Flash Fiction for EasterCon 2013

Cedar Court Hotel

Bradford, England

Cory Doctorow

doctorow@craphound.com

==

MURDER AT THE CONVENTION

The con-chair was dead, but that was only to be expected. After all,
he'd been predicting it since the first progress update.

Still, it was rather unsightly, the spectacle of a body in the main
atrium. The hotel people were starting to ask questions.

NorEas'Con had been using the Teaneck Hyatt through several incarnations
-- the TeaNeck Raddisson, the TeaNeck Hilton, even a prief flash when it
was the Teaneck Trump. The facilities chair knew the hotel better than
any of its own facilities people and had even consulted, once, upon a
particularly difficult HVAC problem. The facilities people, they trusted
old Tom. Or, as his badge had it, 3TOM3. No one remembered what the 3
stood for.

The con chair was dead, and he lay sprawled in the middle of the atrium.
Some wag had deposited a hall costume coupon on his chest, which was
considered to be in pretty poor taste by all present. The con committee,
of course, had been expecting this. After all, they'd signed off on all
the progress reports.

3TOM3 had given some thought to the problem of disposing of the body.
Randall was a large man, and difficult to shift, and that was before
both arms and both legs had been subjected to multiple compound
fractures. Carrying the con-chair now was a *messy* business, and there
were sharp bits that protruded.

But it had to be done.

==

TV 2050

"Oh come ON," Grandpa said. "When I was a lad, we BEGGED our parents to
let us do this!"

Grunion and Lilian rolled their eyes at him, not even bothering to hide
it. "Grandad, we want to go outside! We hardly ever get bodies," Grunion
said, trying to sound as reasonable as he could. At 11, he was the
diplomat of the two. He'd been the one who'd negotiated for an entire
day in-world, despite Mom's complaints about the carbon taxes.

"This is important," Grandad said. "It's part of our family's tradition.
Your mum and I used to snuggle up on that sofa and watch cartoons
together when she was a girl. I DVRed them!" He looked expectantly at
them, waiting for praise of his technical prowess. The two kids rolled
their eyes straight back into their skulls as they looked up DVR, then
rolled back in synchrony.

"You couldn't just CHOOSE what you'd watch?" is what Lilian said. She
was NOT a diplomat.

Grandad sagged. A lone tear slipped down his cheek. "Look," he said, "It
was the only thing I was ever really good at. It's an important and
vanishing skill. I just want to pass it on to you."

They sighed. "All right," said Grunion. He couldn't bear to break the
old man's heart. He'd wheedle an extra hour of embodiment out of mum in
exchange for it. They'd get to walk around outside later.

==

THE HIDDEN CHILDREN

I don't like my room. Mum and Dad say it's as good as my old one and
even better. But I hate it.

At night I can hear them whispering to each other. I can't make out the
words. It's not English that's the problem. It's nonsense talk. Baby talk.

I was dropping off to sleep last night when one of them whispered in my
ear. "I don't like you. We don't like you." Breath tickled my ear, but
there was no one there. I couldn't tell whether it was a girl or a boy's
voice. It was just a whispery noise. Almost like the wind.

"Are you ghosts?" I whispered back. I felt like I might wet myself.

There was a scatter of laughter that seemed to whip around the room like
a whirlwind. "No," the whisper said. "Guess again."

I didn't know what to guess.

#

I had an imaginary friend when I was little. Slappy Duck had 100 legs
and was always a baby and only ate chocolate. She disappeared when I was
six. I don't know where she went. I guess I didn't need her anymore.

I never thought about where she went.

#

"Are you fairies?"

"Guess again."

The titter of those voices was terrible.

I didn't want to say it.

"How many legs do you have?" I said.

"You've got it," the voice said. "We've missed you."

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came.

==

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

Though you don't know it, at the heart of the Internet's magic is a
router that can manage TCP/IP over destiny. It can send packets where
they will fulfill the truest desires of true love, where they will turn
farce into tragedy, where truth is weighed in the balance and whence
inspiration comes.

Not all the packets pass through that router. That would be insane. Its
backplane can only handle a modest petabit per second, a tiny fraction
of the net's total communications. But it's enough. It's always been enough.

The mandatory filters were installed on January 1, 2015, though
secondary legislation following on from the Digital Economy Act. They
sieved each packet leaving or entering the UK and its undersea cables,
the deepest of deep packet inspections. Anything amiss went straight to
/dev/null. Where it belonged, after all.

That was the day where everything on the Internet that was not mandatory
was forbidden. The moment of perfect control. And no packet ever reached
that router again, from any of the British Isles.

No one ever wrote a song worth a damn after that. Though they never knew
why.

==