When Amanda Sam took me out to dinner and then was Amanda for me in bed, I knew she was going to tell me it was time to work. “I warned you. I warned you. I warned you. And I’ll take good care of you and make sure you meet only the best of people. Some of my peers have taken new people under their wing and taken half. I’ll only take twenty percent, plus your share of rent and food.” The next morning she bought me a big breakfast, and she said how she’d loved every second in bed with me but it was time to learn how to do a few things a little differently. I asked feebly about women, and she laughed. “Young men, they can get for free.” Things were flush now, and she had found several people on Haven who would enjoy paying to break me in. And that’s how it all started.
I’ve heard other stories, and I know now how lucky I was. No one beat me or mistreated me. Amanda Sam always met me at the Wake at the end of an evening to find out how things went, to coach me on how to handle the rude and stingy ones and how to handle the ones who wanted to fall in love with me. And maybe if I were tuned that way, I might have enjoyed myself. Instead I felt like I was living someone else’s life. When I wasn’t working and when I wasn’t with Amanda Sam, I was walking. Long walks with long elaborate dreams. Noriko would appear in the Wake. She’d say she’s seen enough battles, and she now wants to take me with her, some place far away. I knew now I would never go home. What would I say? How many lies would I tell just to be comfortable?
She says, You always avoided the truth when it made other people uncomfortable.
I listen for something severe in her voice, but I don’t hear it. I say, I’m telling everything the best my memory will allow.
I know. That’s what I love about this visit. You know, she says, the subject changing with her tone of voice, I always wondered why you wouldn’t change. I did want to try out a life as a man, and I always thought you didn’t love me enough to be a woman.
You understand now? I ask. After all those men, after their insistence on their needs…the only time they cared about my arousal was when they wanted to boost their own self-confidence…after all that, I could never sleep with a man again. You probably would have been a great man, but I couldn’t bear to sleep with another one, no matter how nice.
I said I understood. But now I wonder this. Did you stay with me because you loved me or because you wanted a secure life?
There’s a giant difference between why I first sought your attentions and why I’m with you now.
It’s an awkward moment, given the way our bodies are touching, given the years of abstinence in our last life together, so I return to the story.
When the newborns came, it was a rush. I now dreaded the sight I had once longed for. Many of the newborns had not seen enough battle to afford a guesthouse, so Amanda Sam and I traded off with the apartment. There would be an occasional woman soldier who hired my services, but mostly I listened to men lament their lives after they’d relieved themselves of their burdens. I kept an eye out for Noriko, but now my plan was to spot her first so I could avoid her.
I started to hang out more with the nurse and the therapist, just to know people who had nothing to do with the Wake and Amanda Sam, though Haven is a small enough place that I’m sure they knew what I did. I’m sure when I got up from lunch, they probably said, He’s not so bad. Everyone’s got to make a living somehow.
Some nights, I decided just to do nothing, and I stayed in the Wake and drank. Sometimes Amanda Sam would rest her hand on my shoulder and I’d turn to her and she’d tell me it was time to go home. She’d make love to me, comfort me, and I’d pretend to be comforted. “I’ll always take care of you,” she said. “I’m so glad we found each other.” And the next morning she’d take her twenty-percent cut. So I sat in the Wake and foresaw years and years of this, and sometimes in the Wake, but never on my walks, which were just for dreams, I would tally up how long it’d take to build up savings, how long it would take to get off Haven, and how much I’d need to start a new life when her hand fell on my shoulder. I turned and Noriko was looking at me.
“I’ve been told you’ve been asking about me,” she said.
Oh, no, she says. She doesn’t recognize you. She died before she had another neuromap, and she doesn’t know you.
I hear the sadness in her voice. For decades and decades I couldn’t mention Noriko to her; now, after all these years apart, she sympathizes. How different life would have been if so much separation wasn’t necessary to erase whatever had made us bitter.
I stood up to face her. I thought for a second she looked older, as if the job had worn away her friendliness, but then I recalled this look, the way she’d gotten when she’d given out instructions to her companions. There was no recognition on her face, no joy at seeing me, just this military face accustomed to giving orders.
She said, “I thought you’d be gone by now. I made sure the cost of everything was covered.”
“I couldn’t go.”
She stood and waited for me to say more.
“I didn’t know what happened to you. I didn’t know what happened to me.”
She looked around, took my hand, and led me to a table. She sat across from me and ordered herself a beer. She held the glass in both her hands, and I wanted her to hold my hand again. She said nothing for the longest time. I surveyed the entire place, the bar, the booths, to make sure Amanda Sam was nowhere to be seen.
Noriko said, “Here’s what happened. We posted as comrades-in-arms. We were set to attack an orbital. They told us that ninety percent of our unit would die. You began to shake in your sleep. You talked about how when you died, once they’d grown you a new body, once you’d been reassigned, that we’d be apart. But the truth was you were scared to die. When it came time to suit up, you were trembling so much that the captain ordered you to your quarters. He didn’t want you to put us at risk. I told you to pack up your gear and move out while I was away.
“The enemy was unprepared. We took the orbital with few casualties. When we got back, you’d hanged yourself.”
I felt myself shaking my head. I wasn’t the me that would do that.
“I blamed myself for what happened,” she said. “Back on Haven, I was so involved in taking care of my own needs that I didn’t recognize the warning signs. The one thing I forgot about youth, real youth, the first youth, is how passionate you are about life itself. How it sometimes has to be all or nothing.”
I didn’t know what to say. I said something about there being no discharge papers.
“You forgot or ignored what you were told. In the military, your life is only to be lost for the cause. The military won’t pay for a new life if you kill yourself. They promoted me after that skirmish. I got a pay raise. I had enough money to cover your rebirth. I arranged for some loans to cover the cost of a berth back to your homeworld. I thought I’d made up for everything. I though I’d taken care of you.”
We sat there for a while and what more could we say? I wanted to know what warning signs she’d seen. I didn’t want to know. And what other subject was there? We’d only been together for three or four days.
Noriko didn’t ask about where I was living or what my plans were. She told me she’d recently been assigned to Haven in a supervisory capacity. There would be four units of newborns to organize, plus two units of newbies coming in. The big push was beginning.
She was talking about everything they had to do and how she had to get back to her duties when Amanda Sam walked in and said hello. Noriko looked up at her. There wasn’t a trace of recognition on Noriko’s face. “I’m sure I’ll see you,” Noriko said to me and left without saying a word to Amanda Sam.
“I see that soldier girl is back,” Amanda Sam said.
“She didn’t recognize you.”
Amanda Sam looked at me for a moment. I think she was tempted to explain why I was wrong, but she’d taught me the con. I’d already used it a few times, but because I was living such separate lives in my head, I hadn’t figured the whole thing out
, how everything had stretched back to day one of my new life. The con: you sit down with a newborn, and you talk about the last time you’d been together, the one that must have taken place after the neuromap was recorded.
I walked and walked that night. I told myself I wasn’t a coward, I wasn’t the kind of person who’d kill himself. Look at what I was living through now. I hadn’t been tempted to kill myself in the past months with everything that had happened. And I reminded myself that Noriko had said we’d left Haven as comrades-in-arms. I thought of ways I could see her again, of things I could say to win her back.
But, of course, Haven was a military way station, even though it was run by civilians. Of course, people knew I’d been asking about her, and the local military intelligence guy, whoever he was, must have told her. They’d know how I was making a living, and so Noriko would know.
I didn’t see Noriko again. I avoided the hospital, and I avoided other taverns. I only conducted business out of the Wake, and she never returned. I stopped taking my walks. I’m sure she was on Haven until everyone involved with the big push had left. And by the time the newborns and the fresh recruits were gone, I had enough money to start a new life, to be reborn and not remember one bit of this. Instead, I worked for another year and had enough to fly to planets that people liked to talk about, to have some money to live for a little bit and try one unsuccessful business venture or another.
Amanda Sam cried when I told her I was leaving. “I made this possible for you,” she said. “I want you to remember that.” And my last night there, I let her make love to me the way she liked, and I was so moved by the way she felt that I had my first orgasm while I held her in my arms. This caused her to kiss me passionately. “Please don’t leave. Please stay. You think I took advantage of you, but I really do love you.” Right then I thought she was begging her twenty-percent cut to stay. Now I think she either loved me or, at least, my company. I think of all the booths I sat in, waiting alone to attract some eager company. I think of those same booths at the end of a long evening when she sat beside me and took my hand in hers.
And the ship I boarded later stopped at some planet or other, and you boarded, and that’s how I spent the rest of my lives.
She turns over in the bed and kisses me. I caress her face, and the way time has lined her skin feels wrong against my fingertips. My body betrays me. I say, Talk to me, and I hear her voice and she pulls me into her embrace and it’s her I make love to.
The next morning she makes me my favorite breakfast and she packs my bag. I tell her I was more than willing to stay indefinitely. I have no special plans and I like being with her.
She says, These last few days, well last night, especially, were perfect. When I first met you, you told me about Noriko, and I wanted to be with someone who could love so passionately. And I was jealous of her ever since because I couldn’t inspire the same kind of love. Last night, you told me about Noriko, and I remembered everything about you I loved when our lives together weren’t so difficult. Last night is the memory I want to have of you when I die.
I argue, but if I argue too fiercely, I’ll destroy everything these few days have come to mean. I leave her house in the woods, take train after train, come to a port and board a ship for elsewhere. In the decades we were apart—me in a fresh new body, she finding out what happens when the body finally ages—I always thought about her. During those years, I knew that one day, when I had the money for the voyage, I would track her down and see her at least one last time.
I leave her now, but I can’t imagine another life.
The Consciousness Problem
MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL
Mary Robinette Kowal (www.maryrobinettekowal.com) is a writer and puppeteer who lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband Rob. She is currently serving her second term as Secretary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She is the 2008 winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In an interview she says, “I’m a storyteller. I love world-creation in all its forms…When talking about puppetry, I’ve often paraphrased Orson Scott Card—puppetry is the theater of the possible. That’s why I like speculative fiction; I like playing in the world of ‘what if.’” Her website described her puppetry career thus: “She has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures, and founded Other Hand Productions. Her design work has garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve.” Tor is publishing her debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, in 2010.
“The Consciousness Problem” was published in Asimov’s. It is about brain damage from bad and illegal science done in the third world in the not too distant future. And it is a romance, of an original SF kind. The author says, “I had a nightmare involving a clone of my husband committing suicide, and though it has a very limited relationship to the story now, it made me wonder why a clone would do that.”
The afternoon sun angled across the scarred wood counter despite the bamboo shade Elise had lowered. She grimaced and picked up the steel chef’s knife, trying to keep the reflection in the blade angled away so it wouldn’t trigger a hallucination.
In one of the Better Homes and Gardens her mother had sent her from the States, Elise had seen an advertisement for carbon fiber knives. They were a beautiful matte black, without reflections. She had been trying to remember to ask Myung about ordering a set for the last week, but he was never home while she was thinking about it.
There was a time before the car accident, when she was still smart.
Shaking her head to rid herself of that thought, Elise put a carrot on the sil-plat cutting board. She was still smart, today was just a bad day was all. It would be better when Myung came home.
“You should make a note.” Elise grimaced and looked to see if anyone had heard her talking to herself.
But of course, no one was home. In the tiny space of inattention, the knife nicked one of her knuckles. The sudden pain brought her attention back to the cutting board. Stupid. Stupid.
Setting the knife down, she reached for the faucet before stopping herself. “No, no Elise.” She switched the filtration system over to potable water before she rinsed her finger under the faucet. The uncertainty about the drinking water was a relatively minor tradeoff for the benefits of South Korea’s lack of regulations. They’d been here for close to three years, working on the TruClone project but she still forgot sometimes.
She went into the tiled bathroom for some NuSkin, hoping it would mask the nick so Myung wouldn’t worry. A shadow in the corner of the mirror moved. Who had let a cat inside? Elise turned to shoo it out, but there was nothing there.
She stepped into the hall. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light, twirling and spinning in the beam that snuck past the buildings in Seoul’s to gild the simple white walls. There was something she was going to write a note about. What was it?
“Elise?” Myung came around the corner, still loosening his tie. His dark hair had fallen over his forehead, just brushing his brow. A bead of sweat trickled down to his jawline. He tilted his head, studying her. “Honey, what are you doing?”
She shivered as if all the missing time swept over her in a rush. Past the skyscrapers that surrounded their building, the scraps of sky had turned to a periwinkle twilight. “I was just…” What had she been doing? “Taking a potty break.” She smiled and rose on her toes to kiss him, breathing in the salty tang of his skin.
In the six months since she’d stopped going into the office at TruClone, he had put on a little weight. He’d always had a sweet tooth and tended to graze on dark chocolate when she wasn’t around, but Elise was learning to find the tiny pot belly cute. She wrapped her arms around him and let him pull her close. In his embrace, all the pieces fit together the way they should; he defined the universe.
“How was work?”
Myung kissed her on the forehead. “The board declared the human trial 100 percent effective.”
Adre
naline pushed her breath faster and made the backs of her knees sweat. “Are you…?”
“Elise. Do you think they’d let me out of the lab if I weren’t the original?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, of course not.”
She should have been there, should have heard the success declared. The technology to print complete physical copies of people had been around for years, but they’d started TruClone to solve the consciousness problem. Elise had built the engine that transferred minds to bodies, so she should have gone into the office today, of all days.
She had forgotten. Again.
“I want to hear all about it.” She tugged his hand, pretending with a smile to be excited for him. “Come into the kitchen while I finish dinner.”
Outside, the first sounds of the market at the end of their block began. Calls for fresh fish and greens blended on the breeze and crept in through the open window of their bedroom, tickling her with sound. Curled around Myung, with one leg thrown over his thigh, Elise traced his body with her hand. The mole at the base of his ribs bumped under her finger, defining the territory. She continued the exploration and he stirred as her fingers found the thin line of hair leading down from his navel.
“Morning.” Sleep made his voice grumble in his chest, almost purring.
Elise nuzzled his neck, gently nipping his tender skin between her teeth.
His alarm went off, with the sound of a stream and chirping birds. Myung groaned and rolled away from her, slapping the control to silence the birds.
She clung to him. Not that it would do any good. Myung loved being in the office.
He kissed her on the forehead. “Come on, get up with me. I’ll make you waffles.”
“Ooh. Waffles.” Elise let go of him, smacking his rump gently. “Go on man, cook. Woman hungry.”
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