“So you see, I was on the Moon,” Ursula Underhill concluded with a twinkle in her eye.
I stared at her, quite lost for words. “Oh, don’t concern yourself, young man, I didn’t expect you to believe me. Now, could you take my bag and escort me to my room? I am weary and must retire.”
As I took Ursula by the arm and helped her to the elevator, I finally found my voice.
“Why did you never tell anyone before?”
“Well, that was the first thing Monty did. They put him in the booby hatch for a couple of years before he learnt to keep his trap shut.”
“What about the professor?”
“Oh, he wanted to hush it all up. I had worked out that Kong was responsible for most of the actual work, and the old fool was ashamed that he had taken credit for another man’s work—a Chinaman’s creation at that. The ‘professor’ title was also a sore point. I don’t believe he’d ever attended a university, let alone taught at one…”
“And the redoubtable Kong?”
“Well, I don’t know much about the martial arts, but I can assure you that he was very accomplished at the marital ones. We were wed the following spring, you see.”
We reached her room and I helped her to a cushioned chair. Ursula asked me to open her bag and place its contents on the dressing table.
“A gift from my late husband,” she told me.
I found a curious box, not unlike a manual typewriter, with brass controls and some kind of projector.
“I’m so old, my dear,” she said sadly. “My bones are brittle and all my friends have gone. I’m not long for this world, you know.”
“It’s been an honour,” I said, and left her to her thoughts.
Then a strange thing happened in the hallway. I heard a pop, saw a purple flash, and then someone or something clearly said, “Semolina trouser press.”
Ursula Underhill’s door swung open and, concerned, I went back in, but there was no one there and the curious gift from Kong had gone too. Outside the window, a full moon hung over the New York skyline.
I bowed politely in its direction, saying, “Parsnip, parsnip,” before I left the room again and gently closed the door.
Recent work by Andrew J. Wilson has appeared in Weird Tales, Critical Insights: Pulp Fiction of the ‘20s and ‘30s, Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places, Double Bill: Poems Inspired by Popular Culture and Chilling Horror Short Stories. With Neil Williamson, he co-edited the award-nominated anthology Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction.
Model Organisms
Caroline Grebbell
Art: Sara Julia
I have never considered a companion—is that the word? an organism to interact with. It has been such a lengthy duration and I was unaware of the existence of your kind—the existence of any of this—until relocated from Japeng Aquatic. Yes, the temperature is higher in Phototropi, but still humid. Throughout the last dyau-sequence I have been feeling my mass, which is new to me, and it weighs heavy. I am euryhaline but the first of mine to invert to terra. For genera I have laid immersed within the covalent bonds of Aquatic. Cold sodium chloride, then warmer habitats free of halite Now I advance bipedally, neither one thing or the other. My new bones are durable. Microgravity activates the osteoclasts; they are fluorescent, quite mesmeric I once overheard, although I have never seen them myself as my retinas become weakened. You will view me as colourless, my skin is dehydrated.
I was a model organism, as you were Thaliana. There for the determination of genes, toxicology, transgenic and haploid embryonic stem cells. I was brought here to help them learn. To assist them. That’s what I believed. That’s what they told me. I was numerous at first but have evolved to one. To this. I realise you are aware of all I say, Thaliana, I tell you each time we converse. I apologise, it is all I know, it is all that is left for me to say but to say nothing for want of something new is further suffering.
When did this split appear, this chasm between spirit and physical worlds? How can a spirit exist four-hundred kilometers above its planet drowned? Anima? Your kind will remember her.
I have been here the longest of durations. I have spawned brood but they are from the other, the Oryzias, the Meduka. They shifted me, stretched me, twisted my form. They have lost me and now I am losing you. Six dyau-sequence is too short a duration for you to flourish. I was permitted to observe you Thaliana, you are exemplary. You may indeed be mesmeric. The permission was a distraction I know, to push reasoning from my solitude. But solitude is not the focus of my reasoning. I exist more humanoid than Oryzias now, my scales have levelled, my surface lanulose, spermatozoa multiplies in my ovaries. I am neither one thing nor the other. From seed to germination I have tended you Thaliana. You flowered then to seed once more and now you are dying. To be pulled apart. Sectioned and evaluated. I too will be recalled for dissection but I am unknowing as to when. Unknowing as to what I will become. They have left me like this. My life ends and I do not know what I am.
And now we are to be separated. I am scared. I have seen so little. The True Aquatic was my home and then my jailer. I am lonely. We co-exist beneath the electro-rad of this artificial sunne. I fail to find even the remnants of a shadow in this habitat.
Should we ever wonder how it resulted in this, us and not the others, what did we show over them? Nothing perhaps. Nothing other than being plucked from the ether.
Do you live your memories? Ancient and distant but beyond my reach, they are duration-worn and strange, as if perhaps not my belonging at all. Perhaps they bind to the being I was before me or link to the me I am to become. An untroubled duration has been the one spent with you. And now you are dying. Your gestation is over, your span, and I am to be left alone. My bones are strong but my muscles grow stiff and rigid. I am lonely, Thaliana. I am atrophied and dying and they will watch me shrink and wither and turn their backs to continue their search. I am scared, Thaliana. Perhaps I will block my gills with your flowers and we can travel together.
Caroline Grebbell has been around the block several times and now finds herself studying Creative Writing at Napier University, Edinburgh—which feels pretty good. Twitter: @Grebbell web: www.carolinegrebbell.co.uk
Note to Self
Michael Stroh
Art: Jackie Duckworth
The day had come. After four long months of waiting, I stood there at the open mailbox, my pulse quickening as the sunlight blazed on the folded letter. My mind filled with fantasies of what it might say. Promise of fame, payment concomitant with my sheer talent, a key to my future. My dream. All that stood in the way was a flip of my thumb to reveal the words.
Dear Mr. Goldstein,
Thank you for the chance to read your story, “The Martian Clones Reborn.” Unfortunately, it’s not a good fit for us right now. We wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.
Sincerely,
The Editors
Sci-Fi Planet
