I imagined the world like an Escher drawing, part of either of two different scenes, and our brains decide which to see.
The more complex the system, the more ways it can go wrong. Point Machine had said that.
And things go wrong. That spotlight. Little engines of wave function collapse. Humans are blind to the beauty; the truth is beyond us. We can’t see reality as it is: only observe it into existence.
But what if you could control that spotlight, dilate it like the pupil of an eye? Stare deep into the implicate order. What would you see? What if you could slide between the sheaths of the subjective and objective? Maybe there have always been people like that. Mistakes. People who walk among us, but are not us. Only now there was a test. A test to point them out.
And maybe they didn’t want to be found.
I pulled the sheet of paper out of the envelope.
I unfolded it and spread it out flat on the desk. I looked at the results — and in so doing, finally collapsed the probability wave of the experiment I’d run all those months ago.
I stared at what was on the paper, a series of shaded semicircles — a now familiar pattern of light and dark.
Though, of course, the results had been there all along.
Over the last five years, Ted Kosmatka has published more than a dozen stories in places like Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Subterranean. His writing has been reprinted in seven Year’s Best anthologies, serialized over the radio, performed on stage, and translated into Russian, Hebrew, Polish, and Czech.
Ted was born in Indiana, not far from Lake Michigan. He studied biology at Indiana University and since then has gradually assembled one of those crazy work histories that writers so often seem to have. Among other things, he’s been a zookeeper, a chem tech, and a laborer in a steel mill. More recently, he worked in a research laboratory where he ran an electron microscope. He left the lab in 2009 to take a job writing for a video game company. He now lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.
A MEMORY OF WIND
Rachel Swirsky
FROM THE AUTHOR: In the spring of 2006, I attended a production of Euripedes’ Iphigenia at Aulis at the San Jose Repertory Theatre. It was the U.S. premiere of Don Taylor’s adaptation, featuring the San Francisco Dance Brigade as the Greek chorus. It was an exceptional production, smart and intense and brilliantly acted. I was familiar with the original Greek myth which provides the basis for the play. After Paris abducts Helen, troops mass in the harbor at Aulis under the leadership of King Agamemnon, preparing to make war on Troy. But they can’t leave the harbor — there’s no wind. A priest named Calchus informs Agamemnon that Artemis will only let them sail if he sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia. So he does.
I had always been a little peeved with what I felt was the traditional interpretation of the myth, which poses Agamemnon as the tragic figure. Taylor’s adaptation of the play moved Clytemnestra into the pivotal role, imagining the tragedy from her perspective, as she is helpless to prevent Agamemnon from killing their daughter (an interpretation which gains emotional freight when you remember that she later kills him in revenge, and then is murdered by their son, Orestes).
While Taylor’s shifting the point of view created an interesting, new way of looking at the myth — and allowed him to comment on the politics of war — I found it unsatisfying. The original myth was about Agamemnon. The reinterpretation was about Clytemnestra. What about Iphigenia? Surely the story of her death was her own, not someone else’s.
So I tried to imagine it.
From a certain perspective, Iphigenia is an unsuitable main character. She has minimal agency. She is young and trapped and sad and passive and dying. It seems much easier to write about Agamemnon, who could call off the sacrifice, or about Clytemnestra, who will eventually have the power to exact revenge. But sometimes we are the ones who are trapped. Sometimes we are the ones who can’t change our fates. Those stories are also important.
AFTER HELEN AND her lover Paris fled to Troy, her husband King Menelaus called his allies to war. Under the leadership of King Agamemnon, the allies met in the harbor at Aulis. They prepared to sail for Troy, but they could not depart, for there was no wind.
Kings Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Odysseus consulted with Calchas, a priest of Artemis, who revealed that the angered goddess was balking their departure. The kings asked Calchas how they might convince Artemis to grant them a wind. He answered that she would only relent after King Agamemnon brought his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to Aulis and sacrificed her to the goddess.
I began turning into wind the moment that you promised me to Artemis.
Before I woke, I lost the flavor of rancid oil and the shade of green that flushes new leaves. They slipped from me, and became gentle breezes that would later weave themselves into the strength of my gale. Between the first and second beats of my lashes, I also lost the grunt of goats being led to slaughter, and the roughness of wool against calloused fingertips, and the scent of figs simmering in honey wine.
Around me, the other palace girls slept fitfully, tossing and grumbling through the dry summer heat. I stumbled to my feet and fled down the corridor, my footsteps falling smooth against the cool, painted clay. As I walked, the sensation of the floor blew away from me, too. It was as if I stood on nothing.
I forgot the way to my mother’s rooms. I decided to visit Orestes instead. I also forgot how to find him. I paced bright corridors, searching. A male servant saw me, and woke a male slave, who woke a female slave, who roused herself and approached me, bleary-eyed, mumbling. “What’s wrong, Lady Iphigenia? What do you require?”
I had no answers.
I have no answers for you either, father.
I imagine what you did on that night when I paced the palace corridors, my perceptions vanishing like stars winking out of the night sky. You presided over the war council in Aulis. I imagine you standing with the staff of office heavy in your hands — heavy with wood, heavy with burdens.
Calchas, priest of Artemis, bowed before you and the other kings. “I have prayed long and hard,” he said. “The goddess is angry with you, Agamemnon. She will not allow the wind to take your ships to Troy until you have made amends.”
I imagine that the staff of office began to feel even heavier in your hands. You looked between your brother, Menelaus, and the sly Odysseus. Both watched you with cold, expressionless faces. They wanted war. You had become an obstacle to their desires.
“What have I done?” you asked Calchas. “What does the goddess want?”
The priest smiled.
What would a goddess want? What else but virgin blood on her altar? One daughter’s life for the wind that would allow you to launch a fleet that could kill thousands. A child for a war.
Odysseus and Menelaus fixed you with hungry gazes. Their appetite for battle hollowed the souls from their eyes as starvation will hollow a man’s cheeks. Implicit threats flickered in the torchlight. Do as the priest says, or we’ll take the troops we’ve gathered to battle Troy and march on Mycenae instead. Sacrifice your daughter or sacrifice your kingdom.
Menelaus took an amphora of rich red wine and poured a measure for each of you. A drink; a vow. Menelaus drank rapidly, red droplets spilling like blood through the thicket of his beard. Odysseus savored slow, languorous sips, his canny eyes intent on your face.