Fetus: She asked you, “If you could be born again, where would you rather be born?”
Mother: I answered, “Here, of course! I want to be born in a big city and live a city dweller’s life.”
Fetus: Dr. Ying stared at you for some time and smiled. It was a smile that you didn’t fully understand. Then she said, “If you’re brave, I can make your dream come true.”
Mother: I thought she was joking, but then she explained memory inheritance to me.
Dr. Ying: I told your mother that we had developed a technique to modify the genes in a fertilized egg and activate the dormant inherited memories. If it worked, the next generation would be able to achieve more by building on their inheritance.
Mother: I was stunned, and I asked Dr. Ying, “Do you want me to give birth to a child like that?”
Dr. Ying: I shook my head and told your mother, “You won’t be giving birth to a child; instead, you’ll be giving birth to”—
Fetus: —“to yourself.” That’s what you said.
Mother: I had to think about what she said for a long time before I understood her: If another brain has the exact same memories as yours, then isn’t that person the same as you? But I couldn’t imagine such a baby.
Dr. Ying: I explained to her that it wouldn’t be a baby at all, but an adult in the body of a baby. They’d be able to talk as soon as they were born—or, as we’ve now seen with you, actually before birth; they’d be able to walk and achieve other milestones far faster than ordinary babies; and because they already possessed all the knowledge and experience of an adult, they’d be twenty-plus years ahead of other children developmentally. Of course, we couldn’t be sure that they’d be prodigies, but their descendants would certainly be, because the inherited memories would accumulate generation after generation. After a few generations, memory inheritance would lead to unimaginable miracles! This would be a transformative leap in human civilization, and you, as the pioneering mother in this great endeavor, would be remembered throughout all history.
Mother: And that was how I came to have you, baby.
Fetus: But we don’t know who my father is.
Dr. Ying: For technical reasons, we had to resort to in vitro fertilization. The sperm donor requested that his identity be kept secret, and your mother agreed. In reality, child, his identity isn’t important. Compared to the fathers of other children, your father’s contribution to your life is insignificant, because all your memories are inherited from your mother. We do have the technology to activate the inherited memories of both parents, but out of caution we chose to activate only those from your mother. We don’t know the consequences of having two people’s memories simultaneously active in a single mind.
Mother (heaving a long sigh): You don’t know the consequences of activating just my memories either.
Dr. Ying (after a long silence): That’s true. We don’t know.
Mother: Dr. Ying, I have a question I’ve never dared to ask.… You are also young and childless; why didn’t you have a baby like mine?
Fetus: Auntie Ying, Mama thinks you’re very selfish.
Mother: Don’t say that, baby.
Dr. Ying: No, your child is right. It’s fair that you think that; I really am selfish. At the beginning, I did think about having a baby with inherited memories myself, but something gave me pause: We were baffled by the dormant nature of memory inheritance in humans. What was the point of such memories if they weren’t used? Additional research revealed that they were akin to the appendix, an evolutionary vestige. The distant ancestors of modern humans clearly possessed inherited memories that were activated, but over time, such memories became suppressed. We couldn’t explain why evolution would favor the loss of such an important advantage. But nature always has its reasons. There must be some danger that caused these memories to be shut off.
Mother: I don’t blame you for being wary, Dr. Ying. But I participated in this experiment willingly. I want to be born a second time.
Dr. Ying: But you won’t be. From what we know now, you are pregnant not with yourself but a child, a child with all your memories.
Fetus: I agree, Mama. I’m not you, but I can feel that all my memories came from your brain. The only real memories I have are the waters that surround me, your heartbeat, and the faint reddish-orange glow from outside.
Dr. Ying: We made a terrible mistake in thinking that replicating memories was sufficient to replicate a person. A self is composed of many things besides memories, things that cannot be replicated. A person’s memories are like a book, and different readers will experience different feelings. It’s a terrible thing to allow an unborn child to read such a heavy, bleak book.
Mother: It’s true. I like this city, but the city of my memories seems to terrify my baby.
Fetus: The city is frightening! Everything outside is scary, Mama. I don’t want to be born!
Mother: How can you say that? Of course you have to be born.
Fetus: No, Mama! Do you remember the winter mornings in Xitao, when Grandma and Grandpa used to yell at you?
Mother: Of course I remember. My parents used to wake me before the sun was even up so that I could go with them to clean out the sheep pen. I didn’t want to get up at all. It was still dark outside, and the wind sliced across skin like knives. Sometimes it even snowed. I was so warm in my bed, wrapped up in my blanket like an egg in the nest. I always wanted to sleep a little longer.
Fetus: Not just a little longer. You wanted to sleep in the warm blanket forever.
Mother (pausing): Yeah, you’re right.
Fetus: I’m not going out there! Never!
Dr. Ying: I assure you, child, the world outside is not an eternal night in a winter storm. There are days of bright sunshine and spring breeze. Life isn’t easy, but there is much joy and happiness as well.
Mother: Dr. Ying is right! Your mama remembers many happy moments, like the day I left home: When I walked out of Xitao, the sun had just risen. The breeze was cool on my face, and the twittering of many birds filled my ears. I felt like a bird that had just escaped its cage.… And that first time after I earned my own money in the city! I walked into the supermarket, and I was filled with bliss, endless possibilities all around me. Can’t you feel my joy, baby?
Fetus: Mama, I remember both of those times very clearly, but they’re horrible memories. The day you left the village, you had to hike thirty kilometers through the mountains to catch a bus in the nearest town. The trail was rough and hard, and you had only sixteen yuan in your pocket; what were you going to do after you had spent them all? Who knew what you were going to find in the world outside? And that supermarket? It was like an ant’s nest, crowded with people pressing on each other. So many strangers, so utterly terrifying …
Dr. Ying (after a long silence): I now understand why evolution shut off the activation of inherited memories in humans. As our minds grew ever more sensitive, the ignorance that accompanied our birth was like a warm hut that protected us from the harsh realities of the world. We have taken away your child’s nest and tossed him onto a desolate plain, exposed to the elements.
Fetus: Auntie Ying, what is this line connected to my tummy?
Dr. Ying: I think you already asked your mother that question. That’s your umbilical cord. Before you are born, it provides you with oxygen and nutrients. It’s your lifeline.
* * *
A spring morning two years later.
Dr. Ying and the young mother stood side by side in the middle of a public cemetery; the mother held her child in her arms.
“Dr. Ying, did you ever wind up finding what you were looking for?”
“You mean whatever it is, besides memories, that makes a person who they are?” Slowly, Dr. Ying shook her head. “Of course not. I don’t think it’s something that science can find.”
The newly risen sun reflected off the gravestones around them. Countless lives that had already ended glowed again with a soft orange light.
“Tel
l me where is fancy bred, or in the heart, or in the head?” muttered Dr. Ying.
“What did you say?” The mother looked at Dr. Ying, confused.
“Something Shakespeare once wrote.” Dr. Ying held out her arms, and the mother handed the baby to her.
This wasn’t the baby whose inherited memories had been activated. The young mother had married a technician at the lab, and this was their child.
The fetus who had possessed all his mother’s memories had torn off his umbilical cord a few hours after their conversation. By the time the attending physician realized what had happened, the unborn life was already over. Afterward, everyone was puzzled how his little hands had the strength to accomplish such a thing.
The two women now stood before the grave of the youngest suicide in the history of the human race.
Dr. Ying studied the baby in her arms as though looking at an experiment. But the baby’s gaze was different from hers. He was busy sticking out his little arms to grab at the drifting cottony poplar catkins. Surprise and joy filled his bright, black eyes. The world was a blooming flower, a beautiful, gigantic toy. He was completely unprepared for the long, winding road of life ahead of him, and thus ready for anything.
The two women walked along the path between the gravestones. At the edge of the cemetery, the young mother took her baby back from Dr. Ying.
“It’s time for us to be on our way,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement and love.
About the Author
Cixin Liu is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant. His novels include The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End. You can sign up for author updates here.
Copyright © 2016 by Cixin Liu
Art copyright © 2016 by Richie Pope
I don’t remember a time before girls vanished. The first one I heard about was April Shaw. I didn’t know her, only her name. I had just turned ten when she disappeared. I was fourteen when the taken was someone I knew. That was the year Jenna Adams didn’t make it home. No one did anything. Autumn meant harvest, a chill in the air—and another missing girl.
The taken are as young as fifteen and as old as thirty. They are vine-thin, heart-curvy, dark of eye and pale of hair, light-eyed and dark-skinned. There is no true pattern to who will be taken.
Despite that, I look for one. I cannot help it. The girls are always taken near my birthday, so I feel a strange kinship with them. Every spring, as the fields are tilled, I watch for bones as if this, at least, will give me some insight into the secret of the Maiden Thief. I walk the long way home, meandering along the roads, peering into freshly turned soil as if I’ll be the one to find the dead girls.
But spring fades into summer yet again this year, and we still have no answers.
Months and weeks pass, and the air eventually turns cool. No one seeks the killer. No one searches for the taken. We simply wait, knowing that inevitably autumn will come—and another girl will vanish.
As my sixteenth birthday draws near, I wait and watch like most of my classmates. He’s out there, studying us, thinking about who’s next. We’re all secretly whispering, “Not me.” We can’t meet each other’s eyes as the leaves start to drift to the ground.
Not ten minutes after I walk into the kitchen door, Karis tells me, “Today, at the market, I heard that Ella—the girl with the pretty voice and the red shoes—was late on Sunday, and her dad was going round to everyone thinking she was this year’s girl.”
“And?”
“She twisted her ankle and couldn’t get home. She’s fine.”
“That’s good.” I drop my books on the table and go to the sink to wash my hands. It’s what Bastian used to do after classes, and I follow his routine.
When he was alive, my brother was my closest playmate. Our sisters were both much older than us, and the two babies after them but before us hadn’t lived past their second years. Karis, who was ten years older, was the “little mother,” while Amina, who was only two years younger than Karis, was the “big sister.” Bastian, of course, was the future, the one who would increase fortune and ease for our family. I was only the poppet, the plaything they indulged. I read every book Bastian had, and many of Father’s, too. Then, they smiled and laughed. Now, there is no laughter in our home.
The only brightness that remains is from Karis’ determined cheer.
As if she hears my thoughts, my sister takes up the song she was singing when I walked into the house, something about meadows and fields of forever. Her voice is sweet, and the words are familiar. Before Mother’s death, Karis sang more than she spoke.
Both of my sisters would make wonderful wives and mothers, but the money for their dowry is long gone. Mine went first, a peril of being the youngest. Only our household skills and presumed virtues remain as enticements to potential spouses.
Karis sets me tasks, and we work in quiet companionship. We are not petty with each other, not short of temper or ill of manner, not since we lost Mother and Bastian. We work together, and we are stronger for it. Our sister Amina draws forth the food that we sell for our money. Karis minds our home, cooking and cleaning. Once a week, she goes into town to sell what we can and buy what we need. I go to and from the school, learning so that I can figure a way to a better future. Ours is a quiet life with no friends, no outings, and little contact with the people in town. Being with my sisters fills me with peace.
But that peace is soon broken. My father comes in with something clutched in his hand. I can’t see the words on the parchment, but I know well enough what’s there. I wrote the words myself, gathered the facts, and called for action.
“Verena!” Father stops and levels me with a glare that makes me want to reach out to Karis. “What have you done?”
“Shared my findings,” I say with barely a quaver in my voice. I know he disapproves. Girls are to be seen, to be delicate, to be graceful, to be many things my sisters excel at, things I will never be—things I might not have even been if we’d kept our fortunes.
I straighten my spine and stare at my father. “It’s true. Every word of it is true.”
“It’s shameful to say so.”
“It’s more shameful that no one is doing anything to catch the Maiden Thief,” I say, a tremor in my voice as I try to not look away from Father.
I remember being the “littlest gem,” the daughter who drew eyes and smiles. He’s dead, though, and I am expected to master my studies as my brother once had been. It is a lie we agree to live, to pretend I can replace my brother, but it doesn’t mean that Father has forgotten that I am a girl when I dare cross him.
“So, you went courting trouble we don’t need?” Father asks. It’s not a real question; he makes that quite clear as he thumps past the table and into the sitting room where he’ll stare out at Amina as she toils in the garden, the orchard, and the fields.
Amina is his favorite. He doesn’t say that aloud, but we know it just the same. We always have. Amina looks like Mother, much as Bastian did. Father used to laughingly speak of selling their golden hair should we ever need coins. When I was a small child, I clipped a lock of Bastian’s hair and tried to buy sweets with it. The grocer gave me candies, but he let me keep that lock of Bastian’s golden hair. It is all I have of my brother.
Amina is all Father has of his three golden ones. And so, Father watches her every afternoon and much of the morning to be sure that she is not the one taken this year.
Karis and I exchange a look as he passes, but neither of us dare to speak. We see that his bad leg is dragging more than last month. It’s getting worse again. We see it, but no one is so foolish as to comment. Father doesn’t discuss the accident that took my mother and brother, and we’re not to do so either.
In the early weeks of his recovery, he blamed God. He
blamed himself. He blamed us—three useless daughters. If Father could’ve bartered with God in those fever-filled days, we would all have been offered in exchange for the return of the two people he’d lost. Bastian was the cherished one, the son who would carry on the family name. His death was worse because Mother was taken too, so he had no wife to carry a replacement son … and soon after, we were far too poor for Father to woo a new wife. He couldn’t work, and our fortune had sunk to the bottom of some dark section of the sea.
“What did you do this time?” Karis asks softly.
“I wrote a tract on the Maiden Thief.”
My sister smothers her gasp by slapping her hand to her mouth. It’s such a girlish gesture that I wonder how we’re related. Even as she stirs a pot of what we privately called “stretch soup,” she manages to be feminine in the way of the girls I study in my classes. Most of them are excelling at the courses in Household Angels, Art Appreciation, and History for Delicate Minds. They don’t take the courses in the maths or sciences, and they certainly don’t take Literature Unbound. There, I mostly only see boys or the girls who wear trousers out in public. I wear dresses, as much to remind myself of the girl I once was as to remind the boys that I could be a bride one day.
Karis stirs the soup before coming over to embrace me. It’s the sort of all-encompassing hug that Mother used to offer, but Karis doesn’t smell of lavender, and her body is brittle and bony against mine. She may hide it with Mother’s remade gowns and layers of cloth, but she takes the smallest portion of the food. Karis has told me often enough that Father needs to eat for his health, Amina for her strength, and I for my mind.
“I’m not hungry,” I blurt out, as close to a thank-you as I can come without embarrassing us both. “Will you eat half of my soup so Father doesn’t notice?”
I’m certain she’ll see through my words, but instead, she squeezes me tighter still and whispers, “I think you’re brave, Verena.”
Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016 Page 25