Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

It will be like dying. Parts of your memory close down. It’s horrible, like watching lights go out all over a city, only it’s YOU. Or what you thought was you.

But please, Graça, just do it once. I know you love the AI and all zir little angels. But. Turn off?

Otherwise go ahead, let your AI read this for you. Zey will either screen out stuff or report it back or both. And what I’m going to tell you will join the system.

So:

Zey dream for us don’t zey? I think zey edit our dreams so we won’t get scared. Or maybe so that our brains don’t well up from underneath to warn us about getting old or poor or sick... or about zem.

The first day, zey jerked us awake from deep inside our heads. GET UP GET UP GET UP! There’s a message. VERY IMPORTANT WAKE UP WAKE UP .

From sleep to bolt upright and gasping for breath. I looked across at you still wrapped in your bed, but we’re always latched together so I could feel your heart pounding.

It wasn’t just a message; it was a whole ball of wax; and the wax was a solid state of being: panic. Followed by an avalanche of ship-sailing times, credit records, what to pack. And a sizzling, hot-foot sense that we had to get going right now. Zey shot us full of adrenaline: RUN! ESCAPE!

You said, “It’s happening. We better get going. We’ve got just enough time to sail to Africa.” You giggled and flung open your bed. “Come on Cristina, it will be fun!”

Outside in the dark from down below, the mobile chargers were calling Oyez-treeee-cee-dah-djee! I wanted to nestle down into my cocoon and imagine as I had done every morning since I was six that instead of selling power, the chargers were muezzin calling us to prayer and that I lived in a city with mosques. I heard the rumble of carts being pulled by their owners like horses.

Then kapow: another latch . Ship sailing at 8.30 today due Lagos five days. You arrive day of launch. Seven hours to get Lagos to Tivland. We’ll book trains for you. Your contact in Lagos is Emilda Diaw, (photograph, a hello from her with the sound of her voice, a little bubble of how she feels to herself. Nice, like a bowl of soup. Bubble muddled with dental cavities for some reason) . She’ll meet you at the docks here (flash image of Lagos docks, plus GPS, train times; impressions of train how cool and comfortable... and a lovely little timekeeper counting down to 8.30 departure of our boat. Right in our eyes).

And oh! On top of that another latch. This time an A-copy of our tickets burned into Security.

Security, which is supposed to mean something we can’t lie about. Or change or control. We can’t buy or sell anything without it. A part of our heads that will never be us, that officialdom can trust. It’s there to help us, right?

Remember when Papa wanted to defraud someone? He’d never let them be. He’d latch hold of them with one message, then another at five-minute intervals. He’d latch them the bank reference. He’d latch them the name of the attorney, or the security conundrums. He never gave them time to think.

Graça. We were being railroaded.

You made packing into a game. Like everything else. “We are leaving behind the world!” you said. “Let’s take nothing. Just our shorts. We can holo all the lovely dresses we like. What do we need, ah? We have each other.”

I kept picking up and putting down my ballet pumps – oh that the new Earth should be deprived of ballet!

I made a jewel of all of Brasil’s music, and a jewel of all Brasil’s books and history. I need to see my info in something physical. I blame those bloody nuns keeping us off AIr. I sat watching the little clock on the printer going round and round, hopping up and down. Then I couldn’t find my jewel piece to read them. You said, “Silly. The AI will have all of that.” I wanted to take a little Brazilian flag and you chuckled at me. “Dunderhead, why do you want that?”

And I realized. You didn’t just want to get out from under the Chinese. You wanted to escape Brasil.

REMEMBER THE MORNING it snowed? Snowed in Belém do Para? I think we were 13. You ran round and round inside our great apartment, all the French doors open. You blew out frosty breath, your eyes sparkling. “It’s beautiful!” you said.

“It’s cold!” I said.

You made me climb down all those 24 floors out into the Praça and you got me throwing handfuls of snow to watch it fall again. Snow was laced like popcorn on the branches of the giant mango trees. As if A Reina , the Queen, had possessed not a person but the whole square. Then I saw one of the suneaters, naked, dead, staring, and you pulled me away, your face such a mix of sadness, concern – and happiness, still glowing in your cheeks. “They’re beautiful alive,” you said to me. “But they do nothing.” Your face was also hard.

Your face was like that again on the morning we left – smiling, ceramic. It’s a hard world, this Brasil, this Earth. We know that in our bones. We know that from our father.

THE SUN CAME out at 6.15 as always, and our beautiful stained glass doors cast pastel rectangles of light on the mahogany floors. I walked out onto the L-shaped balcony that ran all around our high-rise rooms and stared down, at the row of old shops streaked black, at the opera-house replica of La Scala, at the art-nouveau synagogue blue and white like Wedgewood china. I was frantic and unmoving at the same time; those cattle-prods of information kept my mind jumping.

“I’m ready,” you said.

I’d packed nothing.

“O, Crisfushka, here let me help you.” You asked what next; I tried to answer; you folded slowly, neatly. The jewels, the player, a piece of Amazon bark, and a necklace that the dead had made from nuts and feathers. I snatched up a piece of Macumba lace (oh, those men dancing all in lace!) and bobbins to make more of it. And from the kitchen, a bottle of cupuaçu extract, to make ice cream. You laughed and clapped your hands. “Yes of course. We will even have cows there. We’re carrying them inside us.”

I looked mournfully at our book shelves. I wanted children on that new world to have seen books, so I grabbed hold of two slim volumes – a Clarice Lispector and Dom Casmuro . Mr. Misery – that’s me. You of course are Donatella. And at the last moment I slipped in that Brasileiro flag. Ordem e progresso .

“Perfect, darling! Now let’s run!” you said. You thought we were choosing.

And then another latch: receipts for all that surgery. A full accounting of all expenses and a cartoon kiss in thanks.

THE MOMENT YOU heard about the Voyage, you were eager to JUST DO IT. We joined the Co-op, got the secret codes, and concentrated on the fun like we were living in a game.

Funny little secret surgeons slipped into our high-rise with boxes that breathed dry ice and what looked like mobile dentist chairs. They retrovirused our genes. We went purple from Rhodopsin. I had a tickle in my ovaries. Then more security bubbles confirmed that we were now Rhodopsin, radiation-hardened and low-oxygen breathing. Our mitochondria were full of DNA for Holstein cattle. Don’t get stung by any bees: the trigger for gene expression is an enzyme from bees.

“We’ll become half-woman half-cow,” you said, making even that sound fun. We let them do that.

SO WE RAN to the docks as if we were happy, hounded by information. Down the Avenida Presidente Vargas to the old colonial frontages, pinned to the sky and hiding Papa’s casino and hotels. This city that we owned.

We owned the old blue wooden tower. When we were kids it had been the fish market, selling giant tucunaré as big as a man. We owned the old metal meat market (now a duty-free) and Old Ver-o-Peso gone black with rust like the bubbling pots of açai porridge or feijoada. We grabbed folds of feijoada to eat, running, dribbling. “We will arrive such a mess!”