She shook her head.
"How do we not know about this?"
"Because we're still only some people," said Robby. "Not enough people yet."
"And you're going to do it," said Mom. Remeny wondered who she was talking to. Dad? Robby? Both of them? It almost looked as if she had calmed down except that just then her avatar went completely still. Remeny searched the house cams and found her at the real dining room table with a plate of tortellini in front of her. She had pushed her Deveau back onto her head. She was crying.
"Sweet part for me." Dad hadn't noticed that Mom had logged off. "I'm a senator and I'm against it. I've never actually played a senator before. President, yes. Mayor. It's only a supporting, but still Frederick Nooney is attached, Gonsalves to direct. I told Steve I'd give him an answer tomorrow, but this... is this some coincidence or what?"
"You should do it," said Robby. "Absolutely. What's it called?"
"Title on the script is 'Declaration,' but that will never fly."
Remeny almost choked on a snap pea. Robby started to laugh.
Then Dad did something that Remeny didn't think that an oldschool eighty-threeyear-old could. He opened a private channel to Robby in softtime.
=You there, son?=
=Maybe.=
Unfortunately he didn't know how to close Remeny's private channel with her brother, so she was able to eavesdrop. =Look Robby, if this is what you want, I'm for it. I know you're in pain and miserable.
= =Only when I'm stuck in hardtime.
= =I get that. Ever since that day, all we've wanted is to help.= His sympathy blip was (.8). =I know it's hard for you but it's hard for us too. Your mother blames herself because she sent you...=
=Dad, stop. I love you but stop. You want to help me then take the damn part. It'll be good for the cause. My cause, Dad. But what I really want is for you to come home and help me with Mom. Because reality sucks and I'm giving up on it. We need to make Mom understand. All of us, face to face. Oldschool.=
"Stop saying you're sorry." Sturm was trying for stern but his blippage read embarrassed.
"I just didn't want Mom to freak," said Remeny.
"Well, she did and nobody was killed. I call that a win for our side."
"Think Dad can convince her?"
"He's an actor." Sturm scanned the crowd around the dance floor for Silk. "He'll give a performance."
The music twanged and couples began to take their places.
"Nine minutes after," said Sturm. "He's not coming."
"There's no schedule." Remeny's irritation climbed to (.3). "He's not a train."
"Bow to the partner, now bow to the corner, all join hands and circle to the left, please don't step on her, now circle to the right, and we go round and round."
Now that she was old enough to know better, Remeny was sick of square dancing. When she was twelve, ForSquare had been one of her favorite EOS playgrounds. She had loved the movement, the color, and the concentration it took to remember and execute all of the calls. When she was sixteen she had come in second in the Jefferson County Challenge. There had been more than twenty calls that day that involved changing avatars on the fly, on top of two hundred more traditional calls. A hell of a lot of remembering, but that was the point. It was all about teaching kids how to use their interfaces while they pretended to have fun.
"Promenade now, full promenade." Crystal stalactites rose at random from the dance floor and the dancers weaved around them.
Another thing: the music was so loud that you had to shout to be heard. Okay for these kids, so young that they had nothing to say. But now that she was eighteen, Remeny preferred a quiet place like Sanctuary. It was better for flirting.
Remeny spotted Botão and waved. She skirted the dancers to join them.
"I'm here but I can't stay. I'm babysitting my sisters." Her avatar was wearing a Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness T-shirt.
"I like this." Remeny brushed a hand down the sleeve.
"Yeah." Botão tugged at the hem, stretching the front of the tee so she could admire it too. "My mom and I designed them and then I printed out ten on our home fab, sizes six and seven. I'll bring them to the Gates Center tomorrow and have the teachers send them home with the kids. Cost less than ten bucks."
"I was just there today myself."
"Oh my god, what if we had met?" She clutched her throat in mock horror. "You ask me, I say the whole secret identity thing is dumb. The oldschool is just trying to keep us from ganging up on them." She brushed up against Sturm. "What do you think, Sturm, or are you ignoring me on purpose?"
"You forgot the commas," he said, "and I wasn't ignoring you. I was looking for Silk."
"Asshole." She was stunned. "Be that way then." She pushed away from him.
"What do you know about Silk?" he said.
=What are you doing?= Remeny sent Robby a private message.
=I think she's in on it.=
=In on what?=
"Why should I tell you?" said Botão.
"Because Silk isn't who we think he is."
Botão's anger blip had a sarcastic edge. "Nobody here is who I think they are."
"Did he tell you to come up with that slogan?"
"Oh, I get it. I'm not smart enough to come up with an idea on my own. Let's see now, is it because I'm a girl? Because I am uma Brasileira?"
"There." Remeny pointed. Silk had entered with a couple of avatars new to her.
"All roll now, and spin those wheels, easy now and boys form a star...." Some of the avatars on the dance floor morphed their shoes into roller blades; the others grew casters in their legs. "Now be our stars, and keep it rolling." One of the boys in the star formation slipped and toppled into the boy next to him. The girl dancers clapped and giggled, but the caller didn't pause. "That's all right, no time for regrets, head back home and into your sets."
Silk appeared beside Remeny. "Our meeting isn't until Tuesday," he said, "but as long as we're here... I don't see Toybox."
"Leave him out of this," said Sturm.
"Oh, and are you giving the orders now?" His amusement blip barely registered.
"I think there is some kind of conspiracy going on and you're part of it. You're manipulating me. Us."
"Speak for yourself," said Botão.
"How can it be manipulation..." Silk spread his hands. "... if you're doing what you wanted to do anyway? You believe, Sturm. I know you do. "
"But I don't," said Botão, "and you can take your conspiracy or revolution or whatever the hell it is and shove it." As Botão tore her T-shirt off and hurled it at Silk, she generated a replacement Seleção Brasileira soccer jersey. "I'll find another coop. Remeny? You with me?"
With a shock, Remeny realized that she wanted to say yes, that she was actually afraid of what Silk and Sturm were trying to do to themselves. She liked being an avatar, sure, but this wasn't how she wanted to live the rest of her life. Not if it meant getting stashed. She started toward Botão.
=Wait.= Sturm was desperate.
Silk didn't wait. "You can't quit," he said. "Don't you want to live your life in soft-time? You're the one who wanted to make your own domain and never get real again."
"No." Botão glared at the three of them, and Remeny was ashamed to be lumped with the boys. "I was just saying that I like the real world and VR." She had to raise her voice to be heard over the music and now people were eavesdropping. That only made her talk louder. "I don't know about you jerkoffs, but I like sex, oldschool sex, the kind you probably can't get, you know with touching and kissing and... and sweetness." Her anger blip soared. "And I'm going to have my own kids someday."
In her room, Remeny felt tears come. She agreed with everything Botão was saying—except maybe the part about having kids. But it would hurt Robby if she spoke up and he had been hurt so much already. Not fair, not fair, but then nothing in her life was fair. She had been so busy being Robby's sister that she had forgotten how to be herself.
"But
we're doing your kids a favor," said Silk. "And your grandchildren."
The caller had stopped and the music shut down. Now the entire playground was listening to them. Remeny was pretty sure they were about to be kicked out. Or worse.
"We've got nine billion people crowded onto this planet," he continued. "Most of us stashed aren't ever going to have kids. We say that's a good thing. And the stashed don't burn through scarce resources like you and your kids. We're saving the planet. All we ask is that we get to live the life we want."
"Avatars Silk and Botão, you are disrupting this playground." The caller's warning pierced the argument like a fire alarm. "Stop now or there will be consequences."
"Okay." Botão raised her hands in surrender . " So you have some ideas. But a revolution? No. You haven't seen what evil a revolution does. I have." Then she brought her hands together with a sharp clap and her avatar popped.
Everyone but Silk seemed to be holding their breath. He knelt, picked up her discarded T-shirt and held it up. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he said.
"Someday. That's all. In the meantime, I apologize."
The music started again. The crowd in the playground buzzed.
"Please." A kid in a foolish wizard's hat touched Sturm's elbow. "What was that all about?"
Sturm waved him off and snatched the T-shirt out of Silk's hands. "You and I still have something to settle."
"We do. But what about your sister?"
Sturm froze. "What did you say?" A blip shimmered but he suppressed it.
"We don't play by the rules, remember? That's how revolutions work." Was Silk smirking? "But we should really take this elsewhere. I have a place."
"You smug bastard. Why should we trust you?"
"Because you're smart? Because you need us?" He was ignoring Remeny. "We can leave her behind if you want."
"I'm right here," said Remeny, although she felt like she was in someone else's dream.
"Don't pretend I'm not." She poked Sturm. "Either of you."
"Fine," said Silk. "Now, we should go."
Remeny was surprised that Toybox could afford a domain, although his taste in decoration was about what she would have imagined. The floor of his space was bone, the walls fire, the ceiling smoke. His temporarily abandoned avatar, dressed in garish vestments, perched at the edge of a gilt Baroque throne, obviously a copy of something. Remeny queried and it turned out to be the Chair of Peter from St. Peter's Basilica, part of some altar designed by Bernini. It didn't seem like Toybox's taste until she found the sublink: some people called it Satan's Throne. In front of the throne were couches and chairs that seemed to have been made from writhing bodies. These gathered around a glass coffin, on top of which were an open bottle of absinthe, a crystal decanter of water, four matching goblets with slotted absinthe spoons, and a dish of sugar cubes. Inside the coffin was the stashed body of Jason Day, or at least what she assumed was a fairly accurate copy. It wasn't too hard to look at: the breathing mask and feeding tube hid most of the face and the body had not degenerated as much as some of the stashed she had seen images of. He still had all his arms and legs, but then Jason Day was under age and would have to log off and leave his coffin for several hours a week. This meant he wasn't yet eligible for an intercranial interface like Sturm's. His Deveau had a larger array of sensors than her Neurosky 3100 and it was connected to the body sock which monitored his vital signs.
"Where is he?" Sturm flicked a finger against Toybox's idle avatar.
"Don't know," said Silk. "Wobbling around hardtime? I'm sure he'll show up before long. Meanwhile, you need to promise that you won't rat us out."
"Rules?" said Remeny. "Wasn't there something about revolutions not having any?"
"Sorry, but either you promise or we're done."
"Sure, sure. We promise." Sturm bent and pretended to examine the Chair of Peter. "Just get on with it."
"Johanna?"
"Remeny to you. How do you know I'll keep my word?"
"We've done our homework." He tried a smile on her. "Which means I trust you more than you trust me." She was embarrassed that, just a few hours ago, it would have worked.
She morphed one of Toybox's repulsive couches into a park bench and sat. "Promise."
"Thank you. The first thing to know is that there are a lot of us. Not enough, but more all the time. Did you know that when Jefferson wrote that first declaration, only about a third of the colonists favored independence? A third were loyal to the king and another third were on the fence. The point is that we don't need to convince everybody, okay?"
Toybox jerked on his throne and opened his eyes. "What did I miss?"
Remeny swallowed her blip of chagrin.
"We just started." Silk seemed annoyed at the interruption.
"The contact went well?"
"About what we expected. Botão bailed."
"But these two bit after all." Toybox rubbed his hands together. "I wanted to be there but the damn overlord... well, you know. Besides, Silk says I'm not quite ready for a contact. I need to work on my issues." He came off his throne to the coffin. "Absinthe?"
Remeny scooted away from him on her bench. She opened the private channel with Robby. =Does he have to talk?=
=Humor them. They're taking a risk.= Sturm joined him. "I'll have some." He laid a sugar cube on one of the slotted spoons and set it on a glass.
"Could we please get to the point?" said Remeny. It felt good to close her hands into fists, like she had control of something at least. "What are you asking us to do?"
"Recruit," said Silk. "What we were doing in coop—that's what we're doing all across the entire county. You talk to kids. Make friends. Get our point across."
"I signed on last month," said Toybox. "Easiest thing I ever did."
"Okay," said Sturm. "But we're graduating."
"Are we?"
Remeny and Sturm stared at one another. =Oh shit.=
"We flunk coop." Toybox's glee was (.7). "On purpose. Isn't that crush?"
Remeny couldn't help herself. "Shouldn't be hard for you."
Sturm drained his virtual absinthe at a gulp. "So we're stuck in EOS hell forever."
"There are only so many times you can repeat coop," said Silk, "although we can help you extend your time here. We can arrange it so that most of the kids assigned to your teams are sympathetic to the stashed. Changing avatars can buy time. Eventually you will have to graduate. There will be another assignment waiting, if you want."
Remeny was stunned by the enormity of what Silk was saying. And who was he, really? How old? Did he even live in Jefferson County?
"All of this is voluntary, understand, drop out any time. But you won't want to.
We're busy everywhere, working in every demographic group. Lots of us are over-clocked and can think rings around those who lived the majority of their lives in hardtime. And Remeny, we're not all stashed. There are lots of us out and about in the real world. Maybe they have brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers...."
"Wait," Remeny said. "Aren't our parents going to get suspicious if we keep flunking coop?"
"Some do." Silk nodded.
"My parents don't give a shit," said Toybox. "They're stashed too."
"Sometimes kids convert their parents," continued Silk.
"Let me guess." Robby held up a hand to stop him. "And sometimes you try for entire families at once."
Toybox chuckled.
"Special families get special consideration."
Remeny thought about Steve Spencer in his house in Vermont and a sixty million dollar Vicente Gonsalves flix and Robby's ultimatum. Which was more important to Dad, the part or his son's pursuit of happiness? Wondering about it made her head ache.
"So that's pretty much the deal," said Silk. "I'm happy to tell you more, but I'd like to hear what's on your mind now."
The silence stretched. Remeny couldn't look at Robby. She closed their private channel. She felt like curling up into a ball. He had to
speak first. But she knew. He was her brother. She knew.
"I'm interested."
"Good man." Silk came over and sat on the couch beside her. "Remeny?" What had she seen in him? "We definitely want you, too." She thought that if he tried to touch her, she would slap his hand away.
On an impulse, she pulled the Neurosky off her head and Silk, Toybox, and Sturm disappeared. It was almost midnight. She was going to owe her overlord big time for this night. She stood and stretched in the dark of her room. Her home. She didn't bother with lights or a headset. Mom and Dad were almost certainly asleep but she opened the hall door as if it were made of glass and slunk down to Robby's room. She was glad now that she hadn't left ForSquare with Botão. It was important that she understood what Silk was offering Robby. The pursuit of his happiness. As Sturm.
But his happiness wasn't hers, and that was okay. Silk had given her something, even though she couldn't accept his offer. She would have life and her liberty from her brother's pain.
Johanna leaned close to Robby and blew on his face. Goodbye. He stirred but did not wake.
* * *
THE PLANTIMAL
Mike Resnick and Ken Liu | 6657 words
Mike Resnick has won five Hugos from a record thirty-six Hugo nominations (most of which came from Asimov's ), and is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner for short fiction. Mike was the 2012 Worldcon Guest of Honor. His two most recent books are The Trojan Colt (a mystery) and The Doctor and the Dinosaurs.
Ken Liu ( http://kenliu.name )is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. His fiction has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He has won a Nebula, two Hugos, a World Fantasy Award, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, and been nominated for the Sturgeon and the Locus Awards. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts. Although it will be awhile before Ken accumulates as many awards as Mike, these decorated authors join their formidable talents to examine what it's like for an older couple forced to make choices about their new life on a space station.
Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 Page 9