The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

First time I saw that photograph I couldn’t take it, I thought that’s not me, that’s not the Brewster, who is that old, double-chinned geezer? Now, I look at it and I’ve got most of my hair and it’s black, and think how young I look.

And I read my record, and it tells the story of a middle manager who got a couple of promotions. It doesn’t say I came up with loop recognition iterations. It doesn’t say I was the first guy to use quantum computers on security work. It doesn’t say I was the guy who first told the CE about ISO 20203 and that getting registered to that standard got us Singapore and Korea and finally China.

What it does have is my retirement date. And then it says down at the bottom. “Left without visible security compromises. No distinguishing features.”

No fucking distinguishing features. What was I expecting, a thank you? A corporation that tried to credit its employees? I guess I was expecting that since I did some pretty extraordinary stuff for them, big stuff, stuff that got a whole congress of my peers on their feet and applauding, I guess I somehow thought I’d made some kind of mark. But they don’t want you to make a mark. They want that mark for themselves. But they don’t get it either.

We just all go down into the dark.

And I feel the fear start up.

Oh you can blank out the fear. You can turn and walk away from it. Or you can let it paralyse you. The one thing you can’t do is what you would do with any other fear. You can’t just turn and walk right at it. It won’t go away. Because this fear is the fear of something that can only be accepted.

The only thing you can do with death is accept it, and if you do that at our age, it’s too close to dying. You accept it, and it can come for you.

You get something like angry instead. You do what you do when you’re trapped. You writhe.

I can’t stay still. I go lolloping and limping like I’m stoned and drunk at the same time, because my room is like a coffin and the dark is like my eyes will never open. I go off down the corridor hobbling and jerking like some kind of goddamn puppet that something else is making move. I’m slamming my ribs against the wall and I don’t care.

And then I see a light under Mandy’s door. I don’t have my shirt on, but what the fuck. I’m scared. And I can’t afford to let myself stay scared. I knock on her door.

“Kinda early for socialising,” she says. She checks out my sagging pecs. “Are you inviting me for a swim?”

She still has her make up on, she looks sussed, she looks great, she looks like it’s a big bright beautiful Saturday.

For me, everything starts to fall back down into normal. “I… I just need to talk. Do you mind?”

“Not much. I hate nights as well.” She walks off and leaves her door open.

Her room smells of perfume. On the bed there are about eight stuffed toys… puppy dogs, turtles. On the shelf there is a huge lavender teddy bear, still wrapped in cellophane with a giant purple bow.

“I got nothing,” she says, and flings her fake fingernails at the TV screen. For a second I think she means nothing in her life. Then I get it: she’s been hacking. On the screen are eight old faces and the photo of the guy who mugged my granddaughter.

I take a chair, and I start to feel strong again. “Me neither,” I say, meaning I got nothing out of SecureIT. “I’m… uh… kinda surprised that you’re doing this so openly.”

“Are you kidding? We’re doing our bit to catch Silhouette. I want any brownie points that are going.”

That TV is pointed straight at the surveillance. I gotta smile.

“You’re smart,” I say.

“Oh wow, really? Like I didn’t know that without you telling me.” She looks at me like I’m bumwipe.

I like her. “So has anybody else said you’re smart recently?”

She nods. She accepts. “Most people don’t give a fuck what you are so long as you can pay.”

“You got any family?” I lean forward, into the conversation. I want to hear.

“No,” she says, just with her lips, no sound. She breathes out through her nose. “I got property instead.”

“For real.” I understand. I flick my eyebrows. It’s like: so why do you have to hack, then? . She gets it. She answers the question without having to hear it. “Keeps the brain in gear,” she says. “Beats talking to teddy bears.”

“At least you got one smart person to talk to.”

“Who?” She turns around and she’s dripping scorn, expecting some egotistical guy kind of remark.

I lean forward again. “You.”

“Oh.” She looks down and finally smiles. “Yeah, OK, I’m smart. Thanks. You want a whisky while you’re sitting there?”

“That’d be great.”

“Just a few more months in Neurobics and a six month course of PDA will replace the neurons you’re destroying.”

And I say, “Maybe I’ll die first.” It’s not such a joke.

She turns with the glass. “I hope not. Here.”