Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 202 by Neil Clarke

Author:Neil Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, Science Fiction And Fantasy, science fiction magazine, short fiction, short stories
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2023-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

About the Author

Risa Wolf is a multi-gendered water elemental disguised as an ink-stained lycanthrope. (Don’t tell their spouse or their dogs; the disguise is working.) They come from the Burned-Over District and every so often it shows. They imagine houses for book-ghosts for a living, and their writing can be found in Apex, Cossmass Infinities, and Cast of Wonders.

Timelock

Davian Aw

It’s been hours, but it’s still dawn, and you’re sick of the timelock your next-door neighbor insists on running for every party these days. Across the lawn, their house lies silent in the golden-black mist of early sun, colored streamers blowing idly from tree branches, an assortment of party junk scattered upon the grass amongst the comatose forms of yesterday’s guests.

The gate is open. You walk in. The bodies might be dead, blissed-out looks on their faces from whatever cocktail of drugs gets passed around at these things. You could rob this place clean, and no one would know; except of course they would know, for yours is the only house too close to theirs to escape the timelock, and you’re the only one who would have been able to get in.

You should have been at work long ago. Yet it’ll be a long time more before these wake, and by then your morning alertness would have slipped away into the torpor of your afternoon, and with it would be gone the diligently rehearsed points for that meeting you had been stressing over all month. You could nap, but then you might miss the unpause and miss the meeting altogether, and right then you hate your neighbor and the casual way they shrug off your complaints, too intoxicated with the magic of holding time still.

They couldn’t care less about your circadian rhythm.

You drop down on the grass with a sigh. The quiet is stunning. The temptation—to rest, to be in this stillness, forever—tugs at your mind. Why not, after all; why not stay in this moment, in the many moments between the seconds, and dally with immortality for as long as you need?

You can see the dome of the timelock extend high across the sky and down right before the far end of your house. That was another complaint, the way it cut off right where the kitchen sink was, and that whenever your neighbor turned this on you would have no access to that sink for the whole duration. You’d arrive home tired and ready for a quiet night with a cozy home-cooked dinner before settling in with a book, only to see the familiar golden sheen ripple into place, the temporal membrane nudging your hands gently (but very firmly) away from the taps and into the embrace of the timelock bubble separating you from your colander of freshly washed spinach.

You’re grateful, at least, for the way the membrane identified living organic material and kept you from the worse nightmare of having part of your body in motion and the rest stuck in time. It left you instead with the

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