Speculative Fiction Collection

"They're uploads, Jennifer." When I first met Mel, I thought the sleepy voice was sexy. "How can they move in with us when they're not anywhere?" "They bought a puppet to live in," I say. "Life-sized, nuskin, real speak - top of the line. It's supposed to be my Christmas present. Bring the family back together for the holidays and live unhappily ever after." "A puppet." A puzzlement glyph pops up at the bottom of my screen. "As in one puppet?" "It's a timeshare - you know. They live it serially. Ten hours of him, fourteen of her." "Not fifty-fifty?" "He's giving her the difference so he can take extra time off for his bass tournament in June."

I am called Dog the Digger. I am not mighty, neither am I fearsome. Should you require bravos, there are muscle-boys aplenty among the rat-bars of any lowtown on this raddled world. If it is a wizard you want, follow the powder-trails of crushed silicon and wolf's blood to their dark and winking lairs. Scholars can be found in their libraries, taikonauts in their launch bunkers and ship foundries, priests amid the tallow-gleaming depths of their bone-ribbed cathedrals. What I do is dig. For bodies, for treasure, for the rust-pocked hulks of history, for the sheer pleasure of moving what cannot be moved and finding what rots beneath. You may hire me for an afternoon or a month or the entire turning of the year. It makes me no mind whatsoever. As for you, I know what you want. You want a story.

Flies buzzed around the edges of the huge stone block, gathering at the rivulets of blood that ran down to the floor. A bit of what looked like it might be intestine hung off one corner, drawing special attention. It was a testament to the force of the collision that fragments of bone and tissue were scattered all the way down the passage, some even wedged in the carvings in the stone walls. Two men surveyed the scene with dismay. "See? And this just keeps happening. It's getting so we can't get anything done around here," said the taller of the two, a grey-haired man with red eyes and a patchy beard. The other man, younger but not precisely young, hauled himself up on top of the block and examined the mechanism. "This bar's been sliced right through." He looked back down at his client. "You say this was a poltergeist?"