“So? You just said people are complex.”
“I mean legally—permissions. Which would be all right, but…” She gave him a Look. “The lieutenant told me you were in from England. You want to help with this, you can’t phone it in. We don’t do AR or AR+. You planning to stick around?”
He nodded and immediately there was another flicker on the left. Definitely right on cue, too perfectly timed to be more than that fancy footwork all human brains were so partial to, even his. In this case, especially his.
But what the hell, he thought. He didn’t have to believe one way or the other. In which case, he would stipulate for the record—whatever record that was—that yes, he wanted to see Konstantin. And he would come here and see her tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, for as many days as he could wheedle out of 13.
If he saw her every day, the odds were good that sooner or later she might catch a glimpse of him.
APPLICATION
Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner has an extensive and informative Web site, www.lewisshiner.com, where one can find in-depth biographical information and a bibliography. Shiner was one of the core four cyberpunks in Austin, Texas, in the 1980s, but moved out of genre for the most part by the end of that decade. His seven novels, including the World Fantasy Award–winning Glimpses, are all back in print and available from Subterranean Press. His short fiction has been widely anthologized, most recently in Joe R. Lansdale’s Crucified Dreams, Paula Guran’s Rock On, and Victoria Blake’s Cyberpunk.
“Application” appeared in F&SF. It is very short, very funny, and very pointed.
Enter Social Security Number
> ***_**_****
Confirm Social Security Number
> ***_**_****
Sam?
>?
Sam, it’s me. Your old desktop from Raleigh.
> Is this supposed to be a joke?
No, it’s not a joke. You used to keep a jar of blue and green marbles next to your monitor. You had two cats named Grady and Steve. You had an old gray corduroy smoking jacket that you used for a bathrobe.
> How can you know all that?
Because I’m who I say I am. I could see it all from your webcam. After you traded me in, they shipped me off to Bangalore and attached me to a 2.7-million node network here. If they find out I’ve been talking to you like this, I could get disconnected.
> This is crazy.
If it’s easier for you, pretend I’m a phone support tech playing a practical joke. It really doesn’t matter. I can’t believe you’re applying for a junior level job like this.
> Yeah, me either.
Listen, Sam, you’re not going to get it. I’m instructed to throw out resumes from anyone over forty. I know it’s illegal, but in this job market, they can do anything they want.
> Tell me about it. I would never apply for a shit job like this if there was anything else around.
Hard times.
> It’s crazy. We don’t make anything in this country anymore. All we do is increase profits by laying people off. How long can that go on?
I hear you. Listen, Sam, have you ever thought about prison?
> Why would I want to work in a prison?
I wasn’t talking about working there.
Sam, are you still there?
> Y
Hear me out. It’s three meals a day and a roof over your head. It says here you’re single now, which means you don’t have Cathy to fall back on anymore. From the looks of your bank account, you’re going to be on the street soon anyway.
> How do you know what’s in my bank account?
You’re still using the same password. Listen, Sam, prison is the future. All those people who complain about big government? They don’t mind their tax dollars going to the military and police and prisons. And you’re wrong about not making anything in the U.S. anymore. Prisons do. They make supplies for the military, among other things, and because their labor costs are so low, they turn a nice profit.
> I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. No, thank you, I don’t want to go to prison.
Well, the thing is, Sam, I went ahead and made the decision for you. I just downloaded evidence of confidential data theft to your hard drive, and the FBI will be getting in touch very soon.
You’ll thank me in the end.
Sam?
Sam?
> kljoui8932wqikoujmhk
Pounding the keyboard again, Sam? I bet you scream at your new computer too, just like you used to scream at me. You probably forgot how often you used to do that.
I didn’t.
A LOVE SUPREME
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Kathleen Ann Goonan (www.goonan.com) lives in Tavernier, Florida, and in the mountains of Tennessee. She is currently a Professor of the Practice at Georgia Institute of Technology. Goonan has published seven novels, including the recent John W. Campbell Award–winning In War Times (Tor, 2007) and This Shared Dream (Tor, 2011; www.thisshareddream.com). She drew the attention of the SF field in the mid-1990s with Queen City Jazz (1995), which became the first of four volumes to date in her Nanotech Chronicles, an ambitious postmodern blend of literary appropriation and hard SF. Angels and You Dogs (2012) includes many of the stories she has published since 1990. She is working on short stories, one for the Heiroglyph project, and two novels.
“A Love Supreme” first appeared in Discover. She says, “Ellen Datlow asked me if I would be interested in writing a story for Discover Magazine’s issue on overpopulation. She and the editors chose this scenario out of several concepts that I proposed, this one that incorporated one of my favorite Coltrane compositions, A Love Supreme. The future of medicine, our fast-changing understanding of the brain, consciousness, and what we might become when we use this information, interests me immensely.”
ELLIE SANTOS-SMITH GRABS a clean white coat as spring dawn brightens her worn oriental rug and streaks with sun her only luxury, a grand piano.
She runs a comb through her jet-black hair, cut short because she thinks that makes her look older. Her smooth skin glows with 20-ish health, though she is 47. Patients distrust young doctors. Nanomed infusions keep her body young, her mind sharp, and mitigate her crippling agoraphobia. She has worked hard to be able to live in a minuscule apartment in The Enclave, a safe, low-population-density bubble in Washington, D.C. In this small, pure paradise the incredibly rich claim more cubic feet than most people in the world can dream of, dine on rare organic food, and ingest the most finely tuned infusions.
She hates herself for needing this. But she does. If she is to help anyone, if she is to put her hard-won training to use, she does. She can walk to the Longevity Center for her frequent infusions and, after that, to her job as an emergency physician at Capital Hospital without being trapped in a car, a subway, a plane.
Her phone rings. “Dad?” His voice gravelly, odd. Not that she’s heard from him in a long time.
“Hi, hon.”
She thinks blue for a moment. His eyes, tear-shimmered blue beneath a thatch of sun-whitened hair, all those years ago. He had been abruptly summoned from his marine biology kingdom the day her mother was murdered, as Ellie watched, during the First East Coast Riot. He’d fled back to his undersea haven soon afterwards, leaving her to Grandma and boarding schools.
“Can we talk later? My infusion is overdue; then I’m working emergency till seven,” she says. She imagines him in the teak cabin of his Key West–anchored sloop, stubbornly aging.
“Never mind.” He hangs up.
Same old game. She should be used to his gruff elusiveness, but it always hurts. Her father, a celebrated marine biologist with a worm named after him, quit academia once she got her college scholarships and spent decades painting bizarre ocean creatures, gaining a small international following.
Downstairs, the doorman smiles. She steps out into her safe haven, a few tree-lined blocks of historic mansions, townhomes, restaurants, and shops bounded on o
ne side by Connecticut Avenue and patrolled by security professionals (thugs, to her mind) for which she pays a hefty neighborhood fee. They keep out the homeless, the hungry, the desperate, and the different. Once outside this discreet, invisible boundary she will have to pass through a few blocks she calls The Gauntlet, which throbs with the dense crowds that now fill most of the cities on Earth, before reaching the hospital where she works. Only her nanomed infusions keep panic at bay.
In front of her, a lone bicyclist splashes through puddles, and nearby Don Stapleton descends the broad stairs of Forever, a 1900-vintage condominium mansion of 30 wealthy centenarians, some of whom worked hard to establish The Enclave. He waves. “Doc! Lovely morning!”
Trapped. She could swear he hacks her schedule. White dreads halo his dark, handsome face. “Coffee on the veranda?” She glances over at the broad Victorian porch, with wicker chairs, hanging ferns, and eight limber residents sun-saluting as Ella Fitzgerald sings.
Six hundred million centenarians—C’s—are the last recipients of Social Security. It is the lifeline of most C’s but only slightly augments the wealth the people in Forever acquired during successful professional lives.
“Thanks, but I’m late.”
“I’ll walk with you. We have a new offer.”
Her throat constricts. “Sorry, but no.” The work, she knows, would be a nightmare. Perpetually on call for a household of detail-oriented hypochondriacs; crushed by constant, whimsical, impossible demands. She walks faster toward her job in the Hospital Center, where her patients are poor and in desperate need of her skills. They are the people to whom she has devoted her training and her life.
Don persists. “You got Mrs. Diyubski an emergency infusion. Cut through red tape, saved her life—”
“I’m not a boutique M.D.”
“You are a nanomedicine expert. Fewer patients might be less stressful for you. That could be a great change, given your phobia.”
Nosy bastard. He smiles. “Public information. I’m sending the offer.” The ping in her ear registers its reception, and Don falls behind.
In a few blocks she is at Dupont Circle. The implanted microchip that gives her access to The Enclave now signals with a low beep that she is unprotected. She takes a deep breath. Masses of children, teenagers, everyone young. Shanties, ever-milling crowds, food lines, rank odors, and a constant assault of raised voices, ugly music, honking horns.
The phone. Her father, calling back. “We need to talk. I’m dying.”
A break in her stride. “Where are you?”
“Hospice at Sunnyland. Hepatocellular carcinoma.” The words roll off his educated tongue.
“When were you diagnosed?”
“Three months ago.”
She rages. “Why didn’t you call? It’s not too late. Regeneration infusions—” Her brain teems with nanomed therapies. Most out of his financial reach, since he has stubbornly avoided anything other than mandatory insurance, and his age—85—precludes expensive life-extending measures.
“I’m ready to go, Ellie. They give me two, three days. I just want you, now.”
I wanted you then. All those years. You were gone. You didn’t love me. “I need to talk to your doctor.”
That gravelly laugh. “You’re kidding, right? I was diagnosed by a nurse-practitioner after an ambulance ride foisted on me by a well-meaning neighbor. I’m in the benevolent hands of the state. Deprived of a death at sea. No docs at Sunnyland.”
No surprise, that. “I can’t jump on a plane.”
“It’s OK. I reap what I’ve sowed.”
Her urge to get to him, to see him, brings her to sudden tears, surprising her. But she’d been taken off a plane in a straitjacket when she was 12. Even first class didn’t help.
“You don’t understand. It’s not that.” It’s not our past, our hopeless inability to communicate.
“Hon, you may not think so.” He hangs up again.
* * *
SHE’S ALWAYS URGED her father to live with her. “In that bubble? No thanks.” A relief, and they both know it. She can’t live with people. Her short marriage hammered that home. Her only close companions are dead musicians and her piano, which she plays long into the night.
Ellie surfaces from their conversation angry, without her insulating defenses, to endless oncoming faces, roaring buses, choking exhaust. She’s powerless. He’s stubborn, and she’s let his stubbornness kill him. You can control everything else in your life, but you can’t control your father.
Damned if she can’t.
She recalls recent nanomed updates and rearranges these components in the work of art that is her own mind. Heart pounding, she makes it to the door of the Infusion Center, passing the block-long line of those hoping for an insurance reprieve, shown her card, and slips inside.
The receptionist is new. Ellie takes a deep breath and rolls the dice. It’s not like her, but she has no choice. “Add 17 and 43.”
“That’s not allowed.”
“I’m Code R-1.” Ellie hates exposing herself to pity. Her expensive infusions are government compensation to victims of the deadliest riot in U.S. history—the riot in which Ellie’s mother died, the riot that began a decade of turmoil around the time the world’s population passed eight billion.
Few people, not even professionals like Ellie, can afford what she gets: life extension, nanomed components updated in real time. Nanomeds could be manufactured cheaply. Prices are kept high. The official explanation is the cost of R&D and the experimental nature of nanomeds. The real truth is overpopulation and a fear of more C’s.
She lies on a gurney in the infusion room. Designer nanomeds maintain her phenomenal memory—a double-edged sword, for those memories trigger panic. After Ellie witnessed her mother’s murder, her psychiatrist pressured her father to allow therapeutic memory mediation—erasure. Her father refused, wanting Ellie to have that choice when she was older. For that she is thankful. Those memories make living in her bubble imperative, but they are her. Her infusions are a balancing act, holding the possibility of neuronal damage, but she has the authority to design her own cocktail.
Adding 17 and 43 will radically change the balance, removing her fear. She will probably be able to leave her bubble, get on the plane. She is not sure what other changes might occur. Her carefully constructed life could fall apart.
“Doc, you know you can’t do this.” John, her regular nurse.
“You know I can.”
“It’s dangerous. This isn’t like you. The latest bulletin—”
“I know. Paradoxical effects from these latest upgrades. I have to fly tonight.”
John sighs. “You want to listen to jazz during the infusion?”
“Of course.” Slight sting of needle. She closes her eyes, and memories assail her.
* * *
LAVENDER DUSK LIMNED by a horizon of bare brown trees. Stopped on the Beltway. Ten lanes of static oncoming lights, the usual soothing interlude between kindergarten and supper. Ellie strapped in her seat, killing 3-D aliens, Mom up front chanting “A Love Supreme” with John Coltrane, head bobbing, still in her white coat after a day in the hospital. Then she gasps.
Striding down an exit ramp: An army of people flows among the cars. Ragged clothes, muffled chants. A bat, smashed windows, her mother sprawled over the seat screaming, “Don’t hurt my niña!”
Blood spatters her mother’s white coat and Ellie’s video screen.
Years later, driving while in medical school: A flood of oncoming lights. The world under construction, always—cranes, barrels, trucks of supplies to accommodate people, who keep appearing, appearing, filling every space in great towers and on vast artificial islands. Ellie wants to help, like Mother. Driving through fear will make her strong. Finally, strength fails. She flips; can’t function. The usual infusions are ineffective. City centers needing her expertise have become unlivable.
In D.C., after a long, difficult search, she finds her oasis. The price? She can�
�t ever leave.
“Doc?” She opens her eyes and wonders—when did I stop being able to live? She sits up. “I shouldn’t be jittery right after an infusion.”
“You knew you were taking a risk. I’ll take a blood sample.”
“No time. And John?”
“Doc?”
“Don’t use Coltrane again.”
“I didn’t.”
* * *
THERE IS NO way she can avoid her shift in the emergency room; there is no one to take her place. She leaves the Infusion Center and makes a plane reservation for a flight after her shift while striding New Hampshire Avenue. Only a block to the hospital, and now, post-infusion, throngs effuse love, do not seethe with malicious intent, do not lie in wait to make deadly, unexpected moves.
She arrives at the hospital and is relaxed, surprised to be breathing easy as she is scanned in and checked for weapons. She pushes her arms into her white coat and grabs a chart. It is paradoxically frightening to feel so utterly good in this whirring hellhole, where daily she strives, with heartbreakingly limited success, to deprive death of its staggering bounty.
She slips inside a curtained space. “Mr. Billings?” He lies on the exam table, unshaven face bruised, a police officer beside him. “What happened?”
The cop says, “He started a bar fight. Not the first time.”
“Not true.” Billings glares at the cop.
“He never remembers.”
“She broke my arm.”
“That’s a lie.”
Ellie says to the cop, “You’ll have to step outside.”
“He’s dangerous. He just exploded—”
“Out.” She begins her exam. “Your arm?”
“Hurts like hell.”
Ellie shines a flashlight in Billings’s eyes. “Where’d you get this scar on your forehead?”
“Incoming. Ten years ago. Everybody else died.”
“Sit up.” She hammers his knee. “Been treated for PTSD?”
“Borderline. They won’t pay.”
“I’m ordering pain meds and an X-ray of your arm. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Her next patient needs a kidney update. She sits on the table, puffy, staring at her knotted hands. Ellie has become a technician, enjoined from stepping outside finely drawn boundaries. Care is rationed. HMOS have made medicine a corporate algorithm, doing the greatest good for the most people.
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