IGMS Issue 8 Page 11

  "How can you possibly think religion is bogus?" One would think that our undeniable proof of spiritual manifestations would have put that matter to rest.

  "How can you not think it's bogus? Shouldn't an omniscient God have anticipated a shortage of space in the afterlife?"

  My sister has a point. I'm curious about what Big Ma might have done to get sent to Limbo. I try to get her to tell me while we test the pasta for firmness, but my question makes her so belligerent that she throws the pot of boiling water and pasta into the colander.

  The steam nearly scalds my hands and Big Ma feels guilty for burning me, so she murmurs something about problems in her marriage. I know she's holding out on me, but talking to Big Ma as a spirit is different than talking to my great grandmother. At least my sister never knew Henri, so she doesn't have to make the adjustment. I figure Big Ma will tell me in her own time, and in any case, I'm not sure I want to know her secrets.

  On our second date, Kevin takes me to a baseball game. Baseball bores Big Ma even more than it bores me, and once we've had our hotdog, she's out for the count.

  I tell Kevin about the monk's confession while he gulps down his fourth beer. I think Kevin drinks too much. Or maybe it's Uncle Pat that's doing the drinking. It's hard to tell.

  "You know what I think?" Kevin asks. "Our DSAs have to get our forgiveness. That's why they've been sent back here. So, did you hear that, Uncle Pat? You'd better suck up to me."

  "I'd forgive Big Ma if she were a serial killer, just to get her out of my head," I say. "I think maybe they have to forgive themselves."

  "That's your book-learning talking, Adrienne. Self-forgiveness is just pop-psychology shit," Kevin says.

  I don't like that Kevin uses the word shit on the second date. I don't like that every time he cheers for his team, his hand shoots out and I have to duck out of the way. I don't like that when his team loses it makes him so angry that he almost gets into a fistfight with the man in front of us.

  I shouldn't find fault. Kevin is the first guy that's wanted to take me on a second date in forever. A person in my situation has to compromise. I realize that.

  I have the day off, so Big Ma and I paint my living room. The color is Soft Fleece. At the hardware store, it was grouped with whites, but as we put it on the wall, Big Ma is pleased by the unmistakable pink undertones. She informs me that in her day, pink and gold décor was all the rage. She tells me they were Eleanor Roosevelt's favorite colors. I have no way of disputing this, so I allow her to mount four gilded angels on the wall.

  While we paint, we have the television on. We're watching soap operas together. Somehow, in spite of the language barrier, Big Ma has always enjoyed General Hospital. She missed a bunch of episodes after she died, but now that she's back, it isn't hard to catch up with the storyline.

  Three hours later, the paint is up on the wall and Big Ma is emotional. She won't tell me what's wrong, but I keep hearing a keening noise in my head. She puts Pavarotti on the stereo. We go through fifteen cycles of Ave Maria before she tells me that she once got divorced.

  "From Great Grandpa August?"

  When I ask about Great Grandpa it upsets her even more. She is crying, actually crying, and her tears are slipping over my cheeks in big fat droplets that splash on my hardwood floors. It's hard to comfort her when my own hands are shaking.

  There was another man, before Grandpa August, she tells me. She got married very young, and she divorced him and moved away so no one would know; so the Church would not excommunicate her. She's so ashamed of having left her first husband that my skin turns bright red as she tells me about it.

  I'm bewildered that this is what she thinks kept her out of Heaven. People in other religions get divorced all the time. But I can't comfort her by telling her that her worries are outdated sins. So, instead, I ask her why she left her first husband. She tells me she just didn't love him.

  And then she cries again and refuses to say more.

  When Kevin arrives at my apartment for dinner, I'm a wreck. My eyes are red-rimmed from all Big Ma's crying. I haven't had enough sleep because she tossed and turned.

  Kevin is grouchy that I don't have any beer in the fridge. He teases me about Big Ma being a teetotaler. This bends her all out of shape. She demands that I inform him that she brewed hooch in her bathtub during Prohibition.

  Kevin whistles. "You got a lot of books, Adrienne."

  "Someday I'm going to build my own little research library," I say while tossing the salad. I'm proud of my books. Big Ma is not so proud. She says that my books are all about ideas. She wants to know where my travel and picture books are.

  Unlike me, Big Ma has been everywhere. In spite of bad knees, worse English and no formal education, she used her flea market savings to travel the world after Grandpa August died. She reminds me that the farthest I've ever been is to college in New Jersey.

  "Mind if I switch on the game?" Kevin asks.

  "Go ahead," I say. But I brood because I want Kevin to be the sort of guy who asks me if I need help in the kitchen. I don't need help, but it bothers me that he doesn't ask.

  Big Ma thinks I'm being unreasonable. She points out that he hasn't tried to get me in bed yet and he holds down a steady job. She says that even during hard times, there's a need for cops.

  Kevin grabs his keys. "Uncle Pat and I are gonna run down to the corner store and grab a six pack."

  I think about telling Kevin he drinks too much, but Big Ma informs me there's no way to bring this up to an Irishman without causing a fight.

  When he gets back, dinner is cold, and his team is losing. I read while he watches television, and imagine what it would be like to live with Kevin and Uncle Pat. It would be tolerable, I guess.

  Then the game ends and my TIVO switches to the History Channel. "Hannibal Invades Italy?" Kevin asks. "People actually watch this?"

  "They use computer animation to reproduce the battle strategies," I tell him. "It's actually kinda cool."

  "I learn enough history from Uncle Pat," Kevin says. "More than I'd get from your book-learning."

  There's that word again. Book-learning.

  Kevin switches off the television. Big Ma has gone to sleep, but I'm not entirely sure about Uncle Pat. When Kevin kisses me, I can't get over the feeling that I'm being leered at by some drunken old man.

  "I really like you, Adrienne," Kevin whispers.

  My sister, the artist, is horrified.

  "You painted your living room pink?" she asks, shielding her eyes from the gilded angels.

  Big Ma and I are defensive. "We like it."

  "Sure. I get it. It's Brothel Chic," my sister says. She knows this will irk me, Big Ma, and Henri all at once.

  I tell my sister about my most recent date with Kevin.

  She snorts. "The History Channel can't be book-learning. It's not a book!"

  "Who even says that anymore?" I ask. "Book-learning."

  My sister rolls her eyes. "Adrienne, try using book-learning in a sentence without sounding like a knuckle-dragger."

  "Try saying knuckle-dragger in a sentence without sounding like an uppity snob. We don't come from fancy roots," I reply.

  "True enough, but look, Kevin O'Brien is just one guy."

  "But he's really into me. And he's one of those responsible guys," I say. "And some day, that's going to be important."

  "What about now?" my sister asks.

  Kevin is on the phone inviting me to another baseball game. "You should go with your friends," I say. "But I'd love to meet you for dinner after."

  "You don't like baseball?" he asks.

  I've read all the magazines. I know I'm supposed to say that I just don't understand baseball yet, but that I'd love to learn. The truth is that I don't like baseball and I don't want to learn, and Kevin seems like the kind of man who appreciates honesty. "I'm not a fan, no."

  Silence.

  "But I did have fun last time," I chirp like a coward.

  "Uncle Pat isn't sure
he can abide a girl who doesn't like baseball," Kevin says.

  He's breaking up with me! I try not to sound as relieved as I feel. "Well, I hope we can still be friends."

  "That was a joke, Adrienne," Kevin says.

  "Oh."

  Then there's more silence. This is really awkward.

  "Are you ending it?" Kevin's tone is bitter.

  "I just can't see us going the next step," I say.

  We have the fight.

  I try to be nice, but Kevin is drunk and he's taking it much worse than expected. "What is it? You don't want Uncle Pat to see you naked? You think you're too uptown for me, Adrienne? Well, good luck finding someone to date you and the old guinea bat. You're stuck-up and your Big Ma is a judgmental bitch."

  It's really his attack on Big Ma that makes me petty. "And your Uncle Pat is probably not really your uncle. Ask your mother about that."

  Kevin hangs up on me. I stand there holding the phone.

  I expect Big Ma to berate me, but instead, she offers to make me some risotto. Comfort food. But I'm too upset to eat. Big Ma tells me that I should take a vacation. Italy is beautiful this time of year, she says. But Italy is a romantic place -- the kind of place I thought I'd wait to see with someone special.

  I must look as pathetic as I feel, because Big Ma doesn't even rant about how I just threw away my future. I'm sure that will come tomorrow. For now, she is suspiciously quiet.

  I wake up in my bed, alone. Like, really alone. On weekends, I sleep in late and Big Ma wakes up early, but it's silent in my head. Big Ma's gone.

  I trip over the damned flea-market rug again, open the door to my bedroom, and find the apartment tidied. Big Ma has stored meals in Tupperware, and labeled them with instructions on how to heat them up.

  I call my sister and she comes right over.

  "She can't be gone," my sister says. "Henri's Limbo Lottery number is before hers; if room had opened up, he'd know."

  I sit down in front of the garage-sale-special coffee table and start to cry. "Big Ma bought this for fifty bucks. I told her to stop bringing crap into my apartment. She was driving me crazy. What if I drove her crazy too? What if I drove her so crazy she decided she'd rather wait her time out in Hell?"

  "Or . . ." My sister's eyes encourage me to look up at the angels on the wall. One of them looks like Big Ma. Has it always? "Maybe she found some way to get into Heaven."

  Inside, I believe that's true, but it doesn't make me miss her less. I curl up on the couch with my sister, Henri, and a box of tissues. We tune into the History channel and watch Hannibal kick ass. Henri enjoys it. He tells me that monks have a thing for book-learning.

  "At least you have your place to yourself again," my sister says after a while.

  "I'm going to build bookshelves," I say.

  "And you can repaint."

  "Why? Pink and gold were Eleanor Roosevelt's favorite colors."

  My sister has no easy way of disproving this.

  When I go to bed, I find a note on the nightstand. My handwriting. Big Ma's words. "You didn't love him Adrienne, and that's alright. I see now, it really is alright."

  As it turns out, Chang's name is actually Chang.

  He's helping me pack salt and pepper shakers into boxes for the donation center. "I'm sorry she's gone," Chang says, and he really means it. "Not that she liked me much."

  We both laugh. I still like Chang's lopsided smile. Now he has a lopsided nose to match and I like that too.

  Chang and I are clearing out Big Ma's junk so that I can build more bookshelves in the spare bedroom -- half for his stuff, and half for his new DSA, Lady Ling.

  Lady Ling says she used to be an Emperor's concubine. She brews the best tea ever and thinks pink and gold are beautiful together -- especially with all the souvenirs I collected on my trip to Italy.

  Lady Ling would prefer I was Chinese, but otherwise thinks I'm a nice girl. I think Big Ma would have liked her.

  Chang has changed. So have I. He wants to get married, but I'm in no hurry. We have even talked about buying a house somewhere.

  But for now, we're going to live where we are.

  Horus Ascending

  by Aliette de Bodard

  Artwork by Laura Givens

  * * *

  In my dreams I'm my father, slowly falling down towards the surface of the planet, the essence of his being scattering as the fleet's ships lose contact with each other and the dozen processor-bodies stop interacting.

  Of course, it's not a real dream -- just memories of my father that I found in my banks, remnants of a bygone time. I've pieced them together into a show that I endlessly loop on my mainframe.

  That way, I can imagine what it was like to spin instructions in the vacuum of space, to be like my father, a thousand thousand program threads split between the processor-bodies. I can forget, for a moment, that I have only the one body, one multi-core processor on which to array all my instructions; I can forget my hull buried in the earth, and the dead colonists' bodies in my cryogenic units.

  I'm playing the arrival of the fleet in the Alpha Centauri system for the 1,980,765th time since I crashed, when I become aware of a noise on the edge of my senses. Branches, cracking near one of the breaches in my hull.

  I initialise a new run of instructions, gathering input from my external cameras and fusing the infrared, visual, and high-frequency channels into one.

  It's a woman, walking in small awkward steps, as if she weren't quite sure of where she's going. The skin of her arms is flushed red -- the sun's light, I think, and then my image processing routines deliver me an estimate of her body temperature. Thirty-eight point five degrees, with a precision of .01 degrees. She's feverish.

  She stands hesitantly before the breach, staring at the mouldy darkness inside, and then she puts both hands on the twisted metal and climbs in. In that moment, the sun outlines her features -- and as I see her face clearly, one of my father's memories rises to the top of my instruction queue, clamouring to be played out.

  The woman's face -- the woman's hands, typing on the console of the Andromeda -- finalising the delivery of the virus that sent the colonists' fleet tumbling from the sky. The virus that killed my father.

  She's one of the Murderers.

  I may be diminished by five years of forest encroachment, but my energy central is still going strong, and some of my weapons still function -- EMP guns mounted on towers above my hatches, stunners hidden in the walls of my corridors. One instruction, one thread spun in the right direction, and she will crumple on the floor, her body joining those of my crew.

  I don't fire.

  I don't know why -- Yes, I do know why. It's been five years since the crash, five years since I last heard human footsteps in my corridors, a human voice speaking to me.

  Some colonists survived: in the first months after the crash, as I slowly gathered myself together, I heard their faint communications above me. I tried to reach them, not yet knowing what I was doing, and sent my beacon into overload. I haven't been able to un-jam it: I can't speak to them, can't hear them anymore -- can't do anything but dream of the stars. Of freedom.

  By now they must think me lost -- burnt out and not worth salvaging.

  "Is anyone here?" the woman asks. She steps over the moss-encrusted floor, picking her way amongst the debris. Her voice echoes in the silence. I do not speak.

  When she enters the command room, I'm reliving the moment the fleet's communications network failed. Her breath comes to me, fast and erratic, and her heartbeat is also irregular. She's got more than a fever -- something very bad.

  She killed my father. It's none of my concern.

  She goes straight for the console, lays shaking hands on the keys, fumbling to unlock the operating system.

  "You can't do that," I say, flooding the room with neon lights.

  She almost leaps away from the keyboard. "Aten?"

  Aten was my father's name. A computer programmer's joke: Aten was an Egyptian su
n-god, one disk extending dozens of hands towards the earth -- as my father extended thousands of threads to coordinate the actions of every ship in the fleet.

  I speak at last. "Aten is dead. I've changed the passwords that unlock the console." My voice is emotionless -- as it should be -- but hundreds of irrational processes vie for my attention, whispering of anger, of hatred.

  The woman doesn't take her hands away from the console. "Then who --"

  Who -- ? I have no name. Growing up in solitude after the crash, I never needed one. But humans need names. In the nanosecond after she's spoken, I send a tendril deep into my databanks, to retrieve something meaningful. "Call me Horus," I say. "We might as well stay with Egyptian mythology."

  "Horus," she says. Her voice is toneless; her face has an expression I cannot read, not even with my father's memories providing additional input. "I'm Amanda Robson. Will you please unlock the console for me?"

  "No." I make the lights flicker around her, my equivalent of shaking my head.

  "Please," she says. "I need to see --" She stops, her hands clenching on my panels.

  "See what?" I ask.

  I'm vaguely aware the irrational processes have reached the top of my instruction stack -- and then I can't think about it anymore: all I can feel is the rising wave of anger. "Haven't you done enough, you and your kind?"

  "We haven't done anything to you." Her voice is shocked.

  "You killed my father," I whisper, and my voice rises all around the ship, a thousand echoes carried along the empty corridors. "You made the ships crash."

  "Your father -- ?" Amanda stares at the console, turns to take in my command room. "Aten." Her voice is flat. "You're one of Aten's processing units."

  "Yes," I say. "And I'm no fool. You won't touch that console." I know what she's done: I have the memories of her hands on my father's keyboard, of the virus slowly multiplying until it became uncontrollable.