Writers of the Future Volume 28: The Best New Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

by L. Ron Hubbard

  One day, the local United Nations and Intelligences office summoned Dev and Anna to a “program integration meeting.” A UNI rep bristling with several generations of cyber-access nodes drew Anna into an extended discussion of the technical aspects of her work. Another rep, to all appearances unenhanced, sat with Dev over coffee.

  “We’ve modeled your future,” said the rep.

  “Grand. Am I a very rich man?”

  “We anticipate that one day soon, you’ll want some insurance.”

  That was when Dev came up with Newly Dead Yeats.

  Dev drove north with Joyce towards Sligo. Human-driven autos on killer narrow roads were a tradition and sport, so cars would continue to terrorize the new Ireland. Joyce hunted for music feeds and found “Irish rock,” which amused, appalled and intrigued him all at once. “G-L-O-R-I-A, in te domine,” he quipped.

  Dev didn’t respond, too busy scanning the skies. He didn’t stop at Sligo town, but went on to Drumcliffe, with its lonely churchyard just off the main road under bare Ben Bulben hill’s head. Dev pulled into the small deserted parking lot. Again, with the deadline approaching, no more tourists for this attraction. One way or another, Dev’s next stop was the grave.

  “Wait with the car, Jim. Keep your ears open.” Even at their best, the PR’s authentically bad eyes weren’t a match for Dev’s chip-aided perceptions.

  Dev paused at the gate. Too quiet—a steady stream of lyric poetry should greet any visitor. He switched his head chip to enhanced, and subjective time slowed as he walked towards Yeats’ grave on the other side of the churchyard. The headstone had the same blue-gray shade as the local rock.

  Finally, an otherworldly voice from the grave began to recite verse:

  “Whether you die in your bed

  Or my rifle knocks you dead,

  A brief parting from those dear

  Isn’t the worst you have to fear.”

  Wait, thought Dev, that’s more a personal threat than the original. From behind the headstone, a long metal tube swiveled towards him. Dev moved his head. A bullet cracked by his ear, the rifle boomed, the shot ricocheted off distant old stone. Definitely projectile—meant for biologicals. Dev hit the ground.

  Newly Dead Yeats rose up from his grave. His nanoswarm body was, unlike Joyce’s, translucent and spectral. Yeats’ wild gray hair, beaked nose and black funeral clothes glowed with his rage. He pointed at the epitaph on his headstone. “‘Horseman, pass by’—that means you, drunken lout.”

  “WB, it’s me, Dev. I just want to talk.”

  Several more rounds passed over as Dev flattened himself. “I know who you are,” said Yeats. “That’s why I haven’t killed you yet.”

  Dev scuttled back behind an old Celtic cross, hoping Dead Yeats wouldn’t risk damaging it.

  “Tell me what’s the matter, Senator.”

  “You vainglorious bastard. Wasn’t enough to have Young Yeats and Old Yeats; you insisted on Dead Yeats too?”

  “You agreed to it!” That drew more fire, uncom-fortably close. Probably the wrong thing to say.

  “They agreed to it! Old and Young One could accept your conceit—they weren’t buried here with the carcass. You said it would give me a cosmic perspective. You dull ass! It gave me endless tourists who haven’t read a line of my work. When I cried for help, did you listen?”

  “I’m sorry, WB. I had to do this because of Anna. That’s who I’m here about.”

  “Was it Anna who stole my soul, bound it to this place, and prevented my reunion with the mysteries? No. She tried to free me.”

  So she had been here. But before Dev could ask more, Joyce walked through the gate, doubtless emboldened by the exclusive use of bullets. “Yeats, cut the mystical malarkey and occult shite . . .”

  Dev’s enhanced vision picked up the silent tracers of anti-nano weaponry before Joyce felt them against his shielded skin. So much for bullets only. Joyce crawled back behind the cross with Dev, and the Dead mocked him.

  “What, you haven’t fled to the continent again? Coward. Where were you when your country needed you?”

  Joyce aimed his ashplant at Yeats and returned fire. Energy lightnings traced along the shielding around Yeats’ grave, a gray mist drifted down. “Where was my country when I needed it?” he yelled. For a weak man, Joyce sure knew how to pick a fight.

  “You can’t keep that up for long on your own juice,” noted Dev.

  As if in response, Yeats bellowed, “I give you ten seconds to leave. One, two . . .”

  “That’s enough.” From the shadow of the church doorway emerged a young man with full dark hair and spectacles. The Young Yeats. Dev did not relax one bit.

  Dead Yeats sighed sepulchrally. “He has imprisoned me here forever.”

  “Are you going to risk crashing yourself again just to kill them?” Young Yeats turned towards the Celtic cross. “Tsk, tsk. Hiding behind the old god. It’s a new age; come out and live it.”

  Dev stood up next to the cross, while Joyce kept him covered with the ashplant. If Dead Yeats had crashed, that confirmed that Anna had tried to free him. “Willie, where is she? Is Old Yeats still with her?”

  Young Yeats smiled with his charming wistfulness and insufferable arrogance. “You realize, she’s another Cathleen ni Houlihan, the Irish spirit incarnate, more so than even Maud was.”

  Dead Yeats snorted. “You mean she’s crazier than Maud ever was.”

  “Silence, dead man.” Young Yeats lacked Dead Yeats’ perspective on how often Maud had frustrated him.

  Dev pleaded, “Willie, for my sake, please.”

  “You’re the least of my parents, Father. Anna is mother to us all, the maiden with the crone’s eyes and the walk of a queen. The Golden Dawn predicted her and this Return.”

  Christ, the magical mystery tour. “Tell me where she is, and maybe we can try again to bring back Maud.”

  Next to him, Joyce flinched at this fib, but said nothing.

  Young Yeats shook his head. “Anna already did.”

  She had tried again and again. Oh shite, not good. Dev came clean. “But there’s not enough there for a full PR.” No, more likely another mirror for Narcissus, another statue for Pygmalion.

  “She looked pretty lively to me.” Dead Yeats chuckled.

  “Curse your eyes, cyber-carrion.” Young Yeats scowled. “Anna sought our help to enhance Maud. Maud is now a deep PR, though whether she’s fully herself, I cannot say.”

  “Where have they gone?” asked Dev.

  “I will not tell you.”

  “Was the Morrigan with them?” No one had mentioned the bird, which was damned quare.

  In an instant, Young Yeats shed his Victorian manner and tone. “Right. This casual comedy is over.” He turned and walked back to the church door. “Don’t let the gate hit your arse on the way out.”

  “I’m sorry, sorry about both of you.” But Young Yeats had shut the church door. “About all of you.” Joyce walked back towards the car, ashplant over his shoulder.

  Dev lingered. He wiped off the grass and gravelly dirt near his mouth with his sleeve and turned again to Dead Yeats. “Tell me where they’ve gone, and I’ll free you.” Letting Yeats loose was risky, but it was all Dev had to offer.

  “But Anna couldn’t release me,” said Dead Yeats. “I crashed, and when I returned, she was gone.”

  All according to program. “I can,” said Dev. “I will.”

  Yeats stared down at his translucent hands. Then, slowly, he said, “Gone off together, old self in tow, a Second Coming, not slouching towards Bethlehem, but Dublin.”

  “Dublin for Bloomsday. Grand.” Dev’s time was too short to search the city. “Any idea where?”

  “They spoke of meeting the other Returned. That is all that I know.”

  “Okay.” Dev had some ideas of where the PRs
might gather. A variable hole in Yeats’ mind was Dev’s key to his insurance policy, but which of the dozens of possibilities was now active? “Before I can release you, I need to run a check on your memory.”

  Yeats smiled thinly, eyes cold. “No need for that. I know what I’ve forgotten. I wanted to say something to Anna and Maud before they left—a poem, not mine, but an old lament that I once knew well. I remember everything about the lament, but I cannot remember any of the words.”

  “Is it Lady Gregory’s translation, about losing everything for love?” Dead Yeats nodded. “Did you tell Anna about this?” If Anna knew, Dev would never make it to Dublin.

  “No. Excess of love is bewildering them, and killing Ireland.”

  Yeats had guessed too much. “Don’t worry . . .”

  Like an impatient theater director, Yeats waved Dev’s objection away. “Please, I know what I am, and what a blind spot like that might mean. You’re here to tell us all those words. All I ask is that you say them with meaning.”

  “I will.” Now to keep his other promise. “Do you recognize me as Dev Martin?”

  “I do.”

  “A terrible beauty is born. Execute.”

  Instantly, Yeats became more substantial. “Thank you,” he said. “Now, I think I shall take a long stroll up bare Ben Bulben’s head. I have been under it long enough.”

  Not trusting his voice to stay steady, Dev said nothing and returned to the car. “Ineluctable modality of the audible,” said Joyce. Then he smiled. “No need to apologize, Dev. It’s been brilliant, most of it at least. But once your quixotic quest is over, you will again try to restore Nora.” Joyce tapped Dev’s knee with his ashplant to emphasize his point.

  Dev didn’t know how to answer truthfully, so he changed the subject. “First things first. If UNI is still operating in Dublin, I think I can get you out.”

  “To Dublin town then,” said Joyce.

  “One thing before that.”

  They drove back into Sligo and stopped at a pub by the river, the Crazy Jane. At the bar rail, two men sat before their drinks, eyes like slates, jaws slack. “They look as if they’ve been thirsty too long,” Joyce said, no doubt thinking of drunks past.

  Dev shook his head, surprised at Joyce’s error. “They’re the Morrigan’s regurgitated prey.”

  They were also Dev’s predecessors. The two men had tried to hack the Referendum. When caught, they claimed UNI sanction, but UNI disavowed them. So they fell into the Morrigan’s jurisdiction.

  Unlike her mythic counterpart, the Morrigan’s devastation was seldom physical. She had facility with the software of the human brain, and no amount of protection could keep her out for long. A terrible weapon, but only used to keep the fight fair.

  As a warning to others, the Morrigan had left the hackers physically alive after wiping most of their minds. They would forever play the role of town drunks. Dev tried not to think about their blank eyes.

  Over the last year, after Anna and Dev’s summons to UNI, the changes in Ireland sped up. The Irish literary greats turned to writing aggressive speeches and manifestos. Nationalist PRs appeared and delivered the speeches. Up close, these thin and sometimes nutty PRs didn’t socialize well, but they could sway huge crowds with the rousing words of their literary brethren.

  The Irish revolution hinged on the paradoxes of the age. First, the global nano/info prosperity meant that even a single city could decide to go it alone. Fusion and solar power, a cornucopia machine and enough information flow to satisfy the watchful paranoids at UNI were all that were required. Second, with all information directly accessible through head chips, anyone could arbitrarily choose his or her language and culture. Irish could emerge from being a largely unspoken language of the schoolroom to become the living primary language of the nation.

  So the revolution made its pitch: let’s leave UNI and this global homogenizer and again become really Irish, a particular people living in one place, speaking the Irish language, educated in the culture of the past and producing a new culture for the future. All were invited, Irish ancestry or no. Global information flow would be narrowed. Entry to Ireland would be limited to those committing to remain for at least a year, which allowed for scholars, but not tourists.

  This idea caught fire with the future-shocked citizens of the late twenty-first century. When UNI and the world corporations tried to reimpose global authority, a few AIs dissented and joined the demand for a referendum.

  Anna asked Dev how he felt about the Referendum. Brilliantly thick until the end, he said, “It’s bad for business. But we could use a vacation. Just us, without our artificial friends. Someplace warm would be nice.”

  Without saying goodbye, Anna left America and Dev. UNI accused her of helping the PRs design their nationalist siblings. Anna and Lingua spoke at monster-sized rallies in Ireland, announcing publically that they had joined the revolution. Lingua appeared as a raven, and called itself the Morrigan, the Irish goddess of sovereignty and slaughter.

  Dev was gobsmacked. He had understood that he and Anna were a bit knackered and stressed with work, but he had assumed that their love continued despite the troubles. He took to drink, but slow self-destruction in modern times was surprisingly difficult and unromantic.

  Officially to preserve the generation-long world peace, UNI allowed Ireland to hold the Referendum and, once it passed, let Ireland leave the global community. Then, seeing that Dev had an appropriate lack of interest in self-preservation, UNI sent him his papers and nudged him on his way.

  That night, avoiding some heavy transformation along the other routes into the city, Dev and Joyce drove into Dublin from the north along Finglas Road. As they passed the iron gate of Glasnevin Cemetery, a dark corvine form shimmered overhead. Joyce shuddered. “The feckin’ Morrigan. Death, death, death and more death.”

  Dev kept his head low, though that wouldn’t do any good if the Morrigan chose to notice him. The AI that Dev had known as Lingua had been polite and pleasant to work with, but that had all been for show.

  As Dev and Joyce approached the river Liffey, Dublin was slowly melting all around them, modern architectural travesties failing under the nanos’ acidic assault. The people loved the dissolution, and the owners didn’t squawk much, having negotiated a favorable restitution. Other nanos gave gray eighteenth-century houses a new shine. But the places Dev knew best all seemed to be gone.

  Eventually they came to a roadblock barring their way to the UNI compound in the imposing old Custom House. Behind them, two plainclothes revolutionaries with paper notepads recorded their imminent passage from friendly ground. After fifteen minutes of apologetically holding assault rifles in his face, three UNI marines let Dev and his “AI-related object” drive through. Cut off from the frenetic transformation of the city, the UNI compound was under a polite state of siege. The city nanobots waited hungrily for their chance to restore the building to its full imperial glory.

  Inside the Custom House, Dev and Joyce ran a further gauntlet of scanners, chaotic packing and courteous delay until they reached the office of the chief Dublin UNI representative, Thomas Kenny. Kenny appeared to be midway through a sleepless week. His reluctant handshake and his English accent by way of Trinity gave Dev an instant dislike for this south-of-the-Liffey poser.

  Dev wasn’t feeling very popular himself. Kenny’s smile had less warmth than the most primitive PR’s. “You have some nerve, Martin, showing up here. Returning to the scene of the crime?”

  Joyce responded for Dev. “I wish to request asylum.”

  Kenny stared at Joyce as if he were a barking dog. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to speak to Mr. Martin in private.”

  Joyce raised his stick, and Dev slapped it down. “It’s okay, Jim. I’ll get you out, I swear. Find someplace comfortable to connect and see if you can get us a room and some drink.”

  Joyce left without
even a glance from Kenny. The rep poured Dev a whiskey, and then poured one for himself. “Charming. But at the next stage he could be a liability.”

  “Did you get him?”

  “We’ve got him.”

  “And me?”

  “And you.”

  Dev downed his drink in one. “Then all debts will be paid.”

  June 16, Bloomsday. Holo holy scenes from Ulysses played out about Dublin like ghosts in daylight. In the middle of O’Connell Street, humans dressed as Joyce characters enjoyed a breakfast of Denny’s sausage and a pint of Guinness, some going whole hog with a bit of kidney. Sounds of celebration mixed with small casualty-free explosions, as holdouts struck the General Post Office and the Four Courts—the usual places.

  Dev and Joyce walked across the river. They reached Davy Byrne’s pub in time for lunch, which had to be the Ulysses gorgonzola sandwich with burgundy. The crowd couldn’t tell if Joyce was a human actor, a recorded simulation or a full PR. Joyce found their confusion delightful.

  Despite the celebration of their triumph, the major PRs (besides Joyce) were nowhere to be seen on the streets. Rumor held that Anna, Old Yeats and Maud would make an appearance later, but in virtual.

  “They’re worried about something,” said Dev.

  Joyce tapped his ashplant. “The nationalists are great ones for security. Maybe the Morrigan is with them all.”

  “The cemetery.” They had seen the Morrigan at Glasnevin. Sure, she could like a cemetery on its own merits, but so could Anna and Maud. Dev would search there next.

  Crossing the river again, Dev noticed a hard-copy Referendum leaflet on the O’Connell Bridge. He bent over to grab and crumple it, then with an angry grunt threw it out over the rail at the wheeling gulls and into the Liffey. He stood silent and still, watching as the leaflet floated away. “Jim, are you sure you want to leave this again, maybe forever?”