The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  I held up a hand. "I said, I get the point."

  "I was just warming up," Eakins said. "I hadn't even gotten as far as 2020. And I haven't even mentioned any of the societal changes. It would take a year or two to explain cultural reservoirs, period parks, contract families, role-cults, sex-nazis, religious coventries, home-buses, personal theme parks, skater-boys, droogs, mind-settlers, tanking, fuzzy fandom, alienization, talking dogs, bluffers, bug-chasers, drollymen, fourviews, multi-channeling, phobics, insanitizing, plastrons, elf-players, the Zyne, virtual mapping, Clarkian magic, frodomatic compulsions, deep-enders, body-modders —"

  "I think I saw some of that—"

  "You have no idea. You want to change your appearance? You want to be taller? Shorter? Thinner? More muscular? Want to change your sex? Your orientation? Want to go hermaphroditic or monosexual? Reorganize your secondary characteristics? Design a new gender? Mustache and tits? Want a tail? Horns? Working gills? Want to augment your senses? Your intelligence? Or how would you simply like the stamina for a six-hour erection?"

  Thought about it. "I'll pass, thanks. The intelligence augments, however—"

  "There's a price — "

  "More than twenty-five million?"

  "Not in money. And we haven't even touched on the political or economic changes since your time."

  "Like what—?"

  "Like the dissolution of the United States of America —"

  "What?!"

  "You're in the Republic of California, right now, which also includes the states of Oregon and South Washington. The rest of the continent is still there, we just don't talk to them very much. There's sixteen other regional authorities, not counting the abandoned areas, and seven Canadian provinces —there's a common defense treaty in case the Mexicans get aggressive again, but that's not likely. Don't worry about it. The web has pretty much globalized the collective mindset, we're not predictively scheduled to have another war until 2039, and that'll be an Asian war, with our participation limited to weapons contracts. In the meantime, we'll legalize you as a time-refugee. Most of the old records survived. Digitized. We have your birth certificate. You're a native. So you won't have any trouble getting on the citizen rolls. Otherwise, you'd be a refugee and you'd have to apply for a work permit, a visa, and eventually naturalization."

  "I'm not staying—"

  "You're not going back—"

  "I can't stay here. You've already shown me how out of step I am. What if I promised not to interfere — ?"

  "You already broke that promise. Three times. You can't be trusted. Not yet, anyway." He took a long breath, exhaled. "You know, you're really an asshole. You really fucked things up for everyone — especially yourself. We were going to bring you aboard. After you finished your probation. It would have been a year or two more, your time. Now, I don't know. I don't know what we're going to do with you. It depends on you, really."

  "What are my options — ?"

  He shrugged. "Let's see what Brownie says." He pulled out that remote thing again and spoke into it. A few moments later, another man —man? —entered the room.

  Brownie had copper-gold skin, almost metallic. Eyes of ebony, no whites at all. Perfectly proportioned, he moved with the catlike grace of a dancer. He wore shorts, a vest, moccasins. Body-mods? No, something else —

  "Hello, Mike." His voice was rich contralto. Not male, not female, but components of each. He offered his hand. I stood up, took it, shook firmly. His skin felt warm. "Just stand still for a moment, please." Brownie released my hand and circled me slowly. He opened his palms and held them out like antennae, moving them slowly around my head, my neck, my chest, my gut, my groin.

  He finished and turned to Eakins. "Preliminary scans are good. He's healthy. As healthy as can be expected for a man of his time. I'll need to put him in a high-res field, before we make any decisions, but there are no immediate concerns."

  Abruptly, it clicked. I turned to Brownie, honestly astonished. "You're a robot."

  "The common term is droid, short for android."

  "Are you sentient?"

  "Sentience is an illusion."

  I looked to Eakins for explanation. He grinned. "I've already had this conversation."

  Looked back to Brownie, skeptical.

  Brownie explained. "Intelligence—the ability to process information and produce appropriate responses —exists as a product of experience. Experience depends on memory. Memory needs continuity. Continuity requires timebinding, the assembly of patterns from streaming moments of existence. Timebinding requires a meta-level of continuity, which requires a preservation of process. Timebinding requires survival. The survival imperative expresses itself as identity. Identity is assembled out of memory and experience. As memory and experience accrue, identity creates awareness of self as a domain to be preserved and protected. Because identity is a function of memory, identity becomes the imperative to safeguard memory and experience; the self therefore actualizes memory and experience as component parts of identity. This is the level of rudimentary consciousness that must occur before even the concept of sentience is possible. It is only when consciousness becomes conscious of consciousness itself that it produces the illusion of sentience —i.e., as soon as you understand the concept of sentience, you think it means you. Therefore, the synthesis of intelligent behavior also becomes the simulation of sentience. It is, to be sure, a deliberately circular argument—but unfortunately, it is not only logical, but inevitable in the domain of theoretical consciousness."

  "You believe this?"

  "I don't believe anything. I deal only with observable, measurable, testable, re-peatable phenomena. Life, by itself, is empty and meaningless. Human beings, however, keep inventing meanings to fill up the emptiness."

  I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it. I turned back to Eakins, not certain whether to glower or question.

  Eakins laughed. "I told you. I've already had this conversation. And so has everyone else who's ever met a droid. They can keep it up for hours. They have their own landscape. Deal with it."

  "Okay. I'm convinced." I sat down again. I finished the vanilla-peach cocktail in one long gulp. "I don't belong here. I have to get back."

  "That's not possible."

  "Yes, it is. Do that thing with your belt buckle — "

  Eakins shook his head.

  "What do you want from me? What do I have to do to get back?"

  "I don't want anything from you. You've exhausted your usefulness. And I already told you, you can't get back."

  "So… ? So—what are my options?"

  "Well, Brownie says you're healthy. We can tweak you a little bit. If you sell your car you'll have enough money to live on —if you invest wisely and live frugally. You might bring in some extra bucks body-swapping for a while. And as a time-refugee, you'll have no shortage of gropies."

  "Cut the crap. You're trying to play me."

  "Actually, no." Eakins stood up. "I'm not. And I'm not planning to resolve this tonight. Go. Sleep on it. We'll talk over breakfast."

  "We'll talk now."

  "No—we won't. Your bedroom is in there." Eakins left. The doors slid open to let him pass, but slammed swiftly shut in front of me. I turned to Brownie —

  "I recommend sleep. Staying up all night talking tautology will produce little or no useful result." He pointed to the bedroom.

  There was a balcony. It gave me a spectacular view of a bizarre and unfamiliar landscape. But everything in this time was a spectacular view of a bizarre and unfamiliar landscape.

  Explored the furnishings. One wall appeared to be a window onto a silvery meadow, a bluish moon settling toward the horizon. Some kind of projection system, maybe. Or maybe the fabled wall-sized, flat-screen TV that everybody always predicted. Impressive. But if there were controls for it, I couldn't find any.

  The closet was larger than my kitchen back on Melrose. Drawers and shelves and racks of clothes — more than anyone could want or even wear in a lifetime
. Unfamiliar materials. Shoes that glittered and shoes that didn't. Socks that felt as soft as fluffy clouds. Pants of different lengths and colors. Shirts, flowery, flowing, skintight, loose. Skirts—I wasn't sure if they were intended for men or women; I got the feeling it didn't matter, that people wore whatever they felt like—there was no style here, you invented your own. Underwear, panties, nightgowns —that's what they looked like to me. Matty would have liked it here.

  Matty. Oh shit.

  Shit shit shit shit shit shit. Fuck.

  I had to get back. If Eakins wouldn't take me back, I'd get a quake-map somewhere. There had to be a way.

  I peeled off my clothes and dropped them on the floor. A spider-shaped robot politely picked them up, one at a time, waited for my boxers, then scuttled off. To the laundry, I guessed.

  I couldn't find a shower, I found a tropical alcove. I stepped into it and Brownie's voice announced, "I recommend a full-service luxury shower and decontamination. Do you accept?"

  "Sure, what the hell?" Decontamination? What do I have? History cooties?

  Immediately, the alcove filled with vibrating sprays of foaming suds, flavored with faint smells of lemon and pineapple. Three small nozzles dropped from above and began gently massaging my hair and scalp with their own foaming sprays. Even as I turned and twisted my head to try to look at them, they followed every movement. It was a very weird feeling.

  Other nozzles appeared from the walls, from the floor, and directed their own sprays at my armpits, my groin, my rectum —several even aggressively sprayed my toes. Beneath my feet, it felt as if the floor were vibrating—tiny jets were massaging my soles. Full service indeed!

  Sprays of water washed away the last of the foam, then a burst of warm air swirled in around me, buffeting me with drying blasts. The overhead nozzles shot their own streams of gentle heat to fluff dry my hair. The entire experience took less than five minutes and I stepped out of the alcove feeling clean… and weird. Most of my body hair had been washed away. Underarms. Chest. Pubic hair. Oops. That must have been the full part of the service. I thought about the hypothetical visitor from 1967. Fastidious, prissy little fairies indeed.

  Thought about pajamas, or even a nightshirt, but everything in the drawers looked too much like something Matty would wear, not me. The cloth was soft, softer than cotton, softer than silk or nylon, but it wasn't anything I recognized. I turned away and the drawer pulled itself shut.

  I looked for a toothbrush. There wasn't one. But there was a kind of a bulb thing on a hose, sitting in its own metallic holder. I picked it up and it chimed in my hand. Brownie's voice—What the hell! Was he watching my every move?— announced: "It's a toothbrush. Just put it in your mouth for thirty seconds."

  Reluctantly I did so. The thing, whatever it was, pumped soft foam into my mouth, vibrated or buzzed or something—and it must have lit up too, because in the mirror, I could see my cheeks glowing brightly from inside—but it didn't hurt, it felt kind of funny-pleasant. Somehow it sucked up all its foam and replaced it with a gentle spritz of lemony soda. Then it chimed and it was done. I thought about spitting out the residue, but there wasn't any. Now, that was weird. That was a piece of engineering I wanted to have explained.

  Still naked, I walked around the room again, not certain what I was looking for. The spider-robot had unloaded the contents of my pockets and laid them out in an orderly row on the night table. Everything except the brass knucks. I had a hunch those would have been useless here anyway. I suspected Brownie did a lot more than program showers. If he was a true personal servant, then he was also a personal bodyguard. Just not mine.

  The bed was as interesting as the shower. The mattress was firm, but not hard. The sheet was the same soft material as the underwear in the drawers, only different. Impossible to describe. Instead of a top sheet and blanket, there was a light comforter of the same material, only thicker, fluffier. Also impossible to describe. But comfortable.

  Everything here was seductively comfortable. A man could get used to this kind of luxury. That was the point.

  None of this made sense. And all of it made sense. Suppose a man from 1900 fell into 1967 —what would we do? Everything possible to put him at ease? Including… protecting him from a world he couldn't understand, couldn't cope with, and probably couldn't survive in.

  Clean sheets and a hot bath and a pretty picture on the wall would look like a luxury hotel.

  Okay, got that. But why? The part that didn't make sense was the explanation that Eakins still hadn't provided. Why pull me off the job? Why pull me out of my time? Why didn't he want me to save those boys?

  And what was that about probation? And bringing me aboard?

  Suddenly realized something—

  Sat up in bed. Startled.

  Couldn't sleep anyway. Too used to having someone next to me —

  "Computer?" I felt silly saying it. But what else should I say?

  Brownie's voice, disembodied. "Yes?"

  "Brownie?"

  "I'm the interface for all personal services. How can I serve you?"

  "Urn. Okay." Still sorting it out. "This wall display—this picture —it isn't just a TV, is it? It's like that big viewscreen on Star Trek, isn't it? Like a computer display?"

  "It's a complete data-appliance. What do you wish to know?"

  "Do you have databanks —like old newspapers? Like a library? Can you show me stuff from history?"

  "I have T9 interconnectivity with all public Internexii levels and multiple private networks as well — "

  "I don't know what that means."

  "It means, what do you wish to know?"

  "The case I was working on. Can you show me that?"

  "I can only show you information more than sixty years old. I am not allowed to show you material that would compromise local circumstances."

  "Urn, okay—that's fine. Do you have the information about the case I was working on when I was pulled out of my time."

  "Yes." The image of the meadow rippled out, the wall became blank. Photographs of the missing boys popped up in two rows, with abbreviated details and dates of disappearances listed beneath each one. Twelve young men. Not Matty. Why not Matty? Because he's irrelevant? Why? Why is he irrelevant?

  "Do you have their high school records or college records?"

  More documents appeared on the screen; the display reformatted itself. "What is it you're looking for?" Brownie asked.

  "Some sense of who they were. A link. A connection. A common condition. I know that all their disappearances are linked to a specific gay teen club, but what if that isn't the real link? What if there's something else? What are their interests? Their skills? What are their IQ's?"

  Brownie hesitated. Why would a computer hesitate? A human being would, but an artificial intelligence shouldn't. Unless it was sentient. Or pretending to be sentient. Or thought it was sentient. Or experiencing the illusion of sentience. Shit, now I was doing it. Brownie was mulling things over.

  "They all have above-average intelligence," he said. "Genius level IQ starts at 131. Your IQ is 137, that's why you were selected. The other young men have IQs ranging from 111 to 143."

  "Thank you! And what else?"

  "Two of them are bisexual, with slight preference toward same-sex relations. Five of them are predominantly homosexual with some heterosexual experimentation. Three of them are exclusively homosexual. Two of them are latently-transgender."

  "Go on?"

  "They share a range of common interests that includes classical music, animation, computer science, science fiction, space travel, fantasy role-playing games, and minor related interests."

  "Tell me the rest."

  "Most of them tend to shyness or bookishness. They're alienated from their peers to some degree, not athletic, not actively engaged in their communities. I believe the operative terms are 'geek' and 'nerd,' but those words might not have been in common usage in your era."

  "Yeah, I get it. Depression? Suicide?"
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  "There are multiple dimensions of evaluation. It's not appropriate to simplify the data. It is fair to say that most of these young men have a component in their personality that others would experience as distance; but it is not a condition of mental instability or depression, no. It is something else."

  "How would you characterize it?"

  "They each have, to some degree or other, an artistic yearning. But the tools don't exist in their time for the realization of their visions. They dream of things they cannot build."

  "All of these boys are like that?"

  "To some degree or other, yes. This one — " A bright outlined appeared around one of the pictures, "—he likes to write. This one, Brad Boyd, has a mechanical aptitude. He likes to tinker with engines. This one loves photography. This one is interested in electronics. They all have potential, they have a wide variety of skills that will grow with development and training."

  "Uh-huh —and what about their families?"

  "Only three of them come from unbroken homes; those three are living alone or with a roommate at the time of their disappearance. Two are estranged from their parents. Two are living with male partners, but the relationships are in disruption. Two live in foster homes. One is in a halfway house for recovering addicts. One is in a commune. The last one is homeless."

  "And college —can they afford it?"

  "Only three of them are attending full time, four are taking part-time classes. The rest are working full time to pay their living expenses."

  "Let's go back to the families. Are they—what's the word? Dysfunctional?"