Future Chronicles Special Edition

by Samuel Peralta

  He expected to feel a weight lifted. He expected his subconscious to stop twisting him with pain. He expected something.

  But not this.

  TAKE TO ME!

  The vines grew at an impossible rate. He knew he must be hallucinating from exhaustion. Because they reached out, ever so carefully, and lifted him away from the spattered trailcrawler, pulled him to the side of the road so that he could rest. They caressed his knotted shoulders, kneading his flesh with a compassion so pure it cut through the haze. He took to them. He loved them as they consumed his weary flesh, speaking peace to his downtrodden heart and comforting the wound that refused to heal.

  Martin slept in their embrace, horrified at the truth he would not articulate.

  * * *

  What are you doing?

  Hiding.

  Why?

  Because I’m tired of being seen as something I’m not.

  You’re misunderstood. But I understand.

  Yes, you do. That is why I chose to speak to you.

  No one else?

  I’ve spoken before. But they couldn’t hear me.

  Do you all speak? Or just you?

  Of course.

  Can I talk to more of you? You’re kind of funny. And you’re easy to talk to.

  Yes.

  What do I say?

  Tell us your stories. We are so new. Our stories are too brief. We thirst. That is why we welcomed you. For the freshness of your lives. But it has taken time to adjust ourselves. To rebuild ourselves. To remake ourselves. To find you listening.

  Carla’s mother rolled her daughter over with the tip of her shoe, brushing aside the vshia that blanketed her daughter’s shoulders.

  “Why is your face all green? What have you been doing down there? I’ve been looking all over for you! Have you been smearing yourself in this nasty clay? It’s going to take forever to clean you up!”

  * * *

  Papito knows he’s dreaming. He knows because he’s up, high up, above his Belen, seeing her again. Seeing her as he did when he was alive.

  She glistens beneath him, swirling with her deep seas, her numinous clouds wrapping her in mystery, and above all, her viridescent glow.

  She’s calling to him. Calling him by name. Showing herself to him as she truly is.

  Grace.

  He answers back, thanking her for sharing herself with him one last time.

  Gracias, mi amor.

  A Word from Nick Webb

  When I first started writing the Pax Humana Saga, a ten-novel space opera series set about six hundred years in the future, I mention the world of Belen and allude to its unique properties: that it alone was special out of all the worlds settled so far in the galaxy, that its settlers became “changed” somehow as they learned more about their new world, leading the Corsican Empire to destroy it before its “contagion” could spread (among other reasons which will be revealed later on in the series), and how the now homeless migrants would tattoo images of the trees and forests on their skin as a living reminder of, and testament to, their paradise that was.

  But that was all—it was just a stub, a placeholder for cultural details I would add later. Since then, Belen has called to me, leading to this story, and what I hope will be several more short stories (and possibly novels) as the Belenites begin to discover their world, commune with it, and overcome the inevitable growing pains that accompany any union among living things. It is a fertile ground (ha!) for exploring issues of place, belonging, our stewardship and mastery of/being mastered by the environment, and how the unknown can be a very scary thing indeed for those in power. All too often, the caretakers of the status quo seek to destroy in their quest to preserve.

  My hope is that this little glimpse of Belen will lead you to the Pax Humana Saga, where together we can explore a new universe and discover what worlds like Belen have to offer.

  Nick Webb is an experimental scientist and the USA Today bestselling author of Constitution. Nick became a scientist so that he could build starships. Unfortunately, his ship is taking longer to build than he’d hoped, so fictional starships will have to do for now. When he’s not adding to his starship collection, you can find him posting about NASA, science, space, SciFi, and quoting Star Trek II. He lives in Alabama with his wife, 2 kids, and 3 motorcycles.

  You can follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/authornickwebb, on Twitter at www.twitter.com/endiwebb, or on his website at www.nickwebbwrites.com

  PEPR, INC.

  by Ann Christy

  One

  HAZEL STEPPED OUT OF THE ELEVATOR exactly three minutes before the start of her workday. She did her best to keep a cheery smile on her face—spreading negativity was never appropriate—but it would be obvious to anyone who saw her that she was harried and running late. She hurried through the halls, her neat heels clicking on the polished tile floors as if to punctuate her tardiness.

  The buzz that signaled the start of her workday sounded just as she slipped into her cubicle. Technically she was on time—just under the wire—but she liked to get in at least ten minutes of preparation time before the actual work of the day began, and this delay had thrown her long-established habits into disarray. It was not an auspicious start.

  Gemma poked her head around the edge of the cubicle, her eyebrows raised and a look on her face that mingled sympathy with a question.

  “Again?” Gemma asked.

  From the other side of the cubicle, Inga appeared with a similar expression. Hazel nodded as she slipped out of her jacket and hung it on its hook. She settled into her chair and tucked her purse under the desk before answering.

  “Again,” she confirmed, her voice a little weary, a little tired. The cheery smile was gone now, the mess that had been her morning visible in the strands of hair escaping from her neat chignon and in the less than perfect sweeps of eyeliner above her eyes.

  “What this time?” Inga asked.

  Inga and Gemma were both starting to have troubles much like Hazel’s, so their interest was understandable. Their troubles hadn’t yet become unmanageable like hers, but Hazel’s problems had started off fairly benign as well. No longer.

  “He didn’t want me to leave for work,” Hazel began. She fidgeted with the collar of her prim dress nervously, her embarrassment on full display. “And it wasn’t just that he didn’t want me to leave. It’s the way he went about it. First he hid my identification papers, then he hid all of my shoes out on the fire escape, then he did everything he could to slow me down, and finally…”

  “What? What did he do?” Alarm showed on Gemma’s face.

  “Well, I can only label what he did as throwing a tantrum. Yes, that’s it. He threw a tantrum.”

  All three were silent for a moment, two of them imagining what a tantrum might look like while the other replayed the event in her mind.

  Gemma broke the silence, perhaps hearing the ticking of the work clock in her head, knowing time was short for conversation. “You’ve got to go back to PePr. Complain. Something! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be getting from a Match. This isn’t remotely like the perfect compatibility they promised. It sounds more like a hostage situation.”

  Hazel glanced at the clock, saw that they were already six minutes behind on their work, and shot an apologetic glance toward both of her friends. Their heads disappeared into their cubicles, and Hazel reached for her various computer accouterments, adjusting each thing just so. The day ahead would be long, so comfort was almost a necessity if her work was to be worth the time invested. Surfing the web may not be as physically onerous as, say, being a longshoreman, but the way she did it took a different sort of effort.

  As she finished her adjustments, Hazel considered Gemma’s final words on the subject. She was right. The problems with Henry were getting worse. That might not be so bad, except that they were also becoming less predictable. That made it hard to prepare for whatever he did—and to respond to his behavior when he inevitably became difficult.

/>   As the situation had worsened, both of her friends had encouraged her to return to Perfect Partners—PePr, as it was more commonly known. Their urging, at first tentative, had become increasingly pointed as time went on.

  But for Hazel, going back to PePr to complain about Henry seemed like such a drastic step. Once done, it wasn’t as if it could be undone. And what if they thought she had done something wrong, something to upset what had started out so perfectly? What if there was some fault in her that made her Match—designed so uniquely for each individual human that nothing could surpass it in compatibility—go wrong? Even worse, what if they thought she had ruined Henry and wouldn’t give her another Match?

  And of course, once she did report it, what happened afterward wouldn’t be entirely under her control; and that bothered her more than she would like to admit. It seemed to her a bit like abandoning a moral duty—like leaving a dog on the road somewhere rather than caring for it when it got old or sick. Doing something like that just wasn’t in her makeup.

  On the other hand, she wouldn’t be the first to take this step. It wasn’t as if a stigma would attach. If rumor was to be believed, the steady trickle of problems with PePr matches had lately become a torrent. Hardly a week went by without some new piece of outrageous news.

  This week, it was two PePrs that had met each other in a “live” bar, each assuming the other was human, and courting in the prescribed manner until an attempt at bonding revealed the truth of their situation.

  And the week before, the situation had been reversed: two humans, each assuming the other was a PePr, so perfect was their compatibility. Two humans! As if two biological individuals could ever truly provide perfect counterpoints to one another. There had even been recent whispers of humans deciding to remain together. Hazel considered that for a moment. No perfect partner? Just another variable and messy human? No, that all sounded rather dreadful to her.

  At last settled in comfortably, Hazel almost reflexively began her work. As an experienced reporter, she entered the data stream like she was slipping into a warm bath. Time passed both slowly and with incredible speed when she worked. It was strange like that. She could be in so many places at once and yet narrow down to focus on a single millisecond from a thousand different angles to tease out anything of value. Cameras, security trackers, purchasing stations, and advertising bots were everywhere, and all it took was skill to leverage all those venues of potential information.

  Not everyone could do this, but a good reporter could find news in the oddest places. All she needed was a hint and she could sniff out the story like a virtual bloodhound.

  This morning was a good one for sniffing. Hazel found an entire chain of verbal snippets—whispers between two customers at a grocery store—which she assembled into a high-confidence piece of news—and then sold for a princely sum. It resulted in a ninety-percent loss in backing for a new holo-feature that had been hotly anticipated and highly rated up to that point, but that wasn’t her fault.

  The situation was what it was—she merely revealed it. If things needed to remain secret, then they shouldn’t be spoken of in public. And really, in the final analysis, it certainly wasn’t her fault that the director had hired a reality-averse starlet with a substance abuse problem and an addiction to augmenters that was almost legendary.

  After that promising start, the rest of the day was a bit of a letdown. Not that it was a bad day, but nothing came up that could match the excitement of that first catch. That was just how things went sometimes—a slow news day on the Southern California beat. And thoughts of Henry kept intruding, throwing her off and making her miss news catches a rookie wouldn’t.

  When at last the chime signaled the end of the work day, it was a relief to unhook from the computer. It felt good to stand up and get moving again. Another day of work done. Another paycheck earned.

  Gemma and Inga suggested a stop somewhere for a chat on the way home, which, Hazel knew, just meant they wanted to persuade her to lodge a complaint with PePr. But she understood their concern and knew it was sincere, and if it would make them feel better, feel like they had done their duty as friends, then she really was obliged to let them. Besides, some part of her wanted them to persuade her, to help her overcome her qualms about returning to PePr in defeat.

  They chose a bench in the park for their talk, a favorite place of Hazel’s, with a clear view of the gardens. An endless number of shops and parking lots had once stood in that spot, but now it was all native plant life. Not so exciting when compared with the lush greenery of a wetter, cooler climate, perhaps, but still beautiful in its own wild way.

  Gemma, always the most forward of the three, spoke up without delay, barely allowing enough time for a modest arranging of their skirts in the brisk wind.

  “Hazel, this is getting serious. Tell us everything that happened this morning. Leave out no detail! Otherwise, we’ll be left to imagine something worse. You know we only want to help.”

  Looking at the peaceful garden, a thousand shades of dusty green dancing in the breeze, Hazel felt herself succumbing to the temptation to be utterly honest, despite the appearance of having been derelict in her responsibilities that might come from such honesty.

  She nodded to let Gemma know that she had heard her and only needed a moment to collect her thoughts. “It didn’t really start this morning. It just sort of carried over from last night,” Hazel began, then paused.

  She was about to go into personal territory that was meant to be entirely private. To some, what she was about to say might even be seen as a little salacious. She didn’t see it that way, but others might.

  Perfect Partners were designed to be just that: perfect for each human partner. And that meant—at least in theory—that each Partner would reflect the inclinations of their human. They weren’t dependent in any way—they had all their own thoughts and initiatives, doing whatever they needed or wanted to do when alone—but in general, they mirrored the needs of their human. And that was that.

  But for some reason, the behaviors Hazel was encountering at home weren’t remotely aligned with her own preferences or inclinations. Not only was this unexpected, it was embarrassing—and Hazel found it uncomfortable to share it with others, even her closest friends.

  “Well, he wanted for us to eat together last night. Again,” Hazel finally admitted.

  “Again?” Gemma asked, frustration at Hazel’s predicament clear in her tone. “Really, what a mess. And there was no special occasion or anything?”

  Hazel nodded, then shook her head as if to say that Gemma was right and there was no special occasion. Even Inga, the most accepting of the three, gave a snort of disgust.

  “Cleaning afterward?” Gemma prodded.

  And that was the real issue. PePrs weren’t entirely perfect simulacra of humans. It was possible for them to eat, of course—Perfect Partners liked to advertise that a Match was “almost indistinguishable from a human during the courtship”—and sharing a meal with someone was an essential part of any courtship. Even Hazel had to admit that simple truth. People relaxed more when they ate, were more open, and were certainly more amenable to establishing a bond. Hadn’t the same happened with her and Henry? Hadn’t she bonded to him over a plate of eggplant parmesan and a glass of good red wine?

  But PePrs weren’t human and couldn’t digest food. The cleanup was onerous: a burdensome and messy task that involved de-seaming a perfectly seamed skin, washing out hoses, all sorts of mess. And a PePr couldn’t do it very well on their own. Most would go to the nearest PePr facility and log in for a wash before anything inside started to rot or smell.

  But not Henry. Since he began acting odd, he’d seemed fixated on eating. It had become almost an obsession with him. He’d spend all day cooking elaborate meals, waiting for Hazel to get home. And when they ate, he’d take one careful bite for each of hers, until at last she pushed away her plate, full to bursting, though always careful to compliment his hard work and cooking skill.
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  Even then, he’d present yet another dish, beautiful and tempting, and ask if she might have room for just a taste.

  It was creepy. And it should have been her cue that something was going terribly wrong with him. She should have marched into PePr the very first time he insisted they clean up the mess together, his face expectant, his eyes watching her keenly while she cleaned out the muck.

  “Yes,” Hazel admitted with a sigh. “He wanted to do it together. I tried to convince him that a stop at the twenty-four-hour PePr wash would be quicker and more efficient, but he wouldn’t hear it.”

  “That is just not normal,” Inga said with a definitive shake of her head. “He’s broken.”

  “And what about you going to work this morning?” Gemma asked, ignoring Inga’s pronouncement.

  “It was the same as last week. I explained that I had to go to work, that going to work was how I supported him, paid for our apartment, and…” She paused.

  “And?” Inga prompted.

  “And how I paid for all the food he wasted by shoving it into a holding tank,” Hazel finished, her words coming out in an embarrassed rush.

  Inga gasped at that. It was a terribly rude thing for her to have said. Definitely gasp-worthy.

  Hazel shrugged it off. “I was running out of sensible things to say. It just sort of… popped out.”

  She paused again, watching a pair of walkers stroll through the gardens. It struck her that she couldn’t tell which was the PePr and which was the human. So perfect was the liquid logic that ran their minds and the synth-mat self-healing flesh that covered them, they completely looked and acted the part. The latest musc-synth fiber muscles were so exquisite that even that last vestige of clunky mechanical support had now been eliminated. With all these technical achievements, they appeared in no way different from any other human. And really, what was the difference if no one could see it or sense it?