Future Tense Fiction Page 16

  He slowed down and let her disappear over the hilltop ahead, just behind the goatbots.

  Then Zheng, Simak, and the two other Whale CEOs zipped through the pack. Their legs and pumping arms were a blur. For them, this was a clash of the R&D departments of the vast companies whose avatars they’d become. It was pointless to compete with them. Their muscle cells were synthetic, their tissues fully superhuman.

  At last, Jyri was over the first hill. The road turned left. The goatbots followed it, straight at the steep cliffs crested by white clouds. The Whales were tiny dots at their heels. The other runners followed, and the Race was on.

  The sun blazed at their backs. The paved road turned into a rocky path. Jyri did not mind the climb. Early on in his training, he had done a lot of hill runs. It was a good way to get the biomechanics right.

  He shifted his gait into full barefoot style, stepping down with the foot’s edge, not with the heel, gliding, elf-like. Others in the runner pack found the path tougher, and even without quickening his pace, Jyri started to leave them behind.

  The last ruined house on the outskirts of the village was surrounded by skeletons of real goats. The main goatbot herd was nowhere to be seen, but Jyri kept pace with a handful of bots ahead. They veered to the right, onto an even rockier path leading diagonally up the cliffside.

  “Let’s go get them, shall we?”

  That slap on his shoulder, again. Alessandro. He was right at Jyri’s heels and then ahead, sending up puffs of dust as he went. He’d come out of nowhere. He had pulled the old ultrarunner trick: running on the very edge of the path so you could not see him from ahead.

  Jyri’s gut churned at the sight of Alessandro’s broad, receding back. This was too much. But the voice of reason cautioned there was a long, long road ahead. The goatbots had to have at least 20 hours of charge, and the island could have hidden recharging stations. The rough terrain promised microfractures, accumulating pain.

  Jyri took a tiny sip of water from his Camelbak, not enough to hydrate, just to trick his brain into keeping thirst at bay. An ultrarun was an ever-expanding tree of decisions. Drink or not. Speed up or not. He reached a compromise. He would open the valves a bit, just to see if he could gain on Alessandro, and slow down if the effort seemed too much.

  He increased the beat of his mental metronome to 180 beats per minute. He grazed his shin on a rock—he would be paying for that for many hours. But the pain mixed with the dopamine drumbeat gave him a burst of speed. His head lifted high. He pumped his knees in perfect running form. Suddenly, he was just behind Alessandro, who grunted in surprise.

  Jyri could not resist lightly brushing Alessandro’s shoulder as he edged past. Then he raced up the path, following the joyous zigzag dance of the goatbot ahead, toward the cliffs that now belonged only to him.

  Fourteen hours into the race, Jyri lost the goatbot in the clouds.

  The rapidly falling dusk made the island’s contours soft and dream-like. The ascent had been grueling. The paths were unmarked and strewn with sharp-edged rocks. On the worst stretches, he had to run bent almost double to avoid the spiky branches arcing over the path.

  But the dopamine drive kept him on the bot’s trail all the way up to the plateau. It resembled a lunar landscape: large boulders, grey gravel. There were fields of tiny round pebbles that retained the sun’s heat and were like hot coals to run on.

  He glimpsed other runners only once: two dots moving along the coastline far below, chasing a goatbot side by side. They might have been Zheng and Simak, and Jyri wondered what they were doing, racing so close together. Unable to give an inch to each other, perhaps. Or was it something else?

  Otherwise, it was just him and the bot. By now, he had a feel for the artificial animal’s behavior. It stopped as if to rest whenever he slowed down, probably recharging in the sun. If he rushed it, it scrambled away.

  That was the cruelty of La Gama’s scheme. The only way to narrow the gap was to be relentless. The goatbot’s pace was just above his fat-burning maximum heart rate of 140 bpm, and he was halfway through his energy gel packs.

  A chilly wind picked up. Clouds started rolling across the plateau, swallowing the dark boulders. This was it, Jyri realized. The thing could not recharge in the mist. If he could get close and stay with it, it would be his.

  He sprinted forward and followed the bot into the whiteness. It seemed like a demon now, making wild leaps over rocks that Jyri had to go around. Every now and then it melted into the fog, and Jyri’s thundering heart skipped a beat. The beat of the dopamine drum pushed him forward, faster and faster, roaring inside his head.

  And then the goatbot stumbled.

  There was a clatter of metal and rocks. Jyri snapped back to knife’sedge alertness. The pebbles were wet and slippery, and he slowed down. A shape loomed ahead: a boulder. He swung around, and saw the bot barely 50 feet away, struggling to get up, its legs scraping against stone. This was it, he had to push now, just a little—

  His leg muscles burst into cold flame. Then they seized up. The cursed rigs, the runner’s rigor mortis.

  No. I can do this.

  The cold feeling spread into his brain, like the world’s worst ice cream headache. Keep pushing, damn it.

  But he could not.

  He.

  Could.

  Not.

  A treacherous pebble twisted beneath his foot. He fell forward, pressed his chin to his chest, cradled his head. One elbow banged on a boulder and went numb as he came down with a bone-jarring thump.

  Then everything was quiet, except for the taunting clatter of the goatbot’s hooves.

  Jyri lay still, curled up on the damp stones. Everything hurt. But it wasn’t the pain that made vomit rise into his throat, it was the absence of something.

  The running fire had died.

  He didn’t want to get up. He lay on the bare wet rock and tried to think through the pain, but thoughts fled him like the goatbot in the fog. He fumbled for the Camelbak’s tube with numb hands. It slipped and he let it go.

  Lying down meant the end. He would be one of the Race’s failures, the non-finishers. From now on, investors he pitched to would give him one knowing look and pass. CarrotStick would die, and his future with it. He closed his eyes and fought back tears.

  Only—it made no sense.

  The drive to run was gone. Something was wrong with his dopamine receptors. Had his own immune system started rejecting them? He had undergone a regime to get his body to tolerate the new genes. Still, a sudden runaway immune reaction was not impossible. But he did not have a fever or any other symptoms.

  That left one other possibility: a hostile biohack targeting the enhancement directly, maybe a biologic drug that blocked the receptor. And only someone with insight into CarrotStick’s IP could have designed that.

  Alessandro. Those slaps on the shoulder. The rings he wore. Alessandro would know enough about CarrotStick’s receptors to leverage A.I. to design a molecule to target them.

  The void in his head was filled by a flood of anger, red and warm and good.

  He remembered what his first running coach had told him in high school.

  The best fuel for finishing a race is hate.

  Jyri flopped to his belly, got to his knees, and stayed there for a moment, breathing hard. There was a boulder next to him. He embraced it like a lover, found a handhold, and pulled himself up. He leaned against the rocky surface, pressed his forehead against it. His legs wobbled but held.

  He would make it back. He would prove what had happened, destroy Alessandro’s name.

  He squirted an energy gel pack into his mouth. The hydrogel-encapsulated carbohydrates released an expanding bubble of warmth in his belly.

  He let go of the rock, took one step, then another, fighting the rigs. After three steps, it started to get easier.

  After 10 steps, he broke into a jog.

  The descent was even worse than the ascent. Most ultrarunners walked uphill and ran downhill, b
ut the trail was so rough Jyri had to slow down to a walk to give the microtears in his muscles a chance to heal.

  It was almost dark when he finally emerged from the cloud cover and realized he had made it further than he’d thought.

  Only in the wrong direction.

  The interior of the island spread before him in the pale moonlight: rolling hills, a dry riverbed, ash-colored dead trees. Jyri had taken a wrong turn on the plateau. The village was behind him. He would have to climb back up and retrace his steps—a 14-hour journey, back when he was still fresh.

  The fatigue fell upon him, heavy and thick. He nearly stumbled again. What did he have left? In theory, 40 percent: That’s what science claimed you could still draw upon when you reached all limits of endurance.

  It would have to be enough.

  He turned to start the long climb back up, and heard a shout from below.

  “Salo! Down here!”

  Alessandro. He was perhaps 100 meters below Jyri, on rough but level ground. A short distance away from him was a herd of goatbots, at least 20 of them. As Jyri watched, Alessandro dashed toward them. The herd erupted in all directions. Alessandro chased one for a half-minute, but then it swerved away, and the herd simply regrouped behind the Italian. There was no way to tell which one it had been.

  If Jyri had retained any strength, he would have laughed aloud. The goatbots were persistence-hunting Alessandro, playing a shell game that would eventually exhaust him.

  Maybe I should just sit down and watch. The bastard deserved it.

  “Salo, damn it, I need some help here! You can’t catch these motherfuckers alone. They gang up and then there is no way to tell them apart. We need to work together. Come on!”

  “If you’d wanted my help, maybe you shouldn’t have screwed with me,” Jyri shouted. His voice was hoarse.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Jyri was now halfway down to the clearing. He imagined punching Alessandro, but was not sure he could actually lift his arm.

  “I know you hacked me,” Jyri said. “Back in the village.”

  Alessandro stopped and stared at him, eyes wide.

  “You too?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My metabolism is fucked. I thought it was a malfunction.” Maybe it was just the moonlight, but Alessandro did look pale.

  “Bullshit,” Jyri said. He needed the hate, goddamn it. There were tears in his eyes.

  “Think about it, Salo. It was that bitch La Gama. Those smoothies—why do you think they made us drink them? She was the only one who knew enough about our hacks to develop countermeasures against them.”

  The hate cooled down to an ember. Jyri stared at Alessandro. His hands started shaking.

  Alessandro lowered his voice.

  “Look, man. You’re a good guy. I know I left you in a bad spot, back in the day.” His grin was gone. “I don’t need to cheat, damn it. But right now, I need you. So…I’m sorry I screwed you, all right?”

  Jyri looked at him. One apology was not enough to erase five years of backbreaking work and anxiety. How stupid did Alessandro think he was?

  Then he remembered Zheng and Simak, running in tandem.

  “This is the whole point of the Race,” Jyri said. “La Gama gave us a challenge that’s impossible to meet individually, no matter how good your enhancements are. The Whales must be hating it.”

  He looked at Alessandro’s leonine face. There had been no malice in the betrayal. Out here, it was easier to see it. Just an animal, running after the prey, as was its nature.

  All of a sudden, Jyri felt less heavy.

  “That’s why we didn’t make good partners, man,” Alessandro said. “You were way too clever for me.”

  Jyri took a deep breath.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s hunt.”

  It took Jyri and Alessandro several tries to separate a goatbot from the herd. One of them rushed the herd and chose a target; the other intercepted whenever it tried to join the others. It took bursts of speed Jyri would not have imagined he still possessed. Alessandro’s face was purple, all traces of arrogance wiped away by pain. Between dashes, they shared their remaining energy gels and water.

  By two in the morning they finally had a goatbot on the run. The herd followed close behind, so they could not let their attention waver.

  Forty percent, Jyri kept thinking, as they raced along the dry riverbed. This was what he imagined the land of the dead was like, arid and endless.

  Yet, somehow, he found himself enjoying the run. His mind was quiet. How long had it been since he’d run in flow, disappearing into a task at the edge of his ability? The Finnish word for thinking was ajatella. It originally meant harrying one’s prey until the end.

  Their lungs worked like bellows. There was no breath for words, but Alessandro was a silent presence at his side, focused on the same goal. With every synchronized step they took, the anger and the anxiety leaked out.

  After a while, there was only the satisfaction of joint pursuit: the bot’s indistinct shape ahead, the rattle of rocks beneath their feet.

  The coastal cliffs were rimmed with light when the goatbot finally slowed, collapsed in a tangle of limbs, and lay still.

  Jyri stared at it, trying not to collapse himself as his heart rate slowed and the blood pressure in his limbs dropped. Alessandro was doubled over, hands on his knees, as he retched.

  “You…” the Italian waved breathlessly. “You…do the honors.”

  Jyri half-walked, half-hopped to the machine. Up close, it looked even more like an animal. Its black carapace moved up and down, as if it was breathing. Gingerly, he touched the white stick figure on its flank. A round hole snapped instantly open. He reached inside, and his fingers found two objects: a vial filled with a clear liquid and a pneumatic injection needle.

  Alessandro wiped vomit from his beard and looked at him.

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked. “It’s the antidote, stupid.”

  Jyri weighed the vial and the needle in his hand. Was this some final trick? Did it even make sense that there would be a universal antidote to hacks against all the contestants’ different enhancements? Of course. The smoothies: They were probably probiotics with bacteria producing a variety of customized biologics in the runners’ guts. They would have a universal genetic off-switch, triggered by whatever the vial contained.

  One shot, and the drive to run would be his again. And yet there was something pure about the night air, the light in the horizon, the dust on his face. He was here, not in the anxiety-ridden past or uncertain tomorrow. Did he really want the overriding, relentless drumbeat back? He was in pain, but this pain was something he had chosen. It belonged to him.

  He shook his head and handed the antidote to Alessandro.

  “You do it,” he said. “I’ll find my own way back.”

  The Italian looked at him, green eyes unreadable. With a practiced move, he filled the vial and found a vein in his arm. The clear liquid went in with a hiss. Alessandro took a deep breath. His skin flushed, and he stretched expansively.

  “I’ll tell them to come get you,” he said. “Find some shelter and stay there. And I’ll do that intro to Zheng, and brag about your mad motivation-hacking tech. I know you were bluffing earlier about talking to her, but you should. I think she’ll be interested.”

  Jyri nodded and raised a hand.

  He watched Alessandro’s white form recede into the distance until he disappeared behind the withered foliage on the dry riverbank.

  He waited until the sun came up. Long shadow-fingers stretched across the valley, and the coastal cliffs glinted golden. A mirage hovered above the dry expanse of the island. It looked like a ghost city, with floating towers and pillars.

  Jyri felt empty and light. His Camelbak was dry, and he let his backpack fall to the ground. Gazelle or lion, he thought.

  Then he started running.

  Burned-Over Territory

  Lee Konst
antinou

  I’m halfway through a plate of soggy risotto, giving my opinion about the Project Approval Framework, when my phone buzzes. I thought I’d muted notifications. I’m tempted to check the alert, but 30 faces are watching me, all Members, some from Zardoz House, the rest from other Houses around Rochester. We’re at a table made from reclaimed wood, which is covered with food and drink. It’s freezing. Everyone’s wearing sweaters, hats, coats, scarves, mittens; I’m in a blue blazer over a T-shirt, jeans, and leather boots. My hair is buzzed into a crew cut, and even though it makes me feel like an ass clown, I’m wearing makeup.

  A videodrone hovers near the credenza, five feet from my prettified face, streaming this Chat ’n’ Chew live on the Federation Bulletin. Twenty-thousand Members are watching me. Zardoz House is one of the First Five, and me getting invited here is a pretty big deal. The Federation is in a political frenzy. The Voting Period closes next week, and Joan McGee, incumbent Chairperson, an Artist, is probably going to win, but I’m within striking distance—I would be the first Universalist Chair—and I’m not going down without a fight.

  My phone stops buzzing, and I sigh with relief. “Over the last six months,” I say, trying not to let my teeth chatter, “I’ve been invited into hundreds of Houses from Rochester to Davis. And whatever so-called faction I talk to, I hear the same story. All of us have been screwed by the World. We wouldn’t have joined a House otherwise, right?”

  “Damn right, Viola,” Marlow says.

  Marlow is an old friend, the one who invited me to Zardoz. He’s a Universalist, like me, and part of a not-so-secret network of recovering addicts. Our stronghold is the old Opioid Road, the so-called Burned-Over Territory, from Albany, New York, to Columbus, Ohio. We stick together. We give a shit. We participate. We were, after all, there at the founding, helping make the Federation what it is today. McGee and her stuck-up allies are trying to rewrite history, to erase us. That, anyway, is what I want to tell the crowd.