Fantastic Stories of the Imagination (with linked TOC)

By Warren Lapine, Trent Zelazny, Harlan Ellison and 13 more

Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominated editor Warren Lapine celebrates twenty years in genre publishing with his latest effort, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. This anthology contains fourteen nicely varied stories by some of the top names in genre publishing and several new up-and-comers. Included are Harlan Ellison, Mike Resnick, Barry B. Longyear, Kelly McCullough, Shariann Lewitt, Tom Piccirilli, Trent Zelazny, Sharon Lee, Steve Miller, and many others. The stories range from edgy cyberpunk to urban fantasy, and they'll stay with you long after you've closed the book. Explore what it means to be human and experience the depth of despair and heights of joy that come along it. These stories do not disappoint.-SF Scope

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781617208133

Book preview

Introduction

by Warren Lapine

It’s been five years since the last project I was the fiction editor of, Absolute Magnitude, saw print. A lot has changed since then. E-books have risen in prominence, e-mail submissions have become the norm rather than the exception, and genre magazines have experienced staggering losses in circulation. Back in 2009, after a four-year hiatus from genre publishing, I decided to return to magazine publishing. I contacted Harlan Ellison to see if he’d write a story for me so that when I made my announcement I could include the info that I had a new story from him. He readily agreed and sent me How Interesting: A Tiny Man, which I accepted immediately.

Then the universe threw me a curve ball. The top magazine in the science fiction/fantasy field, Realms of Fantasy, announced it would be closing. I know a thing or two about buying magazines on their last leg and turning them around, so I called the publisher, Sovereign Media, to see if they’d be interested in selling the magazine to me. I didn’t hold out much hope as I’d actually tried to buy Science Fiction Age from them back in 2000. At the time, they told me it wasn’t worth the effort to sell a defunct magazine. But they surprised me by being quite anxious to sell Realms. I looked over the financials and decided I could make a go of it.

So now I owned the top fantasy magazine in the field and I had a paid-for Harlan Ellison story. After looking over several issues of Realms and being impressed with the contents I decided to keep the editorial staff, which included longtime editor Shawna McCarthy. If there’s one thing I believe as a publisher, it’s that you never force an editor to run anything they’re not comfortable with. So I called Harlan, told him that I had purchased Realms of Fantasy, and that I would not be going forward with Fantastic Stories. We discussed what to do with the now-orphaned story. I suggested we could send it to Shawna and see if she thought it would fit in Realms, and if not then Harlan could keep the payment as a kill fee. Shawna did indeed accept the story for Realms of Fantasy; it appeared in the February 2010 issue, and went on to win a Nebula.

As it turned out the magazine industry had changed so much that I simply was not able to turn Realms of Fantasy around. I poured close to $100,000 into it, yet the circulation just kept declining. So after nine issues I announced the closure of the magazine and then sold it. The magazine had brought me back into the genre community, but it had done nothing to scratch the editorial itch that had caused me to want to return to magazines. It did, however, convince me that I wanted no part of trying to publish a magazine under the current market conditions; but I still had the urge to edit short fiction. To that end I announced Fantastic Stories as an anthology. I contacted Harlan to see if he’d be interested in selling me reprint rights to How Interesting: A Tiny Man, as I’d actually been the first editor to purchase the story. And as you can tell from the table of contents he said yes.

I’m extremely proud of the work I did with Absolute Magnitude and the award nominations were cool. That said, Absolute Magnitude had such a narrow focus that it could sometimes be very frustrating to edit. Right out of the gate I’d had to pass on stories by two of my favorite authors Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison. The Zelazny story, Coming to a Cord, had been set in my favorite literary universe, Amber; and the Ellison story Chatting with Anubis went on to win a Stoker Award. They were both top notch stories that just didn’t fit with the hard science fiction theme of the magazine. There were scores of other stories that I passed on not because I didn’t think the stories were well worth publishing, but because they didn’t fit the magazine.

I remember telling many name writers that I loved their stuff, but that it just wasn’t right for Absmag. I don’t think most of them believed me, but two of those writers are in this anthology. When I opened for submissions I’d expected Fantastic to essentially be Absolute Magnitude with a slightly broader subject matter. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Ultimately Fantastic Stories doesn’t read anything like Absolute Magnitude. Really only three or four of the stories here could have been accepted for Absolute Magnitude. It was a hell of a lot of fun watching as the anthology dictated the unexpected editorial terms to me.

Steampunk was just starting to come into vogue when I closed Absolute Magnitude’s doors. I must confess that I never really got it and that I don’t particularly care for it as a sub-genre of fantasy. I know that some people consider it a sub-genre of science fiction, but I think of any story that requires science that isn’t real to work as a fantasy story. Of course, my classification of it as fantasy didn’t preclude my purchasing it for this anthology, and while I expected to see a lot of it I didn’t expect to buy any of it because it just doesn’t do anything for me.

I should also mention that I don’t like stories in the present tense or stories that deal with religion. But over the years I’ve discovered that a good writer can still get stories past my prejudices. Really it’s all about the story. If I care about the characters and I’m pleased by where the plot takes me, I’ll buy it, period. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I purchased not just one but three steampunk stories.

It should be interesting to see how submissions change once writers see what I purchased for this anthology. Over the years I’ve found that a number of writers do a very good job of targeting editors. I remember routinely thinking as I read the slush, oh this one was written for Stan, or this one was written for Gordon, etc. So hopefully I’ll be thinking this one was written for me next time out.

I’d be remiss not to mention that this anthology is in part a celebration of sorts. I plan to release it on what will be my twentieth anniversary in the publishing field. It’s been a wild ride with a lot of highs and lows. Some of the highs were amazing and some of the lows were lower than anything I could have expected. But through it all, publishing has given me an extraordinary life that a working-class kid from a small working-class town had no right to expect. So to all of you who have been part of my publishing life in one way or another for the last twenty years, thank you so much, and here’s to twenty more.

Interface Pattern

by Kelly McCullough

The beverage was coffee, not java, not cappuccino, just coffee. My only companion was my avatar, Harvey. Projected by my temporarily grounded auton, Harvey provided the illusion of companionship. He was raising one furry white paw.

Yes, Harvey? I subvocalized.

Incoming call, came the reply through my cochlear implant. Devon from tech-branch.

Put him through.

An instant later the lasers in the auton beamed a new image onto my retina and Devon Emory appeared across the table.

What do you want, Devon? I’m on vacation.

I know that, Becker, but we’ve got something that really needs your attention. The Director has authorized me to double your retainer.

That made me sit up. Congress is notably short-tempered about paying free-lancers. I’m not cheap, and the FBI’s tech-branch answers to an oversight committee on finance. I didn’t really need the money just then, but anything big enough to uncork the cashflow barrel like that was guaranteed to be a challenge, and I was getting bored with downtime.

Why the sudden generosity? I asked. I was still suspicious. Politics can open wallets too, and I wasn’t interested in playing white-knight hacker for some jerkoff senator.

Let me show you, I’ve got the upload here. He gestured vaguely.

Fair enough. I nodded to Harvey. The part of him that exists in the web backtracked the signal to Devon’s office and grabbed the data packet, bringing it back via my auton, or autonomous remote, to my IBM wearable.

The first POV takes about three minutes, said Devon. The second is shorter. I’ll wait.

I nodded and pointed at Harvey. The restaurant seemed to vanish as the world of the video filled my vision. The clip, taken by someone’s auton, showed an urban street. My POV, or point of view, was a pedestrian, on her morning commute. At first there was nothing to draw my attention, but then one of my fellow commuters turned and stepped carefully around a pedestrian barrier, nodding politely to it as though excusing himself. My POV must have found that interesting, because she stopped to watch.

This little detour put the man on a closed rampway. Apparently oblivious, he walked up the ramp to a pedestrian bridge, one that was still under construction. At the end of the completed section, without ever changing stride, he stepped into space. The drop was only about five meters. It might not have killed him, but two seconds later a robot cargo trailer made that a moot point.

The second clip started with the same street scene. At first I figured it was taken by another witness. It wasn’t until my POV stepped sharply to one side to avoid running into a wheelchair that I realized I was now in the victim’s POV. I watched in morbid fascination, as he walked calmly up the ramp to the bridge which, to his eyes, was complete. At the point where the fall began, the scene didn’t change. His view, the view his auton was feeding him, went smoothly across and down the other side.

There was a tiny flicker of disorientation and I was sitting across from Devon again.

Pretty god-damn creepy, isn’t it? he said.

This came from the victim’s wearable? I asked. It survived the fall and the cargo robot?

Yes to both. I can send you an encrypted copy of the full contents. Assuming you take the job, of course.

Oh, I’m taking it. There was no question about that. I was hooked. You knew I would from the minute you saw that second clip.

Guilty. You see the implications?

Don’t insult me, Devon. After fifteen years as a darkside hacker and five hunting them, I know the Holy Grail when I see it. Somebody hacked the Realtime Operating System on the guy’s wearable. The question is, how? ROS has the best civilian security ever coded. I should know. I’d spent thousands of hours trying to crack ROS back in my days as a darksider. We all did.

That’s what we need to know ASAP. If this gets out, it’ll be the ugliest thing to hit the economy in a century. They’re holding a seat for you on the next suborbital to Minneapolis. Mike Oswald’s in charge there. So long for now.

So long, Devon. His image vanished from my world and I gave my auton a hard stare. The thirty-centimeter plastic dragonfly gazed blankly back with laser-lens eyes. The idea of a ROS hack was both damned scary and completely seductive. It would be like owning the keys to the whole world. I could only think of one thing that might be more satisfying than being the cracker who broke ROS. That was to be the hunter who bagged the cracker. And since I’d already missed out on the one...

Harvey, I murmured. I want everything on ROS, both mainstream lit and darkside billboards. Sort for coding, original, patched, hacked, and kludge. Give me the same for autons, and the ROS-auton interface. Weight it for technical and coding, condense it and weed out anything printed by general news rags. I’d like two hundred pages or less, see if that’s possible. Also, pay the waitress, standard tip.

I headed for the door. When I stood, my auton flew up to hover in front of me, keeping its lasers focused on my retinas. I ignored it as I glanced around. The London branch of Gibson’s Cyber-Cafe looked like all the other nostalgia houses. Big clunky desktop machines with helmet and glove attachments sat in glass cases beside other remnants of that era.

It was kind of funny: all the hullabaloo for a time that never was. The cyberspace prophets were smart enough, but they didn’t anticipate the pace of change. By the time the technology was there for true cyberspace it was already obsolete, overtaken by the complete integration of computer technology into everyday life. Cybereality had arrived. But, as always, people long for simpler times, and so the Cyber-Cafes thrived.

*

En route, I had time to scan most of the material Harvey’d collected. It fell into three basic categories: too vague, too speculative, and so what. On the other hand, it offered me the chance to review the basics of BRAIN, the underlying programming language for ROS. And even with Harvey acting as gatekeeper, I was going to have to eyeball a lot of BRAIN when I went over the victim’s wearable.

Tech-branch had taken over an empty office suite in a light industrial strip. Nice place, I said to Mike, as I pulled the ‘guest’ chair out from its place beside the desk. I shoved the ‘suspect’ chair, with its hard back and lumpy seat, into a corner.

It’ll get me in under budget, he replied. But why am I talking expense with the man who is single-handedly going to put this entire operation on the Oversight committee’s audit list?

I’m worth every penny, I replied, haughtily.

"Yeah, I believe that. We roomed together all through MIT, I had better grades, and a real job at graduation, and you’re the one who gets consultant’s rates. There ain’t no justice." He shook his head sadly, as if mourning this cosmic wrong.

Then, a smile flashed across his wide-mouthed face and he came around his desk to give me a hug. I couldn’t help grinning; with his straight brown hair in a regulation cut, and his athlete’s frame in a tailored wool suit he looked like an FBI recruiting poster. It was a big change from the shaggy, hollow-chested slacker I’d roomed with at MIT. Or, for that matter, from the green haired, leather clad, undercover agent who’d approached me six years earlier looking for an in to darkside culture.

Still going for the non-conformist look, I see, he said, looking me up and down.

But of course, I replied. I’m an individual,—

—you can tell by the uniform, Mike finished for me, and we both grinned.

In college, my mohawk, ear-piercings, and black clothes over pasty white skin had set me apart from about thirty percent of my fellow students. The rest could probably have claimed to be me at a family reunion. At thirty-three, I preferred collarless silk shirts and Saville Row suits, but they were still black.

Tell me about the murder, I said.

If you’ve seen the clips, you’ve seen everything. I’ve only been here two days myself. As soon as I found out what we were dealing with, I started pressuring the director to call you in. I know you haven’t done anything in the area for a couple of years, but you understand ROS better than anyone outside of WearSoft. And with the anti-trust suit, I can’t tap that pool without Oversight screaming conflict of interest.

Writing an open source ROS after college doesn’t make me an expert. BRAIN’s come an awfully long way in the last five years.

I want you as more than a BRAIN and ROS expert. I could get one of those a lot cheaper. What I need is the serious hacking experience, the A-1 security clearance, and the track record on tech-branch cases.

Point taken. But since you don’t have the case neatly wrapped up and ready so I can take all the credit, I’d better get to work. Crime scene first. Then I’ll need an office with no windows. I was glad to be working with Mike again. I owed him. If he hadn’t been willing to testify for me, I’d never have been able to cross back over into the lightside.

*

The murder site was anti-climactic. After the forensics boys had been through, the only remaining evidence was a purely electronic body outline. I did walk the victim’s final route in the flesh and have Harvey run a comparison between the real thing and the clip. The only difference was at the end, when I stopped and looked down instead of falling obliviously to my death. That gave me the shudders; imagining what it would feel like to have my inner ear screaming I was falling, while my auton-altered vision reassured me everything was fine.

What the hell would make someone do that to another person? asked Mike, looking over my shoulder into the abyss.

I didn’t answer because he was my friend. I wasn’t willing to lie, or to expose him to the dark places in my soul. I knew the answer. And I didn’t need elaborate psychological profiles to figure it out either. I might have walked in the light for the past five years, but I could still feel the call of the dark. Computers ruled the world now. And the ROS hacker had just demonstrated who ruled the computers. It wasn’t about killing. It was about being the best, being god. And there was a part of me that still wanted it. Wanted it badly. That was the real reason that I would give this case everything I had. Because if I could nail the bastard, it would prove that I was better still. And, since I worked for the forces of good, I’d even be doing it on the right side of morality.

The next couple of days were a caffeine-enhanced blur, spent slogging through a couple of terabytes of wearable storage looking for the place where our killer had hacked into the ROS. My office was small, dark, and packed with shiny new hardware. Combine that with a comfortable recliner and a coffee machine and you have my perfect workspace. I lived in that room, exiting only to go to the bathroom and wolf down take-out Vietnamese. I spent the time deep in ROS land.

I don’t really need the office. My wearable is as sexy a piece of hardware as you can get, and my auton has a custom input package. I can do full scale programming with nothing but sub-vocalizations, rapid eye movements, and the occasional small gesture. I can code almost as well walking down the street as I do tucked away in a dark room. But I spend a lot of time mumbling to myself, rolling my eyes around, and twitching my fingers. Witnesses have been known to call the police. That’s the real reason I don’t do windows. I give other people the screaming creepies. The isolated office is my little way of being kind to my fellow wet-ware.

I was happily ensconced in this womb, when the 3D data structure I’d embedded myself in suddenly vanished. It was replaced by Mike’s scowling visage. Apparently he’d been trying to get my attention for a while with no success, and had finally placed himself squarely between me and my auton. It was disorienting but effective; a trick he’d learned when we were roomies.

Time to come up for air, Scott. He sniffed disdainfully. I sure don’t miss that eau-de-coding-binge. Grab a shower and fresh clothes. We’ve got another victim.

*

Lisle Dahlquist, said Mike, opening a folder.

How? I asked.

Poisoning. She thought she was taking a dose of liquid cold remedy. What she actually got was a good big swallow of drain opener. Of course, that might not have killed her, if she’d been able to get her phone to work.

Sharp, I said, then hastily added, and nasty.

Damn straight. By the way, this one actually predates the other. It was filed as a suicide. We’d never have known about it if not for a Centers for Disease Control study.

You lost me, Mike.

Some folks over at CDC have been conducting a study on suicide. In the process, they’ve been going over the final recordings on a bunch of suicides’ autons, and some clever grad student noticed that Ms. Dahlquist’s view of her final moments didn’t match up with the coroner’s report. The student told her advisor, who called the police, and so on up the feeding chain to us.

That is not the sort of news I needed to hear. How many other ‘suicides’ do you suppose actually belong in our files?

I’m working on that. I put in a request for all suicide and accidental death files in the upper Midwest with accompanying auton clips. Lord knows how long it will take to get them all here, much less sort them. Even with some very serious AI search programs, that job’s gonna be a nightmare.

Aren’t you worried that a blanket request that big is going to attract some pointed questions?

Hell, yes. But what can I do? The worst thing is that there’s no way of knowing whether this will even net all of our fish. There’s no reason for our killer to confine himself to this geographic region. He could strike anywhere.

Don’t commit yourself to one gender, Mike. It’s sloppy.

The overwhelming majority of mass murderers are male. I see no reason to assume otherwise in this case.

So, you’re calling this a mass murder case? I asked. I didn’t think that the deaths were the heart of the matter. But I wasn’t about to tell Mike that, because then I would have to explain my reasoning.

Yes, said Mike. I am. We’ve only got two confirmed corpses, and we don’t even have a solid link between the two, but I’ve got a really ugly feeling about this. He shook his head worriedly. Which leads me to ask, are you getting anywhere?

Not yet, I admitted reluctantly. I was beginning to worry that whoever was responsible for the murders was better than I was. It pained me. I’ve been through the whole thing twice without finding any patches. I was just writing a line by line search engine when you showed up. I’ll put that on hold for a while if you can get me a copy of the Dahlquist drive. I’ll have Harvey do a cross comparison and find all the strings that the two share in common.

It’s already in your download queue.

On my way, I said, quickly rising. I was in a hurry to get back to my computer. To finish my hunt. To prove who was the better hacker.

Thanks, said Mike. I don’t think I have any leaks in my organization, but too many people know about this for it to stay under wraps for long. It sure would be nice if you had a handle on the problem before the news crews show up.

*

Over the next three days I made great strides in figuring out what our ROSkiller hadn’t done. It was important work, but frustrating. In that same time period, we identified five more suicides that weren’t. And, in a fit of massive paranoia, I wrote a whole new security algorithm and firewall for my wearable.

Four days later, I was completely immersed in a sea of data when my door popped open. Something about that penetrated my coding-dulled senses, and I flicked my eyes and mumbled a command to dissolve the data structures, before Mike could cut me off.

What’s up? I asked blearily.

Grab your coat and come on. You can hear about it as we go.

No time to clean up and make myself presentable for polite company?

Nope, replied Mike. There won’t be any polite company where we’re going, just me, the forensics team, and about a thousand reporters.

Mike waved away my questions as we took the stairs three at a time. I’m going to have to put a spin campaign together on the fly. You can run the clips in the car. I don’t suppose you’ve located the ROSkiller’s gateway in the two hours since I last asked?

No, but I can tell you in great detail how it isn’t done. Will that help?

Fat chance. With the news cycle as short as it is, my chances of explaining anything in great detail, especially bad news, are about the same as my odds of winning the Triple Crown with you as my jockey. This is going to be very nasty, and no matter how I handle it, Oversight will be howling for blood by morning.

Mike’s car picked us up at the door. A command to its robot-pilot got us moving. Mike’s avatar, a giant alien bug from the old Marathon game, took its place behind the wheel in a nod to the convention that a car needs a driver. I settled back into the seat and ran clips.

I had to agree with him about the fallout. No Oversight politician could resist this kind of an opportunity for grandstanding.

My initial POV was from a storefront window in the main atrium of the aging Mall of America. I was just down from the free-play area of the arcade. A young man stepped out of the arcade doorway. He was cradling a long-barreled pistol. At first I assumed, as I’m sure my POV did, that it was just a prop for one of the never-ending series of splatter games. What he was doing leaving the gaming area with the pistol out of its case, I didn’t know.

Abruptly, the twitch-gamer did a dive roll which put him behind a planter. Something was definitely wrong. The game shouldn’t have followed him into the world outside the arcade. His first bullet took an elderly mall-walker high in the shoulder. The man let out a shriek and went down, blood pumping. The next one hit a teenage girl. She dropped without a sound, unquestionably dead. About then my POV realized he was in the line of fire and hit the deck.

Immediately the clip switched to another POV. This one had a little 3D projection of the mall in the corner of her vision. The arcade area was flashing bright red with the word sniper beside it. A tinny alarm was ringing in her ear. I rode this security POV as she raced along a hallway. Ahead, I heard a shot. It was followed by another. I watched the girl crumple again from this new angle. There was a sharp crack and an angry buzz. The window next to me exploded. My POV tumbled as the guard dived for the floor. The gun hammered twice more as we crawled and scrambled forward. I could hear screams and crying.

There was another shot. Suddenly, I popped up. In my peripheral vision I saw my hand rise. It was holding a pistol with a laser-sight. There was a narrow but clear line from my POV to the sniper. The tiny red dot of my targeting laser touched his throat and I pulled the trigger.

My POV switched again. Now, I was looking at an attractive but excessively groomed blonde woman from about a meter away. Her tailored suit and lip-deep smile screamed reporter.

I’m Crystal Carlson on WSCBS and that was the scene just minutes ago at Mall of America, she said. That first clip was from Dale Schultz, manager of KB Toys. The second was security guard Maria Velazquez, hero of the hour, and former Marine Commando. It’s the next clip however, that’s really shocking.

Ms. Carlson vanished to be replaced by a scene of gothic horror. My POV was moving slowly down a hallway. The walls were rough stone and the floor was dirt. My eyes whipped back and forth, searching. A bolt of green plasma flashed in my peripheral vision. It hit some sort of invisible shield around me, causing a bright hemispherical glow. The bolt, only partially dissipated, glanced into a wall. Even as I started to spin, I saw a huge tiger-like alien step into the hall in front of me.

Checking to see where the first bolt had come from, I saw another alien. Crossfire! My view bobbed around as I looked for escape. A previously hidden passage opened to my left. I dived and rolled into it, coming to rest behind some sort of torture device. There was a subtle jerk in my perspective.

Seeing a clear shot at one of the tiger-things, I fired. It went down. Then I turned and nailed the other one. A rapid movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. Some kind of tiger-queen was running towards me. I fired at it, but missed. I fired again, but even as I did, it dove to the floor. A bat-winged creature came around a corner to my left. I shot it. The monsters were coming thick and fast now, but I got a couple more before a spray of red informed me I’d been hit. Cracks, like a windshield shattering, filled my vision. They formed themselves into fractured letters. GAME OVER.

The clip ended and I was back in the car. Tell me that wasn’t the sniper’s point of view, Mike. Though I knew that it must be.

No can do. That boy didn’t have a clue he wasn’t in a game.

I assume that WSCBS isn’t the only station carrying this. When did it happen? How did WSCBS get hold of it?

The guns are probably still warm. Every news station in the country is running with this. Crystal Carlson was the first to upload that clip. Everybody else picked it up from WSCBS. I’m not sure how she got it, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say someone in mall security just pocketed a clean half mil in cash. If I find that somebody, they’re going to be facing a whole pile of federal charges. He snorted. The funny thing is that I wouldn’t have known about this for at least another hour if I hadn’t been watching the news.

How did he come to have a real gun? I asked.

"At least that hasn’t hit the headlines yet. As soon as I saw this piece, I scrambled a couple of boys to reclaim the sniper’s wearable. Once we get our hands on that, I may be able to answer you. Until then, your guess is as good as mine."

When we arrived at the Mall, Mike and I split up. He waded into the sea of reporters while I slid around to get my hands on the hardware. I still didn’t know how the ROSkiller was working. This looked to be the most elaborate use yet of the ROS-hack and it might give me what I needed to catch up to my opponent. I wanted it badly. Once I had the wearable, I used my shiny FBI ID to convince a couple of uniforms to give me a ride. There was no point waiting for Mike. He’d be