** ************ *** *********** **** **** ********* *** **** *********** **** ** *** ** *** *** *** ** *** *** **** ** ***** *** *** *** *** **** *** **** ****** *** ******** ****** ******** **** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** **** ******* *** *** *** *** *** *** ** *** *** **** ********* ***** **** **** ********* **** *** **** *** *** **** ** *** *** ------------------- **** *** ****** ***** The Online Magazine *********** ****** ***** of Amateur Creative Writing ************ --------------------------- ====================================================================== March 1990 Volume II, Issue 2 Contents Etc... .................................................. Jim McCabe Editorial "Piled Higher and Deeper" ........................ Kenneth A. Kousen Fiction "Uncle Itchy" ..................................... Heidi G. Wolfson Fiction "Solace" ................................................ Bill Sklar Fiction "Moonlight" ....................................... Sonia Orin Lyris Fiction ATHENE, Copyright 1990 By Jim McCabe. Circulation: 654 (21% PostScript) This magazine may be archived and reproduced without charge under the condition that it remains in its entirety. The individual works within are the sole property of their respective authors, and no further use of these works is permitted without their explicit consent. This ASCII edition was created on an IBM 4381 mainframe, using the Xedit System Product Editor. Subscriptions: Athene is available in PostScript and ASCII form, and is distributed exclusively over electronic computer networks. All subscriptions are free. To subscribe, send email to MCCABE@MTUS5.BITNET, with a message inicating which format (PostScript or ASCII) is desired. Etc... Jim McCabe MCCABE@MTUS5.BITNET ====================================================================== Some might find it strange that it has taken me six issues to finally get comfortable with Athene. The tedious job of processing subscriptions, although still done by hand, is becoming more efficient. The development of the PostScript edition is also becoming more and more automatic, as I continue to fine-tune both my custom software and the templates used by FrameMaker. I am comfortable, but I don't think I will ever be completely content. There is always room for improvement, and I encourage the readership to recommend changes. This month's issue contains some subtle changes, suggested by a few concerned subscribers, which relate to the formatting of the PostScript versions. The story titles are now enclosed in quotes, instead of being underlined. The title of this column is now formatted more consistently, using no italics or quotes everywhere it is referenced. Also, the gray "filler" blocks, used to balance the columns of the last page of some stories, have been discontinued. A true dash is used now as well, instead of a double hyphen. In addition, the "A" icon is now used to signal the end of every story, instead of being used only for my editorial section. The most visible change is a reduction in the size of the type. The smaller type helps to ease the psychological burden of reading such narrow columns of words, and it also makes each issue about four pages shorter. I have also started a newer system for distributing the back-issues of the magazine. Before, I would process each request an issue at a time, immediately when I received it. Now, I save up all the back-issue requests until the end of the week, then I send them all out at once. Although this causes a slower turnaround time in the short run, above this individual level it makes much more efficient use of the network and contributes to a faster throughput in the long run. These reader-sponsored improvements, balanced with a few other small modifications made on my own, should help to make this monthly magazine a more enjoyable experience for everyone. I am happy to announce the formation of a new fiction magazine for the Scandinavian community -- Volven. Like Athene and Quanta, Volven will be distributed electronically, over the ever-expanding global computer network. The editor, Rune Johansen, had originally planned for it to deal exclusively with science fiction, but has decided to allow for "any good stuff in Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian." (Not "Nynorsk.") Rune may be reached at: Rune Johansen Editor, Volven rune.johansen@odin.re.nta.uninett But enough of this, on now to the real purpose of the magazine, the stories! "Piled Higher and Deeper" By Kenneth A. Kousen KAK%UTRC@utrcgw.utc.com Copyright 1990 Kenneth A. Kousen ====================================================================== Sometimes, graduate school is no picnic. I reflected on this fact in the Student Lounge while "talking" to my friend Jeremy Davis, a fellow Ph.D. candidate in mathematical physics. I use the word "talking" loosely, because Jeremy suffers from Graduate Student Disease: the firm conviction that his work is so fascinating that everyone in the world ought to be eager to hear about it, in great detail, for hours on end. I find this self-centered foolishness frustrating, because it makes people reluctant to hear about truly important work. Like mine, for instance. I am going to revolutionize physics by introducing the concept of negative probabilities. How can the odds of something happening be negative? Simple. If something is absolutely impossible, its probability is zero. Therefore, a negative probability means that it is so totally impossible that you shouldn't even be wasting your time thinking about it in the first place. This, naturally, brings me to the problem of writing my thesis. Don't get me wrong; I'm an excellent student. I took all the required courses, and did fine (after all, grades don't matter to graduate students, right?). I passed my qualifying examinations at the end of my second year with only minor damage, and spent the last four years blissfully contemplating the wonders of the universe. All right, so I mostly did it while drinking beer at the beach. Thinking deep thoughts is best performed when you are relaxed, and where do you go to relax? Q.E.D. (Latin for "it ought to be obvious from here, so don't bother me with any questions"). All in all, it had been a good, productive, and, of course, relaxing existence, all for the benefit of my fellow man. Last week, however, my entire carefully cultivated world received a shattering blow. I had presented the deep, powerful theorems I had been working on to my advisor for His review (note: advisors always get a capital He/She/It -- follow this rule and you have at least a fighting chance to get your degree). When He later called me into His office, I subtly commented that it was He who had provided the inspiration for this beautiful, elegant work, and carefully called His attention to the way my work built upon His own. I finally told Him that I was going to name my first child after Him, even if it was a girl. He rolled His eyes in response, no doubt thanking the heavens that He had been blessed with such a devoted disciple. Imagine my astonishment when He then informed me that funding for my project was being terminated, so that if I wanted a Ph.D., I had to submit a thesis within two weeks! I went to the Student Lounge to consider my plight, which is how I received the privilege of hearing every detail of Jeremy's research, as I said. When he finally ran out of wind, I told him about my predicament. "Ok," he said, "so you have to give your advisor a rough draft. What's the problem?" "Well, at this particular point in time, I don't have much actually committed to paper." "Really? You've been here forever. How much do you have?" I looked down my nose at him. "Please, sir. Like the immortal Gauss, I am an explorer, not a colonizer. I prefer the noble quest for knowledge to the mundane aspects of recording my discoveries. While it is true that I may have spent more time here than the average student, I assure you that it has been well spent." "So you keep telling me. Don't you have anything at all?" I gave him my pages of theorems and proofs. He shuffled through them, emitting an occasional whistle. He never actually laughed. "My friend," he said after he had finished, "you have a problem." "Nonsense," I replied, "_we_ have a problem." "We? What do you mean `we'?" I then proceeded to dazzle him with logical arguments in favor of his helping me find a way out of this mess. Sadly, I must report that man is not a rational animal. Threats worked better, but I'm afraid it was bribery that was most effective. I shall dearly miss my mint condition set of Pink Floyd original master recordings. "Well," he said, "I'll try, but I'm not promising anything. I'll let you know if I come up with any ideas." "Sir, you are a gentlemen and a scholar. I look forward with great anticipation to hearing your recommendations." Later that evening while listening to Pink Floyd's _The_Wall_ (you know, "we don't need no education..."), I compiled a list of possible solutions to my dilemma. It ran, in part: 1. Finish the thesis. I rejected this as impractical, given the time considerations and my adviser's unfortunate predisposition against me. 2. Transfer to another department. (And have to take the qualifiers again? Get serious.) 3. Transfer to another school. (Possible but unlikely. See (1) above.) 4. Get a job. (And _work_ for a living? There has to be a better way.) 5. Extortion. 6. Marry my adviser's daughter. 7. French Foreign Legion. Believe it or not, the list went downhill from there. How disappointing. Maybe my work is not the most rigorous in the world, but at least it tends to be original. I know my ideas sometimes seem rather far out, but they're certainly new. I remember when I took that Modern Art course as an under- graduate. The instructor projected slides of various odd-looking works of art on a screen, and invited discussion about them. One day she put a particularly wild Jackson Pollack up there, and it pushed me too far. The painting consisted entirely of blotches of paint on a canvas, with no apparent pattern. I felt compelled to say something. "Now wait a minute," I said. "What's so wonderful about that?" I pointed disdainfully at the screen. "It was new and different," she replied. "You mean that all I have to do to be a famous artist is to come up with new and different things?" "It's not quite that simple, but, in effect, yes. If you can be truly original, perhaps you could produce something of merit." "All right, then, try this. I'm going to paint an absolute masterpiece on a canvas and put it in a nice, wooden frame. The thing is, though, I'm going to hang it so that the picture faces the wall and nobody can see it. I'll call it `Hidden Beauty' or something like that. What do you think?" "Well..." "Next, I'm going to suspend it by a thread from the ceiling, but in the middle of the back so that it faces downward. Then I'll attach a motor to it so it spins back and forth. What do you think now?" "Um..." "You like that one? How about this? I'm going to slice a triangular section out of one end and argue that the missing piece gives the work a sense of space. Then maybe I'll hang the section next to it. Maybe I'll just put the whole thing in a locked room and only let people see it through a mirror. Am I an artist?" She shook her head sadly and didn't reply. I wound up with a B-minus in the course. I never did figure out what made some modern art works worth a lot of money and others garbage. I decided to stick with physics, where you could usually tell the good from the bad. This, unfortunately, brought my attention back to the problem at hand. All this daydreaming may have helped, though, because I began to get the barest glimmer of an idea. Maybe the whole trick was to turn everything around and look at it from a different angle. I pondered the possibilities far into the night. The next day, I met Jeremy for lunch. He looked like he hadn't slept well either. He handed me the papers I had given him the day before. "I don't know," he said. "There are some interesting ideas here, but not a lot of development. There really isn't enough here to get a thesis out of it." I smiled at him. "Fear not, I have been inspired. With some help from you, my dear fellow, we are well on the way to becoming famous beyond your wildest dreams." "What are we going to do, rob a bank?" "Oh, thee of little faith. You know my hypotheses about negative mass and negative probabilities?" "Sure. Cute ideas, but I can't imagine anything productive coming out of them." "The beauty of my plan is that we don't have to. What we are going to do is to propose the Madison-Abramson-Davis Conjecture." "The who?" "Look, all the truly famous problems in mathematics are unsolved, right? Some may even be unsolvable. But it doesn't matter. Nobody ever remembers the person who solves an unsolved problem, only the person who came up with it in the first place. Look at Fermat's Last Theorem. Mathematicians have been trying to prove or disprove it for three hundred years with no luck. Even if they do succeed, though, the guy everybody will remember is Fermat. So I, Robert Madison, and you, Jeremy Davis, are going to come up with a Great Question." "Sure we are. By the way, where does the Abramson part come in?" "Elementary, my dear Davis. No doubt you have forgotten the name of my esteemed advisor, the soon to be famous Professor Bartholomew S. Abramson." He laughed. "Cute. Real cute. Incidentally, why is my name last?" "Ah, sometimes my subtlety surprises even me. Can you think of a better name for a kooky idea like this than the MAD Conjecture?" Jeremy grinned. The grin forced its way into a laugh, and then into a guffaw. It is extremely gratifying to watch skeptics come around to my way of thinking. "Now for the minor details," I continued. "As wonderful as my work thus far has been, it needs to be presented in the proper manner for it to yield the desired results. This is what I want you to do..." During the next two weeks, I circulated rumors around the various funding agencies that my advisor had made a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery. I stated that he was reluctant to announce it yet because he hadn't worked out all the possibilities. I then called the science editor at the local newspaper and gave him the story. He loved it. Most professors don't have time for science journalism types; they prefer to talk only to each other. Consequently, the newspaperman was thrilled to be on the inside track of a potentially major discovery. I then called the governor's office. `If you're going to be audacious, you might as well go all out,' is my philosophy. I eventually was placed in touch with the state representative for public relations in education. When I told him the story, he ate it up. Nothing like a little state xenophobia to make people not worry about facts. All he could talk about was how this reflected well upon the governor, the state, the university, and my advisor, probably in that order. My favorite call, however, was to the fund-raising office at the university. Here, the operating principle is greed. They love anything they can flaunt to potential donors. I spoke to a Ms. Weston, Senior Executive Assistant to the Dean for Industrial and Alumni Relations. "We're so glad," she said, "to see our junior faculty producing such important work." She always used the royal plural. "We simply must see to it that Professor Abramson receives our fullest support and appreciation. Would you please, for the good of the University, of course, persuade him to release his results as soon as possible?" I promised to try. Meanwhile, Jeremy was working on graphics. There's nothing like multicolored diagrams and videos to dazzle the uninformed. Just look at all the computer manufacturers that show bar graphs on TV. Honestly, when was the last time you truly needed to use a bar graph. Jeremy really came through. He made multicolored pie charts, constructed elaborate three-dimensional models, and even managed to create a video tape of some complicated numerical simulation. It looked beautiful. Finally, everything was ready for the big day. I triumphantly entered my adviser's office, just before my list of callers was scheduled to arrive. Professor Abramson motioned for me to take a chair until he got off the phone. "No," he was saying, "I'm not ready to publish my results just yet. Yes, yes, I'll let you know when I am. You're welcome. Good bye." He hung up the phone and turned to me. "Strangest thing," he said. "All week long I've been getting the oddest inquiries about some supposed `Big Question' they say I'm working on. Can't imagine what they're talking about. No matter, they're all daft anyway. Now, Mr. Madison, have you a thesis to present to me today?" "Sir, with my associate, Jeremy Davis, I have prepared a paper I believe you will find quite interesting." I handed him a copy of "The Madison-Abramson-Davis Conjecture and Its Revolutionary Impact on Modern Physics." His expression was priceless. He couldn't decided whether to be astonished or furious, and tried to do both. Fortunately, at this point the first visitor arrived. "Professor Abramson, I presume. I'm Dick Jorgens from the Daily Press. Your student here tells me you're on to something big." My advisor turned to him, but before he could respond, in walked the Honorable William H. Wyeth, State Senator and Head of the Governor's Commission on Science and Technology. He didn't introduce himself. He just assumed everyone knew him, which was probably correct. "Nice to see you again, Bart," he said. Nobody ever calls my advisor Bart, but what the heck, I was going with the flow. "I hear you're up to something that will make the governor proud." Right on schedule, Jeremy came in, with an armful of materials and equipment. He and I started handing out copies of our paper, complete with multicolored graphs, etcetera, and he then hooked up a video monitor and a slide projector. Everybody started talking at once. Now that it looked like something really important was going on, in walked the Dean for Industrial and Alumni Relations, Randolph Murphy, and the Dean of the School of Science, Chong-Liu Mei. An assistant professor's office is not large, so this made quite a crowd. I called for attention. "Honored guests, members of the press, distinguished gentlemen, I bring you greetings. You are witnessing an historic occasion. Professor Abramson, my esteemed advisor, tends to be overly modest about His work, so I am now taking the liberty of informing you about His latest results. If I may have the first slide, please..." I talked for about an hour. I said a great many things, some of which might even have been significant. I wasn't worried, though. When you are dealing with an audience of non-specialists, it's easy to get them to ignore your words in favor of your pictures. "... and so, in conclusion, let me say that negative probabilities and negative mass could change our entire conception of reality. Future work on solving the Madison-Abramson-Davis Conjecture will undoubtedly open up whole new continents of theory, and lead to many new and exciting discoveries for the benefit of mankind. Thank you for your kind attention." Dean Murphy was first to speak. "Thank you, son, that was quite impressive, and no less than we expect from such a gifted young researcher. We in the administration are proud of the progress Professor Abramson has made, and consequently we would also like to make an announcement. In consultation with Dean Mei here, we have arranged for an award of early tenure to be given to Professor Abramson, as a reward for his important advances in his chosen field. We are very pleased to have such a brilliant young colleague, and look forward eagerly to his next discoveries." Beautiful. Couldn't have planned it better myself. There's no better way to get a faculty member on your side than to help him get tenure. I'll skip the subsequent discussions, which primarily consisted of my advisor making polite denials about the importance of his work, which were naturally taken as appropriate modesty. Eventually, all the VIP's left, leaving me alone with Professor Abramson. The video tape was still playing in the background. "Congratulations, sir," I said. "It's no more than you deserve." He wanted to be angry with me, but couldn't. Getting tenure will do that to you. "Now look, you know very well that I didn't come up with any `revolutionary hypothesis.' What happens when nothing ever comes out of any of this?" "Not to worry, sir. You just tell them that the problems are more complex than you imagined, and that it could take years to see practical results. Besides, what difference does it make? You are now a tenured professor." That did it. Finally, even He had to laugh. "All right, you win. Congratulations, _Dr._ Madison." One final note. Two years later, I visited Jeremy in his office at Rocket Propulsion Associates, where he worked as a research physicist. "Bob!" he said, wringing my hand. "Good to see you. What have you been doing with yourself?" "My dear fellow, you have the distinct honor of addressing this year's winner of the Golden Squiggle Award for Original Concepts in Modern Art." "You became a modern artist? It figures. Only you could find a way to make a pretentious attitude and a crazy imagination pay." "Please, sir, you wound me. I earned it. Don't argue with success." We sat around, talking about old times and listening to his (near) mint condition set of Pink Floyd original master recordings. Eventually, the subject of Professor Abramson came up. Since I had left the field soon after receiving my degree, I wasn't up on current events. "Then you haven't heard?" Jeremy asked. "Heard what?" He dug up a recent copy of Physics News, and opened it to a picture of my advisor. He had just become the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. My jaw dropped. Jeremy laughed. "Apparently, there really was something to all that stuff about negative probabilities and negative mass. Professor Abramson managed to tie a theory for antigravity to it. They're talking about a multi-billion dollar industry." Hoist by my own petard! I recovered quickly, though. "Nonsense," I replied. "Not `they.' We." "We? What do you mean, `we'?" Here we go again. --------------------------------------------------- Ken Kousen is an associate research engineer at United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, CT, where he works on computational models for the aerodynamics inside turbomachines. This story was written while he was completing his doctoral thesis at Princeton University, which he admits "was finished by the traditional method, rather than the one used in the story." --------------------------------------------------- "Uncle Itchy" By Heidi G. Wolfson v5011e@TEMPLEVM.BITNET ====================================================================== Uncle Itchy was the one who gently shook my sister and me awake to announce the arrival of the family's first baby boy. To use the word gentle in the same sentence with Uncle Itchy's name is very unlikely, yet fitting. As a child, I would stare up at his anchor tatoo, down at his shaking hands and up again into his anxious, red and blue eyes. There was a gentle fright inside of Uncle Itchy that he pushed inside himself with Seagrams. It was apparent to me then, but dissolved from my sight over time. The only real fact that I knew about my Uncle Itchy was that he had been in the navy. That was, for me, the whole of his identity. He was my father's older brother and I was a week shy of being five on the night that my brother was born, old enough to wonder what my Uncle Itchy's job was and why he had no wife. "It's a boy! Girls! Girls, you have a brother." They may be the most gentle words my Uncle Itchy ever bestowed upon us or anyone; still, he was our favorite adult in my grandparent's house. Uncle Itchy would make faces behind the backs of the other grown-ups in the room and then smile through his eyes at our giggling. My mother called it immaturity. My grandfather referred to it as laziness, often calling my Uncle Itchy a schleper. Whatever it was, I liked it. It was the thing that prompted Uncle Itchy to pay more attention to us than our grandparents did. "I'll trade you a quarter for your nose," he would say. My grandparent's house was the opposite of other places. There, the adults were noisy and the children were quiet. My Uncle Itchy and my father's sister, Aunt Sheila, lived at home. Aunt Sheila was getting married that year, and would soon be out of the house. It was not shameful for her to live at home. My Uncle Itchy was thirty-five. He lived at home, walked boldly up and down the avenue, and tip-toed around my grandfather. My grandfather had a booming voice and would criticize every one around him. He was also riddled with aches and pains. My grandmother was always fussing over my grandfather, making him food and coaxing him to eat it. I used to think of her as my grandfather's pet dog. There was something about my grandparents' cedar smelling house that made all adults who entered act a little bit like my grandfather. There was a mirrored wall along the stairs. I would watch myself walk up and down the stairs as an available form of amusement, and sing songs to myself to block out the voices. "Lazy slob," "No good bum," "Schlemiel," "Faird," (which meant a big, stupid horse) and so on, talking about no one in particular and everyone in the room. Uncle Itchy was often the sullen target. I would watch him drift into the living room while the adults were in the dining room playing cards and exchanging insults. From the top of the stairs I could see Uncle Itchy in the mirror, opening the bottom door of the cabinet where the bottles and decks of cards were kept, screwing and unscrewing the cap of the Seagrams and taking drinks out of the bottle while keeping sharp watch on the dining room. I wanted him to know that it was our secret. I would stare at him through the mirror and try to send him that message through secret brain waves. The occasional nights that my sister and I would sleep over at my grandparent's house were the longest days and nights that I can remember. The neighborhood was quiet and felt desolate despite the old women that would sit on their front patios in lawn chairs. For play, my sister and I would walk around the block and fill paper bags with acorns. We were always in identical dresses and tight, patent-leather shoes. We would smile at the old women. Sometimes they would call us over and pinch our cheeks, exclaiming "Shana Maedelachs!!" and put candy in our acorn bags. We circled and circled the same square block. We weren't allowed to cross the street. The day after my brother was born, Uncle Itchy promised to take me to the library. We walked first down to the Avenue, and Uncle Itchy brought me a whole dill pickle, which he allowed me to hold in my hands and eat as we walked. He never cared if I got my dress dirty, and didn't keep after me with a napkin as the pickle juice dribbled down my chin. He smoked cigars and said brisk "Hellos" to people in his throaty voice. Uncle Itchy had a big nose and a black moustache. Black, curly hair circled the sides of his head; he was bald on top. Now I know that he wasn't a particularly tall man, but, as we walked down the avenue I remember likening his sullen stare to a Wooden Indian in the tobacco store and wondering if all of the people we passed weren't just a little afraid of him. Uncle Itchy didn't make me hold his hand as we walked, which next to my Grandmother's overprotection and grandfather's bossiness, was wonderful freedom. We paused for a traffic light, and I darted against it out into the busy Avenue. When Uncle Itchy finally caught up with me, his face had turned white and he grabbed me with both of his hands under my arm pits. "What's a matter with you? Meshugeneh! Didn't anybody ever teach you that red means stop and green means go?" He shook me violently and I dropped my pickle. "Yeah, they did," I defended as I sadly watched my pickle rock back and forth and then settle on the dirty sidewalk. "But that's for the cars. People are supposed to do the opposite of what the cars do so's they don't bump into each other." "Lunatic, crazy person," Uncle Itchy mumbled to himself and then held my wrist between his vice-like thumb and forefinger as we walked. My brother and I were wrestling on the carpet of the living room in our own house, when Uncle Itchy showed up with Aunt Mable. My brother was then five, and I was old enough to know that Uncle Itchy had brought disgrace to the family by marrying this huge, red-haired gentile behind everybody's back. My brother and I stopped wrestling when the screen door opened. Uncle Itchy was proud and defiant as he quickly led Aunt Mable to the couch. I guessed that she had to sit down right away because her legs couldn't hold her. My mother nervously shuffled into the living room with glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. My brother and I stared at Aunt Mable. My mother lightly kicked my bum with her pointed shoe when Uncle Itchy and Aunt Mable weren't looking. There were rolls of flesh wagging beneath Aunt Mable's chin and her arms were as wide as my mother's whole body. She had bright red-orange hair piled high on her head. I wondered how she got it so stiff and shiny. I thought that it was really a plastic wig and fought the desire to walk over and touch it. Aunt Mable didn't say a word. She looked at all of us with a blank expression and smiled lovingly at Uncle Itchy. "Oh, Itch," was all she said during the whole visit, giggling and looking down at her own fat thighs. She seemed amused by every word that came out of Uncle Itchy's mouth. She even looked at him lovingly when he belched real loud, as he tended to do. That was the only time I ever met Aunt Mable. After she and my Uncle Itchy were married, he didn't come to visit us very often, maybe once a year, and when he did, he came alone. On Uncle Itchy's visits he would bring money and candy. He never stayed in our house very long. My parents kept no booze in the house. On each of these visits, someone would ask Uncle Itchy where Aunt Mable was. "She's home," was his standard reply. Uncle Itchy's eyes and nose were becoming permanently stained red. He would promise to buy us cars and tell stories about all of the important people he knew and all of the money he had in the bank. At the time, Uncle Itchy was selling appliances at a downtown retail store. I had heard that he and Aunt Mable lived in a dim, brown-paneled, one room apartment, although I had never been there. My sister and I used to laugh about him when he left, and then feel guilty for laughing as we each spent the five dollars he had given us. "Where do you think Aunt Mable really is?" My sister once asked me. "I don't know. Maybe he killed her." "Do you think?" "Yeah. And he's got her buried under the floor boards." "Damn," my sister said with widening eyes. "He would have had to pull up the whole floor." We amused ourselves for hours, planning out Uncle Itchy's strategies of murder. "He pushed her face in a lemon meringue pie and held it there until she suffocated," my sister suggested. "Yeah. And then he hung her on a meat hook in the closet and did some process on her like dried beef so he could fit her under the floor boards." Five years went by, in which I didn't see my grandparents. My father didn't talk to his parents. There was some blow-up in the family that evoked this grudge. I think it had something to do with a card game. I suspect that for most of my grandfather's life, he didn't talk to his parents either. When I finally did see my grandfather again, it was at my grandmother's funeral. Before the service, the coffin was opened for the immediate family and the grandchildren. My grandmother was the first dead person I had ever seen. I remember thinking that at any moment, my grandmother would sit up in her coffin. My Aunt Sheila and my sister were crying. My sister held my hand and reminded me of all the times that my grandmother sat us down and her linoleum, kitchen table and plied us with potato-latkas and luxion-kuggle. I wanted to cry, too. I thought that everyone was looking me and thinking that I was a bad girl for not crying for my dead grandmother. I turned away from my sister, and looked over at Uncle Itchy. He was red-eyed, silent, and nervously fidgeting with his keys. "Where's Mable?" Aunt Sheila had asked Uncle Itchy during the Shiva. "Oh. She's home," Uncle Itchy said quietly. My sister and I looked at each other and suppressed our laughter. Uncle Itchy was the first to notice my breasts. I think he noticed them before I did. I remember my face turning red as he commented. "Ooooh, looks like you're developing," he said with his Uncle Itchy grin, red eyes and twitching moustache lurking in my disgrace. "Yeah." I would run out the door, letting the screen door slam behind me, and head for the corner to drink beer with my friends. There was a relief in being handed a cold can and pulling the tab back. I remember the beer tasting soapy and the chore of getting it down. There was something in the beer, however, that pulled me far away from my family and Uncle Itchy's shaking hands. The slow, mechanical clicking in my head replaced all thoughts and violent emotions. My friends and I laughed and spent nights trying to climb telephone poles or hang onto the back bumpers of moving cars in the snow. Aunt Sheila told my sister that Aunt Mable was put in a mental hospital because they found her wandering naked down the crowded Avenue. I tried to picture it for a moment and then blocked the sight out of my mind and laughed. "I guess she's alive, after all," I said to my sister. This was my teenage years, drawing to a close. There was a feeling of the world stretched out before me that the thought of a 300 pound, naked Aunt Mable could do very little to disturb. There was a world beyond family to explore and I was beginning to get served in bars. Once, in my early twenties, as my head was throbbing with hangover and I was calling out sick from work, I thought about Uncle Itchy. It was the second time I had called in sick that week and the sixth time that month. The memory of my grandfather's voice, hurling insults and accusations, disharmonized with the pounding in my head. The exact look of Uncle Itchy's watery eyes came back to haunt me, and then disappeared. The phone call had come like a wolf at the door on a particularly cold, January evening. I was sitting in the dark, in my downtown efficiency, listening to traffic and drinking brandy. The phone call was from my sister. Aunt Sheila had asked her to call me. My sister passed on to me all of the details that Aunt Sheila had passed onto her. Uncle Itchy's friend had called Aunt Sheila to say that Uncle Itchy had not been to work in a month and that his phone was disconnected. Aunt Sheila went to his apartment, and when there was no answer at the door, called the landlord to let her in. In the apartment were my Aunt Mable and Uncle Itchy, stretched out on the floor. They were surrounded by empty whiskey bottles and there were empty cardboard boxes in the corner that once held cases of Seagrams. Aunt Sheila said that the apartment was overwhelming with the smell of urine and that the mattress and rug were covered with human defecation. The food in the refrigerator was unidentifiable in its mold. Aunt Mable was dead, and had been for days. Uncle Itchy was still alive, holding onto her. It wasn't until I got that phone call, that I realized that Uncle Itchy had a friend. He had a friend at work. I wonder what they talked about. I wonder what kind of friend my Uncle Itchy was. My sister was going to the hospital to see Uncle Itchy the next day. She asked me if I was going. When I didn't answer, she insisted that if I ever wanted to see Uncle Itchy again, this was my last chance. I hung up the phone and stared into my snifter. I resolved that 'tomorrow' I would stop drinking. Uncle Itchy's eyes were open and moving with vague recognition as my brother and sister and I stood above him. His feet were sticking out from the bottom sheets. They were yellow and scabby and three times as large as life. His face was yellow and bloated as well. The only things about him that looked like Uncle Itchy were his blue, watery eyes and the anchor tattoo on his arm. I suddenly wished I could talk to Uncle Itchy. I wished I could tell him something, anything. I thought about saying "I love you", but decided against it. I wasn't sure myself if it was true, and even if it were, he never would have believed me. The shiva was at Aunt Sheila's house. Everyone, except for my grandfather, had fond stories to tell about Uncle Itchy. The way that he died was never discussed. The talk made me uneasy. I escaped the sound of the voices by going into the kitchen. On the counter was a bottle of Seagrams. I poured myself a drink, glancing nervously over my shoulder at the adults in the living room. I suddenly heard a child's laughter. I looked down. Aunt Sheila's little boy was sitting under the kitchen table, staring up at me. I winked at him as I lifted the glass to my lips. "Solace" By Bill Sklar 86730@LAWRENCE.BITNET ====================================================================== I sat in the lobby playing guitar. It was my "Flamenco" phase and music to me was often a form of fire. I remember the feel of my fingers as my right hand struck the strings with a syncopated pulse and my left climbed up and down the fretboard with rhythmic ferocity. People sat near me, watching and listening, but I noticed them only incidentally. My mind was occupied with the music. John walked into the room. I looked up. He grinned. He opened his trumpet case and started to warm up. I continued to play, nervously looking forward to his participation. I went into an uncharacteristic scherzo-- my thumb plucking a pizzicato bass while my index and middle fingers played an arabic dance. Then without thought I moved back into my original theme. I was watching myself create. My hands knew more than my brain what was to come next. John piped in with a soft flurry of notes. I smiled and relaxed, letting him take the lead for awhile. My strumming grew sparser, and his tone grew fuller, painting the room a regal rustic red. The rapport was better than usual. John and I had played together for a long time, but it was rarely this good. My mind was cleared of extraneous thought as I grew more and more oblivious to the world around me. The beat led me like nothing else could. John too was the music's willing slave. He played a theme and I echoed it back, giving it a slight variation and he returned the favor. It felt so smooth, so lucid, as if nothing could possibly go wrong. We were one with the melody, the harmony, and for a single moment, we were one together as well. Suddenly John dropped out, leaving me to face the music alone. The beat wavered a little and I felt suddenly lost. I looked at him, somewhat annoyed. He grimaced as he moved the trumpet back to his lips and inhaled deeply. Suddenly we were flying. Before I knew what was happening, John was at double tempo, and made a deliberate effort to avoid every melody I approached. I chased him, kept trying to pin his theme down, but every moment I reached a connection, he found a new tangent and moved on it as if he were racing with the wind. "You bastard!" I wanted to scream, "It was going so damn well! Where the hell are you going now?" and yet his melodies mocked me, taunting "catch me if you can." My fingers were driven by vengeance. I wanted to win that melody. I wanted to find it and tie it down, so my fingers moved to match John's tempo. My tendons began to ache. My fingers grew sore. I kept chasing. My hands began to sweat. Resigned, I stopped, letting him carry the last moment of the song. It was his show now, he would be the one to move it through and follow the action, though I was still fuming with anger for the way he had edged me out. Upon stopping, however, I was able to sit back and listen. The turmoil, I noticed, was hardly what I had felt it to be. This new view showed me something different and I heard a melody for the first time from the ears not of a performer but a listener. I felt ashamed -- ashamed that I had tried to interfere with his theme, and ashamed that I had been angry with him for taking on his own song. I carefully edged myself back into the song. We finished it as a duo, separate, yet joined -- alone yet together. John's cheeks above me blow air through his golden horn. I caressed his flourish with a cadential strum and the room exploded into a laudatory roar. I looked at John, and he back at me. "It's time," our eyes said to one another, "It's time to move on." I hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. He stroked my hair as the crowd dispersed. It was over between us, we both knew, but to let him go was so hard. The music was good, sometimes great, but it wasn't enough simply to make beautiful music together. My head ached for a second, resisting the moment I knew was about to come. He put his trumpet away. I watched him move, wanting to hold him next to me. I didn't touch him again. I knew I couldn't handle it if I did. From across the room I waved a warm goodbye, holding back my tears. As he left he blew me a kiss. I still feel it to this day. I turned away, and picked up my guitar. I started into a solace, but the notes didn't come together. I tried again, and still it didn't feel right. I put the guitar down. I paused for a moment. "Alone again," I thought, and looked back at my instrument. I paused again. "But I've still got you," I added aloud. I picked it up once again, and struck a gentle chord. I started into a solace -- it flowed like never before. I could feel it working itself within me, though it was painful. The music knew, better than I, what had to be done. It hurt so much, trying to hold onto those memories. "Let go," it told me. "Let go." My hands were becoming their own masters again. I watched and listened as they played with bittersweet simplicity. I took a breath and exhaled a sigh of relief. Alone we sat, me and my music, but we were no longer slaves to the sounds of another. I fell into song. Tears streamed down my face and rather than hold them in this time, I let them stream. The song flowed in unison and I reached a harmony with myself. With the tears still flowing, I laughed aloud, my joy complementing my sorrow in a rubato rhythm of fire and ice. My fear dissipated and my hope soared. "Finally," I thought. "Finally I am alive." I strummed like mad and my voice bellowed with joyous agony. The pain flowed as I released it -- the wounds bled, "but oh so much better to feel this pain," I thought, "then to be denied the chance to embrace it." Blood coursed through my veins and I was aware of every last corpuscle -- I felt the pulse inside me in tune with the rhythm of my music. I allowed the melody to end itself. My heart relaxed and I wiped away my tears as I put my guitar away. "It's over," I thought aloud, half-smiling. "Time to go home." --------------------------------------------------- Bill Sklar is a musician with interests in filmmaking, photography, fiction writing, and sexuality issues. He feels a driving force to express himself artistically as well as politically through whatever means he finds appropriate. He is currently working on a multi-media presentation of his photography and music, with the possibility of incorporating them into a play. Bill lives "somewhere in central Wisconsin," where he spends countless hours composing and recording his own music for various combinations of fretted instruments, keyboards, and percussion. This is his second appearance in Athene. --------------------------------------------------- "Moonlight" By Sonia Orin Lyris sol@lucid.com Copyright 1989 Sonia Orin Lyris ====================================================================== I cannot shake the desire to kill. We have won. I have survived the fight, and it feels very good. I know I have been cut but I cannot feel it because I am still too full of battle lust. I am still furious, and the passion rises inside me, crashing, demanding more. I am still hungry, but there are no more enemies. The sun is reddening, threatening to leave the sky and I curse at it for depriving me of light. The handle of my sword is slick with sweat and blood. I tighten my grip and swing at nothing. There are bodies everywhere. Some are still moving and some will be fertilizer for the soil. I notice the sky, the land, the smell of death, the sounds of pain. I walk towards the rise, still swinging my sword, towards the mountains that ring the valley that we won today. This is fertile land, and now that we have fed it with the blood of our enemies it will be even more fertile. Our enemies. They resisted us and so we killed them. Their farms, their mills, their animals, their wealth, are now our inheritance. I remember how they fought, not as warriors but as farmers, clumsy and slow. It is what happens to a people who settle to become workers of the land and forget the skills that made them masters of men. This will never happen to us. I will teach my children as I was taught, I will see to it that they are always warriors first and farmers second. There are children in the piles of bodies. My kin collect more dead even as the pile is lit on fire. I should stay and help, but there is still too much of the battle in me. I walk towards the mountains again. The land is steep, and I push myself to walk faster, and it feels good. The sky is dark in front of me. After a while I stop, breathing heavily. I look out on the valley that is now ours. The moon hangs on the edge of the sky, as full as it can be, so bright the stars nearby have vanished. Smoke rises from the fire below, painting the moon dusty red. The moon holds my gaze. The sun is life, but the moon is a mystery, and I do not know what it is good for. It does not fight. It does not change us, it only changes itself, over and over again. I turn and walk again up into the darkness of the hills. Around me are trees, birds and the sounds of night. The battle is over and I have killed and somehow it is not enough. I recall every hand that was raised against me today, every cry, every death. It is important that I remember each death carefully, for each one brings me life. I look at the valley again, watching the fires. My sword has grown heavier, fed with blood. It feels alive in my hand, hot, fevered, and I am hot, too. The night air has begun to cool me, but I am still much too warm, and sweat gathers under my leather. I hear a step behind me. I have turned almost instantly, my blade raised, ready, hungry, and the sound stops suddenly silent. In the moonlight there is a girl. She looks almost a woman, but the moonlight washes her color and the color of the rags she wears so I cannot be sure. She is one of them, I know, a villager, the enemy. She must have run to the hills to escape the battle. Her eyes are wide. She thought that I was one of her own, come to take her back to the valley. She backs away towards the trees, but I have already caught her by her hair and arm. She cries, at me, at the night, terror and anger, and I grab her and throw her to the ground. Now I sheath my sword. I do not need it for her. I straddle her on the ground, pinning her. She is small beneath me. She pleads wordlessly for a few moments and I hit her to make her quiet. I tear the rags away from her chest and stomach. She is slender, just at the first change of life, and she squirms to get away. I take out my knife. She cries and I hit her again. Her hair fans out around her head on the ground and I take a handful, tilting her head back to expose her neck. I hold my knife close and I think about where I want to cut first. Suddenly she goes limp under me. I look at her face, thinking that she has fainted, and I see her looking back at me. I hold the knife against her neck a moment, and cut a bit to draw blood. She closes her eyes and I watch the trickle of blood run down her neck. Her eyes are open again. There is a look on her face, and it is not one of fear. She is going to her death and she is not afraid and this makes me angry. I hit her across the face with my fist, with the handle of my knife, and she exhales as her head turns. I dig the tip of my knife into her chin and turn her head to me to look at me, to see in her eyes if she is afraid yet. She is not. I grab her breast and slowly I dig my nails into her chest, raking lines across her skin. She looks past me, into the night sky. I search her face again for fear, for any reaction. The moonlight makes her face very pale. She might be dead already. I decide that it is time to finish this. I place my knife against her ribs, angling to slide the blade through, into her heart, but I do not. She looks at me now and I do not look away. I know I must kill her. We do not take prisoners and she is enemy. But there is something in her eyes that I have never seen before. For a long moment I do not move. She waits, and I wonder what to do. This is not right. She should be afraid. She should resist. She should fight me, fight death. It is right and good to fight death. I growl and I grab her neck and I shake her. She winces and cries out, and then she is quiet again and without expression. I position the knife once more, ready to put my weight into the movement, but everything feels wrong and I hesitate again, angry at my hesitation, my confusion. I struggle to find the answers before this moment is past understanding. As I look into her eyes something new comes into my mind and I begin to understand. She breathes still, but somehow she has already given up her life. How can I take what she has already given away? Her eyes are so strange and calm. I am drawn in and caught. I shake my head to clear my thoughts. This is a moment of death, but she is already dead. How can that be? I hold the knife but I cannot move my hand to kill her. And then, suddenly, the warrior inside me decides, and the blade plunges deep into her. She cries loudly now, with pain, but her eyes are still fixed on mine and mine on hers. She convulses under me, and I lie on her, I embrace her with my body, breathing with her as she breathes, breathes for the last time, watching her eyes as they watch mine, watching her, seeing her die. Long moments pass. Her eyes are open but they do not see, and I close them for her. I pull my knife out of her body. I wipe her blood off the blade on her body and then I sheath my weapon. I look at her a for a while. The moonlight makes the blood on her black and her face white. I stand slowly, looking at the stars, not looking down, yet I see her eyes as I walk back down the mountain. They stare at me, clear, calm, alive. Now the blood-lust has finally left me. I do not understand what has happened, what I have done, what it means. How have I killed what was already dead? I wonder if I have been cheated somehow, and the thought makes me angry. I stop walking to let my anger cool. A doe bolts into my path, freezes. Her eyes meet mine for a moment, glinting in the moonlight, and then she bounds away into the brush. I realize that the girl has won. Slowly I smile. The moon shines on me as I walk down the hills, away from my most recent battle. My enemy lies dead on the ground behind me and I realize that I have lost and she has won. I don't know how, exactly, but I know it is true. I look at the moon and I almost think that I understand what it is for now, what its mystery is about, but I am not sure. I must think about what has happened, about this battle, and about the moon. I will stay outside with the moon every night until I understand this thing. Eventually I will win the battle that I have just lost. --------------------------------------------------- Sonia is a software engineer by trade. She has been writing fiction since she was first able to read and write. She also sculpts SF & Fantasy critters and shows them at local convention art shows. --------------------------------------------------- QQQQQ tt QQ QQ tttttt QQ QQ uu uu aaaa nnnn tt aaaa QQ QQ uu uu aa aa nn nn tt aa aa QQ QQ uu uu aa aa nn nn tt aa aa QQQQQQ uuu aaaaa nn nn tt aaaaa QQQ ______________________________________ A Journal of Fact, Fiction and Opinion ______________________________________ Quanta is an electronically distributed magazine of science fiction. Published monthly, each issue contains short fiction, articles and editorials by authors around the world and across the net. Quanta publishes in two formats: straight ascii and PostScript* for PostScript compatible printers. To subscribe to Quanta, or just to get more info, send mail to: da1n@andrew.cmu.edu r746da1n@CMCCVB.bitnet Quanta is a relatively new magazine but is growing fast, with over eight hundred subscribers to date from nine different countries. Electronic publishing is the way of the future. 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