The End Has Come

But in the silence, his eyes finally adjusted. And he saw that the sun was merely the burning coil of the tungsten bulb. He reached out and touched the lamp with the dead battery, turning it off and on. Yet, the light remained. Twitching, he unscrewed the bulb and it glowed in his hand, even brighter still, as he became aware of the chamber of horrors that his comet shelter had become. Phineas could feel the hum of electricity in the air, on his arms, and the fine hairs on the back of his neck. The World Wireless System was still functioning, but more importantly, someone was using a Tesla coil, beaming spark-excited voltage in his direction, which could only mean one thing.

Finally, someone was searching for him.

Or perhaps, just the machine. Maybe that’s all they wanted. His lieutenants, the men with lotus tattoos, had waited for him to expire, to take it from his lifeless grasp. As fearful, angry, vicious thoughts clogged his reason his prison became a fortress, his tomb became his castle. And his followers became traitors, worse, they became fallen foot soldiers. The terrible enemy was coming, the Mongols had risen up again, but instead of wearing cloaks sewn from field mice the hordes were arriving in great steam-driven airships sewn from the skin of their conquered dead. They would come in waves, they would search, but they would never find him. The British wouldn’t find him. Neither would the boastful Americans. He’d never allow it. He’d smash the machine — he’d destroy the professor’s creation if he had to.

Holding the glowing bulb like a torch, he rested the machine on his lap. He wiped grime off the metal and asked in a breathless panic, “Will someone else ever use this beautiful device. Could the I-Ching ever be attuned to another. Will they come digging to claim this clever machine.” Phineas cranked the handle, listened to the gears thrum with clockwork precision, and watched the lettered tumblers spin and spin and spin . . . until the static charge in the room faded as quickly as the light.

The answer, his answer came, as he smiled in the darkness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jamie Ford is the great grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. His debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and went on to win the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. His work has been translated into 32 languages. Jamie is still holding out for Klingon (because that’s when you know you’ve made it). He can be found at www.jamieford.com blogging about his new book, Songs of Willow Frost, and also on Twitter @jamieford.

MARGIN OF SURVIVAL Elizabeth Bear

In darkness, Yana waited. To her left, the sea was the smell of spent oil and a blackness broken by the slow hiss of phosphorescent breakers. If she squinted at the horizon, she could just make it out — a line as level as if it had been planed, pimpled with the tops of aquaculture rigs. To her right, the beach stretched rocky, rusty, and bleak up to an undercut bluff that she knew was there only because of suggestion and memory. It was a narrow margin of survival between the proverbial devil, and the equally proverbial sea.

The aquaculture domes were within sight, trailing rich constructed biomes of mussels and kelp through the richly nutritious, bitterly cold water. She could swim out to them and spare herself the risks. If she were a stronger swimmer; if she were not already weak with hunger; if it weren’t for the waves and the rip current; if she had a drysuit; if she had some way to keep the mussels from spoiling before she got them home to Yulianna; if she could guarantee there weren’t snipers or booby traps or guards.

Yana counted under her breath until the light came again.