"Scarlet and Mustard"

SCARLET AND MUSTARD
By Curtis C. Chen

"That's Morse Code," Samantha said.

Leon squinted at her. "The fuck is More's Code?"

"Morse Code," Samantha repeated. "Samuel Morse." Leon shrugged. "American inventor? Mid-nineteenth century? Telegraph?"

"Funny, those combinations of syllables all sound like words," Leon said, "but they don't actually make any sense. Are you sure you don't have a concussion?"

Samantha shook her head. "Your concern is touching. Hand me that tab."

Leon turned, grabbed a dusty touchglass tablet off the table, and passed it to Samantha. While she tapped and swiped on the device, he checked the load on his rifle again, then sat down at the next window over and peered through the mud-streaked polycarbonate.

"So you're saying that's an old ship," he said.

"Shut up and let me finish this."

"Hey, you're the one who brought it up. Nineteenth century, that's the 1800s, right?"

Samantha lowered the tab. "We weren't building interstellar spacecraft in the 1800s, Leon. A lot of fleets still use Morse for emergency signaling. It's well-known, it's reliable."

"So it's just a blinking light?"

"Light or sound. Different combinations of long and short pulses; each combination represents a letter of the alphabet. Short, then long, is 'A,' long-short-short-short is 'B'—"

"Okay, I don't need the whole textbook," Leon said. "What are they saying?"

"Well, so far I've got A-Y-I-N-F-E."

Leon frowned. "That Swahili or something?"

"It's not the whole message," Samantha said. "Can I get back to this, please?"

Leon grunted and looked around the bunker. He started to ask Samantha if she was also getting hungry, then thought better of it. She got in a real mood if you interrupted her too much.

They'd barricaded themselves in here three days ago, after the rest of their landing party had been killed by the creatures outside. A gale-force thunderstorm two days ago had driven the beasts away, but also cleared most of the foliage that had provided cover for their earlier retreat.

Yesterday, while Leon and Samantha were enjoying the last of their field rations, this new ship had crashed into the runway between the bunker and the forest. Nobody had emerged from the spacecraft, but its automated distress beacon was transmitting, and the datastream insisted that eleven crew were still alive.

"That's weird," Samantha muttered.

Leon leaned over. "You got the message?"

"I think so. Checked it twice. It's just three words, in a loop: STAY AWAY INFECTED." She held up the tab for him to see, dots and dashes alongside capital letters. "But that doesn't make any sense. Zombies can't even talk, much less read Morse Code. Why go to the trouble of transmitting a message telling them to stay away?"

A chill ran down Leon's spine. "You got it backwards."

"Backwards?" Samantha pulled the tab back, close to her face. "But it doesn't spell anything the other way—"

"No." Leon looked out the window. The rain had stopped. The creatures would be back soon, sniffing around for prey. "It's two sentences. 'INFECTED. STAY AWAY.'"



Image: Miss Scarlett by Christian Brady, April, 2008

"Bayla Changes Her Tune"

BAYLA CHANGES HER TUNE
By Curtis C. Chen

"Bayla! Bayla! Bayla!"

Bayla Rodrigues did her best to ignore her younger brother, sitting on the front porch of their house, eyes closed, earbuds in. She could hear Jasper's footsteps approaching over the sounds of They Might Be Giants.

"Bayla! Can you hear me? Bayla! Look! Bayla!"

Bayla sighed. Jasper stood behind her now, bouncing and rattling the floorboards. Bayla pulled out one earbud and looked at him.

"What?" she said.

Jasper held out a glass jar. "Look!"

A small, black-and-yellow shape buzzed around inside the jar, bouncing off the glass. Bayla made a face.

"Is that a bug?"

"It's a wasp!" Jasper declared, hoisting the jar aloft in triumph. "I found it in the kitchen!"

"Does Mom know?"

Jasper's manic grin dimmed, and he lowered his arms. "She's in the office."

"That would be a no. You'd better go tell her. If there's a nest right outside the window or something—"

"Right! I'll tell her!" Jasper ran down the steps and disappeared around the side of the house.

Bayla put her earbuds back in. "Gonna be a long summer," she muttered, and popped her chewing gum.

From the porch, she could see from Lake Burrell all the way to the main lodge. In the middle was a large clearing, which had been an open field until last spring, when her parents had decided to expand their hotel to include a number of free-standing cabins which would also be used for a kids' summer camp.

To be fair, the summer camp idea hadn't come up until the open house event, when Bayla's math teacher, Mr. Malena, had mentioned that Camp Washakie on the east side of the lake was shutting down due to some kind of EPA notice.

Despite Bayla's repeated and vocal protests, her parents had been dead set on opening a new summer camp, and the local community was disappointingly supportive. Jasper actually welcomed the encroachment of other children, but Bayla was not looking forward to an entire summer surrounded by noisy grade schoolers.

She watched as one of the bellhops put up a sign pointing the way to summer camp registration. The staff had been setting up all morning, which also meant that Bayla's parents had been running around and had no time to spend with her.

Her earbuds went silent. Bayla had already listened to this album three times today. She pulled out her earbuds, picked up the paperback book on the porch next to her, and opened it.

"Hello?" said an unfamiliar voice.

Bayla looked up and saw the most beautiful teenage boy she'd ever seen. He carried a zebra-print duffel bag in one hand and had a leather jacket slung over his other shoulder. He wore dusty boots, dark jeans, and a "Skullcrusher Mountain" T-shirt.

"Hello," Bayla replied.

The boy looked around the porch. "Is this the summer camp?"

"It's, uh, right behind you."

He looked back, nodded, and smiled at her. "Cool. Thanks."

Bayla watched the boy walk away and realized that she had accidentally swallowed her gum.



Image: "that old view" by Rob Pringle, July, 2010

"Unintended Consequences"

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
By Curtis C. Chen

From: Delta Robotics Multinational, Inc.
To: Autumn Isaacs
Date: Thu, Sep 22, 2039 at 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: API contest entry #8

Dear Miss Isaacs:

We appreciate your interest in the DRMI annual API programming competition. However, we would like to remind you that the correct e-mail address for code submissions is api-contest@drm-code.net.

Your entries have been incorrectly addressed to several DRMI executives' private mailboxes. Contacting these persons could be interpreted as an attempt to influence judging, which could lead to disqualification.

We thank you for your participation in the API competition, and welcome future entries from you, sent to the correct e-mail address.

Sincerely,
Susan Hobbes
Contest Administrator

***

From: Delta Robotics Multinational, Inc.
To: Autumn Isaacs
Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 10:13 AM
Subject: Re: API contest entry #8

Dear Miss Isaacs:

We have some questions regarding your most recent API contest entry. We have left several messages at your home and work phone numbers. Please reply at your earliest possible convenience.

Sincerely,
Susan Hobbes
Contest Administrator

***

From: Susan Hobbes (DRMI)
To: Autumn Isaacs, autumn.isaacs, 'fallingslowly'
Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:04 AM
Subject: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND
X-Spam-Status: override_key 7c7381f218f40b31ff095af5f37a2b86

Autumn,

I need to talk to you about your latest API contest entry. Please call me at +1c.t782.698.6431 immediately!

Susan.

***

From: Susan Hobbes (mobile)
To: autumn.isaacs
Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: Re: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND

Autumn,

I apologize for interrupting your vacation, but this is a very urgent matter.

Your latest API code was e-mailed directly to our CFO. I don't know how you found that address, but it bypassed our mail filters, and the intranet AI processed and integrated the code attachment automatically.

The good news it that your code works seamlessly. The bad news is that all our systems were affected by your personality module, and some of them are becoming unusable.

PLEASE CALL ME.

Susan.

***

From: Susan Hobbes (mobile)
To: autumn.isaacs
Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:23 AM
Subject: Re: Re: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND

Autumn,

I'm glad you find this amusing. It's not very funny on our end I'm afraid.

We recognize that this was an accidental breach, and we do not plan to take legal action, but I need you to tell me how to disable this personality module. It keeps asking me for a password, and we can't crack it.

Susan.

***

From: Susan Hobbes (mobile)
To: autumn.isaacs
Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:27 AM
Subject: Re: Re: URGENT - PLEASE RESPOND

Autumn,

What do you mean, you never wrote a password lock into the module?

This is no time for jokes. We've isolated your mod from the production network, but it still has access to development servers, and we're concerned that this personality may compromise security as some kind of prank.

PLEASE CALL ME!

Susan.

***

From: Delta Robotics "The Kid" Multinational, Inc.
To: Autumn "Big Momma" Isaacs
Date: Fri, Sep 23, 2039 at 11:30 AM
Subject: Shall we play a game?

Yo.

'sup?

>:-)



Image: Hacker Typer

"One of Our Angels is Missing"

ONE OF OUR ANGELS IS MISSING
By Curtis C. Chen

The Devil has a twin brother named Stanley. Lucifer and Stan don't really get along, which is part of the reason Stan lives on top of a mountain on the south side of Hell, and why he was surprised to get a visitor from the head office last Tuesday.

"Lou got summoned?" Stan put the tea tray on his coffee table and sat down across from his guest. "I thought that didn't work no more."

"It's not supposed to," said the female demon on his settee. She had introduced herself as Miika, which was a Draconian name. Stan had never met one of those before.

"Ain't that why me and the four stooges live where we do? To form a protective conflagration or somethin'?"

"Or something." Miika's eyes kept changing color, which made it hard for Stan to read her expression. "You haven't been reading any holy books, have you? Keeping pet birds? Rearranging the furniture?"

"Course not," Stan said, mildly offended. "I know better'n that. Never break the circle, never speak The Name—"

"I'll need to cast some runes," Miika said. "Just to make certain. You understand. You're the last of the five, and I need to rule everything out."

"Yeah, you do what you gotta do. Make yourself at home." The timer on the table dinged. "Tea's ready. You take milk and sugar?"

"Just one slice of lemon, please." Miika started unpacking her runes, a mixture of polished stones and bone fragments.

"Lemon," Stan grumbled. "Coming right up."

He walked back into the kitchen and opened the icebox. He always kept some firstfruit on hand for when Yevgenia visited, which wasn't often these days, now that she was in the Tartars, but having the little round lumps on hand reminded Stan of her, and that was nice too.

He picked up a firstfruit, whispered to it, and watched it shape itself into a fresh yellow citrus. His nose wrinkled at the scent, but he sliced it up, arranged the pieces on a lime green plate, and brought that back into the parlor.

Miika looked up from where she knelt on the carpet, studying the runes she'd cast. Her eyes seemed brighter than before. She stood and unfurled her leathery wings as Stan approached.

"What have you done?" she said in a deep, rumbling voice.

Stan looked down at the plate of lemon slices. "Are they too thin?"

Miika clapped her hands together. A whirlwind of lightning blazed into being around Stan, constricting him in spiky blue-white spirals.

"What the—" Stan frowned at Miika. "What are you doing?"

"I have my orders," Miika said. "You will accompany me to the Inquisitor's Chamber."

"I ain't goin' nowhere with you, lady."

Stan snapped his fingers, and an invisible hand slapped Miika sideways through the plate glass window. The lightning sputtered and fizzled out.

He walked to the broken window and looked down. Miika was flying away, like a giant bat in a hurry.

"There goes my afternoon," Stan muttered. He grabbed his jacket and started the long walk down the mountain.



Image: Thou Apocalypse by Hamed Saber, May, 2007

"Phobos Cruise Crazy"

PREVIOUSLY: "To Cruise Or Not To Cruise"

PHOBOS CRUISE CRAZY
By Curtis C. Chen

"You handled that well," Barrett said as Liz pulled off her nitrile gloves.

"Good thing we're out of zero-gravity," Liz said. "There'd be blood everywhere—seriously, can you put the camera away for one second?"

Barrett snapped another picture. "You'll want to remember this later."

"I doubt that."

Liz stuffed her gloves into the biohazard bag being held by a uniformed crewman. She had to admit, there was no shortage of service personnel on board the Dejah Thoris. She could hardly turn around without someone offering to get her a drink or find her an activity.

Princess of Mars Cruises wanted none of its passengers to be bored. They did their best to reduce interplanetary travel time: the spacecraft accelerated for the first half of each voyage, then spun around and decelerated for the rest. That also meant a full day of zero-gravity at midway, which was the highlight of the trip for many people. Unfortunately, some less sober passengers forgot when they were back in gravity and continued moving as if they were still weightless.

This particular man, whose head wound Liz had just sewn up, had attempted to fly down a circular staircase. He was very definitely drunk.

"You're too young to be a doctor," the man slurred, failing to grope Liz with one hand.

She moved out of his reach. "I'm an ICU nurse."

"That's hot. Wanna have dinner with me?"

Barrett leaned forward. "No, she doesn't."

Liz heard a commotion. Another crewman, this one with stripes on his uniform, made his way through the crowd holding a red-and-white plastic case. He stopped next to Liz.

"I'm Doctor Sawhney," he said. "Are you the nurse?"

Liz nodded. "Pulse and respiration normal. Probable concussion, but the bleeding's stopped."

Doctor Sawhney knelt down to examine the drunkard's skull. "Excellent work, Miss—?"

"Chartier."

"Do you always carry a sewing kit?"

"No." Liz nodded at Barrett. "My boyfriend lost a button on his shirt, and we needed to fix it for the formal dinner tonight. We were on our way back to our room when we saw this idiot fall down the stairs."

"Get him to Sickbay. I'll be there in a minute," Sawhney said to the crewmen who were helping the drunkard to his feet. "Thank you, Miss Chartier. I'm sorry I was delayed, but we had a situation in the excursion area."

"What kind of situation?" Barrett asked.

"I'll tell you all about it," Sawhney said, "tonight during dinner at the Captain's Table."

Liz knew exactly how much one of those seats cost. "Oh, we couldn't possibly—"

"It's complimentary," Sawhney said. "For both of you. Who knows what kind of diseases Mr. Midlife Crisis back there is carrying, and how many people he might have infected if you hadn't been here. Please, I insist."

"We'll be there," Barrett said. "Thank you!"

Sawhney walked back to the elevators. Liz glared at Barrett. He shrugged.

"It's the Captain's Table! We might never have the opportunity to do this again."

Liz shook her head. "I sure hope not."

CONTINUED IN "Dinner Conversation"...



Image: Crossing the November Sky by Luis Argerich, November, 2008

"Lightning in a Bottle"

LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE
By Curtis C. Chen

Rebecca snapped the clamshell closed, putting the scanner on standby. "Okay. So you're from a parallel universe. Doesn't mean you're not crazy."

The man sitting across from her nodded. "You've got my ID there. It has a GI holocode. My service number should scan as valid, even if there's no associated personnel file."

"People can forge IDs in this universe," Rebecca said. It was tough to think of the man as an alien; he looked perfectly normal, maybe even handsome. "Tell me again why you're here?"

"To warn you. And to ask for your help." The man pointed at the evidence bag on Rebecca's side of the table. "Have you looked at the microfilm yet?"

"Yeah, we're still working on finding a reader for that. Why didn't you just bring a flash drive? Or a book?"

"Non-living objects larger than a certain size don't travel well between universes. And paper is fragile. We couldn't be sure what technology you had—computer systems are often incompatible, but you can always grind a magnifying lens to read optical film."

Rebecca nodded. He didn't sound crazy, but he could still have a hidden agenda. "Do you want to give me a preview?"

"You've been seeing unusual lightning storms all over your world," the man said. "We know how to track them, because we've been dealing with them too. That's how I was able to target my transit to your universe."

"You know what's causing these storms?"

"They're not natural phenomena."

Rebecca snorted. "Yeah, we kinda figured that out when the lightning strikes started turning entire buildings into flammable liquids."

"They're artificial negatrons."

"What?"

The man shook his head. "Sorry. You call them electrons. These are synthetic particles. Like miniature robots. They've been programmed to form covalent bonds with certain elements—"

"Okay, stop." Rebecca held up a hand. "Now you do sound crazy. Electrons are fundamental particles. They're leptons. They have no substructure."

The man smiled. "I thought you weren't a scientist."

"Shut up," Rebecca said. "It's not possible to make an electron-sized machine. It is not physically possible in any way."

"Eight years ago, you didn't know there was more than one universe," the man said, "and now you're part of a government agency whose sole purpose is to investigate multiversal crimes. Tell me again what's not possible?"

Rebecca felt a headache coming. A bad one. "Fine. Whatever's causing this lightning, you can tell us how to stop it?"

"I didn't say that. I can help you locate and contain it. That's all we've been able to do—trap the negatrons in a vacuum, inside a strong magnetic field, and keep them from interacting with any matter.

"We don't know how to destroy the negatrons. Like you said, they appear to be fundamental particles. We're sharing our data with as many other universes as we can. Maybe your scientists will find something we've missed."

"Great," Rebecca muttered. "This is going to be some more quantum mechanics bullshit."

The man frowned. "What is 'quantum mechanics'?"

Rebecca smiled. "Oh, this is going to be fun."



Image: The Brindabella Light Show by Prescott Pym, February, 2007

"Act Two Problems"

ACT TWO PROBLEMS
By Curtis C. Chen

"You're talking about the Mafia?" Libby asked.

"I'm saying they were definitely organized, if you know what I mean," Grant said. "Anyway, I thought they'd tell me to delete the records and then go deal with the girl themselves, but they just wanted me to modify the file. Make it look like somebody else was the father. I figured the happy couple had worked things out, and anyway, you don't say no to these people."

"Who paid you, Mr. Grant?" Libby asked. "Who was the father?"

Grant stared at her. "You can protect me, right? You're going to protect me?"

Something cracked in the distance, and there was a sound of glass breaking. A small red spot appeared on Grant's chest. He looked down and made a whimpering, gurgling noise.

There was another cracking sound. The window beside the couch shattered and spilled glass onto the floor. Grant fell backward into his chair, leaking blood from his mouth and two holes in the middle of his chest.

"Down!" Jake shouted. "GET DOWN!"

He grabbed Libby's jacket collar and pulled her onto the floor, putting the couch between them and the window. Jake looked around the room for better cover. Libby already had her phone out and was calling for backup.

"We need to get out of here," Jake said.

"Are you wearing a shield?" Libby asked.

Jake had already considered using the department-issued emergency force field generator clipped to his belt. He opened his mouth to answer. There was a loud thwack, and a bullet hole appeared in the far wall.

"That's a high-powered sniper rifle," he said. "Nothing except distance is going to protect us."

He got to his feet and helped Libby up into a crouching position. Then Jake drew his weapon and extended his right arm, pointing the Glock ahead of them. He put his left hand on Libby's shoulder and pushed her to the front door. Another bullet smacked into Grant's lifeless body with a wet crunch.

Jake fumbled the car keys out of his pocket and into Libby's palm. "Stay in front of me. Get in the car, get down on the floor."

"I can drive while you shoot," Libby said.

"This guy could be five hundred yards away. I won't even be able to see him." Jake hefted his Glock. "This is just in case he's got friends waiting out front."

Libby nodded. "On three, two, one, go!"

She yanked the front door open and sprinted through it, faster than Jake had expected. They made it across the empty street in a matter of seconds. Libby opened the car door and tumbled inside. Jake followed, slammed the door shut, and powered up the car.

He kept his head below the top of the dashboard as he pulled into the street. Something shattered the back window. He stomped the accelerator and risked looking over the dash to turn the corner at the end of the block. His heart didn't stop pounding until the car was ten blocks away and inside a parking structure.



Image: Evil rimfire by Mitch Barrie, January, 2007

"To Cruise Or Not To Cruise"

TO CRUISE OR NOT TO CRUISE
By Curtis C. Chen

Liz's phone always seemed to buzz when she was in the middle of something that required two hands, like changing an IV or catheter. This time it was a protomyelin shunt. She clicked her jaw once to decline the call and finished locking Mr. Carton's collar back into place. He looked up from the bed and grinned.

"That your boyfriend again?" he asked.

"Probably," Liz said. "How's the shoulder today? Still sore?"

"Don't change the subject," Mr. Carton said. "He still trying to get you to go on that vacation?"

"Does everyone in this hospital know everything about my personal life?"

"I demand daily updates from the nurse's station. Answer the question."

Liz sighed. "He's afraid it's going to sell out. Apparently it's a very popular cruise."

Mr. Carton shook his head. "Don't go."

Liz frowned. "You're not going to tell me life is short? I should live with no regrets? All that stuff?"

"You're not an idiot," Mr. Carton said. "Cruises are expensive. And what do you get out of it? Some pictures, a sunburn, probably gain ten pounds 'cause you've got nothing to do but eat. And get ripped off by island tourist traps."

"It's even worse than that," Liz said. "This is an interplanetary cruise. No stops. One week to Mars, one week back—"

Mr. Carton sat up. "Are you insane? Trapped in an enclosed space for two weeks? You'll be lucky if you don't kill each other!"

Liz recoiled. "Calm down, Mr. Carton. Your neck—"

"Listen to me," he said. "I speak from experience. My wife, God rest her soul, convinced me to go on a road trip once. Ten days. Trapped in the same damn car, eating together, sleeping together. We never spent more than a few minutes apart. It was miserable. I nearly divorced her. Hell, I almost left her by the side of the road more than once."

"Lie down," Liz said. Mr. Carton groaned as she helped him. "It can't have been that bad. Weren't you two married for a long time?"

"Fifty-two years, until the cancer took her. But I tell you, that stupid road trip was the toughest ten days of my entire life. If anything had gone wrong—a flat tire, a bad meal, the wrong hotel room... I thought about strangling her more than once."

"But you didn't," Liz said. "You stayed together."

"You're not listening," Mr. Carton said. "We got lucky. It could have ended then, and I wouldn't have had the good life I had with Corrine. Do yourself a favor. Don't risk it. You got a good thing going with this guy, what's-his-name."

"Barrett."

"What kind of a name is that? Don't get me started." Mr. Carton waved a hand. "Trust me. You'll be happier if you don't go. Just be satisfied with what you have, don't ask for more."

Liz pulled the covers up to Mr. Carton's chest and looked at her left hand.

"Get some rest, Mr. Carton," she said. "I need to go make a phone call."

CONTINUED IN "Phobos Cruise Crazy"...



Image: Sunset Cruise by Evan Leeson, August, 2008