Forgotten

"I hope this trip's worth his money, Ship," Jesus mumbled.

Unrecognized command phraseology, was the whispered answer inside his head. His dim-witted co-pilot couldn't even recognize a rhetorical statement.

"Ship, ignore previous command," he said.

In the soft glow of his command screen-wall, Jesus rubbed eyes beaten into blood-shot submission by the tedium of space-travel. Fifty-eight days out, they now crossed the boundary of the Outer System's edge. Subvocalized commands—translated by his liaison implant into zeroes and ones—instructed the Empresario's co-pilot algorithm to complete deceleration, bringing the ship to a relative halt.

He didn't know what lay ahead, besides the obvious two-month return trip. His passenger was tight-lipped, and his reasons for traveling outside of inter-planetary space were a mystery. Jesus was not normally the type that found ignorance blissful. Fortunately, his passenger had made it very lucrative.

With a touch of his finger, the webbing of his captain's chair melted into the seatback. He spun the chair around and pushed off into zero-G, catching hold of and digging his fingers into the malleable surface of the ceiling and walls to guide his progress. Exiting the bridge through its circular portal, a few short corridors brought him to his patron's door. A mouthed "Ship, open," caused it to slide away seamlessly into the wall.

As usual, he found the old man webbed to the wall of his room, loose robes surging out at all angles in zero-G like the petals of a strange flower. He read a passage aloud from his deteriorating paper book in a language that wasn't Spanglish—or any of the Inner System's less common tongues. It sounded archaic and ancient—like the book itself. Jesus had dealt with the mad before, religious zealots included, and was well aware that the language might exist only in the eccentric man's head.

The rich madman looked down from his perch with kind blue eyes, partially obscured by a nest of white curls. Kindness was something Jesus saw precious little of while hauling cargo through the Inner System. His usual reaction to it was guarded cynicism, but he couldn't help but feel it was genuine this time.

"My son, please come in," the man said—as if Jesus hadn't just done so without knocking. He always referred to Jesus as his son, and preferred—but didn't insist—that he be called "Father." Again, experience with nut-jobs told Jesus it was best to humor him.

Jesus obligingly pulled himself fully into the cabin. "We've crossed the threshold of Pluto's back door, Father Peter," he announced.

Peter nodded solemnly. Jesus detected anxiety in the soft creases and planes of his chubby face. "I suppose I should prepare my experiment then. There isn't any sense in delaying." He detached his webbing and pushed himself down to the vacuum-box by his bunk, placing his book into it with obvious reluctance—as though he may never hold it again. As the lid closed, the box began cycling out the damaging air and Peter looked up, casting off his melancholy and smiling again. "I'm sure you're anxious to get back to the Inner System, or at least to have some gravity under your feet for a while," he said.

Jesus nodded absently, his eyes still on the vacuum-box. Curiosity was dangerous, and Jesus only did dangerous things when being obscenely compensated. Still, two lunar months of watching the man spend all his free time reading from a dusty antique had piqued his interest. As they glided into the hall and made their way to the otherwise empty cargo bay that held Peter's equipment, he couldn't help but ask his question.

"Father Peter, if you don't mind my asking, what's that book you always read from? A science text? A collection of erotic tales?" The last, he said with a smirk. He had offered Peter full access to the ship's sex-sim libraries—homo, hetero and auto—only to discover via polite explanation that he was celibate in every sense of the word. Jesus, on the other hand, would go insane without his nightly brainjob.

Peter smirked back. "Nothing so dry or so ribald, I'm afraid. It's partly the story of my Father, and partly the story of your namesake."

Jesus frowned. "You like reading about the drunken escapades of a murderous son of a bitch named Jesus Manuel Delgado Goméz? Well, please don't tell anybody how his story ends. I have enough pending warrants as is."

Peter stopped pulling his weightless body along the corridor wall. "You misunderstand," he insisted. "Your people were once very devoted to God, my son. They often named their own sons after His. Unfortunately, most bearers of the name know nothing of its origin."

Jesus didn't mind humoring the old man, but he was finding this last bit hard to swallow with a smile. "Father Peter, you‘ve done an excellent job of not preaching to me for the last two months," he said. "I hope you can keep excelling at that simple job for the remainder of our business relationship. I, like the vast majority of the System's populous, think humanity has enough reasons to lie, steal, and kill without adding in the will of some imaginary creator." He didn't wait for a reply, just started back toward the cargo bay.

When Peter caught up at the doors, he placed a hand dry with age on Jesus' shoulder—a strangely calming gesture. "I'm sorry," he said. Waiting for Jesus' nod, he continued. "I agree, my son. The history of religion is full of bloodshed, greed and corruption. But I know it's also full of compassion, love and forgiveness. These are the qualities I hope to bring back to the world with the success of my experiment."

Jesus—still facing the doors—rolled his eyes. The portal had remained sealed since Peter supervised the loading of his equipment onto the Empresario, with even the cameras in the bay disabled. Jesus felt like a giddy kid. He was usually the one hiding cargo, and it was difficult to contain his wonder at what might be secreted away on his own ship.

"May I?" he asked.

"Please."

"Ship, open," Jesus said—aloud, for dramatic effect. The massive blast doors split and slowly disappeared into the walls. "Ship, illuminate cargo bay one," he said. The ceiling of the cavernous bay fluoresced like a bed of bioluminescent fungus. Light filtered into the vast, nearly empty chamber, finally revealing Peter's machine at its center.

Even in such an advanced age of man, there were still those who looked forward, and the apparatus had all the trappings of a science fiction writer's cold-sweat nightmare. It looked like a demonic cyborg that had been enticed from its own sinister plane and bound against its will. Everything about it screamed terrible, terrible wrongness.

Unfamiliar gooseflesh cascaded across Jesus' arms.

The massive device was a conglomeration of gleaming tubes and whirring engines, grafted haphazardly onto sheets and mounds of seemingly organic material, the whole thing sprinkled liberally with obsolete analog knobs and dials; A devilish calliope, whistling eerily, leaking a steam that smelled vaguely like a carrion-eater's breath. A chair and bank of monitors looked mounted to it awkwardly, and in no way appeared part of the original construction—or birth—of the machine.

When Jesus' initial rush of fear subsided, he pried his gaze away from the thing in his cargo bay and turned to his passenger, who stared at it with the pride of a new father. Jesus worked the jaw of his already gaping mouth. "What the fuck is that?" he asked.

Peter's glittering eyes didn't budge; he said nothing.

"And...may I ask what you're going to do with it?" Jesus continued.

"Certainly, my son," the beaming man acquiesced. "I am going to prove the existence of God." With that, he bent to activate his boots' magnetism, clamped down to the floor, and strode through the portal toward his humming clockwork monstrosity.

Jesus, bewildered, activated his own boots and followed.

Peter walked frantically around his machine, turning a knob slightly this way or that, making adjustments that seemed miniscule to the point of inconsequence to Jesus. He couldn't help but say so.

The old man stopped and wiped droplets of sweat away from his forehead. They tumbled toward the wall as perfect spheres. "When one is dealing with the universe at the quantum level," he explained, "even a hair's breadth is a vast chasm from which hidden dangers can emerge. That's why I needed to get as far away from the populated system as practical." He turned solemnly toward Jesus, snapping briefly out of whatever spell the demon—engine had cast on him. "I won't be angry if you want to turn back now, my son," he promised. "I need to know you accept the danger."

Jesus chewed on a bit of jerky—part cultivated animal flesh, part recycled waste—he had pulled from his jumpsuit. "With what you're paying me, I can afford a few years of safe legitimacy." He swallowed the jerky with a practiced grimace. "I acknowledge the risk. Continue."

He fully expected the machine to let out a fart of steam and collapse when the old kook fired it up from his jury-rigged controls anyway. That was, unless it came to irritated life and tore its way out of the Empresario, killing them both in the process.

Peter walked briskly back and forth from his monitor screen to one knob in particular and nudged it slightly more in one direction, and then back again several times—coaxingly, lovingly. He finally stepped back and let out a deep breath, chuckling nervously. "I'm about to meet my Father," he said with a lunatic smile.

"Should I give you two some privacy?" Jesus scoffed.

Peter shook his head vehemently. He winked, saying, "I think you need to meet Him more than I do, my son." Jesus felt like bashing his skull against one of the machine's steel pipes. He hid his malice behind a smile.

He backed up a few meters from the machine, unraveled his anchor line from his belt, and clamped the magnetic head to the floor. Deactivating his boots, he floated up a meter or so, keeping his finger on the button that would give the line slack. It was far better that an explosion rocket him against a padded wall than blast him with his feet magnetically grounded. He valued his legs.

Peter smiled knowingly. "I'm glad you have such confidence in me," he said. He was too pleasant to be good at sarcasm. "I assure you," he added, "your actions are unnecessary. Anything that goes wrong would turn us and you're _Empresario_ into a cloud of atoms."

"Just in case I'm not disintegrated," Jesus mumbled around another mouthful of toilet-jerky.

The old man sat in the machine's chair. He looked one more time at the readings on the monitor and picked up a circlet of metal that trailed wiring into the machine's belching bowels. Placing it on his head, he webbed himself to the seat and closed his eyes in deep concentration.

The machine's whistling quickly morphed into a deep "Om," as if it too had begun to meditate. It grew louder and louder, until it was all that was heard; one syllable filling the volume of the cargo bay. Jesus floated backward, moved by an unseen force until his anchor line grew taut. He quickly fed out the remaining slack, though the extra five meters or so did little to make him feel better.

Waves of the force began buffeting him with increasing regularity. He bobbed in a sea of tingling, microscopic pinpricks that filtered into him through every orifice; he could feel them in his stomach, his nose, his brain. Attempts to swallow nervously revealed that a lump of what was either undigested jerky or fear had welled up in his throat.

Something was about to happen. That was for damn sure.

Jesus' flight instinct fought desperately to take over his mind and body. He needed to get out of the cargo bay. Now. "Father!" he cried.

"Hush, my son," Peter whispered. "He's coming." An iridescent sphere emerged from the machine, tricking Jesus' vision like a heat shimmer, and quickly expanded to swallow up both men. It swelled through the walls and ceiling of the room, giving everything a wavy, underwater look. Out of the corner of Jesus' eye, he saw a similar sphere growing on the monitor screen. The likeness of the Empresario sat at its center.

He realized, too late, that he was being underpaid.

Jesus Manuel Delgado Álvarez felt unreserved sorrow swallow him; a loneliness he had never known in all his years of cruising empty space weighed upon him. He felt the overwhelming terror of an empty universe crushing down.

Without warning, or even a whisper of sound, his passenger, ship, and person, ceased to exist.

When there was once again a Jesus Manuel Delgado Álvarez, he found his mouth locked open in mid-scream. Realizing all sensation of pain and despair had left him, he slowly let it close. The devastating loneliness was gone. Loneliness was impossible now, it seemed. This knowledge came from what appeared to be a new facet of his mind; one he could feel, but could not yet access.

He had other things to worry about right now.

He noticed that—oddly—the webbing of his captain's chair once again held him fixed in the glow of his monitor bank. Screens that had minutes ago shown the void now revealed a darkened planetoid. Familiar gray habitat domes spread across its surface like acne; craters like pockmarks. Jesus had seen this scarred complexion before.

"Ship, current position." he pleaded aloud, trying to stifle hysteria.

A voice echoed in his head through his liaison. We currently orbit Luna, over its Western hemisphere.

"Ship, position five minutes ago."

There seemed the slightest hesitation. His co-pilot never hesitated. .4 Astronomical Units outside Pluto's orbit.

It could not be.

He hammered away at his seldom-used manual controls. Numbers and words scrolled on a corner screen, a log of the Empresario's journey. There was no missing data, but approximately two minutes earlier the ship's logged position changed by over fifty AU. This occurred with no time lapse.

The implications were enormous.

It appeared, in some way at least, that Peter's experiment was a resounding success. Hopefully he was alive to enjoy his achievement.

Jesus shook his head to snap himself back to what, for at least the moment, seemed to be reality. He quickly retracted the webbing and—with an eerie sense of déjà vu— began retracing his steps of only a half-hour before. Outside the bridge, he found a frazzled Peter pulling himself down the corridor from the cargo bay.

"Jesus!" the old man cried. "Thank the Lord. I thought you'd been forgotten!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jesus grabbed him by the shoulders and steadied him. "Do you realize we traveled almost five-billion miles instantly? Your machine is going to make you a very rich man, Father Peter." He thought for a second. "Richer, I mean."

Peter didn't seem impressed by this. His bright blue eyes now looked pale gray. The downcast expression on his usually cheery face fit him like a borrowed vacuum-skin. "Where are we?" he asked.

"We're back in the Inner System, orbiting Luna."

His face betrayed little of his thoughts. "I see," was all he said.

Jesus was getting a little angry at his lack of enthusiasm. "This technology is going to revolutionize space travel!" he said. "Don't you realize the universe has just become humanity's playground?"

Peter wouldn't have it. "You don't find it strange that you were transported from the cargo bay back to the bridge during our teleportation?" he asked.

"Hey," Jesus said. "If I can save myself expensive fuel and months of travel time, I don't care where I appear. As long as it's inside the ship." He winked. The thought of a taste of that fortune was intoxicating.

Peter closed his eyes and shook his mop of curls. "As far as I'm concerned, my experiment was an abject failure." He pulled himself slowly past Jesus toward his cabin. "I wanted to make sure you were alive. Now I am going to return to my cabin to reflect on this." He pinned Jesus with a hard look. "The machine is password locked and the slightest touch could undo difficult calibrations."

Jesus projected insult, but deep inside he understood why Peter needed to say it. They both knew his reputation. "Trust me, Father, I wouldn't know where to start," he said.

"Thank you, my son. Now, I will rest. I must consult my book, to see what it says of these matters." He continued toward his cabin.

"I would try 1 Chronicles 22:13 if I were you," Jesus offered. The shocked Peter stopped in his tracks. Jesus was just as shocked, and had no clue what had just come out of his mouth. Before Peter could turn back to question him, he braced his feet against the wall and pushed off down a side corridor, out of his sight.

They both had thinking to do.

Back in the bridge, Jesus watched Peter on a screen. The old man was back in his cabin, wasting no time in unsealing his vacuum box and pulling out his book—the Bible, Jesus somehow realized. It appeared the first thing he did was look up Jesus' passage. It wasn't clear if it gave him comfort.

"Then you will have success if you are careful to observe the decrees and laws that the Lord gave Moses for Israel. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged." Jesus said aloud. A chill ran down his spine. Right now, he didn't know what the passage meant. He had no idea who these Moses and Israel people were. He was certain, however, that this knowledge was also just beyond his grasp and waiting to be unlocked.

He was also certain that when Peter had mentioned his machine being password locked, the password in question had revealed itself in his mind, another child of that hidden knowledge he now possessed.

He needed to decide what to do with it.

It didn't seem that Peter was prepared to properly enjoy his success, or use his machine to its fullest capacity. That was inexcusable to a capitalist like Jesus. There was money to be made. They could work out the details of who got what share later.

"Ship, lock cabin four door. Open on my voice command only," he subvocalized.

There is a passenger in cabin four. This conflicts with Inner System safety code.

Jesus gnashed his teeth. Moronic AI. He pulled up the Empresario's schematics on a monitor and traced the different pathways one could take to the cargo bays. When he felt he had memorized them, he once again checked the screen that showed the old man. Peter floated near his pallet, legs crossed, eyes closed, in apparent meditation.

Jesus peeled Peter's screen from the wall and rolled it, placing it snuggly behind his belt. He started making his way toward the machine.

Along the way, he gave the co-pilot several commands. They involved the sealing off of various corridors with blast doors. None of this violated the AI's precious security code, but it did limit Peter's path to cargo bay one to a labyrinthine snake of seldom used passages that Jesus himself would have had a hard time navigating.

When he reached the cargo bay, once again illuminating it, the machine stood before him, still emitting a barely audible hum. It was as if it whispered to him. Surely, it wanted a master who would use it to its fullest potential, and it knew Jesus was that man.

He unrolled the screen and noted that Peter was still in deep thought, in no position to interfere. Magnetizing to the floor, he approached the machine slowly. With each step, new knowledge of its operation flooded into his head. He still had no idea what it was, or how it worked, but he did know how to make it work.

Peter's password consisted of a series of twists of one of the analog dials, almost like a primitive combination lock. He made short work of bringing the machine back to a ready state. As far as he could tell, the monitor showed it to be calibrated correctly. All he needed to do was put the control circlet on his head and decide where he wanted to go next.

As he sat in the seat and felt the cold metal slide over his temples, he realized that something wasn't quite right. This machine was no mere transportation device. Had Peter not said he was trying to prove the existence of a God?

The circlet came to rest, contracting to fit snugly, and Jesus swore he felt tiny hooks dig into his mind. The monitor showed him the cube of space that the Empresario occupied. A small, nearby communications satellite drew his attention. As he thought about it, a minute sphere encircled its location on the monitor. Suddenly, a flood of information spilled forth into his head. Jesus was now aware of every bit of matter within the sphere, down to the sub-atomic level. He knew how many hydrogen atoms drifted through that specific volume of space, the serial number on the battery unit powering the satellite.

He realized he was touching God's mind. He also realized what the inner peace he had felt when he woke up back in his captain's chair had been. Back on the edge of the Outer System, when Peter used his machine, he felt what it was like for God to forget him. When he reappeared on Luna's far side, God had remembered him once more, and now, he remembered God for the first time.

"I asked you not to touch the machine," a voice said.

Jesus' concentration broke. Eyes that had been locked on the satellite drifted to Luna and the sphere disappeared from the monitor. He was back in the real world, no longer interfacing with God.

He didn't turn to see where the voice came from. There was only one other soul aboard the Empresario. "Father Peter," he said.

There has been a large explosion on Luna's surface. One of the habitat domes has been damaged. The AI interrupted. Jesus looked to the screen and noticed the satellite was gone. Where his gaze had slid when his concentration broke, a plume of dust and venting gasses now billowed.

Peter couldn't hear the AI, but apparently he could see the screen. "You just killed hundreds of people with a stray thought," he accused. "Don't you see the machine needs to be destroyed?"

Bile rose in Jesus' throat. "Destroyed?" he challenged. "You claim to be a disciple of God, and now you want to destroy our link to Him?" He turned to face the old man, shaking with rage.

Peter held a large tube of steel in his hand, a spare part for the machine, no doubt. The twinkle in his eyes had become a hard gleam. Still, it was difficult for the pudgy cherub to look dangerous. "Don't you wonder why you believe in God now," he asked, "when less than an hour ago you grew angry at the mere mention of His name? You know Bible passages even though you've never read the book!"

"When God touched my mind, he enlightened me," Jesus spat.

Peter shook his head. "Then ask yourself how I got here so quickly when you obviously tried to make it difficult for me. I now know this ship better than the man who designed it, all because it was enveloped in the machine's sphere." Just as Jesus now knew every nuance of the now destroyed satellite. "As for your piousness, I believe I accidentally imprinted my wishes on you while you were in the sphere. Neither of us is the man we once were. We're imperfect memories with a touch of my wishful thinking thrown in, remade by that demonic machine. You're nothing now but an amalgam of what I thought you were and what I wanted you to be; a greedy smuggler with the utmost devotion to a God he doesn't even know!"

He stopped talking and stared at the plume rising from the shattered habitat dome. "Luna is my home," he said. "When the flood of knowledge and power scared me, I started wishing we were here." A tear was welling up in one blue eye. "And here we are."

Jesus couldn't argue with Peter's logic, but he wasn't ready to give up the reigns. "What are you saying? The machine is a prayer-answering device? It lets you communicate your every want and need and share in God's infinite knowledge? It lets you guide his hand as he crafts reality?"

Peter shook his head sadly. "What I'm saying is that I never realized what the organic component of this machine is. Now I know. It's a tumor in my Father's brain, and it needs to be removed."

A surface-to-space missile has been fired at the Empresario. It will connect in twenty seconds, the AI said. If Peter had more to say, Jesus didn't hear it. He quickly centered the screen's view on the approaching projectile and enveloped it in a sphere.

"Please, God. Save us," he whispered. Again, an intimate knowledge of everything within the sphere filled his mind. He imagined the missile streaking back toward those who fired it. The next second, there was another explosion on the surface.

There would be more missiles to follow, perhaps too many for him to stop.

Jesus began to concentrate, closing his eyes. The machine's hum increased as it had when Peter used it. It grew louder, and soon the thrum was deafening. He could feel his every molecule vibrate.

Jesus opened his eyes and saw Peter holding his hands over his ears, shouting, his pipe floating nearby. Turning back to the screen, he saw that the view had zoomed out several orders of magnification. The Empresario was no longer visible, but the entirety of Luna had filled the monitor.

Little by little, information metastasized into his head. He had to close his eyes to block out the insignificant details of the cargo bay. First, he knew the atomic composition of Luna's cold core. Soon, he became intimate with every Planck-length of its crust. The floor plans of every habitat dome on the planet, the design of every lunar vehicle, were no stranger to him than his own name.

It was last that he became aware of the souls. Over one billion human lives became twinkling stars within his mind. He watched some flicker and die only to be replaced by new, brighter ones. He flitted from one to the next, taking in each life as a whole: desires, loves, fears. Sins. He realized he could snuff them all like candle flames; mold them like tiny balls of clay.

Very few of them knew God. Jesus stood at His right hand, poised to educate them, or do His bidding unto a heathen world.

Before he could begin to make the subtle changes he knew God wanted done, the souls blinked out of his mind. Pain, blossoming like a mushroom cloud, took their place. The infinite power drained from his body and he fell upward from the chair, the circlet floating loose from his head. Peter held the metal pipe, looking more like a warrior than Jesus had imagined he could. Blood stained the end of the pipe that had obviously connected with his head. Images of tranquil angels with flaming swords came to mind.

Before Jesus could float toward the cavernous ceiling, he grabbed hold of the chair's back. "What are you doing?" he screamed at Peter through the blood in his mouth.

"Stopping you from making a huge mistake," Peter said. "When that machine transported us here, we did one of two things. We either gave God temporary amnesia, damaged His brain, or we used the very fabric of the universe as a giant computer to factor our own selfish equations. Either way, we became gods." He swung the pipe into the monitor screen, shattering it. Jesus flinched. "There can be only one God."

Jesus looked at the ruined shards of the monitor. Hopefully the machine could still be used without it. He agreed with Peter's statement, and if he had to envelope the whole Inner System, he could still sift through and find the smaller details.

God's work would still be done.

He began slowly running his free hand down the side of his jumpsuit toward the knife on his leg.

Peter swung again and hit the side of the machine with a loud clang that appeared to do no real damage. He continued his diatribe. "No sane Father would give his children such corrupting power." Tears were cart wheeling away from his eyes now. His pipe connected with a clump of organics, causing the machine to emit a keening wail. "If this unholy machine proves anything, it's that God forgot us long ago. Or that he never existed at all."

"Blasphemer!" Jesus shrieked, pulling on the seat and launching himself through the air toward Peter. The pipe connected with his shoulder, not slowing his momentum. He struck the old man, who bent at the knees, anchored by his magnetic boots. Jesus sailed on toward the floor, skittering toward the wall until he reached down and activated his own magnets.

Coming to a sudden stop, he found he was now several meters from Peter and the machine. Peter lay on the floor, his feet still flat against its metal surface. The front of his clothing was soaked through with blood. Droplets of red floated around him like tiny iron-rich asteroids. The knife hilt emerged from his robes at chest level.

Four surface-to-space missiles have been fired at the Empresario. They will connect in twenty seconds, the AI warned. Jesus doubted he could get to the machine and make it work in time.

"Peter!" he cried. "They've fired more missiles at us! Use the machine!"

Peter looked over at him with rapidly clouding eyes and scrambled painfully to his feet, coughing up another cloud of blood droplets. He clomped over to the machine as quickly as his magnets-and the knife in his chest—would allow. When he reached the seat and grabbed the floating circlet, he looked uncertain.

"Now, Peter! Do your God's will!" Jesus screamed.

"If there's one thing...I've learned today...it's that what you said is true," he stammered. "Humanity has enough to fight about...without the fickle will of gods." With that, he snapped the circlet in half and let it float free.

"No!" Jesus shouted.

Peter clasped his hands together. "If my Father...is truly out there...somewhere...I pray that he remember us...and that he bring us—"

A roar filled the bay, like the angry voice of God. Peter was seared from existence.

Another sphere erupted into the room, but it was not a sphere of knowledge and power. It was a sphere of righteous flame. It filled Jesus not with loneliness, but with clarifying pain. He, too, clasped what remained of his hands together, praying to his newfound savior.

As the world was cleansed away in slow-motion, layer by agonizing layer, time began to freeze. Whether this was a function of the machine, Jesus would never know. As each pulse of pain became a century of agony, he waited for his Father to come and take him home.

He waited, and prayed he had not been forgotten.

Brian Salyards lives in New Hampshire with his wife and daughter, works in insurance, and would love his SF-writing hobby to someday be a full-time job. His previous work has appeared in Alien Skin, Anathema and Clonepod.