by Ron Collins
“Sounds great.”
She pointed at several places in his chart.
A tension ran along his right arm, then his left, along his right leg, then the other. It didn’t hurt. Just the opposite. It was like a rolling pin was being run up and down the long lengths of each extremity.
“Feels like a massage,” he said.
Another smile came as she worked. Halfway, this time.
“What’s your name?” Bexie asked.
“Julia Epsilon,” she replied. “Of B-Ward.”
“Well, Julia Epsilon of B-Ward, can I move my hands?”
“Your blood pressure is high, but you are doing well,” she said. “I’ll bring the doctor.”
“I asked if I could use my hands.”
“Soon,” she said.
She glanced to the machine that had now moved to the foot of his bed. Bexie had been wrong before — rather than rolling, the thing was floating on a pad of air.
“Don’t mind the tripid,” she said. “They are going to test your nervous system and neural function.”
As the nurse left, the machine ran two arms under the sheets.
He tried to pull away, but he found his legs, too, were locked in place by more of the cuffs.
A pair of instruments latched onto his feet, and he gasped as rivers of cold flowed up his legs.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, bracing himself. “What the hell are you doing?”
The snakes stopped high up on his thighs, for which he was immensely relieved, then looped around his legs.
Another holo screen appeared, green lights flashing.
The hair on his legs tingled in patterns across his thighs.
That’s when the next chunk of memory dropped into place.
Past Wave Regrowth: The Contract
The room had reeked of leather and wood, with carpet that ate noise for breakfast. The air had been stale, the men aged.
He remembered contracts.
DNA. Simple swabs. A long day with his brain being scanned.
The smell of salt.
Goodbyes with work teams during his last day at the office. Email and video notes. Renee’s very vigorous going-away present later that evening.
And finally, he remembered his bank accounts — yes.
He remembered them.
He was thirty-nine when the diagnosis came.
He remembered not believing it.
Bexie Montgomery was not a man who came down with a terminal disease. The all-powerful curator of Creutzfeldt-Jakob — an ugly, degenerative brain infection — hadn’t gotten the message, though.
Blurred vision. Headaches. An inability to sleep.
“You’re not going to beat this, Bexie,” the doctor said. “Weeks, maybe months. Not years.”
He was not a man without contacts, however.
He remembered Dr. Michela Angelic, who had perfected a stripping process that could save a person’s brain patterns — personality, cognitive paths, and lived memories — but who had not yet published because she still needed to work out the back end of the technology.
Bexie understood her goal, though.
Clone and upload. Grow your own body, load your own mind.
He remembered discussions of risk.
That was his thing, after all — what separated him from the rest.
He enjoyed looking at a map of the moment and seeing probabilities. He prided himself in being able to parse reckless steps from those that were simply high-return events. Bexie Montgomery was a man who understood the value proposition of risk and benefit, a man who made a living seeing opportunities where others missed them.
He enjoyed making the right bets.
Bexie blinked with the impact of the memory.
He licked his lips and felt the stubble of growth along his upper lip.
He took several deep breaths.
With the nurse gone, he was alone, feeling the autonomous exercisers work through his legs and then up to his arms again.
At his feet, the tripid retracted probes.
“What year is it?” he asked the machine, as if it would respond.
“2372,” it replied.
He gave an involuntary chuff of laughter.
“Holy shit,” he said.
More than three hundred years.
He crunched numbers.
Assuming his pile could double every decade, Bexie was a gazillionaire many times over.
His laughter then was real.
Holy Mother of All that Was or Was Not Holy…
He had won.
He clenched his fists. Pressed his feet hard into the foot of the bed.
“Holy shit,” he said again. “It goddamned worked!”
Or had he?
Was his money still there?
This is when the floating football entered the room.
It was white and spherical, with a row of lights flashing a rapid spectrum of colors. Sensors and short probes stuck out at all angles, but they were mostly rounded and bristly rather than angular and sharp, making the ball look like a puffer fish that floated in midair.
“Good morning, Mr. Montgomery,” the thing said in a neutral voice that seemed to come from inside his mind like his heartbeat in the darkness had earlier. The phrase Welcome to Think Space came from somewhere. “I am your doctor. We are very happy to have you here.”
Male, he thought. The voice was male. He strained to look left then right. He pulled on his restraints to no avail.
His heart pounded.
“What the hell?”
“I said we are very happy to have you here.” The doctor hovered over his bed, blue lights pulsing slowly. “I see your blood pressure is up. How are you feeling overall?”
“I want out of here.”
“You will be released when your recovery is complete.”
“I’ve got things to do. I need to see my trustee.”
“You will see a counselor from the Central Inspector’s Office as we near your release.”
“Central Inspector’s Office? Am I a goddamned prisoner here? I want to see my trustee now.”
“I admit I don’t know what a trustee is, but the counselor will see you as you are ready to be released.”
“This is bullshit. I can make things very unpleasant for you if I don’t get my way.”
“I don’t understand.”
Bexie shook his head. “Look at me, arguing with a goddamned robot.”
He could believe a mechanical doctor wouldn’t be programmed to understand banks and trustees, but he was talking about a goddamned boatload of money. He couldn’t afford to take a cavalier attitude. And the fact was, his money was probably why he was in lockdown. Someone would want it. Someone with the wherewithal to lock him up.
“Can I at least get a real doctor here?” Bexie said.
“A human, you mean?” the doctor bot replied as it called up the same diagrams the nurse had.
“What the hell else would I mean?”
“Our nurses are made and deployed in such a way as to ensure our patients are comfortable in their presence, but we do not constrain our doctors to the physical limits of your human bodies. Perhaps we should consider doing that.”
“Configured for our comfort?”
The doctor bot didn’t respond, but Bexie’s mind ran in several directions at once. Clones? he wondered. Robots? Genetic engineering? AI interfaces? She could be any of the above, he supposed. She looked human, but memories of progress along all these lines came flooding back to him. Even in his own time, robotics and cloning technologies had been combining to create entities that were so humanlike they could fool a person. All he could say right now was that Nurse Epsilon’s touch was no different from anyone else’s.
His gaze went to the doctor.
“I’m not joking. I want to talk to a real doctor.”
“Your recovery is progressing well, Mr. Montgomery. I’ll have a nurse explain the acclimation process shortly. Once we’re certain of your body’s ab
ility to control itself, the restraints will be released. You need to rest, though. Give your body more time to settle in. In the meantime, I will prescribe the release of your next collection of learning modules.”
“I don’t want a goddamned learning module. I want my trustee.”
The doctor left the room.
The nurse returned, and Bexie suddenly wondered what the doctor’s comment had meant.
“We’ll get you a conditioning nurse later today,” Julia said aloud, her gaze flashing to the tripid and a pattern sequencing along her gem line. “But first let’s get you a little more sleep.”
The box rolled closer. An arm swabbed something over his leg.
He felt his consciousness begin to fade and remembered a name from before. “Hey, Julia Epsilon from Ward B,” he said, sure he was slurring words. “Can you get Kinji Hall’s cell phone for me?”
“Nothing named Kinji Hall works here,” the nurse replied.
This confused him, but before he could decide why, the learning module’s low rumbling voice filled his mind.
CHAPTER 3
The 400 was Maine Parker’s race. He wanted to win.
Through the curve, he worked on his stride, focusing on his footsteps and his exhalations, ignoring the sounds from other runners behind him that echoed in the chasm of the facility, ignoring movements of other athletes training for other events, focusing only on a proper midfoot gait, on keeping his hands relaxed and down at waist level, his arms swinging, his body loping with what he hoped was fluid grace. The soles of his shoes sounded like sandpaper as they grazed the running surface. The weight of his body rocked back and forth as it transferred through his hips and up his thighs.
He checked the clock as he matched his breathing to that same gait, ignoring the burn of his muscles as he turned the corner and headed for the finish.
Behind him, Matt Reed and Lionel Burgess huffed harder as they stretched their own strides. They wouldn’t catch him, though. They were basketball players moonlighting as runners, so they didn’t understand what it took to win in a race, didn’t understand that the opposition was really pain and fatigue, and that the challenge was really to bring discipline to bear against variance in your own stride that would cost you those fractions of a centimeter off each stride.
That’s why the 400 was his race.
It was a race against yourself. A race where precision and practice and persistence met talent.
His monitor said he was within the parameters Coach Hedvitt had given him at their session before today’s practice. His heart rate and oxygen exchange were good and getting stronger. A big kick would blow Coach H away.
He didn’t have it, though. Not today.
He tripped the timer at 43.38, not bad for a kid with the Mercy North Academy. Good enough to win Zone, probably even good enough to make the Global Games. Still not good enough for himself, though.
Sub-43, he thought, hearing Coach H’s voice inside his mind. That’s the target.
“You, my friend,” said Lionel as he grabbed his knees and sucked air after finishing, “are goddamned lightning in a pair of running shorts.”
“That’s da plan, right, Maine-man?” Matt added next, also grabbing for air.
“Yeah, that’s da plan,” Maine replied.
“My Maine-man is gonna just be cruising along and letting them all think they can win until the very end when he kicks in that last gear, and whoosh” — Matt dropped into a caricature of a runner’s squat — “he’ll get all down there and be gone, gone, gone!”
Everyone laughed, including Maine.
Maine did his recovery and his stretches, then took his electrolytes and the protein builders that would repair microfractures in the cells of his muscles, then he went to the showers with the rest.
The steam was hot against his shoulders.
The water pressure at the school was better than at home. He liked the sharp feeling of water on his skin.
In the distance, the gang laughed at a joke.
Lionel, he thought. The guy was funny as hell.
He liked to be with the team. It kept his mind from wandering to “the problem.” It was always there, though, hidden behind the moment. If he could have one wish — beyond being the fastest human being to ever run the 400 — it would be settling somewhere for good.
This time “the problem” was that the steward for Bay Pod 41, where the Parker family lived, was trying to get the community to agree to add a marine manufacturing site to their area, making it easier for people to receive boats they’d requested.
It didn’t make a lot of sense to him — wait time for a boat was usually only a week or so anyway. Lots of people already put their boats in the bay. A factory here would just make it happen a little faster.
If the proposition succeeded, though, Bay Pod 41 would be rezoned, leaving the Parkers to find a new place.
Again.
Which would fucking suck.
His parents had worried about this for as long as he remembered, though worried was probably the wrong word there. The Parkers were about like everyone else, their record was solid, so it was never hard to find another zone.
But a move meant uncertainty while the request was processed. Although physically attending a high school wasn’t much required anymore, swapping out his learning group meant he would have to suspend school while the move happened, which was both annoying and bothersome. The idea created anxiety.
He liked Mercy North as well as any, and the kids in his session seemed to like him. Coach Hedvitt was the best, too. If Maine had to, he would tram all the way across town to keep working with him. But now something bigger was at stake. Now, the first issue was Beatrice.
The idea of being separated was like a big piece of his chest had been ripped out.
“Maine?”
The coach’s voice rose above everyone’s laughter as he startled back to reality.
“Yes, Coach?”
“Come see me when you’re done in there.”
“All right.”
“Mainey’s in trouble.” Lionel sang it as a tune. “Probably got caught looking over his shoulder on that last turn.”
“Probably,” Maine shot back. “But, I like seeing you, and lookin’ behind me is the only way to take you in.”
The team laughed.
Maine smiled, put his head under the stream of hot water to rinse one more time, then went to dry off.
He knew what the coach was going to say.
Because Coach H understood it wasn’t really about winning for Maine Parker — or, at least, since it was a foregone conclusion that Maine was going to win every time he stepped onto the track, winning meant something more to him than crossing the finish line first.
Maine Parker was something special.
A world record was not out of the question.
The coach knew this.
So, what worried Maine as he dried off, stuffed his running clothes into the laundry, and put on his street clothes was that Coach H almost certainly knew he had coasted the last half of this practice sprint.
“Coach?” he said as he knocked on the door.
“Come on in, Maine.” Coach Hedvitt motioned to a seat. “Shut the door.”
Maine shut the door and took the seat.
Coach H was an old guy, probably forty. He had been a distance runner of some note when he was at school, but never good enough to progress far up the chain. He was still lean, though, still put in five kilometers a day.
Now he was sitting at his desk, looking at time sheets and metabolic charts on his data scan.
“Are you okay?” the coach said after Maine got settled.
“Sure, Coach.”
“Really?” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“Didn’t look fine. Looked like you quit on me.”
Maine stared straight ahead.
“You know how long it’s been since a man set a world record in the 400?”
“Yes, sir.”
>
“How long?”
“Fifty-three years, Coach.”
“That’s right. Shanghai, 2319. Lucifer Jones, running in the Global Games.”
“42.82 seconds,” Maine added. “With a headwind of 0.02 kilometers an hour. Bested Frenchie Tardiff’s previous record by a full tenth.”
“You ran 43.02 in the finals last year.”
“I understand, Coach.”
“No, Maine, I don’t think you do.”
Coach H’s face got a set to it.
“That record lasted a hundred twenty years before Jones ran his time, right? Nobody without augmentation sets world records like that anymore. Nobody. Except maybe for you.”
The coach let that sit for longer than Maine was comfortable with.
“You know when runners peak.”
“Yeah, Coach, I know.”
“Twenty-two,” Coach H said anyway. “Maybe twenty-three. You drop a sub-forty-three before you’re eighteen years old and every eye in the field will be on you, right?”
Maine wanted to say I understand one more time, but he knew how far that would go, knew the coach was on a roll and nothing would stop him now, so he sat quietly instead.
“You’re a special runner, Maine. I know you know that. But you aren’t breaking anything without putting in the work. So, here’s the deal: You’re not getting a shower ever again without giving me your best effort, you hear?”
“I ran a thirty-eight.”
The coach put his hands together and rested on his elbows, waiting until Maine caught his eye before speaking again.
“I love you like a son, you know?”
“I know you do, Coach. I’m sorry. I’ll do better tomorrow.”
“You need help with anything, you know all you need to do is say the word and I’ll be there. But when I see you on the track, I’m getting your best or you’re not coming in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So, let me ask again. Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine. Just got to get home.”
“All right then. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Maine stood up, shouldered his bag, and headed home.
CHAPTER 4
The next time he woke up, Bexie was in a different room — darkened, but clearly a small place, more hotel room than hospital bed, with a window view of the city at night.
