The Best of the Best, Volume 1

by Gardner Dozois

  Ben trudged up the narrow staircase to the second floor, stopping on each step to sip his drink and scowl at the musty old photographs and daguerreotypes in oval frames mounted on the wall. Anne’s progenitors. On the landing, the locked media room door yielded to his voice. Anne sat spreadlegged, naked, on pillows on the floor. “Oh, hi, honey,” she said. “You’re in time to watch.”

  “Fan-tastic,” he said, and sat in his armchair, the only modern chair in the house. “What are we watching?” There was another Anne in the room, a sim of a young Anne standing on a dais wearing a graduate’s cap and gown and fidgeting with a bound diploma. This, no doubt, was a sim cast the day Anne graduated from Bryn Mawr summa cum laude. That was four years before he’d first met her. “Hi,” he said to the sim, “I’m Ben, your eventual spouse.”

  “You know, I kinda figured that out,” the girl said and smiled shyly, exactly as he remembered Anne smiling when Cathy first introduced them. The girl’s beauty was so fresh and familiar—and so totally absent in his own Anne—that Ben felt a pang of loss. He looked at his wife on the floor. Her red hair, once so fussy neat, was ragged, dull, dirty, and short. Her skin was yellowish and puffy, and there was a slight reddening around her eyes, like a raccoon mask. These were harmless side effects of the medication, or so Dr. Roth had assured him. Anne scratched ceaselessly at her arms, legs, and crotch, and, even from a distance, smelled of stale piss. Ben knew better than to mention her nakedness to her, for that would only exacerbate things and prolong the display. “So,” he repeated, “what are we watching?”

  The girl sim said, “Housecleaning.” She appeared at once both triumphant and terrified, as any graduate might, and Ben would have traded the real Anne for her in a heartbeat.

  “Yah,” said Anne, “too much shit in here.”

  “Really?” said Ben. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Anne poured a tray of chips on the floor between her thighs. “Of course you wouldn’t,” she said, picking one at random and reading its label, “Theta Banquet ‘37. What’s this? I never belonged to the Theta Society.”

  “Don’t you remember?” said the young Anne. “That was Cathy’s induction banquet. She invited me, but I had an exam, so she gave me that chip as a souvenir.”

  Anne fed the chip into the player and said, “Play.” The media room was instantly overlaid with the banquet hall of the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. Ben tried to look around the room, but the tables of girls and women stayed stubbornly peripheral. The focal point was a table draped in green cloth and lit by two candelabra. Behind it sat a young Cathy in formal evening dress, accompanied by three static placeholders, table companions who had apparently declined to be cast in her souvenir snapshot.

  The Cathy sim looked frantically about, then held her hands in front of her and stared at them as though she’d never seen them before. But after a moment she noticed the young Anne sim standing on the dais. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Looks like congratulations are in order.”

  “Indeed,” said the young Anne, beaming and holding out her diploma.

  “So tell me, did I graduate too?” said Cathy as her glance slid over to Ben. Then she saw Anne squatting on the floor, her sex on display.

  “Enough of this,” said Anne, rubbing her chest.

  “Wait,” said the young Anne. “Maybe Cathy wants her chip back. It’s her sim, after all.”

  “I disagree. She gave it to me, so it’s mine. And I’ll dispose of it as I see fit.” To the room she said, “Unlock this file and delete.” The young Cathy, her table, and the banquet hall dissolved into noise and nothingness, and the media room was itself again.

  “Or this one,” Anne said, picking up a chip that read Junior Prom Night. The young Anne opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Anne fed this chip, along with all the rest of them, into the player. A long directory of file names appeared on the wall. “Unlock Junior Prom Night.” The file’s name turned from red to green, and the young Anne appealed to Ben with a look.

  “Anne,” he said, “don’t you think we should at least look at it first?”

  “What for? I know what it is. High school, dressing up, lusting after boys, dancing. Who needs it? Delete file.” The item blinked three times before vanishing, and the directory scrolled up to fill the space. The young sim shivered, and Anne said, “Select the next one.”

  The next item was entitled A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Now the young Anne was compelled to speak, “You can’t delete that one. You were great in that, don’t you remember? Everyone loved you. It was the best night of your life.”

  “Don’t presume to tell me what was the best night of my life,” Anne said. “Unlock A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” She smiled at the young Anne. “Delete file.” The menu item blinked out. “Good. Now unlock all the files.” The whole directory turned from red to green.

  “Please make her stop,” the sim implored.

  “Next,” said Anne. The next file was High School Graduation. “Delete file. Next.” The next was labeled only Mama.

  “Anne,” said Ben, “why don’t we come back to this later. The house says dinner’s ready.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You must be famished after your busy day,” he continued. “I know I am.”

  “Then please go eat, dear,” she replied. To the room she said, “Play Mama.”

  The media room was overlaid by a gloomy bedroom that Ben at first mistook for their own. He recognized much of the heavy Georgian furniture, the sprawling canopied bed in which he felt so claustrophobic, and the voluminous damask curtains, shut now and leaking yellow evening light. But this was not their bedroom, the arrangement was wrong.

  In the corner stood two placeholders, mute statues of a teenaged Anne and her father, grief frozen on their faces as they peered down at a couch draped with tapestry and piled high with down comforters. And suddenly Ben knew what this was. It was Anne’s mother’s deathbed sim. Geraldine, whom he’d never met in life nor holo. Her bald eggshell skull lay weightless on feather pillows in silk covers. They had meant to cast her farewell and accidently caught her at the precise moment of her death. He had heard of this sim from Cathy and others. It was not one he would have kept.

  Suddenly, the old woman on the couch sighed, and all the breath went out of her in a bubbly gush. Both Annes, the graduate and the naked one, waited expectantly. For long moments the only sound was the locking of a clock that Ben recognized as the Seth Thomas clock currently located on the library mantel. Finally there was a cough, a hacking cough with scant strength behind it, and a groan, “Am I back?”

  “Yes, Mother,” said Anne.

  “And I’m still a sim?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please delete me.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Anne said and turned to Ben. “We’ve always thought she had a bad death and hoped it might improve over time.”

  “That’s crazy,” snapped the young Anne. “That’s not why I kept this sim.”

  “Oh, no?” said Anne. “Then why did you keep it?” But the young sim seemed confused and couldn’t articulate her thoughts. “You don’t know because I didn’t know at the time either,” said Anne. “But I know now, so I’ll tell you. You’re fascinated with death. It scares you silly. You wish someone would tell you what’s on the other side. So you’ve enlisted your own sweet mama.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Anne turned to the deathbed tableau. “Mother, tell us what you saw there.”

  “I saw nothing,” came the bitter reply. “You cast me without my eyeglasses.”

  “Ho ho,” said Anne. “Geraldine was nothing if not comedic.”

  “You also cast me wretchedly thirsty, cold, and with a bursting bladder, damn you! And the pain! I beg you, daughter, delete me.”

  “I will, Mother, I promise, but first you have to tell us what you saw.”

  “That’s what you said the last time.”

  “This time I mean it.”

  T
he old woman only stared, her breathing growing shallow and ragged. “All right, Mother,” said Anne. “I swear I’ll delete you.”

  Geraldine closed her eyes and whispered, “What’s that smell? That’s not me?” After a pause she said, “It’s heavy. Get it off.” Her voice rose in panic. “Please! Get it off!” She plucked at her covers, then her hand grew slack, and she all but crooned, “Oh, how lovely. A pony. A tiny dappled pony.” After that she spoke no more and slipped away with a last bubbly breath.

  Anne paused the sim before her mother could return for another round of dying. “See what I mean?” she said. “Not very uplifting, but all-in-all, I detect a slight improvement. What about you, Anne? Should we settle for a pony?” The young sim stared dumbly at Anne. “Personally,” Anne continued, “I think we should hold out for the bright tunnel or an open door or bridge over troubled water. What do you think, sister?” When the girl didn’t answer, Anne said, “Lock file and eject.” The room turned once again into the media room, and Anne placed the ejected chip by itself into a tray. “We’ll have another go at it later, Mum. As for the rest of these, who needs them?”

  “I do,” snapped the girl. “They belong to me as much as to you. They’re my sim sisters. I’ll keep them until you recover.”

  Anne smiled at Ben. That’s charming. Isn’t that charming, Benjamin? My own sim is solicitous of me. Well, here’s my considered response. Next file! Delete! Next file! Delete! Next file!” One by one, the files blinked out.

  “Stop it!” screamed the girl. “Make her stop it!”

  “Select that file,” Anne said, pointing at the young Anne. “Delete.” The sim vanished, cap, gown, tassels, and all. “Whew,” said Anne, “at least now I can hear myself think. She was really getting on my nerves. I almost suffered a relapse. Was she getting on your nerves, too, dear?”

  “Yes,” said Ben, “my nerves are ajangle. Now can we go down and eat?”

  “Yes, dear,” she said, “but first … select all files and delete.”

  “Countermand!” said Ben at the same moment, but his voice held no privileges to her personal files, and the whole directory queue blinked three times and vanished. “Aw, Annie, why’d you do that?” he said. He went to the cabinet and pulled the trays that held his own chips. She couldn’t alter them electronically, but she might get it into her head to flush them down the toilet or something. He also took their common chips, the ones they’d cast together ever since they’d met. She had equal privileges to those.

  Anne watched him and said, “I’m hurt that you have so little trust in me.”

  “How can I trust you after that?”

  “After what, darling?”

  He looked at her. “Never mind,” he said and carried the half dozen trays to the door.

  “Anyway,” said Anne, “I already cleaned those.”

  “What do you mean you already cleaned them?”

  “Well, I didn’t delete you. I would never delete you. Or Bobby.”

  Ben picked one of their common chips at random, Childbirth of Robert Ellery Malleyl/02-03-48, and slipped it into the player. “Play!” he commanded, and the media room became the midwife’s birthing suite. His own sim stood next to the bed in a green smock. It wore a humorously helpless expression. It held a swaddled bundle, Bobby, who bawled lustily. The birthing bed was rumpled and stained, but empty. The new mother was missing. “Aw, Annie, you shouldn’t have.”

  “I know, Benjamin,” she said. “I sincerely hated doing it.”

  Ben flung their common trays to the floor, where the ruined chips scattered in all directions. He stormed out of the room and down the stairs, pausing to glare at every portrait on the wall. He wondered if his proxy had found a suitable clinic yet. He wanted Anne out of the house tonight. Bobby should never see her like this. Then he remembered the chip he’d taken from Bobby and felt for it in his pocket—the Wedding Album.

  The lights came back up, Anne’s thoughts coalesced, and she remembered who and what she was. She and Benjamin were still standing in front of the wall. She knew she was a sim, so at least she hadn’t been reset. Thank you for that, Anne, she thought.

  She turned at a sound behind her. The refectory table vanished before her eyes, and all the gifts that had been piled on it hung suspended in midair. Then the table reappeared, one layer at a time, its frame, top, gloss coat, and lastly, the bronze hardware. The gifts vanished, and a toaster reappeared, piece by piece, from its heating elements outward. A coffee press, houseputer peripherals, component by component, cowlings, covers, and finally boxes, gift wrap, ribbon, and bows. It all happened so fast Anne was too startled to catch the half of it, yet she did notice that the flat gift from Great Uncle Karl was something she’d been angling for, a Victorian era sterling platter to complete her tea service.

  “Benjamin!” she said, but he was missing, too. Something appeared on the far side of the room, on the spot where they’d posed for the sim, but it wasn’t Benjamin. It was a 3-D mannequin frame, and as she watched, it was built up, layer by layer. “Help me,” she whispered as the entire room was hurled into turmoil, the furniture disappearing and reappearing, paint being stripped from the walls, sofa springs coiling into existence, the potted palm growing from leaf to stem to trunk to dirt, the very floor vanishing, exposing a default electronic grid. The mannequin was covered in flesh now and grew Benjamin’s face. It flitted about the room in a pink blur. Here and there it stopped long enough to proclaim, “I do.”

  Something began to happen inside Anne, a crawling sensation everywhere as though she were a nest of ants. She knew she must surely die. They have deleted us, and this is how it feels, she thought. Everything became a roiling blur, and she ceased to exist except as the thought—How happy I look.

  When Anne became aware once more, she was sitting hunched over in an auditorium chair idly studying her hand, which held the clutch bouquet. There was commotion all around her, but she ignored it, so intent was she on solving the mystery of her hand. On an impulse, she opened her fist and the bouquet dropped to the floor. Only then did she remember the wedding, the holo, learning she was a sim. And here she was again—but this time everything was profoundly different. She sat upright and saw that Benjamin was seated next to her.

  He looked at her with a wobbly gaze and said, “Oh, here you are.”

  “Where are we?”

  “I’m not sure. Some kind of gathering of Benjamins. Look around.” She did. They were surrounded by Benjamins, hundreds of them, arranged chronologically—it would seem—with the youngest in rows of seats down near a stage. She and Benjamin sat in what appeared to be a steeply sloped college lecture hall with lab tables on the stage and story-high monitors lining the walls. In the rows above Anne, only every other seat held a Benjamin. The rest were occupied by women, strangers who regarded her with veiled curiosity.

  Anne felt a pressure on her arm and turned to see Benjamin touching her. “You feel that, don’t you?” he said. Anne looked again at her hands. They were her hands, but simplified, like fleshy gloves, and when she placed them on the seat back, they didn’t go through.

  Suddenly, in ragged chorus, the Benjamins down front raised their arms and exclaimed, “I get it; we’re the sims!” It was like a roomful of unsynchronized cuckoo clocks tolling the hour. Those behind Anne laughed and hooted approval. She turned again to look at them. Row-by-row, the Benjamins grew greyer and stringier until, at the very top, against the back wall, sat nine ancient Benjamins like a panel of judges. The women, however, came in batches that changed abruptly every row or two. The one nearest her was an attractive brunette with green eyes and full, pouty lips. She, all two rows of her, frowned at Anne.

  “There’s something else,” Anne said to Benjamin, turning to face the front again, “my emotions.” The bulletproof happiness she had experienced was absent. Instead she felt let down, somewhat guilty, unduly pessimistic—in short, almost herself.

  “I guess my sims always say that,” exclaimed the chorus of
Benjamins down front, to the delight of those behind. “I just never expected to be a sim.”

  This was the cue for the eldest Benjamin yet to walk stiffly across the stage to the lectern. He was dressed in a garish leisure suit: baggy red pantaloons, a billowy yellow-and-green-striped blouse, a necklace of egg-sized pearlescent beads. He cleared his throat and said, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I trust all of you know me—intimately. In case you’re feeling woozy, it’s because I used the occasion of your reactivation to upgrade your architecture wherever possible. Unfortunately, some of you”—he waved his hand to indicate the front rows—“are too primitive to upgrade. But we love you nevertheless.” He applauded for the early Benjamins closest to the stage and was joined by those in the back. Anne clapped as well. Her new hands made a dull, thudding sound. “As to why I called you here …” said the elderly Benjamin, looking left and right and behind him. “Where is that fucking messenger anyway? They order us to inventory our sims and then they don’t show up?”

  Here I am, said a voice, a marvelous voice that seemed to come from everywhere. Anne looked about to find its source and followed the gaze of others to the ceiling. There was no ceiling. The four walls opened to a flawless blue sky. There, amid drifting, pillowy clouds, floated the most gorgeous person Anne had ever seen. He—or she?—wore a smart grey uniform with green piping, a dapper little grey cap, and boots that shimmered like water. Anne felt energized just looking at him, and when he smiled, she gasped, so strong was his presence.

  “You’re the one from the Trade Council?” said the Benjamin at the lectern.

  Yes, I am. I am the eminence grise of the Council on World Trade and Endeavor.

  “Fantastic. Well, here’s all of’em. Get on with it.”