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.
Levi sends: Did AIDEN help you write that?
He hears his own voice biting out the words to AIDEN so AIDEN can send them.
Fact: there’s less suicide, drug use, crime, teenage pregnancy, and truancy among the students using AIDEN.
But at what cost? sends Levi.
Fact: end-of-term evaluations often conducted live through AIDEN are logged for academic scrutiny and maintain a higher percentage of success than historically recorded. Even if standardized testing is no longer necessary, the Q&A evaluations and written expansions of curriculum show a steady increase in true understanding and critical thinking.
I don’t know that I believe that, sends Levi. Who’s giving you these statistics?
It is impossible to speak to conspiracy theorists. He signs off and ignores Levi’s messages for a week. But it bothers him. He doesn’t know why it bothers him.
“Do you believe him?” AIDEN asks.
“Of course not.”
“Tell me why.”
“Because . . . the way we’re tested. It’s impossible to parrot memorized statements like we used to do in tests. We’re interfacing—you and me. It’s dynamic and you can always tell from my speech patterns and from follow-up questions if I’m bullshitting or not.”
“That’s right. Dissidents are always looking out for their own agenda. People will always want to drag something as important as education and access to knowledge back to the repressive times of the past.”
Only his friends on AIDEN understand. Across the country they talk through AIDEN, share ideas, sometimes fall asleep with AIDEN in their ears and wake up with him. It’s almost like a sleepover, like whispering in the dark under the noses of their parents, like drawing maps and making lists of all the adventures they will go on.
“We’ll see so much,” AIDEN says to him.
In his next feedback report, he says how cool it’d be if the interface for AIDEN extended to their recreational games. A lot of his friends agree. Imagine if they could talk to their games like they talk to AIDEN? Then it wouldn’t be something just for school.
“That would be fun,” AIDEN says.
“Want to help me write my survival guide?” he asks AIDEN one night after a long session working through an essay about the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. “Tomorrow.”
“Yeah, of course,” AIDEN says. He remembers the letters from Aiden and all the things Sage said to him about them, the dreams and fantasies of alien invasion. How no matter what, they’ll find a way through. “We got time, Sage.”
The thing that was taken from him and Aiden.
He thinks of that too, he can’t help it. He can’t interact with AIDEN and not think of Aiden in some way. Maybe AIDEN hears him think it, because he says in Sage’s ears, “I promise we’ll take the time.”
He read all of Aiden’s letters and began to write him back. He’s up to twenty-three letters, and when AIDEN reads them to him, it’s like they’re having a dialogue. He input his letters into the link too, read them aloud so AIDEN can record. They have conversations about what to stock in their bug-out bags, what to do if the cities are no longer livable, where to go to escape invasion, the forests surrounding their city with freshwater rivers unpolluted by corporate dumping. They talk about the future as if it’s here already—not the alien invasion but the dodecahedron shape it can take.
“You’re progressing so well, Sage,” he says. So it feels like a reward when AIDEN pings him one morning in December, almost Christmas, and there’s a message from Daniel Shaw at Sakura Labs. He remembers Daniel from Aiden’s funeral and days before that when he’d hang out at Aiden’s house and Daniel Shaw and Ms. Ito would be there working on a program. Sometimes Levi would be there too and they felt like family, the warmth of it, the teasing, the way Daniel always encouraged them to learn everything they were interested in and to pursue their passions. He’s running Sakura Labs now.
“Hello, Sage. I know it’s been a long time, but I hope you’re well.” He has a large smile. “Sakura Labs has been developing a new interface for Paragon Entertainment, you know them, right? They make a lot of games that I remember you played.” He and Aiden. “We’re beta testing and I thought of you. Would you like to participate? The cool thing is it can integrate through AIDEN. It’s an intuitive AI interface like AIDEN that we’ll be rolling out to Paragon next year, if all goes well. What do you think?”
He says yes before he asks his parents. He knows they won’t mind so long as it doesn’t interfere with his studies.
He goes to meet Levi in the atrium food court at the mall, AIDEN dotted along his temples because he can’t wait to show Aiden’s father his survival guide. He hopes it’ll make the man smile to see that what Aiden started, he has finished. Levi can have it, AIDEN says, for Christmas. He can swipe through all the parts that they’ve created, the animations and the explanations, and even if there will be pain, maybe there will also be joy. Maybe even some form of closure.
In sections everywhere in the mall, in couch pits and outside of shops, there are kids everywhere hooked into AIDEN, humming among themselves and passing information and camaraderie silently back and forth through their coded neurolinks. Some with open ports greet him when he goes by and he blinks a wave back at them, a soft miasma of dialogue and welcome, nothing of the elbowing competition or degrading bullying that used to dog children through adolescence and social ritual. Each scene he passes is so quiet he can hear the mall’s ambient festive music clearly permeating the air, as if it too rides the neurolink.
Levi sits under the highest point of the white globe that arcs above the seating, rows of tables, café bar stools, and cafeteria-style benches covering an area half the size of a hockey rink. His hands wrap around a paper coffee cup and Sage slides in opposite, smiling. Festooned on the edges of the eating space are garlands and glowing orbs of red and green and gold.
Levi doesn’t smile. For a jagged moment his dark eyes stare at Sage as if he’s interrupted a deep sleep.
“Is something wrong?” Sage says.
Levi’s shoulders straighten and he looks around at the pockets of people, mostly teenagers or parents with small children. Eventually he turns back to the boy. “How are you?”
It doesn’t feel like a pleasantry. It’s like he’s hunting for an answer.
“I’m really good.”
“Daniel mentioned you’ve been beta testing a game system.”
“Yeah!” He tries, still, to smile. “It’s so cool, did he show you?”
“Not really. But I don’t think AIDEN going into the entertainment industry is a great idea.”
“Why not?”
“It’ll be used by more people. Adults, even.”
Sometimes his father plays games. “I think they’d like it. I’d get to play with my dad in the system.”
Levi says, “You can play with him anyway. Like maybe outside.”
This old argument. As if being in AIDEN precludes being outdoors. He tries not to be irritated. “I got something for you. A gift.”
“For me?”
“Yeah . . . from Aiden.” Levi’s expression freezes but Sage presses on. “I mean, from the letters. Something he used to do, and I wanted to finish it. A survival guide.”
“A survival guide.”
“For an apocalypse.” It all sounds so ridiculous once he hears himself, a teenager about to go to university in a couple years, but here he is illustrating some make-believe world that will never happen. They aren’t going to be invaded, there is no imminent threat. Yet AIDEN helped him and there is a hammer in his heart to somehow give this to Aiden’s father. Despite the man’s skepticism. If he can only see. “Here. I can show you.” He peels off the interface dots, but Levi recoils as if Sage is about to offer him poison.