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

“They say,” our taxi driver said, looking even more hooded than before, “that it will be launched today or tomorrow. The whole town knows. We’ll all be looking up to wave.” Our hearts stopped. He chuckled.

We squeaked to a halt outside the reception bungalow. I suppose you thought his fare at him. I hope you gave him a handsome tip.

He saluted and said, “I pray the weather keeps good for you. Wherever you are going.” He gave a sly smile.

A woman in a blue-gray uniform bustled out to us. “Good, good, good. You are Graça and Cristina Spinoza Vaz? You must come. We’re boarding. Come, come, come.”

“Can we unpack, shower first?”

“No, no. No time.”

We were retinaed and scanned, and we took off our shoes. It was as if we were so rushed we’d attained near-light speeds already and time was dilating. Everything went slower, heavier − my shoes, the bag, my heartbeat. So heavy and slow that everything glued itself in place. I knew I wasn’t going to go, and that absolutely nothing was going to make me. For the first time in my life.

Graça, this is only happening because zey want it. Zey need us to carry zem. We’re donkeys.

“You go,” I said.

“What? Cristina. Don’t be silly.”

I stepped backwards, holding up my hands against you. “No, no, no. I can’t do this.”

You came for me, eyes tender, smile forgiving. “Oh, darling, this is just nerves.”

“It’s not nerves. You want to do this; I do not.”

Your eyes narrowed; the smile changed. “This is not the time to discuss things. We have to go! This is illegal. We have to get in and go now.”

We don’t fight, ever, do we, Graça? Doesn’t that strike you as bizarre? Two people who have been trapped together on the 24th floor all of their lives and yet they never fight. Do you not know how that happens, Graçfushka? It happens because I always go along with you.

I just couldn’t see spending four years in a cramped little pod with you. Then spending a lifetime on some barren waste watching you organizing volleyball tournaments or charity lunches in outer space. I’m sorry.

I knew if I stayed you’d somehow wheedle me onto that ship through those doors; and I’d spend the next two hours, even as I went up the gantry, even as I was sandwiched in cloth, promising myself that at the next opportunity I’d run.

I pushed my bag at you. When you wouldn’t take it, I dropped it at your feet. I bet you took it with you, if only for the cupaçu.

You clutched at my wrists, and you tried to pull me back. You’d kept your turquoise bracelet and it looked like all the things about you I’d never see again. You were getting angry now. “You spent a half trillion reais on all the surgeries and and and and Rhodopsin... and and and the germ cells, Cris! Think of what that means for your children here on Earth, they’ll be freaks!” You started to cry. “You’re just afraid. You’re always so afraid.”

I pulled away and ran.

“I won’t go either,” you wailed after me. “I’m not going if you don’t.”

“Do what you have to,” I shouted over my shoulder. I found a door and pushed it and jumped down steps into the April heat of Nigeria. I sat on a low stucco border under the palm trees in the shade, my heart still pumping; and the most curious thing happened. I started to chuckle.

I REMEMBER AT seventeen, I finally left the apartment on my own without you, and walked along the street into a restaurant. I had no idea how to get food. Could I just take a seat? How would I know what they were cooking?

Then like the tide, an AI flowed in and out of me and I felt zie/me pluck someone nearby, and a waitress came smiling, and ushered me to a seat. She would carry the tray. I turned the AI off because, dear Lord, I have to be able to order food by myself. So I asked the waitress what was on offer. She rolled her eyes back for just a moment, and she started to recite. The AI had to tell her. I couldn’t remember what she’d said, and so I asked her to repeat. I thought: this is no good.

THE BASE OF the rocket sprouted what looked like giant cauliflowers and it inched its way skyward. For a moment I thought it would have to fall. But it kept on going.

Somewhere three months out, it will start the engines, which drive the ship by making new universes, something so complicated human beings cannot do it. The AI will make holograms so you won’t feel enclosed. You’ll sit in Pamukkale, Turkiye. Light won’t get through the Fabric so you’ll never look out on Jupiter. The main AI will have some cute, international name. You can finish your dissertation on Libro del cortegiano – you’ll be able to read every translation – zey carry all the world’s knowledge. You’ll walk through Urbino. The AI will viva your PhD. Zey’ll be there in your head watching when you stand on the alien rock. It will be zir flag you’ll be planting. Instead of Brasil’s.

I watched you dwindle into a spark of light that flared and turned into a star of ice-dust in the sky. I latched Emilda and asked her if I could stay with her, and after a stumble of shock, she said of course. I got the same taxi back. The rooftops were crowded with people looking up at the sky.

But here’s the real joke. I latched our bank for more money. Remember, we left a trillion behind in case the launch was once again canceled?

All our money had been taken. Every last screaming centavo. Remember what I said about fraud?

So.

Are you sure that spaceship you’re on is real?

GWYNETH JONES(www.gwynethjones.uk) was born in Manchester, England and is the author of more than twenty novels for teenagers, mostly under the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded SF novels for adults. She has won two World Fantasy awards, the Arthur C. Clarke award, the British Science Fiction Association short story award, the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night award, the Philip K. Dick award, and shared the first Tiptree award, in 1992, with Eleanor Arnason. Recent books include novel Spirit , essay collection Imagination/Space , and story collection The Universe of Things . Her latest novel is The Grasshopper’s Child , a young adult novel in the ‘Bold as Love’ sequence. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and son, a Tonkinese cat called Ginger, and her young friend Milo.

I FACED THE doctor across her desk. The room was quiet, the walls were pale or white, but somehow I couldn’t see details. There was a blank in my mind, no past to this moment; everything blurred by the adrenalin in my blood.

“You have three choices,” she said gently. “You can upload; you can download. Or you must return.”

My reaction to those terms, upload , download , was embarrassing. I tried to hide it and knew I’d failed.

“ Go back? ” I said bitterly, and in defiance. “To the city of broken dreams? Why would I ever want to do that?”

“Don’t be afraid, Romy. The city of broken dreams may have become the city of boundless opportunity.”

Then I woke up: Simon’s breathing body warm against my side, Arc’s unsleeping presence calm in my cloud. A shimmering, starry night above us and the horror of that doctor’s tender smile already fading.

It was a dream, just a dream.

With a sigh of profound relief I reached up to pull my stars closer, and fell asleep again floating among them; thinking about Lei.

I was born in the year 1998, CE. My parents named me Romanz Jolie Davison; I have lived a long, long time. I’ve been upgrading since ‘uppers’ were called experimental longevity treatments . I was a serial-clinical-trialer, when genuine extended lifespan was brand new. Lei was someone I met through this shared interest; this extreme sport. We were friends, then lovers; and then ex-lovers who didn’t meet for many years, until one day we found each other again: on the first big Habitat Station, in the future we’d been so determined to see (talk about ‘meeting cute’!). But Lei had always been the risk taker, the hold-your-nose-and-jump kid. I was the cautious one. I’d never taken an unsafe treatment, and I’d been careful with my money too (you need money to do super-extended lifespan well). We had our reunion and drifted apart, two lives that didn’t mesh. One day, when I hadn’t seen her for a while, I found out she’d gone back to Earth on medical advice.