Lowering our friend, she looked at me, and with a suddenly serious, very important tone, she asked, "Is that your bus?"
It was. But as I explained before, there was no place that I needed to be, at least not in the immediate future.
"I'm going to sit here for now," I said.
"Well then. I guess I will too."
Such a day, and who would have guessed it possible?
"I've made a study of storytelling," Berry began. "Nothing scholarly or elaborate. But I'm lucky enough to have been around for a very long time, and what do humans do with their lives? We absorb stories. Day and night, commercial tales or twists of gossip, we swim in an ocean of story."
"You just think you're human," I said.
She laughed. "Point taken."
A new bus was arriving. The shiny door swung open, but nobody disembarked. Instead of an automated pilot, there was a fat human male perched on a hard high seat. The drab uniform threatened to split with the pressure of the swollen body, fat hands clinging to the old-fashioned steering wheel. All the colour was washed out of the man, but that wasn't the oddest detail. It was his face. I recognized him. To save my life, I couldn't identify the driver, but I was absolutely certain that I had seen him pictured somewhere. Maybe he was the obese man from one of my son's school lessons - a cautionary emblem of wasted, impoverishing wealth that stole too much from the world.
"A good story begins in an intriguing place," Berry said.
The couple remained seated on their bench, playing with the bug. The driver closed his door with a mechanical lever, and the ancient diesel engine roared as the bus rolled away, dragging a swirling black cloud of soot in its wake.
"But the tale can't be too interesting either," she said. "The author doesn't dare surrender too much, because the next scenes or the coming chapters are going to drag, if only by comparison."
"I suppose not," I said.
"A great story is like a wonderful song. There are those delightful beginning notes and a fetching flow, and it builds and grows, entertaining its audience for the whole journey."
"And what does this have to do with us?" I asked.
"Stories do grow," she said. "It's inevitable and I'm sure there is some robust scientific reason why narratives become more complicated and intricate with time. Maybe it's because fresh characters are being introduced. Or maybe it's the thirst for surprise plots and new twists. Whatever the reason, I've seen this a thousand times. Take my little doctor drama here, for instance. The television series ran for years and years, getting bigger and wilder every season. Ordinary diseases weren't good enough anymore. Plagues and spectacular tropical diseases kept raising the stakes. Happily married characters suddenly fell into torrid affairs, and the best doctors started killing patients, and every woman gave birth whenever it would help the ratings most. Preferably in the middle of an anthrax attack."
If she proved nothing else to me, I realized Berry was a very peculiar old gal. "So what's your test?" I asked.
"This is how you can tell if you're living inside a made-up story," she said. "If your world is contrived from thought and shaped light and a few arbitrary, algorithmic principles, then odds are you are living an interesting, unlikely life. A spellbinding life. Just think of the stories that capture your imagination. Aren't they full of important coincidences, and passion, and tragic pain, and obvious heroism? No character with a name has to wait long for something new and fascinating to happen to him."
I nodded, staring straight ahead. The woman on the bench was handing the mantis to the man. The man said something, and the skinny woman smiled and said, "Yes," while nodding, closing her eyes and tilting her mouth.
"Is your life fascinating?" Berry asked.
"Not normally," I allowed.
"Well then," she said. "Every time you feel bored and ordinary, be grateful. Because that's the best evidence that you are genuinely, joyously real."
At one point, I said, "You know what I want to do, don't you? I want very much to kiss you."
Her name was still a mystery, and I was equally unknown to her. But bless the girl, she didn't jump up and run away. What she did was stare hard at me, never blinking, and after what seemed like a very long while, she said, "Oh, you want to kiss me, do you?"
"Yes, very much," I said.
"Since when?" she asked.
I suppose she expected to hear that the idea popped into my head now, or maybe when I first saw her walking my way. But I surprised both of us, saying, "I woke up today wanting to. I just hadn't met you yet."
It isn't often that inspiration finds me. And looking at my life, I can't think of ten other times where this much success has come from a few words.
The girl nodded and smiled, saying, "Yes."
And we kissed. For a very long time, we held that pose. She even let me put a hand on her bony back and shoulder.
We pulled apart, and I said, "You like Chinese."
She nodded warily.
"I have enough carbon points for one exceptional dinner," I promised.
Hunger made her face prettier. She didn't trust herself to say, "Yes." Her enthusiasm might scare me off. So instead, she nodded and took a deep breath, handing the mantis back to me.
She asked, "What does the mantis think about?"
"Her next meal," I suggested.
"Besides that." Then the girl laughed, saying, "I think she knows that she is the centre of the universe, and we're all just objects, soulless but entertaining to her."
On that note, I stood and started to place our friend back into the tree, and that's when I looked at the infinity window again. I suppose I wanted to see approval from our audience. But the window had gone out, and except for a giant gutted room and some upturned office furniture, there was nothing to see. There was nothing but glass and the girl's reflection, and mine, and my arm up high, as if I was waiting for some hook or hand to grab me up and carry me away.
We hollered. I think every patron in the club yelled, loudly and most of the words angry. Mr Pembrook came bounding out of his office. He is a red-faced man with no hair and elastic kangaroo-style legs. Sharing our panic, he began chasing wires and tinkering with diagnostic boards. Within the first few minutes he narrowed the blame down to ten or twenty possibilities, none of which he could fix. His apologies were earnest, and he wished there was more that he could do. But there wouldn't be any fix until tomorrow, if then, and with that sorry bit of non-news, he bounded back to his office and vanished.
I was still beside Berry, still working my lungs and heart. I had watched those strangers start to kiss, and now I was staring at the white wall, some piece of me ready for whatever scene was to come next.
And I kept thinking about that long green mantis too.
Berry and I exchanged a few more words. She was still attacking the easy miles when I finished, and I thanked her for the conversation. "Food for thought," I said. Then I called for help, and my personal cradle swept in and took me under what remains of my arms, lifting me up as my new friend said, "I'll see you around, perhaps."
"I'm sure you will," I said.
There was something else I wanted to say, but I resisted. I didn't think it would be right, parting on a sour, disagreeable note.
I live ten floors below the club, in an apartment that encompasses an enormous volume - a wealthy man's home with two rooms and a private, water-free bath. I really don't have the means for this luxury, which is why the rest of my life is full of sacrifices. I rarely run the air conditioning and never travel. It takes very little food to keep my minimal body alive and healthy, which gives me extra carbon points. In this world with too many people and too many problems, my son eats well when he comes home. And on that day it seemed like such a blessing to see him - a robust and busy, full-limbed gentleman who was five days short of his thirteenth birthday.
His dinner was real potatoes and peas and a meat that was sold under the euphemistic label Rabbit.
I had an intravenous meal and chew
stick to keep my mouth busy.
Together, we watched what interested me - the world's news compressed into fourteen minutes of drought and distant wars, plus heaping helpings of heroic perseverance and robots exploring the high clouds of Venus. Then I let him choose for both of us, and I endured the animated fluff. I watched my boy. I smiled at him, at least until he noticed. Then he frowned like any near-adolescent, telling me, "Stop that."
I looked away, staring at the emptiest of our walls. I was imagining the would-be lovers, wondering what part of them was real, and then I pictured Berry beside me, and I told her, "This is where you are wrong. Characters in a story can't tell if anything about their lives is remarkable or interesting. They just are. But there is one major difference between stories and life. Stories come to an end. Eventually and always, there is a last chapter, a final scene. As you said, fictions get too big and cumbersome, and then the author gives them a mercy killing. But real life goes on and on. And that's how you know that all of this is genuine."
My boy noticed something in my gaze, or maybe I was muttering to myself. "What are thinking about, Dad?"
"Nothing, son. Nothing."
Judgement Eve
John C. Wright
John C. Wright attracted some attention in the late '90s with his early stories in Asimov's (one of them, "Guest Law," was reprinted in David Hartwell's Year's Best SF), but it wasn't until he published his Golden Age trilogy (consisting of The Golden Age, The Golden Transcendence, and The Phoenix Exultant) in the first few years of the new century, novels which earned critical raves across the board, that he was recognized as a major new talent in SF. Subsequent novels include the Everness fantasy series, including The Last Guardians of Everness and Mists of Everness, and the fantasy Chaos series, which includes Fugitives of Chaos, Orphans of Chaos, and Titans of Chaos. His most recent novel, a continuation of the famous Null-A series by A.E. van Vogt, is Null-A Continuum. Wright lives with his family in Centreville, Virginia.
1.
Imagine the boulevards of Golgolundra on the world's last day, and the angels circling like vultures above it. Everywhere is noise, and lights, and gaiety, and crime, and chaos.
Imagine every wall and window of the crowded towers colourful with graffiti. The graffiti of these times are bright, not sloppy, composed of computer-assisted images of artistic depth and merit. They move, they sing, they speak to passers-by, and some of them reach from their billboards and kill whomever seems dispirited, obnoxious, dull; tiny flicks of paint flying up, reforming in mid-air into blades or poisoned plumes of gas.
Other people, beautiful or monstrous or both, dancing in the street in their fantastic costumes, applaud and cheer when some vivid near-by death splatters them with blood. They do not wish to seem dull. The whole city screams and screams with laughter.
Why this forced gaiety? Why this hideous display? Today is the birthday party for Typhon, their founder; today is the wake for mankind.
Tomorrow the angels drown the world.
The streets are a festive combination of war-zone and Mardi Gras.
Imagine most of the crimes are committed by the young, who are more extravagant. A shy young boy sees a laughing woman sway by, surrounded by handsome admirers raising glasses of Champagne and poison. It takes him but a moment to program his assemblers. A diamond drop, unnoticed, stings her flesh or flies into her wine. A moment later it has taken carbon from her blood to construct a series of gates and interrupts along major nerve-channels in her spine. The programming is precise and elegant, there is no jerkiness as her arms and leg muscles move, stimulated without her control. She tries to cry out for her companions. Instead, her lips move, she hears her voice make clever excuses, and away she walks with the shy boy. He becomes a shy rapist, perhaps using his controllers to overload the pleasure centres of her brain, or pain centres, before doing whatever else to her his bored imagination might conceive.
Or imagine a laughing woman, irked by an unwanted stare, or prompted by real fear, who programs her assemblers to shoot into the boy's flesh, so that, in mid-festival, surrounded by unsure giggles, he will fall, his arms and legs distorted into clumsy lopsided shapes, or boneless tubes of flesh, while he stares in horror at the grotesque growths sprouting up from what was once his groin.
And perhaps she does not know who has offended her. Without sumptuary laws, faces and bodies change from day to day like images in nightmare. Better, she thinks, to program all assemblers to reproduce and strike at random. Any flesh they enter, check for genes. Spare those who carry XX chromosomes.
Now imagine, not two such folk, but a city of such people, creatures of godlike power and infantile rage. The sky above Golgolundra is dark with brilliant diamond points, thicker than confetti, a blizzard, and by now no one can tell who sent them out, or when, or why, or what their original programs were.
And where the assemblers fight each other (which they do often) the reaction heat from their rapid molecular manipulations starts fires in the city. No one fights the fires.
More people would be dead, more horribly, were it not for the Invigilators. They soar in the high pure air far above, surrounded by rainbows and rings of force.
Their technology is very different from that of the Earth.
When they dive, one can see manlike shapes; faces and forms of ruthless beauty. Their personal shields clothe each one in a radiant nimbus of gold, and the forces which give lift to their flying-cloaks make their wings to shine. Where the nimbuses sphere their heads, the glancing light makes golden rainbows appear and disappear.
Their faces are inhumanly perfect and stern. The mental training systems brought by the Ship of the Will give each one a perfect calm and utter sanity; the calm of a frozen winter pond.
Is it any wonder men call them angels?
From their eyes dart slender rays, like a warship's searchlight, sweeping back and forth, penetrating crowds and clouds and hidden places.
Where they glance upon weapons or explosives, or fighting machines, they squint, and the rays of light tremble with mysterious force, and consume what they see with fire.
Sometimes the weapons, before they are found, discharge a futile shot or two toward the angels, whose shields flare to higher energies, flashing like whirlwinds of fire. People applaud when this happens.
Imagine Golgolundra. Everyone laughs. No one is happy. Everyone is doomed.
2.
There is one young man among the dancing crowds who does not dance. He dresses in black and does not laugh. He is not doomed. And, perhaps, he has a chance, if small, to become happy.
In his forehead glints a ruby gem. Any passer-by with the proper machine can read his thoughts. The grim look on his face saves them the effort; his thoughts are clear.
The crowds part when he walks by. The dancers fall silent. The graffiti images recoil and do not molest him.
He is Idomenes, son of Ducaleon. His genetic modifications are not the same as those who live in Golgolundra. He is a Promethean; they are Typhonides.
He comes to the central tower, which serves Golgolundra as administration, rebellion-centre, entertainment capital, and whorehouse. Idomenes paces down the wide corridors, looking neither right nor left. The monstrous statues, grotesque murals, or weeping deformities in their glass cages do not attract his attention.
From his black cloak, black diamonds fan out, sweeping the corridors before and behind him like nervous soldiers or presidential bodyguards, edging around corners, darting near anything suspicious, maintaining their spacing and their overlapping fields of fire. He ignores all this motion. He walks.
When he comes before a certain door, perhaps he is impatient with precautions. The swarm of black diamonds flutter back beneath his cloak, or come to rest in jewelried patterns along the chest and sleeves of his dark doublet.
The door recognizes him, and, without a word, politely opens.
Lounging at ease on a day-bed on the balcony, dreamily watching the distant fires, a woman of haunti
ng beauty reclines. Her skin is the colour of coffee with cream, her hair is as black as the midnight sea. She wears it very long. When she stands, it falls fragrantly past her rounded hips and brushes her shapely calves. When she lies on her stomach it is long enough that, even when braided, it can be used to tie her wrists and ankles. When she lies on her side, as she does now, it forms luxurious cloud-scapes, and falls, little waterfalls, from bed to floor, stray locks swaying.
Above the couch floats a mirror. She watches the little glints of her white assemblers caressing her body. Where they pass, a garment of black lace is being woven tightly around her curves. The garment has no seams, and would have to be unwoven to remove it, or roughly ripped off.
She pretends she does not see she is being watched. Now she stretches and yawns like a cat, arching her back and moaning. She turns on her stomach, and regards Idomenes with mock- surprise. Her eyes are half-lidded. Her frail lace garb is half-woven.
He does not remove his gloves, but, at least, he holds his hands at his sides, and makes no gestures.
Idomenes speaks first, grand with simplicity. "Lilimariah, I want you to come with me to the stars."
Lilimariah smiles mysteriously, as if charmed by distant music. Her voice is husky and low: "Men want only what they can't get. That is the nature of desire."
She stirs and half-arises, so she is leaning on one arm. Her hair is electrostatically charged, so that it floats and sways as if in a breeze, even though there is no breeze. "A lot of people would like to go to the stars, sweet lover. The angels won't let them. All but your folk. The sheep."
"I broke an oath to tell you these things. Do not mock my people. They will be saved." Idomenes speaks harshly, stepping forward. Now he is close enough to smell her perfume, and his expression weakens into confusion and anger. His eyes burn like the black diamonds glittering in his coat.
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