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

And then this man is actually not that bad, or even bad at all, because if you haven’t seen him be bad to you, he cannot ever be bad, fuck an object permanence

And then any punishment is far too big, you can’t just take away his human rights by not reading his books or not watching his movies or not voting for him or not being pleasant to him at cocktail parties

And then where will this end, maybe men should never talk to women ever again because of course it is preferable to cease all interactions with about half of humanity if the alternative is to think or worry about one’s behavior for longer than 0.000002 seconds

And then sometimes bad men apologize, sorry you admired me so much, sorry the rules changed on me, sorry I don’t remember doing that because I was addicted to alcohol and drugs but I remember you being into it and sorry you changed your mind, however I am not sorry for being so kinky

And then bad men disappear and reappear

And then we forget and they reappear

Or is it more like they reappear and it makes us forget

Onto the next, onto the next

“I think this news cycle is really upsetting her,” I told another friend of hers. We sympathized.

One morning Bonnie knocked twice on my bedroom door and came in without waiting for a response. I didn’t like her coming into my room because she often gazed at my furniture, my clothes, my shoes with a fixed, sweetly neutral expression that I knew was pitying and insulting. Sure, my things weren’t nearly as nice as Bonnie’s, but I also didn’t think they were so bad you needed a poker face to look at them.

This time, she didn’t do any of that. She said, “Call in sick to work. I want to show you something.”

“You know I can’t.” Although—did she know? Currently, I had a pretty good temp gig at a duty-free shopping company, entering the names of makeup products from large binders into a computer database. Near the end of my stint they discovered I had entered all the names incorrectly, because I had been trained incorrectly. So they hired me for another round to fix the mistakes I had made, which was really nice and humane and understanding of them. Unfortunately, because I’d finally been doing my job right, I would be losing it soon. I had no idea what was happening next.

“It doesn’t matter!” Bonnie said. “Okay, no, wait. I’ll pay you five times what you usually make in a day. And I’ll buy you breakfast. Let’s go out!”

“Seriously?”

She looked down at me with the hauteur of a much older, much more professionally accomplished woman. “You know that I never lie about money or food.” She placed an already written check on my face, and when I started sputtering, she said she’d go wait in the living room.

After I got ready and called in sick, I came out and found Bonnie sitting primly on the couch, her eyes closed. “Let’s go!” she said, standing. Her eyes were still closed. Now that I was right next to her I saw her lids were covered in something clear and crusty. “You’re about to ask what’s up with my eyes. I superglued them shut,” she said. “Is it dry?” she asked herself. “Yes. It’s dry. So, you can see that my eyes are completely closed, right?”

Oh, were they ever. I was backing away very stealthily when Bonnie said, “Stop backing away not that stealthily . I know you have this whole thing about being allergic to crazy because of your schizophrenic aunt who raised you, and it’s fine to honor the child who had to come up with coping mechanisms and protect herself somehow, but you’ve got to get over it. Sometimes shit is wild beyond all reckoning. Sometimes people are extremely weird and oftentimes literally crazy, but they’re not all the time trying to be crazy at you! So get over it. Oh, and you’re also not so normal yourself.” She put on a pair of black sunglasses. “Look, you’re going to say, ‘Says the rich white hot girl with the happy childhood,’ which is not wrong. Although you did meet my parents. Oh, shit. Wait. You didn’t this time. Anyway, you’re right but I’m still right about a tiny bit of it too. Do you want to come get your mind blown or not?”

“I wasn’t going to say hot ,” I said.

We laughed for so long I forgot to ask how she knew about my aunt; then we went out.

Though she couldn’t see at all with her eyes glued shut, Bonnie didn’t need my help out of the building. She picked up a toy that had fallen from a stroller and gave it back to the child. She complimented a woman on her shoes, in convincing detail. She bought a newspaper and told me what was in it. She took out her phone and told me what everyone was talking about. She stood on the street corner and asked me to let her know when it was exactly 8:00 a.m., and when it was, she pointed straight ahead and said, “Red car, black car, blue car, blue car, cop car, hot guy on a bike, hot guy jaywalking.” (Though I disagreed about the hotness of the guys, if you took Bonnie’s tastes into account, this was all accurate.)

And all with her eyes superglued shut . I checked them again. They looked even more awful in daylight. “Bonnie,” I said, feeling equal parts wonder and foreboding. “How are you doing this?”

Late that night we ate popcorn and watched a reality TV show—at least, I watched, while Bonnie listened, her eyeballs wiggling under her lids—since the other things we wanted to watch were created by or starring known rapists and gaslighters. “Wait, him too?” I said. “Check your phone,” said Bonnie. “The news just broke.”

For a moment I was surprised that Bonnie would give up on something she really wanted to watch because a Bad Man™ was involved with it, but the fact was that she was no longer the same Bonnie I had known. “All this shit, all it wants to do is continue and repeat with only slight variations,” she intoned. “Care or not care, it doesn’t make a difference to the loop I’m in. I only can’t stand to look at his fucking face. If you see it the way I see it, it is too encrusted with the dark knowledge I have about him, a layer for each week I’ve been through. Layers and layers and layers and layers.”

Bonnie started reciting what would happen on the reality TV show right before it did, which was getting pretty old, so I asked her if the whole week started over again right at midnight.

“That’s right,” she said. “Midnight tonight. Tuesday is the last day before it turns over. I love and dread Tuesdays. Though I am looking forward to this superglue being vanished.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier in the week?”

“I have.” She couldn’t see the horror on my face but she reached out and patted me on the arm. “Well, you know, this time I’d thought of the superglue trick and it seemed fun, but I wasn’t about to have my eyes glued shut for a whole week. It did blow your mind, right?”

I thought. “You know…” I said. “I’m a person. A real person. Even if I can’t remember anything.”

“I know.” Bonnie exhaled. “Sorry. At first I was really jealous of you all, but once I started being able to prove, you know, my whole deal to people I began to see how terrifying it is. To finally get to see the truth of what’s been happening, and then to understand that it will eventually be wiped away and started over.”

The problem with a Bonnie who was focused on the dark, scary side of things was that someone else had to pick up the positivity slack. This was not my greatest strength. I considered the me I was now, the being who had been shaped by living through this week, who would be destroyed once midnight came. Sure, Bonnie could re-create a very close approximation of this current me by behaving the same way next time, but that was almost worse somehow. No. It was definitely worse. I said quickly, “Is there, like, a magical phrase you can say to me that will hurry things up so we can get the show on the road quick next time?”