Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 111 (August 2019)
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 111, August 2019 FROM THE EDITOR Editorial: August 2019 SCIENCE FICTION One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit Dominica Phetteplace Calved Sam J. Miller No Matter Kendra Fortmeyer The Macrobe Conservation Project Carlos Hernandez FANTASY The Rock Eaters Brenda Peynado The Final Blow Scott Sigler Card Sharp Rajan Khanna A Leash of Foxes, Their Stories Like Barter Cassandra Khaw EXCERPTS Bursts Of Fire Susan Forest NONFICTION Book Reviews: August 2019 LaShawn M. Wanak Media Review: August 2019 Christopher East Interview: Silvia Moreno-Garcia Christian A. Coleman AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS Dominica Phetteplace Scott Sigler Kendra Fortmeyer Cassandra Khaw MISCELLANY Coming Attractions Stay Connected Subscriptions and Ebooks Support Us on Patreon or Drip, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard About the Lightspeed Team Also Edited by John Joseph Adams © 2019 Lightspeed Magazine Cover by Grandfailure / Fotolia www.lightspeedmagazine.com Editorial: August 2019 John Joseph Adams | 167 words Welcome to Lightspeed’s 111th issue! If you’ve ever worked a terrible service job, you’ll want to take a trip to Robot Country—the weird and sometimes hilarious world of Dominica Phetteplace’s new SF short “One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit.” Kendra Fortmeyer brings us our second original science fiction short, “No Matter,” which wrestles with time travel paradoxes. We also have terrific reprints from Sam J. Miller (“Calved”) and Carlos Hernandez (“The Macrobe Conservation Project”). In our first fantasy short, “The Final Blow,” Scott Sigler takes us onto the battlefield . and into the mind of one scared young witness. Cassandra Khaw spins a lovely fable about two dangerous lovers in “A Leash of Foxes, Their Stories Like Barter.” Our fantasy reprints include “The Rock Eaters,” by Brenda Peynado, and “Card Sharp,” by Rajan Khanna. Besides fiction, we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Plus, we have a feature interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia. ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Joseph Adams is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a science fiction and fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent books include Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, Loosed Upon the World, and The Apocalypse Triptych. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist twelve times) and an eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of the digital magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare, and is a producer for WIRED’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. He also served as a judge for the 2015 National Book Award. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams. One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit Dominica Phetteplace | 9808 words Isla didn’t consider herself much of an outdoor person, but after five layoffs and a breakup, she found herself in a drone warehouse at the border of the barren wasteland known as Robot Country. She consulted the map on her tablet. To the west was the Gila National Forest. So, trees. She clicked on the forest icon and up popped some names of trees. Arizona sycamore, Douglas fir, Aspen. To the south was desert and the Mexican border. To the east was an even more extreme kind of desert, the White Sands National Monument, where atomic bombs had been tested in the previous century. North was Robot Country. North of that, the tablet didn’t seem to know. Robot Country was a million acres owned by Company Omega. It was a flat and dry regolith plain that had first been ruined by logging, ranching, and other forms of land mismanagement, then further desertified by rising temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns. Then poisoned by Company Omega so it could be what they called a “blank canvas.” Company Omega was interested in terraforming. In the long term, they hoped to make Mars habitable. More immediately, they were interested in ways in which Burning Man could be made more fun. “Your backpack will be filled with water, but try not to drink it, it’s for emergencies,” said Kaya, her supervisor. Isla had taken the bus from Oakland and Kaya had picked her up at the station. They had only just met and Isla had been on the clock for less than an hour, but already she was about to set off on her own. “The drones should be bringing me water,” replied Isla. “Exactly. The water in your backpack is just in case the water drones don’t show. Every day you should be getting deliveries of the things you need. And don’t worry about littering, the drones should be cleaning up after you, too.” Kaya reached over and clicked a few icons on the tablet Isla was holding. “This is how you access your route. We’ll give you a new one each day. At some point a spider will be along to help guide you.” Kaya pinned several bodycams to Isla’s jumpsuit. It was tough but also cute, khaki with zippered cargo pockets, designed by Diane von Furstenberg, a prototype of what the female astronauts stationed on Mars would wear when they were lounging around the yet-to-be-built station. “We’ll be recording everything, and machine analyzing it too. But we won’t necessarily have a pair of human eyes looking at things. If there is something important, please bring it to our attention. And take your own pictures, too. Have fun!” Isla considered the training to be minimal, probably inadequate. And it’s not like she knew anything about camping. But maybe that was the point, Company Omega was trying to see if their robots could keep someone extremely naïve alive. A helicopter drone came to pick Isla up. It didn’t land, these things were notoriously crash prone. It hovered above Kaya and Isla and lowered a harness. Isla snapped herself in, and was lifted high above the border station. She flew for a few miles before gently being lowered to the ground. She unhooked herself, the helicopter flew away, and suddenly Isla was alone. She used her tablet to call Kaya. She wanted to tell her she had arrived safely. But Isla’s call was intercepted by a helper AI. “Can I help you?” The robot had an English accent. It sounded bored. “Tell Kaya I got here okay.” “She already knows that.” Then the AI hung up on her. Isla checked her tablet. Her route for the day was on the map. She was supposed to hike ten miles to the north and then make camp. She looked around for any drones, and she saw none. So she called the spider and waited. It was supposed to come right away but there was no sign of it. Isla had been a drone minder before, doing stints at a device store, a high-end café, and then finally, as she got older, several fast food restaurants. The key was to keep your eye on the customer, making sure they were being well served by the robots. Out here, there were no customers. The customers were theoretical. Isla supposed she was minder and customer both. Isla stopped to check the route on her tablet. The directions seemed clear enough. She didn’t really even need the guider spider. But she wanted some evidence that there was actual machine life out here in Robot Country. So she called Kaya once more. And got the AI once more. “Can I talk to Kaya?” “If I judge your query worthy of her time,” replied the operator. That Kaya had set this AI to such a high level of bitchiness was evidence that she was really busy. Company Omega was a pioneer in lean employment, which meant they burned through humans pretty fast. “It’s just that I haven’t seen any drones,” said Isla. She looked up at the sky. There were supposed to be surveillance planes keeping an eye on her. “That’s because there are none in your area.” “I’d like to talk to Kaya.” Isla knew how important the first day on the job was. You couldn’t ask for too much assistance, that would make you seem helpless. But Isla was beginning to have second thoughts. She was worried that she had been misled somehow, that she had actually signed up for some kind of weird psychological experiment. Such things were known to happen in this economy. “You have everything you need,” the AI said before it hung up. And so Isla was truly alone, nothing but brown dirt for miles. It’s good to spend time alone, she thought as she hiked. She was out of normal service so she didn’t even have a phone to check. No way to get text messages and no one to get them from, but she still habitually wondered if Javi was trying to reach her. They had broken up because he had decided he could not be monogamous. His plan was to fuck lots of girls but Isla hoped he was miserable and lonely. There was no way to know what was up with him, and Isla wished she could stop herself from wondering. She checked her tablet again as if it had the answer. She was on the right path still, a tenth of a mile farther along than last time.