Loving the Bomb
She couldn't understand how one man could make every door, every wall, every piece of furniture seem just that fraction out of place. Everything he did and said seemed designed to push her off-balance. He'd even tried to tell her that her job was unnecessary, that she should have been replaced with an automaton years ago, ignoring that the metal-wire brains of machines were easily corruptible by viruses and flash attacks, worms and enemy reprograms.
What he didn't -- couldn't -- realize was that the bomb needed her. It stood in the depths of the installation, silent and perfect, and only she and the most powerful man in the world knew how to make it fly. The codes had been drilled into her head so thoroughly that she’d forget her name and life before she’d forget those sequences of numbers. She’d die before giving them away.
The idea behind "Loving the Bomb" was one I had while at Worldcon in Philadelphia in 2001 -- my first convention. It was to be a short little thing about a woman who becomes obsessed with the end-of-the-world bomb she is sworn to protect.
Shortly after was 9/11.
What was to be a simple story quickly became darker, nastier and a whole lot longer. Not only was this story about a war, death and destruction so much more immediate, but it was also the first story I wrote after Clarion: there are a whole lot of issues coming to the fore in this tale, a lot of emotions and anxiety that rushed from my brain to the page in the telling. I've heard people both recommend and warn against using fiction as therapy; I'm not sure which side I'm on. My only hope is that through it all, I somehow ended up with a story worth reading.
Published in Far Sector SFFH, November 2003.
