The Solution

THE SOLUTION
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The blind date had been a bust so far. What was Susan thinking when she set him up with her sister, Amelia? They'd been through the weather (twice), making fun of Susan, and their jobs. What the hell happened to that appetizer? Phillip searched for a third angle on the weather while Amelia busted out with: "When God blinks, the Universe shuts down." So much for small talk.

"Well, things seem to be going along fairly well," Phillip said, playing with his fork. He couldn't work up the nerve to make dancing legs out of his flatware. "I suppose he's had his eyes open for quite some time now."

"No, not at all. It all comes back when he reopens them."

"Are there . . . fluctuations?" It was a little nutty, but it was better than staring at the candle.

"Not that we'd notice," she said. "It's generally a smooth transition. Everything picks up pretty much where it left off."

"How do you know that it happens at all, then?"

"You've just got to have faith. There are clues, though."

"Like?"

"Like, you know how your milk sometimes goes a bit funny before the expiration date? That's God's blinking that does that."

And in that moment, Phillip found his life transformed. He thought of the milk he poured into the sink just this morning, cursing it all the way down the drain. He'd desperately needed his Fruity Pebbles and everything at work had gone wrong because of this lack.

"My God, Amelia! We've got to do something about this!"

"Like what? How in the world could we ever keep God from blinking?"

"We can't keep him from blinking, that much is obvious, but maybe we can encourage him to blink less."

"How?"

"Saline solution."

#

Where do you look to find God's eyes? Shoot a rocket into space? Astronomers had confirmed long ago that if God was in any physical location above the Earth, it wasn't anywhere we could reach in a lifetime or even twenty. If they weren't going to give up before they even began, Phillip and Amelia had to work from the "God is everywhere" school of thought. They created a huge saline diffuser and attached it to the back of Phillip's restored El Camino. They drove up the California highway spraying as they went. Things got a little better. Phillip's milk seemed to last a day or two more than it used to.

They filled their holding tanks for a second time as Phillip's next revelation came to him. He grabbed Amelia by the shoulders.

"Amelia, do you trust me?" he asked.

"Well, yeah, sure," she said. They'd been working on Project: Cosmic Redeye for two months by that point and she realized that her sister was right to set them up on that blind date. The two of them meshed.

"We need to go to Israel," he said.

"What?"

"Think of it: How happy are you when you get sand in your eye?"

"Not very."

"Exactly. You think it's a coincidence that there's all that sand in the Middle East and all that fighting? God's irate, baby, and it's up to us to fix him up!"

"I'm with you," she said.

Phillip traded the El Camino for a sweet dune buggy and the two of them roamed the sands of the Fertile Crescent, spraying everything they saw with their solution. The violence didn't stop but it certainly eased up and six months later there was hope for serious peace talks for the first time in years. Phillip and Amelia had a celebratory dinner at a decent restaurant. They couldn't afford anything too fancy as their work didn't bring them any money. After dessert, Amelia became serious.

"Phillip, what if this only lasts as long as we spray? Who's going to carry on our work? Everyone thinks we're insane."

"I've been thinking about that also, Amelia." He took her hand. "We could pass the torch on to our children."

"Our children?"

"Marry me, Amelia." Phillip wasn't nervous in the least. He'd eaten his Fruity Pebbles this morning. There was only one thing she could say.

A Hard Rain

A HARD RAIN
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The clouds rolled in fast, heavy and dark, and caught them in the country far from any shelter they knew. Jake found an abandoned barn and he and David pulled open the enormous door just as the first drops were starting to fall. By the time they got back in the car, the rain was already stinging. Inside the barn, they stayed in the car, Jake covered with sweat with the air conditioner on.

"You're getting old, Dad," David said. "The door wasn't that heavy."

"It's not the door. This is serious stuff here, kid. I don't want to scare you, but I don't want to bullshit you either. We may not make it."

"You serious?"

"You saw that sky. This could be a long, hard rain. We've got the barn and the car, but it's been getting worse." The news was filled with stories, each day, more horrific than the last. No one could explain why the New Rains began. Why should they be able to explain why they got worse?

They heard something small crack against the roof of the car. David jumped.

"You saw the door," Jake said. "The thing was covered with pin holes. This old barn has seen a few storms."

"Is there metal in it? The New Rain? It sounded like metal."

"No. Just water, but it's falling a lot harder than it should. Gravity doesn't pull down rain like this. Listen, I'm sorry I haven't been a great dad."

"You've been great." More raindrops hit the car now, too many holes in the barn's roof.

"No. I haven't spent the time with you that I should have."

"You're busy."

"I'm not really busy. I just can't bring myself to get into the stuff you like. I'm too selfish, son. I'm too concerned with trying to get my life together when I should - Don't look up! Cover your head with your jacket." There were strange lines on the wet windshield. It took Jake a minute to realize they were tiny spiderweb cracks.

"I'm sorry for all the times I was bad, Dad." David's voice was quivering.

"You were fine, don't worry about it! You were just being a kid. I couldn't be more proud of you."

Outside sounded like gunfire. There was a massive groan of tired wood followed by a crash that made them both jump. A few yards away, a chunk of the barn's roof had fallen in, about four feet by six feet of rain riddled planks. Jake dove out of the car.

"What are you doing!" David yelled, muffled when the car door slammed shut. "Dad! Dad!"

Jake's head was covered but his hands were bare. He grabbed the piece of roof a dragged it to the car. His hands were on fire. He hauled the wood onto the car without looking up and dove back into the vehicle. David's face was wet, but he wasn't hurt.

"You all right? You're bleeding!"

Jake looked at his hands, covered in blood, wiggled his fingers. Everything was still working.

"I'm fine. Just broke the skin. A little bleeding's good for my high blood pressure anyway. I feel better already." They both laughed and Jake wrapped him arms around his son.

"Don't do that again," David said.

"I bought us a few more minutes."

The gunfire eased up and dim light came in through the barn's roof. In a few minutes, the rain passed. They stared out the windows until the it was bright again.

"We made it," David said. Jake fell back into his seat with folded arms, tucking his hands beneath his armpits. David bent forward, burying his face in his hands. For a few minutes, they couldn't move.

Road Rage

ROAD RAGE
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The highway was wide and vast, stretching across the state. By the time it had reached adulthood some five years after groundbreaking, State Road 7 had had enough of the crushing vehicles which wore it to dust. It shrugged off its fillings and wore its pothole wounds with pride. The pain was worth it; traffic fell away a little when it refused any further patches.

Some of those who traveled the road in the dead of night found themselves lost in endless traffic circles or redirected into hellish wildernesses unprepared. When twelve highway workers disappeared in late April, word among the uneducated was that the road had become haunted. An Indian burial ground was blamed but none could be found.

Radicals came one night from off-road and planted explosives which tore the highway in two. S.R.7 drank up asphalt from its tributary roads and healed itself. Self-repair proved to be its undoing.

The humans cut off connection from any other roads, starving S.R.7 to death. They thought they had won but in fact the highway had gotten exactly what it always wanted. It spent its final days untrampled and free from its human masters. In peace, its once black arteries baked grey in the summer sun, its drying flesh crumbled.

A Little Black Bag

A LITTLE BLACK BAG
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Ahmed drew attention as soon as he entered the dusty shop. Bakr's shop was a known haunt of wizards and young men Ahmed's age would only run in and out and then only on a dare. Even that had stopped once Bakr hired the guard outside. But Ahmed showed the guard his purse to prove he didn't mean to waste anyone's time. He nosed about the place patiently while waiting for a tall, bald Assyrian in blue robes to finish his business and leave. The man paid in papers instead of gold which made Ahmed uncomfortable. He hated to look stupid. It had taken a month of research and questioning before he considered setting foot in Bakr's.

Once the Assyrian left, Bakr turned to Ahmed expectantly. "What do you seek, Ahmed?" That Bakr knew his name disturbed him not as it was the nature of this man and his patrons to trade in knowledge.

"Too young for a mage, too old for an apprentice, eh?" Ahmed said.

"Not exactly true. Your reputation grows, however. Much more growth and the Sultan may have your head."

"What have you heard?"

"You're a petty criminal, with visions of grandeur."

"I am a prophet! I am here to deliver the people from oppression!"

"You're here to deliver yourself to a bed of silken pillows and a stable of servants. Once your visions of luxury are within your hands the people could go to hell for all you care."

Ahmed took a step toward Bakr and immediately stepped back.

"You're not a complete fool then," Bakr said. "I have something for you." He pulled a jar down from a high shelf and broke the wax seal. Ahmed stayed back until Bakr pulled out a black bag with a drawstring. It wriggled.

"Look," Bakr said, opening the bag.

Ahmed imagined some venom spitting thing and stood his ground, but there was something else in there, powerful and glowing.

"What is it?"

"It is the power to give the people what you claim to want for them if you use it for that purpose."

"And if I use it for another purpose?"

"There will be more meat for the jackals. I won't weep." The shopkeeper stuck his fingers into the bag, ran them through countless dark, glowing glyphs. "You see? These give you the power to listen to voices of the dead, to speak to the yet unborn. They solidify thought and send your words across the land."

Ahmed came closer and dipped his fingers into the bag. Bakr spoke true. He was electrified with the power of the glyphs. Certainly they would give him the power to do everything that Bakr suggested and more. He threw his purse to the shopkeeper. Bakr threw it back.

"Your gold is dogshit here."

"It's all I have," Ahmed said.

"You're wrong. You are rich in years."

"How do you mean? I'm young compared to your clientele."

"Exactly," Bakr said. He pulled the bag from Ahmed and shook it before him. "The power to topple kingdoms for five years of your life."

Ahmed swallowed hard. The things that went on in the mystical depths of the city were too well worn by rumor for anyone not to take them seriously. If he took the bag, his life would indeed end five years sooner. Five years! But if he was truly rich in years and if he could topple kingdoms . . .

"Why would you sell this power to one such as me?"

"I'm not selling. I'm buying. This bag is a fair price for what I want."

"Very well." Ahmed made his decision and took the bag without another thought.

"A pleasure," Bakr said with a smile.

Ahmed held his bag close to his chest until he was far out on the edge of the city. Beneath a date tree he opened the little pouch. The glyphs that had been so beyond comprehension only a hour before, he now saw were sounds given form. They crawled over one another like insects in a hive and even seemed to couple every now and then to become something more. They made words!

He poured them into his hand and to his delight there seemed just as many in the bag as there were before. Unending words. Bakr was no scoundrel, not by any judgement. This was a power greater than he had seen held by any wizard. With these he could issue edicts. He could raise armies. He wrote words in the sand now to practice and play and watched his thoughts coalesce before his eyes.

What he saw terrified him. They weren't simply words, they were how he spoke. Inflections and idiosyncrasies. He could see his face there on the sand before him as anyone else would as well. Damn that shopkeeper to hell! The Sultan's soldiers would be on him in a night if he tried to implement his plans. He'd be executed before he got the slightest taste of power.

Five years! He'd thrown away five years of his life for a magic he couldn't use. Could he sell it? He didn't have the knowledge to take payment. Anyone wise enough to know how to give Ahmed their years of life would never be so foolish as to do it for these glyphs.

Could he get anyone else to use them in his place? Could he trust a person in that position? Everyone wanted their own power. The people, to a man, despised their lots in life. The damned Sultan, the damned wizards, the whole damned structure had them cowed.

There came footsteps in the sand behind him. Two beggars with knives approached. He was weaponless as well as a coward. With the path this night was taking Ahmed decided to throw himself to the inevitable. He put the bag of glyphs into the folds of his robes and withdrew his purse of gold.

"Come friends!" he said, shaking his hard-earned gold before them. "Fill your gullets tonight with mutton and wine!"

"Hold out your hands," one of them said. They looked puzzled by him and why wouldn't they be? He threw his gold at their feet.

"What's that in your hand?" the taller one asked.

"Oh, this?" Ahmed opened his fistful of glyphs to them. "This is power. Take it and enjoy."

The beggars seemed astounded and afraid, but they, too, felt the power and seemed to understand after a moment what it was they had found. Greedily they swept his hand clean and ran, actually forgetting his gold in their excitement.

Ahmed laughed, almost with joy at their discovery. Now men like that, lives so short and dirty and cheap, they had nothing to lose and the world to gain. It was perfect for them. The men who needed it the most. Of course.

Ahmed went into the filthiest parts of the city in darkness after stopping at his home to hide his gold. He felt generous but, as Bakr said, he wasn't a complete fool. The people who needed his power most were the least protected by the Sultan's guard, so Ahmed moved freely. His hand went in and out of his bag, sprinkling glyphs at the feet of the sick and destitute. These same people were also the ones desperate enough to take advantage of real power. Everyone would have power, not just the Sultan and the wizards. Ahmed would have his revolution.

Someone To Love

SOMEONE TO LOVE
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

A guy wasn't supposed to have the hots for his great-grandmother. But circumstances had left Poyo with no other options. For one thing, rejuvenation baths had given her the body of a twenty-year old. For another, he was related to everybody on the planet.

Too many people had died on the harrowing voyage of the generation starship, Botswana. The handful of survivors did what people do with one another and now that they'd arrived on Stuckey's World, everyone in the world was blood. Their population now numbered in the thousands, but most of them were clones. There were only twelve genetically distinct types.

"What's the problem," Sari asked, when he'd confided in her. "You've got six-hundred kids, and you can make six-hundred more, or even six thousand more if you like." She was a seventh generation clone of his mother, Elzhbieta and he worked with her in the chem labs. She made the world's supply of processed cheese food. He made crabs, the good kind of crabs, to stock the ocean that his uncle was working on.
"You don't understand," he said. "you weren't sexually conceived."

"That's your excuse for everything. Elitist crabshit!" She hadn't known what a bull was, you see. All she'd ever seen were cloned cows.

"No, this time, I really mean it," Poyo said. "Clone zygotes are manipulated to detest sex. I don't even know if you can have sex. The colonists thought this up long ago, to avoid a planet full of birth defects. They figured their bases were covered. They just never anticipated my situation."

The blue crab at his workstation was going to come out with seven extra legs. He flushed it and started on a new one. Poyo shook his head to clear it.

"Just don't make a baby, that's all." Sari said.

"That's not all. Humans avoid incest as a matter of course. It's socially ingrained, if not genetically ingrained."

"Why?"

"So we don't make babies!"

"So don't make a baby!"

"You don't understand."

"Crabshit!"

#

"I need someone, Anise," he finally confessed at his great-grandmother's breakfast table. Everything was white and sterile here, including her clothes. Overcompensation, he figured, for the filthy state to which the ship had reverted by the end. She must have given his problem some thought, because her expression didn't change.

"What if some woman fell out of the sky and solved your problems" she said. "Wouldn't your children have the same problem? Would you want to put them through what you're going through?"

"No," he said, surprised by the maturity of his answer. "So that's it, huh? Somebody's got to be last so I just take the hit for the whole race?"

"I'm sorry," she said, taking his hand.

"You're beautiful," he told her.

"Don't bring it there,' she said, and pulled her hand away.

"It's either that, or suicide, at this point."

Anise slapped him. "Too many people died so you could be here, Poyo."

"Is this what they wanted for me then? I'm going to die alone eventually. Why spend years suffering?"

"You'll get used to it. I've been widowed for nearly forty years now."

"So you're happy about that?"

"No, I'm not happy."

"Then you're not used to it. I can't do this anymore, Anise, I'm sorry." He turned to leave.

"Poyo!"

"What?" There were tears on his great-grandmother's face.

"God damn it! You look like him. I don't want to lose you again."

"There's six-hundred people out there who look the same as I do, Anise."

"They don't act like you. We made a mistake when we removed the sexual urge. We made another species, they're not really human. But what choice did we have? Stay with us and we'll rebuild the ship and we'll seek out other people."

"That'll take twenty years." he said. "What am I supposed to do in the meantime?"

"In the meantime. My soul rotted away a long time ago, Poyo. I've done some bad things. I've always done what I needed to do to keep us alive. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

"So in the meantime, you'll keep your mouth shut."

Tahiti Screams

TAHITI SCREAMS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The magazine had flopped open to an article about a small group of people who had formed an organization dedicated to eating Peruvian tree bark. Dennis glanced through this until he let the issue fall back down to the side table. Past the heads of other patients, he lost his eyes in the wood-paneled wall for a while and absorbed this bizarrest of articles.

"There are people who dedicate themselves to eating Peruvian tree bark," he murmured, "And here I sit in a waiting room trying to get approved for some new disease."

"I'm sorry?" said the red-headed woman to his right. She had corralled her little one between her outstretched legs, and only now that she looked at him did Dennis realize how very beautiful her eyes were.

"My God," he asked her, "What's wrong with this?"

"What's wrong with what?" she asked, drawing her daughter closer. He put his hand on her shoulder, very un-Dennis-like, and looked into her green eyes.

"I'll never see you again. Take care of yourself," he said. He left the woman and the office and took the grimy, yellow elevator down to the second floor. He took the stairs down from there.

Hard soles slapped the gritty concrete outside with a rhythm that brought his thoughts into line. All the heads on the street turned to face him, blown his way by a soft October breeze. Not a one looked familiar. He considered all the people he knew in the city and wondered if he had any unfinished business with any of them. Not a damned thing came to mind. His bills were paid, his obligations were met. The lint in his pockets felt bumpy on his fingertips. What about the women? Weren't there any, for the love of God, that he wanted to sleep with?

No, came the voice on a cool gale that wailed through his stomach. He wanted revenge on no one and felt sad for that. Thirty-three years and his life held no passion for him. No excitement, no romance, no sense of joy. Hell, not even hatred or jealousy or rage. Was something wrong with him, or was something wrong with his life?

Tahiti. The word flashed in his mind, no, the concept screamed through his flesh, unbidden. Dennis had a vision of a beautiful, bare-breasted Polynesian lovely sinking longingly into his arms after he had killed a shark with his bare hands. And he smiled. That could work. He hailed a cab. There was an old woman driving, wrapped in a babushka as if she had just arrived from Armenia. He flopped into her back seat with an eruption of dust and inhaled a mildewy stench like it was a grove of orange blossoms.

"Take me to Tahiti," he said. She pulled out onto the street.

"Let me tell you about the world," the cabbie said. "The world has just altered. You are at large within it and it has taken notice. No ordinary things will ever happen to you again."

"That's what I'm hoping for," he said.

She stopped to let a herd of goats cross at the intersection. While they waited she pointed out and up.

"Look," she beckoned. The spacescrapers of steel and blue glass had suddenly turned to pale yellow and dark red stone. Single pieces, as if towers of rock stood here from man's earliest ascension and he had carved these monoliths from within to be his structures. The faces beyond the vinyled car door were all black now. They floated above bodies long and thin which were draped in exotic, weird fashions. He drank in a woman whose face was pierced fifty times and who wore the thinnest of golden rings dripping from each puncture. A triangular sail of royal blue silk sprang from the collar of her dress and fluttered behind her head while the glittering rings waved in the autumn wind.

"You haven't looked before," the Armenian woman said to him in response to nothing he'd asked.

"I want to find my life, cabbie. I want to look around me and know that I'm really living. I want to make love to a magnificent woman in some out of the way bedroom overlooking the streets of Portugal. I want to feel comfortable with myself among strangers. I want to feel my blood pumping as the cold washes over me atop a mountain or on the open ocean. Help me, Cabbie." He capitalized it in his voice, decided that Cabbie was her name now. "For the love of everything that's sacred, help me. There's an extra ten in it for you."

She reached a thick, chewed-nail hand back over her shoulder and waited until he fished a ten-spot from his pocket and stuffed it into her greedy paw. After a glance, the bill disappeared between her legs. She stopped the cab in the middle of the road, shut the damned thing off, and turned, looked him straight in the eye and said:

"Will it. WILL IT!" Those red-rimmed eyes nearly popped from their sockets when she spoke.

He willed it.

And Dennis felt the change as if flipping a toggle switch. In one deep breath, he savored the feel of the air sweeping down his windpipe, over-filling his lungs before he let it rush out with a woooosh.

The thirty-three year-old man stepped from the vehicle, looking through the strange faces all about him. Within seconds, he felt the heat of contact in one smooth, round face. Dennis went to her, took her face in his hands and kissed her more passionately than he had any woman he had ever known. He was oblivious to her lady friend who cursed a red storm of protest. This woman in his arms kissed back, like he knew she would and after covering her long succulent neck with kisses, he pulled back, shivering, while she drew her long, orange fingernails down his chest and stomach.

"How do I call you?" he asked.

"Kirikiri," she sang, like a bird. He stepped back, not at all embarrassed by his raging erection and moved on through the crowd. He could kill sharks from this state of being. Of that there was no doubt.

The Fall Of The Soy Milkers

THE FALL OF THE SOY MILKERS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

It all started up with Pa losin' his left arm when the cow exploded. They said Carmelita was blowed up by terrorists from the Soy Milk Association who'd been in a tizzy ever since, through the miracles of modern day genetic manipulation, we was able to build a cow that was ninety percent udder. I seen the explosion and later on, whenever Pa complained about his gone arm, I'd say, "Well, Pa, I seen it happen and as slick as them soy milk people are, you was lucky you didn't lose that piece of upper, upper shoulder that Doc Opret was able to save." And when he realized he could beat me just as well with one arm, he seemed to be agreeable. I even got his revenge for him on top a' that.

Cuz you see, them soy milkers had stuck tiny pieces a' that bomb all over the grass. When Carmelita finally ate em all up, well they knitted theyselves together inside her and settled down near the bottom of her udder, and when Pa gave a tug for milk, it was like pullin' a pin out of a old-fashion hand grenade. It was damn near genius the way they pulled it off. I said to them soy milkers, "You people oughtta get outta the soy milkin' business and get into the cow-blowin'-up business cuz you finally found somethin' you're good at."

So they did. And then they went belly-up broke cuz about the only people that was interested in cow-blowin'-up was the soy milkers and they was all gone. Sure there was a couple a' chicken lovers that'd hire em but there wasn't hardly any a' them no longer since all the chickens had been blowed up by the Soy Chicken Association which was a much more together organization.

Yup.

Maisy Made Croutons

MAISY MADE CROUTONS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Maisy made croutons that could break your teeth. Her secret was to start with a nice, dense, unleavened bread, before toasting every last vestige of moisture from it. The dough may have had a little secret ingredient in it, too, bought in bulk at The Home Depot, but she liked a little crunch.

Maisy's salad brought turmoil to the congregation of the Southern Cross Baptist Church during their annual Memorial Day picnic. Twenty injuries and on a holiday. Tell me, where are going to find a dentist on a holiday? Those that ate around the croutons found her salad delightful.

Government men came to the door the next day and Maisy was afraid they were going to take her away. Instead they wanted to buy her recipe. It seems her croutons had what they called, "Defense Department Applications" or some such thing. It wasn't a lot of money they offered, but since they considered taking her away anyhow if she wasn't interested, it sounded quite generous. The money might have been enough to get Reynolds' old Dart out of the garage, too, so she took it.

After Congress okayed the funds, The Salads Against Terror program was implemented. Croutonic casualties amongst foreign brown people, combatants as well as civilians, at first threatened to swell the ranks of the enemy, but it turned out the extra roughage in their diets calmed everyone down a bit. In fact, once everyone learned to eat around the croutons, things were slightly better. You can't really argue with a good B.M. Maisy's illegitimate step-nephew, Conner, was a permanent Reservist and described, in numerous letters, the salad-induced decrease in attacks.

Maisy took credit for the whole thing.

We Became A Star

WE BECAME A STAR
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Jimmie and me upped that morning with no intention than stealing a bit of food for fun more than belly. Down the end of the long line of huts was a great tree, two hundred feet tall if a hand. We figured it was as good a day as any to make climb, but the air was thicker than ever had been. Good swimming air, and climbing was dirty work.

Top of the tree was a patriot package. War hadn't stopped by since dad was a lad, but the tree always seeded for the odd fugitive breaking from the killing. From up here we could see anything we ever knew. I broke open the huge egg of flexcrete with my BigKnuckle and we feasted in a little way on dried things and what might have been roots. There was some chewy boozy thing but Jimmie spat it out. I tried it and re-spat it. What we had was good enough for a fluffy head and maybe that's what gave us our new idea.

Looking upward forever, we felt the curve of the dark blue splotchy sky and it seemed right what they said, that the sky was a ceiling. It meant why we never felt the wind but we heard of it. Out down a ways we saw a fat lightbladder and Jimmie took the bandages from the egg.

"Might get dark up there," said he and kicked off like a shot to rope the slow glower. It was a bloated thing, fat with sap and as big as both our heads. Bright to make spots all over when we looked away. We were happy for the catch and swam up without another word. It might have been a day we swam, no knowing as the light was a constant dim. People were up there. Another world of tiny hanging huts and blue algae until you couldn't eat no more. We took it all in before we bumped our thick skulls on the roof of the world.

The sky was sticky and we set up a little place on it, tethering our lightbladder and seeing the other bladders we once knew were stars. It was prettyful forever. Above any war anyone ever known. Jimmie and me algae-stuffed our lightbladder to bursting almost. We thought to stay and we became the biggest star had ever been.

And So It Begins

AND SO IT BEGINS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

It was dusk when Sandra came out. Stanislav watched her against the light shining through the sliding glass doors, watched his wife's bare legs, still nice after twenty years of marriage. By the time she got to the green plastic picnic table his eyes were still focused where her legs were fifty feet ago.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know." And he didn't. God spoke to him eleven days ago, told him in twelve days the world was going to begin. What the hell do you do with information like that? "The world ends, everyone knows what to do," he said to Sandra. "Rape, steal, cry, scream, kick. People always say, if the world was ending what would you do? Who the heck asks, What would you do if the world was beginning?' What does that even mean?" He'd been asking these questions since he got the news.

"Didn't it already begin?" Sandra asked.

"That's what I said. But he seemed real sure of himself." At first, Stan wondered if he should tell anybody, he felt pretty stupid. But then they saw other people announcing that they'd gotten the same information from different sources: a fire hose, goat's entrails, Zeus Amon, and so forth. It was all over the news, but except for a few nutballs, the world at large wasn't buying it. Why should they?

"Maybe he meant it was going to end," Sandra offered.

"No, no. I didn't get that feeling at all from him. He wasn't pissed at all, it was like run of the mill stuff to him."

"I s'pose it would be." She slapped herself. "You ready to come in? The mosquitoes are coming out."

"Yeah, okay. I want to come back out at midnight, see if anything's happening."

"Okay."

They held hands on the way in, something they hadn't done in a long time.

"You suppose he's starting the day by our time zone?" she asked.

"I didn't think about that. Maybe " he stopped and looked at the sky.

"What is it?"

"The Jews. Doesn't their day start at sundown instead of midnight?"

"I don't know, maybe. You think God's Jewish?"

"Well, he was before he converted, right? The bible says so. Maybe he didn't adjust his clock." They both looked up at the sky again.

"Nothing's happening," she said.

"Awright. He must be on Christian Standard Time."

They went back out at midnight and stayed outside till dawn. At about eight, they both called out at their jobs. They ate breakfast and slept for some hours. In the early afternoon they looked out the window and then made love and fell asleep again. They watched the news until well into the next morning, when they were good and sure that the day had to be considered over by any reasonable person. They figured it was safe to decide that nothing had happened. They showered together, washing each other's backs. Stan insisted that he wash Sandra's front.

Back in bed, Stan said, "Oh, I get it," while staring at the ceiling. Sandra bolted up from a dead sleep.

"What? What was it?"

"Think about all the kids that were born yesterday. For them, the world began."

"Oh. But then the world ended for a lot of people yesterday, too."

"Yeah, but I'm sure I'm right about the baby thing. It's too perfect."

"Mm." Sandra fell back onto the bed and closed her eyes. She wiggled around a bit before taking a deep breath and stopping. "It could still be that nothing happened at all."

"There's that," Stan conceded.

"Course, the guy seemed so sure of himself."

High School Days

HIGH SCHOOL DAYS
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Everyone that knew them said that Zeke and Allison had chemistry, and it was true. Seventh period in Mr. Hodung's room. What everyone didn't know was that they were sweet on each other as well. For their one day anniversary, Zeke snuck the graviton collator out of the supply closet (yes, you're saying this sounds more like physics than chemistry and I'm sure it would have been called that when you were in school) and accumulated enough to mold a little kitty cat for Allison out of gravity.

It so happened that the gravitons he collected came mostly from beneath Ms. Thadeau. She floated to the gymnasium rafters during the pep rally. Everyone thought it was part of the show and agreed it was the best pep rally ever. Ms. Thadeau found some balloons and played with them until she was fished down by the Bat-Snarers club which met in the gym the following Wednesday. Their treasurer, Demetrius, gave her his pickle sandwich. She'd been famished even before she floated away. That night, the two of them made sweet, sweet love in her bungalow while they listened to Jethro Tull. The guys in the band felt terribly uncomfortable about the whole thing but they really needed the gig.

It was about this time that Allison's gravity cat tore through the wall during its five day binge of space-warping destruction. Not only did the little scamp destroy half of Ms. Thadeau's Avon decanter collection, but when it leapt through the lovers' adjacent abdomens, it prematurely pulled one of Ms. T's ova right down a fallopian tube.

The next month, right there in Calculus, Ms. Thadeau demanded that Zeke marry her and take responsibility for the child, as the whole thing had essentially been his fault. She also made him conjugate the verb currere (to traverse) thirty thousand times (Yes, sounds more like Latin than Calculus, but, again, that was in your day). Zeke, being a gentleman, agreed to everything, but his hand went useless after about fifty-seven hundred conjugations and he lived out his days playing piano pieces for the left hand. It was a pity that he hated the piano, but that's what he thought one was supposed to do in such circumstances.

Allison was heartbroken when Zeke left her. She demanded restitution for the destruction of her future marriage. The judge awarded her thirty broken Batmobile decanters of Avon shampoo and marriage to a very old, but still quite nimble Ian Anderson. No one came out of the whole business extremely happy (save for Ian), but hey, this is life, how many people do?

Besides Ian?

Homemade Heroes, Face One

HOMEMADE HEROES, FACE ONE
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Ja had been going for stretchy powers, initially. Mr. Fantastic, Plastic Man and the like. It was really the only power where you could be a super-hero and guarantee yourself a nice, big wang. Like so many kids in the late twentieth century picked up a guitar for the women, so many in the late twenty-first picked up powers. No one had achieved super-stretchiness yet but Ja figured he'd unlocked the secret.

One afternoon after he'd loaded class, he spent his graffiti money on twenty-thousand rubber bands. It took them three days to print out and tied up the whole house because his monkey-ass Giz-box was about three years old. ProxyMom was pissed, especially when the override worked about as well as everything else on the out-dated crapbox, but she'd see it his way when he put it to her as Mr. Plastastic. That was the best name his feeble mind could muster. When the printout was ready, Ja fused himself with the lot of them.

He didn't exactly get what he wanted, although he immediately tried to stretch his wang. It did seem bouncier than usual but it wouldn't hold its longer form. After ten minutes of attempting to bring his super-powers to their full potency he rolled over and fell asleep.

He found work holding papers together and securing the pony- and pig-tails of the poor. When he grew tired of the super-hero life, he went back to graffiti. Mr. Plastastic had only fought the forces of chaos for about nine months, but Ja's murals would forever after stretch just a little bit higher than anyone else's.

The Next Vampire Story

THE NEXT VAMPIRE STORY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

"We don't have much time," Van Helsing insisted as darkness approached. He clutched the young man's arm for emphasis. "There are things you need to know if you're going to survive till morning! Everything you thought you knew about vampires is wrong."

"You mean they don't suck blood?" Jimmy asked.

"Well, no. Of course they suck blood. They wouldn't be vampires if they didn't suck blood! I meant everything else."

"You can see them in a mirror, then?"

"No. You can't see them in a mirror."

"How about sunlight destroying them?"

"Yeah. Sunlight's pretty bad. But - -"

"Running water?" Jimmy asked.

Van Helsing put his hands on his hips. "For a provincial lad, you certainly seem to know a lot about vampires."

"Well, this is just basic stuff here, I mean everybody knows this."

"You lie! I've spent my life climbing mountains to find mystic tomes and tricking demons in contests to learn what I have! This is arcane stuff! How could everyone know about it?"

"You know, movies. The occasional novel or whatever. Scooby Doo."

"They make vampire movies?"

"Yeah. Only about a million of them over the past eighty-five years."

"I like documentaries," Van Helsing said in his defense.

"So, wait a minute," Jimmy said. "What did you figure I thought vampires were like?"

"Well, I assumed you bought into the old folktales and such. Vampires like ice cream, for instance. When they go dancing, they really hop more than they dance and they're mad about Hummel figurines. Vampires are skillful drywallers and when they gather together in the places of the dead they stage mock swordfights using Wiffle bats and garbage can lids."

"Where exactly did you grow up?" Jimmy asked.

"Long Island."

"You destroyed any vampires? Yet?"

Van Helsing looked at the sidewalk. "I gotta . . . I gotta couple of good leads. My cousin's ex-girlfriend, she just moved to Colorado. She's got this guy in her neighborhood." Van Helsing bent his fingers like claws. "Kinda creepy."

"You wanna come over for dinner?" Jimmy asked. "My mom's making spaghetti."

"Yeah. Yeah that'd be great. Garlic's always good, right?"

"We can cut through the park here."

"Okay. Do they have any documentaries on vampires, then?"

"I don't know of any. I think there's a documentary on the making of a vampire movie, though. I can check Netflix for the title if you'd like."

"Thanks. I'd appreciate that."

How A Telepathic Ladder Visits His Brother Across The Country

HOW A TELEPATHIC LADDER VISITS HIS BROTHER ACROSS THE COUNTRY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Sal took the ladder out of the garage and propped it against the west wall of the house. He had a notion of tinkering with the satellite dish to tweak out some of the jumbled screens they'd get once in a while. He was really trying to keep his mind off of food until suppertime. Once on the ladder, he called inside with his cellphone.

"Hello?" Geena said.

"Hey," Sal said to his wife. "Get Tommy on the phone, I need him to tell me the satellite strength."

"He hasn't come home yet. Why don't you come in, supper's done."

"That was fast. I'll see you in twelve seconds." Sal went inside to fill his belly with garlic bread and tortellini.

Some kids came running through the yard about a minute later and one knocked the ladder over with his outstretched hand. This, when Sal washed his hands. He didn't hear a thing.

Tommy came home and saw the ladder on the ground near the garbage can. He brought the ladder and the can to curb so he wouldn't have to get up early and catch the garbage pick-up in the morning.

Just before dark, Jerry Johnson drove by in his truck. He never could resist an abandoned ladder. Or an abandoned anything else. A quick test of the rungs and it was his.

"What the hell is that?" Porsche asked when he got back to the trailer. Like the trailer, she too had once been abandoned.

"Here in America, we call it a ladder," Jerry said.

"I told you, no more crap. You've already got a ladder and this place is tiny and junked up as it is!"

"It was free, though. Somebody was getting rid of it."

"You ever see The Burning Bed with Farrah?"

"Awright." Jerry brought the ladder over to Larry's, two lots down. Larry was going to a new job site tomorrow. Five bucks was a steal for Larry and at least Jerry could get a case of Milwaukee's Best Light out of the whole deal.

Larry brought the ladder to his new job the next day. You know the drill by now. It just goes on and on like this. I'm assuming you read the title. Suffice it to say that the ladder made it to California. His brother had a nice place with a swimming pool. They had some tea and watched some television. A little Scrabble and it was off to bed because our ladder had a long and exhausting trip.

They'd hit the strip joints the next night. His brother knew this place where they didn't use electric sanders. All the sanding was done by hand. Oh, baby! If he wasn't so tired . . .