Нэнси Кресс - The End Is Nigh

Raine’s head exploded. Silver turned red, and my mouth was suddenly full of something warm and dark-tasting, and then several people fleeing in opposite directions crashed into me and I swallowed. I swallowed and doubled over as the crowd smashed into me, and I forced myself not to vomit because I needed to be able to breathe. Then the crowd pushed me down again and my last thought before I blacked out was that with this many extras, all we really needed would be a crane and a few dozen skateboards and we could have had a really cool set piece.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlie Jane Anders’ story “Six Months Three Days” won a Hugo Award and was shortlisted for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards. Her writing has appeared in Mother Jones , Asimov’s Science Fiction , Tor.com , Tin House , ZYZZYVA , The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes , and elsewhere. She’s the managing editor of io9.com and runs the long-running Writers With Drinks reading series in San Francisco. More info at charliejane.net.

Maddie hated the moment when she came home from school and woke her computer.

There was a time when she had loved the bulky old laptop whose keys had been worn down over the years until what was left of the lettering appeared like glyphs, a hand-me-down from her father that she had kept going with careful upgrades: it kept her in touch with faraway friends, allowed her to see that the world was much bigger and wider than the narrow confines of her daily life. Her father had taught her how to speak to the trusty machine in strings of symbols that made it do things, obey her will. She had felt like the smartest girl in the world when he had told her how proud he was of her facility with computer languages; together, they had shared a satisfaction in mastering the machine. She had once thought she’d grow up to be a computer engineer, just like…

She pushed the thought of her father out of her mind. Still too painful.

The icons for the email and chat apps bounced, telling her she had new messages. The prospect terrified her.

She took a deep breath and clicked on the email app. Quickly, she scanned through the message headers: one was from her grandmother, two were from online stores, informing her of sales. There was also a news digest, something her father had helped her set up to track topics of interest to both of them. She had not had the heart to delete it after he died.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

* Market Anomaly Deemed Result of High-Speed Trading Algorithms

* Pentagon Suggests Unmanned Drones Will Outduel Human Pilots

* Singularity Institute Announces Timeline for Achieving Immortality

* Researchers Fear Mysterious Computer Virus Able to Jump From Speakers to Microphones

Slowly, she let out her breath. Nothing from… them .

She opened the email from Grandma. Some pictures from her garden: a humming bird drinking from a bird feeder; the first tomatoes, green and tiny on the vine like beads made of jade; Basil at the end of the driveway, his tail a wagging blur, gazing longingly at some car in the street.

That’s my day so far. Hope you’re having a good one at the new school, too.

Maddie smiled, and then her eyes grew warm and wet. She wiped them quickly and started to compose a reply:

I miss you.

She wished she were back in that house on the edge of a small town in Pennsylvania. The school there had been tiny and the academic work had perhaps been too easy for her, but she had always felt safe. Who knew that eighth grade could be so hard?

I’m having problems with some girls at school.

It had started on Maddie’s first day at the new school. The beautiful, implacable Suzie had seemingly turned the whole school against her. Maddie tried to make peace with her, to find out what she had done that so displeased the schoolyard queen, but her efforts had only seemed to make things worse. The way she dressed, the way she spoke, the way she smiled too much or didn’t smile enough—everything was fodder for mockery and ridicule. She now suspected that, like all despots, Suzie’s hatred for her did not need a rational explanation—it was enough that persecuting Maddie brought her pleasure and that others would try to curry her favor by adding to Maddie’s misery. Maddie spent her hours at school in paranoia, uncertain if a smile or any other friendly gesture was but a trap to get her to let down her guard so that she could be cut deeper.

I wish we were with you.

But Mom had found this job, this good-paying job, and how could she not take it? It had been two years since Dad died. She and Maddie couldn’t go on living at Grandma’s place forever.

Maddie deleted what she had written. It would only make Grandma worry, and then she’d call Mom, and Mom would want to talk to the teachers, which would make things so much worse that she couldn’t even imagine. Why spread sadness around when others couldn’t help?

School is all right. I’m really happy here.

The lie made her feel stronger. Wasn’t lying to protect others the surest sign you were growing up?

She sent the email, and saw that a new message had arrived in her inbox. It was from “truth_teller02,” and the subject was “Too scared?”

Her heart began to pound. She didn’t want to click on it. But if she deleted it without reading, did that mean they were right? That she was weak? Did it mean that they’d won?

She clicked on the message.

Why are you so ugly? I bet you wish you could kill yourself. You really should.

Attached to the message was an image: a picture of Maddie taken with a cellphone. She was running through the halls between classes. Her eyes were wide and intense, and she was biting her bottom lip. She remembered how she had felt: lonely, her stomach tied up in a knot.

The picture had been photoshopped so that she had the nose and ears of a pig.

Her face felt like it was on fire. She willed the tears to subside. She was self-conscious about her weight, and they had seen right through her. It was amazing how effective such a cheap trick could be.

She didn’t know which one of the girls had sent this. She imagined Suzie’s cruel, contemptuous smile as she viewed this latest offering from one of her minions. A good portrait of Piggy .

She had stopped using social networking sites because of the constant stream of mockery—when she deleted any of their comments, it only made them redouble their efforts. If she tried to block anyone, she thought it might also make them think they got to her, might appear as an admission of weakness. She had no choice but to endure.

Sticks and stones. But the digital world, the world of bits and electrons, of words and images—it had brought her so much joy, felt so intimate that she thought of it a part of herself.

And it hurt.

She crawled into bed and cried until she fell asleep.

Maddie stared at the screen, confused.

A new chat window had popped up. It wasn’t from any account she recognized—in fact, there was no chat id at all. She could not recall ever seeing such a thing.

What did they want? To tease her more about the email? If she didn’t say anything, would that also be a concession of weakness? She typed on the keyboard, reluctantly pecking out each letter.