Single-Bit Error

Chinese translation published in Science Fiction World / 科幻世界 (April 2009), English version published in Thoughtcrime Experiments. The text posted here has been edited and is slightly different from the form in which this story was first published. (中文) Before he met Lydia, Tyler’s life, like the lives of most people, involved the steady accretion of names. Names were just shorthand for memories, and young Tyler did not yet understand that we define each name in life twice: the first time as a promise of the future, and again later, when it is a summary of the past. — “What happened next?” “Nothing,” Grandmother said. “They just lived happily ever after.” “Forever?” “Forever.” Until Grandmother read him “Sleeping Beauty,” Tyler thought every story ended the way his parents ended them: “And they lived, sometimes even happily, until the day they died.” — Tyler and every other kid avoided the new boy because he was bigger than all of them and stared at everyone like he was looking for a f

Chinese translation published in Science Fiction World / 科幻世界 (April 2009), English version published in Thoughtcrime Experiments. The text posted here has been edited and is slightly different from the form in which this story was first published. (中文) Before he met Lydia, Tyler’s life, like the lives of most people, involved the steady accretion of names. Names were just shorthand for memories, and young Tyler did not yet understand that we define each name in life twice: the first time as a promise of the future, and again later, when it is a summary of the past. — “What happened next?” “No