The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “Are you certain?” asked the officer.

  “Positive,” BK said.

  Then MK said, “Huh. I wonder why the difference.”

  But the problem had an easy enough answer. “I was down longer than you,” her brother pointed out.

  In frustration, the officer snarled, “But what in hell happened to you?”

  The siblings glanced at one another.

  Then they looked up, and they spoke the same words.

  “Love happened,” they said.

  Elaborate graphs have been produced. Recorded testimonials and secondhand numbers have been plotted against axes that might be useful. Seventy thousand points in space and time will create pictures. For instance, there is a strong inverse correlation between the distance from the bomb and the duration spent being helpless. Spectators in the high seats generally woke that evening, while those closer to the field remained unconscious for days and often far longer. Being inside a restroom or otherwise shielded by concrete reduced the effects, but not as much as we might have guessed. Victims in the lowest seats, particularly those at the fifty-yard line, were slowest to wake. Yet their experiences pale next to the poor souls standing on the field itself—the band members and grounds crew, two teams and coaching staffs. Plus alumni and benefactors who had been given space on the sidelines. Those victims received the full onslaught of a very peculiar weapon, and several dozen died from brain hemorrhages, while others survived but have yet to open their eyes.

  On the matter of correlations: There is a weaker but persistent positive correlation between how long someone was senseless and their perception of time.

  Five days is the minimum “imaginary” time, while the record holder to date, if believed, is fifty-eight years.

  Liquor consumption has no proven role in duration of helplessness or the depth of the experience. And despite rumors, cannabis had at most a minimal negative influence.

  But judging by family reactions, genetic components can matter.

  At this point, it bears stating that every number is just a number. Mathematical figures seem precise and cleanly rendered, yet in its nature, each number wants to mislead. Tidy graphs belay the scarcity of real data. Seventy thousand subjects were thrown into the same ad hoc experiment. No operative plans were made beforehand. No logistics were set in place. A college city with two major hospitals and minimal equipment for deep-brain analysis was trapped in the most unlikely scenario. Add to that the confounding facts of a wide-scale power outage and the substantial numbers of medical people—first responders and local physicians—trapped with the other victims inside the stadium. Also many key government people were struck down. The state’s second-term governor was enjoying one of the luxury booths, which gave him valuable distance. But he was standing over the forty-five-yard line and as a result was left unconscious for many days.

  A genuine bomb would have left corpses and living people who knew what to do with corpses.

  Broken bones and burns respond predictably to medical tools.

  But what can be done with tens of thousands who are incapable of reacting to light or pain, or human voices, or any other reasonable treatment?

  What city in this world could handle the crush of so many patients, each wrapped in a condition that doesn’t resemble known comas or dream states?

  The tragedy is still emerging.

  What amazes us, writing from the midst of history, is the heroism of ordinary citizens facing an unexpected foe.

  Case study:

  SZ is a youthful fifty, a man who enjoyed prestige and responsibility in his lifelong profession. At the time of the attack, he was positioned high above the north forty-five-yard line, apparently standing at the back of a luxury box. State troopers found him within the first hour, and because of his job and important friends, SZ was carried past other victims and placed inside a helicopter that whisked him to the state’s premier neurological-care facility.

  SZ was the first patient to receive full batteries of tests, including blood work and EEGs and several thorough PET scans.

  As such, he enjoys a singular value among his peers.

  SZ wasn’t comatose or asleep, but characteristics of both states were observed. His body was limp, immune to mild pain and tickles. Loud sounds didn’t rouse him. The voices of his wife and children had no visible effect. There was a persistent erection, but it wasn’t associated with any normal REM sleep. If not for his arousal and rapid breathing, the man might have appeared dead, but the reality is that he was very far from death.

  It bears repeating: Every victim’s brain was at work. Trained athletes and world-class dancers make huge metabolic demands on their minds, but SZ’s brain consumed more sugar and more oxygen than any brain studied before. No portion of his neurological system was at rest. Each breath supplied just enough air to maintain that fantastic storm of electricity, and because of fears that this middle-aged man would be overtaxed, SZ’s breathing was augmented with an oxygen mask.

  The treatment may or may not have had a role in his experience.

  Frankly, nobody knows what his experience was.

  For three weeks, the patient’s condition held steady—no improvements or variations in his status. He was made comfortable, his body was hydrated, and once it was shown to be essential, he was fed sugar and proteins. (Starvation was and is an ongoing concern with every victim.) There was no reason to expect SZ to awaken, even after others from the same luxury box had opened their eyes. Three weeks had taught the doctors that they knew very little. After three weeks, even the most rational voice was speculating that a person didn’t wake until he was ready.

  Twenty-four days after the football game, SZ was ready.

  Unless of course he just simply woke up.

  His wife was in the room, and by chance, his oldest child. Like every other patient, SZ was lost to the world, attached machines measuring the quick vitals, and then he was back again. This was not the same as waking from deep sleep. His mind was alert, and then he and his body were alert in a different fashion. The only major physical problem were his atrophied muscles. According to a nurse present, SZ tried to sit up but couldn’t. Then he spoke to his wife by name, and he smiled at the teenage daughter, and the girl responded by blurting out, “So who did you sleep with?”

  By then, the world had learned what happened inside those raging minds—if not in detail, at least as a general rule.

  Patients were meeting imaginary lovers and undergoing intense, soul-shaking affairs.

  According the nurse, the girl’s combative attitude startled SZ’s wife.

  “Honey,” she said.

  “I know you were cheating on Mom,” the girl said.

  SZ tried again to sit up.

  The nurse attempted to help him.

  “Get your hands off my father,” the girl shouted.

  “Leave us, please,” the wife begged.

  Standing in the hallway, the nurse overheard portions of a very difficult conversation. Her sense was that the girl was only voicing her mother’s deepest concerns. For years, there had been stories of infidelity involving this very important man. But rumors didn’t matter as much as the certainty that his mind—struck helpless by a terrorist attack—was happily engaged in a relationship that had no connection to real people and genuine events.

  Beds were still at a premium at that stage in the crisis.

  SZ was discharged as quickly as possible, and after several days of rest, appeared in public. His family stood beside him when he thanked the state troopers and hospital and the many subordinates who did his job in very trying times. Every observer was struck by the man’s graciousness and his smile. There are people with famous smiles, and SZ’s was one of those. But the expression was different than before. The audience saw a transformative joy, not only in how he grinned but how that joy seemed to make him lighter and younger than any man in his fifties should be.

  The rumors had already begun by then. Which makes it doubly disappointing t
hat we don’t have SZ’s account about his time as an invalid. Yet the patients are rarely willing to speak about these personal experiences, and our subject was even more circumspect than the norm.

  Whispers claimed that he lived twenty years in as many days.

  That would put him at the high end of the charts.

  Voices that might know the story claim that SZ enjoyed a torrid affair with a living actress—that is, an imaginary version of an Academy Award winner. But that is the kind of rumor that spreads. Because it is compelling and obvious, and a portion of those who are doing the telling wish they could have dreamed about sleeping with a woman like that.

  Another story is that SZ had a twenty-year relationship with a youngster. The girl was only eleven at the beginning, and by the end, the dreaming man was sleeping with her as well as his various daughters.

  That is the kind of story told by enemies and believed by only a few of them. Yet from what is known, pedophilia is unlikely but never impossible.

  A third version exists. There was a large Christmas party where SZ had one drink too many and then confided to the wrong person. He claimed that the woman he loved for twenty-one imaginary years was as exotic and beautiful as any woman could be. But there was more than just that one woman in the other realm. He had lived inside a fully realized world, sharp and honest. A man who had never built anything with his hands built the house where he and his common-law wife lived together. They had several children. SZ mentioned names and grieved that he didn’t have pictures of their little ones. He was that proud of them. Actual specifics were few, but the witness had the impression that this nonexistent mother and family lived in another age, perhaps inside a fantasy world—a world of grand beauty where everybody shared a crushing, relentless poverty.

  SZ’s wife filed for divorce shortly after New Year’s.

  He didn’t contest her when she took their three children.

  Rumors of depression seem to be untrue, but those same rumors led to talk about removing him from his post. SZ didn’t give anyone that chance. He resigned on a Friday afternoon, slipping out of his office and then out of the country. The last credible sighting came from the border of Uganda and South Sudan. A white man matching SZ’s description was seen walking alone into the bush, wearing tattered clothes and an enormous smile that washed away his miserable circumstances.

  Certain categories make easy statistics, and perhaps these numbers have real significance.

  But statistics are a game for bolder souls than ours.

  Yes, there has been a strong rise in separations and divorces. The largest upticks come from males married for seven to twelve years and whose spouses weren’t affected. And inside that group, the most susceptible are young men who experienced only a year or two of pernicious romance. (PR is the latest term for the condition. Will it last? Who knows?) Perhaps this says something about human nature. You spend two years with the girl of your dreams, and that’s both too long and too short. Coming back into the old world, you look at your legal mate as an embarrassment or disappointment, or boring. Because your dream mate and you were still fresh to each other, and everything ended too soon.

  Couples that collapsed together are less likely to divorce. Though their numbers are still higher than normal, and substantially so.

  Older couples are most resilient.

  Indeed, if a husband and wife fell into a stupor for just a few hours, and if they woke at nearly the same time, they often use the event as a bonding agent, revitalizing marriages that perhaps weren’t as strong as they might have been.

  Books are being written on the psychological effects.

  Careers and entire new industries are being nourished.

  One category that receives remarkably little attention: The effects on children and young teenagers. From what has been observed, young children always experienced a love affair, but non-sexual and with a parental figure. In their dream, some disaster had swept away life as they knew it, and they found an adoptive adult who led them through a series of great adventures, sometimes spanning decades of life and growth.

  Those children are as profoundly changed as anyone. “Baby adults,” they have been dubbed by observers and the occasional news feature.

  And what other changes have been wrought?

  Today, several thousand patients remain scattered in various facilities. They demand an expensive level of care, and if they don’t wake in the next few months, their bodies will require new and aggressive interventions. And there are the social ramifications to a world making ready for the next attack—even if the first attack wasn’t terroristic in nature. The health industry is devising huge, largely unworkable plans in case crowds and entire cities are rendered helpless. Billions are being spent on facilities that will wait in stasis for the next wave of casualties, giving us the chance to study them in detail. And there is the simple, relentless problem that comes from one difficult evening in October: Tens of thousands of people are awake today, dealing with lives that were never lived, and from all accounts those other lives seem to be as genuine and as thoroughly recalled as any.

  How can so much human experience, sitting outside normal life, not have a significant impact on all of us?

  What ideas did our neighbors and friends bring back from the other world?

  And how will the echo of romance play, now and for the next thousand years?

  Case study:

  EL is a physical therapy major and a member of the football trainer’s corp. That’s why she was standing near the twenty-five-yard line, fully exposed to the blast. Among her peers, EL has various distinctions. As a patient, she was cared for at home by her mother and stepfather. That wasn’t particularly unusual. There was a rampant shortage of hospital beds, particularly in those first three months, and many families took up the burden. But EL was a different kind of patient. Everyone had elevated breathing rates, but she was at the high end of the continuum. Perhaps youth and physical fitness made that possible. Or there were random or unknown factors. What is known is that she spent seventeen weeks in her own bed, cared for by people who had the resources and energy to meet her extraordinary needs. EL sounded like a sprinter when she breathed. Her mouth and nostrils became chapped, and she lost weight despite constant feedings through IVs, and later, tubes pushed down her throat. Twenty pounds evaporated from a frame that didn’t enter that state overweight, and just before she woke, EL’s mother was considering transferring her to an expensive care facility.

  But her daughter woke before she starved. Perhaps because her body was suffering, it has been suggested. But only a handful of cases resemble hers, and those patients emerged long before the body failed.

  Another distinction is that EL is easily the most forthcoming about her case. She began blogging immediately. The wasted body wouldn’t let her sit up, but she wrote her first entries on her back, on a tablet held by her dutiful mother.

  One might expect that her seventeen weeks would translate to an impressive stretch of illusionary years. But that isn’t the case at all. EL felt that only nine years had passed, which again puts her at the tip of a bell curve. And where most dream lovers were idealized, hers seems to have been a more fully rounded individual.

  Heather was the lover’s name.

  Is her name.

  She was an older woman, beautiful and possessive and sometimes cruel, at least in an emotional sense. EL writes that she and Heather fought often and about every possible topic. They lived together for seven years, off and on. EL was working as a trainer for the Minnesota Vikings, and her lover held and lost an assortment of jobs.

  In her blogs, EL duplicates long stretches of dialogue.

  Of course their authenticity can’t be determined. But EL’s words match the tone and vocabulary that she prefers, and her lover is nothing if not consistent.

  EL loved Heather despite or because of the flaws.

  She loves her now.

  This is perhaps the most intriguing and potentially disturbin
g part of this case: Awake again, EL is using every spare moment of her life to explain what happened to her inside a dream. And she claims that she does this because Heather is real, and Heather returned to this world with her. There is a second mind, vivid and pissed, smoldering inside a bored skull.

  Subsequent PET scans have shown interesting abnormalities.

  And EL still consumes more food than before, feeding a mind that insists on running faster than average.

  Everyone with an interest in the outcome is watching, wondering if and how the parasite will try to take hold of its host.

  Speculation is easy, and done properly, calm speculation might help our adaptations to the ongoing challenges.

  But we continue to dismiss the terrorism theory, and for good reasons. What political movement has the requisite technical skills? Whatever the device’s source, it was a high-end technology wielding powers born out of the most rarefied strata of theory, and these tools were used in a very unterroristic fashion. Few deaths. No claim of credit. Seventy thousand cases of love-sick revery, and no second attack either.

  But that leaves a very important question:

  Who are the reasonable suspects?

  Exclude one word from that question, and quite a lot becomes possible.

  Foreign governments were testing a new weapon.

  Or perhaps our own government was.

  A small, portable device that drops thousands into a helpless state. That would be an excellent way to cripple your enemy while leaving his infrastructure intact. That is an unreasonable scenario with considerable appeal. But the first complaint is to point out the scope of the test and the dozens dead. Wouldn’t that bring too much notoriety? Unless that was the goal, of course. An unexpected nightmare delivered to the unwary world. But if this was and is an experimental weapon, then there is a slightly less unlikely explanation.

  We call it the Castle Bravo scenario.

  Castle Bravo was one of the first thermonuclear tests in the Pacific. The bomb’s yield was two-and-a-half times larger than predicted, and the blast and fallout effects caused years of misery.