《Flourishing in Obscurity (a short story collection)》 The One Who Will Wake The Sleepers The healing spell doesn¡¯t feel at all how I¡­ expected? Was it me who expected anything about it? Maybe it wasn¡¯t. I remember someone else who read they want us to die and strangers they can love to move in behind our faces and scoffed. It seemed stupid. It seemed stupid to them. It doesn¡¯t seem stupid to me. I am a stranger that other people can love; I am a stranger even to myself, with no idea what my favorite foods are, no idea what hobbies I would like to have, no feelings at all for any of the people who wanted me, a stranger they can love, to move in behind this face. I open my eyes and¡ªI think I can only see because the spell is decent at patching agnosias. I don¡¯t know how, but I don¡¯t need to; colors and shapes exist, alien and incomprehensible, and I have strange sourceless-seeming hunches about what¡¯s in front of my face. This is not something just anyone can afford. But me, I¡¯m a talented dancer¡ªthat¡¯s not true. I want to claim credit but there¡¯s something fundamentally alien in those memories. I know deep down that I am not in them. I¡¯m not a talented dancer; I¡¯m a fungus growing on a corpse, I¡¯m a changeling, I¡¯m a cuckoo come suddenly into my adult plumage. I¡¯m the heir to a talented dancer who was killed to make way for me, who earned enough to afford even just one casting of a spell this powerful. They wanted to leave. They wanted to take the rest of the proceeds from their own performances and run away with a friend. They wanted to never see anyone from their old life again. They were right to want that. And now, well, now I¡¯ll have to¡ª ¡ªThere¡¯s a strange sensation, a sensation of someone standing beside me shoulder to shoulder, a sensation a bit like being used as part of a distributed computer. Some of the thoughts in my mind cease to be mine to direct. What, thinks the dancer, the actual fuck is going on here? And I don¡¯t know how to answer that but I do burst into tears because at least they¡¯re not dead.
We make it out. What, were you expecting this part of the story to be the exciting part? No. We stick some cash and jewelry in a backpack and we and one of their old friends go for a hike to another town. We pass some zombies but those always leave my headmate alone¡ªit is specific to my headmate, who can run after them begging them to come back and only succeed in chasing them away. I would never do this and they come after me when I¡¯m in front, like the world¡¯s worst cats. Anyway, my headmate and I make it out and crash with our friend Jay for a while, then move into our own studio apartment. We come up with names for each other, since the legal name isn¡¯t disambiguating; they go by Alex and I go by Artemis. We dance less-comprehensive healing and we dance stability for buildings and we dance peace and safety (insofar as you can manage that at all with magic, which is not very much). We get paid. We go to college and consider what else we can do with ourselves.
So the main thing that everyone else thinks about, a cause that¡¯s not even slightly neglected and that no one else has a handle on, is the plague of cursed children. Like Alex was, once. Blind and mostly deaf, and¡ªwell, people argue about whether it¡¯s caused by growing up like that, or caused directly by the curse, or even just stereotypes and slander, but there¡¯s supposed to be a personality type. Robotic, distant, precise, cold. Alex, who wishes we could¡¯ve been an accountant, always thought it was mostly the first with a bit of the third for flavor. But me, I¡¯m different. So it seems pretty clear, now, that it¡¯s the second thing. Everyone else worries about this cause area a lot, even though it¡¯s not neglected. I guess it wouldn¡¯t make any sense for everyone to worry about a cause area that was neglected, huh. But it¡¯s a big deal. It started happening a few decades ago, to tiny toddlers whose parents swear they weren¡¯t like that to start with. Some people think the incidence keeps increasing, that soon everyone born after a certain year will be cursed. You might think this would be really easy to measure, since it¡¯s so obvious and distinctive a syndrome, but actually its first appearance coincided with the zombie apocalypse and a UFO flyby and a lot of the first cohort died and, well, look, it was a mess. Anyway, society¡¯s fine now, with more zombies but still fine, and now we have a reasonable attempt at epidemiological data. And people are freaked out, but it¡¯s not clear what there is to do about it. About one in ten families can afford to get their child cured, and that¡¯s with subsidies and crowdfunding and everything we can throw at the problem. There¡¯s been talk of having the government pick up the tab but the government can¡¯t afford that now and if the prevalence is rising it¡¯ll only get less able to afford it. Not that dealing with not curing the cursed is cheap, either, but you can fund one cure or twenty years of disability or unemployment benefits and the cursed usually scream and resist healing magic powerful enough to touch their curse and while the employment rate among adults is shy of fifty percent it¡¯s not very shy of it. Once you figure in the kids who don¡¯t grow up for whatever reason, well over fifty percent of the cursed don¡¯t go on to be unemployed adults. So for a forty-year career, it doesn¡¯t save the government any money to cure people. (¡°Whatever reason¡± isn¡¯t just a euphemism for murder. The cursed have a tendency to run off into the wild even from a young age and are usually extremely precocious at opening childproof locks or even regular locks. They¡¯re not usually extremely precocious at avoiding rivers. But also, yes, it¡¯s partly a euphemism for murder.) There¡¯s not great data on those who are cured, but mostly they¡¯re cured very young, and mostly they act like normal people, and mostly they don¡¯t talk about having alter egos who are still cursed. (Did you imagine that Alex wasn¡¯t cursed anymore? They still are. When they come to front the first thing they do is close our eyes and whine that the light hurts. They won¡¯t listen to music of any kind and hate talking out loud. You can explain to them that it¡¯s not safe to run into zombie-infested wilderness even if the zombies in question run away from you but they find it very hard to care.) So we¡¯re not totally sure that curing people isn¡¯t¡­ murder, somehow, of the people they could have grown into. But then, maybe the curse is also murder, of the other people they could have grown into. So even if it seemed like a tractable, neglected problem, we aren¡¯t super eager to cure cursed children. Or to let them continue to be cursed. But we¡¯re not keen on preventing them from being cursed, either, because we¡¯re not really sure how population ethics works. Instead we fund efforts to eradicate poverty and speculative research into why the dead rise and whether it¡¯s preventable. Yes, we split our donations. Yes, we¡¯re obviously philistines with no comprehension of the fact that an ideal lives-saved-maximizer would be indifferent between a 50% chance of a million dollars and a 100% chance of half a million dollars with utility perfectly linear in lives saved and would therefore give only to the best charity. We¡¯re so unaware of it, in fact, that neither of us even has a linear mapping of lives saved to utility at all, like uneducated losers or something. Anyway, our story picks up a little after we graduate college and get a job researching zombies.
But I¡¯m not about to tell you that part! I¡¯m going to back up and tell you something else first. Something about Alex¡¯s childhood. They were loved, once. Not in the way you love a performer, not in the way you love a useful resource, but loved as you love a child. I¡¯m jealous, thinking of it. The way their aunt would play with them and shower them in gifts and take them places. The way their grandparents would touch them, always gentle and never grabbing or hugging if they weren¡¯t invited to. Even their mother, back then, made a real try at genuine human connection. And then they turned out to be good enough at magic dance that you could turn a profit keeping them around, already, at age seven. The only mercy there is that magic dance isn¡¯t really for or about an audience; they didn¡¯t become a celebrity, not really, although they were sort of well-known within their specific subfield within a few years and by now a lot of people have heard our legal name. Well, so they were useful. And they could be pushed to do more of that, and other aspects of their education left by the wayside, and that made Alex¡¯s aunt very angry and their grandparents very disappointed. So their mother (their father wasn¡¯t in the picture by now; their mother said later that he left because he didn¡¯t want to deal with a disabled child) backed off, a bit, and scheduled some fun activities and tried to send them to summer camp. And it seemed okay, for a while. The prophecy came when Alex was nine and already making as much as their own mother. Prophecies aren¡¯t super rare, but only maybe one in a hundred fifty people is the subject of one. Prophecies aren¡¯t usually particularly useful, either. A lot of them go something like ¡°this person will dance in the rain¡± and get fulfilled one day while they¡¯re listening to music in the yard and don¡¯t feel like going inside as it starts drizzling. Alex¡¯s is ¡°this child is special; this child will gain the power to wake the sleepers.¡± But by then Alex had already managed to wake people up who were asleep, so the prophecy couldn¡¯t be about that; clearly they didn¡¯t need to gain that power. And much as any family might think their child is special no matter what, prophecies usually don¡¯t agree. We¡¯ve talked about whether it could mean Alex will gain the power to do to everyone what happened to us, if there¡¯s a me in every cursed child. We¡¯re not really sure. On the one hand, that¡¯s a lot of people who might exist and might be sleeping. On the other hand, that doesn¡¯t seem special enough; healing magic isn¡¯t that rare and expensive. But Alex¡¯s mother took it as a reason to cut ties with anyone who¡¯d question her parenting and use Alex relentlessly, nurturing their magical talent and profiting off it. She could¡¯ve had them cured, and she didn¡¯t, even with enough cash on hand that Alex could steal it and get themself sort-of-cured-ish. Alex thinks it was because being disabled made them less able to say no to her or go off alone. I think it was probably more reasonable than that, but it doesn¡¯t matter. Alex left. We aren¡¯t in contact with her. And that¡¯s fine.
So here¡¯s the part where it gets exciting: fresh out of college, we get a remote job in zombie research, and something clicks for Alex and Alex explains it to me and then something clicks for me and we realize something. There are a lot of zombie attacks, and sometimes they¡¯re fatal. Cursed people should be the same fraction of those killed by zombies as they are of the general population, unless something interesting is happening. Well, there have been a few anecdotal reports of attacks; on a forum Alex likes, for cursed people and their families, they¡¯ve read a few posts that said a zombie shambled toward someone cursed. But there¡¯s never been a single cursed person who died of zombie-inflicted wounds. There¡¯ve been a couple who died in the process of fleeing¡ªnot, usually, under their own power, but being carried away by a guardian who trips and falls into a ditch or something¡ªbut never any who were eaten. So far so niche-but-not-novel. There are bloggers who¡¯ll tell you this is because the cursed are an attempt to protect us from the zombies, and bloggers who¡¯ll tell you this is because the cursed are so foul even zombies avoid them. The cursed tend to be drawn to the wild. That¡¯s famous. Except¡ªAlex isn¡¯t. Alex is drawn to zombies, who exist in the wild and get cleared out of cities. None of Alex¡¯s cursed forum friends are afraid of zombies; attitudes range from fascinated to obscurely pitying. Evidence for the protection-from-zombies theory? Well, sure. But there¡¯s more. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Zombies don¡¯t rot all that much, past a certain point. This is very interesting, and has potential applications if we can replicate it with other things we want to preserve. Which is why Alex¡¯s lab dissects some and why Alex learns that their brains are weirdly well preserved, slowly being replaced with a strange nonfunctional material that preserves all the information we know how to get out of a freshly dead brain. If you had the tech to do full brain emulation, you could dissect a zombie and get the information you needed to bring back whoever they had been. So: zombies. Not information-theoretically dead. The cursed could¡ªwe have to posit an intelligence behind this but that¡¯s not weird¡ªsomehow be drawn to them because they¡¯re aware that that information is in there, because they want it for something. That¡¯s what Alex comes up with, and they run it by me for a sanity check, and I say, oh, you want to wake the sleepers. Alex says shit fuck goddamn, you¡¯re right, I do. I feel like it¡¯s what I was made for. And they breathe a little easier, all of a sudden, as if they know where they belong, as if they¡¯re comfortable with who they are.
It¡¯s not, of course, as easy as poking one. I try it, with one that the lab captured¡ªI interviewed; I show up to our voicechat meetings, when Alex isn¡¯t just pretending our webcam is broken. They work remote and almost everything they have to interact with is text that their refreshable braille display handles fine, but they don¡¯t want to explain themself. Neither of us really wants too many people to know. On the very rare occasion when it makes any sense for one of us to visit in person, I¡¯m the one who goes. I touch a zombie. It doesn¡¯t do anything. I tell Alex, look, this is the chance we have, and I close our eyes and wait for them. Alex touches the zombie. It does¡­ something, or at least it feels like something. But it¡¯s not completely intuitively obvious exactly what to do, and also there are sounds, and also there¡¯s light getting in through our eyelids, so Alex hides. I wash our hands. Good work, team, I think. We¡¯ll figure this out yet. I can feel Alex metaphorically, mentally, vibrating with excitement.
So the thing to do is obviously to study zombies until Alex knows enough to wake them. Alex cares about that more than almost anything else. They get up and eat breakfast because it will fuel them to study and they study and they pause for exercise because it will keep them healthy for studying and they study more and they eat dinner because it will fuel them for studying and they sleep because it¡¯s necessary to keep our brain in good condition for studying and they get up and they spend another entire day like this. On the third day I claw through the fog and distraction to remind them that I am supposed to get to go for a walk and check my email every day and that today is my day of the week to watch a movie. Sorry, it¡¯s just¡ªyou can have however much time you want after I¡¯m done but this is really important, Alex answers. You have to understand that, don¡¯t you? It¡¯s important, I agree, but I¡¯m not saying you shouldn¡¯t work on it. I¡¯m saying you should keep our agreement. Yeah, absolutely, Alex thinks. In a minute. I wait and watch over their shoulder. Well, ¡°watch¡± might not be the right word. Alex has the lights off, the curtains closed, and a sleepmask on. I read braille nearly as well as they do, though, and I can sometimes read some of their thoughts, so I have a good idea of what¡¯s happening, no matter how claustrophobic and lost it makes me feel not to be able to see. I have a good idea of how much time passes, too, and it¡¯s more than a minute. I... don¡¯t literally clear our throat, although I sure make an attempt. The attempt by itself communicates plenty. Yeah, soon, Alex says, and goes on working. You¡¯re not even supposed to work this much overtime! I say. I¡¯m not. See? And I do see, or at least perceive, as Alex draws our attention to some memories. They have, technically, not been working this whole time. The¡¯ve just spent all of their leisure time reading research in related fields. I am unamused. I make Alex aware of this. It¡¯s the most important thing in the world! Alex thinks frantically, almost desperately. More important than being someone who keeps their promises? You made me, Alex. You owe me a life that doesn¡¯t make me curse you for it. Alex doesn¡¯t particularly think that¡¯s true; they never meant to, and it¡¯s possible I existed, dormant, for their whole life. But they relent and leave me the body.
Alex chills, a little. I take what time I can, and when I get the body I hold onto it for hours over their protests. After a couple weeks of our schedule falling apart, Alex is so offended by the mess we¡¯re making that they shape up. And once Alex has shaped up and I¡¯ve had time to do other things, I take a look at some of their work and offer them a new perspective on some of it. It goes faster that way. We learn a lot. Everyone learns a lot, of course; it¡¯s not like we¡¯re working on this alone. But, eventually, things quiet down a bit. Alex hits diminishing returns on how many new insights they can get from their technically-not-overtime. They and their coworkers scare up all the interesting correlations they can find in the data they have and it¡¯s not Alex¡¯s job to go hunt zombies or buy tissue samples. I go to a few meetings, one of them in person, and Alex writes up a critique of the lab¡¯s methodology and acts as a soundboard for a coworker drafting a grant proposal, and I get my walks and my email and my movies and Alex even finds time to do things besides work. And while Alex is solving a rubik¡¯s cube one evening, it occurs to them to come at the problem from the other direction, by researching the cursed. You might imagine this should¡¯ve occurred to them sooner, but in fact the research on the topic is mostly worthless. Studies ask whether it correlates with prenatal exposure to estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, plastics, teflon, animal food products, artificial dyes, healing magic, pest-control hexes, or divination; but the studies in question can¡¯t tell if it does, because some of those correlate with higher or lower odds of death specifically for cursed children relative to other children. Studies look into whether the prevalence is different depending on zodiac sign; it doesn¡¯t seem to be, but at least they manage to rule something out. Some particularly useful studies report data from biopsies and autopsies and brain scans and eye exams. We¡¯re already pretty familiar with that, and as disappointing as the state of the research is we jointly only have twenty-four hours in a day and can¡¯t do all the research anyone should be doing anywhere in the world. But either the cursed all have the same instinctive sense of what they¡¯re meant to do with zombies, or there¡¯s variance. And if there¡¯s variance, then maybe all of them together have enough information. Which means, actually, the most useful data is psychological. So Alex starts another research binge in an area with terrible study quality and a tendency to focus on what Alex will unapologetically call the wrong questions. By far the closest they get to useful sources are off-topic arguments about zombies on the cursed forum they like to read. Two hours in I remind them that I exist. I¡¯m not going to make the same mistake again, Alex says. And they mostly don¡¯t.
There comes a point when the next step has to be to get in touch with a researcher and talk about funding the studies we want. Alex emails one, a prominent one with a name that nags at our memory as if we heard it somewhere once before. Doctor Evelyn Glen, an old woman with a lot of irons in the fire, doesn¡¯t answer her own email¡ªat least, doesn¡¯t answer this email¡ªbut her assistant or whoever it is sends us what reads like a form response, listing some organizations that fund studies in the field and linking to their websites. Alex goes ahead and follows the links, in case they have anything useful to say. Most studies are funded by a national public health organization whose research priorities are prevention and bringing a cure down into most people¡¯s price range; they¡¯re the ones behind all that research on prevalence by zodiac sign and prenatal hormone exposure. Three studies published so far, and apparently two more that¡¯ve been preregistered, have been funded by a self-advocacy organization whose focus is on restructuring society in light of its apparently inevitable demographic takeover by the cursed. (What they actually fund isn¡¯t that radical; it¡¯s just educational inclusivity and online accessibility. So far.) Should we get in touch with them? Alex wonders. If what they do is self-advocacy then they¡¯re cursed themselves and they¡¯ll want to wake the sleepers too. I answer, but will they really? They¡¯re not prophesied to. We don¡¯t know no one else is, Alex thinks. Anyway, if that¡¯s not what the cursed are for, it¡¯d be good to know that, too. Okay, but you¡¯re going to sound like a kook if you just say that out of the blue. And since I¡¯m right, Alex writes an email to the self-advocacy org that sounds much less kooky, explaining that they¡¯re a researcher in a related field interested in the interactions between zombies and the cursed. We receive a helpful list of publications to look at. Something breaking down zombie victims by demographic, which we¡¯re already familiar with. Something about the engagement of the cursed with the media, including zombie documentaries, which is new to us. A qualitative analysis of themes and motifs in forum postings by the cursed about zombies, which is also new to us. That last one has some of what we¡¯re looking for and what it doesn¡¯t have we can at least organize into a small number of simple, concrete questions. For Alex, it clicks. For me, I make a flowchart, and then it makes sense. Alex writes back asking outright, Have you ever thought about whether we could revive zombies? The response we get is just ¡°all the time¡± and a link to a website. The site belongs to a highly speculative nonprofit that humanely detains zombies without destroying them, in case they can be revived someday. There¡¯s a donation page. Alex gives them about as much as the cost of a bus ticket, on a whim, and makes a note to consider them when we¡¯re thinking about our charitable donations later in the year, if it still makes sense then. Alex writes back to thank them for the link, and then writes to the zombie warehouse people with my flowchart. The zombie warehouse people don¡¯t write back. Of course. Alex eventually tries sending that to the self-advocates, too, and gets enthusiastically encouraged to write the zombie warehouse about it and asked if we have a project we need funding for. Alex facepalms and waits for a reply that never comes. After a few days, they write up a list of questions, without any of the context that makes them sound like a crackpot, and send it to Doctor Glen. Doctor Glen answers. She answers at length and in detail, though not, unfortunately, completely. By the end of the email we have two questions left and Doctor Glen has invited us to meet for coffee soon.
I meet her for coffee. Doctor Glen frowns at me curiously and then, tentatively, addresses me by Alex¡¯s deadname. ¡°¡­I don¡¯t go by that name anymore,¡± I say. ¡°I got it legally charged halfway through college. Where do I know you from?¡± ¡°I had a cursed grandchild,¡± says Doctor Glen. ¡°An amazingly talented magic dancer whose mother didn¡¯t want me keeping in touch.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± I say. ¡°That¡¯s where I¡¯ve heard ¡®Evelyn Glen¡¯ before.¡± My hands idly form her sign name, the one I remember much better because Alex used to actually use it regularly, years and years ago. I don¡¯t want to be the one having this conversation. ¡°Yes. I got into the field because if it was ever useful it would be a gift she couldn¡¯t keep away. But it looks like it¡­ isn¡¯t helpful in the way I expected.¡± She¡¯s still frowning. This doesn¡¯t feel right, for a loving grandmother finally reunited with her long-lost grandchild. There¡¯s something wistful and sad in her tone that there shouldn¡¯t be. ¡°What became of the prophecy?¡± ¡°¡­You know, don¡¯t you? You know why the cursed are so jumpy about healing.¡± There. She can¡¯t quite suppress a flinch. ¡°Is that who the sleepers are? I had hoped they were the dead.¡± ¡°They might be both. Alex isn¡¯t dead¡ªAlex changed their name too, but they¡¯re not dead. Just not the one piloting right now.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± she says. ¡°I see now. Alex Artemis, and I can call you Artemis. Pronouns they/them. Are either of you even nonbinary or is it the plural ¡®they¡¯?¡± ¡°Alex is nonbinary.¡± ¡°And they didn¡¯t fight. They weren¡¯t afraid. When you were healed, I mean. Is that right?¡± ¡°Yes. How can you tell?¡± ¡°It¡¯s fighting the healing that kills them, I think. Or puts them to sleep¡ªthey might be the sleepers¡­¡± ¡°We wondered about that but we¡¯re really confident we¡¯re one small breakthrough away from figuring out how to bring zombies back to life with a touch¡ªwell, Alex is. I just do the in-person meetings because Alex is cursed.¡± Invite her home, says Alex. ¡°They can still come out, then. Good. I don¡¯t think you can wake the sleepers.¡± ¡°I know. You can come over and meet them in person some time. But for this meeting, I just need to know¡ªokay, I have this flowchart, see?¡± I show it to her. Doctor Glen studies it for a long time, smiling. ¡°I would love to visit. Well, you¡¯ve made a lot of progress, and I think¡­¡± She launches into an explanation of the last couple of answers we need. It takes the better part of ten minutes. I take notes, but it doesn¡¯t matter; Alex listens over my shoulder and won¡¯t forget. It¡¯s what they were made for. We¡¯re just setting up a time for Doctor Glen to visit and meet Alex when the sirens start blaring and the riot bars come down over the windows. There¡¯s a zombie attack. They don¡¯t usually come into civilization but there¡¯s a nice big park nearby and occasionally they do. When the sirens pause, the proprietor starts speaking almost loudly enough that I¡¯d call it shouting, but not quite. ¡°Okay, everyone! This is a great place to wait out an attack. They can¡¯t get in, we have food and drink and facilities and comfortable seating, and you¡¯re all welcome to stay as long as you need to. Please don¡¯t open the door without me there to guard it as you leave. Everyone still here when they give the all-clear will get a coupon good for one free drink or pastry.¡± I can feel Alex trying to turn toward the windows to look for zombies between the bars. Idiot, I think at them, I need to go ask them to cover our escape and then be in front to draw the zombies. And I feel Alex¡¯s grin tug at my face. Ruin If you¡¯re reading this, I Actually I have no idea why anyone would be reading this. If you¡¯re reading this, somehow, then maybe you¡¯re alive and real and near enough to find me and save me, if I¡¯m even salvageable when you read this. It might last forever. I might last forever, but I doubt I¡¯ll be sane if you come for me in two thousand years. I know you¡¯re not there. I know there¡¯s no one. I imagine what it would mean, to be reading these words, and I know that¡¯s not something that¡¯s likely to happen. But¡ªif you were reading this, I guess all I could say is that I¡¯m sorry and I hope you forgive me. Except that you wouldn¡¯t be from around here, if you were reading this, so it¡¯s not you I¡¯d owe an apology, and instead of that I¡¯d want to explain what happened. It starts with a sorceress. Doesn¡¯t it always? Someone with such strength of character that reality itself warped around her, who pissed off half the people who heard of her and terrified the other half. She figured she¡¯d try to take over. It¡¯s happened before, of course, people conquering most of the world and dying young eighty years later¡ªat least I¡¯ve never known a tyrant to age and I¡¯ve never heard of one not getting assassinated eventually. But my¡ªI really need to write this in a more forgiving medium because I keep wanting to erase things¡ªbut the sorceress would¡¯ve been a good one to do it, if anyone was going to, and she didn¡¯t care so much whether someone should do it as whether she wanted to do it but I kind of thought maybe she should. And, well, it doesn¡¯t usually work, of course¡ªI mean, didn¡¯t. I guess there¡¯s no ¡°usually¡± to it now. But most people who tried went out with a bang before taking over anywhere. And we always knew that might happen. So that¡¯s why she let everyone know she had some kind of unspecified dead-man¡¯s switch set up to destroy the world if she died. She didn¡¯t care what happened after she died other than that she was willing to let me ask for what I wanted, and I said at the time¡­ It¡¯s hard to make myself say it, now. We were sitting on the balcony at her aunt¡¯s place in the suburbs, just before the stars came out, sharing a bowl of salted melon with the fancy frilled toothpicks in two colors. And she¡ªshe looked at the moon and waved away a fly and sighed heavily and said to me, ¡°I guess I¡¯m going to die, huh?¡± And I said, ¡°Most people do.¡± She rocked the swinging bench we were both sitting on and took a bite of melon. I figured I should take one too. The fly came back and I tried to shoo it but it was a lot more responsive to her, even when she wasn¡¯t putting any particular power behind her gestures. ¡°I wonder what happens afterward,¡± she said wistfully. ¡°In the afterlife?¡± I asked. ¡°No, I mean what happens to you and¡­¡± She trailed off and shrugged. Somehow she could shrug elegantly. Not quite like she was posed for a photoshoot, it always felt too natural and effortless for that. ¡°Maybe I¡¯ll be dead by then, you never know.¡± I laughed. ¡°It¡¯s such a shit world, isn¡¯t it? With plagues and disasters and man¡¯s inhumanity toward man.¡± ¡°It¡¯s pretty,¡± she said. ¡°Wherever you are is pretty,¡± I said. ¡°Well, I¡¯ll try to make the world a little better.¡± She turned and smiled at me as though what she really meant was that she wanted to make it more to my liking. I never did understand what she saw in me. ¡°But afterward, or if I don¡¯t make it¡­¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. The world sucks. It¡¯s tolerable for some people sometimes if no one is running it, and it gets better when it has someone nice running the show and worse when it has someone not so nice and I don¡¯t see what to do about it. Besides try to put a benevolent dictator in charge. That never lasts and the next person¡¯s just as likely to be malevolent, I¡¯d almost rather say we should try to make the system resilient against powerful individuals except¡­¡± I shrugged. ¡°If it were more resilient I guess it¡¯d just keep sucking forever. I wish we could burn it all down and try again but I don¡¯t know of any reason to think trying again would work any better. Maybe it¡¯d be worse.¡± She put her hand on my shoulder and nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll fix it,¡± she said, and I knew my history but I still believed she had a chance, even if not much of one. I¡ªI guess that makes it my fault. We didn¡¯t discuss it again. She handed me something very magical some time later and told me never to tell anyone I had it and to activate it after she died. I didn¡¯t ask questions so I wouldn¡¯t be able to betray her confidence. No, wait, saying we didn¡¯t discuss it again is how I felt about it, but now that I think about it, I did tell her once that a world without her wasn¡¯t worth living in. I meant for me and I thought she knew that. I was right, by the way. I wish I could miss anything else. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. A long time before we sat out on the balcony discussing it, my cousin¡¯s friend¡ªI know stories that start ¡°my cousin¡¯s friend¡± are never true but I saw this personally. I just didn¡¯t know the friend very well and she wasn¡¯t anything else to me. My cousin¡¯s friend was drawing in chalk in the alley behind the coffee shop with the arctic theme. The shop¡¯s main entrance is on a nice street with a restaurant just classy enough for silverware and its back door let out on the same alley as the fire escape from a building some people I¡¯d known as a kid lived in¡ªI don¡¯t know how to explain this in a way that¡¯ll be clear to someone who definitely never lived on this planet. We¡ªthat is, the kingdom I lived in¡ªhad banned slavery two hundred years before I was born. Sort of. It took longer to ban branding people the way they did slaves, and longer to ban contracts where you only get paid at the very end and leaving halfway through results in getting nothing, and longer to ban contracts with penalty clauses requiring you to provide more of the same work you just did, and longer to enact any restrictions on working conditions per se. But, you know, some apartments were badly maintained and full of people who worked the worst jobs that were legal or even ones so bad they weren¡¯t, for the descendants of the people who¡¯d enslaved their ancestors. And you can tell who they are because they dress a certain way, talk a certain way, don¡¯t know the right references to seem educated, do know the right references to have grown up talking to other people like them. So my cousin¡¯s friend was like that, and drawing flowers in chalk. I¡¯m pretty sure they were random flowers, because she was seven. I happen to know she¡¯d walked past a garden with pink periwinkle hundreds of times, so her five-pointed pink flowers were probably not impala lilies like were implicated in the recent murder of a local magistrate. And¡ªlook, I could go on, but the point is a cop came out the back entrance of the coffee shop and had questions and told her to look him in the eye, which she didn¡¯t want to do, and told her to stop drawing, which she also didn¡¯t want to do. She did answer what she was drawing (¡°flowers¡±) and who told her she could draw there (¡°Mom¡±) and where her mother was at the time, and for good measure she also told the cop he looked like a bobcat. He was kind of jowly, I guess. I don¡¯t think it was even quite meant as an insult; apparently she was pretty slow to learn how to talk to people, both in the sense that she said her first words at age four and in the sense that she had no idea how people would take it if you commented on them having a fat old saggy face. I have some of that secondhand; I didn¡¯t actually know her well enough to know when she learned to talk. I heard it later, from my aunt. Anyway, I ducked away from the window where I was watching so I wouldn¡¯t be seen. I heard later that she was questioned and so was her mother and she was already pretty off so it¡¯s hard to say if she got more off from getting hit in the head but I saw her again a few months later and she wouldn¡¯t say hello to me and my cousin told me not to take it personally because she wasn¡¯t talking to anyone anymore. That was years before my sorceress ever asked me what I wanted done with the world. It wasn¡¯t a surprise. It wasn¡¯t anything out of the ordinary. It wasn¡¯t as bad as it could have been. Thinking about it now, I¡¯m not as sure that I¡¯m sorry the world ended as I am that I¡¯m still around to see it. What else is there to say? I guess half of what happened is recorded somehow somewhere. By the time they wanted to arrest her they already couldn¡¯t, so they came for me first, thinking they¡¯d use me as a hostage. I didn¡¯t realize they knew how important I was; I kind of assumed my accent slipped at some point while I was hanging around upscale neighborhoods and someone got mad about it. I definitely dressed fine and I was always more confident I moved right than that I talked right. Not that social mobility is actually illegal and not that hanging around a neighborhood you can¡¯t afford to live in is actually illegal, either. I think no one ever did clock me and even if they did I¡¯m not sure anything would have come of it, but it was where my mind went first when they came for me. They cuffed my hands behind my back, at first¡ªI managed to get them in front, at least, later, by being skinny and flexible¡ªand I didn¡¯t get a good look, at first, so I didn¡¯t recognize the enchanted manacles once used to bind the Lord of Woven Echoes (which really seems like overkill to me, but what do I know) until I tried to say something. I forget what, maybe I wanted to ask what was happening, and I noticed no sound came out. Not even the sound of breathing or the sound of moving my mouth. I guess if this is the first thing you read from this planet you wouldn¡¯t necessarily know that the Lord of Woven Echoes used to chant magic. Might as well mention that. So they used a priceless indestructible artifact to bind me, and of course it could only be loosed by someone speaking the command word aloud. I like to think I wanted them to let me go. I guess I should also mention that I had set up this elaborate machine where some ice would melt and drop a weight onto a lever that would¡ªanyway, I had set things up so that if I wasn¡¯t around to reset it, the artifact would be activated. They had about five hours, and I¡­ couldn¡¯t have done anything anyway, right? There wasn¡¯t anything left that I could possibly have done, right? I couldn¡¯t have explained. I couldn¡¯t have written anything. I definitely couldn¡¯t have gone home and done anything about it myself. She came for me. They told her to turn herself in; she didn¡¯t. She slipped unnoticed through the cracks in reality and found me sitting by myself in a cell and tried to pull me back out of reality with her, but. Well. One of a kind priceless magical artifact for confining great sorcerers. I was a little stuck, and about ten seconds later a guard noticed her and she turned to step orthogonally to reality and before she¡¯d gotten anywhere she¡¯d been shot dead. I like to think I still wanted to warn someone. I like to think that when I tried to escape it was because I wanted to save the world. Why else would I have bothered trying? But I couldn¡¯t do it. I watched in silence as they took her body away. By the end, I know I was bitterly grateful to know they wouldn¡¯t get away with it. I thought I had more to say. I wanted to have more to say. I can¡¯t die, so I wanted to take a long time on this and imagine my imaginary audience all the while. But I don¡¯t have that much more to say. If you think it¡¯s worth scavenging something from the ruins, I hope it brings you joy; just don¡¯t touch the building with the bismuth fa?ade. excerpts from a recipe blog that doesnt exist Ham and Banana Spaghetti This American comfort food classic comes courtesy of an American couple I met in Seoul who, unable to find their favorites ready-to-eat in the grocery store, took to home cooking. I first met Eileen when I ducked in through her open window as I was parkouring away from the group of high schoolers trying to use me as a demo subject for their extra credit history project about mummification. I sat there catching my breath and waiting for my hands to stop shaking for a while, as she cooked this very recipe and asked me sympathetic questions about what I was running from. Soon her husband and their daughter came home for dinner. We ate together, this hearty meal with the flesh of two different animals who lived their entire lives as captives and died at their captors¡¯ whim. To me, it tastes like being the predator and not the prey. The Italian-inspired flavors, the Asian-style noodles, the tropical bananas¡ªit¡¯s easy to forget that bananas are tropical, when they¡¯re one of the most boring sights in supermarkets throughout the temperate regions¡ªreally showcase man¡¯s dominion over the whole globe and the heights we can rise to if we just work together. I don¡¯t find that this recipe tastes exactly the same as what you can get at the supermarket, with the banana slices in a little baggie waiting to be put on top after you¡¯ve zapped the spaghetti. That¡¯s because they coat the bananas in citric acid. I think it¡¯s to prevent browning! It gives it a slight tang that goes well with the tomatoes. Eileen¡¯s version feels more elegant and refined. YOU WILL NEED: one package ready-to-eat shirataki noodles 1/8 lb ground beef 15 oz pasta sauce (if you can¡¯t find jars of it, you can make your own by boiling 15 oz of tomatoes with 2 tbsp italian seasoning and blending with an immersion blender once the tomatoes are soft) 4 oz shredded Italian cheese mix (if you can¡¯t find it at the store you can make your own from parmesan, mozzarella, asiago, provolone, and romano) cooked thinly sliced ham, cut into small squares about 2 medium cavendish bananas Brown the beef, stirring well, in a saucepan. Add the pasta sauce and simmer. Add the noodles five minutes before taking it all off the heat. Remove from heat, add half the cheese, stir slightly. Plate, and garnish with ham, sliced banana, and the rest of the cheese.
Tuesday¡¯s Classic Pizza Remember the pizza restaurant where it¡¯s always Tuesday? You¡¯d decide to try visiting on a Friday, but when you walked in, you¡¯d discover that you were mistaken and it was Tuesday after all, and the next day would be Wednesday. They were closed on Sundays, though I never happened to walk by on a Sunday; I meant to once but I didn¡¯t manage it. Whenever I did wander down that street they were always open and the smell of pizza and the sound of laughter were spilling out onto the sidewalk. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. They closed three years ago now. You can still visit, if you want, if the last three years were just a nightmare and all you need to wake you up is to step inside and order your usual just like you do every week. We¡¯ve all been there, some of us more than once, wandering through horrors-to-come until we fall off the calendar entirely. That place was a real source of strength to me and a real anchor, for what really felt like forever. I knew no matter how bad things got, no matter how dark the future seemed, I could stop by for my usual, any time at all, as long as it was Tuesday, and afterward when I left I¡¯d be ready to try again. The last time I visited, I asked about the recipe, to have something to remember them by after they were closed, as I followed the march of calendar days away and away and further away. It was the last night they were open, and Danny wrote it all down for me, and here it is. Whenever I make this recipe, the classic taste really takes me back, metaphorically, to my favorite restaurant. I hope I never see it open again. YOU WILL NEED: One pizza crust 5 oz pizza sauce 4 oz shredded Italian cheese blend Assemble and bake until done.
A Milkshake To Bring Boys To Your Yard Food brings people together. That¡¯s especially true of this absolutely irresistible milkshake! You¡¯d better be prepared to make a big batch, because if you start making it you WILL be mobbed by thirsty milkshake lovers. I used to make these all the time when I lived in a small town in the middle of the desert. Haven¡¯t wanted to deal with the hassle ever since moving to the city, but today all of a sudden I remembered how much I used to love them and now I¡¯m making plans. In case you want to try them, too, I decided to post the recipe on my blog. I learned this recipe from my departed grandmother, who told me once that she invented it just to get on my grandfather¡¯s nerves. She kept it up because her kids and grandkids liked it and really everyone in town liked it, by then, my grandfather being dead. I never knew him. She didn¡¯t talk much about him; she didn¡¯t like to speak ill of the dead and there wasn¡¯t much but ill to speak of him. She put up with him because she came to him with nothing but the clothes on her back¡ªwhich he insisted on replacing and buried someplace near the beach where they met, before they moved inland. The most she ever told me about all that was just before the trip we went on together, when she showed me the beach where she met my grandfather, where she drafted me to help her dig for buried treasure. That trip is one of the happiest and one of the last memories I have of her. Just the two of us by the beach, making sandcastles and talking together, going back to the hotel room with sand between our toes to pop popcorn and make hot chocolate. She told me a lot of things on that trip, some of which I will never blog about. But one of them was this recipe. I know she¡¯s in a better place now, and we¡¯ll be together again someday when I tire of walking on this earth. But I still miss her. Anyway, I¡¯ve presented quantities that will fit in a typical blender all at once, but buy in bulk even if you think you only need to make a small batch. You WON¡¯T get to taste the first glass. YOU WILL NEED one large scoop butter pecan ice cream one large scoop vanilla ice cream three slices of frozen peach one tablespoon unsweetened creamy peanut butter one frozen pea a generous sprinkle of freshly grated nutmeg enough whole milk to make everything blend properly, as little as you can get away with Just blend it all together until it becomes smooth and irresistible!