Carbide Tipped Pens Part 23

And she kneels.

Against her hip is a bottle made of graphene, sealed by every reliable means and charged by her body's motions. n.o.body else knows what she carries. She doubts anyone in her group would understand the concepts or her devotion to what has lost any sense of symbol. This is deadweight, however slight. But she is prepared to surrender quite a lot before this treasure is left behind, and that includes every person hiding inside that miserable bas.e.m.e.nt.

Separated from her body, the confining charge begins to fail.

There is a logic in play, though mostly this is magic, contrived and deeply unreliable, and she would admit as much to anyone, if she ever mentioned it.

"Let a few runes leak free every so often," her mother told her. "It probably won't do any good, but it won't harm anything either."

"But why bother?" the young woman asked. "What am I hoping for?"

"Humans have so much trouble seeing what is strange," Mother said. "But we shouldn't a.s.sume that super beings built from new forms of matter would be any less blind. So let some of the bugs fall free. Every so often, just a few."

"But why?"

The old woman set the bottle aside, grasping her daughter's hands with both of hers. "Because maybe a Venusian will be swimming past."

"Oh," the girl said. "I'm giving them something to notice."

"And after that, maybe it will notice you, and maybe it will save you somehow. Out of kindness, or curiosity, or because saving my daughter would cost that G.o.d so very little."

Magic.

All of this was nothing but hope and wild magic.

Yet she remained on her knees, in the ashes, waving the enchantment with all of her might while thinking how magic has always lived for darkness, and everything was dark, and really, on a day like this, what better thing could she possibly have to do...?

SHE JUST LOOKS THAT WAY.

Eric Choi

"I don't know what she sees in him."

How many times have you wondered why a friend or acquaintance falls in love with someone you cannot stomach? We shrug and tell ourselves that love is blind. "She Just Looks that Way" deals with a man who wants to be blind, so that he cannot see the woman he loves, because she has no interest in him.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that there is a price to be paid for everything we get. Nothing in the universe is free. There's always a price to be paid.

Thumbnail images of MRI brain scans covered the computer screen, a mosaic of Rorschach ink blots in grayscale. Each image represented a moment in time-a snapshot of a thought, a memory, a feeling.

Rick Park had given it much thought. He didn't want to change his memories, only what they meant. And that, he hoped, would change his feelings.

He turned to Dr. Barbara Ho. "So, that's the only part that will be changed? This ... um, fusion area?"

"The fusiform face area, yes." She selected one of the thumbnails and maximized it to fill the screen. "Located here, in the extrastriate cortex. It's where facial recognition and physical attractiveness are processed. We've been treating people with body dysmorphic disorder by modifying some of the neural pathways in this area." She moved the mouse pointer over the region. "People with BDD perceive themselves as ugly and disfigured, even though there's nothing wrong with them.

"But in your case..." She looked at Rick. "What you're asking for is ... a little different."

"Can it be done?"

"It can be done, although we've never attempted it before." She paused. "Chris has warned you about the risks?"

"Yes."

"And you still want to go ahead with this?" She tapped a file folder on her desk. "We've got your signed consent and waiver, but I want to hear this from you myself. Do you understand the risks, and do you still wish to proceed?"

"I understand the risks," Rick said slowly, "and I want to go ahead with the treatment."

"Fine." She opened the folder and started writing on one of the papers inside. "I'll say this much, you'll certainly be taking our research into a whole new area. Tell me, how long have you known Chris?"

"A long time, since the seventh grade," Rick said. "Didn't see much of him the last couple of years until he finished his masters at Wisconsin-Madison and moved here to Hopkins to work with you."

"Well, the next time you see him..."

"He's coming to pick me up after the treatment."

"Yeah, well, when you see him, can you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Tell him he still owes me a thesis." She closed the folder and put down her pen. "All right, let's get started."

Rick stood slowly, keeping his newfound doubts silently to himself.

The icon representing the LIDARSAT s.p.a.cecraft traced a sinusoidal groundtrack across a Mercator projection of the Earth. In the bottom right corner of the screen, a clock raced ahead at many times normal speed.

Rick watched the orbital simulation with disinterest. His mind was elsewhere.

She would be here today.

Rick had known that she would be coming for weeks. He'd heard from his line manager, not her. When he found out he tried to e-mail her, but she never responded. He called her up. Her father was home, said she was busy, couldn't come to the phone. She never called back.

The months apart without contact, or at least without any interaction initiated by her, only intensified his feelings. He told himself he was looking forward to seeing her again. He told himself things would be different.

"Rick?"

He turned-and there she was, at the entrance to his cubicle, standing beside the line manager, Harry Davidson.

"I'd like you to meet Mariel Beckenbauer, our new thermal engineer," Davidson said. He was in his late fifties, tall yet chunky, with a substantial beer belly his cheap suits couldn't hide. His gray hair was cut short, parted on one side, and he wore thick c.o.ke-bottle gla.s.ses.

"Mariel's from Canada," he continued. "She was a summer student here last year. It took a while for the TAA to go through the State Department, but here she is at last." He put a podgy hand on Mariel's shoulder. His fingers looked like dried sausages.

"h.e.l.lo." This moment had been on his mind for weeks, yet now, it was all he could think of to say. He looked at Mariel, and a surge of emotions swept over him-confusion, longing, anger, regret, desire, sadness.

"Nice to see you," said Mariel with brittle neutrality.

"Come on," Davidson said. "I'll introduce you to the rest of the team."

As Rick turned back to his computer, a black depression settled on him.

The white saucer-shaped object glided silently over the skies of Was.h.i.+ngton, DC. There were no visible markings or discernible method of propulsion. From Rick's perspective, the object seemed to dwarf the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument and the trees of Gravelly Point.

He reached out to it.

That could be a you-pho.

Someone suddenly cut into his field of view, leaping upward. An arm reached out and swatted the Frisbee away, beyond Rick's grasp.

"All right! Way to go with the big D."

Another voice called from the sideline. "Force the line, Rick. No breaks!"

As the opposing player tapped the disc on the ground to put it back into play, Rick took up marking position. The opponent jerked his shoulder, apparently going for a forehand flick. Rick lunged to block, recognizing the fake a split second too late. The opponent went the other way, spinning around to deliver a backhand throw toward the end zone.

"Up! Broken!" Rick yelled, trying to warn his teammates he had let the handler throw to the undefended side of the field. But they were all out of position. He watched helplessly as the disc sailed to the end zone and was caught by a woman on the opposing team.

The game concluded, and the teams lined up on the field to shake hands.

"All right folks, good game," said Chris Brown, the captain of Rick's ultimate team.

Ca.s.sie Clarke glared at Rick. "We were counting on that force. You can't let them break you like that!"

Rick was in no mood to respond. Chris opened his mouth, but another teammate, Jill Kravitz, spoke first.

"Leave him alone, Ca.s.sie. We're just having fun here."

"Fun is fun, but I'd like to win sometime too!" Ca.s.sie retorted.

"Hey, hey." Chris raised his hands. "All will be solved with beer. Who's in?"

Ca.s.sie shook her head, and the rest of the team also declined.

"No beer for me, and besides my dad is coming into town tonight," Jill said. She smiled at Rick. "But maybe we can hang out another time."

Chris watched the team depart. "The post-game drink is an essential part of the game. This is why we haven't won." He turned to Rick. "I guess it's just us, then?"

Rick nodded.

"G.o.d, you actually look like you need a drink. Where do you want to go?"

"Doesn't matter," Rick mumbled.

"How about Fad? We can walk there from Gallery Place Metro."

The other team had already left the Gravelly Point field. Rick picked up his gear, and as he did so glanced toward a spot beside the Potomac River between two cl.u.s.ters of trees. A memory surfaced, and his heart tightened.

Fad Irish Pub was surprisingly empty for a Friday night. Rick and Chris seated themselves at one of the small square wooden tables, ordering a pitcher of Yuengling and an appetizer of smoked salmon bites. In the background, "Why Don't You Love Me?" by Amanda Marshall played from the jukebox.

"So, this guy walked into the lab today," Chris said. "I swear he looked like a movie star. Chicks must fall all over this guy, but he's got this thing about his nose and hands. Cla.s.sic body dysmorphic behavior. There's absolutely nothing wrong with his nose. Now his hands, sure, he's got dishwater hands from those two jobs-"

Chris tapped Rick's mug. "Earth to Rick?"

"What?"

"I wasn't going to say anything on the field, but Ca.s.sie was right. You were off your game today. Something wrong?"

Rick took his beer, knocked back a swig of it. "Mariel started working at Devcon a few days ago."

"Mariel?" Chris thought for a moment. "That girl from Canada you met last summer?"

Rick nodded.

"What happened?"

"I can't explain it. It's like she's a completely different person than the one I met last year. It's like a switch was thrown in her head-black is white, white is black, a hundred and eighty degrees. Her personality, the way she acts toward me, is completely different. I don't mean to be funny, but it's like she's been replaced by alien pod people, or she's a double from the Star Trek evil mirror universe or something."

"That's really weird," Chris said. "It must be hard to see her around all the time."

"Uh, huh." Rick wrapped his beer in both hands.

"How did you guys meet?"

The reception at the G.o.ddard Visitor Center following the Soffen Memorial Lecture was not well attended. Astronaut Shaun Christopher, the keynote speaker, had left immediately after his presentation, so most of the audience did the same. Surveying the stragglers, Rick spotted the usual suspects from the local aeros.p.a.ce contractors that served the NASA G.o.ddard s.p.a.ce Flight Center-Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Alamer-Daas, Raytheon. He was the only person from Devcon Systems.