Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (8 page)

"Really?"

"Really." I tried to hold still, but felt hot all of a sudden, and sweat streamed down my neck. To wipe the sweat off, I pulled my hands from under my thighs, then changed my mind and kept them under the table so that I could relieve the itching. I peeled the right thumbnail off and felt new tendrils squirming in its place. I started to giggle, then brayed hysterically.

Mom pushed back her chair and stood up. "What's going on?"

I began breathing fast, through my mouth, and the prickling sped up, surging along my body like a million sparks. She crossed the dining room in three quick strides.

"Show me your hands."

I squirmed and laid them flat on the table, palms down. Purple coils snaked between the black webs I had drawn, and fresh pink tendrils twined around the thumb tips. She tore the tunic's plastic sleeve off my right arm, exposing the tangle of lines. Some of them pulsed.

I expected her to scream, or jump back from me, so I wouldn't contaminate her. Instead, she took the big-brimmed hat off my head, leaned over the chair back, and wrapped her arms around me, her head against my cheek. "How long, honey?"

I let out a sob. "Last week," I wheezed, "after I went through the vac."

She nodded, still holding me.

"I'm scared, Mom. What can I do?"

She knelt beside me and held my hands lightly. A few smears of my foundation streaked her left cheek. "Breathe slowly. Count to five as you inhale, and then again as you exhale."

I closed my eyes. After each breath, the prickling sensation faded.

"Good," she said. "Keep it up while I check the vidscreen." Her overalls rustled as she pulled out the system pod. The familiar click of the vidscreen turning on comforted me almost as much as the breathing.

"Here's something we can try," she said. "The Eco-Friends newsgroup claims that an herb tea diminished 'the line effect' on victims in the New Sierra coast."

I flicked my eyes open and watched her scroll down through the screen. "Star anise, fennel... we have everything except Codonopsis root," she murmured, clicking the system pod to copy the list.

She helped me up from the chair and led me into the living room. "Just relax. Lie on the couch and rest, while I go out to find what we need. I'll bet the co-op's open."

I curled on the couch. She drew a blanket over me, then went into the pantry to double check the herbs. Pretending to sleep, I listened as she tiptoed from the kitchen into the entryway. When I heard her approach the airlock, I slid off the couch and crept to the edge of the living room. I knelt and peered around the corner right when she punched the new code into the keypad. The light turned green, and she crossed into the vestibule to put on her gear.

My skin prickled everywhere—not from the tendrils, this time, but from excitement. All I had to do was burn those numbers into my brain, and then I'd be free.

No—better to write them down. My coversuit and daypack hung on a hook next to the airlock door. I crawled over and risked standing for a second to grab the pack. Through the porthole, I saw Mom strip off her clothes, her back to me. Maroon tendrils dotted her shoulder blades.

It was my fault. I must have infected her, maybe with the window breach, maybe before.

I started sobbing again, then held my breath, afraid that Mom might hear me.

Leaving the pack on its hook, I crouched in the entryway even after I heard the van pull out of the driveway.

I hadn't written down the code, but the numbers rang through my head: 25-78-14-4-66-X-91. I didn't know what to do. Home felt safe all of a sudden. I wanted to apologize to Mom. We would drink tea, and our skin would heal, and we'd replant the courtyard garden.

But the sun there wouldn't be right. My skin itched for real sunlight. I wanted to feel cool grass between my toes. Just a short walk to Dad and Becca's, and then I'd come back. Mom wouldn't have to know.

But what if I infected them, too? I could put on my gear when I got to their house—that would keep them safe. My helmet and airmask were still on their porch, anyway. I grabbed my coversuit and punched the keycode into the airlock pad.

Mom had programmed the front door with the same code as the airlocks, so I got out easily. I was halfway down the driveway when I realized I should have taken my pack, too, in case she didn't want me back.

My knees didn't bend well, but I hobbled back to the door and punched in my personal entrance code, which went through fine. I followed with my thumbprint, and the light flashed yellow for me to exhale into the breath scanner. I leaned into the tube and blew. Then the light blazed ambulance red and the bioalarm sounded. Mom would come back soon, warned by the system pod. I had to get to the park.

I kicked off my shoes and stepped onto the lawn, giddy with the feeling of wet grass on my bare feet. Where the sidewalk used to be was a stream, and across the street, where the kids had turned their cartwheels, there were trees with budding branches. There was a familiar smell in the air, a sweetness. I threw the coversuit on the ground, tore off my clothes, and kicked them onto the driveway. Why wait to run naked through the park? I could start right here.

But the sun on my skin felt so warm—I wanted not to run but to stretch up tall to reach it. The breeze tickled me, and nudged me forward. I limped to the stream edge and dipped my big toe in.

I thought the water had stabbed me, the pain cut so deep. But it wasn't the water. The tendrils tore through my skin and dug deep in the loam, as my heels rooted and my toes gnarled and spread and clung to the bank. I tried to lean over, but my body was so stiff I could no longer bend.
Run,
I thought,
RUN!
But all I could do was twist at the waist and fling my arms higher and higher.

"Mom," I shouted into my voicecom link, "Mommy, I can't move."

"Maxie," she whispered. Her voice sounded muffled in my earplants, as if she was bricked up behind a wall

.
No,
I tried to tell her.
I'm the one who's trapped.

"I'm coming," she crooned. "I love you. Breathe. Just try to breathe."

Breathe,
I thought,
yes, breathe,
but I'd forgotten how.

My legs locked, bound solid by tendrils, and the skin thickened to bark powdered with green. Caught in the twist, my waist stuck, and my shoulders and neck froze next. Only my arms kept moving. They divided and branched, branched and divided, again and again, finger after knotted finger, and my leaves drank in the sunlight. I closed my eyes, and felt the water course into my toes, along my spine, and up through the crown of my head, where the new-leafed hair grew long, and light, and slim branched enough to sweep the ground.

I thought I heard the van, but the sound of the stream drowned it out. I couldn't see anything behind me, but the footsteps made the soil vibrate around my roots. I had never noticed the rhythm of her walk before, but now it was how I knew her, what my body remembered, the rhythm of her climbing the stairs, or scrubbing the fish tank, or spading compost in the courtyard.

Then she stood beside me, calling, "Xam! Xam! Xam!" Her voice, sweeter than wind, sang through my leaves. She wore her sunglasses, overalls, and her feet were bare—no gear! Purple tendrils crowned her bald head. She turned, her posture perfect, and looked back at the house. "Xam!" she called again. "Honey, where are you?"

I whispered to her,
Mom, it's me! Look, my hair's longer than Becca's! Stay with me, Mom, the stream's a good place.

She bent down—slowly, because she'd gone stiff by then—picked up the coversuit, and touched the three butterflies on the sleeve. She tossed her sunglasses on the ground, and smiled up into my branches. Sighing, she leaned against my trunk and dipped her big toe in the stream. I rustled my leaves, dappling her with sunlight.

QUANTUM ORPHEUS, AT THE LIGHT CONE'S APEX

Igor Teper
| 7561 words

Igor Teper is a physicist and an author of fiction, poetry, and essays. His story "The Secret Number" was recently adapted into a short film of the same name, for which he co-wrote the screenplay. He lives with his family in the San Francisco Bay Area. Igor's first story for
Asimov's
is a hard SF tale about a modern day Argus putting the finishing touches on a space-faring ship that may need its own...

What they don't teach you about time in any physics class is that the present is all you have, all you can ever own. Your past, like your future, belongs to someone else, someone you may think you recognize but can never know. All you can know are the past's traces and the future's inklings, scattered like compost and seeds through the soil of now.

My name is Abe Kapelin, and my wife, Angela, is dead. I would give anything to be the Abe Kapelin whose Angela is alive, but all I can do is envy him.

Hrmmm-klat-klat-whirr, hrmmm-klat-klat-whirr. I'm running performance tests on the International Space Agency Quantum Computer—nicknamed Isaac—in preparation for a newer version's use on the
Prometheus,
the first deeper-space probe, due to launch in less than a year. Or rather, Isaac, ensconced in a cocoon of cryogenic vacuum equipment and fiber-optic and electrical cables, is running tests on itself, and I'm watching the results and listening to the modulated humming, thrumming, and clicking of the apparatus's power supplies and motorized actuators.

Isaac's self-diagnostics are the first to notice a slight delay in its computations, compared to earlier benchmarks. It's as if someone else is siphoning off Isaac's computing power, impossible not only because no one knows how to do that, but also because the only means of accessing Isaac is at my fingertips.

I test the experiment's subsystems—lasers, cryogenics, electronics, all fine. Reinitializing Isaac takes two weeks we don't have, plus it's a matter of pride that I figure this out. I don't tell anyone else, not even Leonard Rains, once my best graduate student and now the project's brightest rising star. This is the first time I've kept science from him.

Night after night, I wait until everyone but the overnight security guards has gone home, and poke and prod Isaac with every kind of calculation I can think of, without learning anything at all. Long after midnight on the fourth night, having exhausted both myself and the variety of possible computations, I try an impossible one. The outcome should be meaningless quantum noise, but what shows up on my touchboard screen is a single word:

END

I run the calculation once more.

END, Isaac repeats.

In our language for interfacing with Isaac, "end" signifies the end of a stream of input commands; it has no meaning as an output. Not one we gave it, anyway.

A week later, I'm desperate enough to consider calling my daughter. Two more days, and I muster the resolve to do it. I cannot tell if the tingling on the back of my arms and neck as I dial her number is due to my mood or to the storm whipping water against my windows.

Jane puts me on voice-only. I haven't seen her since her college graduation.

"My birthday isn't for another three months," are the first words out of the speaker.

I'm breaking the not-entirely-unspoken agreement—I only call her once a year, on her birthday, and she has a civil conversation with me—that governs our relationship.

"Please hear me out, Jane. This is important. Are you still working on expert systems?"

"What do you want, Dad?" That last word is a curse.

"Our quantum computer is acting weird, like there's something we didn't put in there using up computing power, and a little while ago, I'm not sure how to say this, but I think it refused to perform a calculation. I've tried everything I can think of, but I don't really know this stuff. You do. I could really use your help, Jane."

The next several seconds are the longest of my life. Then the phone screen comes on.

My breath catches in my throat, and a fist closes around my heart. Her hair is no longer an orange crew-cut, and there are no tattoos writhing on her cheekbones or snaking along her jawline. What I see instead are shoulder-length brown curls framing my dead wife's face.

A swirl of impulses crowds and clouds my mind, and a million questions and declarations throng the tip of my tongue.

"If you're making this up—"

"I'm not, I swear," I assure her. "I swear." My voice seems to emerge from else-where.

She sizes me up like she would a phone salesman, a stranger. I tell myself that indifference is better than hostility.

"All right," she finally says. "Tell me about it."

I compose myself and go over the incident, and then tell her about my futile attempts to figure things out. Jane listens, asks questions, takes notes, all utterly businesslike.

"What I need is a way to get at whatever processes are using up Isaac's resources, but its interface is just too limited," I say when I'm done chronicling my failures. "All I can do is ask Isaac to perform calculations."

She sighs. "Performing calculations is all any computer ever does, no matter what else it seems to be doing. You just have to find the right calculations for it to perform."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"When it spit out 'end,' that had to be the result of some calculation it performed, even if it wasn't the calculation you thought it was performing. Somehow, maybe through whatever is causing the delays, your computer redefined the 'end' instruction, and you happened to stumble upon that redefinition."

"Okay, so should I just keep trying random calculations in the hopes that I stumble on something else?"

"You could do that, though I don't think your odds of success are very good. But there may be something you can do to increase those odds."

Jane's mischievous not-quite-smile pulls me back thirty years—Angela and I are studying together, she scribbling notes in the margins of her
Moby-Dick
with that same kind of sly self-assurance while I labor through
The Feynman Lectures.