lightspeedmagazine.com\/android<\/a>), soon to be published by MIT Press in 2027.<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nLise\u2019s personas have no warning when the XexlCo Construct appears at the gate of her memory garden, smiling cheerfully at each of her personas in turn like a neighborhood milkman making his daily rounds. They watch the newcomer saunter by with open curiosity, moving aside to let him pass as though he\u2019s a regular guest in Lise\u2019s subconscious. There\u2019s nothing threatening about him. He might\u2019ve popped in a million times, the way he behaves.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowdy-do!\u201d he says, tipping his hat. Nodding and smiling ingratiatingly, he makes his way slowly through the crowd. When he comes at last to Freddie Mercury, he peers up into the rock god\u2019s face. Mercury looks like he\u2019s doing his best not to laugh at this strange little man. The Construct nods in a decidedly more businesslike fashion, chirps \u201cbest get to it, then!\u201d and before anyone can stop him, suddenly gloms onto Freddie\u2019s head with both hands.<\/p>\n
Freddie is the oldest of Lise\u2019s personas, as familiar a presence in her head as her own face in the mirror. Lise<\/i>, her first therapist had said one day, when she was eight years old and her scars were still fresh from the accident and the whole of her seemed a snail-tight spiral with a pulsing ulcer at its center, I\u2019ve got a homework assignment for you. No, no, it\u2019s not that serious! You don\u2019t even have to do it if you don\u2019t want to, but\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0if you feel like it, I\u2019d like for you to go home tonight, close your eyes, and build a part of you that likes talking to other people. Somebody who isn\u2019t afraid of crowds or strangers or people taking notice of them. Who or what might that look like?<\/i><\/p>\n
For Lise, there had been only one answer.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t the real<\/i> Freddie Mercury, of course\u2014merely a simulacrum of what a traumatized, newly orphaned young girl had imagined he must be like, cobbled together from music videos and concert tapes and old interviews. He had been enough, though. Between him and Captain O\u2019Briers and the Believer and the Skeptic, Lise\u2019s nightmares had gradually lessened, the ulcer throb fading to a dull ache. Now, in the grip of the Construct, that part of her is changing\u2014or being changed. There\u2019s a high-pitched buzzing like someone has just switched on a fluorescent light the size of the Sun. Freddie screams. Captain O\u2019Briers is already coming to his aid, tearing through the crowd in a moth-eaten brown blur, but it\u2019s too late. Freddie writhes as the Construct\u2019s flickerstatic fingers sink deep into his skull.<\/p>\n
Captain O\u2019Briers hits the Construct squarely in the chest with the full weight of his furry little body. The force of the blow knocks the Construct\u2019s hands away and sends him staggering back several steps, but it\u2019s too late for Freddie; whatever has been done to him is already taking effect. His outline wavers and warps like the superheated air above a bank of stage lights. His lips move as if he\u2019s still trying to speak, although no sound comes out. The shape of him twists, unravels, changes entirely. His clothes change into business casual\u2014neutral colors, off-the-rack fits. The mustache vanishes entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere you go!\u201d the Construct says. \u201cThat\u2019s a little more palatable for a workplace environment, don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of Lise\u2019s personas stare at the thing and then turn and flee as one, infected with terror. Even Captain O\u2019Briers is swept along. The horror of it scatters them in every direction, wild-eyed and witless.<\/p>\n
The XexlCo Construct dusts the paw print off his chest and follows. He doesn\u2019t run; nothing so grossly unprofessional. He\u2019ll get around to finishing what he came here to do soon enough, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
The XexlCo therapist\u2019s name is Dr. Brita Moore. The words compulsory cognitive therapy sessions for pre-employment conditioning<\/i> had buzzed fluorescent and glinted stainless up at Lise when she first read them in the contract, an echoing white hallway of a phrase lined with the world\u2019s most uncomfortably stylish Scandinavian furniture. Somewhere in her subconscious Captain O\u2019Briers had twitched a long ear in his sleep, smelling hidden traps.<\/p>\n
The reality turns out to be much less clinical. Dr. Moore\u2019s office is on the ground floor of a brownstone on a tree-lined block, the interior all polished wood, lamps casting pools of creamy golden light onto antique carpets. Dr. Moore ushers her in personally\u2014there is no receptionist\u2019s desk in sight\u2014and offers her tea from a frankly bewildering selection of oolongs and Darjeelings and loose leafs. Lise\u2019s guard drops ever so slightly despite herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease, have a seat. Make yourself at home. Was your commute long? You\u2019re coming from South Lostline, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Moore has one of those voices that\u2019s a joy to listen to, professionally trained and carefully buffed until it\u2019s black velvet and saddle leather. Lise has been to more therapists in her twenty-six years than most people see in seventy, but municipal funding and bronze grade insurance plans didn\u2019t get you much in the way of polish. Lise\u2019s last therapist had been three stories up an office tower with a broken elevator and a busted toilet. This place, though? There are probably laser turrets hidden in the ivy outside calibrated to go off if a plastic chair or scuffed linoleum floor gets within five blocks of the front door.<\/p>\n
When you work for us<\/i>, the whole thing says, this is how your life will look. No more cracks in the ceiling. No more store brand toilet paper. When you\u2019re an employee at XexlCo, everything\u2019s double-ply and designer label. Only the best. All you have to do is talk to this nice lady with the voice like honey once a week for a month and you\u2019ll be on your way<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Lise is bright enough to see the string, the stick, and the box it props up. Here\u2019s the thing, though: She\u2019s tired of just scraping by. Her whole life since losing her parents has been hand-me-downs out of church donation boxes, kindly but work-worn relatives tolerating her extra spoon in the Hamburger Helper, and scholarships snatched by the barest of fingertips and bleariest of all-nighters. They want to have her go to some new kind of experimental therapy in exchange for never having to look at the price of fruit ever again? Sure. Fine. She\u2019s come too far to get squeamish now.<\/p>\n
And if any of this were illegal, somebody would stop it. Probably.<\/p>\n
\u201cLostline, yeah,\u201d she says, sitting down on what appears to be an honest-to-god antique therapist\u2019s couch. \u201cIt\u2019s a long trip, but at least the rent is still extortionate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
The terrain of Lise\u2019s internal landscape is an ever-shifting geography stitched together from recollection, mental exercises, and dreams. Some of these places exist in the real world. Others are impossibilities. A few are both, road trip memories fancifully embellished.<\/p>\n
The train tunnel is one of the latter. In the world outside Lise\u2019s head, it\u2019s an unimpressive little spur decommissioned when the interstate was built nearby, leading nowhere important. The rusting tracks plunge into darkness with weeds clenched in their teeth and reemerge on a beach hemmed in on three sides by rocky, mountainous bluffs. There\u2019s an abandoned depot at the water\u2019s edge and a platform slowly being eroded from beneath by waves. The tracks continue into the sea and vanish.<\/p>\n
This is where a handful of her personas end up finding each other. In ones and twos, they creep back together, visibly shaken and ready to flee at the slightest provocation. Captain O\u2019Briers is already there, scuffling his paws together and swearing softly. He\u2019s a jackalope the size of a small dog, with long ears, a small rack of antlers, and a twitching nose covered in scars. Freddie had been older than him, but only by a month or two. Despite their opposite natures, they had always been close. Now that Freddie has been\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. changed, Captain is the eldest. He does not want to be, does not understand why it has happened, would dearly love to bite something with his long yellow teeth and pummel it with his back legs until things begin to make sense again.<\/p>\n
(Lise had been on a kick about cryptids of the southwest when the therapist asked her to give her anger and defensiveness a shape. He could\u2019ve been anything\u2014a dragon or a dog or a great grizzly bear with ivory-tipped claws. Instead, he was a jackalope, tough as nails and forever ready for a tussle. He has served and protected her as loyally in this shape as he could have if he were a Tyrannosaurus rex<\/i>.)<\/p>\n
\u201cHellfire, is this all of us that\u2019s left?\u201d he drawls, looking around at the little group gathered on the platform. His ears are constantly swiveling to catch the sound of approaching footsteps, nose working to pick up suspicious scents. All he can smell is the sea. All he can hear is the waves. \u201cHas that thing really gotten to that many of us already?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them are probably still hiding,\u201d says a redheaded woman in a smart business suit. \u201cIt\u2019s highly unlikely that anything could have worked that quickly without anyone noticing. Even with a massive head start\u2014even supposing it has been moving undetected among us\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow can you say how quickly it can or can\u2019t move when we don\u2019t even know what it is yet?\u201d counters a rangy, dark-haired man to her left, also dressed in a dark suit. \u201cIt could be a mental illness that\u2019s been developing for months, or outside forces. Demonic possession? A brainwashing cult? We may need to open ourselves to extreme possibilities, here.\u201d He pauses and gives the redhead a look, half-pleading, half-defiant. They might as well be the only two personas on the platform, the way they focus on one another. \u201cLook, I know what you\u2019re gonna say, but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cActually? I agree with you. In theory,\u201d she hastens to add, perhaps noticing a dangerous glint in the Believer\u2019s eyes. \u201cMaybe. If this therapist she\u2019s seeing has some reason to\u2014to try and\u2014I don\u2019t know, rewrite certain facets of her personality for the job, whether helpful or harmful, that could certainly manifest as\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA creepy flight attendant hunting us down so he can do bad mind-control mojo to our DNA?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0Yes,\u201d the Skeptic says, after a beat. \u201cI\u2019m not exactly sure what \u2018bad mind-control mojo\u2019 traditionally entails, but that more or less sums it up. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
A weather-beaten rag doll with red-yarn hair and black-button eyes creeps into the circle. Her painted slash of a mouth is downcast. She\u2019s wringing the boneless fabric mitts that serve as her hands; with no wrists or fingers, it\u2019s more like she\u2019s wringing her entire arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cUm. Excuse me,\u201d she says. \u201cSorry. Sorry if this is a really stupid question, but. Um. Has anybody just tried\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0talking to it? Maybe it can be reasoned with?\u201d<\/p>\n
The rest of the group turns to look down at her. She flinches back and hides her face behind her tattered apron but keeps talking, papery whispered words drifting out in a rush. \u201cI-just-think-we-shouldn\u2019t-make-it-mad-is-all<\/i>! We\u2019ll never make new friends if we don\u2019t try to fit in! Shouldn\u2019t we at least take him to her and see if\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
Captain O\u2019Briers is staring at the doll as if she\u2019s just grown four more limbs and begun scaling the depot wall. His naturally bulgy hare\u2019s eyes seem to protrude even further from the sides of his head. \u201cDid somebody take what little sense you got in that raggedy cotton mouse nest you call a head and replace it with empty air?\u201d he says. \u201cTake them to her? That is exactly the thing we should be avoiding. Sakes alive, I know you ain\u2019t got a backbone, but could you just pretend, just this once?\u201d<\/p>\n
The doll flops over with a squeak and contracts into a shivering wad of fabric. The Skeptic and the Believer look vaguely uncomfortable. \u201cShe\u2019s just being who she\u2019s made to be, Captain,\u201d the Skeptic says, not unkindly. \u201cCan any of us claim to be any different?\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Briers shoots the redhead a scornful look before turning to stare out to sea. His body is hunched and angry.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was your friend, too,\u201d he mutters. \u201cIf you don\u2019t give a damn about yourself, you could at least give a damn about that. And about protecting her.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do,\u201d the Believer says, squatting down beside him. \u201cAnd we will. But first, we need to figure out what this thing is, where it comes from.\u201d He looks up at the Skeptic. Something seems to pass between the two of them. \u201cKnow thy enemy, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d rather not know the son of a bitch at all,\u201d Captain O\u2019Briers says, grim and gray as a tombstone. \u201cIf it\u2019s all the same to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like there are some things you\u2019re still not telling me,\u201d Dr. Moore says. \u201cYou\u2019ve still got your guard up.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019ll be good old Captain O\u2019Briers watching my back<\/i>, Lise thinks. He doesn\u2019t quite trust you, so neither do I<\/i>. She doesn\u2019t say this out loud\u2014that would feel rude, and she hates being rude\u2014but the thought definitely runs through her head. Instead, she pushes back with a question of her own, letting the part of her she calls the Skeptic drive. \u201cI forgot to ask this during our last session, but how long has XexlCo been requiring this therapy?\u201d she says. \u201cI know some people who used to work for them and they\u2019ve never mentioned any of this stuff before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fairly new, implemented last year.\u201d Is that the slightest shiver of irritation in Dr. Moore\u2019s voice, or is Lise just imagining it? It\u2019s so hard to tell sometimes. \u201cIf your friends were hired before then, they wouldn\u2019t have been required to undergo it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, but a year. That\u2019s a long time for nobody to say anything about it in the media, or\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMost employees are so satisfied with the results, they don\u2019t feel the need to gossip about it, we find,\u201d Dr. Moore says. If she was annoyed before, the emotion has been swiftly throttled into submission; her voice is once again untroubled and smooth. \u201cI think you may find you feel the same way once everything is said and done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lise doesn\u2019t reply. She\u2019s not quite sure how to, frankly\u2014her usual ability to keep up a friendly back-and-forth conversation has felt a little muted lately. She just nods and lets Dr. Moore guide the conversation wherever she likes.<\/p>\n
She does make a mental note to do some digging online later that night, though, just to satisfy her own curiosity.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
\u201cFrankly, I can\u2019t tell,\u201d the Skeptic says, massaging the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. \u201cThere\u2019s not enough research publicly available to give a conclusive answer, and little to nothing about the company\u2019s implementation of this new cognitive modeling in their hiring practices.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s definitely not a cult.\u201d The Believer is stretched flat on his back in a sprawl on the ground next to her. They\u2019ve been moving around for what seems like forever. For the moment, they\u2019ve stopped at a campground Lise still vaguely recalls from a trip with her Girl Scout troop. Captain O\u2019Briers wouldn\u2019t let them have a fire\u2014too risky\u2014so they\u2019re seated around a cold ring of ashy stones, staring at the place where a fire should go. Every time something rustles in the undergrowth, Raggedy Arabella gives a little squeak and cowers behind whoever\u2019s closest.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d the Skeptic says, sounding exhausted. \u201cXexlCo is a start-up, not a cult. There\u2019s no evidence of any connections to the Freemasons, the Scientologists, or any government agencies either real or alluded to in pamphlets found in truck-stop restrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPft. Boring.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe truth often is.\u201d She sighs disconsolately and pokes at a half-burned log with the toe of one sensible heel. \u201cIf we could just get at some academic journals. Tomorrow, maybe. She\u2019s got that one friend in the psychology department, maybe he can loan her his password\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHas she reached out to Tamera lately?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe girl with the tarot cards? Not in like six years, and I hardly think that\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that thing has taken over Freddie,\u201d O\u2019Briers says, waltzing into the middle of their conversation like a moose bisecting a homecoming parade, \u201cand maybe a bunch of others we ain\u2019t even missed yet, what\u2019s to stop him or any of them from already knowing where the Affective is at?\u201d<\/p>\n
A long, weighty silence descends as they mull this over. The Skeptic and the Believer share another novel-length look.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I don\u2019t know, maybe they have to reach some kind of critical mass before they know enough to gain access to that information,\u201d the Skeptic says. \u201cThe Affective is very good at taking care of herself without our intervention. I mean, half the time we<\/i> don\u2019t even know where she is, right? So\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a point.\u201d The Believer has rolled to his feet. \u201cWhat if we\u2019re the only ones left and we just don\u2019t know it yet? What if they\u2019re on their way to her right now?\u201d<\/p>\n
A dense uneasiness is descending. Even the Skeptic, usually coolheaded and impervious, can feel it worming its way into her bones.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd while we\u2019re asking questions,\u201d Captain O\u2019Briers says suspiciously, \u201cwhere the hell did that rag doll get off to?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
There had been a real Raggedy Arabella, once upon a time. A family friend had given her to Lise at some point after her parents died. She had found the rag doll\u2019s pleading smile, button eyes, and old-fashioned dress incredibly creepy and had shoved it behind her aunt\u2019s couch at the earliest opportunity, where it presumably bowed and scraped to dust bunnies still. When she later needed something to embody all her weak-willed traits\u2014her desire for acceptance, that gnawing desperation to make everyone like her, going along to get along\u2014the memory of Raggedy Arabella had been swept up out of the darkness and set free to simper and squeak anew.<\/p>\n
She was not well-liked among the other personas, but they tolerated her presence; she was harmless and played her thankless role diligently.<\/p>\n
Down wet midnight alleyways culled from half-recalled film festivals she slithers, pulling herself along through neon-tinted puddles with a strange rolling crawl like an octopus made of wet dishtowels. She push-pulls herself into a sewer vent, free-falls with a plop into a rush of filthy water, feels a strange sense of expectation as she lets it carry her along. The Constructs will find her if she wants them to. All she has to do is do nothing at all.<\/p>\n
And sure enough, after bobbing flotsam-fashion down several twists and turns of a cathedral-like system of underground brickwork (from Sewers of Victorian London<\/i>, read for a college course), a hand plucks her, dripping, from the murk.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou won\u2019t hurt her, or them?\u201d Raggedy Arabella whispers. \u201cIf I tell you where they are, you\u2019ll let us join you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMercy, why would we hurt her, or any of you?\u201d The Construct sounds genuinely wounded at the implication. \u201cWe\u2019re not here to harm anyone! We\u2019re only here to make Lise\u2019s integration into the XexlCo family easier. All the little snags and jagged bits of her that might not fit, well\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0we\u2019ll make them fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sets Raggedy Arabella down carefully on the slippery bricks. \u201cAnd all the parts that are just fine the way they are\u2014like you, for example\u2014well, you\u2019re free to just keep on being the way you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s nodding her sodden head to the rhythm of his wheedle. It all makes perfect sense. Who wouldn\u2019t want to fit in? The others were worrying needlessly. They had never wanted it like she did.<\/p>\n
They simply didn\u2019t understand the importance of belonging.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
Lise wakes at 2:00 a.m. with a name ringing in her ears like someone down the hall has just shouted it before slipping out the front door. Todd Kramer. There\u2019s no reason she should be thinking of him\u2014she\u2019s barely thought of him in the six years since they last saw each other\u2014but just like that, she\u2019s remembered he exists, and more importantly that he\u2019s a member of university faculty with access to a JSTOR account.<\/p>\n
She rolls out of bed and fumbles in the darkness for a pen and paper. She could grab her phone from the nightstand and jot his name down in Notes, but the last thing she wants to do at 2:00 a.m. is touch her phone for any reason whatsoever. Pen and paper it is, then.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
The Constructs appear in the campground clearing with the soft pop of a soap bubble giving up the ghost. Captain O\u2019Briers has hopped a little further into the woods, following Raggedy Annabelle\u2019s faint mothball and cedar-chest scent as it threads away into the gloaming beneath the pines. This is what saves him when they come.<\/p>\n
Like two arms of the same organism, the Skeptic and the Believer go for the pistols they each carry beneath their coats. Side by side, they track their attackers as they circle. Just as O\u2019Briers had guessed, there are many more now, old friends barely recognizable as the personas they used to be. They look vacant and well-scrubbed, like the actors in an advertisement for tooth-whitening or real estate floating above the heads of commuters on a rush hour train. There\u2019s no spark in their eyes. They all wear the same politely neutral expression.<\/p>\n
All except the first, the one who turned Freddie. He looks delighted to see the personas. His perfect grin practically throws shadows across the darkening campground. \u201cThere<\/i> you are! Do you know how long we\u2019ve been looking for you?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot a clue, but I know how long one of these bullets will take to reach your brain, you brainwashing son of a bitch,\u201d the Believer says, through gritted teeth. \u201cStep away and let us through.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry, but that\u2019s simply not possible at this time. We need at least one more of you to reach our quarterly goal.\u201d The circle around the personas tightens. They smell like printer paper and fresh ink and cleaning solvent, uncorked sharpies and computer monitors baking behind gray cubicle walls. The Construct shifts his weight forward. \u201cIf you\u2019ll just hang on one second\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
For the barest moment, the Believer hesitates. The Skeptic does not. Smoothly and with brittle focus, she pulls the trigger, a rhythmic one-two-three, like turning a lock in a deadbolt. The pistol coughs fire and clears brass from its throat onto the forest floor. The bullets burrow bloodlessly into the Construct\u2019s face and lodge somewhere inside his skull, like he\u2019s made of ballistic gel. The three new holes in his face don\u2019t seem to give him any pause at all.<\/p>\n
He shakes his perforated head ruefully. \u201cThere\u2019s really no need to take that tone with me, miss,\u201d he says. With terrifying speed, he slips forward and palms the top of her head, as if preparing to give a blessing or benediction. \u201cYour research skills and your accuracy are assets our organization can use. All it\u2019ll take is a little\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. attitude adjustment . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
The Skeptic has a moment, one final precious breath, to lock eyes with her partner. Everything happens so fast that her expression is still halfway through the process of shifting from confusion to fear when the change tears through her small frame, shivering her to static. She doesn\u2019t even have a chance to scream. The Believer does it for her.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re outnumbered and outgunned. O\u2019Briers is hotheaded, but not a fool; he knows damn well what\u2019ll happen if he throws himself into that mob. But it\u2019s hard not to help his friends. God almighty, it\u2019s hard. He\u2019s halfway out from under the bush he\u2019s been skulking beneath before he can regain control of himself. Luckily, no one notices. They\u2019re all too busy restraining the Believer as he bucks and plunges beneath their grasping hands.<\/p>\n
The thing that was the Skeptic looks back at the Believer blankly. A strained, polite smile haunts her lips, like she\u2019s not sure if she needs to call security. The Construct studies him as well with a thoughtfully furrowed brow. \u201cMmm. I\u2019m sure your services will be useful somewhere,\u201d he says, finally, stretching the final word out, \u201cbut I\u2019m afraid we don\u2019t have any use for you at this time. None at all, actually. Wow, that doesn\u2019t happen very often! You\u2019re a unique case!\u201d The Believer has slumped as if his strings have all been cut. He\u2019s still staring at the Skeptic, whispering soundless words that might be her name. \u201cWell, might as well get this over with and find that Affective.\u201d The Construct steps forward and places both hands atop the Believer\u2019s head. The prisoner barely seems to notice. His eyes never leave his partner\u2019s face. \u201cHave a lovely day!\u201d<\/p>\n
Childhood nights spent reading the Fortean Times<\/i> and books on cryptozoology shrink and crumble, there and then gone. Teenage dalliances with witchcraft, the names of a hundred spots across the United States known for UFO sightings\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. the company has no use for such uncontrolled flights of imagination. The Believer dissolves with a sigh beneath the Construct\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s go, people!\u201d the Construct says, turning and dusting his palms off with a flourish. \u201cBrainwaves are burning!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
When the alarm shrills Lise awake at 8:00 a.m., she finds a crumpled sticky note with the name of an old college buddy clenched in her hand. Todd Kramer. Why on earth would she have any need to write down Todd Kramer\u2019s name? Some weird sleepwalking quirk? Oh shit<\/i>, did she call him in some sort of bizarre Ambien fugue state?<\/p>\n
She hurls the sticky note away from her like it\u2019s alive and poisonous and frantically checks her outgoing calls from the previous eight hours. Nothing. Thank Christ<\/i>. With a sigh of relief, she rolls to her feet and staggers down the hallway to get her day started, chock-full of residual mortification adrenaline.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
The Constructs are in no rush, now that they are so near their goal. Down the dappling quilt-stitch roads of Lise\u2019s memories they meander\u2014now a hallway from a college trip to England, now the highway that ran outside her middle school, now the last street she ever lived on with her parents, well-tended Foursquares lulled into closing their golden porchlight eyes by the lullaby drone of air conditioners and crickets\u2014moving with the air of a group of tourists visiting some mildly fascinating historical site. At the last house on the right, they turn down a cracked concrete path and up a set of cracked concrete stairs, mounting a porch that lists and slants beneath their business casual shoes like the warped deck of a ship. One of the boards judders slightly underfoot, flapping an upper jaw fanged with rusted nails. None of them pay it or the darkness beneath any mind as they mill and tramp onwards.<\/p>\n
The front door has a knocker shaped like a hare\u2019s head. They don\u2019t bother using it. Their leader pushes it open unceremoniously and steps inside. There are no rugs on the hardwood floors, no runners on the stairs, no art on the walls or furniture in the corners to muffle the sound of their footsteps. The only light is the ambient glow from a sodium streetlight, falling through the front windows to encase the empty house\u2019s interior in dim amber.<\/p>\n
\u201cLise? Honey?\u201d The Construct\u2019s voice is wheedling. \u201cWe\u2019re\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0friends of your Aunt Ruthie. She sent us here to pick you up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silence. The Construct sighs, shrugs, shoots an exasperated smile at his followers. They shuffle further inside and mount the staircase.<\/p>\n
A sudden, blinding flare of light. For a split second, the house is warmly lit and furnished. From somewhere on the ground floor comes the sound of clanking silverware, a humming radio, a woman\u2019s laughter. The noises Doppler and fade away. Darkness and emptiness wash back over them like the beam of some temporal lighthouse that has flashed through the windows and swung back out to sea. It happens a few more times as they climb\u2014a muffling of leather soles on hardwood as a runner appears and vanishes beneath their feet, photographs of ghostly faces there and gone, leaving only bare nailheads\u2014but it doesn\u2019t seem to give anyone in the group pause as they make their way to the second floor.<\/p>\n
There, on their left, gapes the open doorway of a large master bath. They file inside, sniffing the air delicately. One of them\u2014the thing that used to be the Skeptic, now bland as unbuttered wheat toast\u2014swings the door partially shut, pointing silently to a built-in linen closet tucked neatly behind it. The Construct beams. He squats down on his haunches and slowly pulls the closet open. It\u2019s deep, running several feet back into the wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, hey there, little lady,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat are you doing all the way back there, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n
A seven-year-old Lise opens her eyes and stares back at him.<\/p>\n
She scrambles to a sitting position and scoots away on her rear until her back is against the wall. The Construct leans in and chirrups as if calling to a small, nervous dog. \u201cJust a liiiiittle closer,\u201d he says through his teeth, reaching out for her ankle. \u201cJust a little\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
Something hits him in the back of the head so hard stars supernova across his vision. He loses his balance and reels face-first into the closet\u2019s maw, nose grinding into the floor. The sounds of a scuffle suddenly thump and thud and crack behind him. A body falls heavily against his legs, pushing him further down and in.<\/p>\n
As The Construct scrabbles to shove whoever has landed on him off, he becomes aware of a voice roaring amidst the din.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou sons of bitches want to tango, I\u2019ll give you lessons, by god! I\u2019ll teach you the goddamn Charleston! Y\u2019all come in here and kill my friends, you tinker with my girl\u2019s good self, and you think I\u2019ll just let you? I\u2019m Captain O\u2019Briers, by god! You think these antlers on top of my head are just there to make me look pretty? Come and take it!\u201d<\/p>\n
Something comes at the Construct from the darkness of the closet, clambering over his lowered head and neck while grinding his face even harder into the floor. Rubber sneaker soles yank at his hair. The Affective is scrambling across his back to freedom. He snatches blindly and manages to grab onto her ankle, but she kicks free and slithers away, going, going, gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo on, girl! Get gone and fight it!\u201d the voice yells. \u201cDon\u2019t let them change who you are!\u201d<\/p>\n
Her footsteps pound down the stairs and fade into the distance. Somewhere far below, a door slams. In the bathroom, the fight rages on.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
The week before her fourth session with Dr. Moore, Lise has a dream.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s standing in the front hallway of a house she briefly rented a room in during her sophomore year of college. The carpet had been dingy, the plumbing temperamental. The elderly front porch\u2014facing an empty lot\u2014and back door\u2014looking out on a yard where the weeds had taken the lawn by force and begun their final siege on the cracked concrete patio\u2014had sagged at their posts with obvious exhaustion.<\/p>\n
Lise had always been slightly worried that the array of deadbolts would prove to be purely decorative, should anybody decide they really wanted to get in. Which is exactly what\u2019s happening in her dream: Something is shaking the front door down with terrific force.<\/p>\n
The plastic venetian blinds on the barred front windows are shut, so she can\u2019t see who or what\u2019s attacking the door, but there\u2019s a little rectangle of chicken-wire-enforced glass high up within the door itself. All they have to do to see her standing there is lean on their tiptoes and peek through. She wants to move\u2014to hide behind the couch in the living room, to duck, to slip away and make sure the back door is locked\u2014but fear has frozen her solid. All she can do is stand there, waiting for someone to look through the window or kick down the door or maybe both. Another blow shivers the rotten, old thing hard enough that the rusty hinges make an unhealthy consumptive sound.<\/p>\n
A small hand takes hers.<\/p>\n
\u201cC\u2019mon,\u201d seven-year-old Lise says, softly. \u201cLet\u2019s go this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
She lets her younger self lead her through the living room and a filthy galley kitchen up to the back door.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we go out there, they\u2019ll get us!\u201d Lise says, balking.<\/p>\n
Her younger version shakes her head impatiently and gives Lise\u2019s arm another tug. \u201cNo they won\u2019t. Captain O\u2019Briers won\u2019t let them. C\u2019mon, we gotta go.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other side of the house, the door finally begins to splinter with a triumphant crack. Seven-year-old Lise yanks the back door open and drags older Lise across the threshold into a vacant office building. The sounds of tearing wood cut off abruptly.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re in a large, open room filled with cubicles. Fluorescents hum above their heads like a hive of ghost hornets carrying industrial-strength entropy in their gray stingers. Far away on the other side of the maze, the doorway to a darkened kitchenette gapes. The warm red and blue glow of a vending machine within is the only splash of color visible in the entire place. There are no windows; it could be day or night outside, stormy or sunny, and no one inside would know a thing about it.<\/p>\n
Seven-year-old Lise releases her older self\u2019s hand and scampers ahead as soon as they step through the door. She threads through the cubicles at a run, the echoing slap of her Keds on the carpet the only sound aside from the hum of the lights and idling computers dreaming in their stalls.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey!\u201d Lise shouts. The fluorescents seem to buzz louder at this disturbance; it is not a room zoned for things like shouting or running or laughing. Its architects designed it to be an eight-hour-a-day lobotomization of all human passions. Any reminder of the world outside this hermetically sealed canyonland of plastic and steel threatens to shiver the walls down like a house of cards in a wind tunnel. \u201cWait up! Where are you going?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want a Coke,\u201d comes the distant reply. \u201cDo you have any change?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lise sighs and follows at a slower pace.<\/p>\n
She finds younger her bathed in the glow of the vending machine, probing the depths of the coin tray with her small fingers in vain. She checks her own pockets and comes up with several quarters; feeds them, clinking, into the slot. Young Lise crows in triumph and hammers the selection button more times than strictly necessary. The machine rattles out a can and she snatches it from the trough. Prize clenched in her hands, she trots over to the only pieces of furniture in the kitchenette\u2014a sad little table attended by two sad little plastic chairs with metal legs\u2014and sits. She pops the top and takes a long swig, sets it down on the table and drums her heels against the underside of the molded plastic seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a boring place,\u201d she announces.<\/p>\n
Lise flicks on the kitchenette\u2019s overhead light and immediately wishes she hadn\u2019t; another fluorescent. \u201cYeah. Yeah, it is,\u201d she says. \u201cSo why are we here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI dunno. Why are<\/i> we here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, you\u2019re the one who brought us.\u201d Lise\u2019s exasperation is starting to build. \u201cYou tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNuh-uh. That\u2019s bull crap. You<\/i> brought us. I thought we were gonna do something fun, like wildlife biology or paranormal investigation or being a jockey. Why\u2019d you sign us up for this? They don\u2019t even have any good books or magazines to read here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cParanormal investigators need day jobs. Don\u2019t even get me started on horse racing.\u201d She feels ridiculous arguing with a seven-year-old, but for some reason it feels necessary to convince her that the right choices are being made. \u201cAnd wildlife biology? You really wanna share an apartment with three other people and live off ramen just so we can catalogue beetles during the day instead of working in an office? I\u2019m doing this for us, so we\u2019re not just scraping by.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMmm.\u201d The girl sounds unconvinced. She drums her heels harder. \u201cBut we like<\/i> ramen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot for every meal.\u201d Lise sighs and sits down in the second chair. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a better life this way. You\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her younger self looks across the table at her. Her eyes are suddenly very old and very shrewd for a seven-year-old\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, but\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0like, will it be our<\/i> life?\u201d she says. \u201cIs it worth it if there\u2019s none of the old us left, and the life we get looks like\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0this?\u201d She waves the soda can expansively at the kitchenette, the soda machine, the cubicles and monitors and fluorescent lights. \u201cI mean, just look at you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lise catches a glimpse of herself in the reflective surface of a microwave door. The top of her skull is gone, leaving her brain fully exposed. Copper wires are embedded in the tissue. They stretch up into the drop ceiling above them to where a panel has been pried away, leaving a dark square.<\/p>\n
Young Lise takes another pensive sip of her Coke. \u201cPretty gross,\u201d she says, matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n
Lise wakes, heart pounding, frantically patting the top of her head.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
When she gets up the next morning, the dream has receded to a series of hazy, disjointed images. Only a vague sense of uneasiness and anxiety sticks around, dogging her for the rest of the day. Something about her brain. Something about the new job and her younger self.<\/p>\n
October 4: Dr. Moore<\/i>. She looks at the appointment in her planner and the anxiety whirrs to life in her chest like a trapped grasshopper in a jam jar.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
The Affective runs into the woods, following the old train tracks behind her aunt and uncle\u2019s subdivision. When they\u2019re done with Captain O\u2019Briers, the Constructs follow.<\/p>\n
The railway line had once run beneath a tunnel of trees, through forests and green fields and along the edges of rural neighborhoods where children raced out to wave at engineers as they blasted by on their mysterious missions. The trees wave in a memorial breeze. The sun shines brightly and does not move.<\/p>\n
Grasshoppers and katydids whirr sleepily in the long grass on either side of the embankment. Tiny chips of mica embedded in the granite stones between the crossties flash the sunshine back in hot little mirror glints.<\/p>\n
As the Constructs follow the Affective along the tracks\u2014she\u2019s barely visible now, a black speck on the horizon flanked by the fluttering plumage of heat miasma\u2014their shoes crunch and clatter on the loose ballast, snapping the occasional twig. When the noise recedes and then stops outright, it\u2019s such a small thing most of them don\u2019t notice it, but the leader does. He makes a curious sound in his throat, but keeps on walking.<\/p>\n
Slowly, as if the memory has been sitting in the sun for too long, more things begin to lose their detail.<\/p>\n
First, it\u2019s the sounds of the summer day. Birds singing, the breeze rustling, the deafening shrill of cicadas\u2014gradually they fade, like someone is gently turning down the volume. Then the breeze stops. With every step, the tree branches and glittering stones and worn wooden surface of the crossties become less photographically real and more like a painted backdrop. Another half mile and it\u2019s a colored pencil sketch. A full mile and now it\u2019s crayon, sharp black and gray lines beneath their feet, the horizon ahead a blank sheet of white with wavy green lines to indicate hills.<\/p>\n
Why won\u2019t you STOP FOLLOWING ME?<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. The Construct looks up at the blue scrawl of the sky, the frozen yellow cactus of the sun. The smile is still on his face, but there\u2019s something that might be nervousness starting to strain at the corners.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just want to help you be a better part of our team!\u201d he shouts. \u201cThat\u2019s all any of this is about!\u201d<\/p>\n
Liar. You don\u2019t want me to be a part of your team. You just want to make me more like you<\/b><\/i>. The Affective appears a few feet away, her young face furrowed with anger. Her lips don\u2019t move, but the words boom on, petulant and annoyed. Look at what you did to all my friends. I\u2019m sick of you<\/b><\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou agreed to this!\u201d The Construct\u2019s voice is getting slightly more desperate. \u201cIt was right there in the contract you signed. If you didn\u2019t want us here\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
He takes a step towards her. The Affective\u2019s eyes narrow. She stomps her feet and throws her hands out in front of her in a warding gesture. LEAVE\u2014ME\u2014ALONE!<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n
A shock wave bubbles outwards from her small form and blows everything away\u2014crayon tracks and trees, the crowd of Constructs, all of it. They\u2019re tumbled head over heels into the white like luggage being sucked from the fuselage of a collision at thirty-five thousand feet.<\/p>\n
The Affective glowers after them. She blows a raspberry for good measure.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n
Lise\u2019s final appointment with Dr. Moore is scheduled for October 4 at 4:00 p.m. Two p.m. finds her still in her pajamas, when she should be pulling on clean pants and a blouse. She stares at the reminder in her planner for a long, long time, neat blue ink letters jotted down in her own tidy hand.<\/p>\n
At 2:45 she\u2019s still on her laptop, when she should be walking out the door to catch her train. She\u2019s reading the contract again, over and over, that faint sense of warning growing stronger with every subsequent pass. It\u2019s the culmination of a week\u2019s dread, gradual at first, but spreading to fill her head while pushing everything else out like a thunderhead or a migraine.<\/p>\n
At 3:00, she\u2019s still sitting at her desk with her laptop open, when she should be sitting on the train staring blankly through the person in the seat directly opposite her. She\u2019s writing an email of apology for any inconvenience she may be causing with her abrupt reversal and how much she truly, sincerely regrets not being able to take the position. They\u2019re going to be angry. They\u2019re going to be curt in their reply and call Lise a flake and probably some worse stuff, too. But guilt and anxiety had a shoot-out inside her, and this time anxiety drew first.<\/p>\n
At 3:15, when she should be transferring from one train line to another, she picks up the phone to call Dr. Moore. This is ten times worse than sending the email.<\/p>\n
At 3:30, she makes the call. She\u2019s so relieved when it goes directly to voicemail that her legs go a little numb.<\/p>\n
She can\u2019t stop her voice from shaking as she thanks the doctor\u2019s inbox for her time and wishes her all the best.<\/p>\n
At 3:50, she\u2019s got her r\u00e9sum\u00e9 open in one tab\u2014hello again, old friend\u2014and a site with several job listings open in the other. She feels a little bit better for the first time in a week, but looking at all the blank slots in those applications waiting to be filled feels like pouring salt on her sluggish soul. This used to be easier before. It almost feels like part of her is gone, or at the very least, not functioning as well as it should. Lise closes her eyes and looks inward, but all that greets her is a weird intrusive thought: Reapply and maybe they\u2019ll still take you on. There\u2019s still time<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Around 4:00, when she\u2019d usually be climbing the stairs to Dr. Moore\u2019s cheery brownstone door, she writes an email to her old therapist, the one she used to see before Dr. Moore. She\u2019s got a lot to talk to her about. If anybody will be able to help her figure out what the hell is going on inside her head it\u2019s Dr. Rhimes, busted toilet be damned.<\/p>\n
Finally, at 4:30, she puts on clean clothes and her coat and walks to the public library down the street. Lise nods at one of the librarians as she passes the front desk\u2014she used to know the woman\u2019s name, have long conversations with her and make her laugh, but lately, she can\u2019t find it in her to be anything but passively polite\u2014and wanders into the stacks. She\u2019s not looking for anything in particular, hasn\u2019t picked up a book in weeks, is mostly just there because libraries have always felt like safe places to her. Her eyes flick over mountain ranges of spines, searching for something that will pique her interest. She lets her feet carry her haltingly through fiction and nonfiction, biography and history, epic poetry and cookbooks and world religion. Nothing clicks. It feels like defeat, like something has slipped away from her.<\/p>\n
As she turns back to the front desk empty-handed, a table full of retired books being sold to clear space for newer titles catches her eye. It\u2019s mostly stuff that\u2019s too old or battered to keep around, a lot of romance novels and histories with foldout maps listing countries that haven\u2019t existed in several decades. Some self-help bestsellers, a couple of trade paperback comic collections, and . . .<\/p>\n
Lise comes within a hair\u2019s breadth of missing it. It\u2019s crammed beneath a book on dog training, just the upper half of the dust jacket sticking out. It\u2019s enough, though. Something about the half inch of visible cover plucks at her memory and she pauses, tugging it out curiously.<\/p>\n
When she sees what it is, she smiles.<\/p>\n
Cryptids of the Southwest<\/i>, proclaims the title. Beneath the words there\u2019s a lovingly detailed \u201940s-era jacket illustration of a desert landscape populated by all sorts of imaginary beasts: hoop snakes, Whangdoodles, an enormous winged cougar. At the front of the pack rears a jackalope with a fabulous rack of antlers and ears roughly the length of its lanky body.<\/p>\n
She had owned this book before. Remembers reading it in the backseat of her aunt\u2019s car on a night long, long ago, peering at the illustrations whenever a streetlight threw enough sliding yellow light through the windows to see by. The younger Lise had plucked it from a library sale an awful lot like this one. Her dad had laughed when she showed him the cover and fished in his pocket for a five-dollar bill.<\/p>\n
Tears sting her eyes and she\u2019s not sure why. Something stirs inside her, a faint thready pulse.<\/p>\n
She tucks the little book under her arm and heads for the front desk.<\/p>\n
\nBased on research by Professor Kathryn Lively,
\nDepartment of Sociology, Dartmouth College
\nsociology.dartmouth.edu\/people\/kathryn-j-lively<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lise\u2019s personas have no warning when the XexlCo Construct appears at the gate of her memory garden, smiling cheerfully at each of her personas in turn like a neighborhood milkman making his daily rounds. They watch the newcomer saunter by with open curiosity, moving aside to let him pass as though he\u2019s a regular guest in Lise\u2019s subconscious. There\u2019s nothing threatening about him. He might\u2019ve popped in a million times, the way he behaves.<\/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-36523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","section-fantasy","status_flag-no-anthology","series-android-in-the-archives"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Fragments of the Whole - 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\/fragments-of-the-whole\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fragments of the Whole - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Lise\u2019s personas have no warning when the XexlCo Construct appears at the gate of her memory garden, smiling cheerfully at each of her personas in turn like a neighborhood milkman making his daily rounds. They watch the newcomer saunter by with open curiosity, moving aside to let him pass as though he\u2019s a regular guest in Lise\u2019s subconscious. There\u2019s nothing threatening about him. 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Wells<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1435\" height=\"1648\" class=\"alignnone unstyled-image size-full wp-image-36334\" style=\"margin: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png\" alt=\"Image is all text: THE AGE OF CANCER after H.G. Wells \u201cI stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. All trace of the moon had vanished. The machine was standing on a sloping beach. Quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me, a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as a table, legs moving slowly and uncertainly, big claws swaying, its long antenn\u00e6 like carters\u2019 whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and blotched with greenish incrustations. The many palps of its complicated mouth flickered and felt as it moved. With a frightful qualm, I turned and saw another monster crab just behind me, its mouth all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed months between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green. I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. I moved on centuries, and there was the same red sun, the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.\u201d # This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings. The ancestrat is a traveller through time. It is quite a large specimen nearly big as we are we think it would be quite long if unfolded but it has always been seated sideways in its nest of brass and ivory, about to fall over, bare front paws grasping at the rods and dials it lives so slowly but must be breathing very fast because over the generations we have tracked several breaths in. And out. So. Very. Slowly. It has stood on the beach almost never moving flickering slightly for uncounted generations shellless meat out eyes bulging is it fear is it prurience is it shock is it a cardiac event we are uncertain and time will tell but so much time will pass in the telling that we will have quite forgotten the question this is our struggle. He is so almost but not quite palpable that our palps palpitate and it is said by old cracked shells that if we could only catch him tight in our pincers we could see such wonders as a yellow sun, a blue sky, the small old moon that was lost. Still he lives one second at a time, as we do. We study him in his stillness and understand his project, his yearning for a solved future, a future past the struggle, a future in which the revolution has already been carcinized. He wishes to skip past the difficult part, to fast-forward the boring bits, to sidestep history and arrive in the golden city, fully automated and luxurious. But see him grimace frozen as history passes without him, a self-fulfilling failure for the rat era. We who have studied their fossil leavings and understood something of their symbology slowly over the generations we decide to raise a massive construction into orbit, an icon we think he can\u2019t miss and might be able to read, so that he might see it overhead down the aeons and know that we understood what he was looking for, and that it was to be found here among us. But he accelerated in his journey and moved on into a dead future before we had raised more than the sickle into the sky.\" border=\"0\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png 1435w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer-261x300.png 261w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer-892x1024.png 892w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer-768x882.png 768w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer-1337x1536.png 1337w, https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer-220x253.png 220w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1435px) 100vw, 1435px\" \/><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p class=\"epigraph dedication\"><strong>The above rendering of the text is the author’s preferred edition. Because of the non-standard formatting, we had to publish the text as an image in order to achieve the effect the author desired. To make the story as accessible as possible, we’re including the full text below using standard formatting practices. \u2014eds.<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>\u201cI stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. All trace of the moon had vanished. The machine was standing on a sloping beach. Quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me, a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as a table, legs moving slowly and uncertainly, big claws swaying, its long antenn\u00e6 like carters\u2019 whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and blotched with greenish incrustations. The many palps of its complicated mouth flickered and felt as it moved. With a frightful qualm, I turned and saw another monster crab just behind me, its mouth all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed months between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green. I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. I moved on centuries, and there was the same red sun, the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings. The ancestrat is a traveller through time. It is quite a large specimen nearly big as we are we think it would be quite long if unfolded but it has always been seated sideways in its nest of brass and ivory, about to fall over, bare front paws grasping at the rods and dials it lives so slowly but must be breathing very fast because over the generations we have tracked several breaths in. And out. So. Very. Slowly. It has stood on the beach almost never moving flickering slightly for uncounted generations shellless meat out eyes bulging is it fear is it prurience is it shock is it a cardiac event we are uncertain and time will tell but so much time will pass in the telling that we will have quite forgotten the question this is our struggle. He is so almost but not quite palpable that our palps palpitate and it is said by old cracked shells that if we could only catch him tight in our pincers we could see such wonders as a yellow sun, a blue sky, the small old moon that was lost. Still he lives one second at a time, as we do. We study him in his stillness and understand his project, his yearning for a solved future, a future past the struggle, a future in which the revolution has already been carcinized. He wishes to skip past the difficult part, to fast-forward the boring bits, to sidestep history and arrive in the golden city, fully automated and luxurious. But see him grimace frozen as history passes without him, a self-fulfilling failure for the rat era. We who have studied their fossil leavings and understood something of their symbology slowly over the generations we decide to raise a massive construction into orbit, an icon we think he can\u2019t miss and might be able to read, so that he might see it overhead down the aeons and know that we understood what he was looking for, and that it was to be found here among us. But he accelerated in his journey and moved on into a dead future before we had raised more than the sickle into the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":567,"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":[5,220,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-flash-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>The Age of Cancer - 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\/the-age-of-cancer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Age of Cancer - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/the-age-of-cancer\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-13T10:01:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-09-16T00:44:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1435\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1648\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Joseph Adams\" \/>\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\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"John Joseph Adams\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e43350e530d16b70f75ee8d1d26852b\"},\"headline\":\"The Age of Cancer\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-13T10:01:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-16T00:44:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":799,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"Fiction\",\"Flash Fiction\",\"Science Fiction\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Age of Cancer - Lightspeed Magazine\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-13T10:01:16+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-09-16T00:44:30+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e43350e530d16b70f75ee8d1d26852b\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/fiction\\\/the-age-of-cancer\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/Chandrasekera_Age_of_Cancer.png\",\"width\":1435,\"height\":1648,\"caption\":\"Image is all text: THE AGE OF CANCER after H.G. Wells \u201cI stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. All trace of the moon had vanished. The machine was standing on a sloping beach. Quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me, a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as a table, legs moving slowly and uncertainly, big claws swaying, its long antenn\u00e6 like carters\u2019 whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and blotched with greenish incrustations. The many palps of its complicated mouth flickered and felt as it moved. With a frightful qualm, I turned and saw another monster crab just behind me, its mouth all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed months between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green. I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. I moved on centuries, and there was the same red sun, the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.\u201d # This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings. The ancestrat is a traveller through time. It is quite a large specimen nearly big as we are we think it would be quite long if unfolded but it has always been seated sideways in its nest of brass and ivory, about to fall over, bare front paws grasping at the rods and dials it lives so slowly but must be breathing very fast because over the generations we have tracked several breaths in. And out. So. Very. Slowly. It has stood on the beach almost never moving flickering slightly for uncounted generations shellless meat out eyes bulging is it fear is it prurience is it shock is it a cardiac event we are uncertain and time will tell but so much time will pass in the telling that we will have quite forgotten the question this is our struggle. He is so almost but not quite palpable that our palps palpitate and it is said by old cracked shells that if we could only catch him tight in our pincers we could see such wonders as a yellow sun, a blue sky, the small old moon that was lost. Still he lives one second at a time, as we do. We study him in his stillness and understand his project, his yearning for a solved future, a future past the struggle, a future in which the revolution has already been carcinized. He wishes to skip past the difficult part, to fast-forward the boring bits, to sidestep history and arrive in the golden city, fully automated and luxurious. But see him grimace frozen as history passes without him, a self-fulfilling failure for the rat era. We who have studied their fossil leavings and understood something of their symbology slowly over the generations we decide to raise a massive construction into orbit, an icon we think he can\u2019t miss and might be able to read, so that he might see it overhead down the aeons and know that we understood what he was looking for, and that it was to be found here among us. 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Wells \u201cI stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue. All trace of the moon had vanished. The machine was standing on a sloping beach. Quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me, a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as a table, legs moving slowly and uncertainly, big claws swaying, its long antenn\u00e6 like carters\u2019 whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and blotched with greenish incrustations. The many palps of its complicated mouth flickered and felt as it moved. With a frightful qualm, I turned and saw another monster crab just behind me, its mouth all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed months between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green. I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. I moved on centuries, and there was the same red sun, the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.\u201d # This is our struggle. We scuttle on the sand before the softly breathing salt-burdened sea with the lichen on the rocks a bright poison green and great white butterflies screaming under a red sky while we dream of justice and watch the ghost of a long-extinct rat ancestor, an ancestrat if you please, you know the ones we mean, the toothy ones who built dams to block the rivers, the handsy ones who built towers to block the skies, and choked on their own leavings. The ancestrat is a traveller through time. It is quite a large specimen nearly big as we are we think it would be quite long if unfolded but it has always been seated sideways in its nest of brass and ivory, about to fall over, bare front paws grasping at the rods and dials it lives so slowly but must be breathing very fast because over the generations we have tracked several breaths in. And out. So. Very. Slowly. It has stood on the beach almost never moving flickering slightly for uncounted generations shellless meat out eyes bulging is it fear is it prurience is it shock is it a cardiac event we are uncertain and time will tell but so much time will pass in the telling that we will have quite forgotten the question this is our struggle. He is so almost but not quite palpable that our palps palpitate and it is said by old cracked shells that if we could only catch him tight in our pincers we could see such wonders as a yellow sun, a blue sky, the small old moon that was lost. Still he lives one second at a time, as we do. We study him in his stillness and understand his project, his yearning for a solved future, a future past the struggle, a future in which the revolution has already been carcinized. He wishes to skip past the difficult part, to fast-forward the boring bits, to sidestep history and arrive in the golden city, fully automated and luxurious. But see him grimace frozen as history passes without him, a self-fulfilling failure for the rat era. We who have studied their fossil leavings and understood something of their symbology slowly over the generations we decide to raise a massive construction into orbit, an icon we think he can\u2019t miss and might be able to read, so that he might see it overhead down the aeons and know that we understood what he was looking for, and that it was to be found here among us. But he accelerated in his journey and moved on into a dead future before we had raised more than the sickle into the sky."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/the-age-of-cancer\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Age of Cancer"}]},{"@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\/3e43350e530d16b70f75ee8d1d26852b","name":"John Joseph Adams","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/acd5290958dfdb1b9c38ff39759edc400c8692e57bda44db0c44715a20e597d5?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/acd5290958dfdb1b9c38ff39759edc400c8692e57bda44db0c44715a20e597d5?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/acd5290958dfdb1b9c38ff39759edc400c8692e57bda44db0c44715a20e597d5?s=96&d=monsterid&r=pg","caption":"John Joseph Adams"},"url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/author\/jjadams\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36335","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\/567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36335"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36987,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36335\/revisions\/36987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":36498,"date":"2026-08-06T03:05:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36498"},"modified":"2026-07-30T21:15:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:15:28","slug":"editorial-august-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/editorial-august-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: August 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to issue 195 of <i>Lightspeed Magazine<\/i>!<\/p>\n<p>Did you know that August 30<sup>th<\/sup> is Mary Shelley\u2019s 229<sup>th<\/sup> birthday? So it seems appropriate that this month, our science fiction is centered around the difficult relationships between creators and the created. A.M. Maris kicks off the month with a story of a bioengineered organism\u2014the eponymous \u201cLegs.\u201d In \u201cLadd\u2019s Robot Repair,\u201d David Anaxagoras spins us into a gritty cyberpunk future built on the salvaged ruins of our current civilization, featuring a cast of intriguing robotic characters. We also have two terrific flash pieces: \u201cWhat Do You Mean the Nanobots Formed a Union??\u201d from Joel W.D. Buxton and \u201cThe Age of Cancer\u201d by Vajra Chandrasekera.<\/p>\n<p>Adelehin Ijasan sticks to the theme with the new fantasy short \u201cOf All Who Dream,\u201d about a man looking to create a god\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. with the help of his magically trained grandmother. In \u201cFragments of the Whole,\u201d Brooke Bolander explores a fantastical inner terrain and its inhabitants. We also have a flash story (\u201cInfinite Wishes\u201d) from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and another (\u201cThe Goddess of Not Enough\u201d) from Susan Palwick.<\/p>\n<p>Our nonfiction includes our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with book reviews from our terrific review team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be sure to check out the editorial for a rundown of this month\u2019s content!<\/span><\/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":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-nonfiction","section-from-the-editor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - 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The air smelled of roses and lavender and pine. Tiny white sparks, like fireflies, floated upward, almost as if they were watching her.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy she had trapped sat on a flat stone at the edge of the pond, just out of arm\u2019s reach. She was small, but not tiny, not like the sparks. Still, Rachel\u2019s Siamese cat could have eaten the fairy, if Rachel\u2019s cat had come along. She could almost imagine the fairy dangling out of the cat\u2019s mouth, slender arms above her head, black hair flowing downward, wings crushed in the cat\u2019s teeth, legs curved awkwardly.<\/p>\n<p>Most people wouldn\u2019t have even noticed the fairy, but Rachel had trained herself to do so. Just like she had trained herself to locate hidden glens filled with magic.<\/p>\n<p>She was determined\u2014or crazy, as her ex would have said.<\/p>\n<p>She should be elated. She was on the cusp of making her third wish, and she knew what to ask for. She had planned out all three wishes years ago, when she started on this quest. She had even memorized decision trees\u2014if the fairy couldn\u2019t grant Wish A, then pivot to Wish K, and hope that Wish B was still possible.<\/p>\n<p>Wish C was always, always, a wish for more wishes, just like in the fairy tales and the books and the movies. She actually thought it might work.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy\u2019s greenish-gold eyes had shadows underneath them. Her pointed chin wobbled, almost like she was holding back tears.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy had been quite talkative in the beginning\u2014after kicking and screaming and biting and demanding to be let go.<\/p>\n<p><i>I can\u2019t grant world peace<\/i>, the fairy had said in a very dry voice. <i>I can\u2019t change timelines and make evil dictators disappear. I can\u2019t even stop a massive drought. I don\u2019t have the powers for that. I can grant<\/i> personal <i>wishes, things that are important to<\/i> you<i>, and that\u2019s it<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel almost argued\u2014after all, wasn\u2019t world peace personal? Who wanted to live in a war-torn country?\u2014but she didn\u2019t. She\u2019d read all the books and manuals and theories that she could find, and they all warned about careless words, especially the use of the word \u201cwish\u201d casually, as in <i>I wish you would change your mind<\/i>. Even <i>I hope<\/i> was dangerous, because it might be misconstrued.<\/p>\n<p>Fairies were tricky, after all.<\/p>\n<p>So, Rachel made her first wish, the wish that had sent her on this quest. She wished that her little brother Ryan could walk again. She was the one who had shattered his spine when she was four and he was two. She had shoved him, and he rolled down a flight of stairs. They were lucky, the EMTs had said, that he hadn\u2019t been killed. But he was never going to walk.<\/p>\n<p>She got instant confirmation from her friend Candace, who was just outside the glen, near a dirt road in a Michigan backwater where they\u2019d heard that fairies had been sighted. Candace texted !!! which meant not only could he walk, but that he was actually doing it.<\/p>\n<p>The second wish was more nuanced. Rachel wished that his life would be as good or better than it had been before\u2014not in riches or wealth, but in friends and love.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy had looked at her then with a tiny frown, and said, <i>You know your friend Candace can\u2019t confirm this one. You\u2019ll have to trust me<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel had nodded.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the all-important third wish. More wishes, more healing for friends and family, more improvements to the community. All things Rachel could do with unlimited wish power, provided she didn\u2019t make a verbal mistake.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy watched her, waiting, wings trembling. The fairy wasn\u2019t saying anything, no warnings, nothing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou seem young,\u201d Rachel said, and silently cursed herself. Talking was her problem, always being interested in others, figuring out what they needed. She shouldn\u2019t do that here, but she couldn\u2019t take her words back.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not supposed to get caught,\u201d the fairy said. \u201cThe wishes are a punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPunishment?\u201d Rachel asked before she could stop herself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey drain our magic, take away a bit of our lives. It\u2019s supposed to make us more cautious, and maybe that\u2019ll work.\u201d The fairy kept her chin raised, even as she sounded doubtful.<\/p>\n<p>This was probably fairy manipulation, but it was good manipulation. It preyed on Rachel\u2019s sense of innate fairness. After all, what had she done? She had captured someone and forced them to do her bidding. That made her the bad guy here.<\/p>\n<p>Her breath caught. The fairy had already warned her that wishes couldn\u2019t be reversed.<\/p>\n<p>If Rachel made a wish for infinite wishes, would it kill the fairy and if so, would another fairy have to take over?<\/p>\n<p>The air felt warmer, almost moist, and there seemed to be more tiny light things floating upward. Were they waiting to see what Rachel wished for? Or what would happen to the fairy before her?<\/p>\n<p>Rachel sighed. Infinite wishes sounded wonderful, but she would always wonder what the toll had been on this fairy. Maybe that was why fairies were traveling in clumps, moving to unlikely places, always on the move. Because if they got caught . . .<\/p>\n<p>Rachel couldn\u2019t do it. She wasn\u2019t the right kind of greedy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wish . . .\u201d she said, knowing that this was it, the choice that she had thought about since she was six and learned about wish magic. \u201c. . . that no one punishes you for being captured. It\u2019s not your fault. It\u2019s mine, and you don\u2019t deserve to suffer for keeping your end of a bad bargain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fairy raised her tiny head. Her hair curled around her face, making her look impossibly old.<\/p>\n<p>This was where the fairies in the fairy tales became something other\u2014an ogre, a witch, a malevolent being. But this fairy smiled, and became the prettiest thing Rachel had ever seen.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy rose and flew directly at Rachel\u2019s face. Rachel didn\u2019t flinch, even though she wanted to.<\/p>\n<p>The fairy kissed Rachel\u2019s forehead, and then flew backwards, wings curving inward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re a good soul,\u201d the fairy said, her words visible, gold and sparkling. \u201cMay you be forever blessed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then the fairy vanished, along with the glen.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel was sitting near a puddle near a ditch at an intersection not far from what remained of the forest. Construction equipment was poised to do more damage, but no one manned it.<\/p>\n<p>Candace sat on the bumper of her Volkswagen Bug, holding her phone, mouth agape.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happened to the glen?\u201d she asked. She hadn\u2019t been able to go inside\u2014it wasn\u2019t big enough for two humans, and she said she didn\u2019t want to anyway\u2014but she had seen it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI guess they moved it,\u201d Rachel said.<\/p>\n<p>She stood up. The air smelled of exhaust. The water in the puddle was covered in oil. She wiped her hands on her jeans, almost wishing\u2014and then stopping herself from making it formal\u2014for the smell of roses and lavender and pine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re sure Ryan\u2019s walking?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, yeah,\u201d Candace said. \u201cSocials are calling it a miracle. He has an appointment with his doctor, and he\u2019s going to get in immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnother miracle,\u201d Rachel said drily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat else did you wish for?\u201d Candace asked.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel shook her head. \u201cIt\u2019s complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI figured,\u201d Candace said. \u201cYou\u2019re so courageous, going up against that kind of magic.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not courageous. Desperate. Her brother had been sickly all his life. Something had gone wrong in that fall, something serious. So even though his attitude was good, and he knew how to handle his chair and he\u2019d become an advocate for folks like him, he wasn\u2019t going to get the kind of full life most people got. Now, the docs said he only had a year or two left.<\/p>\n<p>She hoped she had healed it all, and maybe expiated some of her own guilt. Maybe she could forgive her four-year-old self for being four and giggly, pushing at her little brother in play, not seeing the stairs.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>But that guilt had gotten her here, maybe made things better, allowed her to see magic, if only for an afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou all right?\u201d Candace asked, frowning.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel nodded, and stood up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know you have a little gold star in the middle of your forehead,\u201d Candace said.<\/p>\n<p>Rachel put her hand up. She could feel the star right where the fairy had kissed her.<\/p>\n<p>A gold star for being good. Something her four-year-old self could appreciate.<\/p>\n<p>She giggled, sounding almost childlike.<\/p>\n<p>Candace raised her eyebrows. She had clearly never heard Rachel do that before.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMission accomplished, I guess,\u201d Rachel said, feeling a tiny bubble of joy rise inside her.<\/p>\n<p>Just enough to make her feel better. To make her feel like she could hold on to a little bit of magic, for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rachel sat at the edge of the sparkling pond in the secluded glen that had taken her five years to find. The air smelled of roses and lavender and pine. Tiny white sparks, like fireflies, floated upward, almost as if they were watching her.<\/p>\n<p> <\/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-36486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","category-flash-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>Infinite Wishes - 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\/infinite-wishes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Infinite Wishes - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Rachel sat at the edge of the sparkling pond in the secluded glen that had taken her five years to find. 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Maris"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"question\">Welcome to Lightspeed Magazine! We\u2019re so happy to have \u201cLegs\u201d as one of the science fiction stories for this month. Can you tell us about what inspired you to write this story?<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking about power dynamics, and about a Tamsyn Muir story that appeared in Lightspeed in 2017. It\u2019s called \u201cThe Magician\u2019s Apprentice,\u201d and it follows a young girl, Cherry, as she learns how to work magic. I was intrigued and distressed by the extreme power imbalance between Cherry and her teacher, a much older man with a secret about where his magic really comes from. At the end of Muir\u2019s story, Cherry learns the secret and chooses to accept it, to embrace the nasty roots of magic. But, I found myself wondering, how much of a choice did Cherry really have? Completely isolated from her friends and family, living in a world where her teacher exercises absolute control, how could she have chosen otherwise?<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to write a story about a character participating in some type of ritualistic practice, in a world where she\u2019s not only doing so entirely against her will, but the concept of her even possessing a will at all is inconceivable to the people in charge. What sort of wiggle room is there in this existence for joy, or novelty, or redemption?<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Perspective plays such a vital role in this piece\u2014what drew you to telling this story from Legs\u2019s point of view?<\/p>\n<p>Muir is one of my favorite writers, and one thing she does that I\u2019m continually impressed by is write from the perspective of a character with no idea what\u2019s going on around her. Sometimes her characters choose to not be interested in very important things; other times they are incapable of seeing the bigger picture for various reasons. It\u2019s hilarious and devastating by turns to realize what is being said in the periphery, how much it matters in the world of the story, and why certain characters can\u2019t or won\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n<p>I was also thinking of Marlon James\u2019s Dark Star Trilogy, in which each book retells the same events from a different character\u2019s perspective, and how drastically my understanding of what happened shifted between tellings.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cLegs,\u201d I wanted the slow creep of realization that the idyll presented in the opening paragraphs isn\u2019t actually what\u2019s happening at all. Once you realize how much of a shithead Dennis is, Legs\u2019s resilience becomes (hopefully) even more bittersweet. I also wanted the challenge of writing from a perspective with a very limited understanding of the world at large.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Do you believe cycles of abuse can be broken?<\/p>\n<p>I think we have to differentiate between interpersonal abusive relationships and institutional systems of abuse. Dennis, for example\u2014he\u2019s a guy who believes that the world owes him whatever he wants. I don\u2019t think Dennis as a person is exceedingly capable of change. But we also have to think about why Dennis is the way he is\u2014what values were taught to him about gender, ethics, and accruing capital? How is his behavior positively reinforced by his community? When the system benefits him, why would he think about alternatives? And if the system were very different\u2014if, for example, we valued things like people\u2019s lives instead of shareholder value\u2014what might Dennis be like?<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">What do you aim to explore through the connection between human beings and their pets?<\/p>\n<p>Aside from young children, pets might be the singular group in our society with the least amount of power. There is also less of a social incentive to \u201cinvest\u201d in your pets. Their existence is entirely at our mercy. Pets, maybe, should hate us. But instead, they love us unconditionally. It\u2019s beautiful, and terrifying. You\u2019re telling me that my dog, who is right now sitting at my feet asking to go for a walk, was once a wolf who had to kill something if she wanted to eat? My sweet darling dog would one hundred percent starve.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\">Is there a project you are currently working on? And if not are there any themes, objects, or news that might be tickling your fingers?<\/p>\n<p>I am working on too many projects! Lots of short stories are in the editing stage right now. I write a lot about bodies, and how horrible it is to have one. Speaking of, I\u2019m writing a series of personal essays about living with chronic pain and chronic illness (these may never see the light of day). My novel and I are feuding.<\/p>\n<p>I have a story coming out in Apex this month (it might already be out!). If you liked \u201cLegs,\u201d go check it out. It\u2019s also about abuse, which is funny, because I write about a lot of other things that aren\u2019t abuse, I swear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was thinking about power dynamics, and about a Tamsyn Muir story that appeared in Lightspeed in 2017. It\u2019s called \u201cThe Magician\u2019s Apprentice,\u201d and it follows a young girl, Cherry, as she learns how to work magic. I was intrigued and distressed by the extreme power imbalance between Cherry and her teacher, a much older man with a secret about where his magic really comes from.<\/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-36455","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: A.M. 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I was intrigued and distressed by the extreme power imbalance between Cherry and her teacher, a much older man with a secret about where his magic really comes from.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/author-spotlight-a-m-maris\/","og_site_name":"Lightspeed Magazine","article_published_time":"2026-08-06T10:02:09+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/LS-default-embed-graphic.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Leigh DeRouen","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/author-spotlight-a-m-maris\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/nonfiction\/author-spotlight-a-m-maris\/"},"author":{"name":"Leigh DeRouen","@id":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c9239086e47db7180090b8afd674bdf0"},"headline":"Author Spotlight: A.M. 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Maris"}]},{"@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\/36455","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=36455"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36492,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36455\/revisions\/36492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":36454,"date":"2026-08-06T03:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T10:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/?p=36454"},"modified":"2026-09-15T17:44:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:44:44","slug":"legs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lightspeedmagazine.com\/fiction\/legs\/","title":{"rendered":"Legs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He called her Legs. \u201cLegs for days,\u201d he\u2019d say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be careful when she did, because she was still growing into her spikes and she\u2019d already drawn blood more than once. His skin was so flimsy, so tearable. She marveled he didn\u2019t end up a shredded mess just from going about his days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut that\u2019s what you\u2019re for,\u201d he said, recovering from his momentary flare of anger at being nicked. \u201cTo protect me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>He called her other things, too. Legolas. Leggo My Eggo. Leg Cramp, if she was being obnoxious, which she often was. In her defense, she was little more than a toddler trying to get the hang of her many-legged body. She seemed to sprout new limbs every week or so. He kept a log of her milestones in a grid-block notebook, recording the date and measurements of budding appendages, lengthening tails, sharpening spikes, the coloring and roughening of her hide.<\/p>\n<p>At six months old, she\u2019d grown into her body. She didn\u2019t trip so often over her string bean, seven-jointed legs. She no longer accidentally impaled things with her spikes or urinated on the carpet. For a while, she was very good, and he was proud of her goodness, and she was proud of his pride.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>He brought her around to show off to his friends. She was so eager to impress them, she did everything they asked: jump, bow, roll over, stick out your tongue. Some acidic drool got onto one of the hands poking around in her mouth, burning through the glove. (She\u2019d just come into her salivary glands.) The owner of the hand howled and leapt away, shouting obscenities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re sulking, aren\u2019t you?\u201d her keeper said on the way home.<\/p>\n<p>She couldn\u2019t speak in the way he did, but he could always tell what she was thinking. She didn\u2019t like being touched so much, at least not by strangers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d he said, rubbing her head. \u201cThat idiot shouldn\u2019t have stuck his hand so far into your mouth. And they all agree, you\u2019re beautiful. The most impressive mongrel they\u2019ve seen in ages.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She unfurled under his praise, leaning into him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, Legs,\u201d he said, \u201cyou miracle, you freak of nature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Legs was unsure of her origins. She heard him say she was grown in something called a lab, which\u2014she was less than pleased to deduce\u2014was a kind of dog, those horrid, furry, four-legged things she encountered on walks. She didn\u2019t understand how she could come from something so stupid, and with such few legs. Dogs seemed to have two brain cells, one for peeing and one for barking. They usually did both when they saw her.<\/p>\n<p>She once witnessed a dog eat a literal piece of garbage. She growled and raised her hackles, letting it know she was offended and astonished they shared even one strand of DNA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEasy, Legs,\u201d said her keeper, as the dog went berserk. \u201cYou could kill him in one bite. Mangy ass lab.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So this, then, was her pathetic lineage. She felt a deep thrum of shame, but he assuaged her mood by reminding her how smart, beautiful, and capable of murder she was.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Still in her adolescence, exhausted from all the growing, she\u2019d sleep for most of the afternoon, until he came home. His arrival was the best part of the day, when he squatted and let her wriggle excitedly in his lap (she had grown hard keratin plating behind which she could conceal her spikes, almost always at will). The scent of him filled her nostrils, her very being. She purred so hard she thought her vocal cords would seize.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy beauty,\u201d he said, scratching the soft innards of her ears. \u201cMy smart, smart girl. We\u2019re going to go far, you and I.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then came the second-best part of the day, when they went out for a walk or a drive. She preferred drives. She hung her head out the window, lapping at the air, tongues lolling in the summer wind. On walks, he tethered her with a cord, which was worse to navigate than a new limb because she couldn\u2019t even feel it. She was always getting tangled in the cord, and her lack of coordination made him angry. Otherwise, walks were delightful. Everything on two legs crossed the street and everything on four legs barked like crazy. The smells were excellent.<\/p>\n<p>The bigger she grew, the less often they walked around the neighborhood and the more often they drove to a wide, open field. She loved its vast emptiness. She could almost recreate the face-in-the-breeze feeling by running as fast as she could, although he got angry if she did too much running and not enough of something else. She was never quite sure what the something else was. He yelled \u201cDefensive shield!\u201d and \u201cSpikes out!\u201d and threw tennis balls for her to catch in the air. He was always changing what he wanted. If she couldn\u2019t manage to produce his desired outcome, he\u2019d get upset, which was terrible, and she\u2019d get a shock from her collar, which was worse.<\/p>\n<p>The third-best part of the day, which was rapidly becoming the new second-best part, was dinner. He fed her new, thrilling foods: spider crabs, bats, live snakes with delicious, crunchy mice in their bellies.<\/p>\n<p>After dinner, she lay at his feet while he watched TV. She was usually too sleepy to enjoy the evenings very much. She disliked the TV shows he watched, where people put their bodies together and made sounds like they were being injured. She had the vague impression they were ashamed of how few legs they had, that by combining their bodies they could exorcise this wrongness, this absence. It made her sad in a small, hollow way, because <i>his<\/i> two legs were muscly and beautiful, and he needn\u2019t be ashamed. If he was, she\u2019d give him one or two or three of her own. She tried to fall asleep very quickly, so he wouldn\u2019t notice how sad she was and think it had anything to do with him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>One morning, she was left unsupervised in the backyard. It was autumn now, cool enough to be outside, but he\u2019d forgotten to feed her breakfast. She waited to be let in, whining and pacing by the door, her hunger approaching ravenous levels. As the sun crested the roof of the house, she realized he must have left for the day.<\/p>\n<p>The neighbor\u2019s chickens clucked and rustled in the next yard over. Legs hated chicken\u2014too lean, more slimy than bloody\u2014though as the hours passed, her need for food eclipsed all previous distaste. She tore apart the chain-link fence and feasted for several glorious, feather-filled minutes until the neighbor came out screaming. She was startled, then guilty, then afraid. The neighbor raised a gun and shot her several times. The bullets bounced off her plated armor. \u201cJesus fucking Christ!\u201d yelled the neighbor.<\/p>\n<p>She didn\u2019t know what to do. When she couldn\u2019t figure out a command in the field, her keeper called her to heel (she was very proud of her recall) and she lay at his feet while he kicked her. After he cooled off, his next instructions were usually clearer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDennis!\u201d the neighbor shrieked as Legs came toward the house, \u201cDennis, your science experiment is going to kill me!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So his name was Dennis. Her master, her diviner. What a marvelous, perfect name! She couldn\u2019t believe she was hearing it for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>The neighbor took careful aim and shot her again. The bullet pierced the soft skin beneath her throat. She collapsed in the dirt with chicken gristle still in her teeth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Dennis raged and threw things at the walls. He didn\u2019t touch her\u2014she was recovering from surgery, her throat itched terribly and all nineteen of her legs were encased in cloth so she couldn\u2019t scratch it, and also she was extremely woozy\u2014but she wished he would. She deserved it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can <i>never<\/i> do something like that again, do you understand me?\u201d he shouted. \u201cYou could hurt someone. They\u2019ll take you away from me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Legs whined in her nest, her cloth-swaddled limbs jerking lethargically.<\/p>\n<p>One of her first memories was of shredding Dennis\u2019s linens to make a nest, and of the chill silence that came over him when he saw it. She understood instantly she\u2019d done something wrong. He called her to him, soft-spoken yet firm. Once she was at his feet, he hit her over the head with a kitchen pot. The metal dented against her armor. He shouted, flinging the pot across the room, impotent in his anger. He hit her with an iron wrench until she lay whimpering, too afraid to move. After the beating he stood over her in a state of shock. At length he knelt, touching her head. She nuzzled him in relief. It was okay, they were still learning how to talk to each other. He bought new linens and she kept the ruined ones for her nest.<\/p>\n<p>Now as before, Dennis wore himself out. He sank to his knees, his eyes wet and unfocused. He lay his head against her belly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, my sweet, hurt girl,\u201d he mumbled into her leathery hide. \u201cLegs, I\u2019m so sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>A few months after the chicken massacre, Legs succumbed to puberty. Puberty was nothing short of hell. She would be going about her day, sniffing in the yard or grooming herself or taking a nap, when some animal urge would flood her brain, and her traitor body would carry it out. Run around! said her brain, and she scampered for hours about the house, scuffing the already-scuffed floors, until her brain said, Sleep! and she fell, snoring, into her nest. One day, seized by the urge to chew, she stripped the living room couch to its wooden bones, gnawing until her gums filled with splinters. Dennis put her in a cage when he left the next day. Escape! ordered her brain, affronted, so she chewed through the cage. Dennis found her hours later in the yard, doing Run! again.<\/p>\n<p>Fuck! said her brain. She vigorously and assiduously humped everything she could possibly hump, including Dennis\u2019s sleeping body. The sound he made when he woke beneath her frightened her so much she peed, even though she hadn\u2019t had an accident in months. She scuttled to the living room, cowering in her nest, trying to say she was sorry before he started in on the hitting. Seeing his figure backlit in the doorway, she laid an egg out of fright.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHuh,\u201d Dennis said. \u201cThat\u2019s interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Dennis announced she was going to have a playdate. This was cause for great celebration, and she dashed about the house like she hadn\u2019t since her puberty days. Dennis didn\u2019t share her enthusiasm. He was nervous, on edge. In the car, he put her in a cage draped with cloth, which he told her in no uncertain terms not to shred.<\/p>\n<p>She was carsick on the way to the playdate and nervous from being carsick. Dennis was too distracted to be mad about the vomit. He put the tether on her, even though they were inside, in a parking garage. He put more horrible cloth over her snout, avoiding her eyes as he did so.<\/p>\n<p>They got into an elevator, descending deep below the garage. Some of Dennis\u2019s friends greeted them at the doors. She recognized them from all those months ago. She thumped her tails, trying to lick them, tasting only the dreadful cloth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRestrain your mutt, sir,\u201d snapped the one whose hand she\u2019d burned.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis dragged her bodily into the room. It was full of people, and movement, and overwhelming smells.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLegs, listen to me.\u201d He crouched before her, cupping her head in his hands. She managed, just barely, to focus on him. \u201cThe other mongrel will try to kill you. You can\u2019t let that happen.\u201d He gripped her head tighter. \u201cDo you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She didn\u2019t. Dennis pulled her into another room, removed the tether and muzzle. The smells were hot and rank, blood and adrenaline. She didn\u2019t like this playdate. She wanted to go home.<\/p>\n<p>A door opened at the far end of the antechamber. Something massive and saber-toothed screeched on the other side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Legs won the fight. She won because she had to, but it wasn\u2019t hard. She was good at engaging her armor when a blow was coming and retracting her plates to hit the tiger with her spikes. And dodging her opponent\u2019s poison spit was similar to catching balls in the air.<\/p>\n<p>She hadn\u2019t wanted to kill anything, even though the chemical rush of her final bite to the jugular was nice, a startling clarity. She sat licking her wounds next to the mongrel\u2019s corpse. All at once the smell of death caught up to her, the ancestral knowledge that she killed this animal and now would eat it. There was no conscious thought between her realization and the act of eating. She leaned over, burying her jaws in a hunk of shoulder. People yelled in disgust and delight.<\/p>\n<p>The look on Dennis\u2019s face when he came to retrieve her was pure reverence. He hugged her, skinning himself against the grain of her hide. \u201cYou did it,\u201d he said thickly. Tears streaked his cheeks. \u201cLegs, you were brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The fights occurred irregularly, every few months. The more fights she had (Dennis insisted on calling them playdates, and he also insisted on saying things like \u201cIs this line secure?\u201d when discussing said playdates), the less she got to go to the field, or on drives for the sake of going on drives. She began to dread the car, the cage, and being covered in cloth. Worst were the injections Dennis gave her, which predated the fights by several days and made her even more ill than being carsick. Inoculations, he said. He rubbed her neck after every shot. His touch did little for the nausea and everything for her heart.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>There was a new person in Legs\u2019s life. Her name was Amelia, and Legs hated her. Her smell was all wrong, artificially floral, tainting the familiar scents of the doorknob, the TV remote, the toilet paper. Dennis acted strange around Amelia, trying to seem relaxed. Legs could tell he was tense from the way he kept scratching the back of his head. She whined and padded at his heel as he moved from the kitchen to the living room, bringing Amelia a margarita.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan you tell that thing to go away?\u201d said Amelia, eyeing Legs with distaste.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHush, Legs,\u201d Dennis said traitorously. \u201cGo lie down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dennis and Amelia went into the bedroom and shut the door. Legs paced the hallway, anxious, alone. It was too much, really: all the fights, the terrible car rides, being sick everywhere and never going outside, and now this new, floral-scented change. Sounds leaked from the bedroom, quiet grunts quickening into a strangled moaning. Finally Legs couldn\u2019t bear it any longer. She let her nausea coalesce into raw epinephrine, the way it did in the antechamber before a fight. She broke through the door and there was Dennis, lying atop Amelia, their four legs tangled in the sheets.<\/p>\n<p>She howled in dismay, groveling on the carpet. Amelia was hurting Dennis, taking advantage of his two-legged shame, and she, Legs, had failed to protect him. She jumped on the bed. Amelia screamed, flailing in the sheets. Dennis flung himself between them, wrestled Legs to the ground, and stuck her with a needle. She felt her muscles go numb.<\/p>\n<p>It was all going wrong, Legs thought with her head pressed against the shards of the door. The threat, the intruder into their peace, was on the other side of the bed, couldn\u2019t Dennis see? It had only ever been the two of them. Hadn\u2019t she been good? Hadn\u2019t her love been enough?<\/p>\n<p>After that, Amelia refused point-blank to come into the house if Legs was in it, so Legs began to spend a lot of time in the garage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>A year after the first fight, Dennis came home in a good mood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHappy birthday, Legs!\u201d He squatted down and let her rub against him like he used to do when she was little. \u201cI can\u2019t believe my little monster is two. Want to go for a drive?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They went for a drive in Dennis\u2019s new cherry-red convertible. The wind came from all directions. She couldn\u2019t get enough of it. He laughed at how her tongues lolled behind her like the ends of a scarf.<\/p>\n<p>They pulled into a gated estate far nicer than their own neighborhood. Dennis parked the convertible in the circle drive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome on, birthday girl. I have a surprise for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They went around the back of the house, through a gate humming with electricity. There was nothing, just grass and dirt and trees. Legs was confused until he said: \u201cTen acres. All for you. I figured you\u2019re tired of being cooped up in the garage.\u201d He grinned. Legs quivered with pleasure.<\/p>\n<p>The shade beneath the trees was full of sticks to chew and snakes to catch. Beyond the trees was a long, unbroken field. She sprinted ecstatically through the grass, leaping and pretending to catch a ball. This field was even better than the old one, because there was a slight hill on one end, and she could go <i>so fast<\/i> down it. Where was Dennis? Oh, he\u2019d be so pleased to see how fast she could go.<\/p>\n<p>When she came back to the gate, it was locked. Dennis and Amelia stood outside the enclosure, arguing. \u201c\u2014afford this?\u201d Amelia said. \u201c\u2014eggs?\u201d Amelia said.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis took her by the arm. \u201cOw, Dennis, Jesus,\u201d Amelia cried, jerking away. Dennis didn\u2019t let go. He brought her up the hill and into the new house without so much as a backwards glance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Amelia sometimes came down to the enclosure after a round of inoculations, when Legs was lethargic enough for her to feel safe. She threw mice through the fence. Legs hadn\u2019t liked mice since she was about four months old, but she understood it was a gesture of apology and ate them dutifully. They tasted ashy, fried from the electricity.<\/p>\n<p>Amelia didn\u2019t smell like herself anymore, jasminey and chemical. She smelled sad. She wore heavy, caked makeup and long sleeves even in the summer.<\/p>\n<p>When Legs was injured in one of her fights (three limbs amputated after being crushed in hippopotamus jaws), Amelia brought her a bucket of writhing snakes and changed her bandages. She knelt over Legs\u2019s body, making soothing sounds and scratching Legs\u2019s velvety ears.<\/p>\n<p>Legs couldn\u2019t help herself. She let out a little purr.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>Still she had not lost a fight, though she\u2019d come very close. She was in the major leagues now. Every match was more brutal than the last, every opponent more experienced and bloodthirsty. She was four when she skewered a giant beetle thing which, on death blow, burst apart into a hundred fang-toothed worms. The worms burrowed under her armor, into her flesh, heading straight for vital organs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFucking parasites,\u201d Dennis raged. \u201cThey won\u2019t call the fight until you\u2019re cleared of infection. Even if\u2014\u201d he paused, eyeing her. He swallowed. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to fight like hell, girl. I might have to split the pot.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>The worms would not clear. Legs was loopy with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and fever. They brought her into the house where they could keep an eye on her. There was blood in her urine, worms in her vomit. Amelia cleaned it all up while Dennis raved in the next room.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRetirement!\u201d he bellowed into the phone. \u201cI\u2019ll show you retirement!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Amelia wiped Legs\u2019s brow with a wet cloth, the first tolerable cloth she\u2019d encountered. There were deep bruises patterning Amelia\u2019s neck. Her eyes were yellow, her mouth thin and lined.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAmelia!\u201d Dennis said from the doorway, hand over the microphone. \u201cCover yourself!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s the point?\u201d she said viciously. \u201cI never leave the fucking house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUpstairs.\u201d Dennis glowered. \u201cNow.\u201d He looked at Legs, his gaze softening. Into the phone, he said, \u201cWe were never sure of the life span for something like her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>She didn\u2019t die, but she was never quite the same. Something funky had happened to her kidneys, and her vision intermittently blacked out like poor cell reception. If she ran for too long she got dizzy and fell over. \u201cYou will fight again,\u201d Dennis told her. \u201cYou <i>will<\/i>.\u201d But she wouldn\u2019t, and they both knew it. Dennis watched her failure with stony eyes. They moved her back into her enclosure. Amelia did not come down from the house.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>In winter, Legs experienced being cold. She\u2019d been cold before, though she\u2019d never been unable to warm up from the cold. She was fairly skeletal now. Nights were awful, spent shivering in a nest of dry leaves and bark. During the day, she lay out in the sun, moving every half-hour as shadows chased her across the yard. Snakes and lizards dozed with her. She had no energy to catch them anymore, and no desire to eat them.<\/p>\n<p>Amelia came to visit. She brought no food, no gifts of surrender, only one long, slender needle in her hand. Wary of the needle, Legs sheathed her spikes and rolled onto her back, tails thumping in the dirt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWant to go for a walk?\u201d said Amelia.<\/p>\n<p>Legs always wanted to go for a walk. They went through the trees, now bare and letting a lot of light through their branches, and into the field. Run! said her brain, and she gave in to the urge, running until she was overcome with joyous convulsions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, Legs,\u201d said Amelia. She was crying. \u201cHow did we get here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The seizure passed. Legs sat up. Amelia was next to her in the grass, rubbing her ears the way she liked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m afraid you\u2019re not long for this world, old girl,\u201d said Amelia. \u201cYou should experience freedom before you go. From him, from this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Legs was too busy purring to listen. She closed her eyes in the sun, leaned against Amelia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI left the gate open. My last gift to you, perfect girl, better than us all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was a grunt, a gasp, and her weight shifted. Legs opened her eyes to Amelia, keeled over on the ground, the needle protruding from her arm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"center\">\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n<p>She didn\u2019t mean to. She didn\u2019t even want to, but want had never held influence over her base instincts. Amelia\u2019s flesh was as weak as she always imagined human skin to be, pulpy and soft from the bruising. She nosed deeper, rooting for the kidneys. The squelch as she bit in, the rich iron flavor\u2014she was so involved in feeding that she didn\u2019t hear Dennis approach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLegs, NO!\u201d he roared, running out of the trees. \u201cDrop it!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She tensed, eyeing him even as her teeth still worried at Amelia\u2019s intestines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGet away from her!\u201d he screamed. He slowed as he neared the corpse, approaching with caution, a rifle aimed at Legs\u2019s head.<\/p>\n<p>She growled, bristling at the gun. Digestive juices dripped from her jaws.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDown, girl. I said <i>down<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She tore at Amelia\u2019s stomach, unable to stop gorging, never taking her eyes off him. He was fifty feet away, then thirty, then twenty. He wasn\u2019t a great shot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDamn it, Legs. You were never supposed to hurt anyone. If this is the pedigree, the eggs will be worthless.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He edged closer: the man who made her kill a hundred times over.<\/p>\n<p>The threat of the gun overcame, at such close proximity, the pleasure of eating Amelia\u2019s organs. She unsheathed her spikes, lowering her weight onto her haunches. Her tails twitched. She did not blink.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis paused. His expression flickered from disbelief to fear to revulsion to default rage. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t hurt me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wouldn\u2019t she? She loved him, his barely-managed temper, the intensity of his fury and his affection, loved him all the way down to his sad, shame-filled core, and people hurt the things they loved. He had taught her that. Amelia, lying on the ground with her innards all over the grass, was dead because of it.<\/p>\n<p>She lunged. The rifle went off with a loud crack. Legs was knocked out of the air and landed hard on her side, bleeding from the throat. She hissed in anger and pain, rightening herself with flailing tails. Three staggering steps and Dennis shot her again. Blood seeped from her neck. She tried to growl, managing only a wet gurgling. Her legs seized and gave out.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis stood over her, still holding the rifle. He didn\u2019t look angry anymore, only stunned. He tilted her chin back with his foot.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBad girl,\u201d he said, but it sounded like <i>I love you<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He called her Legs. \u201cLegs for days,\u201d he\u2019d say, his voice thick with wonder. When he spoke to her, she was filled with a warm, heady feeling that made her purr and rub against him. She had to be careful when she did, because she was still growing into her spikes and she\u2019d already drawn blood more than once. His skin was so flimsy, so tearable. She marveled he didn\u2019t end up a shredded mess just from going about his days.<\/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-36454","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>Legs - 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\/legs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Legs - Lightspeed Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"He called her Legs. \u201cLegs for days,\u201d he\u2019d say, his voice thick with wonder. 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