Schrӧdinger Can’t Save My Grandmother

by Michelle Koubek

I’m supposed to let my grandmother out of her cube today. She’s been in there for ten months alone. I’m not sure what I’ll find when I open the door. Her environmental conditions suggest she could be alive, but that doesn’t mean she is.

I didn’t know my paternal grandmother well before the event. I can’t say that I know her better now, although it feels like I do. Sitting beside a cube of alloy day after day for months, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring my grandmother’s home. It was the best way to entertain myself as the cube hummed in the center of her living room like a mechanical grist of bees. It’s not like I could talk to her through those carefully fabricated walls that kept her safe.

The photo albums are what I have gone over the most with smiling visages of an era before I was born. I’ve discovered through them that my grandmother is full-blooded, bold, and occasionally dramatic. I’ve seen a lot of photographs, but one sums all of this up. Her, standing behind my father as a little boy, arms crossed but smiling like a vagabond as she trips my late grandfather with a stockinged toe. I think that we could be friends if she comes out.

I’m supposed to let my grandmother out of her cube today, but there’s been reports that give me pause. Not everyone is still breathing when the door to the cube is opened.

Some people, and possibly my grandmother, haven’t survived.

The Promposal

by Lori Sambol Brody

A large moth dives toward us, tracers in its wake, and Autumn, so dramatic, screeches. I’ve known River since pre-school at the synagogue; he’s the son of Rabbi Mike and Cantor Dovid. At his bar mitzvah, everyone threw Sunkist fruit gems at him for a sweet life. I tossed a lemon gem at him, so he’d notice me, but the candy fell at his feet. It was not my fruit gem that he had unwrapped and laid on his tongue, but someone else’s candy.

“Oh, let’s practice Jane’s promposal!” Autumn says.

“Let’s don’t.” I already have an idea, but it’s so dumb.

“You’ll be less nervous if you practice.”

“Come on, Jane,” Reem says. And they start to chant my name.

Propelled by the rhythm of their chant, I stand up. The ground undulates like the ocean; whorls on the oak bark form into faces. Roots jut from the base of the oak and dive into the soil. One thin root’s texture is more like skin than bark and resembles a forearm, with a bend for an elbow.

I kneel by the root.

Autumn gasps, “That root is weird—”

Jenni, Who Might Have Been

by Sandra Skalski

Deidra knew Jenni wasn’t real, but she spent time with her every day.

On what would have been Jenni’s third birthday, Deidra added segments from chromosome four and nine to the Jenni simulation. The software melded age-progression AI, Genomic Circles animations, and her own DNA coding. While the new inserts compiled, she wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into stiff fingers. Bits of sunlight slipped through the kitchen window, and the first birds of the morning began their songs. She stared at the spinning wheel on the screen. Somewhere within the pluses and minuses of the code, images formed of her beautiful child.

A soft chime told her the program was complete. Hands trembling, Deidra set the tablet on the dining room table and initiated the simulation. She drew the curtain to block out the light. As she took a seat at the end of the table, the birthday party hologram solidified. Jenni sat in the center, composed of advanced entertainment software, DNA, and bits of dust.

Jenni rests her chin on folded hands as a gaggle of boys and girls sing “Happy Birthday” out of tune. A sprinkle of Frank’s freckles adds spice to her brown nose, but she has her mama’s honey-brown eyes and tight coils. As the last notes fade, she inhales until her cheeks puff like a chipmunk, then blows until the candles sputter and die. Laughing, she claps her hands and catches her mama’s eye.

Deidra’s breath caught. Her precious child blew out her birthday candles. She reached into the hologram and brushed Jenni’s cheek.

Ich Bin en Zombie

by Richard Zwicker

In a deserted apple orchard, the gaunt zombie’s rotting hand clamped onto the shoulder of the scantily clad, well-endowed young woman. Her scream liberated an apple.

“Ramona,” wheezed the zombie, “my love for you overwhelms my desire to eat your flesh.”

Ramona’s face twisted in disgust.

“Cut!” yelled Santiago, the director, pulling a few hairs out of his patchy black beard. He approached his star with the slow gravity of a manager walking to the mound after his pitcher just gave up back-to-back homeruns. “Emmanuel, that’s not your line.”

Emmanuel scratched his forehead, pieces of skin falling to the ground. “You said we could ad-lib if we felt inspired and it improved the script.”

So Many Dying Stars

by Robert Nazar Arjoyan

This place used to be an aquarium. Remember my dad telling me his parents brought him here when he was five, their first road trip up the coast. Said his dad sat across the street while Grandma took him to see eels and sharks. Wonder if I’m sitting where Grandpa was seated. Wonder how he’d feel if Dad went in five and returned a grown man.

Wonder how I’m gonna feel.

Harry’s five now too, same age as Dad was, same place as Dad was, only it isn’t an aquarium anymore.

Folks like me mill about as I try to create memories that won’t ever be, milestones compressed into minutes. So Harry will just know how to shave somehow? Or the ability to drive a car will be burned in? His drum kit’s gonna be too small, and he was really starting to get that hi-hat snare combo down. How about talking to girls, or boys, if that’s what he’s into?

These landmarks he’ll bypass.

The Fickle Favor of the Fae

by Julie Brydon

Kelsey turned her head, suppressing a sneeze. The telltale tickle in her sinuses was the downside of regular rolls in the hay.

Beneath her, Wanda giggled, gazing up with those big blue eyes. “Oh, sweetie.” She plucked a stray piece of hay from Kelsey’s short copper hair. Never mind that there was so much straw in Wanda’s own long golden hair that she could easily pass for a scarecrow. “I wish we could move this to my bed.”

Kelsey wished that too. The few trysts they’d snuck in Wanda’s room—sweet stolen moments while her father was away—had been wonderful. But the risk was too great. If Mr. Decker caught them together, he’d fire Kelsey and throw her out on the streets without a second thought. And who would hire a cook who’d shagged their previous employer’s daughter?

At best, he’d cast Wanda out as well. At worst . . .

Kelsey would never see Wanda again. The thought chilled Kelsey to the bone.

Opened by Fire

by Robin Cassini

Thunder still roared overhead. They might be overwhelmed soon.

“United Methodist Church!” Bill shouted.

“What?”

Bill pointed to the map on the Jeep’s dashboard. “There’s a big lawn there! They host soccer games in August. They keep it irrigated; grass will be green!”

Eddy swerved between two abandoned sedans. “Got it!”

Most of Etna had the same idea. Eddy gave up on dodging traffic once they were a block away from the church. She helped Bill out of the passenger seat. “Can you run?”

Bill glared at her. “Ain’t dead yet!”

They ran, jostling elbows with panicking families. Eddy stalled to help a four-year-old back onto her feet.

An Unfamiliar Face

by Russell Giles

“It must work.”

Ethel rearranged the unlit firelogs for the seventh time.

“It simply must.”

The eighth time. And the ninth.

“By the gods, let it work!”

While the sun peeked through the forest grove in pollen-hazed shafts, Ethel began the most important spell she had ever attempted; possibly the most important spell she would ever attempt. Her materials spread on the moldering trunk of a fallen tree, she tallied everything to be certain, absolutely certain, that nothing had been missed.

There were the specific plants of specific purpose; licorice root that can spur a life, blackberries that can sustain it, and berries of nightshade and yew that can easily end one. Beside them sat a linen pouch filled with her own milk-teeth, every last one. There were vials of water from a dozen wells and one, some more brackish than others. A silver pestle with an oaken handle came next. Wood for the fire (a single log each of hawthorn, ash, and spruce) was rearranged for the tenth time. Lastly laid a heavy pot, cast of iron and never before used, in which to combine it all.

The sun reached its height, sending beams down in vertical bars. Ethel sparked the fire and positioned the pot, constantly referring to the book beside her for proper placement and order. With the pestle, she crushed the teeth one by one, starting with the incisors. She poured the vials of water in a set order, precise and prescribed, occasionally placing a palmful of berries into the mix. She repeated the process until the reagents were depleted. At the crushing of the final tooth, she chanted ancient words of unknown meaning. Having rehearsed them by rote for years, she had no difficulty in the reciting; seven times forward and seven times back, just as the book prescribed. She punctuated the final syllable with a clang on the pot from the silver handle of the pestle.

The sound dissipated quickly in the forest, absorbed by the trees and the unseen things that dwelt among them. Ethel cleared her throat.

“Hello?” she said aloud, tensely timid. “Did it work? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

The Clamour of Silence

by Christian Fiachra Stevens

You should have heard it: the sounds the world made when those images came through. Not the initial grainy pictures that loaded in at first. They were always grainy at first. You could count the pixels on those ones easily enough. No, only the usual nutters whirled up a stir when those ones popped up on the ultra-niche threads online. Those that slept in tinfoil and rubbed mercury across their temples. No one really paid attention to those murmurings until the next set landed in our laps, more defined and sleeker. That made people pause for real. You could see the clear, manufactured edges. And despite the erosion of time having played a heavy part in covering them up, as the rovers dug deeper, and carefully brushed away the debris, the reality was clear as day.

Ruins on Mars.

All Rabbits in a Hat

by Bri Castagnozzi

Laiza had fourteen other rabbits to contain at the house on the lip of the bayou. Many were the white, red-eyed kind whose ancestors had once been used for testing. Some might still remember the pinch of a needle the way your grandmother’s suffering has a way of finding you in a dream. No one ever wanted the red-eyed whites, and no one could ever return the looks they’d give. Like they wished you’d become unborn.

Milagros was the only person who could bear and dish the gaze of white rabbits. At nearly ninety-six, she was always there to return their wild eyes, red around the rims. Laiza thought it good to help her. It had been the fifteenth week in a row without rain, and the rabbits were fitful.

“It’ll rain again. A fog is coming,” Laiza said to a big white buck. His spine was stiff, the tail pumping. Rabbits do not bare their teeth, but you would know their fear heartily if you tended to over twenty of them for six days in a row. Laiza huffed with effort. Her knees hurt, crouching close to the ground like that. Sometimes, knees retire at the young age of forty-one.

She ought to check on Milagros.

She left the remaining rabbits on the patio. Laiza had come to visit Milagros last week out of concern; Louisiana had been generous with its water rationing, but Laiza didn’t know if Milagros’ rabbits required more.

The old woman was sitting up in bed, eyes closed. The house was slouching into its years, but the mending men would come by soon to pour new lime clast concrete as they’d done for the rest of the state’s geriatric architecture. She faced the nearest wall, where a television stand hosted a bowl of duckweed and pond water and a single lamp. Milagros couldn’t stand televisions on account of her migraines, which, as Laiza had found out, stood for almost all her personality.

“It’s raining somewhere close. Georgia, I think,” she said. Her skeletal fingers prodded the base of her neck. “Oh, yeah. Georgia is getting rain.” Her eyes peeled open. “Laiz? That you?”

She stood, swaying predictably; she caught herself on her walking cane and Laiza stood there, feeling silly with open arms.

“It’s me.”

The room smelled of jasmine perfume and old Bibles written in Tagalog that Milagros mentioned she had never read. A vacuum machine scuttled across the floor, beeping loudly at her ankles. She looked down slowly and swayed. Her robotic cane contorted with her, shifting and gliding to accommodate her meager weight. She blinked.

“Laiza!”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you want me to make groceries?”

Man of War

by M.F. Higgs

In the last few seconds of his life, Emmett didn’t recall the wars he’d fought in, the countless planets he’d touched down on, or even the woman he’d given the best part of his life to. None of that. Only a little boy clutching the hand of his dying mother, like he was leading her to something beyond this world.

Wing Commander Emmett Engel dipped the fighter low across the dunes, banking a hard right while keeping under detection level. Thruster bursts boomed over the dunes as his squadron broke formation, choosing separate vectors back to the mothership. “Desert Eagle” was the handle they’d given him, but to the enemy on Tyneeria, he was Shaitan, “The Sand Devil.”

Ninety-eight percent accuracy rate, who could argue with that? His three-hundredth successful drop. Every confirmed kill was a step closer to the endgame, to securing the safety of the settlements on this dustbowl of a planet.

He looked at the picture of his wife, Amelia, pinned to the cockpit for good luck. In the picture, she stood with her parents on their farm, her father dressed in his military uniform. He could hear his father-in-law’s voice as clearly as if he were in the cockpit next to him. “Freedom comes from men like us, willing to fight so others can sleep soundly. War, boy, it’s not just necessary—it’s inevitable.”

Like an apparition from a mirage, Emmett saw it: a blur against the horizon, a solitary figure standing atop a dune directly in his line of sight. Within a second, he’d marked the danger, but perhaps a second too late. The insurgent fired, a missile snaking its way through the air in an erratic trajectory. It was a one-in-a-million shot—impossible, according to command—yet the impact was unmistakable.