Read Alien Landscapes 2 Online
Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #Adventure, #High Tech, #Two Hours or More (65-100 Pages), #Hard Science Fiction
The Porterhouse was grayish on the outside, and a rich, cold red at the center.
#
“—and then we’ll stop,” Chandler said, his eyes pleading.
As Tara looked at him, she caught an image of the gaunt, middle-aged man again, riddled with self-doubt and the fear that he would be unable to complete the job he had taken on. “Just help me finish this one,” he said. “You’ll enjoy it. I promise.”
Tara turned away, uneasy and afraid to meet his eyes. “Tell me again what’s wrong,” she said.
Over the past week or so, she had refused to jack in at all. Spooked by the growing evidence of the crumbling barrier between their personalities, she had decided to back off, worried about the danger of using the prototype splitter.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with it!” Chandler lashed out on the verge of panic. His eyes glittered in a silent plea. She had never seen him look so helpless. “It’s missing something at the heart. Without your help it’s only a shell. I’m falling flat on my face.”
He reached out in desperation and clung to her hand. He hadn’t done that in a long time. “Please?”
As the refusal died in her throat, Tara realized how drastically their needs had changed, as if they had swapped insecurities. Chandler needed to become more a part of her, and she retreated, trying to build barriers and maintain her own soul.
But as she looked at him grasping her hand and silently begging, she saw the man who had stood beside her when her bright future had been stripped from her, who had let her share in his growing success and giving her a new chance. She saw him redefining his company to include her, asking her to become his partner in everything.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll make this one our masterpiece, a final flash of glory. Then we’ll stop. You’ll be on your own from now on.”
“Sure,” Chandler said with obvious relief. “It’s for a whole shopping mall. It’ll be really big.”
Tara went to the wall jacks, wondering why he would think that the size of the implementation had anything to do with her decision to help him.
She carefully mounted the viper fangs of the jack cable into the socket in the back of her head. Rushing and fumbling with his own socket, Chandler linked up. They plugged into the splitter, and both swam down into the virtual world.
He took her to Mount Olympus.
Chandler had chosen the assignment to pique her interest, since in her student days she had traveled through virtual Greece, visited the ruins of the Parthenon, the Acropolis, statues of Apollo and Athena.
Tara looked around under the bleached-bright sky of Chandler’s land of the gods. Mount Olympus towered, reaching to the clouds, where Zeus and the other gods dwelled, working their mischief by playing games with mortal lives.
Tara’s image had entered the world at the foot of the great volcano. On grassy hills stood weathered, half-fallen remains of Greek architecture, a random mix of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, small temples and larger structures scattered in no particular order, as if Chandler had captured their images from a mixed-bag database and pasted them to the slopes as the impulse struck him.
Black obelisks of volcanic rock thrust out at the base of the mountain. Steam and sulfurous fumes curled from fissures, and a blistering glow rose from a large opening, accompanied by loud sounds of clanging metal, a sighing forge, and someone massive stirring.
She saw no image of Chandler waiting for her. They had both jacked in, but he had gone to a different place. As Tara listened to the grunting, clanging sounds in the fire-filled cave, she knew where to find him, where he wanted her to go. He was playing some sort of game with her.
She stepped inside what she guessed would be the forge of Hephaestus. The sharp-edged cave walls reflected the burning-hot light rising from a river of incandescent lava that flowed, rumbled, growled through the chamber.
On a flat rock in the midst of the lava stood the incarnation of Chandler—Hephaestus himself—his head a mass of wiry black hair matted with perspiration, a voluminous beard, eyebrows like feathers from a bird of prey, a face lumpy and ugly. He wore only a soot-stained loincloth. Sweat trickled down his bronzed and muscular frame. One of his feet was crushed and shriveled; Tara remembered the myth of an angered Zeus hurling Hephaestus from the top of Mount Olympus.
He withdrew a sharp metal object from the lava—the glowing tip of a new trident for Poseidon. He looked up, his eyes flashing reflections from the fiery, molten rock. “How do you like it?” Chandler asked. His familiar voice sounded strange issuing from the vocal cords of a massive Greek god.
Tara glanced down at herself to see her body a sculptured model of absolute beauty, pure alabaster, clad in sparkling white flowing robes. She felt luxurious tresses of hair draped between her shoulders. She rolled her eyes at the irony of being too lovely to touch—cool and aloof, unreachable. “Am I supposed to be playing Aphrodite to your Hephaestus?”
“You’re my wife, aren’t you?” Chandler asked with an eloquent shrug. He began to hammer the smoking trident on an enormous, misshapen anvil; the sledge blows sent thunder reverberating through the grotto.
She indicated the cave, the forge. “Well, the exterior of Mount Olympus needs work, but you’ve surpassed yourself here.”
Chandler looked at her longingly, his large green-tan eyes glowing beneath the bristling brows. “That isn’t why I wanted to bring you here,” he said. He laid down the trident and stepped down into the flowing lava as if wading across a stream.
“In here, metaphor becomes reality—or whatever reality can become.” The molten rock rippled around his naked thighs as he took another limping step on his deformed leg and sank up to his waist. “I need you Tara,” he said, holding out a grime-blackened hand. “I’ve become a part of you, I’ve become addicted to you. And I can’t do my work without you inside me.”
Tara felt alarm well up inside her. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“I think you know. Come into the fire with me,” he said. “Together we have unlimited potential. You must know it. Merge with me, once and for all. All or nothing. No secrets. Remember what you said? We exchanged vows, combined our lives. We’re supposed to be partners.” He dropped his voice. “We can share everything, down to the smallest thoughts. We’ll both be in each other’s head: a complete synthesis.”
He took another halting step forward, stretching his hand toward her, imploringly.
“Oh, Chandler, I wanted to be closer to you,” she said, “not to
become
you.”
Chandler shook his head. “You won’t become me.
We’ll
become
us
.” Swirling thoughts screamed for her attention, but Chandler kept talking. “We won’t even need the jacks anymore. We can do it ourselves. Our minds have already started growing together. We’ve intertwined. I’m in you, and you’re in me.”
She tried to respond, but found no words. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have constant mutual support, shoring up each others’ weaknesses, never to be alone, always a part of a team? She thought of herself, and wondered how much she really had to lose.
Tara found her own hand lifting toward his as she stood on the brink of the fiery river, gazing at him, knowing she was the image of perfect beauty, fragile yet enduring. And he stood in the lava, powerful, a symbol of unending labor in all its grimy ugliness.
Her hand hovered in the air as the molten rock continued to bubble and hiss. She longed to join with her husband, but she knew that one personality would ultimately prove stronger. For now, Chandler could stand unharmed in the purging fire—but eventually one or the other of them would be consumed.
As Chandler touched her fingers, Tara viciously jacked out.
#
With an abrupt motion, like a drowned woman gasping back to life, Tara wrenched the end of the jack cable from the illegal splitter in the wall.
Reeling and disoriented, she suddenly found herself back in her mundane den, where Chandler still sat on the floor beside his old maroon chair, his face slack, his mind lost on Mount Olympus. Tara threw the jack cable down with a sharp gasp, as if it had stung her. She looked at it lying on the floor like a disembodied tentacle, and uncontrollable shudders wracked her body.
She never wanted to go back into the same data stream with Chandler. She had no boundaries left, and neither did he. They would keep merging, averaging. She had to get rid of the temptation—before Chandler could talk her out of it.
Tara dug behind the wall plate, routed Chandler over to the main network access, and disconnected the splitter. The clunky-looking gadget made of plastic and wire snapped like cracking knuckles as she ground it under her heel. The prototype had not been made for durability. She tossed the pieces into the kitchen incinerator and came back to stare at her husband.
Crouched in a lotus position, Chandler remained unaware of her presence. His eyes REMed back and forth; his red-gold hair hung limply over the interface cable. She wondered if he was grieving in the forge of Hephaestus.
They were already intermingled. Their minds had touched and shared and come away with pieces of each other. But from this point on they would no longer be on the same path; partners, yes, but not two people averaged together. From here, she and Chandler could move on parallel life roads, or they could diverge—but they would not be stepping in the same footsteps.
She could be part of him, and apart from him. The best of both worlds, if he would settle for that.
Tara’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at Chandler, who now seemed separated from her by an impenetrable wall. When she called his name, he didn’t answer, and so she reached out and caressed his hair instead.
* * *
Good Old Days
The future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Weren’t we all supposed to be flying regularly to big pinwheel space stations in orbit? Vacationing on Mars, or going to college at the Lunar Dome Academy? The future didn’t turn out exactly the way we all saw it depicted on
The Jetsons
. *sigh*
But a story is all about turning preconceptions around and looking at things in a different way. What if a future character, much like George Jetson, were to look back at our present with fond nostalgia, wistfully thinking that simpler times without the dazzle of so much technology might be a better way of life? And what if his family didn’t approve of his obsession?
When the signal rang, George told the door to answer itself, but the mailbot insisted on a thumbprint signature for the delivery. With a sigh, he was forced to make the extra effort of doing it in person.
“Hello, Mr. J.!” said the cheery, buzzing voice of the mailbot. In his metal arms he carried a large crate. “Special delivery for you. Boy, I wonder what it is.”
George pressed his thumb against the scanning plate on the mailbot’s smooth forehead. “Jane!” he called over his shoulder. “What have you been ordering now?”
Jane, his wife, walked up with a bounce in her step. “George, dear, you know I don’t order anything anymore. The catalogs make the purchases all by themselves.”
He frowned. “Well, I certainly didn’t order this.” He stepped aside to make room for the mailbot. “You don’t expect me to carry that heavy thing?”
“Of course not, Mr. J. You can expect
service
from your postal service.” The mailbot strutted inside and set the crate in the middle of the floor.
Creaking along, Rosie the maidbot wheeled forward, tsking at the condition of the box. “Just look at those smudges and the dust. Very unsanitary.” She bustled about, tidying up the package’s exterior.
George waited for the big crate to open automatically, then realized he would have to do it manually since the package had no standard automation. He struggled with the flaps and seals. “Whatever it is, we’re not ordering from this company again.”
Inside, he found a sealed envelope (which, again, he had to open by hand) and a sheet of actual paper. Not quite sure what to do, George slipped the paper into a reader and the words spilled out, announcing his name and address and I.D. number in a very official-sounding voice.
“We regret to inform you that your Uncle Asimov has died. These are his personal effects, and you are his only known heir. He has also bequeathed you his property and his home. By accepting his package and reading this letter, you have agreed to the terms of his estate.”
George started to grin at their windfall, but then the letter-reader continued, “Mr. Asimov owed a substantial amount of back taxes and assessments. Your account has been debited to pay off these debts, as well as the delivery fee.”
“Your Uncle Asimov?” Jane asked. “George, dear, isn’t he that crazy old hermit out in the desert?”
“Yes, it was the last place in the country where he could live off the grid. He actually liked that sort of thing.” He looked down to scrutinize the contents of the box, hoping that the value of the items inside would at least pay for the delivery charge. He sneezed.
Rosie wheeled forward like a steel filing drawn to a magnet. “Dust! Real dust! Let me take care of that before you catch some sort of disease.” The maidbot sprayed disinfectant all around the area.
When she was finished, George rummaged around inside the crate. Jane peered over his shoulder. “It’s like a museum in there.”
“Or a junkyard.” George picked up round, cylindrical metal containers, each with a faded label. He realized they were cans of food, preserved chili and soup. He sniffed one of the cans, smelling nothing but old metal. The picture on the label certainly looked unappetizing.
“Why would anybody want this stuff?” Jane asked. “Do you suppose that means Uncle Asimov didn’t even have a food replicator out in the desert?”
“I don’t think he even had electricity, Jane. Maybe not running water, maybe not even a self-cleaning hygiene station.”
The maidbot buzzed her disapproval while Jane shuddered in horror.
Next he found actual hardcopies of books and magazines so old that the paper was brown and crumbly. Underneath those was a stack of yellowed newspapers, wasteful old-fashioned informational devices that were published only once daily, regardless of how often the actual news changed.
George was still digging items out of the crate when his blonde teenage daughter, Judy, and his boy, Elroy, arrived home from the preprogrammed school simulations. Seeing the crate and instantly assuming they had received gifts from someone, Judy let out a delighted shriek, then frowned in disappointment.
George had picked up a pack of a powdery brown substance that smelled vaguely like a cup of coffee from the food replicator, though he couldn’t see how the ground substance could turn itself into coffee. Next to it there was a strange contraption, like a pitcher made of metal. He took the pieces apart but couldn’t understand their function.
Boisterous Elroy piped up, “That’s a coffee percolator, Pop! We studied that in ancient history class.”
“A coffee percolator? You mean Uncle Asimov had a special machine just to make coffee?” George held up the filter basket, peering through the tiny holes. “Can it be reprogrammed to do other things?”
“No, Pop. You add the water yourself and then . . .” he hesitated. “Well, then you do something to it. I wasn’t exactly paying attention in class.”
“Tell you what, Elroy—if you figure out how this percolator works, I’ll consider it your ancient history homework. Afterward, what do you say we spend some quality time together? We can watch those holos of people throwing a baseball back and forth.”
“Gee, Pop, I’ll do it!” The boy spent two whole minutes digging through one informational archive after another until he found a set of rigorously detailed instructions. After all that effort, George certainly considered that the boy had earned his reward. . . .
Much later, exhausted from watching the holos of people engaged in strenuous exercise, George tucked Elroy into bed, patted the kid on the head, then went about his evening routine. He went back to look at the coffee percolator, perplexed. He thought of his mysterious and eccentric uncle, unable to understand what could have driven the old man to shun everyday modern conveniences. Why would Uncle Asimov intentionally make his life more difficult than it needed to be? As George read through the complicated instructions, on a whim, he decided to go through the process.
He opened the package of ground beans, assembled the gadget’s components, then asked the household computer to find an adapter so that he could plug the machine into the power grid. The coffee-making steps were quite intricate, and George had never done anything so convoluted before. It took him three separate tries before he finally figured it out. “People used to go through a great many tribulations just to make a simple cup of coffee,” he said to himself. Uncle Asimov had presumably gone through the gruelling process every single day!
When George was done, however, listening to the gurgle of water pumping through the filter basket and grounds, it all made a certain amount of sense to him. When the smell of coffee rose into the air, it seemed delicious, fresh.
Jane came out, ready for bed. Sniffing the air, she looked at him and the coffee percolator. “George, dear, what are you doing?”
Triumphantly, he said, “I’m making coffee.”
“If you want coffee, just tell the replicator to make you a cup.”
“It’s an experiment, dear. Let’s try some.” He burned his fingers as he lifted the percolator from the wrong end, then poured two cups of the steaming black liquid.
Jane came forward skeptically. “It smells like any other cup of coffee.”
He drew in a deep breath, then took a sip. “Delicious! I think it’s better than what the replicator makes.”
Jane took a drink with great trepidation, as if afraid the old hermit’s supplies might be laced with some unusual toxin. “It tastes exactly the same as the coffee we usually drink, George.”
But he insisted that wasn’t so. Perhaps the very effort he had expended in making the hot beverage increased his own satisfaction. Jane was not sure what to make of this change in her husband’s behavior. He gave her a peck on the cheek. “You can go to bed without me, dear. I think I’ll stay up a while longer.”
She went to bed, leaving him to his unusual preoccupation. George drank the cup of coffee, then poured a second one.
He picked the faded old magazines from the crate and gingerly began thumbing through the pages. Uncle Asimov had kept these publications for so many years. How many times had he read them? George considered feeding the pages into the automatic reader so he could enjoy the articles. Then, drawing a deep breath and setting his jaw with determination, he sat back with his hand-made cup of coffee and read the words for himself. He found it quite an unusual experience. Though he hadn’t intended to, George stayed up long into the night.
#
The next day at his job in the factory, George looked down at the industrial line, the clanking conveyor belts, the whirring robot arms busily producing the best sprockets money could buy, the mechanical inspectors that monitored all the steps in the operation. Wearing his supervisor’s cap and uniform, George stood at his post and watched the robots, just as he had done every day in his career.
Though he was a supervisor, George didn’t exactly know what he was doing. The more he thought about it, he realized that he had never really known what he was doing.
He saw his boss in the glassed-in office, lording over the assembly line. He was a short, balding man with dark hair and a large moustache. George had always thought of him as a good boss, though the man’s temper was often on a short fuse. George had never really thought about it before, but he didn’t quite understand what his boss did either. His job seemed to entail looking down at George and his fellow supervisors, as they in turn looked down at the robotic assembly line. The robots automatically did everything on their own.
George left his station, his brow furrowed with questions. He took the whirring lift platform that raised him up to the boss’s office. The balding man was quite surprised to see him. “Why have you left your post? That simply isn’t done!”
“But why not, Mr. S.?” He fumbled to articulate his question. “What am I actually
doing
down there?”
“The assembly line can’t be run without you. A supervisor at every station, and a station for every supervisor. How do you expect sprockets to be made and for us to meet our inventory goals if you shirk your duties? The whole company depends on you, um—” He looked at the name patch on George’s shirt. “George.”
“But, sir, what is my job? I don’t even know what a sprocket is.”
The boss scratched his moustache and sat down at his desk. “George, don’t ask me such complicated questions. Sprockets are vitally important items, and you’ve got a job to do.”
“Actually, sir, the robots are doing it. They run everything on the assembly line. In all my years of working here at the sprocket factory I haven’t had to push a single button.”
“Then that proves you’re doing a good job. No breakdowns, no emergencies. Keep up the good work, George.”
“Mr. S., does anybody really know how anything works in this factory?”
“That’s in the hands of the general manager.” With a jerk of his head, Mr. S. nodded toward the ceiling, indicating other floors in the skyscraper overhead.
George went back to his station and watched the robots continue to work for the rest of the day.
#
That night he came home from work with a brilliant idea. The rest of the family considered it a disaster.
While Judy and Elroy sat at the table and Jane pondered the evening meal in front of the food replicator, George sauntered into the kitchen holding a can of chili and a can of soup. “Let’s try these. It’ll be like nothing we’ve ever had before.”
Judy seemed horrified. “The pictures on the label look gross.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure? We’ll heat up our own food . . . as soon as I figure out how to do it.”
Elroy got into the spirit of the challenge. “Don’t we have to rub sticks together or something, Pop?”
“Of course not. Maybe we can use a heating plate. I wonder how long it takes.”
The first experiment turned into an unpleasant experience. The instructions printed on the label—which George was proud to read by himself—didn’t say anything about having to open the can first before exposing it to high heat. The soup exploded into a dripping, hot mess.
Rosie the maidbot complained as she wheeled back and forth to clean up every drop.
George did better with the can of chili, and soon each of them had a small bowl of a lumpy red-brown mixture that didn’t look even as appetizing as the faded illustration on the label. Elroy, sitting beside his father, good-naturedly took several bites. Jane was stoic as she tasted the meal. Judy refused and slipped over to the replicator to make herself a different snack, much to George’s disappointment.
He expected that most of them would prepare a different meal for themselves later on, but he insisted that this was quite tasty. The fact of making it for himself added a sense of accomplishment that increased the flavor of the meal (though his stomach gurgled unpleasantly and his mouth tasted strange for hours afterward).
In the evening, when it was time for them to plan their upcoming family vacation, Judy was the first to pipe up, bubbling with excitement at her own suggestion. “I’ve always wanted to go to CentroMetropolis. We can see the shows and the museums.”
“And the boys,” Elroy added sarcastically.
“And the
shows
,” Judy insisted.
“Sounds boring,” Elroy said. “I want to go on a virtual immersion vacation! Every kind of game simulation! We’ve got a dome right here in the city, and Pop can get discount tickets from the factory.”
“We’re not all going to play virtual games.” Judy rolled her eyes. “That’s for kids.”