by Nik Abnett
Metoo and Tobe sat opposite each other for several minutes, until Saintout could bear it no longer.
“What’s not like maths?” he asked.
Tobe looked up at the Police Operator and said, “Life.”
Metoo leaned across the counter, and took Tobe’s face in her small hands.
“Don’t try to understand life, Tobe. Nobody understands life.”
“But...” Tobe began, not knowing what he wanted to say.
“You can have feelings without having to understand them,” said Metoo. “It’s nice to have feelings. You’ll like it.
“Saintout,” she said, “can you go into Tobe’s room and get me the Eustache, the maths book without its cover. I want to show him something.”
A few moments later, Saintout came back with the book, and handed it to Metoo. She turned to the end papers and handed the open book to Tobe.
“‘Probability extends beyond the mathematical. In the real world, probability has no memory’,” he said. “I don’t understand.”
“Not yet,” said Metoo, “but you will, very soon.”
Epilogue
THE SERVICE FLOOR erupted in chaos as Operators and Techs jumped up and down, screaming, crying and embracing each other, with Bob Goodman and John Mayer at the centre of the storm.
His bank of screens in front of him, Control Operator Branting removed his headset and mic, and ruffled his own hair. Qa walked into the room, and Branting stood up and offered his hand. They shook hands firmly, solemnly for several seconds, and then beamed at each other.
“Is it over?” asked Qa.
“Take a look at that,” said Branting, pointing at screen seven. “It’s not just over, it’s going to change the World.”
Eight of the screens on the Service Floor blinked, and turned black, before shifting to scenes of drifting snow. They blinked again, in unison, and when they cleared a bright-white, tightly knit ball of threads emerged, gleaming and pulsing with an incandescent halo.
Around the World, on every Service Floor, in every College, one screen flickered, filled with snow, and blinked to reveal the same bright-white ball.
Tobe’s screen had changed. He had changed. The World had changed.
The Earth no longer needed a thousand Actives. The Earth had Assistant-Companion Metoo and Active Tobe, and that was enough.
METOO AND TOBE talked until a small army of Service personnel arrived to take them away. Saintout had left after retrieving the book for Metoo. Their conversation seemed far too intimate to tolerate an eavesdropper for long.
He had retreated to the garden room. As he stepped over the threshold, Doctor Wooh threw herself into his arms. She embraced him fiercely, and then pounded her small fists into his chest.
“You scared me you... You...”
“I scared me, too,” said Saintout.
Saintout and Wooh were debriefed while they waited for Service to arrive at the flat.
“Will I see him again?” Metoo asked Saintout, as he escorted her from the kitchen.
“Are you kidding me?” said Saintout. “You’re a bloody hero, woman. You will have to undergo some pretty intensive de-briefing, and I gather that scholars are queuing up to interview you. Your screen data will be studied from here to eternity... Now that we have an eternity.”
“We do?” asked Metoo.
“That’s what they tell me,” said Saintout.
WHEN ACTIVE TOBE was interviewed, which he often was in the weeks, months, and even years that followed, he was invariably asked how he had come to feel. He didn’t know how, and he said so. He also said that he only knew that someone had taught him to feel.
When Active Tobe was asked who had taught him to feel he didn’t hesitate. He simply beamed and said, “Empath Metoo taught me.”
EMPATH METOO WAS studied and questioned, and did everything that she could to help develop a program for the training and nurturing of others like her, and the integration of Empaths into Active households. There was no longer any need for the secrecy that surrounded Actives.
Tobe and Metoo were the first, but there would be others. An Empath paired with the right Active could create a Shield that would remain impenetrable for as long as they lived.
SERVICE HAD BARELY changed for two hundred years, and when a crisis had occurred its conditions were unprecedented. Service would change now, and probably for the better, but, if another crisis ever did occur, it too would come with its own unprecedented conditions.
When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.
Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own.
As the siege wears on, Cheris must decide how far she can trust Jedao–because she might be his next victim.
‘Starship Troopers meets Apocalypse Now – and they’ve put Kurtz in charge... An unmissable debut.’
Stephen Baxter
‘I love Yoon’s work! Full of battles and political intrigue, in a beautifully built far-future that manages to be human and alien at the same time.’
Ann Leckie
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FOR FANS OF THE MARTIAN AND THE MARS TRILOGY
In the near future Dr. Holland, a scientist running from a painful past, joins the Mars colonisation effort, cataloguing the remnants of Mars’ biosphere before it is swept away by the terraforming programme.
When an artefact is discovered deep in the caverns of the red planet, Holland’s employers interfere, leading to tragedy. The consequences ripple throughout time, affecting Holland’s present, and the destiny of the red planet.
For in the far future, Mars is dying a second time. The Final War of men and spirits is beginning. In a last bid for peace, the disgraced Champion Val Mora and his ‘spirit’ lover are set free from the Arena to find the long-missing Librarian of Mars, the only hope to save mankind.
Holland’s and the Champion’s lives intertwine, across the millennia, in a breathtaking story of vast ambition.
“Champion of Mars celebrates all that is best in SF. Simply put, Guy Haley is a very good writer, with an infectious love for sci-fi that shines off every page.”
The Guardian
“Haley weaves two tales into a tight, compelling narrative. Champion of Mars is a thriller, an unnatural mystery and a strange sort of love story. Highly entertaining and original, and well worth a look.”
Starburst Magazine
www.solarisbooks.com
HOW DOES IT FEEL, NOT BEING REAL?
In Hollywood, where last year’s stars are this year’s busboys, Fictionals are everywhere. Niles Golan’s therapist is a Fictional. So is his best friend. So (maybe) is the woman in the bar he can’t stop staring at.
Fictionals – characters ‘translated’ into living beings for movies and TV using cloning technology – are a part of daily life in LA now. Sometimes the problem is knowing who’s real and who’s not.
Divorced, alcoholic and hanging on by a thread, Niles – author of The Saladin Imperative: A Kurt Power Novel and many others – has been hired to write a big-budget reboot of a classic movie. If he does this right, the studio might bring one of Niles’ own characters to life. But somewhere beneath the movie – beneath the TV show it was inspired by, the children’s book behind that and the story behind that – is the kernel of something important. If he can just hold it together long enough to figure it out...
‘A disturbing, self-reflective type of brilliance.’
Pornokitsch on Death Got No Mercy
‘There’s a lot to love here.’
&nbs
p; Total Sci-Fi on Gods of Manhattan
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