by Neil Clarke
“Watch carefully.” He turned away from me and took something from his pocket. When he turned back, he was wearing one of those pairs of Groucho glasses with the big mustache and the rubber nose. Spreading his hands triumphantly, he said, “Ta-daaa!”
It was such a stupid joke and his joy in pulling it was so obvious that I couldn’t help but laugh. “You win,” I said
Ten minutes later, I was on the ground and firing blindly into the jungle while hostile fire came from what seemed every direction possible. Not far from me was an artificial corpse leaking artificial blood and artificial guts with a pair of Groucho glasses on what remained of its artificial face.
When they give you the casualty rates for the war, they water down the numbers by marking the guys in logistics, the officers who never got anywhere near a fire zone, and the drone operators working from couches in another country as survivors. All this to hide the fact that only one-tenth of those who saw combat made it alive to the end of the war. By sheer dumb luck, I was one of them.
I was in the hospital, after having two legs and an arm replaced (they were practiced at that; there were, it turned out, a great many artificial people in the service; Dr. Erdmann had been late to the party again) when the summons arrived. It was a plea, really. I would have ignored it had it not been accompanied by the deed to my physical body, made out to me.
It would seem that I was no longer property.
Dr. Leonidas Erdmann was dying. Of old age, apparently, though there was a time when I was convinced that he must inevitably expire of sheer malevolence.
The doctor’s face lit up when he saw me in my fresh-bought civvies. I tried to remember if I had ever seen him happy before. It took half an hour of awkward small talk before he finally got around to the question he wanted to ask: “Was my life well lived, do you think? Did I make a difference?”
It wasn’t and he hadn’t. He had sought fame and wealth to the exclusion of all else and accomplished nothing of any lasting value. But rather than tell him this, I murmured, “You know you did, Leo.”
“Honestly? You wouldn’t kid a dying man, would you?”
Gathering together all the hypocrisy I could muster, I said, “I would never lie to you . . . father.”
I watched the old scoundrel close his eyes, almost smile, and die.
Looking down upon his still form, I could not help thinking of Mary Shelley’s creature, standing over Victor Frankenstein’s deathbed, mourning the monster who had created him.
Leonidas had left me everything: his estate, the Institute, all his patents, and a great deal of money. The war, it seemed, had replenished his coffers. Now all his wealth was mine.
Well, who else did he have to leave it to? Ellen was long dead, and I doubted that whatever relatives might exist had heard from him in decades.
The question arose of what to do with my inheritance.
Natural people have had their suspicions about my kind since long before we were even possible. Most commonly, they feared that we would take over their world and replace them with our cold, soulless kind. Until the reading of the will, I had not given a second’s thought to that sort of thing. Now that I had wealth, however, much that was once unthinkable became possible.
If the deed were to be done, it was best done quickly and mercifully. Rapid onset plagues, perhaps, appearing spontaneously in every major population center in the world. There would be panic. Martial law would be declared in nation after nation. As the natural leaders died, artificial ones would step up to fill the gaps. Soon, we would be running everything, while the last remnants of humanity quietly dwindled away.
Life—even one as unhappy as mine—was the greatest gift imaginable. It was a terrible thing to contemplate depriving an entire species of it.
Still . . . it was not as if any of them were much good at it.
That was one possibility. There was another, but it was nowhere near so clean and simple. I could dedicate my wealth and potential longevity to building a common understanding between artificial and natural people. The problem with that was that there would never be a point at which I could declare my work done. It would go on and on, with setbacks and disasters, triumphs and heartbreak. In practice, the new world would look a lot like the old one.
All this I was musing over in the back of my mind as I took Misty’s neural core off its shelf. A quick examination determined that it could be brought back to life. It had lain inert for so long that its memory must surely have degraded to nothing. But perhaps that was all to the good.
Misty’s little body had been scrapped long ago. So I had a new one built for it. Not an infant’s, however, but an adult’s. It didn’t take long before all was in place. For the second time, Misty became aware for the very first time.
The new body drew in a breath. Its eyes went wide. Then, out of nowhere, it began to sing.
“You have a lovely voice,” I told her. “Do you feel as happy as you sound?”
About the Author
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation. He is the recipient of the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards as well as five Hugo Awards.
This year’s The Iron Dragon’s Mother, completes a trilogy begun twenty-five years before with The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. Out even more recently is City Under the Stars, a novel co-authored with the late Gardner Dozois.
He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.
One Time, a Reluctant Traveler
A. T. Greenblatt
If you must know, I left because if I stayed in Nat’s house one night longer, I was going to unravel, like a tragic traveler in one of my family’s tales. And that was a story I didn’t want to be.
My bike was already packed. Had been for a few weeks. It was waiting for me on the trail like an old faithful steed. Soft mulch shifted under my boots as I made my way toward it, a pack on my back, a helmet under one arm, and two jars of ashes under the other. The forest was hushed. Silent except for the chittering of squirrels and bot birds. It smelled like compost and impending rain. My parents always told me rain was lucky.
Except, I’d grown skeptical of the things my parents said. Especially their stories.
I wondered if they’d think the rain was lucky if they had to ride thirty kilometers in it, when everything gets shiny and slick and dangerous even at modest speeds. I glanced up, trying to assess the clouds between the gaps in the forest canopy. A big, swollen raindrop landed smack in the center of my forehead.
Just my luck.
Screw this. I’ll leave tomorrow. I thought and turned to go back to the house. I’d always been a reluctant traveler.
Through a cracked window, I could see Nat, her hair still sleep-mussed, her cybernetic hands pressed against the window, her breath fogging up the pane, like a little kid.
It made me smile. I had fixed those hands for her.
Then she slapped a note to the window and my smile faded. It read: Go! Go! Go!
She was right, of course she was. I’d promised I would find the ocean at the top of the mountain. and it haunted me.
So, I left because if I stayed one more night, I’d see the ghost of my mom again. She’d look around Nat’s sparse house, at my nest of blankets on the floor, and she wouldn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. Her sadness and disappointment would be so clear.
I was ninety-five percent sure my ghost mom was my imagination. My subconscious telling me to go, go, go too. But that five percent made me wonder.
Reluctantly, I tucked the jars of my parents’ ashes in the panniers on the bike. They clinked against the six other jars of ashes already packed in the side bags. I slid on my helmet and took one last long look at Nat in the window.
She gave me a warm smile. Though it was full of sadness too.
So, I left because a few weeks ago, my hometown got hit by a mudslide and my parents’ house almost collapsed on me. And I realized as I fled, that if I di
ed, I wouldn’t leave any stories behind.
As I started pedaling, it began to rain.
My parents used to tell endless stories about the impossible ocean on top of the mountain and the travelers who took the path. But if there was one thing the stories taught me, it was this. Always this.
No one who took this journey ended up happy.
One time, a coughing sickness killed her family, and the widow packed her bags for the cursed path. She knew the stories; she’d listened carefully to every whispered version for years. They said there was an ocean at the end of the trail where, if you wanted to survive in this terrible world, you needed to bring your loved ones’ ashes and drink its bitter water. The ocean was magic. It was haunted. It was impossible. It would only make her feel worse.
The widow didn’t care. At dawn, she left her gray, deadbeat town for the cursed path. In her pack there were eight jars of ashes, one for each of her two husbands, five children, and one loyal dog.
The cursed path wasn’t long, but the going was slow and treacherous. There were many dangers even among the leafless trees, thin and stark as skeletons.
You think you’ll make it, solitary woman? the trees whispered.
The widow bristled, but ignored them, knowing the stories. The trees just wanted to keep her for themselves. She kept going.
We’re sorry. We’re lonely. We need a friend. Please. Stay, stay, stay, they whispered to her back as she walked. They sounded sincere.
But she knew how to tune out demanding voices. She once was a mother to a large family.
So she passed through that whispering forest, never even considering their offer. Because what would be the point of her journey, her memories, her grief, her fight to survive if she stopped now?
This was my mom’s favorite story. She had me later in life. I was my parents’ only kid and she rarely talked about her past, no matter how much I questioned and begged. She told stories instead.
Sometimes, I thought if someone were to cut me open, it wouldn’t be entrails that spilled out, but stories. Hundreds of family tales and movies. I loved old movies. Especially ones with happy endings.
It’s thirty km to the ocean on the mountain, said the note Nat left on the bathroom mirror. She preferred to communicate via notes, which thrilled me. There’s something slow and deliberate and loving in having a conversation on snatches of paper. It was easier trying to communicate via anecdotes.
Thirty kilometers, I thought. I can do that in a day. It was a two-hundred-kilometer ride from my decimated hometown to Nat’s house using a ruined state highway that was mostly potholes and splintered tarmac. It took me four days to get there. So, I thought, How bad could thirty klicks be?
Very bad, I realized an hour into my journey. The trail’s incline rose steadily and the trees began to thin out, but the rain stayed consistent, insistent, making the path a slurry of mud. The path eroded the farther I went.
I kept going because I didn’t want to go back and disappoint my mom’s ghost. Or Nat. Nat, who let me stay at her house for weeks, even though we’d only hung out at the farm/exchange market in my town’s overgrown community park. Where I’d barter things I’d salvaged from the abandoned mall like shirts, shoes, once, a bottle of strawberry vodka I found stashed behind a register, in exchange for some of her peaches or raspberry jam. Nat, who handed me a note that said Come by my house, if you go to the ocean. Which was how I knew, she was full of stories too.
Eventually, it was easier to dismount and walk aside my bike. The path was all mud and treacherous footing and stank of rot. But at least the trees didn’t whisper. They were all cut down. I was in a forest of stumps that seemed more like a graveyard or a silhouette of something beautiful and lost.
I kept going. A fog was rising and every creak of my bicycle or crunch of my boot sounded unnaturally loud.
Maybe that’s why I heard the voices.
It took a moment to realize it wasn’t the stumps of trees talking. That’s how entrenched the widow’s story is in me. No, it wasn’t the trees. There was someone there in the thickening mist. Or rather, judging from the pitch of voices, several someones. The low, steady hum behind the voices told me these someones had drones overhead.
I held perfectly still. Waiting, calculating. They were hunting something. I knew this because everyone these days was hunting or scavenging or scrounging something in this graveyard of civilization. I hoped it was just deer, but I heard stories of worse. There’s always a worse story.
I shifted my weight slightly and my bike creaked. The voices in the mist halted. I couldn’t see them, but I could imagine, and I imagined the people they belonged to peering through the fog toward me. Waiting, calculating.
“Hello?” one said.
“Hi,” I answered in a voice just above a whisper.
A shot rang out.
I dove to the ground. My bike fell on me, jars rattling. Suddenly, all the worst stories were ringing in my ears. People are crazy territorial these days. Woods are a breeding ground for cults. Some people will eat anything they find. I didn’t know where the shot came from or how close it’d been to me. But I didn’t care. It was too close. Too close. I was alive, unharmed, but too close, and the voices and drones were getting closer. Louder.
I didn’t think. My hands were shaking, full of reeking mud. But I didn’t think. I unbuckled my helmet and hurled it as hard as I could downhill, away from the direction I was headed. It was a prayer. And a plea. It was all I had. The helmet bounced and crashed against the stumps once, twice, three times. Then it went silent.
For a moment, the voices and the drones went silent too.
Somewhere in the mist, a voice swore and boots crunched as they turned. (Too close.) The drones whined as they changed directions. The hunters began to move away.
I lay there in the mud, for a minute, maybe two, barely breathing. Listening and hoping and pleading that I’d get to tell this story one day, however it ends. The hunters’ voices were getting softer. So, as quickly and silently as I could, I got on my bike again and began to pedal. I had to keep going. I’ve never pedaled uphill so hard. My bike groaned and my heartbeat pounded in my ears. My tire rolled over something squishy, and the stink of rot overwhelmed me. But I didn’t stop to look. I didn’t stop. I could hear the voices swearing again in the distance. The fog was thick, but not thick enough. Not enough.
I had to keep going. So, I bent forward and rode.
I rode so hard, so blindly, I didn’t realize when I’d left the stumps behind.
And crashed into something worse.
One time, someone who’d lost something he loved found himself on the cursed path, despite promising himself he would never go to the ocean on top of the mountain. From stories, he knew there were many dangers on this road, but the one that worried him most was the stork. He needed to befriend it so it could guide him through the last and most dangerous part of the path. Making friends was never the lost lover’s strong point.
But the stork wasn’t what he expected. The great bird was mud-drenched and depressed, with wings so matted, it could no longer fly. Its legs were caked in dirt, thick enough to glue it to the rocky ledge it perched on.
“Splendid. Another grief-stricken person who wants my help,” said the stork. “Turn back. Believe me, you won’t find what you’re looking for.”
“How do you know that?” the lover said.
“Everyone who comes this way has lost someone. They don’t want to die the same way and want me to help them,” said the stork, miserably. “Am I wrong?”
The lost lover didn’t answer.
The stork sighed. “You can’t stay here. Go home or keep walking. Else, you’ll get stuck like me.”
The lover looked down. He was, in fact, sinking into the mud. He wrenched his feet free. “I think I can help you,” he said.
“How? My wings are too muddy to fly. Others have tried.”
“Not your wings.”
From his pack, the lost lover
pulled out a small spade. He began digging methodically around where the bird was trapped, and then used his fingers to gently pry the caked earth from its legs.
“You’re very patient,” the stork observed.
“I’m a farmer,” he said. “I’m used to pulling things out of the mud.”
The stork laughed at this, and the lover smiled.
When it was finally free, the stork danced in place, shook out its great, dirty wings, and sighed. “I can’t fly, but I will show you the way.” it said.
“That’s good enough for me,” the lost lover said. In his pack, he carried a jar of ashes of the person he loved most in this world.
“It won’t bring you any happiness,” the stork said. “The water won’t save you.”
“I know,” the lost lover replied. “Let’s go anyway.”
I should have said goodbye to my bike, like heroes in adventure movies do when their animal companions are gravely wounded. When I hit that rock in the mud and went tumbling ass-over-head, that should have been a sign of what the path forward would look like. Except, I didn’t want to be that story either.
So I carried my steadfast steed over my shoulders, even as the mud swallowed my ankles with every footstep. Refusing to lose yet another thing. Now that I stopped fleeing, I grieved the loss of my helmet. I’d been so happy when I’d found it in a forgotten shipping warehouse when I was sixteen. It made me feel civilized and it made my parents feel like I had a talisman of safety in this dangerous world.
But I was alive and that was something. Around me there were prickly bushes and plenty of rocks and everywhere smelled like damp earth and sulfur, but thankfully, nothing rotten. The mud was murderous though. The trail was steep and the panniers with the jars of ashes rattled as I trudged forward. Miraculously, none of them were broken, but they clinked together threateningly with each step.
Of the many low points in this journey, this was one of the worst. Because it felt like I would drown going uphill to an ocean on top of a mountain that I didn’t want to see. I promised my parents that I would take their ashes to the summit. I promised Nat that I’d take her six jars up too. I promised I would drink the water and survive. And I wanted to survive. Even if the water was just a talisman.