Nature Futures 2 (33 page)

“On the other hand, you don't have to deal with your dead brother's remains. Bonus, right?” Yvonne pinched her lips shut. Since Brian's accident she'd learned she shouldn't resent how the world went on as if nothing had changed. For them, it hadn't. She scuffed the ground with her foot.

Peggy shrugged.

They'd circled round on the asphalt path and the dorms stood a block away. Yvonne wished she was already there, tucked under the blankets. She'd lose points, of course. Since arriving at school she'd focused her Metric on rewarding education and new experiences. Peggy used hers to avoid her freshman fifteen. But their concentration on scoring drew them together. Nothing felt as good as the chime for a new high score.

“Doesn't your Mum want to handle his ashes? That's a major emotional milestone. It's a level-up for sure!”

“Mum wouldn't use the points. She relies on a cell phone. I tried to set a Metric up for her, but she never got into it. She says her MMO is a better game.”

“Old-fashioned! They're such a different generation, escaping into TV, video games and movies. Hanging out with friends online. Real-world accomplishments are so much more fulfilling, I mean, as long as you've set your incentives right.

“I've hit my exercise goal. Let's cross the street, it'll be shorter.”

Cyclists rode by, their Metrics ticking up health and social responsibility points.

“Mum's had a hard time dealing with Brian's death, so I said I'd do it. I don't know why I'm making a fuss. It's just a button.” Yvonne raised her wrist. Why delay? There were no extra points for doing it in person. Stomach clenching, her index finger hovered but would not descend. Although she'd said goodbye at the memorial — held at a virtual church so friends from all over could mourn together — this would be final. Real.

Peggy halted. “I don't know what it's like to lose a family member, but I know it's tough. You've been strong, and you're helping your family by taking this on.”

Tears blurred the bottom of Yvonne's vision. She embraced Peggy.

Peggy squeezed back. She sniffed and wiped a hand across her nose. Her Metric dinged and her eyes brightened. “Social connection! I was totally there for a friend. Look, I'm ahead for the day.” She gave Yvonne's unresisting shoulders another squeeze. “And usually I score low on empathy. See you later. Thanks for making it a great day!”

Peggy bounded towards her dorm, humming.

Yvonne's fingers stroked the bubbled key of her Metric. One press, and she'd complete a mega-life task. She'd level-up. Some people were born rich, and exotic trips set their experiences scores ahead. But with this, she'd be ahead of most of her peers. She could gain something nice from a painful life event. Brian would like that.

But she didn't want to score points for this.

“Peggy!” she called.

The girl stopped on the steps.

Yvonne slipped the Metric from her wrist. The thin coil dangled between her fingers, innocent of the weight she'd given it. She tossed the Metric into the bushes and heard a sad chime — lost points.

“OMG, what are you doing?” Peggy yelled.

Vertigo flooded Yvonne and her knees threatened to buckle as she tried to orientate herself towards the mortuary without her Metric to guide her. Once familiar buildings hid the way, their configuration confusing to a sleepwalker who'd awakened. On the second step towards her goal, her stride strengthened. Over her shoulder she called: “There's litter in the bushes if you want it!”

Peggy squealed. A Metric chimed.

H. E. Roulo is a Pacific Northwest author whose stories have appeared in a dozen podcasts, magazines and anthologies (
www.heroulo.com
).

The Rumination on What Isn't

Alex Shvartsman

This isn't a time-travel story. As you sit in the sterile room that looks and feels like a hospital ward but doesn't smell or sound like one — you know the difference after so many months — as you stare at the thing at the other end of the chessboard and try to picture your daughter instead, you ponder the choices you've made. You realize that, if given a chance, you wouldn't go back to change anything. There is no decision, no single action that would have altered the course of events. No moment in time that could have been modified to avoid this outcome. No matter what, you would find yourself in this room, lost in thought as your fingers caress a white pawn. She is waiting for you to make your move.

This isn't a horror story. You certainly felt like it was, on that day in the doctor's office, when he delivered the diagnosis with practised compassion. Words like
stage four
and
metastasis
sounded surreal. They were fears of old people; there was no place for them in the life of a ten-year-old girl. You remember feeling shaken and detached, as if this was happening to somebody else. But the oncologist wouldn't allow you to process this fully, to despair, to grieve. He wanted to talk treatment options, and DNA sequencing, and clinical trials. And he wanted decisions to be made right away, because there wasn't a lot of time.

But it wasn't all fear and dread. There were moments of happiness, when the two of you giggled while watching cartoons together, or went picking apples under the pleasantly warm September sun. There were moments of boredom, hours spent in waiting rooms filled with year-old magazines and stone-faced strangers who probably understood what you were going through better than your closest friends, but were barricaded behind the walls of their own distress. And then there were mundane moments, because even when your world is shattered you still have to go through the motions of picking up paper towels at the supermarket, and getting the oil changed in your truck, and doing laundry.

This isn't a fantasy story. When her hair fell out from the chemo, and she lost weight, and the doctors began to mention the word hospice, you sought alternative treatments. Folk medicines and psychics, and any number of other things that don't work, but desperate people try them anyway, because they're better than doing nothing. This isn't a fantasy, there's no magic or miracles. She kept getting worse.

This isn't exactly a tragedy. Before the illness could take her, lawyers in expensive suits showed up and offered you a way out. It was an experiment, they said. The procedure had never been performed on a human being before. There were plenty of risks and unknowns, but your daughter was given an opportunity to make history. More importantly, it was the way for her to survive. You hated the thought of her being used as some sort of a guinea pig, but the doctors said that she had just a few weeks left. This was her only chance. So you signed endless pages of legal documents until your hand ached almost as much as your heart, and you allowed yourself to hope.

This is a love story. You sit in the sterile room and play chess against a sleek metal box that houses your daughter's mind. She has been uploaded, the first herald of the coming singularity. She will never again pick apples, or play soccer, or hug you. The scientists don't know whether her mind will continue to develop or if she will remain a perpetual ten-year-old. They don't know whether she will live forever inside the machine, or if her consciousness will degrade and disappear with time. The entire world is waiting to find out.

She watches you through digital cameras and hums her favourite tune through the speakers, impatient for you to finally make your move. And you know with absolute certainty that this is a love story, because you love your daughter just the same, regardless of her physical form. You get to tell her stories, and watch cartoons together, and play chess, and face whatever challenges may come in the future as a family.

You smile at her, and push the pawn forward.

Alex Shvartsman is a writer and game designer from Brooklyn, New York. His other fiction is linked at
www.alexshvartsman.com
.

Unglued

Amber D. Sistla

So, it turns out that they don't make glue out of horse parts anymore. I take it off the list.

I still have another glue on the list — stopping parents who force their kids to sniff glue to keep them from getting drafted. Ms Tyler would like that one. She always says a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I also have gelatin, so I'd still be against misusing animal parts. Ms Tyler always says it's a shame to use animal parts for something frivolous like gelatin when so many people are starving, and starving wastes their minds.

With the other glue and the gelatin, the horse-glue was a redundant cause anyway. Dad always says reduce, reuse, remove redundancy. Said. Dad always said that. Before. I close my eyes tight and focus on my list. Crying wastes the mind, Ms Tyler says.

Glue and gelatin have always been on my list. I mean, glue is all sticky and gooey and it smells really good. And gelatin … well, who doesn't like Jell-O? I mean, really.

I recite the list again and again in my head, waiting for the sounds to quieten on the other side of the privacy curtain. Whenever I start to get drowsy, I dig my nails into my legs.

Whisper won't come until I'm the only one still awake. Mum says Whisper is just a figment of my imagination, and I should ignore him. But if he's real, I think that would make him mad. Really mad. I'd rather be safe than sorry. That's what Dad always used to say.

Finally, all is quiet, and I peek through a small hole in the curtain. Mum's slumped against her workstation. Probably she'd been looking at her list — the one from the doctors with the cost of every procedure Dad needed. I'd heard Mum and Dad arguing because they only had enough money for one op.

I hear Whisper stirring, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Whisper always hides in the food processor on the bottom shelf. He slithers and slides out of the appliance shelf, clattering across the shelf with the bowls and plates, scales scritching against the shelf with my robot, and then rubbing against the shelf with my clothes before finally arriving on top at my bed.

I don't open my eyes. Whisper would disappear. I know what I need to do, but the thought of doing it alone makes me feel like a used-up battery.

Are you ready?

He coils around me like a capacitor.

Whisper's question squirms in my mind like a live wire. I nod and open my mouth, and Whisper slides inside, tasting like lightning. He crams inside, pushing memories and thoughts about until I think my head will explode, but then it's done, and he's curled inside my mind.

I climb down, pausing to touch my robot. It's all ready, just needs a brain. Dad said if I built it and proved it worked to spec, he would get a mouse brain for me to intelligence it. But that was before.

Crying will ruin everything, so I think about my list until my tears forget they were coming. Down on the ground, I kneel by Dad's makeshift bed. He's deflated a lot since he got sick. I hold his hand and mouth the list in his ear. He doesn't move, the meds make sure of that. Nose to nose, I memorize his face.

Mum sleeps, curled around her station. Her black hair covers her face. She'll wake if I push it aside, so I just memorize its dark shadow.

I take one last look at our ten-by-ten. We used to have a ten-by-twenty when Mum and Dad still smiled. I don't remember that place much, but I do remember the smiles.

I slide the door open just enough to squeeze through. The halls are crowded. I asked Dad once why they didn't just get a one-by-one. He shrugged and said maybe they were doing a camping vacation, but Mum glared at him and said to Dad to be realistic and she told me that they didn't have money or the buildings just don't have room any more or both. When I looked up camping, it didn't make sense, so I guess Mum was right.

I wedge myself into the queue on the up stairway. On the 243rd floor, a lot of people exit, pushing and pulling me with them. My hands get clammy. This high up, it'd be impossible to get back on if I had a forced exit. Whisper growls, and suddenly there's enough room to keep squirming up and up to the top floor.

The recruitment centre is huge. Hundred-by-hundred, maybe. Bigger, maybe. It made me dizzy just to look at it, so I run around it as fast as I can until my legs won't move anymore.

While I'm gasping for breath, the woman recites the Declaration of Informed Consent as if I'm a baby in a crèche. I've been hearing it every month at school for five years now, ever since I turned four and reached the age of Consent.

The woman tells me that she won't know yet what my brain will be used to intelligence until after the auction ends. After Consent Given, the base credit will transferred to my parents' account, and they could get a bonus depending on how the bidding goes.

She tells me that I'm helping save the world. I don't tell her about my list, or that I have my own plans.

Whisper says he has plans too.

Amber D. Sistla's fiction has appeared in
Jim Baen's Universe
and
Cosmos
magazine.

Out of the Blue

Mohamad Atif Slim

“Yargh-thr! You Chinese?” The ten-eyed Gorgon stared at me, drunk.

“No, I'm Malay.”

“Wussat?” His spittle flew like rockets.

“Human subclass.”

“Human? You sure you're not Chinese?”

Goo oozed from one corner of his mouth. I gave him a sympathetic look. This is why I don't drink. “You should go home. Wife might be worried.”

“Wife? What wife?” All ten eyes went blank, then bulged in recognition. “Oh. Yargh!”

I left the bar by the back door. On a crowded night like this, usually, if one alien picks on you, the rest will too. Lone human in the bar, let's ask him if he speaks Chinese and eats carrots, if he can get us bootleg ethanol. But I guess I can't blame them — the Chinese were the first humans to venture out to space since First Contact, after all. Still, you'd think the rest of the Universe would grow out of stereo-typing minorities — I don't think I've ever met a carrot-eating Chinese in my whole life.