Challenging Destiny #25 Read online

  "Sir?” the youngster said on the intercom, and Bill smiled because you could tell that he'd tweaked the settings to make his voice sound deeper.

  Bill leaned forward so the kid could see him through the windshield and waved one hand, indicating the scene around them. The long white-walled tunnel stretching far back up to the entrance. The six long white-walled tunnels spaced around the enormous central room—the perfectly round central room—all six curving away out of sight. The small neat buildings in that central room, with their tidy labels: Administration; Infirmary: Dining Hall; Chapel; Recreation; Store.

  "All this!” Bill said crossly. “Is this really Tall Pines? I mean, there aren't any pines, not down here. Not back up there either.” He pointed back over his shoulder, back the way he'd come from. Where the last of the icons—the two straight lines with the inverted Vs, and then the word FINAL all in caps—had been scrawled on a flat rock in the middle of a bare desert wasteland beside the giant billboard for breath mints that hid the opening to the entrance tunnel.

  "This really is Tall Pines, sir,” the youngster said. “It really is. And I'm Paul. I'm here to serve you."

  "What do you do if tourists wander in here?"

  That got him a smile. “It doesn't happen. We're way out in the wilderness. You have to be following the icons to find this place, sir."

  "Humor me. Suppose it happened. What would you do?"

  "Tell them this is a military installation and not open to the public."

  Bill thought a minute, and then he nodded. “I suppose that would work."

  "It would. If such a thing happened. It never has."

  After a while, when Bill went on just sitting there without saying anything, the young man said, “Sir? Do you want to check in?"

  "Check in,” Bill said slowly. “Oh. Sure. I guess I do."

  "Well, then. If you'll step down, sir, and sign the register, and look this way for your retina print, we'll be done."

  Bill got out of the StarSpangly, brushed himself down, signed his name on the page, and glared at the retina camera until the youngster smiled and said, “All right, sir. All done!"

  "Now what?” he said.

  "Now you choose your VR environment."

  "My VR what?"

  "We have six choices, sir, one for each of the residence corridors, and you can make a new choice at the beginning of every month if you like. Watch this.” The youngster pressed a button, and the room went away. There was a blue sky overhead, dotted with tradewind clouds. White sand beach under their feet, blue sky over their heads, a spectacular ocean stretching away in the distance all around them. Surf pounding on the shore, where the smooth white walls had been. Fresh sea breeze. Cries of seagulls. All the mod cons.

  "This is the Seaside VR, sir,” said Paul. “Nice, don't you think?"

  "Very nice.” Threedy-holo. Top of the line threedy-holo.

  "We think so, sir. And then there are the other choices."

  He demonstrated them for Bill, one at a time. The Prairie. The Mountains. The Desert. The Forest—which was a lot like what Bill had thought the real reality was going to be, with its pine trees and its little creek, and its waterfall. And then there was The City, for people who didn't care for the big outdoors; with skyscrapers.

  The VR environments were all very well done. The little prairie wildflowers bobbed gently in the breeze. The horns honked on the city streets below the skyscrapers. The waves came in on the beach, one after another. All the necessary smells and sounds and textures were there. Try to get close to anything and you'd run smack into the wall, of course, but if you just stayed in your proper place you'd be fine.

  "My tax dollars at work,” Bill said slowly, because every last bit of it screamed FEDERAL at him, “here in Mexico. God bless America and all who sail upon her!"

  "Sir,” said the youngster, sounding genuinely hurt, “I think you'll find that it's very nice here!"

  Bill narrowed his eyes and glared at him, but it didn't slow him down any.

  "All three meals served 24/7, sir. Open bar, 24/7. Slot machines in Recreation—24/7. Doctor and nurse, 24/7. Very nice. Very reasonably priced. You'll like it here—everybody does."

  "I'll bet they do,” Bill said, his voice sad and thick and hoarse. “And I can leave anytime I want to, right?"

  "Of course,” the young man said. And then he smiled and added, “But nobody ever does leave, you know."

  Bill nodded, sure that was true. Nobody ever does leave, he thought to himself. Not as long as they're breathing. Not when the alternative is one room in some sleazy motel.

  "I'll take the Forest VR,” he said, staring down at the ground because he had no interest in looking at Paul. “It's what I was expecting."

  * * * *

  He was coming back from a lunch that he'd enjoyed, and conversation that he'd enjoyed, and was so deep in thought that it wasn't until he reached out for the handle on his front door that he noticed it wasn't his front door any more. There was a front door there, sure, and it was in his space and part of an RV, but it wasn't his and Vanessa's RV. It wasn't the StarSpangly. It wasn't the RV that had been there when he left that morning.

  "What the hell?” he said. They'd moved him to another space without asking him, and put somebody else in his space? They had a lot of damn nerve! He knocked at the door, hard, ready to tell whoever lived there an assortment of things or two, and when nobody answered he opened the door a polite couple of inches and looked in. And said “What the hell?” again, but more softly than the first time. Because it was true that it wasn't his RV, but all the stuff inside was his own stuff. He stepped into the rig and checked the drawers and cupboards and closets. And everything that had been in the StarSpangly was still there in this different RV, stashed roughly where he would have stashed it. Somebody had taken all his stuff out of the StarSpangly and put it away in this different RV, while he was gone. He felt old, then, and frail. He didn't feel that way often, but he felt that way now.

  He answered the soft knock at the front door with “Come on in,” not bothering to look first and see who it was. It didn't really matter who it was, after all. He was mildly pleased when he saw that it wasn't Paul, it was the man who lived in the space across the road from him, a man named Doug who was very good at poker.

  "I'm sorry about this,” Doug said, standing there rubbing his hands together and looking uncomfortable. “We're all sorry."

  "Sit down,” Bill said, and Doug sat.

  "Nobody told me about this part of it,” Bill said, his voice sounding to him like somebody else's voice entirely. “All those old guys that whispered to me about Tall Pines ... nobody ever said this would happen."

  "Depends on the source,” Doug said, shrugging his shoulders. “The ones you got probably didn't know about it. They were just passing the rumor along."

  "Did this happen to you?"

  The other man nodded. “They gave me a little more time than they gave you, though. It was a couple of weeks and change before they took my rig and put in the government one. I think it's something they just do when somebody at FEMA has a spare minute, you know?"

  "But all the men here must have known it was going to happen. Why didn't anybody warn me?"

  Doug raised his eyebrows. “What would you have done about it, if you'd known?"

  Bill drew a long breath and thought about it. Let's see. He could have taken the StarSpangly and run for it? He could have gone to a Federal Building and turned in the RV and moved on to the room in the sleazy motel? He could have barricaded himself in the StarSpangly with an automatic and held off the federal swat team, or at least taken some of them with him before he turned the gun on himself?

  Doug nodded. “You see what I mean. There isn't anything anybody can do about it. We don't see any reason not to just let people be comfortable as long as they can."

  "What's going to...” Bill cleared his throat, realized that he was terrified, and tried again. “Doug ... what's going to happen now?"


  "Nothing."

  "Nothing? How can it be nothing?"

  "Twin Pines has a whole building full of these RVs,” Doug told him. “Half a dozen different models; different colors. They'll deduct the rental from your monthly check the same way they deduct your Medicare premiums, and life will go on. As usual."

  "But you don't understand!” And Bill told him the whole story, all about putting Vanessa in the refrigerator, and renting the big freezer at the storage place and moving her in there, and all the rest of it. Because obviously it wasn't a secret any longer, obviously the government knew all about it, and there was no reason not to tell.

  "Well,” Doug said, when the story was finished, “I buried my Miranda in a cornfield. Joshua Grenna—you know him, he usually eats breakfast at our table and he's the guy with the one bad eye and the bald head—he threw his wife's body overboard way out in the damn ocean. And there's one guy here that—"

  "Doug,” Bill said softly. “Stop. Please. I don't want to know what they did with their wives’ bodies.” And Doug stopped.

  "The thing is,” Bill went on, “the thing is, it has to be against some law, you know? It has to be. It can't be a thing that's allowed ... putting your dead wife in a refrigerator and storing her in a freezer and all that. Aren't they going to come get me and take me away? In handcuffs?"

  "Well, in the first place, you're not inside the United States right now, and that makes a difference, legally. And in the second place, if they'd found anything when they retrieved your wife's body that made them think you had something to do with her death, they wouldn't have bothered to set you up in a different RV. They'd have been here long ago, suggesting politely but firmly that you'd be well advised to drive back over the border with them."

  Bill stared at him.

  "It's true,” Doug insisted. “So help me. Think about it, man. The government doesn't want any trouble. This way, everything's taken care of. It's settled. Your Social Security covers your expenses here, they don't lose any money on you, you stay happy and out of their hair. They're not interested in rocking this particular boat. Suppose by some unlikely combination of freak accidents a relative finds out about your wife and tries to make a stink—maybe they thought they should have inherited some stuff from her, for example—the government will just say they're very sorry but Mexico won't extradite you. Which is also true."

  "And Vanessa ... my wife. She's on file somewhere. She's a ... she's a cube. In a file drawer, in alphabetical order, in a government Funerary."

  "That's right. And that's reasonable, you know. When you did what you did with her body, you sort of gave up your right to have a tasteful memorial service."

  Bill took a deep breath and stared at the floor. Suddenly, he wanted Vanessa desperately. He wanted all of this to be a bad dream, and he wanted to wake up from it and see her lying beside him in their bed in the StarSpangly, breathing peacefully. He would have given up all the years that remained to him, just to have her back for one single minute.

  He looked at Doug, and swallowed hard.

  "Well,” he said, “you feel like playing some poker?"

  * * * *

  Suzette Haden Elgin (born in 1936) is a linguist, writer, artist, songwriter, poet, businessperson, housewife, and grandmother of twelve. Her most familiar books are the Native Tongue and Ozark sf trilogies and her nonfiction Gentle Art Of Verbal Self-defense series; her most recent books are Peacetalk 101 (a verbal self-defense novel), The Science Fiction Poetry Handbook, and Twenty-One Novel Poems. Her SFWA website, with homepages for many of her books, is at www.sfwa.org/members/elgin; her Live Journal blog is at ozarque.livejournal.com.

  * * * *

  If you're a science fiction writer or reader ... you're still looking at the world and challenging it, saying ‘Does it have to be this way? Does it make any sense that we follow these rules?’ Science fiction is about thought experiments. What does it mean to tell stories set in a different place than this one? How does that affect our world?

  —Scott Westerfeld, “Scott Westerfeld: New Kid in Town” in Locus (May 2006, Vol 56 No 5)

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  Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics by C. A. Gardner

  Georgiana Burne-Jones sat beside the great bed, holding Topsy's hand while he slept. Georgie had seen this room many times: the whole of Kelmscott Manor was a work of art. The top panel of the bed curtains bore a verse that Topsy had written, embroidered by his younger daughter in medieval script. The house held furnishings both medieval and modern; he and his friends and family, including Georgie, had created many of the tiles and tapestries.

  But Jane, his wife, had only been interested in his vision in the early years, when he still tried to paint her in oils or verse, before her boredom had grown to disgust and led her to the arms of the lovers that her adoring husband chose not to begrudge her. Though they never spoke of it in such vulgar terms, Georgie knew that her friend had spent his time in this wonderful bed alone.

  His face looked so worn, so lined—shockingly old. Too much for sixty-two. The unruly dark hair and beard had all gone white. So many marks of care about his mouth; even while he slept, a muscle ticked on his cheek, as if he couldn't rest. It was his energetic spirit—his need to do everything—that was killing him.

  Since 1883, he'd worn himself down, committing heart and soul to the Cause: his form of Socialism, which aimed to bring beauty and happiness to daily life through the revival of handicraft, care for the earth, and the elimination of class disparities. Though he had sacrificed his poetry on this altar years ago, in the end, he'd despaired of the politics. These last few years, he'd turned his hope inward, crafting beautiful books to fuel the imagination and give courage to the soul. But he hadn't stopped his grueling lectures soon enough to save his health.

  She stroked his hand, so large, so talented—so often stained deep blue from the dye vats. His elder daughter had dubbed him “Old Proosian Blue.” Now the hands had grown thin, spotted, striped with the paler blue of ropy veins.

  The great man, William Morris, opened his eyes.

  "Georgie,” he murmured. “You came at last. How I've wanted a sight of your dear face."

  "Topsy,” she said fondly. “We'll be walking through your gardens before you know it. Kelmscott is beautiful in the fall, with all the leaves aflame."

  He grunted, but he smiled. She could see what an effort he made for her. Both of them knew that he would never see Kelmscott in autumn again.

  "How I've missed you. Our talks.” He lifted a trembling hand toward her face. She pressed it to her cheek.

  "Ned should be here in a few hours.” She faltered. Her husband, Edward Burne-Jones, would be devastated when Topsy died. Topsy had sunk so fast in eight months. Gout, diabetes, congestion of the left lung, tuberculosis. Topsy had lost so much weight that he might be another man.

  "I don't have much time left, Georgie.” He squeezed her palm weakly. “There's something I must tell you."

  Her chest tightened. Here it was—the words they'd never spoken. What had always been understood, in silence and verse. They were dear friends, drawn closer by the fact that both their spouses had broken their hearts—and they themselves were too bound by love and honor to do anything. They'd taken comfort in the warmth of friendship, when they might have thrown themselves into the fire. Both Ned and Janey had entangled themselves in disastrous, painful affairs; but it was Georgie and Topsy who loved too much to cause further grief by finding their own happiness together.

  He managed another smile. “You know I love you, dear heart. I can't tell you,” and his voice trembled, “how glad I am to have you here with me, at the end."

  She kissed his hand. She kissed his brow, as a friend might. Then she sat back and watched him with wide eyes as he told her other things. Painful things. Things she could scarcely believe.

  And yet it was her Topsy who said them. It was easy to fill the room with the memory of his booming voice—a whisper now, as he mentioned days
that had not yet been. Days that would never be. He reached into the bed curtains and drew out a letter. “Please, Georgie. Sit here by me and read it now. I could not give it to you before...” And as she read, she began to understand. Why he had waited to tell her, until it was too late.

  He knew, if there were still a chance for him to live, she might have changed his mind.

  * * * *

  My dear, my life of late has not been what it seems. There is a reason why I grew so listless toward politics in 1894, and it has nothing to do with my health. Or rather, everything, as you shall soon see.

  I suppose you remember that young writer, H. G. Wells—Bertie, we called him—who used to come to Hammersmith for the meetings of the old Socialist League. He seemed quite taken with News from Nowhere, my vision of the future. He called it The Dream of Socialism Fulfilled. But he seemed equally fascinated by that damned-dull machine age of Edward Bellamy and the philosophic science of T. H. Huxley, with whom he'd studied at the Normal School of Science.

  As we became friends, he would slip round odd evenings to the meetings and stay on afterwards to talk of the future, developments in science, and how things might change—how they must change, if the fate of humanity is to be anything but dismal. We talked utopia and time travel, amidst our Socialism, our hopes and fears for the future. Bertie told me he wanted to explore the future in quite a new rational and scientific way. In 1890, he showed me a few exploratory pieces. But it wasn't until 1894 that I realized the full genius—and danger—of the man.

  Bertie came around one evening, agitated. He beckoned me outside. As we stood in the gardens, he thrust some numbers of Henley's National Observer at me, with his work.

  "Here. You must read this first. Then come to my chambers as quick as you can."

  "The Chronic Argonauts?"

  "Henley got his hands into it,” Bertie said with disgust. “I'll have it out by itself in the spring as The Time Machine, the way it's meant to be."

  "Congratulations!” I pumped his hand.