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Bruce Sterling (http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades) lives in Austin, Texas. The novel Schismatrix (1985) and the related stories that made him famous were re-released in 1996 as Schismatrix Plus. He collaborated with William Gibson on The Difference Engine (1990), became a media figure who appeared on the cover of Wired, became a journalist who wrote the exposé The Hacker Crackdown (1992), and returned his attention to science fiction in 1995, with a new explosion of stories and novels, including Heavy Weather (1994), Holy Fire (1996), and Distraction (1998). His most recent novel, Zeitgeist (2000), is fantasy. His interest in thepolitical and cultural implications of future change has informed his work, and in his recent nonfiction book, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (2002), he re-imagines the future after the turn of the 21st century.
"In Paradise" was published in F&SF, a magazine that published a large number of especially good stories this year. It is a madly jolly, near-future love story, in which the machete of satire is wielded against the advent and spread of intrusion into the private lives of citizens in the name of homeland security. Certain moral and ethical problems are oversimplified so that love conquers all. It is first in this book because we found it so representative of the year 2002 and so much fun.
The machines broke down so much that it was comical,but the security people never laughed about that.
Felix could endure the delay, for plumbers billed by thehour. He opened his tool kit, extracted a plastic flask and had a solid nip of Scotch.
The Moslem girl was chattering into her phone. Her dadand another bearded weirdo had passed through the bigmetal frame just as the scanner broke down. So these twosomber, suited old men were getting the full third degreewith the hand wands, while daughter was stuck. Daughterwore a long baggy coat and thick black headscarf and a surprisingly sexy pair of sandals. Between her and her minders stretched the no man's land of official insecurity. She waved across the gap.
The security geeks found something metallic in the blackwool jacket of the Wicked Uncle. Of course it was harmless,but they had to run their full ritual, lest they die of boredom at their posts. As the Scotch settled in, Felix felt time stretch like taffy. Little Miss Mujihadeen discovered that her phone was dying. She banged at it with the flat of her hand.
The line of hopeful shoppers, grimly waiting to stimulate the economy, shifted in their disgruntlement. It was a bad, bleak scene. It crushed Felix's heart within him. He longed to leap to his feet and harangue the lot of them. Wake up, he wanted to scream at them, cheer up, act more human. He felt the urge keenly, but it scared people when he cut loose like that. They really hated it. And so did he. He knew he couldn't look them in the eye. It would only make a lot of trouble.
The Mideastern men shouted at the girl. She waved herdead phone at them, as if another breakdown was going tohelp their mood. Then Felix noticed that she shared his ownmake of cell phone. She had a rather ahead-of-the-curveFinnish model that he'd spent a lot of money on. So Felixrose and sidled over.
"Help you out with that phone, ma'am?"
She gave him the paralyzed look of a coed stuck with adripping tap. "No English?" he concluded. "Habla español, senorita?" No such luck.
He offered her his own phone. No, she didn't care to useit. Surprised and even a little hurt by this rejection, Felix took his first good look at her, and realized with a lurch that she was pretty. What eyes! They were whirlpools. The line of her lips was like the tapered edge of a rose leaf.
"It's your battery," he told her. Though she had not a word of English, she obviously got it about phone batteries. After some gestured persuasion, she was willing to trade her dead battery for his. There was a fine and delicate little moment when his fingertips extracted her power supply, and he inserted his own unit into that golden-lined copper cavity. Her display leaped to life with an eager flash of numerals. Felix pressed a button or two, smiled winningly, and handed her phone back.
She dialed in a hurry, and bearded Evil Dad lifted hisphone to answer, and life became much easier on the nerves.Then, with a groaning buzz, the scanner came back on. Dadand Uncle waved a command at her, like lifers turned totrusty prison guards, and she scampered through the metalgate and never looked back.
She had taken his battery. Well, no problem. He wouldtreasure the one she had given him.
Felix gallantly let the little crowd through before he himself cleared security. The geeks always went nuts about his plumbing tools, but then again, they had to. He found the assignment: a chi-chi place that sold fake antiques and pot-pourri. The manager's office had a clogged drain. As he worked, Felix recharged the phone. Then he socked them fora sum that made them wince.
On his leisurely way out -- whoa, there was Miss Cellphone, that looker, that little goddess, browsing in a jewelry store over Korean gold chains and tiaras. Dad and Uncle were there, with a couple of off-duty cops.
Felix retired to a bench beside the fountain, in the potted plastic plants. He had another bracing shot of Scotch, then put his feet up on his toolbox and punched her number.
He saw her straighten at the ring, and open her purse, and place the phone to the kerchiefed side of her head. Shedidn't know where he was, or who he was. That was why thewords came pouring out of him.
"My God you're pretty," he said. "You are wasting yourtime with that jewelry. Because your eyes are like two black diamonds."
She jumped a little, poked at the phone's buttons with disbelief, and put it back to her head.
Felix choked back the urge to laugh and leaned forward,his elbows on his knees. "A string of pearls around yourthroat would look like peanuts," he told the phone. "I am totally smitten with you. What are you like under that bigbaggy coat? Do I dare to wonder? I would give a milliondollars just to see your knees!"
"Why are you telling me that?" said the phone ...
Year's Best SF 8. Copyright © by David G. Hartwell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Excerpted from Year's Best Science Fiction by David G. Hartwell, Kathryn D. Cramer
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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