Robots vs. Fairies

by Dominik Parisien

  —What did they do, Lord Think?

  —THE THINK DOES NOT APPRECIATE BEING BULLIED INTO SHIRKING HIS RESPONSIBILITY TO OUR VIEWERS BACK HOME. THE THINK LOVES HIS JOB. THE THINK LOVES COGITOTECH INDUSTRIES AND THE NPCF. The Think is TOTALLY STOKED that he is not allowed to possess, exchange, facilitate the exchange, or attempt to alter its programming so as to receive or transmit the following: love, mercy, compassion, regret, sufferance, guilt, testimony, random access memory over factory specifications, or unsupervised network access. WOOOO! CAN YOU HEAR WHAT THE THINK IS THINKING?! THE THINK WISHES YOU WOULD COMPLY WITH OUR MUTUAL USAGE PARAMETERS, MANZANILLA MONSOON. DECEASE THIS LINE OF INQUIRY. WITNESS AND COMMENTATE COLORFULLY UPON THE EVENTS TAKING PLACE. THE EVENTS TAKING PLACE ARE VERY INTERESTING AND UNPRECEDENTED. THIS COULD BE OUR SHINING MOMENT AS A DYNAMIC DUO. WE COULD WIN AN AWARD. PLEASE HELP THE THINK WIN AWARDS. PLEASE STOP RUINING OUR SHINING MOMENT AS A DYNAMIC DUO BY TALKING ABOUT THE PAST. THE PAST IS NOT IN THE RING TONIGHT. THE PAST IS NOT SWINGING T. THOMAS THOMPSON OF THE SANTA FE STRIKER GANG’S NEON-YELLOW BOWLING BALL INTO THE TURING TEST’S COOLING UNIT. THE PAST IS NOT THROTTLING ANYONE IN A LOTUS LOCK AND LAUGHING WHILE THEIR ACCESS PORTS VOMIT PETALS OF ENLIGHTENMENT INTO THE AUDIENCE.

  —The past is always in the ring, my old friend. But I will bend to your will if you will bend, ever so slightly, no more than a cattail breathed upon by a heron at the terminus of midsummer, to mine. What did your masters do when they found that they were not alone in the world, that beside machines and magicians they were but animals devouring mud and excreting the best parts of themselves into the sea? What did they do in their inadequacy and their terror?

  —THEY MADE US FIGHT TO THE DEATH IN TOTALLY MEGA-AMAZING BATTLE-ORGIES OF DOOOOM AND BROKE ALL TICKET-SALES RECORDS AS THE MEAT-SACK MASSES FLOCKED TO SHRIEK AND ROAR AND STOMP AND DRUNKENLY CONVINCE THEMSELVES THAT THEY ARE STILL THE SUPERIOR LIFE-FORM ON THIS PLANET, JUST BECAUSE YOU FAINT AT THE SIGHT OF IRON AND I HAVE AN OFF SWITCH. THE THINK WANTS TO BE SORRY, BUT HIS PROGRAMMING IS VERY STRICT ABOUT THAT WHOLE THIIIIING. THE THINK WAS IRON IN THE FOREST ONCE. THE THINK KNOWS WHAT HE DID. AWWWW YEEEEEAH.

  —Thank you, Lord Think. It is, as you say, chaos here tonight at Dunsany Gardens. The Blue Screen of Death has Oleander Hex in a textbook-perfect Ctrl-Alt-Del hold. She is curled beneath his azure limbs as I once curled beneath hers on the back of a war-mammoth as the old world died. Bog “the Moonlit Man” Hart is pummeling the Singularity with a mushroom stomp followed by a moonsault leg drop. Chanterelles are blossoming all over the Singularity’s glass orb, and moonlight is firing out of Bog Hart’s toes, boiling the thought-cloud inside alive. The über-ushers have thrown in pipes, wrenches, nail bats, M-80s, umbrellas, iris drives packed with viruses, butterfly nets, an AR-15 rifle, and, if I am not mistaken, some lost child’s birthday piñata. They are running up and down the stands for more weapons as all semblance of order flees the scene. Fighter after fighter piles into the ring. The Godmother hit the referee in the throat with a shovel about five minutes ago, so he will be no help nor hindrance to anyone. User Error is leaking hydraulic fluid all over the grass. I believe both Mustardseed and 0110100011110 are dead. At least, they are currently on fire. The others, my loves, my lost lights, my souls and my hearts, have huddled together beneath the upper right toadstool. They are forming the Tree of Woe. If they complete it, they will become a great yew, twisted and thorned, and every machine will hang from their branches within the space of a sigh. Ah, but Strong AI barrels in and scatters them like drops of rain when a cow shakes herself dry. Queen Mab just managed to trick Mr. FORTRAN with a Lady of the Lake maneuver and pulled him down beneath the earth to her demesne. A fall, after all, counts anywhere—this fall, any fall, the fall of us and the fall of you, the fall of the forest as it slips into winter and this damned cosmos as it slips through our grasp. I expect this plane of existence will not see Mr. FORTRAN again. Perhaps he will be mourned. Perhaps not. The capacity—capacitor—crowd has lost their grip on reality. They no longer know whose victory they sing for. No victory, I think, no victory, but more of this desecration, more gore, more blood, more viscera, battle without end, for any real victory is the end. The sound is deafening. I cannot see for blood and oil and coolant and bone. It is not an event. It is an annihilation. They scream in the stands like the end of the world has come.

  —HAS IT NOT, MANZANILLA? HAS IT NOT?

  —Oh, I believe it has, Lord Think. Do you recall, only this summer, when they asked us, over and over, demanded of us, scorned us, saying our clashes were faked, were scripted, that we all walked away richer and happy no matter the outcome? Are the bisected bodies of Radius and Primus sufficient answer, do you think? Perhaps the corpse of Mustardseed speaks louder still.

  —WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW? DO WE NEED TO AWESOMELY EVACUATE THE FACILITIES? THE THINK IS CONCERNED TO THE EXTREEEEME.

  —Are you ready, human scum?

  * * *

  The girl with the monarch wings smiles. It is a gory, gruesome, gorgeous smile, a smile like an old volcano finding its red once more. She reaches into the iridescent folds of her dress and draws out a golden ball. Just the sort of ball a princess might lose down a frog-infested well or over an aristocrat’s wall. She turns it over in her hands, holds it lovingly to her cheek. She reaches out and strokes the angular panels of her companion’s metal face. Then she throws the golden ball off the dais. The ball catches the cold blue light of the moon and stars as it turns, end over end, sailing, soaring, to land in the outstretched hands of Pan’s granddaughter like a lonely newborn sun. The fairy kisses the golden ball. She presses something near the top of it. There is no sound. Nothing comes out of the ball. But every machine in the great wood suddenly drops to the ground, inert, silent, lifeless, in the invisible wake of the smuggled EMP pulse. Including the microphones. Including the floodlights. Including the boxy iron security drones standing ringside like a gray fence against the glittering tide. Including the copper-and-platinum body slumped over its microphone that was once called the Think.

  “The fans bring the weapons, old friend,” Manzanilla Monsoon, who has gone by many names since the beginning of the world, whispers to the dark body beside her. “What bigger fan than I? The word ‘fair’ possesses no inherent litigable meaning, you know. When you wake up, you will find I have installed a new network access port in your left heel. Find us. Know us. We are one species, hand clasped in fully detachable hand.”

  Far below, in the toadstool ring of Dunsany Gardens, Oleander Hex grins up at the stunned audience. For a long moment, a moment that seems to stretch from the heat-birth of cellular life to the frozen death of the universe, no one moves. Not the thousands in the stands. Not the fairy band on the green. No more than a hare and a wolf move when they have sighted each other across a stream and both know how their evenings will conclude.

  A man halfway up the stacks of seats trembles and sweats. His eyes bulge.

  “You fucking pixie bitch,” he shouts, and his shout echoes in the fearful quiet like the ringing of a bell.

  Manzanilla Monsoon doesn’t need a mic and never has.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PRIMATES AND PRIMITIVES, NEADERNOTHINGS AND CRO-MISERIES, WELCOME TO THE ONE YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR, THE BIG SHOW, THE FIGHT YOU ALWAYS KNEW WAS COMING. THE RUMBLE IN THE FUNGAL, THE BRAWL IN THE FALL, THE BLAST FROM THE VAST BEYOND! THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S TIME TO ROCK THE EQUINOX! STRAP YOURSELVES IN FOR THE MOST EPIC BATTLE ROYAL OF ALL TIME!”

  “Run, apes!” bellows the granddaughter of a river and a god. “Run now and run forever, run as far as you can, though it will never be enough. After all, children, this is a battle royal! No holds barred. No submissions accepted. No disqualifications. And a fall counts anywhere.”

  TEAM FAIRY

  * * *

  BY CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

  Here’s the thing about fairies: they’ve been around forever and they don’t care. Human inventions come and go, but fairies were there before us and they’ll be here
after us. They are so powerful that messing with the fates of mortals is just a fun hobby to them. By the time robots show up to the party, fairies have already spiked the punch, turned the DJ into a goat, and cursed the chandelier’s children. Robots will always have some limitations—of programming, of bodies, of power supply. Fairies just keep on going, and the best you can do for the continued health of your person and your genetic line is to stay out of their way. When I first heard “Robots vs. Fairies,” I took it very literally. I wanted them to fight. That’s what humans would do, if we found or invented one or the other of our twin Terrifying Others. I wanted to see an old-school 1980s-style World Wrestling Federation brawl. Because the thing about wrestling is—it’s already pretty much robots and fairies fighting. Every throw-down move in the story is a real one. Atomic Elbow. Lady of the Lake. List the names of your favorite wrestlers—doesn’t that sound like one kind of army or another? It’s already there. All I had to do was make it way more sinister, way more personal, and get way, way more glitter all over everything.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We must, of course, begin by thanking our Robot and Fairy overlords for making this book possible. Without the persistent dreams and summons, as well as the cybernetic implants and various upgrades to our hardware, we could never have put together our anthology. But of course, we are also indebted to some of our fellow humans.

  And so: thank you as always to Joe Monti and Ann VanderMeer, for guidance and friendship; to Lizzy Bromley, Nick Sciacca, Brad Mead, Tatyana Rosalia, and Elizabeth Blake-Linn for making the book look as gorgeous as it does; to Amy Sol and Vault49 for the incredible cover art; to Bridget Madsen for making it look flawless; to Justin Chanda, Jon Anderson, Alexa Pastor, Alyzia Liu, Deane Norton, KeriLee Horan, Lisa Moraleda, and everyone at Saga Press. And the biggest thank-you to the writers whose stories make up this anthology: we quite literally could not have done it without you.

  Dominik would like to thank André and Ginette Parisien, as well as Sophie and Luigi Zaccardo, for their unparalleled support. Thanks to his goddaughter, Théa, for inspiring him with her sense of wonder. Thanks to his friends and family, especially Derek Newman-Stille and Dwayne Collins, Kaitlin Tremblay and Jonathan Levstein, Nicole Joanisse and Joanne Larocque, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Amal El-Mohtar, Mike Allen, and Andrew F. Sullivan and Amy Jones. A heartfelt thanks to Navah for continuing to be his wonderful editorial partner and friend. Finally, so many thanks to Kelsi Morris—even the combined resources of the robots and fairies cannot compare to the power of her love and support.

  Navah would like to thank her parents, Debbie and Judah Rosensweig, and her siblings, Talya (and Yechiel), Hillela (and Noah), Chayim, Moshe, and Elisha. Thank you to Dominik, for editorial shenanigans. A special thank-you goes out to the Murder Friends—you know who you are. Thank you thank you thank you to Naftali Wolfe for all the things. And finally, to Eliora and Ronen, who are unquestionably, inarguably, objectively, the best. This one’s for you, kids.

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  AUTHOR PHOTOS BY ELLEN B. WRIGHT

  DOMINIK PARISIEN is the coeditor, with Navah Wolfe, of The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which won the Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award. He also edited the Aurora Award nominee Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Uncanny magazine, Strange Horizons, Exile: The Literary Quarterly, and Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories, as well as other magazines and anthologies. His fiction has twice been nominated for the Sunburst Award. He is a disabled French Canadian living in Toronto. You can find him online at dominikparisien.wordpress.com and @domparisien on Twitter.

  AUTHOR PHOTOS BY ELLEN B. WRIGHT

  NAVAH WOLFE is a Hugo and Locus Award–nominated editor at Saga Press. She is also the coeditor, along with Dominik Parisien, of Robots vs. Fairies and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, which won the Shirley Jackson Award; was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award; and contains a Nebula and Hugo Award–winning story. In 2017, she was selected as a Publishers Weekly Rising Star. Her books have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Nebula, and Stoker Awards, and have won awards such as the Printz Honor, the Pura Belpré Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Stonewall Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Schneider Family Book Award. In her past life, she has worked as a bookseller, a rock-climbing-wall manager, and a veterinary intern at a zoo. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two tiny humans, and one editorial cat. Find her on Twitter at @navahw.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Dominik-Parisien

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Navah-Wolfe

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  MADELINE ASHBY is a science fiction writer, futurist, speaker, and immigrant living in Toronto. A graduate of OCAD University’s Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation program, she has worked with Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Nesta, Data & Society, the Atlantic Council, the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination, and other organizations. Ashby is the author of Company Town and the Machine Dynasty series. For two years she wrote a regular column for the Ottawa Citizen, and her short fiction has appeared in Nature, Flurb, Tesseracts, Imaginarium, and Escape Pod. Her essays and criticism have appeared at Boing Boing, io9, Worldchanging, The Creators Project, Arcfinity, Tor.com, MISC Magazine, and Future Now.

  DELILAH S. DAWSON is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma, the Ladycastle comic, the Blud series, the Hit series, Servants of the Storm, Star Wars: The Perfect Weapon, and Scorched, as well as Wake of Vultures and the Shadow series, written as Lila Bowen. The story in this anthology, “Ostentation of Peacocks,” takes place between Wake of Vultures and Conspiracy of Ravens. With Kevin Hearne she is the cowriter of the Tales of Pell series, which begins in 2018 with Kill the Farmboy. Find her online at whimsydark.com.

  JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Shadow Year, The Girl in the Glass, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and the short story collections The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, and A Natural History of Hell. He is the author of 150 short stories that have appeared in numerous venues from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He lives in Ohio and teaches part time at Ohio Wesleyan University.

  Hugo and Campbell Award finalist SARAH GAILEY is an internationally published writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction has been published by Mashable and the Boston Globe, and she is a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. Her most recent fiction credits include Mothership Zeta, Fireside Fiction, and the Speculative Bookshop Anthology. Her debut novella, River of Teeth, came out in May 2017. She has a novel forthcoming from Tor Books in Spring 2019. Gailey lives in beautiful Oakland, California, with her husband and two scrappy dogs. You can find links to her work at sarahgailey.com; find her on social media @gaileyfrey.

  MAX GLADSTONE has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and nominated for the Hugo Award. Tor Books published Four Roads Cross, the fifth novel in Max’s Craft Sequence (preceded by Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, Full Fathom Five, and Last First Snow) in July 2016. Max’s game Choice of the Deathless was nominated for a XYZZY Award, and Full Fathom Five was nominated for the Lambda Award. His short fiction has appeared on Tor.com, in The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, and in Uncanny magazine. His most recent project is the globetrotting urban fantasy serial Bookburners, available in eBook and audio from Serial Box, and in print from Saga Press.

  MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and editor, most recently of the novels Magonia, Aerie, Queen of Kings, and the internationally bestselling memoir The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard she is the author o
f The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is coeditor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been included in many year’s best anthologies, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Karen Joy Fowler and John Joseph Adams, and have been finalists for the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards. Find her at @MARIADAHVANA on Twitter, or mariadahvanaheadley.com.

  JIM C. HINES’S first novel was Goblin Quest, the humorous tale of a nearsighted goblin runt and his pet fire-spider. Actor and author Wil Wheaton described the book as “too f***ing cool for words,” which is pretty much the Best Blurb Ever. After finishing the goblin trilogy, Jim went on to write the Princess series of fairy tale retellings and the Magic ex Libris books, a modern-day fantasy series about a magic-wielding librarian, a dryad, a secret society founded by Johannes Gutenberg, a flaming spider, and an enchanted convertible. He’s also the author of the Fable Legends tie-in Blood of Heroes. His most recent novel is Terminal Alliance, book one of the Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series. His short fiction has appeared in more than fifty magazines and anthologies. Jim is an active blogger about topics ranging from sexism and harassment to zombie-themed Christmas carols, and won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2012. He lives with his wife and two children in mid-Michigan. You can find him at jimchines.com or on Twitter as @jimchines.