The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Ten

by Jonathan Strahan

  “How bad?” a bypasser asked.

  “They still don’t know,” his companion said.

  “How many people live downstream?”

  “Millions.”

  The men were past, gone. The final cookie was half eaten. That very calm woman took a moment to examine her tooth marks in the bright black chocolate. Then she finished the cookie and the last of her low fat milk, and she disposed of the trash and used the restroom, returning to her station two minutes before one o’clock.

  Every monitor in the office showed the Chinese flood. The giant dam hadn’t just split open. It had failed catastrophically, dissolving into rubble and a wall of filthy black water that was slashing through the nightbound countryside, and it wouldn’t stop flowing until wreckage was washing up on American shores.

  That portion of the future was easy to predict.

  Other parts were less certain.

  Most humans would have been traumatized, and many would have mentioned their brilliance or dumb luck. But no, Adrianne had a project to shepherd along. Her department was trying to calculate the likely changes in life spans in the Western world. Insurance companies never stopped making these assessments. Until now, she had been enjoying a productive week, discovering speculative works in places that normally didn’t share ideas, including several interesting reports about a small start-up in France working with anti-aging drugs.

  Adrianne was the only person in the office who had found the anti-aging references. Which was bothersome. Her staff was badly distracted, but she sent one of her boys chasing the French story, expecting and even hoping that he would follow the crumbs to the same destination.

  But he didn’t, no.

  “I’m not finding anything, ma’am. Where am I supposed to look?”

  Adrianne drove home as usual. The evening news was filled with videos of cities being gutted, churning waters filled with animal corpses and human corpses. She stayed awake past midnight, just after a light-water reactor and various storage facilities were inundated. The disaster had reached a new level of appalling. By five o’clock the next morning, her time, martial law had been imposed across China, and there were rumors of a major shake-up in Beijing.

  The Chinese civil war remained weeks in the future.

  Arriving late to work, Adrianne found one of her boys standing beside her desk. He smiled nervously. The young man looked happy yet uncertain, rocking from foot to foot. His voice cracked when he said, “Hello,” and then he laughed at his obvious terror.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Her voice broke. Just a little, in places only she could hear.

  The man tried laughing again. But he couldn’t make himself. “I don’t read it a lot,” he confessed.

  “Read what?” she asked.

  “Your blog.” He sighed. “But I did see something... I don’t know... it’s been a couple years. And you were right.”

  “Was I?”

  “China. It was ripe for environmental disaster.”

  At that moment, Adrianne would have been hard-pressed to write any coherent opinions about Chinese futures. The flood was enormous, but good things might come from this. Sometimes chaos supplied the fuel to make meaningful changes, destroying corruption, ensuring stability for hundreds of millions of survivors.

  “You were right,” he repeated.

  Finally, she saw what was obvious. “You didn’t read my last article. Did you?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. Like I said, I don’t get to it much.”

  Adrianne felt sick.

  “Why? Should I become a follower?” He was nearly a boy, years younger than her son. “I’ll read it right now. How’s that?”

  “No,” she said.

  Loudly, almost shouting.

  He blinked. “Okay. You’re right. Work first.”

  Adrianne’s hope was to cross the day, to finish these hours and escape back home and then make some accommodations to this very unlikely coincidence. But the peace only lasted until ten in the morning. People from other departments began to stop outside the office. Familiar, nameless faces came to look at the slender woman with the neat gray hair and out-offashion glasses. With caution and nervous wonder, they stared, and then she would glance up and they would retreat. Then one bold lawyer asked how she could be so right about this goddamn mess. And suddenly her own people were demanding explanations. Adrianne had no choice but some species of honesty, and then nobody was working. Everyone inside her office and throughout the complex began to read and reread a few thousand words predicting the century’s largest disaster.

  Adrianne took her lunch home and called in sick.

  By evening, with the help of two cocktails, she checked her blog. The comments went on and on, many in Chinese. And she had just under fourteen thousand followers, the number rising every time she refreshed.

  SOMEONE HAD FED her the information.

  That was the first and still obvious explanation. She kept imagining the Chinese dissident, crafty and out of reach, and with that bit of false-knowledge in hand, Adrianne wrote her next blog – a careful piece using bits of new research.

  With words and tidy graphs, she reminded her readers that hydrocarbons were common, both in the world and across the universe. But being common didn’t matter. Most of the world’s oil was too expensive to lift out of the ground, and what could be lifted was often too expensive to refine, and the energy gained at the day’s end was approaching the grim fulcrum where the modern world couldn’t afford to pay its bills.

  The topic was familiar. She had investigated peak oil many times. But she had more followers now, a lot of new heads to absorb her thinking, and that’s why she wrote the piece, expecting that a few of her readers would appreciate and maybe even welcome her calm logic.

  Fifty-eight years of life gives a person experience with insults and curses.

  But what surprised Adrianne was the intimacy of the threats – violent words coupled with images from people who didn’t simply doubt her numbers and good sense, but who wanted to come her house just so they could cut off her head, to claim it as a trophy they would nail to their truck hoods or use in ways far worse than that.

  She slept badly for a week. And while awake, every stranger deserved small anxieties.

  Yet nothing evil ever came to her door, and everything that was good proved to be excellent. Adrianne’s staff rallied around her. Unfit men in their thirties and forties acted as unofficial bodyguards, and without fanfare, the youngest member of her staff – a girl in her mid-twenties – broke company rules by bringing both a Taser and pepper spray into the office. That next Sunday, Adrianne published a brief, dense blog about magnetoinertial fusion engines – the best means for opening up the solar system. And inside the piece, she included schematics plucked from what looked like a NASA website.

  Her followers had reached 80,000.

  The rocket blog was followed by a long, complicated piece about increasing lifespans and why that was a damnable trend. Long-term environmental successes would never be possible if too many bodies were prepared to live comfortably in the increasingly overheated world.

  By then, her followers’ comments had dropped by half, insults by one third, and she had the carefully plotted data to prove it.

  By then, the Chinese civil war was underway, and feeling invested in that particular horror, Adrianne suggested a solution. Like an innoculate into a sick body, she proposed that one of the peripheral Chinese enclaves could supply a new paradigm. Taiwan was offered, then dismissed. Too much history. Hong Kong had its potentials, but it didn’t have the necessary freedom of motion. So instead she voted for the distant and very wealthy citystate of Singapore. Its authoritarian leaders and billionaires were Chinese by heritage. They could broker deals and supply guidance that wouldn’t end the strife today, but in another couple years, perhaps with only fifty million dead from war and famine, some new normalcy could be established. Adrianne’s final Monday at work was pleasantly forgettable.
Actuarial adventures.

  Lunch.

  More adventures.

  Plus one long meeting.

  Then home and a light dinner, one drink and idle reading, and bed. On Monday, Ghawar was the greatest oil field on the Earth. But early Tuesday, Adrianne’s time, a series of prolonged earthquakes rolled across northern Saudi Arabia. By Wednesday morning, virtually every oil well in the region had seized up and died. The spot market for crude was driving towards 300 dollars. An initial explanation, full of panic and half-informed conjecture, blamed the greedy Saudis. An ocean of oil had been removed from the Ghawar field, and the strata must have been pushed too hard. Despite sound geologic evidence that this was impossible, an entire region had slumped, and the world was several million barrels short of oil today and tomorrow, and always. By Wednesday evening, the Prime Minister of Singapore was opening public talks with three of the main combatants inside China.

  Thursday morning saw a news conference from France. An upstart medical firm was going to sell expensive compounds that could only be described as elixirs, and lifespans would soon triple.

  But the blogger at the heart of it remained surprisingly unnoticed. Only half a dozen news crews sat on the street outside Adrianne’s home. With her phone off and drapes closed, it was possible to believe that her life hadn’t changed. Then came Friday morning, and a team of MIT engineers announced that the design for a novel rocket propulsion system, posted on a small blog, was not from any governmental database. Or commercial database. Nor any other reasonable source. Yet A. Hammer’s documents contained quite a few interesting features, some invoking the newest ideas about energy in the universe, and it might be possible to build a prototype star-drive within the next five years.

  By then, the world was plunging into its Grand Depression. But those financial horrors were augmented by promises of endless life and easy commutes to the other worlds.

  The raging chaos had a center – one quiet woman barely known a month ago.

  Adrianne escaped her house through the back gate, taking a cab to work.

  Nobody in her office was pretending to work. They watched the news together, the door left mostly closed. A manager and two security people arrived before lunch, and Adrianne was ushered into the largest conference room. Every important person in the corporation had gathered to stare at her. Several of them remembered to thank her for her long service. Then the CFO offered her a worried smile and a substantial buyout.

  Everybody adored her work, but she was too much of a distraction. Twenty million followers were just the beginning. Adrianne was going to have advertising revenues flowing from her blog, and she had her buyout package, plus savings and numerous offers of cash for appearances on news networks and talk shows. With those prospects and a numbed resolve, she began the long walk back to her office and the cubicle, ready to wish her people the best before heading off into this unforeseen life.

  But stepping through the door, an idea took hold.

  Seven others watched the old lady make coffee for everyone. The Folgers was brewing, and she sat with her back to her desk, in a pose they had never seen before. She didn’t look regal or even particularly confident. No, nothing was special in her appearance, save for the weariness of great events, and they felt sorry for the lady, even while wondering which of them would end up in charge. She looked at each face. Then she gave the carpet a long stare. Somebody thought to pour coffee into eight mugs and everyone had their share and there was sitting and more silence, except out in the hallway where someone had slipped indoors. A supporter or an enemy: The invader’s goals were never known. Security noticed the interloper and tackled her, and when the screaming was finished, Adrianne looked up at the ceiling. Quietly, soberly, she said, “There’s no reasonable set of factors that can make this possible. What’s happening. To me and to the world. I don’t know why, but I seem to have a pipeline to things I don’t understand.”

  Nobody could disagree with that assessment.

  Then she surprised them, saying, “If somebody has to wield this kind of influence, why not me?”

  It was the first inkling that their boss saw the potential.

  “But I need a staff,” she said. “A well-paid, familiar group of people who know me well enough not to take offense when I’m lost in work.” The girl with the Taser said, “Oh. You want to hire us.”

  “And later, others,” Adrianne admitted. “But you’re my nucleus.” Every head nodded.

  There. It was agreed. They would leave work together, after tendering their resignations.

  “Nothing about this is reasonable,” Adrianne continued. “But this world is built on unreasonable coincidences. Until we understand what’s happening, I’m going to be the Empress of Everything. And for as long as I have the job, I should at least try to do my best.”

  HER HOUSE WAS abandoned. There was no choice in the matter. Adrianne lived for three days on the Taser girl’s sofa, writing a sharp blog delineating recent history and her apparent, surprising hold on some form of cosmic power or blunt magic. Whatever this was. Her hostess suggested adding a little personal noise to the piece. “So people think they know you.” But it was Adrianne who gave the post its signature moment. Mentioning the horrors of liver cancer, she added a quick request for people to send a few dollars to one of several appropriate agencies. And by the time she slipped out of the girl’s apartment, nearly a hundred million dollars had appeared in the welcoming coffers. With a flood of unexpected gifts choking the blogger’s Paypal account too.

  That next week was spent in anonymous hotel rooms, talking strategy, giving possibilities flesh and shadow. Her people did their best to keep the media at bay, scaring off Senators and business leaders as well. And they also found a recently constructed, never occupied warehouse complex, far from the city but close to highways and a high-grade optical cable that could be secured.

  Only the President was given access to the world’s boss. There were three long, very exhausting conversations. The last talk was a face-to-face session. Adrianne was touring the warehouse, preparing to sign a long-term lease on the facility and a power commitment from an adjacent windmill farm. A security firm still needed to be hired, and her team was interviewing remodelers. Apartments would be installed in back, and because nobody knew where this madness would lead, plans were being drawn up for a school and playground for children, a swimming pool for everyone, and a bar for the ruling class.

  In those two phone conversations, the President tried charm. But charm had proved useless. Ready to unleash stronger tactics, his helicopters landed on the empty parking lot. Flanked by high-ranking civilians and officers in dress uniforms, he met the empress in the front office. With a careful blending of rage and authority, he defined his level of scorn. Adrianne listened silently. Then he invited his aides to talk about various legal actions that might be appropriate. She interrupted with a raised hand, which amusingly was enough to stop every voice. Everyone stared at her. “Which laws have I broken? I would very much like to know,” she said. Then the ranking general outlined what his people would do if faced with a dangerous power trying to usurp the nation’s security. “Except that sounds like war,” was her response. “And I don’t approve of war. If I can find the words, I intend to make every army in the world obsolete.”

  That brought a chill, and more rage.

  Sensing failure, the President returned to charm.

  “You’re a registered Republican,” he pointed out. “I’m assuming you voted for me.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve never voted for national candidates.”

  “But you do vote, correct?”

  “Only for local candidates. Bond issues. I have a tiny but real chance of making an impact. But I can’t pretend to have a role in presidential races.” The man needed to pause, giving himself a chance to recalculate. “Come over here, sir. If you would.”

  He joined her beside a laptop.

  “I’ve been working on a new blog. In fact, I intend to
publish in the next few minutes.”

  Some prior briefing came to mind. “It’s Saturday. I was told that you put these things out on Sundays.”

  “Except I don’t have a normal job anymore. And with the change of fates, I think I need to embrace a more ambitious schedule. Which makes this is a good day to begin.”

  Keys were pressed. The unpublished text appeared.

  Stepping back, she said, “Read the piece, if you wish. Sir.”

  The blog spoke about the dangers inherent in the aging nuclear fleets. Adrianne was arguing that the only wise course was to put the weapons to bed, today if possible. But she was afraid that people wouldn’t change their natures until they received a good clear warning. So at the end of the piece, she had written, “I want to see one of their swords pull itself out of its scabbard.”

  The President hadn’t finished reading the piece.

  “Lady, what are you talking about?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. Her heart pounding, she clicked the Publish button and stepped back. “I don’t understand what’s happened to me,” she said, quietly but not quietly. “I can make guesses. I doubt if anyone can decipher what’s true, not in the short-term. But there are clues. If you look hard. With the Three Gorges and the stardrive, I was fed information of something already happening. Which is one phenomena. But I wrote about oil. On my own. And whatever this power is, it needed time to make preparations before the quake struck, before we started this overdue collapse into economic ruin.

  “Sir, I have a sense,” she said. “My very strong intuition is that simple directions are more likely to lead to immediate effects.

  “Consider this blog a test.

  “Both of us need to know. What marvels do I have in this hand?”

  Moments later, an alarm sounded.

  An Air Force general turned away, muttering into a sat-phone. Voices spoke of “the football”.

  “It’s ours and it’s launched,” someone cried out.