"You see, Jennifer?" said Randy.
Jennifer looked away.
"You don't care, do you?" said Randy.
Jennifer didn't answer.
"You see, we know humans," said the Slavemaker. "We know all about our subject peoples. That's why we will eventually rule the Universe. Humans only care about their freedom when they're young. Old people don't rebel."
"That's not true," said Randy.
A sound of metal plates clanking. A man walked into the room. His skin was dark metacarbon.
"Hello Daddy," said Jennifer.
"He's not your father," said Randy.
"Not biologically speaking, but he's the man who made me what I am," said Jennifer.
"Only so he could make a profit from you."
"Not just for that reason," said Jennifer's father, kissing her on the cheek. "I love her as well. There's something about a well-made piece of machinery. And Jennifer is the best."
He looked at his daughter.
"I hope you enjoyed your little excursion," he said. "But it's time. Reynaldo arrives tomorrow. We need to get you ready."
"I know," said Jennifer.
Her father looked at Randy.
"There's space in the flier if you'd like a ride back down to the plain."
Jennifer sat with her father as the flier descended.
"You always liked him, didn't you?" said her father.
"Yes," said Jennifer. "But not as much as you might think. I pity him too much. He'll always be too idealistic."
"Hmm," said her father.
Jennifer looked at him.
"We really did sell ourselves to the Slavemakers, didn't we?" she said.
"Do you care?" asked her father.
"Am I a slave now?"
"When someone can change your body, tell you what to do, tell you what to wear, even when you're going to mate, then you're their slave," said her father. "Does that bother you?"
Jennifer looked around the interior of the flier, decorated in white and gold. The floor beneath her feet was dusted in gold. The region of Jennifer had taken hold.
"Does it bother me?" said Jennifer, thoughtfully. "No, I don't suppose it does."
Her father looked out of the window.
"I can see your friend down there. He cares."
"That's good," said Jennifer. "It sort of relieves me of the responsibility. I can sit back and do what I want and hope that other people sort out the mess we're in."
Silence.
"Is that bad of me?" she said.
"It's human," said her father.
* * *
Survivors
Ron Collins | 2694 words
It was warm for early September, but Daytona Beach would have been busy even if the Sun wasn't blazing down. Hiram lay on a towel, propped up by his elbows, watching girls walk by. Waves slid up the beach, then slipped back toward the ocean like silent curtains. The half-moon drapes of wet sand left in the aftermath erupted with dimples made by mole crabs as they dug their way toward China.
"Look at 'em, man," Taylor said, burping as he threw another can of beer into the trash at the trunk of the car. Taylor was a junior at USF, majoring in something that would almost certainly lead to a life selling insurance. They were together with a group of guys—all friends from back at McKinley North high school, each enjoying a last blow-out before retreating to the hallowed halls of their chosen facilities of higher education, none of which would be populated with women in bikinis.
This was not what Hiram would have chosen to be doing. He had picked this host, however, and had learned long ago that making a host avoid things it would normally do was a bad idea.
"Them bugs always make me laugh," Taylor said.
"Not always," Hiram replied. He hated absolutes. "For example, you're not laughing now."
"You know what I mean."
"Yes," Hiram said. "I know what you mean."
What Taylor meant—according to Hiram— was that he, Taylor, was too damned stupid to see that the crabs were just doing what they were supposed to do, that they were a species whose entire universe was contained in the top hundred centimeters or so of the crust of the earth, and whose existence relied completely upon the unrelenting waves and the constantly shifting tides to keep them in places where the water broke and helped them collect the plankton that fed them. What Taylor meant was that he was too damned stupid to notice a life-and-death struggle even when it was happening right before his eyes.
It wasn't Taylor's fault. He was a human being. Their lives are too short, their connections too slight. They did not feel things as deeply or instinctively as Hiram could.
It wasn't fair, though. Why do these humans live, while his people pass into the realm of galactic history?
Using his hand as a visor, Hiram peered over the late afternoon wash to where the constellation Taurus would soon appear if it weren't still daylight.
"You wanna go to The Drop tonight," Taylor said, fishing another can from the cooler. "Those girls said they're gonna be there."
Hiram sipped his own beer, feeling an all-consuming sense of resignation at just how deep the need to procreate is in any species.
"Sure," he said. "The Drop sounds fine."
He had left his home star some eight thousand years ago, traveling in a stasis cocoon designed to give him comfort. It had not been bad, not really. The field worked for the most part, and he woke only three times for barely a year or two each.
He was also lucky that the first time his field broke, his home star had not yet been destroyed, so he was able to enjoy the ultrahigh frequency of the Pentali music they piped to him. He also received a steady stream of news-feeds that told him of the final preparations his people were making for their star to go nova. It made him weep to know that everyone he left behind was going to be gone soon, but he could not deny that listening to the feed also gave him a sense of pride larger than his body could contain. His were a noble people. They faced extinction with such beautiful dignity.
He, along with thousands of other chosen survivors, was their hope. They had been feted, and worshiped. Their memories had been loaded with every element of information about their culture and their history that could be stuffed into them. The survivors would carry the genetic content of their species wherever they went.
They were all his people had left.
So, with the stasis pod working mostly as designed, and flying at near the speed of light, the seven-thousand-year flight—give or take a few—was easy. Then his cocoon's analytical programs deemed the third planet of this remote solar system to be inhabited, and its piloting routines guided him through the atmosphere, providing him a fiery entry made in a golden blaze one evening late in a month the indigenous people called August. It took him some time to dig out, but when he did he quickly gathered his first host, a young man named Kanji who had come to investigate the fire in the sky. Kanji was a thin, wiry man who had worked in rice paddies his entire life.
It was through Kanji's eyes that the traveler got his first view of the nebula that had once been his home—a bright spot, visible even in daylight, that would eventually become known to human beings nearly eight hundred years later as the Crab Nebula.
Something had gone wrong, though. There were supposed to be more of him on this planet, but he had searched for a thousand years across hundreds of hosts and found nothing. No signs of other survivors, no signs of other crashes. So over the years, Hiram had come to the staggeringly heavy conclusion that he was the only traveler who had landed on this planet that humans called Earth.
Until now.
Hiram was so shocked he nearly dropped his beer mug.
She was on the dance floor all by herself, moving to the beat of a Maroon 5 song that was, thank the human Gods, most definitely not that thing about Jagger. Her dark hair was cut short, or he might have missed the telltale red dot at the nape of her neck even though the strobe lights pulsed at a marvelous quarter-second interval that helped him see it
glow slightly. She wore a pair of white jeans and a striped top that, when she raised her arms over her head, lifted to bare her naval.
The red dot was mesmerizing.
It was a twin to the one at the base of his own neck. It was a scar left when they took a host—the place where they entered the body and then drilled upward into the host's brain. For an instant he wondered if he had taken this girl as a host earlier —if the dot was one of his own making. But that couldn't be right. She was young, like Hiram's current host. He would not have forgotten something so recent.
He ran his palms down his pant legs. Was it possible? Seven thousand years in a cocoon, and a thousand scouring the planet, and he had never found another survivor. But he felt her. He sensed her presence with something humans might consider smell, but was really more of a warmth, or a tingle against the membranes of his host's nostrils. The red dot spoke to him, and the girl danced amid sound waves that rolled over him like a hot shower.
Yes. It was possible.
Taylor noticed his double-take and screamed into his ear as he put his hand on the small of Hiram's back. "She wants you, man! Get'er done!" Then he launched Hiram out of his seat.
He nearly crashed into the girl, but she had her eyes closed and didn't seem to notice.
He took a step back.
The girl turned in place, arms stretching up to the sky.
He wanted to reach out and touch that red dot. He wanted to feel the scar to make sure it wasn't just a tattoo or a birthmark.
"Are you gonna stare or are you gonna dance?" the girl yelled. She had consumed considerable quantities of alcohol.
Hiram was no dancer to begin with, and had only been in this host for a few weeks. So he just kind of bounced on his feet. The heat of the kids on the floor made him sweat. Another song replaced Maroon 5—a mash-up this time, Pink, D-Jive, and MoTzart KZ.
The girl's skin was milky. Her eyes were blue—not unheard of, but a bit of an oddity on one with such dark hair. His host body responded to hers. This close, he could smell the red dot.
There was no doubt.
She was a survivor. Another of his kind.
His head nearly exploded with questions. Every cell in his system wanted to link. His human eyesight grew wavy as his eyes teared up. Could it happen? Could the two of them be the ones to make their civilization whole again? Hiram struggled to find words. What do you say in a situation like this? Where have you been all my life? Do you come here often? When were you launched?
He reached out to her with his need to link, but she was vacant, a wall of silence.
"Do you want to go to the beach?" he asked when the next song transition came.
She ran a hand over his shoulder and up to cradle the back of his head, drawing him closer as if to kiss him. Her finger grazed his red dot. Her eyes grew suddenly wide, and she stopped moving as she was just now sensing him for the first time.
"No," she replied.
Hiram pressed closer, putting his hand on her waist. He felt her stiffen. The pressure of his hand seemed to keep her rooted in place as waves of sound played over them like surf.
"Can I get you a drink?"
"No," she said again. "I'm going to the ladies room." And she bolted through the crowd.
Hiram waited for nearly thirty minutes before asking another girl to check on her.
It was no use.
She was gone.
He felt a sense of loss deeper than any he could remember, a loss that shredded him as certainly as if she had exploded and sent stardust shrapnel across his universe.
Why had she run? What had he done wrong?
He tracked her, of course. To connect was ingrained in him, and knowing there was another survivor on the planet gave him renewed hope. She wasn't hard to find the first time. It took only a few dollars placed in the right palms and a bit of asking around in local hot spots.
But she ran again, and then her apartment was empty.
The next time he found her she was in Arkansas.
Then Vancouver.
Then she was tending bar and waiting tables at a pub in the tiny Scottish town of Pitlessie. Each time, she ran.
Then she went dark. Nothing. Was she dead?
Sixty years passed before he saw her again.
He was on a vacation tour of Africa, wearing a host named Kanady, a body that was thirtyfive-years old and that lived in the Caribbean. He worked at fishing docks and dealt genetically refined cocoa extract on the side. She was wearing a guide, a woman of Norwegian descent who had come to the veldt country when she was eight. Her name was Brita. It was a purely random happening, and it took her days before she recognized him and slipped away, this time escaping while their troupe was out camping, leaving her coworkers with the task of taking care of them, and trekking back on her own.
He sent her a notice, then, passed through the safari company.
"I thought you would like to know that I am through chasing you," he said. "Live a good life. I wish I knew you."
He was back home in Nassau, two weeks later, when she sent him the note that asked him to join her for dinner.
He put the paper into the pocket of his work shirt, and kept it there the rest of the day, thinking about Brita as he worked to mend nets and watched over a contractor who was up-fitting a power boat for a rich client. It was simple work, work that kept his mind occupied and left him feeling like he had accomplished something at the end of each day.
The Shanty was an open restaurant with a roof made of thatched palm leaves and a touristy view that looked out over emerald waves. The aromas of warm crab and cold fruit laced with alcohol drifted on the late afternoon breeze. The sun neared the horizon, and lit Brita's cheeks, which, since her Nordic skin was fair, seemed to be in a perpetual state of sunburn.
She was seated at a table overlooking the beach, drinking something orange. He sat down and ordered rum. They looked at each other over the distances of three feet and a thousand years. The waitress left a plate of papaya.
He reached to connect with her, but received only a cold, empty vacuum.
"Why don't you love me?" he finally said.
She stared over the surf and rolled her straw between her fingers.
"I'm broken," she finally said.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't be with you. I don't..." her voice broke. She took a deep breath through her nostrils, then drew on her drink, taking half of it down at once.
"I know what we are here for," she said. "I know what you expect. But I am blank. Don't you see? I cannot connect."
Suddenly it was clear. She had not been blocking him—not shunning him at all. Instead, she was damaged and unable to fulfill her purpose for being here on this planet. Maybe radiation in deep space had taken its toll. Maybe it was something else. All he could say for certain was that he looked at Brita and knew she blamed herself, and that she felt the weight of her people on her shoulders.
She didn't cry. He was impressed by that, though maybe he shouldn't have been. She didn't seem to display any emotion at all. Perhaps that was part of the problem. Or perhaps at one point Brita had despaired over her condition, but the years had left her with nothing but this cold resignation that radiated from her like a beacon.
He didn't say anything at first. Just reached out and touched her hand. How would he feel if he were the one damaged? How crushed would he be? He cleared his throat.
"You run because you're embarrassed."
"No."
He waited.
"I run because every time I see you it reminds me that I am a failure."
Kanady, who had been Hiram before that, and who had been many others prior to Hiram, sat back.
"I see," he said.
She pressed her lips, then sighed and reached for her purse.
"I wanted you to know why I can't see you again," she said.
He nodded, trying to comprehend this more fully as she slid off the stool and moved away, leaving him behind once again, passing the
bar to walk out the door.
"Look at those two," said a man at a table across the dining area. "I think they're breaking up."
"Tell me we'll never be that way, all right?" his partner replied with a hint of snark.
"Never, love. We'll never be that way."
If Kanady had overheard them he might have told them how humans are flawed, how their lives are too short to feel connections as deeply as those whose lives span millennia. Or maybe he would have just nodded and told them how lucky they were to live in such a condensed moment together, holding hands and connecting for only a few scant years, how lucky they were to have each other even if it were only for this brief moment in time.
But he did not hear them.
Instead, he put money on the table, and he left to follow Brita down the beach where she was walking away.
He needed to tell her he understood, and that he would always be here if she changed her mind. He needed to tell her she would be all right. But mostly he needed to tell her he didn't care about tomorrow, that he had long ago stopped worrying about whether he would be one of the pairings that might extend their species. He had learned that life isn't about tomorrow. Life is about today. Kanady needed her to know how lonely he was, how much he yearned for someone like her, someone who understood his pain and who he could understand in return. He needed her to understand how much it had meant to his life merely to know she existed.
As he walked across the beach, waves rolled over the sand to leave clear, dusky patches that erupted in mole crabs digging their way toward China.
* * *
A Star to Steer By
Jennifer R. Povey | 2797 words
They towed the Ai Weiwei back to the Lagrange point. The ship was more battered than any ship had a right to be, and still return.
In one piece would perhaps have been an exaggeration. Had the vessel held any crew before, it certainly did not now. The hull resembled, in places, a lace doily, more holes than reality. Both engines were more or less intact, but the port system drive was clearly fried, char marks around the exhaust.
In fact, it was obvious to any observer that the Ai Weiwei was a dead loss. This was not a ship that would fly again without the kind of total rebuild that cost more than a new ship, far more. The only reason to tow her in was for salvage. Recycling.
Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 Page 14
