The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12

by Jonathan Strahan

  “You don’t know CPR, do you?”

  “You’ll be fine.” Callum cycled, rain or shine, rich or poor, right through the Singularity. “I know you think I was an idiot, but it’s not that simple.”

  Dan sat on the floor and put his head on his knees. “Please don’t tell me that it was all a double bluff: our AI masters pretended to reveal themselves, then allowed you to discover that they really hadn’t, in order to convince you that they don’t exist. Of all the even-numbered bluffs, the less-famous ‘zero bluff’ cancels itself out just as thoroughly, while attracting even less attention.”

  But Callum was in no mood to see his faith mocked, and if his Shroud of Turin had failed its carbon dating, that demanded a conspiracy at least as elaborate as his original, theological claims.

  “It’s not as if I took that Reddit post at face value,” he said vehemently. “I checked the Wikipedia article on one-way functions before I did anything else. And I swear, the formula was still listed as a high-confidence candidate. There was even a link to some famous complexity theorist saying he’d run naked across a field at MIT if it was ever disproved in his lifetime.”

  “Maybe he’d already seen an early draft of the paper; it’s so hard to find good excuses for compulsive exhibitionism.”

  “Last week, I went back to Wikipedia and looked at the edit history. That part of the article was actually updated to take account of the Delhi result, months before I read the page.”

  “But then some vandal rolled it back?”

  “No. Or at least, if that’s what happened, the edit history doesn’t reflect it.”

  Dan’s breathing had slowed now; he raised his head. “OK. So the trolls didn’t just edit the article, they had the skills to cover their tracks. That’s sneaky, but—”

  “‘Sneaky’ isn’t the word for it! I’ve been comparing notes with people online, and either the article was edited thousands of times in the space of a couple of days—all without raising any flags with Wikipedia—or the edit history is actually correct, but certain people were fed the older version, somehow.”

  Dan gazed across the floor at all the crates he needed to unpack before Janice arrived with Carlie. “Someone messed with your head, and you’re angry. I get it. But that doesn’t mean you have a personal cyber-stalker, who knew exactly when you’d taken the bait and jumped in to prop up all the other pieces of fake scenery as you walked by each one of them.”

  Callum was silent for a while. Then he said, “The thing is, when we thought it was real, we weren’t doing too badly. We were keeping things together: fixing each other’s stuff, doing food runs out into the countryside.”

  “Practicing your Linda Hamilton chin-ups, learning to fire rocket launchers...”

  Callum laughed, but then caught himself. “I can think of a few countries where it might have ended up like that.”

  Dan said, “So look on the bright side.”

  “Which is?”

  “You can still play Terminator: Resistance for as long as you like, repairing your analog gadgets and running a clandestine food co-op under the radar of the digital banking system. All without turning into survivalist nut-jobs, or worrying about killer robots trying to assassinate your leaders.”

  WHEN JANICE AND Carlie arrived, they were accompanied by Carlie’s friend, Chalice, who’d heard so much from Carlie about the family’s glorious new abode that she’d talked her mother into letting Janice whisk her away for a quick tour.

  “Come and see my bedroom!” Carlie demanded. Dan hadn’t even reassembled the shelves there, but the sheer novelty of the place seemed to be enough to keep his daughter enchanted, and if her friend was unimpressed she was polite enough not to show it.

  At least the fridge had been running long enough that they had some cold fruit juice to offer their guest when the tour was over.

  “Chalice’s mother has her own fashion line, and her own perfumes, just like Japonica,” Carlie explained, as she dabbed a forefinger curiously into the ring of condensation her glass had left on the table.

  “Aha.” Dan glanced questioningly at Janice, who returned an expression of pure agnosticism.

  “I don’t want that kind of high-pressure lifestyle myself,” Chalice said. “I just want people to be able to look at the pictures of my ordinary day, and see how to stay healthy and stylish on a budget.”

  Janice said, “I think it’s time I drove you home.”

  Dan went to put up the shelves. When he was done, he toured the flat himself and took stock of things. The place looked even smaller now they’d furnished it, but it was clean, and the rent was reasonable. They’d got out of the mortgage just in time, and managed to land on their feet.

  WHEN CARLIE WAS in bed, Janice said, “I have some news.”

  She was fidgeting with her wedding ring, which was a bad sign; when she was stressed, she got eczema on her fingers.

  “We’re going to end the strike. No one can hold out any more.”

  “OK.” Dan wasn’t surprised; the tribunal had ruled a week before that the nurses should return to work and re-start negotiations, and the decision had come with a deadline and the threat of fines for non-compliance.

  “But the hospital’s already sent out dismissal notices to twenty percent of the workforce.” Janice held up her phone. The message was shorter than Dan’s own conversation with Human Resources.

  “I’m sorry.” Dan took her hand. Her job had been ten times harder than his—and though she’d worked in the same ward for the last eight years, they’d never made her position permanent. As a casual employee, she wouldn’t get a cent in severance pay. “At least we’ll have a bit left over from the equity in the house, once the settlement goes through.”

  “Enough to keep us afloat for three months?” she asked. That was how long they’d have to wait before they’d be eligible for the JobSearch Allowance.

  “It should be.”

  “‘Should’?”

  Dan was meant to be on top of their finances; it was the one thing he was supposed to be good at. “If we’re careful,” he said. “And if nothing unexpected happens.”

  8

  DAN PARKED A hundred meters down the street from Graham’s house, and prepared to wait. For the last three days, he’d managed to spend an hour in the same spot without attracting any attention from the police or local residents, but if he was challenged he was willing to risk claiming that he’d come to visit his friend to discuss a personal matter, only to suffer cold feet. It sounded pathetic, but if the cops knocked on Graham’s door to test the story he was unlikely to flatly deny knowing Dan, and he might well be capable of sincerely believing that Dan could experience both an urge to confide in him, and a degree of reticence when it came to the crunch.

  His phone rang; it was his sister Nina.

  “How’s Adelaide?” he asked.

  “Good. But we’re leaving next week.”

  “Really? Going where?”

  “Seville.”

  “You’re moving to Spain?”

  “No,” she replied, amused. “Seville as in Seville Systems—it’s the new town around the solar farm. It’s only about three hundred kilometers away.”

  Dan had heard of a big new solar farm about to come online in South Australia, but he’d pictured it in splendid isolation. “Why are you moving to live next to a giant array of mirrors? If they’re going to be selling power to half the country, I’m sure you’ll be able to plug in from Adelaide.”

  “The shire did a deal with the operators, and they’re setting up a new kind of community there. Locally grown food, zero carbon housing... it’s going to be fantastic!”

  “OK. But what will you do up there?” Nina had trained as a social worker, but as far as Dan knew she hadn’t been able to find a job in years.

  “Whatever I want,” she replied. “Part of the deal with the company is a universal basic income for the residents. I’ll have plenty of ways to pass the time, though; I can keep on with my paintings,
or I can work with disadvantaged youth.”

  “OK.”

  “You should come!” Nina urged him. “You and Janice and Carlie... we’d have a great time.”

  Dan said, “No, we’re too busy. There are a lot of opportunities we’re looking into here.”

  “At least ask Janice,” Nina insisted. “Promise me you’ll think about it.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Dan said. The courier’s van was pulling up in front of Graham’s house. “Call me when you get there, you can give me an update.”

  “All right.”

  Graham walked out with a white cardboard box about a meter across, and held it up with the bar-code visible so the van would accept it. A hatch slid open, and he placed the package inside.

  When the hatch closed, Graham slapped the side of the van, as if there were a human inside who needed this cue to know that he’d finished. As the van drove off, Dan half expected him to raise a hand in farewell, but he lowered his eyes and turned away.

  Dan didn’t risk driving past the house; he circled around the block, catching up with the yellow-and-red van as it approached the arterial road he’d guessed it would be taking, unless this mysterious Medici just happened to live in the same suburb as their Michelangelo. When it turned, heading east, Dan managed to get into the same lane, a couple of cars behind it.

  The van maintained its course for ten minutes, twenty minutes, ascending the income gradient. Dan had already spent enough time rehearsing his encounter with Graham’s patron; now he just tried to block the script from his mind so he wouldn’t start second-guessing himself. In the script, he had phrased his request as a business proposition, in language so oblique that even if the whole thing was recorded, half of any jury would refuse to interpret it as blackmail.

  He wasn’t proud of himself, but he had to get the family over the line somehow. The government’s computers had convinced themselves that he and Janice had willfully frittered away their savings, so they were facing an increased waiting period for income support. Dan had spent the last six weeks trying to understand the basis for the decision, in the hope of having it reversed, but he had been unable to extract any coherent narrative from the department’s online portal. Apparently some fly-spot in the multidimensional space of all welfare applicants’ financial profiles had ended up correlated with profligacy, and that was that: once you fell into the statistical red zone, no one was obliged to point to any single act you’d committed that was manifestly imprudent.

  The van shifted lanes, preparing to turn at the next set of lights. Dan was surprised; anyone who could afford sixty grand a year for designer porn ought to be a little more upmarket when it came to real estate. He smiled grimly; when a few hundred thousand data points couldn’t separate his behavior from that of a welfare cheat, who was he to start profiling aficionados of Graham’s special talent?

  The van turned north; Dan followed. The street was mixed residential, with well-maintained but unspectacular houses, retail strips, occasional office blocks.

  As it approached a row of fast-food restaurants, the van slowed, then turned into the carpark. Dan was confused; even if it was able to make time for another pick-up along the way, because the ice-cream cake was so well-insulated against the afternoon heat, this was an odd site to do it. Was there a driver on board, after all? Dan hadn’t actually seen into the front of the vehicle. Despite its uniform nationwide livery, the courier company was a franchise; maybe one local owner-operator had decided to buck the trend and sit behind a steering wheel.

  Dan followed the van into the carpark. It still hadn’t settled on a bay, despite passing half a dozen empty spots, but maybe the driver wanted to get closer to the Indian take-away at the far end of the strip. He stayed well behind, but decided not to risk parking yet, gesturing to an approaching station wagon to take the bay that he seemed to be coveting.

  The van stopped beside a dumpster. The lid was propped up, angled low enough to keep out the elements but still leaving an opening at the side so large that all but the most uncoordinated members of the public who lobbed their trash in as they drove past would stand a good chance of succeeding.

  The hatch opened at the side of the van, and Graham’s pristine white box emerged, riding on a gleaming stainless steel plate. When the platform was fully extended the box sat motionless, and Dan clung for a moment to a vision of the rightful recipient, appearing from nowhere in a designer hoodie to snatch up their prized fetish-dessert and dash from the carpark to a limousine waiting on the street. Perhaps a whole convoy of limousines, with decoys to render pursuit impossible.

  But then some hidden mechanism gave the box a push and it toppled in to join the chicken bones and greasy napkins.

  9

  “WE’LL MOVE IN with my mother,” Janice decided.

  “She has one spare room. Which she uses for storage.” Dan could feel his sweat dampening the sheet beneath him. The night wasn’t all that warm, but his body had started drenching his skin at random moments, for no reason he could fathom.

  “We can deal with the junk,” Janice said. “She’ll be glad to have it tidied up. I can sleep in the spare bed with Carlie, and you can sleep on the couch. It will only be for a couple of months.”

  “How do you know she’ll even agree to have us?”

  “Do you think she’d let her granddaughter sleep in a car?”

  “Do you think I would?” Dan replied.

  Janice pursed her lips reprovingly. “Don’t twist my words around. I know you’ve done everything you can. And I know I have too—which doesn’t make me feel any less guilty, but it makes it easier for me to swallow my pride. If we’d pissed all our savings away on... whatever the government’s brilliant algorithm thinks our vices are... then I’d probably be tearing my hair out in self-loathing while I tried to keep my voice calm on the phone to her, begging for that room. But we’ve done nothing wrong. We need to be clear about that, for the sake of our own sanity, then take whatever the next step is that will keep a roof over our heads.”

  DAN MUST HAVE fallen asleep around three, because when he woke at a quarter past four, he felt the special, wretched tiredness that was worse than not having slept at all.

  He rose and walked out of the bedroom. In the living room, he switched on his laptop and squinted painfully at the sudden brightness of the screen. He went through the ritual of checking the JobSeekers site, TaskRabbit, and a dozen other places that supposedly offered business and employment opportunities, but—once you weeded out the pyramid schemes and the outright phishing scams—never seemed to carry anything legitimate for which he had the skills or the capital.

  His mail program beeped softly. He kept his eyes averted from the alert that came and went on the upper right of the screen; he didn’t want to know about yet another plea from one of the charities he’d stopped supporting. What did he actually bring to the world, now? If he disappeared at this moment, it would be as if the air had closed in on empty space.

  He opened the program to delete the unread message, but he didn’t succeed in going through the motions without seeing the sender. The email was from Baker and Saunders, the American law firm. The subject line read: Settlement offer.

  Dan opened the message. His eyes were still bleary; he had to enlarge the text to read it. Deepity Systems were prepared to settle out of court. They were offering a payment of thirty thousand dollars per year, for five years, to every single litigant in Dan’s age and skill cohort.

  He re-read the message a dozen times, searching for the downside: the toxic fine print that would turn the victory sour. But he couldn’t find it. He opened the attachment, the formal agreement the lawyers had drafted; it was five times longer than the summary, and ten times harder to follow, but there’d been a time when he’d been used to reading financial contracts, and none of the language set alarm bells ringing.

  Just before dawn, Janice emerged from the bedroom.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked, sitting beside him.
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  He switched back to the body of the email and slid the laptop across so she could read it. He watched her frowning in disbelief as the scale of the offer sank in.

  “Is this real?”

  Dan was silent for a while. It was a good question, and he needed to be honest with her.

  “If I sign this,” he said, “then I believe we’ll get the money they’re promising. The only thing I’m not sure about is... why.”

  “What do you mean? Presumably they’re afraid that the courts might make them pay even more.”

  Dan said, “If you were a tech mogul, what would your fantasy of the near-term future be?”

  “Colonies on Mars, apparently.”

  “Sticking to Earth, for now.”

  Janice was losing patience, but she played along. “I don’t know. That business keeps booming? That my stock options keep going through the roof?”

  “But what if a large part of your business consists of selling things that put people out of work. Including many of the people who actually pay for the things you’re trying to sell.”

  “Then you’ve screwed yourself, haven’t you?”

  Dan said, “Unless you can find a way to keep your customers afloat. You could try to talk the wealthier governments into paying everyone a UBI—and sweeten it a bit by offering to pitch in with a bit more tax yourself. You and your machines become the largest sector of the economy; what used to be the labor force is reduced to the role of consumer, but the UBI plugs them into the loop and keeps the money circulating—without bread-lines, without riots in the street.”

  “Well, they can dream on,” Janice replied. “Whatever Nina’s got going in Seville, that’s never going to be universal.”

  “Of course not,” Dan agreed. “Between the politics, and the different ideas everyone has about personal responsibility, it’s never going to fly. Not as one size fits all. But you know, the computers at Thriftocracy always managed to find a repayment plan that suited every client. Once you’ve gathered enough information about someone, if your goal isn’t actually harmful to them you can usually find a way of repackaging it that they’re willing to swallow.”