Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 Page 16
Back to the wild. Back fending for herself, thousands of years out of their reach. She might die of starvation or a toothache. Back to the cruelty of nature.
Akhtar was going to have a hard time explaining this to her husband.
"It was an act of love," she said to herself. She was practicing. She spoke directly to the portal's surface, which was still like a deep lake. It beckoned her.
Akhtar stuck her hand and just her hand through the portal. She wanted to touch Emmy one last time. She wanted to feel the world Emmy was now a part of.
The portal felt cold and gelatinous. Worse than that, it felt alive. It buzzed, it spoke to her in its own language, and Akhtar somehow understood.
Back away.
The surface of the portal began to ripple in time with Akhtar's heart. She felt a stiffness in her body, an absence of control. Her body took two steps back for her. She wasn't sure who was in charge anymore. The experience taught her something valuable. The portals, dozens of them scattered across planetary surface and floating through space unmoored, were always thought to be devices crafted by a long absent intelligence. Akhtar now knew the truth. The portals were intelligence. They were not devices, they served no one, they were beings in and of themselves. Their civilization continued. Emmy was a part of it, and now so was Akhtar.
IIIIIIIIIIII.
It was an act of love.
After I passed through Portal, but before I re-entered the we, I turned around to say my prayers.
And Portal listened.
And spat out a new I.
I pulled this new Emmy close.
I taught her how to pray. That's when the hand emerged.
IIIIIIIIIIIII.
The portal flashed colors and young Emmy walked back through. She looked just like Akhtar's Emmy. Eight years old, same braid, same overalls.
"Emmy? Is that you?"
"Mama?"
The little girl looked confused. She seemed the same. And for right now, that was enough. They would sort it out later, back at the base.
IIIIIIIIIIIIII.
It was an act of love.
This jungle is going to eat us. It will bury us. It will erase all trace of us.
The ants will devour our bones, the algae will cover our unburied corpses. There will be nothing left of us and no I will ever know we were here.
It is all part of Portal's plan.
It will take an eternity of prayer to make peace with this fact.
The only thing that keeps us alive are our numbers. That we can work together. That we can pass down knowledge. That we can know the poison from the fruit. That we can know which types of ants will keep you full the longest.
There will never be a last of us. Only longer and longer gaps. The end of we. The beginning of I. An I will not live very long here, not without us. We will end. I will go on.
It is a difficult and endless act of generosity, almost too much for us to understand.
Portal gives and will keep on giving.
Portal never takes, but with that one exception. And even then, what was taken was returned. Moments after the return, a hand emerged.
It was a vision, a hand to take, a hand to turn Portal purple, we knew we had to respond with an act of love. A sacrifice to show Portal our devotion, our faith in Her plan. We gave her the most precious thing among us.
We gave her a new one of us. And that is how Portal will know we love Her so.
We love Her.
Because it is through Portal that we know life, all of us. It is through Portal that I became we. And through Portal that we will become I.
* * *
What a Time Traveler Needs Most
Jane Yolen | 140 words
Mike Resnick and Ken Liu
What a time traveler needs most
when going back to childhood:
a solid plan that can be forgot,
an adventurous spirit that can be curbed,
lust for the road that can turn off to rest,
desire for the next hill that can stop for a drink.
And for the lost times, the loose times, the left times,
the botherations, hesitations, frustrations, privations,
and all the other aberrations
that lead to growing up again:
one good, old-fashioned compass rose.
* * *
GOLFING ON THE MOON
P M F Johnson | 145 words
After a hard day in endless night,
it's good to get out on the course,
though you're sure to spend your whole time
fighting hazards. There's no hope of
escaping the sand, and though you
would think the ball-thief pixies
that lurk under the trees back home
would have no place up here, sadly
they hide just fine behind rocks,
despite the lack of oxygen.
Everywhere the horizon waits to claim
the careless shot, and though you may
think this heaven (with no wind,
you can never slice the ball)
any successful shot still must curve
back down out of the sky. It's easy
to launch an orbit shot. Still, your
greatest puzzle is which hole in the Swiss
landscape must be the right one.
Remember, friend, you're not the first,
all the greats that came before are up there
in the ground in the sky above you,
so before you play, bow your head
in reverence (though for reasons
of frailty, you shall remain exempt
from removing your headgear).
* * *
Empty Cities
Suzanne Palmer | 210 words
I have peered through the fractured windows of Prypiat,
walked corridors and roads graveled by one shattered moment,
my virtual feet unfeeling and distant, my eye a goggled, gleaming lens.
One tiny decay, one slip, one instant, and a city is fled bare,
left for weeds to gather on rooftops, slink through empty bedrooms,
slowly thieve away structure, atom and shingle and chair,
the maples and the elk ticking over with hubris.
I have flown, arms wide as imagination, over Hashima,
stood on its sloping porches and leaned fearless on its tenuous rails,
never to be trapped nor dead beneath it, one blink to carry me away.
One chemistry supplants another, and the city is bled dry of men,
left for time to scour above, rock and pick abandoned below,
as coal-dark remnants, skeletal and grim, loom upright,
stalwart in a captive stillness they cannot evade.
I have sat beside you, listened to the pull and snag of your breath
as the morphine drowned you, drip by drip, like winter rain,
and you lay curled in your favorite chair that you would never leave.
One bad cell, divided, multiplied, hiding in the body's underground,
feint and riot and angry rabble, they burn the establishment down,
your hand in mine, held together like we were children again,
and it was real, this city of you, as the last lights winked out.
* * *
AD ASTRA PER SACCHARUM
Robert Borski | 158 words
For five cents you could ride
the mechanical red rocket
round in circles just outside
the supermarket. Or sans conveyance,
you could expeditiously travel
the galaxy from anywhere
at all provided the neighborhood
Mom-and-Pop store carried
the appropriate fuel. You needn't
even bother putting on a space
suit in those days, a candy wrapper
was more than enough to open up
the universe before you, starting
of course, until that first gibbous bite),
then proceeding to a Mars Bar
before leaving the solar system
altogether for the wide open caramel
and chocolate parsecs of a Milky Way.
And if as you traveled further out,
Starbursts began to gum up your works,
your mother's insistence that you always
brush your pearly whites after each glucose-
abetted jaunt usually helped damp down
the worst damage. Alas, over time, other
effects were less easily countenanced.
Now, many years later, the rocket ride
is a collectible and a needle probe
of insulin chains me to the Earth beneath
sweet stars. Now it's my boyhood
that recedes galactically beyond the light
years of nickels and candy red rockets.
* * *
Everything Decays
Geoffrey A. Landis | 73 words
Here's what happens
after we die,
after everybody we know dies,
after the sun cools,
after all the stars cool:
Everything decays to iron.
Then, slowly, it all falls into black holes
until there is nothing else left,
just black holes
and the cooling microwave background.
After ten to the trillionth years
all the black holes decay to thermal photons,
all the photons stretch out
and stretch out
and stretch out
to perfect nothingness,
crystalline vacuum,
and then,
the most improbable thing ever:
even the vacuum
decays.
In time beyond our imagination
symmetry breaks
into another
bang.
* * *
EDITORIAL
A DAY AT THE FAIR
Sheila Williams | 728 words
Photo by Jackie Sherbow
Off and on, for many years, we ran a subscription table in the Dealers' Room at the annual World Science Fiction convention. Authors would help out by signing books while pitching subscriptions. Frequent con participants knew this was the place to go for the year's most heavily discounted subscription. The subscription offers worked well for us, too, because the sale was made straight to the consumer—no middleman to share profits with and no expensive direct mail campaign. I always found working the table exhilarating. It was a great opportunity to meet long-time readers as well as solicit new subscribers.
Many of the authors, like George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis, and Joe Haldeman, made hilarious sales pitches. Others, like Nancy Kress, Cory Doctorow, and Allen M. Steele, took more decorous approaches. All of these methods contributed to sales and fun adventures.
One such occasion occurred during Philadelphia's Millennium Philcon in 2000. Connie Willis signed books and magazines while my seven-year-old hollered out "get your half-price prescriptions." Our commotion soon caught the attention of a brand new conventiongoer who happened to be looking for an autograph from one of her favorite authors. That's how I first met the singer/songwriter and SF reader Janis Ian.
An awkward incident occurred while working the table with Cory Doctorow. We were approached by a man who I erroneously assumed was an Asimov's or Analog reader. I was about to make the usual sales pitch when some clue seemed to imply a certain level of disinterest. After a brief conversation with Cory, the man continued on his way through the Dealers' Room. Cory then explained that our guest was a founder of the shared software movement. His enthusiasm for free and collaborative teamwork made it seem unlikely he would have welcomed my come-on for a paid subscription to Asimov's.
Despite this close call, my passion for the table never waned. Spending time there was a great way to hear about the items subscribers particularly liked as well as their gentle suggestions for improvements to the magazine. Alas, though, our official days in the Dealers' Room came to an end. No more adventures at the table and a harder time Sheila Williams, Robert Reed, and Emily Hockaday making face-to-face contact with readers.
For the past couple of years, though, I've had the chance to meet readers in a new venue. Two years ago, the mystery and science fiction editorial assistants— Jackie Sherbow and Emily Hockaday— suggested we attend the Brooklyn Book Festival as vendors. The fair is held in the fall at Brooklyn's Borough Hall. Book related events occur all week long and there is a swanky vendors party the night before the festival. Fellow guests at this year's party included Alaya Dawn Johnson and N.K. Jemisin.
All these events are exciting, but the best part is the day at the fair. On a crisp Sunday morning, Emily and Jackie set up a beautiful table decorated with printouts of some of our most classic covers. We distributed free magazines and great subscription offers to our four fiction magazines— Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines in addition to Analog and Asimov's. Two years ago, Michael Swanwick came up from Philadelphia to sign autographs and hang out at the table. This year, Robert Reed flew in from Nebraska and Tom Purdom took a bus from Pennsylvania to do the same thing.
Visitors to the 2013 table included Jane Yolen, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman. New Asimov's writer Jay O'Connell stopped by as did 2011 Dell Magazine Award winner Seth Dickinson. Jay had recently sold me four stories, but this was our first opportunity to meet in person. I was also delighted to see Seth who has started to sell tales to publications like Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Analog.
I didn't meet as many subscribers as I would at a science fiction convention, but we did entice a lot of fairgoers to our table. By the end of the day, we had given away over three hundred copies of Asimov's and hundreds of subscription offers. We'd touched base with some stalwart subscribers, reconnected with some lapsed readers, and introduced Asimov's to a bunch of new people.
When the last copy of Asimov's flew out of my hands, I hurried over to the Festival's "Youth Stoop" to catch Alaya, Jane, and Delia's five P.M. panel on "Realms of Illusion and Imagination." Hearing the authors' thoughts on YA books and other worlds was a nice finish to a fun day connecting with writers and readers. Maybe next year, I'll see you at the fair!
* * *
REFLECTIONS
BLUES AND GREENS
Robert Silverberg | 1771 words
I was born and grew up in Brooklyn, and when I was a boy I lived and died by the ups and downs of the Brooklyn Dodgers, a long-vanished baseball team whose modern successor plays the game in Los Angeles. When the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Dodgers in a playoff for the 1946 league championship I was disconsolate; when the New York Yankees defeated them in seven games in the 1947 World Series, despite some astonishing heroics by hitherto obscure Dodger players like Cookie Lavagetto and Al Gionfriddo, I mourned bitterly. Whenever I could manage it, I went to games at Ebbets Field, the Dodger stadium, antiquated even then and surviving now only as a plaque on the wall of the apartment house that occupies its site. In my adolescent days I went to the occasional basketball game, too, and some football games, and even a hockey game or two.
In the course of time I lost interest in the doings of the Dodgers and the other local sports teams, mainly because other things (science fiction, girls, college) came to occupy my attention. I could not tell you, now, which teams played in last year's World Series, though I know plenty about the contests of 1945–55. And it is fifty years or more since I attended any sort of professional sports event. This has something to do with my modern-day lack of interest in professional sports, of course, but there is also an element of fear involved, since I have begun to think of sports arenas as dangerous places where drunken fans engage in murderous riots at the slightest provocation. I am an Elderly Person now, and one way I got to be an Elderly Person was to stay away from places where
murderous riots are likely to occur.
You may think I am just a timid geezer and that I am exaggerating the risks of turning out to see the hometown team play. Maybe so. But the Wikipedia entry on Violence in Sports provides me with all too many examples of sports events that I am glad I missed. The Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985, a brawl between soccer fans, took thirty-nine lives and injured six hundred. In 1990, a football match between Red Star Belgrade and Dinamo Zagreb was called off after ten minutes when thousands of fans began to fight each other, and soon afterward the stadium was set on fire. Three hundred twenty died at a soccer riot in Peru in 1994. In July 2000, thirteen people were trampled to death in a riot at a soccer game in Zimbabwe. There were 126 fatalities at a game in Ghana in 2001. In Los Angeles in 2011, a visiting San Francisco Giants fan was beaten nearly to death by irate Dodger fans. And so it goes.
I was about to deplore all this as one more example of modern decadence, and to compare it to the peaceful days of 1948 when, as a mere boy, I went fearlessly to see Brooklyn Dodger games at Ebbets Field and New York Knick games at the now vanished predecessor of today's Madison Square Garden. But then I remembered my Byzantine history—I have made quite a study of Byzantine history in the course of sending various time travelers back to that gaudy empire—and reminded myself that the worst sports riot of all time took place not in Liverpool nor in Detroit but in splendiferous Constantinople, the magnificent capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. It happened fourteen hundred years ago in the reign of Justinian the Great, when fans of chariot-racing, Byzantium's favorite sport, went after each other so fiercely they nearly brought the Empire down.