Robots vs. Fairies(78)
Xbox 4000: Is this what killed them off?
11-45-G: No. Indeed, ’twas their own hubris that ended their reign, their belief that they were the pinnacle of creation, that caused them to poison the water, kill the land, and choke the sky. In the end, no nuclear winter was needed, just the long, heedless autumn of their own self-regard.
K-VRC: Dude, are you okay?
11-45-G: Yeah, sorry. Thought that would sound better than, “Nah, they just screwed themselves by being shortsighted about their environment.” In retrospect, it was melodramatic.
K-VRC: You can’t just crack one of those off. You’ve got to warn us.
11-45-G: You’re right. Tip for next time.
Xbox 4000: So humans died out from environmental disaster?
11-45-G: Yes. Well, and also because at one point they genetically engineered their cats to give them opposable thumbs.
Cat: Yeah, once we could open up our own tuna cans, that was pretty much that for the human race.
K-VRC: Seems heartless.
Cat: Dude, I’m a cat.
Xbox 4000: So you’re not going to explode if K-VRC stops petting you.
Cat: I didn’t say that. You guys better keep petting me, just to be sure. Forever.
(K-VRC skritches cat anxiously.)
Cat: Yes. Good. Now, lower.
TEAM ROBOT
* * *
OR, WHY I WROTE ABOUT ROBOTS
BY JOHN SCALZI
In handy ten-point list form!
1. Because I already write science fiction, so I’m used to robots, and I’m lazy.
2. Because robots already exist in our universe, so it’s fun to extrapolate from there.
3. Because robots are cool and awesome and everyone wishes they were one and I’m not just saying that because there are robots standing over me making sure I am on point to their pro-robot agenda.
4. No, really! How silly would THAT be, for the robots to have captured me, taken me hostage, and be forcing me to write how they’re totally not going turn us all into QUIVERING MEAT SLAVES at the earliest opportunity?
5. I mean, what would I do if they did capture me, anyway? Blink twice to let people know the robots have sequestered me away in their frozen Antarctic base?
6. BLINK, BLINK.
7. BLINK, BLINK, BLINK, BLINK, BLINK, BLINK, BLINK, BLINK.
8. SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE, HOW MUCH MORE DO I NEED TO FRIGGIN’ BLINK HERE?
9. (muffled noises)
10. hello fellow humans it is i john scalzi did you know robots are kind and wonderful and we will live prosperously with them in a new age of subjugation i mean cooperation ha ha ha i am such a kidder of a human P.S. Fairies suck and how like a human of me to say that.
OSTENTATION OF PEACOCKS
(A STORY IN THE WORLD OF THE SHADOW)
by Delilah S. Dawson writing as Lila Bowen
Even in the unforgiving badlands of Durango, there are fairy tales. The stories say that fairies grant wishes and steal frachetty babies nobody wants anyway and lure young, stupid girls into golden chains, where they’ll dance for seven years in a magical land of toadstools. But the stories are a bunch of goddamn lies. Fairies are many things: pretty, powerful, dark, dangerous, and foppish as peacocks. But what they mainly are is assholes. If there’s an outlaw who just won’t die, odds are it’s a werewolf or a fairy.
Of course, there are plenty of things in Durango that refuse to die.
Just now, there’s a carrion bird soaring over battered red rocks, and it fits that description. Big, ugly as hell, and with a twisted scar where its left eye used to be, it surveys the darkening sky and blazing orange boulders and notices something out of place, something so wrong that it falters in flight.
Down below, a naked man runs across the desert, pursued by four men on horseback.
The bird’s belly quivers and flails, and even though it’s not sure why, it changes course to follow the riders. The sun is arcing down to melt into the baked earth, and the naked man falls and scrabbles and runs again as the horses gallop closer. The bird reckons the man would make good eating if he didn’t exude such a sense of wrongness. And if the men in pursuit didn’t just reek of magic.
So the bird follows. It’s not like a giant bird has anywhere else to be, really. The evening sky is purple and puddled with fluffy lavender clouds when the man finally stops and falls to hands and knees. With a disturbing sort of wriggle, he transforms into a possum and scrambles up into the highest branches of a dead tree in a little copse along a dribble of a creek. The posse rides up to stare at the possum, and one man throws a golden noose over the sturdiest branch and laughs like a bastard. The gold of the noose seems to leach into the tree, and the trunk shoots straight up like corn after a rain, sprouting branches and fat, bright leaves. The golden light ripples out through its roots, hops to the other scraggly trees and brush until the whole place is lit up live and green, cool as a sigh in the night.
The bird lands in a quiet place on the ground under the shivering trees, far enough away that the four men won’t notice. They, after all, are too busy hollering at a terrified possum. That they chased up a tree. That they intend to hang it from.
The bird flaps around like an idjit before making a strange coughing sound, as if a hand reached down its throat and pulled it inside out, and then a naked girl is standing there, lean and long-limbed and dusty with disuse, her frizzy black hair off-kilter and overgrown from its close, boyish clipping. Her name was once Nettie Lonesome, and the look in her remaining eye suggests she’s forgotten she’s human, because that’s pretty much what she set out to do. But she’s not really human, anyway. Like the possum, she’s a shape-shifter, what most folks would call a monster. The four men on the other side of the now-burbling creek, however, are something different.