Asimov's Science Fiction: September 2013 by Penny Publications Page B

populate my personal utopia?
    I didn't want to believe that. I didn't want to be the kind of sophisticated cynic who believed that nothing so wonderful could possibly be real.
    And yet... wasn't Cockaigne's perfection in itself rather cloying? Hadn't I had enough, like a child who's eaten too many sweets? Could I stand any more of the endless days?
    Veronica knew me well: she could see my doubts. And she didn't want to lose me. "There are always new quests needing a brave knight, even here in Cockaigne."
    "Yeah, I know," I said, thinking of the social whirl, the inf inite number of hobbies and sports and arts and games—all the myriad ways to compete and collaborate and interfere and interact. But I'd already tasted that life, and drunk deep from its well.
    "There's much more than you realize," Veronica said. "In those memories from my copy who died, I saw something inside the black hole—something ahead of us.
    " "It shouldn't have been possible to see anything ahead.
    " "Yet we did. We saw the singularity, where the laws of physics transcend themselves. It was like the light of heaven! And it was welcoming us, a shining beacon.... People are living there already. If we'd had a stronger ship, we could have reached them." Eagerness shone in Veronica's face. "There's no need to be restricted by our human bodies and minds, the limitations of physical laws in a normal environment. There's no need to become tired or jaded."
    The curtain rose. Behind it, the huge viewscreen showed the black hole, still remorselessly swallowing everything that approached. Veronica pointed to the darkness at its core. "There are whole new universes in there! Come and explore them with me."
    It wouldn't be utopia without an inf inite range of possibilities. Yet I shuddered. "That's a bit... irrevocable, isn't it?"
    She turned and smiled, her arm still extended. "It doesn't have to be irrevocable." Now she pointed at one of the copying booths.
    Indeed, we could copy ourselves. We could simultaneously enter the black hole to join the singularity, and also continue our lives in Cockaigne, pursuing merely ordinary perfection in the dull suburbs of the universe.
    Escapologists don't copy themselves. But if I stayed with Veronica, that meant abandoning my dream of accomplishing the ultimate escape. I'd already performed enough routine exploits; there'd be no point in continuing as an escapologist.
    Should I abandon my dream? What would make me happier: attaining my ambition, or staying with Veronica?
    Achieving my ambition would be a lonely, temporary triumph. Yes, I'd be acknowledged as the top escapologist—for a while, until something else became the ultimate feat to aspire to. I liked my colleagues, but I didn't love them. And after all, they had tried to kill me.
    I reached for Veronica and kissed her. Then, arm in arm, we walked toward the copying booth, leaving the empty stage behind.
    Half of showmanship is knowing when to stop.
----

A HOLE IN THE ETHER
    Benjamin Crowell | 13924 words

    This story is dedicated to Ray Bradbury.
    I.
    On Friday Bill got a promotion in acknowledgement of his development and marketing plan for
On the Road,
which was a twentieth-century novel by Jack Kerouac that was totally unreadable in its original text-only form. That night he celebrated by trading in his crawlie for the new Honda 37m, and early Saturday morning he took the new machine for a shakedown cruise in the San Gabriel Mountains.
    A low-speed run took him silently up the narrow trail in the dawn light, diverting once along the hillside above to avoid a jogger and her German shepherd, neither of whom seemed to notice Bill and his silent exoskeleton. He slithered like a snake over the chaparral, the ultralight suit's 16 legs placing themselves so precisely that they never so much as broke a stem of the rusty buckwheat.
    Leaving the trail again, he crossed Little Santa Anita Canyon above the reservoir, frightening one chipmunk, and then pointed himself up the