GlitterShip

ORDINARY SOULS

by K. M. Szpara

“This is a bad idea, Callum.” The sorceress rolled a colorful concoction of dried plants in a thin piece of cigarette paper and balanced it between her lips. “You know that, right?” The end smoldered on its own.

“Probably.” If Ethan didn’t know, would he forgive me?

I picked at a chunk of yellow foam exploding from my chair’s upholstery. She wouldn’t notice. Her whole apartment was crumbling slowly around her altar—chipped paint, smoke glazed walls, mysterious splatter on the floor. Serena was a ‘non-profit’ sorceress, one of the few who didn’t whore over-inflated skills in the private sector.

A full transcript appears under the cut.

[Music Plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode four for April 23rd, 2015. I’m your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Well, we’ve made it through the first month of GlitterShip. It’s been a bit of a learning curve on my end, but I think we’re off to a good start. As a head’s up, since GlitterShip only publishes four fiction episodes a month, we’re going to have a week off next week, although I may put up a short question and answer session about the podcast if anyone has any questions. I made a short Google form, which I’ll link in the transcript, or you can email me at kehrli at gmail dot com if you have anything you’d like me to talk about next week.

One of the Kickstarter stretch goals that we reached right at the end of the campaign was an original fiction goal. What this means is that I’m going to start putting out one original piece of fiction per month. I thought that I’d be able to start doing that in May, but the first original story will come out in June, since I have to buy some stories first!

If you’re a writer, submissions for original stories will be open starting on May 1st. This is an open call, so no previous publishing experience is necessary, just send me your best work. For more information about GlitterShip submissions, please check out our Submission Guidelines on the website.

This does mean, however, that since we’re starting two months late with original stories, there will be two original episodes in both June and July to catch up.

One last update about GlitterShip in general: I’ve started to send out Kickstarte

THIS SHALL SERVE AS A DEMARCATION

by Bogi Takács

I.

Tiles flip over, land to sea to land. Enhyoron grimaces, rocks back in their chair, eyes still fixed on the ever-changing map. I can feel their moods on my skin and my skin burns, flares with frustration, chafes against my simple cotton garb.

 I sit up on the futon and pull up one sleeve to examine my arm—lighter-toned in branching lines like the bare, defoliated frames of trees in winter. I used to be cut along those pathways, gleaming metal and shapeforming plastic set into flesh, embedded to remain inside—a part of me forevermore.

A full transcript appears under the cut.

 [Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode three for April 16th, 2015. I’m your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

First, some quick queer publication news: two new releases from Aqueduct Press (a feminist small press) have some queer content in them. Those are Caren Gussoff’s Three Songs for Roxy and Lisa Shapter’s A Day in Deep Freeze. Both books are part of the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces series and are available for purchase on the Aqueduct website at aqueductpress, all one word, dot com.

Links are also available in the transcript on the GlitterShip website.

Our story today is “This Shall Serve As a Demarcation” by Bogi Takács

Bogi Takács is a neutrally gendered Hungarian Jewish author who recently moved to the US. E writes both speculative fiction and poetry, and eir works have been published in a variety of venues like Strange Horizons, Apex, Lackington's and GigaNotoSaurus, among others.

E has upcoming stories  in Clarkesworld, titled "Forestspirit, Forestspirit" and in Queers Destroy Science Fiction titled "Increasing Police Visibility."

In addition, e helped Rose Lemberg assemble the Alphabet of Embers anthology and will guest-edit the next issue of Inkscrawl, a magazine of minimalist speculative poetry.

THIS SHALL SERVE AS A DEMARCATION

by Bogi Takács

For A, M and R; for the path walked

I.

Tiles flip over, land to sea to land. Enhyoron grimaces, rocks back in their chair, eyes still fixed on the ever-changing map. I can feel their moods on my skin and my skin burns, flares with frustration, chafes against my simple cotton garb.

I sit up on the futon and pull up one sleeve to examine my arm—lighter-toned in branching lines like the bare, defoliated frames of trees in winter. I used to be cut along those pathways, gleaming metal and shapeforming plastic set into flesh, embedded to remain inside—a part of me forevermore.

The Collaborators took it all out—Enhyoron took it out, softly murmuring as they adjusted, readjusted, readjusted; molded rather than cut. Magic as technology. Still, I wept in pain, thrashing against my restraints, keening like a foam-cat stuck in bramble.

I shudder as the memory passes through me, but I don’t miss the metal—I only miss the domes of Red Coral Settlement, the sounds of all-surrounding water pulling me down into sleep every night. There’s no way back now, now that I’ve taken a stand in the war between land and sea settlements, and I’ve chosen neither.

Enhyoron push themselves away from the wall console, stretch out their strong limbs, their wide shoulders. They move with firm determination. “It’s time to go.”

“I have done so much wrong,” I mutter, my tongue slow. “The land will not accept me. The sea will not accept me,” I whisper to Enhyoron, and they grab me by the neck, push me down into the dirt.

“They already have. You think I’m the only one?” Enhyoron says mildly, somewhere above me, standing guard over me.

I smell green and the sweet-rot smell of spring decay. A band of invisible light connects my mud-sodden front to the ground and I weep in relief.

Their words resonate in my head: “The planet accepts you before you can accept yourself.”

We walk back—I’m unsteady on my feet, and my eyesight is hazed over with exhaustion.

“This planet knows the meaning of sacrifice,” Enhyoron says, gaze firmly fixed forward toward our makeshift camp.

I don’t get to mourn the technology softly scooped out of my flesh. I don’t get to mourn my break with my home. We have no time. The land has requested my presence, and the sea has given assent.

Can I call my home an eyesore? Was it ever really my home? As the antenna-tops of Red Coral Settlement peek out of the water, all the stainless steel seems crude and out of place against the billowing clouds sweeping across the horizon, the ever-renewing waves of the sea. Still, do I want it gone?

I turn around. The landfoam is encroaching, drawing closer to the cliff edge, heaping up in small iridescent piles. In a few days it will go through another growth spurt, rushing toward the water, solidifying, extending. A map tile will flip.

Red Coral Settlement is foamproof. The people will be gathered inside, huddled together as the structure croaks, but holds. I’ve been through many such transitions on the borderlands. Settlements changing from undersea to underground. Hard chunks set into the soft soil and fluid of the planet-surface, unmoving when everything else flows. Disrupting. I am reminded of my body, run my hands down along my sides. The metal is gone, only the pain remains.

Enhyoron knows my thoughts. “It’s not sustainable,” they say. “The settlements will be gone in another long cycle. The question is, how much damage can they do to the planet until then?”

I used to live there. I know how much damage they did to me.

Enhyoron pulls me close, and we hug; I mash my face into their coveralls.

“I am afraid,” I whisper.

They smooth down my tiny curls—I have hair on my head again, after so many years. “I know, Î-surun, I know.”

II.

The land and the sea were perturbed when the people started to guide the foam. Guide is a Settlement term, a poisonous euphemism. They forced it into their own paths, rushing along linear trajectories at high speeds to assault other Settlements. The borderlands changed shape in unprecedented ways. My nightmares started. The planet screamed.

The first dream was the most terrifying. Sea-foam melted away the land like acid, as I’d seen many times, but then it turned around and surged toward me. I was naked, with no envirosuit. I panicked—I wouldn’t survive outside, the foam would eat away at me, the air would poison me. I woke stunned.

The battle of Lapis Lazuli Settlement only came afterward.

I wish I could say that I ran away from my task to guide. But I was instructed to seek out the Collaborators, pose as a defector and destroy them from within; Red Coral Settlement knew precious little about them, but deemed them dangerous.

I took an envirosuit and a small buggy. I knew the Collaborators were somewhere out there, trying to live on the surface, not in shards irritating the planet’s skin. I knew they existed, but I had no more information.

In retrospect, I just wanted to kill myself. After that battle. I was so eager, driving myself forward, into destruction. Akin to the destruction I had caused. Not seeking the Collaborators, just desperately trying to run away.

I drove to a deserted clearing, flecks of foam hanging from the treesprouts and slowly worming themselves forward on the ground like mindless slugs. My hands shook so hard as I stripped out of my suit that I could barely unlatch the clasps.

I knew foam spores were floating in the air outside the buggy. I deliberately exhaled, then held my breath as I opened the top hatch and clambered outside. Was this bravery?

Of course it burns like acid; and it is drawn to magic, being of a magical nature in itself.

It does not abhor technology; it only abhors attempts to coerce.

What Enhyoron finished, it had started.

I was thrashing in a puddle of my own body fluids when arms suddenly held me, when hands wiped the tears, the snot, the saliva, the blood off my face. I don’t remember well; I think I might’ve had a seizure, my brain giving in to the unbearable, unassailable input.

Two brown eyes stared at me, skin the same if lighter shade. A round face, a thick neck disappearing into leaf-brown coveralls. I had no room for thoughts in my head—I didn’t know if this person was one of the Collaborators, and the group had no uniforms, just a symbol. A symbol I had not known then: the open hand.

I could not speak. But I grabbed their coverall sleeves and would not let go.

This was how I first met Enhyoron. The planet alerted them, sent them to me. A disturbance, again.

At first, they didn’t ask questions. No one did—not a single one of these bright, non-uniformed and only loosely organized cavalcade of people of all kinds of genders, shapes and sizes. I even saw someone like me, neither of the two most common genders as Enhyoron was both. Could the Collaborators even be called a group, or just a set of people with mostly aligned goals? I still don’t know.

The people waited for my reconstruction to run its course. My own lack of language isolated me better than any quarantine.

My previous life is cast in gloom and wrapped in gauze. I lost a lot; planet-adaptation is usually gentler because it is usually supervised. It still pains Enhyoron that they could not have been there from my first breath of unfiltered air.

But I remember this. I remember signing up, back in Blue-Ringed Octopus Settlement, talking to a dark-skinned lady wrapped in a turquoise uniform and discussing my options. At that point, I was sure I had options.

I had the magic, and a deep willingness to serve. Serve my people? I hadn’t understood yet that it was best to avoid ones speaking in the abstract.

They would re-form me, neurotechnology and implantations and all the training; ostensibly to help me control my magic. Also, always unsaid: to help them control me. And I gladly complied.

I wanted no part in a war. But after Blue-Ringed Octopus was washed away and us stragglers, ragged and shocked survivors with wide-open eyes, were picked up by Red Coral, they told me I had no other choice but to fight; for I had the power. And the foam could be guided.

I saw Lapis Lazuli Settlement crackle and burst under the pressure, imploding upon itself deep inside the earth. I was among those who made it happen. They pulled power out of me, tore it out of me—guided it, they said—until I was utterly spent, until there was nothing left, until the enemy settlement was gone. The eternal war of land settlements against the sea, sea against the land.

But the sea itself, the land itself spoke out, their voice hammering in my head. No longer tolerating the people’s actions.

I didn’t know if the others had heard. I heard, but did not listen. Not until much later.

All around me it was soft and twilight-dark. Enhyoron was there, running a hand along my smooth if patchily colored skin. Admiring their handiwork? I understood how much effort it had been to remove the shards and slivers from my body, to remove the contamination.

I knew them beyond speech, from the way they carried themselves, from their gentle accepting kindness, and the words shaped themselves in my head long before my mouth could move.

They helped me walk, take the first hesitating steps. How much of my nervous system had been regrown? A staggering percentage. They helped me eat, spoon-fed me, guided my hands in the true sense of the word. They were patient, and I tried so hard, with all the eagerness that I had to serve, so cruelly exploited once; even before I knew that it wouldn’t be exploited again. They could’ve done anything to me in that state. They chose to heal me.

They hadn’t betrayed me, hadn’t sent me to destroy life. And I wouldn’t betray them. Not now, not ever.

 “I wish to serve you,” I said, my first sentence.

 They shook their head, a sad smile on their androgynous face. “You understand nothing.”

We talked. So much we talked!

“I… I wasn’t built to destroy,” I said, voice edging into a whine; again after so many times. The well of tears was very deep. “Originally…”

Enhyoron leaned close. “Are you sure?”

I thought of the configuration of implants. Intrusion, invasion. Settlement. Even my spine cut open. They had said it was for my benefit, it was to improve my magic, I was a civilian—this ran through my head: I was a civilian, before the destruction of Blue-Ringed Octopus, before I was conscripted into war—magic had so many peacetime uses…

But who would need this in peacetime? Was there ever peacetime on this planet, or just brief cessations of neverending hostility, like tiny gasps of breath? What had I agreed to, in my eagerness, my naivety—I had thought this would be good, I could be helpful—

I thought of the settlements scarring the planet.

“When the entire establishment is corrupt, it corrupts those who serve it,” I said slowly, haltingly.

“If you have a need to serve, it is best to serve a person, not an organization,” Enhyoron said. “A person who respects your no.” They were silent for a moment. “A person you trust. A person you love.”

I knew they were alone. I knew they were painfully lonely. I knew they were thinking of themselves.

But it was only much later that they accepted my service.

Improve. Like guide. Words themselves are twisted, take on new meanings. I had to disentangle myself from that bramble, and I fear I’ve only partly succeeded.

What would Enhyoron ask of me?

III.

The landfoam waving in the wind, hanging off the cliff wall in thick fluffy braids. Red Coral Settlement in the distance, on the water—in the water.

I’m not serving Enhyoron to cause destruction, I tell myself, but yet I know not what they will ask of me—what the planet itself will ask of me. Yet we are aligned, we are together.

“Those who wish to stay inside their cages can stay,” Enhyoron says. “I’ve disavowed coercion.” It strikes me I know little of their past; but they say these words with conviction and force. There has been something to disavow.

 “Kneel,” they say on a more gentle tone, and I do so. The landfoam twines around me, touches my skin. It feels warm and dry. I bend my head and close my eyes.

 “I will guide you,” Enhyoron says and a twinge of fear runs through me. Too-familiar words. But they continue differently:

“We protect life,” Enhyoron says. “We do not seek to harm. We do not destroy—we seek to build. We seek to sustain—not to dismantle. What is harmful will, with time, dismantle itself.”

They put their hands on my head and guide me as the magic rises up in me, running along paths in my body that still feel new. Power soaring to the sky. The landfoam rises, rises; multiplies with a newfound strength drawn from me. I shudder, but I know my reserves are deep. I recall the destruction.

Enhyoron holds me from behind, crouching down into the mud. I breathe with their breath.

 “This shall serve as a demarcation,” Enhyoron says, “a border we vow to uphold, a chain-link of mountains to stand between sea and land. And we will uphold it, until person will lift arms against person no more, until we collaborate with the planet instead of settling, until the time of intrusion runs out and the body rejects the invasion.”

They pause. Their words give me renewed strength. The planet itself ripples.

“We isolate the harmful,” they say. “We do not deny its existence. And once it is gone, the planet can reassert itself, and the border between land and sea will again move freely on the foam.”

A sudden flash of insight—from outside my skull? Is the foam the planet’s defense mechanism?

“We are the planet’s defense mechanism,” I whisper to Enhyoron as the giant spires of the mountains solidify, and I waver, my energy spent; spent but not ripped out.

Offered of my own free will, I think and smile. And of my own free will it will likewise replenish itself; for I choose to live. I have stopped running away.

Enhyoron embraces me as I topple forward, holds me firm and tight.

END

“This Shall Serve As a Demarcation” was first published in Scigentasy in July 2014.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the  Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you again on April 23rd.

[Music Plays Out]

THIS SHALL SERVE AS A DEMARCATION

by Bogi Takács

I.

Tiles flip over, land to sea to land. Enhyoron grimaces, rocks back in their chair, eyes still fixed on the ever-changing map. I can feel their moods on my skin and my skin burns, flares with frustration, chafes against my simple cotton garb.

 I sit up on the futon and pull up one sleeve to examine my arm—lighter-toned in branching lines like the bare, defoliated frames of trees in winter. I used to be cut along those pathways, gleaming metal and shapeforming plastic set into flesh, embedded to remain inside—a part of me forevermore.

A full transcript appears under the cut.

 [Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode three for April 16th, 2015. I’m your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing this story with you.

First, some quick queer publication news: two new releases from Aqueduct Press (a feminist small press) have some queer content in them. Those are Caren Gussoff’s Three Songs for Roxy and Lisa Shapter’s A Day in Deep Freeze. Both books are part of the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces series and are available for purchase on the Aqueduct website at aqueductpress, all one word, dot com.

Links are also available in the transcript on the GlitterShip website.

Our story today is “This Shall Serve As a Demarcation” by Bogi Takács

Bogi Takács is a neutrally gendered Hungarian Jewish author who recently moved to the US. E writes both speculative fiction and poetry, and eir works have been published in a variety of venues like Strange Horizons, Apex, Lackington's and GigaNotoSaurus, among

THE TRUE ALCHEMIST

by Sonya Taaffe

for Mat Joiner

Whatever they left in the garden, Seth, I don’t think it wants to stay there.

The man and the woman who came about the gas meter yesterday, or maybe it was the water bill? I had a deadline, I barely noticed them except for the noises they made, the crunch of shoes on stiff grass, scrapes and clangs as if they were wrestling the dustbins back against the garage door, a sudden snap of bracken that startled me until I remembered the rose-canes you’d pulled down in great, dry-cracking armfuls, their petals the soft and blotted brown of foxed paper, dead as the end of Sleeping Beauty——I forgot to call the city to take them away, brambling like baling wire beside the shed...

A full transcript appears under the cut:

[Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode two for April 9th, 2015. I’m your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

My intro is going to be much shorter than it ought to be this week. Um, it turns out I was sick all of last week and that it was pneumonia. Of all things. I know. Seriously, what are the chances.

Although, speaking of chances, I want to thank everyone who took the chance and pledged money toward the GlitterShip Kickstarter campaign. We successfully funded on April 8th and our final tally was $5,015!

This means that not only is GlitterShip funded through the first year, but I’ll also be able to bring on other readers for many of the stories going forward, and there will be four episodes a month instead of two, and one story a month will never have been published anywhere ever before!

I’m still working on the logistics regarding the submissions period for original fiction, but as soon as I know, I will make an announcement and update the submissions guidelines.

This week, I have three very short stories for you by three awesome authors.

I’m starting with “The True Alchemist” by Sonya Taaffe.

Sonya Taaffe's short fiction and poetry can be found in the collections Ghost Signs (Aqueduct Press), A Mayse-Bikhl (Papaveria Press), Postcards from the Province of Hyphens (Prime Books), and Singing Innocence and Experience (Prime Books), and in anthologies including Aliens: Recent Encounters, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry, People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Alchemy of Stars: Rhysling Award Winners Showcase, and The Best of Not One of Us. She is currently senior poetry editor at Strange Horizons; she holds master’s degrees in Classics from Brandeis and Yale and once named a Kuiper belt object. She lives in Somerville with her husband and two cats. She maintains a livejournal at Myth Happens.

THE TRUE ALCHEMIST

by Sonya Taaffe

for Mat Joiner

Whatever they left in the garden, Seth, I don’t think it wants to stay there.

The man and the woman who came about the gas meter yesterday, or maybe it was the water bill? I had a deadline, I barely noticed them except for the noises they made, the crunch of shoes on stiff grass, scrapes and clangs as if they were wrestling the dustbins back against the garage door, a sudden snap of bracken that startled me until I remembered the rose-canes you’d pulled down in great, dry-cracking armfuls, their petals the soft and blotted brown of foxed paper, dead as the end of Sleeping Beauty—I forgot to call the city to take them away, brambling like baling wire beside the shed. Two of the city’s representatives banging around in our back garden and I didn't think to ask them, crouched over my computer with a legion of tea mugs cluttering up among the books and less than sixteen hours before Nora was going to run out of excuses to make to the publisher on my sorry, late-arsed behalf, I didn't even mark the color of their eyes or the length of their hair. They were white as winter sunshine, dressed in coveralls as if for dirtier work than reading a meter. You won’t have any more trouble, sir, the woman said on her way out, or maybe it was the man; I was nearly throwing them out at that point, giving that rattled manic grin that is supposed to pass for comradely homeownership, presumably to soften the slam of door in face—I knew I should have pretended to be sick, or in the shower, or just not at home. I’m a bad liar when I don’t have time to think. I’m too good at it when I do. Seth, the garden’s fucked. Call me tonight or come home. Or both.

Seth, I know the conference isn't over till Sunday, but could you just tell them it’s an emergency—the cat’s on fire, the kitchen blew up, your husband is having a baby? I got the article sent off on time and I haven’t slept since. Or I can’t tell if I’m sleeping, rolling over and over through dreams of the same cold, entangling sheets, vacant and huge around one person in this bed that’s a jigsaw puzzle for two, the same little sounds rustling up the back stairs, fanning underneath the windowframe with the icy slip of the air. It sounds like footsteps moving unhurriedly on frost-brittle grass, the squeal and judder of metal dragged over asphalt chips; it sounds like a trampling of dead branches, each as sharp and sick as a bone-break, the knuckle-pop crackling of twigs wrung like a neck. So fast. I think murder instead of horticulture, intruders instead of rats or the cats that hunt them. The swimming cathedral light before dawn looks like the underside of water to a long-drowned man. I made a point of shaving, combing my hair, putting on a different sweater. I haven’t been out all day. I've taken all my pills, including the ones I try to ration; Nora knows I'm feeling skittish—it’s not like she can pretend not to when I turn in a page and a half of self-recrimination with the other twenty-five about Philoktetes and the poisons and cures of language. I'll call Dr. Linsey if it gets much weirder.

 I won’t call anyone. I’m crap at self-care. I’ll just sit here drinking our ever-diminishing hoard of tea and typing run-on sentences, knowing it’s not like New York is three days away by transatlantic steamer anymore and it doesn't matter. Our neighbors are right there on the other side of the kitchen window—washing dishes, in fact, side by side with soapy plates and dishrag in some urban equivalent of a tranquil, pastoral scene—and it doesn't matter. I might as well be on the far side of the moon. If the moon were haunted by the smell of oil and leaf-mold, slick as a slug’s track or petrol-spill. Seth, this is bad. I hate that fucking mobile, I wouldn't check my e-mail on it to win a bet, but I've started carrying it like a locket, as if it really contained something of you. I’d check the gas meter if I could go outside. Or the water.

 I went outside. I want to stress that very carefully. I unlocked the back door and I went down and I stood in the garden, freezing, hugging myself over the sweater I hadn't thought to supplement with a jacket or even a scarf, breathing out sharp quick clouds that hurt as much to draw breath for as it did to stand there with the no-colored sun in my eyes, the sky pressing down on my hair and my shoulders and the backs of my hands, seeing me. The neighbors with their curtainless windows, locked in newlywed oblivion: two mirrors gazing into each other endlessly. Passing cars, passers-by, graffiti hanging over the wall. The air.

Our garden, Seth. It doesn't move after all. It might be a machine, if machines were pinned and carved from rose-thorns and rain-torn petals and withered cuttings, blown dandelions and willowherb wreathed in seed-silk like a questioning cigarette; it might have grown there, if rails of brick-spiked iron and clagged tin could throw out runners, coil delicately to follow the sun. There was a ragged round of copper crept in green from the edges, turning like a suncatcher as the verdigris crawled. There was a spiderweb beaded from one prong of fused glass to a tarnished silver spike of lamb’s ear, glittering cleanly in the morning chill. It saw me.

 That was when I went upstairs, and I left a message at your hotel, and I did not take any more of my pills than I was supposed to, and I went to bed. It was cold and bright and the sounds came up through the walls, from nothing moving around where the neighbors, or me, or anything at all could see. After a while it started to sound familiar. After that I really couldn't sleep.

 I dreamed anyway. There was a door.

 How is this supposed to end, Seth? You’d drop everything if I checked myself in, but I don’t want to be that hungry ghost when I don’t need to, Eurydike-reeling myself in and out of the dark to see if you’ll brave it one more time for me; I don’t want you to find me with an empty bottle or emptier wrists, curled in the rime-blackened ruins of our garden like a child on a cold hill’s side. You've got epidemics to talk about and I've got my contagion here at home, allowed passage like every good haunting—any more trouble, but then maybe I don’t. It smells very strongly like burning now, acrid as antifreeze, sweet as spiced woods, and I think of an engine turning over, cogs and pistons and sap and steam. I think of pavement cracking like a caddis-husk, ice-starred earth rumbling like a drum. If it doesn't want to stay here, Seth, I won’t stop it: I’ll hold the gate for it just as I let it in, or I’ll sit here and drink the last of the black ginger tea, typing sentences that don’t stop as usual; we’ll get more when you’re home. The cat’s not on fire. The garden’s fucked, but aren't we all? Maybe it will tell me when it goes, knowing we feel the same way about an audience. I’m truthful when I need to be, too.

END

Our next story is “Ulder” by Vajra Chandrasekera.

Vajra lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka. His stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Black Static, and Shimmer, among others. You can find more work by him at vajra.me.

ULDER

by Vajra Chandrasekera

“Ulder,” said the man in the hat, leaning in, lips barely moving. His eyes darted, as if anyone else on the train would hear him through their prophylactic earplugs. We were the only two with ears open.

"What?" I said, too loud. The man in the hat leaned away, mouth tight, beard bristling. He didn't look at me again.

At the station, guardsmen took the man in the hat away. I watched them go out of the corner of my eye; they'd knocked his hat off when they took him down, and his hair was tousled from the scuffle. I couldn't see the hat anywhere, but there were so many people on the platform. I imagined it, briefly, crushed and stepped on somewhere in the press.

I mentioned the word to Kirill in bed that night, and he stiffened, asked me where I'd heard it.

"He didn't tell you what it meant?" Kirill asked when I'd told him the story.

"What does it mean? Do you know?"

Kirill hesitated so long that I prodded him to see if he'd fallen asleep. "You know I hate it when you keep secrets," I said.

"Don't be melodramatic," Kirill said.

And then he told me what the word meant.

It was several days before I thought to ask him how he had known the word. I spent those days in a haze, raw and newborn. The wind seemed colder. I started letting my beard grow. The long bones in my shins felt weak, as if from fever. And the word, it reverberated in me, growing echoes like fungi in the dark.

Ulder, I said to myself at my desk, working and writing. But only inside, so that the other people in my office wouldn't hear me. I needn't have worried; they all wore prophylactics anyway.

Ulder, I said to myself when I saw uniforms on the street, guardsmen arresting someone.

("Disappearing," Kirill had once said, early in our acquaintance. "Not arresting, disappearing them." And I only thought, this man is free and beautiful. But if I had known the word then I would not have thought ulder, because Kirill was never that.)

Ulder, I whispered when they broadcast the prayer-anthems, tinny from loudspeakers, in the evening as I walked to the railway station. I used to mumble along to the prayers out of habit, never seeing what was in front of me.

Ulder, ulder, ulder.

I said it out loud the next time Kirill and I slept together. It had been almost a week, because we couldn't afford to be seen together too often. Kirill flinched as soon as I said it. He rolled out of bed, lighting one of his contraband cigarettes.

"Now who's being melodramatic?" I said.

The cigarettes were very Kirill. That was both the extent and the nature of his rebellion; slick, sly, sweet-smelling, carcinogenic.

"I was afraid you'd react to it this way," Kirill said. "Some are immune to memetically transmitted disease. But you--"

"MTDs don't exist," I said. "I've told you, it's just state propaganda against disapproved ideologies. Ulder--"

"Don't say it to me," Kirill said, laughing his bitter tar laugh and coughing. "What do you know about it? I was the one who told--"

I don't want to talk about the fight. That's not the way I want to remember him. But we shouted a lot, and I think someone must have heard.

A few more days went by, and I wanted to make it up to him. So I went to see him at the teahouse where we usually met after work. But even as I got there, I knew from the commotion that something was wrong. I didn't recognize Kirill's walk at first, pressed between the guardsmen as they marched him out of the building and into the waiting van. I only realized it was him when he laughed, bitter like tar.

Not knowing what else to do, I took the train home. It was crowded, as always, and I hung from the strap like a drowning man. And when the young woman, the only other person in the carriage without earplugs in, caught my eye, I didn't have a choice.

I knew what would happen, that it wouldn't go unremarked, that you'd be waiting for me on the platform with your batons.

But in her eyes I saw a moment of openness, that fragile and fractured thing I had always seen in the mirror and never recognized until I heard the word, and though I knew she wouldn't understand and I couldn't explain, I leaned in and said “Ulder”, the word naked and bright like fever in my mouth.

END

Our next story is "The Sewell Home for the Temporally Displaced" by Sarah Pinsker.

Sarah Pinsker is the author of the novelette, "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind," Sturgeon Award winner 2014 and Nebula finalist 2013. Her fiction has been published in magazines including Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, The Journal of Unlikely Cartography, Fireside, Stupefying Stories, and PULP Literature, and in anthologies including Long Hidden, Fierce Family, and The Future Embodied.

She is also a singer/songwriter with three albums on various independent labels (the third with her rock band, the Stalking Horses) and a fourth forthcoming. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland and can be found online at sarahpinsker.com and twitter.com/sarahpinsker.

THE SEWELL HOME FOR THE TEMPORALLY DISPLACED

by Sarah Pinsker

Judy says, "It's snowing."

I look out the window. The sky is the same dirty grey as the snow left from last week's storm. I stand up to look closer, to find a backdrop against which I might see what she sees. The radiator is warm against my knees.

"You don't mean now." It's not really a question, but she shakes her head. She looks through me, through another window, at other weather. She smiles. Whenever she is, it must be beautiful.

"Describe it for me," I say.

"Big, fluffy snow. The kind that doesn't melt when it lands on your gloves. Big enough to see the shapes of individual flakes."

"Do you know when you are?"

She strains to catch a different view. "1890s, maybe? The building across the street hasn't been built yet. I wish I could see down to the street, Marguerite."

Judy isn't supposed to leave her bed, but I help her into her yellow slippers, help her to her feet. I try to make myself strong enough for her to lean on. We shuffle to the window. She looks down.

"There's a Brougham* waiting at the front door. The horse is black, and he must have been driven hard, because the snow that's collecting elsewhere is just melting when it hits him. There's steam coming off him."

I don't say anything. I can't see it, but I can picture it.

"Somebody came out of the building. He's helping a woman out of the carriage," she says. "Her clothes don't match the era or the season. She's wearing jeans and a T-shirt."

"A Distillers T-shirt," I say.

"Yes! Can you see her too?"

"No," I say. "That was me, the first time I came here. I didn't stay long, that first time."

I hear the creak of the door. It's Zia, my least favorite of the nurses. She treats us like children. "Judy, what are we doing up? We could get hurt if we have an episode."

She turns to me. "And you, Marguerite. We should know better to encourage her."

"Your pronouns are very confusing," I tell her.

She ignores me. "Well, let's get down to lunch, since we're both up and about."

Zia puts Judy in a wheelchair. I follow them down to the dining room, slow and steady. She pushes Judy up to the first available space, at a table with only one vacancy. I'm forced to sit across the room. I don't like being so far away from her. I would make a fuss, but I try to tell myself we can stand to be apart for one meal. I keep an eye on her anyway.

Judy isn't fully back yet. She doesn't touch her food. Mr. Kahn and Michael Lim and Grace de Villiers are all talking across her. Mr. Kahn is floating his spoon, demonstrating the finer points of the physics of his first time machine, as he always does.

"Meatloaf again," mutters Emily Arnold, to my left. "I can't wait until vat protein is invented."

"It tastes good enough, Emily. The food here is really pretty decent for an industrial kitchen in this time period." We've all had worse.

We eat our meatloaf. Somebody at the far end of the room has a major episode and we're all asked to leave before we get our jello. I can't quite see who it is, but she's brandishing her butter knife like a cutlass, her legs braced against a pitching deck. The best kind of episode, where you're fully then again. We all look forward to those. It's funny that the staff act like it might be contagious. 

I wait in Judy's room for her to return. Zia wheels her in and lifts her into the bed. She's light as a bird, my Judy. Zia frowns when she sees me. I think she'd shoo me out more often if either of us had family that could lodge a complaint. Michael and Grace are allowed to eat together but not to visit each other's rooms. Grace's children think she shouldn't have a relationship now that she lives in so many times at once. Too confusing, they say, though Grace doesn't know whether they mean for them or for her.

"How was your dinner?" I ask Judy.

"I can't remember," she says. "But I saw you come in for the first time. You said 'How is this place real?' and young Mr. Kahn said 'Because someday all of us will build it.'"

"And then I asked 'When can I get started?' and he said 'You already did.'"

I can see it now. The dining room was formal, then. Everyone stared when I came in, but most of the smiles were knowing ones. They understood the hazards of timesling. They had been there, or they were there, or they were going to be.

Judy takes my hand. I lean over to kiss her.

"It's snowing," I say. "I can't wait to meet you."

END

*Brougham was changed to "carriage" for the audio version.

“The True Alchemist” was first published in Not One of Us #51 in April 2014.

“Ulder” was first published in Daily Science Fiction in July 2014.

“The Sewell Home for the Temporally Displaced” was first published in the Women Destroy Science Fiction edition of Lightspeed Magazine in June 2014.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you again on April 9th with a selection of three flash fiction stories.

[Music plays out]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

HOW TO BECOME A ROBOT IN 12 EASY STEPS

by A. Merc Rustad

How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot:

1. Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous.

A full transcript appears under the cut:

[Intro music]

Intro:

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode one for April 2nd, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you!

Before we start, I'd like to thank everyone who has supported GlitterShip so far. Our Kickstarter campaign will be finishing up on April 8th, so if you're just hearing about GlitterShip for the first time, you can still check it out. If you're listening to this episode after the 8th, well, hello future person! I hope we have space travel whenever you're listening to this.

Very briefly, here's some publishing news. Our talented cover artist has a queer poem that's going to be coming out in Uncanny Magazine on the 7th of April. That will be called "The Eaters" by M. Sereno.

I'd also like to draw your attention to two other Kickstarter campaigns. There's the Beyond Anthology, which is a queer science fiction and fantasy comics anthology, and there's also Vitality Magazine, which is a queer science fiction and fantasy literary magazine that is seeking to fund its second issue.

This has really been a huge couple of months for queer science fiction and fantasy. The special Lightspeed Magazine issue "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" has recently announced its table of contents, so that'll be out later this year. And if you're a writer, the submissions are currently open for "Queers Destroy Horror."

All of these links are going to be in the transcript on our website at glittership.com. You can check us out there and we also have a Twitter feed @GlitterShipSF.

If you have news or publication notices that may be of interest to the GlitterShip listeners, get in touch with me at publine at GlitterShip dot com.

Our story today is "How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps" by A. Merc Rustad.

Merc is a queer non-binary writer and filmmaker who lives in the Midwest United States. Favorite things include: robots, dinosaurs, monsters, and tea. When not buried in the homework mines or dayjobbery, Merc likes to play video games, read comics, and wear awesome hats.

Merc has several other things published recently: a science fiction short with gay protagonists at Escape Pod, which is available both as text and audio; a longer fantasy story about monsters and dancing and fairy tale tropes that features lesbian protagonists (cis and trans) with a happy ending at Inscription Magazine; and a quieter fantasy short about undersea adventures and multiple trans protagonists forthcoming in Scigentasy in May.

You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Rustad or visit their website for a complete bibliography (and links to short films) at http://amercrustad.com.

Alright. I hope you enjoy the story.

HOW TO BECOME A ROBOT IN 12 EASY STEPS

by A. Merc Rustad

Read by Keffy R. M. Kehrli

How to tell your boyfriend you are in love with a robot:

1. Tell him, “I may possibly be in love with a robot,” because absolutes are difficult for biological brains to process. He won’t be jealous.

On my to-do list today:

• Ask the robot out on a date.

The robot is a J-90 SRM, considered “blocky” and “old-school,” probably refurbished from a scrapper, painted bright purple with the coffee shop logo on the chassis.  The robot’s square head has an LED screen that greets customers with unfailing politeness and reflects their orders back to them. The bright blue smiley face never changes in the top corner of the screen.

Everyone knows the J-90 SRMs aren’t upgradable AI. They have basic customer service programming and equipment maintenance protocols.

Everyone knows robots in the service industry are there as cheap labor investments and to improve customer satisfaction scores, which they never do, because customers are never happy.

Everyone knows you can’t be in love with a robot.

I drop my plate into the automatic disposal, which thanks me for recycling. No one else waits to deposit trash, so I focus on it as I brace myself to walk back to the counter. The J-90 SRM smiles blankly at the empty front counter, waiting for the next customer.

The lunch rush is over. The air reeks of espresso and burned milk. I don’t come here because the food is good or the coffee any better. The neon violet décor is best ignored.

I practiced this in front of a wall a sixteen times over the last week. I have my script. It’s simple. “Hello, I’m Tesla. What may I call you?”

And the robot will reply:

I will say, “It’s nice to meet you.”

And the robot will reply:

I will say, “I would like to know if you’d like to go out with me when you’re off-duty, at a time of both our convenience. I’d like to get to know you better, if that’s acceptable to you.”

And the robot will reply:

“Hey, Tesla.”

The imagined conversation shuts down. I blink at the trash receptacle and look up.

My boyfriend smiles hello, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets, his shoulders hunched to make himself look smaller. At six foot five and three hundred pounds, it never helps. He’s as cuddly and mellow as a black bear in hibernation. Today he’s wearing a gray turtleneck and loafers, his windbreaker unzipped.

“Hi, Jonathan.”

I can’t ask the robot out now.

The empty feeling reappears in my chest, where it always sits when I can’t see or hear the robot.

“You still coming to Esteban’s party tonight?” Jonathan asks.

“Yeah.”

Jonathan smiles again. “I’ll pick you up after work, then.”

“Sounds good,” I say. “We’d better go, or I’ll be late.”

He works as an accountant. He wanted to study robotic engineering but his parents would only pay for college if he got a practical degree (his grandfather disapproves of robots). Computers crunched the numbers and he handled the people.

He always staggers his lunch break so he can walk back with me. It’s nice. Jonathan can act as an impenetrable weather shield if it rains and I forget my umbrella.

But Jonathan isn’t the robot.

He offers me his arm, like the gentleman he always is, and we leave the coffee shop. The door wishes us a good day.

I don’t look back at the robot.

A beginner’s guide on how to fake your way through biological social constructs:

1. Pretend you are not a robot. This is hard, and you have been working at it for twenty-three years. You are like Data, except in reverse.

Jonathan and I lounge on the plush leather couch in his apartment. He takes up most of it, and I curl against his side. We have a bowl of popcorn and we’re watching reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

“I have something to tell you,” he says. His shoulders tense.

I keep watching the TV.  He knows I pay attention when he tells me things, even if I don’t look at him. “Okay.”

“I’m...” He hesitates. The Borg fire on the Enterprise again. “I’m seeing someone else.”

“Another guy?” I ask, hopeful.

“Yeah. I met him at the gym. His name’s Bernardo.”

I sigh in relief. Secrets are heavy and hurt when you have to carry them around all your life. (I have to make lists to keep track of mine.) “I’m glad. Are you going to tell anyone?”

He relaxes and squeezes my hand. “Just you right now. But from what he’s told me, his family’s pretty accepting.”

“Lucky,” I say.

We scrape extra butter off the bowl with the last kernels of popcorn.

We’ve been pretend-dating for two years now. We’ve never slept together. That’s okay. I like cuddling with him and he likes telling me about crazy customers at his firm, and everyone thinks we’re a perfectly adorable straight couple on the outside.

The empty spot in my chest grows bigger as I watch Data on screen. Data has the entire crew of the Enterprise. Jonathan has Bernardo now. I don’t know if the robot will be interested in me in return. (What if the robot isn’t?)

The room shrinks in on me, the umber-painted walls and football memorabilia suffocating. I jerk to my feet.

Jonathan mutes the TV. “Something wrong?”

“I have to go.”

“Want me to drive you home?”

“It’s four blocks away.” But I appreciate his offer, so I add, “But thanks.”

I find my coat piled by the door while he takes the popcorn bowl into the kitchen.

Jonathan leans against the wall as I carefully lace each boot to the proper tightness. “If you want to talk, Tesla, I’ll listen.”

I know that. He came out to me before we started dating. I told him I wasn’t interested in socially acceptable relationships, either, and he laughed and looked so relieved he almost cried. We made an elaborate plan, a public persona our families wouldn’t hate.

I’m not ready to trust him as much as he trusts me.

“Night, Jonathan.”

“Goodnight, Tesla.”

How to tell your fake boyfriend you would like to become a robot:

1. Tell him, “I would like to be a robot.” You can also say, “I am really a robot, not a female-bodied biological machine,” because that is closer to the truth.

I have this nightmare more and more often.

I’m surrounded by robots. Some of them look like the J-90 SRM, some are the newer androids, some are computer cores floating in the air. I’m the only human.

I try to speak, but I have no voice. I try to touch them, but I can’t lift my hands. I try to follow them as they walk over a hill and through two huge doors, like glowing LED screens, but I can’t move.

Soon, all the robots are gone and I’m all alone in the empty landscape.

11 Reasons you want to become a robot:

1. Robots are logical and know their purpose.

It’s Saturday, so I head to the Purple Bean early.

The robot isn’t there.

I stare at the polished chrome and plastic K-100, which has a molded face that smiles with humanistic features.

“Welcome to the Purple Bean,” the new robot says in a chirpy voice that has inflection and none of the mechanical monotone I like about the old robot. “I’m Janey. How can I serve you today?”

“Where’s the J-90 SRM?”

Robbie, the barista who works weekends, leans around the espresso machine and sighs. She must have gotten this question a lot. The panic in my chest is winching so tight it might crack my ribs into little pieces. Why did they retire the robot?

“Manager finally got the company to upgrade,” Robbie says. “Like it?”

“Where’s the J-90 SRM?”

“Eh, recycled, I guess.” Robbie shrugs. “You want the usual?”

I can’t look at the new K-100. It isn’t right. It doesn’t belong in the robot’s place, and neither do I. “I have to go.”

“Have a wonderful day,” the door says.

How to rescue a robot from being scrapped: [skill level: intermediate]

1. Call your boyfriend, who owns an SUV, and ask him to drive you to the Gates-MacDowell recycle plant.

Two techs wheel the robot out and load it into Jonathan’s car. The gut-punched feeling doesn’t go away. The robot looks so helpless, shut down and blank in the back seat. I flip open the robot’s chassis, but the power core is gone, along with the programming module.

The robot is just a shell of what the robot once was.

I feel like crying. I don’t want to. It’s uncomfortable and doesn’t solve problems.

“What’s wrong, Tesla?” Jonathan asks.

I shut the chassis. My hands tremble. “They broke the robot.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jonathan says. As if anything can be okay right now. As if there is nothing wrong with me. “You can fix it.”

I squirm back into the passenger seat and grip the dash. He’s right. We were friends because we both liked robots and I spent my social studies classes in school researching robotics and programming.

“I’ve never done anything this complex,” I say. I’ve only dismantled, reverse-engineered, and rebuilt the small household appliances and computers. No one has ever let me build a robot.

“You’ll do fine,” he says. “And if you need help, I know just the guy to ask.”

“Who?”

“Want to meet my boyfriend?”

Necessary questions to ask your boyfriend’s new boyfriend (a former Army engineer of robotics):

1. You’ve been following the development of cyborg bodies, so you ask him if he agrees with the estimates that replacement of all organic tissue sans brain and spinal cord with inorganic machinery is still ten years out, at best. Some scientists predict longer. Some predict never, but you don’t believe them. (He’ll answer that the best the field can offer right now are limbs and some artificial organs.)

Bernardo—six inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than Jonathan, tattooed neck to ankles, always smelling of cigarettes—is part robot. He lost his right arm at the shoulder socket in an accident, and now wears the cybernetic prosthetic. It has limited sensory perception, but he says it’s not as good as his old hand.

I like him. I tell Jonathan this, and my boyfriend beams.

“They really gut these things,” Bernardo says when he drops off the power cell.

(I want to ask him how much I owe him. But when he says nothing about repayment, I stay quiet. I can’t afford it. Maybe he knows that.)

We put the robot in the spare bedroom in my apartment, which Jonathan wanted to turn into an office, but never organized himself enough to do so. I liked the empty room, but now it’s the robot’s home. I hid the late payment notices and overdue bills in a drawer before Jonathan saw them.

“Getting a new arm might be tricky, but I have a buddy who works a scrap yard out in Maine,” Bernardo says. “Bet she could dig up the right model parts.”

“Thank you.”

I’m going to reconstruct the old personality and programming pathways. There are subsystems, “nerve clusters,” that serve as redundant processing. Personality modules get routed through functionality programs, and vestiges of the robot’s personality build up in subsystems. Newer models are completely wiped, but they usually don’t bother with old ones.

Bernardo rubs his shaved head. “You realize this won’t be a quick and easy fix, right? Might take weeks. Hell, it might not even work.”

I trace a finger through the air in front of the robot’s dark LED screen. I have not been able to ask the robot if I have permission to touch the robot. It bothers me that I have to handle parts and repairs without the robot’s consent. Does that make it wrong? To fix the robot without knowing if the robot wishes to be fixed?

Will the robot hate me if I succeed?

“I know,” I whisper. “But I need to save the robot.”

How to tell your pretend-boyfriend and his real boyfriend that your internal processors are failing:

1. The biological term is “depression” but you don’t have an official diagnostic (diagnosis) and it’s a hard word to say. It feels heavy and stings your mouth. Like when you tried to eat a battery when you were small and your parents got upset.

I work on the robot during my spare time. I have lots of it now. Working on the robot is the only reason I have to wake up.

I need to repair the robot’s destroyed servos and piece together the robot’s memory and function programming from what the computer recovered.

There are subroutine lists in my head that are getting bigger and bigger:

• You will not be able to fix the robot.

Bernardo and Jonathan are in the kitchen. They laugh and joke while making stir fry. I’m not hungry.

I haven’t been hungry for a few days now.

“You should just buy a new core, Tesla,” Bernardo says. “Would save you a lot of headaches.”

I don’t need a blank, programmable core. What I want is the robot who worked in the Purple Bean. The robot who asked for my order, like the robot did every customer. But the moment I knew I could love this robot was when the robot asked what I would like to be called. “Tesla,” I said, and the blue LED smiley face in the upper corner of the robot’s screen flickered in a shy smile.

Everyone knows robots are not people.

There’s silence in the kitchen. Then Jonathan says, quietly, “Tesla, what’s this?”

I assume he’s found the eviction notice.

Reasons why you want to self-terminate (a partial list):

1. Your weekly visit to your parents’ house in the suburbs brings the inevitable question about when you will marry your boyfriend, settle down (so you can pop out babies), and raise a family.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jonathan asks, more concerned than angry. “I would’ve helped out.”

I shrug.

The subroutine list boots up:

• You are not an adult if you cannot exist independently at all times.

“I thought I could manage,” I say. The robot’s LED screen is still cracked and dark. I wonder what the robot dreams about.

Bernardo is quiet in the kitchen, giving us privacy.

Jonathan rubs his eyes. “Okay. Look. You’re always welcome to stay with me and Bern. We’ll figure it out, Tesla. Don’t we always?”

I know how small his apartment is. Bernardo has just moved in with him; there’s no space left.

“What about the robot?” I ask.

How to self-destruct: a robot’s guide.

1. Water damage. Large bodies of water will short-circuit internal machinery. In biological entities, this is referred to as “drowning.” There are several bridges nearby, and the rivers are deep.

Bernardo’s family owns a rental garage, and he uses one of the units for rebuilding his custom motorcycle. He says I can store the robot there, until another unit opens up.

Jonathan has moved his Budweiser memorabilia collection into storage so the small room he kept it in is now an unofficial bedroom. He shows it to me and says I can move in anytime I want. He and Bernardo are sharing his bedroom.

I don’t know what to do.

I have no operating procedures for accepting help.

I should self-destruct and spare them all. That would be easier, wouldn’t it? Better for them?

But the robot isn’t finished.

I don’t know what to do.

How to have awkward conversations about your relationship with your boyfriend and your boyfriend’s boyfriend:

1. Agree to move in with them. Temporarily. (You feel like you are intruding. Try not to notice that they both are genuinely happy to have you live with them.)

I write another list.

I write down all the lists.  In order. In detail.

Then I print them out and give them to Jonathan and Bernardo.

The cover page has four letters on it: H-E-L-P.

Reasons why you should avoid self-termination (right now):

1. Jonathan says, “If you ever need to talk, I’ll listen.”

“Hey, Tesla,” Jonathan says, poking his head around the garage-workshop door. “Bern and I are going over to his parents for dinner. Want to come?”

“Hey, I’ll come for you anytime,” Bernardo calls from the parking lot.

Jonathan rolls his eyes, his goofy smile wider than ever.

I shake my head. The robot is almost finished. “You guys have fun. Say hi for me.”

“You bet.”

The garage is silent. Ready.

I sit by the power grid. I’ve unplugged all the other devices, powered down the phone and the data hub. I carefully hid Bernardo’s bike behind a plastic privacy wall he used to divide the garage so we each have a workspace.

We’re alone, the robot and I.

I rig up a secondary external power core and keep the dedicated computer running the diagnostic.

The robot stands motionless, the LED screen blank. It’s still cracked, but it will function.

“Can you hear me?” I ask. “Are you there?”

The robot:

I power up the robot and key the download sequence, re-installing the rescued memory core.

The robot’s screen flickers. The blue smiley face appears in the center, split with spiderweb cracks.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello, Tesla,” the robot says.

“How do you feel?”

“I am well,” the robot says. “I believe you saved my life.”

The hole closes in my chest, just a little.

The robot’s clean, symmetrical lines and tarnished purple surface glow. The robot is perfect. I stand up.

“How may I thank you for your help, Tesla?”

“Is there a way I can become a robot too?”

The robot’s pixelated face shifts; now the robot’s expression frowns. “I do not know, Tesla. I am not programmed with such knowledge. I am sorry.”

I think about the speculative technical papers I read, articles Bernardo forwarded to me.

“I have a hypothesis,” I tell the robot. “If I could power myself with enough electricity, my electromagnetic thought patterns might be able to travel into a mechanical apparatus such as the computer hub.”

(Consciousness uploads aren’t feasible yet.)

“I believe such a procedure would be damaging to your current organic shell,” the robot says.

Yes, I understand electrocution’s effects on biological tissue. I have thought about it before. (Many times. All the time.)

The robot says, “May I suggest that you consider the matter before doing anything regrettable, Tesla?”

And I reply:

The robot says: “I should not like to see you deprogrammed and consigned to the scrapping plant for organic tissue.”

And I reply:

The robot says: “I will be sad if you die.”

I look up at the frowning blue pixel face. And I think of Jonathan and Bernardo returning and finding my body stiff and blackened, my fingers plugged into the power grid.

The robot extends one blocky hand. “Perhaps I would be allowed to devise a more reliable solution? I would like to understand you better, if that is acceptable.” The blue lines curve up into a hopeful smile.

The robot is still here. Jonathan and Bernardo are here. Melinda and Kimberly are here. I’m not a robot (yet), but I’m not alone.

“Is this an acceptable solution, Tesla?” the robot asks.

I take the robot’s hand, and the robot’s blocky fingers slowly curl around mine. “Yes. I would like that very much.” Then I ask the robot, “What would you like me to call you?”

How to become a robot:

1. You don’t.

END

Outro:

"How to Become A Robot in 12 Easy Steps" was first published in Scigentasy in March 2014. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you'd like, but please don't change or sell it. Our theme is "Aurora Borealis" by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again on April 9th with a selection of three flash fiction stories.

[Music plays out]