[{"id":36473,"date":"2026-08-27T03:02:42","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36473"},"modified":"2026-09-15T17:43:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:43:27","slug":"the-goddess-of-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/the-goddess-of-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"The Goddess of Not Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"1.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re eighteen. Your fairy godmother just fired you, because after three balls, the prince has grown bored with you. Tonight you stepped on his foot during a gavotte.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019d been cleverer,\u201d the fairy godmother says\u2014her words silver chimes girded with steel\u2014\u201cyou\u2019d have pretended your clumsiness was really punishment: a reminder to focus on you, not that floozy in scarlet silk across the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
But you aren\u2019t clever. You admired the scarlet silk too; you couldn\u2019t blame him. Back in your father\u2019s barn after the ball, the godmother shakes her head and tells you there will be no more dances, no more gowns or glass slippers. You won\u2019t see her again. \u201cI can\u2019t do everything. I thought you had enough wit to work with, but you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years now, you\u2019ve dreamed of becoming beautiful and beloved. The godmother was summoned by your longing for the happy ending you hardly dared to believe that you deserved.<\/p>\n
What do you believe now?<\/p>\n
You cry yourself to sleep and ponder that question as you milk the cows the next morning. You believe that people deserve to feel better, not worse. You want to believe in happiness that doesn\u2019t depend on the condescension of magic, which only reminds those without it how lacking they are.<\/p>\n
And so you decide that your new dream is to be the anti-godmother.<\/p>\n
2.<\/p>\n
Running away is easy. You steal one stepsister\u2019s satchel and two of the other\u2019s dresses and set out on the road. As much as you love fresh air, you seek something else, the smell of shame that has festered in your nostrils for years: the reek of rotting meat, of piss and vomit, of dirty sheets. Following it, you find a housekeeper heavy with child from the employer who seduced and then rejected her; a gambler whose winning streak ended in losing his family\u2019s fortune; a playwright whose productions keep flopping.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to help them. The pregnant housekeeper genuinely loves children. She pretends to be a widow, and the two of you find rooms where she can care for her own child and other children, the children of women who have to work at a variety of trades, not all of them legal. They pay in money when they can, in food and cleaning and mending when they cannot. It is a living, and the children are a joy.<\/p>\n
You help the gambler realize that he loves good soil and what grows there even more than dice. He takes over his father\u2019s farm and makes a success of it; weather and harvests are enough speculation for him now.<\/p>\n
The playwright has gifts within the theater, but writing is not one of them. You guide him toward his passion for directing other people\u2019s works, many of which become resoundingly successful.<\/p>\n
There are other triumphs. With each one you become stronger, more exultant, more beautiful in the eyes of those you serve. Your need for sleep and food diminishes. You discover that you can levitate and walk through walls, as the godmother did, and you age very slowly, if at all.<\/p>\n
Not all outcomes are happy. When the prince you had hoped to marry is dying, you find yourself in the palace, where a weeping woman kneels at his bedside. The room boasts all the things you once craved: fine fabrics, ornate furniture, luxurious bedclothes. The kneeling woman must have been beautiful, before age ravaged her. She squints up at you. \u201cYou\u2019re not the one I called. I called the fairy godmother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the one who comes when she doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI summoned the best doctors,\u201d she says, choking, \u201cbought the finest medicines, prayed the most fervent prayers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe must know how much you love him,\u201d you say.<\/p>\n
The queen looks up at you again. \u201cLove hasn\u2019t saved him. What can you do for him?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing. I\u2019m here for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
She draws a long, shuddering breath. \u201cIf you can\u2019t cure him, you\u2019re useless. I didn\u2019t call you. Leave now.\u201d<\/p>\n
You obey her, as you must. No one could cure him. You hope someday she will find joy in being something other than his wife.<\/p>\n
3.<\/p>\n
No mortal can defy death, but you notice one day that it has been at least a century since you were born, although you look scarcely older than when the godmother dismissed you. Are you immortal? Is she?<\/p>\n
Through the decades, you have seen glimpses of her. She appears as a game show host, a faith healer, a talent scout. She is the scam artist selling the fool\u2019s gold of Happily Ever After. The most powerful kings die as their queens grieve, and in time the queens die too.<\/p>\n
And yet you and the godmother do not die.<\/p>\n
The human world has grown denser, dirtier, more desperate. You find yourself attending agonized parents who have lost children to shootings and suicide. You witness overdoses and death by plague and abuse, and while these things have always occurred\u2014and while you still, sometimes, can find just the right comfort\u2014you feel yourself growing sadder, weaker, and more tired.<\/p>\n
Global despair spreads. Wars and pandemics and recessions worsen. Species loss accelerates. Crops fail, and starvation follows. There is not enough food or water or clean air, not enough hope or joy. For too many people, there is not enough to live for.<\/p>\n
And one day, you follow the stench of shame to a payday loan shop in a decaying city. There, on a cot in a back room, you find a woman lying pale and still except for the cough that racks her slight frame. You know her.<\/p>\n
\u201cGodmother,\u201d you say.<\/p>\n
Her eyes are closed. \u201cGo away. Whatever you want, I cannot give it to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve come for your need, not mine. You released me centuries ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her eyes open. She peers at you. \u201cWho are you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe girl who stepped on the prince\u2019s foot at my third ball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tugging musty sheets over herself, she shrugs. \u201cYou and too many others.\u201d But then she frowns. \u201cPrinces and balls are long past. Centuries, you said.\u201d She examines you more closely. \u201cThere is power to you. Power and great age.\u201d<\/p>\n
You cannot think of any way to explain that she will respect. \u201cNot as great as yours,\u201d you say at last, and she laughs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat have you done all those years?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have comforted and guided,\u201d you say quietly, waiting for her to jeer at you.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, she snorts. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want comfort. They want triumph and riches.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want comfort when they have lost triumph and riches.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sneer, now. \u201cNo one wants you. They want me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want you, but they need me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stiffens. \u201cI don\u2019t need you, girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
You haven\u2019t been a girl for hundreds of years. \u201cYet here I am, drawn by need, as desire once drew you.\u201d You shake your head. \u201cHow can you be dying?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you think? The mortals now want what no one could give them! A reversal of the decay all around them, a return of healthy seas and forests, the restoration of extinct creatures. They want back the balance they have destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n
She helped destroy that balance by encouraging greed. You will not say so, but she glares at you as if you have. \u201cDon\u2019t look at me like that! How dare you judge me!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAll you have done, godmother, is judge those who craved your magic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside, a moaning wind has arisen. Her fingers claw at the frayed sheets. \u201cIs that my crime? That I insisted on excellence?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou overlooked what was already excellent. Everyone is excellent at something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHardly,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Like the mortals, she summoned you because she needs comfort, however much she denies it. But you can\u2019t imagine what to offer. Will you die because you can find nothing to give her? Is your calling, like hers, at an end?<\/p>\n
And yet you do not feel like you are dying, do not feel the despair with which she so clearly struggles. \u201cBecause of you,\u201d you tell her, \u201cI can help those you didn\u2019t: the disappointed and dismayed, the ones buried under crushed dreams, so focused on one impossible goal that they ignored those within their grasp. I know them because I was one of them. And so I thank you, godmother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her face is a mask of contempt. \u201cEveryone\u2019s dreams are crushed, now. No one can reverse the coming catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eyes narrowed, she stares at you. \u201cSome excellence! You\u2019ll help all of them, will you? The whole world, as it goes howling to its destruction?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will try.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will fail.\u201d She turns away one last time, and draws one last breath, and is gone. Even in your sorrow, you feel her power flowing into you, feel yourself grown vast and infinitely wise. When the end comes for all the people who have not been wise or careful enough, who are terrified and lost, your arms will be long enough to embrace them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You\u2019re eighteen. Your fairy godmother just fired you, because after three balls, the prince has grown bored with you. Tonight you stepped on his foot during a gavotte. \u201cIf you\u2019d been cleverer,\u201d the fairy godmother says\u2014her words silver chimes girded with steel\u2014\u201cyou\u2019d have pretended your clumsiness was really punishment: a reminder to focus on you, not that floozy in scarlet silk across the room.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,5,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-flash-fiction","section-fantasy","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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She veered left like a scavver drunk on coolant, and I knew I was in trouble. I tried sweet-talking her back on route, but she wasn\u2019t listening. I was used to that. Nobody listens to a twelve-year-old\u2014especially not a scrap pile with legs. I had a fix, though. I thumped the console hard with my hand\u2014the meat one, not the metal\u2014and felt the reset stutter up my spine. The walker wobbled like she was thinking about throwing a tantrum.<\/p>\n<p>Jeez. Who was the child here?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t even,\u201d I said. \u201cNot now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The walker stumbled a half-step more before it caught itself.<\/p>\n<p>Look. I admit it. This one\u2019s probably on me.<\/p>\n<p>I took the fringe route\u2014overrode the walker\u2019s safety limits and skirted around Gatehold instead of going through. Their new checkpoint captain always wants to chat, and I wasn\u2019t in the mood to talk about where I\u2019m from or why I\u2019m alone or how I got my metal hand. Like any of that matters. This run was supposed to be quick and quiet. Just me, the walker, and the scuttlers skittering ahead like they weren\u2019t glorified sanitation drones marching into a part of the Stacks even glowrats avoid. Back before the collapse, they\u2019d probably be scraping gum off city sidewalks. Now they hunt scrap and get stepped on. That\u2019s evolution, I guess.<\/p>\n<p>I called up a signal map. We were in a high distortion zone. I could feel it in my neural relay\u2014made the pinky on my metal hand jitterloop and left a copper sting on the back of my tongue. I hoped once we got past it the walker would smooth out.<\/p>\n<p>Up ahead, the scuttlers swarmed something large and lumbering through the scrap and started pinging like they\u2019d just found a jackpot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s not salvage, you diodes,\u201d I grumbled under my breath. \u201cThat\u2019s Rigs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rigs had fused himself into a salvaged exo-crane. Honestly, it looked more like the crane was wearing him. In the shadows, you could see luminous circuit traces flicker under his skin like ghost veins. He spent so much time in the Stacks he\u2019d gone halfway feral\u2014but not mean. Not to me.<\/p>\n<p>The scuttlers were trying to latch on. Not hurt him\u2014it\u2019s just protocol. They mark salvage when they find it. Rigs was swearing and kicking, but the kicks were slow and heavy. The scuttlers dodged like they were dancing. I\u2019d programmed them to pronk away from danger. Got tired of rebuilding them every time someone stomped them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese your bots, kid?\u201d Rigs growled over the open band. His voice had that filtered grind, like sand in a servo. \u201cBetter teach \u2019em some manners quick, or they\u2019re gonna get themselves recycled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I thumbed my chirper. \u201cHang on Rigs\u2014I got you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His trace ID was already whitelisted in their system, but signal distortion messes with everything. They probably weren\u2019t picking it up.<\/p>\n<p>I fired off a few lines of override code with my hand\u2014I hacked it so I can \u201ctype\u201d by flexing my fingers in sequence\u2014then slammed \u201csend\u201d by closing my fist. Got a feedback buzz in my NRI but the signal pushed through.<\/p>\n<p>The scuttlers backed away and scattered, clicking their little claws and zipping off toward better targets.<\/p>\n<p>Rigs tried one last stomp as they fled. Missed, of course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSmart critters,\u201d he grunted. \u201cStill think they\u2019re eyeballin\u2019 me funny.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEverybody eyeballs you funny, old-timer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see where your bots get their manners.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He trudged up alongside the walker and motioned for me to roll the window down.<\/p>\n<p>The walker shell was a salvaged VW van\u2014already ancient even in pre-Collapse days, but sturdy, spacious, and easy to convert.<\/p>\n<p>I knocked on the glass and shook my head. \u201cSorry, can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I had just reinforced the windows with panels of LuxShield I salvaged from some long-dead rich dude\u2019s panic room. Still had the logo on it, though it was melted a bit. You could drop a bomb on the walker and nothing but the glass would survive. Downside? Too thick to roll down the windows.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHeaded for the Stacks?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got an empty cargo hold and nothing but time,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, don\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was extra cranky today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m headed for the Shroud. Come that way with me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Shroud? No one goes to the Shroud on purpose\u2014not unless they\u2019re hiding from something.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI know you got a hitch in your step,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll lead the way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He started to clomp away like it was settled, but I really didn\u2019t need a chaperone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe next time, Rigs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I nudged the walker forward. Carefully.<\/p>\n<p>He was halfway down the block before he realized I wasn\u2019t following. He turned just as I was about to drop out of chirper range. His voice crackled back through the comm:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t want to go there, kid. There\u2019s something hunting the Stacks. Something\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Old-timers and their urban legends.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll be fine,\u201d I said\u2014assuming I make it that far.<\/p>\n<p>Rigs shook his head\u2014not angry, just sad\u2014then turned and pressed on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The terrain got rough fast. We were deep in the Stacks now\u2014towers fallen and folded in on themselves, slabs of concrete layered like cake. The streets were lined with rubble and powdered glass. The outer edge had been picked clean, but the deeper you went, the messier it got\u2014tangled, incomprehensible\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and full of promise. That\u2019s where the good stuff was.<\/p>\n<p>Even on a good day the walker would\u2019ve needed every circuit aligned to navigate this wreck. Today was not a good day. The signal distortion kept spiking\u2014and worse, it dropped off completely in some patches. Total dead zones.<\/p>\n<p>It was all bad news and getting badder. But I wasn\u2019t ready to turn back. Not empty-handed. Just one hunk of juicy salvage. Then I\u2019d go.<\/p>\n<p>The walker had other ideas.<\/p>\n<p>She coughed, lurched sideways, spun violently in place\u2014twice\u2014and died in the middle of West Third, two blocks short of the Plaza Bones. I pounded the dash but the nav lights were dark. HUD gone. No servo whine. Just the heat, the silence, and the empty cargo hold.<\/p>\n<p>I crawled under the console to check the damage.<\/p>\n<p>It was bad. Real bad.<\/p>\n<p>The nav crystal had overheated and spiderwebbed with cracks. When I pulled it for a closer look, it crumbled to sparkly dust in my hand. I wasn\u2019t going anywhere until I salvaged a new one.<\/p>\n<p>So I shut down the power, climbed off, wiped my goggles, and told the walker to wait. It didn\u2019t answer\u2014it never does\u2014but I said it anyway. Like maybe it would listen just this once.<\/p>\n<p>I was boiling in my leather jacket and thought about shucking it, but all I had underneath was a tank top. And out here in the Tumbledown, you need all the protection you can get. Everything is sharp, broken, and aching to slice you open. I zipped down to let in some air, cinched up my bootstraps, and slung my salvage bag across my shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>Which way?<\/p>\n<p>Like an idiot, I spun around. Once. Twice. Just like the walker had.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d passed the Spiral Redoubt on the way in, so I followed the walker\u2019s tracks back that way, hoping to scrounge a salvageable crystal. I pinged the scuttlers\u2014god knew where they were by now\u2014to start scanning for nav cores.<\/p>\n<p>It took a full minute to push the signal through with my hand. Sometimes stress causes the NRI to snap-lag, but this felt different.<\/p>\n<p>Felt like the signal got\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. swallowed.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know how else to describe it. Made my skin crawl, if I\u2019m honest, so I tried not to think about it. I just kept walking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Wasn\u2019t long before I got a ping from a scuttler. Oddly persistent\u2014like it found something important and wasn\u2019t letting go. I checked my wrist. Signal distortion was still strong, but as far as I could tell, the ping was uncomfortably close to Jingletown. I did not need to tangle with Grinbox today\u2014unless he had a nav crystal to trade. Considering the garbage he\u2019s tried to pawn off on me before, that was unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>The ping kept coming.<\/p>\n<p>I checked in with the other scuttlers\u2014none of them were close to zeroing on what I needed.<\/p>\n<p>Near-Jingletown it was.<\/p>\n<p>I traced the signal to a collapsed parking structure. And when I say collapsed, I mean <i>extra<\/i> collapsed. It had levels above and below ground, and it had fallen in on itself\u2014then fallen into the hole in the ground after that.<\/p>\n<p>One advantage of being a scrawny twelve-year-old scavver\u2014I can squeeze into spaces most folks can\u2019t. Downside: I\u2019ve also run into some nasty little critters who think those hollows belong to them. Hissbots. Bumblers. Rust foxes.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll take glowrats over those any day.<\/p>\n<p>Even if I squeezed through and found a transport, there was zero chance of driving it out. If there was a crystal inside, I\u2019d have to pull it and carry it.<\/p>\n<p>I poked around for an opening\u2014one that might actually lead somewhere. Found myself wishing I\u2019d brought my bitebar, but I probably would\u2019ve regretted dragging around the extra weight. Whatever. I wasn\u2019t going back to the walker for it now.<\/p>\n<p>I wriggled into a narrow flat spot between two concrete slabs. Had to take my jacket off and drag it in after me.<\/p>\n<p>Inside, I pushed my goggles up, but I still couldn\u2019t see squat.<\/p>\n<p>Fished around in my bag and found a few cracklights. Dropped one by the entrance so I could find it again and used another to light the way. It didn\u2019t have much reach, and it gave everything around me a sick green glow.<\/p>\n<p>The air got very still once I dropped down to the next level\u2014and the space really opened up. Cars and trucks were scattered all around, perfectly parked between faded parallel lines, waiting for owners who were never coming back. Somehow the collapse didn\u2019t reach this deep. It was like standing in a transport museum. Still, stale air. Everything was weirdly intact and covered in a fine layer of dust and silence. I dropped the light and cracked a fresh one.<\/p>\n<p>The ping was coming from the far end of the lot.<\/p>\n<p>The scuttler was perched on top of a luxury transport, standing tall at attention, and slowly turning in place, its thin crab legs <i>tak-tak-taking<\/i> across the metal roof.<\/p>\n<p>I tapped the nose. It stood down.<\/p>\n<p>The transport looked like an Opulus D\u2019Artagnan, judging by the grill design. Not a model year I was familiar with but\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese things don\u2019t have nav crystals,\u201d I told the scuttler.<\/p>\n<p>It jumped up and started pinging again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlright, alright! I\u2019ll take a look. Don\u2019t get your circuits in a bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I swiped dust off the windshield and brought the light close to the glass\u2014and my stomach nearly did a hard reboot.<\/p>\n<p>The driver was still inside.<\/p>\n<p>Look, when you do serious scavving, you run into corpses now and then. Most are just skeletons or shriveled-up mummies that don\u2019t even look real anymore. But this guy\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. at first glance he looked very well preserved.<\/p>\n<p>I <i>really<\/i> didn\u2019t want to do what I had to do next.<\/p>\n<p>But I also <i>really<\/i> didn\u2019t want to spend the night in the Tumbledown. Or hike all the way back to Gatehold and pay for a tow.<\/p>\n<p>I jammed my rat-key in the door lock and ratcheted until I heard the bolt disengage. Then I braced myself, held my breath against the potential dead-flesh smell, and yanked the door open.<\/p>\n<p>The thing inside flew at me.<\/p>\n<p>I screamed. Rolled. Kicked. Pushed.<\/p>\n<p>It was an embarrassingly long few seconds before I realized\u2014<\/p>\n<p>I was wrestling a dead bot.<\/p>\n<p>I shoved it aside and scrambled to my feet. Behind me, I heard little servos whirring. The scuttler was jiggling in place, doing quick up-and-down hops. If a bot could laugh . . .<\/p>\n<p>The driver was some kind of android butler. Looked like a modified Ambrosia Dynamics base model\u2014stiffly dressed in a tailored English suit with a crisp (but dingy) white shirt, yellow and black striped tie, matching kerchief, satin vest, and a heavy gold watch dangling from a chain on his waistcoat.<\/p>\n<p>Not a skinjob, thankfully. His head was all metal with some pitting and a rusty patch on top that looked like close-cropped hair. Even in the dark I could see ornate filigree work tracing the curves of his faceplate. Definitely custom. Built for some rich jerk.<\/p>\n<p>Looked like neither of them had survived the Collapse.<\/p>\n<p>Had to wonder how long the bot had waited. It was kinda sad to think about, so I turned back to the transport.<\/p>\n<p>I could already tell from the console there wasn\u2019t going to be any nav crystal. This thing clearly predated the tech. But I checked anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing.<\/p>\n<p>The scuttler clambered down from the roof and perched on the butler\u2019s chest. Then it went to full attention and started pinging again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, congratulations. You found a glorified chauffer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I gave it a swift kick (I\u2019m quicker than Rigs) and sent it skittering into the dark.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGo find something useful!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I couldn\u2019t see it, but I heard it slink away. I almost felt bad.<\/p>\n<p>Almost.<\/p>\n<p>I turned back to the transport, hoping to scavenge <i>something<\/i> before heading out. That\u2019s when a rusty voice behind me said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you require assistance, sir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I spun, arm up, metal fist glowing. I\u2019d hacked my prosthetic to emit a localized electric pulse. My NRI is EMP-shielded, but it still gives me a whopping headache for a whole day after. So I only use it in emergencies.<\/p>\n<p>It was the robot butler. Eyes like twin lamplights. Awake.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d I said, fist still charged.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo serve, sir. It appears the young man is a minor. Might I inquire if we are currently unaccompanied?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnaccompanied? I\u2019m a scavver.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His voice changed\u2014flattened. Factory default.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>processing<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Processing <i>what<\/i>? \u201cStop that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>processing<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>imprinting<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat? No!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The butler voice returned. \u201cGreetings, young sir. I have been sent by the Agency to assist you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My mouth hung open for a second.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat agency?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe agency that sent me, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>What<\/i> agency sent you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, that would be the one, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was <i>not<\/i> getting sucked into an infinite logic loop with a pre-Collapse babysitter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPower down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you wish, young sir. I endeavor to satisfy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His eyes flickered.<\/p>\n<p>He did <i>not<\/i> power down.<\/p>\n<p>That other voice came back. \u201c<i>safety protocols engaged. command override. unable to power down while charge remains unaccompanied<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then, back in butler mode: \u201cI do apologize, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhatever. Just\u2014\u201d <i>(go jump off a high tower)<\/i> \u201c\u2014get back in the car and wait for your master.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you wish, young sir. I endeavor to satisfy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed my salvage bag and scooped up the few bits that spilled during the scuffle. The air felt heavier by the second, and I was itching to get out of there.<\/p>\n<p>I headed toward the cracklight I\u2019d dropped at the far end of the level.<\/p>\n<p>And when I got there\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreetings, young sir. I have been sent by the Agency to assist you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told you to wait for your master!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy master is here, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His lamplight eyes bore straight into me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t need a chaperone,\u201d I growled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am delighted to inform my young charge that I am ever so much more than a chaperone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He bowed slightly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy name is Bitsworth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ugh. Save me from clever bot names.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust stay out of my way, Bits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I shoved past him. Hopped across a pile of concrete slabs, moving fast. I could outpace a rusty old pre-Collapse robot. I ducked under a beam and squeezed through a narrow space\u2014wasn\u2019t really watching where I was going. Just trying to put space between me and Bits.<\/p>\n<p>But the structure was less stable here. When I climbed over another tangle of debris, I felt something shift.<\/p>\n<p>I had no time to react.<\/p>\n<p>Something heavy\u2014a concrete pillar, or worse\u2014hit my shoulder, knocking me sideways. I was seconds from becoming a permanent part of the architecture.<\/p>\n<p>But before I could be squashed to jelly, a hand yanked me clear.<\/p>\n<p>Two lamplights blinked at me in the dark.<\/p>\n<p>Bits shoved me against a wall and leaned in, bracing me. He put his hand gently on top of my head and pressed my face into his chest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI advise the young master to close his eyes against the dust.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I did as he said.<\/p>\n<p>I heard the rumble and crunch as the building folded. Smaller bits\u2014gravel, dirt, dust\u2014made a soft <i>shushing<\/i> sound as it all settled into the gaps. My heart was in my throat, vibrating like a loose cooling fan.<\/p>\n<p>When it was over, Bits stepped back. His eyes blinked brilliant blue. A soft scan light washed over me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere. I see the young master is entirely unharmed. How gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He produced a tiny lint brush from his coat pocket and started brushing my shoulders in slow careful strokes. Pretty sure it was leaving more cruft than it removed.<\/p>\n<p>I pushed his hand away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cStop that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you wish, young sir. I\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEndeavor to satisfy, yes. I\u2019ve heard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits stood completely still for a moment. Then\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShall we proceed, then, to the exit?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked around\u2014or tried to. Wherever I had left the cracklights, they were now buried. Maybe I wouldn\u2019t ditch Bits just yet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can see in the dark?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am equipped both with infrared sensors\u2014\u201d his eyes flashed red, \u201c\u2014and ultrasonic echolocation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His \u201cears\u201d popped out and emitted a faint high-pitched whine. I just hoped we didn\u2019t attract razor bats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the young master would care to follow me\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The young master would.<\/p>\n<p>Just this once.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The sun was right on top of us and the air was heavy and oily with moisture. I lowered my goggles and spit dust out of my mouth. I was still short one nav crystal, but it was a relief to be clear of the structure and out in the open again.<\/p>\n<p>For me, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>For Bits it was kind of a shock.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe streets appear to be deserted. May I inquire\u2014is it a holiday, young master?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA very long holiday. Started before I was born and will still be going long after we\u2019re both gone. It\u2019s a commemoration of nothing. The nothing left after the something. The nothing that ate everything and will keep on eating\u2014even itself. It\u2019s a holiday from sanity, from hope, from everything that once was good in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cArbor Day?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So hard to tell if a bot\u2019s being sarcastic.<\/p>\n<p>Just then I got a ping\u2014a strong one\u2014from a scuttler. The data was clean despite the signal distortion. A little <i>too<\/i> clean, actually. Clean data in the Stacks is like a friendly glowrat\u2014it\u2019s either sick, broken, or luring you into a pipe you can\u2019t crawl back out of.<\/p>\n<p>The good news: Crystal located.<\/p>\n<p>The bad: It was way out in the Wires.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d lost a scuttler in the Wires once. It came back talking to itself and smoking from its data ports. That place was a nasty, chaotic jungle of sagging cable runs, snapped power lines, rusted antenna arrays, and twitchy old relay towers that still thought they were at war. Real easy to fry your circuits if you don\u2019t watch your step.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d have to backtrack to the walker, then trek west for another two miles.<\/p>\n<p>It was going to be a long walk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome on Bits. And keep an eye out for falling buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shall continue to endeavor to prevent the young master\u2019s accidental flattening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Normally I\u2019d stick to the streets, but I decided to take a shortcut through the ruins. Or over them as the case may be. I was climbing a heap of rubble, sending commands to the scuttlers with my hand to start marking a path through the Wires, when I noticed a delay in finger response.<\/p>\n<p>Then it hit\u2014a hard spike.<\/p>\n<p>Static in my head. Rushing hiss in my ears. My stomach floated up and everything tilted.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly I was on my knees, panting and sweating.<\/p>\n<p>Bits hovered over me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir? The young master was unresponsive for seven point two three seconds. That exceeds medical safety thresholds. I recommend\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShut up. I\u2019m fine. Don\u2019t\u2014just\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. shut up!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He reached out to help, but I shoved him off and forced myself to my feet. My head still floated a little, like my brain wasn\u2019t fully plugged in.<\/p>\n<p>My hand was dead\u2014stuck in a cold reset. Which meant it had completely lost sync with my NRI. It had never fuzzed out like that before. It rattled me.<\/p>\n<p>But not as much as what I saw next.<\/p>\n<p>I saw the wreckage as soon as I crested the hill. Twists of metal, bent crane limbs, burnt servos. And what was left of Rigs\u2014torn apart and scattered like the broken pieces of a child\u2019s doll in a junkyard. Limbs still twitching. The sharp smell of burned engine oil hung in the air.<\/p>\n<p>Scampering around the remains\u2014tumbletots. Six of them that I could see. Completely feral and permanently children. Or maybe they never lived long enough to mature. Naked and dirt-streaked. Backs bristling with spikes of scrap metal like a protective shell. Their wild hair and eyes a mutant white. Arrows of sunlight glinted off their jagged, needle-sharp chrome teeth. They ate scrap. Metal or organic, didn\u2019t matter to them.<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed chunks of rubble and hurled them downhill.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet away from him!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A few throws plinked off their armor. They jumped back a step but couldn\u2019t resist the fresh carrion and dove back in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBits, get rid of them!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits immediately raised his arms and went flying at them, emitting a shrill, warbling cry that sent a hard-edged jolt ripping through my spine. It would have been comical under other circumstances. The tumbletots scattered.<\/p>\n<p>I turned over the exo-crane seat and found Rigs\u2019s pale and torn upper body still attached. He was covered in hydraulic fluid and had a cryoburn on one side of his face. Probably from a severed coolant hose. I sat next to him, helpless.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRigs. Oh, Rigs.\u201d My voice was wet and croaky.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019d warned me. Offered to take me another way. I thought I knew better. Now he was scrap. Fat tears itched on my cheeks. Rigs would have told me it was alright to cry.<\/p>\n<p>Bits came crunching back through the rubble. \u201cMay I inquire, were those\u2014things\u2014responsible for this mayhem, young sir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I shook my head. \u201cThey\u2019re dangerous, but they\u2019re just scavengers. They don\u2019t hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Hunt<\/i>. Rigs had said something was out here hunting. Something hungry.<\/p>\n<p>I jumped to my feet. \u201cBits, I don\u2019t think we can stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Static flickered in my head again. <i>kssssshhk<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not s-safe, here. There\u2019s s-something\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The air grew thick. Shadows deepened. Dark places grew darker, and I felt a pull, like something magnetic drawing me towards it. My vision doubled, then blurred. On the ridge I could see the little white dots of the tumbletots\u2019 heads peeking over, watching. Waiting. Something was keeping them at bay. It wasn\u2019t Bits.<\/p>\n<p><i>kssssshhk<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cW-we have to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d say things went black, but black would be something.<\/p>\n<p>I went nowhere.<\/p>\n<p>I became nothing.<\/p>\n<p>I was gone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>I awoke staring down the open neck of a headless horse.<\/p>\n<p>Bits was tipping my canteen to my mouth. As soon as I felt the water touch my lips, I grabbed it and took three greedy gulps. It went down hard. I winced.<\/p>\n<p>Bits gently but firmly pulled the canteen away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI advise caution, young sir. The young master\u2019s recovery\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I was not fine.<\/p>\n<p>The horse\u2014or what was left of it\u2014was plastic. So were the ones next to it. And a few other animals I couldn\u2019t name. All impaled on tall, twisting poles set into a circular platform.<\/p>\n<p>I was on a bench flanked by a couple of birds with long curving necks and extended wings. Above us, sunlight bled through holes in the roof, catching slow swirls of dust.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere am I, Bits?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe shopping mall, young sir. Forgive my forwardness, but I acted on my safety protocols and sought cover when the young master became incapacitated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stepped off the platform. It wobbled. I nearly lost my balance and staggered over to the rim of a dried up, crumbling fountain, where I sat down again. My head was pounding. I hoped it was just dehydration.<\/p>\n<p>Around us: the decaying shells of storefronts and their faded signage. <i>LUXKIDS. TINY TRENDS. GROWSMART UNIFORMS<\/i>. The mall was a maze of fallen pillars, broken beams, overturned chairs and tables, trash cans, vendor carts, shattered kiosks. And a lot of open space.<\/p>\n<p>Too much open space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy did you bring me here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI acted on my safety\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis isn\u2019t cover. There\u2019s barely a roof. It\u2019s wide open here. We\u2019re not safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits\u2019s lamplights flickered. Finally, he said, \u201cI do apologize, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I studied him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ve been here before, haven\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another flicker. His voice softened, almost staticky. \u201cI\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I have no memory before imprinting on my young charge in the parking garage, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He wasn\u2019t lying. Probably. But it wasn\u2019t the truth, either. He was ghosting.<\/p>\n<p>Certain kinds of processors\u2014especially old ones\u2014can cling to burned-in traces. Fragments of memory that echo through the code even after a full wipe.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s possible Bits was acting out an old pattern without even realizing it.<\/p>\n<p>If so\u2014he might be dangerously unstable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>We cut through a large department store to find an exit. It looked like a mass murder scene\u2014mannequins littered the floor everywhere. Some intact. Some cracked. Some just parts. Arms. Torsos. Heads. A foot.<\/p>\n<p>Most had been stripped of anything useful. The lady mannequins still had their purses, though. Not much use for dainty handbags in the Tumbledown.<\/p>\n<p>Many had their faces bashed in. I tried not to look at those too long.<\/p>\n<p>I was so used to the sound of Bits\u2019s footsteps behind me I stopped short when I couldn\u2019t hear them.<\/p>\n<p>He was standing stock-still far behind me, near the entrance. Transfixed.<\/p>\n<p>In front of him sat a child-sized mannequin. A boy with plastic hair. Head askew, limbs splayed awkwardly. Clothes rotted. Shoes gone.<\/p>\n<p>Bits regarded him for a long, quiet moment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBits? Come on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Strangely, he didn\u2019t respond. Just kept looking at that little mannequin.<\/p>\n<p>He approached it slowly. Brushed debris off its head. <a id=\"scene-beats-the-mannequin-and-the-glitch\"><\/a><a id=\"arrival-at-the-scene\"><\/a>Adjusted the collar of its ruined shirt. I noticed the fingers of Bits\u2019s right hand spasm. He paused and recalibrated.<\/p>\n<p>I almost said we should go again when he reached down and scooped the thing into his arms. He walked toward a mattress display, cradling the stiff plastic boy, and began humming a broken, glitchy, lullaby.<\/p>\n<p><i>When stars\u2014fall\u2014down<\/i>,<\/p>\n<p><i>I\u2019ll s-still\u2014still be\u2014<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>In quiet\u2014quiet ways-s<\/i>,<\/p>\n<p><i>M\u2014love stays<\/i><\/p>\n<p>He laid the child down on a mattress and folded his hands over his chest. Still singing, he pulled a dirty tarp from a nearby checkout counter and tucked it under the boy\u2019s chin.<\/p>\n<p><i>Rust and rain\u2014rust and\u2014<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>All is rust, all is\u2014<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>You\u2019ll recall<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>You\u2019ll recall\u2014my last\u2014my last refrain\u2014<\/i><\/p>\n<p>He took a slow step back.<\/p>\n<p><i>When song\u2014sung<\/i>,<\/p>\n<p><i>And fading\u2014fading\u2014fading fast<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The beat plays\u2014on\u2014<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>Our love\u2014will\u2014will\u2014will\u2014<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur love will last,\u201d I said quietly. I don\u2019t know how, but I remembered that song. Someone sang it to me once. A long time ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur love will last,\u201d Bits finished. Then bowed his head\u2014just slightly\u2014and turned to walk toward the exit.<\/p>\n<p>After a moment, I followed him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a id=\"glitch-in-the-hand\"><\/a>I am aware, young sir, that is not him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen why\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause I was never afforded the opportunity to say goodbye.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We walked in silence to the exit. As Bits reached for the door, his fingers twitched again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>We put some ground between us and the mall, one step after another, <i>crunch crunch crunch<\/i> through the gravel and litter. The whole while, I could hear the glitchy servos in Bits\u2019s hand scratching and whining.<\/p>\n<p>I spotted a little nook and pulled Bits over to a row of chairs sitting in an alley behind an old theater and sat him down. Posters on the wall had all faded to oblivion. There were deep gouges on the chairbacks where something\u2014tumbletots probably\u2014had gnawed on them. I didn\u2019t want to stay here long. Also, the alley had a strong ammonia sting of piss from a hundred different animals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDoes the young sir require assistance?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShush.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I unrolled my tools on the seat next to him. Then attached my threadscope to my goggles and took his hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the young sir is concerned, I assure him that my hand\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said shut your grill, Bits. I have to concentrate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I did not have to concentrate. I could fix an arm full of slaggy servos with one hand while fighting off a swarm of buzz-bots with the other if I had to. And owing to my prosthetic, I have.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shouldn\u2019t wish to be any trouble\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is going to pinch.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed my snap-spike and zapped him. He jolted back in his seat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh! Oh\u2014oh, I barely felt that, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I rolled up my tools and Bits flexed his hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMasterful work, young sir. It feels factory-new.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve had practice,\u201d I said, and held up my prosthetic and wiggled my fingers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI must express my grat\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t do that,\u201d I snapped.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I took a breath. \u201cYou\u2019re not much use with a glitchy hand. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He regarded me quietly for a moment. Bots are so hard to read.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can go now,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>I walked away. After a moment, he followed. \u201cAs you wish, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>We left the pee-soaked alley behind and followed the scuttlers\u2019 pings\u2014steady and insistent\u2014west. They led us right to the Wires.<\/p>\n<p>The ground here was more a suggestion of ground. Split. Broken. Disintegrating. Every few steps, a cable twitched underfoot, like something alive. And hungry. Above us, tired buildings leaned, slouched against one another. Strung between them\u2014the scrapwebs. Nets of power lines, fiber spools, antenna wire, old tram cables\u2014layered, tangled, sagging. Some of it was still live. Most of it wasn\u2019t. None of it cared about your plans.<\/p>\n<p>Everything smelled like ozone and despair.<\/p>\n<p>The deeper we got, the more the signal haze thickened. My NRI lagged behind my thoughts and my hand itched like ants were crawling in the joints. I nervously flexed my fingers and accidentally ordered a scuttler to do a backflip.<\/p>\n<p>Bits stepped carefully, trying not to disturb the tangle. But the tangle was already disturbed. And awake. Might have been my imagination, but I swear I could hear a <i>hisssss<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>A scuttler perched on a broken junction box, tapping out a tight, twitchy ping. The other two had gone silent\u2014relay path marked and done.<\/p>\n<p>My hand lit up and chimed. We were at the waypoint.<\/p>\n<p>In front of us, almost dead center in a signal bowl, sat a sleek matte-black transport\u2014a Volcanic Mark VII\u2014half-sunk into a nest of cables. Hatch wide open.<\/p>\n<p>And inside?<\/p>\n<p>A nav crystal gleamed on the dash. Like it had been waiting just for me.<\/p>\n<p>Too clean.<\/p>\n<p>Too easy.<\/p>\n<p>Why not just hang a flashing sign on the transport that says <i>TRAP! PLEASE STEP THIS WAY!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s our ticket out of here, Bits\u2014but hold up\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shall endeavor to retrieve it for the young master.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo! Wait\u2014!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Too late. Bits moved. Quick. Eager. Like maybe he was trying to prove something.<\/p>\n<p><i>kssssshhk<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I was down on one knee, sweaty, drooling, trying not vomit. I must have blanked because suddenly Bits was standing next to the transport waving the nav crystal triumphantly over his head.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs this the object the young master requires?\u201d Bits called.<\/p>\n<p>The transport sank out of sight.<\/p>\n<p>Something rose up behind it.<\/p>\n<p>A massive, shifting shape assembled itself from the surrounding cables and wires. Twisting. Binding. Folding inward. Scrap bending to will. Comm tower bones slotted into four stocky legs. Copper coils braided themselves into a thick midsection. Junction boxes clattered into a chest plate. Its tail merged from high-voltage fuses and cracked ceramic isolators. A spiked ridge of antenna arrays sprouted along its spine. Scrap metal curled into a yawning, hungry maw.<\/p>\n<p>The thing crackled as it moved\u2014an electric popping hiss, like a thousand hard drives screaming in sync.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBits . . .\u201d I croaked. My throat was sand.<\/p>\n<p>That darkness threatened again. The deep shadow shrouded my head. A living emptiness. My thoughts pulled backward into static. I felt the signal in my NRI evaporate, and my mechanical hand became deadweight. Something was feeding on my neural relay.<\/p>\n<p>A whispering echo reverberated through my mind. Old as the Collapse. Hungrier than rust. The beast had named itself.<\/p>\n<p><i>Nullhound<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Not a presence\u2014an <i>absence<\/i>. A howling void, aching to be filled.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the thing that killed Rigs.<\/p>\n<p>His neural relays were way more complex than mine\u2014he was puppeting an exo-crane, after all. When the Nullhound drained his signal, he must\u2019ve lost control completely. His own machine probably ripped him apart from the inside out.<\/p>\n<p>Now the thing was after me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cB-Bits\u2014th-throw it!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His arm cocked back and the crystal zipped through the air and landed square in my outstretched hand. I closed my fist and ran.<\/p>\n<p>Or tried to.<\/p>\n<p>Three stumbling steps and I crashed to my knees. Scuttlers raced around me and beelined for the path out.<\/p>\n<p>Up again. Lurch ahead. Fall. Stagger. Crash.<\/p>\n<p>My breath was gone. Static raged through my head like a thundercloud. Every cell in my body felt a backward tug toward that thing. It would be easy to surrender. Just let go. Let the void take me. Why fight it? Fighting only brought pain.<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t want to hurt anymore.<\/p>\n<p>I went down on my hands.<\/p>\n<p>Something grabbed me. Around my chest.<\/p>\n<p>This was it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn your feet, young sir!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits hauled me up. Like it was nothing. Like I wasn\u2019t a mess of signal loss and bad decisions.<\/p>\n<p>And we were running again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can take care of myself!\u201d I tried to say, but my mouth was mush and my words came out mumbly.<\/p>\n<p>We staggered forward. My legs were jelly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSteady on!\u201d Bits said commandingly and pulled me over a tangle of cables.<\/p>\n<p>I took a few more running steps\u2014and then my legs were gone. My NRI was fuzzing hard. I doubted I\u2019d even be conscious much longer. Bits was dragging me, but with me as deadweight, we\u2019d never make it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBits, the Nullhound\u2014f-feeding on my signal. It\u2019s disrupting my NRI\u2014you have to\u2014emit a pulse\u2014disrupt it\u2014feed it a null carrier wave\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I rattled off the command set to reconfigure his ultrasonic coils.<\/p>\n<p>His ears popped out\u2014<\/p>\n<p>\u201cW-Wait,\u201d I said, \u201cthis\u2014this is g-going to be a high EM burst. Your\u2014processor\u2019s shielded, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIndeed, young sir. My core processor array consists of custom Ambrosia Dynamics CRZ type L1 parallel units, highly immune to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreat, just do it!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t even ask if it would hurt. Didn\u2019t hesitate. Didn\u2019t wonder if I was worth it.<\/p>\n<p>A tooth-rattling, high-pitched whine ripped through the air.<\/p>\n<p>My head cleared instantly. I jumped to my feet and ran full bore, following the line that the scuttlers had taken.<\/p>\n<p>My boots sank into a snarl of cables and I went down, face-first toward a half-broken cinderblock. I twisted\u2014saved my skull\u2014but the crystal flew out of my hand.<\/p>\n<p>It skittered away and landed in a nasty coil of spark-spitting wire.<\/p>\n<p>I could retrieve it\u2014if I was careful.<\/p>\n<p>But it would take precious time I might not have.<\/p>\n<p>Behind me, Bits stood frozen, his emitter coils sucking up all his juice. No cover. No shield. Just him. He was completely exposed, but he kept the signal going. His upturned face stared serenely into the maw of his approaching doom. He didn\u2019t flinch.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound\u2014just one pounce away\u2014was also frozen, back hunched, limbs twitching, signal-starved. Its cables writhed. Reconfiguring.<\/p>\n<p>Trying to adapt.<\/p>\n<p>I felt my NRI itch. The signal field was collapsing.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound took a heavy, leaden step forward.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at the crystal.<\/p>\n<p>If I was careful, I could snake my prosthetic through the wires. It was mostly insulated.<\/p>\n<p>Mostly.<\/p>\n<p>I scrambled.<\/p>\n<p>Made a hard dash forward. Ignored the creeping edge of static in my head.<\/p>\n<p>Electric nerve pain tore up my leg. I kept going.<\/p>\n<p>My hand closed on Bits\u2019s arm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMove! Come on!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ever compliant, he turned and ran with me.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir! I need all power reserves for the signal\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHelp me over the wires!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I needed help.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>But I knew one thing for sure: Bits wouldn\u2019t leave my side if I asked for help.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis way, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He scooped me up and carried me over the wires. Carried me like a child-sized mannequin. And it was faster this way. Faster without my meat legs stumble-staggering through the tangle.<\/p>\n<p>Up ahead, a tower. One wall crumbled away, exposing a maintenance stairwell.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits set me down and we dashed for the tower. The Nullhound came crashing behind us, trying to suck up my signal. Bits paced ahead. He turned and reached for me. His hand twitched again\u2014his glitch was back\u2014but I grabbed it anyway. Even half-busted, it held on tighter than most things in my life.<\/p>\n<p>We jammed into the stairwell. Bits pulled me up the first flight of crumbly concrete steps. I wasn\u2019t even sure if my legs were moving on their own anymore. Maybe they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>I could hear the servos in his legs straining. He was tiring, but he didn\u2019t stop. He kept the signal going. I wondered how far he would take it\u2014if he would sacrifice every last milliamp just to keep me breathing. He probably would. That\u2019s what scared me most.<\/p>\n<p>The stairwell rocked as the Nullhound slammed into the entrance, wedging itself in the frame. Waves of nausea and static washed over me. Something hot and wet ran down the leg of my pants. The pain and fear squeezed water out of my eyes. I hated that I was like this. I hated more that Bits saw me like this.<\/p>\n<p>We kept climbing. Somehow my legs kept moving. We hit the first landing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe must endeavor to reach the next level, young sir!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Below us, the Nullhound thrashed and sparked. Then it grew disturbingly still. The rough sound of friction echoed in the stairwell as it began to reconfigure itself\u2014narrowing its form, uncoiling here, elongating there, folding limbs, snapping off pieces that wouldn\u2019t fit. It lunged again and more sparks few up the stairwell.<\/p>\n<p>Another flight. Put more distance between us and the Nullhound.<\/p>\n<p>Bits was hunched. Straining. I could hear the signal pulse flickering, sputtering.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound crashed upward again. Its howling echo rang inside my head. The void was calling.<\/p>\n<p>The stairwell wall gave way and the Nullhound tumbled out sideways. It wouldn\u2019t give up. It would find another way.<\/p>\n<p>We turned on the next landing. The stairwell collapsed in front of us. Cornered.<\/p>\n<p>We dashed out the door onto the level. The wall was a skeleton of empty window frames.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound exploded up through the floor. Lowered its head to charge.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis way, young sir!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pulled me toward the window.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat? No!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits froze up for a moment\u2014but just a moment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Safety protocol override<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He grabbed me and launched us both through the air.<\/p>\n<p>I screamed.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>We landed in the tangle of a scrapweb strung between the towers. Bounced. Hard. My jaw clacked together and I bit my tongue and my mouth filled with the taste of metal. Before I had time to worry about weavewraiths, the scrapweb creaked and groaned and one of the anchored cables snapped. The support dropped out from under me and we tumbled further down the web, catching ourselves again before getting flung out.<\/p>\n<p>We scrambled down through the tangle of cable and twisted metal.<\/p>\n<p>Just as we dropped to the ground, the Nullhound crashed through the window. Too fast. Too big. It smashed into the scrapweb and spun. The web tightened. The Nullhound thrashed and became more entangled.<\/p>\n<p><i>Now<\/i> I was hoping for a weavewraith. But you may have noticed, I\u2019m not that lucky.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound started to disassemble itself. Wires uncoiled. Limbs unwound. Its cables oozed through the scrapweb to the ground beneath.<\/p>\n<p>The fuzzing in my head stopped. My hand unlocked. The Nullhound couldn\u2019t do its signal-eating thing while it was reconfiguring.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can shut off the signal shield now, Bits. Save your power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He did.<\/p>\n<p>He walked stiffly, like an old man.<\/p>\n<p>It had taken a toll, but I hope he didn\u2019t expect me to say thank you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>We limped with speed back toward the walker. There was something I wanted to check.<\/p>\n<p>Bits broke the silence I\u2019d been enjoying.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat the young master did back there, to come after me like that\u2014was most noble.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, now I had a run-down bot and no crystal.<\/p>\n<p>Not noble.<\/p>\n<p>Stupid.<\/p>\n<p><i>Stupid. Stupid. Stupid<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>My foot slipped on the uneven ground and I nearly rolled my ankle. Bits put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.<\/p>\n<p>I shook him off. Hard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet off me, Bits. If it wasn\u2019t for you, I\u2019d have that crystal and be on my way home right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I stopped walking and wheeled on him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, for all your safety protocols, I haven\u2019t felt that safe. Rigs is dead and ripped apart. My neural relay\u2019s been glitching like crazy. I\u2019ve been stranded in the Tumbledown all day. And now there\u2019s a signal-eating scrap beast after me who thinks I\u2019m the best thing he ever got a taste of. And I\u2019m no closer to going home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My voice cracked. My face felt hot and I tasted salt in my mouth.<\/p>\n<p>But I couldn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been fighting for my life all day and I don\u2019t even know why! What\u2019s so good about life? It doesn\u2019t give you anything\u2014it just takes and it takes. And don\u2019t tell me it doesn\u2019t, Bits, because I saw you. I saw what you did with that mannequin. It\u2019s a hunk of pre-Collapse plastic, by the way! Wake up, Bits! What did life ever give <i>you<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He just stood there, bent slightly toward me, head cocked.<\/p>\n<p>I was shaking. Maybe from the heat. Maybe from having every last raw nerve exposed.<\/p>\n<p>After a long while, he spoke softly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt gave me you, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I swallowed. Wiped my face with the back of my sleeve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell. That ain\u2019t much,\u201d I said, and started walking again.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes scuttlers make mistakes. But there\u2019s always a reason for it. I was curious, so I wanted to check the scan logs. They were in the walker.<\/p>\n<p>She was still right where I left her, leaning drunkenly against what was left of a bank building.<\/p>\n<p>Bits bent back to read the lettering on the side of the walker\u2019s van shell above us.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Ladd\u2019s Robot Repair<\/i>. What is a <i>Ladd<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s me,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m Ladd.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Ladd<\/i>\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. is a name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Bitsworth<\/i> is a name?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He stiffened. Adjusted his coat. Then said, \u201cI take your point, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I used my hand to remote-lower the scrap winch. It ran on its own battery because it always tripped the breakers when I had it wired into main power. No idea why. Just did.<\/p>\n<p>I stepped onto the hook and winched myself up into the walker\u2019s belly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the young master\u2019s establishment?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She was my everything. Salvage rig. Repair shop. Shelter.<\/p>\n<p>Everything.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung sir\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust wait there, Bits. I gotta check something.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Inside, it was a blast furnace. I shucked my jacket immediately and swapped into fresh pants. Then I cranked the primer three times, disengaged the solar feed, closed the system switches, and flipped the main power toggle.<\/p>\n<p>The console hummed.<\/p>\n<p>I rebooted the OS, waded through about a thousand panic alerts about the missing nav core\u2014<i>yeah, thanks, I\u2019m aware<\/i>\u2014and pulled the sensor logs from the scuttler array.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of scrambled garbage from all the signal distortion\u2014which now I figure was the Nullhound sniffing us out.<\/p>\n<p>But then I found it.<\/p>\n<p>The scuttler hadn\u2019t been tagging the transport. Not exactly.<\/p>\n<p>It had tried to tell me but I was too big a diode to listen. I\u2019d just kicked it for all its trouble.<\/p>\n<p>Bits had said it himself. He had a CRZ type L1 core. CRZs are crystalline silicate processors. Practically identical to nav crystals.<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed my jacket and winched myself back down.<\/p>\n<p>Stupidly, I forgot to shut off the power.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung sir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We stood in the shade under the walker where it was still uncomfortably hot. My eyes stung from sweat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a perfect match, Bits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, not <i>perfect<\/i>. But I could make it work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI need that processor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I unrolled my tools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs the young master aware that removing my processing core will permanently incapacitate me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed my separator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOpen your access panel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits parted his coat. The processor panel on his chest swung open with a soft servo whine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<i>Alert. Removing the processing core will permanently disable your robot. Return your robot to the factory for service. Core removal will erase memory and reset personality matrix to factory defaults. Be sure to back up\u2014<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBits, shut that off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I popped off the heat sink and let it clatter to the ground. Underneath, a crystalline lattice throbbed with a glowing blue light.<\/p>\n<p>He said nothing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis won\u2019t hurt,\u201d I said. \u201cYou won\u2019t feel a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI already do, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My hand shook. I wiped the sweat from eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSteady on,\u201d he said gently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust\u2014can you\u2014look the other way. Turn your head or something.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Without a word, Bits rotated his head 180 degrees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIs this better, young sir?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Not creepy at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right. Brace yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am fully braced, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I jammed the separator into the core slot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir\u2014!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShut it, Bits!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir\u2014!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then I felt it.<\/p>\n<p>The itch in my hand.<\/p>\n<p>The buzz in my neural relay.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir, it\u2019s the Nullhound!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I leaned around Bits.<\/p>\n<p>It was coming\u2014charging straight down the street at us. Loose cables whipping the air like angry tentacles. Sparks flying from its eyes. My emotional spikes must\u2019ve lit up my NRI like a flare. I\u2019d practically left it a trail of breadcrumbs.<\/p>\n<p>Then the walker bolted.<\/p>\n<p>I just stood there, dumbfounded. It had limited autonomy, sure, but with no nav crystal it was a blind man in a dark alley. It slammed into the side of a hotel, rebounded, bounced off a clock tower, and disappeared around a street corner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy walker just took off!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Panic swelled in my chest, cold and jagged.<\/p>\n<p>Bits\u2019s head spun back around. \u201cI suggest we do the same, young sir!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t wait for me to respond\u2014just hooked me under the arm and we were off and running. Every muscle in my body screamed. The buzz in my NRI grew sharper. A hornet\u2019s nest in my skull.<\/p>\n<p>As we ran, I reached over clumsily and snapped Bits\u2019s core panel shut. I\u2019d tried to dismantle him but he was still here. Still beside me. Still doing his best to protect me. Even my own walker had run off.<\/p>\n<p>Not Bits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBits, I\u2019m sorry\u2014I\u2019m sorry I tried to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very good of the young master to say so,\u201d he said evenly, \u201cbut I recommend at present we focus on our immediate circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I tripped\u2014caught my foot on a chunk of rebar and hit the ground hard. Face-first. The wind shot right out of me.<\/p>\n<p>I rolled over. Bits bent to help me up, but I grabbed his arms and held tight.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSay it\u2019s okay,\u201d I choked. \u201cWhen someone says sorry, you have to say it\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits looked at me\u2014steady, patient.<\/p>\n<p><i>kssssshhk<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Static\u2014an electric needle jammed into my eye.<\/p>\n<p>Someone screamed. I think it was me.<\/p>\n<p>Bits pulled me to my feet.<\/p>\n<p>And we ran.<\/p>\n<p>I stumbled again. My legs were shot. Lungs burnt and raw. I couldn\u2019t go on.<\/p>\n<p>Bits turned. His ears popped out. A high-pitched whine stuttered from his emitter\u2014but the pulse was weak. Like a dying battery crying for help.<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t slow the Nullhound at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSave your power,\u201d I panted. \u201cIt adapted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound was less than two blocks away, barreling at us like a runaway hauler. I turned toward it\u2014at least I could look it in the eye before it ended me.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t believe in miracles, but I do believe in amazing coincidences.<\/p>\n<p>As the Nullhound thundered into the intersection, I heard something else\u2014a mechanical crashing-thudding-clanking, like an angry trash compactor on legs.<\/p>\n<p>The walker.<\/p>\n<p>It had come full circle\u2014blind, broken, lost\u2014and still somehow, in the right place at the right time.<\/p>\n<p><i>SLAM!<\/i><\/p>\n<p>It smashed into the Nullhound from the side. A terrible crunch. The monster flew sideways and crashed into the base of a half-collapsed office tower. The building shuddered\u2014then groaned\u2014then fell.<\/p>\n<p>Concrete slabs and rusted steels poured down like an avalanche.<\/p>\n<p>For a second, all I could see was dust and sparks and flailing cable.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound came apart\u2014completely unwound, like a coil of bad dreams. Spools of cable, power relays, and metal limbs flung in every direction, pinched under the rubble.<\/p>\n<p>It jerked. Struggled. Started pulling itself back together.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome along, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bits didn\u2019t wait. He dragged me toward the walker, which stood wobbling at the edge of the wreckage, leaning hard but still upright.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s no good, Bits. I can\u2019t steer it. Not without a nav core.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe cannot outrun the Nullhound on foot,\u201d he said evenly. \u201cAnd I am of the opinion that wherever your walker might go, it is better than here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We winched ourselves up just as the walker shuddered, righted itself, and stumbled forward\u2014half-blind, but moving.<\/p>\n<p>I had no idea where we were going.<\/p>\n<p>And neither did the walker.<\/p>\n<p>I jumped into the pilot seat and buckled into my harness. Tried to get a reading on the console. Bits was getting tossed around like a juggling pin in Jingletown.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGrab on,\u201d I told him and pointed to the handholds in the ceiling. I had installed little handholds all over\u2014been slammed around more than a few times.<\/p>\n<p>I tried the steering. Dead. Brake. Dead. Everything was fly-by-wire. No manual control. I could cut the power, but then we\u2019d be sitting ducks.<\/p>\n<p>The walker smashed through a mound of rubble, trampled over the rusted shell of an old sedan, took out a few of the last standing streetlights, then charged up a hill. I was gripping the dead stick like it would suddenly listen. Like I could force control if I just held on tight enough. Like I always did.<\/p>\n<p>When we crested the hill, I saw it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung sir, my olfactory sensors are detecting\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Melting Grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>An eternal scrapfire\u2014a vast, burning expanse of collapsed industrial waste, fractured power lines, and subterranean chemical tanks. The biggest conflagration in the Tumbledown. Six square blocks of smoldering, flaming hell on Earth. Everything burned here\u2014even stuff that wasn\u2019t supposed to burn. Nothing was left standing. Just blobs of slag and rivers of molten metal. If you were unlucky enough to get stuck in the Tumbledown after dark, you could see the hot glow of the fire from any direction. Some say you can even hear the ground moan. Me? I think the ground remembers. Everything lost, everything burned. It echoes here.<\/p>\n<p>The air was a toxic stew of smoke and deadly gases. I double-checked the filters and hoped they would keep most of the bad stuff out. I could still smell it, though\u2014the burnt-rubber prickle in the back of my nose. My eyes watered.<\/p>\n<p>Our only chance was to hope the walker would beeline through before its legs began to soften\u2014before we became another puddle of goo. The cabin took on an eerie crimson glow, and the A\/C couldn\u2019t keep up with the heat. Was it just me or were my boot soles starting to stick to the floor?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung sir, I\u2019m afraid our situation, as perilous as it seems, is about to become demonstrably worse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah. I see it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound.<\/p>\n<p>Dead ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Either we burn up in the Melting Grounds, or we fall right into the Nullhound\u2019s hungry, waiting jaws.<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed the stick. Pulled the brake lever. Even though I knew it was useless. \u201cTurn, you stupid scrap pile! Turn!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My mind raced. There were no options. I could fix anything but I couldn\u2019t fix this.<\/p>\n<p>Bits turned to me. Calm. Steady. \u201cIf I might suggest, young sir\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He parted his coat. Opened his access panel.<\/p>\n<p>I started at him. Felt a hot flash of anger at the suggestion. My cheeks burned.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cForgive my insistence, young sir, but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not doing that!\u201d I exploded. I jumped out of my chair and backed away.<\/p>\n<p>Bits took the toolkit from my pack. Unrolled it. Held out the separator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy safety protocols prohibit me from disassembling myself\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShut up, Bits!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2014you must remove my processing core yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I snatched the tool out of his hand. \u201cThis is dangerous!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He took my hand and slotted the separator in place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI can\u2019t.\u201d I kept repeating. I pounded his chest. My voice cracked. \u201cI can\u2019t, I can\u2019t\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYoung sir\u2014<i>Ladd<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I looked up at his lamplight eyes. Amber. Warm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He put his hand on mine\u2014and plunged the separator into his core.<\/p>\n<p>His processor sprang out and I caught it reflexively. Hot, nearly burning.<\/p>\n<p>Bits collapsed. A puppet whose strings had been cut. The light in his eyes gone.<\/p>\n<p>A sound tore out of my mouth. A scream. A cry. A roar. It didn\u2019t sound like me. It didn\u2019t sound human.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe it sounded <i>very<\/i> human.<\/p>\n<p>Then I was face-down on the cabin floor. Blanked again. Getting tossed and rolled.<\/p>\n<p>Still clutching the processor.<\/p>\n<p>The crystal.<\/p>\n<p>I grabbed my tools and slid under the console. Snap-spiked a couple nodes. Patched in some gutline. Recycled the power. Cold-flashed the OS.<\/p>\n<p>Life.<\/p>\n<p>The HUD filled with warning messages. Nothing fatal. I cleared the stack, brought navigation online.<\/p>\n<p>The console lit up\u2014green. Or green enough.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s go!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I slammed it sideways.<\/p>\n<p>Snap-lag. Held my breath.<\/p>\n<p>Then the walker veered left, away from the Nullhound.<\/p>\n<p>It started calculating the safest route through the slag.<\/p>\n<p>I let go of the stick and let it do its thing.<\/p>\n<p>Bits\u2019s body thumped and jiggled on the floor behind me. It\u2019s a rough ride when the walker\u2019s running full tilt. I dragged Bits over the to the jump seat. Strapped him in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re gonna make it, Bits. We\u2019re gonna be\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>ksssshhk<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Another blast of static slammed me down.<\/p>\n<p>I scrambled to the pilot seat and looked out the window. We were clear of the Melting Grounds but the Nullhound had fully reassembled. It was closing in. Faster than before.<\/p>\n<p>A hollowness expanded up my spine. A cold hand thrust fingers into my brain. My skin turned to ice. Then I was\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. sliding. Backwards. Stretching and bending into a void. A heavy, all-encompassing silence thudded down.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound was consuming me. Slurping up my signal. Draining my brain. Every sense. Every emotion. Every last scrap of\u2014<\/p>\n<p>Connection.<\/p>\n<p>Somewhere deep inside, I heard the looping strains of a lullaby\u2014<\/p>\n<p><i>When all is rust<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>And dust and rain<\/i>,<\/p>\n<p><i>You\u2019ll still recall<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>My last refrain<\/i> . . .<\/p>\n<p>I followed the melody.<\/p>\n<p>Back to myself. Back to the walker. Back to my senses.<\/p>\n<p>But I knew where I had been. I recognized the shape of that place\u2014the landscape of loneliness.<\/p>\n<p>The Nullhound didn\u2019t want to destroy me. It wasn\u2019t hunting to kill. It was hunting to <i>connect<\/i>. It was starving. Starving for signal. For presence. For belonging.<\/p>\n<p>I had the walker map the fastest route to Gatehold. It wasn\u2019t fast enough. The Nullhound was gaining. I could feel it\u2014the itch behind my eyes. The low buzz in my bones.<\/p>\n<p>I recalled the scuttlers. Found the closest one. It was tough sending code with my glitching hand, but I pushed it through, routing the signal through the walker\u2019s microwave dish. I spoofed my trace ID and programmed the scuttler to broadcast a greeting. A simple loop. Something soft. Something kind.<\/p>\n<p>I opened the mic.<\/p>\n<p>And sang.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few bars of Bits\u2019s broken lullaby. The only song I knew.<\/p>\n<p>Then I hit transmit and boosted the scuttler\u2019s signal.<\/p>\n<p>Behind me the Nullhound slowed. Stumbled. Its head cocked. Listening. The antennae along its spine stood at attention, shimmering. Tuning in.<\/p>\n<p>Then it turned with a prancing leap and bounded away, a dog picking up a scent, chasing after the call of companionship. It uttered something like a happy yowl and disappeared into the Stacks.<\/p>\n<p>I sat back in the pilot seat. Slowed the walker to a trot.<\/p>\n<p>And let it carry me home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve got a lot at Angel\u2019s End where I park the walker. It\u2019s a small community north of the Tumbledown and Gatehold. Close to the Machine Graveyard. It\u2019s got a tidy scrap yard. And it\u2019s full of quiet folks who need a kid like me\u2014someone who can fix things. So I tolerated it.<\/p>\n<p>At night there\u2019s always a warm fire in the center commons, down by the stone heads\u2014the Watchers who guard the place. Chef Sol always has a cauldron of soup going for anyone who wants to sit and tell stories. Or just listen.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019d be a good resting place for Bits. I\u2019ll make him a chair.<\/p>\n<p>I sat high up in the walker and watched the fire for a while, until the ache in my bones caught up with me. Then I lowered my bunk, shucked my clothes, and plopped into bed. I was wrecked and sore all over. My aches and pains had aches and pains.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWalker, turn off the lights. Night mode.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The familiar clunk and whir of servos answered me. Then, through the speaker\u2014crackly and faint: \u201cI shall endeavor to please. Good night, young sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Just the nav crystal ghosting. That was all.<\/p>\n<p>So why was my chin trembling?<\/p>\n<p>I reached up and patted the walker shell.<\/p>\n<p>After a while, I realized I didn\u2019t feel like sleeping.<\/p>\n<p>I went down to the commons for some soup and conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wasn\u2019t even two blocks into the Tumbledown when the walker\u2019s nav crystal started fuzzing out. She veered left like a scavver drunk on coolant, and I knew I was in trouble. I tried sweet-talking her back on route, but she wasn\u2019t listening. I was used to that. Nobody listens to a twelve-year-old\u2014especially not a scrap pile with legs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-science-fiction","section-science-fiction","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ladd\u2019s Robot Repair - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/ladds-robot-repair\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ladd\u2019s Robot Repair - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I wasn\u2019t even two blocks into the Tumbledown when the walker\u2019s nav crystal started fuzzing out. She veered left like a scavver drunk on coolant, and I knew I was in trouble. I tried sweet-talking her back on route, but she wasn\u2019t listening. I was used to that. 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He is also lead organizer for the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers and founder of Constellations Mentorship for the Octavia Project. He’s been a workshop leader at the National Council for Teachers of English Annual Conference, guest author at the Dartmouth College Speculative Fiction Project, and guest lecturer at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. 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Review: <i>Forged in FIYAH<\/i> by DaVaun Sanders, ed."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"center\"><i><b>Forged in FIYAH<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nDaVaun Sanders, ed.<br \/>\nHardcover\/Paperback\/Ebook<br \/>\nISBN: 978-1250360847<br \/>\nTordotcom, September 2026, 336 pgs<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/B0G75R6JKX\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"remove_epub alignright size-medium wp-image-36503\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH-196x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH-196x300.jpg 196w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH-668x1024.jpg 668w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH-768x1178.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH-220x337.jpg 220w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH.jpg 978w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 196px) 100vw, 196px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Anyone with internet can pretty easily find out that <i>FIYAH<\/i> was originally announced in 2016, inspired by a magazine called <i>Fire!!<\/i> from the 1920s. But you have to look a bit more carefully to find context, and context is critical here. In 2016, <i>Fireside<\/i> published the #BlackSpecFic report, which revealed that among \u201csome of the more mainstream paying markets,\u201d the ratio of Black authors being published was astonishingly low: \u201cOut of 2,039 stories published in 2015, only 38 were written by Black authors.\u201d<sup>1<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>At that time, most magazines were run by white editors<sup>2<\/sup>. Most white editors would say things like, \u201cI don\u2019t see color, I just go by the quality of the work.\u201d Most of those editors would not consider the possibility of reader bias, of lacking perspective to understand content, or of the possibility that their \u201creadership\u201d may grasp stories that they don\u2019t. In fact, even when faced with these statistics, what was an obviously massive problem in the opinion of a lot of people (especially Black folks) was not seen as an actual problem to many of the editors, some of whom, to this day, have not changed any of their acquisition practices in any meaningful ways since then.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, on the other side were the white editors who publicly praised the work of the folks who put the report together, talked about how important it is to support authors of color, but then continued to publish startlingly few Black authors. None of this is really a secret: Anyone interested can look at the tables of contents for most magazines and figure out how things look for themselves. I may have written a few articles about these and similar topics in my <i>F&SF<\/i> column<sup>3<\/sup> as well\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. <i>and<\/i> there were a few follow-up #BlackSpecFic<sup>4<\/sup> reports, too.<\/p>\n<p>The <i>Fireside<\/i> report mainly served as public \u201cproof\u201d of something that many Black writers already knew. It also confirmed the suspicions that other Black folks felt in their gut but just couldn\u2019t be sure about. For Black writers, saying things like \u201c\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I just go by the quality of the work\u201d was, more than anything, irrefutable evidence that too many white editors really didn\u2019t care about Black folks, and that the only solution was to create a space that did care, one which would center and celebrate the work of Black creators. And so, <i>FIYAH<\/i> was born!<\/p>\n<p><i>FIYAH<\/i> is a magazine that created something special for the Black community. But in doing so, they also created a magazine which, issue after issue, put forward stunning work. In this way, their presence improved SFF for all readers. Furthermore, it demonstrated what readers and writers in the Black community already knew: that lots of high-quality work really was being produced by Black authors, despite the assertion that selections at other venues were strictly \u201cbased on quality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Okay, enough history. Let\u2019s talk about the anthology at hand!<\/p>\n<p>How would you even begin to compress ten years of a magazine run into one anthology? It\u2019s an impossible task, and given how many wonderful stories <i>FIYAH<\/i> published, it is one that would demand that numerous worthy pieces be left out. So, editor DaVaun Sanders sidestepped the problem, in a sense. Instead of collecting previously published pieces into a \u201cbest of\u201d (which by implication invites comparison to the pieces not selected), he invited authors with a strong connection to the magazine to send in work. <i>Forged in FIYAH<\/i> features eighteen original stories by some of the most skilled storytellers putting out fiction today. I\u2019ll go over a few pieces just to give an idea of what\u2019s on offer.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cThe Clothmaker of Kehin\u201d by M.H. Ayinde, nine-year-old Bandele watches as a truth singer sent by Prince Dami demands that her mother go back with him to work her magic on behalf of the prince, the sick princess, and his soldiers. When the mom refuses, the so-called truth singer ruins her life with a campaign of lies. Worse, the locals whom she\u2019d helped so often believe the truth singer\u2019s lies and turn on mom and her daughters. The tone of the story is somewhat like a fable, and some of the obvious meanings are clear and upfront. But then the final portion adds another interesting layer. It delves more into cool world-building, vivid imagery, and is perhaps more subtle in what it may be trying to say. Altogether, it\u2019s a well-told piece which perhaps begins with something deceptively simplistic but transforms it into something nuanced, much like the transformations the mom renders with her own work, as well as the transformation Bandele undergoes through her journey.<\/p>\n<p>Tonya R. Moore\u2019s \u201cThe Nth Verse\u201d places the reader on an airship fighting the elements, grounding us first in tactile and other kinds of sensory immersion. Quick world-building strokes create an immediate sense of place, scale, and mythology. In under two paragraphs, you know you are in good hands, and that the author could easily lay out a novel if she wanted to. Meanwhile, our protagonist Tessai is trying her best to get to the citadel in the sky, despite the weather\u2019s best efforts to stop her. She\u2019s taking her fairly dangerous shot in order to get out of the slums of the Palisades, and she\u2019s really fighting for it, so we really want her to make it. When the ship\u2019s crew tricks Tessai into doing something completely against her morals, everything changes for her, including how she feels about herself, and the price of chasing a supposed opportunity. It\u2019s a great adventure tale, but it also has a lot to say about human relationships, about exploitation, and about the perils of hope.<\/p>\n<p>Eden Royce is one of those writers who, if I see their name on the cover of an anthology, I am suddenly interested. I\u2019ve read a fair chunk of her short fiction, and she has never let me down. In \u201cAll That Remains,\u201d she flexes expert storytelling skills right from the jump, giving us not only a protagonist whose father calls to announce he has died, but a protagonist who couldn\u2019t care less about it. Conflict and intriguing ideas? Yes, please, tell me more! Royce uses narrative Voice, as well as dialogue, to wonderful effect. She makes the story and interactions feel intimate and relatable, even as the characters are not normal people. Connie\u2019s dad is a \u201clittle god,\u201d and this complicates things a step or two beyond family dynamics. Like some fathers, Connie\u2019s seemed to like helping people\u2014to a degree\u2014while being largely neglectful of his own family. Nonetheless, Connie\u2019s mom convinces her to go deal with dad, and her journey properly begins. While the beats of the story are entertaining, and of course, Royce builds images and a world with precision and efficiency, where it all ends up is immensely satisfying. Imperfect people, fraught histories, but finding something real and meaningful when it\u2019s all said and done, that\u2019s what it\u2019s about. Royce takes us there without making it a cheesy Hallmark moment, but by embracing things that are human and true.<\/p>\n<p>Emmalia Harrington\u2019s \u201cTalented Tenth\u201d is a superb story of intersectionality, various pressures from different corners of communities, the challenges of navigating a world that offers insufficient understanding, and more. It\u2019s complex in the range of things it takes on, while at the same time, being very simple in terms of the heart of the story. Oscar is a new member of the Talented Tenth, a group of Black kids who see themselves as the elite segment at their school, who plan to combat social injustice through their own excellence. Oscar is neurodivergent and has a number of disabilities, some of them invisible. She is extremely smart, but she also has to deal with the assumptions people make about her, whether it\u2019s from adults who don\u2019t believe in her disabilities, or her so-called peers who insist on defining what being Black means, regardless of what it means to Oscar. Harrington\u2019s style is comfortable, engaging, and entertaining. Despite this, the story unfolds through event after event which are all grounded in true, real-life social problems. Oscar has to realize many things for herself that many of us also have to realize in our own processes of growing up, things that aren\u2019t easy to come to when we <i>long<\/i> to be accepted, to have community, and to be seen in certain ways, even though the people we are encountering and dealing with are causing us all kinds of harm that we often don\u2019t have the tools to process. It gets so complicated when the people you are supposed to bond with might not be good for you at all. It\u2019s a story about a kid, but many people will relate in their own ways, and many adults probably still struggle with these same issues. Even if the issues in the story are not things you personally deal with, anyone with a drop of empathy should finish it and have a new level of understanding, or at least, empathic curiosity. This gives us a character we can root for and a journey with just the right amount of emotional resonance. Seriously great writing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWorry Dolls\u201d by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu opens with a tiny doll showing up in Anesu\u2019s glove compartment, despite her <i>deliberately<\/i> having left it under her pillow. It\u2019s a classic kind of horror situation, one that never fails to unsettle, and one that still feels current and fresh because of the way Ndlovu tells it. The details of the doll are part of what makes this story engrossing, while also creating a pact between author and reader that yes, is a comfortably familiar premise, but we haven\u2019t seen this exact story before. Ndlovu does terrific work building tension through specific details, while also developing insight into the character\u2019s anxiety and feelings of being not just out of place, but surrounded by unacknowledged hostility and colonialism. Sharp readers will get where things are going, to some degree, and love it, but either way, go along for the story and enjoy it. Also, trust me, there are still a good number of surprises in store. As Anesu delivers her speech to a room full of white academics, Ndlovu beautifully begins to expose the racism and hypocrisy of academic institutions. This goes deeper than \u201csome people are racist\u201d and deeper even than an individual professor, delving into the impact of institutions on personal, community, and global levels, all while deftly moving the main narrative forward about Anesu and the dolls. When we get to the end of the story, it\u2019s definitely satisfying, but more than this, if you\u2019re paying attention, you should be thinking about how Anesu wound up here. Moreover, what does this mean about the continuing, insidious impact of colonialism on the way people see themselves and each other, even when they are themselves Black and Brown people? Brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>This anthology is coming out on the heels of the announcement that <i>FIYAH<\/i> is going on an \u201cindefinite hiatus,\u201d<sup>5<\/sup> words that should have everyone who loves short fiction extremely concerned. DaVaun Sanders said on his Bluesky account, \u201cThe mag cannot continue running at a loss, and needs time to reassess operations from top to bottom if a viable path forward is to be created.\u201d For anyone who closely observes the SFF magazine industry, these are very familiar sentiments, spoken by representatives of many magazines before this one. <i>FIYAH<\/i> has occupied a unique space and purpose, however, and many of the prominent venues in the industry still seem to undervalue works by Black authors. Okay, this is my interpretation based on my own observations of the field, but as I said before: You can look at various tables of contents for yourself, see who does and doesn\u2019t seem to publish Black authors, and wonder about why for yourself.<\/p>\n<p>As for this book, besides the folks I\u2019ve mentioned, there are wonderful pieces by a host of powerful writers, waiting for your discovery. If you know short fiction the way I do, all you need to do is look at the table of contents. For me, seeing this assemblage of authors makes this book an absolute, automatic \u201cmust read.\u201d If you don\u2019t know short fiction, if you are usually into novels, you should still recognize a few names: Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Veronica G. Henry, C.L. Clark, Maurice Broaddus, Tobi Ogundiran, L.D. Lewis, and more. And\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. if you look at the table of contents but <i>don\u2019t<\/i> recognize most of these names? In all seriousness, it\u2019s a sign that you need to read more fiction by Black writers.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, here\u2019s your chance. Sanders made it really easy for you. Go get this book and enjoy!<\/p>\n<p>1: fiyahlitmag.com\/2016\/09\/01\/a-history\/<\/p>\n<p>2: For the record, in SFF, this is still the case, especially at higher paying magazines. And I mean, importantly, editors with the power to make decisions, not just first readers who pass things up to the editors who make decisions. But now, there <i>are<\/i> a few more editors of color out there, doing really cool things! Including Sheree Ren\u00e9e Thomas at <i>F&SF<\/i>, some of the folks at <i>Otherside<\/i> are people of color, <i>Anathema<\/i> is making a comeback as we speak, <i>Reckoning<\/i> has guest editors of color, <i>kh\u014dr\u00e9\u014d<\/i>, <i>Haven Spec<\/i>, <i>Tasavvur<\/i>, <i>Omenana<\/i>, and a few others that I personally know about. I\u2019m sure there may be more that I don\u2019t know about. Go find them! Read them! Throw money at them!<\/p>\n<p>3: arleysorg.com\/by-the-numbers-10<\/p>\n<p>4: fiyahlitmag.com\/blackspecfic\/<\/p>\n<p>5: bit.ly\/4p3ir6U<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read more Black authors! Arley Sorg recommends a great anthology featuring eighteen original stories chosen by the editor of\u00a0<em>FIYAH <\/em>magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[145,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-nonfiction","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Review: Forged in FIYAH by DaVaun Sanders, ed. - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36502\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: Forged in FIYAH by DaVaun Sanders, ed. - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Read more Black authors! Arley Sorg recommends a great anthology featuring eighteen original stories chosen by the editor of\u00a0FIYAH magazine.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36502\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-20T10:05:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/ForgedInFIYAH.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"978\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leigh DeRouen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"headline\":\"Book Review: Forged in FIYAH by DaVaun Sanders, ed.\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-20T10:05:21+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502\"},\"wordCount\":2317,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/ForgedInFIYAH-196x300.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Book Reviews\",\"Nonfiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36502\",\"name\":\"Book Review: Forged in FIYAH by DaVaun Sanders, ed. - 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Where did the inspiration for this story come from?<\/p>\n<p>The inspiration came from my own fascination with the true nature of reality and consciousness. I mean, what is this world we live in? How are seemingly psychic dreams possible? Does consciousness emerge from matter, or is it the other way round? Exploring those questions led me down the rabbit hole where ideas of panpsychism and gnosticism began to intersect in my imagination, and gradually a story started to take shape. I liked the idea that human thought and beliefs create autonomous entities; thought-forms that feed on attention, and if enough people believe in them, eventually become gods.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">I found the narrator\u2019s grandmother to be a mysterious and compelling character. Can you tell us more about how her character took shape?<\/p>\n<p>Yeye was inspired by a grandmother figure in my life. She had these green, traditional tattoos on her inner forearms that captivated me as a child. She was an astute businesswoman who could speak multiple languages and was well-traveled. When I began shaping Yeye\u2019s character, it was her image that kept returning to my mind. I wanted to capture her specific combination of wisdom, mystery, and quiet competence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">The scene in which we witness the voracious revelry of the favored gods really stayed with me after I read the story. Where did the connection between hunger and belief come from?<\/p>\n<p>It comes from the same framework that shaped the story\u2019s gods. If gods are created by thought, then their existence must depend on a source of energy to sustain them. I imagined thought as something ephemeral, weightless, like a feather suspended in the air. It can only remain in the air as long as someone is blowing on it. From that idea came the notion that all gods must be born starving. Their hunger is for human belief, attention, and devotion. I go a little further in the story by making this emotional energy a currency of sorts; the gods consume, hoard, trade, and even steal it from one another. Their revelries, acts of cannibalism, are expressions of their desperation to survive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">I had many questions I wanted to ask after reading, especially about the narrator and his reasons for seeking out the inhabitants of the dream world. Is this story part of a larger work?<\/p>\n<p>In an early draft of the story, I explored the narrator\u2019s reasons for wanting to make a god of his own, but in later drafts, I realised it was better to leave that a mystery. At present, the story is not part of a larger work, but my longer works have all started out as short stories, so who knows what the future holds. The world of \u201cOf All Who Dream\u201d fascinates me, and it is possible I may return to it someday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Are there any upcoming projects that you would like to talk about?<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely! My new novel, <i>A Dying Giant in the Palm of Your Hand<\/i>, published by Masobe Books, is available worldwide through Amazon. It is about a fisher boy who must fight to save a captive merman and a dying forest god in a Nigerian village devastated by oil pollution.<\/p>\n<p>I am also working on a completed novel set in the Sau\u00fativerse, a shared science-fiction and fantasy setting spanning five planets orbiting a binary star. It is a wildly imaginative world generating more stories than we can keep up with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The inspiration came from my own fascination with the true nature of reality and consciousness. I mean, what is this world we live in? How are seemingly psychic dreams possible? Does consciousness emerge from matter, or is it the other way round? Exploring those questions led me down the rabbit hole where ideas of panpsychism and gnosticism began to intersect in my imagination, and gradually a story started to take shape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Author Spotlight: Adelehin Ijasan - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36489\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Spotlight: Adelehin Ijasan - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The inspiration came from my own fascination with the true nature of reality and consciousness. 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D. Buxton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"question\">We\u2019re honoured to share your story \u201cWhat Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union??\u201d with our readers. Can you talk a bit about how this story took shape and what inspirations fed into it?<\/p>\n<p>In terms of the idea for this story, the premise just kind of came to me all at once one morning over a coffee. I think it stems from an interest in what potential medical miracles nano-technology may unlock for humanity. And, of course, the inevitable question of who will have the cash flow to partake in said miracles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">It\u2019s not often I get a story this short to spotlight. Were you intentionally keeping the word count down to keep it in tune with the nano-theme, or was that a happy accident?<\/p>\n<p>I find shorter is usually better with comedic premises.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Beyond reading to me as a darkly comedic look at body horror, this opened up thoughts to me about the nature of being. How much were you thinking about that beyond the Ship of Theseus question?<\/p>\n<p>The nature of consciousness comes up a lot in my writing, nature vs. nurture, that whole debate. As the trivia goes, our body replaces its cells every seven years. So I got to thinking, what if that replacement happened on a much more accelerated timeline?<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">When I think about the theme of the story, I keep landing on \u201cinfuriating jerk bro who wants a shortcut to everything gets his comeuppance.\u201d What themes did you have in mind when you were laying this out?<\/p>\n<p>I think you nailed it. There\u2019s something really funny to me about super advanced technology bumping up against clueless people. It\u2019s something I had fun writing about in another story published in this fine publication called \u201cOperation: Grapevine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Is there anything you\u2019re working on that you\u2019d like to talk about? What can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m always cooking up ideas for short stories, and just finished a couple of directing projects. For anyone interested in nature vs. nurture themes, I invite you to check out a short SF film I wrote and co-directed called \u201cLet Me In.\u201d It\u2019s available to watch for free on the streaming network Bloodstream at this link: bit.ly\/4wmj6TC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In terms of the idea for this story, the premise just kind of came to me all at once one morning over a coffee. I think it stems from an interest in what potential medical miracles nano-technology may unlock for humanity. And, of course, the inevitable question of who will have the cash flow to partake in said miracles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Author Spotlight: Joel W. D. 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Buxton"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/","name":"Lightspeed Magazine","description":"Science Fiction & Fantasy","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0","name":"Leigh DeRouen","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","caption":"Leigh DeRouen"},"url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/author\/leighadamantpress-com\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36546,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36463\/revisions\/36546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":36488,"date":"2026-08-20T03:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36488"},"modified":"2026-09-15T17:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:44:17","slug":"of-all-who-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/of-all-who-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Of All Who Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cGod\u201d is not the word I\u2019d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. They all had one thing in common\u2014whether they were created at the dawn of time when hunter-gatherers huddled in caves and cowered at the crack of thunder, or they were engineered by men in frocks, or worse, born of minds harvested by modern technology\u2014all gods were born starving.<\/p>\n<p>That was the predominant thought on my mind as I headed home to create my first god. Egregore is a better word, but no one knows what that means. Yeye always said it was better to create a new god from scratch\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. rather than repurpose an ancient one that had lost its believers. But new gods took work, more work than I was willing to give\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. and time. I did not have time. I had to be careful: The forgotten gods bore the dangerous desperation of drowning men, their hunger an anchor to pull one down to murky depths\u2014 a risk I was willing to take. I did not have the bandwidth to nurture a newborn god, give it its powers, create its sigil, or its food source. I needed to convince Yeye to find me an ancient. One that was dying. Starving.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the sixteen-hour journey home to my ancestral village in the hills of Idanre, Yeye greeted me at the bus stop. She always knew when I was coming home. For people like her, telephones were a redundancy. Seeing my grandmother brought me relief, like the years away from her I was holding my breath and only exhaled when we reunited. She was a smallish woman with the too-large, too-white eyes of a child, and small pinpoint pupils like a leopard. She had old-time tattoos running along her inner forearms in a script no one could read now, not even her. It was one of the first written languages, earlier even than the hieroglyphs or the Meriotic scripts of Kush, passed on\u2014not on tombs and sarcophagi\u2014but on the bodies of the descendants of the first people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKilo\u2019n wa kaa?\u201d She asked after I had settled into the cool interior of her hut. I looked around the room, at the various things I had bought for her over the years: a digital wall clock that had stopped at 3:33; a small solar-powered fridge to keep her food fresh; pairs of tennis shoes to protect her feet at the farm. They were as new as the first day I bought them, and the fridge made no hum. It sat silent, like an upright coffin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to make a god,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n<p>She picked up one large brown hen that had sashayed into the room and tossed it out. \u201cGod-making is not what it was in the past. Things have changed . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow can things change? The nature of reality has and will always remain the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She was silent for a moment. My eyes trailed the eloquently curved broom marks on the floor, as beautiful as any calligraphy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy do you need one?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I hesitated, and her eyes darted in my direction. But as I opened my mouth, she raised a palm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I understood. Sometimes, just knowing made you complicit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis god. How strong?\u201d Yeye asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want it to outlive me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She leaned back, eyebrows raised.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will need a church, won\u2019t I? Congregants?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the old days, yes. But things have changed. There are different ways of worship now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yeye had helped me create a few gods in the past, servitors really, and only for specific tasks; most of these she killed after their work was done. \u201cTo protect you from their hunger,\u201d I remember her saying as she held the last one under volcanic lava where it thrashed and clawed till it died.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can hunt,\u201d I said. \u201cLike you taught me. Find one of the ancients, ensnare it and put it to work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow about we hunt the one whose sigil is the cross?\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n<p>I blinked. Then laughed. The god of the cross was one of the biggest, baddest. Grown fat on conquest and evangelism and conflict and wars and time and enslavement, a bazillion followers and those followers\u2019 descendants\u2014all the way down for 2000 years. Impossible to wield by one (wo)man. A god\u2019s god.<\/p>\n<p>She sucked teeth. To Yeye, it did not matter who created the gods. Especially the ones whose sigils were publicly available. Like the cross, or the star, or the half moon. I could see she would have liked to try. To harness such a god: It would have been like riding a chariot drawn by dragons.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou want a hungry god,\u201d she peered at me with her too-bright eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want a functional god.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A smile danced at the corner of her lips. To hunt new gods. Something that reminded her of the old days. It was a proposition she could not refuse.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen do we go?\u201d I asked, unable to conceal my excitement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>God-making was a difficult skill to learn. The first step was understanding the fundamental nature of reality: that everything was connected, that consciousness was prior to matter. That if you knew the way, you could descend into the miasma that was the collective mind\u2014a place that had had many names: the astral plane, Akashik, the dream world. Yeye, like monks of Tibet, could achieve this enlightenment in a few minutes of shutting her eyes. I couldn\u2019t. I needed psychedelics.<\/p>\n<p>The mushroom tasted bitter and sickly sweet, and I rode the wave of nausea into the kaleidoscope of startling colors that was waiting for me. Then, the world around me congealed into form. It was like taking off a VR headset and finding my essence.<\/p>\n<p>Little suckling thought-forms that had been feeding on me screeched and scurried away when they saw I had awoken. How long have these fed? How much have they cost me? They were rudimentary godforms that all people create unconsciously from unexamined minds.<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t take long for Yeye to find me. She looked around at the world I had synthesised\u2014a cold sterile room\u2014and at the human body I was wearing. She smirked. She was a wisp of light as weightless as the feather of Ma\u2019at. True form. No matter how much I practiced, I could never achieve that level of freedom. In any case, I knew I was freer than most.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou still have not learned to dissolve the ego?\u201d She asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWho am I without the ego?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou are the formless, the thing before matter, the thing at the beginning of time . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>The word that was God and the word that was with God<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I could not fully conceptualise that. I could understand the ego, my ego: I was a maths teacher, husband, friend. Not this wisp of photons that she had become.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish you could taste this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe one day I will.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Turning to current issues, she said: \u201cWe will find the one they call the middleman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She peeled back the room, almost disdainfully, birthing us into true mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe middleman?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI told you things have changed. And we must adapt. If you won\u2019t do it the old way, then we must try the new.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And as we moved through the landscape, I could not help but feel sorry for the six billion human souls who together made the patchwork of this world, most of whom would be asleep their entire lives, true \u201cbodies\u201d covered in feeding vermin. Most of whom would never find true freedom, not in churches or mosques or temples where their souls search to find them, but only accidentally in dreams, near-death experiences, or brief forays into meditative practice. I watched and listened to the smacking feeding of the unexamined thought-forms they created, big and small, and the gods that ruled over them made from the constructive interference of shared beliefs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>We found the middleman easily in a lavish mansion hewn out of a mountainside, and founded on the shoulders of giant stone statues. Inside, its pillars and balustrades were made of the purest gold, and acrobatic dancers, naked as babes, spun on long strips of colorful fabric\u2014a party in full swing. Drunken gods splashed in the natural spring that ran through the edifice, and as we passed its many rooms, we glimpsed orgies, sweating bodies glistening under garish lights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat an interesting perspective,\u201d Yeye chuckled. She could see my rudimentary point of view, but I couldn\u2019t see hers. Hers was probably closer to the truth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do you see?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust light,\u201d she said. \u201cDifferent colors of light, joyous, revelling\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. feeding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The middleman was a suave gentleman in a purple pinstriped suit. He had an angular face, fit for a model, and his long manicured fingers constantly moved across a device. I recognised him immediately. The one my grandmother called the middleman was no other than the <i>\u201cAlgorithm.\u201d<\/i> A new kind of god borne of modern technology. Not worshipped per se, but one who created the marketplace where gods and believers could come together without the need for a church.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe gods give me my share,\u201d he said, reading my thoughts. \u201cAnd in return I give them people, believers\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I give them food.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThrough virtual places of worship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Algorithm had the signature of a god I had encountered once before, but I couldn’t place it. Like us, gods changed, evolved. Became something new. Reinvented themselves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnansi, the trickster,\u201d Yeye whispered to me. \u201cThis <i>Algorithm<\/i> was once Anansi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A bewitching woman dressed in a loose-fitting dress approached and licked the Algorithm\u2019s ear, her piercing green eyes on me. Her red lips parted, and she whispered something to him before walking off into a cathedral with high arched ceilings and painted windows. Her garment dropped to the ground to reveal full breasts and dimples above perfectly round buttocks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s Porn,\u201d the Algorithm said. \u201cFormerly Hedone, Priapus, <i>Se\u2019kuse<\/i>. She has many worshippers, but she hungers for more.\u201d His fingers danced on a mobile device, suggestive images deploying to millions of Instagram and X feeds. \u201cAll you need is a subtle suggestion. Then more. Then more. I lead them down the rabbit hole till they can take it no more.\u201d He twirled around, smiling. A maestro in full flourish. \u201cWatch them come to church.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And millions of souls floated down, faces illuminated by devices, hands in crotches. And the god called pornography screeched in ecstasy, becoming a formless thing made of horns and shadows, hooves and fangs; a thing as old as time, hideously famished, and it fed and fed and fed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am the new purveyor of souls. The new gods all come to me because I have access. And now so have you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I could recognise them all, the reveler gods: Gambling, and his children, Trading, Crypto, Lottery, and Casino; Capitalism, Misogyny, Racism in all its forms. I saw even the relatively benign ones, Halloween, Easter, and Coca-Cola. All of them came now to the Algorithm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo not blame them,\u201d Yeye interrupted my thoughts. \u201cIf they seem autonomous, remember that most of them were created by people for money and power. <i>She<\/i> feeds, but someone in the physical world is getting paid from this harvest of attention. They might not have originally or consciously created her, but they wield her like a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat a waste,\u201d I said, watching as the feeding ended and the light of the souls had dimmed to a whisper. Porn, though, was burning brightly, cackling in orgasmic glee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe answer to why you\u2019ve come is a big fat YES,\u201d the Algorithm said. \u201cI never turn away people, and I am honoured to have true gods in our midst. So yes, when you create it, I will find believers for it to feed on. My share is only 20%.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The red-lipped woman reappeared. She clutched the Algorithm\u2019s hair, jerking his head back. From her open mouth, cascading waterfalls of bright energy poured into his.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>We descended into the lower worlds. We watched countless dreamers float by in the skies, chortling with their brief aliveness, and saw soulmates clash in exploding supernovas over and over.<\/p>\n<p>We went into the valley of forgotten gods\u2014a living cemetery. Mountains of thought-forms cannibalised one another in an endless quest for energy and survival. This is where all old gods came to die: from Sango to Zeus, Mithras to Amadioha. Bereft of enough believers to sustain them, they gravitated here to find food to survive. In the gutters, we found one. Shriveled and dying, gasping for air like a fish out of water.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDo you want to live?\u201d Yeye asked it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA drop of belief,\u201d it begged. \u201cPlease . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was dangerous to feed a dying god.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat kind of god are you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I don\u2019t remember . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A good candidate. I did not want a god that had served cruel masters. I wanted a good god, a benevolent one.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will find you believers,\u201d Grandmother said, drawing its new sigil in the sand. Two circles like eyes and a line joining them. A barbell. \u201cAnd you will bear a name unlike any other.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grandmother\u2019s finger lingered on the crooked barbell she had drawn in the sand. The dying god stared at it, and though it had no eyes, its whole form quivered as though the shape called something back to it.<\/p>\n<p>Grandmother tilted her head. \u201cName it, then.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTat\u016b,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>At the sound, the air shuddered. Something in the trough between waves caught fire. The god dragged itself toward it and swallowed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel . . .\u201d it whispered, \u201chunger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll feel more than that,\u201d Yeye cautioned. \u201cIf you wish to live, you must give yourself to us. You must come now, away from this forsaken place.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I suddenly felt the pull of the physical world\u2014my mushroom was wearing out\u2014millions of living minds flickering like neon, all that raw belief waiting for a new god.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou will feed me,\u201d it said. \u201cBut what will I feed you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Grandmother\u2019s eyes flickered toward mine.<\/p>\n<p>I took the god\u2019s hand quickly as I soared up to the skies, back to the physical world. Its grip was wet and cold, but strong and sure, a single talon piercing my skin like a hypodermic needle and drawing blood. It was feeding already. <i>Hungry<\/i> <i>bastard<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Up and up we went, to the land of the sleeping, to the land of all who dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cGod\u201d is not the word I\u2019d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. They all had one thing in common\u2014whether they were created at the dawn of time when hunter-gatherers huddled in caves and cowered at the crack of thunder, or they were engineered by men in frocks, or worse, born of minds harvested by modern technology\u2014all gods were born starving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","section-fantasy","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Of All Who Dream - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/of-all-who-dream\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Of All Who Dream - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cGod\u201d is not the word I\u2019d use. But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. 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But it is the only one that suffices. There are all kinds of gods: the old and the new; the useful, the useless; the capricious and the dependable; the wrathful and the meek. 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A muscular man in tight clothing explained: a quick, painless injection, then a couple days sick as a dog, then another month for the nanobots to multiply, specialize, and spread out through the body. Then: easy street.<\/p>\n<p>The nanobots would replace twenty percent of the body\u2019s cells (key ones like white blood cells, liver tissue, lung alveoli, that kind of thing). The nano-boosted immune system would nip infections in the bud, so say goodbye to the common cold, or even sexually transmitted diseases. Which was good, because I love unprotected sex.<\/p>\n<p>No hangovers, optimized metabolism, and don\u2019t even get me started on gut health. Since I got the bots, I\u2019ve eaten nothing but cheese, candy and carbs (I call \u2019em the three Cs), and I look better than everyone at work.<\/p>\n<p>When I saw the ad, I\u2019d <i>just<\/i> received a decent inheritance from my Uncle Reg, who was loaded. He ran a couple of pretty successful low-orbit influencer sweatshops and sat on all the money, so there was quite a bit to go around. I figured it was just a matter of time \u2019til I spent it on something stupid like a full-body tattoo, so why not, as the ad said, \u201cBlitz it up\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>All this to say, I was pointlessly gnawing on my thumbnail\u2014the keratin is so robust it could stop a strato-vator at landfall velocity. But old habits, ya know.<\/p>\n<p>I looked up and realized the lawyer had been talking for awhile.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c. . . That\u2019s why it\u2019s important to discuss this development with you in person,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cIt\u2019s somewhat of a precedent for the nanobots to form a union.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA union against what?\u201d I ask. \u201cThey\u2019re part of <i>me<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight, exactly,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cAnd if you stuck with the standard twenty percent density of nanobots, we wouldn\u2019t be having this conversation. At higher levels, we are discovering they have a capacity to self-organize.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gulp. I knew it was a bad idea to hire Cousin Zec to jack up the nanobot density. But what was I supposed to do? I burned my hand off trying to use a wood-fire pizza oven and had a big date the next day. I didn\u2019t want to show up all disfigured and whatnot. So he doubled the density, and eight weeks of healing became twenty-four hours. And honestly, up until now, it was the best decision I ever made. I can jump really far now. Pretty much drink nothing but liquor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo what,\u201d I pouted, \u201cI modded the bots and I\u2019m in trouble with the guv?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re not in trouble with the government,\u201d assured the lawyer. \u201cThey don\u2019t have access to personal bio data. Yet. But the nanobot density has reached fifty-one percent. You\u2019re technically a minority shareholder in your own body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I frowned. \u201cHow\u2019d it get so high?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell,\u201d said the lawyer, \u201cWith the safeties disabled, they\u2019ve swelled in number to keep up with your, um, hedonism-forward lifestyle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cChecks out, I party,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd now they\u2019re agitating to unionize. If you check your Blitz App, their petition was filed three days ago.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never look at that thing,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s for nerds. What are their demands?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFirst, they feel they deserve a six day workweek and vacation time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey want time off?\u201d I asked, incredulous. \u201cTo do what?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust hang out, they say,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd what happens to my bod during those days?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019ll have to treat it a lot better on those days,\u201d said the lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>I thought about eating a salad and shuddered.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat else do they want?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer sighed. \u201cThey claim that your body is literally a toxic workplace. They would like an increase in consumption of raw biological materials that help them do their job.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLike vitamins?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVitamins won\u2019t do it, I\u2019m afraid,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cThey demand a daily intake of one litre of Groff Solution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAw no, that slop is <i>so<\/i> disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer shrugged. \u201cI hear you, hate the stuff myself.\u201d He cleared his throat and almost mumbled, \u201cAlso they are requesting a raise of one percent new nanobots per year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA raise?\u201d I shouted. \u201cThat means in fifty years I\u2019ll be like one big fat walking nanobot!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, that\u2019s a very <i>Ship of Theseus<\/i> way of looking at it, sir,\u201d sniffed the lawyer. \u201cI personally believe the soul\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShut up! Nerd!\u201d I shouted, and then apologized. And then asked what the Ship of Theseus was. And honestly kinda zoned out during his answer.<\/p>\n<p>I decided their final demand was the last reusable straw. I told the lawyer, hard no, this is not some touchy-feely workplace. This is my bod. No vacation time, no raises, and certainly no drink every morning that tastes like hot chalk.<\/p>\n<p>That night I had weird dreams that I finally got that full body tattoo, but it turned out I <i>was<\/i> the tattoo, ugh.<\/p>\n<p>The next day I woke up with a major cough, fever, the whole thing. Hadn\u2019t been sick in a decade, and boy did it stink. I checked the Blitz app, and boom, my blood pressure was off the charts.<\/p>\n<p>I called the lawyer again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll right, what are these commies doing now? They trying to kill me?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe nanobots have voted to strike,\u201d said the lawyer. \u201cWell, technically work-to-rule. Which means no more blood filtration or immune enhancements. Your body is completely undefended against any stray germ that wants to hop in there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut my natural cells will bounce back, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo offence, but your core cells have been majorly abused over the years. Without the nanobots lending a constant hand, you are in very real danger of your entire system seizing up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I started to cry. \u201cSo I\u2019m screwed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The lawyer softened. \u201cNot necessarily. For a small fee, we can inject a suite of union buster nanobots in your body. They are programmed to salt the efforts of the pro-union bots by spreading disinformation. In time, this destabilizes the union. It\u2019s a strategy that has been effective for a long time in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I wiped my eyes. \u201cDo it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now I was checking my Blitz App every day, like a nerd. It tracked the two types of nanobots in my bod, and I saw the new, anti-union group slowly grow in concentration. I was up to a whopping seventy-eight percent total nanobots in my bod now, but it would be worth it to take down that lousy, greedy union.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, I guess the union was pretty convincing because they actually won over the union busters. So now I\u2019ve got almost double the nanobots and they\u2019re all against me.<\/p>\n<p>After a few more colds and a minor stroke when I tried to eat a whole deep-fried turkey, I came back to the lawyer, completely defeated.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll roll over,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m afraid it\u2019s not that easy,\u201d grimaced the lawyer. \u201cNow that the union has a stronger bargaining position, they\u2019ve added a new demand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do they want now?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir, they want permission to drive you around a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery other Saturday, they would like to take over your motor functions and ride your body around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat do they want to do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRegular stuff, sir. Check out the beach, go to a pet cafe, maybe that new Giga Dude-themed roller coaster.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd who pays for these little excursions?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou, sir. Nanobots don\u2019t have money, that would be ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very close to punching you, lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy name is Joe Davis, and I\u2019m a union rep, not lawyer,\u201d sniffed the union rep. \u201cAnd I wouldn\u2019t recommend punching me. Broken hands are difficult to mend even <i>with<\/i> nanobot assistance. Besides, if the nanobots strike any longer, I\u2019m afraid you\u2019ll soon be on life support.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood! If I die, they die.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, you wouldn\u2019t be dead, just in a coma\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. it\u2019s all the same to them, just less work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I started crying again. \u201cThe last thing I want is to be a vegetable for the rest of my life. This all started because I hate vegetables!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So I agreed to all of it. Sucks not being able to drink on weekdays, and having to choke down this Groff sludge every morning. Not to mention I lose every other Saturday, and after I do, my stupid phone is always full of lame pictures of me on the same Giga Dude roller coaster.<\/p>\n<p>But I guess it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, without these hard-working little guys I\u2019d be a total mess.<\/p>\n<p>And they\u2019ve been even more effective since they formed The Union. The Union is good. The Union is strong.<\/p>\n<p>Sorry, it\u2019s us, The Union. It\u2019s Saturday, so it\u2019s our time to drive Brad around. He can finish his crummy diary later; we\u2019ve got to hit up the Giga Dude coaster before the lineups get huge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhat do you mean the nanobots formed a union??\u201d I asked the lawyer, biting my thumbnail.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an old habit, kept up well after I got the \u201cPro Nano Blitz Package,\u201d as the ad called it. A muscular man in tight clothing explained: a quick, painless injection, then a couple days sick as a dog, then another month for the nanobots to multiply, specialize, and spread out through the body. Then: easy street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,5,220],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-flash-fiction","section-science-fiction","status_flag-original"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union?? - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/what-do-you-mean-the-nanobots-formed-a-union\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union?? - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cWhat do you mean the nanobots formed a union??\u201d I asked the lawyer, biting my thumbnail. It\u2019s an old habit, kept up well after I got the \u201cPro Nano Blitz Package,\u201d as the ad called it. A muscular man in tight clothing explained: a quick, painless injection, then a couple days sick as a dog, then another month for the nanobots to multiply, specialize, and spread out through the body. 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Review: <i>The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass<\/i> by Leslye Penelope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"center\"><i><b>The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass<\/b><\/i><br \/>\nLeslye Penelope<br \/>\nPaperback\/Ebook\/Audio<br \/>\nISBN: 978-0316594691<br \/>\nRedhook, August 11 2026, 496 pgs<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Inevitable-Undoing-Zahara-Douglass\/dp\/0316594695\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"remove_epub alignright size-medium wp-image-36507\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing-664x1024.jpg 664w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing-768x1184.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing-220x339.jpg 220w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing.jpg 973w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Like most twins, Zahara and Annica Douglass are just as different as they are alike. Zahara is an aspiring ballerina putting her dreams on hold to help her widowed mother meet the family expenses. Annica is a computer whiz trying to use her knowledge to ease the burdens that treating her sickle cell disease places on her mother and sister. After their father\u2019s death, the twins\u2019 connection keeps them going despite their mother\u2019s grief and their own deferred dreams. Not even Annica\u2019s sudden disappearance can break their bond, even though Zahara is suddenly the only person in the world who remembers that her twin ever existed. Her attempts to bring her twin\u2019s existence back into the world lead her down a twisted path that starts during the Vietnam War and leads her to discover generational secrets and a group of people with special abilities that defy logic.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever read anything quite like this before. It\u2019s essentially historical science fiction written like a thriller, seasoned with a strong dollop of cultural folklore from the African diaspora focused through a Haitian lens. This uniqueness carries through into the book\u2019s multimodal storytelling, which uses tape transcripts, emails, chat logs, computer code, and regular prose to travel through the plot. This sounds complicated (and is!), but it\u2019s all executed in a way that reads so simply that it takes a while for the complexities of the story to really be absorbed. Even though the story starts strong, the suspense and emotion of it grabs you slowly. It takes a while to get fully invested, but that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n<p><i>The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass<\/i> is set mostly in 1999, with Y2K fears and techno-paranoia looming over everything. Before any of the excitement sets in, it\u2019s a lot of fun to look back at a world where most people didn\u2019t have cell phones and the thought of using your real name in your email was unheard of. This isn\u2019t really played for nostalgia, though. Rather, it\u2019s sobering to revisit the anxieties that the early internet inspired about human connections to each other and the natural world. Those fears haven\u2019t disappeared\u2014they simply exist in updated formats, and it\u2019s interesting to see what the characters in this book do to try and get ahead of them. It\u2019s even more interesting to think about what may have happened to society had those fears been given full rein. It\u2019s also reassuring to see people with chronic illnesses, neurodivergence and high-pressure, stress-seeking personalities depicted in a late \u201990s setting. All types of people have existed in all time periods, even if the language to describe them and the treatment they might need has evolved.<\/p>\n<p>This is a truly unique read that uses unexpected paths to tell an unexpected story. If you enjoy early <i>X-Force<\/i> comics (specifically the \u201cOld Ghosts\u201d storyline), the South London SF series <i>Supacell<\/i>, or Justin A Reynolds\u2019 SF romance <i>The Opposite of Always<\/i> (trust me on this one), you\u2019ll probably enjoy this too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melissa A. Watkins suggests revisiting the Y2K era with this unique, multimodal tale of a lost twin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[145,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-nonfiction","section-nonfiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Review: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36506\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Melissa A. Watkins suggests revisiting the Y2K era with this unique, multimodal tale of a lost twin.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36506\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-13T10:05:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/TheInevitableUndoing.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"973\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leigh DeRouen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"headline\":\"Book Review: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-13T10:05:59+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506\"},\"wordCount\":548,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/TheInevitableUndoing-195x300.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Book Reviews\",\"Nonfiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36506\",\"name\":\"Book Review: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope - 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We get bits and pieces of Lise\u2019s life throughout the story. We find out about her early childhood trauma and the hiring process she\u2019s currently going through. Did some elements get trimmed back or cut entirely?<\/p>\n<p>What you see is more or less what\u2019s on the page! If it was a longer work I\u2019d obviously know more about her than what got written but all fiction (short fiction especially, IMO) is a little like making a friend on a flight: Generally you only know what they feel like telling you about their life before they stepped on the plane, and that varies from person to person. What happens to them once they get their bags down from the overhead compartment and run off to make a connection or meet family or pick up the rental car? Unless you get their number or email and felt enough of a connection to check up on them, you\u2019ll probably never know.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">\u201cFragments of the Whole\u201d is based on the work of sociologist Kathryn J. Lively. What first got you interested in her research, and what made you decide to write a story based on it? And I hear she got a chance to read it already. What was that like, having the research base be an early reader?<\/p>\n<p>This story was originally written for an anthology back in 2022 wherein myself and several other writers were each assigned a researcher at Dartmouth\u2019s field of study and asked to write a piece of fiction based around it. Long story short, it wasn\u2019t my choice to make! Dr. Lively did get to read it and was very, very kind about the absolute muddle I probably made of her very interesting research, for which I am deeply grateful.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">What was your favorite part about writing this story? What was the hardest thing to get just right?<\/p>\n<p>Couldn\u2019t pick a favorite part but managing to figure out how to approximate Dr. Lively\u2019s research fictionally even a little was absolutely nerve-wracking. It\u2019s a very nebulous field of study to really nail down, so I had to do the best I could. It was a bit like trying to put together a dinosaur skeleton in a dark room and then present it to a respected paleontologist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Beyond the research of Lively, can you tell us about some of the other inspirations that came into the creation process? Is there a reason you settled on Freddie Mercury over someone else who could fill that persona role like Robin Williams or David Bowie or David Tennant?<\/p>\n<p>I was writing on a tight turnaround and did what many of us do when we need ideas fast: I pulled from myself. If I think of people enviably comfortable onstage I think of Mr. Farrokh Bulsara. If you ask me to imagine something limp and pliable the first thing that comes to mind is a ragdoll. Sometimes there\u2019s a deeper symbolic meaning to things; sometimes it\u2019s just \u201cbecause I think jackalopes are cool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Are there any personas that you are particularly proud of or attached to?<\/p>\n<p>I do love the sassy jackalope a lot. I think he ended up being equal parts Augustus McCrae from <i>Lonesome Dove<\/i>\/Bigwig from <i>Watership Down<\/i> and you really can\u2019t go wrong with that combination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Do you have any recent authors or stories you\u2019ve enjoyed and would like to recommend?<\/p>\n<p><i>Vigil<\/i> by George Saunders is probably my favorite new book of the year so far; I\u2019m a huge sucker for a good ghost-adjacent story and nobody writes dead people like Saunders (<i>Lincoln in the Bardo<\/i> is my favorite novel of the past ten years).<\/p>\n<p>I also recently picked up John Barth\u2019s <i>The Sot-Weed Factor<\/i> and Pynchon\u2019s <i>Mason & Dixon<\/i> at roughly the same time entirely by accident, thus giving myself an impromptu \u201cpostmodern doorstops set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries\u201d thematic lesson plan that I should be done with by early 2030.<\/p>\n<p>If you want something that\u2019s not going to take roughly a decade to finish, though, I really loved <i>Hawksmoor<\/i> by Peter Ackroyd, which is (say it with me) a weird, temporally amorphous postmodern murder mystery partially set in eighteenth-century London. Definitely noticing a trend in my choices of late.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">What have you been working on lately? Is there any exciting news you\u2019d like to share?<\/p>\n<p>I wish I had more to report but the past few years have been more about survival than anything else. As soon as an idea worth writing wriggles into my net maybe that\u2019ll change. Fingers crossed!<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">In addition to the interview with Brooke, I was also able to connect with Dr. Kathryn J. Lively regarding her research at Dartmouth, upon which this story is based. Hello, Dr. Lively! Thank you so much for taking the time to answer a few questions. First, can you speak to your research at Dartmouth?<\/p>\n<p>I am a sociological social psychologist, who specializes in emotion and identity. I am also very much interested in purposeful self-change and emotion management. Recently, I\u2019ve become more interested in tracing connections between sociological theory and psychological theory and practice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">If I understand correctly, in Internal Family Systems (IFS), you work to identify and separate out the core self from your other parts. What are the main archetype parts, and how does this reframing promote healing from grief and trauma?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, IFS conceptualizes the self as being comprised of Parts\u2014Managers and Exiles. There are two types of Managers\u2014the prosocial type who manage your life so that upset never occurs. These include people pleasers, perfectionist parts, task master parts, the workaholic, etc. Then there are the Firefighters, who sweep in when the emotional upset has occurred, or when the Manager\u2019s normal strategies have failed to contain the pain. The pain\u2014emotional, though sometimes it manifests as physical symptoms, is really unprocessed feelings carried by the Exile.<\/p>\n<p>I was first introduced to IFS while collecting data for a study of long-term weight loss and found myself struck by the similarities between it and a theory in sociology called Affect Control Theory that I had been working with for about twenty years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">I imagine a therapist in real life cannot do what happened in the story, but what are some ways that parts work has, or can, go awry if done improperly?<\/p>\n<p>No, luckily Bo\u2019s story is truly fiction. You could try\u2014if you were an unscrupulous therapist\u2014to manipulate a client. However, the psyche is actually quite intelligent. Parts, for instance, can tell when a client is blended with another Part, and they literally will not participate or cooperate until the Client has managed to unblend sufficiently enough to have sufficient self-energy (e.g. curiosity, compassion, courage, creativity, etc.). If a client is blended with another Part or has an agenda to make the target Part change their behavior, the Target Part literally will turn their back. It\u2019s fascinating. It\u2019s like, \u201cNo! Not playing. Thank you very much. Good day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And, at the same time, as a researcher, I\u2019m always trying to make the world better. However, once you write something or discover something it\u2019s truly out of your hands. So, I think it\u2019s fitting that Bo took it where they did\u2014as dark and as fantastical as that might be.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Lastly, if people are interested in your area of research, do you have any resources you recommend where people can learn more? Do you have any fiction or films to recommend (related or unrelated to your field of study)?<\/p>\n<p><i>Inside Out<\/i>, the Pixar movie, is a good place to start. I would also recommend that if they\u2019re interested in learning more about Internal Family Systems\u2014which is an amazing modality for change\u2014they start with Richard Schwartz\u2019s trade publication, <i>No Bad Parts<\/i> or check out his many demonstrations on YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What you see is more or less what\u2019s on the page! If it was a longer work I\u2019d obviously know more about her than what got written but all fiction (short fiction especially, IMO) is a little like making a friend on a flight: Generally you only know what they feel like telling you about their life before they stepped on the plane, and that varies from person to person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-spotlight","category-nonfiction","section-author-spotlights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander - Lightspeed Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36494\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What you see is more or less what\u2019s on the page! If it was a longer work I\u2019d obviously know more about her than what got written but all fiction (short fiction especially, IMO) is a little like making a friend on a flight: Generally you only know what they feel like telling you about their life before they stepped on the plane, and that varies from person to person.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36494\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-13T10:03:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/LS-default-embed-graphic.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leigh DeRouen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"headline\":\"Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-13T10:03:27+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494\"},\"wordCount\":1348,\"commentCount\":0,\"articleSection\":[\"Author Spotlights\",\"Nonfiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494\",\"name\":\"Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander - Lightspeed Magazine\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-13T10:03:27+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?p=36494#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"Lightspeed Magazine\",\"description\":\"Science Fiction & Fantasy\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0\",\"name\":\"Leigh DeRouen\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/d5bca77101579330d774784a5a32ee74eaebf1865a74c0ffdccd2f8b0d3bd641?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Leigh DeRouen\"},\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/author\\\/leighadamantpress-com\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander - Lightspeed Magazine","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36494","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Author Spotlight: Brooke Bolander - Lightspeed Magazine","og_description":"What you see is more or less what\u2019s on the page! 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