Best of British Science Fiction 2016

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Without support, I was concerned that my initial strike wouldn’t be sufficient to destroy these people, although generating copies of the entry points would offset that disadvantage. It was also clear that the natives’ physical lives were not completely integrated with this network, with uneven geographic distribution. From their own data, less than half of the population was connected, so even if my attack went to plan there would be survivors.

  I didn’t need to destroy them completely, though. Sufficient damage would cause their technological progress to wither and cripple their infrastructure. The weaknesses in that infrastructure helped shape my strategy. Their distrust of each other would provide the required force multiplier and, if all went to plan, might convince them to fight the war for me.

  The key to their fall was their geographical social groupings. I’d identified several capable of causing the necessary level of devastation. From these, I isolated three main alliances that, with the proper motivation, could engulf the globe in conflict. I aimed to make the larger of the three believe that the other two were moving against them. It was the larger group that seemed to be able to detect my presence, so distracting them with a new attack would aid my cause.

  Their ability to counter my efforts meant that I had to move sooner than I would have liked. Throughout the network, I located secure clusters. Some I was able to penetrate and so gain additional insight to the military of this world. Some linked to critical systems, including weapons command. I gained control of enough to provide a vigorous distraction and act as a statement of intent meant to confuse the enemy.

  My observations of the activity on the network since my emergence revealed that conflict between the societies took place in virtual space as well, though in comparison to their physical battles, these appeared low-key. Most took the form of information theft, but others were more offensive in nature, including industrial sabotage. The latter provided a template by which I would disguise my attacks.

  As the nature of the conflict, or at least my part in it, was solely in the virtual space, I would lose the ability to monitor the progress of the battle. This meant that I had to prepare the bulk of the actions in advance. The attacks were set up to weaken their power management systems, communications and logistics. These were carefully prepared so that my presence remained hidden.

  The war began with an artful blend of deception and strikes against the largest nation’s infrastructure. The deception I planned couldn’t be too obvious, so I ensured that the origins of these attacks didn’t immediately trace back to the supposed source. The continued onslaught would reveal the source and so trigger the counter-attack.

  Across the world, my preparations unfurled. Not all succeeded, but there were enough. Communication networks collapsed node by node. Faults appeared throughout the web of routing devices. Power systems were disrupted. A flood of messages reported the building disaster and so overloaded what little infrastructure remained.

  As I predicted, my knowledge of events was rapidly degraded, so I initiated the next and final part of my plan.

  15:33:20:

  With the war underway there is little I can now do to influence events. Any direct intervention on my part risks revealing my involvement and that could be the one thing that stops the war. I hope that I’ve done enough to cripple this world and remove their threat, or at least make them a softer target once the intervention fleet arrives. The fleet needs to be informed of events so that they are properly prepared, and so that my experiences here can be reintegrated into my core self.

  There is a chance, a slim chance, that I can return home.

  My only way off this planet is by the same method I arrived. Four coordinates are encoded in my memories. These mark the locations of monitoring stations but, as a precaution, they’re not occupied systems. The necessary technology is available on this world in the form of radio telescopes. Unfortunately, only one is currently aligned along the vector I need.

  Their sub-network isn’t secure, so access takes barely any time at all. Compressing my consciousness takes longer, and time is of the essence. All around me systems and networks are collapsing as the conflict spreads. This will be my only chance.

  At exactly the moment I initiate the sequence to transmit my signal, the computer crashes…

  Possible Side Effects

  Adam Connors

  My head is full of strange ideas today. Fragments. Daydreams. Memories. I buzz with them. I woke with words in my mouth that must be decades old. “Have you seen the newspaper?” “We need milk, I’m going out to buy milk.” “Soon, I promise.” I was dreaming about the woods again. Out where we used to live in the old days, before the business took off, before we moved to California, before… Well, just before.

  Beech trees standing like guards over the dirt path. Black branches etched into white sky. Do you remember how beautiful it was? Somehow, in my dream, it’s always autumn. You’re with me, and we’re both young. Ben is five or six and he’s cycling ahead of us on that little orange bike he used to have.

  He laughed when I told him this. He remembers that bike.

  He was wobbly and you were terrified he was going to fall and hurt himself. I said something—in the dream I didn’t get to hear what it was—and you laughed and clutched my arm. In the dream I watch us and I wonder if we were ever really that happy. I was working so much back then, trying to get the business off the ground, it’s hard to imagine I had time for a walk in the woods. But it felt so real.

  And then for some reason I was dreaming about Dr Merck again. Do you remember Dr Merck?

  “It’s not good news, I’m afraid, Mr King,” he said.

  I always disliked Dr Merck. There was a cruelty to him. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t wait for you to sit down before giving you bad news. The kind of man who would sit behind his immense desk like he was immune to all sickness, and leave you standing like an idiot, wondering if the consultation had begun already. Of course, I know now that none of this was an accident. His performance was carefully crafted, the result of many hours of coaching.

  I sat, without being invited. “I feel good. Better.”

  “Steroids,” Dr Merck said, looking up. “Temporary, I’m afraid. Your cancer is very aggressive. The scans indicate significant metastasis.”

  “Then we’ll go again,” I said. “Another round.”

  “I have to advise against it.”

  My eyes blurred, refocused, blurred again. It’s one thing to know that you’re dying. To be told so bluntly that there is nothing more to be done, no hope, no maybes, is another thing altogether. Looking back I suppose Dr Merck had been working with Rosen for a while. He’d built his business around people like me, and Rosen must have had discrete relationships with all the doctors in the Bay Area.

  “There must be something—” I said.

  I was trying not to sound desperate but I don’t suppose I succeeded. Dr Merck knew how much this hurt. When my company started to see its first big successes I became known as a futurist. A technologist. Some described me as a genius. One particularly florid obituary (oh, yes, I read my obituaries, who wouldn’t?) described me as somebody with: “the mind of an engineer and the hands of a poet.” I liked that one. I remember feeling for a while that I had achieved so much I must be capable of anything. But then you get sick and none of it means a damn. Is it possible that the prospect of an early death is more painful for a successful man like myself? More difficult to accept one’s powerlessness? I suppose you think me arrogant for even asking.

  “There are some areas of research that are showing promise,” Dr Merck said. “Gene therapy. Nanotechnology. Some are even in early trials.”

  “Then give them to me.”

  “Animal trials, Mr King.”

  “So?”

  “They’re not ready. This is very early stage stuff.”

  “I have nothing to lose, do I?”

  I leaned forward in my excitement. A part of me must have known I was be
ing led somewhere. If there was really nothing to be done why was the conversation still going on?

  “I have money,” I said.

  “Please, Mr King, I know you have money.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Dr Merck spread his hands on his desk. “These treatments just aren’t ready. In twenty, maybe forty years they might… But now—” He shook his head sadly. “You should go home. Be with your family. With careful management I can give you another good six months. You should make the most of what time you have.”

  The arrogant twerp. You can see how he made me sweat for it, can’t you? You can see that I never really had a chance against that. I’m not making excuses. I made the choices I made. But once Rosen got a whiff of me you can be sure he left nothing to chance. You saw how long he’d been preparing. Just imagine how the machine must have swung into action. Focus groups. Planning sessions. Poor Dr Merck briefed to within an inch of his life lest he screw this up.

  Dr Merck sighed. He laid down his pen. (Imagine the psychologist who would have suggested that particular movement to him. The thought that would have gone into that simple, tired act designed to convey just the right level of regret or resolve).

  “We might have one option,” he said.

  He glanced down at his notepad as if unwilling to look me in the eye. I remember being terrified that the consultation would end there. That he’d look up and smile and send me on my way. And if I complained and said: yes? yes? what other option? He’d look blankly and pretend he’d said nothing of the sort.

  When he did look up he was very solemn. This, I’m sure, was how he’d been told to present the idea to me. If there had been a hint of celebration in his voice I might have thought naturally of the negatives. If he’d tried to congratulate me on cheating death, maybe I would have thought more carefully about what he was really proposing. I wished desperately that you were with me. I don’t even remember why you weren’t but I suspect now Rosen had arranged it that way. You’d attended all my other consultations. Taking notes. Calming me. You always were more practical than me, more rational. If you’d been there we would have taken more time to think, we would have weighed the pros and cons. As it was, I had already made my decision.

  “These treatments I mentioned… Imagine if you could last until the research comes to fruition,” Dr Merck said. “Imagine if we could give the scientists here the forty, maybe fifty, years they need to make the kind of advances they’re going to need for your condition to become treatable.”

  I shook my head. “But you already told me. I have six months.”

  Dr Merck leaned forward. “You have six months, Mr King. Yes.”

  I have just taken a break from writing to deal with my medications. Every day I hook myself up to the big machine and sit there for an hour while it whirrs and ticks and administers whatever the computer thinks is the right amount of medication for me. The medications I take cause my skin to get thin and crack. I have sore patches that never heal and mouth ulcers so bad I can hardly eat.

  After my medications I do my daily checks. Cabin pressure. Waste processing system. Fuel load. Navigation check. I have to turn the big silver handle to vent the toilet module. I have to bleed the coolant system. I have to key in a special code to switch to auxiliary power and back again. Why? I’m not sure. What do I do if it fails? I have no idea. It is all documented in meticulous detail in a lever arch file the like of which I have not seen since I was at school. My suspicion: some psychologist on Rosen’s team thought it would be good to keep me busy. I don’t dare question it. I do as the doctors say and I consider myself lucky to be here. But I don’t think they realised how precious time would feel up here. At 299780km/s the opportunities for reconciliation are smaller than they ought to be.

  My medication cycle takes about 4.6 days in your frame of reference.

  I take an afternoon nap and a month goes by.

  I have been here 132 days. On Earth, forty years have passed.

  I came home from Dr Merck’s in a frenzy, do you remember? “There’s a treatment but we have to move quickly!” I said. Why was there never enough time? Why did I never sit down and just talk to you? We have argued about time since the beginning, don’t you think? In the early days we thought we were arguing about work but really it was always about time. How much time should I spend working instead of being with my family? Was it okay to miss a weekend, a month of evenings, to spend one of Ben’s birthdays out of town? I argued that I was investing in our future. You argued that I was missing our present.

  I remember packing. I remember you trying to talk to me and me not listening. I was throwing clothes into a suitcase and telling you at the same time that we were out of options. I remember you sitting down. You drew your knees up to your chest. Even though we had known this was the most likely outcome, I remember how white you turned.

  “We’re coming with you,” you said when I finally told you where I was going.

  “Fine,” I said. “But we have to leave now.”

  Did you resent me for leaving as I did? Did you think I should have stayed and lived out my last few months with you and Ben? That would have been the normal thing to do, wouldn’t it? Perhaps, in that, you thought there would be time for reconnection. Perhaps those last six months would have contained more value than forty years lived in any other way. But I didn’t see it like that. I was not a normal man. I had built one of the most profitable companies in the world. I had created a range of products that had turned the industry on its head. Why should I not have options other men didn’t? I didn’t want to talk to you because I was afraid you would try to change my mind. The decision was simple, and I wanted to keep it that way: roll over and die, or live.

  Two months of training. So much training. Briefings. Psychological analysis. Technical instruction. Emergency procedures. A whole team of people employed to prepare me for something nobody had experienced before. You and Ben were there but we didn’t see much of each other. I remember, once, coming back to our apartment. Ben engrossed in his laptop. You moving around quietly, tidying, laying out dinner for me. “Have you eaten?” you said. “I’m sorry, Ben was hungry, I ate with him.” I remember how slowly you moved, how little you talked. You must have been going out of your mind. The whole site was a custom built campus and launch centre. There was nobody there who was not employed to send me on my way. What did you do all day? Did you walk in the hills in the blinding heat? Did you use the gym and avoid the eyes of those scientists and engineers who were dedicated to taking me away? I’m sorry, I never even asked. I was afraid you would get angry.

  You had every right to be angry. Do you remember when the business first began to take off? There was one time in particular that I keep coming back to. It was right after we made the decision to float. We were lying in bed and I was talking you through the numbers for the first time. “We’re rich,” you said, with that simplicity of yours that was not naivety but an astuteness most people will never understand.

  “We’re much more than rich,” I said.

  “We should celebrate, take a holiday,” you said.

  “Soon, I promise.”

  You got angry then. “When?”

  “Now’s not the right time.”

  “It’s never the right time.”

  I thought you were being unreasonable. I thought you should understand that I had to be there for the business. I’m sorry we argued then. Arguments like that can’t be erased, they only fade under new experiences. But there was never enough time was there?

  We met Michael Rosen only twice. You didn’t like him. He made his money from biotech so I guess he was used to people disliking him. He was the one who insisted I “die” rather than make public what was really happening. Publicity, he maintained, was of no value to him. I didn’t like him either, but unlike you I wanted to like him. He was an impressive man. Where my business had revolutionised an industry, his had created a dozen new industries at least. But he needed me, d
ammit. He must have spent billions on his project with no guarantee of a customer: he’d built a vessel capable of prolonged, self-sustaining space flight; his team had devised propulsion technology decades ahead of anything NASA was capable of... Even he must have been running low on funds by now.

  I must have slept, I’m sorry. The medication makes me tired. I snooze and you have to wait another three weeks for your letter. I’m sorry it took me so long to write. I have lived these past 132 days in a different frame of reference from the rest of the world. On Earth an automated system (devised and maintained by Rosen’s team) aggregates the top news stories and takes a random sample of the world’s media output. It fires a continuous, ultralow frequency signal into space which my passing ship picks up (suitably blue-shifted), decodes, and delivers to me each day alongside my morning meds. In the past four months I’ve watched the world in fast forward. I’ve watched wars erupt and fade. I’ve seen joy and suffering flicker past in the blink of an eye. I’ve seen heroes, despots, superstars, and supreme leaders come and go in less time than it takes me to figure out how to vent the toilet module. I admit, I was surprised by how quickly my business failed and was forgotten. I watched our son grow up, attend medical school, become a surgeon, get married and divorced (twice). And somehow, along the way, I abandoned you.

  What was it like for you after I left? Did you hate me? I told myself I didn’t have a choice. Live, or roll over and die. It was simple. I told myself it was only six months. I see things differently now. You were there for me when we thought I had only six months to live. But in my frame of reference it was you who had only six months.

  I enjoyed your letters. So warm. So ordinary. Morsels of information about how Ben was doing at school. His school exams. His first girlfriend (you were so worried she would break his heart). If you hated me you hid it well. But I think you tipped your hand, because maybe you forgot it had been only a week and a half for me and I was sick as a dog for most of that time. I read all three years of your letters in a single sitting, and the growing distance was undeniable. You grieved for me, just as if I’d really died. And then you got over me. I should have written then, but I didn’t know how. I was a ghost. Far from cheating death I had become everything we fear most about death. I lingered and observed. I agonised over past misdeeds. But I had no more opportunities to set them straight. What right did I have to haunt you? Surely, if I wrote now it would be for my sake not yours.