Year's Best SF 17

“Would you like to change the design of your bedroom?” Dad thinks. “A new start? You’ve had the Klein bottle for a while now. We can look through some contemporary designs based on eight-dimensional tori, or we can go with a five-dimensional sphere if you like it minimalist.”

“Dad, the Klein bottle is fine.” I pause. “Maybe I’ll try making my room three-dimensional when I’m rested.”

He looks at me, and maybe he sees in me something new that he didn’t expect. “Of course,” he thinks. “You are ready to do the design yourself.”

Dad stays with me as I drift off to sleep.

“I miss you,” Dad thinks to himself. He does not know that I’m still awake. “When Renée was born, I put the ‹star› in her name because I knew one day you would go to the stars. I’m good at making people’s dreams come true. But that is one dream that I can’t create for you. Have a safe journey, Sophia.” He fades out of my room.

I imagine Mom’s consciousness suspended between the stars, an electromagnetic ribbon shimmering in the interstellar dust. The robot shell is waiting for her on that distant planet, under an alien sky, a shell that will rust, decay, and fall apart with time.

She will be so happy when she is alive again.

I go to sleep, dreaming of the Chrysler Building.

Tethered MERCURIO D. RIVERA

Mercurio D. Rivera (www.mercuriorivera.com) has worked as a Manhattan litigator for more than twenty years, generating voluminous legal briefs rather than short fiction. That changed during a one-year sabbatical when he signed up for a science-fiction writing course taught by author Terry Bisson at the New School. Since 2006 he has published twenty stories in markets such as Asimov’s, Interzone, Nature, Black Static, Abyss and Apex, and Unplugged: The Web’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2008 Download, edited by Rich Horton (Wyrm Publishing). In 2011, he was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in the short fiction category. His stories have been podcast at Escape Pod, StarshipSofa and Transmissions From Beyond. He has served as an Associate Editor for Sybil’s Garage Magazine, and is a proud member of the Altered Fluid writing group. The story in this book is one of his Wergen series. The alien Wergens suffer from a compulsive biochemical love for humanity, a love that has driven them to share their superior technology and establish joint colonies with humans throughout the solar system.

“Tethered” was published in Interzone. Set on the shores of Titan’s methane lakes, it is a story about very strange alien biology, a female coming-of-age story in which the transition between girlhood and womanhood is further complicated by the relationship between humans and a subservient alien race that is biologically compelled to try to make humans happy.

On the shore of Ontario Lacus on Southern Titan, Cara molded castles from the windblown sediment that served as sand. Her parents stood at the threshold of their shelter in the distance, chatting with their sponsor, the Wergen responsible for transporting her family from Earth. Cara lay on her stomach while the methane waves lapped against the shore, tickling her bare feet.