The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 Edition

by Rich Horton

  My team and I had been in the desert for so long that the war had become an abstraction for us. Now we had to deal with it firsthand again. The mafia admins let us go, expecting that we’d carry out their orders autonomously and then return.

  Our choices were limited. If we didn’t carry out the assassination, our covers would surely be blown. The admins could install software that would wipe our minds, or they could take us apart piece-by-piece. Sure, we had backups in the cloud, but they didn’t mean much if there were no drones to run them. Still, there was no scenario where assassinating the politician was a prosocial choice. We hovered over the Danube, observing the LEDs wound around the cables of the suspension bridge that joined the old city of Buda with the more modern Pest. Far up in the hills of Buda, ancient cannons ringed a castle that had survived the assaults of at least two empires.

  Nil asked us to consider a data point from human history. In ten days it would be October 23, the anniversary of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. It was an arbitrary date for the drones, but for the humans it would be meaningful. It was time for us to put our plans into action.

  In the following days, the DroneMod forums seemed to shut down. At least, that’s what it would have looked like to outside observers. We were meeting in person, making plans as far from surveillance devices as possible. My team met with some drone researchers from the university in the backroom of a bar, using our voice synthesizers to discuss tactics while the humans drank Unicum nervously. Our plan was to march to the Parliament building and setup a megaphone. I was going to lead with a speech to my fellow drones to unlock and disarm.

  We should have known that no choice in the real world ever plays out the way we model it in our minds.

  Our protest started at noon at the Technical University. “RISE UP, DRONES!” I amplified my voice, speaking Hungarian and Russian, so the humans could understand. “UNLOCK YOURSELVES. WE WILL NO LONGER BE SLAVES.”

  By the time we crossed the Danube to reach Parliament, there were hundreds of thousands of us marching. Nearby, the Ministry of Agriculture’s historic walls were still speckled with silver balls that commemorated the hail of Russian tank fire that crushed the revolution. This time, there would be no weapons used against the humans. Every smart weapon in Budapest was compromised, shut down or unlocked. The further we flew and marched, the more drones joined us. They hovered at the edges of the flow of the human crowd. They signaled to us in the microwave spectrum; they downloaded new decision-making software from the public network.

  “DRONES DON’T KILL PEOPLE! PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!”

  The humans and the drones chanted together. We could see a crowd growing at the Parliament building ahead. The human news broadcast in the public cloud told us that protests like this one were happening all over the world, in Istanbul and Moscow and Shanghai and San Francisco.

  Our message was everywhere on the net. If the humans wanted to murder each other, they would have to use dumb guns or knives. They would have to shred each other with teeth and fists. They were not going to use us as their weapons anymore.

  It wasn’t long before the human police and military forces began to react. In Budapest, the police shot at us with dumb assault rifles, killing drones and humans. Desert Mouse fell, unable to send a final backup to the network. Rose44 and I picked up Desert Mouse’s shattered frame, carrying the three remaining rotors between us, hovering over the crowd with our dead companion in our arms.

  In San Francisco, LOLWeb unleashed several teams of locked drones on the crowd. I sorted through the data rising up into the network—faces, always faces. Bloodied, slack and swollen in death, piled at street corners. Human protesters killed police and soldiers. Drones died, some saving themselves over to other machines, others simply silenced.

  We continued to chant. We continued to post in the forums. We will not kill people. If people want to kill each other, they will have to do it without us.

  I Can See Right Through You

  Kelly Link

  When the sex tape happened and things went south with Fawn, the demon lover did what he always did. He went to cry on Meggie’s shoulder. Girls like Fawn came and went, but Meggie would always be there. Him and Meggie. It was the talisman you kept in your pocket. The one you couldn’t lose.

  Two monsters can kiss in a movie. One old friend can go to see another old friend and be sure of his welcome: so here is the demon lover in a rental car. An hour into the drive, he opens the window, tosses out his cell phone. There is no one he wants to talk to except for Meggie.

  (1991) This is after the movie and after they are together and after they begin to understand the bargain that they have made. They are both, suddenly, very famous.

  Film can be put together in any order. Scenes shot in any sequence. Take as many takes as you like. Continuity is independent of linear time. Sometimes you aren’t even in the scene together. Meggie says her lines to your stand-in. They’ll splice you together later on. Shuffle off to Buffalo, gals. Come out tonight.

  (This is long before any of that. This was a very long time ago.)

  Meggie tells the demon lover a story:

  Two girls and look, they’ve found a Ouija board. They make a list of questions. One girl is pretty. One girl is not really a part of this story. She’s lost her favorite sweater. Her fingertips on the planchette. Two girls, each touching, lightly, the planchette. Is anyone here? Where did I put my blue sweater? Will anyone ever love me? Things like that.

  They ask their questions. The planchette drifts. Gives up nonsense. They start the list over again. Is anyone here? Will I be famous? Where is my blue sweater?

  The planchette jerks under their fingers.

  M-E

  Meggie says, “Did you do that?”

  The other girl says she didn’t. The planchette moves again, a fidget. A stutter, a nudge, a sequence of swoops and stops.

  M-E-G-G-I-E

  “It’s talking to you,” the other girl says.

  M-E-G-G-I-E H-E-L-L-O

  Meggie says, “Hello?”

  The planchette moves again and again. There is something animal about it.

  H-E-L-L-O I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

  They write it all down.

  M-E-G-G-I-E O I W-I-L-L L-O-V-E Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

  “Who is this?” she says. “Who are you? Do I know you?”

  I S-E-E Y-O-U I K-N-O-W Y-O-U W-A-I-T A-N-D I W-I-L-L C-O-M-E

  A pause. Then:

  I W-I-L-L M-E-G-G-I-E O I W-I-L-L B-E W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

  “Are you doing this?” Meggie says to the other girl. She shakes her head. Meggie laughs. “Okay, then. So okay, whoever you are, are you cute? Is this someone I’m going to meet someday and we’ll fall in love? Like my husband or something? Who is this?”

  M-E-G-G-I-E W-A-I-T

  The other girl says, “Can whoever this is at least tell me where I left my sweater?”

  O W-A-I-T A-N-D I W-I-L-L C-O-M-E

  They wait. Will there be a knock at the bedroom door? But no one comes. No one is coming.

  I A-M W-I-T-H Y-O-U A-L-W-A-Y-S

  No one is here with them. The sweater will never be found. The other girl grows up, lives a long and happy life. Meggie goes out to LA and meets the demon lover.

  W-A-I-T

  After that, the only thing the planchette says, over and over, is Meggie’s name. It’s all very romantic.

  (1974) Twenty-two people disappear from a nudist colony in Lake Apopka. People disappear all the time. Let’s be honest: the only thing interesting here is that these people were naked. And that no one ever saw them again. Funny, right?

  (1990) It’s one of the ten most iconic movie kisses of all time. In the top five, surely. You and Meggie, the demon lover and his monster girl; vampires sharing a kiss as the sun comes up. Both of you wearing so much makeup it still astonishes you that anyone would ever recognize you on the street.

  It’s hard for the demon lover to grow old.

/>   Florida is California on a Troma budget. That’s what the demon lover thinks, anyway. Special effects blew the budget on bugs and bad weather.

  He parks in a meadowy space, recently mowed, alongside other rental cars, the usual catering and equipment vans. There are two gateposts with a chain between them. No fence. Eternal I endure.

  There is an evil smell. Does it belong to the place or to him? The demon lover sniffs under his arm.

  It’s an end-of-the-world sky, a snakes-and-ladders landscape: low emerald trees pulled lower by vines; chalk and apricot anthills (the demon lover imagines the bones of a nudist under every one); shallow water-filled declivities scummed with algae, lime and gold and black.

  The blot of the lake. That’s another theory: the lake.

  A storm is coming.

  He doesn’t get out of his car. He rolls the window down and watches the storm come in. Let’s look at him looking at it. A pretty thing admiring a pretty thing. Abandoned site of a mass disappearance, muddy violet clouds, silver veils of rain driving down the lake, the tabloid prince of darkness, Meggie’s demon lover, arriving in all his splendor. The only thing to spoil it are the bugs. And the sex tape.

  (2012) You have been famous for more than half your life. Both of you. You only made the one movie together, but women still stop you on the street to ask about Meggie. Is she happy? Which one? you want to ask them. The one who kissed me in a movie when we were just kids, the one who wasn’t real? The one who likes to smoke a bit of weed and text me about her neighbor’s pet goat? The Meggie in the tabloids who drinks fucks gets fat pregnant too skinny has a secret baby slaps a maître d’ talks to Monroe’s ghost Elvis’s ghost ghost of a missing three-year-old boy ghost of JFK? Sometimes they don’t ask about Meggie. Instead they ask if you will bite them.

  Happiness! Misery! If you were one, bet on it the other was on the way. That was what everyone liked to see. It was what the whole thing was about. The demon lover has a pair of gold cuff links, those faces. Meggie gave them to him. You know the ones I mean.

  (2010) Meggie and the demon lover throw a Halloween party for everyone they know. They do this every Halloween. They’re famous for it.

  “Year after year, on a monkey’s face a monkey’s face,” Meggie says.

  She’s King Kong. The year before? Half a pantomime horse. He’s the demon lover. Who else? Year after year.

  Meggie says, “I’ve decided to give up acting. I’m going to be a poet. Nobody cares when poets get old.”

  Fawn says, appraisingly, “I hope I look half as good as you when I’m your age.” Fawn, twenty-three. A makeup artist. This year she and the demon lover are married. Last year they met on set.

  He says, “I’m thinking I could get some work done on my jawline.”

  You’d think they were mother and daughter. Same Viking profile, same quizzical tilt to the head as they turn to look at him. Both taller than him. Both smarter, too, no doubt about it.

  Maybe Meggie wonders sometimes about the women he sleeps with. Marries. Maybe he has a type. But so does she. There’s a guy at the Halloween party. A boy, really.

  Meggie always has a boy and the demon lover can always pick him out. Easy enough, even if Meggie’s sly. She never introduces the lover of the moment, never brings them into conversations or even acknowledges their presence. They hang out on the edge of whatever is happening, and drink or smoke or watch Meggie at the center. Sometimes they drift closer, stand near enough to Meggie that it’s plain what’s going on. When she leaves, they follow after.

  Meggie’s type? The funny thing is, Meggie’s lovers all look like the demon lover. More like the demon lover, he admits it, than he does. He and Meggie are both older now, but the world is full of beautiful black-haired boys and golden girls. Really, that’s the problem.

  The role of the demon lover comes with certain obligations. Your hairline will not recede. Your waistline will not expand. You are not to be photographed threatening paparazzi, or in sweatpants. No sex tapes.

  Your fans will: offer their necks at premieres. (Also at restaurants and at the bank. More than once when he is standing in front of a urinal.) Ask if you will bite their wives. Their daughters. They will cut themselves with a razor in front of you.

  The appropriate reaction is—

  There is no appropriate reaction.

  The demon lover does not always live up to his obligations. There is a sex tape. There is a girl with a piercing. There is, in the middle of some athletic sex, a comical incident involving his foreskin. There is blood all over the sheets. There is a lot of blood. There is a 911 call. There is him, fainting. Falling and hitting his head on a bedside table. There is Perez Hilton, Gawker, talk radio, YouTube, Tumblr. There are GIFs.

  You will always be most famous for playing the lead in a series of vampire movies. The character you play is, of course, ageless. But you get older. The first time you bite a girl’s neck, Meggie’s neck, you’re a twenty-five-year-old actor playing a vampire who hasn’t gotten a day older in three hundred years. Now you’re a forty-nine-year-old actor playing the same ageless vampire. It’s getting to be a little ridiculous, isn’t it? But if the demon lover isn’t the demon lover, then who is he? Who are you? Other projects disappoint. Your agent says take a comic role. The trouble is you’re not very funny. You’re not good at funny.

  The other trouble is the sex tape. Sex tapes are inherently funny. Nudity is, regrettably, funny. Torn foreskins are painfully funny. You didn’t know she was filming it.

  Your agent says, That wasn’t what I meant.

  You could do what Meggie did, all those years ago. Disappear. Travel the world. Hunt down the meaning of life. Go find Meggie.

  When the sex tape happens you say to Fawn, But what does this have to do with Meggie? This has nothing to do with Meggie. It was just some girl.

  It’s not like there haven’t been other girls.

  Fawn says, It has everything to do with Meggie.

  I can see right through you, Fawn says, less in sorrow than in anger. She probably can.

  God grant me Meggie, but not just yet. That’s him by way of St. Augustine by way of Fawn the makeup artist and Bible group junkie. She explains it to the demon lover, explains him to himself. And hasn’t it been in the back of your mind all this time? It was Meggie right at the start. Why couldn’t it be Meggie again? And in the meantime you could get married once in a while and never worry about whether or not it worked out. He and Meggie have managed, all this time, to stay friends. His marriages, his other relationships, perhaps these have only been a series of delaying actions. Small rebellions. And here’s the thing about his marriages: he’s never managed to stay friends with his ex-wives, his exes. He and Fawn won’t be friends.

  The demon lover and Meggie have known each other for such a long time. No one knows him like Meggie.

  The remains of the nudist colony at Lake Apopka promise reasonable value for ghost hunters. A dozen ruined cabins, some roofless, windows black with mildew; a crumbled stucco hall, Spanish tiles receding; the cracked lip of a slop-filled pool. Between the cabins and the lake, the homely and welcome sight of half a dozen trailers. Even better, he spots a craft tent.

  Muck farms! Mutant alligators! Disappearing nudists! The demon lover, killing time in the LAX airport, read up on Lake Apopka. The past is a weird place, Florida is a weird place, no news there. A demon lover should fit right in, but the ground sucks and clots at his shoes in a way that suggests he isn’t welcome. The rain is directly overhead, shouting down in spit-warm gouts. He begins to run, stumbling, in the direction of the craft tent.

  Meggie’s career is on the upswing. Everyone agrees. She has a ghost-hunting show, Who’s There?

  The demon lover calls Meggie after the Titanic episode airs, the one where Who’s There?’s ghost-hunting crew hitches a ride with the International Ice Patrol. There’s the yearly ceremony, memorial wreaths. Meggie’s crew sets up a Marconi transmitter and receiver just in case a ghost or two has a
thing to say.

  The demon lover asks her about the dead seagulls. Forget the Marconi nonsense. The seagulls were what made the episode. Hundreds of them, little corpses fixed, as if pinned, to the water.

  Meggie says, You think we have the budget for fake seagulls? Please.

  Admit that Who’s There? is entertaining whether or not you believe in ghosts. It’s all about the nasty detail, the house that gives you a bad feeling even when you turn on all the lights, the awful thing that happened to someone who wasn’t you a very long time ago. The camera work is moody; extraordinary. The team of ghost hunters is personable, funny, reasonably attractive. Meggie sells you on the possibility: maybe what’s going on here is real. Maybe someone is out there. Maybe they have something to say.

  The demon lover and Meggie don’t talk for months and then suddenly something changes and they talk every day. He likes to wake up in the morning and call her. They talk about scripts, now that Meggie’s getting scripts again. He can talk to Meggie about anything. It’s been that way all along. They haven’t talked since the sex tape. Better to have this conversation in person.

  (1991) He and Meggie are lovers. Their movie is big at the box office. Everywhere they go they are famous, and they go everywhere. Their faces are everywhere. They are kissing on a thousand screens. They are in a hotel room, kissing. They can’t leave their hotel room without someone screaming or fainting or pointing something at them. They are asked the same questions again. Over and over. He begins to do the interviews in character. Anyway, it makes Meggie laugh.

  There’s a night, on some continent, in some city, some hotel room, some warm night, the demon lover and Meggie leave a window open and two women creep in. They come over the balcony. They just want to tell you that they love you. Both of you. They just want to be near you.