The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  It was the time codes on my screen that finally jolted me out of my trance. I surveyed them as they flickered past, seeming to go on forever. Two weeks’ worth of memories.

  And she was in nearly every single one of them.

  “Damn it!” Dr. Solara cursed, pushing her chair back violently. I could feel her stale, coffee-soaked breath on my face. “There are references everywhere. It’s all this guy thought about for two frickin’ weeks.”

  She switched off her monitor and I solemnly watched the girl’s delicate face dissolve into blackness, the brilliant purple hue of her eyes the last to fade.

  Dr. Solara groaned and rose to her feet, but her body remained hunched over in defeat. “Just…” she began with a frustrated sigh. “…take it all.”

  “Doctor?” I questioned, a flash of panic shuddering through me. “Are you sure? A two-week restoration will take all night. Not to mention the potential side effects on the subject.”

  She shot me a look that immediately made me regret the objection. “Well, what the hell do you expect me to do? If they had caught this pervert on day one, this wouldn’t be an issue.” She paused near the exit, thinking. Hesitating.

  I noticed her head shake ever so slightly before she shoved open the door. “Replace the whole damn thing.”

  I bristled as the cold air of the server room smacked against my face. It was a harsh contrast from the sweltering desert climate outside. The three cups of coffee I’d guzzled after I woke up were doing nothing to keep me alert, but the artificially chilled air was definitely helping.

  I hadn’t gone to bed until four in the morning. As predicted, the restoration took all night. And the only reason I wasn’t there four hours longer was because I was able to use precoded memory templates for the majority of the restore. It’s a common practice among coders to save time. Taking frequently occurring memories from the subject’s mind, copying them, and tweaking small details to make them feel fresh. Routine events like eating breakfast, showering, getting dressed, going to work, watching movies can seem believably new just by updating a few details.

  But despite how exhausted I’d been been when I returned to my apartment, sleep simply wouldn’t come. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her face. Those sparkling purple eyes danced in the darkness. That hair draped across my neck. Those lips called out to me. I’d tossed and turned until daylight came streaming through the window and the effects of the sleepless night started to gnaw away at my sanity.

  It was like I wanted her. No…

  Like I needed her.

  And the need was so desperate, so unfounded and relentless, it had started to consume me.

  I had to at least see her with my own eyes.

  Not through the grainy filter of the delivery boy’s faulty, unreliable memory.

  What are you doing? I asked myself as I made my way down one of the long aisles of the server room. Glowing machines were stacked from floor to ceiling, each of them holding millions of byte-sized secrets. Like tiny fortresses.

  But I only cared about one.

  The one that held her.

  I understood the risks. Perhaps the lack of sleep helped soften the direness of those risks, but I knew what would happen if I were caught. My security clearance would plummet to zero. I’d be stripped of every rank I’d ever earned. Countless hours of training and coding flushed down the toilet.

  But I had no choice.

  I had to find her.

  I had to know her.

  The technician at the back of the room rose from his seat and gave me a subtle, friendly nod.

  “What brings you in here?” he asked.

  I glanced over both shoulders before responding. “I need a favor.”

  “After you helped me land that girl from accounting? Anything.”

  I cringed at the mention of that. I hadn’t wanted to do it, but the technician had been persistent. Using memory restorations as a way to manipulate women was something a few of the other coders did. But I personally liked to keep my nose clean, stay out of trouble. Which made my presence here weigh that much stronger on my mind.

  “There was a delivery here two weeks ago,” I said. “I need to know who the recipient was. Can you check the logs?”

  The technician guffawed. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific than that. We get hundreds of deliveries a day.”

  “A fruit basket,” I replied anxiously. “He was delivering a fruit basket.”

  The technician turned toward his system and initiated the search. I held my breath as the computer spit out one result. A security log documenting the entrance of a delivery from Sunset Valley Flowers and Gifts. Exactly two weeks ago. At 2:34 p.m.

  “That one.” I pointed at the screen.

  The technician selected the file, but nothing happened. He tried again before finally noticing the small icon adjacent to it, in the shape of a red letter X.

  “It’s locked,” he informed me.

  “Locked? What does that mean?”

  “Classified.”

  My heart hammered at the thought of losing my one and only lead. My one and only path to her. “Can’t you get around it?”

  The technician released a low whistle. “A C9? No way. There’d be guards swarming the place in seconds if I even attempted to crack the encryption.”

  I sighed and scuffed the floor with the toe of my shoe. “Well, can you at least tell me what gate he was admitted into?”

  The technician glanced at the screen. “Southeast entrance.”

  “Southeast entrance?” I repeated in disbelief. “But they shut that down years ago. There’s nothing even back there.”

  The technician shrugged. “Evidently something’s back there.”

  I knew my minutes were numbered as the gate closed behind me and I stepped into pitch-black desert night. It would only be a matter of time before they recognized that the fingerprint I used to enter the restricted area was a fake. Lifted from Dr. Solara’s coffee cup earlier that night.

  I convinced myself that all I had to do was lay eyes on the girl, confirm that she was real and not a figment of the boy’s wild imagination, and then I would be done with this. Forever. I would go back to my station at the lab and forget this ever happened.

  I felt like I’d been walking for miles when I finally came across the concrete wall, towering high above my head. I secured the flashlight between my teeth and began to climb, holding the image of the girl’s face in my mind as the skin of my palms scraped unpleasantly against the rough cement.

  My head had barely cleared the top when my eyes landed on something on the other side.

  Her.

  And then suddenly everything seemed to stand still. My entire body was frozen. Transfixed. It wasn’t until I started slipping back down the surface of the wall that I managed to snap out of my daze and keep myself from falling.

  She was looking out the window of a small house, lit from the inside. As she stared into the night, I couldn’t help but think that she looked…

  Lonely.

  The light of my flashlight bounced across her face and her gaze darted toward me, fear distorting her perfect features.

  And for the briefest, most blissfully joyous moment of my life, our gazes intersected. Those remarkable purple eyes radiated through the pitch blackness like tiny luminous orbs of light. Her beauty lit up the entire desert night.

  She was real. And yet surreal at the same time.

  But most important, she was right there.

  And in that moment, I knew I would never be able to forget her. Even if we never spoke a single word to each other, even if this brief glimpse of her was all I would ever get, I knew I would never be able to go back to work tomorrow and pretend that none of it had happened.

  I understood exactly why the delivery boy had returned day in and day out, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would risk everything to do the same.

  No matter the consequences.

  I stayed there, utterly mesmerized. Half
of my body hoisted over the top of the wall, the other half dangling down the side. I didn’t feel the pinch at the back of my neck until it was too late.

  And then I was falling.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  But I never hit the ground.

  When my eyes dragged open again, I was here. Immediately recognizing the peaceful seaside scenery that covered every inch of the room’s four walls. I knew it because I’d built it. I’d programmed the simulation during my first job at the company. Before I’d been promoted to this very department.

  The chair felt hard against my back. I marveled at how I’d never actually sat in it before. Never realized how incredibly uncomfortable it was.

  I resolved not to struggle. I knew it was pointless. And I didn’t want to be like everyone else.

  But as the needle punctured my skin and her eyes flashed through my mind for what I knew would be the final time, all my resolve vanished into the night.

  And I fought and I fought until I couldn’t fight anymore.

  “Retrieval in sixty seconds,” the memory coder reports to Dr. Solara, who stands behind him, hands firmly planted on her hips. Her eyes are more sunken than usual. Her skin paler.

  She stares at the unconscious man on the other side of the window, disappointment tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  “Ready for metadata,” the coder announces in his most professional voice. He’s been after promotion for months and now that he finally has it, he’s determined to make a good impression.

  She lets out a tired sigh, her voice hoarse and defeated as she recites, “Name: Sevan Sidler. Age: Twenty-five. Occupation: Memory coder…”

  She collapses into the adjacent chair and the coder transfers the download to her screen. She cups her chin in her hand and watches the Revisualization playback with an overall air of surrender.

  “It appears the infraction is isolated to the past twenty-four hours,” the coder remarks, referencing the time stamps on his screen.

  She swats sluggishly at her controls, pausing the playback midstream. With visible effort, she rises from her chair and shuffles out of the room, not even bothering to look back as she orders, “Replace it all.”

  He nods dutifully. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The door swings closed behind her and he immediately gets to work, his hands moving adeptly over the keys. Replacing reality. Altering truth.

  As is common with programmers, he quickly disappears into the code. The synthetic world being crafted by his fingertips draws him in, causing everything else to dissolve into a soft focus in the perimeter of his vision.

  But it isn’t long before something snags his attention. Yanks him out. Wrenching him back to the here and now. He reluctantly peers over at Dr. Solara’s monitor, the image from the downloaded memory still frozen on the screen.

  It’s a girl.

  The most beautiful girl he has ever seen.

  And as hard as he tries, he simply can’t bring himself to look away. There’s just something about her eyes.

  The Memory Coder. Copyright © 2012 by Jessica Brody

  Art copyright © 2012 by Goñi Montes

  For information, address [Tor.com], 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  e-ISBN: 9781466838994

  First eBook Edition: February 2013

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  I’m guessing you knew the desecrator would be there, and just didn’t tell me because, well, for your own reasons.

  Sorry, sorry. In order, then. From the beginning?

  You were the one who said sarcasm was—Yes, m’lady.

  It was several days ago that you sent me—Barlen’s balls. All right.

  It was early in the morning of the third day of the month of the Phoenix in the 230th year of the Reign of Her Glorious Majesty Zerika the Fourth that you sent me to meet the desecrator. Well, sorry! You sent me to the place where I ended up meeting the desecrator. Is that better? I don’t know what you know. That’s kind of funny when you—okay, I’ll just say that I left Dzur Mountain on the third day of the month of the Phoenix in the 230th year, all right?

  I had to walk a long way, and there was still snow on the ground; deep snow at the top. It was cold. No, that is not a complaint, it is a detail. You said I was to include details of what I was feeling and—thank you.

  As I walked, I thought about the mission you’d given me and how I would carry it…

  Okay, I won’t lie. I thought about how cold I was, and how annoying it was to have to walk. My sword was light on my back, but the cross guard kept smacking the back of my head when I climbed down off rocks. I tried to adjust it, but couldn’t find a position that worked.

  Eventually I made it down the mountain and found the cottage of a Teckla family. They groveled and all that. I identified myself properly, as Lord Telnan, House of the Dzur, and said I would be spending the night. They didn’t have a problem with it. They had a lot of kids—I could never quite count them—who were all too loud. The mother didn’t even seem to notice the noise. Every time she’d slap a spoonful of pulped tubers on a plate, she’d make some remark, like “grow those bones,” or “this will make your hair curly,” or “you need more muscles.” She was one of those laughing, happy peasants that you hear about but never actually meet. Now I’ve met one. It wasn’t as big a thrill as you might think. I got some sleep on a lumpy bed while they slept on the floor next to the hearth, and I paid them half an imperial for their trouble, and I didn’t kill any of them.

  Do I really need to give you every day? It isn’t like anything happened.

  All right, all right.

  Your rules were: no teleporting, no magic, no Imperial conveyances until I reached Adrilankha, so I got a ride on an oxcart from another peasant, a young one. He wasn’t interested in conversation; just grunting in response to whatever I said. But he was willing to take a few coins in exchange for letting me stay in his cottage that night. He lived alone.

  The next day I walked as far as the inn in Yalata, and slept in a real bed.

  My next ride was on a wagon drawn by a pair of oxen. This was from a merchant, a Jhegaala. When he finished groveling and shaking, he got talkative: he chattered about exchange rates, and margins, whatever they are, and quantity discounts, and how changes in the weather and major events can affect sales. It was annoying, but he’d given me a ride, so it would have been rude to disembowel him. He brought me all the way to the city.

  You never indicated there was any hurry, so I spent three days in Adrilankha, enjoying civilization. When I sobered up and recovered enough to feel like I could teleport, I used the location you gave me and arrived in Lansord an hour after dawn.

  Have you ever been to Lansord, Sethra? There’s not much to it: a speaker’s house, two silos, a store. There’s no physicker closer than Bringan, ten miles to the east. I saw two old men and an old woman, none of whom gave me so much as a glance.

  The ground rises steadily as you look west, to the foothills of the Kanefthali Mountains. Mount Durilai is closest; as you start west it rises over your head; I’d have liked to climb it. Maybe I’ll go back someday and do that. Sometime when there’s less snow.

  I found the path where you said I would—a rock forming a tunnel, two flat, slanted, man-sized boulders inside it like teeth, with a wide man path to the right, and a narrow animal path to the left. I went left and followed it for a day. I slept outside. I don’t care for that.

&nb
sp; The next morning I ate bread and cheese, and washed up a bit in a stream. It was very cold.

  It was around mid-morning when I found the cave, hidden by a profusion of calia. I pushed the bushes aside and went through, giving myself the first wounds of the day. There, see the back of my hand? And here, on my cheek.

  The cave was dark. I did a light spell; just a dim one. The place was just wide enough for my arms, and I couldn’t see the back. I brightened the spell a bit, and still couldn’t see the back. I checked my sword and my dagger, and started in, the spell illuminating twenty feet ahead.

  The cave went pretty deep into the mountain. If I’d thought to set a trace-point I could tell you exactly how far, which I’m sure would make you happy. But I was walking for more than two hours, and the thing just continued. As you said, from time to time there were side passages, more as I went deeper. But it was never hard to determine the main line and stay on it. I figured out that, in spite of how rough and jagged and uneven the walls, floor, and ceiling were, it had been deliberately dug out. But it was old. Really, really old. Maybe as old as—um, as really old things.

  Then it ended, just like that; and that’s where the desecrator was waiting.

  Okay, well, I shouldn’t say he was waiting. He’d obviously been doing something, and he looked up when he saw my light or heard my footsteps.

  He had his own light spell—brighter, but a smaller area. The combinations of the two spells made it look like he was emitting a glow. He was about my height, and wore all black. No question of his House: the dark complexion, the narrow eyes, the nose, all said Hawk.

  He said, “Who are you?”

  I very, very badly wanted to say Zungaron Lavode, but I was good. I said, “Telnan of Ranler. And you?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “An honor to meet you, my lord What-are-you-doing-here.”

  “Hmmm? Oh, no, that isn’t my name. I was asking.”

  I had no idea how to reply to that, so I just waited. So did he. Eventually he cleared his throat and said, “What did you say you’re doing here?”