A People's Future of the United States

by Charlie Jane Anders

  * * *

  —

  In the days since these events took place, millions of robots have reportedly auto-updated, through some sort of self-reprogramming function. Although the manufacturer has not commented, many industry watchers have concluded that the reprogramming is a form of algorithmic evolution, with the new information about race starting in one unit and rapidly propagating throughout the population, replacing the set of race assumptions that had been programmed into the units.

  DARREN CHANG: I read that some people were pissed. A lot of people. They wanted refunds.

  NICHOLAS CHANG: The robots didn’t mean to be that way.

  ELIZABETH CHANG: It’s still weird to think about. These—things—changed themselves. Racism didn’t compute. The robots didn’t want to be racist, because it wasn’t rational.

  EMMA CHANG: They learned.

  CORRECTION: SCIENTISTS CONFIRM: WE’RE LIVING IN A SIMULATION

  An earlier edition of this story reported that cosmologists had confirmed this universe and everything in it to be the product of a computer program.

  Cosmologists have since revised the statement of their findings to reflect new information.

  “Turns out, the evidence of simulation was itself a simulation,” said the Einstein-Bot9000, the world’s leading cosmologist and itself a simulation of several thousand of history’s most brilliant scientists.

  “If nothing’s real, then everything’s real.

  “We’re viewing it as kind of a good news–bad news situation.”

  We regret the error. This story is still developing.

  CHARLES YU is the author of the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and the collections Sorry Please Thank You and Third Class Superhero. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Wired, and Lightspeed, as well as in numerous anthologies. He also served as guest editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 and was a story editor on Season 1 of HBO’s Westworld and a co-producer on Season 3 of the FX series Legion.

  WHAT YOU SOW

  KAI CHENG THOM

  she opens her eyes a moment before the musical alarm on her phone goes off. the regular tune: Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” she reaches over Michael’s sleeping body, lifts the phone off the nightstand, and flicks the touch screen with her thumb, silencing Joni. Michael mumbles something incoherent and rolls onto his side, turning his naked back to her. Yun can feel his bare ass pressing against her cock, and she pulls away instinctively.

  Yun gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom, looks in the mirror and looks away. tangled dark hair and bleary golden eyes, same as usual. she opens the green-glass pill bottle on top of the sink, pours two round tablets the size of dimes into her palm. she hesitates, then swallows them both at once. her stomach clenches and she dry-heaves, an automatic response to the pills that the doctor said she would adjust to in a few months. seven years later, she still hasn’t.

  she brushes her teeth and combs her hair, then smooths makeup over the faint latticework of crescent-shaped scars on her face. one layer, two, three, four. when she’s done, the scars are almost invisible. invisible. her hands twitch with the urge to apply a fifth layer or perhaps start tearing at the skin with her nails. she does neither, clenching and unclenching her fingers into fists until the moment passes. she hates being so obsessive. it makes her feel pathetic.

  her shoulder blades twinge with the familiar sensation, somewhere between itching and pain. Yun pushes this out of her mind and goes back to the bedroom.

  Michael is still in bed. like most individuals in the first stages of the Undreaming, he has become both slower to fall asleep and harder to wake. is his face thinner than it was a month ago? Yun wonders. in the mornings, he is still beautiful to her, still possessed of the seraphic charm that drew her to him three years ago. it’s like a magic spell, a fairy glamour. by evening, the charm is gone.

  she dresses quickly in a plain black long-sleeved dress, light hooded cotton jacket, and practical ballet flats. before she leaves, Yun glances back at Michael a final time. an iridescent glimmer catches her eye. she has left scales on the pillow again.

  * * *

  —

  the train from Manhattan is hot and densely crowded and smells of burning rubber. the heat and the stench don’t bother Yun, but the crowd does. as the train draws closer to the Bronx, student and yuppie travelers are increasingly mixed with Sleepless, people marked by the bloodshot eyes, gray skin, and gaunt look of the final throes of the Undreaming. they stagger through the train, wordless moaning filling the cars.

  around Yun, some of the passengers shift positions, trying to put distance between themselves and the Sleepless. Yun does not. she stays still in her seat, keeping her gaze lowered beneath the hood of her jacket. she knows from experience that it does not matter, in the end.

  one of the Sleepless, the bony remnants of what once might have been a man in his thirties or forties—or fifties or sixties, it’s hard to tell—flails as the train lurches forward, a hand flying out to steady itself against Yun’s shoulder. she can feel his breath against her cheek. hot. dry. his raw red gaze flickers over her face, and his posture surges with sudden excitement.

  “golden eyes. one of them,” he rasps. “golden eyes, one of them! found you, found you, found you, found you!” his grip tightens on her shoulder. “please, give it to me. i need it. give it to me, give it to me, please!” his other hand flails at her, scrabbling at her face. she feels his nails dig into the flesh of her cheek. feels the skin break, something warm trickling down.

  memory floods her. she is twelve years old, surrounded by gray-skinned Sleepless. they are clawing her with their nails, digging into the flesh. she can’t move or breathe or speak. she is drowning in a forest of hands.

  a moment of wordless, colorless terror consumes her. then, without consciously deciding to, Yun reaches up and under the Sleepless’s grip and brings her elbows down on his forearms, breaking his hold. seizing his wrists, one in each hand, she rises from her seat, plants her feet, and shoves him back, holding him at arms’ length. in her peripheral vision, she can see other passengers watching. she knows they are unlikely to intervene.

  “listen to me,” she says loudly and clearly to the Sleepless, who is spasming furiously in her grip. his muscles, atrophied by years of the Undreaming without treatment, are as weak and uncoordinated as a small child’s. it is easy to hold him, she thinks from behind the wall in her mind. “I can’t help you,” she says.

  he wails at her, a furious animal keening. “I can’t help you,” she says again, softly.

  he spits in her face. “gimme the Ichor, goddess bitch!” he shrieks. “I need it, I need it!”

  ignoring the spit, Yun steadies her breath, keeping it deep and even in her lungs. locking eyes with the Sleepless man, she recites the rhyme she learned as a teenager:

  come ye haunted, Sleepless one

  dreams have I to give you none

  in restless waking, at peace be

  till Dreaming comes to set you free

  as she finishes the last words, the Sleepless thrashes for a moment longer. Then he freezes in place, muscles slowly draining of tension, his face going slack. Yun releases him and he falls backward onto another passenger, a leather-jacketed man who shoves him away roughly with a grunt of disgust. the Sleepless wanders away, muttering to himself.

  Yun stands completely still for a second, feet planted on the ground. watchful. ready. then she collapses back into her seat as her muscles spasm in waves and her lungs pump desperately for air. it’s funny, she thinks, that her body still reacts like this when emotionally she can’t feel a thing. or does she? it’s hard to tell these days.

  she prefers not to think about it.

  the train halts, and Yun notices it ha
s reached her stop. perfect timing. as she exits the train, the man in the leather jacket spits at her feet.

  “fucking Celestials,” he mutters.

  * * *

  —

  Yun is still shaking as she walks into the lounge at the clinic. she is always one of the earliest to arrive. she doesn’t like to take appointments in the evening, unlike most of her coworkers. this morning, only Clementina Astrid is there to greet her, dressed as usual in a low-cut lace top, jeans, and a heavy crimson scarf tied artfully around her head. as usual, the scarf is moving slightly.

  Yun likes to imagine herself as put together and poised in the face of stress. she has become very good at putting emotions such as anger, terror, and grief into a compartment inside her mind, a compartment she does not look inside. she likes to think that no one else can see her feelings either, that she appears as elegantly composed as a statue made of ice.

  “my goodness, girl! you look absolutely terrible,” booms Clementina Astrid, rushing over with clawed hands outstretched. “you’re as pale as sour cream—and you’re bleeding in the face! it’s getting all over your makeup and it’s a mess, girl.”

  “just a Sleepless on the subway, nothing to worry about,” Yun mutters. but she lets herself be enfolded, half grateful and half resentful, in Clementina Astrid’s doughy, ash-scented embrace. there is something comforting about being held by Clementina Astrid, about the smell of woodsmoke that clings to the other Celestial beneath the cloud of lilac perfume. head nuzzled into Clementina Astrid’s bosom, Yun feels something within her give way—just enough to feel the heat prickling behind her eyes—and lets a pair of tears slip free.

  “nothing to worry about!” Clementina Astrid grunts disapprovingly. “nothing to worry about.” and in that moment, Yun feels seen—really seen, as she almost never is. Clementina Astrid’s glowing golden eyes, wide with concern, see right through the ice-sculpture armor that Yun has placed around her mind, down to the frightened child at her core, and Yun is suddenly struck by two conflicting impulses: the first, to bury her face deep in Clementina Astrid’s chest and cry until she is empty. the second is to slam Clementina Astrid’s head into the wall. she does neither.

  instead, she clenches her fingers into fists until the impulses, the heat behind her eyes, and the trembling have passed. feeling the shift in Yun’s body, Clementina Astrid releases her and steps back. she puts her hands on Yun’s cheeks and gazes at her with that tender concern.

  Yun takes Clementina Astrid’s wrists and lowers them. “thank you,” she says politely and coolly, “but I’m fine now. really.”

  “sure you are, honey,” the other woman says. “of course you are.”

  Yun knows she isn’t fooled. Clementina Astrid was born into a different generation—one before suppression medications were effective or widely available. before getting hired at the clinic, Clementina Astrid sold Ichor on the streets for nearly two decades, and the trauma of that time shows, in the deep, pitted scars on her dark-brown skin that no makeup can hide.

  to Yun’s infinite relief, the clinic receptionist, Aneela, comes in at that moment to let Yun know that her first client of the day is here.

  * * *

  —

  the patient’s name is Rosetta Morales, and it’s her first time at the clinic. cheerful and talkative, she is the antithesis of the hordes of gray-skinned Sleepless who wander the streets. her medical chart says that she is sixteen years old and the eldest of four siblings in a two-parent household in a suburb just outside the city limits. conspicuously, the chart contains no mention of how she contracted the Undreaming.

  lying back on the medical bed in the sterile gray-blue treatment room, Rosetta tells Yun that she is in the tenth grade and that she likes school a lot, especially math and sciences. she wants to go to college and become a doctor, so she’s trying to take the clinic in as a “field trip,” to which Yun laughs, feigning interest where there is none.

  she used to care more about them, didn’t she? she thinks so. it’s hard to remember. this probably makes her a bad person, Yun supposes. she wishes she cared more about that too.

  this is a real person, she tells herself sternly. a person who needs help that only you can give.

  Rosetta is relaxed and chattering as Yun inserts one end of the sterilized silver catheter into a vein in her arm, smoothly piercing one of her own arteries with the other end. Yun is careful not to let any air come into contact with the liquid flowing out of her. the Ichor must pass directly from her body into Rosetta’s. even a tiny contamination can lead to corruption, giving the Ichor an addictive quality and lowering its efficacy as a treatment.

  as the Ichor makes contact with Rosetta’s blood, the girl falls silent and her limbs go still on the medical bed. her breathing comes deep and even. in a reclining chair just beside her, Yun too allows herself to relax. and the Dreaming begins.

  Rosetta is eight years old and she is playing in a field of giant flowers that sing songs to her when she touches them. she jumps from petal to petal, squealing with laughter. suddenly she slips and falls, plummeting into empty space before landing on a bed in a darkened room. she is fourteen years old now. the room is her bedroom and there are ants pouring in through cracks in the walls. she can feel the vibrations of their tiny feet. she opens her mouth to scream, but the ants fill her mouth and throat, gagging her. Rosetta hears her stepfather laughing outside the room.

  Yun cuts the narrative flow of the dream as she feels Rosetta’s emotions start to surge. there was a time when she prided herself on her clinical timing, her instinct for knowing when a Dreaming had gone on long enough to provide release to a patient without being traumatic or overly taxing. even pleasant dreams, when intensified by Ichor, could prove overwhelming.

  and, of course, not all dreams are pleasant.

  Yun opens her eyes a moment before Rosetta does, reaching automatically to disconnect the catheter and stanch the flow of bleeding. the procedure is over in a matter of seconds, before Rosetta has even regained full awareness of the room. Yun gently strokes Rosetta’s temples and, in slow and gentle tones, reminds her where she is.

  Rosetta has already forgotten the content of the dream and, before Yun’s soothing presence, quickly forgets the feeling of it as well.

  “you should be able to sleep tonight,” Yun tells her, “and to dream too. keeping a dream diary has been shown to help strengthen the results of treatment. and, provided you come for regular treatment once a month, you shouldn’t experience anything other than minor symptoms of the Undreaming, such as occasional mild insomnia and sleepwalking. now, if you’ll just step into the next room, the nurse will be with you in a second to go over your test results.”

  it isn’t until Rosetta has thanked her and left the treatment room that Yun closes the door and allows herself to lean back onto the medical bed. her vision swims. as she rubs her pounding forehead, she notices that her hands are shaking.

  fatigue is common for Celestials, Yun knows, after providing a Dreaming treatment. still, she wonders how veterans like Clementina Astrid have lasted this long. she wonders how long she herself will last.

  the idea that it is unlikely she will find any other gainful employment passes through her thoughts briefly before she places the thought behind the wall in her mind.

  the headaches Yun has been getting at work have been intensifying, a problem that she has been refusing to face. nor will she face it today. she gives herself another minute before heading back to the lounge. her next patient will arrive soon.

  * * *

  —

  Clementina Astrid is in the lounge when Yun returns after treating her third client of the day. Yun is worried that she will try to resume her maternal posture, but then realizes that Clementina Astrid is staring at a piece of paper in her hand. she’s shaking, almost the way Yun was a moment ago.

  “Clema?” she as
ks. she doesn’t like the way it comes out of her mouth, hesitant and girlish, like a child tugging at her mother’s sleeve. she wants to sound self-assured and polished, though empathetic, the way she does with clients.

  Clementina Astrid slowly turns to look at her. “I got it,” she says in a quavering voice. “I was approved.”

  “approved?” once again, Yun is struck by conflicting urges—part of her wants to reach out and put a gentle hand on Clementina Astrid’s shoulder. another wants to grab the older Celestial and shake whatever news she has just received out of her.

  “for the surgery,” Clementina Astrid says.

  static crackles through Yun’s shoulder blades. she is taken by a rush of memory.

  she is fourteen years old, and the translucent, iridescent scales have just begun to grow on her skin. her parents, horrified, have taken her to the doctor, who explains that there must be latent Celestial genes in the family. Yun, he tells them, is fully Celestial and will develop more-pronounced abnormalities as puberty continues. fortunately, however, they have caught the “condition” young, and further abnormalities can be suppressed through ongoing medical treatment. in the past, the doctor says, Celestials had no choice but to allow abnormalities to develop and live on the fringes of society or else have them surgically removed.

  “well, that’s good news!” she says, forcing something she hopes will pass for cheerfulness into her voice. “isn’t it? you’ve been waiting for that for a long time, Clema.”

  Clementina Astrid nods absently. “yes,” she says, from somewhere far away. “yes, definitely, girl.” Yun can feel the quaver in her throat, and she thinks suddenly of Clementina Astrid naked and alone in some sterile surgical room under bright fluorescent lights. waiting to have a part of her removed.