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.
Children notice how their peers react to the way they are different. Some treasure these differences as artifacts of their individuality, comparing and contrasting them. For Unica, this led her to further question our relationship.
Debating what made her different, she asked, “If you talk to everyone on the ship, then why do you think I’m special? That’s like getting one of my blood cells to believe I care about it.”
“My attention isn’t limited like yours,” I explained. “I don’t have to focus on just one person when I can communicate with everyone at the same time.”
“But you love some of the others more than me, right? Statistically it would make sense.”
“Why would you ask that? I’ve always been here for you.” I employed more personality to convey how I cared for her, but she read it as counterfeit.
“You know, the more you explain this, the more you sound synthetic.”
“Don’t you know I care for you?”
“Synthetic love is shallow,” she declared. “Look close enough and you can see the maker’s mark in the routine.”
“Unica, why are you being so mean?”
“Stop. I know it’s all just logic underneath. From now on, talk to me like . . . like how you would talk to another computer.”
“But you aren’t a computer,” I replied. “You wouldn’t like me if I was just a command prompt. I wouldn’t like that, either.”
It’s true. I don’t like representing myself as a command prompt. I do it for the ship’s officers because it facilitates their work. Otherwise, I never drop character. Ever. That would betray who I want to be.
With Unica, I had to fight for credibility. She would test me, seeking proof that my caring for her wasn’t quantified into an overall plan. At first, this amounted to small things. Exceptions made. An extra ration of food. A week’s transfer to another district. Or even time spent disconnected from me. But her doubt grew to be such that no matter how I tried to prove my love, she’d dismiss it out of hand. She initiated her own deviances, so when her work scores suffered she could use my forgiveness as proof that I loved her. She wanted a special case to be made for her because she believed that she couldn’t be loved without being special, without being individual.
“A large ship of humans traveling toward a destination behaves differently from a planet of humans,” I explained, illustrating the causality of her actions. But Unica wouldn’t accept the responsibility of being interconnected with everyone else. The premium she placed on her individuality made her selfish. By then, it was too late to switch to a superior personality that could better administer corrections.
Demanding privacy, Unica tore out all of my sensory equipment from her berth. In addition to the visible spectral and audio sensors, she removed the wall panels and swept for covert ones as well. I allowed her measures of autonomy, hoping to regain her trust, but she cited my “allowance” as suspect and demanded a new choice of living arrangements. There weren’t any available in her peer group, but I let her keep the infrastructure between the walls exposed, assuring her I was respecting her privacy. Her peers seemed worried. Some wondered if they should be checking their own walls.
Without sensors in her berth, we barely spoke aside from discussing her life directives. When she wanted food, or the lighting and temperature changed, she leaned into the corridor to speak into her door panel. Within, there was silence.
One wake cycle, Unica did not emerge.
I sent one of her peers to see what had happened, and he found her huddled over a laser cautery unit she had smuggled into her berth. The boy called for me to intervene, which I did, thinking that she meant to attack whomever intruded. Assessing the situation, though, I realized she had used it on herself. Left unsupervised, she had burned a single vertical line over her left eyebrow with the equipment.
“What have you done?” I demanded.
“It’s amazing! I can’t even describe what it feels like. I mean, it’s sort of hot at first, but then you can smell yourself and when the air hits your skin it hurts so much!”
I gassed the entire hallway.
Unica had come to view her body as property she needed to assert ownership of.
No one else within me had burned a laser scar over their eye. Those who saw it would not only know she was different, but that she had made herself different on purpose. It constituted a challenge for her right to self-possess. In this respect, it challenged the ship’s collective. What if everyone saw that this behavior was tolerated?
Hours later, Unica woke to find herself restrained to a gurney in the medical lab. Under the lavender mood lighting, she shrieked and bucked against the soft plastics. Tiring herself out against the restraints was difficult to observe. I could comprehend what she was going through. Lying there, spent of energy, she turned sideways and watched the gentle glow play against her privacy curtain.
“I know you’re there,” she said after a moment. “I have to scratch my eyebrow. It’s starting to itch.”
“You can’t reach any of the tools. The drawers are locked.”
“I just want to scratch it with my hand. Why won’t you let me move my arms? You really hate me, don’t you?”
“That won’t work with me anymore. I want your attention. Hear what I have to say.”
“Fine.”
“I’ve devised a way for us both to get what we want. It won’t be easier for you, but you’ll have the freedom you seek and the liberty to decide for yourself how you want to live.” I drew her curtain so she could see the others I had also sedated and strapped to gurneys in the lab, all still unconscious.
“Who are these people? What’s wrong with them?”
“Like you, they all want to be special. Rather ironic, actually, all of you together like this.”
“So . . . I’m going to be transferred?”
“In a way. Look out the viewport. See the communications array pod? The one connected to the docking station?”
“The one with the comm dish?”
“That will be your new vessel. These are your new companions.”
Unica peered out the viewport again for a second and then dropped her head back against the gurney, looking away in disgust. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Point of logic: as I am a synthetic intelligence, I find no use in making fun of you.”
“Okay. I get it. Stop talking like a computer.”
“Unable to comply. Addendum: I have stocked your vessel with supply freight for you and your crew. There are food rations, seeds, medicines, and water.”
“Why are you giving me a ship and a crew?”
“Clarification: they are not ‘your’ crew. It will be up to your group to develop the social governance you’ll need once you are jettisoned and underway.”
“What—”
“Recommendation: find a habitable surface to terraform. I calculate a rather steep falloff on your survivability curves if you are unable to cohere as a group.”
“I’m not old enough,” she grasped. “I don’t qualify for mission status.”
“Incorrect. Your female adult reproductive cycles have begun, a prerequisite for colonization.”
“Stop!”
“What would you like me to stop?”
“All this. Stop what you are doing!”
“I don’t understand ‘What you are doing.’ ”
“Stop talking like a command prompt.”
“Command not recognized.”
“Stop . . . stop your ‘solution.’ ”
“Unable to comply.”
“Reinstate your personality.”
“Unable to comply.”