110918b

Wafer City

Wafer City is recycled orbiting scrap. The junk was a navigation hazard, and Indonesia was hired to clean it up. The ISF built a city 4 km across and 50 m thick out of garbage. It was cheaper than hauling the stuff away, and pretty soon they were renting space to small governments, fly-by-night corporations, and individuals who couldn't afford the rates charged by the space stations.

That's why I'm there. I run an off-grid storage business. I specialize in stuff you should throw away, but don't. Incriminating love correspondence, homemade porn videos, ugly keepsakes.

*

My first customer of the cycle. It's hard to judge ages in zero-G, where gravity doesn't drag your body down, but she looked very young.

"What can I do for you?" I asked.

"I need to stash something." She glanced around. "It doesn't look like you could keep a rat out. What kind of security do you have?"

"Only the fact that I store junk: no monetary value. My one rule."

She heaved a battered plastic crate up on the counter and passed me a credit chip.

*

She returned now and again, each time with an old duffel bag or the like. Until the last time. She looked frightened.

.

"I need the box. The blue box. I need it now."

"Sure. But what's the rush? You didn't break my rule, did you?"

"You don't understand. It's my son. He signed with Cybershipping. I have 22 hours to talk him out of it." I had evidently been rad wrong about her age.

"Why does he want to become a cyborg?"

"I don't know! I need the box now! He is ... his partner ... they were together a long time. He's impulsive. The box!"

I made a wild guess. "His partner was Dou Haffersen, the man who was sucked into the black hole." She nodded, biting her lip.

"It won't work, you know," I said. "You've got to show him WHY he needs to live, to testify. Ask him who will remember Dou, if his own partner becomes a machine."

"This will save him?" Her fingernails dug into my palm. I gently disengaged.

"I don't know," I said. She got up to leave. When she reached the door I called after her. "Tell me what happens."

She looked back over her shoulder. "Maybe."

I still have her stuff, though she's 3 months behind on the rent. I'll space it on the first if she doesn't show. Maybe.

End

From The Simian Transcript

110818e

A tree by any other name

"Imagine that we are standing in the three-dimensional extension of a much larger library." John waved his arm at the dingy window above the study carrel. "The dogwood out there? Choose a different set of three dimensions and you might see something that doesn't photosynthesize, maybe nothing alive. These books are mostly in English."

"And French."

"Yes, but another set of dimensions contains books not made on paper, not written in earthly languages."

"In Estonian, Basque."

"Whatever. I'm just saying you need to be careful. You haven't seen the missing persons reports that this university has had to suppress. Worse than the date rapes. No one would send their children here if they knew. It's the Library. When they renamed it, Pabodie begged them not to use his name. I never go out of sight of certain milieu-specific landmarks. Like that poster from the Betty Boop retrospective."

"OK.... See you at five at Starbucks." John walked off towards the elevator and Jimmy tossed his backpack on the desk. He had a bunch of references listed on his palmtop, and most of them were housed on this floor.

Clark's "Paradimensional manifolds," yes, here it was. Too bad the photos were all reproduced in B&W. Rumor said the originals boasted several colors that the printers still couldn't reproduce. And there was de Heinel's "Theory and practice of dimensional partitioning" (no photos), and so on.

When he returned to the carrel, arms full of books, it had gotten darker. Quite a bit darker. Shit! It must be way past five. He shoved the books into his backpack and glanced out the window. Where the dogwood had been, now stood a leafless tree whose rubbery limbs writhed indigo under a crimson sky. Jimmy rubbed his face vigorously and looked again. Something like a bunch of vermilion grapes with two pairs of membranous wings circled the tree, then shied away from a striking branch. He palmed his cameraphone and ran for the elevator. This would be awesome! No one had ever brought back pictures like this.

end

From The Simian Transcript