The New Voices of Science Fiction

by Hannu Rajaniemi

  The people outside the door step toward us, worried I might hurt their Super. Estelle waves them off.

  “It’s a simple choice,” Estelle says calmly. “Join the mists or stay apart. All your life you’ve heard why you should stay apart. But you know so little about why you should join.”

  As Estelle says this, the mists whisper our names in voices sounding like the sizzle of pigeon eggs on good breakfast days. Like the hopeful taste of fresh air replacing bad.

  From the window I see the mists rising. The people outside the room flee for higher floors but I can’t leave Estelle. I grab her wheeled chair and push but the wheels won’t turn. Estelle grips them tight, refusing to budge.

  “Don’t fight it,” she says as the mists flow into the room.

  As the mists rise, I wonder what it will feel like to die. Will the mists speak in Momma’s voice as they take me?

  But instead, the mists ease around us without touching our bodies. I stand beside Estelle’s chair as the mists rise to the ceiling. They croon my name but I can’t see anything—merely a white wall of everything and nothing.

  Afraid, I lean toward Estelle, but a slice of mist stabs between us. It rises over Estelle until I can’t see her. I scream her name. The mists whisper for me not to worry, speaking calmly like Estelle did moments before.

  The mists seem to surround me forever, the hours in my mind merging to days and years before falling back to mere seconds. I find myself reliving a moment from several days ago, when I woke in my slug and greeted the mists below. I also see my life from years in the past, when Momma kissed me on the cheek before jumping off Empire.

  Then as quickly as the mists rose, they flow away, falling through cracks in the floor and walls until they again rest a few feet below the windows.

  Estelle smiles at me from her chair.

  “Why didn’t the mists kill us?” I ask.

  “When you’re in the mists, does it ever seem like time plays tricks with you?”

  I nod, remembering how I felt a few moments before. Or how I’ve walked the mists in a suit and almost believed that if I lost focus, I’d become stuck between one moment and the next. “I once mentioned that feeling to Bugdon,” I mutter. “He said the lack of vision in a mist suit squirrels with people’s minds.”

  “I’m sure it does. But this isn’t sensory deprivation—the mists actually play with time. Most people can’t sense it. But I can. And so can you.”

  Estelle’s words ring a memory in me. I remember Momma— right before she dived off Empire—telling me her time had come. But while those were the words she’d spoken, I’d also felt more. A sense that Momma was playing a role she’d already played many times before in her life, ever since she’d opened her suit’s blinder to the mists while pregnant with me.

  For a moment, my life folds in on itself. As if I’m a forever loop of time stretching from before my birth to this very moment and returning to when Momma was pregnant with me.

  I stagger and, to keep from passing out, sit down hard next to Estelle’s wheeled chair. She gently pats my shoulder.

  “I felt the same way when the mists first exposed me to their truths,” she says. “I worked at Rockefeller University back in the Days-We-Knew. We were attempting to open tiny doorways through time. Instead, we . . . changed something. Ever since I’ve heard the mists speaking. Perhaps some similar event in your life gave you the same ability.”

  Momma, I think. Pregnant with me when she became lost in her mist suit and opened her blinder to find her way home. But I don’t tell Estelle. That’s too personal to share.

  Instead, I ask, “You gave us the mists?”

  “Accidentally,” she whispers with a grin. “Few others know—wouldn’t be safe to tell too many people, would it?”

  Estelle speaks the truth. Even though she’s a Super, most toppers would toss her from a roof if they knew.

  “It happened unexpectedly,” she says. “I was staring at my experimental portal when suddenly the world blinked. Or more accurately, the city blinked, taken from the Days-We-Knew to this . . . place. Or time. Or place without time.”

  I nod. Everyone knew our city had been taken, even if they didn’t know why or how it happened. That’s why Old Man Douger and the other oldies still prayed for the people back in the Days-We-Knew to find a way to save us.

  “What are the mists?” I ask, excited to finally ask such a taboo question of someone who can answer.

  “The mists are time itself, or at least time as it exists here. Does that make sense?”

  I remember Old Man Douger’s stories about those fearful first hours. Where before the city had been firmly entrenched in the Days-We-Knew, suddenly endless empty horizons surrounded the city. Time flickered and failed and reappeared, as this place was unsure if one moment should still pass into the next. People found themselves living one moment in the past, the next in the future, and the next spread across an eternity of their own life.

  And through it all flowed the mists, devouring each person they touched. They flung peoples’ lives into the air so everyone around them tasted their births and loves and happiness and sads before those lives exploded into a new cloud of mists.

  Eventually time returned to a semblance of normal. Lives were again lived from beginning to end. But many oldies like Douger questioned this normality, saying the mists were merely giving us a brief reprieve while they plotted to kill us all.

  “What do the mists want?” I ask.

  “They don’t have desires like you and I. The mists exist both in our timestream and outside it. It’s hard to explain. Imagine if each moment of your life could come alive and exist alongside who you are right now. That’s essentially what the mists are—countless moments from the lives of millions of people.”

  I grin, happy to understand a little more about the mists. I tell Estelle what happened to me in the mists. How a person not wearing a breathing suit ran into me. How I opened my blinder and saw long-gone Central Park. How the mists saved me. How my momma cheered me on. I even tell her how I talk with the mists like she does.

  Estelle listens without speaking, smiling occasionally as if she already knows what I’m going to say. When I finish, she sits silently for a few moments before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a necklace. The necklace is a series of small glass globes strung one after the other on a golden wire. Each globe has a curl of mist rising and falling inside.

  Estelle hangs the necklace around my neck.

  “So what do we do?” I ask.

  Estelle smiles. “I don’t know,” she says. “But if you listen to the mists, I’m sure you’ll discover a path.”

  Because of the collapsed building I take a new route home, a spare air bottle slung over my shoulder so I can make it. I’m tempted to again raise my helmet’s blinder to see if Momma will reappear. But in the end I walk home in darkness, afraid of what the mists might reveal.

  Bugdon is ecstatic when he sees me, and more so when I hand him the two bags of seeds I received in trade. Everyone thought the building collapse had slapped me dead.

  For the first time at Empire I eat my fill and drink a full bag of fresh water. Bugdon even offers to move my slug inside. But I’m happy where I live. Bugdon nods, satisfied with my answer.

  When I finally shinny up to my slug, it’s well after midnight. Ignoring the wasp-buzz racket of Old Man Douger’s snoring I lean out of my slug and stare down below at the white glow of the mists.

  I try to see the different spots of time. The different moments of my mother’s life spread across infinity. But instead, I see only a blurry whiteness.

  I want to ask so many questions. Do the people who became mists like what they’ve become? Where exactly is this place, or time, or whatever it is?

  But instead of asking those questions, I settle on another. “Hellos,” I whisper.

  Hellos to you, Hanger, the mists whisper back, their many voices merged into one gasp of sound carried on the wind.

 
Old Man Douger snorts loudly and I hush up, afraid he’ll hear me talking. After hearing nothing but snores from him for a few minutes, I whisper my question. “Why don’t you simply take us all? I know you can do it.”

  The mists don’t answer, and I don’t ask again, afraid someone will hear and cut free my slug and I’ll fall and fall until I have no choice but to discover the truth about the mists.

  In the following weeks Bugdon works me hard. He sends all the mist scouts out seeking new trade routes or bringing in fresh seeds and supplies. I think he’s worried about more building collapses cutting off our food lines.

  Lots of work means I’m well fed, but it also means there’s not much time to think about what I saw in the mists. And the funny thing is I don’t feel bat-bat. Not like Momma after she saw the mists.

  So I sleep, and live, and walk the mists.

  Ordinary life, plus mists.

  Until Chrysler collapses.

  I watch the building fall from my slug. The wind is howling, blowing so hard that Empire moans and shakes and dances like the building is drunk. I poke my head outside my slug to stare at the dull gray morning. That’s when I hear and feel the collapse. I grab my binoculars and watch people screaming as the oh-sobeautiful rocket of a building collapses into a cloud of white dust.

  That morning Bugdon calls an emergency meeting. The people of Empire cram into the old visitor’s center on the eightieth floor to hear him speak.

  “We can’t trust Empire to last forever,” Bugdon says. “Maybe a few more years, maybe a decade or two. The mists are eroding all the buildings and we’ve gone too long without the serious maintenance and repairs Empire needs to live.”

  Everyone nods.

  “Maybe we have plenty of time, but we can’t take the chance. I propose we move some of our people to safety.”

  As Bugdon says this, people smirk and roll their eyes. After all, there is no safety. There’s nowhere to go but the city and the high-rises.

  Turns out Bugdon’s not joking. He points to an ancient transit map on the wall, where someone has circled a spot near what used to be the East River. “I’ve heard rumor of a mist-proof building in Rockefeller University,” he says. “It’s a hangover from the Days-We-Knew.”

  I wonder if Bugdon knows that’s where Estelle worked when she accidentally blinked the city to this place. Even if such a building exists, it’ll be suicide to try and reach it. The path to Rockefeller University has never been cleared. But Bugdon is the Super, so people merely nod agreement when he says we’ll send a scout to investigate.

  I try sneaking out of the meeting, not wanting to be the scout sent on this death mission, but two of Bugdon’s goons grab me. They escort me down to the fourteenth floor, where we wait until Bug-don arrives.

  “Go jump the mists,” Bugdon tells his goons, who tense at the insult but quickly back away before Bugdon makes them do the deed.

  Once we’re alone, Bugdon grins. “You’re not volunteering for my mission?”

  “It’s a deader’s death. Merely to give Empire false hope.”

  “Maybe not.” Bugdon leans close, whispers. “What if I said the mists told me to do this?”

  I shiver. Does Bugdon also hear the mists talk? Or is he trying to trick me into admitting that I hear them? “If the mists said to do this, then you do it,” I say.

  “No can. The mists want you.”

  I want to yell coward. Fake-topper. Scared-ass Super. But Bugdon simply smiles. “I know you didn’t get lucky making it back from the Plaza—the mists helped you. But why? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  I stare at my boots, afraid to speak. Bugdon points at the necklace Estelle gave me, which peeks out from under my jumpsuit. Bugdon opens his shirt to reveal a twin of the necklace, with a similar wisp of mist swirling inside each of the dozens of tiny glass globes.

  “When did you meet Estelle?” I ask.

  “I’ve never been to the Plaza.”

  “But the necklace. . . .”

  “. . . was given to me by someone you know,” he says. “This person said the mists want you to do this. That our time is running short.”

  I want to run for my slug and hide, but Bugdon hugs me tight and whispers in my ear. “There’ll be no more Supers after me,” he says. “Empire won’t last. But even if the building doesn’t collapse, we can’t keep living like this. You’ve seen it. We’re dying. Our people are merely passing time until we die.”

  I nod. I’ve long thought this, as I’m sure others have even if we never speak such heresy aloud.

  “Maybe you’ll die,” Bugdon says, “and based on how the mists play with us, you likely will. But if there’s a chance. . . .”

  “I’ll go. But if the mists take me, I’m coming back. Gonna haunt you until you do the big swan dive.”

  Bugdon laughs as only a true topper laughs. “If the mists take you, I’ll do exactly that.”

  How do you divide the mists? How do you divide past from present from future?

  As I walk toward Rockefeller University, I imagine myself on that paper map back in Empire, my path separating the mists from what they’ve been and what they are and what all of us might have become if we’d never been pulled from the Days-We-Knew.

  I walk blind, using a tap-cane to feel my way through streets which have never been cleared of rubble. I asked the mists to direct me, but for once they don’t speak. I want to raise my blinder but I’m afraid of what I’ll see.

  The route to Rockefeller University dances in my mind, but counting steps is impossible because of the rubble. So I feel my way as I drag a sled of air tanks and plug in new air every few hours. It takes me twelve hours to go a thousand feet. Another day to go half again that.

  Eventually I’m exhausted and nap for a few hours. I dream about what Momma told me, that I should only join the mists when I’m ready. I wake to bad air and immediately plug in a new tank before stumbling on in a delirium of not seeing.

  As I walk, I wonder what our city was like in the Days-We-Knew. A city with countless Empires of people sleeping and dreaming and eating and dying and moving through life. Were they like me? Did they talk but barely understand each other? Did their lives touch on each other but never truly penetrate to the core of who each of us could be?

  Instead of each moment of my life shattering into a million living instances of me, what was it like living with so many millions of other people?

  By the fourth day I have only have a few air tanks left. Based on what I know of the route, I suspect I’m near the university. But my air will run out well before I find it.

  With a sigh, I know what I must do. I’ve known all along I would do this. Maybe that’s why the mists and Momma have been silent. They’ve been waiting for me to make this choice.

  I raise my blinder and look.

  Around me stands the city as if we’d never left the Days-We-Knew.

  Crowds of people walk by me, a few staring in disgust at my smelly suit and strange attire. Most, though, flow around like I’m not there. They step by as if I’m merely an obstacle in their path.

  As my gloved hands rise to my helmet, I find I’m no longer afraid. I remember Momma jumping off Empire and, like her, I’m eager to see what happens next.

  I twist open my helmet and breathe deep. As the clean air reaches my lungs, a deep pain slams me. A pure white-fire pain. A pain like every muscle in my body cutting away at my bones and blood.

  I scream and fall to my knees. I try to beg the mists to help me but words refuse to leave my mouth.

  But the pain passes quickly, leaving me gasping and shaking. When I’m again able to stand, I blink back tears and look around.

  I stand on a rubble-free sidewalk as cars and buses pass in the street beside me. While I’ve seen pictures of such vehicles before, and touched their unseen remains while hiking the mists, it’s still shocking how big they are and how fast they move.

  But even bigger are the buildings. High-rises line the street, all of them
gleaming in unbroken glass and metal and stone. In the distance I see Empire State. But not the Empire as I knew her, covered in slugs and missing large pieces of limestone. No, this is the Empire as she was always meant to be. Perfectly maintained and wholesome and taller than all the other high-rises around her.

  And the sounds! A moment before all I heard was the air hissing in my suit. Now I hear cars grumbling and people muttering and an entire city speaking at once.

  I stumble backward and collapse against the side of a glass storefront. The glass begs for Dry Cleaning. I can’t begin to understand how cleaning could ever be dry.

  “A lot to take in, isn’t it,” a familiar voice says. I look up to see Momma standing beside a strange cooking stand on wheels. The man cooking there hands Momma a bottle of what looks like water and some type of a bread and meat food.

  Momma walks over and hands me the water and food. “It’s called a hot dog,” she says. “Better than anything we ate on Empire.”

  I haven’t eaten in days and I tear into the food, not caring if it’s mist dreams or not. Momma’s right—it’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I also drink the entire bottle of water.

  Feeling better, I look around. The people passing Momma and me on the sidewalk are purposely not looking at me. I see my reflection in the window beside me and know why. My hair’s matted, my face dirt-streaked, and my suit stinks. Compared to these people’s clean, neat clothes, I’m a wreck. Even Momma looks beautiful, wearing something called a dress. At least, I think that’s what Old Man Douger called the old pictures he once showed me of the clothes people wore in the Days-We-Knew.

  The man who’d cooked the hot dog for Momma brings over another, along with more water. He whispers to Momma that it’s good she’s helping me. “If you need anything, let me know,” the man says before returning to his cart.

  “He thinks you’re in trouble,” Momma says. “Now that the people here can see you, all they comprehend is a dirty girl in a strange outfit.”