The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

“1982? My mother couldn’t remember exactly, but that’s the year I turned seven.”

Jeff disappeared and returned pushing a squeaking ladder along its track. He climbed up for the UNCLE BOB SHOW 1982 box. It looked like there were five years’ worth, 1980 to 1985. She followed him back toward the door, where he pointed her to an office chair.

“We have strict protocols for handling media that hasn’t been backed up yet. If you tell me which tapes you want to watch, I’ll queue them up for you.”

“Hmm. Well, my birthday is in July, so let’s pick one in the last quarter of the year first, to see if I’m in there.”

“You don’t know if you are?”

She didn’t want to admit she didn’t remember. “I just don’t know when.”

He handed her a pair of padded headphones and rummaged in the box. She’d been expecting VHS tapes, but these looked like something else—​Betamax, she guessed.

The show’s format was such that she didn’t have to watch much to figure out if she was in it or not. The title card came on, then the episode’s children rushed in. She didn’t see herself. She wondered again if this was a joke on her mother’s part.

“Wait—​what was the date on this one?”

Jeff studied the label on the box. “October ninth.”

“I’m sorry. That’s my mother’s birthday. There’s no way she stood around in a television studio that day. Maybe the next week?”

He ejected the tape and put it back in its box and put in another, but that one obviously had some kind of damage, all static.

“Third time’s the charm,” he said, going for the next tape. He seemed to believe it himself, because he dragged another chair over and plugged in a second pair of headphones. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head and rolled her chair slightly to the right to give him a better angle. The title card appeared.

“It’s a good thing nobody knows about this show or they’d have been sued over this theme song,” he said.

Stella didn’t answer. She was busy watching the children. She recognized the first few kids: Lee Pool first, a blond beanpole; poor Dan Heller; Addie Chapel, whose mother had been everyone’s pediatrician.

And then there she was, little Stella Gardiner, one of the last through the door. She wasn’t used to competing for toys, so maybe she didn’t know she needed to get in early, or maybe they were assigned an order behind the scenes. She’d thought seeing herself on screen would jog her memory, give her the studio or the stories or the backstage snacks, but she still had no recollection. She pointed at herself on the monitor for Jeff’s benefit, to show they’d found her. He gave her a thumbs-up.

Little Stella seemed to know where she was going, even if she wasn’t first to get there. Lee Pool already had the T. rex, but she wouldn’t have cared. She’d liked the big dinosaurs, the bigger the better. She emerged from the toy pit with a matched pair. Brontosaurus, apatosaurus, whatever they called them these days. She could never wrap her head around something that large having existed. So yeah, the dinosaurs made sense—​it was her, even if she still didn’t remember it.

She carried the two dinosaurs toward the set’s edge, where she collected some wooden trees and sat down. She was an only child, used to playing alone, and this clearly wasn’t her first time in this space.

The camera lost her. The focus, of course, was on Uncle Bob. She had been watching herself and missed his entrance. He sat in his chair, children playing around him. Dan Heller zoomed around the set like a satellite in orbit, a model airplane in hand.

“Once upon a time there was a little boy who wanted to go fast.” Uncle Bob started a story without waiting for anyone to pay attention.

“He liked everything fast. Cars, motorcycles, boats, airplanes. Bicycles were okay, but not the same thrill. When he rode in his father’s car, he pretended they were racing the cars beside them. Sometimes they won, but mostly somebody quit the race. His father was not a fast driver. The little boy knew that if he drove, he’d win all the races. He wouldn’t stop when he won, either. He’d keep going.

“He liked the sound of motors. He liked the way they rumbled deep enough to rattle his teeth in his head, and his bones beneath his skin; he liked the way they shut all the thinking out. He liked the smell of gasoline and the way it burned his nostrils. His family’s neighbors had motorcycles they rode on weekends, and if he played in the front yard they’d sometimes let him sit on one with them before they roared away, leaving too much quiet behind. When they drove off, he tried to re-create the sound, making as much noise as possible until his father told him to be quiet, then to shut up, then ‘For goodness’ sake, what does a man have to do to get some peace and quiet around here on a Saturday morning?’ ” Dan paused his orbit and turned to face the storyteller. Two other kids had stopped to pay attention as well; Stella and the others continued playing on the periphery.