“Mahmood, Mahmood!”

  “Huh?” Mahmood opened his eyes.

  “Mahmood, Mahmood!” From the bushes, children were calling for him. Women were waving. The Sender was cleaning his parang on a banana leaf, back and forth, front and back.

  Mahmood bolted.

  How many times did he pray for forgiveness? Tuhan, Hantu, God, devil. Only Hantu offered a solution. What did foreigners say? Win-all?

  “Mahmood, Mahmood!”

  Hands clapped over his ears, Mahmood ran past Hantu. He stopped. Silly. Nothing moved. The rain made fools of men with heavy hearts. He reached out with his hand, but he could not bear to touch the yellowed tipped rock. No one forced her, or the others.

  “Win-win.” He said, and left. His lonely rented room in the city waited for him.

  Lightning streaked. Trees and branches lit into a scarred painting. Winds whipped leaves into Mahmood’s face. Something was burning. Impossible. Nothing could stay lit in this rain. Branches whipped his arms. Vines slapped around his body. The charred smell followed him. He tugged and tore to get away. At a large rock slimy with lichen, he stopped to catch his breath.

  Rain streamed cool over his head, his face, his legs...

  Thunder boomed.

  Mahmood opened his eyes. How long had he been standing there? He continued through the forest.

  “Wh-what?” He stared at the clearing. “I-I—”

  He took another step. His shoes sunk into wet soil. He laughed. How did he lose his way? He lived here his whole life.

  “I need a good curry.” He laughed, and made his way across the clearing again.

  Something golden moved. Hantu? Mahmood squinted.

  “Ahhh!” Mahmood reeled backward.

  A rock, flashing golden, flew at him, barely touching his nose, then dropped into the ground.

  Mahmood fell on his knees.“No, no, this is not good,takbagus!”

  Where was the rock?

  Wind whipped around him, as if admonishing him for his incompetence.

  The girl, she wouldn’t stop talking, it was her fault, Chuck was right, she was a troublemaker. Where was the rock?

  Children and women screamed. Men’s voices grew loud.

  The villagers were shouting. “What is happening? Our new home in the forest, you promised us…”

  Women and men jostled around Mahmood.

  “It’s the rock!” Mahmood fell to his knees. He scattered rocks. “We must find the rock!”

  Hands dug like spades into the ground. A small hand pulled away.

  “Yes, yes!” Mahmood smiled. “Good boy, Ali, good!”

  Men and women parted. Ali sprang away. A woman began to chant.

  Mahmood sat on the ground. Why was the Sender staring at him? He wanted to close his eyes and rest. Why was everyone smiling at him?

  The chanting rose.

  Leaves fell on him, layering him, cool and wet, soothing as hands washing away the aches in his body, the pain in his -

  Something flew above his head.

  Whoop!

  THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

  by Tara Maya

  Personal Paradise Inc. did not buy ads in the Chicago Tribune or post notices on the Internet. They relied strictly on word-of-mouth. Their clientele were ubiquitously as discrete as they were rich.

  The office of Personal Paradise Inc. reflected the nature of the company: quietly opulent. The halls carried the whiff of affluent men, of cologne, leather and mahogany, but it was the art on the walls that drew his eye. Exquisite and unidentifiable masterpieces of famous artists graced the walls, boasting silently: We were made in another history. Glass shelves framed Declarations of Independence to start nations that had never existed, and Treaties of Perpetual Peace to end wars that had never been fought. Photographs showed cities where all the cars had three wheels and the pedestrians wore fashions subtly wrong. Despite himself, Dean was impressed.

  Klaas Smit was a white-haired man with a florid face and immaculate suit. His office was dominated by a large photographic mural of Manhattan: a Manhattan with a skyline not quite right, a nude Statue of Liberty, Dutch flags.

  "So," Dean said without preamble, as he seated himself across from Smit. "Have you found me a world where I am richer and more powerful than I am in this dump?"

  "We have found the best of all possible worlds for you." Smit leaned forward over steepled hands. "You’ll be the happiest man on Earth."

  Dean reflected on his life: his company, once his baby, now his slave driver; his parents, to whom he had not spoken in years; Colette, grown more and more distant. None of it made him happy.

  Smit displayed a map of the alternate Earth that the company had identified as Dean Vanch’s personal paradise. The map of the other Earth looked like a three-day binge of Risk. Outlandish politics resulted in familiar landmasses with unfamiliar borders.

  "France won the French-Indian wars," Klaas Smit said affably. "Among others. But don't worry -- by the early Twenty-first Century, Napoleon's empire has long since collapsed in on itself. It will be nothing but history for you. Here is where your alternate self lives."

  Smit pointed to a nation gathered around the Great Lakes, between New England and Louisiana, labeled "Acadia." The capital city read: DIESKAU, although it was located where Detroit should have been.

  Smit cheerily outlined the history of Acadia. Like most of the nations in North America, it had achieved independence in the 1830s, trading an imperial dictatorship from abroad for a homegrown "presidential" dictatorship. Because of ethnic tensions, Acadia's fitful bouts of democracy had been pockmarked ever since with military coups and civil wars. Acadia had, in some ways, fared better than other North American nations. Take French Mexico, with 159 coups in 170 years since independence, or California, which, after thirty years of fascist rule followed by forty years of Communism, had no economy or industrial infrastructure worth mentioning.

  In recent years, Acadia, like many of its neighbors, had been engaged in bouts of vicious ethnic cleansing, as the Anglophones and Francophones took advantage of their turns in power to exterminate one another. The country funded its forty-years-and-going civil war with a brisk cocaine trade.

  To Dean, it sounded like Eastern Europe's 20th Century piled on top of South America's 19th. "This is the best of all possible worlds? Weren't there any with nuclear winters available?"

  Smit smiled slyly. "Remember! What matters isn't if the world makes most people happy, only if it makes you happy!"

  With a subtle gesture, Smit indicated the papers on the desk between them. Crisp black on white, legal documents, with yellow sticky arrows indicating everywhere Dean needed to sign.

  The docs describing the proposed journey through the Multiverse were more than twenty pages long; when lawyers met physicists, they birthed a many-headed hydra of nearly incomprehensible techno-babble and legalese. During a previous meeting, which had involved Smit, Dean, the company lawyer and Dean’s lawyer, Smit had explained the contract clause by clause. Clause 21, for instance, said that Dean would not be able to travel to the alternate dimension in his own body. His quantum consciousness, as the scientists had defined it, would inhabit the body of the Dean who already existed in the alternate reality. Since that world would be the best of worlds for any existing Dean in the Multiverse, Dean would find himself stronger, healthier and maybe even better looking than he was now. But that was just the beginning, Smit had assured him. Every aspect of his life would be the best it could be.

  Dean had a sudden vision of himself as supreme dictator of one of the states on that alternate earth, with palaces, cars, women, and the power of life and death over his subjects. He signed the papers. The only sounds in the office were the ripple of the pages as he turned them, and the scratch of his pen on every line marked with a sticky yellow arrow labeled SIGN HERE.

  When he finished, the enormity of what he had done washed over him. He felt almost giddy.

  “You’re going to love your new life,” Smit said.

  "Damn straight. As long as I’m happy, screw the rest. Let’s do it."

  *

  Dean felt nothing during the transfer itself, but a hollow roar echoed his ears. Cold, gritty wind blasted him. He found himself next to naked and the temperature next to freezing. He gawked at his surroundings. Barbed wire. Thin, half dressed men. Sky blown with ash and smoke. For some reason he was holding a heavy rock. What the hell...?

  Dean stepped out of line with the shuffling men. They, too, carried large rocks. The stink of their unwashed bodies affronted him, even more so when he realized he stank as badly as the rest. He dropped his to the ground, fighting nausea, forcing himself to stand tall.

  Pain snapped across his back. He cried out and crumbled to the ground, full of surprise and then indignation.

  "Work, you lazy dog!" a voice growled.

  Dean almost laughed. The absurdity overwhelmed him. A thug in an unrecognized uniform had hit him with a whip. Then anger replaced irony. He recognized a damn labor camp when he saw one. And it was clear he wasn't running it. Personal Paradise Inc. had betrayed him.

  Dean would have tackled the guard. Except Dean’s body had changed too. His attempted tackle degenerated into a wheezing struggle just to regain his feet. Dizziness and aching limbs made movement itself an agony. His body, which had been sleek with gym-worked muscles before the transfer, was putty stretched across bone. That dull pain in his distended stomach -- that was hunger. Starvation. Real starvation, not the damn-it-why-don't-you-have-anything-decent-prepared-I'm-starving starvation he had often bitched about at Colette.

  The whip descended again. Dean Vanch cringed, and felt shame at cringing, but it hurt.

  "If you're too weak to work..." The guard hooked the whip on his belt and pulled out a gun.

  *

  It all took a while to absorb. He drew a deep breath of the clean air in the office of Personal Paradise Inc., which was fragrant with the faint scent of soap and exotic bouquets. His body was sleek and strong and he enjoyed the way breathing didn’t hurt at all. He savored his strength, his health, the wonder of it.

  "So you mean that I switched places with my other self?" Dean Vanch asked Smit.

  "That’s correct," said Smit.

  "My parents didn’t die in carpet-bombing by the Francophones during the civil war?" Dean asked in amazement. "Collette was not shot during the ethnic cleansing? I wasn’t sent to a labor camp because I broke the miscegenation laws by marrying a Francophone? My health is good because I didn’t suffer from malnutrition during the Siege of Dieskau? I’m a wealthy man? And you even expect me to believe I don’t need a passport to travel from California to Louisiana?"

  "All correct," smiled Smit. "Are you happy now, Dean Vanch?"

  "Are you kidding?" Dean asked. "If all you say is true, I’m the happiest man on Earth."

  This story has been previously published in Conmergence.

  ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN

  by Jonathan Broughton

  ‘Round and Round the Garden

  Like a little Devil

  One step, two step,

  And…’

  In the sitting room, Emma sings quietly, and as she sings she sets out the brightly coloured plastic pieces that make the game ‘Mousetrap.’

  Anthony from Sunday-School is coming to play. ‘Round and Round the …’ There is a step at the door, and a shadow dulls the gleam of the bright plastic.

  It is only Mum. ‘Have you done your hair?’

  Emma coughs to cover her singing, because Mum always tells her off when she hears the Devil word. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re wearing your new pink dress I see.’

  Emma stands up and twirls, happy that she looks pretty.

  ‘Very pretty,’ Mum agrees. ‘Anthony will be here soon.’ She glances out of the window. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Play ‘Mousetrap.’ Then, after tea, can we play in the garden?’ The Devil will test him.

  ‘We’ll see dear, you might be too full to run around.’ Mum gives a little cry. ‘Anthony’s here.’ She waves as if he is standing a million miles away, ‘Cooooeeee!’ Then she runs into the hall to open the door.

  ‘Round and Round the…’

  Dad puts his head round the door and she stops singing. ‘Anthony’s here Emma.’ He is very angry when she says the Devil word.

  ‘I know.’ She twirls the red cage on the end of the spiky yellow pole and then lines them both up beside the other pieces. She leans back, satisfied. It’s ready.

  Mum laughs, long and loud, as she greets Anthony and his Mum. ‘Emma’s waiting for you in the front room, darling. She’s got a game ready for you to play. Go and see.’

  Anthony appears in the doorway. He pretends to be shy, which is silly, because he isn’t shy at Sunday-School. Emma wonders when he will try to look up her skirt.

  ‘Hello Anthony.’

  ‘Hello Emma.’

  His hair is combed with a parting like an adult. It looks like that in Sunday-School too.

  ‘Do you want to play ‘Mousetrap?’

  ‘All right then.’

  He is wearing a yellow T-shirt with ‘Jesus Loves Me’ in silver letters. Anthony believes in God. He hasn’t seen him, of course. He says the Devil is evil. He hasn’t seen him either.

  They play ‘Mousetrap’ six times. Emma wins every one. She cheats twice by moving his mouse closer to the round cheese under the cage when Anthony goes to the bathroom. He doesn’t notice.

  They eat tea in the kitchen and there is everything that Emma likes best; chocolate fingers, fizzy orange, green jelly and two different pizzas. Then the doorbell rings and she runs into the living room to look through the window.

  Is Anthony’s Mum back already? The Devil hasn’t tested him.

  A big brown lorry is parked in the road, blocking the drive. A man in dirty blue overalls is standing at the front door and waves when he sees her looking.

  Mum answers the door and then she calls for Dad and together they walk towards the lorry with the man. Anthony has joined her to watch.

  Emma seizes her chance. ‘Let’s play outside.’ Mum and Dad won’t notice them going into the garden. ‘You can ride my bike.’

  ‘All right then.’

  Emma runs through the hall to the kitchen, then out through the back door. Anthony pounds along behind her.

  The shiny pink bike is leaning against the wall and she jumps on and pedals over the grass away from the house. ‘Let’s go to the bottom of the garden,’ where the Devil is waiting.

  The short grass is easy to ride on and the garden curves right, past a bank of rose bushes. Anthony puffs and grunts as he sprints to keep up.

  The grass is longer now and the feathered tips stroke Emma’s bare legs, and she shivers.

  The apple tree stands in front of a high hedge, out of sight from the house. The branches twist, long and gnarled; brittle grey twigs spiral like corkscrews into pencil line thinness, and dark green leaves gleam in the sunlight. At its roots, fallen blossom turns from white to mushy brown.

  Emma brakes, and brings the bike to a halt. The Devil lives in the apple tree and his eye glints in the darkest part of the bark.

  Anthony runs up, panting like an old man. ‘Can I - have - a go now,’ he gasps, pointing at the bike.

  ‘Only if you pass the test,’ In Sunday-School, God and the Devil are always testing people.

  Anthony frowns. ‘I know how to ride a bike.’

  Emma points at the tree. ‘This is the Devil’s garden, and if you want to play, you have to pass the test.’

  Anthony puts his hands on his hips, throws back his head, and laughs.

  Emma thinks he looks ridiculous. He is pretending to be an adult, but she guesses that he is scared.

  ‘Don’t laugh too loud,’ she tells him, ‘or the Devil will get you!’

  Anthony looks all around with wide eyes. ‘I can’t see the Devil, Emma,’ he shouts in a silly sing-song voice. ‘He isn’t real you know.’

  ‘Yes he is Anthony. He lives in the apple tree. I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Ha ha ha! Liar liar, your pants are on fire!’ He jumps up and down, holding his bottom.

  He is the most disgusting boy she has ever met. Then he runs forward and kicks the apple tree with a loud thwack!

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she shouts. ‘You’ll make him angry.’ The spindle twigs tremble; the Devil is stirring.

  ‘You must believe me. Pass the test, and the Devil will let you play.’ She points at the twisted trunk and the deep wrinkles gouged out of the bark. ‘He can see you.’

  The spindle twigs reach down like clawed hands, and the thick root running through the grass is his tail; his knotty hump protrudes from underneath the lowest branch.

  Anthony falls flat on his back and rips up handfuls of grass, ‘Ha Ha Ha!’

  Emma stamps her foot. Why won’t he listen? ‘Look, I will show you how to do the test.’

  Anthony jumps up and skips round the tree. ‘Liar, liar, your pants are on fire!’ The twigs catch in his hair.

  Emma gasps. ‘The Devil nearly caught you then. Did you feel his fingers?’

  ‘Ha Ha Ha!’ Anthony runs behind her and lifts up her skirt.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ She bunches her fist and aims for his head, but he ducks and her blow misses.

  He dives into the grass, rolls onto his back, and arches his neck towards her as he takes another look. ‘Your pants are on fire!’

  Emma shuffles towards the apple tree, flattening her skirt against her legs. ‘You’re horrible!’

  The Devil’s tail flicks, like an angry cat’s, and his eye widens as the shadow under it deepens.

  ‘You mustn’t keep him waiting.’

  Anthony sweeps his arms backwards and forwards, making star shapes in the long grass. ‘I don’t like playing this game.’