Asimov's SF, December 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “What about the girl?” she said.

  “Nothing."

  “Tell me. Please."

  “You already think I'm nutty,” he said.

  She did her one-shoulder shrug, but it was the other shoulder.

  “Her name was Lynn,” he said. “She was totally random, nobody I knew or was likely to know. I was walking into a bank in Spokane, and she was walking out. One of those revolving doors. Her face. Oh, man, was she cute—but very sad-looking. And a story begins spinning itself out, something about a divorce, an empty bank account, embarrassment, a brave face, and a fast exit. At which point I tried to take control of the story. I put myself into it, which I think screwed it up. I'm the outsider, right? I don't ever have a story to be in, not with anybody else. Anyway, I followed her down the block and found her crying in front of a Starbuck's. And it was like she was so glad that I stopped and asked if she was all right. I have a kind face, non-threatening? I've heard that before. How far does a so-called kind face get you? It doesn't matter. I'm totally used to being alone, I'm accustomed to the idea. With Lynn I reminded her of her high school crush, the one she always wished had asked her out but never did."

  “That was mean,” Freya said. “Making her believe that."

  His eyes widened innocently. “I didn't intend it to be mean. I just wanted to meet her. I wanted her to like me."

  “Maybe she would have liked you anyway, without you changing all her memories around."

  “I doubt it. People tend to look right though me, Freya. Especially women. Anyway, I bought her a coffee, and we talked. She really was a sweet girl."

  “What about the bank account, why was it empty?"

  “It wasn't."

  “But you said—"

  “That was before. Once I intentionally added myself, the backstory changed, too. She told me she was crying because she was thinking about her best friend, who had told her she had breast cancer. Nothing to do with the bank."

  Freya thought for a minute.

  “What if the empty account story was never real?"

  “It would have been, if I'd left it alone."

  “You're guessing it would have been. But maybe the stories in your head don't become real. Maybe they're just stories in your head. Did she tell you that you reminded her of the high school crush?"

  Neil looked at his coffee mug. “No."

  “See? Maybe she liked you for being you, for bothering to stop and ask if she was all right. For your kind face, even. Is that so outlandish? Maybe you don't have any weird power."

  “You're forgetting something."

  “What?"

  The men's room door opened. Neil tensed, slopping coffee over the rim of his mug, then relaxed when the pony-tailed hippy-looking guy stepped out, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  “What, what is it?” Freya asked.

  Neil slumped, placed his mug on the table. He rubbed his eyes.

  “What you're forgetting is all that stuff I know about you. The cat, Roger, the rough sex, all that."

  Freya blushed. “Maybe—"

  “Maybe what?"

  “I was thinking, maybe it's that you read minds?"

  “I don't read minds.” He looked disgusted “Jesus, that pseudoscience stuff is reaching."

  “It makes more sense than the other thing. There's at least some scientific basis for mind-reading.” (She was remembering an X-Files episode). “What if you read minds without even knowing it? So you think it's a story you're making up, but it's the truth to begin with. What about that?"

  He gave her a weary up-from-under look.

  “Never mind,” Freya said. “What happened with your bank girl?"

  “I told you: Nothing."

  “You didn't go out, or see her again?"

  “No. She wouldn't have wanted to see me again. I just caught her at a vulnerable moment."

  “That's a dumb way to think,” Freya said. “Trust me. You know what your problem is?"

  “Tell me, I think I need to hear it."

  “You're afraid to let anybody know who you really are.” (She was thinking of a Dr. Phil book, but that didn't invalidate the point).

  “Something funny? I don't even know who I am. A long time ago—a long time ago, I think, I started telling stories about myself. Maybe it was because I was always alone, it seemed like, when I was a kid. It wasn't such a happy home, all that crap you might expect. So I'd make stuff up, to escape. And the stuff was in my dreams, too. Maybe mostly in my dreams. You know dreams, there's no bullshit. It's the unconscious, giving up what we think we deserve. But there's something else—and you're really going to think I'm nutty—but I think when I started out I wasn't even human. Because about half the time I don't feel human even now."

  “Neil?"

  “Yeah?"

  “You're nutty."

  He laughed.

  “I told you,” he said. “You should have believed me."

  “How could you not be human? What else is there?"

  “Listen. I travel around a lot. I used to like big cities, because there were so many people, so it seemed like it was less lonely, but it wasn't. I'd hang out in my crappy apartment, go out to coffee shops, the movies, but I was always by myself. All those other people, it got depressing. So then I went the small town route. Like I had this idea it'd be Mayberry, you know, Andy Griffith, all that. But it wasn't. People in those towns are suspicious as hell about outsiders. So I thought about going the Kerouac/ Dharma bum route, but I couldn't get worked up about it. I feel like I'm at the end of my options. I'm tired."

  “How come you get to live in all these different places? What do you do for money?"

  “I'm a writer."

  “Ah."

  “You mean ah-ha. Right? Well, you're wrong. It's natural that I'd be a writer. Like if you have a talent for constructive empathy you might be a counselor, or even a teacher, for instance. I have a talent for making stuff up."

  “Well, Neil."

  “What?"

  “The last time I looked, writers are humans like the rest of us."

  “Most of them are, I guess. Personally I don't get along with the ones I know. They're all kind of weird."

  “Thank goodness you're not."

  “Yeah, thank goodness."

  “So what did you mean by not being human?"

  “You ever see 2001, that Kubrick movie?"

  “Of course."

  “Remember at the end, the Star Child is floating in space above the Earth? That's what I think sometimes.

  “What is what you think sometimes?"

  “That I started out like that, like some kind of Star Child, and I was having a dream and the dream became a planet, and the planet became populated with all these really interesting beings full of possibilities and contradictions, and it looked like so much fun I dropped into the dream myself, but I never really fit. And when I sleep, because I'm so lonely and insane, my unconscious desires to just wreck the whole thing boil up, and we get wars and pestilence and all that. What do you think?"

  “I think you think too much."

  “Jesus, I hate it when people say that. How can anybody think ‘too much'?"

  “Wait a minute. What kind of writer are you?"

  “I suppose if I told you I was a science fiction writer you'd do a double ah-ha."

  “Are you a science fiction writer?"

  “I saw a revival of that movie when I was a little kid,” Neil said, as if she'd asked him a different question. “My mom dropped me off, by myself. I think because the movie was so long. Like to get rid of me for a while? Well, who can blame her."

  “Was your father around?"

  Neil didn't answer. He looked at the men's room door and chewed his lip.

  “What is it with the bathroom?” Freya said.

  “That genie-looking son of a bitch."

  “What about him?"

  “On the bus I was afraid I'd dream something bad if I fell asleep, something I was afraid of but wanted ve
ry much. And I think I did that. All I know is, I mean I wanted to die. Freya, I wanted to die. I was tired of everybody else's life and not having one of my own, my true one. Never knowing who I was supposed to be, never having a companion. I had even started resenting other people's lives, hating them. Why should I go on living, why should anybody else get to? You know the drill. That kind of solipsistic crap they find in somebody's note after the latest massacre. I mean that isn't what I wanted, but it might be what my secret warped unconscious heart wanted. And that guy, that genie guy, I think he's going to give me my wish, my secret desire. Because he's at the end of his rope, too, and he's ready to go off. He's ready to go off like a stick of dynamite. You better get out of here, Freya. Right now."

  The men's room door banged open, and the bald man appeared.

  Freya grabbed Neil's hand, and he squeezed it hard enough to grind the bones.

  The bald man walked by their table, looking glum, and resumed his seat at the counter. A few minutes later the driver announced it was time to board.

  Freya swallowed. “Maybe your warped unconscious heart dreamed up some other secret desire you're afraid of,” she said.

  He stared at her.

  * * * *

  On the Greyhound traveling southwest through the desert, Freya said:

  “What are you going to do when we get to Phoenix?"

  “I don't know. Get back on the bus? I don't really like hot weather that much."

  “Why don't you hang around a while? It's a dry heat, you know."

  “So I've heard."

  “Neil?"

  “Hmm?"

  “How did you really know all those things about me and Roger?"

  “I hypnotized you."

  “That's what I thought."

  “Really?"

  “No. I'm going with the mind-reading idea."

  They sat quietly for a while, which was easy and comfortable. Freya got her book out but didn't open it. She tapped the cover.

  “To think,” she said, “I used to like this crap."

  “Shocking."

  “I mean before I transformed into the Freya from a parallel dimension with better taste. Thanks, by the way. ‘Fear and desire,’ she quoted, reading the dust jacket copy.

  “Who needs it?” Neil said.

  “Right."

  She dropped the book on the floor and nudged it under the seat with her foot.

  “I'll leave it for the next passenger."

  They rode along, and after a while Neil closed his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. Not like in the diner, when he thought a homicidal maniac, a monster from his id, was going to come out of the men's room with guns blazing.

  “The fear part, anyway,” he said.

  “What?"

  “Who needs it,” he said.

  Copyright (c) Jack Skillingstead

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: THE RULES

  by Nancy Kress

  The author's forthcoming books include an SF novel from Tor, Steal Across the Sky; a bio-thriller, Dogs, from Tachyon Publications; and a collection Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories, from Golden Gryphon Press. In her latest tale for Asimov's, Nancy takes a grim look at what it takes to follow...

  Carmody surveyed the house clinging to the side of a steep hill and surrounded by three hundred acres of the haunting gold-green of a New England spring. A modest enough house, considering the owner. Vaguely rustic but not pushing the point. The weather vane on the top was a nice satiric touch. Which way is the wind blowing for you now, you old reprobate?

  He walked the last of the driveway by himself, over the strenuous objections of his bodyguard. By the time he reached the portico, all of his electronics had ceased working. The door opened before he could push the bell. Somehow, Carmody wasn't surprised to see Tartell himself on the other side.

  Tartell sat in an elaborate powerchair with neck braces. In his wasted hands trembled the house remote. The second Carmody stepped inside, saw the layout, and smelled the air, he realized his mistake. This wasn't a rustic home, no matter what it looked like from the outside. Nor was it the secret command headquarters he'd expected. This was a hospital, and Tartell was finally dying.

  “Hello, Arthur,” Tartell said. “I've been expecting you."

  * * * *

  It had begun five days earlier, on Monday evening. In Cleveland, Ohio, Ron DiSarto finished his dinner of Soy Surprise, kissed his wife on the top of her head as she fed the baby in the bunny-patterned high chair, and went through to the living room.

  “This is NBC News live from New York, with Tanya Jones—” Tanya Jones, smiling professionally, vanished.

  “What the...” DiSarto said. For a long moment his TV filled with snow. Then a picture burst into view, a village of wood-and-mud huts in a bare, sere landscape. A voice-over said urgently, “This is Nakmu, in Kenya, and this is Saya.” Close-up of a one-armed child with a heartbreaking smile. “Saya was mutilated by the band of robbers who burned down her hut and killed her parents."

  DiSarto frowned. Okay, it was a human interest story, or maybe a commercial for one of those do-good outfits like Amnesty International. He called, “Brenda, bring me a beer, honey, will ya?"

  The commercial said, “Saya's life was saved by a donation from Mr. and Mrs. James Sellers of Atlanta, Georgia, and a prosthetic arm is being paid for by Ms. Cassie DuForte of New York City."

  DiSarto sighed and reached for the remote to change the channel. He wanted real news. Although, come to think of it, it was a bit odd that individual people were being mentioned like that on—

  The exact same program was on ABC and CBS.

  “Brenda!” DiSarto called but she was already beside him, juggling the baby and the beer.

  “Don't yell, I'm right here."

  “Look at this! It's on all three networks, exactly the same!"

  “—medical clinic run by the Sisters of Charity Mission.” Shots of children huddled two and three to a bed, of empty supply shelves. “—three hundred doses of penicillin, paid for by Mr. Carl Venters of London, England. Saya—"

  “And it's not ending!” DiSarto said. “This is no commercial. Do you think somebody is actually fucking with the airwaves?"

  “—new dress, her only one, paid for by—"

  “The FCC must be having a cow!"

  “That poor little girl,” Brenda said, patting the baby on the back. “God, she's cute. Ronnie, we could afford the cost of a second dress for her. How much could a dress cost?"

  * * * *

  In the WRKC control booth, an NBC affiliate in Tampa, Florida, technicians worked frantically at their stations. “I can't override it!"

  “What do you mean ‘can't'? Get that damn thing off the air and Tanya Jones back on!” The chief engineer pushed the tech aside. The signal was coming in from the outside and somehow it had seized, or replaced, WRKC's frequency. How the hell could anything...?

  The engineer tried everything he knew, including cutting off the live feed from New York and substituting an old episode of Gilligan's Island. Nothing worked. Saya and the African village and the Sisters of Charity played for twenty minutes, ending with a title screen:

  COMPASSION CHANNEL

  SEND DONATIONS DIRECTLY TO

  SISTERS OF CHARITY MEDICAL CLINIC

  ALL CURRENCIES WELCOME!

  YOU WILL BE TOLD EXACTLY WHAT YOUR HELP PURCHASES!

  With an address in Kenya.

  The title screen stayed on for fifteen seconds.

  “Chief, we got New York on the phone!"

  Thirty seconds.

  “They say other affiliates got the same signal!"

  Forty-five seconds.

  “Not just in the East, either—maybe every station in the country!"

  Sixty full seconds, an eternity in television. Of an unauthorized still shot! On his station!

  No technology could do that. The chief engineer stared blankly at the Mission address. />
  * * * *

  “We know the signal comes through Chinese satellites,” Carmody said, “and of course with the political situation the way it is, we can't touch them."

  “Really?” Tartell said. “Coffee, Arthur?"

  “Yes, please.” Carmody was curious to see who would serve. It was a young Hispanic girl that he recognized from StarCorps’ extensive surveillance: Juanita Perez. Legal Mexican immigrant, minimal English, IQ of about ninety. The coffee was excellent.

  “I regret I can't join you,” Tartell said. “Medical restrictions."

  “You must have given the Chinese an enormous chunk of change."

  Tartell merely smiled.

  “Total override of all news shows for twenty minutes for the last five nights, right up until it was time for sports and weather. Which genius at which of your subsidiary companies developed the software, Glenn?"

  Another smile.

  “Oh, for God's sake,” Carmody snapped, “We know your tech can prevent or erase any recording inside this house. How stupid do you think I am?"

  “Pretty stupid,” Tartell said, “but not about technology."

  Carmody held up five fingers. “Kenya. Morocco. Argentina. Uzbekistan. Myanmar. One per night, each focused on a particular dirt-poor village, a particular child, and a charitable organization absolutely above suspicion. Superb production values, great story-telling. Hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring in, and you now have 88 percent of Americans watching your illegal broadcasts, breathless to see if the FCC can stop you."

  Tartell had a sudden breathing fit. His head jerked within the powerchair braces and his face turned ashy blue. Carmody stood and Juanita rushed in, but by the time she got to Tartell, his chair had snaked a gas mask up over the old man's face. Tartell breathed deeply and the gasping subsided.

  “Sorry,” Tartell wheezed.

  Carmody sat down again, leaning forward in his seat. Tartell's dying was not going to deter anything. “Glenn—what the hell are you really after?"

  * * * *

  Sister Héléne-Marie sank to her arthritic knees before the statue of Notre Mére Bénie in the dim, mud-walled chapel. Enfin, it was a miracle! Clothes for the children, drugs for the clinic, a computer with a satellite uplink to get real answers from real doctors! Never had she dared pray for such riches. When she thought of the lives this could save, tears came to her old eyes. And the food pouring in—not soysynth but real food, such as Sister Héléne-Marie had not tasted in years and the poor villagers, never.