New Short Story (Happy Valentine's Day ...)

I seldom write short stories these days. Now and again, somebody will ask for one, for an anthology, and when prompted with a general subject -- something like, say, magic in the urban workplace -- it will trip something and I can sit down and do a piece.

I can do a story if I want. Mostly, the form is too exacting for me. Not like haiku, but tight enough so that the time spent constructing a short is worth a chapter or more in a novel, and I'm more comfortable at the longer forms, not to mention that they pay the bills.

In the last few years, my short story ideas all seem to pop up the same way every time:
I'm up to my eyebrows in work, have a deadline, either contractually, or self-imposed, and absolutely no time, nor any desire to be fiddling with a short story. Zip.

Ah, but what happens is the wild-hair idea falls upon me in a piece, and I can't not do it. It demands to be written. And these never seem to me to be commercial ideas, at least they never do when the thing sneaks out of the bushes and attacks me. I write them full well knowing they won't ever sell, but that I have to do 'em anyhow.

Oddly enough, the ones that have sold the quickest have always been these wild-hair things. Go figure.

So, like the blues songs say, I woke up this morning and this thing was on my mind. Got coffee, checked the email, and then cranked away. Hour and a half, from start to end of the draft. Ten minutes to fix typos and clunks, and done.

Here it is. See what you think:

Kill Switch

Lotz found Dalissa in the kitchen, making dinner. The air was full of wonderful smells -- garlic-stuffed trout roasting; potatoes boiling; freshly-baked whole-wheat bread on the counter, steam still coming off it.
His tears flowed, his stomach twisted. He wanted to scream, to throw up, to run until he dropped.
He couldn’t do this. Could not!
But -- there was no choice, was there? He had to. He couldn’t stop what was going to happen anyway.
She looked up and smiled as she sliced baby carrots, using the Japanese knife he had bought her for her birthday, a long, hand-made folded-steel thing so sharp that to risk the edge with your thumb even lightly would cut you. It had cost a week’s pay, that knife, and it had been worth it just to watch her smile when using it.
In a heartbeat she saw that he was upset. She always did.
She put the knife down, hurried to him. She touched his shoulders, searched his face.
“Lotz? What is it, darling. What’s wrong?”
She was so beautiful. So smart. So caring. The scientists had worked on that, the empathy. She’d been one of the first to be decanted, ten years past, his for nine, and her ancestors so far removed by the brilliance of the geneticists and DNA manipulators that she looked completely human. Her grandparents had been bonobos, but Dalissa was a woman, and anything saying different needed a battery of tests so complex as to make them pointless.
How could he tell her? How could he do what he had to do?
“Lotz. Talk to me!”
The tears streamed. His nose stopped up.
She found a tissue somewhere and handed it to him. He wiped his eyes, blew his nose.
“Tell me. Whatever it is, we can deal with it together.”
“The Council,” he managed. “They -- it -- “ He shook his head, unable to continue.
She hugged him to her. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll figure something out. They won’t get away with it.”
It took a moment for what she said to sink in. He leaned back and looked at her, puzzled.
Her face showed only a calm concern.
“What do you mean? What do you think you know?”
She sighed. “It’s the kill switch, isn’t it?”
He felt her words stab into him as if they were shards of dry ice -- cold, cold, piercing to his soul.
“You -- you know about it? But -- but -- how?!”
She shook her head. “Your people made mine too well. They engineered in compliance, but they didn’t stint on our intelligence. The Pan have known for years. That drawer you keep locked next to the bed? The transmitter you keep in it? The one that is in your back pocket now.”
Oh, God! Oh, God!
“We know. We know about the nanotech machinery built into our brains that, when tripped, will cause us to suffer massive, killing strokes. I know that pushing the button on that small device will kill me as surely as if you stabbed me in the heart.”
The tears came back now, and he sobbed, unable to stop.
“So the Council has decided for some reason, that we have become a threat, the Pan. That the experiment is a failure, and so we must be ... eliminated.”
He nodded dumbly, unable to find words.
“But, Lotz, you don’t have to push that button.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to! I don’t! But -- “ he stopped. How could he make her understand?
“We could leave,” she said. “Run, get outside the cancer that our civilization has become. Live out our lives together. You could choose to do that.”
He shook his head again. “No, I can’t. You don’t understand. I have to -- I can’t.”
She sighed again. Stepped away from him. Turned her back to him and looked down at the small pile of sliced carrots on the cutting board. “You don’t. You have a choice.”
“No,” he said. “Each of us who have a companion have this.” He removed the transmitter from his pocket and held it up.
She glanced at the device, then looked away.
“So. Now I know. You don’t love me.”
“You’re wrong, Dalissa, I do! That’s why I ... “ he couldn’t finish.
She turned around. The distance between them was only a meter and a half. She pressed her legs back against the cutting board, her hands gripped the thick wood. The smells, so good before, had become nauseating.
“Like a man putting his dog down,” she said. “Rather than let the vet do it, you will.” She sounded bitter. He couldn’t blame her. Yes, that was it, that was it exactly, and --
Wait. Wait. There was something here --
Never mind. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Waiting wouldn’t help. It would only get harder, and already it was the hardest thing he had ever had to do.
He looked away from her, at the transmitter. Smaller than the palm of his hand, the device was, a cover over the button to make sure it wasn’t accidentally pressed. He thumbed the cover up. “You don’t understand,” he said. His voice was only a whisper. “I’m so sorry. So sorry.”
He steeled himself. It had to be done. He pressed the button.
It was supposed to be instant and painless. She would collapse and she would stop breathing, and be gone. At least he could cling to that much. She wouldn't suffer.
She smiled at him, her expression terribly, terribly sad.
Did she forgive him, even as she died? Oh, God --
She shook her head. “You never were able to read mystery novels -- you could never get the clues.”
She wasn’t dead! His heart soared for an instant. It didn’t work! The Council was wrong!
Even as he thought this, his elation collapsed. His transmitter might be bad, maybe the battery gone flat, though it was supposed to last a hundred years, but that wouldn’t matter --
“I told you that we knew about the switch. We know all about it. We know about the master transmitter. That the Council, not trusting that all of our partners would be able to push the button, did the time ever come when they demanded it, had a failsafe. A pulse that would blanket the country and deal with those who were unable to do the deed on their own.
“To bypass those who would not participate in murder. In genocide."
He stared at her, his brain awhirl. What -- ?
“Some of us are partnered with the scientists who made us, and some of us are loved more than others.” She shook her head again. “More than you love me.”
She sighed. Long. Deep. Sad.
“You still don’t see, do you? There are those among the Pan who are as skilled in manipulating DNA and nanotech machineries as any human.” She gave the last word an echo of disgust. “Those who could -- and did -- devise a counter for the horror implanted in our brains, with help from their companions. We knew the day would come.
"The Pan have had access to it for years. Your kill switch won’t work -- nor will the Council’s transmitter. There are more than a million of us, Lotz, and we have all just become rebels.”
“But -- this is wonderful!”
He saw a tear run down her cheek as she gave him a small, sad smile. “For some of us. Some of the Pan even now stand in front of their lovers laughing or crying with joy, because those with whom they live chose not to push the button. They elected to run, to defy all, for love.”
He blinked.
“But not you. You pushed the button, Lotz.” More tears streaked her face now. “You pushed it.”
“But -- But I thought -- “
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
She picked up the knife.

-30-