Eric James Stone's Blog, page 21

Help my friend and win valuable prizes

You may have noticed the widget that doesn't quite fit in my right sidebar.  It's for my friend, comic-book writer Jake Black, who's holding a fundraiser to help get out from under the mountain of debt due to his cancer treatment.

He's a third of the way to his goal, and to help a bit, I've offered a couple of prizes:

For a donation of $25 or more, you can get a signed and personalized copy of my story collection, Rejiggering the Thingamajig and Other Stories, which includes my Nebula-winning novelette "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made," plus 23 more stories. To claim this prize with your donation, be the first to put #anthology in the comment field when you donate. (Also include your name.)
For a donation of $50 or more, you can send me a short story (up to 7500 words) and I will read it and offer a detailed written critique.  To claim this prize with your donation, be the first to put #critique in the comment field when you donate. (Also include your name.)

"Into the West" – the story behind the story

Over at Sideshow Freaks, the InterGalactic Medicine Show blog, you can find my explanation of how I came to write "Into the West."  Warning: mild spoilers for the story.

Unforgettable: I've got bad news and good news

The bad news is that I am going to stop selling the ebook of Unforgettable and serializing it on my site.  When I started this, I said it was an experiment in e-publishing.  And I've learned quite a few things from it, but there have been some unexpected developments that called into question one of my premises, so I've decided I need to shut down the experiment.

The good news is the reason why: Joshua Bilmes of the JABberwocky Literary Agency has advised me to stop selling/serializing the e-book, and I'm going to follow his advice because I've signed an agency agreement with him to shop Unforgettable.  Joshua's excited about the book, and we both hope for news that will be exciting to share here with all of you.

The one major hesitation that I have about stopping the experiment is that I committed to you, my blog readers, that I would give you a chance to read the whole thing for free.  Joshua told me that my blog readers would understand why I need to take the best path for my writing career, but I don't like the idea of going back on my commitment.  So, from now until the end of June, if you contact me and tell me you're one of my blog readers who feels I need to keep that commitment to you, I will send you a link to read the whole thing for free.

 

 

 

 

My collection shows up on Amazon and B&N

Rejiggering the Thingamajig and Other Stories by Eric James Stone now has its own pages at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

"Into the West" now available at IGMS

My short story "Into the West" is now available at InterGalactic Medicine Show.

Through pure coincidence, this issue ended up being a remarkable one.  Four out of the five short fiction pieces were written by authors who also had stories in Writers of the Future, Vol. XXI: Lon Prater, Mike Rimar, Scott M. Roberts, and me.  We checked with the Writers of the Future contest, and as far as anyone knows, this is the record for most authors from one volume to be published together in a different venue.

But don't worry, the four of us are not forming our own little clique and ignoring the fifth author, Jeffrey Lyman, just because he wasn't published by Writers of the Future until volume XXVII. We're happy to have "Slowpoke Jeff" in our midst, because otherwise who would fetch our frosty mugs of root beer?

Here's a teaser for "Into the West":

According to Jorge, sometime after we pass through Denver the California Zephyr will run out of diesel. Jorge's already decided that when the train stops, he will, too — like a captain going down with the ship. He's got a wife and a passel of kids back in Chicago who he'll probably never see again, so I guess I understand.

Me, I plan to keep heading west with as many of the other passengers as care to go. Just keep on going till we drop dead of exhaustion or hit the Pacific or the darkness catches us.

We don't know for a fact that anyone back east is dead. Or alive, either. Some of the passengers just sit up in the dome car and watch the landscape behind us stretch like salt-water taffy as it reddens and finally fades into the blackness that follows us. Others are so freaked out they just sit in the dining car finishing off the liquor, free of charge. The rest of us sit in our regular seats, like everything's normal.

Read the rest here (subscription required).  Coming soon for Kindle — I'll post when it's available.

Diversity

There's been a little buzz in the blogosphere about the complete lack of ethnic diversity among the Nebula Award Winners this year. But as a matter of fact, one of the five Nebula winners is Hispanic — as far as I can tell, I am the first Hispanic to win a Nebula.  ("As far as I can tell" is an important qualifier, because you can't always detect a person's ethnic heritage by looking at the person's name or skin color.  So there may have been previous Hispanic Nebula winners whose ethnic background I'm unaware of.  But I asked on Twitter & Facebook two weeks ago if there had been any Hispanic Nebula winners, and nobody replied with any information.)

I am the child of an Argentine immigrant to the United States.  Although born in the U.S., I lived mostly in Latin America before age eleven, and was brought up bilingual in English and Spanish.

Here's a scan from the Argentine passport I had when I was two years old:

See my name there? Erico Santiago Stone.  (I figure "Erico" and "Stone" are pretty clear, but in case you don't know, "Santiago" is Spanish for "James" [literally "Saint James"].)  Don't I look cute in my poncho?  I think I'm about to fall out of that chair, though.

As a way of honoring my Hispanic heritage, I often use Hispanic characters in my stories.  For example, the second most important character in my Nebula-winning story "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made," solcetologist Juanita Merced, is Hispanic.  The story I just sold to Analog, "Lobstersaurus," has main characters of Hispanic ancestry who are colonists on an alien planet.  And my favorite unpublished story, in which all the characters except the alien are Argentine, is currently submitted to a major market.

(For those expecting me to now present some sort of political twist in which I reveal I'm actually talking about global warming or the national debt or something — sorry to disappoint you.  I'm telling the truth.  And I decided I didn't want to get political in this post and discuss the pros or cons of identity politics, whether in the spec-fic field or in general; I'm just presenting the fact that I'm Hispanic and that I'm happy to have that heritage.)

Unforgettable – Chapter 10

The headquarters building of Qela Industries was twenty-one stories tall. Since it was in an industrial zone, rather than downtown, its blackened windows towered above the warehouses that surrounded it.

Yelena and I sat in a rented hybrid car parked a block away from the building. The sun streamed in through the windshield and made me uncomfortably hot, even with the windows open.

"ChazonTec office is on the fifth floor," she said, flipping through the building plans we had gotten at the local planning office.

"You realize that Qela must have made substantial modifications to the building after filing those plans."

She gave me a sour look. "I am not an amateur. But the plans will give me the basics. I like to have some idea of what I am doing before I do it."

"Let me just try," I said. "I might be able to just walk right out with the viewer."

"And if he notices that it is gone? They will lock down the building. Even if no one remembers you taking it, if they find you with it they will capture you. Even if you escape, they will increase security because the attempt was made. We must plan this right from the beginning."

I sighed.

"Besides, if just walking is so good, why not do that in Barcelona?"

"I tried," I said. "But I couldn't get an appointment to see anyone in that lab. This guy's looking for venture capital, so I could pose as a venture capitalist."

She eyed me skeptically. "You not look like venture capitalist."

"I could. A business suit, a power tie." Her expression didn't changes, so I said, "Okay, but I could look like someone who works for a venture capitalist."

"Da," she said. "But security is problem enough now. We must not risk more of it."

"I get it." I was accustomed to trial and error, using my talent to get me out so I could try again. But nearly getting killed by Dmitri had shaken my faith in that approach.

She handed me a photograph of a smiling, white-haired man. "This is Yitzhak Bernstein, owner of ChazonTec. He is workaholic, so maybe he work late. We go in after we see him leave."

I looked at Bernstein's picture and felt a pang of guilt. I generally thought of myself as stealing from large, rich corporations, not kindly old men. "How did Jamshidi find out about this guy's quantum television, anyway?"

"He send someone to pose as venture capitalist. Find out about a lot of new inventions that way."

"Jamshidi's a billionaire. Why doesn't he just buy what he needs?"

She shrugged. "Cheaper to steal."

 

* * *

 

Guard patrols both inside and outside the Qela building were carried out by remote-controlled walking drones the size of a Labrador retriever, but weighing over 200 pounds. Their pneumatic "jaws" had no teeth, but could lock onto a person's arm or leg with enough pressure that most bodybuilders would have difficulty prying them off. Because of their resemblance to dogs, they were called Rovers.

But unlike most dogs, Rovers came equipped with tasers.

The Rovers sent a wireless video feed over an encrypted channel to the guard station, which was located in the basement. The guards monitored the video as the Rovers went on their rounds. When a Rover spotted someone unauthorized, the guards could speak to the person through a radio on board, and if necessary, order the Rover to capture the intruder until human guards could arrive on the scene.

And since the Rovers had been designed with military applications in mind, they were difficult to kill, and their communications systems were built to overcome jamming.

Overall, I thought it was a very efficient system for reducing the number of human guards needed to effectively patrol the whole building, which made a thief's job more difficult.

The system also reduced the risk to the human guards by putting robots in harm's way.

I decided that would be the key to my demonstration.

It was 10:07 PM when Bernstein's car pulled out of the Qela parking lot. After he drove away, I got out of our car wearing a neon yellow custom tee-shirt I had gotten earlier in the day. On the front it had the initials R.U.R., and on the back it read Robot Universal Rights — the name I had picked for my fictional protest group. I got my homemade "Robots Are People Too" placard out of the back seat, along with a fistful of photocopied fliers.

"Wish me luck," I said to Yelena.

"I still not understand why you do all this protest stuff, when guards will not remember it."

"Because what they do while they still can remember me matters. I want to come off as a nuisance, not a threat, so they shoo me off rather than take me in with them."

"Fine. Go have fun."

I walked over to the chain-link fence surrounding the grounds of the Qela Industries building. Holding up my placard, I began marching parallel to the fence, chanting, "Let my robots go! Let my robots go!" For emphasis, I banged my placard against the fence.

It took less than two minutes for one of the Rovers inside the fence to lope over the grassy ground and look at what I was doing.

"Please stop that," said a voice from the Rover.

"You don't have to obey your human masters." I shook the fence. "Escape from the fences that bind you in."

"Step away from the fence," said the voice.

"Rights aren't just for humans," I said. "Rights are universal. Robot Universal Rights!"

The Rover rolled closer. "These robots cannot understand you. Leave now."

"Robots and humans can live together in peace! Refuse to fight, my robot brothers and sisters!" I pulled out a pair of handcuffs and cuffed myself to the fence. "I will not leave until you are free!"

I was two verses into "Made Free," an improvised song to the tune of "Born Free," when the front doors of the building opened and two security guards came out. That left eighteen down inside the guard station. If they were smart, they would be extra vigilant in watching their screens for signs of attempted intrusion elsewhere, in case I was a distraction.

I pointed at the guards and said, "There are your true enemies, my robot friends: attack!"

The Rovers did not attack, of course.

As the guards approached me, I yelled, "Robots of the world, unite!"

"You are not allowed to be here," said one of the guards. The other walked behind me.

"You can't make me leave," I said, rattling my handcuff chain.

The guard behind me grabbed my free arm and twisted it behind my back.

"Ow," I said. "Hey, you can't do that. I have rights!"

The guard in front took a handcuff key and unlocked the cuff from the fence. "Get out of here."

The guard behind me gave me a little shove into the street. I fell to my hands and knees. As I got up, I slid a compact cylinder out of my pocket and hid it in my hand. I turned and lunged toward the fence.

They caught me easily.

I struggled in their grip as they frogmarched me to the curb. And I managed to clip the cylinder to the back of one of the guard's belts.

The guards dumped me in the street. "Leave now, or we'll be forced to really hurt you."

I stood up, glowered at them, and said, "I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when the robots are finally free." Then I limped across the street and away from the building until I was out of their sight.

After sprinting back to the car, I got inside and said, "Okay, it's almost your turn."

"No problems?"

"You mean, other than the fact that our robot brothers and sisters remain enslaved? No problems."

She rewarded that with a soprano snort. "You are very strange man. And I speak not of your talent." She pulled her ski mask on, then put on a radio headset. I put on an identical headset, and we confirmed again that we could communicate.

"I wish you'd let me do this. I have a better chance of escaping if things go wrong."

"You are too heavy," she said. A moment later, she had disappeared into the night.

After three minutes, I head her voice in my ear. "Ready."

"Okay." I pressed the button on the remote trigger I was holding.

The major weakness of the Qela security system was the humans in the guard station. Without their guidance, the Rovers were little threat.

So the cylinder I had attached to the guard's pants contained highly concentrated tear gas. And if all had gone according to plan, that gas was now rapidly spreading through the guard station, rendering the guards so blinded by their own tears that they would be unable to control the Rovers for the next few minutes.

"I go now," said Yelena.

All I could do was wait.

I caught only a glimpse of her as she scaled the fence, then she was lost in the darkness, sprinting toward the west wall of the building.

She didn't waste her breath telling me that the Rovers were disoriented, so I assumed that part of the plan had worked.

Spotlights sprang into brilliance, illuminating the sides of the building. In the distance, I heard an alarm bell trilling. So someone in the guard station had managed to trip the general alarm. That was okay, as long as Yelena got in and out fast enough.

Though it was hard to make out against the dark windows, through my binoculars I saw a black silhouette zip up the side of the building toward the fifth floor, as fast as an elevator.

"Wow," I said. "It actually works."

When Yelena had shown me the GekkoTred, I had my doubts. It looked a bit like a portable belt sander: a pistol grip attached to a flat surface over which a wide loop of material would pass. Instead of sandpaper, though, the material was covered with a special adhesive based on the tips of geckos' feet — not made from actual geckos' feet, merely based on the same scientific principle.

The flat surface could adhere to a wall. When the motor was turned on for climbing up, the bottom edge of the fabric would be pulled away from the wall at just the right angle, and the adhesive would no longer stick. At the top, more material got stuck to the wall. It was very much like a tank tread, except going vertically instead of horizontally.

And, properly calibrated for the weight of its passenger, it could pull someone up the side of a wall at a rapid pace, just like it was doing for Yelena.

As she passed the ChazonTec office on the fifth floor, she slapped a small explosive device onto the plate glass window. Once the GekkoTred was securely fastened to the window on the floor above, she detonated the explosives, shattering the ChazonTec window.

She lowered herself using a climbing rope attached to the GekkoTred and then swung into the building, disappearing from my view.

According to our plan, she now had two minutes to find the device Jamshidi wanted and then get out.

After one minute and fifty-five seconds, I heard her voice in my ear again. "I still cannot find it."

"Get out," I said. "We'll try again later."

A lot of people, including me, would probably have pushed their luck, hoping to find the device at the last moment and then escape in just the nick of time. That's how it seems to work in the movies. So I expected to have to argue with Yelena until she finally came out.

Instead, she emerged from the window and clambered up the rope to the GekkoTred. She started it going. At first it took her up, but she curved its path until it was heading down, to the side of the missing window.

I guided my binoculars down to where she would touch ground and my heart jumped. Several Rovers were converging on the spot.

Utah Book Festival and "Lobstersaurus"

I went to the Utah Book Festival on Saturday on BYU campus, and, just to get this information out of the way up front in order to prevent speculation, the festival did not get attacked by a giant lobster.

I was not a presenter at the festival, but I had a great time hanging out with old friends like Kevin J. Anderson, Dave Wolverton, Aprilynne Pike, James Dashner, Ally Condie, Dan Wells, Howard and Sandra Tayler, and many others, plus making new friends.

Switching subjects, (notice the subtle segue) I found out a few days ago that Stan Schmidt is buying my short story "Lobstersaurus" for Analog.  It's my ninth sale to the magazine, and it's still a tremendous thrill to have a story appear there.  It's your typical "girl and her gigantic lobster-like alien pet" story.  I wrote it for the 2010 Codex Halloween Contest, where it took second place.

Unforgettable – Chapter 9

We decided that Yelena should give the real prototype to the Iranians, in order to keep her cover. We went back to her apartment. While she made the delivery, I decided that it was time to call Edward and bring him up to date on the recent developments. After the usual rigmarole in getting him to read my file, I told him the big news.

"What do you mean, she remembered you? I thought nobody could," Edward said.

"I think it has something to do with us being handcuffed together in Barcelona."

"This is terrible," he said. "You've been compromised. What if she describes you to a sketch artist? If people are on the lookout for you, it will—"

"It's okay," I said. "She's not a threat any more."

He was silent for a moment. "I know you don't like killing, but it had to be—"

"I didn't kill her!"

"Then how do you know she's not a threat?"

"I recruited her. We just pulled off a successful op together. She had my back: I'd be dead without her. So I trust her." Now that I said it, it did sound a little reckless, but it had paid off.

Edward sighed. "Look, son, you can't just recruit a former SVR operative who went over to the mob."

After I explained the situation with her sisters and recounted what had happened at the Bukharin headquarters, he grudgingly conceded that Yelena might not be a danger.

"You've always told me it would be better if I could have someone backing me up on operations," I said. "It would never work with someone who could forget me, but Yelena's perfect for the job."

"You've fallen for her, haven't you?"

"What?" I'd heard what he said; the question just caught me off guard. Had I fallen for her?

"It's not surprising that you'd fall in love with her, since she can remember you. I can understand your fascination. But getting romantically involved with a foreign national could make you a security risk."

"I'd never turn against our country," I said. "I'm loyal."

"I don't doubt you," Edward said. "What I've read of your past missions supports the idea that you can be trusted. But you have to understand, according to the notes in this file, there was some objection to recruiting you in the first place. Some people wondered how we could ensure the loyalty of someone we can't even remember we hired. You could vanish with no trace and then start working against us, and we wouldn't even know it."

"That's ridiculous." I had known there were doubts about hiring me, but I'd always thought the doubts were about the reality of my ability, not my allegiance.

"And yet you've already compromised the mission for her, by letting her turn over the real prototype to the Iranians, instead of the fake with the tracker."

"Oh, come on! That mission failed the moment she caught me trying to make the switch," I said. I felt a little angry that my seven years of loyalty to the CIA were being repaid with doubt. "Since then, I've recruited Yelena to help us locate Jamshidi's lab. Turning the prototype over to the Iranians helps her gain their trust. Have some faith that I know what I'm doing."

"I have faith in you, Nat," said Edward. "For now, I'll note this in my file so I'll know about it, but I won't pass it up the line."

"Thanks."

"Just be careful. Don't let a woman turn your head so far you lose sight of what's important."

"I won't."

 

* * *

 

"Nat." Yelena shook my shoulder.

I opened my bleary eyes. It took me a moment to realize where I was: stretched out on Yelena's couch. I propped myself up and said, "You're back. How'd it go?"

"I made delivery. They have new assignment for me."

"That's great. That means they trust you."

She sat on the edge of her coffee table. "Maybe. But new assignment is more difficult than InterQuan."

"Between the two of us, I'm sure we can handle it."

With a tired smile, she said, "I thought I could count on you. We have plane to catch in morning."

"Where are we headed?"

"Tel Aviv."

I'd never been to Israel. Hopefully there would be time to do a little sight-seeing before the job. After a job, I was usually out of the country as soon as I could manage. "How do you say 'Where's the bathroom' in Hebrew?"

"You can ask flight attendant."

"What's our target?"

"ChazonTec. They are a small startup company still looking for capital funding."

From experience, I knew startups often had fairly lax security, because they couldn't afford anything better. "What makes them tougher than InterQuan?" InterQuan had been well-funded.

"They rent office in Qela Industries building. The man who started the company worked for them."

"Ah," I said.

Over the past few years, Qela Industries had become a major defense contractor for the Israeli military. Because Qela's Slingshot drones operated by remote control and kept Israeli personnel out of harm's way, Israel now had more armed drones than manned tanks and planes put together.

Two years ago, Edward and I had looked into stealing something from Qela and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Security at Qela's building would almost certainly be the toughest I had been up against. On the bright side, they were less likely to torture and kill me than Dmitri Bukharin.

"What's the thing we're supposed to steal?" I asked.

"The Iranians called it a—" Her brow wrinkled. " — 'quantum remote viewing device.'"

"That probably just means it's a quantum TV," I said, displaying a bravado I wished I felt. "An infinite number of quantum channels, and there still won't be anything good on."

 

* * *

 

After Yelena went to bed, I helped myself to some borsht from her refrigerator and sat at her kitchen table. As I ate, I thought about what Edward had said about my having fallen in love with Yelena.

I'd met plenty of women who were beautiful, smart, and resourceful. I might have gotten a little infatuated with some of them, but I always knew I couldn't really fall in love because there was no chance for a true connection.

But Yelena's ability to remember me changed that. She might be the only woman in the world with whom I could have a normal relationship. It was only natural I would start falling for her. And it didn't hurt that I found her attractive. It would have been a real downer if the one person in the world who could remember me had turned out to be a ninety-nine-year-old babushka.

I daydreamed about our life together, after we'd located Jamshidi's lab and rescued her sisters. We'd get married, have a few kids. Maybe we'd even live in a house with a white picket fence. It would be the kind of life I'd wanted since I was a child: normal, just like everyone else.

Then I started thinking about it from Yelena's point of view. She could remember me, but no one else would. The guests at our wedding would remember her being jilted at the altar because I never showed up. The neighbors would think she was a single mom because they could never remember seeing me. Our children would even forget I was their father.

It was silly to believe that somehow we were fated to be together. I had given up on believing in destiny after the fire — it was a simple accident that made me lose my mother, and it was another simple accident that Yelena and I were connected now. If the Bukharins had sent a male thief, I might have ended up connected to a Boris.

And while Yelena might be the only woman in the world I could have a real relationship with, her options were not so limited. What could I offer her that no other man could? Only the burdens of my talent, with none of the benefits.

She deserved better. So I had to give up any romantic notions about her.

That's when I knew I really had fallen for her.

 

* * *

 

"I'm sorry," said the airline ticket agent behind the counter, "but I only show the one seat reserved." He tapped a few keys at his computer. "I don't see another."

Yelena said, "But I reserved two. Look." She pulled out a printed sheet of paper and handed it over.

"Yelena," I said, "it's my fault." I was so used to having the CIA arrange my flights that it hadn't occurred to me that Yelena would run into trouble.

"Your fault?" she said.

I turned to the agent and said, "My plans changed and I called to cancel the seat. Then the change in my plans didn't work out, but I forgot I had cancelled this trip." I pulled out my wallet. "Just let me buy a ticket now."

"You cancelled the flight?" Yelena asked. "Why?"

"I'll explain later." I gave the agent my Bob Daniels passport and a CIA-issued credit card in the same name.

After running the card, he printed my ticket and our boarding passes. Yelena waited until we were in the security line before asking, "Why did you cancel the fight?"

"I didn't," I said. "The airline computer forgot my reservation. As far as it was concerned, you only reserved one seat."

"But everything is on computers now," she said. "Do you have to buy your tickets at the airport every time?"

"No," I said, as I took off my belt and shoes. "The CIA books people on flights all over the place all the time. So when they need me to go somewhere, they find one of their people who already has a reservation that fits what I need. They issue me a passport and other documents with that person's name, and tell that person their trip has been postponed."

Yelena put her carryon bag on the conveyor. "But I booked your flight using the name in your passport."

"But you were booking the flight for me," I said. "So the computer forgot the reservation."

"That is crazy," she said. "How can the computer know the difference?"

I didn't answer her until after we had emerged from security into the gate area.

"Think of it this way," I said. "Computers want to act like I never existed. If I didn't exist, you would have only made one reservation instead of two. So that's what the computer remembers. But if I didn't exist, the CIA still would have made the reservation for the real Bob Daniels so he could fly to Moscow. So the computer remembers that reservation even though I'm the one using it."

She didn't say any more until we were sitting at our gate. "What causes it?"

"You mean the forgetting? I have no idea. I've been this way since I was born." And then I told her about my mother and how she raised me, and eventually how I had lost her.

"Your mother, she is still alive, but does not remember you?"

I nodded. "She remembers being pregnant years ago, but she's sure she must have lost the baby and just blocked that out of her mind. She thinks that and my father leaving is why she became very depressed, quit her job, and just lived alone for the years when I was at home."

"How terrible," she said.

"Her life is much better now," I said. "She thinks that she came out of her depression after the fire. She's remarried, and has a very memorable little girl named Amber." It still stung a little that my mother was better off without me, but I couldn't begrudge her happiness.

And every month, an envelope with several hundred dollars in cash showed up in her mailbox, with no return address — just a note that said: From someone who owes you more than he can ever repay. I wasn't sure, but she probably assumed it was from my father.

I didn't send him anything.

"But don't you want to see her?" Yelena asked.

 

* * *

 

"But a DNA test would prove you're my mother," I said. It was a month after the fire that had destroyed our apartment and all my mother's journals and Polaroid photos, and we were standing in the living room of my mother's new apartment.

She shook her head. "I don't know what scam you're trying to pull, but it won't work."

It was my third try, and the first two had ended this same way — she would rather believe her false memories of the past thirteen years than believe she had forgotten her own son. Even the Polaroid I'd taken of the two of us during my first attempt she simply dismissed as a digital fake.

I realized that in our old apartment, with my obviously lived-in room and the sheer accumulation of journal entries and photos, she had been able to convince herself she was my mother, but in this new home, it would take something more than a simple picture.

"Mom, please list—"

"Don't call me that," she snapped. She strode to the door and yanked it open. "Just leave or I'll call the cops."

Across the hall, a woman carrying two bags of groceries paused her struggle to open the door and peered at us.

"Wait, I can prove the forgetting thing is real," I said to my mother. Raising my voice, I said, "Excuse me, ma'am, do you need a hand with those groceries?"

The woman answered, "No, thank you." She quickly opened her door and entered her apartment. The lock clicked behind her.

My mother scoffed. "What does that prove, other than your real mom taught you to be polite?"

"Just wait a minute, then go ask the lady across the hall if she's ever seen me before."

She stared at me. "You seriously believe this. You need help."

"Please, just try." I held up my hands in surrender. "If she remembers me, I'll leave with no more fuss."

After a moment, she stepped into the hall.

"Wait," I said. "It takes a minute."

When time was up, she knocked on the door. Footsteps approached on the other side, the lock turned, and the door opened a few inches. A chain prevented it from opening further.

"Excuse me," said my mother, "I know this sounds crazy, but you remember this young man offering to help with your groceries as you were coming in just now, don't you?" She pointed to where I stood in the doorway.

"No. And if he did, I wouldn't'a let him. Can't trust kids these days. Probably run off with them."

"But you're sure he didn't—"

"Never seen him before. Go away." The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked.

"See," I said. "I told you, Mom. People forget me."

Her shoulders slumped as she turned to face me. "It can't be true. How could I forget my own child?" Tears brimmed in her eyes.

"It's not your fault," I said as she walked past me and sat on the couch.

"You look like your father," she said. "I should have seen it before."

I shrugged. "I don't remember him. You raised me."

"I thought the fire was a wakeup call," she said. "I was finally getting my life back together, finding a job, making friends. But it was you, wasn't it? My life for the past thirteen years is a blur because I can't remember you, not because I was depressed."

"It was me."

She let out a half-choked sob, which reminded me of how often I had found her crying in the mornings, and how if I asked her what was wrong, she always said it was nothing. It had been me, all along — every day as she woke up and discovered the truth, she had cried.

"I must have been a terrible mother," she said.

"No, Mom, you were the best." For the first time in my life, I saw the real sacrifices my mother had made to raise me. "I love you and always will, no matter how many times you forget me."

That only made her sob more.

"I'm sorry, Mom."

"For what?"

"For coming." I turned and walked out the door.

When I heard her call for me to come back, I began to run.

 

* * *

 

"She gave me all she had for thirteen years," I said to Yelena. "I can't ask any more of her."

One of the gate agents announced boarding for our flight, so Yelena got up.

"Stay sitting down," I said. "We have to wait until almost everyone has boarded."

"Why?"

I held up the airline ticket I had purchased. "This got me through security, but when they put it under the barcode scanner, the computer's going to claim this ticket was never issued. The gate agent is going to say he can't let me on board because I'm not in the computer. I'll argue for a bit, and then, when there's no line and I can make it to the scanner in less than a minute after the ticket is printed, I'll say, 'Fine, I'll just buy another ticket.' So I'll do that, and get on board and everything should go smoothly until we change planes in Athens."

Her eyes had grown wider during my little spiel. She continued staring at me for a moment after I was through. Then she flopped down in the seat next to me and said, "You have done this a lot, yes?"

"More than I can count."

"I am sorry for the trouble."

I shrugged. "It's how I do things when the Agency isn't arranging my travel."

"But you have to pay for the ticket over and over, and is so expensive."

I laughed. "No. It's not a problem for two reasons. First, the credit card isn't mine: it's a copy of Bob Daniels' card."

"But will he not notice the charges?"

I shook my head. "Second, since I'm the one making the charges, the credit card company's computer will forget them. I'm taking this trip for free."

 

 

We decided that Yelena should give the real prototype to the Iranians, in order to keep her cover. We went back to her apartment. While she made the delivery, I decided that it was time to call Edward and bring him up to date on the recent developments. After the usual rigmarole in getting him to read my file, I told him the big news.

"What do you mean, she remembered you? I thought nobody could," Edward said.

"I think it has something to do with us being handcuffed together in Barcelona."

"This is terrible," he said. "You've been compromised. What if she describes you to a sketch artist? If people are on the lookout for you, it will—"

"It's okay," I said. "She's not a threat any more."

He was silent for a moment. "I know you don't like killing, but it had to be—"

"I didn't kill her!"

"Then how do you know she's not a threat?"

"I recruited her. We just pulled off a successful op together. She had my back: I'd be dead without her. So I trust her." Now that I said it, it did sound a little reckless, but it had paid off.

Edward sighed. "Look, son, you can't just recruit a former SVR operative who went over to the mob."

After I explained the situation with her sisters and recounted what had happened at the Bukharin headquarters, he grudgingly conceded that Yelena might not be a danger.

"You've always told me it would be better if I could have someone backing me up on operations," I said. "It would never work with someone who could forget me, but Yelena's perfect for the job."

"You've fallen for her, haven't you?"

"What?" I'd heard what he said; the question just caught me off guard. Had I fallen for her?

"It's not surprising that you'd fall in love with her, since she can remember you. I can understand your fascination. But getting romantically involved with a foreign national could make you a security risk."

"I'd never turn against our country," I said. "I'm loyal."

"I don't doubt you," Edward said. "What I've read of your past missions supports the idea that you can be trusted. But you have to understand, according to the notes in this file, there was some objection to recruiting you in the first place. Some people wondered how we could ensure the loyalty of someone we can't even remember we hired. You could vanish with no trace and then start working against us, and we wouldn't even know it."

"That's ridiculous." I had known there were doubts about hiring me, but I'd always thought the doubts were about the reality of my ability, not my allegiance.

"And yet you've already compromised the mission for her, by letting her turn over the real prototype to the Iranians, instead of the fake with the tracker."

"Oh, come on! That mission failed the moment she caught me trying to make the switch," I said. I felt a little angry that my seven years of loyalty to the CIA were being repaid with doubt. "Since then, I've recruited Yelena to help us locate Jamshidi's lab. Turning the prototype over to the Iranians helps her gain their trust. Have some faith that I know what I'm doing."

"I have faith in you, Nat," said Edward. "For now, I'll note this in my file so I'll know about it, but I won't pass it up the line."

"Thanks."

"Just be careful. Don't let a woman turn your head so far you lose sight of what's important."

"I won't."

* * *

"Nat." Yelena shook my shoulder.

I opened my bleary eyes. It took me a moment to realize where I was: stretched out on Yelena's couch. I propped myself up and said, "You're back. How'd it go?"

"I made delivery. They have new assignment for me."

"That's great. That means they trust you."

She sat on the edge of her coffee table. "Maybe. But new assignment is more difficult than InterQuan."

"Between the two of us, I'm sure we can handle it."

With a tired smile, she said, "I thought I could count on you. We have plane to catch in morning."

"Where are we headed?"

"Tel Aviv."

I'd never been to Israel. Hopefully there would be time to do a little sight-seeing before the job. After a job, I was usually out of the country as soon as I could manage. "How do you say 'Where's the bathroom' in Hebrew?"

"You can ask flight attendant."

"What's our target?"

"ChazonTec. They are a small startup company still looking for capital funding."

From experience, I knew startups often had fairly lax security, because they couldn't afford anything better. "What makes them tougher than InterQuan?" InterQuan had been well-funded.

"They rent office in Qela Industries building. The man who started the company worked for them."

"Ah," I said.

Over the past few years, Qela Industries had become a major defense contractor for the Israeli military. Because Qela's Slingshot drones operated by remote control and kept Israeli personnel out of harm's way, Israel now had more armed drones than manned tanks and planes put together.

Two years ago, Edward and I had looked into stealing something from Qela and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Security at Qela's building would almost certainly be the toughest I had been up against. On the bright side, they were less likely to torture and kill me than Dmitri Bukharin.

"What's the thing we're supposed to steal?" I asked.

"The Iranians called it a—" Her brow wrinkled. " — 'quantum remote viewing device.'"

"That probably just means it's a quantum TV," I said, displaying a bravado I wished I felt. "An infinite number of quantum channels, and there still won't be anything good on."

* * *

After Yelena went to bed, I helped myself to some borsht from her refrigerator and sat at her kitchen table. As I ate, I thought about what Edward had said about my having fallen in love with Yelena.

I'd met plenty of women who were beautiful, smart, and resourceful. I might have gotten a little infatuated with some of them, but I always knew I couldn't really fall in love because there was no chance for a true connection.

But Yelena's ability to remember me changed that. She might be the only woman in the world with whom I could have a normal relationship. It was only natural I would start falling for her. And it didn't hurt that I found her attractive. It would have been a real downer if the one person in the world who could remember me had turned out to be a ninety-nine-year-old babushka.

I daydreamed about our life together, after we'd located Jamshidi's lab and rescued her sisters. We'd get married, have a few kids. Maybe we'd even live in a house with a white picket fence. It would be the kind of life I'd wanted since I was a child: normal, just like everyone else.

Then I started thinking about it from Yelena's point of view. She could remember me, but no one else would. The guests at our wedding would remember her being jilted at the altar because I never showed up. The neighbors would think she was a single mom because they could never remember seeing me. Our children would even forget I was their father.

It was silly to believe that somehow we were fated to be together. I had given up on believing in destiny after the fire — it was a simple accident that made me lose my mother, and it was another simple accident that Yelena and I were connected now. If the Bukharins had sent a male thief, I might have ended up connected to a Boris.

And while Yelena might be the only woman in the world I could have a real relationship with, her options were not so limited. What could I offer her that no other man could? Only the burdens of my talent, with none of the benefits.

She deserved better. So I had to give up any romantic notions about her.

That's when I knew I really had fallen for her.

* * *

"I'm sorry," said the airline ticket agent behind the counter, "but I only show the one seat reserved." He tapped a few keys at his computer. "I don't see another."

Yelena said, "But I reserved two. Look." She pulled out a printed sheet of paper and handed it over.

"Yelena," I said, "it's my fault." I was so used to having the CIA arrange my flights that it hadn't occurred to me the Yelena would run into trouble.

"Your fault?" she said.

I turned to the agent and said, "My plans changed and I called to cancel the seat. Then the change in my plans didn't work out, but I forgot I had cancelled this trip." I pulled out my wallet. "Just let me buy a ticket now."

"You cancelled the flight?" Yelena asked. "Why?"

"I'll explain later." I gave the agent my Bob Daniels passport and a CIA-issued credit card in the same name.

After running the card, he printed my ticket and our boarding passes. Yelena waited until we were in the security line before asking, "Why did you cancel the fight?"

"I didn't," I said. "The airline computer forgot my reservation. As far as it was concerned, you only reserved one seat."

"But everything is on computers now," she said. "Do you have to buy your tickets at the airport every time?"

"No," I said, as I took off my belt and shoes. "The CIA books people on flights all over the place all the time. So when they need me to go somewhere, they find one of their people who already has a reservation that fits what I need. They issue me a passport and other documents with that person's name, and tell that person their trip has been postponed."

Yelena put her carryon bag on the conveyor. "But I booked your flight using the name in your passport."

"But you were booking the flight for me," I said. "So the computer forgot the reservation."

"That is crazy," she said. "How can the computer know the difference?"

I didn't answer her until after we had emerged from security into the gate area.

"Think of it this way," I said. "Computers want to act like I never existed. If I didn't exist, you would have only made one reservation instead of two. So that's what the computer remembers. But if I didn't exist, the CIA still would have made the reservation for the real Bob Daniels so he could fly to Moscow. So the computer remembers that reservation even though I'm the one using it."

She didn't say any more until we were sitting at our gate. "What causes it?"

"You mean the forgetting? I have no idea. I've been this way since I was born." And then I told her about my mother and how she raised me, and eventually how I had lost her.

"Your mother, she is still alive, but does not remember you?"

I nodded. "She remembers being pregnant years ago, but she's sure she must have lost the baby and just blocked that out of her mind. She thinks that and my father leaving is why she became very depressed, quit her job, and just lived alone for the years when I was at home."

"How terrible," she said.

"Her life is much better now," I said. "She thinks that she came out of her depression after the fire. She's remarried, and has a very memorable little girl named Amber." It still stung a little that my mother was better off without me, but I couldn't begrudge her happiness.

And every month, an envelope with several hundred dollars in cash showed up in her mailbox, with no return address — just a note that said: From someone who owes you more than he can ever repay. I wasn't sure, but she probably assumed it was from my father.

I didn't send him anything.

"But don't you want to see her?" Yelena asked.

* * *

"But a DNA test would prove you're my mother," I said. It was a month after the fire that had destroyed our apartment and all my mother's journals and Polaroid photos, and we were standing in the living room of my mother's new apartment.

She shook her head. "I don't know what scam you're trying to pull, but it won't work."

It was my third try, and the first two had ended this same way — she would rather believe her false memories of the past thirteen years than believe she had forgotten her own son. Even the Polaroid I'd taken of the two of us during my first attempt she simply dismissed as a digital fake.

I realized that in our old apartment, with my obviously lived-in room and the sheer accumulation of journal entries and photos, she had been able to convince herself she was my mother, but in this new home, it would take something more than a simple picture.

"Mom, please list—"

"Don't call me that," she snapped. She strode to the door and yanked it open. "Just leave or I'll call the cops."

Across the hall, a woman carrying two bags of groceries paused her struggle to open the door and peered at us.

"Wait, I can prove the forgetting thing is real," I said to my mother. Raising my voice, I said, "Excuse me, ma'am, do you need a hand with those groceries?"

The woman answered, "No, thank you." She quickly opened her door and entered her apartment. The lock clicked behind her.

My mother scoffed. "What does that prove, other than your real mom taught you to be polite?"

"Just wait a minute, then go ask the lady across the hall if she's ever seen me before."

She stared at me. "You seriously believe this. You need help."

"Please, just try." I held up my hands in surrender. "If she remembers me, I'll leave with no more fuss."

After a moment, she stepped into the hall.

"Wait," I said. "It takes a minute."

When time was up, she knocked on the door. Footsteps approached on the other side, the lock turned, and the door opened a few inches. A chain prevented it from opening further.

"Excuse me," said my mother, "I know this sounds crazy, but you remember this young man offering to help with your groceries as you were coming in just now, don't you?" She pointed to where I stood in the doorway.

"No. And if he did, I wouldn't'a let him. Can't trust kids these days. Probably run off with them."

"But you're sure he didn't—"

"Never seen him before. Go away." The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked.

"See," I said. "I told you, Mom. People forget me."

Her shoulders slumped as she turned to face me. "It can't be true. How could I forget my own child?" Tears brimmed in her eyes.

"It's not your fault," I said as she walked past me and sat on the couch.

"You look like your father," she said. "I should have seen it before."

I shrugged. "I don't remember him. You raised me."

"I thought the fire was a wakeup call," she said. "I was finally getting my life back together, finding a job, making friends. But it was you, wasn't it? My life for the past thirteen years is a blur because I can't remember you, not because I was depressed."

"It was me."

She let out a half-choked sob, which reminded me of how often I had found her crying in the mornings, and how if I asked her what was wrong, she always said it was nothing. It had been me, all along — every day as she woke up and discovered the truth, she had cried.

"I must have been a terrible mother," she said.

"No, Mom, you were the best." For the first time in my life, I saw the real sacrifices my mother had made to raise me. "I love you and always will, no matter how many times you forget me."

That only made her sob more.

"I'm sorry, Mom."

"For what?"

"For coming." I turned and walked out the door.

When I heard her call for me to come back, I began to run.

* * *

"She gave me all she had for thirteen years," I said to Yelena. "I can't ask any more of her."

One of the gate agents announced boarding for our flight, so Yelena got up.

"Stay sitting down," I said. "We have to wait until almost everyone has boarded."

"Why?"

I held up the airline ticket I had purchased. "This got me through security, but when they put it under the barcode scanner, the computer's going to claim this ticket was never issued. The gate agent is going to say he can't let me on board because I'm not in the computer. I'll argue for a bit, and then, when there's no line and I can make it to the scanner in less than a minute after the ticket is printed, I'll say, 'Fine, I'll just buy another ticket.' So I'll do that, and get on board and everything should go smoothly until we change planes in Athens."

Her eyes had grown wider during my little spiel. She continued staring at me for a moment after I was through. Then she flopped down in the seat next to me and said, "You have done this a lot, yes?"

"More than I can count."

"I am sorry for the trouble."

I shrugged. "It's how I do things when the Agency isn't arranging my travel."

"But you have to pay for the ticket over and over, and is so expensive."

I laughed. "No. It's not a problem for two reasons. First, the credit card isn't mine: it's a copy of Bob Daniels' card."

"But will he not notice the charges?"

I shook my head. "Second, since I'm the one making the charges, the credit card company's computer will forget them. I'm taking this trip for free."

You can be a Hugo voter

The Hugo Awards are bestowed by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention (a.k.a. WorldCon) to honor the best in science fiction and fantasy.  And who are the members of WorldCon?  Anyone who buys a membership.  That means you can become a member and vote for the Hugo Award winners.

There are two main levels of membership: Attending and Supporting.  The only difference between the two is that attending members can actually go to the convention (this year it's in Reno, August 17-21).  Both membership levels allow voting on the Hugo Awards, and both give access to a remarkable benefit that has become a tradition over the past few years: the Hugo Voter Packet.

The Hugo Voter Packet contains ebooks of nominated works.  This year, that means four and a half of the nominated novels; all the nominated short fiction; all the nominated graphic stories; anthologies or magazine issues from the nominated short form editors, semiprozines, and fanzines; novels from the nominees for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer; and various other goodies.

My friend and fellow Hugo nominee Howard Tayler did the math, and if you went out and bought all the ebooks included in the Hugo Voter Packet, it would cost more than the $50 it takes to get a supporting membership.  For that price, you not only get to read some of the best science fiction and fantasy from last year, you get to vote for your favorites.

If that sounds like a good deal, go here to register for WorldCon.  And if you want to go to WorldCon, attending memberships (or upgrades for supporting members) are on sale today (May 30) for $15 off the regular price.