The Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  Game players go through the following stages as they learn a particular game. None of this is anything to be ashamed of.

  At first, new players are not sure how the game works. They fumble, follow decidedly suboptimal strategies, take agonizingly long times to decide upon a course of action. They may consult with more experienced players when they are uncertain of the interpretation of a game rule.

  After they persevere, they gain mastery of the existing rules. At that point, they may assist in teaching others to play, and in enforcing the rules of play, both explicit and explicit.

  Finally, some game players, having understood the rules and their advantages and disadvantages, may decide that they can modify the rules by mutual agreement. There are as many variants of tag, chess, or jus ad bellum as the people who play them.

  A good set of game rules will account for all of these stages of development.

  Differing strategies

  Many civilizations, faced with this, make pyres of themselves and those around them in an effort to write themselves more brightly in the years (centuries, eons) they have.

  But there are other approaches. The parasitic elei built with corpses. The stysya lied compulsively about the achievements of other civilizations, as though this could camouflage their structures from the annihilating hand of entropy. And the short-lived ooroos were so demoralized that they halted all research mathematics.

  Questions to consider, Part 2

  1. The participants in a game come together through social accord. There has to be some mutual agreement as to what the game is, even if that understanding cannot be articulated in words or saturated pheromones. To what extent is the same true of war?

  2. Games do not spontaneously arise. They are designed, either by individuals or groups or the accretion of culture. To the extent that their rules are conventions, said rules are amenable to redesign. When is it desirable to redesign a game?

  3. What does it mean for a game to be fair? Is fairness always desirable? Consider, for instance, a game played between an eggling and an adult metamorph, in which the former’s naivety would put it at a demoralizing disadvantage; a military training simulation that encourages its player to learn the values of ambush and outnumbering the foe; a recreation of the one-sided Battle of Carved Suns, in which a fleet of millions succumbed to the dimensional trickeries of a vastly outnumbered foe, and whose players expect the game outcome to echo that of the historical incident.

  Meditations on the nature of entropy, Part 3

  There is a difficulty with our game, which is that order and entropy are properties of physics, rather than the results of a social contract. In this case, redesigning the game would no longer cause it to reflect the universe’s reality.

  Let me tell you the real story about a civilization ancient of years, which extinguished itself before your ancestors’ primordial ancestors were born—the real story of the people who called themselves the ktho. The ktho discovered their own version of Ginsberg’s theorem. They were young, then, and ambitious; even a slow-moving people made of piezoelectric crystals and metal filaments and fleeting impulses of light can be ambitious. Certainly they proved it by conquering a not inconsiderable fraction of their galaxy during their banner years.

  The ktho debated what to do about the all-conqueror entropy. Like others before and after them, they decided to defy it. Using arcane technologies, they created for themselves an enclave—an arkworld—in which order ceased to decay into disorder, in which entropy stopped increasing.

  You know where to find the arkworld, the way everyone does, although I wouldn’t advise entering it. You wouldn’t get far in any case. Inside the arkworld nothing moves. Nothing changes. Nothing lives. The ktho knew this would be the result. They were defiant but not stupid. They did the math.

  Entropy is a necessary by-product of change. Change leads eventually to death; but without change there is no life.

  The last of the ktho

  You have no reason to believe a ktho speaking about the ktho, especially not the last of the ktho, the final scribe to scratch admonitions on the arkworld’s shell. We left you a grand and terrible game. Perhaps you will play it better than we did.

  Questions to consider, Part 3

  1. Entropy War (prototype) can end in one of three ways: the death of order, the death of a civilization, or the triumph of one civilization’s achievements over the others. What are the ideological implications of the end conditions? What commentary do they make on the concept of winning?

  2. What is the optimal strategy? Does “optimal” have meaning in the context of an annihilation finale?

  3. What will you (your nation, your civilization) do?

  Robert Reed is the author of nearly three hundred published stories, plus more than a dozen novels. He is best known for his Great Ship stories, including The Memory of Sky. And for the novella, “A Billion Eves,” which won the Hugo Award in 2007. Many of Reed’s favorite titles are now available on Kindle. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter.

  AN EQUATION OF STATE

  Robert Reed

  This is where we die.

  Our orders promise nothing else.

  A long, cold journey brought us to this place. Familiar stars and every navigational beacon have been left behind. What was it that our superiors envisioned? What good would the war accomplish in such a remote realm? Not that we offer doubts. Discipline doesn’t allow doubt. Exemplary soldiers, we are instinct and orders and passion wrapped inside diamond shells and EM threads. Built to serve narrow, highly specific goals, our purpose is to fortify our next position, making a convincing statement of ownership over an anemic wilderness.

  Our army falls through darkness, and then the local sun’s light catches us and slows us as we wriggle our way out of stasis.

  Food is every army’s first need. Comet ice and sunlight are eaten, then rock dust and iron dust and the radionuclides inside. Starved bodies grow into capable brutes, ten grams or a full kilogram in mass, depending on duties. One of the next duties is to collect data, and that’s why tiny scouts scatter, mapping an impoverished solar system. There aren’t enough asteroids here to build even one respectable wall. Most of the local worlds are sterile or nearly so. Microbes hide inside cold stone and buried seas, and the large gaseous planets sport living bubbles that know nothing about what lies past their clouds. Only one terrestrial world offers a self-aware biome: water life is able to stare at its sky, making tiny assessments about the universe and its minuscule role in the business of stars and empires.

  Native life sometimes has value. But standards must be met, and this world falls short. The locals are too simple, too slow. Building fortifications from scratch is the better solution, and that’s why we retreat to the outer worlds. Comets can be easily modified. We carve out holes and brace the walls and build guns and subtler weapons along with the overlapping mechanisms to focus our rage on hated enemies. And, most importantly, we hide. Shielded bunkers will keep us invisible, and when the enemy scouts arrive, they will see nothing, and that’s how their army will be enticed into this brutal, lovely trap.

  The battle won’t be won. Victory is impossible. We are a tiny army compared to the coming multitude and every soldier accepts the blunt truth. I know this. I know because I belong to the diplomatic cadre and reading thoughts is my first skill. Yet every sacrifice gives reason to celebrate. Colliding with us, our enemies will become weaker. And even better, our sacrifice will build worry among the survivors. Their forces will have to move more carefully, and every new solar system will require precautions, and that can only slow their progress across the galaxy.

  Even diplomats have to help build the barricades, and I do that work gladly and efficiently, and then the job is finished.

  We are ready.

  Yet no enemy shows.

  Most soldiers drop into a rejuvenative stasis. But not our diplomats. Fresh intelligence might arrive at any moment and I’ll have to parse the meaning
s. Except of course nothing arrives, not one flicker of coded noise from any part of the sky, and there is nothing to do but remain alert and ready. This is the worst kind of pain, cultivating useless excitement. But what else can I accomplish? The question lets itself be asked. Possibilities offer themselves. And armed with my best argument, I approach our strongest minds, proposing a tiny mission that will mean very little to anyone, including me.

  My superiors want to deny my request.

  But I know how to read thoughts, and of course every diplomat understands how to present ideas in the best possible light. A conversation begins and builds, and suddenly my superiors realize that the creatures who mean nothing to us are suddenly just a little important.

  “Go to them,” I am told.

  “Hide among them,” they say.

  “Select a few and make assessments,” the orders demand.

  “It is my honor,” I say.

  All of us convinced that this will be a small distraction, and nothing else.

  I stand among them and talk and they ignore my simple language. Then I stomp a hoof and swish my tail, and one man delivers a fond pat to my flank, asking, “What’s the matter, son?”

  I’m not his son. I am a horse that helps pull iron-rimmed wheels and a wooden cradle along with an iron cylinder open at one end, ready to throw iron balls at other soldiers and their horses.

  I swish my tail again.

  And the soldier sees what’s wrong with the harness, loosening what was done badly by others.

  Most of the soldiers are talking, their language rather more complicated than the snorts and grunts produced by horses. I listen to each word, and my horse eyes see every color that the soldiers see and quite a bit more. Details none of them could notice are obvious to me. Water infused with proteins and lipids. That’s what these soldiers are made of, and their horses are made of, and I am, too. I wove an animal as a disguise, and being a creature of pride, I made myself powerful and even-tempered and beautiful.

  Bred to be docile and strong, horses are still very poor helpers. Food demands are enormous and we need frequent breaks if we aren’t going to fall ill or collapse. That’s why the horses and men are enjoying a much-needed rest before finishing the march. The dirt road ahead of us is lined with rail fences and farm fields and civilians who watch the blue uniforms and the cannons and the dust. Gettysburg waits near the horizon, and I am listening to the preliminary sounds of detonating powder and men dying in slow, miserable ways.

  But where I am now is not the war. Where we are, the world is calm and warm and brightly lit. The fusion bomb in the sky brings joy, and one soldier mentions that roasted chicken should be enjoyed tonight, if they can find a flock to raid in this next little while. Another soldier talks about home in Ohio. A third whispers to a left-behind lover. Mentioning the name, he sees the female naked in his mind, and I watch his smile as well as the stirrings that move the water inside his soft body, preparing him for intercourse.

  This is my third war among humans.

  It is my favorite war.

  There’s much to be enjoyed here: causes that can be seen and consequences that even dim-witted water appreciates. Each side is convinced of its noble purpose as well as the doom to come if it fails. And both sides are sure to fail. Military triumph is often brief. This is because war occurs when the armies are approximately equal in power and reach, and every battle degrades the fighters, and broken soldiers often leave children who want revenge for their fathers’ midnight tears.

  I am a horse because horses always stand near the fight. But I can make myself into any creature, including an upright beast that wears blue and talks about mating rituals and cooked birds, joking about his fear and his death when he isn’t casting long gazes at the green hills to come.

  Why not be human?

  Because the temptation to influence these creatures would be too much.

  I never stop reminding myself of that. Yet something is happening, some portion of my mind shifting.

  “Time to move,” says the soldier in charge.

  “Looking good, son,” says the soldier who likes horses, patting my flank with a flattened hand.

  I snort once, with authority. I don’t want this man to die. Which is the oddest thought for an entity like me. Empathy for a drop of water and the warm, slow life inside that water. Another fifty wars need to pass before I begin to make sense of my impulses . . . these wicked, obvious thoughts secretly dancing inside my mind . . .

  Bombs plunging from the sky will kill him, or bombs spat from howitzers. Or maybe the boy lives long enough to rise out of this hole, dying when hidden mines throw metal bits into his face, machine-gun bullets shredding his organs. Or these adversities will be survived, and he will slide past the barbed wire, allowing the enemy to beat his small, half-starved body with shovels sharpened for that one purpose. The boy’s army is miserably provisioned, and his youth and lack of strength never help in the fight for rations. But tonight is a good night, an exceptional night. The little soldier has caught a rat, killing the meat and cooking the carcass over a forbidden fire.

  I am the rat.

  It’s too simple to confess that I let myself be caught. Or that I have feelings for this one boy. But I did walk into his snare and I do have my feelings, and more than a century of living among humans has only enhanced my proclivities.

  Fire won’t kill me but the body sputters as the stick turns, and it’s a beautiful sound, fire changing muscle into a meal. I listen to the boy’s mind anticipating what is to come. A final feast before his own body cooks, in one fashion or another. He’s thinking about that. Jet engines roar nearby and he jumps. But those machines aren’t worth concern. B-52s are the true killers, and flying so high, the boy will never hear their arrival.

  My ears are everywhere. I listen to bombers throttling their engines in Guam and American soldiers laughing on the hill above. And like my companion, I listen for the footsteps of older, bigger men who would happily steal this prize from a boy.

  “Select a few and make an assessment,” I was ordered.

  I’m doing nothing else.

  Starved fingers can’t help but reach out, cooking themselves a little before prying loose black flesh and molten fat. My disguise is delicious. I see that on the boy’s face and in his thoughts. He eats, and I taste what I am to him, which is a wonder. Full of enthusiasm, he lifts the stick and carcass to his face, biting and chewing even as his tongue burns. The rat bones are as sweet as the guts, and the stick needs to be licked clean, the same as each finger. Then the stomach lies, claiming to be full, and this doomed little boy soldier thinks about his mother and sisters in the North, imagining each of them responding to the eventual news that he vanished while bravely battling the Imperialist invaders.

  There is no bravery. Not in this world. Seven months of marching and hiding and shooting aimlessly and listening to propaganda have taught the boy the idiocy of courage and its minimal power in the world. Fear rules, along with the promise of deep sleep and feasts. Living water knows that much, and a kindred spirit sits inside the happy, unfilled belly.

  I intend to leave with his shit.

  Except I don’t. Wracked by gastric pains, the boy climbs deeper into the bunker. Water and poisons have to be dropped into a special hole. But when my chance arrives, I don’t abandon him. Instead, I use my gifts for mimicry to place my mind beside his mind, strengthening the bonds between us.

  He thinks about that mother and the sisters.

  I think about the joy of a poor family who sees their only son and brother return from a fire that killed everyone else.

  But how can any boy survive this nightmare?

  Easily.

  My senses swallow his. Living hydrocarbons and fats are designed to be adjusted. Every poor world is full of untapped energy, and that’s what I sip at now. A hundred wounds and limitations are healed. The boy looks exactly as before, which is useful. A starved little body is what his fellow soldiers see when they f
ind him squatting over the latrine, shitting out the last remnants of that feast.

  Jokes are made. The most brutal man suggests one prank, and it’s the weakest man who acts on the advice. The boy is shoved and everyone else laughs. Except their victim doesn’t fall and the boy needs a fresh push.

  Two men try to bully him.

  In the next moment, every man is dead. Which will have no consequence because the bombers will target the slopes of this jungle hill, and by morning nothing about these dead soldiers or their nature will remain.

  The boy and I gather up guns and the various enhancements.

  Knowing where the mines hide and where the Americans are watching, we scale the hillside without being seen.

  The enemy dies almost as easily as his comrades. Shots in the dark make no sound, covered with elaborate antinoise. Each bullet strikes a brain. A quarter of the firebase has been murdered before the general alarm is sounded. Stolen claymores wait at the doors to the bunkers, and grenades are lobbed exactly where they need to be, and the panic builds and grown men cry and boys cry and I hear every spoken word. But my little peasant boy hears nothing except the pain and chaos. His own pain is enormous. Intimate as we are, this fellow surprises me. His desperate love for life bleeds into these other existences. When I abandon him, he will murder himself. That’s the kind of misery this brings, so many slaughtered and dozens more begging for mercy from this invincible god.

  My assessment is made.

  Now I know this species better than I know myself.

  But I am a thorough god, killing my way across the hilltop, leaving nothing in the wreckage but a new rat and a clear, sharp sense of possibility.

  I am considered the seventeenth most powerful soldier on the planet. My army numbers in the billions, each soldier loyal and perpetually ready for a fight. We battled yesterday, one war won and a second suspended so that the perfumed diplomats can have their chance to shine. I often say rude words about diplomats. Certain insults make humans laugh out loud, and the AIs emit joyful noises, though they have been carefully scrubbed of any semblance of real humor. This is one of the barricades against the machines: Humanity’s job as stand-up comedians remains safe.