by Rich Horton
“Wait right there,” Damini said. “Don’t touch a thing. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Mother,” Ferron said to her mother’s lion-maned goddess of an avatar, “I’m sorry. Sandhya’s sorry. We’re all sorry. But we can’t let you go on like this.”
It was the hardest thing she’d ever said.
Her mother, wearing Sekhmet’s golden eyes, looked at Ferron’s avatar and curled a lip. Ferron had come in, not in a uniform avatar, but wearing the battle-scarred armor she used to play in when she was younger, when she and her mother would spend hours Atavistic. That was during her schooling, before she got interested in stopping—or at least avenging—real misery.
Was that fair? Her mother’s misery was real. So was that of Jessica Fang’s abandoned daughter. And this was a palliative—against being widowed, against being bedridden.
Madhuvanthi’s lip-curl slowly blossomed into a snarl. “Of course. You can let them destroy this. Take away everything I am. It’s not like it’s murder.”
“Mother,” Ferron said, “it’s not real.”
“If it isn’t,” her mother said, gesturing around the room, “what is, then? I made you. I gave you life. You owe me this. Sandhya said you came home with one of those new parrot-cats. Where’d the money for that come from?”
“Chairman Miaow,” Ferron said, “is evidence. And reproduction is an ultimately sociopathic act, no matter what I owe you.”
Madhuvanthi sighed. “Daughter, come on one last run.”
“You’ll have your own memories of all this,” Ferron said. “What do you need the archive for?”
“Memory,” her mother scoffed. “What’s memory, Tamanna? What do you actually remember? Scraps, conflations. How does it compare to being able to relive?”
To relive it, Ferron thought, you’d have to have lived it in the first place. But even teetering on the edge of fatigue and crash, she had the sense to keep that to herself.
“Have you heard about the star?” she asked. Anything to change the subject. “The one the aliens are using to talk to us?”
“The light’s four million years old,” Madhuvanthi said. “They’re all dead. Look, there’s a new manifest synesthesia show. Roman and Egyptian. Something for both of us. If you won’t come on an adventure with me, will you at least come to an art show? I promise I’ll never ask you for archive money again. Just come to this one thing with me? And I promise I’ll prune my archive starting tomorrow.”
The lioness’s brow was wrinkled. Madhuvanthi’s voice was thin with defeat. There was no more money, and she knew it. But she couldn’t stop bargaining. And the art show was a concession, something that evoked the time they used to spend together, in these imaginary worlds.
“Ferron,” she said. Pleading. “Just let me do it myself.”
Ferron. They weren’t really communicating. Nothing was won. Her mother was doing what addicts always did when confronted—delaying, bargaining, buying time. But she’d call her daughter Ferron if it might buy her another twenty-four hours in her virtual paradise.
“I’ll come,” Ferron said. “But not until tonight. I have some work to do.”
“Boss. How did you know to look for that DNA?” Damini asked, when Ferron activated her icon.
“Tell me what you found,” Ferron countered.
“DNA in the BioShell composter that matches that of Chairman Miaow,” she said, “and therefore that of Dexter Coffin’s cat. And the composter of Rao’s building is just full of his DNA. Rao’s. Much, much more than you’d expect. Also, some of his email and calendar data has been purged. I’m attempting to reconstruct—”
“Have it for the chargesheet,” Ferron said. “I bet it’ll show he had a meeting with Coffin the night Coffin vanished.”
Dr. Rao lived not in an aptblock, even an upscale one, but in the Vertical City. Once Damini returned with the results of the warrants, Ferron got her paperwork in order for the visit. It was well after nightfall by the time she and Indrapramit, accompanied by Detective Morganti and four patrol officers, went to confront him.
They entered past shops and the vertical farm in the enormous tower’s atrium. The air smelled green and healthy, and even at this hour of the night, people moved in steady streams toward the dining areas, across lush green carpets.
A lift bore the police officers effortlessly upward, revealing the lights of Bengaluru spread out below through a transparent exterior wall. Ferron looked at Indrapramit and pursed her lips. He raised his eyebrows in reply. Conspicuous consumption. But they couldn’t very well hold it against Rao now.
They left Morganti and the patrol officers covering the exit and presented themselves at Dr. Rao’s door.
“Open,” Ferron said formally, presenting her warrant. “In the name of the law.”
The door slid open, and Ferron and Indrapramit entered cautiously.
The flat’s resident must have triggered the door remotely, because he sat at his ease on furniture set as a chaise. A grey cat with red ear-tips crouched by his knee, rubbing the side of its face against his trousers.
“New!” said the cat. “New people! Namaskar! It’s almost time for tiffin.”
“Dexter Coffin,” Ferron said to the tall, thin man. “You are under arrest for the murder of Dr. Rao.”
As they entered the lift and allowed it to carry them down the external wall of the Vertical City, Coffin standing in restraints between two of the patrol officers, Morganti said, “So. If I understand this properly, you—Coffin—actually killed Rao to assume his identity? Because you knew you were well and truly burned this time?”
Not even a flicker of his eyes indicated that he’d heard her.
Morganti sighed and turned her attention to Ferron. “What gave you the clue?”
“The scotophobin,” Ferron said. Coffin’s cat, in her new livery of gray and red, miaowed plaintively in a carrier. “He didn’t have memory issues. He was using it to cram Rao’s life story and eccentricities so he wouldn’t trip himself up.”
Morganti asked, “But why liquidate his assets? Why not take them with him?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Pardon me for speaking about you as if you were a statue, Dr. Fang. But you’re doing such a good impression of one.”
It was Indrapramit who gestured at the Vertical City rising at their backs. “Rao wasn’t wanting for assets.”
Ferron nodded. “Would you have believed he was dead if you couldn’t find the money? Besides, if his debt—or some of it—was recovered, Honolulu would have less reason to keep looking for him.”
“So it was a misdirect. Like the frame job around Dr. Nnebuogor and the table set for two . . . ?”
Her voice trailed off as a stark blue-white light cast knife-edged shadows across her face. Something blazed in the night sky, something as stark and brilliant as a dawning sun—but cold, as cold as light can be. As cold as a reflection in a mirror.
Morganti squinted and shaded her eyes from the shine. “Is that a hydrogen bomb?”
“If it was,” Indrapramit said, “your eyes would be melting.”
Coffin laughed, the first sound he’d made since he’d assented to understanding his rights. “It’s a supernova.”
He raised both wrists, bound together by the restraints, and pointed. “In the Andromeda galaxy. See how low it is to the horizon? We’ll lose sight of it as soon as we’re in the shadow of that tower.”
“Al-Rahman,” Ferron whispered. The lift wall was darkening to a smoky shade and she could now look directly at the light. Low to the horizon, as Coffin had said. So bright it seemed to be visible as a sphere.
“Not that star. It was stable. Maybe a nearby one,” Coffin said. “Maybe they knew, and that’s why they were so desperate to tell us they were out there.”
“Could they have survived that?”
“Depends how close to Al-Rahman it was. The radiation—” Coffin shrugged in his restraints. “That’s probably what killed them.”
“God in Heaven,” s
aid Morganti.
Coffin cleared his throat. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Ferron craned her head back as the point source of the incredible radiance slipped behind a neighboring building. There was no scatter glow: the rays of light from the nova were parallel, and the shadow they entered uncompromising, black as a pool of ink.
Until this moment, she would have had to slip a skin over her perceptions to point to the Andromeda galaxy in the sky. But now it seemed like the most important thing in the world that, two and a half million years away, somebody had shouted across the void before they died.
A strange elation filled her. Everybody talking, and nobody hears a damned thing anyone—even themselves—has to say.
“We’re here,” Ferron said to the ancient light that spilled across the sky and did not pierce the shadow into which she descended. As her colleagues turned and stared, she repeated the words like a mantra. “We’re here too! And we heard you.”
The Philosophy of Ships
Caroline M. Yoachim
Kaimu dug his skis into the snow and forced himself onto the steeper slope along the edge of the run. Michelle was behind him, and there wasn’t far to go. He was going to win.
A white-furred creature stirred at the sound of his approach. It rose up from the snow and stared, paralyzed, directly in his path.
The safety mechanism on his skis activated, but it was too late to turn. Instead, the skis treated the creature as though it was a ski jump. Kaimu landed, and the safeties shut off.
Several meters up the mountain, Michelle knelt in the snow. “You hit an Earther.”
Impossible. Before he left the Willflower, the tourist board had assured him that the glacier-covered Canadian region wasn’t populated. All the native Earthers were in a temperate band near the equator.
“Hominid Class 304. Organic component . . . 100 percent.” Michelle transmitted her initial assessment to the rest of her collective, pausing briefly upon the discovery that the creature had no upgrades. The rest of her transmission was a stream of numbers relating to the creature’s condition. All Kaimu gleaned from the numbers was that the creature wasn’t dead. Yet. Blood stained its shaggy white coat and seeped into the icy powder. Kaimu stepped off of his skis. Cold seeped through his skisuit and chilled his feet. He trudged up the hill, kicking his toes into the powder.
“Can you save it?” he asked.
“Twenty-eight percent. My training is neurosurgery, and I’ve never worked on anything 100 percent organic before.” Michelle’s gaze was locked on the two parallel gashes in the creature’s torso, but most of her mind was elsewhere, searching for the knowledge she needed. To her, this was a problem, a challenge. He wondered if she was enjoying it.
Michelle turned away, and Kaimu stepped in for a better look at the injured Earther. Despite its blood-matted fur and diminutive stature, it was undeniably human. She, Kaimu realized from the gentle curve of her hips. She was undeniably human. Her fur was downy and short, more silver than white. The coarser, whiter fur that covered much of her body turned out to be clothing, cut from the skin of an animal. He shuddered.
“You’re in my way.” Michelle nudged him aside. She’d reprogrammed one of her skis to the smallest size, still unwieldy, but small enough to hold in one hand. She drew the sharp edge along the Earther’s outer furs, cutting away the clothing. Unable to see, Kaimu extended sensory tendrils, tapping into Michelle’s visuals and trying to grasp the severity of the injuries.
“Too distracting,” Michelle informed him. She banished his consciousness into a memory cache.
In the memory, there are three consciousnesses in Michelle’s body. Michelle, of course, and Jasmine, who isn’t so bad. Elliot, however, Kaimu finds deeply disturbing. Not the man himself, but the idea that Michelle is part male. Or that another man is in his girlfriend’s head. Kaimu tries to tangle himself only with Michelle, but the three are so intertwined he has no choice but to dissolve into all of them.
Kaimu recognizes the memory. He’s on planetside leave on Nova Terra, and it’s his first time visiting Michelle at work. She’s been easing him into her life. It’s a new experience for her, to share herself without drawing him into her collective. It’s new for him, too.
Michelle reviews patient data files while she waits for him to arrive. All around her, Hospital617 buzzes with activity. In physical space, the hospital is a cavernous room. One floor, no walls. In headspace, there is more privacy, walls that give the illusion of each patient having a separate room. As part of the staff, Michelle doesn’t bother uploading the headspace sensory inputs. Through her eyes, Kaimu can see the entire floor. Specialists of all sorts hover over their patients. Most of the work is upgrades—body reconstruction, routine anti-mortality treatments.
Neurosurgery team 8 to 27-12.
The woman in bed 27-12 is old. Not in the sense that Kaimu is old; his age comes from time dilation from his trips between the stars. Her skin is wrinkled and blotchy, and her hair has thinned so he can see the top of her scalp. She is frail, her body is giving out.
Kaimu sees himself weaving across the hospital floor. He feels his kiss on Michelle’s cheek. Hears himself ask if she’s busy. She tells him yes, but stay anyway. So he does.
She goes back to the woman. Elliot crowds his way to the foreground with patient information. Noelani Lai. A flood of datapackets swirl around the name: age, medical history, anything that might be relevant to selecting a treatment. Jasmine dilutes herself into the hospital archives, matching Elliot’s patient data to other surgical cases. The mini-collective reconvenes and decides that the woman’s body is inoperable. Insufficient regenerative capabilities. Instead, they will re-wire her organics to allow her consciousness to disengage itself. She can be installed into a new body later, if she so desires.
Michelle peels away layers of skin and cuts through Noelani’s skull. The tissue beneath is predominantly organic, with traces of ancient wiring. More primitive than Kaimu. As a navigational officer, he’s had to upgrade to interface with the Willflower.
Michelle blends with Jasmine and Elliot so thoroughly during the surgical procedure that Kaimu can’t find Michelle at all. They become Jasmine/Elliot/Michelle. Jem. As the surgery progresses, the sight and smell of Noelani’s organics become mildly nauseating. The SmartDust that sterilizes the air leaves behind odor-causing particles because sometimes a strange smell can serve as a diagnostic tool.
Kaimu is relieved when the operation is finished, and he can pick out strands of Michelle again. She doesn’t bother to replace the slice of skull she removed, simply folds the skin back down over the wound.
Noelani floats out from her organics and into the vast interconnectivity beyond. Unused to such freedom, she loses cohesiveness, still existing, but commingled with the larger world. Jasmine observes, and notes the response as normal. Twenty-five percent of patients who are absorbed in this way eventually re-cohere. The remainder pursue a less individualized existence. Jem declares the operation a success.
Michelle—the realtime Michelle on the mountain—has shown him what she wants him to see, but now there is something he wants her to see. Awkwardly, since he isn’t used to manhandling other minds, he takes control of the fractional portion of Michelle that led him here. He binds them to the hospital recording of a young woman. The woman is Noelani’s granddaughter, Amy.
She hurries through the maze of hallways, filled with an overwhelming sense of worry. Not for Tutu, but for Mom. She remembers Tutu from her childhood, an energetic woman with long black hair who held her hand in Southside Park while they fed energy chips to the mechanical ducks. They’d gone every time Tutu came to visit, from the time she was two until the time Amy decided she was too old for ducks.
In the pre-op room, Mom is holding Tutu’s hand. Mom’s eyes are swollen and red, but dry. When she sees Amy, fresh tears roll down her face.
“Tutu,” she says. “Tutu, wake up. Amy is here.”
Amy puts her hand on Mom’s shoulder
, half a hug because Mom can’t turn away from Tutu. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“She was awake. An hour ago,” Mom says. She pushes gently against Tutu’s shoulder. “Your granddaughter is here. Amy.”
Amy takes Tutu’s hand. It isn’t the strong hand that she remembers from her childhood. The surgeons wouldn’t fix her body; even Amy could see that Tutu was too old. They would save her by putting her into the collective, and she would be absorbed and lost. Amy can’t bring herself to say her goodbyes out loud. The words would be too final, and her voice would fail her. Instead she squeezes Tutu’s hand and thinks the word, goodbye.
Kaimu withdraws, taking Michelle with him. They drift back to themselves, and the warm hospital air shifts to the biting chill of the mountain. He has to pause and collect himself. Michelle doesn’t acknowledge his return.
“That memory meant nothing to you,” Kaimu said, disappointed.
“You used my access rights to get a hospital recording of a private individual. Those are only supposed to be used in the event of a malpractice suit.” She tried to sound stern, but Kaimu could tell that she was more amused than angry. “Besides, I’ve seen it before. Outdated minds thinking outdated thoughts.”
“Human minds thinking human thoughts,” he snapped back.
“I never said the minds weren’t human.” Her voice was quiet, sad. As though he had missed something, had failed some test. Her sadness diffused his anger, and he let the argument lapse into silence.
The Earther’s eyes were open, pale blue like the color of the sky diluted with white snow. They reminded him of his son, Kenji, before he disconnected from his body. He’d been six years old. Kaimu had married and divorced a few women in the centuries since, but he never fathered any more children. Michelle was right, he was outdated. He shook the memory away. The Earther’s eyes didn’t move except to blink. Her right eye was clouded over by cataracts.
While his mind had been locked away in the past, Michelle had finished work on the lower gash. Now she reprogrammed bits of her skisuit to serve as bandages. She pulled strips of suit from the back of her neck. Kaimu supposed that the thick curls of her hair would block the icy air.