SWAGAZINE ISSN: 1522-7707 Issue #1, November 1994 Special "Light at the End of the Tunnel" Issue Originally published by Swagman and Colin Campbell. Online edition edited by Zeylan. A Feature of the Swagland BBS. Call us and see what all the shouting's about. Telnet: barbaria.ibexa.com http://www.swagazine.com/ ----- In This Issue . . . 1. Joel vs. The Aliens, by Luminary Coremaster 2. St. JD, by Murray Headroom 3. Crazy, by Mordrak 4. This Gilligan Must Die, by Murray Headroom 5. Ice Cream, by Mordrak 6. Icepick in the Mind's Ear, by Murray Headroom 7. Stargazing by Day, by Douglas Seacat 8. My Life For, by Psyche 9. An Ode to the Giants in the Sky, by Murray Headroom 10. Off the breakwater after dinner, by Swagman 11. Take a Number, by Luminary Coremaster 12. Astronomy, by Dark Doctor X 13. Walter One-Way, by Luminary Coremaster & Charlotte Sometimes 14. Haikus, by Zeylan 15. Old Shoes, by Swagman 16. Prayer1.Fun, by Swagman 17. We Are Here to Heal You, by Colin Campbell * Submission Information ----- Joel Versus the Aliens by Luminary Coremaster Joel walked up the steps to his house, each step feeling like he was marching through a few yards of swampland. The strain of the high-pressure workplace had taken a toll on his physical condition, and to put it simply, he was beat. All he wanted to do was grab a beer and watch some television. He put his coat under his other arm as he dug into his pocket for the keys. As he advanced the key to the lock, he realized that the front door was slightly open. Joel always made a point of locking the door every morning, and even if he hadn't locked it, he would have closed it. "God," he thought to himself, "I've probably been robbed. What should I do? I better go to the neighbor's house... Nah, I better make sure I've been hit first... Plus, they don't like me too well after that poodle incident last fall." Carefully, Joel pushed open his front door and peeked inside. He flipped on a lightswitch by the door, and seeing no signs of a robbery, made his way inside. As he closed the door, he checked the various rooms of his house, and finding nothing wrong, did a double-check, and then checked all the locks on the doors and windows. As he made his way into the living room, he dropped his beer. And with good reason--- Seated on the couch, where there had formerly been a couple pillows, were five little silvery aliens. "Hey!" Joel exclaimed. "Where are my throw pillows?" One alien, on the left side of the couch, poked his head from a fort that had been constructed out of the couch cushions. "We have come in search of waffles. Could you direct us to them, please?" "Huh?" Joel replied. "Waffles? As in a tasty breakfast treat that goes great with fruit or syrup?" "Leggo my Eggo! Leggo my Eggo!" a few aliens exclaimed in sing-song unison. "Yes, that is correct," the leader replied, and then sunk back into his cushion house. "Wait. You're aliens, right?" Joel asked. "Yeah." one of them said, as he knocked a coaster tray onto the floor. "And you're looking for waffles?" Joel continued. "Yeah." another confirmed. "But..." Joel said. "This doesn't make any sense. Waffles. That's such a random item. This is like a bad rip- off of Douglas Adams or something. But it's not even funny." "Well, Mr. High-And-Mighty," squawked one alien, "You seem to be the comedy expert around here, why don't YOU come up with a funny item?" "Who's Douglas Adams?" one alien asked. "Did he write that book Shampoo Planet?" "No, that's Douglas Copeland, you goof," replied another alien. "Wha-What?" Joel sputtered. "But, why are you here? What is this? Why do you want waffles?" "Well, I guess we don't want waffles anymore, it's not FUNNY enough for you," blurted one alien who hadn't spoken yet, but was quite obviously getting riled up and kept looking like he WANTED to speak, but when he would get a chance someone else would talk, which didn't help to calm him down any. "So at least part of your mystery is solved." "I suppose he'll make me put the cushions back, next," remarked the leader from inside his fort. "Just like my mother used to." "But, you're the leader of this expedition, you shouldn't have to take orders from him!" shouted one alien who was obviously kissing up to his superior, probably because he wanted a promotion or larger living quarters. "Wait! Stop!" yelled Joel, who was still having enough trouble with the initial shock of aliens in place of his pillows. "Why are you here? Do you have something to offer mankind? Are you going to kill me if I don't give you waffles? There's a Lucky's down the street, I could go and buy you waffles. Blueberry ones, even." "Kill you?" contemplated the leader. "I didn't think of that. Anyway, we wouldn't do that, there'd be no point. And it's too late for the waffles now, so quit trying to pretend you didn't insult us." "No!" Joel stuttered. "Waffles are perfectly fine! There's nothing wrong with waffles! They even have strawberry ones now, they're next to the frozen orange juice!" "No, no," cut in the leader, "it's too late for that now. The waffle issue is over now; you're only making matters worse." "You might want to clean up that beer before the stain sets in," commented an alien who was flipping through a People magazine. "Huh?" said Joel, looking down, and then, "Oh! Yeah, I guess I better... Good thing I got StainGuard on my carpets when I bought them, eh?" "Is that the commercial where the little kid spills grape juice all over the carpet, and the mother says, "That's okay!" and they all laugh knowingly?" asked the alien who had wanted to speak earlier, but now that he's had his say, he was much more laid back. "Probably," mumbled Joel, as he ran to the kitchen to get paper towels. As he returned, the alien who had been kissing up earlier pointed to the paper towels and started laughing, "He's got teddy bears on his paper towels!" "Hey!" exclaimed the alien who was now reading Time magazine, "There's nothing wrong with that! Colorful prints on paper towels can help spice up the decor of an otherwise drab aspect of the kitchen!" "Yeah!" exclaimed the alien who was obviously very relaxed at this point, and not overly eager to speak out, having already had his say. "But, how did you get into my house? Did you use a transporter device from your space ship?" asked Joel, who was more confused than ever, primarily because there were aliens squabbling about paper towel patterns in his living room. "We forced open the front door by picking the lock," said the leader. "Didn't you notice the door was open? We couldn't figure out how to lock it again." "I noticed it!" retaliated Joel. "Hey, don't get defensive about it," said an alien. "Well, I think I have a right to get defensive about this!" exclaimed Joel. "I come home after a long day, I just want to watch TV and have a soda, and then I find my house broken into and there's a bunch of aliens on my couch!" "Hey, I resemble that remark!" said an alien, and the rest began giggling. "This isn't funny!" said Joel. "What gives you the right to just march in here and take over my house?" "Who's taking over your house? We're not taking over your house," said the leader. "Besides, we're aliens. We can do whatever we want." "What!" shouted Joel. "That doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want, just because you're aliens! You're no better than anybody else! How would you like it if I went into your spaceship and messed up your furniture and got cookie crumbs all over the couch and caused you to spill beer on the carpet?" "Ha!" said an alien who was playing with a bronze statue of a giraffe on the coffee table. "We WISH there was carpet in the ship! Well, good carpet, at least." "That carpet is just there for decoration," commented the leader, as he used a smaller cushion to make a door in his fort. "There's no way the galactic legion would spring for nice, plush carpet, like here." "Look," cut in Joel, "I'm really tired and I've had just about enough of you. Now if you don't leave now, I'll... I'll call the police!" "They wouldn't believe you," snickered the relaxed alien, as he stretched out his legs on the footstool. "I'll tell them there's an intruder in the house," threatened Joel. "They'd believe that." "Oh cripes!" one alien said, surprisingly enough. "We didn't think of that!" He and the other aliens jumped up, and the leader burst out of the fort, sending cushions flying around the room, one hitting the lamp and knocking the shade sideways. They then proceeded to go to the front door, at which point they exited the house. Joel sort of just stood there for a few minutes, and then went to work putting the cushions back. He then cleaned up the beer and wiped the crumbs off of the chairs. He found an empty package of Keebler Elf "Ernie Loves Fudge" cookies in the corner, next to the potted plant. "Funny," thought Joel, as he picked up the crumpled bag, "I thought they stopped making this kind a few years ago." Joel then searched his house a final time, and sat down to watch some TV. There was a marathon of Spanish-dubbed episodes of "I Love Lucy" on Nickelodeon. And he never did find his throw pillows. ----- St. JD by Murray Headroom Saint James Dean came down from the mountain, His hands and feet were bleeding like water from a fountain; The scars upon his soles and fists Remind us that the love he missed Was blinded in the headlights of our haste. Saint James Dean died for my sins, I sometimes feel like I killed him; Saint James Dean died before I was born, And that's why I couldn't warn Him; he had to die. Saint James Dean came down from the fence, The way he cried, the way that I'd, it made me wince, He sang for the valkyrie to carry him home, But instead his body was buried alone; Still, his brothers, in his shadow, continue to roam. Saint James Dean came out for the western role, In his heart we could see a martyr's hole; He had the marks upon him, he was immolated, He couldn't stand to live inside the world that he created; Saint James Dean went up to see the stars, He bought the farm, he keeps us warm, we bear his scars, Saint James Dean died for my sins, I sometimes wish I could thank him. "Hey, Man, can I borrow your jacket?" ----- Crazy by Mordrak Silence. The room is silent. I am once again alone. The phone does not ring and I wait. Hoping...wishing for a break in the silence. I hear my heart beating. It beats slowly, my hands tremble. The heaviness of the silence bears down on my mind, I thrash wildly inside. There is no escape, I cannot leave. I am stuck here in this void. The books are stacked in front of me, the radio at my side. I turn it on, noise comes out, I don't hear any of it. When I'm like this, none of the songs are good songs. I don't know any of the words. I am still waiting for the phone to ring, where are all my friends? They are with others, they have forgotten me. I pace madly within the confines of this square chamber. Three steps and I have to turn around and three more. My hands grasp and grab at my hair. They pull in frustration, my eyes wide in anticipation. My patience grinding and tearing my blood rimmed eyes. Hate rages in my stomach, a hot burning sensation floods my body. Tingling spreads thereafter. I jump around my room, making the echo that tells me I am still alone. I take out a pen, scribble furiously on many pieces of paper. I stab through the sheets, no blood comes out. How easily it is to tear through that stack...how easily it would be to just force it through my head. It would enter in a second, penetrating spongy matter. The pen would enter through my temple, get lodged 4 inches horizontally into my cranium. I would drop, blood would be all over. My body slumped back into the chair. The pen sticking straight out the side of my head. If I were able, I'd pull it back out, stuff some Kleenex in the newly formed hole in my head. I would bang my head as hard as I could against the white textured walls. The blood would mark my passing as I rush outside. I take a butter knife from the kitchen and run outside! Ahhh, there's that girl that lives down the street. All thoughts of love, sex, relationship forgotten. Come here girl, I have something to show you. I violently shove the pen through her orb, pull it back out. Screams echoing in the back of my mind as I shove it through her chest. Leave her there in the middle of the rode. I'd drop the knife and head toward the beach. I run, my lungs explode after a few minutes of hard running. I don't stop. The aching builds up till I cannot stand it. But I do. I make to the blue ocean, the white shifting sands below. There are many people here. Many, many victims yet to be handled. There is a little boy on the beach. How easily it would be to wrap my hands around his puny neck and strangle and break! I move on. She lies there. Golden tanned body, scantily clad. I want to break her violently, furiously! I can't, I don't know how. A radio lays beside her. I grab the radio and raise it above my head! She starts saying something to me, I don't care. I slam the radio into her and the radio stops its music. I kick her many times, the blood is all over my feet. Her face, gorge dripping from the massive wound that gapes from it. Many substances that used to be contained within is all over the sand. I move on. I don't think anyone noticed. What happened to all the people? Where are now? I don't know. I'm tired, and its hot. I'm going to go home. ----- This Gilligan Must Die by Murray Headroom I The sun rose mightily over the Pacific Ocean and its heat warmed the humid air, letting it rise to push the remnants and makings or tropical storms and typhoons in paths of destruction and rebirth. Rain fell and drops sizzled on hot rocks in the morning light, while small animals hunted and the few people stranded on one particular island began to stir in the new day. Two women, dressed once again in the only clothes they had salvaged from the damaged vessel which alit them upon this maritime prison, separated their makeshift cots and replaced them at far walls across the room. In quite tones, they discussed they misfortune which had befallen them again the previous day. The one called Ginger, her red locks levitating in an unblemishable bouffant, lamented, "I don't know whether I can take it much longer." Her companion, Mary Anne, responded knowingly: "Do you mean how Gilligan killed us all again yesterday?" Ginger nodded. "Something has to be done about that boy." Implying her agreement, Mary Anne could only ask, "But what can we do? He's just a kid with an IQ of about 75; can he really be blamed for his inability to function at a normal level?" "It's not a question of blame," justified Ginger, "it's a question of survival. More than once-- I can't count how many times-- his recklessness has threatened our lives or ruined our chances for rescue. If we want to live long enough to get off this island, we'll have to stop Gilligan from doing more damage. It's a miracle he's lived as long as he has." Mary Anne embraced her friend. "You're right. But what can we do?" "We'll think of something." With tenderness, they joined in a womanly kiss. Only a few feet away, Thurston Howell and his wife (known to their world, but never addressed by anyone but her husband, as Lovey) sat on their beds, always kept separate, and recited a similar conversation. "I cannot believe the gall of that boy, scaring us so," Mrs. Howell accused with all the clandestine venom of the society shrew she wished to once again be. "One would think he had no consideration for the rest of us." "Yes, Lovey," drawled Mr. Howell, gently sipping from a snifter of cognac. "Were we at home I could hire somebody to take care of him." "Perhaps we could find somebody here?" Howell contemplated a moment and subsequently poopooed the suggestion. "The girls would never do it; and the Skipper shows that he's almost as big an idiot as Gilligan for his loyalty to him. Perhaps the Professor... but, no." Mrs. Howell agreed: "The Professor is too busy rebuilding his nuclear reactor with coconuts and palm fronds to even consider our concerns." Howell grunted. "Nonetheless, something must be done." With the help of the Skipper, the Professor was putting the finishing touches on what he told them was a nuclear reactor; the machine was a bit more complex than Mrs. Howell understood, involving also many conch shells as well as the hide, bones and entrails of two of the wild boar, and several small birds, which inhabited the island. As the pair secured the frame into place with long strips of kelp, Skipper couldn't restrain his curiosity any longer and asked the Professor about his training. "Just what exactly are you a professor of?" "My degrees are in Arcane Arts and Sciences and Medieval Metaphysics, with an emphasis on Knowledge Man Was Not Meant To Know; from Miskatonic University." "Well, that's all good and fine, Professor," the portly sailor responded without understanding a word, "but if you are able to build these fabulous devices, why can't you fix the Minnow?" "That's a very good question, Skipper, let me try to explain it to you this way: Most of my training is in areas which are purely abstract, and those which are physical have multidimensional ramifications; areas like carpentry won't be helped, as my education does not apply to Newtonian physics. Does that help?" With all the enthusiasm he could muster, the Skipper wobbled slightly and answered, "If you say so, Professor." "Besides," the academic added, "any time I try to concoct a scenario in which might return us to the civilized world, Gilligan does something to disrupt it." "I guess that's true, Professor. But you know he doesn't mean to." Skipper removed his hat, knowing the conversation would now focus upon Gilligan and the damage done. Had he any concept of social grace, the Professor might have realized that courage was necessary to pose the following question, though to him it seemed only to be an objective, scientific inquiry: "Just why do you put up with Gilligan?" Skipper now wrung his hat anxiously, still being eaten inside over the incident which had happened so long ago. "When I began in the skippering business, I did some shipping of certain herbs outside the authority of some governments. But the money was good. I made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it away so fast... anyway, one night, I was making a drop in Chicago, and the guys I was delivering to were upset about the size of the package." Skipper paused, but did not admit that he had skimmed a portion of the heroin both for his own use and gifts for friends. "I really think they would have killed me, if a kid in a red shirt hadn't come along right then. The other guys got scared and tried to shoot him, too. He just started running around, zig-zagging in circles-- I hid behind a barrel-- and when I looked up, he was just standing there, and the three fellows I was supposed to deliver to had shot one another. I owe Gilligan my life! And the oath I took, when I joined the Brotherhood of Skippers, requires that I now protect his life." "I understand," nodded the Professor. "But Gilligan has caused so much chaos; he's nearly killed all of us, more than once. Am I wrong in assuming that his actions got us stranded here?" "No, it was the tropical storm, Professor-- aw, hell, he did turn off the ship's radio, so we didn't know we were sailing into a storm... I guess... I don't know." "I understand the devotion you have to your obligation, Skipper," the Professor sympathized with marginal sincerity, "but it's not only your honor, or your life, that's at stake here. Think of the lives of the girls, of the Howells. Is there some statute of limitations on your lifesaving duty?" "I don't think so... but what are you saying, Professor?" "I think he's saying that we're agreed. This Gilligan must die." They turned to see who had spoken; looking through the windows and door to this hut were the other inhabitants of the island. In that moment, a silent bond was formed among them, even stronger than the bond developed when the group had landed ashore. Mary Anne broke the reverie. "Where is Gilligan now?" "We're safe," assured the Skipper. "He's on the other side of the island, collecting citrus fruits." Gilligan was indeed across the island, but collecting citrus fruits was far from his mind. He was relaxing on a ledge over the mouth of a small volcano. He breathed deeply and held, watching steam from the bubbling magma below twist and dance into ghostlike images, and smoke from the makeshift appliance in his hand rise and waft in counterpoint. At the base of this hill he had found a patch of the purest cannabis sativa L. ever tasted, and as often as possible he sat here to enjoy it. More than once he had nearly slipped from the narrow path which brought him to his secret place, threatening a plunge into the boiling rock below, but as always, his safety was overseen by a protective force he did not pretend to understand. That unseen force had also shown him that strange combination of coconut and bamboo which the Professor had made for another of his machine, but which Gilligan recognized as a perfect substitute for a bong. So what if they hadn't been able to send up a flare for that airplane that minute after he'd removed it? Couldn't the Professor build another one? Swiftly, as always, his thoughts became paranoid. He knew that the others on the island hated him for his clumsiness; that was the same reason his father had always beaten him, and why he'd finally run away. It was only the most uncanny of fortune which had led him to the Skipper to take care of him, after those strange men had that duel on the dock. Gilligan could never be sure whether Skipper really liked him, though he did sometimes hit him on the head with his hat. It was a lot like home. By then, the warmth in his lungs was making him feel better, and he didn't even notice the mud and leaves stuck to his chin like some beatnik beard. Gently, his hand slid under his waistband and began to rub between his legs. He knew he was probably destined to die a virgin, but he had the satisfaction of knowing the sin-- no, the Gift of Onan would always bring his spirit closer to that of the sophisticated, wholesome woman who lived on the island with him. With a clear image of her in his head, he began also to chant her name and his feelings of devotion to her. "Oh, Lovey... oh, Mommy." He would go back to the clearing of huts soon, but knew that the others would only give him another impossible task to strain his back and numb his mind, and if something went wrong, again they would curse him for it. So for now, he waited, alone. II The castaways gathered with morose zeal around the camp's fire pit. Gilligan had been sent to gather wood for the evening's fire, and they knew he would not return soon. Trepidation was balanced with anticipation as this war council prepared to advance and reject schemes to eliminate the threat to their safety from the island. They sat silently, eyes shifting form partner to partner, knowing not where to begin. Ginger spoke first. "I did a movie once, where I played a vicious she-devil gun-moll who seduced a rival gangster and smashed his head with a vase. We could try that." "But there are no vases on the island," countered Mary Anne. "Though you could use a rock. Back on the farm, once, one of my dogs got mangled in the combine and we had to put him out of his misery by bashing his head with a rock." "Surely a knife would be easier," suggested Howell. "Simply stab him-- in the back, as it were." The picture of smugness, he smirked and Mrs. Howell patted his arm in compliment. Ginger nodded. "The only knives we have are the primitive, home-made ones we use for cutting fruit." "Shivs," informed Skipper. "They'd work, but I don't think the plan will work. Though you're very beautiful, Ginger, I don't think Gilligan would be seduced by you." "He's right," agreed Mary Anne. "He's always seemed to me to be completely asexual and disinterested, like a cat with its nuts cut." "Or a eunuch," added the Professor, his eyes never having left Ginger's cleavage since she first began the discussion. None of the others knew what a eunuch was. If any better suggestions were had in mind by the group, none were spoken, until Howell defiantly stood and slammed his highball glass against the table. "Fine, then! If no one else will take the initiative, I will do it myself!" "How bold of you, Thurston," Mrs. Howell commended, "but don't you think it will be dangerous?" "Danger?" he boasted. "I laugh in the face of danger. I buy and sell danger every day, and make money on it." He pursed his lips and finished his drink. "In the morning, I shall go with Gilligan to a high cliff and push him off." Muttering amongst themselves, the rest agreed that this was a fine plan, and quickly they hushed as Gilligan returned to the camp and promptly dropped his load of firewood on his foot. During the evening's leisure, Howell speculates to Gilligan about possibly purchasing the island, upon their return to the outside world, for research and development. His assertion that it is top secret research clued Gilligan enough that he asked no further questions, but he agreed to show Howell the lay of the land and the defensible high ground. Come morning, the unlikely pair hiked not far from Gilligan's secret place, but up an easier path, at the base of which was a pike punctuated by a boar's head. Skipper had placed it there some time before, at the Professor's suggestion, to represent not only how they as a group were conquering nature, but also because they displayed a fair cross-section of society and must endeavor to keep society and civilization alive within their small group. That was one of the few times the others had ever witnessed the Professor laughing, and it was a strangely ironic laugh, not jovial, and only verging upon sinister. At the foot of the hill, Howell found a large branch to use as a walking stick, both to aid in his climb and to hasten Gilligan's descent. Ascending the hill was a greater challenge than the old man anticipated, but with the determination of a man on a mission, he ignored the painful ache in his lungs and the distasteful sweat which ran off his body in sheets, a sensation he had never before felt. He hoped never to experience it again. And after all, he did concede that the view from the zenith was nearly worth the effort expended. Howell rested on a rock as Gilligan peered against the horizon. "Do you see that?" the younger man asked his oblivious companion, whose eyes were closed and mouth was open. "I see only stars, and my grandfather waving to me from a long tunnel," Howell gasped. "What do you see?" "It looks like a ship-- over there!" Gilligan began jumping up and down, stupidly thinking someone on the distant boat might notice. "Here! Over here!" He turned to Howell. "I've been eating my carrots. My eyesight is very good." He commenced jumping and yelling. Howell, exhausted as he was, recognized his chance, slowly stood, and swung his walking stick at Gilligan. Feeble as he was also, Howell's strike missed, only succeeding in hurling Howell himself off the sheer face of the cliff, to splat resoundingly on the rocks below. Gilligan stared, aghast. He was most surprised that there was no blood; the body remained, if dead, intact. He hurried back to camp, to relay to the others the fateful news. He explained, as sensitively as he could, that while trying to signal the ship, he had slipped, and in trying to save him, Mr. Howell had fallen. Mrs. Howell screamed and demanded solitude, where she might drown her misfortune (or good fortune, half of her thought, now that she controlled all of Thurston's empire) in their fine collection of libations. The Professor and Skipper agreed to collect the corpse after building a signal fire; they knew they would also formulate a new plan while traveling. By evening, no rescue party arrived from the passing vessel, nor did they hear any news on the radio. The reconnaissance team toted Howell's body back to camp, placed it on a makeshift raft, and with only a few words of eulogy, they set it out to sea in funeral. By that time, Mrs. Howell had imbibed enough alcohol to ferment an army, spurned the rest as unworthy proletarians, but miraculously said nothing to reveal to Gilligan the plot. The sun set as Howell's body drifted out of sight. On the morning of the third day, the movie star was bathing nude on a secluded beach. The warm water felt cleansing against her body, and she scrubbed herself with determination. At first she was not surprised when another hand touched her from behind; she assumed Mary Anne had come to join her in the bath, but a wayward wave twirled the water around her to display that her company was instead Mr. Howell-- or rather, his dead corpse floating ragged in the surf, returned by the morning tide. Ginger screamed with a sincerity unmatched in all her professional work. The carcass was again prepared for burial at sea, this time by Gilligan and the Skipper, while the Professor comforted Ginger in her cabin, and Mary Anne searched the island for Mrs. Howell, who had wandered away in a besotted stupor. While pushing out the second raft, Skipper agreed with Gilligan that the ship he'd seen was stopped; in fact, there seemed to be smoke rising from it. Certainly trouble on board would be no blessing, but if it was stopped, chances were better that those marooned on the island could be rescued: if not by that ship, by the one that comes to rescue it. They rushed back to stoke the signal fire. Skipper tossed wood and kindling into the pit, while Gilligan, knowing this was a suitable emergency, fetched their final can of kerosene. Careless as always, while lifting, he swung it against a branch, puncturing the side and leaving a path of fuel behind him. As he approached the fire, a spark jumped and alit. Panicking, he spun around and splashed a new trail for the growing fire to blaze. He jumped away, throwing the can across the camp, and another wave of kerosene found home at the foot of the huts. The grass shacks all ignited immediately, but none was faster than that of the Professor; the front wall was incinerated with the blink of an eye, exposing to plain view the Professor and Ginger, inflagrante upon his laboratory table. He was not the least bit absent-minded when he hobbled out of the tempest, his pants around his ankles; but she stood dumbfounded, the beakers exploding around her, chemicals splashing her once beautiful, now melting, face. Gilligan and the Skipper watched in awe, and so did Mary Anne who had carried Mrs. Howell, whom she subsequently dropped, back into camp just in time to see the spectacle. The afternoon rains extinguished the fire, which really posed little threat to anything else on the island, since the rest of the growth was too moist. Ginger's burns were ugly but superficial and not life-threatening, though Mary Anne refused to speak to her beyond the single word, "Tramp." The Professor was congratulated mightily by the other men for his conquest. And with the evening tide, no rescue party, no word on radio, just the prodigal corpse once again sprawling upon the beach. Sleeping on makeshift mattresses of leaves, moss and kelp, the survivors agreed to face their mounting problems upon the fresh dawn, allowing this day to fade with no further activity. III The dawn was colder than normal, but bright and unblemished under the tropical sun. The air was clear, only the faintest trace of smoke and ash assaulted their noses as they awakened. The plume raised by the ship straddling the horizon was motionless but present, a beacon of hope for those who still had the will to live. That number was dwindling. The Professor suggested that, as tides were unfavorable, it might be best to burn Howell's body; besides, another signal fire was necessary. Gilligan and Skipper set out to gather fresh firewood, while the Professor began clearing rubble from the camp ground. Mrs. Howell sat beside the remaining lounge chair, barfing up not only the contents of her stomach, but most of her colon and possibly some other organs. Mary Anne, feeling betrayed, strolled to the lagoon to be alone, but Ginger followed, begging sympathy. "If ever I needed a friend, it's now." "Didn't you use that line in one of your movies?" "That doesn't make it any less true." "I thought we had something special." "We did; we still can." "And what about the Professor?" "Well, frankly, he's got something you haven't." "Tramp!" "Mary Anne, please! What about our future?" "We don't have a future. I can barely stand to look at you." "That's cruel, Mary Anne." When Gilligan returned to the camp with a few planks of wood, the Skipper and Professor were already trying to light some branches with dried fronds and coconut hair as kindling. Gilligan carefully set his armload down and did not injure his foot. Skipper asked where Gilligan had found those properly cut boards. "I took them off the Minnow. I figured that since we're getting rescued, we wouldn't need it any more." For a moment, they looked at him speechlessly, baffled that this simpleton had lived so long. Reflexively, the Skipper removed his hat and obligatorily smote Gilligan's head. Mary Anne was just returning to camp, dragging the raft bearing Howell's body behind her. "Did he do something stupid to ruin our rescue chances again?" she asked. The others nodded. She dropped Howell, picked up a two-by-four, and whacked Gilligan in the back of the skull with it. Ginger had been sitting on the opposite side of the clearing, but not wanting to miss her chance, she walked over and kicked Gilligan in the knee. The Professor pushed him to the ground and they all began to kick the shit out of him. It was Gilligan's greatest fortune that he escaped their wrath and ran into the jungle. When he was sure they were not following him-- they thought it more important to start the fire-- he went to his special place. He didn't stop to pluck any cannabis from the crop at the bottom of the hill; he knew there was plenty in his bong, on the ledge above. Without excess care, he began the ascent, cursing the others and their families, vowing never to return. He had no idea how true his promise was, for in his agitation, he lost his grip, tumbled a few feet down the path, and without recognizing the irony of anticlimax, plummeted into the hot lava below. Meanwhile, back at the camp, the Professor and Skipper hoisted the corpse of Howell and placed it over the nicely roaring bonfire. They carefully set it down, then realized in horror that it had spent two days at sea, dressed in his finest clothes, and was thoroughly saturated with water. Rather than burning, it cracked like a cask, spilled water in a rush, and extinguished this fire which they now wanted. "We have only one more hope," announced the Professor. "We might be able to build a raft and paddle out to the ship." "Of course!" Skipper agreed. "Why didn't I think of that?" (The Professor had an idea why but didn't say it.) "Mary Anne, will you help us?" "Yes, yes!" The three salvaged what they could of Howell's raft, dumping his body in the soggy ashes, and strapping fresh planks from the Minnow to their new boat. Ginger merely sat on the chair, weeping and scratching the peeling skin from her bald head, while Mrs. Howell sprawled on the sand beside her, smelling like a wart and staring into the pile of vomitus she had expelled; one thread of saliva still connected it to her lip. The poignancy of the tragedy struck the movie star so thoroughly then, that she pushed Mrs. Howell's face into the mess and Mrs. Howell did not struggle, though she did choke a few times. It was not long before she stopped breathing entirely. The others did not notice, even when Ginger muttered, "Bitch." When they had assembled the best raft they could, they quickly dragged it to the shore nearest the stopped ship, but found it was not big enough to carry three people. The Professor promised to send help back for Mary Anne-- oh, and the others, sure-- but it would be best if he and the Skipper ventured out first. Reluctantly, bitterly, Mary Anne admitted that this made sense. She bid them farewell. Paddling as hard as they could, they expended a great deal of energy going in circles before synchronizing and finding a way to work together. Eventually, they began moving toward the distant vessel. It was farther than they had anticipated, and after two hours of difficult struggling, they were only three-quarters of the way toward their goal. The sun was beating down upon them, and its reflection blinded them from below as well. The heat was unbearable, so without ceremony, the Skipper clutched his chest above his heart, grunted in agony and died as he fell into the ocean. The Professor kept paddling. He seemed to make better time alone, but perhaps he was delirious was distress, thirst and heatstroke. But he was relieved when he reached the giant ship and called out for anyone on board to notice him. Two men looked over the railing at him and spoke in a language he did not understand. He tried to explain his situation, but his tongue was as foreign to them as their swarthy complexions were to him. The last thing the Professor saw was the muzzles of their guns rising over the railing as they sprayed him with bullets. The last thing they needed was a witness. Mary Anne felt sure that the others would not come back for her. When Gilligan did not return at sunset, she began to feel truly alone. The sight of Lovey, drowned in her own sick, didn't bother her much, nor did Howell's rotting corpse in the fire pit. Ginger was sitting alone by the lagoon, so Mary Anne molded together all her courage into her heart, and went to apologize. She tried to justify it by saying, "I've been under a lot of stress, lately. And it is my time of the month." "I understand," consoled Ginger. "I do love you." Ginger responded, but Mary Anne was too busy staring in horrible fascination at her scars to hear what she said. It might have been, "I love you too," it might have been, "I know," it might very well have been, "No you don't, you don't even know me." It didn't matter. "Your scars will heal," Mary Anne said, as much to salve her own wounds as Ginger's. "And your hair will grow back." "I'm glad to have you back," Ginger answered, and moved closer. "We don't need those sweaty men." They kissed, and went down until the sun went down. ----- Ice Cream by Mordrak This bowl of ice cream is much too cold for me to hold. The cold stings my hands but I cannot let go. My fingers are numb, blue with frost. My mind is numb, the ice cream tastes wonderful. This bowl of ice cream is much to big for me to hold. I can barely wrap my arm around it. Maybe I should just set it down and eat it as it makes a cold imprint on the floor. The water that emits from the coldness sticks to the outside of the container, but I don't want to let go. The chilling languid feeling of the ice cream washes smoothly over my searching tongue. I eat and shove spoonful after spoonful of this wonderfully fattening processed milk product into my waiting mouth. I eat faster and faster, the whole back of my head hurts like goddamn hell! My brain freezes, my tongue is numb. I drool out of the corner of my mouth. I still have a lot of ice cream left. I still want to eat it! Oh goddamn, I stick my head into the container, chewing the soft ice cream. The bitter cold gives away as my face presses further and further into the container. My face stings, a thousand tiny pins stick into it as my nerves go overload! I love this goddamn ice cream! I brace myself on the edges of the container as my face gobbles down mouthful after mouthful of gob! My head is exploding, bright white spots appear in my vision. It feels like I've been sucking Slurpee through a straw for 30 minutes non stop. If you've drank Slurpee like I've drank Slurpee, you'll know what excruciating pain I am feeling. My hands are slipping, oh, what the hell. I release and let my body lean over to this container. My mouth still a moving, chewing orifice. I love this goddamn ice cream! I feel myself slipping over the edge. I put my hands inside the container to try to brace myself from tipping in, but the soft, wet, cold mass gives away easily. I fall into the container. I'm immersed in ice cream. This is so great. I'm upside down inside a container full of ice cream. I feel myself sliding downwards, my body working with gravity as I keep falling in. I keep eating, eating hordes and hordes of this delicious ice cream. I'm still sinking inside this ice cream. I don't care. I have all this ice cream to eat. My entire body is within the container and buried under ice cream down. It is very cold. It's colder than jumping into the ocean in the middle of the night, butt naked. I'm shivering uncontrollably, my appendages wiggling. A seizure takes control, but my mouth is working fine. I'm still eating this delicious ice cream. Its so cold though, but this delectable smooth food is still traveling down my gullet. I think I've had enough ice cream now....but its too late. I'm trapped inside a large never-ending container of ice cream. I'm slowly traveling downward... toward hell. I'm moving ever so slowly. At this rate, it'll take me forever to get to hell. Might as well keep eating this delicious ice cream. I love this goddamn ice cream. ----- Icepick In The Mind's Ear by Murray Headroom a monologue (in tribute to J.S.) Hi. I'm sorry you're not home, I'll have to talk to your machine. I need to talk to someone. I haven't been sleeping well lately. It's not the dreams, so much as the music. The constant music. It comes to me at night. It's like it comes from outer space, it's like the voice of god, or maybe the devil, speaking to me, singing to me. Even when I sleep it won't go away. I close my eyes, I plug my ears, but it won't go away. Even when I put the blinders on and the cotton in, even when I lock myself in the closet and fall on the floor, the music doesn't stop. It just gets louder, and louder. It becomes more clear, and I can see the notes, dancing in front of my closed eyes, like they were floating in space... rocketing across space, and now they're invading my mind. They're infecting my mind, and they're keeping me awake. I never really sleep any more. But even that can't stop the dreams! The dreams where the entire city is burning, and I'm swallowed by the mirrors, and the wolf with the red roses says he can keep me young forever... And the music won't quit! But I can only hold that murderous guitar, I can't turn it off, I can't turn it down, and I can't stand the sound! Can't you hear it? Can't you hear the music? Can't you see the notes, like a plague of locusts in the sky, trying to drown us? Trying to suffocate me. The suffocating music, it comes to me at night. And it sings your name. So call me, when you get chance. I need to talk to you. ----- Stargazing By Day (Or: The Art of Meditation Intrudes on the Science of Astronomy) by Douglas Seacat He opened his fingers slightly, letting rice slip between the cracks, falling lightly down upon the glittering surface of the mirror. They scattered, spinning, forming random whorls and spirals. Squatting, he bent closer to the surface, letting the light dazzle his eyes. He closed his eyes, watching the afterimage on his retina, comparing the random spray to his mental image of the night sky. "What are you doing?" Paul leaned against the door frame, looking on with curiosity and amusement at his friend, who was sitting on the floor of the back room, a mirror flat on the ground in front of him, covered with rice. It was a scorchingly hot morning, even in the cooler rooms of the house. Despite this, Trent sat there, in the sun's full glare, eyes closed, a look of deep concentration on his face. Trent didn't open his eyes, but answered, "Divining for constellations." "Ah." "It's a new technique, I started doing it two weeks ago." He finally opened his eyes, giving Paul a steady look, speaking seriously, "The rice forms patterns, some of which correlate, if you look closely, with the stars. I believe sometimes the patterns here show me the stars as they would appear in the day's sky, if we could find a way to view them." Paul nodded, disinterested, "Want a beer?" He took a sip from his own, then wiped the cool sweating bottle across his forehead. "Damned hot in here... you should open some windows." "No thanks. There are many cultures, most notably certain Native American tribes, which feel heat is conducive to meditation. Quite understandable, really. The stresses of extreme temperatures can create altered states of consciousness." "Well, if you change your mind, I've got a twelver in the fridge, all cold. I'm going over to Carrie's, so pick up the phone if it rings. I'm expecting to hear from my folks today. Tell them I'll be back around nine." Trent nodded, distracted, then stooped back down to let the reflected sunlight splash across his face. He sprayed some more rice across the surface, and closed his eyes once more. Daylight was frustrating, washing across the earth in terrible intrusiveness. The nearby sun, gaseous furnace, fusion reactor, sprayed its energy across the universe, speeding as proto-waveform particles, vibrating through reality. Even as old as the sun was, light existed from its birth, somewhere in the universe, distance equaling time. Somewhere, perhaps galaxies distant, someone could see that light for the first time, focus their alien instruments upon it, and watch the beginning of a new world. Closer to home, the light was a pervasive annoyance. Most people believed the sun to be an illuminator, useful for the clarity it opened on the world. Yet those intense rays of energy entered the atmosphere, bounced from the oceans, and scattered across the sky in a reverberating blue illusion. This created a ceiling which shouldn't exist, a lofty blue vault as solid, to the eye, as a concrete dome painted a faded azure. Trent found it ridiculous how most people thought they could see clearly in the day. It was only at night that the sky opened to the larger universe, and sight was possible. Trent became most impatient at those hours just after the sun passed below the lip of the horizon. He would stare upward, watching the blue vault tremble and quiver, turning to deeper blue, then purple. Through the steadily thinning veil of reflected illusion, tiny pricks of light appeared, which multiplied like rice scattered on a mirror. The stars could grow in number endlessly, if you had the right telescope, or the conditions ideal. Light pollution, clouds, and even the blasted moon itself all interfered, making observation difficult. But daylight was infinitely worse. Nothing could be done in the day at all. Sighing, Trent scraped the mirror clean, and began from scratch, spreading stars with the wave of his hand. It was coolest in the kitchen, since it faced on the west side of the house. Thanks to some abundant ivy, and the proximity of the neighbors, direct sunlight could penetrate the kitchen window in only a small sliver of the day. Besides, that was where the beer was, so Paul gravitated toward it. David and Shelley, the house's only resident couple, were seated at the kitchen table, taking refuge there. David was a tall stick of a person, but seemed the most discomfited by the summer's heat. His shirt was stuck to his back, and his hair disheveled and somewhat stringy from sweat. He was drinking a tall glass of ice-water. His hand was fastened to the glass, which was now on the table, his arm slumped, as if anchored to the cool cylinder lest it slide off and onto the floor. In contrast, Shelley was bright-eyed and energetic. Wearing shorts and her bathing-suit top, she'd been involved trying to convince David to go with her to the beach. She was one of those slightly mad individuals who enjoyed nothing better than blistering heat. They looked up as Paul came into the room, and watched him walk purposefully to the fridge, open it, take another beer, and pop the top. He drank the first half of it in a single mammoth glug. David inquired of him, "Aren't you leaving for Carrie's?" Paul nodded, still drinking. David turned to Shelley, shaking his head, "I've never found beer very refreshing." She ignored him, lost in thought. "Paul, how's Trent?" Forced to stop guzzling long enough to respond, Paul answered, "He's all right. Goofing around with that rice and mirror, talking about stars as usual. Seemed okay, though." Glancing at his watch, he cursed under his breath, "Hey, I'd better go... I'll take this one for the road. Help yourself to the rest. See you guys later." Shelley waved, then turned back to David, "He's been very odd recently." "Paul? He's been drinking and driving as long as we've known him." "No, Trent. He's been really peculiar." "What are you talking about? He's always been odd. Spends all day sleeping, then goes up and looks through his telescope until the break of dawn." "No, it's different now. What's this rice and mirror stuff he's been doing lately? I'm worried about him. He was eccentric before," (David scoffed at the euphemism, but Shelley continued without pause) "but now, he seems to have taken one more step around the bend. It's been like that ever since he lost his job..." Coincidentally, Trent was just then thinking about the day that he lost his job. The office manager, a particularly calm and rational man by the name of Oliver Hines, had asked him in for a meeting. Despite the fact that he ran a boring and unimportant branch of a large mortgage conglomerate, Oliver dressed impeccably. This day was no exception, and Trent remembered Oliver's perfectly groomed hair, his starched collar, and his smooth clean suit, without even a single speck of lint. Oliver smiled, and began talking about a dream he'd had. Despite his calm and rational manner, Oliver had a fascination with dreams, something Trent could never understand. "Last night, I had a very peculiar dream. Would you like to hear about it?" Without waiting for a reply, Oliver broke into his story proper, "I was seated here in this office, just like now, except it was nighttime. In the dream, this didn't seem odd, nor did the fact that my chair was actually a large sow with a blue ribbon around its neck." Trent raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, "I remember smelling smoke, so I got off of my pig-chair, and went into the office. There I saw you, standing on top of your desk, holding a basket filled with the company's money. And you were burning it. You kept taking large stacks of my money, and lighting it on fire." Oliver steepled his fingers, and let his gaze settle on his employee. Trent, never knowing how to handle these little "confessions," cleared his throat, "Sir?" Oliver smiled lazily, and waved his hand, "And so, I'm going to have to let you go..." "Excuse me?" "I'm sorry, you've worked very well here, but a man must follow his subconscious signals. Dreams are allegorical. Full of symbols representing hidden emotional currents, unresolved dilemmas. This dream shows me that I must not really trust you. Perhaps there is a strong undercurrent of hostility between us. I think it would be best for both of us if you found employment elsewhere. You'll be given two weeks." "You're firing me because of a dream you had?" Trent was too shocked to put any feeling into the question. "That's right." Oliver reached forward to shake hands, "It's been great working with you, Trent, I'm sure you'll do well in any office environment. Good luck to you." And that was it. After making sure his backpack was firmly affixed, and all the flaps closed, Trent climbed up the ladder onto the roof. It was one of the highest buildings on campus, the only one which would work for his needs. Fortunately, one of the janitors was a class-mate and was easily convinced to open the locked door leading to the lower roof. Trent had explained that he wanted to do some sun-tanning. Aside from a raised eyebrow, Franklin, the janitor, hadn't been hard to convince. Now there was just this one ladder leading to the highest point on the building. It was a stunning view from the top. The ocean spread to the south like a great glittering blue cloth unrolled to the horizon. To the north were the bumpy green-swathed hills. Off to the southwest, a translucent section of fog was obscuring the land, but it was retreating steadily, vaporizing under the sun. Other than this rapidly vanishing fog, it was a perfectly clear morning, and already starting to get hot as hell. Trent opened the backpack, and carefully removed his towel and suntan oil. After spreading the towel, he began to disrobe. He stowed his clothing carefully away, then applied the oil liberally across his entire body, filling his nose with the smell of coconut. Laying back on the towel, Trent closed his eyes and tried to fall into a suitable state of repose. This was more difficult than he had expected, with the sun already shining upon his eyelids, creating spots on his vision. It was similar to what he had experienced with the mirror, but more relentless. Time passed slowly, and the sun began to feel like a hand upon his body, a strong palpable presence, pushing down on him. For a while, he wasn't sure if he could bear it, and he found himself becoming fidgety and uncomfortable. Soon, however, he became accustomed to the feeling, as the heat seeped into him like a drug. Without meaning to, he dozed off several times. Eventually, he stopped resisting, and drifted into deeper sleep. It was a heavy dreamless sleep, which left him drained and tired when he awoke. His eyes were caked with dried tears, and he could feel the sun more directly overhead. His skin was baked and sore. He felt like a miniature sun himself, as if the radiation he had absorbed was now spurting outward from his flesh in palpable heat-waves. Shifting onto his side, wiping the grime from his lashes, Trent opened his eyes, squinting against the uncompromising brightness. The entire landscape was faded and wan to his overexposed vision. He fumbled in the backpack, bringing out a small pile of incense and a bowl. He placed this near his left side, and lit the cubes, watching as the smoke rolled upward, filling the air with its pungent scent. He sat cross-legged over the bowl, and breathed its scent deeply, coughing at first, almost choking on the thick cloying smoke. His eyes began to water and sting, but he continued to breath as deeply and regularly as he could manage. A small smile crossed his face as a thought occurred to him, and he took a single ten-dollar bill from his wallet. This was all he had left from his final paycheck, cashed last week and quickly spent on bills. He rolled it into a tube, and added it to the bowl. With shaking fingers, he struck a match, and lit the money, letting its smoke join the incense. All the while he pondered the meaning of allegory and dreams. Light-headed, he reclined back onto the towel, closing his eyes once more. Like familiar friends, the spots danced on his eyelids, and he let his mind fall into calm. His skin was like an open-wound, burning and cooking under the merciless sun, no longer a hand pressed upon him, but a tightly clenched fist, slamming into every tortured cell on his exposed flesh. He focused upon this pain, upon the brightness above him, forcing his mind to concentrate beyond them. Time lost meaning, and Trent didn't know when he was awake, or when he slept. The world faded, and it seemed like cotton had been packed into his ears. There was only the heat of the sun, and the blinding brightness obscuring his vision, blocking him from the deeper void beyond. It was that brilliant curtain which he must rend, so true vision could be found. Befuddled, dehydrated, and delirious, Trent smiled as the spots under his eyelids whirled into an intricate dance, leaving black streaks behind themselves. He laughed as everything suddenly became clear, like a tolling bell ringing in his skull. The shrouds of day were ripped aside like flimsy curtains, the world inverted, and his vision fell into the deep blackness of space. Thousands of stars stretched outward from him, each distinct and clearer than ever before. His vision stretched to infinity. The deeper he looked, the more stars he saw, and their patterns were beautiful and breathtaking. He could see the glowing gasses of forming galaxies, the shattered remnants of exploded stars, and an infinite ever-increasing flow of tiny pinpoints of light, each a sun more massive than a thousand Earth's. He felt himself stretch out to meet the edge of the universe. Trent laughed and laughed until tears came streaking down his sun-burned cheeks, his eyes pressed tightly closed, his eyelids trembling. David and Shelley were in the front hall, just returned from a day at the beach. Despite himself, David felt happy and relaxed, having enjoyed the ocean more than he had expected. It had certainly been a sweltering day, though, and now the house felt cool by comparison. "Hey, I'm going to go grab one of those beers Paul left us--" David was interrupted when the front door was flung open. Trent leaned into the doorway, barely able to stand. He was visibly swaying, and his breath came in pants. There were little flecks of white to either side of his mouth. He was wearing only shorts and shoes, and his entire face, chest and legs were scarlet red. Multiple blisters could be seen along his cheeks, nose, chest, and shoulders. His backpack was gripped loosely in his right hand. Shelley yelled in surprise, rushing up to help him. A dreamy slow smile cracked his dry lips, and he whispered, "I've seen them. I've seen the stars, all of them." With that, he stumbled into the house, and dropped his backpack onto the floor. He collapsed into Shelley's arms. She could feel the heat radiating from him where her hands touched his bare skin. ----- My Life For by Psyche Riding, gently. Hot winds rising All around us in the night Just begun, barely even. My life for a fingernail moon And a handful of silk Hair blowing in my face. My life for this peace. Yeah, shove it in my pocket. Fairy tale of skin. The pale, fiery evensong Folding us in. Folding inside of us. My life for your darkness, wetness And a fingernail moon Silver, ebbing, flowing. Come into this cathedral. My life for this to come in to. ----- An Ode to Giants in the Sky by Murray Headroom Stars are lighting distant space Always in their proper place Turning broken dreams Against cosmic schemes Nothing that we can erase Like Atlas shrugging off the world Ignore the mystics at your door Voodoo idols on the floor Enemies are these he hurled Settling a cosmic score Instantly eternity Notices the comedy Offers golden chariot Unleash the curse to bury it Remember poor Iscariot He did not mean to dis Jesus Even though his last kiss freezes And turns his own heart to stone Roll away and life has flown Toward the stars but still unknown Sitting very near the throne As if justice were a value Never mind exactly how you Decide which victim you might sell to Selling vision case by case Orbiting a mortal race Ultimately casual Locked in vectors fragile Stars are lighting distant space ----- Take a Number by Luminary Coremaster I always wanted to own a farm. It'll never happen, of course. But I still would have liked it. The idea of raising crops and tending to animals, getting up and being part of an ecosystem, having a place to live. Stability. Hard work. Accomplishment. Want to know what I'm doing right now? This very minute? I'm calculating the chemical elements of a newly- discovered compound, an oil. I'm on my way to a shuttle bay to join 199 other Class 33 officers in the "excavation" (genocide is more like it) of a certain life form, from Planet 16943-B. It has been discovered under laboratory conditions that oil can be extracted from the animal. We will serve as supervisors to the 4000 Class 5 soldiers who will be rounding up the animals on the surface and loading them into the cargo hold. Personally, I think it's a waste. We've got more than enough oil supply, we're extracting it from 378 other planets in just this sector alone, it's pointless to extract such a minor amount from these poor creatures. Not that I'd ever tell anyone in the ship my sentiment; "loose lips get shot off," as they say. Besides, I've got enough to worry about for not finishing desert last night; a Class 47 officer wandered by in the mess hall, and accused me of treason. Now I've got three guards trailing me at all times, watching my every move. But because of my high rank, five bodyguards have been assigned to me for protection from the other three. I thought there may have been a mistake somewhere along the line. I went to a computer terminal and accessed the assignment records, and found out that a Class 20 officer (Class 20 serve as bodyguards to Class 30 and higher) noticed the guards constantly following me, figured it was an attempt on my life, and therefore took the appropriate safety measures. I'm surprised that he got the bodyguards out so quickly. Usually it takes 6-8 weeks for the application to be processed, before the guards are deployed. I guess the assassination attempt rate has gone down lately. I should check the Imperial Legion Internal Affairs Statistics Board when I get a chance. But I digress. So I'm almost at the shuttle, but I just realized that I forgot my Shuttle Authorization Pass. But it's in my quarters and that's too far away to go back at this point. Now I have to go to a nearby Form-O-Mat and get a Request For Temporary Shuttle Pass Form Form and submit it, and hopefully I'll get a Temporary Shuttle Pass Form before the shuttle leaves. I could be in serious trouble if I'm not on that shuttle upon departure. For one thing, I'll probably be shot for dodging duty, and subsequently treason. For another, I'll probably be put on SaniSeptic duty as punishment. There's a 50-credit service charge for applying for the Request Form, and another 40-credit charge for submitting it. I'll have to pay 45 credits for the Temporary Form, assuming of course that my Request Form is accepted and the Temporary Form is thereby granted. I waited four hours, and finally my request was granted. The form printed out of the cheap printer slot attached to the terminal. The ink on the flimsy paper was badly faded, but semi-readable. I then submitted the Request Form, and after about a half hour, a Temporary Shuttle Pass printed out in the same sickly manner. I wandered over to the turnstiles and waited for about 10 minutes until I was at the window. I produced various forms of identification and the Pass, and was granted entrance onto the shuttle. And so here I am. Sitting in the shuttle for the two-hour flight, until we hit the planet's surface and I can begin supervising a group of soldiers in their efforts of rounding up the animals. What good will it do me? What good will it do for the Imperial Legion? Probably nothing. But, hey, it's a living, as they used to say, before it was discovered that 87% of the Legion jobs are directly and indirectly cancer-causing. I wonder what it would be like to raise animals for their milk, instead of assimilating them for their various chemical fluids? Is the latter wrong while the former is acceptable? Is there a difference, when it really comes down to it? Who can say. And besides, I've got a team to supervise. ----- Astronomy by Dark Doctor X Astronomy Is where you look at stars, The same stars. They've been that way for a billion years, They'll stay that way for a billion more. People like looking at them, I'm not sure why. Maybe they think the universe will end, And they'll get to see it. ----- Walter One-Way by Luminary Coremaster & Charlotte Sometimes When I was young, I learned fast how to be old; I hung out at a diner. My father shipped cargo from system to system, and quite often he left me in the care of whomever he owed the biggest poker debt. A sort of living collateral. You wouldn't believe how many different galactic cultures contain guys named Vinnie, with shirts unbuttoned down to their navels, more than adequately exposing enough hair to clothe a small village. Of the alternate life forms who gathered at the galactic grease pits loving referred to as "Al's Eat & Gas," a few rose out of the grungy, wandering masses who caught my eye and stained my mind. Joey the Mass was an odd character. Blind in seven eyes, he had the hearing of a sentient sonar robot and the wit of an adobe brick. Although he couldn't see you, he could tell every move people made in the diner, and somehow managed to keep track of every single individual on the premises. I've never met a more effective bouncer. The diner was no place for children; I knew this because that's what people would tell me every day when they knocked me down and took my money. Many dangerous elements drank coffee in my home-away-from-noplace. Fried Billy Gater was an out-of-work, washed up bounty hunter who, for some reason, always ended up being hired by old ladies to find lost cats. Perhaps he was listed as a detective of some sort in the Galactic Directory. "Let your sensory digits do the translocation," if their three-foot hair on the commercials wasn't enough, the backup jingle was sure to reel you in. At any rate, one day Fried Billy came in, looking more frazzled than usual, and demanded a steaming hot cup of Joe. Melva, the waitress, said that they were fresh out, so he tried for a steaming hot cup of Melva instead, which produced even less fruitful results. He was banging his fist on the counter, and I, being a young naive kid, told him that if he kept that up, he'd break it, and wouldn't have a good-luck charm anymore. Well, he whipped out a pistol and turned around, only to stare at me as I stared down the barrel. "Son," he said, "Remember this, and remember it well. You can fight a battle of wits all your life, but I'm one man who's traded in his wits for a gun." "When I was young, people had respect, it was musical! The air was musical," the old man sighed wistfully, "even Jupiter's Red Eye was brighter." He cast me a defiant grimace, and tightened his grip on his corned beef sandwich. This was a crucial moment, it all hung in the balance now. "It's all a matter of perspective," he said eyeing his sandwich suspiciously. "See this corned beef? You SEE this corned beef?" His voice peaked and cracked like an adolescent lying to his mother. "Well, I can't." he spat, as he wadded up his napkin and shuffled away. "When I eat a bagel," one trucker elaborated to me, "I like to have cream cheese with it. That's the best application for cream cheese, in my opinion. I once heard that my grandmother, a dear old woman of 80 years old, likes to eat fruit jam and cream cheese on her bread. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the `classic' way to eat cream cheese and bagels." I never saw him again. "Go stay by that particular river," muttered the man over his bologna (or was it to his bologna?), "the one that isn't blue, the one you almost drown in, with lots of fish in it. You have to, and when you do, you might see that when you are some place else, there are still better places to be." They say he did drugs in the 60's, but he must have done more than drugs. And so I've unwrapped individually wrapped slices of cheese, and attempted in vain to press them together. And so I've made plastic fork forests; can you honestly say you haven't? ----- Haikus by Zeylan Here are some haikus written by the guy Zeylan for the magazine: The waistband snaps back And leaves a blistering welt; My pants are too tight. I am too old to push the tears outside my cheeks But I am trying. Sharp silver concept With seasons of angry mist. Flowery bullshit. On my car window the frost might scribble her name If it were colder I can never be quite as real as I had hoped The world might find me Clenching tight my sex Rapidly moving forward My juices explode. cities forget how it is to be dark inside But we remember memory is all we have. sun, wind, sand, and sea don't have even that and I remember eyes a little too narrow and how she would smile Why does my groin itch? I scratch and scratch, no relief. Do I have crotch crabs? Don't stare at my butt. How do I know you're not gay? I'm exit-only! Stealing from the store, Stuffing things in my pockets; Peanuts and some gum. There is nothing wrong with the form I have chosen Blame me for failing I stand on my lawn At the wrong time; I'm drowning! The sprinkler is on! cornflakes and some milk the light of the morning sun on the oak table At least my haikus Make some sort of sense when read, Unlike yours, which stink. When there is nothing that I need to cut away I can hear the wind when she slips away until she moves to go, I will hold on to her. small, delicate girl a full-grown woman outside a combination Comments on my work Mean so very much to me. Lick my nuts in praise. Sometimes, I have it. Like a hallucination, it blinds my vision. battle babylon end of our life together. It grows so cold now. her train is late. her last remaining hope with it. I haven't the heart. I look to the north waving farewell, I move on I find the best thing the spark is gone, but the love is pulling the weight from up off the floor. did I leave you with the empty feeling that I am having right now? He puts his heavy arm around me and lifts me This is my best friend. Ow! Something bit me! God damn these little spiders. Concentration gone. What the fucking hell? Am I losing my marbles? I must be on smack. A long time ago, In a land far, far away, Adam and Eve fucked. Celery is good, But the little stringy things Get stuck in my teeth. This is out of hand! Haikus will not stop themselves; I am going mad. april strings, soft sigh the woman solitary and alone for me forever moving there is only God for me when I look within Five! Seven! And five! Repeat the chant with me now! "Five! Seven! And five!" She is my mother. I do not remember her as she is right now. Fast and twangy bass and a lousy nasal voice. I don't like Primus! what have I become that I don't cry anymore when I ache inside? Turn off the TV Before I smash it to bits! Shopping channels suck! When the stars have drowned and the night has turned away there is still the sun Are you reading this? Something is wrong with you, man. Easily amused. Haikus are supposed To be about nature, right? Not just strict meter? I just had a thought... I forget what it was, now. I'm going to bed. Hand me my crack pipe; I must take another hit Before it wears off. wandering, my soul trapped within my body, held until surrender I was five years old. It's not easy to recall, but I remember. Hey, do you have it? Where the hell did I put it? I left it right here! her admonition the excuse that I needed to leave forever. That is all I have, There's no more room on the page for more of the same. ----- Old Shoes by Swagman Walking, the harbor tourist crowd watching feet, Too many to count, always in pairs, old feet, young feet. Noticing shoes, canvas, leather, plastic, Sneakers, moccasins, three-point flaps, strapped sandals, Birkenstocks, jelly kid shoes, waffle-soled boots, reef runners, Buffalo thongs, roller blades, open toes, open heels, bare skin, Legs, calves, shins. Everybody, everything moving, going Somewhere while my father is dying. Cool wind blowing along the harbor esplanade ruffles the water, Fracturing sunlight into crisp meteoric reflections of afar Over the water, distant mountains rise silently into the sky Timeless crooked skyline weaving unbroken design Of rock, of crag, of cliff, of rugged precipice, All the while erased by wind, dust, water. Wearing stone into sand, into streams, into the sea, As my father's life drains into space. My father's shoes, filled with the sand and dust of a lifetime, Broken down mountains of eternity mingling between his toes, History has worn out his feet, the spring is gone from his step. Now he walks slowly, if at all. Time, dust, water, moving like Shoes without feet, spirit without body, space without form, Movement without substance, on the blue ocean of time, his Groundswell rising, cresting, breaking. The tide, his life Ebbing. Nothing else to do, I watch feet. ----- Prayer1.Fun by Swagman Oh Heavenly Father, Creator of all that is seen and is unseen. In your infinite mercy, Bless this little corner of the cosmos we call home. Lead us to the wisdom to see in each other the spark of life the light of the dawn the beginnings of the new age of wholeness of being and completion of spirit, wholly love, wholly life, wholly present. Steeped in compassion and tender understanding of each other, though we look through the glass darkly for the moment. Grant us peace, love and grease for our automobile chassis. May our radios play without commercial interruption from 10 to 20,000 cycles-per-second in pure analog sound. May our guitars stay in perpetual concert tune. May our micro-wave ovens all break at once and we be forced to boil the water for our rice over the divine purity of an open gas flame. May Kellogg's Pop Tarts be removed from the market and little French bakeries spring forth in every neighborhood offering fresh croissants and pastries to please our tender gourmet sensibilities. May all the engines of all the airplanes all over the world cease to start and world travelers be forced, once again to take to the lanes of the sea. As always, Thanks for your attention Love & Kisses Your obedient Servant, Billy. ----- We Are Here to Heal You by Colin Campbell "We are here to heal you." The voice was loud enough to make the windows shake, but they didn't. Still, the noise woke up Mary Whitlow. It was just dawn, Mary saw, and she wondered if she'd dreamed it. She hadn't been sleeping very well since the accident that had killed her husband and hurt little Ricky so badly. "We are here to heal you," the voice shouted again. Mary heard Ricky say, "Mommy, what is it?" Ricky couldn't walk, and he couldn't see. It was a blessing that Ricky couldn't see himself in the mirror; four years after the accident he was still undergoing corrective and restorative surgery. Mary put on a robe and went outside to see where the sound was coming from. The voice came again, from above, "We are here to heal you," and she looked up and saw a huge sphere in the sky, ten times as wide as the full moon. It was a pearlescent white, except for two intersecting red stripes. One ran around the equator, the other from pole to pole. Mary stood speechless as the voice spoke again. "We are here to heal you." The sphere was moving across the sky toward the west, and she saw that her neighbors were standing in their yards staring up, too. But the dogs seemed unaware of the voice, and paid no attention to the sphere. "Mommy, what is it, what is it?" She heard Ricky yelling but she stayed and stared at the sphere. "We are here to heal you." The voice was not human, but it didn't sound machinelike, either. The sphere spoke three more times before passing out of view below the northwestern horizon. Mary stood in the silence. Then she heard the strangest sound: thousands of her neighbors in suburban Chicago shouting in amazement to their neighbors. In the still and quiet dawn, the roar of human babble was loud all around. "What was it? What was it?" Mary yelled to her neighbor, old Sam, who yelled the same thing back to her. She ran into the house and dialed 911, but she couldn't get a dial tone; the phone was dead in her hand. The TV had only the normal Saturday morning cartoons, and even CNN showed only Showbiz This Week. She turned on the radio and a local station leaped into life. "--so please hang up your phones, the system is overloaded. I went to the roof of the radio station when I heard it, and I saw the same thing as you, folks, a big white sphere with a red cross on it. 'We are here to heal you.' I brought a tape recorder but the voice didn't record, I couldn't get any reading on it on the vu-meter. Now here's the funny thing--the janitor was there on the roof with me, and he insisted the sphere spoke in Spanish." A few minutes later the sphere was seen approaching Minneapolis/St. Paul. By this time a full network alert was in progress and when the white sphere came into view on the southeastern horizon, the TV cameras of WMSP were aimed and ready, and the news crews heard (and everybody else in Minneapolis/St. Paul heard) the same message: "We are here to heal you." The flat voice produced no flicker on the sound man's meters, and viewers on network feed didn't hear a thing. But the cameras clearly showed the inexorable passage of the white sphere. And the cameras showed the thousands of people streaming outside to look up at the sky, for the sphere's voice dominated all human activity. Surgeons rushed away from their incisions, lovers broke their embrace, all who were physically capable to do so went out to look up. The story drove all other programming off the airwaves. Mary cooked breakfast and watched the coverage on CNN. By the time the sphere had spread its message over Montana and North Dakota, astronomers were able to determine that the sphere was ten miles in diameter and was in a low-earth 90-minute polar orbit, passing over the north pole and south pole on each orbit. The Pentagon was on alert, because polar orbits are of military concern: they cover the entire surface of the earth. "We are here to heal you." The voice bathed Edmonton with its thunder and proceeded northwest across the tundra. The westward motion was an illusion caused by the turning of the earth under it; the sphere remained over the sunrise line, orbiting from pole to pole. Later it was determined that the message was heard in a swath 15 degrees wide on the face of the Earth under the sphere. The sphere's voice was heard in the native language of each human in the path. The sphere spoke in Ojibwa, Inuit and Aleut. As the sphere passed the North Pole and began streaking across the ice cap toward Moscow and Kiev, a flight of missiles rose from Russian silos and pummeled into the sphere and exploded with huge bursts of light in the twilight sky of eastern Europe. U.S. surveillance satellites showed breathtaking video coverage as Mary was vacuuming the house--she wanted to take advantage of the unexpected day off to get some housework done. The sphere continued to call out, "We are here to heal you," and the H-bombs left not a mark on the sphere's surface. Down through Yugoslavia, past Rome, across the Mediterranean, over Tunisia and down through the jungles of Mali and Guinea and Nigeria, speaking the message every sixty seconds. The sphere dominated all human activity when it was heard. Then the sphere was across the south Atlantic, and there were few people to hear the message. Except for the island dwellers of Tristan de Cunha and South Georgia, three commercial container boats, and a few isolated bases in Antarctica, the sphere's path didn't cross inhabited land again until it was rising north over the Gulf of California. By that time the sphere was being tracked by ultra-fast United States intelligence planes. As the sphere approached the U.S. border, the President appeared on TV and told Mary about the threat, and promised that the intruding sphere would now be removed. Ground-based cameras showed the launching of hundreds of missiles, but unlike the Russian barrage, not one U.S. nuke exploded. The President had no further word that day for his fellow Americans. Almost every person on Earth heard the message with his own ears within two days: "We are here to heal you." Mary happened to be in the path where the message was first heard; over the next couple of days the sphere passed over Chicago three more times, and she heard the voice each time, twice at sunset and once again at dawn: WE ARE HERE TO HEAL YOU. Then the voice stopped. The sphere was still orbiting overhead, but the voice had stopped. And people began stirring out again as the world revived after 48 hours of paralysis. Humanity waited, wondering, hoping, talking about the sphere in hushed terms. The Christians claimed it as a sign from God because of the pattern, the two red stripes which met to form a kind of a cross. In the United States, it was an election year and every candidate attempted to give the impression that the Appearance was due to that candidate's dedication and commitment to the welfare and progress of the nation. That is, unless he blasted the Appearance as another ploy by the opposition. Many attempts were made to communicate with the Sphere, and much was made of the fact that the existence of the sphere demonstrated the existence of a far larger intellectual community in the universe, a community moved by compassion to aid humanity. Yet why would they not communicate? Then the voice returned with a new message: "The treatment has begun." This time the voice was accompanied by a diffuse pink ray that bathed the surface of the Earth directly under the sphere's orbit. And under that pink ray, people began to heal. In Florida, the family sitting vigil at the deathbed of Enrique delRey, their patriarch, saw a rosy flush return to his cheeks despite his hopelessly advanced case of congestive heart failure. In Rwanda, suppurating sores covering the legs of 5-year-old M'shing Ktuma began to close. In Chicago, Ricky Whitlow flexed his legs and stood up, and Mary wept with joy. But then Ricky opened his eyes and was able to see in the mirror the hideous thing that was himself, and Ricky wept. It was unlike anything that had happened in the three and a half billion year history of life on Earth. Amputees felt a strange itchiness in their stumps, and limbs began to regenerate. Quadriplegics began wriggling their toes and fingers, testing long-unused muscles. For two days the pink healing rays bathed the Earth; then the rays flickered out and the voice ceased, but the healing continued. The Sphere swung silently in its orbit while humans began a new life. The rays were not all-powerful. Some people were already in their death throes when the rays began, and those who had massive blood loss from severed arteries or internal injuries could not be saved. But all others were saved. Even the elderly found a return of vigor, a new spring in their movements. Toothless folk worldwide felt stirrings of new molars and incisors in their jaws. The Sphere could not cure famine: despite the healing rays, a human body would run down and die in a couple of months without food. But it cured deformity and injury as well as disease, and Mary Whitlow was pleased to see Ricky's scars fading, replaced by normal tissue. She should have been very happy, and she was, at least about Ricky. But she lost her job as a receptionist at the medical testing lab within a week after the Appearance. Overnight a recession had begun, a recession that did not end. Life insurance companies vanished in the blink of an eye, along with hospitals and mortuaries. The economy of the industrialized world depended on death and it tripped and fell face first when death and sickness were ended. Battles broke out around the world as various faiths proclaimed the Appearance of the Sphere as the confirmation of their own particular deity's power, an omen of the return of their messiah, and rejected the argument of the despicable infidels that it was a manifestation of their own god. Iran and Iraq poured new resources into their war, the Steppes ran red with blood, south Africa exploded into destruction. Soldiers became more and more reckless, knowing that any injury short of total obliteration was certain to heal. The death toll was enormous. It wasn't for several months that another effect of the Sphere's rays became evident: no woman in the world had become pregnant since the healing began. No other animals seemed to be affected--monkeys and marmots and parrots and perch all reproduced as usual as the weeks and months went by. Only the human race appeared to be affected, and most nations ignored the problem. There were enough problems in the world; six billion people seemed more than enough, and the lack of babies was a blessing, especially since the old folks no longer were dying. Some people praised the Sphere for its foresight. "All humans are immortal now," they said, "and we shall populate the Earth until the final days, and it is only fitting that no more join us, for we would overfill the Earth." Fat melted off the bodies of the obese as the rays of the Sphere apparently tinkered with the individual's metabolism rate. Even genetic defects were repaired, and every human's body mutated toward the optimum configuration. There was enough trouble finding enough food to feed the oldsters who refused to die, who refused to allow the next generation to take over. After two years a cult of ancestor-killing began in Asia. In Russia the Appearance was explained as a natural outgrowth of the theories of Marx and Lenin, and as a slap in the face to the capitalist imperialists, for it granted equal health to all. Unfortunately it also sparked in each peasant's breast an unwillingness to spend eternity shackled to the Soviet machine; they took the Appearance to mean a commandment to return to the old village ways. Troops were dispatched to control them. In America the borders were now guarded by miles of barbed wire and machine gun posts. There would be no equality of materialism here, no matter if there were equality of health. The economy sagged even further as the years began to pass and the diaper business, the children's clothing business, and the school system vanished. The Sphere became a curse as the factories ground to a halt, the wandering hordes of the unemployed began to get more and more unruly-- after all, nobody could really get hurt--and the cities shrank into themselves, armed camps against the seething starving masses. In the Third World, more and more people were being killed as huge armies of immortals marched and swarmed and looted. The ancient generals knew that plague is the true enemy of the large army, and for the modern generals there no longer were plagues of dysentery or cholera; even the wounds of the footsoldier were no longer fatal. Usually. Twenty years after the Appearance there was an uprising among the youth in every developed country. They were the final ones, the last ones to join society, the last ones to have to pay the dues, to pass the tests, to suffer the hazing of their elders, and they would never have a younger generation to get even with. They rioted and demolished cities all over the world. There was discontent among the middle aged, also, because their elders had not passed the reins of control down--they kept them, and were not getting older, but instead more active. As time passed all people no matter how old were returning to the vigor and appearance of the middle 20s. The Sphere continued to orbit as the decades peeled away. People gradually became accustomed to their immortality; more and more of them in the industrialized nations were becoming cautious, afraid to go outside or to take any kind of chance for fear of being killed. But in the developed nations a new resurgence began. The intelligent and the creative maintained their equilibrium while society was dissolving. New discoveries flew around the infonet as vast new resources became available with the decline of population pressure in the Third World, and as the abandoned slums of the cities decayed into the biosphere. For the population was dwindling rapidly. There still were four and a half billion people, but that meant a billion and a half immortals had died in only 25 years. The fitful little atomic wars had stopped--Argentina had obliterated Chile, for instance, for reasons known best to itself and based on an obscure point of Catholic theology, and Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran had engaged in a merry dust-up of nuke-tipped missiles because each felt the other was undeserving of eternal life. The Mideast was now a desert of glass. After a hundred years the essential skills were beginning to leak away from the race. The cities gradually fragmented and withered away as commerce died; people became content to live closer to the Earth, to raise their own food and eat it--for there was no longer an organized system of trade in the United States, let alone the rest of the world. A hundred years after the Appearance there were still two billion people left on Earth, living in the best health in history. Living long lives of contentment? Apparently not. Suicide was becoming a fashion--throw a big party and kill yourself at the end. There no longer seemed a point to life. The ecology of the Earth changed as people gradually became less and less common. The acreage in cultivation dwindled and natural forest and grassland moved in. The herds of domestic animals became smaller--animals are unpredictable and dangerous--as people became less and less anxious to expose themselves to dangerous situations. A rage against technology spread around the earth, a rumbling subconscious belief that the Sphere was brought by meddling with machines and science, and the rabble worldwide stormed the surviving cities and sacked them, killing all who seemed to have technical knowledge, all who seemed to think they knew something more than the proletariat. Communications broke down. The change in ecological structure caused violent extremes in weather patterns, and by 150 years after the Appearance humans survived mostly in huddled tents in small enclaves; perhaps five hundred million still lived. The numbers dwindled inexorably. Each day there were accidents, each day there were feuds, and as the weather worsened, there were more deaths from starvation, from freezing, from drowning and exhaustion, and there were fewer and fewer people of learning left, and there were no young to re-learn. For a century the survivors muttered along, cooking their scanty daily meals, occasionally succumbing to cannibalism, but the numbers still dropped, a hundred million, twenty million, six hundred thousand, a hundred and twenty thousand, fifty eight thousand, twelve thousand... Twelve thousand. Some remained in towns, but the result over the years was murder and theft. When there were only 600 people left, they were all hermits with sizable food caches; but those caches eventually ran out. Mary Whitlow cackled to herself about her situation--enough food stocked in for a century, a million videocassettes, all the power she needed (from a vast solar array), and enough liquor to float a battleship. She was sitting alone, watching videos, drinking vodka, thinking about poor lost Ricky, and she had to go to the bathroom. On the way back to her chair she stumbled drunkenly and fell and hit her head on the corner of the coffee table. It didn't hurt much, but when she got up she noticed she was bleeding from her scalp. Sigh. She pressed a paper towel to her head and sat down and watched the movie. She poured another glass of vodka and by the time she finished it, she noticed the paper towel was soaked with blood. Sigh. She went to the linen closet and got a bath towel, then picked up another bottle of vodka from the pantry. She sat back down and blearily watched the movie, refilling her glass every fifteen minutes. Around one in the morning she passed out and the blood-soaked towel slipped off her head. Her blood, thinned by the alcohol, failed to clot, and she bled to death before dawn. The last human was dead. Moments later the Sphere stirred in its orbit and spoke for the first time in three hundred years, speaking this time in a language that caused all animals on earth to look into the sky; even the bacteria and the plants seemed to stir as it spoke: "The treatment is complete. Your infection is healed." The sphere orbited two more days covering the Earth with this message, and then vanished from the sky. ----- SUBMISSION INFORMATION Swagazine originated within the online community in Santa Barbara at a now defunct BBS we knew as Swagland. The personalities who graced our electronic medium shared messages of such considerable talent that we decided to pool our efforts, take on the world, and start a magazine of our own. Now, several years later, the BBS world has migrated to the Internet and so has our publication. While it is still our intent to spotlight local talent from the Santa Barbara area, we will consider submissions from anyone, anywhere. If you would like to submit your poetry, prose or artwork to the next edition of the Swagazine, we would enjoy the opportunity to review it for consideration. Guidelines for Submission Issues are usually published twice a year (Winter and Summer), depending on the number of quality submissions and the editor's workload. There is no limitation on style, content or subject matter. We accept individual poems or several poems to be displayed seperately or together, letters (serious, silly or literary), short prose, essays concerning matters of interest to writers, or anything that's just good to read. Writing and self-expression should be fun, and we appreciate work that reflects this in its execution. If it was created honestly and makes the reader feel glad they took the time to read it, we want it. We desire to print only previously unpublished work. Any submissions which are concurrently submitted elsewhere will not be considered for publication. We expect that if we confirm acceptance of your work, it will not be withdrawn in favor of another publication at a later date. If you publish your accepted work elsewhere, we do ask that you site Swagazine as the first place of publication. Submissions of poetry and prose should be in standard ASCII format as part of the message body -- attachments in alternate word-processor formats will be sent to the bottom of the consideration pile. Artwork submissions should be in GIF or JPG format for easy display on the web site. Please limit image files to 20k-40k in size. Please include with your submissions a short (2-3 sentences) biographical description of yourself which may be printed in the same issue as your work. You may list any other publications which have showcased your talent. If you have a small scanned photo of yourself that you would like included with your bio, please submit it in GIF or JPG format. Please send your submissions, questions or comments in e-mail to submissions@swagazine.com. We will make every effort to respond to you promptly. Any comments we receive regarding an your work will be forwarded to you, unless we receive notice from you asking us to not do so. Copyright Statement and Disclaimer Submission of material does not guarantee publication. Any author whose work is accepted for any particular issue grants Swagazine the right to use the work for the issue of our choosing, as well as one-time rights to publication with the option of reprinting the accepted work in a hard-copy anthology issue. All works published in Swagazine are copyrighted one time only, and online publication counts as use of First North American Serial Rights. All contributors maintain full rights to any of their works presented in the Swagazine. No portion of Swagazine or any work published in in its pages may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the creator of the content and notification of the Swagazine editor. This includes the graphics and design elements of the website itself. Ordering Information Swagazine is an online publication first and foremost, but every so often we do get around to the printed version. For complete details on how you can obtain a paperback copy of this issue, please visit our ordering page at http://www.swagazine.com/ordering.html on the World Wide Web. ----- SWAGAZINE #1. http://www.swagazine.com/issue1/ Copyright © 1994 Lip Think Press, All rights reserved. "This Gilligan Must Die" Copyright © 1994 Wrong Element Entertainment. JAMES DEAN TM/Copyright 1996 the James Dean Foundation. All Rights Reserved. JAMES DEAN(TM) is a trademark of the James Dean Foundation. Licensed by CMG Worldwide, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana 46256.