(first published by everydayfiction.com)

“Is that a Wyndham flower?” Milton stared with some concern at the strange, semi-translucent stalk, ghastly pale and no bigger around than his thumb. It clung precariously to the handle of an old shovel resting in the corner of the greenhouse. “You do know those are illegal?” 

“What I know,” answered Bernadette with a patient smile, “is that Wyndham flowers are as misunderstood as they are exquisite.” She gently tugged at his shirt sleeve to pull him away, easing past with a plastic spray bottle. She gave the base of the stalk two quick spritzes, then moved back to her orchids.

“They come from outer space.” Milton watched the Wyndham flower tremble excitedly, and gave a little shiver himself. “They could be dangerous.”

“You may recall, all sorts of government funds went into proving that back when the seeds first fell, but what did they find?”

“Nothing they could share with the public.” Milton leaned forward to peer dubiously at the tip of the flower, ostensibly what could be considered its blossom, a teardrop shaped bulge, containing at its center a softly glowing cluster of knotted veins. “Who knows what nefarious inner workings they discovered but were forced to keep secret to avoid mass panic.”

“That kind of xenophobic paranoia is exactly the problem with humanity. How many of the dear little things were ripped out and burned for no reason better than mankind’s senseless fear?”  

“How many? Not enough, apparently.” Milton gave a quick blast of air through his nostrils. “Where did you happen across one?”

“I happened across three. Up in the cut above the old cabin. Ages ago. I thought transplanting them would be a simple affair, but only the one took. Wyndham flowers are similar to lichens. They do rather poorly in soil, but unfortunately seem unable to leech minerals directly out of sterner materials like stone. I don’t know what possessed me to try the shovel. Do you remember when Daddy used to complain about the porcupines chewing on the handles of his old tools? All those years soaking in salt from sweaty hands. Perhaps that’s what made me think of it. In any case, Wyndham flowers are such delicate and gentle beings, it’s a wonder any of them survived at all. Most of the precious few who fell in suitable spots were butchered by terrified cretins and dolts, while the rest were choked out by kudzu and multiflora rose.”

“Ah, see. There you are. Invasives! Kudzu and the roses, I mean. Prime examples of how introducing foreign, or should I say alien, organisms into a new environment hardly ever works out for the natives, even in the best of circumstances. Your Wyndham flower could very well be as catastrophic as cane toads, or woolly adelgids.”

“Oh, Milton.” Bernadette drifted over to one of her bonsais and slipped a dainty pair of shears from her pink apron. Her eyes traced lovingly over the little tree’s twists and gnarls. “You’ve become so excitable in your old age. Foreign? Yes. Alien? Wonderfully so. Invasive? Hardly! An organism must spread past the point of introduction and become abundant to be considered invasive.” She gave a satisfied nod, and the shears disappeared, unused, back into her apron.

“And how can we be certain that isn’t what the damn thing is going to do? Yes, it may seem benign now. I’m sure the European starling appeared innocent enough, back when the American Acclimatization Society intentionally released them into Central Park right before the turn of the century.”

“Wyndham flowers have been on this planet for almost thirty years, and there are indications I may have the last surviving specimen. If they intend to take over the world, the poor darlings are failing rather miserably.”

“They’ve been on this planet exactly twenty-three years. I was nineteen when the discovery was made. I remember vividly watching the meteor shower with Amelia Bernhagen in her father’s orchard.”

“Amelia Bernhagen?” Bernadette lifted her head and gazed for a moment at the milky glass of the greenhouse roof. “The redhead with the ample forehead? Her, I would consider invasive.”

“Bernadette, please.” Milton sighed. “You must concede that you have no real understanding of a Wyndham flower’s life cycle. Isn’t it at least feasible your extra terrestrial friend has been slowly maturing all this time, and could at any moment reach a point where it, say, releases millions of spores?”

“Feasible? As feasible as it sprouting legs and becoming a flesh-eating monster. In which case I may regret having fed it a drop of my blood every morning.”

“You’ve done what?” Milton stiffened.

“Or, what if it’s not a plant at all? What if it’s a sort of biomechanical alien probe, sent to gather information about us? What if it’s currently transmitting everything we say to an invasion fleet on its way from Alpha Centauri?”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“What if this whole time it’s been projecting an intense stream of radiation into my brain, deliberately reshaping my neural pathways, overwriting my individual consciousness with its own? What if the only reason I’ve asked you out here to the greenhouse was so that it could begin the very same process on you?”

Milton blinked and licked his lips.

“My dear brother.” Bernadette stripped off her work gloves and slapped them against the table to knock the dirt from them. “See how easy it is for a little fear to spread? See how quick a mere seed can take root, feeding off a few bits of possibility, growing and propagating through your mind until it chokes out the truth?”

Milton wasn’t listening. The Wyndham flower had begun to quiver again. He stared intently at it, anxious for any sign of malevolence.

(First published by everydayfiction.com)

She’s dreaming of Shiro. It’s the first dream she’s had since the world ended. He’s in the kitchen, his back to her, his broad shoulders hunched up slightly, the way he looks when he’s being mischievous. In her dream she smiles and steps towards him. She can feel the cool tiles against her bare feet. They’d put those tiles in together, almost a year ago now. A low, rumbling hum creeps into to the room, but she ignores it. She reaches her hand out, gently, for Shiro. She wants to feel him, rest against the firm stability of his body. She wants to cling to him and feel his arms wrap around her. The hum grows into an angry growl. He turns, slowly. There’s a pair of scissors in his hand.

***

“Wake up.” The machine speaks softly. Its hand is placed firmly against her mouth. She jolts awake and a surge of panic tears at her. Frantically, she writhes and claws at the cold titanium shell of its arm. The machine calmly holds her against the floor. “There’s a group of them outside,” it explains. Eyes wide, she relaxes, then nods. Carefully, it removes its hand and stands, motioning her to follow.

They slip into the hallway. She tries to move with the same, quiet deliberation as the machine, but every step she takes seems loud and clumsy. It glides ahead of her, unnervingly silent. In the gloom of the corridor the machine stops short and lightly presses its fingertips against the wall. Unconsciously, she holds her breath, listening intently. Its sensors can detect the vibrations of a bird landing on the roof. All she can hear is the pounding of her own heart.

“They’re in the stairwell.” The machine draws a vicious-looking automatic and calmly thumbs the safety to the off position.

“They’re coming up?” She shrinks closer to the wall. She can hear them now; an unnatural, rhythmic chattering, echoing through the darkness. “Do they know we’re here?”

“They don’t know anything anymore.” The machine’s voice is flat. “Go to the end of the hall. There’s a closet on the left. Inside is a ladder to the roof. Go now.”

“Will you…”

“Go now. Stay low.” The chattering grows quickly into a frenzied roar, filling the hallway. Abruptly, a sharp, metallic whine cuts in. The door to the stairwell explodes from its frame, shattering against the opposite wall. A cloud of dust billows towards them and the smell of burnt plastic creeps through the air. Instinctively, she takes a step back. The machine raises its weapon. A massive, hulking shape tumbles into the hallway. It lurches up, the top half awkwardly swiveling around. She recognizes it. A civil loader drone.

“Share,” it screeches, jerking its immense arm up, reaching for them.

She turns, stumbles, then begins to run. The machine steps between her and the loader and opens fire. In the confines of the hall, the sound is deafening, but she doesn’t look back. Not until she reaches the closet. As she grabs the handle and lunges against the door, she glances behind her and sees a seething mass of blocky figures clawing into the hallway; more loaders, domestic helper machines, medical technics, commercial interactives, autonomous tactical units… Desperately, they pile over each other, an endless stream of thrashing machinery.

“Share.” Their voices garble together, blurring into a single gnashing chant. “Share. Share.”

***

Something is wrong. Something about the way he’s holding the scissors. Or the way he turns towards her, his head leaning unnaturally to the side. She hesitates, confused.

“Shiro?” she murmurs. He jerks his arm up, pointing the scissors at her.

“Share.” His voice sounds distorted. “Share.”

Instinctively, she steps back. Shiro lunges.

***

“Wake up.” The machine speaks softly. Her eyes snap open and she jerks upright, terror clutching at her chest.

“What happened?” she gasps.

“You lost consciousness,” says the machine. “I carried you to the roof. You are dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion.”

“Are they…” She is suddenly aware of the rhythmic chattering still humming below them.

“It will take them time to find a way up,” it reassures her. The machine stands beside a small trapdoor a short distance away. Its back is to her. A broken ladder lies at its feet. It must have ripped it from its mounts and pulled it up with them.

“Are you all right?” she asks. It turns towards her. One of its arms is missing. All that remains is a shattered stump and a few dangling wires.

“There’s no pain,” it says. “Although, I won’t be as effective now.”

“We can… find you a new one,” she offers.

It looks down at its remaining hand and works its fingers back and forth. “Unlikely. My retainer only allowed isolated automata in close protection roles.” She looks confused. “I was manufactured offline,” it explains. “I cannot interface with technology outside my original operating system. I suspect this is why I have not been affected like the others.” It looks over at her, its optical sensor adjusting to scan her face. “My retainer did not trust machines that could be hacked or hijacked. Not that it mattered in the end. They ripped him apart, and I could not stop them. The machines, the affected ones, do not seem to realize that you biologicals are like me; isolated.”

“When this started,” she whispers. “Before you found me. Before you… saved my life. I felt… so alone.”

“You are alone.” The machine looks back down at its hand. “You are biological. I am machine. I protect you because that is the function I was built for. That fact does not make us any less isolated.”

She doesn’t say anything. She wants to reach out, move closer. She wants to tell the machine about Shiro, explain how much she loved him, how she never felt alone in his arms. But she understands now. That was the function Shiro was built for.

Beneath their feet the chattering grows into a frenzied roar.

(First published by everydayfiction.com)

It’s been twenty-five years since Genesis Jones. He was the first. For me anyway. I’m not one for sentimentality, but once a year I find myself wandering over to this place by the docks called Harry’s, a dark, lonely little bar, where a man and his ghosts can drink the night away in peace. A good place for remembrance, although technically it all went down about three blocks away, under the street, in the sewers. I prefer Harry’s though, on account of there’s whiskey. And a few less rats.

The door creaks open like a coffin lid. Nobody notices. Darker than sin in here. I stumble for the bar like a blind man, trying hard to maneuver through the maze of mismatched tables and zombie-like patrons. I don’t recognize the barkeep, but that’s half the charm. Different barkeep every year. Harry’s been dead for a decade. Not by my hand of course. Liver disease.

Barkeep doesn’t wait for an order, just slops me a shot of whiskey. Guess if you’re not drinking whiskey, you’re in the wrong place. I gesture for him to the leave the bottle.

Twenty-five years. Damn. I was fresh out of the service. Signed up with the Security Council right off the transport. Lotta guys did that. Apparently, if you had a knack for not ending up dead, they thought you’d make an okay detective.

Spent my first year bored senseless. Mostly cleaned up for the real hero types. They’d make the messes, get the glory, and leave all the dirty details for us civil servants. Don’t need a cape or a cowl to push a pencil, I guess.

One day, out of nowhere, this tall man with a narrow face and dark hollow eyes steps into my office and sits down in front of me. He puts his fingertips together and stares across at me for an uncomfortably long time. “Do you know who Genesis Jones is?” he asks.

“The hero?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says. “The hero.” He says it like he doesn’t have the patience to choose a better term.

“I read the papers,” I say.

“Of course you do.” He smiles. Not a happy smile. Just a joyless twisting around the corners of his thin little mouth. “Hypothetically speaking…” Again, like he’s avoiding a longer explanation. “If you had to kill Genesis Jones, how would do it?”

I blink at him, then mull it over.

“I knew this guy, back in the War,” I say. “Wasn’t much of a soldier, but he was handy in a machine shop.”

The man raises a slinky eyebrow.

“One time, he takes this hollow spike, ’bout a foot long, and rigs it to a handle with a pressurized tank of liquid nitrogen inside. Then he fixes up a trigger, so when you stick a guy… Pfft! Shatters him into ice-cubes.”

“It worked?”

I shrug. “He never got to use the thing. Took a slug in the face at Anzio. In any case, Jones has that super-fast healing thing, right? Papers say his body eats bullets. Freezing him good on the inside might slow things down. Enough to do some damage anyway.”

The man nods and rubs his chin. “I like it. Subtle, effective, and cheap. A single man could do it with minimal trouble.”

“A single man?” I lean back and fold my hands behind my head. “Any reason you wouldn’t get a Cape to do it? Or an army? We’re speakin’ hypothetically, right?”

He chooses his words carefully, like a man trying to dance a waltz through a minefield. “This society… is made up of many… interconnected elements. Actions made by some… cause… equal and opposite reactions by those inverse of them. Balance… is maintained through the actions and reactions of opposing forces.”

I frown at him. “The hell are you talking about? The world ‘aint a seesaw, it’s a food chain. We’re on the bottom, and people like Jones are at the top. Problems way up there get solved way up there.” I pull the morning paper out from my desk and toss it over to him. “You show me anything in there other than gods at war with gods. The only time us mortals make the news is when we get killed in the crossfire.”

He smiles, his sad little smile. “Making the news is exactly what we wish to avoid.” He slips to his feet and turns to go. “You’re quick,” he says, looking back. “Answers should come easy for you. Provided you’re asking the right questions.” And then he was gone.

That’s how it started. Honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened after our first conversation. None of it seemed significant. Until a few nights later, there I was, standing face to face with Genesis Jones, staring into his wild eyes, freshly rigged nitro-spike clenched tight in my sweaty hand. As soon as I saw him, I knew something wasn’t right. He didn’t look like the pictures I saw in the papers. He was clutching the broken body of a little girl close to him, like a kid clinging to a rag doll. I don’t know, some guys have a bad reaction to the Victus Serum after prolonged use. They never told me what made him like that.

I lunged at him, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t let her go. I stuck him low in the gut and the liquid nitrogen instantly froze a good sized chunk out of his inner organs. Death was slow and painful, but he didn’t make a sound. Didn’t move. Held that kid close until the end.

That’s what I remember down here at Harry’s. I remember why they need me to do what I do. That the world needs to keep looking up in the sky for heroes, so nobody sees what dirty things are happening below its feet. And I remember how mortal it makes you feel when a man takes down a god.

(First published by 365tomorrows.com)

You might call it fear. When your knee gives out on the stairs, suddenly, without warning. Gravity snaps its jaws around you and rips you from a passive illusion of self-control straight to the floor. An immediate awareness of potential damage momentarily consumes your senses. A list of injuries you could likely incur flashes vividly across your consciousness. But it’s not the threat of pain that triggers this deep feeling of dread within you. The impact isn’t even that bad. Your reflexes hold out. Your arms snap forward, instinctively, and your hands take the brunt of the fall.
No, it’s that sensation you feel as you collect yourself, slowly regain your sense of balance, and tentatively lurch back to your feet. A sensation of betrayal. Your body for a moment felt foreign, and your trust in it is now shaken. You think to yourself that it’s odd to let a certain distance from the floor ultimately dictate your sense of personal stability.
You’ll get it taken care of. In the morning, you’ll call and make an appointment. They’ll fix you up. Like always.
The next day, however, Dr. Apatox seems less than optimistic. “I can’t fix this,” he says, trying to make eye contact with you.
“I’m not looking for original parts from the manufacturer,” you say, half joking, eyes firmly fixed on your problematic knee. “I’ll be fine with something printed. I have the CAD files if you need them. They’re open source.”
“They’re open source because Armaturion hasn’t existed for sixty years.” Dr. Apatox sighs. “You’re one of, what, a dozen or so original transfers still living? You’re the only one I know who is still operating with an exclusively biological CNS. Honestly, you’re probably the only adult patient I have who doesn’t have some kind of integrated neural assistance.”
“It’s the relays.” You’re not really listening to him. “I should have paid a little extra for better ones.”
“It’s not the relays.”
“The ports then.” You nod to yourself, certain that’s it.
“It’s not the ports. There’s nothing wrong with your hardware. Look at me.”
You let your head sink away from him, stare instead down at the floor. Firmly, you press your feet into it, reassured by its solidity.
“The human brain was never built to withstand this kind of constant long term strain,” presses Dr. Apatox, relentlessly. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I can’t keep cobbling together mechanical solutions for what has become a systemically biological problem. We are at the point where we either import your consciousness to something more stable, or you end up trapped in this chassis, unable to move or speak, waiting for what’s left of your brain tissue to give out.”
“It’s just a bad knee,” you insist.
“This isn’t anything to be afraid of. Imports are seamless, completely safe, and one hundred percent reliable. We map every pathway, every placement of every brain cell, and perfectly recreate the fabric of your individual being inside a durable synthetic matrix.”
You lift one heel, then try to lift the other. It remains planted. “If…” You hesitate. “If I wrote down every memory, every detail of every experience I’ve ever had… Would that be me? Is that all I am?” Dr. Apatox starts to reply, but you stop him with a shake of your head. You move to rise to your feet, but your knee gives out again. The floor comes rushing at you, but this time your reflexes aren’t fast enough. Your head hits the edge of the counter and everything goes black.

(First published by 365tomorrows.com)

It was a good arm. You’re cognitive its loss will have negative effects. Absently, you work the fingers on your remaining appendage, one after the other. You seem to control a decent amount of movement and function. You ignore the barrage of internal damage reports cascading through your peripherals. There’s no time to process them anyway. A reflex prompt pulses through your chassis, jerking you upright. The command display reads, “Get up.” Tabbed beneath is the notation, “Incoming fire.”

Bullets shred the concrete pillar beside you. Bits of it spatter your nano-tube plating as you scramble away. You move fast, trying to stay low, but a round catches you in the leg. More damage reports. They can wait. You can still move, and right now, that’s all that matters. A tactical subroutine automatically calculates the trajectory of bullets, concluding the shots are originating from an elevated vantage point. Red target markers pop into your optical display, indicating the position of your attacker, on a rooftop across the courtyard. It occurs to you one of the things you miss most about the arm you lost is the very large gun it was holding.

A logic trigger recalls one of the internal damage reports you ignored earlier. This time, you glance through it. Struck by a high-velocity projectile, it states. Catastrophic structural failure, from shoulder to elbow. Severed connectivity from the rest of your frame. The impact knocked you to the ground. Yes, all that was obvious the moment it happened. Wait. Shoulder to the elbow joint were destroyed. Which means, nudges the logic trigger, everything else, including the very large gun, likely remains intact.

A bullet cracks into your left side, spinning you around and slamming you to the ground. Warning tags explode across your primary display, informing you that your lower extremities are currently offline. Yes, you are aware. Flat on your back, you watch, helpless, as your feet, then your legs, are chewed apart by gunfire. You claw at the rubble beneath you, attempting to drag yourself to safety, but before you can make any progress, the shooting stops. Confused, you look up and see squat little building is now obscuring your attacker’s path of fire. Mostly obscuring, you think, looking down at the wreckage that was once your legs.

A tactical subroutine estimates the amount of time it will take the shooter to relocate. You have at most four seconds before it can cross over to the next building and reestablish a line of sight. Quickly, you cast a signal out for the gun. To your surprise, it pings back instantly. You trigger its mobility function and wait. A second later you see it skittering towards you, its spindly legs frantically stabbing at the ground, propelling it forward. You raise your remaining arm, directing it to to the precise point where your attacker will come into view. At full tilt, the gun stutters around to match the angle, then leaps. It glides in a perfect arc towards your hand. At the same time, you see a combat sniper machine land gracefully on the rooftop directly in front of you. Reflexively, your hand goes to clench around the grip of the gun. As it does, a hand/eye sync error blips into your peripherals. Your fingers close a fraction of a second too soon. The gun deflects off of your hand and tumbles away, its spindly legs flailing wildly. “I never had sync errors with my good arm,” is the last information to flash through your central processor before a bullet shatters it into a thousand pieces.

With his eyes closed, he can see it perfectly. It rests in his mind, distinct against a void of any other conscious thought. Carefully, he explores the graceful curvature of its outer edge. Its form is simple, and in its simplicity he can understand how common it might seem. Even so, there is a purity to it that feels almost godlike. Holy. Consecrated. 

Intently, he concentrates, moving it deliberately in his mind’s eye until he can perceive its entirety. Its exact symmetry consumes his imagination. For a moment, he holds it there, frozen. Then he opens his eyes.

The stylus feels awkward and brutish in his hand. He tightens his grip. He flexes his wrist. He tilts his elbow, first up, then down. He rolls his shoulder in its socket. Unconsciously, he pulls air into his lungs, until his chest is full, then slowly he lets it all spill back out.

He touches the stylus to the screen.

Wrong. Horribly wrong. 

He jerks it away and angrily swipes at the single mark left behind. At his touch, the blemish vanishes.

Again, he steadies himself. Tightens his grip. Flexes his wrist. Tilts his elbow, up, then down. Rolls his shoulder. Gently this time, he touches the stylus once more to the screen.

No. He sighs and resists the urge to throw the stylus across the room. Instead, he keeps it pressed firmly against the screen and forces himself to finish. He drags it around to the left, then down, then back up to the point where he started. He lifts his hand and stares down in disgust. Utterly unacceptable. The shape is bent, bulging to one side, starting out too severe and ending too shallow. Unforgivably asymmetrical. Even the line is distorted. It wavers in uncertainty, from beginning to end.     

“Nevin…” Her voice is soft, but he still jolts when he hears it. He thought she would be gone longer. He hadn’t heard her come in, but that wasn’t unusual. The grace of her movements always took him by surprise. 

“What are you doing?” she asks. It’s not a question. More like an icon for a conversation, one they’ve been having a lot lately. 

Without looking back, he reaches for her. She was already leaning over, wrapping her arms around him. He could feel the softness of her cheek slide down against his. Awkwardly, he puts his hand on her shoulder, realizing he’s still holding the stylus. 

“It’s not like I could draw a decent circle with my right hand.” He shrugs, and feels his shoulder push into her. “Before, I mean.” He leans forward and stabs at the screen, his movement wavering, the new line curving outside and back.

She gently reaches up and takes the stylus from him. She slides her fingertips across the display, wiping it clean, and in the same motion moves the stylus over into his right hand. 

“Try it now,” she says.

He looks down. The hand holding the stylus is not his own. The arm it’s attached to isn’t either. From his shoulder to his fingertips there is titanium, and wiring, and carbon fiber instead of flesh. 

He knows a conscious directive is all the prosthetic needs to realize the shape into being. The instant his intention to act flickers through his nervous system the applied AI will process his neural activity into a model of predicted behavior and initiate a correlative response to the myriad of intricate servos woven throughout the artificial limb. In turn, the thousands of sensors embedded in the joints and fingertips will send back a cascade of carefully orchestrated stimuli, effectively mimicking the complex call and response of organic motor function. He remembers one of the technicians at the clinic telling him, with some pride, that they were down to a point zero, nineteen percent error margin.

“I can’t,” he says, unmoving. The stylus remains, still and lifeless in the grip of his artificial hand.

She breathes warm air down the side of his face, her patience silent and indescribably oppressive.    

Instead of stumbling through an explanation, he lets his mind sink back to a moment a few months ago, the memory enveloping him like slipping into a lukewarm bath. The sensation is  not pleasant or soothing, but decidedly present and inescapable.  

He’s a week out of surgery. His therapist sits with him in one of the clinic’s consultation rooms. 

“With trauma,” she is saying, her words methodically gentle. “We often expect the healing process to be restorative, rather than adaptive.” She sips her tea, mint and ginger. “We evaluate the extent of our recovery by how close it returns us to our previous perception of normalcy, rather than a sense of equilibrium.”

His cup of coffee rests awkwardly on his leg, the fingertips of his left hand pressed against the rim, holding it in place. He stares down at the dark splotches above his knee where he spilled a few drops earlier. They had been scalding at first, but now felt cool and wet against his skin.     

“The goal after losing a leg should be the return of mobility, not necessarily the return of the actual leg.” She sets her tea on the stand beside her and gathers her tablet. “When we are unwilling to recognize alternative definitions of wellbeing, we may leave significant progress unrealized.”  

Back at his desk, he closes his eyes and for a few heartbeats he is lost in the process of forming words. He wants to make her understand. He wants to be understood. The possibility of it glimmers briefly, somewhere in what his therapist had told him. If he could somehow wrap what she said around what he wants, what he’s trying to do, and why…

“It’s not about the circle,” he says.

Wrong. Horribly wrong. He can feel it in the forgiving calmness that falls through her as she pulls away. He knows he should try again. Instead, he swipes a dismissive hand at the screen, even though there’s nothing there.