“Cling to the concept of the Cloud,” Faíd told me before we parted ways, “don’t ever doubt it. Because you need a living woman beside you. And to live will be the same as to believe in the Cloud for your friend. Don’t let her doubt it for a second. Otherwise you’ll really lose her, and this time, I won’t be able to help you.”
Yes, I’ll have to believe in the Cloud. Not just because of Bamobah, but because of myself. I need to believe that metallurgists are everywhere around us, scattered throughout our technology, in the key parts of our civilizations.
Because otherwise what I’m contemplating is nothing but murder.
* * *
We are the Cloud. It’s difficult to imagine, until you experience it. But once you do, it’s impossible to conceive of anything else. Our hearts have stopped, quenching slowed them down a thousandfold. We haven’t yet had time to feel the pain of being shattered into so many pieces.
We are in the pistons of shock absorbers in subway cars’ chassis, and we pass through the darkness of the tunnels and the light of the stations faster than we can comprehend. With each braking, the warmth of the flying sparks brings us to life.
We are the vault of a bionic cranial prosthetic. We feel the warm flow of thoughts beneath ourselves, but the human life we’ve helped to save flies around like a mayfly flapping its wings. When the flapping stops, a few seconds of heat rouse us; we awaken in the hearth of a crematory, barely have time to try to catch our breath, and sink into the embrace of swirling hot ash.
We are the reinforcements of ceramic coating of a landing module. We wake and fall asleep with each orbit, slowly spiraling down. And then it comes. The atmosphere flares up around us and we feel the surge of energy, the speeding up of time. We feel the earth deep below and the vast emptiness above ourselves, and understand the importance of the job we were created for. Who can blame us that we chose this? Who cannot understand us? Who can judge us? It is difficult to imagine, but it is infinitely more difficult to imagine it could have ever been otherwise.
I have always thought that we were something more. That we are still human. That we still live in our warm organic bodies, in the residuals of our minds. We have given up human feelings, yes, we have given up the solace of a certain death and given up our inner integrity, the feeling of self at one point of space and time. For each of these sacrifices, we draw one sign of a dislocation line on the wall, one symbol ┴, one austere syllable of the Cloud’s emblem. I thought that there is no way to sever the bond between us and them. I believed it. But now, when diffusion flows at grain boundaries tickle us like beads of sweat trickling down our back, when we smell the cinnamon scent of metastable phases, when flashes of reorienting Zener pairs glimmer before our eyes, when we probe the soft plasticity of deformation twins with our fingertips, when the spinodal curve vaults above us like a night sky studded with stars, now … I’m starting to have doubts.
About the Author and Translator
Hanuš Seiner is a Czech scientist and writer of SF short stories. He holds a PhD degree inapplied physics and is currently employed as an associate professor at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. His research interests cover mainly mechanics of microstructures in advanced materials and laser-ultrasound experimental methods. Hanuš is married, has two kids, and lives in Pardubice,Czech Republic. Up to now, he has published more than 10 short stories, mostly combining elements of hard SF and space opera subgenres. His short storiesappeared in Czech and Slovak SF magazines (Ikarie, XB-1, Jupiter) and inanthologies (“Mlok” book series, “Terra Nullius”). The titular story “TerraNullius” by Hanuš is upcoming in Strange Horizons. You can sign up for email updates here.
Julie Nováková is a Czech author and translator of science fiction, fantasy and detective stories. She has published short fiction in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Fantasy Scroll and other magazines andanthologies; upcoming e.g. in Analog, GigaNotoSaurus and Persistent Visions.Her work in Czech includes seven novels, one anthology (“Terra Nullius”) and over thirty short stories and novelettes. Some of her works have been also translated into Chinese, Romanian and Estonian. She received the Encouragement Award of the European science fiction and fantasy society in 2013, the Aeronautilusaward for the best Czech short story of 2014 and 2015, and for the best novelof 2015. Julie is an evolutionary biologist by study and also takes a keeninterest in planetary science. She’s currently working on her first novel inEnglish. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author and Translator
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Hanuš Seiner
Art copyright © 2018 by Brent Hardy-Smith
