All the Birds in the Sky

by Charlie Jane Anders

Laurence’s dad had been pretty great with computers, once. But then he’d grown up and gotten a job in the insurance industry, where he still needed a head for numbers, but it wasn’t anything you’d want to hear about. Now he was always freaking out that he was going to lose his job and then they would all starve. Laurence’s mom had been working on a PhD in biology, before she’d gotten pregnant and her thesis advisor had quit, and then she’d taken some time off and never quite gone back to school.

At least, that’s how Laurence felt, until he saw the picture of the sleek shape, glinting in the sunlight. He stared at the tapering curves, the beautiful nose cone, and the powerful engines, and something awoke inside him. A feeling he hadn’t experienced in ages: excitement. This privately funded, DIY spaceship was going up into orbit, thanks to maverick tech investor Milton Dirth and a few dozen of his maker friends and MIT students. The launch would happen in a few days, near the MIT campus, and Laurence had to be there. He hadn’t ever wanted anything the way he wanted to see this for himself.

He wasn’t going to get to see anything. Somehow he’d let himself believe that if he saw a rocket blast off, something that had been right in front of him and was now free of our planet’s gravity, he would be set free, too. He could go back to school and it wouldn’t matter because he’d been connected to something that was in outer space.

After that, they treated him like one of them. He had conquered a small piece of time, and they were conquering a small piece of space. They understood, as he did, that this was a down payment. One day, they would own a much bigger share of the cosmos, or their descendants would. You celebrated the small victories, and you dreamed of the big ones to come.

On the long drive home, Laurence tuned out his parents explaining to him that life isn’t an adventure, for chrissake, life is a long slog and a series of responsibilities and demands. When Laurence was old enough to do what he liked, he would be old enough to understand he couldn’t do what he liked.

But instead, all it did was turn me into a one-trick pony.” “Better than being a no-trick pony.” Patricia looked up again at the sky. The ravens were long gone, and all she saw was a single slowly disintegrating cloud.

“It’s real. It’s messy. It’s not like people.”

And he found himself curious to ask her stuff and see how she responded—because he never, ever knew what Patricia would say about anything. He only knew it would be something weird.

“It’s amazing how much you can tell about people from their feet,” said Patricia. “Shoes tell the whole story.” “Except us,” said Laurence. “Our shoes are totally boring. You can’t tell anything about us.” “That’s because our parents pick out our shoes,” said Patricia. “Just wait until we’re grown up. Our shoes will be insane.”

She shrugged. “Well, you look joyful. You get all excited. I envy that.”

society that has to burn witches to hold itself together is a society that has already failed, and just doesn’t know it yet.”

NG3M3: Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.

What, you didn’t think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They’re all crazier than you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you’ve chosen to torture all of us instead. That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show.

“So. You violate any laws of physics lately?”

(When talking about middle school, Laurence had long since learned it was best not even to mention that he believed he’d created artificial intelligence in his bedroom closet, even as a funny story. It just made him sound like an asshat.)

She spent so much energy keeping her good deeds secret, it was hard to watch someone else show off.

“You know … no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you’re not. But if you’re clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were.”

You still might not be able to fix anything, because every time you solve a problem you’d cause another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature’s way of striking a balance?

It’s more that nature’s playing field is full of traps.”

But you always put yourself on the line for other people. You don’t push people away—you try to do everything for people, and then they don’t get to do anything for you. Please don’t let any idiots tell you otherwise, okay?”

“But you’re colossally missing the point, almost like on purpose. I’m saying that there are a lot of different ways of looking at the world, and maybe I actually do have a unique advantage, because I get to hear different voices. You really don’t get that?”

“I think that the most basic thing of ethics is being aware of how your actions affect others, and having an awareness of what they want and how they feel. And that’s always going to depend on who you’re dealing with.”

At some point, when you’re spending every free waking moment with a person, and you’ve developed your own private language, and you’re always chilling until way past your bedtime, you inevitably start to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t be easier just to share a bed as well. Not to mention, you know, fun.

loony

The same device, harmless if you go one direction, but potentially disastrous if you go the other way. Sometimes things have a grain, that you have to go with. You can’t swim against a tidal wave.” “And history,” said Laurence, maybe seeing where Milton was going with all this. “History is a tidal wave.”

He probably hated her, whereas she couldn’t find the comfort of hating him. She was stuck blaming herself, instead. I will be a slippery shadow. I will fool everyone. Nobody will fuck with me.

Did Peregrine just have a skewed view of the world, its bodies belonging as they did to the privileged millions instead of the damned billions? Laurence asked Peregrine, and it responded: “I read the news. I know what’s happening in the world. Plus some of the Caddies belong to some very powerful people, who have access to information that would make your teeth fall out. So to speak. Five minutes.”

“But don’t you get that romance is an essentially bourgeois contrivance? At best, it’s anachronistic. At worst, it’s a distraction, a luxury for people who aren’t preoccupied with survival. Why would you waste your time helping people find their ‘true love’ instead of doing something worthwhile?”

He had been so bitter toward her just hours ago, but now he felt in his hobbling kneecaps and his jerky pelvis that his life story was the story of Patricia and him, after all, for better or worse, and if she ended his life might go on, but his story would be over.

Also, futurist Richard Worzel helped me troubleshoot the book’s near-future war and disaster scenarios. Kevin Trenberth helped me to make my superstorm as plausible as possible. Lydia Chilton helped me create a realistic AI. Mike Swirsky was a huge help with the Siberian drilling project, and Dr. Dave Goldberg helped a lot with the weird physics. I also learned a lot from the Cornell Bird Lab. Lightninglouie gave the book its epigraph. And my father helped me a lot with the book’s philosophical conundrums, while my mother helped me think about how systems work.

“I’m here to learn, not study.”