Space and Time Issue 121 (6 page)

“Do you remember anything?” I ask my body.

“Not much. That’s good, though. Lena’s lawyer friend thinks I’ll get off with a slap on the wrist since I only went to the swapmeat to help my sister with an article.”

Liar. No one knows his real reasons for being there better than me. I lean over and whisper, “Do you know where the next swapmeat will be?”

Confusion passes over my old face. “No. Why would I?”

“Do you think your sister might know?”

“You can’t, Natalie! The police are looking for you. You shouldn’t even be here.” He smiles. “But I’m glad you came to see me.”

“Never mind,” I say.

“My lawyer can probably help you too.”

Still playing the hero.

He smiles nervously. “Maybe one day, when all this is over, we could...?”

“Sorry,” I say automatically. “You’re not my type.”

Disappointment washes across his face. I think about everything this version of me never experienced, the memories he’ll never have.

I hesitate, then bend down and kiss him. It feels even stranger than I’d expected.

“Forget about me,” I murmur in his ear, even though I know he won’t listen.

I black out and find myself on the other side of the room, leaning against the bathroom door.

“Are you okay, Natalie?” Drew asks.

I wonder about Tony, what he felt in those final moments as the last vestiges of his personality faded away.

I open the bathroom door and shut myself inside. I peel off Natalie’s clothes and fold them neatly on the toilet tank. When I’m naked, I stare into the mirror over the sink. Natalie stares back at me with cold, azure eyes that draw me into them, like I’m falling into a frigid, blue ocean.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life,” she whispers.

I hear my own voice shouting in the room outside. “Lena? What’s going on? Who are these guys?”

“Where is she?” a man barks.

“She’s gone!” Drew says.

A moment later, a fist pounds on the bathroom door.

I pull my fingers through my blonde hair, down the nape of my neck and around to linger on my breasts. I shudder.

I look at my reflection. “I love you...” I struggle to remember the name, and then it bobs to the surface. “Tony?”

“Who’s Tony?” The woman in the mirror mouths the words with me.

A beat pounds against the door.

I’m lost, spiraling into the pupils of the blue eyes, searching, searching for someone I can’t find. I lean forward and the woman kisses me. Bliss. A perfect moment.

I slip into my reflection, like diving into the calm surface of a lake. A woman’s laugh follows me, clear and confident, as I leave Natalie’s body behind.

* * *

Mercurio D. Rivera has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and his fiction has appeared in venues such as
Year’s Best SF 17, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Interzone, Nature, Black Static
and elsewhere. Tor.com has described his short story collection
Across the Event Horizon
(NewCon Press 2013) as “weird and wonderful,” with “dizzying switchbacks,” and “a revelation.”

E.C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and a public library in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of the Andre Norton Award–winning young adult novel
Fair Coin
and its sequel,
Quantum Coin,
as well as numerous short stories in anthologies and magazines. You can find traces of him all over the internet, but especially at http://ecmyers.net and on Twitter: @ecmyers.

JODY LYNN NYE:

Pern, Xanth & Myth Adventures

by Stephen Euin Cobb

Author of forty novels and more than one hundred short stories of science fiction and fantasy, Jody Lynn Nye often enlivens her work with a generous dose of humor. She has collaborated with Anne McCaffrey in her
Dragonriders of Pern
series, and in the
Myth Adventures
series with Robert Asprin. She transcribed and corrected Gary Gygax’s prose for
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons;
taught the Fantasy Writing Workshop at Columbia College Chicago; and teaches the annual Science Fiction Writing Workshop each year at DragonCon.

SEC:
How did you get started in writing?

JLN:
I have always written things, or told stories. Riding around in my old Volkswagen, my best friend, Diane, used to say, “I could always reach into the back seat and find something interesting to read.” The back seat was largely full of bits and pieces of manuscript I was writing.

In the early 1980s, my dear friend Barbara and I took over one of the very small press magazines for the Society for Creative Anachronism for a couple of years—a kingdom newsletter which was called
Dragonrunes.
We edited and wrote articles. I took over a humorous saga from the previous editor who surrendered it to me. I changed the characters just a little, and had a lot of fun with it because it was goofy and full of dreadful puns. So I was ready for Xanth.

My first paid work in publishing was typing—for a dollar a page—the
Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide
and
Monster Manual
for TSR; which included correcting Gary Gygax’s grammar.

My first publications in the professional press were technical articles for a magazine called
Video Action,
as well as RoleAids modules for Mayfair Games which were used to play
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

SEC:
You wrote eight books with the late Robert Asprin. How did that collaboration come about?

JLN:
My husband, Bill, was one of Bob’s best friends and also acted as his agent. He kept the creative Bob on a more business level. He was a good friend to him, but also able to tell him, “Bob, that’s not going to work.”

Bill introduced me to Bob early in our relationship. We went up to Ann Arbor to stay with Bob and his second wife, Lynn, for what I thought was going to be a nerve wracking experience. It turned out they were incredibly nice, generous people who went to a great deal of trouble to make me feel at ease.

Bob and I got along like a house on fire. We hit it off immediately. We discovered how ridiculously much we had in common, despite being born eleven years apart. We liked much of the same music, movies and writers. We both wrote humor, and the same things made us laugh.

A few years later, Bob was having trouble writing. He was frozen. Having achieved a little too much success with one of his novels, he feared he could not match it. So to get him through this frozen period, Bill proposed we do a project together. Something completely unrelated to anything Bob had written before. And so we wrote the novel
License Invoked.
A story of magic, spies and Rock & Roll!

SEC:
What were the mechanics of that collaboration?

JLN:
Bob and I sat together in the living room at my and Bill’s house and talked at length about what we would like to do with this project. We put together an outline (which I still have somewhere) then went through the outline and decided which of us was likely to know the most about each section, and scribbled in the margin who would write that section. Then he took his half of the outline down to New Orleans, I kept my half up in the Chicago area, and we started writing. We wrote the sections while apart, then we put them together and I went over it, then Bob went over it—because his name is first on the cover—and then it went to the publisher.

SEC:
You also collaborated on many books with Anne McCaffrey. How did that collaboration differ?

JLN:
First, it was much earlier in my career. I began writing with Anne in 1987; Bob and I didn’t write together until the late ’90’s. And second, Anne was much more the senior writer; I was really more an apprentice.

The first thing I wrote with Anne was
Dragonharper
which was one of the
Crossroads Adventure
series. In the 1980s “branching-path” gamebooks, also called choose-your-own-adventure books, were very popular. They weren’t linear stories. At the end of each chapter it said, “If you choose to take
this
action go to page 35, but if you choose to take
that
action go to 87.” I wrote two of them in Anne’s universe.

But Anne also had a number of books that she had always meant to go on with. She wanted to explore their world more but just didn’t have the time. One of them was
Dinosaur Planet,
so she agreed to work with junior authors. Elizabeth Moon and I were both selected to write novels in that universe. It’s now called the
Planet Pirate
series.

Anne was always generous, but strict about wanting a good story well told. As an apprenticeship I could not have wished for better. It boosted me years beyond where I would have been at that time. She made me better than I knew I could be.

Bill arranged many apprenticeship-style book projects with junior authors. Many of whom have gone on to notable solo careers: among them Mercedes Lackey, Nancy Asire, Leslie Fish, and Elizabeth Moon. It also made me some close friends of Anne’s collaborators even though we never actually collaborated with each other.

SEC:
Your collaboration with Piers Anthony, was it different too?

JLN:
Yes, though the first things I worked on for him were also a pair of
Crossroads Adventures
. Bill, my husband, came up with the idea of creating a gazetteer set within the imaginary universes of popular novels. He started with
Roger Zelazney’s Visual Guide to Castle Amber
which was copiously illustrated by the wonderful Todd Cameron Hamilton. I didn’t write that first gazetteer, I wrote the next:
The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern.
For that Todd Cameron Hamilton and I spent ten days with Anne in Ireland, interviewing her and getting the ideas of what she wanted. Anne was already familiar with me. And Todd had a background in pre-med and so was able to sketch skeletons and muscle groups so that Anne was able to get on paper the dragons she always wanted.

Then Todd and I did a
Visual Guide to Xanth for Piers Anthony.
Piers wrote some of the internal material, but it was mostly me working from my research of the existing Xanth books—of which there were many.

SEC:
Your husband, Bill Fawcett, has been a college professor and dean, teacher, corporate executive, writer, editor, anthologist, and game designer. How did you two first get together?

JLN:
We met at a science fiction convention in the middle of the night, introduced by my friend Barbara. She told him, “Oh, there’s Jody. I need to get something for her. Tell her to stay where she is.”

Bill, who is a very eager person and loves to do things for people, came running over to me and said, “Barbara says you have to stay right here.” So while we waited for Barbara we attempted to make small talk. It was an awkward situation for both of us, but one of the things he came up with was asking me out. He is an incredibly wonderful, warm, considerate person so we got along very well. And still do.

* * *

Stephen Euin Cobb is an author, futurist and award-winning producer of the podcast
The Future And You
. A contributing editor for
Space and Time Magazine;
he’s also been a regular contributor for
Robot, H+, Grim Couture
and
Port Iris
magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for
Jim Baen’s Universe
Magazine. His nonfiction books include
A Brief History of Predicting the Future
and
Indistinguishable From Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science.
His SF novels include
Bones Burnt Black
and
Skinbrain (Cerebrodermus Fantastica).
He is also an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation.

THE HAUNTED GOLDMINE

by Derek Muk

artwork by Alan Beck

Dan looked at his watch: 10:00PM. He sighed in relief. He did one final sweep of the park, making sure all the buildings, entrances, and rides were locked. It was a muggy summer night and he mopped his sweaty face with his handkerchief. When he reached the Funhouse he noticed the dungeon-style doors the cars went through was ajar. He pointed his flashlight to the ground and saw the padlock had been cut. Damn kids! They probably went on a joyride inside. Got stoned and Lord knows what else. It happened before.

Next to the Funhouse was a ride called the Haunted Goldmine. Kids had broken in there before, too. Dan checked it out. He wasn’t surprised when he saw this padlock had been snapped off as well. Dan returned to the Funhouse and entered, walking along the track used by the cars to transport patrons. An eerie silence surrounded him. He shone his flashlight around, not seeing anything except cheesy-looking figures meant to scare. He passed by a coffin. Claws hung out of it.

Suddenly, something or someone flashed by him. Super fast. He spun around, scanning the darkness. It whizzed by him again.

“Who’s there?” Dan asked. At moments like this he wished he had a gun. “This is park security. Who’s there?”

The eerie silence continued. Things just didn’t feel right. Something was definitely wrong here. He felt a cold draft, and the hairs on the back of his neck went up. His face was sweaty and he heard himself panting out of fear. Dan didn’t scare easily so he knew something was up! Something foreign was in the atmosphere…unexplainable.

Again, whatever it was flashed quickly by, knocking into him. “Hey!” he said. “Stop! This is security. Stop!”

Silence.

* * *

“Welcome. Thank you for attending The Occult Files Magazine’s fifth annual ghost and paranormal convention,” Albert Taylor said into the podium’s microphone. He was a tall, lanky fiftysomething man with brown hair and long dark sideburns. “As our handy little brochure indicates, we have a full schedule of cool spooky lectures and workshops lined up for you, folks. This introductory lecture, Ghost Hunting 101, will cover the basics of forming your own ghost hunting/paranormal group, what each members’ ghost hunting kit should contain, legal issues and forms to use, the definition of a ghost, and so forth.” He looked ahead at his assistant, Jan, who was seated behind a laptop in the audience. She was a slender young woman with shoulder length red hair. “Jan, could you dim the lights and start the slide show? Thanks.”

The hotel ballroom darkened and there was some mumbling and whispers here and there as a picture appeared on the large white screen near Taylor. “Now, this first photo is a little grainy, but if you look carefully you can see the outline of a figure standing on the stairs. Notice the two orbs above the figure, too.”

Dan, sitting in the second row of the audience, studied the photo. Then he looked at a business card in his beefy hand: Professor Albert Taylor.

* * *

After the lecture there was a lengthy question and answer period. When it was finished, Taylor drank some water and put his papers in his briefcase. Dan approached the stage hesitantly, the business card still in his hand.

Taylor smiled at him. “Did you enjoy the presentation?”

“Very much,” Dan replied. “I…I wanted to talk to you about…something.”

Taylor closed his briefcase, walking down the stairs of the stage. “Sure. Let’s sit down.”

They sat in chairs before the stage. The ballroom was empty except for them and Jan, who was packing up the equipment.

Dan cleared his throat. “Well, I’m a security guard at Bizarro and I…I think I had a ghostly encounter the other night.”

“That used to be Funland, right?”

Dan nodded. “Another victim of the bad economy. A corporation bought it, gave it a new name, but essentially it’s the same attractions with some tweaking here and there.”

“Gotcha.”

“Anyway, someone or something broke into the Funhouse and the Haunted Goldmine so I checked it out…and boy, I never had an experience quite like that!” He chuckled. Dan was a heavyset, bearded man in his twenties with dark hair. “I truly believe it was a ghost…things just didn’t feel right. I felt this cold chill that I’ve never felt before. And I read about how other people also felt this draft when encountering ghosts. Something foreign was in the air…I had to get out of there. It didn’t feel right, you know?”

Taylor nodded. “What else happened when you were in there?”

“Well, it bumped into me, almost knocking me over. I didn’t feel flesh, but it felt like a person, you know? And it was fast! Zipped by me.”

“Was this the first time you encountered a ghost there?”

“No. I’ve heard of strange goings on and sightings before. I figured it was just a bunch of kids playing a prank, or there to steal the props. It’s happened. And get this, someone told me that a murder occurred at Funland years ago.”

“What happened?”

“Some employee got whacked there after hours. It’s still unsolved. Rumor has it that his spirit haunts the park and that he was responsible for some fatal accidents on rides.” Dan shook his head. “Creepy. Anyway, management has been slow to respond. That’s why I’m here…I don’t have much money but I’ll pay you what I can.”

Taylor grinned reassuringly. “No worries. I’d be happy to help.”

* * *

Taylor and Jan went to Bizarro the following day, during a break from the convention. The dry summertime heat of Sacramento hit them as soon as they stepped out of Taylor’s air conditioned station wagon. Like a slap in the face.

Jan frowned. “Oh!”

Dan greeted them at the entrance. “I know, tell me about it. Believe it or not, people like me actually live here and get used to it.”

“Why torture yourself?” she asked.

“You look like Jean Rasey.”

“Who’s that?” Jan asked curiously.

“She was the actress who played George in the Nancy Drew TV series from the late ’70s.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

They went inside the crowded amusement park that was thronged with screaming teenagers and children. Dan gave them a brief tour of the park and then introduced them to the owner, a middle-aged man who donned a cowboy hat and boots.

“Howdy, name’s Skyler,” he said, extending his big, calloused hand.

Taylor and Jan shook it.

“Heard you were comin’,” Skyler continued. “I’m gonna be up front with chu, Taylor. I don’t need no witch doctor snoopin’ around here, performin’ your mumbo-jumbo. But I like to consider myself an open-minded man from time to time. So I listened to young Dan here and he convinced me. So I tell you what. I’m gonna give you two days max to find this ghost. After that, you’re history. Clear?”

“That’s not a lot of time,” Taylor replied. “Sometimes it takes a while for spirits to appear. You have to build a rapport with them, bond with them.”

Skyler chuckled. “That sounds so frickin’ gay! No wonder you’re from Berkeley.”

Taylor was beginning to not like this dude but kept his cool.

“Two days,” Skyler said firmly, and he stormed off.

Dan’s face was red. “Sorry about that. Sometimes he’s nice, other times…”

Taylor nodded understandingly. “People have their days. I definitely won’t debate politics with him. Can you show us the rides?”

“Sure,” he said, drying the perspiration off his face with his handkerchief.

They passed by a long, twisty roller coaster called The Serpent. A string of cars zipped by, hanging upside down above them, with kids dangling their arms and screaming.

“Ahh, the good ole days of summer,” Taylor remarked with a grin. “Carnival rides, cotton candy, corndogs, funnel cakes, and pretty women in shorts.”

Jan elbowed him. “Hot looking guys, too,” she added.

Dan laughed, leading the way. They reached the Funhouse minutes later, seeing the long line outside of it. The Haunted Goldmine had an equally lengthy queue. Two teens got in a black car and it cruised along the track at the Funhouse, entering the giant mouth of a clown. The car paused at the dungeon-style doors beyond for a moment, then continued in slowly. The teens giggled. Later they screamed.

Taylor looked at the entrance of the Haunted Goldmine. It was essentially a man-made cave opening that ore carts on the track went through. He thought the 1800s period detail looked pretty accurate for an amusement park ride. An ore cart with a skeleton in it sat on one side of the entrance, while on the other stood the life-sized figure of an old time gold prospector, guarding the mine like a sentry. His mustache and beard were disheveled, a sinister look on his realistic-looking face. He held up a lantern in his right hand.

“Spooky,” Taylor said to Dan.

“Yeah, it’ll give you some chills compared to some other cheesy rides here. A woman got so scared she fainted. A few other patrons claimed to have seen ghosts inside.”

“Well, that’s what we’re here for,” Jan replied. “Ready, Professor?”

“Yes. We’ll set up our gear tonight, when everyone’s long gone.”

“Oooooooooh, creepy!” Jan said, smiling devilishly.

* * *

It was after midnight. Taylor, Jan, and Dan were inside the dark, cavernous Funhouse. They had walked up the car track and set up their equipment in the middle of the ride, right below a giant spider that rested on a fake web. Occasionally, the eerie silence was shattered by creaking sounds, the low howl of wind coming in through cracks, the expansion of wood, and what sounded like someone wailing or moaning.

Taylor put his finger to his lips. “Hear that?”

The other two nodded.

“Ever hear that before?” he asked Dan.

The beefy security guard nodded. “I tried to find where it originated but was unsuccessful.”

“Sounds like they’re crying for help,” Jan commented.

Taylor looked down at the screen of his laptop. The wailing registered as a series of jagged peaks and lows. Moments later, however, the noise ceased and a flatline was displayed on the screen. He checked the other laptops that were hooked up to video cameras throughout the Funhouse. No sign of activity.

“Those are wired for sound, too, right?” Dan asked.

“Yes,” Taylor replied.

Five minutes later, Jan pointed to the main laptop. The flatline disappeared, replaced by small peaks. They heard faint footsteps coming through the speakers.

Jan covered her mouth, her eyes wide. “Could it be?” she whispered.

Taylor checked the other screens, seeing no one. “Is this familiar, Dan?”

He nodded. The footsteps grew louder. It sounded like they were in the same room. The screens still showed nothing. Eventually, the footsteps stopped.

“Could it be someone playing a prank?” Jan asked. “Perhaps someone that broke in?”

Dan stared at the flatline, whispering: “I locked up all the entrances securely after we came in.”

* * *

Taylor looked at his watch: 3:06AM. He stifled a yawn, looking at the laptops. The flatline was abruptly shattered, replaced by a high, jagged peak as they all heard a loud stomp coming through the speakers. A second stomp followed. It was as though someone pounded their feet as hard as they could on the ground.

Taylor studied the screens but they showed nothing. On one laptop, he clicked the mouse a few times, zooming in on an image of one of the back doors. Earlier, when Taylor and Jan were setting up shop, they had poured baby powder on the floor at each entrance. Taylor and Jan saw that the straight line of powder at this door had been broken, and that white footprints led off into the darkness.

Dan led them quietly to that back door, pointing his flashlight at the broken line, then at the footprints. He checked the door. “It’s locked,” he said. He double-checked all the entrances and reported they were all secure. Upon his return, there was a puzzled expression on his face. “I’m getting a weird feeling about this, you guys,” he whispered.

“Ditto,” Jan added.

“You’re feeling the same way you did during the last encounter?” Taylor inquired.

“A little, it’s not as strong as before…but something definitely doesn’t feel right, know what I’m saying?”

Taylor nodded. “Something in the atmosphere…I feel that cold draft, too. Do you want to go?”

“No, I’ll stick it out.”

“Are you sure? We can leave, it’s no problem.”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

They waited and surveyed the Funhouse for a few more hours but there were no other unusual phenomena.

* * *

The next day was quite busy for Taylor and Jan at the ghost convention. Taylor spoke as part of a panel discussion on the topic of haunted houses. Later in the day, he moderated another panel on séances, and an actual séance was held on stage in the hotel’s auditorium. Afterwards, he helped Jan pack up their gear. A patron came up to him with a book on ghosts Taylor wrote years ago, asking for his autograph.