Asimov's Science Fiction: February 2014

by Penny Publications

  He never noticed his own death. He missed the tiny beep beep beep of his alert bracelet signaling AftrLyf 's collection team. He missed the team's dramatic entry, their clockwork efficiency as they wrapped his head in cooling blankets and inserted the needles into his neck. He never heard the swishing whir of the pump that circulated foul-smelling fluids through his body or the hurried rush of the ambulance as it whisked him to the processing center.

  From Oxford's point of view, he fell asleep in his living room and awoke in a bus station.

  The blue plastic seat was hard, but the finger poking Oxford's shoulder was harder still.

  "Hey. Buddy. Wake up," the man poking Oxford said. "Don't want to sleep your death away, do you?"

  Oxford grabbed the man's offending finger, trying to blink away the fog in his head. "Stop that," he said.

  "So," the man went on, "you're from Raleigh, huh? How'd the Tar Heels do this year? They get a bowl game? Man, you're old. You should fix that."

  "Of course I'm old, you idiot." Oxford had already had quite enough of the man. "And how do you know I'm from Raleigh?"

  The man pointed up to an enormous electronic sign on the wall. "Now arriving: Raleigh, NC Ctr #201."

  "Oh." Oxford rubbed his eyes. "This isn't at all what I expected. I thought my wife would be here."

  "Yeah, well," the stranger said, shrugging, "you can't expect her to just hang out at the terminal waiting for you. She's got a death to live, too, you know."

  Oxford looked pointedly at the crowd milling at the edge of the waiting area. "I suppose," he said.

  "Them?" The man squinted and blew through his lips like a horse. "Losers, hanging around waiting for news from the living world. Just can't let it go and get on with their deaths, you know?"

  "Pot," Oxford said, turning his pointed look toward the stranger, "meet kettle."

  The man's eyebrows shot up. "Me? No way. I'm not like them at all. I'm just here to..." His voice trailed off into a long sigh and his gaze drifted to the floor. He seemed to deflate, aging as Oxford watched. Wrinkles began to crease the corners of his eyes and his cheeks sagged. His thick, dark hair faded, thinned, became a wispy gray fringe above his ears.

  "Man, you look old," Oxford said.

  "Eighty-two," he said, glancing up. "I'd be eighty-seven now."

  "Neat trick, looking young."

  The man planted his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands. "I hate being dead."

  Oxford left the man to stew in his own self-pity. He had his own death to live, and his first order of business was to find Emily. Outside, he found a bright, sunny day with just the right amount of breeze and a perfect temperature. That made sense, of course. It was all virtual, right? Why program it to be anything but heavenly?

  A ten-foot wall, painted pale blue, surrounded the bus station. There were no buses, though, and no streets, just a little bit of well-ordered grass and a few generic-looking trees. A sidewalk led to an archway in the outer wall. "Exit," read a sign above the arch, "to the Yellow Zone."

  Uncertain what to do next, Oxford shoved his hands in his pockets. Surprised, he pulled out the rectangular object he found in the right one. It looked a little like a cell phone. "What the hell is this," he said aloud.

  A rectangle appeared in the air above the device. Words resolved themselves. It was some kind of projection display. "Welcome to your new AftrLyf Network Guide to Eternal Life."

  Oxford groaned. IT people and their stupid acronyms. Did they really think that was cute? What about their customers whose religions didn't have angels? He suddenly realized he had no idea which religions those might be, but he wasn't in the mood to be agreeable. "What about the atheists?" he said.

  The display changed. It now read, "Welcome to your new Personal AftrLyf Librarian."

  Oxford sighed. "Thanks, pal," he said, shoving the device back into his pocket, "but no thanks." He wrapped his irritation around himself like a comfortable old sweater and strode out through the archway.

  The yellow zone was surprisingly urban. Except for the fact that the cars were silent, and the sidewalks were spotless, and the passersby were courteous, and the stores weren't gaudy, and the air smelled like freshly mown grass, it might have been any city. The buildings ranged from one to forty stories, in a mix of styles that somehow managed to blend together smoothly. Whenever he reached an intersection, the lights changed and the cars stopped. Traveling by car must be annoyingly slow. Overall, the place was a little too cheerful for Oxford's tastes.

  It didn't take him long to completely lose his bearings, not that he had any idea where he was going. After an hour or so, his feet hurt and his knees ached and his mood took on the sharp, jagged edge of frustration. He stepped into a small coffee shop, despite its unbearably silly name of Cy Klopp's Grill.

  The place was like something out of history, with leatherette booths along one wall, a scattering of tiny Formica-topped tables, and a long counter fronted by a row of red-seated stools. Oxford chose one of the empty booths. Lily was there before he'd finished squeaking himself into something like a comfortable position.

  "Hi, I'm Lily," she said, tapping her name tag with the end of her pen. "What can I get for you?" She couldn't have been older than twenty-three. Her green-and-white uniform and pale yellow apron looked like something from her great grandmother's era. She was so young. Maybe she'd never had the time to become more than just a waitress.

  "I don't—I just needed to get off my feet for a while," Oxford said. Then he realized a bigger problem. He reached for his back pocket. "I don't think I have any money." Lily giggled. " 'Course you do," she said. "Ask your ANGEL."

  "My what? Oh, the PAL thing." Oxford pulled it out of his pocket.

  "I figured you were a rookie," Lily said, sliding into the booth across from him. "What with the way you look and all." She tapped his PAL with her pen. "It's your wallet, your phone, your computer, your library, everything. Did you sleep through orientation or something?"

  Oxford frowned. "I might have dozed off. So what?"

  "Everything you need, you can get through your ANGEL." Oxford held the thing up gingerly, turning it over and examining it from every angle. "So if I lose this, I'm screwed."

  Lily gave him a schoolgirl giggle and snatched the device away. Before he could react, she smashed it on the floor. He heard the impact, heard the sound of shattering plastic. Aghast, he peeked over the edge of the table. There was nothing there. He turned wide eyes toward Lily.

  She smiled at him and told him to check his pocket.

  It was there, all right, just where he'd first found it. He pulled the thing out again, clutching it a little more tightly this time. "You might have warned me," he said.

  Lily just giggled.

  "You can laugh," Oxford said. "You're young. At my age, you might have given me a heart attack."

  "Funny you should say that." Lily tapped her chest with her ever-present pen, this time just below her name tag. "That's what got me. I was just going along one day and all of a sudden—poof!—my heart gives out."

  "I'm sorry," Oxford said.

  "Eighty years of solid service and the damn thing just quits."

  It took him a while to get it out, but Oxford finally managed to whisper the word,

  "Eighty."

  "You're as young as you feel, hon." She winked at him. "Really."

  "But how?"

  "It's AftrLyf 's world," she said, "but it's built to work with our own minds. Look, what did you do, you know, before you died?"

  "I had tea."

  "I mean for a living."

  "Oh," Oxford said. "I was in insurance."

  "Oh."

  Oxford frowned. Something in the way her voice fell made it seem as if she thought that was a bad thing. It's not like he'd been an attorney or something. "Why?" he said. "What's wrong with insurance?"

  "Nothing! It's just—" She paused a moment, looking uncomfortable."The computer works with your imagination."

 
; Oxford looked at her a while, trying to decide if waitresses should tie with shrinks on his "annoying people" list, before sliding out of the booth.

  "You're leaving?" Lily said.

  "I imagine so."

  "I didn't mean to be insulting."

  "And yet..."

  "It's just that you're not very good at being dead."

  Oxford folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. "I don't mean to be insulting, either," he said, "but why should I take advice from a waitress?"

  She laughed, sliding out of the booth. By the time she was standing, her hair was in a tight bun and her uniform had become a white lab coat. She adjusted the dainty, gold-rimmed glasses she was suddenly wearing. "How about from an organic chemist? That's what I used to do. Of course, I was far too shy to give advice to strangers, then, but if it makes you feel better..."

  An uncomfortable feeling roiled in Oxford's stomach. He didn't like being wrong, and he hated apologizing, but he had to admit he might have misjudged this whole Lily situation. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize."

  "That," Lily said, suddenly becoming Lily-the-waitress again, "is my point."

  "Do you mind my asking what you did?"

  "I just told you."

  "I mean to warrant this," Oxford said. "The waitress thing. It's punishment, right?"

  Oxford was back to wandering the streets of the Yellow Zone, still not understanding why Lily had thrown him out of the restaurant. Death had unbalanced her, clearly. He was surprised AftrLyf didn't have some kind of screening process to keep the crazies out. So far, he was unimpressed with the whole experience. If he could just find Emily, everything would be fine.

  He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, watching the other pedestrians. Several of them had their PALs out, pointing them this way and that and waving their free hands above them.

  It was worth a try. Oxford pulled the thing out of his pocket and held it up uncertainly. "Hello, PAL," he said.

  An athletic young man in tennis whites stopped. He had his PAL in one hand and a racquet under his other arm. When he looked at Oxford, his smile fell. "Oh, hey," he said. "I'm flattered and all, but—"

  Oxford's PAL display lit up with a page from something called the Dead See Scroll. It identified Mr. Tennis Pro as Randy Fleet. The man's whole pre-death biography was listed, as well as his current address, his hobbies, and his favorite books and music. It also noted that he was gay and "actively seeking companionship."

  "Oh, wait," Oxford said. "I didn't—I mean, I'm not—"

  "If you want to meet people, though," Fleet held his PAL a little higher, "you should turn off the privacy. All it shows is your name."

  Oxford looked at the device in his own hand. "You mean everyone's in here?"

  "Oh," Fleet said. "You're new. That explains the..." He pointed vaguely at Oxford's face.

  "Is everyone here rude?" Oxford said.

  Fleet shrugged. "About as rude as they were on the outside, I guess," he said. Then he turned and walked away.

  Oxford grunted as Fleet's Dead See Scroll page winked out. "Emily Brown," he said.

  The display showed nothing but her name, followed by the words, EMILY DOESN'T SHARE HER INFORMATION PUBLICLY.

  "Tell her it's her husband!"

  EMILY IS CURRENTLY NOT ACCEPTING MESSAGES.

  Oxford sighed, shaking his head. The poor woman had never been very good with computers. She probably hadn't figured out how to set her PAL up yet. He remembered the time he'd tried to show her the multi-dimensional real-time actuarial tables he'd devised. She'd tried to put on a brave front, but he could tell her eyes were glazing over. He'd never even gotten to the torroidal risk-aversion factoring graphs.

  "I think," Oxford said to his PAL, "that there's an error in your programming."

  There was a flash and a zap and Oxford found himself staring at a tall gray box about the size of an old phone booth. A sign on the door read "Oracle." It stood on the sidewalk just about where Randy Fleet had stopped. Oxford glanced around, but no one else seemed to consider it remarkable.

  The door swung open and a woman in a conservative blue business suit stepped out. "Hello, Mr. Brown," she said. "I'm Cassandra. How may I help you?"

  "Cassandra? Really?" Oxford frowned at her. "Aren't you folks taking the references a little too far?"

  Her smile almost seemed genuine. "That really is my name, Mr. Brown, but if it makes you feel better, you can call me Cassie. After all, we're here to give you a happily ever afterlife."

  "You're real, then?"

  "If you mean alive," she said, "then, no. I'm afraid real-time interaction with the outside world is a few years off yet. But I'm not a computer program, either." She walked over to him and took his arm, steering him toward the doorway. "I'm a real live dead person just like you."

  Once through the door, Oxford found himself in an office the size of an aircraft hangar. Its flat lighting and sea of cubicles comforted him more than anything he'd seen so far. The place swam with blue-suited staffers dancing the chaotic hustle of an efficient operation. Suddenly, the afterlife didn't seem like such a bad place.

  Cassandra led him into a cubicle that proved to be at least ten times larger inside than out. It was a fully furnished office and, Oxford noted, rather tastefully furnished, at that. He sat in the well-padded chair across from her desk. "Now," she said, sitting down, "about this error you've detected."

  "What error?"

  She tapped the keyboard on her desk and stared at the air above it. "Your ANGEL—" she began, "I'm sorry, your PAL indicated you were filing a bug report."

  "Really?" Oxford said. "Heaven has bugs in it?"

  "I'm a little confused, Mr. Brown. Your PAL indicates you prefer the non-religious taxonomy."

  "What? Oh, yes. I do," Oxford said. "Not that it matters, I guess. It just sounded funny."

  "I see." The woman's smile grew a little broader. "Quite humorous. Now, about the bug?"

  Oxford put his PAL on her desk. "It's this thing," he said. "It won't let me talk to my wife."

  "Oh? Let's see." She tapped her keyboard some more. "Emily Brown. Yes. She's been with us just over three years, now."

  "That's her."

  "Hmm," Cassandra said in the same way Oxford's doctor used to say it before delivering unwelcome news. Then, "Hmm."

  "Well?" Oxford leaned forward. "Can you fix it?"

  "I'm afraid there's nothing to fix." She sat back and placed her hands in her lap.

  "Mrs. Brown's PAL account is functioning normally."

  "Impossible," Oxford said. "If it were, she'd be waiting to hear from me."

  "Mr. Brown, these things happen." Cassandra leaned forward, too, and her voice softened. "It's been three years."

  "I'm sure they do," Oxford said, "to other people. Emily, however, is waiting for me and I demand you tell her I'm here this instant."

  "She's a customer, too, Mr. Brown."

  "This instant!"

  Her lips pinched together and she shook her head. "I'm afraid I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. You see, she's somewhere in the Red Zone."

  Oxford didn't like the sound of that. "Red" never denoted anything good. "What's the Red Zone?" he asked.

  Cassandra was polite enough not to ask how Oxford had managed to miss the orientation sessions. She simply explained the various zones. Blue, of course, was Aftr-Lyf territory, like the terminal and this off ice, where the company's system had complete control of the environment. Yellow and Green, one urban, the other rural, were worlds designed to be pleasant, carefree, realistic, and safe. Most of the residents never went beyond them.

  For the adventurous, there was Orange, where the controls were relaxed. For one thing, residents could feel pain in Orange, which was masked almost completely in the other levels. It added spice for those who didn't like things too easy. It gave skiers more incentive to avoid wiping out. Sky divers a good reason to pack their chutes carefully. You couldn't die there, of course, and you could fix a
ny damage you did incur, but some residents just didn't like the good without the risk of the bad.

  Then there was the Red Zone.

  "Red," Cassandra said, "is a free-for-all. The company has no control there at all. We don't monitor it. We don't alter it. Nothing. The residents have complete autonomy. They control the environment, the world's physics, everything. Once you know how to interact with the system, you can do anything there."

  "Then someone kidnapped her?" Oxford said. "How can you let that happen? I demand you retrieve her!"

  Cassandra got up and came around her desk. She kneeled next to him and rested her hands on his. "The PALs still work there," she said. "If Mrs. Brown wanted to come back, she could."

  Oxford shut his eyes against her look of anguish. It was fake, of course, like everything else in this place. Sympathy 101. Caring in a can. "You don't know that," he said.

  "You just told me the company doesn't monitor it. She's lost and I have to find her."

  "Of course," Cassandra said. "But maybe you should take some time, first. Get used to your new world. Think back. Do you remember being nineteen? How it felt?"

  His eyes still closed, Oxford grunted. "I was fat," he said. "I lost sixty pounds that year. Stopped eating and started working out."

  "Twenty, then," she said. "It felt good, didn't it?"

  "Sure."

  "Then take a look."

  Oxford opened his eyes to find Cassandra holding a mirror. In it was a man Oxford had known a long, long time ago. A boy, really. A boy who had no idea what to do with his life. He'd had no goals, no focus. No Emily. As he watched, the boy became a man, became a middle-aged man, an old man. He became the Oxford Brown he'd seen in the mirror every day for the last three years. Full circle.