The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

I patted the space between my handlebars. “Hop up. I’ll move fast on the pavement.”

PARKER 17 hesitated. Then slowly, carefully, it approached the bike, reached up, and wrapped four of its six legs around the frame.

“I’ll ride, you navigate. Okay?” I said.

“Okay,” it whispered.

It was strange to have someone ride on my handlebars. It was something people did all the time in movies, but I’d never done myself. For a few moments, it was like I was part of one of those stories, with sunshine and a happy ending.

The trail began to climb upward again, and the anxious knot in my stomach started uncurling. I was going the right way again. Snaking and threading between the huge mounds of trash, I spotted glimmers of rusty cookware and broken furniture and new plants.

“What is this place?” I shouted into the wind.

“Art installation.”

We passed hundreds of mounds. My dad would have loved this, I thought as I pedaled and weaved. He was always adding decorations to our old barn. In another life, he would have probably been a set designer.

When the trail split, PARKER 17 announced a direction, and I followed. Speeding on the smooth tarmac, it felt like flying.

But then, we hit a dead end. My stomach flipped. Flipped again.

“Damn,” the bot said. “This un-updated map. Go back. A few turns.”

I did, and dutifully followed the bot’s revised instructions. We seemed to be making progress up the mountain. Until we hit another dead end.

“Damn it,” PARKER 17 whispered.

We tried dozens of combinations, tracing and retracing our journey. But the mounds were identical, or identical enough, and the beautiful paved path never led anywhere at all.

The last route we tried was something I picked based on the incline and growth of the trees, which got stubbier and squatter the higher we climbed.

For a moment, it seemed like a good plan. I dared to hope, despite my aching quads and calves. That is, until we dead-ended at the biggest, most impassable hill of trash I’d seen yet.

“What do we do?” I asked, rubbing my hands through my sweat-soaked hair. I could feel them shaking through my scalp.

PARKER 17 wasn’t listening. “I can never,” it whispered. “Save them.”

That was when panic threatened to swallow me. There are hundreds of unfinished stories of travelers who took the cursed path and never made it home. It was a story I swore I would never become.

I dismounted and sat on an old coffee table sticking out from one of the trash heaps. I desperately wanted to fix something. I looked down and saw my shaking hands and decided to fix myself. I pulled out the sandwich from my pack that Nat gave me that morning. Made myself chew the homemade bread and eggs and greens. Made myself hydrate. Made myself breathe.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

PARKER 17 didn’t respond. It was muttering to itself miserably, kicking loose detritus around with its legs.

So, I heaved myself up and began studying the mounds. Up close it was a strange art installation. I’d always wanted to be an artist, but surviving these days takes time. I wasn’t like my parents. The way my dad could craft things, or my mom could spin stories. Sometimes I wondered what I could have become if I wasn’t living in the dregs of civilization. A movie director, maybe. Instead, I became good at scavenging.

Which is probably how I spotted the hair-width trail snaking between two mounds.

“Wait, what’s that?” I said.

PARKER 17 followed where my finger pointed. It inched up the ghost of a path to get a better look. It didn’t say anything for a long minute.

Then, the LED in its torso flashed green.