Promise by Christi Nogle

Author:Christi Nogle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: weird fiction; flame tree press; fantasy; future fiction; escapepod; Ray Bradbury; Bram Stoker Awards
Publisher: Flame Tree Publishing
Published: 2023-07-11T10:30:38+00:00

Fables of the Future

You might have found one of The Seer’s books in a stack of fancy hardcovers they used to have by the registers at big bookstores. Fables of the Future read as a science fiction book, though a decidedly strange one. Below the title, three collegial-looking figures walked hand in hand. Only the center one was human. The one on the right was a big, jaunty barrel-chested robot not unlike the Tin Woodsman. The green one on the left, was it supposed to be an alien, a ghost, maybe a deer or a goat with its suggestion of horns? Certainly aliens, talking animals, and ghosts were all represented in these stories, which read much like Aesop’s Fables. Some even shared morals with Aesop such as ‘United we stand, divided we fall’, while others bore more futuristic messages: ‘Never let a machine become your governor’, ‘A robot’s first loyalty is to itself’.

Fables was my favorite work of the medium and prophet we knew as The Seer. My parents and I had collected at least two copies of every one of The Seer’s books: Fables, An Account of My Time at the Cabin, The Yellow Backpack, One Out of Many, and all the rest.

My parents were devout. I suppose I was too as a child. Our studies were always a secret. To the uninitiated, The Seer was only a writer – a famous one, a household name, but just an ordinary human for all of that. Some may have wondered what, exactly, was she famous for. You couldn’t quite say she was a science fiction writer, a mystery writer, or whatnot. Her books were all different, as though written by different hands, and of course that was the thing: she was channeling others. All the time, at every moment, she was hearing thousands of voices telling their stories. She saw through the eyes of those living, those dead, and those yet to be born.

We averted our eyes if she was interviewed on television and avoided speaking her name. We spoke carefully, even at home. Maybe we thought the house was bugged. More likely, we thought The Seer eavesdropped, that we were among the thousands of voices she heard.

My earliest bedtime stories were of The Seer hearing her daughter’s call from a hundred miles away, a time she found she could scent like a bloodhound, a time her eyes lit up in darkness like a cat’s. I’ve forgotten what The Seer needed to hear and see so clearly, but I always kept the image of her cat’s eyes.

Well, I saw those eyes myself, later. That’s why I remember them.

* * *

My parents cheated before the split, Mom with an initiate and Dad with a secular person. These new spouses were kind, but instead of burrowing into one of the new families, I focused outward. I became popular at school.

At Dad’s, if he got me alone, he might make some veiled reference to The Seer, but it was mostly just nostalgia.

Mom’s new house was only a place for me to rush through after school.

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