Mitigated Futures

by Buckell, Tobias S.

  Loser.

  Elaine started to cry over the mud. "I'm sorry I didn't call. I was too damn stubborn."

  ***

  She could feel the storm eating at her from the inside. Dissolving through her skin, her leaking eyes.

  "Elaine?"

  Her fingertips tingled as the rain lashed at them.

  "Elaine!"

  She held them up in the air as the wind slapped at her jacket, trying to rip it away from her shoulders like a desperate lover.

  Hands grabbed her shoulders and twisted her around. She stared at the man in front of her without understanding for a moment that she was looking at a face. Weathered and leathery, with gray-green eyes and faded blond hair.

  "Elaine," he said again. "You shouldn't be out in this. We need to get to shelter."

  "I recognize you," she said, dazed. "You look familiar."

  "Hannes," he shouted over the increasing wind and rain. The sound of droplets striking the mud and puddles was overwhelming. Thunder cracked. The world split itself apart with light and then faded back to normal.

  "Hannes," Elaine said.

  He had taken off a mask, which he now slid over her face as he steered through the mud. His shoulders were firm. She hung onto them. A stable foundation in the gusting winds.

  "Why are you here?" she asked.

  "Used to come out here drinking with him and your brother," Hannes said. He steered her into a strange-looking car with giant wheels. "Though we were not supposed to. They liked having me along, I could tell them what best to buy to go with the rain."

  Inside, once the doors shut, the wail of the storm muted, Elaine found a curious calm. There was space to think as the effects of the storm trickled down through skin contact and deeper into the space under her skin.

  She looked out at the gray darkness and wet.

  Chemicals. She remembered when the rain had started causing side effects, and people started analyzing it. Realizing that the genetically engineered organism let loose to gobble up the miles of plastic trash floating in the Pacific had somehow gotten signals crossed and instead began pumping out a cocktail of modern pharmaceuticals before they were sucked up into the clouds.

  Or maybe that had even been on purpose.

  Conspiracy theories always had seemed silly, but right now, staring out of the window, nothing seemed out of reach.

  Hannes got in, exposing the inside of the car to the maelstrom outside.

  "This is intense," Elaine told him. She probably needed to go to the emergency room. But then she remembered something. "You're Hannes!"

  He laughed. "It's intense for me too, and I'm used to it. Yes, I'm Hannes."

  "The weather guy."

  He smiled at her. "Psychopharmacological weatherman, yep." He started the car and they bumped along the sand and mud, balloon tires carefully moving them along. "I was going to turn back when I saw your sister whip past, but then I saw you standing there in the rain. The storm's going to get worse."

  "Worse?" She couldn't imagine worse.

  "There's a microburst about to hit," he said. "We should take shelter."

  "You can tell that?" She was suitably impressed. "I thought you were just sensitive to what moods the storm would bring. What is this one going to bring?"

  "It's an MDMA riff," Hannes said.

  "What?"

  "There was a low pressure front of a very mild hallucinogenic at the start. Maybe some feel goods. Now there's some other contaminants, but it's basically raining ecstasy right now. I don't know what's coming in the microburst. That's why I want to take shelter."

  "You don't know?"

  He looked at her and grinned. "Storm's too big, too complex. It's passed over huge chunks of the ocean out there. It could have picked up anything. It might have picked up a little of everything."

  ***

  The road back was washed out. Hannes eyed the muddy water sluicing past the dip, guardrails buried under the chocolate milkshake of flood, then shook his head and turned them around.

  "This would be a horrible place to die," Elaine said. "After all the work I did leaving, and building a life in Michigan, I still end up caught by a storm here in Cali."

  "There's a small welcome building up here, with some exhibits inside," Hannes said. "As long as we reach it in five minutes we're fine."

  "They think I'm stuck up and unhappy," Elaine told him. "Bev and Jack. They think I stayed away because I'm dry, and hiding. But the truth is, I'm on a mission. I'm focused. And I'm happy back there. I run my own goddamn business. And it's going well. They don't understand that people who know what they want, and are on a mission for it, they're in good shape."

  "Jack doesn't think you're unhappy," Hannes said, veering off down a gravel road as debris struck the side of the vehicle.

  "He was like dad. He was good to me. And he just wanted to live on the beach. Leaves people to be themselves."

  Hannes smiled, tanned skin creasing in the corners of his eyes. "And there's something wrong with that?"

  "No." She didn't think that anymore. She knew that was just a way of knowing what you wanted. "I used to think they were directionless and didn't have a fire in them like I did. But it's a different fire."

  Hannes nodded and wiped greenish-tinged water away from his forehead. "Why'd you leave? No one would ever talk about it." He looked over at her. "Some of us missed you."

  Hannes missed her? He'd lived four blocks down and been a year behind. She barely remembered him as one of Jack's beach buddies that wandered in and out of the house. There'd always been other itinerant friends Jack adopted, living on his floor or passed out on the deck with a blanket.

  "I was offered a buyout," Elaine said to Hannes.

  "What?"

  "A buyout. Someone wants to give me millions to sell my business."

  "I didn't know you had a business." They stopped in front of a stone building with overhanging terra cotta eaves.

  "I built an intellectual property rights firm that manages off brand three dimensional plans for desktop printers."

  Hannes looked over at her, bemused. "Are you going to sell?"

  Elaine looked out at the sheets of pelting rain. "I don't have a fucking clue." But it was nice to let that secret out into the muted space inside the vehicle, where the words could settle into the soft plastic of the dashboard.

  It made them real for the first time, instead of a secret ghost following her that even she hadn't acknowledged.

  ***

  The visitor's center was locked down, so Hannes came back with a crowbar and broke the lock as the storm seemed to double and then triple its intensity. The entire world smelled like the back of a pharmacy, now. Suffocatingly chemical.

  When she stepped inside the protected air of the center, protected by stone walls, the clean air felt like a vacuum sucking her lungs out.

  She coughed and staggered. Held onto Hannes.

  "Hannes?" she asked in the dark, once he shut the solid wooden doors behind them. "Did you really miss me?"

  The idea that the historical, absent space she'd tried to create still had some reach surprised her.

  Hannes looked down at her. "Of course. You had a fire. Energy. Purpose."

  "Purpose?"

  "You were always looking at the future. Planning. You would talk to people about what was going to happen when desktop fabrication became common. You would talk about things like 'disruption' and 'intellectual property' and most of us didn't even know what the hell you were talking about. But you were smart."

  "I geeked out on that shit. I didn't think anyone paid attention," Elaine said, shaking sharp smelling rainwater off her skin.

  "I became a pharmacological forecaster because of you," Hannes said. He stepped closer. The rain soaked shirt clung tight to his abs. They were as rocklike as his shoulders had been.

  Statuesque.

  A lot of fine marble, she thought.

  "Because of me?" she asked.

  There were zones here, she real
ized. The world. And inside of that, the town around them. The storm. Inside the storm, the Visitor's Center. And inside the center, they'd just stepped forward into a tiny little world that just contained the two of them, dripping wet.

  It made sense, that they'd end up here, she thought muzzily. They'd affected each other, before she'd attained escape velocity and gotten away.

  Now she was back.

  Closer and closer. The Center spinning around them both. She reached up and kissed him. Their tongues sparked with what felt like left-over lightning. She grabbed his shirt and ripped, and the tearing sound continued, gathering in tone and intensity.

  The entire room shook. She staggered back, and looked up to see the roof peeling away.

  ***

  Invaders from another world descended with flashing lights and machines and ripped them apart. Elaine held onto his hand as hard as she could, but didn't have the strength.

  "Hannes!"

  ***

  She threw up all over herself and pulled at something jabbing deep into her forearm. Machines beeped warnings, and something pricked her.

  Elaine sighed and rode out into the ocean, letting herself spin slowly in circles and dissolve into the foam of the receding waves. She burbled happily as she spilled between the grains of sand.

  ***

  The sun cut the room into bright and shadow, and Elaine blinked. A half eaten breakfast tray caught her attention. Had she eaten that?

  Her memories skipped and warbled about like a flock of happy starlings.

  "Oh thank God." Bev stood up and walked over. "You overdosed on the storm. They found you and Hannes sheltering in the Visitor's Center."

  She looked like walking guilt.

  Elaine wanted to believe that. But then, who had decided to come down to the funeral when she'd abandoned the family? And who had decided to do that to avoid a hard decision? And... it didn't really matter, did it?

  Elaine took a deep breath. "About the house..."

  Bev waved her quiet. "The storm took it."

  "What? Was it that bad?"

  "Other than the roof to the Center you were in and some minor damage, no. Hannes knew the microburst was coming, but it wasn't that bad. Dad told us he fixed the termite problem we'd been having with something a friend of his gave him. But he was wrong."

  Elaine sat up, and the room wavered a bit. She took a deep breath. "Is everyone okay?"

  Bev nodded. "We went next door."

  "So there's no house?"

  "It's all a heap." She folded her arms. And then, to Elaine's surprise, started laughing. "Fucking, dad, right? Of course it was riddled with termites. Shit."

  "We'll use the insurance money to rebuild it," Elaine said. The words came out strong and sure. She could see the path in front of her. She knew what came next.

  Bev laughed sadly. "No insurance."

  "No insurance?" Elaine couldn't parse those words. "None?"

  "Dad." Bev tapped the tray with the half eaten food on it.

  "Dad." Elaine bit her lip.

  ***

  She asked after Hannes, and one of the nurses took her to a door propped open with a chair. Hannes sat on a bench outside with a half-burned cigarette held delicately between his fingertips.

  "You're kidding me," she said, sitting next to him. "You smoke? Who does that?"

  "The few, the ashamed, but belligerent," he said.

  "I can't believe I kissed a smoker," Elaine said, deciding to storm the hill of awkwardness.

  Hannes actually blushed. "Look, about that, I'm really sorry. We were out of our minds back there in the storm. It was raining chemicals. We would have been..."

  "It's okay," Elaine said. "I understand. But Hannes, what were you really doing coming up there. You're weather sensitive, you predict storms. And you weren't all that close to my family."

  He dropped the cigarette and stubbed it out with the tip of his hospital flip flops. "I was doing the whole, 'what if' thing," he admitted. "For so long, I had this image in my head of what you had become, based on a sort of idea I thought I had of who you were."

  "So you came to the funeral to connect with a high school crush?" Elaine asked.

  Hannes laughed. "You make it sound worse than it was. Look, I really did know your dad pretty well, and I was just... I don't know. But I'm glad I went. I'm not going to say I learned something about myself in that storm, but, it certainly helped me prioritize."

  "Near death experience framed everything for you?" Elaine asked with a bit of sarcasm.

  "Something like that."

  She put her elbows on her knees. "I had an epiphany."

  He looked over. "Really?"

  Elaine smiled. "When the roof ripped off. I'm angry about that. Been thinking about it ever since I woke up. I'm going to sell my business. And create a larger fabrication business, one that just prints out whole houses that can withstand hurricanes, microbursts, earthquakes, floods. Whatever. Because this heavy weather shit is getting more and more common." With walls that filtered air, she thought.

  "I believe you'll do it," Hannes said.

  "And I need to tell Bev I'll use the money I make off the sale to rebuild dad's house again for us."

  "You thinking of staying?" Hannes asked.

  "No." She looked at him, answering a question he hadn't voiced. "I have a life back where I came from. A life I love. A whole world. But, I want this to be here. It should be here. You know?"

  A tiny trace of disappointment flicked across his eyes. But he understood and nodded. "It'll be nice to have the old beach house in some form still up there. The rich folk hate it."

  She laughed. "That'll be half the fun in rebuilding it more or less like it was."

  He stood up. Elaine did to, crinkling her nose at the acrid smell of smoke on him. "You'll want to leave by tomorrow afternoon, to get home. In the afternoon there's an eighty percent chance of stimulants. You don't need that after your overdose."

  She smiled. "Thanks, Hannes." She hugged him. Impulsive, but happy. He walked inside, not looking back.

  For a moment she stood out there in the dry heat, looking around at the parking lot and a set of alien-looking palms. And then it was time to move and go back inside to be with her family again, really, for the first time since she'd left.

  Mirror, Mirror

  Gwenda Bond was guest editing a special YA issue of Subterranean Magazine and approached me about writing a story. Not only was I flattered to be asked, but it immediately gave me an excuse to pull out this idea about augmented reality I’d been mulling around in the back of my head for several years.

  I’ve been fascinated by augmented reality ever since I first came across the idea. Watching apps on the iPhone pop up that layer data over a realtime view of the environment fascinates me. Of course, as exciting as it is, the truth is humans have been adding meta-tags to our physical environs for a very, very long time. Businesses have signs hanging outside announcing what’s inside. People put up posters. Others graffiti. This is all superimposed data.

  What is interesting about augmented reality is that we’re allowed more layers of simultaneous data to be added to the environment. We’re also potentially adding very advanced visualizations. You could conceivably look at a building and get a wiring map overlaid. Or see a 3-d cutout. Or who’s inside that you know.

  But I began to wonder, what other ways could we alter what we see around us that would have unanticipated results. What, for example, would the cosmetics industry do with really interesting augmented reality. The moment I wondered, Mirror, Mirror came to me. All I had to do was write it.

  Can you see yourself in these glasses? They’re called mirrorshades. They’re antique. I found them via someone in Topeka at an estate sale. They’re not replicas, they’re actual mirrorshades. I think a cop wore them. Like thirty years ago.

  I came over here because I wanted to tell you a story, so don’t get all excited. I do represent the agency, yes, but I just saw you here, and I thought, I
should tell you this.

  And no, I’m not drunk. Just tired. It’s the fourth day of tryouts, and we’ve interviewed hundreds of applicants.

  So my story is about these glasses, right?

  ***

  Tell Aden the glasses look stupid on his face, and he’ll call you an idiot. They’re retro-cool, and he likes them because no one else has a pair like this.

  He’s a cool-hunter. Of sorts. He values unique. And he has an aesthetic about him that screams ‘you’ve never seen anything like this: I stand out and I like it and this ensemble is almost ugly it’s so unique and non-standard, and that’s okay because I know what I’m doing.’

  It’s pretentious and loud and it does the job.

  He meets Riki in Ann Arbor in Michigan, because yet another damn storm has swept out of the Arctic North. The jetstream has gone all wobbly, and cold air is being dumped down across the midwest. It’s negative twenty-some degrees. Planes are grounded all over the place. Idiots are asking ‘what global warming?’ And people are shouting back that the jetstream wouldn’t be jacked if it wasn’t for good ole G.W.

  So Chicago’s out of the question. The planes are useless. He’d rent a car, but no one will rent one to someone under twenty-one. And all the self-driving cars are already rented by passengers who’d rushed out of the train before him.

  Aden’s paid for a sleeper on a train that was supposed to wind its way out across flyover country and get him to NYC… eventually. Because here in redneck-country trains are considered socialist plots and are barely tolerated this one leaves at ass-o-clock in the morning and will take almost two days of travel to get to NYC.

  And so it goes.

  But that damn thing breaks down in Ann Arbor due to the cold. The passengers are all disgorged into the bitter air and told to find somewhere warm for three hours while engineers work on the train.

  So Aden, shivering because his clothes, while stylish, are hardly suited for survival in the midwest in the heart of winter, finds himself in a warm coffeeshop. And he’s hunched over, hugging himself and shivering, the damn glasses all but frozen to his nose, when he looks up at the cashier.

  “You’re beautiful,” he says to her, momentarily forgetting about the cold and the hassle and every little indignity of travel.