The Last Science Fiction Writer

by Allen Steele

  By midafternoon, a small army has been mustered from the urban wasteland surrounding the White House. Men and women, young and old, anyone able to carry a weapon and not too sick or frail to fight. War drums roust them from the ruins of the Old Exec and the Blair House, the half-collapsed high-rise of the National Press Building, the vast squatter camp of the Federal Triangle, the putrid underground warrens of the Metro stations. An army that’s toothless, scrawny, cancerous, bowlegged and on the verge of starvation, but an army nonetheless. A thousand points of light, lurching its way down Pennsylvania Avenue toward a mansion on the hill.

  At the head of this faith-based initiative is President. He rides into battle as a good commander-in-chief should, seated upon a litter carried by a half-dozen loyal Pubs. His spear is clasped in his right hand, his knife in his left. A silver platter, once presented to one of his predecessors as a gift from the ambassador of a country long since vanished, now hangs from his neck as a shield. The scalps of his vanquished foes are suspended from staffs carried by his honor guard, the Seecrit-Servis, and at the front of the procession is a warrior waving the last American flag flown from the White House roof before the coming of the ice.

  As they approach Capitol Hill, a Dem sentry positioned on the roof of the National Gallery raises the alarm. One long, loud bellow from his horn before he’s brought down by a Pub spear, but that’s enough to let the Dems know that they’re coming. By the time the Pubs reach the Mall, war drums are echoing off the vine-covered walls of the Smithsonian. From his litter, the President can see Dems scurrying for the safety of the crude barricades erected at the bottom of the hill, while short plumes of smoke rise from the shattered dome of the Capitol. All the same, though, he’s satisfied. The Dems have been caught by surprise. The mid-terms will be short and swift. The polls predict a Pub victory.

  Yet his troops have just skirted the wreckage of a Navy helicopter that went down at the intersection of Pennsylvania and 3rd during the evacuation, and have come within sight of the decapitated heads that Dems stuck on pikes alongside the Reflecting Pool, when the President hears an odd sound. A low, throbbing hum, sort of like that made by a bumble-bee, but louder, more metronomic. Looking around, he sees that others hear it, too. The litter-bearers nervously glance back and forth, and the mob behind him has become restless.

  “Holdit!” He raises his staff, and the procession comes to a halt.

  Now the hum is closer. Even the Dems pay attention. From on the other side of the barrier of rusting automobiles, their war drums falter in their beat. Staring up at the Capitol, the President catches a glimpse of his arch-enemy. The Speaker of House stands at the top of the Capitol steps, wearing his war-bonnet of Pub scalps, surrounded by committee chairmen. He’s too far away for his expression to be discerned, yet it seems as if the Dem warlord is just as puzzled as he is.

  “Whuddafugizzat?” This from the Secretary of Defense, standing next to the litter along with the other cabinet members.

  “Dunno.” The President can’t figure it out either, but he’s not about to let it distract him. Raising his staff, he points it toward the Capitol. “Fohwahd…!”

  “’Ey! Lug!” The Secretary of the Interior points to the left. “Ovahdere!”

  The President turns to behold a miracle.

  A small round platform glides down 3rd Street, passing the burnt-out ruins of the Department of Labor. Levitating twenty feet above the weed-choked asphalt, lights flashing along its underside, it’s held aloft by the humming sound. And standing upon it are a pair of figures…

  “Cheezuz,” the President mutters, his voice low with awe.

  “Ifdats Cheezuz,” the Secretary of Defense whispers, “whodat wiffem?”

  “Dunno.” The Secretary of the Interior shrugs. “Mebbe Cheezuz bruddah.”

  The visitors don’t appear to be of this world. Dressed entirely in white, with hoods pulled up over their heads, they seem almost angelic. As the platform comes closer, the President sees not a face beneath the hoods, but only golden masks, devoid of any features yet reflecting the afternoon sun like gilded mirrors.

  “Prays Cheezuz!” The President stands up on his litter, raises his hands. “Hescominta kigsumass!”

  Not all of the Pubs are impressed, though. Someone in the mob hurls a spear at the platform. It falls short by a dozen feet, yet one of the figures immediately reacts. He raises his right hand; clasped within it is a short rod. The briefest glimpse of a beam of light, then the Pub who hurled the spear screams and collapses, a hole burned through the center of his chest.

  “Holeecrap!” the Secretary of Defense shouts. “Cheezuz pizzed!”

  “Fugdis!” the Secretary of the Interior yells. “Lesgeddouddahere!”

  The Pubs panic. Screaming in terror, they turn and run back the way they came, stampeding across those behind them. The Seecrit-Servis hesitate for a moment, then they discard their staffs and bolt. Even the litter-bearers have had enough; the President is toppled from his perch as the men holding him aloft drop the litter and join the rest of the mob as they flee for their lives.

  Dazed, the President clambers to his feet, looks around. Suddenly, he’s alone. His cabinet has abandoned him; knives and clubs are strewn all around, and the tattered flag lies crumpled in the street. Looking back over his shoulder, he sees his routed army in full retreat, already half a block away and getting smaller by the second.

  Yet it scarcely matters, for the Dems are keeping their distance as well. Cowering behind the barricades, they watch in awestruck wonder as the platform slowly descends to the ground. As it glides closer, the President finds his knees quaking. For a moment he has an urge to make his own escape.

  Yet he doesn’t. Instead, he bends down, picks up the flag that was left behind. Holding it aloft, he slowly approaches the platform. The low throb subsides as it settles upon the ground; the two figures silently watch as he comes closer.

  “Howdee Cheezuz,” he says, once he thinks he’s close enough for them to hear him. “Imda Prez ovda Yewnited Staytes Uffa’merica.”

  The figures say nothing. He sees himself reflected in the mirrors of their faces, and suddenly feels very small and insignificant. At loss for words, he offers the flag. “Yewkin havedis, ifyewwan. Its rillyol, an…”

  One of the figures raises a white-gloved hand, beckoning for silence. The President stops, watches as the other one reaches down to pick up a metal case. Its burnished aluminum surface catches the sun as he steps to the edge of the platform and offers it.

  A gift. The President feels something catch in his throat. Putting down the flag, he walks forward to accept the offering. The case is heavier than it looks; he nearly drops it, but manages to keep it in his hands.

  “Tankyew,” he says softly. “Tankyew, Cheezuz. Yewdaman. Juswannasay…”

  Again, the figure raises a hand. The President obediently falls quiet. Both figures return to the center of the platform. The throbbing sound resumes, and the President feels the hair rise on the nape of his neck. Then the platform lifts off once more. He watches as it ascends, then turns to go back the way it came, disappearing behind the half-collapsed hulks of government buildings.

  By now, the Dems have gathered their courage. Hooting in glee upon finding their hated foe all by himself, they begin to climb across the barricades, their knives ready to add his head to the trophies surrounding the Reflecting Pool.

  Yet the President is unafraid. He and he alone has been given the holy object. Raising it above him, he turns to face the Capitol.

  “Lugwad Cheezus brung!” he shouts in victory. “Hegimme blessing! Imda Prez…!”

  These are the final words of the last President of the United States.

  The neutron bomb does little tertiary damage beyond the immediate radius of the blast zone. The President, of course, is instantly vaporized, as are the nearby Dems. The concussion topples a few structures already weakened by nature, but the Capitol itself remains intact. Yet every living creature within six miles
of ground-zero drops dead, killed by the massive pulse of ionizing radiation. In seconds, the ancient war between the Pubs and the Dems comes to a swift and bloodless conclusion.

  Not long afterwards, men and women in spacecraft descend upon the ruins of Washington D.C. For many years now, they’ve awaited this moment, within the orbital colonies and lunar settlements where they’ve kept the flames of civilization alive; now they return to the ancestral lands of their forefathers, to lay claim to their common heritage. The old conflicts are over and done, a dark age best left in the past. The time has come to take the wounded Earth, heal it, slowly transform it back to place it had once been, before it fell prey to the whims of the arrogant, the misguided and the stupid.

  The corpses of both Pubs and Dems are buried in a mass grave on the banks of the Potomac River. In time, cherry trees are planted on the site. In the many peaceful years to follow, their spring blossoms add a gentle fragrance to the air, rendering subtle beauty to a place that, at long last, has become kinder and more gentle.

  THE LAST SCIENCE FICTION WRITER

  He sits at his desk, writing a story.

  His fingers tap at the computer keyboard, making a sound like rain falling on plastic, as his eyes follow the words that gradually flow from left to right across the screen. He pauses to pick up a glass of ice tea from a coaster; a quick sip, then his hands return to the keyboard. A cigarette smolders in an ashtray, but more often than not it burns down to the filter without him taking more than a few drags. His mind is completely focused as ideas are transformed into thoughts, thoughts into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs.

  His office is a spare upstairs bedroom; the window is half-open, allowing the cool breeze of a late September afternoon to drift into the room. Fading sunlight rests upon the distant hills, bringing out the crimson and burnt-orange hues of the autumn leaves; the crickets are already being to chirp, a soft sound that subconsciously relaxes him. From the house next door, an abrupt, mechanical roar: his neighbor starting up his riding mower, getting set to do a little yard work before evening sets in. Distracted, he mutters beneath his breath as he peers more intently at the screen, yet he doesn’t notice when the noise of the lawnmower abruptly ceases, replaced once more by the quiet chitter of the crickets.

  The cigarette has burned out. When he reaches for it, though, he finds a fresh one resting in the ashtray, its tip already glowing. He wonders about this for a moment—did he light another one and forget about it?—but that thought vanishes almost as soon as it occurs to him. He takes a drag, puts it back in the ashtray, and goes back to work. His glass remains perpetually three-quarters full; whenever he picks it up, he finds that it still contains as much ice tea as it did the last time he took a drink. Yet this miracle bothers him for less than a second.

  Paragraphs become scenes. Scenes gradually take shape and form of a story. He writes for hours upon end, the pages slowly scrolling upward upon his screen, and yet he feels no exhaustion, no need to rest. He’s married, but his wife never enters the room. He has two dogs, but they’re nowhere to be seen or heard. Friends don’t drop by unexpectedly; the phone next to his desk is silent. He never feels an impulse to push back his chair, stand up to stretch his legs, take a deep breath, maybe go to the bathroom. The view through his window remains the same, the character of the autumn light unchanging. The world is locked in an eternal, golden afternoon. He takes another drag from his cigarette, drinks some more tea, and brings himself back to where he’d left off just a few seconds ago.

  At long last, he reaches the end of story. He types the last few lines, then enters the command that will save the text in computer memory. Another keystroke will send the story to the printer, but that isn’t necessary; a hard copy has already appeared in its tray. A large manila envelope, addressed to the editor of a science fiction magazine in New York, has materialized upon the desk. He removes the story from the printer tray, shuffles the pages to make them a tidy sheaf of paper; he attaches a butterfly clip, then pushes it into the envelope. He lays it upon his desk, and doesn’t notice that it vanishes as soon as he looks away.

  He gazes at the blank screen of his computer for a few moments, feeling a sense of satisfaction at having accomplished his task. He doesn’t notice that everything around him has frozen in place. A curlicue of smoke from his cigarette lingers in stasis above the ashtray; the autumn breeze no longer wafts through the window, and the crickets have ceased to chirp. Time itself has come to a stop.

  He sighs, reaches over to pick up his ice tea. He takes a sip, puts down the glass, then picks up his cigarette. A quick drag, then his hands return to the keyboard. Enough procrastination. Time to begin work on a new project.

  He sits at his desk, writing a story…

  “What the hell is this?”

  “I don’t know. My team has checked the entire system. No deterioration in the mnemonic download. Alpha wave levels remains nominal. Sensory input fully engaged, same for cerebral feedback loop…”

  “You want feedback? Here’s your feedback. Read the end of the story just you got from him. Here…the bottom of the transcript.”

  “Wait a sec. Lemme pull it up…‘What’s your name?’ she asked. ‘Adam,’ he replied. ‘What’s yours?’ ‘Eve.’”

  “Uh-huh. And now the end of the one before that.”

  “Ummm…okay, here it is. ‘And then he woke up, and discovered that it was all a dream.’”

  “Yeah, okay. And now the first one…”

  “Hold on…yeah, here it is…‘Oh, my God! It’s a cookbook!’”

  “And you don’t see anything wrong with this?”

  “Well, they do seem a little predictable. Except maybe that last one. Didn’t see that coming.”

  “You didn’t see…? C’mon, this stuff was lame even back then! I thought you told me this guy was a major author!”

  “Well, he was. According to Research Division, he published fifteen novels and nearly a hundred short stories during his lifetime. He also earned…”

  “Several awards…what the hell is a Hugo, anyway?…his work translated in half a dozen languages, yada yada. I read the same report. ‘My name’s Adam. What’s yours?’ Crap! If he was that good, he could’ve have written better than this in his sleep.”

  “Well, in a sense, he has been asleep…”

  “He’s been dead! Just before he kicked off, he spent everything he had in the bank, even sold his house, so that he could arrange for his body to be cryogenically preserved. Thought there was a chance that he might be revived sometime in the future. Pure Pre-Collapse nonsense…”

  “Yes, well, he was a science fiction writer, after all. They tended to think about things like that.”

  “Science fiction…sheesh, no wonder that stuff died out. Those guys never got anything right. And you say he’s the last one?”

  “The only one whose brain survived cryogenic freezing. There were a couple of others, but…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Too much collateral damage to the neural infrastructure. We’re lucky to have been able to download just this guy. And you say there’s been no deterioration of his long-term memory?”

  “Well…”

  “Well what?”

  “Look, this isn’t an exact process. Besides cellular damage, there’s also the psychological trauma of death itself, so even though we were able to reconstruct his neural pathways enough to allow a complete brainscan, we still had to edit his core engrams once we downloaded them. Otherwise he’d have gone into solipsistic syndrome. You don’t want them knowing they’re really just a few hundred terabytes in a…”

  “Yeah, right, I got that. But…”

  “Just listen, all right? Once we pieced together a partial memory of his life before he died, we used it to develop a template simulacrum of his contemporary environment. He resides in that now. For him, it’s real. He feels, he hears, he tastes…the works. And we can manipulate that environment at will.”

  “Okay, I underst
and that. What I don’t understand is why this guy is turning out garbage.”

  “We can’t figure that either. Remember, this is the first time we’ve attempted to devise a creative modus. However, we have a theory that residual memes may be causing a chaotic influence. If that’s the case, then…”

  “Look, this is all over my head. And frankly, I don’t care. Bottom line is that I’ve got Entertainment Division breathing down my neck. I told ’em they could have a new story from a major Pre-Collapse writer, and now they’re making deals all over the place. The revenue they’re expecting from net rights alone…”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Uh-uh…it’s your problem. Because if I don’t deliver, I’m telling them why, and then you and your team will be lucky if your next job is down in Astronautics, humping code for the Jovian run. Get my meaning?”

  “Yeah, okay. We’ll work on it. Maybe if we change the simulacrum…”

  “Whatever. I got a meeting in ten minutes. Get it done, and let me know when you’ve got something besides this Adam and Eve crap.”

  “Sure. Oh, and by the way…you were wondering what a Hugo was? Here’s a visual image we’ve recovered from his memory…”

  “Oh, no…no, that’s just not right. Thanks a bunch. Just the sort of thing I need to take with me all day…”

  “It’s supposed to be a rocket. Why, what else did you think it was?”

  “Never mind.”

  He sits at an autograph table, signing books.

  The table is located in the midst of the largest, most luxurious bookstore he’s ever seen. Aisle upon aisle of mahogany bookcases, each so tall that stepladders are provided so that patrons may reach the volumes on the topmost shelves. Tiers of balconies, one above the other, rise toward a vaulted ceiling from which crystal chandeliers are suspended; wrought-iron elevators, operated by young men in bellboy uniforms, carry customers to the upper floors. Classical music—the first movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons—drifts down to him from the chamber quartet performing on the second level, while waiters in tuxedos roam the aisles, offering mimosa and Swiss chocolates to readers lounging in soft leather armchairs.