Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  There’s something sadly romantic about the Orphans. Tipper likes to come out here on break, sit with a bucket-sized cup of Coke, and bask in the silence of these patient, old machines. Usually, the Orphans sit near the parking lot, and Tipper’s view is of auto-drive cars lined in arrays, tight and neat as corn kernels. Beyond the lattice of windshields, she can just make out the lights of a typical southwestern ‘burb. Lawns dead from water rationing. Shuttered factories, hard-luck malls. The Fringe.

  That’s where Tipper was three nights ago, when she heard laughter from among the machines. She gulped her hotdog, put down her Coke, and picked her way through the thicket of steel limbs.

  And there they were. Gathered in the shadow of Tentaculus, four boys were passing around a vaper pipe. Perfect stereotypes, these guys, with their caveman beards, their mechanic’s jumpsuits, their construction vests and Pan-Am coats. All of them affecting the styles of jobs that no longer existed.

  Manuals.

  Tipper stepped over the limp limbs of Tentaculus, wiping hot dog grease on her shorts. As she approached, one of the guys was leaning back, sighting up an extended arm, a J&B bottle dangling from his hand.

  “Hey!” Tipper shouted, just as the bottle went winging toward Tentaculus’s monstrous face. The ride blinked, a fiberglass lid slamming down over its one huge eye. The bottle bounced off, fell harmlessly in the dirt.

  Tipper stomped forward. “Dick. These are functional rides.”

  The group turned. She found herself facing four teenage sneers.

  “Doesn’t look too functional to me.” The guy who’d thrown the bottle kicked a limp tentacle, a hose of compressed air sheathed in piezocanvas.

  “Well, they don’t get a lot of riders,” Tipper said, “but that doesn’t mean . . . ” She wasn’t in a mood to argue. “Look, I’m just saying, be respectful, okay?”

  “Respectful?” The guy lifted his scruffy chin. “And who are you, the ride fairy?”

  Snickers all around.

  “I’m an operator,” Tipper said, “and you—”

  But suddenly, a boy broke free of the group. He was the tallest, by far, and the only clean-shaven one, dressed in an airman’s jacket and carpenter’s pants. Long black hair reached to his shoulders.

  “Hey, I know you.” He tipped his head toward the grounds. “You run the Snake, over by the Haunted House. With that Chinese lady and the mean-looking cowgirl.”

  “Their names,” Tipper said, “are Suzie and Amy.”

  The guy wasn’t fazed by her tone. “I’ve seen you working. You know your stuff.”

  “There’s nothing to know.” Tipper hesitated. “The rides do all the work, mostly.”

  “Sure.” The boy looked up at the Orphans, hands in his brass-zippered pockets. “Still, it takes a kind of talent, right? Like with animals.”

  “I guess.” Tipper knew not to trust guys like this. She’d seen more than enough of the type; she had three older brothers, after all. But something about him . . . there was tension in the boy’s presence, more intriguing than threatening, like a faint scent of something burning.

  “Animals? Really?” One of the others sneered up at Tentaculus’ cartoon grin. “Animals are cool. But look at this stupid thing.”

  The tall boy and Tipper both ignored him.

  “Luke.” He held out a hand. “You’re Tip, huh? I’m always hearing that old lady shout your name.”

  “Suzie. That’s the old lady. She’s not old, though; she’s only like, fifty. I’m Tipoli. Tipper.” She gave Luke’s hand a single, brisk pump.

  “You’re on break? Well, I wonder, Tipper . . . ” He grinned, and this much was true: he was dazzlingly handsome. “I wonder if you could give me a hand?”

  The fair’s parking lot had seemed vast and cracked, that night, the site of a mall that never got built. The cars were packed so tight you couldn’t even squeeze between them; the drivers would have to summon them through the valet station. Crazy, the navigational skills of machines.

  Luke went to a section of the lot marked off with chains, where old cars had been parked at madcap angles. Pickups, mod-jobs, a vintage corvette. The antique bodies and scattershot parking betrayed what signs on the pavement confirmed.

  HUMAN DRIVERS ONLY.

  NO AUTO-DRIVE BEYOND THIS POINT.

  Luke pointed. “Mine’s over here.”

  The vehicle made Tipper gasp and laugh at once. It was a courier truck, squeezed between two streetlight pedestals, the logo of the company still showing under a hasty spray-paint job. The thing was modded in a serious way: integrated tire-wheels, expanded cab, tinted windows custom-cut and sealed into 3D-printed panels hung on a modular frame. The cargo box rode low; Tipper suspected more than package-sorting machinery had been stored away back there.

  “Home sweet home.” Luke pounded the box. “Got a bed back here, internet, built-in fridge, the best game hookup you’ll ever see. With a ride like this, who needs property taxes, huh?”

  Tipper followed him along the vehicle’s fiberglass flank. The compact design, the lightweight frame, the aerodynamic lines . . . it was obviously a computer-driven truck, built for maximum speed on the shipping-only roads. Never meant for a human driver.

  She peered at him. “So you drive this thing?”

  “Trying to. That’s why you’re here.”

  He popped open the door, a maintenance hatch he’d expanded to fit his makeshift cab. Inside, the components had been shifted and rebuilt, making room, just barely, for a driver and passenger. A carbon-fiber NASCAR seat, crudely cabled to the frame, took up most of the space. An ancient Mini Cooper steering wheel bloomed like a thistle from a two-foot exposed column. The pedal system looked like something from an old church organ. Although the interface for the computer was in place, showing all systems normal, Tipper assumed it had been clipped out of the loop.

  Her older brothers, car jocks all, would have heartily approved. Cars ought to be an open book, they thought. No hidden triggers, no mechanical turks. They wanted to pull back the curtain from the autodriving wizard. Put the driver in control.

  She ran her hands over the welding. “No way this is legal.”

  “No way,” Luke agreed with a grin.

  He grabbed the hatch, contracted his body, and half jumped, half tumbled into the jackleg seat. “They’re still using the same parts as the trucker days. You just have to load ’em up with different stuff. Legacy line systems, right? All the same tools and dies, injection molds. So it’s not too hard to pull everything out and retrofit.”

  Tipper ducked in after him. “You crash in this, you’ll crumple like a beer can.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be chewed like Trident, huh?” He laughed silently, running two fingers round the wheel. “You know about cars?” “My family does.”

  “Well, it’s this queen bee that’s giving me problems.” Luke tapped a knuckle on the autodrive. “I clipped everything I could think of, but I can’t seem to shut it down for good. I still need it to—”

  “To check in at the toll gates, right.” Tipper knew how this stuff worked. “Or they’ll snap your plates and call it in as a malfunction.”

  “Right. So mother brain here has to be awake and talking. Only thing is, I tried to code feedback in for all the connectivity checks. Edge-stitching, they call it. So the program, like, talks back to itself?”

  “Right, I know.”

  “Well, it’s not working. She keeps noticing she’s disconnected. And shouting alerts at other drivers. So everywhere I go, all the cars around me are getting these alarms, like I’m a runaway truck. It gives me a nice open road, but . . . ”

  Tipper edged him over, sliding in. “You need to shut off the emergency alerts. It’s got one of those AI security systems, right? So just give it your info and a statement, tell it you’re taking legal responsibility as a human being. It’s federal law, the car has to—”

  “Exactly.” Luke was holding out his license, his phone. “That’s all I need you to do.”


  Tipper sighed. She should have known.

  “All right.” She waved him out of her space. “Hand it over.” Taking Luke’s license, she keyed on the comm. The touch interface showed a smiling cartoon truck.

  “Sorry,” Luke said with shy pride. “It’s just that I don’t—”

  “You don’t talk to robots. I get it.” Tipper did the old touchscreen finger-dance, darting glances at his workman’s clothes. “I should have guessed.”

  Luke smoothed his airman’s jacket over the roadworker’s vest underneath. “It’s kind of a code with me.”

  “Right. I know. You’re a Manual.” She keyed her way into the security system.

  “I wouldn’t use that label.” Luke shrugged. “I mean, I’m not all hardcore about it. I don’t go all the way. I don’t get into sabotage.”

  Typing in the last commands one-handed, Tipper pulled out her strapless Navy watch. Ten to ten. Almost the end of her break.

  “You know, this could take a while. There’s a whole interview you have go through. I mean, federal law and shit . . . ”

  Luke watched her. “I guess you probably have to get back to your job, huh?”

  Tipper hesitated. Two shadows, the merest hints of dimples, appeared in Luke’s cheeks. He put his hand over hers, gently drew it away from the screen. “Guess we’ll have to do this another time.”

  And that’s when Tipper got a feeling, a very strong feeling, that this whole thing wasn’t about Luke’s truck at all.

  Now, in the shadows among the trailers, Luke draws back, lips lingering to brush Tipper’s cheek. Almost against her will, Tipper stretches up for his retreating mouth, clinging to him with feral hunger as his boots scratch away across the sandy ground.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” The instant she hears herself saying it, Tipper wants to viciously kick her own ass. So cliché, but the problem is, it’s true. Every night for the past three days, she’s spent her breaks lounging around the lots, wandering the Orphans, waiting for Luke to come strolling through the forest of hydraulic limbs.

  Which is why she was standing around like an idiot, earlier, wasting time, dragging out her break, when Snake started blasting that alarm through her phone. Which is why she absolutely should not be standing here, grabbing this boy by the collar, pulling him down to her lips and . . .

  “What’s up, anyway? Where’ve you been?” Tipper shoves him back halfway through the kiss, annoyed in twenty different ways. “And why are you coming around here, now, screwing up my ride?”

  “Sorry.” Luke pushes down her hands. “I had some things to do.” Boys and their vague excuses. Of course he doesn’t even answer her second question. “Hey, listen, you still up for it? You know, giving me a hand with that truck?”

  Tipper holds back. She has to at least pretend not to seem too interested. “Are you going to actually meet me this time? Or just screw around and make me lose my job?”

  He glances up. She can see the whole fair, a brief gold flicker in his eyes.

  “How about tomorrow? I’ll come by. You’ll be around?”

  “Till Sunday. Then we’re moving on.” Tipper hopes he feels the pressure implicit in those words.

  “Hey, Luke?” The runty sidekick pipes up; Tipper had almost forgotten he was there. “If we’re going to meet with that guy . . . ”

  Luke waves. “One second.” His fingers rest, briefly, on the back of Tipper’s hand. “Tomorrow, then.”

  And she could swear those words are still hovering above her, like one of the fair’s ethereal projected signs, even after his body has gone away.

  The fair has no name, no official schedule. The rides themselves choose the itinerary, following summons on the radio waves. A shambolic, clunking caravan, they clump across the desert, sticking to corridors set aside for drone traffic, free and grand as demigods in this federally sequestered space. With a strange and phaneric benevolence, they settle on the outskirts of towns, sending out their ads and alerts, putting up tents and stalls, declaring to everyone that the fair has arrived.

  And with it, in buggies and battered trailers, in terrain-adaptive four-by-fours, in the guts of the rides themselves, sunburned under dragon tats and open leather vests, scented with the smoke of sweet-flavored cigarillos—with it, as ever, come the carnies.

  It’s five p.m., peak family time, and Suzie is deep into her routine.

  “All right, folks, come and meet our baby. Fifty feet long and heavier’n a bucket of elephants, she lives on a diet of hydrogen and motor oil. Believe it or not, she’s a baby of her kind. Sweet as an orange creamsicle and twice as gentle as a St. Bernard. She’s more scared of you than you are of tigers and only looking for a little help. Give us a hand, and we’ll give you a reward, if you can help us cure the tummy-ache of our Baby Snake.”

  A few families are at the gate. The kids, as usual, look entranced and terrified. The parents stand back with wary frowns.

  “Is it clean?” a mom asks.

  Suzie’s answer is prompt. “Snake, like all of her kind, has a grade-A immune system. She fully cleans herself after every ride.”

  “I don’t know.” The mom takes her kid by the shoulders. “Hon, this looks a little intense.”

  That’s when Suzie switches tactics, aiming her pitch at the little girl.

  “Well, I have one question for you, little lady. Can you guess who Baby Snake’s parents were?”

  A shake of black curls.

  “Her mom was the Loch Ness monster,” Suzie says, “and her dad was a washing machine.”

  “No,” the girl insists, showing gapped teeth.

  “It’s true. Baby Snake got lost one day, and now we’re trying to help her get back home. Only problem is, I broke my phone, and silly Snake here swallowed all the pieces! You think you could help us get them out, so we can fix them up and help this poor little girl find her parents?”

  The girl gazes with alarmed curiosity into Snake’s wide-open mouth, up at Suzie’s friendly face, and then at her mother’s skeptical frown.

  “Mommy,” she whispers, tugging her mother’s shirt. And Tipper hears snatches of an ancient negotiation.

  “I want . . . ”

  “Are you sure . . . ?”

  “I really really really . . . ”

  “You won’t be scared?”

  “I promise promise promise . . . ”

  A few other kids are coming up. It’s the old, the universal need. To be brave, to be helpful, to answer a call. As the children gather at the gate, their faces seem less eager than awed. They’re really doing it, going down the monster’s throat. But this is a gentle monster. And it’s all for a good cause.

  “I suppose there’s some kind of policy?” the skeptical mom asks.

  Suzie already has it out. “That’s me, Suzie Choi. That’s my license, that’s my insurance, and that’s my safety record. Go here, and you can see the ride stats: four hundred units operating in thirty countries, and we’ve never had a robot-initiated accident. Just in case, me and my assistant will be on hand at all times. But we’ve never had anything go wrong.”

  Which is not quite true. What goes wrong, Tipper knows, is that the kids get over-excited, start fights, cry when the ride has to end, suffer the inevitable effects of too much fairground food. It’s the source of all robot woes: human error. But another ancient need is being met, now: the shaking of hands, the meeting of eyes, the reassurance of human contact. The mother gives in and thumbs the screen.

  “All right, Nichelle, I guess we can try it.”

  “Ye-es!”

  Suzie opens the gate. “One at a time, guys, one at a time.”

  It’s Tipper’s job to guide the kids in. That means maintaining even spacing, giving the fainthearted a last chance to quit, infusing the doughty with a final dose of assurance. Amazing, how needed it can make you feel, just doing this simple human work. The kids have so much faith, gazing up at her, amazed at the ease with which Tipper stands in the Snake’s open mouth.

>   In they go, out they come. Until at last . . .

  “Tip.” Suzie comes to her side. The last kids are bouncing out of the ride, carrying foam pieces of the fake phone, trading them in for tokens at the gate. The adults gather up their charges and depart, listening to gleeful tales of derring-do. Suzie hangs out the come back later sign, the little clock set for thirty minutes.

  “I think we need to have a talk.”

  Suzie’s trailer is a buggy-style unit, the living quarters hung from a big-wheeled frame. Autodrive only, keyed to follow Snake wherever the ride might choose to go. Snake herself travels under a lightweight, woven-ceramic shroud, loaded on a radio-piloted, all-terrain wheelbed. Rugged and unglam-orous. But the carnies don’t demand much in the way of style.

  Stepping in, Tipper throws back the curtain from her hammock, tumbles into the nylon mesh. Suzie settles into her own sling near the door. The size of the trailer means they can never be more than eight or nine feet apart. Ultra-compact storage is more a theory than a practice: Shirts have completely flooded the floor. The gallon water jugs, the potted cottontop cacti, Suzie’s Metalhead posters, the Mojave pattern pillows—everything is fastened tight or swinging free. Even with the best in dynamic suspension, travel on the desert roads is some rough riding. It’s the ridegirl ethos. You stick with your machine, wherever it happens to go.

  Tipper can still smell the oily aroma of the fair, the cool evening air, the spice of empanada stalls—until Suzie hits the privacy switch, the walls tighten their lignin weave, and there’s nothing but the whir of the ventilation fans.

  Suzie pops open her traveling case, lifts out a vape, loads a homebrew cart. The LED cherry cycles green to gold, making the trailer glow with magic light. “So,” she says. “How awkwardly unsubtle should I make this?”

  Tipper plants a toe on the wall and sets her hammock swaying. On the curved ceiling above is one of Suzie’s posters, Controlled Discord, a metal-head act from way back. Algorithmic music, scientifically tested, calculated to produce acute feelings of unease. Not Tipper’s thing.