I can tell from the sirens that the SecFor vehicles have reached the turn off here, racing down the street. I shuffle about to face them. They’ve stopped in the road. Their sirens continue, and then their sirens die. Only the klaxon remains, wailing from the direction of the Eye.
I turn back around. I look down at the remote. Its connection light is back on. Nell. I should have sent a message. I think stupidly that perhaps whoever is in the Eye will relay my love to her. I watch it stand out there, red and solid and steady. And then, it beats once like a heart and without a sound, it starts to expand.
I hear engines and the squeal of tires. The SecFor vehicles are retreating. And it is not an illusion. The Eye has begun to grow. I cannot gauge its speed, but its edges crawl outwards, eating up land. I am frozen, and then finally I turn and clamber down the hill. But I fall once and roll and when I get up, I’m sure I’ve broken a rib; my lungs feel like gauze on fire. Still, I make it to my car and start the engine and behind me the SecFor trucks are fleeing down a straight and empty road.
I drive forward instead. Nell. The home I searched this morning. Amos thought the Eye was an attack. I am more sure than anything at this moment that he is utterly wrong. I drive to the end of the street, and then over the embankment there and into the field beyond. The Eye advances, filling before me the whole of the sky, and it beat once like a heart for it is a heart, an embrace; it is contact that somehow went wrong, like a call too early in the morning, like pictures of an empty apartment showing the life I’m no longer in. I head toward it, my tires churning dirt, and soon I will be inside it and I can tell them what they need to know, that we want to meet them and know them, whoever they may be, but their methods have caused too much pain. But their hearts are pure, and the Eye continues to beat before me and now I am almost there.
I wonder if whoever is inside will let me see Nell again. I hope they do. That red wall is coming towards me and I towards it. I say her name as I am seconds away. Somehow, I’m sure she hears me. I lean forward and my eyes are wide and at long last I am—
***
Dan Reade grew to love science fiction while listening to his father read stories from the genre’s Golden Age. He and his wife reside in California, where Dan teaches, writes, and walks the world’s most adorable dog.
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BELONG
SUZANNE PALMER
Gwenna Thirty-Seven stared at the display set into the back of her left hand, where it said, in surprisingly large letters: REJECTED. She tapped it, shook her hand, tapped it harder, reset the display, but the word remained.
Gwenna Twenty-Two and Helene Thirteen came into the bunkspace, their footsteps neatly and perfectly in sync, discussing the upcoming placement in a smooth exchange in the approved rhetorical range. She slipped her opposite hand over her display as casually as she could.
“Greetings, Thirty-Seven,” Twenty-Two said. “Thirteen and I are using our free period to go down to the media hall and watch the Inspirations again. You would be welcome to join us.”
She wished to go; she never got tired of the Inspirations. “I have a superseding matter,” she said to her best friends, instead. “It is a regret.”
“I am informed there will be at least one more occasion to view the Inspirations before the Placement tomorrow night,” Thirteen said. “I am certain we will enjoy them with you again then.”
“I am also certain,” Thirty-Seven said. Her friends turned and, still in step, walked out the door.
When they were gone, she tapped the communication button on her screen. “I have a technical malfunction with my hand device,” she informed the answercomp. “I should bring it for service.”
“You have a scheduled window in sixty-eight minutes,” the answercomp replied. “Please report to Orange One.”
“Technical services is in yellow block—”
“Do not contradict. Your window is in sixty-eight minutes in Orange One. Proceed there.” The service disconnected.
***
It is three weeks before Placement. Gwenna Thirty-Seven has just completed her last proficiency exam, and sits perfectly still with a smile on her face as mentor punctures ink into her arm. It is the symbol for Hand-to-Hand Combat, in gold because she ranked in the top one percent. She has several other gold icons in the line from her shoulder down near her wrist; more than her friends, a few of whom have no gold, and one no silver either. It does not matter; teams are teams because all the members make each other stronger. When they are Placed on Hichia V’s surface, they will face unknown challenges and dangers from the barely-terraformed planet to hostile competitor colonies, and all of them would find ways to contribute and excel.
“Congratulations, Gwenna Thirty-Seven,” mentor says as it withdraws the needles, leaving blood and ink smeared in its wake. “You must expect to be declared Team Lead. You have the best scores of your group.”
“I have no expectation except to serve at my very best at all times, however I am asked to serve,” Thirty-Seven answers. “We are a team together.”
This is the correct answer, she knows, and she feels the truth of it like a song in her heart.
“It has been a pleasure training you, Thirty-Seven,” mentor answers. “You have been an excellent student. You are excused.”
***
Orange One was a large facility that sat half-in and half-out of the safety of the QuanEngCorp Dome. When it was time for Placement, the armored carriers would depart from there out onto the vast, dangerous wastelands of Hichia V. They didn’t yet know the exact time because there were corporate spies within the dome, just as they had information patriots embedded within others’, and the uncertainty made it harder for the competition to ambush them right out the door. Once they were released from the carriers and away they’d be able to hide in the canyons and gutterlands, and they’d quickly dig in and fortify their positions.
Gwenna Thirty-Seven had never been inside Orange One, nor any of her team that she was aware, and no good team kept secrets from each other. She would have been afraid, except that she knew she was perfect in loyalty and valued in full by the Corp; she would have hurried, except she had no just cause for anxiety. A technical fault would not be held against her.
The doors opened, welcoming her, and a servicebot immediately approached. “Gwenna Thirty-Seven,” it said. “Please follow me.”
She followed, taking in the bustle of bots and people around her, all so self-assured and efficient that she could not help but smile from the joy of it.
The bot led her to an elevator, and they went up several floors before exiting into a nondescript hallway. There were no signs, no name plates, no numbers, only cheerful orange walls and doors leading in both directions. The bot took her to one, then stopped. “You may knock,” it said.
Thirty-Seven knocked on the door, three confident but not overly-loud raps, and the door opened. “You may enter,” the bot said, and then spun around and left.
Gwenna stepped in and stopped a respectful third of the way to the desk and the man behind it at the other side of the room. He was looking down at his console, ignoring her. She waited patiently.
At last he glanced up. “Gwenna Thirty-Seven,” he said. “You have a concern.”
She held up her hand, showing the display. “My screen is experiencing a malfunction,” she said.
“It is not a malfunction,” he said. “You will not be Placed with your team. When they have all departed for their new position, you will be released from service.”
“I…” Gwenna started to say, then stopped. She did not know what to say, and stared.
The man waited expectantly.
“I have very satisfactory rankings in all skills from the mentors,” she said at l
ast. “I am fully genetically compliant with all desired corporate parameters. I have zero reprimands and seventeen commendations for loyalty and corporate pride.”
His eyes narrowed. “The Corporation does not make mistakes,” he said.
“I would never consider that it could!” she said.
“Then if the corporation does not make mistakes, you have an alternate explanation for your status.”
“It is a technical malfunction.”
“It is not a technical malfunction. The corporation does not make mistakes. You have been rejected. You are dismissed.”
Behind her, the door opened again and the servicebot beeped. Gwenna Thirty-Seven bowed to the man, turned, and then followed the robot out. Her body felt like the time they had practiced with stun fields, numb all over.
At the door back out into the dome, she looked up at the bot. “I don’t understand,” she said.
It left without a word as the doors of Orange One closed behind her, sealing her out.
***
For their last exercise, mentor has brought them out onto the surface of Hichia V at one of the recently acquired mine settlements. “You must think and move as a team, always mindful of the greater good of the Corporation,” mentor reminds them. This is not hard; this is how they have been taught to think and move since they were selected from their families at age five.
They have seen plenty of images of bodies, both that of the enemy finally meeting justice, and of their own heroes fallen tragically for the Corp. Gwenna has never expected to see them in person, except in combat, so it is a surprise when mentor releases them from their travelpod out onto the surface and there is the bloodied remains of a person among the rocks at the foot of the ramp. She can feel uncertainty sweep the team, just for an instant, before they are all solid again, unswayed, undeterred.
They are suited up for combat, identical except for the designation on their chest armor and backs. She is G37, of course; in front of her she can see G22 and H13, her best friends among equals. They have their rifles out and are moving into the settlement. Behind her, Francine Six – F6 – is hesitating still, and Thirty-Seven takes her arm. “We are a team together,” she says. “We are the body of the Corporation, and we are strong.”
Six nods and steps forward now with more confidence. Thirty-Seven feels the joy of mutuality as a warmth in her body. They will succeed, and bring greater wealth to the Corporation together.
There are other bodies ahead.
One of them still has the logo of TangenTech visible. The carnage is easier to deal with now, being certain they are the competition, rightfully supplanted.
She feels a swell of love for QuanEngCorp, for them selecting her to be a part of their superior organization. She will never let them down, not ever, not even if it means becoming a burnt body in the dirt for the good of the Corp. There is no higher purpose. She has been chosen for this.
***
The others would not talk to her any more. They packed their things for Placement around her, as if she was a pillar or a chair or other inanimate obstacle to be skirted around without further thought. Not even Francine Six, whom she’d once helped, would meet her eyes. “I did nothing wrong,” she told them, but they would not hear.
After they were gone, she sat on her bunk and tried to find in herself her love for the Corporation even through this terrible day. Surely it was a test, a last chance to show her devotion through the worst and most unexpected adversity. Gwenna Thirty-Seven managed a smile, kept it steady on her face, and packed her own things to show she was still prepared to go, willing to give whatever the Corporation asked of her.
The bunkspace was more silent, more empty than anywhere she had ever been. Her handscreen had shut off, even the hated REJECTED now gone, and none of the buttons would do anything.
When she heard the transport outside lift off, she felt her heart break, but she did not cry, and she kept her smile on her face, ready and waiting and loyal.
***
They move together through the settlement, cataloguing resources both available and reparable; occupying this will be another team’s Placement task, not theirs, but the groundwork is good preparation for their own imminent assignment. They have done a multitude of similar tasks – some under hostile fire – in sim, but not live, not with the smell of charred bodies around them as they pull down the TangenTech flag. They are confident the planet will soon belong wholly to QuanEngCorp.
At the far end of the canyon, mentor has them divide up and pass back through, making a finer survey of structural damage. Thirty-Seven is tired but elated, and she and Helene Thirteen work up opposite sides of an abandoned and devastated street. TangenTech’s civilians have fled into the hills; they would either die there or sign themselves over to QuanEng.
She reaches a small structure that is intact enough that resources might have survived inside. Shouldering her pulse rifle, she ducks through the shattered doorway inside.
It had, she realizes, once been a home. Broken, burnt bits of furniture are shoved up against the far wall, pressed there by the shock cannons of whichever team acquired the town. She unclips a scanner from her belt, holds it out in the palm of her glove, lets it sweep the room with its bluish light. The Team placed here will be able to use the data to plan resources for the rebuild.
There is a sound, small but clear, clearly human, among the destruction.
Thirty-Seven uses her boot to kick debris aside, and finds a face there. Dirty with soot and blood, it is a man, barely not still a kid, maybe even younger than she is. “Please,” he says. “Please don’t hurt me.”
She takes a bee from her pack, bends down, and sets it gently on his chest before she steps well back. There is a spark, and the man-boy arches his back and screams, a terrible sound that dwindles quickly away as his last breath is taken.
In the sims, the enemies lay there peacefully, and smile as they are removed from this life. They do not scream, or thrash, or soil themselves.
Gwenna stares at the body long enough that mentor enters the building, assesses the situation, declares the structure and its contents satisfactorily surveyed. She looks at it, the metal and plastic drone that has been teacher, friend, for all of her life that she can recall.
“I did the right thing?” she asks.
“It is necessary to move along to the next structure,” mentor says instead.
She leaves the bee, as it will hasten the decomposition and sanitization of the body, and follows mentor back outside into sunlight that seems brighter than when she entered. There is another building ahead, and she sees that Helene Thirteen is already several structures ahead of her. She will have to hurry to catch up, so she does, and she does not think on that house, the dead enemy boy, again.
***
Six hours later, they came for her. She was still smiling, though her face ached. A small group of people in orange checked that she had properly packed her things and then indicated she should follow them out of the bunkspace.
“There’s a new team coming in,” the woman in the lead explained. “Team IJKL, a male group. They will live and train here for the next five years, just as your team did, and if they train well they will be Placed, as all of your team except you were.”
“I trained very hard,” she said.
“You did. We were very pleased with you, until the end,” she said.
“I don’t know what I did wrong. I would try again, if the opportunity is still available. I would do anything for the Corporation.”
“That is not my choice to make,” she said. “Please roll up your sleeve.”
Gwenna Thirty-Seven did as she was told, as she always had. Mentor was there, though she had not seen it arrive. It grasped her arm and stabbed ink in, and when it drew away at first she thought there was only blood there. Then she saw the pattern, in red, at the end of the long line of gold and silver of all her achievements: a red question mark.
“You asked a question,” the woman said. Sh
e shook her head, and all the others in orange looked down and away at the shame of it. “There is no room for questions, for doubt, in loyalty. You no longer belong among us.”
Still seeping blood from the mark, they escorted her from the Corporate dome to be cast away from this world.
***
Suzanne Palmer is a writer, artist, and linux system administrator who lives in the beautiful but bug-filled woods of western Massachusetts. She tweets random things about writing, space, bugs, and other cool stuff as @zanzjan.
ON THE TECHNO-EROTIC POTENTIAL OF DONALD TRUMP UNDER CONDITIONS OF PARTIALLY INDUCED PSYCHOSIS
KEN HINCKLEY
illustrated by Dave Senecal
Streaked with Toner. In the latter stages of Dr Axsel Scinder’s investigations – as the funding dried up in the aftermath of the economic crisis and the high-rise Institute crumbled around him – he found himself obsessively viewing projected (and thus grotesquely enlarged) cine-loops of the Presidential candidate.
The bitter aroma of a cup of coffee Axsel had poured some days ago – precisely how many, he could not recall – seemed to fertilize the extensive notes that flowered in his tattered moleskin.
Meanwhile the film of grime deposited on his floor-to-ceiling windows by the diesel trucks rumbling through the cloverleafs far below turned his world into the toner-streaked nightmare of a poorly photocopied forensic report.
Such was Axsel’s frame of mind as he returned his attention to his long-neglected monograph.
ABSTRACT
It is widely recognized that the candidacy of Mr Trump is a phenomenon long lacking a firm scientific explanation.
Interzone #265 - July-August 2016 Page 8
