Existence is Elsewhen Read online

  Twenty stories from twenty great writers

  The title Existence is Elsewhen paraphrases the last sentence of André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, perfectly summing up the intent behind this anthology of stories from a wonderful collection of authors. Different worlds... different times. It’s what Elsewhen Press has been about since we launched our first title in 2011.

  Here, we present twenty science fiction stories for you to enjoy. We are delighted that headlining this collection is the fantastic John Gribbin, with a worrying vision of medical research in the near future. Future global healthcare is the theme of J A Christy’s story; while the ultimate in spare part surgery is where Dave Weaver takes us. Edwin Hayward’s search for a renewable protein source turns out to be digital; and Tanya Reimer’s story with characters we think we know gives us pause for thought about another food we take for granted. Evolution is examined too, with Andy McKell’s chilling tale of what states could become if genetics are used to drive policy. Similarly, Robin Moran’s story explores the societal impact of an undesirable evolutionary trend; while Douglas Thompson provides a truly surreal warning of an impending disaster that will reverse evolution, with dire consequences.

  On a lighter note, we have satire from Steve Harrison discovering who really owns the Earth (and why); and Ira Nayman, who uses the surreal alternative realities of his Transdimensional Authority series as the setting for a detective story mash-up of Agatha Christie and Dashiel Hammett. Pursuing the crime-solving theme, Peter Wolfe explores life, and death, on a space station; while Stefan Jackson follows a police investigation into some bizarre cold-blooded murders in a cyberpunk future. Going into the past, albeit an 1831 set in the alternate Britain of his Royal Sorceress series, Christopher Nuttall reports on an investigation into a girl with strange powers.

  Strange powers in the present-day is the theme for Tej Turner, who tells a poignant tale of how extra-sensory perception makes it easier for a husband to bear his dying wife’s last few days. Difficult decisions are the theme of Chloe Skye’s heart-rending story exploring personal sacrifice. Relationships aren’t always so close, as Susan Oke’s tale demonstrates, when sibling rivalry is taken to the limit. Relationships are the backdrop to Peter R. Ellis’s story where a spectacular mid-winter event on a newly- colonised distant planet involves a Madonna and Child. Coming right back to Earth and in what feels like an almost imminent future, Siobhan McVeigh tells a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of using technology to deflect the blame for their actions. Building on the remarkable setting of Pera from her LiGa series, and developing Pera’s legendary Book of Shadow, Sanem Ozdural spins the creation myth of the first light tree in a lyrical and poetic song. Also exploring language, the master of fantastika and absurdism, Rhys Hughes, extrapolates the way in which language changes over time, with an entertaining result.

  Previously from Elsewhen Press

  [RE]AWAKENINGS

  AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW SPECULATIVE FICTION

  Existence

  is Elsewhen

  John Gribbin

  Rhys Hughes

  Christopher Nuttall

  Douglas Thompson

  J.A. Christy

  Peter R. Ellis

  Steve Harrison

  Edwin Hayward

  Stefan Jackson

  Andy McKell

  Siobhan McVeigh

  Robin Moran

  Ira Nayman

  Susan Oke

  Sanem Ozdural

  Tanya Reimer

  Chloe Skye

  Tej Turner

  Dave Weaver

  Peter Wolfe

  Elsewhen Press

  Existence is Elsewhen

  First published in Great Britain by Elsewhen Press, 2016

  An imprint of Alnpete Limited

  Copyrights

  Inside and Out™ V.5 © J.A. Christy 2016; In the bleak Long Winter © Peter R. Ellis 2016; Something to Beef about © John Gribbin 2016 (a revised version of a story that first appeared in Interzone #49, July 1991); Earthsale © Steve Harrison 2016; Ambrosia © Edwin Hayward 2016; Jekking the Oofers © Rhys Hughes 2016; Luceria © Stefan Jackson 2016; Homo Sapiens Inferior © Andy McKell 2016; Face the Music © Siobhan McVeigh 2016; Degeneration © Robin Moran 2016; The Writer Did It! © Ira Nayman 2016; The girl in Black © Christopher Nuttall 2016; Hide and Hunt © Susan Oke 2016; The Song of the Sky © Sanem Ozdural 2016; Forbidden Fruit © Tanya Reimer 2016; Precipitation © Chloe Skye 2016; Bird Brains © Douglas Thompson 2016; The Last Days © Tej Turner 2016; The Copy © Dave Weaver 2016; Murder in M-23 © Peter Wolfe 2016. All rights reserved

  The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, telepathic, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Elsewhen Press, PO Box 757, Dartford, Kent DA2 7TQ

  www.elsewhen.co.uk

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-908168-85-6 Print edition

  ISBN 978-1-908168-95-5 eBook edition

  Condition of Sale

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  Elsewhen Press & Planet-Clock Design are trademarks of Alnpete Limited

  Converted to eBook format by Elsewhen Press

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, worlds, universes and timeframes are either a product of the authors’ fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual planes of existence, places, people (living, dead, cybernetic or choofies) is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Inside and OutTM V.5 – From Here to ETERNITY

  J.A. Christy

  In the bleak Long Winter

  Peter R. Ellis

  Something to beef about

  John Gribbin

  Earthsale

  Steve Harrison

  Ambrosia

  Edwin Hayward

  Jekking the Oofers

  Rhys Hughes

  Luceria

  Stefan Jackson

  Homo Sapiens Inferior

  Andy McKell

  Face the Music

  Siobhan McVeigh

  Degeneration

  Robin Moran

  The Writer Did It!

  Ira Nayman

  The Girl in Black

  Christopher Nuttall

  Hide and Hunt

  Susan Oke

  The Song of the Sky

  Sanem Ozdural

  Forbidden Fruit

  Tanya Reimer

  Precipitation

  Chloe Skye

  Bird Brains

  Douglas Thompson

  The Last Days

  Tej Turner

  The Copy

  Dave Weaver

  Murder in M-23

  Peter Wolfe

  Inside and OutTM V.5

  – From Here to ETERNITY

  by

  J.A. Christy

  J.A. Christy’s writing career began in infant school at the age of seven when she won best poetry prize with her poem ‘Winter’. Since then she has been writing short stories and has had several published in magazines and anthologies.

&nbs
p; J.A. Christy holds a PhD in which she explores the stories we use in everyday life to construct our identities. She is a Chartered Psychologist and Scientist and writes to apply her knowledge to cross the boundaries between science and art, in particular in the crime, speculative and science-fiction genres.

  She lives in Oldham with her partner and their dog.

  Part 1

  The Farraday Institute, New York,

  28th September 2095

  I pull up the blind and the sunshine streams through the window. I can feel Tendo’s eyes burning into my back, silently pleading for answers.

  “So…?”

  I turn to face him.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t abandon the conference. It’s too important.”

  Tendo shakes his head.

  “But your wife? Your child?” There’s a pause. Then he nods. “Version 5. You’re unveiling Version 5, aren’t you?”

  I stare at him.

  “Yes. I am. I’m sorry, Tendo, but I can’t understand what your problem is with Version 5. It’s temporary, and Version 6 will be on standby to implement in case anything goes wrong.”

  Tendo snorts.

  “Wrong. Now there’s a concept. But I don’t suppose it matters what I say. I’d better go and attend to what, it turns out, is a very special event. More special than any of us knew, but still not important enough for you to be there.”

  The anger builds and eventually I lose it.

  “They’ll be fine. The baby’s Level 1. Green. Julia is Red, but that’s only to be expected in her condition. But she was fine this morning. So what can go wrong? I didn’t plan it this way, but I don’t need to be there. They don’t need me, Tendo; Julia will be fine. And if you’re so concerned, why don’t you go right now? I’ve been waiting for this conference all my life, and I can’t just abandon it.”

  It’s true. I’m Angus Farraday, the founder of Inside and Out™, a healthcare system that has changed the vista of life. Today, on the 200th anniversary of the death of Louis Pasteur, I’m about to launch Inside and Out™ Version Five, at the World Medicine Congress. In just over one hour, medical experts from all over the world will meet virtually to witness the launch of a bigger and better version of the system that has streamlined health. I was just in the process of rehearsing my speech when Tendo, my wife’s Fountain Keeper, told me that she is about to give birth.

  Tendo still looms large on the wall monitor behind me. I silently damn Ray Bradbury for his communication prophesy, that we would have life-sized versions of people on screens that fill a whole wall. I would never have guessed a hundred years ago that I would be able to pull up a chair to a virtual conference table in Tobago and feel like I was there. But I’m grateful because, despite what we have achieved in the Inside and Out™ program, I still privately think there’s nothing like face to face communication. Of course, the visual social cues of yesteryear, like eye movement and skin blush, have been overtaken by Inside and Out™’s ‘Vital Signs’ service, where, as well as the overall health level, the heartbeat, perspiration rate and blood pressure are shown on the screens of all the participants. Very convenient. And often very telling. Despite the race to develop ways to mask these Vitals, no one has yet been able to disguise the sudden changes that come with stress and disapproval.

  “Look, Tendo, tell Julia I will be with her as soon as possible. The conference will only last a few hours, how long do you expect the process to last?”

  Tendo frowns. He’s more difficult to read, but his expression tells me everything I need to know.

  “The process? She’s your wife, and your child is about to be born. You might have controlled everyone’s health until they are practically cyborg, but you haven’t managed to control that yet, have you? You know, life? The actual process of living, that elusive spark? Get over here as soon as you can, and I’ll keep a split screen ready just in case you can’t make it.”

  The screen fades to a pulsing green with an amber tint around the outside and I notice my own Vitals are quite high. Unusual. I’d been to the Fountain just this morning. Tendo’s words hurt, because I really have tried to get the birthing process under control. When I started the Inside and Out™ program, over fifty years ago, I naturally assumed that every human being would welcome the ability to automatically take care of their own body. When we introduced the Fountains we were certain that the whole population would simply roll up and use them.

  We’d all worked hard to provide a Fountain in every neighborhood in Inside and Out™ V.1. The Fountain principle is that we provide preventative measures for the malconditions for which we already have vaccinations and treatments for those we don’t. At the beginning of the project we screened every person with a program called Initial Diagnosis, or ID, and placed a tiny microchip in their wrist. All babies born after V.1 was introduced automatically have a chip inserted. Three levels of health were introduced with corresponding Fountain requirements:

  Level 1 – Green – Fountain walk-throughs for those with excellent health to minor ailments

  Level 2 – Amber – People who do not respond to Fountain walk-throughs must undergo SIA treatments – Specific Investigation Actions

  Level 3 – Red – Those people who are terminally ill or pregnant are allocated a separate Fountain and Fountain Keeper within SIA

  By V.2 we had realized that there were some people who were resisting the chip, and would not be assessed or attend the Fountain. My staff couldn’t understand it, as the Fountains were so conveniently placed, in railway stations, on the metro. It was and still is a step-in, step-out process. We have improved the cubicles since then, but overall the process is the same.

  Every morning you step into the Fountain and place your thumb onto a pad, which extracts a tiny piece of tissue and a drop of blood. This is analyzed and, as this takes place, an eye level screen monitors vitals and produces a visual. Green, amber, red. If any malconditions are detected, then a Fountain Treatment is given direct from the thumbpad. A record is kept of health levels and, should green turn to amber, the person reports to SIA for further investigation.

  SIA was the easy part of Inside and Out™. When the uses of the program became clear, all the major pharmaceutical companies joined together to form the World Medicine Congress, or WMC. All Healthchips are manufactured by WMC and all the data collected in the Fountains are managed by them. The SIA department operates in order to investigate conditions that do not respond to Fountain walk-throughs and to rationalize them and manufacture an adequate treatment. While this seems simple enough and very efficient, this was the part that we had most difficulty with and had to resort to extreme measures to implement and stabilize.

  The main problem was that even though V.1 was marketed across both virtual and street level platforms, it wasn’t user friendly enough. In order for the program to be successful, 98.9% of the population needed to take part. In the test areas we had 99.9% success, when it was rolled out nationally we found that some people actually preferred the old system of waiting for an appointment to visit a doctor, citing the face to face comfort of a consultation, even though many of the doctors gave wrong diagnoses, compared with the 99.9% correct diagnosis rate of the Fountains. We tried implementing a virtual face on the Fountain screen, but this did not work so we reverted to the color graphics. By this time the pharmaceuticals had committed to WMC and were pooling all their knowledge. In order to keep them onboard, we introduced two implementation tools.

  The first was the Life Credit. The Fountains were monitoring all aspects of physiology. If it occurred in the human body, the Fountain could analyze it. To make the Fountains appear more user friendly we introduced the ‘Me Test’, a survey that asked the user questions about their psychological health. As the sample size increased, WMC were able to compare the biological state and the psychological state and note the organic deficiencies that occurred in low mood, sadness and depression compared with happiness and contentment. This, it turned out, was not on the level purely
of serotonin, but in a complex cocktail of neurotransmitters which, once discovered, was tested at SIA and subsequently made available in the Fountains to those who gained Life Credits. Obtaining a life credit is simple: Attend to have a Healthchip installed and attend a Fountain every day.

  The second was a little more controversial and more difficult to convince the authorities that it was ethical, but they agreed in the end that it was for the greater good. Here at Inside and Out™ we pride ourselves on integrity and honesty, but unfortunately we concealed the initial uptake figures from WMC. Some would, and later, did, say that this was fraudulent, and was used as a lever for the second implementation tool. As founder of Inside and Out™, I have always held the view that the program was voluntary and in no way impedes human rights and choice. But when we realized that the demographic for the non-uptake of the Fountains were the poorer communities, we had to act fast. Genetic modification of food became popular mid 20th century and gathered pace in the early 21st century as climate change meant that crops were failing and people were starving. World leaders agreed publicly to the provision of genetically modified food and faced little opposition as the process was entirely transparent.

  However, some foods flourished in the warmer, wetter climate, and people still had the choice to choose these foods if they wished, claiming that this was a basic human right. In 2050 Inside and Out™ in conjunction with the WMC offered free fruit and vegetables to poorer communities. These crops were loaded with the daily Fountain treatments and a radioactive trace that could be identified in the Fountain test, similar to the microscopic chip that many people had volunteered to have in their wrists. The rogue ‘doctors’ who still frequented these poorer communities were struck off the WMC register and Fountains were installed on every street corner. After six months the food provision was ceased and people suffered withdrawal symptoms. Fearing there was a serious epidemic, they consulted WMC and were directed to the Fountains, where their healthcare was resumed.