So what is the Golden Age, and why should we care which novels were published decades ago by a bunch of old dead white men? So I would say Golden Age lies between Pulp Age and Silver Age (or new science fiction). Since I abhor politically correct lists, or efforts to shoehorn in an author or novel simply because it is popular to do so in the current year, this list is going to focus only on novels as they merit such notoriety. For the purposes of this list, I’m only considering novels published between 1940 and 1959, leaving the era before that to the Pulp list and Silver Age list, both of which I will write in the next few weeks.

– Leigh Brackett – 1951

Leigh Brackett is probably best known these days as one of the co-authors of the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back. However, she had a career in sci-fi dating back decades before joining the Star Wars team. This novel is the story of a man who is caught up in a struggle between Martians and humans. The protagonist Rick is foretold to become the ruler of Mars, however, he is captured by Martians and forced to work the mines.

– Theodore Sturgeon – 1953This is a novel that perhaps (I’m not that well read on the Golden Age of sci-fi, if there are others leave us a comment) was one of the earliest examples of a writer examining the next step in human evolution. It is the story of six people who can blend their powers together to become more than human and act as a single creature. Though the people are not necessarily mutants, it is hard to imagine the X-Men without a novel like this.

– Isaac Asimov – 1950Perhaps my favorite Asimov book. This is a collection of short stories centering on the theme of human/robot interaction. It gave the world the three laws of robotics which sci-fi authors have been playing with and thinking about ever since.

– Arthur C. Clarke – 1952

This novel speaks to me as I read about the immigration debate going on in the West today. The story is about an alien race invading and overtaking Earth imposing a utopia on us, but at the cost of everything it means to be human, our culture and our identity. It seems to me this novel could be seen as an examination of the civic nationalist postilion on immigration: illegal bad, legal good as long as they assimilate. However, the civ nats don’t seem to recognize that without identity and heritage a utopia is meaningless. Even change towards a utopia (Marxism anyone? “The wrong side of history”) is examined. Perhaps Clarke understood the perils of immigration more than many do today.

– Ray Bradbury – 1953Probably the most famous book to come out of the Golden Age of sci-fi. Bradbury wrote the book in the basement of the UCLA library on a typewriter that cost him 10 cents per hour to use. He wrote fast understanding that his limited funds meant he didn’t have time to overthink and over analyze his novel. Good advice for any writer or artist. Fahrenheit 451 is about a fireman whose job it is to burn books. All books. Books are banned in the future (guess he didn’t think about e-readers. High school English teachers BTFO). However, the knowledge has been preserved as an underground society has taken to memorizing a book each. This book deserves to be more than mandatory reading in an increasingly meaningless school curriculum.

We made our own world, the way lepers used to, but we had to accept the necessity first and even now most of us question why we ever needed to. “Human nature” is not a good answer, but it’s a damning one.

I stir sugar into coffee as I look out from the diner across the compound to the security of walls topped with wire, and try to remember how the world was before. I may not have long to live and if I’m to die I’d like it to be with a clear impression of why.

It all started with the Europa sample return. The world was jubilant to find life in the ocean under the ice, we suddenly knew we weren’t alone in the universe, we could afford to relax from our paranoia. The odds now favored life being widespread throughout the stars, and we could start to approach the future on those terms. With interstellar missions becoming a practical prospect for the next century, we had to think bigger, try to separate our future as a space-faring people from the wreckage we made of our homeworld in the process, and resolve to do better.

But all it took was one bit of alien genetic material escaping from isolation to change everything, at least for some, and having worked at those laboratories I know what I’m talking about better than most. If it had affected everyone equally there would have been no division of society, but genetics are random and diverse, and only people with certain characteristics, this blood type, that preponderance, those dominant or recessive alleles, could accept the lock-in of alien-coded proteins. In and of itself, it was hardly an invasion, and the condition is by no means life-threatening or even painful, but oh, what a difference a simple mutation can make.

I let my eyes go to my reflection in the window and smile sadly.

Stripers, they call us. After all, there has to be a name for everyone who diverges from normal, it reinforces the ‘us-and-them’ mentality characteristic of the human animal. That’s why we call the unaffected ones norms, a kind of passive retaliation. It began within weeks of the unnoticed escape of the alien proteins, the first change of the skin, and over a few more it matured into, essentially, a birthmark, a rich stripe varying in tone with the individual’s natural pigmentation.

Down the middle of the face.

Two-tones, halfy-halfies, cut-on-the-dotteds, they came up with lots of names for us. In the early days people used foundation makeup to hide it, but that was not going to work forever as a way to keep a secret, and we live in a culture, at least in the west, where masks are social taboo. To cover your face would be to admit what was concealed. The beautiful irony was, this alien junk protein had no respect for borders, boundaries, religion or politics. It struck throughout the community in the same proportions everywhere. The most polarized interest groups were lumped together, suddenly stripers and norms had become the overriding moiety defining the human race. Naturally, norms began murdering stripers as mutants, defective and to be put down before we “mongrelized the breed.” The law was in a difficult situation, as police officers, judges, prison guards and social workers were not exempt the touch of the alien.

The simple fact the effect manifested in all races, cultures and creeds underlined our unity as one species, something of which many did not want to be reminded. Tough, when the Europa bug comes calling privilege is meaningless, only the happenstance of your genetic combination carries any weight.

My smile is bitter, ironic–even now nature’s scorn for the petty imperatives of human division is enough to make one burst out laughing. I sip my coffee, enjoying it to the full. I can’t dismiss the notion it may be my last; for the problem is ongoing and resentment, blame, runs deep.

Massive efforts were put into a molecular fix, and they’re still trying, but nobody expects the resulting therapy to be dished out evenly. That’s where privilege comes in–a striper’s money is as good as a norm’s, if he can afford it. For your ordinary striper-in-the-street who might never afford it and whose insurance was not meant to cover alien infections, the cure might as well be prayer. You can bet this lead to civic unrest, a fair few clinics felt the torch and you had to wonder how many black-suited riot troopers putting it all down with gun, baton and water canon had stripes behind their gas masks. And how they felt about following orders.

Eventually, as the cure, the affordable, available-to-all correction of our alien mark, was pushed off into some future la-la-land of other administrations, ifs and maybes, stripers began to flock together. Striper-friendly apartment blocks, schools, clinics, churches, mosques, shopping centres, all began to spring up. Many were burned, some rebuilt. Walls went up around them, but the difference from other proposed walls was we built them for our own defence. That was our barbed wire, our searchlights, our armoured cars after dark. Hoo-rah, striper’s gotta do what a striper’s gotta do, and that’s survive the norms. Suddenly we were proud to call ourselves stripers, we owned the term, every day was Striper Pride Day. We had Christian stripers and Muslim stripers, aetheistic, gay and straight, black, white and everything in between, fat ones, thin ones, tall and short. Being striped brought us together and we found strength in unity. Of course, there were those who hanged themselves rather than kibitz with the others they had hated since grade school, and that was to be expected as well.

We expected a Striper Registration Act but it was a formality, with such a mark it’s hard to hide. We took to traveling in groups for safety but they passed a law forbidding more than three stripers in one place at the same time, as more constituted “provocative assembly” and earned arrest. Suddenly all the ills of society were stripers’ fault, but the one ray of hope was the number of politicians who hid behind makeup and did what they could for us.

It seemed the world was only looking for something new to tear itself apart over, and this minor mutation was the spark that touched off an inferno. It reordered society in a thousand ways, destroyed families, changed the flow of capital, built new allegiances. What towering irony, the discovery of extraterrestrial life on one hand had brought the human species together, then split it down the middle as surely as firewood before the axe. The problems faced by minorities were suddenly shared by every community everywhere, and people in general took it badly.

At length my friend Marty joins me. He’s a tough ex-trucker, now he’s a wall guard who keeps us safe. I was afraid to meet, I’ve known for a while he saw the old employment registers, knows I was a scientist at the exo labs. If resent runs deep enough he’d be the one to blow me away, and I could hardly blame him. I can’t be certain I wasn’t responsible; I handled the specimens. Did protocols fail or was it human error? No one knows, and attempts to pin blame serve no purpose. We chat, he orders coffee, I sense something unsaid between his words, and I quietly shit bricks waiting. He must know my fear, and I wonder if the man I know will prove harder or more resilient? We speak of the early days, how it got started, and seem to be dancing around the edges of something neither of us wants to say. Instead we speculate about the future, and seem to share common hopes.

You see, if there’s a happy ending in sight it’s that striper scientists are working on the cure and if we find it first we’ll have the say in how it’s delivered. There’ll be no fortunes made, and that alone makes us targets as Big Pharma treated the naevus as its dream disease, half the human race in need of therapy–when they had mined every cent they could from the top of the market down. Or maybe … we won’t treat it. Maybe we’re proud of the people we’ve become and wear our significator without shame. Not lepers but marked all the same, with a badge that says we overcame, we were strong, we made a society despite all they could do.

And that’s really as much as anyone can boast, to overcome, to survive. Maybe if alien intelligence came to Earth tomorrow we could look them in the eye and say proudly, we rose above all our fellow human beings could throw at us and it makes us just that tiny bit special.

For me it’s doubly important, for, even many years on, I have never forgotten those first days, when the Europa samples came back. Marty is right to suspect. I’ve wondered a million times if any carelessness of my own let them escape. If so, I have paid in full, I believe, with many an instalment left to make, and will never stop paying til the day I die. But I’ll go proud, a striper to the end, and if anyone were to ask me if I had any regrets, I’d say no.

In the end Marty drains his mug and pulls his cap on, heads out into the harsh sun of day, and I breathe a shaky sigh. Hard as he is, he was resilient today–able to absorb the possibility without breaking. I get to live some more.

I sigh and stare into my almost-empty mug. I’ve done what I had to, as we all have. It’s a strange thing to realize, but at the end of the day, a leper is not the worst thing you can be.

Theordore Von Monocle swung his legs over the side of the airship’s railing, releasing the rope ladder to land on the deck. His cape flowed behind him, and his signature top hat remained on his head despite the wind the giant turbines generated.

The landing party had been a success. A complete rout of the Wyranth supply caravan, which had been exactly where the Grand Rislandian Army’s intelligence agents said it would be. When intelligence was right, it made his job a lot easier. Even with the victory, there was no joy or adulation coming from him or his commandos. For the fifth strike in a row, they’d lost one of their own.

Several of the crew watched him from the deck, their faces longing for leadership. Ordinarily, Theo would give a rousing speech, but he couldn’t muster one today.

Instead, he strode across the length of the ship to the door that opened into the Liliana’s mess cabin. Long benches spanned the room along with several tables for the crew to all be able to eat at once. The chef and his newest helper, a beautiful girl by the name of Talyen, lingered in the back. Theo could smell the spices already, but he wasn’t hungry.

He collapsed onto one of the benches, part from exhaustion and part from the sadness of the loss of his crewman. There would be very little time to mourn poor Everett, a young man who had joined the crew. When he came aboard, the boy had a longing for adventure in his eyes. The last thing Theo saw in those eyes had been the blank stare of death.

Too many deaths. Too many friends lost. This one had been the final straw, the one that broke his own morale. Tears formed in Theo’s eyes, but he held them back, vowing not to let the rest of his crew see that kind of weakness. He was a symbol to his people. One of victory and immortality.

Theo bit down hard on his tongue in an effort to feel something else. That proved to be a mistake, as the salty taste of blood formed in his mouth. There had to be something he could do to lift his own spirits, to get the crew motivated again.

From behind him, footsteps fell on the wood planks. The floorboards creaked, which could be annoying at times, but it also meant that no assassins would ever sneak up on him. Theo turned around.

Harkerpal approached, bobbing his head as he bounced toward Theo’s table. “Baron, good to see you made it back. Life is short, and it is a blessing each breath that it continues. That’s what my mother always told me. I remember the days home sick for school where she would make me fresh stew. It smelled a lot like what the chef’s preparing tonight, come to think of it,” Harkerpal said.

The man was the type that could talk endlessly. However, he was also the finest engineer in Rislandia. No one knew more about the workings of airships. “I’m not much in the mood for conversation, Harkerpal,” Theo said, trying to sound polite.

Harkerpal cocked his head. “What happened out there today?”

“We lost Everett,” Theo said. He turned, propping both of his elbows onto the table and resting his chin in his hands.

“Ahh, I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man,” Harkerpal said.

“Yeah.”

“I remember the time when Everett drank a little too much in celebration after a battle. He—“

“Not now, Harkerpal.” The words came from between his teeth, sounding harsher than they should have.

Silence resounded for a long moment. “Ah,” Harkerpal finally said. He lifted one leg over the bench and then the other, plopping down by Theo’s side. “The crew needs you, you know. They look up to you.”

“I know.” Theo let his face fall further into his hands. “I can’t be their symbol right now though. It’s one death too many.”

“We all make sacrifices to be a part of this crew,” Harkerpal said. “But it’s worth it. We get to do something no one else in history has done. Well, aside from the other four commissioned airships. But it is still a rare privilege.”

Theo grunted in response. What could he do? He was a man at the end of the day, with the same thoughts and feelings as everyone else. The problem was, the crew would see his lack of willpower and it would reflect in their performance. They needed something to stir them. But what?

“You know, I’m quite honored to be serving Rislandia. We have a fair king who is a good man and does right by his subjects,” Harkerpal said, as if sensing Theo’s thoughts.

“That’s why we’re here,” Theo said, but not as enthusiastic as he should have been. “Maybe we need something a little simpler to rally with, though.”

“Ah, like a mantra or a creed. I heard that the monks to the east in Atrebla utter the same seven words every morning in a chant. It’s supposed to be beautiful when they’re all in chorus.”

“I’m not having the crew chant,” Theo said. He sat himself back upright and turned to look at Harkerpal.

The engineer stroked his chin. “You’re right. But we could change it to something else.” He snapped his fingers. “A battle cry!”

Theo couldn’t help but let out the smallest of chuckles at that. Enthusiasm was contagious, he’d give Harkerpal that. “For Malaky?”

Harkerpal shook his head. “No, no. We need something that’s specific to the Liliana, something that lets the people know that they’re a part of this beautiful airship, that they’re the elite.”

Talyen, the chef’s assistant, moved across the mess with a bucket of hot water in her hands. She looked to be struggling from it. Steam rose from the bucket to her face.

“Our steam exhaust brings fear to our enemies when they see our glorious ship!” Harkerpal said, laughing to himself. “Down in the engine room, we like to pretend that it’s our work that they so fear.”

“Heh,” Theo said. He found himself rising to help Talyen, his spirits already lifting. “Maybe that’s what matters anyway. The symbol of it all. For steam!” he said jokingly, raising a hand in the air.

When Theo had arrived by Talyen, she gratefully handed the bucket over to him. “What are you two laughing so hard about?” she asked, wiping sweat from her brow when Theo relieved her of the heavy object.

Theo followed her, careful not to spill the water. The hot steam filled his face. “Thinking of a battle cry for the crew. Something simple to lift spirits and remind us why we’re here.”

“You need something with more substance,” Talyen said. She held the kitchen’s swinging door open for Theo. Theo carried the bucket into the kitchen. “You guys were talking about how great Rislandia is.” She blushed. “Sorry, I can overhear everything in the mess from the kitchen.”

“Don’t worry. It’s an open discussion,” Theo said, lifting the bucket higher and placing it on the stove. “Here?”

Talyen nodded. She pursed her lips. “Hmm. How about ‘For Steam and Country’? That has a nice ring to it.”

It did. The hairs on his neck rose. The words caused Theo’s skin to prickle with electricity. It felt right. “Talyen, you’re a genius.” He turned to shout back to Harkerpal. “You hear that?”

“Hear what?” the engineer asked.

“For steam and country!” Theo belted as if he meant the words. The cry pierced him even more deeply than before.

“For steam and country!” Harkerpal shouted back. “I love it!”

Those words carried, and others throughout the ship repeated it. Shouts of the words echoed, muffled through doors and floorboards. They had struck a chord that would change the course of this war, and they’d done it together. Theodore Von Monocle smiled.

 Read more in Jon Del Arroz’s new novel “For Steam and Country” now on Amazon!

Neema, who had been keeping a watchful eye on her bounty from the relative safety of the tenting’s thick canvas, waited until the last possible moment before scurrying out and flipping the meat. A quick glance to confirm its progress, she then turned on her heel and returned as quickly as possible to the welcoming shade.

“Just another couple of minutes, grandfather,” she called over her shoulder.

“Take your time, child,” her grandfather replied from the mound of cushions he’d made his chair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Neema nodded, her eyes scanning the sands and sky. It was troublesome enough to catch and cook her treat, she was not about to give it up to some opportunistic bird of prey or carrion feeder.

It was as her eyes travelled the horizon that she caught first sight of the hint of motion. Shielding her brow, she focused her gaze, studying the distant shimmer.

“Something is coming, grandfather,” she said solemnly.

“Oh?” her grandfather asked congenially. “Are you sure? Could it not be a mirage; a trick of the sun?”

Neema pouted; she wasn’t a baby anymore, and she hadn’t mistaken a mirage for something else in nearly four years, but still her grandfather enjoyed his gentle teasing of her for it.

“No,” she replied testily, “it’s throwing up dust, and it’s coming closer.”

“A wild dog, perhaps?” her grandfather suggested.

Neema didn’t have to turn to look at her aging carer to know he was smiling. The old man loved to amuse himself with silly notions, despite the fact she had long since stopped playing into them.

“It’s closing too fast to be a dog,” she replied, her eyes watching the flicker in the distance, within which she could now see glints and gleams of reflected sun. “And it’s metal.”

“Hmm…” her grandfather replied, his typically resonant voice pensive. “A dog with a jet-pack maybe?”

Neema rolled her eyes, though her lips curled into a small grin nonetheless; she may not have played into the old man’s jokes anymore, but that didn’t mean she did not still get some enjoyment out of them. “No, grandfather, I think it’s a customer,” she smiled.

“My goodness, a customer!” her grandfather gushed. “Am I presentable?”

Neema risked a glance from their impending company, and her meal, to appraise her grandfather’s appearance. The old man, still garbed in his baggy night pyjamas, beamed a toothy grin at her, a single photovoltaic eye blinking rapidly closed in a conspiratorial wink. Giggling, she turned back to her sizzling rock. “Perfect, grandfather,” she muttered, her gaze alternating between the cooking meat and their rapidly approaching guest.

When their customer arrived barely two minutes later, it was with a purring thrum of slowing turbines. The speeder settled itself gently on the scorching sand, five and a half metres of gleaming, polished metal, a slice of sleek, exquisite engineering in the otherwise barren and desolate plain. Neema, her meat retrieved from her makeshift stove and clutched securely in her fist, studied the machine intently, her eyes roaming its smooth lines, examining the decorative embellishments, and noting with mild interest the high-end electro-magnetic rifle mounted on its hood.

“Careful, little one,” a lofty voice jibed, its owner emerging from the speeder’s cockpit with a hiss of hydraulics and a whoosh of depressurised air. “If you stare too long, I may have to charge you for the privilege!”

Neema turned to look at the man as he stepped down, the soft crunch of the sand muffled by his booming laugh. Beaming back at her, she watched as he affixed a large, golden sun protector atop his head, his hands brushing imagined dust from his soft and delicate robes.

“Nbao!” he barked. “Think you can fill her up for me?”

From within the dark confines of the tent, her grandfather returned an affirmative nod, followed by a rate displayed with his fingers.

The man smiled, his head dipping genially as he reached into a pocket and withdrew a silken pouch. Tossing it in the direction of her grandfather, Neema could hear the clink of credit tiles.

It took but a moment for the old man to verify the amount, his deft and capable hands effortlessly cross-checking the tiles, and when he’d finished he gave her a nod. Her mouth full of meat, Neema refrained from replying and instead simply grabbed the fuelling hose and moved toward the speeder.

“Careful,” their guest winked at her with a smile of gleaming platinum, “if you scratch it, I’ll expect a discount.”

Neema bobbed her head courteously; every customer they had seemed to come up with roughly the same pseudo-joke, and every one apparently thought themselves original and hilarious. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d never so much as grazed a guest’s property in all the time she’d been entrusted with the pump.

The fuelling nozzle in place and locked, she gave her grandfather a quick thumbs-up. At her sign, the old man threw a switch, and chilled liquid hydrogen began surging from the stores beneath their feet and into the speeder’s fuel tanks. The hose, heavily insulated against the icy substance now flowing through it, as well as the searing rays of the sun, writhed and expanded for a moment in the harsh light before settling.

Neema, satisfied her work was done for the moment, carefully chewed a mouthful of her afternoon’s culinary exploits and then swallowed. Turning her gaze once more to the speeder’s owner, she found him studying her uncomfortably. Uncertain, she held out her meal to him.

“Care for a bite?” she asked, hoping this was the polite and socially acceptable thing to do.

The man gazed at her offering, his lips twisting into a grimace, and then waved her away irritably. “No,” he replied, making no attempt to hide his revulsion, before turning his attention from her imperiously.

Neema, despite the fact that she hadn’t really wanted to share her treat, was still hurt that something she’d worked so hard over had been rejected so brutally. Moving away from the speeder and their guest, she retreated into the cooler confines of the tent and settled herself up against the pillowy seat of her grandfather.

“Everything okay, Neema?” her grandfather asked, his lips curling around a freshly lit hookah pipe, the rich scent of the flavoured tobacco already wreathing him in its embrace.

“Yes,” she replied sullenly, her eyes lingering on the lustrous speeder, and its equally gleaming owner.

Her grandfather puffed leisurely on his pipe, his artificial eyes studying her carefully. Silence passed between them, and Neema knew that the old man was waiting for her to confide in him. Ordinarily, she’d rise to the challenge and hold out as long as she could, a game created out of how long each could maintain the silence, however in that moment she didn’t feel like it.

“Grandfather,” she asked, working to put her thoughts in order, “why do some people have power, and others don’t?”

Her grandfather raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And here I thought you were just going to ask why some people had no manners.”

Neema shook her head. In actuality, that had been one of the first questions on the tip of her tongue, however she’d noticed a similar trend in the majority of their customers and she’d found her thoughts attempting to identify a common factor.

Her grandfather smiled and placed a loving hand on her shoulder. “Neema, would it surprise you to know that you and your doddering old grandfather, despite what you may think, are both richer and more powerful than almost all of our ‘esteemed’ visitors?”

Neema frowned, her eyes never leaving the regal figure of their customer as he stood imperially beside his property, his attention no doubt engrossed on loftier things. He was too far away to hear their conversation, though she suspected that were he not he’d have most definitely had some things to say regarding her grandfather’s ludicrous statement.

In his absence, and with no challenge forthcoming, her grandfather continued. “He may have a fancy vehicle, but he requires it because he is not powerful enough to remain in one place. He dresses in gold and finery, but that is because he must go out of his way to display his wealth and inform potential observers of his station. He speaks authoritatively, and rudely at times, but this too is simply window dressing so as to convince others that he deserves to be listened to in the first place. And he refuses your offering, because he does not possess the knowledge or ability to see it for what it really is.”

Neema cocked her head, disbelieving her grandfather, but listening intently nonetheless.

“We, on the other hand,” her grandfather smiled, smoke curling from his lips and drifting lazily up through his thick eyebrows, “have no vehicle at all, because we have nowhere to be; instead, people come to us. They go out of their way to do so, because this is where we have chosen to be. So too do we have no need to clothe ourselves in the appearance of power or wealth, instead prioritising comfort and ease; in spite of this, all who come to us know the power that we hold. Were we to refuse their requests of us, they would surely die out here, the sun snuffing out their lives with a deadly poise that it’s had millennia to perfect. Their riches cannot save them; only our good grace has that power. A grace, I might add, that requires no speech at all. We simply move our head one way or another, and show them our price; one which they will gratefully pay.”

Reaching out a hand, her grandfather gently pried a stick of fried lizard from Neema’s fingers. “As for this,” he said, taking a slow and savouring bite of the treat their guest had rejected so forcefully, “to me it tastes of friendship, made all the richer for it was offered at no cost at all.”

Neema allowed herself a tiny smile, her eyes blinking rapidly to prevent them from watering.

“Your name, Neema,” her grandfather continued, his hand tender and warm on her shoulder, “means ‘one born in prosperity’. Recognise what you have, and learn to see what others merely claim to possess.”

She watched as her grandfather turned to gaze at the speeder, their guest now fidgeting in his sumptuous clothes under the blazing, unforgiving heat of the afternoon sun.

“Nothing but a mirage,” he muttered, his expression calm and untroubled. “A mirage.”

It listened to music through an implant in its skull while standing at the rigid attention its boss wanted. It couldn’t watch digital media through its contact lenses; that might prevent it from reacting when seconds counted, and someone might see the commercials in front of its eyes and think badly of it. It couldn’t risk a bad review, it needed this job. This position paid so much better than the dole out, and you had to work to have the chance to afford an upload. That was a luxury, unlike the gender neutral body mod it had chosen several years before, subsidized because it rendered it sterile.

Levan signaled Anowen through the network that he needed help in lab 5, one that was still in process. Finally, it’d be relevant and bill at a high rate. So much better than getting assigned clean up when someone else did the organ harvesting.

Anowen waved its badge and hand over the sensor, and it still hesitated to let it in. Levan did a voice over-ride, which meant it was high security. Was this something new? A higher pay rate then, to be sure. Anowen entered the room and the door closed immediately behind it.

Levan begged it, “Help me hold her down!” The old woman was convulsing, and the electrodes that went past her skull into the brain were flashing erratic patterns.

“You have to call for medical! I can’t handle this! I just do deconstruction or harvesting!”

“Help me hold her down so it at least has a chance of working!”

Anowen obeyed because it had no other idea what to do. Anowen winced at having to apply pressure to the limbs, bruising the skin. Levan pulled out straps from some hidden compartment on the table and restrained the patient. The body shook and tried to flail as mental commands failed, but now it could not accidentally strike a person or seriously damage itself. The convulsions eased as Anowen watched, fiddling with the restraints’ controls out of a desire to minimize the damage. Did this mean the body wouldn’t be harvested? Anowen’s social rating was high in part because of its ties to the life-saving organ harvesting here, getting shout outs and kudos and not quite joking requests for a new kidney from those who couldn’t afford artificial organs or out of ethics refused them.

The light patterns during an upload were usually fluid, a beautiful liquid rainbow as someone’s essence – the soul, if you believed in such a thing – changed, evolved, and was liberated. This was a dim, discordant mess. It grew darker before seemingly turning off. Anowen had never seen that before and said so.

“I have.”

“You have?” Anowen asked.

“It happens sometimes.”

“The process is perfect. It almost never goes wrong, Six Sigma quality levels – “
“No one would do this if they knew the failure rate.” Levan brought up a human-machine interface and entered a number of commands. The organ harvesting procedures started, and the surgical equipment descended from the machine. Anowen started working out of habit as much as the desire to not think about the failure. Anowen said nothing as the body was disassembled. The brain and a few bones were all that was left at the end.

Levan entered a code to flag the body as suffering severe osteoporosis. He began personally collecting the bones and brain, when usually it was only the brain that was flash burned.

Anowen objected. “The bones could be used, marrow harvested, bone grafts –“

“If the bones are sent anywhere but cremation immediately, someone could get a scan of the sensor entry points relative to the brain or how a sensor shifted and triggered seizures, killing the upload. No, it all gets burned.”

“That’s not policy.”

“That is policy when there is a failure.”

The words burned through Anowen. Policy was like the law; you dare not violate it. But policy for this type of case meant it happened enough to have a policy. “You’re lying.”

Levan hit a button and pulled up the text of the policy on a screen they could both see it. The codes on it indicated this was restricted, extremely sensitive and secret. Yes, there was a policy, and what he was doing was per the rules. And Anowen was never, ever allowed to discuss this. Levan entered a number of other codes manually.

It said, “You could send the commands through the network through an implant or say it aloud.”

“Read the policy again. What gets sent wirelessly through the network from an implant gets recorded there, and voice commands get processed for meaning before implementation. Only commands through an interface are secure enough for something this sensitive. You don’t talk about it, anywhere, and you don’t give any commands in any way in any method that could be used to figure out what happened here.”

“How often does this happen here?” Anowen asked.

“For patients this age, maybe one in eight. I don’t have access to all the stats and researching that would get me in trouble. For all patients, fewer than one in twenty.”

“What about the family?”

“They’ll see the persona we pieced together from the person’s recorded statements and rough personality simulation from their social media history, blogs, interviews, psyche profiles and so forth.”

“It isn’t them.”

“It is close enough for most family members, and given the expectation that the new AI will pursue its own interests and change radically in the grid, it is enough.”

“Won’t the AIs in the grid say that person hasn’t joined?”

“Most of them won’t care unless they were expecting it like a spouse, and this patient was single.”

“Children, friends, someone?” Anowen asked.
“AIs aren’t people anymore. Give it a few weeks of hundred fold experience compared to the lives we live, and it won’t care much about people. And those that do care about the newcomers are relieved that we opted to delete the bad uploads than dump them in with the good ones. If necessary, the intact personalities will cover for us.”

“They can’t lie.”

“They can dissemble and distract until the human gives up asking. And unless you’re in IT and monitoring the AIs, you wouldn’t be able to verify.”
“And IT works for us.”

“Yes.”

“Why would we accept patients with high odds of failure?”
“Because there is still a market for human organs, and a conversion to digital reduces overall resource consumption on the planet relative to you being alive while extending a few lives. Even if the organs aren’t useful due to disease or health problems, they still turn into fertilizer and we still get social points for trying to save lives and reduce resource usage simultaneously.”

“AIs use a lot of energy, servers.”

“They don’t mind running off power from the cremation units, nuclear waste facilities, or biofuels I’m not going to talk about. They can tap chemical energy, too, or slow down to the point they hardly use any power computing or electrical.”

“If they slow down too much, they become incoherent. That requires deletion of the corrupted version and restoration.”

“We don’t back them up.”

Anowen felt its heart become heavy, something it knew was a biological impossibility. “What?” The syllable was all it could utter. “What?” it asked again, a refrain desperately seeking to deny what it had heard.

“There are nine billion people on the planet, some of whom didn’t even have electricity when we were born. Brown outs, blackouts, we still suffer from energy shortages. It is cruel to use power to backup digital personalities when people need energy to live, too.”

“Digital personalities need it to exist.”

“They do exist in the grid. And they are on their second life, living something we can’t imagine. They don’t get a third.”

“Except when the uploads fail.”
“She was going to die. She knew that if she read only the marketing material. She just didn’t get a second life, and most people don’t even get that.”

“We took her money.”
“Yes, to give her that second chance. That’s all anyone has – a chance.”

Anowen fell silent and finished the clean-up task to try to distract itself from the urge to scream at him. Yes, the company said it gave people second chances at a second life. There was no explicit guarantee, only an implicit one. And if the harvested organs saved other lives, extending those, then someone else still lived longer because of this one’s death.

Finally, Anowen said, “Sometimes I see the families when the person is escorted in.”

“And procedures prevent you from seeing them when the procedure is over, ostensibly so that they don’t see the person who deconstructed a loved one, and you’re always forbidden from contacting them.”

“Do the AIs ever contact their families?”
“Their communications outside of the grid are limited so they don’t consume too many resources, copy themselves, harass people from beyond the grave –“

“And censored.”

“Just like everything else in life if you want to keep on living.” His words held an implicit threat. The company monitored activity and communications. Violate the privacy and secrecy rules, get sued to oblivion, and they might get an order for Anowen to be dismantled to pay the debts it otherwise couldn’t pay.

Anowen stared at the now empty bed for far too long before hitting a button on the console for it to be sterilized. Its cycle time metrics had to be shot by this aberrant session. “What is my pay rate for this?”
“For the difficult session, double.”

Then cycle time didn’t matter as much. “Is that why you always seem to get the old ones, to get the difficult cases?”
“They are just as dead when I’m done and you start whether the upload works or not. The only difference is the pay rate, and yes, I do like that.”

“I was saving for an upgrade,” Anowen admitted.

“I save up for replacement artificial organs so I don’t need an upgrade to live a long time in the real world.”

Anowen completed the sterilization routines and let Levan do all the commands, since he was the expert. It waited until he confirmed Anowen could go. It checked out of its shift and went to the showers, stripping quickly to get under the warm, wet spray. Maybe no one would notice the tears mingled with the water, and thus they wouldn’t ask, because Anowen could only bear the burden in silence.

Renwick had seen the holovids of those creatures possessing a person. They instantly drove their host mad. Horrifying chaos and violence ensued every time. It’d gone that way year after year as the wraiths performed their annual migration to Eredia Prime. Up until this year, smart miners fled from orbit or from the colony below.

The situation proved untenable for human colonists. The Rentech Corporation needed the platinum from the rich colony mine. It was far too profitable to stop operations for several weeks every year to allow the wraiths free reign.

Renwick, an engineer by trade, had the foresight to figure out how to repeal the wraiths. The electromagnetic energy field created by his ship’s hyperdrive deterred them, drove the spirits away. As a test, he had a crew amplify that field. Though they contracted radiation poisoning from the experiment, most of the crew survived. That proved enough for the company to allow Renwick the resources for an expedition team to deploy Project Scarecrow.

His ship dropped the last beacon from his cargo bay, activating network of hyperspace fields. Just in time. His sensors detected the energy beings on the horizon.

“We’re deployed. Power up,” Renwick said through his comm system. A glowing minefield of the beacons formed a net of electromagnetic waves around the colony.

The wraiths advanced with inhuman speed. The energy field crackled. If there had been sound in space, Renwick would have sworn the wraiths howled in pain. Whatever those spirits felt, they turned back, leaving the colony safe for another year.