Asimov's SF, June 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Sharon was still. But then he pointed.

  The Worm-Hare posse was there, gathered around a minivan, each with a brane gun strapped to its arm.

  “You've got to be kidding,” Parka said. He tried to get out of the car, but it was difficult because of his nascent wings. He ended up crawling forward through the glassless windshield and onto the hood. The wings settled around him like a reptilian cape.

  “We want our damn car back,” the prime Worm-Hare said. It was a different prime from the one Parka had defeated in kickboxing. The sliding door of the minivan was open, and Parka could see the original prime in the back of the minivan in a shimmering heal-sac. “To say nothing about the amulet, one of the key symbols of our people, which you've gone on and messed up as well. You know that your corporation is going to hunt you down for triggering ‘dragon mode,’ right?”

  Parka laughed. Dragon mode. “That's great. Anyway, you seem to forget that I won the car fair and square. I don't know why you're so upset about that, considering your current sweet ride.”

  “We don't care,” the prime said, hoisting his gun at Parka, ignoring the jab about the Honda Odyssey. “We just want a souvenir to take back with us off-world.” He indicated the dying Being in the distance. “This planet is a cursed cesspool. There's nothing here anymore. But nothing would make us happier than to disintegrate your sorry carapace and take this car into orbit with us.”

  Parka spread his wide wings—which didn't hurt at all—because he thought it would scare them. But it didn't, at all. He sighed. He realized that sometimes it's the smallest moments that could change a creature's life. He had given the Camaro to a human as a prize, and had thought nothing of it. But here he was, about to die from the Worm-Hares after all, and with weird wings. But all the same, he felt good about his generosity, even if Jar wasn't there to share it with him.

  With that in mind, he wasn't going to back down.

  Sharon was motionless, but then he looked in the backseat and started laughing. It was such a quiet, tinny laugh that it shocked everyone into stillness.

  “What?” the prime Worm-Hare said, exasperated. Then there was a red dot on his spiny forehead. Parka stared at it.

  “Will someone please tell me what's going on?” the Worm-Hare said.

  Then there was a whooshing sound, and a crossbow bolt hit the Worm-Hare's forehead where the red dot was. The bolt went through his head, blasting into the front windshield of the minivan. The prime slumped over.

  Parka turned around. There was someone in the back seat.

  “Hey,” Jar said, sitting up, slinging a laser crossbow over his shoulder and looking groggy.

  “Christ on a—” Parka said, but he stopped, because he didn't know what to say. Instead, he ran to Jar and wrapped his leathery, demonic wings around his friend in a familial embrace.

  “Look at you,” Jar said, still sleepily. “With wings and stuff.”

  “It's the amulet,” Parka said. The remaining Worm-Hares were forgotten, but they had made their pathetic escape in the minivan. “But, anyway, priorities. How the hell did you get there? You weren't there all along, were you?”

  Jar shrugged. “No, not really. I was in the Being and then . . . um, I don't remember much about that, but I saw this sweet Camaro cruising through, and then stop in front of me, and I said to myself, hey, maybe I should hop on board, so I did. And I must have picked up this crossbow. I guess I was on a shooting range for awhile or something?”

  Parka had no recollection of the Camaro slowing down enough for anyone to jump aboard.

  He disengaged from Jar. “I'm just glad you're safe.”

  “Well, you came back, friend. That's the important thing. I'd still be in there without you.”

  “The Tree requests your presences,” Sharon said.

  “What?” Jar said.

  “Ah, the kid, he's like that,” Parka said. He waved toward Sharon. “Okay, okay, the tree. But first, we need to get a beer.”

  * * * *

  Later that day Jack Nicklaus and Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sharon met for a summit over a few of the local beers.

  “How's things?” Jack said.

  “Super,” Dwight said.

  “Awesome,” Jack said.

  Sharon was silent. They were in a basement tavern somewhere north of Albuquerque, at a circular table. It was the off-season, and likely everyone in a 500-kilometer radius was trying to flee the potential blast zone of the Being, so they had the place to themselves. The beer was warm but the off-worlders didn't care. Sharon didn't order anything, so Parka had the bartender make him an Arnold Palmer. Toby Keith was playing on the speakers and everything was all right with the universe, at least for a few minutes.

  “I'm going to miss Hallows Eve with the gang,” Jar said. “But it's a small price to pay.”

  “Yeah, it would have been fun. I'm glad we dressed up anyway.”

  “You know, I wonder if Eisenhower would have won the war faster if he had wings like yours.”

  “It's very possible,” Parka said. The amulet against his chest pulsed like his second heart. The walking sticks swirling around Sharon clicked and skittered.

  “What do you want to do after we, er, look at some tree that might very well be imaginary?” Parka said.

  “I don't know,” Jar said, taking a sip of his Budweiser Light. “It's hard to say. Go back home, maybe. Start over with a new corporation. How about you?”

  “Well, maybe I'll stay here,” Parka said. “I haven't decided. But I like it here. I still have no idea what the hell happened.”

  “With the amulet?”

  “A little. But mostly with the Camaro. And the Being.”

  “Ah, that's understandable,” Jar said.

  Parka leaned forward, which was awkward because of his wingspan. “What I want to know is . . . I might not never understand, ever, what's going on with these walking sticks. But they're trying to say something, trying to do something. They're trying to survive on this godforsaken planet we—I mean, not us personally, I mean the mining ventures—sucked dry for resource management. And for what? So we can get more fuel for our transmutators to find more planets to suck dry and destroy?”

  Parka was melancholic, but not just for geopolitical reasons. He realized that this might be one of the last times of relative normalcy with his good friend.

  “Yeah,” Jar said. “You make a good point. Maybe I'll stay too. And learn how to properly ride a motorcycle and do a wheelie.” He laughed and then downed his beer. “Come on, Sharon,” he said. “Finish your drink.”

  * * * *

  They rode for an hour in silence through the empty desert, and could see the Tree from many kilometers away. A towering, shadowy shape. Sooner rather than later—Sharon wasn't exactly following a speed limit—they could see the enormity of the living structure. Parka stood up in the car, letting his body poke out of the shorn top, letting his wings free.

  “Holy shit,” Jar said.

  The Tree was as tall as the highest peaks that the Being had desiccated, many kilometers high. And the Tree was on fire. Smokeless fire. The tree pulsated with orange light. The branches were leafless, but they spiraled in gargantuan yet intricate patterns.

  About a thousand meters away, Sharon stopped the car. Everyone got out. The walking sticks encompassing Sharon, or perhaps embodying him, were glowing in syncopation with the Tree. Then it became clear that the Tree was made up of billions of the walking sticks.

  There were many other abandoned vehicles all around the Tree in a ring.

  “Why are the walking sticks doing this?” Jar whispered.

  Parka shook his head but didn't say anything. He had no idea.

  Sharon turned to the two of them and said, “We need you two, the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jack Nicklaus of interpersonal diplomacy, to carry a message back to your people. You will relay terms for peace.” Sharon began walking toward the Tree.

  “Wait, Sharon,” Parka said. “What will happen if we do?”<
br />
  “What will happen if we don't?” Jar said.

  Sharon paused for a second and said, “My name's not Sharon.” Then he began walking toward the Tree again.

  Parka watched him for a little while, and looked at Jar, who shrugged.

  “Who the hell knows,” Jar said.

  As the general and the golfer followed Sharon to the base of the tree, Parka swore he heard Sharon, who wasn't in fact Sharon, humming a tune, one of Toby Keith's more recent songs about exile on the moon and earthly liberation. Or maybe it was only the sound of the walking sticks and the desolate wind making music together, which wasn't meant for a stranger like him, wasn't for him to understand.

  Copyright © 2011 Alan DeNiro

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: APOCALYPSE DAILY

  by Felicity Shoulders

  Felicity Shoulders lives in the wooded hills of Portland, Oregon, with a cat and a software engineer. Her story “Conditional Love,” which appeared in the January 2010 issue of Asimov's, can be heard at Escape Pod. In her latest story for us, a couple of ambitious game designers try to figure out how to survive the cutthroat climb up the corporate ladder while trying to be saved from the . . .

  “How shall I end the world today?” Katrina Vang asked the ceiling. The ceiling didn't respond, and her cat offered only a petulant mew.

  “What kind of question is that to ask a poor dumb animal?” Natalie said from the doorway, and Katrina blinked to make sure she was actually awake. Right, her sister was supposed to be there. Sleeping on the couch due to a sudden lack of job and apartment.

  “Traddles woke me up by sticking his paw in my eye socket. He owes me.”

  “Still, you can't ask the cat to do your job for you. End the world yourself.” Natalie scooped up the tabby and scratched him over-vigorously beneath the chin.

  Katrina put her feet on the floor and preemptively turned off the alarm clock. “Why are you already up at six? Even I'm not supposed to be up this early, and I'm employed.”

  “Not ‘already’ so much as ‘still.’ You can go back to sleep, I'll corral the cat.”

  “No, once I've started worrying about work it's all over.” She shooed Natalie ahead of her and shuffled into the kitchen. “Stupid first anniversary is coming up. The Veeps That Be demand something ‘spectacular.’ Ideas due today, and we don't have any.”

  “World ending is old hat?”

  “Pretty much. It's my job to make it new again. Or die in the attempt.” The coffeemaker, programmed for eight am brewing, sat empty. Its LEDs stared at Katrina until she woke up enough to push the button.

  Coffee smell obtained—half the benefit, as far as she was concerned—Katrina slipper-slapped across the parquet floor of her apartment and sat at her computer. She should treat this time as a valuable gift and dream up an anniversary event that would render the Veeps stunned and sockless. Instead she started up Apocalypse Daily.

  “You're playing games?” Natalie said.

  “The game. Everyone at Endertainment's supposed to play at least twice a week.”

  “But you wrote all the challenges. Isn't it boring?”

  “It's one thing to storyboard something and another to survive it. Besides, it's a good game. It's sociable.”

  “I think thin rationalizations are a sign of addiction,” Natalie laughed and moseyed toward the kitchen.

  “Half that coffee is mine, mei mei,” Katrina called, and logged into the game.

  Katrina's avatar, Wee Kat, woke up in AD. Kat lived in a place much like Katrina's, but bare and devoid of night-owl sisters and tabby cats. She could have told the game about Traddles, but she wasn't keen on carting a cat carrier with her through flood, fire, and zombie-pocalypse, or on leaving even a digital Traddles behind. As for the décor, Katrina had never seen any point to blinging up her home base. Sure, items like rugs and TVs were free to add, but that's because they were survival-neutral.

  Every Apocalypse Daily day began the same way, since she didn't see fit to share any travel plans with Endertainment. Kat appeared in her apartment, the “life expectancy” and “health” bars at top left showing 100 years, 100 percent. Through the window, she saw that today was #285, Epic Flood. Not a good AD day to live in Seattle, but the water was only forty feet up from Lake Washington, glinting in overly regular patterns of charcoal and silver. Getting up early had given her a head start. Checking the friend list on her character's “phone,” she saw that none of her local friends were online yet. She was on her own.

  Kat ignored her earthquake kit (purchased with 400 Survivor Points) and picked up her hiking backpack (200 Survivor Points). She headed down the stairs and loaded her bike (1000 Survivor Points) from the lobby bike icon. Public transit was seldom reliable in an apocalypse.

  Katrina set her virtual handlebars for the passenger ferry, since drowning in a train car didn't sound much better than drowning at home. By the time she got to the overpass and the slope down to the Sound, the water had already risen further. The ferry terminal rose out of murky ripples, and she wasn't sure Wee Kat would make it to the boat. She dropped her bike—it would be back at her building for tomorrow's adventure—and waded out to the doors. She had to do a drum solo on the “use” button before Wee Kat managed to pull the door open against the pressure of two feet of water. Her life expectancy ticked down to 98—the Environment department must have added a pollution algorithm—before she slopped out of the rendered water into the stairwell of the terminal, leaving footprints on the treads. The door swung wide in the current for the next player.

  She ran along the hallway to the drowning pier. The ferry hadn't started its engines yet, so she had time to swim out to the gangway with the slow but preternaturally even doggy-paddle of the AD character. Katrina was an experienced swimmer, and if she had cared to, she could have proven it to the company and gotten Wee Kat several points of swimming skill. Since she knew Endertainment made almost as much money off information sales as subscriptions, she forbore. Importing friends-lists from other networks was as far as she'd go.

  Wee Kat made it to the ferry and sat shivering rhythmically next to a napping character. Ninety-four years life expectancy and full health, she noted smugly, and logged out in the glow of a safe-save symbol. Her character would be secure here for at least four hours.

  Back to real life, and the troubling question of what Apocalypse Daily could do that they hadn't before. Katrina shampooed her hair thinking about zombies, which they'd done for the six-month, and pulled on a sweatshirt considering the possibility of intra-plate earthquakes.

  Natalie was eating the last banana and Katrina looked her over: unconvincing blond highlights that stopped a few inches from the root, dark circles. “Honey, shouldn't you get some sleep?”

  “I'll sleep when I need it. If I wanted to be nagged, I'd have stayed with Mama and Baba.”

  Katrina suppressed an indignant sound. Her salary would, barely, cover Natalie. It was tempting to point out that her parents’ retirement would not and Natalie was selfish to even consider it, but Katrina decided to go for a smaller caliber response. “All I'm saying is I wouldn't hire you right now. You look like the undead.”

  “You guys are hiring?”

  “Ugh, no. The word is cuts, big cuts. They're just holding off for the anniversary, hoping to have a big subscription bump to counteract the bad PR from layoffs.” She stuck her head into the refrigerator, scanning shelf after shelf of disappointment and decay. She settled for a yogurt, plopped into her desk chair, and spun it to face Natalie at the kitchen table. “I could be out on my ass in two months.”

  “But you've been there since they were a li'l baby startup. You're the senior whatever!”

  “Yeah, so if the disasters get stale, all the responsibility's mine. Besides, there's Emil.”

  “What's that?”

  “One of my teammates. Ever since they decided one of us should be Senior and I got anointed, I feel like he's got cross
hairs on my back.”

  “What's he do?”

  “Little stuff. Like when I do have a good idea, after I present it to Lee, Emil chimes in with an extra flourish or detail or addition, and somehow Lee ends up thanking him for the whole thing.”

  “Dude, do it back to him.” Natalie wiped her mouth and started doing yoga in the middle of the kitchen. Warrior Pose.

  “One of us needs an idea before the other can try to steal credit.”

  “Well, figure something out,” Natalie said, dropping her arms. “I can tell you firsthand, the last thing you want is a boss who thinks he has ‘grounds for termination.’ Once the bastards have an excuse, you're savings waiting to happen.”

  Time for work. Katrina shooed Natalie into the bedroom and logged back into AD—she could leave Wee Kat sitting in the ferry while she worked, jiggle the mouse occasionally to accrue Survivor Points.

  Collaboration Space tinkled an alert as a team member logged on. Morning. Any ideas for the big day? Sara's message appeared, and Katrina paged back to Collaboration Space.

  Not yet. You? she typed back.

  Acid rainstorms?

  Not a big enough spectacle, but we'll put it on the dev list.

  Yellowstone supervolcano?

  I wrote that already. It was released Friday the 13th as a gimmick, remember? Back in May.

  Oh, I should have remembered. I played that. Well, there's always nuclear war.

  Sara . . . Katrina sighed and looked at the time. Emil would be logging on any moment now, twenty minutes late, so she had better brush her hair. Sara always developed a need for video contact as soon as Emil was online.

  Didn't you tell me at orientation that users like similar scenarios? Like a do-over.

  Emil logged on as Katrina typed, This is the one-year anniversary. It can't be the same old thing with better graphics.

  A message from Emil appeared: Hey Sara, hey boss. Looks like I didn't miss much! :)

  Katrina snarled at the monitors as she finished looping up her hair. Do YOU have any ideas?

  Zombies, Emil sent.

  Done three ways.