Nature Futures 2

by Colin Sullivan

First of all, I want you to forget every single word that they told you at the recruiting office. No, just stop, I don’t need to hear it. It’s all lies.

  Stand right up here with me and take a look around. This is the front line. No, that is not a euphemism. War’s not normally neat with straight lines and easy-to-understand strategies, but here we have a line. It’s that trench right there. Don’t get too close to the edge.

  The Sporians disintegrate about four of our people a day. Your ship came in with 10 crates of supplies and 500 raw recruits. You do the maths. Don’t make friends.

  Listen. We don’t need you to wear uniforms or learn to shoot a gun or do anything but be here and drink cod liver oil and die. That’s the reality.

  Nah, I’m joking. It’s not actually cod liver oil. It’s worse. It smells like something the dog shat out and tastes like rancid butter. You’ll learn to ignore your gag reflex and force it down, just like the rest of us.

  That’s one of the few things we know. We don’t know how to fight them. We don’t even know if they are intelligent. But every time we give up and leave the rock to them, they move in closer. Your job is to stand around like you might want to get infected. Don’t get infected. That’s it.

  You won’t know if you get infected. You just zombie off looking for high ground and a few hours later, a stalk grows out of your head and explodes. Neon orange spores scatter everywhere, looking for a new home. See, that’s why we like this trench right here. You see one of your mates acting like a zombie, push him in. Fast.

  Truth is, when we first got the reports from Earth, we just quarantined it off. There was barely anyone left there anyway, right? But then, suddenly, we’re getting orange mould patches on Mars. Military went in that time, bombed the planet with every fungicide known to man. That’s when we discovered the oil. The Sporians don’t like it. No, we don’t know why. We don’t know shit about them other than right here, right now, we’re holding them at this trench. And we know that if they have a choice between someone who’s been drinking the anti-fungal oil and some fussy idiot who hasn’t, they’ll infect the fussy kid every time.

  Anyway, we gave ’em Mars, too. G Council just said, fine, have a planet. Wrote it off.

  And it didn’t work. A few weeks later, orange flecks. The Sporians start showing up here in the belt. There’re no transports. Not a soul has travelled here from Mars in a hundred years. So how’d they get here in a month? No one knows.

  Listen, here’s what we do know. Sporian expansion only happens when we stop showing up. They don’t want the rock, they want us. And as long as the G Council keeps sending in new blood, they’ll stay here. The next populated ’stroid is only 2 AU from here, a hell of a lot closer than Mars. That settlement’s not seen a single patch of mould. And they won’t, so long as dumb recruits like you keep coming.

  The oil’s the only thing we’ve found that even makes ’em wince. It won’t help if you’re the last one standing, but for now? Drink the oil. Tell the guy next to you not to bother. Try not to get infected. Push anyone infected down into the deep as fast as you goddamn can.

  I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but that’s our war. Stand guard at the top of a trench and try to last more than a week while brighter minds search for a way to fight back.

  Right, now get to work. Start unpacking those crates and I’ll tell you the good news. Yeah, it’s not much, but there is good news.

  Number 1. The infected seem like they die happy. I’ve seen more than my fair share. Hallinan didn’t talk or anything but he got this real peaceful look. Patel’s last word was: “Finally.” Steinberg just stared at the sky and grinned. So, here’s my thought: maybe the Sporians are God. Maybe this is the second coming. Maybe you are all about to get saved.

  I don’t know that it’s true, but it helps to get me through the night.

  Number 2. Half of those crates you are unloading are full of gin. We don’t need to stay sober, we just need to stay here. There’s no way off this rock so we might as well have a party. Might even find some cocktail sticks, if you’re lucky.

  Good News Number 3. See all those stars out there? There’s over a centillian people out there, all of them living happy lives. See that muddy trench? That’s where the Sporians are and because we’re here, that’s where they’re going to stay. You are saving the Universe. You are a goddamn hero.

  Now drink.

  Sylvia Spruck Wrigley was born in Germany and spent her childhood in Los Angeles. She now splits her time between South Wales and the Costa del Sol, two coastal regions with almost nothing in common. She was nominated for a 2013 Nebula Award for her short story, ‘Alive, Alive Oh’. Sylvia’s short stories have recently appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Crossed Genres and Lightspeed. You can find out more about her at http://www.intrigue.co.uk.

  The Cambrian

  George Zebrowski

  We were sure that Hinkle had to be deluded when he first told us that he had been talking to horseshoe crabs.

  “They are intelligent,” he insisted, “a variation of the oldest on our planet. They think about a lot of things.”

  He showed me equations.

  “You did these yourselves,” I said. “Come on, admit it.”

  Physics was my game, but his maths gave me a strange feeling, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

  “Where did you get these?” I asked.

  “From the Cambrians.”

  There weren’t any equations like this that I had ever seen.

  “If it’s a delusion,” I told Hinkle, “then you need to keep at it,” half joking.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You deserve the credit, of course,” I said.

  “But I have no idea of what they mean, or what they’re about,” Hinkle said.

  “You must know,” I said, “or you couldn’t have written them.”

  “I only took them down,” he insisted.

  “Why are you lying?”

  “You’re my friend. Why should I lie to you?”

  “Who are you protecting?”

  “No one. The crabs talk to me. Here, look.”

  The equations all led to one unified statement about the Universe, but I noted that there seemed to be an incompleteness about the final statement, and wondered what crank book he had found them in.

  “What about that?” I asked him.

  “Search me,” he said. “I’m just a conveyance.”

  “So you say,” I said, “but this claim is so comprehensive and suggestive … yet incomplete.”

  “Remember, I am a palaeobiologist first.”

  I nodded and said: “Stop kidding me.”

  “Well, I can tell you,” Hinkle said as he took a deep breath, “that I suspect it’s supposed to be incomplete, but that it says all that can be said about our Universe. Who was it that said that science attempts to say something about our Universe, but will never say everything that can be said?”

  “Bohr, maybe Feynman,” I said. “Doesn’t matter. But do you have any idea of the assertions you’ve written down?”

  “You tell me,” Hinkle said.

  “Either physics can be completed, or it can never have an end, and this final equation of yours asserts a perpetuum mobile.”

  “It’s news to me. Enzymes interest me, especially as they affect intelligence.”

  I gave him a hostile glare, the first in our long friendship, and it seemed to shake him.

  “Who’s behind all this? I demanded.

  “What do you mean?” Hinkle asked, looking like a deer in headlights.

  “I get it,” I said. “More Gödel incompleteness! Dyson’s claim that the theorem is a cathedral of implications, that he would feel sorry for physics if it could be ended, a cultural disaster, leaving us with technology and a manipulation of the Universe through instrumentalities, but nothing more to learn, ever. I’m tired of Gödel and his nothing proof.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Hinkle said, “but I never thought any such thi
ng. These critters are the oldest thinkers on Earth, and they don’t wish us any harm.”

  “But you are doing harm, with these pseudo equations!” I cried. “Don’t you know that you can’t just claim such things?”

  “Then leave me out of it,” Hinkle said, “as all this doesn’t mean anything, as you say.”

  “Oh, you’re sly,” I said. “You know damn well that we have enough dummies who may take it seriously. You’re sly, all right.”

  “But if they’re nothing at all, then you have nothing to fear.”

  I looked at my friend and said: “I’ll tell you the truth. You fell in love with these crabs, and that seemed to help you come up with all this. That’s all there is to it. You can’t take it seriously. You obviously know more maths than I thought.”

  “But I don’t,” Hinkle said. “One way or another, I don’t know.”

  I looked at him and said: “Show me how it happens, when you write down what they … give you?”

  “Sure, look here, I feel one coming in.”

  I watched him scribble on the back of an envelope, as fluidly as any good mathematician.

  I looked at the result and said: “It’s a literate mathematical statement, but it has to be a guess.”

  More equations came, after which he seemed worn out. I packed them in my briefcase and left him sitting there with his eyes closed like an exhausted lover.

  * * *

  Physics continued completing itself. As usual, open ends had to be irrational avenues; infinities had to be renormalized, limited, outlawed.

  Yet in his own way, Hinkle became the greatest physicist of his generation, despite a vast suspicion that he had unknown collaborators feeding him variations on anomalous Higgs boson regimes, which he described and applied without the Large Hadron Collider’s data.

  Patents are granted to him, and his ideas lead to inventions that work but are not explained. “Just luck,” many say. “Quantum engineering works, it predicts and needs no explanations, only descriptions.”

  The last time I went to see him he told me that human and crab brains might have merged. I told him that was an insane idea. “Well, of course, maybe it didn’t happen,” he said, “but it should have.”

  He’s a fraud of some kind, but we don’t know how he does it.

  He’s a sight on campus, walking a lot, even at his age. People say he looks younger than some years ago. He strides around in a long coat, hunched forward a bit as if there was something on his back.

  George Zebrowski is best known for the Campbell Award winning novel Brute Orbits, the classic Macrolife, and Cave of Stars (chosen as one of the best SF novels since 1985). A collection of stories with Jack Dann, Decimated, is from Borgo/Wildside Press. All his fiction is available from Gollancz’s SF Gateway (www.sfgateway.com/authors/z/zebrowski-george) and Open Road Integrated Media (www.openroadmedia.com/george-zebrowski).

  Here Be Monsters

  Stephanie Zvan

  Karee stuck her head into the windowless lab. “Doc?” Doctor Andrews stared at her screen, chewing a twisted strand of hair.

  “Uh, Doc?”

  “Oh!” Andrews started. “Is it time already?”

  “Actually, I’m running late.”

  “Right.” Doc Andrews stood up but kept watching the screen.

  “Doc…”

  “Sorry, sorry.” She turned. “It’s just that I might finally be there. If the lab in Sweden has duplicated my results, we may finally have a cure, even for the worst cases.”

  “Really, Doc? That’s wonderful!” Karee’s voice rang in the concrete hallway. “No more muco-whatsis?”

  “No more MPS.” Andrews laughed, a sound of pure joy. “No more sick babies. No more stunted bodies and minds. Just healthy children, beautiful and sound.” She licked her lower lip.

  Despite her best effort, Karee twitched a little. She scratched her shoulder to cover it. “That’s great, Doc. Great.” It was wonderful news, but … They arrived at the doctor’s room, none too soon. “Here we are. Have you eaten?”

  She often forgot.

  “While I was waiting.” Andrews grabbed what looked like long underwear off the back of a chair and headed into the bathroom. A few minutes and some running water later, she was changed and back. She sat on her bed. “All set.”

  The helmet always looked uncomfortable to Karee, bulky and claustrophobic, and the relish with which Andrews put it on didn’t make Karee any happier. She waited for Andrews to settle into her special pillow. A light on the helmet indicated everything was synching properly. Small power and data cables clipped onto the pyjamas. Gloves attached to the sleeves completed the outfit.

  “You good, Doc?”

  “Oh, yes.” Andrews gave a little wriggle of anticipation.

  Karee swallowed. No getting used to that. “Good night, then.”

  With the last of the inmates ‘shelved and synched’, she signed out using her passkey. Her ward was quiet, with the exception of the occasional low moan. Time to leave her charges to the night staff and rejoin society.

  There was no good reason to wash her hands at the end of her shift, but she always did. Her face too. The cool evening breeze found the spots around her ears she hadn’t quite dried. She shivered but felt much lighter than she had inside.

  Then she saw the sign through the fence. Poster paper on a broom handle, it said simply: Here be monsters. It must be Thursday.

  Theo was alone, as he always was these days. The year before, his wife, Hannah, had waded into the lake and swum out farther than she could swim back.

  No one at the facility ever spoke to him, but everyone knew his story. Everyone knew about Hannah, and everyone knew about their son.

  Claude was born the year the facility opened. Theo and Hannah weren’t protesting then, but plenty of others were. Sure, the paedophiles and compulsive sadists should be locked up, but using VR to give them what they wanted? Victimless as it was, it still felt wrong.

  Karee understood. She did. But study after study had showed that no treatment was effective enough in changing inherently antisocial sexual orientations and that the stigma surrounding them only made people more likely to offend. Involuntary commitment after the fact couldn’t help the victims. Voluntary commitment with the VR as incentive worked despite its unpopularity.

  The video interviews had at least made it acceptable. Doctor Andrews had been one of the first interviewed, and Karee had transferred from maximum security to guarding voluntary commitment after seeing the look of relief on Andrews’s face. Here Karee could make a difference.

  The difference hadn’t come in time for Claude. When the neighbour who raped and murdered him was found to be one of those organizing the local demonstrations, most of the remaining protests stopped. More people volunteered to be locked up. Claude’s death saved uncounted children, but it destroyed his parents. And when their neighbour was murdered in prison two years later, Claude’s family was left without any target for their anger except Karee’s facility.

  So, here it was, Thursday again, and there stood Theo with his sign. He hefted it a little higher when Karee was buzzed through the gate, but he didn’t look at her. He never had, not once in the past five years.

  Karee sighed, suddenly tired. Doc Andrews and the others were rewarded for making the world a safer place. They were happy. Why wasn’t she? The kids were taken care of, and so were the … well, the monsters who’d agreed not to threaten them. Everybody was taken care of, in fact, except her and …

  Karee took a deep breath. “Hey, Theo?”

  Startled, Theo looked at her for once. Karee had dreaded seeing anger or hate on his face, but the blankness there disturbed her more. It said he’d forgotten what his protest was supposed to accomplish. He looked terribly old.

  Karee nodded up the street. “You’ve got to be just about done here, right? Want to go get a cup of coffee?” Coffee seemed like such a simple, uncomplicated good thing, what she wanted more than anything else in the world rig
ht now.

  The blankness stared back at her. Then Theo opened his mouth. It worked for a bit, no sound coming out, but confusion was an improvement. Karee realized they must be about the same age.

  “Come on.” Karee motioned with her hand. “Coffee shop’s just on the corner. I’ll buy.”

  Finally, Theo rested his sign against the fence and nodded. His smile was tentative, but it was a smile. As they walked away, Karee felt herself grinning for the first time in years.

  Stephanie Zvan is a Minneapolis writer fascinated with the strains that science and society place on one another. She blogs on that and more at Almost Diamonds.

  Note

  Recursion

  1. Field, S. Q. Futures 2 (2014).

  Also available in ebook format: Nature Futures 1

  This book brings together 97 short stories that seek to answer the question ‘what will the future look like?’ First published in the leading science journal Nature, these 900-word tales come from scientists, journalists and many of the most famous SF writers in the world.

  Initially published in book form as Futures from Nature, this is the first time this collection has been available as an eBook. A unique blend of satires, vignettes, fictional book reviews, science articles and journalism, Nature Futures offers an eclectic mix of ideas and attitudes about the future.

  With contributions from: Arthur C. Clarke; Bruce Sterling; Charles Stross; Cory Doctorow; Greg Bear; Gregory Benford; Oliver Morton; Ian Macleod; Rudy Rucker; Greg Egan; Stephan Baxter; Frederik Pohl; Vernor Vinge; Nancy Kress, Michael Moorcock, Vonda N. McIntyre; Kim Stanley Robinson; John M. Ford; and 79 more.

  For more on Nature Futures follow us on Twitter @NatureFutures or visit our Facebook page at go.nature.com/mtoodm

  nature.com/futures

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  NATURE FUTURES 2