Babylon Sisters

by Paul Di Filippo

  This is not to deny that post-transition changes will almost certainly occur. Minor lifestyle alterations are inevitable; major ones are likely. Any option open to the original possessor of the identity is open to his replacement. Just as the surrogate could have decided to initiate a divorce, adopt a child, switch jobs or relocate his residence, so may the ex-prisoner decide. Yet the important thing is that all such decisions are not undertaken in a vacuum. Domestic, financial and other constraints faced by the original remain, and must be negotiated. Yet the history of this program reveals a surprising stability of these newly reconfigured families.

  And of course any illegality perpetrated by the new possessor of the identity is fully punishable, in accordance with relevant laws, bringing down relevant punishments. Parents who abandon their new family, for instance, are subject to arrest and the standard penalties for non-support. Spousal abuse and marital rape merit the strictest punishments....

  The prisoner set the booklet down on his knee for a moment, lost in thought. When he picked it up once more, he opened it to the final page.

  Perhaps some will say that the State is acting arbitrarily or capriciously in mandating such substitutions. Humans are not interchangeable, some will argue. Emotions and feelings are neglected or trampled. Every individual is unique, one cannot be exchanged for another by government fiat. Utilitarianism has limits, they say. The State is coming perilously close to playing God.

  Yet what are the alternatives? To let a perfectly useable individual, often in the prime of his or her life, be put to death as in premillennial days, while for lack of one of its prematurely taken members a bereaved family falls to pieces, becoming a burden on State welfare rolls? This is not acceptable, either to the State or to its citizens. And historically, many precedents for such behavior exist.

  Dissenters to this policy might be advised to consider it in terms of an arranged marriage....

  5.

  The New Home

  The car pulled into the short oil-spotted driveway, a length of buckling asphalt barely longer than the shabby old hydrogen-powered compact itself. For a moment, the engine continued to idle. No one emerged. Then the motor was cut, and Mr Glen Swan opened the passenger’s door and stepped out.

  The postcard-sized yard was ankle-high with the vigorous weeds of late spring. A cement walkway led from the driveway to the scuffed door of a small house that was plainly the architectural clone of its many close-pressing neighbors. The yellow paint on the bungalow was flaking. A plastic trike lay on its side, half on the walk, half on the lawn, one wheel still uselessly spinning in the air.

  Swan studied the scene. It was nicer than anyplace he had ever lived.

  And much, much nicer than the prison.

  Movement by his left side startled him from his revery. He hadn’t even heard the car’s driverside door open and close.

  Without taking his gaze from the house, Swan said the first thing that came to his mind. “Uh, it’s nice.”

  A woman’s voice responded, if not flatly, then with a measure of reserve. “It’s home.”

  Swan could not immediately think of what else to say. So, still regarding the house, he repeated something he had said earlier, said more than once.

  “I’m sorry you had to drive. It’s just that I never learned how.”

  The woman’s voice remained level, neither frustrated nor sympathetic, though her words partook of some small traces of both emotions. “You apologized enough already. Don’t worry. You’ll learn how soon enough. Meanwhile you can ride the bus. The stop is just five blocks away.”

  There was silence between them. Then the woman said, “Do you want to go in?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Thanks.”

  The woman sighed. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s your house too.”

  6.

  The Son

  The front parlor was decorated with a wooden plaque bearing a pragmatist inspirational motto (REGARD ONLY THE OUTPUT OF THE BLACK BOX), a framed print of a nature scene, a dusty artifical bouquet. The couch and chairs had seen much wear. A low table held several quietly murmuring magazines, the cheap batteries powering their advertisements running low with age.

  There were no pictures displayed of the man who had died in Swan’s place. But Swan had no trouble calling up his face.

  There was another woman inside the house. She was trim, on the petite side, brown hair cut short, and wore a pair of green stretchpants topped by a white sweater in the new pixel-stitch style. Her sweater depicted a realistic cloud-wrapped Earth.

  “Hi,” the woman said, attempting a small smile. “Welcome home.”

  Because of his studies, Swan recognized the woman as his sister-in-law, Sally.

  “Hi, uh, Sally.” He extended his hand, and she shook it. Swan liked the fact that people would shake his hand now. He was starting to believe a little more in all this, in the whole scenario of exculpation, although every other minute he still expected the carpet of his freedom to be pulled from beneath his feet, sending him tumbling back into his cell.

  “Will’s in his bedroom,” said Sally a little nervously, addressing mostly the other woman. “He was very good all morning. But when he saw the car....”

  Emboldened by the ease of the transition so far, of his seeming acceptance by the two women, made slightly giddy by the very air of freedom on this, the late afternoon of the day of his execution, recalling several of the mottos of his pragmatics classes that counselled forthrightness and confidence, Swan said, “I’ll go see him.”

  The layout of the house had been among his study materials. Swan strode confidently to the boy’s bedroom door. He knocked and called out, “Will, it’s me, your father.”

  Behind him the two women were quiet. Through the door came no words, just small sounds of a small body moving.

  Swan raised his hand to knock again, but before he could the door opened.

  Will was four, but tall for his age. From photos Swan knew his face very well. But he could not see it now.

  Will wore the all-enveloping rubber mask of some kind of reptilian alien, possibly from Star Wars VI .

  “You’re Glen now,” the boy said, his voice muffled.

  Swan squatted, putting his face on a level with the goofy mask. “That’s right. And you’re Will.”

  “No,” said the boy firmly. “Not anymore.”

  7.

  The Wife

  Their first supper together as a family of three was a largely silent affair, save for a few neutral questions and comments, perfunctory requests and assents. Swan tasted nothing vividly, except perhaps the single beer he permitted himself. Never much of a drinker, he was somewhat startled to find how much he had missed the flavor of the drink, the feelings of sociability it conjured up, while in prison.

  Will had been convinced to discard his mask for supper. Swan smiled frequently at him. The handsome young boy—Swan fancied he could spot some affinities between the young face and the one he himself saw in the mirror each morning—returned the smiles with a look not belligerent, but distant as the stars.

  Much of the meal Swan spent covertly studying his wife.

  Emma Swan both cooperated with and slightly frustrated this inspection by eating with her head mostly lowered over her plate.

  Swan’s wife resembled her sister Sally in height and build. But her face, thought Swan, was prettier, and her longer, lighter hair suited her. Although some of her movements were nervously awkward, she exhibited an overall easy grace.

  Glen Swan had been a lucky man, he thought.

  But I’m Glen Swan now.

  So does that mean that I share his luck?

  Shortly after cleanup, which Swan volunteered to handle, it was time for Will to go to bed.

  Wearing onepiece pajamas, Will emerged from his bedroom. A different mask hid his features, this one of a Disney character, some kind of animal prince or hero, Swan guessed.

  Emma herded the boy up to where Swan sat.

  “Say goodn
ight to your father.”

  Will had adopted a chirpy new voice to go with the mask. “Good-eek-eek-night.”

  Mother and son went into the bedroom. Swan did not follow.

  He could hear Emma reading a book aloud. Then the lights were extinguished, and she came out, closing the door softly behind herself.

  Swan’s wife took a seat on the couch. She looked at Swan directly for the first time that day, as if perhaps the ritual in the bedroom had given her strength or firmed up a decision.

  “Do you want to watch some TV?”

  “Sure.”

  Watching TV, Swan knew, meant they didn’t have to talk.

  Right now, this first night, that was just as well.

  But he knew they couldn’t watch TV for the rest of their lives.

  Hours passed. Once, Emma laughed at a sitcom. Swan enjoyed hearing her laughter.

  Shortly before midnight, Emma clicked off the television. She stood and stretched.

  “You have to be at work by eight. Me too.”

  “Right, right,” Swan agreed readily. “And Will—?”

  “I’ll drop him off at the daycare on the way to the Wal-Mart.”

  The couch seemed to be a sofabed. Swan looked around for signs of bedding. But Emma’s next words informed him differently.

  “When Glen— When the sickness hit us, I got twin beds in. It made things easier for everyone.... Anyway, I’ve thought about this a lot. We can’t act like complete strangers, hiding things from each other. We have to share this small house. Bathroom, whatever. Getting dressed. So we have to be at least as close as roommates. Like in a dorm. Anything else— I don’t know yet. It’s too soon. Is that okay with you? Am I making any sense?”

  Swan considered how best to answer. “Roommates. That’s fine.”

  Emma slumped in relief. “Okay. That’s settled. Good. Let’s get to sleep. I’m completely wiped out.”

  Lying in the dark, Swan listened to Emma’s breathing, only a few feet away. The rhythm of her breath gradually smoothed out and softened, till he knew she was asleep.

  He had expected her to sob. But after some thought, he realized that her tears must have been drained long ago, the very last ones shed in the death chamber.

  And certainly not for him.

  8.

  The Job

  His boss was a big man with the startling, abnormally delicate hands of a woman. His name was Tony Eubanks. Tony was the supervisor for a crew of ten men, split between five trucks. Normally Tony stayed put in the office, dispatching his fleet, scheduling assignments, handling paperwork. But for the duration of Swan’s training period he would go on the road with Swan, functioning as Swan’s partner and teacher.

  Swan knew that this was special attention, for his special case. So, of course, did everyone else. The people in charge of his future, while not actively monitoring him, had nonetheless seeded his path with mentors.

  Swan tried not to think of Tony as a jailer or warden. Luckily, as Swan soon discovered to his relief, Tony’s attitude made it easy to regard him as simply a more knowledgeable co-worker, perhaps even a friend.

  The attitudes of the other linemen, however, were less easy to pin down.

  For the first few weeks, busy learning and doing, Swan was able simply to ignore them.

  He and Tony were stringing cable. Lots of new cable. It was some kind of special new cable meant to treble the bandwidth of the net. Swan never got a really firm grip on the physics behind the wire. But then again, he didn’t need to. All he needed to master was the practical stuff. The tools, the junction boxes, the repeaters, the debugging tricks, the protocols. He concentrated on these with his full attention, and was proud to realize that he could learn such things, mastering them fairly easy.

  The physical side of his job was enjoyable too. Up and down poles, into ditches and tunnels, popping manhole covers, manhandling big reels, driving the truck. All of these actions appealed to him.

  Tony, however, was not so enthralled. In the truck, with one of their endless cups of coffee in hand, he would frequently say, in a kindly way, “Jesus, kid, I’m getting too old for this kind of workout. I can hardly get to sleep at night for the fucking aches and pains. I’m glad you’re picking up on things quick. I never thought I’d say it, but I can’t wait to see my fucking desk again.”

  The hard work had the opposite effect on Swan’s sleep patterns. Each night, after the repeated rituals of meal, television, and brief, safely shallow conversation with Emma, he dropped off into dreamless slumbers.

  Part of the job involved dealing with customers. It was the hardest part for Swan to adapt to. Entering offices and homes, he encountered a spectrum of people utterly foreign to him. At first, he would stammer and perform clumsily. Forms that had to be filled out confused him, and Tony would have to intervene.

  But after a time, he found himself warming to even this aspect of his job. One day he was surprised to find himself actually looking forward to dealing with a complex installation that required him to speak frequently with a pretty woman manager in charge of the project.

  Tony approved of Swan’s new interpersonal skills. One day when they had just left the job site, he said, “You handled her nice, kid. And she really had a bug up her ass about those delays. Couldn’t have done it any better myself. In fact, you’d better watch it or the suits are gonna catch wind of how slick you’ve gotten and the next thing you know you’ll be locked up behind a desk all day like me.”

  Swan beamed. He felt close to Tony. Close enough to ask him the next day a long-held question about his hands.

  Tony held up his small hands without embarrassment. “These mitts? Replacements. Lost my original ones in an accident on my old job. Got a little too careless around an industrial robot. I was one of the first patients where the graft took. Back then, they had to do it within the first twenty-fours hours, the donor had to match nine ways from Sunday, a lot of shit they don’t have to worry about nowadays. Anyhow, everything came together so’s I had to take these or nothing.” Tony was quiet a moment. “She died in a car crash while I was lying in the hospital. Head crushed, but hands fine. I still see her parents now and then.”

  Swan was silent, as was Tony. Then the older man shrugged.

  “No big deal, I guess. They can replace anything nowadays.”

  9.

  The Merger

  It happened over the course of the next eight months, by a process Swan could neither chart nor predict.

  He became, on a level sufficently deep to pass mostly out of conscious scrutiny, his new self.

  In his own eyes and his adopted family’s.

  What caused the merger was nothing other than simple daily repetition, the hourly unrelenting enactment of a good lie engineered by the State. The continuous make-believe, bolstered by a mostly willing shared suspension of disbelief, eventually solidified into reality. Under the sustained subtle assault of the mundane and the quotidian, the blandishments of the hundred bland rituals and the shared demands of a thousand niggling decisions, reality conformed to imagination.

  What greased the way was a desperate willingness to succeed on the part of Swan and Emma, a loneliness and void, shaped differently in each, yet reciprocal, that eagerly accepted any wholesome psychic fill.

  The path to the merger was made of uncountable little things.

  Swan had very few clothes to call his own. It was only natural for him to use those of the man who had preceded him. They fit remarkably well, a fact the Renormalization Board had doubtlessly reckoned with.

  Will enjoyed making models out of the new memory clay for children. Swan discovered a facility for shaping that allowed him and the boy to spend some quiet hours together.

  His sister-in-law Sally, having overcome the hurdle of meeting him early on, was a frequent visitor. With her husband, Al, and their daughters, Melinda and Michelle, the two families went places: the movies, picnics, amusement parks, the beach. Apparently, reports back to the rest of Swan�
��s new relatives were encouraging enough that the massive multifamily get-together held each Labor Day did not have to be cancelled this sad, strange year.

  At the outdoor gathering Swan’s head spun from greeting so many familiar strangers, from heat and sun and the usual overindulgences of food and drink. But by day’s end, he had earned high accolades from Emma.

  “They liked you. And you fit right in.”

  Emma.

  She taught him to drive. They shopped for groceries together, went to conferences at Will’s daycare together, watched endless hours of television side by side on the couch, apart at first, then holding hands, then her in his arms.

  But each night, even after a year, Swan slept in his bed, and she in hers.

  10.

  The Torment

  Swan had been paired with a guy named Charlie Sproul for several months. Charlie was fairly silent and self-contained, not very friendly. It wasn’t like working with Tony. Swan tried to make the best of it though.

  One afternoon in the locker room, Swan was surprised when Charlie and a couple of other linemen asked him out for a drink.

  He accepted.

  “I’ll just call home,” Swan said.

  “Don’t bother,” said Charlie. “We won’t be long.”

  They drove in their cars to a part of town Swan didn’t know. The bar was a rundown place called The Garden. Flickerpaint scrawls on the windowless walls teased Swan’s peripheral vision.

  At the threshold, Swan sniffed. The place smelled bad inside, like

  some kind of subterranean den or tunnel, half familiar in a dreamlike way that made him very uneasy.

  But Swan told himself he was being foolish, and went in.

  The room was hot and noisy and smoky; the conversation was boring and felt contrived. Midway through his second beer, Swan began to prepare excuses for leaving. But then his fellow linemen said they wanted to play pool. Swan didn’t play, so he said he’d stay at the bar and watch.

  As soon as his coworkers had crossed the room, leaving Swan alone, several strange men drifted up and stood around him.