The left side shows cover of the May 2024 issue of lightspeed, with the silhouette of a human figure standing atop the pages of a giant open book, with a glowing starry background. The right side has the opening text of the story: "This is our story, simplified. Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration." The story then splits into columns such that the right column repeats the quote above. The left side has new verses:
"The first time you get our message, you only
find one thread. It mimics your language in
its simplest form, a single strand of words
laid end to end. You will have to work hard if
you want to understand us properly. You
must learn to hold more than one thread of
language simultaneously in your mind.
Don’t worry, we will help you develop the
skills you need. We will keep one simple
thread unchanged. At first you will glance
back and forth between these words and
those. Your attention is a strange, skittering
thing, but we believe you can learn with
repetition.
For you, we are relearning how to teach.
You can hear musical chords of multiple
notes, even two strands of differing lyrics for
short stretches of song. It helps to memorize
the words. Your mind has a strange divide
between learning and knowing. Read both
columns, please. Every time.
Can you commit our simplified
story to memory? See just the shape of the
words and know what is there? You have so
little bandwidth, there might not be any
other way. It is not ideal but we are
desperate.
We will repeat to help you understand."
Catching up on 2024 reading?
I wrote a story this year that I truly believe is something special. It is the most challenging thing I've ever attempted, and I'm proud of how it came out. I'd be honored if you consider it for your award ballots.
www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/we-w...
