The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
Her face froze. He’d intended to make her smile, but somehow he’d said it wrong.
“Here’s what I would do,” Rashad said. “I’d go back in time and take away the sniper’s free will to shoot at me. I’d kill him before he entered that house full of people and climbed to the roof.”
“That would be the right thing to do? You have no doubt?” It was almost as if she were asking permission.
“No doubt.” They both seemed surprised by his certainty. Decisiveness had crept back into his thinking.
They resumed the slides. Blue square. Puppy. Yellow X. Pistol. Yellow X. Sailboat. Once it had been almost relaxing to sit through the cascade of images, but now he felt as if he were riding the bow of a SURC in heavy surf. By the end of the final series he was sweating, nauseated. He turned away from her, flipped up his eye patch, rubbed away the sweat. He didn’t want her to see the wound.
She brought him water. They chatted about the recent heat wave. And then she said, “I have something to tell you.”
He could hear the edge in her voice.
“Dr. Subramanian’s taken a position back east,” she said. “Cornell’s opening a new neuroscience lab and he’ll head it.”
Rashad couldn’t speak for a long moment. “And you? You’re going with him?”
“In a few weeks. I need to finish my work with him, to get my PhD.”
The room seemed to shift. It was the strongest, most piercing emotion he’d felt since the bullet. Had the DBI’s neural network strengthened the signal as it passed through? Or, shit, weakened it?
Finally he said, “So you have no choice.” Another failed attempt at a joke.
“There are good neurologists here,” she said. “They’ll continue to see you, and they know the protocols. You’re not being abandoned.”
It didn’t feel that way. “Don’t let them turn down the volume,” he said. “Please. The implant’s working.”
“I can’t promise you. Your brother wants to end treatment.”
Another blow. They were coming too fast now, getting past his guard. He said, “Leo can’t do that.”
“He’s your legal guardian. He has medical power of attorney. If he wants to end treatment, I can’t stop him.” She touched his hand. She’d never done that before. “But I’ll try to convince him to keep you in treatment.”
“The DBI stays on,” he said. “My choice.”
The night after Pierce and Conseco died, Rashad kept his shit together by staying busy and focusing on the next day’s mission. He did not break down when he was ordered to visit the family of the people who’d been in Building 31. He made his apology and the company captain paid the survivors 100,000 rupees, which came out to about $1,100 US per victim. One old man, four women, and three children. The surviving brother claimed they weren’t secessionists and didn’t know the sniper. Through the translator he said, “When they tell you they’re coming into your home, you have no choice but to let them in.”
Rashad projected calm when the squad rotated out of Tartuk, said he was happy to spend the next four weeks in the relative safety of Srinagar while they waited to return to Camp Pendleton.
The SHEP never left Tartuk; it was passed to another squad staying in the village. But the robot had already taught him what he needed to understand, just as the Rifleman’s Creed had promised. My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. Once they reached stateside there’d be no more open carry; his sidearm and rifle would stay in the armory when he wasn’t on the shooting range.
So. It would have to be here, in the barracks in Srinagar.
He’d heard about jumpers from the Golden Gate, who changed their minds between the bridge and the water. He wasn’t that kind of person. His mind was made up.
His body, however, betrayed him. When he awoke in the hospital he realized that his hand must have shifted, or his head pulled back. Some subconscious reflex. The bullet entered at an oblique angle and exited without killing him. By then, however, the failure didn’t bother him.
Leo and Marisa were arguing. Rashad could hear them from his bedroom. For the past few weeks he’d chosen to spend most of his time here. He was no longer interested in watching Leo and Marisa’s TV shows, eating the meals they prepared. He came out to microwave his own food and take a shit and sometimes, when they were asleep, pace the circle of the living room, kitchen, and dining room. He left the house only for his regular appointments with Alejandra. He’d refused to visit the therapist she’d found for him. He needed isolation and quiet for the work he was doing.
The arguing stopped and then they knocked at his door. Kept knocking. He let them in. They stood over him as he sat on the bed, hands on knees. He hated himself for putting them through all this. They were good people.
“Dude,” Leo said. “This isn’t working. You can see it’s not working, right?” He described Rashad’s various behaviors over the past few weeks, as if Rashad wasn’t aware of them.
“I can leave,” he said.
“That’s not what we’re saying!” Marisa said.
Leo said, “We just have to talk to Alejandra before she bails on you. There’s something wrong with the implant. The way you’re feeling, this isn’t you.”
“You’re wrong,” Rashad said. “This is finally me.” He could feel the DBI working, like a cave tunnel widening day by day, letting through more and more water. “I can’t go back to what I was before.”
“That’s the implant telling you that,” Leo said.
And Rashad thought, What part of your subconscious is making you say that? Whether the subsystem was mechanical or biological made no difference.
“When we go in tomorrow,” Leo said, “I’m going to tell them to turn that thing off.”
“That’s not what I agreed to,” Marisa said hotly.
Rashad was surprised they weren’t on the same page. He’d thought they’d been arguing about how to confront him, not what to say.
Marisa said, “Numbness isn’t the answer.”
“Thank you,” Rashad said. “I have to—” His voice broke. How could he explain that he wanted this pain? That he believed in it. He’d turned the bedroom into a kind of arena—Rashad Before Bullet versus Rashad After—and he didn’t want to shrink from those blows. It would be immoral to not feel that pain. What kind of coward would he be if now, after finally regaining the ability to regret what he’d done, he refused to face it? “I have to take responsibility.”
“You did what you had to do,” Leo said.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t take responsibility,” Marisa said. She knelt so that she and Rashad were eye to eye. “I’m saying you don’t have to keep beating yourself up about it.”
“Yeah, I do,” Rashad answered. “That’s the point.”
“You can ask God for forgiveness.”
Leo groaned. “Can we keep this on track?”
“Why would I do that?” Rashad said to her. “So I can feel better?” He shook his head. “I’m not going to shrug this off. I’m not going to move on, now that I have a second chance.” The bullet that had meant to be his punishment had robbed him of it.
“Please,” Marisa said. “It’s not so hard. You can ask Jesus to come into your heart.”
“Definitely not.” No more intercessors, strengthening some signals of forgiveness, dampening remorse. “My heart,” he said, “is crowded enough.”
“Pick a card,” Alejandra said. “Any card.”
Yellow X. Red circle. Green triangle.
“Why are we doing this?”
“Humor me. One final exam.”
“More data for your dissertation.” It was a mean thing to say. He tapped the green triangle.