Wireless (53 page)

She looked at him oddly. “Do you have any idea how weird you can be at times?”

He snorted. “Don’t worry, I’m not serious about that. I know my limits. If I don’t do this thing we’re discussing, him upstairs will be annoyed. Because Kafka will have all those naively loyal young potential me’s to send on spy missions, won’t he?” Pierce took a deep breath. “I don’t see that there’s any
alternative
, really. And that’s what rankles. I had hoped that the Opposition would be willing to give me a little more freedom of action than Kafka, that’s all.” He felt the ghostly touch of a bunch of raisin-wrinkled grape joints holding his preteen wrists, showing him how to cast a line. He owed it to Grandpa, he felt: to leave his own children a universe with elbow room unconstrained by the thumbcuffs of absolute history. “Will you still be here when I get back?”

She regarded him gravely. “Will you still want to see me afterward?”

“Of course.”

“See you later, then.” She smiled as she stood up, then departed.

He stared at the spot where she’d been sitting for what seemed like a long, long time. But when he tried to remember her face all he could see was the two of them, Xiri and Yarrow, superimposed.

Twenty years in Stasis. Numerous deaths, many of them self-inflicted, ordered with the callous detachment of self-appointed gods. They feed into the unquiet conscience of a man who knows he could have been better, can
still
be better—if only he can untangle the Gordian knot of his destiny after it’s been tied up and handed to him by people he’s coming to despise.

That’s you in a nutshell, Pierce.

You’re at a bleak crossroads, surrounded by lovers and allies and oh, so isolated in your moment of destiny. Who are you going to be, really? Who do you
want
to be?

All the myriad ways will lie before you, all the roads not taken at your back: who do
you
want to be?

You have met your elder self, the man-machine at the center of an intrigue that might never exist if Kafka gets his way. And you’ll have mapped out the scope of the rift with Xiri, itself rooted in her despair at Stasis. You can examine your life with merciless, refreshing clarity, and find it wanting if you wish. You can even unmake your mistakes: let Grandpa flower, prune back your frightened teenage nightmare of murder. You can step off the murderous infinite roundabout whenever you please, resign the game or rejoin and play to win—but the question you’ve only recently begun to ask is, who writes the rules?

Who do you want to
be
?

The snow falls silently around you as you stand in darkness, knee-deep in the frosted weeds lining the ditch by the railroad tracks. Alone in the night, a young man walks between islands of light. A headhunter stalks him unseen, another young man with a heart full of fears and ears stuffed with lies. There’s a knife in his sleeve and a pebble-sized machine in his pocket, and you know what he means to do, and what will come of it. And you know what
you
need to do.

And now it’s your turn to start making history . . .

“Missile Gap” originally published in
One Million A.D.,
ed. Gardner Dozois, published 2005, Science Fiction Book Club.

“Rogue Farm” originally published in
Live without a Net,
ed. Lou Anders, published 2003, Roc.

“A Colder War” originally published in
Spectrum SF #3,
2000.

“MA XOS” originally published in
Nature,
2005.

“Down on the Farm” originally published on
Tor.com
, 2008.

“Unwirer” originally published in
ReVisions,
ed. Julie E. Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel, published 2004, DAW Books, copyright © 2004 by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow.

“Snowball’s Chance” originally published in
Nova Scotia: New Scottish Speculative Fiction,
ed. Neil Williamson and Andrew J. Wilson, published 2005, Mercat Press.

“Trunk and Disorderly” originally published in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, 2007.