Collected short stories, p.20
Collected Short Stories, page 20
It creates.
During the last six months, the population of the world has increased two hundredfold. And that's the conservative estimate.
No, you haven't heard anything about this plague. And there's a perfectly good explanation why you haven't.
Listen.
What happened was that those tech-wizards in the interactive market -- those creative geniuses of commerce -- thought it would be fun and sweet, not to mention lucrative, to build gaming platforms that their customers could carry wherever they went, embedded inside willing skulls. That's why the nanobodies do what they do. They bring improvements to cognitive functions. Think of them as an upgrade of old hardware. A little perk to every user. The brain gets quicker and smarter, so there's plenty of room for whatever diversion the buyer desires. And creativity has to be boosted, if only so the player can enjoy an experience that's promised to be unlike any other on the market today.
And the nanobody that went wild...?
It invents characters. Phony people that seem very real to the user. The entire package isn't much different from certain computer games that were popular during the last century. But then again, when hasn't human history been full of fictional worlds and imaginary friends?
This is how the disease works:
An infected person thinks of somebody. He picks a face in the crowd, or she dreams somebody up from nothing. Fantasy souls of their own invention. Then the machinery builds a character to match the face, guided by the host's supercharged creativity. These new entities are so carefully drawn that they acquire many if not all of the aspects of real life. Independence. Self-awareness. A life story, plus a huge capacity for love and hate.
Give the wild nanobodies a few busy weeks, and they'll infect any skull with a town's worth of artfully rendered citizens. These new people inhabit any dreamed-up landscape that suits them. Mountains are popular, and beaches, and drinking establishments, too. In principle, the infected person can visit whenever he wants, talk and touch whomever he wants. But he sees only tiny slivers of his new friends' rich, enormous lives.
Why is that bad?
Okay, that's a fair question.
Trouble comes sooner or later. You see, those fictional souls have their own lucid daydreams. Maybe they imagine a secret lover, or they want to have a child or three. Whatever the inspiration, they can trigger the same machinery that created them in the first place. And what's been a manageable population swells, and a disease that was only a nuisance suddenly overwhelms the infected, overtaxed mind.
This wouldn't happen with the original nanobody. It couldn't. But the wild bug has dropped all of the carefully contrived safeguards.
No matter how much genius a person carries, he has limits. The first symptom is to lose the elevated IQ. Then decision-making and recall slow down. If left unchecked, the infected person falls into a deep sleep, followed by a coma, while his brain works slower and slower as an entire nation of fictional souls struggle to live their important lives.
To date, the only treatment -- not a cure, mind you, but only a short-term fix -- is to physically remove these parasitic characters.
And it's not an easy fix.
I won't mention the physical constraints, which are enormous. But worse are the ethical problems. Purge the mind of thousands of living souls, and what are you doing?
You're committing mass murder, some say.
Says hundreds of billions of people, if you bother to ask them.
The imagined souls, yes.
But if humanity doesn't fight this runaway plague, everybody will become a host. Everybody will be unconscious and helpless. The meat-and-bone population of the world will live out its days in hospital beds, their minds progressively declining, their minimal needs tended to by machinery and empathetic software.
So you see, this is the worst disease ever.
No matter what the response, billions and eventually trillions of sentient entities are going to die. Will have to be killed. Yet for the time being, there is no other viable option.
Believe me when I say this: The best that we can do is to treat every last casualty with the same respect that humans would want, if these tragic roles were reversed.
Now put down the drink again, please.
No, I don't think you have been paying attention. Not like you should have been!
You're right. I haven't introduced myself.
Think of me as an angel.
As a servant from On High.
Now do I have your attention?
In the clearest possible terms, this angel is telling you that you have exactly one day to make peace with everybody in your world, and with yourself.
Did you hear me?
One day.
Or do I need to explain all this to you again?
The Children's Crusade
by Robert Reed
If one tallies weekly allowances, part-time employment, birthday and holiday gifts, as well as limited trusts, the children of the world wield an annual income approaching one trillion NA dollars. Because parents and an assortment of social service organizations supply most of their basic needs, that income can be considered discretionary. Discretionary income always possesses an impact far beyond its apparent value. And even more important, children are more open than adults when it comes to radical changes in spending habits, and in their view of the greater world.
Please note: We have ignored all income generated through gambling, prostitution, the sale of drugs and stolen merchandise, or currency pilfered from a parent's misplaced wallet.
We need to conspicuously avoid all questionable sources of revenue . at least for the present .
-Crusade memo, confidential
ú ú ú ú ú
The pregnancy couldn't have been easier, and then suddenly, it couldn't have been worse.
We were still a couple weeks away from Hanna's due date. By chance, I didn't have an afternoon class, which was why I drove her to the doctor's office. The check-up was supposed to be entirely routine. Her OB was a little gray-haired woman with an easy smile and an autodoc aide. The doctor's eyes were flying down a list of numbers-the nearly instantaneous test results derived from a drop of blood and a sip of amniotic fluid. It was the autodoc who actually touched Hanna, probing her belly with pressure and sound, an elaborate and beautiful and utterly confusing three-dimensional image blooming in the room's web-window. I've never been sure which professional found the abnormality. Doctors and their aides have always used hidden signals. Even when both of them were human, one would glance at the other in a certain way, giving the warning, and the parents would see none of it, blissfully unaware that their lives were about to collapse.
Some things never change.
It was our doctor who said, "Hanna," with the mildest of voices. Then showing the barest smile, she asked, "By any chance, did you have a cold last week?"
My wife was in her late forties. A career woman and single for much of her life, she delayed menopause so that we could attempt a child. This girl. Our spare bedroom was already set up as a nursery, and two baby showers had produced a mountain of gifts. That's one of the merits of waiting to procreate to the last possible moment; you have plenty of friends and grateful relatives with money to spend on your unborn child. And as I mentioned, it had been a wondrously easy pregnancy. Hanna has never been a person who suffers pain well or relishes watching her body deformed beyond all recognition. But save for some minor aches and the persistent heartburn, it had been a golden eight-plus months, and that's probably why Hanna didn't hear anything alarming in that very simple question.
"A cold?" she said. Then she glanced in my direction, shrugging. "Just a little one. There and gone in a couple days. Wasn't it, Wes?"
I looked at our doctor.
I said, "Just a few sniffles."
"Well," our doctor replied. Then she glanced at her aide, the two of them conversing on some private channel.
Finally, almost grudgingly, Hanna grew worried, taking a deep breath and staring down at her enormously swollen belly.
Seeing her concern, I felt a little more at ease.
Someone had to be.
Then our doctor put on a confident face, and a lifetime of experience was brought to bear. "Well," she said again, her voice acquiring a motherly poise. "There is a chance, just a chance, that this bug wasn't a cold virus. And since the baby could be in some danger-"
"Oh, God," Hanna whimpered.
"I think we need to consider a C-section. Just to be very much on the safe side."
"God," my wife moaned.
My temporary sense of wellbeing was obliterated. With a gasp, I asked, "What virus? What chance?"
"A C-section?" Hanna blurted. "God, when?"
The doctor looked only at her. "Now," she answered. And then with an authoritarian nod of the head, she added, "And we really should do it here."
"Not at the hospital?" Hanna muttered.
"Time is critical," the doctor cautioned. "If this happens to be a strain of the Irrawaddy-"
"Oh, shit-"
"I know. It sounds bad. But even if that bug is the culprit, you're so far along in the pregnancy, and you have a girl, and the girls seem to weather this disease better than the boys-"
"What chance?" I blurted. "What are we talking about here?"
The autodoc supplied my answer. With a smooth voice and a wet-nurse's software, it told me, "The odds of infection are approximately one in two. And if it was the Irrawaddy virus, the odds of damage to a thirty-nine week fetus are less than three in eleven."
Our doctor would have preferred to deliver that news. Even in my panic, I noticed the bristling in her body language. But she kept her poise. Without faltering, she set her hand on my wife's hand. I think that was the first time during the visit that she actually touched Hanna. And with a reassuring music, she said, "We're going to do our best. For you and for your daughter."
About that next thirty minutes, I remember everything.
There was a purposeful sprint by nurses and autodocs as well as our doctor and her two human partners. The largest examination room was transformed into a surgical suite, every surface sterilized with bursts of ionized radiation and withering desiccants. Hanna was plied with tubes and fed cocktails of medicines and microsensors. Needing something to do, I sent a web-flash to family and friends, carefully downplaying my worsening fears. And then I was wrapped inside a newly made gown and cap and led into the suite, finding Hanna already laid out on a table with her arms spread wide and tied down at the wrists. Some kind of medical crucifixion was in progress. She was sliced open, a tidy hole at her waist rimmed with burnt blood and bright white fat. I could smell the blood. I overheard the doctor warning Hanna about some impending pressure. And all the while, the autodoc worked over her, those clean sleek limbs moving with an astonishing speed and a perfect, seamless grace.
Thirty seconds later, my daughter was born.
With a nod to custom, our doctor was allowed to cut the cord.
Then both professionals worked with my daughter, stealing bits of skin and blood for tests, and in another few moments-a few hours, it felt like-they decided that Hanna's cold had been a cold and nothing more.
The autodoc began gluing my wife back together, and with a congratulatory smile, the doctor handed my baby to me. Veronica, named after her mother's mother. I had just enough time to show the screaming baby to Hanna, and then the ambulance arrived, flying the three of us to a hospital room where we could start coming to terms with the changes in our lives.
Veronica slept hard for hours, swaddled tight in a little blanket infused with helpful bacteria and proven antibodies. Hanna drifted into a shallow sleep, leaving me alone. I was holding my child, and the room's web-window was wandering on its own, searching for items that might interest me, and there was this odd little news item about a fifteen-year-old boy in France-a bright and handsome young man blessed with rich parents and a flair for public speaking. Standing in a mostly empty auditorium, Philippe Rule was announcing the launch of some kind of private space program.
It involved Mars, I halfway heard.
But honestly, I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy holding my happy, healthy daughter, watching her eyes twitch as she dreamed her secret dreams.
ú ú ú ú ú
Three times in the last twenty years, the great dream of humanity has been attempted:
A manned mission to Mars.
The Americans were first, and by some measures, they had the greatest success. Seven astronauts completed the voyage, only to discover that their lander was inoperative. Repairs were attempted while in Martian orbit, but with the launch window closing and limited supplies on hand, the mission had to be canceled. An American flag was dropped on Olympus Mons, pledges were made to return soon, and after several months in deep space, and a string of catastrophic mechanical failures, three of the original crew returned home alive.
Four years later, the European Union sent nineteen astronauts inside a pair of elaborate mother ships. One of the mission's twin landers exploded during its descent, but the other lander managed to reach the surface. Photographs made from orbit show a squat, bug-like machine tilted at an unnatural angle, its landing gear mired in an unmapped briny seepage. At least one of its crew managed to climb out of the airlock, crossing a hundred meters of the Martian surface. Then she sat on a windswept boulder and opened the faceplate, letting her life boil away.
The Chinese mission was the most expensive, and ambitious, and in the end, it was the most frustrating. The nuclear-powered rocket was intended to solve the difficulties of past missions. The voyage to Mars would consume only two weeks. With the added thrust, a wealth of supplies and spare parts could be carried along, and the inevitable problems of muscle and bone atrophy would be avoided. Depending on circumstances, the crew would stay on Mars for as long or as briefly as needed, exploring various sites while building the first structures in a permanent settlement.
Unfortunately, the ship that held so much promise survived only sixty-five minutes. A flaw in the reaction chamber triggered a catastrophic series of accidents, culminating in that brief, awful flash that lit up our night sky.
Since that tragedy, no nation or group of nations has found the courage, much less the money, to attempt a fourth mission.
This is wrong.
These countries, and the adults who lead them, are cowards.
Mars is out there. Mars is waiting, and we know it. It is a new world, and it is wonderfully empty, and you want to go there. I know that's what you want. You dream about walking in its red dust, and exploring its dry riverbeds, and building castles out of its red rock, and hunting for alien fossils. Or better still, you want to find living Martians hiding in some deep canyon or under the floor of an old sea .
I know you.
You want to do what your parents couldn't do.
Help me! Together, let's do this one great thing! If you give me just a little money . a week's allowance, or what the tooth fairy leaves under your pillow tonight . then maybe you will be one of the lucky ones chosen for the next mission!
The mission that succeeds!
-Philippe Rule, from the announcement
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I love my little sister, but it's hard to imagine us as sharing parents. We don't look alike-she is a wispy blonde while I am stocky and dark. Our interests and temperaments have always been different. And in most ways, we don't think alike. Both of us married for love, but it was a foregone conclusion that Iris' spouse would have money. Where Hanna and I have a comfortable little home, Iris needs two enormous houses, plus a brigade of AI servants to keep both homes pretty and clean. Instead of having one child late in life, Iris started early, producing five of the rascals. Being a parent is everything to my sister: She hovers over her babies and babies her children as they grow older. Every birthday is a daylong celebration, and every holiday is a golden opportunity to spoil her children while flaunting her husband's wealth. By contrast, I've always forgotten birthdays, and Christmas is an insufferable burden. I don't approve of outrageous gifts. Yet with a distinct and embarrassing selfishness, I wish she would send some of her wealth my way.
She is my only sister, and how can anything be easy between us?
I love my nephews and nieces, but according to Iris, I have never shown the proper interest in them.
Tom was her middle-born-an undersized kid with a bright, overly serious manner and a real talent for getting whatever he wanted. When he was eight years old, he decided that he wanted money for Christmas. Nothing but. He pushed hard for months, pleading and arguing, and begging, and generally making his parents miserable. And even when they surrendered, his demands didn't stop.
"He won't accept even one present," his mother complained to me. "Not from anyone. He says he'll throw any package into the fire."
"Give him fireworks," was my snappy advice.
Iris put her arms around herself, and shuddered.
Then with a more serious tone, I offered, "Cash is good. I always liked getting it when we were kids."
"I didn't," my sister snarled.
In secret, I was admiring the boy's good sense. His mother's gifts tended towards the fancy and the lame, and after a day of fitful abuse, the new toys usually ended up inside some cavernous closet, forgotten.
"This is our deal," Iris continued. "Every relative puts money into a common account, and Tom buys himself something. A real gift."
It was Christmas Eve. Hanna and I had flown into town that afternoon, bringing our baby girl. "So you want me to throw in a few dollars?"
Iris blinked, and a tension revealed itself. She looked thinner than normal, nervous and pretty in equal measures. As if in pain, she winced, and then with a stiff voice, she admitted, "He really likes you."
"Tom does?"
"He adores you, a little bit."
I always thought the kid was high-strung and spoiled. But everybody likes to hear that someone adores him.
"I told him you'd help. Help him pick a real gift."
