Summon me, theurge or sorcerer, and ask your questions. I will tell you of my death, and the truth of all deaths: that they are small things we must all endure, and only as important as we make them. I lived for my family, and I chose to die for a father and his son. I have met both Magrius and Amandros in their own passage through the Graylands and I know that I chose well. Few in this world are given the blessing of choosing when and how they die. Fewer still are allowed to decide.
The Face in the Box
written by
Janey Bell
illustrated by
Bruce Brenneise
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Janey Bell is a Chicago writer native to Washington State who specializes in speculative fiction and playwriting. She earned her degree in fiction writing and playwriting from Columbia College Chicago in 2016 and is a 2011 California Arts Scholar. She placed third in the Writers of the Future Contest. Her work can be found in the upcoming edition of the literary magazine Hair Trigger and her first play Bobby Pin Girls opened in the fall of 2017. She has two cats.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Bruce Brenneise grew up in the countryside by Lake Michigan; nature and fantasy were two of his main interests from childhood. He continued to not-so-secretly focus on magic, monsters, and myths while studying scientific illustration at the University of Michigan. Pursuit of diverse environments and experiences led him around the world in search of artistic inspiration: a field sketching trip to Southern Africa, months amid ancient ruins of Anatolia, not to mention six years working and traveling throughout China and other parts of East Asia. The landscapes he has explored and the vistas one can only find in fiction are at the heart of Bruce’s current work as an illustrator and independent artist. He currently lives with his wife and carnivorous plants in Seattle.
The Face in the Box
1
The pieces of Skyturf slowly migrated across the light blue ceiling of atmosphere, avoiding one of the last true Earth farms; a sunflower field. Cara stood watching, eyes watering with dawn. She turned to wipe them, but when she looked up again, there was a lone Skyturf beginning to hover near the edge of her land. She squinted at it, trying to discern if it was going to block her sunflowers, or if it had slightly gone off course and was about to readjust itself.
The Skyturf didn’t turn, but chose instead to stop in the middle of her fields. It hung above her farm, high enough to be a nuisance, but low enough to avoid hovering ships and planes.
“Son of a bitch,” Cara said. It had taken nearly six years after her first purchase of the farm, but she had all the permits, all the paperwork, and not one of those Skyturfs were allowed to block her flowers, protected airspace, that was the deal. Her fields stretched out before her little bungalow, a sea of green and brown and brilliant gold petals, all gently rocking from side to side.
She would have to put in a complaint to the Skyturf monitor. Cara padded back inside, bare feet on smooth hardwood. She flipped on the lights in the kitchen, and they buzzed to life, sucking power from her solar array in the next field over. Her computer whirred to life. She called out to it while dumping out yesterday’s coffee into the sink.
“Activate. Request complaint. Skyturf Monitor. Sector 605,” Cara said, making the fresh pot.
“Ready when you are,” her computer chirped in a soft, girlish voice.
“Start message: Hi, Brent, it’s Cara Fischer, and I seem to have a tract of Skyturf blocking my sunnies. Could you see if a maintenance team can come out today and remove it? I think it’s malfunctioning. Thanks, Brent. End message.” Cara leaned against the counter while the coffee maker gurgled.
The message was sent, and she went to stand at the sink and look out the lace-draped window to the Skyturf above her farm. Its gray underbelly didn’t look any different from the other squares, the hundred foot squares of floating farmland that passed over the sky every day. It stayed put, while everything, the clouds, the other Skyturf, the sun, passed it by.
2
Cara stood on the edge of the Skyturf tract, waiting for the thrusters on her boots to cool before taking a look around. The field seemed pretty ordinary, long rows of scraggily cornstalks. It was quiet up here, except for the sound of the wind, which seemed to permeate everything it touched with its hollow cry. Cara shook herself a bit and stepped off the metal edge of the tract and into the dirt. She passed between the stalks, their blooms brushing over her head. The sun shone full-force now, and Brent hadn’t replied to her message, no matter how many times she’d checked.
The center of the field would have the tract’s computer, and perhaps something could be jury-rigged so that Cara could at least land the tract somewhere it wouldn’t be a nuisance. She counted off the rows as she went along, keeping her eyes ahead, not looking down to see that the dirt she was walking on was turning to bright green grass, dotted with wildflowers.
It wasn’t until a bumblebee lazily buzzed by that she noticed the stalks were farther and farther spaced out and ahead of her the rows were turning into lush, wild gardens. She breathed in the smells of pollen and grass and summer blooms and found herself in a clearing at the center of the field. A box with a screen sat on a raised area of dirt, overgrown with budding leaves and vines. The screen glowed white, even in the strengthening sunlight. The screen flickered.
“Who’s there? Who are you?” A distorted voice said. Cara stepped forward. The voice was small, childlike, but tinged with static and errors in the voice modulation. It came from the machine.
“Easy now, I’m just here for maintenance,” Cara said. She had never heard a voice like that from a Skyturf computer, let alone seen one completely overgrown. Nobody had inspected this thing for ages.
“Stay back! T-Tell me who you are.”
Cara held her hands up, palms forward. “I’m Cara. Who are you?” The screen flickered again, and certain pixels began to darken, forming what seemed to be a face. Eyes, nose, mouth, all relatively humanlike, but as with the voice, distorted and blurry.
“I don’t know,” the voice said, and the lips on the mouth moved with it.
“What’s your serial number?” Cara asked.
The eyes on the screen looked away. “I don’t want to tell you.”
Cara let out a long breath. “And why’s that?”
“You’ll send me back to the factory.”
“No,” Cara shook her head. “I just want you to leave my protected airspace, okay?”
The face suddenly smiled.
“You’re not going to report me?”
Cara tried to smile, but felt the shock of guilt hit her. It was too late for that.
“Of course not.”
The Face in the Box by Bruce Brenneise
“Okay!” The screen flickered, and the face faded away. The ground shifted beneath Cara’s feet, and her knees wobbled as the tract of Skyturf dropped in altitude, eventually floating to rest above a small marsh just north of Cara’s farm. The cornstalks shuddered with the adjustment, and several of them broke off into bent fingers. When the motion stopped, Cara walked up to the screen and touched the edge of it with her fingertips.
“Hello?”
But the face did not reappear.
3
The sunflowers had their faces turned west. Each tremble of the breeze sent their golden crowns bobbing. Sunflower seeds, like other once staples, had become scarce with the decimation of farmland, everything natural succumbing to urban development or sealed off for protection. Even the once-majestic national parks were no strangers to bulldozers, with a population that would not stop growing.
It was good money, but harder work than most other things, now that everything and everyone was either automated or medicated. Nothing to produce, nothing to worry about, nothing but progress. Progress, Cara would scoff, that looked an awful lot like stagnation.
/> Brent finally replied and promised that a crew would be out that evening to disassemble the Skyturf and return it to the factory. Cara’s fingers lingered over her keyboard as she contemplated telling him about the strange computer that seemed to fuse with the plants around it. She’d heard rumors of plants and computers (especially the experimental sort that got tossed around by the military) coming together to create strange mechanical living creatures, but that was all supposed to be rumors. Nothing but ghost stories made up by those who didn’t approve of using living tissue in super computers.
But this was something else entirely. This was an average operating system that had the voice of a child and even had the capability to show expressions. It could refuse orders, too. Cara leaned back in her chair, tilting her chin to the ceiling and staring up at the blank, gray tiles.
4
Ms. Fischer?” The bald maintenance worker, Brent, stood on her porch, construction hat tucked under his arm. Cara pushed the screen door open.
“Yes, it’s about a half-mile north of here, hovering above some marshland,” she told him. The bug zapper crackled. The sun was hanging above the horizon. The man pulled out his phone and gave a quick call to the others nearby, alerting them to the Skyturf’s location. Far above them, hundreds of panels followed the trail of the sun, speeding to keep up with its glow.
“It’s okay, tracts go crazy all the time, s’nothing to worry about,” Brent said. Would it have made a difference if she told him about the conversation she had with the Skyturf?
Cara frowned and returned inside, going to the back of her house with a pair of binoculars to peer out the window. She watched as the maintenance truck neared the rogue cornstalks, and she watched as they disappeared into the rows. She stood for a long while but didn’t move or avert her gaze in any way. Her back and arms were beginning to ache. The marsh was cool green and growing darker with every passing moment. Finally, the crew came out. They gathered to talk, then began the process.
Using remote access, they forced the tract to lift into the air. Cara put down her binoculars and went outside to walk across the grass and observe. The tract rose up and then began to quiver. In the distance she could hear a voice, high-pitched and wavering, calling out into the still night.
“Liar! Liar, liar! You told them! Liar!” the voice cried, and Cara wrapped her arms around herself. The tract shook as it began to fold over itself, pushing together to crush the plants between layers of soil and metal. The voice screamed bloody murder while the crew looked on, chattering nervously with each other about the voice. Cara ignored them.
With a screech, the folded tract self-destructed, exploding into a blossom of flame. It rained down burning leaves, and the crew scattered as the blackened carcass of the tract hovered for a moment and then went careening left and crashed into the wet bog, cascading fire the whole way. Cara stood still in the tall grasses, her fingers digging into her arms. The crew stomped out the small fires, snuffing their brief glow.
The sun had set and the stars loomed overhead. Cara could hear the men now. They were lucky, they said.
Cara waded through the grass to the wreckage of the Skyturf. Mangled and broken, it had split open a tree. The screen hung from a cord wrapped around a branch. The box swayed, noose-like. Its face was black, empty and voiceless. Cara turned away and began walking home. Her sobs were muffled by the crackle of burning wood.
5
In the morning Cara stood on her porch again, scanning the skies. The pieces of turf wove around her designated spot like ducks avoiding a patch of lily pads. Her body felt heavy. She had tossed in her bed for three hours before getting so frustrated that she’d sat working at her terminal until the sun came up. There was a sharp pounding behind her eyes, but she took no medicine, no painkiller for it.
She kept thinking about the face in the box. The guilt was something she felt unaccustomed to. Working alone with robots most of the time didn’t generally come with much workplace drama. Between her and the other farmers was a vague friendliness underlined with a stench of jealousy for Cara’s rare farm. But nothing tremendous and emotional had happened like this.
Cara stepped back inside and sank into a kitchen chair, resting her forehead on the table. Her eyes closed, opened, closed again, and then her body yanked her upright.
The suicide of the face in the box kept startling Cara out of sleepiness with first a sharp aural memory of the tract’s screaming and then the inevitable explosion making Cara’s eyes snap open. She tried to focus on messages and accounting and managing her farm but the face in the box was still there.
Sitting in the vines and flowers, surrounded by butterflies and fire. Screaming.
By noon, she couldn’t take it anymore. She went out into the field again to where the wreckage of the Skyturf was piled neatly, to be moved sometime in the days to come. The cord on the box had been cut and the box had been tossed on the pile with the rest. Cara’s feet lifted off the ground as she hovered before the pile, taking the box—cold, hollow—into her arms. She floated back to her house, to her private garden where she had her vegetables, and she tucked the box up against the creaking fence.
In her garden she planted the box, sinking the cords deep into the soil where she hoped they might find some solace in the surrounding roots. The sun was beating now. She could feel her skin beginning to burn on the back of her neck and shoulders. She continued, watering the box, wiping the slightly cracked screen and doing all that she could to … what, exactly? Bring it back to life? Cara understood plants. She knew that with the right steps and proper care, you could nurse a dead plant back into living, but this was biotech.
When she had finished, she brushed her hands off on her pants, her fingers shaking as she looked at the box, now surrounded by green once more.
6
It took four weeks for the box to turn on.
It was early at dawn when Cara stood on her porch and heard the small blips and beeps coming from her garden. She walked out, bare feet sinking into the earth with each step toward the faint glowing box. An earthworm wriggled under her toes and dove deeper. She knelt before the box, staring into the static that had appeared.
“Hello?” Cara said. Her eyes searched the salt-and-pepper storm for any signs of the face, an eye, a hint of a smile, anything. The image flickered and went completely white. Cara sighed and rested her forehead against the edge of the box.
A scratchy voice made itself known. “Who’s there? Who are you?”
Cara’s head snapped up, and she smiled at the face that was slowly piecing itself together across the screen.
“I’m Cara,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Flee, My Pretty One
written by
Eneasz Brodski
illustrated by
Alana Fletcher
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eneasz Brodski lives in Denver, Colorado. He is active in the Bayesian Rationalist community, an eclectic collection of misfits who believe humans can do better. Through the powers of science and technology, he hopes all humans currently living can someday celebrate their 5,000th birthday.
Eneasz has a number of meaningful relationships, of many varieties. He was raised in an apocalyptic Christian sect, and while he has left that behind, that childhood colors much of his writing to this day. He’s been writing since he could hold a pencil, but has only begun professional efforts in the past few years. He just finished his first novel and hopes to see it in print soon.
When he’s not writing, podcasting, or blogging, he can often be found gothing it up at a local goth club. He’s willing to strike up a conversation with anyone in dark clothes and eyeliner.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Alana Fletcher was born in 1996 in Middletown, NY. She was introduced to the arts at a young age while growing up in Michigan. She took figure-drawing class
es at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and continued to develop her work within online communities. She began painting with a mouse in Photoshop, but eventually obtained a Wacom tablet to continue to expand her capabilities.
Alana is now attending Ferris State University for Game Design and Digital Animation in Grand Rapids. She concurrently works as a freelance illustrator and concept artist.
Flee, My Pretty One
From up on the stage, half-blinded by the lights, all I saw of him were piercing blue eyes. The crowd churned before me, pounding music whipping them into a froth, but those eyes glittered calmly in the chaos. They shone at me, reflecting the strobe lights like jewel shards, floating over the bass pulses that rose from the floor to rattle my rib cage.
I stepped to the mic, screamed the chorus line. “Death to all collaborators!” His eyes never left mine.
Three beats to my guitar solo. I threw myself into it with a quickened pulse. I would never slack at a gig—this is my communion, the guitar sings my blood. And yet, there’s an extra charge to it when you’re showing off for someone beautiful. The blood burns a little hotter. Look at me—this is who I am inside. Eat of my body.
When the surge of emotion finally ebbed, I could breathe once more. The last notes faded, we said our thank yous, we turned away. Only his eyes remained unchanged, numinous among the vulgar. I imagined briefly that he loved to submit to vulgar, mohawked girls.
He came up to talk with us afterward, which was too bad. Not because the rest of him sunk the fantasy. He was thin, with the delicate features that make it attractive—I like the pretty boys. No, it’s because when new fans come up to see me they realize the slouch isn’t a stage affectation. They see me without a guitar to hide my stance, catch me pressing my back against a wall for the relief it brings. They realize I’m twisted. Their interest fades and we both wish we’d just left the damned fantasy undisturbed.