Stories of the Space Psychopaths (short story)
Stories of the Space Psychopaths was the fourth story in The Boulevard: Volume Two.
Summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
An unnamed Journalist walks into his office in April 2096 to find a set of dossiers on his desk. He never knows how the dossiers appear, and not always who they're from. In this broken, divided world it's best to do the work, take your memory pills to forget, and move on. In the dossiers were four people to construct a story out of.
- Professor Emeritus Samuel Golenski, a cannibal who'd eaten three people, yet to be identified, all some relation of his. He has a mask of bone that he refuses to remove, and if taken from him will vanish after 30 hours, a new mask appearing within that first hour. In addition, changes made to the masks taken will propagate to the new masks.
- Imelda Zappatachek, a young terrorist who detonated a bomb, causing 307 casualties, countless injuries, and immeasurable profit loss. A footnote on her file says that it's suspected that she used anachronistic technologies in the attack.
- Clive Attamore, an insurance adjuster who never made a mistake, to the point where people began to call him to admit to fraud, or to cancel insurance policies, or found themselves convinced that Clive had told them that they'd never need insurance, or to buy insurance right before catastrophe. Clive, meanwhile, was aware of none of this.
- Subject D, 1-11. The son of two party members, he has appeared eleven times in varying ages, ranging from 1 to 25, each telling a story of being abducted by a figure named Z in a bone mask in a world ending apocalypse, coming up sometime in their future, from 2 months to a few years from now.
The four are prisoners of HAND, rumored to have access to a hyper prison, the Boulevard of Atrocities. The Journalist accepts the assignment, and after meeting with the head of HAND, Agnia Malaconda, for some ground rules, he finds himself interviewing Subject D, the oldest iteration. The Journalist brings with him Samuel Golenski's mask, procured for him by HAND, which D recognizes. D says that it's Z's mask, that Z took him to change this broken society, and that by simply being here, by not being where he should be, that will be enough. Moreover, the apocalypses he's referred to, that the different versions of him remember, they're all the same. There's no variance in how they're spaced out, just fragmented memories of the same event. It's arriving at the same rate as it ever was.
The Journalist next meets with Clive Attamore, who doesn't recognize Golenski's mask, but does muse that it doesn't seem to get lost often. Knowing it's likely hopeless, the Journalist decides to take out an insurance policy on Subject D not being abducted when he's supposed to be, hoping to prevent it. And with that he turns to Imelda Zappatachek, who has depressingly little to say, only confirming that she's seen a mask similar to Golenski's once, a digital artifact on the web, before insisting he leave.
The Journalist meets Samuel Golenski, handing him back his mask, asking him about the corpses in his fridge. Golenski explains that the corpses are cell cultures of his family members that have been retroactively annulled. Golenski explains that the mask is an artifact of an initiation ritual of Faction Paradox, an initiate going back and place to kill an ancestor, becoming a living paradox. As his grandson tried to excise him from history, Golenski fought back, through inaction, prevented his mother from being born. But this wasn't enough, and the pair fought for years, and Golenski eventually took hold of the mask and his family, and now he waits.
The Journalist, knowing no more what to say, walks away, prepares his report, just as many questions as answers remaining.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Journalist
- Professor Emeritus Samuel Golenski
- Imelda Zappatachek
- Clive Attamore
- Subject D
- Agnia Malaconda
References[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
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