Future Lovecraft by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Anthony Boulanger, Paula R. Stiles Read Free Book Online Page B

she let go, her long, dark hair billowing around her, but her body pliant and ready, not angled in fear. She smiled as her body met the pavement. maria had used the ternary glasses she kept for just such an occasion, to see everything that happened. Below, her follower was the colour of life in seconds, and was immediately surrounded by soldiers. Some looked up. The man appeared to her a short while later. He held handcuffs and talked to her about inspiration.
     ***
    “You inspire us to make this more difficult for you,” he said to her, his eyes almost catching light, almost becoming alive.
    “You inspire me to write. She died for a reason. The part of me that never dies, dies in this world. On another, freer world, she is everlasting. My Followers do not weep for this. We rejoice, because we know Freedom is soon coming.”
    “You’re naïve. Who will you go to? You know your voice cannot carry beyond these walls. We made sure of that. Only the Followers in your head, when they appear, know of you.”
    “If I told you my plans, I would not live beyond the three moons, and beyond this world. There are many who wait for my shape to enter its chosen space. This is what frightens you. And the more I write, the more ready my chosen space. For you to keep appearing, it means I am close to my goal.”
    “I have the plug right here, little queen with a small m. What would you tell your followers if I were to pull it? What then would your imprint be like, incomplete, not ready to take shape?”
    “You forget I have allies outside of this yellow, cold room. And that sitting, writing all day is an exercise in creation. You forget many things when it comes to women from my part of the world. You forget our power.”
    “You talk a lot. The Council has agreed. It is time to say goodbye.”
     ***
    The planets were in alignment; the three moons rose that day. Outside the tower, red scarves appeared around the necks and mouths of some soldiers. They started to scale the tower, to the only room it housed, on the top floor.

HARMONY AMID THE STARS
    By Ada Hoffmann
    Ada Hoffmann is a graduate student in computing who commutes to southern Ontario from an obscure globular cluster populated mostly by elves. Her short fiction has appeared in Expanded Horizons , Basement Stories , and One Buck Horror , among others.
    Harmony I: Day 624
    THERE’S ONLY SO much paper on this ship. I shouldn’t be wasting it on a diary, even with my thumbtop gone. But I have to write this somewhere, before the songs of the stars drown it out and I forget.
    I found blood on the walls today.
    I was lugging garbage from the mess hall out to the recycler. Thumbtop in my pocket, piping kwaito music into my ears. Humming along, so I wouldn’t hear the stars at the edge of my mind. I kept my eyes on the white-tiled floors, avoiding the windows. The current song ended and I picked up the rectangular screen of my thumbtop with one hand, using my thumb to scroll through to a song I wasn’t tired of yet. I settled on a homemade audio file: my sister, Onalenna, back Earthside, laughing and singing a song we’d invented as children.
    Then I looked up and saw it: the red-brown streaks marring the wall’s white tile, just opposite the window. Angry, dripping Mandarin characters. I dropped my thumbtop with a crash.
    I can get by in a Mandarin conversation, but the writing still eludes me. I don’t know what the characters said. Normally, I would have needed to use the detector on my thumbtop even to know what they were. But I’ve got a PhD, same as everyone, and I knew what it would have said if it hadn’t just broken. Organic material. No bacteria. Dissipated proteins. Glucose. Platelets. Erythrocytes.
    Blood.
    I wanted to pretend I didn’t know why anyone would have done such a thing. But I knew. After all, I’ve been avoiding the stars with all my might since we passed the Oort cloud. They’ve looked different since then. When I’m not talking or listening to