Year's Best SF 1

by David G. Hartwell

  Perhaps he tried. His mouth shaped something more articulate than a scream. But it was against his nature to give out free information. He couldn't break the habit of a lifetime in an instant. And then he was gone.

  For a minute I was too frightened and sick to move.

  Then, rocked with a sense of my own vulnerability, I got out of there—fast.

  The next day, I learned what had happened to Sammy Hood. He had been disconnected, violently and forever.

  I had to see Bloom. I went out to the Grit. The Grit is totally off-line. It was slapped together during a Warhol-burst of eco-chic. It burned bright for about as long as it took people to realize that they were really off the Broad Highway, really without Access. Now the Grit was nothing but bottom-dwellers, godtalkers, crazies. And my goofy partner Bloom. It was the last place you would expect to find a virtual freak like Bloom.

  I asked him about that. “It makes the rest realer,” he said, looking around the place like he'd just noticed it himself.

  Bloom was living in an old two-mod sprawl off a dirt road. There was tall grass in the yard, twisted, spindly trees, grasshoppers. It made me want to laugh. Organic is so goddamn sincere. Look, I'm a real tree, a dirty, sap-leaking, crooked, bug-infested real tree. Love me. Yeah, sure.

  Bloom hadn't shaved since I last saw him, and—if it were possible—he had grown even paler.

  I told him about Sammy Hood. Someone had stuck a pressure bomb to the side of Sammy's Deprive chamber. Sammy Hood was floating in the Big R, blood oozing from his ears, while I watched his mock-up disintegrate.

  I'd gleaned that info from a deep sink planted at Sony Corp. It was news that would never make the Window. Imagine the panic, the failure of faith, if Com Wick wasn't safe?

  Until now, it had been safe.

  “You can't get past Security at ComWick,” I said.

  Bloom nodded. “Yeah. Unless you are Security. Or unless you own Security.”

  This was poison info. Pick it up, and you are instantly irradiated, a walking leper. No thanks. I let it lie.

  I told Bloom about the interference on the Highway, the crying.

  Suddenly, Bloom looked lost, looked like he was about three years old, an orphan waking on one of Jupiter's smaller moons. He looked like I'd sucker-punched him in the gut.

  “That's Zera,” he said. “That's Zera rifting.”

  Zera. I was hoping that glitch in his brain had healed. Not so. He'd done considerable brooding. He was convinced that Zera Terminal was causing the disturbance.

  Theoretically, a surge could activate peripherals. Holos were free-functioning artificials, and one AI could react to another. An amok could cause turbulence in related programs. In practice, it just didn't happen.

  I said as much to Bloom. How did he explain it?

  Bloom rubbed his palms on his thighs and rocked in his chair. He seemed embarrassed by what he had to say. He studied the floor. “I think they were having a sexual, uncontracted relationship in Big R. I think that's what did it. When the actors updated, the artificials couldn't handle the new information; it rifted them.”

  Real sex with a holo fantasy co-star's source would have been a Morals violation, and it would have offlined Trumble forever, and it was, of course, disgusting, the sort of perversion that could cause an esteem devaluation throughout all of Entertainment.

  It would explain Jell Baker's hysteria. If that scandal leaked to the Window, Baker would be out of work. Legals would be the only humans he talked to for the next fifty years.

  “She's still out there, Marty,” Bloom said. “She's still out there, and she's hurt.”

  Bloom wanted to go under the Highway right away.

  “Tomorrow's soon enough,” I said.

  I went home. I retreated to my rain forest, jacking the oxygen way up, lowering the temp, setting the rain for a slow drizzle. I contacted Jell Baker.

  “Who is Zera Terminal's source?” I asked. “You want help, you have to give me what you've got. I need that information.”

  “That's privileged,” he said. “No way do you get that.”

  “I can't work in the dark,” I said. “You want things smoothed or not?”

  “Sorry,” Baker said. “I got plenty of troubles without a source-privilege violation.”

  I sat in my room and ran the collapsed videos of American Midnight. I'm not a holoshow fan; I'm in the business. I had watched these only after Armageddon went amok and the job came my way. Then I'd been focused on Armageddon. This time around I studied his co-star, Zera.

  You've seen her, those big eyes and the fullness of her mouth. Her features are almost too lush for the chiseled oval of her face, but somehow it works, probably because of the innocence. This is a woman, you think, who trusts. This is a woman who finds everything new and good.

  There is usually some chill to a holo, some glint of the non-human intelligence that runs the programs. Zera almost transcended that. There was a human here, lodged in that sweet, surprised voice, that gawky grace, that wow in her eyes.

  It came down to a single quality, always rare, rarer in a land of artifice: Innocence.

  I slept and dreamed of Zera Terminal. I held her in my arms, felt the warmth of her as she pulled closer to me, heard her small, shining voice in my ear. She was singing, singing a children's song.

  Sally has a sweetheart,

  cold as ice,

  Johnny has a girlfriend

  don't like mice.

  She giggled.

  In the morning, Bloom and I went under the Highway. We entered through private Deprive tanks, a rich man's club called Mannikin. Their security was top notch, but I hired additional AI failsafes. Better paranoid than dead.

  The under-Highway was calm when we arrived, brighter than usual. It felt like the eye of the storm, and it was. We were on the street when the sky broke open, and hard, cold rain pounded us. The rain was gritty, as though there were sand in it. We fled the downpour, darting into a small slacker bar.

  The place was crowded—other refugees from the rain and some AI Personalities flashing smiles and phony resumés.

  “I'll get us a table,” I said, and I started out.

  I heard Bloom shout, and I turned and saw him dive back out into the rain. I pushed through the crowd and went after him.

  He was running flat out, and the sideways rain had slicked his shirt to the somehow ardent, yearning bones of his spine. This single detail pierced the blur of rain and low-res shadows and wavering storefronts. It frightened me when I recalled it later: Bloom, the skinny, dream-struck kid, urging his skeleton through the virtual storm. It frightened me, as did the single word he shouted: “Zera!”

  I ran after him, the gritty rain clawing my face. Bloom raced down an alley. I lowered my head against the rain and dashed across the street. I looked up just in time to see the buildings stretch and to hear the cold smack of meshing programs as the alley disappeared. Bits of trash, old readouts and superfluous machine imagings fluttered from the new wall.

  I ran on down the street, hesitated at the entrance to another alley, and plunged into it. I came out on another street, empty, swept by clattering rain.

  Bloom had disappeared from the under-Highway. I spent the rest of the day seeking him.

  I returned to the Big R with a sense of dread. What would I find? In Deprive, Bloom floated like an drunken angel.

  “No problem,” the private tech told me. “Everything is in order.”

  I nodded to this tech; said nothing. I increased security.

  Two weeks after Bloom's disappearance, Gloria and I had dinner to celebrate my success.

  “Smile,” Gloria said.

  “That would be dishonest,” I said. “A smile would not reflect the true state of my emotions. I'd be subject to a failure-to-disclose fine.”

  “It is sweet of you to worry about Bloom,” she said. “But he was never very stable. Perhaps he is happy wherever he is. He has nothing to do with us.”

  “Maybe he does,”
I said. “Jell Baker just gave me a fortune for cleaning up the Highway. I didn't do it.”

  Gloria smiled blandly. She raised her eyebrows in a gesture that said And so?

  She leaned forward, close enough for demerits if a peep had been watching. “I've been thinking of an amendment to our latest contract,” she whispered.

  I didn't respond.

  Gloria giggled. “A foreplay clause.”

  I didn't say anything. I wasn't in the mood.

  I waited for the Highway to explode, for chaos to come roaring down every byway. Nothing happened. A month went by and nothing happened. Bloom floated in luxury Deprive at the Mannikin.

  I kept going in, kept looking for him, but there wasn't a sign, not a word. He'd gone down the rabbit hole and left no trace.

  Seven weeks and a day after he went in, I heard from him.

  He contacted me over the little ComLink, an archaic alpha-terminal that I still used occasionally for failsafe codes. It was a secure line, being rarely traveled.

  The message came in on my personal mix:

  HI MARTY, I AM FINE.

  ZERA GETS BETTER EVERY DAY. BLOOM.

  I got another message two days later.

  MARTY. I AM IN LOVE.

  THERE ARE NO CONTRACTS HERE, BUT

  THAT DOESN'T MAKE MY LOVE ANY LESS.

  ZERA AGREES.

  YOU MUST COME AND VISIT.

  There were coordinates this time, and I went in immediately. I didn't know how deep the trauma was, how impaired he would be. I felt responsible. I had known he was delusional when I had let him accompany me that last time.

  The young couple were living in a cottage in the small rural mock-up that had been stored in the under-Highway when the holoshow Country Ways had dropped in the ratings and been retired.

  They were holding hands when I came into the yard. Bloom waved, turned and said something to Zera, then ran to me.

  He put an arm around my shoulder and led me back. “Don't spook her,” Bloom whispered. “She's fine, but be cool, okay?”

  “Zera,” Bloom said, “this is Marty.”

  Zera smiled, extended a hand. I felt the moth-touch of her fingers, then she giggled and turned away.

  She was lovely, breathtakingly so. She wore a yellow cotton dress and her hair was tied back with a green ribbon. A sudden image, crude and disorienting, came to me: Zera Terminal writhing in celebrity sex, back arched, thighs glistening with sweat.

  I shoved the vision away, heard Bloom speaking.

  “Come look at our garden,” he said.

  We walked around the cottage and into the back yard. Insects whirred in front of us. I snatched one from the air. It was an undetailed, buzzing program, a blur that tickled my palm.

  Zera ran into the garden, knelt, returned with a red tomato. “Here,” she said.

  “Thank you,” I said. Politely, I took a bite, and was surprised by the authenticity of the simulation.

  As the day went on, and Bloom realized that I was not going to do anything outrageous or hurtful, he relaxed.

  “It's good to see you,” Bloom said. “It's really great.”

  “You too,” I said.

  “Zera's looking great, isn't she?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I think I'm good for her.”

  We watched Zera kneel in the garden. She was utterly lost in the business of weeding. The ribbon in her hair had come undone, and long, raven coils spilled over her shoulders. The effect was at once wanton and innocent. I was on guard for prurient thoughts and so kept them at bay.

  Bloom went out to help her. Together they watered the garden. Zera turned the hose on Bloom and they laughed and wrestled for possession and the spume of water droplets enclosed them in bright, impossible protection.

  Their laughter came to me where I sat under the live oak.

  I did not say any of the things I had come to say. I did not take Bloom back with me. I did not threaten to have the Neuros come in and forcibly disconnect him from Deprive.

  I wished the young couple well. I told Zera how good it was to meet her.

  I saw the way blue electric lights skittered behind her eyes, and I said nothing about that either.

  “Isn't she beautiful?” Bloom said.

  “She is,” I said. “She is the world's most beautiful woman.”

  I left them to their dream cottage, to their small, fragile section in the V, and I busied myself in Big R and waited for the great, rolling doom to come. I knew it was coming—I was born knowing that—and that, finally, was why I had left Bloom there without an argument. Let him have whatever nourishment illusion offered, I thought. It would be brief enough.

  I didn't hear from him for two weeks. Then I received another message on the ComLink, arriving with new coordinates.

  That message came the day after the Broad Highway began to burn. The day after Baker called and said he would kill me. The day after every holoshow suffered static, earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, and plagues of locusts and flies.

  Just words on a screen. But I felt his anguish.

  LOVE ISN'T ENOUGH. I TRIED.

  BUT SHE HURTS SO BAD.

  SHE HURTS FROM THE BIG R.

  SHE CAN'T FORGET.

  I went to him immediately. The under-Highway had been stripped. It was stark, long flat stretches of road and gutted buildings. AIs functioned on minimal loop programs, responding to random stimuli.

  The couple had moved from the cottage. Bloom told me rural was nothing but stuttering patterns. Their new place broke my heart. It was just a box, a couple of sleep racks and some feed lines. It wavered like a dying scan, kept alive by nothing but desperate Will. Trust, Love, whatever you want to call it.

  Zera was still lovely, despite the blue storms behind her eyes and the new twist to her spine. She had some difficulty speaking. “You are the nice—nice—the Bloom's—friend friendly—having to do with friendship—goodwill. Hello.”

  The program was disintegrating.

  I took Bloom outside where the sky bubbled like red soup boiling.

  Bloom looked at me, and the smile he'd worn for Zera disappeared. I thought he would cry. His eyes were red. His lips were chapped and there was dried blood on his stubbled chin.

  “I tried,” he said. “I really tried.”

  His hands dropped to his sides as his voice grew thinner.

  “She's a holo,” I said. “She's an artificial intelligence mapped from a real person. But she's not real.”

  “Zera,” he moaned.

  I clutched his shoulder and shook him.

  “We've got to get out,” I said.

  “They hurt her too much,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The ones who did it. Whoever. All of them.”

  “We've got to go now,” I said.

  “It was worse,” he said. “It would have been bad enough if they were lovers in Big R. That would have been a major rift. But it was rape.”

  “No contract, you mean,” I said.

  Bloom shook his head. “No. Rape. The old meaning. Trumble raped her. Forced her against her will.”

  The under-Highway was coming apart around us. A shadow rolled over us and I looked up to see something dark and vast fly over on mechanical wings. It uttered shrieks of rage as it rose into the red sky.

  A drone exploded on the street, and its head rolled by, repeating a servant mantra. If there is anything I can do please…if there is anything I can do please…if there is anything I can do please.…

  I felt a chill deeper than any virtual prompt.

  “Of course,” I said, although I could not say then just what it was that had achieved clarity—horror alone, perhaps.

  “Her name,” I said. “What is her name?”

  “She won't tell me,” Bloom said. “It hurts her to remember. It causes…new disturbances. I think—”

  I saw her over his shoulder. She came out of the house, running. She was oscillating. She threw her arms in the air, her many, waverin
g arms, and screamed.

  “Zera!” Bloom shouted, and he turned and ran toward her. He embraced her.

  “Don't!” I yelled. Every action and reaction was too late.

  She tried, I think, to back away.

  Bloom erupted in flames, green flames that the collapsing walls reflected as they fell.

  Scales flowered on the street beneath my feet as it turned into a monstrous serpent and began to glide into a black pit.

  I leapt away, found something like a real street, and fled.

  “I'm sorry,” the tech said when he pulled me from Deprive.

  “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

  Gloria and I signed a special contract to attend Bloom's negation ceremony together.

  “That was uplifting,” Gloria said at the ceremony's conclusion. Bloom was of no particular faith, so a renowned logic had been hired to utter affirmations.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am inspired.”

  Gloria gave me a skeptical look.

  I was inspired, although not, perhaps, in the intended fashion. I was struck by the arbitrariness of events, of life's essential meaninglessness. I saw myself standing on the last shreds of the under-Highway, right before it blew, listening to my partner anguish over a renegade hologram, and I envied his emotion, his pain-embraced love.

  I resolved to find Zera's source. Listening to the Logic's voice drone on about essence and being and defined goodness, I knew that a lust for vengeance was all I had.

  I went home after the ceremony and called V-Concepts and they sent over two techs to dismantle the rain forest and install the latest neutrals. I wasn't ready to head out to the Grit, but I was beginning to weary of virtual specifics. Good timing. When Baker finished slapping suits on me, I'd be out of the business anyway.

  The techs knew their job, and they had the rain forest packed and the neutrals installed that same day. The white space felt a little stark, and I knew it would take some fine tuning.

  I sat in artificial twilight and watched the American Midnight playbacks. I watched them over and over again, mindlessly. I keyed loops, and I stared unblinking at the replicating images.