My Favorite Science Fiction Story: Blue Tyson

Today’s post is a guest review by Blue Tyson. Who is the enigmatic Blue Tyson you may ask? Well, he is that Australian guy who runs the fantastic web site Free SF Reader. He has several other web sites too, but Free SF Reader is my favorite – crammed with loads of free science fiction stories, organized into rating categories, and filled with clever one-line reviews! I recently asked Blue Tyson “What is your favorite science fiction short story and why?” Here is his answer:

Caution: Spoiler Alert!

Blue Tyson’s Answer:

When I was asked about this I thought ‘favorite SF story, impossible to pick!’ So, to narrow it down I thought why not go for both online and Australian.

Which leads us to the incomparable Greg Egan. There are a few stories of his I think are outstanding, some of which aren’t online :- Wang’s Carpets, Luminous, etc. To see which stories are available to read, check out his website at Greg Egan’s Home Page. This includes a comprehensive bibliography, non-fiction, and information on upcoming stories – so just now I found more to look forward to.

This brings us to the story choice in “Border Guards”. You can find this here Border Guards – Greg Egan.

A story that is somewhat different to the ‘Holy Crap, Wow!’ of the couple I mentioned previously. Instead, this is an immortal sport romance, if you like, and on a much smaller scale, even though some fascinating history of this future history is revealed later.

The sport part is how it starts, as a man decides to go play:

“As he rounded the corner and the field came into view, it was clear from the movements of the players that they were in the middle of a quantum soccer match. At Jamil’s request, the city painted the wave function of the hypothetical ball across his vision, and tweaked him to recognise the players as the members of two teams without changing their appearance at all.”

Lots of geeks don’t like sport. I am not one of them. A good chunk of the first part of the piece is about the playing of this future game of probability manipulation via opposing teams. For example:

“Two long lobes of probability, each modulated by a series of oscillating mounds, raced along the sides of the field. A third, shorter lobe running along the centre-line melted away, reappeared, then merged with the others as they touched the end of the field, forming an almost rectangular plateau encompassing the goal.”

Jamil is intrigued by the opposition’s star player, Margit, even more so after their team is waxed by hers. A woman of mystery.

“So what’s her story? She must have told you something.”

Ezequiel said, “Only that she learnt to play a long time ago; she won’t say where or when. She arrived in Noether at the end of last year, and grew a house on the southern outskirts. No one sees her around much. No one even knows what she studies.”

Jamil is upset that a friend of his is moving away, and here you start to see, that along with playing strange games, these people are likely rather old, and also cue mystery woman arriving on the scene:

He felt a need to explain. He rose to his feet and addressed her. “This was Chusok’s house. We were good friends. I’d known him for ninety-six years.”

Margit gazed back at him neutrally. “Boo hoo. Poor baby. You’ll never see your friend again.”

Immortality stories fascinated me when I was quite young, not really now, but I think this is some of its appeal.

So, he goes back to studying until the next soccer game, where Margit and teammates wipe the floor with them again. It appears that Jamil may have managed to draw the stranger out of her shell, as

“Margit was sitting on Jamil’s doorstep, holding a bunch of white flowers in one hand.

Jamil was irritated. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to apologise.”

He shrugged. “There’s no need. We feel differently about certain things. That’s fine. I can still face you on the playing field.”

“I’m not apologising for a difference of opinion. I wasn’t honest with you. I was cruel.” She shaded her eyes against the glare of the planet and looked up at him. “You were right: it was my loss. I wish I’d known your friend.”

Further, it appears this woman is not just the aloof independent super-athlete that everyone thinks.

“She said, “I’m so lonely here. I can’t bear it any more.”

He sat beside her. “Then why did you rebuff him? You could at least have been friends.”

She shook her head. “Don’t ask me to explain.”

She wants more than just dinner, clearly, and after sleeping together, the next morning her trauma begins to be revealed.

“Margit was seven thousand five hundred and ninety-four years old.
…
“Grace was my best friend. We were students.” Margit smiled. “Before everyone was a student. We’d talk about it, but we didn’t believe we’d see it happen. It would come in another century. It would come for our great-great-grandchildren. We’d hold infants on our knees in our twilight years and tell ourselves: this one will never die.

“When we were both twenty-two, something happened. To both of us.” She lowered her eyes. “We were kidnapped. We were raped. We were tortured.”

This traumatic event spurred them on to develop the Ndoli jewel (which appears in other Egan stories) to prevent people suffering what they had undergone in the same way.

Needless to say, immortality is going to get, in particular, religious opposition, and Margit and Jamil discuss this, along with further discoveries made that enabled travel and expansion – something pretty handy when you have huge numbers of people that can live a very long time. The suicide of her friend and colleague is at the heart of her bitterness

“The tragedians were wrong. They had everything upside-down. Death never gave meaning to life: it was always the other way round. All of its gravitas, all of its significance, was stolen from the things it ended. But the value of life always lay entirely in itself — not in its loss, not in its fragility.

“Grace should have lived to see that. She should have lived long enough to understand that the world hadn’t turned to ash.”

So we come to another issue of the story, that of the generation gap. Here, it is really about as large as you can get. Margit, one of the first of the long lived encounters a young generation, who she thinks can’t understand what she has experienced particularly with regards to people actually dying, as opposed to just up and vanishing for some length of time, like Jamil’s friend.

“But I was wrong to tell you what I have, and I’ll fight to regain the strength to stay silent. I stand at the border between two worlds, Jamil. I remember death, and I always will. But my job now is to guard that border. To keep that knowledge from invading your world.”

Before the next quantum soccer game, Jamil talks to his fellow players about what is troubling the enigmatic star, to see if they can overcome their generation gap.

After she manages a particularly spectacular goal, they stop the game early, and here is where the title comes from:

Penina said, “The game’s over early, just this once. Think of this as an invitation. We want you to swim with us. We want you to talk to us. We want to hear everything about your life.”

Margit’s composure began to crack. She squeezed Jamil’s shoulder. He whispered, “Say the word, and we’ll put you down.”

Margit didn’t whisper back; she shouted miserably, “What do you want from me, you parasites? I’ve won your f***ing game for you! What more do you want?”

Jamil was mortified. He stopped and prepared to lower her, prepared to retreat, but Ezequiel caught his arm.

Ezequiel said, “We want to be your border guards. We want to stand beside you.”

An intriguing future history, wherein the problems of inter-generational relations are shown through a beginning friendship, and a really cool sport, with a rather sweet ending.

Rusty’s Two Cents:

Thanks Blue Tyson – that sounds like a really intriguing story. I have read a few of Greg Egan’s stories, including the awesome “Wang’s Carpets” but this one had escaped me until now.

Don’t forget to check out “Border Guards” at Greg Egan’s web site.

And, if you are a fan of free science fiction and fantasy stories then it is high time you got yourself on over to Free SF Reader and find yourself loads of great stories to read!

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