Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

Default gave it to a select few, sometimes with Schorr’s approval first, sometimes not. Only a small handful of fems and sirs and neuts rode the razor-edge of the bacterial trend. Those without connections were left mimicking the effects, walking bent double and faking coughs between words.

There were more bugs, and Schorr wanted them all. At first Default thought he was following because he’d always followed Schorr, because he’d never had social stock this high or funtime this exclusive, but no.

There was something else drawing him to the bright white basement where Epi, now No-Skin, did his work. Default was breaking his body down so thoroughly, so deeply, that he knew himself in ways he never had before. In ways Memmi never had either, but Memmi was distant now, a dim thought on the periphery.

Sometimes the infections hit so quickly Default and Schorr couldn’t even leave the basement. They collapsed against each other and No-Skin apologized, talked about reducing potency, but when they were entwined on the floor with entropy swimming their veins they couldn’t hear him and didn’t care.

Sometimes they stayed there with No-Skin for days on end instead of spreading the word, spreading the vogue, but he seemed to enjoy their company. They shivered and groaned and reveled in pus from a new orifice, an interesting discoloration of the gums, a bone-deep ache.

“How did you learn to make these?” Default chatted on one of these occasions, half inside a fever dream. They had their own closed web at this point, him and Schorr and the newly-christened Bugwright. The Bugwright pulled down his cowl and shrugged.

“Practice, unit,” he said, breath steaming. “Practice in other places.”

“Schorr never told me you were a pilgrim,” Default chatted. He glanced over to where Schorr was lounging, eyes crusted.

“I’m not forthcoming with it,” the Bugwright admitted. “A lot of people don’t like pilgrims. They like to just think their station is the only station, you know?”

“I had an ex who always wanted to hop stations,” Default chatted.

“You see a lot of things,” the Bugwright said. “I’ve seen a lot of things, and all of them end.”

“Tell him about the finale,” Schorr chatted. Default hadn’t known she was lucid.

“It’s not ready,” the Bugwright said. “When it’s ready.” He pulled the cowl back up over his skinless face and returned to work.

Time had passed; the nocturns had changed. Every unit in the universe had a bug to show off, and bioscans were everywhere you looked, sprayed onto walls and tattooed onto skin. Signature viruses, custom infections. The freebus had divvied into personal transportation pods for units who were no longer walking, or for those pretending they no longer could. The air was swimming with disease.

“We started this, you know,” Schorr said. “How’s that feel? You’re not the steady satellite anymore. You’re nova.”

They were in a corner supshop, squeezed into a booth that was doing its best to massage their back muscles. Default was burning off a mild fever, hair fashionably sweat-slicked. He didn’t know what Schorr was running. Probably something subtle. Discharge was getting too obvious, she thought.

“It feels good,” Default said. Schorr smiled and patted his face. Default caught her hand and held it there. “But I’ve got a lift leaving soon.”

“You want to go back topside?” Schorr asked, incredulous. “Why?”

“It’s time, that’s all,” Default said. He judged his next words. “I want you to come with me.”

“I want you to stay here.” Schorr tugged her hand back and pointed out the wide window. “This is different, unit. This is finally different.”

“You’ve found things like this before. Different things.”

“But this is the last thing, Default.” Schorr looked hurt. “The biggest thing. I was hoping you would do it with me.”

“Do what?” Default asked, heart thumping. They had been docking more often lately, less often with other people, and if she wanted a contract… well, Default wanted one, too. He felt Schorr open up a private line.

“Do you remember the Five?”

Of course he remembered the Five. The memory was entrenched in every brain on the station. There was a hundred orbits’ worth of art, music, and gene-shares dedicated to the Five and their ill-fated hull-walk, to the malfunction that let a meteorite slip through the station’s detection system and plow five units into blood and carbon dust.

“What do you think happened to them?” Schorr asked.

Default frowned, unsure where the conversation was headed. “They ceased.”

“What do you think it felt like?”

“It’s impossible to know that.”

“Not impossible.” Schorr peeled back the sleeve of her thermal and raised her arm. Default saw something black and bubbling underneath.

“A different thing,” Schorr said in the air. “A new thing.” She looked sad.

“I thought maybe you meant something else.” Default stared at the infection and remembered a conversation with the Bugwright. Bubonic. Old Old Earth. Fatal, whatever that entailed.

“But I wanted it to be me and you, Default,” Schorr said haltingly. Her eyes roved all the way around the supshop, everywhere but on him, then finally landed.

“Why?” Default asked.

Schorr shrugged. She smiled. “Because then you’d never have to find someone else.”

Their hands entangled, and as they kissed Default dropped his immunity buffer all the way down to zero.

Memmi/Others had missed Default, she/they really had. The polymind probe had circled the edge of the galaxy, watched the decay of a red dwarf, catalogued a crude bacterial life-form on a thawing moon. Memmi/Others had marveled at the vastness, the chaos, but she/they had not forgotten the station, either. It was harder to re-locate than expected, no longer buzzing with wave communication. Maybe something new had been developed, some new frequency the outdated probe instruments could no longer detect.

The probe docked and gave Memmi/Others a troubling report: the station was empty. She/they floated through the station like a ghost, jumping from monitor to monitor. The AIs were dormant, running only the most basic maintenance protocols. The lifts were stalled in their berths. The multihouses were derelict. She/they went down to the nocturns.

Nothing. The holos danced on in the dark streets, music was still relooping and evolving, but the revelers had vanished. A lone autocleaner was still wandering, still shoving debris, and Memmi/Others recognized the dull yellow of old bone only by the probe’s logs. She/they retreated to the station’s main thinker, trying to make sense of it, trying to evaluate.

One ship had left the station. Memmi/Others saw the trajectory like a laser, and she/they directed the probe to follow it. She/they slid through black space for a century. For two. The probe arrived at another station, this one slowly orbiting a double sun. Memmi/Others requested docking. No answer.

The probe sailed on to the next station, and the next, and as desperation grew and then ebbed there came a slow realization: she/they had missed the party.

The apartment’s DNA scanner can pick Anton out of the crowd almost a block away, so the sliding doors were unlocked and the lobby lighting was welcoming when me and him arrived with the crate. Automated apartments are cushy like that, but I would get lonely without human voices. Anton likes it better that way so he can concentrate on work. The latest of which was, of course, the crate: a cube of dull green armor, military–grade stuff that looked ready for an atomic bomb.