In preface, Tim writes to me:
These stories did not start formally as a response to those questions per se, or how Mr. Wolfe formulated them. The stories grew out of motivations long lost to memory. The nature of the Wolfe questions, however, were certainly somewhere in the air. What if something new came along? What if it gets better? What if those two got together? It got me to thinking...
There's a subcurrent to the questions, of course: they imply a before state. To have something new, you have to have something old to compare it to, a reference or context point to make the new, new. The same for better. There had to be a before, not so good. Not necessarily bad, but something that could be improved on. The last question--bringing them together--is, for me, the function that gives science fiction its form. New, better, brought together. (Quick aside: worse is possible, as well. A whole host of 'look what your damn science did' canon exists, continues to pull from the well. Dystopia and apocalyptic genres can be science fiction, at least for me.) Interestingly, Wolfe does not appear to be suggesting that all three questions be present in every story. He cites three different stories for each question. It may be that all three examples do in some way address the three questions, but I don't see in your small passage that it is necessarily a condition. As I write this, I wonder if 'new' might be a necessary condition for any science fiction story. I'm not sure of that. Maybe.
But to return. "A picture of You," I think, has all three of the Wolfe call-response elements. Something new has come along, a gate that leads to another world and seemingly grants a "better" condition for the people who pass through it. The 'brought together' element is the finding of the gate and the subsequent interaction with said gate, contextualized by space travel, advanced instrumentation, and a fundamental condition that all of this might be explained (with time and enough knowledge) rationally. That is to say, though the gifts are beyond the characters' present day experience, they do not appear to be from a supernatural force, which would, for me, suggest fantasy. The gate is an unknown and highly advanced form of technology, but one that could in time be reproduced or at least understood by human minds/inventors.
I will say this. I had a dream-like image of the world the gate led to in my mind long before the actual story events formulated. I didn't put that world in the final version. It seemed to me that the story was richer for the absence, not the other way around. Some things should only be pointed to, not named. The gate, the gifts, the click of the glass world they landed on--these were named, and in naming I both limited and enabled the thing named. You have to have the fish trap to catch the fish, after all. A bit of scienticity-trap is necessary, I think, to make science fiction science fiction, though I have no way of defending how, when, or why.
But it was there, vague and morphous and informing everything I did, even before the blood spill, even before I knew my answers to my own questions. Something new, something better (or was it?), brought together, and the trappings caught the fish I was looking for.
A Picture of You
By Timothy Vincent
Originally published in Beautiful Lies, Painful Truths LHP Anthology vol 1, Karen T Newman, Ed. 2017
Something is wrong; the floor has fallen. That can’t be right. A hand (I assume it is mine) twitches and flops like a fish in front of my face. The hand is on the floor, my face is on the floor. And now there is this ominous, crimson cloud spilling along my right eye line.
Something is wrong.
It occurs to me that I am the one who has fallen. It occurs to me that this is my blood running so red along the floor. It occurs to me that I am dying.
I close my eyes against the fallen floor, against the blood running red. I recall instead the pictures. I remember the pictures because they are a clue. I recall the pictures and lay them out like a mental solitaire in my mind.
Because something is—and was—very, very wrong.
The first picture is a family portrait. We were a family of sorts; companions in exploration, fellow travelers to distant, unknown spaces of space. There were six of us. There was Kan, Nonce, Z'beth, myself, you, and Carl, and we tripped the black hole-fantastic, sending out our Hoërding-line and releasing it again almost simultaneously, playing with those impossible forces to slingshot our ship into distant spaces again, and again. In the first picture, we stand as a family, side by side, all of us with various expressions of hope, confidence, and determination. The camera took that picture.
The next picture is a landscape. In the frame, a panorama of impossibly smooth black and green marble, an improbable planet surface stretching to the farthest horizon. We laughed to hear our footsteps echo like a busy billiard hall, we grimaced at our warped reflections beneath our feet. I took this picture.
I also took one of the Gate. TheGate. An arch of colored sunset, twelve feet in height and six across. We knew fear to look on that strange rainbow of empty space, but I took the picture just the same.
The rest are individual portraits, each recalling personalities and events.
The first is Kan, who is always first in everything. Kan, first to step on the improbable surface of the marble planet; Kan, first to venture the Gate. Bright, fiery, Kan, captain of the Titan. Handsome, strong, Kan, who knew no fear in his ionic-suit, and who I see now in his portrait standing like a statue made of moonlit water, strolling boldly to the Gate with his mag-spear perched on one shoulder, his gloved hand reaching forth. I took that picture, as well. I took it just before he touched the Gate.
But I took no pictures afterward, after that fateful touch. I left unrecorded his ruined form, kept alive only by the ship’s medical tanks and some perversity of will that still resided deep within that charred surface, or of his wasted remaining limbs, all two of them. Nor did I photograph his ruined face, once so handsome. I took no pictures of that Kan.
Fittingly, the next picture is of Carl, the dog. We all liked Carl, but it was clear that Kan was his favorite. Domesticated and enhanced by the best our science and ethics would allow, Carl was nevertheless still a dog, and in the picture, he sits under Kan’s hand, his tongue rolling out of his massive jaws and an empty expression in his eyes. Carl was inconsolable after Kan’s accident. For days, he sat by the medical tanks refusing to leave his master’s side, refusing to eat or drink. We finally had to drag him from the medical room. He disappeared the same night.
We looked for him of course, and where after all could he hide on a planet of glass? But he was gone, vanished into thin air. Of course, we considered the Gate. But there was no sign of his remains, not even a pile of ash. Nonce wondered if they had been blown away, but no wind roamed that heartless surface and I thought this unlikely.
We considered then, for the first time, going home. We had lost our dog and no one was anxious to study or even approach the Gate again. Kan was crippled, but Nonce thought he could manage the ship on his own.
And then Carl returned.
I took a picture of that as well. It is an intriguing subject. Intriguing, because Carl stands alone—and the expression on his face is not unlike my own: reflective, pensive, curious. It was Nonce who first noticed that Carl no longer looked away when you tried to hold his eye with your own. It was Z’beth who said he was somehow more…aware.
We wondered then what might lie beyond the Gate, for we were certain that Carl had somehow passed through and returned. And while the rest of us argued the risks and possibilities, Z’beth did what each of us wanted to do but were too afraid to try: she passed through. She simply walked under the arch. There one moment, gone the next. When she did not return, we worried.
The next picture, fittingly, is of a couple, standing close, but not touching. Nonce was Z’beth's betrothed. He had argued against her going through the Gate. She did not listen. As time passed, and she did not return, he could not be dissuaded from following after her. He too passed through, and he, too, did not return.
I was chosen to bring them back. In truth, I volunteered. I was expendable: an aged ship’s doctor; a humanist with nothing left to lose. You, of course approved, but why wouldn’t you? That’s how things were. I don’t have a picture of us as a couple, not on that planet, not after all that time.
So, I went through the Gate in search of Nonce and his betrothed, Z’beth. To everyone's surprise—including my own—I brought them back. Somehow in that non-Euclidean world of tri-colored perspective and impossible panorama, I found them. I took pictures of the world beyond the Gate, but everything came back overexposed. Our personal recollections were little better, none of us quite understanding or finding the right words to describe what we experienced.
We did have something to show for our journey, however. Nonce lost an eye somewhere along the way—and Z’beth found something. She never gave it a name. From the start, we all knew the creature was on levels far beyond names.
It was small, the impossible thing Z’beth brought from the other side. She would often hold it in her lap, stroking it lightly with her fingertips. To look at the thing was to see a living paradox: form without permanence, motion at rest, colors awash in negative perspective.
And it could talk…in a sense. It became clear that it could sense our wonder, our curiosity, our recent pain, and our need. It told us so…in a sense. And by the same empathic language, we knew it could do something about it. The impossible being from the impossible planet had gifts to give.
This was the good time, the wondrous time, and there are many, many pictures that fall one after the other now in my broken solitaire of memory.
Overnight, Kan was healed and made whole in mind and body.
Nonce's lost eye was replaced. Now he bore a strange diamond-like artifice which made of horizons, mere doorstops, distance, a myth. He would entertain us with the details of the moons’ surfaces or the colors of our respective undergarments. Nonce could now see everything, anywhere—everything, but his own end.
Carl, our dog, who was not so much our dog now, suddenly had the gift of limited speech.
To Z’beth, who was closest in many ways to the impossible-gift-giving thing, was given the power of true empathy. I remember at the time, I thought this the most fitting of gifts. For Z'beth had once been kind to me and defended me as I stumbled in my arrogance and presumption in front of you. She had come to my side and asked you to understand and forgive my foolishness—and, you did.
Like Nonce’s eyes, Z’beth’s gift took a recognizable form. Above her head now hung a cloud full of storm or fleece, shifting as fast as thought. It was a reflection of her or (when she chose to) another’s every emotion. It was a majestic gift. A gift that gave in return. For it is a wonder to know someone truly understands you on the most intimate of levels. Z’beth, who once was kind to me, had that gift.
To you, my long-time companion, it gave beauty again. Gone suddenly were the ravages of time, gone the curvature of decaying bone, gone the cataracts, gone the wrinkled lines and accidents of biology and experience. Beauty, pure and complete, was yours again.
And to me, your companion? To me, it gave a gift to match your splendor, to complement your return to beauty. I was given youth-reborn. The vine once withered and useless, was made strong again and resilient. Youth was my gift. Words cannot describe my emotions.
Which leads to another unlooked-for picture, to the final, unexpected, gift, a consequence of the others. A small miracle of sorts among the larger examples. For a time, we were happy again. You and I, beauty and youth reborn, find ourselves smiling in sudden wonder as old feelings were renewed, old passions rekindled.
Again, words fail.
But pictures there are a plenty. You, in your beauty, figure in many. One in particular turns over now before me…
It is of Kan, strong Kan, fiery Kan, looking at you in your new beauty. Caught, despite himself, despite our friendship, caught looking with more than admiration. I remember I laughed at the time. For I was young. Young, young, again, a thousand times young. More than that, I was youth coupled with wisdom. And Kan, fierce Kan, noble Kan, handsome Kan, heard my laugh and looked on in surprise and wonder. For I dismissed his trespass with wise-humility, humble-wisdom.
And what price for all these new gifts, this new-found happiness? For there is always a price.
It was a simple thing, a fitting thing. The impossible being from an impossible world required only one thing in return for all its bounty: pure, untarnished affection. Nonce speculated it was a byproduct of its empathetic nature, but the reasons didn’t matter. We paid the price gladly. Were we not happy in our new-found glories?
So came the days of wine and song, and what matter Time’s ever passing pendulum? Where you not beauty incarnate? Was I not youth reborn, eternal? Were we not happy with each other? I even managed to put down my camera for a time.
And then, and then, and then…
I found the picture in your drawer as I looked for a brush. I needed the brush because in my youth, my hair was again thick and full, and I had long since thrown all mine away. I found the picture, this last picture of you, where you hid it under your cosmetics. Cosmetics you no longer needed, in your renewed perfect beauty. I found this last picture there.
I did not take the picture. Some other eye captured this moment in time, this scene of frozen infinity.
In this, the final picture, you lay reclined in your most fragile-open self, and your slip, like its name, carelessly falls from your shoulder. Your hand, childlike, but not so childlike, covers one bare breast. Is it an invitation, a secret offering, an unspoken desire, that it covers? My hand shook to hold the image and the question-promise in your eyes.
I put the picture back, of course. I told no one.
I wasn't laughing now. Far from it. With wisdom born patience I nursed my hatred and plotted my revenge. I resolved to expose the one who took that picture, the one who knew your most intimate expressions and desires, to expose them and make them pay.
That night as I sat by the fire I drank more than my usual. We were all gathered as was our custom, and Z’beth held the strange creature in her lap as the cloud above her head burned in soft red and gold, a physical representation of our communal worth and goodwill. Or at least, it started out that way.
After a time, I remember I spoke without preamble, loud and long on the subject of fidelity. As I mouthed my sermon, I looked more than once at Kan. I remember you told me to be still, and to go to bed. You grew very angry. I remember Z'beth tried to calm you, and that her cloud was now a wisp of pale angst. I remember Kan looked uncomfortable, and Nonce looked nowhere and saw perhaps everything. Kan stood and left, his expression sad and worried. I remember you dragged me off to bed not long after that. I don’t remember anything else from that night.
The next day was awkward, to say the least. Kan found me near the Gate. He said nothing for a time. When he did speak, it was in tones that were more sympathetic than anxious. “You can be an ass sometimes, William.”
I did not answer him. I thought about the picture, and warmed my hatred with its consequence.
“Someday, soon,” said Kan, again in that disconcerting calm voice. “We should talk.”
And then he walked away.
The next morning Kan was gone. He gave no warning or reason for his departure. He left no explanation. He was simply gone. We assumed, of course, that he left by the Gate. We assumed he would return when he was ready. We were wrong.
When the days had become weeks, and still there was no sign of Kan, we began to worry. It was Nonce who suggested we search for him beyond the Gate. He had looked everywhere and knew that Kan was not on our glassy planet. We did go through. We did search. But somehow, we knew we would not find him.
We grieved for our lost companion then, each in our way. Z’beth made the skies around us gray and hopeless, and it was fitting. Carl howled, then sang, then howled some more. Nonce looked, forlorn and helplessly, to and through the distant Gate. I remember I said things, a youth’s tongue voicing a jaded mind’s tired reflections. I remember you cried, and even in this you remained beautiful.
Then things changed again.
I had dashed my camera against the wall, so there are no pictures of this, our time of grieving. Nor are there any recordings of the impossible gift-giving thing from beyond the Gate dying. I remember Nonce speculated that our grief was too much for it. Whatever the cause, it failed quickly, and died. For a week, Z’beth was a walking cloud of despair.
I remember feeling sad for the loss—the loss of the strange being, that is. I remember, too, that I looked to you for comfort. I thought with Kan gone now, you might return once more to me.
But the tension remained, and took on new, confusing directions. There were awkward silences now where once there was laughter, and our evening meals became a parody of waltzing, pregnant eyes. Nonce looked to you, and you turned away…I looked to you, and you turned away…Nonce looked to Z’beth, his betrothed, and they both turned away.
We all looked, and turned away. And in turning, looked away again. Carl turned most of all, trying to find some reason to the strange human farce before him.
One day, by mutual, unspoken consent, we gathered again outside the Gate. We stood there silently, searching like forlorn children for some succor or hope. Why we stood there, I do not know. Perhaps we hoped for another impossible answer. But we all of us, I think, knew it was a pointless exercise. Our distress was not to be solved from outside. We had given birth to the evil, and we alone could answer it.
I remember Nonce stayed long after the rest of us returned to the ship. He stood with head bowed and eye closed.
The next day we found Nonce in his room, his natural eye now blank and lifeless. The other still turned eerily inside its socket, as if searching for the answer to the rope twisted about its Master’s neck.
I took the body down. I also removed the wondrous eye, and put a patch in its place. We burned Nonce on a makeshift pyre fired by the Titan’s engines. I put the eye in a box, which I kept under my bed. At night I heard it turning, searching. For all I know, it searches still.
Then it was just the four of us. For a time, we tried to understand it, tried to make sense of the tragedy and put the pieces back together again.
Well, let’s be honest, Carl and I tried. You and Z’beth refused to talk about it. I tried to comfort Z’beth. She had been kind to me once, and I wanted to offer my support in return. But she avoided me, and made it clear she did not want my comfort. You were little better, though we at least had long practice in this mutual apathy.
So, it was I found myself spending a lot of time with the dog. We often sat together outside the Gate, and sometimes we even talked.
“We gained and lost when we found that damn thing,” I said to Carl once, looking at the Gate.
Carl looked to the Gate for a moment, turned back to me. “Gained,” he said, and his voice was a mixture of klaxon and gut.
I considered his response carefully. “Yes. For some of us, it was all gain.”
He cocked his head slightly in an old habit, and I pulled gently at the loose skin under his jaw.
“You are…troubled,” he said, putting his head on my lap. “Is that the right word?”
“That’s the right word.” I looked to the cold crystallized horizon. “Carl, I must confess something to you.” He raised his head and looked with me to the horizon, smelling the air. After a time, he put his head on my lap again, and closed his eyes as I massaged his tight and powerful neck muscles. Finally, he turned one brown eye in my direction.
“The truth is,” I said, “I’m feeling a little guilty over our recent losses. I suppose it is a human tendency to feel relieved when something we fear is suddenly removed, or when we are granted a dark wish. But it brings guilt just the same.”
Carl remained silent, and the big brown eye did not leave mine.
“I loved my wife, Carl,” I went on. “I love her still. I think. I don't want, after all this time, after all that we have been through…I don't want to lose her.” I sighed and looked to the horizon. “I didn’t want to lose her,” I said in a faltering whisper.
Carl moved his head a bit until he had my attention again. “More,” he said. I frowned, then realized I had stopped the massage. I started again.
“She is beautiful, after all,” I continued. “It is only understandable.” I felt a slight tension in the head beneath my hand now. “I’m afraid I thought very badly of Kan for a time…Easy Carl!” I took my hand carefully away from those massive jaws, and looked away from the suddenly angry eyes which had risen to look in my own. “You have to understand. Jealousy is not an easy thing to deal with as a human. I know you two were close, but I was very angry with Kan….”
But Carl was now baring his teeth, and I stopped.
After a time, I tried again. I didn’t want the dog angry with me, as well.
“Okay,” I said. “I admit I may have been wrong about Kan and my wife. I wish he were here. Can we leave it at that?”
He slowly backed off, but now sat with his back to me. I could see the tension along his shoulders and back. “What happened to Kan?” he asked.
“How should I know?” I asked, quite surprised that he would ask me this question, after all the time passed.
He snorted, and put his head on his paws. I watched him carefully.
“And Nonce?” he asked. “Did you have the same…bad smells about Nonce?”
I sat then for a long time looking at the Gate, considering all that had been lost and gained. I tried to calculate if we—if I—had come out ahead. I was very sad that it had come to this, that even Carl and I should be reduced to this.
I rose, and Carl rose with me. I put a hand hesitant on his head. “Never mind, Carl. I'm just rambling. It’s a human thing. You understand?”
He turned to look me in the eye. I looked away.
*
Thus, my memory, my pictures…
Too late I remember/realize what is wrong.
Who took that picture? Who captured that other you?
Now as I lay dying, now as the blood finally stops pooling around my shattered skull, now as the shock wears off and I feel the pain where the blow was delivered with purpose and passion, now I finally understand.
I was wrong. I had gotten it all wrong.
I thought perhaps Kan. I thought maybe Nonce. I thought wrong.
I had come home to you after my conversation with Carl. I had come home to do what I should have done from the first, to confront you. I had come to find my answers.
And in a way, I did.
I thought Kan. I thought Nonce. Vain and silly man. Youth and aged fool! I could not see. I did not want to know.
So, I see the pictures again, one last time in my mental solitaire. I see them all, but the last—the one of you reclined, ardent, begins to fade.
I die, and as I do my last thoughts are of you and the other, the one who took the picture.
For you, my lover-deceiver, companion finally faithless, my thoughts of you are as disjointed as the man you knew. I offer you my understanding, and my bitterness. You deserve both, for I both love and despise you. I aged-youth; I blind-visionary; I vain-fool.
And for you, picture taker, most secret of secrets. You, the one who wears their every feeling for all to see. You noble-beauty, who was once kind to me...
For you, I offer nothing. The blood you spill now is more than gift enough.
I see the pictures and I understand.
I thought Kan; I thought Nonce. But I was wrong.
And the last begins to fade.