If he did start nodding, he thought he’d just go on sitting there in the snack bar, looking out at what he and Kelly had accomplished. He felt proud of what they’d done. Maybe others would think differently when they found all the bodies, but they hadn’t been here. They hadn’t lived through it. He watched as plumes of exhaust drifted up from the front row.
“Another sellout,” Dad chuckled. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for a Locus Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Compton Crook Award. His latest novel is Defenders (May, 2014; Orbit Books), an alien apocalypse novel with a twist. It has been optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film. Along with four novels, he has published dozens of short stories in venues such as Lightspeed, Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Reader’s Award), and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. Will was a psychology professor for two decades before turning to writing full-time. He lives in Williamsburg with his wife and their five year-old twins.
Megan Arkenberg — HOUSES WITHOUT AIR
The First Match
Six weeks before the end of the world, a new bar opens on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. The proprietors are a middle-aged West Coast couple, evacuees from Seattle or Portland, Beth can’t remember which. The bar is on the first floor of the building where Beth’s favorite bookstore used to be, but the familiar smells are gone—dust, vegetable glue, and old, acidic paper, all drawn out by the pair of sleek Blueair filters that add their silvery humming to the murmur of the television and the small Wednesday night crowd.
The hanging colored-glass lamps have disappeared, too, replaced by fluorescents; the light from the tall street-facing windows is unreliable now, dirty, gritty and dry. At least the restroom graffiti is unchanged. The back door of the middle stall in the women’s room still says “No danger shall balk Columbia’s lovers,” an obscure scrap of Whitman in dark purple Sharpie.
Wednesday nights have been Immerse team nights for the last four years. They used to walk the five blocks from the University to a small Thai place near the river, but with the ash and acid of the ongoing eruptions in the air, a five block walk has become unendurable, even with carbon masks. Beth proposed a migration to the new Georgetown place, which is right on the bus route that she, Aidan, and Lena take to work every morning. Even so, after the first two weeks, she and Aiden are the only Wednesday regulars. Immerse is still running—one of the few projects anywhere that is—but the team is drifting apart. Spending more time with their families, as the official line goes, even though none of the contracts have been officially terminated. It looks like everyone’s losing enthusiasm for immersive alternate reality. Everyone except for Beth, who has no family to speak of—and Aiden, who is borderline delusional.
“Give it to me, Beth. The honest assessment.” Aiden’s brown eyes are lit up like gin under a black light. He’s two drinks in, which, considering the strength of this place’s rum-and-colas, is closer to four. The most recent DOI press release sets the remaining atmospheric oxygen levels at six weeks, maximum, and Aiden McCallum is the only man in the world to whom that could possibly be good news. “They’ll have to increase our funding now, right?”
“Jesus, Aiden, give it up.” Beth has been willing to play along for the last few weeks—Wednesday nights would get damn lonely, otherwise—but even she has a limit. “You can’t upload yourself into a damn computer. We’re talking decades of development, centuries even. You can’t just throw money at Immerse to turn it into a functional alternate whatever.”
The last word comes out more harshly than she intends, waffling over the word dimension, which sounds too science-fictional. Beth rubs the bridge of her nose as though she can massage away the soreness. Nose, throat, lungs, everything aches these days.
Her phone beeps from deep in her purse before Aidan can say something stupid. It’s a text from Farah: Where do you keep the baking sheets?
Cabinet to the right of the fridge. Beth hits send too quickly, curses under her breath. Wait, why?
“Is that crazy woman still living with you?” Aidan asks. It looks like he’s letting go of Immerse for the moment, which is probably for the best—but as far as Beth’s concerned, Farah Karimi is hardly a safer subject.
“She’s fine.” Beth forces herself to smile. “Going batshit with cabin fever, but then, who isn’t?”
Aiden shakes his head and stands up to get another drink, almost knocking over his bar stool. Another text from Farah shimmers on the small screen.
Do you have sand anywhere?
WTF are you doing?
Work. A second later: Is the sugar still in the cabinet over the microwave?
Yes.
Can’t reach. Where R U?
Now Aiden is deep in conversation with the bartender, gesturing at the television that hangs above the shelves of neon-colored bottles. It’s a basketball game, but the DOI announcement is scrolling along the bottom of the screen on a blue banner. The world has a use-by date now, just like a gallon of milk, just as arbitrary, just as inevitable.
Beth looks down at her phone. Farah again: I need sand or sugar. Also aquariums. Plural. Where’s the nearest fish supply shop?
On my way.
The Second Match
Immerse is long past the data-gathering stage, but Beth still catches herself in the habit of collecting sensations, of watching the fluorescent light play across the raised numbers on her credit card, of running her hand along the smooth-sanded barn boards of the bar’s countertop, picturing the precise regions of her brain that would light up in a scan as she alters the pressure of her fingertips. After years of this, she knows the patterns of wood from laminate from drywall, granite from sandstone, leather from writing paper. The sound of her heels on the bar’s tile doorstep compared to the sound of Farah’s rubber-soled crutches in their apartment’s tile stairwell. Some senses are impossible to program. Colors, for example—but she’s used to dreaming in black and white, and so is everyone else, if they’re honest. Smells are also difficult. Beth can hardly remember a smell—even inside Immerse—that isn’t smog and sulfur dioxide, the half-electric scent of a struck match.
She fits her carbon mask over her nose and mouth and strides quickly across the street to the enclosed bus stop. In the June twilight, the air is actually visible—shimmering, tangibly thick, settling between the restaurants, bakeries, furniture stores, and boutiques like a black-gray mist. The bus stop’s air filter sounds like it’s gasping for breath. Soon scrubbing out the pollution won’t do any good; there won’t be enough oxygen left in the air to make it breathable.