Asimov's SF, January 2012 (15 page)

"I didn't—"

"I told him to take a student, you, a project to occupy his mind. I—” Huerta fidgeted. “I should go after him, make sure . . .” and she hustled away.

Cayla stared after Huerta. Her stomach was a wet cloth, twisted into a knot. “Let's go,” Rish whispered.

But Cayla did not move. She wished she could take back her words, scrub them from her mouth, but, oh God, she could not see how. And although Rish was standing right next to her, and she could feel the warmth of his body and feel the pressure of his arm against hers, and she could feel the breeze in her hair and the sun on her face, she also felt alone, a small speck in the cold and empty universe.

Copyright © 2011 C.W. Johnson

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Eric Del Carlo's fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Futurismic, and many other venues. He has written novels in collaboration with the late Robert Asprin, including the pre-Katrina New Orleans mystery NO Quarter (DarkStar Books), and on his own, such as Nightbodies (Ravenous Romance). Readers can find out more about his work at www.ericdel carlo.com. Eric tells us that “Friendlessness,” a story of social isolation that is his Asimov's debut, is inspired by that rusty old saw: “Write what you know."

Daric Dandry spent the final forty-two minutes of his fifty-five-month Friendship with Maddox Colburn pleading, with rapidly dwindling dignity, for Maddox not to leave him. Daric knew his last payment was running out. He couldn't afford Maddox anymore. But even so, he begged and sniveled at their familiar table at the retro coffeehouse.

Maddox, of course, professionally maintained their Friendship for every one of those forty-two minutes, and so tried to comfort Daric. He flashed his dazzling, assured smile. He encouraged Daric toward nostalgic reminiscences—that wild trip to Reno they'd taken on impulse, the all-night movie and pizza marathons with gales of laughter interspersed by sober grace-note profundities. Those many poignant instances of intense camaraderie had been unsullied by bickering, rivalry, oneupmanship—in fact, untouched by disagreement of any kind. Remembering these interludes just wrung Daric's heart all the worse, knowing they were gone, never to be repeated.

He made a spectacle of himself, and knew it, and couldn't help it. He had never been suave or socially adept. It was why he had engaged such an aggressively cheerful and confident Friend.

"What am I going to do without you?” was what he was saying, for maybe the hundredth time since they had sat down, when time was up. Daric looked longingly with swollen eyes across the authentically graffiti-scarred wooden tabletop, catching a final glint of Maddox's consoling smile and gleefully shrewd eyes. Then the broadcast inhibitors kicked in, and that face fuzzed into static, and Maddox turned away, and Daric was simply unable to stare at him any longer, even if he had wanted to.

He sat where he was for another minute, breathing in the burnt root smell of the “coffee,” feeling a weightlessness—an absence—in his chest. He looked around and saw other heads turn away, embarrassed for him.

Palming his cheeks, Daric Dandry belatedly remembered to engage a Privacy. His socweb ‘plant emitted a nullifying field. He was, therefore, literally faceless as he slunk away from the table and his erstwhile Friend.

He had juggled his finances to keep Maddox as long as he could. Well past the time, really, when he could even conceivably afford him. Three nights ago, at one-thirty a.m., a tow truck had slammed across the lip of Daric's driveway and scooped up his car. Utilities were final-noticing him. Next, of course, would be the house.

And yet he had done everything to retain Maddox Colburn just a little while longer, a little . . .

They couldn't fire him from his job for his low socweb score, nor for being Friendless. But they could do this:

"Your latest evaluation is, frankly, abysmal. And it's reflected in your numbers, Dandry. Your productivity is—how do I say this?—unacceptable. I'm afraid the firm has no choice, none at all, but to . . . “

That was the job.

He had, he knew by now, taken on too many Friends initially. A flush of acquisitiveness had come with his prestigious position at the firm—thus, the house, the sporty car he hadn't really needed. But what a wonder to be surrounded by companions, confederates, jolly, jovial, rib-nudging, back-slapping chums. Daric had savored their masculine raucous ways, how they always had some rollicking activity in mind. No matter what deep-seated doubts Daric had about himself, his Friends would unfailingly sweep him up and away, off to social adventures the likes of which he had never known before. Never were they cruel to him; never was he challenged or threatened.

But he had overextended, and his finances had started to crumble.

In the end he had tried to retain only Maddox, his favorite Friend, the one he'd known the longest, with whom he had shared endless emotional intimacies, who was his supreme confidant. His best Friend, truly.

The financial troubles he'd created for himself had indeed affected his job performance, and the firm was right to fire him. He knew that. He knew it even as he packed a single bag with a paltry number of belongings, and left the house.

To say he was socially inept was, he knew, to heap praise on himself. His socialweb score was disastrous. Always had been. Most everyone had several null-sum Friendships, those entered into by parties whose scores canceled each other out. Daric had none of these. So it had been since age sixteen, the year of his first socweb score, which was determined by number and duration of social interactions. He couldn't even start to build a statistical base. Nobody, it seemed, was interested in registering an association with him. And who could blame them? He created awkward silences wherever he went, blurted out non sequiturs at inappropriate moments, couldn't summon any insights, jokes, observations, or complaints that anybody wanted to listen to.

It became easiest for him to do nothing, to make no socializing efforts. That lack of comradeship left a hollow in him, but he had plans to fill it. He was socially graceless, true, but he had his intellect. He was not helpless.

So it had been through his adolescence; but long before then he had set himself a goal of financial success, and had pursued it doggedly. By the time he was an adult, he had made a place for himself in his business field, and he could afford professional Friends, which allowed him to feel content and confident. That in turn had stimulated his productivity at the firm.

Still, there had been a time before all that, before he received his socweb ‘plant. Daric Dandry had, inevitably, once been a boy. And friendships had been different back then.

Incredibly, you could still hitchhike. It seemed an activity from another era, one that should have been erased by advancing technologies and modern cultural strictures. But no. You could still stick out your thumb on rural roads, and the occasional person would give you a ride.

One of these halted a ten-year-old Spark and popped the door. Daric, who had already crossed some distance in this fashion—walking when he couldn't get a ride—gratefully climbed inside. He didn't have the credit for any other means of transportation. For days now he had been sleeping in a pup tent, and he smelled like it.

"I'm going ten klicks,” said the older man, lifting a finger from the old-fashioned spoked steering wheel to point ahead, “that way."

Daric, settling in the seat, said, “I'm . . . that way . . . uh, going.” It was typically fumble-tongued of him. Suave replies never made it out of his mouth, leaving behind only their echoes, unspoken, in his head. Why couldn't he have said:
Ten klicks is a lot better than none?
That would have shown a mastery of the language, even a hint of wit. This older man would have immediately taken him more seriously. But it was already too late. It was a lifetime too late for Daric.

In his private misery, he sat with his bag on his lap. Every interaction he'd had so far on the road, had necessitated a social negotiation. So it was with every human engagement. Some people made their livings as Friends. But the socweb served to regulate how people interfaced with each other. With ‘plants, everyone was aware of the score. Daric already knew that this interaction was lost to him.

"So, where you headed?"

What caught Daric most off-guard was the older man's forthright tone, how he seemed to demand a response to his question. Some drivers liked to talk; it was why they picked up hitchhikers. So far, though, the ones Daric had met had been content to carry on monologues, not even using him as a sounding board. Daric normally only interacted with people on the most basic, least impactful level. He'd never learned how to do anything else.

Daric answered with the name of the town, carefully enunciated. Was this going to become a . . . Conversation? Fear and excitement prickled his flesh.

The driver grunted. “I've never been down there.” That comment seemed to indicate that, indeed, a Conversation was afoot.

Turning shyly, Daric took deliberate note of the older man for the first time. He had an average socweb score, maybe a few points below the national median. But it was categorically better than Daric's dismal number.

He also perceived the subtle gold glow ringing the driver's neck and knuckles, the telltales of a failing restorative treatment. Nothing unusual there. Everybody who underwent a Ricca-Hixon Rejuve or a SkinCorp Feenix had failure to look forward to, eventually. But this meant that the older man might be
much
older, perhaps old enough to have been an adult before the socialweb's sweeping implementation. What had started as a voluntary socializing movement had become institutionalized, a means of identifying people. The outdated analogy said that it was like the Social Security number, which had evolved beyond its initial purpose to become an identity check.

For some reason the thought of this man being from that antiquated time unnerved Daric, adding to the stress of their burgeoning Conversation.

The driver talked sports for a few minutes, until it was clear that Daric had nothing to contribute. He switched gruffly to politics. Daric, heart thumping against his breastbone, lunged at the first political name he could think of when the older man asked him who he favored in the approaching electoral cycle.

The older man, who turned out to be a diehard Re:green supporter, savaged Daric's candidate, who apparently was the Patriot Party's current pick. Daric had never voted in his life; he didn't plan to start. Evidently the driver really did come from a bygone era, when people had had definable and vehement political views. Most everyone these days understood that politicians got into office on the strength of their socweb scores.

When they came to a halt, Daric thought he'd blurted something unforgivably gauche and the man was kicking him out of the vehicle. But the stalwart Re:greener merely indicated the winding rutted track that was his turnoff.

Daric got out, muddling his thanks.

As the Spark drove off and he began walking, Daric was shocked to discover that the tense interaction had ironically moved his socweb score up a few inconsequential increments. He tried to hold on to the strange sense of victory this gave him, but couldn't sustain it. That night he made camp in a field off the road and wept in the tight sleeve of his tent over the loss of Maddox, with whom he'd never had a tense Conversation . . . aside from their last.

The beach town was a reimagining of itself; or that was how it appeared to Daric as he advanced through it. Its dimensions hadn't changed. There had been nowhere for it to sprawl, notched as it was into the crags of the coastline.

But the row of fast food franchises was gone. That was typical; they were hard to find anywhere these days. Daric recognized businesses and buildings, parks and residences, from better than a third of his life ago. Other structures, however, were totally unfamiliar. Memories reverberated, and like echoes, he knew, they were distorted and not entirely trustworthy.

Still, the scenery fascinated him. He'd never visited after he'd departed, and he understood why. He'd left no family here. This sleepy little burg had had no credible connection to the mature and lucrative life he had fashioned for himself. This place was merely his starting point.

The town was still a functional entity. It didn't look economically depressed—or no more so than he remembered it being. It was a modest place to live. It smelled of the ocean. Whorls of sand stirred at the intersections. Sandals slapped the pavements. The diners and cafes were un-ironic. No retro chic here.

Daric Dandry, unshaven, humid with his own smells, walked with his one bag through the streets and spoke to no one. It was much as it had been for him as a lonesome, awkward schoolboy who wasn't terribly versed in matters of hygiene. He'd had long, flat hair that dropped in oily fronds across his eyes. He'd picked up the habit of gnawing his thumbnails, he suddenly recalled. The image of those ragged raw crescents was a fact of personal history he had somehow misplaced years ago. The town was prompting these remembrances.

Again he was leery of trusting the memories. Had he, for instance, shoplifted an expensive, poseable superhero action figure from Myerling's Toys? Or had he only planned the crime in ardent detail, playing out the fantasy with its thrill of theft and delirious reward? He didn't know. If he'd ever actually owned the doll, he had no clue what had happened to it.

Had he ever climbed to the highest level of the playground castle in the park nearest his home? He vividly remembered being afraid to scale high enough to crawl out onto the parapet like the braver kids did. But had he ever done it? He might have. Or he might simply have imagined it often enough that the event had gelled into a memory.

Had he ever kissed Kimberly Chin on the mouth . . . ? No. He sure hadn't done that, and no need to wonder about it. His first kiss he remembered, and it hadn't been with the girl he'd had such a horrible adolescent crush on. Romance—or sex, anyway—was far less demanding than sociability, he'd discovered. His first
every
thing of that nature he recalled with exacting specificity.