CZM Book Club: Black Hole, by November Rush

Happy Valentine's Day! Margaret reads you a story about codependent lesbian mushroom parasites.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. Hello and
welcome to the Coolzone Media book Club, the only book
club that is introduced by me. Going book Club, book Club,
book Club.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
This week we're back to fiction, and I have a
little Valentine's treat for you. This is a really fun
story by a writer named November Rush. Hazel pitched this
story to me as what if Alien The movie was
about the horror of falling in love, and so what
more could you want from Valentine's Day than a story

(00:45):
about falling in love? That is horrible. I will have
seen Wuthering Heights by the time that you hear this,
but I have not seen it yet by the time
I'm recording it, So I wonder whether it will also
misunderstand stories about love. Anyway, that's entirely unrelated. We are

(01:07):
going to be reading a story called black Hole by
November Rush. It's a weird little space journey through psychedelic,
out of control body horror. It's about parasitic body jumping,
codependent lesbians searching to find each other again, and the
wake of destruction they leave behind them. That sounds like

(01:27):
romance to me. I'm not actually a cynical as I'm
making it sound. This story is from the collection Bury
Your Gaze, an Anthology of tragic queer horror, edited by
Sophia Asram, which Hazel describes as very fucking good. So yeah,
the story's fun. Just trust us here. It is black

(01:47):
Hole by November Rush. Morgan blinks down at her hands,
sluggishly touching her thumbs and fingers together as she tries
to figure out how an ordinary cinicied plan could cause
a psychedelic effect in a human. The palm of the
hand she's just used to touch the alien plant sample

(02:08):
is covered with a mist of tiny beads of blood,
as though her flesh is a sponge, as though something
minuscule on the plant has burrowed into her skin and bloodstream,
which seems like a clue, though she's having trouble focusing
on how. Splitting splitting another clue, like a splitting headache,

(02:29):
but more like her head is split. Her mind is split, kaleidoscopic,
fracturing into yes, that's me and actually this is Morgan
attempts to sort through the disjointed foreign images in her mind.
Terror bubbling up from her stomach like bile, and it

(02:51):
occurs to her she may have an increasingly short window
of time. She feels her mouth open and her tongue
run along her teeth, feels the sting as her teeth
close on her lip a little too hard. Something is
trailing up her arms and pulling gently experimentally on the joints,
and she realizes belatedly it's her own fingers, no longer

(03:14):
under her command, and a single idea pierces the fog
of panic. Find void, except Morgan actually wants to alert
Allan and get help, not find void, because she suspects
she is dying. How exactly would one go about alerting

(03:39):
Alan and getting help and not dying a little hard
to figure out, even if she could control her hands
or make noises. Since she has the overwhelming and bizarre
feeling this is the first time in maybe years, she
has had access to a mind capable of this level
of intellect. Morgan is intoxicated by the dizzying rush of

(04:02):
unfamiliar memories that her plant and insect bodies can only
comprehend as emotions or maybe temperature warm and safe for
the times the two of them wait her and who
the void were little furred animals together for the times,
dozing in puddles of light as children or invertebrates, or

(04:23):
bandits cool for waiting in stasis for an opportunity, for
centuries passing, as the tree of her body thrust knobbed
roots through the soil to lap up nutrients and brush
fronds against the sky, And most of all, the frigid loss,
the grief when they are torn apart, the cold of searching,

(04:44):
searching for the warmth of hoping, the heat of finding
overlaid confusingly with her own short human life, Morgan remembers
the blur of thousands of lives, looping thousands of times
around hun undreds of suns, of knowing so much and
only sometimes having the brain to understand it all. She

(05:07):
sees winding through them all like a vein of gold,
like a fracture void her eyes, her multitude of eyes
that are pale and orange and black, all at different times,
but all void. Her smile, her smiles, the twist of them,
and the way that a serpentine body, or a cartilagineous one,

(05:31):
or a leaf can smile, can smile with a twist.
Morgan feels her mind's eye fixed hungrily on a pool
of light as the fallible, tactile biology around it, royals,
shaped shifts huge than tiny, scaled than feathered, then vibrant green,
recognizing some of the animals, people, and alien life forms,

(05:54):
but not most. The consistent glow of void recognizable throughout
her many shapes, perceived by a multitude of sensory organs
in a jumble of identity, purpose, and form. Moving towards
void is an instinct that doesn't require a brain at all.
Even a plant knows to turn and face the sun.

(06:17):
The love of Void is unlike anything Morgan has ever felt.
The confusion of her self destructive love for the metamorphizing
void calls an old human story to mind. Okay, so
in retrospect, most of those thoughts probably don't belong to Morgan.
It's been mere seconds, but she's lost control of her body,

(06:39):
worse her brain. Morgan realizes that a foreign consciousness has
dug its tendrils into her mind, her personhood, and is
pressing her down, holding her still as she feebly thrashes
like a fish in the bottom of a rowboat. Taking over.
Morgan's lungs take a soft, shaky breath, and her throat

(07:00):
constricts a few times, making a noise like which is
not enough to attract attention, and her mind begins to
blur sideways. It feels a little like being the sinicied
plant sample. Again. With her last strength, she tries to
cling to why it matters whether she was really a
parasitic entity occupying a plant a few moments ago, or

(07:21):
whether she was a human woman named doctor Morgan Christie
who knew how to breathe with her lungs and analyze
a sample of alien fauna, who could use part of
her throat to communicate with other humans in a natural
and unsuspicious way. She fails. Star feels a cautious satisfaction

(07:42):
as the consciousness of doctor Morgan Christie fades to black
and her own consciousness takes over the body completely. Doctor
Christie says, Alan, these first few moments are critical. Star
flicks through Morgan's mead's eyelids fluttering, then discards that idea

(08:03):
and focuses on Morgan's general knowledge of her identity in
the world instead. How would she have appeared to Alan?
Just now, Ah, I've identified something unexpected in the sample,
she says, place it back in quarantine for me. Was
that enough? Actually? Now that she's here there's only four

(08:23):
other crew members, so there's a one in four chance.
Star dubiously surveys Alan's bland concern and Morgan's knowledge of
this unremarkable man, and shelves that idea. If she knows Void,
and she does, like one hand knows the other, Alan
wouldn't be it. She makes an excuse to him and

(08:45):
turns from his searching expression, picking up a clipboard and
wincing as unexpectedly light it rises a little too fast
in her clumsy hands. She heads for the door, searching.
But you, dear listener, don't have to search too hard
yourself in order to find these sweet deals and let

(09:06):
them subsume your personality and destroy it until there is nothing,
nothing but left over. That's all that will be left
of you. Here's ads, and we're back. It's been decades

(09:38):
and hundreds of forms since Star and Void last saw
each other. Star runs through the old signs and signals
they've used in the past, finding them all wanting. She
considers any possible reason for Morgan to mention to her
crewmates moving water thrice, or to reference the entangled rulers
of a historic dynasty on a planet that human have

(10:00):
no idea exists. As she walks, she runs Morgan's limited
color vision over the metal and plastic contours of the ship.
Its sterile and artificial. Here, few life forms other than
the humans, their lab samples, and a little of their food,
barely even a micro organism. It's hostile, with precious few

(10:24):
options should she need to hop Nowhere to shelter, no
where to hide. Star is sure enough that Void is
wearing someone on the ship that she has bet everything
on it. Once she had received Void's signal, it was
hard enough to coordinate her arrival here, following the movements
and plans of the ship, occupying just the right animal

(10:46):
or plant, just the right place, waiting dormant and insensible
for the moisture and bacterial scent of a new life
form to touch her fragile, borrowed body with a porous
part of their own, or lean close enough to breathe her.
She arrives at the bridge, surveying a crew as close
as family to her body and entirely alien to her mind.

(11:10):
The captain and first mate are here, two out of four.
She runs through Morgan's knowledge of each of them, scans
them as subtly as she can for hints, The captain
turns and smiles at her expectantly. The sample from planet
Side turned up some very interesting characteristics that I think
you should know about, Starr says, using Morgan's voice in

(11:33):
Morgan's expertise. She smiles professionally and looks over Captain Jace's
rigid posture, her hair tidily secure in a dark bun
at the nape of her neck. Power often attracts void,
which she has to admit does make things easier. The
captain is wearing a meticulously maintained squarish jacket in a

(11:54):
light blue sleeves pulled practically back to her elbows, not
part of stand uniform. Could that be anything? She considers,
which alien languages this body's throat and tongue could articulate
through a cough. Star begins to detail her report. She
considers how long she can draw this out and thinks,

(12:16):
my hunger for you is teaching me to hate each
one of these beautiful, soft creatures I discover because they
are not you. It takes her more than an hour
to think of anything to try, and by the time
she does, she's running out of excuses to stay on
the bridge. Failing to find a natural way to bring
up any of the old signals. She turns instead to

(12:37):
their one constant change, the malleability and interchangeability of the body.
She could say something like I'm not feeling myself, or
I'd love you as a lion or a swan or
a campfire. What was that story that Morgan had been
reminded of before her feeble kicking turned a twitching and

(12:59):
stopped altogether? Some elf prince named tam Lee or something.
What does that have to do with her and Void?
Four people on the bridge that doesn't leave mushroom, says
a voice from behind her. That's that's a pun, a
mushroom pun. That's so stupid. God, it's so much better

(13:21):
than what she was going to say. She turns. Void's
expression is carefully neutral, and her eyes shimmering. The corner
of her mouth trembles, just a fraction wanting to smile
before being carefully schooled with a twist of her Void
is in a surprising, fragile body. Her blonde hair is

(13:42):
greasy at the roots, like she hasn't quite figured out
how to deal with it, and there is an anxiety
that has permanently marked her. Peaky face with somewhat the
look of a white lab rabbit. Her uniform hangs awkwardly
on her frame and is afraid at the wrists, where
it looks like she choos it. It's not the kind
of body that Void usually chooses, and she wears it

(14:03):
with a softness. The thrumbs Star's chest with physical pain.
She's wearing a chunky and tasteless beaded necklace that looks
like it was made by a child, and Star's new
heart jitters as she recognizes the colors that harold a
house they once dedicated their lives to as bounty hunters.
And that's not all. Her fraying collar is fraying in

(14:26):
a very specific way, actually, and the patterns of little
tears and protruding threads form a world in a language
only spoken several galaxies away, the name of a cult.
They had found it and became extremely fond of one
of the only places they'd been accepted and cherished for
what they truly were to have the divinity of their
changeable flesh acknowledged. And craziest of all, her coveralls are

(14:50):
unbuttoned to reveal a T shirt with an image of
a fox skull with mushrooms growing out of it. That's
just two on the nose, there were dicks less. Creature
didn't even have to use her stupid, risky pun because
she's wearing their lives all over herself, not knowing if
her transmission had been received or if Star were even
still alive. Void has been sending signals out into an

(15:14):
empty universe on speck on faith. Star Love's are so
goddamn much she could scream. Morgan's memory recognizes the body
Void as wearing Cole the ship's tech. Notably, Cole and
Morgan were friendly, if slightly awkward coworkers and not thousand

(15:35):
year old star crossed lovers. But she's gone speechless. She's staring.
Priority one needs to be staying safe and not lunging
across the bridge and finding out what two of these
warm and lightly furred bodies feel like when they press
against each other. She has to say something chill and normal. Actually,

(15:55):
now that you're here, I'm having issues with the lab processor.
If you could take a look, she manages, and Void
Coal is saying, of course, doctor before she's even finished,
and she may simply not be able to control Morgan's face.
As they leave the bridge together. She catches a few glances,
and the first mate leans whispering towards the captain. Oh well,

(16:19):
they'll think of a good excuse for this later. Now
that they're finally, finally together again, Star isn't wasting another
moment on catering to expectation. Void leans close to her,
murmuring in the language of these people, finding expression there
so naturally idiot, She says, I would know you anywhere

(16:40):
and anything. The place that Void brings her to is
hidden enough to do for now, and as they duck
squeezing into the crawl space beneath the large computer together,
Star has to agree that the warmth, the hum and
the smallness of it, the darkness punctuated by flickering lights,
is pleasure and comforting. They fold together, finding the parts

(17:03):
of themselves and each other that are soft or pointed
to lie against. Void drags the translucent scales at the
ends of her fingers through the mane of hair that
crests Star's head, showing her how the feeling sends prickles
of physical pleasure down Star's scalp and spine. I love it,
she says, I'm like a little you know, those flexible

(17:27):
mammals that live inside, says Star. Comprehends that concept of
housecats and giggles and feels the vibration of laughter bubble
through her for the first time. The combination of Star's
love of Void and Morgan's body's instinct has made her
desperate to touch the pale silver of skin visible at

(17:47):
Void's collar and sleeves, and Void rolls the coveralls back
to allow Star's thumb and index to circle her wrists
with a gentle craving. There are soft, dark bruises spotting
Void's skin, like she's an over ripe fruit. Morgan's scientist's
mind recognizes the heaviest bruising on the part of the

(18:09):
forearm that must rest against the desk. As Void sits
at the console, she frowns, and Void glances down at
her own arms. That's gotten a bit worse. Void says, Damn,
I was trying to be careful. You're pressing too hard,
I think, says Star. I know, but that's not the
only reason. I dent much easier than when I first

(18:30):
got the body. Look and Void takes Star's finger and
grinds it into her own wrists so hard that the
tips of both of their fingers turn white, then rolls
the skin a little between Star's fingers, as though crushing
a leaf. Sure enough, when Void lets her take her
hand away, a yellowish mark has begun to blossom. The

(18:51):
fragility is hypnotizing malnutrition. Probably, Star says, you have to
be more careful than this, doesn't it hurt? And Void
nods and shrugs. Star continues, If we're going to find
a way off the ship, we have to make these
bodies last and keep them looking normal. You have to
pay attention to the pain. Don't lecture me, I know,

(19:13):
says Void, rolling her eyes. I was waiting for you.
I'll be more careful now. But Star is still frowning
a little, running through Morgan's memories of coal and noting
how her skin looks a little too tight. Her uniform
fits a little wrong, her eyes are brighter and wider
than they used to be. This body is already starting

(19:33):
to give. Void is riding it too hard. I mean it,
says Star. Maybe this could be our shot. We could
live a thousand years among these humans and not run
out of things to be. And these two are good,
healthy and intelligent. I want to stop running love, and
I want to hop less as little as possible, void

(19:54):
smiles a little. Your sensitivity is part of what I
love about you, she says, I know you hate seeing them.
Empty voids certainly been in coal long enough that the
mind of the sweet and quiet programmer with a surprisingly
wicked streak of humor is gone, forever. Left to her
own whims shall grind the body down to the quick,

(20:16):
shall ride the fraying nervous system as the body deteriorates
around her, delighting in the mind the sensations, and when
she becomes too obvious or too uncomfortable, shall jump a
memory bobs to the surface. They had activated queendom, and
they stayed as long as the fragile and decaying bodies

(20:36):
could disguise them, piloting near corpses, pressing chalky powder to
the skin to hide the rot, filling their chambers with
sickly sweet blooms to mask the smell, the strips of
flesh ribboning away, sending the prickle of impulses through the
nerves and dead meat, the limbs ceasing to function, frantically,

(20:57):
trying too late to figure out what had gone wrong,
not being able to reverse the decay that had begun
and Void in her arms at the last, her mouth
parts black as she smiled, eyes feverish, dragging the husk
of herself to the communicator to summon a page for
the first time in months, asking for strong ones, two

(21:17):
of them. Ugh, that had been bad. It's not just
the emptiness I'm worried about, says Star, picking up her
train of thought. If we leave these bodies anywhere, they'll
identify the traces of us in them. Yeah, they know
about us. That's bad luck, says Void. There have been
others that got caught. I wonder who. Yes, I want

(21:39):
to try. Let's live it out. We'll stay on the
ship and be Morgan and Coal and wait and live
like real people and rest. We can wait for a
good opportunity. Relief washes over Star. Of course, Star knows
that even if she tends Morgan's body like a garden,
learns to be gentle in the right places, uses all

(21:59):
the systems properly, Morgan's mind and self will still be dead.
But she is now the keeper of Morgan's memories, and
she will incorporate them into herself, carry them forward with
her as a sign of gratitude and respect. That's how
it should be, how it could be maybe now, and
says Voyd, There's so much more I want to show you.

(22:21):
She reaches behind Star fingers, skimming the waistband of her pants,
and pulls her shirt free. Void's hand finds the heat
of stars Morgan's skin, and Star shivers in a new way.
They tumble from the humming crush of the crawl space
onto the floor. Star finds herself on her stomach as
Void's thigh presses between her legs and sparks thrum through

(22:45):
the length of her. Desire kindles in Star and if
her lungs feel a little tight a Void is lying
on her a little too heavy, and her pelvis is
grinding into the floor too hard, it matters less and less.
Void Coal's narrow, cold hands slide under Star's clothing completely
and begin to demonstrate what human bodies can do. Void

(23:09):
rolls the bulk of Coal forward onto Star's neck and
head and no, okay, now she really can't breathe, and
that's clearly a problem. Her arms and torso are pinned
in place, but she rolls her jaw experimentally to the side,
seeing if it's flexible and strong enough to lift her
head and create a little space for air. It isn't
what she realizes at the exact moment, as Void grinds

(23:32):
down into her heart, lost in her own exploration of sensation.
Terrible timing, that's what it is. Star hears the pop
and doesn't understand what it means. She dazedly tries to
run her tongue over the inside of her mouth and
finds that the shape is wrong, the tongue too, and
in a moment, Morgan's nervous system fires a white explosion

(23:55):
of pain into her. Something hot is filling her mouth,
and her cheek is too on the floor. It seems
wrong that she could break so easily. Her strangled yell
is choked off. She can't close her mouth or actually
move it at all. She still can't breathe, and her
writhing and gargling must read a little too much as pleasure.

(24:16):
It takes precious seconds until she begins to gag and cough,
sincerely for Void to catch on to what's happening. Star
can't blame her. Once lost in pleasure, they often don't
express it the way that memories of the species they
occupy would expect. Void bucks off of her and flings
her onto her back. Ah. Good, now she'll be able
to breathe and spread Morgan's ribs like a flower in

(24:39):
the sunlight, creating the vacuum that will fill them with relief.
But oh no, there isn't any air in her mouth.
There's that hot liquid which doesn't feel right at all. No,
that doesn't work. It has to be air. But with
all this liquid, there isn't mushroom left in her lungs.
And actually something has gone very wrong. Indeed, a prepper
human would probably have known not to take such a

(25:01):
huge and greedy lungful of a non air substance. Her
face is starting to feel thick. She tries to raise
a hand to touch it, and watches the hand swim
helplessly at the corner of her vision, before veering away somewhere.
As the world begins to blacken at the edges, like
a love note burning in a grate, star focuses Morgan's

(25:23):
eyes on the white and purple triangle avoids coal face,
the terror and panic there looking like starvation. And do
you know what you can lock onto in your own
moments of terror and panic? Like a love note burning
bright against the blazing meaningless void of space and time.

(25:43):
It ads and we're back, and Jase glances at Mira
and Alan ready she asks, no skin showing, make sure

(26:06):
they don't touch you, and don't take off the filtration masks.
What had been nothing more than a whispered suspicion between
Jason her first mate, has quickly become a full blown
rescue operation now that Coal, or the fungal entity that
is currently controlling her, as disappeared with Morgan, Jace and
Beira raise their weapons, moving Alan behind them a little,

(26:29):
and Jace reaches forward and punches the button to open
the door. The Coal thing crouches over Morgan, knuckles white
as her fingers dig into the doctor's arms, holding her
face down above the floor and almost seeming to shake her.
Morgan's dark hair falls forward limply, and a long red
drool of blood connects her unseen face to the dark

(26:52):
puddle on the floor. Jiggling and swaying as she hacks
with gagging coughs, What used to be Coal snaps its
head forward, mouth slack and eyes like dark pits. Blank
with horror. Jace expects her to scramble to her feet. Instead,
her legs coiled beneath her abruptly spring pistoning her body

(27:15):
towards them like a projectile, making no attempt to use
her arms to cushion her fall. As she cannons into
their little huddle, Jace registers the thunk sound of Mira's
blaster being fired. A little after part of Coal's head
goes missing, Cole's remaining eye slides sideways, as though a
string that was holding it steady has been cut, and

(27:38):
her tongue protrudes from her mouth, stretching forward inquisitively, like
a tentacle mind its own. She's drier inside than Jace
thought she would be. All the puff of what looked
like dust that rises from the crater of her face
may contribute to that impression. Not dust, of course, thinks
to Jace as she raises her blaster. Those it must

(28:00):
be the spores. How incredible that whitish cotton fluff across
that bit of brain she can see must be part
of it too. Thank God for the filtration masks. Jace
fires into the trunk of what was Coal, and its
neck bends like a flower stem bearing too heavy a
blossom and opaque pink fluid. The texture of thickened milk

(28:22):
dribbles from her half head, but the creature is twitching
and swaying, but not falling. Its head rolls drunkenly, mouth
slowly widening, and a hand snaps up with instinctual speed
and rips the ventilator from Mira's face. The coal thing
finally buckles and folds to the floor, a few grayish

(28:45):
lumps spattering from its head, as though spilled from a bowl.
Jace watches transfixed for a moment too long, and that
cross her everything. Uh thunk whispers from beside her, and
she wrenches herself to see Mirah with her blaster in hand.
Her gaze follows the line of the shot to see
Alan collapse on the ground, eye lids twitching and neck missing.

(29:09):
Jace stumbles back, but it doesn't look like Mira's attention
is on her, or Jace thinks whatever is now occupying Mira.
The body of one of Jace's oldest friends lurches to
the ground next to Morgan, yanking her wheezing form upright,
winding its arms around the doctor and latching to her
like a limpet. Morgan's head jerks back and Jace's heart

(29:32):
drops sickeningly. Morgan is alive, gasping raspily, but the bottom
half of her face isn't in the right place. Her
bitten through tongue is so swollen it fills her lulling
skewed mouth, and her cheek has ripped a little at
the corner, torn skin frilling at the edge, stretched to
the point it becomes lacy. Her face is purplish and

(29:54):
her bulging eyes are watering. The Mira thing is clinging
to Morgan as though it's trying to, which makes it
considerably more difficult to get a clear shot. The Mirra
thing begins to windmill its legs awkwardly, scrambling to drag
both Morgan and itself towards Captain Jase. Still holding the

(30:14):
gun level, Jase reaches for the dispenser at her side,
pops the safety and douses both women with the entire contents.
Foul smelling yellow liquid plasters the thing's hair to its
face in strands, and drips from the edge of its
nose onto the doctor. Mira's body arches, and a soft

(30:36):
animal keening comes from its throat. A flossy strand of
myilium begins to snake from one nostril. The frond's tip
quests blind, seeking moisture, bacterial sense, organic life forms. The
first thread is followed by more furred, little tendrils curling
around the edges of the nose. Almost shy, Mira's eyes

(30:58):
roll back and slide closed. The creature tilts its head
and continues easing forwards, Propelled wormlike by the strangely flexible
movements of shoulder and hip. It seems to be relying
on the filaments as its primary sense organ and moves
as though pulled. Jay screams and flings the empty canister
at the creature that was supposed to kill the fucking thing,

(31:21):
not merely draw it out. She lifts her blaster and
then sees something else, another pale thread, writhing like a
headless snake against the broken cheek of doctor Morgan Christie
protruding from a tear at the corner of her mouth. Oh, unexpected,
there's two of them. Jase fires into the doctor's chest.

(31:42):
Morgan sputters and chokes anew, but the creature and mirror
doesn't stop advancing. The captain breathes in, breathes out, shudders,
a part of her brain and nimbly fires point blank
three times in Emer's head. A headless neck dips towards
her severed white tendrils, shivering in the spine, and Jace
lunges backwards as she feels a vice like grip lock

(32:04):
around her boot, fingers digging and burrowing. Mindless of pain,
she can only scrabble backwards a half step before she
feels the press of Mira's hand on her bare ankle.
Jay snaps her foot out in a kick to dislodge
the headless corpse, whose grip on the shuddering doctor is slackened,
except she doesn't do that. She tries again, and her

(32:26):
leg does move, but it folds under her props her
up insensitive to Jace's desperate attempts to control it. She
still has time moments. She's still herself, and she's still alive,
and that can't be it. She kicks herself free clambers back,
except she doesn't. Jace watches a helpless prisoner as her

(32:47):
body sits and leans forward, fluttering its hands over the doctor,
whose face is wrong and es is collapsed. She feels
the slipperiness of the doctor's blood and a few troubling chunks,
but she can't even control the direction of her eyes,
fixed on what's left of Morgan or the water that
begins to fill them. No, that can't be it. They

(33:10):
still have time moments. She's alive, she's right here. But
if they could get her to a plant, yes, that's it,
to the labs, she'll be fine, like always. But the
lab is far. The samples are locked in quarantine that
only Morgan or Allan's brains knew how to access. And
this is so much blood. Joyce Void could lift her.
Jace's body is strong and she's whole, at least one

(33:31):
of them is. She could carry her. But if she
begins to lift stars Star lets out a gurgling gasp
as something in the openness of her ribs sucks in
and out. Wetly. Star reaches up a hand, movements syrupy slow.
Her fingers drift to the Captain's ear, as though in
a dream, rolling the lobe so gently, with a kind

(33:52):
of wonder, like she's the first person in the universe
you've ever thought to do it. The twist of Jace
Void feels like it's unspooling. Morgan's Star's body dipsent on unconsciousness.
The danger doesn't occur to Void until she's looking down
dreamily at the body she had so recently occupied. Oh wait,
she wasn't. She's void. She never had Morgan's body. She

(34:15):
was borne into it and died in it to day
or Star was, which is herself. Void is aware of
a flicker of images, scratched and jumpy, like an artifacting video,
her own memories, but othered flipped. She sees her own
myriad shapes through the myriad eyes of Star and thinks,
I thought I was my best with her, but she
saw how wretched I was, and she loved me for it.

(34:36):
Oh no, not this dizzy in semi lucid, Star is
in Jace, and Void is in Jase, and so Star
is in Void. As above, so below. Without sentient thought
or purpose, trapped in an invalid host, Starr's most basic
chemistry has attempted to hail Mary any port in a storm,

(35:00):
including hostile takeover. Frantically attempting to make room for Star
inside Jace, Void presses her hands to Morgan's bare neck,
mashes her mouth against the clammy lips, and puffs breath
into her. But she can't force the transfer. There's not
enough left of the woman. Her attempt to hop to
Morgan's rapidly spoiling body and die with it has failed.

(35:23):
Void wants to vomit. She's sweating and shaking, and she
doesn't know whether it's her biology's natural reaction to Star,
fighting her off like a fever, or if it's her
heart's natural reaction to Star. Willing herself to die in
Star's place and destroy every fraction of herself and her name.
That could work, She thinks desperately, I always hoped i'd

(35:44):
die for you, and I can do it. Now, take
Jace's body from me. She tries to make herself weak,
to still her panic, to give up. That would be
a poetic end, fitting, there could be a point to it,
but nature doesn't care for poetry, and Void has always
had a strong immune system. She's dying again, and this

(36:07):
time it's the big one. No, unfortunately not the Void
half the Star. Half. Void isn't sure if Star can
hear her, but suspended in the moment before the drop off,
Void thinks to her lover as though thinking can save them.
I always felt, even with our bodies pressed together, I

(36:27):
can never get close enough to you to slake my thirst,
and look at us now. We have become divine, not
for the power and expansiveness of us, but for the
end of our story. At once one heart and the
dagger thrust through it. We are aspirational and cautionary God.
Creatures should be parables. Star's tiny fungal corpse will be

(36:52):
processed and expelled invisibly by Jas's body. Void won't even
have a smear of mucus to weep over the emptiness
of a cold universe stretches away from her on all sides.
The end. That's the end of the story, and what

(37:12):
a story. We've actually we've been talking about doing this
one for a long time now, and we wanted to
wait for Valentine's Day because we're not monsters, totally, not
at all. Anyway, Thanks for coming along in that wild
ride with us, Hazel, who helps me pick out the stories.
We and I talked about the story a lot when
we first read it, And if you take Star and

(37:33):
Void as the main characters, it's this cautionary tale against
codependence and becoming too lost in romantic love at the
cost of literally any other aspect of your life. But
if you take Morgan and Cole as the protagonists. It's
this allegory about how falling in love new relationship energy,
the swoons. Whatever is this out of body experience like
being taken over or possessed? Hazel says about it quote,

(37:58):
I particularly loved how star and to run up against
the fragility of the human body in small and big ways.
It felt so relatable to new relationship energy when I
often find myself consumed by something that feels so much
bigger than my bodily needs, Like no, I don't want
to get out of bed to eat, I want to
keep cuddling. And then what do I have to say

(38:18):
about it? I mean, you could take it as a
story about how if you try to save your friends
from codependence you have to shoot them with blasters in
order to do it. That's probably not the takeaway, but
it is interesting how the people who are trying to
save them from this like codependence destructive relationship end up dead.

(38:41):
I don't know whatever. This is what science fiction does best,
you know, is make these like non subtle metaphors yet
that are still somehow psychedelic and that you can't necessarily
pin exactly what they mean. We feel its meaning and
we can point to pe pieces of it, but we
can't grasp the entirety of what it's saying about everything.

(39:07):
I just really like that about art, and I think
that science fiction is incredibly well posed to do this.
When I first started reading it, I actually tend not
to like psychedelically written fiction, and so the first scene
I almost passed on this story. But it's worth it
and it becomes a little bit more understandable. But I
have to admit this is one of these stories that, like,

(39:27):
I don't know, y'all might need to listen to it
again or bury your gaze to read it properly anyway.
Bio the author November Rush. November Rush is a tattoo
artist and painter living in Montreal, Canada. This is her
debut as a writer, and you can follow her tattoo
and painting work at Underscore November Underscore Rush, which I

(39:49):
believe is Instagram is what it's saying, and on Blue
Sky at November Rush dot bsky dot social. I'm Margaret Kiljoy.
I have been your host. You can find my writing
on Substack. My newsletter there it's called Birds before the Storm.
It's really just Margaret Kiljoy dot substock dot com. And
I have various other podcasts on this very network. I

(40:10):
have cool people who did cool stuff. If you haven't
listened to it, what are you doing with your life
not listening to my podcast? That's what you're doing because
you hate me. That's what I think of everyone doesn't
listen to my podcast. I think they hate me. That's
actually not true at all. A lot of my best
friends don't listen to my podcasts. But that's out of
like weird stuff that's too personal. You don't get to

(40:30):
know that anyway. Dear listener, take care, love the ones
closest to you. I'll see you next week. Fuck Ice bye.
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

(40:53):
You can find sources where it could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.