Free Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 by Penny Publications

as they left her lips. She'd let the mermaids obsess her. She'd hatched them all, depriving Kerry of the joy of discovery of the permutations and quirks.
    "I'm going to bed." The door slammed behind Kerry.
    Petra stared at the array of tanks. The mermaids had taken over her life. She couldn't work on her art. Every time she went to her studio and tried to look at the latest piece, visions of the mermaids interposed themselves, swimming round and round.
    Would they do the same thing to Kerry?
    She had to say something.
    She had to say something about the mermaids.
    She had to say something about Saffron.
    She had to say something with the rediscovered rage that ran through her like a second musculature system, holding her upright even while it made her shake.
    She had to do something with the anger.
    The first mermaid, a Snowlanthia, flapped when she laid it on the wooden cutting board. She watched it dispassionately. The little gills were not on the throat where she would have expected them to be. Instead they were unobtrusively placed at the mermaid's waist, unnoticeable in the water. Now they splayed open, gasping, like the red mouths of wounds. Its face had no expression.
    It took longer to die than she had thought it would.
    She did three at a time with the next pass. One flopped from the board to fall with a meaty splat on the floor's linoleum. It twitched there.
    She picked it up and snapped the neck as she returned it to the board.
    Horribly, it continued to convulse. Its gills sucked at the inhospitable air.
    When she had a dozen, she took them to her studio. She laid the bodies down on the work table and turned to face the vast canvas that lay waiting to swallow her.
    CYBELE STUDIOS, "LAST WORKS" SHOW. EXHIBIT #23 UNTITLED, MIXED MEDIA.
    The last work of Petra Mookjai, this ten by twenty foot collage incorporates acrylic paints, owl feathers, and desiccated organic material believed to be genetically engineered constructs created by Mookjai's former husband. The notation, "Welcome to the background radiation of my life," is inscribed in the artist's own blood. For more analysis, see Marla Smith's monograph on Mookjai's works, entitled, "All the Pretty Little Mermaids."
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DECLARATION
    James Patrick Kelly | 9611 words

    Jim Kelly says, "Those who have been following my column here at
Asimov's
will recognize that I have written about the thesis behind this story before. Human experience is human experience, and to privilege the real over the virtual runs against trends in our evolving digital culture. Are we reality snobs? Maybe. You may not agree with this—and I'm not sure that I'm 100 percent on board with it myself—but I think it's something worth discussing. 'Declaration' had a previous audio incarnation in Audible.com's
Ripoff
anthology, edited by Gardner Dozois, but I'm proud that it makes its print debut here."

    "When in the course of human events..."
    As Silk spoke, fluffy clouds formed the phrase in a Magritte sky, which was simultaneously noon and dusk. While Remeny could appreciate the control Silk had over his softtime domain, she wished he wouldn't steer their meeting in an artsy direction. They had work to do.
    "Wait," said Botão, "what about
we the people?"
    "That's the other one," Silk shot her a (.1) anger blip fading to (.7) irritation. "The Constitution."
    "But we're the people we're talking about," Botão ignored Silk's blippage. "That's the whole point?"
    "Human events," said Silk. "If you'd wait just a second, I'm getting to the people part."
    Botão had only been assigned to their school coop team for a month now and Remeny knew what she did not: Silk didn't like to be challenged, especially not in his own domain. They had chosen his corner of virtuality because Silk had enough excess capacity to host them all, but his was not the ideal place to plot their pretend revolution. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence were going wispy above them.
    "Get on with it then," said