GlitterShip

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 36 for April 13, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story for you. Today we have a return of Rose Lemberg, whose story "Stalemate" was published in episode 7. This is the last story for the Winter 2017 issue, and Spring 2017 is right around the corner! We also have a guest reader, Rose Fox, for this episode.

Rose Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel. Rose's work has appeared in Lightspeed's Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Unlikely Story, Uncanny, and other venues. Their Birdverse novelette "Grandmother-nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds" has been nominated for the Nebula Award, and longlisted for the Hugo Award and the Tiptree Award. Rose's debut poetry collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird, is available from Aqueduct Press (2016). Rose can be found on Twitter as @roselemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/roselemberg, and on http://roselemberg.net.

Rose Fox is a senior reviews editor atPublishers Weeklyand the co-editor (with Daniel José Older) ofLong Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. They also write Story Hospital, a compassionate, practical weekly advice column about writing, and run occasional workshops for blocked and struggling writers. In their copious free time, they write fanfic and queer romance novels. They live in Brooklyn with two partners, three cats, the world's most adorable baby, and a great many books.

How to Remember to Forget to Remember the Old War

by Rose Lemberg

At the budget committee meeting this morning, the pen in my hand turns into the remote control of a subsonic detonator. It is familiar—heavy, smooth, the metal warm to the touch. The pain of recognition cruises through my fingers and up my arm, engorges my veins with unbearable sweetness. The detonator is gunmetal gray. My finger twitches, poised on the button.

I shake my head, and it is gone. Only it is still here, the taste of blood in my mouth, and underneath it, unnamed acidic bitterness. Around the conference table, the faces of faculty and staff darken in my vision. I see them—aging hippies polished by their long academic careers into a reluctant kind of respectability; accountants neat in bargain-bin clothes for office professionals; the dean, overdressed but defiant in his suit and dark blue tie with a class pin. They’ve traveled, I am sure, and some had protested on the streets back in the day and thought themselves radicals, but there’s none here who would not recoil in horror if I confessed my visions.

I do not twitch. I want to run away from the uncomplicated, slightly puffy expressions of those people who'd never faced the battlefield, never felt the ground shake, never screamed tumbling facedown into the dirt. But I have more self-control than to flee. When it comes my time to report, I am steady. I concentrate on the numbers. The numbers have never betrayed me.

At five PM sharp I am out of the office. The airy old space is supposed to delight, with its tall cased windows and the afternoon sun streaming through the redwoods, but there’s nothing here I want to see. I walk briskly to the Downtown Berkeley BART station, and catch a train to the city. The train rattles underground, all stale air and musty seats. The people studiously look aside, giving each other the safety of not-noticing, bubbles of imaginary emptiness in the crowd. The mild heat of bodies and the artificially illuminated darkness of the tunnel take the edge off.

When I disembark at Montgomery, the sky is already beginning to darken, the edges of pink and orange drawn in by the night. I could have gotten off at Embarcadero, but every time I decide against it—the walk down Market Street towards the ocean gives me a formality of approach which I crave without understanding why. My good gray jacket protects against the chill coming up from the water. The people on the street—the executives and the baristas, the shoppers and the bankers—all stare past me with unseeing eyes.

They shipped us here, I remember. Damaged goods, just like other states shipped their mentally ill to Berkeley on Greyhound buses: a one-way ticket to nowhere, to a place that is said to be restful and warm in the shadow of the buildings, under the bridges, camouflaged from this life by smells of pot and piss. I am luckier than most. Numbers come easy to me, and I look grave and presentable in my heavy jackets that are not armor. Their long sleeves hide the self-inflicted scars.

I remember little. Slivers. But I still bind my chest and use the pronoun they, and I wear a tight metal bracelet on my left arm. It makes me feel secure, if not safe. It’s only a ploy, this bracelet I have found, a fool’s game at hope. The band is base metal, but without any markings, lights, or familiar pinpricks of the signal. Nothing flows. No way for Tedtemár to call, if ever Tedtemár could come here.

Northern California is where they ship the damaged ones, yes, even interstellars.

Nights are hard. I go out to the back yard, barren from my attempts at do-it-yourself landscaping. Only the redwood tree remains, and at the very edge, a stray rose bush that blooms each spring in spite of my efforts. I smoke because I need it, to invoke and hold at bay the only full memory left to me: the battlefield, earth ravished by heaving and metal, the screech and whoosh of detonations overhead. In front of me I see the short, broad figure of my commanding officer. Tedtemár turns around. In dreams their visor is lifted, and I see their face laughing with the sounds of explosions around us. Tedtemár's arms are weapons, white and broad and spewing fire. I cannot hear anything for the wailing, but in dreams, Tedtemár's lips form my name as the ground heaves.

I have broken every wall in my house, put my fist through the thinness of them as if they're nothing. I could have lived closer to work, but in this El Cerrito neighborhood nobody asks any questions, and the backyard is mine to ravage. I break the walls, then half-heartedly repair them over weekends only to break them again. At work I am composed and civil and do not break anything, though it is a struggle. The beautiful old plaster of the office walls goes gritty gray like barracks, and the overhead lights turn into alarms. Under the table I interlace my fingers into bird's wings, my unit's recognition sign, as my eyes focus resolutely on spreadsheets. At home I repair the useless walls and apply popcorn texture, then paint the whole thing bog gray in a shade I mix myself. It is too ugly even for my mood, even though I’ve been told that gray is all the rage with interior designers these days.

I put my fist through the first wall before the paint dries.

Today, there is music on Embarcadero. People in black and colorful clothing whirl around, some skillfully, some with a good-natured clumsiness. Others are there simply to watch. It’s some kind of a celebration, but I have nothing to celebrate and nothing to hope for, except for the music to shriek like a siren. I buy a plate of deep-fried cheese balls and swallow them, taste buds disbelieving the input, eyes disbelieving the revelry even though I know the names of the emotions expressed here. Joy. Pleasure. Anticipation. At the edge of the piers, men cast small nets for crabs to sell to sushi bars, and in the nearby restaurants diners sip wine and shiver surreptitiously with the chill. I went out to dates with women and men and with genderfluid folks, but they have all avoided me after a single meeting. They are afraid to say it to my face, but I can see. Too gloomy. Too intense. Too quiet. Won't smile or laugh.

There is a person I notice among the revelers. I see them from the back—stooped, aloof. Like me. I don’t know what makes me single them out of the crowd, the shape of the shoulders perhaps. The stranger does not dance, does not move; just stands there. I begin to approach, then veer abruptly away. No sense in bothering a stranger with—with what exactly? Memories?

I cannot remember anything useful.

I wish they'd done a clean job, taken all my memories away so I could start fresh. I wish they'd taken nothing, left my head to rot. I wish they'd shot me. Wish I'd shoot myself, and have no idea why I don't, what compels me to continue in the conference rooms and in the overly pleasant office and in my now fashionably gray house. Joy or pleasure are words I cannot visualize. But I do want—something. Something.

Wanting itself at least was not taken from me, and numbers still keep me safe. Lucky bastard.

I see the stranger again at night, standing in the corner of my backyard where the redwood used to be. The person has no face, just an empty black oval filled with explosives. Their white artificial arms form an alphabet of deafening fire around my head.

The next day I see them in the shape of the trees outside my office window, feel their movement in the bubbling of Strawberry Creek when I take an unusual lunch walk. I want, I want, I want, I want. The wanting is a gray bog beast that swallows me awake into the world devoid of noise. The suffocating safe coziness of my present environment rattles me, the planes and angles of the day too soft for comfort. I press the metal of my bracelet, but it is not enough. I cut my arms with a knife and hide the scars old and new under sleeves. I break the walls again and repaint them with leftover bog gray, which I dilute with an even uglier army green.

Over and over again I take the BART to Embarcadero, but the person I seek is

Cooking with Closed Mouths

by Kerry Truong

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Full transcript after the cut.

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[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 35 for March 22, 2017.This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: “Cooking with Closed Mouths" by Kerry Truong.

Kerry Truong writes about many things, including folktale and horror. Their hobbies are futilely trying to train their dogs; tearing their hair out while reading comics; and eating good food. They like their meat rare, and if a story doesn’t mention food at least once, it wasn’t written by them. You can follow their queer firebreathing on Twitter @springbamboos.

We also have a guest reader!

R Chang hails from a small valley on the West coast, where they moonlight as an artist. Their dearest wish in life is to quit their day job and establish a farm for dogs.

Cooking with Closed Mouths

by Kerry Truong

A gumiho could run faster than shadows spread, but since Ha Neul doubted that Americans would take kindly to a nine-tailed fox streaking down Los Angeles’ busy streets, they opted to walk to the bus stop in the falling darkness after work.

The cool night air was a relief after the hot confines of Mrs. Chang’s restaurant, where Ha Neul had spent the day carrying heavy dishes and enduring customers’ complaints. Mrs. Chang’s mediocre food attracted few customers, and her refusal to use air conditioning made those who did come disinclined to be generous. Ha Neul never told her this, of course, because what was the point of trying to change people’s ways? For this silence they were rewarded with meager wages and leftovers that turned to ashes in their mouth.

Today was no different. After mediating between Mrs. Chang and angry customers, Ha Neul was finally left in peace, a bag of banchan the only payment for their troubles. They stood at the bus stop in a crowd of other commuters, careful to remain at the edges where they could go unnoticed but still hear the conversations around them. There was chatter about everything from peace in Viet Nam to some boxing championship or another. Ha Neul didn’t understand the voracious interest humans showed in things that would only fade from memory or repeat themselves in a matter of years. Still, they liked listening. There was something comforting about the way humans kept going, as full of energy as if they were the first to experience these things.

When the bus arrived, Ha Neul boarded in a stream of other passengers, shouldering their way through until they could find a place to stand. Proximity filled their nose with the tang of everyone around them and made their stomach clench. They ignored it, used to the hunger. Instead of thinking about it, they studied the people closest to them.

An older woman stood next to them in the aisle, her eyes drifting closed as if the lurch and stop of the bus were a lullaby. A pair of students on their other side consulted each other in urgent voices about what songs to put on a mixtape for a crush. Ha Neul listened with amusement. It must be nice, they thought, to be caught up in the rhythm of falling in and out of love; to hope over and over that warmth could be found in the clasp of another person’s hand.

At home, Hana was waiting for them, her homework fanned out on the kitchen table. Their one-bedroom apartment was too small for a proper desk, and neither of them had much use for the kitchen’s traditional function, so Hana had claimed it as her study room. The table was often strewn with books and papers and half-chewed pens. Ha Neul had given up on putting the mess into any kind of order. No matter how hard they tried, the table would be cluttered again within the day.

Hana waved when they came in. “Took you long enough to get home! Did Mrs. Chang give you food again?”

Ha Neul nodded, searching for an empty spot to set the bag down. After a moment they gave up and simply handed it to Hana.

“All mine, and none for oppa,” she sang.

Ha Neul sat down next to her as she searched through the bag, their body heavy from exhaustion. They relaxed in the warmth of the kitchen, watching as Hana tasted each banchan in turn. She was eager to try them all, which was why Ha Neul always accepted Mrs. Chang’s leftovers. It didn’t matter if the food couldn’t make her full. It reminded her of home, of a life where she’d had family and people to belong to.

Ha Neul’s stomach clenched again. They went to the refrigerator and opened it. It was nearly empty, except for the large plastic bag dominating the center shelf and several plastic cartons arranged in neat rows beside it. Ha Neul brought the bag to the table.

“Oppa, don’t you dare get blood on my homework,” Hana said as they stacked books and papers to clear a space on the table.

“I would never sully the homework of a top student.”

Ha Neul took a package wrapped in butcher paper out of the bag and set it on the table. The paper was damp in spots, its white color stained pink by the blood that seeped through it. The tang that Ha Neul had smelled on the bus filled their nose again, this time richer and deeper. Hana stopped eating to watch, her eyes intent. She could smell the blood, too.

They unwrapped the paper to reveal hearts, kidneys, slices of liver, and other organ meats, raw and glistening. Ha Neul ate a heart, ripping the muscle with their sharp teeth. It was savory, satisfying them in a way Mrs. Chang’s food never could, making them crave for more. They reached for a piece of liver as soon as they’d finished the heart. It was good to be home.

Hana was still watching them. They thought they could see the hint of a fang beginning to protrude in the corner of her mouth, but when they offered her a kidney she waved it away. “I’m not into solid food.”

Ha Neul raised an eyebrow, looking at the banchan.

“That’s different. I eat that for fun, not to get full.”

“Can you really taste it?”

“A little. It’s really faint though, like when you have a cold and can only get an aftertaste.”

Ha Neul didn’t understand, having never had a cold. They nodded anyway. “Do you remember what human food tastes like?”

Hana looked wistful. “I think I’m forgetting. I know that hotteok are sweet and kimchi jjigae is spicy, but even though I know the words I don’t remember the taste.”

She must be nearing forty, but time hadn’t changed the smoothness of her skin or the roundness of her face. If there was one thing that aged her, it was her eyes. They were too knowing. It was only now, with her longing so apparent, that she seemed exactly the high school student that she pretended to be.

Ha Neul had known that longing. It had been food that first drew them to humans, after all. So many colors and textures: thick, greasy noodles coated in black bean sauce, kimbap dotted with yellow, green, and orange vegetables, cream-colored crab meat marinated in soy sauce. They supposed it was harder for Hana, though, having actually known what human food tasted like. Reaching over, they squeezed her hand.

Hana squeezed their hand back and smiled at them. “How’s your food, oppa?”

“Delicious.”

“It’s still weird to me how you eat cows and not humans. Isn’t it unsatisfying?”

“It’s a good enough substitute.” When reduced to their innards, humans and cows weren’t very different, Ha Neul thought, and offal was easy to get from the butcher for no more than a few cents.

Hana trailed a finger through the blood that had congealed on the paper, then licked it off. “You know you’re welcome to come find dinner with me any night.”

The food soured in Ha Neul’s mouth. Being hungry around humans was one thing, eating them was another. Thinking about it made them feel ill.

“I don’t eat humans anymore,” they said, allowing their voice to get sharp.

Hana bit her lip, looking chastised. Ha Neul felt guilty, but they’d told her often enough that they didn’t want to be goaded about their eating habits. They’d tried living as a human long ago, hoping to discover the taste of other food. But a gumiho is a fox at heart, its human appearance a mere illusion, and Ha Neul’s hunger had only grown with each dish they’d eaten. It was all ash. In the end, they’d given into their hunger, only to be horrified by the uniform redness. They’d stopped eating humans by the time they met Hana. She should have known better than to tease them about it.

Ha Neul worried that she would sulk, but instead she rummaged through her backpack and brought out a flyer.

“Here,” she said, sliding it across to Ha Neul. Her voice was light, the previous subject waved away. “Talking about food reminded me of this. I don’t think I can wiggle my way out of it.”

Ha Neul chewed on a piece of liver and read the flyer. It was printed on daffodil yell

for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you’re not complaining. You figure that if it’s this cold, even the girl dedicated to foiling all your business ventures won’t be flying around, so your employees might actually get things done.

[Full transcript after the cut.]

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Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 34 for February 28, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story for today is "for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her" by Agatha Tan.

Agatha Tan is a first year student at Yale-NUS College. She writes fantasy and sci-fi fiction and occasionally also pens poetry. In her spare time, she dabbles in fanfiction, modular origami, and video games.

for she is the stars, and the sun revolves around her

by Agatha Tan

You watch from your corner booth as she settles down in the other corner booth, across the room.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen her around here, but the girl still manages to capture your attention. She’s tall and lithe and god, but those arms (you live for the day she wears a tank top, because) and you think she’s probably a dancer or a gymnast, because she moves with a grace that proclaims she knows her body well.

After the crazy week you’ve had at work, seeing the cute girl is pleasant. Today, her brown hair is topped by a maroon beanie, and her nose, which is sharp enough she could use it as a letter opener, is tinged red. You glance out the window as you take a sip of your tea. The world outside is a gorgeous snow globe, complete with the inconvenient white flurry. Still, you’re not complaining. You figure that if it’s this cold, even the girl dedicated to foiling all your business ventures won’t be flying around, so your employees might actually get things done.

Thinking of work dampens your mood quickly. At the rate things are going, when the end of the year rolls around, you’ll have achieved maybe half an item on the to-do list you created in January. All because of a girl who waltzes in at the most inappropriate times and wrecks all your work.

(You consider cancelling bring-your-kid-to-work day because she’s always exploiting the relatively more relaxed security, but family is important, even in this business, and you don’t want your employees to forget that.)

Your eyes roam from your carefully drawn out plans—you’re designing a new machine to replace the one that someone blew up last week—to the girl in the corner, and you decide that, you know what, screw this. You neatly fold up the blueprints and shove them into your bag; carrying your tea in one hand and your jacket in the other, you make your way over to her.

“Hi,” you greet, and you hate that you’re one of the most powerful women in one of the most powerful industries, and your voice still quivers around cute girls. You flash her a smile, and you’re relieved when she flashes you one in return. Granted, her answering smile is nervous and hesitant, but it’s a smile nonetheless. “Do you mind…?”

The girl is perky and a little too enthusiastic and she seems to radiate rainbows, which really isn’t your usual type. But hey, she’s cute. “No! I mean, um, no, I don’t mind.”

As you set your tea down and slide into the seat, you introduce yourself to her. Your introduction is much smoother than hers, which tumbles out of her mouth and trips over her lips. You barely catch her name—Elle. For all the grace she exudes when she walks, she’s a pretty clumsy person. Still, that only endears you more to her, and you find yourself laughing at a stupid joke—her attempt at breaking the ice— even though you’ve heard it before and yeah, it’s just as stupid as you remembered. You talk for a little, and you suspect she’s into you too because you think her pupils are slightly dilated and she keeps leaning in. (Then she’ll catch herself and sit upright again. Rinse and repeat.)

She offers up information about herself to match the information you give her. When you tell her you work in engineering—given your talents, it didn’t make sense for you to go into anything else—she gushes about how cool that is and how smart you must be before telling you that she’s a chef. You mention tennis, and she reveals she dances on the side, confirming your suspicions. Not that you’re ever wrong, of course, but the validation is welcome.

It’s going well—you haven’t screwed up, and neither has she, and you’re beginning to think you might have a chance with her when your phone rings. You don’t want to take it, but glancing at the screen, you realize it’s your second-in-command, Tommy, so you excuse yourself and go outside.

“Boss, there’s something wrong with the machine,” he says immediately, once you’ve picked up. He’s learned remarkably swiftly that if you pick up at all, you know who it is, and he shouldn’t waste your time. Your last second-in-command took weeks to learn that lesson, and he’s still paying the price for that in Reykjavik, Iceland. “It’s making this odd purring sound and shaking like it might blow.”

You have to ask him to clarify thrice which machine he means, because god knows you didn’t hire him for his communication skills, but when you finally get it, you sigh because it’s not something you know how to fix without looking at it yourself. “Fine, I’ll come in,” you say, rubbing your temple with a finger that’s gone numb already. Electricity crackles at your fingertips, streaks of white and blue. “Expect me in half an hour.”

Not waiting for a reply, you hang up and head back inside. Elle has her nose buried in the book she was reading before you approached her earlier, and your arrival startles her, but she smiles. You grin back because she’s so jumpy it’s adorable. Not to mention normal. You could use some normal. Her smile falls when you tell her it was work and you have to go, but her face lights up again when you ask for her number. She keys it into your phone and you want give her yours as well, but she tells you her phone is out of battery. Shrugging, you scrawl your number in felt pen on a napkin—you feel like a cliché, but hey, your life is probably one giant cliché—and watch the lights in her eyes dance as she takes it, accepting your promises of soon.

It’s not going to last long, you know, because these flings never do. Sooner or later, your job will get in the way; you’ll have a screaming match at one in the morning and she’ll throw you out with your stuff because we never see each other anymore and it’s like you’re not even trying when I am, I am, but she won’t hear you and so you’ll go. You’ll feel drained for weeks afterwards, yet jump in again with the first cute girl who grabs your attention.

Still, it’s fun while it lasts, and you find yourself looking forward to seeing her again even as you trudge through the bitter snow to get to the train station. You might be one of the richest women in the country, but that’s only because you’re gifted and smart as hell, and this really isn’t the weather for driving.

Three months later, things have still not gone to hell.

You’re surprised, because usually it only takes one, but you suppose that your job hasn’t been as demanding recently. Your company is exceptionally quiet because your team’s deadline to perfect that next big machine hasn’t passed, so there’s a lull in the excitement. And the lull is good, because not only does it give your employees a chance to get some of the more legitimate work done, but it also means that no one is spying on you because you’re not actually stirring up any trouble. It’s pretty relaxing.

A bonus is that you’ve gotten to spend more time with Elle. Currently, she’s curled up on your couch, playing with Jam, watching a television special on the exploits of the supervillain Black Thunder and how her rival, the superhero Summer Wind, has foiled her every time. This special focuses on the time the superhero blew up Black Thunder’s entire lab three months ago. There are other villains and heroes, but those two are the top of the food chain. You watch these specials a lot, because how else will you keep up with the community?

It turns out that the weird purring sounds the machine had been making? Yeah, a cat, which had somehow gotten into the compound and into the machinery. You took it home with you because you couldn’t have left it in the compound to get stuck in all the other machines, and the next day you found it with a paw in your jam jar, hence the name. Jam took an immediate liking to Elle when she first came over two weeks ago, which is more than you can say for yourself. The cat spent an entire week hissing and clawing at you and the scars on your arms are faint but they’re still there to prove it.

You’re in the kitchen scooping globs of ice-cream on top of strawberries and Nutella when Elle calls over. “Hey, Van? Can I t

Curiosity Fruit Machine

by S. Qiouyi Lu

"What is it?" Alliq says.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It's a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

"I have no clue," Jalzy says. "But... I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens."

CURIOSITY FRUIT MACHINE and THE SLOW ONES are both GlitterShip Originals.

[Full transcript after the cut]

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Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 33 for February 14, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

We have two stories this week, "Curiosity Fruit Machine" by S. Qiouyi Lu and "The Slow Ones" by JY Yang. Even better, S. narrated both stories for us!

S. Qiouyi Lu is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator; their stories have appeared in Strange Horizons and Daily Science Fiction, and their poetry has appeared in Liminality and Uncanny. They are a 2016 graduate of the Clarion West writers workshop and a dread member of the Queer Asian SFFH Illuminati. Find them online at s.qiouyi.lu or follow them on Twitter at @sqiouyilu.

JY Yang is a queer, non-binary writer and editor who has short fiction published or forthcoming in places likeUncanny,Lightspeed,Strange Horizonsand Tor.com. Their debut novellas, THE RED THREADS OF FORTUNE and THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN, will be out from Tor.com Publishing in Fall 2017. They live in Singapore, edit fiction at Epigram Books, and swan about Twitter as @halleluyang.

Curiosity Fruit Machine

by S. Qiouyi Lu

"What is it?" Alliq says.

Jalzy runs eir hands over the object. It's a box of some sort, made from metal with organic paneling; a narrow lever sticks out from one side. Ey finds emself reaching out to the lever, eir fingers grasping the pockmarked knob at the end as if working from unearthed muscle memory.

"I have no clue," Jalzy says. "But... I kinda wanna pull this and see what happens."

Alliq frowns. "Don't. For all we know, that thing could be some sort of weapon. We should probably wait for the others to catch up so we can get the engineering team to take a proper look."

Alliq's voice fades into a mumble. Jalzy presses eir nose to the glass front of the object and brushes a tight curl of hair out of eir face. Ey can just barely make out some lettering—PAY. Eir grasp of 21st-century English is weak, but this seems to be a money machine of some sort. Surely, ey thinks, bringing eir arm down, a money machine can't hurt em...

"Don't—!"

The object whirs to life, three wheels inside the glass case spinning; a few of the bulbs lining the edge buzz and spark. Jalzy jumps back. Oh crap. Ccccccclackkkclackkclackkk—didn't old-timey explosives make that sound? Or were explosives more of a tick-tock sound? One of the wheels clicks as it stops—Jalzy grabs Alliq by the wrist, drags xem to a safe spot behind a wall of heavy crates—then another click—they brace themselves—and—click!

Alliq flinches. Jalzy waits a moment—a dud, perhaps?—before peeking past the edge of the crates. The object's face shows one symbol, then two of the same symbol. The first is an oblong, yellow shape, and the next two are round, red orbs connected by an inverted green V.

"I think we're safe," Jalzy whispers. Alliq comes up from xyr braced position.

"Goddammit, don't do this to me," Alliq hisses. Xe's sweating a little, xyr forehead shining, and Jalzy has to suppress a giggle.

"Hey, we're fine, right?" Ey steps out from behind the crates and goes back to the object. Ey crouches down. There's a metal trough underneath the symbols, but it's empty. Do they need to put something in there?

"Jalzy," Alliq says from over eir shoulder, "those are—those are pictures of fruit."

"What's a fruit?"

"Seriously?" Alliq says, voice laden with exasperation. When Jalzy gives xem a blank stare, Alliq points at the oblong symbol and says, "Look, the first one is a lemon. Those two on the right, those are cherries."

Jalzy squints. "I thought 'cherry' and 'lemon' were just colors. You know, like how we also have orange nutriblocks in our sustenance packs."

Alliq snorts. "You know there used to be a fruit called 'orange', right? It wasn't just a color. Those are actually flavors. They came from these."

Jalzy straightens up and paces around the object. "So what is this, a fruit-making machine?"

"Did you never take terrabiology?" Alliq says. "History of Earth? Anything?"

"Look, I took astrophysics so I wouldn't have to deal with so much reading, okay," Jalzy says, flipping eir crown of curls over eir shoulder. "So just educate me already, O All-Knowing Alliq."

Alliq crosses xyr arms over xyr chest in a huff. "Fruit comes from seeds, not machines. I mean, we perfected the science to duplicate the flavors all the way back in the 21st century, but we never really got down how to duplicate the organic material. So the best we've got now is our nutriblocks." Xe unfolds xyr arms and circles around the object. "This—this is something else entirely. I don't think it actually has anything to do with food."

"So, if it doesn't seem to be a weapon, and it doesn't produce anything... wanna pull the lever again and see what happens?" Jalzy grins slyly at Alliq, who raises xyr hands in surrender.

"I'm going to check out the other room. If I were you, I'd just keep doing inventory until engineering gets here and can confirm what kind of object that is."

Jalzy sticks out eir tongue.

"Good thing you're not me," ey says.

And ey pulls the lever again.

END

The Slow Ones

by JY Yang

"The grass is dying."

Kira looked up from squeezing a sachet of turkey-flavored sludge into the cat's bowl. Thom was standing by the living room window in his bathrobe still, holding a chipped mug of coffee and gazing out.

"What?" she asked.

"The grass. In the garden. It's gone all brown."

She dumped the sachet in the trash and almost rinsed her sticky fingers under the kitchen faucet. But she remembered in time, and instead wiped them on the dishtowel she'd hung up.

She hurried into the living room.

"There," Thom said, "see?"

In the small rectangle of dirt they called a garden the sparse tufts of grass had shriveled and turned colorless like the hair on an old man's head. A flap of crisp packet gleamed in the far corner, silver-underside-up, chicken bones scattered around it. The neighborhood kids. Kira wondered how long they had been there. Maybe forever. Everything seemed stuck in stasis these days.

The grass had been in decline for a long time, months before the invasion began. Once upon a time Kira had plans for that patch. She had imagined cultivating flowers: Tulips, daffodils, rosebushes. Climbing ivies for the trellis. Maybe even one of those outdoor water features. But there hadn't been any time, had there?

"Hasn't rained in weeks," Thom said. "Might never rain again."

Kira exhaled and stormed back to the kitchen. The clock said five to three and she wished it didn't. She took a box of porkloin out of the freezer and popped it into the fridge.

"Might as well dig it all up," Thom said from the living room.

"Yeah, why don't you do it?" she said, louder than she'd intended.

The cat had cleaned out her bowl and now stood staring at Kira, tail stiff in expectation. Kira snatched the water dish off the floor, then gingerly ran a centimeter of water into it. "Don't waste it," she told the cat as she sat it down again.

In the living room Thom had settled into the armchair, knees apart, eyes blank. "What would be the point?"

"What?"

He turned to look at her, framed in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, and shrugged. "There's no point."

"Whatever," she said, and went to put her boots on.

The cat had followed her out of the kitchen. "Come here, girl," she heard Thom say, his voice soft and charming, like it always used to be.

Kira shoved her feet into the narrow confines of her boots. "I've left pork chops in the fridge to defrost," she said. "If you have time, you could make dinner." She knew he wouldn't.

The cat settled on the windowsill to watch her as she stepped outside and locked the front door.

Kira pulled her coat around herself, and then, because she had to, like pulling a plaster off, to get it over with; because she couldn't just ignore it, she looked up at the sky.

From horizon to horizon, the sky above their street was filled with aliens. A thick layer of massive silver bodies, like cumulus rolls made of mercury, slid by over the tops of the streetlamps, the roofs, the twisted fingers of bare trees. Sunlight sometimes leaked through their bulk, but not often; the world had been in a state of weak thunderstorm dusk for weeks.

The president of the United States had called them the Slow Ones, and the name stuck. Their enormous smooth bodies slipped against one another in a never-ending parade. There were scales and faint markings on each one whose purpose was impossible to discern. Concentric discs in alternating light and dark colors, larger across than a commercial jetliner, were assumed by observers to be eyes. But the gaping maw in front of each one, leading into unfathomable darkness: That one everyone could agree on. It was a mouth. A p

The Subtler Art

by Cat Rambo

Anything can happen in Serendib,the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaledin Serendib.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 32 for January 24, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

For some GlitterShip news: coming on February 1st, we will be open to poetry submissions. For more information, check the submissions guidelines page on our website, GlitterShip.com. Also, starting with our Winter 2017 issue, GlitterShip also has seasonal issues availablevia our Patreon (patreon.com/keffy) or at glittership.com/buy, for those of you who would like to read the stories before anyone else.

Our story this week is "The Subtler Art" by Cat Rambo.

Cat's fiction has appeared on GlitterShip before. Episode 13 featured her story"Sugar", way back in September 2015.

Cat lives, writes, and teaches atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is an Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. 2017 sees the publication of her second novel,Hearts of Tabat.

For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and online classes, seehttp://www.kittywumpus.net

We also have a guest reader this week!

Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared inClarkesworld, Nightmare,Lightspeed,and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places.Theirdebut short fiction collectionSinging With All My Skin and Boneis available from Undertow Publications.They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.

The Subtler Art

by Cat Rambo

Anything can happen in Serendib,the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once.

The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason.

The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaledin Serendib.

It was the Dark’s favorite place to eat, and since she and Tericatus were haphazard cooks at best and capable of (usually accidentally) killing someone at worst, they often ate their meals out. And because the city is so full of notorious people, very few noted that the woman once known as the best assassin on five continents on a world that only held four and her lover, a wizard who’d in his time achieved wonders and miracles and once even a rebirthed God, were slurping noodles only an elbow length’s away at the same chipped beige stone counter.

Though indifferent cooks, both were fond enough of food to argue its nuances in detail, and this day they were arguing over the use of white pepper or golden when eating the silvery little fish that swarm every seventh Spring in Serendib.

“Yellow pepper has a flatness to it,” Dark argued. Since retirement, she had let herself accumulate a little extra fat over her wiry muscles, and a few white strands traced themselves through her midnight hair, but she remained the one of the pair who drew most eyes. Her lover was a lean man, sparse in flesh and hair, gangly, with long capable hands spotted with unnatural colors and burns from alchemical experiments.

“Cooking,” said the person on the other side of her, “is an exceedingly subtle art.”

“Cathay,” the Dark said, recognizing the stranger. Her tone was cool. The newcomer was both acquaintance and former lover for both of them, but more than that, Cathay was a Trickster mage, and you never knew what she might be getting into.

Tericatus grunted his own acknowledgment and greeting, rolling an eye sideways at the Dark in warning. He knew she was prone to impatience and while Tricksters can play with many things, impatience is a favorite point to press on.

But the conversation that the Trickster made was slight, as though Cathay’s mind were elsewhere, and by the time the other had tapped coin to counter in order to pay, most of what she’d said had vanished, except for those few words.

“A subtle art,” the Dark repeated to Tericatus, letting the words linger like pepper on her tongue. “It describes what I do as well. The most subtle art of all, assassination.”

Tericatus slouched back in his chair with a smile on his lips and a challenging quirk to his eyebrow. “A subtle art, but surely not the most subtle. That would be magery, which is subtlety embodied.”

The Dark looked hard at her mate. While she loved him above almost all things, she had been——and remained——very proud of her skill at her profession.

The argument hung in the air between them. They both considered it. So many words could go in defense of either side. But actions speak stronger than words. And so they both stood and slid a token beneath their empty bowls and nodded at each other in total agreement.

“Who first?” the Dark asked.

“I have one in mind already, if you don’t care,” Tericatus murmured.

“Very well.”

Serendib has no center—or at least the legend goes that if anyone ever finds it, the city will fall—but surely wherever its heart is, it must lie close to the gardens of Caran Sul.

Their gates are built of white moon-metal, which grows darker whenever the moon is shadowed,and their grounds are overgrown with shanks of dry green leaves and withered purple blossoms that smell sweet and salty, like the very edges of the sea.

In the center, five towers start to reach to the sky, only to tangle into the form of Castle Knot, where the Angry Daughters, descended from the prophet who once lived there, swarm, and occasionally pull passersby into their skybornenests, never to be seen again.

Tericatus and the Dark paid their admittance coin to the sleepy attendant at the entrance stile outside the gate and entered through the pathway hacked into the vegetation. Tericatus paused halfway down the tunnel to lean down and pick up a caterpillar from the dusty path, transferring it to the dry leaves on the opposite side.

The Dark kept a wary eye on the sky as they emerged into sunlight. While she did not fear an encounter with a few of the Daughters, a crowd of them would be an entirely different thing. But nothing stirred in the stony coils and twists so far above.

“This reminds me,” she ventured, “of the time we infiltrated the demon city of S’keral pretending to be visiting scholars and wrestled that purple stone free from that idol.”

“Indeed,” Tericatus said, “this is nothing like that.”

“Ah. Perhaps it is more like the time we entered the village of shapeshifters and killed their leaders before anyone had time enough to react.”

“It is not like that either,” Tericatus said, a little irritably.

“Remind me,” she said, “exactly what we are doing here.”

Tericatus stopped and crossed his arms. “I’m demonstrating the subtlety with which magic can work.”

“And how exactly will it work? she inquired.

He unfolded an arm and pointed upward towards the dark shapes flapping their way down from the heights, clacking the brazen, razor-sharp bills on the masks they wore.

“I presume you don’t need me to do anything.”

Tericatus did not deign to answer.

The shapes continued to descend. The Dark could see the brass claws tipping their gloves, each stained with ominous rust.

“You're quite sure you don’t need me?”

A butterfly fluttered across the sky from behind them. Dodging to catch it in her talons, one Daughter collided with another, and the pair tumbled into the path of a third, then a fourth...

The Dark blinked as the long grass around them filled with fallen bodies.

“Very nice,” she said with genuine appreciation. “And the tipping point?”

Tericatus smirked slightly. “The caterpillar. You may have noticed that I moved it from one kind of plant to another -”

“Of course.”

“And when it eats jilla leaves, its scent changes, attracting adults of its species to come lay more eggs there.”

“Well done,” she said. “A valiant try indeed.”

The Home for Dictators is, despite its name, a retirement home, though it is true that it holds plenty of past leaders of all so

Parts

by Paul Lorello

I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley's finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I'll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He'd make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 31 for January 11, 2017.This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Before I get started, I'd like to let you know about a slight format change for GlitterShip. If you enjoy listening to GlitterShip via podcast or reading the fiction on our website as the stories are released, don't worry! That's not going to change. However, GlitterShip's stories will be released in 4 seasonal issues per year starting this month with Winter 2017. These issues will be available to purchase at the beginning of the season in EPUB, MOBI and PDF format and will include three months' worth of stories. If you like what we do here and would like to support GlitterShip, as well asget an electronic copy of the stories to keep, check out GlitterShip.com/buy.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: "Parts" by Paul Lorello.

Paul Lorello is a freelance writer from Ronkonkoma, New York. His fiction has appeared in Big Pulp's Kennedy Curse anthology, Black Chaos: Tales of the Zombie, Membrane, The Big Adios, Way Out West, and Pseudopod. In 2014, the Pseudopod podcast of Paul's story, "Growth Spurt", was chosen as the winner of the coveted Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Short Story. Paul lives with three quadrupeds and one biped. He knows very little about everything.

Parts

by Paul Lorello

I honestly don't think anyone on Earth was ever happier than Jake was when Bobo Schmuley's index finger arrived by Special Courier on Tuesday. I was the one who got stuck signing for it and paying the non-breakability reward while Jake stood right there in the sub-cooler, jumping up and down and slapping at his sides.

I held the parcel out at him. He grabbed it hungrily and tore it open and he took out Bobo Schmuley's finger and held it up to the light and turned it around—this pallid, hairy thing, stubbier than I thought it would be. He smiled, and I'll confess now that it gave me a soft spot to see him made so happy by simple pleasures. He'd make up for it by the end of the week, but I did have that one soft spot at that moment.

Jake had about sixteen more bids on other parts of Bobo Schmuley. He feverishly browsed them, like watching all these little pots of water set to boil. I failed to mention that this was merely his latest acquisition. That more of Bobo Schmuley was gathered up in a stoneware bowl in Jake's room. They listed the items for auction piecemeal. Bit by bit, as it were. Whet the appetites of folks like Jake for as long as they possibly could, issuing little teasers on newstables and crawl signs, a scroll on the side of a community car—as if the community car industry hadn't already sold out—Bobo Schmuley's Uvula Coming Soon! Or something like that. The heads would turn and suddenly there would be this electric buzz in the air. And then would come sounds from the detractors, who blow these little horns that go skeeeeeet, as they shout their little slogans. I was always one with them in spirit, though I always knew enough to keep my gob stopped. Get a few detractors who'd been sniffing Sour Air and mix them up with these fervent Schmuley devotees and you've got yourself a riot, my friend. Add to that a heat index of 123 Fahrenheit and the thing becomes not so much a war as an unbearable nuisance, with a lot of screaming and fainting and throwing up and very little progress in terms of one side triumphing over the other.

I also didn't mention that this was about the time that I started conversing with Jake seriously on the subject. "This will be over sooner rather than later," I said. "Sooner or later," I said, "they'll run out of Bobo Schmuley. Then what will you do?"

He ignored me the first few times I brought it up. Then it started getting to him. He'd rub at his little frozen blue nose and then the teeth and the fists would clench and the eyes would widen and he'd start to tremble all over. I have to admit I found it amusing. He knew it. It made him angrier.

But he kept on. I couldn't understand why. It's not like he'd ever have a complete Bobo Schmuley. No one would. There was only one, and they were going to run out of him soon. Sure, there were counterfeits out there, but they were easy to spot. Easy for Jake, that is, and anyone else who was serious about collecting.

Here's what happened. A day or so later, Jake came in and started rummaging through the kitchen chest freezer, torso deep.

"That's not sanitary," I called to him. He ignored me.

His legs flailed around, flopping sort of, like a fish or that Sloppy Epileptic toy that people were all up in a tizzy about a couple of years ago.

It's technic, stupid hectic,

Mucho apoplectic

Sloppy Epileptic!

Whooooooo?

Sloppy Epileptic!

Batteries not included.

So I got up. "You do realize you're making an unholy irritant of yourself." And that's when I saw he had a screwdriver in his hand and was chipping away at the rime on the inside of the chest. His mouth was open and his teeth were clenched and he was breathing in gusts and tears and there was spit flying onto the fishstick boxes.

"Fuck you, Miles," he said, chipping with his syllables. "Fucking. Unit. In the. Sub. Cooler is. Fucked. Fuck. Fuck you."

And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to understand, because he kept his parts in the sub-cooler and there was going to be Holy Hell on Earth if they spoiled. I looked through the sub-cooler window and saw a thin fog forming in splashes across it. The real problem was that we spent most of our daylight hours in the sub-cooler. To hell with his parts. To hell with Bobo Schmuley. Of course I didn't say this.

Jake stabbed a coil or something because all of a sudden the room was flooded with this hammy smell of leaking coolant gas.

"Now you done it! Now you went and messed up our cooler and messed up our whole apartment with that stink!"

He dropped the screwdriver into the chest and used both of his chunky hands to gather up the shards of ice he'd managed to free, cursing the whole way because the cold was stinging his fingers. He ran into the sub-cooler and I watched him through the window. He stood before the bowl, looking panicked. Then he dropped the ice pieces next to his bowl of parts and then took off his shirt, laid it next to the bowl, and carefully placed his collection of parts onto it. Then he gathered up the ice and dumped it hastily into the bowl and carefully lifted the shirt and put it on top of the ice. This endearing combination look of satisfaction and triumph and relief came over his face, and he wiped his hands on his pants, then looked around as if there was another shirt in there somewhere. Then he came out.

"That was absolutely poetic," I said.

He pointed at the room, his mouth a rictus. He looked through the window, I guess to make sure he was pointing in the right direction, then looked back at me. "The fucking unit."

"I know," I said. "And now take a whiff."

He did so. "What's that?"

"Coolant. And you're coming with me to go buy another chest. And you're gonna go halfsies on it."

"What about the sub-cooler?" he said, defeated.

"I might be able to fix it. But get your shoes on."

And so we went out to the community car stop and there was this argument in process. Two sourheads were screaming at a young woman with a daisy graft on her chin.

Daisychins were, in those days, by and large, crazy about parts, and this one probably made an excited comment about an upcoming release, incurring the wrath of the sourheads.

Jake took her side, and I had to take his. And now it was three against two. Two sourheads, that is, which is like arguing with four regular people, each of whom speak a different language.

They said that Bobo Schmuley probably wasn't a real guy anyway. And they said that Bobo Schmuley's best parts were all taken and all that was left were grubs and inferior arteries and so forth. And anyway, they said, get a life. And besides, they said, agents of the everclear are everywhere. Their go-to slogan.

I agreed with them silently.

One of the sourheads lunged forth to bite Jake's face. I swatted at him. Probably not the best idea, as now we'd drawn a crowd. And as luck would have it, a community car rolled by and scrolled another message about Coming soon! Bobo Schmuley's Liver! Bid or Be Smashed! And someone shouted that there was absolutely no way there was a liver up for grabs. Jake and the daisychin were red in the face. Redder, that is. We were all red in the face. And we were all sweating profusely out there. Com

City of Chimeras

by Richard Bowes

1.

Salome's hand is the hinge and John the Baptist's head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I slam the brass head held by its brass hair on the door a few times before the spy slot on the iron door opens and closes.

To mortal eyes here in the Middle World even a half-breed Fey like me can appear a bit translucent with his hands and hair trailing away like phosphorous. In my case most of that is the effect of Prince Calithurn's Glamour having rubbed off on me. But at this address I'm recognized and expected. Though since I've come on time, I am by local standards early to the point of madness.

Just then, I feel the probe of another mind. By instinct I block it. The rivalries and feuds of the tall elves are twisted and beyond logic. Recently certain ones have appeared in Gotham who can scan and probe as well as my lover Calithurn or any other Fey. And these newcomers mean us no good. This time however, it's Prince Cal himself and I let him into my mind.

"Enemies from this world and Faery are at my throat," he announces. "Though my father has abandoned me, his enemies have not. My cousins from the South and their friends from the West are closing in. I need you by my side, Jackie Boy."

Full transcript after the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Welcome to GlitterShip episode 30 for November 22, 2016. I am your host, Keffy, and I have a story to share with you today, but a message first.

We are two weeks into the longest nightmare many of us have ever faced, and a resurgence of horror for those of us who have been through the darkness before.

I have no gentle platitudes to offer today. I am sure that I am not alone in fluctuating between broken-hearted grief, staring terror and burning rage.

I tweeted most of this yesterday, but I feel that it bears repeating, and repeating, and repeating.

There are already people telling you the Right or Best or Most Effective way to resist fascism. Some of these Best ways are not accessible to everyone, for a number of reasons. Some have higher costs for some groups than they do for others.

There is no One Single Best Way to fight fascism. The Best Way is anything you can do. Maybe you can make unlimited phone calls. Maybe you can take to the street. Maybe you can't. Maybe you can do something else. Maybe you can survive.

What if the only thing you can do is remind your friends and the rest of us fighting that we are loved, and we need to drink some water? Do that. What if the only thing you can do is wake up and tell your friends that you are still here? THAT IS WORTH DOING.

There are people who say the best way is to wait. Or that unless you do X, your effort is worthless. Don't listen to them. It is true that some single actions will have more immediate effect than others. But, the answer is not "Do THIS THING or DON'T BOTHER."

The truth is that we need EVERYBODY to fight the rising tide of fascism at EVERY STEP using ANYTHING THEY CAN.

What are YOUR skills? What can YOU do? Do that. Keep doing it. In the darkest hours of humanity, we have still needed people to cook meals, to fold a blanket, to hand a cup of water, to give a hug, to babysit, to say "you are meaningful."

RESISTANCE IS NOT A SINGLE HERO. RESISTANCE IS MILLIONS OF ACTS BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE MEAT GRINDER.

Many of the contributors, creators and listeners to GlitterShip are marginalized along one or many axes that make them feel threatened after this horrible expression of white supremacist power in the United States. We must all stand together to protect all of our people, all the way to the most vulnerable of us. If you are queer or trans, make sure that you are protecting those among us who are also people of color, or poor, or disabled. Those of us with more privilege to higher standards. Those of us who are white, who are not members of targetted faiths, we must be willing to stand between our friends and those who would destroy them.

It isn't easy. Oh, it isn't.

I admit that I spent some time wondering how I was going to make things happen, if GlitterShip is worth it, considering what we face. The first two years of episodes have been difficult, partly for personal reasons, and partly for the rising despair as all of this around us keeps slipping into horror.

But. GlitterShip remains. I am a queer, trans writer and editor. I am selecting stories that speak to me, many from among the voices of other queer and trans people, many of whom have very different backgrounds from myself. Authors of stories I have run are trans, non-binary, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, immigrants, latinx, disabled, asian, and on and on.

There is a lot of work to be done, but GlitterShip will remain. We will continue to be a voice in the dark. We're still here.

Our story for today is "City of Chimeras" by Richard Bowes.

Richard Bowes is an award winning author of science fiction and fantasy. His fiction has won two World Fantasy awards, a Lambda award, Million Writers, and International Horror Guild awards. He has published six novels, four short story collections and seventy-five stories. Many of his works are listed on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database if you would like to read more of his work.

City of Chimeras

by Richard Bowes

1.

Salome's hand is the hinge and John the Baptist's head is the hammer on the doorknocker at the Studio Caravaggio. I slam the brass head held by its brass hair on the door a few times before the spy slot on the iron door opens and closes.

To mortal eyes here in the Middle World even a half-breed Fey like me can appear a bit translucent with his hands and hair trailing away like phosphorous. In my case most of that is the effect of Prince Calithurn's Glamour having rubbed off on me. But at this address I'm recognized and expected. Though since I've come on time, I am by local standards early to the point of madness.

Just then, I feel the probe of another mind. By instinct I block it. The rivalries and feuds of the tall elves are twisted and beyond logic. Recently certain ones have appeared in Gotham who can scan and probe as well as my lover Calithurn or any other Fey. And these newcomers mean us no good. This time however, it's Prince Cal himself and I let him into my mind.

"Enemies from this world and Faery are at my throat," he announces. "Though my father has abandoned me, his enemies have not. My cousins from the South and their friends from the West are closing in. I need you by my side, Jackie Boy."

This is just my lord in full dramatic flight. A half-breed with half a talent, I can block probes but I have no ability to reply. In any case there's not much I've been able to say to him lately.

And I still have time before I need to be back beside him. Part of my half Fey birthright is the gift of Foretelling. And even in the worst future I have seen, he won't leave the mortal earth until this afternoon.

The studio door swings open. Power is out in the city and seen from here in the silver morning sunlight the interior of the studio looks like a dark cavern.

The gate keeper is a mortal, young naturally in this house, a girl I am certain. What I had thought last time was short, feathery gold hair I see now is short gold feathers that cover her head, legs and arms. A small russet robe is draped over the rest of her body.

She steps aside saying, "He's still in bed," and indicates the way.

The skylights above are dirty; most of the tall windows are curtained. In a jumble of costumes and props, I make out a green and silver farthingale and an amber and blue doublet and hose tossed over a pool table, a Wehrmacht helmet hung on the high back of a wooden throne.

A sudden shaft of sun points up a blue and white pattern of pagodas and willow trees on a stretch of tiled wall.

As I approach the Japanese privacy screens at the far end of the studio, a spaniel with the eyes of a child barks and backs up. A naked boy with a V of reddish hair on his chest is flushed from behind the screens and scuttles out of my path, one hand half concealing his crotch, the other clutching a donut. Green eyes and white teeth flash in what might be a fox's smile or snarl. I think I can hear the click of his nails on the floor.

Since I first saw him here, I have been curious about the fox boy. I calculate that by the reckoning of the middle earth, I'm in my early twenties and that he's a year or so younger. But time has already put a mark or two on him. As a half-Fey, I am untouched and forever young.

I part two screens and look inside. On his huge, disorderly bed half covered with a sheet lies a large man with a big belly, dark hair on his face and body, thin hair on his head. Scars new and old: the jagged ones on his left shoulder and chest are more recent rough repairs of knife or broken bottle wounds. Neat laser traces on the knee outside the sheet indicate sleek, old fashioned replacement surgery.

The artist who calls himself Caravaggio is half awake. "Jackie Boy all ephemeral and flickering," he says focusing his eyes on me. I don't much like that nickname and he knows it. In the land of the Fey, Jackie Boy is a way of indicating my half human status. In this place, the word boy refers not to age so much as lack of money and position.

"Getting awakened by an angel is not necessarily a good sign."

LEARNED PEOPLE is a GLITTERSHIP ORIGINAL

Learned People

by Chelsea Eckert

She'son her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she's dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth's wing.

For a while I lean against the wall. The paint is a lumpy, intestine pink, which is/was Tess's favorite color. Hard whimpers push their way out of me. I am, for a moment, blind and deaf. A wolf pup at the tit. When I feel more awake I push myself steady and climb onto the bed. Tess doesn't blink. Her eyes are on the sky. One lid twitches.

No, not dead.

Full transcript after the cut. ----more---- Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 29 for November 1, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is a GlitterShip original: "Learned People" by Chelsea Eckert.

Chelsea Eckert is currently attending UNC Greensboro for her MFA in creative writing. Her fiction and poetry have appeared (or will appear) in over twenty-five venues. Stalk her like a hungry catamount athttp://chelseaeckert.me.

Learned People

by Chelsea Eckert

She'son her bed, on her knees, leaning against the window so that her face is pressed against it. Her fingers are interlinked across her gut, and she's dead. Absolutely. Paleness clings to her like dust on a moth's wing.

For a while I lean against the wall. The paint is a lumpy, intestine pink, which is/was Tess's favorite color. Hard whimpers push their way out of me. I am, for a moment, blind and deaf. A wolf pup at the tit. When I feel more awake I push myself steady and climb onto the bed. Tess doesn't blink. Her eyes are on the sky. One lid twitches.

No, not dead.

I'm thinking: Has she eaten? When did I sell her the Drops? What day did she have one?

"Come on," I tell her. Panic twinkles under my lungs. "It's Eve. Wake up. It's time for—school. For pre-calc. Mr. Arvo. Mr. Arvo loves us. Loved."

I haven't been to Mr. Arvo's house, but he's likely in the same position as Tess. In the same stupor. Everyone at school, far as I know, dropped out a couple weeks after I started selling the CosmiDrops to them. Administrators, teachers, the kids. The kids first. I didn't really mourn anybody until more than just the bottom-feeding pipe-bomber types stopped attending.

"Tess," I whisper. A name is a kind of, you know, power. A Czech man, I read inReader's Digestor somewhere, once brought his wife out of a five-year coma just by saying her name a hundred times every day. I try to do the same right now and I lose track somewhere in the forties. Wouldn't have mattered.

So I shake her. It's like throwing rocks into a pond. Stillness is the natural way of things. A body at rest, and such. But—maybe—

I press my face between her shoulder blades, gripping the sides of her arms. My dad Pe and myself—both of us to blame for this, squarely.

But—no. It's not our fault.

I kiss Tess on the back of the head. Her curls lay on my lips, and she smells, justoh-so,of her flavored cigars, her contraband. My mind spins, drifts. Becomes a wave, swarming. Yet it never really touches down on any shore, any subject, least of all fate.

Peopleshould have helped Pe and me.

Human beings can do that easy.

Hunger.Okay.

Real, multiple-day hunger, pick-at-the-dirty-plates hunger, because you can't afford the food—that was me and Pe, after my mother died. Not too many folks in America know any kind of shit about that, I don't think.

You ask: how do you suddenly go hungry, nice-family-nice-house?

Follow me here.

Your monthly rent for the two-bed-two-bath with the expansive yard might be $1500 a month, and your father, alone, only makes maybe $1700 a month from various patent royalties. And it goes to the rent and it goes to the water bill and it goes to keep up the appearance of comfort.

And you yourself can't find a job, especially because you can't drive, because you can't focus on the tests, because of those hot fists in your gut. And your father is afraid to drive you anywhere unnecessary because the car might get all fucked up, which you can't afford and—etcetera.

Your mother never had life insurance or any kind of contingency plan. No one did, no one does. Tragedy collapses onotherfolks.

So: your technically-unemployed-but-not-really super-inventive father gets to brainstorming. A million-dollar idea, he believes, lies deep within him and has since birth, like—eggs, inside infant ovaries.

Atdawn and dusk me and Pe passed each other on the stairs and that was all. Fatigue really drilled into us, broke up our minds, so that little bits of ourselves floated around in our veins, our bodies, never really congealing. I usually walked to school, and tried to let myself go into the wind, but exhaustion, like muscles to bones, sticks.

Then one evening Pe called me up to the attic, which was his office-slash-lab-slash-mancave-slash-library. To put all the bumbling professor and/or frazzled inventor tropes to rest, maybe, my dad kept it sterile and dignified, dustless though expansive, his books arranged alphabetically by author-then-title, the caged mice and rats chattering along with something like peace, the miniature kitchen wiped down.

Pe turned to me with a tray of upturned lollipops in his hands. The pops looked like little bits of topaz, black and blue and silver, and at first I didn't grasp that they were really edible. They were, it seemed, spheres containing the universe and all its stars, gorgeous in their detailed smallness.

"They're called CosmiDrops," Pe said. He is, I think, a bit disarming, because you can't tell his seriousness from his cheeriness, his jokes from his demands.

"Okay."

"When they're ready—a week or two at most, Evie—you're going to go selling them door-to-door."

Sarah’s Child

Susan Jane Bigelow

Once,I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.

In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.

Full transcript after the cut

----more----

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 28 for May 24, 2016. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story this week is "Sarah's Child" by Susan Jane Bigelow, read by Amanda Ching.

Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine’s “Queers Destroy Science Fiction” issue, and the Lamba Award-winning “The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard,” among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.

Amanda Ching is a freelance editor and writer. Her work has appeared in Storm Moon Press, Candlemark & Gleam's Alice: (re)Visions, and every bathroom stall on I-80 from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis. She tweets @cerebralcutlass and blogs athttp://amandaching.wordpress.com.

Sarah’s Child

Susan Jane Bigelow

Once,I dreamed that I had a son named Sheldon, and my grief tore a hole in the fabric of the world.

In my dream I walked through the halls of an elementary school, and I went into the office. Everything was gray and blocky, but somehow not oppressive. I was certain, then, that it was the elementary school in my old hometown, and that I was both myself and also not myself.

I asked for Sheldon.

“Ms. Harp is here,” someone said, and then there he was. He was blond, maybe five or six, with a round face like my sister’s. He smiled toothily up at me.

I took his hand. “Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s go.”

And then I woke up. Janet snored softly next to me.

I touched the space on my body where my womb would have been, if I’d been born with one, and ached.

Itwas a mistake to tell Janet.

“So you had a dream,” she said, crunching her toast. She ate it plain, no butter. “So what?”

She was wearing that muscle shirt that made me melt, and her short hair was a mess from sleep. Janet was athletic, butch and pint-sized, and she wore her queerness like a pair of brass knuckles. I was lucky to have her.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just seemed so real.”

“I dreamed I was a hockey player,” Janet said, popping the last piece of toast into her mouth. “But I ain’t one.”

“I know.” I stabbed at my breakfast, not feeling all that hungry. “Never mind.”

She came over and kissed the top of my head. “Sorry, babe. I know it bugs you sometimes.” She put her dishes in the sink. “You aren’t gonna start asking about sperm donors or anything, right? Did you freeze yours?”

“No,” I said. “And no. I didn’t.” There’d really been no point. When I had my surgery I’d been in the middle of the divorce with Liz. Kids were out of the question.

“Cool. You gonna be okay?”

I nodded.

“All right. I gotta hit the shower. See you at the game tonight!” She headed off to the shower, humming happily to herself. She usually took half an hour in there, so I’d be long gone by the time she came out. I poked at my scrambled eggs again, then tossed them out.

I couldn’tshake the dream, though, so I went through my day in a fog. People at work asked me if I was all right, and I just shook my head mutely. Sure. Fine, just a little haunted.

I didn’t go directly home that night. Instead, I drove the half hour north to Elm Hill, and parked outside the elementary school. School was long over, though a few kids played on the ball fields and ran around the swings.

I shut the car off and got out. There was a hint of fall in the air, though the leaves hadn’t turned yet. I walked through the playground, passing by my own ghosts on the steps, by the wall, on the baseball field, and up to the fence. There was a little rock there, smaller than I remembered. I sat on it, and thought about Sheldon.

This was silly. It was just a dream. I’d had dreams about motherhood before. Pregnancy, babies, those dreams came with the hormones. Everybody had them, or said they did.

So why wouldn’t this one let me go?

I sighed. Somewhere across the playground, a father with two daughters was watching me. I waved at him, and he turned quickly around again. Dads don’t like me.

Impulsively, I rummaged in my purse and found the little reporter’s notebook I kept handy. I’m not a reporter, I work in layout and design for the magazine, but somewhere along the line I’d picked up a few of their habits.

I pulled

Just a Little Spice Will Do

by Andrew Wilmot

When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink.

“Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back andthe other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium.

Full transcript after the cut.

----more----

[Theme music plays.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 27 for May 10th, 2016. The end of the semester hit a little harder than expected, so I ended up shifting the May episodes back a week.

For today, however, I have GlitterShip's second Original story, "Just A Little Spice Will Do" by Andrew Wilmot, with a return by guest reader S. Qiouyi Lu.

Listener warnings for relationship conflict, similarities to eating disorders, and loving cannibalism.

ANDREW WILMOTis a writer, editor, and artist living in Toronto, Ontario. He is a graduate of the SFU Master in Publishing program and spends his days writing as much as possible and painting stupidly large pieces. His fiction has been published by Found Press, Drive In Tales, The Singularity, and 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and the story “When I’m Old, When I’m Grey” was the winner of the 2015 Friends of Merril Short Fiction Competition. He works as a freelance reviewer, academic editor, and substantive editor. For more on his work and creative pursuits:http://andrewwilmot.ca/about/cv/

S.Qiouyi Lu 陸秋逸is a writer, artist, narrator, and translator whose work has appeared inClarkesworld,inkscrawl, andThe Cascadia Subduction Zone. In their spare time, they enjoy destroying speculative fiction as a dread member of the queer Asian SFFH illuminati. S. currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with a tiny black cat named Thin Mint. You can visit their site ats.qiouyi.luor follow them on Twitter as@sqiouyilu."

Just a Little Spice Will Do

by Andrew Wilmot

When Alex arrived home Sunday night with an overflowing grocery bag tucked under each arm, she saw her girlfriend doubled over at the waist, retching violently into the kitchen sink.

“Lindy?” She dropped both bags and rushed over.Lindy gripped the edge of the counter and heaved again, spitting a viscous strand of amaranth red into the stainless steel sink; it came out of her in small globules strung together like Christmas lights. Alex put one hand on her back and the other on her shoulder, but Lindy flinched, shuddering as if they were blocks of ice. It was then Alex noticed the rectangular Tupperware container on the countertop to Lindy’s right. Next to it, a thin sausage wedge of Alex’s heart beat gently on one of her mother’s China plates. She looked inside the plastic container and noticed a new gash in the organ, a little south of the left atrium.

She frowned. “I told you I’d be right back with stuff for dinner.”

Lindy turned, glared at Alex. “Figures you wouldn’t want me to taste this!”

“Taste what? Lindy, love, I don’t understand.”

“It’s rotten!” She pointed accusatorily at Alex’s heart.

“That’s not possible.” Alex surveyed her heart.Several small wedges had been cut away—battle scars pocking the bruise-coloured surface. The organ beat calmly, like clockwork, like there was absolutely nothing wrong. “Looks just fine to me.”

Lindy thrust a blood- and fatty tissue-coated fork at Alex. “Try it yourself. Go ahead, make a liar out of me.”

“Lindy —”

“Taste it! Then try and tell me everything’s fine.”

Alex relented, accepting the fork. She suspected her heart would taste a little off no matter what, in that way that anything chilled tasted at room temperature. She could feel Lindy staring at the back of her head, wearing her mother’s scowl—the same Alex had seen when, after six months together,they went on a week’s vacation to Johannesburg to meet her parents. Lindy’s mother had taken one look at the pale, freckled Irish girl with the decidedly un-Irish name and told her daughter that she would starve to death on someone with such a sour, unfeeling heart. Lindy was quick to protest, but her mother silenced her as if she were still in primary school. She sniffed the air between them, wafting in then imperceptible scent of their nascent vintage. “There’s poison in you,” she said, at last, to Alex. “You’ll ruin my good girl. You’ll be the death of her.”

Neither spoke afterwards of the incident. Indeed, Alex had very nearly forgotten about it, and likely would have were it not for Lindy standing behind her at that moment, waiting expectantly for her to sample her own disposition.

Alex carved a small triangle from the space above the left ventricle. She put it to her nose, sniffed. She heard Lindytskdismissively, as if Alex were admitting complicit behaviour in whatever it was she was being accused of. Not wanting to give her further ammunition, Alex forked the tiny fragment of muscle into her mouth and started to chew. It was tougher than she remembered—a little like biting into a half-inch slab of pickled ginger—but it tasted the same as it ever had, like unsalted ham with a slight metallic aroma.

“It tastes fine,” she said after swallowing. “Like normal.”

Lindyappeared wounded. “I never thought you’d do this to me. I didn’t think youcoulddo this. To me.”

“Love, I don’t—”

“You’re lying!” Lindy shouted. “It tastes rotten, like, like bad eggs, or beef left on a sidewalk in the rain.”