You, Human: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction Page 11

  “Sometimes I wish you were,” she said, grimacing. “Then we wouldn’t have to say goodbye.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to try to argue with me anymore.”

  “Not an argument,” she said. “Just an observation.”

  He considered the list again, and as he did so, remembered not just each achievement, but also the motivations that had driven him to each action. Not all of the events which had preceded each list entry had been pleasant ones.

  “I didn’t do these things because they were on some mysterious list that popped up in my feed. I did them because they mattered at the time. I did them because I couldn’t not do them.”

  She shrugged, then lowered herself back against the ground and started sifting through the sand once more.

  “Who do you think made this thing?” he asked.

  “Does it really matter?” she said. “Whoever it was will soon be Downloaded like the rest us. Well … like most of us.”

  “It matters to me. Don’t be angry. This list … this list is me.”

  “You’re more than just a list of the things you’ve done.”

  “And you’re wise for someone so young.”

  “Uncle, I’m 140 years old.”

  Husssh laughed.

  “As I said, you’re wise for someone so young.”

  “And you’re foolish for someone so old. But I guess that’s part of why I love you.”

  He smiled, and dropped beside her to join in sifting through the mud. And sift through the list as well, trying to decide what do to next. As in the palm of his hand he rolled broken pieces of granite and metal bits from machines that were no longer necessary, he realized that, in the end, there was no need to decide. His course, for once, was not up to him. The list itself would lead him to who had mined his life and made the list.

  “I’ll see you later, niece,” he said. “I need to go for a swim.”

  “We’re already swimming,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, letting the fragments drop slowly to the riverbed. “But it’s time for a swim that’s not on the list.”

  Then he was gone.

  And then he was not.

  He paddled slowly on his back along the Colorado River, looking up toward the stars, which were harder than ever to make out with his natural eyes. The sky had grown much brighter than it used to be, and it was only with enhancement that he could see things as they used to be and would have been able to pretend—had he been the sort of person who felt a need to pretend—that the time for Downloading was not fast approaching. He climbed from the water and then hiked to the deepest part of the Grand Canyon, where he sat and waited for the sun above to vanish.

  Soon, he knew, that sun would grow insistent, and demanding, and be beyond vanishing. But not yet. He considered the list once more as the sun dropped and the rocks around him cooled suddenly, cracking loudly as if surprised by the abrupt sunset and the swift temperature change it bought.

  Find and ride a falling meteor. Repeat until you latch onto one that reaches Earth. Savor the impact.

  Scan every work ever written in every language until you find the words worthy of being your epitaph. Then tell no one what you have chosen.

  Listen to rocks pop after a sudden sunset at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

  Delete a painful memory. Delete the memory of that deletion.

  Had he erased a memory once? He guessed he had. It appeared he’d done all the other things on the list, so why not that one? He thought away the list, then lay on his back to count the stars (which we cannot do, but Husssh, in his future, could) and try to figure out what that lost memory might be. Then he figured … it didn’t really matter. He had to trust himself. If he started second-guessing himself now, where would he be?

  The air shifted beside him, and Husssh sensed he was no longer alone in the darkness.

  He turned away from the stars to see a woman, list in hand, about to tear at the edge of the page.

  “You’re too late,” he said.

  He reached for her wrist, but before he could make contact, she vanished and then reappeared behind him.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” he said. “I read the list. You missed what you came for. You can’t pretend you accomplished this one. It didn’t count. You don’t get credit just for showing up. You’ll have to come back tomorrow night.”

  “I don’t have the time for that,” she said.

  “You have to be somewhere?”

  “I have to be … you know … ”

  She pointed up and to the left, zeroing in through the millennia of rock which surrounded them to the exact spot of the sun.

  “Downloaded?” Husssh said.

  “Well, yes. Of course. Where else?”

  “Why the rush? We have some time left.”

  “Not as much as you’d think. I’m in a race with the others. I don’t want to end up being the last one here. I wouldn’t like it.”

  “Doesn’t seem like that would be too bad to me. Not at all.”

  “It’s already getting a little too empty,” she said. “There’s less … us. I wouldn’t want a planet of my own.”

  “Who would?” he said. “Well … maybe for a little while. And then … ”

  He smiled, and spoke in darkness what he might not have spoken in light.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “it gets a little too noisy around here for my taste.”

  The woman widened her eyes, after for the first time bothering to check who it was beside her at the bottom of the crevasse.

  “Oh,” she said. “That’s right. It’s you. I should have known.”

  “Of course it’s me. So?”

  Her only answer was a nervous laugh. And then, before Husssh had a chance to ask her anything else, she was gone.

  She’d been frightened. Of him. Which was odd, because there was no reason for a stranger to fear him (not that she was truly a stranger in this future devoid of strangers). Though perhaps based on a few of the items on the list some might think there a reason, assuming she knew he’d done everything on that list as he felt confident in assuming she did. But it seemed more than just that knowledge which had scared her and driven her away. The woman had been hiding something, and in a world in which it had become nearly impossible to hide, that was meaningful.

  And so he hunted them.

  How strange it felt to be chasing rather than evading, because in his mind he’d already said farewell. He travelled the world—the whole solar system, in fact, which was the limit of their personal technology during that age—in search of the searchers.

  He hunted them all.

  Walk the Great Wall of China. No, really. Walk. Just like they had to do in the old days.

  And so he walked the Great Wall, encountering others beside him not looking as happy as he had when he first walked the Wall. What gave the appearance of punishment as they did it had felt like freedom to him.

  “Not used to using your feet, eh?”

  But they would not speak to him. Some, whom he assumed wore electronic blinders, erasing him from their world, would not even notice him.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Who gave you this list? Where did it come from?”

  Not a one answered. Instead, they would veer swiftly around him, eyes at their feet, or else bump into him, not seeing him in space. He watched the glum parade until he could stand no more, and then leapt on.

  From the Sea of Tranquility, watch the sun rise over the Earth.

  He stood by the L.E.M. as the others popped in and out of existence. He hovered over the lunar soil, showing proper respect for the place of humanity’s first great leap, but they did not care, leaving new footsteps.

  He approached the first to appear, looking down at they. The other looked up at Husssh and smiled briefly.

  “Why did you smile?”

  “You’re here,” they said. “I’m here. That makes this even better.”

  “But why?” he said. “Who am I to you?”r />
  They winked.

  The others who came after were no more helpful, and he had no means with which to compel them.

  Before Husssh moved on, he cleared the new footprints, returning the soil to the way it had been since the time humanity had last used rockets to get there. He wasn’t entirely sure why it mattered to him, since the Moon would soon—soon in the way the universe keeps track of things—be lost in a solar blaze.

  But it did matter.

  Go to the South Pole. Go to the North Pole. Commune in those spaces with the memory of ice.

  He sat on the stones. He floated in the water. He moved from pole to pole in wonder. It had been different the last times he’d been there. But none of the newcomers would know that.

  There were fewer of them every day. As each fulfilled the tasks on the list, they’d Download, preparing for the escape that would come when the sun overwhelmed the Earth. He did not mind watching their number dwindle—it had been what he’d been looking forward to all along—but their increasing disappearances meant there were fewer and fewer each day willing to answer (or fewer to be asked anyway, since answers were not forthcoming), and he had to wait longer and longer for anyone to show.

  As each appeared, he’d rip the paper from their hands and tear it to shreds. It angered him that the mystery of their quest could so anger him. But his actions in a world which did not know much of aggression didn’t seem to bother them. They’d shrug, and manifest the list all over again.

  “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” he said to one.

  “There’s nothing to tell you,” the one said back.

  And perhaps they were right.

  Walk across Tanzania until you reach the Laetoli footprints. Think of the millions of years behind and the millions of years ahead.

  When he’d first done that, his time behind and time ahead seemed in balance. He’d been teetering in the middle of eternity. No more. He had time to think about that, how nearly all of his future had become his past, because those who remained had dwindled few, and provided no distraction. When another finally appeared, Husssh had almost forgotten what he’d been waiting for, and what he’d wanted to ask.

  “Is this how you want to spend the time you have left on this planet?” he said. “Doing what I did? Walking in my footsteps? Copying my life? Think about it. You could be out there doing something new, something yours.”

  “I am doing something mine,” he said. “And something more than mine as well.”

  Husssh was surprised. It was the first time in a long while someone had actually spoken to him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  And then he was gone.

  He moved around the known, reachable space, reliving the millennia of his life, until finally, there was only one other than himself remaining to be Downloaded. The planet was nearly abandoned. And so he returned to rest where his hunt had begun, atop Mt. Everest, alone.

  Then he was not. Drackle, whom he’d first known as his niece, appeared beside him, though he could tell by a look in their eye he’d seen numerous times before over the decades that at that moment niece was no longer the proper pronoun.

  “I never did find out who made the list,” he said.

  “Of course you did,” they said. “But then, you knew that. Didn’t you?”

  Puzzled, he turned from them to look down from the roof of the world at the emptiness below, which suddenly seemed bleaker than usual and suddenly more beautiful than usual. Then he looked back, nodding.

  “Yes, I guess I did know. But what I don’t get is … why did you do it?”

  “Because I’d agreed not to argue anymore,” they said. “Because I hoped that if you realized all you’d done, all you’d lived for, all you could still do and live for, it would shake you out of your despair. And because you’d lived the most exciting, vibrant life of anyone I’ve ever known, and I hate that you’ve given up.”

  “You think that I’ve given up? You’ve think I despair? I haven’t given up.”

  “Then what then?”

  “I’ve lived enough of a life,” Husssh said. “You think I spent my centuries so I could make a list? I wasn’t list-making. I was living. And I’m fine with dying when planet Earth goes.”

  “If you’re truly fine with the end of everything, then why did you agree to this? Why did you help me plan it all?”

  “I didn’t—” he said, but stopped, for he remembered a mem-ory was missing, even if he didn’t yet remember what that memory was.

  “Yes,” they said. “See?”

  Drackle touched his temples, and he saw them arguing across decades, eventually saw himself telling her everything, so she could create the list that had been the bones of his life up until that point, saw himself agree to alterations in his programming to hide himself from himself, saw her asking the world to help her ask him to stay in this mysterious way, saw himself give her give himself this one final chance to change his mind.

  “It worked,” he said.

  “No, it didn’t,” they said. “Not if you tell me you’re still refusing to keep on living.”

  “I’ll be living a lot longer than you,” he said. “The place you’re going to? That’s not life. That’s a fantasy. This is life.”

  “Who’s to say what’s life? You think those before us would think what we have a life? They might consider this the fantasy.”

  “No,” insisted Husssh. “There’s a difference. There are bound-aries, once crossed, that would make all that occurred before meaningless. I wasn’t sure before now, but now that I’ve played your crazy game—”

  “It was our crazy game, uncle.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is—I’m now more certain than ever. I don’t need to live forever. Almost forever is more than enough. Who needs more life than that?”

  “You do,” she said. “We all do. And I do, uncle. I swear to you that I’ll never become bored of living.”

  “I’m not bored of living. I’m … content.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be that content.”

  Drackle turned away to look at the emptiness below. Husssh wished he could transmit what he saw when he gazed into that emptiness, but not even their future (so very distant from ours, yet not so very distant at all) was up to such things.

  “If you live your life right, and you’re very, very lucky, you will be,” said Husssh. “I’ll miss you.”

  “No,” they said. “No, you won’t. Because you’ll be dead. But I’ll miss you.”

  They gave their uncle a hug, and then was gone, Downloaded, just like that.

  Husssh stared at the space which Drackle had moments before occupied, then turned to consider the sun. He would remain like that, happy, satisfied, until it went nova as had been foretold. And when those final rays someday reach him, igniting him with a warm embrace, he will realize that he has taken an action worthy of being item number 101 on that list of 100 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded.

  And he’ll have been the only one to accomplish it.

  The only one.

  THE STAR-FILLED

  SEA IS SMOOTH

  TONIGHT

  THOMAS F. MONTELEONE

  Link had tasted the universe.

  He had sifted light-years through his fingers like grains of sand; he had breathed plasma like summer air; he had worn a star-bow like a crown upon his head. He had been both starship and man.

  Now, only the man remained.

  He lay in a hospital bed, in a starkly white room, at the edge of the City which had sent him to the stars and now called him back. He was an amusing puzzle for the machines to ponder as he struggled to recover from a special madness. In the IASA installation, Link lay wrestling with the phantoms of his tormented consciousness. Over and over, his moment of collapse was reenacted.

  Link remembered …

  He slipped into an almost circular orbit. The Earth turned slowly beneath him as he
touched its surface with his sensors and auxiliary scanning equipment. Watching and feeling, Link/Ship sensed the small surfaceship climbing toward him, and he absorbed the shortwave communication into his cybernetic receivers: “Com-mander Link? This is Shuttle 41-C … Acknowledge please … Request permission to begin docking.”

  The long-feared moment had finally come, and Link/Ship wished that he could ignore it. Instead, he beamed out a short reply: “Affirmative, 41-C … I have you on instrument tracking … All systems green … Proceed to forward docking collar on present course.”

  As he waited for the small ship’s final approach and contact, he felt himself becoming apprehensive, and he fought down a rising swell of panic. He tried to savor the sensations of the cybernetic/biological mix that was himself; whenever he concentrated on the phenomenon, he felt mildly intoxicated. Yet he was still in complete control. With the Ship’s electronic sense organs, Link/ Ship was a member of a very elite race of beings.

  New signals raced into him, jarring him from his private thoughts, which said that the docking collar had been sealed. He opened his airlock and patiently waited for the technicians to scramble into him. Link/Ship heard their footfalls, felt the infrared heat of their bodies, as the men made their cautious way to the bridge. They were coming toward him as be floated weightlessly in the colloidal-suspension tank. He wore a specially designed suit with a small opening at the base of his spine, from which a shining, serpent-like cable led to a terminal on the side of the tank.

  Their words invaded his mind: “All ready, Commander Link?”

  Turning, shifting around in the suspension, Link/Ship regarded them with his human eyes: they were lean young men, ‘wearing the jumpsuits of the IASA; they were his unwitting torturers. “Yes,” he said after a long pause. “I am.”

  He forced himself to watch as they began the process. One of them inserted supportive waldoes into the tank and cradled his human body firmly. The other one threw some switches on the manual panel and the temperature of the colloid began to change. Slowly it liquefied and began to drain from the tank. But at this point, Link/Ship could still feel everything, even the slight electric pulses that controlled the tank’s thermostats.