Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep

by Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep- The Best New Science Fiction from Sweden (retail) (epub)

  But on the other hand, if the author wrote more Helga would get to read more. And what if the author didn't have a family and managed her regular job no matter how much she wrote? There were many good reasons for the rule, but if the author herself felt that she could write more, then why should Helga be the one to decide how many pages were allowed?

  The argument would not hold if she was discovered, so if that happened Helga had to come up with some excuse, maybe a technical glitch. But that was a later problem. She doubled the number of pages and hoped that no one in the IT department would notice anything.

  When she sent back the changes that needed to be made in the text she also included a small message.

  "You now have twenty pages a day. And I think we have to meet."

  The next day, she began with the last page where she indeed found an answer to her question.

  "Sure. When and where? And why?"

  Helga knew the perfect place.

  "Every Wednesday at noon I will sit in the Botanical Garden. You'll find me by a bench a hundred meters down the trail in the rose garden. Come and see me there."

  After three weeks and huge amounts of text she finally met the author. Helga used to occasionally eat lunch in the peace and quiet of the Botanical Garden, and loved to sit in the heat and light under the glass dome in the midst of the beautiful plants.

  Every time someone came walking towards her, she looked up, but by the time the author finally arrived, she had almost stopped believing that she would show up.

  Helga was sitting, eating her sandwich and observing the vegetation when she noticed a young woman, or rather a girl who could not be more than eighteen, standing in front of her and looking at her.

  Neither of them said anything while studying each other in silence for what seemed like several minutes.

  The girl was wearing a pair of pants that had been fashionable many years ago, and a red blouse, and she had an alert, clever gaze.

  "You want to sit down?" Helga said at last.

  "Sure." The girl sat down on the bench.

  "How old are you?"

  "I'll be seventeen in a month."

  "Seventeen? Then you cannot possibly have been licensed! How can you write?"

  "It's my sister's account."

  "Your sister? You pretend to be your sister? Don't you understand? You're ruining her chances of ever writing! If she has taken the course and is licensed ..."

  "She'll never write!" The girl stood up, crossed her arms and looked down at the ground.

  "You don't know that!"

  "My sister is in a coma. She will never wake up. The doctors talk about ending ..."

  "Oh." Helga was silent. She put aside her sandwich and laid her hands on her knees. "What is your name?"

  "Sophia," said the girl without looking up.

  "Sophia ... I'm truly sorry about your sister. How ... how long do you think she will remain in the coma?"

  "They have started talking about pulling the plug!" Sophia looked up and met Helga's eyes. This was truly an extraordinary young lady. But she did not understand what she was doing when she wrote using her sister's account. They were both silent for a moment.

  "It's a great novel you're writing," said Helga. "I'm impressed."

  "Thank you. You really like it?"

  "I love it. It is one of the best I've read. Besides the classics. But the problem is that it is not okay to write this kind of novel. It is too strange and not commercial enough. I should have terminated it a long time ago, but I haven't been able to do it, because it is so good. I really want to finish reading it."

  "All new books are so boring," said Sophie. "They're all the same. I want to write one like the classics. Like Lord of the Rings, The Flowers of Evil or Brimstone Sleep."

  "Have you read them? But you're not old enough to borrow or buy classics."

  "Dad works at the university library."

  Helga nodded.

  "I understand. I will not tell anyone."

  "Thank you."

  "You really have talent. I have worked all my life as a reader for The Publishing House. Most of what I read is actually quite boring. Skillful but boring. Every now and then I have the good fortune to read some good stuff. Your text really stands out. It does not follow any rules. It is funny, sad and exciting. And your language is wonderful."

  "I just write what I like to read."

  "That's a good principle. You could really be a great writer. Even some original writers who write different from the rest are occasionally licensed to write. At least if they have talent. And you have talent. But there is a problem ..."

  "What?"

  "If it ever becomes known that you have used your sister's account you will be banned for life. Then you will never write again."

  "Oh. I didn't realize that."

  "It's a long process to get permission to write and a lot of people are turned down for various reasons. Last year a guy who was suspended tried to bypass the rules and ... let's just say that you don't want to know what happened to him."

  "Does anyone know what I have done?"

  "Just me. And I have loved reading your book. I would do anything to see you finish it."

  Helga thought about what she had just said. And she realized how right she was. It was about time that there was a book that would shake the foundations of the literary world. A beloved book that broke the rules. An impressive and groundbreaking book. A book that would break the boredom of modern day storytelling.

  "Forgive me for asking," said Helga, "but how long will it be before the doctors turn off your sister's life support system?"

  "I don't know. They just started talking about it. Mom and dad haven't decided yet."

  Helga knew a little about the process since she had a cousin who was an anesthesiologist. If they just had started talking, it meant that after the parents had consulted the physician it would take at least a month before the decision was approved by the administrators.

  "How long do you need to finish?"

  "I don't know. A month. Maybe two."

  "Okay. Then I know what we should do. And I do not want you to argue with me. Not under any circumstances. Do you understand?"

  Sophia looked back at her with her wise, clever eyes.

  "Yes I do."

  Helga enjoyed her coffee at the favorite spot in the Botanical Garden. Two days after Sophia had finished the novel, they had turned off her sister's life support systems. As soon as she had been pronounced dead the account was automatically disabled.

  But Helga had the novel. A book that made her smile just by thinking about it. A daring and unusual book. A book she had longed for without knowing it.

  Normally, someone at a level above her should read a book before publication, but Helga had ignored that rule. She had made sure that it would be published anyway. She had worked for so long that she knew exactly what to do.

  "Her actions would cost her more than her job, but she was at peace with her decision. In any case she did not have much to look forward to. Read boring books and go on holidays to cities that were like museums. Celebrate Christmas with cousins she never saw otherwise.

  But now she could say to herself that she had done something that mattered. Something that was real.

  As soon as the management discovered the book, they would begin the process of withdrawing it, but at that point it would have reached enough readers, and above all enough reviewers, that it would be difficult for them to stop it completely.

  At least if the book received the attention she hoped it would get. To be on the safe side she had made sure to send the novel to some literary scholars and critics who she thought would agree with her opinion. Who in not so many words used to call for books that were a bit different, that did not follow The Publishing House's common template and standard.

  But she also knew that even if they couldn't do anything about the book, they would certainly do something about her.

  She had just had time to drink up h
er coffee when she heard the boots. There were many, far too many, to arrest a middle-aged lady who worked in culture.

  It wasn't long before she was surrounded by uniformed men and women who all turned their guns on her. She smiled and was about to stand up when one of the soldiers shouted at her not to move and to raise her hands.

  She found such contradictory orders rather amusing, but realized that it was best not to say anything, and she simply raised her hands.

  It was beautiful here in the enclosed garden, and she had done something she believed in.

  Not even an anti-terror squad could ruin her day.

  "Stories from the Box" – Björn Engström

  He didn't know how long he had been without food. He didn't even know how long he had been in the box.

  The first few days had been easy to keep track of, but after a while, distinguishing each individual day had become impossible. The days seemed to merge, to create a new entity, a new time unit. Not days or weeks, but simply chunks. He'd been in here for countless chunks. He'd even been without food for a few chunks.

  He sucked water out of the damp walls. The last food he ate was some tasteless gray paste which he scraped out of a small plastic package. The package had been thrown to him – no one ever gave him anything here, they threw or thrust things at him – by what he assumed had been a guard. Normally, he was given one plate of food every day, and when he had finished eating, they opened the door again and removed the plate. This repetition gave his life at least some kind of rhythm. But then they stopped bringing the plate. He had already lost count of the days by then, but without the plate, his life changed from "one plate a day" to simply "one". One man. One box. Until the door was opened and someone threw him the package.

  He had made the package last. For some reason, he had assumed that it would take a long time before someone threw anything at him again. And he had been right. He had only eaten a thumbnail-sized piece of paste when the hunger pains in his stomach had become unbearable. Given the size of the package, that meant a lot of days had gone by. Maybe even chunks. And in all that time, the door had not been opened once.

  Sounds confused him. Before, back in the days when they used to bring him the plate, there were sounds of metal against metal, creaks of wheels, the occasional distant scream. Now, there was nothing. Only once in a while the roar of thunder or the howl of a strong wind whipping his box. Something had changed on the outside.

  His box was small. He could only sit or crouch, he could not stand up and he could not take a single step. All the walls were rough concrete. He spent his days leaning against the door, enjoying the smooth softness of its rusty iron against his back. When he felt more stiff than usual, he forced his ass into a corner and stretched his legs towards the opposite corner. This was still not nearly enough, and he wondered if he would ever be able to fully straighten his legs again. Or his back.

  He tried to remember his life before the box. When he could actually do things, when he could go to real places instead of only letting his mind wander. Didn't he once read books? Didn't he sometimes travel to faraway places? Didn't he actually meet other people? Didn't some of those people accuse him of something he didn't do and try to beat him into confessing?

  All those things seemed so distant. They were like fairytales, buried deep inside him, not real memories but made-up stories he could tell if he ever got out of here. He leaned against the iron door and let his mind drift into those stories, living his life through other characters. Time passed in the company of women he had always wanted to meet and men who all looked like him.

  He felt his body giving up, starting to eat itself from within.

  His thoughts dissolved into small fragments that quickly lost track of each other. He was still in the box, he was sure of it. He was almost certainly still alive. Everything around him was in all likelihood very quiet, unnaturally quiet.

  Until suddenly, a metallic clicking noise cut through the silence – and he fell out the door.

  Complete darkness surrounded him.

  He tried to remember how to move his body. Slowly, he managed to pull his legs out of the box. Gravel outside the door scraped his skin, sending lightning bolts of remembrance into his brain: this was what it felt like!

  He took a deep breath and his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as the fresh air shot into his lungs and propelled his blood into his skull.

  He was sure his eyes were open, but the darkness was impenetrable. He seemed to remember a story about something called stars and how they ought to be in the sky. And another story called City Lights, about how the world is never dark but always lit by man-made technologies.

  It was dark, though. It was as if the world had never heard those stories.

  He didn't mind. He could just lie here, enjoying every breath of air and the barely audible sound of the breeze moving over the ground. He could lie here for a very long time, and still be happy.

  At first he thought someone was coming. But then he realized it was only the sun, far beyond the horizon, its faint light starting to lift the darkness. Still, he was not disappointed. It would be nice to meet the sun again after all this time. Probably a lot nicer than meeting the people who were guarding him and the box.

  But where were they? He had been lying here for hours – not chunks, just a few hours, he was sure of it – and he had seen or heard no one. Shouldn't they be here after opening the box? Weren't they supposed to guard him? Beat him? Something?

  He stood up. Had anyone seen him, they would have thought he was crawling. But to him, this was walking, this was happily skipping along, this was sprinting to the cheers of a large audience. His muscles slowly took charge, forcing his joints to unbend from their box limits, pulling him up, up.

  The sun had not yet climbed over the edge of the world, and still the light was so bright he had to shield his eyes. He looked around, beginning to notice his surroundings. The box was just one in a long row of boxes, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. On the other side of the fence: low buildings, trucks, a road leading across a flatland of dust and rocks.

  And something else, hidden in the shadows of the trucks.

  He walked to the next box in the row. On the front of its door was an electronically controlled lock, powered down, unbolted. He eased the door open, peered inside. For a moment he saw himself, curled up into a ball. Then he understood that the man was not him, did not look like the men in his story memories – nor was the man alive. The skin had dried up around the bones.

  He went to the next box and found another corpse.

  His crouched body took a few aimless steps, and he stared at the long row of boxes. Dead. They were all dead. He was the only one alive.

  Then he remembered the things in the shadows.

  His eyes watering from the strong sunlight, he looked again at the world outside the fence. In the shrinking shadows of the parked trucks, there were things on the ground. He could not quite see them yet, but he knew what they were: corpses. They had been his guards, before they also died.

  His stomach suddenly screamed with hunger, and the pain made him fall to his knees. He looked around, then crawled – really crawled this time – to the nearest box and felt inside. He found a package. It seemed empty at first, but his eager fingers unfolded every crumpled seam in the stiffened plastic and finally found a tiny piece of gray something. He eagerly put it in his mouth.

  He looked through more boxes of the dead, and found enough to eat to ease the pain in his gut. Something chewy. Something insubstantial. Something tasteless yet disgusting. All of it kind of pointless. Most of it invigorating.

  He stood up straight and took a deep breath, careful not to let the sunlight blind him.

  Time to get out of here.

  As he reached the top of the mountain, he turned and looked back down towards the prison camp. What had happened there? What had killed all those people?

  He had found a gate in the barbed-wire fence, its electronic lock open
just like the ones on the boxes. Ignoring the bodies of the guards, he had searched through the buildings, and had found food and drink in a fridge and clothes in a wardrobe. Dressed in a guards' uniform and with a backpack full of food packages and water, he had started one of the trucks. That he even remembered how was proof that he was really alive. The stories in his head had filled him with knowledge that he had forgotten he had.

  The truck had brought him as far as the foot of the mountain. Then the engine had simply stopped, and he had been out of ideas on how to make it run again. Maybe he could have found a story in the back of his mind that could have told him what to do, but it felt so good to be able to move that he didn't mind walking.

  So he had climbed the mountain, or hill as someone more acquainted with mountains might have called it, pausing only to soothe his aching stomach a little. Not too much, a story had reminded him, eat slowly. Yet he had still eaten more than he should, and had lost some of it a while later.

  Now he turned away from the dry valley with all the boxes of the dead, and started down the other side. Into the world.

  A world that was strangely quiet.

  It was impossible to understand.

  Was it his mind that was weak after all those chunks in the box? Or was it just such an impossible thing, such an improbability, that no one would have been able to make his mind believe what his eyes saw?

  The first sign had been the gas station. He remembered – he knew now that the stories in his head were mostly memories – that this was the kind of place where he should have been able to fix the truck after it stopped. "Fillerup" was a sound he heard in his head and didn't quite understand.