Asimov's SF, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

“I ... do.”

  “Then come over here, Madeline. Sit down. Please.”

  She collapsed into the chair with a sigh and the rustle of metal on metal. Young pulled up another chair so he could sit next to her. His hands deftly outlined her face.

  “The rangers that picked you up broke the mask seal but were not able to remove it. I need you to unclench your jaw.”

  She shook her head. “Can't.”

  “Sure you can. A yawn would do it. I would massage your neck if the rest of the headpiece did not make it impossible. Just relax. Let all your muscles go limp. Then I'll—ah, there!”

  The mask came free. Young dropped it on the floor and stepped away. Madeline squinted in the suddenly brighter light. By the time she was able to fully open her eyes, Young was back with a basin of soapy water.

  “All the grease and dirt haven't been able to protect you from chafing, so I'm afraid this will sting a bit.”

  It stung more than a bit. “Ow! What's that on the cloth?”

  “Dead skin, most of it. You're cleaning up nicely. Take a look.”

  He held up a mirror. She grimaced. “I'm ugly.”

  “When you make a face like that, you are. Not to worry. When we get you out of the rest of this, your hair will grow back, your skin will get some color, and you will be a good-looking young woman again.”

  He handed her a glass. “No more intravenous feeding for you. Take a mouthful, swish it around, and spit it into the basin.”

  She did so. “But the Singularity—”

  “There is no Singularity, at least not in the sense of an artificial intelligence which suddenly became conscious over the internet.”

  “It killed my family. It put me in programming modules.”

  “That was the work of a very bright young man named Marvin Fringelis,” Young said, as he loosed the metallic coif. “He may be the most brilliant programmer the race has produced. He created what I guess we should call super viruses: extraordinary programs which could mimic life though having no real life of their own.”

  He lifted the coif off gently and set it down. “Brilliant as he was, Marvin was lonely—not just for human companionship. He wanted something to worship. When nothing worthy seemed to present itself, he turned to the Singularity. The problem was that the Singularity was tardy. Like controlled nuclear fusion, it always seemed to be twenty years in the future. So Marvin decided to help it along. His virus programs, complex and flexible as they were, were only an imitation of life. He embedded his neuroses in their programming, gave them the ability to mutate randomly and set them free across the net. They are what attacked your family and the rest of humanity.”

  “In the programming sessions, I was told that humanity would soon be extinct.” Madeline's hoarse voice quavered. “They said the only way any of us could survive was to become part of the machine. But if we did, we would live forever and have powers greater than humans ever dreamed possible.”

  “It always presents itself as something shiny and new,” Young said. “whether a temple to the Goddess of Reason or the advent of the new Soviet man. But when all the blood has been washed down the gutters, it turns out to have been nothing more than the 2.0 version of the Golden Calf.”

  Madeline looked down at the scarred and battered metal covering her body. “Help me get the rest of this off. It is so heavy.”

  “Nurses are coming to take you to a washroom,” Young said. “They will help remove all the rest of the casings and connectors. Then you will have a long, hot bath. When you are done, they will give a nightgown and a place to sleep. In a day or so, when you are ready, we will work on the rest of your recovery.”

  Two nurses appeared at the door and entered the room with a wheelchair. Murmuring encouragement, they helped Madeline into it.

  “One thing,” Madeline said, before they wheeled her out. “I know it may take a while for me to get my strength back, but when I do, I want to work with you, if I can. I want to help your patients, like that man without a face.”

  Young smiled. “I am sure you shall.”

  Copyright (c) 2008 Robert R. Chase

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Poetry: PERSPECTIVE

  by G. O. Clark

  Edvard Munch's

  screaming person seems

  out of breath, suspended in time

  and tennis shoes while jogging

  along the boardwalk.

  —

  The Mona Lisa

  looks quite angry,

  her famous smile turned

  to indignation, her eyes aflame

  with fury.

  —

  Picasso's

  Demoiselles d'Avignon

  have all had major plastic surgery,

  and look as if they might fold

  nicely into a Playboy

  center spread.

  —

  And Dali's

  Still Life—Fast Moving

  has settled upon its canvas,

  motionless swallow

  lifting back into

  the sky.

  —

  Welcome to the Museum

  of Alternate Masterpieces,

  a place of space/time flip flops,

  of multiple universe

  traveling exhibits,

  —

  where it al

  comes down to perspective

  in the end, the universal canvas

  open to multiple interpretations,

  no matter what you are.

  —G. O. Clark

  Copyright (c) 2008 G. O. Clark

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: HORSE RACING

  by Mary Rosenblum

  Mary Rosenblum, Hugo nominee and Clarion West instructor, has published more than sixty short stories in SF, mystery, and mainstream, as well as eight novels. Her latest collection, a novel and three novelette prequels, is called Water Rites. It is available from Fairwood Press. The author also writes mystery novels as Mary Freeman.

  They always hold the auction in Bangkok. I think the reasons are twofold. First, the sex trade there is as easy and open and as glittery as it ever has been and let's face it, more than half of the attendees are still male, never mind that a lot of women run a lot of companies these days. But more importantly, I think, the Thai people have always had a tolerance for trading in flesh that other cultures long ago renounced officially, even if they still pursue it in actuality. Perhaps the Thai are simply more pragmatic? Less inclined to lie to themselves? In any case, that lack of schizophrenic pretension seems to suit the people who arrange this affair—never mind that the Thai government has no idea that we even exist. No government does. We make very sure of that. But maybe my first guess is right and it's simply the stunningly beautiful girls who keep us coming here every year.

  I do wish they could do something about the traffic, though. In every other major metropolitan area, even Mumbai, you have GPS-guided traffic control systems and mass transit that make civilized movement possible. I should know. I worked for the firm that designed the early systems, back before I became a broker. I engineered the public and political support to get those systems in place. Believe me, the support side of the project was the bigger engineering hassle, never mind the physical engineers who think it's all their numbers that make things happen.

  Maybe traffic is the flip side of that Thai acceptance I was talking about. The yang to that particular ying. Sweating men and women on motorbikes dart through the snarled tangle of traffic like maniacs. Hardly any helmets and the taxi driver doesn't make any visible effort not to hit them. Maybe it's the pervasive Buddhism here ... that fatalistic willingness to perch on the back of a battered little Honda forty years old as it squirts through unpredictable traffic defying at least a couple of laws of physics. You'll just come back as something better, right? Okay, I can say that about the physics, I'm a social engineer. My harder-headed colleagues would choke, but
they're not here.

  The hotel our organization owns in Sukamvit looks like all the others, with a bar downstairs. In this part of town, the upstairs is for the girls. The driver whips the taxi over with an inch to spare beside the illegally parked junkers along the curb and hands me a very sophisticated chip reader. No technology lag here, never mind the cars that would be recycle-bait in a northern Chinese village. I wave my hand over it, the security connection buzzes through my forearm, and I approve the charges, verbally adding a fat tip because the driver didn't charge me for the toll on what they call an expressway from the airport. He must be working on his next life, afraid he'll come back as an insect if he doesn't score some karmic points. He says something and clasps his hands in a wai as I climb out of the taxi.

  The bar is pretty usual for this district—a mirrored turntable with a bunch of girls on it posing in a g-string and a smile as the turntable rotates slowly. All ranges of racial profiles, I notice, as the mamasan wais me in. Today's flavor of girl seems to be Semitic, although the recent Great Islamic Rising still has its effect on morality in that part of the world. Of course, they could be native Thais who simply visited one of the body shops on the strip a few blocks over. They're world class with minimum recovery time, even after extensive sculpting. The bar is dark and some of the patrons are smoking tobacco or dope ... the quiet filters suck it all up before you smell so much as a molecule. A smoking license costs way more than a liquor or drug license in most countries these days. It's one of those emotion-driven issues. I didn't work for the firm that made that happen, it was one of our rivals. But it has been a convenient socio-political distraction when necessary. All the social engineers use it at times. Start threatening to let the smokers loose and nobody pays attention to other issues. It's useful.

  The mamasan doesn't bother to take me to a table. Like the taxi, the seemingly low technological level here is superficial only. She leases the buildings from our group and has a state of the art scanning and security system in place. She knew who I was before I hit the authentically filthy sidewalk outside, knew what hardware I'm wearing. She ushers me past the glassy-eyed tourists staring at the girls or sitting with one or two or three already. They don't pay me any attention, although the girls give me a quick look. Some of them have pretty extensive software themselves, but my security is way above any hackware they can afford. That marks me as high end and money talks. But they're discreet, just noting my features in case I show up here when they're unencumbered.

  The elevator at the end of the bar only opens to the mamasan down here. It looks about as scruffy inside as the other elevator, the one that opens to the girls and their customers, but it doesn't open into the same upstairs floors where the rooms are.

  He's sitting where he can watch both elevators, and the glassy stare doesn't fool me. He's not watching the girls. I shake my head at mamasan, saunter over, and slide in across the stained but scrupulously clean teak table top. “Mind if I join you?”

  He does, but he's out of his element here and not sure what the rules are. So he gives me a strained and slightly disapproving smile. “I'm waiting for someone.”

  He's waiting for me, but he doesn't know that yet. “That's okay.” I look up as the mamasan delivers a tall, dewy glass. The color is just right for a whiskey and soda although it's a Pears Ginger Beer, because my drink preference is of course available to the mamasan's software. You don't do intoxicants until the Auction is over, and I never drink down here. But in this day of socially acceptable drug use, alcohol has an old-fashioned nuance that makes people relax. You're not cutting edge if you're drinking booze. You're second rate, not a threat. It's okay. “Cheers,” I say, making sure to use a nice clear, public-school, Mumbai accent. Well, I grew up using it, I look Indian to a white American, and it comes easy.

  He mumbles something and pretends to take a sip of his Singha, which is already warm and only down a few centimeters. I nod approval, which he doesn't get, but he has relaxed a bit. I'm pegged as an Indian tourist, business class, here for the girls, and not what he's looking for. So he goes back to watching.

  He's in his early twenties, Scotch-Irish-Scandinavian. Child of Vikings crossed with potato farmers. But I know all this, know far more about his ancestors than he does, most likely. He watches the new patrons who come through the door, stoned already, nervous, drooling, or a combination of all three. I watch him watch and sip my ginger beer. He looks tense. A bit angry. Defensive.

  “So what made you sure?” I finally say, and I drop the Mumbai accent.

  He starts as if I've stuck a pin into him. Stares at me. “What do you mean?”

  I turn my hand palm up in a “you know” gesture. “That someone was carefully orchestrating your life.”

  I wait through the eye-blink of reaction as he reassigns me from “sex hungry tourist” to something else. Smile gently while his eyes narrow and he gathers his anger like a big, black cloak around him. Very theatrical.

  “Not orchestrating. Controlling.” His lips thin. “So who the hell are you?”

  “You are better than I was.” It is actually hard to admit this. “I wasn't able to track down the actual location, just inferred that such a location had to exist within the city. So I ended up in Bangkok, but you got closer to the bull's eye than I did.”

  “Who are you?” Fear shows behind that cloak of anger.

  “Amit Chirasaveenaprapund.” I smile gently. “Would you like to attend the Auction? I invite you as my guest.” I stand as if he has instantly agreed, bow slightly and make an ushering gesture toward the elevator. Mamasan is already on the way, her imperturbable smile in place.

  He is thinking about declining, but he doesn't have a good alternative strategy in place and ... he really wants to know. So when I head toward the elevator without looking back, I'm not really in doubt. But still, I'm the tiniest bit relieved when I feel his presence behind me as I step into the battered little car. That relief is revelatory, and I file it with my earlier reaction to my admission. I am a social engineer, after all. A very good one. One of the best, I can say without immodesty.

  I can sense his questions, his emotion, but I don't make eye contact and he isn't quite sure enough of himself to spill them all out in the elevator. It's too small, the confrontation will be too confined. The door opens and I step out and yes, I hear the soft sound of his indrawn breath behind me.

  Well, it is impressive.

  The bar and the elevator may be a bit seedy and the girls’ rooms are probably not much better, but this floor is a whole other universe. We all pay our share for the state of the art security, luxury, privacy. Nobody snoops here. Nobody.

  Do you know what it takes to be able to say that, these days?

  No, I don't think you do.

  I'm the last. But I wanted to give him time to show up. The others are already lounging on sofas, chairs, recliners, cushions, all upholstered in elegant silk brocades, sipping drinks or snacking from plates, platters, bowls of delicacies from a dozen cultures. I recognize everyone, but I've been doing this for a long time. You never know who is going to show up at these yearly events, but the cast of serious pros is relatively small. We—the top independents, the brokers—work for a variety of clients. The smaller organizations train their own people until they realize it's not cost effective. It requires a lot of time and effort to prepare for an Auction. And consistent success requires a certain amount of ... well, talent. A waiter appears with a glass of sparkling water with lime for me (the too-sweet ginger beer was just for show) and a tall glass of cranberry juice for my guest. I watch him try not to react as he's offered his favorite beverage, but he can't quite hide the crease of paranoia around his eyes.

  “Let's sit.” Everyone is arranging themselves now, scooping up the last delicacy, collecting a fresh drink from the waiters. We seat ourselves in the large, open room surrounding the low, white-wood table, that is actually a holodeck. Two chairs are left vacant, toward the edge of the room at enough distance tha
t we can talk without disturbing anyone's concentration. Everyone has noticed the new face. We settle in and instantly a small opalescent holo field shimmers to life from the interface embedded in each chair arm. He's looking around, not even trying to pretend he's not, and I can see from his reaction that he recognizes a few people. That pleases me. Nobody here is media fodder. He has done some serious homework.

  “Welcome to the Auction.” A woman shimmers to life above the central holodeck, very Masai, tall and lean, with a sheen of power about her that is hardly imaginary. She has been the Auctioneer for several years now. “This has been a good year and we have an excellent selection to offer you. You all know the terms of payment, you can register your bids through your field. All bids are final and irreversible.” Her eye skates around the room, making contact with each of us. I smile and her eyes crinkle in response for a moment. She does not look at my guest, but on her control stage where she sits, in another room, he exists only as a glyph, with no interactive interface at all.

  He is looking mildly horrified by now. But his posture is alert and relaxed. He has good control of his body language. But then, he's a highly ranked amateur at poker, which he plays for recreation. My own game is chess, but he ranks slightly higher than I do in social integration so I am not surprised at his attraction to competitive poker.

  “We will begin with the Futures,” says our Auctioneer. “You have received your catalogs. You have analyzed the genetic sequencing results and the pedigree profiling. We are able to offer you an excellent crop of potential this year, with sound ancestral expression in the creative spectrum as well as high scores in the psychological profiles and malleable families that can be stabilized.”

  “These are the infants.” I lean close to him so that I can keep my voice low, ignoring my guest's slight and instantly controlled start. He has been staring at the Auctioneer. “They are under one year, healthy, test normal in all infant parameters. Their immediate relatives have expressed the sort of creativity and drive that is desirable and they score highly for compatibility with the program.” I shrug. “But one is reading a pedigree here and gambling on the gene-line. Many of these infants fail to test out. Genetic promise does not guarantee fulfillment, as animal breeders have known for millennia. Quite a few play the game, because if you're lucky, you get a lot of potential for a relatively small investment. It's a favorite with the smaller entities and the start-ups, of course.” I lift one shoulder in a polite shrug at his shocked expression. “Well, once the child has tested out and is clearly a prospect, the price goes way up. If the child doesn't test out, you can void the contract and you're only out the expenses for a few years.” I give him a mild smile. “A small and select group of specialists have evolved. They buy up Futures on spec, develop them through the initial years, then sell the child as a Started lot for a good profit once that child has tested out.”