Following my previous award pimpage on the Shine blog, I would also like to remind people that the DayBreak stories are also eligible for awards. The ones appearing in 2010 are (divided by category, the titles link directly to the full stories, the author names to their websites, and the hits are from when people click through as the posts on the main page only show the first three paragraphs):

Short Stories (up to 7500 words):

• A Thousand Trains Out of Here—Paul Evanby (iPhone App) (577 hits);
• The Notebook of My Favourite Skin-Trees—Alex Dally MacFarlane (a whopping 7331 hits);
• The Rules of Utopia—James Bloomer (652 hits);
• Barcode Babes—Martin McGrath (835 hits);
• Arsonist—Jennifer Linneae (421 hits);
• Hindenburg’s Vimana Joyride—Ernest Hogan (1572 hits);
• The Human Factor—Susanne Martin (262 hits);
• Dropped Packets—Emily Mangan (333 hits);

Novelettes (7500 to 17500 words):

• She’s All Light—LaShawn M. Wanak (1962 hits);
• Dalí’s Clocks—Dave Hutchinson (1259 hits);
• Riding in Mexico—Brenda Cooper (740 hits);
• A Mirror to Life—Jaine Fenn (384 hits);
• No Dominion—Christopher L. Bennett (347 hits);

That’s thirteen more upbeat stories in 2010,and thank you for your consideration!

Although this is a rather belated nusing about a panel topic in this year’s AussieCon IV in Melbourne, I think the topic is sturdy enough to stand the test of time (Q.E.D.).

Let’s start with William Wordsworth:

A single Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

The panel at AussieCon IV was “Implications of Immortality”, and the panel description was:

Immortality is a common element in science fiction and fantasy, but what would it actually be like?
What would you need to do and think about if you were immortal? How would society need to change if we were all immortal?
In a world where we are no longer faced with an end to our lives, how would human society change?

In general, I was rather disappointed by this panel (audio transcript here, courtesy of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence), as it mostly repeated SF and fantasy’s clichés about immortality, and didn’t really reach any interesting, new (let alone ground-breaking) conclusions.

So, with this panel, and a number of internet articles about immortality — Annalee Newitz on io9 (Four Arguments against Immortality), Jason Stoddard (Four Arguments FOR Immortality), BBC’s recent Do You Really Want to Live Forever?, an interview on I Look Forward To about the possibility of immortality or extreme longevity with Aubrey de Grey and David Brin (When Will Life Expectancy Reach 200 Years?), Edward Cheever’s In Defense of Immortality — in mind, I’m going to try to deconstruct a number of faulty assumption about extreme longevity.

You may have noticed that I’m not calling it ‘immortality’ anymore. Well, I think immortality is in the same class as Utopia, infinity and perfection: a great destination to travel to, but one that can never be reached. Yet we should try, nevertheless. While immortality is an unreachable ideal, the effort of reaching it will bring huge progress and immense advantages. So let’s be a tad more realistic and call it the quest for longevity, or extreme longevity.

Problem is, a lot of people think we shouldn’t be on this quest anyway, because of several misconceptions. Let’s go through them:

(1): Humans are not ‘wired’ for immortality or extreme longevity.

As (panel member) Will McIntosh said (I’m paraphrasing here): “the human psyche is not wired for immortality: in almost every thing we do lies the shadow of our oncoming demise.” However, this assumes that humans will not change. I think humans will change. Actually, humans are already changing, and have been changing throughout history.

The problem with a lot of thinking in science fiction is that it often takes one — and only one — idea and tries to imagine its impact on humans and/or society while assuming that the latter (humans and society) do not change, or only minimally through that one single idea. In reality, though, society is an immensely complex web of connections that all influence each other.

Therefore, as such, both humans and society have changed over the years, also (among many other things) in regards to life expectancy. Life expectancy has increased (and is still increasing), and we have learned to live with that. Less than two centuries ago we would become, on average, 37 years old. Our ‘productive’ life span was 20 to 25 years. Now we get, on average, 77 years old, with a ‘productive’ life span of over 40 years.

Indeed: right now we have more ‘productive’ years than we actually lived 200 years ago. And if someone had said, back in 1810, that humans aren’t wired to live 80 years, most people would have agreed.

Well, immortality won’t happen overnight: it will take time to develop much longer lifespans, followed by extreme longevity. Time enough for humans to change, and to adapt successfully to a much longer life. People have been changing all the time — albeit at a much higher rate in the past 100 years — and have been able to cope. Why shouldn’t we be able to do so in the future?

Imagine someone in 1810 saying that in 200 years people would travel around the world regularly, that we would live twice as long, and that we would be able to talk to people at the other side of the globe through a device that weighs less than a book. Now imagine depriving your 8-year-old kid from her/his gameboy, cell phone, or internet connection.

I’ve been discussing this with (Guest of Honour) Kim Stanley Robinson at the bar right after the panel, and he thought that such thinking — humans will remain the same while the world around them changes — is ‘a failure of the imagination’. I agree: by the time extreme longevity is possible, we will have developed the right mindset for it.

However — as Annalee Newitz proposed on io9 — we may change so much that we’re no longer human. Well, try to define ‘being human’ first. Then compare that 21st Century definition with that of a 19th Century one: there will be quite a number of differences. As mentioned, humans change, and the yardstick that ‘defines’ humanity changes, as well.

Of course, Annalee voiced the fear that we might become emotionless monsters as we develop extreme longevity. I disagree: there have been monsterous humans throughout history, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot just a recent addition to a long, long list that stretches back to the dawn of human memory. Yet we have always overcome these monsters: why shouldn’t we be able to do that in the future?

I’ll even go a step further: it makes much more sense to be a ruthless dictator and burn all your bridges behind you if your lifespan is short. Conversely, if you realise that you have several centuries to go, it makes little sense to rampage an ecology that you need to support your much longer life. Even beter, as longer lifespans (or even extreme longevity) spread throughout the world population (and it will: see point 3 of this post), then it is in everybody’s best interest to weed out those so hell-bent on power that they are willing to destroy a very long term infrastructure (like say, Gaia) for it.

(Not to mention the non-starter ‘Whatever body you’re in, there you are’. Sorry: last time I looked all of us are constrained to one, and one body only. I personally will highly appreciate it if it lasts much, much longer.)

(2): Immortality is boring: I will be stuck with the same dead-end job/uninteresting life/pointless existence forever.

As mentioned, immortality is an idealised concept: it is an endpoint that we might approach asymptotically, hence it will not happen overnight. Still, quite a few people (some of which were in the audience of the panel) seem to think so. One even literally mentioned that ‘immortality would be a kind of eternal hell as she would be stuck with the same dead-end job forever’.

In the grander scheme of things, holding a steady job throughout one’s carreer may already be a passing fad in times to come. Yes, in times of yore one — before the 20th Century almost always a man — acquired (either through education, experience, inheritance or a combination thereof) a job or profession and stuck to it for the rest of one’s productive life. Exceptions acknowleged, of course, but those were few and far in between.

But nowadays, things are different, completely different, just check out this video: “Shift Happens: Bringing Education into the 21st Century“

A few price quotes:

—1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company they have been employed by for less than one year

—More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company they have worked for for less than five years

…the top 10 in demand jobs for 2010 did not exist in 2004

—We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist…

…using technologies that haven’t been invented…

…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet

Basically, the amount of jobs that you can hold for your complete productive life is shrinking: a ‘job-for-life’ is increasingly becoming a feature of the past.

Therefore, in order to keep making a living people already need to keep educating themselves, constantly. I know what I’m talking about: I train people in my company’s product, and I need to stay updated. I teach and I learn, all the time.

Some people see this as a bad thing: such people like to keep on doing the same things, ad nauseam until their pension. This, though, is increasingly not an option anymore.

I see this as an interesting, and potentially good development: now people (must) keep developing themselves, learning new things, broadening their horizons, expanding both the depth and the breadth of their knowledge.

Isn’t this an exhilarating convergence? As life expectancy grows, life is becoming more interesting, as well. Maybe we are already on the right track to leading longer and more fullfilling lives by being able to change constantly?

Now before some of you — like Athena Andreadis (see point 2) — start to argue that the memory and learning capacity of a human brain is limited, let me make a bet (for a drink, or a symbolic amount like one Euro): I bet that before people live so long that their brain capacity is insufficient to store, work or even understand all the knowledge they build up in their extended lifetime, that there will be not one, but a variety of competing options to extend that brain capacity. For example, check out Andy Clark’s article “Out of Our Brains” in the New York Times (via Futurismic).

(3): Only the superrich will have immortality, and will keep it ‘locked away’ from the rest of the world.

Or point 4 (“We’ll have to deal with the immortality divide”) of Annalee Newitz’s io9 post.

This argument assumes that:

• there is an immediate development that changes life expectancy immensely;
• that this — nearly instantaneous — development is so expensive that only the superrich can afford it;
• that the superrich elite will be able to keep this development completely to themselves;

Personally, I suspect it’s extremely unlikely that a ‘silver bullet’ for highly increased longevity (let alone extreme longevity and forget about immortality) will be developed overnight. It’s hugely more likely that longevity will increase in leaps and bounds, with all kinds of dead alleys, red herrings and fool’s gold (to deftly mix metaphors) along the way. The way almost all scientific research does. The way longevity has been increasing already.

So while I do expect that there will be new treatments that lengthen lifespan, I do, very strongly, suspect that these will not stay with the ultra-healthy among us for long.

Consider: there are about a thousand billionaires in the world right now. There are about 10 million millionaires. By 2030, about two billion new people may join the world middle class (via Goldman Sachs: opens PDF file): adding this to the 1.5 billion middle class people as of 2010, this will total 3.5 billion middle class incomes.

So a big pharmaceutical company would keep its product exclusive to the happy thousand? Even after it has earned back its development costs? And will ignore the 10 million plus other, rich customers? And once the treatment has been proven to work for over a million people, they will not eventually want to sell it to almost 4 billion more customers? That’s not how capitalism works, last time I looked.

Then there is the case of the ghost having escaped the bottle: in science, once something has been proven to be possible, it can be replicated. If an experiment can’t be verifiably repeated, it’s not true science. So if it’s possible (extreme longevity, even immortality) then competing scientists will know that, and they will redouble their efforts to reproduce the same result.

Once a certain development’s time has come, it shows up everywhere. Tesla’s and Marconi’s dispute about who invented radio first is one example. The rise of aviation (once the Wright brothers delivered proof of concept) is another. There are countless more. And these technologies, once new, are now available to almost everybody: radio (is become obsolete by the internet, another technology initially developed for the hapy few — the Pentagon or CERN— available to all), avaition, the utmost majority of modern medicine. Once the cat is out of the bag…

Competition, the desire to sell it to as much markets as possible, the fact that it can be done all will make sure that it eventually becomes available to all. Inevitably.

(4): (a) Biological immortality or biological extreme longevity is impossible; and (b): mind uploading is a pipe dream.

Check out this interview with Aubrey de Grey and David Brin: When Will Life Expectancy Reach 200 Years?

The above gentlemen are talking about a life expectancy of 200 years. While that may sound already unrealistic to some, and a bit unambitious to others (what is 200 years in the face of extreme longevity?), there is a tipping point. As Ronald Bailey explains in his Liberation Biology:

“Researcher reported in the April 2002 issue of Science that life expectancy has been increasing at about two and a half year per decade for the past 160 years. Demographers such as Olshansky, they note, have been consistently wrong in predicting an upper limit to this trend. In 1928, for example, demographer Louis Dublin predicted that average life expectancy in the United States would never exceed 64.75 years. Today it is 77.6 years.”

“At this rate of improvement, the authors of the Science report conclude that “record [average] life expectancy will reach about 100 in six decades”.”

It gets better:

De Grey offers a scenario in which efforts to achieve radical life extension reach “actuarial escape velocit (AEV)”. Recall that for the last 160 years, average life expectancy has increased by two-and-a-half year per decade. What if increases in life expectancy rose at a rate of ten years or more per decade? “The escape velocity cusp is closer than you might guess,” claims de Grey. “Since we are already so long lived, even a thirty percent increase in healthy life span will give the first beneficiaries of rejuvenation therapies another twenty years—an eternity in science—to benefit from second generation therapies that could give another thirty percent, and so on ad infinitum”

Yes, the same Aubrey De Grey interviewed above. The above quote can be found online on PLoS Biology: ’Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now’.

Extreme longevity in this century? Maybe even in our lifetime?

As noted above, David Brin disagrees, as I’m sure many of you do. “There are way too many obstacles,” I hear you say, “there is no low-hanging fruit.” Further cue to David Brin:

All advances to date have involved allowing ever-greater percentages of humanity to hit the “wall” at age 100, and maybe coast a few years beyond. Getting beyond that will require either;
1) THOROUGH nanotechnology, applied down at the INTRA-cellular level, or
2) genetic recoding to enhance repair capabilities in new ways (good news for our great grandchildren, maybe), or
3) gradual replacement of failing parts and systems with prosthetics, or
4) uploading.

Oh, I am willing to be proved wrong, but all of these seem much harder than the zealots think.
a) The intra-cellular world is the next frontier. It now seems huge, complex, involving massive amounts of computing. Will you flood the INSIDES of cells with nanomachines? Good luck.
b) We haven’t a clue how to do #2.
c) #3 will happen in phases. But when the brain fades… well,… see #a
c) re #4 — see #a

(Emphasis mine.)

The Aubrey De Grey/David Brin interview was posted on November 25, 2010. Three days later, this news came out: “Harvard Scientists Reverse the Ageing Process in Mice“. Price quote:

The Harvard group focused on a process called telomere shortening. Most cells in the body contain 23 pairs of chromosomes, which carry our DNA. At the ends of each chromosome is a protective cap called a telomere. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres are snipped shorter, until eventually they stop working and the cell dies or goes into a suspended state called “senescence”. The process is behind much of the wear and tear associated with ageing.

At Harvard, they bred genetically manipulated mice that lacked an enzyme called telomerase that stops telomeres getting shorter. Without the enzyme, the mice aged prematurely and suffered ailments, including a poor sense of smell, smaller brain size, infertility and damaged intestines and spleens. But when DePinho gave the mice injections to reactivate the enzyme, it repaired the damaged tissues and reversed the signs of ageing.

This sounds very much like ‘genetic recoding to enhance repair capabilities in new ways’. And yes, it is only applicable to mice (“Repeating the trick with humans will be more difficult”), and developing a method that works for humans might still be a long way off. Yet, we have gone from “We haven’t a clue how to do #2” to “We have found a method that works in mice”.

So while extreme longevity is probably not around the corner, I believe that it is possible. At the very least we can expect that our life span will continue to increase in the future, as it has done for the past 160 years. Very probably with more than 2-and-a-half year per decade. I strongly suspect that auctuarial escape velocity will not be a matter of if, but of when.

And then extreme longevity is a fact of life.

Finally, as to (b): mind uploading is a pipe dream;

I don’t know.

On the one side, the human brain is an immensely complex organ, of which we still understand very little (even though our knowledge is increasing). It’s also very unclear if a mind based so intimately in a biological body can be ‘transported’ or ‘copied’ to a non-biological mainframe, without considerable losses in either functionality or memory or both.

On the other side, if Moore’s Law holds (and it’s not showing any signs of slacking up yet), then by the time mind uploading is possible — even when it happens only a few decades from now — then there will be a hell of a lot of computing power available to upload into.

Apart from that, if uploading becomes possible, there is still the problem that, in all likeliness, it will be copying your mind into a different substrate, leaving the original behind to die. That’s why I prefer developments of extending lifespan of our biological bodies: it seems the better bet.

Picture credits:

• Blue Trefoil Knot: via Wikipedia;
• Shift Happens: via Shifting Paradigms;
• Intimations: via Photography Blog;
• Intimations of Immortality: via The Millstone;
• Actuarial Escape Velocity: from the PLoS Biology article;
• Golden Trefoil Sculpture: via Into the Deep;

As some of you may have noticed through io9, here is the wonderfully narrated podcast—by the phenomenal Kate Baker—of Kay Kenyon’s “Castoff World”.

Read the full story at io9.

Podcast here:

Link for podcast: Castoff World mp3

Enjoy!

Picture credits:

• Dead Bird Plastic : via Naked Man in the Tree;
• Garbage Patch: via Lindsay Hoshaw;

Kay Kenyon’s latest work, published by Pyr, is a sci-fantasy quartet beginning with Bright of the Sky, a story that introduced readers to the Entire, a tunnel universe next door. Publishers Weekly listed this novel among the top 150 books of 2007. The series has twice been shortlisted for the American Library Association Reading List awards. The final volume, Prince of Storms will appear in January 2010. Her work has been nominated for major awards in the field and translated into French, Russian, Spanish, Czech and audio versions. Recent short stories appeared in Fast Forward 2 and The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two. She lives in eastern Washington state with her husband. She is the chair of a writing conference, Write on the River, and is currently working on a fantasy novel. All of her work has happy endings, except for those with characters who, alas, must die.

Also, check out the exclusive interview Charles A. Tan did with her at SF Signal.

Review Quotes:

Kay Kenyon’s fantastic Castoff World chronicles the life of Child, a young girl whose entire existence has been spent on a garbage island adrift in the ocean. Her only companionship is a sickly grandfather and something she calls Nora — a Nanobotic Oceanic Refuse Accumulator that has continued its mission of collecting pollutants from the water, breaking them down, and transforming them into “good stuff.”

—Explorations: the Barnes & Noble SciFi and Fantasy Blog;

Likewise the events of the touching Castoff World by Kay Kenyon are restricted to a tiny stage — a makeshift Pacific raft — that nonetheless serves as an effective microcosm of broader ecological concerns.

—New Scientist;

Kay Kenyon’s wonderful story Castoff World of a young girl’s life aboard a floating reclamation centre;

—Catherine Hughes;

Castoff World by Kay Kenyon has an amazing dreamlike feel to it. It’s about a girl, her Grappa (older grandfather figure) and a boat called Nora drifting on the ocean. It’s about truth and having to fend for yourself. It’s a bit Big Blue in its feel and the ending made me well up and sigh that Child will now no longer be alone. Beautiful.

—SF Revu;

The last story I want to mention is Kay Kenyon’s Castoff World. The story is about Child and her Grappa floating around on a barge originally intended to clean up the Ocean of pollutants like plastics. The barge has long since lost contact with the people who designed and ran it and it is now floating freely on a dangerous ocean, collecting ever more rubbish. We see the story from Child’s perspective. It’s a very touching story, I particularly liked the subtle presence of artificial intelligence. Beautifully written. This one is probably my favourite in the entire collection.

—Val’s Random Comments;

A story about the “friendship” between the orphan Child and Nora, a “Nanobotic Oceanic Refuse Accumulator” aka “an ocean garbage eating artificial island” which is Child’s only known home. While a bit too short, this story hearkens back to the traditional lost in the world adventure and it’s wonderful.

—Fantasy Book Critic;

An interactive Google Map of story locations from the SHINE anthology:

US:

UK:

ELECTRONIC:

Independents:

Canada:

Germany:

India:

Dropped Packets

Emily Mangan

First of all, I’m very, very sorry for not updating DayBreak Magazine for two months: this story should have gone live on June 25. There were some very urgent developments in my private life and at the day job that needed to be sorted and had top priority. As things seem to have calmed down, I’m trying to catch up on DayBreak and the Shine anthology sites. My sincere apologies to the readers and writers involved.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll try to catch up by publishing a story every Friday (instead of every second Friday).

So first after the hiatus is “Dropped Packets”: here’s a lyrical and bittersweet look at an India that isn’t, but might yet come to be. In contrast to most of the other DayBreak stories, this one is more about the dream rather than the actuality, the vision preceding the change, the pointer to the way up. And it’s never too late to go up, especially as the messages keep raining down . . .

Suniti grabbed the back of Harisha’s shirt and yanked him down to the grey dust-covered concrete. Harisha launched himself again at the worn cable, but she pulled him back.

Harisha tugged at Suniti’s hand. “Dammit, I wish you went to work today. You’re gonna—”

“You are not leaving!” Suniti continued to hold him to the ground, the filtered light from the layers and layers and layers of cable and wire spanning across the warehouses dancing across them.

“I’m going up there. I am. The Age—”

“The Age doesn’t exist.”

“Bye, Suniti.”

Harisha pushed himself off the concrete, his thin shirt stretched out from Suniti’s grasping fingers. He left her there, Suniti, sitting in the thick gray dusk on the cold concrete ground. She wanted to jump after him, to say just the right words to make him change his mind, come back to her, but he was kicking his shoes off, climbing up the cables, up and up, casting hardly a shadow as he disappeared. He dropped the little red note that had fluttered down to him the day before, and it fluttered now, like a sickly bird, alighting on the cables and coming to rest at Suniti’s feet, half covered by the thick stone dust.

Harisha would be back. He’d tried to go up through the Layers before, when they were kids. Yet Suniti was breathing hard and the scuffles of her shoes on the concrete when she stood were unbearably loud in the dim, quiet street. It didn’t echo, as there wasn’t a flat surface untouched by cables large enough to perpetuate the sound. The adrenaline made her blood feel hard in her veins as it coursed through them and slowly she picked up the shoes her brother had kicked off, picked up the note. She couldn’t bring herself to read its madness. The Age did not exist.

The sun was far past noon and filtered down through the everlasting canopy of sagging ropes and cables and wires in small triangles of light that moved and swayed with the vibrations of feet and birds. India had advanced so quickly, growing rapidly in every way, the warehouses grew taller, being built upon each other, leaving little space where they met down below, on the concrete covered ground. But they weren’t being built on anymore. Nothing was stored in them. Technology was piped across the gaps in between, information condensed into binary and further into liquid impulses sent through tubes, networking the warehouses with cold cables that were slowly walling off the sun from the layered alleys below. Suniti saw small children far down the alley chasing after the brightest patches of sun that filtered through, just fleeting dim glows, pushing each other out of the way, opening their mouths underneath like slow red flowers waiting for rain. They didn’t know what was happening in the world, the changes, didn’t know that their hopes and dreams were slowly losing their luster. The food, stored in heavy metal containers in the warehouses, was growing sparse and it left little to hope for.

Suniti looked up, tracing the way Harisha had climbed. He’d been out of sight for minutes but once he found nothing up above in the monotony of cables, she was sure he’d come back. Harisha had never listened to reason and she hated him for it. She leaned her head back against the dusty concrete wall, her shoulders pressed between cold rusty pipes, to which several black cables had been welded, their bright copper showing frayed where the smart casing had been rubbed away.

The air was quite still down here. The people used to be stagnant, gray, but now they were forgotten. Children were still gaggling in the streets, mostly unaware of their situation. As they aged, Suniti knew she would see the gray fill their eyes, the dullness in their skin and their hair. The children, spending most of their time looking up, would learn to look down, learn to dismiss the idea of a sun and bright clothes. They would troll the warehouses, finding toys and food and weapons to sell. India was far behind of the rest of the world, parts forgotten by the government, people forgotten by each other.

But the Age took more every day. The ones who climbed up always left their doors open, their small houses, built into the side of the warehouses, full of their little belongings. Suniti couldn’t bring herself to believe in the Age, a magical place in the rooftops and the sun, wouldn’t let herself. She couldn’t let herself be disappointed, not again. Toying with the idea of hope made it difficult to eat cans of beans salvaged from the warehouses night after night, to see the streets empty slowly, until she was left alone. She didn’t want to be alone.

She opened the little three-inch red note in her hand. The inside was blank, save for very small writing in the bottom right corner: “The Age: Save India.”

Suniti flipped the note away.

“Dammit, Harisha.” She let her breath out, turned around and craned her neck back.

Still no sign of him.

Suniti was much too old for games, for breaking rules, but Harisha’s absence tugged at her, made her fingers and toes restless.

The gaggle of children ran by in a group, pulling the shoes from Suniti’s hands. She managed to keep one from them as it flung to the ground, but the other was eaten up by the mess of tiny fingers scouring the alley for trouble. She picked up and threw the remaining shoe after them and it landed in a puff of gray dust, quiet, insignificant.

She glanced after the way the children had run, feeling very alone, abandoned. The alley was empty, quiet, and she wondered with an ebbing fear if she was the last one here, on the bottom.

Slowly, the grey of the alley hiding her sound and stealing her presence from the stillness, Suniti slipped off her shoes.

She was going to kick Harisha’s ass, once she found him.

The copper was tingly under her bare feet and she stood close to the wall, all the adrenalin-filled muscles in her body straining to pull her up, to keep her up, to push her up. Climbing was much harder than she had expected. The muscles in her legs stretched further than they ever had, her tendons complaining of the strain. Her shoulders were thin and good for slipping between the smallest alleyways, but it seemed they didn’t have the strength inside of them to pull herself up. She was always stepping on her skirts and the matrix of wires and cables swayed and bounced and elastic under her weight.

There were no sounds when she reached the first Layer, and Harisha still hadn’t come down.

Their conversations played back in her head, as if she would never see him again.

She ran her hands along the exposed copper of the cables, trying to see the way Harisha had jumped up so nimbly in her head. She pushed herself up, stepping on her skirt again, nearly pulling herself off the cables with the jerk. Her near fall made her cling for half-seconds before placing another foot. Many nights she had seen red notes fall, landing like quiet little sun petals in the dust. They had all been written with non sequiturs, Sanskrit quotes, and the names to who they were offered. She could feel the crinkly thing in her pocket, hear it every time she bent her leg.

On the second layer, Suniti saw one old woman, dressed in faded green. She was sweeping dust from the cables outside her door, outletted into the stone and metal of the warehouse, her home snug between the inner and outer walls. She didn’t acknowledge Suniti, just watched the grey dust and bits of stone tumbling down through the cables to hit the concrete far below.

Suniti placed another hand on a cable, her whole body shaking. Harisha wasn’t anywhere in sight and she was higher than she’d ever been before, even as a child. She found herself weak, and doubted she could even stand. She couldn’t see the ground anymore, and nothing would keep her from falling through the web of cables, breaking on the concrete far below. She felt so exposed, small, and even the sun became more intense as she climbed, glinting into her eyes, heating the black smart casing around the wires so that they burned her hands.

Suniti’s eyes teared and her muscles locked up when she reached the third Layer. She didn’t think Harisha could have gone this far, but somehow she knew he had climbed farther. He wouldn’t have stopped. The realization that he really was trying to find the Age sent panic though her. The third Layer had few inhabitants, about twenty that she could see reach, and they were old, their faces lined with dust and worry. A man was peeking at Suniti through his tiny square window and when she glanced at him, he shut it tightly.

Little doors and windows and outlets were pushed into the warehouses on either side of the Layer, and thin pigeons fluttered everywhere. Looking down the warehouses in the half-light, down the alley they formed, Suniti couldn’t see the end of them. The Layers seemed to go on forever, and looking down there, trying to find an end, the vertigo caught up with her. There were no straight lines, nothing even. The elder people balanced, their toes and their heels separate heights and it played with Suniti’s sense of gravity.

Harisha was nowhere she could see, up, sideways, or down. Suniti didn’t know what she was doing up here, she was afraid to climb down, and afraid to climb on. The smart casing was hurting her hands, and the cables she sat on swayed in the stiffening breeze, made her nauseous. She closed her eyes and breathed carefully, trying not to vomit.

A little boy dressed in a bright yellow coverall with red ribbons pinned all over it bounced the net of cables. Suniti opened her eyes at the movement, looked up into his face. He was curious, his dark eyes quick, one of his front teeth missing from his twitching smile. His hair was shiny.

“Up,” he said, and climbed away.

Suniti squeezed her cable-chair tighter, looked up into the splotchy and now flickering sunlight. Red notes were fluttering down through the Layers in swarms, caught up and about by the breeze in all directions along the warehouses. The red filled the sky and the pigeons flew from them. The notes caught on the wires, in clothes, in the people’s hair and hands. The breeze scattered the red snow and she caught a note in her fingers, like a red butterfly as it fluttered past, and inside read only one thing: Up.

There were hundreds of the little invitations, raining down all throughout the warehouses and the alleys and there was hardly anyone left to receive them.

Suniti climbed. She pulled herself up with the weak shoulders of hers and the adrenaline subsided and metabolized, her fingers could close around the smart casings again. There was a rhythm to it now, climbing. It hurt her wrists, her fingers white from clutching her body’s weight away from gravity, her hair blowing into her face and stinging her eyes. Everyone had gone somewhere, the little red notes coming and taking them away. She couldn’t hide it anymore, couldn’t deny her wild fantasy of a world-wide roof-top civilization, recycling metal from the warehouses and bring dirt up from the soil to plant anew in the sun. It was either there, or it wasn’t, but she had to know. She’d find Harisha there, she knew, if it existed or not.

The surface was much closer than Suniti had thought, but it seemed like each inch was pure pain. Her muscles were lose and seemed to be gelatinous inside her skin as she pulled herself over the edge of the warehouse roof, her feet sinking right into . . . dirt. Soft black dirt. She kneeled as the sun beat down on her, blinding her.

The costumes she saw were outrageous, the colors vibrant and new. The people painted their faces and their hands and their feet in orange and red and yellow, bold patterns and designs, the paint rubbing off on whatever they touched, leaving a sweet glow in their wake. There were little children, at home on the roof, dirt between their toes as they moved, their dark hair shining in the sun. Suniti felt gray and out of place, but it was so beautiful, so true.

All around her, on the rooftops, people planted in the soil, they trotted back and forth, touting metal scraps, building communication towers on top of the warehouse roofs, out of the warehouse roofs. A small troop of little children stood at the edge of the warehouses, sprinkling off little reds notes to flutter in the wind.

The smell of sweat and excitement was all around her. She could see for miles and miles, each warehouse different, little structures built from scrap metal, green houses, towers, beds of fresh growing things. She was kneeling on top of her world. Harisha had believed in the Age, believed it existed, believed that people were out there who would give their lives to the sun and to India and to the planet. Suniti did now, too. The gap-toothed boy was sitting on the edge of the roof, his feet digging little holes in the soil. He smiled at her and held up a note in the air. Suniti pulled the crinkling paper from her pocket with her tired fingers and they raised their red notes, reaching for the sky, for a new India.

“Dropped Packets” by Emily Mangan. Copyright © 2010 by Emily Mangan.

Picture Credits:

• Oskar Red: via Exit Interiors;
• Enmeshed Wire: via Upwoods;
• An Empty Alley: via Nik Daum;
• Rooftop Garden Signs: via Kostadin Krajcev;
• Rooftop Garden: via China Economic Net;
• Painted Face: via Picsdigger;

Emily Mangan decided several things between the ages of three, five, and seven. First, she decided that she enjoyed writing and penciled a storybook about her brother having a migraine. Second, she decided that she was going to be a veterinarian. And third, while in the bathtub, she hypothesized that if there really were other universes, and if they really ever were to collide someday due to a rogue time machine or similar mishap, the probability that she would come to not exist would be very slim.

Emily won many writing contests as a child, published her work in Upstarts and Skipping Stones Magazine, and now serves on the board of the Young Writers Association, which provides written arts for children in the community. She attends Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, where she also tutors writing and grammar. After she completes her B.S. in zoology, she will tackle the task of becoming a large-animal veterinarian. She enjoys horseback riding, archery, carving rubber stamps, and physics.

An interactive map with story locations:

Dropped Packets

Emily Mangan

First of all, I’m very, very sorry for not updating DayBreak Magazine for two months: this story should have gone live on June 25. There were some very urgent developments in my private life and at the day job that needed to be sorted and had top priority. As things seem to have calmed down, I’m trying to catch up on DayBreak and the Shine anthology sites. My sincere apologies to the readers and writers involved.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll try to catch up by publishing a story every Friday (instead of every second Friday).

So first after the hiatus is “Dropped Packets”: here’s a lyrical and bittersweet look at an India that isn’t, but might yet come to be. In contrast to most of the other DayBreak stories, this one is more about the dream rather than the actuality, the vision preceding the change, the pointer to the way up. And it’s never too late to go up, especially as the messages keep raining down . . .

Suniti grabbed the back of Harisha’s shirt and yanked him down to the grey dust-covered concrete. Harisha launched himself again at the worn cable, but she pulled him back.

Harisha tugged at Suniti’s hand. “Dammit, I wish you went to work today. You’re gonna—”

“You are not leaving!” Suniti continued to hold him to the ground, the filtered light from the layers and layers and layers of cable and wire spanning across the warehouses dancing across them.

“I’m going up there. I am. The Age—”

“The Age doesn’t exist.”

“Bye, Suniti.”

Harisha pushed himself off the concrete, his thin shirt stretched out from Suniti’s grasping fingers. He left her there, Suniti, sitting in the thick gray dusk on the cold concrete ground. She wanted to jump after him, to say just the right words to make him change his mind, come back to her, but he was kicking his shoes off, climbing up the cables, up and up, casting hardly a shadow as he disappeared. He dropped the little red note that had fluttered down to him the day before, and it fluttered now, like a sickly bird, alighting on the cables and coming to rest at Suniti’s feet, half covered by the thick stone dust.

Harisha would be back. He’d tried to go up through the Layers before, when they were kids. Yet Suniti was breathing hard and the scuffles of her shoes on the concrete when she stood were unbearably loud in the dim, quiet street. It didn’t echo, as there wasn’t a flat surface untouched by cables large enough to perpetuate the sound. The adrenaline made her blood feel hard in her veins as it coursed through them and slowly she picked up the shoes her brother had kicked off, picked up the note. She couldn’t bring herself to read its madness. The Age did not exist.

The sun was far past noon and filtered down through the everlasting canopy of sagging ropes and cables and wires in small triangles of light that moved and swayed with the vibrations of feet and birds. India had advanced so quickly, growing rapidly in every way, the warehouses grew taller, being built upon each other, leaving little space where they met down below, on the concrete covered ground. But they weren’t being built on anymore. Nothing was stored in them. Technology was piped across the gaps in between, information condensed into binary and further into liquid impulses sent through tubes, networking the warehouses with cold cables that were slowly walling off the sun from the layered alleys below. Suniti saw small children far down the alley chasing after the brightest patches of sun that filtered through, just fleeting dim glows, pushing each other out of the way, opening their mouths underneath like slow red flowers waiting for rain. They didn’t know what was happening in the world, the changes, didn’t know that their hopes and dreams were slowly losing their luster. The food, stored in heavy metal containers in the warehouses, was growing sparse and it left little to hope for.

Suniti looked up, tracing the way Harisha had climbed. He’d been out of sight for minutes but once he found nothing up above in the monotony of cables, she was sure he’d come back. Harisha had never listened to reason and she hated him for it. She leaned her head back against the dusty concrete wall, her shoulders pressed between cold rusty pipes, to which several black cables had been welded, their bright copper showing frayed where the smart casing had been rubbed away.

The air was quite still down here. The people used to be stagnant, gray, but now they were forgotten. Children were still gaggling in the streets, mostly unaware of their situation. As they aged, Suniti knew she would see the gray fill their eyes, the dullness in their skin and their hair. The children, spending most of their time looking up, would learn to look down, learn to dismiss the idea of a sun and bright clothes. They would troll the warehouses, finding toys and food and weapons to sell. India was far behind of the rest of the world, parts forgotten by the government, people forgotten by each other.

But the Age took more every day. The ones who climbed up always left their doors open, their small houses, built into the side of the warehouses, full of their little belongings. Suniti couldn’t bring herself to believe in the Age, a magical place in the rooftops and the sun, wouldn’t let herself. She couldn’t let herself be disappointed, not again. Toying with the idea of hope made it difficult to eat cans of beans salvaged from the warehouses night after night, to see the streets empty slowly, until she was left alone. She didn’t want to be alone.

She opened the little three-inch red note in her hand. The inside was blank, save for very small writing in the bottom right corner: “The Age: Save India.”

Suniti flipped the note away.

“Dammit, Harisha.” She let her breath out, turned around and craned her neck back.

Still no sign of him.

Suniti was much too old for games, for breaking rules, but Harisha’s absence tugged at her, made her fingers and toes restless.

The gaggle of children ran by in a group, pulling the shoes from Suniti’s hands. She managed to keep one from them as it flung to the ground, but the other was eaten up by the mess of tiny fingers scouring the alley for trouble. She picked up and threw the remaining shoe after them and it landed in a puff of gray dust, quiet, insignificant.

She glanced after the way the children had run, feeling very alone, abandoned. The alley was empty, quiet, and she wondered with an ebbing fear if she was the last one here, on the bottom.

Slowly, the grey of the alley hiding her sound and stealing her presence from the stillness, Suniti slipped off her shoes.

She was going to kick Harisha’s ass, once she found him.

The copper was tingly under her bare feet and she stood close to the wall, all the adrenalin-filled muscles in her body straining to pull her up, to keep her up, to push her up. Climbing was much harder than she had expected. The muscles in her legs stretched further than they ever had, her tendons complaining of the strain. Her shoulders were thin and good for slipping between the smallest alleyways, but it seemed they didn’t have the strength inside of them to pull herself up. She was always stepping on her skirts and the matrix of wires and cables swayed and bounced and elastic under her weight.

There were no sounds when she reached the first Layer, and Harisha still hadn’t come down.

Their conversations played back in her head, as if she would never see him again.

She ran her hands along the exposed copper of the cables, trying to see the way Harisha had jumped up so nimbly in her head. She pushed herself up, stepping on her skirt again, nearly pulling herself off the cables with the jerk. Her near fall made her cling for half-seconds before placing another foot. Many nights she had seen red notes fall, landing like quiet little sun petals in the dust. They had all been written with non sequiturs, Sanskrit quotes, and the names to who they were offered. She could feel the crinkly thing in her pocket, hear it every time she bent her leg.

On the second layer, Suniti saw one old woman, dressed in faded green. She was sweeping dust from the cables outside her door, outletted into the stone and metal of the warehouse, her home snug between the inner and outer walls. She didn’t acknowledge Suniti, just watched the grey dust and bits of stone tumbling down through the cables to hit the concrete far below.

Suniti placed another hand on a cable, her whole body shaking. Harisha wasn’t anywhere in sight and she was higher than she’d ever been before, even as a child. She found herself weak, and doubted she could even stand. She couldn’t see the ground anymore, and nothing would keep her from falling through the web of cables, breaking on the concrete far below. She felt so exposed, small, and even the sun became more intense as she climbed, glinting into her eyes, heating the black smart casing around the wires so that they burned her hands.

Suniti’s eyes teared and her muscles locked up when she reached the third Layer. She didn’t think Harisha could have gone this far, but somehow she knew he had climbed farther. He wouldn’t have stopped. The realization that he really was trying to find the Age sent panic though her. The third Layer had few inhabitants, about twenty that she could see reach, and they were old, their faces lined with dust and worry. A man was peeking at Suniti through his tiny square window and when she glanced at him, he shut it tightly.

Little doors and windows and outlets were pushed into the warehouses on either side of the Layer, and thin pigeons fluttered everywhere. Looking down the warehouses in the half-light, down the alley they formed, Suniti couldn’t see the end of them. The Layers seemed to go on forever, and looking down there, trying to find an end, the vertigo caught up with her. There were no straight lines, nothing even. The elder people balanced, their toes and their heels separate heights and it played with Suniti’s sense of gravity.

Harisha was nowhere she could see, up, sideways, or down. Suniti didn’t know what she was doing up here, she was afraid to climb down, and afraid to climb on. The smart casing was hurting her hands, and the cables she sat on swayed in the stiffening breeze, made her nauseous. She closed her eyes and breathed carefully, trying not to vomit.

A little boy dressed in a bright yellow coverall with red ribbons pinned all over it bounced the net of cables. Suniti opened her eyes at the movement, looked up into his face. He was curious, his dark eyes quick, one of his front teeth missing from his twitching smile. His hair was shiny.

“Up,” he said, and climbed away.

Suniti squeezed her cable-chair tighter, looked up into the splotchy and now flickering sunlight. Red notes were fluttering down through the Layers in swarms, caught up and about by the breeze in all directions along the warehouses. The red filled the sky and the pigeons flew from them. The notes caught on the wires, in clothes, in the people’s hair and hands. The breeze scattered the red snow and she caught a note in her fingers, like a red butterfly as it fluttered past, and inside read only one thing: Up.

There were hundreds of the little invitations, raining down all throughout the warehouses and the alleys and there was hardly anyone left to receive them.

Suniti climbed. She pulled herself up with the weak shoulders of hers and the adrenaline subsided and metabolized, her fingers could close around the smart casings again. There was a rhythm to it now, climbing. It hurt her wrists, her fingers white from clutching her body’s weight away from gravity, her hair blowing into her face and stinging her eyes. Everyone had gone somewhere, the little red notes coming and taking them away. She couldn’t hide it anymore, couldn’t deny her wild fantasy of a world-wide roof-top civilization, recycling metal from the warehouses and bring dirt up from the soil to plant anew in the sun. It was either there, or it wasn’t, but she had to know. She’d find Harisha there, she knew, if it existed or not.

The surface was much closer than Suniti had thought, but it seemed like each inch was pure pain. Her muscles were lose and seemed to be gelatinous inside her skin as she pulled herself over the edge of the warehouse roof, her feet sinking right into . . . dirt. Soft black dirt. She kneeled as the sun beat down on her, blinding her.

The costumes she saw were outrageous, the colors vibrant and new. The people painted their faces and their hands and their feet in orange and red and yellow, bold patterns and designs, the paint rubbing off on whatever they touched, leaving a sweet glow in their wake. There were little children, at home on the roof, dirt between their toes as they moved, their dark hair shining in the sun. Suniti felt gray and out of place, but it was so beautiful, so true.

All around her, on the rooftops, people planted in the soil, they trotted back and forth, touting metal scraps, building communication towers on top of the warehouse roofs, out of the warehouse roofs. A small troop of little children stood at the edge of the warehouses, sprinkling off little reds notes to flutter in the wind.

The smell of sweat and excitement was all around her. She could see for miles and miles, each warehouse different, little structures built from scrap metal, green houses, towers, beds of fresh growing things. She was kneeling on top of her world. Harisha had believed in the Age, believed it existed, believed that people were out there who would give their lives to the sun and to India and to the planet. Suniti did now, too. The gap-toothed boy was sitting on the edge of the roof, his feet digging little holes in the soil. He smiled at her and held up a note in the air. Suniti pulled the crinkling paper from her pocket with her tired fingers and they raised their red notes, reaching for the sky, for a new India.

“Dropped Packets” by Emily Mangan. Copyright © 2010 by Emily Mangan.

Picture Credits:

• Oskar Red: via Exit Interiors;
• Enmeshed Wire: via Upwoods;
• An Empty Alley: via Nik Daum;
• Rooftop Garden Signs: via Kostadin Krajcev;
• Rooftop Garden: via China Economic Net;
• Painted Face: via Picsdigger;

Emily Mangan decided several things between the ages of three, five, and seven. First, she decided that she enjoyed writing and penciled a storybook about her brother having a migraine. Second, she decided that she was going to be a veterinarian. And third, while in the bathtub, she hypothesized that if there really were other universes, and if they really ever were to collide someday due to a rogue time machine or similar mishap, the probability that she would come to not exist would be very slim.

Emily won many writing contests as a child, published her work in Upstarts and Skipping Stones Magazine, and now serves on the board of the Young Writers Association, which provides written arts for children in the community. She attends Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, where she also tutors writing and grammar. After she completes her B.S. in zoology, she will tackle the task of becoming a large-animal veterinarian. She enjoys horseback riding, archery, carving rubber stamps, and physics.

An interactive map with story locations:

No Dominion

Christopher L. Bennett

There are a number of widespread misunderstandings about fiction set in a future where things have changed for the better. A major one is that in a better society there is no room for conflict. Well, that is simply wrong: if a future is better it doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Nevertheless, a lot of people immediately replace ‘better future’ with ‘Utopia’ and subsequently ‘Utopia’ with ‘boring perfect place’. This is simplified black-and-white thinking, which quite often is one-directional, as well: there are thousands of ‘plausible’ ways in which the future goes down the drain, but the moment one writer tries to depict a better future, that extra light is immediately blinding and all-encompassing.

Or maybe a better future could mean one where the grayscale is just a bit more light?

Similarly, when we talk about immortality—or longevity, or extreme longevity—then the default assumption very often is that this must be a very bad thing indeed: see, for example, Four Arguments Against Immortality (on io9). And even when a more optimistic person tries to highlight the positive sides of longevity (Four Arguments For Immortality), the comments are mostly against it. Again, a lot of the thinking here is a reduction to the black-and-white sides of a topic, not the more realistic approach of a grayscale.

Again, maybe the positive effects of longevity may outweigh the negative ones?

The danger of seeing only the positive sides of a new development is underestimating the dangers—a good point that, unfortunately, is made ad nauseam and often the only point made. The danger of seeing only the negative parts of a new development is overlooking the huge potential benefits in the near and farther future. Obviously, both aspects need to be investigated: but I strongly suspect that a huge majority of the SF community is blinkered by looking at the negative aspects of future developments only.

Therefore, should airflight pioneers like the Wright brothers have stopped their efforts because flying was too dangerous? Should medicine pioneers like Louis Pasteur have stopped their efforts because curing too many people will lead to overpopulation? So should we stop research towards longevity (which basically every medical advancement is doing), as well, because it will increase overpopulation (keep in mind that in most countries that experience higher life expectancy, like Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Holland—to name but a few—the fertility rates are decreasing, as well)?

Now, let’s go to a future that has pushed back death, where a lot of things have changed for the better, and where there is still plenty of room for conflict . . . and murder.

A lot of people think homicide investigation is easy these days, now that you can just interview the victims.

Generally, they’re right, at least in the industrialised world, and increasingly elsewhere as death prevention gets more affordable. The majority of homicides anymore are crimes of passion or stupidity, committed by people who didn’t stop to think about emergency cerebral oxygen supplies and secondary circulation pumps. Typically you just have to wait until the victim wakes up and ask who killed them.

(I know you’re wondering, why not call it attempted homicide, then? Some people do. I don’t. I’ve died myself, and let me tell you, reversible or not, there’s nothing impermanent about it.)

But those aren’t the cases I get called in for. The local cops can handle those. For a victim like Isabelle Warner, a specialist has to be summoned. Which is part of what makes it difficult right there. Homicide used to be so common that every city had experts within minutes of the scene. That’s still true in places where death prevention is a luxury of the rich, or where governments still think keeping the death rate up is better population control than limiting the birth rate (as if that ever worked before). In a place like Onogoroshima, though, a killer’s trail can have hours to cool before an expert can arrive.

Of course they sent me the full sensory record of the crime scene, which I studied in depth on the flight in from Brisbane. “Crime scene” was a misnomer, though, since the site of the murder hadn’t been identified. This killer had been smart — an exception to the rule. Onogoroshima was an arcology complex in the Philippine Sea, one of many such artificial islands springing up around the world these days — compact, self-sustaining greenhouse ecosystems that accommodated tens of millions apiece without placing heavy demands on the Earth’s biosphere. Onogoroshima itself was a huge artificial atoll with a freshwater lake in the center. Enclosed and protected from ocean winds, the lake had slow and turbulent currents that resisted prediction. So Isabelle could’ve been dumped from just about anywhere on the eastern shore and drifted an unknown distance and direction before she was discovered by an early-morning boater.

I viewed the scene as the local cops had experienced it, sharing everything they’d seen, heard, felt, and smelled. Isabelle Warner was a tall, attractive woman with strawberry blond hair, no less than thirty-five years old. Her file said sixty-five, born 1993. Her killer had stripped her naked and wrapped her in a white sheet before setting her afloat. There were no obvious signs of sexual assault, or of any assault aside from a diffuse burn mark on the back of the neck. That was odd. Generally, if you wanted to kill someone these days, you had to destroy the brain past any possibility of regeneration and eliminate any backup memory and cognitive implants as well. So smart, premeditated murder tended to be a messy business. To see an assault this subtle was unusual for me. It looked like the work of a surgical laser tuned to focus underneath the skin. The killer had probably targeted her backup oxygen supply and memory chips as well as her brainstem, but hadn’t destroyed the gross structure of the brain. It was a risk for a killer; natural anoxic damage could be repaired if caught within six to eight hours, and Isabelle was found within the margin. Memory, skills, and identity would be lost, but the survivor could develop a new personality. But maybe that was enough for this killer. Maybe Isabelle had seen something or known something she shouldn’t have. Some killers didn’t mind if their victims survived, so long as their memories didn’t.

Still, with the murder scene unidentified and the evidence washed away by the lake, I’d have my work cut out for me. If I didn’t piece this together quickly, the killer could disappear, adopt a new identity (in the more conventional sense), and be free and clear to kill again — maybe permanently this time.

But I wouldn’t let that happen. I had enough death on my conscience already.

I was met at the airport by a nervous, hopeful man I immediately pegged as the lead investigator. “Detective Chief Inspector Craig?” he asked. “Tamara Craig?”

“That’s right.”

“Hi. Welcome. Assistant Inspector Istfan Majid. Call me Steve.”

I shook his hand. “Inspector.” He blinked, but didn’t react beyond that. He seemed a pleasant enough man, a bit heavyset but fit, probably forty-ish. Warm brown skin, a few shades lighter than my own. No wedding ring, but he probably had little trouble finding dates. Still, I wasn’t here to socialise.

Majid offered to take my minimal luggage — a classic gentleman. I indulged him; I didn’t want anything slowing me down. He offered to show me to my hotel, but I asked to go straight to the victim.

“We’re in luck,” Majid told me in the pedicab as we rode into the arcology proper. “The perp underestimated how well-equipped Ms. Warner was. Made sure to fry all her cerebral implants, but missed what was in her blood.”

My brows lifted. “Genetic memory?”

Majid nodded. “She’s really on the cutting edge.”

Nearly a century ago, an experiment with flatworms seemed to show that memory was stored in RNA and could be transferred from one organism to another. But the experiment had been an unrepeatable fluke — pardon the pun — and later research showed that memory worked in a completely different way, unfortunately for the science fiction writers who’d embraced memory RNA as a plot device. But decades later, nanotechnologists had begun researching the possibilities of engineered DNA as a data storage medium, and in time they made science fiction into reality (yet again). Now it was possible, with the help of transcriptor biochips, to have your memories redundantly recorded in DNA packets that travelled throughout your bloodstream, an extra backup in case something happened to both your brain and your primary backup chips. But it was barely out of prototype stage, only recently approved for human use and still quite costly. Had Warner had reason to take extra precautions against death?

“So she’ll recover her full memory?”

“Most of it, probably,” Majid said. “Though it’ll take time to retrain the nerve pathways, assimilate a whole lifetime all over again. It could be weeks, maybe a month or two before she’s lucid enough to tell us who killed her. If she even remembers. The DNA encoding isn’t instantaneous, apparently.”

I nodded. She wouldn’t remember the murder itself, which would be a mercy for her, but an inconvenience for us. But hopefully her memories could point us to the most likely suspect. “Any way of reading the memory traces from her bloodstream?”

He shook his head. “No more than with any other kind of backup memory. Otherwise people could steal each other’s memories just by punching them in the nose.”

“Right. Good point.” Personal memory encoding was too subjective — not discrete data files, but a web of associations unique to each brain. The engrams would only make sense to her own brain once it reassimilated them and fit the pieces back together in the right pattern. Human memory and personality weren’t something you could copy and transfer like software files; that was one sci-fi conceit that remained a fantasy. Survival of the self still depended on survival of the brain; technology could supplement and protect it, but never replace it. And so humans remained mortal, and murder remained a crime.

I knew I should look into getting a genetic memory upgrade myself; given my speciality, I could justify the expense. But I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. There were some painful memories I wouldn’t mind losing.

But then, those were the very memories I could least afford to forget.

Isabelle Warner was slowly coming back from the dead. She was on full life support, but her blood was flowing again and she looked less like a corpse. The doctors were taking care to restore oxygen to her tissues gradually to minimise ischemic damage. That could be repaired, but there was no point in doing more damage than necessary.

Takeshi Ozaki, the grey-haired medical examiner, grunted as he, Majid, and I looked her over. “Not much to see here,” he said. “So busy saving a life they don’t bother to preserve any evidence.”

I gave him a sour look. “Your job would be easier if they just plain died.”

“Damn straight.”

“So what can you tell me?”

He looked to Majid. “Cause of death was what you thought, Steve. Laser probe to the base of the skull. Someone didn’t want to make a mess.”

“But there were burns on the skin,” I said. “We’re not talking about an act of surgical precision.”

“No. Someone trying to be surgical, but failing. There’s collateral damage to the surrounding tissues.”

“Their hands shook?” Majid asked.

“Maybe. But most of the collateral damage preceded the targeted destruction. I’d call it hesitation marks. He hasn’t killed before, not this way at least. Some of it came during, though, so yeah, there was some shakiness.”

“Emotion,” I said. “The killer cared for her. Didn’t want to damage her beauty. In their own way, they cherished her. Wanted to honour her in death. Hence the ritual quality. The killer didn’t just wrap her in plastic and dump her, but swathed her in a pure white sheet and set her afloat on the lake.”

“Just one problem there, DCI Craig,” Ozaki said. “Nobody’s had sex with her, consensual or otherwise, for at least two weeks.”

“Maybe we’re not dealing with a ‘he’?” Majid suggested.

“Lesbian sex leaves traces too,” Ozaki told him.

I looked over her body. “No signs of a struggle?”

“Nope.”

“Any drugs or foreign nanotes in her system?” Ozaki shook his head. “Then she knew her attacker. Let them in, let them get close.”

“Let them take her clothes off,” Majid added.

I threw him a look. “If you were the killer, and she was willing to get naked for you, wouldn’t you wait until after you rooted her?”

“Oh. Damn, yeah. So first he kills her, then he strips her.” He frowned. “But not to rape her. Just to . . . why? To humiliate her?”

“Then why wrap her in a sheet? Why remove her clothes yet try to preserve her modesty?” In an old mystery story, it might have been done to make her harder to identify. But now we had genetic testing, biometrics, phones in our heads, traceable biochips and nanofibers throughout our bodies . . . it just didn’t add up. I shook my head. “Maybe it’s part of the ritual. We’ll find out when we get the killer.”

“One more thing,” Ozaki said. “There’s evidence that she may have died once before.”

“Violently?” I asked.

“Natural causes,” he said, his tone apologetic. “Signs of a brain aneurysm, almost completely healed.”

“How long ago?”

He shrugged. “No way to be sure without an autopsy. Anywhere from three to six years ago. There’s nothing about it in her medical records. But they’re pretty sparse. Nothing from before she came here four years ago.”

“And have you considered checking elsewhere?”

“We’ve been trying,” Majid told me. “Nothing’s turned up yet.”

I didn’t like it. There could be any number of reasons for that, from a dark, hidden past to sloppy data-handling practices. I hoped the reason for her murder could be found closer at hand.

The only physical evidence we had besides Isabelle herself was the sheet she’d been wrapped in. It was a dead end. The outside had been washed clean by the lake, and the inside bore no fingerprints and no DNA besides Isabelle’s. The killer had worn gloves and possibly even a surgical mask. The sheet itself was a standard type, synthesised from a fabricator of the sort found in most of the hotels and stores in the arcology complex. We couldn’t match it to the specific fabricator unless we knew which one out of thousands to test.

There was no way to track her movements either. She’d put her neurophone on private mode several weeks ago, making its location untraceable. And Onogoroshima didn’t have video surveillance in most places; it was redundant since most people had cameras in their clothes or eyeballs, and not in great demand since there was little violent crime here. Any resident might have video of Isabelle with her killer, but unless we could narrow down just where and when the murder took place, we’d have to subpoena and search the private videos of over twenty million people. Even if we could narrow the number, no judge would consider such a subpoena unless the victim died permanently.

Isabelle lived and worked on the local university campus, a bioengineer working on a project to modify methanotrophic bacteria and integrate them safely into the ecosystem. “Methane’s twenty times more potent a greenhouse gas than cee-oh-two,” explained Rosa Manzano, a cute, diminutive Filipina who was Isabelle’s colleague and roommate, as she led us toward their apartment. “So the more of it we can scrub out of the air, the more carbon-producing humans the planet can safely support.”

“Isn’t that just a stopgap, though?” Majid said.

“There’s no magic formula for the atmosphere,” Manzano said with a flip of her short brown hair. Nearly everything about her was what they used to call ‘perky,’ though her perk was subdued under the circumstances. “It evolves like everything else. We can’t go back to the way things used to be, even if we killed off most of humanity — which, well, isn’t so easy anymore. Thank God,” she added, crossing herself. I looked away uneasily. “So we need to find a new equilibrium, one that works for humanity and the Earth. It’s about stability, not nostalgia.”

“Is this research critical enough to require advanced memory security?” I asked. “Such as a genetic memory backup?”

Manzano frowned. “It’s important, sure, and Isabelle’s a valuable part of the team. But there are people working on this all over the planet. It’s not like she had some unique knowledge worth killing for or something. I mean, I knew she’d gotten the upgrade, and she convinced her insurance to cover part of it because of her work, but it’s not a requirement.”

The researchers’ apartment didn’t reveal much about Isabelle. It wasn’t Spartan; on the contrary, it was cluttered with all sorts of trendy art, gadgets, and clothes, all the latest things. But Isabelle’s half of the apartment contained nothing but the latest things. There was no evidence of a life nearly seven decades old, no family photos, no childhood toys or heirlooms, nothing.

“Yeah, that’s Isabelle for you,” Manzano said when I pointed this out. “She’s always looking forward to what’s next, what’s new. Always looking to the future. Me too. It’s why we’re in this job. We’ve got a long future ahead of us, so we’d better make it a good one, right? But Isabelle’s even more . . .” She frowned. “Is? Was? Will she be the same person after this?”

“No,” I said. “You’re never the same.”

At Manzano’s worried look, Majid threw me an irritated glance and told her, “Of course it’s a traumatic event, and it will take time for her to heal. But she should recover her memory and her familiar personality almost completely. It helps having friends and familiar surroundings to reinforce the memory pathways.”

“Old memories would help too,” I said. “Does she keep anything in a storage facility? Possessions that aren’t this recent?”

Manzano shrugged. “She didn’t bring anything with her when she came here. And she generally just recycles her old stuff when she gets tired of it. If it’s not new, she’s not interested.”

“People who look to the future are generally running from something in their past,” I said. “Did she ever talk about her life before you knew her?”

“Never,” Manzano said after a moment’s thought. “Whenever I brought it up, she changed the subject back to me.” Her cheeks coloured adorably. “It’s easy to get me to talk. I kind of monopolise our conversations, and she lets me.”

“What about her present?” Majid asked. “Does she talk about her social life? Friends, coworkers, lovers?”

“Oh, I know pretty much all of them. We travel in the same circles.”

The list of names Manzano proceeded to give us wasn’t very long. Lack of serious commitments at Isabelle’s age wasn’t surprising in an arcology dweller. Universal death prevention was one of the incentives that drew people to places like this, easing the population burden elsewhere; but the tradeoff was a stricter-than-usual set of limits on childbirth. So a lot of the people who chose to emigrate here were career singles. Isabelle was a wallflower next to her roommate, though. They both attracted male attention about equally (female too; with childbirth out of the equation, arcology dwellers tended to be flexible about preference), but Isabelle was willing to defer to Rosa most of the time. While Isabelle wasn’t chaste, neither was it surprising to Manzano that she hadn’t had sex in weeks. “Well, except virtually,” she added. “She’s a lot more active there.” Most people were, so that didn’t strike me as immediately significant.

“And how about the two of you?” Majid asked. “Have you ever been . . . involved?”

She gave a nervous giggle. “Just casually, a few times. But only virtually!” She insisted. “As a game, you know. I mean, to see each other’s real faces while we did it — that would be too weird.”

“For you, or for her?”

“Both of us. We’re friends! Co-workers! We’d be too busy giggling in embarrassment to get anything done.” She shrugged. “Look, it wasn’t anything serious. Even in virt, we mostly just giggled a lot and messed around. You can probably find the sessions in my database, I never bothered to delete them.” She smiled at Majid. “Feel free to watch.”

Majid blushed. I thanked her and led Majid out the door before he embarrassed himself any further. “What were you going for?” I asked. “That maybe she had an unrequited crush on Isabelle?”

“Just exploring all the possibilities. You said yourself, the killer cherishes her beauty. And it sounds like Rosa is the closest person to Isabelle.”

Police-manual boilerplate: the ones closest to the victim are the most likely suspects. In my job, I run into so many detectives who’ve never dealt with homicide before and have to wing it based on half-forgotten courses and old cop shows. Well, I guess it’s better than the alternative. “Majid, she’s tiny. She couldn’t carry Isabelle across the room, let alone to the lake.”

“She could’ve had help.”

“She didn’t show a trace of guilt or defensiveness. No fear of being caught. Save your energy for when we find a more likely suspect.”

He conceded the point. We walked in silence for a while, and I concentrated on running Manzano’s list of names through the local databases I’d downloaded into my neurophone. Nothing jumped out, so I began running them against Isabelle’s computer records. Then I noticed Majid studying me. “What?” I asked, minimising the text window on my retina with a thought.

“People don’t only look to the future because they’re running from the past. Sometimes it’s just because the future is worth looking forward to.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Tamara — DCI Craig — look at what we’re doing. Just thirty years ago, even twenty, that woman back there would’ve been in grief, devastated because she’d never see her friend again. Now, death is just a temporary setback. So yeah, I can understand looking forward to what comes next.”

“People still die, Majid. People who don’t come back. That’s the reason for what we’re doing. Remember that.”

“I do,” he said. “I remember that we have a chance to prevent it, not just punish it. If you ask me, that makes our job even more important.”

“It’s just as important either way. Murderers need to be punished.” I turned away and went back to the name search.

But his gaze stayed on me. “Tell me, DCI Craig. What are you running from?”

Surely he didn’t expect an answer. It was hard enough to relive (the blood, the flames, Jason screaming) without talking about it.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to dwell on it for long, since the search turned up a hit. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“Russell Takizawa. Manzano called him a passing acquaintance, but his username shows up on the same virt sex site Isabelle used, and at a lot of the same times she was online. They must’ve been virt sex partners pretty regularly.”

Majid nodded. “Manzano said he dated Isabelle two or three times, only got to first base, but then she broke it off for no apparent reason.”

“It seems he sent her a lot of calls and mails that she didn’t answer.” I sorted through the files in my field of view. “She had him spam-blocked . . . even set up a warning cordon.” That was a do-it-yourself restraining order; if his neurophone came within fifty meters of hers, she would be notified and he’d get an automatic mail warning that the police would be called if he didn’t leave the proscribed zone. That explained the privacy block on her locator signal. “What do you want to bet it wasn’t her idea to meet in person?”

“He liked her in virt, she turned down his invitations, so he cracked her personal data and tracked her down, pretended it was their first meeting.”

“But then he let something slip that clued her in that he was stalking her, and she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.”

“But he could shut down his locator signal too. Get close without her knowing.”

I called up a map. “I’m getting a location for him now.”

“If that’s not a fake signal,” Majid said.

“We’ll soon find out.”

We broke into a run. Jason’s screams followed behind me, accusing me. But Majid was wrong. I wasn’t running away from them. They were what drove me to hunt murderers so relentlessly.

Because I was a murderer too.

Russell Takizawa was exactly where his locator said he was — until he spotted us. Then he ran. His locator signal shut off a moment later, but we’d called in backup and already had him surrounded. We tracked him down the old-fashioned way, with eyeballs and feet.

“Look, I didn’t do anything to her!” Takizawa insisted later in the police station’s interview room. “How could I? I couldn’t even get near her.”

“You could cut off your locator signal easily enough,” I told him.

“So I could do what, sneak up on her? Then I’d just scare her off even worse. I didn’t want that.”

“And what did you do to scare her off before?” Majid asked.

“Nothing! I don’t know! All I did was ask a few questions and she just went nuts on me. I was just trying to patch things up, not hurt her.”

“Then why did you run from us?”

“Are you kidding? The way she kept threatening to sic the cops on me? As soon as I heard she was dead, I figured she’d try to pin it on me the minute she woke up.”

“So what did she have against you, exactly?” I asked. “What kind of questions did you ask her?”

Takizawa looked away, his nervousness belying his words. “The usual. Just the questions you ask anyone when you’re trying to get to know them. Where are you from, where’d you go to school, what were your folks like. She didn’t like to answer those.”

“Yeah, we got that. But you kept prying, didn’t you? You don’t like to leave well enough alone. You don’t let privacy keep you from finding things out about a woman.”

He sank in his chair. “Okay. I admit it. I know you’re not supposed to track down your virt sex partners if they don’t invite you. But it’s not a crime. And we really hit it off in there. We made a connection. It was more than just sex. The way she talked about the future . . . it was inspiring. I got the feeling she was part of something important, part of making the world better. She wouldn’t say what exactly, but there was just this air about her that she was doing something special. I wanted to be connected to that. To her. But she kept saying no.”

“So you ignored her wishes,” Majid said, “hacked her private info, and approached her under false pretenses.”

“Yeah, I didn’t tell her we’d met before. I didn’t want to scare her off. I was going to tell her eventually, once we’d . . .”

“Made virtual into reality?”

Takizawa glared at Majid. “Not like that. Once we’d gotten close enough that she’d understand I wasn’t a creep or something — that I was inspired by what she did, who she was, and wanted to share it with her.”

“But something tipped her off before you were ready,” I said. “Did your ‘questions’ get a little too pushy?”

He sighed. “Maybe. Okay, maybe I don’t like not having answers. I’m a Googler. So’s half the human race. I wanted to know more about her, to get close to her, but she wouldn’t open up. So I searched. I didn’t get any hits on her name more than four years old, so I put her picture online, looked for matches. I didn’t get anything definite. But then a guy mailed me. He wanted to know about Isabelle. Said he was an old friend looking to get back in touch. Wanted to know where to reach her.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Sure. Seemed harmless enough. Next time I saw Isabelle, I mentioned the guy, asked how it went. She went ballistic on me! Accused me of invading her privacy, stalking her, all sorts of things. I tried to explain, but it just freaked her out worse. She put that cordon on me and stopped answering my mails. I haven’t seen her since.” He blinked rapidly several times. “And when I heard what happened to her, I couldn’t even go see her. Hell, I don’t know if she’ll even remember me.”

“Maybe you’d like that,” Majid said. “If she lost her memory of what you did to her and you could start all over again.”

“God, no! We had something. A real spark, intangible, you know? Take away her memories, that changes who she is. She might as well be really dead then. And what about her work? That knowledge in her head, that’s our future! I couldn’t jeopardise that.”

His expression hardened. “You want to find the guy who did this, find that old friend. His name’s Charles Trendler. It was after I gave him her address that she freaked out.” He winced. “Oh, God, maybe this is my fault. How could I have been so stupid?”

“We only have your word this Trendler even exists,” Majid said. “You’ve already admitted you’re capable of lying when it suits you.”

“Hey, I have proof. The mail’s still in my database. Just like I have proof I was nowhere near Isabelle that night.” One of the first things he’d told us was to check his jacket’s memory. The garment had recorded video and audio of his visit to a nightclub that evening.

“You’re a pretty good hacker. You could’ve forged the video.”

“Maybe. But I was in a public place. Find the other people there. They’ll have vids too, and I’ll be in them. They can’t all be forgeries.”

Takizawa’s lawyer arrived then and made him shut up. As we left the interview room, Majid asked, “So what do you think?”

“I think he’s a creep and at least a borderline stalker. Whether he’s a killer . . . well, we have some alibi evidence to check out.”

“I don’t know,” Majid said. “He sounded pretty . . . idealistic.”

“Majid, this whole arcology is full of idealists. Easy enough to perfect the act.”

Majid was quiet for a moment, fidgeting as we walked down the hall. “You know . . . just looking into someone’s past doesn’t make you a stalker. Sometimes it’s out of concern.”

I caught the subtext — he wasn’t talking about Takizawa. I pulled him into an empty room. “What do you know?” I asked with heat in my voice.

“Don’t take that betrayed tone, Craig. I saw the way you looked me over like a suspect when we met. Trying to figure me out. It’s what we do. We’re as nosy as Takizawa, we just do it for the law.”

“What . . . do you . . . know?”

He sighed. “What’s in the public record,” he said in a gentle voice. “The car crash. You and your son. You didn’t have any kind of death prevention. The doctors were able to bring you back within an hour, but your boy was too far gone.” Silence for several moments. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

He caught the emphasis on the pronoun. “It’s not yours either, Tamara.”

“The hell it wasn’t! I was a stupid Luddite. Thought it was wrong to tamper with God’s design, outlive our Biblical threescore and ten or some such bullshit. I don’t even remember exactly.” I didn’t have a backup to reload once they regrew my brain, so a lot of who I was is gone forever. Good bloody riddance.

“A lot of people feel that way. You were entitled to make that choice.”

“For me? Maybe. But for my son?” I took a deep, shaky breath. “I thought I was giving him a moral life, securing his place in the afterlife. But all I did was make sure that a six-year-old boy had no chance to live the life he was entitled to.

“Idealism’s nothing admirable, Majid. If all you care about is an abstract ideal, that can make it easy to sacrifice real live people to it.”

I hated the sympathy in Majid’s eyes. “So you’re the one murderer you can’t bring to justice . . . since nobody blames you but yourself.”

“This is justice. It’s penance. I stop other killers.”

“And punish yourself by isolating yourself from other people. How can you fight against death if you refuse to embrace life?”

I met his gaze coldly. “Because it takes one to know one. It’s what makes me good at my job. And it’s time we got back to it.”

Takizawa’s alibi was inconclusive. His video footage showed him at the nightclub, but hanging around in the dark areas in the rear while everyone else’s eyes and cameras were focused on the strippers onstage. Checking the other patrons’ data storage showed us a lot of medically enhanced flesh, but no faces or voices in the audience that could be unambiguously identified as Russell Takizawa.

Charles Trendler turned out to be a 73-year-old resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The most recent photo showed a man who actually looked his age, with gray hair, wrinkles, age spots, the works. He looked frail and weak, but did nothing to prevent his deterioration. Another Luddite. There was no record of him leaving Pittsburgh, and when we contacted him, the signal was routed through a North American server. He had no implants, just an old-fashioned handheld phone, and he asked to conduct the interview by texting, saying he was in a public place and preferred not to discuss such grisly matters aloud. It made for a slow interview. I THOUGHT THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTO MIGHT BE MY WIFE SARAH, he told us. SHE DISAPPEARED FIVE YEARS AGO. I’VE BEEN SEARCHING EVER SINCE.

I asked if it had been Sarah. He said no, and I asked how he could be sure. I SPOKE TO THE LADY, he said. I REALIZED IT WASN’T HER. THE WAY SHE SPOKE, THOUGHT. AFTER DECADES TOGETHER, YOU JUST KNOW.

I asked Trendler if he’d mentioned Russell Takizawa to Isabelle Warner. He said he had explained how he’d learned of her through Takizawa, and that Isabelle had grown upset when he’d mentioned how long and how well Takizawa claimed to have known her. SHE CALLED HIM A STALKER. SAID HE’D INVADED HER PRIVACY, SPIED ON HER. DIDN’T BLAME ME, SHE SAID, BUT I APOLOGIZED ANYWAY AND LET HER GO. DIDN’T HEAR FROM HER AGAIN. A pause. SUCH A TRAGIC LOSS.

“Haven’t you heard?” Majid sent, verbalizing it for my benefit. “She’s expected to make a full recovery. Send.”

HER BODY, MAYBE. NOT WHO SHE WAS.

Majid told him about the genetic memory. The pause was so long we thought we’d lost him. “Mr. Trendler?” I sent.

PARDON. OVERCOME WITH RELIEF.

Why would it affect him so strongly? “One more question,” I sent. “About your photo. Do you object to longevity treatments? Send.” Majid threw me a look.

A PERSONAL CHOICE, he said. I DON’T JUDGE OTHERS. I’M JUST NOT INTERESTED IN LIVING LONGER THAN NATURE INTENDED. I exhaled sharply at that.

After the call, I began a Web search on Sarah Trendler. “I have to admit, it’s looking pretty bad for Takizawa,” Majid told me. “Maybe you were right.”

“I’m not so sure,” I told him. “A lot of it doesn’t add up. We know the killer had to be someone she trusted enough to let him get close. But she wouldn’t let Takizawa anywhere near her.”

“Maybe something changed,” he said, playing devil’s advocate. “He convinced her to patch things up. He does have a sincere way about him. Like you said, it could be an act.”

“Speculation. And we still haven’t explained why he’d strip her and not rape her. I think maybe we have it backward — stripping her wasn’t about her body, it was about her clothes.”

“The killer wanted to remove any recording devices, sure,” Majid said. “But why strip off everything? Who keeps data storage in their panties?”

“You’d be surprised how much redundancy some people want. Maybe the killer didn’t know where she kept her data, or in how many places. So he had to be thorough, take everything. But he couldn’t stand to see her exposed, hence the sheet. That’s not the act of a sexual predator.”

Majid leaned forward. “Let’s cut to the chase here, Craig. You were the one who liked Takizawa for this, but now you’ve suddenly changed your song. Don’t tell me you suspect Trendler? What, just because he rejects longevity treatments? Because he reminds you of the Tamara Craig who refused death prevention for her son?”

“Don’t question my objectivity, Majid. Or I’ll bring up how you couldn’t resist prying into Rosa Manzano’s sexual dalliances with Isabelle.”

“Hey! Now, that’s — ” He broke off, calming himself. “Okay. Let’s not go there. But Trendler never came here.”

“We communicated by text. We don’t know how great the transmission lag was. It could’ve been routed to North America and back here.”

“But why is Trendler a better suspect than Takizawa?” He pressed.

“I don’t know that he is,” I shot back. “But it really threw him to learn Isabelle would recover her memories. He claims he barely knew her — why be so ‘overcome’?”

“Maybe he’s just a compassionate guy.”

“A man who doesn’t believe in outliving his allotted time, and he’s overjoyed that technology’s brought someone back from her natural death?”

“You’re saying Isabelle really is Sarah Trendler. That she disappeared, and now Charles tracked her down.”

I showed him my search results. “Sarah Trendler, born 1989.”

He studied the images. “It could be Isabelle. The hair is different, the nose . . .”

“Look beneath the surface.” I called up her medical records. “She suffered a brain aneurysm five and a half years ago. The doctors brought her back, with partial memory loss. Her backup chips failed.”

Majid’s eyes widened. “That’s a pretty good incentive to get genetic memory.”

“Mm-hm. And she disappeared seven months later.”

He frowned. “But wait. She trusted her killer. If she ran away from him, why let him get close when he found her again?”

“Maybe it wasn’t him she ran away from. Or not everything about him.” I sighed. “Here’s a woman on the cutting edge of death prevention. She’s pushing seventy and looks half that. She’s determined not to go gentle into that good night. And here’s Charles Trendler, a man just as determined to keep his appointment with the Reaper. If you were determined to live forever and had a husband just as determined to deteriorate and die, could you stand to stay with him and watch it happen? Maybe it wasn’t hate or fear that made her leave him. Maybe it was love.” I saw Jason’s face again, that beautiful, terrified face in that last moment. I blinked away tears. “Maybe she couldn’t bear to live with witnessing the death of someone she loved.”

Majid’s hand came into my field of view, holding a tissue. He made no further comment or gesture as I dried my eyes. “And maybe he couldn’t bear to see her live on without him,” he finally said. “Let’s see where Trendler really was that night.”

It didn’t take long to confirm that Trendler’s texts had actually originated from here on Onogoroshima. Facial recognition at the airport soon found a match for his photo — two, in fact. Not only had he arrived here the day before Isabelle was attacked, but he had just bought a return ticket — right after speaking to us — and was waiting in the airport at that very moment. A single call to port security ensured he wouldn’t be leaving.

He didn’t try to deny it. He knew that, now we had the name of Sarah Trendler, we could subpoena her records to verify that Isabelle Warner had her DNA. He told us where he’d disposed of the surgical probe and Isabelle’s clothing, and what fabricator he’d used to make the sheet and the gloves. He didn’t boast, didn’t take any pride in his accomplishment. He was a sad, broken man, unhappy at what he’d had to do. But he was more unhappy that he’d failed.

“Why did you kill her, Mr. Trendler?” I asked as Majid looked on.

It was several moments before he answered. “Sarah and I were married forty-two years ago,” he said. “We saw ourselves growing old together, eventually dying together, maybe living on in some afterlife if we were lucky.

“But as time passed, as science kept coming up with new ways to keep people young, Sarah gave in to vanity. It didn’t matter to me how young she looked, but it mattered to her. And once she could stay young-looking, she began thinking that maybe she didn’t have to die at her allotted time. She was tempted by every new breakthrough, every kind of brain protection and regenerative therapy and backup memory.

“But I argued against it. It wasn’t natural. Look what technology has done to the Earth. The more we fight against death, against the natural cycle, the more we become a cancer overrunning the planet. We have to build whole new land masses just to hold all the people, now that they refuse to let go and die. It’s selfish, it’s irresponsible. I refused to be a part of it.”

Trendler lowered his head, weeping now. “Then . . . she died. It was so sudden. I was devastated. But . . . it was worse when the doctors revived her. I asked them not to, but they told me she had a resuscitation request on file. She’d never told me.

“The . . . woman who came back . . . it wasn’t my Sarah. She’d changed, lost too much. She was some kind of technological zombie. She claimed she still loved me, but I wanted nothing to do with her. So she left.”

“She did more than leave,” Majid said. “She went to a lot of trouble to disappear completely. Did she have a reason to hide from you?”

“It wasn’t like that,” the frail old man insisted. “What I did wasn’t an act of hate. It was an act of mercy.”

“You’ll need to explain that,” I told him.

“I am dying, Ms. Craig. I suppose that’s a sentence you don’t often hear in these parts. I have terminal cancer and I’ll stop being a burden on the Earth in a few more months.” He paused to breathe. Even for him, it couldn’t be easy to say those words. “I could get treatment, but I’ve lived a full life, and it’s my duty to let my life end for the good of the planet. I have no regrets for myself.

“But I couldn’t bear the thought of that . . . artificial person still walking around, desecrating my Sarah’s memory. When I discovered she was here, I came to her, told her I was dying, begged her to join me in returning to the Earth.

“But she refused. She clung to this unnaturally prolonged existence, this selfish indulgence at the Earth’s expense. She even begged me to join her in it. She claimed it was out of love, but she didn’t know what love is. Love requires the willingness to sacrifice.” He blinked, the tears coming more heavily. “So I . . . I decided I had to free what was left of Sarah. She wanted to meet me again, one last time, to say goodbye. I came prepared. I took her in my arms, and held her . . . and I raised my hand to her neck . . . and I set her free.” The tears ran forth, but he gave a shaky smile.

I couldn’t take his sanctimonious crap anymore. “Oh, don’t even try! Don’t pretend this was some act of moral responsibility. Don’t think I don’t know how that works. You make decisions for a loved one, force them to live according to the rules you think are best for them, but in the final analysis, you’re only doing it to satisfy your own ego. Your own conviction that you can’t be wrong! You tried to kill another human being so that you could feel self-righteous!”

I felt Majid’s hand on my shoulder, and somehow it calmed me. Somehow I let it calm me. I sat down again, facing Trendler. “You talk about responsibility, but you’ve got it backwards. Yeah, the world’s overpopulated, but it got that way before we had death prevention. And since then, the birth rate’s plummeted.”

“Because of the draconian, unnatural laws the governments impose.”

“No. If people didn’t like those laws, they’d change them or just break them.” I thought about Isabelle, about Rosa, about Takizawa. “The thing is, when you know you’ll still be around in a century or two, you start to think more about the big picture, the long term. You take more responsibility for the future. People don’t just go along with one child per couple because they get bribed with death prevention, they do it because they understand it’s the right thing to do. Not just for themselves, but for others.

“And yeah, the arcologies are a stopgap. But the longer people live, and the longer their view becomes, the more time and incentive they have to figure out new solutions.”

I leaned forward, catching his gaze. “You know what dying is, Charles? It’s jumping ship. Washing your hands of the future because you won’t be around for it. You don’t save the world by dying, and you sure as hell don’t save it by killing. You save it by taking responsibility for the people around you. Working to improve their future, not just stamping an expiration date on it. All your self-righteous talk about nature, it’s just your excuse for giving up. And giving up doesn’t help anybody.”

After a moment, Trendler calmed himself and gave a small but confident smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Call it what you like, but I acted on my convictions. I didn’t murder anyone, since my Sarah was already dead. And I will die content that my death has meaning. Maybe I’ll even be reunited with Sarah somewhere beyond.”

I met his smile with an even bigger, more smug one of my own. “Don’t bet on it, Mr. Trendler. You’re going to be in the care of Onogoroshima’s penal system from here on. It’s a very enlightened system. Big on rehabilitation. They treat the psychological conditions that turn people into criminals, help them become healthy members of society again. And of course they take care of your physical health too. You’ll get that cancer treatment — and even though your general deterioration is fairly advanced, I’m sure it can all be reversed in time. You’ll have a long, long stay on this mortal coil, Charles.”

The look on his face was priceless. I’ve never before seen anyone so horrified at being sentenced to life.

“All right,” Majid said once we’d freed Russell Takizawa. “I admit it. Your past issues didn’t blind you. They helped you recognise the perp.”

“Bloody oath, Majid,” I affirmed. “I’m good at catching murderers because I am one.”

He caught my arm, stopping me. His grip was gentle but unyielding. “No, Tamara. You’re a victim. You understand death and loss, you understand guilt, and that’s valuable in your job. But there’s a difference between understanding them and letting them define you.”

I didn’t object to the continued warmth of his hand on my arm. But I couldn’t meet his eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like. I know I’ll never forgive myself. So I accept that, and I use it.” I sighed. “You think I’m a cynic, that I’m blind to how much better the world is getting. You’re wrong, Majid. I believe in that better world. I’m determined to help make it happen. But I know I don’t belong in it.”

“Well, I think you do. The things you said in there, Tamara, those were the words of a good person. A person who truly understands how to make the world better. But there’s something in those words that you’re not hearing.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You said that what matters in life is taking responsibility for how we treat each other. That our self-serving beliefs are no excuse for hurting each other.”

Again Jason’s face burned in my eyes. “No. There’s no excuse for that.”

Majid clasped me by the shoulders. “Then doesn’t the same go for how we treat ourselves? And isn’t guilt just as bad an excuse for treating ourselves unfairly?”

I had no words to give in answer. All I could do was look into his eyes. “Maybe you can’t forgive yourself,” he went on. “But that doesn’t mean you have to punish yourself every moment, does it? You did good today, Tamara. You got to look in a murderer’s eyes and tell him he’d failed. You even saved his life, whether he wanted it or not. I think you’re entitled to celebrate that.”

I surprised myself by kissing him on the cheek. “I appreciate the thought, Ma . . . Steve. But there are other murderers to catch. And if I don’t stay on the job, some of them might actually succeed.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” he said, smiling. “But could I at least take you out for coffee?”

After a moment’s thought, I nodded. “Sure.”

We walked out with my arm in his. As the sunlight hit us, I really looked at him for the first time, and decided I could stick around for more than just coffee.

After all, I had plenty of time ahead of me.

“No Dominion” by Christopher L. Bennett. Copyright © 2010 by Christopher L. Bennett.

Picture Credits:

• Oceania: via Creative Conscious Evolution (Transtopia);
• Life Support System: via the Daily Mail;
• Methane 2: via Climate Progress;
• Methans Surface Global: via Watts Up with That?;
• Nighclub: via Burn Bright;
• Do Not Go Gentle…: via Tini21 (via Flickr);
• Longevity Tree: via Travelpod;
• Artificial Island: via Archinews Network;

Christopher L. Bennett is a lifelong resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, with bachelor’s degrees in physics and history from the University of Cincinnati.  His love of science and science fiction was inspired by his discovery of Star Trek at the age of five.  After making his debut with two novelettes in Analog, he has gone on to become one of Pocket Books’ most prolific authors ofStar Trek tie-in fiction, authoring such acclaimed books as Ex Machina, Orion’s Hounds, and The Buried Age.  More recently, he has returned to Analog with “The Hub of the Matter,” and his story “The Weight of Silence” is available in Alternative Coordinates magazine at http://www.ac-mag.com/, and he blogs here.

An interactive map of story locations:

The Human Factor

Susanne Martin

Sometimes (increasingly, more often than not, I suspect), things do improve for the better, and previously underpriviledged people make a move to improve their lot. This has been happening throughout history, and—as progress accelerates—will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Slavery has been abolished, women and people of colour have the right to vote and much more. Yes, there are still many racial and other prejudice issues, but we have come a long way, and should get much further.

Also, there seems to be some, let’s call it resistance or reluctance, in letting people in the third world get access to modern technologies. As Nick Mamatas wrote in his SHINE review on SciFi Wire (commenting on Paula R. Stiles’s “Sustainable Development”):

“[...]especially given the social dislocations that often accompany sudden technological changes. (A quick Google of “Yir Yiront” and “stone ax” would have helped.)”

I fully agree that bringing isolated people into contact with modern technology will be highly disturbing for their culture. However, the utmost majority of third world cultures aren’t isolated anymore: this may or may not be a good thing, but it is an inescapable fact. And these non-isolated cultures can and will use modern technologies, to wit:

• The ‘cheetah generation’ in Africa;
• Bangladesh’s Infoladies;
• The development of ‘Cinderella fruit’ in West Africa;

And many more. Thinking that modern technologies will either disrupt, or are too complicated for the utmost majority of the developing countries is paternalistic at best and oppressive (‘gotta keep these people in their place’) at worst.

Then there is the ‘Girl Effect’: the empowerment of women worldwide. This is already happening through—what some may find counterintuitive—market forces: when I attended a Triodos Bank presentation, I found out that over 90% of the people that received microcredits are women: because they spend the money wisely (don’t squander it on booze and gambling like most of the men).

Now, what would happen if this trend does indeed continue, and develops to its logical conclusion? Susanne Martin portrays a witty ‘what if’, taking “The Human Factor” into account…

Su Lin emerged from her morning mindfulness practice with a smile on her face. She prepared a pot of Jasmine tea taking care to steep it for just the right time, and activated the work terminal by quoting her favourite line of poetry. The moment she faced the screen, she was assaulted by a stream of data that — though noiseless — shattered the serenity of the morning. Su Lin identified the data as results of job applications at SunTech, the firm she worked for. It wasn’t usually her task to review evaluation data; she was one of SunTech’s senior programmers and specialized in algorithms that translated real life data into meaningful numeric correlations. The only reason for the company to feed the read-out to her screen would be a malfunction of ApSel, the program that generated the data, the program Su Lin had designed. She immediately initiated numerous tests and examined the outcomes. She didn’t detect so much as a glitch, let alone a malfunction. With relief and satisfaction, Su Lin picked up her cup of tea.

An unobtrusive chime signaled an incoming call and Peggy Mei’s image filled the screen. Su Lin greeted her superior with a polite bow that went unnoticed as Peggy Mei had started to talk immediately.

“Su Lin,” she said, “I need you to look at the data. SunTech has placed absolute trust in your program. We have, as you’re well aware, eliminated all other selection methods. And this has put us in a difficult situation.”

Su Lin had never seen Peggy Mei in such a state of agitation. The older woman was as immaculately dressed as usual and her movements were outwardly calm, but there was a twitch to the corner of her mouth and her gaze did not stay on Su Lin’s face but drifted upward, to the right. Su Lin suppressed the urge to wipe at her forehead. She held up her palms in a calming gesture and said, “ApSel is fully operational. I’ve run a number of tests to confirm that in all cases applicants most suited to both the job and work environment have been selected.”

“I am not criticizing your program. Since ApSel has been installed, we’ve had virtually no problems with our staff. And the business runs smoothly. But we’ve come under scrutiny. Of our 324 employees, only 59 are men. Ming Yu, one of our senior executives is going into retirement and as a result, the majority of the men working for us here in Shanghai are hired to do menial jobs. We have prided ourselves to be an equal opportunity employer and therefore we must hire a man for the junior management position.”

“That is going to be difficult,” Su Lin replied, “Men just don’t have the necessary qualifications. Their aptitude for multitasking is below the minimum level required for management. You can’t trick ApSel with a good story. The program is foolproof.”

“Yes, that is why we are putting you in charge of the hiring. It is your program, if anyone is able to find a loophole, it is you. You’re to report immediately to your old office on the 70th floor. ”

Her tone of voice allowed no dissent and Su Lin bowed, assuming that the conversation was over. But Peggy Mei, still staring at a spot above Su Lin’s left eye, added, “Do not take this lightly. ApSel has been one of our strongest products. Our company’s success has been evidence to ApSel’s effectiveness and we can’t be seen to be making exceptions by hiring someone not selected by the program. We have to proceed carefully.”

On this note, Peggy Mei’s image disappeared. Su Lin looked at her cup of Jasmine tea with regret. At the thought of having to dress in office attire and face the throng of commuters heading downtown, her good mood had evaporated.

The commute wasn’t terrible. Shanghai’s Rapid Transit system had been designed and built for a city with more than twice the population still living in the area. It was fast and efficient and Su Lin could be downtown in 21.56 minutes. But she would have liked to solve the problem at home — without distractions. She preferred the elegant simplicity of the world of numbers to the company of people. Numbers one could understand and work with, people, well, people had always been a puzzle to Su Lin. And although she normally loved puzzles, she preferred the puzzles she had a hope of solving.

Whenever Su Lin stepped outside her carefully organized and tidy space, she sought the comfort of numbers. She subtracted the seconds spent on the RT from the total travel time, updating the tally in regular intervals. She counted passengers and estimated daily, weekly, yearly commuter numbers based on the average number of people on the train. There were only a dozen passengers waiting for the train this morning and three of them followed her into an empty, clean compartment. Su Lin remembered boarding the train as a child and holding on tightly to her mother’s hand in fear of getting lost in the crowd. But the number of commuters had dwindled along with the population. Su Lin could have easily rented a comfortable, even spacious, apartment downtown, but she preferred to live in Nan Shi where pockets of rare old buildings formed narrow streets. And where she could still buy fresh produce from street vendors and walk to the Temple of the Town God to light a stick of incense.

With nothing to count, Su Lin sat back on the cushioned bench on the subway speeding towards the center core of Shanghai and pondered the implications of Peggy Mei’s message as well as her own willingness to comply. Why, she thought, do I rush into the office to fix a program that functions perfectly? Why don’t I just tell management to update SunTech’s policies? Su Lin realized that the root of these thoughts lay in her reluctance to go into the office. In her opinion, she had more than earned her right to be left in peace and work from home. Her programs were flawless. And ApSel was one of the best. For a moment, Su Lin was tempted to turn back and say she wouldn’t do it. The program was aimed to select the person suited best for the job — gender shouldn’t come into the equation.

“Ni hao, ni hao,” Ellen Leu beamed at Su Lin. “It is so good to see you. I hope everything is alright here?” It was clear that Ellen had hurriedly tidied up the office they used to share. The two women had been hired at the same time and Ellen had gently nudged Su Lin into a deep personal friendship and encouraged various social interactions that led to a level of comfort in social situations that Su Lin had not experienced before. But then Ellen had married and given birth to a healthy and active baby boy. When she returned from the short maternity leave (her husband stayed home and took care of the baby as was usual in urban areas), Su Lin had been promoted and worked from home. And between juggling an office job and spending time with her family, Ellen had been too busy to continue coaxing her friend into socializing on a regular basis.

Ellen pushed her too-big glasses up the bridge of her nose in a familiar gesture that brought on a rush of affection in Su Lin.

“Hello Ellen. It is good to see you too. You are looking great. How is your little boy?”

Ellen’s smile grew even wider, “He is growing very fast and he started to walk. You have to come and see us again. When all this is sorted out.” Ellen gestured to the screen. “The interviews are scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Interviews?”

“Didn’t Peggy Mei tell you? There are two applicants for the management position. Two men.” Ellen noticed Su Lin’s shocked expression and added, “It’s going to be fine. All you have to do is select one of them. Then you can get back to your cave.”

Su Lin managed a small smile as Ellen gathered up a stack of files and left. Maybe Ellen was right. She would talk to the applicants with a highest scores, tell them what was important and let them re-enter the ApSel data. With a bit of coaching, surely one of them could be hired.

Su Lin activated the screen and keyed in her security code. To get a broader sense, she compared the results of all recent ApSel process outcomes. For a maintenance job, a couple of men had made the top of the list and both had been hired. For a programming position, a male applicant had made it as far as number 8, but only number 1 had been hired. For the current management position, two men had made it to 11 and 13 on the list. Su Lin looked closely at the data of the two applicants to see if there were obvious weak points that could be eliminated by preparation, but the score was composed of hundreds of criteria. It wasn’t a big gap in one area that put the men behind — it was half a point here, a quarter there, an even smaller fraction in another area. There was no easy fix to components like expertise, knowledge, aptitude, temperament, ability to work with a team and character traits. As Su Lin pored over the results, she became more and more frustrated. Why should she be held responsible for the shortcomings of the two men? She also realized that by hiring one of them, she would disregard the 10 women ApSel had deemed more suited to the job. But that couldn’t be helped. Su Lin consoled herself that they were, as women, more resourceful and would likely find other work.

Su Lin was still reviewing the data when a man stepped into her office. Mr. Yu was a familiar face at SunTech. He had been on the hiring committee when Su Lin had filled out her application a few years back. And he didn’t seem to have changed much in the intervening time; his hair was still the same shade of silver, his face was youthful, his bearing erect. Su Lin stood and bowed.

“You have trouble replacing me, I understand,” Mr. Yu said. “I have come to offer my assistance and maybe a bite of lunch?”

Su Lin nodded her consent, even though she would have preferred to continue her work. But one didn’t turn down a lunch offer from one of the founders of SunTech, especially when the food was going to be superb.

Mr. Yu guided Su Lin to a small table at the back of Ho Hong’s Seafood Palace. The lunch hours when dim sum was served were nearly over, but the selection was still excellent. Su Lin had to force herself to pay attention to Mr. Yu’s conversation while doing the stream of delicacies in front of her the honor they deserved. Luckily, Mr. Yu rarely required more of a reply then the occasional nod or other small gesture of acknowledgement.

“You might think that it is outdated to have a clause like ‘equal opportunity employer’ in our policies,” he began in his pleasant and measured voice. “but it is there for a reason. As you know, until well into the 21st century, it was the women who were at a disadvantage. They were deemed less reliant because they would go off and have babies or care for elderly relatives. They even got paid less than male workers.”

Mr. Yu popped a rice-dumpling filled with shrimp into his mouth. He chewed it carefully before swallowing.

“Before the Girl Effect took hold in China, and globally of course, the conditions for the genders were reversed. That is hard to believe today, isn’t it?”

Mr. Yu selected another one of the same type of dumplings and ate it, before he continued.

“I am not one of those bitter old men who remember the past with nostalgia. For one thing, I was very young in those days when men held almost all positions of power. And I certainly don’t miss the wars and conflicts that went hand in hand with that arrangement. No, the Girl Effect has done our world a lot of good. We’ve never had such an extended period of peace and prosperity. Even the environment seems to be recovering. Of course, there is a price to pay for all this. And who is paying it? It is our young men, in my opinion. I think it is important for them to re-discover a certain pride in their gender. Do you have a husband?”

Su Lin shook her head.

“A brother?”

Again she answered in the negative.

“Well, I have two grandsons. One of them has found work in an office, the other one is content to stay home with his family. They have no further ambitions and I am sad to see them like this. They are good boys but they seem to be of a lost and confused generation. I think they simply haven’t found their place in our new society.”

Su Lin took a sip of the excellent Jasmine tea and thought about the list of male employees at SunTech she had reviewed this morning: the janitors, the handymen, the messengers and the secretaries. Would she be happy with such a place in society?

When Su Lin set down her cup, she found Mr. Yu looking at her.

“I’ll do my best,” was all she could say.

Mr. Yu said, “I was going to help and it looks like I have confused you with my ramblings.”

“Oh no,” Su Lin said. “It has been most interesting to hear your thoughts.”

“Polite as always,” Mr. Yu remarked. “SunTech didn’t have ApSel when we hired you. But I knew right away what an asset you were going to be to a company like ours.”

He smiled and called for the bill. Mr. Yu insisted in walking Su Lin back to her office and told her that he was available to talk any time if she needed his advice.

“Mr. Liang Wei, please.” Su Lin called and a heavyset young man entered her office. He bobbed his head and managed a small, scared smile. Unsure of whether to offer his hand or sit down, he just stood there, looking awkward and out of place. Finally he gave a small bow — a gesture Su Lin recognized — a gesture she would have, and had, performed in similar situations. But she hoped to have pulled it off more gracefully than Mr. Wei.

“You have been briefed?” She asked.

“Yes,” he answered simply.

Su Lin went through a list of carefully selected questions. Most of them had already been covered when Mr. Wei completed his ApSel evaluation. If the questions were uninspired, the answers were predictable. Pretending to scribble notes, Su Lin frantically cast her mind for a new approach when she saw Mr. Wei’s eyes shift to look over her shoulder at the screen behind her where her screen saver, still set from the days before her promotion, displayed traditional Chinese calligraphy. Su Lin’s patience was wearing thin. This young man was overweight and had limited social skills. He had applied for a management position and now he couldn’t even stay focused for the length of the interview. She stopped scribbling, turned around and spoke a line of poetry to de-activate the screen.

“Must hop ten times.”

“To get a bite of grain.” The hapless young man completed the verse without missing a beat.

When Su Lin turned to face him, he was smiling.

“This is one of my favourites of Chuang Tzu’s poems.” Mr. Wei said. “It is quite odd, don’t you think, that he would link a one-footed man with a marsh pheasant?”

“Maybe he observed a one-footed man hopping to get somewhere.” Su Lin found herself replying. “The thing that puzzles me more is his reference to politics.”

Discussing poetry, Mr. Wei had lost his shyness. They exchanged opinions on verses and interpretations and it took Su Lin by surprise when the allotted time was up. Mr. Wei was on his way to the door when he suddenly turned and told her, “I’ve got a beautifully illustrated early edition of Chuang Tzu’s collected works I would like to show you. May I call you?”

Su Lin couldn’t help blushing. She mumbled, “I’d love to see it. Yes.”

And regardless of the outcome of his job interview, Mr. Wei left with a radiant smile on his chubby face.

Su Lin barely had time so to compose herself when the second applicant entered her office.

“Kevin Chen.” He announced and shook her hand. He was small, trim and well-groomed. Su Lin had the impression that he took charge from the moment he stepped into her office. He told her about his skills, his work experience and what type of management he found effective while Su Lin took notes. When Mr. Chen stopped, she randomly selected a question from her list that set him off on another ode to himself. Su Lin was getting tired of hearing about Kevin Chen and interrupted him, “SunTech specializes in cutting-edge technology. What do you know about its products?”

Mr. Chen looked at her and swallowed. He looked deflated. After a long pause, he said, “I can learn. Please. I need to work. I applied to more than a dozen firms since the beginning of the year. I didn’t expect to come to an interview, but I’ll learn. Give me another day, even an hour. Please.”

“Yes.” Su Lin said. “Thank you.”

She stood up and walked Mr. Chen to the door.

Ellen Leu entered her office with a pot of tea as soon as Kevin Chen was out of sight.

“He was handsome, no?” She gushed while she poured two cups. “I hope it worked out OK?”

Su Lin just shook her head, “Ellen, you know I’m no good with people. I can’t do this. This is a job for someone in management. Why would they put me in charge of the hiring?”

“Drink your tea,” Ellen said. She waited until Su Lin had taken a sip before she continued. “You designed ApSel. You have studied more than 50 application methods and combined them in one program. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the leading expert in hiring. Do you really think Peggy Mei or Ming Yu could do a better job?”

Su Lin answered with a brave smile. She didn’t have the same faith in her abilities, but she did know her research. Maybe she could make the right decision after all.

Ellen came around to her side of the desk and gave her a hug. “And you are much better at paying attention, you figure something out. Well, I am going home now. I am late already. If my husband wasn’t so hopeless at management, I would ask you to hire him so I could spend more time with Gang. Anyway, I’ll see you soon.”

“Good bye, Ellen,” Su Lin replied. “Give your two men my regards. I’d love to come and visit.”

“Empty threats.” Ellen laughed. But Su Lin was perfectly serious. She had planned to go into a shop near the temple and buy a small statue of a laughing Buddha that reminded her of Gang. She couldn’t wait to hand the gift to the little boy.

Ellen regarded her friend for a moment. “Don’t stay too late,” she said pushing her glasses back to their proper position.

It was long after office hours but Su Lin was still at her desk. She had gone back to the ApSel read-outs and was trying to reconcile the similar scores of the two applicants. One of them had trouble speaking up; the other seemed incapable of listening. But what could she know of their ability to perform the duties of a management job? Would Peggy Mei or Ming Yu have a better chance of choosing the right person? The day had shown their different approach. Peggy Mei had ordered her to hire a man and Ming Yu had tried to make her understand why it was necessary. It was Ming Yu’s presence in the office that had always provided a balance to Peggy Mei’s no-nonsense approach. Su Lin had a good idea which of the two candidates would be favoured by which of her superiors. She also knew which of the applicants she liked. But could a right decision be made guided by personal likes and dislikes? From Su Lin’s perspective, the human factor put a question mark on every equation. Su Lin shut her eyes and stilled her breathing to reflect on the encounters throughout the day. One thought floated to the surface, clear and simple. Su Lin wrote out a number sequence that stayed with her on the commute home and through the night.

Su Lin’s morning meditation, as usual, left her in a contented, energized state. She was thinking of Liang Wei when she recited the poetry to activate her screen. She immediately requested a link to Peggy Wei’s desk whose forceful personality reminded her so much of Kevin Chen.

Peggy Wei had a look of surprise on her face and Su Lin realized that this was the first time she had initiated an exchange with her superior.

“Mrs. Wei, I will be working from home today.” Sun Lin said. “I will work on a new version of ApSel that will take equal opportunity employment into account.”

“But did you find someone for the management position?” Peggy Wei asked.

“I hope to install ApSel E by the end of this week. And then you’ll be able to begin the hiring process for the management position, and any other position as well.”

“This is good news, but I asked you to fill the position.” Peggy Wei interjected.

“I’m a programmer. That’s what I do. I’m not suited for management. Last night I have even re-entered my ApSel data to confirm that.”

Su Lin added, “You can hire one of the applicants now, but I guarantee that ApSel E will do a better job.”

“Of course,” Peggy Wei conceded before signing off. “I speak for myself as well as SunTech when I say that we have absolute faith in your abilities.”

Su Lin felt exhausted from the exchange and longed to loose herself into the world of numbers. But she felt that she had to make one more call. She found Mr. Yu at home.

“Mr. Yu.” She said. “I wanted to thank you for your help. I have started to develop an updated version of ApSel. I feel that I understand now what men bring to the table.”

Mr. Yu smiled. “So, you have found men’s strengths?”

“Men’s strengths? Oh, no. I haven’t. But I have realized that there are more opportunities for growth if there are both men and women on the team. And I promise that the numbers will back that theory.”

“An interesting theory.” Mr. Yu nodded. “Good, good. I knew I could count on you.”

After signing off, Su Lin looked longingly at her tea pot but she was impatient to get to work. Re-writing a program in less than a week would require a lot of effort and concentration, but it was an area of expertise where Su Lin had confidence in her abilities. And at the end of it, she would allow herself to share a pot of Jasmine tea with a certain young man who held a lot of potential though not necessarily for a management position.

“The Human Factor” by Susanne Martin. Copyright © 2010 by Susanne Martin.

Picture Credits:

• Jasmine Tea 1: via Jessilicious;
• Shanghai Metro Map: via the Transport Politic;
• Shanghai Skyline: via ABB;
• Application Selection Process: via PATS;
• Vacant: via PRH;
• Girl Effect Logo: via The Girl Effect;
• Applicant Selection: via Total APS;
• Taoism Symbol: via Wikimedia;
• Equal Opportunity 1: via Maven Construction;
• Question Mark: via My Selection Criteria;
• Equal Opportunities Logo: via Accent Powder Coating;
• Little Marsh Pheasant: via Birding BC;

Susanne Martin is living on a small island off the Canadian West Coast in a house on a hill where nature manages to keep humanity at bay. She does venture into urban areas if she has to but only from the safe distance of her home is she able to contemplate the elusive human factor. She is writing the truth for the community newspaper and fiction for a completely different market but has noticed the blurring of the edges of the two at certain times of day.

An interactive map of story locations:

The Human Factor

Susanne Martin

Sometimes (increasingly, more often than not, I suspect), things do improve for the better, and previously underpriviledged people make a move to improve their lot. This has been happening throughout history, and—as progress accelerates—will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Slavery has been abolished, women and people of colour have the right to vote and much more. Yes, there are still many racial and other prejudice issues, but we have come a long way, and should get much further.

Also, there seems to be some, let’s call it resistance or reluctance, in letting people in the third world get access to modern technologies. As Nick Mamatas wrote in his SHINE review on SciFi Wire (commenting on Paula R. Stiles’s “Sustainable Development”):

“[...]especially given the social dislocations that often accompany sudden technological changes. (A quick Google of “Yir Yiront” and “stone ax” would have helped.)”

I fully agree that bringing isolated people into contact with modern technology will be highly disturbing for their culture. However, the utmost majority of third world cultures aren’t isolated anymore: this may or may not be a good thing, but it is an inescapable fact. And these non-isolated cultures can and will use modern technologies, to wit:

• The ‘cheetah generation’ in Africa;
• Bangladesh’s Infoladies;
• The development of ‘Cinderella fruit’ in West Africa;

And many more. Thinking that modern technologies will either disrupt, or are too complicated for the utmost majority of the developing countries is paternalistic at best and oppressive (‘gotta keep these people in their place’) at worst.

Then there is the ‘Girl Effect’: the empowerment of women worldwide. This is already happening through—what some may find counterintuitive—market forces: when I attended a Triodos Bank presentation, I found out that over 90% of the people that received microcredits are women: because they spend the money wisely (don’t squander it on booze and gambling like most of the men).

Now, what would happen if this trend does indeed continue, and develops to its logical conclusion? Susanne Martin portrays a witty ‘what if’, taking “The Human Factor” into account…

Su Lin emerged from her morning mindfulness practice with a smile on her face. She prepared a pot of Jasmine tea taking care to steep it for just the right time, and activated the work terminal by quoting her favourite line of poetry. The moment she faced the screen, she was assaulted by a stream of data that — though noiseless — shattered the serenity of the morning. Su Lin identified the data as results of job applications at SunTech, the firm she worked for. It wasn’t usually her task to review evaluation data; she was one of SunTech’s senior programmers and specialized in algorithms that translated real life data into meaningful numeric correlations. The only reason for the company to feed the read-out to her screen would be a malfunction of ApSel, the program that generated the data, the program Su Lin had designed. She immediately initiated numerous tests and examined the outcomes. She didn’t detect so much as a glitch, let alone a malfunction. With relief and satisfaction, Su Lin picked up her cup of tea.

An unobtrusive chime signaled an incoming call and Peggy Mei’s image filled the screen. Su Lin greeted her superior with a polite bow that went unnoticed as Peggy Mei had started to talk immediately.

“Su Lin,” she said, “I need you to look at the data. SunTech has placed absolute trust in your program. We have, as you’re well aware, eliminated all other selection methods. And this has put us in a difficult situation.”

Su Lin had never seen Peggy Mei in such a state of agitation. The older woman was as immaculately dressed as usual and her movements were outwardly calm, but there was a twitch to the corner of her mouth and her gaze did not stay on Su Lin’s face but drifted upward, to the right. Su Lin suppressed the urge to wipe at her forehead. She held up her palms in a calming gesture and said, “ApSel is fully operational. I’ve run a number of tests to confirm that in all cases applicants most suited to both the job and work environment have been selected.”

“I am not criticizing your program. Since ApSel has been installed, we’ve had virtually no problems with our staff. And the business runs smoothly. But we’ve come under scrutiny. Of our 324 employees, only 59 are men. Ming Yu, one of our senior executives is going into retirement and as a result, the majority of the men working for us here in Shanghai are hired to do menial jobs. We have prided ourselves to be an equal opportunity employer and therefore we must hire a man for the junior management position.”

“That is going to be difficult,” Su Lin replied, “Men just don’t have the necessary qualifications. Their aptitude for multitasking is below the minimum level required for management. You can’t trick ApSel with a good story. The program is foolproof.”

“Yes, that is why we are putting you in charge of the hiring. It is your program, if anyone is able to find a loophole, it is you. You’re to report immediately to your old office on the 70th floor. ”

Her tone of voice allowed no dissent and Su Lin bowed, assuming that the conversation was over. But Peggy Mei, still staring at a spot above Su Lin’s left eye, added, “Do not take this lightly. ApSel has been one of our strongest products. Our company’s success has been evidence to ApSel’s effectiveness and we can’t be seen to be making exceptions by hiring someone not selected by the program. We have to proceed carefully.”

On this note, Peggy Mei’s image disappeared. Su Lin looked at her cup of Jasmine tea with regret. At the thought of having to dress in office attire and face the throng of commuters heading downtown, her good mood had evaporated.

The commute wasn’t terrible. Shanghai’s Rapid Transit system had been designed and built for a city with more than twice the population still living in the area. It was fast and efficient and Su Lin could be downtown in 21.56 minutes. But she would have liked to solve the problem at home — without distractions. She preferred the elegant simplicity of the world of numbers to the company of people. Numbers one could understand and work with, people, well, people had always been a puzzle to Su Lin. And although she normally loved puzzles, she preferred the puzzles she had a hope of solving.

Whenever Su Lin stepped outside her carefully organized and tidy space, she sought the comfort of numbers. She subtracted the seconds spent on the RT from the total travel time, updating the tally in regular intervals. She counted passengers and estimated daily, weekly, yearly commuter numbers based on the average number of people on the train. There were only a dozen passengers waiting for the train this morning and three of them followed her into an empty, clean compartment. Su Lin remembered boarding the train as a child and holding on tightly to her mother’s hand in fear of getting lost in the crowd. But the number of commuters had dwindled along with the population. Su Lin could have easily rented a comfortable, even spacious, apartment downtown, but she preferred to live in Nan Shi where pockets of rare old buildings formed narrow streets. And where she could still buy fresh produce from street vendors and walk to the Temple of the Town God to light a stick of incense.

With nothing to count, Su Lin sat back on the cushioned bench on the subway speeding towards the center core of Shanghai and pondered the implications of Peggy Mei’s message as well as her own willingness to comply. Why, she thought, do I rush into the office to fix a program that functions perfectly? Why don’t I just tell management to update SunTech’s policies? Su Lin realized that the root of these thoughts lay in her reluctance to go into the office. In her opinion, she had more than earned her right to be left in peace and work from home. Her programs were flawless. And ApSel was one of the best. For a moment, Su Lin was tempted to turn back and say she wouldn’t do it. The program was aimed to select the person suited best for the job — gender shouldn’t come into the equation.

“Ni hao, ni hao,” Ellen Leu beamed at Su Lin. “It is so good to see you. I hope everything is alright here?” It was clear that Ellen had hurriedly tidied up the office they used to share. The two women had been hired at the same time and Ellen had gently nudged Su Lin into a deep personal friendship and encouraged various social interactions that led to a level of comfort in social situations that Su Lin had not experienced before. But then Ellen had married and given birth to a healthy and active baby boy. When she returned from the short maternity leave (her husband stayed home and took care of the baby as was usual in urban areas), Su Lin had been promoted and worked from home. And between juggling an office job and spending time with her family, Ellen had been too busy to continue coaxing her friend into socializing on a regular basis.

Ellen pushed her too-big glasses up the bridge of her nose in a familiar gesture that brought on a rush of affection in Su Lin.

“Hello Ellen. It is good to see you too. You are looking great. How is your little boy?”

Ellen’s smile grew even wider, “He is growing very fast and he started to walk. You have to come and see us again. When all this is sorted out.” Ellen gestured to the screen. “The interviews are scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Interviews?”

“Didn’t Peggy Mei tell you? There are two applicants for the management position. Two men.” Ellen noticed Su Lin’s shocked expression and added, “It’s going to be fine. All you have to do is select one of them. Then you can get back to your cave.”

Su Lin managed a small smile as Ellen gathered up a stack of files and left. Maybe Ellen was right. She would talk to the applicants with a highest scores, tell them what was important and let them re-enter the ApSel data. With a bit of coaching, surely one of them could be hired.

Su Lin activated the screen and keyed in her security code. To get a broader sense, she compared the results of all recent ApSel process outcomes. For a maintenance job, a couple of men had made the top of the list and both had been hired. For a programming position, a male applicant had made it as far as number 8, but only number 1 had been hired. For the current management position, two men had made it to 11 and 13 on the list. Su Lin looked closely at the data of the two applicants to see if there were obvious weak points that could be eliminated by preparation, but the score was composed of hundreds of criteria. It wasn’t a big gap in one area that put the men behind — it was half a point here, a quarter there, an even smaller fraction in another area. There was no easy fix to components like expertise, knowledge, aptitude, temperament, ability to work with a team and character traits. As Su Lin pored over the results, she became more and more frustrated. Why should she be held responsible for the shortcomings of the two men? She also realized that by hiring one of them, she would disregard the 10 women ApSel had deemed more suited to the job. But that couldn’t be helped. Su Lin consoled herself that they were, as women, more resourceful and would likely find other work.

Su Lin was still reviewing the data when a man stepped into her office. Mr. Yu was a familiar face at SunTech. He had been on the hiring committee when Su Lin had filled out her application a few years back. And he didn’t seem to have changed much in the intervening time; his hair was still the same shade of silver, his face was youthful, his bearing erect. Su Lin stood and bowed.

“You have trouble replacing me, I understand,” Mr. Yu said. “I have come to offer my assistance and maybe a bite of lunch?”

Su Lin nodded her consent, even though she would have preferred to continue her work. But one didn’t turn down a lunch offer from one of the founders of SunTech, especially when the food was going to be superb.

Mr. Yu guided Su Lin to a small table at the back of Ho Hong’s Seafood Palace. The lunch hours when dim sum was served were nearly over, but the selection was still excellent. Su Lin had to force herself to pay attention to Mr. Yu’s conversation while doing the stream of delicacies in front of her the honor they deserved. Luckily, Mr. Yu rarely required more of a reply then the occasional nod or other small gesture of acknowledgement.

“You might think that it is outdated to have a clause like ‘equal opportunity employer’ in our policies,” he began in his pleasant and measured voice. “but it is there for a reason. As you know, until well into the 21st century, it was the women who were at a disadvantage. They were deemed less reliant because they would go off and have babies or care for elderly relatives. They even got paid less than male workers.”

Mr. Yu popped a rice-dumpling filled with shrimp into his mouth. He chewed it carefully before swallowing.

“Before the Girl Effect took hold in China, and globally of course, the conditions for the genders were reversed. That is hard to believe today, isn’t it?”

Mr. Yu selected another one of the same type of dumplings and ate it, before he continued.

“I am not one of those bitter old men who remember the past with nostalgia. For one thing, I was very young in those days when men held almost all positions of power. And I certainly don’t miss the wars and conflicts that went hand in hand with that arrangement. No, the Girl Effect has done our world a lot of good. We’ve never had such an extended period of peace and prosperity. Even the environment seems to be recovering. Of course, there is a price to pay for all this. And who is paying it? It is our young men, in my opinion. I think it is important for them to re-discover a certain pride in their gender. Do you have a husband?”

Su Lin shook her head.

“A brother?”

Again she answered in the negative.

“Well, I have two grandsons. One of them has found work in an office, the other one is content to stay home with his family. They have no further ambitions and I am sad to see them like this. They are good boys but they seem to be of a lost and confused generation. I think they simply haven’t found their place in our new society.”

Su Lin took a sip of the excellent Jasmine tea and thought about the list of male employees at SunTech she had reviewed this morning: the janitors, the handymen, the messengers and the secretaries. Would she be happy with such a place in society?

When Su Lin set down her cup, she found Mr. Yu looking at her.

“I’ll do my best,” was all she could say.

Mr. Yu said, “I was going to help and it looks like I have confused you with my ramblings.”

“Oh no,” Su Lin said. “It has been most interesting to hear your thoughts.”

“Polite as always,” Mr. Yu remarked. “SunTech didn’t have ApSel when we hired you. But I knew right away what an asset you were going to be to a company like ours.”

He smiled and called for the bill. Mr. Yu insisted in walking Su Lin back to her office and told her that he was available to talk any time if she needed his advice.

“Mr. Liang Wei, please.” Su Lin called and a heavyset young man entered her office. He bobbed his head and managed a small, scared smile. Unsure of whether to offer his hand or sit down, he just stood there, looking awkward and out of place. Finally he gave a small bow — a gesture Su Lin recognized — a gesture she would have, and had, performed in similar situations. But she hoped to have pulled it off more gracefully than Mr. Wei.

“You have been briefed?” She asked.

“Yes,” he answered simply.

Su Lin went through a list of carefully selected questions. Most of them had already been covered when Mr. Wei completed his ApSel evaluation. If the questions were uninspired, the answers were predictable. Pretending to scribble notes, Su Lin frantically cast her mind for a new approach when she saw Mr. Wei’s eyes shift to look over her shoulder at the screen behind her where her screen saver, still set from the days before her promotion, displayed traditional Chinese calligraphy. Su Lin’s patience was wearing thin. This young man was overweight and had limited social skills. He had applied for a management position and now he couldn’t even stay focused for the length of the interview. She stopped scribbling, turned around and spoke a line of poetry to de-activate the screen.

“Must hop ten times.”

“To get a bite of grain.” The hapless young man completed the verse without missing a beat.

When Su Lin turned to face him, he was smiling.

“This is one of my favourites of Chuang Tzu’s poems.” Mr. Wei said. “It is quite odd, don’t you think, that he would link a one-footed man with a marsh pheasant?”

“Maybe he observed a one-footed man hopping to get somewhere.” Su Lin found herself replying. “The thing that puzzles me more is his reference to politics.”

Discussing poetry, Mr. Wei had lost his shyness. They exchanged opinions on verses and interpretations and it took Su Lin by surprise when the allotted time was up. Mr. Wei was on his way to the door when he suddenly turned and told her, “I’ve got a beautifully illustrated early edition of Chuang Tzu’s collected works I would like to show you. May I call you?”

Su Lin couldn’t help blushing. She mumbled, “I’d love to see it. Yes.”

And regardless of the outcome of his job interview, Mr. Wei left with a radiant smile on his chubby face.

Su Lin barely had time so to compose herself when the second applicant entered her office.

“Kevin Chen.” He announced and shook her hand. He was small, trim and well-groomed. Su Lin had the impression that he took charge from the moment he stepped into her office. He told her about his skills, his work experience and what type of management he found effective while Su Lin took notes. When Mr. Chen stopped, she randomly selected a question from her list that set him off on another ode to himself. Su Lin was getting tired of hearing about Kevin Chen and interrupted him, “SunTech specializes in cutting-edge technology. What do you know about its products?”

Mr. Chen looked at her and swallowed. He looked deflated. After a long pause, he said, “I can learn. Please. I need to work. I applied to more than a dozen firms since the beginning of the year. I didn’t expect to come to an interview, but I’ll learn. Give me another day, even an hour. Please.”

“Yes.” Su Lin said. “Thank you.”

She stood up and walked Mr. Chen to the door.

Ellen Leu entered her office with a pot of tea as soon as Kevin Chen was out of sight.

“He was handsome, no?” She gushed while she poured two cups. “I hope it worked out OK?”

Su Lin just shook her head, “Ellen, you know I’m no good with people. I can’t do this. This is a job for someone in management. Why would they put me in charge of the hiring?”

“Drink your tea,” Ellen said. She waited until Su Lin had taken a sip before she continued. “You designed ApSel. You have studied more than 50 application methods and combined them in one program. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the leading expert in hiring. Do you really think Peggy Mei or Ming Yu could do a better job?”

Su Lin answered with a brave smile. She didn’t have the same faith in her abilities, but she did know her research. Maybe she could make the right decision after all.

Ellen came around to her side of the desk and gave her a hug. “And you are much better at paying attention, you figure something out. Well, I am going home now. I am late already. If my husband wasn’t so hopeless at management, I would ask you to hire him so I could spend more time with Gang. Anyway, I’ll see you soon.”

“Good bye, Ellen,” Su Lin replied. “Give your two men my regards. I’d love to come and visit.”

“Empty threats.” Ellen laughed. But Su Lin was perfectly serious. She had planned to go into a shop near the temple and buy a small statue of a laughing Buddha that reminded her of Gang. She couldn’t wait to hand the gift to the little boy.

Ellen regarded her friend for a moment. “Don’t stay too late,” she said pushing her glasses back to their proper position.

It was long after office hours but Su Lin was still at her desk. She had gone back to the ApSel read-outs and was trying to reconcile the similar scores of the two applicants. One of them had trouble speaking up; the other seemed incapable of listening. But what could she know of their ability to perform the duties of a management job? Would Peggy Mei or Ming Yu have a better chance of choosing the right person? The day had shown their different approach. Peggy Mei had ordered her to hire a man and Ming Yu had tried to make her understand why it was necessary. It was Ming Yu’s presence in the office that had always provided a balance to Peggy Mei’s no-nonsense approach. Su Lin had a good idea which of the two candidates would be favoured by which of her superiors. She also knew which of the applicants she liked. But could a right decision be made guided by personal likes and dislikes? From Su Lin’s perspective, the human factor put a question mark on every equation. Su Lin shut her eyes and stilled her breathing to reflect on the encounters throughout the day. One thought floated to the surface, clear and simple. Su Lin wrote out a number sequence that stayed with her on the commute home and through the night.

Su Lin’s morning meditation, as usual, left her in a contented, energized state. She was thinking of Liang Wei when she recited the poetry to activate her screen. She immediately requested a link to Peggy Wei’s desk whose forceful personality reminded her so much of Kevin Chen.

Peggy Wei had a look of surprise on her face and Su Lin realized that this was the first time she had initiated an exchange with her superior.

“Mrs. Wei, I will be working from home today.” Sun Lin said. “I will work on a new version of ApSel that will take equal opportunity employment into account.”

“But did you find someone for the management position?” Peggy Wei asked.

“I hope to install ApSel E by the end of this week. And then you’ll be able to begin the hiring process for the management position, and any other position as well.”

“This is good news, but I asked you to fill the position.” Peggy Wei interjected.

“I’m a programmer. That’s what I do. I’m not suited for management. Last night I have even re-entered my ApSel data to confirm that.”

Su Lin added, “You can hire one of the applicants now, but I guarantee that ApSel E will do a better job.”

“Of course,” Peggy Wei conceded before signing off. “I speak for myself as well as SunTech when I say that we have absolute faith in your abilities.”

Su Lin felt exhausted from the exchange and longed to loose herself into the world of numbers. But she felt that she had to make one more call. She found Mr. Yu at home.

“Mr. Yu.” She said. “I wanted to thank you for your help. I have started to develop an updated version of ApSel. I feel that I understand now what men bring to the table.”

Mr. Yu smiled. “So, you have found men’s strengths?”

“Men’s strengths? Oh, no. I haven’t. But I have realized that there are more opportunities for growth if there are both men and women on the team. And I promise that the numbers will back that theory.”

“An interesting theory.” Mr. Yu nodded. “Good, good. I knew I could count on you.”

After signing off, Su Lin looked longingly at her tea pot but she was impatient to get to work. Re-writing a program in less than a week would require a lot of effort and concentration, but it was an area of expertise where Su Lin had confidence in her abilities. And at the end of it, she would allow herself to share a pot of Jasmine tea with a certain young man who held a lot of potential though not necessarily for a management position.

“The Human Factor” by Susanne Martin. Copyright © 2010 by Susanne Martin.

Picture Credits:

• Jasmine Tea 1: via Jessilicious;
• Shanghai Metro Map: via the Transport Politic;
• Shanghai Skyline: via ABB;
• Application Selection Process: via PATS;
• Vacant: via PRH;
• Girl Effect Logo: via The Girl Effect;
• Applicant Selection: via Total APS;
• Taoism Symbol: via Wikimedia;
• Equal Opportunity 1: via Maven Construction;
• Question Mark: via My Selection Criteria;
• Equal Opportunities Logo: via Accent Powder Coating;
• Little Marsh Pheasant: via Birding BC;

Susanne Martin is living on a small island off the Canadian West Coast in a house on a hill where nature manages to keep humanity at bay. She does venture into urban areas if she has to but only from the safe distance of her home is she able to contemplate the elusive human factor. She is writing the truth for the community newspaper and fiction for a completely different market but has noticed the blurring of the edges of the two at certain times of day.

An interactive map of story locations:

As promised in the previous post, here’s a podcast of Lavie Tidhar‘s “The Solnet Ascendancy“, narrated, very vividly, by Ray Sizemore.

Picture credit:

• Stones: via Aeschlih;

Lavie Tidhar is the author of linked-story collection HebrewPunk (2007), novellas Cloud Permutations (2009), An Occupation of Angels (2010), and Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God (2010) and, with Nir Yaniv, of The Tel Aviv Dossier (2009). He also edited the anthology The Apex Book of World SF (2009). He’s lived on three continents and one island-nation, and currently lives in Israel. His first novel, The Bookman, is published by HarperCollins’ new Angry Robot imprint, and will be followed by two more.

Also, check out the exclusive interview Charles A. Tan did with him at SF Signal. Or did he?

Review Quotes:

Lavie Tidhar’s The Solnet Ascendancy… what can I say? The guy is bloody brilliant. It’s not a large offering but it’s a story told with impact. It centres around how quickly and easily and with what devastating effect the redistribution of the future (you’ll understand it later) has when it occurs at an accelerated rate in a small backwater. It’s reading stories like Lavie’s that cause you look at technology and progress with caution.

—SF Revu;

Perhaps the most memorable is Lavie Tidhar’s The Solnet Ascendancy, which describes how the miniscule Pacific island of Vanuatu transforms itself into an information superpower.

—New Scientist;

[...] a fair number of them do a credible job of successfully balancing drama and optimism without sacrificing cultural complexity. The stories here that probably do the best job with this complex balancing act are The Solnet Ascendancy by Lavie Tidhar, Sarging Rasmussen: A Report by Organic by Gord Sellar, and The Earth of Yunhe by Eric Gregory.

—Garner Dozois in the April Locus Magazine;

Lavie Tidhar makes a welcome appearance with The Solnet Ascendancy, a humorous story set on remote Vanuatu. It’s a brilliant little story that returns intermittently to see the unfeasible progress made as technology becomes available and local ingenuity puts it to good use. It’s a refreshingly different location for a story and makes for an enjoyable pleasant read.

—SF Crowsnest;

The Solnet Ascendancy by Lavie Tidhar is a concise, witty and high impact offering that lures the reader into a thought experiment on the redistribution of the future. It also considers the risks and possibilities of the imaginative exploitation of second-hand technology.

—Interzone;

Despite this, the stories in the anthology show considerable variety. Some are Trickster parables. Lavie Tidhar’s The Solnet Ascendancy neatly reverses the cargo cult scenario, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Seeds describes the perfect blowback, while Alastair Reynolds’ At Budokan updates the impresario concept with panache.

—The Huffington Post;

The state is viewed with suspicion, while the market moves so quickly that malevolent corporations die off with a minimum of fuss. China, Brazil, tiny Vanuatu all have powerful roles in a post-superpower future.

—SciFi Wire;

The Solnet Ascendancy by Lavie Tidhar and Seeds by Silva Moreno-Garcia are, for the most part, trickster stories, but they work within the context of the theme.

—Charles A. Tan;

An interactive map of SHINE story locations:

US:

UK:

ELECTRONIC:

Independents:

Again my profound thanks to the indefatiguable Charles A. Tan for interviewing all the SHINE authors. Well, all the SHINE authors? Charles missed one, possibly becuase he’s so close to him (relatively speaking: they both post on the World SF News Blog, but live a considerable distance from each other).

I thought about attenting Charles to this (and I will now), but on second thought decided to interview Lavie myself.

So here is the ‘lost’ SHINE interview with Lavie Tidhar (and as an extra bonus tomorrow I will post the podcast of Lavie’s SHINE story The Solnet Ascendancy, narrated, very vividly, by Ray Sizemore):

Jetse de Vries: Actually, I don’t really see you as an ‘optimistic’ writer (at least: the work that I’m aware of). So why try SHINE? Stretch your wings? The challenge? Or do you just want to be published in every publication available?

Lavie Tidhar: It’s interesting — how do you fit into an ‘optimist?’ label? I’m not sure I’d describe myself that way, but with my science fiction work — I’ve been working on my own sort of future-history in a sequence of short stories and at least one novel — and that assumption, that there is a future, that humanity goes on to the solar system and even out of it, that it develops the tools necessary for its own survival — that’s quite optimistic, isn’t it?

I’m not sure the stories themselves are particularly optimistic — which comes down to an awareness that, even if we do go out into space, even if we do develop alternative energy sources and so on — humanity will still remain the same. You’d still have abuse (of people, of power), greed, violence… which means you can still tell interesting stories. I don’t ever see a utopia emerging, but I also doubt we’ll destroy ourselves in the short term.

So — a realist? But I’m pretty sure realists don’t write science fiction…

Maybe the answer is just wanting to be in every publication going, as you suggested!

Jetse de Vries: You’re an avid traveller, and it informs your writing. Did your awareness of the wider world eventually initiate the World SF Blog?

Lavie Tidhar: Yes and no. I always knew I wasn’t a part of the American SF sphere, in a way. I grew up on a lot of American SF, but I also grew up on a lot of very obscure Hebrew fantastical fiction (not to mention growing up on a kibbutz, which is a real-world failed-utopian construct), so my interest, very early on, was in different modalities of science fiction and fantasy. You know, James Gunn can bleat all he wants about how science fiction is soooo American, but it’s not: it’s a way of thinking about the future that, one could argue, needs very little in common with the American pulps. So whenever I went travelling I always looked for that. I remember at eighteen — I wasn’t even eighteen then — travelling through Eastern Europe just post-communism, and picking up the Romanian Nemira anthologies, and some interesting Russian books in translation — and going to China a few years later was a delight, because I got to meet all these science fiction writers in Beijing. Most recently I went to Singapore and had a chance to meet a lot of people working in the field at the moment.

I’m very lucky I’ve been able to move around as much as I have, but then you also sacrifice a lot for it, I guess — a sort of stability is obviously lacking.

The blog was something I wanted to try for a very long time, but it was the publication of The Apex Book of World SF that finally enabled me to do that — it was meant to be a promotional tool for the anthology but, of course, very quickly took on a life of its own. And it’s been pretty incredible — all these talented people joining us, contributing articles, starting a real dialogue that’s still ongoing, that’s still evolving.

Jetse de Vries: When writers write about an ‘exotic’ place on today’s Earth, must they really have been there, or can they get away with making it up and a ton of research? Or in other words: does one need to have been in an exotic locale to write about it?

Lavie Tidhar: You know, as I’ve said before, what’s exotic for one person is commonplace to another. So if you approach a location as “exotic” you’ve already lost, in a way. I don’t personally know if writers need to have visited somewhere or not. Personally, I need to. I need to get a sense of place or I find it very hard to write about it. Which is why I almost never write anything set in the United States. For me, I need to learn a place slowly, over time, and even then I know I’m only scratching the surface. So part of it is pretending, obviously! But not too much, I hope.

Jetse de Vries: Why do editing projects at all, when you’re already writing? Basically, editing (anthologies, books, magazines) is a huge time sink (believe me: I know), so why bother?

Lavie Tidhar: You’re right. I don’t really have an answer to that — it can be incredibly frustrating and time consuming and so on, but at the same time it can be incredibly satisfying. I love the fact I get to promote other people’s work, put together something I can be proud of. As long as it doesn’t take over fiction writing, for me (or playing with comics or whatever I end up being fascinated with) then it’s ok. I think it’s a bit like a bug — once you get it, it’s very hard to stop!

Jetse de Vries: In “The Solnet Ascendancy” you depict Mike Rowe as a well-intended volunteer, while the Vanuatu local in the story — Fatfat Freddy — in the last part of the story wistfully remarks: ‘“Fifty years of volunteerism—” he makes it sound like a rare type of disease, “and what did it get us?”.’ How ambiguous do you feel about volunteer labour in developed countries?

Lavie Tidhar: Sadly, I didn’t invent “volunteerism”. It’s an actual term used by development agencies. The fact that it sounds like a disease — and they don’t seem to get it — is quite sad, isn’t it? I know a lot of people in development, and I know a lot of them do feel ambivalent about it. How much good does it do? How much bad? How much of it is tied in with national or big-business interests, or with a very specific vision of what development means? It’s not things I can answer easily.

Jetse de Vries: When I spoke with John Berlyne at the last EasterCon, he was full of praise for your novel Osama (to be released by PS Publishing). An excerpt from it has gone up online recently on World Literature Today’s special SF issue (If I understand correctly). However, while John loved Osama, he also mentioned it was a near-impossible sell to the ‘big’ publishers. Do you intentionally try to write controversial material, or did it just happen? And do you think that something like — say — Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses would be published today by a major publisher?

Lavie Tidhar: What’s published in World Literature Today isn’t actually a part of the novel. It’s a story about a guy who wakes up one morning to find out he’s Osama bin Laden. I write a lot about politics, I think. The novel, Osama, actually owes part of its origin to a story I wrote a while back, My Travels with Al-Qaeda (in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s anthology Salon Fantastique), which is sort of a love story, about two people trapped by several bombing attacks — which is sort of what happened to my wife and me. We were in Dar-es-Salaam when the American embassy was bombed, my wife was in the Sinai during the Ras-al-Saitan bombinbgs, in London during the Kings’ Cross bombings… so you do get to the point where you think, hey, is this personal?

Osama is, I think, a very ambitious novel. And I do think that, at heart, it’s a love story. What John said is absolutely true. A lot of editors liked the book, but were afraid to publish it. And we’re very lucky Nick Gevers and Pete and Nicky Crowther at PS were so enthusiastic about it.

Now, I don’t set out to write ‘controversial’ material. But I do feel I should engage with what’s important, that I should write about things that matter. It’s not to say I don’t love the escapist stuff as well, but at heart I’m a political writer — because there’s so much that we need to talk about, need to understand.

Would The Satanic Verses be published today? I have no idea. So far, however, Osama has been turned down by, oh, well, a fair number of publishers, yes. But I’m lucky to have PS, and I am still hopeful someone would get over this fear and pick it up. We’ll see…

Jetse de Vries: Do you think science fiction (or any other writing) is capable of changing the world?

Lavie Tidhar: Well, everything we do changes the world, doesn’t it? It’s a question of scale, not effect. But yes, absolutely it does. Books have a tremendous power. And even it all it ever does is help someone pass a lonely night, well, that’s still changing the world to the better, isn’t it?

Jetse de Vries: Does being an Israeli inform your writing in any specific matter?

Lavie Tidhar: Obviously it does, though being also a naturalised South African and having permanent right-to-remain in the UK makes me feel like Uri Geller, sometimes… I find Israel fascinating, as an experiment in large-scale myth-making — it has an entire history written and patched-together to justify it. In a very real way it was, and is, an experiment in creating a fictional state. You’d have to be crazy, as a writer, not to want to engage with it.

Jetse de Vries: Finally, anything you want to plug (apart from The Apex Book of World SF and the World SF News Blog)?

Lavie Tidhar: I’d like to give a shout-out to Shine, an anthology of optimistic SF stories!

Truth is, I’ve got a ton of stuff coming out. The Bookman, my novel from Angry Robot Books, comes out in the US in October — it’s kind of a love letter to steampunk. And another novel in the same world, Camera Obscura, is coming out next year. Can you say kung fu-noir?

There’s also Martian Sands, a short novel coming out from Apex Books in the US — late this year or early next year, I’m not sure — which deals with the holocaust, kibbutzim on Mars, fictional detectives, digital intelligence and evolution, drugs, four-armed Martian warriors and, well, lots more. I think of it as Schindler’s List meets Total Recall.

Osama, as we mentioned, is coming out of PS Publishing in the UK, in a limited hardcover edition. This is probably next year sometime?

PS are also releasing my novella Cloud Permutations soon, which is about Melanesian colonists on a distant planet, a boy who wants to fly, possibly sentient clouds and a quest. You got to have a quest! And PS will release another novella from me at some point, Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God, which I think of as a guns & sorcery novella — think sex, drugs and violence, with no redeeming features!

And Apex Books are re-issuing my novella, An Occupation of Angels, very soon — a supernatural cold war thriller with angels. And there are quite a few short stories coming up — from Interzone to Ellen Datlow’s anthology Naked City.

Keeps me busy…

[End of Interview]

Anyway, with the excerpt of his story posted yesterday here on the SHINE blog, and an interview with him today, and a podcast of his story tomorrow, we might as well call it Lavie Tidhar week.