Forever Magazine Issue 64 by Lavie Tidhar & Maureen F. McHugh & Kelly Robson

Author:Lavie Tidhar & Maureen F. McHugh & Kelly Robson [Tidhar, Lavie & McHugh, Maureen F. & Robson, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, science fiction magazine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2020-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

IX. THE DROWNED WORLD

Elsewhere.

The world loses definition and returns with the taste of blue, a shriek of salt, a flash of musical notes from a popular song no one has played in centuries. The world tastes of pain and soapsuds.

I fall.

The sky is rent asunder and static devours the horizon. A bridge like a clean black line spans a low-resolution river. The world takes on definition, blocks of buildings, tiny figures moving jerkily in the streets between.

I fall.

The world explodes around me. Color returns, but everything is so gray. Bostrom worlds are meant to be happy places, the last refuge of the climate-clans rich into a make-believe world. Tiny hidden microworlds scattered deep underground in shelters built to weather nuclear storms. They never did count enough on entropy, though.

I fall.

The world gains and loses definition. Termites crawl across the sky. A diseased river flows down below. . . .

I fall.

I-we stood at the north end of the Blackfriars Bridge, ghosting on a local host. Local data flooded into my-our consciousness. I knew, for example, that had once been a great bridge that spanned the river from south to north, but by now it was reduced to a pile of rubble still, somehow, just standing up, and that a makeshift rope bridge that ran along its five spans was the only way to cross it in relative safety. I could see, from where I stood, the fishing nets that hung from the bridge, and the objects caught in them: debris, blowing in a powerful wind.

I wore a parka, heavy-soled boots, thick gloves, and goggles over my eyes to protect them from the wind. The sky was a gray and impenetrable expanse of clouds through which sunlight filtered wanly. It was the sort of sky you get during a hurricane, but here it looked permanent. Small figures moved nimbly over the bridge, pulling up ropes and nets, scavengers looking for salvage.

“You! You there!”

I turned, and saw them. There were five of them, thin, scraggly, dressed much as I was. They moved with a loping gait, into the wind. Coming my way.

“You there! Stand where you are!”

I began to back away. I saw them reach for weapons. Ahead of me I saw a domed cathedral but there were holes in the dome and the road leading up to it was filled with tenement buildings, and more figures came out at the shouts, and they stared in my direction but made no move either way.

“Outsider! Outsider!”

Thiels, I thought, with a sense of horror. I should have anticipated this. A Level IV Bostrom world slowly degrading to a Level III, and its inhabitants, at least some of them knowing, or at least suspecting, their world was a simulation—

They wanted out. My arrival would have been a shot of data powerful enough to send checksums awry all across the virtuality. They’d pinpointed me quickly—too quickly.

“Stop or we’ll shoot!”

I started to run, away from the river, away from the Thiels. They gave chase. I had to assume sentience, but sentience does not equate kindness or mercy.

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