Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2019 Edition

by Elizabeth Bear

  She looks broken in half. Suddenly my ten-by-ten cubicle in dirty feels empty and crushing. I wolf down my meal, log back into clean.

  * * *

  In clean, I’m still in the hammock, Telo asleep and logged out next to me. I can’t tell what time it is because the blinds are still programed to leak out sunset.

  If there was ever a time to log into his robot, it would be now. He’d given me the passcode when I gave him the digital key to my house, and never once had I been tempted to use it. But was he okay? Did I need to warn him about the robot glitches? Did I need to see him in real life even if I was embodied in a plastic humanoid? Did I need to tell him about Alicia?

  I say his cubicle number into the air, then the passcode.

  “Accept login?” I hear.

  “Accept.”

  His cubicle looks exactly like mine, but his robot seems to be working fine. My hands, the robot’s hands, aim and squeeze correctly.

  “Telo?” I say, and the bright robot voice saying my words startles me.

  He’s probably asleep in his immersion ball, but when I open the padded door, he’s not in there. He’s not in his cubicle. He’s gone out into the dirty world. I open and close my robot hands, grasping air.

  * * *

  In the morning, the news has figured it all out, about the glitching robots having all contracted a code virus. Usually the sick ones are robots that have been repeatedly logged into. They’re working on a fix.

  Telo still hasn’t come back by the time I leave for work.

  At work, Alicia is there, but translucent and her head down on her desk, the polite way to log out.

  “She said she was feeling sick,” Fermat says.

  “Feeling sick?” I say.

  He shrugs. “I don’t need her for this part anyways.”

  If she’s sick, was it something I contracted?

  And of course, my robot gathering samples is still frozen in place. It’s like dirty was infecting clean, spiraling out of control.

  Telo, are you okay?

  Yeah, just at work, I slept in this morning.

  Late night?

  The usual.

  When Fermat logs out to use the bathroom back in dirty, something comes over me and I hug Alicia, of course falling through her empty avatar, landing headfirst on her desk inside her. Through her translucent form, I see that she’s written something on a notebook. My name, over and over. Then at the end, a phone number. I pull the notebook through her avatar form. I call the contact, one trembling number at a time.

  “Have you used us before?” says the person who picks up.

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  The woman sighs, “Okay, new customer.” A moment’s pause. “Alright, I have your details and your account. Ten p.m. tonight. Just be sure that your robot is disabled and that your cubicle door can be accessed from the outside.”

  “In dirty?” I say, terrified.

  “Are you kidding me?” she says, and she hangs up.

  For the rest of the day, I watch my flocks on the drone monitors. The robots with useful digits are all glitching, not to be trusted near the test subjects. Was I to be trusted?

  The baby kicks again, and I grip the lab desk until it passes. When I think about the phone call, my heart skips a beat. I try to call the number back, cancel what I might have just signed up for, but the number is now disconnected.

  What was coming for me at my cubicle? A delivery? A replacement robot? A person? And despite myself, despite knowing what it would cost them, me being class five contaminated, I want it to be a person. I’m willing to ruin them.

  * * *

  When I get home, Telo is waiting for me. No hammocks this time, or sunset. Just the regular couches and afternoon light. He’s left the waves programming, which he usually does before he brings up something sure to cause an argument, meant to calm me in advance. His avatar doesn’t register any of the visible effects of tiredness; he looks as perfect and unruffled as ever. But he yawns.

  My anger eclipses everything else. “Where were you last night?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You weren’t in your cubicle.”

  “You logged into my robot?”

  “You hypocrite. You log into mine all the time.”

  “I mean, I don’t mind, it’s just you never have before. Of course you can log in. But why last night?”

  I shrug. “Why aren’t you answering the question?”

  “Just the kids, obviously. With the robots down I had to help with some of the babies. What is wrong with you?”

  “You weren’t trying to help me with my research, were you?”

  “No, I was definitely not trying to help you.” He’s amused, smirking.

  I snort. I don’t know why I’m so angry. “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just—I needed you and you weren’t there. It’s glitch, I know. But anything could have happened to you.” I don’t mention my own guilt.

  “I’m here now.”

  He hugs me. I let myself be swept up. The projection clock on the mantel says nine o’clock.

  He yawns again. “Maybe we should go to bed early tonight,” he says, draping me over the bed in our bedroom. “Since we were both up late.”

  I shrug, trying to remain calm. “If you’re tired.”

  “You know you are, babycakes,” he says, nestling himself behind me. He spoons me, and we both close our eyes before we log out, our avatars back in clean locked together and shimmering.

  * * *

  In dirty, Nan is stuck folded over and motionless. Just in case, I point her camera towards the corner. My cubicle still says that it’s permanently locked, but it’s always been accessible from the outside, in case the government, scientists, or caretaker robots need to come in beyond the delivery chute. Some people are so paranoid about the bugs outside that they smash the screen, blowtorch the entrance shut. The occasion anyone would have to use it is so rare as to be ridiculous, but once, a cubicle row caught on fire and the drones couldn’t put it out. The people who had sealed themselves in burned in there, everyone else rolling their bioballs towards their new cubicle row. All of these people rolling through the smog-filled, ruined world, their own selves ruined, and now they could see each other, uglier, greasier, messier than their avatars.

  I feel nauseous and hold my head over the toilet just in case. A symptom of a disease? Nerves? Then it passes.

  Still an hour to go. It’s been a few days since I showered, and I can smell myself. I pull the curtains in the corner opposite Nan around myself, turn on the vacuum seal drain. I soap myself. If I slip and fall, no one will come running. Not even Nan can save me now. As I pass the soap over my skin, I tremble. Here, my stomach is flat. In a month, if I’m not dead from superbugs, a baby will be placed into my arms. Which version is the lie? I think of Alicia, her fingertip, my palm, and let the water touch me clean.

  At ten o’clock, nothing happens. My door stays shut, and I am alone. I want to confess to Telo right away, nudge him awake and tell him what I hoped for, how much this world is not enough, how this cubicle that I might never leave feels like a trap and all I am able to do is run in the fields of the virtual world. Would he be enough? Would the baby be enough? Would all of our research for re-entry be enough?

  The decontamination chamber outer door opens. A man rolls in, then steps out of his bioball and lifts his arms to be scrubbed by gas. The door to my cubicle opens.

  He moves quickly to wedge the inner door open with one of Nan’s arms. He freezes when he looks up, as if he’s as surprised to see me as I am him. Then he relaxes and grins.

  “Hi,” he says. “We have ten minutes.”

  I don’t say anything. My hair is dripping down my back, immediately absorbed by the floor’s dehumidifier. I keep glancing towards the door that should be shut, that should be the second barrier protecting me.

  “Here I am,” he says.

  “I’m contaminated,” I warn. “Class five.”

 
“I guess that’s the risk,” he says, like he’s not surprised. He’s much shorter than Telo, balding even though he’s about my age, skinny like all of us in real life, green eyes to Telo’s startling black eyes. He has a scar on his shoulder. His palms are stretched out to me.

  “Here I am,” I say, but I don’t move.

  When he walks towards me, I flinch, but he reaches me, surrounds me with his arms. I can smell him, his underarms, my breath on his skin. I melt, and I put my arms around his neck, and he lifts me from the floor. I am floating on someone else’s skin. A hot tidal wave inside me drowns me in him. In a week, we could both be gone, dead from infection, nothing left of us—not our cubicles or robots, incinerated; not our ephemera wiped from clean.

  “Babycakes,” he breathes into my hair. He is crying.

  I realize. The extra money, the late nights, his nonchalance about the risks of touch. Telo has touched many people before me.

  “You look nothing like your avatar,” I say, but I don’t let go. Telo is alien, uncanny, the resemblance only slight. Who are we? How can we raise a human child and teach it who we are without lying, without weeping?

  “That’s what you have to say to me?” He grabs my hair, puts his other arm underneath my legs, and lifts. He trembles with the weight of me, something he doesn’t do in clean. How little we are, for how much we can ruin.

  Everything in me gives up. “Take me,” I say.

  “Take you where?” he says. “This is how we live.”

  We’re snotting in each other’s necks, grabbing our faces, smelling each other down to the feet. I run my fingers in the curves of his ear. If we hurry, this touch could last a lifetime.

  And this is what we can tell the baby assigned to us, if we survive: We can pass on our ruin through love. This box that you wake up in is evidence of how dangerous you are with need. We will give you what we can. We will offer up the whole world to your hunger.

  About the Author

  Brenda Peynado’s stories have won an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, The Chicago Tribune‘s Nelson Algren Award, a Dana Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Dominican Republic, and other prizes. Her work has previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Tor.com, The Georgia Review, The Sun, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review Online, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. She received her MFA at Florida State University and her PhD at the University of Cincinnati. She’s currently writing a novel about the 1965 civil war in the Dominican Republic and a girl who can tell all possible futures, and she teaches at the MFA program at the University of Central Florida.

  Copyright © 2019 by Brenda Peynado

  Art copyright © 2019 by Keith Negley

  Knowledgeable Creatures

  Christopher Rowe

  A Tom Doherty Associates Book

  New York

  Before I take on an investigation for someone, I first make at least a cursory investigation of that someone. I did not adopt this practice out of any particular worries about the moral compass, or even in relation to my quite healthy sense of self-preservation. I investigate potential clients simply to avoid circumstances like this one, circumstances in which I wind up telling a story.

  So I should have known. I should have well known. I knew about the learned mouse before I agreed to work for Professor Thomasina Swallow. I have no one to blame but myself.

  Professor Swallow was a human woman, then aged forty-four years, on the faculty of the Rookery here in town. If that seems young for such a prestigious gig, then other factors of her biography will no doubt shock you even further, to wit: She was unmarried, her area of study was, and is, Second Empire military history, and when she was just sixteen and still a student herself at the Ladysmith Academy, she was adopted by the learned mouse, Coleridge.

  As for me, these are my particulars: I am the private detective, Connolly Marsh. I am an investigative dog.

  * * *

  Professor Swallow found me at a bar in the Limestone Corridor—I don’t keep an office—and immediately made her intentions clear by settling down in the sawdust where I was enjoying a bit of rawhide and ruminating over a recently completed case.

  “Mr. Marsh,” she said, “I want to engage your services.”

  I looked up at her. “Is it on a matter of some delicacy? If so, I’ll need to refer you to someone else. I’m quite indelicate.”

  The professor detached her pince-nez from her hilariously small nose, folded them over themselves, and deposited them inside a locket hanging from the gold chain around her neck. Then she sat back on her hindquarters, stuck her muddy boots out from skirts now liberally coated with flakes of pine, and bellowed, “I need a beer over here!”

  The other people present, mostly humans with a scattering of others, including the drinking hole’s owner, a curious cat familiar with the city’s jails, briefly stopped their hubbub to take in the scene. Me, a well-known dog about town, giving the side-eye to a woman dressed like a scholar and acting like a stevedore.

  “Make that two,” I said.

  * * *

  The gist was this: She had killed a man.

  She didn’t lead with that. First there was some obfuscation.

  “There’s a man where I work who is harassing me.”

  Something for her bosses to settle, I told her.

  It didn’t surprise me that a client would come to me with something like that. In addition to my investigative talents, I have a reputation—notice I don’t say that I enjoy a reputation—as something of a fixer. I’d leaned on people before.

  She kept talking.

  “This man is threatening to blackmail me.”

  This was more interesting. Though my history with secrets both real and imagined was, to say the least, fraught, I rarely resisted opportunities to turn over stones and see what was crawling under the everyday. Back then, anyway. I nodded at her to continue.

  “He came to my office this morning. Things … things got violent.”

  I raised a paw to stop her. I’d just decided I probably didn’t want to hear any more.

  “He’s dead,” she said.

  “I’m going to stop you right there,” I said. The bartender was approaching with her pint glass and my bowl. It seemed best if nobody overheard whatever else she had to say.

  After the bartender cleared out—and after I’d steeled myself with a couple laps of the house mild ale—I considered the risks, and I considered the length of my various tabs around town, including at the very bar we sat in. “I’m not saying I can help you and I’m not saying I can’t. Before I decide, I need to ask you two questions.”

  She wiped some froth from her upper lip and nodded. That was good. That indicated she’d picked up on my feeling that this should be a quiet conversation.

  “First,” I said, “was it an accident?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Not at all.”

  That was less good.

  “Second,” I said, “was it self-defense?”

  She thought about it for too long. Then she said, “Probably not in the way you mean.”

  Man, I hate it when they try to be clever.

  I stood up. “Do you have a card?” I asked.

  She dug in a pocket sewn onto her skirt and pulled out a classy-looking piece of parchment, started to hand it over.

  “Just show it to me,” I said. Humans. They think everyone has finely manipulating appendages. And pockets.

  She held the card in front of my face and I memorized the particulars, especially her office address. “Is it safe for you to go back there?” I asked. “Can we meet at your office in, say, four hours?”

  She thought too long again, then nodded hesitantly.

  “The body is still in your office?” I asked, maybe a little too loud.

  “I locked the door,” said the professor. “I put a note on the door telling the staff not to enter.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, we’ll see how well that goes. You stay here for at least half an hour. And don’t go back to you
r office until our meeting time, you got that?”

  She was taking a long drink from her pint. “At least half an hour,” she said. “Agreed.”

  * * *

  Outside, I spied a couple of crows perched on a wire stretched between two of the courthouse towers. I barked to get their attention. They just jeered at me in response, then flapped away in the drizzle.

  I cursed to myself. Crows were the only knowledgeable creatures who still had much to do with their forebears, and it was hard to tell the varieties apart. Those two had been of the antecedent type, not knowledgeable. Or if they had been knowledgeable, then they were rude as hell.

  “What’s up, Mr. Investigator?” The voice was raspy and familiar. “Why are you cussing at my kin?”

  I turned around to find Cool Charles strutting on the boardwalk behind me. He was small for a crow of any variety, but there was no doubting the gleam of intelligence in the beady black eye he had turned toward me.

  “Your reputation would be better if you didn’t fraternize with that rabble, Charles,” I said.

  He cawed, and I knew from past experience it was meant to be a laugh. “My reputation is irredeemable,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s going around. Look, I need some information.”

  Cool Charles hopped closer, clearly interested. Crows, man, they’re always interested.

  * * *

  I needed to cover some bases. One of them was making sure that I wasn’t walking into an open murder investigation. So, as was mandated by one of the court orders that I’m under, I stopped precisely one hundred feet from the entrance to police headquarters. None of the cops going in and out noticed me there in the little park across the street, and I was in kind of a hurry to talk to someone, so I threw my head back and started howling, which is something I’m pretty good at.