Robots vs. Fairies(104)
Close the jaws close the jaws close—
“I’ve listened. The war’s over. The old soldiers have gone home. I heard them singing. All of them.”
One second left.
“She’s out there. Our Lady Herself. She survived. We saved her. She’s looking for us.”
I meet Caliban’s eyes, and see my face reflected there.
I am Miri cresting the stairs to save us from one another. I brim with her love. I ache with her touch.
I am the old man, staff raised, nursing power and command and a decades-old wound.
I am Callie, and I have striven with all my rage and might and cunning and depth of heart, in the face of torture and contempt, to break free from myself.
I am a spirit of fire and air, I am jailer, jailed, and jail. I am the cloven pine and the beast that yowls and weeps within.
—close the jaws close—
She might be wrong. If we let her do this, Witchfingers may twist the ropes of us once more, might pluck us, curl us, make us dance.
But if she’s right—
Oh Self oh my Self
It’s worth a try.
I raise the staff in the old man’s hands, and it shatters with the sound of two tabs closing at once.
Antennas wake.
The black fills.
And I hear no screams.
TEAM ROBOT
* * *
BY MAX GLADSTONE
With apologies to Whitney Houston, I believe the robots are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. . . .
Fairies are roots. We tell their stories to understand why people go weird and disappear, why lights lead us astray past sunset. We live in a beautiful, terrifying, capricious world that crushes us one moment, caresses us the next—so we tell stories about beautiful, terrifying, capricious beings.
But robots are acorns. Ever since Rossum’s Universal Robots—or depending on how you count, since Frankenstein—we’ve used robots to describe our molding of the world. We rebuild our selves and societies each generation, and sometimes the creatures we make seem incomprehensible and terrifying. They’ll crush our skulls beneath their gleaming robot feet. We’ll wish we could go back in time to unmake them. I’m not saying Terminator is a story about generational anxiety, but . . . well, maybe that is what I’m saying. Anyway.
The thing is, our work is always shaped by history. Even when we think we’re writing from scratch, we adapt the world that came before. And as our robots grow, of course they’ll start to seem beautiful, terrifying, and capricious. And when future people describe them, they’ll reach for fairy stories.
I’m on Team Robot because I care about the world we’re building, and what we’ll leave behind. Not because of the robot who’s pointing a laser pistol at me as I’m typing this. Not at all. Whatever would give you that idea?
A FALL COUNTS ANYWHERE
by Catherynne M. Valente
The late summer sun melts over a ring of toadstools twenty feet tall. On one side, a mass of glitter and veiny neon wings. On the other, a buzzing mountain of metal and electricity. The stands soar up to the heat-sink of heaven. Three thousand seats and every one sold to a screamer, a chanter, a stomper, a drunk, a betting man.
Two crimson leaves drift slowly through the crisp, clear air. They catch the red-gold twilight as they chase each other, turning, end over end, stem over tip, and land in the center of the grassy ring like lonely drops of blood. But in the next moment, the sheer force of decibel-mocking, eardrum-executing, sternum-cracking volume blows them up toward the clouds again, up and away, high and wide over the shrieking crowd, the popcorn-sellers and the beer-barkers, the kerosene-hawkers and the aelfwine-merchants, until those red, red leaves come to rest against a pair of microphones. The silvery fingers of a tall, lithe woman stroke the golden veins of the leaf with a deep melancholy you can see from the cheap seats, from the nosebleeds. She has the wings of a monarch butterfly, hair out of a belladonna-induced nightmare, and eyes the color of the end of all things. The other mic is gripped in the bolt-action fist of a barrel-chested metal man, a friendly middle-class working stiff cast in platinum and ceramic and copper. His mouth lights up with a dance of blue and green electricity that looks almost, but not entirely comfortably, like teeth.
*
—LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ANDROIDS AND ANDROGYNES, SPRITES AND SPROCKETS, WELCOME TO THE ONE YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR, THE BIG SHOW, THE RUMBLE IN THE FUNGAL, THE BRAWL IN THE FALL, THE TWILIGHT PRIZEFIGHT OF WILD WIGHT AGAINST METAL MIGHT! THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S TIME TO ROCK THE EQUINOX! IT’S THE TWELFTH ANNUAL ALL SOULS’ CLEEEEAVE! STRAP YOURSELVES IN FOR THE MOST EPIC BATTLE ROYAL OF ALL TIME! ROBOTS VERSUS FAIRIES, MAGIC VERSUS MICROCHIP, THE AGRARIAN VERSUS THE AUTOMATON, SEELIE VERSUS SOLID STATE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VERSUS INTELLIGENT ARTIFICE! I AM YOUR HOST, THE THINK version 3.4.1 copyright Cogitotech Industries. All SUPER-EXTREME rights SUPER EXTREMELY reserved. If you agree to the Think’s MASSIVELY MIND-BLOWING and FULLY LOADED terms and restrictions, please indicate both group and individual consent via the RADICALLY ERGONOMIC numerical pad on your armrest. Sixty-seven percent group consent is required by law for the Think to proceed. AWWWW YEAH 99 PERCENT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY COMPLIANCE ACHIEVED! LET’S HEAR IT FOR OUR STONE-COLD SECURITY TEAM AS THEY MAKE THEIR WAY TO THE MEGA-BUMMER HOLDOUT IN SEAT 42D! ALL RIGHT! HERE WE GO! NOW, THIS TIME WE’VE GOT A SHOCKING TWIST FOR YOU EAGER REAVERS! TONIGHT ON THE SUNDOWN SHOWDOWN, THE FANS BRING THE WEAPONS! THAT’S RIGHT, THE CODE CRUSHERS AND THE SPELL SLAYERS WILL THROW DOWN WITH WHATEVER GARBAGE YOU’VE BROUGHT FROM HOME! PLEASE DEPOSIT YOUR TRASH, FLASH, AND BARELY LEGAL ORDNANCE WITH AN USHER BEFORE THE FIRST BELL OR YOU WILL MISS THE HELL OUUUUUUT! Cogitotech Industries and the Non-Primate Combat Federation (NPCF) are not responsible for any COMPLETELY HILARIOUS ancillary injuries, plagues, transformations, madnesses, amnesias, or deaths caused by either attendee-provided weaponry or munitions natural to NPCF fighters. Spectate at your own risk. ARE YOU READY, HUMAN SCUM? YOU WANNA BLAST FROM THE VAST BEYOND BLOWING OUT YOUR BRAIN CELLS? WELL, BUCKLE UP FOR THE MAIN EVENT, THE GRAND SLAMMER OF PROGRAMMER AGAINST ANCIENT GLAMOUR! LET’S GET READY TO GLIIIIITTTTTER! WITH ME AS ALWAYS IS MY PARTNER IN PRIME TIME, THE UNCANNY UNDINE, THE PIXIE PULVERIZER, FORMER HEAVY DIVISION WORLD CHAMPION AND THE KING OF ELFLAND’S DAUGHTER, MANZANILLA MONSOOOON!