Clarkesworld Magazine - Issue 27 by www.clarkesworldmagazine.com & Robert Reed & Don Webb & Karen Heuler & Neil Clarke

Author:www.clarkesworldmagazine.com & Robert Reed & Don Webb & Karen Heuler & Neil Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction magazine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2008-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

They were utterly charming together, they were full of sparks. Toasters popped up when they visited their friends — though did people really still have toasters? Wasn’t that, instead, the sound of CD players going through their disks, shuffling them? Wasn’t it the barely audible purr of the fan of a car as they passed it, sitting up and noticing as if it were a dog? They were attractive, after all; they attracted.

“If we moved in together,” Johnny said after they’d known each other for a month, “we’d have half the bills. We could live on very little, we could live on what I make at the parties. You wouldn’t have to work as a waitress. In fact, we could be free.”

“And give up my dreams of rocket science?” she asked, her eyebrows arched.

“I thought you were a waitress.”

“That’s just till I sell my first rocket.” Nevertheless, she decided to move in, and it was working out fine, except for the strange way that objects behaved around them.

Small electrics followed them like dogs sometimes — they could turn down the block and hear a clanking or a scraping behind them. Eager little cell phones, staticky earphones, clicking electronic notepads gathered in piles on their doorstep.

“We have to figure out a budget,” Cheree said after she moved in. “Until I sell that rocket. Rent, not much we can do. We should get bikes, that will save on transportation. But, you know, we’re still paying for electricity, and it’s pretty high, too. What do we really use it for?”

Together, they went through their apartment, noting: refrigerator, lamps, clock, radio, stereo, TV, microwave, coffee maker, hair dryer, iron, laptop computer.

“Well,” Johnny said. “All quite useful in their own way, but we can make coffee without electricity. And I already recharge the computer myself.”

She considered it all. “You can recharge most of it, really, if we get the right kind of thing. If we look at everything that way — I’m sure there are rechargeable lamps, for instance — why are we paying electric bills? We could save a lot of money by doing it ourselves.”

They canceled their energy provider, a savings right there of $70 a month. They would plug a different item into Johnny at night, so they would never run out. It was a brilliant solution.

That gave him even more motivation for the photovoltaic upgrade. When he went to his mad scientist friend, she went with him, and they mentioned the strange way they seemed to be accumulating electrical appliances. The mad scientist was sitting across from them, taking down Johnny’s recap of the past few months, when the scientist felt his skin begin to tingle. He shook himself briefly, as if buzzed by a fly. He was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, a Mexican genius who did illegal cable and satellite hookups to make some money, and was always looking over his shoulder. Johnny Volts was his ticket to fame and fortune; once the process was perfect, he would

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