Asimov's Science Fiction

by Penny Publications

  “I thought that was the plan,” I said, bewildered.

  Taylor rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, as though beseeching an Absentee God to check his goddamned voicemail for once.

  One of the DEA guys—he bore an uncanny resemblance to a clean-cut Russell Means—was pretty clearly annoyed. “So Valdez and Durand are not coming through?”

  Taylor ground a palm into one eye. He really was the most exhausted guy I’d ever seen. “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  Agent Russell Means’ sharp eyes never left Taylor’s face. “Then why don’t you just go get ’em, kid?” It was technically a question, but he didn’t ask it like a question. He asked it like Robert De Niro asks for a table in a packed restaurant.

  Taylor just laughed, shaking his head. “Because that is mos def above my pay grade, Special Agent Pete.”

  The Agent scowled. “These little expeditions don’t come cheap, Chuckles; we’re angling for big fish.”

  Taylor shrugged. “Then why not send one of your guys?”

  All the DEA guys—who, I noticed then, were pretty damn young—assiduously avoided eye contact. Popping back in time to chase perps through the wilds of Colonial New England was evidently above their pay grade, too.

  “I don’t think anyone wants to do that,” I volunteered. “There’s a really pissed off, um,” I looked at the lead cop again, his umber skin and raven hair, “First Nations person standing just on the other side of the portal. He’s got a sledgehammer.”

  That seemed to settle it. I guess DEA foot soldiers know better than anyone that, even if you’re packing heat, you don’t want to tangle with a hammer-wielding tweaker. Agent Russell Means tightened up, even more pissed off, but he remained silent.

  “Anywho,” Taylor said, easing between the mulling agents, “That being established, I’m just gonna shut this down before anyone over there gets bold.” He reached the portal’s controls, and the portal shrank, then dissipated. The rank-and-file finally relaxed.

  And that’s when one of the junior agents piped up. “Hey! I know that voice! You’re Whiplash Bass!” Everyone turned, all smiles, and another called out “What’s with the identical purses?” He meant my two satchels. The brimming snuffboxes of meth jumped to mind. Something must have passed over my face, because everyone darkened and sharpened. Hands brushed up to holsters.

  “What’s in those bags, sir?” the first junior agent asked, his voice as cold and deep as a well. I didn’t answer—I swear I didn’t, just by old reflex, Fifth Amendment and all that—but no answer was all the answer they needed. The guns came out, and I was on the floor before I knew what hit me.

  So, that’s how I got the bruised jaw and ribs, and the charge of possession of Schedule II controlled substance with intent to distribute, which I guess is all factual, even if it isn’t exactly true.

  For what it’s worth, I really appreciate you coming down in the middle of the night like this. And I’m sure you’re really great at your job. But if at all possible, I really want Sully Green representing me. I think I need Mr. Attorney Man for this one.

  In case it doesn’t go without saying, I’ve got the money to pay:

  I’m an actor.

  From the Journal of Pastor Ephraim Otis, Quansigamog Pond, Massachusetts, 1770

  Two more emissaries have come—a Spaniard and goodwife. They are as soft of foot and hand as Parson Brown but bear none of his teachings nor the Lord’s New Sacrament. Parson Brown does not return, and these new emissaries claim mystification. We fear they may be Fallen Angels sent for our perdition, or a test from the Lord, in like stead as He tested Job and Abraham.

  We all fear for the states of our souls in a world absent the Face of God and His Communion through the Manifest Gospel. We are sick for want of the Lord’s Grace. It is intolerable.

  Young Charles takes hammer and tongs to the new emissaries, in hope of extracting some confession, and of showing the Lord the true depth of our steadfast Faith. Their cries rise swiftly to Heaven. If they are truly the Lord’s servants, then He will intervene on their behalf soon, and we will again enjoy the full Ecstasy of his New Sacrament and Glistering Communion.

  Until then we pray.

  And pray

  And pray

  amen.

  —For Sri Gordon, Steff Weyand, and Stephen Trouvere, for filling the gaps.

  * * *

  THEY HAVE ALL ONE BREATH

  Karl Bunker | 12234 words

  Stories by Karl Bunker www.karlbunker.com have appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, Interzone, Cosmos, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and elsewhere. In the past Karl has been a software developer, jeweler, musical instrument maker, and mechanical technician. He currently makes a living through freelance editing and copywriting. He lives in a small town north of Boston, Massachusetts, with his wife, sundry pets, and an assortment of wildlife. In his moving new story, an artist strives to create a great work in a “perfect” world.

  A passing streetcar noticed me on the sidewalk. It slowed to a stop, opening its door and dinging its bell to invite me onboard. I ignored it, preferring to walk. It was hours before dawn, early to be heading home by the standards of some, but I’d had enough club-hopping for one night. My skull, my brain, my body were all still vibrating with echoes of the evening’s music. It was a good feeling, but I wanted to get home and put in a few hours of work before crashing. I was walking down Boylston Street, enjoying the cool evening air.

  There was a loose crowd filling the little plaza at Copley Square. As I walked past, a tall, thin figure separated himself from the rest and called out to me: “James! Hey James, Maestro James!” He laughed, dancing up to me on the balls of his feet.

  “How goes it, Ivan?”

  “Goes good, confrere.” He fell into step beside me, then lifted his hand and pointed straight up. “The sky is busy tonight. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed, walking along with your nose scraping the ground the way you do.”

  I looked up. He was right. White and blue sparklers were winking on and off in a dozen places, and three separate shimmery threads stretched across random patches of the sky.

  Ivan hooked his thumb in the direction of the crowd now behind us. “It’s got this pack spooked. They think the AIs are putting the finishing touches on a starship, and any second now they’re going to fly away, leaving us poor miserables to fend for ourselves.”

  I grunted, still watching the sky. One of the big orbiters had scrolled into view, its X shape visible as it crept along.

  “Kind of like in that E. M. Forster story,” Ivan said. “ ‘The Machine Stops.’ Have you read it?”

  “Yeah.” Lisa had given me a copy of the story; Forster was responding to what he saw as the naive optimism H. G. Wells expressed in some of his science-exalting utopian fiction. In Forster’s dystopia people live in hive-like underground dwellings, cared for by a great machine that provides them with everything. They rarely have any physical contact with other people, rarely travel or even leave their rooms. They sit and watch entertainments, talk via videophone, eat machine-produced food, breathe machine-produced air. Many of them have come to worship the machine as a kind of god. (“O Machine! O Machine!”)

  “That’s what they’re afraid of—that the machine will stop,” Ivan was saying. “And then where will we be? No more freebies, no more zaps to keep us all behaving like good boys and girls. All the bad old stuff of the bad old days will come back again.” He turned and walked backward for a few steps, looking back at the people filling the square. “Some people just like to fret. About what the AIs have done, about what they’ll do next, or this bunch—fretting that they’ll stop doing anything.”

  “The Machine,” I pondered aloud. People have never been able to settle on a good name for the whatever-it-is that runs the world now. “The AIs” is an awkward mouthful. And should we properly be calling it/them “the AIs,” plural, or “the AI,” singular? Nobody knows. Some like using the term “the I’s” for short, which of course has
a handily appropriate homophone. But usually people just talk about “they” and “them.” They did this, they ought to do that, they won’t do this other thing. They’ve been making it rain too much. I wish they’d move me to a bigger house. I can’t believe they zapped me—I wasn’t really going to hit her. They they they they. “The machines” is what Lisa used to call them. “The Machine,” dressed up in singular and capitals, has a nice ring to it, too.

  Ivan got ahead of me and started walking halfway backward, bending his knees to get his face into my field of vision. I guess I was staring down at the ground again. “Where are you headed, James? Home to the salt mines?”

  “Yeah, home,” I said. “Maybe get some work done.”

  “Ah... work.” He turned to face in the direction he was walking. There was an extra bounce in the rhythm of his steps, like there was too much energy in him for the act of walking to contain. People who don’t know Ivan want to know what kind of drugs he’s using and where they can get some. But it’s all just him, just the way he is. He’s a man who looks like he’s all crackling hyperactive surface charge, but who in fact has more depth and inner stillness than anyone I know. “I should do me some of that ‘work’ stuff myself,” he said. “I’ve got an idea for a mural, and there’s a restaurant in Oak Square that’s talking about letting me do a couple of walls, one inside and one exterior.” He scanned the space around us until his gaze settled on a curbside tree. “I’m thinking something natural. Old nature, from back when it was scary.”

  “Red in tooth and claw,” I said.

  When I was about ten years old, my mother had a job that was walking distance from where we lived. Her walk to work took her past a park with a pond that was home to a population of ducks, and as winter came on some of these ducks chose not to fly south. It was a typical New England winter, with the temperature fluctuating randomly between mild and brutally cold. On one of the colder mornings, my mother decided that the ducks, now huddled together on a small part of the pond that remained unfrozen, must be hungry. And so from that day on she began bringing food for the ducks on her morning walk to work. First it was a few slices of bread, then a half-loaf, then a whole loaf, then a concoction of bread, cheap peanut butter, and lard that she would mix up by the gallon every evening. Naturally, ducks greeted her in greater and greater numbers every morning, and to my mother’s eye at least, ate with greater and greater frenzy and desperation.

  One day she came home with her right hand raw and red, the tips of three fingers bandaged. She’d given herself a case of frostbite by scooping the gooey duck food out with her bare hand in sub-zero weather. She sat at the kitchen table, crying as my father gently re-bandaged her fingers. Her tears weren’t from the pain, but over the plight of “her” ducks. My father began to argue with her, using his calm, captain-ofthe-debating-team tone that my mother and I alternately admired and loathed, depending on whether it was directed at us. “This is crazy, Ann. You’re killing yourself over a few birds that were too stupid to fly south when they should have. And as long as you keep feeding them, they never will fly south. And there’s just going to be more and more of them...” And on he went, softly logical and reasonable. I saw my mother’s face hardening with anger and saw my father being oblivious to this. Knowing that an explosion was coming, I retreated to my room.

  I didn’t have to wait long. First there was my father’s voice—too muffled to make out any words, but so recognizable in its stolid rationality—and then my mother’s ragged shout, interrupting him: “Natural? Why would I give a damn about what’s natural? Nature is a butcher! Nature is a god damned butcher!” Next came the sound of my parents’ bedroom door being slammed.

  Of course. This was a recurring theme with my mother. She loved the beauty of nature, loved animals of any species, but always she saw ugliness behind the beauty. Every bird at our backyard feeder would remind her of how many chicks and fledglings died for each bird that survived to maturity. Every image of wildlife on television or the web would bring to her mind the bloody, rapacious cycle of predator and prey. The boundless, uncaring wastefulness of nature infuriated her. All through my childhood our home was an impromptu hospital, rehabilitation clinic, and long-term rest home for a host of rescued wild and domesticated animals. Orphaned fledgling birds and baby squirrels, starving semi-feral alley cats, and then the mice and birds rescued from the jaws of those same cats.

  A few moments after my mother’s tirade, my father came into my room and sat beside me on my bed, looking as shamefaced and apologetic as a scolded dog. He often came to me in situations like this. As poor a job as he often did of understanding her, I never questioned that he loved my mother with a helpless intensity. And when he had made her angry he would come to me, as if I were the closest replacement for her that he could find. “You’d think I’d know her better by now, eh, champ?” he said with a sad smile, resting a hand on my shoulder. Then we talked about trivialities for a while, my father ordered a take-out meal, and life went on.

  When Ivan and I arrived at our building, a squat little delivery bot was trundling up the outside steps with a stack of packages. Moving ahead of us, it opened the door to Ivan’s studio, deposited the boxes a few yards inside the door, and left again, silent on its padded treads. “Ah,” Ivan said, looking through the packages. “Every day is Christmas, eh? Canvas, stretchers, some tubes of color, and...” he yanked open the top of one of the boxes, “yup; some genuine imitation AI-brand single malt Scotch. Yum yum.” He pulled out a bottle and cocked it at an angle near his head. The label had the words “Scotch, Islay single malt (simulated)” printed over a nice photograph of (presumably) Scottish countryside. Nothing else. “Join me in a few, confrere?” Ivan asked.

  I dropped into one of Ivan’s hammock chairs while he flitted into the kitchen for glasses and ice. “You know what I hear?” he said when he came back, handing me a clinking tumbler. “Shanghai, man! That’s what I hear. People say great things are happening there. Really happening. Music, art, literature, movies... They say it’s wide open there. New ideas, new things, stuff like nobody’s done before, nobody’s thought of before. A real renaissance, happening right out on the streets! We should go, James. We should go!”

  I grunted noncommittally. Ivan had these flights of enthusiasm; a new one every few weeks, it seemed. A while ago he’d been reading about the Vorticists and Futurists of the early twentieth century, and had been wild to write an artist’s manifesto like theirs—one that would “encapsulate the role of the artist in a post-singularity world.” That had kept him busy for a month or two, and then there had been some vague but dangerous-sounding talk of performance art involving pyrotechnics, and after that he’d returned to painting with a deep dive into old-school realism and precise draftsmanship.

  Ivan had been wandering around his studio as he drank, and now, standing at an open window, he said, “Hey, come look.” I weaved my way around a half-dozen or so unfinished canvasses on easels and went to him. He pointed down at the outer woodwork of the window. The building was old, with brick walls and weathered wooden trim around the windows. The wooden sill Ivan was pointing at was partly rotted at the corners, and busily at work in those rotted areas was a crew of micro-bots. Vaguely insect-like and about a quarter-inch long, they were the same grayish brown as the weathered wood. There were around ten or twenty of them crawling over the sill, some making their way to one of the rotted voids in the wood and squirting out dollops of resinous material. Others were engaged in chewing away bits of rotten wood, using ant-like pincer jaws.

  Ivan reached out and picked up one of the chewer bots, first holding it between thumb and forefinger, and then letting it crawl over his hand. It moved with an unhurried purpose, eventually dropping off the side of his hand to the windowsill and rejoining its comrades. “You remember Louisiana a couple of years ago?” he said, still watching the little bots at work. “The governor and legislature were puffing up their chests about reintroducing a money-labor economy by mak
ing it illegal to accept any goods or services from ‘any artificial entity.’ Then it turned out that little mechanical bugs like these guys were swarming through both the statehouse and the governor’s mansion. They’d been rebuilding both from the inside out for months.”

  I reached out to the window myself, picking up one of the bots and holding it by the edges. It churned its legs for a moment and then went still as I held it close to my eyes. A memory of Lisa’s voice murmured into my ear, vicious and accusing: You love them. It makes me sick how much you love them.

  Lisa appeared in my life right about the time of the world’s big tipping point. It was during the few days of the last war in the Middle East. The War That Wasn’t; the Fizzle War. I was in a club called The Overground, and the atmosphere was defiantly celebratory. The wall-sized screen behind the stage was showing multiple videos—scenes that have since become iconic, even clichéd and boring: tanks rolling off their own treads and belly-flopping onto the desert sand, soldiers trying to hold onto rifles that were falling to pieces in their hands, a missile spiraling crazily through the air before burying itself in the ground with the impotent thud of a dead fish. And from other parts of the world, scenes of refugee camps where swarms of flying bots were dropping ton after ton of food, clothing, shelter materials.

  No one claimed ownership of these Good Samaritan cargo-bots, nor of the gremlinesque nanoes that were screwing up the mechanisms of war. It soon became known that these were machines built and run by other machines. It was becoming undeniably evident that something new was moving upon the face of the land. Indeed, that the world was being rebuilt around us, disassembled and reassembled under our feet. The AIs were taking over, and they were changing the rules.