Annabehl, Annabehl, Annabehl, Annabehl and Annabehl concur with Annabehl’s advice.
Annabehl, Annabehl and Annabehl dissent with the substance of the advice, but concur in the recommendation of a beer.
Annabehl abstains.
000000000000000000111000000000000000000011110000000000000 000000099115555000000000000000000007700000000000000000000 0000Dear Annabehls: 0000011111333377777777700099999999999999 99:
I’m afraid. So afraid I can barely function. I feel totally adrift, as if nothing, no one, that I know is quite right. It’s difficult to explain, but sometimes I swear I don’t recognize my children. Didn’t I used to have a uni-daughter named Allison? I have a memory, a fading dream-memory of brushing her tangled blond hair. The thing is, I know no one has uni-daughters, certainly not me. I have an adorable set of identical septuplet boys. And while I know that this is my house, why do I sometimes find myself stumbling into rooms I never even knew existed? And my friends. Why do I forget their names? Sometimes I stare into the mirror-eyes of our pet elphine, and I don’t even recognize my own reflection. The diagonal rows of black eyes that speckle my face seem unfamiliar to me. I’m afraid, afraid that the walls between realities have finally crumbled, and that I’m the only one who sees it. Wasn’t the sky blue a long time ago? I could swear that it used to be. Didn’t we used to walk upright on two legs? I’m lost, Annabehls. I don’t think I know who or what I am any more.
Lost in Newfoundland
000000000000099555577777777999000000000000000000000000000 00Dear Lost: 9999999999999999900077777777111100000000000000 07
We’re sorry to say that there’s only one reality, dear, and we’re stuck with it. The sky has always been deep red, we’ve always skittered on six legs, and we’ve always come in sets of seven, nine or thirteen. It’s not unusual to sometimes feel out of place, to feel cast adrift like a wind-blown ember in the eye of a black tornado, everything around you changing while you’re standing still. We’ve felt that way ourselves, sometimes. Do what we do, Lost. Buck up. Fly high on the fumes of ecsahol, if necessary. And relax.
THE GOAT VARIATIONS
JEFF VANDERMEER
Jeff VanderMeer is a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award whose stories have been published by Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Conjunctions, Black Clock, and several year’s best anthologies. Recent books include the Nebula finalist novel Finch (2009), and the short story collection The Third Bear (2010). His The Steampunk Bible was featured on CBS This Morning and been named a finalist for the Hugo Award for best related book. He also recently co-edited the mega-compendium The Weird with his wife Ann. A co-founder of Shared Worlds, a teen SF/F writing camp, VanderMeer has been a guest speaker at the Library of Congress and MIT, among others. He writes book reviews for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, and the Washington Post. VanderMeer’s latest novel, just completed, is Annihilation.
It would have been hot, humid in September in that city, and the Secret Service would have gone in first, before him, to scan for hostile minds, even though it was just a middle school in a county he’d won in the elections, far away from the fighting. He would have emerged from the third black armored vehicle, blinking and looking bewildered as he got his bearings in the sudden sunlight. His aide and the personal bodyguards who had grown up protecting him would have surrounded him by his first step onto the asphalt of the driveway. They would have entered the school through the front, stopping under the sign for photos and a few words with the principal, the television cameras recording it all from a safe distance.
He would already be thinking past the event, to the next, and how to prop up sagging public approval ratings, due both to the conflict and what the press called his recent “indecision,” which he knew was more analogous to “sickness.” He would be thinking about, or around, the secret cavern beneath the Pentagon and the pale, almost grublike face of the adept in his tank. He would already be thinking about the machine.
By the end of the photo op, the sweat itches on his forehead, burns sour in his mouth, but he has to ignore it for the cameras. He’s turning a new word over and over in his mind, learned from a Czech diplomat. Ossuary. A word that sounds free and soaring, but just means a pile of skulls. The latest satellite photos from the battlefield states of Kansas, Nebraska, and Idaho make him think of the word. The evangelicals have been eschewing god-missiles for more personal methods of vengeance, even as they tie down federal armies in an endless guerilla war. Sometimes he feels like he’s presiding over a pile of skulls.
The smile on his face has frozen into a rictus as he realizes there’s something wrong with the sun; there’s a red dot in its center, and it’s eating away at the yellow, bringing a hint of green with it. He can tell he’s the only one who can see it, can sense the pulsing, nervous worry on the face of his aide.
He almost says “ossuary” aloud, but then, sunspots wandering across his eyes, they are bringing him down a corridor to the classroom where he will meet with the students and tell them a story. They walk past the open doors to the cafeteria—row on row of sagging wooden tables propped up by rusted metal legs. He experiences a flare of anger. Why this school, with the infrastructure crumbling away? The overpowering stale smell of macaroni-and-cheese and meatloaf makes him nauseous.
All the while, he engages in small talk with the entourage of teachers trailing in his wake, almost all overweight middle-aged women with circles under their eyes and sagging skin on their arms. Many of them are black. He smiles into their shiny, receptive faces and remembers the hired help in the mansion growing up. Some of his best friends were black until he took up politics.
For a second, as he looks down, marveling at their snouts and beaks and muzzles, their smiles melt away and he’s surrounded by a pack of animals.
His aide mutters to him through clenched teeth, and two seconds later he realizes the words were “Stop staring at them so much.” There have always been times when meeting too many people at once has made him feel as if he’s somewhere strange, all the mannerisms and gesticulations and varying tones of voice shimmering into babble. But it’s only lately that the features of people’s faces have changed into a menagerie if he looks at them too long.
They’d briefed him on the secret rooms and the possibility of the machine even before they’d given him the latest intel on China’s occupation of Japan and Taiwan. Only three hours into his presidency, an armored car had taken him to the Pentagon, away from his wife and the beginnings of the inauguration party. Once there, they’d entered a green-lit steel elevator that went down for so long he thought for a moment it was broken. It was just him, his aide, a black-ops commander who didn’t give his name, and a small, haggard man who wore an old gray suit over a faded white dress shirt, with no tie. He’d told his vice president to meet the press while he was gone, even though he was now convinced the old man had dementia.