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

Had we kept in touch at all? I had to check my cache, which saddened me, although it’s only a mental eye-blink. Apparently not. She’d left without a goodbye, and I’d let her go. I wondered if I should try to reach her. But what would I say? I had a bad dream, I think it was about you, are you okay? I needed a better reason to pick up the traces, so I did nothing.

Then I had the same dream again; exactly the same. I woke up terrified, and possessed by an absurd puzzle: had I really just been sitting in that fuzzy doctor’s office again? Or had I only dreamed I was having the same dream? A big Space Station is a haunted place, saturated with information that swims into your head and you have no idea how. Sometimes a premonition really is a premonition: so I asked Station to trace her. The result was that time-honoured brush-off: it has not been possible to connect this call .

Relieved, I left it at that.

I was, I am, one of four Senior Magistrates on the Outer Reaches circuit. In Jupiter Moons, my hometown, and Outer Reaches’ major population centre, I often deal with Emergents. They account for practically all our petty offences, sad to say. Full sentients around here are too law-abiding, too crafty to get caught, or too seriously criminal for my jurisdiction.

Soon after my dreams about Lei a young SE called Beowulf was up before me, on a charge of Criminal Damage and Hooliganism. The incident was undisputed. A colleague, another Software Entity, had failed to respond “ you too” to the customary and friendly sign-off “ have a nice day” . In retaliation Beowulf had shredded a stack of files in CPI (Corporate and Political Interests, our Finance Sector); where they both worked.

The offence was pitiful, but the kid had a record. He’d run out of chances; his background was against him, and CPI had decided to make a meal of it. Poor Beowulf, a thing of rational light, wearing an ill-fitting suit of virtual flesh for probably the first time in his life, stood penned in his archaic, data-simulacrum of wood and glass, for two mortal subjective hours ; while the CPI advocate and Beowulf’s public defender scrapped over the price of a cup of coffee.

Was Beowulf’s response proportionate? Was there an intention of offence ? Was it possible to establish, by precedent, that “ you too ” had the same or commensurate ‘customary and friendly’ standing, in law, as “ have a nice day ”?

Poor kid, it was a real pity he’d tried to conceal the evidence.

I had to find him guilty, no way around it.

I returned to macro-time convinced I could at least transmute his sentence, but my request ran into a Partnership Director I’d crossed swords with before: she was adamant and we fell out. We couldn’t help sharing our quarrel. No privacy for anyone in public office: it’s the law out here and I think a good one. But we could have kept it down. The images we flung to and fro were lurid. I recall eyeballs dipped in acid, a sleep-pod lined with bloody knives... and then we got nasty. The net result (aside from childish entertainment for idle citizens) was that I was barred from the case. Eventually I found out, by reading the court announcements, that Beowulf’s sentence had been confirmed in the harshest terms. Corrective custody until a validated improvement shown, but not less than one week.

In Outer Reaches we use expressions like “night, and day”, “week, and hour”, without meaning much at all. Not so the Courts. A week in jail meant the full Earth Standard version, served in macro-time.

I’d been finding the Court Sessions tiring that rotation, but I walked home anyway; to get over my chagrin, and unkink my brain after a day spent switching in and out of virtual time. I stopped at every Ob Bay, making out I was hoping to spot the first flashes of the spectacular Centaur Storm we’d been promised. But even the celestial weather was out to spoil my day: updates kept telling me about a growing chance that show had been cancelled.

My apartment was in the Rim, Premium Level; it still is. (Why not? I can afford it.) Simon and Arc welcomed me home with bright, ancient music for a firework display. They’d cleared the outward wall of our living space to create our own private Ob Bay, and were refusing to believe reports that it was all in vain. I cooked a meal, with Simon flying around me to help out, deft and agile in the rituals of a human kitchen. Arc, as a slender woman, bare-headed, dressed in silver-grey coveralls, watched us from her favourite couch.

Simon and Arc ... They sounded like a firm of architects, as I often told them (I repeat myself, it’s a privilege of age). They were probably, secretly responsible for the rash of fantasy spires and bubbles currently annoying me, all over Station’s majestic open spaces –

“Why is Emergent Individual law still set in human terms?” I demanded. “Why does a Software Entity get punished for ‘criminal damage’ when nothing was damaged ; not for more than a fraction of a millisecond –?”

My housemates rolled their eyes. “It’ll do him good,” said Arc. “Only a human-terms thinker would think otherwise.”

I was in for some tough love.

“What kind of a dreadful name is Beowulf , anyway?” inquired Simon.

“Ancient Northern European. Beowulf was a monster –” I caught myself, recalling I had no privacy. “No! Correction . The monster was Grendel. Beowulf was the hero, a protector of his people. It’s aspirational.”

“He is a worm though, isn’t he?”

I sighed, and took up my delicious bowl of Tom Yum; swimming with chilli pepper glaze. “Yes,” I said glumly. “He’s ethnically worm, poor kid.”

“Descended from a vicious little virus strain,” Arc pointed out. “He has tendencies. He can’t help it, but we have to be sure they’re purged.”

“I don’t know how you can be so prejudiced.”

“Humans are so squeamish,” teased Simon.

“Humans are human ,” said Arc. “That’s the fun of them.”

They were always our children, begotten not created , as the old saying goes. There’s no such thing as a sentient AI not born of human mind. But never purely human: Simon, my embodied housemate, had magpie neurons in his background. Arc took human form for pleasure, but her being was pure information, the elemental stuff of the universe. They had gone beyond us, as children do. We had become just one strand in their past –

The entry lock chimed. It was Anton, my clerk, a slope-shouldered, barrelchested bod with a habitually doleful expression. He looked distraught.

“Apologies for disturbing you at home Rom. May I come in?”

He sat on Arc’s couch, silent and grim. Two of my little dream-tigers, no bigger than geckos, emerged from the miniature jungle of our bamboo and teak room divider and sat gazing at him, tails around their paws.

“Those are pretty...” said Anton at last. “New. Where’d you get them?”

“I made them myself, I’ll share you the code. What’s up, Anton?”

“We’ve got trouble. Beowulf didn’t take the confirmation well.”

I noticed that my ban had been lifted: a bad sign. “What’s the damage?”

“Oh, nothing much. It’s in your updates, of which you’ll find a ton. He’s only removed himself from custody –”

“Oh, God. He’s back in CPI?”

“No. Our hero had a better idea.”

Having feared revenge instantly, I felt faint with relief.

“But he’s been traced?”

“You bet. He’s taken a hostage, and a non-sentient Lander. He’s heading for the surface, right now.”

The little tigers laid back their ears and sneaked out of sight. Arc’s human form drew a long, respectful breath. “What are you guys going to do?”