“With the ivy and the—”
“Yup.”
She shakes her head and slowly resumes stirring, with one more “god damn” for emphasis. “Any reason why you chose my building?”
“Hungry.”
“And... what, you thought there was a noodle stand on the roof?”
She pours the eggs into the pan and stirs them with a spatula. The smell of cooked food fills the room and suddenly Rhye’s trying to talk around a mouthful of eager spit. She swallows hard. Starts again.
“They said there was a Make who had birds,” she says. “Rich guy. Birds and eggs.”
“Who said?”
“Word on the street.”
The woman snorts. “Word on the street. Right. That’s what word on the street says, huh?”
“Yup.”
“And you wanted some eggs ’cause you were hungry, so... up you went.”
Rhye nods. She feels hypnotized. She can’t take her eyes off those eggs. The stale dinner roll she fished out of a diner’s curbside garbage that morning and the Halfway slop an hour or two before that might as well have been eaten by someone on a different planet. “He’s rich. A rich Make.” A rich Make. It sounds ridiculous when said out loud, like a talking dog who solves crimes. “We didn’t think he’d miss them.”
The woman lets that hang in the air as she tumbles velvety folds of scrambled white and gold onto two plates. Nowhere on any colony in any system has anything ever smelled as good as those eggs.
“Well,” she says, taking off her sunglasses, “as usual, word on the street is half-truth, half-bullshit. I would have very much minded if you had stolen next year’s hatch—”
—She would have minded?—
“—And I haven’t been going by ‘he’ since... oh, about two bodies ago.”
Her eyes meet Rhye’s. They are a bright reddish-copper, reflective in the late afternoon sun slanting through the kitchen window.
“I haven’t been rich since about two bodies ago, either,” she says, and hands Rhye a plate of eggs. “That shit don’t come cheap.”
EPIPHANY[ ih-pif-uh-nee ]
noun
1. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
2. a work presenting such a moment of revelation and insight.
3. an appearance or manifestation, especially of a deity.
“YOU CAN’T DO that,” says Rhye. Actually, what she says is ymff comft do tham; most of her mouth is crammed full of scrambled eggs and she’s way more interested in eating than she is in being understood.
“You’d be amazed at the impossible things you can achieve with enough money and connections, kid. You only know as much as you’re allowed to know.”
The woman’s fork clinks against the edge of her plate for emphasis. Her name, she says, is Soa, Soa Harr. The last name is “an affectation”—whatever that means—and neither is the one she originally started out with. She left that behind with her first body. Humans had given her both, and she had unceremoniously told humans to go fuck themselves when at last given the means and opportunity.
“So many of the restrictions they put on us start out here,” she says, tapping her forehead with a long finger. “Pain is pain because they designed your body to feel it. You sweat and you suffer and you go hungry because they made you that way. You start out as a stupid little kid in a stupid little body because you’re easier to train like that. Dig what I’m saying?”
Rhye does. Hearing someone else finally say it is such a relief she almost feels boneless.
“You can’t die of the heat, and you can’t really starve to death, but they want you to feel every single inch like you’re gonna. Sometimes, I think the only reason they ended up making us like them is because of their goddamned vanity, otherwise we’d still be full metal and not mostly yeast-fueled meat. They already know all their own weaknesses.” She shoves the eggs on her own plate around aimlessly before leaning over and scraping them onto Rhye’s. Rhye is absolutely fine with this generosity. “How old are you? Swallow first.”
Chew chew chew. Gulp. “Twelve. Seven outta Factory.”
“Last generation released before the Shutdown, huh? Poor little bastards.” Soa heaves a long, rusty sigh. “Turing’s balls, all those blank bodies sitting in cryo-warehouses, waiting to be scrapped. I hope Word on the Street hears about that some day.” She looks down at Rhye speculatively. Something seems to click behind her copper eyes. “It’s funny how that part never got out,” she mutters.
“What part?”
“Someone knew I existed, knew how I got here, even knew I was raising pigeons on the goddamned roof, but apparently they missed the part where jumping bodies is possible. It’s a funny old world, Roy.”
“Rhye.”
‘Rhye, Roy, whatever. It’s a funny, horrible old world, and I’ve made it worse. And I don’t just mean by sitting up here and doing nothing, raising pigeons and laying low while shit gets worse down in the gutter, I mean actively worse. The guy I worked for, the human, my old boss, he was... not nice. If his business had been on the up and up, he would have never hired a Make, but not the part that made him Not Nice. Breaking the law is whatever. Laws are written by the same assholes who decided you and I should feel every single sweaty second of a Colony summer. When I realized that, I stopped giving a damn about what was and wasn’t legal. Some of the stuff this guy did, though … whoof. And I kept him alive. Saved his life more than a few times, even.” She runs a hand through her dark hair until it sticks up in tufts. “C’mere. Stop licking that plate. Put it on the counter. I got something to show you.” She slips off her bar stool and pops a squat with her back to Rhye.
The distinct possibility has begun to emerge that Soa is not quite right in the head. Rhye’s only understood every third word since “poor little bastards” and the parts about body-swapping and warehouses full of blank Make bodies have not inspired a lot of confidence that the older woman isn’t going to start barking like a dog. Still, despite herself, she kind of likes Soa. She’s voiced some of the same thoughts Rhye’s been having for years. More importantly, she made Rhye lunch.
Hesitantly—just in case Soa tries anything cuckoo bananapants—Rhye creeps up, the balls of her feet springloaded. Soa’s pulled her hair back from a place just above the knobbly bit at the base of her skull. There’s a pink scar there maybe an inch thick, like a pair of tightly pressed lips. It gives Rhye a little bit of a start. She’s got the same kind of scar on her own head in the exact same spot, which is, even by the standards of this day so far, super-weird. Her fingers absentmindedly reach up to trace the seam. She can’t remember where she got it.
“You see that little line?”
“You mean the scar?”
“Yeah, the scar. That little pink spot on the back of my head. Do me a favor, would you?”
“…Sure?” Rhye doesn’t commit to the sure. It’s a placeholder in case of emergency.
“There’s a block of knives on the counter. Take out the paring knife—the littlest one—and cut open that seam.”
Yep. Definitely crazy. Time to start searching for the nearest escape hatch. “I—look, I gotta—“
“—You wanna know why you’ve got it too?”
“I didn’t until you SHOWED ME!”
“Hey, YOU were the one who said body-swapping was impossible. I’m telling you right now, kid: It ain’t. There’s a data port beneath that scar. I have it. You have it. We all have it. It was a cost-cutting measure. They didn’t want to lose skilled workers. They wanted to recycle us. If there was an accident or something, right? Just transfer the data, which is to say: you. Your brain. Your hard drive. Grow us up big and strong and docile from little kids, get our sensory modules all used to piloting these meat bags, and then if you get totaled—if the meat bag gets burned up or smashed up or throws itself off a roof because the Factory supervis
or’s been feeding everybody cardboard for a month straight again...”
It makes sense. It makes no sense at all. Rhye takes a wobbly step backwards.
“It’s a lot, I know,” Soa says patiently. “It was a lot for me and I was full-grown when I found out, when Boss Tachati first bought me from the hospital. He liked me. He trusted me. He didn’t want to lose that kind of talent to a stray bullet or a knife in the dark. So he—”
There’s a knock at the front door, heavy-knuckled and insistent. A demanding knock. The buzz and spit of radios fizzles from the hall. Rhye and Soa swivel to face the living room as one.
The cops have found her.
Fuck.
WHAM WHAM WHAM
“Police! Anyone home?”
Again: WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM.
“Wonder who they could be hunting for,” Soa whispers drily. Rhye’s eyes are already darting around the loft, searching for somewhere to hide. “Under the sofa. I’ll distract them as long as I can, but—”
WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM!
“—Co-ming!” Soa singsongs. To Rhye she silently gestures and points beneath the couch. No time to think of a better plan. Rhye dives for the crawlspace, wriggling and squirming. She twists herself so she’s at least facing the front door; no way she’s gonna let herself be dragged out by the ankles. She’s got a ringside seat as Soa’s socked feet approach the door, as she twists the knob, as—
Wait, did she put her sunglasses back on?
—the door slowly swings open to reveal a forest of shiny black boots with heavy treads—
She didn’t put her sunglasses back on the cops are gonna see her eyes they’re gonna know she’s a make
—shuffling and stomping impatiently all over the door mat—
SOA PUT YOUR SUNGLASSES ON
—and Rhye can’t see the moment when Soa realizes what she forgot, but she can hear it in the way the air chills as the cops and Soa presumably make eye contact.
“Is the owner of this apartment at home?” a male voice says.
“You’re looking at her.” Soa’s tone is brusque. “Something I can help you with, officers?”
“Had a call about some Make delinquents fooling around outside. One of them apparently made it onto the roof somehow.” His tone hovers somewhere between disgusted and impressed. He’s already pushing by Soa, followed closely by the others, a shuffling centipede cluster of blue-clad legs. They split apart, prowling in pairs. “You live here, you said?”
“My boss willed the place to me when he died. No law against inheriting property, is there?”
The cop stands so close to the couch Rhye can smell the rubber treads of his boots. There’s a crash from the other end of the apartment like a drawer dumped on the floor. Wrecking the place for no reason other than the simple fact that they can. Cop #1 holds his ground for another long, itchy, moment, presumably staring Soa down. Then he slowly walks off towards the kitchen, belt and cuffs jingle-jangling as he goes.
Okay. Maybe this’ll be over quick. Maybe they’ll just give Soa some mild grief and get the hell out. Maybe—
“You had guests here recently?”
The plates. The fucking plates. Two of them.
Soa sighs. Rhye doesn’t know her well enough to know what it means, but it doesn’t sound afraid. It sounds like the sigh someone makes when they find they’re out of toilet paper halfway through a dump, or when the Halfway headmistress collars them to help scrub the floorboards. Not an oh no, a god dammit.
“I’m sorry?” Soa’s voice is a pitch-perfect imitation of someone who doesn’t know shit about shit. She pads out of Rhye’s line of sight, so that everything that happens next is heard rather than seen.
“These plates. Is there someone el—”
There’s a sharp, solid crack, followed by the even more solid thud of something dropping heavily to the floor. Somewhere a clock raps knuckles. The one-two drumroll of running feet joins it, right to left; Soa’s socks are a black blur as she passes back through the living room, sprinting for the other end of the apartment where the murmur of cop mutters and cop vandalism surges to a shout and there’s more thudding and another decisive snap and the familiar sound of fists on meat off skulls in teeth and something is shattering and something bigger is joining it like a china shop on a trampoline and the POP POP POP of gunshots is suddenly telling every other noise in the vicinity to pack the hell up, loud enough to make Rhye’s ears ring with feedback.
And then … silence. The clock stubbornly picks up where it was interrupted. Alarmed voices downstairs rise and fall. Rhye wonders how long she should wait before making a break for it. It won’t be long before someone comes up to see what the hell just happened, and Soa is most probably outta commission after losing her mind and tackling a bunch of—
“Man, that was... man. I haven’t done anything like that in years.”
Soa’s socks are soaked in blood. They leave red spongey splats across the floor.
“No fuckin’ way,” Rhye mutters. She pulls herself back out and feels the closest she’ll ever get to religious awe.
Soa’s got a hole in her shoulder and two more blossoming on her chest. Her nose looks to be broken. She’s grinning like she’s just had the time of her life, a real now ain’t that somethin’? kind of smirk.
“…D-doesn’t that hurt?” Rhye ventures, when she finds her voice again. “The… bullet-holes, I mean?”
“Just because they designed you to feel doesn’t mean you gotta, kid. Your body is a lie. The sooner you figure that out, the happier you’ll be.” Soa cocks an ear at the voices downstairs. She casually spits out a tooth, poking gingerly at the hole with the tip of her tongue. “The sooner all Makesfigure that out, the sooner things start to change.”
“But—I mean, did you... kill them? Those cops? All of them?” What she really means is you can just do that? Bare-handed? Like all street kids, her relationship with the local cops has been one of fear. The thought of fighting back—really fighting back—has never really occurred to her before this moment. It feels like a door opening inside her chest.
And Soa did it for her, too, at least a little. Just snapped those cops in half as a favor.
“They ain’t taking power naps, that’s for sure. C’mon. Let’s get you outta here before their buddies show up. I was getting kinda bored up here anyway.”
RADICAL[ rad-i-kuhl ]
adjective
1. of or going to the root or origin; fundamental:
2. thoroughgoing or extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms
noun
3. a person who holds or follows strong convictions or extreme principles
4. a person who advocates change by direct and often uncompromising methods.
WORD ON THE street these days says there’s something the Company doesn’t want Makes to know. That’s the kind of word that spreads like a summer rash. That’s the kind of word that gets Makes poking and prodding the backs of their heads, wondering just why it is they all have that same little spot, wondering if all the rest of the crazy talk swirling about—of cryo-warehouses full of bodies, adult bodies, blank slates sleeping eternal—is also true.
Word on the street says there’s a Make of about thirteen or fourteen who doesn’t give a single solitary fuck anymore. She openly taunts the cops every chance she gets. She fights like her spirit is a razor and her body is an afterthought. She still feels things—still gets hungry, still sweats and shivers and aches—but she uses all the little injustices as kindling, burning them to keep warm.
Rhye’s found her purpose: Be a thorn. Be a middle finger. Make them regret ever giving her the capacity to feel hunger that blossoms into slow, sweet hate. If her body is a lie, she’ll cut out the tongues of the ones who told it and feed them back to their owners raw.
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM…
Life is fragile. The difference between success and failure can come down to nothing – the thread of a screw, the flick o
f a switch – and when it goes wrong, you fix it. Or someone dies.
Mission Critical takes us from our world, across the Solar System, and out into deep space to tell the stories of people who had to do the impossible.
And do it fast.
Featuring stories by Peter F. Hamilton, Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard, Greg Egan, Linda Nagata, Gregory Feely, John Barnes, Tobias S. Buckell, Jason Fischer & Sean Williams, Carolyn Ives Gilman, John Meaney, Dominica Phetteplace, Allen M. Steele, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Peter Watts.
www.solarisbooks.com
THE FUTURE IS OURSELVES
The world is rapidly changing. We surf future-shock every day, as the progress of technology races ever on. Increasingly we are asking: how do we change to live in the world to come?
Whether it’s climate change, inundated coastlines and drowned cities; the cramped confines of a tin can hurtling through space to the outer reaches of our Solar System; or the rush of being uploaded into cyberspace, our minds and bodies are going to have to drastically alter.
Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us another incredible volume in his much praised science-fiction anthology series, featuring stories by Madeline Ashby, John Barnes, James S.A. Corey, Gregory Benford, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Simon Ings, Kameron Hurley, Nancy Kress, Gwyneth Jones, Yoon Ha Lee, Bruce Sterling, Sean Williams, Aliette de Bodard, Ramez Naam, An Owomoyela and Ian McDonald.
“One of the year’s most exciting anthologies.”
io9 on Edge of Infinity
“[The Infinity series] has gone from strength to strength.”
Tor.com
www.solarisbooks.com
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