Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49

by Seanan McGuire

  He thinks about it as the plane taxis down the runway. The loss of control scares Spencer. He fixates on it. The forecast was exactly what they wanted; he knew it was solid. But a caster bleeding and puking after doing the job means burnout. Malfunction. The body is failing. A sick feeling of dread has been growing inside him. He wants to ask Megan what she thinks, but he can’t bring himself to do it. She hasn’t brought it up, and he can’t.

  The flight attendants begin the safety briefing. It’s a déjà vu moment that reminds him of a hundred flights he’s taken. He immediately shifts his thoughts before they start to come back to him. It shouldn’t be this hard, he thinks uneasily. This is part of the problem. Casted memories are indelible. They are sharp and clear, and if he begins to drift towards them, they can come flooding back without hesitation. No delays when the memory lives in circuitry embedded in the brain. The smallest thing can be a trigger, and it’s hardest to avoid it when he’s tired. It’s best to try to ignore everything, to adopt an air of vacancy in moments of boredom, because everything casted lives just below the surface, ready to come bursting forth in recall. Better to concentrate on something else, something from before, subjective remembrance the way it’s supposed to be: wavering and half-clouded with untruths. Those are safest, the best protection. Recall is an annoyance for market research casters, but hazardous for the counter-intelligence team. Some things shouldn’t be relived. Razor sharp memories cut both ways—going in and when they come out in recall.

  The plane levels off. The businessman heaves a sigh, kicks off his shoes and accepts a drink from the flight attendant. The magazine slithers to the floor, a headline catching Spencer’s eye. Chemical Terror in Syria: Inside the Inspectors’ Report. Spencer lifts his head quickly, but he’s already seen the picture that goes with it. He struggles to control his breathing, to silence the murmuring dread.

  “And for you, sir?”

  Spencer shakes his head.

  “Go on, kid,” says the man. “It’s free.”

  “N-no, thanks.” Spencer leans his head back in the seat, reaches to close the window shade, and tries not to think about anything. Tries not to remember.

  “Sir?” The flight attendant leans towards him, holding out a napkin. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  • • •

  He wakes suddenly. Thick moments of confusion hold him in a panicked stillness and he holds his breath, waiting for that memory to start playing back. But it doesn’t, mercifully. He realizes with embarrassment that he’s the last one on the plane. The cleaning crew is coming on board. Spencer mutters an apology, begins to get to his feet and remembers the seat belt, blushing as the flight attendant laughs.

  He’s carrying enough opiates to get the attention of a border services agent with a dog. The dog stops and sits next to him, tail wagging, and the agent starts asking questions. Spencer has to search through the pockets of his coat to find the paperwork again, pulls it out and hands it over with his passport. He’s taken to another room, opens his suitcase, hands over the prescriptions, lifts his shirt and lets the guards inspect him. They do not notice, as he does, that the green monitor lights along his ribs have flickered to amber. He packs his bag again, steps back out into the crowded terminal.

  The cacophony makes him cringe. It registers as a buzz in his head, a hum like a thousand fluorescent lights in a small room. He ought to be offline, shielded from this. He ought not to be feeling the thrill that twitches through his spine and warms the memristors, trickling up to the cache basins. Spencer struggles on through the crowd. Head down like a buffalo, his mother used to say, and into the wind. She’d say that when he complained about walking to school in the cold. What would she think if she could see him now? Afraid to go to sleep because recall invades his dreams, struggling not to associate something simple and innocuous in case it triggers one when he’s awake. He’s terrified that it’s all starting to get away from him, that he’s losing himself. What would she say?

  • • •

  The guy from the car service has a friendly smile and takes his suitcase from him right away. Spencer follows him to the car, feeling foolish. He ought to carry his own bags, he thinks, but he’s too tired to mount a manful protest. He sits huddled in the back of the dark sedan. The driver glances at him in the mirror and turns up the heat. Traffic is heavier than Spencer remembers. “Worse all the time,” the driver says. “Sometimes it takes me an hour to get downtown. Can you believe it?” Spencer murmurs something. “Visiting family for the holidays?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nice. Everybody should try to be with their family.”

  He gazes out the window as they pass by downtown, picking out the old, familiar towers dwarfed by the new: Gulf Canada Square, Bankers Hall, the Bow. The boom kept going after he left. The price of gas made the cheap stuff from the oilsands suddenly okay, when tearing up the north seemed justified by the cost to fill a tank. Calgary was built smugly on oil. It still is.

  He got his start here when he was newly implanted, still learning how to sort through the blizzard of noise and data. They had him on marketing forecasts. The facility in the southeast industrial park was a nondescript building with razor wire fences and layers of security checkpoints. He forecasted in a blank room, with the couch and the analysts sitting with him, quietly coaching him through panic and fear as he learned to connect and read, talking him down when it overwhelmed him. Calgary would rise, that’s what he came up with first. Be more specific, they told him. People are optimistic. No, hopeful. Can you be more specific? Indulgent. Ready for more growth. People want bigger things.

  His casts became more and more accurate, perfectly attuned to the point of prescience. The call to meet with the DA research and development team came quickly. They spoke of next-gen implants over coffee and danishes around a marble and glass conference room table. We want to take you to the next level, they told him, and he agreed without hesitation. He wanted the storm, the merging with the howl and the fury, to become a part of it. Flipped and spun and thrown through, one speck in a blizzard, pure and beautiful, nerves on fire with the tension and pain, and the pleasure. It was intoxicating.

  He didn’t think then about what would happen if he couldn’t do the work anymore. He didn’t think that the memories could come back when they weren’t supposed to, more vivid each time, frighteningly so. It didn’t occur to him when he took on the counter-intelligence work. He didn’t think about what it would be like to have to force himself to get up and get dressed in the morning after a night of horrors. He didn’t think casting would ever make him sick. There’s no quitting after implantation. The equipment can’t come out. The finality was not something he thought about when he signed the contracts for the surgery to get the implants. It’s too late now.

  Maybe it’s the skyline and the glimpse of the distant mountains. He finds himself chewing on his fingernail as the city rolls past, the sun flashing off glass and metal. The road is lined with dirty snowbanks. Spencer sits in the back of the luxury sedan heading south on the Deerfoot. His suitcase is in the trunk, full of presents Megan bought and wrapped for him. The satchel stuffed full of drugs is on his lap. His hand is clenched around the strap. His eyes burn and he blinks, turning away from the window to gaze steadfastly at the back of the driver’s head.

  • • •

  “MOM! He’s here!” The door flies open; three kids hanging off his legs and trying to hug him all at the same time, nearly knocking him over. His sister comes out of the kitchen, throwing a towel on the counter, and stretches out her arms in welcome.

  “You made it,” she says.

  Hugs and more hugs. The kids squabble over who will drag his suitcase upstairs to the guest room, but he keeps the satchel with him and takes off his shoes while his sister hangs up his coat. “I’d forgotten how cold it is.”

  “Wimp,” she says. “You’ve been away too long.” She stands with her hands on her hips, looking at him. Spencer can still see traces of their ch
ildhood in her face, but Erin takes after their mother now. She looks well, fit and clear-eyed. He feels shrunken standing in front of her. “You look awful,” she says, finally.

  “You’re supposed to say I look tan and relaxed.” Spencer forces himself to grin.

  “When have you ever been tan?”

  “Once? Twice?”

  She rolls her eyes. “You look tired.” He doesn’t need to try to feel her worry. It’s an undercurrent that plucks at his guilt.

  “I am,” he admits. There are framed photographs lining the walls—he can see the last family portrait they took before he moved to LA, when the kids were small. I look so different, he thinks. He’s so used to the way he is now. He catches his sister watching him as he inspects it and straightens quickly.

  “Are you okay?”

  He knows she wants him to reassure her. “I’m fine. Just working too hard.”

  “You’re going to really take a break this week, right? You look like you just need to chill out.”

  “Good thing it’s freezing out there,” he says lightly. She smiles, but her eyes are narrowed. “It’s okay,” he says. “It was a long flight. That’s all.”

  “Well, come on in,” she says. “You hungry? I’ll make you something. Dinner’s not until later.”

  “Got any coffee?”

  “Yes, if you’ll eat something with it.” He follows her into the kitchen, pausing to look at more photos on the walls. This is how she remembers her family’s life: memories held neatly in place by a frame. “You’re so skinny, Spence. You need to eat more.”

  “Can’t help it,” he says. “It’s my tapeworm.”

  “You’d think they’d figure out a better way for implants to charge,” she says, opening the fridge.

  “It’s better than first-gen. Remember those?”

  “Oh my god,” she says, laughing. “Yes. You were like some kind of freaky binge eater. You were hungry all the time.” She puts a bowl in the microwave. “Remember those late night trips to Peter’s Drive-In? I used to lie and say we were picking up burgers for my softball team.”

  “Hah. I’d forgotten about that.”

  “I got you pickled beets and cantaloupe,” she says. “I remembered all your favourites. And grapes, and that soy milk stuff—I still say it’s gross—and two cases of Ensure. That’ll be enough, right?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. You remembered everything.” There are drawings and coupons stuck to the fridge. The toaster sits crookedly next to the coffee pot on the counter. His sister moves briskly around, opening drawers and running water. He feels himself sinking into the pattern on the linoleum floor, the silent storm rising slowly to meet him, threatening to break.

  “The fridge did it,” she says, dragging him back, and he looks up, bewildered. “See that? It’s wired into the home network. Keeps track and orders things when we’re low on anything. I don’t need to even think about milk anymore.” The microwave beeps. “The kids hacked it, of course. Chocolate milk and candy, chips and cookies. Ten pounds of jelly beans. You name it. I was so pissed.” She puts a bowl of pasta on the table, then drops into a chair. “Go on.” She waits, then gestures to the food. “Sit down. Eat.”

  “It’s too much.”

  “Just eat what you want. I don’t care. You’re probably hungrier than you think. Did you eat on the plane?”

  “No. Had a headache.”

  “Because you need to eat.” He needs to eat to keep the equipment running. The neuromorphic implants in his intestines convert calories to charge the circuitry in his brain. It’s elegantly engineered, but the practical side is that hunger gnaws at him all the time to the point where he isn’t fully aware of it. Casters all look alike: painfully thin and tired, a gaunt hipster-chic look without the heroin. The engineers didn’t count on that.

  “Where’s Bill?”

  “Working. Cutting a deal—they’re putting the final touches on a new exploration contract. He’ll be home late. He’s going to meet us at the party.”

  “Party?” His stomach clenches, and the fork wobbles on its way to his mouth.

  Erin doesn’t notice. “We do it every year. The Westlunds put on this big party for everybody. Somebody dresses up as Santa. The kids love it.”

  “Do I have to go?”

  “Oh, come on, Spencer. It’s so much fun. Everybody wants to meet my famous brother. You don’t want to stay here by yourself, do you?”

  The kids come thundering down the stairs before he can think of an answer.

  • • •

  The street is bright with twinkling lights strung around garages. Spencer stumbles on the ice. The driveways are shoveled, the snow piled up in the yards and along the edges of the sidewalks, but it’s been years since he clambered over frozen ruts, and in canvas sneakers he slips and has to clutch her arm to keep from going down. Erin makes him wear one of Bill’s winter parkas even though they’re just going across the street. He’s soon standing uncomfortably in the Westlund’s living room with a drink in his hand, Christmas music booming in the background. Spencer’s sure they won’t ask him to be the one to duck outside to dress up as Santa. He doesn’t have the build for it. There aren’t enough pillows handy to even come close.

  “This is my brother, Spencer. He’s out from Los Angeles.” Erin introduces him as though LA is some exotic, far-off place, and he’s forced to shake hands and smile at jokes about the weather. She excuses herself to go and take a plate into the kitchen, and somebody hands him another drink and takes the empty glass from him. Spencer finishes the drink, takes another. Smiles and laughs, wishing he had an excuse to leave and go back across the street because he’s worried that something will trigger another recall. He finds himself carefully touching his nose and surreptitiously looking at his fingers for blood. He can’t afford to have a bad recall in the middle of the neighbourhood Christmas party.

  “What do you do in LA?”

  “Excuse me?” A woman smiles at Spencer, sidles closer, and asks him again. He has a stock answer for the question, a made-up story about a dull job nobody wants to hear more about. But he’s tired from the flight and the wrong side of tipsy, and the truth slips out. “I work for Distributed Arbitrage.” He blinks owlishly at the woman and is reminded of Megan. The resemblance is striking. He finds himself standing straighter. He’s trying not to think of it, but there it is: the recall playing, skipping ahead. Love and regret. A hand on his. A cold compress on the back of his neck.

  “Really? What do you do? Are you a forecaster?”

  Dammit. “Yes.” He rubs his eyes, trying to swim up to the surface to focus on the woman. Love. There was love. No.

  Her eyes widen, and she moves a little closer. “That must be so exciting.”

  “Sometimes.” Berlin was exciting. The clubs were great. The casting was good, too—searching out terrorists, looking for anger and anticipation of bloodlust, that alert feeling of tension and preparations. It’s so hard to find just one, but where there’s one, there’s more. They hardly ever work by themselves and when they get together, they feed off each other, and the emotions are amplified.

  He tries to tell her about it. How the trick to finding bad guys is to look for clusters in the noisy mass, pulling them together. He finds people, and he uses them to jump from one to the next, hunting in the storm, circling, slowly and deliberately, spiraling closer to them, slipping past flashes of images and impulses of thousands of people packed into neighbourhoods, sliding through them to get closer to the angry, controlled core that marks the men building bombs in a third floor walkup on Kastanienallee, above a record shop. He shivers as he thinks of it, the thrill warmly gripping him as the recall dips and weaves its way through him. Spencer is desperate to impress this woman.

  “Is it true that you can read people’s minds?” She hasn’t understood what he’s been trying to tell her.

  “Not really.” She frowns, and he rubs his eyes again, trying to explain, words slurring a little. “It’s not like that. Your bra
in … you know you make electrico … electromagnetic waves, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “So they’re really weak, you know? Like, barely there compared to everything else. But a caster listens to them. That’s what I look for.”

  “How do you do that?” She tips her head to one side, fluffs her hair. She looks so much like Megan. His heart thumps. No, he tells himself. He shouldn’t be thinking about Megan. Megan would never be interested in him. He has nothing to offer her. But there was love. He read it. No.

  “You have to listen. There’s lotsa noise, you know, from everything else. But it’s like having really good hearing. You go out into the storm and you listen for sounds in the wind. That’s what it’s like … and then you find people and you listen to them.”

  “So you eavesdrop?” She’s smiling at him again.

  “Sort of.”

  “That’s kind of pervy.”

  “I guess it is.” His breath comes faster.

  She moves even closer, a little taller than him, and he tips his head up to look at blue eyes. He can feel the heat of her body. “Can you tell what I’m thinking right now?”

  “That’s not what I do,” Spencer says.

  “Oh, no?” She pokes him gently with one finger, and the shock of her touch makes him jump. “Is it true you’re half robot?”