Кори Доктороу - Make Shift - Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future

He saw the future. Artificial worlds strung around stars like strings of pearls. Wormholes connecting galaxies like synapses between neurons. Currents of dark matter redirecting the movements of superclusters, slowing down the expansion of the universe, preventing the Big Rip that threatened to leave each photon alone in its own bubble. And then, new universes, budding off from the first one, entire new realities with their own laws and constants and life, a forest growing from a single seed. A multiverse, made from minds and wonder and surprise, no longer dead and cold, lighting up, inside him.

We are the vaccine, he thought. We are the vaccine against the dark.

And then it all blinked out.

THE COUGHING BROUGHT TORSTI BACK. IT FELT LIKE BEING CHOPPED AT WITH ANaxe, right in the chest. The universe came out of him in tiny big bangs of phlegm and cold brine.

Finally it stopped, leaving him freezing and shaking all over, but alive. Torsti opened his eyes. His Grandfather’s silhouette loomed over him, against the evening sky.

“Don’t try to move,” the old man said, crouching next to Torsti on the granite. He lifted up his phone, pointing the camera at Torsti, and the screen lit up his face.

He wasn’t wearing his mask. His thick silvery hair and salt-and-pepper beard were dripping, and he had a pained look on his face. The lines were deeper than Torsti remembered, his cheeks were hollower.

“Grandfather,” Torsti wheezed. “I saw it.”

Relief spread over Grandfather’s face, smoothing the wrinkles.

“Thank goodness,” he said. “You stupid, reckless boy. What if I hadn’t been strong enough to haul you up that goddamned rope?” He held up his phone. “The Hanko Medical Center AI said you were going to be fine, but I almost didn’t believe it. You should be glad I still remembered my rescue breath training. How are you feeling?”

Torsti’s ribs hurt, but he felt better with each breath. Slowly, he sat up. He was soaked through and shivered in the wind. Grandfather wrapped his coat around Torsti, and then hugged him tight, wiry arms around the boy’s shoulders and back.

“I saw it in the churn,” Torsti whispered. “The future. I really saw it.”

Grandfather pulled away and looked at Torsti.

“I believe you,” he said. “You have it too, don’t you? That way of seeing. And I never realized. What a strange thing.”

His voice was thick. Then he held up his phone, clearing his throat. “Well, I guess I’m going to see the future too, now. This damn thing confirmed transmission.”

“I’m sorry,” Torsti said. “I took away your choice.”

Grandfather sighed.

“You did no such thing, boy,” he said. “You can’t take what wasn’t there in the first place. My choice was made long time ago. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.”

He helped Torsti up. “Let’s go to the sauna,” he said. “All these vaccines or not, you don’t want to catch your death.”

They walked down the pine needle path together, toward the sauna and the warmth.

Madeline Ashby is a futurist and science fiction writer based in Toronto. She is the author of the Machine Dynasty series from Angry Robot Books and also Company Town from Tor Books. She is a contributor to How to Future: Leading and Sensemaking in an Age of Hyper Change , available soon from Kogan Page Inspire. She has also developed multiple science fiction prototypes and scenarios for Intel Labs, the Institute for the Future, SciFutures, Data & Society, Nesta, the WorldBank, WHO, and others. You can find her at madelineashby.comor on Twitter @MadelineAshby.

Indrapramit Das (aka Indra Das) is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. He is a Lambda Literary Award winner for his debut novel The Devourers (Penguin India/Del Rey), and a Shirley Jackson Award winner for his short fiction, which has appeared in a variety of anthologies and publications including Tor.com, Slate, Clarkesworld , and Asimov’s Science Fiction . He has lived in India, the United States, and Canada, where he received his MFA from the University of British Columbia.

Cory Doctorow ( craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently Radicalized and Walkaway , science fiction for adults; In Real Life , a graphic novel; Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free , a book about earning a living in the Internet age; and Homeland , a young adult sequel to Little Brother . His latest book is Poesy the Monster Slayer , a picture book for young readers. His next book is Attach Surface , an adult sequel to Little Brother .

Adrian Hon is CEO and founder of Six to Start, co-creator of the most successful smartphone fitness game in the world, Zombies, Run! He is the author of A New History of the Future in 100 Objects (MIT Press, 2020) and has worked with the British Museum, Disney Imagineering, and the Long Now. Before becoming a game designer, Adrian was a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist at Cambridge, UCSD, and Oxford.

Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has lived in Canada, the United States, and Spain, and is now based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the author of the novel Annex and the collection Tomorrow Factory , which contains some of the best of his 150+ published stories. His work has been translated into Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Portuguese, French, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese. Find free fiction and support his work at patreon.com/richlarson.

Gideon Lichfield is from London, where he began his career on the science desk at The Economist , then spent stints as a foreign correspondent in Mexico City, Moscow, and Jerusalem before winding up in New York City. He was one of the founding editors at the business publication Quartz and worked there until 2017, when he became editor-in-chief of MIT Technology Review . He has taught journalism at New York University and has written (not very good) short science fiction as a fellow at the Data & Society Research Institute.

Ken Liu ( http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, he wrote The Dandelion Dynasty , a silkpunk epic fantasy series (starting with The Grace of Kings ), as well as The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories and The Hidden Girl and Other Stories . He also authored the Star Wars novel The Legends of Luke Skywalker . Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Ken frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, and the mathematics of origami.

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and sociologist. Her science-fiction political thriller Infomocracy was named one of the best books of 2016 by Kirkus, Book Riot, and the Washington Post . She is the creator of the serial Ninth Step Station , currently running on Serial Box, and her short story collection And Other Disasters came out in November 2019. Her opinions can be found in the New York Times , Nation , Foreign Policy , and NBC THINK , among other outlets.

Hannu Rajaniemi is a cofounder and CEO of HelixNano, a venture- and Y Combinator-backed biotech startup developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Hannu was born in Finland. At the age of eight he approached the European Space Agency with a fusion-powered spaceship design, which was received with a polite “thank you” note. Hannu studied mathematics and theoretical physics at University of Oulu and Cambridge and holds a PhD in string theory from the University of Edinburgh. He cofounded a mathematics consultancy whose clients included the UK Ministry of Defence and the European Space Agency. Hannu is the author of four novels including The Quantum Thief (winner of the 2012 Tähtivaeltaja Award for the best science fiction novel published in Finland and translated into more than twenty languages). His most recent book is Summerland (June 2018), an alternate-history spy thriller in a world where the afterlife is real. His short fiction has been featured in Nature , Slate , MIT Technology Review , and the New York Times . Hannu lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, neuroscientist Zuzana Krejciova-Rajaniemi, and their vizsla puppy Neo.