The Venus Effect
By Joseph Allen Hill, first published in Lightspeed
Apollo is an ordinary kid at a party, a crime fighting justice-seeker, a victorious basketball player, a police officer doing his job, a scared boy running from a villain. His story begins again and again, and he's different every time — but every time, his story ends in the same, terrible way.
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Plot Summary
It's 2015, and Apollo, a young black man, is at a rooftop party when he sees a girl lose her balance while dancing and fall off the roof. He runs to the edge to save her, but he is too late. When he desperately peers over the edge of the roof, he watches as the girl stops herself in midair before she hits the ground. Stunned, he rushes from the party, following the girl to find out who she is. Running through the city, he doesn't hear a policeman yell at him to stop. The policeman raises his gun; he shoots and kills Apollo.
The story flips to a first person narrator, a confused meta-voice wondering how Apollo's story could have ended so abruptly, because it's not the story we expected it to be, some kind of sci-fi romance narrative. The voice resolves to start the story over again.
The story begins again, and in this version of Apollo's story, he's a basketball player who's trying to save a dying alien woman. The woman warns him of Lord Tklox and something called the Omega Question as she gasps for breath. Apollo rushes to a gas station to get medical supplies to help the alien woman. At the station, he is shot by a policeman.
The meta-voice comes in again, resolving to try the story once more. In Apollo's next version, he's a kid who, at the urging of a Princess, runs from the evil Lord Tklox. As he runs through the city, Apollo is shot by a police officer. Again and again, the narrator tries to tell the story 'right' — Apollo in a Justice Gang saving the city from a huge bubblegum machine monster, Apollonia the female protagonist on a covert mission to save the world, Apollo sitting at home with an ex-girlfriend, Apollo the police officer saving the city. But each time, the story ends abruptly, with Apollo's death — every time at the hands of a police officer.
Finally, the story switches to second person. You are a police officer wrestling a possible suspect. You watch the man's hand move towards his pocket and you feel afraid. Your hand travels instinctively to your gun. And the Omega Question is activated: who matters?
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