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In the Late December

by Greg van Eekhout

They come to a cloud of silver mist, and there Santa finds a little boy made of molten silver with liquid silver eyes and sweeping silver delta wings. His wrists are ringed with missile launchers, and a rounded cone emerges from a cavity in his chest. Once there were many silver boys, fleets of them, protecting the outermost parts of inhabited space against things that came from outside inhabited space. But now, there is only the silver boy.

“You, sir,” the silver boy says, “are a tiresome consciousness cluster. Your binary value system remains as laughable as it is irrelevant. How you manage to remain cohesive is beyond me.”

“My value system is hardly binary,” Santa says. “In between naughty and nice I’ve made room for you: grumpy but fundamentally sound. Do you want a toy or not?”

Read the full story at Strange Horizons: http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/in-the-late-december/

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Host Commentary

I am a lover of the holidays. I love the lights and the beauty and the stories that are just so lovely and end up fine. I loved those stories even when I discovered that real life rarely ties up our endings in neat bows, with the lovers getting together and the bad guy getting what he deserves. But because life is like this, that makes me love the other views of Christmas. The things that come out in the darkest time of the year. The fact that it’s cold and desolate. And the fact that we can do everything right and still get eaten.

This year has me feeling rather low for a variety of reasons. Take your pick. And while I will still watch all the movies that turn out just fine, with snow on Christmas Eve and families forgiving each other and all the neighbors chipping in to save someone, I’m finding myself more in the mood for things like this story.

One of my favorite movies for this time of year is Anna and the Apocalypse, which is a musical that takes place at Christmas and the zombie apocalypse. When watching with my adult kid, I was ashamed that they easily found the theme of the movie: Things go better for you if you strive to change. There are some characters who want to change some things in life, and others who say that everything is wonderful and nothing should ever change. You can guess who gets eaten. (Come on, it’s not a huge spoiler. You know that some named/beloved characters won’t make it till the end; it’s a zombie movie.)

And that is what I get out of this story. At the end, there’s one child left to visit. It may not be triumphant. But it will be a thing. And we can be thankful for that. So don’t stagnate. Realize that just the fact that you are here, listening to this with me, is a thing, and we can be thankful for that.

That was our show for this week. Our quote comes from Kurt Vonnegut: “Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

We’ll see you next week with more short science fiction. Till then, stay safe, and stay kind.