Once Upon a Future

by Robert Reginald (ed)

  Wondering if my body, back in my one-room palace, has just turned my boxer shorts into an adult diaper. Wondering how to begin getting right with the Creator and saying goodnight. Wondering if anyone will cry when they hear I’m gone.

  Wondering how to scream with no working mouth.

  Then the mooring-rope simply isn’t there anymore.

  Now’s the time the fun begins. A-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA…I fumble forward, dropping my staff, trying to hoist some retarded sense out of this damn sail as the squall takes me, punchy passive passenger, onto its roller-coaster and the waves...the waves....

  I feel my body and mind unclench slowly. Thinking about the news blips gives rise to thoughts of several other kinds. I clamber up the mast, my feet taking the cleats, but barely.

  The sail’s up, but the boat-object’s written Seamless. I have to put myself near the sail to get it to remember....

  “START!” I don’t even know what I’m saying any more. “START HER UP LIKE THUNDERCLAPS, THAT’S ALL! GIVE ’EM THE LONG AND THE STRONG STROKE LIKE GRIM DEATH AND GRINNING DEVILS, AND RAISE THE BURIED DEAD PERPENDICULAR OUT OF THEIR GRAVES, BOYS! WOO-HOO! WA-HEE! AND—”

  Oh. Duh. I slide down the mast in the rain, feeling slick and nasty and awful without a shower or shave in days, becalmed in horse latitudes even worse than being swallowed by this storm.

  I swing my staff somewhere between the stern and the water. A magical clink rings in my ears as the hawser parts, and the PLOOMP of the unseen anchor swirls down to the Big Six. Then my tiny craft hits the apparent outer edge of a Zone, and drops into a trough with a roar of decompression that would have made my eyes bleed if I’d felt it in the flesh.

  I’m thrown forward, then hard backward, falling with a sick crunch I feel....

  Huh? I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up. For a moment, I thought I just broke my back. I make my more furious self stand up a little at a time. So much of this kind of work in-game takes so much time. The system’s apparently trying to unzip some kind of vast datum. Where the hell did the storm come from in the first place?

  I’m lashing myself to the mast. I give up. The Überguild can make me a martyr. I was playing an unfinished game the whole time, I think, as I bind the sail-rope around my right wrist to begin, like a string around the finger, a visual memory of a save-point I can’t even save. The storm momentarily freezes. So does the whole world. I look up.

  Encrypted language shines from the dark parts of the gold-ring’d sailor moon whose light falls on some distant shore, too, through a crack in the game. Over that way, tiny people in coveralls are singing as they toil, clearing away old wall-panels, unwriting random objects, chucklingly trying on body-armor and tossing it into big garbage cans on casters.

  Over there, over there, send the word, send the word, send the word, to Beware…. On the other side of that crack, seeming to fold the very map away from this Sargasso of blunt force and broken static, appear islands of non-zoned space and the rivers and oceans of a more consistent geography.

  Then I look further out on the waves, and grow sick at heart.

  The whirlpool moans like a tortured prisoner, making sucking sounds like nothing has ever sucked before. It resembles a twisted Duchamp staircase in sick green light, a spiral stairway with a giant clambering up it, toward the meniscus of the still water, balancing in the center of the maëlstrom, teetering on the heel of one high-buttoned gaiter boot.

  The right half of Ross’ Crooked Man head isn’t coming into focus correctly. I hang in my Cloak, cold and convinced I’m dead. As Ross begins to speak, I slowly notice that the face issue isn’t just due to asymmetrical bandwidth.

  Part of that long crescent-moon face has gone all soft and lumpy, swollen like a marshmallow Peep in a microwave. He’s cracking too. If I have anything to say about it, I’m taking him down with me.

  “Come out from behind that strap-on gear,” calls Ross, big as life and twice as ugly, out there on the waves “Somebody still thinks he can get the power-up and win the game. Try me.”

  Somehow, I hear myself taunting back, in that same voice all old and pipe-smoky beyond my scant thirty years, “Don’t be afraid, my butter-box! You’ll be picked up presently! I thought I saw the FBI a-stern....”

  Now I’m just amazed. After a string of shit jobs and relationships gone south, after the long transcontinental odyssey to nowhere, I begin to hope against hope...that every quest in this game really can be completed by every player.

  Pure imagination fills my sail. I begin to laugh. The thing out on the waves grows very, very confused. His form leaves my sight. I breathe in the essence of the moonlight I just saw falling through the crack, and....

  A wild gray beard bristles on my face out there on the deep as the tsunami rises high hard a-port, a hump like a snow-hill…. Something wrapped around part of the right half of my skull feels like scar tissue.

  I lean on one wooden leg, looking in every way as though I’ve been shriveled by Time’s own flame.

  A single blue eye, ringed with yellow, rolling and wild, rises from the frozen tsunami on the port side. Over there, under the Beast, a hole in the game leads down to nothing. Here there be monsters, I think, bowing my head, and steering my improbable vessel straight into the storm, directly toward the empty space.

  Gigantic stone drums whomp and wallop in my head as the rigging creaks and the Ross-thing tries to suck me down. All hunted and haggard and hollow of eye, I swear I feel every cold spray of silicate salt on my skin.

  “This is much,” I mutter, “Yet Ahab’s larger, deeper, darker part remains unhinted,” Oh, something’s popped in me. “What soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck?”

  I feel Ross breathing. Trying not to think too much about the metaphysics of that, I focus every bit of myself, my concentration, into the meat....

  Into my thumb, my numb left thumb, sliding it to the right in hopes that the mousepad will pick up the motion, feeling it only in the way I imagine quadriplegics must feel phantom pain. Ross barks laughter.

  “His whole captive form,” Ross bellows, “folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which like Satan would not sink to Hell until she’d dragged a living part of Heaven along....”

  The wave folds around my craft and pops it high like a ping-pong ball. I find the eye in the wave and simply give it the finger, thinking of poor old Herman Melville, never famous until death, and Bartleby the Scrivener….

  “I would prefer not to! But thank you so much for playing!”

  At the words, my personal toolbar blooms into light before my eyes, the mousepad unstuck, all terror reset to zero. I feel the improbable railgun on my shoulder as real as light and breath, my subordinate right hand lashed to the ornate wheel still steering straight and true through those bloody seas.

  The eye widens with surprise. I look back into it, back and back and back, and discover the reflection of myself staring from a Void none could conceive.

  Aiming straight into the eye, I hold my breath and fire a volley of what appear to be....

  Harpoons? The eye winks out. The world goes white. Far away in Pennsylvania, I feel him die.

  Then I open my eyes, lying on my own filthy, wine-stained carpet, and kiss it.

  Game Over.

  * * * *

  I ran. I ran so far away. My credits transferred. But for a while, that was the least of my worries.

  I’m a haxor nowadays, but one of a very different sort. Electronic Arts Global Guild puts the nicotine gum in my mouth and the roof over my head. We both want the same thing: to make sure that another Ross Ehrend never, ever happens again.

  EAGG has stopped preaching to the choir, and started offering open-handed caritas to the whores and sinners. I’ve put myself in the middle of pitched battle, tilting at the Internet Baangs and the megaservers, yanking back scores of young Asian geniuses from the claws of the sea that takes and takes and takes.

  Every game has its holes. Gaming in the Pacific Rim (especiall
y down here in Chiba City) is so vast I still can’t get my head all the way around it. The only thing to do is design games where people make the world’s history and impact it, not bots or big imaginary entities.

  When those games get out, they need beta-testers…and police. That’s where I come in. I have a lot to pay back for. And Shelley....

  Well, she wouldn’t answer my pings. In the meat world, there are no reset buttons in many areas. Yet, I finally feel like going out in the sun again, to look at the petal-storms blowing along the vast walks of sakura trees, breathing deeply and rejoicing.

  When I get low, I look at the newsfeed printouts I’ve framed in a private place. The ones from the AP wire, and the Oregonian, and all the weeklies. I won’t tell you what they said about me. It’s...aaah, shut up. I didn’t want any credit. I....

  Yeah, I got the bastard. Apparently, there really is a Powersburg, Pennsylvania. They found Ross Ehrend hiding in his Dad’s basement out there. Pardon me, stiffening in his Dad’s basement.

  Ross had a heart-attack in-game. There’s still not a scientist or a programmer in the world who can explain why. But I don’t need them to. Thanks to the Fark News people and their apparently massive clipping service, I figured out what Ross was trying to do.

  Swapping bodies across the metaverse might not be possible yet. But this wasn’t a rational person. The “wards” he had hung around his computer are still sitting in several pathology departments. Who knows?

  He wanted mine.

  In a less-private place in my apartment in Chiba is Ross Ehrend’s death certificate. It’s framed over my mantel. And Shelley might not be here to see it....

  But my wife Momo laughed and clapped her e.e. cummings hands when I finally finished the damn thing, and threw her small, powerful arms about my neck. When she kissed me then, I remembered where some of the real power-ups are, how easy it is for anyone to beat the game sometimes, and that the more often we learn to do it without cheat-codes, the more people we can lead back onto land.

  Momo never calls me Sam. No one in all of Japan knows me by the nickname I couldn’t shake off in high school.

  She calls me Ishmael.

  For Neal Asher

  THE TALISMAN, by Charles Nuetzel

  Even if we had remembered the old saying about Greeks bearing gifts, most of us couldn’t have resisted the sales pitch.

  I should have been more suspicious, having come from the big city. We’d moved to Dales, a small farming town, when I was a little past fifty—some ten years ago. I’d come for my health—which was in bad shape—though I didn’t expect a magically prolonged and vigorous life, only a few extra years. If we’re lucky we survive into our seventies, and might even get into our eighties and be thankful for the extra years. Heck, these days, with the advanced medical discoveries, many of us are going into our nineties. But I’m a realistic sort, and a medical doctor; not a believer in Voodoo.

  Yet what followed Mr. Smith’s visit seemed nothing short of witchcraft; him and his damnable Talisman. It was the event of Ms. Black’s baby that sent silent shock waves through the county. But that comes later.

  It all started with Mr. Smith. He was small and only a bit aggressive. Those compelling dark eyes were anxious to grab you.

  The instant I realized he was a salesman I started to close the door in his face.

  He lifted a small hand, the lines etched deeply into his palm, fingers almost gnarled, bony, the skin discolored, off-white. “Please! It is so important to both of us that you listen.”

  There was something haunting about the desperate quality of his plea, as if the very existence of our lives depended on my cooperation. That stopped me from slamming the door shut.

  His gaunt frame looked terribly frail; those dark eyes had the impelling stare of a small desperate puppy.

  “Who’s there?” Mildred called from the kitchen. The aroma of home-baked cherry pie was just beginning to drift through the house, mixed with the spicy promise of beef stew. The man had a nerve invading our privacy on the one day of the week we were normally able to rest. The people in Dales County used to be tightly religious, and believed it was a sin even to be ill on the Holy Day. Nobody was supposed to work on Sunday; not even a doctor.

  But Mr. Smith pushed into the house.

  Mildred came from the kitchen, flowery apron about her ample waist, hair pinned back into a tight ponytail. A friendly smile broke instantly from her wide lips. Mildred seldom turned away strangers. “Hello. What can we do for you?”

  “It is what we can do for one another,” the man’s skinny lips announced around a tight grin. “You’re Mildred Henderson Shelby Benson, of course...right?”

  “How in the world did you know?” She was taken by surprise. Even her best friends didn’t know her full name.

  He turned to me. “Dr. Glenn Thomas Benson. A specialist in child care who is childless himself. You’ve been a GP since you came here to Dales.”

  This should have warned me. But of what?

  “By way of explanation.” He quickly stepped across the small living room, taking a seat on our overstuffed chair. He leaned intently forward. “By the way of explanation, a good salesman does his homework. Just let me make my pitch and I’ll go.”

  Those eyes again, pleading, yet so compelling, drilled into ours, flitting back and forth between us.

  “Please be comfortable. Sit while I do my pitch.” It sounded so innocent, and yet was such a command. We sat next to one another on the battered pink sofa. Mildred grabbed my hand.

  I noticed the black bag he was holding on his lap. I hadn’t seen it before.

  “Now, it is my job to convince you to believe that you can’t live without what I have to offer.” He glanced down at the black bag on his lap. “Of course, all salesmen must convince their prospects to need something they don’t want.”

  Mildred’s fingers were hot and damp, trembling, as they squeezed mine.

  “I won’t claim I’m working my way through college. I’m a bit old for that line, now don’t you think?” His grin was almost icy. “I won’t use any silly excuse like most salesmen do to shove something down people’s throats. Nothing but honesty is my approach. Such a direct approach should be worth at least a few minutes of your time.”

  Mildred’s lips hung open, soundlessly. I merely shrugged, wishing he would leave.

  As if reading my thoughts, he said: “Of course, you’re anxious to consume the delicious food the Missus here fixed. I’ll take only a few moments.”

  Flexible fingers, almost rubbery, boneless, slipped over the clasp of the tiny black bag. “Now, let me warn you, from the first, this is something few people would think of needing...yet you must have one.”

  One gnarled hand reached deeply into the small bag, wrist disappeared, and then forearm. It was as if he were reaching into some bottomless pit.

  “You must be wondering why you should be willing to take something you don’t need or want. Well, observe!”

  He made a dramatic movement of his arm, lifting it out of the tiny black bag. With a flourish he presented a furry pink powder-puff.

  “This is it!” He placed the object on the coffee table before us. It rested there quietly, doing exactly nothing. For a moment the man merely sat there gazing at us, eyes fanatically watching for any reaction.

  I finally managed: “What...is it?”

  “Oh, of course, I forgot. A Talisman.” He let the statement sink into our minds like a feather attempting to penetrate thick oil.

  “So?” Mildred asked in a small voice. “What?”

  “A Talisman. Brings you luck, you know. Has magical properties. Does wonders.” He paused just a moment, hen added, with a playful wink: “Might even put you out of business, give you the retirement you’ve always wanted!”

  He smiled quite generously.

  “Come on, Mr. Smith, what’s the gag?” I demanded, a bit angrily. “You’re taking up our Sunday afternoon—”

  “Please. This is se
rious! With my Talisman you’ll be safe from all harm, from loss of life...even acts of gods...you’ll remain happy and secure and safe...have a long life...what else is a Talisman for? In primitive times it was assumed to have magical powers. It brought luck. Observe this one.”

  He made a quick motion over the puff, fingers lightly touching it. At that instant it seemed to move, perhaps from the action of his fingers making contact with it. One could not believe otherwise. It swelled as if taking a deep breath, and turned a deeper crimson. But nothing more.

  “See? Very responsive. Stroking it will bring you luck. That’s all you have to do. Every day, stroke it. Nothing more. It will always look after you, see that no harm comes your way; protect you both from all evil influences.” Then, leaning a little closer, eyes intense as they shifted from me to Mildred, he said a bit too casually: “You can never tell what tomorrow will bring. This Talisman is yours to keep, for life. Just ask...and it will protect you from harm….” He broke off, grinned, said: “Well, let’s just say you’ll be happy as long as you stroke it once a day, each and every day.”

  My impulse was to take the man by the arm and lift him bodily out of the house. “Mr. Smith, you must be kidding...in this day and—”

  “I’m quite serious. Please...I’m merely attempting to offer you continued happiness until the day you die. Is that a crime?”

  “I’ve heard enough rot. I’m not interested in buying—”

  “Please. You misunderstand. It is free! No strings. Just keep it. Stroke it. And I promise that no harm will ever come to you until the day you die of old age—very old age, beyond the normal three, four, or more score and—”

  I fell back on the sofa, unable to speak. There was that compelling command in his eyes. I didn’t hear all of what he said for some moments, but picked up the thread as he stated:

  “...My company’s doing an experiment. We’re trying to prove that there’s nothing to the old story about people refusing free gold bricks. Though, of course, we aren’t offering gold bricks, but the point is the same. Our company hopes that people just might accept a Talisman. What harm? Let me leave this one with you. I promise if you merely touch it each day, you will live a very long life. Your future is assured.”