The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

the Lifechain Group?’ Mei Lingyilu rose, bowed gently toward me. ‘Or would you prefer to let the world know the truth behind the curtain? Your math is quite good. I’m sure you can do the calculations.’

Eyes fixed on her ageless face, I took quite some time to reach the solution.

10.

Dreaming is a strange human design.

When I was on the asteroid, I always dreamed of Earth. Now that I’m back on Earth, I dream of the low gravity darkness of that living hell I once called home. There’s always some flake of the past I can’t give up.

I dream of Ginger, Freckles, Magpie, Popcorn… One by one, they say goodbye to me and leap from the rotating hatch through the mouth of Mother Whale into the dark sea of stars.

They wear no protective clothing, no helmets. They float naked as though suspended in amniotic fluid. The universe is their uterus.

I too am naked, racing along the slate-gray interior of Mother Whale, chasing after them. The endless starry sky, the curved horizon, dust glittering like hallucinations. I feel as if I too am slowly disappearing. I have no need for oxygen, gravity or protection. Like a wolf lost in the wilderness on the verge of death, I connect again to the whole of the universe. Hidden forces in the body activate, senses spring completely open. I realize a part of me is not yet consolidated into the system. Raw emotions thrive unencrypted, unread by the algorithms. These are more important than perpetuating life.

I guess they’d all agree that death’s freedom from debt is not so much an escape as it is a return.

I stop running. I watch them float on until they merge with the stars.

I open my eyes in a smile. Before me now are the two tombstones.

I brush away the dust, sweep spider silk from their names.

I lift a yellowing picture book from the cardboard box and set it before the tombstone on the left. On the cover of the album is a gray whale with a puppet boy, a long nose obscured by the shadow cast inside the whale’s belly. The puppet is grinning as if to say—

‘You see my nose growing longer?’

I hold back tears as I pull the mottled picture frame from the box. The picture inside is so damp and mildewed I can no longer make out the original image. I turn it over and set it face down on the tombstone at the right. In the corner of the frame is a twisted line of small characters that reads, ‘Dad, don’t be afraid.’

I nod. It’s as if I am actually hearing that voice. Dad, don’t be afraid. The words echo inside me.

They say I’m no longer who I was when I was in space. The Lifechain Group never brought back my physical body. They just transmitted my consciousness back from the cloud to the Earth to install it in a freshly manufactured body. So, the reason I can’t adapt to Earth’s gravity has nothing to do with my muscles, but simply the inertia of my consciousness. They say the crimes committed by EM-L4-D28-58a on the asteroid have nothing to do with me.

I try not to think about what happened on Mother Whale. When I do, it only drives me crazy.

They say, I’m a new man.

I finish my prayers, rise to leave, gently stroke my fingers along the edges of the two tombstones on my way out. I may never come back.

The debtless form a circle on the green hills outside the cemetery. They are waiting on me.

I wave. Their foreheads glimmer like clocks, like whirlpools, like songs of freedom.

For me, for Anan, for all the people of Earth.

Translated by Blake Stone-Banks

Fandom For Robots

Vina Jie-Min Prasad

Singapore

Vina burst onto the speculative fiction scene in 2017 with two powerful stories – ‘A Series of Steaks’ and ‘Fandom For Robots’ – gaining multiple award nominations between them. We reprinted ‘A Series of Steaks’ in The Apex Book of World SF 4, but my heart really belonged to the story presented here, a funny, heartfelt tale of a lonely computer and the joys of fanfiction. ‘Fandom For Robots’ was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, Sturgeon and Locus Awards, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Computron feels no emotion towards the animated television show titled Hyperdimension Warp Record (超次元 ワープ レコード). After all, Computron does not have any emotion circuits installed, and is thus constitutionally incapable of experiencing ‘excitement’, ‘hatred’, or ‘frustration’. It is completely impossible for Computron to experience emotions such as ‘excitement about the seventh episode of HyperWarp’, ‘hatred of the anime’s short episode length’ or ‘frustration that Friday is so far away’.

Computron checks his internal chronometer, as well as the countdown page on the streaming website. There are twenty-two hours, five minutes, forty-six seconds, and twelve milliseconds until 2 a.m. on Friday (Japanese Standard Time). Logically, he is aware that time is most likely passing at a normal rate. The Simak Robotics Museum is not within close proximity of a black hole, and there is close to no possibility that time is being dilated. His constant checking of the chronometer to compare it with the countdown page serves no scientific purpose whatsoever.

After fifty milliseconds, Computron checks the countdown page again.

*

The Simak Robotics Museum’s commemorative postcard set ($15.00 for a set of twelve) describes Computron as ‘The only known sentient robot, created in 1954 by Doctor Karel Alquist to serve as a laboratory assistant. No known scientist has managed to recreate the doctor’s invention. Its steel-framed box-and-claw design is characteristic of the period.’ Below that, in smaller print, the postcard thanks the Alquist estate for their generous donation.

In the museum, Computron is regarded as a quaint artefact, and plays a key role in the Robotics Then and Now performance as an example of the ‘Then’. After the announcer’s introduction to robotics, Computron appears on stage, answers four standard queries from the audience as proof of his sentience, and steps off the