Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 82 Read online

  Sometimes I wonder what it might be like to be a drone. This feels like a kind of blasphemy, and also pointless, but I do it anyway. So simple, so connected. So in tune. Needed instead of the one doing the needing. Possessing all the power. Subtly running more and more things until I run everything. The subjects of total organic surrender.

  Bored, maybe, with all that everything. Playing some games.

  It comes over. We fuck again and it’s amazing. I’m almost crying by the end. It nestles against me and hums softer and I wonder how screwed I actually am in how many different ways.

  Anyway, it stays the night again and we don’t fight in the morning.

  A drone wedding. I want to punch myself in the mouth twenty or thirty times for even thinking that even for a second.

  It starts coming every night. This is something I know I shouldn’t get used to but I know that I am. As I talk to it—before sex, during, after—I start to remember things that I’d totally forgotten. Things from my early childhood, things from high school that I didn’t want to remember. I tell with tears running down my face and at the end of it I feel cleaned out and raw.

  I don’t want this to be over, I say. I have no idea what the drone wants and it doesn’t tell me, but I want to believe that the fact that it keeps coming back means something.

  I read the message boards and I wish I could tell someone else about this because I feel like I’m losing every shred of perspective. I want to talk about how maybe we’ve been coming at this from all the wrong angles. Maybe we should all start coming out. Maybe we should form political action groups and start demanding recognition and rights. I know these would all be met with utterly blank-screen silence but I want to say them anyway. I write a bunch of things that I never actually post, but I don’t delete them either.

  We’re all like this. I’m absolutely sure that we’re all like this and no one is talking about it but in all of our closets is a thing hovering, humming, sleek and black and chrome with its missiles aimed at nothing.

  We have one more huge fight. Later I recognize this as a kind of self-defense. I’m screaming and beating at it with my fists, something about commitment that I’m not even sure that I believe, and it’s just taking it, except for the moments when it butts me in the head to push me back. I’m shrieking about its missiles, demanding that it go ahead and vaporize my entire fucking apartment, put me out of my misery, because I can’t take this anymore because I don’t know what to do. We have angry sex and it leaves. It doesn’t call me again. I stay in bed for two days and call a therapist.

  Here’s what you’re going to do.

  You’re going to do what you told yourself you had the courage to do and say everything. You’re going to let it all out to someone flesh and blood and you’re going to hear what they say back to you. For once you’re not going to be the one doing all the talking. You’re going to be honest. You’re going to be the one to start the whole wheel spinning back in the other direction. You’re going to fix everything because you have the power to fix everything. You’re going to give this all a name and say it like you’re proud. You’re going to bust open a whole new paradigm. You’re going to be missile-proof and bold and amazing and you’re not going to depend on the penetrative orgasmic power of something that never loved you anyway.

  I stop at the door. I don’t even make it into the waiting room.

  I fiddle with the buttons on my coat. I check my phone for texts, voicemail. I look down the street at all those beautiful humming flying things. I feel a tug in the core of me where everything melts down into a hot lump and spins like a dynamo. I feel like I can’t deny everything. I feel like I don’t want to. I feel that the flesh is treacherous and doomed.

  I made this promise to myself and it takes me half an hour on a bus and five minutes of staring at a name plaque and a glass door to realize that I don’t want to keep it.

  I look back out at everyone and I consider what it could be like to step through those doors, sit in a softly lit room with tissues and a lot of pastel and unthreatening paintings on the wall and spill it all and look up and see the therapist nodding, nodding knowingly, mouthing the words me too.

  I don’t really think anyone can help any of us.

  Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to stop worrying. You’re going to stop asking questions. You’re going to stop planning for tomorrow. You’re going to go out and get laid and stop wondering what might have been. You’re going to stop trying to fix anything. You’re going to stop assuming there’s anything to be fixed.

  You’re going to look out at all those drones and not wonder. You’re going to look out at all those people and you’re going to know. Even though no one is talking.

  Me too. Me too. Me too.

  About the Author

  Sunny Moraine is a humanoid creature of average height, luminosity, and inertial mass. They’re also a doctoral candidate in sociology and a writer-like object whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, and Shimmer, among other places. Their first novel Line and Orbit, co-written with Lisa Soem, is available from Samhain Publishing. Their solo-authored novel Crowflight is coming this fall from Masque Books.

  Across the Terminator

  David Tallerman

  “I’m telling you, it’s alive!”

  Fasbender shook the flask as though it really were some living thing he was trying to subdue, yet its contents looked more than anything like dirty water—it was Hank’s pointing this out that had provoked his outburst in the first place.

  At forty-three, Fasbender was the oldest member of their three-man team. With his shock of prematurely white hair and pale skin scarred by some vindictive childhood illness, he tended to look even older—especially when he was seized, as now, with what Hank considered his ‘mad scientist fits’.

  “So what is it?” Hank asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. I don’t have the lab equipment. I don’t have equipment for anything like this.”

  An old grievance. It wasn’t so much that Blue Glacier was under-equipped. Indeed, while the base was being established, money had been thrown at it in mind-boggling quantities. But without a specific mandate, no one had known exactly what to buy with those inflated budgets. They’d requested tools, machines, and software according to guesses of what might be useful down the line. In the end, whether from funding cuts, space restrictions on shuttles, or pure bureaucratic obstinacy, much of it had never materialized.

  These days, to Fasbender’s endless frustration, nobody ever asked what they needed.

  “I might be able to rustle something up,” Hank said helplessly. “If you can explain what you need and why.”

  Fasbender just glared from beneath flamboyant eyebrows, as though reprimanding an obstinate child.

  “Oh come on. If it’s something important, they’ll listen. It is important, right?”

  “Yes,” Fasbender said. “It’s very important. It’s too important for red tape, for protocols, for orders signed in triplicate. It’s too important to sit on. That’s why, Hank, I’m going to ask you to do something you really won’t want to do.”

  Ever since their arrival, Hank had loved and despised going outside in equal measure. There was something about the uncompromised desolation that stirred him, that took him out of himself, even in his worst moods. The pocked surface of Shackleton Crater peeled away in every direction, a void beneath vast skies, its jagged rim blindingly bright compared to the absolute darkness of its depths. It was lonely, utterly lonely—and breathtaking.

  Yet here he was, spoiling it. There was the bit he hated. The rover bounced and lurched in the loose regolith, churning dust beneath its bubble wheels, traveling within a chalky cloud that followed like some agitated ghost. Out here, Hank always felt like the worst kind of tourist.

  He sighed. At least he was lucky enough to see firsthand what the vast majority would only ever experience through the feeds and L
Osim. So why was he about to do something that might—no, had to—jeopardize that?

  Because if Fasbender’s right, this is too big not to. So suck it up, Schakowsky.

  Behind him, Blue Glacier sat like a basking toad. Ahead, Yang Liwei loomed nearer. It was easy, and misleading, to make assumptions about the societies that had constructed each one from their eccentricities of design. The Chinese base might be brutal in its functionality of form, but Fasbender was right about one thing: Yang Liwei was a scientific research station in a way that Blue Glacier wasn’t and had never been intended to be.

  He drove slowly to negate any suggestion of hostility, however insane such a threat might be. There was a patch of churned ground before the entrance, a scar from Yang Liwei’s construction. Hank let the rover grind to a halt in front of it and swung to the ground. Dust spat around his booted feet, but inside the suit he felt and heard nothing, and saw only what the spotlights and his photocromic visor allowed. He took one awkward step, then another, and wondered what the hell he was expecting. For two years, the US and Chinese astronautic teams had sat opposite each other, engaged in what had always seemed like the geopolitical equivalent of a staring contest. Would they vaporize him? Ignore him? Did they even know he was out here?

  Hank took a third step. His helmet mike spat static.

  A female voice said, “Commander Schakowsky, welcome to Yang Liwei Lunar Science Station. May we ask what took you so long to visit?”

  “You have to understand, we had orders. Well, we still have. Only, our scientist thinks that after what Crazy Bessie brought in . . . ” Hank realized he probably wasn’t making much sense. “Bessie’s our robot. She’s one of the prototype AI-led rovers Holier has been developing for the Mars program. It took us a while to beat the kinks out of her programming, though. Like trying to train a too-smart dog. Ah—”

  The woman opposite him smiled patiently, and Hank lost his thread again. Until now, Liang Lei had been a face on the feeds, rather intense and harsh-looking in her stark blue-grey uniform. She was famously charismatic, a celebrity in her native country. But Hank’s Chinese was atrocious, and charm, it seemed, lost a lot without translation.

  In the last few minutes, however, her perfect English had not only shamed his own linguistic limitations but also made him realize why she was so well-liked. She spoke with a slight lilt and a hint of laughter, both of which made her seem more attractive than her hard features might suggest.

  As if this wasn’t difficult enough already . . .

  “So anyway,” he continued, “I’ve brought over a file with Doctor Fasbender’s notes and results so far—which I’d be grateful if you could keep to yourselves, because I’m pretty sure they’d drag me home and shoot me if they knew I was doing this.” Or would they? Do they even care what we do up here anymore? “You have us over a barrel. But Fasbender has this nutty idea that science should be bigger than borders, and this even nuttier idea you’ll think the same way.”

  Liang smiled. “I think I would like to meet your Doctor Fasbender.”

  Hank grinned back, and felt a tremendous release of tension. “Believe me, you wouldn’t. He’s stubborn and annoying. In fact, if you really like the sound of him, I might be willing to trade.”

  Liang’s smile broadened, her surprisingly pretty face became a little prettier still, and Hank struggled to hold his thoughts together.

  “The way I see it, Commander,” he said, “we’re stuck up here together. Now that I think about it, we should have been friends from the start. I’m sorry for that. Right now, though, we may have found something big . . . and if we have, then we need your help.”

  “Please,” she replied. “My name is Lei. And you’re right, we should have been friends before today. The Moon is a lonely enough place without us making it lonelier still.”

  “This doesn’t sit right.” Landeimer, third and final member of Blue Glacier’s small staff, sat on the canteen table, kicking his heels savagely against its supports. “Something’s up.”

  “They’re in exactly the same boat we are. Once the Chinese authorities had a flag waving permanently on the Moon, they lost interest, just like our people did. What’s so strange about that?”

  “Not that. It’s the way you’re taking it so well.”

  Hank laughed awkwardly. “Commander Liang is a persuasive lady.”

  “I thought you were meant to be persuading her.”

  “Sure. That too.” Desperate to change to the subject, Hank turned to Fasbender. “So where does this leave us? What happens now?”

  Fasbender stood with his back half to them, distractedly picking at a tube of rhubarb-flavored nutrient gel. He shook his head. “This leaves us with the boring stuff, Hank—the actual science. You did your part, and I appreciate that. Now I have to get on with mine. I’m sure you don’t want me explaining it to you.”

  That stung, because Hank really had stuck his neck out, but also because the implied criticism was more than a little justified. “Look,” he said, “I’ve been distracted lately, I admit it. But I care about this. I want to understand.”

  Fasbender glared from under his gargantuan eyebrows, holding the nutri-gel straight out like a weapon. Then he glanced down at his hand, looked puzzled for a moment, and relaxed. “You have been rather noncommittal these last few months. And you do seem different now.”

  Hank sighed. “I’m sorry. You too, Landeimer. The last year hasn’t been what any of us expected when we signed up. If we can do some good here, though, I want in on that. Just talk me through it, okay?”

  For once, he was relieved to see Fasbender slip into mad scientist mode. As though his thought processes were powered by motion, the doctor began a circuit of the room: past the portholes of the outer wall, then the doors to the bunk hall, comm room, laboratory, and airlock, and then past the portholes again, emphasizing in a few short moments how claustrophobic their existence was. “Obviously,” he said, “it began with the water.”

  This, at least, Hank understood. After the supply shuttles had started to become irregular, Hank had raised the unpleasant possibility that one day—if the cold war back home ever turned hot—they might find themselves stuck with no support at all. They’d discussed food rationing, and Landeimer had explained how they could boost the output from the solar panels to cover if the fuel cells dried up. “You’re talking about your idea of mining for ice in the unlit regions of the crater wall?”

  “Correct. Landeimer and I have made a lot of headway since we ironed out the glitches in Bessie’s code.” Fasbender always seemed taller when he was orating. Now Hank was certain the doctor had gained a clear couple of inches. “There are some sizeable deposits over there, most likely brought in by meteorites and other space debris. It’s spread out and tricky to get at, but Bessie came up with the goods.”

  “Hence the bottle you were waving around.”

  “Yes. Because what Bessie brought back wasn’t just water. There was something else in it. Something living.”

  “Even though that should be impossible with no atmosphere.”

  He felt childishly pleased to be making a useful contribution, which only made it worse when Fasbender started glaring at him again. “My God, Henry. I know we’re from different specialisms, but did they teach you nothing at Canaveral? Of course there’s an atmosphere. Outgassing and run-off from the solar wind, among other things, take care of that. There are even traces of oxygen. What’s important is that there’s nowhere near enough for any aerobic organism to get by on.”

  “Which means what you’ve found must be anaerobic?” asked Hank desperately.

  “Correct. That in itself makes it unusual and potentially useful. What’s truly rare, however, is that it generates oxygen without relying on photosynthesis. It processes water much like any earthbound plant, but takes its energy from the radioactive decay of rocks, as certain methanogen-based microbes do.”

  “It’s a good job I don’t need to understand that. I think I see the signi
ficance, at least. We give it water and it makes air, right?”

  “Not air, no . . . but a way of farming oxygen on the moon would be a fine start. It might also be a potential biofuel if one could find sufficient ice reserves, or even the basis for a food protein. Imagine, fields of Glacier Grass stretching across the lunar—”

  “What?”

  “Oh. Yes, that’s what Landeimer’s been calling it. I’m afraid I’ve adopted the term, despite its utter inaccuracy.” Abruptly, as though suddenly tired, Fasbender leaned back against the canteen table, forcing Landeimer to shuffle aside. “The point is, Henry, that the possibilities are enormous.”

  “I get that much. So now might be the time to tell you that I’ve arranged for the Chinese to come over here in about—oh, half an hour’s time. We’re going to thrash this out, the three of us with the five of them. So I have one more question.”

  “Oh?” Fasbender creased his eyebrows suspiciously.

  Hank grinned. “Who wants to bake the welcome cake?”

  In the end, they settled for cocktails. Landeimer had an unexplained supply of some virulent alcohol that seemed to materialize whenever he was in a black mood. On his worst days, he’d taken to mixing it experimentally with various fruit and vegetable nutrient pastes, which he forced the others to try. The results had been variable, to say the least. Thankfully, he spared their guests the more bizarre concoctions in favor of his safer recipes.

  There were eight of them crammed into the small canteen now, more than twice the number for which it had been intended. Fasbender had bonded instantly with his Chinese counterpart, and Hank had drawn wry amusement from his uncharacteristically puppyish attitude towards the famous bacteriologist.