Mindscan (29 page)

Deshawn thought the jury would deliberate for four days The jury consultant he'd hired was estimating a full week, and the commentator on Court TV opined it would be at least eight days. Karen and I went back to her mansion and tried to keep our minds occupied by anything but worrying about the verdict. We were both sitting in her living room — we'd decided we liked sitting, even though it wasn't necessary from a fatigue point of view; it just felt more natural. I was in that leather La-Z-Boy, and Karen was in an adjacent easy chair, trying to read a paper book. While reclined in the La-Z-Boy, I could clearly see what page she was on, and noticed she kept going back to re-read the same section. I guess her inner zombie was the only one able to pay attention while we waited.

I was watching highlights of the baseball games I'd missed on a small handheld viewer, with the sound off — I could do the play-by-play at least as well as the paid commentator.

Suddenly — is there any other way for it? — my cell phone rang; my ring tone was the theme to
Hockey Night in Canada
. The device was sitting on Karen's coffee table. I brought the La-Z-Boy to the upright position, scooped up the phone, held it in front of my face, and looked at the small picture screen, which said "Audio Only," followed by "Long Distance." I've never been good at resisting the phone; Karen says she has no trouble completely ignoring it — I suppose celebrity would do that to you. I hit a key and brought the handset to my ear. "Hello?" There was silence; I thought no one was there. "Hello?" I said again. "Hell—"

"Hello," said a man's voice with a British accent. "May I please speak with Jacob John Sullivan?"

"You've got him … Hello? Hello? Is there—"

"Good, excellent. Mr. Sullivan, my name is Gabriel Smythe. I work for Immortex."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Smythe … Mr. Smythe … Hello? Hello?"

"I apologize for the delays, Mr. Sullivan. You see, I'm calling you from the moon—"

"The moon!" I saw Karen react in surprise. "Is this about—"

"—in fact, from Heaviside Crater, on Lunar Far — yes, yes, this is about the original you. As I was saying—"

"What about him?"

"I'm at Heaviside, the facility — please, Mr. Sullivan, it's very difficult talking with these delays. Perhaps if we each said 'over' when we're done. Over."

Well, I'd always wanted to do that. "That's fine. Over."

Silence, then: "There, that's better. Now, as I was saying, I'm at Heaviside, at the facility our brochures call High Eden. Mr. Sullivan, it's about your original here. He's—"

"He's passed on?" I hadn't expected to be directly informed. Karen placed a soothing hand on my arm. "I, ah, don't want to—"

"—taken three people hostage, and — what? No, he hasn't passed on. Please, wait for me to say 'over.' He's taken three people hostage—"

"Hostages! That's impossible. Are you sure—"

"—and barricaded himself inside a moonbus, along with his captives, and — Please, Mr. Sullivan; we agreed you'd wait until I said 'over.' I haven't yet—"

"Sorry."

"—finished. Your original is demanding to talk with you. There, now: over."

Karen had moved in close so she could hear both sides of the conversation. Her green eyes were wide.

"Mr. Sulli—"

"Yes, I'm here. Sorry."

" — van? Are you there? Over."

"Yes, yes. I'm here. But, look, this is crazy. I know — I know
myself
. There's just no way on God's green Earth — or anywhere else, for that matter — that I'd ever do something like taking hostages." Silence, then I remembered: "Over."

Karen and I exchanged anguished looks while the seconds past, then: "Yes, we understand that. But — um, perhaps you know this? They found a cure for your … for
his
condition. Over."

"Really? Wow. No, I had no idea. That's … well, that's amazing. Um, over."

Silence, then: "We arranged for the procedure, of course. But there have been some aftereffects of the surgery. The doctor who treated him theorizes that his neurotransmitters are temporarily out of whack, and rather severely so. It's making him paranoid and violent. Over."

"Can you fix that?"

More silence, while radio waves bridged worlds, then, even though I hadn't properly terminated my last sentence, the cultured British voice came on again. "Surely — if we can get him into treatment, he'll be fine. But right now, as I said, he's holding three people hostage in a moonbus. And he's demanding his rights of personhood back. Of course, we—"

"He's what?"

"—explained to him why that was impossible. There's simply no legal procedure to allow…
repatriation
I suppose would be the word … to allow repatriation of personhood. Anyway, we need your help, Mr. Sullivan. We need you to come here, to Heaviside, to parlay with him. Over."

"Come to the moon? I've never even been to Europe, for God's sake, and you want me to come to the moon? Uh, over."

The maddening delay, then: "Yes. Right away. You're the only one he'll talk to.

There's far more than just the three lives at stake; if he explodes the moonbus's fuel, he'll kill almost everyone here at High Eden. Over."

"Well, put him on the phone. There's no need for me to go all the way to the moon. Over."

There was silence even longer than the speed of light required. "Umm, we, ah — we tried a deception earlier, in hopes of expeditiously resolving matters. It didn't work.

He won't believe he's talking to the real you unless he can see you face to face and speak to you directly. Over."

"Christ. I — I have no idea how to go about arranging such a trip. Over."

"We'll take care of all of that. You are in Toronto, right? We can have—"

"No, no. I'm in Detroit, not Toronto."

"—a driver at your door, and — oh. Detroit. Okay, we can still do this. We'll have a driver at your door within the hour to take you to Metropolitan Airport. From there, we'll fly you to Orlando, and from Orlando we'll have a small jet standing by to transfer you directly to the Kennedy Space Center. We can get you on a cargo rocket — by luck, one's scheduled for launch six hours from now to bring medical supplies to High Eden. That's not unusual; there are a lot of complex, perishable pharmaceuticals that the residents here rely on, and that are only manufactured on Earth. Anyway, there's lots of residual cargo capacity that they were going to fill with gourmet foodstuffs, but we can get that off-loaded to make room for you. Over."

"Um, I've got to think about this. Let me call you back. Over."

A pause, then: "It's complex ringing the moon. Please—"

"Then you call me back in thirty minutes. I need to think. Over — and out."

I'd had to let my … my
guests
… aboard the moonbus go to the washroom. I'd worried the first two times that they might get up to something in there, but it didn't seem there was anything that could be used to their advantage. The mirror above the small sink, for instance, was polished stainless steel, rather than glass. Still, I made them keep the door open while they used the facilities.

But soon enough I myself would have to go. There was no way I would back myself into a stall, but I'd also never been good at peeing in public. I guess I'd have to get them all to turn their backs while I did it into a jar or something … if I could find a jar. Of course, it would be even worse when I eventually had to defecate, since that was an exceedingly vulnerable posture. If only I—

The videophone bleeped. I went over to answer it.

"We've established contact with the other you," said Smythe, appearing on the small screen. "He's in Detroit."

"Detroit?" I said. I had the piton gun in my right hand. and gently swung it back and forth between Chloe, Akiko. and Hades … although Akiko was currently napping, so she probably didn't pose much of a threat. "What the hell would he be doing in Detroit?" And then it hit me. The trial — he must have been curious enough, for some reason, to go watch it. "Anyway," I said, before Smythe could reply, "what's he say?"

"He says we have to call him back in thirty minutes."

"Damn it, Smythe, if you're stalling—"

"We're not stalling. We should have an answer for you soon. So, please, please, for the love of God, don't do anything desperate."

Karen and I looked at each other. She was still holding her paper book aloft; it was effortless to do so, and unless she actually told her arm to drop down, it wouldn't.

For my part, I was sitting on the La-Z-Boy, but with it upright, the mechanisms within it and the mechanisms within me both tense.

"You've got to go," Karen said. "You've got to go to the moon."

"They don't need me. They need a professional. A hostage negotiator, or a…"

"Or a what? A sniper? Because that's what they'll send: not someone who can talk him out of it, but someone who can
take
him out."

Damn. All I'd ever wanted was what everyone else gets: a normal life — just a normal fucking life. "All right," I said at last. "I'll go."

"And I'm going, too," said Karen.

"Where?" I replied. "To Florida?"

Karen shook her head. "To the moon."

"I'm, ah, not sure they'd pay for that."

"I can afford it."

I was taken aback for a second — but she was right; she certainly could. Even if her bank accounts were never unfrozen, the advance from St. Martin's would more than cover it. "Are you sure you want to go?"

"Absolutely. God knows how long the jury deliberations will go on, and, anyway, they don't need me here just to read a verdict. So I have to wait an extra 1.5 seconds to find out what the verdict is up on the moon; I can live with that."

Karen got up, turned, and faced me. She put out her hands and I took them, and she effortlessly pulled me to my feet. Placing her head against my shoulder, she continued: "And, bluntly, I've got too much at risk to stay here. I love — I love talking with you, Jake. I love the way you play with ideas. But you're too quick to see the other person's perspective. I don't want you to be talked into shutting yourself off.

The transfer was legal and binding:
you
are Jacob Sullivan. I don't want whatever's up there on the moon playing mind games with you. The people from Immortex only care about getting their hostages back. Your original, at least in his current medical state, apparently only cares about himself. There needs to be someone up there who cares about
you
."

I drew her even closer, hugged her, feeling the soft exterior and the hardness beneath. "Thank you."

"How long till they call you back?"

"I said thirty minutes, but I doubt they'll be that patient, and—"

As if on cue, the phone rang. I glanced down at the call display, which said "Long Distance" again. I'll say.

"Hello?" I said, after touching my cell's speakerphone button.

Two seconds of digital silence, then: "Mr. Sullivan, thank you for picking up. Sorry to ring you back so soon, but we really—"

"No, that's okay. I'll come."

"—need to have an answer from you. The situation up here is — you will? Brilliant! Brilliant! I'm delighted. We'll—"

"There's one condition. Karen Bessarian gets to come with me, too. Over."

Silence, then: "You mean the Mindscan version of her? Why? Her — um, well…"

"We know her original has passed on. But she's my friend, and I want her with me.

Over."

"Mr. Sullivan, I'm not authorized—"

"I'll pay for it myself," said Karen.

" — to make arrangements for anyone else. This is going to be — what's that? Well, if you'll cover the costs; I assume that's Ms. Bessarian speaking. But I warn you, ma'am, we're planning to use an express rocket; an extra fifty kilograms will cost …

Anna? Give me a sec … approximately six million dollars. Over."

I smiled at Karen. "The six million dollar woman."

"No problem," she said.

"Well … all right, then," replied Smythe. "All right. But, again, we're using an express cargo rocket — fastest way to get here. They're uncrewed, and not designed for passengers. It won't be a comfortable trip. Over."

"What is comfort, anyway?" said Karen. "Neither of us need padded chairs. We're a
ware
of the temperature, but indifferent to it. How long will the trip take?"

"You have to say, 'Over,'" I added helpfully.

"Um, over," said Karen.

The time lag, then: "Twelve hours."

Karen snorted — something I wasn't aware we could still do. "I've spent longer on airplane flights."

"Then it's settled," I said. "We'll go. You said you'd send a car for us? Over."

"Will do. What's the address there?"

Karen told him.

"Great," said Smythe. "We'll get it all arranged. You're on your way to the moon."

On my way to the moon…

I shook my head.

On my way to the fucking moon.

The videophone in the moonbus bleeped again. "All right," said Gabriel Smythe, as soon as I'd answered. "All right. He's on his way. Jacob Sullivan is on his way here."

"By cargo rocket?" I asked.

"He will be, yes. He's
en route
to Florida now."

"When will he be here?"

"In fourteen hours."

"Well, then, there's not much for us to do until he gets here, is there?" I said.

"You can see that we're cooperating," said Smythe. "We're doing everything we can to help you. But fourteen hours is a long time. You'll have to sleep."

"I don't think so. I can still pull an all-nighter when need be. And I've taken some pills. Ask Dr. Ng. I told her I was suffering from extreme drowsiness; she gave me some uppers."

"Still," said Smythe, "things can only get more complex in fourteen hours. And three detainees is a lot to manage. Do you think you could see yourself clear to letting one of them go? A show of good faith, perhaps?"

I thought about this. Strictly speaking, I perhaps didn't need any hostages — after all, I could take out the whole of High Eden just by blowing up the moonbus. And Smythe was right: three
was
a lot of people to control. But I didn't want to change any parameters. "I don't think so," I said.

"Come now, Jake. It's going to be a lot easier for you if you only have to worry about two other people. Or one…"

"Don't press your luck, Gabe," I said.

"All right, all right. But surely you can let one hostage go?"

Damn it, three
was
a lot to look after. Plus, soon enough, I'd have to feed them…

"You probably want Brian Hades," I said. "You can't have him."

"We'll gratefully accept anyone you care to send out, Jake. Your choice."

I looked around at my crew. Hades had a defiant expression on his round face.

Chloe Hansen looked terrified; I wanted to say some soothing words to her. I shut off the phone.

"What about you?" I said to Akiko Uchiyama. "You want to go?"

"You want me to beg?" she said. "Fuck you."

I was taken aback. "I— I'm not trying to be mean here."

"You're fucking us over, you son of a bitch. Not to mention everyone who cares about us."

"I was going to let you go."

"
Was
. The benevolent tyrant."

"No, I mean if you—"

"Let me go. Or don't let me go. But don't expect me to fucking
thank
you for it."

"All right," I said. "You can go. Cycle through the airlock."

Akiko looked at me for a second, no change in her facial expression.

"But when you get back home," I added, "wash your mouth out with soap."

She got up from the chair she'd been sitting in and headed for the airlock. I watched her cycle through, then went back to the videophone. "Smythe," I said.

There was a pause. "Smythe's not here just now," said the voice of the female traffic controller.

"Where the hell
is
he?"

"The washroom."

Lucky bastard — although I wondered if that was really true, or if they were playing more mind games with me. "Well, tell him I've just sent him a present."

The rocket's cargo hold was cylindrical, about three meters long, and a meter in diameter. It made steerage look elegant.

"How, um, how do you want to be arranged?" asked Jesus Martinez, the muscular, bald man who was overseeing the loading of cargo.

I looked at Karen. She raised her eyebrows, leaving it to me. "Face to face," I said.

"There's no window, so it's not like there'll be anything to look at."

"There's no light, either," said Jesus. "Not once the hatches are sealed."

"Can't you throw in some glowsticks?" I said. "Luciferin, something like that?"

"I suppose," said Jesus. "But every gram costs money."

"Put it on my tab," said Karen.

Jesus nodded. "Whatever you say, Mrs. Bessarian." He told a man standing near him to go get the glowsticks, then, turning back to us: "You realize we'll have to strap you in for the first hour, while you're undergoing steady acceleration — although you can undo the straps later if you like. As you can see, we've already lined the chamber with padding. Your bodies are durable, but the launch will be rough."

"That's okay," I said.

"All right," said the man. "We're at T-minus sixteen minutes. Let's get you in there."

I entered the vertical cylinder of the hold, and positioned myself against the far curving wall. I then opened my arms, inviting Karen to step into them. She did so, and she slipped her arms around me. Why shouldn't we travel hugging each other? It wasn't as if our limbs were going to get tired.

Jesus and two assistants worked on positioning us just right, and then they strapped us in. "Guys like you — artificial bodies — might be the future of manned space-flight," Jesus said as he worked. "No life support, no need to worry about prolonged exposure to high gees."

The person Jesus had dispatched appeared a few minutes later, clutching some glowsticks. "These are good for four hours a piece," he said, breaking one open now, shaking it up, and letting the — green, I guess that was also a shade of green — light fill the chamber. "You guys have normal night vision?"

"Better than normal," I said.

"Then one stick should be plenty to have going at a time, but here are the others."

He put them in a webbed storage pouch attached to the inner curving wall, where Karen could easily reach them.

"Oh, and one more thing," said Jesus. He handed me something I hadn't seen in a long time.

"A newspaper?" I said.

"Today's
New York Times
," he replied. "Well, the front section, anyway. They do a thousand hardcopies every day, still on paper, for deposit at the Library of Congress, and for a few eccentric old subscribers who are willing to pay over a thousand bucks for a printed copy."

"Yes," I said. "I've heard about that. But what's it for?"

"Instructions came through from the folks up on the moon. This'll help prove that you came from Earth today; there's no other way, except by express rocket, that a copy of this could get to the moon in the next twelve hours."

"Ah," I said.

Jesus wedged the newspaper into another storage pouch. "All set?" he asked.

I nodded.

"Yes," said Karen.

He smiled. "My advice: don't talk about politics, religion, or sex. No point having an argument when neither of you can get away from the other." And with that, he swung the curved door shut, sealing us in.

"Are you okay?" I said to Karen. My artificial eyes adjusted to semi-darkness faster than my biological ones had; another difference, I suppose, between an electronic and a chemical reaction.

"I'm fine," she said, and she sounded sincere.

"Say, have you been to space before?"

"No, although I always wanted to go. But by the time they started having significant space tourism, I was already in my sixties, and my doctor advised against it." A pause. "It's nice not to have to worry about such things anymore."

"Twelve hours," I said. "It's going to seem like forever, not being able to sleep. And I can't even relax emotionally. I mean, what the hell is going on up there, on the moon?"

"They've cured the other you's condition. If you hadn't had that condition, that…"

I moved my head slightly. "That birth defect. Might as well call a spade a spade."

"Well, if you hadn't had that, you wouldn't have uploaded this early in life."

"I — forgive me, Karen, I'm not criticizing your choice but, well, if I hadn't had that birth defect, I don't know that I would have
ever
uploaded. I wasn't looking to cheat death. I just didn't want to be cheated out of a normal life."

"I didn't much think about living forever when I was your age," said Karen. And then her body shifted slightly, as if squirming a bit. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't use that phrase, should I? I mean, I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable about our age gap.

But it's true. When you've got decades ahead of you, that seems like a long time.

It's all relative. Have you ever read Ray Bradbury?"

"Who?"

"Sigh." She said the word, rather than made the sound. "He was one of my favorite writers when I was growing up. One of his stories begins with him — or his character; as a writer I should know better than to conflate author and character — reflecting on being a school kid. He says, 'Imagine a summer that would never end.' A kid's summer off school! Just two short months, but it does seem like forever when you're young. But when you get into your eighties, and the doctor tells you that you've got only a few years left, then years, and even decades, don't seem like enough time to do all the things you want to do."

"Well, I—
Kee-ryst!
"

The engines were firing. Karen and I were pressed down hard, toward the floor of the cargo chamber. The roar of the rocket was too great to speak over, so we simply listened. Our artificial ears had cutoffs built in; the noise wasn't going to harm us.

Still, the volume of it was incredible, and the shaking of the ship was brutal. After a short time, there was a great clanking as, I presumed, the rocket was released from its restraining bolts and allowed to start its upward journey. Karen and I were now ascending into orbit faster than any human beings ever had before.

I held tightly onto her, and she grasped me equally firmly. I became aware of those parts of my artificial anatomy that were missing sensors. I was sure I should be feeling my teeth rattle, but they weren't. And doubtless my back should have hurt as the nylon rings separating my titanium vertebrae were compressed, but there was no sensation associated with that, either.

But the roaring noise was inescapable, and there was a sense of great weight and pressure on me from above. It was getting warm, although not unduly so; the chamber was well-insulated. And everything was still bathed in the glowstick's greenish light.

The roar of the engine continued for a full hour; massive amounts of fuel were being burned to put us on a fast-track to the moon. But finally the engine cut off, and everything was quiet and, for the first time, I understood what was meant by the phrase "deafening silence." The contrast was absolute — between the loudest sound my ears could register and
nothing
.

I could see Karen's face, centimeters from my own. It was in focus; artificial optics have more flexibility man do natural ones. She nodded, as if to indicate that she was okay, and we both enjoyed the silence a while longer.

But there was more to enjoy than just freedom from noise.

Perhaps if I were still biological, I would have been immediately aware of it: food trying to come up my esophagus, an imbalance in my inner ear. I could well imagine that biological people often got sick under such circumstances. But for me, it was simply a matter of no longer registering the downward push from above. There wasn't much room to move around — but, then, I'm sure it had seemed to
Apollo
astronauts that they'd had hardly any room until the gravity disappeared. I undid the buckles on the restraining straps, pushed off the floor, and floated slowly the meter toward the ceiling.

Karen laughed with delight, moving effortlessly within the small space. "It's wonderful!"

"My God, it is!" I said, managing to get an arm up to stop my head from hitting the padded ceiling — although, I quickly realized, the terms ceiling and floor no longer had any meaning.

Karen managed to turn herself around — her synthetic body was shorter than mine, and, after all, she'd once upon a time been a ballet dancer: she knew how to execute complex moves. For my part, I managed to curl around the curving inner wall of the tube, becoming essentially perpendicular to my position at liftoff.

It was exhilarating. I thought about what the launch attendant had said: people with artificial bodies are perfect for space exploration. Perhaps he was right, and—

Something hit me in the face, soft, scrunchy.

"What the—?"

It took me a moment to make things out in the dim green light, especially since the glowstick was now on the far side of Karen, meaning her body was casting weird shadows across my field of view. The thing that had hit me in the face was Karen's shirt.

I looked down — across — over — up — at her.

"Come on, Jake," she said. "We may never have another chance like this."

I thought back to the one previous time we'd done this: with the stress of the trial, we hadn't tried again. "But—"

"We'll doubtless return home on a regular transport," Karen said, "full of other people. But right now, we've got an opportunity that may never happen again. Plus, unlike most people, we don't have to worry about getting bruised."

Her bra was flapping up toward me now, a seagull in our emerald twilight. It was … s
timulating
, watching her move as she bent and twisted, taking off her pants.

I caught her bra, wadded it up, and sent it on a trajectory that would get it out of the way, then began to remove my own shirt, which quickly billowed around me as its buttons were undone. My belt was next, a flat eel in the air. And then my pants joined Karen's, floating freely.

"All right," I said, to Karen. "Let's see if we can execute a docking maneuver…"