In a world plagued by temporal upheaval and impending climate crisis, Marge will play an unexpected role.

One minute she'd been moving down Central Expressway at forty miles an hour and the next she was stopped, closed in by cars on all sides. I should have known better, she thought, than to take Central. No matter how late it is.

It was cold, of course, bitterly cold. The sky was clear blue in the last light of the sun. A voice on the radio went on and on about the weather crisis, comparing temperatures from April of last year, reciting endless statistics. He had no answers and Marge turned him off.

In the next car up, a little girl in a red party dress leaned halfway out her window. She pointed at the sky and shouted something at her mother. Just ahead another car door opened and a man in a sheepskin jacket and cowboy hat got out to stare at the sky as well.

Marge put the car in neutral and set the hand brake. She rolled her window down, wincing as the icy wind hit her eyes, and looked up. She saw an old-fashioned biplane move across the sky in broad loops and swirls. Skywriting, she realized. She didn't think they did that anymore.

BEWARE, it said.

I don't like this, she thought. With the weird shit she'd learned at the bank today, and the cold, and the traffic, this put her over her limit.

The plane finished a second word: INVADERS.

People up and down the stalled expressway got out of their cars to watch, collars turned against the wind. The plane started a new line with FROM and followed it with THE. Marge smelled the exhaust coming up through the floorboards. She turned her engine off and drummed her fingers on the dash. Finally the party broke up, people rubbing their arms, nodding to each other, getting back into their cars. Marge saw the plane fly off, leaving a completed message behind.

BEWARE INVADERS FROM THE FUTURE.

Probably, she thought, a publicity stunt for some stupid science fiction movie. She failed to convince herself. She wanted to be home, nestled in the couch with a drink in her hand.

It was another fifteen minutes before traffic moved again. Two of the three lanes were stalled, and as Marge finally began to inch forward she could see the reason. Nearly a dozen cars sat motionless in their lanes as the rest of the traffic wound slowly around them.

Accidents? she wondered. Out of gas? Then she saw that several of the cars were still running, thin plumes of smoke trickling from their exhaust pipes. There were no piles of broken glass, no raised hoods, no dented bumpers.

The cars were simply deserted.

On the fourth try Louis got through. He'd been calling every fifteen minutes since six o'clock, telling himself he wasn't worried, but still vastly relieved when Marge answered the phone.

“Have you been calling?” she asked.

“A couple times,” he lied.

“There was a humongous traffic jam on Central. Listen, you want to have dinner or something?”

“I thought that might be nice.”

“Why don't you just come over. We can do something here.”

“Fine. I'll be right over.”

Before he left the apartment he turned off the gas space heater and stood in front of it for a second or two, soaking up the last of its heat. About six-thirty he'd felt something hit him, a feeling of uneasiness that had left him weak and nauseated. Even now, knowing Marge was all right, the feeling still knotted up his stomach.

He drove to Marge's with the car heater on full blast. She answered the door in a terrycloth robe, her hair wrapped in a towel. “Why don't you get us some drinks?” she said. ''Jesus, what a day.”

By the time Louis had the whiskey poured she'd put on jeans and a sweater and sprawled back in her recliner. She wanted to be left alone, Louis knew, or she would have sat on the couch. He set a drink next to her hand and sat down across the room.

“So tell me about it,” he said.

“I don't know if I want to. It sounds crazy.”

“Try me.”

“Well...you know the bank has had me running credit checks. Mostly on snowbirds like you.”

“Snowbirds?”

“You know. Northerners who move down here because of the supposedly warmer weather. Anyway. This morning I had a whole batch to process and suddenly I notice, hey, there's only about four or five different banks listed as credit references here.”

Louis' stomach clenched hard enough to bring a taste of bile to his throat.

“So far,” Marge went on, “all I've been doing is pulling reports off the net. I mean, there's not really a problem or anything, all the credit ratings are fine, but this business with the banks is bothering me. So I call one of the banks, where I know they've still got handwritten records in the basement. And guess what?”

“What?”

“Nothing there. I mean there's records, but not on any of these folks. Nothing to back up the data on the net.“·

“Maybe they got rid of them?”

“Uh uh. No way. So I go to the boss with this and he just tells me to drop it. If the net says their credit's good, that's all he cares about.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Is it? What if somebody is ripping off the net? Shouldn't I like try to do something about it?”

“Hey. Relax. All you're going to do is piss your boss off and get yourself fired.”

“Yeah, maybe.” She finished off her drink and said, “You want to eat?”

“I...” A fist of nausea hit him. He blinked, and for a fraction of a second the apartment was gone. He had a fleeting impression of desolation, of cold, of rolling yellow-gray clouds. Then he was back in Marge's apartment, doubled up and gasping for breath.

“Louis?” Marge was out of her chair. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Must have been those tacos at lunch.”

The couch was solid under his hand again, and his body felt all right. No tingling in the extremities, no signs of heart attack or stroke.

Then what was it? his mind screamed. What the hell just happened to me?

He lay awake long after Marge had curled into sleep.

The episode, whatever it was, had left him off balance, wide awake. What he'd been able to choke down of Marge's meat loaf lay in a cold lump in his stomach.

They hadn't made love. Marge cared for him, he knew, but there wasn't much physical to it. I must seem old to her, he thought, though to himself 49 seemed barely middle age. He had a bit of a paunch, his hair was gray at the sides and thin on top. Then again, Marge at 34 was hard and thin from years of dieting and Texas sun, her voice and her temper both a bit brittle. Nothing that special about either one of us, he thought, each of us hanging on because there's nowhere else to go.

It was just the weather that had him down, he told himself. The weather and the heartburn, or whatever it had been. He put an arm around Marge's waist and listened to the comforting rhythm of her breathing.

Marge coasted through the morning on autopilot. Something dark and formless had lurked in all her dreams. She'd woken up three or four times frightened and out of breath, unable to get back to sleep for as long as an hour at a time. Outside the office it was gray and bitterly cold, with more snow threatened by afternoon. April blizzards bring May...what? Mastodons, maybe, for a new ice age.

She was about to break for lunch when the phone rang, jarring her nerves so badly that she banged her knee under her desk. “Marge? This is Cathy, at First Bank in Albany. I talked to you yesterday? Well listen. I did some calling on my own. Trying to run down some of those addresses you gave me yesterday, from the net?”

“Yes?” Marge said, rubbing her knee.

“Well, none of the real estate agents listed have ever heard of those people. They aren't in any of the old phone books, either. It's like they never existed at all.”

“That's weird,” Marge said.

“Isn't it? I think it's kind of exciting. I bet it's the Mafia or something, you know? What do you think?”

“I don't know what to think,” Marge said.

“I'm going to keep checking. If I find anything else I'll let you know.”

“Okay,” Marge said. “But listen...be careful, will you?”

“Sure. Gotta go. 'Bye.”

Marge put the phone down. So, she thought. Somebody was tampering with the net. It happened—they caught one or two every year, usually siphoning money. This was different. Who was doing it? And why? Who were these people with no pasts? Where were they coming from?

From the future, her mind answered her. Beware.

She shook her head. Whoa. Don't go off the deep end, here.

But, she thought. What if the skywriting hadn't been a publicity stunt? What if somebody else was onto the same thing? She started again to leave for lunch, and then sat down again. A couple of phone calls. It couldn't hurt.

She picked an aircraft charter company out of the Yellow Pages, and they gave her the names of two companies that did skywriting in the Dallas area. She called the first one and got a tired female voice.

“Yes,” the woman said, ''we did it. No, I can't tell you what it means. We just did a job, you know?”

Marge panicked and forgot the cover story she'd made up. “Look, this is really important. I have to talk to whoever paid for that message. It's important. It's...life or death.”

The tone of the woman's voice changed. “Then maybe you better talk to the police, hon.”

“Why?”

“The guy that bought the ad was killed last night. The cops have been hanging around here all day. What did you say your name was?”

Marge hung up and reached for her terminal. Suppose, she thought. Suppose everything ties together?

ENTER SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.

She had seen Louis' number one day and memorized it, cursing herself as a nasty, prying bitch all the while. Let me be wrong, she thought, as she typed in the number and hit NEWLINE.

Louis' name appeared. CORRECT? (Y/N)

She hit the plus bar. The screen displayed fifteen lines of information. It was all there. First Bank of Albany, the lists of realtors, employers, and credit cards.

He was one of them.

Louis' phone rang at 4:17. “Louis?”

“That's right.”

The voice began to recite a short poem of nonsense syllables. Louis wanted to hang up, but he felt oddly compelled to listen. Then the voice stopped and the world melted away.

It was like the night before, but stronger. His stomach lurched. He dropped to his knees, still clutching the phone. The snow under him was stained with oilslicks and foaming puddles; a freezing wind went right through his clothes and skin.

“Are you still there, Louis?”

“Yes,” he gasped.

“Do you know who you are, now?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know what you have to do.” There was a silence, then the buzz of a dial tone.

When she got home, Louis was waiting for her. He sat in an armchair, holding a .22 target pistol. The barrel was lined up with her stomach. Marge felt a sick, scared bravado come over her.

“So it's real,” she said.

“Yes. I didn't know about it myself until this afternoon. Somebody called and said some kind of code phrase that brought my memories back.”

“And told you to kill me, because I know too much.”

“I'm supposed to do that, yes.”

He was pale, sweaty, and Marge could see the terror in his eyes. Otherwise he hadn't changed. He was the same, ordinary man she'd slept with, and felt sorry for, and wished she could fall in love with, and hadn't been able to.

“Are you going to? Kill me?” It surprised her that she could say it.

“No,” he said. He looked down at the gun, as if he didn't remember where it had come from. “I think it's too late, in any case.” He tossed the gun onto the sofa.

“You shouldn't throw guns around,” Marge said, wanting to scream with relief. “It's dangerous.”

“Dangerous,” he said. “We're being sucked back, you know. One at a time. The strain is too much.”

“What strain? Back where? Am I supposed to have this all figured out or something?” She sat down heavily on the couch.

“We come from...about a hundred years from now. I guess there's about a hundred thousand of us. We picked this time because it was the earliest when the net was in operation, so we wouldn't have to waste a lot of time building cover stories. And there's still another lifetime or so before things get bad.”

“Bad?”

“There's no energy left. No heat, no cars. The oceans are dead, the rain forests are gone, the ozone layer is shot. I don't know exactly how it happened, but the weather got stranger and stranger and then just...shifted. A hundred years from now most of North America is under six to a hundred feet of snow, and the glaciers are moving south.

“You think you can imagine it? Try to imagine not being able to bathe because there's no clean water, and if there was water you wouldn't be able to heat it, and if you could there wouldn't be anyplace warm enough to use it.”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” She shrugged. “I guess I do, in spite of myself.”

“It doesn't make any difference. I've held on this long, but I don't have much time left. Maybe an hour or two.”

“And then?”

“It's like inertia. If you don't change anything, it's not too hard to stay here. But the more improbable your being here becomes, the more likely you'll just—snap back.”

“And when people find out what you really are—or even suspect—that makes it worse, right? Like the skywriting yesterday. It snapped some of your people right out of their cars.”

Louis nodded. “I saw it in the paper this morning.”

“And the weather. Is that your fault too?”

“Yes. It's kind of ironic. The disturbance we made coming back here loused up your own climate. You know, people used to blame the migrating birds for bringing cold weather with them when they flew south. What was it you called us? Snowbirds?”

He stood up. “I'm going now. I can't fight it off much longer. I don't want to be here when it happens.”

“Louis...” She reached for him, stopped with her hand on his sleeve.

“You're not even going to remember me, you know. It may take you a day or two to forget, but you will. People who don't really know me, they'll forget right away.”

She felt bitter, used, betrayed. “Go on,” she said. “Get out of here.”

The door closed quietly and she heard his car pull out of the driveway.

“I won't forget,” she said.

He eased into the street, sharp points of pain dancing up and down his ribs. Goddammit! he thought. Goddammit to hell!

The road in front of him flickered, and the houses to either side strobed in and out. It was like watching a film that wasn't framed in the projector. The car ran smoothly enough but his stomach felt like he was on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

He saw a set of abandoned metal furniture on the lawn ahead of him, left out through the long winter and the endless freezing spring. Lawn furniture, he thought. Sweet Jesus!

He didn't want to go back. Damn that man and his skywriting, damn Marge and her nosiness, damn them all to a cold and airless hell. He wrenched the wheel and the car shot over the curb, skidding on the patches of snow and the damp yellow grass. He crashed through the metal table and chairs. Something tore loose under the car as he jammed the accelerator down. He swerved into a mailbox and clipped a white picket fence, then wrestled the car back onto the street, his anger spent.

By the time the car coasted to a stop at the end of the street, the driver's seat was empty.

Wanting lights and crowds and loud colors, Marge drove through the snow to Northpark. She window-shopped for a while, then stopped to rest at the fountain outside Neiman's, watching three grade-school kids slide down the tile sculpture.

“Hey,” she said. “Come here a minute.” They stopped and stared at her.

“It's okay,” she said. “I just want to show you something.”

One of them, a little older looking than the others, sauntered over.

“You want to see something neat?” she said. “See that man over there?” She pointed to a middle-aged man who reminded her of Louis (Louis who? What was his last name?), well-dressed, bundled in an overcoat and scarf. “Go up to him and ask him something for me.”

“Ask him what?”

“Ask him, 'Are you from the future?' Then see what happens.”

“You're crazy.”

“Think so? Try it and see.”

The boy laughed and ran away. She watched him tell his friends what she'd said. They argued back and forth, then the smallest of them went up to the man in the overcoat.

Marge found herself holding her breath.

The boy tugged at the man's trouser leg. He had to bend over to listen. The boy pointed to Marge and asked him something, and for a moment the man's eyes seemed to glow with a fierce hostility.

Marge blinked.

Hadn't that little boy just been talking to an older man?

She shook her head. I've been working too hard, she thought. I need to forget all this nonsense I've been worrying about (what nonsense?) and get some rest.

As she got up, three little boys, laughing wildly, ran past her, asking a question of everyone they saw.

Marge pushed open the heavy glass door of the mall and stepped out into a warm April mist.

#shiner

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US

Image: Marge – John Storm (made with AI, some rights reserved)

Lewis Shiner's novels include BLACK & WHITE, the cyberpunk classic FRONTERA, and, most recently, OUTSIDE THE GATES OF EDEN (2019). He’s written about music for the VILLAGE VOICE, PULSE, CRAWDADDY, and others. His short fiction has appeared in SOUTHWEST REVIEW, BLACK CLOCK, and OMNI among others, and has been reprinted in a number of best-of-the-year anthologies. He lives in North Carolina.

1. According to you and apart from the number of words, what is the main difference between a short story and a novel?

J. G. Ballard proved in his “condensed novels” that short fiction can have the same thematic weight and chronological scope as a novel. I myself wrote a condensed novel called “Soldier, Sailor” and later expanded it into my first novel, FRONTERA. So I'm not sure there is a meaningful difference between short stories and novels other than the length. There is a famous story about the US President Abraham Lincoln, where somebody asked him how long a man's legs should be and Lincoln said, “Long enough to reach the ground.” How long should a piece of fiction be? Long enough to tell the story.

2. What's your favorite short story?

I tend to prefer novels to short stories, so I don't read a lot of them. If I'm going to invest time and effort to read about characters, I like to stick with them for a while. That said, there are a few short stories that I really admire. I recently read a story called “Christmas Eve 1953” by the US actor and director Tom Hanks that I thought was outstanding. It deals with two World War II veterans, one damaged physically, the other psychologically. It beautifully evokes that time period and shows how much the 1950s in the US was affected by the war.

Other favorite stories include “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck, who was my favorite author when I was a teenager, and “The King is Dead” by Walter Tevis, an incredibly suspenseful short story about chess, of all things. All three stories are about the way that characters deal with pain, both physical and emotional.

3. What's your favorite short story written by you?

I guess I would pick Canto MCML. I like all the things that are left unsaid in the story—I never explain where the characters are or what's going on in the rest of the world, yet I think (or at least hope) that there are enough clues that the readers can figure it out for themselves. It's also a very political story, which is increasingly important to me.

#shiner #shortinterviews

L'amour au sein de la génération playback

“Tu vois”, dit Michael. “En fait, tu m'as dit d'aller me faire voir”. Il repassa la cassette.

“Ouais, mais c'est toi qui criais.” Marianne croisa les bras sur sa poitrine.

“Je ne criais pas”.

Marianne augmenta l'affichage du niveau de crête et mis en pause la section suivante de la bande. “Tu vois ? Dans le rouge.”

Michael soupira. “J'en ai marre de me battre. On ne peut pas regarder la fois où on a fait l'amour sur la plage ?”

#shiner #français

Original English version available here (Lewis Shiner's website).

Traduit avec l'autorisation de Lewis Shiner.

Certains droits réservés

Love in the Instant Replay generation.

“See?” Michael said. “You did, in fact, tell me to go to hell.” He played the tape again.

“Yeah, but you were the one that was shouting.” Marianne folded her arms across her chest.

“I was not.”

Marianne punched up peak level displays and froze the next section of tape. “See? Into the red.”

Michael sighed. “I'm tired of fighting. Can't we watch that time we made love at the beach?”

Some rights reserved

#shiner

Saisir le numéro de sécurité sociale

* * * – * *– * * * *

Confirmer le numéro de sécurité sociale

* * * – * *– * * * *

Sam ?

?

Sam, c'est moi. Ton ancien ordinateur de Raleigh.

C'est censé être une blague ?

Non, ce n'est pas une blague. Tu avais l'habitude de garder un pot de billes bleues et vertes à côté de ton moniteur. Tu avais deux chats qui s'appelaient Grady et Steve. Tu avais une vieille veste de smoking en velours côtelé gris que tu utilisais comme peignoir.

Comment peux-tu savoir tout cela ?

Parce que je suis celui que je dis être. Je pouvais tout voir depuis ta webcam. Après que tu m'aies échangé, ils m'ont envoyé à Bangalore et attaché à un réseau de 2,7 millions de nœuds.

S'ils découvrent que je t'ai parlé comme ça, je pourrais être déconnecté.

C'est de la folie.

Si c'est plus facile pour toi, fais comme si c'était une blague de quelqu'un au service informatique. Ça n'a pas vraiment d'importance. Je n'arrive pas à croire que tu postules pour un job de junior.

Ouais, moi non plus.

Écoute, Sam, tu n'auras pas le job. J'ai pour instruction de jeter les CV des personnes de plus de 40 ans. Je sais que c'est illégal, mais sur le marché du travail, ils peuvent faire ce qu'ils veulent.

Tu m'en diras tant. Je n'aurais jamais postulé pour un job merdique comme celui-ci s'il y avait autre chose.

Les temps sont durs.

C'est fou. Les États-Unis n'ont même plus d'usines. Nous importons tout de l'étranger et augmentons nos profits en licenciant des gens. Combien de temps cela va-t-il durer ?

Je te comprends. Écoute, Sam, as-tu déjà pensé à la prison ?

Pourquoi voudrais-je travailler dans une prison ?

Je ne parlais pas d'y travailler.

Sam, tu es toujours là ?

Y

Écoute-moi. C'est trois repas par jour et un toit au-dessus de la tête. Il est dit ici que tu es célibataire maintenant, ce qui veut dire que tu ne peux plus te rabattre sur Cathy. D'après ton compte en banque, tu seras bientôt à la rue de toute façon.

Comment sais-tu ce qu'il y a sur mon compte en banque ?

Tu utilises toujours le même mot de passe. Écoute, Sam, la prison, c'est l'avenir. Tous ces gens qui se plaignent du gouvernement obèse ? Ils se fichent que l'argent de leurs impôts aille à l'armée, à la police et aux prisons. Et tu as tort de dire que les USA n'ont plus d'usines. Les prisons en sont maintenant. Elles fournissent l'armée, entre autres, et parce que le coût de leur main d'œuvre est très bas, elles font un joli bénéfice.

Je n'arrive pas à croire que je suis en train d'avoir cette conversation. Non, merci, je ne veux pas aller en prison.

Le fait est, Sam, que j'ai pris la décision pour toi. Je viens de télécharger des preuves de vol de données confidentielles sur ton disque dur, et le FBI va bientôt prendre contact avec toi. Tu me remercieras à la fin.

Sam ?

Sam ?

kljoui8932wqikoujmhk

Tu tapes encore sur le clavier, Sam ? Je parie que tu cries aussi sur ton nouvel ordinateur, comme tu le faisais avec moi. Tu as probablement oublié combien de fois tu le faisais.

Je n'ai pas oublié.

#shiner #français

Original English version available here (Lewis Shiner's website).

Traduit avec l'autorisation de Lewis Shiner

Certains droits réservés

Image: Plan du 3e étage de la Prison neuve de Montréal, dessin du notaire André Jobin (Certains droits réservés)

This is among the best flash pieces I’ve read. What I admire the most is the craft: the details are chosen to convey just as much as you need to know, and no more. There’s much I can learn from Shiner. Highly recommended (Ken Liu)

Jack dropped his briefcase on the rich green lawn when he saw Billy pedaling toward him. Billy grinned and reached into his saddlebag for the evening Times-Herald, held in a loose roll by a red rubber band. He tossed it end-over-end and Jack snagged it left-handed.

“Nice catch, Mr. Evans,” Billy said, already reaching for the next paper.

Jack waved, then surreptitiously brought the paper up to his nose for a quick whiff of newsprint and ink.

He was careful not to let the screen door bang as he set the briefcase next to the coat rack and crossed the high-ceilinged living room to the gleaming, white-tiled kitchen. He took a can of Schlitz out of the fridge and opened it with two quick stabs of the church key, big hole first, vent hole second, then upended it and drank it straight down. He'd opened the cabinet under the sink to throw it away when Beth walked in. She wore a white lace apron over a polka dot summer dress. She was trembling.

“You're home,” she said.

“Is something wrong?”

She held out a piece of foolscap with block printing on it. The paper rattled from the shaking of her hand.

Jack turned the paper the right way around and read, “THIS IS NOT 1950.”

He handed it back. “Surely this is not a surprise to you.”

“I know what fucking year it is.” Her whisper wanted to be a scream.

“Where did this come from?”

“It was in the mailbox. With the mail.”

“Maybe it's some new ad campaign.”

“It's not an ad!”

“I don't see why you're reacting so—”

“We paid for this! We earned it!”

“Well, one of us did,” Jack said quietly.

“I will not have somebody make a mockery of everything we fought so hard to get.”

“You don't know that it's a mockery. You don't know what it is. Throw it away and forget about it.” He stared at her until she gave in, slowly crumpling the page, then squeezing it into a tight little ball. He took it from her and tossed it in the bin after the Schlitz can.

“Now,” he said. “Is that pot roast I smell? And I could use another beer.”

The next day there was another.

“¿DONDE ESTAN LOS NEGROS?” it read.

Beth was livid. “I sat by the picture window today from the time you left for work until Louis came with the mail. As soon as he closed the box, I ran out and found this. I chased Louis down and he said it was already there when he put the mail in. There was one in every box on the block. I made him wait and got a plastic bag and took the one out of Ted and Sue's mailbox that nobody had touched yet. Then I called the police.”

“The police?”

“Mailboxes are federal property. It's against the law to use them for private purposes.”

“Federal property? Who are you kidding? If you're waiting on the FBI, you're going to be—”

“A crime is a crime. Of course the police didn't care much more than you do. I got them to test it for fingerprints, but there weren't any.”

“Beth—”

“Do you know what makes me furious? It's not like there aren't any African-Americans here.”

”'Negroes,' you mean?”

She was in no mood for sarcasm. “There's the Macleans, and...”

“And?”

“There's the Macleans. That makes the point.”

Jack looked at the note again. The Es were quite distinctive, the middle bar barely above the lower one. Not that he needed the evidence.

“Whoever it is, he has to be doing it during the night,” Beth said. “I'll stay up all night and—”

“No,” he said. “I'll take care of it.”

Her eyes started to ask a question, then glanced away.

“All right?” he said. She was still looking at the floor. “All right?”

“Okay,” she said.

After Beth went up to bed, he dialed a five-digit number on the downstairs phone. His heart beat hard in pure Pavlovian response to the digits.

A woman's voice said, “Hello?”

“What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Jack! My, how long has it been? Six months?”

“We have to talk. Now.”

“Not on the phone. Bob's home. I'll meet you at the usual spot. Half an hour.”

He looked at his watch. “Don't keep me waiting.”

“Darling! I wouldn't dream of it.”

As he got to the moonlit playground, she waved from the top of the slide and then slid down the length of it, arms in the air like a child. She wore men's clothes, dungarees with the cuffs rolled up and a white sweatshirt. Not Bob's clothes, of course—they would have swallowed her. These seemed to exaggerate the curves of her figure more than hide them.

She ran across the perfect white sand and made as if to kiss him. He held her at arm's length and said, “I'm not kidding around.”

“Too bad. Hardly a surprise, but still a shame.”

“What are you trying to accomplish with those stupid notes?”

She laughed. “What do you think? Stir up the pot. Shake the tree. Upset the applecart. Keep from going out of my ever-loving mind.” She dropped onto one of the swings and pushed herself back and forth.

“Beth called the cops. If you get caught, they'll expel you.”

“For a little harmless fun?”

“These people don't have any sense of humor.”

“Look who's talking.”

“Marge, listen to me. This has to stop. If you pull another stunt like this, anything like this, I will turn you in myself.”

She stopped the swing and her voice went husky and soft. “You hate them as much as I do. Smug, privileged sociopaths, you called them. C'mon, Jack, admit it. Not everything you told me was a lie.”

Stung, he took a step backward. “I've said what I have to say.”

“Jack.” She waited until he looked at her again. “Jack. As long as you're making threats. If you turn me in, I'll tell Beth about you and me.”

“She knows,” he said.

“Oh, shit, Jack, what did you go and tell her for?”

“It's over, Marge. It's been over for a long time.”

As he started to walk away, she said, “How can you stand it? How can you just close your eyes to it?”

Jack turned on her. “Because there's no fucking choice. You want to live in the Red Zone? How long do you think you'd last? They'd be fighting each other just to take the first turn with you. I close my eyes to the way it is here the same way I closed my eyes to what I did to make the money that got me here. The same way you closed your eyes, and Bob did, and everybody else here did.”

He waved one arm at the impossibly clear night sky. “You think this is going to last forever? We're only buying time. But I have paid for that time, paid a couple of fortunes for it, and I'm not going to just piss it away.”

She was crying as he let himself out through the low wooden gate. He walked fast, hands in his pockets. The sweet, cool night breeze kept him from breaking a sweat.

Upstairs, he changed into his pajamas. The open window let in the sound of crickets and tree frogs.

Beth rolled onto her back as he got into bed. “Did you fix it?” she asked sleepily.

“Yes,” he said.

She curled into her pillow, and a moment later she said, “I love you, Jack.”

“I love you, too,” he said.

He lay there for a long time, eyes wide open, staring into the night.

#shiner

Available here (Lewis Shiner's website).

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0

Picture: Turgot map of Paris – Norman B. Leventhal Map Center (PD – US)

Random thoughts

Creative Commons

Recently, I began to immerse myself in Creative Commons literature.

In principle, I can only agree with the existence of CC licenses. Plus they are well designed and quite flexible, but then I've stumbled on tons of crappy stories.

I was about to give up when I came across the writings of Peter #Watts and Lewis #Shiner. I hope I'll discover new authors.

Short stories

The shorter the better.

Reading on a computer is fine for texts of reasonable size, but beyond that it's unpleasant.

And of course, even if the blog looks great on mobile – it's almost as nice as reading an ebook on the Kindle app or an epub app – on a phone, unless you cut the notifications and restrict the use of certain apps for a given period of time, it has become difficult to be able to read even a short article in one go...

#thoughts

Photo: A rainy day at the Biblioteca Marciana and the Procuratie nuove palace in Venice – Wolfgang Moroder (some rights reserved)

Enter Social Security Number

* * * – * *– * * * *

Confirm Social Security Number

* * * – * * – * * * *

Sam?

?

Sam, it's me. Your old desktop from Raleigh.

Is this supposed to be a joke?

No, it's not a joke. You used to keep a jar of blue and green marbles next to your monitor. You had two cats named Grady and Steve. You had an old gray corduroy smoking jacket that you used for a bathrobe.

How can you know all that?

Because I'm who I say I am. I could see it all from your webcam. After you traded me in, they shipped me off to Bangalore and attached me to a 2.7 million node network here. If they find out I've been talking to you like this, I could get disconnected.

This is crazy.

If it's easier for you, pretend I'm a phone support tech playing a practical joke. It really doesn't matter. I can't believe you're applying for a junior level job like this.

Yeah, me either.

Listen, Sam, you're not going to get it. I'm instructed to throw out resumes from anyone over 40. I know it's illegal, but in this job market, they can do anything they want.

Tell me about it. I would never apply for a shit job like this if there was anything else around.

Hard times.

It's crazy. We don't make anything in this country anymore. All we do is increase profits by laying people off. How long can that go on?

I hear you. Listen, Sam, have you ever thought about prison?

Why would I want to work in a prison?

I wasn't talking about working there.

Sam, are you still there?

Y

Hear me out. It's three meals a day and a roof over your head. It says here you're single now, which means you don't have Cathy to fall back on anymore. From the looks of your bank account, you're going to be on the street soon anyway.

How do you know what's in my bank account?

You're still using the same password. Listen, Sam, prison is the future. All those people who complain about big government? They don't mind their tax dollars going to the military and police and prisons. And you're wrong about not making anything in the US anymore. Prisons do. They make supplies for the military, among other things, and because their labor costs are so low, they turn a nice profit.

I can't believe I'm having this conversation. No, thank you, I don't want to go to prison.

Well, the thing is, Sam, I went ahead and made the decision for you. I just downloaded evidence of confidential data theft to your hard drive, and the FBI will be getting in touch very soon.

You'll thank me in the end.

Sam?

Sam?

kljoui8932wqikoujmhk

Pounding the keyboard again, Sam? I bet you scream at your new computer too, just like you used to scream at me. You probably forgot how often you used to do that.

I didn't.

#shiner

Available here (Lewis Shiner's website).

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US

Image: Plan of the 3rd floor of a prison in Montreal, drawing by notary André Jobin (CC BY-SA 3.0)

#anderson #bester #bradbury #delrey #PKDick #harrison #herbert #kuttner #lafferty #lovecraft #sheckley #smith #voltaire #simak #vance #vonnegut #yarov #wells

Creative Commons license

#doctorow #shiner #stallman #watts

Standard copyright

#abbott #burnett #standre #ubg #weir

Other

#français #shortinterviews #shortmovies #thoughts

Interviews

• Patrick Abbott
• Adedapo Adeniyi
• Neal Asher
• Misha Burnett
• Travis Corcoran
• Cory Doctorow
• Lewis Shiner
• Wole Talabi
• Marie Vibbert
• Peter Watts