Future Tides: The Collected Works of Christopher Ruz

By Christopher Ruz

Lonely AIs, Peruvian parasites, graffiti activists and far-future memory swapping meet in Future Tides, a collection of all Christopher Ruz's short works from 2007 to 2011. Cyberpunk and space opera sit side by side with award-winning tales of heroin addiction and swords-and-sorcery fantasy in this 18 story, 60,000 word compilation. Future Tides includes three previous collections - PAST THE BORDERS, THE KING & OTHER STORIES, and NOTHING TOO DANGEROUS - as well as an exclusive scifi short: FRONT PAGE CAPTION.

In THE ANT TOWER, Parkin, a soldier-turned-mercenary, has been hired by the King's Magician to accompany him on a long journey into the great western desert, in search of an ancient and powerful artifact. After years spent battling the heathens in the frozen north, Parkin is glad for an easy contract. But there's more to fear in the desert than thirst, and as Parkin's comrades fall one by one, he's forced to ask - what does the Magician really want from him? And what evil has taken root in the rock mound known as the Ant Tower?

In THE KING, Derek and his misanthropic friends are competing to find enlightenment through misery. But Derek isn't playing by the rules. He has a plan that'll make him the idol of his all friends, as well as get him back into Sylvia's pants. All he has to do is quit heroin while they all watch. Except, Derek has never used heroin. And so begins the greatest lie of his life... a lie that might be too big to back away from...

In THE LAST BROADCAST, the colony ship known as the Vale has been spiralling towards Epsilon Eridani for four millennia, and Barry - the semi-sentient AI set to guard its frozen human cargo - has had a long time to question nature of his mission. There are too many gaps in his code, too many mistakes left unfixed. Could Barry's programmers really have been so lax? Or does he have a greater purpose, some secret mission buried in his source code? He has another eighteen thousand years to find the answer. In the meantime, he's growing bored, and idle hands are the devil's playthings...

And in THEY TRADE IN EYES, Alicia is faced with a terrible decision. To get any sort of job in the future economy requires new eyes - cobalt plated units with laser-blue irises, that can interpret petabytes of data at a glance, that record every moment of your life. Can she bring herself to go under the knife, and trade in her old fleshsacks for new units? And can she evade the street-dealers who steal and resell eyes to fill the new market in memory-trading? Business is business. Someone has to make a killing.

Includes:
They Trade In Eyes
No Exit
Whispers
The Hard Sell
The Aliens Came Alphabetically
Never Old Enough To Know
The Ant Tower
Occupied
Back To Civilisation
The King
Front Page Caption
Eight Ways From Tomorrow
An Unknown Hunger
The Last Broadcast
What You Bring Back
Black Rain
Long Way Home
Hercule And The Doctor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Ruz
• Release date: Nov 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497719774

Book preview

Future Tides

The Collected Works of Christopher Ruz

Copyright © Christopher Ruz Hayes-Kossmann 2011 All Rights Reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or copied without written consent from the author.

Future Tides

They Trade In Eyes

No Exit

Whispers

The Hard Sell

The Aliens Came Alphabetically

Never Old Enough to Know

The Ant Tower

Occupied

Back to Civilisation

The King

Front Page Caption

Eight Ways From Tomorrow

An Unknown Hunger

The Last Broadcast

What You Bring Back

Black Rain

Long Way Home

Hercule and the Doctor

Other Titles by Christopher Ruz

They Trade In Eyes

They trade in eyes, and business is good.

This is strictly back alley commerce. Battered aluminium suitcases lay open on the concrete. The setting sun casts long shadows over the dumpsters, man-high heaps of broken bottles and circuit-boards. Mechanical limbs reach out from the debris with knuckle-servos still whining on backup battery. A place where you dump what you need to forget. Two dealers stand with hands folded, a thin amber glow coming from beneath wide-brimmed hats. If they were to look up, you would see their pupils are vertical slits, like predatory cats. But they never do.

The eyes are laid out in rows, polished to a mirror finish, nestled in foam. Only the left of each pair is on display. Standard business practice. There are eyes in black steel, white steel, inlaid with pulsing circuits that mimic electric veins. Some are painted in flesh tones, but they are passé. Sleek composite plastics are popular these days.

All the irises are closed. They are rotating shutters, a thousand tiny overlapping plates that expand and contract with the light. But now they are asleep, waiting for new owners to plug them into their ocular nerves and let them see again.

It shouldn't be long. Business is good.

* * *

The first of Alicia's classmates got new eyes when she was fourteen. She remembers sitting in the cafeteria and watching those unblinking blue points glowing deep in the gunmetal, and envying them so much it felt like a stone had dropped in her belly.

At first there were policies to ensure students with new eyes didn't gain an unfair advantage. But policy changed. Harder and harder to keep up. Sometimes it felt like trying to chase down a cyclist, exhaustion growing heavier as they accelerated and left her behind to watch the flash of spokes.

By final year, half the class had upgraded. The other half were promised new eyes as graduation presents. That was a year of retro-chic, and the kids with the richest parents had eyes that swept back from the sockets to curve around the face, imitating latter-century sunglasses. They were drawn to each other, sliding effortlessly through crowds, joining together in twos and fours like dividing cells, and soon they were the crowd, laughing and sharing things Alicia would never know.

* * *

His apartment is prison-cell bare. Four blank walls and carpet rank with mould. The only furniture is a crate in the corner filled with stims and depressants and fluoro-carbons and a knife as long as his forearm. He tells people that one day he will use it to cut out his own heart, but it's a lie. Maybe it was true once, back when he thought there was nothing left to see, but now he knows different.

It's well past bedtime but the ceiling is splayed with dawn-sun, captured by the bucky-domes and released gradually throughout the night. A constant orange-peel glow for a world that never sleeps. He lies flat on the carpet and reaches for the pliers with shaking hands.

* * *

There aren't many people who need convincing these days, but the trader has his patter down flat. Nobody trusts organic eyes any more. Too prone to failure. Ocular degeneration, cataracts, sun damage, eye strain. Soft and vulnerable. Mechanical are obviously superior; titanium build, resistant to impact, much higher resolution at distance. And really, what else can an organic eye do but see?

New model eyes are wired straight into the brain. Microscopic paths worm through the neo and prefrontal cortex. Everyone can buy a photographic memory. Not good enough? Advanced models have wireless data options. How do you think people get up in the world these days? Executives don't have time to read. Send it to your eyes and it's already memorised. Flushed down the right pathways, interpreted, cross-referenced. What is the brain but an inefficient computer? The eyes are the secretaries that keep you running smooth, and no executive can keep on top without a good secretary.

Not in that market? Don't forget fashion: anodised aluminium shells, blue steel streaks, camouflage paint jobs. Want an iris that glows with the flickering red flame of Lucifer's pits? Or a sea-green that ebbs with your moods, pulsing hypnotically, as slow as the tides? Perfect for a first date. Done and done. Sign on the line. We prefer cash.

* * *

Now Alicia is twenty-two and still looking for a job beyond data entry and sweeping floors. Something to get her out of the basement. She does three interviews a week minimum but never gets a call back. She stands in line at the employment agency, and everyone around her has their original, organic, ugly eyes.

The woman at the agency tells her she needs to upgrade. Mech-eyes will let her digitise pages of data, straight into her long-term memory. Cross-correlate faces glimpsed on the periphery. Mech-eyes don't get tired at night during the late shift. Mech-eyes never forget the name of a business partner. You'll never break past bottom level with organics. Her irises are twin points of violet, to match the amethyst on her wedding ring. Get the surgery, honey. Then come back.

She inquires at the closest hospital as to the costs of the socket replacement; it is far too much. The nurse invites her to view the operation, see how simple it is. Through a window she watches a surgeon prise the eyeballs from a boy of fifteen, slice and suture the optical nerve, cut away the lids and leave the socket gaping like a bloody shrapnel wound. The next step is to install the receiving socket, a neural interface with which any eye can connect. Like twisting in a lightbulb, the nurse explains.

She watches the surgeon with his laser scalpel and welding torch, and she stays completely silent throughout. Back in the waiting room she crouches in a corner and hugs herself and shakes. The patients stare at her, unblinking.

* * *

This is a two-part process. First, a latch at the bridge of his nose that he flicks open with a thumbnail. Underneath is a labyrinth of microscopic circuits, servos, ball-bearings made from nets of carbon. He digs in with the needle-nosed pliers, burrowing into his eye socket, looking for a release rod. If he slips, any number of delicate surfaces will be scarred. Resale value through the floor. His name black-listed amongst the traders. If he slips too badly, the control points that connect the eye to the brain might get scratched. Messing with them will leave him blind.

He closes the pliers around the release rod and lets himself exhale. Three half turns counter clockwise and it slides free. He can feel it as it comes out, like a long splinter being pulled from a wound. The rod is slippery in his palm. When he first started switching it was only lubricant on the rods. Now there is pus and blood mixed with the oil. It scares him.

* * *

One day kids will be given eye upgrades for free along with their tetanus, tuberculosis, polio III and melanoma vaccines. The government already gives tax rebates for store-bought eyes. It's only a matter of time. Some people think that that will be the end of the dealers, but the dealers know better. People aren't buying eyes to see. They're buying eyes to know.

Data storage has long passed the point where consumers bother comprehending the numbers. You can store everything in a space of almost nothing. There are knife-edge slices of circuit-glass in each eye laid out in the suitcases, and recorded on those is everything that eye has ever seen. Manufacturers lock down the images as best they can, protecting them from wireless transfer, but that doesn't stop people trading hardware. A savvy man who knows some basic circuitry can relive them as memories.

The dealers own the refurbished eyes of hover-racers, porn stars, heiresses, executed criminals. The things they have seen and done are worth more than any stolen car or drug. There are memories compressed inside the sleek optical units, entire lives laid out on wafers, and to see and own somebody else's life; well, that's a hell of a rush, isn't it boy? This is one of a pair that belonged to the first man to orbit Saturn. Pick it up. Hold it. See how it feels. Let it grow on you.

* * *

A beer at sunset in a shanty-bar under the highway. The mugs rattle across the table every time a truck passes overhead. Alicia's friend is paying. So you're finally getting a pair, huh?

She nods, idly tearing strips from the coaster. When she closes her eyes she sees the scalpel descending, muscles curling away like piano wire. I don't know how I'll afford it, she says.

Still no job? That's rough.

Alicia nods. You have no idea.

The stink from the highway eats into the sinuses. She knows that if they stay in the bar too long it will feel like she's inhaled mustard. Desperate motorists synthesize fuel from anything they can find, organic or artificial, safe or toxic. She wishes she'd brought a mask.

There is a way, her friend says. Easy cash.

Alicia frowns. How?

You know. Selling.

Selling? And then she understands. No, no way.

It's not that bad. It's how I got mine. Just hook up with a clean place, they'll take care of you, make sure you don't get any crazies.

No, she says again.

Her friend quiets down and sips her beer. They listen to the jungle-blare of horns and sirens. I'm trading in for a new pair, she says.

What's wrong with your eyes now?

You know. They look a bit cheap.

Okay. Sip, swallow. You're going to wipe the memory first, right?

Hell no. Her friend laughs. They're worth so much more this way.

* * *

He first did this at a party in Boston. He'd had the socket replacement done a year before, and was still on his first set of eyes. They were a sleek pair, with silver ridges radiating outwards from the iris. A girl at the party said they made him look intense. Intense how? She didn't answer, just led him into a back room and pushed him down and rode him on the couch while the host and his girlfriend watched on appreciatively.

When they were done she pulled a tiny pair of pliers from her handbag. What are you doing?

I want to know how it was for you.

How?

She shushed him and showed him how. The blindness was terrifying. He shuddered when she plugged her eyes into his sockets. They felt bizarre. Light and cold and somehow not quite there. But then they rebooted, and he knew what it was to have someone inside you.

It's time for the other eye now. He puts both release rods down on a sheet of newsprint. More clasps on the outer edges. He clicks them off and grasps and pulls and there is a little bit of resistance, just a little. Fingers tense and then everything is black as his eyes tug free from his sockets. They're heavy in his hands. He holds them a moment, remembering the things he's seen through those borrowed irises, and the memories he's added. A shootout in a cinema parking lot, bullets leaving phosphor trails hanging in the air like dancehall lasers. Watching from the air as the isolation barrier came down around South America, an entire continent sealing itself away under a dome of lightning, steam rising from the sea as it flash-boiled. Days long gone.

* * *

Most of the eyes in the suitcase are trades. Men and women looking to keep ahead in the rat race. Kids needing to ride the crest of every trend. The dealers recognise them and treat them well, always doff their hats and smile. Repeat customers are worth the effort.

But there are other eyes, carefully distributed through the displays, which come with no warranty or tag indicating previous owner. Eyes on discount. Superficial damage, little scratches here and there, nothing to worry about. All our merchandise is tested. Consider it floor stock.

The customers aren't stupid. They know where it comes from, but they pretend not to.

They are delivered at irregular intervals by men in armoured jackets. Each pair of eyes comes in a separate padded bag. Sometimes the bags are wet and heavy with blood. The dealers shake hands with the men and watch them stalk back out into the night, and they shiver, and are glad they only sell and not collect.

They are silhouettes against the orange glow of the bucky-domes, their eyes not blue or red or violet but black. They see in infra-red and they wait behind the never-ending procession of tail-lights for the traffic to die, wait for the lone hitch-hiker or the student taking a shortcut through places best left unexplored. They wait.

A knife in one pocket and pliers in the other.

* * *

She spends ten minutes on the table waiting for the anaesthetic to take hold, and every second is an agony of indecision. Then, just when she decides to call it all off, she feels her limbs drop away one by one and she starts to float.

Then Alicia is awake. Her head is bandaged tight. She can feel the gauze pressing against her temples but not against her eyes. It's unnerving.

Forty-eight hours in darkness before they let her unwrap the bandages.

She hears the nurse walk in, shoes clicking on the linoleum. Her breathing is rapid, almost panicked. A half-percent of all artificial optical transplants don't take to the optic nerve. Wind from the open window brushes cool on her cheek.

The bandages fall away.

The world comes into focus. White sheets, white walls, the nurse with hands folded and concern on her face. How is it? Tell me what you see? She tries to find words but it's hard. Everything is sharper. Out the window there is a distant highway, and she can see a woman in a car pouting at the rear-view mirror, applying lipstick. She holds a hand up to her face and feels the iris shudder and refocus. Furrows and hills and valleys set with deep shadows, her life-line winding away. A childhood scar long forgotten now a garish white slash across the palm. Is this how everyone sees?

The nurse hands her a mirror, and she reaches up to touch the black aluminium. It is bitingly cold. Her eyes twitch and zoom like camera shutters. She chose a baby-blue iris from a catalogue, to match her organics. She asked for them to twinkle. They are just as she requested.

She tries to cry, but they excised her tear-ducts.

* * *

This must be his hundredth switch. The first time it was awkward. The girl asked for her originals back at the end of the night, and he felt dirty when recalled the memories he'd peered into. Now it's routine. He once spent a day in a back-alley club where everyone lay down in a row and yanked their eyes on the half-hour mark, passing them to the right. He experienced twenty different lives before dinner. He saw a hand that was not his strike a crying boy across his face. He saw the worlds last komodo dragon shot and sliced into steak. He saw a woman standing with her grandmother at the edge of a canyon, and together they opened an urn and let the winds take the ashes within.

At the end he felt cleansed and yet empty, and unable to tell where his own memories began or ended. And so he went in search of more.

Some days, it's hard to remember the faces of his parents. Did his father have blonde hair, or red? Whose Dad is that, invading his memories, muscling his own father out of the frame?

He sets his eyes down and picks up the new pair, and slots them into place by feel. They are cold, terribly cold, ice-water in his skull. Contact points connect with a static crackle that sends little shocks through the meat of his brain. His left foot twitches involuntarily. He waits for the moment to pass, lying there in the nothing. The release rods slip into place, much easier in than out. A buzzing in his teeth as the eyes reboot.

And the rush, the sweep of energy from head to toe, the light, twin supernovas blanketed by lines of code. He stiffens and digs his fingers into the carpet like claws. His toes curl up. There is so much there, so many years just behind the cusp. He's almost there now. Almost over the lip. It swells...

And then he sees.

Oh, the things he sees.

* * *

Suitcases click shut. The artificial dawn of the bucky-domes is fading, replaced by the distant bloom of smog igniting with the rising sun. They pull down their hats and adjust their lapels. A taxi is already pulling up.

These days, business