by Neil Clarke
“Marybeth was the opposite. She loved her freedom, loved the drones for freeing her from something that was pointless. She was an artist.” Chase shakes his head. “It should have been me.”
“Don’t say that.” Victoria removes a strand of hair from Chase’s eyes.
It’s true, he thinks.
The sun is below the horizon when they finally make it to the coast. Chase scouts a rickety shack half-buried under the white sand. There’s a mattress there, with not too many spiders on it, and the springs scream as they collapse onto the thin foam. Victoria falls asleep right away, but Chase lingers for a few minutes, enjoying the feel of her supple body against his.
Not a holo, he thinks. Never a holo.
They’re playing in the ice-cold water when a drone passes by, but it’s Sunday, so they don’t have to worry. Probably maintenance, Chase thinks, tidying up the beach that nobody ever visits.
He’s naked as a buzzard’s head. So is Victoria, her clothes stacked neatly near a dune. Her feet are still raw and bleeding, but she claims the salinity of the ocean helps.
They’re safe. But when the drone nears, they still hold their breath, waiting for it to pass by. It’s a little one, no larger than a toaster, and it’s heading straight for Victoria.
Please, Chase thinks, no.
The small maintenance drone reaches out two feelers and strokes her cheeks. It digs its claws into the brown rings of her hair. It beeps one, twice. Victoria trembles.
“Get away!” Chase yells. He splashes through the shallow water and thumps the drone on its side with his fist. “Go!” Please.
The drone turns. It whirs. It squares its glittering optical sensors with Chase’s eyes, and within the glass bubbles of the sensors he can see a miniature version of himself staring back at him. He feels a moment of sickening recognition before the drone speeds away.
No. It can’t be her. Chase shakes his head, letting the insane thought pass.
Victoria collects her clothes. “We should go. We’ll be late.”
They retrace their steps along the highway. Chase doesn’t tell her what he saw, or what he thinks he saw. He doesn’t say much at all.
When they finally get back to the station, the light rail is running a major delay. They’re late for the draft.
Chase doesn’t see Victoria the next day, or the day after that. Thursday is a storyteller day, and so he goes to the abandoned strip mall. He knows there must be some grave consequence for skipping the draft, but it hasn’t come up yet. Maybe it never will.
Or maybe it’s happening now, he thinks.
“Gather round, friends,” says the storyteller. “This is a story about a very brave, but very shortsighted leopard.”
Victoria is nowhere in sight. He leans against the lumberjack’s shin and lights up. Above his head, drones zip along, watching over all of them with foul intent disguised as loving grace.
The story is terrible, but he listens all the same.
About the Author
Erica L. Satifka’s work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Shimmer, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Lightspeed’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction special issue. When not writing, she works as a freelance editor and writing instructor. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her spouse Rob and three needy cats.
Preserve Her Memory
Bao Shu
One o’clock in the morning. Heavy rain.
Ye Lin, her clothes drenched, stands at the edge of the roof of the three-hundred-story Future Tower. She shivers uncontrollably as the gale, whipping freezing rain, slices across her skin like an ice knife. From her perch more than a kilometer aboveground, she surveys the city that never sleeps, glittering and coruscating in the rain like a metaphor for her glamorous life.
They look up at me like a princess in the heavens. But do they understand how cold and alone I am?
In the metropolis below, a scintillating net woven from thousands of glowing streets, infused with lust, greed, and fame, ensnares thirty million men and women and binds her the tightest of them all. She once thought herself one of the lucky few who found a rare morsel of happiness, but she had not realized that the spider of fate had already closed off all avenues of escape behind her.
All right, it will all be over soon. I’ll have eternal freedom and peace.
Ye Lin takes a deep breath and steps forward. There is nowhere to set her foot down except empty space.
And so she falls. Like a drop of rain, she plunges toward the gleaming city, toward the abyss of death.
Police Captain Jiang Yong, head of the investigations unit, took off his helmet and let out a long sigh. “You dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night for this? Who found her?”
“I did, Captain,” said a young woman with long hair. Liu Ningning was a new addition to the investigations unit. By the looks of her swollen eyes, she had been crying. “The impact damaged the body to such an extent that we couldn’t ID her, and DNA analysis was going to take some time. I decided to access her memories, and found out that . . . she’s Ye Lin, the actress. I called in a report immediately.”
“No wonder the bureau told me to handle it.” Jiang Yong yawned. “She’s a big star. I imagine those vulture reporters will be swarming here soon, and this is going to be all over the headlines in the morning . . . But the case doesn’t look that complicated. The memory replay indicates that it was suicide. All you have to do is follow the procedures.”
“But since the deceased is such a celebrity, there will be a lot of attention focused on us,” said another detective. “The bureau didn’t want anything to go wrong, and they specifically asked for you to review the investigation.”
“I don’t care if she’s a celebrity or some average Jane Doe,” Jiang Yong harrumphed. “I have no sympathy for suicides.”
“No! This is murder, pure murder!” Liu Ningning cried out, her voice full of anguish.
Jiang Yong frowned. “Ningning, I know you’re a fan of Ye Lin, but you can’t allow your personal feelings to interfere with police work.”
“But . . . but . . . ” Ningning wiped at her eyes. “You’ll understand if you replay more of her memories.”
Intrigued, Jiang Yong put the helmet back on, and data flooded into his mind from the memory black box.
The memory black box was the product of advanced research in neuroscience, information technology, nanotechnology, and other fields. The recorder consisted of a biochip smaller than the head of a pin implanted into the hippocampus and nanosensors embedded throughout the body. Normally, the system lay dormant. But as soon as it detected severe deviations from the norm in various brain activity parameters—indicative of the stress caused by imminent death or great danger—the black box would automatically contact the police and record the short-term memory in the hippocampus via molecular scanning. In the event of death, about one to two minutes of memories preceding the cessation of brain activity could be decrypted from the black box. The device was invaluable for tasks such as criminal investigation, accident inquiry, insurance adjustment, and so on.
Although the chip was expensive, it didn’t require a craniotomy to install; instead, molecule-sized nanomachines were injected into the bloodstream, and they assembled themselves into the recorder and sensors in the requisite areas of the body without causing any discomfort. Many celebrities and the wealthy installed memory black boxes not only for the benefits in the event of death, but also to deter criminals who would wish them harm. Since the invention of the memory black box, the murder rate had plunged, accompanied by a corresponding rise in the percentage of solved murders.
The induction helmet used to replay the memories had originated in virtual reality gaming. Not only could the helmet replicate the recorded visual data and other sensory information with high fidelity, but it could also induce in the wearer the memories and emotions experienced by the deceased through artificial bioelectric fields localized to specific regions of the brain. Someone wearing the helmet would feel as though they
were taking the place of the deceased, gazing through her eyes, hearing through her ears, experiencing everything she felt.
. . . As Ye Lin fell, she seemed to turn into a raindrop, one falling faster than the other raindrops. The blasting wind whipped the rain against her face as the windows of the skyscraper—some lit, some dark—flashed by her, the unconnected scenes seen through them like a string of memory fragments.
From the depths of his soul, Jiang Yong experienced terror, despair, and a profound, unrelenting hatred.
Many on the verge of death experienced a final flash of lucidity during which innumerable memories surfaced from the unconscious in a final farewell performance. Ye Lin was one of them. As she fell, millions of memory fragments danced and flickered like the ever-changing, chaotic patterns found in a kaleidoscope. The most fascinating type of experience recorded by the memory black box was this pre-death recollection. Someone replaying it through the induction helmet would even experience time as passing more slowly. Although the recollected scenes were hazy and fragmentary, when enhanced with the emotions felt by the deceased, they effectively conveyed the hidden depths and meanings behind each memory, allowing the helmet-wearer to empathize intensely with the deceased. Thus, decrypted pre-death recollections, when sold through legal channels, made a mesmerizing, fantastic entertainment product.
Jiang Yong saw the funeral of Ye Lin’s mother when she was a little girl; saw how she had lived in poverty with her alcoholic father, and vowed before a mirror, with tears staining her face, to change her fate with the one gift life gave her—her extraordinary beauty; and then, as she was stopped in the street by a talent scout, Jiang Yong experienced Ye Lin’s ecstatic heartbeats.
Once she entered the movie business, the talented Ye Lin threw herself wholeheartedly into her performances. One moment she was in period dress as she fought against the other empresses and consorts in palace intrigue; the next she was a graceful woman in a modern metropolis; and in another moment she was an adventurer in the jungle of an alien planet . . . She achieved success, accepted award after award, and became a star known in every household. She left poverty behind as she jetted around the world, hobnobbing with other international celebrities, laughing and chatting at parties . . .
And then that man appeared. At first, he was only a lowly cameraman in one of her movies who timidly manufactured excuses to be closer to her. One day, he finally found the courage to hand her a letter, which she promptly tossed into the trashcan without even unsealing. But the man didn’t give up. He stayed by her side as he advanced in his career, taking care of her and watching out for her in numerous ways, big and small. Gradually, she began to notice him, and finally, one night, after they were both drunk, the flame of romance sprung into life . . .
Jiang Yong was familiar with the basic biographical details of Ye Lin’s life, and he knew that the man in her memories was Xue Kai, a famous director and Ye Lin’s ex-husband. The memories weren’t too different from what she had revealed in her interviews and biographies, but the specific, vivid details he experienced had been absent from mere text. There was no question that if the contents of this black box were brought to market, they would become an instant best-seller.
Ye Lin was still falling. For a body to traverse the full distance between the roof of a thousand-meter-plus skyscraper and the ground, impeded by air resistance and the strong wind, would take tens of seconds, plenty of time for those important memories to play through. The sweet memories winked out of existence in a flash, and all that remained were acute pain and deep hatred.
Jiang Yong saw Ye Lin ignore the objections of the studios and retire from her acting career. She put on the white wedding gown and stood by Xue Kai in the cathedral. By now, Xue Kai was gaining some renown as a director. Soon after, Ye Lin became a joyful, expectant mother. But then a string of misfortunes arrived: she found intimate photographs of Xue Kai with other women on the computer . . . Fights between the couple flashed before Jiang Yong’s eyes; her shock, rage, and despair roiled his heart; and then Xue Kai walked into their home holding the hand of another woman, arrogantly showing her that he didn’t care—and after shoving and pushing and screaming, she rolled down the stairs, blood flowing from between her legs in a torrent. The terrified Xue Kai ran away . . .
What a shithead, Jiang Yong said to himself.
After the miscarriage, a frightened Xue Kai swore that he would break off all contact with his mistress. At the hospital, he cared for her day and night without complaint. Finally, Ye Lin forgave him. But half a year later, cruel truth revealed itself: Xue Kai abruptly disappeared. After a few days, rumors said that he had been seen with his mistress in another city, and when Ye Lin went to the bank to check her account, she found that more than thirty million yuan in savings—the couple’s joint property—had vanished. She fainted.
Courts and lawyers were useless, and even after the divorce was finalized, she couldn’t get a single yuan back. After her loss was reported in the tabloids, Xue Kai attacked her by claiming that she had defamed him. Nude pictures of her surfaced on the web from anonymous posters, and rumors spread that she was actually the mistress of some important party official or the sexual plaything of a wealthy businessman. The tabloids printed damaging “news” about her without cease, and she was dogged by threats and hurled abuses. Even contracts she had reached agreement on were rescinded. Though she knew that Xue Kai was the one making trouble for her, she had no recourse. Xue Kai had seized the public narrative. She felt she was being driven insane . . .
The concrete ground loomed before her eyes. After a momentary flash of utter despair and horror came the eternal darkness. No more memories.
Jiang Yong took off the induction helmet and exhaled deeply. Though he was used to the multitude of tragedies humans put one another through, it was hard not to be moved after experiencing such memories. The heartbreaking scenes seemed to linger before his eyes. He understood how Ningning felt—rage burned in his chest, too.
“I couldn’t believe her life was like that.” Jiang Yong heaved a heavy sigh. “When I used to read the gossip about her, I just thought she was one of those celebrities with an immoral, extravagant lifestyle. I had no idea there were such painful secrets behind the scenes.”
“It was all because of that asshole Xue Kai!” Ningning exclaimed. “He killed Ye Lin. Why can’t that son of a bitch die?!”
“He didn’t commit any crimes,” said Jiang Yong. “The law can’t punish him for what he did.”
“There is a cosmic balance at work though,” said Ningning. “Karma will catch up to him.”
Ye Lin’s death shocked the nation—no, the world. Her memory black box, of course, became the focus of media attention. As both of her parents had died, and she had no children, her legal heir, an aunt, soon declared that she would place Ye Lin’s memories on auction. Many memory entertainment companies swarmed to bid, and in the end, the black box was sold for fifteen million yuan to a megacorp, which promptly brought the memories to market. Anyone could pay the requisite fee and then experience the memories of Ye Lin on the verge of death.
And in this manner, the truth of Ye Lin’s life, which had been buried under a flood of ugly rumors while she had been alive, surfaced. Xue Kai’s despicable acts became public knowledge, and no matter what he said to defend himself, the power of those vivid memories triumphed over his rhetoric. Soon, he was buried by the tide of public opinion, and became the favorite target of the shaming mob. Many companies pulled out of contracts with him and his girlfriend; his friends stayed away; fans knocked on his door to give him a piece of their minds; and some even sent him death threats. He dared not show his face in public—one time, he was recognized in the street, and a mob harassed him and attacked him until he was afraid for his life.
This lasted half a year.
And then, Xue Kai, now at the nadir of his career, braced himself and emerged from seclusion to attend a televised gala. The other guests all kept their distances, and eve
n the host made him the butt of several jokes. Fortunately, a fifteen-year-old girl in the audience claimed to be his die-hard fan and asked for his autograph, allowing him to save a bit of face. But as Xue Kai grinned and signed his name, the young woman pulled out a dagger and stabbed it into his belly. Then, as the shocked host and guests watched, she proceeded to stab him again and again on live TV . . .
Xue Kai died as millions watched. Afterward, the young woman received a sentence of sixteen years. However, public opinion stayed on her side, and many even opined that she should be deemed innocent for eliminating a waste of human flesh.
A few more months passed, and it was the anniversary of Ye Lin’s death. Liu Ningning, being a loyal fan, visited Ye Lin’s grave during the day and then returned to the site of Ye Lin’s suicide at night.
At one in the morning, Ningning opened the door to the rooftop platform of the Future Tower. A blast of wind greeted her, making her shiver. Imagining how Ye Lin felt on that day a year ago, Ningning stepped toward the edge where she had jumped. There was no rain on this night, and a crescent moon hung in the sky, the motley neon radiance of the metropolis spread out under its glow.
Suddenly, Ningning noticed a hazy figure standing at the edge of the roof. Startled, she almost screamed. But as she looked closer, the figure was Jiang Yong.
“Captain, what are you doing here?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of . . . ending . . . ”
“Nothing like that.” Jiang Yong’s voice was placid. “I saw you post on NanoShare that you were thinking about coming here. I figured I’d join you.”
“Right. Hard to believe it’s been a year already. I guess Xue Kai got what he deserved. I hope Ye Lin can rest in peace.”
“I’ve replayed hundreds of pre-death memory records, but hers affected me the most. Even now, as soon as I close my eyes, I seem to be falling through the air again.” Jiang Yong gazed at the horizon and sighed.