My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.
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The complete Black and White Animals Trilogy, uncut. Written by Kendall Marchman, Luke Coddington and Norm Sherman, produced by Norm Sherman. Originally appeared as episodes 11, 22, and 24… Part 1: Secret Weapons, Part 2: Vengeful Hearts and Part 3: Chromatic Conclusions.
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The week we present to you Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog by Shaenon Garrity.
Have you ever been so exasperated that you could feel the energy rippling off of you? Just how far could the power of that hate carry you? Could it fuel your car? How about a rocket ship?
I know my neighbor’s dog as a bark: a deep, dark, venomous yawp that begins and ends on a snarl. It’s loud, louder than it should be. Earplugs do nothing. It penetrates. Once it starts, it continues, relentlessly, for a period ranging from one to four hours. It can start at any time, day or night, dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings.
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Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five distributed by the Bureau: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.
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Tim already had his bag and overcoat on and his keys in his hand and was about to leave when Diane stopped him at the door.
“I just got this thing working. You have to come and see it.”
“I have a bus to catch.”
“You can get the next one.”
“They’re every half an hour,” he objected. “This had better be good…”
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One of the reasons Joshua loved Lydia as much as he did was all the secret rituals they’d devised. Their shared jokes were treasured secrets, never to be shared with the other kids at high school; some days, the way Lydia could send Joshua into high titters with a raise of her pierced eyebrow was the only thing that kept Joshua from slitting his wrists…
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He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe–ninety-six billion planets–into the supercircuit that would connect them all into the one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies…
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He was not alone.
There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before him. The control room was empty but for himself; there was no sound other than the murmur of the drives — but the white hand had moved. It had been on zero when the little ship was launched from the Stardust; now, an hour later, it had crept up. There was something in the supply closet across the room, it was saying, some kind of a body that radiated heat…
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It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control…
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Please, mister, could I have a cracker for my oontatherium?”
Not exactly the words you would expect at an instant when history changes course and the universe can never again be what it was. The die is cast; In this sign conquer; It is not fit that you should sit here any longer; We hold these truths to be self-evident; The Italian navigator has landed in the New World; Dear God, the thing works!–no man with any imagination can recall those, or others like them, and not have a coldness run along his spine. But as for what little Mierna first said to us, on that island half a thousand light-years from home . . .
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The alien parked its car across the street from the shop and came and sat down in the waiting room. The mechanic must have seen this happen, peripherally. But he was busy settling the bill with a smartly dressed middle-aged woman, to whom he’d taken an irrational dislike. Those who deal with Joe Punter, day in and day out, especially Joe car-owning Punter, are prone to such allergies. He saw her start of concealed surprise, looked up, and there was the alien.
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The Town Council meeting was split down the middle — Hullabaloo colonists on the one side and Fenella Elane Tyne on the other. Jerram stood in the back and admired the way Fenella strove to convince the tired farmers. Pacing around the podium, she brought to bear the power of unmatched intelligence, impeccable honesty, and polished verbal skills. In the discordant discussion that followed, Jerram studied her serious face. She was magnificent, but hopelessness coursed through him. She didn’t have a chance of winning anyone over to her side. And he did not have a chance of winning her.
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Every few day-cycles, it receives hate-scented lace in anonymous packages. It opens the bland plastic envelope to pull one out, holding the delicate fragment between two forelimbs. Contemplating it before folding it again to put away in a drawer. Four drawers filled so far; the fifth is halfway there.
“Traitor,” say some of the smells, rotting fruit and acid. “Betrayer. Turncoat. One who eats their own young.” Others are simply soaked in emotion: hate and anger, and underneath the odor of fear. It lets the thoughts, the smells, the tastes fill it, set its own thoughts in motion. Then it goes downstairs and sits with the other whores, who make room uneasily for it.
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This episode of the Drabblecast brings you a very special presentation of “The Electric Ant” by the one and only Philip K. Dick!
Garson Poole wakes up after a flying-car-crash to find that he is missing a hand. He then finds out that he is an ‘electric ant’ – an “organic” robot. He further finds out that what he believes is his subjective reality is being fed to him from a micro-punched tape in his chest cavity.
Yeah, it gets weird in perfect Philip K. Dickian fashion!
At four-fifteen in the afternoon, T.S.T., Garson Poole woke up in his hospital bed, knew that he lay in a hospital bed in a three-bed ward and realized in addition two things: that he no longer had a right hand and that he felt no pain.
They had given me a strong analgesic, he said to himself as he stared at the far wall with its window showing downtown New York. Webs in which vehicles and peds darted and wheeled glimmered in the late afternoon sun, and the brilliance of the aging light pleased him. It’s not yet out, he thought. And neither am I…
Without further ado, please enjoy:
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It was quite a party. The women wore gowns. The men wore tuxedos. Anthony Blair wore power armor.
Armor that was sleek and black and polished, and made not a whisper as Blair paced the lawn behind his mansion, passing a word here or there with one of his guests. In those days the most advanced exoskeletons were crude affairs, and Blair’s armor seemed decades, if not centuries, ahead of its time…
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When the alien fleet was first sighted just beyond the asteroid belt, end-of-the-world riots broke out in cities around the globe. But when astronomers calculated that the huge, silent ships would take nearly three weeks to reach Earth, all but the most committed rioters felt their enthusiasm wilt. By the end of the day they’d all dropped their bricks or bats and slunk home, plundered consumer electronics in hand, muttering about the aliens’ apparent lack of urgency...
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The water fountains are low. The lockers are empty. The summer air is warm but there are people in the classrooms. People are talking, are moving. A female emerges from the nearest classroom. She is fully grown. She has dyed hair and competing odors and all of her teeth. Showing her teeth, she asks, “Are you the teacher?”
“YES. YES, I AM.”
She wants to believe those words. What she sees isn’t what she expects, but this woman believes in authority. She wants to get along with others. Showing her teeth, she says, “My son is thrilled to get into your class. He loves the outdoors and doing outdoor things . . . fishing and all that. . . .”
“GOOD.”
“You’ll do the field trip Thursday, right? To the woods?” She waits a moment and then says, “I can take some of the kids, if you need an extra car.”
“I DON’T NEED A CAR.”
“But I’d like to come along. I mean, I’ve heard such good things about you. My friend Rita . . .” She stops talking, trying to find a reason for her nervousness.
“I MUST GO AND TEACH YOUR SON.”
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Once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, when the world was one world with one moon and the stars did scintillate and sparkle in the sky, astronomers discovered a Beast of a Meteor flying through the vast black toward the Sun.
The scientists of the world realized that the Beast, in a veraciously voracious manner, would devour the hot yellow sun, and they did talk and squawk and look through long telescopes to watchwhat that Beast was doing. They crunched their magic numbers and they scribbled their special notes, and they filled their study rooms with piles of scritch-scratch paper…
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Sandeer smelled her.
It was just a whiff, a few molecules of something familiar and therefore sweet, wafting on a late afternoon breeze that otherwise carried only the usual: formaldehyde, benzene, dioxin, chromium, and miscellaneous particulate matter both organic and non-. (Once, there had been the smell of roasting chestnuts and crackling logs and simmering spiced cider, but in recent cycles only less pleasant things burned.) There, represented by an air sample just barely statistically significant, was the scent of Sophie.
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