Plugs

Jason Erik Lundberg‘s fiction is forthcoming from Subterranean Magazine and Polyphony 7.

Angela Slatter’s story ‘Frozen’ will appear in the December 09 issue of Doorways Magazine, and ‘The Girl with No Hands’ will appear in the next issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Alex Dally MacFarlane’s story “The Devonshire Arms” is available online at Clarkesworld.

Susannah Mandel’s short story “The Monkey and the Butterfly” is in Shimmer #11. She also has poems in the current issues of Sybil’s Garage, Goblin Fruit, and Peter Parasol.

Where You’ll Find Me

by Edd

If it’s a Monday, I will awaken in a spherical space and stumble out a door to a glorious cloud-free day. It will feel like the beginning of something good and strong. I will find an old-fashioned key in my pocket for room 405 at the Tarleton Towers Hotel.

If it’s a Tuesday, I will have a Spanish omelet for breakfast. Opening the window, I will lean out and squint just a bit. Faintly, I will see the track of many time machines as they pass. I extend a hand, but the track is just out of reach.

If it’s a Wednesday, I will sleep in. I will read in the newspaper of a physics conference in this very hotel.

If it’s a Thursday, I’ll be glued to the television, watching the destruction of civilization. CNN will televise it all day until they (and everyone else) go off the air at 16:05 hours. I will take a single look outside my hotel room’s window, shudder, and draw the shades.

If it’s a Friday, I’ll take the time machine that Hans Beliskov discovered last Monday, and the memory eraser that Vera Pascal invented. Neither of them will be present to object. I will set the time machine to take me four days and five hours into the past, and while traveling I will use the eraser to destroy all I have experienced in the previous one hundred one hours. As the memories fade, I glance out the porthole to see myself, last Tuesday, and press a hand to the glass.

I am certain there were times I did not use the memory eraser, times I did things to try to save the world, but I no longer remember doing so.

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