Welcome to Dystopia

by Gordon Van Gelder

  It will be at least three months before compost made from their corpses is useable, so it’s dumb for me to starve myself now. And my grief is upsetting people. I’m not the only one who’s lost a loved one.

  I was polite. I said thank you for your concern, then walked away. I do a lot of walking now, up and down the stairs, into all the dark offices. Step, step, step, light, light, light as I go forward, behind me it’s dark, dark, dark as the lights go off.

  I’ll eat my private stash until it’s gone. I’m not sharing their food. I’m not working their jobs. Fuck them. I don’t care. I’d rather be dead.

  From: Sophie Goldstein

  To: Emily Wilson

  Date: September 6, 2020

  Subject:

  It’s been 15 days since the fire, days of walking the dark floors, 3 - 11. At first, I was moving just to move. Then I got curious about who the people in all these offices had been. I started poking around, looking at the photos on their desks, the books on their shelves.

  My first find was a bottle of Scotch on seven, hidden behind a Webster’s dictionary in a bookcase. I gave it to Eddison.

  I went back to see what else was out there. It felt like a treasure hunt. I learned people on the daylight floors use the dark floors to hide their stashes.

  In the GBH Capital offices on four I found a stack of Juggs and Asian Fever. Gross. Also on four, in Jennie’s Fine Foods I found a gun and a box of ammo along with a case of tuna tucked under a couch. I took the gun and ammo, left the tuna. On ten, in the Salish Sea Weekly’s offices I found birth control pills and weed. Sweet!

  Someone working for Loan Care hid a case of Soylent in their server closet. I tried one. It tasted like pancake batter, so not terrible. When I told Eddison, he rolled his eyes and called it “food for techies who hate themselves,” so I left it.

  The prize was on nine, in the Adventure Gear lobby. Sure, all the energy bars had been taken, as well as the dried food and freeze-dried coffee, but laid out in a display case was a climbing harness, blue rope, pretty, anodized metal things I didn’t recognize, and carabiners. There was also a book on climbing on the coffee table.

  No doubt back in the day when we expected to be rescued, no one wanted to break the display. Since then, whoever went through this floor had forgotten it, if they even noticed.

  I used a chair to break the glass, then I shoved everything into an Adventure Gear backpack. When I got home, I left a note for Eddison to come see me. We have to do this together.

  From: Sophie Goldstein

  To: Emily Wilson

  Date: September 7, 2020

  Subject:

  It’s dangerous, but Eddison agrees it could work. The climbing rope is 60 meters. That’s almost 197 feet. We estimated ten feet for each floor, more than enough to get us from 12 down to the 6th floor terrace, and from there, to the tree.

  We’ll need to break a window. There might be an alarm. The shutters might close. The windows might not break. The building protects itself.

  We decided to test the windows in my old office on 14. No one lives in the Patterson offices anymore. If we’re discovered, Eddison will say I lost it, and he tried to stop me. That settled, we went upstairs. We hit one of the two windows with an end table. Even double paned, they broke easy, and no alarms. But the shutters closed. That freaked me out.

  We broke the other window, timing it. The shutters close in one minute, 20 seconds. By 43 seconds, the opening is too narrow to get through. 37 seconds to escape. We’ll have to move fast.

  There’s only one climbing harness. Eddison insists I use it. He’s stronger than me, and figures he can jury rig something with a couple of belts. He’ll wear gloves and slide down if he has to.

  Should we risk it? Here, we have heat and light and water. Even if rations are cut, probably we can survive the winter. Then what? How long will we stay in this stupid building, hoping civilization will magically reboot?

  Outside, we can find people. Not everyone will be like the hillbillies. We can stay in empty buildings, and get canned food from supermarkets. We have a gun. We even have a place to go, Krystal’s cabin at Moclips. If we grab bikes, we can get there before winter. It’s less than 200 miles, down to Tacoma then across the bridge.

  We’re going to do it. It’s dangerous. We could die—neither of us are climbers—but we can’t stay here. We just have to get to the terrace, from there it should be easy. If the hillbilly could climb down the tree, then so can we.

  Eddison will bring our rations soon. We’re going eat and study the climbing book until everyone’s asleep, then we’ll go. Wish us luck.

  EXTREME BEDDING

  David Marusek

  I went to the office the other day and found a terrorist sitting at my desk.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  My boss came over and pulled me aside. “Why don’t you sit at Marilyn’s desk today?” she said. Marilyn was away on leave.

  “Because I prefer to sit at my own desk,” I replied. “But I can’t because there’s a terrorist sitting at my desk.”

  My boss threw up her hands. “What can I do about it? We all have to pitch in and help out in difficult situations, don’t we? Of course we do. Around here the real work is teamwork. So try to be the solution, Bob, and not the problem.”

  So I sat at Marilyn’s desk that day. The sky didn’t fall, and the next day the terrorist was gone.

  At first I felt a little sheepish about all the fuss I had made, but then I noticed that my Post-it notes were rearranged on my computer. And the cap of my favorite ballpoint pen had chew marks all over it.

  Who does that? Who rearranges and gnaws on people’s things like that?

  Worse, there were cigarette ashes on my keyboard.

  Ashes? Really? Who smokes cigarettes anymore? And in a smoke-free building!

  But when have you ever known a terrorist to follow the rules? That afternoon, when my boss walked by my desk, I stopped her and asked why the terrorist couldn’t have used Marilyn’s desk instead of mine. She didn’t even slow down but rolled her eyes way back in her head. Made it seem like everything was my fault.

  Right before five o’clock, my girlfriend texted to tell me she had an unexpected open house and not to wait dinner on her. This was the third time this had happened this week. The real estate market was on fire, and my girlfriend worked around the clock.

  So I stopped at the supermarket on the way home to pick up some take-out dinner. But the front doors didn’t slide open for me, and the aisles inside the store were dark. There was a big sign in the window that said:

  CLOSED BECAUSE IMMIGRATION

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” I said. “Closed? Really?”

  I made myself a frozen pizza at my girlfriend’s apartment and afterwards watched some TV while I waited for her. The news was all about a terrorist plot at a train station in Europe. I was grateful that at least the terrorist at my desk hadn’t blown himself up.

  Another news story reported on the president’s speech at a victory rally in an Air Force hangar. The Air Force was rolling out its new drones with bombs so smart they could pick out a single terrorist in a crowded football stadium. The president declared that America was wonderful. America was just incredible. And that was why terrorists were blowing themselves up big league.

  I must have dozed off because I woke up when my girlfriend came in. It was quite late, and she was tired and cranky. Turned out, her prospective buyers were terrorists and they made her show them, like, a dozen different listings.

  “They had all of these unreasonable demands,” she complained. “Everything had to be just so.”

  But the terrorists eventually saw something they liked and made an offer, so things turned out well and good at the end.

  The next day, as I was riding the train to work, I received a blast text from the office. My boss instructed everyone not to come into work; the office was closed, permanently, due to abortion. She thanked us for our
years of service and sent us her best wishes.

  I was stunned. I was unemployed. Again! I got off at the next station and took a return train home.

  When I got to the apartment, wouldn’t you know it, there was a terrorist in bed with my girlfriend.

  I lost it completely then. “Get out!” I screamed at them. “Both of you! Get out!”

  The terrorist only smirked and flicked cigarette ash on the sheets, and my girlfriend said, “Someone’s forgetting whose apartment this is.”

  Now I live in a motel, not far from the fulfillment center where I work. I get weekly rates here, with cable TV, wi-fi, air, and pool included. It even has maid service, so I suppose things could be worse.

  I work the night shift packing cartons. Basically, the robots bring me stuff, and I put it in cartons.

  I sleep during the day. Or at least that’s the plan. Lately, the minute I close my eyes, they pop right back open and I lie there, sometimes for hours, staring at the ceiling. Weeks have passed since I’ve gotten a good day’s sleep. It’s wearing me down.

  But this morning I received an encouraging bedtime tweet from the president: America has the best sleep. It’s world-class sleep, what can I tell you. Our sleep ranking is huge, believe me.

  His words help a little and I drift off, only to bolt upright an hour later with a galloping heart.

  Why are things so screwed up?

  I lie there, powerless against exhaustion, as I try to figure out how in the hell we got ourselves into this mess in the first place. Was it something we did as a nation or something we failed to do? Are we the victims here, or is all of this our own damn fault?

  In desperation I cry out, “When, oh when, will this nightmare end?”

  Under my bed, someone yawns and says, “I don’t know for you, my friend, but for me when you do something about the snoring. Sad (or Sick).”

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  K. G. Anderson has published short fiction in Second Contacts, Triangulation: Beneath the Surface, and The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories. She is online at writerway.com.

  Elizabeth Bourne has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Interzone, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She is currently at work on a novel.

  Richard Bowes is the author of Minions of the Moon, From the Files of the Time Rangers, and Dust Devils on a Quiet Street. His fiction has been honored with the Lambda Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the World Fantasy Award.

  Scott Bradfield is the author of The History of Luminous Motion, Animal Planet, and What’s Wrong with America.

  J.S. Breukelaar is the author of Aletheia and American Monster. She has a website at thelivingsuitcase.com.

  Jennifer Marie Brissett is the author of Elysium, or, The World After. She is working on her second novel. She can be found online at jennbrissett.com.

  Becca Caccavo is currently a college undergraduate. This is her first published work of fiction.

  Don D’Ammassa is the author of such novels as Haven, Scarab, and Multiplicity, as well as having written encyclopediae of adventure fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. A longtime reviewer for Science Fiction Chronicle, he continues to publish reviews online at dondammassa.com.

  Stephanie Feldman is the author of The Angel of Losses. She has sold essays and stories to Electric Literature, Forward, The Rumpus, and Asimov’s. She can be found online at stephaniefeldman.com.

  Eric James Fullilove’s novels include Credible Threat, Narcolepsy, and Circle of One. Born to a literary family, his grandmother, Maggie Shaw Fullilove, wrote for The Half-Century Magazine, and his uncle, J. B. S. Fullilove, published fiction in Weird Tales. Eric can be found online at ericjamesfullilove.com.

  Ron Goulart is the author of dozens of novels, including After Things Fell Apart, Calling Dr. Patchwork, and the Chameleon Corps books. He has also written extensively about comic books and dime detectives, including the recent volume, Alex Raymond: An Artistic Journey.

  Eileen Gunn’s short fiction has been collected in two volumes, Stable Strategies for Middle Management and Questionable Practices. A former director of advertising for Microsoft, she maintains a web site at eileengunn.com.

  Leslie Howle attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop as a student, then wound up working as its director for more than twenty years. Formerly the education and outreach manager at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, she is currently teaching digital film making to teens and working on a novel.

  Matthew Hughes’s many books include Fools Errant, Hell to Pay, and Template. He is online at matthewhughes.org, where “Loser” first appeared.

  Janis Ian is a singer, songwriter, producer, writer, and occasional actress. Her recent books include an award-winning autobiography, Society’s Child, and a book for young readers, The Tiny Mouse. She has a website at janisian.com.

  Michael Kandel’s novels include Strange Invasions, Panda Ray, and Captain Jack Zodiac. In addition to his own writing, he is also an accomplished translator and editor.

  Thomas Kaufsek has published reviews and short fiction in Science Fiction Eye, Infinity, and elsewhere. He works as a copyeditor and has been true to his resolution not to have his own web site.

  Paul La Farge is the author of The Artist of the Missing, Luminous Airplanes, and most recently, The Night Ocean. Check out paullafarge.com for more information, before it disappears.

  Yoon Ha Lee began publishing fiction while still a college undergraduate. For more information, including news about the novel Ninefox Gambit, visit yoonhalee.com

  Michael Libling has published short fiction in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s, F&SF, and elsewhere. His debut novel is due out soon. A former newspaper columnist and talk radio host, he blogs occasionally at michaellibling.com.

  Heather Lindsley has published short fiction in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Brave New Worlds. She has also published and directed a variety of plays, a list of which can be found online at randomjane.com.

  Barry N. Malzberg is an author, editor, and critic perhaps best known for the novels Herovit’s World and The Men Inside, and for his nonfiction collection Breakfast in the Ruins.

  David Marusek’s novels include Counting Heads and Mind Over Ship. He won the Theodore Sturgeon Award for his story “The Wedding Album.” According to marusek.com, his latest novel, Upon This Rock, has recently been published.

  Lisa Mason has published ten novels, including Arachne, Summer of Love, and The Gilded Age. Her short fiction has appeared in Omni, Asimov’s, F&SF, and various anthologies. A full list of her works can be found at lisamason.com.

  Mary Anne Mohanraj has founded and edited three magazines, including Strange Horizons. She’s published a dozen books, including the Lambda-finalist, The Stars Change, and writes for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She’s online at maryannemohanraj.com.

  James Morrow’s novels include Only Begotten Daughter, City of Truth, Towing Jehovah, and Galápagos Regained. He can be found online at jamesmorrow.info.

  Ruth Nestvold has published stories in such markets as Asimov’s, F&SF, and Strange Horizons. In 2007, the Italian translation of her novella “Looking Through Lace” won the “Premio Italia” award for best international work. She maintains a web site at ruthnestvold.com.

  Deji Bryce Olukotun is a technology activist who focuses on cybersecurity and freedom of expression. He has published two novels, Nigerians in Space and After the Flare. He can be found online at returnofthedeji.com.

  Marguerite Reed recently published her first novel, Archangel. Her bio online at margueritereed.com spells out some of her real-life efforts for change.

  Robert Reed is the author of The Memory of Sky, Down the Bright Way, An Exaltation of Larks, and many short stories. He can be found online at robertreedwriter.com.

  Madeleine E. Robins is the author of The Stone War, Point of Honour, and Petty Treason, as well as a score of short stories. She lives in San Francisco and currently works at the Ame
rican Bookbinders Museum.

  Jay Russell’s novels include Celestial Dogs, Burning Bright, and Brown Harvest. His short fiction has been collected in Waltzes and Whispers. He teaches writing at St. Mary’s University.

  Geoff Ryman’s novels include The Unconquered Country, Was, Air, 253, and The Child Garden. He is the administrator for the Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction by Africans and his interview series 100 African Writers of SFF is appearing in Strange Horizons.

  James Sallis has published more than a dozen novels, including The Long-Legged Fly, Drive, and Willnot. His nonfiction books include The Guitar Players and Chester Himes: A Life. His website is jamessallis.com.

  J. M. Sidorova published her first novel, The Age of Ice, in 2013. Her short stories have appeared in Albedo One, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and other magazines and anthologies. She has a website at jmsidorova.com.

  Brian Francis Slattery is the author of Spaceman Blues, Lost Everything, and Liberation. He’s also a frequent contributor to Bookburners. He can be found online at bfslattery.com.

  Harry Turtledove has published more than four dozen novels, including works of fantasy, historical fiction, and stories of alternative history such as The Guns of the South and, more recently, The House of Daniel.

  Deepak Unnikrishnan won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for his first novel, Temporary People. “Birds” is excerpted from this novel.

  TS Vale (tsvale.com) is one of the pen names of an awarded author who’s loved and practiced “writing” her entire life. TS wrote her first published novel, Buck, at age 16. The novel remains on certain banned and challenged book lists.

  Leo Vladimirsky works in advertising and has created campaigns for clients like IKEA, YouTube, L.A. Tourism, and XBOX. His fiction has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Boing Boing. He recently finished his first novel, The Horrorists. You can find his work at leovladimirsky.com.