The Book Fair starts at 9 a.m. and runs through 4:30 p.m. Mari will be signing copies of her horror anthology Harlan County Horrors.

This is a large event, one that Apex encourages anybody near the region to attend.

After the Apex Halloween Story Contest submissions were whittled down to the top fifteen entries, I read them. All of them were good stories but, as all authors know, ‘good’ doesn’t cut it with anthologies. The story must both suit the theme and play well with the other stories already chosen for the anthology. It is my pleasure to announce the two winners of the Apex Halloween Story Contest.

The top prize goes to Bev Vincent for his excellent story, “The Fingernail Test.” Bev’s story will be published in the Apex anthology, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind at $0.08/word.

The runner up prize goes to Jonathan McKinney for his story, “Shiny Eyes.” Jonathon’s story will be published in the Apex anthology, Close Encounters of the Urban Kind at $0.05/word.

There are three honorable mentions: “Don’t Follow Any Ugly Dogs” by Daniel Johnson, “Finger Prick” by Val Muller and “Pod N” by Michael Britton.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a story to the Apex Halloween Story Contest. We appreciated each and every one.

This month we present a special “international” issue of our online magazine. Lavie Tidhar, editor of The Apex Book of World SF, guest edits this issue and brings us three excellent selections from around the globe. To round things out, Charles Tan interviews Malaysian author Tunku Halim and Lavie writes an editorial about the international genre scene.

Editorial: “A Celebration of World SF” by Lavie Tidhar
Interview: Tunku Halim by Charles Tan
Short Fiction: “After the Fire” by Aliette de Bodard
Short Fiction: “Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys” by Nir Yaniv
Short Fiction: “An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My Mind” by Alexsandar Žiljak

Enjoy!

I am delighted to welcome you to the special World SF issue of “Apex Magazine.” This month, The Apex Book of World SF is officially released, an anthology of fifteen stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror from around the world. This issue is in celebration of that book, and of some of the great writers working in speculative fiction around the world today.

Our first story comes from Israeli writer Nir Yaniv: “Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys” is a story I fell in love with as soon as I read it in the Hebrew, and I knew straight away I wanted it for this issue. Yaniv takes a hackneyed theme and does something weird and wonderful with it in a story of obsession, love…and little grey aliens. Yaniv’s contribution to The Apex Book of World SF, “Cinderers”, is equally funny and strange, and I do hope you pick up a copy to read it.

Our second contributor was an equally easy choice. French writer Aliette de Bodard is a fast-rising star in the world of science fiction, with stories appearing pretty much everywhere, a Campbell Award nomination, and not less than three novels forthcoming from HarperCollins’ new Angry Robot imprint. Aliette’s “After the Fire” combines science fiction and horror in the best tradition of “Apex Magazine,” and I do hope you like it as much as I did. Aliette’s contribution to the anthology, meanwhile, the novelette “The Lost Xuyan Bride”, is a wild noir romp in a complex alternate history. Again, I hope you might pick up a copy to read it.

Our third contribution is a sample story from the anthology by Croatian writer Aleksandar Žiljak: “An Evening In the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia On My Mind”, a mixture of Men in Black and Boogie Nights – and who could resist that tagline?

Finally, we have an interview with Malaysian writer Tunku Halim, conducted by Charles Tan. You can read interviews with the rest of the anthology contributors all this month over at SF Signal.

I hope you enjoy this issue!

Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris and has been publishing stories steadily since 2006, several of which take place in the world of this story. She won the Writers of the Future competition in 2007, and is currently working on more stories and a novel. She was a 2008 nominee for the Campbell Award.

In her dreams, Jiaotan saw Father: hands outstretched, the flesh of the fingers fraying away to reveal the yellowed, tapered shape of bones, the deep-set eyes bulging in their sockets, pleading, begging her to take him away.

But the Ancestors were bones and dried sinews, shambling upright from the wreck of their graves–anger shining in the hollows of their eye sockets as they walked past the devastated gardens, the withered trees, the dried-out waterfalls and rivers. And clouds marched across Heaven, a billowing mass of sickly grey spreading to cut the path of The Red Carp as it rose away from Earth…

Jiaotan woke up with a start, instinctively bending over to cough out the fluid that blocked her lungs. But something held her, pressed against her as tightly as the embrace of Earth.

Where–? She tried to pull herself upright–to breathe–but she was still held. She couldn’t—

Father…

“Shun Jiaotan,” a voice said with the cultured accents of the Court, loud enough to cover the frantic beating of her heart. “Stand by for awakening procedure.”

Something shifted, and she was upright, the fluid choking her. A cough wrung her body, spraying the obstruction out of her lungs. She inhaled in huge gulps while the light around her slowly grew, the stale air searing her throat.

Where–?

But she remembered. All the dreams–the grinning skulls and the withered flesh on brittle bones, the forests coated in liquid metal, the wind that bore the rank smell of carrion…

When the hibernation couch released her, Jiaotan stumbled out on her knees and bent over, racked by coughing fits, feeling as though she was going to spit everything out, lungs and liver and stomach. But the only thing that came out was more of the hibernation fluid, a grey ooze that spread across the pristine metal surface of the ship’s quarters.

It took her a while to stand, and a while longer for the images to stop hovering in front of her face–for Father’s burnt face to disappear, back among the dead where it belonged.

“Shun Jiaotan,” the voice said again, echoing under the metal ceiling. “The Red Carp has need of you. Go to the navigation room.”

A quick glance around her confirmed that all the other sleepers were still in their couches; the ship around her was silent. What had happened?

But she knew better than to ask. The only way to communicate with the ship’s Mind would be to jack in physically, and that could only be done by the engineers and the pilots, those with the proper implants and authorizations.

Why had they woken her up, then? What need had they for a poet, brought on the Exodus only as a favour to her sister?

Her sister.

Sukuang–she was the engineer, she was the one who truly mattered–the one they’d wake up if there was a problem.

Something was wrong. Jiaotan pulled herself to the door, sliding it open with a touch of her hand, and moved into the corridor, trying to ignore the growing hollow in her stomach.

Everything was deserted; everything gleamed with the coldness of metal. The light, reflected on a thousand surfaces, danced and coalesced into ten thousand patterns, ten thousand forms that might have been drawings or characters–the beginning of sentences hovering on the edge of significance, always dissolving before Jiaotan could focus on them. And there came no other noise but her own laboured breathing as her lungs struggled to re-accustom themselves to a normal atmosphere. She hadn’t realised, before the Exodus, how huge The Red Carp was; going upwards, she passed row upon row of hibernation rooms, from the scholars to the officials, from the officials to the lower ranks of the Court–and further up was the highest room, where the Emperor, the Son of Heaven, the holder of the Divine Mandate, slept in his own couch. A little lower than this would be the navigation room, a reminder that the pilots of the Exodus were almost–yet not–as powerful as the Emperor.

Jiaotan walked through the corridors, seeing everything merge and blur into an endless dream of metal.

There was a wind, blowing through the ship–not the cold one between the stars, but a hot and rancid one, with a smell like spoiled butter, like curdled cheese left too long in the sun. The metal quivered and danced, became the red of flames which swept up, and Second Cousin Yu’s skin crinkled and blackened like charred paper, and her eyes popped like chestnuts in the Fire’s wake…

Something swam out of the darkness in which she walked: a picture against a red background–a fierce, dark face with a beard and eyes like black beads. Batons, crossed in front of silk robes.

A guardian deity, and his twin by his side, pale-skinned, his two straight swords drawn against threats. The doors they protected were tight metal panes, cold and reassuring.

Jiaotan laid a hand against the doors, feeling the coolness travel up her arm–into her heart. If she closed her eyes, she knew, she’d see Father again, or perhaps Aunt Qin or one of the other concubines: all the dead she couldn’t forget, an endless chain of ghosts stretching back to the wreck of Earth. Blood, stronger than mountains, more enduring than jade or cinnabar.

Why had they woken her up? It should have been Sukuang at the door, not her.

“I’m here,” Jiaotan said aloud. “Now would you tell me what you want?” She moved her hand to the control panel, long enough for the ship’s Mind to recognise her. The doors parted like the leaves of a book, and she entered the navigation room.

Inside, it was cool and dark and silent. The air smelled of ginseng and pine essence–not quite enough to mask the staleness of the recycling.

This was ridiculous. She couldn’t possibly fix whatever was wrong. Couldn’t the ship’s Mind tell the difference between Jiaotan and her sister?

Something shifted in the shadows–the sound of breathing coming in small, ragged gasps. Someone? Impossible. All the colonists slept in their hibernation couches; all the pilots were in their berths, augmenting the ship’s computing capacity with their own minds. There should have been no one—

“Jiaotan?” a voice asked.

Sukuang. But she didn’t have her usual confidence; her voice sounded empty, and a little startled, as if she’d been doing something that Jiaotan had interrupted–something reprehensible.

Cautiously, Jiaotan approached. The hollow feeling in her stomach, if anything, grew larger.

Sukuang sat on her knees at the foot of the pilots’ wall. Above her, bulges in the metal marked the crew members’ berths. The metal was translucent, letting her see the crew, resting as snug in there as in a hibernation couch. Their faces were pale against the grey fluid, their eyes bruised; their mouths were set in troubled grimaces. One of the control panels–that of the second-in-command–blinked dark blue, the sign of a problem.

“I should have known they’d wake you up,” Sukuang said, as Jiaotan approached.

“I–” Jiaotan stopped, seeing what Sukuang had spread on the ground.

A letter on white paper, stamped with the seal of the Courts of Hell, filled with scrawled, disorderly characters–and a welding knife, carefully set aside from the writing brush.

That wasn’t good. You only wrote to the dead Ancestors for one reason, and that was to apologise for the shame you would be bringing on the family.

Such as the shame of not living on.

“Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the ship?” she asked slowly. All that Sukuang had to do was pick up the welding knife and open her own throat; and there’d be nothing Jiaotan could do–and nothing the ship could do either. It had been programmed to take care of itself and the passengers in the hibernation couches, but it couldn’t act outside of that.

No wonder the ship had awakened Jiaotan.

Sukuang raised bruised eyes towards her. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean?” Jiaotan asked. “You’re the best engineer we have. That’s why the ship picked you.”

Sukuang shook her head. “I’m capable of repairing the damage. But what’s the point?”

“The point?” Jiaotan knelt by Sukuang’s side, carefully, and laid a hand on her arm. “We’re the only ones left. The hope of rebirth for the whole world. When we reach the colony–”

“We destroyed Earth, Jiaotan.”

Jiaotan tried to ignore the images of the Fire, sweeping through the steppes and the grasslands, racing up towards the launch rail in the instant before the ship took off in a blaze of light. “The alchemists did,” she said. “Whoever made the White Fire did.”

“We all did.” Sukuang sucked in a breath, went on, her voice shaking. “The alchemists, the engineers, the soldiers. Every one of us with our little experiments, every one of us reporting on what worked and what didn’t, building the sum of knowledge that they used to make the Fire. Do you really think we deserved to be carried away?”

“The Emperor ordered us to board the ship. Would you go against that?”

Sukuang’s hands clenched. “There are higher powers than the Emperor.”

“Not many.”

“Enough,” Sukuang said. “Please, Jiaotan. Just leave me be.”

“I can’t. You know I can’t.” Sukuang’s presence had made the Exodus bearable–the knowledge that the Shun lineage wasn’t reduced to Jiaotan alone, to a mediocre poet unable to pass the state examinations; that in the vastness of the ship, in the strangeness of their new home, they could still watch out for each other as they’d done when they were children.

“And you know I can’t ignore it anymore, either.” Sukuang was silent, her lips compressed–she couldn’t ignore Jiaotan without being rude, but neither did she agree.

Jiaotan tried something else. “We’re the only ones left. Father’s flesh, Mother’s blood. If we die, then the last trace of them will vanish.”

Sukuang’s eyes were as dark as scorched meat, her pupils dilated by grief. “I know what we’ve done, Jiaotan. I still see them–they’re in my dreams, in my waking days. Father and Mother and Aunt Qin, and the rest of them.”

All those we left behind, Jiaotan thought, shivering. But it didn’t matter; it shouldn’t matter. The dead were dead, and the future belonged to the living. It had to.

“Sukuang,” she said, “I share your grief. I understand.” Truly, she did. She saw them, too: all the ones they couldn’t save, all those the Emperor had been forced to abandon as they flew away, all those the Fire had taken. “But to commit suicide….” She paused, looking for a suitable quote to paraphrase, and finally settled on Grand Historian Sima Qian. “Some deaths are weightier than Mount Tai, some lighter than a swan’s down. Your death will achieve nothing.”

“You’re wrong,” Sukuang said, but her gaze strayed to the dark blue light, still blinking in the shadows, and wouldn’t come back to Jiaotan. “It would atone for what we’ve done.”

Jiaotan took a deep breath and called on the Classics, which Sukuang would know by heart, just like her. “A person’s virtue is seen through the whole of their lives, not the manner of their death. It is seen by the benefits of their acts. You know this.”

“I used to, once.”

“You can’t bring them back,” Jiaotan said. “You can’t change the past. And death is no atonement; it’s just a way to preserve your dignity.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. It’s different, Jiaotan. You know it is.” Her voice shook.

Jiaotan said nothing. There was no need to.

At length, Sukuang said, “You’re right. I’ve been selfish, Jiaotan. And arrogant.” Her smile was devoid of any joy. “And I have a ship to repair.”

She rose and laid her hand against the faulty berth. The wall softened, flowed up her wrist, her arm; the gleaming metal coated her skin and her clothes, burrowing into her body to connect her implants to the ship’s Mind.

“It’s going to be a while,” she said. “You might as well make yourself comfortable.”

Jiaotan propped herself up against the farthest wall, watching her sister. Nothing happened that she could see. Sukuang did not move, though the metal of the ship shifted from time to time, changing colours like a living being.

Her mind drifted into the land of dreams. The metal flowed upwards, covering Sukuang as it had covered the trees and the flowers, choking them to death…

She and Sukuang ran on the dry earth behind the wall of the Fire, which grew more and more distant as it swept away from them. The trees were shining masses coated with the melted metal of skyscrapers, the mountains sterile rocks with the corpses of acid-eaten forests; underfoot were ashes–and bones, crackling like corn in the frying pan, their pale fragments billowing in the air, small and sharp.

See my children…

Jiaotan woke up with a start, in the dark, the afterimages of the Fire imprinted on her retinas and the woman’s grinning skull superimposed on the navigation room. The woman–Guanyin, Bodhisattva of Mercy–she, too, taken by the Fire, eaten away to nothing.

Jiaotan’s heart beat in her chest with the frantic desperation of a caged hummingbird. They hadn’t done this–not any of this, it wasn’t their fault, they couldn’t have done anything…

But, deep where it mattered, she knew it for a lie; a flimsy, unacceptable excuse.

The light above the berth blinked red, the colour of good fortune and things gone right–slow and steady, the anchor for her flailing sanity. The ship’s metal flowed away from Sukuang, revealing once more the green of her clothes, the pale colour of her skin, the exhaustion in her eyes.

Jiaotan stood up, trying to calm the frantic beat of her heart.

“It’s done,” Sukuang said. “We’ll have a safe journey.”

Jiaotan forced a smile she didn’t feel and held out her hand to Sukuang. “Come. Let’s go back to sleep, then. With luck, they won’t wake us up before we reach the planet.”

“No,” Sukuang said. “I guess they won’t.” She sucked in a breath, her gaze shifting down to the welding knife.

The hollow feeling returned in the pit of Jiaotan’s stomach, sharp and cold. “Sukuang. Think of the others…”

Sukuang raised her gaze again–eyes filled with such a desperate need that Jiaotan knew, with absolute certainty, that she couldn’t stop her sister, that she didn’t have the right to.

Sukuang’s hand moved towards the knife; the outstretched fingers hovered over the handle for an agonisingly long while. At length, and with a visible effort, she withdrew. “You’re right,” she said tonelessly. “Let’s go back.”

She didn’t speak again until they’d walked back to her own hibernation couch–close to the navigation room, along with the ship’s engineers and the few remaining alchemists–until Jiaotan had wedged her into the couch and the cycle of hibernation had started.

“Sleep well, sister,” Sukuang whispered then, as the couch swung shut.

Jiaotan laid her hand against the outer panel of the couch and caught a distorted reflection of herself in the metal: dishevelled and pale, her eyes bruised and haunted, her skin the colour of things that no longer saw the sun, and ten thousand ghosts on her back, bowing her shoulders and spine.

“Sleep well,” she whispered in return, though she knew the truth, as did Sukuang: that in sleep there was no oblivion. The weight of their transgression would never be erased. The dead were with them, carried in their minds and in their hearts–and, as the Fire had eaten those left behind, they in turn would gnaw at the sleepers, every hour, every day, tearing away at the will to live, at the fabric and sanity of their beings, until nothing was left.

Red lights hummed on the control panel and from inside came a sound like rushing water: the hibernation fluid, filling the couch, flowing into Sukuang’s nostrils and lungs like water into a drowning man.

Drowning, Jiaotan thought. All of us, floundering in our couches, carrying our grief and guilt and madness between the stars, all the ghosts that we won’t ever exorcise dragging us down; a slow, lingering death instead of the Fire. Drowning.

She thought of the desperate hunger in Sukuang’s eyes, and she wondered how many among them would ever come up for air.

This story is part of a special issue of Apex Magazine featuring international writers.

To read more of Aliette de Bodard’s work, check out “The Lost Xuyan Bride” in the anthology The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar.

Nir Yaniv is an Israeli writer, editor and musician. His first short story collection, Ktov Ke’shed Mi’shachat (Write Like a Devil), came out in 2006, and he is co-author (with Lavie Tidhar) of a short novel, The Tel Aviv Dossier. He served as editor of the Israeli SF Society’s website and later edited the magazine “Chalomot Be’aspamia.” He lives in Tel Aviv.

When Benjamin Schneider came to my clinic and complained of mysterious coils on his left wrist, I wasn’t overly surprised. The term “hypochondriac” may have become overused years ago, but Benjamin nevertheless lived and acted as its perfect archetype. He had been that way ever since he was a child. I remember the first time he came to me, when I was still a minor family GP at the National Health clinic in town. He was about fourteen, short for his age, thin, curly and bespectacled, and a thorn was stuck, mortifyingly, in his behind. His mother, Mrs. Romina Schneider, did not spare him her wrath – “Every time, something strange has to happen to you!” she said – and the embarrassed child gritted his teeth and gave me a pleading look. His mother, too, gave me a look – the kind an older woman gives a younger woman she doesn’t trust, doesn’t want to trust, but is forced to, if only by the vagaries of the National Health Service. I don’t remember how I got her away from the room – one of the nurses helped me, perhaps – but five minutes later the thorn was removed, to the relief of everyone concerned. Benjamin’s grateful gaze was something I could never forget – if only because, for years afterwards, I received it from him, on average, about once a week.

The week after the thorn incident, for instance, he grazed the back of his neck on barbed wire – I had no idea how – and came to me to clean up the wound. I asked him if they didn’t have iodine at home, and he shrugged and didn’t reply. In fact, he never talked about himself, beyond – more or less – the medical reasons for his current visit. Every week he visited me, with one reason or another, as he grew up from a boy to a teen and then a man, still thin, still curly and bespectacled. When I opened my own clinic twelve years later, Benjamin was my first client.

His medical problems were always a little odd. He was bruised in unlikely places – his right ear, for instance; suffered diseases like an arthritis that had the same symptoms as gum disease, didn’t respond to medicine, and disappeared after a week; and indeed always healed miraculously and returned to me to verify the fact and perhaps discover some new ailments in the process. It is possible other doctors would have ridiculed him and his various ills, and certainly my cooperation with it and with him, but I couldn’t bring myself to be so cruel to him.

The coils, however, despite our long history together, were something new. I had sent him for an X-ray several days before, at his insistence. He brought the prints back to the clinic in the brown paper folder of the National Health, searched through them for a minute or two, and then found what he was looking for. I spread the print over the white fluorescent board designed for that purpose and examined it, not expecting to find anything out of the ordinary, or at least of the ordinary as considered in the case of Benjamin Schneider. But, to my surprise, something was there. Two greyish coils, half-transparent, testifying that whatever they were made of was not solid enough to completely block the X-rays. And there was something else that was odd in the picture, but to begin with I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Does it hurt?” I asked. He shook his head. His arthritis had already disappeared. I examined the wrist myself, but externally it was not possible to discern anything out of the ordinary. I told him I had to think about it, and to come back to me in a few days. I looked at him, worried he might be upset by that, but he just nodded and left, satisfied, to all appearances, that his fate was in good hands. How little did you know, Benjamin. How little did we know.

I had quite a lot of work to do in the office that day, so I took the print home with me afterwards. I didn’t have a fluorescent board at home, so I hung the print before a desk lamp. I looked at it all through dinner, and for a change didn’t wait in vain for the phone to ring. The coils were odd, but there was also something familiar about them, and these were two separate things, the strangeness and the familiarity. After a while I lost my concentration and watched a little TV. One of the channels was showing a horror B-movie, and I watched it disinterestedly as my mind floated here and there on its own without my being fully conscious of it. It’s a way as good as any of dealing with problems, but this time the solution came not from that, but rather from the tiny part of me that was actually watching the television. One of the monsters there was sawing through the arm of another monster, and I noticed immediately the cheap special effect – the saw and the hand about to be cut were two separate images filmed at different times and joined artificially. It was easy to see that the saw didn’t really touch the arm. And it was the same phenomenon that I could see in Benjamin’s X-ray – the coils looked like an artificial addition to the picture.

There was something calming about this, of course. Incidents like this are not common, but sometimes, despite all precautionary measures, they happen. A foreign object finds its way between the camera and the subject, the result being spread in all its glory before my reading lamp. If Benjamin still needed it, I would send him for a repeat scan, and if not, all to the better.

And still the coils seemed familiar.

On his next visit I explained all this to him, apart from the strange feeling I had about the coils, and he seemed pretty happy. Another problem occupied him by now. He had something in his eyes. That’s how he put it, and I couldn’t get a better explanation out of him. I examined his eyes and could see nothing out of the ordinary, apart from a redness that could have been caused by a thousand and one things, most of them not worthy of attention. But when I examined his right eye through an ophthalmoscope I saw it: a tiny grey circle, barely seen against the redness of the cornea.

There was one in his left eye too.

They both seemed familiar, just like the coils. They also seemed, as hard as it was for me to believe when watching something that was real and not a scan, unconnected. If the coils in his arm seemed like foreign bodies that had entered by mistake into the field of vision of the X-ray camera, then the circles in his eyes seemed like foreign bodies that had entered by mistake into the field of vision of reality.

I think I managed to hide the shock I felt. I gave Benjamin eye drops, closed the clinic early, and went home to rest. And watch TV. And think.

In the morning I arrived at the clinic two hours before opening time and dismantled the ophthalmoscope. I examined all the parts through a magnifying glass, but found nothing to explain the little grey circles that were similar to the little grey coils that were similar to nothing I knew even though my brain insisted otherwise.

I didn’t know how to reassemble the device and decided to just buy another. I had money, after all, and besides, it was tax-deductible. I spent the rest of the time before my first patient’s appearance in thoughts of this nature, which were relaxing in their simplicity and mundanity but which led me nevertheless, in one way or another, to the mystery of Benjamin’s grey parts; thoughts that were only halted with the appearance of the patient himself.

“Benjamin,” I said, surprised. He never came to me two days in a row. “Is everything all right?”

Usually, he would merely point at the source of pain or discomfort, speaking as little as possible, and let me complete the diagnosis on my own. Not today. “I have a crop circle,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“A crop circle. You know. Like the ones aliens make.”

“Benjamin—” I said, but he had already launched into an explanation that was exceptional both in its length and its content. Crop circles are giant circles, and sometimes more complex shapes, that are formed in wheat or corn fields by the pressing down of the stalks. All kinds of attributes are ascribed to them, and stories are told of strange things that have happened to the stalks. There are people who believe that they are proof of the existence of aliens. The rest of the world, of course, assumes it’s merely a practical joke.

“Fine,” I said. “I don’t really believe in aliens either, but let’s get back to you, Benjamin.”

He looked at me. “I have a crop circle,” he said again. “On my tummy.”

I stared at him, thinking about whether I needed to send him to see a psychiatrist. Then I had him lie down on the examination table, turned on the strongest lamp, and opened his shirt. I asked him to point to the place where the circle was, and he did.

Despite everything, I needed all my willpower not to laugh.

“Benjamin,” I said, “that’s your navel. Your belly button.”

“It’s a crop circle. Look at the hairs there, see what happened to them.”

“It’s only natural that the hairs around…” I said, and then I saw.

They were bent. Or stood, erect, in unnatural angles. Circles within circles, around the navel. But more than that – they were grey.

I passed my hand over his stomach, touching them. I wasn’t sure I was touching them all. It seemed to me that some passed through my palm, as if they were air. As if I was air. It was not a pleasant feeling. Under my hand, Benjamin shuddered. I felt a kind of electric current, something passing between us through my spread fingers, touching-not-touching his crop circle. Many things were suddenly clear. Many things. Little clues, grazed necks, strange illnesses, illogical pains. Aliens.

“What do you think?” he said. “Am I going to be all right?”

I looked at him, straight into his eyes. They were grey. There were strange geometries behind his eyes, and I thought I understood them. I didn’t say anything. His eyes grew large. Only after a moment I realised he was afraid. And only a little after that I realised he was afraid of me.

“You too, Dr. Katz,” he said. “You too!” And he passed out.

I climbed on the chair, and from there onto the table, and stood there, high, looking at the thin, silent man who had spent the majority of his life with imaginary diseases that were, at the end, quite real. Maybe he was in love with his diseases. Maybe he was in love with me. It didn’t matter. Not now, with the aliens controlling him – and me. I gritted my teeth and jumped, head first, into the crop circle, into his navel.

He still comes to visit me every week. Right after they released him from the hospital, he came to see me. How nice of him. Maybe he’s still in love with me, even after I jumped into him. They told me the doctors managed to recover his digestive system. My head, though…

He comes to visit me every week, and the little greys are in his eyes, on his hands, forming and growing, growing and spreading, all over his body. I have no mirror here, and I can’t look at my body, but I think it’s the same with me. I think I hope it is so. It’s hard to be sure, with a head like mine.

I think I see the world in black and white, or grey. Apart from Benjamin, no one would understand, of course. I know exactly what the medical thinking is. I know exactly what the people who surround me would think of anything I would say. I know what I would have thought. I’m well-behaved, but that doesn’t help. Only Benjamin, only Benjamin can help me. He and the little greys, the growing greys, the great big greys. Now, when I see the look in his grey eyes, when I imagine the touch of his hands, the coils in his wrists, beyond the reinforced glass window separating us, beyond the jacket enfolding me, I know that he loves me.

I love him too.

But most of all I love the greys.

This story is part of a special issue of Apex Magazine featuring international writers.

To read more of Nir Yaniv’s work, check out “Cinderers” in the anthology The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar.

Alexsandar Žiljak was born in Zagreb, Croatia. He is the author of the short story collection Slijepe ptice (Blind Birds) and is a three-time winner of the Sfera Award for best short story. With Tomislav Šakić he edited Ad Asta, an anthology of Croatian science fiction stories, and the duo currently edit the genre magazine “UBIQ.”

Maybe I shook them off. I don’t feel them breathing down my neck anymore. I turn around, but I don’t see them in the crowd.

The square is swarmed by people. I elbow through the sea of bodies, carried by the current of fear. Conversations, laughter, shouts are everywhere around me. It’s supper time, and crowds gather in front of manna machines. In Gaj Street, the Bolivians drawl El Condor Pasa on their flutes and drums, wood and stretched skin bringing snow from the Andean peaks. Performers are dancing under the clock and in front of the Vice-Roy, not giving a shit about ten degrees below zero. Nanopigments in their skins pour colours across naked bodies writhing through retro-industry at full volume. Hare Krishnas reach me from the Dolac. Their mantra collides with the flutes and ghetto blasters, mixing and merging into a bizarre noise of three worlds melted in the same pot.

I look at my wristwatch. The Underground from Samobor arrived a couple of minutes ago and a new crowd spills out on the square, seekers of evening amusement in the metropolis core. I drown amongst people, one fish in the glittering school that moves to and fro, hiding me from gaping jaws.

A bunch of kids in fluorescent jackets buzz next to me on their roller skates. One of them almost runs down some babe, her skin violet, her snow-white hair reaching halfway down her back. The girl spouts obscenities after them, but the punks don’t even hear her, their players at full pitch.

I walk across the square and find my refuge in the City Coffeehouse, a preserve of the Kaiser-und-König Zagreb tradition in the midst of the nano-Babylon. Also, a relatively good place for taking a break: they will hardly dare to off me here. Absent-mindedly, I order a cup of coffee. The real coffee, expensive: Brazil. Just a few plantations left, surrounded by vast rainforests.

I take a deep breath and calm down. As I wait for the coffee, I run all the possible scenarios through my head. And they all boil down to the same thing: back to the start. New name, new address, as far away from here as possible. Maybe even a new face in the mirror every morning. I already ruled out everything else. My existence in Zagreb is past and finished. When I leave, there’ll be no coming back for some time. Say, to the end of my life.

They won’t forgive. They can’t.

If only Piko wasn’t such an idiot!

Time for some stock-taking. The plastic in my pocket is comfortably fat. Perhaps it could last me two years. That’s good news. Bad news is that every use of the credit card is a public announcement of my momentary whereabouts. That means a new card. It’ll cost me at least a third, maybe more.

I touch an Apple under my jacket, as if I want to make sure it’s still there, in my pocket. A little box with a headset and dataglove that I need to switch to the next level. I feel somewhat better now. I’m still in the game, it’s not over yet. But I need an assembler, ASAP. And I need some time to hack its protection. In the meantime, public places. I’m becoming quite certain that the boys won’t take me out before witnesses. At least, I hope so.

Meanwhilst, the player rewinds and the clip starts from frame zero.

My name doesn’t matter. It means nothing to anyone, not even to me anymore: by the morning at latest, it will end in a recycling bin, together with all my life until now. What I’m doing is more important. More precisely, what I’ve been doing till a couple of hours ago.

Pornies. Passive, mostly for screen, although I sometimes render them for VR. Depends, it doesn’t work every time…black stuff, quite black. Not what is usually meant, snuff or kids, but still, enough to dress me in stripes for a long time.

The waiter brings me coffee, puts the bill on my table and leaves. I mutter something that should be thanks. He’s already at the other table, leaving me alone again. The coffeehouse is almost full. I look for them amongst faces under nano-makeup and neon hairdos, but I don’t find them. They’re not here; I’m safe. At least, for some time.

I reach into another pocket and take Lydia out of it. Twelve terabytes of the finest resolution, with flawless sound. Lydia, beautiful, perfect, a dream-girl. If only I had never laid my eyes on her.

First, I comb citizen register databases. With knives that I have, I cut the CS-level security like butter. I look at the residence registrations, issuing of papers, places like that. I also scan the compulsory reports of the feature changes: all the legal beauty parlours file them routinely. (Once, I stumbled on a chick who changed her look and skin colour every three days: not even fashion changes that fast. But I digress.) The faces are what I need at first. The computer does all the work, skipping the personal data and fingerprints and taking just the holos. That’s a daily job, taking some twenty minutes, half an hour tops. It’s best done at peak hours, when one connection more passes unnoticed.

Then I have to warm the chair myself. If there are many new faces, it takes me an hour, maybe two, to make a selection. It’s clear what I’m looking for: good-looking babes and hunks. But, what does ‘good-looking’ mean in this age of beauty parlours that turn a Quasimodo into a top model in a few hours and with just a few pinpricks? There’s beauty and beauty. It’s impossible to just list the criteria and let it roll. You either know it or you don’t. Something in an eye, a smile, bearing, a little bit of everything, a personality. Yes, perhaps that’s the best word. A personality. And I have the nose to find it. The others don’t.

I know that; I sell my clips better than my competition.

Phase two is detailed selection: more rummaging through databases, this time with precisely defined goals. Address, education, social status, marriage, children, health, age, though that doesn’t mean much these days. I let some victims go by default. Public personalities, for instance, particularly those powerful enough to crush my crown jewels. I prefer singles. I have a mild revulsion toward married couples with children. I mean, we’re shooting a clip, and then whining starts in the next room. Kids have an infallible sense to start screaming when it’s sweetest.

The coffee is almost over. The pressure doesn’t subside; I order another. I have some cash in my pocket, more than enough to spend some time here. People leave, others enter. Murmuring and soft music surround me.

Step three is automatic. To the chosen ones—one, two at best—I send a present. A swarm of flies to their home addresses. The flies are the peak of military intelligence technology: a floating camera plus nanocomputer plus video memory, and they are virtually unnoticeable. Don’t ask me where I got them and what they cost me. What you don’t know can’t kill you.

Once inserted, most frequently through the air conditioning, the swarm reproduces by itself. Part of it forms a hive, hacking the network outlet of one of the victim’s nanocomputers. The rest deploys itself in the apartment. If the technical conditions don’t screw me up, which happens occasionally, that’s all the foreplay there is.

When everything is finally green, filmings follow. In simple terms, the moment one fly senses a motion, it informs the others. The swarm is programmed to cover the action from all the imaginable angles, and I usually let it buzz 24/7. Girls often look very inviting on the screen just doing aerobics. Showers and bathtubs are nice spots, too. Some dolls really like to relax when they think nobody’s watching them.

Once their memories are full, the flies empty themselves in the hive. The hive then mails the data to the predetermined addresses. It all works without my interventions. As I said, purely automatic.

I check my watch. I’m here for some thirty minutes. Nobody drives me, the coffeehouse is open throughout the night, but I should move on. As long as you move, they can’t grab you. But it’s cold outside, and fatigue and pressure won’t relent, won’t let go, pinning me down.

I decide to stay a little longer. I call the waiter, ask for the newspapers, and he brings them. The screen fills with headlines. Airbus closes down the assembly lines, only R&D and nanoprogramming remain. Nothing new, Boeing did that six months ago. Today, every moron builds an aeroplane in his backyard, if only he has necessary programs.

I read on. Politics, business, brief news…a posh apartment totally fucked up in an explosion, cops, fire brigade, blah, blah. I know all about it, the apartment was mine. I look for murdered and killed. Several in the last twenty-four hours, but Piko’s name is not amongst them. One is unidentified; the cops give his picture. The face is not in the best shape, but it’s not Piko. That means they already disassembled his corpse into molecules.

They don’t leave tracks behind.

Post-production is the place and time to get creative. First, I clean the contents from a dozen sites hidden all over the town, sometimes after sending them through Ndjamena, Kabul, Ulaanbaatar and Yerevan. Then I examine the material and edit the raw clip. So far, it’s routine: some basic knowledge of film editing and that’s it. For the cheap stuff pushed in the flea markets, that’s usually all. For me, it’s only a beginning.

For hours I squeeze the graphic software dry in order to turn a more or less plain shag into a sophisticated aesthetic experience, as Piko used to put it when he wanted to sound educated. I also have to take the demands of the market into account. Piko asked me once for a bald-headed babe, and I didn’t have any in my stocks. So I took this blonde cutie with a hedgehog hairdo and shaved her clean within half an hour.

The sound is no less important. If I’m lucky, it’s enough to filter it and add the music. Usually something jazzy or perhaps classic. Ravel (not Bolero, Bolero is much over-used) or Satie or Tchaikovsky, depending on the mood. If the pigeons on the screen coo as in Bavarian flicks, even the complete dialogues are not much of a problem. Some materials are suitable for 3-D models—I transfer them into VR or holos. But most of my customers are voyeurs, after all. They like to watch, and a screen is the best substitute for a keyhole.

The final step is the sale. Fuck the goods that are not sold, fast and as far from here as possible, to avoid accidental recognition. That’s where Piko came in. He was an expert born, with the knack to sell the stuff.

In short, we were a real dream team. The job was running smoothly and the money just poured in. And one thing led to another—posh place, equipment, car, and a honey from time to time, the way I like them best—the bed beneath, me above, she in between. Without flies, naturally. And that’s how it was until I stumbled upon Lydia—and until Piko proved to be a greedy cretin.

That’s why he’s been dead for the last twelve hours.

And I’m next on the list.

Lydia was the real thing, I knew it the moment I saw her holo. I forgot all the others that week and concentrated on her alone. Perfect, unique, the one that you search for for years, perhaps never to find.

And I found her, my star. I knew that all the others could go and hide, Jurković from Gajnice and the boys from THC and Joža and all the others. Their clips were shit anyway, and now I was finally ready to put them in their place. Lydia’s charms were all there: beautiful face, sensual lips, long and shiny blonde hair cascading over her shoulders. And it could all be artificial. Above average, true, even top, but still artificial. Until you looked her in those eyes. Cute, coquettish, inviting, slutty. You know, bedroom eyes. But at the same time alert, sparkling with intelligence, piercing. A personality? Oh, yes, you bet. And she was mine and mine only, for me to offer her to the world outside, going crazy with boredom, buried under the avalanche of cheap average.

Phase two should have been sufficient to forget her. The alarms were at full blast, but no, I wasn’t listening. ‘Cause her background was, to put it mildly, strange. Twenty-three years old, on state welfare since she was ten. High school graduate with some useless profession and zilch work experience.

With a bio like that, you queue in front of manna machines three times a day. You are issued a UC cut A (female) every six months and you sleep in a homeless centre. A cylinder, a bed, a dry toilet, and a TV on the wall.

Lydia, on the other hand, lived in the most expensive house in the most expensive part of Zagreb and ordered custom-made evening gowns. She forgot what the manna tasted like a long time ago, and she travelled to the Seychelles in a chartered Ilyushin jet. Oh, yes, I almost forgot the black 1955 Pegaso 102B in her garage. An original, not a nano-replica. Those who know, know what I just said.

In the present-day world, such a dame earns that much only one way: by being an expensive working girl. Which is okay, I didn’t have to worry that I’d have no material. But she certainly would have a protector, and a powerful one at that. It was written in large neon letters across everything I dug out about her, but I wasn’t looking, blinded by the blue of her eyes.

The warmth seduces and embraces me, caressing me, turning exhaustion into numbness. I’m not immediately aware of it, but when I want to move, I cannot and I fall back into the chair. I wonder what’s the matter with me and I order another cup of coffee. I have to wake myself up. It’s not safe here anymore and I’d better move on.

I inserted the flies without a problem. Test shots gave me a fine performance in the bathtub and another one, that evening, in her bed. Lydia in silk sheets, body out of wildest wet dreams, a perfectly tuned instrument played by her own gentle fingers.

And then Piko dropped by. It was Friday. Yo, man, let’s go out for a couple of days, he said, I’ve got an empty cottage in Zagorje and two real honey-babies. He hadn’t seen Lydia yet. Now, how can a crow sleep soundly when the figs are ripe? So I left everything running, locked the doors, and went with Piko to enjoy life.

Piko’s couple of days lasted somewhat longer: the fridge was full, the cellar was full, the girls were in top gear, ready and willing. And so it was not before the next Monday that I downloaded the first real Lydia shots. That moment when I started watching them still lingers before my eyes.

Reclining in my armchair, a drink in one hand, a remote in another. PLAY. Waking up, morning toilette, breakfast. Looks like a usual daily routine: FAST FORWARD to evening. Makeup, perfume, black evening gown, jewellery. Impatient glances at the clock, as if she’s waiting for someone. I skip another forty minutes; I’ll return to the foreplay later.

PLAY. Lydia is here, in front of me, her legs spread wide in ecstasy, sighing under fierce thrusts. I drop my glass, spilling the drink on the floor. The picture is perfect, the sound flawless, Lydia moaning and cooing and that thing banging her! I press FREEZE FRAME and stare like a veal calf at the tens of screens before me.

Imagine a body like a tree trunk, brown, spotted black. Two short legs, four arms like branches holding Lydia around her waist. No head, but I see several eyes between the arms and a slit probably acting as mouth or nose or both. The thing. Lydia’s fucker for the night. PLAY again: the fuck continues vigorously. The branches glide across Lydia’s body, lovingly fondling her breasts, caressing her buttocks, taking her to the seventh heaven. It goes like that for the next ten minutes, orgasm after orgasm, until finally both collapse and calm down in an embrace. I freeze the frame again and sit in front of the screens, remote in my hand, with a definitive answer to the big question: Are we alone in the universe?

Another take, two days later. This time it was…the nearest description is a psychedelic beach ball bouncing on two duck legs. I don’t know how the ball did what it did, but Lydia obviously enjoyed being tickled that way.

There was another bole on the third take. At first, I thought the guy from the first clip had returned for more. I would if I were him. But hell, no! I compared the spots; the pattern was different. You know Dalmatians? Each one has different spots. If the same logic applied here, this was another one. Obviously, Lydia’s fame travelled far, never mind the parsecs.

Speaking of parsecs…I mean, Lydia was a real sweetie, but the galaxy is a big place and it means some real long journeys. Unless…I did a little search of Lydia’s house. Using flies, of course.

And indeed, I quickly located a cabinet in her cellar. Three by three by two-and-a-half, walls covered in something opaquely bluish-white. White lights installed in the walls, sliding doors and rows of—electrodes?—on the ceiling. Control panel on the outside and that was all. A teleport, what else? Beam me up, Scotty, stuff like that.

The next three weeks were exciting; Lydia was a really busy girl.

Two more boles—they seemed to be her favourite customers.

Then, little green men. I mean, some thirty centimetres tall, emerald green skin, nine of them. The gang bang lasted till dawn. Not that Lydia was complaining; quite the contrary.

Then, a snail. A slug, actually, black, about two metres long, weighing perhaps a hundred kilos. Lydia read a book whilst it was doing the deed. Which apparently wasn’t God-knows-what. It just lay between her widespread legs, abruptly turning red every fifteen minutes or so. An orgasm?

Then, there was a Giger monster, the whole works, including teeth and saliva.

And a little pink elephant with large ears. It didn’t take off. It couldn’t, even if it wanted. Not with Lydia’s legs wrapped around it.

And I just produced the clips. Lydia gave me some twenty hours of top material, needing almost no post-production. And then I made the biggest mistake in my life.

I dialled Piko and told him to drop by my place. I told him I had something to show him.

One more. If I go on this way, I’ll turn into a walking coffee machine. Numbness becomes indifference. Something is happening to me, I can feel it, but now it’s all the same to me. I have no more will to resist the faintness possessing me.

I watch the couple at the next table. A dude with an orange hairdo and a black jacket striped in neon embraces the girl with jet hair. She leans on his shoulder, love me tender, love me do. He whispers something gentle in her ear, and she replies with a warm look in her eyes. I can see it flowing between them and suddenly I’m jealous. In that brief moment of embrace in the murmur of a crowded coffee shop, they have more than I’ve had in my whole life.

Piko didn’t say a thing. He couldn’t say much with his jaw dropping, now could he?

We played the clips for the whole night and half the following day. Every so often, Piko would ask me to rewind, or he’d freeze the frame and just watch. Then I showed him Lydia’s file. He rummaged through it for two hours. Finally, he just looked at me and asked me if I had a copy.

And I, the cretin, gave it to him without a word.

Two days later—this morning—beeping wakes me. Still half-asleep, I look at the clock as I try to find my mobile phone. 09.23. Piko’s on the line, his voice full of enthusiasm. Dude, we’re loaded with dough!

“What dough? What are you talking about, man?”

“That broad, you know, the one we watched a couple of days ago, remember? Well, I gave her a call, regarding what she’s doing, right? We’ll meet in half an hour, have to go now.” And Piko hangs up, leaving me in bed like a veal calf, with the phone in my hand, and I guess it takes five minutes for his babble to reach from my arse to my head.

And then I’m wide awake in a second. I curse Piko, the idiot, as my fingers press the keys frantically. Beep… Pokretna stanica je isključena…Beep…The mobile phone has been disconnected….

I jump out of bed, cursing. I walk around my room, not knowing what to do. Then I stop, take a deep breath, relax. Don’t panic! Easy to say, but I’m ear-deep in shit.

I grab the phone again, trying to reach Piko. I don’t make it. I throw the phone away. No use, anyway. If Piko decided to do something like this, it means he’s too much of an idiot to reason with.

To go and blackmail Lydia!

I curse all the time as I dress. I check my watch. Half an hour, he said. I have an hour or two before they come smashing through my doors. And Piko is a dead man. Fuck, it can’t be helped! Lydia’s not a poor little unprotected kitten. Too much is at stake here, and she certainly called for help. Piko’s heading straight into the trap, too dumb to see it.

And then I realise there’s a gap, after all. Maybe I can squeeze through, if I kill all the addresses immediately and forget about the job for some time. Piko was an outside connection; I kept a low profile. I know about the others, but maybe others don’t know about me. As a matter of fact, Piko’s death might be my salvation: the only lead to me goes with him. Sorry, Piko, it was good whilst it lasted!

I check the main deck: systems are ready. My brain works on overdrive as I make the list of other possible leads to me. Lydia first, of course. The swarm is certainly already dusted. And the hive, too. Let’s see….

Suddenly, the phone beeps. Persistently, impatiently. I threw it on the bed earlier; I reach for it.

I don’t have to look at the screen to know who’s calling. There’s a brawl at the other end of the line. Piko shouts as they lay hands upon him. They don’t let him warn me. I hear something sounding like a gunshot and a scream. It’s Piko’s. The body falls down and his phone hits the ground, still working. Silence. Then, somebody picks it up.

I hold my breath. I don’t dare utter a word. Deep, heavy breathing from the other end of the line.

I hang up. So much for Piko. A minute of silence, please!

All right, I say to myself, we knew it would end this way. Back to work! And then I stop and a new wave of panic seizes me. The way I had Piko’s number on my screen, the bloke on the other end of line had mine! And right now, they’re certainly rummaging through HT files. In ten minutes max, they’ll know how long my dick is.

What did I say? An hour? Two? Half an hour. Tops. If that. There’s neither time nor reason to cover any tracks. All I can do is disappear. I take the Apple, a computer for situations like this. It holds only the bare essentials: nanoprograms for the swarm and a few more things and my DNA and the Lazarus. Chill takes hold of my heart when I think of it. Fuck the Lazarus now, I push myself, rather take care that you don’t need it.

I check the account on my plastic. It’s good, and there’s even some cash in my pocket. I look at my equipment, not without a pang of pain. It took time and knowledge and money to put it all together. And all I can take with me is this little Apple.

The clips, I ponder. The shelves stacked with discs, hundreds of thousands of terabytes of the finest stuff. Fuck it! All I take is a portfolio, one disc with one hour of the best, thoroughly sieved and selected. Just in case I decide to restart the business. And Lydia. Of course she’s coming with me, I’m not leaving Lydia, no way, come hell or high water.

At that moment, silent buzzing stops me dead. An alarm! The whole house is covered. Front doors, lift, staircase, everything. I mean, I’m doing an illegal job with illegal equipment. A scenario in which a whole bunch of coppers and gumshoes and spooks busting my joint is quite real. Therefore, a surveillance system and an AI programmed to buzz in case of a possible crisis. Of course, the system’s not perfect; I’ve had some false alarms. Better that than being caught with my trousers down.

And these blokes on the monitor are definitely not a false alarm. Five of them. Three enter the lift and go up whilst two cover the entrance hall.

I switch to the outside image: three more there. I switch back to those in the lift. Dark suits, not black, more dark grey. Shades on their noses, hats. Faces…human. At least, they appear to be: everything’s there, but to describe them…no way! Quite common faces, too common, better to merge with the crowd. Impossible to remember, even if you see them real good.

The fingers work on their own. I press the key, my personal modification, and the lift stops between the floors. A moment of surprise on their faces, then palms hit the control panel. No chance! Monkeys are caged until further notice. One of them takes his mobile phone and tries to call the others, but that doesn’t work either: my electronics suppress all the communications in the building.

I win several minutes. I put on my coat and grab the Apple. Out of the apartment and to the staircase. I hear shoes on the stairs; those down there figured out something’s wrong. I run to the staircase window, a glass panel from floor to ceiling. Normally, it can’t be opened.

I touch the glass with my index finger. Surface nanos read the fingerprint, the glass turns opaque and opens into a slit wide enough for me to step out. Simultaneously, a magic carpet forms beneath me and receives me into an embrace of condensed molecules. A bone-breaking jump from the third floor turns into a gentle descent to the lawn. I look up; the carpet disintegrates and the glass returns to normal. By the time the boys come running, I’ll have vanished in the thin air.

With haste, I exit the yard into the street. There’s nobody there—the three in front of the building also entered. For a moment, I think of my car. But no time to drive it out of the garage—besides, it would be easier to follow me that way. At a fast pace, I get away from the building. With a little bit of luck, I’ll slip away.

Suddenly, shouts. I don’t turn around. Don’t turn around, son, is the golden rule of escaping. My legs switch into top gear whilst the boys run after me, obviously eager to ventilate me like they did Piko. But I have an advantage. I run down and across the street. In the corner of my eye, I see an approaching car, but I don’t stop. Screeching and slamming of bumpers as the car brakes to a halt and is hit by another behind it. I keep running, followed by obscenities. The bus stop is just around the corner.

Somebody up there loves me! The bus is at the stop. At the last moment, I rush through the doors and as they hiss shut I allow myself to look at my helpless pursuers, left behind. I give them a finger, mentally. I’m still the best in business, chums!

It is only then that I look at the people in the bus. Several pensioners, couple of kids, two women. It might even be worthwhilst attaching the swarm to one of them. And a…my knees almost let go when I spot him on the back seat: dark grey suit, hat, shades, undefined traits. And I think it’s game over, but no, the bloke just sits there and stares at me. Then it dawns upon me: we’re not alone, and he doesn’t dare waste me in front of some fifteen people. Piko, as dumb as a dick, must have arranged a meeting in a lonely place.

I run out of the bus at the next stop. The goon does nothing. He doesn’t give chase. But as the bus leaves, I see him opening his mobile phone and pressing the keys. I turn around. Nobody suspicious nearby, but I haven’t gone far and I should move on.

Suddenly, a hollow KA-BUUM! Glasses shudder and alarms go off everywhere. I try to determine where it came from, and then I see smoke billowing into the sky and realise they blew my place up. They want to erase me thoroughly, as if I never existed.

The rest of the day is a long, cold, and exhausting chase. Whatever they were, and now I’m certain they weren’t human, they were real good. I tried every trick in the book, changing buses, taking cabs, getting lost in the crowd, everything I know. But they were always one step in front of me. Every time I thought I finally got them off my dick, one of them would tap my shoulder. One by one, they cut all my attempts to leave the town unseen, to take a fast ride to Vienna or Belgrade, where I could disappear.

I even wanted to change my phiz. In the black parlour, naturally. It would last perhaps an hour or two, and it would pull me through the dragnet. And I’d have done that, not gladly, if I haven’t found that bloke waiting at the address. Grey suit, hat, shades…I just turned tail and ran.

Then it occurred to me. Maybe they had pinned a tracer on me? I didn’t have the slightest idea how: I’d had no physical contact with any of them, but it wasn’t impossible. And so, a visit to the cleaner’s. I wasted a lot of cash just to find out that I was wrong. Even telepathy came to my mind, but then why would they use mobile phones? I knew they couldn’t buzz around the town that fast, so there was only one explanation left: there was a whole shipload of them, and they deployed at the start to block me. That means they are very keen that Lydia’s business doesn’t leak and there is no possibility I can make some deal with them.

I’m completely helpless, unable to move, and I should. I’m asking for trouble now; all they have to do is comb coffeehouses in the city. The waiter brings me another cup and I don’t recall ordering it. I lift my eyes and I see him well for the first time. Human face, seemingly everything in place, but to describe it….

The waiter glides on, and I know I flew right into their hands. I want to get up and run, but the legs don’t work. I touch my left leg. I don’t feel my hand on it. I pinch myself; I don’t feel it. I’m fucked. I know it for certain now. There is some nano shit in the coffee, and they’ve stuffed me like a goose with it since I came in here. It screwed my nerves: the connection to my legs is history, and there’s no reason to believe it will stop at that.

That’s why they let me go, once I gave up breaking out of town and turned back. And me, dumbass, didn’t find it strange how easily I got rid of them in Martić Street and again in Jurišić Street and how I slipped away in the crowd on the square. I mean, why chase a jerk who’s impaling himself?

I recall a party a couple of years ago—there was a conspiracy freak there. He was more fun than most of the others, so some of us gathered and listened to him. I couldn’t believe my ears.

Flying saucers and MIBs and they’re everywhere and Chris Carter was their man. Seriously, they sent him to cloud the truth. Otherwise, he would have ended up under a truck before take one. But that was just for starters: masons and who wasted JFK and Marilyn and why they brought the Soviet Union down and started the war in Yugoslavia. That’s when it became crazy. There was a whole treatise on trucks as assassination weapons; the guy was obsessed with trucks. And why Quebec separated from Canada and how nanotechnology became the ultimate step in a conspiracy to rule the world. Of course, it all started back in Roswell in nineteen-forty-something, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I have nothing to complain about. I can’t say that I wasn’t warned.

Suddenly, I sniff a stench coming from under the table. I don’t even have to touch, I did a number one in my trousers. That went, too. The system is falling apart. Soon I’ll know the answer to another big question. The one about life after death.

There’s only one way out, better than none. The Lazarus.

I got it two years ago in return for some five hundred terabytes of clips. I open the Apple, turn it on, unfold the headset and put it on my head. I put the glove on. My hands still serve me, but I know I don’t have much time. I plug it all into a connector on my table. VROS unfolds before my eyes, and I touch the Lazarus with my finger. Black stuff, real black. I heard of it before, but it was only then that I saw it for the first time. Two years ago.

The man came to my home carrying two cases of equipment. It took him fifteen minutes just to unpack it all and unwind the cables. Then he put a helmet on my head and recorded with the Lazarus for an additional half an hour. My brain, everything in it, the complete content, memories, everything. He never explained how the stuff worked. He just told me there were a lot of big shots using it, and often, in case somebody iced them. When the session was over, he had me completely downloaded to his computer. I took a look: the machine was custom-built, nothing you would see in shop windows.

The recording was step one, followed by the compression, to reduce it into an acceptable size. Finally, it all ended on my Apple, together with the user’s part of the Lazarus. Theoretically, I should have dialled the man every few months to update. In practise, the thing had remained untouched since the evening he’d first recorded me.

Now, all I have to do is raise the Lazarus, to uncompress me and return me to life, me, two years ago, in the VR, scattered across the sites, but alive. Sort of.

And whilst the Lazarus rises, I choose a site. I know a good one. I discovered it six months ago: an abandoned virtual role-playing game site in Nairobi. I cut the remains of C-level security; the last access was two years ago. God only knows how the site survived that long. Perhaps it went unnoticed when the Kampala server blew up, pulling all of East Africa with it. But the site is big enough, VRPGs need memory, and it will be enough to put me in and unpack. And the black clinics are near, Kampala, Kinshasa, Luanda. Allegedly, they can raise you out of nothing, like Adam out of clay, if only they have the DNA. Expensive, though.

The Lazarus interrupts me, giving me thumbs-up. It’s connected. All I have to do is touch “okay” and we go. But before that, I send all the programs and the DNA and all the materials from the portfolio disc, to keep them handy. And Lydia, my perfect baby, I will go nowhere without her. I place her comfortably next to me. I open a notepad and type several remarks, what happened to me and why. What is past to me is future to my doppelgänger: I have to warn him. Finally, I give the Lazarus a go-ahead and it streams me to the site, me of two years ago.

It’s over in a moment. TRANSMISSION SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED and the line is terminated. The Lazarus sweeps tracks, leaving me alone in the VROS. With the last touch of my finger, I activate the virus to burn everything in the Apple, whilst somewhere over there, in Kenya, I’m being reborn amidst the roar of lions.

Here, in the coffeehouse, in the murmur, the body loses the last atoms of strength. My hands drop feebly on the table. I lean back, my neck barely holding. I can’t take off the headset. I remain that way, then the head drops, too.

I feel myself shutting down…eyes…as if I drain, dirty water in the gutter….

…darkness….

They say that your whole life passes before your eyes…no time, not even for that.

Fear…somehow, I don’t feel it…worse…could’ve been worse….

Everything around me disappears…

…just one…last….

Lydia…meet you…I’d like to meet you so much…

…perhaps one day…

Lydia….

This story is part of a special issue of Apex Magazine featuring international writers and appears in the anthology The Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar.

Tunku Halim is a Malaysian-born writer of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. He’s seen two novels published, four collections of short stories, and runs a popular blog at tunkuhalim.wordpress.com

You mentioned in an interview that you don’t like the term horror. How would you describe your own writing?

I don’t particularly like the term horror for my own writing because it creates an expectation on the readers’ part that the writing will scare them. If you’re a horror writer, then you necessarily have to write scary stories. It puts a box around you. I prefer the term “dark fantasy”, for then the expectation of having to induce fear in the reader is removed. My writing is dark and often involves the supernatural element. Often, as in my two novels Dark Demon Rising and Vermillion Eye, it is aimed to be scary but sometimes, as in my novella Juriah’s Song, it is not. So the term “horror” is restrictive, whereas “dark fantasy”, which I’m glad to say lacks a precise definition, is expansive and allows a particular story and its characters to lead the author down whatever dark path they choose.

What was the road to publication like? What was the most difficult hurdle you had to overcome before you could become a professional author?

I was fortunate that I already had a non-fiction book published and therefore had already built a good relationship with my publisher. But even then they were reluctant, as they specialised in non-fiction. The greatest hurdle is self-belief. You ask yourself if you’re really good enough to make writing a full-time occupation. Do you even dare call yourself a writer? The other hurdle is the change of mental state, for what was once a hobby now becomes work. As a full-time writer, it’s important to have interests outside of writing.

If I’m not mistaken, you currently live and work in Australia, in addition to having travelled elsewhere. How has this experience shaped your writing? How does it feel to live elsewhere, yet still be rooted in Malaysia?

I feel that living outside Malaysia is vital to my role as a writer. Being away from home gives me the mental distance to write about it. All the small things we take for granted in Malaysia become magnified when you’re in a different environment. One analogy is that it’s easy to write a letter home to your mother if you’re overseas but very difficult if she’s in the room next door. Working in Australia also gives me the isolation I need to write. Malaysia is a very social place, and I’ve lots of friends and family there, so it’s a difficult place to isolate yourself.

In your opinion, what makes Malaysian fiction unique, at least compared to other Western countries?

It really is Malaysia’s multiethnic diversity that makes it unique. It is not only the intermingling of the different races, but its fusion, the creation of a distinctive culture that makes it so interesting. For example, the phrase “Eh boss, pass me your handphone, lah!” although it is in the English language, contains words derived from Indian, Chinese and Malay cultures. This is something that Western fiction cannot offer.

Your fiction will be appearing in international publications like The Apex Book of World SF and Exotic Gothic 3. How did you end up writing for these publications?

I was actually approached by the editors to write for each publication. In both cases, they were looking for stories outside North America and Europe. This is a great thing and is a natural development, for the world has become a smaller place. I’m glad to be able to share our Malaysian “gothic” experience with a wider readership.

How would you describe the speculative fiction field in Malaysia?

I’ll have to admit that it’s a bit poor. Even with the huge number of Malaysian and Singaporean horror books available, many of these are aimed at the teenage market and take the form of reportage rather than creating great stories. They seem to be written for profit rather than for the sake of the craft of writing. Not much has been written in the realms of fantasy and science fiction. Perhaps this is because of our Malaysian obsession with horror. There is much material to mine in the fantasy genre, for the Malay Annals, written in the 15th century, contains many fantasy-like tales.

You mentioned that horror is popular in Malaysia but science fiction and fantasy not so much. That’s similarly the case here in the Philippines. Do you have any theories as to why that’s the case?

I think it’s because scary stories are rooted deep in our past. Fear is a primeval thing, sitting deep in our brains. And when you combine that with the myths and legends of our Asian culture, which are full of ghosts, demons, witches, and vampires, then the result is quite potent. Our parents have always told children horror stories, usually to stop them from doing something or going somewhere dangerous. For Asians, fantasy and science fiction are relatively modern genres. Horror stories, though, are as old as our ancient jungles.

In your opinion, what makes Malaysia unique and a rich source of inspiration for fiction?

Malaysia has a truly interesting history where so many cultures have met and continue to meet. Its cultural richness and vibrancy make it a wonderful source of fiction. For a writer of speculative fiction, Malaysia provides a lot of material, for it is a country which is full of superstition, with each culture having its own ghosts, spirits, and demons.

What made you decide to write in English?

That’s an easy one. I’ve spent many of my school years studying in the UK. My written Malay is therefore not particularly good. I hope to one day have some of my books translated into Malay.

In your opinion, why is the international scene not very aware of fiction of third-world countries such as Malaysia? Who are the writers we should be reading?

I think a lot of the problem is marketing and availability. The other issue is language. Luckily Malaysia, because of our colonial past, has many writers who write in English. Many, like Tash Aw and Tan Twan Eng, are also educated overseas and are able to compete with Western writers and write for that particular market. The same can’t be said for Thailand or Indonesia. Even the famous Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer had to have his works translated into English before his writing was recognised internationally. Whilst we should be delighted that Malaysian writers are making it on the world stage, we should not neglect our older writers like K.S. Maniam, Lee Kok Liang, and A. Samad Ismail, for these are the writers who will give us a sense of time and place.

You’ve also managed to leverage the Internet for your own promotion, whether it’s blogs or podcasts. How is the Internet changing the publishing scene?

The effect of the Internet is dramatic. It means that anyone can become a publisher. Anyone can have a web page, a blog, an e-book, or even twitter a novel. Of course, there is nothing like having a physical book in your hands. But even the effect on traditional publishers has been enormous. From production to marketing to distribution, every aspect of publishing has been affected.

You’ve written short stories, novels, non-fiction, and even a children’s book. How adaptable are you when transitioning from one format to another?

Writing fiction and non-fiction does require use of different parts of the brain. I find it refreshing moving from one to the other, and so changing formats is quite an easy thing to do. The difficulty is focusing on one book at a time!

You’ve also used self-publishing to publish your own books. How is self-publishing a viable platform for authors?

I self-published History of Malaysia – A Children’s Encyclopedia only because I wanted to retain complete control of how the book would ultimately look. Self-publishing is not something I would normally recommend to authors. That’s because when you self-publish, you become a businessperson. You’ll need to have or build business skills and spend time on your publication. This takes you away from writing. Also, self-publishing is expensive.

Lastly, for international readers, could you tell us more about your own fiction and where we can find/obtain it?

I would try MPH online (http://www.mph.com.my), Amazon, and other online shops. My books may also be available at some specialist bookshops and perhaps the local library network.

You can read Tunku Halim’s story “Biggest Baddest Bomoh” in The Apex Book of World SF anthology.

“As an author does the current state of the publishing industry concern you at all? Has it affected you and if so, how?

I don’t think there’s ever been a time when the publishing industry wasn’t in some state of flux. It’s just more pronounced right now because of the types of changes we’re going through.

The current changes haven’t affected me that much in my role as a writer, and I suspect that most writers won’t be affected that badly. At the lowest level, we’re still doing what we always did, which is writing stories that we hope people will enjoy. How those stories get delivered to our readers, whether by print magazines or electronic media, is irrelevant so long as a market still exists.

The real problem isn’t the industry, but the market. Are there still enough readers of short stories out there, for example, to make it worthwhile to write short fiction? There’s been a lot of talk recently that writing short fiction is going to become a labor of love.

The problem is that editing short fiction looks like it might also be moving in that direction. There are some very good webzines out there whose editors don’t earn a living from their editing, and as long as part of their philosophy is to make sure that their writers do in fact get paid a professional rate, people seem to be fine with it. But an editor serves as a gatekeeper, an arbiter of taste, and you can’t just find good fiction by randomly visiting websites. And like writers, editors need to eat. My hope is that the more things change, the more they will stay the same.”

Read the whole interview here!

If you enjoy this story, or any of the other stories for Brian Keene Must Die Day! please consider making a small donation to The Shirley Jackson Awards.

Keene, in a drunken outburst, once promised me the world. He promised to write a sequel to City of the Dead, a book that all his fans want, a book that would catapult Apex into the lap of Oprah Winfrey. I was his friend. He owed me.

Days…weeks…months passed with no book. I emailed him. Big Joe, Mr. Keene’s assistant, wrote back saying that Mr. Keene asks that I go “slide down a greasy pole ass-end first.”

Mr. Keene! You owed me this book! You owed it to your fans! I’ve never done anything for you, in truth, but still, you OWED ME!!!

Never mind all this.

We’re even now.

You ever read his book titled Dark Hollow? You know the one, where Brian Keene…er, I mean Adam Senft and his buddies encounter a well-endowed horny satyr in the woods behind Keene’s…er, Senft’s house? Hey. Guess what?

Hylinus lives.

While Mr. Keene was on one of his weekly excursions to his favorite comic shop, I rammed zombie-boy off the road into a ditch with my large white van. I tossed his broken body into the back of the van, dumped a bucket of fragrant oil over his body, and then wrapped him in a clear plastic tarp. I then drove into the heart of darkness and found Hylinus.

Hylinus smiled as I brought Keene’s body to him. “Bring him and allow us to savor the sex of this wonderful season.”

I dumped the body and ran away, not wanting to watch the proceedings. Hylinus likes to play rough.

But is Mr. Keene dead?

If the sound of Hylinus’s sexual wailing are any indication, then yes, Mr. Keene is dead, ripped open in the most heinous ways possible.