I smiled—fully aware that it wasn’t quite the dimpled smile they were used to. “Hi, Sabrina,” I said.
Sabrina always hugged me when she saw me; she made no move to do so this time, though, and without some signal from her, I wasn’t going to initiate it.
“It’s … it’s amazing,” said bald-headed Rudy Ackerman, another old friend—we’d hiked around Eastern Canada and New England the summer after our first year at UofT. The “it” Rudy was referring to was my new body.
I tried to make my tone light. “The current state of the art,” I said. “It’ll get more lifelike as time goes on, I’m sure.”
“It’s pretty funky as is, I must say,” said Rudy. “So … so do you have super strength?”
Rebecca was still looking mortified, but Sabrina imitated a TV announcer. “He’s an upload. She’s a vegetarian rabbi. They fight crime.”
I laughed. “No, I’ve got normal strength. Super strength is an extra-cost option. But you know me: I’m a lover not a fighter.”
“It’s so … weird,” said Rebecca, at last.
I looked at her, and smiled as warmly—as humanly—as I could. “‘Weird’ is just an anagram of ‘wired,’”I said, but she didn’t laugh at the joke.
“What’s it like?” asked Sabrina.
Had I still been biological, I would, of course, have taken a deep breath as part of collecting my thoughts. “It’s different ,” I said. “I’m getting used to it, though. Some of it is very nice. I don’t get headaches anymore—at least, I haven’t so far. And that damn pain in my left ankle is gone. But …”
“What?” asked Rudy.
“Well, I feel a little low-res, I guess. There isn’t as much sensory input as there used to be. My vision is fine—and I’m no longer color-blind, although I do have a slight awareness of the pixels making up the images. But there’s no sense of smell to speak of.”
“With Rudy around, that’s not such a bad thing,” said Sabrina.
Rudy stuck his tongue out at her.
I kept trying to catch Rebecca’s eye, but every time I looked at her, she looked away. I lived for her little touches, her hand on my forearm, a leg pressing against mine as we sat on the couch. But the whole evening, she didn’t touch me once. She hardly even looked at me.
“Becks,” I said at last, when Rudy had gone to the washroom, and Sabrina was off freshening her drink. “It is still me, you know.”
“What?” she said, as if she had no idea what I was talking about.
“It’s me.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.”
In day-to-day life, we hardly ever speak names, either our own or those of others. “It’s me,” we say when identifying ourselves on the phone. And, “Look at you!” when greeting someone. So maybe I was being paranoid. But by the end of the evening, I couldn’t recall anyone, least of all my darling, darling Rebecca, having called me Jake.
I went home in a pissy mood. Clamhead growled at me as I came through the front door, and I growled back.
“Hello, Hannah,” I said to the housekeeper as I came through my mother’s front door the next afternoon.
Hannah’s small eyes went wide, but she quickly recovered. “Hello, Mr. Sullivan,” she said.
Suddenly, I found myself saying what I’d never said before. “Call me Jake.”
Hannah looked startled, but she complied. “Hello, Jake.” I practically kissed her.
“How is she?”
“Not so well, I’m afraid. She’s in one of her moods.”
My mother and her moods. I nodded, and headed upstairs—taking them effortlessly, of course. That much was a pleasant change.
I paused to look into the room that had been mine, in part to see what it looked like with my new vision, and in part to stall, so I could work up my nerve. The walls that I’d always seen as gray were in fact a pale green. So much was being revealed to me now, about so many things. I continued down the corridor.
“Hello, Mom,” I said. “How are you doing?”
She was in her room, brushing her hair. “What do you care?”
How I missed being able to sigh. “I care. Mom, you know I care.”
“You think I don’t know a robot when I see it?”
“I’m not a robot.”
“You’re not my Jake. What’s happened to Jake?”
“I am Jake,” I said.
“The original. What’s happened to the original?”
Funny. I hadn’t thought about the other me for days. “He must be on the moon, by now,” I said. “It’s only a three-day journey there, and he left last Tuesday. He should be getting out of lunar decontamination today.”
“The moon,” said my mother, shaking her head. “The moon, indeed.”
“We should be heading out,” I said.
“What kind of son leaves a disabled father behind to go to the moon?”
“I didn’t leave him. I’m here.”
She was looking at me indirectly: she was facing the mirror above the bureau, and conversing with my reflection in it. “This is just like what you—the real you—do with Clamhead when you’re out of town. You have the damned robokitchen feed her. And now, here you come, a walking, talking robokitchen, here in place of the real you, doing the duties the real you should be doing.”
“Mom, please …”
She shook her head at the reflection of me. “You don’t have to come here again.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mom, aren’t you happy for me? I’m no longer at risk—don’t you see? What happened to Dad isn’t going to happen to me.”
“Nothing has changed,” said my mother. “Nothing has changed for the real you. My boy still has that thing in his head, that AVM; my son is still at risk.”
“I—”
“Go away,” she said.
“What about visiting Dad?”
“Hannah will take me.”
“But—”
“Go away,” my mother said. “And don’t come back.”
CHAPTER 13
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice over the moonbus intercom, “as you can see on the monitors, we’re about to pass around onto the far side of the moon. So, please do take a moment to look out the windows and enjoy your last sight of the Earth; it won’t be visible at all from your new home.”
I turned and stared at the crescent planet, beautiful and blue. It had been an image I’d known all my life, but when Karen and the rest of these old folks had been children, no one had yet seen the Earth like this.
Karen was sitting next to me at the moment; Quentin Ashbum, my old seatmate from back on the spaceplane, was off chatting with the moonbus pilot about their shared pride and joy. Karen had been born in 1960, and it wasn’t until December 1968 that Apollo VIII got far enough away from the home world to take a photograph of the whole thing. Of course, I wouldn’t normally remember a date like December 1968, but everyone knew that humans first landed on the moon in 1969, and I knew that Apollo VIII—the first manned spaceship to leave Earth orbit—had gone there over Christmas the year before; my Sunday School teacher had once played a staticky audio of one of those astronauts reading from Genesis to commemorate that fact.
Now, though, both Karen and I were seeing for the last time the planet that gave birth to us, and to every one of our ancestors. Well, no, of course, that wasn’t quite true. Life had originated only once in the solar system—but on Mars, not Earth; it had been seeded on the third planet from the fourth some four billion years ago, transferred on meteorites. And although Earth, less than 400,000 kilometers away, would be forever invisible from Lunar Farside, Mars—easy to spot, brilliant with the color of blood, of life—would frequently be visible in the night sky from High Eden, even though it was often a thousand times farther away than was Earth.
I watched as the nightside part of Earth—lenticular in this perspective, like a cat’s black pupil abutting the blue crescent of the dayside—kissed the gray lunar horizon.
Ah, well. One th
ing I wouldn’t be missing was Earth’s gravity, the little stab of pain each time I put weight on my left foot.
But what people would I miss? My mother, certainly—although, of course, she’d have the new him, the durable him, for company. And I’d miss some of my friends—though, now that I thought about it, not as many as I would have supposed; I’d apparently already come to terms with never having any contact with most of them again, even though, with so many of them, the last words I’d said to them or they’d said to me had doubtless been, “See you.” Christ, I wondered what my friends would make of the new me. I wondered what …
Yes, yes, there was one friend I’d miss. One very special friend.
I looked at the Earth, looked at Rebecca.
More of the planet was below the horizon than above it now, and the moonbus continued to speed along.
I tried to make out what part of the globe was facing me—but it was impossible to tell with all those clouds. So much hidden, even before one got to the surface of things.
I looked over at Karen Bessarian, who was staring out the little window next to our row of seats. Her deeply lined cheek was wet. “You’re going to miss it,” I said to her.
She nodded. “Aren’t you?”
“Not the planet, no,” I said. Mostly one person there.
All of the unilluminated part of the globe was below the horizon now; only a small blue segment was visible. For a second, I thought I was seeing the brilliant whiteness of the north pole—it had certainly stood out from Low Earth Orbit, even if, as Karen had said, it was much reduced in size from when she had been a girl. But, of course, the orientation was all wrong: we were flying parallel to, and not far south of, the lunar equator, so Earth was lying on its side, with its north-south axis running horizontally. Both poles were now well below the horizon.
“Going …” It was Karen, next to me, speaking softly.
Earth was fiercely bright against the black sky; if the moon had an atmosphere, Earthsets—only visible from a moving vehicle, since at all locations on nearside, the Earth hung motionless in the sky—would have been spectacular. Even though I was color-blind, and understood that I’d been missing out on some aspects of the spectacle others saw, I’d still always enjoyed sunsets.
“Going …” said Karen again. There was only a tiny bead of blue still visible.
“Gone.”
And it was, totally and completely. Everyone I’d ever known, every place I’d ever been.
My mother.
My father.
Rebecca.
Out of sight.
Out of mind.
The moonbus sped on.
After the disastrous visit to my mother’s house, I returned home. Clamhead continued to stare out the window, waiting for someone else.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried—and now I was utterly incapable of it. But I wanted to. Crying was cathartic; it got things out of your system.
My system. My fucking system.
I lay down on my bed—not because I was tired; I was never tired anymore—but because that had always been my habit when thinking. I looked up at the ceiling. The old me might have popped a pill at this point. But the new me couldn’t do that.
Of course, I could get in my car and drive up to Immortex’s offices in Markham. Perhaps Dr. Porter could do something, adjust some bloody—some bloodless—potentiometer, but …
But there was that damned asking-for-help thing again: stupid, stubborn, but part of who I am, and the last thing I wanted to do right now was behave out of character, lest even I begin to think what my mother and my dog and the one and only woman I loved did, that I was some sort of ersatz knockoff, some pale imitation, an impostor, a fake.
Besides, I had an appointment to see Porter tomorrow, anyway. All of us new uploads had to visit him for frequent checkups and tuneups, and—
Karen.
Karen had to do that, too.
Of course, she might have gone home to Detroit, but how practical was commuting internationally every few days? No, no, Karen was a sensible woman. She’d almost certainly be staying here in Toronto.
Where exactly, though?
The Fairmont Royal York.
The thought burst into my synthetic head. The place where the sales pitch had been held. Directly opposite the train station.
I looked at my phone. “Phone, call Fairmont Royal York Hotel; audio only.”
“Connecting,” said the phone.
Another voice came on, female, perky. “Royal York. How may I direct your call?”
“Hello,” I said. “Do you have a Karen Bessarian registered?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Oh, well. It had been just a thought. “Thank you—wait. Wait.” She was famous; she probably used something other than the name she was best known by. “Ms. Cohen,” I said, suddenly remembering her maiden name. “Do you have a Ms. Karen Cohen?”
“I’ll put you through.”
Karen would doubtless know who was calling; the hotel room’s phone would inform her. Of course, it was possible that she wasn’t in, but—
“Hello,” said that Southern-accented voice.
In that moment, I realized that she couldn’t have had the same experience I’d had, not if she hadn’t yet gone home to face family and friends. But, as I said, she had to know it was me; I couldn’t just hang up. “Hello, Karen.”
“Hi, Jake.”
Jake.
My name.
“Hi, Karen. I—” I had no idea what to say, but then it occurred to me to put it on her. “I guessed you might still be in town. I thought you might be lonely.”
“Aren’t you sweet!” Karen declared. “What did you have in mind?”
“Um …” She was in downtown Toronto. Right by the theater district. Words came tumbling out. “Would you like to go see a play?”
“I’d love to,” Karen said.
I turned to my wall screen. “Browser, show me live theater tonight in downtown Toronto for which good seats are still available.”
A list of plays and venues appeared on the screen. “You know David Widdicombe?” I said.
“Are you kidding?” said Karen. “He’s one of my favorite playwrights.”
“His Schrödinger’s Cat is on at the Royal Alex.”
“Sounds great,” Karen said.
“Wonderful,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”
“Perfect,” she said. “It’s—that’s perfect.”
She’d started to say ‘it’s a date,’ I’m sure, but of course it was nothing of the kind.
CHAPTER 14
The moonbus, as I’d seen before boarding it, was a simplelooking affair: a brick-shaped central unit, with great engine cones protruding from its rear end, and two cylindrical fuel tanks, one strapped to each side. The bus was silvery white, and the tanks, I was told, were painted a color called teal, apparently a mixture of blue and green. It sported the Hyundai logo in several places, and a United Nations flag on each side near the back.
There was a wide window across the front of the brick for the pilot (he apparently didn’t like to be called a driver) to see through. The bus could accommodate fourteen passengers: there were eight swiveling seats along one side, and six down the other; a gap after the second seat made room for hanging space suits. Next to each passenger seat was a window about the size of those on airplanes; each window even had one of those vinyl blinds you could draw down, like on a plane. Behind the last two seats were a small toilet on one side, and a tiny airlock cubicle on the other—“Pity the poor fool who mixes them up,” the pilot had quipped during his orientation remarks.
The passenger cabin only extended halfway down the brick; the other half was taken up with cargo holds, the engines, and life-support equipment.
The moonbus’s normal run was from LS One, on the Lunar Nearside, to High Eden, then on to Chemyshov Crater, both on Farside. Chemyshov was the site of a SETI facility, where big telescopes scanned the he
avens for the radio chatter of alien lifeforms. Immortex leased space at High Eden to the SETI group, and had allowed an auxiliary radio telescope to be built there, giving the SETI researchers an eleven-hundred-kilometer baseline for interferometry. There were always a few SETI researchers at High Eden, and, indeed, two of the moonbus’s other passengers today were radio astronomers.
We were getting close to High Eden, according to the status display shown on the monitors that hung from the ceiling. The gray, pockmarked lunar surface continued to streak by beneath us while a song I’d never heard before was playing through the moonbus’s speakers. It was rather nice.
Karen, the old lady next to me, looked up and smiled. “What a perfect choice.”
“What?” I asked.
“The music. It’s from Cats.”
“What’s that?”
“A musical—from before you were born. Based on T. S. Eliot’s Book of Practical Cats.”
“Yes?”
“You know where we’re going, no?”
“High Eden,” I said.
“Yes. But where is it?”
“The far side of the moon.”
“True,” said Karen. “But more specifically, it’s in a crater called Heaviside.”
“Yes?” I said.
She sang along: “Up up up past the Russell Hotel l Up up up to the Heaviside layer …”
“What’s the Heaviside layer?”
Karen smiled. “Don’t feel bad, my dear boy. I imagine most people who saw the musical didn’t know what it was, either. In the musical, it was the cat version of heaven. But ‘Heaviside layer’ is actually an old term for the ionosphere.”
I was surprised to hear a little old lady talking about the ionosphere—but, then again, as I had to keep reminding myself, this was the author of DinoWorld. “See,” she continued, “when it was discovered that radio transmissions worked over large distances, even over the curve of the Earth’s horizon, people were baffled; after all, electromagnetic radiation travels in a straight line. Well, a British physicist named Oliver Heaviside figured there must be a charged layer in the atmosphere that radio signals were bouncing off. And he was right.”
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