The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “Strictly hands-off, Professor! Look but do not touch.”

  The functionary, a bored fellow some inches shorter and stouter than I, waited with his eyes out of focus, probably watching some Flix drivel. I took the neuronic whip out of my pocket and buzzed the Director to sleep. His head fell forward and hit the table. The functionary gave his boss an astonished look, but by that time I was beside him and cold-cocked him with the whip’s butt. I kicked out of my KT-26 joggers, dragged off his clothes, struggled into them over my own, got my feet stuck in the arms of his numbered Demons football team sweater-trousers. I shoved, had them in place, tugged the shoes back on—I needed something sturdier than a pair of foot mittens. I heaved both men well clear, piled up a stoichiometric mixture of powdered iron oxide and aluminum, and set fire to it with the propane lighter. It went up with an explosive huff, and the hot blue blaze evaporated the death-laden logs and started to melt the top of the steel table.

  The Director was stirring. I ran to the door, flung it wide. “Fire, fire!” I screamed, and ran to the elevator. “Quick, the treasures!” The polished cedar doors of the old lift creaked open. It was empty. Offices were opening, faces gaping. I flung myself in, hit the ground floor button, breathed deeply as the elevator descended, stepped forth slowly in a dignified manner and retrieved my backpack before the shouts and bells broke out in earnest behind me.

  As I skipped light-heartedly down the gray steps and onto the grass, something fast and heavy slammed into my upper back, flung me forward on my face. I rolled, twisted, came up in a crouch, but the Director’s prosthetic had pulled away out of reach. His face was livid with fury. I grabbed at my bruised neck. The rolls of toilet paper had saved me from having my spine ruptured, but I still felt as if I’d been kicked by a horse. Three fat guards tore down the steps, batons raised. I could have killed the lot of them, but my job here was to keep a low profile (ha!) and save lives. A lot of lives. Millions of lives. Mission accomplished.

  I sighed and held my hands away from my body. It’s a shame you can’t loop back into your own immediate history or I’d have seen a dozen later versions of me popping up from the gathering crowd, coming to my rescue. Nope, it just didn’t work that way. Maybe Moira—

  Through gritted teeth, she was saying in my inload, “Damn it, Bobby, are you all right? Your vitals look okay. Hang on, I’ll be with you in a—”

  They hauled me inside again and this time the lift took us down into the basement.

  “On my way,” Moira told me. Then, in a softer tone, she said, “Bobby, honey, you done good. Real good. Nine million lives spared. Oh man. When I spring you, we are going to have a party, baby.”

  “You are the worst kind of terrorist,” Director Vermeer told me in a chill, shaking voice. “In a matter of seconds you destroyed not lives but the very meaning of lives, the certified historical foundation that—”

  “So the Martian logs are entirely destroyed?” I tried to rise; two overweight but chunky-muscled guards held me down. At least the functionary I’d stripped of his outer garments wasn’t in the room, although his pilfered clothing had been taken away and I suppose returned to him, or maybe held for some kind of forensic examination. I’d expected the place to be swarming with firefighters, ladders, gushing hoses, media cameras. No such thing. Evidently the vault room’s internal fire protection systems had done the job, but not in time.

  “Entirely incinerated, you barbarian.”

  “Thank dog for that!”

  “And blasphemous mockery on top of this devastation, ‘Professor’ Chop.” I could hear the inverted commas. “Oh yes, I wasted no time checking your absurd alibi. The University in Suva has no record of you, no faith exists called Chronosophy, nor is there any Albert M.—”

  I chopped him off. “True. I had to deceive you to gain access to those festering Martian plague vectors. You have no idea how lucky you are, Director. How lucky the entire world is.”

  “What fresh nonsense is this?”

  “In two days’ time you’d have—” There was a knock at the door of the curator’s office, a long narrow room decorated with holograms of flaring galaxies, rotating, peeling, multiplying nucleic acids, two lions mating rather terrifyingly again and again in a loop, and other detritus of Installations and Exhibitions past. A woman with a floral skirt down to her wrists said apologetically, “Pardon me, Director, but there’s a police Inspector here to speak to the, the prisoner.”

  My heart sank. I looked up gloomily, and Moira, in full police uniform worn upside down, but with a peaked cap covering her short red hair, said, “Good afternoon, Director. With your permission, I’d like to speak to this man in private for a moment. Then we’ll be taking him across to Police Headquarters where he will be charged with this heinous offense.” She was carrying my backpack.

  “Very well, Inspector. I hope to hear a full accounting in due course. This arson is the most egregious—”

  My wife shepherded him to the door, and shooed out the guards with him. “Please take a seat, Mr. …What should I call you?” she said for the sake of the library staff milling on the other side of the closing door. It clicked shut.

  “I think you could call me ‘Bobby,’ honey. Delighted to see you, but how do we proceed from here? We can’t just stroll out and take a tram to the Botanic Gardens.”

  “The machine’s out the back. No sense mucking around.”

  “Who did you clobber, by the way?”

  “Some poor cow downstairs. Had to drag her into the loo to get her uniform off her. She’s trussed up in one of their quaint cubicles. Someone’s bound to find her, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  Moira was hyper, on the verge of babbling; she always gets that way when she’s pulled off some amazing exploit.

  “Okay, sweetie.” I stood up, groaning, and she marched me toward the door in a stern and professional gait. “Lay on, MacDuff.”

  The lift took us back to the ground floor, where the director hovered, literally. “We have transport waiting at the back entrance,” Moira told him. “Let’s keep this as low profile as possible, no sense getting people hysterical. The braindrain is under sedation, he’ll give me no trouble.”

  We made our way briskly through confusing corridors to the back, me giving a glazed fish eye to anyone we passed. There was no vehicle, of course, but the drab graveled back space was relieved by a handsome rosebush in a large wooden pot. Nobody was watching us. It’s amazing what an air of authority and slight menace can do. We entered the disguised time machine and Moira, in the pilot’s seat, took us forward a year. It was three in the morning when we emerged, so the place was deserted. But the city lights were bright in the crisp air, and from somewhere to the northeast we heard music and laughter. No plague. No epidemic of murderous nanomites from Mars. Another horrible future with its teeth pulled, made safe for humankind. Hooray, hooray.

  “What’s up, sweetie? Let’s go back to 2099 and put our feet up.” She started to snigger. “My dog, Bobby, you were a class act with your legs jammed into a sweater and your boof head sticking out of some guy’s fly. Come on, what’s up?”

  “Candidly,” I told her, feeling dreary, “I’m feeling dreary. How stale, flat and unprofitable are the uses of this world.”

  “Come on, buddy.” My wife jabbed me in the ribs. She’s just a little thing, but her elbow is sharp, even through a stolen blue police skirt. “Remember our motto, and be proud.”

  “A stitch in time,” I said without much enthusiasm. It’s the nature of our trade. You can change your future but not your own past. So you’re obliged to go further and further into the day after the day after, and track down tomorrow’s atrocities that can be reversed earlier in unborn histories you’ve never lived through, have no real stake in. Guardians of time, that’s us. We can go home, sure, as far as our first time trip, but no further back than that. No way we can repairs the horrors of our own past, the local history that made us: assassinations of the great and good, genocides, terro
rist attacks, our own insignificant but painful goofs. It’s like something from a Greek tragedy or myth, seems to me sometimes. Doomed to fix everyone else’s atrocities and never get any thanks, and no chance to remedy our own mistakes.

  But Moira was hugging me, and the sky was clear and filled with faint stars, through the light-spattered towers of Melbourne in 2073, which is more than could be said for some other epochs. So I hugged my wife back, and found myself grinning down at her. “Yeah. Okay. A stitch in time—”

  “Saves nine,” she said. “Nine million lives, this time. Maybe our own grand-grandkids, if we decide to. So hey, let’s feel good about that, eh?”

  “You bet.” I said. I did feel better, a bit. “Party time it is, honey.”

  And we fell away into the future, again.

  END

  Copyright © 2011 by Damien Broderick

  Art copyright © 2011 by Victo Ngai

  Books by Damien Broderick

  NOVELS

  Sorcerer’s World

  The Dreaming Dragons

  Valencies (with Rory Barnes)

  Matilda at the Speed of Light

  Zones (with Rory Barnes)

  The White Abacus

  The Game of Stars and Souls

  Transcension

  The Hunger of Time (with Rory Barnes)

  I Suppose a Robot’s Out of the Question? (with Rory Barnes)

  I’m Dying Here (with Rory Barnes)

  The Dreaming

  Dark Gray (with Rory Barnes)

  Human’s Burden (with Rory Barnes)

  Quipu

  THE FAUSTUS HEXIGRAM NOVELS

  The Judas Mandala

  Transmitters

  The Black Grail

  Striped Holes

  The Sea’s Furthest End

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  A Man Returned

  The Dark Between the Stars

  Uncle Bones

  The Qualia Engine

  NON-FICTION

  The Lotto Effect

  The Architecture of Babel: Discourses of Literature and Science

  Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction

  Transrealist Fiction: Writing in the Slipstream of Science

  The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technologies

  The Last Mortal Generation

  X, Y, Z, T: Dimensions of Science Fiction

  Ferocious Minds: Polymathy and the New Enlightenment

  Outside the Gates of Science: Why It’s Time for the Paranormal to Come in from the Cold

  Unleashing the Strange: Twenty-First Century Science Fiction Literature

  Climbing Mount Implausible: The Evolution of a Science Fiction Writer

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  Unremembered

  The struggle is not what I remember most about the delivery boy’s procedure. It’s the girl. The one buried deep in his mind. Hidden in his memory like a keepsake.

  But of course, it would be difficult to forget that struggle. The delivery boy fought harder than most. Maybe that’s because his breach was more personal than the others’. A repeat offender. Fueled by fascination and obsession. While most offenses are merely accidental. A slip up.

  Delivery boys are the bread and butter of our department. The nature of their job makes them prone to seeing more than they should. But there are plenty of others brought in as well. Mail carriers, caterers, tutors, relatives, suppliers. Anyone from the outside, without a security clearance level, is susceptible to breaches.

  But like I said, most are not intentional.

  The delivery boy, according to the report, had returned again and again. Had gotten too close. And had finally been caught.

  I had to admire his persistence. And feel just the slightest bit sorry for him.

  “Let me out of here!” he screamed, banging on the bolted door. “You can’t keep me locked in here like a prisoner!”

  I watched him through the window. Dr. Solara was already starting to work her magic on him. It’s hard not to fall for that body and face. Every guy in this department is guilty of at least one fantasy starring the tall, blonde doctor. Even me.

  But novelty wears off fast.

  And things are different on this side of the window.

  “Don’t worry.” She attempted to subdue him with a gentle touch on the arm. “We’re not going to hurt you. Please just have a seat.”

  She gestured to the chair in the middle of the room.

  By the look in the boy’s eyes, he could tell it wasn’t just a chair.

  No one ever thinks it’s just a chair.

  The boy glared at it as Dr. Solara offered him one of her winning smiles.

  Normally the smile is enough. It’s the reason Dr. Solara has earned the title of “Mediator.” She’s good with the offenders. Mediators have to have smiles like that. It’s part of the job description.

  I, on the other hand, just have to know how to push the buttons. Sometimes I think that’s all I am to them—a button pusher. The guy who writes the code. Who uploads the file. Who performs the final system tests to make sure the restorations are successful.

  What they don’t seem to understand is that there’s an art to it. Ultimately, Revisual+ is a programming language like any other. But the language of memories is so much more than just logic and a degree in software engineering.

  I observed the boy’s reaction carefully, waiting for that inevitable moment when he finally surrendered to his fate. When he succumbed to whatever kind of procedure this was. When he finally resigned to sitting in the chair that’s clearly not just a chair.

  Eventually they all surrender.

  The needle came from behind. Almost immediately after the boy sat down. It jutted out from the seat’s tall back, puncturing him in the neck. His whole body stiffened.

  “Don’t worry,” Dr. Solara assured him again with another radiant smile, pushing the hair back from his forehead. “It will be over before you know it. And you won’t remember a thing.”

  I rolled up to my desk to prepare my system for retrieval. As the boy’s eyelids started to sag, his gaze floated languidly in my direction. For a second, I swore he could actually see me, his accusing eyes penetrating the barrier between us.

  Of course, I knew this was ridiculous. The only thing he could see on the other side of that window was whatever soothing landscape the doctor had chosen to project.

  But I ducked my head nonetheless and focused on my monitor.

  Dr. Solara appeared through the door a minute later, after the delivery boy was out. She ran her fingers through her short blond hair, tugging on the ends as though she meant to pull them straight from the roots.

  “What a piece of work, huh?” she grunted, all traces of femininity wiped clean from her voice.

  I opted not to comment. In the three years I’ve been working here, I’ve learned that the less I engage in conversation, the better. “Retrieval in sixty seconds,” I reported.

  She sighed and pressed her balled fists to her hips. No smiles in this room.

  The download progress bar inched its way across my screen, filling empty space with digital green pigment.

  “Ready for metadata,” I announced, fingers poised on keys.

  Dr. Solara lowered herself into the adjoining station and began to list off the subject’s stats. “Name: Nik
o Benz. Age: Nineteen. Occupation: Employee at Sunset Valley Flowers and Gifts. Address: 171 North Cannon…”

  I entered the data with the precision and speed of a machine.

  “How much do you need to see?” I asked.

  “The last two weeks.” I immediately noted the annoyance in her tone. Having to review that much footage is a daunting task. “Filter out anything that doesn’t reference the infraction. I don’t need to watch this guy taking a dump.”

  I yawned and input the search parameters. The results spit out a moment later and I transferred them to her terminal, activating the Revisualization program.

  Dr. Solara rubbed at her painted cheeks as she watched the downloaded memories play out on the screen. I tried to keep my eyes glued to my own monitor, knowing full well that it’s not the coder’s job to assess the infraction. It’s only my job to remove it. And of course, leave something believable in its place.

  But it was hard not to look. Especially once I saw the reason the boy was here.

  The reason he was unconscious in that room on the other side of the window. And then everything became clear.

  It was a girl.

  But not just any girl.

  Her intoxicating purple eyes flashed in and out of the delivery boy’s mind all day. Her flawless face mesmerized him. Consumed him. He thought about her everywhere he went. He fantasized about her constantly. Caressing her smooth bronzed skin. Running his fingers through her silky caramel-colored hair. Kissing her delectable pink lips.

  It was she who kept him coming back. Who captivated the poor boy beyond reprieve. He was originally sent here on a routine delivery. A fruit basket, of all things. An innocent task turned into something else.

  And for a face that exquisite, it was hard to blame him.

  I felt myself leaning forward in my chair, gazing at Dr. Solara’s monitor. Falling into the delivery boy’s fantasies. Replacing his hands, his fingers, his mouth with my own.