Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction (18 page)

It took three weeks, this time, before he held the calling-card again, pressing one slender finger into its improbable mesh.

This time, the power didn’t go out.

Ammon collected Vasily from his apartment, and they took a train: a slow one, ancient and buzz-shaken, running to a nondescript corner of town. He wouldn’t say where they were going, just that there was someone Vasily needed to meet. They walked past run-down, crumbling concrete buildings, and Ammon stopped at one that was little more than a shell: roof gone, weeds growing out of what once were floors. Under a little bit of lingering overhang was a door, metal and scratched but intact, padlocked.

Vasily shifted in his fields, feeling conspicuous hovering in navies and purples here in this ghetto. “Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.” Ammon touched his thumb to the padlock, which shimmered open: not a true physical lock, then, but a morphic one. The door swung in and revealed a dank basement stairway, air moist and stale, walls slimy—but with a subtle dockpoint at the top of the stairs, to let a ’skipper glide down in safety. Curiouser and curiouser.

At the downstairs landing was another door, sturdier-looking than the last. Ammon knocked a simple skittering pattern, and it opened inward. The basement was cramped, low-ceilinged, all rough-stubbled concrete. Fluorescent light from a bare bulb caught its jags. The man who had opened the door looked strangely at home here underground. He was short, stout, and bristling with dark hair. It peeked out from his shirt-cuffs and dusted his knuckles; his beard and brows were bushy, and the hair on his head shaggy. He was dressed in nondescript dark colours, utilitarian fabrics. He nodded to Ammon. “This the new one?”

Ammon smiled and made introductions. “Yes. This is Vasily, no other designator of yet. Vasily, this is Kvedulf, our sensor.” Kvedulf nodded to Vasily, in turn, and made a gruff hello.

Vasily tilted his head to Ammon: “Censor?”

“Sensor, like senses, sensory function, not censor like limiter or redactor—though it does kind of work like that, sometimes. If you don’t check out, if you might be dangerous, you won’t make it past him.” He turned to address them both equally. “But I scrubbed Vasily myself and you’ve seen the background check, Kvedulf, so I’m sure you’ll be alright, Vas.”

The hairy man harrumphed, darkly.

“Kvedulf really only trusts his own senses, though. No offense meant,” Ammon added. “
Despite
the outstanding quality of my work, I’ll have you know, and my being such a fine judge of character.”

“I thought you had the… star-thing? To be sure.” Kvedulf was circling Vasily, peering, nostrils flared. The hair on his head seemed to have a life of its own, the ends floating and drifting in a little cloud around him.

“Oh, this room has an actual built-in damper mechanism, it’s in the walls, but still: safety measure. This is the last bar of clearance before you can access the rest of us. Kvedulf keeps us all safe.”

Vasily’s skin tingled as Kvedulf probed the g-skip’s fields; he tightened them in as low as he dared, to make it easier. The hairs on Kvedulf’s knuckles danced as he prodded the air around Vasily. He made several more circuits, crouching below the ’skip, then beckoning him to lower down so he could swirl the air above his head as well, before he seemed satisfied. He nodded to Vasily.

“They’re alright, Amm.”

“See? Told you, Vasily, you’re fine. Let’s go meet the family.”

Kvedulf stepped aside, and tapped the wall opposite the door. The jags of concrete suddenly seemed to make sense, to resolve, as an irregularly-edged, heavy door opened out, onto a low, arched brick hallway, dimly lit. Vasily followed Ammon along it, to a simple wooden door. Vasily paused before they reached it.

“Why did he call me a ‘they’?”

Ammon’s smile shone in the dim light. “Remember, I said we have all types? You can be—anything you need to be, here. It’s your choice, and no one else will make it for you.”

Vasily’s heart seemed to skip a beat, several beats. “Oh.”

“Anything. Man or woman, or neither, or little blended gamayun-bird, Vas, anything.”

“I can’t—I don’t—” Vasily choked on the words. “I never dared. I only dreamed—barely dreamed—I never told anyone.” And how could he? Certainly someone like him would never meet the criteria for sanctioned androgyny, or for any change like that; the mandate was mutually exclusive with adaptive licensure. He couldn’t. “I don’t think I can.”

Ammon rested his warm hand on Vasily’s shoulder, squeezed it gently. “You don’t have to choose today.” His smile seemed to bring a bronze glow to the russet colours of his skin. “Ready to say hello?”

Vasily nodded.

Ammon rapped out another short, skittering knock. This door opened into another low-ceilinged room, though it was larger than Kvedulf’s antechamber, and lit warmly. The bricks were hung with richly-coloured cloths, and there were couches, chairs, cushions on the floor: all filled with the most amazing array of individuals Vasily had ever seen. At first glance alone he spotted scaled heads, many-jointed legs, glittering eyes, outlandish prostheses, blended sexes. He gaped in wonder, then tried not to stare and look the yokel, then gaped again. A few folks waved, called hellos to Ammon, who cleared his throat theatrically.

“Everyone—could I have your attention? Everyone. We have a newbie!” There was some hooting, some applause. Ammon turned, said softly, “Vas. You don’t have a shifter name yet, I know, but,” he turned back to the crowd, spoke out clearly, “here you go, this is everyone. Everyone, please give them welcome!”

The cheer that greeted him was so full-throated and genuine it felt like it rocked him backward on the ’skip. Ammon’s voice, soft though it was, rumbled warmly beneath.

“Welcome to the shifter family, little gamayun.”

Losing Touch

Louise Hughes

I want to cry but the only eyes I have are not my own.

These eyes, through which I see too clearly in the dark, are Ghent’s. They put my brain inside his metal, human-mimicking body and he
told
me they were mine. But mine, the ones I closed years ago and never re-opened, would need more light to see by. The cloud-access bunker is not lit for the old me.

As the computer thinks, my fractured memory retreats to two clear images.

Skating. I remember that. Blades on
my
feet, not these feet.

Waking up. I remember that too: the first time Ghent and I awoke together, my brain in his body. But my memory has replaced that lab, the first place these eyes saw, with another. I’ve taken all those feelings and wrapped them around a more familiar place. The lab we go to each year to be checked and polished. That first one is probably under the ice, somewhere.

Most of my other memories are last-gasp echoes. When Ghent lay down to take the sun and recharge our cells, I used to pass the time remembering so much more. Everything after and before the day we woke. The lying down, the stillness and the silence, are all insistently familiar. Our life together started like that, with a whisper and then an attempt to lift these legs that aren’t quite mine. A need that grew and grew, too big to fit inside my tiny head.

I try to remember when the screaming merged into the background, but have no place to start. Ghent provided me with dates, so earnest, trying to make me feel better like he always does. The battering of the walls around my thoughts is like the endless thud, thud, thud of the engine in our chest. The engine that will keep me alive forever.

“Here.” Search successful. Less than a minute. Ghent tried to coax Adela out, the mind inside the brain inside his—their—head. “When I’ve downloaded this year’s records, I can upload all this if you like. I’ll delete some things, to make the space.”

No. Don’t do that.

“We’re nearly full.” 95.4%. Adela took too many pictures. All of ice or snow in different kinds of light. The point of their walking wasn’t to take pictures but to find what of the human race had survived the ice. But it made her feel better to save what their eyes saw, so he allowed it. “I’ll put it into backup. And they’ll be here, if we need them.”

But I don’t want that. Just let me see.

I look down at the screen. He’s turned on the display just for me, because it’s not like he needs it. I hate having someone do such a simple thing for me.
I
should turn the screen on. Myself.

Let me,
I say. He relinquishes control only of our hand and arm. We found the ocean last week. The ice drifted away in a hundred white lily pads. I wanted to know if swimming was something one never forgets how to do, like riding a bike.

Not it isn’t
.
And I’ve never ridden a bike.
Ghent reminded me when he hauled us back onto land.

The ocean. I lived near the ocean once. There’s always an ache in my chest when I see it.

An imagined ache in the chest that isn’t mine. It took me three days of focus to remember the name of the town, to taste that familiar ring to its syllables. It was by the ocean and we walked to the beach every day beneath a sky so blue it hurt my eyes. My real eyes. From the name it grew like hunger, the nagging worry about forgotten knowledge. I reach for something in my head that’s no longer there. A great black pit, like someone’s been digging it deeper while I wasn’t looking and my whole life has fallen in. The computer offers to haul it back. I can already taste triumph. Waves of promise in my head.

Text strolls across the hovering screen. I want to sit down, out of long-forgotten habit, but there aren’t any seats. Ghent doesn’t need seats.

What’s this?
I ask.

The town you’re always talking about,
Ghent says.
It’s in your record. I looked it up last time you got worked up about this.

Little pictures of brick and concrete flick past. A graffiti-infested flyover and a town square tower of red with a high clock face. Cars. Their blocky image and their shiny colors stand out sharp. Wow. I’d forgotten what cars looked like. I can conjure their name, but like the rest of my life, their details are missing from my mind.

I don’t recognize any of this. Are you sure this is the right place?
A map at the top of some half-familiar landmass puts the town about as far from the ocean as it could be. “It isn’t even by the sea. There’s just a river.” The flowing brown soup was hemmed in by cracked grey walls.

Yes. I don’t forget things. My brain isn’t broken like yours,
Ghent says. He doesn’t mean to be malicious.

I’m not broken.
And you don’t have a brain.

Then why can’t you remember? I can see everything I’ve ever seen, so why can’t you?

I don’t know.

We can go back to the laboratory and have the tech give you another look over if you want.

I’m not a machine.

Back when I first woke up, my brain inside this metal case, and Ghent held back our limbs from listening to my commands. I knew, in a sudden plummeting flash, that I couldn’t live like this. My memories, those few that still clung on, betrayed me.

Then as now, I’d stared at the ceiling with just one thought. I take control of our mouth.

“Please kill me.”

“What’s the point of them if they can’t remember anything?” the figure behind Ghent in the technician queue had said. “Mine just sings nursery rhymes all day. London’s Burning, London’s Burning… and every time I tell her it really did, she’s surprised all over again. Replace them with someone new. There are many more waiting in the storage bays.”

Ghent closed his eyes on the computer, so Adela could not see the thing that made her so upset, and took back control of their hands to stop the scrolling. Years of wandering the ice sheets looking for the ruins and detritus of civilization with her in his head had made him quick to act when he sensed her sadness. Humans weren’t meant to exist this way. On the verge of shock. They needed someone to calm the panic and the fear, the disbelief.

Don’t do that
, Adela said.

What?

I want to see. Please, let me have our arms. I promise I won’t try to swim again.

We’re a long way from the ocean.

Please. I want to see if there’s anything else
.

He gives in, because no matter how close we are, he still can’t read my thoughts. The town continues to spin its lies. It wasn’t like that. It can’t have been. I remember the ocean and the beach, and the flowers in all the borders in springtime, the palm trees throwing out their fans over neat cut grass on every roundabout. I remember my home with its windows framed in green and the dappled sunlight on the kitchen worktop. From my window seat piled high with cushions I could see the winking sails of the ships fluttering in, from horizon to port, bringing unnamed treasures.

“This is wrong.”

The faux-glass computer screen splinters around my fist, shards mingling with the ice below. I smash again. This vat of lies doesn’t deserve to keep on blinking its tiny little light.

Someone grips our wrist. Until then, I don’t realize anyone has entered the room and it stuns me. Ghent takes our hand back.

Stop,
he tells me, incapable of anger. I crash against our skull, trying to force my will into our limbs. I want to make him angry, furious. I want him to bellow at me so loud it echoes round our head.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run the search. I thought it would help.

The other in the room lets go of our wrist. Their bland metal face is just like ours, except they have already been to the technician to have the kinks of a year’s wandering on the ice smoothed out. Our nose is still a little squashed.

Glass eyes of blue light up to let us know who is speaking. Everything is designed for me. Ghent and everyone I meet. They are vessels for unpredictable and mysterious as minds who can’t be trusted to exist alone. They feared I would wake, mind prisoner in a metal form, and lose myself in horror. And yet they never thought my mind would atrophy. Idiots.