Year’s Best SF 18

by David G. Hartwell

  She sees me hesitate. And she grows determined. “I’ll stay as long as you will,” she says. “You might do this to yourself, but I know you’d never let your child suffer.”

  I think about it. I do myself the courtesy of that. I toy with the horror of doing that. And then I look again into her face, and I know I’m powerless in the face of love.

  * * *

  I’M LOOKING INTO the face of someone I don’t expect to see. It’s David. Our experimental subject. The schizophrenic. Only now he’s a lot older, and … oh, his face … he’s lost such tension about his jaw. Beside him stands Alice, five years older.

  He reaches out a hand and touches my cheek.

  I shy away from him. What?!

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have done that. We’re … a couple, okay? We’ve been together for several years now. Hello you from the past. Thank you for the last four years of excellent family Christmases.” He gestures to decorations and cards all around.

  “Hello, Mum,” says Alice. She reaches down and … oh, there’s a crib there. She’s picked up a baby. “This is my daughter, Cyala.”

  I walk slowly over. It feels as odd and as huge as walking as a child did. I look into the face of my granddaughter.

  David, taking care not to touch me, joins me beside them. “It’s so interesting,” he says, “seeing you from this new angle. Seeing a cross section of you. You look younger!”

  “Quickly,” says Alice.

  “Okay, okay.” He looks back to me. And I can’t help but examine his face, try to find the attraction I must later feel. And yes, it’s there. I just never saw him in this way before. “Listen, this is what you told me to say to you, and I’m glad that, from what Alice has discovered, it seems I can’t mess up my lines. It’s true that you and Alice here fought, fought physically, like you say you and your mum did. Though I once saw her deny that to your face, by the way. She sounded like you were accusing her of something, and she kept on insisting it hadn’t happened until you got angry and then finally she agreed like she was just going along with it. Oh God, this is so weird—” He picked up some sort of thin screen where I recognised something quite like my handwriting. “I was sure I added to what I was supposed to say there, but now it turns out it’s written down here, and I’m not sure that it was … before. I guess your memory didn’t quite get every detail of this correct. Or perhaps there’s a certain … kindness, a mercy to time? Anyway!” He put down the screen again, certain he wouldn’t need it. “But the important thing is, you only see one day. You don’t see all the good stuff. There were long stretches of good stuff. You didn’t create a monster, any more than your mum created a monster in you. You both just made people.” He dares to actually touch me, and now I let him. “What you did led to a cure for people like me. And it changed how people see themselves and the world, and that’s been good and bad, it isn’t a utopia outside these walls and it isn’t a wasteland, she wanted me to emphasise that, it’s just people doing stuff as usual. And these are all your words, not mine, but I agree with them … you are not Ebenezer Scrooge, to be changed from one thing into another. Neither was your mother. Even knowing all of this is fixed, even knowing everything that happened, even if you only know the bad, you’d do it all anyway.”

  And he kisses me. Which makes me feel guilty and hopeful at the same time.

  And I let go.

  * * *

  I SLOWLY PUT down the crown.

  I stood up. I’d been there less than an hour. I went back to my car.

  I remember the drive home through those still empty streets. I remember how it all settled into my mind, how a different me was born in those moments. I knew what certain aspects of my life to come would be like. I had memories of the future. That weight would always be with me. I regretted having looked. I still do. Despite everything it led to, for me and science and the world. I tell people they don’t want to look into their future selves. But they usually go ahead and do it. And then they have to come to the same sort of accommodation that a lot of people have, that human life will go on, and that it’s bigger than them, and that they can only do what they can do. To some, that fatalism has proven to be a relief. But it’s driven some to suicide. It has, I think, on average, started to make the world a less extreme place. There is only so much we can do. And we don’t see the rest of the year. So we might as well be kind to one another.

  There are those who say they’ve glimpsed a pattern in it all. That the whole thing, as seen from many different angles, is indeed like writing. That, I suppose, is the revelation, that we’re not the writers, we’re what’s being written.

  I write now from the perspective of the day after my younger self stopped visiting. I’m relieved to be free of that bitch. Though, of course, I knew everything she was going to do. The rest of my life now seems like a blessed release. I wrote every note as I remembered them, and sometimes that squared with how I was feeling at the time, and sometimes I was playing a part … for whose benefit, I don’t know.

  * * *

  I REMEMBER WALKING back into my house and finding Ben just waking up. And he looked at me, at the doubtless strange expression on my face, and in that moment I recall thinking I saw his expression change too. By some infinitesimal amount. I have come to think that was when he started, somewhere deep inside, the chain reaction of particle trails that took him from potentially caring dad to letting himself off the hook.

  But that might equally just be the story I tell myself about that moment.

  What each of us is is but a line in a story that resonates with every other line. Who we are is distributed. In all sorts of ways. And we can’t know them all.

  And then I felt something give. There was actually a small sound in the quiet. Liquid splashed down my legs. And as I knew I was going to, I went into labour on Christmas Day.

  Ben leaped out of bed and ran to me, and we headed out to the car. Outside, the birds were singing. Of course they were.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “You’re going to be a great mother.”

  “Up to a point,” I said.

  PRAYER

  Robert Reed

  Robert Reed lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife and daughter and is by himself enough to put the state on the map in the SF world. He has had stories appear in at least one of the annual Year’s Best anthologies in every year since 1992. He is perhaps most famous for his Marrow universe, and the novels and stories that take place in that huge, ancient spacefaring environment. In 2012, a new Marrow book, Eater of Bone, collecting four novellas, came out, and another Marrow novella, “Katabasis,” appeared in F&SF, a terrific original work.

  “Prayer” was published online in Clarkesworld. In a future war, climate change has built into a global crisis. The United States now occupies Canada in the name of its AI, Almighty. And somehow the story projects the disturbing feeling that this dystopian future is already here.

  FASHION MATTERS. IN my soul of souls, I know that the dead things you carry on your body are real, real important. Grandma likes to call me a clotheshorse, which sounds like a good thing. For example, I’ve always known that a quality sweater means the world. I prefer soft organic wools woven around Class-C nanofibers—a nice high collar with sleeves riding a little big but with enough stopping power to absorb back-to-back kinetic charges. I want pants that won’t slice when the shrapnel is thick, and since I won’t live past nineteen, probably, I let the world see that this body’s young and fit. (Morbid maybe, but that’s why I think about death only in little doses.) I adore elegant black boots that ignore rain and wandering electrical currents, and everything under my boots and sweater and pants has to feel silky-good against the most important skin in my world. But essential beyond all else is what I wear on my face, which is more makeup than Grandma likes, and tattooed scripture on the forehead, and sparkle-eyes that look nothing but ordinary. In other words, I want people to see an average Christian girl instead of what I am, which is
part of the insurgency’s heart inside Occupied Toronto.

  To me, guns are just another layer of clothes, and the best day ever lived was the day I got my hands on a barely used, cognitively damaged Mormon railgun. They don’t make that model anymore, what with its willingness to change sides. And I doubt that there’s ever been a more dangerous gun made by the human species. Shit, the boy grows his own ammo, and he can kill anything for hundreds of miles, and left alone he will invent ways to hide and charge himself on the sly, and all that time he waits waits waits for his master to come back around and hold him again.

  I am his master now.

  I am Ophelia Hanna Hanks, except within my local cell, where I wear the randomly generated, perfectly suitable name:

  Ridiculous.

  The gun’s name is Prophet, and until ten seconds ago, he looked like scrap conduit and junk wiring. And while he might be cognitively impaired, Prophet is wickedly loyal to me. Ten days might pass without the two of us being in each other’s reach, but that’s the beauty of our dynamic: I can live normal and look normal, and while the enemy is busy watching everything else, a solitary fourteen-year-old girl slips into an alleyway that’s already been swept fifty times today.

  “Good day, Ridiculous.”

  “Good day to you, Prophet.”

  “And who are we going to drop into Hell today?”

  “All of America,” I say, which is what I always say.

  Reliable as can be, he warns me, “That’s a rather substantial target, my dear. Perhaps we should reduce our parameters.”

  “Okay. New Fucking York.”

  Our attack has a timetable, and I have eleven minutes to get into position.

  “And the specific target?” he asks.

  I have coordinates that are updated every half-second. I could feed one or two important faces into his menu, but I never kill faces. These are the enemy, but if I don’t define things too closely, then I won’t miss any sleep tonight.

  Prophet eats the numbers, saying, “As you wish, my dear.”

  I’m carrying him, walking fast towards a fire door that will stay unlocked for the next ten seconds. Alarmed by my presence, a skinny rat jumps out of one dumpster, little legs running before it hits the oily bricks.

  “Do you know it?” I ask.

  The enemy likes to use rats as spies.

  Prophet says, “I recognize her, yes. She has a nest and pups inside the wall.”

  “Okay,” I say, feeling nervous and good.

  The fire door opens when I tug and locks forever once I step into the darkness.

  “You made it,” says my gun.

  “I was praying,” I report.

  He laughs, and I laugh too. But I keep my voice down, stairs needing to be climbed and only one of us doing the work.

  * * *

  SHE FOUND ME after a battle. She believes that I am a little bit stupid. I was damaged in the fight and she imprinted my devotions to her, and then using proxy tools and stolen wetware, she gave me the cognitive functions to be a loyal agent to the insurgency.

  I am an astonishing instrument of mayhem, and naturally her superiors thought about claiming me for themselves.

  But they didn’t.

  If I had the freedom to speak, I would mention this oddity to my Ridiculous. “Why would they leave such a prize with little you?”

  “Because I found you first,” she would say.

  “War isn’t a schoolyard game,” I’d remind her.

  “But I made you mine,” she might reply. “And my bosses know that I’m a good soldier, and you like me, and stop being a turd.”

  No, we have one another because her bosses are adults. They are grown souls who have survived seven years of occupation, and that kind of achievement doesn’t bless the dumb or the lucky. Looking at me, they see too much of a blessing, and nobody else dares to trust me well enough to hold me.

  I know all of this, which seems curious.

  I might say all of this, except I never do.

  And even though my mind was supposedly mangled, I still remember being crafted and calibrated in Utah, hence my surname. But I am no Mormon. Indeed, I’m a rather agnostic soul when it comes to my interpretations of Jesus and His influence in the New World. And while there are all-Mormon units in the US military, I began my service with Protestants—Baptists and Missouri Synods mostly. They were bright clean happy believers who had recently arrived at Fort Joshua out on Lake Ontario. Half of that unit had already served a tour in Alberta, guarding the tar pits from little acts of sabotage. Keeping the Keystones safe is a critical but relatively simple duty. There aren’t many people to watch, just robots and one another. The prairie was depopulated ten years ago, which wasn’t an easy or cheap process; American farmers still haven’t brought the ground back to full production, and that’s one reason why the Toronto rations are staying small.

  But patrolling the corn was easy work compared to sitting inside Fort Joshua, millions of displaced and hungry people staring at your walls.

  Americans call this Missionary Work.

  Inside their own quarters, alone except for their weapons and the Almighty, soldiers try to convince one another that the natives are beginning to love them. Despite a thousand lessons to the contrary, Canada is still that baby brother to the north, big and foolish but congenial in his heart, or at least capable of learning manners after the loving sibling delivers enough beat-downs.

  What I know today—what every one of my memories tells me—is that the American soldiers were grossly unprepared. Compared to other units and other duties, I would even go so far as to propose that the distant generals were aware of their limitations yet sent the troops across the lake regardless, full of religion and love for each other and the fervent conviction that the United States was the empire that the world had always deserved.

  Canada is luckier than most. That can’t be debated without being deeply, madly stupid. Heat waves are killing the tropics. Acid has tortured the seas. The wealth of the previous centuries has been erased by disasters of weather and war and other inevitable surprises. But the worst of these sorrows haven’t occurred in the Greater United States, and if they had half a mind, Canadians would be thrilled with the mild winters and long brilliant summers and the supportive grip of their big wise master.

  My soldiers’ first recon duty was simple: Walk past the shops along Queen.

  Like scared warriors everywhere, they put on every piece of armor and every sensor and wired back-ups that would pierce the insurgent’s jamming. And that should have been good enough. But by plan or by accident, some native let loose a few molecules of VX gas—just enough to trigger one of the biohazard alarms. Then one of my brother-guns was leveled at a crowd of innocents, two dozen dead before the bloody rain stopped flying.

  That’s when the firefight really began.

  Kinetic guns and homemade bombs struck the missionaries from every side. I was held tight by my owner—a sergeant with commendations for his successful defense of a leaky pipeline—but he didn’t fire me once. His time was spent yelling for an orderly retreat, pleading with his youngsters to find sure targets before they hit the buildings with hypersonic rounds. But despite those good smart words, the patrol got itself trapped. There was a genuine chance that one of them might die, and that’s what those devout men encased in body armor and faith decided to pray: Clasping hands, they opened channels to the Almighty, begging for thunder to be sent down on the infidels.

  The Almighty is what used to be called the Internet—an American child reclaimed totally back in 2027.

  A long stretch of shops and old buildings was struck from the sky.

  That’s what American soldiers do when the situation gets dicey. They pray, and the locals die by the hundreds, and the biggest oddity of that peculiar day was how the usual precise orbital weaponry lost its way, and half of my young men were wounded or killed in the onslaught while a tiny shaped charge tossed me a hundred meters down the road.

  There
I was discovered in the rubble by a young girl.

  As deeply unlikely as that seems.

  * * *

  I DON’T WANT the roof. I don’t need my eyes to shoot. An abandoned apartment on the top floor is waiting for me, and in particular, its dirty old bathroom. As a rule, I like bathrooms. They’re the strongest part of any building, what with pipes running through the walls and floor. Two weeks ago, somebody I’ll never know sealed the tube’s drain and cracked the faucet just enough for a slow drip, and now the water sits near the brim. Water is essential for long shots. With four minutes to spare, I deploy Prophet’s long legs, tipping him just enough toward the southeast, and then I sink him halfway into the bath, asking, “How’s that feel?”

  “Cold,” he jokes.

  We have three and a half minutes to talk.

  I tell him, “Thank you.”

  His barrel stretches to full length, its tip just short of the moldy plaster ceiling. “Thank you for what?” he says.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Then I laugh, and he sort of laughs.

  I say, “I’m not religious. At least, I don’t want to be.”

  “What are you telling me, Ridiculous?”

  “I guess … I don’t know. Forget it.”

  And he says, “I will do my very best.”

  Under the water, down where the breech sits, ammunition is moving. Scrap metal and scrap nano-fibers have been woven into four bullets. Street fights require hundreds and thousands of tiny bullets, but each of these rounds is bigger than most carrots and shaped the same general way. Each one carries a brain and microrockets and eyes. Prophet is programming them with the latest coordinates while running every last-second test. Any little problem with a bullet can mean an ugly shot, or even worse, an explosion that rips away the top couple floors of this building.

  At two minutes, I ask, “Are we set?”

  “You’re standing too close,” he says.

  “If I don’t move, will you fire anyway?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good,” I say.

  At ninety-five seconds, ten assaults are launched across southern Ontario. The biggest and nearest is fixated on Fort Joshua—homemade cruise missiles and lesser railguns aimed at that artificial island squatting in our beautiful lake. The assaults are meant to be loud and unexpected, and because every soldier thinks his story is important, plenty of voices suddenly beg with the Almighty, wanting His godly hand.