Robots vs. Fairies

by Dominik Parisien

  Daedalus, watching the wings melt.

  . . . the amygdala, hypothalamus, prefrontal cortex, and olfactory bulb are all activated by infant behavioral cues, which trigger adjustments in the levels of hormones such as oxytocin, glucocorticoids, estrogen, testosterone, and prolactin for the maintenance of parenting patterns. . . .

  I closed the textbook and rubbed my temples.

  The sleep deprivation, the anxiety from the infant’s cries, the constant worry that something so fragile and so demanding depended on you—the experience of being new parents changed people, altered the chemical composition of their blood, rewired their brains.

  There was no such thing as quality time because there were no shortcuts. The very experience that bonded new parents to their children required the investment of time and energy to change them, just as their babies needed time and energy to grow.

  The tedium and anxiety were inseparable from the rewards.

  It was not possible to reduce parenting down to “quality time” and to outsource the difficult parts to robots—for some, perhaps most, parents, the physical and neurological changes brought about by becoming a parent were desirable.

  Really, I should have known better. Would I give up the sleepless nights and the tedious days of trying out hundreds of failed solutions in the struggle toward a successful, shipping product? The painful process was what made the victory sweet, changed me as a person, made the impossible dreams real.

  * * *

  “Are you leaving or are you being fired?” asked Amy, handing me a mug of tea. “I made you the good stuff. The robots here ruin good tea with tepid water.”

  My skunkworks project had been shut down. Once I understood that Para had no future, there was little choice but to come clean. I had cost the company a lot of money and taken on unacceptable risks. I should have been fired.

  “Neither,” I said, accepting the mug gratefully. “I’m being transferred to a new division.”

  Amy lifted an eyebrow.

  “It doesn’t have a name yet,” I said.

  “What . . . will you be doing?”

  “Shaka, when the walls fell,” I said.

  After a moment, Amy smiled. “Ah, I see. The Unknown Unknowns.”

  “That’s one possible name,” I said. “Or maybe the Division of Country Mice.”

  We laughed.

  Ron and Jake had decided that it was important to have a group focused on fresh perspectives. Staffed with artists, ecologists, ethicists, anthropologists, cultural critics, environmentalists, and other nonroboticists, our job would be keeping an eye on the blind spots of technical solutions. We would critique products for unanticipated consequences, gather data to detect non-obvious evidence of failure (like those searches for exterminators), and generally act as a kind of corporate source of pessimism to counterbalance the overexuberance of the engineering staff. Having become a byword for failure at weRobot, who was better qualified to join the group than me?

  “Thanks for taking over the rehabilitation projects,” I said.

  She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve always been good at cleaning up after other engineers, probably because I never think anything is going to work in the first place. But I’ll enjoy fixing your robot rats. They’re cute.”

  “I really made a mess of things, didn’t I?”

  “Not entirely,” said Amy. She proceeded to explain to me that with Ron and Jake’s blessing, she was going to repurpose the hardware and software of Para for a much less ambitious version that would try to help overworked mothers and fathers rather than supplant them. Instead of yielding to the myth of quality time, the robots would be more cooperative, doing only what parents wanted them to do, and always ready to step back. Some advocacy groups for mothers suffering from postpartum depression had expressed interest in such a project as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.

  “You had the right ideas, kid,” she said. “Sometimes you step out too far and fall off the edge, but how else would you know how far you can go?”

  “That sounds almost like the One True Myth.”

  “I’m a skeptical believer. Technology is beautiful, but it’s the nature of technology to create more problems to be solved. Machines, like rats, are a part of nature, and our lives are embedded within each other. Hephaestus, his hammer raised.”

  “That reminds me,” I said. “I’ll need you to come by my office next week.”

  “What for?”

  “We are going to do a brain dump with you—”

  “That’s impossible—”

  “I didn’t mean literally! Besides, how do we know it’s impossible if we don’t try?”

  I couldn’t keep a straight face long enough to fool her. But I could tell she came this close to falling for it.

  “I’m not going to be scanned into a robot,” she said.

  “I want you to come and tell some stories, infect everyone with a bit of your cynicism. I think that’s going to be really useful.”

  Amy nodded. “Gimli, his ax ready.”

  TEAM ROBOT

  * * *

  BY KEN LIU

  I love to write about robots because I’m pretty sure they’re going to rule the world one day. In preparation for that inevitable future, it seems wise to lay the groundwork to show that I can be useful to our robot overlords—for example, as a human bard to praise the glory of robot kind.

  (P.S. In case the humans win, please read the previous paragraph as mere cover to allow me to be an effective saboteur and infiltrate the robot central command.)

  (P.P.S. But in case the robots win, please read the previous paragraph as an attempt to gain the trust of the human resistance for robotic purposes.)

  (P.P.P.S. I’m thinking now it might have been easier to be on Team Fairy. . . .)

  MURMURED UNDER THE MOON

  by Tim Pratt

  Emily Yuan, the mortal head of Rare and Sentient Special Collections at the fairy library, took a different route to work every day. Some mornings she left her house in Oakland, walked along the sidewalk, turned a corner, and found herself stepping into her office in that other realm. Other days she strolled down to the shores of Lake Merritt, where a mystic fog on the water would part to reveal a small, jewel-encrusted boat—a fairy ferry, her friend and coworker CeCe joked—for her to ride across strange liminal waters to the island that housed the library. One morning she’d opened her shower curtain and found, instead of the bathtub, the library’s front desk. That had been embarrassing, and she’d asked the facilities department to tweak the commute spell.

  The morning the library was invaded and sacked, the weather was all gloomy, rainy October, so she opted for a strictly indoor commute after finishing her toast and jam. “Did you want to come in with me?” she asked her girlfriend, Llyfyr.

  Llyfyr had green skin and wore a gown of living leaves that morning; she smelled like a forest after rain. She lifted her head from the kitchen table and blinked at Emily. “I read too much poetry last night. I’m still drunk. I think I’ll just linger here. There’s a volume of Goldbarth in the living room I haven’t read yet. Hair of the dog.” Her head dropped back down.

  Emily kissed Llyfyr on the crown of her head and said, “See you later.” Emily had discovered Llyfyr in the deep stacks of the library when she first got hired, two years before, and they’d both been smitten straightaway. No one loved books like a librarian. Once Emily got used to the strangeness of dating a shape-shifting living book, they’d settled into a relationship of lazy weekends and quiet evenings and enjoyably active nights. In book form, Llyfyr was a fantasy love story, which made her whimsical and romantic; Emily was one of the only people who’d ever read her cover to cover. As a living book, Llyfyr called the fairy library home, but she had the autonomy to check herself out whenever she liked, and often stayed over with Emily in the mortal world.

  Time to get to work. Any door would do. Emily picked up her bag and walked to the nearest closet, directed her mind toward the day’s
tasks—helping researchers, continuing to catalogue the depths of the rare book archive, shepherding along the digital conversion and preservation projects—and opened the door.

  She’d wanted to walk straight into her office, but instead she stepped into the outdoors, at the base of the stone steps that switchbacked up to the library from the dock. She frowned, but fairy magic was unreliable by nature, and at least it wasn’t raining here in the fey realm. The morning was cool and partly cloudy, as usual, and glittering waters surrounded the rocky island as far as her human eyes could see. She started up the stairs—I could probably use the exercise—and halfway up became aware of a commotion.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, she saw a crowd of three dozen people milling around on the steps in front of the stately stone vastness of the fairy library. The immense carved wooden doors were closed, as usual—they only opened when one of the rare giant patrons visited—but the smaller inset doors were closed too, and that was decidedly unusual. Even more unusual: a pair of tall, slender guards wearing gilded armor stood blocking the doors, holding spears with nasty-looking complex barbs on the ends. The guards looked more bored than menacing, but something very serious must be going on. The library was full of valuables and had its own security in the form of the formidable Miss Ratchet and her hounds, but Emily had never seen soldiers like these before.

  Two of the Folk—they preferred that name to “fairies,” as a rule, though they also responded well to any kind of compliment—hurried toward Emily. They were frequent researchers engaged in long and bewildering scholarly projects, and quite familiar to her. Mr. Ovo was an immense smooth white egg with arms and legs, dressed in trousers and a waistcoat, and the Kenning was an anthropomorphic metaphor who looked like a crow-headed undertaker today. The Kenning squawked and Mr. Ovo signed too rapidly for her to follow—the only words Emily picked up were “outrage” and “theft”—but fortunately, her assistant Faylinn came over too.

  Faylinn was an ancient fairy woman with the upright mien of a Victorian governess, her eyes featureless spheres the color of quicksilver. After some initial resistance to having a mortal boss, she’d become devoted to Emily, mostly because Emily had started a scanning project that allowed researchers to examine the contents of rare books on computer screens instead of touching the beloved volumes with their filthy hands. She wrung her long, ink-stained hands. “Emily, something terrible has happened. We’ve all been barred from the library—and look!” She pointed, and Emily lifted her eyes to see winged fairies the size of children streaming out of the sides of the crystal dome atop the library—she hadn’t even realized there were windows that opened up there. Each fairy carried a small cargo net full of—

  “Where are they taking the books?” she gasped.

  “No one knows!” Faylinn said. “I thought it was theft at first, and I cast a summoning to call Miss Ratchet, but when she appeared, she told me the library was closed and the resources were being reallocated on the orders of Mellifera.”

  “That—what—that doesn’t make any sense. Wait.” Emily took her phone from her bag. There was no cell service here—they weren’t even in the mortal world, though she’d never seen any of the fey realm beyond this island—but she could always reach Mellifera, the fairy woman who’d hired her and had ultimate authority over the library. Emily poked at the honeybee icon on her screen . . . but instead of connecting her to Mellifera, the bee flew off the side of her screen and vanished.

  That was troubling. Emily marched up the steps to the guards and poked one in the chest plate. He looked at her and frowned, his long, narrow face transforming from bored beauty to cruel sneer. “Begone, mortal. Your kind has no place here.”

  “Mellifera hired me personally to oversee the most valuable part of the library—”

  “There is no more library. Just a building that will soon be empty of books. Be gone.” He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and shoved her—

  —and she stumbled out of her closet, into the hallway in her apartment. Her phone buzzed with a text from her former roommate and current best friend, CeCe. Emily had hired CeCe to help modernize the library, and CeCe had put in computer terminals and started an ambitious project to scan and digitize the rare volumes. The text read, Tried to go to work and couldn’t find a path, just walked in circles. What’s up?

  Not sure, Emily texted back. Looking into it.

  Emily walked through the house, calling, “Llyfyr!” There was no sign of her girlfriend in the bedroom or the living room, though she found a volume of poetry on the living room floor, pages splayed open. That was odd. Llyfyr was usually gentle with books. Emily tried not to worry. Sometimes Llyfyr took on a more human-looking guise and went on walks, but she usually left a note (her handwriting was exactly the same as the typeface that filled her in book form). She’d probably expected to be back before Emily got home, that was all, but—

  “Are you Emily Yuan?”

  Emily spun around. The armchair in the corner was occupied by a woman—no, she was Folk, her ears pointed and her smile revealing sharp teeth—dressed in black. Her long dark hair seemed to sparkle, as if stars were caught in the shadowy waves. She looked like a theatrical pirate, right down to the cutlass resting across her knees.

  Emily resisted the urge to back up a step. As a rule, the Folk scorned the fearful. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Sela. We have a mutual friend who needs our help. Mellifera?”

  “I’m . . . not sure she’s my friend.”

  Sela chuckled. “Nor mine, really, but we’ve known each other for a long time. Mellifera recruited you, though, to run her library?”

  “I don’t know what you’re doing here—”

  “I’m here to help you get your precious library back, but if you’d rather return to your mortal life—” She began to rise.

  Emily held up her hands. “Fine, yes, Mellifera hired me. Over two years ago now.”

  “Why did she pick you?”

  “I’d just been fired from my job at a university library because of budget cuts, and I was in the train station with a box of all my personal items from work, waiting to go home, when I saw a woman sitting on the edge of the platform, her legs dangling over the tracks. She seemed upset, so I asked her if she was all right, and shared a chocolate bar I’d had in my desk. That was Mellifera. The next day I got a job offer . . . and found out magic was real.”

  Sela nodded. “If you show one of the Folk kindness without motive, you will receive kindness in return.”

  Emily bristled. “I didn’t get the job just because I was nice. I’m qualified, and I’ve totally transformed the collection. It’s almost entirely catalogued. We’re digitizing and preserving—”

  “Peace, mortal. I never meant to impugn your skills. Mellifera is practical, and I’m sure you’re good at your job. I was just curious how a mortal came to hold such a position, and, I confess, I hoped that she’d hired you because you had some deep knowledge of magic.”

  “I mean, I know what I’ve read, and been told. . . .”

  “Yes. Well. Mellifera is in danger, Emily—”

  “Mellifera is the danger! The library was closed by her order.” Mellifera had always been aloof and superior, and was terrible to behold in anger, but she’d always shown Emily a measure of respect and even distant affection. To take away Emily’s job, what she’d expected to be her life’s work, without even a conversation, was immeasurably cruel.

  Sela shook her head. “Not of her own free will. Mellifera is not herself, but you might be able to help me fix that, even if you aren’t a sorcerer. I understand that as librarian you have been granted certain powers? That you can summon books?”

  Emily nodded. “Yes. The archive is vast, and as part of the cataloguing magic, I can call any volume in the collection to my hand.” She touched the necklace around her throat, where an enchanted pewter charm in the shape of a book dangled.

  “Excellent. I need you to call up a volume of poetry calle
d Murmured Under the Moon.”

  “Who’s the author?”

  “Mellifera.”

  “Really?” Emily closed her eyes, murmured the incantation, and held out her hands. No book appeared.

  “A shame.” Sela stood, sheathing her cutlass at her belt. “Mellifera’s soldier must have disenchanted your necklace before he shoved you off the island.”

  “Wait!” Emily thought of a book at random—one of the volumes from the Subterranean Warfare section, Under Hill and Kill and Kill, a firsthand account of something called the Battle of Fallen Barrow. The hardbound book appeared in the air and dropped a few inches into her waiting hands, and she brandished it. “See? The magic works. I couldn’t call that other book because it was never part of the collection. I’ve never heard of a book like that. I had no idea Mellifera was a writer. I only have a score of books authored by your kind.”

  Sela sighed. “Ah, well, it was a long shot. The Folk don’t produce much art, and don’t often share what they do. I thought Mellifera’s vanity might have led her to include the book in the collection, but it seems not. Too bad. Good-bye, mortal.”

  “Stop. What is going on? What’s happened to Mellifera?”

  “She’s under a powerful enchantment, and I need to save her.”

  “Who enchanted her? I thought the Folk were immune to that kind of thing! And what does it have to do with this poetry collection?”

  The fairy leaned against the door frame. She looked almost amused. “It’s not just poetry. It’s love poetry. Long ago Mellie fell in love with a mortal, wrote poems to him—in her own hand!—and had them bound, intending the poems as a gift.” Sela shook her head. “One night several centuries ago, during the new moon in October, she opened a passage from our world to the mortal’s house and read her poems to him. She wanted to lure him through, to stay with her forevermore. There is magic in such an act, you know—for a princess of the Folk to murmur such things under the moon. The man refused her, though, choosing his own mortal family instead. He must have had tremendous strength of will, because when Mellie wants to charm someone, they are generally well charmed.” Sela sighed. “Unfortunately, his refusal created a sort of . . . unresolved spell, deeply embedded in the pages of the book. Someone in possession of those poems, with the right knowledge, at the right time, can use it to reopen that passage between worlds and charm Mellie as she tried to charm her would-be lover—by symbolically becoming that lover.”