The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014

by Larry Niven

  I think of brownies. Hot. Sweet. Fudgy. Gooey in the middle but crunchy around the edges.

  Randy’s tapping his fingers on his desk. I can picture him half-standing, leaning his weight on his hands while he stares at the monitor. “OK,” he says. “I can get this. Parahippocampal gyrus. Christ, Maggie, could you have picked something easier to spell? Lemme look it up.”

  I hear the rapid-fire clicking of his keyboard.

  “Reward center. Associated with food. You’re … hungry? No, wait. You can’t be hungry. Reward center—it means yes, right? Yes?”

  Apple pie hot from the oven with the steamy scent of cinnamon rising from the crust.

  Randy’s voice sounds intense but distracted. It’s his work mode when he’s hot on a breakthrough.

  “Got it. OK, Maggie, let’s try ‘no.’ Whaddaya got for me?”

  I’ve thought about no. Pain won’t work. I don’t think I can fake it consistently. Neither will sadness. Too diffuse. I need something baser, more instinctive. I need disgust.

  Vomit. Maggots. Rotting, stinking meat crawling with flies.

  “Whoa, anterior insula. Yeah, that’ll do it. Now let’s run some confirmation trials. Give me a yes.”

  We practice until yes and no are instant, consistent and clear. The door opens again, but it’s not Jeanine with Randy’s sandwich. It’s a male voice asking Randy if there’s been any progress.

  I know that voice. Doc Leavitt, ANA’s Executive VP of Research. Arrogant bastard. We’re all PhDs here, but we call each other by our first names. Not Leavitt. He wants to be called Doctor.

  “Yeah, there’s been progress. It’s Maggie.” Randy sounds livid. His voice is low and constrained, like he’s holding back from violence. There’s a thwack and a rattling, metallic crash like someone slamming a file on the desk and kicking a chair across the lab. “It’s Maggie, you troglodyte prick.”

  For once I’m glad I’m just a brain in a jar because I would have laughed out loud. Randy, Randy, it’s Doctor Troglodyte Prick to you.

  “Of course it’s Dr. Hauri,” says Leavitt. “She was too close on the bionet project. We gave your notes to three separate teams, and they’ve gotten nowhere. Learn to communicate with her so you can finish it before the perfusion decay sets in.”

  “You gave our notes—?” Randy sounds incredulous, then indignant. “Wait. You want us to finish it? Screw you!”

  Oh, God. I wish I could see. Don’t punch him, Randy. Please, don’t punch him.

  “Insubordination, Mr. Moreno. I will forget you said that when your proof-of-concept hits my desk. Until then, remember that I could send the tissue to the Connectomics lab for neural mapping instead of leaving it with you.”

  Connectomics. Where I’d be plastinated and carved into millions of transparent slices. I take it back, Randy. Punch him.

  The door closes again, and I hear Randy righting his chair. He sighs heavily.

  “Well, Maggie, guess we need to finish it. What do you say?”

  I hesitate. The bionet was my life’s work. Of course I want to finish it. But in this state, is it even possible? With the perfusion decay, I don’t even know how long we have.

  After a few moments, I think of ripe peaches, and how their heady scent used to fill my mother’s kitchen during summer canning. I imagine their velvet under my fingers and peach juice running down the inside of my arm.

  “OK, then,” says Randy. “We finish it.”

  * * *

  In the hallway outside, Jeanine’s heels tap their way to the door. I wonder what kind of sandwich she got him? I hope it’s a cheese steak. Randy likes those. Her voice when the door opens is unbearably perky.

  “Hey, Randy. They were out of peppers for a cheese steak, so I got you a Cubano.” He ushers her in with a sharp whisper. When the door clicks closed, Randy swears her to secrecy.

  Wait—Jeanine’s on the team? Hello, nobody asked me about this? I sulk while Randy eats his sandwich.

  * * *

  Randy and I work together in the lab just like we used to. Well, almost like we used to. Jeanine keeps Randy fed, and I count the lunches to keep track of the days. After the fourth one, a gooey meatball sub by the sound, something’s changed in Randy’s voice. There’s a huskier note that tells me he’s beginning to return Jeanine’s feelings. My sense of loss and bewilderment comes as a rude surprise, and I retreat into memories of my boys.

  * * *

  Randy says the auditory linkage wasn’t that difficult. We had it pretty well nailed down in previous trials, but vision is being fiddly. There’s not enough time to code even rudimentary opsin mimickry, so Randy scraps the environmental sensor that would have let me see what’s going on in the lab and switches to one of his implants. Leavitt, meanwhile, slaps Randy with a HIPAA redaction and non-disclosure order specifying that the anonymous tissue donor for our project be identified only as subject HF47-A.

  Great. I’ve been officially reduced to a number.

  Randy’s visual assist implant has been used with the legally blind, but it’s supposed to augment organic vision, not replace it, and it’s never been used for remote viewing. Without the opsin profiles, Randy’s only choice is to slave the input to a live source, namely his own eyes. He’s breaking at least six internal policies, and probably a federal law or two, but we both know Leavitt will look the other way if it works.

  The first two trials are abject failures. On the second one, Randy says there’s a flicker in my visual cortex on the fMRI, but my subjective experience is negative. Nada. Zip.

  Randy’s voice is tense and layered with exhaustion. “Listen, Maggie, we get one more shot at this. The nerve endings are too frayed for another splice if we fail.”

  I know the connection’s good before he finishes. I can’t see, exactly, but there’s … something. It’s like the dull gray of dawn when your eyes are still closed.

  “I’ve got activity in your visual cortex, Maggie. Can you confirm?”

  The sensation becomes a vague blurriness. Brownies, Randy! Brownies!

  “Subjective experience confirmed. FMRI activity increasing.”

  Randy has prepared me for this. He doesn’t want to overtax the connection, so he puts on goggles that limit his field of vision to a single image.

  “I’m looking at a shape, Maggie. I want you to identify it.” As I listen to his voice, corners start to emerge from the blur.

  “Is the shape a circle?”

  Cockroaches swarming over kitchen tiles, invading the cupboards and …

  “Is it a square?”

  The blur slowly sharpens, the angles too acute for a square. Cat barf studded with clumps of bile-soaked fur.

  “Is it a triangle?”

  Yes! Hot, fresh coffee with farmhouse bacon sizzling in an iron skillet.

  “Shape identification confirmed. Hot damn, Maggie!”

  * * *

  Randy spends the rest of the week running confirmation trials—shape and color identification, simple photographs, then a video clip of an old Three Stooges segment. Finally, he’s satisfied that the neurolink works as well as it’s going to. “OK, Maggie, we’re ready for full-spectrum visual. We’ll go live first thing in the morning.”

  But Randy doesn’t come to the lab the next morning. I know it’s morning because I can hear muted activity in the hallway outside—muffled voices, footsteps passing, the squeaky wheels of the coffee cart. Where is Randy?

  I wait. Five minutes, five hours. With no external markers, the difference is nearly impossible to tell. Finally, I hear his voice. “Hey, Maggie. I’ve got a surprise for you. Are you ready?”

  The sound startles me. I never heard the door open. Is Randy even here? His voice sounds tinny and distant, like it’s coming from a speaker. A speaker? What the hell is Randy up to?

  “OK, Mag, we’re about to go live with the visual feed. Not much I can do about the audio quality. I had to route my phone through the computer speakers. I’ve got your fMRI synced to my datapad, so w
e’ll start with something easy while I check the levels.”

  There’s a slow dawning of pale white light. The image comes into focus and I find myself staring at a cinderblock wall covered with thick layers of dove gray paint. Randy’s facing an interior corner to keep the visual complexity low.

  “FMRI’s lookin’ good, Maggie. Let’s open it up a bit.”

  The image pans to the left, and I see a blue tile floor and three porcelain sinks mounted to the wall. Wait a minute. Those aren’t sinks. A tinny little toilet flushes in the background. Great, for our first live visual, Randy takes me to the men’s room.

  “Hey,” he says, anticipating my response, “it’s not like I could start us off in the girls' bathroom. We’re headed outside now. Stick with me.”

  “Outside” is an exterior hallway flanked by a courtyard. The air is heavy with mist, and a steady drip, drip of water falls from the eaves. A hedge of peonies lines the walk, but the spent blooms are drooping, their pink tissue petals brown and curling at the edges. I’ve been here before, but I can’t place it until Randy reaches for the gymnasium door. The boys’ school!

  The gym is set up for an assembly, and Jeanine is saving us a seat in the second row. She waves at Randy, but I stare straight past her to the edge of Randy’s visual field where twenty school children fidget in metal chairs waiting for the assembly to start. Twenty, but I only have eyes for two.

  My boys. I see their smiles, their faces. Dale sits in the front row, wearing red sneakers and his brother’s favorite Transformers shirt. Zachary has new glasses and gel in his hair.

  Jeanine takes Randy’s hand, and the three of us watch together while Zack receives a certificate for reading achievement, and Dale gets honored as Student of the Month. It’s the best surprise Randy could have picked. I wish I could hug them all and never let go. I want to cry, but I can’t. Real tears are just one more casualty of the accident.

  On the way back to the car, Randy puts his arm around Jeanine’s shoulders and thanks her for setting this up. He wants to check the readouts in the lab, and she has to get back to her press releases, but they make plans for dinner later. Randy whistles happily until he sits down in his computer chair. When he does, there’s this quick intake of breath, a gasp that’s never been good when I’ve heard it before.

  “Crap, Maggie. Look at this.” The decay rate on the SuMP is running thirty-eight percent above normal and climbing. “You’re burning too hot, Mag. You’ve got to slow it down.”

  Slow it down? How am I supposed to do that?

  Randy checks the connections and scans the data again. “You’re the first live, human trial, Maggie. We never figured on a brain with your IQ, or that you’d be conscious. So, stop thinking or something. Can you meditate?”

  Randy raises his hand to his mouth, then drags his fingers through his hair. “I’m re-instituting hypothermic protocols. It should shave a few percent off the burn.”

  I can’t feel the cold, but I see the wires and the aluminum cooling tank. Randy checks the readouts again.

  “OK, Mag. Your file says you’ve been here seventeen weeks. If we can keep the burn rate down we might get six, maybe eight, more.”

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Randy and Jeanine start carpooling, and Randy gets in the habit of turning the vision implant off when he leaves the lab at night. He says it’s to keep my burn rate down, but I think he doesn’t want me to see whatever else they’re sharing besides the car.

  I’m excited about our progress on the bionet, but in the quiet darkness of the lab at night, I have time to obsess over my new existence.

  The SuMP is slowly failing. Actually, the perfusion is fine; it’s my brain that’s failing. The SuMP refreshes the perfusion medium with sonicated oxygen microparticles six times an hour. We have redundant power supplies, and we increased the perfusion’s O2 ratio.

  It doesn’t help. I’ve seen my own readouts. The curve of the decay rate continues to steepen. Tissue degeneration accelerating. Every indicator ticks away at what’s left of my existence. But the truth is, I don’t think I’ll miss this strange variation on life. When Randy and Jeanine aren’t here, I’m bitterly lonely, and I miss my boys with every fiber of my non-existent being.

  Weekends are the worst. Weekends I think and I think to keep the accident at bay. I know the mechanism—vasopressin, trauma memories—but I’m powerless to stop it.

  I recite lines from Oklahoma! and Star Wars in my head. I remember snippets of books I’ve read and sing every pop song I can remember.

  Randy stays later and later at the lab, sleeping on a cot in the corner sometimes. Jeanine brings him hot food and clean clothes to keep him working.

  I know we’re almost there, but the SuMP decay preys on my thoughts. Motor functions fail always first, then speech. I guess I’m luck lucky not to have, not to have any of those.

  * * *

  Twenty-two weeks from Leavitt’s ultimatum, we have our proof-of-concept ready. Randy does a fancy double-blind demo where he’s in one room, and I’m in another, and the whole thing is broadcast live on vid screens in the conference room.

  By Randy finishes time, our success is clear. The bionet is a reality.

  The other scientists Randy’s back pounding and champagne pouring. Jeanine stands nearby, her face the brightest smile ever I’ve seen. He throws an arm around her shoulders, and they come to see me.

  I want to be peaches happy for them, for us, but I’m tired. Thinking is … effort, and I have to struggle to under, understand things.

  “We did it, Maggie! We made history. Who knows where the bionet will go next? And hey, look at this. Jeanine swapped out Leavitt’s press release.”

  Randy holds, holds up the text of the release and reads aloud. “Allied Neuro Associates named the discovery after neuroscientist Margaret Hauri, whose work formed the bulk of the project’s underpinnings before her tragic automobile accident at the age of thirty-eight.”

  Stands Randy at the monitor to see my reaction. I see my own fMRI through his eyes. Colors sparse, muted. Activity level vomit low. I should, should be on top of the world right now, but not I’m maggots not.

  Randy’s face I see in the monitor. Concerned. “You’re not happy, are you?”

  I hot cocoa. Wood smoke in winter. The colors on the monitor flicker rotten weakly.

  Randy kisses Jeanine on the cheek, asks her to give us a moment alone. She steps outside, closes the door.

  “Is it the Connectomics thing? You know I won’t let them do that.”

  trash juice gag brown rotten grass clippings

  “This is bigger, isn’t it. Not just the discovery?”

  I weak yeskittens, but, but complicated the answer.

  Randy draws up a chair. Swings a leg over. Rests his chin on the back, dials O2 to MAX. He speaks to the monitor, my proxy.

  “Talk to me, Maggie. We should have a couple of weeks left. Where we going next? You wanted to take on Alzheimer’s. Are you in?”

  Helps, the O2. Days, maybe—not weeks. There’s a maggots flicker of yellow in my anterior insula. Hard even to say “no” anymore. The crux of, of it, really. Brownies, vomit. Binary existence. Someone else’s control. Don’t want it. Notvomitnot.

  Randy’s voice deathly quiet goes. “Mag, you leaving me? Is that what this is about? You want to end it?”

  Hot blueberry waffles with real maple syrup and fresh, melting butter. Wish I could explain to Randy. Hauri Net his project now. Stories I read as a girl, clones, cyborgs, space liners. Randy and Jeanine—theirs now.

  Off takes Randy his glasses, eyes wiping breaks his voice. “It’ll be fast, Maggie. I’ll just turn off the SuMP. You won’t even feel it. Are you sure?”

  I feel a strange lightness, a pulling-away feeling that’s almost euphoric, and my thoughts become clear for a moment. I think of burgers on the grill on the Fourth of July. Sweet corn. Blueberries and cream. I think of sand between my toes at the beach with the breeze whipping my hair across my fa
ce.

  Randy’s walking to the equipment. He turns on the music with one hand, and flicks a switch with the other. The stately lilt of Pachelbel’s Canon surrounds me.

  I’m sneaking sugar cubes as a girl, their edges crumbling sweet on my tongue, then sharing strawberry ice cream with the boys.

  Randy picks up a picture of Dale and Zachary, in front of his eyes holds it. Dale on a red tricycle. Zachary stands behind, arms around his brother’s waist. Summer sun, upturned their laughter faces. Oh, my boys. My beautiful, sweet boys.

  Shaking Randy’s hands, the picture, too, shake-shaking. Bracing on the table Randy his elbows. fading kittens the silver light

  * * *

  It was the first big storm of the season. The boys had dentist appointments, so we all slept in, and I made waffles for breakfast.

  I can still smell the syrup.

  Published in Galaxy’s Edge Issue 9

  Copyright © 2014 by Kary English. All rights reserved.

  The Unchanging Nature of Stones

  by Andrea G. Stewart

  My grandmother lives among the stones. My family’s duties to her are the duties we owe a dead woman. We lay flowers on her resting spot, we sing songs in her memory, and on Vashmihan we light a candle for her. I shift my basket to the other hand. I do what I can, but she deserves better.

  “Tahrie.” Grandmother’s voice hisses like sand in an hourglass. It’s nearly lost in the wind and the calls of gulls. A line of boulders stretches before me, pressed against one another along the beach. Tar covers the cracks between them, and water slaps against the other side. The sea is higher than it was yesterday.

  The fat stone near the end—the one shaped like a teardrop—shifts. The fissure in the middle becomes a mouth, the hollows, eyes. She looked more like a woman when I was a child. Now,

  her nose is gone and she can no longer form hands. “What do you bring me today, granddaughter?”

  I pull a honeyed bun from within the basket and place it on the sand, in front of the flowers at her base. “A sweet bun.”