Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn't Die

Behind them, for a split second, she can see something like a mountain surrounded by darkness, something like a mist around them and they are wavering, flickering, and then they are there. With her. Reeking of oxygen, looking baffled and coated in a thin red film like the algae that plagues the surface of aboveground rivers, very much alive in the dim light with her. They smile. Dead for three years and now here. Like they’d never gone at all. “Hello.”

Her scream catches in her throat. She can’t move. She is a silent sculpture of a woman whose deceased lover has come back from the dead through thin air. How could she do anything? She wants to cry, to laugh, to check her vital signs. Kean’s hair is tousled, their freckles are a constellation in the pale expanse of their face under that thin red coating, their lip is split. They are holding something mechanical and broken. She reaches for them and her legs begin to give out.

What she says is: “Kean. Oh.” And then she bursts into tears, falling into them. They grasp her firmly, keep her up, and she sobs into their embrace. It is unnervingly sticky, impossibly solid.

She decides that she’ll take them home, learn the secrets behind their travel, their impossible existence. The two of them take a back route, one Kean used to know but now perhaps seems puzzled by. They follow behind her, unsure footing on the smooth stone. There are no natural lights on the path from the Great Falls to the Quartz Quarter, only darkness that Shanna cuts with a headlamp set to dim blue—a color that doesn’t announce itself to mushrooms or the New Peace Valley Guard who have told her numerous times that it’s a fine if she’s caught gathering produce at crop sites without treated water. She watches Kean as they walk together.

They explain, “I made a device that oscillates particles in such a way that they bend, together, through spacetime.” Their voice is quiet, there is a lisp that wasn’t there before, they walk slightly faster than she remembers. They hold the machine’s broken pieces, glittering, in their arms like a baby. “That’s the short of it. I couldn’t carry any of my papers with me, but I know the design by heart.”

“That sounds like a lot of work.” And not at all in your field. They’re chemists, the two of them. Not particle physicists. Fifteen minutes into Kean’s return and Shanna is facing the fact that it is not, actually, a return but rather a new arrival. A new Kean. A Kean who strains their eyes against the darkness of the back-tunnels, who may not know the landscape of the New Peace Valley settlement or the 975 other miles of caves that connect to it. A Kean who didn’t die in the earthquake that killed so many.

“It was.” They grin at her. “But worth it. I had to find you.” They run their hand over the rugged wall. A trace of red appears, follows their fingertips.

Shanna, too, is smeared in the drying film where they touched her. She has decided that the likelihood that it’s blood is too high to risk asking if it’s blood or not. Once they’re home, she’ll take them into the shower anyway. It won’t have to be addressed. The whole thing, this whole situation, in fact, won’t have to be addressed. She can keep them secret, she can keep them hers.

Kean, the first Kean, died from a cholinergic crisis after the earthquake. There had been no early warning, no time to prepare. Shanna, Kean, and the rest of the synthesis team were plunged into darkness and then, as the equipment shattered, into a cloud of mixed spores. Only Shanna, closest to the door, had come out mostly unscathed. The others hadn’t come out at all. For three weeks, Kean (and Liu and Retta and an intern whose name Shanna has since forgotten) lay lifeless in the locked-down lab while Shanna lay unconscious in the hospital. When she woke up, it was alone, to the news that all synthetic hormones would now be made from animals and that the Human Growth and Progress Lab, far enough down in the valley’s floor that it could be sealed, would never be reopened.

Now, in the security of her small apartment built into the side of the rock walls that slope to the settlement along the river, she sits on her sofa and watches Kean assess the oscillation device. They are showered, wearing a pair of her pajama pants that are both too small around the waist and too long in the leg, and kneeling shirtless on the carpet at her feet, the pieces of machinery all intricately small. “I hate this bit,” they explain, arranging tiny metal pieces like a puzzle. “It has to be re-built every time I travel. It’s like a gun that only goes off one bullet at a time.”

“Have you used a gun?” Shanna takes in the uneven scars on their chest. Her old Kean had perfectly straight, wide scars that ran nearly the whole circumference of their torso. This new Kean has knotted, u-shaped incision marks running from sternum to armpit. Their hands are the same, though. Shanna can’t imagine a gun in them.

“You don’t use guns here?”

“What would we need a gun for?” Shanna stretches out on the sofa and wants to invite them up, to say that all of this can wait, that they have to learn each other again and that nothing is more important than that. “I’ve seen a gun, but only in the museums. There’s no hunting down here, we farm.”

Kean laughs. “That’s not the only use for a gun.”

There is a long silence. Shanna doesn’t know if she should explain that she knows that, that the museum covers all that, that New Peace Valley has never seen a war since the last war above-ground when the miners took their stand. Years and years and years ago but she knows what a gun is. Everyone in the valley does. She doesn’t say any of this.

Like the idea has just come to them, Kean asks, “What year is it?”

“6012.” She sees the frown that he covers up as soon as it crosses his face. “What year is it where you came from?”

“I don’t know if it translates.” Kean is back to looking at their machinery. For a long time, they’re silent. Shanna can see the exhaustion dawn on them, the twitch of their eyes. “Do you have a tupperware for right now?”

She doesn’t recognize the word. A bell of panic chimes in her heart and the skin on her neck stings with sudden sweat. She can manage to pretend around Kean’s physical changes, but if she can’t understand them...They’re looking at her expectantly and she has to ask, “Tupperware?”

The concern is in their face as well, but they smile through it. “A container with a sealable lid, big enough that I could put the pieces in.”

“Oh. Yes.” She is careful stepping around their project. When she returns with the ceramic box, she helps them load each individual piece in with care.

“I need more aluminum. And rare earth minerals.” They touch her hand as they close the box. “Where could we get some?”

The reputable sources, scientific supply stations and the City Farm and Supplies Market, aren’t an option for a person who is supposed to be dead. Shanna slowly draws near to them. They don’t pull away. She places her forehead on theirs and for a moment they are still. She feels as though all of her skin is shaking, like she’s a battery finally re-charging. “I’ll ask around. Scavengers on the surface offer a pretty good bargain sometimes and I—” Her voice catches in her throat and breaks.

They kiss her without asking but her surprise hardly registers before she is overwhelmed with the sensation and bursts into tears again. “Shh.” They pull her close, both of them pressed up against the sofa. They are warm and soft and there. There, there, there. “I’m here now. It’ll be alright, darling.”

They used to call her sweetheart.

Kean’s list has more than just aluminum on it. They need things that are simple (scrap metal, tools) and things that are not (yttrium, lithium batteries). They present this list to her in the morning and she sets out, undeterred, determined. “I’ll also get you some clothes,” she promises, though when they ask if she’s certain that she wouldn’t prefer them to stay shirtless while they build she does pretend to consider it.

The earthquake that took her first Kean also took the largest route to the aboveground. To get from New Peace Valley to Aboveground Settlement 039 was once nothing more than a short hike up a long set of stairs. Now, woven reed mushroom basket strapped to her back, she has to hug the valley walls through a series of switchbacks to make it to the market at the entry of the cave system. She watches the sun follow her west through the immense glass dome under which New Peace Valley lays. By the time she gets to the Big Sandstone Camp, the glow in the valley, hundreds of feet down, is afternoon’s dark gold.

Stationed at the point of entry, Roye, who Shanna tried to date after her first Kean’s death, greets her. “Shanna! Oyster or lion’s mane?” He points to her basket. “What are you trading for today?”

“Rare earth minerals, mostly.” There’s no point in lying about it. Her reincarnated partner she can keep secret, a pack full of precious metals she could not. Not from Roye, anyway, who takes his job greeting and good-bye-ing every customer so seriously.

His eyebrow arches up. “Are you back at work? I thought you were on Income.”

“I’m crafting now.” She hands him her point-of-entry booklet. There are no borders in their massive cave system, no countries, but there are checkpoints. If a person goes missing, it’s helpful to know where they were last. “You know, like...bots. I’m crafting bots.”

He nods, stamps her entry book. “That’s great. That’s really great! A hobby is...Well, it’s good. I know it’s been tough.” His voice has that irritating note of sympathy that drove her out of all her old spaces. But Kean is back now, she can humor Roye for a moment. “Would you be interested in coming to dinner tomorrow? At my place? Jal will be there, I know she’d love to see you.”

The invitation catches her off guard. For a moment, she feels like a filter has been lifted from her vision. There is Roye, talking to her like he knows her because he does, and she knows that Jal is sweet, or at least that she brought food over for the first three or four months after the earthquake, while Shanna was recovering from the toxins and the funerals and the paralysis. The idea of going out seems less overwhelming, knowing that she has someone to come home to. “Maybe?”

Roye beams, “Great! I’ll swing by tomorrow night then and check in. Are you still up in the Quartz Quarter?”

“I am. Unit 706.” She places one of the largest mushrooms on his table and collects her booklet. There is a stamp in it dated two years ago. She doesn’t remember making the journey, but there it is—the proof that she tried to live a life after the quake, alone. What did her days look like? Last year she returned to mushroom gathering but who was she, she wonders, for the first two years after Kean died?

She must be making a face because Roye is standing now. He reaches across his table and puts his hand on hers gently. “Shanna, are you with us?”

Who is us? She focuses on Roye’s face, tries to bring herself back. Us, trans people? Us, the community of New Peace Valley? Us, survivors of the quake? Technically yes, she is with us if those are the definitions. “Yeah, sorry.” She pats his hand, forces a smile. Kean’s list is in her pocket, she has things to do. “I’m with you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kean spends most of the evening tinkering. Shanna watches with a feeling that she can’t identify, which compels her to pace in circles on tiptoe around Kean’s project, examining it from every angle, as they attach delicate piece to delicate piece around a crystal which Kean has described as, alternatively, a source of power and simply a refractory tool. Refractory, Shanna realizes, is what New Kean is for her, as well. Their presence makes Shanna aware of how empty her apartment is, how silent. When her next door neighbor begins his nightly flute practice, the sound startles her. Voices of passersby outside seem like shouts echoing off the rock walls.

When they are in bed, after they have taken their turns with each other enough to confirm that they are still in love or at least still lovers, Shanna curls her arms around Kean. They are small enough to fit comfortably into her, their bulk warm and familiar. “I’ve been here before,” they say into her embrace.

“You belong here.” She says this intending to be affirming, but as soon as the words leave her mouth they sound hollow. Kean belongs here. Is this Kean? They are close enough, but the gap is widening. She looks at the ceramic box on her dresser.

“I belong with you.” They kiss the palm of her hand. “But not here. You’re in the wrong place here.”

“I live here.” There’s no fight to her voice. She wishes there was, that she could make a resounding argument and drain the tension, like an infection. She feels her heart beat against their back. “We live here.”

They turn, squirm, until their nose is pressed against hers. Up close she sees double of them merging into one, single bright brown eye full of expectation. They smile, teeth too long. Shanna closes one eye to fix her perspective. “Do you want to know about the other worlds?”

“I…” Want to believe this is the only one, the one where a miracle has brought you back to me. “Of course.”

“I’ve seen worlds where people don’t live underground, where they built up instead of down. Do you know why you live underground? I’ve seen the world this one came from, or at least one of them. I’ve seen worlds without good air, without water, without cities, without antibiotics, without plants and animals. I’ve seen worlds with all of those things. And I’ve seen worlds without war, with universal language and income and with great old forests that didn’t get burnt down.”

Shanna listens to these descriptions with a growing anxiety. There are an unknowable number of them, these worlds. And in each Kean is...Where? Simply passing through? Kean was in her world and someone else’s all at once. Where was she? Is there another Shanna out there, missing her Kean?

“What about me?” she squeezes their hand. “You and me. How are we, in those other worlds?”

They are silent, then. For a long time, they look at her, that half smile fixed on their face until it isn’t anymore. They place their hand on her face, pull her towards their chest. “You’re dead in a lot of them. I’m dead in a lot of them. There’s a better world than this one.” This is the most serious she’s heard them. She cannot remember a time in their life, their first life, that they spoke so clearly. “Every world I’ve seen is a variant on this one from a hundred or more years ago. And only in one have things been fixed, really. Only one where we could be happy together. I can get us there, if you let me.”

“I’m happy wherever I’m with you.” If she says it, she can believe it. She can will it into being. If she believes hard enough, maybe they will, too. Maybe there are worlds out there with clean surface air and wild forests, but the thought fills her with fear more than excitement. How could there be a better world than this, the one where the unreal is possible?

When Shanna leaves for dinner next evening, Kean is still building. The device is taking on the appearance of a pipe bomb. Would they know she knows what that is? “I won’t be long,” she promises, and they nod but don’t say anything else. She waits for a response for a beat too long before going out. There is tension between them, leftover from the night before, and she wants to think they’ll fuck it away later but she isn’t certain. She can’t bring herself to talk about the other worlds, and it’s all they want to talk about.

Roye is waiting at the end of the lane, waving, carrying one of the immense lanterns that signifies him as a part of the New Peace Valley Guard. With his bright blue clothes, his dark skin, he looks like a butterfly resting on the wall under the lantern’s glow. He smiles at her. “Hey there!”

“I didn’t know what to bring.” Shanna holds up her empty hands. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. You’re bringing yourself.” Roye motions to the path, hoists the lantern high. It’s not a long walk to the center of town but visibility is low. Even with the stars above, shining through the great sunroof that, blessings upon it, survived the quake, the inside of the cave is unrelentingly dark.

Before the quake, the worst thing that New Peace Valley had known was its own founding. Shanna considers this, under the glow of the lantern and Roye’s smile. Carved into existence by desperate, impoverished people facing an aboveground that was blisteringly hot, strapped of clean water, abandoned by the wealthy of the old regime, New Peace Valley has a resilience that she envies, a tenacity she hopes to embody. So far she’s done all right, given everything. She walks with Roye, who, like her, used to work at the Human Growth and Progress Lab, the shift before hers, and wonders if he misses his life before the quake, or if he is so ingrained in the valley that there’s nothing else for him beyond. Is it love or nostalgia, to embrace Kean’s return-arrival?

The question nags at her. Coupled with Kean’s other worlds, she imagines she can see through the darkness of their passage, where the line between their lives and another life might be. Even when they reach Roye’s house, when she’s embraced by Jal and given a seat at the table, when she’s admiring the art and the sturdy furniture constructed from mycelia. Over dinner, after the conversation about Jal’s work at the modeling garden, Shanna asks, “If there was another world, and you had the opportunity to go there, would you?”

“Absolutely not.” Jal answers without a second thought. Her head shakes so vigorously that her earring comes loose. “I’ve read a book or two. Nothing good ever comes out of that kind of thing.”

“Come on, Jal, play in the space.” Roye sets his spoon down and considers the question. “What are the parameters?”

“What do you mean?” Shanna asks. Should she have asked Kean this, herself?

“I mean, like, what other world? How would I get there? Would I have to cease existing in this one?” Roye stirs his soup while Jal nods. “Would I get to bring people?”

She should have asked Kean, she decides. “I don’t know. I just…” Roye and Jal’s house is like hers, walls made of stone and hardened layers of fungi, powered by hydroelectric and solar, decorated sparsely but with great intention. There is very little in their world, so much less than the world that came before them, but that little is enough. “I think about it. About another world. Dimensions. If I could go to another dimension, one where…” She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Kean, the secret, is only two days with her but already too heavy to carry.

A long silence fills the space between their seats until Jal clears her throat. “When Liu died, I had a lot of dreams about hir. I dreamed that ze would come back, or that I would go somewhere and find hir. And I would wake up and think I would give anything for that. But it couldn’t happen in this world. I think....It’s not easy. But if ze showed up now, like, through a portal or something...I don’t know what I would do. I don’t think I’d go. I don’t think it would be hir, you know? I mean, Roye said it better than me. Parameters and stuff.”

Roye half-laughs, “Yeah. Would I go to a world where the quake never happened? Maybe. But not if I had to give this up.” He gestures at everything at once. This. Shanna realizes with something like panic that this includes her. That this does not include Kean. This. The people around her, the place where she lives.

“I should get going,” she says. She feels unsteady on her feet. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“It’s all right.” Roye stands, too. “Take my light.” He smiles, Jal nods.

Shanna holds the lantern, feels its smooth and warm heft as Roye lights it, the moss in its heart a constant glow. For a moment, she thinks about another dimension that doesn’t contain Kean, a dimension where she made the choice to stay for the rest of dinner with Roye and Jal. She sees the shiver in their reality, looking at their faces, in the understanding that that world is one she could still create.

Shanna is silent when she comes home. Kean doesn’t register her presence. Their sturdy body is hunched over the device which still resembles a pipe bomb, but now with a lotus flower stuck to it. She passes behind them to the bedroom, where their clean clothes are laid over the chest at the end of her bed. Quietly, her eyes still on the hallway, she fishes into their pockets to find their pocketbook. When they were alive, the first time, they carried her picture with them.

She feels the edge of a photograph in the worn leather before she opens it. Her heart races and then feels frozen. The photo is them together but not them. It’s not even the Kean in the living room smiling back at her. It’s Kean but with a different nose, Shanna but with a different jawline. There are twelve ID cards in the pockets. Different sizes, colors, fonts. Some of plastic, some of paper, one of metal with a holographic finish. All with Kean’s face, or a face that looks uncannily similar. The name Kean does not appear.

She stands and approaches the living room. She considers the film of red over their face when they arrived. “Hey, sweetheart?”

Kean practically jumps. “Oh! When did you get home?” They have the tired, wild-eyed face of someone close to a breakthrough. Shanna remembers it from their days at work, the care they took with their experiments.

“Could you…” She hesitates, looking at them. They could belong, couldn’t they? If they tried? But there would always be the doubt. And she’s holding their wallet in her hand. She has already accepted. “Say my name.”

“What?” They laugh. When she doesn’t, they laugh louder. “Come on. What’s this about?”

“I miss hearing it from you.” She doesn’t move. “It’s been...A long time.”

“Well that’s—Oh.” They’ve seen their wallet. “What were you doing in my things?”

“Do you know my name? Do I know yours?”

“My name can be whatever you want when we get where we need to go.” The edge to their voice startles her. They have already turned back to the machine.

Her stomach knots in a hot ball, her legs weak. She watches new Kean, their broad shoulders and wide back straining their shirt, hunched over a machine that looks like it might kill everyone in the Quartz Quarter, and tries to map their face to her Kean’s. She cannot imagine what they look like now, sealed in their lab with Liu and Retta and the intern. Are they decayed? Are they part, now, of a body of fungi that used to give them what they needed? Is the fate of all desire to be consumed by it?

Her stomach aches as she asks, “What are the parameters?”

“What?” They turn around. The device in their hands is glowing. The crystal in the center shakes. “What are you talking about?”

She grips the wallet tightly, holds it up for them to see. “What happened to me in these worlds? What happened to you?”

They look her dead in the eyes, lit by the glow of the crystal. She thinks of the thin red film on them when they arrived, her decision not to ask. She wishes she had, now. Would they have told her the truth? Who had to die for them to arrive here? She knows how her Kean died in this world, how did they go in the others?

“Do you want to go or don’t you?” Their voice is low, like they’ve already accepted her no. Like it wasn’t a surprise. Have they made this offer to her before? Has she declined? “If you don’t want to go…” They fall silent, holding their breath.

“Where am I, in these other worlds?”

“You died, all right?” they yell. She wants to say she understands, that the pain is immense enough that she, too, would have bent the world for them. That the world bent on its own, became small, and only has recently begun to unfold. They continue, “You died in the best world and I keep trying to bring you home. But you won’t go. Why won’t you go?” Their voice breaks, the question a high note, their face furious, tears in their eyes.

She lowers her hand. She wants to embrace them, there, with their dangerous little device and their heartache that she knows lives under their skin. “Because I don’t love you. I love a version of you, the version of you that’s special to this world. And some other version of me loves a version of you that is special to your world. Because each world is its own.”

Their face distorts. Their mouth opens and then closes, the muscle of their jaw strains against their skin. “A version of me? I’m me. I’m the only version of me. I’m the only version of me in the universe for you. Do you know how many extraneous duplicates of myself I’ve had to get rid of, trying to get you back? I’m me wherever I go, and I love you. And in every world you say you love me but you won’t go with me.” They raise the device in one hand over their head, hold their other hand out. “Either trust me, because I love you, or give me my wallet back and I’ll find the version of you that does.”

The feeling of their skin against hers in the transfer is enough to bring tears to her eyes. She wants to convince them to put the machine down. Instead, she says, “My name is Shanna.”

“Shanna.” Their accent mars her name.

She can imagine Kean, a body made of mushrooms, without wishing she could join them. New Kean stands before her with their glowing machine that will rip the world apart. She says, “Again.”

“Shanna.” They are half-smiling, now. She wants to say that she is, despite everything, grateful to have held them one more time, that she’s sorry for them across those worlds. But they give her no time to say anything else before they close the lotus bloom of the machine, activating it. It ruptures.

The air around them both becomes hot, reeks of lightning. The room flickers, warps. Everything shakes, and Shanna’s skin seems eager to leap through the rip in space without her. She watches in dull shock as the flesh of her fingertips peels away into the portal where Kean stands. Behind them, a world is forming. Dark forest, ancient growth. The air is burning and Shanna flinches, trying to pull away. She has survived worse, she tells herself. She got out of that room, she made it down the hall, she escaped to the safe zone during the quake. She has survived the world ripping apart before.

Kean’s eyes are closed, their face a grim smile that shows all their teeth. They take two steps backwards and raise their arms. The world behind them emits a smell of wet leaves, the reek of a compost pile. For a second, the portal is stabilized. Kean opens their eyes, their feet are on grass. “You had your chance.”

The machine begins to emit a higher whine. The crystal shivers furiously. Shanna takes one last long look at Kean, now in this other world. Kean, who is not Kean, who is someone willing to do things that Kean would never do to get to some version of her that loves them. She may never be able to stop them but she can slow them.

They begin to reach through the portal for the machine. Shanna rushes forward, plunges her hands into the cold air of the other world. Her fingers burning, she pushes Kean backwards. They grunt, stumble, fall back onto the grass. There is no time for them to cry out before Shanna’s hands are around the crystal, before they’re back in her world, before they’re burning and cramped and then—

Shanna comes to in the hospital. Her hands wrapped in bandages, a bedside table full of flowers. At the foot of the bed, Roye and Jal are reading the newspaper together. The air is dry and cool, smells of lavender and vinegar. Above her, the stone ceiling is intact. Splitting the world has incurred no damage to New Peace Valley, at least not here. “How,” she manages, her throat dry. “How is everyone?”

Jal and Roye spring to attention, immediately at her side. “Everyone’s fine,” Jal assures her. “You’re all right, nobody got hurt.”

“Your apartment is a bit...singed?” Roye looks for the right word, holds her injured arm gently. “Your bot malfunctioned pretty badly. I don’t know if it can be salvaged.”

Blessings upon us, she thinks, nodding slowly. “That’s...That’s okay. I don’t think it was the right hobby for me, anyway.” Jal brings her a glass of water and she drinks it through the metal straw. Her mouth less dry, her chest less tight, Shanna looks at the curtains that separate her from fellow patients. All divides can be overcome, she thinks, and then looks at Roye and Jal. There is only one of her now, in this world. And only one Jal, one Roye, one opportunity in this moment to reach out. She asks, “Would you two like to come with me, sometime soon, to gather mushrooms?”