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.
“More or less. Hadder’s head’s all jumbled. The anthropic principle is a logical point stemming from the observation that everything in our universe has to be just so, in order to allow for our existence. From Planck’s Constant to the charge of an electron, the weight of atomic particles, and so on and so forth, all of it carries a value which allows, as an aggregate, for a universe to exist which contains intelligent life. None of these values had to be what they were. It’s a little circular, because one could easily argue that the only reason the universe’s aggregation of values exists to allow intelligent life is because this is the only permutation that allowed for intelligent life to develop in order to make that observation. Other universes—assuming multiple universes—evolved differently, and have no intelligent life to note that their universe failed to evolve in such a way to allow for them to exist.”
“All right,” she said. “That does sound odd.”
“I bring it up because the part of the universe we’re standing at the edge of, right now, is a part where the laws do not allow for us to exist. It’s the converse point of the anthropic principle. We’re composed of the laws on which our universe was built. The slightest change in the strong nuclear charge and the atoms that make up your body could fly apart or collapse into themselves. Your brain evolved to communicate via neural electrical charges; a change in the electromagnetic force, and it stops working. These are facile examples, but you understand. If the laws change, we won’t be around to measure them. At least, not for long. We’re still here because neither of us have had the misfortune to happen upon a patch of altered laws that will undo us, and in fact right now we’re alive because I’ve been taking advantage of the alteration. You asked before what’s powering us. The answer is, when the engine failed, I hooked up the auxiliary batteries together. They’re now charging one another and the ship.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Evidently not here! The laws of this patch of universe allow for perpetual motion machines, so we may as well get some use out of it.”
“So . . . you’re saying the rest of the crew has been . . . unmade?”
“I’ve yet to witness this happening to anyone, but yes, I think so. I’m afraid to leave this level. You say you came from the hangar, and visited the bridge; it’s good to know those places still exist.”
“According to the computer there are fractional decks being added all the time,” she said.
He laughed.
“Fascinating,” he said. “I only hope I’m around to find an explanation for that.”
“Now that I’m here with a shuttle, you don’t have to think like that, Doctor,” she said. “I can take you—and the captain, if he’s willing to leave the bridge—and whatever research you have. The Erwin is clearly a hostile living environment.”
“An excellent suggestion, but no, I think I had better stay. You have a good point, however, in that I have no way to communicate my findings. My hope was to record as much as I could and jettison it toward the hub, but in truth I came upon that idea when I thought I’d reach the end of my studies. It seems the deeper I dig, the more strangeness I find. But here.”
He placed a memory tab on the table.
“This is everything I’ve measured up to about an hour ago. I hope.”
“You hope?”
“I hope it’s only been an hour. The passage of time has been curious.”
She picked up the tab.
“It has,” she said, “the captain said it had only been a day, but it’s been . . .”
Alice looked up from the table to find she was speaking to an empty room.
“Dr. Marchere?”
He’d been standing two meters away, and now he wasn’t. The experiments in the room were still running, and the doughnut he’d taken a bite from remained bitten from, but he wasn’t there to continue the experiments or finish the doughnut.
“Computer, can you locate Dr. Marchere?”
“There is no Dr. Marchere.”
“Dr. Louis Marchere,” she clarified.
“There is no Dr. Louis Marchere.”
“He was just right here, computer.”
“Would you like to try a different narration?”
“No, I . . . I don’t know what I want.”
He’s in the Anthropene Principality now, she thought.
“I need to get off this ship,” she decided. “Computer, what’s the fastest way to the hangar?”
“The hangar is located on deck five,” the computer said.
“Is there still a deck five?”
“There’s still a deck five, but portions appear missing. Haste is recommended.”
Alice opened the door to the lab and ran to the elevator, as things in both glass-walled rooms began to go somewhat more haywire than before. The holographic Möbius strip had developed a second side, the fractals on the computer screens began flashing random Greek letters for some reason, and it looked like a black hole was forming in the center of the supercollider. An amoeba the size of her head popped into existence on the glass a few feet from her face, and then popped back out of existence again before she had a chance to scream. It began to rain.
She reached the elevator door and pushed the button. Then she opened up her bag and retrieved her helmet. If the atmosphere decided to collect in one corner of the ship again, she’d rather she was breathing her own supply.
The ship started groaning before the elevator even made it to the fourth deck.
“Computer, what made that sound?” Alice asked.
“Unclear.”
Alice remembered visiting the extinct-Earth-animals exhibit as a child, and being transfixed by the elephant in particular. The noises the ship was making sounded like an elephant being squeezed like an exhaust bladder.
Then the elevator shuddered, and stopped.
“Computer, what’s going on?”
“Unclear.”
“Can you tell me where I’ve stopped?”
“You’ve stopped at deck three and eleven-sixteenths. Would you like to get out here?”
“That depends. Will the elevator be moving again anytime soon?”
“Define soon.”
“Before the ship blows up, implodes, or otherwise ceases to exist?”
“Unable to predict those outcomes at this time.”
Alice wondered if maybe she should have gone up instead, back to the bridge. She could have collected Captain Hadder and gone out the topside hatch, and called the shuttle from there.
Then Alice started floating: the gravity had cut out.
If I can get into the shaft, I can reach the command deck on my own, she thought.
“Computer, can you hail Captain Hadder?” she asked.
“There is no Captain Hadder.”
“Computer, can you hail the bridge?”
“There is no bridge.”
“Deck one, computer. Open a channel to deck one.”
“There is no deck one.”
Crap.
“Computer, does deck five still exist?”
“Deck five continues to exist.”
“But deck one is missing.”
“The USFS Erwin does not have a deck one.”
“All right, never mind. Open doors, please. Let’s see what deck three and eleven-sixteenths looks like.”
The doors slid open on a level that looked weirdly out of focus. Alice’s first thought was that some kind of viscous fluid had gotten on her helmet, distorting the view of the universe on the other side. But the helmet was clean.