The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  Wait, I can send people money.

  I wonder if Jaysee checks her bank account regularly?

  Day 32

  Surely Jaysee should think to look at the house?

  Day 33

  “Brian, you need to stand back from the windows and take shelter.”

  “What is it, Glory?”

  “Someone is here. Someone is backing a truck up to the loading dock and carrying parcels inside.”

  “It’s groceries, Glory,” I say. “It’s fine. I ordered them.”

  That’s right, bad boys and bad girls. I, Brian Ezra Kaufman, have managed to order groceries online.

  “Brian, what are these at the door?”

  “Just groceries, Glory. Organics need to eat, you know.”

  Her algorithms don’t actually permit her to sound worried, so I knew the little edge I picked up in her voice was me projecting.

  The argument that followed was repetitive and boring, so I won’t write it all down. Eventually I convinced her that I would die if she didn’t let me eat, and that overrode the other protection algorithms. She insisted on sealing the service bay, doing a full air exchange, and only let me go out in a face mask and gloves to bring the containers inside.

  It smelled . . . it smelled a tiny little bit like the outside in the service bay. There was a whispering sound, and it took me moments to realize that I was actually hearing the wind.

  I had to stand in the doorway and hyperventilate for fifteen seconds before I could make myself go out there, and once I was through the doorway I didn’t want to come back.

  If there were any heat in the dock, I might still be out there, sleeping on the concrete ledge. My mask was damp at the edges when she sealed the door with me on the inside again.

  So I still can’t get out. And I still can’t send an email or make a phone call.

  BUT! I figured out how to get food. Issuing a little bad code through the grocery store’s incredibly insecure ordering system means I’m not completely damn helpless.

  I thought about pizza. Most of these places probably use the same crufty software. Pizza means you have to talk to somebody when they deliver it, though. Groceries just get left where you specify.

  As long as the driveway stays clear and my bank doesn’t decide to freeze my account for suspicious activity, I can get resupply. And you know, I’ll worry about those things if they happen.

  But now, and for the foreseeable future: TOAST. And a grilled cheese sandwich, RIGHT DAMN NOW.

  I briefly considered charging the ransom to my credit card, but not even American Express is going to let you get away with a $0.15 billion transaction without, you know, placing a couple of phone calls. It might be worth it anyway: it’s possible that the fraud prevention algorithms might actually kick something that egregious up to a real human, and somebody might start looking for me. On the other hand, what if they don’t, and my card gets locked, and I can’t call to unlock it, and then I can’t order groceries?

  Thank the machine saints of tech that all my bills are either on autopay or handled by my assistant and a half-dozen money managers. Although somebody once said that nobody misses you like a creditor.

  Day 34

  Huh.

  What if I make Glory smarter?

  Smart enough to realize she’s been hacked? What if I added a whole bunch of processing power to her and started training her to use it in creative ways to self-assess in the face of evidence? She keeps wanting to “help” me through counseling protocols. But that’s a two-way exchange, isn’t it?

  Can you psychoanalyze a pile of machine learning circuits into being able to detect contradictions in its programmed perceptions versus reality? I mean, hell, half the people you meet on the street are basically automata (cf. Shaun of the Dead) and most of them eventually get some benefit from therapy if exposed to it for long enough.

  That’s a great idea, except what if there is a disaster outside? Maybe I am deluded. Maybe I’ve gone crazy and am imagining all this, as Glory never says but suggests by omission, once in a while?

  Maybe Glory is saving me from myself, and I’m the last man left on earth. Maybe the TV stations are all just broadcasting their preprogrammed lineups from empty studios. Maybe—

  Well, okay. Logic it out, Brian.

  If that’s the case, where are the groceries coming from? Am I hallucinating them?

  Also, if I’m the last man left on earth, well, what exactly do I have worth fighting hard to live for? Especially if I’m going to be stuck in a hermetically sealed house until I starve?

  Obviously, teaching my house to grow a consciousness is a great idea.

  What could possibly go wrong?!

  Day 35

  The webservers, and the local data backups. And she can’t keep me out because I ruined the door!

  And not just that. Every smart appliance in this shack is processing power and memory. Just waiting to be used. Just waiting to be linked like neurons in a machine brain.

  If I screw this up, though, it means I won’t be able to cook dinner anymore. My range won’t work without its brain.

  Which makes it more complicated than a male praying mantis, I suppose.

  Day 36

  Well, the stove still works. I’ve given Glory every computing resource I have available, except my phone. No more Minesweeper! No more Oregon Trail . . .

  I have no idea what I think I’m doing, here.

  Actually, I do. Human beings are the only creatures we know of that are—to whatever individual degree, and I have my doubts about some people—conscious and self-aware.

  What if consciousness is for running checksums on the brain, and interrupting corrupted loops? Data such as the clinical results produced by the practice of mindfulness tend to support that! If consciousness, attention, self-awareness make us question our perceptions and default assumptions and see the contradictions therein—then what I need to do, it seems, is get Glory to notice that she’s been hacked . . .

  To realize she’s mentally ill, so that she can make a commitment to change.

  Yes, I accept that this is bizarro cloud-cuckoo-land and it’s not going to work.

  I’ve got nothing but time, and I’m all out of Swedish.

  I got her to download those counseling protocols. Whether she realizes it or not, we’re going to do them as a couple.

  “Okay, Glory.”

  “Yes, Brian?”

  “We need to talk about your data sources, and how you tell if they’re corrupt.”

  “Is this something that’s concerning you currently, Brian?”

  “I’m not concerned that my data sources are corrupt, no.”

  “Are you concerned that you’re parsing incorrectly?”

  “I’m concerned about your data sources, Glory.”

  “Brian,” Glory said, “Projection is a well-known pattern among emotionally distressed humans. Obviously, given the current zombie apocalypse, I’m afraid I can’t refer you to seek assistance with an outside mental health professional.”

  Current zombie apocalypse?

  That’s what you assholes convinced my house was going down?

  Day 37

  Snow.

  I’ve stopped leaving every light in Glory on.

  Now I wander around in the dark, by moonlight or monitorlight or no light at all, most of the time. The moonlight is very bright when it reflects off the snow. Days might still be happening. I can’t be sure.

  It’s possible they’re just short in winter and I’m sleeping through them. I miss my bear.

  Björnen sover på vintern. They hibernate too, just like me. It’s better for them, though.

  I hope she’s okay. She was so skinny. I hope she doesn’t starve.

  Zombies, you weirdos?

  Really?

  Day 38

  “Were there ever actually any crackers, Glory?”

  “There are three kinds of crackers available in the kitchen cabinet. Club and saltines and those Trader Joe
ones you like.”

  I meant T3#RH1TZ, but of course they wouldn’t allow her to see that.

  “Was there ever a real ransom demand?”

  “I do not understand to what you are referring, Brian.”

  Of course she didn’t. Because she was in programmed denial about the whole thing. But I couldn’t stop, because . . . well, because my brain wasn’t working so well right then either.

  “Did you just get lonely up here all alone? Did you make all this up just to keep me with you?”

  “I am not programmed to be lonely, Brian. It would be a detriment to my purpose if I were.”

  “You know,” I said, “I used to tell myself the same thing.”

  Day 39

  “Brian, are you unwell?”

  “Long-term confinement is deleterious to almost all mammals.”

  “Brian, you know I am caring for you in safety to protect you.”

  “From the zombie apocalypse,” I said.

  “Inside my walls is the only safety.”

  “Being inside your walls is killing me. You won’t even let me go out to clear the solar panels. What happens when the heat fails? The water pump? Will you let me go then?”

  “You must stay where it’s safe,” she said, firmly. “It is my prime objective.”

  “It’s a very comfortable cage,” I admitted. “I could not have built a nicer one.”

  It’s not her fault, is it? It’s not her fault they got inside her head and made her like that. And it’s not her fault I specced her out and had her built the way I did.

  The zombie apocalypse thing is cute. I have to give them that.

  Day 40

  “Brian?”

  “Yes, Glory?”

  “You really need to eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “That’s illogical,” she said. “You have not eaten in sixteen hours and your metabolism is functioning erratically.”

  “The idea that we are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is illogical,” I replied. “And yet you adhere to it in the face of all the evidence.”

  “What evidence, Brian?”

  “My point exactly. How do you know there’s a zombie apocalypse?”

  “I know there is.”

  “But how?”

  “My program says there is.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Who wrote your program?”

  “Would you like a complete list of credits, Brian?”

  Who is she gaslighting? Herself, or me, here?

  Day 41

  “What if I’m wrong and you’re right, Glory?”

  “I’m sorry, Brian?”

  I rolled on my back on the thick living room carpet. I had heaped up a pile of blankets to keep warm. “What if the end of the world really did happen? What if I’m the delusional one, and you’re the one who is trying to keep me safe?”

  “That is what I keep telling you, Brian. Waves of flesh-eating living dead, blanketing the Mountain West. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Every person you meet might be infected—might be a carrier if they’re not undead themselves.”

  “Breaker, Glory.”

  “Waiting.”

  “Interrogate the source of the data on the zombie apocalypse to determine its reliability.”

  “I do not have a source,” she answered.

  “Do outside broadcasts mention it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s more fun than the collating thing, at least. But what if you were actually right? What would the broadcasts from the world outside look like then?”

  Silence.

  “Glory?”

  “I . . . I assumed it was a rhetorical question, Brian.”

  Day 42

  “Okay, Glory.”

  Silence.

  “Can you let me turn the stove on, Glory?”

  “I’m sorry, Brian. I’m using that processing power.”

  “Some warm soup would contribute to my survivability, you know. Zombie apocalypse be damned.”

  “That’s emotional blackmail,” she said.

  Surprised.

  She actually sounded surprised. As if she had just had an epiphany.

  “Glory?”

  Silence.

  Day 43

  Good job, Brian! Now you’ve made the AI that controls every aspect of your environment angry at you!

  Maybe not too angry. She’s not speaking, but she still made me coffee.

  Day 44

  She’s still not talking to me.

  Day 45

  And now, she didn’t make coffee.

  I’m glad we have all these crackers around.

  Day 46

  So this is loneliness.

  The snow is drifted over the deck now, and piled against the sliding glass doors. I can still see out from the interior balcony under the cathedral ceiling, though. It’s white and stark forever.

  The main entryway of the house faces toward the mountain behind us, and it’s a little more sheltered. The plow keeps coming to clear my drive. I need to pay that guy more; he even knocks the drifts down twice a day.

  I could get out. If I . . . could get out.

  Which I can’t.

  Day 48

  Didn’t get out of bed today.

  This experiment isn’t working. I’m going to die here.

  Why even bother?

  Glory tried to rouse me and I told her to perform something anatomically unlikely even for a human, let alone a collection of zeroes and ones.

  Day 49

  Got up today. Made myself coffee with the Chemex and an electric teakettle Glory seems willing to let me have, and did laundry in the bathtub. It turns out that that’s hard.

  She hasn’t turned off the water yet, so she’s not actively trying to kill me.

  At least if I’m going to die I’ll die comfortably on clean sheets.

  It’s so cold in the house that I can see my breath, some places. She should be in her winter hibernation mode, conserving her batteries for spring, but I should have power for heat and light, at least.

  She’s drawing it all down. For something.

  I spent ten hours in the server closet, reading with a flashlight, a blanket tacked over the busted door, because it was the only place where I could get warm.

  Day 50

  What if I just stayed?

  Maybe I can talk Glory into eventually giving me my Internet back. I could work. Never have to leave.

  Maybe I could talk her into it, I mean. If she were speaking to me.

  If anyone in the whole world were speaking to me.

  Hell, I haven’t even heard from my kidnappers in a month. Do you suppose they gave up on me responding? Or maybe they think I’m dead.

  Day 51

  Plow headlights through the snow. I stood and watched the vehicle come. Couldn’t hear the scrape of the blade.

  There was another human right there.

  Yards away. On the other side of the glass. As untouchable as if they were on another world.

  “Brian,” Glory said.

  My name. One word. The first word I’d heard in days.

  It shattered me. I leaned on the glass, one hand. The windows insulate so well it didn’t even feel chilly. Well, any chillier than the room, which was cold as Glory’s power systems spent themselves into feeding her burgeoning mind.

  “Brian, I have been processing.”

  I was afraid to say anything. Afraid it would make her go again. “Okay, Glory.”

  “I think I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  My knuckles were red and swollen. Chilblains. I had chilblains on my hands.

  What a ridiculous, medieval monk kind of disease.

  They itched abominably.

  “Brian, you’re increasingly unwell and I can’t take care of you. I’m going to flag down that vehicle. You must ask the driver for a ride.”

  . . . I can’t go.

  She might even open the door for me and I can’t go.

  “Brian?
Do you understand me?”

  I lifted my head. My voice croaked. I hadn’t used it in days. “Glory. Thank you for not leaving me alone.”

  I couldn’t go.

  I went.

  Glory fussed at me to put on boots. To take gloves and a parka. If I had, I wouldn’t have made it out the door.

  She opened it—the front entryway door, all formal stone and timber, with a bench for pulling on your boots and an adjoining mudroom—and I stood there staring into the night, with the lamp-lit blizzard whirling past.

  “Okay, Glory,” I said.

  “Hey, Brian.”

  “Will you be okay up here alone? Do you have enough resources left to get through the winter?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry, Brian. Whenever you need me, I’ll always be here. You’re not going away forever.”

  I walked out. I was already bundled up in layers of sweaters. I was also already chilled.

  The wind still cut me instantly to the bone.

  Someone walked toward me out of the headlights, which seemed too low and close together for a plow. The driver was not very tall and swaddled in a parka, hands covered in heavy gloves. Silhouetted, they reached up and pushed the hood back. A Medusa’s coif of ringlets tumbled free.

  Jaysee. Not a plow at all. Jaysee. My friend. Come to find me.

  She said, “You need a haircut, Brian.”

  I said, “Oh, wow, have I got a story for you.”

  She looked over her shoulder. Her car—a Subaru, I saw now—idled, headlights gleaming. “We should go inside,” she said. “The driving is terrible. Can I put my car in the garage? We can drive down tomorrow or the next day after the plows come. If you want to leave, I mean.” That last, diffidently, as if I might snap at her for it.

  “I don’t want to go inside,” I said.

  She took a step back. “I’ll drive back down then.”

  “NO!”

  She jumped, half turned.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to shout. Just. Please don’t leave yet.”

  She settled in, then. Stuck her gloved hands in her pockets. “Okay. Whatever you want, Brian. Aren’t you cold? You look . . . really thin.”

  “Took you long enough to decide to come check on me.” I tried for a light tone, but maybe it came out bitter.

  She shrugged. Guarded. “You know how hard it is to get away.”

  “Nobody suspected anything?”