Uncanny Magazine Issue 33 by Lynne M. Thomas

Author:Lynne M. Thomas [Uncanny Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, magazine
Publisher: Uncanny Magazine
Published: 2020-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

L. Tu was born in China and now lives on the US east coast.

Georgie in the Sun

by Natalia Theodoridou

2448

He’s thinking of changing his name again.

His name was first Vlad, but he’s been going by George since the early 22nd century. He would have changed it to something else a long time ago—that’s what he’d been doing every twenty years or so, for centuries—but Eliza liked it, so he kept it.

In two years, she will come out of stasis again. Maybe he’ll bring it up then. Maybe they can come up with a name she likes together.

He fixes himself a drink (one part synthetic blood powder, two parts water) and puts on some music. Turns the volume right up. The Țepeș echoes with the sounds of the Beatles for days.

Outside, Alpha Pegasi rotates rapidly, its light nothing like the Sun.

2449

One year to go until Eliza wakes up. He performs maintenance on the ship, the way she taught him. He misses her, thinks of her eyes, her voice, her blood. His teeth hurt.

He sits at his gaming console and boots up his favorite retro parser. 8-bit graphics, green-on-black text, bad writing. In the game, he is a knight in shining armor. A prince.

George knew how to be a prince, once.

The cursor blinks at him.

You traverse the dark forest. In the distance, you see the fabled castle where the Princess sleeps, its turrets gleaming in the light of the full moon.

The moon is always full, George knows.

Riding your mighty white stallion, you come to a fork in the path. You can only see a few meters in either direction. The path to your left seems well-trodden. The one to your right is overgrown with thorny branches.

George has played this game a thousand times already. Maybe more times.

>Go left.

You go left. You are attacked by a pack of wolves.

You die a horrible death.

He imagines the wolves’ canines until he can remember the taste of fresh blood. Hunger desiccates his veins.

He thinks of names to distract himself.

Philotheos. Too old-fashioned. Mark. Too apostle. Larry. No. Just no.

Andreas?

He plays the name around in his mouth, rolling his R’s.

Maybe Andreas. Andreas is a good name.

Very slowly, he traverses the span of the Țepeș, wondering how to bring it up.

2450

He sets the controls to REVIVE and lets Eliza’s stasis machine do the rest. He never understood exactly how the machine works, no matter how many times she explained, so he makes sure to follow her instructions to the letter.

He puts on her favorite shirt, the black button-down with the mandarin collar. He spent a month ironing out every crease, then ironing it again. He always thought it made his bloodless skin look bloodless-er, but she said it brought out his eyes. Besides, she liked him pale.

When she emerges from the chamber, George feels the way he felt the first time they met, when she tripped on her way out of that club in Soho and he smelled her from two blocks away and reached out and caught her so fast that car alarms went off in a two-mile radius.

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