Nature Futures 2 (26 page)

Marissa Lingen

Dear Uncle Michael,

Thanks so much for taking me for a spin in the time machine! What a great way to spend my sixteenth birthday. It was honestly better than a new car. Versailles and the Mars launch and the flock of velociraptors — I just can't pick which was the best. They were all the best. Being able to watch Grandma play her favourite Aho symphony before the Minnesota Orchestra broke up. Breathing in the scent of fourth-century Beijing. It was all so amazing, so carefully chosen — almost more of a cultural festival than a birthday. It was like a liberal-arts education with strawberry gelato at the end. I've learned so much from you about space, time and the Novikov self-consistency principle in the years since Mum and Dad disappeared and Uncle John died. I really appreciate it.

You may have noticed by now that the trigger device is missing. Actually, I know you have. I left this note at the time I knew you'd notice. I didn't actually have to use the time machine to find out when that would be. I just know you that well: coffee, then oatmeal, then run, then shower, then fire up the time machine. I used the time when you would be in the shower. It wasn't very risky — if you were early, there'd be nothing strange about your niece being in the kitchen.

Here's what I've done with the time machine so far: I've been to see Uncle John. You looked so sad when you told me that we can't change our loved one's deaths, that we can't change the past at all. But you told me he was alone when he died. The heart attack that took him in the middle of the night: he was alone.

I made sure he wasn't. I held his hand as he went off into — into whatever is next, which we can't reach with your time machine or Mum's stardrive. I made sure that the last thing he heard was that while he was with us, he was loved. I saw the last of Uncle John's smiles that the Universe ever contained.

Why didn't you think of doing that, Uncle Michael? Dad and Uncle John both taught me something more than you did: they taught me that you don't leave the people you love alone when they need you. That's the stuff we just don't do. To be blunt, that's
bullshit
.

Then I went back to you the night after Mum's stardrive test failed and she and Dad disappeared. I bet you don't remember her, the girl on the plane who listened to you pour the whole story out, who handed you tissues and listened to how scared you were about raising your niece, how much you would miss your sister and brother-in-law. I wore a wig. That's all it took, a wig. You never knew it was me. But I was there.

I went back and encouraged Grandma to stick with the clarinet. You remember the story she tells of the older girl who bolstered her confidence when she was 12? That was me. I didn't even need the wig for Grandma. But I wore it for myself, the time that you didn't make it to my talent show. The time you said you
couldn't
make it to my talent show, and someone's big sister was the only one who said I was good. You have a time machine. What does ‘couldn't make it' mean with a time machine?

I also went to see some woolly mammoths, because hey, who doesn't like woolly mammoths? They frolicked, and it was awesome, but I bet you knew that, because you found time for the woolly mammoths. Oh, and I went to the first Purple Toupee show, because I'm 16, and what 16-year-old doesn't want to see her favourite band? (First shows are overrated. The band are desperate and don't have it quite together yet. You told me. I should have listened. You were right about that much, at least — but seriously, Woodstock? You were too young for that cliché. I'm
way
too young for that cliché.)

Also I left a cryptic note at my best friend's, telling her not to worry. She will worry anyway, so I'll drop in there next week to reassure her as best I can. If you have any messages for me, you can leave them with her. (My best friend is Sarah. Come on, you should know that by now. You keep thinking it's Monica. Really, Uncle Michael. Nobody who could be best friends with Monica would ever have stolen your time machine.)

So now I'm off to find out what happened with Mum's stardrive test. I'm going to go back to make observations until I can figure it out. Maybe I'll find Mum and Dad somewhere in the Universe, alive, waiting, trying to get back. Maybe I'll find out they died. But I will put in the time and I will find out.

When you love people, you move time and space to be there for them. When you love people and have invented a time machine, you show up. You. Show. Up. If you have to try again and again, you do it. You make sure you're there. I may be only 16, but I have that figured out.

I'll come back for you when you do too.

Love,

Irene.

Marissa Lingen has published more than 90 short stories in venues such as
Analog
,
Lightspeed
and
Tor.com
.

Monkeys

Ken Liu

Ted and Kathy stared at the chaotic scene through the bars of the cage. A large, male macaque monkey about two feet tall screeched and lifted the typewriter — a 1953, lime green Olivetti Lettera 22 — over his head. He stood still for a second like a weight-lifter, and then threw the machine hard against the ground. It clattered on the dirt floor, keys and platen jangling, and came to rest with the sequence “jl,dykb nvcxliuear” on the sheet of paper.

Kathy's hands covered her mouth. She blew out a breath. “At least we now have our first keystrokes.”

Ted just shook his head.

Two smaller males approached the typewriter. One jumped up and down on the keys: “cx,juoun2 ep89 xadl ‘.” The other watched, and then decided to defecate into the curved bowl formed by the type bars.

“Well, Professor Emroche isn't going to want
that
typewriter back,” Kathy said, after recovering from the initial shock. Then she started to laugh. The monkeys stopped to stare at her, which only made her laugh harder.

Ted shook his head again.

*   *   *

The ‘Monkey Shakespeare' project was an interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and the science departments. But after a short clip of the monkeys pooping into the typewriter was circulated online, everyone began to distance themselves from it.

“We don't really think there's much
science
in a project like this,” said Professor Kun of the Department of Computer Science. “That old chestnut about an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of typewriters is just a thought experiment. You should really ask the literature people what they're trying to accomplish with this.”

“This is obviously not how we envisage the future study of
literature
,” said Professor Emroche of the Department of American and English Language and Literature. “We already have the works of Shakespeare, so why would we want monkeys reproducing it by chance? You should really talk to the biology people about what they are trying to get out of it.”

In the end, Ted and Kathy, undergraduate assistants who had yet to declare their majors and who had signed on to feed the monkeys, became the only names attached to the project. The students felt like orphans. No one wanted to claim responsibility for them.

They decided to treat the project as a piece of performance art.

*   *   *

After a while, the monkeys stopped abusing the typewriter. They mainly left it alone during the day, like a toy they found boring. But once in a while, one or a group of them would come by and bang on the keys until they grew tired of it again. Ted and Kathy stopped by several times a day to swap out filled pages for fresh ones.

Kathy flipped through the stack of typescript they had collected, examining each like a puzzle.

“There's a word!” she said.

Ted looked at where she was pointing. Amid a full page of jumbled letters, a sequence of four stood out like a bright diamond: “734q9u8opfuion wise djk;we897d78.”

Ted sighed. “It took the monkeys 5 days to produce 25 pages, and we have one word. At this rate, we aren't going to have much to show by the end of the semester. Not much of an art project.”

“You're missing the point about art,” Kathy said. She threw the papers up in the air and watched them drift to the ground like a flock of pigeons. “It's not about what you have to show, but how you interpret what you have.”

“How would you interpret this?”

“It shows just how rare order is in this random universe we live in. It shows how art is precious and miraculous. It shows the true measure of Shakespeare's genius.”

Ted laughed. “Yeah, that B. S. sounds pretty good.”

“It's the viewer who gives meaning to art,” Kathy said, laughing as well. “Just like it's the reader who gives meaning to the book.”

*   *   *

Wflq rushed into the Eqqlb, gesticulating wildly.

She waved a sheaf of papers in front of 7*uLw, who asked her calmly what in the world was the matter with her.

Wflq was too excited to speak coherently. It took a while before 7*uLw finally understood that her experiment had finally yielded some results. In one of the infinite number of universes that she had been observing, the native creatures had finally produced something worthy of notice.

Although the natives who dominated that world seemed to bang on keyed machines randomly all the time, this time they had allowed some other creatures — deemed inferior by them for some reason — to use one of their machines. These ‘lesser' creatures immediately produced the most beautiful poetry that the universe had ever created. Out of the babbling, random chaos that made up almost all the symbolic output of that world, this new string stood out like a clear voice in the wilderness.

But tragically, the natives of that universe did not seem to understand what they had. Wflq had to rescue a great piece of art.

Here's how the masterpiece began: “jl,dykb nvcxliuear cx,juoun2 ep89 xadl ‘…”

As they read, Wflq and 7*uLw fell in rapture. The beauty of the language overwhelmed them.

Translated into our language, the book Wflq produced started this way:

Boatswain!

Here, master: what cheer?

Ken Liu (
http://kenliu.name
) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
,
Asimov's
,
Analog
,
Clarkesworld
,
Lightspeed
and
Strange Horizons
, among other places. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts. Ken's debut novel,
The Grace of Kings,
the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, will be published by Saga Press, Simon & Schuster's new genre fiction imprint, in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories.

A Game of Self-Deceit

Clayton Locke

I saw him duck under the cover of the awning, collapsing and shaking his umbrella, and step into the lazy smoke of the
izakaya
. When he raised his gaze to sweep the diners and drinkers at their tables, it took me a moment to work out what was wrong. Then I got it: I was looking at myself, not as I usually did, left–right inverted in the mirror, but as I saw myself in photographs. It's funny that my brain should pick out such a subtle detail. He saw me sitting at one of the outer tables, next to the plastic sheeting turned opaque with hammering rain. Then, as he moved away from the door, another figure entered. He was with my wife.

His greeting bow was the slightest nod. “
Konbanwa
.”

“Why did you bring her, you fool?” Without thinking I had addressed him using
temee
, an aggressive personal pronoun. I didn't even dare look at my wife, for fear of choking emotion.

“Because, Koji-
kun
, I want everything we do here to be witnessed. I'm not underestimating you.”

I composed my face into the ever-necessary mask of neutrality. He had taken me off-guard, and I silently reprimanded myself. I harboured a sense of superiority over him, although I knew it to be illogical. This man was exactly me. Well, almost. I had the memories of the mountains and the time of cold, the experience that has shifted my entire way of thinking. A way of thinking I intended to preserve.

“This is illegal. You have to stay more than 20 kilometres away from me,” he said.

I couldn't help but laugh at the notion that a bystander would pick us as clones; a salaryman in a crisply tailored suit, and a man in ill-fitting rags. He was right though, yet still he came. That's good, it meant he was afraid. I flicked a glance at my wife. For a heartbeat our eyes met and the blood sang in my ears.

“I've got a proposal for you,” I said. I nodded to the empty chairs at my table and after a moment of hesitation they sat. I reached down for the plastic bag beside my chair and placed it on the table between us. Inside were documents and photos.

“So it's blackmail? I credited myself with more imagination than this. Where did you get these?” He paused a moment: when he spoke again his voice was level. “What's your problem? It's legal, you've been given a new identity, you're still
you
. You're wallowing in this self-serving misery, don't look to me to pull you out of it!”

“You don't know the half of it,” I said. I reflected on all that had brought me here, how I should never have gone mountaineering without a backup hoverbelt. It was only when the primary one didn't catch and I slipped and fell that I'd realized how stupid I'd been. I'd come to a stop in a deep ravine, my knees shattered, coughing blood. A blow to my head had cracked the personal smartphone chip embedded in my skull. Suddenly I was cut off from the world, no Internet access, no emergency calls, and a silence like I'd not known in many years. I'd been missing for less than two days, but who could survive those subzero temperatures? Lost in the mist and rain, hearing the electric hiss of hover-copters as they glided overhead, and shouting myself hoarse. I'd finally been found, but by the time the gears of bureaucracy had turned, nearly two weeks had passed, and to the world I was dead. How easily they'd discarded me. Life was cheap now, but death was cheaper. Already a clone body had been grown and my latest memory backup imprinted on the fresh brain. It wasn't possible to re-enter my life, for my new self had all the rights and identity: everything from bank accounts and job qualifications to friends and my wife.