Plugs

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.

Sara Genge’s story “Godtouched” may be found in Strange Horizons.

David Kopaska-Merkel’s book of humorous noir fiction based on nursery rhymes, Nursery Rhyme Noir 978-09821068-3-9, is sold at the Genre Mall. Other new books include The zSimian Transcript (Cyberwizard Productions) and Brushfires (Sams Dot Publishing).

Ken Brady’s latest story, “Walkers of the Deep Blue Sea and Sky” appears in the Exquisite Corpuscle anthology, edited by Jay Lake and Frank Wu.

Reset

by Jon

Someday you may wish to reset your life. A tree falls, leaves your daughter paralyzed from the waist down. You forward the wrong email to your boss and are subsequently fired. While hunting you accidentally shoot your best friend, killing him. Such events are not as uncommon as we hope.

To reset, follow these directions.

1. To prepare your reset point, go to a soundless place and remember a day when things were still as they should be. Write out a complete description of that day. Leave out nothing. The two seconds of arousal when the charming neighbor greeted you, the half-second of formless panic when you thought you had forgotten the gift. Such details are essential.

2. With description in hand, leave your home at sundown and travel on foot to the nearest crossroads. Speak to no one. Minimize contact with metal. When you arrive, sit in the center of the crossroads and wait. Think only of your goal. Try not to move.

3. At midnight the universe’s first intermediary will arrive, recognizable by white-feathered wings, a halo, and a golden harp. This intermediary will offer, in a voice of gravel and thorns, to restore the universe to the desired point in exchange for your soul. Refuse. While soulless people live perfectly normal lives, this option will not allow changes. Your life will begin again, but you’ll be unable to alter events, instead repeating them.

4. At 3am, the second intermediary will appear, equipped with hooves, small horns, and a pointed tail. With a voice soft as the ocean wind it will offer you comfort for how things are. Refuse. While an improvement over the first offer, it will not correct the past. You will instead accept the unfortunate developments as immutable.

5. When dawn arrives, read your description of the day aloud in full, then wait. The universe might manifest as a robin in the grass, a sudden rainstorm, or a policewoman in her patrol car. Explain to the universe what has gone wrong in your life, then give the description of the day to it. Close your eyes and wait. Your life will reset to the desired day.

Troubleshooting
This procedure can fail if your description is incomplete. Without a full detailing, the universe will not be able to reset your life. If this happens, then you must start again.

Posted: 3 Comments » Categories:  Jon Hansen , Uncategorized

3 Responses to “Reset”

  1. Bill Jones Says:

    November 17th, 2010 at 10:01 pm

    Your feed posted a whole mess of stories again, filling my LJ friends page. I’m now taking you off my feeds, since you guys don’t seem to be able to get it together.

  2. Rudi Dornemann Says:

    November 17th, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    Hi Bill,

    Yes, our host seems to have another server crash, which again messed up the scheduling feature, resulting in a flood of stories to anyone reading via RSS. Please accept our apologies for the mishap. We’ll be following up with our system administrator, but removing us from your feeds might be the safest course of action, at least until the server’s stabilized.

    Rudi

  3. Luc Reid Says:

    November 23rd, 2010 at 5:04 pm

    Jon, really liked this one. The interesting title drew me to the first line, which made me read the first paragraph, which got me reading to the end and reflecting. Gotta love a good set of metaphysical instructions.