The Year's Best SF 22 # 2004

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  In Cretaceous Returns the plants were towering gingko trees, with lots of barriers and hidey holes. Mike played the purely visual Cret Ret a lot these days, in person with the twins and all over the world with others. It had not been an uplifting experience. He had been “killed and eaten” three times so far this week. It was a tough game, one where you had to contribute or maybe you got eaten. Mike was trying. He had designed a species—quick, small things that didn’t attract the fiercest of the critics. The twins had not been impressed, though they had no alternatives of their own.

  As he walked through the gingko forest, he kept his eye out for critters with jaws lurking in the lower branches. That’s what had gotten him on Monday. On Tuesday it had been some kind of paleo disease.

  So far things seemed safe enough, but there was no sign of his own contribution. They had been fast breeding and scalable, so where were the little monsters? Maybe someone had exported them. They might be big in Kazakhstan. He had had success there before. Here today … nada.

  Mike stumped across the Hill, a little discouraged, but still uneaten. The twins had taken the form of game-standard velociraptors.

  They were having a grand time. Their chicken-sized prey were Pyramid Hill haptics.

  The Jerry-raptor looked over its shoulder at Mike. “Where’s your critter?”

  Mike had not assumed any animal form. “I’m a time traveler,” he said. That was a valid type, introduced with the initial game release.

  Fred flashed a face full of teeth. “I mean where are the critters you invented last week?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Most likely they got eaten by the critics,” said Jerry. The brothers did a joint reptilian chortle. “Give up on making creator points, Miguel. Kick back and use the good stuff.” He illustrated with a soccer kick that connected with something running fast across their path. That got some classic points and a few thrilling moments of haptic carnage. Fred joined in and red splattered everywhere.

  There was something familiar about this prey. It was young and clever looking … a newborn from Mike’s own design! And that meant its Mommy would be nearby. Mike said, “You know, I don’t think—”

  “The Problem Is, None Of You Think Nearly Enough.” The sound was like sticking your head inside an old-time boom box. Too late, they saw that the tree trunks behind them grew from yard-long claws.

  Mommy. Drool fell in ten-inch blobs from high above.

  This was Mike’s design scaled to the max.

  “Sh—”said Fred. It was his last hiss as a velociraptor. The head and teeth behind the slobber descended from the gingko canopy and swallowed Fred down to the tips of his hind talons. The monster crunched and munched for a moment. The clearing was filled with the sound of splintering bones.

  “Ahh!” the monster opened its mouth and vomited horror. It was scarey good. Mike flicker-viewed on reality: Fred was standing in the steaming remains of his raptor. His shirt was pulled out of his pants, and he was drenched in slime—real, smelly slime. The kind you paid money for.

  The monster itself was one of Hill’s largest robots, tricked out as a member of Mike’s new species.

  The three of them looked up into its jaws.

  “Was that touchie-feelie enough for you?” the creature said, its breath a hot breeze of rotting meat. Fred stepped backwards and almost slipped on the goo.

  “The late Fred Radner just lost a cartload of points,” — the monster waved its truck-sized snout at them — “and I’m still hungry. I suggest you move off the Hill with all dispatch.”

  They backed away, their gaze still caught on all those teeth.

  The twins turned and ran. As usual, Mike was an instant behind him.

  Something like a big hand grabbed him. “You, I have further business with.” The words were a burred roar through clenched fangs. “Sit down.”

  Jeez. I have the worst luck. Then he remembered that it was Mike Villas who had climbed a tree to perv the Hill entrance logic.

  Stupid Mike Villas didn’t need bad luck; he was already the perfect chump. And now the twins were out of sight.

  But when the “jaws” set him down and he turned around, the monster was still there—not some Pyramid Hill rentacop. Maybe this really was a Cret Ret player! He edged sideways, trying to get out from under the pendulous gaze. This was just a game. He could walk away from this four-storey saurian. Of course, that would trash his credit with Cretaceous Returns, maybe drench him in smelly goo. And if Big Lizard took things seriously, it might cause him trouble in other games. Okay. He sat down with his back against the nearest gingko. So he would be late another day; that couldn’t make his school situation any worse.

  The saurian settled back, pushing the steaming corpse of Fred Radner’s raptor to one side. It brought its head close to the ground, to look at Mike straight on. The eyes and head and color were exactly Mike’s design, and this player had the moves to make it truly impressive. He could see from its scars that it had fought in several Cretaceous hotspots.

  Mike forced a cheerful smile. “So, you like my design?”

  It picked at its teeth with eight-inch foreclaws. “I’ve been worse.” It shifted game parameters, bringing up critic-layer details.

  This was a heavy player, maybe even a cracker! On the ground between them was a dead and dissected example of Mike’s creation. Big Lizard nudged it with a foreclaw. “The skin texture is pure Goldman. Your color scheme is a trivial emergent thing, a generic cliché.”

  Mike drew his knees in toward his chin. This was the same crap he had to put up with at school. “I borrow from the best.”

  The saurian’s chuckle was a buzzing roar. “That might work with your teachers. They have to eat whatever garbage you feed them—till you graduate and can be dumped on the street. Your design is so-so. There have been some adoptions, mainly because it scales well. But if we’re talking real quality, you just don’t measure up.” The creature flexed its battle scars.

  “I can do other things.”

  “Yes, and if you never deliver, you’ll fail with them, too.”

  That was a point that occupied far too much of Mike Villas’ worry time. He glared back at the slitted yellow eyes, and suddenly it occurred to him that—unlike teachers—this guy was not being paid to be nasty. And it was wasting too much time for this to be some humiliating joke. It actually wants something, from me! Mike sharpened his glare. “And you have some suggestions, Oh Mighty Virtual Lizard?”

  “Maybe. I have other projects besides Cret Ret. How would you like to take an affiliate status on one of them?”

  Except for local games, no one had ever asked Mike to affiliate on anything. His mouth twisted in bogus contempt. “Affiliate? A percent of a percent of … what? How far down the value chain are you?”

  The saurian shrugged and there was the sound of gingkos swaying to the thump of its shoulders. “My guess is I’m way, way down. On the other hand, this is not a dredge project. I can pay real money for each answer I pipe upwards.” The creature named a number; it was enough to play the Hill once a week for a year. A payoff certificate floated in the air between them.

  “I get twice that or no deal.”

  “Done!” said the creature, and somehow Mike was sure it was grinning.

  “Okay, so what do you want?”

  “You go to Fairmont High, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a strange place, isn’t it?” When Mike did not reply, the critter said, “Trust me, it is strange. Most schools don’t put Adult Education students in with the children.”

  “Yeah, Senior High. The old farts don’t like it. We don’t like it.”

  “Well, the affiliate task is to snoop around, mainly among the old people. Make friends with them.”

  Yecch. But Mike glanced at the payoff certificate again. It tested valid. The payoff adjudication was more complicated than he wanted to read, but it was backed by eBay. “Who in particular?”

  “So far, my ups
tream affiliate has only told me its broad interests: basically, some of these senior citizens used to be bigshots.”

  “If they were so big, how come they’re in our classes now?” It was just the question the kids asked at school.

  “Lots of reasons, Miguel. Some of them are just lonely. Some of them are up to their ears in debt, and have to figure how to make a living in the current economy. And some of them have lost half their marbles and aren’t good for much but a strong body and lots of old memories … . Ever hear of Pick’s Syndrome?”

  “Um,” Mike googled up the definition: serious social dysfunction. “How do I make friends with someone like that?”

  “If you want the money, you figure out a way. Don’t worry. There’s only one on the list, and he’s in remission. Anyway, here are the search criteria.” The Big Lizard shipped him a document. Mike browsed through the top layer.

  “This covers a lot of ground.” Retired politicians, military officers, bioscientists, parents of persons currently in such job categories. “Um, this really could be deep water. We might be setting people up for blackmail.”

  “Heh. I wondered if you’d notice that.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “If it gets too deep, you can always bail.”

  “I’ll take the job. I’ll go affiliate with you.”

  “I wouldn’t want you doing anything you feel un—”

  “I said, I’ll take the job!”

  “Okay! Well then, this should get you started. There’s contact information in the document.” The creature lumbered to its feet, and its voice came from high above. “Just as well we don’t meet on Pyramid Hill again.”

  “Suits me.” Mike made a point of slapping the creature’s mighty tail as he walked off down hill.

  The twins were way ahead of him, standing by the soccer field on the far side of campus. As Mike came up the driveway, he grabbed a viewpoint in the bleachers and gave them a ping. Fred waved back, but his shirt was still too gooey for real comm. Jerry was looking upwards, at the FedEx shipment falling toward his outstretched hands. Just in time, for sure. The twins were popping the mailer open even as they walked indoors.

  Unfortunately, Mike’s first class was in the far wing. He ran across the lawn, keeping his vision tied to unimproved reality: The buildings were mostly three storeys today. Their gray walls were like playing cards balanced in a rickety array.

  Indoors, the choice of view was not entirely his own. Mornings, the school administration required that the Fairmont School News appear all over the interior walls. Three kids at Hoover High had won IBM fellowships. Applause, applause, even if Hoover was Fairmont’s unfairly advantaged rival, a charter school run by the Math Department at SDSU. The three young geniuses would have their college education paid for, right through grad school, even if they never worked at IBM.

  Big deal, Mike thought. Somewhere down the line, some percentage of their fortunes would be siphoned sideways into IBM’s treasury.

  He followed the little green nav arrows with half his attention … and abruptly realized he had climbed two flights of stairs. School admin had rearranged everything since yesterday. Of course, they had updated his nav arrows, too. It was a good thing he hadn’t been paying attention.

  He slipped into his classroom and sat down.

  Ms. Chumlig had already started.

  Search and Analysis was Chumlig’s thing. She used to teach a fasttrack version of this at Hoover High, but well-documented rumor held that she just couldn’t keep up. So the Department of Education had moved her to the same-named course here at Fairmont. Actually, Mike kind of liked her. She was a failure, too.

  “There are many different skills,” she was saying. “Sometimes it’s best to coordinate with lots of other people.” The students nodded. Be a coordinator. That’s where the fame and money were. But they also knew where Chumlig was going with this. She looked around the classroom, nodding that she knew they knew. “Alas, you all intend to be top agents, don’t you?”

  “It’s what some of us will be.” That was one of the Aduit Ed students. Ralston Blount was old enough to be Mike’s great-grandfather. When Blount had a bad day he liked to liven things up by harassing Ms. Chumlig.

  The Search and Analysis instructor smiled back. “The pure ‘coordinating agent’ is a rare type, Professor Blount.”

  “Some of us must be the administrators.”

  “Yes.” Chumlig looked kind of sad for a moment, like she was figuring out how to pass on bad news. “Administration has changed a lot, Professor Blount.”

  Ralston Blount shrugged. “Okay. So we have to learn some new tricks.”

  “Yes.” Ms. Chumlig looked out over the class. “That’s my point. In this class, we study search and analysis. Searching may seem simple, but the analysis involves understanding results. In the end, you’ve got to know something about something.”

  “Meaning all those courses we got Cs in, right?” That was a voice from the peanut gallery, probably someone who was physically truant.

  Chumlig sighed. “Yes. Don’t let those skills die. Use them. Improve on them. You can do it with a special form of preanalysis that I call ‘study’.”

  One of the students held up a hand. She was that old.

  “Yes, Dr. Xu?”

  “I know you’re correct. But—” The woman glanced around the room. She looked about Chumlig’s age, not nearly as old as Ralston Blount. But there was kind of a frightened look in her eyes. “But some people are just better at this sort of thing than others. I’m not as sharp as I once was. Or maybe others are just sharper … . What happens if we try our hardest, and it just isn’t good enough?”

  Chumlig hesitated. “That’s a problem that affects everyone, Dr. Xu. Providence gives each of us our hand to play. In your case, you’ve got a new deal and a new start on life.” Her look took in the rest of the class. “Some of you think your hand in life is all deuces and treys.” There were some really dedicated kids in the front rows. They were wearing, but they had no clothes sense and had never learned ensemble coding. As Chumlig spoke, you could see their fingers tapping, searching on “deuces” and “treys.”

  “But I have a theory of life,” said Chumlig. “and it is straight out of gaming: There is always an angle. You, each of you, have some special talents. Find out what makes you different and better. Build on that. And once you do, you’ll be able to contribute answers to others and they’ll be willing to contribute back to you. In short, synthetic serendipity doesn’t just happen. You must create it.”

  She hesitated, staring at invisible class notes, and her voice dropped down from oratory. “So much for the big picture. Today, we’ll learn about morphing answer board results. As usual, we’re looking to ask the right questions.”

  Miguel like to sit by the outer wall, especially when the classroom was on an upper floor. You could feel a regular swaying back and forth, the limit cycle of the walls keeping their balance. It made his mom real nervous. “One second of system failure and everything will fall apart!” she had complained at a PTA meeting. On the other hand, house-of-cards construction was cheap—and it could handle a big earthquake almost as easy as it did the morning breeze.

  He leaned away from the wall and listened to Chumlig. That was why the school made you show up in person for most classes; you had to pay a little bit of attention just because you were trapped in a real room with a real instructor. Chumlig’s lecture graphics floated in the air above them. She had the class’s attention; there was a minimum of insolent graffiti nibbling at the edges of her imaging.

  And for a while, Mike paid attention, too. Answer boards could generate solid results, usually for zero cost. There was no affiliation, just kindred minds batting problems around. But what if you weren’t a kindred mind? Say you were on a genetics board. If you didn’t know a ribosome from a rippereme, then all the modern interfaces couldn’t help you.

  So Mike tuned her out and wandered from viewpoint to viewpoint around
the room. Some were from students who’d set their viewpoints public. Most were just random cams. He browsed Big Lizard’s task document as he paused between hops. In fact, the Lizard was interested in more than just the old farts. Some ordinary students made the list, too. This affiliation tree must be as deep as the California Lottery.

  But kids are somebody’s children. He started some background checks. Like most students, Mike kept lots of stuff saved on his wearable. He could run a search like this very close to his vest. He didn’t route to the outside world except when he could use a site that Chumlig was talking about. She was real good at nailing the mentally truant. But Mike was good at ensemble coding, driving his wearable with little gesture cues and eye-pointer menus. As her gaze passed over him, he nodded brightly and he replayed the last few seconds of her talk.

  As for the old students … competent retreads would never be here; they’d be rich and famous, the people who owned most of the real world. The ones in Adult Education were the hasbeens. These people trickled into Fairmont all through the semester. The oldfolks’ hospitals refused to batch them up for the beginning of classes. They claimed that senior citizens were “socially mature,” able to handle the jumble of a midsemester entrance.

  Mike went from face to face, matching against public records: Ralston Blount. The guy was a saggy mess. Retread medicine was such a crapshoot. Some things it could cure, others it couldn’t. And what worked was different from person to person. Ralston had not been a total winner.

  Just now the old guy was squinting in concentration, trying to follow Chumlig’s answer-board example. He had been with the class most of the semester. Mike couldn’t see his med records, but he guessed the guy’s mind was mostly okay; he was as sharp as some of the kids in class. And once-upon-a-time he had been important at UCSD.

  Once-upon-a-time.