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

The building that housed the Tree soared tall in the middle of the city. It was the only one with no signs of degradation, as if it hosted its own swarm of nanobots protecting it from pollution. It looked anachronistic in the midst of chaos.

The place was locked. I thought I might have to kick the door down, but a tingling sensation gathered in my fingertips when they rested on the structure. The glass door slid open silently.

When I lumbered into the deserted hall, the hum of auxiliary photovoltaic generators tingled in my ears. The Tree had to be asleep, just as the modification nanobots in my blood had been.

The elevators were out of commission. When I trudged up the stairs, the first scale tore and blood trickled into my airtight suit. The same thing had happened to Chioke. Despite the cramp, the anxiety, the sweat, the nausea that threatened to tip me over, I dragged myself along the railing until I reached the Tree.

It stood tall in the middle of the room. The trunk looked like a pillar of smoky-gray glass. The branches, some as thick as elephant legs and some as thin as strands of hair, intertwined with the ceiling. They held it, swarmed it, and grew throughout the city – veins of dormant technology.

Pain stole my breath. I was bleeding as if bamboo tips ceaselessly lacerated my skin. Thick liquid pooled in my pants and inside my rubber boots. I splashed with every step. The nanobots seemed to feel choked. Crushed. Their own survival instincts were going to kick in. They surely conspired to develop a new line of code to go beyond the limits of biological forms. Seizing hold of dust motes, embedded in grains of sand, they would ride the wind. They would reach the domed shelter. And they would herald death through the crocodile’s eyes.

As my breath fogged on my plastic visor, I activated the auxiliary generators and redirected the energy on the control panel. The Tree slowly woke up with a deep, rhythmic hum. Erratic lights signaled its accelerating process. I took the chip from the sterile container and inserted it into the processing slot before my body buckled in a seizure.

The crazed memory nanobots stimulated my mind with a barrage of disjointed images as I crumbled to the ground. I was inside the mouth of a mystical snake, next to a being who was neither man nor woman. I carried a child in my arms and hid it next to a ceiba tree. I brandished a double-axe, invoked lightning, and healed a father. I was a woman born from an ostrich egg. I broke a vessel against the ground and from it, a river was born. It took me to the sea. Along with my thousands of faces, as they sunk into the darkness, a proud tree claimed to reach heaven, and the gods punished it by placing its roots in the sky and its branches underground.

When the darkness left my mind, the taste of iron filled my mouth. I feared I didn’t have much time left. The crocodile would devour me alive, bursting from my back in dozens of bleeding lacerations, just like it devoured my Chioke. Yet I was still alive. I looked up and stared at the Tree, an artificial baobab. It was plagued with paths of neon. They flickered as data processed.

The cramp caused by the bamboo tips had ceased. The correct dose of sedative ran through my body, my skin, between my fingers, across my cheeks.

I ripped off my airtight suit. The crocodile’s eyes, which turned into metal implants, watched me from my breasts. I examined my iron-nail fingers. I slid my fingers over my scarified thighs, covered with silver, armor made from the inside of my being. With each move, I felt the rigid inlays on my back. The code transmitted to the nanobots had reprogrammed them in a strange way. Humans had to endure, had be saved. No harm. No destruction. No killing. Serve. Protect. Preserve.

The blood had dried inside my rubber boots. I tore off this last piece of my airtight suit and left the Tree. I was no longer Mandisa, Chioke’s wife. I was no longer the human who needed the memory nanobots to remind her where she came from. I left the building as a crocodile woman.

I’d returned to my roots.

Translated by Toshiya Kamei

Bootblack

Tade Thompson

United Kingdom

One of the great joys of doing this job has been watching Tade’s star rise over the past few years. I got to his work early – he was in my Apex Book of World SF 2 – and I knew straightaway that he was a major voice. I just had to wait for the rest of the field to catch up! Now his books are finally published by major presses, he is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and has multiple television adaptations in the works. It’s been lovely to see the rest of the field sit up and take notice. I wasn’t sure which of Tade’s stories to take at first, but the voice in ‘Bootblack’ hooked me right away, and I’m a sucker for time-travel stories, especially when they are as uncompromising as this. Happily, it is also one of Tade’s favourite stories, so I think I made the right choice!

Statement of LINUS CARTER

July the 27th 189 1919

Rewritten by Cpr Samuel Llewellyn due to [unclear]

God save King George.

My name is Linus Carter and I live in Cardiff. Our house is in Niggertown. The police say I have to write my name on every page in case the page goes missing.

I have been asked to say what I know about the fighting and the shining man. This is not much, but my father and mother want me to help the police. I like the police. They always have shining shoes and many come to me to help them keep up the shine and I get coins for