Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 109 Read online

  He paused as a metal slug punctured the inside of the cockpit. The hole in the ship sealed itself, saving him milliseconds before the capsule decompressed. He turned back to his ear piece.

  “Brothers and sisters, I am the father of Goddess.”

  He input new coordinates, throwing the ear piece to the ground. He did not need to hear their whining. No, what he needed to focus on was escape. Escape from the ruins of the empire. Escape from the Children of Confucius. It was time to find salvation. Give birth to Genesis, become Jesus and Buddha and Olodumare. Bring Her back like it was supposed to be. Go back, back to Earth. It might not be his Earth, or his great-Grandparents’ Earth. But it was an Earth, a holy planet. And it would do. He would return to the motherland. Landing in fields of saccharum and sunlight. Taking with him the baby, returning to the planet that always started it all. No matter what dimension, no matter what time period. Earth was at the center, the beating heart of the multiverse.

  The camera view blurred as his pod took to his new directions. The cathedral swung out of sight, and only a map of dense stars could be seen. He settled into his chair, preparing for deep sleep, as he and Goddess sped into the night. He ignored the shots at his ship, he ignored his ETA of one hundred and twenty-four years. Instead, he let the ship cradle him. Let the ship drop the temperature. Let the ship hook him up to yards of IV tubes and needles and medical probes. Even more chemicals entered his bloodstream, chilling his body until it was as if somebody hit pause.

  Even if he made it to Earth, to India, it would take him more than a century. But time was irrelevant. He had found faith again. Madhav smiled as his body froze to a standstill.

  The father of Goddess flew into hyperspace.

  About the Author

  Since an early age, Kola has loved to put the words and people from his imagination straight into the word processor. He currently resides in Durham, North Carolina and attends the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. Kola is working on expanding and developing his fictional setting, along with completing the first draft of his novel. He also enjoys the posthuman ascendance struggle, like the rest of us. This is his first published story.

  Egg Island

  Karen Heuler

  Audra Donchell’s right arm was 3D-printed; she’d lost the original in a scooter crash when she was a teenager. That was years ago; she had a number of arms she could take off and put on; she could remodel them and change their color. A different color for every day.

  All the parts worked smoothly; all she had to do was think—or not think, simply imagine—and her arm moved and bent, her fingers picked and pinched and tapped. There was a certain distance to it, but she had finally adapted to the slight sensation of objectivity that had been her original experience with it. The other great thing about her 3D arm was that it could hold heavy objects, like her suitcase, for longer times than her other, natural, arm could.

  Carrying her case effortlessly, she took the supertube to the heliport, then took the copter to the helipad that used to be an oil platform. There was a party there—teenagers, how tiresome—so she took a glider to Stepoff Point, the last bit of land before the ocean.

  Her destination was a small spot on the planet where the natural evolution of plastic was taking place. She was interested in plastics and she was interested in this development; she thought (as many did) that plastics had in many ways shaped the present and would save the future. She was nearing thirty and it was time to think of how she could contribute to life; she might get a clue from this visit.

  The skimmer from the Stepoff Point took over four hours to get to Sister Island and on its way passed four other floating islands, reclaimed and now habitable. She saw one that seemed to be connected pieces. “That island over there,” she said to the pilot, pointing. Pilot was, of course, a useless term. The skimmer was on auto, but the unions demanded qualified help in case of emergencies. “Is that a reclaimed island?”

  “Not yet,” he said. He was middle-aged and pale (good sunscreen implants), with sinewy arms and a half-smile, half-frown combination that was charming. “It’s still just garbage.”

  She studied it with interest. Garbage had been outlawed, of course, but garbage still existed, washing down off mountains, washing out from waste piles disturbed by weather or earthquakes or construction projects, or coming up again after ocean dumping. She saw plastic bags and buoys and fishing nets and plastic cups and bottles and wrappers of various kinds. They floated along together.

  The pilot leaned towards her. “I’ve made islands,” he said. “I spent years making islands. The place we’re going to—I worked there. There were a bunch of us, volunteers, young kids, full of the thrill. We wove the plastics together. We caught the bags and cups and straws and toothbrushes, and we made them into the islands.”

  “The islands are great,” she said. She wanted to make a good impression, so she was very enthusiastic. “I’ve always been fascinated. I put in a request over a year ago for it—you know, the event. On Egg Island.”

  The pilot looked at her for a moment. “I made Egg Island. Not me alone, of course. But the islands—I made the islands.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes, out of awe and a sense of embarrassment. The skimmer roared over the water. They passed vast clumps of Sargasso. A few flying fish raced them, then veered off.

  “You made Egg Island,” she said finally. She felt close to tears and tapped the back of her hand to give herself just a drop of endorphins. “Tell me about it. I’ve been longing to go to Egg Island ever since I first heard of it.”

  He nodded and they introduced themselves. His name was Wen Wickler. The skimmer thrummed, even creating some kind of wind, despite the fact that they were entering the doldrums, that place far out in the ocean where all the winds died and all the garbage gathered.

  “I was 30 when I came out here,” Wen said. “I was burning with the need to heal the earth. I had watched my mother’s farm blow away with the drought. You weren’t born yet, but my generation faced it all: too little clean water, soil that had been poisoned by pesticides, animal extinctions. And garbage, garbage everywhere. We had filled in every nook and cranny, it seemed, and it leached out and got into the water tables. Too much of what we lived in was dirty and dangerous. We looked to the seas.

  “The first volunteers got some backing by some big polluters who had to do it by law, and we took trawlers to the ocean and began to pick up all the floating plastics. We did that for a few years, but the garbage went on for miles. And where were we supposed to put the plastics? We talked about it and it seemed reasonable, eventually, to go with what was already happening. It was collecting in patches, in islands of its own, all the plastics, the lost stuff, the things from tsunamis and from ocean dumping, the lost things and the forgotten things, just drifting out to the doldrums and bumping into one another.

  “We trawled and gathered and sorted. Lots of plastic ropes to tie things together. Nets to tie things together. Cups to be part of the ‘earth’ of the island. We sifted and netted and wove and strung together. It took months, years; we weathered it and built a spongy sort of island and then built shacks on it from boogie boards and construction debris that floated out from the disasters occurring everywhere. We took dolls and toys and made little sceneries; we took buckets and plastic bottles and began to collect rainwater (not much) and began to make evaporation coils to make drinking water from the sea. We set up small farms in plastic bins, and began to tie seaweed to the shores of our islands. We kept weaving into it, pushing down the cups and plastic shoes and child’s shovels and whatever we found, weaving it deeper and deeper and spreading it out. Islands. We made islands.” He stopped and shook his head.

  “I’m so impressed,” she said. “We learned about that in school. I always dreamed of being like you someday.” She made a modest sound. “I kind of forgot that, though. I went into industrial plastics, after my accident.” She shrugged, lifting her 3D arm a bit. “I got waylaid. My genera
tion—all we know is plastics. Your generation—you saw things, didn’t you? Surprising things?”

  “We saw the changes start,” he said huskily. The boat bobbed forward. Out in the distance, she could see the first of the islands. She wanted it all to slow down; she wanted to hear what he had to say. All of this was magic, was storytime; the first plastic islands, the change. The change over. The first sightings.

  “I wanted to see the eggs,” she said finally. Her voice was soft; she didn’t want to seem egotistical, to gather importance from her desire. Because in front of her, here was someone who had probably been one of the ones who figured out what was happening. He was heraldic.

  He pushed a button on the dashboard of the boat. She had no doubt it was, strictly speaking, unnecessary. The skimmer could do it all by itself. He was insignificant now. One of the people who had discovered the eggs, now a token pilot on a ship that didn’t need him.

  “I took some classes after the farm failed. I thought at first it was just a question of learning what to do. That we could fix it,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much there was to fix. We knew the waters were rising, we saw that the shore was disappearing. But I was inland. I was landlocked. Of course there were water restrictions, even there. But one year snow geese fell from the sky and convinced me that I had to do something. I ended up here. I knew nothing about this.” He shrugged. “But I could listen and I could work. We had discussions all the time, how to proceed, what made most sense.”

  “I heard there are eels on Sister Island now,” she said. “Birds come sometimes.”

  He nodded. “The jellyfish are the real indicator. They’re easy to catch and study. Microfibers are everywhere, you know, but they’re hard to spot and the earliest teams didn’t have microscopes. But we could see the small plastic beads—Styrofoam and microbeads, breakdowns of the soft plastics—under the hoods of the jellyfish, even along the arms and tentacles. From what we could see, doing no harm.”

  She looked at her own arm and flexed it. “I’ve read there are jellyfish bigger than whales.”

  He laughed. “Haven’t seen that. Not here, anyway. Things are relatively predictable here.”

  “What was the first thing you saw that gave you a clue?” Audra asked.

  He squinted slightly. “We caught fish to eat, of course. And we saw the plastic pieces. We couldn’t see the microplastics, as I said. But a piece of plastic line; a plastic wheel off a small toy—things like that. A few of the fish were damaged, but there were others that seemed to incorporate the stuff without harm. Those were interesting.” He grinned.

  Audra sighed. “I wish I’d been there. I mean, what an experience! I can’t wait to see the island. I hear there’s a research center. I know it’s just a shack, but it’s still amazing to me that people live there. They made it work.”

  “Well, we all made it work,” he agreed.

  “Oh yes, of course, sorry.” When he didn’t continue, she said, “Are you here for the laying?”

  He nodded.

  “I suspect I only got permission because of my arm,” she said and flexed it.

  He looked impressed. “That must be handy,” he said. “I suppose you can control it to the nth degree?”

  She grinned. “To the nth,” she said.

  By now they were close to Sister Island. Brother Island could be seen in the distance, still a few days away, floating with the faint currents or what little wind there was. Egg Island was smaller and therefore harder to observe over distances, but the currents were predictable enough.

  She saw a figure waiting by the slip. “That must be Johncy,” she said and waved with her true arm. She caught Wen noticing that. “Emotions seem to go out my natural arm. Always have, always will.”

  “Of course. It’s called appropriate use. The organism finds its job. It adapts. We’re thankful for that. It’s what might save us.” He smiled. “And it doesn’t seem to hurt, does it? The plastic?”

  “No.”

  He watched the shoreline intently. “After all this time, after all the harm, plastics might be a solution. It’s a strange thing for my generation to think about.”

  He stood leaning against the controls, tapping one absent-mindedly, slightly weathered and not entirely used to having the world surprise him. Her 3D arm had been an improvement in her life and had been offered to her soon after her accident. It was common enough by then. But she believed she understood what he meant. “Bodies accept almost everything, don’t they?” she said finally.

  They landed at what passed for a pier—a projection of plastic gas tanks roped together to make a sort of fork jabbing into the sea. Wen steered in while Audra studied the geography. The main structure on the island was made of a series of cabins or rooms, lightly constructed of all kinds of materials. There was a plastic picnic table outside and molded plastic chairs. Wen handed up their bags and four large black duffel bags. “The gear,” he said to Johncy, who grabbed the bags as Wen handed them up. Then Johncy reached a hand out and grabbed her, and steadied her as she stepped on the island.

  She turned to him and saw he had one brown eye and one clear eye.

  “My god!” She couldn’t help herself. “I’ve never seen a plastic eye before. I thought my arm was special.” She laughed. “I’m sure it takes a lot more refinement to make an eye.”

  Johncy smiled and nodded. “I was only the second to have one; the first was a monkey. One who’d lost her eye from a disease; don’t worry, it wasn’t tortured. It lived for a few more years, till the monkey fungus got it. But I got this eye.” He held a hand out to help Wen up. “Wen, good to see you. It wouldn’t be the same without you.” He turned to Audra. “You know he discovered the turtles, don’t you?”

  “He didn’t exactly say.”

  “Too modest. Or too secretive?” He laughed. “He always insisted that only plastics get told about the turtles and this island. We’re very protective.”

  She turned to consider Wen. “You’re plastic too?”

  “My heart,” he said easily. “If you lean in real close you’ll hear a different sound, more like a shush than a normal heart. It’s been running for about five years now. We don’t have a good idea about stress factors on plastic when it’s internal. One of the reasons Egg Island is kind of an obsession with me.”

  A young woman came paddling up in a plastic kayak and pulled into the other tine of the fork. “Egg is coming along,” she said, clearly delighted. “I think it will be early this year. It’s right behind Brother and to the east.”

  “It’s good you came when you did,” Wen told Audra. “I wasn’t going to come ‘till tomorrow. I might have missed the sight of it. I love watching it arrive.”

  The woman’s name was Kit, and she, along with Johncy and Michael, showed Audra around. They walked on the rippling island with absolute assurance, explained how they placed plastic straws and coils to reclaim water, how they dried seaweed in racks and baked it in solar ovens into a kind of bread. A modest vertical garden grew herbs, tomatoes, and beans.

  “I brought extra water,” Wen said. “And some groceries. And eggs, of course,” he said, winking. That brought a round of applause and laughs from the staff.

  The island was almost a quarter-mile around, so its motion was relatively minor, but it made her dizzy. They promised her she would get her balance by morning.

  Water splashed a little during the night, and occasionally a fish would flip out of water, or something would fall off the island. Once she heard voices offshore, so she supposed that the staff went for swims, and that must mean that the oil slicks had moved off for a while. Or they accepted being covered in oil. Or there was another alternative she knew nothing about. She slept.

  She did have her sea legs the next morning, rolling a little as she walked over the woven plastics, watching her step, but no longer in any way queasy. They grabbed plates and cups of coffee (also Wen’s gift) and sat staring out to the east.

  “I think,” Michael said, and st
opped. Everyone seemed to freeze, cups or forks in hand, just looking. They held a collective breath.

  “Yes,” Wen said. “Yes. That’s Egg all right.”

  They stood up. They stared at the island, watching it slap gently through the waves, pushed by a twist in the current, by the merest suggestion of wind. Audra thought it seemed to be aware of them, to be heading for them deliberately, even though she knew of course that the island itself was passive. Still, she was filled with expectation; they all were tense with anticipation, pulling out cameras and logbooks and charts from previous years.

  Audra stayed by Wen’s side. “When will it happen? Is it always at night?”

  “So far,” he said. “How long is ‘always’ under these circumstances? It’s been eleven years now, and I was the first to see it. Among the first, technically, I suppose. But I saw it, shook my head to clear it, saw it, and called the others. A wonderful thing.”

  “Will the island be here tonight, then?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not. But tomorrow, yes, I think so.”

  She spent the day doing the chores she’d been assigned, which included watering the garden. The reclamation straws dripped slowly, and she had to be careful to replace any bucket she took with another bucket immediately; not one drop of water could be lost. The plants poked up through plastic tarps, so that the soil would hold the water as long as possible. The tarps were lifted an hour a day to avoid mold or fungus in the soil. This was done by hand; they stood around, tarps lifted, holding corners or centers, chatting about the next things to do or any topic that came up.

  “Does your arm ever bother you?” Michael asked her.

  She looked down at it; it had become familiar, it had become a part of her. “No,” she said. “Not at all. It’s part of me now.”

  He smiled. “I have a leg,” he said. “Works perfectly, too.”

  The others nodded. They each had a replacement part. “I sometimes forget about it,” she said. “Though it can do more, lift more, have more force, than my original arm. So I think I’ve been improved.” She grinned.