Apex Magazine - Issue 4 by Apex Publications

Author:Apex Publications
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: peter m ball, jc hay, apex publications, apex book company, apex magazine, jason sizemore, paul jessup, alethea kontis

Peter M. Ball is a writer from Brisbane, Australia, whose work has previously appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons and Apex Magazine. His unicorn-noir novella, Horn, was published earlier this year by Twelfth Planet Press and he can be found online at petermball.com.

Ghost Technology from the Sun

Paul Jessup

Master told us that the earth was hollow, and that we lived on the inside of it, clinging to the top of the crust. Below us was another world, a world inside the world, a glowing bright sun of a place. What Master called the summerlands. That is where the dead live, he said. That is how we can talk to them, he said. They send us signals across the air, and the mediums pick them up and drink them in.

And when the words came in, we had to speak them. We cannot deny the dead our voices–the dead would be angry if we did. And nobody wanted the angry dead to fly their zeppelins up from the sun and attack us crust dwellers.

That wouldn’t do anyone any good.

Master knew this because he is an ambassador to the land of the dead. At night he walked through the door of the dead, and it beamed his body down above us, into the summer sun inside of the earth. That is where he talked to them, worked out trade between our two peoples.

The dead have a lot to offer the living.

He came back with schematics.

Ways of building circuit boards.

Ghost technology from the sun.

* * * *

I remember when Ma first drank in the voices of the dead and talked with the tongue of paper and fire. We’d only been here a week or so and I was frightened of what was going to happen, having heard stories of horror from different members of the God’s Foot Spiritualists. I kicked and screamed, refusing to go with her into the lodge, refusing to let her destroy herself for religion.

Eventually I gave in.

They took us into the Dead Man’s Tongue. This was a lodge built for dead drinking. It had no windows and was covered in paintings of ghosts and the summerlands. It was lit entirely by the Master’s halo, blue light bouncing off of the walls and illuminating the circle of faces in an eerie chilled light.

I remember clearly the shadow chanting and the fingers moving and the feet pounding out that rhythm. Ra-tat-tat. Ra-tat-tat. A hum of sounds: ah-m-m-m-ah. Ah-m-m-m-ah. The air thickened, and we could hear a clear barrage of whispers. Like everything started whispering around us, the trees, the lodge, the stars and the sun. Everything had a voice, and everything spoke in hushed tones.

Mother rolled her eyes back in her head, the marble white of her corneas reflecting the cities in the sun. Her mouth opened wide and out came fire and words and long streams of paper snakes. She danced and spat and spoke, she revealed her breasts and screamed. The chosen inscribers jotted down everything she said into small red-and-black notebooks.

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