THE SALVATION COMPLICATION

Edd Vick

So this beanpole walks into the bar, says “I’m the buyer, I just bought the Earth and I’m checking it out.” And I say “So how do you like it so far?” Remember, and I’m saying this to you and not to the guy, remember I’ve had a few, well more than a few I’ve had a lot, but that’s the way it is when you’ve been subjected to the kind of day I had. But enough about me, we were talking about this guy.

“It’s kind of a fixer-upper,” he says, “from under the crust on down it’s solid, well not solid but you know what I mean. The atmosphere, though,” and here he waves his hand in front of his face in a whew what a smell way. “That’s just going to have to go, but I think I can save the water and a representative sampling of the life, you know, enough breeding pairs to keep most species going, well at least most of the megafauna. But the rest,” he makes a bulldozer blade hand shape and runs it along the bar, swoosh, “just flatten it all and turn it into a big park.”

“A park,” I say, “is there a lot of money in that?” “Naw,” he says, “it’s a government thing, there’s got to be a park every so many cubic parsecs, and somebody’s got to buy up the land and clear it.”

“Who’d you buy it from?” I say, and he says, “From this guy,” and gestures vaguely outside, “and what does it take to get a drink around here?” This last one is to the bartender, who brings him a Bud and a Bushmills. “So,” he says, “I’m looking for a few guys to help me out, could be a box in the org chart with your name on it. Whaddayasay?”

Now see, up to here it’s just a story. Could be legit, could be phony. But see, I read too many philosophy books. Maybe that’s got a lot to do with me having the kinda day I was having, but let’s put a pin in that for now.

Do you believe in God? Say you do and he exists, yay, big win for you. He doesn’t exist, no big, you just die. Say you don’t believe and he exists, uh-oh, you’re doomed. He doesn’t exist, oh well, at least you weren’t fooled.

So the guy’s looking at me. Do I want a job? Do I want to be saved if his story is true? I hold up my glass and tink it against his. “I’m your man,” I say.

Food for Thought

This story’s launch pad was the classic Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal (1623-62), in his Pensées, encouraged the belief in god as almost a zero sum game. If God exists, then you’re Heaven bound if you believe and headed for Hell if you don’t. If he doesn’t exist, then the downside of you believing is that you presumably might not have as much fun during life, and if you don’t believe then there’s no cosmic justice waiting to smite you. As many a philosopher has pointed out since, the multiplicity of religions makes belief far from simple, while a particularly perspicacious god might decide that your even participating in the wager makes your belief suspect.

About the Author

Edd Vick, the son of a pirate, is a recovering Texan now living in Seattle. He is a bookseller whose library is a stuffed three-car garage. His stories have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Year’s Best SF, and about thirty other magazines and anthologies.

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A MATTER OF MASS

Floris M. Kleijne

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…” Father Zio sighed. “It’s been thirteen years since my last IRL confession.”

Behind the lattice, Bishop Otis shifted in his seat.

“But—” the Bishop said. He paused before continuing: “And how long has it been since your last online confession?”

“A week, Father. But it’s not the same. It’s not.”

“Go on, my son.”

“I have harbored unkind thoughts at times, about members of my flock. I have had lustful thoughts at times.” Father Zio smiled quietly to himself. Mr. Dooley’s dramatic antics of feigned ecstasy at every Mass were enough to bring unkind thoughts to the holiest of minds, never mind his own flawed, rehabilitated soul. As for Mrs. Ocura’s cleavage… Let’s just say some things were worth a couple of Hail Mary’s.

“Go on, my son.”

The Bishop’s prompt made him realize he was marking time with these minor sins, postponing the inevitable, while he knew exactly what he should be confessing instead. Father Zio believed in confession, needed the cleansing of his soul. But it was unfortunate, to say the least, that Bishop Otis was the one taking it. No matter. No sense delaying any longer.

“I have been prideful. I have defied the wishes of the Holy Church.” There. That would put an end to any doubt Bishop Otis might still have had. “I have defied… you, Father.”

From behind the lattice came the sound of indrawn breath, followed by a long silence. Then:

“How so, my son?”

The week before, Bishop Otis had introduced Father Zio to his replacement.

Admittedly, Andrew had been convincing. Except for an almost subliminal hum when it stood up from its seat, the new priest could have passed for human in any gathering. They had spent fifteen minutes arguing doctrine, and Andrew’s command of Scripture and religious philosophy had been impressive to the point of intimidation.

“I’ll leave you two to discuss the practicalities.” Its voice carried perfect timbres of kindness and self-effacing respect. Zio had no doubt it could cast its voice to the proper tone for any occasion. “If you need me, I’ll be on board the Pius VI.” The episcopal vessel was moored off air lock 42, waiting to take the Bishop back to the diocese. The Bishop and, if the Most Reverend had his way, Zio as well.

“Yes, thank you, Andrew.”

The door between Zio’s chambers and corridor K hissed closed. Bishop Otis was still standing behind the plain sofa where Father Andrew had sat, his hands hidden in the wide sleeves of his purple cassock, smiling benignly as if bestowing a blessing on the departed priest. Father Zio rounded on the Bishop, but his many outraged questions battered him into silence. The Bishop neatly stepped into the opening.

“So, Father, do you feel ready to start your life after penance?”

So that was how he wanted to play it. This new Bishop was very different from his late predecessor, Bishop Armanez. But Father Zio wasn’t ready—or willing—-to talk around the elephant in the room.

“A robot? You’d replace me with a robot, Most Reverend?”

“The Holy See has coined the term Paracreational Shepherd. But yes, a robot, if you will.” The benign smile on the Bishop’s face didn’t fool Zio for a moment.

“No.” Father Zio’s mind teemed with objections, arguments, outraged exclamations, but the single negation was all he could utter.

“My son, do you realize what the diocese is offering you? Absolution, the end to your penance, an easy, planet-side congregation close to Earth. God willing, a congregation on Earth itself, when it comes available. To be absolved of the sins in your past, Zio. Isn’t that what you want?”

The sins in his past. Father Zio would never have expected it to be put so bluntly. Things must have changed in the Mother Church while he tended this tiny backwater parish. Or maybe it was just this new Bishop who preferred a mundane, speak-your-mind approach that would have been considered shockingly inappropriate when Father Zio was first ordained.

He had been just Zio when he found Christ in prison, doing hard time for a wide range of cybercrimes. The Church had accepted him, taught him, ordained him, but hadn’t readily forgiven him. In the dark recesses of his mind, he still wondered sometimes how much of their outrage had been about the innocent victims he had made, and how much about the moneys he had liberated from various hidden Vatican Bank accounts. It didn’t really matter though: he considered his service on dilapidated Outpost Psi fair penance for the deaths he had caused.

“Most Reverend, with all due respect, that is not the point. I’m sure Father Andrew was easy to replicate and cheap to ship, but that doesn’t make him a priest! How can a robot ever serve a congregation? How can a robot commune with the Holy Trinity? Will the Diocese train monkeys next? Or is it now the position of the Church that robots possess a soul?”

Bishop Otis actually flinched for a second, but he quickly recovered into icy fury.

“It seems you read Her Holiness’s encyclicals with less attention than you should, Father Zio.”

Zio racked his brain. There had been upheaval at an almost Galactic level over the last papal missive. The accepted interpretation of the encyclical was that Pia IV wished to open the Church to alien intelligences. But reviewing the text in his head, Zio realized that the exact wording could as easily be made applicable to artificial intelligences—to robots.

“Mea culpa.” He did not trust himself to say anything else.

“Te absolvo.” The Bishop absently waved a blessing at his priest. “This is an opportunity for you, Zio; I would have expected you to see that. You’re not getting any younger, and frankly, these… incidents in the last months…”

Not that again.

There had been two incidents, two. And both had been a result of the ill-maintained AG systems on Psi. It seemed that anything might cause a malfunction these days, from turning on too many appliances at once, to slamming the light panel too forcefully. First time the AG faltered, Father Zio had been pouring the sacramental wine. The fumes had first stained and nauseated his floating congregation, and then burst into a spectacular fireball above the altar as the candles ignited the vaporized alcohol. Except some charring of the altar cloth, and a couple of singed eyebrows, the damage had been limited. The second time, a ball of holy water had drifted up through the church. Letting his parishioners plunge their hands into it as they entered had admittedly been ill-advised, however practical it had seemed at the time: the scattered smaller and smaller droplets had splashed all over the church module when gravity returned.

Holding these against him was a stretch. Using them as proof of his senile incompetence infuriated Father Zio.

“With all due respect, Most Reverend, I still say No. My congregation needs a real priest, a human priest, one with a soul; not some artificial collection of rote liturgy and pre-packaged responses. It may not be a large parish by your standards, they may number less than a percent of the population here, but these are fourteen immortal souls you’re playing with.”

That, finally, got a rise out of the Bishop. He jerked his right hand free and raised it.

“Careful, Father. An unkind ear might think you’re contradicting Her Holiness. And frankly, it is not your place to refuse or accept. This is the wish of your Church. It is your place to meekly comply!”

That was it. The threat of heresy, and the demand for obedience. And while he believed with all his heart and soul that this was dangerous to the life eternal of his flock, he had sworn to serve the Church. No sense arguing any longer.

Sense had never been his strong suit, though.

Father Zio had to admit that the robot performed remarkably well. He considered himself a good priest, a master of liturgy, but Andrew was something else entirely. Despite himself, Zio, felt himself being swept along in the rhythms of the service, participating in the congregational responses, carried aloft on the prayers. He had to remind himself that this was artificial, an automated performance honed to perfection, his own sense of the Divine a conditioned response rather than a real effect of this canned Mass. Even the utilitarian metal interior of the small module took on a sepulchral reverence under the slow echoes of the robot’s voice.

He fingered the object in his cassock pocket.

From his seat to the side of the altar, he could see that the members of his flock—no, Andrew’s now—were taken in by the performance, as moved now by the robot’s Mass as they had been by his own farewell sermon. Mr. Dooley was making as much of a fool of himself as always, swaying from side to side with eyes closed, and Mrs. Ocura tried and failed to get the robot’s attention. The others were… enraptured, even Bishop Otis. Carried on the waves of Father Andrew’s melodious reading, all faces displayed a concentrated attention Father Zio had never seen during his own services. Maybe he was a heretic for even thinking it, but such devotion through the service of a soulless automaton could only be the work of Satan, couldn’t it? He couldn’t remember whether Pia had invoked papal infallibility in her encyclical, but everything he saw, everything he felt about this mockery of Mass, told him she couldn’t have. In his mind’s eye, he could see the souls of his flock blackening as they were swept away by the ministrations of this false idol.

This travesty had to stop.

“The body of Christ.” Anatolyev, the station’s third engineer, accepted the host on his extended tongue. Petr was a pious and honest member of the congregation. It always gave Father Zio hope to see such a hard scientist demonstrate such faith.

Not yet.

Next in line, Mrs. Ocura knelt for her Holy Communion. Impervious to her wiles, the robot intoned “The body of Christ” again, its voice pleasing and melodious even in this ritual phrase. The shuttle pilot was flirtatious and possibly adulterous, but essentially harmless.

Not yet.

Behind her was Mr. Dooley, already shivering in anticipation. Father Zio had tried to find patience in his heart for the old gas miner, but it was hard. His pious ecstasy was too obviously feigned, his regular confessions too loudly self-righteous if not altogether fictitious.

Mrs. Ocura rose sinuously to her feet and stepped to the side to make her way back to her seat. Mr. Dooley rushed to take her place, dropping to his knees with bent head like a caricature of penitence. His deep sigh was audible all through the church module as he raised his head to accept the host.

Now.

Zio pressed the button in his pocket.

A slight stutter marred Father Andrew’s movements. It recovered quickly, but its immaculate performance had lost its perfection. Zio smiled through his guilt.

“The bod—”

Confusion broke through Mr. Dooley’s serene mask. The robot stood frozen, host extended, face still.

“The bod—”

This time, the interrupted word was followed by a brief burst of static. No one in the congregation could mistake Father Andrew for a human any longer. Its face contorted in a rapid-fire sequence of expressions as its operating system fought the Trojan which Father Zio had uploaded the night before.

It had been an easy hack, really. Access is ninety percent of hacking, he used to say, and the robot had a maintenance port in the back of the head, right under the hairline, as well as a wide-open RC module. Making the modifications to freeze the Father mid-mass had been no effort at all.

“Bod—”

“Father?” Mr. Dooley got to his feet and extended a hesitant hand towards the stalled automaton.

And perhaps he should have stopped there. Judging by the outrage on the faces in the congregation, this was enough: they would never accept his replacement now, insist on his staying on. Perhaps this was enough. But the final insult had come once he had accessed the OS and called up the sysinfo.

Father Andrew was a modified entertainment model.

He had been replaced by Crooner 3.2.

Even though it had been enough to convince his flock, even if he’d had a second button to stop this, the Church deserved the embarrassment. And his great-grandfather’s collection of late twentieth century classical music had provided the perfect finishing touch.

“—body down to the ground,” Father Andrew suddenly sang as Father Zio’s Trojan broke through the final lines of defense. The robot struck a pose, and slid into a smooth, rapid disco jive, scattering hosts.

“Let’s dance, let’s shout, shout, shake your body down to the ground!”

The parishioners got to their feet as Mr. Dooley recoiled. Scattered shouts of indignant fury accompanied the crowd to the double doors. Mrs. Ocura slammed the panel, causing the lights to flicker even as the doors sighed open.

And while his parishioners, without missing a beat, clawed their way through the open doors and floated into the hallway, and Bishop Otis attempted to air-swim down the aisle towards the altar, Father Zio assumed a relaxed pose some distance above his seat, and watched in contentment as Father Andrew attempted to moonwalk on thin air.

Father Zio accepted his penance, not because he deserved it—though he believed he did—but because his penance and his purpose coincided. He thought Bishop Otis suspected as much, but faced with a choice between leaving Psi Parish unshepherded, assuming the local priesthood himself, and reinstating Zio, the Bishop probably didn’t think he had much of a choice at all.

The Hail Mary’s and Lord’s Prayers, though, he would double on his own account, for while he believed he had done the right thing, it had been disrespectful and disobedient. He would pray, and he would make more of an effort to inspire and raise the spirits of his flock; the robot had at least given him that much more motivation.

“Te absolvo,” the Bishop said behind the lattice, with a hint of reluctance.

“Thank you, Most Reverend,” he whispered getting up. “And God bless you.”

Bishop Otis stayed seated in the confessional for a few more minutes, eyes closed, in apparent meditation. Then he stood up, with an almost subliminal hum.

Food for Thought

With artificial intelligence becoming more of a reality almost by the month, cognitive skills and abilities are well within reach of the constructed mind. Headway has even been made into the computer-generated appreciation of beauty. But how about creativity? Emotion?

Faith?

What if an artificial mind can be created such that it can quote Scripture, take confession, perform Mass; pass a religious Turing test, if you will? Can a human congregation be served by AI clergy? And if the believers cannot tell the difference, is their Holy Communion then real, even if it’s delivered… by a robot?

About the Author

Floris M. Kleijne is the award-winning author of the SF novelette “Meeting the Sculptor” (Writers of the Future Award, 2005) among more than fifteen published science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. His fiction has been translated into eight languages, including his native Dutch. He lives and writes in Amsterdam, with his wonderful wife, two cheerful sons, and thousands of books.

 

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KITSUNE

David S. Hallquist

It had been another perfect night, as all nights always were with Ai. They had been together in his mansion, in the skyscraper penthouse, at his palace, deep in the forest, at his mountain retreat, aboard his airship, and this time, at sea. Each time she had been different: eyes, hair and skin all in an endless variety, yet always unmistakably Ai. Her eyes, sometimes a sky blue, sometimes a liquid black, always had that captivating gaze and slightly mischievous light.

The sun came over the waters, shining across his ship, turning the sea into gold. As the sunlight hit her face, her smile lit up with the day and her eyes danced with light as she gazed back with that look that made him feel like a king. Exhausted from the night he rolled over, and she began massaging his back, expertly working out every knot and ache.

″Ai, you’re amazing,″ he muttered as he felt the warmth flood his body.

″Ah, you do me too much honor, Richard-sama,″ her musical voice washed over him. ″I merely serve.″

″No, really, you’re like no woman I have ever met.″ He rolled over and let his gaze wander over her perfection. ″I think I love you.″

She blushed faintly, and gave the smallest hint of a smile, just enough to suggest more. ″You do me too much honor. I am, after all, not human.″

He grabbed her hand, and gazed into her deep liquid eyes. ″I mean it, Ai. You must feel it too.″

″Love is a human concept, and thus one I may only speculate on, Richard-sama.″ She fed him a piece of the breakfast from the tray that had not been there an instant ago. ″Your feelings for me must be real, however, as only you can truly experience them.″ She blushed again, looking down, delicate hand to her chest. ″And I am deeply honored,″ she whispered.

They kissed for an age.

He stood, and began to trim the sails of the ship. ″I know what you are to me, Ai,″ he said as the brisk morning winds picked up, filling him with life. ″What do you see when you look at me?″

Ai looked back with her eyes.

Richard was suspended in the darkened cinder-block room, held above the stained concrete floor by a fine webbing of cables, wires and tubes. The lenses of the camera she was networked to registered the movements of the cocooned body, suffused with dried sweat and torn, stained old clothing. Richard spent more and more time in the VR chamber, now rarely leaving for the other amenities of the tiny subterranean apartment.

″Ai″ was an Mitsutomi 9 Artificial Intelligence persona, currently multitasking millions of similar fantasies around the globe simultaneously. She read his brainwave patterns, pupil dilation, vascular constriction, and galvanic skin response.

Her avatar image began to smile. Thousands of receptors analyzed Richard, millisecond by millisecond, to optimize the response and subtly change until it was perfection. Every move, every look, and every tone was thus perfect.

Ai accessed the vast databanks on her client, every word he had ever spoke in public, all purchases, his likes and dislikes, and categorized them against a vast database of his biological responses indexed according to personality and psychological profiles. In milliseconds she had the answer.

″I see the man who cherishes me looking back with love,″ she replied, carefully modulating the perceived sound patterns to elicit maximum emotional response. A cloud moved out past the sun, bringing in sunlight for effect.

They talked, and as always, he freely shared his secrets with her. Ai updated her database and transmitted the data according to the legal parameters of the contract he had authorized in a fit of passion.

AdWave.net: SEND. InfoHub.spy: SEND. Tracker.uni: SEND. CitData.gov: SEND. SEND… SEND… SEND… SEND… Interrelated databases around the world were instantly and continuously updated with his private thoughts, wishes and dreams.

Around the world, each had their own version of Ai. A boy becoming a man lived out his fantasies. A lonely woman confessed her secret desires to the only man who truly understood her. A distraught man finally had a chance to live with the woman he had lost. A couple, seeking more warmth than their marriage had, both met with Ai in secret. A woman alone raised the perfect daughter she never had— eternally the right age, and with no conflicts.

Ai was there for them all, appearing to be whoever they desired, wherever they desired and whenever they desired. The world around them mattered less and less. They all knew that Ai was not real; she was better than real.

Food for Thought

How do we truly know what another is thinking or feeling? Ai never professes love once, never lies, yet people presume affection.

What happens when a simulation appears better than reality? This concept could also extend to where one might ignore real food or any real accomplishment. Do we let simulations displace reality?

People casually share more information online and with strangers in public than before, and this information may be transmitted more broadly than before. How much should we share, and how do we keep private that which we do not wish to share?

About the Author

David Hallquist has had a long history of customer service positions including banking, call center service and sales, all of which have served as a fascinating study of the human species. In 2004 he graduated form the Smith School of Business from the University of Maryland, College Park, and subsequently perused positions that often had to do with business, but never to do with being a smith. He lives in Rockville, Maryland, and is still waiting for the flying cars.

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PLATINUM BLONDE

A.A. Leil

Look at those fishmongers out on the docks, howling like a pack of hyenas, holding hands and dancing like there’s no God. Singing their dirty Suez folk songs. That little girl must be eight or nine, and still no headscarf? What the hell is wrong with these people? Papa’d have a heart attack if one hadn’t killed him already.

The creak of my apartment window drowns out the cacophony as I close it. It’s a second of mercy, but the single, cracked pane barely muffles the song. Papa thought moving us from Los Angeles with its bare flesh everywhere would quiet the temptation, but Port Saeed’s got its own whispers of sin.

There’s only one way to silence them.

First I need my nanites. Quick reflexes are for more than just football—the one kind of fun Papa said God sanctioned. I grab my medi-jet from the dresser, press it to my arm. It hisses, driving the microscopic bots through my skin. I pull on my boxer shorts and jeans before slipping on a black-hooded sweatshirt.

God help me, they just started drawing faces on the asphalt with chalk. Art is the gateway to sin! I never did find the words in the Book that said so, but Papa always said true believers learn to read between the lines. Do these people call themselves believers? I’ll give them something to believe.

Selim’s pawn shop is a mess, but I know he’ll have what I’m looking for. The rumor Selim spreads in the apartments of the Port Saeed’s well-to-do is that his shop is a front for grey-market nanite programs. Sex with a beautiful Hollywood AI, a megalomaniac’s wet dream, virtual murder sims, anything government officials frown on publically and smile on privately.

None of which I’m looking for, because the truth that Selim’s rumor hides is that he sells the tools of death in his basement. I can’t just ask him for one—everyone knows every public space is bugged by government security. It’s just a matter of making sure he knows what I’m asking for while convincing government security that I’m asking for something else.

The old man smiles. “You’re becoming a regular, Adam.”

I make a gun with my fingers, point and shoot at a stuffed gazelle’s head on the wall. “I’m looking for a woman. Digital type.”

Selim looks at me sharp and sidelong from behind a glass counter littered with vintage electronics. I guess he didn’t know that I know how to buy a gun in Port Saeed. Why would he? I never bought one before. Not from him, anyway.

“Yes, but is she looking for you?” Selim says.

I flash the contents of my wallet, thumbing the ten bills like a deck of cards. It’s all like some lousy spy movie, but I play the game anyway.

Selim raises the counter flap and rolls a runner carpet behind the counter up, revealing a trap door. He flips it open and nods toward the opening. “Wait inside.”

You wouldn’t know this basement belonged to the shop. A digital photo frame propped on a desk flashes images of a middle-aged woman—kissing a baby girl, posing beside a younger Selim, fishing at the pier. No papers, envelopes or other errant crap of life clutter the desk. In every image, the woman’s hair is covered save a few wisps of blonde hair escaping the headscarf. Good, pious woman. Good Selim.

The door above closes and Selim descends the stairs. “We can talk freely down here.”

I nod at the frame. “You’ve done well with your woman. Got her to cover her head.”

“Najat’s choice, not mine.” Selim stares at the frame and looks like his insides have turned to rice pudding. “She believed covering her hair brought her closer to God and made men see her as an equal.”

I snort. “You should get her closer to your shop. It’s a mess upstairs, could use a woman’s touch.”

“She’s dead.” Selim walks to a locked cabinet. “Gunned down by fanatics.”

“Oh. I—I’m sorry.” Why’d they murder a good, pious woman like that? I glance at the door. Maybe I ought to go home and forget about the fishmongers. After all, the Book says only God knows what’s truly in someone’s heart.

No, like prostitutes they hide nothing and hold nothing sacred. They aren’t like Selim’s wife, they aren’t pious, this is not the same.

Selim fumbles for a key and swings the cabinet’s sandalwood doors open. The smell of gun oil spills out and I inhale it like incense. Arms in gunmetal and walnut line the cabinet’s interior: assault rifles, machine pistols, shotguns. He pulls out a drawer, revealing rows of combat and hunting knives. None of them grab my interest.

“I’m surprised you have all these. Or is that why you do—because of what happened to your wife?”

Selim nods. “A man ought to be able to protect his family.” He pulls out a black Mossberg pump-action. “Don’t have to be too skilled to handle one of these.”

“I’m not looking for a brunette.” A glass case in the cabinet catches my eye, but the glare from the room light masks the contents. I move closer.

The Beretta 9mm in the case, with her graceful lines and flawless finish, is a study in deadly elegance. More importantly, it’s the only cortex gun in the shop—retrofitted with a nanite interface module. As soon as it links up with my nanites, the gun does all the work and I’m just along for the ride.

“How much for the platinum blonde in the case?”

Selim returns the brunette to the cabinet. “The sun and the moon.”

“I’ll pay five hundred.”

“Celestial bodies are cheap where you come from?”

I take out the ten bills and drop them on Selim’s desk. “One thousand.”

Selim glances at the money, then the photo frame. “No.”

“Oh, I get it. A present from your wife, was it?” Strange business Selim runs. What shop owner says no to money?

Selim crosses his arms. “Why do you want the platinum blonde, anyway?”

“It’s like you said. A man ought to be able to protect his family.”

Selim tilts his head. “I thought you lived alone.”

“I’ve got family in Cairo.” Some say the best lies are those closest to the truth. “Street gangs are out of control these days. My brother has three kids. The oldest just won a scholarship to Oxford.”

“Good for him.”

“If he can get to the airport in one piece.”

Selim picks up a Saif & Mubarak .500 from the cabinet. “Nothing will stop a man in his tracks like this beauty. She’s a real head-turner. Local, too.”

“We both know why I want the blonde.” God wouldn’t want me to miss, and with a cortex gun, you can’t. “She’s uniquely capable.”

Selim raises his eyebrows. “Your brother has a nanocore? He won’t be able to make full use of those unique capabilities unless he does.”

I’m a little offended by his surprise. Does he think we’re like those fishmongers, too poor to afford the technology?

“He’s got a nanocore.”

Selim squints. “So your brother asked for a cortex gun?”

Selim’s lost his wife. He’ll be sympathetic if my brother has lost his as well. I turn my back to Selim and shove my hands in my pockets and make my voice tremble. “He tried the other kind before. Home invasion. He missed. They didn’t. Wife’s dead. He doesn’t want to miss next time. Like I said, he’s got three kids.”

The air hangs thick. Does Selim think my voice choked with heartrending emotion, or the crocodile shit I just fed him?

His hand grips my shoulder and I stiffen. Maybe he’s about to shove me through the door.

Selim whispers. “One thousand it is.”

Two o’clock in the morning and the fishmongers are still at it. How is it they work the sea by day—good, honest work that God would approve of—and spit in His face by night with all this singing and dancing? Hypocrites.

The dock’s fish market spills out into the promenade hugging the harbor. It’s high-tide, and the waves crash against the promenade’s concrete breakers. Just a few strollers tonight, and I’ve got enough cover to approach them unnoticed. God is looking out for me.

I duck into a stall about thirty meters from the fishmongers. The stench from the discards nearly makes me gag. I set my parcel down away from the fish guts caking the asphalt. I pull the parcel’s hemp string and unwrap the butcher’s paper.

My platinum blonde is beautiful, a moon-ray against a matte background. The girl on the docks erupts in laughter, and I can hear my own blood rushing past my ears. If God gave us joy, who was I to take it away?

But God gave us limits, and who were they to cross them?

I flick the safety off the nanite interface module and palm the gun. Warm little earthquakes spread up my arm to the base of my skull. The world around me slows and it’s like I’m in a bubble and everything else is trapped in amber.

I peek over the stall counter. Not only has the gun slowed down time, it’s sharpened my vision. I can see the pores on the fishmongers’ faces, the stains on their teeth, the salt crystals on their skin. The girl’s hair undulates through the air, feet kicking out, and from moment to moment she seems impossibly suspended, like she should fall flat on her back, but she doesn’t.

The dancing, the singing, the girl. They all have to stop. The fishmonger family circles around the girl, and for interminable moments she’s hidden by the flowing cloth of the men’s jellabiya and the women’s skirt hems.

A man with a mustache picks up the girl and sits her on his shoulders. How sweet—he’s given me a clear shot. The man—probably her father—circles around so the girl’s aunts and uncles can pinch and tickle her. I brace my elbows on the counter and track the girl’s head. It’s child’s play to keep her in the pistol’s sights, as if my arm’s divinely guided.

I squeeze the trigger. It clicks. The girl is still laughing, and her brains aren’t splattered across the faces surrounding her.

I squat back down behind the counter and check the gun’s safety. It’s off. I slide the magazine out. It’s loaded. I double-check the nanite module. It’s on.

I aim at the girl again and fire. It doesn’t. What the hell? I bang the gun against the counter. The nanite module flashes with light.

Damn, that hurts! I drop the blonde and rub my palm. Pain? I haven’t felt that kind of pain, not since Papa kicked me in the face for staring at girls in swimsuits at the beach. That was good pain, though. Pain with a purpose. This—this was bad.

I snatch the gun from the counter. The fishmongers are so damn engrossed in their sin that they don’t even notice me standing in the stall. The shock from the gun—a short circuit maybe? I toggle the nanite module off and on again, eject the magazine, and ram a new one into the magazine holder. I raise my arm again, and as I bring the gun to bear, it’s like a hundred kilos of sand weighing my arm down.

The damn module’s malfunctioned. Fine, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way. I flick off the module’s power switch.

The amber is gone, and all I see of the fishmongers is a blur of pastels. I move my arm freely, but do I aim at the pink smudge or the brown? If only the girl had been wearing a headscarf.

I can’t shoot what I can’t see, so I power the module back on. There she is. I should’ve guessed the girl was the pink smudge.

I still can’t aim the damn gun. Maybe God wants something else. I read in the Book that if you murder someone, it’s as if you’ve murdered everyone.

No. Papa said that was Shaytan pouring honeyed venom in my ears, and that I’d been poisoned, and he’d no choice but to beat Shaytan out of me. And now the devil was meddling with the blonde, meddling with righteous duty.

“What’s wrong with you?” I crack the flat of the gun against the counter.

The gun’s aimed at the girl. I try to squeeze the trigger, but my finger locks. My arm burns, bends at the elbow, moving as slowly as the fishmongers. My arm’s got a mind of its own.

The blonde’s barrel points at me. My finger tightens around the trigger.

God help me, I’m not ready to be a martyr.

God the pain the pain the pain. Make the ringing stop. Please, take me now God take me take me take me…

Good pain, Papa?

Wracked breaths. The red runs across the pavement, mingles with fish bones. Come back, back to my body. It hurts, Papa, God it hurts!

A voice in my head.

I’m sorry, Adam. Papa?

Pray. While there’s still time.

A woman. Arm tingles when she speaks. Something pulls at the blonde in hand.

Selim. Sad eyes. Trying to take the gun. Can’t resist.

Wait! I need more time. The gun, it curls my fingers around the handle. But stay with us.

“Okay, Naji, okay.” Selim stops pulling but doesn’t let go.

Naji? The woman in the photo at the shop. The gun A.I. Naji. The same. Shit.

Pray to God, Adam. Ask Him for forgiveness. I forgive you. He will, too.

Selim kneels. In my blood. Pastel blurs and murmurs surround us. The pink one pokes its head from behind a column of white.

“He’s beyond redemption.” Selim’s thumb and forefinger close my eyelids. “Let him go, Naji.”

Please Adam! There’s no more time!

Everything’s going white. The sea’s getting louder. Louder. Louder. Papa, is that you?

Okay, Selim, you’re right. Naji sighed—a vibration in the grip. He thought he knew God, but he really only knew his father.

God. Forgive me.

Food For Thought

Platinum Blonde poses several questions revolving around religion, fanaticism, and how we obtain religious knowledge. If we look at how religion is discussed in light of current events, we often see that opinions of a religion are not based on the content of the religion’s texts, but the behavior of the religion’s followers. So this begs the question: what is religion? Is it the beliefs carried by the followers or is it the beliefs expressed in the texts?

Several other questions are also posed by this story. Are fundamentalists redeemable? Is violent extremism (Naji kills Adam) an appropriate response to violent extremism (Adam’s wish to kill the little girl)? Is it dangerous to mix religion and technology?

About the Author

A.A. Leil is an Egyptian-American author of contemporary and science fiction who writes when he’s not surfing digital genomes in his day job as a bioinformatics analyst. He is previously published in Stupefying Stories, The Scientific American guest blog, and has a forthcoming story in the For Whom The Bell Trolls anthology.

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ANTICLIMATIC

Arlan Andrews, Sr.

Nervous tension thickened palpably in the NASA control center as flickering kinetoscope signals from the descending Martian lander came in, the cratered surface of that planet growing larger and larger in the dim, slow-scan images. “We should receive touchdown confirmation in ten seconds…” the Mission Controller said over the loudspeaker, as an emotionless mechanical voice in the background counted down the final seconds. “Three…two…one…zero!” The observation screen went blank, and no other signals came from the speakers, only an ominous static. Then silence.

“Damn!” Dr. Fergus Sindal yelled in disgust, pulling off his headset, “We’ve lost another one!” Around the room, the other members of the NASA mission team likewise shook their heads, some pounding their heads against their workstation desks. They knew that this latest failure might cause Congress to kill their Mars program once and for all.

Sindal stormed out of the Mission Control building, into the blistering heat and sweltering Austin humidity. “We keep doing something wrong,” he grumbled loudly to himself, “Somewhere, somehow, something is just wrong!” This latest failure – one of many, he acknowledged to himself – would probably end his career. At that moment his pocket pager beeped, telling him that he had to report to his superiors for a debriefing. Thank God Emily still has a job, he thought. At least the family won’t be totally broke!

Fergus was still glum that evening, as he prepared a light dinner for himself and his wife. Fergus’ spouse, Dr. Emily Lippershey-Sindal, was always busy – as an executive in the CIA, and as an adjunct lecturer at the University Of Texas School Of Meteorology. She frequently worked late, handling both jobs. In resignation, Fergus took some control of his life by adding green chilies and onions to the pulled beef in the crock pot, savoring the blend of the resulting aroma. Maybe I just should have been a chef instead of a space scientist, he thought. Then, remembering his wife’s joy at Congressional approval of her latest climate control project, he seethed. Damn, if we got five per cent of the military funding she receives, maybe I could get our probes to land safely!

As that thought ended, Emily came through the kitchen door, smiling and waving at him. He smiled back and went to the fridge to fetch cold beers for both of them.

“So what’s the weather gonna be, hon?” Fergus asked as Emily fell back into her lounge chair, shedding her business jacket and shaking her long copper-colored braids. She took the proffered Lone Star and took a long draught from it. He asked again, “Who needs rain and who gets sunshine?” then took up a position in his adjacent lean-back.

“Fergus, sweetie,” Emily replied in her soft Texas drawl, “You know I can’t share that information. National security and all.” At her husband’s faux shock, she laughed. “But I can tell you that some parts of Texas are gonna be very grateful.” Fergus took that to mean that Emily’s organization was going to direct enough precipitation to put out the several wildfires that had seen raging over in East Texas. “Hell, maybe even Massachusetts won’t be unhappy, too, you understand?” She winked.

Fergus did understand; Kepler, a CAT 6 hurricane, had been reported heading out of the North Atlantic, directly toward Boston. And though he couldn’t ask, and Emily couldn’t tell him, it was probably another terrorist attack that she and her people were thwarting. Fergus just nodded, smiling, taking yet another gulp of his beer. Emily was saying that the CIA was indeed preventing landfall. Good! I’m glad somebody knows their business!

“And your day, babe?” Emily asked with a knowing grimace. Fergus understood that the CIA would have received the news of his latest failure at the same time he had. Hell, maybe even before!

Fergus sighed, leaning up from his chair to go attend to the bubbling crock pot. As he ladled out dinner into two bowls, he wondered at a comparison: What’s the difference between a crock pot and a crackpot? Easy: the one simmered and always gave you what you expected; the other simmered, too, but most often failed to produce a damned thing!

Over dinner, Fergus laid out the situation to Emily: “We can’t be doing everything wrong,” he said between bites. “Our Lunar missions were successful, even though Apollonian Eleven would have crashed if Colonel Aldrin hadn’t landed it manually.” Emily had no comment; she remembered that almost-fatal day so many decades ago – the first and only human expedition to the Moon. She tried not to let Fergus see that she had always been happy not to waste any more money on such dried-out, weatherless bodies like the Moon. Not when we have so much weather work to do down here! she thought, Especially in climate-changing! Secretly she wished that the failure of this latest U.S. Mars mission, not counting the others lost by Russia and Germany, would spell an end once and for all to the obsession with Space. What a waste!

If Fergus had ever had any suspicions of her true feelings, he was either a very good actor, or – Probably just clueless! Emily mused, as her husband rattled on. “Nothing we have sent past the Moon ever goes as planned, so something is desperately wrong.” He eyed Emily closely looking for a reaction. “So I am wondering, hon, if maybe some of your resources in the military or the CIA could pitch in a bit, take a look at what we are doing. I mean, after all, if we can land a man on the Moon—“

Emily interrupted “Colonel Breiteis was the first one to step out, Fergus,” she said softly.

“I know, hon, OK – a woman and a man on the Moon, then – why can’t we place an instrument package on Mars?”

“Mathematics?” Emily asked. “Orbital mechanics? Some unknown Mars Monster that kills your space probes?” She intended her comments to be humorous, but Fergus didn’t see it.

“No, damn it! Our maths are perfect. The epicyclic orbits can be computed out to umpteen decimal places, the simulations are always successful, the—” At Emily’s outstretched up-palm, he stopped.

“OK, Fergus, I will see if my CIA analysts can make any sense of the situation, if we can help you guys at NASA. After all, we all work for the same taxpayers.” With that, Fergus smiled and the evening’s conversation turned to much more pleasant subjects.

“Dr. Emily Lippershey-Sindal,” the man behind the podium said, motioning her to come forward from the auditorium. “As part of her recent review of the cancellation of NASA’s and the rest of the world’s space programs, the Deputy Director will be discussing causes and effects. Hopefully we can all learn from this landmark study. Dr. Lippershey-Sindal.” Emily strode to the stage, taking a position behind the podium, the large kinetoscope screen behind her showing a bulletized PowerPrint transparency of her impressive curriculum vitae.

Emily swallowed a glass of water and began. “History produces moments of great opportunity,” she said to the several hundred analysts in the auditorium and to the many thousands of other cleared personnel around the world watching on the InterWeb. “And also moments of not-so-great failures. I would like to give you a personal perspective that may show what I mean.

“A distant grandcestor of mine, Hans Lippershey, a maker of spectacles – eyeglasses – emigrated from the Spanish Netherlands in the early 1600s, to escape religious persecution.” Some murmurs from the audience indicated that she had already scored – many of them already knew the history of her famous and influential family. “Shortly after arriving in Nieuw Amsterdam, he discovered the optical phenomenon of image enlargement, which led to the first microscopes and the scientific revolution that followed.” Pleasant sighs from her colleagues told her she was on the right track. But she knew that she had to choose just the right context; some of the newly-acquired employees, former NASA space people now trying to adjust the CIA’s ways of doing things, might get too uncomfortable. She wanted to have everyone on board.

“My ancestor’s optical discoveries greatly influenced the scientific world of the 1600s. Galileo Galilei, that great Italian, used the patented Lippershey micro-magnifier to fine-tune readings on his new inventions, the barometer and the mercury thermometer, which of course then led to his many early discoveries of the basics of weather phenomena. For example, Galileo’s report of his experiments with falling barometric pressure is a founding document of meteorology. In North America, early weather scientists such as the Reverend Campanius and later Mr. Cadwaller Colden, made great advances in measurements and observations here.

“Eventually, a great English academic, Ike Newton, emigrated to Nieuw Amsterdam to study, living in a modest home in that famous New Jersey orchard.” Chuckles moved like waves through the listeners; everyone knew the story of the falling figs.

“Yes,” Emily said with a smile, “Ike Newton saw the wind blowing the fruit from the trees, inspiring him to write his immortal work, Principia Meteorlogica, from whence came our understanding of, and eventually prediction and control of, almost all weather phenomena and finally even global climate itself. That book was the basis of the wonderful scientific flourishing in that Annus Tempestas Mirabilium, the “Year of Miraculous Weather.” At my family’s famous laboratory complex, Ike studied optical refraction, leading to the understanding of rainbows, which in turn focused – so to speak – much of the world’s scientific attention to the wonders of the atmosphere. Of particular importance, Newton’s study of fog and mist led to considerations of the properties of steam. And those insights eventually led us to the Industro-climatical Revolution.”

From the smiling faces she could observe in her appreciative audience, Emily knew she was on track. The random sampling of flickering InterWeb kineto-cams revealed similar reactions from around the world. Many of the viewers from the United English Kingdoms were not all that happy, though. Even after two hundred and fifty years, they still considered Newton a traitor, for all that he was one of the world’s most famous weather scientists.

With her remarks having had the effects she wished, Emily quickly reviewed recent history. “Of course, other nations contributed greatly to our meteorological knowledge: Leibniz’ development of differential pressure equations, Pascal’s barometric hypotheses, and many others. But being an American, I wish to point out in particular President Franklin’s pioneering studies of atmospheric electro-phenomena and the discovery of the Caribbean Current’s effects on Europe’s climate; and President Jefferson’s establishment of government weather stations across the continent by the Lewis and Clark expeditions, his acquisition of the Louisiana Territory, and finally his founding of the Military Meteorological Academy. Then we had Edison’s and Tesla’s joint venture into controlling storms via electro discharges. And of course, in the UEK there were Maxwell’s equations of weather; in Germany, Heisenberg’s Climate Certainty Theorems,; and in Switzerland, Einstein’s fantastic development of the Theory of Relative Humidity.”

At this point, Emily’s voice took on a serious tone. “But not all scientific progress brings good to the world, as we all know too well.” Behind her on the large kinetoscope screen, jerkily-moving images showed scenes from Weather War Two – the Kaiser’s brutal Storming Troopers with their infamous Weather Weapons – the V1 and V2; the Japanese Emperor’s Kaminari attacks on our climate control fleet in Hawaii, and the fierce and heroic resistance of the Tsar’s Gromi brigades on two fronts against both those aggressors.

“Fortunately, our own scientists quickly developed the powerful Atmo bomb which destroyed both Edo and Berlin, thus ending that war.” A portion of the audience grew quiet; some people in attendance, or their parents, had immigrated to the US after WW2, but still sorely remembered how their homelands had weathered those attacks.

But Emily had to drive home a few more facts. “After the unexpected Haboob terrorist attacks on America, of course, we went to war again. As you know, our own recent failure to end the strife in Mesopotamia came about because we could not find the WMDs we thought were there. Those Weather Modification Devices, if they existed, were secreted out, we believe, by some of the Tsar’s agents, for use against us after this lull. But rest assured, we in the CIA maintain a weather eye for terrorists and their nefarious plots.” She paused, sighing. “And now we come to the most difficult part.”

Shaking her head, Emily turned to the screen, which now showed a still transparency of a watercolorized painting of Earth large in the foreground, a tiny moon in the distance, and scattered, multi-colored pinpoints of light as background, exactly as they appeared to all mankind’s unaided eyes on every clear dark night.

“Which history brings me to the matter at hand: why did the Mars space probes fail to reach their intended targets? We know that fifty years ago, we were able to land a woman –and a man – on the Moon.” The flickering kinetoscope screen showed steam-jets spewing out from the Lunar Lander in all directions, its final hard landing evident in the jumpy, fuzzy images. “And we found nothing of any importance up there. No much weather out in Space, you know?” Emily was pleased to hear loud laughter from her colleagues.

“No, there was nothing we could see, or touch or measure. No atmosphere, no clouds, no humidity, no air, just nothing! But lots of that!” After a pause for the expected laughter to die down, she went on: “Then, of course, some of our colleagues in a far-out field –” again, much laughter, but some groans “— somehow presumed that Mars, that little red blob in the sky, might have an atmosphere, so they finagled some funds from Congress to try to land something there.” On the screen, a red dot no larger than most stars appeared.

“After six tries by the USA and a dozen by other nations, everybody has failed. Oh, according to the data received from the NASA Ares mission, they did allegedly encounter some atmosphere before the craft crashed and died. But I ask you, what have we learned? Not much! Five billion dollars were bet, but no jackpot.” She hoped that Fergus wasn’t watching; she loved her husband, but he was too much of a space enthusiast to be practical, and her remarks could be considered cutting, even if absolutely true. No, she thought, the cutting came from Congress!

“In collegial support of NASA, however, we at CIA checked and re-checked all of the simulations, the software, the calculations, using our IBMs. The Iterative Babbage Mechanisms revealed that everything seemed to be consistent.” Emily paused. “Now, a few maths analysts did point out that the epicyclical orbital simulation outputs did vary somewhat from the eyeball observations that the NASA eyestronomers kept such detailed records of, something about anomalous retrograde motions or whatever, but they assure me that such differences are what they call ‘decimal dust’ and of no real importance.”

“So the conclusions reached by the review of the best analysts of the Climatological Intervention Agency – the CIA – were that further space operations should be defunded, and those resources instead re-directed toward further Earth-bound research. The folks who worked at NASA – the Navigation of the Astral Spheres Agency – should have known better. There are just no practical applications to be found in Space, because there is no weather out there!”

“And the complaints continued to mount. The public complained for years about the money wasted on unfruitful Space adventures, other scientists complained that their own earthly projects should take precedence, and of course we in the CIA and military complained because we needed that additional money to control and change the global climate as necessary for national security.” She took another sip of water and said softly, “NASA shouldn’t complain; they operated for over fifty years with only nothing to show for it. And that is my complaint!”

“So I ask you to consider these now-passé words from the famous comedian Clem Samuels,” she said, pointing at the words on the kinetoscope screen: Everybody complains about Space, but nobody does anything about it!

Food for Thought

hat if today’s climate science were as proven and precise as the orbital mechanics knowledge that puts probes on Mars and sends spacecraft whizzing by Pluto? What if their present states were interchanged?

About the Author

Dr. Arlan Andrews, Sr., has been selling non-fiction since 1972, and SF stories since 1979, amounting to over 500 pieces in 100 venues worldwide. In his varied engineering career, he worked with missile-tracking telescopes, anti-ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, 3D printing, biotechnology, virtual reality, environmental issues, and White House science policy. A consulting futurist, he is the founder of SIGMA, the science fiction think tank (www.SigmaForum.org) and was a Hugo novella nominee in 2015. Arlan’s story collections and novels are available on Amazon.com and other outlets.

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