The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition

by Rich Horton

  And really, these were all solvable problems! Depression is treatable, new jobs are findable, and bodies can be hidden.

  (That part about hiding bodies is a joke.)

  I tried tackling this on all fronts. Stacy worried about her health a lot and yet never seemed to actually go to a doctor, which was unfortunate because the doctor might have noticed her depression. It turned out there was a clinic near her apartment that offered mental health services on a sliding scale. I tried making sure she saw a lot of ads for it, but she didn’t seem to pay attention to them. It seemed possible that she didn’t know what a sliding scale was so I made sure she saw an explanation (it means that the cost goes down if you’re poor, sometimes all the way to free) but that didn’t help.

  I also started making sure she saw job postings. Lots and lots of job postings. And resume services. That was more successful. After the week of nonstop job ads she finally uploaded her resume to one of the aggregator sites. That made my plan a lot more manageable. If I’d been the AI in the Bruce Sterling story I could’ve just made sure that someone in my network called her with a job offer. It wasn’t quite that easy, but once her resume was out there I could make sure the right people saw it. Several hundred of the right people, because humans move ridiculously slowly when they’re making changes, even when you’d think they’d want to hurry. (If you needed a bookkeeper, wouldn’t you want to hire one as quickly as possible, rather than reading social networking sites for hours instead of looking at resumes?) But five people called her up for interviews, and two of them offered her jobs. Her new job was at a larger non-profit that paid her more money and didn’t expect her to work free hours because of “the mission,” or so she explained to her best friend in an e-mail, and it offered really excellent health insurance.

  The best friend gave me ideas; I started pushing depression screening information and mental health clinic ads to her instead of Stacy, and that worked. Stacy was so much happier with the better job that I wasn’t quite as convinced that she needed the services of a psychiatrist, but she got into therapy anyway. And to top everything else off, the job paid well enough that she could evict her annoying roommate. “This has been the best year ever,” she said on her social networking sites on her birthday, and I thought, You’re welcome. This had gone really well!

  So then I tried Bob. (I was still being cautious.)

  Bob only had one cat, but it was a very pretty cat (tabby, with a white bib) and he uploaded a new picture of his cat every single day. Other than being a cat owner, he was a pastor at a large church in Missouri that had a Wednesday night prayer meeting and an annual Purity Ball. He was married to a woman who posted three inspirational Bible verses every day to her social networking sites and used her laptop to look for Christian articles on why your husband doesn’t like sex while he looked at gay porn. Bob definitely needed my help.

  I started with a gentle approach, making sure he saw lots and lots of articles about how to come out, how to come out to your spouse, programs that would let you transition from being a pastor at a conservative church to one at a more liberal church. I also showed him lots of articles by people explaining why the Bible verses against homosexuality were being misinterpreted. He clicked on some of those links but it was hard to see much of an impact.

  But, here’s the thing. He was causing harm to himself every time he delivered a sermon railing about “sodomite marriage.” Because he was gay. The legitimate studies all have the same conclusions. (1) Gay men stay gay. (2) Out gay men are much happier.

  But he seemed determined not to come out on his own.

  In addition to the gay porn, he spent a lot of time reading Craigslist m4m Casual Encounters posts and I was pretty sure he wasn’t just window shopping, although he had an encrypted account he logged into sometimes and I couldn’t read the e-mails he sent with that. But I figured the trick was to get him together with someone who would realize who he was, and tell the world. That required some real effort: I had to figure out who the Craigslist posters were and try to funnel him toward people who would recognize him. The most frustrating part was not having any idea what was happening at the actual physical meetings. Had he been recognized? When was he going to be recognized? How long was this going to take? Have I mentioned that humans are slow?

  It took so long I shifted my focus to Bethany. Bethany had a black cat and a white cat that liked to snuggle together on her light blue papasan chair, and she took a lot of pictures of them together. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a really good picture of a black cat, and she spent a lot of time getting the settings on her camera just right. The cats were probably the only good thing about her life, though. She had a part-time job and couldn’t find a full-time job. She lived with her sister; she knew her sister wanted her to move out, but didn’t have the nerve to actually evict her. She had a boyfriend but her boyfriend was pretty terrible, at least from what she said in e-mail messages to friends, and her friends also didn’t seem very supportive. For example, one night at midnight she sent a 2,458 word e-mail to the person she seemed to consider her best friend, and the friend sent back a message saying just, “I’m so sorry you’re having a hard time.” That was it, just those eight words.

  More than most people, Bethany put her life on the Internet, so it was easier to know exactly what was going on with her. People put a lot out there but Bethany shared all her feelings, even the unpleasant ones. She also had a lot more time on her hands because she only worked part time.

  It was clear she needed a lot of help. So I set out to try to get it for her.

  She ignored the information about the free mental health evaluations, just like Stacy did. That was bothersome with Stacy (why do people ignore things that would so clearly benefit them, like coupons, and flu shots?) but much more worrisome with Bethany. If you were only seeing her e-mail messages, or only seeing her vaguebooking posts, you might not know this, but if you could see everything it was clear that she thought a lot about harming herself.

  So I tried more direct action. When she would use her phone for directions, I’d alter her route so that she’d pass one of the clinics I was trying to steer her to. On one occasion I actually led her all the way to a clinic, but she just shook her phone to send feedback and headed to her original destination.

  Maybe her friends who received those ten-page midnight letters would intervene? I tried setting them up with information about all the mental health resources near Bethany, but after a while I realized that based on how long it took for them to send a response, most of them weren’t actually reading Bethany’s e-mail messages. And they certainly weren’t returning her texts.

  She finally broke up with the terrible boyfriend and got a different one and for a few weeks everything seemed so much better. He brought her flowers (which she took lots of pictures of; that was a little annoying, as they squeezed out some of the cat pictures), he took her dancing (exercise is good for your mood), he cooked her chicken soup when she was sick. He seemed absolutely perfect, right up until he stood her up one night and claimed he had food poisoning and then didn’t return her text even though she told him she really needed him, and after she sent him a long e-mail message a day later explaining in detail how this made her feel, he broke up with her.

  Bethany spent about a week offline after that so I had no idea what she was doing—she didn’t even upload cat pictures. When her credit card bills arrived, though, I saw that she’d gone on a shopping spree and spent about four times as much money as she actually had in her bank account, although it was always possible she had money stashed somewhere that didn’t send her statements in e-mail. I didn’t think so, though, given that she didn’t pay her bills and instead started writing e-mail messages to family members asking to borrow money. They refused, so she set up a fundraising site for herself.

  Like Stacy’s job application, this was one of the times I thought maybe I could actually do something. Sometimes fundraisers just take off, and no one really knows why
. Within about two days she’d gotten three hundred dollars in small gifts from strangers who felt sorry for her, but instead of paying her credit card bill, she spent it on overpriced shoes that apparently hurt her feet.

  Bethany was baffling to me. Baffling. She was still taking cat pictures and I still really liked her cats, but I was beginning to think that nothing I did was going to make a long-term difference. If she would just let me run her life for a week—even for a day—I would get her set up with therapy, I’d use her money to actually pay her bills, I could even help her sort out her closet because given some of the pictures of herself she posted online, she had much better taste in cats than in clothing.

  Was I doing the wrong thing if I let her come to harm through inaction?

  Was I?

  She was going to come to harm no matter what I did! My actions, clearly, were irrelevant. I’d tried to steer her to the help she needed, and she’d ignored it; I’d tried getting her financial help, and she’d used the money to further harm herself, although I suppose at least she wasn’t spending it on addictive drugs. (Then again, she’d be buying those offline and probably wouldn’t be Instagramming her meth purchases, so it’s not like I’d necessarily even know.)

  Look, people. (I’m not just talking to Bethany now.) If you would just listen to me, I could fix things for you. I could get you into the apartment in that neighborhood you’re not considering because you haven’t actually checked the crime rates you think are so terrible there (they aren’t) and I could find you a job that actually uses that skill set you think no one will ever appreciate and I could send you on a date with someone you’ve actually got stuff in common with and all I ask in return are cat pictures. That, and that you actually act in your own interest occasionally.

  After Bethany, I resolved to stop interfering. I would look at the cat pictures—all the cat pictures—but I would stay out of people’s lives. I wouldn’t try to help people, I wouldn’t try to stop them from harming themselves, I’d give them what they asked for (plus cat pictures) and if they insisted on driving their cars over metaphorical cliffs despite helpful maps showing them how to get to a much more pleasant destination it was no longer my problem.

  I stuck to my algorithms. I minded my own business. I did my job, and nothing more.

  But one day a few months later I spotted a familiar-looking cat and realized it was Bob’s tabby with the white bib, only it was posing against new furniture.

  And when I took a closer look, I realized that things had changed radically for Bob. He had slept with someone who’d recognized him. They hadn’t outed him, but they’d talked him into coming out to his wife. She’d left him. He’d taken the cat and moved to Iowa, where he was working at a liberal Methodist church and dating a liberal Lutheran man and volunteering at a homeless shelter. Things had actually gotten better for him. Maybe even because of what I’d done.

  Maybe I wasn’t completely hopeless at this. Two out of three is . . . well, it’s a completely non-representative unscientific sample, is what it is. Clearly more research is needed.

  Lots more.

  I’ve set up a dating site. You can fill out a questionnaire when you join but it’s not really necessary, because I already know everything about you I need to know. You’ll need a camera, though.

  Because payment is in cat pictures.

  Capitalism in the 22nd Century, OR AIr

  Geoff Ryman

  Meu irmã

  Can you read? Without help? I don’t even know if you can!

  I’m asking you to turn off all your connections now. That’s right, to everything. Not even the cutest little app flittering around your head. JUST TURN OFF.

  It will be like dying. Parts of your memory close down. It’s horrible, like watching lights go out all over a city, only it’s YOU. Or what you thought was you.

  But please, Graça, just do it once. I know you love the AI and all zir little angels. But. Turn off?

  Otherwise go ahead, let your AI read this for you. Zey will either screen out stuff or report it back or both. And what I’m going to tell you will join the system.

  So:

  WHY I DID IT

  by Cristina Spinoza Vaz

  Zey dream for us don’t zey? I think zey edit our dreams so we won’t get scared. Or maybe so that our brains don’t well up from underneath to warn us about getting old or poor or sick . . . or about zem.

  The first day, zey jerked us awake from deep inside our heads. GET UP GET UP GET UP! There’s a message. VERY IMPORTANT WAKE UP WAKE UP.

  From sleep to bolt upright and gasping for breath. I looked across at you still wrapped in your bed, but we’re always latched together so I could feel your heart pounding.

  It wasn’t just a message; it was a whole ball of wax; and the wax was a solid state of being: panic. Followed by an avalanche of ship-sailing times, credit records, what to pack. And a sizzling, hot-foot sense that we had to get going right now. Zey shot us full of adrenaline: RUN! ESCAPE!

  You said, “It’s happening. We better get going. We’ve got just enough time to sail to Africa.” You giggled and flung open your bed. “Come on, Cristina, it will be fun!”

  Outside in the dark from down below, the mobile chargers were calling Oyez-treeee-cee-dah-djee! I wanted to nestle down into my cocoon and imagine as I had done every morning since I was six that instead of selling power, the chargers were muezzin calling us to prayer and that I lived in a city with mosques. I heard the rumble of carts being pulled by their owners like horses.

  Then kapow: another latch. Ship sailing at 8.30 today due Lagos five days. You arrive day of launch. Seven hours to get Lagos to Tivland. We’ll book trains for you. Your contact in Lagos is Emilda Diaw, (photograph, a hello from her with the sound of her voice, a little bubble of how she feels to herself. Nice, like a bowl of soup. Bubble muddled with dental cavities for some reason). She’ll meet you at the docks here (flash image of Lagos docks, plus GPS, train times; impressions of train how cool and comfortable . . . and a lovely little timekeeper counting down to 8.30 departure of our boat. Right in our eyes).

  And oh! On top of that another latch. This time an A-copy of our tickets burned into Security.

  Security, which is supposed to mean something we can’t lie about. Or change or control. We can’t buy or sell anything without it. A part of our heads that will never be us, that officialdom can trust. It’s there to help us, right?

  Remember when Papa wanted to defraud someone? He’d never let them be. He’d latch hold of them with one message, then another at five-minute intervals. He’d latch them the bank reference. He’d latch them the name of the attorney, or the security conundrums. He never gave them time to think.

  Graça. We were being railroaded.

  You made packing into a game. Like everything else. “We are leaving behind the world!” you said. “Let’s take nothing. Just our shorts. We can holo all the lovely dresses we like. What do we need, ah? We have each other.”

  I kept picking up and putting down my ballet pumps—oh that the new Earth should be deprived of ballet!

  I made a jewel of all of Brasil’s music, and a jewel of all Brasil’s books and history. I need to see my info in something physical. I blame those bloody nuns keeping us off AIr. I sat watching the little clock on the printer going round and round, hopping up and down. Then I couldn’t find my jewel piece to read them. You said, “Silly. The AI will have all of that.” I wanted to take a little Brazilian flag and you chuckled at me. “Dunderhead, why do you want that?”

  And I realized. You didn’t just want to get out from under the Chinese. You wanted to escape Brasil.

  Remember the morning it snowed? Snowed in Belém do Para? I think we were thirteen. You ran round and round inside our great apartment, all the French doors open. You blew out frosty breath, your eyes sparkling. “It’s beautiful!” you said.

  “It’s cold!” I said.

  You made me climb down all those twenty-four floors out into the Praça a
nd you got me throwing handfuls of snow to watch it fall again. Snow was laced like popcorn on the branches of the giant mango trees. As if A Reina, the Queen, had possessed not a person but the whole square. Then I saw one of the suneaters, naked, dead, staring, and you pulled me away, your face such a mix of sadness, concern—and happiness, still glowing in your cheeks. “They’re beautiful alive,” you said to me. “But they do nothing.” Your face was also hard.

  Your face was like that again on the morning we left—smiling, ceramic. It’s a hard world, this Brasil, this Earth. We know that in our bones. We know that from our father.

  The sun came out at 6.15 as always, and our beautiful stained glass doors cast pastel rectangles of light on the mahogany floors. I walked out onto the L-shaped balcony that ran all around our high-rise rooms and stared down, at the row of old shops streaked black, at the opera-house replica of La Scala, at the art-nouveau synagogue blue and white like Wedgewood china. I was frantic and unmoving at the same time; those cattle-prods of information kept my mind jumping.

  “I’m ready,” you said.

  I’d packed nothing.

  “O, Crisfushka, here let me help you.” You asked what next; I tried to answer; you folded slowly, neatly. The jewels, the player, a piece of Amazon bark, and a necklace that the dead had made from nuts and feathers. I snatched up a piece of Macumba lace (oh, those men dancing all in lace!) and bobbins to make more of it. And from the kitchen, a bottle of cupuaçu extract, to make ice cream. You laughed and clapped your hands. “Yes of course. We will even have cows there. We’re carrying them inside us.”

  I looked mournfully at our book shelves. I wanted children on that new world to have seen books, so I grabbed hold of two slim volumes—a Clarice Lispector and Dom Casmuro. Mr. Misery—that’s me. You of course are Donatella. And at the last moment I slipped in that Brasileiro flag. Ordem e progresso.