Horizons: A collection of science fiction short stories Read online

  In my head, I play “The Last Rose of Summer,” the Beethoven version – the lazy, easy version – and slow down everything in the café to fit the song’s tempo. The barista whirls from the espresso machine to the register, carrying a brimming cup with effortless grace. The old man with the crumb in his pocket pores over a crossword puzzle as if it were a love poem. A businesswoman sings directives for a marketing presentation into her phone.

  The presence is the only being in the coffee shop moving in normal time. She looks at me. Her face betrays nothing, but I’ve disturbed her somehow.

  She stands, leaves the café, and evaporates in the salty wind blowing in off the Puget Sound.

  *

  I skip my appointment at Generon. Cynthia calls a half hour later, and I don’t answer. She calls again, and I turn off my phone.

  *

  The music rehearsal room at North Seattle State is smaller than a suburban closet. Between the upright piano, the bench, the music stand, and the stool, there is barely enough room for me. I love it, though. I am underground, insulated, warm.

  All the other practice spaces are empty on a Saturday night, and I feel no inhibition at how loudly I should play. I fly though a few of Paganini’s caprices, take a drink of water, then work through Liszt for half an hour. With each piece, each measure and movement, my hands grow stronger, my mind sharper.

  The presences appear as I’m playing a Liszt sonata. They huddle together in a corner, shifting the gravity in the space. The sound waves flying out of my violin all bend toward them. My nose fills with lilac, and the corner where they’ve gathered goes dim and fuzzy.

  Unlike the others, these presences are silent. Even moreso, they damp the sound from miles around, eliminate vibrations I didn’t even know I was hearing – wind whistling over the building’s roof, a lightbulb humming on the floor above, worms digesting the soil on the other side of the wall. All that is left in the universe is the Liszt.

  The piano in the corner of the room calls to me as I play. The strings in its box beg to be struck. I can’t do much with my hands busy on the violin, but with my mind, I manage to sound a few chords on the keys, and this satisfies the piano. We play together, the piano and I, and another presence appears. The beings have become clearer to me, stronger in the stimuli they emit, but the flood is more manageable, pleasant even. For the first time in six months, I am playing for an audience, and I cherish it.

  Sometime later, there is a knock on the door. I am at the end of the piece anyway, and I let it wind down. The presences evaporate, and the room grows cold. I open the door.

  “Excuse me, folks,” the janitor says. He scans the empty room. “I mean, excuse me, Miss. We’re fifteen minutes past closed now. I’ve loved listening to you, but I’ve got a bus to catch.”

  *

  My reviewer is the Asian gentleman again. I sensed he was on to me when I knocked over the tower of blocks during the stacking drill – I was way too obvious – and now I’m sure he knows I’m bullshitting him as I feebly squeeze the tension ball. The foam sphere is connected to his tablet, and his eyebrows furrow as he watches the pressure readout on the screen.

  “Have you noticed a regression in any other specific areas of your abilities?” he asks.

  “No, nothing specific. Just a general regression on everything. The hand’s not as strong, I can’t feel it as well, that kind of thing. It’s even working its way back up my arm, I think.”

  I’m terrible at this, I know, but they can’t prove I’m lying. They can’t see inside my brain. Besides, I’m the patient. I should have a say in my treatment.

  He notices me tapping my fingers on the desk – the first bars of “Moonlight Sonata” – before I do. I stop, but it’s too late.

  “One second, Ms. Helford.” He stands up to leave.

  I look at my fingertips and realize that the clipped nails on my right hand also could have given me away. I’m such a dummy. How could I have clipped my right hand if my left hand wasn’t working? Maybe my parents or a friend did it. That explanation would work.

  The reviewer opens the door, but before he enters he shouts down the hall, “Tell them to get M4 ready, OK? And P16 for prep.”

  He sits back down across from me with a manila folder holding one sheet of paper.

  “Ms. Helford, my superiors think a Proton CT scan would be helpful in assessing your progress at this stage in your treatment.” He opens the folder and slides it across to me. “Here is the consent form. Just sign this, and we’ll get you prepped.”

  “What is this test?”

  “Proton computerized tomography. We use a proton beam to create a three-dimensional…” He sees the glaze in my eyes and stops. “We look inside your brain, basically.”

  Crap.

  “Oh, I don’t think I can do that today. I have an important meeting right after today’s session, and I can’t stay late, so I—”

  “Not to worry. We’ll have you out at your normal time. We’ll skip the stimulator today.”

  He looks at the paper. My heart is racing, but I can’t think of a way to avoid it, so I sign. As soon as I set down the pen, my right hand rises to the back of my head and strokes my scar.

  “Great,” he says and scoops up the folder. “Right this way.”

  He leads me down a hall to room P16, which holds only a chair with a hospital gown folded on top. He tells me to change into the gown, remove my jewelry, and wait for him to return. The door closes with a click as he leaves. I immediately try the handle. It’s not locked.

  I open the door and look down the hall in time to see my reviewer disappear around a corner.

  I walk to the elevator as quickly as I can without drawing attention to myself.

  *

  I fly into my apartment, fill my cats’ food and water bowls to the brim, grab my violin case, and leave. Generon will be coming for me, but I’m not finished. Not yet.

  I reach the bus stop not knowing exactly where I’m going or how long I plan to be gone. I just know I cannot stay near my apartment. A block to my left is a bus headed downtown. Two blocks to my right is one headed north.

  I hop on the downtown bus. Every block that distances me from my apartment brings relief. Before long, serenity settles in. The bus driver opens her window, and her jasmine perfume wafts back into the bus. The brakes wheeze as we stop at a light and inhale as we accelerate again. The woman seated in front of me twirls her hair, her fingernails tapping on her hoop earrings with each flick of her wrist.

  The bus stops across the street from the Generon Performing Arts Center.

  *

  Two janitors are hauling bags of trash from last night’s performance out a back door and tossing them into a dumpster. With my violin case and confident smile, neither one stops me as I breeze past into the concert hall.

  I navigate the warren of dressing rooms, costume closets, and equipment lockers backstage. The hallway is unlit, but I see clearly.

  Finally, I reach the stage. The orchestra’s seats and stands are positioned on the risers. The hall is dark except for the soft glow of the exit strips running along the aisles. I take the soloist’s place, front and center, and realize I’ve forgotten to bring my music. No matter. I remember every note of every song I’ve ever played, as if I’d written them all myself and rehearsed them a thousand times. The pieces all clamor to be brought to life.

  Before I realize it, I am playing “The Last Rose of Summer.” I don’t immediately recognize which variation I’m playing, and I become aware that I’m playing all of them, none of them, creating a new arrangement as I go. The Beethoven is intertwined with the Ernst woven with folk variations, and all of it is sprinkled with my own improvisations.

  The words sing themselves amid the notes. ’Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone. All her lovely companions, are faded and gone.

  The presences shuffle in one-by-one and take seats. They’re arranging themselves this way to make me comfortable.

  I want
to repay their thoughtfulness, give them a lasting, beautiful moment. My left hand plucks out harmonics, pure, airy tones that glimmer and fade like stars born and dying. I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one, to pine on the stem. Since the lovely are sleeping, go sleep thou with them.

  The presences merge, bleeding into each other over the seats’ armrests. As in the practice room last night, the gravity in the room tilts, and the notes emanating from my violin bend in their direction. The sound waves link me to them, and I feel myself starting to merge into the fog. Energy, clarity, and peace surge through our tether, and soon my bow is a blur, my left hand flies over the strings, and my mind sounds notes directly into the air. I am a full orchestra, with new tones and textures arising from my depths. When true hearts lie withered, and fond ones are flown, O, who would inhabit, this bleak world alone.

  I finish the song and release my violin, leaving it floating in the air next to my face. Time grinds to a halt. The presences buzz to each other, a thousand years of conversations at once. Each atom in the room hums individually, sparking, whirring in constant flux.

  The presences reach a consensus and condense themselves into one. It approaches me on the stage.

  The being tries to speak, but the message comes out as a foghorn blast, a spotlight glare, an earthquake. I cover my ears and squeeze my eyes closed. The presence notices my agony and goes silent. It chatters to itself, adjusts, shrinks.

  Come with us.

  The message comes from everywhere. Voicelessly, I reply.

  Who are you?

  It considers how to answer, how to speak in a way I can understand.

  We made you. Your universe is an experiment, a simulation.

  I understand. The world glistening around me makes sense. The currents of order amid the chaos. The beauty. The gore.

  You are becoming like us, it says. The helpers in your head have helped you grow. We can bring you the rest of the way.

  The presence’s form becomes roughly human. It extends a hand.

  I shudder, fear mingling with astonishment. I look at my hands and for the first time see them as they truly are. Immense clouds of atoms, pillars of creation. They glow and fade, pulsing with my heart.

  The presence tears back the walls of the concert hall to reveal Cynthia and a group of security guards frozen just outside the back entrance. They are here to take me back to Generon, remove my bots, drag me back down among the rest of humanity.

  Others will join us in time, but not the people you know now. They are but patterns, and they will dissipate. But you will never be alone. You will be together with all that is.

  I feel a sudden pang. I miss my smallness, my fear. I feel nostalgia for my limitations and my fight against them. And, I miss Mom, Dad, my cats, even Jesse.

  I can’t.

  The presence probes my mind, trying to gauge my resolve.

  If you stay, these people will undo your enhancements, it says, gesturing toward Cynthia and the guards. You will be as you were before. No more, no less. I have already seen it.

  I understand. Thank you.

  The presence absorbs my wishes, senses their finality, and accepts them. The wall is set back in place, time restarts, and the guards burst through the side door. My violin crashes to the ground. Cynthia approaches with aggressive concern. She tells me how worried everyone was, how they thought something had gone wrong.

  Her words pass through me. The presence has left a wisp of itself to accompany me back to Generon.

  *

  I am lying prone on the operating table, my face cupped in a foam ring as if I were about to get a massage. The anesthetic is circulating through my veins.

  Once I am asleep and my heart is slowed and my blood pressure is lowered, a technician will broadcast a signal that calls the nanobots back to the implant. The implant will signal that they’ve all been recovered, and a surgeon will slice back into my head, then insert a thread-sized scope to tow the implant out.

  The chemicals are overwhelming my biology. I am tired, very tired.

  To the side of the table, I sense the thin reed of the presence. I smell rose.

  The Berserker Scenario

  Henry was gone. The $12 million medical-diagnosis android Sam and Rodney were building for Vivasys Medical Corp. had absconded from the lab after they’d ducked out for lunch.

  “I thought you disconnected his limbs,” Sam said, staring at the empty chair and the unplugged cord that had been feeding Henry the modifications to his programming. The update should have taken an hour, and they’d only been gone for forty-five minutes.

  “Screw you,” Rodney shot back. “I thought you deleted his walking code.”

  They both had messed up, and they knew it. Vivasys management had explicitly instructed Sam, the company’s top software manager, to strip out the ambulation module from Henry’s programming while he was in his trial runs. But Rodney, a scruffy, tattooed hardware hotshot whose robotics operation Vivasys had recently acquired, also had been told to disable the motors and sensors for his limbs.

  Both precautions were meant to prevent him from, say, absconding from the lab while they ducked out for lunch. Now, he could be wandering anywhere around downtown Boston.

  “I was deleting the walking code, but those modules are woven in with the facial expressions,” Sam said. “One error and he’d be another creepy, dead-eyed, talking mannequin. So I was taking my time. What’s your excuse? You couldn’t be bothered to unplug a few wires?”

  “Unplug a few wires? Henry’s frame came out of a DARPA program. You know what DARPA is, right?”

  “Of course,” Sam said and checked to make sure his Vivasys polo shirt was fully tucked into his khaki pants. He loathed sloppiness.

  “DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: the mad-scientist wing of the U.S. military,” Rodney said anyway. “Do you think the Army wants a robot that can have its arms and legs disabled by unplugging a few wires? Do you think they want to send a damn China doll into the Sahara, into Siberia, into the Congo?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Damn right not. Disabling Henry’s limbs takes a full day of work. And then two days to get them working again.”

  Sam pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and tried to figure out why Henry would have left. And more importantly, where he would have gone.

  “Remember what you were telling me at lunch?” Rodney said. “About the Berserker Scenario?”

  “Yeah. All too well.”

  “Could that actually happen?”

  Sam’s face was turning pale. Beads of sweat gathered on his upper lip. “The Berserker Scenario is a definite possibility.”

  “Shit.”

  *

  Tina Spanberg was sitting alone in the Pickmeup Café near Boston Common waiting for a job interview when a man in a white lab coat entered. He was tall and sturdily built and walked with a smooth, purposeful stride, like a ballroom dancer taking the center of the floor. On his head rested a blonde, waxy toupee that was tilted precariously to the side.

  Tina didn’t understand people who couldn’t be bothered to take a good look in the mirror before they left the house. Didn’t people care about the face they presented to the world?

  She certainly did. And she knew that had always helped her in life. Like today, she dialed back the eyeliner, wore a tank top that dropped off one shoulder to reveal her heart tattoo, and combed her hair straight down, bangs just above her eyes, all to fit the hipster aesthetic of the Pickmeup. The manager would offer her the job on the spot, she knew, mostly because she took enough care to look right.

  As Tina waited for her interview, she watched the man stand in the middle of the waiting area and scan the room. He surveyed his surroundings quickly yet methodically, like he’d never seen a coffee shop before and was trying to understand it all.

  Freaking weirdo, Tina thought. Bet he’s an escaped mental patient who jumped his doctor and stole his coat.

  The man’s eyes hopped
from patron to patron, zeroing in on them as they typed on their laptops, following them to the restroom or the sugar-and-creamer station, tracking the barista’s hands as they danced over the espresso machine.

  Picking out his next victim, Tina thought. Which one of us ends up in plastic baggies in his freezer?

  The man turned toward Tina, and their eyes met.

  “Crap,” she muttered into her latte. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him staring at her. She picked her phone off the table and thumbed it nervously, trying to appear busy. He glided over to her anyway.

  “Hello, Miss, I’m Doctor Henry, nice to meet you,” he said and sat down across from her. “What can I do for you today?”

  Tina raised her eyes, mostly to remember his face for the inevitable police sketch. The man was handsome, with strong features tempered by the folds and creases of age. If he hadn’t approached her in such an odd way, she might have found his face reassuring. Still, his appearance unnerved her. It was his skin, she realized. His skin was eerily flawless, like he’d been airbrushed. He must have never gotten sunburnt or eaten a piece of pepperoni pizza in his whole life.

  He stared at her and smiled, waiting for her reply.

  “It’s nice to meet you too, doctor, but I don’t need—”

  “You appear to have an early-stage basal cell carcinoma on your left cheek. If you allow me to inspect it more closely, I can form a more conclusive diagnosis.”

  His face settled back into a statue-still smile. The only movement was the regular, mechanical, blinking of his eyelids.

  Thanks but no thanks, she thought.

  “That’s OK, doctor,” she said and was about to add “I’d rather not” but failed to get the words out as he lurched toward her and clutched her skull.

  “You said OK. Thank you. I’ll inspect it more closely.”

  Tina tried to pull away, but his grip was too firm. No matter how hard she tugged, she remained stuck. She remembered getting her head caught between the balusters on her grandmother’s stairs as a kid.