A quirky collection of short sci-fi stories for fans of Kij Johnson and Kelly Link   Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken; this collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother’s ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead—punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Another story recounts a panda breeder looking for tips. And then there’s a border patrol agent trying to figure out how to process undocumented visitors from another galaxy. Poignant by way of funny, and philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez’s stories are prayers for self-sovereignty. Carlos Hernandez is the author of more than 30 works of fiction, poetry, prose, and drama. He is an associate professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches English courses at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and is a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a coauthor of Abecedarium and is a game designer, currently serving as lead writer on Meriwether, a computer role playing game (CRPG) about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He lives in Queens. "Hernandez's witty, insightful debut collection of 12 short stories pushes the boundaries of speculative fiction." -- Publishers Weekly , starred review "Hernandez's quantum-magical realist style has struck upon a potent vein, appealing to the literary minded and science fiction fans alike." --Peter Dabbene, Foreward Reviews "I loved every tale in this book. Buy it and see for yourself." --Sam Tomaino, SFRevu "Mixing humour, hurt, wonder, and keen insight, this is a short fiction debut that's fierce and charming all at once and by turns." --Amal El-Mohtar, Lightspeed Magazine "There is, in fact, something quite addictive in Hernandez's writerly voice -- a combination of compassionate intelligence and weird humor that contributes to making even his most morally ambiguous and dubious characters likable." --Sabrina Vourvoulias, Al Día News Carlos Hernandez is the author of more than 30 works of fiction, poetry, prose, and drama. He is an associate professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches English courses at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, and is a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is a coauthor of Abecedarium and is a game designer, currently serving as lead writer on Meriwether, a computer role playing game (CRPG) about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He lives in Queens. The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria By Carlos Hernandez Rosarium Publishing Copyright © 2016 Carlos Hernandez All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4956-0739-4 Contents Introduction by Jeffrey Ford, The Aphotic Ghost, Homeostasis, Entanglements, The International Studbook of the Giant Panda, The Macrobe Conservation Project, Los Simpáticos, More Than Pigs and Rosaries Can Give, Bone of My Bone, The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory, American Moat, Fantaisie Impromptu No. 4 in C#min, Op. 66, The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria, Acknowledgements, CHAPTER 1 The Aphotic Ghost Mountain Sometimes when a body dies in Everest's Death Zone, it doesn't come down. Too difficult, too much risk for the living. Thing is, it's so cold up there, bodies don't rot. They get buried by snow periodically, but the terrific winds of the South Col reliably reveal them: blue, petrified, horned by icicles, still in their climbing gear, always forever ascending. They scandalize the Westerners who paid good money to climb Everest and who don't especially want to be reminded of how deadly the journey can be. But then their Sherpas usher them past the garden of corpses and, weather permitting, to the top of the world. I am a Westerner, and I paid good money to climb Everest. But the summit wasn't my goal. I was going to get my son Lazaro off of that mountain, dead or alive. Sea-Level Lazaro's mother, Dolores Thomaston, taught twelfth-grade biology at the same school where I taught AP World History: Bush High, right on the Texas-Mexico border. Lazaro was born of a dalliance between us almost three decades ago. Dolores had an Australian ebullience and a black sense of humor and a seeming immunity to neurosis that made her irresistible to me. She could have been 25 or 55, and I never found out which. She'd made a splash in the scientific world a few years before coming to Bush with a paper she co-authored on a deep-sea jellyfish that, interestingly, was immortal. After it reproduced, it returned to a pre-sexual polyp state through a process called cell transdifferentiation, and then become an adult again, and then a polyp, and so on