Best Science Fiction of the Year

by Neil Clarke

  Development: Vivace

  Sonata opened her eyes to find the kind and intelligent faces of three newbies gazing down upon her. Then she recognized two of them and sat up quickly with a gasp. Or at least, she tried to gasp, but she couldn’t draw in any air. She tried again to breathe, and then panic set in. She clawed at her throat but no one moved to help her. It was her worst nightmare. She flashed back to being in the water at the Washington Park Pool, ten years old, holding on to the edge as she followed her girlfriend Lana around the perimeter. There were two men in their way, and Lana went around them. Sonata let go of the edge too, realizing too late she was toward the deep end. She couldn’t swim. Her eyes went wide as she fell back in the water and slipped under. One of the men had reached out to pull her up—

  The newbie with the silvery face, who had said something to her in the coffee shop earlier—and who she would come to know as Miller—was speaking to her in calm tones. “Become aware of your body,” he repeated.

  Sonata answered with a scream. At least she could still do that.

  The blue-skinned newbie who had also been there stood beside a shorter newbie whose form closely resembled a man’s body. They nodded in encouragement at her efforts. Later she would know them as Satchya and Kent.

  Miller continued with beatific patience. “Observe your own distress. Feel your body. Is your heart racing?”

  She couldn’t stop clawing at her throat. She couldn’t feel anything but her inability to breathe.

  Miller answered for her. “No, your heart is not racing. There is no heart to beat. You are not sweating. Notice how calm your body is. It’s operating exactly as it should. Your panic is in your mind only.”

  Newbody. Sonata forced the word past her animal reflexes. With great effort, she removed her hands from her throat. That’s when she noticed her new hands. She stared at them. They were black like polished onyx, and gorgeous. But what mesmerized her was the slowly moving musical score that wound silently around her fingers and wrists before proceeding at a stately pace up her arms.

  “That’s right,” Miller cooed. “See? They call us newbies, but that’s short for NBs. Non-breathers.”

  She saw it was true. She laughed her new laugh, without needing to fuel it with breath. Just like her scream had been without breath.

  The musical score wound gracefully around her torso as well, and down her legs, where it appeared to pool before it reversed course. “How did you know? I didn’t have time to record any plans.”

  The blue-skinned newbie she would soon learn was called Satchya made a low chuckling noise. “Everything about you is captured in the upload.”

  It took a moment to put it all together. “This is my sonata.” She heard the tinge of awe in her voice.

  Satchya regarded her approvingly. “We wanted to give you a form that reflected your intentions and desires for yourself.”

  “It’s perfect. Thank you.” She wondered if it was appropriate to thank them. She pointed at Miller and Satchya. “You two were at the coffee shop just now.” Then she stared at Kent, the newbie she did not know.

  “Your accident occurred close by,” Satchya said. “When your bio-alert signaled the emergency, we responded and brought you in.”

  “I’m the technician,” Kent said, a touch of shyness in his voice.

  “How long . . . ?”

  “It’s seven p.m.,” Kent said. “Same day as your death.”

  “My mother?”

  “She’s waiting down the hall,” Satchya said. “I’m sure she’ll be relieved to see you functioning.”

  Sonata rose from the table where she’d been created. Her movements were effortlessly smooth, without core muscles clenching in the belly or the dull thud of feet striking the floor. She was suddenly embarrassed her mother might not approve of how black she was, nor care for the musical embellishments on her surface. Her face didn’t grow hot with emotion, however, so she let her concern slide away.

  Miller touched her arm lightly, a sensation of coolness against coolness, slightly metallic yet yielding. “Come meet us tonight, after your mother goes to bed.”

  They were all going to be friends, then. She smiled. “Where?”

  There was an instant transfer of data through the touch. Miller’s name and salutary information, as well as coordinates for where to meet and when. Satchya and Kent touched her as well, transferring their salutary information. It took fewer than ten seconds, she noted with her inner clock. Then she was out the door, accessing the virtual map that showed her the way to the waiting room to greet her mother.

  Sonata spent the night in Lake Michigan. She’d met Miller, Satchya, and Kent by Shedd Aquarium at twelve thirty.

  Miller’s silvery face shone in the moonlight. “Ready to face your inmost fears?”

  Kent slapped her on the back. Again she felt that yielding, slightly metal sensation. “Tag. You’re it.” Then he ran full-speed into the harbor waters. Sonata hesitated, watching as Miller and Satchya bolted as well, then splashed and hooted at her.

  Sonata closed her eyes and focused on her body. It was utterly still and calm. The fear was all in her mind, then, once again. She opened her eyes and challenged herself in the language of childhood: Geronimo! She ran toward the group.

  The nightlong odyssey was full of self-discovery. Not only did Sonata overcome her fear of drowning, reveling in the fact she didn’t have to breathe, she could also swim, and quickly, nearly keeping up with a northern pike they’d surprised as they glided in the relative calm several yards beneath the choppy surface. They navigated by their internal maps, used GPS to track one another, and communicated by way of subvocal messaging protocol. The latter Sonata fancied was akin to ESP, and she pretended they were psychic secret agents on an espionage mission.

  As they finished their frolic, emerging from the waters by the Navy Pier, she felt a deep tranquility settle into her titanium bones. She regarded the huge skeleton of the Ferris wheel looming in the night and wondered how negative emotions like fear sloughed away while this transcendent feeling lingered. Epicurus himself would’ve been jealous of her attainment, she thought, this newfound peacefulness born of an absence of bodily pain. Most people who hadn’t taken philosophy didn’t get what hedonism was really all about, and until tonight, she had had book knowledge only.

  Kent tumbled onto the dock with a soft clatter, a technological Adonis, and stretched out his arms. “This night is fermenting in the veins of God.”

  Sonata looked up the quote and saw it was part of a poem that had been cited on the first page of a sonata written by a woman named Rebecca Clarke. Only then did she consider she could activate the song coursing over her body. She did, and her new friends gathered around to listen to her soul’s sound. It was grounded in the modern but reached back across the centuries, hinting at classical keys even as it played with new tonalities.

  Two days later, Sonata entered the coffee shop on Ellis again, shutting the glass door quickly against the wind, conscious of patrons who would feel the bracing chill. She felt a pang of guilt as she spotted Dante slouching over his computer in the back booth. It was as if he’d never left it. He was even wearing the same black athletic suit, although this time a Chicago Bears scarf hung loosely around his neck.

  The barista cleared her throat loudly. Sonata remembered the rules and complied, scanning her palm and watching as five dollars were deducted from her sky account. There was no longer a need to eat or drink, but an NB took up space. It was only fair to pay.

  “Dante,” she said when she was seven feet away and approaching the boundary of his personal space. He was wearing his earbuds, though, so she slid unnoticed into the seat opposite him. Now that she was completely integrated, the appendages of technology on breathers looked clunky and sad. It was strange to be living in the future, amidst the past.

  He nearly catapulted from the booth. The earbuds jerked from their lodgings and fell to the tabletop. Sonata could hear tinny strains of old R&B weaving insid
e a hip-hop mix.

  “What the …” He stopped and stared at her white tattoos of musical notes floating against their midnight backdrop. He caught his breath. “Sonata, that better be you.”

  “It is.” Surprising him made her pleased.

  “You. Are. Awesome. Not kidding.” He reached out and touched one of the notes on her arm, but of course it maintained its uninterrupted glide toward her wrist.

  “Like it?” She basked in his admiration.

  He huffed out a breath, and she could see a tear glistening at the corner of one eye. “I am so glad to see you, you have no idea. Now look at you. I didn’t think you’d go this radical. I love it, don’t get me wrong. It’s perfect. Tell me.”

  “What do you want to know?” She considered. “Not sleeping is great.”

  He nodded. “I’d wondered about that. There’s this old science-fiction book about some people not needing to sleep. They have all that extra time to do things.”

  “Not just the time,” she said. “It’s the integration. I’m continuously in touch with myself, consciously.”

  His expression went momentarily blank, uncomprehending. He went back to admiring her form. That quickly, they’d come to the divide. Kent had explained it simply to her before she’d come here. We occupy the same space, but we live in different worlds. No relationships can last across that gulf.

  She didn’t know what to say, so she stared at Dante’s computer. It was like looking into an archeological find. Dante suddenly seemed fragile, like a fragment of a child’s collarbone from Homo naledi. He would’ve drowned in Lake Michigan that first night of her new life. Even if he could swim, he wouldn’t have had the stamina, nor could he have remained underwater with her without special equipment.

  “I’ll admit I’m jealous,” he was saying. “And sure, I’m sad, too. I thought we’d be closer in age when we went into our next iterations. But hey, we’re still here.”

  He was hoping against hope for friendship. A deep sadness suddenly seized her, but her body remained unaffected, so the emotion faded quickly. “Still here,” she agreed.

  Dante reached out and touched her hand. It felt different from when her NB friends touched her. It felt flat, like nothing. She didn’t know what it felt like to him, but he withdrew and placed his hand on his computer. He frowned. “It must be painful for you, having your life cut off so suddenly.”

  She could have laughed, but didn’t. “Oh, I’m really not sorry I had the accident. It’s like my real life is just beginning. I’d understand it if someone wanted to commit suicide to become an NB sooner.”

  He blinked. “You think I’d commit suicide? To be with you?”

  “What? No!” Why was he jumping to such a wild interpretation? Her NB friends knew how to just listen. “Never mind. I guess I was trying to be philosophical.”

  Dante’s eyes narrowed as he appraised her, his gaze following her gliding musical notations. She could tell he’d already forgotten what she’d said. “I didn’t take you for someone who’d design their newbody this far ahead of time.”

  She deflected the comment so she wouldn’t have to explain particulars. “If Mother had had her way, I’d be in some screwed-up form that looked like me in life.”

  Dante laughed. “Instead you’re cutting-edge.”

  She smiled. “I went so young, I got top dollar for my body parts. Nine million. They gave me all the latest enhancements, and I only used a fraction of my worth.”

  His hand traced a pattern across the top of his computer in a way that made her wonder what she’d felt like to him. “Are you still set on this limited-edition idea for yourself?”

  She could hear the longing in his voice, and the unspoken question: Would she still be in an iteration by the time he uploaded, decades from now? She held out an arm for him to see. “It’s written in my skin. This is my second movement.” Seeing his face fall, she quickly added, “It’s a luxury model, though. Modular design and completely updateable. Kent says it’ll last more than a hundred years, easy.”

  There was an awkward silence at the mention of another man’s name. They tried to recover an amicable conversation, but Sonata became so utterly exhausted with the effort, she made a polite excuse and left.

  As she made her way to the door, she saw she commanded the gazes of the breathers in the coffee shop. Some expressions were admiring, but several frowned, and as she passed a young man with a goatee standing at the counter, he turned and sneered.

  Sonata had also come to the great divide with her mother. The house itself, although its tall windows let in ample light, felt confining to her now. She marveled at how she used to be able to find things to do inside houses for hours at a time. Yet what did she need a house for now? A bedroom? She never slept. A kitchen? She didn’t cook or eat. A bathroom? Useless to her now. She didn’t own clothes that she had to store in a closet. All the technology she required was built-in. None of her new friends lived in homes. They didn’t live with breathers. What had Miller said to her that last day of her own breathing life, in the coffee shop? That man is something to be overcome?

  She sat straight and unmoving in the chair opposite her mother, watching the soft, aging woman sip coffee before rushing off to her job in the urban development office. Sonata had used to like the smell of coffee. Instead she was mentally removed from the scene, running the most likely scenario in a background routine. She would make the announcement that it was time for her to leave and go live with her kind. Her mother would look up, her face registering relief, fleetingly. Then she would stage a drama of surprise and hurt feelings, which would transition into sadness and tears. Her mother would then get up from the table and Sonata would rise as well. They would embrace. Her mother would say she would worry about Sonata every day.

  Sonata halted the scenario and made her announcement. Her mother looked up, her face registering relief so briefly that Sonata might have missed it if she hadn’t run the simulation first. Everything played out similarly, in real time, ending with them hugging in the sunlit dining room.

  “Be careful,” her mother whispered. “You never know what can happen out there on the streets. There are stories. Not everyone approves of newbodies.”

  Her mother moved away and picked up the coat hanging on the spare chair where her purse and keys rested efficiently on the seat. “Your home is always here if you need it,” she said, pulling on the wrap. She picked up her purse and keys and left, at that point on a trajectory to be a mere fifteen minutes late for work. As the door closed, Sonata noted the efficiency with which her mother had handled the news. It was a final sign they had both been ready for this change.

  Sonata waited till the sound of her mother’s car blended into the rest of the traffic. Then she stepped out of the house. She could no longer smell, but the very air seemed to carry the fresh scent of freedom.

  She spent that first day of her true independence as an iteration celebrating with Miller, Satchya, and Kent, avoiding the crowds by diving to the floor of Lake Michigan where they watched the myriad forms of sea life and experimented with the new subvocal language the NBs were inventing that expressed in symbols, colors, and mathematics rather than words. They were like babies struggling to learn. Sonata caught glimpses of a deeper reality to explore. It was thrilling being at the beginning of a new development in the NB world.

  An hour before dawn they all emerged from the lake by Grant Park. Miller and Satchya went their ways while Sonata and Kent visited the Cloud Gate. They lay side-by-side under the omphalos of the silvery sculpture, where they observed their forms repeated within it, as if time had ceased to exist and the myriad future iterations were laid out before them. Sonata activated the song of her body that her moving tattoos represented, and told Kent her plans of coming out publicly as a limited edition.

  “The problem is, I didn’t have a chance to become known for this when I was a breather,” she said as regret passed fleetingly through her mind. “I’m in my second iteration already.�
��

  “Really, dear,” Kent replied, “your vision was formed before you had all the data. No one will hold you to it.”

  She frowned up at their distorted reflections in the sculpture. “But I want it. Kent, no one understands me. They think I’ll grow up and change my mind.” She thumped the concrete with a fist. “I hate when people say that.” She would’ve been crying by now if she could.

  Kent sat up and looked down at her. “Go say your piece, then, if you want. But just be aware …” His gaze wandered over Millennium Park.

  “What?”

  “I’m sure you already know there are haters amongst the breathers.”

  “Well, you know the cliché about haters.” She grabbed his arm playfully. “I prefer to say that lovers gonna love.”

  Her Adonis lay back down beside her, and they accessed an intimacy protocol together, where their minds entwined in an ecstasy of togetherness she had never experienced during her sweaty biological grapplings with fellow breathers in her old life.

  One of the breathers’ videocasts was enthusiastic about having her as a guest. A young man with long red hair and a spiral tattoo on his forehead listened raptly as she related her vision for her life and iterations. She found herself opening up in a way she hadn’t before, sharing her personal disappointment. “I was going to use this iteration as a means to further explore what I’d made of myself in my first life,” she admitted. “Now it’s like I need to discover who that young woman was who died. I need to invent her future.”

  The man’s eyes gleamed. “Are you admitting the you that’s sitting here is not the same as the woman who lived?”