Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Every morning, upon rising, Murray looked down at his toes and thought, “Hello toes.” It had been ten years since he’d had regular acquaintance with anything south of his gut. But his gut was gone, tight as a drumhead. He was free from scars and age-marks and unsightly moles and his beard wouldn’t grow in again until he asked it to. When he thought about it, he could feel the dull ache of the new teeth coming in underneath the ones that had grown discolored and chipped, the back molar with all the ugly amalgam fillings, but if he chose to ignore it, the pain simply went away.

  He flexed the muscles, great and small, all around his body. His fat index was low enough to see the definition of each of those superbly toned slabs of flexible contained energy — he looked like an anatomy lesson, and it was all he could do not to stare at himself in the mirror all day.

  But he couldn’t do that — not today, anyway. He was needed back at the office. He was already in the shitter at work over his “unexpected trip to a heath-farm,” and if he left it any longer, he’d be out on his toned ass. He hadn’t even been able to go out for new clothes — Liam had every liquid cent he could lay hands on, as well as his credit-cards.

  He found a pair of ancient, threadbare jeans and a couple of medium t-shirts that clung to the pecs that had grown up underneath his formerly sagging man-boobs and left for the office.

  He drew stares on the way to his desk. The documentation department hummed with hormonal female energy, and half a dozen of his co-workers found cause to cruise past his desk before he took his morning break. As he greedily scarfed up a box of warm Krispy Kremes, his cellphone rang.

  “Yeah?” he said. The caller-ID was the number of the international GSM phone he’d bought for Liam.

  “They’re after us,” Liam said. “I was at the Surrey border-crossing and the Canadian immigration guy had my pic!”

  Murray’s heart pounded. He concentrated for a moment, then his heart calmed, a jolt of serotonin lifting his spirits. “Did you get away?”

  “Of course I got away. Jesus, you think that the CIA gives you a phone call? I took off cross-country, went over the fence for the duty-free and headed for the brush. They shot me in the fucking leg — I had to dig the bullet out with my multitool. I’m sending in ass-loads of T-cells and knitting it as fast as I can.”

  Panic crept up Murray’s esophagus, and he tamped it down. It broke out in his knees, he tamped it down. His balance swam, he stabilized it. He focused his eyes with an effort. “Theyshot you?”

  “I think they were trying to wing me. Look, I burned all the source in 4,096-bit GPG ciphertext onto a couple of CDs, then zeroed out my drive. You’ve got to do the same, it’s only a matter of time until they run my back-trail to you. The code is our only bargaining chip.”

  “I’m at work — the backups are at home, I just can’t.”

  “Leave, asshole, like now! Go — get in your car and drive. Go home and start scrubbing the drives. I left a bottle of industrial paint-stripper behind and a bulk eraser. Unscrew every drive-casing, smash the platters and dump them in a tub with all the stripper, then put the tub onto the bulk-eraser — that should do it. Keep one copy, ciphertext only, and make the key a good one. Are you going?”

  “I’m badging out of the lot, shit, shit, shit. What the fuck did you do to me?”

  “Don’t, OK? Just don’t. I’ve got my own problems. I’ve got to go now. I’ll call you later once I get somewhere.”

  - – - – - – - – - – - -

  He thought hard on the way back to his condo, as he whipped down the off-peak emptiness of Highway 101. Being a coder was all about doing things in the correct order: first a; then b; then, if c equals d, e; otherwise, f.

  First, get home. Then set the stateful operation of his body for maximal efficiency: reset his metabolism, increase the pace of dendrite densification. Manufacture viralized anti-viral in all his serum. Lots of serotonin and at-will endorphin. Hard times ahead.

  Next, encipher and back up the data to a removable. Did he have any CD blanks at home? With eidetic clarity, he saw the half-spent spool of generic blanks on the second shelf of the media totem.

  Then trash the disks, pack a bag and hit the road. Where to?

  He pulled into his driveway, hammered the elevator button a dozen times, then bolted for the stairs. Five flights later, he slammed his key into the lock and went into motion, executing the plan. The password gave him pause — generating a 4,096 bit key that he could remember was going to be damned hard, but then he closed his eyes and recalled, with perfect clarity, the first five pages of documentation he’d written for the API. His fingers rattled on the keys at speed, zero typos.

  He was just dumping the last of the platters into the acid bath when they broke his door down. Half a dozen big guys in martian riot-gear, outsized science-fiction black-ops guns. One flipped up his visor and pointed to a badge clipped to a D-ring on his tactical vest.

  “Police,” he barked. “Hands where I can see them.”

  The serotonin flooded the murky grey recesses of Murray’s brain and he was able to smile nonchalantly as he straightened from his work, hands held loosely away from his sides. The cop pulled a zap-strap from a holster at his belt and bound his wrists tight. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and untaped the interface on the back of Murray’s neck, then slapped a bandage over it.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “You’re not cleared to know that,” the cop said.

  “Special Agent Fredericks, right?” Murray said. “Liam told me about you.”

  “Dig yourself in deeper, that’s right. No one wants to hear from you. Not yet, anyway.” He took a bag off his belt, then, in a quick motion, slid it over Murray’s head, cinching it tight at the throat, but not so tight he couldn’t breathe. The fabric passed air, but not light, and Murray was plunged into total darkness. “There’s a gag that goes with the hood. If you play nice, we won’t have to use it.”

  “I’m nice, I’m nice,” Murray said.

  “Bag it all and get it back to the house. You and you, take him down the back way.”

  Murray felt the bodies moving near him, then thick zap-straps cinching his arms, knees, thighs and ankles. He tottered and tipped backwards, twisting his head to avoid smacking it, but before he hit the ground, he’d be roughly scooped up into a fireman’s carry, resting on bulky body-armor.

  As they carried him out, he heard his cellphone ring. Someone plucked it off his belt and answered it. Special Agent Fredericks said, “Hello, Liam.”

  - – - – - – - – - – - -

  Machineguns-and-biometrics bunkers have their own special signature scent, scrubbed air and coffee farts and ozone. They cut his clothes off and disinfected him, then took him through two air-showers to remove particulate that the jets of icy pungent Lysol hadn’t taken care of. He was dumped on a soft pallet, still in the dark.

  “You know why you’re here,” Special Agent Fredericks said from somewhere behind him.

  “Why don’t you refresh me?” He was calm and cool, heart normal. The cramped muscles bound by the plastic straps eased loose, relaxing under him.

  “We found two CDs of encrypted data on your premises. We can crack them, given time, but it will reflect well on you if you assist us in our inquiries.”

  “Given about a billion years. No one can brute-force a 4,096-bit GPG cipher. It’s what you use in your own communications. I’ve worked on military projects, you know that. If you could factor out the products of large primes, you wouldn’t depend on them for your own security. I’m not getting out of here ever, no matter how much I cooperate.”

  “You’ve got an awfully low opinion of your country, sir.” Murray thought he detected a note of real anger in the Fed’s voice and tried not to take satisfaction in it.

  “Why? Because I don’t believe you’ve got magic technology hidden away up your asses?”

  “No, sir, because you think you won’t get just treatment at our hands.”

  “A
m I under arrest?”

  “You’re not cleared for that information.”

  “We’re at an impasse, Special Agent Fredericks. You don’t trust me and I don’t have any reason to trust you.”

  “You have every reason to trust me,” the voice said, very close in now.

  “Why?”

  The hood over his tag was tugged to one side and he heard a sawing sound as a knife hacked through the fabric at the base of his skull. Gloved fingers worked a plug into the socket there. “Because,” the voice hissed in his ear, “because I am not stimulating the pain center of your brain. Because I am not cutting off the blood-supply to your extremities. Because I am not draining your brain of all the serotonin there or leaving you in a vegetative state. Because I can do all of these things and I’m not.”

  Murray tamped his adrenals, counteracted their effect, relaxed back into his bonds. “You think you could outrace me? I could stop my heart right now, long before you could do any of those things.” Thinking: I am a total bad-azz, I am. But I don’t want to die.

  “Tell him,” Liam said.

  “Liam?” Murray tried to twist his head toward the voice, but strong hands held it in place.

  “Tell him,” Liam said again. “We’ll get a deal. They don’t want us dead, they just want us under control. Tell him, OK?”

  Murray’s adrenals were firing at max now, he was sweating uncontrollably. His limbs twitched hard against his bonds, the plastic straps cutting into them, the pain surfacing despite his efforts. It hit him. His wonderful body was 0wnz0red by the Feds.

  “Tell me, and you have my word that no harm will come to you. You’ll get all the resources you want. You can code as much as you want.”

  Murray began to recite his key, all five pages of it, through the muffling hood.

  Liam was fully clothed, no visual restraints. As Murray chafed feeling back into his hands and feet, Liam crossed the locked office with its grey industrial carpeting and tossed him a set of khakis and a pair of boxers. Murray dressed silently, then turned his accusing glare on Liam.

  “How far did you get?”

  “I didn’t even make it out of the state. They caught me in Sebastopol, took me off the Greyhound in cuffs with six guns on me all the time.”

  “The disks?”

  “They needed to be sure that you got rid of all the backups, that there wasn’t anything stashed online or in a safe-deposit box, that they had the only copy. It was their idea.”

  “Did you really get shot?”

  “I really got shot.”

  “I hope it really fucking hurt.”

  “It really fucking hurt.”

  “Well, good.”

  The door opened and Special Agent Fredericks appeared with a big brown bag of Frappuccinos and muffins. He passed them around.

  “My people tell me that you write excellent documentation, Mr. Swain.”

  “What can I say? It’s a gift.”

  “And they tell me that you two have written some remarkable code.”

  “Another gift.”

  “We always need good coders here.”

  “What’s the job pay? How are the bennies? How much vacation?”

  “As much as you want, excellent, as long as you want, provided we approve the destinations first. Once you’re cleared.”

  “It’s not enough,” Murray said, upending twenty ounces of West Coast frou-frou caffeine delivery system on the carpeting.

  “Come on, Murray,” Liam said. “Don’t be that way.”

  Special Agent Fredericks fished in the bag and produced another novelty coffee beverage and handed it to Murray. “Make this one last, it’s all that’s left.”

  “With all due respect,” Murray said, feeling a swell of righteousness in his chest, in his thighs, in his groin, “go fuck yourself. You don’t 0wn me.”

  “They do, Murray. They 0wn both our asses.” Liam said, staring into the puddle of coffee slurry on the carpet.

  Murray crossed the room as fast as he could and smacked Liam, open palm, across the cheek.

  “That will do,” Special Agent Fredericks said, with surprising mildness.

  “He needed smacking,” Murray said, without rancor, and sat back down.

  “Liam, why don’t you wait for us in the hallway?”

  - – - – - – - – - – - -

  “You came around,” Liam said. “Everyone does. These guys 0wn.”

  “I didn’t ask to share a room with you, Liam. I’m not glad I am. I’d rather not be reminded of that fact, so shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”

  “What do you want, an apology? I’m sorry. I’m sorry I infected you, I’m sorry I helped them catch you. I’m sorry I fuxored your life. What can I say?”

  “You can shut up anytime now.”

  “Well, this is going to be a swell living-arrangement.”

  The room was labeled “Officers’ Quarters,” and it had two good, firm queen-sized mattresses, premium cable, two identical stainless-steel dressers, and two good ergonomic chairs. There were junction boxes beside each desk with locked covers that Murray supposed housed Ethernet ports. All the comforts of home.

  Murray lay on his bed and pulled the blankets over his head. Though he didn’t need to sleep, he chose to.

  - – - – - – - – - – - -

  For two weeks, Murray sat at his assigned desk, in his assigned cube, and zoned out on the screen-saver. He refused to touch the keyboard, refused to touch the mouse. Liam had the adjacent desk for a week, then they moved him to another office, so that Murray had solitude in which to contemplate the whirling star-field. He’d have a cup of coffee at 10:30 and started to feel a little sniffly in the back of his nose. He ate in the commissary at his own table. If anyone sat down at his table, he stood up and left. They didn’t sit at his table. At 2PM, they’d send in a box of warm Krispy Kremes, and by 3PM, his blood-sugar would be crashing and he’d be sobbing over his keyboard. He refused to adjust his serotonin levels.

  On the third Monday, he turned up at his desk at 9AM as usual and found a clipboard on his chair with a ball-point tied to it.

  Discharge papers. Non-disclosure agreements. Cross-your-heart swears on pain of death. A modest pension. Post-It “sign here” tabs had been stuck on here, here and here.

  - – - – - – - – - – - -

  The junkie couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. She was death-camp skinny, tracked out, sitting cross-legged on a cardboard box on the sidewalk, sunning herself in the thin Mission noonlight. “Wanna buy a laptop? Two hundred bucks.”

  Murray stopped. “Where’d you get it?”

  “I stole it,” she said. “Out of a convertible. It looks real nice. One-fifty.”

  “Two hundred,” Murray said. “But you’ve got to do me a favor.”

  “Three hundred, and you wear a condom.”

  “Not that kind of favor. You know the Radio Shack on Mission at 24th? Give them this parts list and come back here. Here’s a $100 down-payment.”

  He kept his eyes peeled for the minders he’d occasionally spotted shadowing him when he went out for groceries, but they were nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d lost them in the traffic on the 101. By the time the girl got back with the parts he’d need to make his interface, he was sweating bullets, but once he had the laptop open and began to rekey the entire codebase, the eidetic rush of perfect memory dispelled all his nervousness, leaving him cool and calm as the sun set over the Mission.

  - – - – - – - – - – - -

  From the sky, Africa was green and lush, but once the plane touched down in Mogadishu, all Murray saw was sere brown plains and blowing dust. He sprang up from his seat, laundering the sleep toxins in his brain and the fatigue toxins in his legs and ass as he did.

  He was the first off the jetway and the first at the Customs desk.

  “Do you have any commercial or work-related goods, sir?”

  “No sir,” Murray said, willing himself calm.


  “But you have a laptop computer,” the Customs man said, eyeballing his case.

  “Oh, yeah. That. Can’t ever get away from work, you know how it is.”

  “I certainly hope you find time to relax, sir.” The Customs man stamped the passport he’d bought in New York.

  “When you love your work, it can be relaxing.”

  “Enjoy your stay in Somalia, sir.”

  The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away, by Cory Doctorow

  "Cause it's gonna be the future soon,

  "And I won't always be this way,

  "When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away"

  -Jonathan Coulton, The Future Soon

  Lawrence's cubicle was just the right place to chew on a thorny logfile problem: decorated with the votive fetishes of his monastic order, a thousand calming, clarifying mandalas and saints devoted to helping him think clearly.

  From the nearby cubicles, Lawrence heard the ritualized muttering of a thousand brothers and sisters in the Order of Reflective Analytics, a susurration of harmonized, concentrated thought. On his display, he watched an instrument widget track the decibel level over time, the graph overlayed on a 3D curve of normal activity over time and space. He noted that the level was a little high, the room a little more anxious than usual.

  He clicked and tapped and thought some more, massaging the logfile to see if he could make it snap into focus and make sense, but it stubbornly refused to be sensible. The data tracked the custody chain of the bitstream the Order munged for the Securitat, and somewhere in there, a file had grown by 68 bytes, blowing its checksum and becoming An Anomaly.

  Order lore was filled with Anomalies, loose threads in the fabric of reality -- bugs to be squashed in the data-set that was the Order's universe. Starting with the pre-Order sysadmin who'd tracked a $0.75 billing anomaly back to a foreign spy-ring that was using his systems to hack his military, these morality tales were object lessons to the Order's monks: pick at the seams and the world will unravel in useful and interesting ways.