by Libba Bray
[Alicia] was the first of us to get a Face. I got mine when I was ten. I didn’t really know what was going on. I met all these boys my age, and then the Olds sat down and had a talk with me. They explained what was going on, said that I got to pick which Face I wanted. I picked the one who looked the nicest, the one who looked like he might be fun to hang out with. That’s how stupid I was back then.
[Hero] couldn’t choose, so I did it for her. Pick her, I said. That’s how strange life is. I picked her out of all the others.
[Yumiko] said she’d already talked to her Face. (We talk to our Faces as little as possible, although sometimes we sleep with each others’. Forbidden fruit is always freakier. Is that why I did what I did? I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?) [Yumiko] said her Face agreed to sign a new contract when [Yumiko] turns eighteen. She doesn’t see any reason to give up having a Face.
[Nishi] is [Preeti]’s younger sister. They only broke ground on her pyramid last summer. Upper management teams from her father’s company came out to lay the first course of stones. A team-building exercise. Usually it’s prisoners from the Supermax prison out in Pelican Bay. Once they get to work, they mostly look the same. It’s hard work. We like to go out and watch.
Every once in a while a consulting archeologist or an architect will come over and try to make conversation. They think we want context.
They talk about grave goods, about how one day archeologists will know what life was like because a couple of girls decided they wanted to build their own pyramids.
We think that’s funny.
They like to complain about the climate. Apparently it isn’t ideal. “Of course, they may not be standing give or take a couple of hundred years. Once you factor in geological events. Earthquakes. There’s the geopolitical dimension. There’s graverobbers.”
They go on and on about the cunning of graverobbers.
We get them drunk. We ask them about the curse of the mummies just to see them get worked up. We ask them if they aren’t worried about the Olds. We ask what used to happen to the men who built the pyramids in Egypt. Didn’t they used to disappear, we ask? Just to make sure nobody knew where the good stuff was buried? We say there are one or two members of the consulting team who worked on [Alicia]’s pyramid that we were friendly with. We mention we haven’t been able to get hold of them in a while, not since the pyramid was finished.
They were up on the unfinished outer wall of [Nishi]’s pyramid. I guess they’d been up there all night. Talking. Making love. Making plans.
They didn’t see me. Invisible, that’s what I am. I had my phone. I filmed them until my phone ran out of memory. There was a unicorn down in the meadow by a pyramid. [Alicia]’s pyramid. Two impossible things. Three things that shouldn’t exist. Four.
That was when I gave up on becoming someone new, the running, the kale, the whole thing. That was when I gave up on becoming the new me. Somebody already was that person. Somebody already had the only thing I wanted.
“Give me the code.” I say it over and over again. I don’t know how long it’s been. [Hero]’s arm is greenish-black and blown up like a balloon. I tried sucking out the venom. Maybe that did some good. Maybe I didn’t think of it soon enough.
“[ ]?,” [Hero] says. “I don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want you to die either,” I say. I try to sound like I mean it. I do mean it. “Give me the code. Let me save you.”
“I don’t want them to die,” [Hero] says. “If I give you the code, you’ll do it. And I’ll die down here by myself.”
“You’re not going to die,” I say. I stroke her cheek. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”
After a while she says, “OK.” Then she tells me the code. Maybe it’s a string of numbers that means something to her. More likely it’s random. I told you she was smarter than me.
I repeat the code back to her and she nods. I’ve covered her up with a shawl, because she’s so cold. I lay her head down on a pillow, brush her hair back.
“I’ll be right back,” I say.
She closes her eyes. Give me a horrible, blind smile.
I go over to the door and enter the code.
The door doesn’t open. I try again and it still doesn’t open.
“[Hero]? Tell me the code again?”
She doesn’t say anything. She’s fallen asleep. I go over and shake her gently. “Tell me the code one more time. Come on. One more time.”
Her eyes stay closed. Her mouth falls open. Her tongue is poking out.
“[Hero]?”
It takes me a while to realize that she’s dead. And now it’s a little bit later, and my sister is still dead, and I’m still trapped down here with my dead sister and a bunch of broken shabtis. No food. No good music. Just a small canister of something nasty cooked up by my good friend Nikolay, and some size four jeans and the dregs of a bottle of very expensive champagne.
The Egyptians believed that every night the spirit of the person buried in the pyramids rose up through the false doors to go out into the world. Their Ba. Your Ba can’t be confined in a small dark room at the bottom of a deep shaft hidden under some pile of stones. Maybe I’ll fly out some night, some part of me. I keep trying combinations, but I don’t know how many numbers [Hero] used, what combination. It’s an endless task. There’s not much oil left to light the lamps. Some air comes in through the bottom of the door, but not much. It smells bad in here. I wrapped [Hero] up in her shawls and hid her in the closet. She’s in there with [Noodles]. I put him in her arms. Every once in a while I fall asleep and when I wake up I realize I don’t know which numbers I’ve tried, which I haven’t.
The Olds must wonder what happened. They’ll think it had something to do with that sex tape. Their publicists will be doing damage control. I wonder what will happen to my Face. What will happen to her. Maybe one night I’ll fly out. My Ba will fly right to her, like a bird.
One day someone will open the door that I can’t. I’ll be alive or else I won’t. I can open the canister or I can leave it closed. What would you do? I talk about it with [Hero], down here in the dark. Sometimes I decide one thing, sometimes I decide another.
Dying of thirst is a hard way to die.
I don’t really want to drink my own urine.
If I open the canister, I might die faster. It will be my curse on you, the one who opens the tomb.
I don’t want you to know my name. It was his name, really.
Tara.
The Brave Little Toaster
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger—the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like For the Win and the bestselling Little Brother. His forthcoming books include a new young adult novel Pirate Cinema, Rapture of the Nerds (co-written with Charles Stross), and Anda’s Game, a graphic novel based on his story of the same name. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.
One day, Mister Toussaint came home to find an extra 300 euros’ worth of groceries on his doorstep. So he called up Miz Rousseau, the grocer, and said, “Why have you sent me all this food? My fridge is already full of delicious things. I don’t need this stuff and besides, I can’t pay for it.”
But Miz Rousseau told him that he had ordered the food. His refrigerator had sent in the list, and she had the signed order to prove it.
Furious, Mister Toussaint confronted his refrigerator. It was mysteriously empty, even though it had been full that morning. Or rather, it was almost empty: there was a single pouch of energy drink sitting on a shelf in the back. He’d gotten it from an enthusiastically smiling young woman on the metro platform the day before. She’d been giving them to everyone.
“Why did you throw away all my food?” he demanded. The refrigerator hummed smugly at him.
“It was s
poiled,” it said.
But the food hadn’t been spoiled. Mister Toussaint pored over his refrigerator’s diagnostics and logfiles, and soon enough, he had the answer. It was the energy beverage, of course.
“Row, row, row your boat,” it sang. “Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I’m offgassing ethelyne.” Mister Toussaint sniffed the pouch suspiciously.
“No you’re not,” he said. The label said that the drink was called LOONY GOONY and it promised ONE TRILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN ESPRESSO!!!!!ONE11! Mister Toussaint began to suspect that the pouch was some kind of stupid Internet of Things prank. He hated those.
He chucked the pouch in the rubbish can and put his new groceries away.
The next day, Mister Toussaint came home and discovered that the overflowing rubbish was still sitting in its little bag under the sink. The can had not cycled it through the trapdoor to the chute that ran to the big collection-point at ground level, 104 storeys below.
“Why haven’t you emptied yourself?” he demanded. The trashcan told him that toxic substances had to be manually sorted. “What toxic substances?”
So he took out everything in the bin, one piece at a time. You’ve probably guessed what the trouble was.
“Excuse me if I’m chattery, I do not mean to nattery, but I’m a mercury battery!” LOONY GOONY’s singing voice really got on Mister Toussaint’s nerves.
“No you’re not,” Mister Toussaint said.
Mister Toussaint tried the microwave. Even the cleverest squeezy-pouch couldn’t survive a good nuking. But the microwave wouldn’t switch on. “I’m no drink and I’m no meal,” LOONY GOONY sang. “I’m a ferrous lump of steel!”
The dishwasher wouldn’t wash it (“I don’t mean to annoy or chafe, but I’m simply not dishwasher safe!”). The toilet wouldn’t flush it (“I don’t belong in the bog, because down there I’m sure to clog!”). The windows wouldn’t retract their safety screen to let it drop, but that wasn’t much of a surprise.
“I hate you,” Mister Toussaint said to LOONY GOONY, and he stuck it in his coat pocket. He’d throw it out in a trash-can on the way to work.
They arrested Mister Toussaint at the 678th Street station. They were waiting for him on the platform, and they cuffed him just as soon as he stepped off the train. The entire station had been evacuated and the police wore full biohazard containment gear. They’d even shrinkwrapped their machine-guns.
“You’d better wear a breather and you’d better wear a hat, I’m a vial of terrible deadly hazmat,” LOONY GOONY sang.
When they released Mister Toussaint the next day, they made him take LOONY GOONY home with him. There were lots more people with LOONY GOONYs to process.
Mister Toussaint paid the rush-rush fee that the storage depot charged to send over his container. They forklifted it out of the giant warehouse under the desert and zipped it straight to the cargo-bay in Mister Toussaint’s building. He put on old, stupid clothes and clipped some lights to his glasses and started sorting.
Most of the things in container were stupid. He’d been throwing away stupid stuff all his life, because the smart stuff was just so much easier. But then his grandpa had died and they’d cleaned out his little room at the pensioner’s ward and he’d just shoved it all in the container and sent it out the desert.
From time to time, he’d thought of the eight cubic meters of stupidity he’d inherited and sighed a put-upon sigh. He’d loved Grandpa, but he wished the old man had used some of the ample spare time from the tail end of his life to replace his junk with stuff that could more gracefully reintegrate with the materials stream.
How inconsiderate!
The house chattered enthusiastically at the toaster when he plugged it in, but the toaster said nothing back. It couldn’t. It was stupid. Its bread-slots were crusted over with carbon residue and it dribbled crumbs from the ill-fitting tray beneath it. It had been designed and built by cavemen who hadn’t ever considered the advantages of networked environments.
It was stupid, but it was brave. It would do anything Mister Toussaint asked it to do.
“It’s getting hot and sticky and I’m not playing any games, you’d better get me out before I burst into flames!” LOONY GOONY sang loudly, but the toaster ignored it.
“I don’t mean to endanger your abode, but if you don’t let me out, I’m going to explode!” The smart appliances chattered nervously at one another, but the brave little toaster said nothing as Mister Toussaint depressed its lever again.
“You’d better get out and save your ass, before I start leaking poison gas!” LOONY GOONY’s voice was panicky. Mister Toussaint smiled and depressed the lever.
Just as he did, he thought to check in with the flat’s diagnostics. Just in time, too! Its quorum-sensors were redlining as it listened in on the appliances’ consternation. Mister Toussaint unplugged the fridge and the microwave and the dishwasher.
The cooker and trash-can were hard-wired, but they didn’t represent a quorum.
The fire department took away the melted toaster and used their axes to knock huge, vindictive holes in Mister Toussaint’s walls. “Just looking for embers,” they claimed. But he knew that they were pissed off because there was simply no good excuse for sticking a pouch of independently powered computation and sensors and transmitters into an antique toaster and pushing down the lever until oily, toxic smoke filled the whole 104th floor.
Mister Toussaint’s neighbors weren’t happy about it either.
But Mister Toussaint didn’t mind. It had all been worth it, just to hear LOONY GOONY beg and weep for its life as its edges curled up and blackened.
He argued mightily, but the firefighters refused to let him keep the toaster.
The Dala Horse
Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation. He has received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six years and has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, World Fantasy and five Hugo Awards as well as receiving nominations for the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Michael’s latest novel is Dancing with Bears, a post-Utopian adventure featuring confidence artists Darger and Surplus. He is currently at work on two new novels.
Something terrible had happened. Linnéa did not know what it was. But her father had looked pale and worried, and her mother had told her, very fiercely, “Be brave!” and now she had to leave, and it was all the result of that terrible thing.
The three of them lived in a red wooden house with steep black roofs by the edge of the forest. From the window of her attic room, Linnéa could see a small lake silver with ice very far away. The design of the house was unchanged from all the way back in the days of the Coffin People, who buried their kind in beautiful polished boxes with metal fittings like nothing anyone made anymore. Uncle Olaf made a living hunting down their coffin-sites and salvaging the metal from them. He wore a necklace of gold rings he had found, tied together with silver wire.
“Don’t go near any roads,” her father had said. “Especially the old ones.” He’d given her a map. “This will help you find your grandmother’s house.”
“Mor-Mor?”
“No, Far-Mor. My mother. In Godastor.”
Godastor was a small settlement on the other side of the mountain. Linnéa had no idea how to get there. But the map would tell her.
Her mother gave her a little knapsack stuffed with food, and a quick hug. She shoved something deep in the pocket of Linnéa’s coat and said, “Now go! Before it comes!”
“Good-bye, Mor and Far,” Linnéa had said formally, and bowed.
Then she’d left.
So it was that Linnéa found herself walking up a long, snowy slope, straight up the side of the mountain. It was tiring work, but she was a dutiful little girl. The weather was harsh, but whenever she started getting cold, she just turned up the temperature of
her coat. At the top of the slope she came across a path, barely wide enough for one person, and so she followed it onward. It did not occur to her that this might be one of the roads her father had warned her against. She did not wonder at the fact that it was completely bare of snow.
After a while, though, Linnéa began to grow tired. So she took off her knapsack and dropped it in the snow alongside the trail and started to walk away.
“Wait!” the knapsack said. “You’ve left me behind.”
Linnéa stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re too heavy for me to carry.”
“If you can’t carry me,” said the knapsack, “then I’ll have to walk.”
So it did.
On she went, followed by the knapsack, until she came to a fork in the trail. One way went upward and the other down. Linnéa looked from one to the other. She had no idea which to take.
“Why don’t you get out the map?” her knapsack suggested.
So she did.
Carefully, so as not to tear, the map unfolded. Contour lines squirmed across its surface as it located itself. Blue stream-lines ran downhill. Black roads and stitched red trails went where they would. “We’re here,” said the map, placing a pinprick light at its center. “Where would you like to go?”
“To Far-Mor,” Linnéa said. “She’s in Godastor.”
“That’s a long way. Do you know how to read maps?”
“No.”
“Then take the road to the right. Whenever you come across another road, take me out and I’ll tell you which way to go.”
On Linnéa went, until she could go no further, and sat down in the snow beside the road. “Get up,” the knapsack said. “You have to keep on going.” The muffled voice of the map, which Linnéa had stuffed back into the knapsack, said, “Keep straight on. Don’t stop now.”