Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2013 (34 page)

Monica hated the Oracle. She wanted to have nothing to do with it.

"I can see the appeal of this," Monica said. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and left muddy trails behind. Weeding was hard work.

She had been coming by Penn's place every weekend. She had accepted a position with a small firm in the city to pay the bills, and told the No Pre-Judgment Project coordinators that she couldn't take on anyone else until she was done with Penn.

"When I'm working in the field," Penn said, "I forget the past and the future. I'm alone but not lonely."

Afterward they sat together on the porch, and this time Penn accepted the cold soda that Monica took out of a cooler in her car.

It was near the end of the day, and other men were returning to the house. Some of their eyes lingered on Monica for too long, and she shifted uncomfortably. Penn glared back at them. The men quickly averted their gazes.

"Thank you," Monica said.

"It's one of the few advantages of having had my vision. No one wants to start a fight with me."

Because she was so close to him, Monica could see the slight trembling of his hands and the tense way he gritted his teeth. Penn didn't like confrontations, but he had done it for her. She wanted to reach out and touch him.

"Some of these men are pretty dangerous," Penn said, his voice low. "That one over there killed three people, though he pled guilty only to one, and now he's out after serving twenty-five years. He tells me he's going to kill again." He looked at her, his eyes full of wonder. "Why aren't you scared?"

In his voice Monica heard years of rejection, of people edging away from his presence in fear. She kept her gaze locked with his and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "I already know what's going to happen to me."

***

"I'm still me, you know," sixteen-year-old Penn said to the grainy, jerky image of Sarah on the webcam. "Nothing's changed."

It had been a week since he was last in school.

It was dark in his bedroom, the curtains tightly drawn. He didn't want to leave an opening for the telephoto lenses and directional microphones of the reporters out on the sidewalk and across the street.

The reporters had started out setting up their cameras and tents right on their lawn. His father went out there with his shotgun, and it took the Chief of Police to finally calm him down and reach a compromise with the leeches. They stayed off the Claverly property, but laid siege to it.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," Sarah whispered into the webcam. "My dad..."

He had been so scared by what he had seen that he'd called her right away, waking her whole family in the middle of the night. He had told her everything he could remember of the vision in a torrent of words, frightening her also. Then her father had taken over and called the police.

"But it doesn't mean anything," he pleaded. "Maybe I'll be innocent, just the wrong man in the wrong place. Maybe I didn't understand what I was seeing."

Sarah nodded, but she didn't look into his eyes.

Penn closed his eyes. He could still hear the voice of the talk show host on the radio: "The Oracle is never wrong. That boy is going to grow up a killer, and he'll get the death penalty."

"They're camped out around my house too," Sarah said. "My mom can't even go shopping for groceries without them hounding her."

Sarah's parents hated any kind of publicity, didn't even want their names mentioned for tithing their inheritance to the church. Her father had never seen anything in the Oracle, and her mother's vision had involved a house full of grandchildren. They loved being ordinary.

They had liked Penn because he was an average student and a good athlete. He didn't do drugs and he only drank when he wouldn't be caught. He was polite; he believed in God; and he loved his mom.

But he wasn't ordinary anymore. Not at all.

"Thank you for not talking to them," he managed. Not everyone had been as loyal as Sarah. Some of his teammates were giving media interviews, telling anecdotes about how Penn had always shown "killer instinct" on the court, played rough, or didn't like animals. It didn't matter if they were lies. The newsmen gobbled up the stories.

"Is the DA really going to try to lock you up?" Sarah asked after a few seconds of silence.

This was a question on which everyone seemed to have an opinion.

Can we put people in jail for crimes they're fated to commit? The Constitution might have something to say about that.

Since the Oracle is never wrong, would locking him up even do anything? Maybe he would commit his crimes in jail.

On and on, the debates raged, the arguments going around in circles.

"I don't know," Penn said. "My family was told not to go anywhere until they sort it out in Austin."

Sarah chewed her lips. "Penn, I really have to go."

Penn stared into the screen, imagining that he could smell her shampoo, something faint and floral, the promise of morning. He wished he could reach out and hug her.

"Can we set up another time to talk?"

Sarah hesitated, but shook her head.

"Are you... scared of me?"

He waited for an answer but she looked down, away from the webcam.

"Penn, I'm sorry. Goodbye."

Monica had not wanted to look into the Oracle at all. There were many others like her. "Even if we're not free," she had read in a book, "it's imperative that we retain the illusion of free will."

Then one day Tess challenged her. "Just wear it once. So you know how it feels. Isn't avoiding the Oracle so fastidiously just another way to be un-free?"

So she tried it, and she got her vision right away.

Afterward Tess hugged her little sister. "Oh, I'm sorry."

That was when it really sank in for Monica. Her vision was so bad that even Tess felt sorry for her.

"Well, I'm going to get rid of your romance novels," Tess said. "Remove the temptation. You won't miss what you don't have."

The details of the vision gradually faded from Monica's memory, but the sharp pain in her body and the mental anguish remained. She was lying on the ground, dying, and she knew that the man she loved had killed her. It was a moment and a memory completely without context, without explanation.

So Monica stopped going to dances, and stopped answering when nervous boys asked her if she had plans for the weekend.

She imagined what lay ahead for her in life. She would have to avoid being interested in any man, never look at a rugged face, a chiseled jaw, a lean figure that set her heart aflutter. She would have to be the moth that lived in the dark, never imagining a flame.

"That is a terrible vision," Penn said.

Aldabella's Trattoria was busy on this Saturday night. The crowd was casual, with many families, and Penn's old shirt and unfashionable pants didn't stand out. Monica had gotten him special dispensation from the police to go into town, on the condition that she take full responsibility for any crimes he might commit. There were forms.

She sipped her wine. "Not as terrible as yours."

"Men like me, we have things wrong with us." Penn lowered his voice. "We've had to live with this all our lives. Never had real jobs, real friends, real chances. People are afraid of us. That does something to us."

"You can't let others' fear define you." Monica said.

Penn looked into her eyes. "I'm afraid of myself."

The family moved. The DA didn't put up any objection, happy to be rid of this hot potato. They settled in Massachusetts, which does not have the death penalty.

"Am I supposed to never leave the state?" Penn asked, sarcastically. His parents just sighed.

Penn tried to blend in at his new school, but it took less than a day before someone recognized him from the pictures that had been broadcast everywhere.

After school, Penn found himself surrounded by a few boys. A bigger crowd stayed further back, watching.

"We're not afraid of you," one of the boys said. He was the biggest, the leader. "You little murderer."

Penn stayed still. He would
not
make the first move.

"I bet you're going to be one of those serial killers, aren't you?" another boy taunted. "I bet you've never had a girlfriend."

The fight was brutal and brief. Penn's nose was broken, but he sent three of the boys to the hospital.

The school expelled him. No other school would take him. He was too dangerous.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked his father. Fury lit him up from the inside. He felt like punching the wall. He imagined himself with a gun, walking through the halls of his new school, shooting at every face that came into view. Then he put his hands around his head and howled.

He was terrified by his own anger. It made him realize that the Oracle might be right about what he was capable of.

His father wrapped him in a tight embrace, and for the first time he could remember, they both cried.

Tess lay in the hospital bed, limbs immobilized.

She had not bothered to double-check the water below to be sure it was free of debris. ("What's the point? I know I'll be safe.") She was alive, but the cliff diving accident had broken more than sixty bones.

"This is ridiculous."

Monica lifted the romance novel she had been reading to Tess so that Tess could see it. The cover depicted a buxom brunette in a glass helmet and skin-tight spacesuit. The hunk holding her was bare-chested, with long flowing blond tresses. They drifted in a star field, gazing at each other longingly. Inexplicably, he wore no helmet.

"You still want me to read this to you?"

"Yes. I'm so bored."

"But you already know how books like this end. You know he'll admit that he cares for her. You know she'll realize that she can't leave him. You know that they'll have that long, hot kiss. You know the sex scene is coming, and then the proposal. Why do you want to read it?"

Tess rolled her eyes. "I don't read books like that because I want to be surprised by the ending."

"Then why?"

"Because I like the people in them, okay? I want to see how they make themselves useful and entertaining between page one and page three hundred fifty. That's what I remember."

"Exactly," Monica said. "We've been going about this the wrong way, sis."

Tess stared at her. "What are you talking about?"

"Remember all those people who had visions of meeting the love of their lives? They made sketches of their dream lovers and posted them online, hoping to find them, thinking that it would complete their lives. When they did meet, sometimes they were in love for three days before fizzling out; sometimes they couldn't stand each other within ten minutes, said goodbye, only to meet again ten years later and feel the spark; sometimes they stayed together always and made a life together. But it never worked out the way they imagined it. It was an important moment, and one they would always remember, but it was just one moment. A life is much more than one moment."

"But I'm talking about the end of my life. My vision is how I'll die."

"No." Monica stood up and paced about. "Even death is just one moment among many, no more and no less important than any other. It doesn't matter if you're going to sit contentedly in a room someday, a little bored, not thinking about much at all. You don't know if that's the culmination of a life of joy or a life of sorrow. The arc of your life is unknown.

"You've been thinking so much about that moment that you haven't been living at
all. Stop running. Nap, drink tea, sit with some friends and talk about nothing at all. Sit with
me.
You should be thinking only about this moment, right now."

Tess breathed heavily for a while. "That would be nice, actually."

"Good," Monica said. "Now let me finish reading this book to you."

Afterward, Tess asked, "What about you? What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find him."

"So what happened to Tess?"

"She's got two kids in California, both boys. She loves them more than anything." After a second, Monica added, smiling, "She's never bored, not yet."

"I don't know how it's going to happen," Penn said. He liked the way Monica's hand felt in his hand as they walked.

"I don't either," Monica said. "That's the point. Nobody knows the future." She squeezed his hand.

"But we do know—"

"We know nothing of any use. Will we have a passionate affair and be done in a month, never to see each other again? Will we live together happily for fifty years? Will you be the one to kill me in a fit of rage? Or will I fall in love with another man, and one day, show up as a witness at your trial for some other crime, years from now, telling the jury about this time we spent together?"

"Sometimes I feel such rage at the world that I'm terrified at what I'm capable of." Trembling, he stopped and looked into her eyes. "I don't want to hurt you."

"I don't know if you'll hurt me," she said, and stroked his face. "There's no way to know. But I know that you always have a choice. Just because we've seen a scene on the cover of the book and know it's coming doesn't mean we want to stop reading."

"You're not afraid at all?"

She smiled, and kissed him. "I've met many men like you, and listened to their stories. And I've never been afraid. But I've been afraid since the day I met you."

It took him a moment to understand what she was really saying.
Killed by the man I love.

"I love you too," he said. His heart clenched painfully at the thought that somehow, someday, he would end up hurting her. He couldn't see the path between this moment and that at all.

"We didn't need the Oracle to know that every life ends with a death," she whispered to him. "So we just have to keep on walking and groping in the dark, and give each moment meaning."

And they kissed, long into the dark night.

His skull smoldered with white heat
radiant signatures of the galactic arm
as he floated in the sensory chamber

her voice a filament of hope
insinuated along old frequencies
first imprinted by her touch

his phantom heart throbbed
like a limb lost but not lost
within his tech-scarred chest

her voice moved through the chaos
through his veins of artificial blood
as calming as a narcotic

his memory raveled in flower symmetries
images of her face became exotic tastes
taste buds held extinct languages

her voice no longer spoke
it matched the rhythm in his spine
the synaptic flares of his thoughts

his self relaxed back into the matrices
the piloting routines and controls
as the lightship held to course