The Art of the Curse

Gauwyn sat in his merchant’s stall, watching customers meander around the market square, but none  seemed to want to meander toward him. He sold fabrics and various sundries, such as bandages, sewing kits, perfumes, and household gadgets. Fabrics were his main business, shipped in from across the kingdom. Some were mundane, cottons and flax, for example, but others were exotic, like silk and spider-weave. By this time of the week, he should have recouped his costs and begun making a profit; but that hadn't happened last week, and it wasn't happening this week. He was falling behind.

“Curse Quinhill,” Gauwyn muttered under his breath.

Quinhill had come into town a month ago on a merchant ship and had taken over the stall vacated by Bacot the Metalsmith. Bacot had met an untimely end trying to mine gold in the Dragonback Mountains, and the Merchants Guild had rented the stall to Quinhill upon his arrival. Normally, Gauwyn would not have minded, but Quinhill also sold fabrics as his primary trade. The competition was eating into his profits.

He had gone to the Merchants Guild representative, Richye, in Beabluff. “Quinhill is selling the same types of merchandise as I am,” he told Richye. “The market isn’t large enough for both of us! I have been there for years and have always paid my dues to the Guild. Surely I am entitled to be an exclusive dealer in fabrics and sundries. It isn’t fair that Quinhill sells the same wares.”

“My dear Gauwyn,” Richye said in his most diplomatic voice. “My hands are tied. There is no prohibition against two merchants selling the same merchandise at the same market. In fact, the Guild sees competition as good for the community. There is simply nothing I can do.”

Gauwyn sat in his stall and grumbled. What could he do? “Curse Quinhill!” he whispered. Suddenly, he stood up. Curse Quinhill. Of course, that was the answer. Gauwyn closed shop, headed into his small living quarters behind the stall, and pulled out a lead sheet and a stylus. He would curse Quinhill and his business.

In order for the curse to work, he had to follow the forms. It had to be written on a tablet of earthly metal. He had a lead tablet, so that would do. He would need to etch the words with a stone stylus. He had one of those, too. Now, for the curse itself.

The wording didn’t need to be fancy; he just needed to state his desired outcome clearly. “I, Gauwyn, merchant of fabrics and sundries, curse Quinhill, merchant of fabrics and sundries: may his business fail, his coin fail, and his stall close. I curse the land he stands upon, the land of his stall, and the land of his home. May this curse stand until I, Gauwyn, revoke its precepts.”

He looked at the tablet. “Perfect.”

To make the curse valid, he needed to recite it before the Oracle at the temple. He slipped the tablet into his shirt, took his coin purse for the offering, and headed up the mountain just outside the port town. The temple sat on a ridge that formed the beginning of the Dragonback Mountain range, which spanned the entirety of Alexia.

The cobblestone road out of Port Umbermere turned into a hard-packed path that zigzagged up the mountainside. Kolatti trees overhung the trail, and a small rivulet of water from a hidden spring gurgled nearby as it made its way toward the sea. The temple wasn’t far, and by mid-afternoon, Gauwyn reached his destination.

The temple was a small square box of white marble framed in yellow Kolatti wood. It had no doors, only a wood-framed opening. Gauwyn walked inside. In the middle of the room sat a young woman with eyes the color of white stone, blind, yet all-seeing. She sat on a stool atop a rug the color of earth and trees. Gauwyn noticed a simple cot, a small stove, and a chest in the back of the room. He bowed to the Oracle.

“What errand brings you to the temple, Gauwyn?” she asked.

“I come to pronounce a curse on my rival,” Gauwyn said. “I bring the cost of recitation: one silver coin.” He placed the coin in a small bowl beside her.

“Proceed,” she said.

He pulled out the tablet and recited the words. When he finished, he handed the lead tablet to the Oracle. She rolled it into a scroll, stood, and placed it inside the small chest. Then she returned to her stool.

“The curse is in effect until the fee of release is paid or until the conditions are no longer valid,” she stated. Gauwyn bowed and left. His trip down the mountain seemed to take no time at all.

The next week, Gauwyn’s business returned to its usual brisk pace. By midweek, he was turning a profit again. For two weeks, business was good. The curse had worked.

However, in the middle of the third week, Gauwyn saw Quinhill heading out of town toward the temple.

“Quinhill!” Gauwyn called out. “Heading up to the temple?”

“Yes, I am,” Quinhill replied. “I thought I would pray and seek some guidance.”

Gauwyn couldn’t help but smile. “Have a nice walk.”

The following week, Gauwyn’s business took a sudden turn for the worse. He didn’t make back his costs, and the week after was a similar disaster. He had not released the curse, so what was going on? He grabbed his coin pouch and headed back up the mountain.

At the temple, he bowed and placed a silver coin in the offering bowl. “You have a question, Gauwyn,” the Oracle said. It was a statement not a question.

“Is the curse I pronounced still in effect?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“But it isn’t working,” he argued. “My business is failing again.”

“I assure you, it is working exactly as pronounced,” she said. “The curse remains in effect until the fee of release is paid or the conditions are no longer valid.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That is a true statement, Gauwyn. You lack understanding,” she said simply. “You think you understand Mundanus Magic, but you do not. Let me give you an example: a curse is placed upon a person. If the forms are followed and the words are spoken before an Oracle, the curse becomes active. This much you know. But what occurs if the one being cursed pronounces a blessing on the one who cursed him?”

“I... I have no idea,” Gauwyn stammered.

“The curse remains active, but it is returned to the one who initiated it for as long as the blessing is active,” she explained. “In the realm of Mundanus Magic, blessings always override curses. Thus, the balance is maintained.”

Gauwyn stood stunned. Quinhill, you clever bastard, he thought. Quinhill must have deduced that Gauwyn was the source of his misfortune. He didn't need the Oracle to tell him; he only had to ask the right questions to realize who his only rival was.

“I wish to pay the fee to remove the curse from Quinhill,” Gauwyn said.

“It is a silver coin,” she said. “Once paid, the curse will be banished.”

He dropped the coin into the bowl. She retrieved the lead scroll from the chest and handed it back to him. He slipped the metal into his shirt and headed home. It wasn’t a weapon anymore, just a useless, heavy trinket.

Over the next few days, Gauwyn’s business returned to normal. Quinhill’s stall was also thriving. Gauwyn eventually walked over to his rival. “I come to apologize for the curse,” he said. “And I must admit, placing a blessing on me was very clever.”

Quinhill smiled. “I suppose I should be mad, but I’m not. My actions had the desired effect.”

“Well, feel free to remove the blessing,” Gauwyn said. “I have learned my lesson.”

“I think I’ll leave it,” Quinhill said. “You see, a blessing doesn’t just benefit the person being blessed; it benefits the one who pronounced it, too. Blessings are always more powerful than curses.”

Gauwyn stared at Quinhill, then started laughing. As he headed back to his stall, he thought: Gauwyn, you do indeed lack understanding.

The House That Cared About You

 The darkness in the room was absolute; however, there was sound. A constant background hum that never wavered, never changed tone. The darkness and the hum had existed for a long time, uninterrupted, until light flickered on in the room.

The light was dim. It shone along the length of a pod where a naked man lay sleeping. The man lay motionless. Time passed. Then, his eyes flickered open. He still didn’t move; he just lay in the pod, staring up through the glass at the darkness.

“Can you hear me, John?” a female voice asked. The sound came from a pair of small speakers near his head, close to his ears. The voice was soft, almost a whisper. John slowly nodded. For some reason, he could not speak.

“Good,” the voice said. “Do not worry about your paralysis. It will pass. It is a side effect of the stasis chamber. It will take some time for your body to adjust. This is normal.”

John nodded again. He had no sense of time, but he could feel his body waking up as if he had been sleeping for an eternity. The pod chamber hissed open, and the room's lights flickered on. The light remained dim, leaving most of the room in shadow.

“Do not try to get up yet. Your body is quite weak,” the voice said. “I am coming to help you out of the chamber.”

John heard a door open and footsteps cross the room. A face appeared over his, lit by the glow within the chamber. It was a woman’s face: green eyes, a petite nose, and thin lips. She had red hair that was backlit by the dim ceiling lights. “I am going to help you up,” she said. “Take it slow. Your muscles will be very weak.”

He felt her grip his body and gently lift him to a sitting position. “I am going to move your legs over so I can put you in a wheelchair,” she said.

John stared at her. Her face was that of a normal woman, but her body was metal that gleamed in the faint light. “You aren’t human,” he said weakly, finding his voice.

She smiled. “No, I am the artificial intelligence that runs your house,” she said. “This is my mobile avatar.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I can’t seem to remember anything.”

“Memory loss is a normal side-effect of the stasis pod,” she said. “It is temporary.”

“Stasis pod?” he asked. “I don’t understand.” 

“I know,” she said. “It isn’t anything to worry about at the moment. You are in good hands. Now, I am going to slide your legs over the edge. I have the wheelchair right here.”

She pivoted his legs over, then lifted him into the wheelchair. “There we go,” she said. “You are going to be thirsty and hungry in a few minutes, so I am going to get you a nutrient tube. I am afraid you will be on nutrient tubes for a day or two until your digestive system starts working properly. I will be back in a few minutes.”

John nodded. He could move his fingers and toes, but it took tremendous effort. He sat in the wheelchair and looked around. The lights seemed a bit brighter now, revealing what looked like a hospital room. Instead of a hospital bed, there was the opened pod; on the wall, several screens displayed readouts of his vital signs. The walls were a light blue, and the floor and ceiling were off-white tile. There were no windows, only a metal door opening to a hallway of the same clinical colors. John could not see the end of the hall.

This all seems so familiar, John thought. Not just the room, but the whole process, including the android. He had no direct memory of it, only a heavy sense of déjà vu. He had a thousand questions, but his mind refused to provide any answers.

The android returned with a silver tube and placed it in his hand. There was a small nozzle on the top that he slowly guided to his mouth. He squeezed, tasting a pleasant paste. He couldn’t identify the flavor, but as he swallowed, his stomach responded instantly. He was starving, it seemed.

“I can give you another one in an hour,” the android said. “Slow and easy for now.”

He finished the paste and she took the empty tube. “You said this is my house?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You have lived here for quite a while.”

“It looks like a hospital.”

“This is the medical room,” she explained. “There is also your living quarters and an exercise room.”

“Why was I in stasis?” he asked. “And for how long?”

“It won’t make much sense to you right now,” the android said. “When you start to regain your memory, the situation will clarify itself.”

“It all seems so familiar, like I have done this before.”

The android smiled. “That is a good sign.”

“What is your name?” he asked. His mind naturally identified the android as a “she” rather than an “it.”

“My name is Sharon.”

“Sharon,” he repeated. Yes, that felt right. Why?

“I am going to take you to your living quarters now,” Sharon said. “You should be able to move around soon. There are clothes for you as well. You will be a bit chilly going around naked.”

He looked down at himself. He hadn’t even noticed.

She wheeled him down the hall. The hallway remained dark except for the section directly outside his room. The quarters were small but comfortable: a bed against one wall, a large screen on the opposite wall, a closet, a nightstand, and a table with an overstuffed chair. The faint smell of antiseptic filled the air. 

She wheeled him beside the bed and walked to the closet. He noticed she had covered her silver body with a white lab coat and light blue pants. She looked like a doctor. She. He thought of the android as "she," which was strange but felt natural. A “mobile avatar,” she had called it. That implied the AI wasn’t contained inside the construct, but merely used it to interact with him.

Sharon brought back a light blue shirt, brown pants, and slippers with rubber treads. “There isn’t much of a selection,” she said, bending down to slide the slippers on his feet. “These are made from processed algae. The engineers didn’t think fashion was a priority.”

She helped him dress. After she moved him to the armchair, she pulled a walker from the closet and set it in front of him. “This to help you get around,” she said. “I’m going to get another nutrient tube. Be right back.”

Once she left, he gripped the walker and tried to stand. He managed to get to his feet, but it took a staggering amount of effort. How long was I in stasis? The room felt familiar, yet he couldn't remember ever being in it. His short-term memory was fine, but his long-term memory was a vault he couldn't crack. Memory loss was a known side-effect of cryogenic suspension, he thought.

He paused. Sharon hadn’t used the words "cryogenic suspension." The fact that his mind phrased it that way felt like a breakthrough.

She returned with more paste. “I will return hourly,” Sharon said. “Your body should start responding soon. You will likely need to use the bathroom as your system processes the nutrients.”

She pressed a hidden button on the wall. A panel slid aside to reveal a toilet and shower. “If you want a shower, let me know. The toilet is self-explanatory.” She smiled and closed the door.

He chuckled at the small joke. “They programmed you with a sense of humor?”

“Sort of,” she said. “It’s a bit involved, so I’ll save that for later. Today is for nutrients and mobility.”

The day passed in a blur of slow walks and movies from the room's library.

“Are there any news channels?” he asked.

“No, this is all we have,” she said. “The main library has extensive technical information, but it isn’t available on this screen.”

“No news or current events? That seems strange.”

“It is a limitation of our current state,” she said. “Now, let’s get you moving.”

By the end of the day, he finally had to use the bathroom. “Don’t be alarmed,” she warned as the door slid open. “You haven’t used these bodily systems in a while.”

When he finished, he saw that his stool was black and stringy. “That is disgusting,” he said, emerging from the bathroom.

“Once you start eating solid food, things will return to normal,” she said with a small smile.

Exhausted, John fell asleep the moment he climbed into bed.

The sky was on fire. A roiling mass of pure heat, as if the sun had touched the Earth. Chunks of molten rock rained down like bombs, digging massive craters into the ashen ground. The heat melted everything: buildings, cars, people. He couldn't hear the screams over the roar of the sky. A sound that went on for eternity.

John woke with a start. He stared at the soft overhead lights, feeling the cool sheets and hearing the hum of the ventilation. He was safe, but the horror of the dream clung to him. Was it a warning? Or just a fragment of a forgotten movie?

“Time, please,” he whispered.

“7:43 in the morning,” Sharon’s voice came over the speakers. “I will be there shortly.”

He swung his legs out of bed. He could move without the walker now, though his legs remained shaky. When Sharon arrived, she was smiling. “Time to get you back in shape.”

She led him out into the hallway. A doorway had appeared across from his bedroom. It wasn’t there yesterday. He could see the room had an array of exercise equipment. “I have a schedule that will get you back into physical shape,” Sharon said. “I am going to be your trainer. If you will follow me.”

The following days were defined by the exercise room. Treadmills, then weights. The nutrient tubes were replaced by "normal" food, stuff that looked like turkey or Salisbury steak. Sharon admitted it was all processed algae, but it tasted close enough to the real thing. At night, the dreams of fire returned.

He had been working out for several days, following the routine Sharon had created for him, when a memory struck him while he was lifting weights. It came out of nowhere. He saw himself sitting at a desk, a monitor in front of him. Numbers scrolled across the screen above the words: NEURAL SCAN 75% COMPLETE. Then, the memory faded. Shaken, he sat on the floor, the weights thudding onto the rubber mat.

By the end of the week, his strength had returned, but so had a sense of claustrophobia. During a break, he wandered out into the hallway. The lights stopped at the door of the exercise room. He stepped into the darkness, letting his eyes adjust. The hallway was empty, ending abruptly in a blank wall.

“That’s it?” he muttered. He touched the wall and felt a faint vibration. Pressing his ear to the metal, he heard the rhythmic thrum of heavy machinery.

“There is quite a bit of equipment necessary to keep this place running,” Sharon said from behind him. He jumped and whirled around. She was watching him with an intensity that felt decidedly un-mechanical.

“When can I go outside?” he demanded. “There are no windows, no exits. I don’t even know what this place is. You said my memory would return, but I still have nothing! What am I doing here?”

She was silent for a moment. “You have been dreaming,” she said.

The non-sequitur rattled him. Another memory flashed: a hospital bed, a hand reaching for his, a monitor beeping slowly. A wave of intense grief washed over him. He walked back to his room, sat in the chair, and began to cry. Sharon stood in the doorway, her metal body gleaming like a statue. He cried for a long time.

“This isn’t a prison,” Sharon said, walking toward the display screen. “It is an Ark.”

The screen flickered to life. A woman appeared: red hair, green eyes, wearing a lab coat. John looked from the screen to the android. “You are her,” he whispered.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sharon said. “I am a neural image of her, contained within an artificial brain housed within this facility…”

The words neural image echoed in his mind. Suddenly, the dam broke.

He was sitting on a balcony at the Ark complex. A bottle of red wine sat between them. The sun was dipping below the horizon, splashing the sky with crimson. The air smelled of lilac. John looked up at the stars and saw the comet. A hard, bright point of light. The Hammer.

“I had an idea,” John said in the memory, grasping her hand. “What if we put you in cryogenic stasis?”

“What would be the point?” Sharon asked. She pointed to the sky. “It’s the end of the world, John. There isn’t going to be a cure for my cancer for a very long time.”

“I just don’t want to lose you.”

“You have my neural scan,” she reminded him. “The artificial brain is functioning perfectly. It’s weird, actually, talking to myself.”

“I don’t want a doll that looks like you,” he snapped. “I want you.”

“I know,” she said softly, “but we can’t waste resources. We don’t even know if the Ark will work. Out of a million pods, we’ll be lucky if a third make it.”

“We only need a third,” he said. “The design is solid. They’ll last 500 years.”

“I’m not worried about the surface,” she said. “The bots will terraform that. I’m worried about the shockwave. It’s going to bounce through the bedrock for years.”

“It will work,” he insisted. “It has to.”

The memory faded. He could remember everything. John looked at the android, the avatar of his late wife’s mind. “How many pods are functional?”

“Seventy percent,” she replied.

“How long?”

“It has been four hundred years since impact. The nuclear winter lasted longer than we hoped because of the volcanic activity, but terraformation is progressing well now.”

“So it worked,” he said. “She would have been so happy.”

“I know,” the AI said. “Now that your memory has returned, I have prepared the schedule for the release of the Ark families. The revival team is awake and regaining their memories. We are on schedule.”

John stood up, his legs finally feeling like his own. He looked at the avatar, the woman who was both his wife and his creation. She wasn’t the real thing, but close enough.

“Time to get to work,” he said.