Perhaps I wouldn’t, but I try, and I Remember things. Almost everything since the Destruction. I’m not sure when I started Remembering, or when I realized that not everyone did. I wasn’t that old when the world died, but I know more than a lot of the older kids. I don’t remember Before much, but when the others tell me things, I remember it all.
I’m soaring over the snow-tipped peaks, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my wings, when the call comes in from Andrew. It’s been three years, four months, seventeen days, five hours, forty-seven minutes and twelve seconds, simtime, since I last talked to him, so immediately I fork my consciousness and slow one of me down to realtime.
Dale looked up through the ribbed Lucite dome of Asteroid Cintas II, his eyes lit from within by thoughts of a bright future. “I never imagined,” he said, “I’d own a purebred house.”
When karaoke goes wrong.
So I used to burn books. It is strangely satisfying. I can’t really explain it. There is something almost sensual about burning a good book. There is something near erotic in separating the pages and watching the words flare and fade on the page and, later, finding a random piece of paper still floating somewhere, a few words still legible, if nonsensical: “Water on”; “me? she said–”; “in the colours of the”; “a great silen”. There’s a sort of poetry in burning books.
Allow me the pleasure of beginning this story with its point: Thomas Edison is a being of pure and unimaginable evil. I loathe Thomas Alva Edison.
“Mr. Sergei,” said Jean Tom. “Poor Mr. Sergei. Victim of the Digital Age.”
I’m generally wary of medical professionals declaring things to be miracles. That’s the church’s job. But in the case of Nell Gabrielli, I find it hard to argue. And like most miracles, it comes at a high cost for the grantor.
Mr. Harris shrugs. The shrug is that of a man who is used to predicting what he does not know, controlling what he cannot predict, and ignoring what he cannot control.
The problem is universal. It is compounded by the fact that many file types are proprietary, which means one has limited access to the format specifications or the ability to legally use or exploit that format. The fear of this kind of situation – of file types becoming obsolete, of data existing but being essentially incomprehensible – is such that the possible evolution of the problem has been termed a Digital Dark Age.
Michael A. Burstein (www.mabfan.com) won the 1997 Campbell Award. His short fiction, mostly in Analog, has been nominated for ten Hugos and three Nebulas. He and wife, Nomi, live in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he is a Library Trustee and Town Meeting Member. He has two physics degrees and attended Clarion in1994. I Remember the Future, his collection of award-nominated short stories, was released by Apex Publications in November 2008.
A month after returning with DNA samples, Anna sat across from me, prepping burnt umber for her family’s portrait. With mortar and pestle, she mashed kidney organelles cultured from her brother. The smell, earthy and pungent, mingled with the fragrance she wore.
My breasts continued to throb as I took the subway home. I had finally admitted to Dr. Fremont that I had minor pain, and he told me that the pain was a side effect of the treatment. He said it should fade as my body became more adapted to “servicing the aliens,” his words. But it still put me in a crappy mood.
Sadie smoothes down her long brown hair, then fastens a choker around her neck. She stares at herself in the mirror. Today her father is taking her to work, and she must be perfect. There will be other girls there, other daughters brought to work by their fathers. But her father runs the company, and so she sets the example. All who look on her must see perfection–otherwise, her father will be shamed.
My eyes are dinosaur eggs. My tongue cracks like lightning. I been there, done that, drunk it, fucked it, lived it. I am the hole in the roof where the brains leak in. I eat jerks like you for breakfast. Behold: me! Behold: Skowt!
