“A real Paul. There isn’t one. I made him to order.”
“That’s not possible. I met you yesterday. I met him two years ago.”
“Mm, no. It’s the happiness thing again, you see. Good memories are part of it. So I gave you some. Trust me, Paul is about thirty-six hours old.”
Abby’s knees gave way and dumped her back in her chair. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Then take it back. If that life isn’t real, I want you to get it out of my head. You must be able to.”
“‘I can, if that’s what you want.”
“I do. No, wait. What happens to Paul?”
“Like I said. There isn’t one.”
Abby’s voice caught. “He dies?”
“Technically, he goes back to never having existed.”
Abby’s stomach churned. “Get out,” she said. “‘I don’t care what powers you have, if you come anywhere near me again I will kill you.”
“Well, you see, I’m like energy, in that I can’t actually be…” Sharon looked at Abby’s face and trailed off. “Maybe we won’t get into that right now.”
“No,” Abby said. “Maybe we won’t.” She snatched her car keys off the desk and slammed the door behind her.
“YOU’RE HOME EARLY,” PAUL said. He was stirring something in a wok on the hob, something that smelled spicy and delicious.
She nodded. “I dumped a client,” she said.
“Really? That doesn’t sound like you.”
She stood by the breakfast bar and crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me where we first met.”
“Huh?”
“Tell me, Paul.”
“On the early morning train to Glasgow, three years ago. You were speaking at a seminar on personal development.”
She closed her eyes. “What’s your favorite food?”
He licked the spoon in his hand and grinned. “Green Thai curry, obviously. Why?”
“Same as mine. Your favorite book?”
“Abby, what is this?”
“Just do it, okay? Humor me. Actually, no. You know what? Don’t. Don’t do what I want. Because you always do, don’t you? You’re always perfect.”
Paul gave her a quizzical look. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.”
He laughed. “So—if not doing what you want is a good thing—maybe this is the right time to tell you I booked up for Trevor’s stag do in Ibiza?”
“This is the trouble, you always—wait, what?”
“It’s only for a week.”
“You’re going away for a week? To Ibiza? Without me?”
He put his head to one side. “You do know what stag do means, don’t you?”
She gave a tiny shudder. “I hate Ibiza,” she said. “And Trevor, come to think of it. What if I said I don’t want you to go?”
Paul grinned. “Well, since I’ve already paid my deposit, I’d say we’d have to agree to disagree for once.”
Abby let out a long breath and scrubbed her hands over her face. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe we could do that. Maybe we really could.”
Paul took the wok off the heat and turned to face her. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
She found a smile from somewhere. “I’m fine,” she said, “I just need some air.”
She slipped out the back door into the garden. A large leaf detached itself from next door’s apple tree and swirled in the air. Somewhere, a cat yowled.
“Are you there?” she said softly. “Come on, I know you can hear me.”
“I’m here,” Sharon said. She was sitting cross-legged on top of the shed.
Abby scuffed her heel on the decking. “All right. I still think it’s wrong, what you did. But he’s Paul. However he started out, he’s real now. So I want you to leave things as they are.”
”You humans can really be capricious, you know that? But yeah, I can do that.” She jumped down. “So, about that supervillain thing?”
Abby shook her head. “No. Definitely not. I am not going to play Joker to your Batman, or David to your Goliath, or whatever it is you had in mind. So you can forget all about that idea. The answer’s ‘No.’ One hundred percent no.”
“How about Buffy and Faith? I’ll let you be Buffy.”
“The answer’s no.”
Sharon scratched her ear. “Ah,” she said.
Abby raised her eyebrows. “Ah? Again, with the ah? Now what?”
”So you didn’t want to be given supernatural abilities that would enable you to interact with me on a more equal footing, then.”
“No. I did not.”
“Ah,” Sharon said.
THAT NIGHT, ABBY DREAMED about going sunbathing inside the burning heart of a star. When she woke, she had a deep, all-over tan.
THE BANK APPROVED ABBY’S loan application. She gave the rest of the funds that had appeared in her account to charity and used the loan to lease another floor in her office building. Joe Callaghan was her first employee.
Cthulu discovered online grocery shopping, and she had to buy three new industrial-sized freezers to store all the pizzas. Paul went to Ibiza, and posted photos on Facebook that made Trevor’s fiancée call off the wedding. Abby made him sleep on the couch for a week, but in the end everybody agreed it was probably for the best.
Sharon wiped out half of North America with a tactical strike launched from an orbital space laser, but Abby put it back before anyone really noticed.
“DID YOU HEAR?” JOE said, as he put Abby’s coffee on her desk. “Some woman’s opened up another coaching service on the forty-eighth floor.”
“Actually, I like to call it a facilitation service,” Sharon said from the doorway. She’d dyed her hair brown and swapped the motorcycle boots for suede high heels.
“What’s that?” Joe said.
“It’s a more hands-on approach,” she said.
“Really?” Abby said. “This is what you’re doing, now?”
Sharon shrugged. “You know what they say—if you can’t beat them, join them. And then beat them.”
Joe narrowed her eyes. “And what makes you think you’re going to beat us?”
“I get results for my clients,” Sharon said. “Whatever they want, I can make happen. In fact, I guarantee it.”
Joe snorted. “Good luck with the advertising standards agency on that one. Well, just make sure you don’t try to pinch our clients. Otherwise you’ll have a fight on your hands.”
Sharon grinned. “Oh, pet. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Story notes:
I've always been fascinated by the concepts of immortality and omnipotence—with endless time and power at your command, what would you do? Many fine stories have looked at this question from the serious, “with great power comes great responsibility” angle. I decided to try a more irreverent take.
Michelle Ann King writes SF, dark fantasy and horror from her kitchen table in Essex, England. She has worked as a mortgage underwriter, supermarket cashier, makeup artist, tarot reader and insurance claims handler before having the good fortune to be able to write full-time. She loves Las Vegas, vampire films and good Scotch whisky. Find details of her stories and books at www.transientcactus.co.uk
ONE THING LEADS TO YOUR MOTHER
by Desmond Warzel
Yates propelled himself into the office. The door closed behind him, silencing the emergency klaxons that had followed him around for days like Hell’s own Greek chorus. The only remaining sound was his pulse pounding in his head: too loud, too fast.
A seated figure shimmered into existence behind the desk. White, male, balding, wearing a tan sweater. “Lieutenant David Eldridge Yates. It’s agreeable to see you. You have yet to avail yourself of my services.”
“You’re the psychologist?” asked Yates.
“System: Holographic Replica: INdividual Kounseling. S.H.R.I.N.K. for short.”
“That’s a bit forced.”
“You may call me Dr. Turing.”
“
Very clever.”
“Is my appearance acceptable? I can be either sex, and can approximate any ethnicity.”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s important is, you’re the only functioning computer on the ship.”
“Perhaps that accounts for your agitated state. Is there some sort of emergency?”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“With the exception of the library module, I have no access to the ship’s systems. My isolation ensures the confidentiality of all counseling sessions. What is the problem?”
“What isn’t the problem?” Yates retorted. “Three days ago, Lieutenant Arcuri woke me from cryosleep. My turn on watch. No sooner had I put Arcuri under when everything went to hell. Cascading failure. Systems went down like dominoes. Some went quietly; most didn’t.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see how I can help.”
“I fixed it all. Every last system. Been awake seventy-two hours straight, but it’s done. All I have to do is restart the master system, and everything should come back online.”
“And?” prompted Turing.
“I can’t get in. I forgot my password.”
Turing raised an eyebrow. That he could react at all was a testament to the prescience of his programmers (and their refusal to underestimate the depths of human idiocy).
“You’ve got my file,” said Yates. “Just retrieve my password, and I’ll get out of your hair.”
“I’m sorry, Dave; I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The joke eluded the oblivious Yates, as did Turing’s self-satisfied smirk at finally having a legitimate context in which to deploy it. The lieutenant registered only annoyed confusion.
“Why not? You know I’m me.”
“Passwords do not appear in personnel records. They’re meant to be secret, after all,” Turing said reproachfully.
“Well, we got an hour to figure it out,” said Yates. “Then the auxiliary batteries on the cryopods conk out. Goodbye, crew; hello, just the two of us, alone together for eternity.”
“Perish the thought,” said Turing, with distaste. “The task you propose lies beyond my parameters, however, my perceptual acuity with respect to the human psyche is unmatched. We must try.” He indicated the couch at the side of the room. “I find that most people prefer to lie down. Would you care to?”
To Yates, who had spent three days caroming off the bulkheads like a racquetball (if racquetballs spent their existences in a state of sheer panic), the couch’s allure suddenly eclipsed the aggregated temptations of a dozen shore leaves in the dozen seediest ports in explored space. He kicked gently off from the wall and maneuvered across the room, pulling himself into position atop the leather cushions and strapping himself down.
“Nice place,” he said, and meant it. The rest of the ship (whose designers had seen too many of the wrong movies) was unlivable on a good day: all stark white passageways and blinking LEDs. “Carpet, paneling, real furniture; I’m gonna drop in more often. If we survive, that is.”
“My analysis of human behavior suggests some preliminary possibilities. Is your password ‘password’? Or a numerical sequence? ‘1-2-3-4-5,’ for example?”
“What?” Yates tried to heave himself upright in indignation; the restraint limited him to an awkward-looking obtuse angle. “Because I’m black, right? ‘Oh, he must be too dumb or lazy to pick a real password.’”
“I’ll take that as ‘negative,’” sniffed Turing. “Is it your mother’s maiden name?”
“Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Pardon?”
“You shrinks just love to blame everything on a guy’s mother, right? I’m not having it. If we were Catholic, my mother’d be a saint.”
“All the more reason to use her name, perhaps?”
“I thought about it. But her maiden name was Eldridge.”
“Your middle name.”
“Can’t use your own name, they said.”
“They told you this at the academy?”
“What academy? I worked my way up from airman, third class. I’m the only one on this ship who did.”
“So you chose your password during basic training.”
“Yeah. We had half a ream of paperwork and five minutes to fill it out. With two pituitary cases in sergeants’ stripes screaming into our ears the whole time.”
“For my part, I’ve never approved of such aural assaults as motivational tools.”
“Wasn’t that bad. No worse than trying to do homework when my dad was in the house.”
“Let’s talk about that. You were born in 2190, in New York City?
“Yeah. Lived there until I was thirteen.”
“With your mother.”
“Man, I told you not to bring up my mother. Try that where I come from, and see what happens.”
“And where is that, specifically?”
“Brooklyn.”
“Is ‘Brooklyn’ your password?”
“No. Why would it be?”
“You were under stress when you selected it. You might have unconsciously sought solace in a happier time.”
“No dice.”
“I see that you graduated from high school in Erie, Pennsylvania.”
“Yeah. Central Tech High School. Go, Falcons.”
“Is any of that ringing a bell for you?”
“What? ‘Erie’? ‘Central’? ‘Falcons’? No, sorry.”
“No need to be sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t mean it.”
“When did you move to Erie?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Yes, but my memory isn’t at issue.”
“When I was fifteen.”
“You moved there with your mother.”
“You talk about her one more time, I’m gonna put you right on your holographic ass.”
“A novel threat, if unenforceable. Your concern is noted; I’ll avoid broaching the subject unnecessarily.”
“Fine.”
“So. You moved to Erie with your mother?”
Yates fished a stylus from the pocket of his coveralls and flung it. It passed harmlessly through Turing’s head and ricocheted around the office until it lodged in the kneewell beneath the desk. Turing remained unperturbed. “My understanding is that we have very little time. It’s up to you how much we waste.”
Yates massaged his temples. His pulse was down to a resting rate, but his head still pounded. Starship duty: all the benefits of a hangover without all that bothersome drinking. A little something for the recruiting posters. “Yes. With my mother.”
“Why?”
“Cheaper than New York. And she had family there.”
“What did your father have to say about it?”
“Nothing that mattered.”
“What’s his name?”
“Same as mine.”
“So you’re a Junior.”
“No. Different middle names.”
“And your father’s middle name?”
“Jerome. So what?”
“Is ‘Jerome’ your password?”
“Be serious.”
“You could have chosen something with negative associations and then repressed it after the fact.”
“It’s not ‘Jerome.’ Trust me.”
“Was your father around very much?”
“Is anybody’s, these days?”
“Do you resent him for that?”
“The man was a tyrant. The longer he stayed away, the better.”
“And your mother was more lax, in terms of discipline?”
“No, she just knew how to let a kid be a kid. Again with my mother?”
“You were eighteen when you selected the password; thus, your childhood made up the totality of your experiences. The answer lies there.”
“You’re just jealous. You don’t have a mother, so you gotta rag on everyone else’s.”
“I had a mother. Her name was ELIZA.” This was the second joke to sail majestically over Yates’s head. Turing scheduled a thorough e
xamination of his humor subroutines, contingent on the crew’s survival.
“Fine, my childhood. What else do you want to know?”
“Is there anything you think I ought to know? Something you’ve avoided discussing?”
“Obviously you think there is.”
“You were in Brooklyn through age thirteen and Erie from fifteen on. What’s missing?”
“Age fourteen, I guess.”
“What happened then?”
“I lived with my father in Ohio for a year.”
“Why keep that to yourself?”
“Nobody ever brought up the subject of David Jerome Yates voluntarily.”
“You didn’t think it might be important?”
“The worst year of my life? Sure, if you’re a sadist, it’s important.”
“Why Ohio?”
“He thought Brooklyn had too many bad influences. Said if I came to Toledo for a year, I’d straighten up.”
“Is ‘Toledo’ your password?”
Yates waved off the question irritably. “No, it’s not. What makes you think it’ll be that simple? ‘Oh, the black guy has to have an obvious password, or he’ll forget it.’”
“Hostility is unconstructive. Moreover, you did forget it.”
“It’s not ‘Toledo.’ We didn’t live there anyway; we lived in the suburbs.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t remember. Doesn’t matter. One suburb’s just like every other.”
“Did you like it there?”
“Hated it. Never felt at home. Plus, I was the only black kid in my class.”
“They gave you a hard time?”
“No, I gave them a hard time.”
“I see.”
“Wasn’t their fault; I just wanted gone. I pestered my dad every day. ‘I wanna live with mom, I wanna live with mom.’ Just ‘Mom, mom, mom,’ all the time. I thought you were gonna try not to bring her up.”
“I didn’t; you did.”
“There’s nothing here; try something else.”
“What school did you attend?”
“Gateway Middle School.”
“You remember the school, but not the town it was in?”
“So?”
“What street did you live on?”
“Sackett Street.”
“In what town?”
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