The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) (132 page)

Maybe every human has a moment of katharsis – purification, release. Selina is feeling this now. The engines stop. She is under the boat, kicking slowly with her legs to conserve oxygen, when the dolphin comes up to her and nuzzles her gently. Maybe Poseidon has sent Delphinos to bring her the good luck she badly needs.

On the deck the captain raises his handgun towards the helicopter and is instantly shredded with machine-gun fire.

The technical centre is a wreck. The studio capsules are dead without their source. The computers are inert. There’s water everywhere from the Fire and Rescue damp-down. This is a billion-pound insurance claim.

Lynne stands there with Sunil and Jack. “How long to be up and running again?” she asks.

“It took two years last time,” Sunil says, “so let’s be optimistic and say one.”

They’ve never seen her cry before.

“We can finish the movie,” Sunil says quietly. Lynne laughs through her tears and Jack puts his hand to his head. “And just how are we going to do that?” Lynne asks.

“Go out and shoot with real actors,” Sunil answers.

“What?” She waves her arms around. “Which particular century are you in? We can borrow brains and do anything we like. We can shoot movies in three weeks that would have taken six months. You designed this stuff, for Christ’s sake! Are you really suggesting that we go back to pointing cameras at real people? You’re mad, isn’t he Jack?”

Jack walks over to a pile of cable and stirs it with the toe of his Adidas trainers. “I’d like to do it, but we don’t have anybody left in the country capable of manning an old-fashioned unit. Cameras, lighting – it’s all gone.”

“Here, maybe,” Sunil says, “but not everywhere. By the way, can I borrow the jet?”

“Why?”

“I’ve got an appointment with a doctor.”

Bright green motherboards move down the production line. The main processing chips have arrived from the fab unit. The chips have been made without human intervention, their millions of transistors carefully crafted from design templates on the central computer. The motherboards pause and chips are inserted by robotic units. They move on and pass through a bath of liquid solder. They arrive at the point where cables are attached and then into a bay where they are married with their shiny black set-top boxes. From here the units reach the packaging area and slide neatly into the colourful cardboard boxes with pictures of fantastic movie scenes and the word EMO coming out like a stereoscopic projection. The slogan the world’s been seeing day after day in an expensive advertising campaign runs across the boxes in a diagonal stripe: See it, Feel it, Be it!

The production lines move swiftly and efficiently, as they must, because they have seventeen million EMOs to produce, and that’s just the start.

The little road through the village centre is blocked for traffic. Two nine-thousand watt lighting brutes are standing in the road outside The Little Prince. Thick cables run from the lights to a generator parked outside the bakery. The camera is on a jib arm and looks down on the taverna terrace from ten feet above. Jack stands next to the jib talking quietly to Elena Vafiadou, the camera operator.

Alexandros is wearing black trousers and a white shirt. Makeup assistants are gently tapping powder onto his face. He’s a waiter who falls in love with an English girl and discovers that he has the power to manipulate people. He’s going to have to make some big choices between using his powers for good or evil. Nearby, Alice Walton sits alone at one of the tables whilst a young woman from Frocks adjusts the straps on her dress.

At another table sit Spiros and Maria. Spiros wrinkles his nose and says, “I hate this makeup.”

She smiles in a feline way and says, “See what I’ve had to put up with all these years for your pleasure, Spiros!”

He sighs. “I’m still not sure Alexandros is doing the right thing.”

“I am,” she says. “If you were younger and better-looking I’d have put you up for the job!”

The Assistant Director picks up a megaphone. “We’re going for a take. Starting positions, please. Is the kitchen ready?” There’s a quick burst of affirmative radio traffic from the AFM in the kitchen. The Sparks hits the big switch and the lights come on, brighter even than a Corfu noon. “Quiet, please, and stand by!”

Jack says, “Turn over.” Camera and sound operators confirm that they’re rolling. “And – action!”

The music begins and Alexandros puts down his tray and begins to dance, his arms held out wide, his feet swinging back and forward and across and check and back again. He’s light on his toes. He spins and kneels.

Michalis comes from the kitchen wreathed in steam as he carries Sizzling Steak across the terrace and puts it down on Spiros and Maria’s table. Alice lifts her beautiful sad downcast eyes and watches Alexandros dance. This is the moment. This is the precise second when she falls hopelessly in love.

“And – cut! Check the tape,” Jack calls. “Please reset and stay where you are – we’re moving on to the close-ups.”

Spiros leans back and says, “I never thought it would be this boring. Same thing over and over again.”

Maria laughs. “Like chasing Albanian and Italian boat thieves? I have never had such a wonderful time!”

He reaches forward and puts his finger on her hand. “You are my real star,” he says. “You look beautiful. I don’t deserve you. Se latrevo.” Her eyes widen. It’s a very long time since Spiros told her he adored her.

Sunil is teaching Selina how to make lamb Madras with saffron rice and an aubergine baji. She’s not gifted in the kitchen department. “The onions will burn if you leave the heat that high,” he says.

She shouts, “Malaka!” and pushes him out of the way as she goes through to the living room and flounces herself down in front of the television, which is showing a Greek news channel.

He smiles and rescues the curry.

She shouts, “Sunil! Sunil! Come! Now!”

He wipes his hands and walks through. He can’t understand the fast Greek the news presenter speaks, but he can see the words Universa and EMO on the screen, together with shots of fire trucks.

Selina interprets. “He’s saying that EMO boxes are catching fire or exploding. Several people have died. Hold on – this is several thousand incidents! Universa Studios have just issued a statement saying that they are recalling all EMOs. Wow! A media spokeswoman says it’s a major disaster for Universa.”

He goes back to the kitchen and adds the spices to the onions. Then he starts laughing and gets a bottle of Ino bubbly Greek champagne from the fridge. He’s still laughing as he walks into the sitting room, peeling the foil, and lets the bottle go very loudly pop behind her back. She jumps and shouts, “Don’t do that!” and turns to see him pouring sparkling wine over his head. He grabs her hand and pulls her towards him and bathes both of them in a shower of bubbles. “What about the curry?” she asks, licking the wine off his face. “I turned the cooker off,” Sunil says. “For now.”

A body floats gently in towards the shore. It’s bloated, and prawns have been nibbling the ears, eyes, and nose. But nothing has touched the ginger hair that floats back and forth in the shallow surf.

Danny is wrapped up in a big warm coat as he sits in a park in Russia’s science city. There’s no snow, but the cold grass looks as though it’s been doused in grey paint. A tall man in his early thirties – dark eyebrows, aquiline nose, parka hood up – comes and sits down beside Danny. “Only one target left,” he says. “She lives in Kiev with her second husband and his two children. He doesn’t know she was KGB.”

“So now she’s FSB?”

“Danny, Danny! I’m a programmer. FSB stands for Front Side Bus. I’m predicting some nasty short-circuits in the electricity supply to their apartment.”

Danny stands up. “Don’t hurt the kids,” he says.

Vladimir laughs. “You work for movie business. Now you start having conscience! Very funny.”

Danny walks away across the park. He turns back for a moment, waves and shouts, “Good job! Spasiba!”

Alexandros and Alice are on the front covers of every tabloid, every celeb magazine, and a thousand websites. His almost-black eyes and her green eyes stare into paparazzi lenses. They are parading along carpeted catwalks. They are signing autographs. They are on chat-shows all over the world. The movie has received five Oscar nominations and seven BAFTA nominations.

Lynne Songbird has a whole-page spread in
The Scotsman.
“The thing is,” she’s quoted as saying, “we’ve done the most advanced technology there is. We have done things so advanced it’s like science fiction. But then we talked to the ordinary good people who watch our movies, and they said ‘We don’t care about 3D. We don’t care about being forced to feel things we don’t feel. We don’t care about super-surround and giga-pixels, whatever they are. What we want is great stories, great acting, and maybe a little love besides.’ ”

Their bags are still packed by the door. They’ve just flown in from Los Angeles via Athens and they’re tired. She looked great at the Oscar ceremony, but she’s not feeling great now.

The air is cool and sweet as they stand outside, fragrant with jasmine and thyme. The moon is up over the hills. Selina, whose name means moon, looks up and yawns. Sunil takes her hand and says, “I quit today.”

“I know,” she says. “Lynne told me. So what are you going to do?”

“We’re not short of money. You’re a great doctor. I’d maybe like to do another Ph.D. I’m a bit worried about your family. If I were just a Brit it wouldn’t matter, but I’m second generation Indian and maybe they’re a bit . . . concerned.”

She hugs him, and says, “Hey, xenophobia is a Greek word. We’ve survived the alien invasions by the Italians, the Turks, and the Crusaders. I think even my mother can cope with you.”

She kisses him on the cheek and goes in to bed.

Sunil walks down the garden in the moonlight. Magnolia bushes gleam a silvery pink and the olive trees dance a shadowy sirtaki in the breeze. He opens the gate to the fenced area where the goats live. They’ve heard him coming, and they’re up and stirring. They come bounding up to him and jump around in delight that he’s here.

“Tell you what, guys,” he says to the goats. “You three are never going on the barbecue. That’s a promise.”

He lies on his back on the still-warm ground and looks up at the moon and the great bright splash of stars as the goats skip gleefully over him and the night scent full of herbs and richness fills his nostrils and suddenly he feels immensely, ecstatically and overwhelmingly human.

CAMERA rises higher and higher over the Corfu hills, looking down at Sunil and the goats, and then the credits start to roll as Greek music swells on the sound track and the house lights brighten in the cinema:

Screenplay

Jim Hawkins

Script Consultants

Gillie Edwards, Ray Cluley

Research

Lesley Ann Hoy

Producer

Catherine Townsend

Director

Dean Conrad

With grateful thanks to The Little Prince, Agios Stefanos NW, Corfu, for the location, the moussakas, and the cold beer.

THE BONELESS ONE

Alec Nevala-Lee was born in 1980 in Castro Valley, California, graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in Classics, and worked for several years in finance before becoming a professional writer. His first novel,
The Icon Thief,
a contemporary thriller set in the New York art world, was published in March. A sequel,
City of Exiles,
will follow in December. On the science fiction side, his first novelette, “Inversus”, appeared in
Analog
in 2004. Since then,
Analog
has accepted for publication five more of his stories. Besides “The Boneless One”, reprinted here, they are: “The Last Resort”, “Kawataro”, “Ernesto”, and the forthcoming “The Voices”. He currently lives with his wife in Oak Park, Illinois.