Sic Semper, Sic Semper, Sic Semper

by Douglas F. Warrick

In the hollowed-out skull of the sixteenth President of the United States, a miserable time traveler builds a modest studio apartment and isolates himself from his own time, his own space, his own species, and his own past. But when gruesome reminders of his life prior to intracranial habitation begin appearing in his freshly constructed apartment, the time traveler is forced to either contend with his memories or, failing that, to run further away from them.

Cover Carl Wiens

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Time Travel

18 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 6, 2016

About the author

Douglas F. Warrick is a writer, a musician, and a world-traveler. His first published short story appeared in Apex Digest back in 2006. Since then, Douglas's work has been published in a variety of periodicals, websites, podcasts, and anthologies, and has grown progressively stranger. Douglas originally hails from Dayton, Ohio, but his travels have taken him all over Asia. Douglas has screamed Buzzcocks' lyrics with Korean punk rockers in the neon alleys of Seoul, marveled at the oddness of Beijing's masked opera singers and illusionists, piloted a bicycle through Kyoto on the way to the Golden Temple, broken up a fight between an Australian tourist and a Thai street vendor in Bangkok, and learned that the world is much weirder more wonderful than anything he could fabricate.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

He opened the door of the chamber and set to work emptying Lincoln’s skull. It wasn’t really murder. The president was already dead, and would die very soon anyway. So the time traveler felt no consternation about loading great shovelfuls of brain and cartilage and assorted headmeats into the chamber and shipping them off to some other chamber, constituted in some time and space where nobody would ever be bothered by it.

when the synopsis promised a story of a time-traveling man constructing a studio apartment in the hollowed-out skull of the sixteenth President of the United States, can you blame me for assuming that it would be comical, despite the descriptor "miserable" being applied to that time-traveling man?

it's not that it's never funny; i enjoyed the playful over-deployment of verb tenses and there are flourishes of stiffly-delivered humorous absurdity:

A skull—even an empty one—is not naturally conducive to the construction of an apartment suitable for human habitation, and the time traveler therefore required a great deal of lumber and lacquer and nails and tools.

but overall, the tone leans in to "bleak" much more than "lighthearted," and by the story's end, it's almost claustrophobic in its gloom.

which is what i liked about it.

i'm just not sure i understood all of it - whether i missed some explainy bits due to my dratted intellectual threshold when it comes to time travel, or whether it's intentionally left ambiguous/undeveloped, in any event, i'm pretty neutral towards the meat of the story, and left with nothing more than a sense of having had hopelessness drilled into me, leaving me a little stunned and queasy. which may actually say more about me and my own perpetual hopelessness than the story itself. WHO CAN SAY!?

just let me know when someone writes a short story set in the hollowed-out skull of the fourteenth president of the united states.

short review for a short story!!!

read it for yourself here:

https://www.tor.com/2016/07/06/sic-se...

come to my blog!

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:

A brilliant but despondent time traveler realizes that both time and space are mutable and that he can expand or shrink them with his time-reticulation chamber. By pressing a few keys, he shrinks himself to a miniscule size and sends himself and the chamber into the inside of Abraham Lincoln’s brain, just moments before the bullet from John Wilkes Booth will strike Lincoln behind his ear. Even though he’s actually the one killing Lincoln, he reasons that it’s not really murder under the circumstances. Then, expanding time so that those few moments before Lincoln is shot will take months of subjective time for the time traveler, he scoops out more of Lincoln’s brain matter to hollow out enough space to build himself a nice split-level studio, complete with a roomy bed loft, inside of Abraham Lincoln’s brain. The time traveler isolates himself from all other human contact in his grotesque new home, living in reasonably contented solitude until a shocking and grisly event upsets his routine and impels him to some action.

“Sic Semper, Sic Semper, Sic Semper” ― the title emphasizing certain repetitive actions taken by the time traveler ― is a bizarre story with a great hook. The incongruity of the man’s high-flown philosophical musings regarding time travel, and his gruesomely practical actions (shoveling out bits of Lincoln’s brain matter and cartilage to make room for the apartment he’s building, burying things under Lincoln’s tongue), is both intriguing and disturbing. This quirky and ambiguous story isn’t very logical and leaves the reader with several unanswered questions, but as an unusual exploration of depression and one man’s conflicted feelings regarding death and his family relationships, it has an impact.

2.5 stars.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird as all hell.

It is sort of what it says on the tin. A time traveler goes back in time to "die" in Abraham Lincoln's head just before he is assassinated. By die, it is more like live, but I think you get the idea. When you live in the milliseconds of time, are you dead?

The whole story is weird, and reflective, and is somewhere between a 3.5 and a 4.

You can read it for free here on the Tor site.

[Ariya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I fall for its weirdness.

[Alex Sarll]

Part of me suspects that 'a time traveller builds himself a refuge within Abraham Lincoln's head' would work better as an aside within another story, a glimpse of a writer character's work, than it does as a full short story itself. And as with Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, I'm always frustrated when an SF set-up ends up as the shell for a mope about father-son relations*. Some nice work with tenses, though.

*Ironically, an annoyance over which I have in fact bonded with my father, specifically as regards the horribly mis-balanced climax of the Lost in Space film.

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warrick's Sic Semper is... odd. Our protagonist decides to sequester himself from the world and/or kill himself by using time travel complications to build an apartment in the skull of President Lincoln, moments before the man is shot. Not exactly your typical set-up. I did not predict I would be reading about a man digging out brains today. Unsurprisingly, the story is a bit morbid and uncomfortable. The protagonist struggles with personal crises and responds with inertia. Really really weird inertia. It's a bizarre, but oddly captivating read with some terrific visuals. If you don't mind reading about someone hollowing out skulls.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the hollowed out skull of Abraham Lincoln, a time traveller devises a novel way to commit suicide.

Warricj's mind-bending story is intriguing and encourages a lot of soul searching.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

A suicidal guy still sets up a crappy apartment for himself inside Lincoln's hollowed out skull, which makes sense in a way since Lincoln wouldn't be needing it again anyway. In the stinky damp of claustrophobic rotting brain pulp, the aforementioned guy ruminates about the nature of success and what it means for his grandfather, his own father, and himself. I mean, I can't say it's an enjoyable story. That wouldn't be the word I'd use for this.

[Paulo Vinicius Figueiredo dos Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comentar sobre romances com algum elemento de nonsense é sempre complicado. Isso porque o nonsense precisa ser encarado como algo normal dentro da construção da narrativa. Por mais que o leitor não concorde com a "física" por trás do nonsense, ela existe e dá prumo. Claro que, se a narrativa tem alguma coisa gritante que chama a atenção pela sua falta de nexo, é óbvio que outras coisas vão aparecer em algum momento. E o leitor precisa estar preparado para entender o nonsense como fazendo sentido. Não é um erro do autor; é proposital, é alguma tirada sarcástica, uma ironia ou uma metáfora. E aqui tem algumas coisas bizarras. Mas, bizarras mesmo.

Imaginem um viajante do tempo. Um estudioso sobre períodos históricos que deseja realizar experiência com reticulação do tempo. Imagine que ele descobriu que um viajante do tempo pode ocupar qualquer espaço em determinado momento do passado, não importando se ele vai precisar perder massa ou não para isso. Essa é toda a fundação da teoria de nosso viajante. Ele estabelece o seu apartamento-laboratório dentro do crânio de Abraham Lincoln. Sim, o presidente. Para ficar mais confortável, ele escava o cérebro dele e o deixa oco. Afinal, é necessário espaço para trabalhar. Agora ele pode aproveitar a paz, o silêncio e a solidão para colocar suas pesquisas em dia. Só que sua paz é ameaçada quando seu pai aparece do lado de fora do seu apartamento, tentando entrar. Ele morre antes mesmo de nosso protagonista aparecer para ajudá-lo. Depois que seu pai é devidamente enterrado no interior do crânio de Lincoln, o viajante retoma sua pesquisa. E no dia seguinte, outra versão de seu pai aparece e morre novamente. E se abre um mistério...

Em toda a sua estranheza, a narrativa é uma visão sobre a relação entre pai e filho. Percebemos que ela não é boa a partir de algumas linhas deixadas pelo personagem. Os fragmentos de informação lentamente vão contando uma história. Desejar a solidão e estar sozinho não é por acaso. Ele parece ter tido uma criação com um pai ausente e que, por conta disso, causou um vácuo de presença em sua vida. Quando ele teve contato, situações estranhas se sucederam que levam a um acontecimento trágico mais tarde. Por conta das linhas de viagem no tempo, algumas informações e constatações só ficamos sabendo mais tarde.

Achei a narrativa curiosa e o autor tem uma mão bem leve na história. Apesar de ela ser pequena, o fato de ela ser quase inteiramente descritiva faz com que ela encorpe mais. Se trata de uma narrativa em terceira pessoa e percebemos um pouco de sarcasmo na forma como o autor apresenta os acontecimentos. Outro recurso empregado é o do fluxo do pensamento fazendo com que o protagonista fale de diversos assuntos dentro de um mesmo parágrafo. Não é uma história complicada de ser compreendida, sendo apenas bizarra o suficiente para chamar a atenção.

[Dwight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably a perfect short story. Thought-provoking, poignant, jarring (in a good way), and deep in character development despite brevity. No wasted words, powerful world building in short bursts, the story shines through. I can’t say enough good. Weird and fun although a bit dark.

I will be following the author. Another interesting work from Tor.com.

[Arash Narchi · Rating 4 out of 5]

great piece of spec fiction

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This didn't really work for me. Weird, but not in a very fun way or a creepy way. Felt like the author himself was working through some issues.

[Marco · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very surprised to realize I enjoyed this story, despite its extremely bizarre plot: a scientist with suicide tendencies makes a break-trough in the field of space travel, and decided to use his new discovery to travel back in time, and miniaturize himself to live inside the skull of the sixteenth President of the United States, in the dilated instant of time before his death. The story just get stranger and stranger, but it is nevertheless enjoyable.

[Precious Sagbodje · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weirdest short read