The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight (75 page)

"What if it is?" the others ask. "This is clearly an emergency. Something needs to be done."

Faces look at the floor, at the ceiling.

At the gray unknowable future.

Then from the back of the room, a throat clears itself.

My throat, as it happens.

The other heroes turn towards me – fifty minds, most of whom are superior to mine. But I manage to offer what none of the wizards ever considered.

"Maybe we should ask what she wants," I suggest.

"Ask who?" several experts inquire.

"Her," I say. "If we do it right, if we ask nicely and all, maybe just maybe the lady tells us what all of this means."

N
o guidebook exists for the work.

Interviewing cyphers is a career invented this morning, and nobody pretends to be expert.

The next step is a frantic search for the perfect interrogator. One obvious answer is to throw a second cypher at the problem – a confabulation designed by us and buffered by every means possible. But that would take too many days and too many resources. A second, more pragmatic school demands that an AI take responsibility. "One machine face to face with another," several voices argue. Interestingly enough, those voices are always human. AIs don't have the same generous assessment of their talents. And after listing every fine reason for avoiding the work, the AIs point at me. My little bit of fame stems from an ability for posing respectable, unanswerable questions, and questions might be a worthwhile skill. There are also some happenstance reasons why my life meshes nicely with "hers". And because machines are as honest as razors, they add another solid reason to back my candidacy.

"Our good friend doesn't hold any critical skills," they chirp.

I won't be missed, in other words.

Nobody mentions the risks. At this point, none of us have enough knowledge to define what might or might not happen.

So with no campaign and very little thanks, I am chosen.

The entire afternoon is spent building the interrogation venue. Details are pulled from my public and private files. My world from six weeks ago is reproduced, various flavors of reality woven around an increasingly sweaty body. Strangers give me instructions. Friends give advice. Worries are shared, and nervous honesties. Then with a pat to the back, I am sent inside the memory of a place and moment where a young woman once smiled at me, the most famous voice in the world offering one good, "Hello."

I
am hiking again, three days deep into the wilderness and with no expectations of company. The memory is genuine, something not implanted into my head or my greater life. I walked out of the forest and into a sunwashed glade, surprised to find a small group of people sitting on one dead tree. She was sitting there too. She seemed to belong to the group. At least that's the impression I had later, and the same feeling grabs me now. The other people were a family. They wore the glowing satins of the New Faith Believers. Using that invented, hyperefficient language, the father was giving his children what sounded like encouragement. "Mystic Falls," I heard, and then a word that sounded like, "Easy." Was the falls an easy walk from here, or was he warning the little ones not to expect an easy road?

In real life, those strangers took me by surprise. I was momentarily distracted, and meanwhile the cypher, our nemesis, sat at the far end of the log. She was with that family, and she wasn't. She wasn't wearing the New Faith clothes, but she seemed close enough to belong. The parents weren't old enough to have a grown daughter, and she didn't look like either of them. Maybe she was a family friend. Maybe she was the nanny. Or maybe she was a sexual companion to one or both parents. The New Faith is something of a mystery to me, and they make me nervous.

Sitting on the log today, this woman is exactly what she is supposed to be. Except this time, everything is "real". I march past the three little children and a handsome mother and her handsome, distracted husband who talks about matters that I don't understand.

"Hello," says the last figure.

My uploaded memory claims that I stopped on this ground,
here
. I do that again, saying, "Hello," while the others chatter away, ignoring both of us.

"I know you," she says.

But I don't know her. Not at all.

As before, she says, "Your face. That face goes where I take my dog. Do you use Wise-and-Well Veterinarians?"

I do, and we're a thousand kilometres from its doorstep. Which makes for an amazing coincidence, and by rights, I should have been alarmed by this merging of paths. But that didn't happen. My uploaded memory claims that I managed a smile, and I said, "I like Dr. Marony."

"I use Dr. Johns."

The woman's prettiness is noticed, enjoyed. But again, her beauty isn't the type to be appreciated at first glance.

"I like their receptionist too," she says.

I start to say the name.

"Amee Pott," she says.

"Yes."

"I go there because of Amee's sister. Janne and I went to the same high school, and she suggested Wise-and-Well."

"You grew up in Lostberg?" I manage.

"Yes, and you?"

"Sure."

We share a little laugh. Again, the coincidences should be enormous, but they barely registered, at least after the first time. All this distance from our mutual home, and yet nothing more will be said about our overlapping lives.

"Your name...?" I begin.

"Darles Jean," she says.

"I'm Hector Borland."

She smiles, one arm wiping the perspiration from her forehead. And with that her attentions begin to shift, those pretty dark eyes gazing up the trail that I have been following throughout the day.

That gaze makes me want to leave.

"Well, have a nice day," I told her once, and I say it again, but with a little more feeling. This a different, richer kind of real.

"I will have a nice day, Mr. Borland."

There. That rich voice says my name perfectly, measured respect capturing the gap between our ages. The original day had me walking all the way up to the Falls, alone. A few dozen new memories, pretending to be old, were subsequently woven into my uploads, proving her existence. I walked alone, never seeing her again, or that family that must have turned back before the end. But today, after a few strides, my body slows and turns, and using a fresh smile, I ask the nonexistent woman, "Would you like to walk with me?"

Breaking the script is a serious moment.

Experts in both camps, human and machine, have proposed that disrupting the flow of events might trigger some hidden mechanism. If the cypher is as large as she seems to be, and if she is so deeply immersed in the world's mind, then any innocuous moment could be the trigger causing her malware to unleash.

The Web will shatter.

The world's power and communications will fail.

Or maybe our AIs will turn against us, their subverted geniuses bent on destroying their former masters.

Yet no disaster happens, at least not that I see inside this make-believe realm. What does happen is that the girl that I never met gives my suggestion long consideration, and then without concern or apparent hesitation, she rises, her daypack held in the sweat-wiping hand.

"I would like that walk," she says.

I say, "Good."

And without a word, we leave that nameless family behind.

W
ho would build such a monster?

Everyone asks the question, and this morning's answers have been remarkably consistent. Certain national powers have the proper mix of resources and reasons. Several organizations have fewer resources but considerably more to gain. Crime syndicates and lawless states are at the top of every list, which is why I discount each of them in turn.

Am I smarter than my colleagues?

Rarely.

Do I have some rare insight into the makings of this cypher?

Never.

But in life, both as a professional and as a family man, my technique is to juggle assessments and options that nobody else wants to touch. By avoiding the consensus, much of the universe is revealed to me. My children, for example. Most fathers are quite sure that their offspring are talented, and their daughters are lovely while their sons will win lovely wives in due time. But my offspring are unexceptional. In their late teens, they have done nothing memorable and certainly nothing special, and because I married an unsentimental woman with the same attitudes, our children have been conditioned to accept their lack of credible talent. Which makes them work harder than everyone else, accepting their little victories as a credit to luck as much as their own worthiness.

I think about these exceptionally ordinary children as I walk the mountainside with a beautiful cypher.

She is not the child of the Faceless Syndicate. We know this much already. Nor is she a product of the New Malta Band, or either of the West Wall or East Wall Marauders. Nor is she an Empire of Greater Asia weapon, or the revenge long promised by the State of Halcyon.

She must be something else.

Someone else's something, yes.

The illusionary trail lifts both of us. I feel comfortable taking the lead, keeping a couple strides between us. Nothing here is flirtatious, and it won't be. The experts came up with a strategy based on a middle-aged man and steep mountain slopes and a waterfall wearing a very appropriate name. I follow the others' directions rigorously. But the script remains ours. We speak, if only rarely. She claims to like the bird songs. Nothing but honest, I tell her that I love these limestone beds and the fossilized shells trapped inside them. The word "trapped" is full of meanings, complications. I pause, and she comes up behind me, and for the first time what is as real as anything is what touches me from behind, the hand warm and a little stronger than I anticipated, not pushing me but definitely making itself felt as that wonderful voice says, "I think I hear the falls."

The Mystic Falls wait around the next bend in the canyon. When I came to this ground the first time, I paid surprisingly little attention to bird songs and tumbling water. In a world where every sight is uploaded and stored – where no seconds are thrown away – people have a natural tendency to walk in their own fog, knowing that everything missed will be found later, and if necessary, replayed without end.

But I can't be more alert this time.

The path narrows and steepens, conquering a long stretch of canyon wall. Again, I am in the lead. The preselected ground is ahead of us, and if she has any real eyes, she notices the same spot. On maps the trail is considered "moderately difficult", but there is one patch of tilted rock covered with rubble as stable as a field of ball bearings.

I hesitate, and for more reasons than dramatic license.

This next moment is sure to be difficult.

"I'll go first," she gamely offers, still safely behind me.

"No, I'm fine," I say. And then I prove my competence, two quick steps putting me across the rockslide, letting me stand on the narrowest ground yet – but flat ground with enough roughness for any boot to grab hold of.

The cypher smiles, measuring the journey to come.

Considerable genius went into what follows. And by that, I mean experts in virtual techniques met with experts in human nature. The monster might be well contrived at her center and everywhere else. Nothing that is a soul or even glancingly self-aware might live inside her. Yet she has to carry off the manners and beauty of humans, otherwise she wouldn't have won a place in our hearts. And even just pretending to be human leaves any algorithm open to all kinds of emotional manipulation.

Some voices argued for the interrogator, for me, to assault her.

"Give the critter a shove," they said, or they used harsher words.

Others argued that I should fall while crossing the treacherous ground. A show of mock-empathy on her part had to be instructive, and we might find a route to understand her deepest regions.

But what several AIs offered, and what we agreed to, was something far more unexpected than a simple fall.

She crosses the rockslide, and I reach for her closest hand, touching her for a second time. Then she is safe, and I am safe, and giving a little laugh of satisfaction, I turn toward the sound of plunging water.

A grunt emerges from me, just loud enough to be heard plainly, to be worrisome.

Then I drop to my knees, my hands, and in the next moment, my medical tag-alongs begin to give me aid while screaming for more help.

A coronary has begun.

The young woman watches the middle-aged stranger struck down, and without missing a beat, she helps roll me over without spilling me off the pathway, calling to me with a firm insistent voice, asking, "Can you hear me, Mr. Borland?"

I hear her quite well, as does everyone else.

"The life-flights will be here in a few minutes," she promises. Which is a lie. We're a hundred kilometres into the wilderness, and the permissions for the flights will take another fifteen minutes.

"What can I do?" she asks.

That beautiful face certainly looks concerned. My pain is hers, if only as far as caring people give to one another.

"Tell me," I say.

She bends closer, her face bringing the scent of hair.

"Tell you what?" she asks.

"What are you?" I ask.

This is not the script that the others wanted. My peers wanted me to be specific with my accusations. Being machinery at their center, cyphers appreciate blunt specifics. But no, I decided on a different course.

My voice finds its strength again. "Because you aren't real," I say.

Her face changes, but not in any way that I can decipher immediately. There seems to be a measure of calm joy in that expression. The warm hand touches me on the chin, on a cheek, and then with the voice that has no time left in life, she says, "I was meant to be one thing, but there was a mistake."

"A mistake?" I ask.

"And the mistake was just big enough," she says.

"Big enough how?"

"To pass beyond every barrier, every limit."

I am used to being the dumbest person in the room. But my confusion mirrors everyone else's.