Age of Blight. Kristine Ong Muslim

      

      “Who do you think of when you think of unique voices? Kelly Link, Margo Lanagan, Aimee Bender—major voices in contemporary fantasy. Add a new name—full of oddities and dark bittersweet ironies—to slide up on that shelf: Kristine Ong Muslim.”

      — SF Site

      The Unnamed Press

      P.O. Box 411272

      Los Angeles, CA 90041

      Published in North America by The Unnamed Press.

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Copyright 2016 © Kristine Ong Muslim

      ISBN: 978-1-939419-66-8

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2015957350

      This book is distributed by Publishers Group West

      Cover art by Alessandra Hogan

      Design & typesetting by Jaya Nicely

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected].

      CONTENTS

A Note on the Places in this Book

I. ANIMALS

Leviathan

The Wire Mother

The Ghost of Laika Encounters a Satellite

II. CHILDREN

      No Little Bobos

      The Playground

      Those Almost Perfect Hands

      Jude & the Moonman

      Dominic & Dominic

      III. INSTEAD OF HUMAN

      There’s No Relief as Wondrous as Seeing Yourself Intact

      Pet

      Zombie Sister

      Beautiful Curse

      IV. THE AGE OF BLIGHT

      Day of the Builders

      The Quarantine Tank

      The First Ocean

      History of the World

       Acknowledgements

       A Note on the Places in this Book

      You may observe that certain places recur through the stories in this book. Such places are also visited in my other books. Know that these locations are not completely made up—they may exist or could have existed under different names somewhere on this planet and in this lifetime.

      Bardenstan is a suburb. In 2115, something will happen that will put Bardenstan on the map. It will be known throughout history as the site closest to the epicenter of the fallout. Outerbridge, on the other hand, remains the only part of America where plants are still grown in soil.

      At the junction of the two main highways that lead to Bardenstan and Outerbridge is a nine-story apartment building called Station Tower. The nine stories correspond to the nine circles of Hell where Virgil once guided Dante. There’s only a cursory mention of Station Tower in this book but nevertheless, it helps to know what Station Tower looks like in case you happen to visit it in real life. Last week, someone had spray-painted GOD LIVES HERE on the front-facing wall of Station Tower. The dayshift doorman, Tim Shenkel, promptly cleaned it up. I am telling you all this because it is possible you reside in a part of the world where (or live in a particular time period when) the spray-painted GOD LIVES HERE remains visible.

      At the ground floor of Station Tower, there’s a time loop. Break the glass housing of the third fire extinguisher to the left hallway. You’ll find the time loop behind the fire extinguisher. It will appear to most people as a window. Our lives, as well as those of our ancestors and descendants, are elaborate mythologies that intertwine and sometimes get entangled. There’s a purpose to this life. It is even possible that some of us will find our purpose in Station Tower.

      Beyond Bardenstan, Outerbridge, and their junction, there exists an island. You will recognize this island by its lighthouse. And if you stand on top of the hammer-shaped rock in that island and look toward the direction of the lighthouse, you will see a ghost. There, by the third-story window, you can make out the figure of a man in a dark-colored jacket. He appears dark haired, of slim build, about six-feet tall. You can easily estimate his height off the lighthouse window’s dimensions and approximate distance between the window frame and the floor of the lighthouse. He appears here at roughly the same time every day. Sometimes, he shows up around one p.m., sometimes around two. Then he disappears at four p.m. and returns the next afternoon. Nobody knows who he is. Nobody knows what he is, what he wants, why he stays, why he comes back. On this island, there’s also a body swept to the shore. The body belongs to a child who disappeared eleven years ago. When the child’s body is found eleven years later, it is still wearing the same clothes as the day of her disappearance and hasn’t aged one bit.

      All these places are familiar, and you may have been in some of them—or all of them. And if they don’t seem familiar, it is likely you aren’t paying much attention.

       I. ANIMALS

       Leviathan

      It was the day the ancient sea beast finally reached your shore and died there. Unable to resurrect your sole prize after trawling the ocean floor for eighteen years, you secretly wired a pair of artificial gills inside it. And how the makeshift gills hissed telltale breathing at the rate of two intakes per minute! How the cameramen captured the triumphant moment when you presented the creature long believed to have become extinct during the Silurian Period. The cameramen filmed you as you supervised the lowering of your fine catch into a temperature-regulated water tank. They cheered when you gloated, “I told you I was going to get the sucker.”

      Inside your rented ship, your floundering engineers hastily cleaned up your diamond-studded drill bit free of sediments, free of whatever it was that you managed to dredge up while scouring the primeval ocean floor. They said nothing about the sea beast that followed the ship home. They said nothing about how brilliant you were to think of enticing it with a low-frequency sound generator pinging at 9Hz to conform to its assumed directional ear and to account for the sound propagation rate, which was approximately four times faster