Losers in Space

by John Barnes

  Fendrisol slows happistuf down by a factor of about ten, if the user doesn’t take any more. It is not a reversal or a cure; the patient progresses in exactly the same way into joyful idiocy, merely taking much longer to do it.

  Sir Penn Slabilis was unable to save Chiang from execution because Chiang said on the stand that he wanted to “wipe out the celebutards and the dolebirds and put the world back to work,” and stressed the fact that the eenies he wanted to exterminate were of extremely mixed race, “betraying the traditional human birth lines.”

  He was found guilty of 48 separate capital felony counts under PermaPaxPerity, including intentional genocide with racist motivation, aggravated bioterrorism, addictive-drug creation, and distributing an illegal substance with intent to cause a fatal injury. All of Sir Penn Slabilis’s appeals failed; on October 19, 2122, Chiang was strapped into an execution chair, and a railgun fired a cryofluorine pellet at Mach 12 through the base of his skull, vaporizing and combusting his head. By then it was far too late.

  In the laughing dive, you take dose after dose of happistuf, so that the phosphoproteins in your neurons convert into happistuf prions very rapidly. After a week or so, you’re getting more from the internal conversion than you are from what you’re gasping. Within a two weeks to a month either the process reaches the cells that run your heart or breathing or something else vital, or you stop being able to feed yourself or drink when you are thirsty. Then it’s lights out, giggling all the way, and they have to cremate you so other people won’t dig up your body and crack your skull to get at the happistuf in there. (There are social circles where gasping desiccated brains is extra-high-status.)

  Fendrisol has to be taken twice a day, and the most it does is slow happistuf down enough to give you a couple of decades as a joyful moron like Fleeta, followed by a fifteen-year progression to ecstatic vegetable.

  And the guy I’m so eager to be declared with sells happistuff. That thought comes to me along with another one: Shut up, Pop, it’s my life, my career, my chance in the world.

  To shut out the internal monologue, I ask Derlock, “So can you do anything about Bari and King?”

  “I’ll have to think about it. If I give them something that’s not happistuf, they’ll just find another supplier. So I need a trick that sticks, and I’m not sure what that would be.” Derlock’s arms fold tight around me. I wonder whether it’s really happistuf, or just feeling way too good, that makes you stupid.

  I’m almost asleep when my screen chimes. “Message from Destiny Tervaille.”

  I extricate myself from Derlock. “This one is from Aunt Destiny; it’s probably what we’ve been waiting for. Cue message up please!”

  She’s grinning at me and waving like a goofy miney in the crowd behind a popular meed. “Susan! What an absolutely delightful idea! And don’t feel bad about not having thought of it sooner; at least you thought of it soon enough. Yes, of course, we’d be delighted to have you and a group of school friends come up. I’ll probably reserve you just for myself, since you’ll only be able to be here for about a day, but we’ll get a good guide for your friends and they’ll have fun, too. Oh, but thank you! That’s what I really wanted to say. Yes, yes, come right up, and thank you for thinking of your poor old crazy Anny Dezzy!”

  “Anny Dezzy?” Derlock asks.

  “A little trouble talking when you’re three years old, and they remind you of it forever. That’s what families are all about.”

  I dress and send an equally enthusiastic message back. Afterward, I say to Derlock, “I feel like a solid gold turd.”

  “Just another paving stone on the road to fame and success. It’ll stop bothering you in a bit.”

  “Does anything ever bother you?”

  “I don’t do anything I don’t think is fun, even if most of the fun is anticipating more fun.” He stretches; I admire his body, and he enjoys being admired. “This afternoon Stack and I pinned Glisters down in the bathroom like we were going to put his head in the toilet. I could see him bracing himself and shutting his eyes and trying not to throw up or cry; once I knew he felt like that, of course we let him go and pretended we’d just been teasing all along. But it was fun to scare him that way, fun to know he’ll do what I say because he’s scared, fun to look forward to the day when I find an excuse to do it for real. Solid gold, yeah, turd, hell no.” He deliberately, slowly, looks me up and down, as if deciding to buy a side of beef. “Take off your clothes while I watch.”

  I say no, he reaches for me, and I show him some of the jiu-jutsu Pop made me learn. A minute later he’s outside, banging on the door, asking me to at least throw his clothes out to him. I tell him he’s got his thumbprint and his voiceprint and that’s all he really needs, because his room will let him in, but if he keeps making noise, someone will come out and see him. He runs off like his ass is on fire.

  I still feel like a turd; it’s still the solid gold I have doubts about. I console myself that Pop would be pleased that my time with Sensei Kronstadt wasn’t wasted, and that Derlock is probably not going to try to shove me around in that particular way again.

  I’m almost asleep when he calls to apologize. I tell him three things: that he can have his clothes back tomorrow morning; that I’ll still declare with him during the trip to Mars because the added splycterage is to our mutual advantage, even if he’s really not that great a boyfriend; and the thing I heard Mom say just before she left Pop: “You can fuck me, if I feel like it, but if you fuck with me, you won’t like what you feel.”

  By all reasonable standards, it’s a triumph. If I haven’t completely tamed Satan, I’ve made him think again, and I’m going to be his next girlfriend, not his next victim.

  As I’m drifting off, my gaze keeps returning to my parents’ and Destiny’s pictures on the opposite wall. I still feel like a solid gold turd. Nothing I can do about that.

  March 24, 2129. Bari’s room, Apogee Dorm, Excellence Shop, Oregon/Idaho District, Earth.

  Two weeks before departure day, I haven’t officially had the closursation with Bari. That won’t do. We’ve been declared for nineteen weeks, and I’ve only been cheating on Bari with Derlock for six, so I’ve got to style this. Pop always says always style everything like there’s a cam.

  Bari’s door irises. I take two little steps inside, not too far, using the door to frame me, cock a hip, reach up the wall, tilt the head—Meed Classic! “So I thought we should at least say good-bye and it’s been fun.”

  “Meed Classic,” Bari says. “You’re so good at that.”

  “Identifying the styling. Sheeyeffinit. Pomo’s been over for what, a hundred years? Ultra ultra loser. Got any brain cells left?”

  “Right now,” Bari says, “I have plenty. I just took my first gasp four days ago. So far it puts a peak in my mood and barely puts a dent in my thinking.” He beams with joy.

  Kind, sweet, sad Bari is still kind and sweet but he’ll never be sad again. I’m already too late.

  He’s pleased enough to pop. “So, now you’re Derlock’s girl. Don’t forget Clytie Ambridge put her whole life into him and then tried to kill herself.”

  “Twelve-year-olds can be stupid. And that was last year. He’s more mature.”

  “Fifteen-year-olds can be evil, and if he’s matured it’s just into a more mature evil.”

  “Don’t call him evil. We’re declaring as soon as we come out of hiding.”

  “Wow, perfect publicity.” He laughs like it’s the best idea he’s ever heard.

  I put on my best stony nobody gives sheeyeffinit what you say expression, and style Hepburn Defiant.

  Still giggling, Bari rolls off the bed and hugs me, rumpling my velvet jacket and my hair. Ultra degrading. I push him away. “Doesn’t Derlock sell you most of the stuff you use?”

  “Yeah, so what? I don’t have anything he can take from me.”

  “Your money. Your mind. Your life.”

  “The money’s not mine, it’s Mom’s, she gets it for having
photogenic tits. As for the mind and the life, I wasn’t using them anyway.”

  I have nothing to say to that; I just blurt out, “I wish you’d get treated and come to Mars with me.”

  “And with Derlock.”

  “It’s better than being dead!”

  “Oh, well, that’s where we have a difference of opinion.”

  I close the door on his storm of giggles. I’m Pop’s daughter and you don’t style me out of a curtain line—but somehow I can’t think of one.

  Derlock’s hand is on my shoulder; so he was listening at the door. “Tough closursation?”

  I slip my arm around his waist. “I wish I knew why he wants to die.”

  “He’s going to die happier than you and I will ever live.”

  “You know what I mean. He’s already started the laughing dive.”

  “I’ll load the first gasp he’ll take after we go with a hibernifacient. The dorm’s monitor will sense his body temperature falling and call the cops because it won’t be able to wake him. That should get him rescued way before he hits Fleeta’s level of stupid, let alone dies.”

  “Perfect,” I say, and hug his arm. I’m thinking, Sometimes, when you need a really good thing done, the best person to do it for you is someone who’s pure evil.

  Notes for the Interested, #5

  STYLING: performing everything you do because there’s always a camera

  Children of eenies, and mineys who try to become eenies, are always intensely aware that any moment of their lives might be splyctered into hooks and, if the hooks became popular, could raise their recognition scores high enough for an EE. It’s particularly important to look good at key times in your life that might become a story in someone’s meed.

  Nothing so important can be left to improvisation or to chance. Ambitious parents enroll their children early in classes in styling: acting to maximize attention in everyday life. There are whole trademarked systems and genres for styling; Classic Meed, for example, is a way of performing every action as if in a pre-1980 movie. There are bits that people master; Susan is particularly good at Bold Pout, a snotty, superior, commanding expression. But even when it’s just a matter of expressing an ordinary emotion like anger or pleasure, there might be a camera watching you, the moment might turn out more important than it looks, and you’ve got to style it.

  April 3, 2129. A storage shed on the grounds of Excellence Shop, Oregon/Idaho District, Earth.

  While Fleeta and I are putting together the special bags that Stack and Derlock are going to smuggle aboard, she says, “I am very worried about Bari.”

  “He’s a big boy.”

  “He is not. He’s a very little boy and a scared one, and so afraid of being a loser that he gives up before he has a chance to lose.” She is laughing as she grabs my arm. “No, don’t ignore me.” She giggles like I’m cracking her up. “I think he wants to be like me, and he doesn’t understand how much I wish I weren’t.”

  She makes me so mad. We were apart for one long summer vacation, so I could go to the moon and party, when I was thirteen, and I came back and my best friend had been replaced by an idiot. Now a tiny bit of her old self is peeking out at me again, as if teasing me. So I do something mean. “Wish you weren’t what?”

  Asking Fleeta to remember what she’s just said always throws her. That’s why I did it. Now she can’t, and she doesn’t get to tell me what she wanted to, and she knows her best friend deliberately did that to her.

  She giggles uncontrollably at how angry she wishes she could be, wiping her eyes with frustration that makes her feel as happy and relaxed as a drunk on a binge, and when she can’t stand it any longer she flees down the hall.

  It is faster to pack these bags by myself anyway. It’s easier to endure how much I miss her when she’s not there.

  It was still a mean thing to do.

  April 7, 2129. Commons Cafeteria, Excellence Shop, Oregon/Idaho District, Earth.

  When I get up there’s nothing I’m supposed to do except what I would do anyway. Derlock said if they were going to watch anyone it would be me or him, so he and I have nothing to do but act all natural and innocent.

  I go down to breakfast. Nobody sits with me. Of all the weird things, Bari is there. A guy with his habits is never at breakfast, but there he is, beaming with serene happiness, trying to style that he is not watching me.

  I finish up breakfast, look around at the Excellence Shop Commons Room for the last time, and make sure my scootsack has my cleanstick, smartcomb, and coswand, plus a change of clothes—that’s all Pop ever packs for a whole tour. The inside of my scootsack looks empty and lonely.

  When I look up, Bari is standing directly in front of me. I step into his arms.

  “Have a good trip,” he says. “Be careful.”

  “You too.” I wrap my arms around his neck and whisper, “Don’t gasp any more happistuf. Get started on Fendrisol. Today. Please.”

  He kisses my cheek, gentle and soft and shy the way he always was. “I’ll think about it, while I still can. I haven’t taken any since we talked, because I wanted to feel as much as I still could when you left.” But then he spoils it by smiling like it’s Christmas in heaven.

  I hug him hard to shut out that awful smile. It’s ultra more of a closursation than what we had in his room, even if it’s unsplycterable.

  April 7, 2129. Vandenberg Spaceport, Golden Gate District, Earth.

  The PersKab wakes me just as we’re passing Bakersfield Ruin. I use the cleanstick, smartcomb, and coswand; Glisters will have his cameras out. Funny how once Glisters had a function in life—hacking the systems, prepping for our stowaway, shooting splycterables of the girls—that boy became half as creepy and ten times as competent. He’s still a pink-skinned giant-head pervert, of course.

  My PersKab zips past maybe a hundred launch pads. Directly ahead of me, the cap is a big white ceramic cone, as tall as a three-storey building. The PersKab floats into the parking slot and clanks as it docks to the cap’s main entrance. I grab my scootsack, say “PersKab, I’m done,” and walk out.

  Another clank behind me. The PersKab slams away, its acceleration no longer limited by my comfort.

  In the main common space of the cap, I check to see that my two bags are in the pile of luggage. Stack is already there and answers my raised eyebrow with a nod. So the unofficial additional luggage is already aboard, too; it’s just a few bags with some burglary tools, enough drugs and liquor to fuel a lot of parties, some of Glisters’s purpose-built hacking gear, and extra clothes that might make the crew on Virgo wonder why we brought so many showing-off outfits, but that stuff will be essential once we emerge from hiding and into the meeds. We could still do the plan without what’s in those bags, but as Pop always says, there’s no such thing as overprepared.

  Swish. Thrum. Clank. Another PersKab docks. The cap hatch opens and admits Wychee, Marioschke, Fleeta, and Emerald. Emerald and Wychee have Plexaks, like mine, which is this month’s brand of scootsack. Marioschke has some soggy miney-handmade canvas thing, and Fleeta is actually carrying a Hobag, last November’s brand, because she can’t remember to update.

  “So what was that, the girl wagon?” Stack asks.

  “Wit. Wit. I am pierced by the wit,” Emerald says, her voice perfectly flat. Sometimes I kind of like her—sarcastic, dumpy little body and flat face, won’t get the surgery she needs, can’t dress for shit, unsplycterable, blames everyone else for the way she hasn’t just had everything fixed like a sensible girl—but if you squint hard enough you’d swear she has some kind of style all her own.

  Stack stomps over into the corner and ostentatiously stares at the console, running his hands over the locked keyboards. They don’t let passengers mess with anything. Robots are tougher and have better judgment and far faster reflexes than humans. Stack is just styling important guy with something to do.

  Meanwhile Marioschke sits, singing a soft “ahhh” in the lotus position. It’s the same game Stack is playin
g; he pretends he could fly the ship, she pretends she could levitate it.

  She seems to be even angrier than he is, and I don’t know why. Some strange compulsion makes me sit next to her. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, just… it took me so long to find some people that said they’d tend my plants for me. I thought that was really nice, and I gave them some of my best flowers. So I just got a bunch of pictures from one of them on my phone; they waited till I was here and then threw all the plants out the window onto the sidewalk, and sent me pictures with a note that said nobody likes me.” Her lower lip is trembling.

  I can’t help myself; I put an arm around her, and let her cry. After a while she says, “At least I’m going to space with people who treat me better than that. At least I’m not still back there with them.”

  I can think of at least three of my fellow moes that might be just as mean to her, but it doesn’t seem like the time to disagree. I hug her again, and try to think of something to say. I’m relieved when Glisters and F.B. come in.

  F.B. has a big stupid smile because he had something important to do and it made him feel not-worthless for once, I guess. The truth is, Glisters was the one who set up the sleeper programs that will help conceal our tracks once the cap starts on its way back down. He could have done the whole job in half the time if he hadn’t carefully guided F.B. through “helping,” so that F.B. feels like he contributed. I can’t help thinking that Glisters may be a giant-headed throwback pink geek, but he’s a kind giant-headed throwback pink geek.

  It was clever, too, because it gave Glisters an excuse to be right there to make sure F.B. got into a PersKab headed to Vandenberg—F.B. is Captain for Life of the Awkward Squad, and if anyone might have missed the launch and then accidentally blurted the truth, it would be F.B.

  Derlock is the only one that’s late. Maybe he’s ratting, right now, and we’re about to be arrested. Things like that happen around Satan. Who would know better than his almost-declared girlfriend? But I can’t think of any way it’s in his self-interest, and this is definitely a splycterworthy escapade. I’m glad Glisters is good with a camera, and I only hope we can override his weird taste in editing—he likes to cut so fast you never quite know what you saw, only what you felt—so people can see the good parts of his work. And the best parts of me, of course.