PRE-RELEASE
By Andy Hooper
2156 CE. The Earth was a garden, once more a green riot. And the Earth was a cenotaph, witness to the hundreds of generations of ambitious mankind that strove and played in that familiar yellow light. Even smeared among the stars, humanity had a romantic weakness for burial on the home planet. From the Watts Towers to the Arc D'Arcturus, the Earth was a procession of eternal beacons and memorial squares, twinkling and gleaming in the oxygen-rich air.
Robert Spicer had seen them all when they were new. He'd made up his mind. He was working on his terminal download.
Robert planned to issue himself as an 18 tetrachapter commemorative album on perpetually replaceable data tabs; there would also be a limited edition for his personal acquaintances, a 3-pound book on paper with a suprasensory cover painting by Barley Salt. Loaded with microbuds of Robert's favorite smells, it would fill the room with fresh popcorn or cold summer rain when touched with a moist fingertip.
His second wife Elliny was trying to talk him out of it, but getting nowhere. The ansible put a gap of 14 hours between her pleading paragraphs and his terse phrases of response. He was not especially depressed. He didn't feel very much of anything now. He was simply finished.
In his swanky Brin Building rooms, Spicer silped weak nuclear fizz while he reviewed the index of the Gonkulator Press for the last time. Seeing all the titles floating in glowing orange letters in the middle of the Jello-green page still gave him a perceptible thrill. The 400 issues of Grab marched by in justified ranks, each tipping a hat to show its table of contents under his tickling focal point. Then Rif and Ocracoke pattered in long, short, and tall, almost coyly allowing the silver Hugo rocket to superimpose like a gray ghost over the issues from those prize-winning years. But each of those events was more than a century past.
When the exterior circuit chirped at him, he suspected that Eliney had summoned one of his 130+ acknowledged descendents to reason with him. But the annunciation holo was a fat kid in a propeller beanie, and when Robert asked the system for a clarification, the holo held out its hand, which swelled to fill the field of view. The hand sported a huge ring with the seal of the Cascade Science Fiction League. Richard sat on the committee that designed that seal in the 2030s, so it was a calling card sure to catch his attention.
When he connected, there were three men in the field, all smooth and pink with the glow of genuine youth. Robert felt like he was looking at zoo animals.
The man in the center of the field spoke. "Happy Birthday, Bob! I'm Tanyon Tubb, and these are my committee heads, Belson Ferry and Kevin Mohindar-McCray. On behalf of the BSFA, we want to say FIAWOL to the world's most famous fanzine fan."
Spicer choked a little on the orange backwash of the nuclear fizz. He wondered momentarily if this might be a prank from decades past, a put-on banked in digital hiding by an old friend or feudmate, to be activated when his age and gullibility had sufficiently ripened. The fact that his 166th birthday was still two months away argued against this, as anyone willing to go to such lengths would surely get the date right. And the accent was pure Mancunian.
"I'm a North American, gentleman. My birthday is the 3rd of May, not the 5th of March."
The pink faces fell with such speed that Robert instantly felt regret. "Even so, I don't think anyone born in this century knows what the Cascades SFL was, or what Fiawol means. What kind of ur-skool retrofen are you?"
The pinks all grinned. "We're all cultural materialists. My specialty is 20th Century printed matter. Ferry's area is South Asian transportation and Kev does the early Orbital Era. And when we were all at Polytechnic, we formed the first officially-chartered college science fiction club to grace Britain in more than 60 years."
Robert smiled thinly, "I get student inquiries from a lot of systems. I'm no longer writing or teaching. All my work is available at demand and a surrogate will pretend to drink Beam's Choice with you if you so desire. Thanks very much for the birthday wish, too."
Just as he broke the connection, Tubb raised his fingers about a foot above his head, and his mouth barely began to round into the shape of the word "smooth."
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"You can also plastic canvas stitch a tater tot. Your point?"
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Two days later, Spicer received a letter of comment in the middle of an anagathic treatment. He'd debated breaking the appointment, but he didn't want to go through another round of exit therapies. So his body was bathed in piercing spicules of ice when the mailbox function thunked at him, and he reflexively ordered it open.
It was Tanyon Tubb, commenting on issues #1 to 6 of Ocracoke. He had clearly studied the 2040's in some detail, and commented with some insight on the political bickering that lead to the Worldcon's acquisition by Vivid Entertainment in 2059. Another centennial he was going to miss, thought Spicer, with a nibble of relief. He was surprised to feel a tickle of egoboo at Tubb's praise for his style, despite the fact that the pink had no real frame of reference for his opinions. And he showed a commendable degree of skepticism where appropriate. Spicer asked for a generic reply, but it had been so long since he'd used it that he ended up reading each line and added several personal notes.
Another week passed, and Spicer's download was nearly complete. All of the essential material was now included, and Robert was finishing epilogues and personal observations that would only be seen by those who had read through a hundred thousand words or more.
He received a request for a face-to-face from Tanyon Tubb, and found that he was pleased to receive the message, and tried several settings for their sit-down. He chose a square near the wrestling stadium in Istanbul, with fireworks overhead to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Turkish conquest of the city. Dozens of his descendants had gathered for the event, and many of Robert's favorites populated the field as he and Tubb sipped their coffee.
Tubb had dozens of insightful questions; Spicer was patient this time, and gave the pinkling nearly three hours as the sunner sun slid westward.
"Conventions and fanzines and publishing science fiction were all wonderful ways to pass the time, but you're lucky to have been born yesterday, Tubb. If you can avoid war and disaster, you might live 300 years or longer, and all your friends will probably live just as long. When I began cellular replacements at age 25, they were highly experimental, and intended for use in space. By the time they became available to everyone, most of my friends were over 60 years old and beyond treatment. So I have a legion of friends and family that I can know forever, but I find I miss people that I last saw 149 years ago."
Tubb nodded tightly as he listened. When Robert paused to watch his 7-year-old great-great-great-great-great grandniece eat a piece of Turkish candy, Tubb bent his head toward Robert in a gesture suggesting conspiracy.
"I know why you're telling me this now," said Tubb. "I know that you're busy downloading, Bob. I'm a Pre-Release Subscriber. So this was my last chance to see you directly. We're so close to publishing, Bob, and I really want to send you the first issue so that you can include your reaction in the final release. It should be the first stfnal fanzine published since Feldman and Forrest quit in 2090. I think there's still so much to find -- time travel! Alternate worlds! We all know there's life out there somewhere, we just have to find it."
Tubb brushed up the last crumbs of his baklava with the edge of his index finger, and licked them off. "You know what it was like -- before we had everything handed to us on a null-gravity plate. When it was a proud and lonely thing to be a fan. The others don't know it, but you're the reason why I'm doing this at all. And when you're gone, there won't be anyone else alive that will get my favorite jokes."
Spicer took a deck of blue-backed playing cards from his coat pocket, and began shuffling them. "It's too late," he said, dealing out a hand of solitaire in front of him. "I've seen and done everything I ever wanted to, and a lot more in the bargain. I'm finished with every single thing I can still imagine doing. But I knew that if I entertained this correspondence with you for even a second, I would be unable to follow through with my plans. While you were talking to this very special set of programmed responses, I enjoyed a last look at the view from my rooms, then took a fatal dose of a painless, fast-acting poison and declared the download complete. This is your special Pre-Release Edition, Mr. Tubb."
The top card on the table opened a small field in which a be-robed Spicer jerked briefly, then slid to one side. He had GPNBC playing at the time, and an ad poem for Shawarma Station was the last thing he experiences; "Lamb and onion, sliced up hot," it sang, "put it on a pita and whadaya got? Shaaaa-waaaar-maaaaa!"
A few days passed. There was a funeral included in the data set, and Tanyon Tubb got around to attending about a week after Bob Spicer died. During the Snapdragon Ska-dub organ solo, Spicer walked up to Tubb and pressed a piece of paper into his hand. The address and access codes led him to a climate-controlled long-term storage facility in Swindon. When lubrication combined with force finally popped open the lock, Tubb found that the space was filled with 200 year old science-fiction fanzines, some crumbling into dust, but most stabilized with acid-free backing boards and other protective measures. Some of them were already decades old when Bob Spicer was born. Soon, Tubb was absorbing an alternate alphabet: A is for Atom, Armadillocon and Al Ashley; B is for Benford, Butler and rich brown; C is for Campbell, Carr and Chesley Bonestell.
Many hours later, Belson Ferry's pocket wouldn't stop kicking and whistling, so he had to leave his girlfriend's parent's table at tea to take the message. In the hallway, the pink blob of Tanyon Caslisle Tubb resolved in a maze of piled up paper and books. His usually smooth face was bruised and bagged with lack of sleep. "Ferry!" he croaked, clearing the twilltone dust from his throat. "Guess what! I'm an Insurgent."
Data entry by Judy Bemis
Hard copy provided by Geri Sullivan
Updated March 6, 2007. If you have a comment about these web pages please send a note to the Fanac Webmaster. Thank you.