"Getting to Know You" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

by American writer

David Marusek David Marusek (born January 21, 1951 in Buffalo, New York) is an American author. Biography Marusek worked as a graphic designer for about twenty years and for eleven years he also taught graphic design at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He be ...

, published in the March 1998 issue of '' Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine'', after appearing in a privately circulated anthology prepared by

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

in 1997.ISFDB publishing history
/ref> This story is also included in Marusek's 2007 short story collection '' Getting To Know You''.

Plot summary

Set the same future (the "Boutique Economy") as Marusek's ''We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy'', the story is about Zoranna – an affluent, attractive

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

who visits her elderly sister Nancy, who is the only other surviving member of her family. Unlicensed procreation has been outlawed to prevent

overpopulation Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale m ...

;

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...

has advanced to the point where

immortality Immortality is the concept of eternal life. Some modern species may possess biological immortality. Some scientists, futurists, and philosophers have theorized about the immortality of the human body, with some suggesting that human immorta ...

is possible, but only granted to people who have the means and are considered useful to society. Nancy is one of the people who are considered obsolete, as she was forced out of her teaching career after the Procreation Ban; she now works as a

hospice Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by ...

caretaker from her

apartment An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ma ...

, where she tends to holographic projections of dying patients. A subplot of the story involves Zoranna's "belt valet", an

artificially intelligent Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animal cognition, animals and human intelligence, humans. Example tasks in ...

accessory that can mentally communicate with its wearer and perform a wide variety of tasks. A representative of the company that gave her the belt valet (which she names "Bug") to field test urges that she return it, due to an unspecified defect; she refuses in spite of her annoyance with it, as she needs it for progressively more tasks. When she finally visits Nancy, Zoranna finds out that she is living with a man who is using her as a

fall guy Fall guy is a colloquial phrase that refers to a person to whom blame is deliberately and falsely attributed in order to deflect blame from another party. Origin The origin of the term "fall guy" is unknown and contentious. Many sources place ...

for a

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

. She forces the man to leave under threat of turning him in, a loss which causes Nancy's condition to deteriorate. Zoranna's attempts to get Nancy to go to a rejuvenation clinic on her dime are rebuffed, until Bug – having unexpectedly changed into a suave, powerful entity named Nicholas that knows every aspect of her life and personality – tricks Nancy into taking Zoranna to the clinic by making it appear as if she were gravely ill. Angered at first, Zoranna at last comes to terms with the machine. Zoranna and Nicholas are also minor characters in Marusek's first novel, '' Counting Heads'', while Zoranna herself is mentioned in obliquely in "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy".

References

Sources

*Dozois, Gardner, and Sheila Williams. ''Isaac Asimov's Utopias''. (New York: Ace Books, 2000), pp. 62–96.

External links

* 1998 short stories Science fiction short stories Works originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction {{1990s-sf-story-stub