Shoreline of Infinity 31, page 6
“Oh come on.”
“Seriously, Jen. Like a robotics apprenticeship would leave me time for any of that! I mean don’t get me wrong, France is on strike and Germany is on fire, and we all know things can’t go on like this, so good luck to these guys, but what they do is full on and a heavy gig.”
“They have sympathisers.”
Morag shrugged one shoulder. “No doubt. But not me.”
“So what changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“You remember back at school, that SimScot thing?”
“Aye, vaguely. Load a shite. Set me firm for robotics, mind.”
“You slipped me a dodgy app, remember? Called itself Iskander, or Lexie.”
“Oh, aye – you were going on about wanting to research military stuff without leaving tracks, wasn’t that it?” Morag laughed. “We nearly fell out over it.”
“Well, yeah, when I found it was showing me actual military secrets.”
“It did?” Morag’s eyes widened. “All I got was business secrets!”
“There you go,” Jen said. “Anti-capitalist malware.”
“Do you still have it?”
“I suppose so. I could never get rid of it.”
“But you don’t use it?”
“Fuck, no! Anyone who does gets flagged.”
“Ah, right.” Morag sipped her G&T. “You’re in that line now, right?”
“IT security. Yes.”
“Private?”
Jen shrugged. “What is, these days? We get government contracts. Among others.”
“O ... K,” Morag said, voice steady as a gyroscope. “So why are you asking me about something we did when we were kids?”
“Contact tracing,” Jen said. “We know where the app originated. “The European Committee”! Talk about hiding in plain sight! We know how far it’s spread, along with ... well, the attitude that it incites. But when I look back over the records it seems that you and I were, well, pretty much Patient Zero as far as Scotland’s concerned. So the question of where you got it from is exercising some minds, let’s say. And for old times’ sake, Morag, I’d much rather you told me than that you ... had to tell someone else.”
“Like that, is it?”
“I’m sorry, but yeah.”
“Aw right.” Morag put down her glass and spread her hands, palms up, on the table. “Honest to God, Jen, I cannae remember. I was a bad girl.” Her cheek twitched. “Under-age drinking, under-age everything. Guys off cruise ships. Guys on cruise ships. I even went over to—” she jerked her thumb, indicating the other side of the Clyde “—what’s legally England once or twice.”
“Fuck sake, girl.”
“You could say that.”
“So anyway,” said Morag, audibly moving on, “I was damn lucky a dodgy app was the worst I picked up.”
“I’m glad,” Jen said. She grinned at Morag and raised her bottle, then drank. “I am so fucking relieved you’ve cleared that up for me.”
“Cleared it up, maybe,” said Morag, grudgingly, as if not appreciating how nasty a hook she was off. “Can’t say I’ve narrowed it down.”
“Oh, that’s all right. It’ll give my clients something to work on. That’s all they want.”
What Morag had told her was what she would tell them. Jen didn’t care if it was true or not. It got her off the hook, too.
Morag drained her glass. Jen stood up. “Same again?”
“Thanks.”
When she got back Morag was on the other side of the table chatting to Javid, and where Morag had been Sonia was sitting. Jen set down her own drink and looked at Sonia’s mad-scientist apparatus. The green liquid was almost gone.
“Can I—?” Jen ventured.
Head turned, hair tumbling. “Oh, thanks!”
“Another of these?”
“Christ, no!” Sonia laughed. “I wouldn’t dare.” She glanced sideways. “I see you like your Arran Blonde. I’ll try one.”
Jen returned with a second bottle. She hesitated, then plunged.
“Well, here’s to blonde.”
“Here’s to—” Sonia looked puzzled.
Jen laughed. “Polychromatic.”
Sonia was in Education, whatever that meant. She’d studied and now taught at the West of Scotland University. Very much a Head Girl thing, in a way, still. It was odd to see her swigging from a bottle.
“I couldn’t help overhearing what you said to Morag.” Apparently they’d got the catching up out of the way. “You were wrong.”
“About what?”
“It isn’t the Iskander app that’s radicalising kids.”
That sounded like quite a lot of overhearing. “Yeah? So what is it?”
“Apart from—?” Sonia made the helpless gesture, somewhere between a shrug and a wave of the hands, that meant all this. Flowery flutter around her forearms.
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll tell you a secret.” Sonia shifted closer on the bench, dress whispering. “It’s the Civic and Democratic Engagement programme. The whole idea was – well, you know what it was. It backfired, but Education think that’s because something isn’t quite getting across. The problem is, it is getting across! They’re still doing it, wondering why every year the kids come up with more and more outrageous ideas. They keep tweaking it, but nothing works.”
Jen rocked back. “You mean it’s SimScot?”
“No,” said Sonia. “It isn’t SimScot. It’s just that the whole thing of pushing teenagers to think in terms of practical policies does exactly that. Like the defence policy you came up with. Or Morag’s information policy: the way the problem is posed, any answer has to be revolutionary. This keeps happening.” She let her eyelids drop. “I see what you’re thinking, Jen. Tomorrow you’ll be telling someone to dig into that games company in Dundee.” Sonia’s laugh pealed. “As if!”
It is SimScot, Jen thought. She was certain of it. In the morning she would—
“I’ve done the research,” Sonia said. “Real research, I mean. Peer-reviewed and published. It’s the programme, not the programme, ha-ha!”
“Have you told Education?”
“Of course I’ve told them. They know. They listen. They take my findings seriously. And they keep doing the same thing!” She thumped the table. “And that! Is! The Entire! Fucking! Problem!”
People were looking.
“Sorry,” said Sonia. Her voice lowered. “Bit squiffy.”
“Blame the Bride of Frankenstein.”
“Better have some more Arran Blonde, in that case.” Sonia swigged. “Another?”
They had another. It didn’t help.
“Take me home,” Sonia said.
Sonia lived in a high flat, looking east from Greenock. As the room brightened, Jen sat sharply up from a sleepy huddle.
“What is it?” Sonia mumbled, into the pillow.
“Something just dawned on me.”
“Oh, very good,” Sonia chuckled. “What?”
Jen gazed down at the cascade of yellow hair.
“It’s you,” she said. “It was always you. It was you all along.”
“Aw,” Sonia said. “That’s so nice.” The skin over her shoulder blade moved. Her hand brushed Jen’s hip, then slipped off.
“No,” said Jen. “That isn’t what I—”
But Sonia had already gone back to sleep.
Jen waited for Sonia’s breathing to become even, then rolled out of bed and padded over to the window. The wind had shifted, pushing the overnight rain back to the Atlantic. Smoke from forest fires in Germany hazed the rising sun. The sky above Port Glasgow was the colour of a hotplate, turned to a high level.
Ken MacLeod lives in Gourock on the west coast of Scotland. He has degrees in biological sciences, worked in IT, and is now a full-time writer. He is the author of eighteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to Beyond the Hallowed Sky (2021), and many articles and short stories.
* * *
Art: Simon Walpole
The Shadow Ministers is set about thirty years before Beyond the Hallowed Sky, in the months leading up to the events remembered in that book (and its sequels in the Lightspeed Trilogy) as the Rising. We may suspect that Morag in the story will become Morag in the novel, but her records have been deleted under the Act of Indemnity.
The Peter Principle
Lindz McLeod
As a second explosion rocked the Peter Principle, Finto mentally counted the number of times she’d told Commander Morvis that his badly battered spacecraft would not, under any circumstances, be able to withstand yet another interstellar jump. She lost count along with her balance when the third explosion rocked the engine room.
“Finto! I bloody—” the radio crackled. “—and then—you better—”
“I did warn you, sir.” She drifted through the corridor, pushing aside large pieces of flaming debris, and propelled herself towards the bridge.
Topher popped his head out of the kitchen as she passed. “You were right. I owe you sixty bits.” Behind him, something frothed over the sides of a large steel pot.
“Told you so,” Finto said.
“I know, but…” He waved a careless tentacle. “I didn’t think even he’d be so stupid as to jump right after—”
Finto squinted. “What are you holding?”
Thirty eyes blinked simultaneously. “I thought I’d try something new today.” The tentacle unfurled to display a small pink bar.
“That’s soap.”
“Excellent identification! It’s rose-flavoured. The books Kzz left behind after he passed suggest that floral bouquets can be extremely palatable when—”
“Not flavoured. Soap is scented,” Finto corrected.
Another explosion. Topher’s lower tentacles were suckered onto the metal floor, rendering his position stable, but Finto – clad in cheap boots two sizes too big – did not have the same equilibrium. She stumbled, smacking her elbow hard on the corridor wall.
Topher blinked again, processing the idea. Another explosion rocked the ship, briefly inverting gravity. “What’s the difference?”
Finto was already halfway down the corridor, scrabbling over the ceiling on her hands and knees; being physically present might pause, if not outright halt, the commander’s determination to repeatedly jump through space and time without a properly working engine. At least he couldn’t feasibly ignore her if she was standing – or hovering – right in front of him.. “I’ll explain later! Just don’t put it in the soup.” She reached the bridge as the ship began to jolt again and braced herself against the doorway until the movement had lulled into a gentle sway. “Hello? Commander?”
“It wasn’t even a whole jump,” Morvis complained. “More like half a hop. What sort of ship can’t handle—”
“Sir, as I informed you in my emails, as well as your personal comms and on large-inked notices on the staffroom board, I fixed the engine up to withstand regular travel until such time as we can dock with a trade hub. I can’t hold a skip drive together with glue and good intentions.” She’d managed to do almost the equivalent with some screws and a fervent wish, which had been a minor miracle, but she wasn’t about to admit this now.
“Come now, Finto, you must understand the pressures that have been on me since our late captain died. The board demanded that we arrive in Caorpix on time. They’ve never really accepted the presence of my kind here, and, well, I shan’t bore you with history now. Besides, it’s all that idiot administrator’s fault. He scheduled our run poorly on purpose, I’m sure of it.”
Finto rifled through her mental database as she inched into the vast command deck. “Mr Chchia?”
“Yes, that’s right. Used to be a good secretary to the Director, now he’s the bane of my life. Couldn’t administer… remind me, how do the humans word the insult?”
“Couldn’t administer gravity to an apple?” Gravity chose this moment to reassert itself. Finto hit the deck hard, the metal floor jolting all the breath from her body.
“Yes, that’s it.” Morvis’ features brightened in an approximation of a smile. Light glowed from each of the tiny rocks which composed his body. “Can’t imagine what’s happened to the man. He used to be so good at his job.”
“It’s the Peter Principle, sir,” Finto clambered to her feet, then bit her tongue.
“Eh? What’s that?” He jinted across the deck, gems scraping against the metal tiles, until they were eye to eye. “Speak up. My crystal wavelengths aren’t what they used to be.”
“The late Captain thought very highly of my father and allowed him to name the ship after a human theory, sir. Everyone is competent at a certain level until they’re promoted into the next job which exceeds their skill or talent level. Then they can’t rise any higher because they’re no longer good at what they do. Stuck, you see.”
She tried to count the number of bruises she’d obtained in the last hour and lost count once she reached double figures. Her spine ached. On the nearby consoles, lights flashed various alarming shades of red and orange.
“I can’t say I agree with much of the things you say, but it seems you might be onto something with that idea. Certainly in Chchia’s case—”
Another explosion, this time from the rear of the craft, cut off Morvis’ words.
“It’s happening all over the ship, sir.” In for a penny, in for a pound. Or rather, in for a bit, in for a byto. Her words tumbled out. “Look, Topher was a great assistant to Chef Kzz but he’s got no sense of smell or tastebuds. It’s not his fault, but his face is entirely comprised of eyeballs, sir. Hard to taste anything that way.”
Morvis stared. “But he worked so hard. He’s earned the right to advancement.”
“And Hllela,” Finto continued, “considering she’s essentially a large slug who leaves trails of mucus everywhere she goes, I’m not sure a janitorial role is best suited to her—” Something in the corner of the command deck, which she recognized as part of their only surviving survey drone, was emitting plumes of purple smoke. “Excuse me, sir, is that a wing from our—…”
“Oh, Drenn accidentally flew into the side of the ship while trying out a new manoeuvre. Don’t make another fuss.”
“See, this is exactly what I mean! We’re trying to make do with too little crew and only the most meagre equipment.” Despite herself, she could feel her temper starting to fray again. “Drone controls aren’t made for tiny hooves and besides, I’ve seen corpses with faster reflexes than Drenn. I’ve long said he should never have been allowed near any—”
The commander’s facets glowered. “This is all starting to sound a bit unenthusiastic, Finto.”
Enthusiasm was a key component of Morvis’ managerial strategy, although it could not have been said to be a winning one. Finto straightened, gritting her teeth. “No, sir. I’m very… keen, sir.”
A massive cruiser slid past the windows, taking up the entirety of the view.
“Ah. We’re here,” Morvis said. “Better late than infinity, eh? And you’ll have that engine fixed up in no time, won’t you?”
She sighed. “Of course, Commander.”
Morvis turned, casting a refracted glance over his shoulder. “Oh and Finto, before I forget, I have a meeting with Captain Hork later today.” He jerked a diamond-encrusted limb in the direction of the cruiser. “He’s been on the lookout for extra staff for another adventure later this month. Something about the surface of the sun, I wasn’t really paying attention. And the thought has crossed my mind lately that, particularly in light of your waning ardour, no doubt brought on by a lack of real challenges…” His facets glinted. “You’re long overdue for a promotion.”
Lindz McLeod is a queer, working-class, Scottish writer who lives in Edinburgh. Her prose has been published by/is forthcoming in Catapult, Hobart, Flash Fiction Online, Pseudopod, and more. She is a member of the SFWA and is represented by Headwater Literary Management.
Cockroach
Heather Valentine
I sleep for days again. And when I wake, it’s morning. The weak light reaches through the apartment window and touches the tins of beans, the canisters of water, the old notebooks. Raleigh’s survivalist stockpile has lasted months more than he told me it would now that I’m the only one eating it – and not always remembering to eat. But it’s still running out.
My laptop and notebooks are still in my backpack from the last time I managed to go outside, carefully wrapped inside scabby plastic bags in case of rain. I didn’t find any food, but I made it to Café Marina. The charge point still works, despite the dust clinging to the solar panels. Not that there’s much of point in working on my novel anymore. There’s nobody to read it.
But whenever my mind manages to wander, that’s where it goes: Ivan, dressed in princely blue, falling into Damien’s sinewy arms.
I throw my backpack on, carrying nothing but my writing, and step into the cool, dark corridor again. The stairwell smells worse every day. I’m not sure if it’s coming from the damp in the floor above, or from Raleigh’s old apartment on the ground floor. I gag at the memory of the last time I opened his door. When I went to see if there was anything to scavenge, knowing that’s what he would want. Every bottle of pills was empty; his heart medication and my antidepressants, that stockpile finally ran out. I could survive without my medication. Foggy, tired and miserable, but alive. And he...
I took the tins and his water filter. I couldn’t bring myself to take anything else. His clothes, or his knives. I washed his body, laid him in bed, and never went back.
I keep moving past his hallway and out the front door. Despite the stagnant heat, the smoggy sky is dim even in the daytime. Most of the people I knew in the before times were like me. Pretending, because we still had a job and still paid rent every month, that the world hadn’t already ended. Hoping that if we kept our heads down and acted as we always had, we could make normalcy come back, no matter how bad that normalcy had been.
