Writers of the Future, Volume 29 Read Online Free

onscreen.
    My initial impression is that this is a burnt, deformed old man who has somehow left me a message under my own login. His face is horrifically blistered, dirtied and ruined. Behind him is a dim, nondescript room.
    â€œHello, Harris,” he says through a choking wheeze, as if part of his throat has collapsed. I swallow the lump in my own.
    â€œI’m recording this with the few minutes we have left. You will remember that your last upload followed the explosion on Phobos. Without their tactical center, the Partisans were finished. The Resistance achieved total victory four days later. A few pockets of stubborn holdouts in the west, a lot of groups suicided rather than surrender.”
    It takes until that moment for me to realize who the burnt man is. There’s no use denying it.
    I stare into the blistered face and recognize my own.
    The monitor-me sighs in difficulty, glassy-eyed and dazed. “They must have had a contingency plan to poison the well in the event of defeat. An orbital stealth platform we never knew about bombarded the planetary surface with three hundred nukes.”
    My stomach drops. The fledgling colonies of Mars, with all the innocence of scattered college campuses, now laid to waste?
    â€œI was in my apartment when the first bombs hit. The explosion threw me out into the hallway like a doll. I remember crawling through rubble, trying to find the staircase. Some of the residents and I punched our way through the floor and got to the basement, where we were able to send a message to the outside. I have no idea if Charlotte survived. I reached Traci, and I’m recording this message on her bandwidth.”
    The eyes find mine—hideous funhouse mirror reflection. It makes for a queasy math in my head: one soul across 41 years, two bodies and divergent lines of consciousness in an unfolding fractal pattern like diamond gloss.
    â€œHarris,” yesteryear’s self tells me, “I’ve been mortally irradiated, and we can’t reach any of the labs for treatment. When you get this…” A sad smile forms on his melted face. “Good luck.” A pause. “I slept with Charlotte the night before the bombs fell. Neither one of us seemed to regret it in the morning. Traci will regen you as soon as possible.”
    The message ends.
    I hit the next message, from Traci, recorded 41 years later.
    ILLUSTRATION BY JON ENO
    M y finger is a hummingbird kiss on the monitor. Traci’s message stirs.
    â€œHarris,” she says, and I suck in a panicked breath at how she looks. My God! She is old and gray, enough to account for the passage of 41 years with only the most limited longevity treatments. Her myostatin blockers appear to be cranked too high, giving her a famished appearance.
    Or maybe it wasn’t blockers at all. What the hell had happened in the space of a single sentence?
    â€œI can just imagine how confused you’re going to be when you hear this,” she says. “We tried to bring you back right away. But the bombardment was cruelly calculated, Harris. A second wave, much weaker and more scattered, hit a few hours after the first. It destroyed our facilities. I took the save files and fled. It’s taken this long to get our equipment up and working again. We had to cannibalize several labs, and then trade with other survivors for equipment. You can’t…”
    Tears leak from her eyes.
    â€œThings have been difficult, Harris. I lost Charlie…he was murdered a few weeks ago in New Haven.”
    So bring him back, I think hotly. The way you brought me.
    Traci’s eyes lock onto mine with prescient intensity. “The only city on Mars which still has a working Regen facility is the one you’re just waking up to. New Haven. And it’s not the way you remember it.”
    My memory hunts down a map of Mars. New Haven is a shuttle port city seventy miles south of Cydonia. It’s where, after detonating Phobos