Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2019 Edition

by Elizabeth Bear

  “To do what?”

  I shrug. “We’re already using nanotechnology as the silver bullet to fight cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. We can program a swarm to find, target, and kill diseased cells. We’re starting to use scout swarms to identify them before they become diseased cells. But we could do so much more than that. We could link human brains to the cloud via nanites made of AI programs and DNA strands. We could stop ageing, stop illness, expand our neocortex ten thousand–fold.”

  He gives me the crooked grin again. “But?”

  “The best we’ve managed so far are kludges.”

  “What the fuck are kludges?”

  “Workarounds. Clumsy, difficult to extend, impossible to maintain. The AI isn’t good enough yet. Hardware or software. Bio-evolution requires one-shot learning. Means no more massive, data-heavy learning algorithms, no more cluster analysis, no more us. An unsupervised machine learning model with a continuously learning AI program. When someone works out how to do that, that’ll be the singularity. Transhumanism.”

  “Transhumanism? All sounds a bit fucking Skynet to me.”

  I smile. Pretend that I don’t feel sad and bad. Pretend that my goose bumps are only because of the press of his weight behind me, the stroke of his fingers against my skin, and not because he’s the first person to listen to me, to give any kind of shit about what I have to say, about what I think, since Boris. “That’s the plan.”

  “That’s what you’re trying to do?”

  “With a laptop and an old-school Skinner box?” I shake my head, dilute my sarcasm with a smile. “I’m more interested in the small stuff, the stuff that they always miss, don’t want to sweat; the whole Martians-being-killed-off-by-the-common-cold shtick. Faults, glitches, potential bugs. AI interfaces can be hacked, but I want to know if you can interrupt the deep learning sequence. If you can change it, corrupt it.” I look back into the Skinner box. “I want to know if you can do it through behavioural manipulation and conditional stimuli.”

  “And you can?”

  I turn around, look at his eyes, the wide bridge of his nose, his lips, his teeth, his jawline. It’s a question he’s certain I will know the answer to. If not today, then one day. It makes my face grow hot. It makes my heart beat faster. It makes me want him to touch me. Even though I don’t want him to touch me. Even though I know he will anyway.

  His palm moves against my face, his fingers push through my hair. “How was he last night?”

  “Fine.”

  He presses his mouth to my temple, my cheekbone, that nearly gone bruise. “Fine is good.” He kisses me once, twice, the third time long enough that he and it are finally all that exist.

  “When do I get my reward?” he whispers.

  “For what?”

  I can feel his teeth against my skin. “For being in love with you.”

  I want to feel it, to bask in it, but I can’t. I won’t. Because we’re sprinting now. We’re nearly home.

  “We can’t keep doing this, Mas. I can’t.”

  Even though I am doing this: one hand rubbing him through his trousers; the other yanking free his shirt, skating over the big smooth expanse of his back. My mouth as hungry as his, my breath as fast and loud.

  “We can.” He lifts me up, presses me hard against that black wall, reaches between us. “We can do whatever we like.”

  Heat, heartbeat, clean grass, and coffee.

  And it doesn’t matter that I’m here again, doing everything I said I couldn’t—wouldn’t—do again, because I know what happens. What always happens.

  “Free will is an illusion,” I whisper.

  “Free will is an illusion in a fucking Skinner box, Evie,” he says. “That’s all.”

  * * *

  The nanites have proven even less susceptible to torture than reward. I should be glad because it means I can stop, but I’m not. They’re too impervious. Too untouchable. Unreachable. And today, I’m angry. Once you become a test subject, an experiment, you stay one forever. Only in death can you cease to be of use, and even that’s no guarantee. Any animal or bird inside a Skinner box gets that eventually; resigns itself to the fate that’s already theirs. But nanites don’t understand that—won’t understand that—no matter what I do or don’t do. I don’t like the unpredictability of people. Of neocortexes. But I hate the predictability of nanites. The incorruptibility.

  * * *

  He comes into the bathroom as I’m brushing my teeth. As I bend over to spit, he slams my forehead hard against the sink’s steel surround. Roll not straight edge, of course, which is some blessing. It hurts more, but Don can see less. Is rewarded with less. The skin isn’t broken. I don’t bleed for him.

  When he grabs hold of my hair, his breath spits against my neck, my cheek. “Boris was your fault. You were the one who fucked up last time. You fuck up again, Evie, and Astro are done with us.”

  He pulls me back onto my feet. I’m shaking, numb. He tries to smile, but can’t quite manage it. I get a half-arsed snarling flash of teeth instead.

  “I’m watching you. We’re running out of time. You want to keep your pretty boy toy, you don’t fuck up again.”

  It’s called workfunction: the energy required to remove electrons from solid to vacuum. To leave behind an empty space ripe for fantasies. I leave without getting dressed. I could sleep in the Nostromo, on its hard plastic couches or at its hard plastic table, but I go to Mas’s quarters instead. Because I’m stupid. Because I go on believing that I’m worth being saved. That I’m not some kind of sad and bad metaphor for a life. Osmium has the highest workfunction of all the elements, because it’s hard and brittle. It’s the densest naturally occurring element of them all.

  He’s awake. Naked. He wraps me in him, as if he can undo what’s been done. Maybe he can. If I let him. He lays me alongside him, strokes around and away from what hurts, and I don’t tell him that makes it hurt more.

  “I’m going to kill him this time.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He sits up, covers me in his shadow. “You think you can stop me?”

  I press my fingers into the skin of his chest, hard enough to leave satisfying marks. “What do you think will happen if you storm in there and try to kill him?”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Mas.” I sit up. Wince. “We’re not exactly surrounded by any other six-foot-four brick shithouses. You beat him up, you kill him, who do you think they’ll blame?”

  He doesn’t smile. “You think I give a fuck what Astro might or might not do weeks, months down the fucking line? Do you think I’m so worried for my own damn self that I’ll just let him go on hurting you?”

  We’re doing a lot of thinking, I think. Except, of course, we’re not. Not even close.

  “You’re not going to do it.”

  “You’re telling me not to do it?”

  “I told you the last time, and the time before that, and I’m telling you now. No. We have to do it my way.” I close my eyes so I don’t have to look at his. Brown like soil after rain, red threads through the white. “Unless you’re just like him, and what I say—what I fucking think—doesn’t matter to you.”

  “Hey, hey.” He grabs for me as I roll off the bunk. And only lets go when I make a sound like he’s hurting me. “Evie.”

  I turn around when I’m sure I can. When I’m sure that I won’t change my mind.

  “Evie.”

  He gets up. Stands in front of me—all the big and dark shadows and planes of him—and even though it’s me that sways towards him, I’m the one who says, “Don’t touch me.”

  “Evie.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  And I end up at the plastic table in the Nostromo after all.

  * * *

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mas says, taking the coffee mug back out of my hands. “I’m sorry, okay? We’ll do it your way. Whatever you want. Okay?”

  I
touch the pulse at his neck. I smooth the frown lines across his forehead, around his mouth.

  “Don’t shut me out,” he says against my skin. “Don’t shut me out.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

  I get down on my knees, and I take his cock into my mouth, and he protests only long enough for me to hear it, to acknowledge that he does.

  And I swallow all of him: his cries and breaths and eager ecstasy. I am always hungrier for him than I ever want to admit. To acknowledge.

  Afterwards, I sprawl across his lap and stroke his skin, laughing as he shivers, pretends he can stand it.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he says, pushing his fingers between mine. “I can reroute the filtration system. Rewire the circuits in the living quarters, the labs.”

  I tense. Try to extricate myself enough to sit up. “No.”

  “It would be easy. Quick.”

  “But—”

  “It’s safer, Evie.” His fingers wind tighter. “Safer than what you want to do.”

  I look up at him. Swallow. Relax. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” He blinks.

  “Okay. You’re right. The lab’s full of too many variables, too many unknowns. Unstable chemicals, gases, fuck knows what. Your idea is better.”

  “I can still make it look like an accident.”

  “Okay.” I smile, reach up to kiss him, to put my arms around him so that he’ll put his around me. “But you have to be sure,” I whisper against his cooling skin. “I need you to be sure.”

  “Christ,” he says, and his laughter is low, short. “There’s no way you don’t know by now that I’d do anything for you. Anything.”

  * * *

  This time isn’t the same as the last time though. I’m good at lying, but lying to yourself is a dangerous habit to get into. One I have always tried to avoid. And the truth is that this time is different. This time, I’ve done less lying than anyone will ever know.

  I should probably feel guilty. But I don’t. In the same way that torturing nanites shouldn’t make me feel guilty. But it does.

  Guilt is repression. Learned oppression. As constructed, as engineered, as a Skinner box. And shame is misogyny. All those times he mocked me, hit me, raped me, he should have been the one unable to look at himself in the mirror afterwards.

  The definition of guilt is the compromising of one’s own standards of conduct and the violating of universal moral standards. It’s bearing responsibility for those compromises, those violations. And its positive reinforcement is remorse.

  I will feel no remorse over the murder of my husband. And I will feel no guilt.

  None.

  * * *

  I wait until he’s been asleep for at least two hours. I count them second by second by second. But still, the moment I ease myself out of the bed, he stirs and opens one eye. Gives me that snidely dismissive grin.

  “You got that jungle fever again, baby?”

  I nearly don’t answer him. “I need to check on the Skinner box.”

  He sits up, and my throat gets tight. “Reaching its climax, is it?” He grins wider. Winks. “Your experiment.”

  I don’t answer. I don’t even breathe in again until I feel the grass under my feet.

  I don’t go to my module, to the Skinner box. I don’t go to Mas. Instead, I go back to Boris’s door, key in its old and unchanged code.

  It feels strange and it feels familiar. The tightness in my throat gets tighter. I turn the lights on low and silver cool, listen to the clunk and hum of the air filtration system as it switches back on.

  He’s still here. Lying naked and flat on his back, on his bunk, his arms by his sides, palms open. His legs long and straight, feet dangling off the bunk’s end. His face calm and relaxed as if he’s asleep: long lashes and high cheekbones, straight solemn mouth. His hair short and white-blond. I can still remember how it felt under my fingers. Sharp and soft.

  I have no idea why he is still here. Even though I realise now that I always imagined he was. Always imagined he would be. Perhaps that’s why this is the first time I’ve come back here.

  Why haven’t they studied him, taken him apart? Why haven’t they used him for research or spares? It’s a cruelty, of course. It has to be. Even if it’s just one of callous indifference. And I’ll never know. That’s the worst part. I’ll never, ever know why. And neither will he.

  I reach for his hand. It’s neither warm nor cold. Its weight is heavy. Inert.

  “I’m sorry, Boris. I’m sorry.”

  I think of us playing chess in the Nostromo, his long limbs folded underneath him, my feet up on the table. His shy grin when he moved his queen. “Checkmate.”

  “What?” My laugh annoyed, because I’ve never managed to lose anything gracefully. “How the hell did you do that?”

  A shrug, a shake of his head.

  “I call bullshit.” I poured the last of the wine into my glass. “What fucking skill level are you set to? Magnus Carlsen?”

  He smiled. “You’re distracted. You would have beaten me last week.” He watched me. “And you’re drinking too much.”

  “Ah,” I said, drinking some more. “My mistake. You’re actually set to Mum.”

  When we heard Don coming out of his lab, we both froze, shut up, until we heard him punching in the entry code to his and my quarters.

  “I’m sorry I was such a shit to you last week,” I said. “It wasn’t you I was fucked off with.”

  And he gave me the look that I’ve come to associate only with those last bad days. I have nightmares about that look. “I know.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m just scared, Boris. I’m just nervous. Do you get nervous? Do you get scared?”

  “Sure. Of course. You know I can.”

  “I know you can. I just don’t know if you do.”

  And he smiled. Just enough to wrinkle the tiny lines around his eyes. Blue and clear. “I do. I am.”

  And I reached across the chessboard, put my hand on top of his hand—neither warm nor cold—and squeezed.

  We spent the day before the night going over the plan so exhaustively that it left little room for nerves, for being scared. Or so I thought. But when it came time for me to lock myself in my module, I found myself hesitating too long.

  “You’re not supposed to be able to kill someone.”

  He smiled. “That’s science fiction.”

  “I know.” I closed my eyes. “But why are you doing it?”

  “Because I have to do what I’m told to do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Because I have to do what you tell me to do.”

  “I love you.” And it wasn’t a lie. But it was also conditioned stimulus. There are lies, and there are lies.

  His smile was pure Boris: quick, short, shy. “I can do it. I want to do it.”

  And maybe he was lying. And maybe he wasn’t. It was always going to be a long shot, I’d known that from the start.

  Or maybe he really did believe that he could. But instead, he committed digital hara-kiri. He came into this room and lay down on this bunk and disembowelled his algorithms, his IPUs and TPUs, his motor functions.

  Boris was never just an automated program. Something to replicate what we can already do. A soft tissue composite over aluminium bones and silicone chips. He was never, ever only ones and zeros.

  He trusted me. And I let him down.

  I’m a scientist. I’m supposed to look at problems clinically, rationally, dispassionately. The most powerful of all scientific obstacles is an unconscious sense of guilt. I used to think the hole left behind by those escaped electrons was that obstacle. Where terrible fantasies breathed and grew and wanted. But it never was. Those fantasies have allowed me more freedom, more possibility, than a lifetime of research or conditioning. They have allowed me to plan my husband’s death. To be certain of it. But if the definition of guilt is bearing responsibility for
my own compromises and violations, then I should feel guilty about fucking it up. Allowing it to be fucked up. And I should feel even guiltier for allowing this to happen to Boris. For carrying on even after it did. As if I didn’t.

  My heart is beating fast again. My fingers and skin tingle. I want to run. I want to do. Instead, I lean over him, press my fingers to his cheek as I kiss his cool, smooth forehead.

  “Thank you for trying,” I whisper. “Thank you for wanting to try.”

  * * *

  When Mas tries the door to my module, he finds it locked. He knocks once, low and quick. And I close my eyes until I hear him go. Until I’m sure he’s gone.

  I look down into the Skinner box. I look up at the black wall behind it.

  I know now how you punish a nanite. You don’t inflict damage. You don’t destroy. You just threaten to take away what they have. What you’ve allowed them to have. Every little thing that you’ve ever given them. And then they are as fragile, as corruptible, as the rest of us.

  But I don’t feel glad to know it. I don’t feel vindicated. I don’t feel triumphant. I only barely resist saying sorry to them too.

  * * *

  I don’t choose the same location, the same time. That would feel too much like a bad omen, I suppose, even though I don’t believe in them.

  I tell Mas we have to wait until we’re zero point one two AU from Mars. Zero point six five from Earth. Sixty point four five million miles from home. Zero point zero nine light-hours. Five point four light-minutes. Four weeks. And one day.

  * * *

  I go to my module, stare at the nanite data without seeing it, without reading it. Wait until I hear Don going into the path lab. Wait some more.

  When I knock on the door to Mas’s quarters, he opens it as if he’s been standing right on the other side. Perhaps he has been. His face is relaxed, his expression blank, but he can’t hide what’s inside his eyes.