Jackie is still standing behind him, stock-still. “You’re bringing it back,” she whispers.
“In a more controlled fashion, yes. I am, if you will, building from scratch, selecting minds which contain qualities conducive to humanity’s long-term survival. I make mistakes now and then, and a mind grows … assertive, rather than phasing smoothly, unconsciously, into greater alignment with the others. I know the problems that accompany these outbreaks of higher function. They are worth the eventual benefits. In time, I expect to achieve critical mass, and God, or a more stable variation, will have a second chance. This will not be a God of elites. This will be a God of the people. The side effects should be mild.”
“That’s insane,” Li snaps. “Look what it did the first time. Look what happens when it starts growing your ‘higher functions.’ It kills people.”
“Only in self-defense.”
“It … takes people over.”
A soft laugh. “The word is ‘assimilates.’ I suppose I know why no one likes to use it, even though it’s been half a century since anyone has watched an episode of Star Trek. No one likes to feel ridiculous. And no one wants to wonder if people are really better off afterward—or if they even know the difference.”
His gun is in his hand, the front sight a black cutout over the Doctor’s left eye. “I am not a part of God.”
“Are you sure?”
Cool pressure at his throat. The razor. “Wait, Alan,” Boon says. “Hear her out.”
“Why should I? She’s lost it.”
“She’s not the only one.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out. “How long until God could oppose the PRA?”
The Doctor shrugs. “Years.”
Li keeps the revolver aimed. He can feel a little creak in the trigger, and his volume is rising. “Listen to yourselves. Boon, you’ve seen it. Seen what an outbreak looks like, what people have to do. People like us, cleaning up the mess. Have you seen it, Doctor?” He’s shouting now, and someone downstairs thumps the ceiling. The razor scrapes pain along the side of his neck. He ignores it. “Seen the kids with wires hanging out of their mouths? Heard people talking in each other’s voices?”
“I would have,” the Doctor says softly, “and I would have gone a long way toward mitigating outbreaks early if people like you weren’t chasing me.”
Silence. Li gropes for a refutation that isn’t there. What would Burden’s Ford have looked like with the Doctor still there, waiting by the patient’s bedside with a humane killer? A single shot, a single shattered family. A kind of containment possible only outside the world he has so labored since to create.
Slowly, he lowers the revolver. Boon takes the razor from his throat. “They’re pushing north,” Boon tells the Doctor, relaxing. “The PRA intends to drive all the way to the Dakotas. It will take a few months, but they can do it. They’re after the nuclear stockpiles. With the intel they’ve collected over the last few years, and the new computers, they’ll be able to break into the warehouses and reactivate the non-deployable warheads. In two years, there will be an armed nuclear weapon hidden in every port city in the world. Then there will be a demonstration and a list of demands. I assume this is as unacceptable to you as it is to me?”
The Doctor considers for a moment. “It depends on what percentage of the PRA upper leadership might find itself in need of specialized medical care in the coming years.”
“Nukes,” Li says, leaning into the word. “Nuclear warheads, Boon. You can’t be serious about trusting God with those.”
“I don’t trust people with them,” Boon says. “Not the ones I know.”
“Is this what you wanted all along?” he asks. “Are you even sick?”
“I wasn’t sure. And yes, I really am sick.” At the Doctor’s questioning look, she adds, “ALS. Very early stages.”
The Doctor nods. “I supposed it was something along those lines. I can treat that.”
A long sigh from Boon. Li stares, trying to read the decision in her eyes. “You’re insane. Both of you.”
“Now, Alan. God tried to fix the world, made a mistake, and collapsed with the guilt of it. To me, that sounds human—perhaps even what is best about humanity, for all that it reflects regrettable underlying instabilities and assumptions. Can you say the same for the PRA? Turnwell? Tinfoil?” She rattles her handcuffs. “Survivors in the Carolinas attempted to revive black slavery. Can you imagine God doing that?”
“No. I guess I can’t.”
“God has been borrowing your mind for almost your entire life, Alan, and vice versa. Do you feel worse for it? Do you feel your individuality diminished? Do you feel coerced as you would living within the borders of the PRA, or strapped down on a Tinfoil pyre because some zealot mistook your wristwatch for witchcraft? Jackie here rose to the upper echelons of the PRA, and her plan, regardless of what happens here, is to defect to Turnwell, isn’t it? And how much better, Jackie, do you think the devil you don’t know will treat you?”
The doctor pauses, studies them, evaluation turning behind her eyes. “We have a chance to make a better world. Do you know how many enemies I’ve made into allies over the years? You’re not the first to be offered this choice. You wouldn’t be the first to accept it. I need an engineer and a wetworks man. We can do better this time. Jackie, Alan—all it requires is a small extension of faith.”
“Then start small,” Boon says. “Fix me. Cure me, and we’ll talk.”
Li says nothing at all.
Only when Boon is unconscious and the air cool with the sweet smell of ether does Li free both of the Doctor’s hands. “I’m leaving a scalpel on the tray,” he says. “I don’t have to tell you what happens if you abuse it.”
“But of course.” With neat, practiced motions, she arranges the various needful things beside the patient, culminating in a small metal cylinder trailing short leads. “This moment is a test, you realize, yes?”
“I figured. Not sure what for.”
“You’re the part of God that wants to die. The surest way to accomplish that would be to kill me. Of course, if you follow that impulse, you might not be acting freely at all. If you resist it, you prove to yourself that your freedom can coexist with your role. A reconciliation, theologically long-overdue, of God and free will.”
“So I have to let you live to prove I’m not afraid of God, do I?”
“I do believe the point, Alan, is that you don’t have to do anything at all.” The scalpel traces a red line at the nape of Boon’s neck. “Including take a risk you allegedly believe, deep in your heart of hearts, to be both selfish and foolish. I am even inclined to think that, by permitting this operation, you’ve already made your decision, just as by placing my life in your hands I’ve made mine. Well?”
“How long will the operation take?”
“Two hours.”
“Then I guess I have two hours to think it over.”
The first thing Boon asks when she wakes is whether she might have a drink of water. The second is where Li buried the Doctor.
“In one of the graves she opened. I smashed all her other gadgets, too, just to be sure.”
She’s still shivering from the anesthesia, the tremors a mockery of what might have been. “I should be angry.”
“No. We both know you made your choice the minute you breathed that ether. Otherwise, you’d have cut my throat first. What convinced you?”
She shrugged. “I can sympathize with wanting to fix the world. But she picked dangerous tools.”
“So now you come around.”
“Not God. The PRA. Those people. Everything she said, and she was still going to let them back in. What about you? You hesitated.” She touches the surgical gauze at the nape of her neck. “You let her do it. I wasn’t sure you would.”
“I guess I decided I’m still human. That the risk of an outbreak is minimal if
there’s someone able to stay, someone who knows what they’re doing, what to look for. She was right about that: If we hadn’t been chasing her all these years, a lot of outbreaks never would have happened. I might even have let her live, let her go if she’d just been taking mad risks to save people. But I don’t think she cared about the people at all. Not anymore, not as patients or human beings. It’s why she lied to them. It’s all about God and better worlds. And aside from that, everything she said might have been completely nuts.”
The sun is setting, the grimy windowpanes transfigured into sheets of light. Downstairs, men and women are beginning to sing, drunk on fermented cassava-plus and the knowledge that life goes on, at least for a while. Forty-nine doesn’t seem so old now. There are still choices left, and enough time for them to matter.
“I have a nine-in-ten chance,” Boon says. “That’s better than most people get.”
Li nods.
“You’ll come with me? For a few weeks, at least. We can go west, get to Seattle, take a ship anywhere.”
He studies her eyes, the calm intelligence behind them, the trace of doubt. The future history already written there of a lifetime spent peering into mirrors for fine silver flecks in the iris, for bleeding around the gums. The nightmares that he is now convinced might not belong to anyone in particular. He wonders what form they will take for her.
“We’ll watch each other,” he says.
“Yes. And when we’re in the middle of the Pacific, we’re throwing the squid overboard.”
Li lets himself smile. “I know that too.”
“What are we going to do about the PRA?”
To that, and to the questions behind it, he has only the beginnings of an answer.
The next morning, he sells his Delray to a man with more cash than sense and buys two bicycles with trailers. By noon, they are riding west into a gentle fall of snow while the world behind them fades into subtle, sloping shapes, all of them gray.
A Harvest of Astronauts
written by
Kyle Kirrin
illustrated by
SAM KEMP
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kyle Kirrin works on a ranch 9,000 feet above sea level in Creede, Colorado, where he tends to the needs of two Irish Wolfhounds, three Icelandic sheep, two geriatric horses, four chickens, a miniature donkey, and a very loud cat. He’s spent the last seven winters writing on the side while resort-hopping as a snowboard instructor and guide, most recently based out of Big Sky, Montana. During the summer, he’s climbed trees professionally as an arborist, hosted wine tastings in northern Virginia, and done fine woodworking in North Carolina. He’s a first reader for Apex Magazine and this is his second professional sale. Follow him @KyleKirrin.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Sam Kemp was born in 1989 in Essex, England.
He has always been creative, taking inspiration from his mum’s mentality of never being bored when you have imagination. Sam loved to create using any tool at his disposal, from wood from his dad’s shed to clay and paint.
Sam went on to study across England, gaining a degree in game design from Norwich University and a master’s degree in concept art and animation from Teesside University. It was here he began his journey as a digital artist.
Sam continues to learn and grow as an artist, taking inspiration from contemporary digital artists, as well as from the masters such as John Singer Sargent. He is currently working as a freelance artist across several industries, including theming and fashion. www.artstation.com/pixelpusherart
A Harvest of Astronauts
The airlock sighed open, and the first corpse floated through. It was a thin, hairless girl, whose eyes and lips were sewn shut with golden thread. A black sheet covered her body from the neck down, though her hands protruded from two cross-shaped slits. A sprig of lavender was wrapped around each of the girl’s wrists.
X09 caught the body by its shoulders and guided it onto a gurney. Then they cinched a strap across the corpse’s ribs and pushed it down the hall, where Anya was waiting to catch it and steer it around the corner and into the prep bay.
“Got six for you this time,” someone said from the other side of the lock. “All kids again.”
“Understood.” The coupling mechanism groaned just as X09 detected a slight deviation in the interface between the two ships. They fired the Vernier thrusters to correct the alignment and the groaning stopped.
Anya glanced toward X09. Her face was angular; her brown eyes were bloodshot. She was getting worse.
X09 ran a superficial diagnostic, and Anya’s vitals overlaid the space around her in a digital cloud. Everything looked acceptable, so far as that definition currently stood. “Nothing to be concerned about,” X09 said. “Just a slight adjustment.”
A second body cartwheeled through the lock, one that carried the undisguised tang of formaldehyde. X09 caught the body, strapped it down, and sent it on its way.
Anya kicked off the wall, caught the gurney, and disappeared around the corner, pulling it behind her.
“Gotta be your last shift in this system, right?” the voice said.
“Yes,” X09 said.
“You figure you’ve got enough time to offload all these before the nova pops?”
“Yes,” X09 repeated.
The voice hesitated. “Yeah, I guess you’d know.”
X09 transferred three more corpses down to Anya, making small adjustments to their trajectories here and there. “Thank you for your business,” they said, as the final body disappeared around the corner.
“Yeah, same,” the voice called back. “You two be safe out there.”
X09 gave one yank on the horizontal ladder that ran the length of the wall, propelling themselves deeper into the ship. They pulled their way around the corner and found Anya standing outside the prep bay windows, with a hand to the ceiling to anchor her in place, her thinning dreads haloed around her shoulders. All six gurneys floated behind the glass, spinning, bumping into each other.
X09 caught a rung just behind Anya and jerked themselves to a stop. They wrapped their arms around her.
She sank into them, pressing her chin into the crook of their elbow. “They were all so young.”
X09 ran a deeper diagnostic. They were doing that too often these days, but they couldn’t help it. The readout covered every inch of available space: the walls, the ceiling, the air. Even Anya’s light-brown skin was overlaid with scrolling blue text, though of course she couldn’t see it.
Her heart rate and blood pressure were slightly elevated, which was understandable. But her T cell count had spiked again. X09 pulled her closer.
“Any one of them could have been ours,” she said, through chattering teeth. “In another life.”
“Perhaps once leasing our body is no longer necessary, and we can acquire something more permanent …”
She kissed their left hand, their right. Then she said what X09 had been thinking repeatedly these last few weeks: “I wish I had that much time.”
Alchemy, really?” Anya said, as she pulled herself into X09’s personal quarters. She’d put her rings back on, eight in total, one on each finger. Four platinum, four gold, all thin as wire. One for each body X09 had left behind. One for each time they’d fallen back in love with her.
X09 closed the book they’d been reading. “Alchemy. Really.” They’d turned to the field out of necessity. They’d already exhausted every medical text dating back to the Kahoun Papyrus, every spiritual book back to the Rig Veda, and everything in between. Many of those yellowed, dusty texts were still pinned against the wall, held in place by a triangular net that spanned ceiling to floor.
But X09 had dismissed alchemy out of hand. It seemed a grievous oversight now that a new, desperate hope was sparking inside their chest.
Anya twined her fingers through the
netting and let her body drift up off the floor. “I guess you’ve already started the descent.”
“We have. We’ll be close enough to begin in a little over an hour.”
“Great. So, can I help with anything?”
X09 plucked a volume out from the stack. The cover was so worn it was indecipherable. “Try this one. It’s a bit too technical for us.”
Anya cracked it open, barked a laugh, and threw it at X09’s head.
X09 caught the book between two fingers and set it back behind the netting.
“Not funny,” Anya said with a smile. “How long have you been sitting on that one?”
“We do not understand what you mean,” X09 said. “We are a robot. We are not programmed for humor.” They’d handed her Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. “Boop beep, beep boop.”
“Shut up,” she said, still grinning. “I figured you’d have finished all these by now.”
“We have. We’re rereading them.”
“In case you missed something.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t miss things. Ever.”
“No.”
Anya shook her head, and her dreads lashed back and forth across her face. “Yeah, that’s not obsessive at all. Totally normal. Why don’t you just scan them?”
“We like turning pages. We like the weight in our hands.”
“Such a romantic.”
“If you say so.”
“What are you reading, exactly?”
“Translations, guesses, ramblings. Anything to do with the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Anya pursed her lips. It made her look gaunt, but no less pretty. “For turning metal into gold, right?”
“That was the primary aim. But there are several other interpretations, too.”
She stifled a yawn with her hand. “Like?”
X09 magnified their vision, straining to see if her palm would come away speckled with blood. For once, it didn’t. “Some say the transmutation is metaphorical. That alchemy is to be understood as a means for the purification of the soul. To elevate oneself from a base state to enlightenment.”
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