Shaken

Shaken

Lisa Mason

This is an ebook adaptation of Lisa Mason’s novelette, Deus Ex Machina, first published in Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction, republished in Transcendental Tales from Asimov’s (Donning Press), and translated and republished worldwide.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Bast Book

Copyright 2012 by Lisa Mason.

Cover collage and logo copyright 2012 by Tom Robinson.

All rights reserved.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bast Books ebook edition published May 2012

No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting my hard work.

For information address:

Bast Books

bastbooks@aol.com

Thank you for your readership! Visit the author at her Official Web Site for her books, ebooks, screenplays, stories, interviews, blogs, cute cat pictures, and more. Enjoy!

Table of Contents

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

Shaken

Sources

About Lisa Mason

Books by Lisa Mason

Praise for Books by Lisa Mason

Summer of Love

A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year

A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist

Remarkable. . . .a whole array of beautifully portrayed characters along the spectrum from outright heroism to villainy. . . .not what you expected of a book with flowers in its hair. . . the intellect on display within these psychedelically packaged pages is clear-sighted, witty, and wise.

—Locus Magazine

A fine novel packed with vivid detail, colorful characters, and genuine insight.

—The Washington Post Book World

Captures the moment perfectly and offers a tantalizing glimpse of its wonderful and terrible consequences.

—The San Francisco Chronicle

Brilliantly crafted. . . .An engrossing tale spun round a very clever concept.

—Katharine Kerr, author of Days of Air and Darkness

"Just imagine The Terminator in love beads, set in the Haight-Ashbury ‘hood of 1967."

—Entertainment Weekly

Mason has an astonishing gift. Her characters almost walk off the page. And the story is as significant as anyone could wish. This book will surely be on the prize ballots.

—Analog

The Gilded Age

A New York Times Notable Book

A New York Public Library Recommended Book

A winning mixture of intelligence and passion.

—The New York Times Book Review

Should both leave the reader wanting more and solidify Mason’s position as one of the most interesting writers in science fiction.

—Publishers Weekly

Rollicking. . .Dazzling. . .Mason’s characters are just as endearing as her world.

—Locus Magazine

Graceful prose. . . A complex and satisfying plot.

—Library Journal

One Day in the Life of Alexa

Incorporates lively prose, past/present time jumps, and the consequences of longevity technology. An absorbing read with an appealing narrator and subtly powerful emotional rhythms.

—Goodreads

Five Stars! Like all the truly great scifi writers, what [Lisa Mason] really writes about is you and me and today and what is really important in life. . . . I enjoyed every word.

—Reader Review

The Garden of Abracadabra

So refreshing! This is Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.

—Goodreads

Fun and enjoyable urban fantasy

This is a very entertaining novel—sort of a down-to-earth Harry Potter with a modern adult woman in the lead. Even as Abby has to deal with mundane concerns like college and running the apartment complex she works at, she is surrounded by supernatural elements and mysteries that she is more than capable of taking on. Although this book is just the first in a series, it ties up the first episode while still leaving some story threads for upcoming books. I'm looking forward to finding out more.

—Reader Review

I love the writing style and am hungry for more!

—Goodreads

Strange Ladies: 7 Stories

Offers everything you could possibly want, from more traditional science fiction and fantasy tropes to thought-provoking explorations of gender issues and pleasing postmodern humor…This is a must-read collection.

—The San Francisco Review of Books

Lisa Mason might just be the female Phillip K. Dick. Like Dick, Mason's stories are far more than just sci-fi tales, they are brimming with insight into human consciousness and the social condition….a sci-fi collection of excellent quality….you won't want to miss it.

—The Book Brothers Review Blog

Fantastic book of short stories….Recommended.

—Reader Review

"I’m quite impressed, not only by the writing, which gleams and sparkles, but also by [Lisa Mason’s] versatility . . . Mason is a wordsmith . . . her modern take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a hilarious gem! [This collection] sparkles, whirls, and fizzes. Mason is clearly a writer to follow!"

—Amazing Stories

Arachne and Cyberweb

Locus Magazine Hardcover Bestsellers

Powerful . . . Entertaining . . . Imaginative.

—People Magazine

Cybernetics, robotics, the aftermath of San Francisco’s Big Quake II, urban tribalism—Lisa Mason combines them all with such deftness and grace, they form a living world . . . Her characters and their world will stay with you long after you’ve finished this fine book.

—Locus Magazine

Lisa Mason stakes out, within the cyberpunk sub-genre, a territory all her own.

—The San Francisco Chronicle

Mason’s endearing characters and their absorbing adventures will hook even the most jaded SF fan.

—Booklist

Celestial Girl (A Lily Modjeska Mystery)

Passionate Historical Romantic Suspense

5 Stars! I really enjoyed the story and would love to read a sequel! I enjoy living in the 21st century, but this book made me want to visit the Victorian era. The characters were brought to life, a delight to read about. The tasteful sex scenes were very racy….Good Job!

—Reader Review

Shaken

1

Emma J for Joy Pearce is on the twenty-second floor of Three Embarcadero when the birds begin to twitter. She is sipping her first cup of coffee and watching the rush-hour traffic crawl across the Bay Bridge into downtown San Francisco. A five-car pileup has blocked the Fremont off-ramp for ages, and she shakes her head, savoring her breakfast blend and feeling just a little bit smug. She doesn't have to deal with that commute, thank her lucky stars. Living on Telegraph Hill and hiking ten blocks to the office is the way to go. She wouldn't live anyplace else on the planet.

The birds, a flock of lively sparrows, swarm outside her window. Which is sort of odd. Emma just doesn't see the tiny birds flying so high. Sparrows tend to be ground-bound, pecking at cookie crumbs outside a café on the mezzanine level. Odder still, they are diving and swooping, forming strange frantic patterns against the pink light of the rising sun. They begin to twitter in earnest now, almost screeching, in a weird frenzy. Sounding not like birds anymore, but some other feral creature, weasels or rats.

The birds rouse Emma out of her morning grogginess into mild surprise.

She had spent the night with Timothy and, half smiling, half frowning, has been mulling over what he’d said. She loves him, of course, but she just isn't sure. No, wait. That isn't right. It's insane, what he's asking. When they're both so set in their ways. Things going so well, for the both of them, just the way they are.

She’d bounced out of bed with the completely genuine plea of a very hairy deadline. Buzzed into the office an hour early before the first of the flex-timers. Timothy. Dear sweet wonderful Timothy, but after five years, who would have thought? She sets her cup down, stands and stretches. She isn't quite ready to start tearing apart the manuscript for Genes: Why I'm Me and Not You, Thank Goodness. The first chapter is a mess with lapidary moments, like the rest of the manuscripts Nigel Fontaine has turned in over the years.

More mess than brilliance in his projects these days. She must have a heart-to-heart huddle with the old coot sometime soon. She checks her calendar. Maybe lunch next week?

What’s with the birds?

A hollow booming rises out of the westward fog. Her windows begin rattling. Suddenly, flagpoles are tossing to and fro on the tops of high-rises.

The earthquake strikes.

It starts with a long, rolling shudder, just like the five-point-five in the spring of last year. Emma had been in this very same office, except then she'd been a senior staff writer, and now she's the managing editor. Someone in the corridor outside her office now yells, Whoo-eee! Shake-n-quake! In the cubicles, the copy editors scream, half in fright, half in fun, and giddy laughter peals out.

Just like last year.

Emma doesn't laugh. Her Blackfeet Indian pencils roll across her desk and spill off the edge, and sharp panic sets her heart pounding. The hand-thrown pottery on her windowsill clinks and totters, and a vase--the most expensive one, of course--tumbles to the floor, splitting in two like a cleaved melon. Her PC monitor flickers, then blanks out.

Shit! I just lost an hour's worth of work, wails the new staff writer.

Emma doesn't think twice. She grabs her handbag, her cell phone, her trench coat, the first aid kit she keeps in the bottom left-hand drawer of her desk, and she scrambles the hell out of there.

She flees the southeast corner offices of Ridley Publishing for the architectural heart of Three Embarcadero. There, where the elevators and lavatories are located, she finds the very same coat closet she fled to last year. She flings herself inside, secures the door behind her. Burrowing past winter wools and leather jackets, she finds the very same sturdy corner, where she crouches in a quivering fetal ball.

They said the five-point-five last year lasted all of fifty-seven seconds. But in the dark, in the isolation, the sensation of a twenty-eight-story, steel-girded, million-ton high-rise tossing back and forth as casually as the wicker rocking chair in her living room had seemed to last forever. Crying quietly into someone's raincoat, Emma had felt dizzy then, disoriented. Paralyzed for the entire hour it had taken Jack and Eddie to find her. Led by the beeping of