The Starry Rift Part 41

* Record everything and broadcast live to your worldwide audience of millions.

* Repeat, with variations.

* Repeat.

* Repeat.

* Repeat.

* Repeat.

The ratings are great.

By the time I make it back to the East Bay, there is no longer any debate about whether I'm a bad influence on youth.

A consensus on that issue has pretty much been reached. The thing with Dolores is over. She gets enough of a bounce off our relations.h.i.+p to get a new job with the Fame Network as an interviewer and fas.h.i.+on reporter. When I last see her she is on her way to Mali.

After the suborbital lands in the Bay and taxis to sh.o.r.e, I walk to the terminal through a corridor lined with posters for KimmieWear. Her clothing line, now available worldwide. Even I never managed that.

I wonder if Kimmie has ripped out all the parts of me that had talent and taken them all for herself.

My dad takes me in and makes three pizzas. He doesn't reproach me for running off because, face it, my ratings are as good as they ever were. He talks about his new viral marketing campaign, which sounds just like the last forty years of his viral marketing campaigns.

I've got a whole new Demographic now. Hardly any of my old audience watches me anymore.

The new viewers are older. My dad wanted me to find a more mature audience, but I'm not sure he had in mind my present a.s.sembly of celebrity junkies, scandal watchers, s.a.d.i.s.ts, and comedians. The latter, by the way, have been mining my life for their routines.

Q: What's the good news about Dolores breaking up with Sanson?

A: She'll never accuse him of stealing the best years of her life.

Q: What's another good thing?

A: She'll never complain he was using her. She was using him.

Oh yeah, that's funny all right.

Dad offers ideas for growing my Demographic, like I need another legion of perverts in my life.

I get a good night's sleep. My current wardrobe of tropical wear is unsuitable for a Bay Area spring, and I can't stand the sight of any of my old clothes, so I go shopping for replacements. I buy the most anonymous-looking stuff available. Everywhere I go, there are holograms of Kimmie laughing and pirouetting in her Turkmen coats.

I remember that laugh, that pirouette, from the Style Days our pack used to have.

The day wears on. I'm bored. I call the members of the pack. It's been three months since I flew off with Dolores, and they've all drifted away. They're all in school, for one thing-the spring semester that I blew off.

I wonder whether, if I called a meeting, anyone would show up.

I leave messages with people who would once have taken my call no matter what they were doing. I talk briefly to Errol and Jeet, who promise to get together later. I call Lisa and am surprised when she answers.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "Want to come over?"

She hesitates. "I'm doing a project." I'm about to apologize for bothering her when she says, "Can you come here?"

I program my Scion for Lisa's address. As I drive over, I think about how Lisa's the only person I knew who didn't want something from me-attention, a piece of my fame, an audience, a boost in their ratings. Even my dad seems to want me around only to test his marketing theories.

I think about how she had danced so expertly in my arms. I think about how I hadn't kissed her because I'd thought the Demographic wouldn't approve.

I don't care what the current Demographic thinks at all. They're all creeps.

Lisa's sharing an apartment in Berkeley with a girlfriend, and when I come in she's sitting cross-legged in the front room, with different video capes around her, all showing different flow charts and graphs and strange, intricate foreign script.

"What's up?" I ask.

"Fifteenth-century Persian ma.n.u.scripts. I'm trying to work back from illumination styles to a vision of ma.n.u.script workshops."

"Ah."

I find a part of the floor that isn't being used yet, and sit.

"So," I say, "you were right."

"About what?" Lisa's frowning at one of her flow charts.

"About my audience watching only to see me fall apart."

She looks up. "I probably should have phrased that more tactfully."

I shrug. "I think you voiced the essence of the situation. You should see the kind of messages I get now."

Once I felt this whole swell of love from my audience. Now it's sarcasm and brutality. Invitations to drunken parties, offers of s.e.x or drugs, suggestions for ways I could injure myself.

"The thing is," she says, "it's a feedback loop you've got going with your audience. They reinforce everything you do."

Positive feedback loops, I remember from my cla.s.ses, are how addictive drugs work.

"You think I'll succeed in kicking the habit?" I ask.

Lisa's expression is serious. "Do you really want to become a real boy?"

I think about it.

"No," I say. "I don't. But I can't think of anything else to do. Where can I go in flashcasting once I've mastered the art of being a laughingstock?"

She doesn't have an answer for that, and goes back to her work. There is a long silence.

"Can I kiss you?" I ask.

"No," she says, without looking up.

"Does that mean No, or does that mean Not Yet?"

She looks up and frowns. "I'm not sure."

"Tell me about your work," I say.

So I learn all about the hermeneutics of Persian ma.n.u.scripts. It's interesting, and I love the intricate, complex Arabic calligraphy, whole words and phrases worked into a single labyrinthine design. There are charming little ill.u.s.trations, too, of people hunting or fighting or being in love with each other.

Lisa offers me a gla.s.s of tea. We talk about other subjects till it's time for me to go.

I think about those Persian designs all the way home. I think about how you could base a whole style on it. I can see the clothes in my head. I wonder what kind of music would go with it.

When I get home, I hear my dad in his office talking to some of his colleagues. I go into my room and watch other people's flashcasts. They're all inane.

The Duck Monkey could rip them to shreds, but they don't seem worth the bother.

It's a strange thing, but the Duck Monkey's ratings have held steady, fed by a stream of celebrity gossip from Dolores and her friends. The Duck Monkey has a completely different demographic from my own audience. They're smarter and funnier, and they're not trying to get me to kill myself in some horribly public way.

It's like the Duck Monkey is some kind of viral marketing campaign for something else. A new Sanson, perhaps, one who comes swinging back into the world with a style based on Persian ma.n.u.scripts.

Or maybe the Sanson who's a real boy.

I lie on my bed and think about Lisa and the Duck Monkey and Arab calligraphy. I wonder if I can live without the love of all those people who made up my Demographic for all those years.

I decide I'll try to get the love of just one person, and if necessary go on from there.

I send a message to Lisa to tell her I'd like to see her again.

WALTER JON WILLIAMS was born in 1953 in Minnesota. He attended the University of New Mexico and received his bachelor of arts in 1975. He lives in rural New Mexico.

Williams first started writing in the early 1980s, publis.h.i.+ng a series of naval adventures under the name Jon Williams. His first science fiction novel, Amba.s.sador of Progress, appeared in 1984 and was followed by fifteen more, most notably Hardwired, Aristoi, Metropolitan and sequel City on Fire, and his Praxis trilogy. Upcoming is a new novel, Implied s.p.a.ces.

A prolific short story writer, Williams published his first story, "Side Effects," in 1985, and it was followed by a string of stories that were nominated for major awards, including "Dinosaurs," "Surfacing," "Wall, Stone, Craft," "Lethe," and Nebula Award winner "Daddy's World." A number of these are collected in Facets.

His Web site is www.walterjonwilliams.net.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

For me, stories hardly ever spring out of the blue. They acc.u.mulate, layer by layer, like sediment stored up by the sea, until such time as I have enough material to create a whole story.

"Pinocchio" began some years ago, when I saw a television doc.u.mentary on former child stars, all of whom would seemingly have gnawed off their right arms if only it would have made them celebrities again. It was saddening, and a little bit sickening, to see forty-year-old mature men talking with such hunger and desperation about their glory days, when they were thirteen.

This set off a train of thought about celebrity in general. It seems to me that celebrity rewards you for all the wrong things-not for being a good person, but for playing a good person on television. Celebrity makes no moral distinctions, and sees no difference between saving the lives of African children or smas.h.i.+ng someone over the head with a telephone-both are of equal use for a couple minutes worth of exposure on Entertainment Tonight.

I combined these thoughts with ideas about the instantaneous feedback that is such a part of twenty-first-century media, and rather slowly produced this story of a boy who became famous because he was unstudied and natural, and who fell from public grace when he began to understand too well the machine that was driving his fame.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

Editing an anthology can either be a lonely solo effort, or it can take a community. The community that made The Starry Rift possible was large and varied, and I'd like to thank them all. First, and foremost, my three partners in crime, Charles N. Brown, Jack Dann, and Justin Ackroyd. During the nearly two-yearlong gestation of this book, they were always there, always willing to help when it was needed most. Next would come Russell B. Farr, who stepped in toward the end and helped bring the s.h.i.+p home, and Ellen Datlow, who was always ready and willing to help whenever it was needed. To that number I'd add each and every one of the contributors to the book, each of whom labored mightily, produced wonderful work, and often were patient beyond any reasonable measure. I'm incredibly grateful to all of them. I'd also very much like to thank Ken Macleod for his understanding; Kelly Link for persisting; and Gavin Grant, Garth Nix, Robin Pen, Gordon Van Gelder, Terry Dowling, and everyone else I discussed The Starry Rift with as I reached the finish line.

There are four other people who deserve special thanks here. My editor, the incredible Sharyn November, has been a joy and a delight to work with at every stage-supportive, understanding, and completely committed to this project; The Starry Rift wouldn't exist without her. I'd also, as always, like to thank my partner, Marianne, and my two girls, Jessica and Sophie. They understood when I had to not be around every now and then to get things finished, and made every single other day a joy and a delight. Thank you.

ABOUT THE EDITOR.

JONATHAN STRAHAN is an editor, anthologist, and critic. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1964, and moved to Perth, Western Australia, in 1968. He graduated from the University of Western Australia with a bachelor of arts in 1986. In 1990 he cofounded a small press journal, Eidolon, and worked on it as coedi-tor and copublisher until 1. He was also copublisher of Eidolon Books.

In 1997 Jonathan started work for Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field as an a.s.sistant editor. He wrote a regular reviewer column for the magazine until March 1998 and has been the magazine's Reviews Editor since January 2002. His reviews and criticism have also appeared in Eidolon, Eidolon: SF Online, Ticonderoga Online, and Foundation. Jonathan has won the William J. Atheling Jr. Award for Criticism and Review and the Australian National Science Fiction Ditmar Award.

As a freelance editor, Jonathan has edited or coedited more than a dozen reprint anthologies and three original anthologies, which have been published in Australia and the United States. These include various "year's best" annuals, The "Locus" Awards (with Charles N. Brown), and The New s.p.a.ce Opera (with Gardner Dozois). As a book editor, he has also edited The Jack Vance Treasury and Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling. In 1 Jonathan founded The Coode Street Press, which published the one-shot review zine The Coode Street Review of Science Fiction and copub-lished Terry Dowling's Antique Futures. The Coode Street Press is currently inactive.

Jonathan married former Locus Managing Editor Marianne Jablon in 1, and they live in Perth, Western Australia, with their two daughters, Jessica and Sophie.

1 Called "pulps," they were printed on cheap paper made from wood pulp.

2 The Golden Age of science fiction was the period from the late 1930s or early 1940s through the 1950s, when the science fiction genre first gained wide public attention and many cla.s.sic science fiction stories were published. Many of today's most popular movies, from Star Wars to I, Robot, feature stories very much like those of the Golden Age.

3 The Cold War was a period of conflict, tension, and compet.i.tion between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies that started in the mid-1940s and only ended in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It reached its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Science fiction has always dealt with political and economic themes-you need only look back to satires like Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's The s.p.a.ce Merchants from 1953 to see that-but these themes seemed to become more prominent, more overtly discussed, in the 1970s and 1980s.

end.