He couldn’t look at me, but I wouldn’t let him look away. I would never let him look away. That night, with dried blood still flaking off my lips, I pressed my cheek to his. He flinched and tried to roll over.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered into his ear, my lips stirring his hair that was my hair that was his hair. “You wanted to see my true form, boy. Peter-boy.” He shook a little, maybe crying, and I grinned against his neck. “It’s only fair that you should see yours, too.”
I had not a scrap of magic left in me, it’s true. The boy Peter wept in our bed next to the perfect image of himself, from whom he could never escape, and from whom he could never look away—and it felt so good. It felt so perfect, to know that he would be constantly faced with the self that he had tried so hard to bury in accomplishments and explanations and excuses. In that moment, as I pressed my lips against his sob-clenched throat, I realized that there are more kinds of magic than the spark that had been stored in my little spur of bone and gossamer. That night he began a slow descent into darkness, and I felt a satisfaction deeper than that of a bellyful of bread or a fistful of salt.
“Good night, Peter,” I said. I let my head fall back onto my pillow, and that night, I slept the dreamless sleep of victory.
TEAM FAIRY
* * *
BY SARAH GAILEY
Fairies represent everything that robots can never be. While robots are the result of humans’ hubristic striving for power beyond what their (I mean, uh, “our”) feeble flesh can manage, fairies simply are better, just by being what they are. While robots inevitably fail and decay as the result of human inadequacy, fairies thrive and flourish as a result of their very inhumanity. Robots, as created things, are constantly trying to become what fairies already are: friggin’ awesome. But no amount of wires and tubes can give a robot the sheer unbridled power of a fairy. That’s why I wrote “Bread and Milk and Salt,” which is ultimately a story of one roboticist’s overreach. Humans are used to being able to create and control things that are different from them; that’s part of the importance of fairy lore, which insists that gifts of bread and milk and salt will be enough to buy a fairy’s obedience (or at least her mercy). But humans who are used to being in charge forget quickly that not all things are built to obey. While a robot is ultimately at the mercy of the humans who built it, a fairy is beholden to no one but herself. In this story, one particular human learns that the hard way.
IRONHEART
by Jonathan Maberry
-1-
* * *
Duke took his pills one at a time, the way he always did. If he took more than two of them, they caught in his throat. That made him feel old, because it was the sort of thing his grandma complained about and he was too young to feel that old. He sat at the kitchen table with them lined up across his plate. Thirty-six pills. Every day. Thirty-six every freaking morning; thirty-six every freaking night.
He hated taking them. All that water sloshed in his stomach and made him have to piss. But he took them anyway.
The ones for the pain. The ones for the infections. And the ones to keep his body from rejecting his robot heart.
He knew the pills were expensive, too. The VA was supposed to cover part of the cost, and his insurance was supposed to cover another part. But they covered about as much as a string bikini covered a hot girl on the beach. Technically it was coverage, but there was still a lot left over. And unlike a bikini, what was left wasn’t fun.
Duke loved robots, but he hated his new heart. Unlike the housebots and the farmbots, this didn’t fit in. It was a machine made of plastic and metal, but his own flesh and bone didn’t want it. It was a constant fight, and like many heart-replacement patients, it was not a fight he was going to win. Some people did. The happy, healthy-looking, tanned and fit people on the posters at the doctor’s office and on websites for the manufacturer. And that golfer who had a transplant five years ago was back on the PGA tour. So, sure, some folks won the transplant lottery.
A lot more didn’t, and Duke was pretty sure he was getting close to his sell-by date. Maybe Christmas this year. Maybe Valentine’s Day next. In that zone. His family kept calling him a warrior, a fighter. His nephew Ollie made him a key chain in metal shop in the shape of nine letters hard-welded together. Ironheart. Duke carried it with his keys, and on good days he’d hold it in his fist and yell, “Kiss my ass!” to the world. On most days, though, it hurt him to look at it.
The line of pills on the kitchen table seemed to mock him and the challenge of that steel-welded nickname.
Duke heard a clanking sound and turned to look out the window. Gramps was riding the small tractor and pulling one of the robots back to the barn on a flatbed trailer. Duke couldn’t see which one because it was covered in a tarp, but he figured it was Farmboy. That would be just about right for the way things were going. But no matter which one it was, it was bad news. The bots were all falling apart. Every damn thing around here was falling apart. He sure as hell was.
“Duke,” called Grandma from upstairs.
“Yeah?”
“You take your pills?”
“Yeah,” he said, then hastily swallowed another one. “Yeah, I took ’em.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he lied. He would take them, but it always required effort. Like bracing to pull off a bandage. There was nothing fun about it and the only power he had in the moment was his ability to stall, to make the pills wait a little longer.
“You sure?”
It was the same conversation every day. Sometimes she’d yell from the living room, where she had her sewing stuff, sometimes from upstairs where she had her workbench. Grandma made corn dollies and kitchen witches and sold them at the roadside stand.
“I took them all,” called Duke.
A pause. The house was old and its bones ached. Duke could hear it groan whenever the wind shoved it or the rain fell too hard. It smelled nice, though. Grandma always had a pot of something simmering. Soup, because soup was cheap and you could put anything in it, or game stew if Gramps was lucky with his gun. On Social Security day there would be a roast in the oven. Sometimes Grandma would just put herbs in a pot and let it simmer all afternoon. Nutmeg and cloves, cinnamon and ginger. Sometimes the house smelled like apple pie and sometimes it smelled like Christmas.
Like Christmases used to be before the Troubles.