Phil Preston: Speaking of your trip, there are rumors that you didn’t get along with the UN team during your visit to North America.

  Julian Prince: Well, we spent six months together, so there were the normal conflicts, but I wouldn’t say that I didn’t get along with the team. I actually have a funny story about it.

  Preston: You have a funny story? This I’ve got to hear.

  Prince: Since this was officially a military mission for some idiotic reason, the scientists and I—all the civilians—had to take part in an orientation. The orientation was basically our team leader, Colonel Cooper, telling us over and over again that he was in charge and we had to listen to him. He was this husky bald guy with a kind of soft voice, but he had an intensity that made it clear he was used to people doing what he told them to do. His look and demeanor reminded me of Marlon Brando’s character of Kurtz from the movie Apocalypse Now, so when he finished I said something like, “Sure thing, Kurtz.”

  [Audience laughter]

  Prince: I thought it was funny, too, but he didn’t seem to get it, and he marched over to me, put his nose right up to mine, and said, “The name is Cooper, and you can call me Colonel or Colonel Cooper.” Of course I called him Kurtz for the entire six months.

  [Audience cheers and laughter]

  Preston: I’m surprised he didn’t do anything.

  Prince: I just assumed that he had no idea who Kurtz was, but during the last few days of the mission I said to him “I’m going to miss you, Kurtz.” No one else was around, so I hoped he realized that I meant it. He then shook his head and said—and I remember every word to this day—“You have been calling me Kurtz this entire trip, and I had hoped by now that you would have realized how foolish that has been.” He then leaned in and whispered in my ear, “You can’t go native when there are no natives.”

  Preston: Wow. That’s intense.

  Prince: I know. And people call me the Prince of Doom and Gloom!

  [Scattered audience laughter]

  Preston: Actually, do you mind that—when people call you the Prince of Doom and Gloom?

  Prince: [Pause] Yes.

  Preston: Well, you’ve dated Janet Skillings, so I’m guessing that being the Prince of Doom and Gloom hasn’t interfered much with your love life.

  [Audience laughter]

  Prince: Well, being rich and famous helps.

  [Audience laughter]

  Preston: So is there anyone in your life right now?

  Prince: I’m afraid not. I live life one day at a time.

  Preston: So what you’re saying is you’re only up for one-night stands.

  [Audience laughter]

  Prince: Life is a one-night stand.

  [Uncomfortable silence]

  Political Activism

  The next ten years of Prince’s life were marked by political activism. Violence in Africa and Asia led to the rise of the Repatriation Movement, which fought for the return of former North Americans to their home continent. While most countered the movement on practical grounds—North America simply wasn’t habitable yet—Prince saw the movement as something deeper and darker. He felt the movement was about rejecting Africa and Asia and the expatriates’ hosts more than a desire to return to their devastated homeland.[21][22]

  In a widely quoted speech in 2034, Prince said:

  This is not a movement about returning home. This is a movement about rejecting friends. This is not a movement about finding comfort in familiar lands. This is a movement about fearing those who wish to help. This is not about repatriation. This is about rejection.[23]

  Prince was a prolific essay writer during this period, but nothing ever approached the popularity and power of his earlier work. His essay “Rejecting Home” (Der Spiegel, 2035) an acerbic and politically pointed update of his essay “Coming Home,” was described by critic Gerald King as “a sad attempt by Prince to leverage his earlier brilliance to make a point about what many are starting to see in him as a naïve perception of unity in people who want no such thing.”[24]

  Prince ceased his anti-repatriation activism when parts of North America were re-opened for settlements in 2038.[citation needed]

  EXCERPT FROM RHYTHMS OF DECLINE BY JULIAN PRINCE (KNOPF, 2029)

  Simon had hoped that all would be normal in the end. He would tuck Annie into bed, pat Arthur on the head, and then kiss them both goodnight. Jason would wander off, falling asleep to the dull glow of some video game or another. Later, Simon would poke his head in, mutter a goodnight, and then turn the electronics off. Finally, he and Annie would hold each other and let the night take them. That was his dream—that they would fall asleep as a family and never wake up.

  Yet, somehow, this seemed better. Their tears, their grief, and their fear tapped into a well deeper than family ritual. They were together in a moment when being alone seemed profane and wrong.

  Jason joined Simon and began to cry as they all held each other. No one said anything. They breathed the air that gave them life. They shared the love that made them family. They cried the tears that made them human.

  And then they died.

  Later Life and Novels

  Prince lived the rest of his life in Capetown, South Africa. He only published three more novels; all were well-received but garnered far less praise than The Grey Sunset and Rhythms of Decline.[citation needed]

  Countdown (Knopf, 2040) told the story of a young man named Franklin Proudman who had decided to repatriate to North America. Proudman lands and finds life a lot different than he expected. Much of the book is a rambling series of anecdotes around the hopeless efforts of Proudman to build a life. He eventually dies from starvation, the ground still too damaged to produce crops.

  Lost in North America (Knopf, 2045) is Prince’s only foray into the science fiction genre.[25] The novel tells the story of the Winkler family, who hide in a fallout shelter in Rapid City, South Dakota. Despite Rapid City being ground zero for the Meyer Impact, the family survives and exit the shelter a year later to rebuild their lives. When it becomes clear that there is no food or wildlife, the family begins a journey, foraging for food across North America. The book has clear allusions to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but the emptiness of the landscape provides for a uniquely Princean view. The book generated significant positive critical press.[26][27]

  * * *

  Prince’s final novel, Crater (Knopf, 2056), was released the year before his death. The book continued his exploration of the dark aspects of repatriation.[28] The novel follows a scientist, William Ho, and his assistant Wendy Singh, as they attempt to descend to the bottom of the Meyer Crater. Like Prince’s other novels, Crater is rife with introspection. As Ho and his assistant get closer to the bottom, they realize they are in love. It is when they have reached ground zero of the Meyer Impact when the two realize they have found their future together. The novel’s ending is ambiguous, as the two are attempting to climb out of the crater but are uncertain if they will ever escape. While thematically similar to his earlier novels, Crater employs a denser prose style, with long paragraphs that often include a stream-of-consciousness technique. Despite its ambiguity and often dark scenes, the novel was marked by some as a return to the optimism of “Coming Home.” Crater was a bestseller and re-established Prince as a popular figure in post-Impact literature.[29][30]

  Personal Life

  Prince was romantically connected to several celebrities during his life, including actresses Renee Diaz[citation needed] and Janet Skillings.[31] None of these relationships lasted more than a few weeks, however. In 2050, unofficial Prince biographer Susan Nillson announced that she had uncovered proof that Prince had left a girlfriend and child behind in North America. The document, a digitized copy of a Texas State birth certificate backed up on a European server, showed that Prince fathered a child named Samuel to a mother named Wendy Reynolds. Prince never acknowledged Nillson’s allegations, although most contemporary historians consider the claim accurate.[32]

  EXCERPT FROM JULIAN PRINCE’S FINAL INTERVIEW (PARIS LIVE!, 2056)

  Aliette Rameau: You’ve achieved so much, Monsieur Prince. Do you have any regrets?

  [Pause]

  Rameau: Monsieur Prince?

  Julian Prince: I’m sorry. Your question is a bit overwhelming. My life is full of regrets.

  Rameau: Is there anything specific you could share with us?

  Prince: No. [Takes drink of water] I’m sorry. Could we change the subject, please?

  Death and Legacy

  Prince died on August 20, 2057 in Capetown, South Africa, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left no suicide note. Having died without any heirs, Prince bequeathed his literary estate and assets to The 300 Million Ghosts Foundation, which was founded to record, research, and archive the stories of those who died during the Meyer Impact.[33][34]

  Prince’s legacy continues to define and influence artists to this day. While Impact Nihilism has fallen out of fashion, Prince’s stark images and deep themes can be seen in everything from the paintings of Ellen Winslow to the music of the Bluefins. His use of introspection and stream-of-consciousness has influenced writers as diverse as Joe Lguyen and Isabel Shoeford.[citation needed]

  The play “Coming Home” debuted on the anniversary of Prince’s death in 2058 at the Globe Theater in London. Adapted by Nobel-winning playwright Andrew Hillsborough, the play was an unabashedly optimistic look at a world that survived an extinction event and came away smiling. Hillsborough noted on BBC, “Oh, I’m sure old Prince would have hated it. But the words are all his. Somewhere along the way he changed. Just because he decided that facing the abyss meant that we were all doomed to fall in, doesn’t mean we have to agree with him.”[35]

  EPITAPH ON JULIAN PRINCE’S GRAVESTONE

  Finally home.

  The Plague

  KEN LIU

  Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among many other places. He has won a Nebula, two Hugos, a World Fantasy Award, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award and been nominated for the Sturgeon and the Locus awards. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

  In the short, sharp shocker that follows he demonstrates how people are kept apart as much by their preconceptions as by the mutual incompatibilities of their environments.

  I’m in the river fishing with Mother. The sun is about to set, and the fish are groggy. Easy pickings. The sky is bright crimson and so is Mother, the light shimmering on her shkin like someone smeared blood all over her.

  That’s when a big man tumbles into the water from a clump of reeds, dropping a long tube with glass on the end. Then I see he’s not fat, like I thought at first, but wearing a thick suit with a glass bowl over his head.

  Mother watches the man flop in the river like a fish. “Let’s go, Marne.”

  But I don’t. After another minute, he’s not moving as much. He struggles to reach the tubes on his back.

  “He can’t breathe,” I say.

  “You can’t help him,” Mother says. “The air, the water, everything out here is poisonous to his kind.”

  I go over, crouch down, and look through the glass covering his face, which is naked. No shkin at all. He’s from the Dome.

  His hideous features are twisted with fright.

  I reach over and untangle the tubes on his back.

  * * *

  I wish I hadn’t lost my camera. The way the light from the bonfire dances against their shiny bodies cannot be captured with words. Their deformed limbs, their malnourished frames, their terrible disfigurement—all seem to disappear in a kind of nobility in the flickering shadows that makes my heart ache.

  The girl who saved me offers me a bowl of food—fish, I think. Grateful, I accept.

  I take out the field purification kit and sprinkle the nanobots over the food. These are designed to break down after they’ve outlived their purpose, nothing like the horrors that went out of control and made the world unlivable …

  Fearing to give offense, I explain, “Spices.”

  Looking at her is like looking into a humanoid mirror. Instead of her face I see a distorted reflection of my own. It’s hard to read an expression from the vague indentations and ridges in that smooth surface, but I think she’s puzzled.

  “Modjasaf-fuotapoiss-you,” she says, hissing and grunting. I don’t hold the devolved phonemes and degenerate grammar against her—a diseased people scrabbling out an existence in the wilderness isn’t exactly going to be composing poetry or thinking philosophy. She’s saying “Mother says the food here is poisonous to you.”

  “Spices make safe,” I say.

  As I squeeze the purified food into the feeding tube on the side of the helmet, her face ripples like a pond, and my reflection breaks into colorful patches.

  She’s grinning.

  * * *

  The others do not trust the man from the Dome as he skulks around the village enclosed in his suit.

  “He says that the Dome dwellers are scared of us because they don’t understand us. He wants to change that.”

  Mother laughs, sounding like water bubbling over rocks. Her shkin changes texture, breaking the reflected light into brittle, jagged rays.

  The man is fascinated by the games I play: drawing lines over my belly, my thigh, my breasts with a stick as the shkin ripples and rises to follow. He writes down everything any one of us says.

  He asks me if I know who my father is.

  I think what a strange place the Dome must be.

  “No,” I tell him. “At the Quarter Festivals the men and women writhe together and the shkins direct the seed where they will.”

  He tells me he’s sorry.

  “What for?”

  It’s hard for me to really know what he’s thinking because his naked face does not talk like shkin would.

  “All this.” He sweeps his arm around.

  * * *

  When the plague hit fifty years ago, the berserk nanobots and biohancers ate away people’s skins, the soft surface of their gullets, the warm, moist membranes lining every orifice of their bodies.

  Then the plague took the place of the lost flesh and covered people, inside and outside, like a lichen made of tiny robots and colonies of bacteria.

  Those with money—my ancestors—holed up with weapons and built domes and watched the rest of the refugees die outside.

  But some survived. The living parasite changed and even made it possible for its hosts to eat the mutated fruits and drink the poisonous water and breathe the toxic air.

  In the Dome, jokes are told about the plagued, and a few of the daring trade with them from time to time. But everyone seems content to see them as no longer human.

  Some have claimed that the plagued are happy as they are. That is nothing but bigotry and an attempt to evade responsibility. An accident of birth put me inside the Dome and her outside. It isn’t her fault that she picks at her deformed skin instead of pondering philosophy; that she speaks with grunts and hisses instead of rhetoric and enunciation; that she does not understand family love but only an instinctual, animalistic yearning for affection.

  We in the Dome must save her.

  * * *

  “You want to take away my shkin?” I ask.

  “Yes, to find a cure, for you, your mother, all the plagued.”

  I know him well enough now to understand that he is sincere. It doesn’t matter that the shkin is as much a part of me as my ears. He believes that flaying me, mutilating me, stripping me naked would be an improvement.

  “We have a duty to help you.”

  He sees my happiness as misery, my thoughtfulness as depression, my wishes as delusion. It is funny how a man can see only what he wants to see. He wants to make me the same as him, because he thinks he’s better.

  Quicker than he can react, I pick up a rock and smash the glass bowl around his head. As he screams, I touch his face and watch the shkin writhe over my hands to cover him.

  Mother is right. He has not come to learn, but I must teach him anyway.

  Fleet

  SANDRA MCDONALD

  Sandra McDonald’s first collection of fiction, Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories, was a Booklist Editor’s Choice, an American Library Association Over the Rainbow Book, and winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Her story “Sexy Robot Mom” recently won the Asimov’s Readers’ Poll award. Four of her stories have been noted on the James A. Tiptree Award Honor List that acknowledges writing that explores gender stereotypes. She is the published author of several novels and more than sixty short stories for adults and teens, including the award-winning Fisher Key Adventures and the gay asexual thriller City of Soldiers. She graduated from Ithaca College in New York and the University of Southern Maine and lived on the island of Guam as an ensign in the United States Navy. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine and teaches college in Florida.

  Here she takes us to a postapocalyptic Guam, which has been abandoned by the Western powers, for a sly lesson in what it takes to survive when those powers become interested in colonizing again.

  When I officially became a girl, I took the new name of Isa. At the time I was nine years old. In the Umatac village records I’m still a male named Magahet Joseph Howard USN. It’s good luck to be given the name of an ancestor from Before Silence. My brother calls me Shithead, because he’s my brother. But most people call me Bridge, because the governors gave me that. Someone in every village is appointed to stand with one dusty foot in the past and the other planted in the Great Future, ready to take action when ships appear on the blue horizon.

  Sounds important. Don’t be fooled. We’re not some backwards cargo cult, building mock radio towers in the magical hope of luring back civilization. Civilization will come again regardless. We’re sure of it.