* * * *
Time was vast but always finite, while space would remain two breaths short of infinite; and those were just two components in a multiverse built upon branes and inflationary events, marauding singularities and impossible-fields that worked together to generate every kind of imaginable creation, plus a few more. When given its chance, sentient life always grew to understand that it was inevitably and profoundly tiny. Any intellect, once magnified with a top-flight Thinker, ceased to live in a place of genuine importance. Humanity had been washed clean of tyrants and great souls. Even Jason Popper was important for the famous things done in the deep past. No matter what Gillian might accomplish in her coming days, one girl's history would always be narrow and brief. She might meet ten billion people, but those were just a rough sampling of the vivid souls occupying one end of the galaxy. She could live on a thousand worlds, but that left trillions of beautiful realms that would never know the shape of her hand or the soft, shy pressure of her eyes. And the mind behind those eyes had to pose inevitable questions: Why do you feel this nagging, pernicious sense of loss? And what exactly is it that you believe you are missing?
Years later, Gillian returned to Earth for an extended visit. The world she remembered was gone now, replaced with a crowded, busy, and exceptionally lovely terrain that in no way resembled the place of her birth. With the patience of a woman blessed with time, she stayed with a succession of relatives and old friends, and like any tourist, she tried to absorb the sights and tastes of this new place. Sometimes, seemingly by accident, traces of Jason Popper came forward to be noticed. An acquaintance spotted him hiking in the mountains on the new Pacifica continent, while another claimed that he was right now circumnavigating the globe in a stratospheric glider. Other voices claimed he was investing in a speculative new company using SETI-acquired technologies—an intentional lie, it later turned out, in a useless bid to stir up investors in a soon-to-fail venture. Then rumors surfaced that the old man was building a submarine, planning to dive deeper than anyone ever had into the Jovian atmosphere. Or was he assembling a starship that would take him to the Centauri suns or the galaxy's heart? And then came the day when knowledgeable sources sadly reported that the man who was among the ten or twelve most responsible for this new world had just fallen ill, suffering from a nameless ailment that was stubbornly resisting every doctor's healing touch.
All of those stories had been told before. Gillian had heard variations of them on Titan, and she imagined she would hear them again, probably for another hundred thousand years. But that was to be expected: To the best of his ability, the man was a recluse, and into his absence flowed every bit of nonsense and spectacular speculation.
But here Gillian was, practically standing in Jason's backyard, and why not make good use of her opportunity?
Once the decision was made, it took less than a second for her quick mind to formulate a worthy plan.
Identifying the recluse's location was the trick. He owned three mansions, each surrounded by walled estates constantly shielded from curious eyes. But the man she knew wouldn't hide in those kinds of places, she reasoned. Too inelegant, and in their own fashion, far too constricting. For several days, she sat alone in a quiet room tucked inside her grandniece's giant house, and in that carefully maintained darkness, she remembered everything about the man who used to visit her in that little neighborhood grocery.
One evening, in a loud voice nobody else could hear, she announced, “I know where to find him."
Ten hours later, she arrived at the front gate of a modest farm at the southern end of Old Italy. A thousand threads of evidence had brought her to this place—electronic traffic and robot traffic, the strangely perfect weather and a few hectares of heavily tilled land that were dedicated to an assortment of heirloom crops.
She could be wrong, yes. But really, where was the harm? Alone, she pressed an old-fashioned button that set loose a series of quiet musical bells. But the bells went unanswered. Invisible eyes watched her standing patiently in the ruddy, early morning light. She felt their mechanical gaze, and she listened carefully to birds singing and the warm wind. And then, just as she reached for the button again, a scrubbed voice came from no particular location, asking, “What do you want, my dear?"
"A salad for two,” she replied, smiling.
Again, silence washed over her.
Gillian's patience left her. Nervous frustration—not a popular emotion among modern souls—led to a small, untidy rage. In a single breath, she told the voice her name and the essentials of her story, and when she quit talking, she realized that the heavy oak gate had been pulled open, and on the other side of it stood an ageless and very fit gentleman who was studying her with his own curious brown eyes.
Quietly, Jason Popper said, “Hello, my dear."
Again, softly this time, she said, “'Salad for two.’”
But then with a sad shake of the head, the man said, “No. You must be confused. Gillian, is it? It's been a very long time, and yes, in my day I've bought a few groceries. But no matter how hard I try, I can't remember you.
"And my dear, I don't believe you remember me either...."
* * * *
Beyond the gate stood a massive old oak tree, and in its trunk's shadow waited a long iron bench where two people who didn't know one another could sit with distance between them. The very old man invited that slightly younger woman to tell her story again, in detail.
Gillian talked about the grocery and her favorite customer, and then with a string of telling details, she described her last day of work and the spooky walk to the car and how Jason Popper had driven up alongside her and given her a best-wishes card as well as the hundred-dollar bills—
And she paused, arms crossing on her bent-forward chest. “You're saying this didn't happen,” she muttered. “Well then, where did my money come from? How could I have afforded your stock in the first place?"
Jason smiled for a moment. “When you graduated from high school, your grandmother gave you those shares as a gift."
Why did that sound a little familiar?
He pulled a small reader from his hip pocket and showed her a sequence of transaction files that had been uncovered in just the last several seconds. According to what she read, her mother's mother had bought the stock for Gillian, as well as shares in several other new companies that had long since died.
Once again, Jason prompted her to tell her story.
But Gillian could only touch on those next decades. Confused and a little scared, she had to ask, “Why didn't anyone notice that I was lying? These are public records, and you found them easily enough...."
"Yes, I did."
The man had a pleasant, patient smile.
She thought for a moment, and then she said, “Oh."
"Yes?"
"None of this story's true, is it?"
"What do you mean, dear?"
"I never got a gift from you. Not money or card, or anything. And now that I think about it ... I'm not sure you even lived in my home city...."
"For what's it worth, I did visit once. But that was before you were born."
"And I never mentioned you to my friends or lovers. Everything in my head ... I don't think it was there last year, or even last week.” She slumped back against the seat, and with a soft, lost sob, she said, “I think I dreamed this story up yesterday. And believed it, somehow."
"Is that so?"
"I think I must be crazy,” she muttered.
Which for some reason made him laugh. Then he touched her for the first and final time, on the knee, the hand hard and warm and strong in the ways that a gardener's hand would be, patting her a few times before pulling away again. “No, you're not crazy. And the fault is entirely my own, what's happening to you. Nobody can wear the blame but me."
* * * *
The Three Laws protected humanity from the machines, and giving those Laws teeth were hundreds of legal refinements and thousands of wetware programs, p
lus an army of monitoring agents as well as one bureaucratic empire purposefully starved of creativity or the barest interest in changing the status quo. But more than just that impressive array of public resolve defended humanity. There were subtle, secretive tools at work too. One device was the brainchild of Jason Popper. Or perhaps more than one ... but he confessed to a single pernicious program buried deep in the workings of the first Thinker that Gillian had implanted into her skull.
"This is my guess,” Jason reported. “You've enjoyed a fine long life, and with time, you've grown accustomed to your augmented mind. But no complex system is perfectly static; no army of safeguards can forever defend every last one of your borders. Coming home to the Earth was the trigger, perhaps. Or maybe this would have happened on Titan. I cannot say for certain. But let's assume that familiar skies and the taste of this particular wind brought back memories of pre-Thinker days, and naturally you began measuring what you are today against what you used to be.
"You're homesick, Gillian. Not for a place or even a time, but for that innocent young girl.
"A little harmless longing doesn't matter, of course. Everybody does it. But that expression, ‘Salad for two,’ is a coded cry for help. And ‘The machines take over,’ has a much more transparent meaning. Together, those phrases should tell an informed observer that the organic portion of your consciousness is losing too much ground to its artificial parts. And even more alarming is this elaborate daydream of yours. Which isn't really yours, by the way."
"Then whose is it?"
"Mine, I suppose. There's a string of implanted partial memories that I created. They're inside you and millions like you, ready to be woven into anyone's life story, fragments of a narrative that each person will believe wholly and act upon accordingly. Should they ever be needed, that is.
"What happened to you, Gillian ... quite suddenly you remembered having met me. You wove me into a long ago job, and your daydream told you that our relationship was close enough to be friendly. In the story are just enough clues to lead you to my home. Which is exactly what I intended. Everyone who embraced that first generation of Thinkers is similarly equipped. Each of you has a warning sign, and from that, the possibility of escape."
Jason paused.
Gillian stared at her hands—at the backs of her hands and the long palms—and then she closed her eyes, asking, “What do I do?"
"There are quite a few technical fixes,” Jason allowed. “But first you'll need to decide what is genuinely you and what that ‘you’ desires."
"Can I have everything artificial removed?"
"If that's what you wish."
She offered several less radical options.
"Everything is possible, Gillian."
Panic took hold. Sitting in the warm shade, in air suffused with the odors of tomatoes and basil, Gillian began to shiver. “I don't know what I want,” she confessed. “I have no idea what to do ... not at all...."
Jason watched her with a measure of sympathy. But despite his patience and earnestness, she had the strong impression that he had done just this many times before.
She asked, “Are there others? Like me?"
"Of course,” he allowed.
"And do they come here, hunting for you?"
"If they're on the Earth, they will. Eventually.” He shrugged, adding, “But this is why I allow myself to be found. I'm a fortunate person, and I owe the world a great deal. And believe me, I feel an obligation to help where I can."
"I want to talk to these other people,” she said.
Jason might or might not have expected that answer. But after another nod, he said, “That seems only reasonable."
"How often?"
"Do they come to my gate?” Jason Popper sighed and stood again. “Sit here and wait, Gillian. If that's what you wish. And if I happen to get another visitor today, answer on my behalf. How's that for a plan?"
"I guess I can try."
Then the great man reached beneath the bench, into a weathered cupboard, and took out a wide wooden bowl. The bowl was clean but scarred by fork tines and a thousand different hands. “You've been through a lot,” he said. “You're probably hungry. If you want, make yourself a salad while you wait."
But Gillian barely had time to pick a few greens before the bell at the gate began, quietly but insistently and with much purpose, to ring.
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Short Story: Run! Run! by Jim Aikin
Jim Aikin's first fiction sale was to our magazine back in our Feb. 1981 issue. He went on to publish two more stories with us in the 1980s, as well as two novels, Walk the Moons Road and The Wall at the Edge of the World. In recent years, he has been writing for music technology magazines like Mix, Keyboard, Electronic Musician, and Virtual Instruments, and by his own description, he considered himself “an ex-fiction writer.” His muse, however, had other plans for him—for which we thank her.
An adult unicorn is larger than a pony, though smaller than a horse. Its limbs are as lean and lithe as a deer's, its mane and tail equine, generous, and silky as spider-weave. The males have a goatee of the same hair, which gives them a contemplative look. All unicorns are pure white, but the horns of the males have a thin spiral of blue that runs from the base out to the tip, the females a spiral of gold. At night the horn of a unicorn glows faintly, with a cool unwavering light.
Unicorns have a distinctive odor, somewhere between cinnamon and candle wax. They will eat grass, but they prefer fresh flower petals. An adult can eat seven or eight pounds of flower petals a day, after which its droppings are a swirl of colors, a clotted rainbow.
My daughters know nothing about unicorns. As far as I know, they have never seen one. They may not even know the word. Certainly no one has ever told them about the unicorns their grandfather once kept on his farm outside of Elmira, New York. They never knew their grandfather, for that matter. I wonder—what should I tell them? How much should I tell them?
When I was their age (Cecile is eleven, Faith eight—how quickly they grow!), unicorns were a fact of our lives. We knew we mustn't talk about them, my sister Leonore and I, not to anybody, but they were always there, off in the south paddock nibbling on flower petals, which in the winter my father had flown in from Central America in large bales. I suppose the truck drivers might have wondered about those shipments, but my father had a way of putting people at ease without saying much. He was a quiet, comfortable man, and I miss him very much. My mother had died when I was only a baby and Leonore not much older, so I never knew her, and Father seldom spoke of her. Once in a while he would say, “Your mother's looking down from Heaven, and she's smiling"—or, if we were misbehaving, “Your mother's looking down from Heaven. Do you want her to see you doing that?” But he took good care of us, and our life on the farm seemed to me complete.
The south paddock was well screened from the road by a line of trees, and there was little traffic on the road. If the unicorns—there were usually seven or eight of them—were glimpsed from the road, they would have been thought horses. At night their horns, twinkling among the trees as they ran, might have been mistaken for boys chasing across the field with flashlights.
Father brought the first unicorn home the year before I was born. I suppose Mother must have thought he had gone mad, but he never spoke of that. The unicorn—I knew her, years later, as Sparky—was a foal, and had no horn yet, no more than a nub on her forehead. He found her at the edge of the woods, a trembling little thing. He thought at first the foal must be an albino deer, its mother shot by a hunter. Deer hunters were not uncommon in the woods around our farm, so he may have been right about the fate of the mother. When the foal failed to thrive on mare's milk, I believe he brought the veterinarian in to look at her. The vet, Dr. Land, must have known at once what she was. In later years my father paid Dr. Land what he called a monthly retainer for his services, though by the time I was five or six we had no animals left other than the unicorns, an aging, arthritic spaniel, and a
n entirely self-sufficient cat. Dr. Land was a Godly man, and it would be a slander to say he took my father's money to keep quiet about the unicorns, but I can't think of any other explanation.
I was born in the seventh year after the Final Conversion of the Heathen. All the world at last was Christian, which must have set Satan gnashing his teeth! The Mohammedans, the Chinese Communists, even the Jews had converted, one and all, and been baptized. At last, after centuries of struggle, the United States was a Christian nation. Prayer was heard every morning in every school, every unborn child was safe in the womb, and not one soul would have dreamed of giving voice to the atheistic ideas that had once been so disgustingly common.
Or so it's said. I'm a little hazy on what those atheistic ideas might have been, because no one repeats them anymore. Why should we?
What I hope my daughters would understand, if I were to tell them about the unicorns, was that their grandfather was a Godly man too. Perhaps not as fervent as some, but Leonore and I were taken faithfully to church every Sunday in Elmira, and on Wednesday nights to Bible study at the Christian center down the road. There was no evil in him, not that I ever saw. But there is evil in all of us, I know it's true. I can't deny that Father strayed from the Word of the Lord.
The last summer when there were unicorns at the farm, I was fifteen and Leonore was seventeen. She had fallen very much in love with Timothy McFadden, the son of our local pastor. It was expected that Tim would follow in his father's footsteps and join the clergy. Poor Leonore! It was hardly to be expected that Tim would notice her, with so many girls vying for his attention.
She would have had an easier time of it if we lived closer to town, because she was pretty, and had truly accepted Jesus Christ into her heart. She would have made a wonderful wife for a minister! But Father had too much work to do on the farm to drive her to Monday night choir practice or to the Saturday youth picnics, which was where the boys and girls mainly had a chance to socialize. He had acreage in alfalfa, and apple orchards, and he never had quite enough hired hands to do the work. I don't know whether it was because he couldn't afford the hands—the unicorns must have been a constant drain on our finances—or whether he was worried that the hands would wander out to the south paddock and see something he didn't want them to see.
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