Analog SFF, June 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

Cavanaugh! That was the man's name. Alan Cavanaugh. He was Travis's host and the company's creative director. Cavanaugh held a helmet, dome down, like a hardhat lined with tiny silvery Lego blocks. Sensors, of course. Lots and lots of sensors. EEG on steroids.

  Cavanaugh said, “I'll explain the game in a minute. For the best experience, we'll configure the tank especially for you.” He offered Travis the helmet. “Put this on. This will read out your ideal settings."

  Travis remembered thinking that a personally calibrated VR tank would be awesome. He remembered taking the helmet out of Cavanaugh's hands and setting it on his head—

  And appearing, dressed in camo, pinned down by enemy fire, amid a jumble of boulders.

  * * * *

  Travis sat tailor-style on the ground in the center of a wooded glade. His hands rested on his lap, palms up and fingers interlaced. His rifle, well beyond his reach, its ammo clip removed, leaned against a jagged stump. “Let me out,” he said to the air.

  No one answered. Nothing happened.

  He waited, looking harmless.

  Enemy troops eventually rushed into the clearing. Most were expressionless: clearly bots.

  One shot Travis faster than he could ask the way out.

  Out of the boulder field and across the meadow, into the woods and deep into the valley, Travis had once again left bodies in his tracks. The mayhem had nothing to do with a “mission” and everything to do with his need to hide. He had to disappear, to make the enemy spread out hunting for him.

  Now he hugged a hollow in the ground, beneath a thatch of torn, tall grass. A scout approached, circling inconsequential bumps and dips in the terrain with the telltale algorithmic fussiness of a bot. Travis let it pass. Eventually a second appeared: another bot. Travis allowed it, too, to go by unmolested. And then—

  Nuances of motion and stance said this was a gamer. When the prey turned his back, Travis burst out of hiding. The enemy scout stiffened as a rifle barrel prodded him in the back.

  But this wasn't an enemy, only a link to the outside world. The enemy was whoever kept Travis inside the game.

  "How do I—?” Travis began to ask. Only no speech, no sound at all, came out of his mouth. The programmers had been busy again.

  He was too surprised even to notice what killed him this time.

  * * * *

  Amid a too-familiar jumble of rocks, bullets zinging overhead, mortars blasting, ground trembling, Travis considered. There was much that he remembered only imperfectly. The tastes of foods. The colors of a sunset. The clothes he had worn to the “test” session. The names of the game and gaming company were completely gone.

  And yet . . .

  He remembered enough to know he was no mere game character. Who would fill a bot with the names of kindergarten classmates, and the capitals of the fifty states, and the smell of freshly baked bread? His memories, however incomplete, were his.

  Scripted bots. Randomized bots. Artificially intelligent bots. He was none of those things. What came next? No question: Naturally intelligent bots. Uploads.

  Me.

  Target for an ever-growing legion of players who would seek to kill him. Again, and again, and again.

  In a flash of light and sound, a mortar round found him.

  * * * *

  Rocks. Bullets. The roar of mortar rounds. Deep in thought, Travis ignored them all.

  He had been copied into this game.

  The real Travis would know the goal of the game. He would remember getting into a VR tank and know how to open it.

  Would an uploaded copy know? Apparently not. Or rather, for the copy there was no tank. He was only bits inside a computer, the ghost within the machine. There was no door for him to open.

  The mortar rounds crept closer.

  For what it was worth, Travis knew when the copy—he—had been made. Personal calibration? Ha!

  Was he a bootleg upload? No way. Flesh-and-blood Travis might log onto this game any time, recognize himself, and sue the company for everything it was worth. Why risk it?

  No, Real Travis had agreed to this. That Travis didn't remember the discussion only meant Cavanaugh brought it up after the copying process. Real Travis would have jumped at the chance to star in a virt—and happily collected his royalties.

  Because I would have, Travis thought sadly. And I'd have been wrong.

  Blam!

  Clods of dirt rained down. Travis's ears rang. His nose bled. That was close. In another round or two, inevitably, the enemy would find the range. In a few scant seconds . . .

  He didn't feel much like Batman, Zorro, or Frodo. He didn't feel inspired by them. He didn't feel like fighting, or even like moving.

  Travis remembered wishing life had—even once—dealt him a real challenge. A worthy challenge. A seminal moment. The type of defining moment that forged true heroes.

  Real Travis, yielding to vanity or cash, had had his seminal moment. In dooming his own upload to purgatory, Real Travis had shown himself unworthy.

  And me, Travis thought. What about me? This is a seminal moment. My seminal moment. I choose to fight no more.

  My hero now is Gandhi.

  As the whistle of an incoming mortar shell swelled, Travis wondered how many times, and in how many uninteresting ways, he must die before the game masters ended the slaughter.

  Copyright © 2010 Edward M. Lerner

  (With thanks and apologies to Jeremy.)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: CARGO by Michael F. Flynn

  What makes a Dark Age?

  Early morn, and the sun is up, though the proof would be hard to come by, for the clouds are low and the color of old dishwater. Bright threads of white flash through them like the shuttle of a loom, and distant rumbles follow soon after. A sudden rush of wind rolls through the snug Moren Valley, tousling the grass and whipping the tall, thin trees.

  Little Jace runs through the woods as fast as he can, though the brush grows close and thick and there is no trail. He trips on a stone and sprawls into the ancient leaves and cast-off bark that litter the woodland floor. But he is a small boy and resilient and aside from abrasions on his palms and knees he feels no pain. The urgency of his mission propels him to his feet, and shortly he breaks into the open ground at the edge of the village. “Uncle Nob!” he cries. “Uncle Nob!"

  In the village of Moren's Run, any man is Uncle, and might be father.

  No one answers him. They are busy lashing up the shutters on their huts against the coming rain, hauling laundry from lines, gathering rust-threatened sickles and hoes under shelter. Dogs yelp. Boys hustle thunder-spooked sheep toward their pens. Amidst the bustle, one more rushing, shouting boy goes unnoticed.

  Jace spies Teffny, the priestess, bending into the wind, holding her gowns against herself. She has been out ensuring the fertility of the spring fields with the Chosen Man and has been chased from her duties by the sudden squall. “Ma Teffny!” cries Jace. “Ma Teffny! Have you seen Old Nob?"

  Teffny grabs her poke bonnet before the wind can deprive her of it, and her skirts whip up around her knees. “Over there,” she says, trying to point without releasing the various holds on her clothing. “By the cornfield."

  Jace hurries past the huts and down onto the low ground from which a knot of men is trotting uphill with hoes shouldered like spears. He searches the faces, but Uncle Nob is not among them; so he runs through the newly planted corn, past the corpse of the Chosen Man, until he spies Old Nob standing at the edge of the field and watching the approaching storm clouds.

  Nob is thin and tall, very much like the sapling beeches, and like them he sways, though whether from the wind, as they do, or from drink, Jace does not guess. Nob's long, white hair flutters in streamers off the side of his head.

  "Uncle Nob!” the boy calls over the bluster of the wind. Lightning zigzags through the approaching clouds like a mouse through the fields.

  "Holy Franklin,” the old man says. “Holy Franklin . . ."
r />   "Uncle Nob!” Jace calls again.

  This time, the old man hears him. He turns and his eternal sadness is broken for an instant by a smile. Uncle Nob's face is much like the lowering clouds overhead. Seldom does the sun pierce it. More often, it rains. “Jace!” he says. “Where have you come from?” Then, toward the flickering sky: “Holy Franklin!"

  Maxwell unleashes his daemons and the clouds crackle like dry autumn leaves underfoot. Lightnings flash, one after the other. The sky booms.

  Jace tugs at his sleeve. “Come quick, Uncle Nob. Come quick! Bro Will is in awful trouble."

  "Oh, what now?” Uncle Nob bends over, close enough that Jace can smell the liquor on his breath. “What has that delinquent. . . ? Ay-yi! Such thunder!” He makes fending motions, but even as he does, Franklin summons a bolt to stab the cliffs across the river.

  Jace pulls again at his sleeve. “You must come-see!"

  "Oh-ho! Must I? Just past sunrise, and already. . . ? I swear: If'n a boy could get in trouble while sleeping, Will would find a way to do it.” Uncle Nob laughs a little. “Well, come along, lad. Where is he?"

  Nob is already striding out of the cornfield, his long legs stepping high and storklike, pausing only for a bow of respect toward the Chosen Man, on whom he throws a token clod.

  No one marks their passage through the village. The rain and lightning have herded everyone inside their huts, as the boys had earlier herded the sheep into their pen. The village now huddles snug against spring fires, dry so long as the rain does not find the chinks among the wattles.

  The wind dies while Nob and Jace are still only partway to the woods. A few big drops strike the path and raise craters in the dirt, then more drops patter the nearby leaves, and then it is sluicing down upon them. “Ho-ho!” Nob laughs as his long hair is plastered against him. “A good soaking for us, Jace! And it'll be good for the corn.” He holds his arms out to the side and dances a few twirls until he staggers. Jace steadies him.

  "Mama says you drink too much,” he tells the old man.

  Nob smiles conspiratorially and bends close to the lad's ear. “You know why she complains? ‘Cause that leaves less for them. Ha-ha!"

  The air turns bright as daylight, throwing everything for an instant into black and white. The thunder follows close on its heels, loud as all the drums of Midsummer Night. Jace yelps and Old Nob takes him by the shoulder. “Steady, boy,” he says. “Franklin ain't a-hunting you personally."

  The rain has turned the dirt track to a thick, syrupy mud that threatens to pull their moccasins from their feet. Old man and boy step onto the berm, where they must fight the tall grass, but where the footing is better. Here and there, past rains have scoured the dirt from the underlying asphalt.

  The rain subsides into a steady drizzle and the lightning passes over them toward the east. They seek shelter under the trees, but the gusty wind shivers the branches, and the leaves dump their portions of water on them, so that it seems to rain even under the canopy. “Where is Bro Will? What's he gotten into now?"

  "This way.” Jace scampers through the underbrush that crowds the wide pathway while Nob struggles to keep up. Passing the Great Pylon, he pauses long enough to rap it for luck, listens to the hollow echo, then swings across a fallen pole on one of the cables that still dangle from it.

  "Slower,” Nob grumbles. “I ain't no deer."

  The path horseshoes across the shoulder of the Hill. The rise is steep and here the clay has nearly sloughed off, leaving the old road exposed. Only where the hawthorn and mulberry and sawgrass have grown through the asphalt has the soil remained stubbornly in place. Nob grows uneasy.

  "You know you ain't supposed to come up here,” he cautions the boy.

  Jace pauses and looks around. “I was a-following Bro Will."

  "He ain't supposed to come up here, either."

  Jace leads him off the old road and into the woods, through soaring birches and maples and circles wide ‘round a thickly woven stand of stickerbushes. Animals huddle miserably in burrow or nest, their usual cacophony silent. Limestone boulders, decked in moss, jut from the soil. A crick bubbles between an old foundation and a rotting stump. Jace jumps atop the stump and leaps the crick.

  "How much farther?” Nob complains.

  "Hush now, Uncle. See yonder? There he is.” Jace has brought him at last to a hazel thicket overlooking a small, hidden dell. Nob remembers the dell, from long ago, and wishes for a jug of the potato liquor, because his head is beginning to throb like the recently passed storm. He sees that Will and two of his friends have set up shelfs. He begins to shiver, and it is not entirely from the soaking he has gotten from the rain.

  The shelfs have been fastened to a row of saplings, resting in the crotches of branches, held fast by vines. On them lie crabapples, wild strawberries and blackberries, acorns, scallions, and the like. On them, too, sit a few rusted old cans, and wickedly incorruptible plastic bottles. Beside each item a square of birch bark has been affixed, bearing sigils scrawled in charcoal. The rain has washed much of this away, and so Will and Kenn labor to restore them while Shairn weaves branches into an overhead roof. Off to one side, a cracked and corroded device sits upon a stump.

  A cash register, Nob remembers the name his gramper had used years ago. Although what a register is, and what makes it cash, has remained ever since a delicious mystery. You put “money” in it, gramper had said, and that lets you take some of the food. But of course that had only deepened the mystery. What was money? And why would people not share the food, anyway? Gramper had once seen such things with his own eyes, but he had seen it with a child's understanding.

  It will be our little secret, Nobby, the old man had said.

  Nob's big hand clamps down on Jace's mouth, and he drags the boy away from the thicket. Not until they have emerged from the woods and reached the old roadbed does he release the boy.

  "Why'd you do that?” Jace asks; but he asks in a whisper, for he understands the message of the hand.

  "Quiet, boy. I have to think."

  "That was a store, wasn't it?"

  Nob's long, dour face bends toward him. “Where'd you hear about stores?"

  Faint rumbles drift from the east, where the storm now waters the Jersey lands. The western skies are still dark, promising more rain to come. Jace toes the ground and his forefinger augers his cheek. “I dunno."

  "Don't lie to me, boy. This is important.” Nob lifts a hand, as if to strike, and Jace cowers. But the hand descends slowly, the promised blow withheld. “It's important,” the old man says again. “'Specially now you shown me."

  "I heard Bro Will talk about it."

  "He's talked about it?” Nob's dismay curls his features.

  "Just with Kenn and Shairn. They didn't know I was in the loft. Uncle Nob, how did they make those shelfs?"

  "They didn't make them. They must have pried them from the ruins."

  "But . . . that's a sin! It's inner proprit!" Then, the boy drops his gaze and toes the dirt once more. “I'm sorry, Uncle Nob. I shouldn't of said that. Not to you."

  "No need, boy. It is a sin."

  "But your mama . . ."

  ". . . was inappropriate. I know, Jace. I know. But that was a long time ago. I was no older than you are now. She told stories from her father, my gramper."

  Jace's eyes grow round. “She knew her father? But . . . how would she? Everyone takes turns so we can save our jennickdy versday."

  "Genetic diversity.” Nob helps him with the pronunciation. “Maybe she was mistaken. But everyone remarked a resemblance in their features."

  "Like folks say Bro Will favors you?"

  Nob falls silent. “Yes,” he says finally. “Like that."

  "Did you know your gramper before they. . . ? You know."

  "Before they stoned him? Yes. He was an angry, bitter, old man. He frightened me. I never cottoned to him. You see . . .” Nob hesitates a long time before continuing. Above, a cooper hawk circles hopefully just below the cloud d
eck; but all sensible mice are in their burrows and he soon gives it up. “You see, my gramper was a boy your age when the Crush came, and he . . ."

  "He lived in the Old Days?” Jace's mouth forms an O of astonishment. “Did he tell you stories? What was it like?"

  "Walk with me.” Uncle Nob sets his long legs moving and Jace scampers to keep up.

  "What's Bro Will doing?"

  "It's an ancient prophecy. ‘If you build it, they will come.’ He figures if he builds a supermarket, someone will come stock it."

  Jace skips beside him, swinging his arms. “A sooper . . . A what?"

  Nob does not look at him. “I don't really know. Words my gramper used. A market is when farmers bring all their produce to the same place to trade . . ."

  "Like when we meet with the fishermen from Glennen?"

  The old man's head bobs. “Yes. And a store is a place where you keep things like food to use later."

  "Like the grain pits."

  "Yes, like the grain pits, and the corn cribs.” He quickens his pace and Jace scampers to catch up. “Story is, the people of the elder days will return with trucks. And these trucks will carry wonderful cargo. Breads and cheeses and cuts of meat; sweets keener nor any honey; big, red, juicy apples; potatoes and beans and . . . Oh, well, everything. And they'd last a long, long time before the mold and rot took them. No one in them days had to sweat in the field with his hoe or sickle. And kids like you didn't have to sit out in the fields all day and scare off birds. No one had to grind her own corn or bake her own bread."

  "It sounds . . . wonderful."

  Nob smiles a little, but only a little. “So it probably ain't true. Remember I told you that. They're only stories. There was more: fruits that we don't have no more because they came from so far away it was sinful to eat them. Bananas. Oranges. Grapefruit."

  "What are they?"

  The old man shrugs. “Gramper said he ate ‘em when he was a boy, before they all ran out and no more came. I figure grapefruits was like the grapes that grow over in Brown's Valley. But the rest . . .” He waves his arm. “Ach . . . It don't matter no more.” He falls silent, thinking of Will and the store he has set up in a hidden dell.