Asimov's SF, January 2003 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-07-10T14:01:43+00:00

October 2021

The chemistry professor opened the lab on Saturday morning, giving his slowest students this one opportunity to catch up. Michael had been struggling with his apparatus all week, trying to harvest enough of the properly doped buckyballs and earn a passing grade. It was a miserable morning. His hangover just seemed like the topper. He was sitting on a high stool, his balance uneasy, his vision blurring at the worst possible moments. Suddenly the professor returned from his office—a bearded and relentlessly disheveled man who was running for some reason—and with a wide grin, he made the simple declaration:

“They’re back!”

Only Michael remained on the stool. He might not harvest another ten buckyballs, but at least he didn’t bolt with the others. He didn’t rush back to his dorm room or the student union, watching events that were happening halfway across the solar system. He even managed to convince himself that he enjoyed his sudden solitude. At least twice, he caught himself singing. Once, he heard himself chatting with his dead mother.

By contrast, his girlfriend was made of weaker stuff.

“This time,” Jackie said. And that’s all she needed to say. Everyone knew what the two words meant. Again and again, with a firm conviction, she would say, “This time,” and look across the restaurant table, smiling at him.

Michael could have said, “Sure.”

Or better, he should have told her, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

But instead, he ignored her. Or he tried to ignore her. He ate as if he were hungry, and when they were finished with dinner and heading back to her room, he spoke carefully about everything but the aliens.

Maybe she noticed.

More likely, she didn’t. Really, she wasn’t the sharpest soul. Michael was beginning to appreciate that. The sex was good, but only good, and whenever he bothered to look at the two of them, he saw nothing but trouble looming.

Unaware of the perils, the girl steered back toward the only real topic of the night. “We’ve made so many changes in the world,” she exclaimed. “Improvements everywhere. Life on Earth, and above, is so much better now. And in just ten years, too.”

He didn’t respond.

Jackie mistook silence for agreement. “I’m sure they’ll be impressed. They’ve got to be. Poverty rates are what? Half what they were? And there isn’t nearly as much disease. And what’s the literacy rate now? Around the world, I mean.”

“I don’t know.”

“In so many categories, we’re doing better.” She couldn’t stop praising humanity. Obviously she was practicing for the next interview. “When was the last time we had a war?”

“South Africa,” he mentioned.

“But that’s a civil war. I don’t think that counts.” With a forced sincerity, she said, “We’re more peaceful now. A good, law-abiding species.”

“Is that what they want?”

Michael was sitting in the driver’s seat—a traditional gesture in a world where electric cars glided along with computers at the helm. He’d asked that simple question without considering the consequences, and when it was met with silence, he thought, “Screw the consequences.”

Facing

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