The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 7 by Neil Clarke

Author:Neil Clarke [Clarke, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781625676917
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2023-12-27T21:00:00+00:00

An (pronounce it “On”) is a neutrois author with a background in web development, linguistics, and weaving chainmaille out of stainless steel fencing wire, whose fiction has appeared in a number of venues including Clarkesworld, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and a handful of Year’s Bests. An’s interests range from pulsars and Cepheid variables to gender studies and nonstandard pronouns, with a plethora of stops in-between.

The Equations of the Dead

An Owomoyela

The boyo working the transmitter doesn’t look like much, except his face is radiant. Radiant, like one of those pooka upworld adverts for neural templates. Dopamine-druggy, but lucid. Like he’s in love.

Boyo also looks like he hasn’t spoken to a human in days, and like aside from the food allotments he doesn’t have a lick of capital. His clothes have that washed-while-wearing look, and they’re homespun; no fancy imported fabrics or styles. You’d walk away from this jondo in the market. Let him go his own way, pray he’d not bother you.

Well, boyo is bothering someone.

Harmless walks up, closer than comfortable, and waits a moment for a reaction. He gets none. After a few seconds he clears his throat, clears his throat again, and finally sticks a hand out and says “Heyo. I’m Harmless,” with his best guileless grin.

It’s a joke-threat, really: his fami name sounds like the Commerce word for harmless, and when he tells people he’s harmless when no one’s thought he’d harm them, it starts them wondering why he needs to reassure them. Truth is, he is harmless, except for the Old Man. And the Old Man isn’t here, except in the implication that he might get interested.

That’s the implication most people get, right away.

But boyo doesn’t seem to notice the threat, or the joke, or the hand, no, nor even the fact that harmless is bolsho strange for a man’s name. He nod-nods, and says, “I’m Latchko.” Eyes still on the transmitter. Like Harmless is a passing, talking breeze.

“Lat,” Harmless says. If Latchko cares about the nickname, or notices that Harmless has given him one, he gives no sign. “What are you doing here, boyo? You making trouble in this nice park?” Of course there are worse parks, plenty, where no one would mind trouble. Well, except that the trouble Latchko’s getting in would draw the Old Man’s attention anywhere.

Latchko also seems not to care about the term boyo, which is condescending at best, from a stranger. He shrugs, says, “It’s not restricted. It’s public,” and keeps fiddling with the transmitter. Not a care on the moon. Makes Harmless wonder if there’s something wrong with his brain, or maybe something in his brain, but folken here, they mostly don’t afford implants, innit? Maybe so, he’s just a strange one.

“So what are you doing?” Harmless asks.

He knows more or less already or he wouldn’t have come here. Boyo is transmitting to one of the AI clouds drifting through the system; transmitting very little for most human concerns but quite a lot for human-AI communication, and he’s getting back

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