Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

by Anthology

  Six weeks ago I came home and found her sitting on the couch, with the two letters in her hands. The sight of those envelopes, bright white against her olive skin, made me feel like I was going to shit myself. She had suggested that I open hers, and she open mine. I said that all men die alone and took my fate from her hands.

  I didn't want to see her letter in case both of us didn't have the same results. I tore mine open before she had a chance to open hers. I didn't have to read the whole thing. The first two words said it all.

  'We're sorry…'

  I felt…nothing. All my fear and uncertainty disappeared and my bowels stopped gurgling. I felt exactly like I had, moments earlier, before I opened the door and saw what was in her lap. Nothing had changed. I managed a quiet "Damn."

  I saw her face as she looked at me after opening hers. I knew what it said. Nature duck-duck-goosed right past both of us in the game of immortality.

  The anger came later.

  "Of course it's unfair," she'd said. "Life is unfair. It's always been unfair and it will continue being unfair long after we've rotted away back to starstuff and the people on the street are thirty million years old."

  It was the first time I'd heard her be bitter about anything. She was always so level. I guess even the steadiest of people have their limits.

  We didn't talk much that night. Just sat on the white couch, eyes on the wall, watching TV.

  I thought about what she’d said last night, about her sympathy for the immortals. They had their future. They'd scatter like dandelion puffs across the universe. They'd be subject to rules she and I would never have to deal with. New forms of government. New ethics. New aesthetics. And there's very little that the right mitochondria can do for you if your colony ship plunges into a sun. Their certainty was one of uncertainty.

  I had a certainty. I will die. That gave me time. The immortals didn't have time; they had a coordinate for locating things in the past and the future. I…we…had a finite resource. And we could use it however we wanted. Who's going to tell a dying man what to do, where to go, what to eat, what to read, think, or feel? Our time was freedom.

  For a little while at least.

  I finally understood why I'd felt nothing when I opened my letter. I had felt nothing, because nothing had changed.

  I was still the same man I was the moment before I opened that letter, with exactly as much time left. My life was still my life.

  I was wasting it being selfish.

  Time to live, to share the life we'd dreamed of, been excited about, before. We'd experience life, aging, dying, and death, together. Almost nobody else would have that. I wasn't dead. She wasn't dead. Not yet, anyway. Let's make the sun chase us.

  I looked out the window. The sun was coming up. I hadn't realized it, but the trees were bare, and there was a trace of snow on the sidewalk. When had it become winter? All down the street, in the little apartment windows, lights were coming on. A car drove by, illuminating the small snow drifts that were blowing about. It looked cheery and cold outside. I liked that.

  I turned on the lights. She'd be up soon. For the first time in months I was excited.

  There was a bottle of champagne in the fridge. We were meant to take it over to Jared and Gail's to celebrate, but this seemed much more important. I popped it open, and poured into two small stemless glasses. I sipped mine. It tasted mineral and sharp: perfect for the morning. I shook two pills out of the bottle and placed them beside each glass.

  Time for a grand gesture. Something poetic and symbolic and beautiful to toast the rest of our lives.

  I went over to the bookshelf and started scanning. The poem was her favorite, but I could never stand the damn thing. She could consider this a peace offering. My finger stopped. Andrew Marvell. The book was well-thumbed enough that I opened straight to it. Sometimes you need to hear words aloud.

  "'Had we but world enough, and time…'" I said to the empty living room.

  A letter slipped from the back pages of the book, landing on the floor. It had the letterhead that almost everyone on the planet loved. I didn't have to read the whole thing. The first two words said it all.

  'We're happy…'

  What was it the counselor said? Time times two. Time times twenty.

  I think if I take the whole bottle, I can give her time forever.

  Nancy SM Waldman

  http://nancysmwaldman.com

  ReMemories(Short story)

  by Nancy SM Waldman

  Fantasy Scroll Magazine, Issue #8

  The nanoprocessor points lit up, flashing blue in each corner of the wall of windows in my daughter Miell’s swanky apartment. A bigger than life vid appeared, the date showing on the lower right. I advanced it until I found the memory I wanted: Hayes’ sixth birthday.

  What was I expecting?

  A joyful birthday party. Messy and loud. Cake. Balloons. This glamorous skyrise full of giddy children. My grandson Hayes excited, happy, grinning from ear-to-ear.

  But a very different scene played out—all from his own eyes and ears. No internal emotions recorded, of course. No smells or tastes. Nevertheless, I was in his head, experiencing the world through him.

  Hayes, like many children these days, had been implanted just after birth with a ReMemory slot behind his right ear.

  Just another example of technology that’s passed me by.

  Years ago, I was a professional tech junkie, constantly at some kind of interface—anything other than the real life kind. Before my kids were born, I swore it off and moved to the country.

  It felt weird—invasive—to be in his head.

  He sat at their gleaming cocobolo dining table that held a mountain of professionally-wrapped presents. The room was quiet. Hayes looked down at the present he’d just unwrapped.

  “Mom?” he said, his voice projecting. “Thank you. It’s the game I wanted.”

  No reply.

  He sighed and I felt my own echoing breath rise up and fall. The sensation was similar to inhabiting an avatar on an MMORPG, but more intense.

  He got down and walked toward the living room.

  I heard an animal sound. But there were no pets here.

  “Mom?” Hayes came around the corner. My tall, lean Miell knelt on the floor, forehead to the ground, her hands in loose fists clawing at her temples. The high-pitched moans came from her.

  My heart sped up.

  “Hold on…Hayes,” she said, her voice muffled. “Gimme a sec.”

  He just watched her. She seemed to be in pain, but he didn’t run over to help or ask her what was wrong.

  As if he’s used to this kind of scene.

  After a while he said, “What about v-linking the other kids in for the party? Weren’t we going to do that?”

  She didn’t respond.

  Hayes looked back at the presents on the table. Then he walked past them into the kitchen and opened the fridge. A cake sat on a lower shelf, beautifully decorated with IncrediBlaster—a heroic game character he loved and often pretended to be. He leaned in, scooped a finger full of icing off the back corner, and put his finger in his mouth.

  Some link in my brain caused my salivary glands to respond.

  Hayes returned to the dining room and opened another gift, this one a bright red and yellow IncrediBlaster costume. In the background I now heard Miell talking to someone in a desperate voice, but it was too far away to understand the words. Or maybe Hayes didn’t want to hear.

  What a lousy party. What a lousy memory.

  ***

  Miell and I fought when she was a teenager and young adult. She stopped routine contact, which meant that I’d seen Hayes exactly twice before this visit. When she called me three weeks ago, saying that she had to go on an extended business trip and wondered if I might like to stay with my grandson, I jumped at the chance and asked few questions.

  Over the weeks though, I’d grown suspicious. Miell v-linked in everyday to check up on us, but she wouldn’t tell me where she was o
r when she’d be back. Plus, she looked bad. Overly thin, with deep circles under her eyes.

  She was mostly full of instructions.

  “Make sure he gets exercise.” This meant exercise videos—cartoon characters running him through a little cardio. If it was so important, why wasn’t he allowed to walk on the city streets with me?

  “Are you putting on his finger clip every night?” The clip monitored his vital signs even though she said he had no history of illness.

  Techno-chicanery promising to keep children safe from harm. As if…

  Earlier today, she said, “Don’t forget to change his memory chip. It fills up every three to four weeks depending on how much he sleeps. Put the full one in sequence in the chip reader in his bedside drawer. It makes a back-up.”

  This was the first time I’d heard about this.

  Maybe because she didn’t expect to be gone so long?

  “When are you coming back? Hayes misses you.”

  “He obviously loves having you there. I saw that his reading’s improved. That’s your doing. Thanks.”

  Avoidance.

  “Talk to me. I don’t even know where you are. Yes, I was thrilled to be let into your lives. I would’ve done anything you asked—and I have. But…“

  She glanced over her shoulder, then turned to face me again. “I’m right here. You can always get in touch. I’m working. You’ve nagged me forever to get to know Hayes. Enjoy it. Don’t forget, regular school will be out soon. The info on the summer school is on your comppad. Gotta go.”

  Since Miell wouldn’t tell me anything, I decided to look at Hayes’ recorded memories. I never expected to see her writhing on the floor in agony.

  I fell asleep worrying about Miell, but woke up with the idea of throwing a replacement party to make a happy memory for Hayes.

  But how? I’d never been to his school, didn’t know the parents or the other kids. None had been to the apartment since I’d been here. They v-linked in for play dates.

  “Want to walk with me on the way to the station this morning?” I suggested as he pulled on his sneakers. His big brown eyes stayed neutral, but I had the feeling he liked this idea. “I want to have a conversation which is hard when you’re in front of me in the wheelie. Plus, it’s more grown-up, don’t you think?”

  “I’m six.”

  “I know. Six-year-olds can walk, right?”

  “Right.”

  I’d forgotten that a crowded, noisy city street isn’t the best place for a conversation. Even walking side-by-side we had to shout. “Is your mom sick?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are there times when she can’t work? Stays in bed?”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, she does work—” He looked up at me and said proudly, “in the movies! But sometimes she seems kind of, like, sick.”

  “She hasn’t told you what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer. I looked down and he just shook his head.

  It hit me. Hayes was so careful with words, with his reactions to things because of ReMemory. His mother could, would, see whatever he did or said. The only private thing he had were his thoughts.

  We walked in silence.

  When we got to the station, I strapped him in the wheelie.

  “Can I walk home this afternoon?” he asked.

  “You bet.”

  Negotiating knots of heedless teenagers and self-absorbed business types, I wheeled him through the throng until we arrived at his private berth on the Peditrain.

  I pushed him up the shallow ramp, smiling at the functionary who wore puke green and acted as if she’d never seen us before. She held the scanner in front of Hayes’ eye. It beeped cheerily, one of hundreds of others going off in the terminal. She nodded and we boarded the train.

  Hefty metal hooks locked the wheelie into place. I had twenty seconds to kiss Hayes good-bye for the day before a belt with eight inches of bright blue and orange padding lowered around him and the whole wheelie. I gave him a quick hug and we touched noses. I exited and the door closed behind me. The windows were one-way. I could no longer see my boy, but I always waved at him anyway.

  ***

  “I can’t stay indefinitely,” I said to Miell when she showed up on the vid later that day.

  “You wanted to get to know your grandson.”

  “True, but I know something’s seriously wrong. I watched Hayes’ memory of his last birthday.”

  She drew back in a long slow motion that reminded me of a snake considering whether or not to strike. Her shaky hand floated up and grabbed onto the back of her skull, her fingertips digging in.

  “You’re sick, or addicted, or both.”

  “I’m working.”

  “I’ve seen you on the floor. Moaning. What’s the drug?”

  “I’ll hire a nanny so you can go home. Don’t know why I let you into my life again. Big mistake.”

  “Let me help.”

  Her hand now lay on the desk in a tight fist. She wore heavy make-up, but it didn’t cover up anything.

  “I…I am not addicted to any drug. I just can’t come home right now. We’re…trying to cobble a complicated, time-sensitive deal on a film. Sorry this didn’t work out. I’ll find a nanny for Hayes.”

  “No!”

  She disconnected.

  ***

  I fussed with Hayes’ bed covers as he snuggled on one side, settling in for the night. As soon as I’d tucked in his arm, it wiggled out again. He turned his head to look at me, splayed his fingers and said, “Gama, you forgot the monitor.”

  I sighed. “So I did.” I fished the bright red finger clip out of a dish on his bedside table and sat down on the bed. Pinching the plastic device to open its tiny padded jaws, I slipped it over his middle finger and let go. He had reassured me that he didn’t even feel it.

  “Nice that it’s red,” I said.

  “Red’s my favorite color.”

  “It is?” I feigned shock and surprise.

  He grinned, only then remembering that he’d told me this dozens of times. “Yeah, like IncrediBlaster’s cape. Don’t forget to turn the monitor on.” He rolled over again, pulling both hands together and under his head in the classic child-sleeping pose. I tucked thick strands of light brown hair behind his ear.

  “Tell me again why you need monitoring.”

  “I dunno,” he said, his voice muffled. Then, remembering that it was his duty to educate his clueless grandmother, he added, “So you’ll get an alert if something happens to me in the middle of the night.”

  Parroted words. What if it isn’t about Hayes, but Miell?

  What if he had to wear a monitor because she was often so indisposed that she wouldn’t hear a normal kid’s cry in the night?

  ***

  While Hayes was at school, I zipped through hundreds of his memories. Most of the chip held ordinary, mundane scenes.

  A series of women looked after Hayes. I took Miell’s threat to replace me with a nanny even more seriously after seeing them all. But I also took heart that she had called me this time. First time in six years. There had to be a reason.

  The vids showed that Hayes had friends at school. He was a bit of a hanger-on, never the center of attention, but I saw no evidence of bullying or being actively disliked.

  At home, he often went into his mother’s empty room, lay on her bed and put on her head phones. Then, the vid would pause, indicating that he’d gone to sleep.

  I also witnessed him and his mother together in the bed. Once they watched a funny movie while eating popcorn. I giggled out loud at a wrestling/tickle fight they had another night. It wasn’t all bad.

  But for weeks at a time Hayes saw Miell only on the vid or in person briefly at night after he was asleep. His eyes would open a slit and she’d appear blurry, a wreck. And worse, there were dozens of memories Hayes had of his mother seemingly passed out, or rolling on the floor clawing at her scalp, or pleading with someone to get her a fix.

  I am not addicted to an
y drug, she’d said, like a politician denying a specific thing truthfully while lying by omitting the larger truth. So, if not a drug…what?

  I ran the vid back to one of those pleading scenes. Hayes sat on the couch playing a game. Miell told him to mute it while she argued with some man. I backed it up a little more.

  Maybe I could…

  I minimized the vid controls on the comppad and searched the menu for editing software. This was one of my obsessions back in the day. The one I found had way more bells and whistles on it than I ever had, but I knew enough to know what to ignore.

  I soon had the scene downloaded to the pad. I copied the section I wanted to work with and brought up the snippet in the editing software. Isolating the audio, I ran it back several times.

  “D…dal…Bi..l be…s[unintelligible]…You got…[unintelligible]…can’t ren…[unintelligible]…No…—ts!”

  This section finished with a barrage of enraged words from Miell that were also unintelligible, but the meaning was clear.

  It wasn’t much to go on.

  I worked with it: dulling the ambient noise, pulling up the dominant frequency of Miell’s voice, tweaking the bass and treble so the vowels would come in more clearly, running it over and over. Sometimes the results were worse. Finally some of the words came in more clearly.

  “…deal’s a deal. Bi-n[-something]-l beats. You got me hooked…[unintelligible]can’t renege. Didn’t know…[unintelligible]…No…[unintelligible]…fucking implants!” And then the cursing.

  Bi-n[something]-l…beats. It tugged at my memory.

  What else could she be addicted to if not a drug?

  I used to be addicted to digital technology; that’s why I was so wary of it to this day.

  Bin—-l beats.

  Binaural beats. Of course.

  Audio recordings geared specifically for human ears, the human brain. One sound thread for each ear, running into and mixing in the brain. They’d been around forever and—like snake oil—people would periodically claim that they were digital drugs, safe for relaxation, stimulation and highs. Just like pharmaceuticals without criminality or side effects. I never knew them to gain any credibility and I hadn’t heard or thought of them in years.