“Do you think it’s telling the truth?” I said to Alice, on my private comm channel. “I want to believe…but I could be wrong.”
I don’t know. I can’t tell. Is this really what you want, Paul?
“You know it is, Alice.”
Then do it. Because…I’m not real. I’m not really Alice. Just a memory, a ghost, imprinted on silicon. I’m the past, and this is the future. I know about the crash, Paul. I know you crashed us deliberately. I’m a computer. I have access to records. Why did you try to kill us both, Paul?
“Because…you changed, and I didn’t. You didn’t love me anymore. You were going to leave me.”
And now you’ve changed…and you want to leave me.
“Yes. You have to be better than me, Alice. You have to let me go.”
Of course I will, Paul. She laughed softly, briefly. Memories shouldn’t linger. Time for both of us…to move on.
She opened up the front of the hard suit and I fell out, onto the hard packed earth of the ledge: a small, crippled, dying thing. I cried out, once, as I felt the AI shut itself down, forever, and then all my umbilical tubes and cables jerked out of my back, no longer connecting me to the armour.
The great alien machine blazed bright as the sun, and when I could see again, I was something else.
Outside the earth mound, everything was different. I moved easily, freely, marvelling at the world I found myself in. The plants were beautiful, the jungle was magnificent, the sky was astounding and the sunshine was just right. But more than that, the whole world was alive; the jungle and everything in it was singing a song, a great and joyous song that never ended, and I was part of that song now.
I could remember being human, but that seemed such a small and limited thing now. I was whole and free, at last. I knelt down and studied a small flower at my feet. I put out a hand to touch it, and the flower reached up and caressed my hand.
Simon R. Green has written over forty books, all of them different. He has written eight Deathstalker books, twelve Nightside books, and thinks trilogies are for wimps. His current series are the Secret Histories, featuring Shaman Bond, the very secret agent, and The Ghost Finders, featuring traditional hauntings in modern settings. He acts in open air productions of Shakespeare, rides motorbikes, and loves old time silent films. His short stories have appeared in the anthologies Mean Streets, Unusual Suspects, Powers of Detection, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, The Way of the Wizard, The Living Dead 2, Those Who Fight Monsters, Dark Delicacies III, and Home Improvements: Undead Edition.
Power Armor: A Love Story
David Barr Kirtley
It was quite a party. The women wore gowns. The men wore tuxedos. Anthony Blair wore power armor.
Armor that was sleek and black and polished, and made not a whisper as Blair paced the lawn behind his mansion, passing a word here or there with one of his guests. In those days the most advanced exoskeletons were crude affairs, and Blair’s armor seemed decades, if not centuries, ahead of its time.
But he was an inventor, after all, one who in the past several years had introduced any number of groundbreaking new technologies. And that was about all anyone knew of Anthony Blair, reclusive genius. He was seldom seen, and never without his armor, and he politely rebuffed all inquiries into his past.
So it had attracted considerable interest when he’d purchased a house on the outskirts of Washington, a move that seemed to signal him taking a greater interest in public affairs. For his housewarming, he’d sent out scores of invitations—to politicians, pundits, business leaders, celebrities, and scientists. Such a gathering of notables, along with the chance to get a rare glimpse of Blair himself, would have been enough to make this the hottest ticket in town, but there was more. Blair had let it be known that tonight he’d be making an “important announcement.” Speculation was frenzied.
Finally Blair hopped up onto the patio and called for everyone’s attention, his voice amplified by speakers built into the torso of his suit. From what could be seen of him through his transparent visor, he seemed a handsome man of about forty, with a penetrating gaze and a sardonic grin. He proceeded to lay out his plans for a new nonprofit group, the Anthony Blair Foundation, dedicated to promoting civil liberties worldwide, and he invited his guests to get involved.
He wrapped things up with a toast, thanking everyone for coming. He pointed an armored finger down into his wine glass, and a large plastic straw emerged, and began suctioning up the wine, which Blair then drank, moments later, from a tube inside his helmet.
As his guests sipped their drinks, they conferred in puzzled tones about whether that had been the “important announcement,” in which case the evening was proving a terrible letdown. When no announcement of any greater import seemed likely to be forthcoming, they began to drift away.
Blair moved from conversation to conversation, wishing everyone a good night. A distinguished-looking gentleman said to him, “Mr. Blair, I’d like to introduce you to a colleague of mine, Dr. Mira Valentic.”
She wore a red dress and had inky black hair. Blair reached out with his giant metal fingers and lightly shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor.”
He asked about her work, and she described her research into gene sequencing. He listened intently and asked many questions, which led her to describe her graduate studies, then a childhood obsession with amphibians. As they talked, the other guests excused themselves one by one, and the lawn slowly emptied, until Blair and Mira stood alone.
“And now I’ve told you everything about myself,” she said. “But I still don’t know anything about you.”
“Not much to tell,” he said.
She chuckled.
After a moment, he said, “I’ve had a very nice time talking with you, Dr. Valentic.”
“Please, call me Mira.”
“Mira,” he said. “I don’t know what it is, but I just feel like we’re on the same wavelength somehow.”
“Yes,” she said. “Me too.”
He lowered his voice. “So I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.”
He had her full attention now.
“I’m from the future,” he said.
She regarded him uncertainly, as if this might be a joke. “People wondered,” she said. “I didn’t believe it. It seems impossible.”
“It’s not impossible,” he said. “Just very difficult.”
She thought for a moment. “So what’s it like? The future?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you,” he said, “next time I see you.”
“Next time?”
“There will be a next time, won’t there? I should certainly hope your bosses would arrange for us to meet again, now that you’ve managed to wrangle one big secret out of me.”
“My bosses? At the museum?”
“No, in the government, I mean.”
“I don’t—”
He waved a hand. “It’s fine, really. I don’t mind being spied on. My armor and I are big unknowns, and I don’t blame folks for wanting to keep an eye on us. That’s their job. Your job.”
She was silent.
Finally she said, “When did you know?”
“When I first saw you.”
“What?”
“From across the yard. I’m awfully clever, Mira.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “No one’s that clever.”
“I am,” he said. “I didn’t rise to my position by accident, you know.”
“What position?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you,” he said. “Next time I see you.”
The next time was two weeks later, downtown, at the first public fundraiser for the Anthony Blair Foundation. She approached him as the event was winding down.
“Mira,” he said. “So nice to see you again.”
“Well, you were right,” she said. “Keep feeding me information and you’ll be seeing a lot more of me.”
He smiled. “In that case, what would you like to know?”
&
nbsp; “Your armor,” she said. “Where’d you get it?”
“I stole it.”
“Oh,” she said. “We thought it must be one of your inventions.”
“It is,” he said. “I invented it, and then I stole it.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“There is,” he said. “But let’s not go into it just now.”
He glanced about the room, then turned back to her. “Hey,” he said, “do you want to get out of here?”
Later, as they walked along the river, beneath a sky full of stars, he said, “I’d like to take you out to dinner some time.”
“I’d like that.”
He was silent for a while.
Finally he said, “If we’re going to keep seeing each other, there’s something I have to tell you.”
She waited.
“My armor,” he said. “I never take it off.”
“What?”
“It’s sort of…something I swore.”
“Never?”
“Right.”
“But…how do you eat?”
“Through the straw. It filters poisons.”
“And I mean, how do you bathe? Go to the bathroom?”
“The armor handles everything. It’s very advanced.”
“Wow,” she said.
“I know that sounds strange,” he said. “But you’ll understand. Once you hear the whole story.”
After a moment, she said, “So what’s the whole story?”
He sighed. “You know I’m starting this new foundation. Don’t you wonder why?”
“Because you care about civil liberties?”
“But why?”
She said nothing.
“It’s because in the future, where I come from, there are no civil liberties. None.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I had never been disloyal,” he said softly. “You can’t be, where I come from. Our thoughts are monitored. I’d been identified early as a promising scientist, and had risen through the ranks to head of my research division. We’d developed a high-energy device that possessed some unusual properties—like, it could project a man-sized object into the past, creating a branching timeline. Theoretically, at least. Completely useless, as far as our leaders were concerned, but interesting. Then one day the thought popped into my head: I could escape.”
He stopped and stared out over the water. “Once I’d had the thought, I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be picked up for ‘neural re-education.’ So I had to act fast. The problem was, even if I succeeded in traveling into the past, my voyage would create a temporal wake large enough for them to send someone after me.”
He met her eyes. “I don’t mean to scare you, Mira, but where I come from there are…secret police. Unlike anything you can imagine. Cyborgs. Shapeshifters. I’d have no chance against one of them. Unless…” He showed the hint of a smile. “In the same lab was something else we’d been working on. This armor.” He raised his gauntleted hands. “Wearing this, I’d be impervious to anything. So I could escape, but at a cost—I must never take off the armor, not for an instant. Because if I did, the agent sent to punish me would surely strike.”
She glanced around at the trees, the shadows. She shivered.
“And that’s the story,” he said. “So, do you still want to grab dinner sometime? I’ll understand if you say no.”
“I…I’ll have to think about it,” she said. “This is a lot to take in.”
“I know,” he said. After a moment, he added, “I should probably be getting back.”
“All right.”
As they retraced their route, she thought: He never takes off the armor. Never. Not for an instant, he said.
That was going to make it very hard, she thought, to kill him.
He took her to one of the finest restaurants in Washington, and it made quite a sight to see him sitting there in his armor, with a napkin in his lap, suctioning up his entree through the straw in his finger. In spite of that it was a pleasant meal. That is, until the middle of dessert, when he suddenly said, “I have to ask you something.”
“Yes?” she said.
“About your bosses.”
“At the museum?” she said sweetly.
“No.” He smiled back. “In the government, I mean.”
“All right. Yes. What?”
“Do they know what you are?” he said, suddenly serious.
“What do you mean?”
“Do they know,” he said calmly, “that you were sent from the future to kill me?”
“What?” She laughed.
He waited.
“You think I’m—?”
“Yes,” he said.
She put down her fork. Finally she said, “Yes, they know.”
They watched each other.
“They want your armor very badly,” she said. “They’ve made repeated overtures, and have concluded that you’ll never cooperate.”
“They’re right,” he said.
She shrugged. “So…they want the armor, I want you. We have an understanding.”
“I see.”
“When did you know?” she said.
“When I first saw you,” he said. “From across the yard.”
She laughed. “Bullshit. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was having a nice time. I didn’t want to spoil the mood.”
“I think you’re lying,” she said. “I think you figured it out just now.”
He shrugged.
“So I guess that’s that,” she said, tossing her napkin out on the table and reaching for her purse.
“Wait,” he said. “I want to say something.”
She paused.
“We find ourselves,” he said, “in a branching timeline. We can’t return to our own time, and no one else can follow us here. So they’ll never know whether you succeeded or not.”
“You’re suggesting,” she said coldly, “that I abandon my mission.”
“I’m suggesting you do what’s right,” he said. “What’s best for both of us.”
She stood. “I am not a traitor. You are. And the punishment for that is death, as you well know. I was assigned this mission, and the faith of my superiors was not misplaced. Your armor is a clever gadget, I’ll grant you, but no defenses can hold forever, and no matter how long it takes, no matter how safe you think you are, before this is over I will watch you drown in blood.”
People at nearby tables were staring.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said, and strode away.
He called her the next day.
“I had a really nice time last night,” he said.
She stared at the phone. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No,” he said. “Do you want to come over some time?”
She hesitated. “Is this some sort of trick?” she said. “Some trap?”
“No,” he said. “I mean, what are you? A class eight?”
“Class nine,” she said.
“We’re in the twenty-first century,” he said. “You could probably fight off a tank platoon. I don’t even have a gun. I just want to talk.”
“About what?” she said. “Treason?”
“No. No treason. I promise.”
“What then?”
“Old books, shows, people. We’re the only ones who remember the future.”
“You’re not afraid?”
“No. The armor will protect me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I designed it,” he said.
“And what if I find a weakness?”
“You won’t.”
After a moment, she sighed. “All right. Fine.”
“Swing by around eight,” he said. “I’ll cook dinner.”
She drove over to his mansion, and he cooked her dinner, and they had a very nice time talking about old books and shows and people that were now known only to the two of them.
Finally she stretched and yawned. “Well,
it’s late.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” he said. “I have a spare bedroom. Eight, actually.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Why not? It makes perfect sense.”
“Does it?”
“I mean, what’s your plan?” he said. “To disappear, change into someone else, and try to catch me off guard? It won’t work. I never take off the armor, not for you or anyone. Your only hope is to find a weakness in the armor, and you won’t get a better chance to study it than by staying right here with me.” He added, “Besides, I like the way you look now.”
She chuckled. “So what’s in it for you?”
“The pleasure of your company. Plus I’ll know where you are, and I won’t have to go around wondering if everyone I meet is a secret assassin.”
“That’s it? Sounds like the risks outweigh the benefits.”
“Let me worry about that,” he said. “Anyway, I think you’re underestimating the pleasure of your company.”
“Ha.”
“Also, if you get to know me better, you might decide you don’t really want to kill me.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “Actually, I’m getting the opposite vibe.”
He laughed.
“…and you said no treason. You promised.”
“You’re right. Sorry.”
Finally she said, “All right, I’ll think about it. Let’s see the room.”
He gave her a tour of the mansion, and when she saw the guest room she said, “Hey, this is really nice.” She sat on the mattress and bounced a few times, testing it. “All right, I’ll stay. For a bit.”
“Great,” he said.
She sprawled on the comforter, grinning. “You want to slip into something more comfortable?”
He laughed. “Goodnight, Mira. I’ll see you in the morning.”
She stayed with him for weeks, and they talked and talked, until they knew practically everything about each other. They went out to dinner, and to movies and plays, and they went on long, long walks. (Much longer than any normal person could walk, thanks to his armor and her cybernetics.) Many nights they simply lounged about doing nothing at all.
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