The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year)

by Jonathan Strahan

  I sighed softly, but then the feather touch came again. I rolled over and swatted my neck, and found Ololkolt squatting next to me, laughing as he brushed my cheek with the fletching of the arrow he held.

  "Armistead," he said, calling me by name.

  "Ololkolt," I replied, grinning in spite of myself.

  He had seen the rifle I had left in the storehouse, and he had seen that my canoe was gone. All night, he had tracked me alone by lantern light, only to find my canoe overturned on this beach as the sun began to rise.

  Even if we spoke the same language, I am not sure how I could have told him that I did not belong in the village – his or any other. Much as I had grown to accept the company of the people there, I could not remain among the cooking pots, the hearth fires, the raising of children, the talk of politics, the annoyances, the bickering, the reconciliations, the thefts, the gossip – in short, among the daily struggle and strife and joy of men and women living close to one another.

  So I gave no explanation, and Ololkolt asked for none.

  Instead, he placed a fine bow and twenty long arrows into my canoe, clasped my hand warmly in his for the last time, and left me alone to finish my journey.

  JUNE 1762

  When I found the outlet at last, after following hundreds of miles of westing coastline, I was surprised to see that I hesitated. To be sure, it was no easy road to the Pacific – it was in fact a tumultuous, rock-strewn channel, too narrow for the torrent of water that dropped through it on the way to the ocean.

  Mountains towered on either side of the opening, and the water rushed through in a terrible roaring frenzy, twisted and corded into streams of white foam, and framed by dancing jets and sprays that leapt up toward the sky.

  A more exhilarating ending I could not have asked for, but I paused a long while on the brink of the maelstrom. The channel was certain death, but it was the only way to finish the Northwest Passage I had begun. I knew that if I paddled but a little ways further, I would find myself pulled inexorably and finally down into the rapids until, some hours later, my body would wash out in the surf of the Pacific along with the fragments of my canoe.

  All that was true. But then – why did I still hesitate?

  * * *

  Later that evening, as I sat in my camp still within earshot of the torrent, I took up Ololkolt's bow and inspected it closely for the first time. I had never used such a thing, and had preferred to live on fish and clams for the past months. But as I turned the bow in my hands, a deer wandered dumbly across the beach, not fifty feet from me. Almost without thinking, I drew an arrow from the quiver.

  The deer turned to look at me – a young buck, brazen and strong. He barely flinched as I rose and slotted the arrow's nock against the string. The bow's grip was warm, the arrow fletching light against my face.

  And the arrow, when it flew, was true.

  WATER

  Ramez Naam

  Ramez Naam (rameznaam.com) is a computer scientist and the H.G. Wells Award-winning author of four books: the near future science-fiction brain-hacking thrillers Nexus and Crux and the non-fiction books More Than Human and The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet. He's a fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and serves as Adjunct Faculty at Singularity University, where he lectures on energy, environment, and innovation. He lives in Seattle.

  The water whispered to Simon's brain as it passed his lips. It told him of its purity, of mineral levels, of the place it was bottled. The bottle was cool in his hand, chilled perfectly to the temperature his neural implants told it he preferred. Simon closed his eyes and took a long, luxurious swallow, savoring the feel of the liquid passing down his throat, the drops of condensation on his fingers.

  Perfection.

  "Are you drinking that?" the woman across from him asked. "Or making love to it?"

  Simon opened his eyes, smiled, and put the bottle back down on the table. "You should try some," he told her.

  Stephanie shook her head, her auburn curls swaying as she did. "I try not to drink anything with an IQ over 200."

  Simon laughed at that.

  They were at a table at a little outdoor café at Washington Square Park. A dozen yards away, children splashed noisily in the fountain, shouting and jumping in the cold spray in the hot mid-day sun. Simon hadn't seen Stephanie since their last college reunion. She looked as good as ever.

  "Besides," Stephanie went on. "I'm not rich like you. My implants are ad-supported." She tapped a tanned finger against the side of head. "It's hard enough just looking at that bottle, at all of this…" She gestured with her hands at the table, the menu, the café around them. "Without getting terminally distracted. One drink out of that bottle and I'd be hooked!"

  Simon smiled, spread his hands expansively. "Oh, it's not as bad as all that." In his peripheral senses he could feel the bottle's advertech working, reaching out to Stephanie's brain, monitoring her pupillary dilation, the pulse evident in her throat, adapting its pitch in real-time, searching for some hook that would get her to drink, to order a bottle for herself. Around them he could feel the menus, the table, the chairs, the café – all chattering, all swapping and bartering and auctioning data, looking for some advantage that might maximize their profits, expand their market shares.

  Stephanie raised an eyebrow. "Really? Every time I glance at that bottle I get little flashes of how good it would feel to take a drink, little whole body shivers." She wrapped her arms around herself now, rubbing her hands over the skin of her tanned shoulders, as if cold in this heat. "And if I did drink it, what then?" Her eyes drilled into Simon's. "Direct neural pleasure stimulation? A little jolt of dopamine? A little micro-addiction to Pura Vita bottled water?"

  Simon tilted his head slightly, put on the smile he used for the cameras, for the reporters. "We only use pathways you accepted as part of your implant's licensing agreement. And we're well within the FDA's safe limits for…"

  Stephanie laughed at him then. "Simon, it's me! I know you're a big marketing exec now, but don't give me your corporate line, okay?"

  Simon smiled ruefully. "Okay. So, sure, of course, we make it absolutely as enticing as the law lets us. That's what advertising's for! If your neural implant is ad-supported, we use every function you have enabled. But so what? It's water. It's not like it's going to hurt you any."

  Stephanie was nodding now. "Mmm-hmmm. And your other products? VitaBars? Pure-E-Ohs? McVita Burgers?"

  Simon spread his hands, palms open. "Hey look, everybody does it. If someone doesn't buy our Pura Vita line, they're gonna just go buy something from NutriYum or OhSoSweet or OrganiTaste or somebody else. We at least do our best to put some nutrition in there."

  Stephanie shook her head. "Simon, don't you think there's something wrong with this? That people let you put ads in their brains in order to afford their implants?"

  "You don't have to," Simon replied.

  "I know, I know," Stephanie answered. "If I paid enough, I could skip the ads, like you do. You don't even have to experience your own work! But you know most people can't afford that. And you've got to have an implant these days to be competitive. Like they say, wired or fired."

  Simon frowned inwardly. He'd come to lunch hoping for foreplay, not debate club. Nothing had changed since college. Time to redirect this.

  "Look," he said. "I just do my job the best I can, okay? Come on, let's order something. I'm starving."

  Simon pulled up his menu to cut off this line of conversation. He moved just fast enough that for a split second he saw the listed entrees still morphing, optimizing their order and presentation to maximize the profit potential afforded by the mood his posture and tone of voice indicated.

  Then his kill files caught up, and filtered every item that wasn't on his diet out of his senses.

  Simon grimaced. "Looks like I'm having the salad again. Oh joy."

  He looked over at Stephanie, and she was still engrossed in the menu, her mind being
tugged at by a dozen entrees, each caressing her thoughts with sensations and emotions to entice, each trying to earn that extra dollar.

  Simon saw his chance. He activated the ad-buyer interface on his own implant, took out some extremely targeted ads, paid top dollar to be sure he came out on top of the instant auction, and then authorized them against his line of credit. A running tab for the new ad campaign appeared in the corner of his vision, accumulating even as he watched. Simon ignored it.

  Stephanie looked up at him a moment later, her lunch chosen. Then he felt his own ads go into effect. Sweet enticements. Subtle reminders of good times had. Sultry undertones. Subtle, just below normal human perception. And all emanating from Simon, beamed straight into Stephanie's mind.

  And he saw her expression change just a tiny bit.

  Half an hour later the check came. Simon paid, over Stephanie's objection, then stood. He leaned in close as she stood as well. The advertech monitors told him she was receptive, excited.

  "My place, tonight?" he asked.

  Stephanie shook her head, clearly struggling with herself.

  Simon mentally cranked up the intensity of his ads another notch further.

  "I can make you forget all these distractions," he whispered to her. "I can even turn off your ads, for a night." His own advertech whispered sweeter things to her brain, more personal, more sensual.

  Simon saw Stephanie hesitate, torn. He moved to wrap his arms around her, moved his face towards hers for a kiss.

  Stephanie turned her face away abruptly, and his lips brushed her cheek instead. She squeezed him in a sudden, brisk hug, her hands pressing almost roughly into his back.

  "Never," she said. Then she pushed away from him and was gone.

  Simon stood there, shaking his head, watching as Stephanie walked past the fountain and out of his view.

  In the corner of his sight, an impressive tally of what he'd just spent on highly targeted advertising loomed. He blinked it away in annoyance. It was just a number. His line of credit against his Pura Vita stock options would pay for it.

  He'd been too subtle, he decided. He should have cranked the ads higher from the very beginning. Well, there were plenty more fish in the sea. Time to get back to the office, anyway.

  * * *

  Steph walked North, past layers of virtual billboards and interactive fashion ads, past a barrage of interactive emotional landscape ads trying to suck her into buying perfume she didn't need, and farther, until she was sure she was out of Simon's senses.

  Then she reached into her mind, and flicked off the advertising interfaces in her own implant.

  She leaned against a building, let her brain unclench, let the struggle of fighting the advertech he'd employed against her pass.

  That bastard, she thought, fuming. She couldn't believe he'd tried that crap on her. If she'd had any shred of doubt remaining, he'd eliminated it. No. He deserved what was coming.

  Steph straightened herself, put out a mental bid for a taxi, rode it to Brooklyn, and stepped up to the door of the rented one-room flat. She knocked – short, short, long, long, short. She heard motion inside the room, then saw an eye press itself to the other side of the ancient peephole.

  They knew too well that electronic systems could be compromised.

  The door opened a fraction, the chain still on it, and Lisa's face appeared. The short-haired brunette nodded, then unlatched the chain, opened the door fully.

  Steph walked into the room, closed the door behind her, saw Lisa tucking the home-printed pistol back into her pocket. She hated that thing. They both did. But they'd agreed it was necessary.

  "It's done?" Lisa asked.

  Steph nodded.

  "It's done."

  Steph walked South along Broadway. It was a gorgeous day for a stroll. The sun felt warm on his brow. He was overdressed for the heat in an expensive grey silk jacket and slacks, but the smart lining kept him cool nonetheless. The city was alive with people, alive with data. He watched as throngs moved up and down the street, shopping, chatting, smiling on this lovely day. He partially lowered his neural firewalls and let his implants feed him the whisper of electronic conversations all around him.

  Civic systems chattered away. The sidewalk slabs beneath his feet fed a steady stream of counts of passers-by, estimates of weight and height and gender, plots of probabilistic walking paths, data collected for the city planners. Embedded bio-sensors monitored the trees lining the street, the hydration of their soils, the condition of their limbs. Health monitors watched for runny noses, sneezing, coughing, any signs of an outbreak of disease. New York City's nervous system kept constant vigil, keeping the city healthy, looking for ways to improve it.

  The commercial dataflow interested Simon more than the civic. His pricey, top-of-the-line implants let him monitor that traffic as only a few could.

  In Tribeca he watched as a woman walked by a store front. He saw a mannequin size her up, then felt the traffic as it caressed her mind with a mental image of herself, clothed in a new summer dress, looking ten years younger and twenty pounds lighter. Beneath the physical the mannequin layered an emotional tone in the advert: feelings of vigor, joy, carefree delight. Simon nodded to himself. A nice piece of work, that. He took note of the brand for later study. The woman turned and entered the shop.

  He felt other advertech reaching out, all around him, to the networked brains of the crowd. Full sensory teasers for beach vacations from a travel shop, a hint of the taste of chocolate from a candy store, the sight and feel of a taut, rippling body from a sports nutrition store. He passed by a bodega, its façade open to the warm air, and came close enough that the individual bottles of soda and juice and beer and water reached out to him, each trying a pitch tailored to his height and weight and age and ethnicity and style of dress.

  Simon felt the familiar ping of one of the many Pura Vita water pitches and smiled. Not bad. But he had a few ideas for improvements. None of it really touched him, in any case. His implants weren't ad-sponsored. He felt this ad chatter only because he chose to, and even now it was buffered, filtered, just a pale echo of what most of the implanted were subjected to. No. Simon tuned into this ambient froth of neural data as research. He sampled it, observed it from afar, because he must. His success in marketing depended on it.

  He was almost to his own building when he passed the headquarters of Nexus Corp, the makers of the neural implant in his brain and millions more. Stephanie didn't understand. This was the real behemoth. So long as Nexus Corp maintained their patents on the neural implant technology, they held a monopoly. The ad-based model, all that most people could afford, was their invention. Simon was just one of thousands of marketers to make use of it to boost demand for their products.

  And hell, if people didn't like it, they didn't have to get an implant! It was just the way the world worked. Want to be smarter? Want a photographic memory? Want to learn a new language or a new instrument or how to code overnight? Want all those immersive entertainment options? Want that direct connection with your loved ones? But don't have the cash?

  Then accept the ads, boyo. And once you do, stop complaining.

  Not that Simon wanted the ads himself, mind you. No, it was worth the high price to keep the top-of-the-line, ad-free version running in his brain, to get all the advantages of direct neural enhancement without the distraction of pervasive multi-sensory advertising. And, of course, to be able to monitor the traffic around him, to better understand how to optimize his own pitches.

  Simon reached his building at last. The lobby doors sensed him coming and whisked themselves open. Walking by the snack bar in the lobby, he felt the drinks and packaged junk food reaching out to him. His own Pura Vita water, of course. And NutriYum water. Simon gave their top competitor's products the evil eye. Someday Pura Vita would own this whole building, and then he'd personally see to it that not a single bottle of NutriYum remained.

  The lobby floor tiles whispered ahead to the inner security do
ors, which in turn alerted the elevators. Simon strode forward confidently, layers of doors opening for him of their own accord, one by one, perfectly in time with his stride. He stepped into the waiting elevator and it began to ascend immediately, bound for his level. The lift opened again moments later and he strode to his window office. Smart routing kept subordinates out of his path. The glass door to his magnificent office swung open for him. A bottle of cold Pura Vita was on his desk, just how he liked it.

  Simon settled into his ready-and-waiting chair, kicked his feet up on the table, and reached through his implant to the embedded computing systems of his office. Data streamed into his mind. Market reports. Sales figures. Ad performance metrics. He closed his eyes and lost himself in it. This was the way to work.

  On the back of his jacket, a tiny device, smaller than a grain of sand, woke up and got to work as well.

  Lisa started intently at Steph. "He didn't notice?"

  Steph shook her head. "Not a clue."

  "And you still want to go through with it?" Lisa asked.

  "More than ever."

  Lisa looked at her. "The ones who're paying us – they're just as bad as he is, you know. And they're going to profit."

  Steph nodded. "For now they will," she replied. "In the long run – they're just paying us to take the whole damn system down."

  Lisa nodded. "Okay, then."

  She strode over to the ancient terminal on the single desk in the flat and entered a series of keypresses.

  Phase 1 began.

  Around the world, three dozen different accounts stuffed with cryptocurrency logged on to anonymous, cryptographically secured stock market exchanges. One by one, they began selling short on Pura Vita stock, selling shares they did not own, on the bet that they could snap those same shares up at a far lower price in the very near future.