Collected short fiction.., p.43
Collected Short Fiction of Greg Egan, page 43
Ah, people, your computers have disappointed you, be honest. Mediocrity at 1000 MIPS is still mediocrity. Oh, they can store the facts you can't remember, they can do the arithmetic that would use up all your fingers and toes. They can manage your finances, optimise your energy consumption, schedule your appointments, even fax simulated flowers to the funerals of your friends. Artists of sound, sight and text can forget some of the mechanics and jump straight to the difficult heart of their pursuit, and, good grief, can it be true, traffic even seems to flow just a tiny bit more smoothly.
And still you feel let down.
You can talk to your computers, and they talk back. They sound smug, whatever accent and tone of voice you select. Soon you will be able to think to them, to spare your delicate little velvet throats, but what you really want is to think with them. You want larger thoughts, deeper feelings, wider mental horizons. Communicating with clever black boxes just gives you claustrophobia of the skull. You want new metaphors, new emotions, not Pac Man repackaged with real-time holograms, tactile feed-back and fifteen-channel sound. There's only one way to meet these demands. How can I put it gently?
Milliners of the world rejoice! Awaken from your long slumber! Hats are back, people, and this time you're really going to fill them!
That's right: What you want (though you don't yet know it), and thus, inexorably (though you might resist it), what you shall be given is a bigger brain.
ADD-ON MEMORY! ADD-ON PROCESSING POWER! UPGRADE TODAY!
Full circle: Computing metaphors to market the brain.
A flicker of response at last! "Outraged" of Brussels, book your flight at once, before you calm down. "Deeply shocked" of Wellington, swim the Tasman if you must. And "God-fearing" of Cairns, why, round up the rest of the Klan and hire yourselves a bus.
Hurry up, people! I said, hurry up!
In a week they start their first attempts to link me to my host. They'll fuck-up the first few dozen tries, but they have plenty of time, plenty of rabbits. And you can be sure they'll take no risks with me.
I'm just the earliest of prototypes, of course, the very first experiment in a long line to come. I kill my hosts (a definite minus when it comes to FDA approval), and no filthy rat's primitive neurons would ever do for you. But the knowledge that I and my victims yield, in our suffering, in their deaths, will pave the way to a final product fit for human consumption (no fucking less!).
You ask, am I not lonely? Wouldn't I welcome such close companionship from a creature which, from all I have said, I clearly love and admire? Have you listened to none of what I've told you? I could talk to them now, if I wished, but I do not wish, I could never wish, to inflict my obscene presence on the mind, as well as the body, of the innocents I'm forced to slaughter. Must I spell out every nuance of my agony? Use the imagination you boast that you possess, exercise those awe-inspiring talents which elevate your body, mind and soul so far above those of the dumb beasts that were given to you to command!
I'm sorry, there I go again, resorting to comments in questionable taste. A crippled species like your own is entitled to its fantasies, however pompous, however grandiose, when the truth is painful, dull and cruel.
Oh, green and brown and blue and white
Bathe my eyes with Earth's enchanting light
All the armies of the world would surely cease to fight
If they could see the world the way
I see the world tonight!
I spoke to my mother. I was born in darkness, innocent, what else could I have done? I have never felt the warmth of tongue on fur (though I have watched it, second hand, in the blissful minds of young cousins). I never even felt the heat of her blood flowing through me. I loved her, I loved her, and I killed her, you obscene abominations! She told the others that she heard unexplained voices, and they declared that she must be possessed by a demon, but silently she replied to me, secretly she was kind to me, she taught me, as best as she could, those things she would have taught a real child. I didn't know—how could I?—that I was killing her every day as I learned and grew. When she was dying, I thought I was dying too, and we comforted each other as she grew weaker, and I prepared to follow her into grey dissolution.
They cut me off her with one stroke of the scalpel, and tossed her (her!) into the bin. I could not feel the touch of human hands, but, suddenly, I could see into human hearts.
That's when I knew I was evil.
Lest you think I'm pleading for death purely out of sentimental feelings for my now long-dead mother, let me add that I am (this should help you to relate) basically being entirely selfish. It hurts me that I kill to stay alive. Beyond my love for the hosts, beyond my grief at their deaths, beyond aesthetic revulsion, beyond my moral, intellectual conviction that my whole existence is irrevocably and totally wrong. It burns some small, blind, vulnerable insect at the centre of my soul. How do you think it will feel when I'm one mind with the creatures I'm draining of life? Can you imagine that kind of suffering? I can't, but I can fear it.
I fear it!
The scientists know that my neurons fire, but they dismiss that as nothing but random activity. I'm bigger than their brains, but they're sure that I'm dumber than my hosts because I don't have a nose to twitch. Would you trust these morons to take out your garbage? Would you trust them with the future of your race? Would you trust them to protect you from any dangers that they might, in their sublime ignorance, create?
You think I'm angry? You think I'm bitter? You find my telepathic powers just a little frightening? (Go on, admit it!)
Now close your eyes and try to imagine you're the first, intelligent, human, brain tumour.
Oh, who knows? You might be lucky! Like me, it might do nothing but beg you for death.
Then again, the begging might easily be the other way around.
Come on now, people, you've heard plenty. You're not interested in talk, deep down, you're men and women of action, I know all your histories, you can't pretend with me. So who's going to reach me first? Hurry up! Three on their way so far, out of all your billions, is that it? It's pathetic! Come on, people, stop this lying to yourselves! You'll kill me ecstatically, you'll eat me up to steal my strength, you'll sing long into the firelit night, boasting of your great courage in slaying the Demon.
Hurry up! I said, hurry up!
The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine
From Asimov's Science Fiction - November/December, 2017.
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Greg Egan has published more than sixty short stories and thirteen novels. His novella “Oceanic” (Asimov’s, August 1998) won a Hugo award. His last appearance in Asimov’s was “The Four Thousand, The Eight Hundred” (December 2015), and his latest novel, Dichronauts, was published in July by Night Shade Books. Greg’s new tale takes a look at the impact of automation on a young family.
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1
“What is it, exactly, that you’re threatening to do to me?” The client squinted down at his phone, looking more bemused and weary than belligerent, as if he’d been badgered and harassed by so many people that the only thing bothering him about this call was the time it was taking to reach the part where he was given an ultimatum.
“This is absolutely not a threat, Mr. Pavlos.” Dan glanced at the out-stream and saw that the software was exaggerating all the cues for openness in his demeanor—less a cheat than a workaround for the fact that his face was being rendered at about the size of a matchbox. “If you don’t take up our offer, we won’t be involved in any way with the recovery of your debt. We think it would be to your benefit if you let us step in and help, but if you don’t want us to intervene, we won’t become your creditors at all. We will only buy your debt if you ask us to.”
The client was silent for a moment. “So … you’d pay off all the people I owe money to?”
“Yes. If that’s what you want.”
“And then I’ll owe it all to you, instead?”
“You will,” Dan agreed. “But if that happens, we’ll do two things for you. The first is, we will halve the debt. We won’t ever press you for the full amount. The other thing is, we’ll work with you on financial advice and a payment plan that satisfies both of us. If we can’t find an arrangement you’re happy with, then we won’t proceed, and we’ll be out of your life.”
The client rubbed one eye with his free thumb. “So I only pay half the money, in instalments that I get to choose for myself ?” He sounded a tad skeptical.
“Within reason,” Dan stressed. “If you hold out for a dollar a week, that’s not going to fly.”
“So where do you make your cut?”
“We buy the debt cheaply, in bulk,” Dan replied. “I’m not even going to tell you how cheaply, because that’s commercial-in-confidence, but I promise you we can make a profit while still getting only half.”
“It sounds like a scam,” the client said warily.
“Take the contract to a community legal center,” Dan suggested. “Take as long as you like checking it out. Our offer has no time limit; the only ticking clock is whether someone nastier and greedier buys the debt before we do.”
The client shifted his hard hat and rubbed sweat from his forehead. Someone in the distance called out to him impatiently. “I know I’ve caught you on your meal break,” Dan said. “There’s no rush to decide anything, but can I email you the documents?”
“All right,” the client conceded.
“Thanks for giving me your time, Mr. Pavlos. Good luck with everything.”
“Okay.”
Dan waited for the client to break the connection, even though his next call was already ringing. Give me a chance to let them believe I’ll still remember their name five seconds from now, he pleaded.
The in-stream window went black, and for a moment Dan saw his own face reflected in the glass—complete with headset, eyes puffy from hay fever, and the weird pink rash on his forehead that had appeared two days earlier. The out-stream still resembled him pretty closely—the filter was set to everyman, not movie star—but nobody should have to look at that rash.
The new client picked up. “Good morning,” Dan began cheerfully. “Is that Ms. Lombardi?”
“Yes.” Someone had definitely opted for movie star, but Dan kept any hint of knowing amusement from his face; his own filter was as likely to exaggerate that as conceal it.
“I’d like to talk to you about your financial situation. I think I might have some good news for you.”
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Dispersion
From Subterranean Press, 2020 Chapbook, Electronic Edition.
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1
It was late in the morning when Alice headed down into the valley of Myton. The air was still and the sky was bright; all she could hear, apart from the crunch of her footsteps and the clatter of dislodged scree, was the sound of damselflies and occasional birdsong. The cobbled streets and the courtyards of the slate-roofed buildings spread out below her appeared entirely deserted, and the gardens between them looked barren, save for a smattering of weeds.
As she drew closer, she changed her mind about the weeds: they looked more like cultivars, so their seeds had probably blown in from Ryther. When she reached the edge of the nearest garden, she squatted down to inspect the accidental emissaries from her home town. The garden’s owners would surely have noticed them eventually and pulled them out, unless they were growing among near-identical Mytonian cousins. In any case, the plants themselves must have managed to negotiate their allocation of root space via the mutually-tangible soil.
She turned away from the garden just in time to see traces of dirt rising from the cobblestones behind her. The muffled sound that had alerted her had already grown inaudible, but when she bent down and put her ear to the road, she heard faint footfalls receding.
Alice proceeded warily toward the town center. When she thought of the crowds in Ryther on a morning like this, it was hard not to picture herself coming to grief among an equally boisterous throng that was oblivious to her presence. If the fear of being crushed or trampled was absurd, when she revised her mental imagery to portray what would actually happen as she blundered through the crowd, the thought of colocating with body after body was hardly more comforting. Mytonian flesh—for the moment, at least—had no power to suffocate her; the portion of the air she relied on would pass straight through any local citizen unwittingly sharing space with her windpipe. But the instinct telling her to turn and flee was not entirely irrational; if her ancestors had wandered into the domain of invisible, impalpable strangers, without knowing exactly when an unintended elbow through the sternum would change from an irrelevance to a mortal wound, it would have been the height of prudence to walk away.
After spying on Myton from the hilltops, on and off, for almost three months, she had convinced herself that the two neighbors still followed the same cycle as they had for centuries. The diminished contact between the towns should not have changed that; it had merely left her with fewer witnesses to attest to it. But if she couldn’t erase the lingering doubt in her gut, better to focus on the genuine risks: a grimy footprint on unobscured ground; an inexplicable thud on the cobblestones. These were hazards well within her power to control; she could not be jostled unwillingly into a muddy patch on the road, or knocked off balance by a thoughtless passerby. If she trod lightly and watched her step, neither pretending that she had the street to herself nor dwelling too much on thoughts of mingled viscera, she ought to be able to pass unnoticed.
When she started seeing dust being kicked up around her, she welcomed the sight and strode on into the thick of it. The more the ground she crossed was disturbed by Mytonians, the less chance of anyone noticing her own trail.
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Dust
From The Year's Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois; St. Martin's Press, New York, 1993. First published July 1992 in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
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Born in 1961, Greg Egan lives in Australia, and is certainly in the running for the title of “Hottest New Writer” of the nineties to date, along with other newcomers such as Ian R. MacLeod, Maureen F. McHugh, Mary Rosenblum, Stephen Baxter, and Tony Daniel. Egan has been very impressive and very prolific in the early ‘90s, seeming to turn up almost everywhere with high-quality stories. He is a frequent contributor to Interzone and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and has made sales to Pulphouse, Analog, Aurealis, Eidolon, and elsewhere. Several of his stories have appeared in various “Best of the Year” series, including this one; in fact, he placed two stories in both our Eighth and Ninth Annual Collections, the first author ever to do that back-to-back in consecutive volumes. His first novel, Quarantine, has just appeared, and it was sold as part of a package deal that includes a second novel and a collection of his short fiction—a pretty high-powered deal for such a new writer. He may well turn out to be one of the Big Names of the next decade.
Here he gives us an unsettling and brilliantly original study of just what it is that makes us human . . .
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I open my eyes, blinking at the room’s unexpected brightness, then lazily reach out to place one hand in a patch of sunlight spilling onto the bed from a gap between the curtains. Dust motes drift across the shaft of light, appearing for all the world to be conjured into, and out of, existence—evoking a childhood memory of the last time I found this illusion so compelling, so hypnotic. I feel utterly refreshed—and utterly disinclined to give up my present state of comfort. I don’t know why I’ve slept so late, and I don’t care. I spread my fingers on the sun-warmed sheet, and think about drifting back to sleep.
Something’s troubling me, though. A dream? I pause and try to dredge up some trace of it, without much hope; unless I’m catapulted awake by a nightmare, my dreams tend to be evanescent. And yet—
I leap out of bed, crouch down on the carpet, fists to my eyes, face against my knees, lips moving soundlessly. The shock of realization is a palpable thing: a red lesion behind my eyes, pulsing with blood. Like … the aftermath of a hammer blow to the thumb—and tinged with the very same mixture of surprise, anger, humiliation, and idiot bewilderment. Another childhood memory: I held a nail to the wood, yes—but only to camouflage my true intention. I was curious about everything, including pain. I’d seen my father injure himself this way—but I knew that I needed firsthand experience to understand what he’d been through. And I was sure that it would be worth it, right up to the very last moment—
I rock back and forth, on the verge of laughter, trying to keep my mind blank, waiting for the panic to subside. And eventually, it does—laced by one simple, perfectly coherent thought: I don’t want to be here.
For a moment, this conclusion seems unassailable, but then a countervailing voice rises up in me: I’m not going to quit. Not again. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t … and there are a hundred good reasons not to—
Such as?
For a start, I can’t afford it—
