The Long List Anthology Volume 3

by Aliette de Bodard

  “I wonder what else they like putting in their mouth,” a student says.

  “Everything!” I say. “It’s always like that. Sound waves tickle me. In fact, it’s better when it’s noisier! It strengthens my musculature and increases the variations in my viscosity! This is how I mature, rather than nutrition. And once I’ve experienced enough environmental stimulation—”

  Another student says, “I’ll increase their vibrations . . . .”

  “All right,” the professor says, her voice tired. “That’s enough. And may I remind you that you are being graded on participation, part of which is your empathy score.”

  I slink back to my seat. It’s time for a presentation from the two AIs on theory of mind when you don’t technically have one, traditionally defined.

  In the corner, the pen cap turns over and over in Nina’s mouth.

  • • • •

  In the cafeteria, there’s a human with latex hands who will give me a glove once in a while. I like to sit and sift through the smells wafting around: meat substitute, protein leaflets, still mildly wood-smelling chopsticks, hair product, atmospheric variations, gaseous exhalations, rubber-soled shoes and the feet in them.

  I ponder what my classmates could have been referring to. If they were offering to touch me, well, that was kind of them! Tasting organic material is always better than metals or other synthetic products; it is always changing into something new. I attempt to whistle.

  Boisterous conversation tickles me. But I feel part of a conversation lapping toward me, and as soon as I hear who it is, I focus my attention.

  “. . .It’s plain survival of the fittest,” Tinequert is saying. “They could not survive contact with humanity, which was an inevitability in the ever-increasing intergalactic nature of our universe.”

  “Then why is Filo/Gee still around?” a feline biped snorts.

  A shrug of titanium shoulders indicates they are sitting somewhere behind me. I shift in the made-for-bipedal-shapes chair to more immediately feel their vibrations. “It defies logic.”

  “I imagine they’re pumping the amoeba full of drugs,” the feline sneers. “No wonder it’s so hyped up.”

  A human says: “We just have to endure that oversized snot wad until it catches something and goes extinct.”

  “Now,” says the furred, fanged creature. “Let’s not be cruel.”

  “At least,” says the other AI, “the station’s getting funding for having it here.”

  It wouldn’t have bothered me—considering the fact that AIs can only reproduce under human schematics (ironic for them to cite survival of the fittest)—except the AI turns to a second human who smells of softness and architect’s graphite: “How did you put up with the brainless creature?”

  Nina stirs her cafeteria stew in silence.

  • • • •

  Eavesdropping is great fun. Usually. After the incident in the cafeteria I don’t take as much joy in it as usual as I trundle along the bare echo-chambers that are the dorm hallways, sound resonating from every angle. My own echoes are meager snacks, but they’ll do until I hear the secreted stories behind dorm doors.

  At one door, someone hums to himself. It makes me feel a little better to hum back, low and soft like the air conditioner so they can’t hear. At the next, I can hear the telltale grunts and creaks of two phaseoloides twining and fertilizing each other in coitus—their thick grapey scent rolls under the door into the hallway. I linger, considering the anatomy of copulation, and the necessity of two of the species to reproduce, like most on this station. It doesn’t seem sustainable in terms of perpetuating the species. Then again, neither does having semi-permeable skin that’s susceptible to human-transmitted diseases.

  I wouldn’t mind someone to rub up against and slip into.

  This line of thought is enough to make me slump at the next door, which is thick with well-traversed scents. I tremble with nostalgia and press myself up against that door, the door I no longer have the key to.

  Their voices oscillate: Nina’s pinched and soft, Tinequert’s full of clicking.

  The soft voice hiccups, irregular. I flinch, recoiling for once at the surge of energy roiling off of Nina.

  “You’re being irrational,” comes Tinequert’s hollow voice.

  “You don’t understand.” I press myself fully against the door to better feel the rise and fall of her vibrations. “My grandmother raised me! How can I just forget. . . .”

  “I’m sorry. You are not the first of your kind to be forgotten. It isn’t economical to keep wasting time for an organism that doesn’t remember you or care.” Nina’s choked sob follows. “I’m sorry,” Tinequert says. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “You’re not doing a very good job of it.”

  “My model came before the invention of empathy-synthesis. I’m not programmed to understand grief,” Tinequert says, and her voice has something in it I haven’t noticed before. “Please don’t storm off. Explain it to me.”

  Thudding footsteps, vibrating my foundation. I am absolutely still, so as to catch the tremors. And then the door’s open and I tumble into the suite. Nina hesitates only for a moment, then in a wave scented with salt and sorrow she rushes past me.

  “What happened!” I say, playing it cool. Cool like an AI.

  Tinequert’s mechanical body approaches mine. “We are in an important discussion, Filo/Gee. Can you come back later?” She’s turned Nina against me, she wishes I’d perished like the rest of my kind. A hot, sour feeling boils in my body, but it’s not coming from outside.

  I heave my mass at her and taste her sharp metals, slick bones and rubbery surfaces, and she’s sounding a wailing alarm and yelling at me to protect the hard drive, but I don’t care. I swing myself down to the ground and I take her with me, and her squeals tickle my insides as her copper wirings fray and snap and is that joint oil I’m tasting?

  I’m not surprised when the station staffers come, gloved, to pull me away and lock me in my room.

  • • • •

  It’s a week later and I’m feeling deprived. The station slips trays of pulverized nutrients under the door: protein smoothies, freeze-dried seaweed, slivers of faux animal meat. I attempt to digest them, even though they don’t satisfy. I’m downgraded from endangered species to “corrosive agent.” The doctor from the health center comes, radiating nervousness. He tells me to drink more water and get plenty of sleep, not to overstimulate myself. He ups my antibiotics. I absorb water. I push as much of myself as possible against the corner of the desk and wrap myself around it, begin to bleach all taste from it. I’m too small now for it to really fit.

  My lawyer comes all the way up from the South Fourth to explain something to me. She’s making no sense. Words begin to have less meaning. I can’t translate them to feeling. I stop trying to structure them into any kind of sense.

  It’s the middle of the night. I feel a click of the lock on my door. It rouses me. I expose more surface area to the vibrations.

  The door swings open, bringing with it a rush of the cool air the station pumps into the hallways at night. A human shape parts the air particles around her. I get a rush of musk, sebum, graphite and erasure filings, and come all the way alert.

  “Filo/Gee?”

  I release myself from around the chewed-upon desk corner. Nina has the emergencies-only key in her hand, and also something with a high rectangular volume. And heavy, too—she sets it on the desk.

  Intense, vast relief cools down my body. My liquids slide along my gelatinous parts, loosening my language. “What are you doing here! It’s the middle of the night!”

  Nina sits on the bed even as I slide up from it. She runs her fingertips along my threadbare blanket. “I wanted to apologize,” she says quietly, in a low, fine vibration. I suddenly grasp its significance—genuine regret. “I . . . overreacted, before. When you were in my dorm.”

  I say nothing; I’m trying to focus on the words she’s saying, but I can’t stop
myself from writhing in her scents, from reveling in the soft lilts of her voice. I didn’t even know I missed them. I didn’t even realize how numb I’ve become without her slightly-unwashed scent. “It’s okay,” I burble, the bare minimum response.

  “No,” she says softly. Then, more firmly: “No. It’s not your fault. I didn’t realize . . . .” She trails off. “I didn’t think how you must be so . . .”

  “What?”

  “Alone.” Her scent changes: salty sorrow.

  We’ve never talked about the human-transmitted disease that wiped out my friends and family and everyone I knew and the fact that I avoided it because my sibling Hali/Koo had sent me here, to this station-school. Sure, I was exposed to humans here, same as everyone else. But when my kind started getting sick, my lawyer got me the best medical care, fast. The rest of my planet? Not so much.

  “I know it isn’t the same,” Nina is saying, “but . . .my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse. She had the vaccine, but . . . . One out of a hundred cases, it doesn’t work.” She shakes her head. I get a whiff of her perfume and a taste of her oily split ends. “It’s like . . . To her, I don’t even exist anymore.” A new scent: sweet-sour snot. I stretch to touch her face. She flinches, then holds still as I sop up her nasal fluid and her tears. I pull back, not sure whether I’ve embarrassed myself again.

  “I’m sorry.” I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for. Maybe all of it.

  Nina shakes her head again; guilt rolls off of her in overly-sweet waves. We’re even. “Listen.” She stands up. “I want you to have Shakesfeare.”

  So she’s brought the tank. I remember the soft, ridged scales inside me and can’t help but wriggle. “I thought you loved Shakesfeare.”

  “I do.” We cross together to the desk. “I mean, he’s beautiful. But . . . alone. Like—us.”

  I dare to slip a toe of myself into the tank. Shakesfeare’s sharp, tiny teeth come up to nibble at me. All of my jelly prickles in response.

  Nina’s heat radiates off of her like a low-burning furnace. She’s moving, pressing the hairs of her arms flat against her skin. “They shouldn’t have said that,” she whispers. “Tinequert shouldn’t have said that about your people.”

  “It’s all right!” I’m feeling better and better. She hasn’t moved away from me yet, and I feel a flood of a new emotion that makes me feel warm and sweet. “They’re wrong.”

  “Your people survived?”

  “No. They’re wrong that I’m the last of my kind.” I’m practically purring with pleasure. I would be perfectly fine with letting the grouper nibble off some more of me if I could feel like this in every moment of every day. “When I experience enough matter and energy, I get larger. And when I’m too large, I’ll split into two.”

  “You reproduce asexually?” Nina says. “Your species isn’t going extinct!”

  “Just the opposite,” I say happily. “And I’m going to name them Filo/Koo and. . .” I had the names for my two selves all picked out in preparation for mitosis, but now everything’s changed. I make a decision. “. . .and Nina/Gee.”

  “Oh,” Nina says quietly. “I’m . . . flattered, I think.” The heat is rolling off of her. “Whew. I thought you were going to ask me to incubate your offspring, or something.”

  We’re giggling. “I’m not that kind of alien,” I say. “How is Tinequert?”

  “They’re putting her back together. With some upgrades, too.”

  We trail off to silence, both holding ourselves very still. I’m fighting the urge to reach out to her, to engulf her.

  Instead, she whispers: “Can I . . . ?”

  Her language runs concurrently over this other layer of understanding, as though she feels some of my vibrations, too. I hum a soft invitation. Her round, thin appendage slips into me, garnished with a keratin surface, and I’m trembling to keep myself from reacting and then I’m suckling at her epidermal ridges, callouses and all, and she tastes like everything she has touched and experienced on this day and all the days that have come before and I invite her in, deeper, surround her up to the wrist and tug at the fine dark hairy roots.

  She pulls her hand out from me. Reluctantly, I release her. I’ve forgotten about Shakesfeare, who has been nibbling, and has chewed some of me off. And it hurts, a stamp-sized surface area of me even more exposed, some of my viscosity pouring out, that burst and splatter of joy.

  But it doesn’t matter. It will grow back.

  * * *

  Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author, artist, and editor. She’s the artist behind Sad Chimera Princess, and her stories and poems have been published in Strange Horizons, Flapperhouse, Fiction Vortex, Strangelet, and more. In 2015 Becca participated in the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and graduated with an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2016. While Becca first sprung from the earth near the San Diego area, she now sells weird and wonderful books in the mountain town of Durango, Colorado. See more at rebeccaannjordan.com or follow her @beccaquibbles.

  Lullaby for a Lost World

  By Aliette de Bodard

  They bury you at the bottom of the gardens—what’s left of you, pathetic and small and twisted so out of shape it hardly seems human anymore. The river, dark and oily, licks at the ruin of your flesh—at your broken bones—and sings you to sleep in a soft, gentle language like a mother’s lullabies, whispering of rest and forgiveness, of a place where it is forever light, forever safe.

  You do not rest. You cannot forgive. You are not safe—you never were.

  After your friends have gone, scattering their meager offerings of flowers, after the other archivists have left, it’s just your mother and your master, standing over your grave. Your mother looks years and years older, hollowed out by grief, but your master stands unchanged—tall and dark, with light shining beneath the planes of his face, his skin so thin it might be porcelain.

  “Was . . . was there pain?” your mother asks. She clutches your favorite doll—so well-worn it’s going to pieces in her hands. She doesn’t want to let go because, when she’s knelt in the blood-spattered mud of the gardens, she will have to get up, she will have to go back, to move on, as though everything she does from now on does not stand in the shadow of your death.

  Your master’s smile is a hollow thing, too; white and quick, perfunctory. “No,” he says. “We gave her poppy. She felt nothing.”

  It’s a lie, of course. There was poppy; there were opiates, but nothing could alleviate the pain of being torn apart—of the house gnawing at your innards; of claws teasing open your chest, splitting ribs in their hurry to lick at your heart’s blood—of struggling to breathe through liquid-filled lungs, lifting broken arms and hands to defend yourself against something you couldn’t reach, couldn’t touch.

  “I see.” Your mother looks at the earth again; hovers uncertainly on the edge of your burial place. At length she lays down the doll, her hands lingering on it, a prayer on her lips—and you ache to rise up, to comfort her as she’d always comforted you—to find the words that would keep the darkness at bay.

  You are dead, and there are no words left; and no lies that will hold.

  And then it’s just you and your master. You thought he would leave, too, but instead he kneels, slow and stately, as if bowing to a queen—and remains for a while, staring at the overturned earth. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he says at last. His voice is melodious, grave, as impeccably courteous as always—the same one he had when he told you what needed to be done—that it was all for the good of the house. “Better the weak and the sick than all of us. I know it doesn’t excuse anything.”

  It doesn’t. It never will. Beneath the earth, you struggle to push at what holds you down—to gather shattered flesh and glistening bones, to rise up like the dead at the resurrection, raging and weeping and demanding justice, but nothing happens. Just a faint bulge on the grave, a slight yielding of the mud. Voiceless, bodiless, you have no power to move anything.

  “Y
ou keep us safe,” your master says. He looks . . . tired, for a moment, wan and drained of color in the sunlight, his eyes shot with blood. But then he rises, and it’s as if a curtain had been drawn across his face, casting everything in a sharper, merciless light; and once more he is the dapper, effortlessly elegant master of the house, the man who keeps it all together by sheer strength of will. He stares at the blackened water of the river, at the city beyond the boundaries of the house—the smoke of skirmishes and riots, the distant sound of fighting in the streets. “Your blood, your pain is the power we rely on. Remember this, if nothing else.”

  You do; but it has no hold on you, not anymore.

  He walks away, his swallow-tailed jacket shining like obsidian in the greenness of the gardens.

  Time passes—months flipped forward like the pages of the books you used to love so much. Your master sits behind the gleaming windowpanes of the house, smiling and sipping fine wines, ageless and fattened on the blood of his sacrifices. Your mother dies, and your friends move on—your name becomes like you; buried, broken, and forgotten; your place long since taken in the library and, in the depths of the house, the circle where you died grows faint and bloodless, every scrap of pain long since absorbed to feed the magic that keeps the world at bay. Outside, the city is burning, tearing itself apart over polluted water, over grit-filled rice and rotten fish. Inside—green, verdant gardens; food on the plates; and music and love and laughter, all the things you used to take for granted, when you lived.

  Time passes—there is a girl who comes to sit by the river’s edge. Who steals books out of the library and knots red ribbons into the raven curls of her hair, unaware of what lies beneath her. Who runs, laughing, with her friends—except that you hear the slight catch of breath—feel the slight stumble as, just for a moment, her heart misses a beat and her feet become unsteady on the ground.