The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Her mother-she still remembers this, 105 years later, with a brightness and clarity denied more recent events-turned and stared out of the small, grimy kitchen window. Outside, the darkness of a cold winter’s evening. Mother’s face was lined, though she could not have been more than 30, and she was very thin.

“You know”-she turned to face her child, sitting at the cracked Formica-topped table (an unforgettable egg-yolk yellow)-“I do believe you’re right, Gus.”

Gus’s face dimpled in a smile.

When she had finished her mashed banana, she slid from the chair, and went to fetch her duffel coat while Mother washed up dishes in the big cracked sink. By the time Mother was ready to leave, Gus was already standing by the front door (whose paint was flaking, revealing silver-grey weathered wood: significant in retrospect, natural at the time), her duffel coat buttoned all the way up, her Buzz Lightyear satchel stuffed with books.

“You’re a good girl, Gus.”

“You’re a good woman, Mum.”

Mother bent down and they touched foreheads: their own private gesture which they had performed for as long as Gus could remember.

“Come along, pumpkin.”

Gus sighed, but it was a kind of joke: she liked being called pumpkin, and she always had. Even though she was getting a little old for pet names.

Outside, the streets were cold. Gus walked with her hand in Mother’s, hurrying a little as the bus-stop came into sight.

There they waited, beneath the sodium-vapour streetlamp, in front of an old council house whose patchy hedge, black beneath the glowing orange light, scarcely concealed the tiny front garden, the discarded bath and broken parts of rusty lawnmower strewn across it. Finally the bus came, only ten minutes late; its pneumatic door wheezed open and Gus and Mother climbed inside.

On her lap, Mother clutched the Safeway carrier bag she referred to as her “executive briefcase.” Sometimes she would close her eyes, lightly dozing, though tonight she was not so tired.

Gus counted stops, keeping track of the route-“We’re on the ring road now, Mummy”-as the bus circled the north of Oxford, and turned off into the small science park where Mother worked. They got off at the usual stop, and walked through the dark, empty car park (which in later years Gus would think of as a parking lot) to the locked entrance.

Why is it always empty, Mum? she had once asked. Because the important people, Mother replied, have all gone home.

Inside the lobby, it was her favourite security guard-Uncle Eric with the big grey moustache-who signed them in. Her second-favourite was Big Fredo, who talked to Mother in Italian, which Gus did not understand, though she loved to listen to the flowing lyrical words.

Are we important? she had asked her mother.

After a pause, Oh, yes, Mother had replied. You, pumpkin, are the most important person of all. That’s why they leave the office building empty, just for you.

“Hey, Louisa,” said Eric. “Good to know the real workers have arrived.”

“I guess so. How’s Esther?”

“Just the same.” A slow shake of the head. “Just the same.”

“See you later, then.”

“I’ll be here.” Just as he always said: “Same old same old.”

Mother hung up her threadbare anorak, took the freshly laundered light-blue work-coat from her carrierbag, and pulled it on. From the cupboard, she dragged out the big old vacuum cleaner, set the mop and bucket aside for later.

“Come along, pumpkin. Let’s get set up.”

The wide, gleaming machine room was her domain. Machine room. Gus had learned the name from one of the late-night computer operators, who used to chat with her before the night-shift had been cancelled (Because they finally automated the overnight run, the woman said morosely. Even the back-up routine.)

The place was clean, always cool, with a crispness to the conditioned air which Gus could almost taste. Sometimes she stuck out her tongue-when there was no adult to see-and tried to lick the dust-free atmosphere itself.

The big desktop shone an eerie white beneath strong fluorescent light. All around stood row upon row of pale-grey and matte-black rectangular boxes: the Computers (the capital was obvious, whenever Mother talked about them) which kept the business going.

Gus had learned to program in Logo when she was six years old, on the cracked BBC Acorn at the back of her form-room in school, on a decades-old table bearing the scratched initials of long-forgotten pupils.

By this time, aged eight, she knew the difference between program and data, between processor and disc. Gus was aware that the boxes discreetly labelled System/38 (that was an old one, battered by now), AS/400 and RS/600 were processor units; the majority of the rest were disc drives. Row upon row of them, like tall refrigerators, stacked inside with spinning discs.