Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction by Nicolette Barischoff & A.C. Buchanan & Joyce Chng & Sarah Pinsker

Author:Nicolette Barischoff & A.C. Buchanan & Joyce Chng & Sarah Pinsker [Barischoff, Nicolette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, feminist, Short Stories, cyberpunk, disability
Publisher: Futurefire.net Publishing
Published: 2015-06-30T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

Vasily panicked.

He pretended he didn’t, of course, but he panicked nonetheless. He didn’t leave his room for two days straight, keeping the curtains drawn, the door locked tight. If anyone called, he was “just tired”, and he hung up as quickly as possible. He ignored his mail. He stared hard at his implants with mirrors, worrying: was there a crack there, or just a hairline shadow? Was this the way they used to feel? What kind of fool had faith in a slip of waxed paper in his electronics?

Eventually, he had to go out, if just to the kitchen. The building lobby felt like enemy territory; the open air beyond, outside, was too enormous to contemplate. He started at little sounds, eyes flicking back and forth and up and down. He crouched in the kitchen, zipped as quickly as possible along the halls. He avoided the windows and shivered passing the doors. The coat rack looked like someone lurking, skulking. The groceries his housemates had left in the kitchen were an obvious trap. He sweated and shook.

Over the following days, though, his paranoia gently ebbed. He wasn’t arrested. His implants still worked. No Teeth came for him in the night, save for in dreams, where the questions they grilled him with were nonsensical: how many feathers had he shed this year? Which star was he named after? How long had his sister been invisible? Where did the library go? The waking anxiety turned to chuckles (oh, silly me, spooked by a dream…). He couldn’t shake the looming spectre of the omniscient government—after all, it certainly seemed true—but he remembered also the amber stars of silence, and the contrasts in touch between Ammon’s solid and hard-light hands. They were real, too.

It took three weeks, this time, before he held the calling-card again, pressing one slender finger into its improbable mesh.

This time, the power didn’t go out.

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