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    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84: Clarkesworld Magazine, #84
    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84: Clarkesworld Magazine, #84
    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84: Clarkesworld Magazine, #84
    Ebook141 pages2 hours

    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84: Clarkesworld Magazine, #84

    By Neil Clarke, James Patrick Kelly, Greg Mellor and

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    About this ebook

    Clarkesworld is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month they bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art.

    Our September 2013 issue contains:

    * Original Fiction by Greg Mellor (“Mar Pacifico”), James Patrick Kelly (“The Promise of Space”) and Mark Bourne & Elizabeth Bourne (“One Flesh”).

    * Classic stories by Charles Sheffield (“Out of Copyright”) and Nancy Kress (“First Principle”).

    * Non-fiction by Mark Cole (“Aliens, Robots, Spaceships and . . . Popsicles? SF on American Radio, Then and Now”), an interview with Ken Liu, an Another Word column by Alethea Kontis, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWyrm Publishing
    Release dateJan 16, 2014
    ISBN9781501461316
    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84: Clarkesworld Magazine, #84
    Author

    Neil Clarke

    Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the multi-award-winning editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and over a dozen anthologies. A eleven-time finalist and the 2022/2023 winner of the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form, he is also the three-time winner of the Chesley Award for Best Art Director. In 2019, Clarke received the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community. He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two sons

    Read more from Neil Clarke

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    Reviews for Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84

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    • 4/5
      Another excellent issue. Standouts include the outstanding contributions from Greg Mellor and Nancy Kress.

    Book preview

    Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 84 - Neil Clarke

    Clarkesworld Magazine

    Issue 84

    Table of Contents

    Mar Pacifico

    by Greg Mellor

    The Promise of Space

    by James Patrick Kelly

    One Flesh

    by Mark Bourne and Elizabeth Bourne

    Out of Copyright

    by Charles Sheffield

    First Principle

    by Nancy Kress

    Aliens, Robots, Spaceships and . . . Popsicles? SF on American Radio, Then and Now

    by Mark Cole

    Organic Synthesis: A Conversation with Ken Liu

    by Jeremy L. C. Jones

    Another Word: I am an Endangered Species

    by Alethea Kontis

    Editor's Desk: Post-Apocalyptic Publishing

    by Neil Clarke

    Silent Oracle

    Art by Matt Dixon

    © Clarkesworld Magazine, 2013

    www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

    Mar Pacifico

    Greg Mellor

    A pale dawn spread across the Pacific as my dead mother emerged from the waves.

    The bloom of algeron must have crept closer to shore during the night, and now it shimmered in the sickly morning light all the way out to the horizon. The thing that had once loved me rose out of the bloom, slowly at first, like a column of black mercury. Then features emerged: a head, limbs and torso with skirts of algeron hanging like seaweed down to the foamy water at its feet. Finally the body shape that I knew so well came into being—a nightmarish simulacrum, but taller than her in real life, struggling one step at a time until it found land.

    Its confidence seemed to grow when it saw Kelly with her back turned, playing with pieces of driftwood on the sand. It staggered up the beach and reached out awkwardly with impossibly long arms.

    Kelly!

    I had only turned away for a few seconds—like all the mothers down the ages—but now I was sprinting towards her, sand flicking up behind me.

    Ripples spread for kilometers across the bloom and whispers lingered in the drafts of briny air—voices from something cavernous and deep. They rose in pitch and tone, unifying into a bleak chorus that threatened to overwhelm the sound of the ocean.

    Kelly smiled as I approached, and smiled at the simulacrum. I reached out to Kelly, keeping my distance from the thing now watching my every move. Time to go, honey.

    I could see Kelly was more curious than shocked as this wasn’t the first time we had seen forms flow out of the algeron. She confronted me with inevitable, innocent logic. But it’s Grandma.

    I couldn’t bring myself to look into its eyes for fear I might see what Kelly saw. I know, but we have to go. The bloom is getting bigger and I told you not to go out today.

    But she called me. Kelly stretched out her hand to the simulacrum. They’re all calling me.

    Stop. I grabbed Kelly by the elbow. Time to go, young lady.

    The chorus intensified—a susurrus of lost souls. A crude smile began to form on the simulacrum’s lips. Platelets of algeron shifted across its skin, turning its face into a pin-cushion mask of concentration. Its mouth moved, forming a single word: Erin.

    I gritted my teeth and finally looked into its . . . into Mum’s eyes. The dark orbs reflected sky and sand, Kelly and I standing there, rag-tag and anorexic. Details became visible in the black juncture of its wrist, the tendons on the back of its hand, the long fingers ending in delicate nails—a mother’s hand that had once been caring yet firm.

    We look for things in others we value most in ourselves. It was Mum, in a forgotten time when the world had color and nuance.

    I miss you, Mum, I said, now feeling compelled to reach out to her. But as I did I realized there were details missing: the edges of her hands were crude and sharp so that the fingers looked like talons.

    I shivered.

    The talons came closer.

    I snatched up a long piece of driftwood and clubbed the simulacrum on the jaw.

    It froze; an obsidian statue with surprise etched on its imprecise face. The algeron’s chorus grew quiet against the ever present sound of the Pacific. Cracks spread across its face and then its features melted until it was a blank column collapsing under its own weight and slithering back into the bloom.

    Kelly sobbed then swung wildly at me until I scooped her up and hugged her close.

    It’s okay, Kelly. We’ll be okay.

    More lies to sustain us.

    Kelly whimpered in the crook of my neck as I carried her back to the ruins on the promontory. She craned her neck to look back over my shoulder, seemingly mesmerized by the sight of the bloom receding out to sea.

    The skies were leaden the next morning.

    Kelly sat on the dead grass in front of the building—once someone’s home, now an empty brick ruin like all the others on the Tathra headland. She was playing with her shell collection. She had been a skinny child anyway, but now I fretted as her bones and ribs protruded. I must have looked the same to her, for there were nights when we huddled in the ruins and her hands would trace my sunken cheeks and worry would fill her eyes. Soon to be replaced by innocent resilience and hushed words of reassurance that should never have come from a six year old, but I would accept them anyway and the strength they provided to face another day.

    By mid-morning, bands of sunlight forced their way through the cloud, turning the Pacific into a patchwork of reflections that filled my heart with sadness. Once families had played along Tathra beach, sun-browned surfers had tried their skills on the modest waves, and a warm breeze had tugged my blouse and whisked sand around my feet. It felt like the blink of an eye against the history of an ocean that contained much of the world’s mystery. Ferdinand Magellan, on confronting the vast expanse of water for the first time, had named it mar pacifico—peaceful sea.

    There were some days I still believed it, but today wasn’t one of them. I looked out to the horizon. The black line of algeron was still there, waiting. It had left a stain on the sand that ran the entire length of the bay. A small circular blotch marked the spot where the simulacrum had stood.

    I wondered how long it would take for her to return.

    I knelt down and picked up a fan-shaped shell from Kelly’s collection as she hummed to herself. It was covered in ridges and striations—the discarded home of some tiny creature, washed up over centuries—one and a billion others like it eroded by endless cycles of water and sun.

    Then I caught a glimpse of something black in Kelly’s hand.

    What’s that?

    Kelly clamped her fingers around the object.

    Kelly. We don’t keep secrets.

    It’s mine.

    I held out my hand. Give it here.

    Mine.

    Kelly.

    Kelly reluctantly placed the inert algeron shell in my palm. It was sand-paper grainy, an imperfect replica. I’d seen something like it in a museum, a Paleozoic ammonite fossilized into shining pyrite—the minerals had slowly replaced the original shell over unimaginable spans of time.

    And I had seen it happen in the space of heartbeats that day not so long ago when the world changed, Mum prone on the sand as the algeron nanotech crept up her legs, transmuting flesh. She had been trying to save the dolphins washed up on the beach. Their screams still haunted me when I was able to dream, but not as much as Mum’s mute agony.

    Now the algeron seemed to call me again. Perhaps it would always be there, more terrifying yet different than before—for now it contained the lament of eight billion souls. A wave of euphoria had swept the world when the algeron was created to bring the carbon cycles back into balance and enhance the power of the oceans to absorb more carbon from the polluted air. But the nanotech quickly evolved, overrunning its safeguards with mutating algorithms, and in the space of several months—with a stunned world helpless and watching—it had washed inland over the continents, absorbing just about every living thing on the planet.

    I doubted that I would ever hear the untainted sound of the Pacific again. The ocean had given me comfort all my life, a sense of permanency that used to fill me with hope. But now all I could do was listen for hope in the songs of the dead. And the more I listened the more I could hear a strange cadence emerge from the algeron that hinted at plans and far reaching intentions. And somehow Kelly and I had a role to play—for why else would it bide it’s time when it could just as easily sweep the world for stragglers?

    Then I shook my head, furious at being lulled into a survivor’s crude delusion that everything would be right again. Who was I kidding? I wiped the tears from my cheeks and hurled the replica shell out over the cliff edge.

    Kelly got up and stormed inside the ruins. I hate you.

    Pack your bag, I shouted. We’re going inland. We need to find more food.

    And it’s no use waiting here, waiting for death in the house of the dead.

    We made our way through old Tathra town where you could once buy fish and chips and relax with a beer in sleepy places. The wrecks of old cars glinted in the occasional thrust of sunlight, which made me wonder why the algeron could not absorb non-living things. It had washed over every car, building, fence and street sign leaving most things smeared with a residue of fine black powder. Maybe it was just attracted to the living carbon that was everywhere in our proteins and nucleic acids—the foundation of life.

    With water bottles and rations in our backpacks, I led the way inland along the broken tarmac up towards Brown Mountain. Kelly followed, obedient and silent. The days were hot and the stench of rotting vegetation was still pungent—rain forests took a long time to die, and now the trees were ash-colored silhouettes.

    We stopped every now and then to search the husks of vehicles, found some preserved food tins but all else had perished or been consumed. On the second day we left the highway and on the third and fourth nights, Kelly woke up screaming, but the sound was quickly muffled by the oppressive silence.

    Is Grandma dead?

    I’m not sure.

    Will she come back?

    I don’t know. Go back to sleep.

    In the mornings Kelly was forgetful as she chewed on rations and exchanged vacant glances with me.

    On the sixth day I was afraid she would never speak again until we found a ravine where water still ran and the foliage was still touched with color.

    Look, Mum.

    The words were as startling as the sight of spongy green moss around a small pool at the base of the ravine. I frowned, insulted by the strange palette invading our monochrome world. Crying now, wondering what a bleak thing I

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