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

Where is this dried-up nobody taking you now? “This is called a museum.”

We know what a museum is, you burned-up waste of skin.

“This may interest you.”

This is—oh. A timeline of the Great Leaving. They call it something else, but we know these dates, these images. Yes. Yes. That was how it began, with the Industrial Revolution—oh. They think it began even earlier? Interesting, if inaccurate. Wait, this was once called the United States? What is it called now?

“It doesn’t have a name now. The world. Earth. We don’t bother with borders anymore.”

Then they are endlessly inundated with the useless. Refugees and other refuse.

“We realized it was impossible to protect any one place if the place next door was drowning or on fire. We realized the old boundaries weren’t meant to keep the undesirable out, but to hoard resources within. And the hoarders were the core of the problem.”

We make no apologies for taking everything we could. Anyone would. What is this, though? The timeline jumps, abruptly. Interesting. This world changed—improved—almost immediately after the Leaving.

“To save the world, people had to think differently.”

Please. Happy thoughts and handouts weren’t going to fix that mess. There has to have been some technological breakthrough. Perpetual energy? A new carbon sequestration technique, maybe some kind of polar cooling process. Their technology has changed in some fundamental ways; that’s why it no longer generates radio waves or other EM radiation. That would make it remarkably efficient… But if that’s so, why do they live like this, in elaborate tree-house villages? Why bother cleaning up space trash?

“Yes, some new technology emerged once everyone was permitted a decent education. But there was no trick to it. No quick fix. The problem wasn’t technological.”

What, then?

“I told you. People just decided to take care of each other.”

Delusion. Only a miracle could’ve saved this planet. Here, yes, the exhibit talks about… “the Big Cleanup”? Ugh, these people have no poetry or marketing skill. It just can’t be that simple. We must have left someone behind, an unfound Founder, someone we would have acknowledged as another true heir to Aristotle and Pythagoras. These people are just too small-minded to honor him as they should have. There has to be…

No breakthroughs. Advancements, certainly—but strange, profitless ones. Not the technological paths that would’ve interested us. And progressive taxation, health care, renewable energy, human-rights protection… the usual pithy sentimentalities. Without our Founders around to stand strong against the tide, these simple folk must have given in to every passing special interest…

But if this timeline is correct, then the old man is right. All of a sudden, the world simply did what was necessary to fix itself.

As soon as we lef—

Be silent. Correlation is not causality. Your burned-up skin has made you irrational. We have no idea why the old man even bothered to bring you here. Even for their degenerate kind, you’re a fool.

Hmph. A whole month since last you even thought of your mission. We went to sleep, in your uselessness.

What do you contemplate now, lying in this donated bed, under the roof of your subsidized shelter? Lazy, greedy taker. Shouldn’t you rest in order to be ready for the nothing work they’ve found you? They pay you enough to live on whether you show up or not. Why even bother?

Where are you going?

Ah, you live next door to the old man now. And he’s given you a key? He needs someone to help take care of him as he lurches and wastes toward death, and you’ve decided to be his minder—how sentimental. Will he mind you breaking into his house, now, in the dark of the night? What goes on in that head of yours? The old man is not a pleasurer. You don’t even know how to use your penis.

We are not disgusting. You are.

Well, he hasn’t died in his sleep, lucky you. Go back to bed. What are—why are you turning him over? Stop touching him. The skin has grown loose here on his back; you see? This is what you’ll look like one day. This

is

a product number.

We require more light.

Push him forward. Lean close; your eyes are too dark to take in light properly—yes, there at the small of his back, same as on yours. Definitely a product number. This set of numbers denotes an older series of transmutation nanites. Minifacture of these models stopped some thirty years before your gestation.

“When did you suspect?”

He’s awake. Traitor. Another traitor.

“Ah. The Founders say intuition is irrational and unmanly, but it comes in handy at times, as you now see. Well, younger brother? Now what?”

You should kill him. Then yourself.

“I took you to the museum on a whim. To enjoy the irony. For all these centuries, the Founders told us that the Earth died because of greed. That was true, but they lied about whose greed was to blame. Too many mouths to feed, they said, too many ‘useless’ people… but we had more than enough food and housing for everyone. And the people they declared useless had plenty to offer—just not anything they cared about. The idea of doing something without immediate benefit, something that might only pay off in ten, twenty, or a hundred years, something that might benefit people they disliked, was anathema to the Founders. Even though that was precisely the kind of thinking that the world needed to survive.”

We did what was rational. We have always been more rational than you people.

“What the Leaving proved was that the Earth could sustain billions, if we simply shared resources and responsibilities in a sensible way. What it couldn’t sustain was a handful of hateful, self-important parasites, preying upon and paralyzing everyone else. As soon as those people left, the paralysis ended.”

No. There are too many of you and you’re all ugly and none of you will ever achieve the heights of glory that mankind is destined for—not if you’re so busy taking care of the useless. It has to be one or the other. Either some fly, or everyone gets stuck crawling around in the mud. That’s just how it is.

“Is that so? Is that you talking or that nag they put in your head? I remember how annoying it used to be.”

We. That is. Used to be?

“Have you noticed yet that the people here have been humoring you? An invader from a ‘superior’ culture arrives, and they don’t guard you, watch you, examine you for contaminants? Even after you’ve threatened them, they give you what you need—what you were prepared to steal. Something so precious that your whole world supposedly needs it to survive. An afterthought to them.”

That… has troubled us, yes. We suspected a trap. But—

“Here is what you struggle to understand. The Founders poisoned the world and stripped it almost bare before they left. Repairing that damage was a challenge that forced those left behind to grow by leaps and bounds. They’ve developed methods and technology that we haven’t even thought about, yes. But the reason they were able to make such leaps is because they made sure everyone had food, everyone had a place to live if they wanted it, everyone could read and write and pursue a fulfilling life, whatever that meant. Is it really so puzzling that this was all it took? Six billion people working toward a goal together is much more effective than a few dozen scrabbling for themselves.”

There is logic to this, but we… we deny it. We cannot accept…

“ That’s why the people of Earth talk down to you, younger brother. That’s why they treat you like the quaint, harmless throwback that you are. All these centuries and your people haven’t figured out such a simple, basic thing.”