The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  “You fell off the smartchair,” she said. “During a nightmare, I think.”

  It was getting to her, he thought. The eyeballs. The wider reach was a temptation.

  A lever, maybe, if he could figure out how to use it.

  “Remember anything?”

  “My head in a goldfish bowl?”

  “No fish here, Handsome.”

  They had agreed to another day and night of filming and physical recovery. Drow streamed as much as he could, watching what Tala allowed out of her airlock, what she was willing to leave on the record. She edited his medical journey into a series of high-pathos vids, clips that looked entirely candid, random-seeming captures that always cut to a wincingly painful moment of suffering.

  The humming, he realized, was a tell of sorts: It started when she was busily occupied with work.

  Strokes came in an ever-steadier stream, too few to redeem him but enough to make Drow wish that collaborating with Tala could actually be what they used to call a valid lifestyle choice.

  I should make it up with Marce, he thought. Go back to playing music with her. See what happens.

  He spent the afternoon doodling in an old-school paper notebook—inherited, vintage, no carbon cost—and eating bland printed food, thinking about the video possibilities of future chemo outcomes.

  Ghoulish possibilities, he wrote: shakes, sores, dry mouth.

  Waking later from a light doze, he found three more on the list: Seizure. Cardiac arrest. Stroke.

  With penstrokes that almost tore the page, he crossed them out.

  “No good?” Tala said.

  “Whose ideas are those?”

  “It’s your handwriting, isn’t it?”

  He gritted his teeth. “I’m not having a heart attack for this. Anyway, a hospital-grade emergency commits me to a blood test or fifty, right? Which’d raise questions about the Brill, and supplier of same.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  “Getting away with it, remember?”

  “Nobody wants you to stroke out, Dearheart.”

  Crane, meanwhile: Are you with us, sir?

  Here.

  Jervis has solved my security problems, but he would need to perform a hardware installation. I’m afraid you’ll have to meet.

  So much for Jervis understands you have him blocked.

  This day keeps getting better, Drow said. I don’t want him at my house. Understand?

  Crane: He suggests making an appointment with your whistle-blower at the pop-up, to clean your smartport.

  Drow looked at the words on the notebook page. Cardiac arrest.

  Not his idea, no matter what she said.

  Seeing Jervis couldn’t make things worse at this point, could it?

  Fine, then, make the appointment, he texted to Crane. Lower the drawbridge. Drain the moat. Whatever it takes.

  Another night smeared away into morning, and by dawn his left hip had caught fire and he was nursing a stutter.

  By February, Toronto’s streets usually gave over to a hard, dirty melt, receding mountains of filthy crystallized snow scraped into piles on street corners, revealing clumps of muck and the rare bit of litter tossed by people who didn’t mind risking a cap hit. This winter the snow kept coming, renewing the virginal blanket laid over the roofs and yards.

  It was a sign, Drow thought, a hint from Someone Up There who wanted him to know he should’ve just kept shoveling sidewalks.

  He was braced for Jervis as he stepped into the infusion center, but it was Trevon who met him at the door. The medic’s hand lit on his burnt, scabby shoulder, making Drow flinch.

  His muscles were screwed tight; no pretending this was a casual encounter.

  They made their way down a narrow flight of stairs, through a hallway that smelled of burnt, powdered turmeric.

  “Are we making for the sewers? Underground cave system?” Drow asked—the stairs were wearing him out.

  “Your guy claims the clinic’s changed ownership,” Trevon whispered.

  “My guy—”

  “Our cameras and mics have been getting an upgrade. He refuses to come upstairs. Anyway, here we are.”

  It was a file room, dank and ill-lit, with a screechy fan planted near the door.

  Jervis was waiting beside a dead potted plant under an equally dead grow lamp. Relics of the building’s former life as a pot dispensary, probably.

  Dad’s widower had yet to lose his looks or the salesman’s smile. He’d always been charismatic: The light in his eyes beamed goodwill and noble intentions. C’mon, of course you can trust me, it said. Jerv’s charisma drew people like a beacon, pulling in the emotionally storm-tossed. Even now, seeing him brought an involuntary lift to Drow’s spirits. A lift—and then a swift hit of guilt about the distance he’d scrupulously maintained between them since Dad’s death.

  He loves you, the guilt said, look at him lighting up there, he’s no monster . . .

  No lighthouse, either, Drow told it.

  More a siren; get close and rocks would tear out your bottom.

  “Brucie,” Jervis said.

  “It’s Drow.” He cleared his parched throat. “Let’s keep this to business.”

  “Of course.” If he’d hurt his ex-dad’s feelings, it didn’t show. “Shirt off, then.”

  Drow peeled, sat. Trevon hemmed and hawed over the infusion port as Jervis unpacked a bit of filament, fine as dandelion seed, microscopic wires arrayed around a central stem.

  “The idea here is to have Crane run parallel installations. Twoface protocol, I call it. The vulnerable version, DayCrane, is available to Spiderlady, or whoever’s hacking for her—”

  “Stop! Back up! Whoever’s hacking—”

  “You’ve got a me, kid. She probably has a me, too. If she didn’t, she got one the first time you went off-script. You act, she reacts, she acts, we react. Play, counter-play, do-si-bleeping-do. I should write a dance instructor protocol for Crane, shouldn’t I? Anyone wanna learn to fox-trot?”

  Drow flicked him. “Focus, Jerv.”

  “Yeahyeahsorry. DayCrane still does all your donkeywork, and she can mess with him at will. Meanwhile, NightCrane communicates via tonguetext, evading the mics and security apps in her recording studio.”

  “You’ll feel a pinch now,” Trevon interrupted. He pulled two pump staples and unearthed the belly of the injection device.

  Drow looked away, imagining the scar it would leave, hating the self-mutilation.

  Dad’s voice whispered in the shriek of the fan. Your body is the only thing you truly own . . .

  Stick to business. “What will this new hardware do?”

  Jerv outlined the problem: Drow’s pickups were loading to the airlock in Tala’s home. The video and conversation transcripts were then scrubbed by the confidentiality app in the psychiatric office on-site before they ever made it to the Sensorium or its permanent archive, the Haystack.

  “So you override that somehow?”

  “No,” Jerv said. “We add a cache of on-site storage to the port. NightCrane can upload the records on your command.”

  “On-site . . .” Drow had barely heard of such a thing; private hard drives had been one of the first things to go out when international transparency accords began proliferating and people started loading their whole lives to the cloud.

  “As medical tech, the port’s allowed some freestanding memory, in case it has to shoot you up during . . . dunno. A broadband blackout? I’m radically increasing its capacity. NightCrane can stash footage inside and upload it when you’re back in the world.”

  “Can you get us into Tala’s mics and cameras, at the house?”

  “Maybe,” Jervis said, with a significant glance. Meaning: if Drow gave him another Brilliance vial.

  “I can’t spare more.”

  “You’ve got twenty-some coming, don’t you?”

  He tongue-texted: Goddammit!

  Crane: I do apologize, sir. I cannot keep secret
s from Master Jervis when he’s effectively performing brain surgery on me—

  Drow said, “I get more, Jerv, if I finish the contract.”

  Raised brows. “You’re thinking of walking away?”

  No, Drow thought. He was going to get the goods on Tala: expose the truth. Win the likes, win the game. Make his name.

  But Jerv always did have a way of making him feel contrary, of wanting to say fire when he was drowning. “Everyone says I should walk.”

  “Run screaming,” Trevon muttered. He was easing the upgraded port into position, prepping for the unnecessary cleaning Drow had scheduled.

  “Who asked you?” Jervis said.

  “As my chemo pusher, Trevon, shouldn’t you be on Jerv’s side?”

  The medic ran a gentle finger over the scabs laced across Drow’s biceps. “Chemo didn’t cause these.”

  Jerv wasn’t listening. Behind his pricey low-profile goggs, his eyes were flickering. Reading software install specs, probably, or checking the handshake with Crane. Possibly writing the programming equivalent of symphonies. “Come on, Trevvie my boy. Trevvy muh man. Goal here’s to get Drow to the end of his contract in one piece.”

  “It’s Trevon, I’m not your man, and you of all people . . . Jesus, isn’t this your son?”

  “Technically, he’s my surrogate’s brother,” Drow said.

  Jerv snapped out of quasi-REM. “Didn’t you say let’s stick to business? Because if you want to argue genetic semantics and familial bondage, I have footage from changing your godforsaken diapers—”

  “Business, definitely business,” Drow said. The sudden bursts of rage hadn’t gone away, then. Why would they?

  “Anyway, buddy,” Jerv went on, turning a glittery gaze on Trevon, “you’re the one literally poisoning the kid.”

  The medic’s hands came up. A surrender. “Right. Got it. Seen and not heard.”

  Drow swallowed rising anxiety. “Trevon, really, I’m fine.”

  “See? All good.” Jerv twinkled, apparently surging back into bonhomie. “Drow, let me see your goggs.”

  Drow slipped off his rig, brushing away the by-now usual fall of hair, and handed them over. “Trevon, can you tweak the chemo mix so I can’t fall asleep. Just for . . . say three days?”

  “Days? You want to add psychosis to your problems?”

  “Can you?”

  “No! What about taking a placebo for the remaining infusions?”

  Drow waved the handful of hair. “I need to keep falling bald or T-T-dammit-Tala will know what’s up. And the modeling contract requires I do ten treatments.”

  Trevon considered. “If we’re talking tweaks . . . how about a lighter dose?”

  It was a lifeline, one he hadn’t expected, and Drow grabbed it gratefully. “Yes. Right. Say, enough to finish off the hair, maintain this fabulous green skin tone and a bit of the quease. But not so much as—”

  “Keep getting worse, but not as fast or as bad as expected? Excellent strategy, kids!”

  Approval from Jervis: ironclad sign that this was an incredibly bad idea. He went on: “Hey! What if we threw in a dose of Sustain?”

  Trevon groaned.

  “Which is what?” Drow said.

  “Slows down the Charly effect. Gets you more out of the remaining Brill.”

  “So I can conveniently spare more for you?”

  “You in this to win or not, son?”

  “I’m in it to . . .” His mind tumbled possibilities, finding murk where, three weeks ago, everything had seemed clear. Commit to journalism? Truth, strokes, redemption? A little payback for Tala’s previous models, if she had indeed driven them to suicide? “This Sustain stuff. It’s d-d-dangerous?”

  Trevon said, “You’re past worrying about dangerous.”

  “Is it a zombie drug? Something for life extension that’ll interact badly with the actual boost to cognition?”

  “Not a zombie.” Trevon sighed. “It just slows down your system’s ability to flush out the Brill. The combo will worsen your mouth sores and almost certainly give you nosebleeds.”

  Drow thought of the list in his notebook. Cardiac arrest, in his script. In comparison, a nosebleed sounded both minor and suitably gross. “Might be just the thing.”

  “Too bad. I’m not licensed to give Sustain.”

  “Me either,” Jervis said, pressing a packet of patches into Drow’s hand. “No more than one a day, kid, hear me?”

  Trevon’s expression—disgust with them both—morphed into a sudden “O” of surprise. “Speaking of zombies, yours is parking outside.”

  “What?”

  “My manager says to hold off on your port cleaning until she arrives.”

  “Say it’s already done?” Jerv suggested.

  “No.” Drow sighed. “Either Crane blabbed or she has a source at the clinic. You said new owners, Trevon?”

  “This is me bugging out the back way.” Jerv flashed Drow another of those incandescent, sucker-luring smiles and scuttled off.

  “Wow. Dad really is everything you said he was,” Trevon said.

  “Jerv’s the least of my worries,” Drow said, struggling to keep his voice steady. He buttoned his shirt. “Come on. Haul me up the stairs so we can rip out my staples again.”

  The new drug, Sustain, gave Drow a weird feeling, something like having a dissection pin embedded in his eye. Combined with Brill, it also bestowed photographic memory. He remembered visuals, suddenly, something that had never been his strong suit. How things looked, where they were: He could glance at a floor plan and see the house it described. He could score music by visualizing the notes on each page. He memorized the map of Paris, for fun, and ogled scans of John Keats’s handwritten manuscripts.

  The songstorm he was writing for Cascayde took on a strange, New Wave undercurrent, opera-meets-electronica-mashes-romantic-poetry. Everything old made new again. All Thieves Together, he called it. Extremely fitting material for a virtuoso rising from the depths of despair.

  When he arrived at the clinic for his next infusion, he brought bottled water and more printed clean diet. At Jerv’s suggestion, he brought his saxophone, too.

  The sax was something they’d built together, back in the days before Dad was gone. It had its own modem, fine-tuned for Sensorium upload. Jervis hoped it might attract the attention of his counterpart, Tala’s hypothesized hacker.

  “It’ll look like spyware, your next move,” he explained. “She’d be nuts to take the thing into her house until she had it checked out.”

  Tala hovered, watching Drow’s every move, each drip of the infuser. She was humming, the way she did when she was hard at work. Drow would have bet she’d gotten through the clinic’s privacy protocols, that her goggs were capturing footage now, not just stills.

  He clutched his sax case like it was a teddy bear, waiting for her to make her counterplay.

  And sure enough, after the drip ran dry: “Got a surprise for you, Handsome.”

  She poured Drow into a waiting limo and bundled him to a private reception, some arty event in the lounge of the fanciest of the downtown hotels.

  “A party, Tala? Really?”

  “Sleep if you have to, Handsome. If not, all the carbon costs and calories are covered. Anything you want, just ask.” With that, she installed him in a leathery black smartchair parked in a shaft of blue-tinted sunlight.

  “Are you comfortable, sir?” That was DayCrane, the vulnerable one, talking aloud for show.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  Do we have transparency here? Drow tongued in Morse to the stealth version.

  NightCrane: Technically, yes—this is a public space. However, Master Jervis reports some data packets are being “accidentally” scrubbed before they reach Sensorium. Drow’s goggs showed a set of hands, drawing quotes in the air as the word accidentally played on his tongue.

  So Tala’s tech guy is here.

  It seems likely.

  Tala tottered through the crowd, mingling, pressing
the flesh. Everyone knew her; each conversation ended with her audience turning its gaze on Drow. A feeling of expectation, dense as summer humidity, permeated the room. Were they all hoping he’d pass out?

  Drow forced his tongue to move again: Can you whooz these people?

  NightCrane: Of course.

  Public profiles of businesspeople began filling his whiteboard.

  Drow gave one of the looky-loos a dozy grin, successfully luring him to the chair. He pushed out bleary chitchat. How do you know Tala? Have you seen her work? Are you an artist, too?

  The man deflected Drow’s questions with the ease of long experience. But he’d broken some kind of barrier. More of them came, people wanting a closer look. Finally, one of them dropped a shiny tidbit: “I’m a collector, not an artist. Well. By day, I’m a litigator. Collecting’s my true passion.”

  “You’re looking over the goods?” Drow asked, trying to sound knowing.

  Startled, nervous chuckle.

  “It’s okay,” he lied. “I’ve a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen—”

  The woman’s pupils dilated. Brilliant Sustained Drow lay under the weight of his chemo load, memorizing every nanoshift in color as the blood leached from her face.

  What’d I say?

  Excusing herself, the litigator beelined for someone who looked like they might be her date.

  Tala, missing nothing, orbited back briskly.

  “Is this an auction?” Drow asked. “Am I on some kind of block?”

  “I’m swanning you around while I’ve got you, Dearheart.” She rolled her shoulders, as if they ached.

  “We have weeks yet.”

  She gave him a birdlike, assessing gaze.

  Drow texted: Is Jerv eavesdropping on the mics here?

  NightCrane: He’s grabbing what he can.

  Drow: Try to catch that litigator’s convo.

  The analytic look on Tala’s face hadn’t vanished. To distract her, he said, “Wanna drive my price up?”

  Pink brows climbed so high he could see them over the brass rims of her goggs. “What do you have in mind?”

  He waggled the saxophone, baiting both her ego and her phantom tech support. “Another public feed?”

  She brightened, rummaging in her purse. “You can’t play that horn of yours, can you, with that dry mouth?”