So, here's the story I'm going to be going over the next few weeks, now that I've decided it's unsellable.
After the cut, "Souls on a String."
"Souls on a String"
There is darkness, and a thousand points of departure. A personal dreamtime, made bitter, made into a burst of blood on the tongue.
I am at the height of my disassociation in this, my tenth crèche. In the next life, beyond fragmentation, departure, dreamtime, all will integrate. The next life is open to saner chemicals and more wholesome experiences.
Darkness. Can't see, can't really taste, but I know--they know--we know--the salt, the taste. It's tidal. It's primal. Vast and briny, like an evolving ocean. There's even a gentle sound, a reverberation, to remind a young heart to move.
Lub-dub, lub-dub.
If I could see, would I notice distant lights? Maybe I can see, and they simply haven't turned the lights on. How big is the nursery? Are there two or twenty or five-hundred? Or none? I don't know where I left off, so I don’t know where I shall begin.
Fingers are webbed still, a nice complement to my gills. Fingers have been tap-tap-tapping, for music or a programming pad--I don't even know. Fingers moving, undulating up/down/up/down/up, trying to relate the experience.
To whom?
To me.
Take a back seat, my lords, the new consciousness might not enjoy hitchhikers.
Be subtle.
Don't they ever turn on the damn lights? Don't they know stimulus is just as important as nutrition?
How many days? How do you mark days, anyway? How many heartbeats, simulated or otherwise?
Thousands.
Lub-dub, lub-dub.
Who's there?
#
"What's your name?" she asks, shining lights into my eyes. I think she's pretty, but it's hard to focus.
I roll my infantile tongue around in my mouth. It feels stubby and mole-blind, and it's not the first time I've had to figure out how to do this. But you can't prepare ahead of time. Practice speech with a mouthful of amniotic fluid, sometime--it doesn't work, no matter what they tell you.
"Lughnwaddddddd..." I try.
She smiles. "It's ok. Don't get frustrated. I haven't met a baby born talking yet."
I jerk my head, angry.
"I'm Kijai," she says, "And I'm going to pick you up now. I mean no disrespect, you understand, but your body needs this."
She takes me into her strong arms, cradles me, rocks me, feeds me from her breast. I take no offense. I barely remember this from other times. Memories of memories, really; my brain will change with time, and I'll have to struggle to take memories across the divide. But I will. I always have.
And she's right about my body; it needs her warmth, the feeling her love, the stimulus her touch. If I don't get it, my brain is doomed, and I may as well start over.
And I feel grateful that I don't have to think just yet. My head isn't too muzzy; I don't have the physiological backlash of actual birth this time. I've had surrogates before. The crèche is my preference.
The first few months, Kijai is the only one I see. She's my mother for now, and I think, maybe, she loves me. I see love, or something like it, in her brown eyes.
She croons to me, and I don't object. She tells me stories, and I don't object. She rubs my little body, and I don't object--and she doesn't object when I get an erection, either. It happens with regular babies, now and then, and of course it's going to happen to an eight-hundred-year old man, no matter how short he is, or how undeveloped his motor skills.
The advantage I have over regular babies is that I know the rewards of what I do. Nothing primal motivates me to build muscle strength or to practice speech--I am driven, for I need to be what I was before.
I can't fight brain development, of course; that's been proven. I can't force my body to grow, either; or rather, I can, but then I'm shaving years off the other end of my life.
I lie awake at night in my crib, fitfully moving my legs to practice the coordination necessary to walk again. I think about evolution. I think about how each time I am cast forth from egg and sperm, I regress through the stages that brought forth my species. There's a point when a fetus looks like a fish, and a point where it looks like a monkey.
Sometime between fish and monkey, though, I come into the clone and become myself once more; a graduated personality can't start too early. If they could squeeze me into the blastocyst, they would--but they can't. The brainworkers need a brain to work with.
My evolution continues. I'm already moving around on all fours, like a good monkey. Tool-use, and on its heels bipedalism: I'm a backwards sort of H. habilis. Soon, I will be mankind again.
Alone in my crib, I run my little legs to death. Chug-chug-chug. I pump myself up imaginary staircases, not that I can think of the last time I saw a staircase. Sometime in my third life, when I left the earth for my greater destiny? Some place with marble stairs. I frown, fighting to bring the memory forward.
Damn.
I'm not going to lose another memory to the process. I think. It was long before I took humanity to the stars...
Da Vinci!
Kijai leans over the edge of the crib. "Did you say something?"
"Dabinti," I tell her.
"Leonardo?" she asks.
"Yes."
"I have a book." She picks me up. She rocks me in a rocking chair and holds a book for me. A bright, primary-colored model of Da Vinci's helicopter floats on the screen. I give an involuntary squeal of delight, lean forward and mash the button with my palm, about all the dexterity I own.
The page flips, and there's the Mona Lisa, rendered properly. I flip forward, mashing the page button for all I'm worth, until--there. The great staircase at Chambord, supposedly designed by Da Vinci himself.
"Stairs," I say, enunciating carefully.
"Yes," Kijai says. She is smiling. I don't hold it against her. I'm certainly a cute baby, and it takes a different kind of woman than Kijai to fight the mothering instinct.
She talks to me whenever I'm awake: when she massages me, when she feeds me, when she bathes me, when she changes my swaddling clothes. I waste no time learning to walk, and bladder and bowel control is actually not difficult at all, compared to all the other things I'm trying to rush. Potty training is a matter of comprehension as much as control. I comprehend.
I wake up one morning. I know it is time.
I let Kijai feed me once more, nuzzling into her breast with gentle gusto, sighing and reveling in her milky scent. It's the last time I'll touch a woman intimately in this life.
"It's time, Kijai," I tell her when I'm done. Her eyes are sorrowing. She covers herself, and I regret the weaning already, as her nipple slides out of sight for the last time. She's beautiful.
"I'll alert the College, Father," she says, now formal and deferent. She backs out of my presence.
When she's gone, I slide off the chair and toddle over to the computer. I'm nearly deft as I start punching at the control board, though it's still too big for my hands.
I summon a file I created back before I died. Information has been dumping into this file periodically since then, building up slowly like a stalagmite. There's earlier information here, too, a cave full of old stalagmites. I've avoided looking since I left the crèche.
I don't remember everything yet, but I will. It's all here at the computer, my private files and the dry details of the lives that came before me. It will work; reminders are all I need. Memory is created from pattern. We remember whole faces, not one individual feature... but a familiar feature recalls to us an entire face. It takes only a little prod to start the avalanche.
I read what I can, until the screen flashes red. The College is coming. I turn away from the monitor, straighten my white robes, and stand to meet them.
They file in silently, their red robes rustling, the only sound of their passing. They turn to face me: a dozen men and women wearing the bodies of children, their faces calm and beatific.
"Behold," I say, holding up my arms in an attitude of benediction. "I am reborn among you."
Their voices ring out triumphant. "Holy is our Lord and Father! Blessed be his name! Blessed be the Church!"
"Amen."
#
There is darkness, and a thousand points of departure.
From body to body, the sleep process changes. This body happens to be an insomniac. I lie awake for hours in the darkness, trying to calm my racing mind. I suppose I could tell my doctors about it, but I don't want to.
I lie very still, my fingers laced over my chest. We near my second birthday. Tomorrow, the College will announce to the world that the Church has been reborn, that I have returned. My three-year absence was no hardship on anyone except me. Three years, after all, is the length of the Progress, and I undertake that at least twice every lifetime.
In the darkness, older parts of me bubble up. We are not the grand, unified whole that everyone would believe, that I would like them to believe. There are other graduated personalities in the universe; we all maintain the public fiction that it's a simple procedure with no moments of doubt.
Technically, I don't doubt. In the night, when I stand at the edge of my sanity and look out over the abyss, I know that it is better to have these thousand points of departure than to have died.
Once, though... There was one lifetime when I had a problem. My personality fragmented. I told no one. I coped. I cut my bodily tenure short by a few decades, and came into being again in a fresh brain. It worked. The next personality did not split, not in the waking world. In my dreams... Well, my dreams are vivid, but fade quickly.
I am dreaming now. I must have fallen asleep, because I am dreaming now that I am alone in my room, and there is a monster in the corner. I believe it lingers in the shadows cast by starlight. I breathe deeper, more evenly, to simulate sleep, trying to fool the shadow.
I will laugh at myself in the morning. I believe in monsters again. How cliché. How appropriately toddlerish. Hilarious.
The presence comes closer. In my nightmares, the things that threaten me in the dark have claws of red adamant; they are the hands of a devil, sent from Hell. But I don't fear claws tonight so much as knives. That's a new nightmare.
"Lights!" I call, frantic.
Lights come on.
A young woman stands frozen in the light. She is dressed for stealth, wearing a shadowsuit, which, among other things, hides her body heat from the sensors. It does not hide her from human eyes, however.
"Oh, God," she swears, and moves toward me.
She has a knife. I roll away from the edge of my bed, towards the wall, and squirm between the two.
"Goddammit!"
"Do not take the Lord's name in vain!" I say from under the bed.
Silence. The sound of her breathing draws close. The light dims as she comes to the bed and peers under. She reaches for me, but her arms are too short. I scramble closer to the wall.
"Come out of there."
"You are here to kill me," I say. "So I think not."
Silence.
The bed shakes, but does not move. The bed is molecularly locked to the floor. Artificial gravity isn't very reliable.
She swears again.
The bed shakes as though she has gotten into it, and then an arm shoots down in that narrow slot between wall and bed. I scramble, but I'm too slow. She snags me by my pajamas.
I shriek. I try to get out of my clothes, but she's pulled them tight against my skin. There's no slack. I reach out, grasp the underside of the bed, and hang on.
"Let go, murderer!" She screams. I pray.
She may have fooled the sensors, but my guards are going to hear her screaming. I hold on. The slats of the bed cut into my soft hands, but my strength, it's more than either of us expected.
Eventually, they come. The door bursts open; the guards shout, there are threats made, and the hand lets go of me. I slump to the floor. Wild cursing from the girl. The captain of my guard looks under the bed.
"Your Holiness?" he asks. "Are you all right?"
I'm gibbering. I can't function. I've wet myself. I act like the child that is my body, not the old man that owns my soul. "Kijai," I whimper. "Kijai."
Kijai doesn't come.
#
I have not yet been seated on the Throne of Humanity in this iteration. I walk forward, out onto the high dais with no swelling of pride, no sense of triumph for the grim duty ahead.
I do not have to use a step, nor do I have to climb awkwardly in front of the assembled. They have installed the throne of childhood, cut to my height, just as my clothes are cut to my height. My environment is mere adornment.
It is the first time I've held court since... I can't remember. I shake my head and frown. It is bad that I can't remember. I did not bring the memory with me.
There are those in the observation deck who will read the shaking of my head, the frowning, and think it means a death sentence. That's not what it means, but they would be wrong to think otherwise about the outcome.
The first day of the trial goes slowly. I find it tiresome, and a headache builds.
I'm cranky. Bored with the proceedings. Irritated with the bombast of my bishops. As if I need others to explain to me the true heinousness of her crime. This Kristjin Hentsleya's blasphemy is writ large in the adrenalin surge I get when I see her, in the bruises on my skin where my pajamas dug into my flesh.
Why can't I remember the last time I was in court?
Later, in my quarters, I check the file, and review my last court date. It was a territorial dispute in an out-planet parish. Important enough to need my attention at the time, but not that important. It matters not that it was not brought across the divide.
That's one question answered.
That night, I wake from dreams of blood, weeping, crying out for Kijai.
#
The second day of trial is more wearying than the first. The physical evidence is brought forth and displayed: the shadowsuit, to begin, and other pieces that Hentsleya touched on her path towards destruction. The cash she paid honest merchants to hide her on the station; the drivekey of the light transport she stole to come here. After lunch, the testimony of my guards. Hentsleya stands, frozen and silent by implants through all of this, but remains awake and aware. Her facial muscles are not affected by the paralysis: her eyelids blink, and her mouth works, hurling silent curses towards me.
So much hatred. It is mystifying. I am loved; I have been loved for many centuries. It is the natural state of my being.
Court ends for the day, and I would retire, but that I have a duty.
I go down to the cells and visit the assassin.
"I would hear your confession," I say.
She glares at me with murder in her eyes, making me glad she's behind a shock barrier. I press a button on the cell panel, and the voice suppressor releases her larynx.
"I should have used one of those on you," she says, massaging her throat.
"You screamed more than I did," I pointed out. "You should have used it on yourself. Or stopped screaming blasphemies."
She glares at me.
"What did I do?" I ask. "That made you want to kill me."
"You ask me now? The trial is all but over. Or is this my chance to speak?"
"You get no chance to speak. But I want to know."
She smiles, slowly. "And I'm supposed to believe you don't know. This is a fun game."
"But I don't know. I don't take every memory with me. I can't take every memory with me."
"Then I guess you'll never know." She turns her back on me.
Just one of the crazies, I tell myself. There's nothing I can do.
"May the God of Humanity have mercy on your soul, child."
I leave the voice suppressor off and walk away.
Her name is Kristjin Hentsleya. We know everything about her; she grew up in a mud house in Riverbed Colony in a family of Devotees, true believers and members of my flock.
We know everything about her except why she tried to kill me.
We know she will die at the midnight after I deliver the verdict, surrendered to the void.
#
Delivering a sentence of death is always a chilling moment, but not without its secret thrill. There is a rush of fear and power, a heady mixture, which comes from condemning someone to death. I dread it--I always, always dread it--and yet...
But that little rush goes away, and leaves me drained.
I return to my room and sit down at the computer. I stare blindly at a blank screen for a long moment, before making a few deft keystrokes and pausing once again.
One final stroke, and the computer will call Kijai for me.
Why?
I decide not to answer that. I press the final key.
Instead of getting the expected call screen, a different program executes, a program, the status avatar tells me, called Kijai. Because of the name, I don't shut everything down immediately, even though it has the earmark of infection.
It's an infection, all right.
The program is vile. The worst kind of pornography: footage of me feeding at Kijai's breast, Kijai rocking me to sleep, Kijai's gentle, ebony hand on my head. In the footage, I'm the same tow-headed toddler that I am right now. These images--doctored, of course!--show a loving son and mother in revealing situations, not at all appropriate behavior between a supplicant and the Father of the Church of Humanity. She's even changing my diaper in one sequence.
The worst part is, I'm awake and aware, even looking at the camera, one thumb stuck obscenely in my mouth, a string of childish drool on my chin. I shudder, and close the program.
I delete the files immediately; then I ask the computer to dial Kijai again. The whole mess reappears. This time I let the program continue, and there's more. Kijai tickling me. Me laughing. Staring at the camera and laughing, a boyish gurgle in my throat.
I scream now, banging on the keyboard, trying to close the program again.
It's too late; something has shorted out the command functions. The program runs. "Leo..." the boy on the screen calls to me. Kijai is gone from the frame. "Leo," he calls in his high baby voice.
"This is the life," he says. "The life you've forsworn. You, the perfect ascetic, the spiritual father of Humanity. Rolling around in an excess of love and physical affection, every night."
I shrink from the screen. I cower. I hold my hands over my face, though I look through them.
"Leo," he says softly, and the camera's view shifts downward. The mess on the floor--the blood--. I have lost all breath. Kijai's dead body is there, and he's caressing her cheek. "The mother. Always the mother," he croons, and tastes of her blood.
I can't close the program, so I flee. I run, out of my room, down to the cells. She's still there; they haven't sent her into the void just yet. I release the locks.
"Hentsleya?"
She stares at me and stands at the door of the cell.
"You called me a murderer," I say, a toddler's pleading whine in my throat. "Did you know Kijai?"
"Kijai? No. I have no idea who that is."
"I am a murderer," I say. "You were right. I killed her. How did you know? I didn't even know."
She rocks back on her heels. Her eyes are guarded. "I'm not coming out."
"It's not a trap. Not a trick."
"Doesn't matter if it is, I'm doomed to the void anyway. But I'm not going to tell you."
"Hentsleya..." I open my hands to her, a gesture of surrender. "I'm killing people and I don't even know it."
Something about her softens. She believes me. For a moment, I almost remember everything, and feel a sudden, crafty need to gloat. It disappears, a forgotten memory that I don't know how to pursue.
She opens the door, and holds it for me.
"This is the only place I'll tell you," she says.
I do not point out that I can call guards, who have many skills and drugs that could cause her to do whatever I want. Instead, I enter the cell.
She closes the door behind us and leans against it.
"The Father of Humanity," she says. Her tone is mocking. "The only thing you've fathered is yourself."
"I suppose."
"Over and over and over again. The most graduated of graduated personalities. You've ruled the Church for almost a millennium."
"Eight centuries."
"Something broke, sometime, though. Graduated personalities were never meant to perpetuate themselves for so long, over so many bodies. No wonder..."
I am silent.
"You fathered a girl, once," she says, meditative.
There is no horror, for I am emptied of horror. There is only what there is. "One of the fractures had carnal relations with a woman," I guess, blunt, and too broken to be devastated further.
"No, no," she says. "Or maybe that did happen, but I don't know of it. One of the fractures replicated itself and graduated to a new body, though, some night when you weren't looking."
"Yes," I whisper. Somewhere within me, I know this is true. Someone within me knows it's true. The ghost of a memory...
I crumple.
Footsteps; she steps over me, to the door. It opens, and then comes the faint chirp that means the lock is activated. She comes back in, closing the door behind her.
"Will anyone come, to watch the execution?" she asks.
"No. No one will come. No one will watch." I would have been the only one to bother.
She kneels down beside me, takes me in her arms, and I cling to her, like a child. She strokes my hair.
"How much longer?" she asks. She has no chrono here, and keeping a sense of time in the cells is impossible. There is no night here.
"Not long now," I say, and put my fingers into my mouth.
She rocks me.
"It will all be over soon," she says.
I suck my fingers and think of Kijai.
Loud noises fill the cell, metal moving on metal. A pop and a hiss, and a crack appears on the far wall. We stare into the void.
"Always the father," she says. The air rushes past, and she clutches my head to her chest. "Always the father."
The void welcomes us.
And there is darkness.
One of the things I am concentrating on lately (this year, this era, whatever) is getting beyond merely competent writing.
I not infrequently stumble across random blog or community posts from writers who are throwing up their hands and wailing "Why? WHY can't I sell?" About 9 times out of 10, I don't really wonder why the writer isn't selling, actually. And in part, that's because I have seen enough unpublished stories in slush and in workshops to know what sort of things are out there.
There is a vast amount of competent writing out there. If you cut out the loons, the no-talents, the people writing in crayon, and the ones who don't actually write what we commonly agree to call English, you're left with a large collection of competence. Mediocre competence.
This is no revelation to anyone, I suspect. What might be a revelation is that I'm quite well aware that most of the time I'm merely competent. Sometimes I don't realize it until after the fact. Most of the time, it's bloody obvious: just compare the vision in my head and the version on the paper, and my mere competence becomes apparent.
Now, mind you, I don't actually know how to surpass myself--I mean, I don't have any formal plan of attack here--but I thought that I'd start with a little public self-critique.
Tomorrow, sans commentary, I'm going to post a recently rejected story ("Souls on a String"), then later, a few of the comments from the rejections I've gotten for it, and eventually my own analysis (from years post-writing) of what's really gone wrong with the story. I hope that I'll learn something from the exercise. I'm doing it publically because I'm hoping that if you learn something, too, you'll share it with me. (Ha! And that's how I got the internet to do my homework for me.)