Short Stories 366:235 — “Cinnamon Sticks,” by B. Morris Allen

[image error]I keep mentioning this while I stroll through The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis, but one thing I really like about science fiction is how authors can use an alien race to highlight or discuss some facet of humanity, and spin it in a speculative direction. Here we meet Keevor, a member of an alien race who excrete what humans might call “slime” but is actually one of their key communicative devices: the sensory input from interacting with another of their race’s trail is a deeply immersive experience where they can truly get to know each other. Which, for Keevor, is kind of a problem, because the one he loved most interacted with his trail and found him… nice. Safe. Not at all interesting, really, though pleasant enough.

Keevor finds himself on Plexis in the way many seem to do in Czerneda’s shared world: out of a mix of desperation and innovation. Innately good at chemistry by virtue of his species, Keevor quickly becomes a master of mixing up new drugs (among other things), and cements a place for himself, gains a Human friend of sorts, and tries to do the impossible: to change himself to be something other than nice, and safe, and not at all interesting. All the while, the human friend is there providing a kind of anchored-and-outside point of view, and it’s with her that Keevor’s breadth and depth of changes are noted, even though Keevor doesn’t really “get” most of the cues the human is offering him.

Ultimately, this story read to me to be about about changing yourself to please another, and the folly thereof. Keevor isn’t bettering himself, or trying new things out of enthusiasm, and the end result is a bit heartbreaking and melancholy on multiple levels as the tale wraps up. But this is Plexis, after all. If you want it, it’s here. It just might turn out that what you wanted isn’t what you needed after all. B. Morris Allen spins a tale that’s as cautionary as it is spec-fic, and I really enjoyed it.