by Zion's Fiction- A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature (retail) (epub)
“But information travels at the speed of light.” I folded my hands on my chest. “Your instructions could have spread out for two hundred light-years at the most.”
Nuphar mimicked me, crossing her hands over her chest. “Our instructions were warped by the field, and the fields are in synch everywhere, everywhen.”
There was silence in the room. I heard the sharp, rugged breathing of the crowned woman. A roomful of people, all of whom comprehended this faster than I did.
“Once the Founding Fathers set up the original field, it warped space. Not just time.” Nuphar lowered her voice, as the room was completely quiet now. “I am so sorry.” She sniveled. “But what happened was that areas of space became warped all across the Universe, broadcasting our instructions further and further.”
“And they are coming here looking for more know-how?” I closed my eyes. More and more invasions? Forever?
“Just a moment!” Shir snapped his fingers. “If all fields are in synch….”
Nuphar nodded. “Destroying any one of them will suffice to destroy them all.”
“But we keep destroying them!” I nearly shouted.
Nuphar shook her head. “We are still here.” She moved a tuft of hair behind her ears. “So long as the original field is here, those fields can’t be destroyed.”
I was trembling.
Nuphar addressed the crowd. “Those aliens won’t stop, for as long as their warp fields work. They won’t stop trying to get the know-how we have here. We know how science can be used for destruction. It is our duty to make sure this won’t happen ever again.”
People were wiping their eyes. The crowned one buried her face in her hands. Nuphar looked at us. “Does Earth have the resources to support two thousand four hundred thirty-five human beings?”
We nodded as one.
Nuphar nodded in reply. She turned to address the crowd again. “I propose a declaration: Mission accomplished, immediate evacuation.” She fell quiet then.
There was a moment of alarming silence, then the white-robed man stood up. He said nothing. He just stood there, looking at Nuphar. The woman beside him stood up, and two children, too. One minute later the entire bloc they were with stood up, then the rest of the room.
Shir and I exchanged looks. He turned to Nuphar. “I don’t understand,” he said.
Nuphar came down from her desk and approached us. “Our Mission was to document human civilization, as much of it as possible.” She shrugged. “We’re the only humans left. The Library’s work is done.” She laid both her hands on Shir’s shoulders. “Thank you.”
She looked at me and said, “The original field surrounds the entire Library. Destroying it means destroying the Library.”
I was trembling. Again.
Nuphar smiled at me. “Not to worry, we too have backups. Everything is either scanned or hologrammed. We shall lose the original stuff, but paper, that’s a stupid way of saving information anyway.” She moved her eyes to Shir. “Perhaps we shall build a new Library outside?”
Shir smiled and nodded. As did I.
Emerging from the vestibule, we found the night as we’d left it. The soldiers were frozen in the same positions they were in when we’d entered the sphere. I sent out a stand-down order, and they shouldered their guns. I went to their leader. “We need an evacuation, but there will be no use of the Web. Your trucks still here?”
He nodded.
“Summon them.”
He frowned.
“Now,” I said, louder.
He saluted, and sent some troopers to bring in the trucks.
Shir entered the sphere and returned almost immediately, but the stubs on his chin were half a centimeter longer. “At long last, they’re ready.”
I came closer. “How much time passed inside?” I asked quietly.
Shir shook his head. “Don’t ask.”
I smiled. He smiled in reply. Things will be alright now. I knew they will. There will be Humans again on Earth, and this time we’ll be able to protect them as should be. We’ll destroy the Library’s field and use their know-how to improve our offensive tactics. For the first time since the original activation of my first backup, I felt the sensation Romi defined as “relief.” Shir had an identical smile on his lips.
People started coming out of the sphere. I saw the soldiers tense, but then their faces were flooded with emotions. One of them cried openly. The librarians came out with suitcases, backpacks, wheelbarrows, large spheres floating above them, jars on their heads. The soldiers escorted them to the trucks. I made sure no transmissions came out. We didn’t know for certain whether the Superiors were listening, but we didn’t want to take any chances.
There were more people than trucks. Some soldiers went out to get extra bubbles. Nuphar came out last; her cheeks were smeared with tears.
Shir approached her first. “You forgot your gear,” he said.
She shrugged, and wiped her nose.
I joined them. “Do you need any help?”
Nuphar snuffed again. “We have a problem,” she whispered. She cleared her throat and repeated, quietly, “We have a problem.”
I straightened my back.
“We have no explosives.” Nuphar wiped her eyes. “I thought we had, but when I came to the room where they were stored, I saw that they were not kept properly, and now they are useless.” She looked straight at me. “We have no way to destroy the fields.” She bit her lip and added, “The Library … is very large. It seems that you two won’t be enough.”
Shir patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Nuphar, we’ve done this any number of times.” He grinned. “We are Earth’s greatest experts on field demolition.”
Tension drained out of her shoulders all at once. “I didn’t know how to ask,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. “This is our destiny.” I laid a hand on her shoulder and tried to mimic the way she’d said it earlier, “Not to worry, we have backups.”
Nuphar smiled. “So … this is not a suicide mission?”
Shir pointed at his chest. “Human tissue and a mechanical body, that’s a stupid way of storing consciousness anyway.”
Nuphar let out a giggle. She handed me a chip. “This is the floor plan for the entire Library. To make sure you hit the right places.”
I accepted the chip. “You’d better go get your things. We’ll do it as soon as you come out.”
She nodded and went back to the vestibule.
I downloaded the data. Nuphar came back, wearing new clothes, with a bluish robe on her shoulders and a hat made out of some thin metallic stuff on her head, holding a three-legged suitcase and a floating balloon. “I’m ready,” she said.
I ran the data. The Library was humongous—bigger than any field we’ve ever tried to destroy. There must have been a solution hidden in there, but it eluded me. I stretched my hand to Shir. “I need help with the calculations.” I didn’t want to broadcast the pattern to him.
He raised his eyebrows, but then laid his hand on mine. We interfaced. He repeated my calculations. When the results came in, he clenched his fist and looked straight at me. He nodded. A small nod, imperceptible to others.
“What’s going on?” Nuphar moved her eyes between us.
I cleared my throat. “We need some help.”
“Sure. Whatever you’ll ask for.” Nuphar patted her hat.
“Not from you,” I said, trying not to sound disdainful. “From a few more of our backups.”
Nuphar raised her eyes to Shir. “Is the Library too large for the two of you?” she asked.
Shir raised one hand. “It’s okay, we can handle this. Not to worry,” he smiled. I sent out a short burst of information to my backups. Enough to wake them up, not enough to arouse suspicion, if the Superiors happened to be listening. I knew Shir was doing the same.
“You can get on one of these trucks.” Shir pointed at Nuphar’s suitcase. “Need help?”
Nuphar shook her head. “I’ll wait her
e. I know your backups will be the same as you two, but I want to see you off on your last journey.” She let out a small giggle. “Sounds awfully dramatic. How does it go, your phrase?”
“We shall never stop, we shall never cease, we shall never desist,” we said together, quietly.
Nuphar nodded and laid a hand on her suitcase, which stood there beside her. “It’s a good phrase.”
She waited, but we didn’t reply, and she turned her glance to the trucks.
I felt the quiver of my consciousness waking up in a darkened room. I remembered this sensation from the earlier times I’ve woken up there, although it was always accompanied, those times, by crushing pain and then nothingness. Beside me, Shir stopped breathing.
I close my eyes against the vertigo I felt as my backups woke up one by one. I looked through the eyes of one of me, to the right-hand side. The backup to my right looked back at me. I blinked once. I blinked back. I felt myself awakening all along the line, more and more, glancing right and left, but instead of seeing empty pods on my left-hand side I saw more copies of me, all waking up, blinking, looking from side to side, in a growing whirlpool of sensations. I waited until the last one of me looked to my right. On my right-hand side there was just the wall. All of me looked straight ahead, at Shir’s replicates.
My nerve center couldn’t handle that much data. I had to shut down unnecessary, memory-consuming activities. The line of Shirs woke up. My pod opened and I stepped forward, the first thud on the ground repeated by all my extant replicates.
The entire line of Shirs stepped out of their pods, too.
“It’s the first time I know how many of me there are,” we said in unison. “I’m glad you reached the same conclusion as mine.”
Shir Prime nodded, a uniform wave repeated along the line. “I was afraid we should wake up alone one day.”
In the dark square I reopened my eyes. “Come along.” I looked at the single Shir standing beside me.
“We’re coming.” He looked at me, expressionless. We invested too much of our processing capacity in the effort to keep all our bodies in synchronized motion. Nothing was left for routine maintenance activities.
I shut my eyes again to block unnecessary input. Got my backups out of our room and marched us up the stairs, into the cold air. Shir got his backups out, stepping beside me. We were twenty kilometers away from the sphere. We didn’t speak, didn’t send out needless messages. Ran along at a uniform pace, keeping quiet. My feet were injured by stones. I blocked out the sensation of pain. Shir ran beside me, keeping up.
Dawn came, and the world grew gray.
We arrived, together. I saw myself standing, eyes closed, beside an empty sphere. Textureless, colorless. A hole in the middle of existence. Beside me was Shir, his eyes closed too. Nuphar looked at me. Her face grew red.
“You are naked,” she said to the version of me standing beside her. My facial-expression-reading subroutine wasn’t working.
The I by the sphere opened my eyes, and control reverted to me.
“I know.” I straightened my uniform, a tweed jacket and a hijab. The line of my backups stood in front of me. “Enter,” I ordered. Shir opened his eyes, and his backups marched forward.
We sent each one of the backups the locations assigned to them. They moved into the sphere.
“How can you tell they’d found the right places?”
I looked at Nuphar, and all my backups still outside looked at her with me. “This is our Destiny,” we said, and kept on marching.
One of my backups saw how shaken Nuphar was. Another one noticed how she turned her eyes away. I didn’t bother to catalog those facts.
Nuphar kept silent, but she did turn to Shir after nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds: “How many backups do you have here?”
“Enough,” said all Shir backups as one.
She turned to me. “Are you sure you can hit everything?”
“Yes, we worked out our optimum dispersal.” I concentrated on assigning my backups to the appropriate locations. Some of me noticed that the bubble trucks started leaving the square. As more backups were swallowed by the sphere, my processing capacity increased.
After the last backup had entered the sphere behind me, I was able to assemble a full answer: “We’ve computed the necessary force, and we are sure we’ll be able to destroy the entire field.”
We turned our backs on her and moved into the sphere. We didn’t have communication inside, but I knew my backups were in place. There were red footprints on the floor wherever we went. The old man’s hologram stood frozen, pointing at the nonexistent stairway behind it.
“I’ve sent instructions in case we won’t succeed,” Shir broke the silence.
“Won’t succeed?” Nuphar had reentered the sphere, and now was looking around. “Is there a chance you won’t succeed?”
I hadn’t expected her to reenter. We had to get her out. My subroutine determined that Humans need to be calmed down in order to let us do our work properly. I shook my head. “Shir always worries too much,” I said, smiling at Nuphar.
“A lot of your backups went in.” Nuphar removed her flashy hat. “I came in to ask how many backups are left.”
I didn’t answer her. She turned to Shir. “How many backups of yours are left?” She raised her voice.
Shir looked at me.
Nuphar stamped her foot on the floor. “Answer me, you robots, how many backups of yours there are?”
“None,” Shir replied quietly. “We are the last ones.”
Nuphar straightened up. “Then call in someone else from your unit. I won’t allow you to destroy yourselves.” She waved her finger at me.
Shir smiled at her, looking more Human than ever, as far as I recalled. “We’re already inside. There’s no communication with the outside.”
“Then get out.” Nuphar waved her hand at the wall behind her. “Call somebody else. Do something.”
Shir just stood there, his hands down the sides of his body. “The Silence Unit was created after the first Superiors’ spaceship had swallowed everyone Romi and Shir knew. Everyone sent out to communicate with them and offer an exchange of information. They’d built us in order to save the rest of Humankind.”
“You’ve already told me all this.” Nuphar squeezed her hat, looking directly at me. “You have a partner. You can’t leave it alone.”
I held her shoulders. “We’ve been repulsing invasions for one hundred and ninety years. We’ve died and been reconstructed again and again for one hundred and ninety years. We’re tired.” I softened my voice. “There are other members of our unit; they’ll protect you. They have all our knowledge but none of the memories of pain.”
Shir came closer, looking into her eyes. “Please. This is our chance.”
He waited, but Nuphar never answered. She wiped her eyes and nodded. Shir leaned forward and hugged her. Nuphar’s shoulders were trembling. He stepped back. Tears ran down Nuphar’s cheeks. She turned to me. I hugged her too, allowing her to rest her head on my shoulder.
When I loosed my hug she wiped her eyes again. “I’ll never forget you.” She moved her hair back. “I’ll document everything.”
Shir smiles. “The Ninth Library of Alexandria. Established 15,534, in existence for four and a half seconds now.”
Nuphar nodded, turned back and moved away from us, out of the sphere.
We breathed in. We breathed out.
Shir smiled.
There was pain, and then there was nothingness.
The Perfect Girl
Guy Hasson
The bus is full, but when it stops at the Indianapolis Academy only I get off.
I’m sweating in my bra, and it’s not even hot. My panties are too tight in one place and too baggy in another. My dress is too conservative. They’re going to know.
I watch until the bus disappears behind a turn and a hill. I wait a couple more seconds, take a deep breath, and turn around.
It’s like there’s a
huge gate in the middle of nowhere, with a seven-foot wall stretching in both directions, deep into Indiana country. To one side of the gate is a small booth with an armed guard.
“Hi,” I say, coming closer, being cute.
He steps out of the booth. “You’re new.” All business.
“Yes.” I’ll bet he knows everybody’s faces.
“ID, please.”
I shuffle a bit in my purse and then give him my ID. He puts it in some portable computer thing; it bleeps; he pulls out my ID and hands it back to me. His hand accidentally grazes my finger as he does so, and I get a small sense of him. He’s not a telepath. He’s attracted to me. God, I hate myself.
He goes back to the booth, presses a button, and the gate slides open.
The Academy is inhumanly large, a twentieth-century architectural construct, meant to look like it was built in the seventeenth century somewhere in Europe. I feel as if I’ve shrunk to half my size.
“Good luck,” he shouts after me.
“Thanks,” I call back.
I put on my gloves.
The gate shuts behind me. God, I hate myself.
The lecture hall is built for three hundred.
I get there first, which is oh-so-joyful.
I pick a place somewhere in the middle.
One by one, they come in. And as each of them enters, they all sit in the front row. A minute before eight, I pick up my things and join them.
Professor Bendis comes in at eight on the dot.
Ancient. Smart. Godlike.
He takes his time getting to the podium and looking at us.
He can read my mind. I cross my legs.
He lowers his chin, looking down at us. “There are six students,” he begins without preamble, “in the class of ’14. One of you will probably learn that this is too tough, that this isn’t for him or her, and will drop out within the first month. If this does not happen, we will expel one of you after two months.
“After your freshman year, one of you will be dropped out.
“After your sophomore year, one of you will be dropped out.