Элизабет Бир: The Best of Elizabeth Bear

If I wrote it, people would want to read that poem. It would sell a million—it would garner far more attention than what I do write.

I won’t write it. I don’t even want to remember it. Memory excision was declared by the Supreme Court to be a form of the death penalty, and therefore unconstitutional since 2043.

They couldn’t take my memories in retribution. Instead they took away my pleasure in them.

Not that they’d admit it was retribution. They call it repair . “Rightminding.” Fixing the problem. Psychopathy is a curable disease.

They gave me a new face, a new brain, a new name. The chromosome reassignment, I chose for myself, to put as much distance between my old self and my new as possible.

The old me also thought it might prove goodwill: reduced testosterone, reduced aggression, reduced physical strength. Few women become serial killers.

To my old self, it seemed a convincing lie.

He—no, I: alienating the uncomfortable actions of the self is something that psychopaths do—I thought I was stronger than biology and stronger than rightminding. I thought I could take anabolic steroids to get my muscle and anger back where they should be. I honestly thought I’d get away with it.

I honestly thought I would still want to.

I could write that poem. But that’s not the poem I’m writing. The poem I’m writing begins: Gravestones like smoker’s teeth … except I don’t know what happens in the second clause, so I’m worrying at it as I run.

I do my lap and throw in a second lap because the wind’s died down and my heater is working and I feel light, sharp, full of energy and desire. When I come down the hill, I’m running on springs. I take the long arc, back over the bridge toward the edge of town, sparing a quick glance down at the frozen water. The air is warming up a little as the sun rises. My fingers aren’t numb in my gloves anymore.

When the unmarked white delivery van pulls past me and rolls to a stop, it takes me a moment to realize the driver wants my attention. He taps the horn, and I jog to a stop, hit pause on my run tracker, tug a headphone from my ear. I stand a few steps back from the window. He looks at me, then winces in embarrassment, and points at his navigation system. “Can you help me find Green Street? The autodrive is no use.”

“Sure,” I say. I point. “Third left, up that way. It’s an unimproved road; that might be why it’s not on your map.”

“Thanks,” he says. He opens his mouth as if to say something else, some form of apology, but I say, “Good luck, man!” and wave him cheerily on.

The vehicle isn’t the anomaly here in the country that it would be on a city street, even if half the cities have been retrofitted for urban farming to the point where they barely have streets anymore. But I’m flummoxed by the irony of the encounter, so it’s not until he pulls away that I realize I should have been more wary. And that his reaction was not the embarrassment of having to ask for directions, but the embarrassment of a decent, normal person who realizes he’s put another human being in a position where she may feel unsafe. He’s vanishing around the curve before I sort that out—something I suppose most people would understand instinctually.

I wish I could run after the van and tell him that I was never worried. That it never occurred to me to be worried. Demographically speaking, the driver is very unlikely to be hunting me. He was black. And I am white.

And my early fear socialization ran in different directions, anyway.

My attention is still fixed on the disappearing van when something dark and clinging and sweetly rank drops over my head.

I gasp in surprise and my filter mask briefly saves me. I get the sick chartreuse scent of ether and the world spins, but the mask buys me a moment to realize what’s happening—a blitz attack. Someone is kidnapping me. He’s grabbed my arms, pulling my elbows back to keep me from pushing the mask off.

I twist and kick, but he’s so strong.

Was I this strong? It seems like he’s not even working to hold on to me, and though my heel connects solidly with his shin as he picks me up, he doesn’t grunt. The mask won’t help forever—

—it doesn’t even help for long enough.

Ether dreams are just as vivid as they say.

His firstwas the girl in the mermaid-colored dress. I think her name was Amelie. Or Jessica. Or something. She picked him up in a bar. Private cars were rare enough to have become a novelty, even then, but he had my father’s Mission for the evening. She came for a ride, even though—or perhaps because—it was a little naughty, as if they had been smoking cigarettes a generation before. They watched the sun rise from a curve over a cornfield. He strangled her in the backseat a few minutes later.

She heaved and struggled and vomited. He realized only later how stupid he’d been. He had to hide the body, because too many people had seen us leave the bar together.

He never did get the smell out of the car. My father beat the shit out of him and never let him use it again. We all make mistakes when we’re young.

I awakenin the dying warmth of my sweat-soaked jacket, to the smell of my vomit drying between my cheek and the cement floor. At least it’s only oatmeal. You don’t eat a lot before a long run. I ache in every particular, but especially where my shoulder and hip rest on concrete. I should be grateful; he left me in the recovery position so I didn’t choke.

It’s so dark I can’t tell if my eyelids are open or closed, but the hood is gone and only traces of the stink of the ether remain. I lie still, listening and hoping my brain will stop trying to split my skull.

I’m still dressed as I was, including the shoes. He’s tied my hands behind my back, but he didn’t tape my thumbs together. He’s an amateur. I conclude that he’s not in the room with me. And probably not anywhere nearby. I think I’m in a cellar. I can’t hear anybody walking around on the floor overhead.

I’m not gagged, which tells me he’s confident that I can’t be heard even if I scream. So maybe I wouldn’t hear him up there, either?

My aloneness suggests that I was probably a target of opportunity. That he has somewhere else he absolutely has to be. Parole review? Dinner with the mother who supports him financially? Stockbroker meeting? He seems organized; it could be anything. But whatever it is, it’s incredibly important that he show up for it, or he wouldn’t have left.

When you have a new toy, can you resist playing with it?

I start working my hands around. It’s not hard if you’re fit and flexible, which I am, though I haven’t kept in practice. I’m not scared, though I should be. I know better than most what happens next. But I’m calmer than I have been since I was somebody else. The adrenaline still settles me, just like it used to. Only this time—well, I already mentioned the irony.

It’s probably not even the lights in my brain taking the edge off my arousal.

The history of technology is all about unexpected consequences. Who would have guessed that peak oil would be linked so clearly to peak psychopathy? Most folks don’t think about it much, but people just aren’t as mobile as they—as we—used to be. We live in populations of greater density, too, and travel less. And all of that leads to knowing each other more.