Clarkesworld: Year Four

by Kij Johnson

  “Indeed, tell us,” the second said, “Did you have a bonded-one who abandoned you, who wandered off to have intercourse with strangers when you need him?”

  ‘Intercourse?’ she thought. Perhaps there was more to the Twirlover concept of sharing than she realized. “Actually, I left him.”

  “Of course you did,” the second said. “Like attracts like.”

  “Where did you abandon him?” the first said.

  Interesting, the way it had interpreted her words. “I left him at the first nova,” she said. “The Mother Star. Afsasat.”

  “You were at Afsasat and you didn’t go through the event-horizon?” the second said. “I don’t believe your story! Beloved, look how she defiles this union!”

  “Surely,” the first said, “you are joking, trying to please us with paradox? Why would you do something so idiotic? Why not escape through Afsasat when you had the chance?”

  She sighed and turned her attention to the film on her wrist. Mustachioed father and blond-haired son walking down a path. Father, smiling. Boy running, falling. Crying. Father picking him up, kissing him. All better. All better.

  “Did you hear our questions?” the first asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s just that it’s a very long story.”

  “Our lives are stories. We are empty without them. Fill us so we may fill you.”

  Strangely, she had stopped shivering. She even felt a little warm. If this was intercourse, then she was determined to be a good lover. “This film is part of ‘The Biography,’” she said. “A record of my ancestors’ lives that was encoded within my genes.”

  “Such joy! I have heard of this technology, the sharing of such immensity,” the first said. “How far back do your records go?”

  “About six thousand years.”

  The second squealed.

  “I told you, beloved,” the first said. “She is share-worthy.”

  Her mother had told her the story in the quiet hours while drifting under the ash streams of the decimated Magellanic Clouds, or over stale, thrice-brewed tea, while the ice-blue rings of Cegmar rose above the horizon, or while her mother gently brushed her hair and chills trickled down her spine. When he turned seventy, the boy in the film digitized his aging childhood reels and then gave them to his son. His son added films, photos, and memorabilia and passed the collection to his offspring. His children added more history and passed this collection on again. This continued for generations. Eventually his descendants decided to encode this amalgamated history within their DNA, so it would never be lost or forgotten. Every child was thereafter born with the memories of their parents, and theirs before them, and theirs before them. And also in their bodily archives were the early records—the films, photos and keepsakes that started the tradition. The Biography was an ancient and unbroken chain that began with this black and white film playing on her wrist. The first.

  And now the last.

  “It’s so large!” the second said.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Your story,” the first said, “To carry all that history within you!”

  “It’s not in me anymore. Julio and I stripped all of it, every last base-pair, from our genes. I recall only my personal experiences now. This computer . . . it holds the last copy. This is the Biography, now.”

  This fragile, solitary thing on her wrist.

  “But why?” Moans and tweets. “That must have been an immense loss!”

  The answer was complex, full of shame and guilt. Instead she offered the highly edited version. “Because we wanted to enter the World to Come without a past.”

  The Twirlovers tumbled noisily, screeching.

  “I put the Biography on this ancient computer,” she said, pointing to her wrist. “It belonged to my grandmother, five hundred and eighty years ago. Julio and I parked our starsloop in orbit around Afsasat and we stowed this wrist-player in our shrine-room. We said goodbye to our past and then we flew over to the Eluder Ship. Our starsloop and the Biography within would be destroyed when Afsasat went nova.”

  Chirps. Squeals.

  “But Afsasat took its time. So I explored every corner of the Eluder Ship. I discovered that none of my species were there. That meant Julio and I might be the last of my kind in existence. And that meant the Biography was the last of its kind too.”

  A duet of whistles in a major key.

  “I used to recall the smell of my great-grandmother’s hair of twenty-three generations ago as her lover leaned in to kiss her pink lips. I knew every defect in the bathroom tiles of the beach house where my ancestor Rhindi lived four thousand years ago. I could hear the gulls cry as they flew in the colored dawn as the four suns rose, one green, one orange, one yellow, and one blue before Eleanor left her family for war, to die in deep space, but not before she had a son to pass on the memory. I once remembered the joy Yalta felt toward his seventeen lanky daughters, all born in zero-g, all tall, graceful, beautiful, with eyes like blue giants. These weren’t others’ lives. They were mine. I had lived these lives too.”

  Seven long, high notes.

  “So many people had once lived inside of me. Even these memories that I’m telling you about now—they come from this device! Not from me! I’m silent inside. And I realized that if I let the Biography die I would be murdering billions. Just like the Horde.”

  A very human gasp, then a precipitous pause.

  “So I changed my mind. I decided I’d bring the Biography with me into the World to Come. My ancestors deserved that much. I was about to retrieve it from our starsloop, but Julio held me. Afsasat could go nova at any moment, he said. And . . .he wanted to sever us from the past. I disagreed.”

  Betsy started shaking again as the moment became clear in her mind. She remembered his exhausted, pleading eyes, his unruly black beard.

  “Did you forget what they did?” Julio had said. “Did you erase that memory too? The Horde, the progeny of the human race, stole our children! And you want to bring their history with us? We decided we wouldn’t allow that. The Biography has to be destroyed.”

  “I know what we decided, Julio!” she said. “But I can’t let all those people die!”

  “They’re already dead, Betsy!”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.” Her face grew hot. “They’re not dead! They once lived within us! They gave us our lives, and we owe them our memories!”

  “I don’t feel that way at all.”

  “Julio, how can you abandon them so easily?”

  “They led us to this place of death and horror. I sever myself from the past for that reason alone.”

  And in the end, it was she who had abandoned him.

  She swallowed down her tears as the Twirlovers squealed and beckoned her to continue.

  “I told Julio I wanted to wander the ship alone, and instead I snuck off to fetch the Biography. Maybe he knew where I was going. I’ll never know. I reached my starsloop and was ready to return when I heard the alarm. Afsasat was collapsing. One minute to nova. Not enough time to return safely. I panicked. I had to save the Biography, all those lives, from destruction. Nothing else mattered. I powered up my ship and fled.”

  For weeks she had wondered, did Julio search the Eluder Ship for her? What did he feel when he realized she had left him? Like the thoughts of the boy in the film, she’d never know. He had entered a black hole, and nothing could cross that dark horizon.

  The Twirlovers cried out, a piercing shriek. Perhaps they orgasmed together. Eventually, the second said, “What a dirty tale! So much abandonment. I feel defiled. A sinner! This is the kind of sharing you wanted, my beloved?”

  “But in fetching her Biography she returned to her people!” the first said. “Don’t you see? Isn’t sharing so much more rewarding after a long absence?”

  “You twist words easily, my bonded-one! Her story was . . .acceptable.”

  A large Perslop sloshed towards them. The creature was amber, a gelatinous three-limbed starf
ish with translucent skin and dozens of eyes like upturned brown bowls.

  “Do you wish a comforting invocation?” the Perslop said. A slit tucked into one of its armpits burped open to reveal hundreds of tiny white teeth, and its warm breath reeked of dead seas. “I know rituals from a thousand faiths. Or, if you wish, you may teach me one.” Its voice was like wind blowing over ruins.

  “Blessings, smooth-skinned pleasure to behold!” the first Twirlover said. “We welcome a fourth to share!”

  “No we do not!” the second Twirlover said.

  “My flesh-love, please!” the first said. “Do not be rude.” Then to the Perslop: “Instead of an invocation, my finely contoured friend. Will you share a story with us?”

  “Incorrigible!” the second said, tumbling furiously.

  With the moist end of one if its arms, the Perslop inched towards Betsy’s wrist. The tip opened into a tripod of three small fingers, with diminutive brown eyes capping the end of each. The eyes wiggled nervously above the ancient film. “What is this?” it asked.

  “It’s her people’s history!” the first said. “From six-thousand years ago!”

  “Interesting,” the Perslop said. “Your race hasn’t changed much.”

  “That’s a duck,” Betsy said. “Extinct.”

  “So, that’s you there?”

  “No, that’s a walrus. Also extinct.”

  “Then whose history did you say we are watching?”

  “My race. They’re at a zoo.”

  “A ‘zoo?’” the Perslop said.

  “A place that housed animals in cages.”

  “What for?”

  “So they could observe them without danger to themselves,” she said.

  “Another act of separation!” the second Twirlover said. “Such a barbaric, dirty race!”

  “Her filth notwithstanding, keeping something caged is not barbarism,” the Perslop said, its moist arm dangling an hairsbreadth from Betsy’s face. “Before the Horde destroyed my brothers, I used to travel with my colony to a fecal press, where we severed one of our limbs and tortured it in a cage until it released a small amount of feces. We then burned that feces as an offering to the Absent One. They were profoundly holy events. And I miss them very, very much.”

  The second Twirlover squeaked loudly three times.

  “You see, my beloved?” the first said. “This is the joy you have missed by withdrawing from union all these years!”

  On Betsy’s wrist the film played on, men in white shorts and shirts playing handball. Women sitting on the sidelines bringing smoky cigarettes to their lips. The young boy, a few years older, standing on a porch, talking to a beautiful girl.

  “You simplify my thoughts!” the second Twirlover said. “I take no joy in the suffering of others. If I did, I would find pleasure in the atrocities of the Horde. But those are stories I never wish to hear again. If I could, I would erase them from history like this creature erased this Biography from her genes!”

  If only that were possible, Betsy thought. To rewrite history. If so, she’d go even further back, to the creation of the Horde, more than three hundred years ago. Humanity had been evolving rapidly for generations. They had augmented their consciousness to the point that the body became irrelevant. Flesh was now a temporary abode, while the mind was free to explore and play in infinite space. Epic works of art, science, and philosophy were commonplace. Physical suffering had been eradicated. It was a true Golden Age of humankind.

  But the Hagzhi, a prideful, stoic and gargantuan species that had once peacefully abided humans, became fearful of humanity’s growing power over matter and began to spread lies and sow seeds of mistrust. Later, the Hagzhi began to systematically exterminate humans as a way to prop up their own faltering galactic hegemonies. Humanity was nearly destroyed in the wars that followed, but after that tumult, humans vowed that they would never let such a catastrophe happen again. Through heroic feats of research they discovered the secret folds of negative time and learned the simple mystery behind the origins of consciousness. They learned how to, with a thought, create a sun. And with another, destroy it.

  The Hagzhi race vanished from existence in a day. One hundred and seventy planets, moons, outposts and stations erased from the universe. Later, for no reason anyone could discern, other races vanished. Races which had never threatened humanity. The Onyx Horde, as this force came to be known, acted without cause or reason.

  Not all humans accepted the rise to supra-consciousness. Not all humans wanted to change. The Horde slaughtered those who resisted. Those who hid were found, tortured, and killed. And there were those, like Betsy’s ancestors, who had made a deal and were spared.

  “Keep the Biography in your genes,” the Horde had commanded her ancestors. “Keep your physical human form. Do this and you will not die.”

  And her ancestors agreed, and survived, even prospered, while the rest of the galaxy was ruined. When the other races discovered that there were humans who were spared the Horde’s madness, that the Horde were the progeny of the human race, the long dormant seeds of doubt that the Hagzhi had planted re-sprouted, this time across the entire galaxy. Humans were slaughtered without remorse, and the Horde did not come to save them.

  If I were given that choice now, Betsy thought. To live or die by their rules, I would have chosen death. I’d rather die than live under their darkness another instant.

  On the film, a crowded beach. People swimming. Large umbrellas casting shadows. Wisps of cloud in the sky, all under a bright sun.

  A young sun.

  The Twirlovers stopped twirling. The Perslop leaned in closer to see.

  “Such a young sun,” the Perslop said. “Bright and warm. The sight fills me with sadness. No longer do such stars burn in the Milky Way. Here we orbit this dying star in a dead galaxy where only a few cinders burn in a quiescent sea. And all about the universe a hundred billion galaxies dangle forever beyond our reach. The Onyx Horde has sealed us forever from their glorious light. May their souls be stripped from eternity!”

  On the film, a party. People laughing, dancing, hands on hips, forming a human train. Cone-shaped hats.

  “What are they doing?” the Perslop asked.

  “A party,” Betsy said. “A new year’s celebration.”

  “And why do they bounce up and down?”

  “They’re dancing.”

  “Do you remember, my soul-union,” the first Twirlover said, “how we danced for three ascensions of the Hagic Moon with the birth of our tumble-litter?”

  “I shall never forget!” the second said, squealing. “Our many tumblers, searching for their bond-sisters. How they merged and separated a thousand times before they joined the sisters to complete their soul!”

  “May they find the path to the Glory Star that resides at the center of creation.”

  On the film, the blond boy in the corner staring into the camera eye. I’d always assumed that one day someone would look into the Biography and see me. But I’m the last, aren’t I?

  “Your children, are they dead?” the Perslop said to the Twirlovers.

  “They were living on Ental,” the second said. “It was obliterated by the Horde.” A hiss like a distant wave crashing on an empty beach.

  “I had nine offspring,” the Perslop said. “Three died in the disastrous attempt to pass through the galaxy’s transmatter shell. Three died of malnutrition. Two died in an experiment to create a new star.”

  “That’s only eight,” the first Twirlover said. “And the ninth?”

  “Suicide.”

  On the film, an elderly couple in formal clothing sitting beside a bright window. Their bodies in silhouette. The woman, Bessie. The man, Oser. Betsy’s oldest ancestors in the Biography. She and Julio had named their children after them. A boy and girl. Twins. She remembered their puffy, newborn faces, their eyes hungry for life.

  She and Julio and her children had been living on the temperate moon of Aeoschloch with one hundred other Bio
graphy-carrying humans, far from the wars and the suspicions of the other races. And one morning, as the swirling black eye of the gas giant Ur rose above the distant hills, as she was breast-feeding her twin children, she was swept away.

  She could not see or hear or sense anything, even her own screams, but she felt a presence probing her, scanning her, reading and rereading the Biography within her as if it were the most important thing in the universe. And she knew this presence, remembered it from the Biography and the memories within.

  The Onyx Horde.

  Then the Horde spit her and a hundred other humans out over the sandy coastline. Some people did not rise from the cold beach. Their eyes stared lifeless into the starless sky. Some had organs missing or were merged with others into horrible grotesqueries. Some went mad. Some had reappeared in the ocean and drowned. And the children, all the pre-pubescent ones, had vanished. The Horde had taken them. Every one.

  Oser and Bessie, two months old, barely enough time to open their eyes and learn their parents’ faces. Gone.

  The seventy surviving colonists were wrecked, devastated. Should they have more children? No, they decided, the Horde could just as easily take them again. Should they try to forget and live out their lives on this backwater moon? No, how could they ever find joy again, knowing that the Horde could come again at any time? Then the colonists heard about Afsasat, the Eluder Ship being built there and a possible way to escape the Horde forever.

  And so it was decided. The colonists would end their history on their own terms. They would attempt to enter the World to Come, but without the Biography inside of them. They would excise it from their genes, shedding themselves from the thing which the Horde seemed so desperately to desire. Shedding themselves of humanity’s sordid history. It would be, in their own small way, revenge.

  But they’d have to get to Afsasat first. The Eluder Ship was being constructed in a quadrant of space that was rumored to be tolerant of humans. But the colonists would have to navigate through large quadrants of dangerous space. So they traveled in many ships, by multiple circuitous and zigzagging routes. Betsy and Julio arrived safely. When Betsy walked around the ship, looking for other humans, she found none. They were the last two.