Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 4, July 2014 by Alex Hernandez George S. Walker Eleanor R. Wood Robert Quinlivan Peter Medeiros Hannah Goodwin R. Leigh Hennig Page B
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influential experience with written science fiction was as a kid, when he checked out a collection of Isaac Asimov’s short stories from the public library and immediately connected with the author’s immigrant story. Perhaps because of that, the themes of migration or colonization and post humanism permeate his stories, which usually blend the subgenres of space opera and biopunk. His work has previously been published by Bean Books, The Colored Lens , and Interstellar Fiction .
Forever Lights
Peter Medeiros
Dr. Lorena Hannish was good at a lot of things: theoretical physics, applied thermodynamics, advanced calculus, and the accordion. She was good at these naturally, almost without practice. "Practice," she said, "can help hone your talents, but it won't upset natural inclinations. You can't tell that to a bunch of MIT undergrads, but there you are."
When Dr. Hannish was a girl, her father insisted she play soccer. She seemed to grow less coordinated every season until a busted knee in sixth grade ended her father's athletic ambitions for her, and made sure she would never again miss an episode of NOVA . She told me the one thing she practiced, foolishly, was getting her husband, the late Dr. Clifford Hannish, to shut up and let her do the talking. She practiced for years, and with no improvement.
Dr. Hannish told me all this without turning from the passenger side window, though there was nothing to see but the glow of streetlamps in the distance. She paused, then added, "So what do you think?" The doctor asked questions aggressively.
I told her my dad said I could be anything I wanted, with enough practice. I told her my seventh grade basketball team won states.
"What do you want to be right now?" she asked. "The chauffer of a grouchy Nobel laureate, the 'Ice Queen of Clean Energy'? You want to be an underpaid driver freezing his ass off getting an old bat to a power station the middle of nowhere?"
I said, "Ma'am, what I want to be is asleep."
Dr. Hannish laughed and coughed and finally settled down in her seat and I could tell we wouldn't talk any more all the way to Wiscasset.
I had not expected to see Dr. Lorena Hannish again. After her husband died, she sold off the beach house in Castine, Maine and told me straight off that she would end her days in the Florida home. Clifford died chasing one of their dogs into a snowstorm. She had watched him hobble after the mutt, stood in the doorway for twenty minutes, then went inside and dialed 911 and told them he was dead. Then she called me to get her to the hospital, because she didn't want to ride in the back of any ambulance and she wanted to stop for coffee on the way. This was nine o'clock at night. In this part of Maine, the Starbucks closes at eight.
People asked me if she saw her husband's ghost, when it happened. If anybody could, they reasoned, it would be her. I told them what Lorena Hannish always told me: "There's no such thing as ghosts." And when they started to protest, when they said that Dr. Hannish's work had more or less proven the existence of life or something after death, I'd add, as she always did, "Just because there's smoke, doesn't mean there's a gun."
But she'd called me yesterday. First time I heard her voice in the year since Cliff's death. Now I was driving her from the airport to the Spiritual Residue Plant in Wiscasset. We passed beneath streetlamps that would never go out. She held a small black box in her lap, and a set of thick fuzzy headphones. I'll admit, I was curious. To the best of anyone's knowledge, Dr. Hannish and her husband hadn't so much as published an article in Scientific Monthly since they invented the SR turbines that solved our energy problems and stopped the oil wars. Or as some people said, since they'd saved the world.
#
I used to be a mall cop in South Portland, but nobody every pulled a gun on me until I started driving for the Hannishes. This was right after they bought the beach
Forever Lights
Peter Medeiros
Dr. Lorena Hannish was good at a lot of things: theoretical physics, applied thermodynamics, advanced calculus, and the accordion. She was good at these naturally, almost without practice. "Practice," she said, "can help hone your talents, but it won't upset natural inclinations. You can't tell that to a bunch of MIT undergrads, but there you are."
When Dr. Hannish was a girl, her father insisted she play soccer. She seemed to grow less coordinated every season until a busted knee in sixth grade ended her father's athletic ambitions for her, and made sure she would never again miss an episode of NOVA . She told me the one thing she practiced, foolishly, was getting her husband, the late Dr. Clifford Hannish, to shut up and let her do the talking. She practiced for years, and with no improvement.
Dr. Hannish told me all this without turning from the passenger side window, though there was nothing to see but the glow of streetlamps in the distance. She paused, then added, "So what do you think?" The doctor asked questions aggressively.
I told her my dad said I could be anything I wanted, with enough practice. I told her my seventh grade basketball team won states.
"What do you want to be right now?" she asked. "The chauffer of a grouchy Nobel laureate, the 'Ice Queen of Clean Energy'? You want to be an underpaid driver freezing his ass off getting an old bat to a power station the middle of nowhere?"
I said, "Ma'am, what I want to be is asleep."
Dr. Hannish laughed and coughed and finally settled down in her seat and I could tell we wouldn't talk any more all the way to Wiscasset.
I had not expected to see Dr. Lorena Hannish again. After her husband died, she sold off the beach house in Castine, Maine and told me straight off that she would end her days in the Florida home. Clifford died chasing one of their dogs into a snowstorm. She had watched him hobble after the mutt, stood in the doorway for twenty minutes, then went inside and dialed 911 and told them he was dead. Then she called me to get her to the hospital, because she didn't want to ride in the back of any ambulance and she wanted to stop for coffee on the way. This was nine o'clock at night. In this part of Maine, the Starbucks closes at eight.
People asked me if she saw her husband's ghost, when it happened. If anybody could, they reasoned, it would be her. I told them what Lorena Hannish always told me: "There's no such thing as ghosts." And when they started to protest, when they said that Dr. Hannish's work had more or less proven the existence of life or something after death, I'd add, as she always did, "Just because there's smoke, doesn't mean there's a gun."
But she'd called me yesterday. First time I heard her voice in the year since Cliff's death. Now I was driving her from the airport to the Spiritual Residue Plant in Wiscasset. We passed beneath streetlamps that would never go out. She held a small black box in her lap, and a set of thick fuzzy headphones. I'll admit, I was curious. To the best of anyone's knowledge, Dr. Hannish and her husband hadn't so much as published an article in Scientific Monthly since they invented the SR turbines that solved our energy problems and stopped the oil wars. Or as some people said, since they'd saved the world.
#
I used to be a mall cop in South Portland, but nobody every pulled a gun on me until I started driving for the Hannishes. This was right after they bought the beach
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