The Reckoning of Gifts

Author’s Note ^{(from Gravity Wells short story collection)}

“The Reckoning of Gifts”: Back when I was doing theater, I wrote a one-act play called “Gifts” that was performed by my old high school. Years later, when Lorna Toolis and Michael Skeet asked me to submit a story for Tesseracts 4, I resurrected the idea from the play and this is what I got.

I should point out the story is substantially different from the play. For example, the play had none of the Vasudheva/Bhismu subplot. There are subjects that high schools prefer to avoid…

One last thing about “The Reckoning of Gifts”—the story is science fiction. Science fiction. Just because the tale is dressed in fantasy clothing, just because the characters talk about gods and demons and dreams, don’t automatically believe them. Science-fiction readers should know better.