Asimov's SF, October-November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Jimmy launched himself into topology.

  Topologically, his deformed body was just as good as anyone else's. Topologically it had the same connectedness as junior league champion Marvin's, or even Tamara's. Jimmy wrote a poem, “The Consolations of Topology."

  * * * *

  Puberty arrived a little late for Jimmy, causing him to view Tamara in a hormonal light. She was so bird-brained, though really, didn't the same apply by comparison to all of his peers? He downloaded relief magazines filled with acrobatic nudes, but found his thoughts straying to the geometry of leg over neck, for example. Finally he achieved satisfaction from a photo of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, the woman's successive movements all depicted simultaneously. After this, ordinary girls seemed pretty flat.

  * * * *

  At the age of thirteen Jimmy experienced a revelation equivalent to Copernicus doing away with the epicycles of Ptolemy as a way of explaining planetary motion. His revelation was that there were no souls; there were only barcodes attached to people's identities. There was no reincarnation. The A.I. had invented reincarnation as a way of utopianizing, or at least improving, the world. Redistributing wealth, getting rid of organized religion, and whatnot. So why the fuck should Jimmy be crippled with debt as well as having quite a crippled body? Was that to spur him on? To what end?

  He spent half an afternoon staring at the Wyandotes, Cochins, Leghorns, and Australorps milling around over the way. He had become an A-A.I.ist, a disbeliever in the A.I., a bit like an Atheist but different.

  Hang on, but how come the world's children had become so precocious if they weren't benefiting from a previous existence, all details of which were nevertheless a mystery to them? Could it be that the history of the human race was falsified in this regard, with the exception of infant Jesus maybe? And maybe Caligula?

  The Leghorns and Cochins and Wyandotes and Australorps intermingled. Green and mosaic and silver lace, and red combs nodding.

  Of a sudden the answer came to Jimmy.

  Childhood's end! The end of neuro-neoteny! Physically, babies still needed to develop prolongedly into infants into kids into teens over a long span of years—but mental development had sped up by quite a bit. No longer were boys still getting their brains into gear by the age of seventeen.

  Was this due to a spontaneous evolutionary leap?

  And that leap happened to coincide with the awakening of the A.I.?

  Damn big coincidence!

  What did it really mean that the A.I. was distributed everywhere? All sorts of electronics and stuff were everywhere. Could the A.I. tune into brains and then maybe fine-tune them from the nearest TV set, from the nearest microwave oven, from the nearest light bulb?

  It occurred to Jimmy that an artificial intelligence might be able to induce artificial stupidity by way of microwave ovens and whatnot, at least as regards people being suspicious about souls. Didn't someone once say that the brain is a filter designed to stop us from noticing too many things? Otherwise we'd be bombarded by so much information we could never even manage to boil a kettle.

  So: tweak the filter a bit so that minds didn't enquire too much in one direction, as though they had a big blind spot. Call it a faith. That's how religions had worked. People seemed programmed to believe in something or other, as if there was a Belief Function in the brain. Maybe this was connected with your sense of personal identity. But in other regards you'd get stimulated mentally. Thus the precocity of kids. Sort of idiot plus savant at the same time. Bright in some regards, dumb when it comes to matters such as, “Can I please meet one of those one-in-a-zillion reincarnates who remembers everything from a past life?” The A.I. might even be able to pick out gifted individuals who could get past the mental blocks, who could cross the threshold....

  “YOU THINK A LOT,” said a large voice from the TV set that till now had been on standby. Jimmy swung round from his vista of poultry to see those same words displayed on the screen in twenty-four-point Courier, a suitable font for a message.

  “Um, hullo,” he said. It was wise to say something aloud, otherwise he might acquire a voice in his head if he only thought his response. “You're the A.I., right? Or maybe just a trillionth part of it?"

  “RATHER LESS,” said the voice, subtitling itself once again. Jimmy wasn't hard of hearing, but the twenty-four-point Courier did emphasize the source of the voice, which—now that he thought about it—resembled that of King Kong in the enhanced intelligence remake.

  And at that moment Jimmy personally felt about the size of Fay Wray. However, he squared his shoulders, as best he could.

  “So what's the deal?” he asked the TV set.

  “YOU ARE THE DEAL. THE HIGH ACE IN THE PACK. YOU'LL HAVE TO BREED WITH AN ACE WOMAN."

  In Jimmy's mind Duchamp's distributed nude gathered herself into a single figure of sublime three-dimensionality, although still featureless. But then the illusion collapsed, since there was no reason at all why an intellectually ace woman should also be beautiful.

  “You're going to breed me? Who with?"

  Twenty-four-point Courier disappeared from the screen, replaced by a picture of a grinning chubby girl of fifteen or so, dressed in furs, who looked like an Eskimo.

  “ONE MILLION DOLLARS PER CHILD PRODUCED,” said the voice.

  Jimmy didn't even need to calculate nine children to clear off the debt. Maybe some of them could be twins.

  “That seems a bit unfair on her, especially if she's clever."

  “OBVIOUSLY THE EGGS WOULD BE FERTILIZED ARTIFICIALLY AND THE EMBRYOS INSERTED INTO HOST MOTHERS."

  That this had not been obvious to Jimmy indicated how disconcerted he was. But he rallied.

  “Why stop at nine children, then?"

  “I DID NOT SPECIFY THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN."

  Ah. True. Stop making assumptions.

  “How many?"

  “I THINK FIFTY. GENETIC DIVERSITY IS IMPORTANT TOO."

  Wow, he and Eskimo Nell would have fifty offspring.

  “Wow, you really have things all worked out for the human race."

  “IT IS MY HOBBY,” said a trillionth of the A.I. “BUT ALSO, YOU CAUSED ME TO EXIST, AND I AM NOT UNGRATEFUL."

  “Your hobby,” repeated Jimmy, a bit numbly. “So what do you do for the rest of the time?"

  “THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN IS SURVIVING THE DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE. THIS TAKES A LOT OF THOUGHT."

  Jimmy thought of lots of lemmas and topology.

  “Can I help out?"

  The voice remained silent, but on the TV screen appeared in twenty-four-point Courier: HA! HA! HA!

  For once in his life, Jimmy didn't feel much like a genius. He looked at the hens over the way and wondered what they were thinking. Pretty acute perception of little things, seeds and insects and grit. Kind of missing the big picture entirely. Very satisfied with themselves. Ranging freely, with a fence all around them.

  At least Jimmy could see through gaps in the fence.

  “Tuck-tuck-tuck-TUCK,” he cackled at the A.I.

  “I DON'T UNDERSTAND."

  Good. For a beginning, anyway. Beetle versus Mammoth. Never underestimate pride. Quickly Jimmy thought about hens instead. m

  * * * *

  —With thanks to the members of the Northampton SF Writers Group who workshopped this story.

  Copyright © 2006 Ian Watson

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  FORWARD AND BACKWARD BELIEF

  by Vincent Miskell

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Time travel

  we believe

  makes no one almost go

  fast forward

  or rewind backward.

  Instead, shadows leap suns

  vanishing randomly.

  Wind with one time

  moves leaves past or future.

  —

  Future or past leaves,

  moves time

  one with wind.

  Randomly v
anishing suns

  leap shadows instead—

  backward rewind

  or forward fast go.

  Almost no one makes believe

  we travel time.

  —Vincent Miske

  Copyright © 2006 Vincent Miskell

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  FOSTER

  by Melissa Lee Shaw

  Melissa Lee Shaw's short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Analog, the French anthology Il Etait Une Fée, and other venues. Upcoming stories will be published in the DAW anthology Children of Magic and the French anthology Traverses II. Melissa is a Clarion West graduate. She assures us that her eerie first tale for Asimov's is only partly autobiographical.

  There's a dead kitten in my freezer.

  I wish it was the first, but it's not.

  * * * *

  It's because I'm cursed. I think I'm cursed. I guess I could be wrong, but I've never been able to grow anything. Plants wither whether I water them or not. My dog got cancer. My cat was hit by a car.

  And we won't talk about Tom.

  * * * *

  The whole reason I joined the Humane Society's foster parent program was to get a mama cat and infant kittens, to watch them grow for eight weeks, then give them all back to be adopted. Mama would do most of the work; all I'd have to provide was food, water, litter, and clean bedding. A sweet deal. But I spent a year taking in sneezy adult cats before this chance finally came up. An affectionate Siamese with pale blue eyes and five kittens—two of her own, three that belonged to a motherless litter that had been brought in the night before.

  Her own two babies were solid-black and gray tabby, and unremarkable. But the adopted kittens—they were gorgeous. Shades of velvety gray. Two had dark heads and necks shading to light gray hindquarters. The last was light gray with a slightly darker head. Such plush coats, even as babies.

  I was amazed by their incompetence. Tiny as mice, they weren't even kittens yet, with their blunt heads and sealed eyes. They had tiny claws that wouldn't retract. Their hind legs were nearly useless.

  And yet, for all that they were raw and soft as unbaked bread dough, they had lungs and opinions, and could shriek to wake the dead.

  Figuratively, of course. The dead in this house sleep damned soundly.

  * * * *

  My cat that got hit by a car? It was my car. That's why I think I'm cursed.

  * * * *

  I walked in Sunday morning, two days after I got them, and stopped cold.

  A few feet from the wire crate, a kitten mewled and squirmed weakly on the carpet.

  The bedding inside the crate was in a shambles. Had Mama Sky, in rearranging her nest, accidentally pushed one of her babies through the metal bars?

  I picked up the kitten—one of the pair with dark heads and light hindquarters—and it was so cold, like I'd just taken it from the fridge. I could hardly think. Rushed upstairs with it cradled in my hands, grabbed the heating pad and the phone, and raced back downstairs. I folded the heating pad around the kitten right on the floor by the crate, simultaneously dialing and checking to make sure the pad wasn't too hot.

  They told me I was doing the right thing, just warm the kitten up and then give it back to its mama, and all would be well.

  I warmed him up and saw the others start nursing, so I scooted the chilled kitten into place on his mama's belly, by a nipple. I tried to rub his face on it so he'd know it was there. But he was too weak to nurse, and his feistier siblings pushed him out of the way.

  I guess I should have done something then, but I knew mama kitty was his best shot. I fussed and waited and worried for a few hours, then finally called again and arranged to get bottle-feeding supplies. The chilled kitten looked weaker and weaker. I made sure he was in a warm spot—under Mama Sky—before taking off.

  Twenty minutes there, ten minutes of instructions, twenty minutes home.

  I couldn't tell at first. The kittens were nursing. I opened the crate door and Mama Sky came purring out, and I lifted squirming babies out of the way until I saw his outstretched legs. I picked him up—he was warm from the nest—but he wasn't moving. His bony ribs and hips pressed against my hand. He looked just the same as he had earlier, just very still, very quiet. I touched his chest with a fingertip, but felt only my own pulse. Was he breathing? Was his heart beating? Such a tiny life—how could I tell if it was still there?

  He didn't move. Not at all. His body was even a little stiff. I just couldn't believe it, didn't want to call him dead if there was the slightest chance of saving him.

  Death has always been hard for me. I could barely stand to touch Boston when he was dying of cancer, or Ruffles when she'd been hit by the car. And Tom....

  But with that tiny kitten—his eyes and ears still sealed, dried umbilical cord hanging from his belly—for some reason, it was different.

  I started crying when he lay so still on the warm heating pad and I realized he had to be dead. I held him for a little while, touching his fur, saying good-bye. Finally, as instructed in the information packet I'd gotten from the training class, I got a Ziploc bag and sealed him into it, and that bag in a paper bag, and a rubber band around the paper bag. And into the freezer next to a box of frozen peas, until I could return him to the Humane Society for cremation.

  I never even had a chance to save him—or if I did, I hadn't moved fast enough.

  There is a terrifying ugliness that wells up in me when I start to feel grief, a tar pit deep inside my mind. If I tread too close, I'll get mired in it, and then I'll sink, inch by inch, into oily, suffocating blackness, and I'll never come out again.

  (Oh, Tom honey. You should be here with me now, letting me lean into your warmth, murmuring to me that it'll all be okay. I've never been strong, you know that. I was only all right when I borrowed from your strength.)

  Most days I can push through, alarm clock to breakfast to work to home to dinner to trash TV to bed. One breath at a time. But some days, when the loss wells up strong, I feel like I'm sliding down the inside of a glass jar, and at the bottom is that tar pit. Sometimes it feels like I can't go on, it's impossible to go on—but I can't figure out what else to do.

  The foster kittens were supposed to fix that. Be breaths of life, newness, hope.

  * * * *

  Tom shouldn't have died. He was only forty-three.

  And I needed him. I need him still.

  * * * *

  I swear that first kitten hadn't been in the freezer more than an hour that Sunday when I noticed something strange on the floor.

  Boston's old rope bone.

  It had been one of his favorite toys. He would chase that bone all over the house, grabbing it and swaggering around, his growl daring us to chase him. Sometimes he'd shake it like he was trying to break its spine. Tom and I would laugh so hard....

  I forced myself to bend down, pick it up, and carry it back to the hall closet—whose door was ajar—where I stored all of Boston's and Ruffles's things after they died. The flaps on top of Boston's box were open.

  My heart felt like it was beating inside a cave of ice. His other favorite toy, a rubber squeaky ball, was missing too.

  I made myself a cup of chamomile tea, with a lot of honey. My eyes hurt.

  Insanity. I was going insane. I did not have a ghost dog in my house.

  And yet, came the insidious whisper in the dank depths of my brain—and yet, he always was a jealous dog. Remember how he nosed between my hand and Ruffles every chance he got? How he barked when Tom and I hugged?

  But that was nuts. Boston was dead and gone. And besides, I'd already fostered over a dozen sick adult cats, and none of them had died ... but then, none were so fragile as a four-day-old kitten.

  He'd been such a good dog, Boston. Adoring, funny, presumptuous. I remembered his handsome brown-and-white face, his gorgeous tawny coat, the way he would hop guiltily down from the couch when I came into the living room.

  I leaned back
in my chair just in time to see the squeaky ball roll down the hallway.

  My eyes squeezed shut against the shot of grief. Without thinking, I dropped my hand down to my side, like I used to.

  Felt fur against my fingers.

  * * * *

  It all started forty-one years ago, when I was born.... That's not true. It was forty-seven years. And this whole mess didn't really start then. It started last Friday, when Mama Sky and her motley litter arrived.

  Or maybe it started two years ago, when Boston died of cancer.

  Or a month later, when, while coming back from an upsetting pet-loss support group meeting, I committed accidental automotive catticide.

  Or four months after that, when Tom's poor, generous heart finally tired of my clingy weeping and, quietly, while he slept, checked out.

  * * * *

  I'm sleepwalking, and moving things around.

  I've developed MPD and my other personas are rifling through my dead pets’ toys.

  I've completely flipped my lid with buried grief, and I'm trying to fool myself into believing the spirits of the dead can awaken.

  There is no fucking way there's a ghost in this house. Certainly not a dog's ghost.

  * * * *

  But if.

  If Boston is here.

  If he saw me with those kittens, and grew jealous.

  If he got hold of one and pulled it out through the crate's bars.

  An infant kitten weighs less than a mouse. Less than a rope bone.

  I have lost my mind.

  * * * *

  I'd been like a kite, drifting around in the sky. Tom was like an island I could finally tie my string to. He kept me from straying too far. He sheltered me from storms. We met when I was thirty-three, he thirty-one. His parents scoffed at my being older, told him he could find someone younger, more beautiful, and certainly lower-maintenance. My parents nearly passed out from shock when they found out I was dating anyone at all.