by IGMS
Enter the devil's bargain. Any Amish kid could earn their own socket in exchange for the one thing we had which others wanted: Our lives. In an age where nothing about humanity was stable, where any person might possess a thousand distinct personalities, what the Amish owned were our experiences. Our beliefs. Our years of hard, physical work. Our secure love from growing up in a deep, nourishing community.
Most Amish youth refused to sell their lives and returned to their family farms. Not me. I not only uploaded my memories, I allowed others to experiment on me, to expose me to endless personality proxies then share in my reaction. I became a woman, a baby, a genius, a warrior, an idiot, a bird, a whale, and more. For a bit of money, anyone could see through my naïve eyes as I reacted to each startling mental change.
After four years of this, though, I began to yearn for what I'd given up. Ironically, this nostalgia made me even more popular. Those who had everything had no way of missing anything. I tried to upload an explanation about the emptiness I saw all around me, how even if one connected into a million different lives these proxies were nothing but a distraction from life. However, no one understood. So I collected the scattered pieces and memories of my original life, stitched them together into a new/old personality, burned them back into my brain, and returned home to beg my God and community for forgiveness.
I didn't explain any of this to Emma. With her socket, she downloaded all the information about me and understood in an instant. "I'm sorry," she said. "Believe me, I understand."
Before I could ask her how she understood, my socket buzzed. I started to tell Emma no, but as I stared into her face I felt her utter sincerity. Asking God to forgive me, I opened my socket for the briefest of moments.
Emma's life flooded into me. I saw her as a child more than six centuries ago, growing up in Lancaster County on earth. She too was Amish, and she too yearned to see the universe beyond her one patch of ground. Like me, she sold her memories and life, but unlike me she never returned, instead living and aging across the years until she immigrated to New Lancaster as an Amish expert for the government.
But even as I learned this, I also saw her anger and regret. She hated her life, hated the emptiness of a society of self-centered people who could create anything they wished for. Emma only wished for one thing and that was the one thing she couldn't have -- to return to her family and community. Like me, she had created the proxy she now wore from the memories of her childhood and had embedded it into her brain by rewiring her very neurons. She used this hardwired proxy as an escape from her socket-driven life, or, occasionally, to interact with the planet's Amish. The rest of Emma's memories and personalities lived in her socket, connected forever and irrevocably to the very life they abhorred.
I closed my socket and said another prayer as I urged the horse up the gently sloping foothills. All the anger and hate Emma's proxies felt showed me how I might have turned out if I hadn't returned to the faith. I thanked Emma for sharing this, but instantly saw that the hardwired Emma was gone, replaced by a new proxy who sneered and called me a weak, backward idiot. I ignored her words and urged the horse to go even faster.
By the time we reached the water collection system, Emma was in rare form. She was so angry about her hardwired proxy giving me such a personal download that, as I unpacked my tools, she grabbed a knife and ran to the giant mesh nets which covered acre after acre of these hills.
"Screw Amish nonviolence," she said, dangling the knife under a section of mesh. "What'll you do if I cut this?"
"Repair it," I said. Emma smirked and sliced a long gap in the mesh. I shook my head and walked over to take the knife, but she wanted to fight for it. Refusing to do that, I simply ignored her. After cutting a few more nets, she hacked in anger at the yellow thickens growing beneath the nets then jammed the knife in the ground.
"That's why Stryder and Watkins will win," she said. "You won't fight them."
"One can still win without fighting."
Emma snickered, then zoned out as she retreated into the hedonistic paradise of her socket. While she zoned, I ran a rooter into the blocked section of pipe and pulled out a clump of thickens. While thickens grew all along these hills, I had never known them to clog the pipes. After estimating the distance to the clog, I grabbed my shovel and dug up the buried section of the nanoforge created pipe, which we'd been given in exchange for a crop of hand-grown tobacco. The pipe had cracked and thickens had grown inside, attracted by the abundant water source. It took me two hours to clear them out, an amazing fact since I could see where Sol had cleaned out and patched this very pipe the day before. Obviously thickens grew explosively fast when exposed to large amounts of water.
Once the pipe was clear, I reached for my patch kit before realizing that was exactly what Sol had done the day before. Knowing I didn't have the time to keep returning to the foothills, I opened my socket and activated the pipe's gollum. Instantly the pipe sealed shut.
Emma emerged from her socket trance to tease me. "You're addicted," she said, "so don't you dare look down on me." She then disappeared back into her socket.
I didn't say a word as I drove us back to the farm.
Over dinner that night, Emma and I explained what we'd learned. After returning from the foothills we'd had time for Emma to download the comet's data into the school house computer, where I'd run a number of simulations. Each one suggested Captain Stryder and Ms. Watkins were telling the truth.
"So there's no ulterior motive for wanting us to leave?" my father asked.
"I couldn't tell," I said. "But the information on why the comet is impacting nearby appears to be correct."
My father nodded. He ate another bite of chicken and looked out the window at the comet, which shone brightly across the darkening sky. "When the congregation comes over tomorrow for worship services, I'll tell everyone about this and suggest we evacuate until after the impact."
Before I could I agree with my father, Emma spoke up in the pleasant voice which meant she was using her hardwired Amish girl proxy. "Ms. Watkins and Captain Stryder are lying to you. They don't care about the Amish."
My father stared at his fork. "Excuse me?" he asked.
Emma stared at her plate, obviously embarrassed at having said anything.
"What do you mean, they don't care about us?" my father asked. "No offense intended, but I'm not sure you care either."
Emma nodded, and suddenly the arrogant, hateful Emma appeared. "You are correct. Concern among my people changes like the wind. Are Ms. Watkins and Captain Stryder concerned? No. Ms. Watkins believes the Amish are needed for colonization because you provide an underclass we 'English' can look down on, making our powerful yet disjointed lives seem better in comparison. Captain Stryder's proxy cares only about defending English civilization and terraforming this planet. You're fools to trust either of them."
As soon as she finished speaking, Emma's eyes flickered and she blushed a deep red. "I'm so sorry," she stammered, standing up from the table. "Please forgive me." She then ran from the house. I explained to my shocked family how the English used personality proxies, which changed from moment to moment. I also explained that Emma had been born Amish and left during rumspringa. The personality we liked was created from the centuries-old remnants of Emma's Amish memories. My father nodded with a sad look on his face, as if we'd just witnessed a horrible accident, but could do nothing to help.
"When you disturb the most basic things God has given us -- memory, emotion, soul -- can you call what remains human?" my father asked. "But that's for God to decide, I suppose."
I nodded, even as I wondered if my father would consider me human if he knew how much I resembled Emma.
The next few days passed quickly. After Sunday church services in our house, my father explained to the congregation about the comet and why he believed we needed to temporarily evacuate. The congregation discussed the situation for hours, but eventually agreed we should leave. My father and I volunteered to stay u
ntil the last minute to take care of the animals on the nearby farms while the rest of the families flew to a relocation camp four hundred kilometers away.
Captain Stryder wasn't happy with me and my father staying. Still, he said he'd spare a small AI piloted shuttle to pull us out at the last minute, as long as we accepted responsibility for our deaths if anything happened.
The next day the ships landed and our families boarded. Sol hugged me so long that I didn't think he'd board the ship. I then kissed my mother, who told me to watch over my father. They then flew away to safety.
That night, with the comet lighting up the entire sky, my father and I rode our buggy from farm to farm to check on the animals, making sure they had enough food and water and were protected from the coming blast. Now that we had time to talk, I mentioned how the thickens had grown into the pipe. He said he'd heard rumors they could grow explosively fast around standing water. He asked me how I'd fixed the pipe, to which I didn't respond.
"No matter," he said. "In the last week you have behaved very much like the man God intended you to be." He didn't say he was proud of me -- because that wouldn't have been fitting -- but I still felt a sinful pride at his words.
We woke the next morning a few hours before impact. After a final check on the animals in the area, we bedded down our horse and waited for the shuttle to arrive. It did so with a mere fifteen minutes left before impact.
"We English like to cut it short," Emma said as the shuttle's door opened. "Life's boring without a little drama."
My father started to ask why she was here, but I saw the wild look in her eyes and told him to get onboard before she changed her mind. While I didn't trust this proxy of hers, I doubted she'd do anything to endanger her own life.
Naturally enough, I was totally wrong. Emma flew the shuttle directly toward the impact zone, buzzing so low over the foothills that I saw our buggy tracks from the other day.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"I'm doing you a favor, Sammy boy. I downloaded your life last night and had a revelation. If I can't go home, I might as well save your worthless community."
My father glanced at me, but remained silent. I was about to say something when I saw Captain Stryder's ship appear on one of the foothills, where it'd been hidden from view. Emma landed the shuttle by the ship in a small explosion of dirt and thickens.
The door opened and Emma jumped out. My father and I followed. Even though I didn't want to, I accessed my socket and learned we had eight minutes until impact. I nervously glanced at the comet, which burned in the sky directly over the horizon.
As we approached the ship, a door opened and Captain Stryder emerged. "What the hell are you doing here?" he yelled, his calm militia proxy obviously overwhelmed.
"I'm on to you," Emma shouted, hitting Stryder across the face. "I won't let you do it."
With a quick motion, Stryder reached into his tunic and pulled out a stun gun, which collapsed Emma into pain on the yellow thickens. He bent over to make sure she was alright, then looked at us and shook his head.
"I sincerely want to apologize for this," he said. "I knew she was unstable, but I had no idea her disjointment went this far."
"What are you doing?" I asked.
Stryder aimed the stun gun at us. "We don't have time to fight," he said. "I'm alone on the ship. If I hurt you, I can't carry all of you onboard to safety before the impact."
"We won't fight you," I said. "But what are you doing?"
Stryder wavered for a moment, then kicked at a thicken. "They're spreading," he said. "The damn things used to only cover places like these foothills, where the mists fed them. But as the planet grows wetter they're starting to spread. What's the point of terraforming if a native plant spreads everywhere and keeps out our own vegetation?"
I stared for a moment at the thickens and thought about how hard a time we'd had removing them from a few isolated spots. I then remembered Stryder's role in removing any unauthorized biomatter which threatened terraforming. "You're going to destroy them," I said, even as my socket warned me there were only three minutes until impact. "You're going to vaporize the entire region, just like you did a year ago."
Stryder sighed. "This is the only group of thickens near a settlement. With the comet hitting nearby, we could burn the region away and say any harm to your settlement was merely unanticipated comet damage."
I glanced at Emma, who rolled in pain on the thickens. Any weapon strike big enough to completely destroy all these plants would also destroy our settlement. My anger rose at Stryder's arrogance in deciding the fate of our community and I tensed to charge him. But before I could move, my father laid his hand on my arm. Stryder smirked. He obviously considered nonviolence a weakness. He gestured with the stun gun. "Carry her onboard the ship," he ordered. "We need to be inside to be safe from the impact."
As I bent over Emma, my socket buzzed. On a hunch, I opened myself to her and a wave of information flooded in, everything from her uncovering Stryder and Watkins' plan to detailed sims showing Stryder using his ship's weapons to destroy everything within a hundred kilometers of these hills. As I watched our community explode, Emma suddenly smiled. One final, but critical, piece of information clicked into me.
I stood up and faced Stryder. "We're not going anywhere."
My father reached for me, but he didn't have to worry -- I had no intention of fighting. Instead, I uploaded the access code Emma had just given me into Stryder's ship, sealing the main door shut. A look of panic crossed Stryder's face as my socket warned we were one minute to impact.
"Open the door," Stryder screamed, but I'd already scrambled the code. He aimed the stun gun at me and fired, sending pain coursing through my body. As I fell onto the thicken-coated ground, I glanced up at the comet, which appeared unmoving and eternal yet also ever changing.
As Stryder banged on the door in pure panic, the comet entered the atmosphere with a massive, eye-burning explosion. The fire reached above the distant horizon like God's hand embracing His own. As I passed out, my last thoughts were a prayer, hoping He would forgive my sins and pull me into the sweet night of His bosom.
I woke two days later in my own bed. At first I was disoriented and thought I'd entered a sim of my parent's house, but when tried to find my way out I only felt my own body and senses. I rubbed the slight bump under the back of my skull. The socket was physically there, but the slight buzz I'd felt ever since installation was gone.
I stood up and looked out the broken window at the foothills. The distant hills were still covered in yellow thickens and I saw the glint of water on the damaged water condensers. I then walked downstairs to find my parents sitting on the back porch with Ms. Watkins.
"Sam," Ms. Watkins said, standing up and offering me her chair. "Glad to see that you are up and about."
Remembering Emma's last upload and how Ms. Watkins had been working with Stryder to destroy our community, I refused to take her seat. Ms. Watkins gave me a sour look, then shook her head and walked toward the barn, where a shuttle waited for her.
My father and mother quickly filled me in. After the electromagnetic pulse fried the sockets of Stryder, myself, and Emma, my father had pulled us behind the relative safety of the English ship. The seismic shaking hit a minute and a half after impact; the shock wave twenty minutes later. As we'd been told, the damage to the community was minimal at this distance, although ejecta from the impact pelted our crops rather hard.
Ms. Watkins and other rescuers arrived an hour later. Stryder was in bad shape -- evidently he'd relied almost totally on his socket for storage of his memories and proxies. While Emma's socket, and my own, were also destroyed, Ms. Watkins said we should be okay because we had stable personalities hardwired in our neurons. As a precaution she'd sedated us, but said there would be no lasting effects -- aside from having a dead socket in our head for the rest of our lives. She'd also half-heartedly apologized for going behind our backs in dealing with the thickens problem. Whil
e my father knew she didn't truly mean this, he still suggested several low-tech solutions for controlling the plants near the Amish settlement. Ms. Watkins had expressed interest in exploring those options.
"Do you trust her?" I asked.
"No," my father said. "But I trust God, and even you must admit He handled things rather well."
I nodded, still amazed that my socket could no longer tempt me. While I'd been praying for this ever since returning to the faith, the fact that I couldn't go back to the English world now scared me more than anything. Seeing my concern, my mother hugged me and told me to go check on our guest in the spare bedroom. I nervously walked to the bedroom and knocked on the door. An excited voice told me to come in.
Emma sat on the bed, a black prayer covering in her hands. She quickly placed it on her head and smiled.
"Your mother let me borrow some clothes," she said, standing up. Her dress was loose and baggy, and she laughed as her apron slipped from her waist. "She said I could stay as long as I want. Guess I'll need to make myself some clothes. Been a few centuries since I've had to do that."
I took her hand and squeezed it, then hugged her tightly. I wanted to ask how much of this her other proxies had planned and how much had resulted from God, or chance, or any of the above. But as I looked at Emma's happy face, I realized none of that mattered. Everyone else she'd ever been was dead and, in a strange way, both of our prayers had been answered. What else could we do but be content with the new lives we'd been given.
When I Kissed the Learned Astronomer
by Jamie Todd Rubin
Artwork by Jin Han
* * *
When I kissed the learned astronomer, I never expected to fall in love, discover intelligent alien life in the universe, and end up in jail. Up until the moment our lips first touched, I had never so much as been sent to the principal's office. My biggest infraction had been fibbing to my folks about looking for after-school employment. Up to that point, my biggest discovery had been (much to my dismay) a complete lack of any visible talent in chemistry lab. This made me think twice about becoming a doctor, veterinarian, chemical engineer, or any other profession that required mixing skills (including chef), and which resulted in yet another change in my major.