Analog SFF, April 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Wharton shrugged almost imperceptibly.

  Dennis took a deep breath. He was counting on the fact that Wharton had hired someone else to do the programming. “But I found the flaw. The carbon-14 atoms in the fake were not distributed randomly, as they are in the original. Instead, my scan shows they are evenly spaced throughout the violin. Which means this one is the fake.” Dennis picked up the violin on the left and carried it over to Wharton. “I thought you should see your handiwork one last time before I turn it into toothpicks.”

  Dennis opened the nanofactory's raw materials bin and placed the violin inside. As he moved his hand toward the start button, he watched Wharton's face.

  Wharton looked impassively back at him.

  “Stop,” Gale said, right on cue. His voice sounded panicked. “I thought you said the one on the right had the regular pattern.”

  Yanking his hand back from the start button as if it were hot, Dennis said, “Oh, you're right. What the officer said mixed me up about which was which.” He removed the violin from the bin and took it back to the table, exchanging it for the other one.

  “A pity to destroy such a thing of beauty,” said Dennis as he put it in the bin. “But it's only a copy.” Again he watched Wharton's face, looking for weakness. The man was obsessed with the Soil Stradivarius. Surely he would not allow its destruction.

  Dennis's hand moved toward the start button, and Wharton watched him calmly. Dennis began to press the button, and still there was no reaction.

  With a sigh, Dennis pulled his hand away.

  “If you are done playing at King Solomon,” said Wharton, “I'd like to be taken back to my cell.”

  Dennis nodded to the officers, who escorted Wharton from the room.

  “I'm sorry. I thought sure it would work,” Dennis said.

  “He's a smart man. He saw through the ruse,” said Gale.

  “But how could he have been sure it was a ruse? If he had been mistaken, he would have allowed the destruction of the world's greatest violin.” Dennis shook his head. “Would he risk that?”

  “Perhaps if it cannot be his, he no longer cares about the risk.”

  Suddenly it all became clear. “Or he knew there was no risk,” Dennis said. “Would he be willing to go to prison if he knew the Soil Strad would be his when he got out?”

  Gale frowned. “I'm not going to give it to him when he is freed.”

  “That's not what I mean.” Dennis walked over to the nanofactory and pulled up its history, only to find it had been wiped clean. “What if both of these violins are fakes? He cleared the nanofactory's history so it wouldn't show he made two duplicates. The real violin could be hidden away, waiting for him to reclaim it after he's served his time.”

  “Yes, Wharton would risk a few years in prison to get the Soil. I probably would, myself. But why create two fakes?”

  “Because if the police had found this nanofactory setup, but only one violin, they would have suspected a dupe. My company would have been called in to check his nanofactory, and we would have discovered the illegal modifications. But by providing a duplicate and a supposed original, he hoped no one would suspect that he'd created another.”

  Gale nodded, then said, “Is there some way to be sure?”

  “Maybe.” Dennis focused the scanner on the nanofactory's recycling container. “Unused material gets fed back into the system. In order to match the low carbon-14 count in the original violin, that would mean extra carbon-14 would be recycled. We can tell from the amount of recycled carbon-14 how many violins were created.”

  Dennis ran a few calculations as the scanner counted the carbon-14. When the scanner beeped, the results matched his prediction. “Two violins were made.”

  “So where is my violin?” asked Gale.

  Dennis patted the scanner. “This is the proverbial fine-toothed comb. It may take a while, but I can scan every atom in the house if necessary.”

  Less than two hours later, Dennis found the violin in a safe hidden under the floorboards of Wharton's bedroom.

  “This one is the original,” Dennis said as he handed it to Gale.

  The scanner showed that violin to be identical to the other two. At the atomic level, there was no way for Dennis to tell whether it really was the original. On seeing how happy Gale was to have his violin back, however, Dennis decided it was best not to mention that.

  Seated on the corporate jet on the way back to L.A., Dennis removed the data module from the nuclear resonance scanner and brought up the atomic scans of the violins.

  The two duplicate violins had already been destroyed, and company policy dictated that the scan data be wiped to prevent the creation of unlicensed nanoduplication patterns. He deleted the scan of the first violin, then the second.

  But he hesitated when he reached the scan of the third. He looked at the violin pattern for several minutes, remembering the sweet tones of the melody Gale had played.

  The finest violin in the world.

  Dennis wondered if he could learn to play it.

  Copyright © 2009 Eric James Stone

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  * * *

  Reader's Department: BIOLOG: ERIC JAMES STONE

  by Richard A. Lovett

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Eric James Stone grew up on three continents. Born in New York, he was raised largely in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, England, and Utah.

  He was also raised on Golden Age science fiction—short stories, mostly. “My dad had a lot of old anthologies,” he says. He particularly remembers one called The Early Asimov, in which Asimov introduced each story with an essay about how it came to be. “I became very familiar with John W. Campbell, Jr., from Asimov's point of view,” he says, “even though I wasn't reading Astounding (predecessor to Analog). It was my dream that eventually I would be published in Analog.”

  In college, he was torn between political science and computers. Ultimately, he chose the former in part because it had fewer course requirements. That gave him time for creative writing classes, including one in science fiction and fantasy.

  Political science led to a law degree, then five years in Washington, D.C., working with a nonprofit organization. That brought him back to computers, when his employer needed a website. “The PR firm said they could create a web page for only about $5,000, and I felt I could probably save money by learning HTML myself,” he says.

  That led to a job in web development, back in Utah, where he'd gone to high school and college. Then the fiction bug bit again.

  He signed up for a community education class, then took an online course from the same instructor. Much of the course was comprised of writing exercises, and while it wasn't a science fiction course, the instructor wasn't opposed. “He would give us exercises that had no element of fantasy or science fiction and I would always twist them,” Stone says.

  Then, at the instructor's urging, he polished up one of his writing exercises and submitted it to Analog. He got an encouraging note in the rejection letter, and a year later, he sold “Resonance” (September 2005).

  Like many writers, he struggles a bit when asked what makes a good story. “I'm trying to avoid a tautology by saying that what makes a good story is a good story,” he says. “I tend to be very much focused on plot and ideas, but that's not enough. There also needs to be a character who engages my interest. I like stories that have beautiful language in them, [but] if there isn't a good plot and interesting characters, then that's not going to work for me.”

  Copyright © 2009 Richard A. Lovett

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  * * *

  Short Story: A JUG OF WINE AND THOU

  by Jerry Oltion

  The more you depend on high technology, the worse off you are when you lose it. Right?

  Normally the autopilot would have kept Michael's air car from crashing into the face of a cliff. The car was loaded with safety features, which was why Michael's dad had let him bor
row it for his date with Hannah. It stuck to established routes, and even if it somehow drifted off course, its radar would have sensed the mass ahead and the navigation computer would have steered the tiny two-passenger vehicle well out of the way of danger.

  That was the problem. Autopilots were designed for safety, not impressing your girlfriend. So Michael had switched it off somewhere around Oakridge and was flying on manual, swooping up the sides of canyons and flying over the ridge tops in long, graceful arcs that left them weightless for five or ten seconds at a time, screaming like maniacs the whole way. Michael liked how Hannah's breasts rose up inside her shirt when they were weightless, their curved tops pressing together to give her even more cleavage than usual. He was looking at that rather than out the windshield when her scream became very, very real.

  He whipped his head forward just in time to see the wall of rock eclipse the midmorning Sun. The interior of the car went dark, and he fumbled for a second, screaming just as loud as Hannah, before he found the autopilot button. When he pressed it, the car tipped upward and accelerated hard. For a second Michael thought it might clear the top, then the air bags blew out of the dash and doors and roof and floor, and a moment later the car struck rock.

  The impact jarred the breath out of him, and his knees banged painfully against the underside of the dash. Then he and Hannah spent another few seconds in free fall. Now that it was for real, they didn't scream. They heard a grinding sound from the bottom of the car, probably the fans trying to spin inside crushed housings. Michael had enough time to realize they were probably going to die, take a deep breath, and say, “I love you,” just as Hannah said, “I hate you, Mic—uh.”

  The car jounced hard, the crack of breaking tree limbs sounding distant through the glass, then suddenly louder when the back window smashed. They spun around crazily, crashed through another tree, and came to a stop facing downward at a steep angle.

  The air bags slowly deflated, letting them sag against their seat belts. The windshield was a sheet of tiny cracks tinted green. The air was thick with the smell of sap and pine needles. There was an ominous crackling sound coming from the back, either batteries dying or branches breaking.

  Michael looked over at Hannah. He didn't see any blood. Her eyes were wide as a druggie's, but both pupils were the same size. Her curly brown hair looked like a comical explosion around her head, just as it always did. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “You're bleeding.”

  “Huh? Where?” He didn't feel hurt anywhere except his knees, and she wasn't looking down that far. In fact she was looking at his face.

  “Your nose,” she said.

  He reached up and rubbed the back of his right hand against it, and his hand came away red. Now it hurt.

  “Must have been the air b—yow!” The car lurched downward for a terrifying instant, then tipped over onto Michael's side. Hannah slid toward him, her harness keeping her from landing directly on him.

  “We should get out of here while we still can,” Michael said.

  That proved more difficult than it sounded. The car was resting on his door, and Hannah's door was bent badly enough that it wouldn't open, even when they unstrapped themselves and stood on Michael's door and pushed up with their combined strength, which wasn't all that much, since Michael's left knee hurt like hell when he put his weight on it. Hannah's window wouldn't roll down either. The back window was gone, but the trunk of a tree blocked it.

  “We've got to bust out the windshield,” Hannah said.

  “Right.” Michael looked for something to smash it with, sniffling to keep his nose from bleeding all over everything, but the most massive thing in the car was his foot. He kicked at the spiderwebbed glass with his right toe, then turned around and tried his heel—fumbling for balance and bumping into Hannah while he did. Standing up in a sideways car was awkward business. Normally he wouldn't have minded the gymnastics with her, but for the moment the situation had driven prurient thoughts right out of his mind.

  “Let's try it together,” he said. “On the count of three. One, two, three."

  They both swung their heels at the shattered windshield, and this time it gave a little. Two more kicks knocked a heel-sized hole in the plastic sheet that held all the glass fragments together, and a couple more started a tear that they were able to push farther along a little at a time until it was big enough for Hannah to squeeze through.

  “Don't cut yourself,” Michael said.

  “I'm not stupid.”

  She might as well have slapped him. He hadn't had a chance to think about it yet, but now he realized that this whole thing was his fault. He had been stupid, and he had damned near gotten them killed.

  “I'm sorry,” he said.

  “Don't be.” She ducked down and squeezed through the hole. Michael saw branches wiggling outside the windshield, fractally distorted by the shattered glass. “Stand back,” she said, and a moment later a stick sliced into the gap, widening it an inch or two with each blow until she had cleared a big enough space for Michael.

  They were on the uphill side of a cluster of trees partway up a steep, rocky slope: the talus cone of debris that had fallen off the cliff over millennia. If they hadn't landed in the trees, they would have bounced all the way to the bottom of the slope. Michael looked up at the lip of the cliff several hundred feet above. There was a fresh scar only a few feet below the edge.

  “We almost made it,” he said.

  Hannah snorted. “That makes me feel better.”

  “I really am sorry. It was stupid to fly so close to—”

  “Forget it. Just call for help.”

  He took his phone out of his pocket and stretched it out to talk, dialing 911 as he did so. He stuck it in his ear and angled the mouthpiece forward and waited, but nobody answered.

  “No signal?” He tapped the phone's display on and looked toward the dark green foliage of a tree so he could see the holographic projection, and sure enough, the signal meter showed no bars.

  “What do you mean, no signal?” Hannah said.

  “It says no signal. The cliff must be blocking it.” He turned around and saw that there was an equally large cliff on the other side of the canyon. They were about two-thirds of the way down in a narrow notch between mountaintops.

  She tried her phone, but had no better luck. “Great. So now what?”

  “The car should be transmitting an emergency signal,” Michael said.

  “Didn't you switch off the locator when we started flying on manual?”

  “Oh.” He had, using a hack he'd gotten off the ‘net. As far as the car knew, it had continued on from Oakridge to Diamond Peak. Michael had figured his father would give him a stern lecture about flying on manual if he ever checked the car's log, but he wouldn't know what kind of flying Michael had been doing. Only now the car's emergency locator beacon wouldn't be transmitting their correct location.

  “They'll still be able to follow its signal to the source,” he said.

  “You think it's going anywhere the phone signal isn't?”

  He didn't know. An emergency beacon should be powerful enough to punch through just about anything, but maybe not entire mountains. Would it reach a satellite overhead? That assumed it was even transmitting. The crackle of dying batteries made him doubt that it was. He wondered if the car would catch fire, but there was no smoke yet, and after a few minutes the crackling stopped.

  It was a little chilly in the shade of the cliff. The Sun was shining brightly on the opposite side of the canyon. “Even if the car is transmitting,” he said, “I guess it makes sense to move down into the sunlight and look for a flat spot where a rescue car could set down.”

  She nodded. “Okay. What should we take with us?”

  Michael tried to think. They were both dressed in pants and short-sleeved shirts, hers with wide open strips in back. He had fantasized about slipping his hands beneath those strips when they stopped to admire the view from the top of Diamond Peak,
but now he wished she had worn something less sexy. They had no coats, no camping gear, no flashlights other than the ones in their phones, no food. Wait a minute. “I brought a bottle of wine and a picnic blanket,” he said.

  “Oh, great,” she said. “A little booze. That'll do us a world of good. Maybe we can get drunk by the time the cops show up.” She narrowed her eyes. “And just what were you planning with your bottle of wine and your blanket, anyway?”

  He felt himself blush, hoped it was invisible beneath all the blood on his face. “I, um, thought we'd drink it and ... watch the clouds go over.”

  “Oh, right, whoever was on the bottom, anyway.”

  “Hannah, look, I said I was sorry.”

  She glared at him a moment, then said, “Get your wine and blanket. If we're still up here when the Sun goes down, we'll be glad we have it.”

  Michael hobbled once around the car before he climbed back in, making sure it wasn't going to bounce all the way down to the bottom of the canyon with him in it. It looked to be wedged solidly against the trees, so he climbed back in through the windshield and got the bottle of chardonnay and the blanket from behind the seat. While he was inside he tried to undo the hack he'd put in the navigation system, but the computer wouldn't respond. He couldn't even get an activity light in the instrument panel. The car was as dead as Michael's privileges would be when his father got through with him.

  He climbed back out and he and Hannah set off down the talus slope, stumbling over the loose rock. The copse of trees that had stopped their fall was on a little island amid the desolation; there was nothing like a smooth path away from it. Michael's left knee hurt like hell with every step. He barely made it a hundred yards before he said, “I've got to make myself a crutch or something.”

  “Out of what?”

  “A tree branch would do.” He looked longingly up at the trees they had just left. There were plenty of broken branches around them.