Analog Science Fiction and Fact - July-Agust 2014

by Penny Publications

  "What about Sallii-abeel? Will she—"

  "We'll make sure she gets both doses," Suuppa answered, looking out the sole window in the room. "However, that will only take the edge off the worst of days, and there are still so many other muuks, including your nephew." There was a distinct pause before she turned to Jo-abeel. "Jo-abeel, your trip was so fast that there is still time before the flood season..."

  Kali continued where the healer had left off, "But only enough time for you to Journey again. No one else is quick enough. The water is for you. You have three weeks to prepare—to put the weight back on. May Tepps be with..."

  Jo-abeel had taken another deep breath just before her world spun as it had in the desert, and she was once again unconscious.

  * * *

  Valued Employee

  James K. Isaac | 4839 words

  When she plunged the black shard into her eye she knew everything else would be easy. Child's play. The cauterizing New Model Optic would forever remain a memory, a pain revisited in bad dreams. Nonetheless, such actions proved Asha's loyalty. Anyway, the benefits made it worthwhile. The clarity superseded all of Asha's expectations, not to mention the speed of the data streaming direct from Black Sphere Central.

  She really could save her people now, remove all the pain and hardship from their primitive lives. Just one more thing to do to seal the deal; sever her own hand. Child's play. Papa would understand, surely? She thought. This is the right thing, everyone will be so proud of me.

  "Well done, Miss Asha Kass. You will thrill at the abilities of Black Sphere technology. We foresee that you will rise to the heights of success. A living promotion, a unifier and an inspiration to one and all." The tiny hairs of Asha's forearms bristled at the roll of breath from the far wall; the eye wall, the Board of Directors. Sixty-four eyes, unpaired and lidless, examined and graded her every thought and action. Equidistantly arranged in a grid, dilating and fidgeting independently of each other, some of the eyes sparkled with vitality, some were bloodshot, some wilted and some yellowed with age.

  But the Board didn't concern her as much as the other presence in the room. A Geo-man stood passively in the corner, pure unbreathing Black Sphere tech; a dark silhouette barely distinguishable against the black walls in this all-black place. A trail of polygons blipped, undulating across its form. Its blank face somehow examined and graded her, too.

  Dabbing tongue over dry lips, Asha tasted salt, the flavor of anxiety on her palate. She held a machete high above her head, the plastic handle slippery with sweat. Clenching and unclenching her other hand, laying palm-side up on a plasticlike block in front of her, she urged herself courage enough to do what must be done.

  Again her hair bristled on a draft of breath, cool against Asha's sweat-dampened face. Concentrating to dull the thump of heart in her ears, she readied herself for the cacophony of sixty-four voices. And again the Board of Directors spoke, all in sync but victim to diverse disparities in drawl and accent.

  "Why do we demand such rituals with such primitive implements? Why not just give you the upgrades? Rituals are meaningless after all. Unless something is tangibly lost and given, unless that loss takes conscious effort. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Directors, I understand. I am prepared to be better in my thoughts, words and deeds. To serve and spread the wonder, peace, and plenty of Black Sphere." The words were reverential, well-practiced. A silence followed, thick and heavy like glue in Asha's ears.

  Squeezing her eyes closed until they ached, she felt blood rumbling through her capillaries. Through clenched teeth she sucked at the air, held it in, waited for the burn of oxygen deprivation to spur her onward. Pressure swelled inside her chest until it raged for release. When the agony came she exorcized it with a wail, the machete blade whistling through the air, cleanly severing hand from wrist before embedding into the block underneath.

  For a moment the room ebbed and flowed around her like looking up through bath water. Her legs gave way, sending her free-falling into the infinite abyss. Or so it felt until her knees hit the floor. Blood spouted from her wrist, unreality seeped into Asha's mind.

  Her gaze wandered back to the Geo-man. Pyramidal torso, cube shoulder joints, cylindrical and cuboid limbs, all with edges fuzzing into space and brimming with the potential to do anything. The blank darkness of the Geoman's face shimmered and changed. Suddenly Asha found herself staring at her reflection. But not exactly, since the reflection smiled.

  Satisfaction gleamed in that smile. Well, why not? She could allow herself a smile. After all, she had passed the exams and learnt the ropes, exceeded all expectations. Never would her provincial kin have believed she was destined to become anything other than a war-bureaucrat in some office in the wild periphery. Yet the company had really invited her to join their inner circle of agents. It was only right to smile, to feel proud. Some might even dare to say she was a hero... perhaps.

  Splashing sounds brought her back to the present, the floor rippled into liquidity beneath and around her. Rippling blackness hardened into a pair of lips, parting as they birthed a smooth black ball; a ball as dark as distilled essence of void. "Please attach it," said the Board of Directors, voices grating through Asha's bones. With a pulse, five cylinders slipped out from the ball, dangling limply from it like some shadowy nightmare spider.

  Still on her knees, Asha offered out her stump. Tendrils of blackness reached into her wound, gelling with sinew and nerve and bone, cauterizing as it did. Asha screamed as it fused. When the pain stopped, the black ball had morphed into a perfect imitation of her hand, elegant and long fingered; a hand that could splay and pose in the pantheon of history's most lovely hands. A better hand than the clenched dead thing lying on the floor a few feet away.

  As if possessed of a singular soul the sixty-four twitching eyes fixed on her, the force of their vision almost palpable. "And now to business, Miss Asha Kass.

  "We, the all-knowing Board, have deemed for you to visit the Luddite town of your birth. Bathe in the adoration of your relatives by all means, then take advantage of your closeness to these people, and persuade them to join our commune of technology. You are well suited to this task. Remember, though they fight and die for us, their incompatible beliefs undermine our every gesture."

  Steadying her breath, Asha struggled to her feet even as the room continued to sway. Into the extremities of her new fingers her consciousness pushed, testing them out for size.

  "After all these years, you're really sending me home? To save them all?" It had been fifteen years, three months, and four days since she had seen her log cabin.

  Voice just a breath, she absently mouthed the word "Mama." Tears swelled on the brink of falling but she held them back with all the resolve she could muster. Stupid, stupid. The upgrades transmitted her every thought. Nothing could be hidden. No secrets anymore.

  "Calm yourself," said the cacophony of voices. "There may be obstacles—living breathing obstacles to your success. Obstacles that may snag at old emotions. You have carte blanche when dealing with these. Do you understand? Carte blanche."

  "Yes, Directors," Asha said. She looked back at the Geo-man, its face now that of her mother, with kind smiling eyes. It made her shiver.

  It was almost refreshing to actually walk, into the forest. Although only a couple of miles from the Black Sphere cessation line, into the so-called "Luddite province," the sensation of moving under one's own effort was quaint to say the least. So different from being transported through the omnipresent black membrane in the cities.

  Worn and prematurely aged men and women knelt in the dirt at the edge of the forest. Called Scrubbers, the wiry pads they held dripped with a disinfecting mix of bark and sap, used to scrub away the ever encroaching film of Black Sphere. Or they chipped at hardened scab-like patches with knives and chisels. So much stubborn effort to survive in primitive hardship for so little reward, although Asha had to admit that their persistence paid off. Beyond the cessation line none of her need
s or wants would materialize from the floor in convenient vicinity. Everything had to be made by hand. Quaint.

  But then Asha felt something, a buzz muffled under layers of technology, a sensation embedded deep within Black Sphere technology. A sensation that could only be described as "fear" pulsed within her, along with a collective shudder from the Board of Directors. A sensation as natural to real humans as breathing; fear. Fear of the unknown, of the primitive; of places independent of Black Sphere technology and therefore chaotic and dangerous. A fear Asha didn't share.

  Hazy rods of light broke through the forest filigree. Clouds of dry earth puffed around her boots with every step, wafting up into her face. Gritty in her sinuses, the taste made her cough. But it brought back an avalanche of memories while her New Model Optic buzzed an analysis of her surroundings, breaking everything down into informative components and transmitting them back to the Board ensuring she would never get lost. In all honesty though, Asha thrilled at the chance of losing her way in the kaleidoscopic maze of childhood past.

  Giddiness took her and she ran through blossom swirls into the sap-heavy breeze. Memories of gnawing winter cold and sticky summer nights, of grasses she rolled in, streams she bathed in, trees she climbed, all flooded her mind. Still some of the trees bore the marking of playful youth; names in love hearts and innocent profanity scratched into bark. Eventually she found herself outside the log cabin she once called home. Just seeing it made her feel like a little girl again.

  Mother's tears and a father's empty stare greeted her return. Elderly and hunched now, bent like the gnarled branches of the trees, her mother creaked to her knees, spitting on a cloth to clean her successful daughter's boots. "No, Mama. You need never do this. I should clean your boots." Asha helped her mother up, noticing the old lady's feet were bound up in well-worn leather wrappings. "Good boots. That is the first thing I shall arrange for you, Mama," she said, before her mama threw her arms around her daughter.

  Mama's hugs revealed a body of bony-hard angles, not the warm and cuddlesome plumpness Asha remembered. Yet the superstitious trinkets—wooden stick carvings of animals, crosses and moons—still cluttered floor to ceiling and gleamed with polish. Homely as ever, not a trace of dust anywhere, pots bubbled on a stove spicing the air with scents of tarragon and parsley. Yes, things have changed, but it is still my Mama. This is still my home. The swelling bubble of tears finally burst and Asha hugged her mother tighter.

  "Asha, my flying squirrel in the trees, I am so proud. When the Black Sphere people came looking for soldiers to recruit, your father wanted to fight them. But I knew they saw something special in you. You were always the bright one, my Asha. A heroine who could stand up for us in the cities."

  At mention of her father, Asha looked over at the old man slumped in a wooden-basket chair. Plumped up with feathered pillows, he stared at the door with fixed eyes. Not a gnarled branch like Mama, but a grey tree on barren soil. Poor Papa, the premature aging of his lifestyle had not been kind. Forewarned by numerous of Mama's handwritten letters, it still came as a shock to Asha.

  Over bread and chicken soup Asha told her mother of the years spent in Black Sphere cities. No waste, no want, no currency to squabble over. No fighting for resources, just debates over ideals. All Black Sphere wanted was to own the ideals, not to stifle them. The more they owned the more choices they could offer, everyone would live exactly how they wanted to. But the Luddite settlements remained unconnected, their people living lives of suffering and illness.

  Asha soon realized her words had rambled into a lecture. Yet, through it all Mama just smiled and nodded. "Such a clever girl," she would say when Asha paused for breath. Mama never understood the big issues.

  Dutiful as a daughter should be, Asha fed her papa, spooning chicken soup into his mouth and wiping his chin clean afterwards. Once so strong and loud, Papa had volunteered for Black Sphere while in his prime. He came back six years later. By then Asha was already eight-years-old, with little idea of the fabled "softer-side" of her father.

  Looking the frail man up and down, Asha's heart felt heavy and her insides churned with pity. With big ham fists he used to pick her up and toss her in the air as easily as a bundle of laundry. But those hands were now grey, knuckles red and knotted, fingers clawed; the painful tattoos of soldiery and the hours spent at the edge of the forest scrubbing away the Black Sphere membrane.

  While Asha tended to her father, her mother spoke excitedly of all the community's gossip, tut-tutting at the little indiscretions of other families; petty thieveries, incompetent and lazy workers, and scandalous affairs. But, most of all she spoke of Little Chick, Asha's one-time best friend.

  Poor boy, just before the Black Sphere recruiters came all those years ago he had been chopping trees. A sharp splinter snapped out from bark and jabbed deep into one of Little Chick's eyes. It was touch-and-go for a few days, all that blood and crying. When the Black Sphere recruiters arrived they saved Little Chick just by rubbing his eye with an upgraded finger. Yet without upgrades of his own to maintain the treatment, Little Chick soon lost the sight of that eye.

  Asha felt embarrassed at the recollection of her Papa, how he had yelled at the recruiters, "Don't pollute him with your mind-stealing sorcery." After that the recruiters refused to take the half-blind boy. All Little Chick's friends left for their war-time adventures, leaving him sad and lonely.

  "I can fix things now," said Asha, while her mother started to gather up their wooden bowls and spoons for washing. "If only we grant Black Sphere entrance into our forest, then they could make it all better. In one second they would grow a big house for you and papa. No lack of food during the winter. They could give Papa a new body if I asked. Little Chick would have a new eye."

  But her mother seemed flustered at this talk. "Shush, Squirrel, not so loud. Things have changed since you left. Little Chick is not the same. I wrote to you of how dour he became after the accident, missing you and all his friends. He listened to your father for hours on end, becoming ever more outspoken and loud. Now the other young men look to him, not your father. His is the loudest voice now, and his words are scary."

  Asha sighed with frustration. "Mama, I'll have to show you how good it could be." Placing her Papa's half-filled soup bowl on the armrest of his basket-chair, she squeezed the old man's withered hand, let her Black Sphere tech liquefy and seep through the pores of his skin. For a moment Papa's eyes twinkled, the grey hollow of age receded. A color took to his cheeks, pink on tanned skin. "Papa, it's me, Asha. I will fix you," she said with a great smile. Mama gasped and covered her mouth.

  And although Asha saw love reflected back in her father's eyes, his answer was terse. "No," he said, in a voice as strong and deep as she remembered. Snatching his hand away, grey-age returning instantly, he slumped back into his chair.

  For a while Asha stared at Papa, a mix of resentment and sorrow simmering inside her. I am talking to the past. I must speak to the future. I must speak to Little Chick.

  "Mama, I'll be back soon," she said, walking out into the forest without even looking back.

  Groping boys and laughing girls swung through the trees all around Asha. Dirtsmudged faces flashed through bushes and crunched leaves underfoot. "The Geo-man's coming. I'm going to steal your brain," yelled an older boy to the delighted squeals of the younger ones he chased.

  An exposed root snapped up through kicked leaves, catching a small boy's foot and bringing him down. His first reaction was one of embarrassment, looking to see if anyone noticed. Strange how he only burst into tears when a group of friends helped him up.

  How many times had Asha fallen, scarred her knees, and even dislocated toes, fingers, ankles and wrists? How lucky that she knitted together again even without the aid of Black Sphere. But Little Chick wasn't so lucky. Surely Little Chick would understand why it would be better with Black Sphere? It was his injury after all that pushed a young Asha into the arms of the recruiters, the desire to see more "miracles of hea
ling."

  Sunlight dappled against something ahead. The Hideout! A metal playhouse mottled with rust. Leftover from another time, turned into a font for young imaginations. War-games, hide and seek; places to bury treasure. But the tinny echoes of high-pitch laughter had gone.

  Asha pushed her way in through a corrugated metal door, apprehension burbling in her chest. Instead of children playing games, the Hideout was now serious and grown-up.

  Two dozen grim-faced men and women sat on wooden benches. Mostly adult versions of wiry boys Asha had once known, boys who dared each other to climb to the treetops. Her New Model Optic listed an array of injuries. Everywhere cried hurt; scars and amputations; or emotional amputation in the least. War wounds . Only a few children remained, huddled in a corner distracting themselves with games of chalk and pebbles.

  Further New Model-optic analysis revealed a variety of concealed knives, even more guns. A half dozen rifles leant in brazen view against a wall; all stolen from army surplus according to her reports. A powder keg of tension prickled through her upgrades. Warning lights blinked in her optic, sensing a potential threat.

  "Squirrel, is that you? Someone, get her a drink," yelled a skinny man, bare-chested and standing on a makeshift wooden platform. One of his eyes shone bright blue, the other was milky white; Little Chick! Although skinny, his body was tensed with tight-corded muscle.

  Another young man hobbled over to Asha. Dragging a limp foot behind him, he sloshed a clear liquid in a dirty glass. Asha took the drink but even before she brought it to her lips the stink of strong alcohol stung her eyes. She decided to just hold it, uncomfortable with all the "grown-up stuff" going on in places of which memory had sealed-off for exclusive "kid play-time." This all seemed wrong, improper somehow. When she recognized the "waiter," a gush of pity wore at her resolve. The lame man used to be called "Swifty."

  With a big welcoming smile Little Chick spoke. "I have it all prepared. See what I've done? Your father would be proud. While you've been helping us in the cities I've got us ready to fight back, just like he wanted." Still smiling, he waved his hand dismissively at the gathered people. "You can help convince them to fight. They still um-and-ah like old women."