The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!

by Lake, Jay

  The instructor nodded. “Just as it did after the cometary impact that ended the Cretaceous and extinguished the last dinosaurs, along with seventy percent of all the species then alive. A few million years later, there were as many species as ever. Though there weren’t any dinosaurs.”

  When Avril left the lecture hall, she noticed the posters as if for the first time. They lined the corridor just as they did every corridor on campus, just as once upon a time had proliferated exhortations to use condoms or to protest the draft or to save tinfoil for the war. One showed a multihued sea of faces, with superimposed white letters that said: “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Get out of the way.” Another said, “If you cannot contribute, it is your duty to future generations to remove yourself.” The legend on a third claimed it showed a refugee camp filled with starving children. A fourth pictured a hospital crammed with cholera and plague victims. A fifth needed no legend at all; it showed the mullions of a window, a tattered curtain, a glint of glass, and beyond a dessicated landscape littered with shriveled human bodies. There were more as well.

  But her arms felt as heavy as if she already held a baby all her own. Hers and his, his though she had no idea of his name.

  Now, looking back from the vantage point of death, she could see that her body had been telling her why all the lectures the world had ever heard on the dangers of overpopulation were useless. People were as subject to biological imperatives as any animals. Reproduction was part of the program, even when it threatened long-term survival.

  She had learned his dog’s name before his own. For a week she had looked for him, sat as near as she dared in the lecture hall and in the caf. She had watched him with his dog and heard him cry, “Wooftop!” more than once, a laugh in his voice every time he said the word. Eventually their instructor had called on him by name.

  “Paul,” she repeated to herself, then and now, forever. “Paul Trainor.”

  “What the hell are we doing here?” Sidney Mailloux’s voice, angry and querulous, called her back to the present.

  “We’re dead,” said Ricky Moi. “Where else would we be?”

  “Heaven or Hell or Purgatory. Not here. Anywhere but here.”

  “That’s what they used to think,” said Kirby. “Plant ‘em deep and figure the important part rose up like smoke forever.”

  “The soul,” said Avril.

  “Yeah. With angels and harps waiting on Cloud Nine. Or devils and pitchforks in the pit.”

  “Maybe that’s where the real us really is? We’re just copies here?”

  “I feel real enough,” said Ricky Moi. “A lot realer than if I were just a name on a rock.”

  “That’s how it started,” said Professor Calmari, who rarely spoke. His voice was formal, unctuous. “Our ancestors captured the souls of the dead by naming them. Perhaps they thought this would pin their shades to their graves and keep them from terrorizing the countryside. Later they carved portraits in the stone, and attached photographs. When small, cheap voice recorders became available, those were embedded in gravestones so the survivors could hear the dead speak once more. Then there were video recorders, and interactive personality simulators, and finally downloads. Us. Each step a little closer to preserving all of us, until now all that’s missing is that putative soul. Which I don’t believe exists in the first place, you know.”

  “Eternal life,” said Sidney. “If you don’t mind a bunch of dead old farts for company.”

  “If you call this living,” someone muttered softly.

  “Beats the alternative,” said someone else, not quite as gently.

  There had been no alternative, thought Avril Montez. Not even after she learned his name. She had been shy. He had not. He had had friends to wink at, male and female. Friends to play with in the quad, throwing balls and disks to each other and to Wooftop and other dogs. Even when she had seen him sitting still, on the grass, in the caf, at the library, he had had friends around him. She had not dared to intrude, and he had never noticed her watching him. Or if he had, if his friends had and had mentioned her to him, he had been too polite to confront her.

  That had only made her want him even more.

  “Allie, Allie, Allie....”

  “Yes, Kirby?”

  “You sound so young.” It was true, they all sounded their ages, or the ages at which they had died, just as if their vocal cords had been downloaded with their minds. “Were you a soldier?”

  “Leave her be!”

  But Avril chose to answer. “A student.”

  Only silence answered her. They too had seen the posters. They knew what it had meant to be a student in an overcrowded world. They too remembered the small buildings on every campus, each one with its little fake-brass sign:

  HARRISON MEMORIAL EUTHANASIA CLINIC

  “Making Room”

  Funded in part by the Kevorkian Foundation

  Open 5-9 every evening

  ADDITIONAL HOURS THE WEEK AFTER FINALS

  Similar buildings could be found in cities and small towns and even highway rest-stops. Each one had had a human attendant, but it was the artificial intelligence in the walls that took one’s name, asked one’s choice of methods and disposals, and said, “Now just lie down, right here on this couch. Close your eyes, and....”

  No questions, no attempts to talk one out of it or to relieve depression. The world needed fewer people, and if you did not need the world, that was fine. You would not be missed, not even if you had special talents. In a crowded world, special talents were not rare.

  She had wondered, after the bio course’s first exam. She had done well enough, but Paul seemed dejected and angry and afraid all at once. In the quad, Wooftop stayed close by his side, staring upward, whining just a little. His friends were quiet, as if they sensed something dreadful looming over them all.

  Her heart ached for them, but she dared not say a word. Paul was still too beautiful, too unattainable, too unapproachable, and she was too shy, a nerveless mouse clinging to the wainscoting, burying her nose in a book or a screen every time he passed nearby.

  And he passed nearby more often then. He spent more time in the library, more time studying, intent and serious and still oblivious to the pounding of her heart just a few feet away.

  “Yes,” she said to Kirby once more, to fill the engulfing silence. “A student.”

  She had spoken to Paul only once. On her way to class, she saw him in the corridor, staring at one of the many posters on the wall. “If you cannot contribute, it is your duty to future generations to remove yourself.” Stark white letters, glossy black background, photo of a roomful of white-bloused people intent on the screens of their terminals. College grads, every one of them, of course.

  The poster beside it bore the same words, but the photo was of peasants knee deep in a rice paddy.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  “Good luck,” she said. But she ducked her head, and her voice squeaked, and she did not think he heard.

  After the second exam, he did not return to class.

  She did not see him in the hall, nor the caf, nor the quad, and his friends--Wooftop sitting lonely in their midst--were sober. She remembered that it had hurt to breathe. Tension had made her shoulders sore. Her heart had ached.

  She thought she knew where he had gone, what he had done, where he was now. Yet she dared not ask: if she did not confirm her fears, they might prove false. Paul might return, saying there had been an illness in his family, he had been ill himself, he had enrolled in a special training program, he had joined the army and only had a day or two of leave but he had noticed her, really he had, and would she....

  Tears came at her own foolishness. Angrily, she shook them away--imagining that they flew into the void in her life, her world, and would f
ill it up with salty water--and tried to study. When the words no longer made sense, she took long walks down roads crowded with houses small and large, stores, offices, and apartment blocks. She found every cemetery within miles of the campus, dozens of them, small ones, large ones, old ones, new ones. She realized how crowded her world had become with both the living and the dead.

  Was he in this one? Or this one? Or none of them? She dared not pass their gates to look for new stones, or shout his name in hope of an answer, though she listened carefully to the incessant rattle of the stones’ conversations. But she never heard a familiar voice.

  Sitting in the library, trying to study, she sensed movement in the corner of her eye and jerked, looked around, searching, hoping, heart pounding. But no one was there. Or someone was, but it was not Paul. The void remained.

  Wooftop vanished too. Paul’s friends once more threw balls and disks and ran and shouted, and at last she could stand it no longer. As soon as they collapsed panting on the grass, she approached and stood over them and asked, “Where’s Paul?”

  They looked up at her and saw... what? A short girl, brown-skinned, dark-haired, too broad in the hips, not broad enough in the chest, her dark eyes hollow with pain and yearning.

  They looked at each other, silent, surely knowing why she asked. They shifted their shoulders and their legs uneasily. And at last one of them said quite simply: “The clinic.”

  That simple confirmation of her fears broke all that was left of her heart. She managed to turn away before the tears came once more.

  “You’re awfully quiet, Allie.”

  “May lightning fry your circuits, Kirby. A nice black raven should die on top of your solar cells.”

  “I love you too, dear.”

  She thought he might, but before she could speak others joined the game: “A squirrel with diarrhea should perch on you for a week. A hailstone the size of a grapefruit should....”

  “I get the point, I get the point. I’ll leave her alone, I will.”

  “Pick on somebody else.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. Chandra?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You ever feel guilty?” asked Kirby.

  “Do you?”

  “Hell, yes. You think it was easy, sinking ten thousand walking skeletons at a pop?”

  “Probably. We got pretty used to gassing Mexicans.”

  Silence, as the dead reflected on what horrors one could commit in the name of survival. Then Ricky Moi said, “Yeah. In Peru and Chile, too. The guilt comes later.”

  “I still have nightmares,” said Kirby.

  “I’m nodding,” said Chandra.

  “Me, too,” said others. “Me, too.”

  Yes, thought Avril. So did she. Though not because of the deaths she had caused. Over the next few weeks, she had revisited the cemeteries. She dared not enter, for finding him at that point, speaking across such a barrier, would have been unbearable. But she had to look.

  She had managed to keep up her studies. She had completed the term successfully. She had not been one of those whom the posters urged to get out of the way.

  Yet.... Talent was not rare. She would not be missed, she had told herself. Except by her parents, and she had been quite unable to tell them what had happened or what she now thought she would do. They would never understand.

  Every day she walked past the one-storey brick building that housed the clinic. Once she opened the door to study the foyer. It had three doors. The one straight ahead stood ajar to reveal a utilitarian array of metal cabinets and a long conveyor belt that entered a dark hatchway. Stark and real, reminder of finality and irrevocability. The door on the right had a glass window through which she could see three desks and a filing cabinet. Only one of the desks was occupied, by a young man who did not even look up from the screen he was studying. He was used to ambivalence, she thought. The door on the left was solid wood or wood-look steel, closed tight. Behind it....

  She was listening to sociology lectures in the hall where she had first noticed him. Perhaps, in a better world, he would have been there too, but his seat was now occupied by a skinny fellow with boils on the back of his neck. Wooftop was gone. And his friends were as active as they had ever been before he vanished.

  It had been only a matter of time before she let herself touch the clinic office’s door and push it open. The attendant, no older than she, surely a student putting in hours for his tuition, looked up from his screen.

  She felt as shy and hesitant as if she had finally forced herself to speak to Paul. “I’ve never done this before.”

  He sighed gently. “No one ever has.” He pointed behind her. “Just step right in. There’s no one else.”

  She turned and stared at the other door, solid and closed, a barrier.

  “It won’t open for you. You have to make the decision.”

  She took a deep breath. Paul was gone. She would never meet him again unless.... And she would not be missed.

  She hesitated when she thought of her parents. Would they understand if they knew? But she was the one who had to decide. The attendant was right. And she had no great unique talents--no one really did. The world did not need her. Nor did she need it, as empty as it had become.

  She laid her hand on the knob, hesitated, and finally twisted. The door pivoted away from her. As soon as she was in, it swung shut once more.

  She faced a pair of padded couches flanked by metal tables and racks built of metal rods and glass tubes. Glass-fronted cabinets held mysterious devices. Soft music and the scent of flowers filled the air. There were the usual posters on the walls, and two small windows let her glimpse the campus outside.

  It felt macabre, a mad scientist’s laboratory, a place of horror and monstrosity. She wanted to turn and flee and forget Paul and the world and life and love.

  A silky voice said: “Your name?”

  She gave it, though already she had begun to tremble. Was this really what she wanted? She had assignments to study, papers to write, an exam next week.

  “You have three choices: Gas, pills, or intravenous drip.” As the voice named each item, a small spotlight illuminated a mask attached by a corrugated hose to a metal tank, a bottle of bright pink pills, a metal rack beside a couch, its top supporting a clear glass bottle from which dangled several feet of plastic tubing.

  “No,” she said, and her voice shook on that single little word. “I want to leave. I’ve changed my mind.”

  “It was too late for that as soon as you let the door close behind you. You can’t. Not any more. But don’t worry. It’s all quite painless. We’ve made sure of that.”

  “No,” she said, shaking worse. Perhaps, if the room had said she could leave at any time, she would have stayed. But it had said no, and she could feel her panic growing. “No!” She turned and tried the door. When the knob would not turn, she tried to shake it. “No!” She kicked at the door. Tears flooded her eyes. “I want to go!” She began to scream.

  “Sorry, lady.” Something hissed gently, and a sweetish odor added itself to the air. “Just a little tranquilizer.”

  As soon as she inhaled, she could feel it working. Loosening, relaxing, robbing her of protest. Of course, she had had her chance to say no before she ever entered this room. And the whole idea of the clinic was to remove people. It really wouldn’t do to let them back out at the last minute. Would it?

  “There’s only one way you can leave now,” said the room. “You made your decision, and a good one it was, too. To stop using food and resources. To make room for others. But you don’t really have to die, you know. We can download you.”

  When the room’s last words penetrated, she slumped against the door. Yes. Turn her into a....

  “You’ll be a stone, a gravestone, needing only sunlight. Watching the world
go by, still making new friends, chatting with them. Would you like that?”

  She had known of the option. She had even avoided entering the cemeteries she had stared at for fear of finding a Paul who could still speak to her. But she had not thought of it for herself. Not seen the possibility of....

  “Isn’t it expensive?”

  “Oh, no. It’s quite routine, really. Something we offer everyone. See that helmet hanging from the head of the couch?” It had a cable that burrowed into a wall socket. When she nodded, the room added, “You just put that on. Set your arm in the support, and we do the rest. Very simple.”

  She nodded again. She stiffened herself against the door, stood straight, and took the first hesitant step toward the couch. If she did not, well, the room had said it could use gas. Surely, it could replace the tranquilizer in the air with something deadlier. And then she would fall to the floor in a tangle of disordered limbs. If she obeyed, she could arrange herself more gracefully. For some reason, that seemed important.

  A moment later, the helmet was on her head, chill against her brow and nape just as Kirby had described it.

  “We’re recording already,” said the room. “Now your arm.”

  The support was positioned like the arm of a chair. As soon as she set her arm in its groove, curved bands snapped over her flesh, immobilizing her.

  “There, there. Don’t panic. Just have to hold you steady.”

  A needle stung her arm. She began to feel sleepy.

  “Do you prefer some particular cemetery? A family plot perhaps?”

  “Where’d.... Where’d you put Paul?” The tranquilizer in the air was combining with whatever was in the needle. Her tongue felt thick, her thoughts slow. “Wanna be near him.”

  “Paul?”

  “Paul....” She hesitated, groping for his last name in the fog that was already engulfing her mind. “Paul Trainor.”

  “Oh, him. Tsk. We cremated him. He didn’t want to be downloaded.”