Wakers

by Ron Collins

  New York?

  Berlin?

  He didn’t recognize the skyline, but saw a huge metropolis out there, with lights extending across the horizon as far as he could see.

  He wondered if he was even in the same building as he’d been in when he first woke — what kind of complex was this? Thoughts of his past life came back, memories of nights in penthouses and parties, days in boardrooms with champagne. The memories were intense enough to be real, but scant enough that he could feel holes in them.

  He flashed on a college friend who punched a hole in drywall.

  Music played in the background, piano and sax, a soft jazz beat that made him think of a night he’d spent in Louisiana signing a deal with … someone. He couldn’t remember who.

  The air was warm, but fresh.

  He moved his arm languidly, scratching the stubble that grew on his cheek.

  With a burst of adrenaline, he came to a sudden full alert.

  I’m free, he thought.

  He sat upright to turn his palms up, then down.

  He grasped the sheets pooled at his waist, then moved his legs.

  They were free, too.

  More snapped into place.

  He was naked. The bed was a firm plank built off a rounded, concave wall on the left side of the bed. Body warmth radiated from the mattress. The room was comfortably small, maybe five meters long and four wide, kidney-shaped, and, yes, with a vibe that most definitely felt more like a hotel than a hospital.

  Across the way the wall was lined with a mirror angled to reflect city lights on one side, and dim shadows from his upper torso on the other.

  A door slid open, and a nurse entered.

  The lights rose gently.

  “You’re awake,” she said, coming to his side and calling up another set of holographic data forms.

  “Julia?” He pulled the blanket up, intensely aware of his nakedness and surprised at the vulnerability he felt.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  She looked the same. She wore the same pink and white uniform as before. He remembered the doctor bot saying nurses were “configured” to please humans. The idea of customized and configurable workforces came unbidden across his mind.

  “You’re the same nurse I spoke with when I first woke up?”

  “Of course.”

  He hesitated, trying to piece together what had been going through his mind. “I thought maybe…”

  Now that he was fully awake, he studied her features more closely.

  What had he been thinking?

  That the nursing staff was a collection of automatons? That they would all come in a standard model that looked like Julia?

  “Are you a clone?” Bexie nearly said as Julia Epsilon inspected a readout glowing at the side of the bed.

  Instead, though, he was sidetracked by the fact that now, in full light for the first time, he suddenly saw himself in the mirror.

  “Jesus Christ!” he called out.

  “Is something wrong?”

  He ran his hand over his scalp. His dark hair was matted from the bed, but it was longish and supple, oddly shaped and shaggy enough he needed a haircut.

  “No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  He peered more closely. He was young. Really young.

  “How old am I?”

  “It is standard practice for Wakers to grow to their biological nineteenth year,” Julia replied.

  Nineteen. He laughed, then looked at the floor, wanting suddenly to stand up more than anything, but just as suddenly afraid of falling.

  “Can I stand up?”

  She offered her hand. “Let me help, but, yes, you should be capable of standing.”

  He took her hand, and with the other he gathered bedclothes to cover himself, then swung his legs over the edge.

  The rug was soft under his feet. Julia’s hand was warm and firm.

  He planted his feet at shoulder width, then marveled at the simple joy of how it felt to lever himself upward. Her touch steadied him as he took a small step. Then another.

  He straightened and stood taller — nearly a head above Julia, his shoulders back, and his lungs filling with a victorious breath.

  “I’m letting go,” he said.

  A moment later he was standing on his own.

  Then, Bexie Montgomery stared at the mirror.

  He was thin and graceful.

  There was barely any fat on his bones.

  Soft light colored the high points of his muscles and left depressions in shadow. Even before his tone was fully established, those muscles were firmer than the Jell-O they’d been before. The dark skin of his face was unlined, and the flow of his body was perfect.

  The ache that had been in his ancient knee was gone.

  Prior to his disease, he had been aging as well as anyone could have asked — wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and only a dash of silver barely showing at his temples— but now he was giddy, scanning left then right, marveling at the way his muscles flowed over his frame.

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. His disease. He glanced at Julia. “Am I cured?”

  “Of your disease?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You are healthy, Mr. Montgomery. Your resuscitation was completely successful.”

  A second nurse entered with a tray that held a bowl.

  “Are you hungry?” Julia Epsilon asked as she entered information about his activity into a register she’d called up while he was gawking at himself.

  “Yes,” he replied as he sat back down into bed, suddenly more than hungry. Son of a bitch.

  “We’ll control your diet for the next few days, but then you can ask for what you want.”

  “What do I get now?” Before Julia responded, the second nurse drew nearer, and he smelled a universal aroma. “Chicken noodle?”

  “Just like Grandma’s, right?” Julia replied.

  Bexie inhaled while the second nurse — who was young, like Julia, and who dressed similarly to Julia but also wore a pale blue sweater — placed the tray on a table next to the bed, then maneuvered it to his side.

  “Smells outstanding,” he said. He spooned some. “Not much here, though.”

  Julia replied as the second nurse left the room. “Your body has been sustained in a nutrient bath for many weeks now. We’ve found it best to introduce solid foods slowly.”

  “That makes a sad kind of sense, but I don’t have to like it.”

  “No.” She chuckled. “You don’t have to like it.”

  He ate a spoonful. It didn’t quite carry the deep goodness of “real” chicken noodle soup, but it was tasty, warm, and just about the right level of salty. It made him feel better.

  Bexie ate another spoonful.

  “Be slow,” Julia Epsilon said.

  She pulled a new holo screen and jotted more information, he assumed about his dietary intake.

  “Do you have any word on when I can see my trustee?” Bexie said.

  “I don’t have any news regarding that.”

  “What about the puffer fish?”

  “Puffer fish?”

  “The doctor,” Bexie said. “They look like a puffer fish.”

  “Yes, I suppose they do,” she said in a dry voice. “The doctor is a comprehensive, automated entity that operates fully in Think Space so it can provide health services on demand anywhere around the globe. It will load into any interface available for rapid response to a patient’s needs. In our facility, the doctor fills one of many mobile nodes. They each have full access to the facility, though, so care is the same in all ways.”

  “Interesting,” Bexie said.

  He remembered a hundred meetings with a hundred inventors, having long debates about the best way to present automated services to paying customers.

  “Are you finished with your soup?”

  He held the bowl out for her.

  “What can I do to get the doctor to authorize another bowl now?” he said with a grin.
<
br />   “Excuse me?”

  “I think I can make it worth your time if you can get the sawbones to authorize some more soup sooner than later.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  The nurse’s expression made him think he’d broken protocol.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Just let the doctor know their work is going well, and that I’m still hungry.”

  “All right.”

  “Don’t forget the part about their work going well. That’s the magic phrase.”

  “I won’t.”

  Julia took the tray to the doorway before turning back.

  “You’ll find clothes in the closet and dresser. Nothing stylish, I’m afraid, but they’ll be warm enough.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Julia left.

  Alone, Bexie ran his hand over his hair, feeling its silken smoothness, and the sensation of pressure on his skin. He stood again, then carefully padded to the window. The cityscape blazed with light, but there was a break in the distance, then more light. A river maybe? A park?

  He would have to wait until sunrise to find out.

  Tomorrow, he thought. First thing.

  He was going to talk to his trustee or die trying.

  He felt a warm sensation in the middle of his mind, almost a vibration, but not physical.

  “You have received new learning modules.” The voice inside his mind startled him. “Would you like to absorb it now, or would you prefer to store it for later consumption?”

  “I’ll take them now,” he said, closing his eyes. “No time to waste.”

  An almost imperceptible silence passed before the module started.

  Learning Module 2.0: Waker Tech

  Welcome to 2372, Mr. Montgomery.

  We are so happy to have you here. You are being hosted in the Geo-Span Medical Center in San Francisco, California. The world around you has dramatically changed.

  The Waker process you are going through, for example, is the result of a happy combination of events that include the discoveries of several scientists and much hard work by Avalina Ricci, the simple librarian who made it her life’s work to bring as many of you back to existence as possible.

  Drs. Juanita Kong and Shidar Chippathi, for example, completed the mapping between the nervous system and each element of the brain. They had been working to allow better collaboration between work teams across great distances — work that, of course, is an underpinning to the expansion of Think Space.

  You should also be aware of Maximo Huff and Lania Prevost, a pair of artificial intelligence algorithmists who led an entire generation of open system programmers known today as the Brain Gang. Their work served to develop our understanding of the complex workings of human thought processes that led into our current theory of multidimensional cognition.

  Neither of them, of course, had Wakers in mind.

  Huff’s goal, which was widely celebrated in pop culture of the time, was to transcend the human experience by taking the “inner trip.” Prevost’s was more pragmatic, being simply to unleash a new wave of creativity that might raise the human existence to new heights.

  In hindsight, Prevost — a transgender person of Lithuanian and Dutch heritage who had spent time in Mumbai and Ethiopia as a child — was the one whose vision was closest to the result, and it was her vision that led to the combination of their work with Kong and Chippathi’s. She is the one who first understood how the new economics of product on demand could be affected by infinite supply.

  Still, it’s inappropriate to suggest that any of them saw their work as the root of Waker technology.

  Our ability to resuscitate Wakers came primarily as a result of that simple librarian’s visit to the digital museum at Seoul-dae, — or formally, Seoul National University — whose main repository is in Gwanak, a city often featured in media due to the architectural elegance of its hallways, and due to its extensive collection of ancient texts regarding the manipulation of genetic code that was so much in vogue during the chaotic years of the late 21st and 22nd centuries.

  It was against this background that Ms. Ricci made her fateful research trip, booted up a machine that had been fallow for many years, and came upon several contracts such as yours.

  This led her to repositories of DNA, as well as the locations of personality packages — those digital downloads that collect Wakers’ minds, personalities, memories, and, some theologians still argue, their souls.

  From that point forward, her efforts to have Wakers revived became a lifelong quest.

  Without Avalina Ricci, you, Mr. Montgomery, would not be here.

  As the module finished, Bexie heard a distant tone of music filtering into his consciousness. The aroma of soup made his stomach rumble.

  When he opened his eyes he found he had moved to the bed and was wrapped in a blanket. A fresh bowl of soup sat on the table beside the bed.

  I owe you one, Julia, he thought.

  He glanced at the mirror again, confirming he was still young and letting his mind run over the ideas behind Think Space itself, about the acts that had to happen in order for him to be sitting here on this bed in San Francisco, with the calendar showing 2372.

  Suddenly, he imagined Julia in ways he hadn’t before.

  She was young and attractive.

  And, looking again to the mirror, he was too.

  “The future is damned interesting,” he said to himself as he reached for the bowl.

  All he needed now was to figure out how to get to his money.

  CHAPTER 5

  Maine dropped his bag on the chair.

  He pulled a plapple from the refrigerator unit and ate part of it. The fruit was a mix of apple and plum that Mom was particularly fond of these days. It was good, but not his favorite.

  Not that he cared much.

  Neither his mom, nor his dad, nor almost anyone else but Coach H could seem to understand that meals to him were simply something you ate in order to keep moving — though, admittedly, a good slab of brownie cake was an experience of epic proportion. Unfortunately, that kind of treat was not on the menu if he wanted to set records.

  He walked through the house to find Mom linked-in on a musical.

  The sound was off, but Maine stood at the doorway and touched the link so he could watch the dancers spin.

  His angle made them look two-dimensional, but they would be real to Mom. She loved musicals, especially ones made back when she was a kid — the more flash, the better.

  She sat in the middle chair today, an expression of content on her broad face, the muscles of her cheek twitching with a rhythm he couldn’t hear.

  Most days Mom and Dad spent their time on the same line, but today Dad was on one by himself, lying on his couch, as always. His set was latched onto a sea adventure that a lot of his friends were getting into—something that made Maine feel a tang of anger. Find your own damned addiction, he thought. He didn’t like the idea of his dad wasting his time doing the same thing his friends were doing.

  It just felt weird.

  And it didn’t bode well for tonight, either.

  Probably meant dinner by himself and an awkward night studying.

  Maine understood obsession, but his was more physical.

  Through his TS, he flashed his favorite module of Lucifer Jones — the man’s sprint to the world record — and admired the furious nature of his stride, the raw discipline of his form. Maine could watch that clip forever.

  “Hey, kiddo,” his dad said from his link. “How was your day?”

  “Fine,” Maine replied. “Did you hear anything from Zone Control?”

  “Don’t expect anything until tomorrow.”

  Maine grimaced, and opened the door to their second link-room.

  At one time, his father had been trim, but he was too big for much of anything now. Mom was better off — at least she could move on her own. But here was Dad, plugged into a program that had him crashing through waves and dealing with the ro
lling deck of an old wooden ship in his TS, his cheeks flushed, and a few beads of sweat rolling down his forehead, while in the physical he was amassing girth at an alarming rate.

  “Did you at least make the pitch to the committee?”

  The scenario froze in place, a wave stopping in midair as it crashed over the bow.

  “I don’t think it will help,” his father said.

  “You said you were going to do that, Dad.”

  “It’s not going to matter, Maine. And we’ll be fine either way.”

  “I like it here.”

  “You can find another school arrangement and another study session, or if you don’t like the kids in the area we move to, you can stick with the ones you know. Just takes more tram time.”

  Maine sighed. To a degree his dad was right. Learning was self-driven, meaning the school wouldn’t care about his transfer. Today he was attending Mercy North because his zone had aligned with that institution. All he’d need to do to transfer is advertise for another session in another place and start meeting with it. But there was more to it when you got to the details. A session was only as good as the people in it, and trading around was a lottery of its own type.

  At least Dad wasn’t sticking with the TS argument.

  “It’s not about the kids, Dad. You know that.”

  “There are track coaches everywhere, Maine.”

  “I like Coach H.”

  His dad pointed to him. “Look, son, you know most people don’t think like you do with your running and your schooling. You’re going to have to get that through your head if you want to be happy. You’re just going to have to find a way to make it happen. I hope to hell that you get to that point soon.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Learning is fun, Dad, he thought. Running is a blast.

  “Everyone needs a passion, but you’re not going to be able to run all your life, and you’ve got to understand that life is about feeling good. The world doesn’t care if you’re the best runner in the world. It just wants you to be happy.”

  “Some people care,” Maine said, already feeling the sameness of this argument.