lives are so fleeting.
If you love someone, tell them, as clearly as you can, because once they’re gone, it’s 
too late. And, on one level, that’s what so much of my fiction is. I’m really only writing 
to one person most of the time, and that’s only to tell her how much I love her.
Your first short story collection is due out very soon — where does the title Reserved 
for Travelling Shows come from.
Sadly, it’s not particularly profound. I used to walk to work through a field that 
was “reserved for travelling shows” and I always thought it would be a good title for 
a collection.
What was the process like, to put the collection together. Did you have editorial 
input on this, or did you choose the stories themselves.
It was relatively painless. I had a very strong idea of which stories to include, and 
I genuinely believe these are the best stories I’ve written, and that they track my 
development as a writer. The hardest thing was choosing the single unpublished story 
for the collection, it’s called “Persuasion” and I think it’s a rather sweet love story.
What kind of reaction would you most like to receive when the book is released. 
What do you hope it will do for your writing career.
I hope people enjoy the stories, some of these stories have been published in 
magazines that genre readers are not likely to have encountered. I also hope they 
hold up to multiple readings, I would love this to be a collection that people feel the 
need to return to from time to time. That would make me happy.
As for my writing career, I hope the next couple of years see me finishing a couple 
of longer projects, and having a short story collection out certainly won’t hinder my 
chances at finding them a home.
You’ve worked as an editor of some fairly prestigious material in the past, including 
the magazine Redsine and K.J. Bishop’s novel The Etched City. Are you planning 
any more editorial projects.
I’m currently helping Geoff Maloney and Zoran Zivkovic on the follow up project to 
The Devil in Brisbane called Fantastical Journeys. But my role is fairly minor. I’ve enjoyed 
my editorial work, and while part of me misses it, I much prefer writing. It’s fascinating 
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stories as an editor is extremely different to my approach as a writer. If something were 
to catch my eye, I might say yes, but I rather like having my weekends back.
You’re working on a novel right now — do you prefer to work in short stories or 
novel length. What are some of the differences.
The novel is called Roil, which started out as YA, but now is not, and I’m enjoying 
the longer form, trying to see how many ideas I can fit on a page. I wish I wrote a little 
faster. A short story can take me years to write. One of the things I’ve struggled with is 
trying to fit my way of writing into the novel form. The way I write tends to be somewhat 
disjointed, not one for linear structure, and I tend to slam old and new drafts together, 
mix them up and then rewrite the result. It’s taken me nearly a decade to work out how 
to do that with a novel, but I think I may have finally managed it. It’s certainly working 
on my rough notes for my next novel, and I think it’s working on Roil.
Considering how popular YA fantasy is at the moment, it’s interesting that you are 
moving away from that — was it a deliberate choice, or did the novel just naturally 
go in that direction.
The novel just moved that way. Every draft has made it darker. Which is satisfying, 
if the work can lift you along, and keep you going, and if it can keep changing — 
hopefully for the better — then you’ve just got to go with it. I agree though, that YA 
is extremely popular, but working in a bookstore, in the returns department, I’m seeing 
a glut in the market. Time is coming for sf writers to write for adults again. I kind of 
feel we’re living in the last great age of books, it’s the time to be writing challenging 
books.
What’s the best thing you read in 2005.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell for its fine mixing of genres. There’s been a real 
shift in mainstream literature lately. SF tropes are actually being explored intelligently. 
Other standouts for me this year were Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, and 
The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq. All of which had nary a whiff of SF 
in their marketing.
What’s the best thing you wrote in 2005.
Of the things published in 2005, I would say “Tumble,” the story in Ideomancer 
Online. This story really didn’t start to work for me, until I realised that the protagonist 
lived in a world where cities were extremely addictive, then it started to fly. The stories 
I’m most excited about are the things I’m working on currently.
.

The Mainstreaming
of Speculative Fiction
…Cory Daniells
Disclaimer: To mention just the TV shows and movies that my survey via 
the VISION eList turned up would reduce this article to a series of lists. 
So if I skim over one of your favourite TV shows or don’t mention a movie 
that aroused your imagination please forgive me.
Back in the 60’s, when Disney used to be our Sunday night’s TV viewing, my 
brothers and I would sit with bated breath as Tinker Bell selected the topic 
for the night’s show. Would it be Future World (SF), Cartoon World (Fantasy & 
Horror). Yeah!! But most often it was Frontier World or Nature World — booo! 
As a child I relished anything with spec fic content. I can remember the thrill of 
watching Forbidden Planet one hot Saturday afternoon. After watching Jason and 
the Argonauts, I developed a thing for men with bronzed thighs in short skirts and 
sandals. Jason and the Argonauts still looks good today and holds the attention of 
my children who have been reared on computer generated special effects. Astro 
Boy was my hero because he believed in the rights of robots. Needless to say I did 
not have a lot in common with the other kids on the block.
To research this article I did a very unscientific survey via the VISION 
e-list, (many thanks to those who replied from right across Australia). There 
were responses from multi published authors and people who were just getting 
interested in writing, from those in their early twenties through to those in 
their sixties. And it became clear that unless you were lucky enough to be born 
into an understanding family, an interest in all things spec fic led to an isolated 
childhood…that is, until Star Wars created the great perception shift in the 70’s. 
Those people who responded to the survey, who were lucky enough to grow up 
post Star Wars said they had no trouble finding friends with similar interests. 
Thanks to George Lucas, they shared a common cultural medium.

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Even before Star Wars, children fared better than adults with Doctor Who, The 
Jetsons, Get Smart, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Land of the Giants, almost every 
cartoon, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Catweasel, Lost in Space, The Addams Family 
and The Munsters as well as many other shows that the network executives didn’t 
realise were stimulating subversive young minds. Children’s shows and books have 
always had a high fantastical content from the very first nursery rhymes with talking 
cats, through the classics like The Chronicles of Narnia. But children were expected to 
put away the thrill of the imagination when they entered the adult world.
Back before the proliferation of spec fic TV shows for adults, we had Star Trek, 
Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven, The Twilight Zone and obscure shows that slipped in the side 
door. You could classify The Goodies and Monty Python as spec fic. And what about the 
James Bond movies, fantasy with near future gadgetry. 
And then there were the comics. My mother didn’t approve of comics so I had to 
sneak away to a friend’s place to read them. Thanks to Marvel and their superheroes, 
generations of children were introduced to spec fic concepts in comics. These covered 
every aspect of the genre, from fantasy through science fiction to horror. Who can 
forget Vampirella.
Like the genre itself, comics have always been fringe, with a strong cult following. 
My husband still has his collection dating from the 60’s and 70’s. He was lucky enough 
to discover European graphic novels through people like Hergé, Druillet and Mobius. 
And then there were the Japanese comic artists giving the genre a cultural twist that 
added martial arts and school girls in sailor suits. Just as speculative fiction makes up 
a large percentage of computer game content, it has always been a staple of comics.
Until I moved to Melbourne the year after the ‘75 World SF Con and became 
involved in Fandom I didn’t even realise the things I loved to read and watch belonged 
to a genre that had a name.
With Fandom I discovered people who could hold a conversation on topics other 
than football and cricket. I discovered conventions and a whole range of authors from 
Fritz Leiber, to thrill and delight, through Ray Bradbury, who could twist the everyday 
into the bizarre, to Isaac Asimov, who made science accessible. With Fandom I met 
people who weren’t afraid to look into the infinite and wonder where we would be in 
twenty, fifty or a thousand years time. But this didn’t carry over into the real world. 
Back in those days Fandom had a Them and Us mentality. The spectre of journalists 
denigrating spec fic by concentrating on the propeller-topped-beanie element was very 
real — mostly because we were a fringe group of oddballs. Any spec fic gathering had a 
tendency to look like the party scene from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with people 
of every shape and size, but they were accepted and their eccentricies embraced. That 
was the wonderful thing about Fandom.
While the books and stories I was reading explored consequences of cloning and 
the alienation of an underclass, things which our world are now grappling with, movies 

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and television shows generally played it safe. Star Trek portrayed a future where we 
explored space according to a code of ethics which would have prevented Europeans 
handing out poisoned food to Australian indigenous people. As usual, the English 
pushed the barriers with A Clockwork Orange, which is still confronting today, and 
2001: a Space Odyssey, a movie that appeared at exactly the right time. 
If you look at the top grossing movies of each decade* as an indicator of what the 
popular tastes were you get an over view of the general public’s preference. In the 60’s, 
despite the popularity of Jane Fonda in Barbarella and Raquel Welch in One Million 
Years B.C., the top ten grossing movies contained only five with spec fic content, 
and three of these were children’s movies: 101 Dalmations, The Jungle Book and Mary 
Poppins. If you consider the James Bond movies spec fic then there were six.
In the 70’s, Star Wars delivered visually exciting adventure SF to the masses in a 
readily digestible form. Suddenly, everyone was talking about ”sci-fi”. But Star Wars 
didn’t appear until 1977. The early part of this decade saw several top grossing movies 
with spec fic content such as The Exorcist, Jaws and the Bond movies. Later, there were 
Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Superman. Depending on which list you consult, 
between five and eight of this decade’s top grossing movies were spec fic.
But it is during the 80’s that you can see the shift in public tastes. Nine out of 10 
of the top grossing movies in the 1980’s were spec fic, with ET, the Extra Terrestrial the 
top grossing movie for the whole decade. But spec fic content did not guarantee top 
ticket sales. There were some beautifully made spec fic movies in the eighties that did 
not make the top ten list. Legend, Blade Runner and Willow are all good examples of 
their genre that never achieved massive financial success. 
The success of the big blockbusters did open doors for other movie makers and TV 
producers. Australia’s Mad Max appeared in 1979, a near future movie made on a shoe 
string budget. After the Star Wars phenomenon the Miller brothers went on to make 
Mad Max 2 and 3 with much larger budgets. 
A generation of movie makers, script writers, special effects people and computer 
game designers have grown up post Star Wars, never knowing the desperation of 
living in suburbia’s Desert of the Imagination, or the dizzy delight of discovering an 
oasis of stimulating ideas and visuals. This generation have taken the ground work of 
previous writers and directors who championed spec fic and built on them with the 
next generation of TV shows and movies and the new genre of computer games.
What was a marginal genre has become increasingly popular. Through the 60’s and 
70’s, only four or five TV shows with spec fic content managed to make the top rated 
25. Shows like The Wonderful World of Disney (some spec fic), Bewitched, My Favourite 
Martian and Get Smart in the 60s. And in the 70s, shows like Six Million Dollar Man, 
The Bionic Woman, Fantasy Island, Spiderman and Mork and Mindy. Yet, of the top 20 
Cult TV shows, nineteen are spec fic with the only marginally mainstream The A 
Team coming in at number 20. Of course spec fic features prominently on the lists 

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of worst movies and TV shows as well. Who can forget Ed Wood with his cardboard 
gravestones and flying saucers made from, well, saucers.
Was the lack of adult spec fic content on TV due to the reluctance of the networks 
to run it or because people didn’t want it. It took years and the groundswell of popular 
support to convince the large studios and TV networks to review their decision to 
discontinue Star Trek. 726 episodes, 10 movies and hundreds of books have now been 
based on this series. Look at the popularity of The X Files, and Buffy which comes in 
at number three on the Cult TV list. Then there’s the perennial Doctor Who.Who 
would have thought when it first appeared in 1963 that it would run for 26 years, 
spawn a movie in 1996 and be revived as a TV series 42 years after the first episode 
went to air.
With the increase in shows and movies with spec fic content the general public is 
more prepared to accept outré ideas. But they are still left floundering sometimes.
When The Matrix first came out reviewers were marvelling at the central premise. 
‘Wow, they were fooling with our perception of reality’. This is a very familiar concept 
for spec fic fans. Forbidden Planet’s pivotal revelation was that monsters from the Id 
could come to life. A lot of the time the general public don’t even realise they are 
reading or watching spec fic. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, sold a million copies 
in Australia, which means one in 20 people bought a copy. Yet, if you’d asked them, 
they would have said they don’t read SF.
In the 90s nine out of the 10 top grossing films were spec fic with Titanic the 
only mainstream representative. And in the first half of this decade all 10 of the top 
grossing films have been spec fic. In fact I checked out the top 50 grossing films of 
all time. Only seven were not spec fic and some of those could be classified if we 
stretched the definition. Forrest Gump, an allegorical fantasy. The Passion of the Christ, 
a metaphysical look at humanity’s striving for a greater purpose. Mission Impossible 
One and Two, another version of James Bond. Troy, fantasy sword and sorcery. That 
only leaves Pretty Woman, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan. 
The superheroes of our childhood comics have been reborn on the large screen 
mostly to resounding success. In Japan Miyazaki has been working his magic for 40 
years but it is only now his work is readily accessible to the Western public. 
With the success of The Lord of the Rings, The Sixth Sense and the Matrix trilogy 
spec fic has become part of our shared culture, not just the preferred medium of 
a group of misfits. It is through these movies, TV shows and computer games that 
the popularisation of concepts and ideas long discussed in fandom have reached the 
general public. Fandom itself has been immortalised with humour and affection in 
Galaxy Quest. 
Thanks to speculative fiction we are prepared to discuss the future. Asimov gave 
us the Three Laws of Robotics and we are all familiar with matter transference (beam 
me up, Scotty). We even have antique futures. When I was 11 years-old Apollo 11 

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landed on the moon. Like Marge Simpson, I wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. 
I thought we’d be living on the moon by the year 2000, going bravely where no one 
had gone before. 
Instead we are living the adventure vicariously, through the medium of movies, 
TV shows and computer games. And speculative fiction is the preferred genre of the 
majority of the viewing public. When the edge of the genres blur to the point where 
a movie like Wag the Dog explores the premise that a President might create his own 
fictitious war to divert public attention from troubles at home, then even the every day 
becomes speculative fiction, and what was an obscure genre is now mainstream.
*There is some discrepancy from site to site as to what were the top grossing 
movies each decade.
Website resources (warning: some sites listed below have pop-ups)
Top Grossing Films by Decade www.nostalgiacentral.com/index.htm
Top Grossing Films by Decade www.filmsite.org/boxoffice2.html
Top Grossing Movies www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross.region=world-wide
Top TV Shows from the 50s, 60s and 70s www.fiftiesweb.com/pop/pop-history.htm
UK Cult TV Site 
www.bbc.co.uk/cult
Top 100 Cult TV Shows www.cult.tv/index.php.cm_id=222&cm_type=article
Cult TV, Radio and Film www.cultv.co.uk
The SadGeezers Guide to Cult TV Sci Fi www.sadgeezer.com
Doctor Who 
www.gallifreyone.com
Academic Essays on Buffy www.slayage.tv
Star Trek 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek
Worst Films 
www.thestinkers.com/worstever.html
Worst Films 
www.imdb.com/chart/bottom
Australian Aborigine www.answers.com/topic/australian-aborigine

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Olympos
by Dan Simmons
Eos, 2005
Hardcover, 704 pp
reviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts
Ilium was a book that I really enjoyed for its style and characters and 
sheer epic scope — even though I didn’t know what was going on most 
of the time, and found the read somewhat — well, hard work. It’s not 
badly written by any means, it just takes an awake brain and a hefty dose 
of commitment to plough through in order to get the good stuff. Not 
a beach book, unless it’s a beach being invaded by Greek soldiers and 
quantum-teleporting gods…
If you haven’t read Ilium, don’t pick up Olympos. It’s not so much a 
sequel as Part Two to Ilium’s Part One — a victim to the new trend of 
US publishers to slash huge epic books in half. Mind you, if they hadn’t, 
the Ilium/Olympos monster would have caused some booksellers a serious 
hernia. The books are big. And packed. For those of you just joining us, 
Ilium related the story of Hockenberry, a dead Classics scholar resurrected 
in order to commentate a bizarre re-enactment of the Trojan War, on 
Mars, complete with heroes, kings and gods. Meanwhile, some cute little 
robots with literary fetishes are travelling from somewhere to somewhere 
else, and back on Earth the post-human society is under attack. Sounds 
busy. Yep. And epic. And compelling. And really weird…
Olympos had a lot to achieve — it had to be bigger and better than 
Ilium, plus answer all the questions (the most important being: what the 
**** is going on.) as well as bringing resolution to at least 20 important 
characters.
The good news is that it does all of the above. The better news is — it 
answers the “what the **** is going on.” question! Olympos takes the 
story to a higher level of battle, tension and drama (including some kick-
ass twists, particularly with Helen’s character), then resolves the lot in a 
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine welcomes book reviews or 
books to review, however we can’t guarantee publication of any review, 
or to review every book sent to us. For more information please contact 
the Reviews Editor, Ian Nichols, at asimreviews@gmail.com. 

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way that I certainly didn’t see coming. I was totally satisfied by this book 
— if you liked Ilium, you’ll be pleased to know that Olympos is worth the 
effort it takes to get through. Then again, if you liked Ilium, you’re not 
averse to a difficult but worthwhile read.
Olympos is better, actually, than its predecessor because the ‘following 
the thread of the Iliad’ plot that Ilium followed until the very end of that 
book continues to spiral off the rails, providing a fascinating alternative 
universe that is nevertheless consistent with the classic characters as 
presented by Homer. 
One of the many Amazon reviews dedicated to this book suggested 
that Olympos ends with too many loose ends hanging, with no third 
volume in sight. Technically, this is true, but I would dispute that a third 
book is necessary. The ending is one that left me believing that a really 
interesting story was on the horizon, but I didn’t need to read it — just 
knowing it’s out there is enough for me. My favourite kind of ending, 
truth be told.
The important thing, with such a massive sequel to a massive first 
book that promised so much, is that Olympos is a reading experience that 
repays your commitment in spades. And clubs. And swords…
Hammered
Elizabeth Bear
Bantam Spectra, 2005
Paperback, 352 pp
Reviewed by Cherie Priest
Across the internet there has been much discussion lately over the male 
to female ratio in speculative fiction. Tradition declares that the genre 
world is largely a boy’s club, but talented women are changing this 
conventional wisdom — and one of my favorite leaders of the pack is 
Campbell Award winning author Elizabeth Bear.
Bear’s debut novel Hammered follows retired Canadian special forces 
officer Jenny Casey through a tangled post-revolution adventure mystery 
that begins in Hartford, Connecticut. 2062 is a tough year to live in New 
England, and Jenny’s old built-in military bioware is failing. But although 
she’s in constant pain and increasingly uncertain about her own future, 
Casey takes on the streets to track down a deadly drug — and learns 
that she’s up against something much more dangerous than an organized 
crime syndicate.

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Battered body and all, Jenny is the perfect subject for a classified 
government project that will either make or break her. And when all is 
said and done, there’s no telling who or what will be left standing.
Bear’s style is quick, gritty, and decidedly post-noir in all the best ways; 
and Jenny is the perfect vehicle character to complement the writing. 
She navigates the minefield of futuristic hazards with grim persistence 
and paranoid wisdom — giving the reader a protagonist who is believably 
reliable without being a template alpha superhero. Her primary motivator 
has nothing to do with landing the hunky space god. She is not a flashy 
egomaniac. She does not show a lot of cleavage, and she’d probably laugh 
at you if you suggested it.
I must insist upon these points despite the book’s cover — which, 
while being eye-catching and tasteful, does feature a woman wearing 
a spandex suit with an awfully deep zipper down the front. Therefore, 
every time I dropped this book into my purse and took it out on the 
town to read, I was bound to have a spectator sneak up beside me and 
say (something to the effect of), “Hey, chicks in space!” 
Well, not exactly. 
In fact, the very lack of a “chicks in space” feel is the bulk of its 
charm. There were a thousand and one cliché directions this story could 
have gone, but instead Bear deftly keeps Hammered what it needs to be 
from the first page to the last — a smart, engaging science fiction novel 
that defies pretty much every expectation a reader might bring to it. 
Innocence Lost — Kingmaker, Kingbreaker 2
by Karen Miller
Harpercollins, 2005
Hardcover, 560 pp
Reviewed by Davina MacLeod
In Innocence Lost Karen Miller has laid a feast before us once again.
If you have had the pleasure of reading Book 1, The Innocent Mage, 
you may recall how palate cleansing that entree was. You may also 
remember that just as you were cosily tucking into the main course it 
was whipped from the table, so to speak.
Never fear the craving will now be assuaged. The table is set, and old 
friends have returned. Asher speaks his mind plain as ever. Gar is more 
the royal than before, and does what he must to save the kingdom, while 
trusting that Asher will do whatever he asks of him.

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Matt is still the gentle yet stolid Horsemaster, and at last Dathne 
starts letting go of some secrets, while keeping Asher flummoxed, but in 
love. You will enjoy a visit to Conroyd’s home where you join his guests 
at a lavish dinner. Like me you may cheer when you witness his hopes 
crumble, yet wonder if he will he let go of his dream so easily.
Can Asher and Darran make peace, and keep it, when Gar begs them 
to. They do try. But what is Conroyd and that weasel, Willer, hatching 
together, will they manage to bring Asher down.
Don’t expect the expected with this serving. Although Miller has 
brought most of the same tantalizing ingredients to book 2, she has added 
a few more spicy tidbits to the mix in the same inviting manner as she did 
in book 1. Get ready to tuck in.
Knife Of Dreams: Book 11 Of The Wheel Of Time
by Robert Jordan
Tor Fantasy, 2005
Hardcover, 784 pp
Reviewed by Tehani Wessely
Please, please, please Mr Jordan, let there only be one book to go! The 
wait is driving fans mad, but Jordan seems to finally be winding up the 
myriad plot lines that have been enthralling us for well over a decade. 
Enthralling and frustrating, as we wait eagerly for each instalment, 
aggravated by the long delays between books, and annoyed by the 
teasing prequel (New Spring, 2004) and companion volumes that have 
contributed to these delays (no matter how enjoyable the side story may 
be). But surely now the series is winding down. Prophecies are being 
fulfilled and Tarmon Gai’don comes. In Knife of Dreams, we revisit all the 
primary characters, Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne, 
and follow many of the threads drawing together in the tapestry to show 
the whole picture.
Rand struggles to achieve aspects of prophecy he knows must come 
to pass if he is to find victory in the Last Battle, still struggling with the 
persona of Lews Therin in his head, and despite the fact that he and 
Nynaeve have cleansed saidin of the taint that destroyed so many men 
who channelled, he still fights it every time he channels. Meanwhile, Mat 
and Perrin fight their own battles, both personal and for the cause, as 
Mat tries to understand the vagaries of Tuon, the Daughter of the Nine 
Moons, while trying to keep her safe from her own people, and Perrin 

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desperately searches for a way to rescue Faile, even making a bargain with 
the Seanchan to accomplish his task.
Egwene is captured and taken to the White Tower, where she 
continues to quietly consolidate her position as Amyrlin of the Aes 
Sedai, working against the divisions within and without the Tower. At 
the same time, Elayne is seeking to consolidate her own position as heir 
to the throne of Andor, struggling with the fate of a nation as well as her 
pregnancy, being separated from her ‘sister’ Aviendha, and wondering 
constantly about Rand and what he is doing.
During the novel, we also get a glimpse of other characters, such as 
Elayne’s brother Galad, Nynaeve’s husband Lan, and even are rewarded 
with a mention of Moraine, the Aes Sedai who started the wheels in 
motion way back in book one, indicating that perhaps she’s not quite as 
dead as she may have appeared (and who among us didn’t pick that one 
coming.!).
Jordan’s scope is epic, and it has been building throughout the books, 
but where readers have been frustrated by the crawling pace of the last 
few novels, Knife of Dreams finally picks up the tempo and thrusts the 
story forward. The writing is still perhaps over-wordy — a first time 
author would be told to cut and cull the description — but for some, 
this description may be what brings the Wheel of Time world alive. The 
characters are as finely drawn and conflicted as ever, which is part of the 
morbid fascination we have for this story — none of the characters are 
paragons. They have their good qualities but they also have the darker, 
less virtuous traits, which make them human. I began reading the series 
soon after the sixth book was released, and was drawn in by the depth 
of the character study and the intricate plots Jordan wove for us. I’m so 
pleased I didn’t start when the first book came out, or my wait for the 
finale would have been so much longer. I’ve promised myself that when 
the final book arrives, I’ll re-read the series from the beginning to allow 
continuity to really have effect. But it’s worth the wait, and I can’t not 
read each instalment, waiting desperately for the conclusion which will 
be, I’m certain, stunning and incredible in it’s detail and shocks when we 
finally discover the ending. And I, for one, will then be looking for Jordan 
to write more in this world, as I’ll miss the characters that have been part 
of my life for so long!
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