Hugo Awards: The Short Stories (Volume 3) Page 6

  The prime minister sipped her virgin Mary and chewed on her lower lip. Then with a serious tone, she said, “But to me…there seems to be another reasonable explanation waiting for our attention…”

  “Which would be what, madam?”

  “Subterfuge,” she offered. “The aliens are intentionally misleading us about the nature of the universe.”

  Bristling, he asked, “And why would they do such a thing?”

  “To cripple our future,” she replied. “By convincing us to remain home, they never have to face us between the stars.”

  “Perhaps you’re right to think that, madam,” said the old astronomer, nodding without resolve. Then in his final moment in the series’ final episode, he said, “A lie is as good as a pill, if it helps you sleep…”

  * * * *

  For years, every search to uncover the creative force behind Invasion of a Small World came up empty. And in the public mind, that single mystery remained the final, most compelling part of the story.

  Former executives with the doomed network had never directly met with the show’s producers. But they could recount phone conversations and teleconferences and e-mails exchanged with three apparent producers. Of course, by then, it was possible to invent a digital human face and voice while weaving a realistic mix of human gestures. Which led some to believe that slippery forces were plainly at work here—forces that no human eye had ever witnessed.

  Tracking down the original production company produced only a dummy corporation leading to dusty mailboxes and several defunct Web addresses. Every name proved fictional, both among the company’s officers and those in the brief credits rolling at the end of each episode. Surviving tax forms lacked any shred of useful information. But where the IRS might have chased down a successful cheat, the plain truth was that whoever was responsible for Invasion had signed away all future rights in exchange for a puddle of cash.

  The few skeptics wondered if something considerably more ordinary was at play here. Rumors occasionally surfaced about young geniuses working in the Third World—usually in the Indian tech-cities. Employing pirated software and stolen equipment, they had produced what would eventually become the fifth most successful media event in history. But in the short term, their genius had led nowhere but to obscurity and financial ruin. Three different candidates were identified—young men with creative minds and most of the necessary skills. Did one of them build Invasion alone? Or was it a group effort? And was the project’s failure the reason why each of them committed suicide shortly after the series’ cancellation?

  But if they were the creators, why didn’t any trail lead to them? Perhaps because the consortium that held all rights to Invasion had obscured the existing evidence. And why? Obviously to help feed this infectious and delicious mood of suspicion. To maintain an atmosphere where no doubts could find a toehold, where aliens were conversing with humans, and where the money continued to flow to the consortium like a great green river.

  * * * *

  The most durable explanation was provided by one of the series’ most devoted fans—a Nobel laureate in physics who was happy to beat the drum for the unthinkable. “Invasion is true everywhere but in the specifics,” he argued. “I think there really was an automated starship. But it was bigger than a couple of grains of rice. As big as a fist, or a human head. But still small and unmanned. The ship entered our solar system during the Permian. With the bulk of it in orbit, pieces must have landed on our world. Scouts with the size and legs of small cockroaches, maybe. Maybe. And if you take the time to think it through, you see that it would be a pretty silly strategy, letting yourself become a tiny fossil in some enormous bed of mudstone. What are the odds that you’d survive for 250 million years, much else ever get noticed there?

  “No, if you are an automated starship, what would be smart is for that orbiting mothership to take a seat where nothing happens and she can see everything. On the moon, I’d guess. She still has the antennas that she used to hear the scouts’ reports. She sleeps and waits for radio signals from the earth, and when they arrive, she studies what she hears. She makes herself into a student of language and technology. And when the time is ripe—when she has a product to sell—she expels the last of her fuel, leaving the moon to land someplace useful. Which is pretty much anywhere, these days.

  “Looking like a roach, maybe, she connects to the Web and offers her services at a cut-rate price.

  “And that is how she delivers her message.

  “Paraphrasing my fictional colleague, ‘A lie is as good as a truth, if it leads you to enlightenment.’”

  * * * *

  The final scene in the last episode only seemed anticlimactic. The one-time graduate student, Mary, had been left behind by world events. From the beginning, her critical part in the research had been downplayed. But the series’ creator, whoever or whatever it was, saw no useful drama in that treachery. The woman was middle-aged and happy in her obscurity, plain as always and pregnant for at least the second time.

  A ten-year-old daughter was sitting beside Mary, sharing a threadbare couch.

  The girl asked her mother what she believed. Was the universe really so empty and cold? And was this the way it would always be?

  Quietly, her mother said, “I think that’s basically true, yes.”

  The girl looked saddened.

  But then Mary patted her daughter on the back of a hand, smiling with confidence. “But dear, I also believe this,” she said. “Life is an invasion wherever it shows itself. It is relentless and it is tireless, and it conquers every little place where living is possible. And before the universe ends, all the good homes will know the sounds of wet breathing and the singing of glorious songs.”

  IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

  Tim Pratt

  Pete was walking home from the revival movie house, where he’d caught an evening showing of To Have and Have Not, when he first saw the video store.

  He stopped on the sidewalk, head cocked, frowning at the narrow store squeezed between a kitschy gift shop and a bakery. He stepped toward the door, peered inside, and saw old movie posters on the walls, racks of DVDs and VHS tapes, and a big screen TV against one wall. The lettering on the door read “Impossible Dreams Video,” and the smudges on the glass suggested it had been in business for a while.

  Except it hadn’t been. Pete knew every video store in the county, from the big chains to the tiny place staffed by film students up by the University to the little porno shop downtown that sometimes sold classic Italian horror flicks and bootleg Asian movies. He’d never even heard of this place, and he walked this way at least twice a week. Pete believed in movies like other people believed in God, and he couldn’t understand how he’d overlooked a store just three blocks from his own apartment. He pushed open the door, and a bell rang. The shop was small, just three aisles of DVDs and a wall of VHS tapes, fluorescent lights and ancient blue industrial carpet, and there were no customers. The clerk said “Let me know if you need any help,” and he nodded, barely noticing her beyond the fact that she was female, somewhere south of thirty, and had short pale hair that stuck up like the fluff on a baby chick.

  Pete headed toward the classics section. He was a cinematic omnivore, but you could judge a video store by the quality of its classics shelf the same way you could judge a civilization by the state of its prisons. He looked along the row of familiar titles—and stopped at a DVD turned face-out, with a foil “New Release” sticker on the front.

  Pete picked it up with trembling hands. The box purported to be the director’s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles.

  “Is this a joke?” he said, holding up the box, almost angry.

  “What?” the clerk said.

  He approached her, brandishing the box, and he could tell by her arched eyebrows and guarded posture that she thought he was going to be a problem. “Sorry,” he said. “This says it’s the director’s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, with the missing footage rest
ored.”

  “Yeah,” she said, brightening. “That came out a few weeks ago. You didn’t know? Before, you could only get the original theatrical version, the one the studio butchered—”

  “But the missing footage,” he interrupted, “it was lost, destroyed, and the only record of the last fifty minutes was the continuity notes from the production.”

  She frowned. “Well, yeah, the footage was lost, and everyone assumed it was destroyed, but they found the film last year in the back corner of some warehouse.”

  How had this news passed Pete by? The forums he visited online should have been buzzing with this information, a film buff’s wet dream. “How did they find the footage?”

  “It’s an interesting story, actually. Welles talks about it on the commentary track. I mean, it’s a little scattered, but the guy’s in his nineties, what do you expect? He—”

  “You’re mistaken,” Pete said. “Unless Welles is speaking from beyond the grave. He died in the 1980s.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, then smiled falsely. Pete could practically hear her repeating mental customer service mantras: the customer is always right, even when he’s wrong. “Sure, whatever you say. Do you want to rent the DVD?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t have an account here.”

  “You local? We just need a phone number and ID, and some proof of address.”

  “I think I’ve got my last pay stub,” Pete said, rooting through his wallet and passing over his papers. She gave him a form to fill out, then typed his information into her computer. While she worked he said, “Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk, it’s just—I’d know. I know a lot about movies.”

  “You don’t have to believe me,” she said, tapping the DVD case with her finger. “Total’s $3.18.”

  He took out his wallet again, but though it bulged with unsorted receipts and scraps of paper with notes to himself, there was no cash. “Take a credit card?”

  She grimaced. “There’s a five buck minimum on credit card purchases, sorry—house rules.”

  “I’ll get a couple of other movies,” he said.

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost 10:00.

  “I know you’re about to close, I’ll hurry,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  He went to the Sci-Fi shelf—and had another shock. I, Robot was there, but not the forgettable action movie with Will Smith—this was older, and the credits said “written by Harlan Ellison.” But Ellison’s adaptation of the Isaac Asimov book had never been produced, though it had been published in book form. “Must be some bootleg student production,” he muttered, and he didn’t recognize the name of the production company. But—but—it said “winner of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.” That had to be a student director’s little joke, straight-facedly absurd box copy, as if this were a film from some alternate reality. Worth watching, certainly, though again, he couldn’t imagine how he’d never heard of this. Maybe it had been done by someone local. He took it to the counter and offered his credit card.

  She looked at the card dubiously. “Visa? Sorry, we only take Weber and FosterCard.”

  Pete stared at her, and took back the card she held out to him. “This is a major credit card,” he said, speaking slowly, as if to a child. “I’ve never even heard of—”

  Shrugging, she looked at the clock again, more pointedly this time. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules.”

  He had to see these movies. In matters of film—new film! strange film!—Pete had little patience, though in other areas of his life he was easygoing to a fault. But movies mattered. “Please, I live right around the corner, just let me go grab some cash and come back, ten minutes, please?”

  Her lips were set in a hard line. He gestured at The Magnificent Ambersons. “I just want to see it, as it was meant to be seen. You’re into movies, right? You understand.”

  Her expression softened. “Okay. Ten minutes, but that’s it. I want to get home, too.”

  Pete thanked her profusely and all but ran out of the store. He did run when he got outside, three mostly uphill blocks to his apartment in a stucco duplex, fumbling the keys and cursing, finally getting into his sock drawer where he kept a slim roll of emergency cash. He raced back to Impossible Dreams, breathing so hard he could feel every exhalation burning through his body, a stitch of pain in his side. Pete hadn’t run, really run, since gym class in high school, a decade earlier.

  He reached the bakery, and the gift shop, but there was no door to Impossible Dreams Video between them—there was no between at all. The stores stood side by side, without even an alleyway dividing them.

  Pete put his hand against the brick wall. He tried to convince himself he was on the wrong block, that he’d gotten turned around while running, but he knew it wasn’t true. He walked back home, slowly, and when he got to his apartment, he went into his living room, with its floor-to-ceiling metal shelves of tapes and DVDs. He took a disc down and loaded it into his high-end, region-free player, then took his remote in hand and turned on the vast plasma flat-screen TV. The surround-sound speakers hummed to life, and Pete sank into the exquisitely contoured leather chair in the center of the room. Pete owned a rusty four-door Honda with two hundred thousand miles on the engine, he lived mostly on cheap macaroni-and-cheese, and he saved money on toilet paper by stealing rolls from the bathrooms in the University’s Admissions Office, where he worked. He lived simply in almost every way, so that he could live extravagantly in the world of film.

  He pressed play. Pete owned the entire Twilight Zone television series on DVD, and now the narrator’s eminently reasonable voice spoke from the speakers, introducing the tale of a man who finds a dusty little magic shop, full of wonders.

  As he watched, Pete began to nod his head, and whispered, “Yes.”

  * * * *

  Pete checked in the morning; he checked at lunch; he checked after leaving his job in the Admissions Office in the evening; but Impossible Dreams did not reappear. He grabbed dinner at a little sandwich shop, then paced up and down the few blocks at the far end of the commercial street near his apartment. At 8:30 he leaned against a light pole, and stared at the place where Impossible Dreams had been. He’d arrived at, what, 9:45 last night? But who knew if time had anything to do with the miraculous video store’s manifestation? What if it had been a one-time only appearance?

  Around 8:45, the door was suddenly there. Pete had blinked, that was all, but between blinkings, something had happened, and the store was present again.

  Pete shivered, a strange exultation filling him, and he wondered if this was how people who witnessed miraculous healings or bleeding statues felt. He took a deep breath and went into the store.

  The same clerk was there, and she glared at him. “I waited for you last night.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pete said, trying not to stare at her. Did she know this was a shop of wonders? She certainly didn’t act as though she did. He thought she was of the miracle, not outside it, and to her, a world with The Magnificent Ambersons complete and uncut was nothing special. “I couldn’t find any cash at home, but I brought plenty tonight.”

  “I held the videos for you,” she said. “You really should see the Welles, it’ll change your whole opinion of his career.”

  “That’s really nice of you. I’m going to browse a little, maybe pick up a few things.”

  “Take your time. It’s been really slow tonight, even for a Tuesday.”

  Pete’s curiosity about her—the proprietor (or at least clerk) of a magic shop!—warred with his desire to ransack the shelves. “You always work by yourself?”

  “Mostly, except on weekends. There really should be two clerks here, but my boss is losing money like crazy, with people downloading movies online, getting DVDs by mail order, all that stuff.” She shook her head.

  Pete nodded. He got movies online and in the mail, too, but there was something to be said for the instant gratification of renting
something from the store, without waiting for mail or download. “Sorry to hear that. This seems like a great store. Are you here every night?”

  She leaned on the counter and sighed. “Lately, yeah. I’m working as much as I can, double shifts some days. I need the money. I can’t even afford to eat lately, beyond like an apple at lunch time and noodles for dinner. My roommate bailed on me, and I’ve had to pay twice the usual rent while I look for a new roommate, it sucks. I just—ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all over you.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Pete said. While she spoke, he was able to look straight at her openly, and he’d noticed that, in addition to being a purveyor of miracles, she was pretty, in a frayed-at-the-edges ex-punk sort of way. Not his type at all—except that she obviously loved movies.

  “Browse on,” she said, and opened a heavy textbook on the counter.

  Pete didn’t need any more encouragement than that. Last night he’d developed a theory, and everything he saw now supported it. He thought this store belonged to some parallel universe, a world much like his own, but with subtle changes, like different names for the major credit cards. But even small differences could lead to huge divergences when it came to movies. Every film depended on so many variables—a director’s capricious enthusiasm, a studio’s faith in a script, a big star’s availability, which starlet a producer happened to be sleeping with—any of those factors could irrevocably alter the course of a film, and Hollywood history was littered with the corpses of films that almost got made. Here, in this world, some of them were made, and Pete would go without sleeping for a week, if necessary, to see as many as possible.

  The shelves yielded miracle after miracle. Here was The Death of Superman, directed by Tim Burton, starring Nicolas Cage; in Pete’s universe, Burton and Cage had both dropped the project early on. Here was Total Recall, but directed and written by David Cronenberg, not Paul Verhoeven. Here was The Terminator, but starring O.J. Simpson rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger—though Schwarzenegger was still in the film, as Kyle Reese. Here was Raiders of the Lost Ark, but starring Tom Selleck instead of Harrison Ford—and there was no sign of any later Indiana Jones films, which was sad. Pete’s hands were already full of DVDs, and he juggled them awkwardly while pulling more movies from the shelves. Here was Casablanca starring George Raft instead of Bogart, and maybe it had one of the alternate endings, too! Here a John Wayne World War II movie he’d never heard of, but the box copy said it was about the ground invasion of the Japanese islands, and called it a “riveting historical drama.” A quick scan of the shelves revealed no sign of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, and those two things together suggested that in this world, the atomic bomb was never dropped on Japan. The implications of that were potentially vast…but Pete dismissed broader speculations from his mind as another film caught his eye. In this world, Kubrick had lived long enough to complete Artificial Intelligence on his own, and Pete had to see that, without Steven Spielberg’s sentimental touch turning the movie into Pinocchio.