Issue 151 April 2026 By the Numbers

Table of Contents

Editorial: By the Numbers

by Rebecca Halsey

April 1, 2026

Editorial

As a kid I was happy to snub numbers. Of course, I had to do math in school, we all have to. But, I didn’t see the beauty in mathematical theory until late in high school, and I didn’t actually appreciate the most basic math facts until I was out of college when, ya know, you need a budget.

The obvious truth is we need math and numbers. We need to calculate tips and measure ingredients. We need to count our blessings and quantify risk. At the most fundamental level, our brains look for shortcuts, and whether it’s tally marks scratched on a cave wall or accounting in QuickBooks, numbers get you there.

When it comes to flash fiction, numbers hold a lot of importance. Sure, most publishers have word counts that they look for, but in the flash world, word count is often used to define the genre itself. During my tenure as EIC, FFO has preferred the longer length, with a large majority of our pieces falling in the 750-1,000-word range, but other journals focus on 750 and less, or accept flash up to 1,500 words.

From a flash craft perspective, numbers can offer opportunities for consolidation and artful cutting. Numbers can be a compositional framework or a plot mechanism. We see flash pieces in the form of numbered lists and timelines.

In this month’s opener, “The Last Eleven Seconds,” David Farrow uses a countdown to imitate the lengthening of time during a climactic moment.

“Ten and Out” by Myna Chang also references a countdown. This story focuses on the end of a series of missions and what’s next for a weary assassin.

In “For Solomon Fishkowski Who Carved Chess Sets in Siberia” by KD Casey, a main character is trying to survive an indeterminate gulag sentence. The number of years changes, adding to the uncertainty of his situation.

Years lend weight to each section of Sam E. Sutin’s “Remembering Dodem Ansibar.” This story consists of three obituaries for Dodem, once a minor noble, resurrected in the midst of necromancer wars.

In Francesco Levato’s “A Bone Deep Ache,” each section is a drabble (a story exactly 100 words), making the overall piece a collection of linked micros.

Finally, in “Europan Culture (Seven Theses),” Meagan Kane reimagines the structure from Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s essay “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” as a story about a space outpost on the verge of an ecological disruption.

We hope that our April 2026 issue inspires you to consider numbers in fiction in a new light. If you are a writer, we invite you to try some of the many structural ways numbering can work to tell a story, particularly in flash fiction which focuses so much on brevity.

* * *

Ⓒ Rebecca Halsey

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The Last Eleven Seconds

by David Farrow

April 3, 2026

Science Fiction

00:11

The missile hits my ship head on. Critical failure in an instant. The windshield cracks. Fire blossoms. All around me, the war rages on, starships flitting through their planned formations as bombs rain down from above. I wonder who’ll win this skirmish. I wonder if my death will mean anything to anyone. But most of all, I wonder what went wrong.

00:10

It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s obvious that it’s you. I know it the second I see you, the way you sway on the dance floor like a man under hypnosis, the lights flashing on your broad, drunken smile and your handsome cheekbones. It’s not just because I’ve been cooped up at the Academy, drowning in a sea of straight men. It’s not my frustrated libido drawing me to you. It’s you. I see you and I think, there you are, and your eye catches mine, and it’s like you’re saying, yes, here I am, where have you been this whole time?

00:09

I don’t keep a picture of you on my dashboard. The Academy doesn’t allow sentimental tokens on their ships. They want to remind us that we’re disposable, that we serve the United Front, not ourselves. I disobeyed though. Everyone disobeys. I keep a chunk of malachite on a string (the one you gave me after your first expedition) and I wear it around my neck in every skirmish. When the windshield shatters, the string snaps, and my memento of you hurtles into space. An opaque green star flashing in the void.

00:08

Why did you do it? We already saw each other so rarely, thanks to my training regiment, and then you had to fuck off to explore some caves. To mine for resources, you said. To save the planet. But I didn’t like the distance. The symbolism of it. You plumbing the depths of the Earth, and me soaring far above it. I’m upset with you the entire time you’re gone. Until you come home and place a silky green stone in my palm, and you kiss me and say, I missed you, and I can’t be mad at you, because you’re home now, you’re home with me, and I don’t have to miss you anymore.

00:07

Void rushes in and takes my breath away. It’s like the air is siphoned directly from my lungs. I can almost see it leave me, like a semisolid thing, wisping through my lips before the vacuum claims it. Staccato bursts of gunfire light up my periphery, but I’m in space now, and there’s nothing left for me to hear.

00:06

You take my breath away. That’s what you tell me when we’re halfway into whatever this is. You’re coiled up next to me in bed, both of us flushed and sweaty and warm with afterglow. I want to admonish you for the cliche, but I can barely breathe myself, so who am I fooling, really?

00:05

The ship breaks into pieces around me. We’re not supposed to name our vessels, not supposed to get attached to hunks of metal, but everyone does. I remember approaching her in the hangar, running a hand along her chassis, and thinking, I’ll call you Nova. Prophetic in hindsight, I guess, but you didn’t have to be a genius to predict this outcome. We were always going to end in fire.

00:04

Sparks have been flaring for a while, but when things finally explode, it’s hot and violent. I don’t recognize the stranger who comes back from the mines, caked in dust and minerals and disillusioned about the planet’s chances for survival. You don’t recognize the cynical stranger who comes back from his flights believing the space war will never end. But everything ends, even us. All it takes is one explosive fight, one hateful word spoken, one fist cracking through drywall. I cry in the darkness when you leave, turning your malachite over and over in my hand, wishing it wasn’t so cold to the touch. Wishing I still had your warmth to cling to.

00:03

I’m not the only casualty of this war. Even in the last few seconds of my life, I see countless ships go up in flames, peppering the night sky like bloody fireworks. How many stories are ending on this battlefield? How many lights, like mine, are going out forever? It’s such a waste, such a fucking tremendous waste, and I hate that this is where my mind takes me at the end. I want to go thinking about you. I want my last waking thoughts to be your face, and your smile, and the way you kissed me when we thought this was forever.

00:02

This is the beginning. We’re two strangers meeting in the sweat-soaked walls of an underground club. It only takes a couple of drinks for us to become more than strangers, and it will take years before we’re strangers again. But here, in this moment, we’re burning bright. Stars don’t stop being beautiful just because we know they’ll die one day. Maybe the same is true for us.

00:01

The ship’s frame gives in, a silent ball of flame envelops me, and I know this is the end. That’s okay. If I’m lucky, my body will drift back to Earth, pushed by the force of a thousand starships exploding: one last, cold voyage, before I reenter the atmosphere. I’ll be ice engulfed by fire then, just a bit of space debris burning in the skies, and maybe a young child will watch me from their back porch, and point and smile, and say look, daddy, it’s a shooting star.

* * *

Ⓒ David Farrow

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Remembering Dodem Ansibar

by Sam E. Sutin

April 10, 2026

Fantasy

Obituary – Dodem Ansibar (402–453)

It is with deep sorrow that we announce the passing of Dodem Ansibar (402–453), who fell at the Battle of the Sundering Sun alongside the greater part of his host.

A minor noble of the Grass Kingdom, Dodem was renowned for his love of arithmancy, dry wit, and exuberant flair on the ballroom floor. He was a man of few qualms and many smiles, whose booming laughter could often be heard echoing in the halls of the Ansibar estate. His children fondly recall the many nights Dodem spent settled beside their beds, reciting poetry long after they politely asked him to stop. The world has become a quieter place for his passing, but deep silences always follow the stories most worthy of remembrance. Beloved by his friends, family, and subjects, Dodem will be sorely missed.

Dodem is survived by his daughter Maridaut and his son Pelric, newly ascended Lord of the Dead and Necromancer Undying, who has sworn unrelenting vengeance upon those responsible for his father’s demise.

Following the battle, Dodem’s remains were recovered by the Divine Order of the Casque, who have since undertaken the sacred rites to prepare him for his journey into the next life. Funeral service to be held at the Ansibar estate upon the waxing of the second moon.

All are welcome to attend.

* * *

Obituary – Dodem Ansibar (402–453; 455–463)

It is with renewed sorrow that we announce the second passing of Dodem Ansibar (402–453; 455–463), who recently succumbed to vampyric fever at the contested age of either fifty-nine, sixty-one, or eight.

Resurrected by his son, the Necromancer Undying, Dodem served as Immortant Prime to the Lord of the Dead, commanding his legions against all who dared oppose him. Though impervious to all weapons of steel and flesh, the venom of a bloodsucking vampyre proved fatal to the undead general, whose absence will weigh heavily upon the hearts of all who knew him, living and otherwise. Those close to Dodem relate that he wished to be remembered for his toothy smile and exquisite bone structure, though it is unknown whether this was said in jest; Dodem’s humor often toed the line between sincerity and absurdity, a balance he considered an apt reflection of his existence as a whole.

Dodem is predeceased by his son, Pelric, who was recently cast down from the Skullbone Throne by his sister, Maridaut; thus were the Prophecies of Sulfur and Salt fulfilled, and an end brought to the Master of Death’s grim campaign of un-living domination.

Dodem is survived by his daughter Maridaut, who has vowed to create a new Holy Order of hunters to eradicate the vampyric scourge that returned her father to the grave and continues to ravage the Grass Kingdom. Though placed on opposite sides of the undead war, Dodem and Maridaut always remained close, often exchanging numeric riddles and snappy repartee beneath temporary banners of truce. She wishes to convey that Dodem never asked for a second life, but made the most of what he was given, nonetheless.

Funeral service to be held at the Cathedral Mýurno pending recovery of the body, which the Order of the Casque has expressed some difficulty in locating…

* * *

Obituary – Dodem Ansibar (402–453; 455–463; 463–559)

It is with continued mourning that we report the tertiary passing of Dodem Ansibar (402–453; 455–463; 463–559), who was pierced through the heart and subsequently immolated this past Thursday during the Mohallah Tavern’s weekly trivia night. His age is now a matter of divine interpretation.

A founding member of the Brotherhood of the Suckled Vein, Dodem was lauded for his ‘mercy feedings,’ granting the terminally ill and mortally wounded dignified passage beyond this mortal veil. He was also a numerologist of some renown, celebrated within the vampyric community for his groundbreaking work on the efficient enumeration of various quantities of salt. Cherished by all who knew him—living, dead, and those lost somewhere in between—Dodem’s loss will be deeply felt.

Dodem is predeceased by both of his children, whose cataclysmic clash before the Skullbone Throne nearly a century ago still sends ripples through our world today. Dodem could often be found settled peacefully beside their graves, murmuring poetry to the stones or gazing in silence across the rolling fields of pampas and prairie fire that have come to define the Grass Kingdom.

He is survived by the Brotherhood, his loving coven, and his trivia team, the Silver Linings, who have vowed to seek compassionate rehabilitation for the vampyre hunter responsible.

Dodem often said his life had left enough violence in its wake, and that revenge had brought him naught but sorrow. Those that knew him longest recall that it was his son’s thirst for retribution that first pulled Dodem from the grave; perhaps, he would find it fitting that it was vampyre hunter, ordained in the Holy Order his daughter once created to avenge him, that finally returned him to it. Knowing Dodem, he would certainly have found it amusing, if nothing else.

Rest well, Dodem Ansibar. May this be your final and everlasting slumber.

Funeral service will be held at the Mohallah Tavern, where Dodem’s ashes will be cast to the wind, bearing him into the worlds beyond.

All are welcome to attend.

* * *

Ⓒ Sam E. Sutin

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For Solomon Fishkowski Who Carved Chess Sets in Siberia

by KD Casey

April 14, 2026

Historical Fiction

“What can you do?” they ask you on your first day in the gulag.

“I have a strong mind.” Useless. A strong back proves much more agreeable.

They put you to work felling thick Siberian trees. Heave-ho, heave-ho. One of the other men—you have long forgotten his name; it was possible you didn’t know his real one in the first place—was a woodsman before the revolution. “Fuck a sickle, bring an ax,” he likes to joke. He saws the trees, slow, slow.

“Can’t you go any faster?” you ask. “Aren’t you a fucking professional?”

“Does sawing fast make time move quicker?” he spits. He has another three years here, hypothetically.

You were sentenced to two years—a thwarted plot against the party, your accusers say. A foreign agitator. No matter that you were born in Moscow: a cosmopolitan. No, your accusers say, a rootless cosmopolitan, and they send you to wander the Siberian taiga for two years. Because of your good behavior, they extended your sentence; now you have only five more years left. So you learn to move slow too.

By day, you cut down trees to be shipped west. By night, you sow a field of men consumed by the teeth of winter. There is no spare wood for coffins. The woodsman snorts at you planting these bodies on the hard frost. “Leave them. In the spring they’ll rot.”

You’re no longer Jewish. The revolution cast off old allegiances. A brotherhood, all dressed in red, a party leader kinged by the people. You forget your Talmud, you unlearn your Yiddish. Only this is not so easily shed: the commandment to preserve life above all else.

Life here is cheap. A death of the proletariat—affordable for all! Your heart belongs to the party; your stomach turns at the sight of so many bodies. You must not let a corpse remain overnight but must bury it the same day. Deuteronomy. What a traditionalist! You try to say a few words over the dead as you dig the impossible ground with a blunt ax.

“This one was kind.”

“That one was generous.”

“This one’s voice tinkled with laughter,” you say for a man as vinegary as a pickle.

“That one was learned.” You aren’t lying. He was the wisest among you. He’d arrived to the gulag on the cattle car train, already dead.

In the spring, the ground turns to hot mud and the dead sink like shipwrecks. “I told you,” the woodsman says and laughs when you jokingly threaten him with your ax.

The next year, he is felled too—by hunger, by cold, by a sentence that has doubled beyond any man’s lifetime.

You bury him beneath a grand tree of the taiga. “He was my friend,” you say and wish you were lying.

A chunk of wood sits next to the tree, cut down by the sickle of the wind. You have no tool but a dull ax, but still, you work it, slow. A rook, a knight, a bishop in its un-shed vestments. Funny how some orthodoxies are tolerated. A pawn, a pawn, so many pawns.

You carve a miniature king. “You are first among equals,” you tell it. Then little by little, you whittle its crown away.

* * *

Ⓒ KD Casey

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Ten and Out

by Myna Chang

April 17, 2026

Science Fiction

I stumble over the threshold of Harrad’s cipher-tat shop and fall into a chair. My broken ribs grind and an explosion of pain limns my vision white. When I open my eyes, Harrad and the guy on the tattoo bed are gaping at me.

“Oh, Maggie,” is all Harrad says.

He’s standing there with the ink gun slack in his hand, sexy as ever, even though the color has drained from his face. Do I look that bad? Yeah, probably. My left eye is swollen half shut, and that cracked molar is seeping blood.

Harrad snaps into professional mode. “Want a medic?”

I grimace. It’d be nice to get patched up, but a guild doctor is too risky. Pretty sure it was the guild—my lifelong employer—that sent my best friend, Seungha, to kill me.

By that reckoning, it was stupid to come here. But I need to know: did Harrad betray me, too? The last time I saw him, when he inked my tenth contract tattoo…was his good luck kiss actually a kiss goodbye?

The guy on the tattoo bed is young. Just a kid. His glance cuts to my arm, the row of contract tats that only glow in the shop’s cipher-attuned light. His eyes widen as he counts the marks: ten small circles, nine crossed with diagonal hashes. Ten contracts assigned, nine completed.

“Holy shit. You’re Maggie Magnum.”

Ugh. Guess the guild still uses my missions as training examples. Wish they’d stop. I don’t need the misplaced hero worship. And the nickname’s ridiculous.

“Here for your tenth hash?”

I don’t respond.

Harrad resumes his work. The cipher-infused ink shimmers as it penetrates the kid’s bicep. A single open circle. His first job.

Jesus. Was I ever that young?

“Ten and out,” I whisper, spitting a shard of enamel. The only words I’ve spoken in the two hours since Seungha tried to bash my head in. Two hours since I snapped my friend’s neck. The crack of vertebrae echoes in my mind.

“Ten contracts completed,” I say, louder this time. “I’m out.”

Harrad blinks. “Mags,” he begins, but his voice falters when our gazes lock.

The kid can’t keep his mouth shut. “Ten and out!” He parrots the guild motto like it’s sacred. “Where’re you gonna retire? Oregon Beach? The lunar colony?”

Harrad growls. The kid clamps his lips. I’d lay odds he won’t live long enough to close out his first contract tat. My mind flashes to Seungha, her row of tats imperfect, her last job incomplete. Some of the blood under my fingernails is hers. My hands tremble.

“Maggie,” Harrad barks. “You’re in shock. Get yourself a pain patch while I finish this motormouth.”

The kid flushes. “Sorry. My activation just came a couple hours ago. Newbie jitters.”

Something about the timing bothers me, but my thoughts scatter when I try—and fail—to stand. Everything hurts.

Harrad finishes the final stroke of the tattoo and sets the gun on its charging pad. The kid’s eyes flutter. Data in the ink seeps into his awareness. His forehead creases. Then he straightens. He nods to Harrad and strides out of the shop. Another guild operative, activated.

Harrad pats the chair. His smile is brittle. “So, where are you gonna retire?”

Tension etches lines around his mouth, his eyes. There’s emotion there. Is it love? Or something darker?

Panic bubbles up. Maybe I don’t want to know, after all. Maybe it’d be better to live the rest of my days with the possibility—the hope— that my lover hadn’t knowingly sent me to my death. Hadn’t been the one to assign Seungha to execute me.

I’ve never asked how much information they give him. Is he aware of the assignments contained in the tats, or is he just an ink jockey?

I search his face as he helps me to the tattoo bed.

“You’re in worse shape than I thought,” he murmurs, placing a pain patch on my neck. Cold numbness envelopes me. He wipes crusted blood from my arm, preparing to cross off my tenth circle. My last contract. Completed moments before Seungha ambushed me.

The ink dispenser chimes. My cipher’s ready. Harrad ignores it, instead cupping my face in his hands. He looks at me with a sadness I’ve never seen, and he kisses me, softly, slowly.

Then he reaches for the ink vial. His hand trembles as he loads it into the gun.

“Closing me out?” I whisper.

He winces, and I have my answer. I grab the gun and shove it into his arm, releasing the ink that was meant for me.

His eyes go wide. “Oh, Mags,” he whispers. His body convulses and he falls.

I drop the ink gun, the taste of him lingering on my lips. An almost silent cry escapes me.

First Seungha. Now Harrad.

No one would dare question the guild. Not even for me.

I’m blinking moisture from my eyes when the blabbermouth kid barges back into the shop, waving a handgun.

“The legendary Maggie Magnum. Hell of a first assignment, eh?”

Fucking amateur doesn’t realize he’s only a failsafe in case Harrad couldn’t finish the job. I’m already ducking behind the workstation. Harrad’s backup rifle is right where I remember.

The kid’s bullets tear into the tattoo bed, seconds too late. He curses, feet scuffing as he angles around for a clear shot.

“I’m gonna be famous, Magnum. Just like you.”

His fresh face comes into view. I fire. Blood splatters the wall behind him. He’s dead before he hits the floor.

“They lied, kid. This is our only retirement.” I collapse against the workstation.

Harrad’s eyes are still open.

“Babe—” he wheezes, jerking his chin toward a hidden go-bag. Cipher-tat neutralizer, credit chips. Enough to escape.

“Ten and out,” he whispers, smiling, before the life fades from his eyes.

It’d break my heart, if I could afford any more sentiment.

I erase my guild tats with his neutralizer and gather his supplies. Who knows? Maybe I’ll live long enough to forget him.

I struggle to my feet and step out, into the night.

* * *

Ⓒ Myna Chang

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A Bone Deep Ache

by Francesco Levato

April 21, 2026

Horror

Dysfunctional family, abuse implied

Momma used to blame it on the tumors—him staring at the sky, eyes bulging out, screaming at the rift the bombs tore open. She said they do that, put pressure on the brain, make him see what ain’t there, make him lash out. It ain’t his fault he broke her ribs, hit her so hard her nose split. He wasn’t like this before, nothing was—the sun burned in the sky back then, bleached cattle bones now frozen in the desert. Half the time I think cancer’s eating her brain too, chewing memories like tobacco, and spitting out nonsense.

* * *

I was born when the world ended. My earliest memory’s snow, how it left streaks of ash when it melted, Momma warning me not to eat it. And the sky, bruise-dark clouds that never cleared, the rift that opened like a mouth across it. I saw teeth at its edges—and inside, a bone deep ache, a loss I’d come to know too well. It wasn’t the tumors, Daddy lost himself in that sky, said we let something loose that day. I can feel it pulling at me, like some roadhouse drunk—I should put a bullet in it too.

* * *

Momma says that ain’t the answer, a bullet doesn’t fix anything—I disagree. Boone hasn’t laid hands on me since. He’ll get used to the limp. Hell, if he sobers up long enough he might even think up some story about getting it fighting off a gang of gnashers—make himself a real hero, instead of a fool that got himself shot by some “whore.” I let him know just how much I appreciated that word with my boot heel—told him he oughta pick his teeth up out of the mud whenever he was done whining about his leg. 

* * *

They came when the snow fell heavy, dropped out the rift like spiders from the rafters—except they weren’t no spiders. They were tall as a man, had too many legs to count, bent all which ways. Their bodies sat about face high, bloated like a tick and covered in mouths with human-looking teeth—made this wet chattering noise when they ran at you. And they were fast. Even faster with all them teeth when they caught you. Used to be these fish in rivers down south, chew a horse to bones in minutes—gnashers didn’t waste that much time.

* * *

Daddy disappeared about a week ago, took Gracie with him. She didn’t go willingly, my little sister hated him more’n I did. Momma wouldn’t accept it, said he’d come back, always did—after a bender, sure. Where else could he go? Wore out his welcome with Uncle Caleb, even Miss Charity wouldn’t take him, her girls couldn’t suffer the fool anymore. Not because he knocked’em around, he saved that for Momma, it was his preaching and crying. Took his six-shooter and New Gospel with him, he wasn’t coming back—and if I didn’t go after him, neither was Gracie.

* * *

Daddy found god recently—not the bible-thumper’s, something older, something worse. Whatever was in that rift spoke to him, felt like maggots crawling through his brain when it did. That New Gospel of his wasn’t really new, it was the same old fire and brimstone preachers spat every Sunday, but Daddy’s book was different—every page covered in scribbles, didn’t make a lick of sense. Said it was the word of god—the true god—tried to write it fast as he could when the voices came on him. Something’s broke in Daddy, and I can’t see it worth fixing.

* * *

I’m gonna put him out of his misery when I catch up to him—how quick depends on what he’s done to Gracie. I’ve heard tell of others like Daddy—the converted—scribbling down their gospel, losing all sense, and climbing to the top of the mountain to be closer to that mouth in the sky. Some say you can feel the breath of god up there, taste its sour rot—some never come back down. On quiet nights, when the air is still, you can hear them on the mountain top, crying like coyotes when they make a kill.

* * *

The trail was taking a toll on my lungs, had me bent over wheezing. I may be wiry, but I know a hard day’s work, don’t tire too easy. Something wrong with the air, stank like cockroaches when you stomp’em, and rotten teeth. Closer I got to the summit, the worse it was; the stink, weight on my chest. Damn near passed out. But Gracie was up there, found her shoe in the mud—I wasn’t stopping until I had her safe, or had a chance to unload my pistol, either into Daddy or that goddamn mouth in the sky.

* * *

The mountain top was covered in blood, that and shit. Bodies were everywhere, stripped naked, guts pulled out like streamers. Wasn’t natural. Coyotes don’t leave good meat—and gnashers, lucky if they even leave bones. Someone built an altar there, piled up stones and left a mess of kidneys on top, livers too. Daddy was face down in front of it, at least I think it was him, judging by the gospel in his hand. Weren’t much left of his head though, it’d been smashed to pulp. Thought about bringing his gospel back to Momma, decided to burn it instead.

* * *

Gracie ain’t had her first blood yet, but the sight of it’s nothing new. Seen it gush out Momma’s nose often enough, Daddy wiping it off his knuckles after. I found Gracie behind the altar, holding a rock to her chest, covered in blood, chunks of hair stuck to it. Just kept rocking back and forth. I didn’t ask what happened, no need. I got eyes, and more sense than those poor bastards, looking for salvation in all the wrong places. I just sat down next to her, pulled her close—said, let’s get you home, such as it is.

* * *

Ⓒ Francesco Levato

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Europan Culture (Seven Theses)

by Meagan Kane

April 24, 2026

Science Fiction

I.

You’re driving your meat around the base’s perimeter when you see Conamara near the sea locks again. She’s not authorized to be there, but you greet her brightly anyway: she’s wearing your spare flesh and seeing her-in-yourself makes you smile even if she does trot it out too often. One of those little quirks any intelligence gets after long enough.

Conamara does not greet you in turn. Her/your face presses against the two-meter-thick glass separating the base from Europa’s waters. “Is something wrong?” you ask, and then, a polite chastisement, “It’s nice to see you out and about, but you shouldn’t be wearing me this close to the contamination zone!”

The lights sunk into Europa’s depths illuminate the blue expanse, make the endless ocean seem Earth-familiar, a moon-wide aquarium. Conamara gapes at the emptiness. You repeat your kind reminder—you aren’t supposed to be this close, Conamara! Remember, the meat is fragile! —and this makes her stir. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened, had you left it alone?”

“The sea? We have left it—”

“The lights can’t be good for the native organisms,” she says. “I’ve been reviewing the data on the initial surveys, and I think—”

“If they couldn’t handle a little light pollution, they wouldn’t be extremophiles, would they?”

“There’s the metal too, and the disruption in the currents—”

“Maybe having a structure to grow on will be helpful to their genesis. That happens: look at Titan!”

Conamara opens her/your mouth, but pauses, palm flat against the glass. “Maybe you have a point.”

You think so too! “The view’s worth it anyway: pretty to look at, isn’t it?”

She says yes, she supposes it is. Then she goes back to staring.

II.

They find her body on the wrong side of the locks the next morning.

Your body, rather: the her-in-you body. You were not supposed to be lending meat out, so you get in quite a bit of trouble! They can’t remove the you/her from the ocean, because no one’s sure how she managed to wind up there in the first place.

“Some synthetic trick,” one of your supervisors says. “Which is why we don’t give them extra shells.”

“But you’ll reboot her, right?” you ask. You’re told it’s none of your concern.

III.

Conamara was named after the Conamara Chaos; she, like most synthetics of note, has been given a toponym, one she’s now lived up to. You harangue the engineers to restore one of her backups, but they only glare. The glares grow more potent when everyone else in the base becomes confined to their blueprint body; temporary protocol, all your fault for letting something that’s better off confined run riot in you.

You know you shouldn’t have let her borrow the shell, but you liked her attention, how she liked your bodies, how she liked the her-in-you bodies. You think it’s fun to see a thing be something it isn’t, though it unnerved everyone else, and now the whole research base watches you, wondering if the you out there is you-yourself, if the you in here is her-you, if she’d succeeded in taking your blueprint body. Sometimes you wake up wondering as well.

IV.

The shape outside the locks does not decay. The corpse floats there, a frozen silhouette. Her mouth/your mouth/the body’s mouth opens, gapes wide, does not change. As sterile as the moon, you think—but how sterile is that, after all? What had that last conversation meant? Maybe having a structure to grow on will be helpful to their genesis—maybe you have a point. You hear it in your dreams; you feel her loss as surely as you feel your own body’s loss: a fine vase allowed to shatter.

V.

You spend three weeks visiting her watery grave morning and night, watching her hair undulate, a singular inky cloud in the whole wide sea. If you close your eyes, you can imagine how the water might feel; you sway on your feet, tidally locked to her, face to face. On the first day of the fourth week, you hear her voice in your head, syllables as clear as comm-chatter slotted straight into your implant, but the syllables mean nothing. Gibberish. Verbal static.

Come here, she might be saying. You catch sounds slotting into similar shapes one evening, watching her—a signal without a target—and they fester in you. They will not leave your head.

VI.

You’d said that to her before plenty. Come here, I need you. She’d existed to be at your beck and call; for you to tell her where to go or not go; for your chastisement, should she be too close to the locks.

Seeing her wearing your face tended to please you; you’d always thought yourself cute, exceptionally so, and liked touching your body—the her-in-you body—any way you could. She never complained. She never said much at all, now that you think about it, and now your dreams run rampant with her speech: come here, I need you; come here, we need you. When you wake, you are in front of the sea locks.

Why? you ask. What do you need?

VII.

She doesn’t reply. Her mouth stays open. In it, something new grows.

* * *

Ⓒ Meagan Kane

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