by Kate Moretti
“Progress is a group effort. It sounds like you’ve done admirably, Judy.”
“But what about you? Fifty years! How’s Velt?”
The line was silent for a moment. “Velt passed away five years ago. He was a mechanic aboard a large trading vessel, and there was a radiation leak.”
“I’m so sorry, Dela.”
“I’ve mourned. And he died a hero. He saved many lives that day. And our boys are healthy and strong. They remind me of him.”
“Boys? You had sons? What are their names?”
“Skelt. He’s our youngest. And Helt is older. I wish you could meet them both.”
Judy put her fingers to her lips. Her smile sank, no matter how hard she tried to keep it from slipping. The initial thrill of excitement was fading, being replaced by the memory of a fifty-year-old prophecy that she had somehow suppressed but never forgotten.
“Dela… you told me the last time we met that Earth wouldn’t stay isolated forever. Are you calling me because—?”
“We had an appointment. That’s all. As far as I know, it’ll be another ten years before an expedition is mounted to Earth.”
Judy released a breath she had been holding too long.
“And when that happens,” said Dela, “I’ll release my old data. I never did erase it; I just hid it. I’ll even recommend they land in Lancaster and meet you.”
Judy smiled. “Oh? Not Kentucky?”
Though she couldn’t see her old friend, she imagined her ears standing almost straight up in the Clorofin equivalent of a belly guffaw. “Preferably not.”
“Won’t you get in trouble for withholding our existence for so long?”
“For fulfilling a blood debt? Not unless the Overlord wants to see the entire Clorofin population go into revolt. Blood debts are beyond sacrosanct to my kind. Besides, I’m an old dowager now. What are they going to do to me?”
“So will I see you in ten years?”
“I think not, Judy. This trip will be my last time in space. It’s time I retired to a resort planet, like Bolvassa.”
Judy rose from her desk and, carrying the phone in one hand, the receiver still pressed to her cheek with the other, walked to her window. Her office hours were diminishing into twilight. Lindsay, the TA, would have snuck out already. The first stars were twinkling in the Pennsylvania eventide, and as Judy squinted, she thought she could make out one brighter than the others, moving, though it might have just been wishful thinking.
“Well, maybe I’ll come visit you on Bolvassa.”
“You mean when my people come and bring you starships?”
Judy found herself absently tracing a rocket ship into the dewy glass of her window.
“Nah, I’ve got ten years. I can build my own.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Kozeniewski (pronounced “causin’ ooze key”) lives with his wife and two cats in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern zombie. During his time as a Field Artillery officer, he served for three years in Oklahoma and one in Iraq, where, due to what he assumes was a clerical error, he was awarded the Bronze Star. He is also a classically trained linguist, which sounds much more impressive than saying that his bachelor’s degree is in German.
THOUGHTS ON BRAVE NEW GIRLS
“The Brave New Girls cause is good for equality, good for self-esteem, good for the economy, and good for the future of both defense and industry. Everybody wins!”
Illustration for “The Keys to the Stars” by Adrian DeFuria
TAKES A HACKER
by Mary Fan
“Could you come outta there? I wanna see who I’m talking to.”
This was a bad idea. Sneaking out of your room in the dead of night and meeting a stranger in the shadowy depths of a space habitat? Who did that?
But this was Kozen Float in the Kyderan system, the center of interstellar civilization, and not some sketchy Fringe world. Should be safe enough, even for a lone sixteen-year-old girl… right?
I should’ve brought a stunner or something. Somehow, a hundred ten pounds of willowy-girl frame didn’t seem like the best fighting machine in case her mysterious summoner turned out to be a psycho.
Jane waited, pressing her shoulder into the elevator’s doorframe to keep the car open. One step backward and a punch of a button would whisk her out of there.
Before her, giant machines stretched from the metal floor up to the high ceiling, humming in perfect fifths. Only a music nerd like me would notice that, she thought with a slight smile.
The area was the float’s central air processing center, and it was huge. But the only illumination came from the devices’ glowing screens and blinking lights. What spilled out of the elevator was by far the brightest.
No one went down there. Ever. All maintenance was done by repair bots. So why the hell had she decided to come?
Whatever. I can take care of myself. Besides, they need me. Won’t whack me just yet… I hope.
The message she’d received on her slate earlier that day had been so short, she’d memorized it: “Help me, Jane Colt. If you don’t, my life is over. But they might be watching me, so I can’t say more over the Net.” Plus a time and location for meeting. How could anyone say no to a desperate cry like that?
Jane watched the shadows. Annoyed by the lack of response, she said, “Look, you called me here. The least you can do is show who you are.”
“Please don’t freak out.” The voice sounded like a woman’s, or maybe a girl’s.
Jane spotted a glimmer of light and whirled toward it. Footsteps neared, clunking against the ground. The speaker must have been wearing boots with metal soles. How tacky.
A silhouetted person emerged from the darkness. She was… shiny. Though Jane couldn’t make out any details yet, flashes of light reflected off the gleaming limbs. What’s she wearing? An ancient suit of armor?
The stranger stepped into the rectangle of light from the open elevator.
Jane gasped.
It was a girl—sort of. She wore a sleeveless red top, which revealed her two metal arms, and a pair of black shorts that stopped a few inches above her mechanical knees. The left side of her face looked human enough, with its round, golden cheek and tilted eye, which was darker, even, than Jane’s own deep-brown irises. The girl’s small nose and plump lips were normal, too. Pretty, even. But the right side was a whole other story. Silver metal ran from her forehead down to her chin, and her right eye was clearly fake. Someone had tried to make it look real, but it gleamed too brightly. Plus, the iris was neon blue. Obsidian hair streaked with cobalt topped the whole thing, yet its plastic-y sheen told Jane that it, too, was artificial.
There was only one cyborg among the students sent to Kozen Float by the galaxy’s top schools to compete in the Acuitas Interstellar Cyberengineering Competition, better known as the A-Comp.
“Vieve Hua. So you’re the one who sent the message.”
The other nodded, and Jane suddenly noticed how scared Vieve looked. The girl’s lips were tight, and her eyes wide with worry. Her mechanical hands clutched her arms.
Jane felt incredibly dumb for having been so jittery. She realized her own face had inadvertently twisted into something not-so-nice, and she consciously relaxed it, doing her best not to stare.
She’d known about Vieve, but she had never seen her in person before. Everyone talked about her: the girl who had survived a starship crash last year and was pieced back together with synthetic body parts. Some rumors said that her whole body was fake and that even her brain had been wired. A few thought it unfair that she was competing against them, since, as they said, “She’s practically a computer herself! How are we supposed to win a coding contest against her?” And others snickered at her for being a charity case, since while her school was as elite as the others,
she was a scholarship girl.
Jane had let the talk go in one ear and out the other. She hadn’t come to Kozen Float to gossip. Of all the Cyber Club members at the Academy, Zared, the student president, had picked her to represent the school. Well, he also happened to be her boyfriend, but she liked to think that hadn’t affected his decision. And she didn’t intend to let him down.
So it was goodbye social life, hello programming cave. Jane and the other contestants had been given three weeks to code their entries. Hers was supposed to be a synthetic instrument that would automatically harmonize to a live singer, using the old rules of counterpoint. It was getting really complicated with all the variables. Only five days remained before judging, and she was nowhere near finished, so she’d been determined not to let anything distract her. Until now.
She crossed her arms. “What do you want?”
Vieve bit her lip. “You’re not weirded out by how I look?”
Of course I am, but I’m not gonna be a jerk about it. It suddenly occurred to Jane that she hadn’t seen Vieve around before because the girl had hidden herself away. She felt bad and thought about saying something nice, but she couldn’t come up with anything other than cheesy clichés. So she just shrugged and said, “I’m a big fan of colored hair. Always wanted to dye mine purple, but my dad would kill me.”
It was a lame attempt at a joke, and yet Vieve smiled—a wide, genuine mix of amusement, relief, and happiness. Jane didn’t think her dumb comment merited such a response, but she was glad that Vieve no longer looked scared.
“So.” Jane flicked a lock of dark brown hair out of her face. “What’s up?”
“Someone’s out to get me.” Vieve shifted her weight nervously. “It’s my A-Comp entry. They say I violated the ban on artificial intelligence. And since that’s an interstellar law, they’re taking it very seriously. They haven’t arrested me yet, obviously, but if they do… they could send me to a prison planet. For life.”
Questions exploded in Jane’s mind, from the impressed—How did you manage to code an AI?—to the curious—What’s the program for?—to the worried—What’re you gonna do? But the one that made it out her mouth first was: “You finished already?”
The A-Comp’s rules said that you could turn in your program any time before the deadline, and the judge, Dean Florentina Reyes of the Thern School of Cyberengineering, reviewed entries as they rolled in. Everyone would present their creations at a public assembly, and then the winners would be announced. Some people thought getting your entry in early would impress the judge more, but Jane hadn’t known that someone had done it.
Vieve nodded in response to the question. “I wanted to finish as fast as possible so I wouldn’t have to hang around here the whole time. Thought I could take a few days off before the presentation, get away from all these rumor-spreading dirtballs. But now they’ve put me on probation, which means I can’t leave Kozen Float until they either arrest me or clear me. I’m not betting on the latter, especially since everyone hates me for existing.”
Guilt pricked at Jane’s conscience. She hadn’t been among the busybodies who’d talked smack about Vieve, but she hadn’t stopped them, either. And she couldn’t deny the knee-jerk sense of revulsion she’d experienced when she’d first seen Vieve. Cyborgs were weird and unnatural—that was what everyone else said.
But it wasn’t Vieve’s fault her starship had crashed. And who could blame the people who’d saved her life for using machines to restore her body?
“That sucks,” Jane muttered. “Um…”
“Okay, let’s get this part over with.” Vieve put her hands on her hips. “Yes, most of me got replaced. No, not including my brain, though I do have implants to connect me to my metal bits. Yes, I can feel with them, so don’t punch my arm, thinking I won’t notice. No, I don’t have wires in my gut.” She swept her hand from her stomach to her chest. “This is all organic, though not all of it is what I was born with. They grew me a new set of lungs in the lab, but if you looked at them, they’d look just like yours.”
“What about your face?” Jane’s curiosity got the better of her, and she figured as long as Vieve was in a show-and-tell mood, she might as well ask.
“Skull got crushed, so they reconstructed it with metal. Sadly, they can’t grow bones yet. They can create new organic stuff for anything in your torso, though, and they only give you mechanical parts if they don’t have anything squishy.” She smirked jokingly. “Which means if you do meet someone with wires in their gut or with a mechanical shoulder or something, he’s an actual bot.” Her expression sobered. “Hurt like a mother to get all this done, but it beats dying.”
“Sorry you had to go through all that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Vieve rolled her eyes. “I’m a real sob story. Get smashed up in a crash, then shunned for surviving. Wanna know what my entry was? A conversation bot, so I’d have someone to talk to again. Not exactly original but whatever. Reyes thought I created an AI that could respond as if human, which is too close to an artificial life to be legal.” She let out a dry laugh. “I wish I were that good! But no, I just faked it really, really well. Pieced together a ton of prerecorded responses, bit by bit, until I made something that reacted like a real person would, without actually being alive. Which I could prove if I just showed them the code, but someone deleted it from the judge’s computer.”
Jane nodded, understanding. “They think you did it to cover your tracks.”
“Yup. I don’t know who set me up—or who I can trust. I need help, though. I don’t really know anyone here, but… you seem different from the other contestants. More real, not so stuck-up. So I thought I’d take my chances.”
Jane knitted her eyebrows. She didn’t doubt the story. Vieve had no reason to lie. And she certainly wouldn’t have reached out to Jane, who didn’t even know her, unless she had no other options. Jane wondered who would be twisted enough to ruin someone’s life over a contest. That had to be why the culprit had done it, right? Take Vieve out for a better shot at the prize?
The competition’s sponsor, Acuitas, was an influential Net company, and they would award the winning contestant and his or her school with hefty checks. But only elite schools were invited to take part, and all the contestants were already rich, so it wasn’t the cash they sought. Rather, it was an internship dripping with prestige no money could buy. The winner would spend three months working for and learning from arguably the greatest master of code in programming history: Marcus Streger, the head honcho of all things programmed at Acuitas. The only thing better would have been interning for the President of Kydera or the Chairman of the Interstellar Confederation.
And apparently, someone wanted it bad enough to frame Vieve. Which meant it was someone Jane knew. And whoever it was probably wouldn’t stop at one contestant, so Jane had to watch her back, too.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
Vieve hesitated. “You’re… um… really connected, right? I was hoping you could use your pull to convince the judge to leave me alone before the interstellar authorities get involved. You know, withdraw the accusation and say it was all a misunderstanding. Which it is.”
Jane pursed her lips. Yes, she hung out with powerful people, so calling her “connected” wasn’t wrong. Her dad was the famous Victor Colt, who ran the most powerful bank in the galaxy. And she was dating the son of Melchior Ramos—a.k.a. Mr. President.
But she was just a schoolgirl and not a particularly special one. Dad had always told her she could go farther in life by being pretty than by being smart. According to him, her best career option was politician’s wife—hence the beaming “I’m so proud” he’d given her when he’d learned she’d snagged Zared Ramos.
Still, she had to do something. And she hadn’t missed the part where Vieve had said she trusted her. If it was just connections Vieve wanted, she coul
d’ve gone straight to Zared—who, along with the student presidents of the other schools, had come to Kozen Float to supervise his peers. Or George Blumenthal, the contestant from East Olara Secondary School, whose dad owned one of the galaxy’s biggest tech conglomerates. Or any of the other heirs and heiresses taking part in this competition for the Interstellar Confederation’s most elite schools.
So there must have been something about Jane that Vieve believed in—though what, Jane couldn’t guess, other than that she was “real.” Whatever that means anymore. She wasn’t above faking her way into getting what she wanted, but the act never lasted long. Because in the end, she could only be herself; she didn’t know how to be anyone else.
Jane hadn’t realized how long she’d hesitated, but Vieve must have taken it for a silent refusal, because she said, “Forget it. This was stupid.”
“Wait!” Jane grabbed Vieve’s arm as the other girl started to leave. The touch of metal where there should have been flesh made her stomach twist, but she ignored the sensation. “I’ll help you!”
Vieve turned to face her. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Jane released her grip. “Sorry, I was just thinking about what I could do. I mean, I don’t wanna promise something if I can’t deliver.”
“Any help would great.” Vieve relaxed visibly. “Thank you… seriously. I wouldn’t have messaged you if I weren’t desperate.”
“I’ll do my best. One question, though: how do you know I didn’t set you up?”
Vieve grinned. “Because you snuck out alone to meet a stranger in the dark, just because someone called for help. Gotta be one of the good guys to do that.”
Jane snorted. She’s got a point. “So meeting here was a test?”
“Yeah. You passed.”
“Ugh, you suck! All right, let’s get outta here. This place gives me the creeps.”
