Postscripts, #11, Summer 2007

Postscripts #11 opens strongly with “Cobwebs” by Kealan Patrick Burke, an absolutely chilling tale that starts with Alfred Ross, an aging man, forgotten in Spring Grace Retirement Home. What begins as a sad story of a man watching his friends die and feeling the sting of the world and his family moving past him, waiting for him to fade, too, turns into something heartbreaking as we watch Alfred try to deal with his circumstances. Then, with only a few words, the game changes. The tale of sadness and despair is merely bait to pull the reader into someplace far worse, someplace where the greatest horror a person can face is not a serial killer or a monster from beyond, but tricks their own mind plays on them. Burke presents one of the scariest stories printed in a while, with no gore, no painful twists of fate, and no reprieve from an eventual end every living thing faces.

Next up, “Waiting For Dawn” by Mikal Trimm is a fantastic romp of imagination starring a bitter writer. Many writers say that if they didn’t write their stories and characters, they would spill out anyway, and so Alan’s does in the form of Dawn, a foxy redhead who exists just for him. This story leaves behind questions of sanity as something to dwell upon another day and instead races real life—the sum of the choices Alan has made—alongside the bits of him screaming for something better from within. When Janie, Alan’s mundane, self-centered wife, works, Alan and Dawn get to play. He doesn’t question her loyalty to and empathy with him, or why a hot young thing like her would be so interested in him. Until the day he catches her with part of his story, long lost, but not forgotten. Only then does he question, and only then does he find a way to an answer.

In “Servant of the Stone,” Dave Hoing takes a step out of the modern world and into that of a more traditional fantasy world. The story of two races at war is told retrospectively from the memories of Ashka, a man whose mind is quickly succumbing to age. In one moment, a half-breed of both races ends the war and unites the two races by healing the divide between the two. As Ashka seeks out the now aged, fabled ex-ruler of the world to regain his memories, seeking only to die whole and not a shell of a man, he discovers that Ket has memories of his own that he fights with. Surrounded by storms and a crumbling symbol of Ashka’s past, Ket names his price for clearing the skies of Ashka’s mind, proving that perceptions and actions, not memories, make a person who they are.

“The Saint of the Bells” by Forrest Aguirre returns this issue to a more familiar world, and a familiar theme as well, the conflict between Ignatio, a devotee to God but cruel in his faith, and his wife Juanita, who longs for the fellowship of her husband as he was before he found religion. With the help of a widow, Juanita hatches a plan to shatter her husband’s faith and return him to being the man she fell in love with. Surely any godly man would be interested in a miracle, a phantom ringing of bells in a church far away? The idea of something is often better than the event that spawned it, and though Ignatio loses much on his pilgrimage, he arrives at the small, almost forgotten church in the peasant town. The story cumulates with a question on the power of faith and whether true power comes from something outside, or the human mind.

“Bossanova” by Steve Aylett takes us back into science fiction with an Asimovian flare. Reflected through many events is the story of Baum, who created a robot and gave it and its successors the logic bases he created for court systems. “It’s decided, not detected, that a person committed a crime—the fact of whether he actually did it or not is altered by the decision, but people will believe as if it is.” But unlike the other robots for which this is a system of control, for Nova, it is a reason not to be human, not to be a subservient slave to what others say. The showdown between humanity and reality takes place not in some massive battle of survival, but with the flipping of a switch which proves both sides correct.

In “The King’s Physician” by Richard Paul Russo, Niccolo, follows with the troops as the king lays siege to the known world. But his role as king’s physician isn’t to heal the king’s wounds; it’s to operate the machines that compensate for both the congenital defects the king was born with and the king’s great age. The king is not truly a king, and the war is not just a last bid at a place in history for the fighters. “The King’s Physician” works its way through layers of story, motive, and action as Niccolo tries to come to terms with the way the world is changing and his own role in the process. In the end, the time the king has been warding off with chemicals and machines becomes a crushing thing, grinding everyone around him under its wheels.

“Talking at 60 Watts” by Eric Schaller is a strange, surreal tale about a drunk and a talking lamp. Not so much a straightforward story, but memories of a life from the sad end of it, after revealing bitterness and lies, it shows surprising depth and comfort, one of the only lighter endings in the issue.

“State of Grace” by David Barnett takes us into the future, a future where people have implanted “pairs”—devices like Palm Pilots and iPods (here “idPod”s)—that do far more than simply play songs or keep dates. They act as planners, news feeds, video and music players, money managers, threat detectors, phones, and more. But when a machine can be everything you need, how can the real world compete? And what happens if you turn that machine off? Jason’s idPod starts to show signs of jealousy, then romantic love. Used to letting it make the decisions for him, Jason begins to reciprocate its electronic feelings to the point of shunning his own kind. And what once aided communication between humans begins to isolate them, leaving people reluctant to think on their own. It’s a distant future, but one not hard to see on a city street where most people seem to have cell phones or headphones sprouting from them.

This issue of Postscripts concludes with “Behind the Clouds: In Front of the Sun” by Christopher Harman, a story that feels as though it’s told in a different language altogether—due, undoubtedly, to cultural differences between reader and author. But the plot is engaging nonetheless. Proffit, a hoarder in a violent, possibly doomed city, and perhaps one of the last civilized humans in the populace, finds a globe depicting a planet much different from Earth. After a haunting, possibly ominous dream, he hears a scratching coming from inside it. With horror, he determines that something is indeed inside. As he attempts to dispose of the, he witnesses the thing within hatch forth. Proffit only begins to learn of the globe’s strangeness, its meaning, and its creator after the hatchling flutters off into the city night. As he tries to figure out what can be done to stop the world in its progression into savagery, the story closes, much like watching the light at the end of the tunnel recede and knowing you’re heading the other way.