Brave New Worlds

'And me?'

'You?'

'I would do this too?'

'You catch on fast. '

The outside wall of Campus was imposing. Tall, sheathed in seamless metal painted uniform grey. Nothing grew for several yards around it, as though the world was shrinking back from it.

How did Zbigkrot get off campus?

That's a question that should have occurred to him when he left the campus. He was embarrassed that it took him this long to come up with it. But it was a damned good question. Trying to force the gate — what was it the old Brother on the gate had said? Pressurized, blowouts, the walls rigged to come down in an instant.

If Zbigkrot had left, he'd walked out, the normal way, while someone at the gate watched him go. And he'd left no record of it. Someone, working on Campus, had altered the stream of data fountaining off the front gate to remove the record of it. There was more than one forger there — it hadn't just been zbigkrot working for the Securitat.

He'd belonged in the Order. He'd learned how to know himself, how to see himself with the scalding, objective logic that he'd normally reserved for everyone else. The Anomaly had seemed like such a bit of fun, like he was leveling up to the next stage of his progress.

He called Greta. They'd given him a new pan, one that had a shunt that delivered a copy of all his data to the Securitat. Since he'd first booted it, it had felt strange and invasive, every buzz and warning coming with the haunted feeling, the watched feeling.

'You, huh?'

'It's very good to hear your voice,' he said. He meant it. He wondered if she knew about the Securitat's campus snitches. He wondered if she was one. But it was good to hear her voice. His pan let him know that whatever he was doing

was making him feel great. He didn't need his pan to tell him that, though.

'I worried when you didn't check in for a couple days. '

'Well, about that. '

'Yes?'

If he told her, she'd be in it too — if she wasn't already. If he told her, they'd figure out what they could get on her. He should just tell her nothing. Just go on inside and twist the occasional data-stream. He could be better at it than zbigkrot. No one would ever make an Anomaly out of him. Besides, so what if they did? It would be a few hours, days, months or years that he could live on Campus.

And if it wasn't him, it would be someone else.

It would be someone else.

'I just wanted to say good bye, and thanks. I suspect I'm not going to see you again. '

Off in the distance now, the sound of the Securitat van's happy little song. His pan let him know that he was breathing quickly and shallowly and he slowed his breathing down until it let up on him.

'Lawrence?'

He hung up. The Securitat van was visible now, streaking toward the Campus wall.

He closed his eyes and watched the blue satin ribbons tumble, like silky water licking over a waterfall. He could get to the place that Campus took him to, from anywhere. That was all that mattered.

The Pearl Diver by CAITLIN R. KIERNAN

Caitlin R. Kiernan is the author of seven novels, including Silk, Murder of Angels, Daughter of Hounds, The Five of Cups, and The Red Tree, the last of which has been nominated for the World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson awards. Her short fiction has been collected in Tales of Pain and Wonder; From Weird and Distant Shores; To Charles ForT, With Love; Alabaster; A is for Alien; and The Ammonite Violin & Others; in spring, Subterranean Press will release another: Two Worlds and In Between. Her work has also appeared in my anthology By Blood We Live and in Lightspeed Magazine. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Privacy issues have become some of the paramount concerns of the 21st century. Facebook leaks its members' interests to everyone in their networks. There are RFIDS in our credit cards, passports, and $100 bills. CCTV usage is on the rise, companies are monitoring their employees Internet use. Wherever you go, someone is paying attention to what you do, say, and buy.

Our next story places us in a society where the government and corporations have tag-teamed to control the work force, and they have the surveillance powers to make sure you're behaving. Your email isn't private. Your home isn't private. What you do and say behind closed doors might as well be happening out in the open, for all the world to see.

Here, Big Brother isn't just watching you — he's reporting you to your boss.

* * *

Farasha Kim opens her eyes at precisely six thirty-four, exactly one minute before the wake-up prompt woven into her pillow begins to bleat like an injured sheep. She's been lying awake since at least three, lying in bed listening to the constant, gentle hum of the thermaspan and watching the darkness trapped behind her eyelids. It's better than watching the lesser, more meaningful darkness of her tiny bedroom, the lights from the unsleeping city outside, the solid corner shadows that mercury-vapor streetlights and the headlights of passing trucks and cars never even touch. Her insomnia, the wide-awakeness that always follows the dreams, renders the pillow app superfluous, but she's afraid that muting it might tempt sleep, that in the absence of its threat she might actually fall back To sleep and end up being late for work. She's already been black-cited twice in the last five years — once for failing to report another employee's illegal use of noncorp software and once more for missing the start of an intradepartmental meeting on waste and oversight — so it's better safe than sorry. Farasha tells the bed that she's awake, thank you, and a moment later it ceases to bleat.

It's Tuesday, so she has a single slice of toast with a smear of marmalade, a hard-boiled egg, a red twenty- five milligram stimu-gel, and an eight-ounce glass of soy milk for breakfast, just like every other Tuesday. She leaves the dishes in the sink for later, because the trains have been running a little early the past week or so. She dresses quickly, deciding that she can get by one more day without a shower, deciding to wear black stockings instead of navy. And she's out the door and waiting for the elevator by seven twenty-two, her head already sizzling from the stimu-gel.

On the train, she stares out at the winter-gray landscape, Manhattan in mid-January, and listens to the CNN2 Firstlight report over the train's tinny speakers: the war in Turkey, the war in North Africa, the war in India, an ecoterrorist attack in Uruguay, Senate hearings on California's state-funded 'suicide camps,' the weather, the stock-market report, the untimely death of an actor she's never seen. The train races the clock across the Hudson and into Jersey, and, because it's Tuesday morning, the Firstlight anchorwoman reminds everyone that there will be no private operation of gasoline-powered motor vehicles until Thursday morning at ten o'clock Eastern, ten o'clock Pacific.

The day unfolds around her in no way that is noticeably different from any other Tuesday.

Farasha eats her lunch (a chocolate-flavored protein bar and an apple from the vending machines) and is back at her desk three minutes before anyone else. At one nineteen, the network burps, and everyone in datatrak and receiving is advised to crossfile and reboot. At one minute past three, the fat guy five desks over from her laughs aloud to himself and is duly docked twelve points plus five percent for inattentive behavior. He glances nervously at the nearest observer, risking another citation, risking unemployment, and then goes back to work. At four thirty-eight, the lights on the fourth floor dim themselves for seven minutes, because it is Tuesday, and even