The Last Science Fiction Writer Read online

  “And you’d allow this?” He couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. “Sure…”

  A short pause, uncustomary for Alfred. “If you thought it was necessary, perhaps I would. But ask yourself…would your fellow humans want this? When was the last time a war was fought? When was the last time you saw smog? When was the last time you…?”

  “Alfred, be quiet,” Melanie said, and her pad went silent once more. She looked at Lawrence. “See? That’s all it takes. I do it all the time.”

  “Not so simple for me.” Lawrence leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees.

  “No, I imagine it isn’t.” She regarded him with sympathy. “You’ve spent years regarding it…him…as an enemy, even before he was born. Your entire career, your fame and fortune, was derived from the premise that Alfred would cause the end of the human race. And when that didn’t happen…”

  She didn’t need to finish, for Lawrence knew the rest. His words had turned to ash, his predictions as useless as astrological charts. The phone stopped ringing, and the speaking engagements dried up. Deus Irae went out of print and gradually became an object of derision. The money went away and his notoriety faded, and yet he continued to issue proclamations of a doomsday that would never come. Indeed, the very night he attempted suicide, he was still hammering at his theme, like a stand-up comedian who hadn’t changed his act in twenty years. Take my AI, please…

  The world was different now, and there’s nothing more pathetic than a prophet whose time had come and gone.

  The drizzle had become a steady rain that seeped down the eaves of the gazebo and spattered on the back of his neck. He let out his breath, looked up at Melanie. “So now what? Off to the funny farm? Or maybe there’s a higher building for me to jump off?”

  “No. I have a better idea.” She picked up her pad, shut it off, then looked at Raoul. “Would you excuse us for a moment, please? We need to discuss something alone.”

  Without another word, the orderly walked down the steps. She watched as he hastily strode for the shelter of a nearby oak tree, then turned back to Lawrence again. “There’s a place you can go where I think you’ll be happy,” she said quietly. “If you’d like, I can take you there for a visit…”

  “Is this Red’s idea?”

  “No. You’re my client. I invited him to this session because he already had knowledge of your situation, and I thought that it was important that you confront him. But in the interest of confidentiality, he doesn’t need to know the rest.” She held up her pad, showing him that its diodes were dark. “This is strictly between you and me, understand?”

  Mystified, he nodded his head. Melanie stood up, offered her hand. “C’mon…let’s go for a ride.”

  She stopped the minivan, shut off the engine. “Okay, we’re here,” she said, unfastening her shoulder harness and opening the driver’s side door. “Sorry, but we’re going to have to walk from here.”

  Lawrence gazed out the window. From what he could tell, they were miles from the nearest town. It had been over an hour since they’d left the Mass Pike just north of Springfield; a short drive up I-91, then they’d taken an exit that brought them to a state highway leading into the foothills of the Berkshires. By this point, they were beyond range of traffic control; she’d switched back to manual, then driven down a series of country roads that meandered through densely wooded hills, passing small lakes and horse farms, until they reached a dirt road.

  Melanie had stopped at a clearing. The road continued further uphill, yet there was vehicle barrier blocking the way. On the other side of the clearing was a carport; parked beneath it was a Volkswagen beetle that looked to be at least forty years old; there was rust around the hinges of its doors, and a hump beneath its rear hatch showed that it had been converted to hydrogen cells.

  “Here?” He stared at the antique VW. “Where’s here?”

  “Call it a sanctuary.” Melanie opened the passenger door and helped him climb out, then reached behind him and pulled out the aluminum crutches she’d put in the back seat. “No cars past this point. In fact…well, you’ll see.”

  “See what?” The afternoon sun cast long shadows through tall pine and red maple; the humid air tasted of cedar and oak. “If this is a joke…”

  “You think I’d bring you all the way out here as a prank?” She waited until he stood upright on the crutches, then she pulled her pad from her pocket. “Here,” she said, switching it on and offering to him. “Talk to Red.”

  “I don’t want to…”

  “C’mon,” she insisted. “I dare you. Call Alfred.”

  He signed, then took the pad from her. Thumbing the wi-fi switch, he said, “Alfred, you’re a jerk.” No response. He tried the modem. “Alfred?” Nothing, not even static.

  “Dead zone.” Melanie took the pad from him and tossed it on the back seat. “No cell towers in a ten-mile radius, and the hills block out reception from anywhere else. Even radio reception is bad out here.”

  “But you could use the car satphone…”

  “Not allowed. I switched off as soon as we left the state highway. Community rules.” Melanie slammed the passenger door shut. “We don’t have to go far. Just a few hundred yards past the gate.”

  She led him toward the vehicle barrier, letting him set his own pace. “No easy way to explain what this place is,” Melanie continued as they stepped around the gate. “Until a few years ago, it was a monastery belonging to a group of Buddhist monks, but then they elected to accompany the Dalai Lama when he returned to Tibet. For a little while after that it was sort of an artists colony, but the guys who bought the property let it get run down, and so it changed hands again. Now it’s…well, like I said, I guess you could call it a sanctuary.”

  They walked for a while, following the road as it gradually led uphill, until he spotted a wood-frame cabin about twenty feet back from the road. It had a screen porch and flagstone chimneys; a cord of wood was neatly stacked within an open shed, and nearby was a small garden. A man about his age, with long grey hair tied back in a ponytail, was pulling weeds from a tomato trellis; he looked up as they walked past, and raised his hand when Melanie waved to him.

  “A sanctuary for who?” Lawrence asked quietly. “Beat-up old hippies?”

  She didn’t smile. “Some might qualify as such, but you might be surprised at who lives here.” She hesitated. “I’m bending the rules concerning patient-doctor confidentiality, but I can tell you that there’s a couple who used to be software designers. Another guy was once the chief financial officer for a major internet service provider…you’d recognize his name if I told you. There’s also a former TV producer, a novelist, and…well, some plain, ordinary people.”

  She pointed to other cabins, just now becoming visible on either side of the road. “But that’s beside the point. Look around, and tell me what you don’t see.”

  Lawrence studied them. No cars, but plenty of bicycles propped against front porches. Woodsheds, gardens, flagstone chimneys. Propane tanks here and there; solar-power grids on almost every rooftop. Yet no power lines, no utility, no satellite dishes…

  “They’re off the grid.”

  “Off the grid, off the net, and damn near off the map.” She nodded, a smile touching the corners of her mouth. “No phones, no computers, no TV…”

  “No radios? No stereos?”

  “Oh, sure, they can have those…so long as they’re not networked in any way. These people aren’t total Luddites.” She pointed to a large, wood-frame at the top of the hill; it had Asian-style trimming around its roof eaves, and an iron bell was suspended from a yoke out front. “That used to be the pagoda. Now it serves as the community hall. Mail gets delivered there…takes a few days, but it comes in…and there’s also sort of a co-op. Every now and then, someone goes to the nearest town with a shopping list, buys whatever anyone needs. That’s what the old veedub you saw parked at the gate is for. But otherwise they’re pretty much…”

  “And
you think I should move here? Is that it?”

  “You might consider it, yes.” Melanie stopped, turned to him. “There’s one thing all these people have in common…none of them want anything to do with Alfred. It’s fair to say that some were as desperate as you.” She nodded toward the first house they’d passed. “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she murmured, “but the gentleman who lives there was once a patient of mine, too.”

  “Funny place for a suicide consoler to know about, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps.” She gave him a wink. “But whoever said my specialty is suicide?”

  Lawrence gaped at her. “I assumed…”

  “Of course you did. Most people do, the first time they meet me.” She shook her head. “There isn’t a clinical name for your problem yet…at least none that that the AMA formally recognizes…but I suppose you could call it cyberphobia. Fear of computers, Alfred in particular. It’s rare, but it gets around. And in extreme cases, it manifests itself as suicidal behavior.”

  “And that’s when they call you in.”

  “Uh-huh.” She gestured to the cabins around them. “Most people here found this place on their own, but I’ve brought a few here myself.”

  “Until they’re cured, and then they leave…”

  “If they want to, sure. Most of the time, though, they don’t. Here, they can live without having contact with Alfred. It’s a bit rough, sure, but it’s also quiet. No voices from the desk telling you that you’ve got mail, or from the fridge saying that you need milk, or from the TV reminding you to renew your cable subscription but if you act today you can get a twenty percent discount on HBO. I don’t think anyone here knows what the big new movie is or who has a hit song this month, and they probably don’t care either.”

  The village was quiet, enjoying a solitude Lawrence hadn’t experienced since…he suddenly realized that he couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever known such tranquility. A dog barking from a backyard. A summer breeze rustling through the trees. From the open window of a nearby cabin, the sound of typewriter keys, with the occasional sound of a carriage-return bell. Otherwise, silence.

  “What does Alfred think of this?” he asked.

  “So far as I know, he doesn’t know it exists.” Melanie idly kicked at some loose pebbles on the road. “It’s not the only one, though. There’s a place like this in Pennsylvania, in Amish country, and another in Tennessee, and a couple in California. I get letters from people there, or from other psychologists in my line of work, asking for referrals. But you won’t find them written up in professional journals, and you can’t Google them.” She smiled. “Part of the attraction. I guess. One little secret Alfred doesn’t know about.”

  Lawrence let out his breath. For the first time in many years, he didn’t feel Alfred’s eyes upon him. The god, or godlike thing, he’d helped create had no place here. He’d have to learn how to chop wood to keep himself warm at night, and when he got hungry he wouldn’t have the option of calling out for pizza. Yet he could listen to the summer rain without having someone tell him the forecast, or sit on a porch without fear of being studied by surveillance systems.

  “So…” He hesitated. “Who do I have to talk to?”

  “Mayor’s office is up there.” Melanie nodded toward the community hall. “We’re not expected, but I’ll be happy to introduce you. Last time I checked, there was a vacancy. Want to meet him?”

  “Sure.” He clasped the handles of his crutches, began to hobble toward the former pagoda. “Different kind of place, but I guess I could get used to it.”

  “I’m sure you will.” She fell in step beside him. “Think of it as a new world.”

  “Or an old one.” He found himself smiling, remembering the benediction he’d heard in church, long ago when he was still a child. “World without end, amen.”

  TAKE ME BACK TO OLD TENNESSEE

  Once upon a time, in a small valley cupped between two mountains, in a place once known as Tennessee but which now had no name, there lived a young man named Jed. Tall and strong, with skin the color of a burnt olive, he lived alone in a grass hut within the village he’d known as home since the day he was born.

  Indeed, Jed was aware of little else except for the valley. When he was very young, shortly after the seventh anniversary of the day his mother had drawn her last breath giving birth to him, he’d slipped away from the other children while they were toiling in the fields and, after crawling through the corn, commenced to climb the forested slopes of the mountain that lay to the east. At first he’d followed the game trails frequented by the tribal hunters, but after awhile he’d left even those behind and struck out through the dense woods until he finally made his way to the top of the mountain. When he reached the summit, where the pines grew thin and the air was cool, he stopped to behold the world, and discovered nothing more than he’d left behind. Mountain upon mountain, valley upon valley, all shrouded by the thin bluish haze that had given this range its long-forgotten name. He remained only long enough to look around, then he went back down to the village, where he received ten lashes from a hickory switch wielded by an angry elder and was sent to bed without supper.

  From that day on, he remained incurious about what lay beyond the fields of home. True, he’d heard the legends, told in song and dance around the camp fires, of great villages beyond the mountains, long-lost paradises where people flew through the air and lived in towers higher than the clouds, never having to work yet nonetheless fat and sleek from a never-ending supply of food. Since he’d seen none of these things when he’d climbed the eastern mountains, though, Jed believed them to be nothing more than fables. Far more believable were the stories of the great walls of ice that had come down from the north, driving his ancestors before them until they’d found refuge in this warm and isolated place. Ancient pictographs, etched in charcoal upon strips of birch and carefully preserved by toothless crones, were the sole remaining record of this exodus; he’d seen them once, yet they’d provoked little wonder in him. So far as Jed was concerned, history was inconsequential, time itself without meaning.

  He lived a simple life, uncomplicated by anything except the basic necessities. He awoke early, usually an hour or so after dawn, and began his day by wandering over to a hole he’d dug in the ground near his hut and squatting over it to relieve himself. If he was hungry, he’d eat whatever food he’d stored in the basket by his bed. Then he go into the village, where he would join the others at work in the fields: ploughing, planting, spreading manure, weeding, harvesting, whatever needed to be done to tend to the crops that kept them all alive. In Jed’s village, one received in equal measure for what one gave; there was no money and no one kept score, except perhaps when it was noticed by all that someone wasn’t doing their share of the labor. This rarely happened, though, because work meant food, and no one was willing to risk starvation by shirking their chores. Anyone who lived more than forty winters was considered old, and the sick either got better or they died, and when that happened everyone ate a little better that night.

  There were other jobs that needed to be done. Wind and rain took their toll on the huts, so they were in constant need of repair. Hunting parties would journey into the mountains, returning days later with animals that had to be skinned, butchered, and smoked; nothing was ever wasted, not even their bones. Waste pits needed to filled and dug, away from the stream that supplied water to the village, and the stone dam that kept the stream from rising above its banks during rainstorms had to be kept watertight. There was never any shortage of tasks, and all able-bodied men, women, and children in the village were expected to pitch in.

  Yet Jed’s life wasn’t without distraction. There were games, such as the one where young men would divide themselves into two groups and take opposite ends of a field, upon which they’d try to kick a ball made of a deer skull wrapped in hide away from one another. And from the moment he entered puberty, he enjoyed the pleasures of sex, with any girl who would have him. Women often
didn’t survive childbirth, and usually there was no telling who the father was—in Jed’s case, it could have been any one of a half-dozen men who’d regularly copulated with his mother—so offspring were raised by the community as a whole. As a result, Jed himself had sired several children before he was twenty years of age, but called none of them his children.

  In the evening, after the chores were done and the sun had set behind the western mountain, Jed often lay on his back outside his hut, watching the stars as they glimmered into sight within the darkening sky. Sometimes he’d have a girl with him, and he’d gently stroke her hair before he mounted her, but more often than not he was alone, which suited him just as well; the night sky fascinated him as nothing else did. He had no idea what those lights in the sky were—some said that they were the souls of those who’d perished during the coming of the ice—but he studied their patterns, noting how some appeared during one season but would be absent in the next, while others remained constant. The Moon was a mystery; on certain nights, during its dark phases, he could see tiny lights upon its face, yet although legend had it that men lived there, he doubted this was true.

  And then there were the stars that raced across the heavens, shining more brightly than the rest, appearing shortly after sunrise and again after midnight. They always followed the same course, season after season, rising from the west mountain and disappearing to the east. If he stared at them long enough, he was almost certain that they had distinct shapes: tiny cruciforms, or miniature rings. These were the most tantalizing of all, and Jed never grew tired of watching them…although, again, he seldom wondered what they were. Jed’s life was uncomplicated by such deep thoughts, and imagination wasn’t one of his gifts.

  So his days were spent in sort of a timeless pastorale, one whose rhythms were orchestrated by the passage of the seasons. Seeds were sown and harvested, huts were built and repaired, children were born and old people died; he played kick-ball and humped girls, and ate well when there was plenty of food and tried to ignore the ache in his belly in times of scarcity. When the weather was warm he walked naked beneath the sun, and when it became cold he wrapped himself in skins and joined the others as they huddled around the fire. And on occasion someone else would climb the mountains to see what lay beyond the valley. Usually they would return, reporting only what Jed himself had seen long ago; sometimes they wouldn’t, and their absence would be felt for a short time, but not very long.