The Januaryist

Flatlands

Adeline noticed the slip of the ring as she sipped her tea and watched the daybreak’s brilliant crest across the eastern mountains.

A headache and nosebleed after her morning stretch confirmed all suspicions.

She knew she’d have most of the day to prepare — she’d already seen this progression in a mother and a grandmother, so she finished the dishes, tidied the kitchen, took out the last of the garbage and recycling and called Mr. Henry about the dog.

“It’s time then?”

“Yes. I’m sure this time.”

“I’ll be over in a half-hour. Can you wait that long?”

“Of course. Just come in when you get here.”

She put on a pot of tea (Mr. Henry liked the Oolong), arranged a few biscuits on a plate, then sat down to stroke Marvy’s silky ears. The collie yawned and slumped heavily against her leg.

Addie had already taken some pills for the pain, but she felt the pressure building, and noticed her vision blur and refocus from time to time.

The sky was clear and bright, but Mr. Harvey arrived in galoshes, as always. Marvy greeted him with joyful eyes and an unabashed display of squirming.

“You should let me give you a ride out there.”

“I can still drive.”

“Of course, but if you let me give you a lift, Marvy and I can spend a little more time in your company. You’ll have plenty of time to be alone, right? And then we don’t have to get your car towed back.”

They paid the state park entry and arrived at the broad field by noon. Mr Henry and Marvy ate the picnic lunch Addie packed, but she just sipped tea from the thermos.

Marvy ran along the length and width of the clearing while Mr. Henry and Addie scouted out a suitable spot in the center. He cleared out the rocks. She moved aside the brush.

By two, the pressure precluded conversation. Mr Henry settled Addie on her blanket, helped her take the last of her pills, kissed her goodbye, and whistled for Marvy.

The sound of the truck rumbling out of range. The sound of an overhead plane. The birds of the field. The insects in the grass. Addie’s internal voice silenced. She heard only the sound of breath and blood as the change began in earnest.

By four, her body had flattened across the field. By six, it stretched miles wide.

As the last light slipped away in the west, the sky shifted from tangerine to raspberry and plum. The expansive plane stretched to its thinnest, widest reach, then broke apart in the twilight.

A Hundred Angry Men

At the market in the plaza, the devout man hissed at his neighbor, “Your god is a womanizer, a thief and a liar.”

The neighbor spat back, “Oh, yes? Your god is weak and conniving. Your god walks on his belly.”

Another man chimed in, “You’re both under a spell. My god is the strongest and wisest. Yours pale before the fury and power of my god.”

“That can’t be so,” claimed a fourth. “My god has promised eternal life to me and mine. No god of yours could match that claim.”

“Blasphemers!” cried the fifth man. “There is no god before my god, yours are false idols with black heads of dark magic.”

A sixth piped in, “Your gods are toys in the eyes of mine, the god of sky and cloud and thunder, god of sea and flood and cyclone.”

Before long, a hundred men were barking and frothing in the square, each single-minded in condemnation of 99 false gods.

A hundred men began a bloodbath that lasted three years, bleeding the countryside of fruit, the houses of laughter, the families of sons.

When the cries turned to epic battle, god before god, power for power, a hundred men cried in unison, sacrificing goats, pigs, children, wives, virgins and bundles of dried herbs to the glory of their deities.

A roar deafened every eardrum within 20 miles of the plaza. A white-blue flash left a hundred men temporarily blind.

They rolled like insects upturned on the plaza, skin stinging, hair singed, mouths dry, lips cracked, and when their sight returned, they looked upon a single being with a hundred heads.

Each man looked into the shining face of his own god, linked to the detested faces of 99 false idols, and the power of the light crumpled a hundred wretched men.

Origin Story

Oscar Petersen observed the full-length mirror, eyes wandering across waves of flesh that harbored around his stomach, a hairstyle that recalled the early ’80s (not in a good way), a set of yellowed teeth, flaking ruddy skin and sunken eyes behind thick glasses.

“No more,” he told the reflection. “It’s time. This is the year of transformation.”

He dragged four boxes of cash from beneath the sofa: one red, two orange, one silver with black. Between these four plastic tool kits he looked across his departed mother’s life savings.

Such an archaic way to live, he thought. Who deals in paper anymore?

He lifted weathered stacks of hundreds bound with rotting rubber bands. But then again, money is money, he thought, and money is my ticket to a new life.

Money for eye surgery. Money for face lifts. Money for tummy tucks and veneers and hair. Money for elocution lessons.

He ditched his deadend job and his layabout friends. He started an internet fast. He began going to networking events and introducing himself as Oz Peters.

Cash payments brought strange looks from cashiers, but that just gave Oz more practice in working on the program of nonchalance he was cultivating at the insistence of his life coach.

Within six months, three of four cash boxes were depleted and Oz was a new man. He set empties out at the curb, slipped the plastic back into his wallet, and downloaded all the latest software and applications for his phone and tablet.

To celebrate the new and improved man, Oz began booking a flight to Bermuda, but the search engine redirected over and over to Spokane, the vacation destination Oscar had favored. When he tried to force a search for Bermuda, the software threw an error and locked him out entirely.

At their customer service number, he sat on hold for 45 minutes through forking paths of data input and visitor options. When he located a human, she chirped a greeting and asked if he needed help booking his flight to Spokane.

“No, I said BER-MU-DA, not Spokane,” Oz explained, visioning James Earl Jones and filling his voice with firm patience and mellow tones.

“Hold please,” said the agent.

A knock came at the door. Oz answered, phone in hand, and met two uniformed agents.

“This is 1260 Meadowlark, Apartment C?”

Oz nodded and pointed to the phone. “I’m on hold. What is this about?”“

“Please surrender your devices, credit and identification cards and come with us, sir. We’ve been called in to conduct an identity investigation.”

He felt his patience (and charm) eroding. “I’m on hold. Who the hell are you people?”

“Please give us the phone and come out to the van, sir.”

“Let go of my arm. I’m not going to a van.”

“Just do the scans here, Jerry. I’ll read him the code. Sir, you are under identity investigation based on code 25894B of the US identity protection act of 2026.”

The taller one pulled a device from his pocket and zapped Oz in the eyes. He winced and stumbled, gripping the door frame for balance.

“Our records indicate you agreed to the identity protection procedures on January 24, 2015”

“I did not agree…”

“The agreement was bundled into the terms of GLife, which our records indicate you accepted on January 24, 2015.”

“He scans, Mitch.”

“Okay, very sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Petersen….sorry… Mr. Peters. Please place your left thumbprint here in this scanpad and we’ll be on our way.”

Oz squinted at them for a long moment, evaluated the scanpad and reluctantly placed his thumb in the square.

“And Mr. Peters, we do recommend that major life transformations be conducted through official channels. Use your credit cards. Conduct your information-gathering online. Update your social media. When you help the software adjust to your new preferences, it’s just easier for everyone.”

As the agents turned to leave, the woman at the other end of the phone line cut into the hold music. “I can help you book that flight to Bermuda now, Mr. Peters.”

“No,” he said. “No more.”

Oz ended the call and turned off the phone. He extracted the chip, which he snapped in half and tossed away. Snatching his duffel bag and the last toolbox, he started his battered Volvo and disappeared from the grid.

Flotsam and Moonsong

The planetoids of the Sarkasian Belt floated tantalizingly between Jove and Cano. Called The Onokkos by the Onokki (and, quite often, something else entirely by the Joven and the Canese), the largest Onokko planetoids had little more than a thin atmosphere, a hearty, self-sufficient population and a passion for the arts and the difficult trade of flotsam netting and refining.

Wisely, the Onokki fishermen (as flotsam netters tended to be called), realized their diminutive stature in the universe and took pains to greet both their Joven and Canese peers with good cheer, generosity and friendly trade.

In fact, for hundreds of cycles, the Onokki were so successful in this regard, the mighty planets on either side of the Sarkasian Belt both looked on the Onokkos as their own trusted brethren — sprightly little siblings among the rocks of the belt — and they protected the funny, oblate planetoids from invasion by the even larger, more alien forces at large in the vacuum of space.

But of course, while the Onokki cultivated their hundred joyful arts, performed their 20-hour musicals of moonpraise and built lovely and distinctive retail goods out of reclaimed flotsam, their neighbors were busy plotting empires.

Jove was smaller (and more aggressive) than Cano, a behemoth planet with 12 moons. Cano had size and biomass, but Jove was full of valuable metals that became the foundation of specialty weapons and ultra-fast vehicles. Before long, The Onokkos Planetoids were caught between an angry rock and a roiling mass of biofury.

Jove discovered the tributes paid by Onokki to Cano, and retaliated by annexing the entire Sarkasian Belt. Battered by harsh Joven dictates, the Onokki sent pleading emissaries to the Canese capital city. Cano turned a cold shoulder. They, too, were bitter that the Onokki had failed to offer complete and total deference.

Over the Hundred Cycle War, the Onokki saw their beloved planetoids covered in military bases, their strange and lovely moonsong banned, their sculptural arts outlawed. While Jove and Cano alternately neglected and campaigned across them, the Onokki stood the abuse with decorum, whispered secrets among themselves and quietly, precisely saved every platinum cygnette they could gather.

A routine Joven patrol was the first to suspect something was wrong. After landing to refuel, the pilots found the lights were on, but there was no one at the filling station. Or the yamhouse. Or the syrup farm. No one.

A team of tribute collectors from Cano City confirmed the rumor that danced on the soundparts of Joven and Canese alike. Every living soul had silently slipped away from The Onokkos, sapping all the grace, beauty and song from the Sigma 12 district.

Jove and Cano fought on several cycles more, but the once the Sarkasian Belt went dark, it was clear their venom was at an ebb.

On the eve of the long night system, the Cano City propagandists made much of the newly formed carbonate orchestra. Their debut began as the sun set with “Howl of the Solar Flare.”

The Canese listened attentively and nodded to praise the glorious effort. In several generations, the symphony would certainly be acknowledged as a Canese masterwork.

But for now, everyone recognized it as a thinly veiled copy of the Onokki “Mooncycle Omega,” forever lost to time and darkness, and it made each of them look up to the milky swirl of the empty Sarkasian Belt and feel a little colder.

The Magic Eraser

Blixco conceived of the Minimatic as a solution for industrial clients. The device facilitated large-scale waste disposal, and it did that one thing better than anything else on the market.

So initially, no one at Blixco even considered other uses or audiences.

The Minimatic was bulky, slow, heavy, energy consumptive and relatively difficult to operate, but if you had an enormous pile of waste (particularly problematic waste, like a pile of radioactive building materials, for example), there was just no substitute. The Minimatic reduced one ton of waste to one pound of inert ash in less than 60 days.

That might seem like a long time now, but back in the day, that was impressive performance.

Keep in mind, the Minimatic was introduced at a time when radioactive waste was a big issue. The Americans were burying it on native reservation land. The Italians were selling it to the mafia, who were dumping it out in the sea off Somalia. Who knows what the hell the Russians were doing with theirs. In the first years after its introduction, the Minimatic solved all that for everyone. Poof. Magic.

But I see the books on your shelf, the posters on your walls. You’re both a student of history and fan of sci-fi. You can’t help but see where this is going, right?

Yeah, so the Minimatic was almost too good at what it did. The machines lasted forever, so parts, maintenance and replacement weren’t a viable business. All they could do was innovate.

And you know what that means: smaller, lighter, faster, more efficient. After industrial and military, the next market was commercial. Every business had waste issues.

Then talk turned to residential use. And you know what happened after that. The end of garbage collection. A whole industry down the tubes, so to speak. Who knew the Minimatic would be a disruptor? Blixco sure never saw it coming. But then, they weren’t as smart as you, were they?

So when you hacked into our system and discovered our little handheld prototype, what were your first thoughts, cookie? Did you think about how we’d be at your door in less than 30 minutes, faster than pizza delivery?

Did you know you’d be one of the first people to see this thing in real life? No? Well, It’s quite a privilege, I’ve gotta say. Historic moment. This kind of thing can’t help but snowball, and you’re Mr. Right Place, Right Time.

Looks like a one of those old sci-fi ray guns, doesn’t it? Makes me think of Star Trek. You ever watch that show? No? Too young, I guess. Well, you missed out.

So yeah, in case you’re wondering, we haven’t had the pleasure of taking this baby for a whirl with a live body yet. I’ve seen it on cadavers, so I’ve got a pretty good hunch.

Don’t look so worried, cookie. This baby is a thousand times faster than that old thing sitting in your kitchen. In less than ten seconds, you’re gonna be famous.