I got a call from my buddy Ranjani Red in Delhi.  She works Gene Crimes, unsanctioned hybrids, toxic enhancements, that sort of thing.  In this back alley drug lab outside Narela, she walked in on a dead man.  He had bloody fingers jammed through his eye sockets.  Pointing outward.  Apparently, he and his lifeclone had been trying to artificially graft their DNA; conjoined twins with the flip of a helix.  So there’s Jani, and she’s standing there across from this guy, who’s half-hysterical and crying some sort of amphetamine compound.  His arm is stuck through the back of his mate’s skull, and every time he sobs or moves his arm at all, his fingers flex, staring at her from an empty head.  She had orders to kill everyone in the room.

On the news tonight, the top story was an exclusive interview with Joel Neckett, Luna’s new all-star goalie who scored six on Titian during last week’s much-hyped rivalry match.  Neckett moves like an android and talks like an alien.  Last week, his skin spontaneously ignited in the VIP room of a Plutonian club, killing a prostitute possessed of an illegal number of limbs.  The newsman asks him where he got his magic feet.  It wouldn’t surprise me if he sawed them off a wizard.

Speaking of, I hear they’re burning witches again on Europa. 

Last week, I came across a K-9 Fast Dog.  It was wandering through downtown Montreal, licking radioactive snow off the concrete.  Probably some kid’s rejected birthday present, he had been kicked into hypergrowth way too fast.  He was pulling through skin that was too small for him.  His eyes were covered by a film of misplaced flesh.  His teeth were visible at all times, gums to tip, his coat unable to stretch down far enough to save him.  He had eaten half of his front right leg.  I shot him.

I walk into our room at the Hotel la Vie at dusk.  Sarah sits on the bed, staring dimly at the vidscreen.  “The worldhead was assassinated,” she says. 

“What, again?”

“Yes,” she says, absently.  She is staring into space, small pink eyes swimming in a waterfall of fuzzy brown hair.  She has taken to wearing a faded orange sundress without shoes.  Sarah is the last alien.  She has come here from an Earth alternate.  She won’t say why.  I get the sense it wasn’t good.  On the vidscreen, two women and one man are lined up on a pile of tinder and Napalm IV. 

Sarah has hacked Europa Fedfeed.   “This fails,” she says.  She looks into my eyes.  My head is knocked back.  My brain cooks in my skull, and I see the universe, one end to the other.  It’s my turn, my turn to move, my turn to seek the Earth that worked, the reality that wins.  I cough blood.

“How . . . how’d you do that?”

Sarah smiles.

“Magic,” she murmurs. 

And onscreen, someone lights a match. 

 

 

 Andy Bolt is a traveling lover of words.  He quickly grows bored with cities, countries, and planets, but he currently resides outside Washington, D.C.. He spends his days typing and his nights gazing wistfully at the stars.