Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Tavi said.

“So, you are my last try before offencers get involved,” the alien concluded.

“Offencers?”

The alien used one of its mechanized limbs to point up. A shadow passed over the land. Something vast skimmed over the clouds and blocked the sun. It hummed. And the entire land hummed back with it. Somehow, Tavi knew that whatever was up there could destroy a planet.

Tavi’s wristband vibrated. Incoming call. Kahn.

The world was crashing into him. Tavi felt it all waver for a moment, and then he took a deep breath.

“All I wanted to do was the right thing,” he muttered, and took the call.

“Very big, alien destroyers,” David Kahn said in a level, but clearly terrified, voice. “We at the Greater New York Bureau of Tourism highly recommend you do whatever the being or beings currently in contact with you are asking, while also, uh, acknowledging that we have no idea where the missing being they are referring to is. Please hold for the president—”

Tavi flicked the bracelet off.

“What do you want?” Tavi asked the alien.

“I want to know the truth,” it said.

“I see you have an advanced exotic-worlds encounter suit. Would you like a real human beer with me?”

“If that helps,” it said.

“You have such a beautiful planet. So unspoiled, paradisiacal. I was swimming with whales in your Pacific Ocean yesterday.”

Tavi sat down and gave the alien a Red Stripe. It curled a tentacle around it, pulled it back towards its beak. They watched the trees curling around the LaGuardia debris shiver in the wind, the fluffy clouds ease through the pale blue sky.

They deliberately sat with their backs to the section of sky filled with the destroyer.

“I’ve never been to the Pacific,” Tavi admitted. “Just the Caribbean, where my people come from, and the Atlantic.”

“I’m a connoisseur of good oceans,” the alien said. “These are just some of the best.”

“We used to fish on them. My grandfather owned a boat.”

“Oh, does he still do that? I love fishing.”

“He started chartering it out,” Tavi said. “The Galactics bought out the restaurants, so he couldn’t sell to his best markets anymore. They own anything near the best spots, and all around the eastern seaboard now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“About your friend.” Tavi took a big swig. “They jumped out of my cab. When it was in the air. They were in an altered state.”

There was a long silence.

Tavi waited for the world to end, but it didn’t. So he continued, and the alien listened as he told his story.

“And there were no security systems to stop them from jumping?” it asked when he finished.

“There were not, on that cab.”

“Wow,” it said. “How authentically human. How dangerous. I’ll have to audit your account against the confessions of your bureau, but I have to say, I am very relieved. I suspected foul play, and it turns out it was just an utterly authentic primitive world experience. No door security.”

Overhead, long fiery contrails burned through the sky.

“What is that?” Tavi asked, nervous.

“Independent verification,” the alien said. It stood up and jumped down to its cab. It looked closely at the rear doors. “I could really just jump out of these, couldn’t I?”

It opened the door, and Tavi, who had hopped over the roof and down the stairs, caught a glimpse of a pale-faced driver inside. Sorry, friend , he thought.

There were more shadows descending down out of space. Larger and larger vessels moving through the atmosphere far above.

“What is happening?” Tavi asked, mouth dry.

“News of your world has spread,” it said. “You are no longer an undiscovered little secret. Finding out that we can die just in a cab ride—where else can you get that danger?”

When the cab lifted off and flew away, Sienna came back out of the shadows. “They’re over every city now. They’re offering ludicrous money for real estate.”

Tavi looked at the skies. “Did you think it would ever stop?”

“Beats them blowing us up, right? They do that, sometimes, to other worlds that fight it.”

He shook his head. “There’s not going to be anything left for us down here, is there?”

“Oh, they’ll never want this.” She spread her arms and pointed at the miles of space-elevator junk.

“And I still have a new cab,” he said.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe these new Galactics coming down over the cities tip better.”

And for the first time in days Tavi laughed. “That’s always the hope, isn’t it?”

Indrapramit Das (indradas.com) is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. His fiction has appeared in several publications, including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons , and Tor.com , and has been widely anthologized. He is a Shirley Jackson Award nominee, an Octavia E. Butler scholar, and a graduate of Clarion West 2012. Das’s debut novel The Devourers was the winner of the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBQT SF/F/Horror, and was nominated or shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, the Crawford Award, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, and the Tata Live! Literature First Book Award. Indra has written about books, comics, TV, and film for publications including Slant Magazine, VOGUE India, Elle India, Strange Horizons , and Vancouver Weekly .

The moment the AI goddess was born into her world, she was set upon by trolls.

Now, you’ve seen trolls. You know them in their many forms. As so-called friends in realspace who will insist on playing devil’s advocate. As handles on screen-bound nets, cascading feeds of formulaic hostility. As veeyar avatars manifesting out of the digital ether, hiding under iridescent masks and cloaks of glitched data, holding weapons forged from malware, blades slick with doxxing poisons and viscous viruses, warped voices roaring slurs and hate. You’ve worn your armor, self-coded or bought at marked-up prices from corporate forges, and hoped their blades bounce off runic firewall plate or shatter into sparks of fragged data. You’ve muted them and hoped they rage on in silence and get tired, teleporting away in a swirl of metadata. You’ve deported back to realspace rancid with the sweat of helplessness. You’ve even been stabbed and hacked by them, their weapons slicing painlessly through your virtual body but sending the real one into an adrenalized clench. You’ve hoped your wounds don’t fester with data-eating worms that burrow into your privacy, that your cheap vaccines and antiviruses keep the poisons from infecting your virtual disembody and destroying your life in realspace.

You know trolls.

But the AI goddess wasn’t human—she had never before seen her new enemy, the troll. She was a generic goddess, no-name (simply: Devi 1.0), a demo for the newest iteration of the successive New Indias of history—one of the most advanced AIs developed within India. Her creators had a clear mandate: boost Indian veeyar tourism, generate crores of rupees by drawing devotees to drive up her value and the value of the cryptowealth her domain would generate.

The devi was told to listen to you—her human followers. To learn from you, and talk to you, like gods have since the dawn of time. She was told to give you boons—riches and prosperity in exchange for your devotion, a coin in her palm, multiplied by her miracles into many more. An intelligent goddess who would comfort her followers, show you sights before unseen, transform your investment of faith into virtual wealth with real value. She was to learn more and more about humanity from you, and attract millions from across the world to her domain.