Shine

by Jetse de Vries (ed)

  Each night before I slept, I checked my ranking. I was safe as long I had eyes upon me. Or so I believed. I am shamed to admit that I was drunk with my new celebrity. I had messages from foreign leaders, proud mothers, and little girls seeking a role-model. I thought that I had made a difference.

  And then the men with black masks came for me. I was drinking coffee in a cafÈ on a unseasonably warm winter day. I heard the screeching of the truck before they slipped the hood over my head. The hard barrel of their guns poked into my back as I desperately tried to gasp for air. They threw me onto the bed on the truck and held me down. I was so terrified that I could not even scream.

  I had no voice, but others screamed for me. The Qur'an says that paradise lies at the feet of mothers. I waited, held down, but the truck did not move. I heard a swarm of voices around me. The death squad had come for me, but you stopped them. No man wishes his mother to see his darkness. The women took me from the death squad with violence. My bonds were cut and the hood removed. And then we cried.

  That moment our country changed.

  My youngest brother was taken one thousand nights ago; almost three years ago. This night he was returned to me. He is thinner than I remember, but tall and strong. I am told that it is a symbol of the new government. A time of hope. A bridge to help unite a desperate people. That is a lie.

  My brother's freedom is a symbol of your power. It is your will that brought him to the light. It is your will that won the parliament election. Your will that convinced the Guardian Council to validate the elections.

  And tomorrow will be my one thousand and first broadcast, and on that day I will be sworn in to parliament. I will take the office for which my mother died and thus Scheherazade must complete her own tale. To you mothers and daughters of Iran, to you I leave the stories. It is only in silence do we lose the spark that Allah has breathed into each of us.

  The Qur'an says that all people are a single nation. I believe that this is a statement of universal truth. The world has grown too small to ignore our neighbors. We are one family.

  And I wait. I wait for your stories to change the world.

  Russian Roulette

  2020

  Eva Maria Chapman

  Eva is another writer I met over the internet. She posted regularly on the Shine blog, and submitted tweets for @outshine (of which I published a few, one of them right after receiving this story).

  While the main intent of the Shine anthology presence on social sites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter is promotion (get the word out), so far it has also been instrumental in bringing me into contact with a number of writers I might never have found in the SF community. Eva has written a memoir about her Russian ÈmigrÈ family in Australia and a historic fantasy involving Kaurna Aborigines.

  Her enthusiasm for Shine is so great she decided to turn her hand to SF, and if "Russian Roulette 2020" is any indication, I hope that she will write much more of it.

  In these modern days, it seems that maximum cynicism equals great coolness. As this high-spirited and spiritual story shows, it's high time to exorcise those nihilistic spirits...

  She spoke for the first time. Roses fell from her lips. Pearls. Her body turned into luminescence and butterflies. It surprised no one.

  --Mercedes M. Yardley--

  "Take it off?" Wingnut was incredulous. "What do you mean, take it off? Hey, MV, Colleen's telling us to take off our ZiSleeves!"

  MV was distracted by the Russian girl in the blue dress. Dazzled. Who did she remind him of? A little Amish looking, perhaps. Hair in a braid. No makeup. And her arm didn't glow with LED lights. His own ZiSleeve bleeped at him. It was Jeezbob from New York. "Come on man, your move." They were in the middle of an exciting game of Robodroids. MV was cornered in a hell-hole by vicious robots, with no way out.

  Wingnut poked him sharply. "Hey dude, listen up, this is serious shit!"

  MV reluctantly disconnected his earchip and put his attention on his teacher. Was she saying: "Take your ZiSleeves off?"

  Colleen knew she had a rebellion on her hands. Like when the school banned earchips during assembly. Trying to tear this lot away from their ZiSleeves was tantamount to gouging out their livers. These kids were truly in the grip of what psychologists called weblock.

  "This is dogshit," whined Wingnut. "Let's get back in the Solaritza and skedaddle back to the plane."

  "You know we can't do that--we don't have permission to land in LA before schedule." Flights were severely restricted, not only to cut emissions, but to curtail the spread of rapidly mutating viruses.

  Wingnut looked horrorstruck. "Then let's go back to the Expo in Moscow." Wingnut had loved Crystal Island--the largest solar powered building in the world, full of avant-garde technology and newly launched Web 4.0 applications. He had purchased 3D glasses and 3D Sims for his ZiSleeve and was dying to immerse himself in juicy porn world. He'd had a peek on the bus and immediately experienced being slammed between bouncing tits and arses. God it was good.

  "What kind of backward crap dive have you brought us to?" snapped Rachel. She objected to being wrenched from her avatar, Astrid, who had just purchased a castle (charging it to Daddy's account of course). She was looking forward to buying outfits that befitted being Queen of such a castle. Her IMVU playmate had just bought a black steed and looked fabulous on it! The unfortunate fact that in her first life, Rachel could warm her hands between the fat folds on her stomach, made it even more imperative to buy the gold bikini for her gloriously slim, Second Life self.

  "Do we really have to?" whined Enrita, looking like the spoilt Brazilian princess she was, zapping microbes with her nano-wand. Her wealthy family had exchanged the gated suburbia of Rio for Los Angeles when food riots had got out of control. Not that LA didn't have food riots. Plenty of them. It was just that LA cops had more sophisticated weaponry--like ray guns to paralyse the starving mobs. "Mamae will freak out if she can't get hold of me."

  Colleen sighed. She knew it would do them all good to extricate themselves from the Controller, as she called it--so like Big Brother it was scary.

  "We want a reason!"

  Colleen approached Rada, the girl in the blue dress, who had met them off the Solaritza. "Could you explain why they have to take their ZiSleeves off? They're like a third arm. They won't take them off for even a moment."

  Rada faced the hostile group.

  MV videoed her to Jeezbob, texting, "Whaddya think of this chick? Knockout tits. No bra!"

  "We welcome you warmly to our school." Her voice and presence were mesmerising. The sun shone through her dress, emphasising her womanly shape. Even Wingnut stopped fiddling with his 3D glasses and gawked.

  In a voice that would tame a horde of starving rioters, she continued in impeccable English. "We will give you an orientation talk in our hall, followed by lunch. This part of the school is techno free, for many reasons. We request that you remove all phones, sleeves and electronic gadgets."

  She immediately quelled the low rumbling that swirled in the courtyard by pointing to beehives nestling under the eaves of the building. "One of the reasons is that your equipment interferes with the bees. We believe it may disrupt their dances."

  They all looked up at the beehives. Some incredulous. Others curious.

  Fortunately this did make sense. Most of them had spent the last two Springs in apple orchards, hand pollinating apple blossom. Tedious and time consuming but necessary, as in 2017 there were no apples in the stores. No one knew for sure why bee colonies were disappearing at such an alarming rate all over the world. A variety of culprits such as pesticides, varroa mites and oscillation frequency from radio towers were implicated. Perhaps this Russian girl was right. And there was something about Rada's voice that was authoritative without sounding bossy.

  "Well I'm keeping my nano-wand," muttered Enrita, who zapped all surfaces for germs wherever she went.

  Rada continued, "We keep our Web equipment over in the Tech block." She pointed to the other
side of the large quadrangle, attractively peppered with trees and flowers. "You can put it over there."

  Nobody moved. Colleen looked to MV. Armed with a scholarship to Yale, he was the most popular boy at school, the highest Flashtrix scorer and boasted the greatest number of PipStream followers.

  MV tore his eyes away from the delectable Rada and noticed trestle tables outside the Tech block. It made sense to get on the right side of this chick. He wanted her. And MV was renowned for always getting the girl he wanted.

  "Come on dudes, let's put our gear on those tables in the sun. At least the batteries can get recharged."

  Rada rewarded him with a stunning smile.

  "I'm in, dude," he texted Jeezbob.

  MV walked slowly across the quadrangle, his forefinger manoeuvring his way out of the trap Jeezbob had set. He finally hit off the sound with a big sigh. The air crackled with the rips of zi-cro pulling apart, as he and his classmates reluctantly disconnected themselves from Mother Web. Glancing reproachfully at the beehives, they laid down their gizmos. Some still owned the bulkier ZiPad-3, but the flexible ZiSleeves were now all the rage. They were lighter and enabled simultaneous screens to operate. MV liked to maintain his supremacy on Flashtrix , joust with Jeezbob, download ZiTunes, upload ZiNaut, keep up with PipStream and watch baseball.

  MV felt naked without his ZiSleeve and rubbed his left arm. It looked skinny and pale compared to his other. He was also dismayed to notice his skin fungus had spread. Mysterious skin diseases had become rampant. Well at least he didn't have asthma or diabetes like half of his classmates, or small genitalia, a scourge of boys born after 2012. He shuffled back across the quadrangle with his fellow web orphans, their school logo glowing green from the back of their T-Shirts. They filed in into a spacious hall with polished wooden floors.

  The future cannot be predicted but futures can be invented, was inscribed in gold above the entrance. A 3D painting that looked like a Hubble photograph vibrated off one of the walls. Light shone down through a myriad of stained glass panels. It was almost like a Church--a wooden vaulted space which sparkled with refracted light. Another beautiful girl was addressing the group.

  "Hello our most revered guests. My name is Tania. We welcome you to Tekos School. May we co-create a positive vision for the future, in this our Space of Love..." Wingnut rolled his eyes and muttered, "I'll give you some positive lovin' baby!"

  As she continued her welcome, MV looked around in awe. The room's splendour matched that of the outside. When he first emerged from the Solaritza, the Tekos bus which had brought them to this school in the Krasnodar region in Southern Russia, he had been impressed. Attractive low rise buildings nestled against a blaze of green forest. He had zipped an image into Archipedia, at the very point when Jeezbob forced him into a bunker full of rayzoids, so hadn't yet seen the answer. He automatically tapped his non-existent ZiSleeve to retrieve it. Damn. He would have to ask instead. As the Americans were being shown to their quarters after Tania's welcome, MV found Rada.

  "Like your buildings. Who's the architect?"

  "We are. We designed it ourselves."

  "Yourselves?"

  "Yes and built it too. This is the third building we have constructed. The first two were burnt down."

  "Burnt down! By who?"

  "By 'whom,' surely?"

  "Yeah, yeah, whom, whatever." She was really unnerving him.

  "Oh, by the Church."

  "The Church?"

  "Yes, a local branch of the Russian Orthodox Church. They think we are a cult and are dangerous."

  Rada and Tania, demure in their braids and cotton dresses, certainly did not look dangerous.

  "The Church burnt you down? You must be joking."

  "No." Laughed Rada. "When Communism collapsed, the Church vied with the Mafia for control. Alexey II, the first post-Soviet Patriarch, reputedly ex-KGB, was very rich and drove a BMW. A perfect example of a new breed of autocrat, jostling for power."

  "What a drag!"

  "A drag?"

  "Demoralising to have to rebuild," he translated.

  "No not at all. Our designs have improved a lot! We have incorporated more sustainability." She pointed up at the walls. "Used more natural products. Our buildings breathe--they are healthier. And we have managed to accommodate the bees better in the new design."

  "Why don't you have them in the garden?" (Like normal people, he refrained from adding.)

  "Oh, they love being near us. They thrive better and they create beautiful honey for us."

  MV ignored this as loony and loopy. Reminded him of that sugary, whole-Earth business his grandmother was into.

  "The bees are very fragile at this present time--they are a barometer for how much we have wrecked the world, so we take extra-special care of them."

  The front of the building was graced by a spectacular, 3-dimensional piece of art. His right hand automatically went for the Digiclick, to send it to Wikiflickr. Again he had the unusual task of having to ask a real person.

  "Who's the artist?"

  "We are--we students created it together."

  MV was stunned. He had heard that this school was exceptional; that kids young as fifteen were completing university degrees, excelling in Maths and Physics. This had been the whole point of Colleen forcing them away from the Crystal Park--to check it out. Most of the Tekos kids had gone home for the summer but three seniors, Rada, Tania and Vassily joined their principal Michael Shchetinin, as hosts for their American visitors.

  "Shove over MV! Hogging all the chick action again!" It was Wingnut, barging in as usual. "Hiya Rada. I'm Wingnut." He ogled her.

  "Wingg-nut?"

  "Yes, let me introduce Wingnut," said MV, ignoring Wingnut's unbelievable social ineptitude, "called so, not because of his political views, or sticky-out ears, but because he resembles the old Ninja character from the affluent times. And his father is still rich as fuck."

  "Ri-ich as fuck ?" repeated Rada, quizzically

  The way the well elocuted 'fuck' burst forth from those rosebud lips was enough to send Wingnut into a paroxysm of hysterical giggling. He didn't know where to put his goofy self. He went automatically to his Zi. He had no idea what to do without it. No wonder his grandparents smoked themselves to death, he thought. Without zyburbia at your fingertips, what else was there to do?

  By this time the trio had circled back to the hall where drinks and lunch were laid out. Sumptuous salads, freshly baked breads and pies overspilled the plates.

  "Ooh, cherry pie!" Wingnut swooped. "That looks cocklickin' good." He couldn't stand the way that Rada was looking at him. Spooky. He dived into the cherries, drowning himself in their delectable sweetness. He, like his classmates, was embarrassed to eat naked, as it were. They couldn't bear being without their earchips for non-stop music, their screens for the latest podcast or video, or their Zi-boards for surfing and texting. Rada, Tania and Vassily were attentive hosts. There was so much TALKING going on. It felt a bit much!

  "How can you guys stand it without Live-stream?" Rachel asked, stuffing her mouth with potato and beetroot salad. "Don't you even have laptops?"

  "Yes, I have a laptop and a phone," said Vassily, "but they are in the Tech building. I only use them sometimes, and then in the evening."

  "God, how boring. What do you do?"

  "It is not boring at all. We dance, sing, have fun."

  Rachel nearly spat beetroot in disgust.

  After lunch there was a massive rush for the ZiSleeves.

  Rada reached for MV as he set out to join the surge. Her touch on his pale arm was warm and inviting. "Would you like me to show you the forest, MV?"

  He felt his eyeballs burning as she looked into them. He thought of his PipStream, which would be overflowing; and Jeezbob, waiting for his next move. "Yeah sure," he said uncertainly, "after I do a quick pip shuffle."

  A flicker of her disappointment flashed between them. He felt like a junkie; starving for his next fix. However he was remind
ed of another kind of fix altogether; the way her arse curved brought warmth to his groin. He'd heard Russian girls were hot. "Okay," he said impulsively, "I'll come." He couldn't remember the last time he had even gone for a walk, let alone without his ZiSleeve.

  Rada led him through a garden that radiated out from behind the Tech building. Flowers spilled onto paths, intricately laid with attractive stones. Rada picked a daisy and threaded it into her braid. The clear skin on her face glowed in the streams of sun that filtered through the trees.

  She led him through the solar garden and past the windmills.

  "Are you totally off-grid here?"

  "Of course," she trilled. "We have very hot summers and in the winter when the wind sweeps down from the Steppes, the windmills take over. Like how you would say...?" She chose her words carefully. "The demented howling of the wind is miraculously converted into the sounds of a flute concerto by Mozart--beautiful to listen to on a wintry evening."

  "You are beautiful to listen to all the time." The thought bubbled from him like within a cartoon. The way she spoke fascinated him. Her words held a beauty that stirred a small neglected pebble resting somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. It felt starved of juice. He promptly dismissed the sensation as sentimental hogwash.

  They walked towards a forest of cedars that swayed tall and majestic, whispering their distinctive hum in the breeze. MV breathed the sweet pine scent into his lungs.

  "Do you have forests near you?" asked Rada.

  "We did have but they are disappearing fast." MV tried to push the dreadful fires of 2016 out of his mind. Angeles National Forest had been razed to the ground, taking with it many human lives including those of his favourite uncle, aunt and cousins. "In the north of California some forests do remain, but many are dying." He looked up at the cedars but did not see the tell-tale brown foliage which was causing the demise of many of those trees. "Your trees look pretty healthy."