Complete short fiction, p.1
Complete Short Fiction, page 1
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Complete Short Fiction
Ted Kosmatka
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
About Ted Kosmatka
Bibliography
Short Fiction Bibliography
The Extinction of Ursus Theodorus
The God Engine
Bitterseed
Deadnauts
The Prophet of Flores
The Art of Alchemy
Divining Light
N-Words
The Ascendant
Blood Dauber
In-Fall
The Color Least Used by Nature
Cry Room
Haplotype 1402
Chasing Ivory
The Bewilderness of Lions
The Stone War
The One Who Isn’t
Sacrificial Iron
The Beast Adjoins
Shy Sarah and the Draft Pick Lottery
The Signal and the Idler
Ted Kosmatka was born on December 16, 1973 in Chesterton, Indiana and raised in northwest Indiana. He studied biology and chemistry at Indiana University but dropped out after his father died.
Over the next several years, Kosmatka moved from job to job, holding down a strange mix of occupations; among other things, he had been a zookeeper, a chem tech and a truckstop dishwasher.
Eventually, like his father and grandfather, Kosmatka found steady work in the Indiana steel mills. He started as a laborer in the blast furnace department of LTV Steel but later bid into the chem lab, working the midnight shift while continuing to chip away at a degree.
After graduating from Indiana University, Kosmatka worked in various quality control laboratories for a while and eventually landed in a research lab where he worked with electron microscopes. While all that was going on, Kosmatka was also writing, and getting rejected, a lot. He collected a whole drawer full of rejections before making his first professional short story sale, “The Extinction of Ursus Theodorus”, for the March 2000 issue of Deep Outside SFFH.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Games (2012)
Prophet of Bones (2013)
The Flicker Men (2015)
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Extinction of Ursus Theodorus, Deep Outside SFFH, March 2000
The God Engine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November, October 2005
Bitterseed, Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2006
Deadnauts, Ideomancer, September 2007
The Prophet of Flores, Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2007
The Art of Alchemy, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2008
Divining Light, Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2008
N-Words, Seeds of Change, August 2008
The Ascendant, Subterranean (online), Spring, May 2009
Blood Dauber, Asimov’s Science Fiction, October/November, October 2009
In-Fall, Lightspeed, December 2010
The Color Least Used by Nature, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February, January 2012
Cry Room, Nightmare Issue 5, February 2013
Haplotype 1402, Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2013
Chasing Ivory, Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2016
The Bewilderness of Lions, Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2016
The Stone War, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June, May 2016
The One Who Isn’t, Lightspeed, July 2016
Sacrificial Iron, Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/June, May 2019
The Beast Adjoins, Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August, July 2020
Shy Sarah and the Draft Pick Lottery, Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February, January 2021
The Signal and the Idler, Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October, September 2025
The Extinction of Ursus Theodorus
1.
From behind chromed bars I watch her enter the lab. She is so beautiful to me. Tall, fair skinned, and bipedal, she is everything that I am not, but still she loves me. She tells me so when I do well.
She crosses in front of the cages without a glance and makes her way over to the far end of the lab. My nose twitches involuntarily at the rich smell of coffee she carries in a mug. My tummy rumbles in hunger.
For a long while she is intent upon her work. Sunlight pours in through the big windows making her hair glow golden. I watch, studying her movements, as she removes a rack of instruments from the autoclave with a long pair of crucible tongs. She isn’t smiling. I marvel again for the hundredth time at her long limbs and slender digits. So dexterous. She removes a test tube from beneath a large, glass condensing funnel and carefully places it in the centrifuge. She made a game once of teaching me the names of these things in the lab. She is my mother, I think, although I’ve never asked her.
While her back is turned I slither my forked tongue out between the bars as far as it will go and taste the air, taste her. She is warm and alive. Healthy taste. Friendly taste. I see she is about to turn around so I slurp in my tongue and move to the back of the cage as quickly as I can. I would surely die of embarrassment if she caught me like that. With my thick, stubby fingers I grasp the bedding and wrap myself beneath its’ soft fabric. I wait. Soon I know the man will come. He will walk through the door swinging a breifcase from his hand. He will take off his brown jacket and put on his white one. They will sit and talk while I listen, then maybe they will let me out for a few hours.
Faintly, in one of the smaller cages beneath mine, one of my siblings begins mewling softly. She looks up from her work for a moment; a concerned look perched across her face.
“Three,” she says gently. “What’s wrong with you today?”
But Three only continues his crying; he’s one of the older ones and so doesn’t understand very many words. She puts down her equipment and walks over to our cages. Her face is on level with my cage and she looks in and smiles at me. I try to smile back and she laughs just a little. She does that sometimes when I try to smile. Her face disappears as she bends down, and I hear a click as she opens Three’s cage door.
“Come on, what’s wrong? Come here little guy.”
A moment later she stands and Three is cradled in her arms. A wave of intense jealousy washes over me as I watch her stroke his fur. His short arms are slung around her neck, his head pressed against her chest. He looks like me, or rather, because he’s older, I look like him, although she tells me I’m much cuter and smarter. I’m basically an improved version of him, she told me once, just as he was an improved version of Two. My name is Seven.
After a while he stops his irritating whining and she puts him back in his cage. She stands and looks at me through the bars.
“He’s getting so old,” she says, shaking her head slowly.
I shirk off the cover and move to the front of the cage, pushing myself against the bars. “So old,” I mimic shaking my head like her.
She smiles again and this time I don’t try and smile back because I don’t want her to laugh. “Pretty today,” I say.
“You say that every day.”
“Because you pretty everyday.”
She just stands for a while looking at me with that smile on her face, and in her eyes, smelling so pleased. I am her favorite, I know. She told me that once when none of the other young ones were around, but I would have known it anyway. She loves me more than any of my brothers.
2.
She reaches up and unclasps my cage door. It swings open and I jump into her arms. My throat starts making that strange ticking noise that I can’t stop when I’m happy. She calls it “purring”, and it’s one of the differences between Three and me. She told me once that children prefer pets that “purr.” More lovable, she had said, but wouldn’t explain what a “pet” was.
I lick her neck and she laughs. Her laughter is like food for me. It fills me up inside. I want to make her happy.
She takes me over to our special table and sets me on top of it.
“I’ve got a couple of new ones for you to try today,” she says, pulling two small colorful books from a briefcase. “Which one would you prefer to try first, The Curious Little Kitten, or My VR Friend?”
“Kitten, kitten.” I say. Kittens are cats, and cats purr like I do, so I like reading about them.
She puts the book in my lap and sits down in her chair to listen. “The curious little kitten,” I say, then flip the little cover over. My stubby fingers make turning to the first page a little difficult, but finally it comes. “There . . . was once a kitten . . . who was . . . born in a dark . . . cozy . . . close it?” I say, not sure of the last word.
“That word is closet.”
“What is a closet?” I ask, trying out the new word.
“It’s a place where people hang up their clothes when they aren’t wearing them.”
“Oh.” I wish I had clothes.
I read her the rest of the book, all the while expecting the man to come in at any moment. He usually arrives just after the woman. Today he is late. I am nearly done with the second book when he finally bursts into the room so fast that it startles me. His face is red and he smells very unhappy. He slams his clipboard down on the table and collapses into the swivel chair next to her.
&n bsp; “That bad?” she says.
The man just looks at her for a while, not saying anything at all. His eyes cast about the room, then softly, he answers her. “Worse than you would believe.”
The woman gets a funny look on her face. She stands and carries me back over to my cage and puts me inside without shutting the door. “Stay inside, ok?”
“Kay,” I say.
Now she smells unhappy too, and that full feeling inside my belly is gone. I want her to be happy again, but I don’t know what I can do. I poke my head out of the cage slowly. They aren’t looking at me. I watch and listen and sniff the air.
The woman walks back over to the man and sits down. “What’s going on? What did the promotional board say?”
A long sigh from the man. “We over shot the mark on Seven.”
My ears perk up at the sound of my name.
“What are you talking about?” she says, leaning forward in her chair.
“The board says he’s too smart. The reading thing backfired on us. It really got them in an uproar.” The man gestures toward the books on the table.
“Well, that shouldn’t be a problem. We can stop teaching him. His clones will never learn.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not just that he knows how to read. It’s the fact that he’s capable of learning to read at all. The promotional board rejected him as a prototype. They want us to start again with Six as a template.”
I can smell the woman’s disappointment now. I’m not sure exactly how, but it has something to do with me. I’m the cause. I try hard not to mewl, but it’s difficult. I don’t want to be like Three.
3.
She stands up, her face getting red like the man. “Why?” she asks.
“They’re afraid of controversy. Pressure from the animal rights groups. There have been designer pets on the market for years now that could mimic human speech after a fashion, but never anything like Seven. They’re afraid of the public’s reaction. The legal aspects of it alone have them petrified. Images of civil rights lawsuits danced in their heads.”
“Civil rights! It’s supposed to be the perfect pet,” her hands moved as she talked. “A companion for the old, a playmate for the young. They will just want to please, nothing more.”
“I told them all that. Don’t you think I tried? They are simply not ready. They said he learns too fast, and to be honest with you, I can see their point.” The man’s eyes dart in my direction. “He doesn’t forget anything.”
The man smiles, trying to cheer her up. “They did however, like the appearance. A little teddy bear. Oh, and the name. They loved the taxonomic name you thought of, Ursus Theodorus. They got a little chuckle out of that.”
The woman was glaring at him. “There has got to be something we can do. Seven represents a year’s work for both of us.”
“Mary, they threatened to pull the plug on the whole project. If you want to know the truth, I was barely able to convince them we had a viable course of action in Six. Besides, they liked most aspects of what we’ve been doing. We just need to make a couple of changes. No big deal.”
“What about Seven? We’ll be able to keep him in this unit, right?”
The man looks down at the floor, then reaches up to loosen his tie. He sighs. “They were emphatic on that. They want him . . . uh, terminated, and his records purged. We are to continue on as if project seven was never advanced to fruition.”
“What,” the woman shouts, scaring me badly. Her mouth stays open and she looks over at my cage. I pull back inside, knowing she caught me eavesdropping.
“Mary, it took three hours of negotiating just to get them to agree to let us continue with the project at all. We should be happy we still have funding.”
For what seems like a long while I huddle in the rear corner of my cage. Neither of them speaks. Minutes go by until the man gets up and I see him walk across the room to the door. He turns and looks back in the woman’s direction. He opens his mouth like he is about to speak, but doesn’t. I am happy to see him go.
Eventually my curiosity gets the better of me and I peek my head out again. The woman is sitting in her chair. Water is dripping down her cheek in small drops. An overwhelming sense of sadness is coming off her, and soon it is too much for me so I retreat back into the corner of my cage. Wrapping myself in the bedding again, I remind myself to ask her later what the word “terminate” means.
About the Author
Ted Kosmatka was born in Northwest Indiana where he now lives with his two small children and wife, Tamela. He has an associate degree in Biology from Indiana University and works as number one analyst at LTV chemical laboratories.
The God Engine
Ted Kosmatka is a laboratory analyst for the steel industry. He grew up a few miles from the dunes of Lake Michigan and earned his degree studying biology, anthropology, chemistry, and genetics. Ted has done research for the National Biological Survey and the Field Museum. In his spare time, he developed a decidedly unusual strain of mice that are now part of Jackson Labs’ Craniofacial Mutant Resource. “The God Engine” is his first story for Asimov’s.
You’ll kill yourself at age thirteen—your first votive act, you’ll call it in the note because you know only I will understand what you mean. And because you know how much it will hurt me to read it.
And they’ll page me over the intercom during my meeting with physics, and I’ll see you spread boneless out across the courtyard in reds and pinks, precious brain spilled like so much loose change on concrete, orderlies trying to resuscitate what doesn’t even look like a boy anymore. And the report will state simply that the four-story fall was incompatible with human life. Incompatible, I’ll think, saying the word over and over in my mind. Incompatible. And they’ll bag you up, and mop you up, and there will be another meeting scheduled on just what went wrong this time.
At the long table the following day, I’ll hold it in like it doesn’t matter, choking on the words I don’t say to the dozen important men. They’ll sit with their eyes pointed at me, morning light spilling in behind them through wall-sized windows that look out across the vast grounds from a vantage exactly one floor below the one you jumped from, and I’ll answer the suits about their money, and I’ll answer the white-coats about possible undetected somatic recombination, and I’ll answer the sweaters about their fucking Jungian revisionism and their conveniently postmortem prodromal phase diagnosis, and when John Sabrams mentions experimental confounds again, I’ll try to take his head off with a reckless roundhouse that knocks him cold but leaves him breathing—and before I can remedy that detail, Stephen will tackle me from behind, and they’ll all pile on while I scream, “Incompatible!” at the top of my lungs—kicking over leather boardroom chairs, face crushed to the light brown carpet while one eye notes the delicate upside-down parabola described by a falling sheet of paper.
But still, they’ll say you’re the crazy one.
I concentrated on the feel of the road, the subtle vibration of the steering wheel in my hands. I tried very hard to blank my mind. Outside the car window, the hills were black under the weight of predawn purple. It had been a long night driving.
At the guard shanty, the face under the blue officer’s hat was young, unfamiliar. He looked at me, my I.D., then back at me again. He squinted but finally gave the, pass back and waved me though. I glanced briefly at the laminated card before replacing it in my wallet. No wonder, I thought. It was a younger man staring up at me from the plastic rectangle. Time for a new pass. How long had it been? Six years? Eight, I decided. The boy was eight years old now.
I was struck again by a wash of déjà vu as I pulled into the complex. The buildings never changed. The same gray brick, the same carefully manicured grounds. It looked like the campus square of a small university. But there would be only one student here. One very special student.
Dr. Sidaque met me in the lobby. His limp had gotten worse since the last time I’d seen him. Rheumatoid arthritis. His canted hand slid into mine for a firm shake.
“Welcome, Dr. Michaels,” he said.
“How is the boy?” I asked.
