Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition

by Rich Horton

  * * * *

  I picked Bonnie.

  A beautiful young woman, she had short dark hair arranged in a fetching fish-scale pattern and a sweet face made with bright brown eyes and skin that looked too smooth and clear to be skin. On most occasions, her smile came easily, but it could be a crooked smile laced with weariness and a gentle sadness. There was a girlish lightness to her voice, but in difficult circumstances, that voice and the pretty face were capable of surprising strength. “What should I do?” she asked the crumbled figure at her feet. “What do you need?"

  "Help,” I muttered, answering both questions.

  Others had gathered on the curb, observing the two of us. Yet she noticed nothing but me, kneeling beside me, grasping a hand without a second thought. “Do you need a hospital? Should I call somebody—?"

  "There's a clinic up the road,” I mentioned.

  "An ambulance,” one of our spectators recommended.

  "Just help me to your car and take me there,” I suggested. Then I made a joke, promising, “I won't bleed on your seat."

  Bless her, she recognized my humor and flashed a little smile. Realizing that my shattered legs couldn't hold themselves upright, much less carry the wreckage on top of them, Bonnie grabbed me under the arms and pulled. But I was too heavy, and after a few hard tugs, she carefully set me down again, asking our audience, “Could somebody lend a hand?"

  A pair of finished people stood among the others. But it was a teenage boy, big and raw, who leaped forwards. He seemed thrilled by the chance to drag me across the pavement, practically throwing me into the waiting vehicle. Then with a cleansing brush of the hands, he asked, “Anything hurt?"

  "Everything hurts,” I admitted.

  He didn't believe me. He laughed and stared at the beautiful woman, relishing this chance to be part of this little drama. I was nothing now. I was a sack of dislocated parts and bottled memories, and he thoroughly ignored me, asking the only one who mattered, “Do you need me to ride along?"

  But Bonnie had already climbed inside, telling her car, “Now. Hurry."

  The ride took just long enough for me to thank her once more and absorb a few more apologies. Then as we pulled up in front of the nondescript clinic, I offered my name. She repeated, “Justin,” and dabbed at a tear. Once again, I told her, “Thank you.” Then I said, “Bonnie,” for the first time, and she seemed to notice the emotions wrapped inside my sloppy voice.

  Her AI must have called ahead; an attendant had already rolled out into the parking lot to wait for us.

  "I'll pay for everything,” Bonnie told the machine.

  She couldn't afford the first two minutes. Her old car proved she was a person of modest means.

  "This was my fault entirely,” I confessed. Then I lied, claiming, “Besides, my insurance covers everything imaginable."

  "Are you sure?” she asked.

  "Dinner,” I said. “If you want, buy me a little dinner."

  The attendant was carrying me through the clinic door, an army of fingers already assessing the damage.

  Bonnie repeated, “Dinner,” before asking, “When?"

  "Tonight,” I suggested.

  Then I asked, “Have you eaten?"

  She shook her head. “No."

  To the machines gathering around me, I asked, “How long will this take?"

  The damage was severe but ordinary. Nothing too exceptional had to be fabricated. Thirty-five minutes was the verdict, and with an intentionally pitiful voice, I asked, “Will you wait for me?"

  As the door closed, Bonnie rubbed her hands together, tilted her head to one side and smiled in her sad, sweet fashion. “I guess I am waiting,” she muttered. “Yes."

  * * * *

  Men instantly took notice of Bonnie. Perhaps her body was too meaty to belong to a model, but that was no failure. She was taller than most females, and she had an inviting walk that any man younger than ninety would notice from the Moon. Twice I saw wives or girlfriends chastising their men for gawking, and a pair of women sitting in the front of the restaurant mouthed the word, “Sweet,” as my date innocently passed by their table.

  I was feeling happy and sick, and very wicked, and I felt a little awful for what I had done, and a little thrilled by what I dreamed of doing.

  "I've never been here,” she confessed, watching the robot staff skitter from table to table, serving people like myself. “This seems like a nice place."

  "It is nice,” I promised. “And thank you for joining me."

  Of course I'd given her no choice. But during that thirty-five minute wait, Bonnie had driven home and changed clothes, returning to the clinic smelling of perfume and youth. She let me pat the top of a hand, just for a moment, and then before either one of us could gauge her response, I pulled the hand back again. And smiled. And with a quiet but thoroughly fascinated voice, I invited her to tell me about herself.

  Some details were memorable. Others slipped from my grasp before I could decide whether or not to keep them. But who doesn't experience the world in such a sloppily selective way? Even with a precious someone, not every facet can be embraced inside a single evening.

  What I learned was that Bonnie worked at the university as a technician, in a DNA paleontologist's lab. She had been married once, briefly. Then she lived with the wrong man for several years, that relationship mercifully ending just this last winter. She was raised Christian, but I don't remember which species. Plainly, she wasn't swayed by the recent reactionary noise against people like me. Watching my eyes, she touched my hand, admitting, “I'm going to be thirty in another three months."

  "Thirty,” I repeated.

  "That can be an ominous age,” I said.

  Her hand withdrew as she nodded in agreement.

  Our meals came and were consumed, and the bill arrived along with a pair of sweet mints. The final tally took her by surprise. But one of us had left the table a few minutes ago, and of course I had purged myself, putting my food back into the restaurant's common pot, the lamb and buttery potatoes destined to be knitted back together again, the next shepherd's pie indistinguishable from the last.

  Bonnie paid for her meal and for renting my food and then graciously allowed me to tip the restaurant's owner. A finished woman, as it happened.

  "Good night, you two kittens,” the woman told us as we left.

  Bonnie drove me to my house.

  I knew she didn't want to come inside. For a multitude of fine reasons—old heartaches, her Christian upbringing, and my own odd nature—Bonnie pulled away while we sat on my long driveway.

  There were several ways to attack the moment.

  What I decided to do, and what worked better than I hoped: I turned to my new friend, mentioning, “You haven't asked about me."

  She seemed embarrassed.

  "Anything,” I said. “Ask anything."

  Bonnie was wearing the sort of clinging blouse and slacks that a modern woman wears on a first date. Everything was revealed, yet nothing was. While a hand nervously played with an old-fashioned button, she asked, “How long ago ... did you do it...?"

  "Ten years and two months, approximately."

  The early days of this business, in other words.

  "Okay,” she whispered. Then, “How old were you—?"

  "Forty-nine years, eleven months."

  She couldn't decide what bothered her more, my being finished or my apparent age. “So you're twenty years old than me,” she muttered, speaking mostly to herself. “Or thirty, including the last ten. I don't think I've ever gone out with anyone quite that—"

  "Why,” I said, interrupting her.

  She fell silent, nervous for every reason.

  Looking into the wide brown eyes, I said, “That's what you want to know. Why did I do it? So find the breath and ask me."

  "Why did you?"

  I intended to tell the story, but the intuition of a middle-aged man took hold. The better course was to take her hand and lift it to my mouth, kissing a w
arm knuckle and then the knuckle beside it, and with my tongue, tasting the salty heat between those two trembling fingers.

  "Not tonight,” I told her.

  I said, “Another time, perhaps."

  Then I climbed out of her old pink Cheetah, smiling with all the warmth I could manage, asking, “Do you believe in Fate, Bonnie?"

  * * * *

  We taste food. Our bodies feel heat and fatigue. Urges older than our species still rule us, and every finished person is grateful for that continuity. Yet even the intelligent unfinished person, informed and utterly modern, has to be reminded of essentials that everyone should know: We are not machines, and we are not dead. Today, for the first time in human history, there happens to be a third state of existence: Alive, dead, and finished. And like the living, we have the capacity to learn and gradually improve our nature, and should circumstances shift, we possess a substantial, almost human capacity for change.

  Another evening found us enjoying an intimate embrace. Bonnie's salty sweat mingled with my sweet, lightly scented sweat, and her nervousness collapsed into a girlish joy. What we had just done was wicked, and fun. What we would do next was something she never imagined possible. “Not in my life,” she admitted. And then in the next instant, with a laughing apology, she exclaimed, “That was a sloppy choice of words. Sorry."

  But I laughed too. Louder than her, in fact.

  After the next pause, she asked, “Is it the same?"

  "Is what the same?"

  "The feel of it,” she said. Her pretty face floated above me, hands digging beneath the moistened sheets. “When you climax—"

  "Better."

  "Really?"

  "But that's because of you,” I told her. “Otherwise, no. It's pretty much the same old bliss."

  She was suspicious, but what soul wouldn't wish such a compliment? Against her better instincts, Bonnie smiled, and then after some more digging beneath the sheets, she remarked, “You don't act like a middle-aged man."

  "Hydraulics are an old science,” I replied.

  She considered my body and my face. I have a handsome face, I'd like to believe. Not old but proud of its maturity, enough gray in the illusionary hair to let the casual eye pin down my finishing age. With her free hand, she swept the hair out of my eyes, and then with a quiet, almost embarrassed tone, she asked, “Is it like they say?"

  "Is what like what?"

  But she realized that she was mangling the question. “People claim it feels like living the same day, without end. If you're finished. You don't have the same sense of time—"

  "In one sense,” I agreed.

  But after my next mock-breath, I explained, “Time announces itself in many ways. I have biorhythms. My mind still demands sleep on a regular schedule. And I can still read a clock. For instance, I know it's half past midnight, which means that according to an utterly arbitrary system, a new day has begun. Dawn would be the more natural beginning point, I've always thought. But I'm not going to be the one to tear down everybody else's conventions."

  She nodded. Sighed.

  I pulled her up on top of me, hips rubbing. “Something else,” I said. “Ask."

  "Why?” she whispered.

  "Why did I allow myself to be finished?"

  "Were you—?"

  "Sick? No."

  Another nod was followed by a deeper, almost tattered sigh.

  "I was almost fifty years old,” I explained. “Which is a good age to be a man, I think. Experience. A measure of wisdom. But the body has already failed noticeably, and the sharpest mind at sixty—if you are a man—is never as keen as it was ten years before."

  She said nothing, moving her body, trying to match my rhythm.

  "Women are different,” I allowed. “They seem to have two popular ages for finishing. Older, post-menopausal women can enjoy it greatly. And vibrant youngsters still in their twenties or thirties. But there aren't many in their forties. Studies show. Even if the woman picks a good day to be finished ... a moment when her mood is even, her hormones in check ... well, not as many of you seem to love that age, I've noticed..."

  She nodded, seemingly agreeing with me. Then she shuddered, sobbing and pressing her body flush against my mine. And with a low, throaty voice, she asked, “Were you talking? I wasn't listening."

  I gave a low grunt.

  "Sorry,” she muttered.

  Then she touched my face, and with a genuinely mystified voice asked, “Why are you crying...?"

  * * * *

  Bonnie's closest friend was the same age but less pretty—a proper woman, well dressed and infinitely suspicious. The three of us shared an uncomfortable dinner in Bonnie's little apartment, and then some mysterious errand sent my girlfriend out the door. The two women had come up with this glaringly obvious plan. Suddenly alone with me, the friend used a cutting stare, announcing, “My father is finished."

  I nodded, trying to appear attentive.

  "In fact, he was one of the first. Four years before you did it, about."

  "Interesting,” I offered.

  She shrugged, unimpressed by interest. Her expression hardened to just short of a glare. “Dad was dying. Pancreatic cancer."

  "Awful stuff,” I said.

  "I got out of school for the day. I went with him and Mom to the clinic.” Suspicious eyes looked past me. “He was weak and dying, and I was thankful this new technology could save him ... and I was very hopeful..."

  I gave a nod. Nothing more.

  "The machines rolled him away,” she reported. Then with a barely contained anger, she asked, “How long does the process take?"

  "Minutes,” I offered.

  "Boiling him down to nothing."

  To be replicated, the brain had to be dismantled. A sophisticated holo of the original was implanted inside a nearly indestructible crystal. Experience and new technologies have accelerated the process somewhat, but there is no means, proven or theoretical, that allows a person to be finished without the total eradication of the original body and its resident mind.

  "He was a sick old man,” she reported. “Then he was this crystal lump as big as a walnut, and he had this entirely different body. It was supposed to look like him, and feel pretty much the same ... but they still haven't learned how to make a realistic chassis..."

  "It's a nagging problem,” I agreed. “Unless you embrace your new existence, of course. Then it isn't a problem, but a kind of blessing. An emblem, and a treasured part of your finished identity—"

  "It costs,” she complained.

  There were some stiff maintenance fees, true.

  "Between the finishing and all the troubles with his new body—"

  "Death would have been cheaper,” I interrupted. “That's what you realized, isn't it?"

  The woman shuddered, a cold and familiar pain working its way down her back. But as awful as that sounded, she couldn't argue with me. “It ate up most of their savings,” she complained.

  What could I say?

  "Of course, Dad eventually wanted my mother to get finished, too."

  "I see."

  "But their finances were a mess."

  "Loans are available,” I mentioned. “Because the finished person can live for another thousand years, or longer, the clinics offer some very charitable terms."

  "Except Mom didn't want any part of that.” She was her mother's child, and she still agreed with the scared old woman. “If you're finished, you're finished. You stop learning."

  "Not true."

  "Yes it is!"

  "No,” I snapped back. “The new mind's design doesn't let fresh synapses form. But that's why it's so durable. Instead, you use subsidiary memory sinks and plenty of them, and as you learn all of the tricks—"

  "He stopped changing."

  I fell silent.

  "My father went into the clinic as a sick man,” she reported. “And the machine that came out ... it was a sick machine, exhausted and feeling all these phantom pains running through it..." />
  "The doctors take precautions now,” I told her. “They can limit certain sensations beforehand—"

  "He's always going to be dying ... forever..."

  The apartment door began to open.

  "I don't approve of you,” the friend blurted. “I just wanted to tell you, and tell you why not."

  I nodded as if I had learned something. As if I respected her honesty. Then as Bonnie stepped into the room—a wary attitude on her face and in her body—I said to no one in particular, “That's why if you're going to be finished, it's best to do it before you get sick. On a good day, if you can manage it."

  I sighed.

  To the floor, I said, “On your very best day, hopefully."

  * * * *

  My best day was a sunny, gloriously warm Thursday. High-pressure centers have this way of causing rushes at the clinics, but I'd set up my appointment well in advance. The weather was nothing but good fortune. Arriving fifteen minutes early, I wore casual clothes and an easy smile. I was rested and well fed, and since I had sworn off sex for last few days, I felt pleasantly horny—a good quality to lock into your soul. If any doubt had whispered to me, I would have postponed the event until the doubt died. If a cloud had drifted across the sun, I would have waited in the parking lot for the shadow to pass. But the sky was a steely blue, glorious and eternal, and my only little doubt was in entering the clinic alone.

  "But alone is best,” somebody had warned me. “Anyone else would be a distraction for you. An imposition. Trust me about this."

  I did trust her, and of course, she was entirely correct.

  "Justin Gable,” I told the man at the counter. “I'm at—"

  "Two fifteen. Yes, sir. Right this way, Mr. Gable."

  An honored guest, I felt like. I felt as if I was walking towards an elaborate celebration, or at the very least, a tidy but significant ceremony. Every stereotypic image of looming gallows or tunnels leading to bright lights was left at the front door. I felt thrilled, even giddy. For the first time in years, I whistled as I walked. Without a gram of shame, I flirted with my female nurse, and then my female doctor—finished souls, both of them. With a haste born of practice and experience, they quickly placed me inside a warm bath of benign fluids, and before my mood could dip, even slightly, they slipped a cocktail of neurotoxins into my happy red blood.