21st Century Science Fiction

by D B Hartwell

  “No problem,” said Buddy Joe with a smile, screaming inside as he did so. In the middle of it all, for the first time ever, he understood how the girl had felt. She hadn’t wanted to go through with it either. She had said no . . . He stepped into the suit . . .

  • • • •

  Buddy Joe couldn’t lie on the bed, not in his new body. It wasn’t just the way that the bed now felt strange: dry and harsh and brittle like everything else in this new world. No. Not just because of that, although the thought of putting on clothes and feeling elastic or nylon against his skin made him shudder, and the thought of a feather against his skin would have made him retch if he still had a stomach.

  No. What disturbed him was the way that his skin could see.

  The images were just there on the edge of his vision, ghosts of his room seen from all angles, the ceiling, the floor, all four walls; his body was watching them and reporting to a brain that couldn’t quite make it all out.

  And when he lay on the bed it was as if he was half-blinded and suffocating at the same time. He couldn’t block his new, imperfect vision in any way.

  So what to do? His feet had known. They had spread themselves wide, walked themselves up the walls and across the ceiling and then gripped tightly.

  Now he hung from the ceiling, watching the viewscreen. The Singhs had just finished having sex. Now it was time to watch his sister drink her evening cup of food. She raised it to him.

  “Hey there, Buddy Joe. What are they going to take away next time? Your hands?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Shouldn’t have raped that girl, Buddy Joe.”

  “I know, I know.”

  His father appeared on the screen. “Hey there, Buddy Joe. What are they going to take away next time? Your hands?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Shouldn’t have raped that girl, Buddy Joe.”

  “I know, I . . .” He paused.

  Why was he hanging here talking nonsense? Why wasn’t he outside, feeling the wind? His body was too dry. Outside the wind was blowing moist and salty from the sea.

  “Hey, Buddy Joe!”

  His father’s face stared from the screen, confused and slightly angry. It was the first time he had seen any expression but blank-eyed apathy for years. Part of Buddy Joe wanted to stop and speak to him. Hey Daddy, where have you been?

  But his alien body was doing something else. One foot had flapped itself free of the ceiling and the leg to which it was attached had turned through 180 degrees and was stretching impossibly down to the floor. It touched, and the other foot let go.

  His father called out to him from the viewscreen. “Hey Buddy Joe! How do you do that?”

  “I don’t know!” he gasped, as his new body marched its way out of the flat and down the corridor to where the lift was waiting.

  • • • •

  It was pleasanter at night. Hanging from the underside of Deck Three—the metal grille didn’t feel strange when gripped upside down—he looked up through his feet at the dark spaces through which squeezed the steady drip drip drip of rain. The rusty water ran around his toes, down his gray-green legs, dripped off his hands and his nose. He could gaze into the reflections and see two Buddy Joes looking down at the blocks and shadows of Deck Two. He could allow his legs to extend, let gravity pull him out like a stretch of toffee, blowing him in the wind from the sea.

  Anywhere he could fit his head, his body would pass. He flattened his body and slotted it through the gap between deck and Pillar Towers and made his way higher and higher up to hang from beneath the Seventh Deck, looking down on the parks and gardens that surrounded the homes where the élite lived. He made his way to the edge of the deck and looked up at the region where the stars were smeared across the sky. The whole universe was squashed into a region less than 100 meters thick.

  Once it had been unimaginably big, and then there had come the Collapse. Why had it happened? There were rumors, of course. Some said we weren’t welcome out there, some said we had done something so obscene in the eyes of the universe they had squashed it to nearly nothing and started it again somewhere else. Buddy Joe’s Granddad was more fanciful. He had said humans had just imagined it away.

  He remembered his grandfather’s words: “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.”

  They’d been out walking the decks, taking the air, listening to the tired splash of the ocean waves below on the garbage-strewn beach. Where does the ocean go? he had wondered.

  “Our minds used to be as big as the universe, Buddy Joe,” said his grandfather, glancing up at the squashed sky. “They still are,” he added sadly.

  There was something out there with him, hanging from the underside of Deck Seven. Another gray-green shape, watching him swinging in the breeze. Another alien, just like him. But look at the . . . Don’t look at the hands, Buddy Joe.

  It didn’t have a head.

  “Hey!” he called. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

  The other shape paused. It appeared to be looking at him, despite the fact it didn’t have a head; and then it turned and moved quickly away, swinging upside down from the deck, it vanished into the forest of Pillar Towers.

  “Hey!” called Buddy Joe again. “Come back!”

  He began to chase after it, but he was still not used to his new body. Whoever was in that suit was obviously a lot more practiced in its operation. Who was it? Buddy Joe had been told he was unique. The alien drew farther and farther away, swinging effortlessly below the deck, its body penduluming back and forth above the homes of the élite, swinging into and out of the lights that shone up from below, dodging through the cats’ cradles of the bracing. It swung around a Pillar Tower and was lost from view. Buddy Joe moved faster, following it around the wide metal curve, but it was no use. It had gone.

  “Where are you?” he called, and “Ouch!” as he felt a sting in his right hand. He looked there to see a black and yellow drone pumping a crystal of Compliance under his skin. Metal mandibles pulsed with red light.

  “Where have you been?” said the drone in a buzzing voice. “I thought I wouldn’t find you in time. Report to the laboratory at 60 P tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said Buddy Joe. “No problem.”

  • • • •

  Buddy Joe could stretch and stretch so that, while his feet still remained attached to the underside of Deck Six, his face moved closer and closer to the laboratory on Deck Five. He was 300 meters long and his body sang like a radio aerial, picking up signals from across the dirty ocean. Something out there was speaking to him. Something like himself. That other alien. He placed his hands on the metal of the deck and released his feet. His body slowly drew itself down and into position. He walked into the laboratory and the end of the meeting of the Historical Astronomers.

  “Ah, my Alien Suit friend. And how nice you look in your new body.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And what are they going to take away from you today?”

  “I don’t know,” Buddy Joe paused. He looked around at the meeting of astronomers as they packed away their pictures and slides into wide, shallow metal cases. He was remembering the last meeting.

  “Something you said, last time. You think Doctor Flynn is mistaken in what he is doing to me. Why is he doing this to me?”

  The Historical Astronomer gave a laugh. “Because your Doctor Flynn is a religious man. He may deny it, he may not believe it himself, but he will have had the teachings drummed into him as a child and they are still there inside him, shaping everything he does. I have been to Deck One, my friend. I have visited the Churches and Mosques and Synagogues and Temples. Doctor Flynn came from Deck One. He has walked on the bare earth, unprotected by the metal of the deck. He has felt the damp sand that runs along the edge of the ocean beneath his feet and between his toes. Down on Deck One they cannot forget Earth as it used to be. They feel a link to the past that we do not up here on Deck Five, and th
ey believe things should be as they were. Nostalgia is not a basis for scientific inquiry, my friend.”

  “He said much the same about you,” said Buddy Joe, and the astronomer laughed.

  “Ah! Touché! But only up to a point, my friend. My beliefs are confirmed by scientific fact. His beliefs are confirmed by the Bible. Numbers, Chapter 20. The Waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarrelled with the Lord and the Lord showed his holiness. The Waters of Meribah, where the Lord told Moses to strike a rock and bring forth water.”

  “Moses?”

  “He led his people into a wilderness and there he brought forth water and food and eventually delivered them to a Promised Land. Imagine that. First there was nothing, and then life burst forth. Just like when the flowers first bloomed on the moon . . . Do you see from where Doctor Flynn’s beliefs come, my friend?”

  Buddy Joe nodded his head slowly. “I think I do.”

  “Ah, but do you see it all? Moses was denied entry to the holy land because of his sin at the Waters of Meribah.”

  “His sin?”

  “He did not trust the Lord to show his holiness.”

  “Oh.”

  “And now, we have been denied entry to the universe. And Doctor Flynn and his kind ask the question, what sin have we committed?”

  Buddy Joe stood in silence, thinking about what he had just heard. The Historical Astronomer spoke. “You are an intelligent young man. You are a rapist, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Buddy Joe, Compliance leaving him no choice but to answer.

  “I thought so. I thought so. A great loss to the scientific community. The Historical Astronomers could have used you. It’s a shame that soon you will no longer be here.”

  As he spoke the door slid open, and the hands were wheeled in. Buddy Joe began to scream at the sight of them.

  • • • •

  “Hey Buddy Joe!” called Doctor Flynn. Buddy Joe was weeping with terror as he stared at his new hands, seeing how big they were, how the multicolored tentacles trailed from the trolley upon which they lay, out across the floor and around the room and out the door. They were too big to see all at once. Too big to imagine on his poor, thin wrists. Look at how they were already thrashing and wriggling, sending luminescent patterns to hang in the air in afterglow, long scripts that his alien body could read. His hands were speaking to him already. Wide hands, hundreds of meters long. Too long. He didn’t want to put them on. No, no, no!

  “Are you ready, Buddy Joe?”

  “Yes,” said the Compliance. “Just one thing,” said Buddy Joe, “I thought I was the only one?”

  Doctor Flynn signalled to his aides to bring the trolley closer. “The only one?”

  “The only one wearing a suit.”

  “You are.”

  “But I saw another alien, just last night. And the other week a woman, she was going to kill me. Just before she told me to jump off the deck, she vanished. I think it was the other alien that took her.”

  Doctor Flynn waved a hand for the trolley to pause. Buddy Joe felt a wave of relief. Don’t make me put on those hands, he thought. Don’t make me do it.

  “You are the only alien, Buddy Joe. This is the first Alien Suit: it is an artificial construct. There are no such things as aliens. Don’t you know that?”

  “I had an idea, but no one ever told me.”

  The hands were thrashing more wildly than ever. They sensed him nearby. They were frustrated at the pause and they strained against their restraints. One scientist jumped back from a vomit-yellow tentacle that lashed and cracked toward her.

  Doctor Flynn looked him in the eyes. “You can’t be lying to me. You are on Compliance.”

  “I’m telling the truth.”

  Doctor Flynn took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his round forehead. “You’re a rapist, aren’t you? You must be intelligent.”

  “I don’t feel intelligent.”

  Doctor Flynn looked at the other scientists. They shrugged. They shook their heads. They made it clear they didn’t understand what was going on, and that Doctor Flynn would have to figure this out on his own.

  “Okay, Buddy Joe. You can’t be lying; therefore you must be mistaken. Let’s see if we can figure out together what it is that you saw. Because it can’t be another alien. Okay?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Okay. Do you know why we’re turning you into an alien?”

  “No.”

  “We’re trying to reverse the Collapse, Buddy Joe, or at least see if we can get around it. Get out of this pathetic little bubble that the universe has become. We’ve tried to build something so alien that it can see what we cannot. Do you know what the Shift refers to, Buddy Joe?”

  Buddy Joe licked his lips as he looked at the hands. That yellow tentacle was thrashing harder than ever. Ignore it; ignore it. Speak and keep it away. He spoke.

  “The Shift refers to when flowers first bloomed on the moon. The moon colonists sent the message and no one believed them; they sent rockets there to check and when they landed there were green meadows where before there had been bare rocks . . . And then the same happened on Mars, and then on Callisto. Everywhere there was a human colony . . .”

  Doctor Flynn shook his head. “No, Buddy Joe. That’s not what the Shift refers to. A popular misconception.”

  “But I thought . . .”

  “No. That was just the catalyst. It refers to the Shift in our perceptions of the way the universe works. For millennia humans believed that the earth was created as a place for them to live. And then, in the last three centuries that idea was turned on its head. We came to believe that life evolved by chance in the universe; that it fought to cling on in the most unlikely places, deep beneath the oceans or high in the atmosphere, and that all the time a subtle change in the balance could wipe it out. The proof of that theory was written in the fossils of the dinosaurs or frozen in the glaciers. But we were wrong.”

  The yellow tentacle thrashed again and finally broke the metal clasp that held it. Three scientists ran from the thrashing, slashing shape. Doctor Flynn spoke on, his face gray and shiny with sweat.

  “Three centuries of so-called progressive thought turned on its head. We had been right the first time. There is a force written at the most basic level of the universe that is dedicated to bringing forth life. The universe warps and bends itself to support life. Where humans settle and live for long enough water springs forth from the rocks and plants from the soil . . .”

  Buddy Joe wanted to back away, but the yellow tentacle had turned its attention to the other bonds and was working to loosen them. Doctor Flynn didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “Life attracts life. We don’t understand it . . . Humans wandered over the surface of the moon for decades without any sign of the effect, but when we established a colony, started to take a real interest in the satellite, then it started to take an interest in us. It’s like some sort of feedback. You understand the term?”

  Doctor Flynn looked at Buddy Joe, seemingly oblivious to what was going on behind him. None of the scientists seemed to care, either. The tentacle had freed two more. Now the metal clasps which held the rest of the alien hands were pulled free, pop pop pop. The hands were free. Those horrible, horrible hands, so big, just so big. Buddy Joe wanted to cry. He didn’t want to put them on.

  “Do you understand?”

  Buddy Joe had to say yes, the Compliance made him. Doctor Flynn nodded, satisfied.

  “Good. That’s why, after the Collapse, we got to thinking about life. What if we made another form of life? Something completely alien to our experience. What if we built an alien suit for someone to wear? Someone like you, Buddy Joe. What would they make of the universe? Maybe they would understand what was going on. Maybe a different perspective would explain why the universe had collapsed to a bubble 300 miles across. Has the Collapse anything to do with the Shift in our perceptions?”

  “The hands are coming for me,” sa
id Buddy Joe.

  “That’s okay,” said Doctor Flynn. “That’s what they were supposed to do.”

  “I don’t want to put them on. They look too big. I’ll lose myself if I put them on. They’re horrible. Why did you make them so horrible?”

  “We had to make them as alien as we could, Buddy Joe. We need the alien perspective. Before we had you in here we took other condemned and pumped them full of Junk and LSD and MTPH and we recorded their hallucinations. We recorded the screams of children, and the thought patterns of dogs twitching in their sleep and the terror of a very bright light in a very dark room. We took all that and painted it across the canvas that makes your body so that it could be as alien as possible.”

  The tentacles formed a thrashing, slashing cage around Buddy Joe. He stood with Doctor Flynn in a maelstrom of orange and yellow violence. Something turned itself up from the floor. Dark green circles with sharp red spines inside. The cuffs of his new hands.

  Doctor Flynn seemed unconcerned. “And you know, even if our experiment succeeds, I wonder about what Wittgenstein said: ‘Even if a lion could speak we wouldn’t understand it.’ I wonder if we will understand you, Buddy Joe?”

  “Please don’t make me put them on,” he cried.

  “Shouldn’t have raped that girl, Buddy Joe.”

  “I know, I know.”

  He remembered the girl. He had cornered her in the lift. He remembered how she had shaken and wept.

  He had been thinking about his grandfather, and things he had said. The girl had a look that reminded him of his grandfather. That same questioning, intelligent look. He thought she would understand. Buddy Joe had asked her how it must have felt to walk under the stars when they shone high above, walk on the beach and feel the sand beneath your feet and the cool ocean breeze. And when she asked him to stop he had ignored her and just carried on speaking, trying to get her to see.

  Buddy Joe had raped her, pushed the hemispheres of her brain roughly apart and slipped the alien ideas into her head: left them to congeal inside her. Dirty, filthy and without her consent.

  The hands reached for Buddy Joe, slipped around his human hands and melted them.