Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 3, July 2013 (10 page)

Of course, it was only a matter of time before all this information fell into the wrong hands.

World Panic:
Those were the hands of one corrupt creature originating on Alphabeta. This creature had hidden itself away for years,  during which time its hatred toward Alphabeta, the world that had killed 22 of its siblings, spread to an insane vitriol aimed at every single world that ever existed. It possessed the technology of cloning and DNA alteration, as well as the very last surviving sample of DNA from its ancestors, the Viruses. Locked away in a secret area far from civilization after being exiled from his home, it had resurrected the Virus, multiplied it, and altered its DNA, making it nearly indestructible. With this green mixture, this weapon of mass destruction, the creature forced its way back to civilization. Its face wild and crazed, it stumbled into the Universe Capitol. Instantly, its body was riddled with projectiles, and it collapsed to the ground. With its final breath, the creature tilted its head back, and let a single drop of green liquid fall into its mouth, as the light in its eyes blinked out of existence.

Seconds passed, then minutes, as the crowd around it held its breath. Then, a shudder rippled through its body, and the crowd gasped. Blackened veins crawled down its limbs and across its body. It became black with a terrible poison…and rose to its feet.

The Infection Epoch

Age of Death and Decline:
A chorus of blood-curdling screams pierced the air as the undead body ripped the flesh from a nearby victim. Shots rang out, boring still more holes into the thing, but it kept moving. The poison spread through each victim it sank its corrupt teeth into, their blood dripping from its jaws. Each victim arose, dead yet animated. They had become evil, heartless
things
with a fierce, everlasting lust for the blood of their enemy. The Undead Apocalypse had begun.

The virus tore through the people like wildfire, as the Undead army spread across the world. The sound of the Undead filled all ears with the horrifying sound of the Xenophobic Yelling Zombies (AKA
Unghhhhh
). They blasted their way through army after army, and in less than a year, the whole World of All Worlds had become a pulsing, infested super-planet of the Undead.
None
were left truly alive, and those few who fled into space soon died of thirst and hunger, as nothing else existed, not a single other world, except the crumbling world they had left behind.

Years passed, and the Undead began to die off as there was no more food to devour, and some began to eat their own kind. In less than a decade, the last remaining species, the Undead, was eliminated from this universe.

The End of Time:
Without the people who had been holding it back, this universe ended as it had begun. The World of All Worlds collapsed in upon itself, imploding with a great bang. It became a singularity once more, ending what had once been a great universe—a memorable universe, one that lived for a healthy 14.059 billion years.

And there it remains in some cosmic limbo, its wonder and amazement, and all the secrets it held, waiting to be released once more.

This is how this universe ends…

***

…and another begins.

(Thanks to Jonah Simpson for assistance in the creation of the original concept)

Original (First) Publication
Copyright © 2013 by Muxing Zhao

********************************************

Jack Williamson was one of the giants of the field. He broke into print in 1928, and appeared in nine different decades, winning a Hugo in 2001. “With Folded Hands” has been considered a classic since its first appearance.

--------------

WITH FOLDED HANDS

by Jack Williamson

Underhill was walking home from the office, because his wife had the car, the afternoon he met the new mechanicals. His feet were following his usual diagonal path across a weedy vacant block—his wife usually had the car—and his preoccupied mind was rejecting various impossible ways to meet his notes at the Two Rivers bank, when a new wall stopped him.

The wall wasn’t any common brick or stone, but something sleek and bright and strange. Underhill stared up at a long new building. He felt vaguely annoyed and surprised at this glittering obstruction—it certainly hadn’t been here last week.

Then he saw the thing in the window.

The window itself wasn’t any ordinary glass. The wide, dustless panel was completely transparent, so that only the glowing letters fastened to it showed that it was there at all. The letters made a severe, modernistic sign:

***

Two Rivers Agency

HUMANOID INSTITUTE

The Perfect Mechanicals

“To Serve and Obey,

And Guard Men from Harm.”

***

His dim annoyance sharpened, because Underhill was in the mechanicals business himself. Times were already hard enough, and mechanicals were a drug on the market. Androids, mechanoids, electronoids, automatoids, and ordinary robots. Unfortunately, few of them did all the salesmen promised, and the Two Rivers market was already sadly oversaturated.

Underhill sold androids—when he could. His next consignment was due tomorrow, and he didn’t quite know how to meet the bill.

Frowning, he paused to stare at the thing behind that invisible window. He had never seen a humanoid. Like any mechanical not at work, it stood absolutely motionless. Smaller and slimmer than a man. A shining black, its sleek silicone skin had a changing sheen of bronze and metallic blue. Its graceful oval face wore a fixed look of alert and slightly surprised solicitude. Altogether, it was the most beautiful mechanical he had ever seen.

Too small, of course, for much practical utility. He murmured to himself a reassuring quotation from the
Android Salesman
: “Androids are big—because the makers refuse to sacrifice power, essential functions, or dependability. Androids are your biggest buy!”

The transparent door slid open as he turned toward it, and he walked into the haughty opulence of the new display room to convince himself that these streamlined items were just another flashy effort to catch the woman shopper.

He inspected the glittering layout shrewdly, and his breezy optimism faded. He had never heard of the Humanoid Institute, but the invading firm obviously had big money and big-time merchandising know-how.

He looked around for a salesman, but it was another mechanical that came gliding silently to meet him. A twin of the one in the window, it moved with a quick, surprising grace. Bronze and blue lights flowed over its lustrous blackness, and a yellow name plate flashed from its naked breast:

***

HUMANOID

Serial No. 81-H-B-27

The Perfect Mechanical

“To Serve and Obey,

And Guard Men from Harm.”

***

Curiously, it had no lenses. The eyes in its bald oval head were steel-colored, blindly staring. But it stopped a few feet in front of him, as if it could see anyhow, and it spoke to him with a high, melodious voice:

“At your service, Mr. Underhill.”

The use of his name startled him, for not even the androids could tell one man from another. But this was a clever merchandising stunt, of course, not too difficult in a town the size of Two Rivers. The salesman must be some local man, prompting the mechanical from behind the partition. Underhill erased his momentary astonishment, and said loudly.

“May I see your salesman, please?”

“We employ no human salesmen, sir,” its soft silvery voice replied instantly. “The Humanoid Institute exists to serve mankind, and we require no human service. We ourselves can supply any information you desire, sir, and accept your order for immediate humanoid service.”

Underhill peered at it dazedly. No mechanicals were competent even to recharge their batteries and reset their own relays, much less to operate their own branch offices. The blind eyes stared blankly back, and he looked uneasily around for any booth or curtain that might conceal the salesman.

Meanwhile, the sweet thin voice resumed persuasively:

“May we come out to your home for a free trial demonstration, sir? We are anxious to introduce our service on your planet, because we have been successful in eliminating human unhappiness on so many others. You will find us far superior to the old electronic mechanicals in use here.”

Underhill stepped back uneasily. He reluctantly abandoned his search for the hidden salesman, shaken by the idea of any mechanicals promoting themselves. That would upset the whole industry.

“At least you must take some advertising matter, sir.”

Moving with a somehow appalling graceful deftness, the small black mechanical brought him an illustrated booklet from a table by the wall. To cover his confused and increasing alarm, he thumbed through the glossy pages.

In a series of richly colored before-and-after pictures, a chesty blond girl was stooping over a kitchen stove, and then relaxing in a daring negligee while a little black mechanical knelt to serve her something. She was wearily hammering a typewriter, and then lying on an ocean beach, in a revealing sun suit, while another mechanical did the typing. She was toiling at some huge industrial machine, and then dancing in the arms of a golden-haired youth, while a black humanoid ran the machine.

Underhill sighed wistfully. The android company didn’t supply such fetching sales material. Women would find this booklet irresistible, and they selected eighty-six per cent of all mechanicals sold. Yes, the competition was going to be bitter.

“Take it home, sir,” the sweet voice urged him. “Show it to your wife. There is a free trial demonstration order blank on the last page, and you will notice that we require no payment down.”

He turned numbly, and the door slid open for him. Retreating dazedly, he discovered the booklet still in his hand. He crumpled it furiously, and flung it down. The small black thing picked it up tidily, and the insistent silver voice rang after him:

“We shall call at your office tomorrow, Mr. Underhill, and send a demonstration unit to your home. It is time to discuss the liquidation of your business, because the electronic mechanicals you have been selling cannot compete with us. And we shall offer your wife a free trial demonstration.”

Underhill didn’t attempt to reply, because he couldn’t trust his voice. He stalked blindly down the new sidewalk to the corner, and paused there to collect himself. Out of his startled and confused impressions, one clear fact emerged—things looked black for the agency.

Bleakly, he stared back at the haughty splendor of the new building. It wasn’t honest brick or stone; that invisible window wasn’t glass; and he was quite sure the foundation for it hadn’t even been staked out the last time Aurora had the car.

He walked on around the block, and the new sidewalk took him near the rear entrance. A truck was backed up to it, and several slim black mechanicals were silently busy, unloading huge metal crates.

He paused to look at one of the crates. It was labeled for interstellar shipment. The stencils showed that it had come from the Humanoid Institute, on Wing IV. He failed to recall any planet of that designation; the outfit must be big.

Dimly, inside the gloom of the warehouse beyond the truck, he could see black mechanicals opening the crates. A lid came up, revealing dark, rigid bodies, closely packed. One by one, they came to life. They climbed out of the crate, and sprang gracefully to the floor. A shining black, glinting with bronze and blue, they were all identical.

One of them came out past the truck, to the sidewalk, staring with blind steel eyes. Its high silver voice spoke to him melodiously:

“At your service, Mr. Underhill.”

He fled. When his name was promptly called by a courteous mechanical, just out of the crate in which it had been imported from a remote and unknown planet, he found the experience trying.

Two blocks along, the sign of a bar caught his eye, and he took his dismay inside. He had made it a business rule not to drink before dinner, and Aurora didn’t like him to drink at all; but these new mechanicals, he felt, had made the day exceptional.

Unfortunately, however, alcohol failed to brighten the brief visible future of the agency. When he emerged, after an hour, he looked wistfully back in hope that the bright new building might have vanished as abruptly as it came. It hadn’t. He shook his head dejectedly, and turned uncertainly homeward.

Fresh air had cleared his head somewhat, before he arrived at the neat white bungalow in the outskirts of the town, but it failed to solve his business problems. He also realized, uneasily, that he would be late for dinner.

Dinner, however, had been delayed. His son Frank, a freckled ten-year-old, was still kicking a football on the quiet street in front of the house. And little Gay, who was tow-haired and adorable and eleven, came running across the lawn and down the sidewalk to meet him.

“Father, you can’t guess what!” Gay was going to be a great musician someday, and no doubt properly dignified, but she was pink and breathless with excitement now. She let him swing her high off the sidewalk, and she wasn’t critical of the bar aroma on his breath. He couldn’t guess, and she informed him eagerly: “Mother’s got a new lodger!”

Underhill had foreseen a painful inquisition, because Aurora was worried about the notes at the bank, and the bill for the new consignment, and the money for little Gay’s lessons.

The new lodger, however, saved him from that. With an alarming crashing of crockery, the household android was setting dinner on the table, but the little house was empty. He found Aurora in the back yard, burdened with sheets and towels for the guest.

Aurora, when he married her, had been as utterly adorable as now her little daughter was. She might have remained so, he felt, if the agency had been a little more successful. However, while the pressure of slow failure had gradually crumbled his own assurance, small hardships had turned her a little too aggressive.

Of course he loved her still. Her red hair was still alluring, and she was loyally faithful, but thwarted ambitions had sharpened her character and sometimes her voice. They never quarreled, really, but there were small differences.

There was the little apartment over the garage—built for human servants they had never been able to afford. It was too small and shabby to attract any responsible tenant, and Underhill wanted to leave it empty. It hurt his pride to see her making beds and cleaning floors for strangers.

Aurora had rented it before, however, when she wanted money to pay for Gay’s music lessons, or when some colorful unfortunate touched her sympathy, and it seemed to Underhill that her lodgers had all turned out to be thieves and vandals.

She turned back to meet him, now, with the clean linen in her arms.

“Dear, it’s no use objecting.” Her voice was quite determined. “Mr. Sledge is the most wonderful old fellow, and he’s going to stay just as long as he wants.”

“That’s all right, darling.” He never liked to bicker, and he was thinking of his troubles at the agency. “I’m afraid we’ll need the money. Just make him pay in advance.”

“But he can’t!” Her voice throbbed with sympathetic warmth. “He says he’ll have royalties coming in from his inventions, so he can pay in a few days.”

Underhill shrugged; he had heard that before.

“Mr. Sledge is different, dear,” she insisted. “He’s a traveler, and a scientist. Here, in this dull little town, we don’t see many interesting people.”

You’ve picked up some remarkable types,” he commented.

“Don’t be unkind, dear,” she chided gently. “You haven’t met him yet, and you don’t know how wonderful he is.” Her voice turned sweeter. “Have you a ten, dear?”

He stiffened. “What for?”

“Mr. Sledge is ill.” Her voice turned urgent. “I saw him fall on the street, downtown. The police were going to send him to the city hospital, but he didn’t want to go. He looked so noble and sweet and grand. So I told them I would take him. I got him in the car and took him to old Dr. Winters. He has this heart condition, and he needs the money for medicine.”

Reasonably, Underhill inquired, “Why doesn’t he want to go to the hospital?”

“He has work to do,” she said. “Important scientific work—and he’s so wonderful and tragic. Please, dear, have you a ten?”