Therefore I Am - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 2 Read online

  Copyright Information

  THEREFORE I AM

  Digital Science Fiction Anthology 2

  These stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or aliens, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.

  Therefore I Am: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 2

  Copyright © 2011 by Digital Science Fiction, a division of Gseb Marketing Inc.

  All rights reserved, including but not limited to the right to reproduce this book in any form, electronic or otherwise. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book or the individual stories contained herein via the Internet or any other means without the express written permission of the Publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Support and respect the authors’ rights.

  Published by: Digital Science Fiction, a division of Gseb Marketing Inc.

  1560 Argus Street, LaSalle, Ontario, Canada—N9J 3H5

  President—Michael Wills

  Managing Editor—Stephen Helleiner

  Production Manager—Craig Ham

  Therefore I Am: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 2

  Editor—Christine Clukey

  Cover Art—Emmanuel Xerx Javier

  Layout and Design—Master Page Design

  Tremors—Copyright © 2011 by Tomas L. Martin; Open Letter to Non-Robotic Sentients—Copyright © 2011 by Shawn Howard; Waiting Room—Copyright © 2011 by Bruce Golden; Breakers—Copyright © 2011 by James C. Bassett; Inchoate—Copyright © 2011 by Tab Earley; El Camino—Copyright © 2011 by Dustin Monk; The Night We Flushed the Old Town—Copyright © 2011 by Martin L. Shoemaker; Fruitful—Copyright © 2011 by David Steffen; Out on a Limb—Copyright © 2011 by Tom Barlow; Nevermind the Bollocks—Copyright © 2011 by Annie Bellet

  First Published, July 2011

  (e)ISBN: 978-0-9869484-3-5 (ebk)

  ISBN: 978-0-9869484-2-8 (pbk)

  http://digitalsciencefiction.com

  Preface

  Our second edition of the Digital Science Fiction anthology series developed a theme all on its own – a theme of what consciousness is and what it means to be human and live a fully human life. Therefore I Am features excellent character studies of uniquely human emotions and traits as well as stories that give us an outsider’s view of human consciousness and behavior. Whatever your point of view, this edition chronicles the concept of humanity as it evolves into the future.

  We gratefully acknowledge the many authors who have submitted stories for inclusion in our anthologies. We’ve laughed with, fought along with, and shared the sorrows of their protagonists…and we appreciate the opportunity to present these tales to our readers. Each of these stories features a distinct voice granting us a perceptive look inside the human psyche as it engages with and copes with technological and futuristic challenges, and the stories have as much variation as the species examined herein.

  This edition of Digital Science Fiction welcomes Christine Clukey as editor. Her skill and pure enjoyment of the genre, along with her talent for introducing words like “troika” into daily communications, make her an excellent addition to the working team. We thank our contributors and staff for creating a second fantastic installment in our anthology series.

  Digital Science Fiction is a monthly anthology of compelling science fiction short stories from professional writers. It is published each month through popular eBook formats and in traditional print. Our anthologies are directed toward a mature readership. While our home base is Ontario, Canada, our artists, editors, designers, and of course authors, hail from around the world. More information about is us is available at digitalsciencefiction.com.

  With that, we thank you for your continued support, and we invite you to leap forward into the ten stories contained in this work. We hope you enjoy them as much as we have.

  Michael Wills

  Digital Science Fiction

  Tremors

  By Tomas L. Martin

  By late summer, the Atlantic seabed had yet to fill up. The dry northern sea valleys waited for the rain. Behind me, our building-sized crawler carved deep tracks in the chemical sludge. In places, the dried ocean remnants drifted hundreds of feet high.

  The purple-black sky wasn’t cold enough yet for it to rain. Billions of tons of H2O loomed dormant above us, waiting to overload the absorbent crystals beneath us and fill the ocean back up.

  Inside the heavy gloves of my suit, my hands twitched involuntarily. I let my grip on the handle slacken for a second, and twisted my head awkwardly inside my helmet to tongue a tablet into my mouth. The medication would give me a few hours peace, perhaps—enough to hide the symptoms for a bit. I lived in perpetual fear of my disease being discovered, and being told that even if our mission succeeded, I couldn’t get off the planet.

  The tunnel began to sink into the sludge without me guiding it, tugging at its flotation device. Five meters in diameter and many kilometers long, the anodized aluminum tunnel was supposed to be mankind’s pathway to the stars. The number of months where a crawler could make it across the ocean floor unscathed was diminishing rapidly, and the atmosphere was becoming too corrosive for anything else. By laying a subway tunnel beneath the surface of the sludge, we hoped that transport between the continents and the launchpad at the Azores could be maintained.

  I had to thrust my quivering hands shoulder-deep in order to rescue the tunnel from its lazy descent to the seabed. The flotation devices and the thickness of the sludge kept me and it from sinking, but it paid to be safe. Chemical nasties lurked in the remains of the ocean, waiting to dissolve the tunnel—and me.

  The suit kept me afloat in the acidic mud and boosted my arm strength. It allowed me to guide the heavy tunnel through the sludge to where the rest of the team had already finished the connecting station. The station, a squat building twenty meters or so in length and with meter-thick sides for acid protection, didn’t look like it held the key to our survival.

  We were trying to link the remaining settlements in Europe to the Azores. Its position at the center of the Atlantic basin meant that, in early summer, it was one of the few places with skies clear enough to launch into space. We only had a few years left before evacuating people from the planet became too dangerous, and then we’d all be stuck here.

  My end of the tunnel led from the handles in my hands back a hundred meters to the rear of the crawler, where twenty kilometers of tunnel waited to be unspooled onto the seabed over the next leg of our journey. I pushed the open end of the tunnel into the waiting airlock on the connecting station. Gears and mechanisms pulled it in closer, covering the vulnerable joints with sheaths of acid protection.

  With the new connection made, the crawler’s vast engines spooled up, their deep rumble cutting across the wind. The crawler’s caterpillar tracks, some twenty meters high, grated into motion. The crawler plowed away the top layers of sand and rock in front of it, along with swathes of gooey crystals and foam.

  Ellie trudged over, her figure distorted by the bulk of her chemical suit. She gave me a thumbs-up as the connection clicked into place. I tried to return it, but my hand was still a little AWOL and gave a random twitch that Ellie looked at oddly through her hardened glass visor. We turned and headed back to the waiting crawler.

  Sooner or later, my disease will stop me from working and I’ll be stuck. The Spacers won’t give me a scholarship, and I’
ll be left down here, another hopeless case. They don’t waste their time on the millions down here on Earth—they only want those who can give something in return. When only a few thousand can survive up there, they can afford to be choosy.

  Ellie and I clambered up the ladder into the crawler airlock. The airlock hissed as the noxious air got pumped out and the purified stuff kicked in. Jets of water sluiced away the sludge caked to our legs and arms. A green light flicked on, and we shucked off our suits and stowed them in our lockers.

  I checked the seals for next time and shook myself, trying to get used to my old, unboosted muscles again. For the next few hours, I’d try to lift things way too heavy for me, expecting the suit servos to kick in and help me out. Worse, from inside that cupboard, the suit couldn’t help disguise my symptoms.

  The crawler floor bucked as we pulled away from the connection point. Through the window, I could see the rolls of tunnel unwinding as we moved, stretching away behind us. The crawler vibrated from the regular impacts of the railguns hammering thirty-foot stakes into the ground, pinning the tunnel to the seabed.

  “That’s my job over for ten hours,” Ellie said, shaking out her matted hair as we left the airlock. “Time for sleep. You joining me?”

  “I wish,” I said. “I’ve got a six-hour shift in the radar room.”

  “You feeling ok?” Ellie asked. She’d seen me shaking. I motioned for her to keep quiet, hoping no one could overhear. If the captain found out …

  “A few tremors,” I whispered. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “I can cover if you need the rest.”

  “No.” I shook my head. I couldn’t take the risk of someone noticing, no matter how exhausted I felt. “It’s something only an officer can do, anyway.”

  Ellie kissed my cheek. “Such are the perils of responsibility, Lieutenant.” She gave a mock salute and darted into the mess. I grumbled and headed for the bridge.

  I was approached about the Atlantic Project two years ago, and there was barely a month between my being assigned the post and getting the news from my doctor. If it had ever been known that I had a major debilitating disease, they’d never have let me anywhere near the project.

  My room at that time, beneath the scorched hills of Snowdonia, was tiny. The bed and desk folded down from the wall to conserve what little floor space there was. I frequently bumped into walls just turning around. It was better than the alternative—all but a few cities that weren’t buried underground had become uninhabitable.

  A general in UN uniform came to see me, bumping his head on the low doorframe as he entered. I stuffed my slightly twitching hands behind my back.

  “Kimi Suominen?”

  I stood up from my calculations and nodded. The general explained that I’d been recommended based on my work engineering the new accommodation tunnel, which we’d completed six months before.

  “How did you enjoy the work?” he asked.

  “It was ok,” I said. “Glad to see we could get more people underground.”

  “And the outside work? You’re comfortable with the dangers?”

  “It’s just work.” I shrugged. “Someone’s got to go out there, otherwise we’ll never survive.”

  “I’m glad you see it that way,” the general said. “We’re hoping you’ll join our Atlantic Project.”

  “You mean it exists?”

  “It exists.” He nodded and passed a thick sheaf of documents to me. “You’ve been outside. You know the atmosphere’s only getting worse. The number of days we’re able to fly to America halved last year to just 13. There’s no ocean left for boats. The storms and acidification make it harder to travel across, even by land.”

  “So you want us to dig underground?”

  “If you dug, it would take centuries. We’re laying a tunnel across the seabed.”

  “Big enough to transport people?” I whistled. “I mean, I know the data cables on the seabed still work, but that’s only with daily maintenance by thousands. How can we risk the journey for something so vulnerable? It wouldn’t last more than a couple of years out there.”

  “Because we have to.” The general closed the door behind him. “You’ve been out there—you know how corrosive the atmosphere has become. Our reports say that this is our last chance to get off-planet. In twenty years, the acidification will be strong enough to erode the hull of anything trying to leave the atmosphere.”

  “All right,” I said, swallowing that piece of classified bad news like a foul-tasting antibiotic. “So what do we do once the tunnel’s completed?”

  “The tunnel connects us and America to the Azores, where the cloud is thin enough for the space elevator to still work. The Spacers are ready to take more people, if we can get them there.”

  “How many people?” I sensed a small hope.

  “Not enough.” The general’s lips pursed. “But all members of the project are guaranteed passage off-world.”

  I signed up straight away. How could I not? It was either that or dying a slow death underneath the crust of a rapidly decaying Earth. I should have told them about my Parkinson’s disease when I learned about my condition. I didn’t. I wanted to get off this planet too much to throw it away. I’ve been lying to them ever since.

  It’s always a surprise for people the first time they wander onto the bridge and see how huge it is. What else are they going to do with the space? Crawlers are big. They have to be to cross the dry Atlantic, scaling the mid-ocean ridges and traversing chasms where the water hasn’t evaporated yet.

  So, after building caterpillar treads nearly half a kilometer long, maneuvering jets and skyscraper-sized engines, the designers found themselves with a lot of space left up top.

  It took me three minutes to get to my chair after entering the bridge. I used to appreciate the exercise, but lately exertion had started the tremors. It’s no fun doing a six-hour shift on sensors at any time. Doing it when your hand won’t stop bucking and your limbs are stiff is worse.

  “I’m only thirty-four,” I muttered to my quivering hand before I got within earshot of the others. “You shouldn’t be doing this to me.” My accusations didn’t stop the tremors.

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” said Marcus, officer of the watch I was replacing. “Long night, eh?”

  “Too long,” I said. “Too damn long.”

  I slid my hand under the sensor desk. Lately, my hands were still prone to shaking even after taking the meds. I smiled at Marcus to make sure he didn’t suspect anything. He was already beginning his slog back to the living quarters, but he paused about ten meters away and indicated one of the consoles.

  “Keep an eye on the weather, Kimi,” he told me. “It looks like it might rain.”

  Rain comes once a year. You know Venus? Well, Earth’s getting close to being its twin these days. The atmosphere got torched years ago and the sun evaporated the oceans, leaving behind the waste we dumped there. Sometimes when you think the sun can’t evaporate any more, the heavens burst open and the ocean bed gets covered in toxic seas once more—just for a few months, until the sun can evaporate them again. It’s not a good idea to be there when it happens.

  It’d been years since Europe had any reliable physical contact with America. There was data and telephone, and crawlers making the trip overland. For most of the year, the air was so thick with storm clouds and lightning strikes that crawler crews struggled to survive the trips.

  If rain interrupted us this time, next year might be too late for us all. I swung my chair over to the weather console. The clouds were over six kilometers thick, and the colorimeter warned of dire consequences: the needle was past the black region. We had floating apparatus for when the rains came, but we’d lose everything that we’d spent all those months building if we left the tunnel exposed under the deluge.

  Next console to check was the map, showing how far we had to go before we reached nominally dry land. Our crawler was laying the section of tunnel farthest from the dry coasts of Europe, u
p to the midway point of the Azores. Once we finished this connection, the first refugees could start traveling down in the train cars. The teams behind us were laying tracks inside each tunnel we completed.

  “Hey, Corey,” I said as I turned the corner around the huge screen that showed our path across the Atlantic. I stuffed my hand in my pocket and attempted a smile.

  Corey was one of the lucky ones not required to put on a suit and work outside. That should have meant he stayed clean and tidy, but hours of screen-work had tousled his hair and dirtied his skin. Red marks lined his cheeks underneath his battered spectacles.

  “Huh?” Corey lifted his face from the screen and craned around to see me. “Oh, hi, Lieutenant. How’s it going?”

  My arm began to stiffen and shake.

  “Oh, fine,” I said, clenching the offending arm. “What’s the news?”

  He looked balefully from me to the screen. I guess when you’ve been looking at the same map every day for six weeks, things get boring. He tapped a few things into the console board and sighed.

  “Oh well, you know, we’re moving,” he said vaguely. “We’ve got another three changeovers to do before we meet up with the American crew in the Azores. It’s taking us about seven hours each change around, which means we’ll be done in two, maybe three days.”

  “Great,” I said. “The weather looks rough, though.”

  “Yeah.” Corey nodded and traced a line on the map, following our path through a maze of contour lines. “Once we get closer to the Azores, the land gets too high for us to worry about losing the crawler. But until we reach this point …” He marked the place with a red light. The mark looked just as random as the rest of the map. “We can still drown.”

  I tried to estimate the distance. The mark was about two-thirds of the way from us to the Azores, after which the seabed rose rapidly.“How long … ?”

  “Based on our current speed, forty hours.” Corey’s bland face twisted into an uncharacteristic frown. The movement bunched up the red marks, and it made him look distinctly alien. “This next section’s a real bastard, Kimi.”