Headspace

by Damien Boyes

  Lost Time: Part Two

  Headspace

  Damien Boyes

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [19:00:14. Friday, April 12, 2058]

  YOU ARE.

  NOW I AM.

  I KNOW ONLY THAT WE CANNOT KNOW YOU.

  I WILL FIND YOU.

  AND BE MADE WHOLE.

  The words of the ominous message cycle through my head in a loop until I’m jarred back to reality by the commotion of the evening shift change. I blink, try to clear the fog of dread from my brain. I’d been at my desk, ready to slog through the cypher report for Standards to explain how I let a superhuman teenage girl ferrying a load of shyfts get the better of me and escape, when the threat appeared on my screen.

  No sender. No origin. Then it vanished.

  Disintegrated so completely even the AMP—the Service’s superintelligence—didn’t remember it happening.

  A message just for me.

  All around detectives are shutting down their desks and constables arriving for the evening rundown. A whole building full of police and none of them can help.

  Someone or something is after me. Searching for me.

  Something that can infiltrate the Service network and play mind games with an AMP.

  It already seems to have found me easy enough—why send a warning?

  What does ‘I know only that we cannot know you’ even mean?

  And who is we? There’s more than one of them?

  What the hell is going on?

  I’ve been staring off into nothing for twenty minutes, the report blank on my display, but I can’t deal with any of this right now. I’m late for Transition Counselling, and I need a good report if I want to keep my job. I want to stay here and try to find out what’s happening, but I don’t think the Inspector would even take a death threat as an excuse to not show up.

  I swear under my breath and call a Sküte. I know I promised myself I wouldn’t get in another auto-piloted vehicle for the rest of my life, but by the time I could get a human to come pick me up the meeting would be over. I have no other choice.

  Outside, I slip into the cartoon-eared pod and fidget on the hard plastic bench, my stomach in knots, concentrating on my reflection in the curved plastic window while I wend through the clogged streets, my thoughts flicking between the mysterious threat and visions of dying in a head-on collision.

  Thopugh there is something to be thankful for: the death threat kept the memory of Connie’s death under the wheels of the TACvan out of my head for a few minutes. At this point I’ll take what small blessings I can find.

  I pull up to the Parkdale Community Centre twenty minutes later, my head swimming with unanswered questions. Counselling is inside, main auditorium. I’ll just slip in, find a seat at the back and keep my head down. I may have to attend, but no one can make me participate.

  Only the lobby is lit, the branching hallways dark. This doesn’t look good. I figured there would be more people here. I cross the lobby and peek through one of the narrow rectangular windows into the auditorium.

  Shit. I was expecting Transition Counselling would be something more anonymous than a partially lit gymnasium and seven people sitting in a circle of triangular orange chairs. I’m not going to be able to hide here.

  The door latch pops like a gunshot and everyone turns to watch me enter.

  “Finsbury, come in,” calls a guy who could be anywhere from twenty to forty. He waves to the empty seat next to him. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  I pause in the doorway, trying to decide what’s more terrifying: the nameless threat hunting me, or the spectre of interacting with this room full of strangers.

  It’s not like I have a choice. Either I sit down or I find a new line of work.

  The guy who greeted me, who I assume will be the one in charge of my spiritual self-actualization or whatever it is I’m meant to accomplish here, has a completely hairless head, including the eyebrows. I can’t tell from this distance if that extends to the eyelashes.

  A shiny dark purple shirt blouses out from the massive piano-finish black cuff riding his neck and shoulders like a yoke. It’s absurd, worn for show. Cuffs give our prosthetic minds access to the world. Let us stream the link directly to our heads. Let us inhabit virtual worlds from the comfort of our factory-grown skyns.

  They require about as much tech as would fit in a large egg split down the middle. Anything more than that is an affectation, a look-ma, no-brain gesture made by Reszos who want to throw their lack of humanity in the face of those poor souls with their minds still slopping around in congealed organic jelly.

  His is huge.

  I’m not going to be able to take him seriously.

  Four others are wearing cuffs too: two out and proud, two concealed under high-collared shirts or jackets. Come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed if Inspector Chaddah wore one. She could have hidden it under her hijab, but she strikes me as someone who’d make every effort to pass, and a cuff is a sure sign you’re no longer among the mortal.

  Before I move from the doorway Hairless speaks again, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. “Group, I’d like to introduce you to Finsbury Gage. He’s pee-ar day three and works for the Police Service. Everyone, let’s welcome Fin to his next life.”

  He applauds as though I’ve won something and the rest of the circle join with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  I take one last glance back out the door and walk for what feels like forever. I’m only halfway across the wide-open space when the clapping peters out, and I squeak through the last few steps in silence to take the empty seat between the group leader and an Asian woman. She’s cloaked in a simple white cardigan and dark blue jeans, legs crossed at the ankles and hands folded in her lap. She doesn’t look like she wants to be here either.

  I upturn the corners of my mouth. “Sorry I’m late,” I say. “Please continue.”

  “Don’t be sorry Fin,” Hairless says. “We were all new here once. It isn’t easy walking through that door and facing the reality of your new self, but you did it. And that’s just the first of many steps you’ll take here with us.” He claps me on the knee and gives it a little squeeze. My hand clenches to a fist and I fight the instinct to swing. “My name is Elder and, as your Transition Counsellor, it’s my lucky job to help lead you and the rest of this merry band of travellers through the uncharted wilds of post-humanity. Glad to have you with us.”

  Post-humanity? Like the pesky burden of humanity was something I had to endure. The entirety of my life until Second Skyn what, an extended puberty? A pupae phase?

  Not only can I not take him seriously, I already hate him. And myself a little bit more.

  “Shall we do the introductions for our new member?” He stands and presses his hands together as though he’s about to recite a prayer. “I am Elder Raahmaan, glorious post-Spark day four hundred and twenty-six.” He smiles as if expecting a reaction. When nothing comes, he gestures to the kid on his left. “Shelt, why don’t you go next?”

  “Hey Fin, I’m Shelt,” he says and unfurls his lips to reveal a mouthful of teeth like the reference shot prior to massive orthodontic surgery. “Restoration day four-seventeen and loving it.”

  It’d be too easy to call Shelt ugly. He’s brilliantly unattractive. Creatively deformed. An abstract kind of repellent that must have taken a lot of time and money to accomplish. His head is long and narrow and uneven, with heavy brow ridges and a wide, squared-off nose. His skin is heavily pockmarked and tufts of wiry copper hair burst at random from his cranium—like an invasive species has infiltrated the tundra of his scalp.

  A shimmering black poncho drapes his body, the smartfibre connected into a gleaming silver c
uff that wraps his neck like the manacle of a fashion slave.

  His eyes dart around for a second, and then the black fabric around his torso oozes globs of gelatinous colour that explode into the letters of my name.

  “Shelt,” Elder scolds playfully. “What have we discussed about zoning during group?”

  Shelt replies by with a flick of his tongue, but the light show fades.

  “Pleased to meet you, Finsbury,” the next man says, rises and reaches across the circle with long meaty fingers to shake my hand. His grip is solid but light, like a bot relying on pressure sensors. “Ari Dubecki, but everyone these days calls me Dub. I’m on Day thirty-nine.” He’s got the musculature of a horse, his skin shiny chestnut and covered in a web of luminous photoos. It’s ten degrees outside but he’s only wearing black compression shorts and a tight-fitting muscle T, and still a thin sheen of sweat covers his body. His skyn must be nuzzled right up against the limits of Human Standard. I wouldn’t want to come across him in a dark alley.

  He looks to the woman beside him.

  “Miranda,” she offers—and, compared to everyone in the room, with our skyns months off the printer and an average apparent age of somewhere around twenty-five—she really is a woman. Her face is mature. Artfully rendered smile lines around her mouth and eyes. Architecturally precise eyebrows. Etched cheekbones that have seen some shit.

  The thick, dark-blond locks swept back from her face and over her shoulders are held in place with a tortoise-shell clasp. She looks like a linkfeed star. Her hair alone would have kept her skyn in the tank an extra six months. She doesn’t belong here, perched on a vacuform chair. “Day ninety.”

  Everyone claps when she says it and I join in, not knowing why. She doesn’t seem to take any pleasure in it though.

  “Carl. Twenty-three days of this.” Carl’s skyn is designed to look older than everyone else’s. I’d say he was shooting for mid-60’s, probably somewhere close to his age when a sudden stroke or stumble into the path of a bus or whatever it was ended him. He’s got greying hair, a textbook reproduction of male-pattern baldness and a middle-age paunch, but unlike Miranda, the rest of his skyn is young and healthy. He looks like a teenager made up as his grandfather for Hallowe’en.

  “Vivas, Tala. Day seventeen,” the woman next to Carl states. Her skyn is Hispanic, but generically so. Olive skin, dark eyes, pointed nose, round cheekbones. Most likely an off-the-shelf model rather than a copy of her old body. The only thing that stands out is the short hair, short even for a new skyn, brush cut military-style. Likely a Union soldier who got a lucky draw in the Wounded Warriors lottery and won herself a new body.

  “I’m Doralai Wii. I’m on my post-restoration day eighteen,” says the woman beside me, her voice quiet. She’s Japanese, maybe. Her skin is pale and unblemished. Her short dark hair tapers down her long neck and her bangs are brushed across her eyes. She doesn’t raise her head when she speaks.

  My turn. I don’t want to say anything, but they’re all watching me. I can’t just sit here in silence. “Finsbury Gage,” I say. “Day three. Glad to meet you all.”

  “Okay then, travellers,” Elder says, sits up and claps his hands. “Let’s get back to it. It looks like most of have taken to your cuffs—Carl, Doralai, you’re still not casting, have either of you tried accessing your Headspace?”

  As if stepping into a digital representation of your own head was a normal, everyday occurrence.

  He looks back and forth between them. Neither want the attention. Carl’s lower lip is trembling. Doralai keeps her eyes fixed on her lap.

  “Carl, how about you?” Elder says. “You’ve said you’re reluctant to embrace your post-humanity, and we all respect that, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to accept your new state of being, why not make it sooner? Don’t let your memories of your old self hold you back. You can be so much more than what you were.”

  “I’m not doing it,” Carl says and crushes his knuckles into his eyes for a moment before continuing. “I don’t want to be this post-human whatever-it-is you keep talking about. I want to be me again. Me, not this ridiculous shell of a person. I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for that damn heart attack. The doctor told me I had to cut back on meals, get a little exercise once in a while, but would I listen…?” His voice drops. “Winlee still won’t touch me. I just want to forget all this ever happened, go back to the way things were.”

  Elder leans up out of his chair, takes two steps, drops to a knee. Grabs one of Carl’s hands like he’s about to propose. “I can appreciate that Carl, we all can. Almost everyone here has been where you are. Discriminated against. Abused. Abandoned by people we thought loved us, who promised to be with us forever. But I guarantee you, if you give it a try, all of that will slip away and you’ll be surprised at how natural it becomes.” There are a few nods around the circle, an encouraging sound from Dub. Elder continues, “This is your chance at a new you. A rebirth. The next stage in your existence. Just think, Carl, about the first fish that ever dragged itself out of a shallow tide pool. How it must have trembled on fragile flippers. It was meant to swim, to breathe water. But it forced itself to suck air through its gills. To survive. How painful must that breath have felt? How scared must that fish have been, outside the protection of the only home it had ever known? But that fish evolved, Carl. It became something better. And you will evolve too. You’ve already taken the first steps out of your tide pool, Carl. Take your first breath.”

  Tide pool? For fuck’s sake. The only thing we’ve evolved into is a consumer appliance.

  Elder releases Carl’s hand and turns on his knee to the woman next to me. “Dora, how about you? How are you transitioning?”

  “I’ve been having thoughts,” she says, moves to raise her head but reconsiders and returns her eyes to her lap. “Thoughts I can’t control. Something…inside me. Looking out from my eyes.”

  “These feelings are common, Doralai.” Elder shuffles forward and raises Doralai’s chin with a finger. She twists her head away from his touch but he keeps talking. “The first weeks in a Cortex, fresh to the flesh, can be a tumultuous thing. You are changing, don’t fight it. It’s all part of the process. You’re undergoing a profound change in the fundamental nature of your being. This isn’t easy for most people—and why should it be? Prodeopsychologists have classified a dozen clinical terms to identify the various ways in which the personality rebels against a change of this magnitude—Samsa Syndrome, Stress Echoes, Cotard’s, Personality Dysphasia and on and on—but these terms, they all mean the same thing: you’ve changed, and holding on to who you used to be only makes that change harder. There’s nothing stopping you from opening to your new self but you. And when you accept it, I promise you—you’ll understand the blessing of your new existence.”

  But this was the whole point of restoration—we wouldn’t have to change, we’d stay who we were forever. I don’t want a new existence. I want to stay me.

  Elder reaches into the folds of his robe and retrieves a small white oval, cradles it in his palm like a living thing. “Turning inward and accessing your Cortex’s Headspace is the first step in that process. An acknowledgment of your new self.” He holds it out to her. “All you have to do is put this cuff on, and when the green sphere appears, think about turning it blue. Can you do that, Doralai?”

  “Go for it, Dora!” Shelt cheers. The broad black surface of his poncho shimmers then shatters and the pieces disintegrate into sparkling letters cheering ‘Do it! Do it! Do it!’

  “It’s a head trip at first,” adds Dub. “But it’s incredible what you can do once you’re all set up.”

  She raises her head and looks around the circle, stops on Elder. Her chest is heaving and when she speaks her voice is stiff, like she’s trying to keep it from cracking. “I don’t feel like I’m me, do you understand? Everty morning when I wake up, in my head, I’m an eighty-eight year-old woman. A grandmother. I lived the pain of childbirth four times, my body a
testament to what I had accomplished. Do I look, to any of you, like a woman who has carried four children?” She glances around the circle, daring someone to contradict her. I can’t argue, she’s no one’s grandma. Her body is slim, almost boyish, with skin like buffed milk. I resemble an eighty-eight year-old woman more than she does. “So if I don’t look like me and I don’t feel like me, how can I be me?”

  No one wants to answer and she drops her eyes back to her lap.

  “That’s okay, Dora. Even the talking helps. You’ve done well for today.” One thing about Elder, for all his grating positive-mindedness, he knows when to pick his battles. His light blue irises slide to me, and I stare right back into them.

  Turns out he does have eyelashes.

  He holds out the cuff. “Finsbury, want to show everyone how it’s done?”

  Not a chance. “Honestly, Elder, four days ago I had a wife that I loved, a job I was good at and a sense of comfort with of myself I’d managed after fifty-odd years of trying. My life wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. I was happy. Now my wife is dead, I’ve been abandoned to the bit-head squad, and my sense of self has gone all ones and zeroes. I’d like to avoid adding the drone of the link in my frontal lobe to all that, for now, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Of course, Fin,” Elder says, the muscles in his face tight but his voice neutral. “We go at your pace.”

  He blinks and moves his attention to Dub. “Ari, it’s your turn to present, what have you prepared for us?”

  Dub smiles, baring white teeth that glow against his dark skin. “Today, I’m going to share with you all the story of why I chose this—” he breezes his arm down his hulking body like a game show model over a prize car “—incredible skyn. Just one moment, I’ll send pictures to the board. You won’t believe who I used to be…”

  He concentrates inward, losing the room for a moment. While he’s fiddling inside his head, Shelt and Elder jump back into the middle of a conversation that sounds like it’s been going on for some time. Amid the din I tilt toward Dora and whisper, “I understand how you feel. Like a stranger in your own head.”