Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 91

by Sean Williams

  April 1st, 2083

  Still no prank has been found. The world awaits as it did the previous year, with identical results. “Perhaps we are the prank,” Straight-Face declares. “You, me, all of us. His work is done. And the joke is on us.” Nobody listens to him, either. Fool’s Day celebrations achieve outrageous heights. There are more injuries, more deaths. All festive promises are met, no matter how extravagant.

  June, 2083

  Professor Marburg of New Leiden University reads a paper by a colleague in Spain who declares that the memeplex is now so complicated that its extent can no longer be accurately measured. This prompts a highly unnerving thought, one she keeps entirely to herself.

  At what point does one seriously consider the possibility that the memplex is alive? Perhaps not in the same way as a human; perhaps it possesses little more than reflexive self-awareness, like that of a puppy or a small child. But still, alive. What could that mean? What happens when it wakes up?

  September, 2083

  Professor Marburg, 59, has a dream about running down a tunnel full of people, all shouting at once. She wakes in a cold sweat. The image haunts her for days, leading her to a new and entirely chilling notion concerning the interaction between d-mat and the memeplex.

  At any given moment the network contains millions of people, crisscrossing the earth from end to end. All their atoms, all their molecules, all their cells, pass relentlessly from one node to another as data. Data that is in theory available. And nature never leaves anything lying around unused. With such a great resource in existence, what are the odds that so many moving brain cells would never achieve spontaneous life? Life that might evolve in fits and starts, depending on the environment around it? Feeding on all the crazy things that humans believe? A thriving memeplex, for example . . .

  January, 2084

  Professor Marburg doesn’t know whether to laugh or weep. If a mind has been accidentally created by the movement of people through the d-mat network, then Straight-Face may well be right, albeit for the wrong reasons. The Fool is all of us, and we are The Fool.

  She has just remembered that, in Scotland, someone who has been tricked on April Fool’s Day is known as a gowk, which is an old word for cuckoo.

  March 31st, 2084

  Professor Marburg of New Leiden University writes her final blog post. In it she explains her theory and elaborates on the almost godlike potential of this emergent organism. We are as tiny compared to it as our cells are to us, she says. But we are not entirely insignificant, not in a chaotic system: butterfly wings, remember? Her work comprises just one cell in that vast creature, and it made a significant difference. She provided a necessary piece of the puzzle for the creature to become aware of itself, via the memeplex. She could even claim to be its midwife, if she wanted to.

  She does not want to claim anything of the sort. All she wants is to stop worrying about the consequences for the entire human race of what she has inadvertently done.

  Professor Marburg, 60, composes another note, which she leaves in an obvious place, and then she goes to sleep.

  April 1st, 2084

  Fool’s Day has supplanted Halloween as the most popular holiday celebration in the world, behind only New Year’s Day. Straight-Face’s annual Sober Address is watched by millions. The death rate is the highest so far, but The Fool is not directly implicated in any way. Next year, The Fool will turn 10, if the phenomenon continues unchecked.

  Few hear about the death of an obscure academic in a small European city, even fewer the typo in her suicide note. However, the coroner makes a note of it in his report, an electronic document readily available to anyone who cares to read it.

  In the suicide note, instead of “I have cancer,” Professor Marburg wrote, “I am cancer.”

  Careless, the coroner observes, for a woman of such impressive intellect.

  About the Author

  #1 New York Times bestselling Sean Williams lives with his family in Adelaide, South Australia. He’s written some books–forty at last count–including the Philip K. Dick-nominated Saturn Returns, several Star Wars novels and the Troubletwisters series with Garth Nix. Twinmaker is the first in a new series that takes his love affair with the matter transmitter to a whole new level (he just received a PhD on the subject so don’t get him started). “The Cuckoo” is part of that universe.

  Going After Bobo

  Susan Palwick

  I was the only one home when the GPS satellites finally came back online. It was already dark out by then, and it had been snowing all afternoon. I’d been sitting at the kitchen table with my algebra book, trying to concentrate on quadratic equations, and then the handheld beeped and lit up and the transmitter signal started blipping on the screen, and I looked at it and cursed and ran upstairs to double-check the signal position against my topo map. And then I cursed some more, and started throwing on warm clothing.

  I’d spent five days staring at my handheld, praying that the screen would light up again, please, please, so I’d be able to see where Bobo was. The only time he’d even stayed away from home overnight, and it was when the satellites were out. Just my luck.

  Or maybe David had planned it that way. Bobo had been missing since Monday, the day the satellites went down, and David had probably opened the door for him when I wasn’t looking, like always, and then given him an extra kick, gloating because he knew I wouldn’t be able to follow Bobo’s signal.

  I hadn’t been too worried yet, on Monday. Bobo was gone when I got back from school, but I thought he’d come home for dinner, the way he always did. When he didn’t, I went outside and called him and checked in neighbors’ yards. I started to get scared when I couldn’t find him, but Mom said not to worry, Bobo would come back later, and even if he didn’t, he’d probably be okay even if he stayed out overnight.

  But he wasn’t back for breakfast on Tuesday, either, and by that night I was frantic, especially since the satellites were still down and I had no idea where Bobo was and I couldn’t find him in any of the places where he usually hung out. Wednesday and Thursday and Friday were hell. I carried the handheld with me everyplace, waiting for it to light up again, hunched over it every second, even at school, while Johnny Schuster and Leon Flanking carried on in the background the way they always did. “Hey, Mike! Hey Michael—you know what we’re doing after school today? We’re driving down to Carson, Mike. Yeah, we’re going down to Carson City, and you know what we’re going to do down there? We’re going to—”

  Usually I was pretty good at just ignoring them. I knew I couldn’t let them get to me, because that was what they wanted. They wanted me to fight them and get in trouble, and I couldn’t do that to Mom, not with so much trouble in the family already. I didn’t want her to know what Johnny and Leon were saying; I didn’t want her to have to think about Johnny and Leon at all, or why they were picking on me. Our families used to be friends, but that was a long time ago, before my father died and theirs went to jail. Johnny and Leon think it was all my father’s fault, as if their own dads couldn’t have said no, even if my dad was the one who came up with the idea. So they’re mean to me, because my father isn’t around anymore for them to blame.

  It was harder to ignore them the week the satellites were down. Mom’s bosses were checking up on her a lot more, because their handhelds weren’t working either. We got calls at home every night to make sure she was really there, and when she was at work, somebody had to go with her if she even left the building. Just like the old days, before the handhelds. And God only knew what David was up to. I guess he was still going to his warehouse job, driving a forklift and moving boxes around, because his boss would have called the probation office if he hadn’t shown up. But he wasn’t coming home when he was supposed to, and every time he did come home, he and Mom had screaming fights, even worse than usual.

  So I had five days of not knowing where Bobo was, while Johnny and Leon baited me at school and Mom and David yelled at each other at home. And t
hen finally the satellites came back online on Friday. The GPS people had been talking about how they might have to knock the whole system out of orbit and put up another one—which would have been a mess—but finally some earthside keyboard jockey managed to fix whatever the hackers had done.

  Which was great, except that down here in Reno it had been snowing for hours, and according to the GPS, I was going to have to climb 3,200 feet to reach Bobo. Mom came in just as I was stuffing some extra energy bars in my pack. I knew she wouldn’t want me going out, and I wasn’t up to fighting with her about it, so I’d been hoping the snow would delay her for a few hours, maybe even keep her down in Carson overnight. I should have known better. That’s what Mom’s new SUV was for: getting home, even in shitty weather.

  She looked tired. She always looks tired after a shift.

  “What are you doing?” she said, and looked over my shoulder at the handheld screen, and then at the topo map next to it. “Oh, Jesus, Mike. It’s on top of Peavine!”

  I could smell her shampoo. She always smells like shampoo after a shift. I didn’t want to think about what she smells like before she showers to come home.

  “He’s on top of Peavine,” I said. “Bobo’s on top of Peavine.”

  Mom shook her head. “Honey—no. You can’t go up there.”

  “Mom, he could be hurt! He could have a broken leg or something and not be able to move and just be lying there!” The signal hadn’t moved at all. If it had been lower down the mountain, I would have thought that maybe some family had taken Bobo in, but there still weren’t any houses that high. The top of Peavine was one of the few places the developers hadn’t gotten to yet.

  “Sweetheart.” Mom’s voice was very quiet. “Michael, turn around. Come on. Turn around and look at me.”

  I didn’t turn around. I stuffed a few more energy bars in my pack, and Mom put her hands on my shoulders and said, “Michael, he’s dead.”

  I still kept my back to her. “You don’t know that!”

  “He’s been gone for five days now, and the signal’s on top of Peavine. He has to be dead. A coyote got him and dragged him up there. He’s never gone that high by himself, has he?”

  She was right. In the year he’d had the transmitter, Bobo had never gone anywhere much, certainly not anywhere far. He’d liked exploring the neighbors’ yards, and the strips of wild land between the developments, where there were voles and mice. And coyotes.

  “So he decided to go exploring,” I said, and zipped my pack shut. “I have to go find out, anyway.”

  “Michael, there’s nothing to find out. He’s dead. You know that.”

  “I do not know that! I don’t know anything.” Except that David’s a piece of shit. I did turn around, then, because I wanted to see her face when I said, “He hasn’t been home since Monday, Mom, so how do I know what’s happened? I haven’t even seen him.”

  I guess I was up to fighting, after all. It was an awful thing to say, because it would only remind her of what we were all trying to forget, but I was still happy when she looked away from me, sharply, with a hiss of indrawn breath. She didn’t curse me out, though, even though I deserved it. She didn’t even leave the room. Instead she looked back at me, after a minute, and put her hands on my shoulders again. “You can’t go out there. Not in this weather. It wouldn’t even be safe to take the SUV, or I’d drive you—”

  “He could be lying hurt in the snow,” I said. “Or holed up somewhere, or—”

  “Michael, he’s dead.” I didn’t answer. Mom squeezed my shoulders and said gently, “And even if he were alive, you couldn’t reach him in time. Not all that way; not in this weather. Not even in the SUV.”

  “I just want to know,” I said. I looked right at her when I said it. I wasn’t saying it to be mean, this time. “I can’t stand not knowing.”

  “You do know,” she said. She sounded very sad. “You just won’t let yourself know that you know.”

  “Okay,” I told her, my throat tight. “I can’t stand not seeing, then. Is that better?”

  She took her hands off my shoulders and sighed. “I’ll call Letty, but it’s not going to do any good. Is your brother home?”

  “No,” I said. David should have been home an hour before that. I wondered if he even knew that the satellites were back up.

  Mom frowned. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Do you think I care? Call the sheriff’s office, if you want to know where he is.”

  Mom gave me one of her patented warning looks. “Michael—”

  “He let Bobo out,” I said. “You know he did. He did it on purpose, just like all the other times. Do you think I care where the fuck he is?”

  “I’m going to go call Letty,” Mom said.

  David hated Bobo the minute we got him. He was my tenth birthday present from Mom and Dad. The four of us went to the pet store to pick him out, but when David saw the kittens, he just wrinkled his nose and backed up a few feet. David was always doing things like that, trying to be cool by pretending he couldn’t stand the rest of us.

  David and I used to be friends, when we were younger. We played catch and rode our bikes and dug around in the dirt pretending we were gold miners, and once David even pulled me out of the way of a rattlesnake, because I didn’t recognize the funny noise in the bushes and had gone to see what it was. I was six then, and David was ten. I’ll never forget how pale he was after he yanked me away from the rattling, how scared he looked when he yelled at me never, ever to do that again.

  The four-year difference didn’t matter back then, except that it meant David knew a lot more than I did. But once he got into high school, David didn’t want anything to do with any of us, especially his little brother. And all of a sudden he didn’t seem so smart to me anymore, even though he thought he was smarter than shit.

  I named my new kitten Bobcat, because he had that tawny coat and little tufts on his ears. His name got shortened to Bobo pretty quickly, though, and that’s what we always called him—everybody except David, who called him “Hairball.” By the time Dad died, Bobo was a really big cat: fifteen pounds, anyway, which was some comfort when David started “accidentally” letting Bobo out of the house. I figured he could hold his own against most other cats, maybe even against owls. I tried not to think about cars and coyotes, and people with guns.

  He started going over the fence right away, but he was good about coming home. He always showed up for meals, even if sometimes he brought along his own dessert: dead grasshoppers, and mice and voles, and once a baby bird. Dr. Mills says that when cats bring you dead prey, it’s because they think you’re their kittens, and they’re trying to feed you.

  Bobo was a good cat, but David kept letting him out, no matter how much I yelled at him about it. Mom tried to ground David a couple of times, but it didn’t work. David just laughed. He kept letting Bobo out, and Bobo kept going over the fence. It took me four months of allowance, plus Christmas and birthday money, to save up enough for the transmitter chip and the handheld. David laughed about that, too.

  “He’s just a fucking cat, Mike. Jesus Christ, what are you spending all your money on that transmitter thing for?”

  “So I can find him if he gets lost,” I said, my stomach clenching. Even then, I could hardly stand to talk to David.

  “If he gets lost, so what? They have a million more cats at the pound.”

  And you’d let them all out if you could, wouldn’t you? “They don’t have a million who are mine,” I said, and Mom looked up from chopping onions in the kitchen. It was one of her days off.

  “David, leave him alone. You’re the one who should be paying for that transmitter, you know.” And they got into a huge fight, and David stomped out of the house and roared off in his rattletrap Jeep, and when all the dust had settled, Mom came and found me in my room. She sat down on the side of the bed and smoothed my hair back from my forehead, as if I was seven again instead of thirteen, and Bobo jumped d
own from where he’d been lying on my feet. He’d been licking the place where Dr. Mills had put the transmitter chip in his shoulder. Dr. Mills said that licking would help the wound heal, but that if Bobo started biting it, he’d have to wear one of those weird plastic collars that looks like a lampshade. I hadn’t seen him biting it yet, but I was keeping an eye on him. When Mom sat on the bed, he resettled himself under my desk lamp, where the light from the bulb warmed the wood, and went back to licking.

  Bobo always liked warm places. Dr. Mills says all cats do.

  Mom stroked my forehead, and watched Bobo for a little while, and then said, “Michael—sometimes you can know exactly where people are, and still not be able to protect them.” As if I didn’t know that. As if any of us had been able to protect Dad from his own stupidity, even though the pit bosses knew exactly where he was every time he dealt a hand.

  I knew Mom was thinking about Dad, but there was no point talking about it. Dad was gone, and Bobo was right in front of me. “I’d keep him inside if I could, Mom! If David—”

  “I know,” she said. “I know you would.” And then she gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and went downstairs again, and after a while, Bobo got off the desk and came back to lie on my feet. Watching him lick his shoulder, I wondered what it felt like to have a transmitter.

  I’m the only one in the family who doesn’t know.

  Letty’s Mom’s best friend; they’ve known each other since second grade. Letty works for the BLM, and they have really good topo maps, so she could tell me exactly where Bobo was: just inside the mouth of an abandoned mine.

  “He could have crawled there to get out of the snow,” I said. The transmitter signal still hadn’t moved. Mom and Letty exchanged looks, and then Mom got up.

  “I’m going upstairs now,” she said. “You two talk.”