io9 is proud to present fiction fromLIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE . Once a month , we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED ’s current issue . This calendar month ’s selection is “ A Pedra ” by Endria Isa Richardson . you may read the taradiddle below or heed to the podcast .
A Pedra
I believe that if we have any whim at all of what has more often than not been called human nature , it is because History , like a mirror , hold in up for our contemplation , an image of ourselves .
— -Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá
I did n’t run away .
Illustration: Tithi Luadthong (aka “Grandfailure”) (Shutterstock)
If the boy had not bid to you , you would have run .
I would not have scat .
mãe ,
There are few moments that I remember with clarity . From those other years , I recall mostly a vast , pervading numbness . Profound dissociation . I remember Salt . I remember Hog .
At Nox , I would curl between them . With my eyes closed , I would attempt to see them as they were just in that moment . I would block out what I know would be . I would see Salt ’s ruddy cheeks and bouffant browned hair’s-breadth . His shoulders , just begin to broaden with muscle . His pale forearm already ropey from forcible training . Hog ’s deep brown optic and chap , gentle lips . The soft tufts of his hair brush against my cheek as he moved about inside a pipe dream .
You will never meet either of them . You will never meet our fry . Your grandchild .
If I still could n’t sleep , I would bet for you . Of of course I never found you . If you were in my time to come , I would have already know .
Once , I enjoin Salt and Hog that I had have it away a mother . A home . What I opine was a family . They were thrown away by their parents , addicts like you , as infants . At school , we were not supposed to say , “ throw away . ” We were supposed to say , “ offered to the time to come . ” But I am not at schoolhouse any longer . So , they were thrown off by their parents , eaten by Kismet to mine the one true future . They take on the same was true for me , until I tell them that I endure with you until I was eleven . But ah , puberty , eh ? The bitch . She came , and wear out us . You could not handle me any longer . The auntie and uncles and cousins who had help grow me , who had ( I thought ) loved me , raised their machetes and tell you—-take care of her , or we will . I still remember the sure thing of your voice when you said , “ I will do it myself . ” You took aunty ’s leaf blade . You abut me out of the only dwelling house I had ever known . You bring up your paw to me , who had never experience furiousness . You sound out , “ Run , Lydia , meu coração , tally . ”
THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN ’S PLAN TO start the FUTURE
The story of Insight ’s first year was one of inexorable forrader motion : an underground inquiry adeptness build in an undisclosed locating , patents filed for what Insight billed as “ a safer alternative to the drug kite , ” an “ army army corps of scientists ” lease , condition , and housed entirely on campus . In the intervening years , however , both Insight and XO seemed to go away .
This is the first show XO has made since then . During this interview , as in our last , XO does not apportion his image or vocalism . We fulfill well-nigh . His embodiment is a slightly progress southeastern Asian man clothed in a slim - reduce dark blue velours tracksuit . sunglass obscure his eyes . “ I am not a terrorist , ” he begin . He laughs , and it ’s jarring . “ I am interested in terror as a mind- , and therefore time- expanding substance . ”
I ask him to clear up what he think .
“ What can heightened emotion , like panic , learn us about the pliability of sentence ? There are ancient wisdom traditions that suggest that when we face the out of the question , and for most hoi polloi that is something horrifying , that is when we truly are free . Unlocking all time to come , not only the one that are toothsome to us , postulate absolute freedom . ”
When I enquire him to share the most horrible thing he has ever confronted , he squeal , in a moment of unexpected vulnerability . “ My female parent abandoned me when I was very unseasoned . deeply down , I had fear that separation my whole short life . Once it happened , I realized I no longer call for to dread anything . I could be free . I could suddenly imagine many potential futures for myself . My future no longer trust on something I could not master , another somebody ’s presence or absence seizure . I require that exemption for everybody . ”
This is how my story begins , if you could call it a starting time . With our programme to escape .
Many of us at school never made it past our first year . We o.d. on kite or any one of the other street drugs , or died because we could n’t source fresh drugs , or the bleak reality that our lives were wholly fucking pointless force back us unbalanced . If we made it far enough , we were placed . We try , for some more years , not to kill ourselves or anyone else . Until then , it was best to find something , or someone , that could ground us—-in one dead body , in one time—-and focussing severely on that . Otherwise , we tried not to concentre at all . Floated somewhere between present and future . Drank until we had to take a breaking from tope . drug ourselves into the stratosphere . do it . Got tempestuous . Messed around . Me and Hog had a serious crack . Then me and Salt . Then me , Salt , and Hog . As in effect a agency to slip away the time as any . Then Hog got call in for early location , and came back quiet . After that , it was mostly me and Salt .
That was about when we decided to do something we had not seen ourselves do . Do you understand ? We decided to cheat the future .
It wander us instead .
The day Ecco come for me , I was rush through the main corridor back to Salt ’s room . Someone called out to me from inside the Head ’s office . I sire quick to consist my path out of anything—-I swear , that half - full pail of prune liquor me and Hog have brewing in the dormer window is only for educational and scientific purposes—-but stop poor at the door .
The valet de chambre stand in Head ’s authority was curt . Only a few inches grandiloquent than me . And brown - skinned and wide . dependable and compact , a nice soft fatness wrapped around a solid frame . At the time , I in all likelihood recollect he was attractive . There were n’t many of us blacks at the shoal . I was one . Hog was one-half of another . ( Salt was Jewish . They were even more of a pariah ) .
At that decimal point , I still believe that I knew everything . Will that sound arrogant to you ? It ’s not . It was bestial . I did n’t screw fact and number or theoretic cathartic . But I believed I lie with everything of consequence that would ever happen to me .
( And to Hog . )
( And to Salt . )
( And to anyone who had , for training or for contract bridge , command me to pull apart the fabric of sentence , extend my mind , like a finger , into its gap , shine my awareness . . . And see the crashing stone in spite of appearance . )
We had not seen our architectural plan . We had n’t realise it neglect , we had n’t seen it work . We were dire enough to try , anyway .
I had not seen this humankind , either . Not in prison term , and not in lifetime . I should have known , then . I should have known to run , to grab Salt and Hog and run . But I was odd .
After a while , I asked , “ Who are you ? ”
“ Ecco , ” he said , “ It ’s gracious to eventually meet you , Lydia . ”
Many thing happened , more or less in succession forthwith after that . There was the first plosion , and that also storm me . You have to understand , surprisal was not an experience I knew well until that breaker point . Mostly , I already know . Mostly , I had already seen . Not this . The bombs , improvised molotov cocktails , were n’t think to be lit for several more hours . I was theorize to light one , Salt and Hog would light two others . A expert amount of chaos , run and screaming in the antechamber , ensued . Then , a blow to my head and darkness .
I awake . after , elsewhere . I shout ( several prison term ) from the pain in my drumhead . No one derive . I explored the elbow room I had found myself in . It was clean , unrevealing , an infuriating ecru - nothing . There was no seam , no furniture . There was no discernible room access . The walls were piano , pliant . I seemed to be in some kind of sophisticated batting cage . It blocked me from get word out of the present moment . I could not think , could not question . I could not rationalize . I curled up on the floor , and slumber .
When I next woke up , Ecco was standing above me . He reach me pills—-pain , and what I assumed was kite . I asked him many questions . He suffice three . It was 10 February 2025 , so three days had passed since the explosions at school . I was at a research science laboratory called Insight . And , he allege , I had been brought there to liberate the future .
This began the next phase angle of my life story . Ecco was my abductor , my captor , and afterwards , my torturer . He was also the only person I see to it , spoke to . I did , in those early days , sense something like rue for him . He would always start out our sessions with a series of “ what if ” questions : What if there were many , perhaps unnumerable , futures ? What if there was a room to unlock clock time itself ? What if we could move in clip , not only see it stretched out , frozen , before us ?
He called it range .
“ You will die hard metre , Lydia , ” he told me . “ Once you recede your fear . ”
By the time Insight Unlimited arose in the former 2130s , Kismet Corporation had already become the enceinte sole employer across the continents . In the Global North alone , Kismet reduce the services of at least 300,000 KIDS ( Kismet Indentured Servants ) in the first one-half of 2133 , and was set to expand to half a million by 2134 . Until Insight ’s rise , the only challenge to Kismet came from outskirt human rightfulness formation and activists sheltering in so - phone “ Dark townsfolk ” ( town which had not converted to Kismet - time , and which often harbored absconded servants ) .
Challenges grew in late yr . Over the course of the latter 22nd century , Insight would destabilize Kismet ’s chokehold on the planetary saving by seeking to control the society ’s indent workforce . Seers , train to locate resources in the future tense , were extremely valuable to Kismet . In later decennary , Insight ’s poaching and re - grooming of Seers give rise to a young course of workers.1 Runners were able to instantly collect advanced technology , material , and rational property from as far as millennium into the future , and come back with them to the corporation . It is estimated that most half of all early runners were lost on their travels . A belittled number of highly sensitive Seers would later work for Insight and their subsidiaries , providing a range of military service that let in the location and extraction of missing runners .
In the early 2100s , Insight begin to assay control of those Seers whose unique attainment they believed could disrupt Kismet ’s control of the future . The wars between Insight and Kismet , engage for the most part between seers , runners , and drear towns , check off the beginning of a brutal century . However , the resulting freeing of trans - temporal commercial-grade trade and fusion of Insight and Kismet into Kinsight is inarguably among the peachy achievement of humankind .
I remember the first time Ecco take the drug kite from me . I had not been full without it since I arrived at school , nauseated and time - sick , barely able to stand . The third hebdomad I was at Insight , Ecco undosed me .
I remember steady for the rock of nausea . It come .
Hog , prismed , leer at me from a thousand eyes . He shatter .
“ Hog ? ” I asked .
Ecco tolerate once more across the room . “ Ecco , ” he said . “ It ’s nice to finally meet you , Lydia . ”
“ What do you desire ? ” I asked . “ What do you require from me anyway ? ”
I come , shuddering against Salt , and bite his berm .
“ Lydia , ” someone cried . “ Sai daqui ! ”
I dropped from a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the dark , feel my arm crack . Screamed .
I holler in the room .
I tend over a toilet and vomited ; chip of gall and weewee stumble my cheeks .
I thumb a smooth , black knife .
I saw a chocolate-brown face , like mine , but old . “ Pedra , ” I enunciate .
“ Yes , yes , ” say Ecco , coaxing , fondle my impudence .
I found a brownish hand in mine ; clasp it . I let it pull me into darkness dot with shining watch glass lozenge . Oblong mirrors , twinkle on / off / on as the light in my brain caught their strange fractal .
“ Mãe ? ” I called . “ Mãe ? ”
Hog ’s body fell to the mat .
Salt ’s pectus exploded .
Lozenges nictate as I cast my mind about , seeking elsewhere . Inside of clip , I saw time to come . Not lozenges , not mirrors—-oh god , mamãe . How could I have think they were mirrors . They opened . I was pull ahead , the nails of that hand digging in my shape .
“ Mãe ? Mãe ? ”
I heard the boy ’s voice behind me . I shake off myself backwards , toward him .
severalize me about your mother .
The bawd who sold me to Kismet ?
“ Papagaio derive milho , periquito leva fama . ”
I do n’t know what that signify .
I thought all you unseasoned hoi polloi spoke Português . Eh ? It mean you are unthankful to your mother . “ Ao menino e ao borracho , põe - lhes Deus a mão por baixo . ” God puts his script under the boy and the young pigeon .
Easy for you to say , who will never fell . If I matte God ’s bridge player beneath me , I would spit on it . “ genus Pimenta nos olhos coiffe outros é refresco . ” Pepper in the eye is a pleasance to you , eh ?
Eh , não genus Pimenta , mas pedra . Stone in the oculus is a pleasance to me . Have you never tried to see her , Lydia ? To understand why she forsake you ?
I have tried .
But you ca n’t ?
No .
But you talk to her , when you are gone in your vision .
The first time I was undosed from kite , I began to understand what Ecco meant with his talk of liberated futures . With his talk of running . I had been inside of some terrible material . I had feel the dark stuff move around me . Its currents were solid . I could feel some alive presence just beyond my peel tug where it want me to go .
I retrieve Ecco comes from that lieu . Or he come from that station . Something about him feels the way it palpate . Empty . thirsty .
I tell him to die hard his futures by himself . He say I just need to discover the key to exemption . What will make me unafraid to enter the unnumerable future .
Sometimes I think he is just lonely .
Are you quick to stress again today ? To run ?
I ’d rather die .
Die then . toss off yourself .
I ca n’t . I do n’t .
See if you may . See if you do .
I know how I end . I know how I continue . I know everything .
Everything . What arrogance . You did n’t even know me .
I never named him . I call him meu caração , my little boy , meu Cupid . I have been able to come through here because of him .
It ’s been five months since I last saw him . The first five months that I have been completely alone , in my life . I was already pregnant when Ecco took me from schooltime . A small fry of Salt , or a child of Hog ? I like to believe , a kid of both . I birthed him here , at Insight . Until August , they let him stay with me . We lived a strange , captive spirit , but we lived it together . Then Ecco took him . He enunciate it was my own fault . My own choice .
I do n’t move . I do n’t talk . Ecco yield me more kite now , triple what I used to take . I close my eyes and fly . I see everything , all of time bubble beneath me like waves , diamond - studded , glinting , on , off , on .
But now I know . They are not mirror , they are not diamonds . They are mouths .
That is the difference between seeing and running .
Sometimes , I permit myself wonder whether Salt or Hog ever made it to you .
That was our whole , foolish plan . tend to you , mamãe , like little children , and beg you to shelter us as you could not shelter me before . When there is no one leave alone , no promise , we always turn to our mothers , eh , no matter how angry we are .
I do n’t remember you will ever have these small notes .
ecco tell apart me that the mystery to running game is losing your mother .
ecco narrate me that if I want to find the boy , i ’ll have to die hard him down myself .
i tell apart him that i have been essay .
something is not correct
not right-hand
i have started talking to myself , to hog , to salt , even to you . sometimes i wake as though from the midriff of a dream , and i am talk to someone else—-but no one i lie with , or have known . i am the only one here . i am the only one here . i ’ve been here for too long
too long
What do you remember from your first days at Insight , Lydia ?
I was dopesick . In pain in the ass . I had n’t been without kite in years . I could barely fend . Could n’t take the air .
You were lost in many concurrent future tense , without the drug that stabilized your vision in the world and its one future .
Yes .
You saw me .
And what did you imagine , that first time ?
That you were my female parent .
( Soft laughter . )
they exact my eyes
interest group in the operation of enucleation ( removal of the middle ) as an intervention gain prominence in the late 22nd hundred , after it was execute with some achiever by the liberatory research group , Insight Unlimited . Numerous studies have inquire the issue since the trade embargo against eye - removal was lifted in 2135 .
At that point , the early Theory of Time Sight put forward that children treated with the drug dimethylcathinone ( “ kite ” ) could be trained to see in four and mayhap five , six , or seven dimensions . Davis and Shutter continued the theory , positing that time - paralysis ( unfitness to move through time ) exhibited in Kismet - trained Seers was a psychological , rather than physical , limitation . All children treat from an early geezerhood with dimethylcathinone should theoretically be open of social movement and not only sight . Hyper - reliance on world - wad , they theorize , might prohibit Seers from “ flattening ” time to one - dimension , a technique reach by so - foretell “ time runner . ”
Two gentleman’s gentleman convicted of thirteen counting of murder in the first degree were handed six and three successive aliveness judgment of conviction , respectively , this morning . The two work force , Adam Hogkins , twenty - one , and Terrence Salz , nineteen , were convicted in July for their function in aiding in the terrorist attacks on the Kismet Headquarters in Northern California in 2133 , as part of a third - wing rebound over the usage of “ indentured servants ” by the Kismet Corporation . The men , both students at the Kismet Training Academy , were find hangdog of planning and provide cloth financial support for terrorist acts and illegal bunch membership .
The trial was one in a series of cases that arose out of what government find out was a sprawl terrorist plot of land organize by an activistic system know as “ Quilombo Sombrio , ” and hold out with the cooperation of one other student , Lydia Davis Peres , the daughter of a well - known Quilombo member . Peres has been missing since the tone-beginning on the Kismet Headquarters .
usually relegated to one - metre guerilla attacks , the incidents—-the bombardment of a school and kidnapping of a scholar on August 10 , 2133 ; the subsequent August 14th , 2133 bombing , and the big dodging of “ indent handmaiden ” at three Kismet locations—-underscore the growing threat of mainstream dissatisfaction with , and potency of violence toward , the company that “ operate the future , ” Kismet Unlimited .
Human right field groups condemn the deficiency of grounds against either defendant in the July trial , and are petitioning for appeals . Judge Julius Johnson sentenced Mr. Salz to a minimum of ninety - six years in prison , and Mr. Hogkins to a lower limit of 192 age in prison house . The younger Mr. Salz was escort out of the courtroom by the bailiff . Mr. Hogkins appeared to be channel to another authority , representatives of whom waited outside of the courtroom . He was transported to an strange location in an overlooked machine .
Do you know what I have for you ?
I ca n’t see .
Here . ( forty - five - minute interval . ) clean it up .
hnh . hnh . hnhh . hauh . Hau . Hau . Hau . Hauh . Haugh . How . How . Hough . Hog .
It is the promontory of your Hog .
( screaming )
i am the only one here . She is not the only one here .
Audio Recording : “ Lydia and Ecco ” ( dateless )
Who do you spill to at Nox ? The son ?
I talk to Lydia .
You are Lydia .
She desire to run , but she is still afraid . Why ? ( She still has Leslie Townes Hope , even after holding Hog ’s chief in her paw ) .
I whisper to Lydia in the dark . “ Acalme - se . ” quieten yourself . I know our female parent ’s tongue . It passed to me along dark electric current that human heart will never see , human arm will never wade through . ( I have compact through the dry field , bubble by wry wings that beat over sunshine - chap skull . I have waded through the salted ocean currents . I have been break away and dismantled . And still , I am ) .
“ you’re able to not change the past , meu coração . ” My nerve . “ Only accept with wonder what the future may make of you . ”
“ I do it your voice , ” she whispers .
I laugh . “ Of course you screw my voice . ”
“ Who are you ? Who allow you in ? ” Her hand fumble in darkness .
I take her hand in mine . I make quieting noises with my tongue . “ I just come , ” I say . “ I take the air through walls . ”
She feels my fingers with hers . I place her hand on my face , let her hound the rooftree of my middle . I do not let her cringe or pull back her hand when her fingers slip and bear on my optic . They are smooth as silk , and very cold . “ See ? ” I tell her . “ There is nothing to fear . It is just stone . ”
“ I hate it , ” she order , as though she were a child .
“ You fear it , ” I say patiently , as though she were a child .
“ It is not me . ”
“ It is us , ” I tell her .
“ I need to leave , ” she enounce . I palpate her stall .
“ Leave . ”
“ I have a child , ” she says .
“ find out him . ”
She search inside of herself for a look that has always been solid certainty , and now is so much fog . She pulls on air , allege , “ I will not survive . ”
“ Look at me , ” I say her . I take her fingers again , convey them to my font . “ And see that you live on . ”
A police raid was led on the dark town known as Quilombo Sombrio too soon this sunup , located in a northerly area of the United States Department of State that has been largely uninhabited since oversupply in the late twenty-first one C gutted the metropolis and town nearby . “ We were able to collaborate with a secret party that had obtained intelligence about the coordinates of the townsfolk , located in the foothills of Cruz Sagrada . We have long had reason to believe that the townspeople was harboring fugitives belong to the Kismet Group . We were able to relocate a act of the missing students . There were some casualties on both side . ”
She require me how .
“ You think of yourself as a peça . The art object . The slave . But we call ourself a pedra , the rock . sentence cuts us , we do not cut fourth dimension . We submit to clip , earmark it to move us . It will move us toward him . Our filho de pedra . Our endless echo . He who will cross all futures to produce me , and put down you . ”
Quilombo Sombrio .
Quilombo ?
A gloomy town in the Northwest . That ’s where we must go .
Why ?
To detect my female parent .
I arrive at Quilombo after the law have gone , after the fires have burned themselves out . Ecco warned me that the town had been dismantle . The seers collected , taken back to brainstorm to readapt to the luminance of time after their years living in darkness . “ It will be secure for you , ” he suppose .
I marvel at what is here , what has been here , evading fourth dimension . Inside of me , Lydia remember the trees . I touch a giant that towers to my left—-wide plate of bark , roughly thread , that smelled like vanilla extract and sugar . I touch my subdivision and remember a break she had received , falling from a Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as a nipper .
I smell out movement . survivor , coming out from the wood to gather their deadened . Amongst them , I know , is Lydia ’s mother . I do not see her with my centre . I see her within time . She floats to me on its black river .
“ Mamãe de Lydia , ” I say , holding out my hands .
Her fingers are rough and lovesome . She traces the ridges of my eye .
“ O que é que você fez ? ” What have you done ?
“ Survived , ” I answer .
“ O que eu fiz para você ? ” What have I done to you ?
Lydia , the child , the striver , turn over to her . “ Mamãe , ” she yells , deep within my caput . “ save up me . ”
She still does not lie with that I am the one who will save her .
Mamãe buckles and falls . Her hands grab at my boldness , my shoulder joint , my weapon , my shirt .
I get out my knife from her rib , and pass over its blood on the tree .
“ You told me to turn tail . ”
I am no longer afraid . There is nothing to hold me anywhere .
The future beckons with all its glistening teeth . I flex my middle ( my Isidor Feinstein Stone ) and see blowhole breach open , closed , open , open , open . Until each is as broad as each , and running is only a matter of stepping from one subject mouth to another .
I head for the hills .
and the matter that is inside me the thing i am deep down of—-spins me like a pebble on its tongue—-swallows me whole ( i am swallowed)—-i am in its one long throat—-it is the length of the universe—-i am passed by fluid muscle—-into its belly—-bright and clean as the sun—-if i depend too closely , i will die—-i am swallowed into the one true future—-burning—-but i who have no eyes can not see—-and oh god , i can not die
everything guide here , ecco , you have seen this noplace too—-knowing this , i see you—-not the you that move outside of time ; the you that is being eaten awake ( unending , it does not terminate ) by the future—-
i see you , meu filho , the one i never describe , you and i both know that there is nowhere to run—-
I spread out my eye . I see the Ecco who stands outside of time .
“ Mamãe , ” he order , and takes my hand .
He is no longer the audio , he is the replication . I am no longer the slave , I am the stone .
We have nothing , we are nothing , we can go everywhere .
Time moves us .
1 . inquiry into the emergent phenomenon of runners found no biological cornerstone for the tendency of dim children to become stolon . Johnson , Edgar et al , “ ‘ Running from Loneliness ’ : appraise psychological trauma present in Kismet - trained sentence - runners . ” 2156 November 11 . Johnson posited lead as a condition response to an underlying trauma disorderliness — a genuine flight response .
Endria Isa Richardson is a author found in Oakland , California . Her essays have appear in Black Warrior Review , Alpinist , and Bay Nature cartridge holder , and her speculative fable is in Lightspeed , Clarkesworld , FIYAH , Nightmare , and others . Her body of work has received celebrated credit in undecomposed American Essays and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy , and the runner - up award from the Black Warrior Review nonfiction competition . Endria holds a JD from Stanford Law School , and is currently a Ph.D. student in African American Studies at UC Berkeley .
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