Twelve Tomorrows - Visionary stories of the near future inspired by today's technologies

by Neal Stephenson

  “Wouldn’t that help the police catch the bandits?” Latifa had asked him, logical as ever but still naive.

  Amir had laughed his head off.

  “When it comes to the police,” he’d finally explained, “money in the bank tends to have the opposite effect.”

  Fashard was waiting for Latifa in the bus station. He spotted her before she saw him—or rather, he spotted the bright scarf, chosen from the range she sold in the shop, that she’d told him she’d be tying to the handle of her suitcase.

  He called out, then approached her, beaming. “Welcome, cousin! How was your trip?” He grabbed the suitcase and hefted it onto his shoulders; it did have wheels, but in the crowded station any baggage at foot level would just be an impediment.

  “It was fine,” she said. “You’re looking well.” Actually, Fashard looked exhausted, but he’d put so much enthusiasm into his greeting that it would have been rude to mention anything of the kind.

  Latifa followed him to the car, bumping into people along the way; she still hadn’t adjusted to having her peripheral vision excised.

  The sun was setting as they drove through the city; Latifa fought to keep her eyes open, but she took in an impression of peeling advertising posters, shabby whitewashed buildings, crowds of men in all manner of clothing and a smattering of women in near-identical garb. Traffic police stood at the busiest intersections, blowing their whistles. Nothing had changed.

  Inside the house, she gratefully shed her burqa as Fashard’s five youngest children swarmed toward her. She dropped to her knees to exchange kisses and dispense sweets. Fashard’s wife, Soraya, his mother, Zohra, eldest daughter, sister, brother-in-law and two nephews were next to greet her. Latifa’s weariness lifted; used as she was to comparative solitude, the sense of belonging was overpowering.

  “How is my brother?” Zohra pressed her.

  “He’s fine. He sends his love to you especially.”

  Zohra started weeping; Fashard put an arm around her. Latifa looked away. Her grandfather still had too many enemies here to be able to return.

  When Latifa had washed and changed her clothes, she rejoined the family just as the first dizzying aromas began escaping from the kitchen. She had fasted all day and the night before, knowing that on her arrival she was going to be fed until she burst. Soraya shooed her away from the kitchen, but Latifa was pleasantly surprised: Fashard had finally improved the chimney to the point where the wood-fired stove no longer filled the room with blinding smoke.

  As they ate by the light of kerosene lamps, everyone had questions for her about life in Mashhad. What did things cost now, with the new sanctions in place? What were her neighbors like? How were the Iranians treating Afghanis these days? Latifa was happy to answer them, but as she looked around at the curious faces she kept thinking of eight-year-old Fatema tugging on her sleeve, accepting a sweet but demanding something more: What was school like? What did you learn?

  In the morning, Fashard showed Latifa the room he’d set aside for their work. She’d sent the kilns, the winders, and the current buckets to him by three different carriers. Fashard had found a source for the superconductor precursors himself: a company that brought a variety of common industrial chemicals in through Pakistan. It was possible that news of some of these shipments had reached Ezatullah, but Latifa was hoping that it wouldn’t be enough to attract suspicion. If Fashard had decided to diversify into pottery, that hardly constituted a form of betrayal.

  The room opened onto the courtyard, and Fashard had already taken up the paving stones to expose a patch of bare ground. “This is perfect,” Latifa said. “We can run some cable out along the wall and bury the current buckets right here.”

  Fashard examined one of the halved diving cylinders she’d adapted to the purpose. “This really might burst?” he asked, more bemused than alarmed.

  “I hope not,” Latifa replied. “There’s a cut-off switch that should stop the charger if the magnetic field grows too strong. I can’t imagine that switch getting jammed—a bit of grit or friction isn’t going to hold the contacts together against a force that’s threatening to tear the whole thing apart. But so long as you keep track of the charging time there shouldn’t be a problem anyway.”

  It took a couple of hours to dig the holes and wire up the storage system. Late in the morning the power came on, giving them a chance to test everything before they covered the buckets with half a meter of soil.

  Latifa switched on the charger and waited ten minutes, then she plugged a lamp into the new supply. The light it produced was steadier and brighter than that it had emitted when connected to the mains: the voltage from the buckets was better regulated than the incoming supply.

  Fashard smiled, not quite believing it. The largest of the components inside the cylinders looked like nothing so much as the element of an electric water heater; that was how Latifa had described the ceramic helices in the customs documents.

  “If everyone had these ...” he began enthusiastically, but then he stopped and thought it through. “If everyone had them, every household would be drawing more power, charging up their buckets to use through the blackouts. The power company would only be able to meet the demand from an even smaller portion of its customers, so they’d have to make the rationing periods even shorter.”

  “That’s true,” Latifa agreed. “Which is why it will be better if the buckets are sold with solar panels.”

  “What about in winter?” Fashard protested.

  Latifa snorted. “What do you want from me? Magic? The government needs to fix the hydro plant.”

  Fashard shook his head sadly. “The people who keep bombing it aren’t going to stop. Not unless they’re given everything they want.”

  Latifa felt tired, but she had to finish what she’d started. She said, “I should show you how to work the kilns and the winders.”

  It took three days for Latifa and Fashard to settle on a procedure for the new factory. If they waited for the current buckets to be fully charged before starting the kilns, that guaranteed they could finish the batch without spoiling it—but they could make better use of the time if they took a risk and started earlier, given that the power, erratic though it was, usually did stay on for a few hours every day.

  Fashard brought in his oldest nephew, Naqib, who’d be working half the shifts. Latifa stayed out of these training sessions; Naqib was always perfectly polite to her, but she knew he wasn’t prepared to be shown anything by a woman three years younger than himself.

  Sidelined, Latifa passed the time with Fatema. Though it was too dangerous for Fatema to go to school, Fashard had taught her to read and write and he was trying to find someone to come and tutor her. Latifa sat beside her as she proudly sounded out the words in a compendium of Pashtun folk tales, and practiced her script in the back of Latifa’s notebook.

  “What are these?” Fatema asked, flicking through the pages of calculations.

  “Al-jabr,” Latifa replied. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

  One day they were in the courtyard, racing the remote-control cars that Latifa had brought from Mashhad for all the kids to share. The power went off, and as the television the other cousins had been watching fell silent, Fatema turned toward the factory, surprised. She could hear the winders still spinning.

  “How is that working?” she asked Latifa.

  “Our cars are still working, aren’t they?” Latifa revved her engine.

  Fatema refused to be distracted. “They use batteries. You can’t run anything big with batteries.” She spoke with the firm knowledge of someone who had spent her whole short life dealing with daily power outages.

  “Maybe I brought some bigger batteries from Iran.”

  “Show me,” Fatema pleaded.

  Latifa opened her mouth to start explaining, her mind already groping for some simple metaphors she could use to convey how the current buckets worked. But ... our cousin came from Iran and buried giant batteries in the gro
und? Did she really want that story spreading out across the neighborhood?

  “I was joking,” Latifa said.

  Fatema frowned. “But then how ...?”

  Latifa shrugged. Fatema’s brothers, robbed of their cartoons, were heading toward them, demanding to join in the game.

  The bus station was stifling. Latifa would have been happy to dispense a few parting hugs and then take her seat, but her cousins didn’t do quiet farewells.

  “I’ll be back at Eid,” she promised. “With Amir.”

  “That’s months away!” Soraya sobbed.

  “I’ll phone every week.”

  “You say that now,” Zohra replied, more resigned than accusing.

  “I’m not leaving forever! I’ll see you all again!” Latifa was growing tearful herself. She squatted down and tried to kiss Fatema, but the girl turned her face away.

  “What should I bring you from Mashhad next time?” Latifa asked her.

  Fatema considered this. “The truth.”

  Latifa said, “I’ll try.”

  3

  “I did my best to argue your case,” Ms. Daneshvar told Latifa. “I told the principal you had too much promise to waste. But your attendance records, your missed assignments ...” She spread her hands unhappily. “I couldn’t sway them.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Latifa assured her. She glanced up at the peg that held the key to the chemistry lab. “And I appreciate everything you did for me.”

  “But what will you do now?”

  Latifa reached into her backpack and took out one of the small ceramic pots Fashard had sent her. Not long after the last spools of wire had left Kandahar, two men had come snooping on Ezatullah’s behalf—perhaps a little puzzled that Fashard didn’t seem quite as crushed as the terms of the deal should have left him. He had managed to hide the winders from them, but he’d had to think up an alibi for the kilns at short notice.

  “I’m going to sell a few knickknacks in the bazaar,” Latifa said. “Like this.” She placed the pot on the desk and made as if to open it. When she’d twisted the lid through a quarter-turn it sprung into the air—only kept from escaping by three cotton threads that remained comically taut, restraining it against the push of some mysterious repulsive force.

  Ms. Daneshvar gazed in horror at this piece of useless kitsch.

  “Just for a while!” Latifa added. “Until my other plans come to fruition.”

  “Oh, Latifa.”

  “You should take a closer look at it when you have the time,” Latifa urged her. “There’s a puzzle to it that I think you might enjoy.”

  “There are a couple of magnets,” Ms. Daneshvar replied. “Like pole aimed at like. You were my brightest student ... and now you’re impressed by this?” She turned the pot over. “Made in Afghanistan. Patent pending.” She gave a curt laugh, but then thought better of mocking the idea.

  Latifa said, “You helped me a lot. It wasn’t wasted.” She stood and shook her former teacher’s hand. “I hope things go well for you.”

  Ms. Daneshvar rose and kissed Latifa’s cheek. “I know you’re resourceful; I know you’ll find something. It just should have been so much more.”

  Latifa started to leave, but then she stopped and turned back. The claims had all been lodged, the details disclosed. She didn’t have to keep the secret any more.

  “Cut one thread, so you can turn the lid upside-down,” she suggested.

  Ms. Daneshvar was perplexed. “Why?”

  Latifa smiled. “It’s a very quick experiment, but I promise you it will be worth it.” ■

  The Art of

  Richard Powers

  Pwnage

  Justina Robson

  you need a silent mind to think of things sometimes.

  A distracted mind. The work goes on underneath somewhere, in a hidden factory where they take things you barely notice, or don’t notice, and brush off dust and see if they fit together. It takes time. You can’t rush it. You follow your interests, like butterflies. Expect to find helpful things, they will appear.

  They don’t appear if I’m switched On. I have to be Off to get a leap of insight—the Eureka moment—but I can only be Off when I’m not at work. Even though this is my work. I cross the threshold of MI5’s property and reluctantly but efficiently I switch On. The theme from Indiana Jones plays just for me. Tum ta tum tum, tum ta tum … We take our reminders of what we’re doing very seriously here. I am a lone adventurer attempting to discover hidden troves of treasure that may be protected by trapdoors and wild savages. Perhaps zombies. Maybe a foreign madman or two.

  I try to remember what it was like when a phone was something you held and carried instead of something you were, but my mind is quickly occupied by the network and soon there’s no room for that. Like all good spies before me, I slip into cover.

  #SlythyTove: Who even started this hashtag? What does it mean? Why is it trending today?

  @SlythyTove That would be me. Why does a bird?

  The caged birds sing a thousand versions of banal pop and the stars in their eyes are all hitched to the gravy train. The metaphors are mashed against the window glass, looking out. Whatever works for you.

  Like a short-order cook, I hack that about until I get—

  #SlythyTove: The blue of day or black diamond glitter of the night. Under the starred eyes of God’s sight we dance, enchanted.

  Oh, it’s so romantic! I like that one.

  The early tweeter catches the worms. I write worms as bait for potential dissidents—curly wurly tangles of juicy controversy and images rich in seductive wrongness to the right kinds of minds. My colleagues and I fish for corruption like tottering soulwrights on the brink of doom searching for scraps out of which to build a devil.

  Well, if you believe the hype we do. I have difficulty believing anything these days. This is good. It allows slippage of unprecedented proportions and is only to be expected, my manager says with the world-weary gaze she’s worn since she left university. I can see her putting it on in the morning after she corrects the stripes on her suit. She stands in her hall, looking in her mirror, checks her face, wonders what she forgot—ah, my air of passive cynicism! It slides on like a corset made of angel breath and holds her all in, gives her the immaculate protection of all sanitary products. Lucky cow.

  A few minutes later the replies start clustering. #SlythyTove is a strange attractor and I have no idea why it would trend today. It never has before. I send a note about it to @WorryAboutItLater.

  My dad calls. What will I have for dinner? Should he get fish or will we eat pasta? I feel sad that our most intimate contact these days is a call in which I mostly feel irritation with his dithering, his clutching. Something in my stomach hurts as if I were poisoned. I say fish, that’ll be great, love fish, do your salmon, that’s the best, and he goes off happier. For a while.

  I interpret, I do not create.

  Reality is what we make it. Or what is made for us by the companies we keep.

  It is our clay from which we fashion ourselves.

  This is nowhere more true than in the Cloud, where every word, every Accept, every Cancel, every navigation and avatar, defines and marks the map of Who, What, and Why.

  But I am here to listen, not to be. To report, not to act. I am here to watch for signs that people no longer believe in the fairyland of the traditional political structure, or any structure, while they float about in this Babel heaven. As the codesmiths in the foundry that underlies all communications forge the codes of law into the Cloud itself with their programming skills and their government mandates, there is still conviction that solid matter can be manufactured out of vapours in the air. The Human Cloud is nerdvana. The Cloud is the natural evolved result of human minds soaring toward the singularity, but—oh, hold your bated breath, cherubs—together.

  #SlythyTove: If God makes theyself from clay who will fire them? What shall be the kiln and when will they crystallize—at what temperature?

  I spec
ialise in playing on the insecurities of those of a religious turn of mind. They’re easier than the political ones, at least for me. They’re much more likely to bog down in theology or mystic twaddle than actually do anything. In that, we’re kindred spirits. I’m one metaphorical leap away from insanity. Two jabbers short of a wocky. Fortunately that’s far enough to keep me in work.

  I only follow respondents to #SlythyTove who reply with things I might myself have written. Tracking them fills up the hours between nine and five-thirty. I let God track them at lunchtime and at night, like he’s supposed to.

  But back to reality. There’s an entire department down the hall devoted to creating hypermaps and psychological profiles of individuals based solely on their Cloud activity. They buy it wholesale from the few remaining social networks that cling on to integrity—integrity here meaning cohesion and liquidity, rather than a moral feature.

  Our department has a rivalry with them which is supposed to be a strictly secret spare-time activity and started as a few exchanged messages but is now an industry in its own right, more compelling as a game than our actual work. We fabricate false Cloud people—entire, randomised, ridiculous collations of preferences. Feminist Nazi collectors of enamelware with secret adopted families of sub-Saharan refugees all getting Open University educations paid for with the proceeds of middle-class suburban glee clubs. We fabricate the glee clubs and have them face off in never-run rival singalongs at abandoned concert halls. Of course the objective is to create something so preposterous no real human could possibly match it, but you’d be surprised how often they do find a real-world avatar for an invented Cloud. I mean real-world person. I think.