Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

by Law, Lucas K.

  0820: Flare on north pole due to impact/explosion.

  0823: Cameras triangulate on crash site at 104x2831. Nearest location: Cabeus Crater.

  0829: Crash object appears to be manned spaceship. Infrared confirm presence of a moving organic matter at temperature 37.9 degrees Celsius.

  Terra gasped. “There’s a person out there!”

  They all looked at each other for a second. Then, Puck said slowly, “Or an alien.”

  “At human body temperature? C’mon!” said Terra.

  It seemed unlikely that another sentient organism had developed a humanoid body temperature. Or maybe that was convergent evolution? Luna remembered reading about that, how species might look the same, or have developed similar traits, but it’s not because they have a close genetic relationship. It’s because they just evolved the same way. Like fish in Antarctica developed a kind of antifreeze glycoprotein so they wouldn’t freeze to death, but so did the Arctic fish on the opposite pole of the planet.

  Maybe 37.9 was just a good temperature for a sentient creature.

  Maybe Mom was with the alien.

  Luna blinked down the rest of the log as fast as she could, skipping the boring parts like a robot drone confirming the sighting and deciding to alert the school and shut down all work for the day. Dr. Bing had been the first to arrive on site, so she set up a live video feed.

  The thing was still breathing and moving over two hours after impact. That was when the investigation team started messaging the rest of the colony. They, too, worried about whether the thing was human, especially given its survival in such an extreme state.

  Luna clicked over to the live feed, so they could watch and hear whatever they could before Dad logged back on the network.

  Mom had helped them extract the creature at almost 1300, assuming that it would be deceased, but it seemed only to be unconscious and immediately identifiable as a human in an extremely flame-resistant suit.

  They all gasped at the blurred view of his face. Even that glimpse through his helmet showed a very old man with a broad, sharp nose. His skin looked as pockmarked and scarred as the moon’s surface.

  Not one of the moon colonists was older than 40, and many of them were much younger. Luna had never seen such an aged man before.

  “Maybe he is an alien,” Puck joked, just before their father cut their connection.

  Luna turned to face their father. His dark eyes were unreadable. “What are you three doing in my account?”

  Luna could barely breathe. She’d never been in trouble. Not like this. She tried to take a step forward, but for once, her bioprostheses failed her. Her legs trembled too much.

  Terra squared off her shoulders. “We had to find out what happened to Mom.”

  Even Puck said, “We couldn’t leave her like that.”

  Luna, the oldest and now the most embarrassed, confessed, “None of our com links are good for anything except partial differential equations. So I was the one who broke into your account. I’m sorry.”

  Dad shook his head, a world of disappointment in his face. “If you think you must break the rules before talking to me, we have raised you wrong.”

  “I did talk to you!” Terra said. “Please, Dad, we’ll take whatever punishment you give us, but we’ve got to know who that man is and why they called Mom?”

  Dad looked each of them in the eye. “You know that much already, then?”

  Luna nodded.

  “You know that your mother is a doctor. You may not know that your mother is a bioethicist. They called her to judge this case. This man, whoever he is, might wish us harm. He came perilously close to harming the base. We don’t know who he is and won’t be able to obtain Earth records for some time. Taking care of him will take many human and planetary resources and possibly endanger the health of our colony. Two people in the team believe that it would be wiser to leave him on site. One person wishes to try and heal him at all cost.”

  Luna and her siblings sent frantic messages to their mother from their own accounts, pelting her with advice, even though they knew she couldn’t hear them.

  In the end, Mom elected to bring this stranger back to the base—outside the base, in the transportation zone, in a temporary shelter, where he would be isolated and have robots attend him. She set a limit on how many labour hours, and how many precious cc’s of water to allot him, before they allowed nature to take its course.

  Luna saw the justice in this, but she was already dreaming of another world. A new kind of world, one where children were allowed to learn what they want, not only what is useful. Where a stranger’s life might not hang in the balance. A world that might be rough and uneven but never boring.

  Memoriam

  Priya Sridhar

  “You are the father of this animate and inanimate world, and the greatest guru to be worshipped.”

  —Bhagavad-Gita, The Yoga of the Manifestation

  Mosquitoes still buzzed outside the balcony nets. Anish Matam sat outside, dressed in white pajama bottoms, a cup of coffee in his hand. His belly fat rolled as he moved, and he stroked the folds. He sipped from the small white mug. Beard stubble coated his chin, and his hair had grey streaks.

  The sun’s rays reflected orange ripples on the Kerala waters. A stray dog ran by the riverbed, fur coated in sickly pink streaks, and approached Anish with a wagging tail. Anish reached into his pocket and pulled out several Western dog treats. The dog caught them one by one as Anish tossed them from the balcony into the air. The dog barked happily.

  The protesters hadn’t come by so early this time; they had discovered the mosquito hordes that preyed at night, unless they wore mosquito nets. When they were here, Anish had offered them coffee and tea, as well as his cook Mina’s many idlis.

  “Her coconut chutney is to die for,” he said. “Would you like me to bring out a bowl?”

  “We don’t want your tea or chutney.” Someone shouted. “We want you to stop parading that THING around!”

  “You shouldn’t be making money off this!” Another person said. “It’s not what your father would have wanted. It’s sacrilegious.”

  “I charge only ten rupees per person,” Anish said, with some irritation. “I’ve said this before; it’s only to pay for groceries. Do you want to stay overnight? I think there’s enough room for all of you.”

  Still the protesters continued to scream and refuse his offer. Their protest signs made flapping noises as they shook them in the steamy, sultry morning. Anish occasionally brought out coconut water and lemon water. He told his guest lodgers that the protesters weren’t dangerous, but to take care.

  “All it takes is one instance of violence,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  The children seemed to view this with interest; they were taking music lessons in his mother’s old practice room. Their teacher, one of Anish’s former friends from university, eyed the whole thing with bemusement.

  In contrast to their children, the adults seemed more nervous. Many of them were his father’s fans, the ones who had made the long pilgrimage from Tony Matam’s European and American houses to see his last living home in India.

  It is strange, he thought as he watched the dog run away toward the dock. If you go to America, Christians there are the majority, and they pervade everything. But here, they are the persecuted race. Was that why my father converted, despite being raised Catholic?

  The thing turned its head toward him. Anish stiffened, looking into the glass eyes. They were a replica of his father’s jet-black eyes, hand-painted by Anish to reflect the spark that came whenever Appa decided to play a chess game or Brainvita. He had used a silicone skin, peppered with dark marks, and moulded in certain areas to replicate the jowl and worry lines.

  “Don’t worry,” Anish told it in a low tone so that his guests wouldn’t overhear. “I’ll take care of things, Appa.”

  He covered the robot’s hands with his own, feeling the synthetic hairs that poked out of his father’
s silicone knuckles. The mechanical fingers curled, the way Appa’s had when Anish came to him as a child after nightmares. Anish remembered one nightmare about his father going over a waterfall, and never coming back.

  The doorbell rang. Anish shuffled downstairs to answer it. A tall, platinum blonde woman stood there nervously, swatting at mosquitoes. Dust and river mud coated her blue sneakers and her black jeans.

  “Janet Oversight.” Anish felt relief on seeing a familiar, friendly face. “The writer from Bloomsbury. You are writing a book on my father. What a pleasant surprise!”

  She smiled. “You must be Anish. I came to do research on the last part of it.”

  “Of course. Come in. Would you like coffee?”

  “I would, actually. My mouth still burned from lunch. Very spicy river fish.”

  “The boat driver didn’t tell you, I assume.”

  “He apologized.”

  He let her inside, directing her to a sign which read: PLEASE TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES. She slipped off her sneakers and scratched her ankle with the other foot. Her white socks were noticeably soaked with sweat and humidity from the river trip.

  “How was your trip?” he asked.

  “Good. A little hot.”

  “Yes,” he said apologetically. “You should have come in the winter, when things are nicer and cooler.”

  “Plane fares are higher in the winter. Bloomsbury is reimbursing me for my travel expenses, but I don’t want them to think the book is going to cost them millions.”

  “It’s your right to travel when it’s most convenient,” he said. “The book will sell because it’s about my father. I remember when you came to Appa’s house in London. You still take your coffee with milk and no sugar?”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Have some idlis.” Anish offered her a few. “Mina makes them fresh every morning.”

  She took the lentil cakes gingerly. She tasted them plain with a quizzical expression, so he put spicy podhi on her plate and told her to dip an idli in the yellow powder. When her eyes became red and runny, he offered her water.

  When she had enough water, Anish began their conversation. “So you want to know about the last days of my father’s life. Feel free to ask me any questions.”

  “First, how long has he owned this home?”

  “About ten years. It started out as a lodge for travellers, and my father fell in love with it while he was researching another book, The River in the Pond.”

  “I remember that book. It gave me nightmares.”

  “Not just you; many others too.” Anish chuckled, trying hard not to sound like water bursting from a stream. “I remember the letters. That was when he got religious and was advising people to pray.”

  “That’s not very helpful.”

  “It wasn’t, and that sparked quite an outcry, especially with how that book ended. He did apologize, though. My father was good at admitting he was wrong when he messed up. You can’t pray when you know that nothing is out there.”

  Janet munched on a plain idli and washed it down with coffee.

  “How was he able to buy this place if it was in a commercial zone and not residential?”

  “He planned to run it as a lodge, just as a little side project. He had a lot of side projects, you know, and mainly to hire people who needed the help.”

  “Side projects.” Janet took a deep breath. “I did want to ask you about that. About your side project.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one that claims you’ve been making money off your father’s death, and creating something ungodlike.”

  “Oh.” He was hoping she wouldn’t. “I figured you might. It could be a good fodder for the book.”

  “Not just that. It seems odd that you would create something like that when—”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “My father’s last book in the Kalki Chronicles was about souls entering robots. That comes directly from the Ramayana, with Ravana’s brother Kumbhakarna. He was an actual machine, who needed six months of sleep to fight properly. I was finishing my engineering degree in grad school, going into robotics, when my father contacted me. He thought that I could help him with his book.”

  Janet nodded. She seemed to know this part.

  “So I had been showing him a prototype I was working on with the department, an animatronic that could simulate human motion without the usual glitches, and which could sync lip movement perfectly. He commissioned the department to make a Kalki prototype that he could use as a reference for his book. Once he was done writing, his plan was to auction off the prototype for charity so that more students in Kerala can afford to attend classes and get a proper education.”

  “Your father was a generous soul.”

  “He was. I didn’t want to charge him, but he insisted, given the expensive development and material costs.”

  “After he died, you kept the prototype instead of auctioning it for charity?”

  “Of course.” Anish tried to hide his sadness. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was the last thing we worked on together. I donated what my father paid me to his favourite charities, but several thousands doesn’t feel equivalent to potentially several millions.”

  “Were you close to your father?” she asked. “I remember the joy when you were born. It was a big deal.”

  “Oh, the social media age,” he said. “I’ve seen the pictures and the videos. Amma wrote so many happy songs when I was born, and Appa was so excited.”

  “But?”

  “I am not a creative person.” Anish looked down at his feet, avoiding Janet’s eyes. “It’s weird. Amma and Appa loved me. But I didn’t inherit anything else. My other siblings did. Tara, Trisha, Rahul. You know about them.”

  “But you went into robotics, and science requires creative minds,” Janet said. Anish could feel her eyes upon him. “You shouldn’t feel guilty that you went into something different. Lots of artists’ children do.”

  Anish looked up. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Christopher Robin Milne, for one. He opened a bookshop and served in the military.”

  “That’s Christopher Robin, though,” Anish said. “He had to be something different. He wasn’t going to stay that boy forever.”

  “And you weren’t either. You’re still adorable as you were in those baby videos.”

  Anish laughed again.

  “Why, thank you, Janet.”

  Janet finished her idli and gulped more water.

  “I did want to ask about what I read in the papers,” she said. “About what you did with that prototype.”

  “Oh, that.” He gave a sardonic smile. “Why don’t I show you instead?”

  Anish led her up a flight of narrow stairs to his father’s study.

  “Sweet Jesus.” Janet muttered.

  The animatronic was writing at his desk idly. It wore a black dressing gown, fine silk embroidered with white curlicues at the end. The quill pen it used scratched against thick bond paper. Every time it took a breath, its silicon skin expanded and contracted.

  “It looks exactly like him,” Janet said, her voice sounded awe and fear. “The way it moves—”

  “Yeah. Very realistic,” Anish admitted. He was proud of his creation. “The voice box isn’t completely done.”

  “Voice box?”

  “The recorded sound of my father’s voice.” He walked over to where the robot was sitting and writing: tapped its throat. “It’s all downloaded, of course, so the sound bites are there, but he can’t carry a proper conversation. I haven’t fixed that kink.”

  The robot looked up as it felt Anish’s fingers. Their eyes met, and Anish felt remorse.

  “Sorry, Appa,” he said, pulling his hand away. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  “Oh my God.” Janet sat down on a piano bench that lacked a piano. “It’s almost like he’s here in the room. I remember interviewing him for the book. But if it can write, can it walk?”

  “He c
an. I’ve only programmed him to pace the way Appa did when he wrote and to occasionally pray.”

  The robot’s gaze followed him as he went to sit by Janet on the piano bench. Anish gave it a nervous smile.

  “Maybe we should leave him alone,” he said. “Appa never liked being disturbed when he was writing something good. It looks like he’s in the zone.”

  They got up. Anish heard a pen scratching against paper.

  “What about all those gestures?” Janet asked Anish when he closed the door. “Your father’s eyes would follow people like that, but not for that long. What about the hair? And the handwriting?”

  “I added a few,” he said. “Not all of them. That’s the thing. For some reason he knows what Appa was like, including the things that I haven’t taught him.”

  “A learning AI, maybe? If it has his downloaded audio—”

  “Possibly,” he said. “Then sometimes I wonder. He can’t carry a conversation, but sometimes Appa makes requests. Like yesterday, while I was polishing him, he asked for Ganges river water.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah.” Anish gave a small laugh. “We used to have a vial of Ganges water, but it went missing. In Hindu culture, if you drink from that river, all your sins are purified. Except my father never had sins. Not to mention the water is disgusting with all the ashes and human filth.”

  “Did he ever talk about the water in interviews?” Janet asked.

  “No,” he answered. “I should know; I listened to all of them when I entered them into his voice box.”

  “You can’t be thinking that a robot suddenly became religious, Anish. You’re not even Hindu!”

  “I’m not,” he said. “But Appa was. Somehow the robot picked up on that.”

  “It must be from one of those interviews where he talked about converting.”

  “He never talked about it in that much detail.” Anish felt sober.