Выбрать главу

She was surprised but not deterred. “I think you know it matters,” she said. “I think that’s why you’re so scared of it.”

*   *   *

They called it the Klein test now. It had been simplified and streamlined since we introduced the first crude Affinity home-test kits eight years ago. A headband sensor array, software to interpret eye movement and skin conductivity, a secure link to a New Socionome test site, and a few hours spent looking at generated images and answering apparently simple questions.

Plus, of course, the final and decisive keystroke, the one that entered your data into the global calculus.

In this case, my data. The suite of numbers that defined me. My one and only true name.

*   *   *

Weeks passed. Nothing happened.

I figured I must be unique, a totally insular human being, no useful social valency at all, nothing to contribute to the centuries-long project of making the world a better place.

Then I received the text message. A terse invitation. Date, place, time. The names of certain strangers.

“It takes real courage,” Geddy had warned me, “not to hit DELETE.”

*   *   *

So I found myself on a crowded sidewalk on an early summer evening, heading for an unfamiliar address.

The world was as shitty and imperfect as it had ever been, but lately I had been wondering if Geddy and Rebecca might be right: maybe there was something (as Rebecca had said in her blog) “a little Renaissancey” in the air. Some shared intuition, unspoken but felt, a verdict of the heart, a suspicion, too fragile to be called optimism, that the world was not old and exhausted but young and undiscovered. Something that passed between strangers in the twilight like a knowing smile.

A wind came up from the west, raising dust from the summer-hot street, and I turned a corner and saw the address I had been given. A small café, its windows spilling yellow light onto the pavement. And yes, I was afraid. But it felt good to be in motion, to be for that moment no one and nothing but myself, stepping through another door into the sound of human voices.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Science fiction is a genre that famously generates new words. Readers may have noticed the word “teleodynamics” in The Affinities and assumed it was another such science-fictional neologism. But I didn’t invent the term; I borrowed it from Terrence W. Deacon’s fascinating Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011). In Deacon’s book the word refers to the kinds of thermodynamic processes that are intrinsic to living things, and by extension to human consciousness. And while at one point Deacon hints that teleodynamics might eventually help us understand social interactions, he nowhere suggests anything even remotely similar to what I describe in The Affinities. In other words, I thank him for the loan of a useful word and a fascinating concept, and I apologize for extrapolating it far beyond anything he ever intended.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Charles Wilson was born in California and lives in Toronto. His novels include Mysterium, which won the Philip K. Dick Award; Darwinia, winner of the Aurora Award; The Chronoliths, winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award; Blind Lake, a New York Times Notable Book; and Spin, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel. You can sign up for email updates here.

    

BY ROBERT CHARLES WILSON

from Tom Doherty Associates

A Hidden Place

Darwinia

Bios

The Perseids and Other Stories

The Chronoliths

Blind Lake

Spin

Axis

Julian Comstock

Mysterium

Vortex

Burning Paradise

The Affinities

Thank you for buying this

Tom Doherty Associates ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

For email updates on the author, click here.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

I. A House on a Winter Night

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

II. A Theory of Everyone

Epigraphs

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

III. Tranche Warfare

Epigraphs

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

By Robert Charles Wilson from Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE AFFINITIES

Copyright © 2015 by Robert Charles Wilson

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Drive Communications, New York

Cover elements © 2015 Shutterstock

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7653-3262-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-0077-9 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466800779

First Edition: April 2015