Analog SFF, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “They didn't seem all that peaceful to me,” Jack said.

  Brody nodded. “Well, the guardians weren't the only ones to react to our presence. Lots of civilizations have nanoticle constructs in the multiverse. The red phantoms were created by nanoticle beings built by a different, more aggressive species. They came through the same door we'd opened. The guardians have been trying to defend us from them while they tried to figure out how to talk to us. In the end, communication was sort of a fifty-fifty thing. Once I figured out what they wanted, I knew what I had to do.”

  “And what was that?” Ted asked nervously.

  “The only way for me to end the war was to pass from our universe to theirs so they could establish a seal between the two sites. The Pit hologram isn't actually in the multiverse—it's like a room that opens into it. The guardians were able to enter here by emulating Dr. Rostov's nanoticle designs. For them to create the seal, I had to pass through the multiverse and into their portal, and the only way I could do that was to let them alter my nanoticle structure to match theirs. Now that we have the seal, it will keep out the bad guys until we can build our own guardians.

  “But, Uncle Ted, look, I have some news that might be hard for you. See, I'll never be able to leave here again. When they changed my pattern, they changed me. Right now, I'm emulating the pattern I used to be, but this isn't really me anymore. At least, it's not a me that could ever fit in my old body.”

  “You mean you're trapped there?” Ted asked, horrified.

  Brody's laugh echoed throughout the coliseum. “No, not ‘trapped'! It's a great opportunity! Look, Uncle Ted, I always wanted a life of adventure and travel. I thought I'd lost that, and I was trying to get used to the idea of a quieter life. But this is better than any adventure I've ever dreamed of! I'm sorry, Uncle Ted, I know you're upset, but believe me, this really is what I want.”

  “Yeah, Brody,” Ted said, “but it sounds like a pretty violent place.”

  “You know,” Brody said, “they thought we were too violent at first. They didn't realize the trainer mechs weren't real. I'm told there's always some friction in the multiverse, but no outright war. We got a lot of attention for a while, but everyone is feeling a lot better now. I've received an invitation to visit the guardians’ home world, and I can't wait! If anyone feels like contacting the U.N. Secretary, I'm willing to deliver a message. Oh, and thanks anyway, Jack, but you'll have to find a new partner. I've got a better offer.”

  Jack laughed. “I hear you, Bro,” he said. “I think the competition just got a whole lot tougher anyway.”

  Copyright (c) 2008 William Gleason

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: THE FOURTH THING

  by Stephen L. Burns

  We've all experienced deadline pressure, but never quite like this....

  It was just after dawn when a voice calling Noelle's name insinuated itself into her sleep.

  Noelle. Wake up.

  “Unnnng,” she protested, trying to squirm deeper under the covers.

  Noelle. You must wake up now.

  "Whaaaat?” Her cry was muffled, muzzy, more reflex than proof that she was awake enough to frame a coherent question.

  Wake up now. There isn't much time left.

  She shoved herself upright in bed, staring in blank-eyed confusion around the softly-lit confines of her cramped one-room apartment, realizing that the voice was more in her head than in the room. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere—and mostly inside. It carried an undertone of tightly-leashed urgency that was hard to miss and even harder to refuse.

  “Who's—who's there?” she asked uncertainly.

  A friend. Someone who has come to rescue you.

  She frowned, baffled and uneasy by the strangeness of what was happening, but not quite awake enough to be afraid. “Rescue me from what?”

  Dying. I have come to save you.

  That had her pulling the covers up to hide the fact that she slept wearing only a pair of panties—and pretty ratty ones in the bargain. “Are you—are you God?” she stammered. She didn't believe in God, but she'd been wrong about more than her share of things in her life. Men, mostly. And more than a few sure-fire diets.

  No, just a friend. There is little time, Noelle. You must get up and get ready.

  “Get ready for what?”

  Get ready to leave.

  “You mean, like, leave my apartment?”

  No. I mean you must get ready to leave your world.

  She shook her head, then pushed her hair out of her eyes, irritation rising from being dragged from a sound sleep to play some sort of crazy game of Twenty Questions with this weird voice. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  This is difficult. Forgive me. I bear bad news. Your world is about to be destroyed, Noelle. Completely destroyed. I want to take you away from there before that happens.

  Noelle kept shaking her head, utterly confused and unable to comprehend what she was hearing. She struggled to get her mind working, her gaze swinging longingly to her coffeemaker, wishing she could suck down at least a couple of cups. She was not a morning person, and had never been able to rise and shine. Her brain was still foggy, and this inexplicable voice wasn't making sense. “Come on, this is some sort of joke, right?”

  No joke, Noelle. I wish it were. Time is short, so I will try to be brief. This is the situation. A black hole with the resting mass of your moon is headed toward your planet at very nearly the speed of light. Such phenomena are rare and dangerous. When it hits, your planet will simultaneously explode and ignite. Nothing on it will survive. There is nothing we can do, or you can do, to avert this cataclysm.

  That was too much, too strange, too unbelievable. Unable to wrap her mind around what she had just heard enough to question it, she could only ask something simpler. “Who the hell are you?”

  We are people from another place. Researchers. We search for and attempt to track these deadly missiles. That is how we happened to be close enough by to render what small assistance we can offer. It was decided that we would try to rescue a few of you in the brief interval before all is lost.

  Once again, this was too much to absorb. “Wh—why me?”

  You are able to hear me, your mind open enough to accept this communication. I know that none of this makes sense to you, and for that I apologize. There is little time left, not nearly enough for any of the explanations you deserve. This is what we can do: in five minutes you must be ready to leave. You are permitted to bring three things with you. Three things only, and they must be things you can carry.

  At least she was able to grasp the frightening subtext of what she'd just been told. “You're saying I can't bring, you know, other people?”

  To our everlasting regret, we cannot permit that. Our space is limited, and already the size of the evacuation we mount puts us all at risk. So choose carefully, Noelle, and choose quickly. Already part of the time remaining is gone. I suggest that you get up and get started.

  Noelle obeyed, scrambling out of bed. “How can I believe you?” she wailed, grabbing the jeans and t-shirt she'd worn the night before and struggling into them.

  I can only beg you to trust me. Were there more time we might have been able to find a better way to do this. But there is no time. We are merely mortal. We do what we can, as best as we can. It is too little, but all we can manage. Now choose what you will bring with you. I will leave you now, so as not to constitute a distraction. Pick your three things and be ready before this construct I am providing has counted back to zero. Each number is a second. You have 247 seconds left.

  A set of foot-high glowing red numerals appeared on the wall. As she watched, 247 changed to 246.

  “This is crazy," she whispered hoarsely. The world and everything on it destroyed? It didn't make sense. It couldn't be possible. That sort of shit only happened in books, and in movies.

  The numbers counted back, reached 240.

  "Rrr
rowl?"

  She might just have stood there for the whole time she'd been given if it hadn't been for Late Fee, her fixed male tortoiseshell coming over to bump his head against her ankle as his way of saying, You're up? You should feed the cat!

  Habit and reflex had her bending down to pick him up. She stared at the cat. The cat stared back, whiskers twitching.

  “You're the first thing I'm taking,” she told him, giving him a squeeze before settling him down on her bed.

  Her gaze went to the numbers on the wall.

  223 seconds left.

  * * * *

  The next thing that came to mind was work.

  Not many people, facing the end of the world, would think about their jobs. But Noelle did, because she had one of those jobs that for some became a vocation. Maybe even an identity.

  The pay was so low as to verge on the insulting. The benefits—as most people counted such things—were mostly intangibles. But it was one of those jobs that quite often swallowed up the people filling them.

  Noelle worked at the library. Assistant Director, which sounded like a pretty exalted title until you learned that there were only four people on paid staff, and she made less than an entry-level municipal garbage technician. The end of the world meant the end of the library—the end of all libraries. When she thought about that she almost had to sit down before she threw up.

  This left one thought in her head, sounding as loud as the trumpets of Doom, as loud as an entire planet exploding.

  I have to save the library.

  And the heartbreaking realization that followed.

  There is no way I can carry a library.

  Or was there?

  She allowed herself the three seconds it took to run to her fancy pod-type coffeemaker and hit the on button, then raced to the corner of her apartment where she kept her tiny home office.

  The library didn't pay enough to bring her lifestyle up above the poverty level. So in her spare time she moonlighted as a geek for hire, building websites and editing online materials for a few small companies.

  Her trusty laptop was in hibernation mode, just as she'd left it around midnight the night before. Precious seconds ticked by as she waited for it to wake up. The moment it did, she went online with a vengeance.

  Seconds later she was at a site where she could download books that were out of copyright. Once there the enormity of the task she faced made her gut twist yet again. There was only time enough to save a few books, even with her fast broadband connection.

  She had to pick which books lived, and which books died.

  Who was she to make such a choice?

  The answer to that question carried its own special freight of horror: she might just be the only one to know there might be such a choice to make.

  She grabbed the mouse and went to it, searching out names and titles, first checking the Most Popular list.

  Dickens. She clicked on the first three titles, moved on. Conrad. This time the first two titles. Twain. No picking and choosing there, she chose everything. Shakespeare. She selected a complete collection of plays and poems.

  Even the big pipe her cable connection provided needed a few seconds per choice, and there was a download queue started. She lurched out of her chair and ran to the coffeemaker, grabbing the quarter cup that had been made. By the time she made it back to her computer more authors had raised their hands inside her head, begging to be saved. Tolkien. Baum. Austen. Poe. She hunted those four and a couple others down and started them downloading.

  The works of Shakespeare were safe, but that reminded her of her own personal favorite playwright, Thornton Wilder. If this wasn't a The Skin of our Teeth moment, nothing was. And what about poetry? Oh shit, Rumi! And Whitman! Dickinson!

  Once again she ransacked the virtual stacks, racing the clock to find and save the best of the best—or at least her personal best of the best. She knew her choices were not the same ones someone else might make; it took her less than a second to pick the Bronte sisters over the Bible, and Aesop's Fables over Aristotle.

  In the back of her head a voice was gibbering that not only were there so many authors and so many books being left behind, there was all that music: the symphonies and operas and folk music and pop music. And art! Movies! The downloads she'd chosen so far included no histories, no biographies.

  Then she realized that there was at least a taste of the broad spectrum of what humans were and had done already on her laptop. It had come with a digital encyclopedia pre-installed. She'd always meant to remove it, but never had. Now she was glad she'd procrastinated.

  The words climbed into her machine and onto her hard drive like passengers into a lifeboat, and the time left sank inexorably away under her.

  The numbers on the wall made her heart skip a beat. 72 seconds left.

  A dozen downloads were streaming in at once. She didn't dare try to get more for fear of losing part of the ones she'd started.

  Besides, she had just over a minute left to pick one more thing.

  * * * *

  She gazed around her apartment feeling helpless and overwhelmed. Just one more thing was not enough. No matter what she chose, it couldn't possibly be the right choice. How could she pick one thing for a life, a way of life, a whole world? She knocked back the dregs of her coffee, hoping it would make her think better and faster.

  61 seconds.

  Inspiration struck. She could grab her purse and stuff it full of CDs and DVDs, both of which could be played on her laptop! She hustled over to the shelves holding her music and movie collection and began ransacking it, but had barely grabbed the first handful of jewel cases when her gaze fell on the red and white paperboard box on the floor under the shelves.

  Family pictures.

  Her hand hung in the air as she was suddenly torn—no, ripped—between the two. How could she choose? It wasn't fair, it wasn't possible. Her lips drew tight, and a frustrated tear broke loose to roll down her cheek.

  You have forty seconds left.

  She jumped, startled, realizing that she had just been standing there, impaled on the horns of dilemma. Her eyes darted toward the numbers on the wall.

  39 seconds left.

  “I can't do this!” she shouted. “I just can't!”

  You must. Or you can come with two things, or with nothing. Or you can choose to remain behind.

  “To die.”

  Yes.

  “What is anyone else bringing?”

  I cannot say. We are too busy to communicate amongst ourselves about such things at this point.

  “Too busy trying to save some of us.”

  Yes. Twenty-three seconds left.

  Noelle stared at the box of pictures, the memories of her late parents, her grandparents, and sepia-toned images of her ancestors, the place she'd grown up, snapshots of the life that had led up to this moment. She raised her eyes to the commercially packaged memories above, the movies and music. How could she let any of it go? How could she let a whole world go?

  Her feet were moving before her mind knew where they were taking her. Out through the door and out onto the small balcony that was one of her favorite parts of the apartment.

  Dawn was breaking, the landscape lighting up for this, its final day. Birds sang, greeting the new morning. Early traffic was a muted sound, a low organ note under the bright melody. The air was fresh with dew and sweetly heady with the scents of the flowers growing in the pots and planters taking up most of the balcony floor. The sun was a flaming crimson ball bisecting the horizon, and she could feel its heat on the skin of her face.

  The vista was nothing special. Just what you would see from the back of a cheesy apartment on the second floor of a small house in a small town of no particular note.

  Ten seconds.

  This was her world. She tried to drink it all in, to soak it in so deeply it would fill her very cells, get it written into her memory as indelibly as the bits and bytes comprising the last of the books being downloaded.
>
  Nine seconds.

  Maybe it would be better to just stay. To meet whatever was to come as part of the life of this place. Go back inside and sit down. Coffee by her elbow, cat on her lap, a beloved book open to a favorite passage.

  Eight seconds.

  Goodbye to her friends, goodbye to the library, goodbye to this town that had always felt so hopelessly confining, but which now seemed as magical and luminously perfect as Kansas had felt to Dorothy.

  Seven seconds.

  Maybe this was what it was like to die. To be taken away from everything you knew with no recourse, and so many things left undone. Sights unseen, dreams unfulfilled, laughter never heard, love untasted—

  Six seconds. So you will bring nothing?

  Her arms were empty, the time all but gone. She looked around wildly, searching for something—anything—that could be salvaged. Some piece of this great green wonder she could take with her.

  Five seconds.

  The planter nearest to the door held the rosebush she had fussed and sweated over the past two summers. She reached out, grabbed a stem. Thorns stabbed into her palm as she snapped the stem off.

  Four seconds.

  She whirled and rushed back inside. Snatched the network plug from her laptop, slapped the cover shut.

  Three seconds.

  She yanked the cord to pull the power block from the wall socket, tucked the computer and wadded cord under her arm.

  Two seconds.

  She scooped Late Fee up off the bed. He struggled and squirmed at the sudden rough handling, claws raking her chest.

  One second.

  She could barely hold the cat. The laptop kept trying to slither out from under her arm. The thorns cut into her palm, and she held the stem so tightly that a drop of blood leaked between her clenched fingers, hung shimmering, about to fall.

  Three things, and a fourth: memory.

  Feel no fear—

  Then she was gone, a drop of blood falling from where she had stood. There one moment, translated elsewhere the next.

  The numbers on the wall reset themselves.

  Now ten seconds remained.