Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
“I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!”

—Jane Kenyon, “Having it Out with Melancholy”

A flash-length journey through a maze of erstwhile humanity.

Once, men and women gained the power to become legends. But legend eventually became history, and now, history is becoming archaeology.

These here in the Zoo of Allah are the ones who never reverted back to their former, fully human bodies, and they have born the social stigma that came with it ever since, and it drove them here, six stories down where they gathered together for sympathetic companionship. Why did they never choose to change? The answers vary greatly or often go entirely unexpressed. Many are mentally ill, some merely ashamed, some too poor and some too proud. Some feel such an act would be pointless, they have chosen their fate with their bodies and they stubbornly await death from drugs or parasites, hoof and mouth disease, tuberculosis of Shenk’s Syndrome, from the violence which proliferates in the tunnels of New York’s underbelly.

A disaffected young woman sets out on the trail of a mysterious society, the keepers of a labyrinth somewhere in Honolulu. She’s about ninety percent certain this labyrinth is just a symbol with no special power over the pathways of time and space, but a gnawing uncertainty drives her to find out for sure.

“But I’m going to see those labyrinths, honey,” I said. Going to David’s softball games—I shuddered as I suppressed a yawn on behalf of the universe.

Saturday I called Renee, a friend once prettier than me who had, through an unfortunate haircut and more than twenty pounds, made herself comfortable on the less-attractive side of adult womanhood by way of cheese cakes, ice creams, plate lunches and flavored coffee drinks. While I grew my hair out and went jogging three times a week, Renee developed her body to better withstand another ice age, accumulating, along the way, the white gold rings and bracelets that would inevitably accompany her in her sarcophagus. But she still had an enthusiasm for adventure, most of which was reserved for popular fiction along the lines of the Knights Templar, Apocalypse conspiracy theories, and anything relating to the imagery of the The Da Vinci Code. No more skinny-dipping with mainland boys for her, no driving through the Wilson tunnel on acid, no growing pot in the closet. She now read bad novels and went to restaurants with her boyfriend.

Two demigods are trapped alone together in a cosmic penal colony, where their only hope for the future is to give birth to a new race. But don’t worry, nobody turns out to be named “Adam” or “Eve”; I’m not going to leave you hanging in suspense about that for the whole story. Just relax, reading is supposed to be fun!

“Do you know how long it will take this world to renew itself?” Taunting, malicious, he said it over and over, trying to break her open, to tempt her into throwing herself from the top of some concrete wreck and become another ghost to be swallowed. “Millions of years. Do you know how many lifetimes that is?” Then he would say it, over and over, and she would find it in herself to keep from trying to kill him.

Over eons their relationship changed. She knew what he had expected when he first arrived: A bleeding heart who would renounce her cause after a few thousand years of loneliness, watching the Ikisat swarm and feed on the remains of humanity and its fear until there were no ruins or traces left behind, no ghosts or lingering memory. The great worms, erasing existence, consumed all and left no sign of former presence, returning the world they infested to a wasteland of rock and iron.

He had expected her ideals to implode.

First published in French in 1984, this is a story about a ragtag clan of travelers with only a meat corridor separating them from starvation and madness.

Along the path of the slug the carpet was burnt. It was secreting, apparently, some kind of acid. The exposed concrete slowly boiled along the final centimeters of the path.

“Take it, Paul. Since it’s only a hallucination, you’re safe. Take it and throw it in the fire!” Eb screamed these last words.

Continuing to smile, Paul bent over and grabbed the beast. Then he went slowly over to the fireplace. He dropped the viscous mass in the flames. It squirmed around for a minute, then a greenish cloud exploded and a dreadful stench of mildew invaded the room. Paul turned around, still smiling. He took a few hesitant steps and then fell onto the ground, right in front of Eb.

His right hand was covered in blood.

Teen Success is one of those creepy religious tracts that well-meaning schizophrenic people spam-submit to every webzine they can find. I figure if I give them a little money and attention they’ll leave me alone. No, just kidding, it’s a science fiction story about a kid who lives in a big dome. Imagine a Harlan Ellison story except more abrasive, and you’ll be halfway there.

Primo’s mother was a handome, matronly woman, heading towards fifty. From anywhere in Room One, she could access him by screen. Once, when Primo’s morning erections had started, he had asked his mother if he could have an off-command for the screen. She frostily requested why he needed to cut off a simple connection from his own mother. And that was that.

Tell me if this has ever happened to you. You’re sitting around reading about some breakthrough in biochemistry or quantum mechanics in some relatively geeky publication like the New York Times or Wired and you’re sort of congratulating yourself for being the sort of person who cares about these issues, but then you get to the end of the article and you realize you haven’t been reading about the scientific discovery at all, but only about the people who made the discovery. And then you have to face up to what a dilettante you really are. Just think, there must be people out there who hear about technical issues only through the popular press, who are under the impression that there’s no fundamental difference between astronomy and psychology and accounting and architecture: that they’re all basically about people. What a mundane world they must live in!

We had come to this planet seeking answers to the largest mystery ever to grace Alliance space—why did the Old Empire simply disappear, leaving civilization scattered across myriad planets, floundering unconnected? It had taken thousands of years for sentients of the Imperial body type to find their way back to space, where the old jump points were still deserted but functional, waiting for passengers to shunt across the galaxy.

Labyrinth Inhabitant has brought you stories where global calamity forces humanity to retreat into an Apocalabyrinth. There have even been ecological Apocalabyrinth tales. But this will be our first entry in the Christian eco-Apocalabyrinth genre.

Swag visited all four gardens in his wanderings, hoping against his better judgment to find some comfort in these places; each was named for a river near the mythic Garden of Eden. Hope was vain; nothing brought respite from his guilt.

Michelle, however, marveled at the sight. Both UV and lamp light flowed from the emitters above and below, feeding the carefully balanced ecosystem. The bulbs chased away any chance of darkness while the airtight, geodesic dome kept the atmosphere secure. The layout enabled machines to harvest oxygen emitted by the verdant flora.

“So…Swag?” Michelle hollered.

Unlike most of the complex, this place wasn’t quiet. The rattling of industrial air recyclers rang out. On the far side, compressor units shuddered under deafening noise.

“Folks named me Jimmy after a relative, a preacher. I don’t have much use for religion, so going by Swag always made it easy to avoid unpleasant conversations.”

In the shops along the spacewalk whole worlds were for sale, but you had to inspect the merchandise very carefully, or you’d be given one with severe flaws.

“The word in the shopping center is that this woman is some kind of time gypsy,” Flan explains. “She can construct worlds out of putty—duplicate planets!—puppeteer and imitate ancient races, and become a living, breathing part of them. She can even physically cross time streams!”

“She sounds like your run-of-the-mill historian. The Cat’s Eye is littered with them.”

Flan shakes his head, annoyed. “She’s not just an historian.”