John Adams - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

Lisa is punching the wall. “It won’t change. I can’t even adjust the sound. Why do they keep saying your name?”

“Sit down.” I draw her to the couch amid the bombs and rubble and screams and blood. “There’s something I need to explain.”

Recognition software doesn’t violate privacy. Recognition software expands privacy. When every machine recognizes every user, the lived environment becomes personal and unique. Stores, cars, homes, and offices all learn to respond to individual needs. Private interest generates private experience. No awkward controls, no intrusive interface: what a user wants is what she gets.

That’s what it says in the promotional materials my company sends to potential investors. I didn’t write it. I don’t believe it. At least, I don’t think I do. I’m not quite sure anymore what I believe.

I’m riding in Armando’s car. It’s been a year since the terrorists found me. Or maybe ten months. Time seems to pass a lot slower nowadays.

The windshield of Armando’s car is old-fashioned glass. I watch the trees go sliding by. I’ve come to appreciate trees lately. So nonjudgmental. I like how they just couldn’t care less. I like how they simply stand there, exhaling life and forgiveness.

The other windows of the car are not mere windows. Like most windows in my world, they are also screens. And like most screens in my life, they glow with bloody destruction. Young men stagger in smoke and agony. Something is hurting them; I can’t see what. A sonic pain ray, perhaps. Maybe a laser. Something to do with deadly sound and light.

Gunfire rattles on the radio. Neither of us pays attention. I’m used to gunfire now. Violence is my music. When I sit near a radio, it sings of murder. When I stand near an advertisement, it cries.

All media recognize me. They conspire against me. Every magazine I open is a gallery of gore. Every book I read becomes a book of the dead. My news feeds tally the tortured, the vanished, the lost, the disappeared.

I can’t sleep at home. The horror show plays day and night. I can’t sleep at a hotel. I can’t even sleep in a shelter. Are there any bedrooms left in this country that don’t come with TVs?

The other day I bought some toothpaste and cheese. The store machine printed out a long receipt. It had coupons for bullets and first-aid kits. “Caspar D. Luckinbill,” the receipt said at the bottom, “thanks to you, three hundred people were just massacred in the CPC’s St. Ignatius Square. Do you suffer from loose joint skin? Try Ride-X. Have a great day!!!”

“Did I tell you?” Armando reaches for the radio, trying in vain to lower the volume. “I remembered about the FRF. It’s an African country. A tiny place. Just one-tenth of a megacity. The name stands for Firstieme Republique Frasolee.”

“That’s not real French,” I say. “That sounds like French, but it’s not.”

“Well, you know, it’s a very backward country.”

“Anyway,” I say, “it’s not the FRF anymore. Now it’s the CPC. Before that it was the DRS.”

“That’s how it is with names,” Armando says. “They’re so ephemeral.”

I disagree. It seems to me nowadays that names are all too permanent. In the early days of my affliction, I made a point of looking up names. I looked up names of people who had died, of landmarks that had been bombed, of leaders who had vanished. But the world has so very, very many names, and all of them, sooner or later, become the names of ghosts.

“At any rate,” Armando says, “you really can’t complain. At least you’re keeping informed. At least you’re learning about the outside world.”

The screen beside me is playing footage of a burning river. The flames skid and ripple with a fluid surreality. I wonder, as I’ve wondered before, what if it’s all just special FX? What if the gory images I see every day are doctored? What if the whole tragedy is made up?

In the early days of my affliction, I used to do a lot of research. I learned a lot, but the more I learned, the less I felt I understood. Now I don’t do so much research anymore.

Armando gives up on the radio. “Have you… have you made any progress? Figured out a way to make it stop?”

I see that he is trying to be tactful. I sympathize. It’s the people around me who suffer most. They haven’t gotten used to the crash of bombs. They can’t handle the screams and blood. They still think these things should be considered abnormal. People are very protective of that notion, normality.

“Have you tried canceling your accounts?” Armando says.

“I tried.”

“Have you tried rebooting your identity?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Have you tried law enforcement?”

“A dozen times.” I tell the car to pull over at the next rest stop. “The problem is,” I tell Armando, “fixing an issue like this takes patience and smarts and concentration. And those are qualities it’s very difficult to summon in the middle of a war zone.”

“I see,” says Armando. “And have you tried tech support?”

I laugh. In the early days of my affliction, people made a lot of tech-support jokes. Everything was a joke back then. When I walked into work, the receptionist said, “Uh-oh, here comes the apocalypse.” When I entered the staff room, my coworkers covered their ears. They called me Caspar the Unfriendly Ghost. They called me Caspar Track-n-Kill. They called me other, nastier things.

When I went home at night, Lisa would say, “How was your day, dear? Massacre any civilians? Eat any babies?”

Har-de-har.

As the weeks went by, there were fewer jokes. Soon even the stares stopped. No one wanted to make eye contact with the face that had launched a thousand gunships. It’s a time-tested response under fire. Duck and cover.

One day at work, Sheila came to my cubicle. “I don’t want this to be difficult, Caspar,” she said. “I understand this isn’t your fault. But I also need you to understand that we’re all human beings, with thoughts and feelings and work to get done. And these days, with you in the office, Caspar—I don’t want to put this the wrong way—but when I look at you, all I can see is a giant pile of murdered children.”

“Maybe I should take a leave of absence,” I said.

“Yes,” said Sheila, “I think that would be wise.”

The car pulls over in a picnic area. Armando and I walk far into the trees, the shade, the sweet green silence. It’s a weekly ritual, this escape to the woods. Only here can I be at peace, amid the indifferent, ignorant trees. They don’t recognize me, trees. They don’t care. They don’t know what things have been done in my name.

“This won’t be easy to say,” Armando says.

I sink to my knees in the soft pine needles. I know what’s coming, but I don’t blame Armando. I don’t blame him any more than I blame the machines that scream and weep when I pass by. What else are they supposed to do, when innocent children are dying in the streets?

“I want you to know that I support you.” Armando leans against a tree. “I even kind of admire you, Caspar. You seem so… connected to things, you know? It’s just… it’s getting a little hard to be around you.”

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I understand.”

“I’ve got my own headaches, you know,” Armando says. “I need to work on me for a while. And that’s pretty tough to do when things keep exploding and dying all the time.”

I don’t answer. I notice a movement in the trees. A deer approaches, soft-stepping and shy.

“Be optimistic,” Armando says. “That’s my advice. Stay positive. I think that’s the way to beat this thing.”

The deer is an ad-deer, painted on both sides—something for the hunters to enjoy while taking aim. I read only half the message on its flank before it sees me and skips away.