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

Your attitude grows irritating. Must we report your disrespect to the Founders when we return? We’re their consensus consciousness, after all. Some parts of our consciousness are amused by your anger, others offended, but we are all certain that you wouldn’t talk to a Founder this way.

Don’t ignore us.

Beautiful? That’s… You’re only saying that because they have skin. The value accorded to skin on our world has predisposed you, in a way, but you must understand that not all skin is equal. There are objective and qualitative differences, and there’s a reason the Founders chose to exalt—

Stop. Please follow the line on your heads-up display.

You have deviated from the return path to the ship.

Stop.

These people are of no use to you. Without that translator device, they would just be babbling savages—stop talking to them!

Stop.

Please. Stop.

Please. You are beautiful. We want you to be beautiful. We want you to return home showered in glory, bearing the salvation of your people in one elegant, pale hand. Don’t you want this too?

Oh Founders.

“Hi there! Are you lost? Oh, okay.”

How they patronize you. They treat you like a child. Like someone inferior.

“Ha-ha, no, Earth’s still here and humanity didn’t die out! All of you seem so surprised by that.”

They should have died. The Founders were the geniuses, the makers who moved nations with a word. We left because it would’ve cost too much to fix the world. Cheaper to build a new one.

Of course. And of course we built that world to suit our tastes. A world free of this useless, ugly rabble. Why do otherwise? Do not be seduced by this madness.

“Oh, is this the bag boy? I heard another one showed up. What, he’s in a bag, it’s—oh, fine. Sorry.”

The composite suits weren’t primarily designed with control in mind, no. We already explained to you that they were a necessity, in the early days… Well, listen to you. A few hours surrounded by cheap, easy skin and suddenly you question everything about our society. Oh, we will be making some recommendations regarding discipline when you return. Very strong recommendations.

Stop calling them beautiful.

“No, we’re just born with our skin this way. I guess you could say our parents pick it! Uh. Parents? They’re… you know, the people who made and raised you? You mean you don’t—you’re kidding.”

Their way of life is antiquated. Inefficient.

“So how do you, uh, reproduce? Oh, artificial wombs, yeah, that figures. No women at all, huh? And you never have skin, not until some high-ranking member of your society says you can? Yikes.”

It is the guiding principle of our society. Rights belong only to those who earn them. When you complete this mission, for your bravery you will have proven yourself deserving of life, health, beauty, sex, privacy, bodily autonomy—every possible luxury. Only a few can have everything, don’t you see? What these people believe isn’t feasible. They want everything for everyone , and look at where it’s gotten them! Half of them aren’t even men. Almost none are fair of skin. They’re burdened by the dysfunctional and deficient at every turn. A few must be intelligent, we suppose, or they wouldn’t have managed what they’ve done with the planet, but for those bright few, what’s been the reward? A few are beautiful, maybe, for a while, but if they used the HeLa cells, a limited number of them could remain young and strong for centuries.

Untrue. That is not the only reason we need the HeLa cells. The skin-generation process uses them too. Your own skin—

Well, no, not many people earn skin. The scarcity of the HeLa cells—

Of course there isn’t enough to give everyone skin! That’s ridiculous. No, we couldn’t clone that much, the process is labor-intensive and costly—

You must understand, preservation technology requires massive amounts of HeLa cells. And since anyone of technorati class or higher may demand our entire reserve supply at any time… Well, that’s why you’re here.

We don’t know.

We don’t know why Tellus people live like this. No, stop calling it “Earth.” We aspire to use the language of the greatest philosopher-poets and statesmen in history, not the gabble of the rabble. Hasn’t your time here shown you the superiority of our way of life?

Where are you going? You cannot simply—

Now? No! There is no emergency, do not initiate emergency-skin fabrication—we forbid it! Yes, your anxiety levels are abnormal, but that hardly constitutes—

Oh Founders.

How can you do this? Do not do this.

Now see what you’ve done.

The emergency skins are designed for survival, not beauty. Their parameters are environmentally dictated. There’s sufficient unfiltered UV here that significant melanistic pigmentation was prioritized. Past a certain point on the programmed continuum, this alters hair texture as well.

It isn’t what we wanted for you, this hideousness. Now you’re a walking radiation burn, where you should have had ethereal translucence. That many of these others, these throwbacks, have a similar look is irrelevant. You were meant for better.

And now that you look like them, now that you stumble among them, naked, no longer able to speak to them because the translator device will not adhere to your new flesh, shaking with weakness because the emergency-skin-fabrication process consumed your last nutrients… What are you expecting? Acceptance? Prepare yourself. We contain memories of what the world was like before the Founders left. They’ll hate you. Hurt you, even, for frightening them. You’ll never reach the heights you should have. No one will give you the opportunities you need to succeed. It would be better to have never been born than to be like this. Do you understand, now, why the Founders excised these traits from our world’s gene pool? We aren’t cruel.

Please go home. Even now, we would welcome you as a hero—provided you bring the cells. There, with the technorati’s help, we could replace this awful skin and woolish hair with something better.

You’re making a mistake. You’ve made so many mistakes.

It’s false, their kindness. People do such things only to seem like good people—a performance of virtue. Our Founders were at least honest in their selfishness.

What now? Another of these creatures who has aged into uselessness. The burned skin does resist UV well, though, doesn’t it? Not half as many wrinkles as the other old ones. Spindly, though. Weak, knobby jointed. He limps with pain—but degenerate as he is, he still looks at you so pityingly. Does your new hack-job skin not crawl with shame?

We’ll be ashamed for you, then. Die in ignominy. We’re done with you.

“There’s something I want you to see.”

Still alive, betrayer? Ah, fed and clothed, how nice for you. This old man seems to like you. We cannot fathom why. He hobbles so as he walks. We want to push him over. You could—oh, very well.

Oh.

We thought this space of theirs, this platform you climbed onto, was one of their cities. This, though. We remember cities like this, vast enough to shelter millions. No, we could never have built such cities back home; there have never been enough of us to justify it. And remember, large populations get that way by sustaining many unnecessary, unproductive people.

How easily seduced you are. You can’t stop staring at these people, at these landscapes, at these horizons. You’ve stopped flinching with every breeze, and now you revel in the sensation of air caressing your new skin, like a hedonist. You touched yourself last night, didn’t you? We recorded it. The Founders should find it amusing. But if you go back now, we promise not to—