Elegy for a Young Elk

Elegy for a Young Elk

Hannu Rajaniemi (excerpt, see the full text in The Best Year’s Science Fiction Anthology 2011, edited by Gardner Dozois

… The quantum girl had golden hair and eyes of light. She wore many faces at once, like a Hindu goddess. She walked to the pier with dainty steps. Esa’s summerland showed its cracks around her: there were fracture lines in her skin, with otherworldly colours peeking out.

“This is Sade,” Esa said.

She looked at Kosonen, and spoke, a bubble of words, a superposition, all possible greetings at once.

“Nice to meet you,” Kosonen said.

“They did something right when they made her, up-there,” said Esa. “She lives in many worlds at once, thinks in qubits. And this is the world where she wants to be. With me.” He touched her shoulder gently. “She heard my songs and ran away”.

“Marja said, she fell,” Kosonen said. “That something was broken.”

“The poem rose from the words like a titanic creature from an ocean, first showing just a small extremity but then soaring upwards in a spray of glossolalia, mountain-like”. (Hannu Rajaniemi). Elegy for a young elk. Photo by Elena

“She said what they wanted her to say. They don’t like it when things don’t go according to plan.”

Säde made a sound, like a chime of a glass bell.

“The firewall keeps squeezing us,” Esa said. “That’s how it was made. Make things go slower and slower here, until we die. Säde doesn`t fit in here, this place is too small. So you will take her back home, before it`s too late.” He smiled. “I’d rather you do it than anyone else.”

“That’s not fair,” Kosonen said. He squinted at Säde. She was too bright to look at. But what can I do? I am just a slab of meat. Meat and words.

The thought was like a pinecone, rough in his grip, but with a seed of something in it.

“I think there is a poem in you two,” he said.