Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2016

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “Gone? Tonight?”

  “Burned.” In her mind, she felt deep grief. “I have friends who are no more. They got the backups.”

  “Oh, baby.” Her mother approached, and they hugged. “I’m so sorry.”

  With effort, Sonata pushed her mother away. “I could be endangering you, coming here.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense.” Her mother suddenly seemed energetic, in charge. This was her mother’s working self. She motioned for Sonata to follow her up the stairs, which she scaled herself at a quick trot. “We’ll put you in your old room till this settles,” she said, heading down the hall. “There are good people left who won’t let this go away. I know who to talk to. People have rights, and that includes iterations.”

  The door to Sonata’s room stood open. Her mother threw on a light and crossed to the window where she drew the drapes. The room had been converted into a media center, with a large flat-screen facing a couch. Sonata stayed in that room for a full week, convinced any glimpse of her through a window would jeopardize her mother’s safety. Finally, she realized her mother could take care of herself, and allowed herself freedom to roam the rest of the house, though she avoided standing at the windows. Her mother worked longer hours now and was meeting with the alderman of the ward and other officials after work, pushing for a solution.

  During her seclusion, Sonata was in touch with her own kind over their secure network. Driven into hiding, they communicated exclusively in the new language of symbols and mathematics. Sonata discovered some of her friends, including Miller, had fled into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Others had spread out to midsized urban centers relatively untouched by the unrest. When she learned at last that Kent and Satchya were gone forever, their bodies destroyed and their backups burned in the fire, she mourned for them terribly until the emotion slid away.

  * * *

  There were hundreds of attempts to bring down the NB network, or to infect it—and the NBs—with one virus or another. But the NBs had superior technology, and the system stood. With the new language, they could conceive of technological developments much more rapidly than ever before. Planning went forward at a new supercomputing pace.

  The breathers were busy as well. There were citywide protests, arrests, negotiations, and, finally, a formal agreement that became a model for the nation. When Sonata left her mother’s house at last, it was to go live in a special area set aside for NBs, where they were guaranteed to live free of harassment, and where they would be allowed to build their technological Eden. It wasn’t far from where the Cabrini-Green projects had once stood, and where a mixed income neighborhood had struggled to become viable but had failed just as miserably. And now? The non-breathers called it the tech ghetto.

  Not trusting the truce, they erected a virtual security fence guarded by the most sophisticated anti-intruder system yet devised. The bodies of the elderly and near dead were delivered to the perimeter to receive newbodies, but the rate of new NBs had slowed markedly. The unrest had left people wary, and the prospect of leaving their communities for an unknown, isolated existence was a profound deterrent. The NBs turned their attentions to perfecting the longevity of their forms.

  It was during this time that Sonata was called to her mother’s deathbed. She received an emergency pass to make the trip beyond the tech ghetto to a hospice center off the Eisenhower Expressway. It was eerie: leaving the NB environment, seeing cars again, hearing spoken English.

  “Mom,” she said, holding the dying woman’s hand and feeling a wave of loss course through her mind. “Why aren’t you going to join me? Why did you cancel your iteration?”

  “Oh … child.” She struggled to form words. “That nonsense. Not for me.” She relaxed back in the bed, smiling. “I saved you, though. You made it.”

  Sonata didn’t leave her mother’s side until the old woman breathed her last breath. As she held the husk of her mother’s hand, Sonata relived the memory of her own death, long ago. She wished she could cry for her, and for Kent and Satchya, but she was beyond that now. She focused on the calm of her body, and let the emotions of her mind slip away.

  * * *

  Sonata lived three hundred more years. After her mother’s death, she threw her energies into work for her community, just as her mother had worked for hers. It turned out her multimillion-dollar newbody was well equipped to last. She saw the breather population decline due to a combination of war, infertility, and devastating new strains of MRSA and flu. With overcrowding no longer an issue, the aging virtual security fence was disabled and NBs were once again welcomed to mingle with breathers. Walking the old streets of Hyde Park, Sonata saw the breathers were enjoying a boom of abundance after their trials. There were no homeless, no beggars. Strollers of babies were numerous, and older children huddled in groups, sharing texts and laughing, looking up to watch her with curious eyes.

  Sonata traveled to many cities, giving lectures to mixed crowds of breathers and NBs. They listened with interest as she let her body play the music of her soul. The composition had grown richer over time, and multilayered. After the concert she spoke about philosophy, about her intention to have one more iteration after her current one ended.

  Eventually her newbody began to wear down and malfunction. She had to stop traveling. Occasionally she would be invited to appear on a podcast, but as she continued to display erratic functioning, the invitations ceased. To the dismay of her technician, Randall, she refused another iteration.

  “There’s no such thing as an old folks’ home for NBs,” he said. “I can’t continue to fix you.”

  She tried to reach out and touch his hand but hers flopped ineffectually. She could no longer subvocalize. Yet the young woman of ancient times would’ve been proud of her. Didn’t Socrates himself declare that philosophy is the preparation for death? “It’s time,” she agreed. “Keep my backup, but not for another iteration.”

  He cocked his head at her. “Then what are we to do with your stored data?”

  “Wait till there’s something new. A breakthrough of some kind. You’ll know when.”

  Word spread that Sonata James was coming to the end of her second movement. A documentary crew of NBs arrived.

  She lay on a table for the shutdown procedure that would capture her data for storage. One of the NBs on the documentary crew leaned close over her. She squinted up into a set of violet eyes that whirled in spiral patterns. The eyes were set in a bronze face whose features were only vaguely human. It was more like the face of a bird. Was there an Egyptian god that looked like this?

  “I don’t know why I stayed away all these years,” the stranger said. She felt the NB attempt to subvocalize to her, in vain. He went on speaking. “I think it was because you had a century’s head start. You were well established in your new life.”

  “Who … do I know you?”

  There was a hint of sadness in the stranger’s smile. “Likely not now. We knew each other a lifetime time ago, but not for very long.”

  Sonata wanted to talk to the stranger some more, but the proceedings were underway. With a pang of regret, she relaxed back into the shutdown sequence.

  Recapitulation: Presto

  Sonata was pulled to her feet by many hands. “You nearly got yourself killed,” a bystander chided. She looked across the street and saw a boy, his mouth agape at the close call. A gust of wind whipped up, pulling orange and red leaves from the trees and sending them on a final journey, dancing across the face of the midday sun high overhead.

  Then Dante was suddenly there, hood thrown back, his face twisted with concern. “I was just leaving the coffee shop when I heard the commotion.” She was suddenly engulfed in his embrace. Her hands touched the hardness of his computer backpack, but it was the warmth of his flesh that gave her joy. She burrowed her face in his neck.

  “I love you, Dante,” she said, realizing the truth of her words as they cascaded unbidden from her lips.

  “Easy there,” he said. But when he nudg
ed his face around to meet her gaze, she saw the delight in his eyes. “I’m just glad you’re okay. How about you come over to my place? Rest up a bit from your near miss.”

  “I should tell my mom…” She trailed off, suddenly disoriented. She looked around at the street, at the throngs of people that had gathered on the sidewalks and were even now moving on. There were fewer people around than she expected to see, and not one of them was a newbie.

  She drew in a deep breath, and let it out. Tears sprang to her eyes. She was crying, weeping tears of relief but also mourning what was lost, which she was incapable of putting into words.

  “Hey now,” Dante cooed, and took her chin in his fingers. “Can’t have that. Come to my place and rest awhile.”

  She nodded. Dante slung a reassuring arm around her shoulders as they walked eastward, toward the lake. The scenery was simpler in a way that could only be explained by way of virtual reality. Bits of memory brushed her hair like blowing leaves and moved on, borne on a biting autumn wind that brought fresh smells. Somewhere inside her core she knew there would be no mother here, but that the friend walking at her side was really Dante. The fleeting image of an Egyptian god with whirling eyes passed through her mind, but finding no purchase, no reality within her current frame of reference, it moved on to whatever land the leaves were going to. She tried to track it in her mind, but couldn’t. She’d lost some of her memory in her fall, then. The phantoms that were even now quickly dissipating … Were they shreds from her past? Or were they the mind’s attempt to fill in what was lost with a backstory that was false? She was certain there had been a conversation about Nietzsche, but all that came to mind was her favorite quote of his. “This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things: and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon.”

  She touched her brow, aware she had paused on the sidewalk. She felt emotionally raw from the near accident. She could’ve died. She pressed against Dante’s side, and he tightened his grip on her shoulder and bent to kiss the top of her head. As they walked on, she pledged to make something of her life.

  About the Author

  Lettie Prell’s short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Best of Apex Magazine anthology, Paranormal Underground, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, StarShipSofa podcast, and elsewhere. She is also the author of the novel Dragon Ring. You can sign up for author updates here.

  Copyright © 2016 by Lettie Prell

  Art copyright © 2016 by Kevin Hong

  November 1880

  On a foggy autumn morning, a horseless carriage chugged slowly along a fashionable London street. The carriage was of antique design, steam-driven instead of the more modern clockwork, with a tall chimney pipe that added its acrid mite to the smoky air. A burly footman sat on its box, peering through the gloom at the house numbers. As they passed a pleasant Georgian lodging-house, he hastily pulled the brake and the carriage came to a halt with a long hiss of escaping steam.

  The door burst open and a young gentleman sprang out onto the pavement. He was perhaps twenty-two, tall and knobby, with longish light hair and small, round spectacles. His low-crowned hat was crammed to his ears and his coat was buttoned askew. His careless appearance suggested Bohemian tendencies. The carriage’s obviously homemade shaded fog lights revealed a mechanical bent. Not an artisan, not with that coat. A gentleman mechanic, then—possibly an inventor.

  The young woman who alit after him was more difficult to parse. She was younger than the gentleman—between eighteen and twenty years of age—and clearly on comfortable terms with him. One would have thought them brother and sister, had there been the slightest resemblance. As it was, she was dark where he was fair, tiny and compact where he was tall and loose-limbed, and her severe mulberry walking costume spoke of a lady’s companion rather than a lady. She carried a practical-looking cane that she did not seem to need.

  A sulfurous swirl of fog briefly enveloped the pair. When it cleared, they were climbing the lodging-house steps with their footman a few steps behind, bearing in his arms what looked to be a large and elaborate doll clad in china blue.

  The young gentleman rang the bell. Above them, a curtain in the first-floor window twitched and a figure retreated into the room beyond.

  The game was afoot.

  * * *

  Miss Tacy Gof was in a state of tension so extreme that time slowed almost to a standstill. The ride through the fog from Curzon Street to Pall Mall had taken an age of the world, and another had passed as they waited for an answer to Sir Arthur’s ring. Tacy was on the point of reaching for the bell herself when the door snapped open to reveal a small, empty room sealed off from the house itself by a second door.

  Sir Arthur stepped in and peered about. “A fog-exhaust!” He exclaimed. “See the fan above the door? I have been longing to see one ever since I read about them in the London Inventor!” Then, impatiently: “Come in, come in. There’s room enough for all of us!”

  There was, though it felt very cramped when the street door swung to, trapping them in a cloud of stinging air. The fan whirred, the air cleared, and the inner door opened, letting them into a hall illuminated by a Smith clockwork lamp.

  A lady in black bombazine took one look at Sir Arthur’s hat and misbuttoned coat and said, “First floor front, end of the hall.”

  Sir Arthur sprang up the stairs like a dog on the scent, but Tacy turned, hesitating. “Angharad?”

  The doll answered her, its voice tinkling and tuneful as a music box. “Away with you! James and I will follow.”

  Gratefully, Tacy laid the cane she was holding in the doll’s white kid hands and ran up the stairs, reaching the top just as the door to the first floor front opened, revealing quite the largest man she had ever seen. He loomed over Sir Arthur—who was himself a tall man—and was easily twice his girth. Tacy judged him to be perhaps thirty, with a heavy, handsome countenance dominated by a hawklike nose and pale eyes that gave back the light of the Smith lamp like pearls.

  Sir Arthur straightened his spine and his spectacles. “Mr. Mycroft Holmes? I am Sir Arthur Cwmlech, of Cwmlech Manor, and I am come to consult your Reasoning Machine on a matter of some importance.”

  The pale gaze swept past him to the end of the hall, where a musical voice was demanding to be set down gently, mind. Turning, Tacy saw the porcelain doll at the stair-head. Quite a picture she made, posed under the Smith with one white kid hand on her silver-topped cane and one white kid boot peeking through the elaborate drapery of her skirt.

  “By all that’s wonderful,” the big man breathed. “It’s the Ghost in the Machine.”

  Although the automaton was indeed haunted by the ghost of Sir Arthur’s noble ancestress, she considered the name bestowed on her by the popular press a slight upon her dignity. Tacy had heard her curse an inventor who had addressed her thus in terms that might have distressed him very much, had he been able to understand Welsh. Tacy was relieved when Angharad contented herself with a haughty lift of her molded chin. “I am Mistress Angharad Cwmlech of Cwmlech Manor. And I believe I am as human as yourself.”

  It was a mild enough rebuke, but Mr. Holmes appeared to feel it extremely. “Your pardon, Mistress Cwmlech. I meant no offense, no offense in the world. I am a firm supporter of mechanical rights—although, of course, you are a special case. Your response to Mr. Justice Booby’s denial of your right to testify brought tears to my eyes.”

  Sir Arthur’s nervous cough brought Mycroft Holmes’s wandering attention back to the issue at hand. “Ah, yes. A matter of some importance, you say? Then, by all means, come in.” He strode down the hall to where Angharad stood, swaying slightly, and gravely offered her his arm. “Mistress Cwmlech—if you will permit me?”

  With equal gravity, she accepted his help, though she must re
ach shoulder-high to do so. Trust Angharad, Tacy thought, as she followed Sir Arthur into Mr. Holmes’s chambers, to behave, when every moment is precious, as though time means nothing. Although perhaps it did not, to a ghost.

  The sitting room was a large and airy apartment in the Aesthetic style, hung with Bird and Gear paper from Morris & Co. Green velvet curtains were drawn against the fog and exquisite automata were ranged like statues between glass-fronted cases of curiosities. Tacy’s eye was caught by a fist-sized bag constructed from sheets of rubber in one of the cases. “That’s never a Peterson’s Mechanical Heart!”

  “It is,” Mr. Holmes said. “You are very observant, Miss—”

  “Gof.” Having attracted their host’s attention, Tacy found that she’d been more comfortable without it.

  “You are Welsh,” he said, his pale eyes fixing her like a bug on a pin. “A countrywoman, and a blacksmith’s daughter, or perhaps sister.” He lifted her hand and examined it. “A mechanic … and unmarried. Sir Arthur’s apprentice, then, given your tender years.”

  Startled, Tacy reclaimed her hand. “How did you—? Oh.” She touched the iron-and-bronze brooch pinned to her lapel. “This, my old boots, and the stuff of my jacket, is it?”

  “And the calluses on forefinger and thumb, the stigmata of our trade.” Mr. Holmes displayed his own plump hands, callused precisely as he had described, then waved hospitably towards a cushioned settee, where Angharad sat, her feet dangling some inches above the carpeted floor. “Pray, be seated.”

  Sir Arthur took the nearest chair and Tacy perched by Angharad, trying not to fidget. Earlier, they had agreed that the story was Sir Arthur’s to tell. Tacy would listen, observe, answer questions if asked, and otherwise keep her tongue firmly behind her teeth.

  Mr. Holmes settled himself in a Morris chair facing them.

  Sir Arthur began, “It’s my Illogic Engine, you see. I—”