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Videotape story by ShaunWrites / art by Pati

Chelsea Charm never remembered anything about the process of being deactivated. When she was off, she was dead. So after Daniel, her husband and builder, finally confessed to her that she that she was a robot, she told him she’d leave him unless he made a video to show her what it was like.

A few days later, they were about to call it a night, turning off the lights in the living room and heading to the bedroom, when Daniel handed her a videostick. He waited in the living room, arms folded, waiting for her to hit play.

“Is this?” she asked.

“Yeah. I made it yesterday.” He couldn’t look at her in the eyes.

"No, I don’t want you to be here while I watch it," she told him.

"Are you sure?"

Of course she was sure. She didn’t respond.

"I’ll be in the bedroom. Let me know when you’re done."

Chelsea sat on the living room floor in front of the TV, and fumbled for the play button in the darkness. As she hit play, the screen glowed on filling up the room in white light.

She saw a wide-angle shot of their bedroom. She figured from the angle, the camera was probably sitting on top of their dresser. The room buzzed with ambient noise like their air conditioner was running. The audio was distant and echo-y, but the camera’s microphone was good enough to understand what everyone was saying.

She watched herself standing near the closet: naked, post-coital.

"Are you working today?" she heard herself ask Daniel as she watched herself putting on her bra.

"No, don’t do that." Daniel’s voice echoed.

"What?"

"I’m just gonna have to take that off again." She watched him pull the bra away and toss it back on the bed.

"I’m not going to sit around the house all day with no clothes on."

"I’ve got stuff to do. We can’t hang out today."

"What about tonight?"

"Class."

She watched herself pick up the bra again to put it on.

"Seriously, don’t do that."

"Okay, I’ll just stand here then, and do nothing until you tell me I can."

"Don’t be like that. I’m in a hurry. I gotta go, alright? Love you, Chelsea .”

She watched him as he deactivated her with a remote and her limbs went limp. She watched him catch her lifeless body and gently rest it on the bed before it hit the floor. She watched as he left the frame, her dead body still laying on the bed.

She wondered what was taking him so long to come back into frame. Was he just going to leave her body there the whole time he was at work? Suddenly, she heard dragging, scraping, and pulling. Drag, scrape, stop. Drag, scrape, stop. Drag, scrape, stop. And then, he was back in frame pulling a black metal case.

She watched Daniel pull her up by the shoulders and roll her body off of the bed onto the case. She watched her body slam onto the case harder than he’d hoped. She saw that her eyes had been open the whole time. She watched him fold her lifeless body into the case like she was a contortionist. First, he folded her arms in place. Then, he flopped one leg at a time in place until she was curled up like a fetus.

She watched Daniel shut the top of the heavy clamshell case up to seal her body. She watched him lock the metal hinges one at a time. She watched him itch his butt and take a deep breath. Then drag, scrape, stop; drag, scrape, stop until he pulled the case out of frame. After she watched about 30 seconds of empty bedroom, she stopped the video because there was nothing left to see.

In a day or a week, he’d reboot her when he needed to have sex or talk about his feelings. Until then, she just wouldn’t exist. And when she was alive again, she wouldn’t remember anything that happened within two hours of her shut down. Daniel had told her that was because of the way her brain’s RAM worked.

Chelsea knocked on Daniel’s bedroom door. That was the signal to let him know the video was over. He opened the door just a crack, and she saw him go back to sitting on the bed that she’d just watched herself die on. She looked at the wood floor near the bed and realized for the first time what had made all of the scuff marks.

She watched Daniel’s expression: anxious waiting. It was clear that he wanted her to talk first: she did.

"Never turn me off again."

"I understand that you might—"

"No, shut up. I’m talking. Never turn me off again. Not for any reason. Ever."

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Interplanetary Relations story by ShaunWrites / art by Jane Medvedskaya

Gau was in charge of interplanetary relations.

LyssaXVII, an old sentient planet, had just sent out a telepathic distress call that made his ship’s monitors light up like solar flare. Gau reversed his regular course and double-timed it to get in communication range. Lyssa rarely ever complained, so there must’ve been something seriously wrong. By the time he was in range, he caught her in mid-sentence,”…I really don’t have much more time to talk,” Lyssa’s thoughts came through crackly on his ship’s speakers. Gau adjusted some dials. “Gau, can you hear me? Can you hear me?” Gau had written his grad thesis on planetary psychology, specifically “celestial existential depression.” His conclusion? Crippling depression was common when planets reached a certain age.

In 240 single-spaced pages, Gau argued that this was because old planets couldn’t handle the thought that so many lifeforms depended on them. Young planets were free but bored. Middle-aged planets were proud of the quickly-evolving life they supported. Old planets had enough time to see all the chaos their highly-evolved life created. At some point, they decide they want no part of it anymore. He called it the “weight of the world” theory.

“Gau, can you hear me?” “Yes. I can hear you now, Lyssa,” Gau said slowly and methodically. “I believe you sent out some type of distress call, I —” “Oh, no, no, there’s no emergency. Don’t get so wound up.” “I’m very calm, I —” “I know, Gau. It’s a joke, don’t worry. You’re the last thing in the galaxy that I would think would get ‘too wound up’ about anything.” Gau admired Lyssa’s nebulae from his window: her six trillion miles of rainbow colored gasses. Her orbit was easily the most beautiful part of the galaxy that he’d been to. He was always a little jealous of the 36 billion class-AA lifeforms that lived on her back who got to watch her three suns — one blue, one red and one white — rise and set. Paradise or not, Gau knew what happened to old planets no matter where they lived. Lyssa was the only living planet in a solar system of rocks and gas: a lonely island. “Do you know what it was like being around 100 million years ago, Gau?” “I wouldn’t even try to guess.” “It was a lot like this, actually. A lot like yesterday.” Gau got into the habit of visiting Lyssa’s solar system a decade ago while he was still a planetary relations intern. On patrols, he would stay up all night talking to her while the rest of the crew was asleep. In grad school, he would take the ship out to watch her suns set from low-orbit. He would keep her company, and she would help him with his thesis. Now, 5 years into his career as the sector’s planetary relations manager, Lyssa told him something that no other planet ever had. She was going to kill herself. “Gau, I know this is really sudden, but if I don’t do this right now, I don’t think I’ll ever get the courage up again.” Gau stared out at her through his window. She was still an expressionless blue-green marble.  He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. “I’ve done what I needed to do. Now, I’d like to see what else there is.” “Is there anything I can do?” Gau asked dryly. “No, it’s really alright. I’ve made my choice.” “I don’t understand then. Why did you call me?” He’d never encountered any research that discussed peculiar planetary behavior like this. This must’ve been the first documented case ever. “I wanted to know if you could somehow communicate with the people for me. Let them know they need to leave right away, and try to keep as many of them as safe as possible.” The speakers inside the ship cracked and fizzed. “And I also wanted to say thank you, Gau. Everyone else only comes by to visit when there’s an emergency.” Gau took out a pad and began taking notes. “You know what I think?” She paused like she was waiting for him to answer, but Gau didn’t say anything. “I think some of the other planets complain all the time just to get your attention. You know, to get some company.” “I never really thought about it that way.” “I didn’t think you would have. Bye now, Gau.” The communication channel went dead and LyssaXVII willed herself out of orbit by a few degrees, completely imperceptible except to Gau’s computer readouts.

###

Within 48 hours, her blue sun would light the gases in her atmosphere and she’d become a fireball. In 72 hours, her flaming body would light the six trillion miles of hydrogen of her rainbow nebulae in a flash fire that would last only 10 seconds. In 500 years, mere seconds relative to how long Lyssa had been alive, she’d die when she was completely swallowed up by her white sun. Years after their goodbye, Gau would sometimes visit Lyssa, now engulfed in flame no longer able to communicate. He hoped she would say something to let him know it was all right and that she still thought she did the right thing. But one day, he thought of something that terrified him: it would take her longer just to die than he could ever live. And that scared him so much he never went back.

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