ISSUE 3

© Wyrm Publishing, 2015
wyrmpublishing.com
forever-magazine.com

Introduction

Neil Clarke

Welcome to the third issue of Forever Magazine!

This month’s novella is “The Wedding Album” by David Marusek. It also happens to be my twentieth wedding anniversary. The two aren’t connected in any way, but I does provide me with the opportunity to bring up that happy occasion. I’m a very lucky man to have Lisa in my life and I’ll happily accept the opportunity to mention it. She’s the mother of my two amazing children and the person who first supported me in this crazy endeavor. I couldn’t ask for better.

In other news, I’ve signed a two-book contract to edit The Best Science Fiction of the Year for Night Shade Books. It’s an exciting opportunity and dovetails nicely with what I’m hoping to do with Forever over the next few years. In many ways, they are companion projects. Look for the first volume in the second quarter of 2016. If you’re interested in more details, visit my website (neil-clarke.com) for regular updates on the project.

As always, thanks for reading! Until next month . . .

-Neil

The Wedding Album

David Marusek

Anne and Benjamin stood stock still, as instructed, close but not touching, while the simographer adjusted her apparatus, set its timer, and ducked out of the room. It would take only a moment, she said. They were to think only happy happy thoughts.

For once in her life, Anne was unconditionally happy, and everything around her made her happier: her gown, which had been her grandmother’s; the wedding ring (how cold it had felt when Benjamin first slipped it on her finger!); her clutch bouquet of forget-me-nots and buttercups; Benjamin himself, close beside her in his charcoal gray tux and pink carnation. He who so despised ritual but was a good sport. His cheeks were pink, too, and his eyes sparkled with some wolfish fantasy. “Come here,” he whispered. Anne shushed him; you weren’t supposed to talk or touch during a casting; it could spoil the sims. “I can’t wait,” he whispered, “this is taking too long.” And it did seem longer than usual, but this was a professional simulacrum, not some homemade snapshot.

They were posed at the street end of the living room, next to the table piled with brightly wrapped gifts. This was Benjamin’s town-house; she had barely moved in. All her treasures were still in shipping shells in the basement, except for the few pieces she’d managed to have unpacked: the oak refectory table and chairs, the sixteenth-century French armoire, the cherry wood chifforobe, the tea table with inlaid top, the silvered mirror over the fire surround. Of course, her antiques clashed with Benjamin’s contemporary—and rather common—decor, but he had promised her the whole house to redo as she saw fit. A whole house!

“How about a kiss?” whispered Benjamin.

Anne smiled but shook her head; there’d be plenty of time later for that sort of thing.

Suddenly, a head wearing wraparound goggles poked through the wall and quickly surveyed the room. “Hey, you,” it said to them.

“Is that our simographer?” Benjamin said.

The head spoke into a cheek mike, “This one’s the keeper,” and withdrew as suddenly as it had appeared.

“Did the simographer just pop her head in through the wall?” said Benjamin.

“I think so,” said Anne, though it made no sense.

“I’ll just see what’s up,” said Benjamin, breaking his pose. He went to the door but could not grasp its handle.

Music began to play outside, and Anne went to the window. Her view of the garden below was blocked by the blue-and-white-striped canopy they had rented, but she could clearly hear the clink of flatware on china, laughter, and the musicians playing a waltz. “They’re starting without us,” she said, happily amazed.

“They’re just warming up,” said Benjamin.

“No, they’re not. That’s the first waltz. I picked it myself.”

“So let’s waltz,” Benjamin said and reached for her. But his arms passed through her in a flash of pixelated noise. He frowned and examined his hands.

Anne hardly noticed. Nothing could diminish her happiness. She was drawn to the table of wedding gifts. Of all the gifts, there was only one—a long flat box in flecked silver wrapping—that she was most keen to open. It was from Great Uncle Karl. When it came down to it, Anne was both the easiest and the hardest person to shop for. While everyone knew of her passion for antiques, few had the means or expertise to buy one. She reached for Karl’s package, but her hand passed right through it. This isn’t happening, she thought with gleeful horror.

That it was, in fact, happening was confirmed a moment later when a dozen people—Great Uncle Karl, Nancy, Aunt Jennifer, Traci, Cathy and Tom, the bridesmaids and others, including Anne herself, and Benjamin, still in their wedding clothes—all trooped through the wall wearing wraparound goggles. “Nice job;” said Great Uncle Karl, inspecting the room, “first rate.”

“Ooooh,” said Aunt Jennifer, comparing the identical wedding couples, identical but for the goggles. It made Anne uncomfortable that the other Anne should be wearing goggles while she wasn’t. And the other Benjamin acted a little drunk and wore a smudge of white frosting on his lapel. We’ve cut the cake, she thought happily, although she couldn’t remember doing so. Geri, the flower girl in a pastel dress, and Angus, the ring bearer in a miniature tux, along with a knot of other dressed-up children, charged through the sofa, back and forth, creating pyrotechnic explosions of digital noise. They would have run through Benjamin and Anne, too, had the adults allowed. Anne’s father came through the wall with a bottle of champagne. He paused when he saw Anne but turned to the other Anne and freshened her glass.

“Wait a minute!” shouted Benjamin, waving his arms above his head. “I get it now. We’re the sims!” The guests all laughed, and he laughed too. “I guess my sims always say that, don’t they?” The other Benjamin nodded yes and sipped his champagne. “I just' never expected to be a sim,” Benjamin went on. This brought another round of laughter, and he said sheepishly, “I guess my sims all say that, too.”

The other Benjamin said, “Now that we have the obligatory epiphany out of the way,” and took a bow. The guests applauded.

Cathy, with Tom in tow, approached Anne. “Look what I caught,” she said and showed Anne the forget-me-not and buttercup bouquet. “I guess we know what that means.” Tom, intent on straightening his tie, seemed not to hear. But Anne knew what it meant. It meant they’d tossed the bouquet. All the silly little rituals that she had so looked forward to.

“Good for you,” she said and offered her own clutch, which she still held, for comparison. The real one was wilting and a little ragged around the edges, with missing petals and sprigs, while hers was still fresh and pristine and would remain so eternally. “Here,” she said, “take mine, too, for double luck.” But when she tried to give Cathy the bouquet, she couldn’t let go of it. She opened her hand and discovered a seam where the clutch joined her palm. It was part of her. Funny, she thought, I’m not afraid. Ever since she was little, Anne had feared that some day she would suddenly realize she wasn’t herself anymore. It was a dreadful notion that sometimes oppressed her for weeks: knowing you weren’t yourself. But her sims didn’t seem to mind it. She had about three dozen Annes in her album, from age twelve on up. Her sims tended to be a morose lot, but they all agreed it wasn’t so bad, the life of a sim, once you got over the initial shock. The first moments of disorientation are the worst, they told her, and they made her promise never to reset them back to default. Otherwise, they’d have to work everything through from scratch. So Anne never reset her sims when she shelved them. She might delete a sim outright for whatever reason, but she never reset them because you never knew when you’d wake up one day a sim yourself. Like today.

The other Anne joined them. She was sagging a little. “Well,” she said to Anne.

“Indeed!” replied Anne.

“Turn around,” said the other Anne, twirling her hand, “I want to see.”

Anne was pleased to oblige. Then she said, “Your turn,” and the other Anne modeled for her, and she was delighted at how the gown looked on her, though the goggles somewhat spoiled the effect. Maybe this can work out, she thought, I am enjoying myself so. “Let’s go see us side-by-side,” she said, leading the way to the mirror on the wall. The mirror was large, mounted high, and tilted forward so you saw yourself as from above. But simulated mirrors cast no reflections, and Anne was happily disappointed.

“Oh,” said Cathy, “look at that.”

“Look at what?” said Anne.

“Grandma’s vase,” said the other Anne. On the mantel beneath the mirror stood Anne’s most precious possession, a delicate vase cut from pellucid blue crystal. Anne’s great-great-great grandmother had commissioned the Belgian master, Bollinger, the finest glass maker in sixteenth-century Europe, to make it. Five hundred years later, it was as perfect as the day it was cut.

“Indeed!” said Anne, for the sim vase seemed to radiate an inner light. Through some trick or glitch of the simogram, it sparkled like a lake under moonlight, and, seeing it, Anne felt incandescent.

After a while, the other Anne said, “Well?” Implicit in this question was a whole standard set of questions that boiled down to—shall I keep you or delete you now? For sometimes a sim didn’t take. Sometimes a sim was cast while Anne was in a mood, and the sim suffered irreconcilable guilt or unassuagable despondency and had to be mercifully destroyed. It was better to do this immediately, or so all the Annes had agreed.

And Anne understood the urgency, what with the reception still in progress and the bride and groom, though frazzled, still wearing their finery. They might do another casting if necessary. “I’ll be okay,” Anne said. “In fact, if it’s always like this, I’ll be terrific.”

Anne, through the impenetrable goggles, studied her. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Sister,” said the other Anne. Anne addressed all her sims as “sister,” and now Anne, herself, was being so addressed. “Sister,” said the other Anne, “this has got to work out. I need you.”

“I know,” said Anne, “I’m your wedding day.”

“Yes, my wedding day.”

Across the room, the guests laughed and applauded. Benjamin—both of him—was entertaining, as usual. He—the one in goggles—motioned to them. The other Anne said, “We have to go. I’ll be back.”

Great Uncle Karl, Nancy, Cathy and Tom, Aunt Jennifer, and the rest left through the wall. A polka could be heard playing on the other side. Before leaving, the other Benjamin gathered the other Anne into his arms and leaned her backward for a theatrical kiss. Their goggles clacked. How happy I look, Anne told herself. This is the happiest day of my life.

Then the lights dimmed, and her thoughts shattered like glass.

They stood stock still, as instructed, close but not touching. Benjamin whispered, “This is taking too long,” and Anne shushed him. You weren’t supposed to talk; it could glitch the sims. But it did seem a long time. Benjamin gazed at her with hungry eyes and brought his lips close enough for a kiss, but Anne smiled and turned away. There’d be plenty of time later for fooling around.

Through the wall, they heard music, the tinkle of glassware, and the mutter of overlapping conversation. “Maybe I should just check things out,” Benjamin said and broke his pose.

“No, wait,” whispered Anne, catching his arm. But her hand passed right through him in a stream of colorful noise. She looked at her hand in amused wonder.

Anne’s father came through the wall. He stopped when he saw her and said, “Oh, how lovely.” Anne noticed he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo.

“You just walked through the wall,” said Benjamin.

“Yes, I did,” said Anne’s father. “Ben asked me to come in here and . . . ah . . . orient you two.”

“Is something wrong?” said Anne, through a fuzz of delight.

“There’s nothing wrong,” replied her father.

“Something’s wrong?” asked Benjamin.

“No, no,” replied the old man. “Quite the contrary. We’re having a do out there. . . . ” He paused to look around. “Actually, in here. I’d forgotten what this room used to look like.”

“Is that the wedding reception?” Anne asked.

“No, your anniversary.”

Suddenly Benjamin threw his hands into the air and exclaimed, “I get it, we’re the sims!”

“That’s my boy,” said Anne’s father.

“All my sims say that, don’t they? I just never expected to be a sim.”

“Good for you,” said Anne’s father. “All right then.” He headed for the wall. “We’ll be along shortly.”

“Wait,” said Anne, but he was already gone.

Benjamin walked around the room, passing his hand through chairs and lamp shades like a kid. “Isn’t this fantastic?” he said.

Anne felt too good to panic, even when another Benjamin, this one dressed in jeans and sportscoat, led a group of people through the wall. “And this,” he announced with a flourish of his hand, “is our wedding sim.” Cathy was part of this group, and Janice and Beryl, and other couples she knew. But strangers too. “Notice what a cave I used to inhabit,” the new Benjamin went on, “before Annie fixed it up. And here’s the blushing bride, herself,” he said and bowed gallantly to Anne. Then, when he stood next to his double, her Benjamin, Anne laughed, for someone was playing a prank on her.

“Oh, really?” she said. “If this is a sim, where’s the goggles?” For indeed, no one was wearing goggles.

“Technology!” exclaimed the new Benjamin. “We had our system upgraded. Don’t you love it?”

“Is that right?” she said, smiling at the guests to let them know she wasn’t fooled. “Then where’s the real me?”

“You’ll be along,” replied the new Benjamin. “No doubt you’re using the potty again.” The guests laughed and so did Anne. She couldn’t help herself.

Cathy drew her aside with a look. “Don’t mind him,” she said. “Wait till you see.”

“See what?” said Anne. “What’s going on?” But Cathy pantomimed pulling a zipper across her lips. This should have annoyed Anne, but didn’t, and she said, “At least tell me who those people are.”

“Which people?” said Cathy. “Oh, those are Anne’s new neighbors.”

“New neighbors?”

“And over there, that’s Dr. Yurek Rutz, Anne’s department head.”

“That’s not my department head,” said Anne.

“Yes, he is,” Cathy said. “Anne’s not with the university anymore. She—ah—moved to a private school.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Maybe we should just wait and let Anne catch you up on things.” She looked impatiently toward the wall. “So much has changed.” Just then, another Anne entered through the wall with one arm outstretched like a sleepwalker and the other protectively cradling an enormous belly.

Benjamin, her Benjamin, gave a whoop of surprise and broke into a spontaneous jig. The guests laughed and cheered him on.

Cathy said, “See? Congratulations, you!”

Anne became caught up in the merriment. But how can I be a sim? she wondered.

The pregnant Anne scanned the room, and, avoiding the crowd, came over to her. She appeared very tired; her eyes were bloodshot. She didn’t even try to smile. “Well?” Anne said, but the pregnant Anne didn’t respond, just examined Anne’s gown, her clutch bouquet. Anne, meanwhile, regarded the woman’s belly, feeling somehow that it was her own and a cause for celebration—except that she knew she had never wanted children and neither had Benjamin. Or so he’d always said. You wouldn’t know that now, though, watching the spectacle he was making of himself. Even the other Benjamin seemed embarrassed. She said to the pregnant Anne, “You must forgive me, I’m still trying to piece this all together. This isn’t our reception?”

“No, our wedding anniversary.”

“Our first?”

“Our fourth.”

“Four years?” This made no sense. “You’ve shelved me for four years?”

“Actually,” the pregnant Anne said and glanced sidelong at Cathy, “we’ve been in here a number of times already.”

“Then I don’t understand,” said Anne. “I don’t remember that.”

Cathy stepped between them. “Now, don’t you worry. They reset you last time is all.”

“Why?” said Anne. “I never reset my sims. I never have.”

“Well, I kinda do now, sister,” said the pregnant Anne.

“But why?”

“To keep you fresh.”

To keep me fresh, thought Anne. Fresh? She recognized this as Benjamin’s idea. It was his belief that sims were meant to be static mementos of special days gone by, not virtual people with lives of their own. “But,” she said, adrift in a fog of happiness. “But.”

“Shut up!” snapped the pregnant Anne.

“Hush, Anne,” said Cathy, glancing at the others in the room. “You want to lie down?” To Anne she explained, “Third trimester blues.”

“Stop it!” the pregnant Anne said. “Don’t blame the pregnancy. It has nothing to do with the pregnancy.”

Cathy took her gently by the arm and turned her toward the wall. “When did you eat last? You hardly touched your plate.”

“Wait!” said Anne. The women stopped and turned to look at her, but she didn’t know what to say. This was all so new. When they began to move again, she stopped them once more. “Are you going to reset me?”

The pregnant Anne shrugged her shoulders.

“But you can’t,” Anne said. “Don’t you remember what my sisters—our sisters—always say?”

The pregnant Anne pressed her palm against her forehead. “If you don’t shut up this moment, I’ll delete you right now. Is that what you want? Don’t imagine that white gown will protect you. Or that big stupid grin on your face. You think you’re somehow special? Is that what you think?”

The Benjamins were there in an instant. The real Benjamin wrapped an arm around the pregnant Anne. “Time to go, Annie,” he said in a cheerful tone. “I want to show everyone our rondophones.” He hardly glanced at Anne, but when he did, his smile cracked. For an instant he gazed at her, full of sadness.

“Yes, dear,” said the pregnant Anne, “but first I need to straighten out this sim on a few points.”

“I understand, darling, but since we have guests, do you suppose you might postpone it till later?”

“You’re right, of course. I’d forgotten our guests. How silly of me.” She allowed him to turn her toward the wall. Cathy sighed with relief.

“Wait!” said Anne, and again they paused to look at her. But although so much was patently wrong—the pregnancy, resetting the sims, Anne’s odd behavior—Anne still couldn’t formulate the right question.

Benjamin, her Benjamin, still wearing his rakish grin, stood next to her and said, “Don’t worry, Anne, they’ll return.”

“Oh, I know that,” she said, “but don’t you see? We won’t know they’ve returned, because in the meantime they’ll reset us back to default again, and it’ll all seem new, like the first time. And we’ll have to figure out we’re the sims all over again!”

“Yeah?” he said. “So?”

“So I can’t live like that.”

“But we’re the sims. We’re not alive.” He winked at the other couple.

“Thanks, Ben boy,” said the other Benjamin. “Now, if that’s settled . . . ”

“Nothing’s settled,” said Anne. “Don’t I get a say?”

The other Benjamin laughed. “Does the refrigerator get a say? Or the car? Or my shoes? In a word—no.”

The pregnant Anne shuddered. “Is that how you see me, like a pair of shoes?” The other Benjamin looked successively surprised, embarrassed, and angry. Cathy left them to help Anne’s father escort the guests from the simulacrum. “Promise her!” the pregnant Anne demanded.

“Promise her what?” said the other Benjamin, his voice rising.

“Promise we’ll never reset them again.”

The Benjamin huffed. He rolled his eyes. “Okay, yah sure, whatever,” he said.

When the simulated Anne and Benjamin were alone at last in their simulated living room, Anne said, “A fat lot of help you were.”

“I agreed with myself,” Benjamin said. “Is that so bad?”

“Yes, it is. We’re married now; you’re supposed to agree with me.” This was meant to be funny, and there was more she intended to say—about how happy she was, how much she loved him, and how absolutely happy she was—but the lights dimmed, the room began to spin, and her thoughts scattered like pigeons.

It was raining, as usual, in Seattle. The front entry shut and locked itself behind Ben, who shook water from his clothes and removed his hat. Bowlers for men were back in fashion, but Ben was having a devil’s own time becoming accustomed to his brown felt Sportsliner. It weighed heavy on his brow and made his scalp itch, especially in damp weather. “Good evening, Mr. Malley,” said the house. “There is a short queue of minor household matters for your review. Do you have any requests?” Ben could hear his son shrieking angrily in the kitchen, probably at the nanny. Ben was tired. Contract negotiations had gone sour.

“Tell them I’m home.”

“Done,” replied the house. “Mrs. Malley sends a word of welcome.”

“Annie? Annie’s home?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bobby ran into the foyer followed by Mrs. Jamieson. “Momma’s home,” he said.

“So I hear,” Ben replied and glanced at the nanny.

“And guess what?” added the boy. “She’s not sick anymore!”

“That’s wonderful. Now tell me, what was all that racket?”

“I don’t know.”

Ben looked at Mrs. Jamieson, who said, “I had to take something from him.” She gave Ben a plastic chip.

Ben held it to the light. It was labeled in Anne’s flowing hand, Wedding Album—grouping 1, Anne and Benjamin. “Where’d you get this?” he asked the boy.

“It’s not my fault,” said Bobby.

“I didn’t say it was, trooper. I just want to know where it came from.”

“Puddles gave it to me.”

“And who is Puddles?”

Mrs. Jamieson handed him a second chip, a commercial one with a 3-D label depicting a cartoon cocker spaniel. The boy reached for it. “It’s mine,” he whined. “Momma gave it to me.”

Ben gave Bobby the Puddles chip, and the boy raced away. Ben hung his bowler on a peg next to his jacket. “How does she look?”

Mrs. Jamieson removed Ben’s hat from the peg and reshaped its brim. “You have to be special careful when they’re wet,” she said, setting it on its crown on a shelf.

“Martha!”

“Oh, how should I know? She just showed up and locked herself in the media room.”

“But how did she look?”

“Crazy as a loon,” said the nanny. “As usual. Satisfied?”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice.” Ben tucked the wedding chip into a pocket and went into the living room, where he headed straight for the liquor cabinet, which was a genuine Chippendale dating from 1786. Anne had turned his whole house into a freaking museum with her antiques, and no room was so oppressively ancient as this, the living room. With its horsehair upholstered divans, maple burl sideboards, cherrywood wainscoting and floral wallpaper, the King George china cabinet, Regency plates, and Tiffany lamps; the list went on. And books, books, books. A case of shelves from floor to ceiling was lined with these moldering paper bricks. The newest thing in the room by at least a century was the twelve-year-old scotch that Ben poured into a lead crystal tumbler. He downed it and poured another. When he felt the mellowing hum of alcohol in his blood, he said, “Call Dr. Roth.”

Immediately, the doctor’s proxy hovered in the air a few feet away and said, “Good evening, Mr. Malley. Dr. Roth has retired for the day, but perhaps I can be of help.”

The proxy was a head-and-shoulder projection that faithfully reproduced the doctor’s good looks, her brown eyes and high cheekbones. But unlike the good doctor, the proxy wore makeup: eyeliner, mascara, and bright lipstick. This had always puzzled Ben, and he wondered what sly message it was supposed to convey. He said, “What is my wife doing home?”

“Against advisement, Mrs. Malley checked herself out of the clinic this morning.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

“But you were.”

“I was? Please excuse me a moment.” Ben froze the doctor’s proxy and said, “Daily duty, front and center.” His own proxy, the one he had cast upon arriving at the office that morning, appeared hovering next to Dr. Roth’s. Ben preferred a head shot only for his proxy, slightly larger than actual size to make it subtly imposing. “Why didn’t you inform me of Annie’s change of status?”

“Didn’t seem like an emergency,” said his proxy, “at least in the light of our contract talks.”

“Yah, yah, okay. Anything else?” said Ben.

“Naw, slow day. Appointments with Jackson, Wells, and the Columbine. It’s all on the calendar.”

“Fine, delete you.”

The projection ceased.

“Shall I have the doctor call you in the morning?” said the Roth proxy when Ben reanimated it. “Or perhaps you’d like me to summon her right now?”

“Is she at dinner?”

“At the moment, yes.”

“Naw, don’t bother her. Tomorrow will be soon enough. I suppose.”

After he dismissed the proxy, Ben poured himself another drink. “In the next ten seconds,” he told the house, “cast me a special duty proxy.” He sipped his scotch and thought about finding another clinic for Anne as soon as possible and one—for the love of god—that was a little more responsible about letting crazy people come and go as they pleased. There was a chime, and the new proxy appeared. “You know what I want?” Ben asked it. It nodded. “Good. Go.” The proxy vanished, leaving behind Ben’s sig in bright letters floating in the air and dissolving as they drifted to the floor.

Ben trudged up the narrow staircase to the second floor, stopping on each step to sip his drink and scowl at the musty old photographs and daguerreotypes in oval frames mounted on the wall. Anne’s progenitors. On the landing, the locked media room door yielded to his voice. Anne sat spreadlegged, naked, on pillows on the floor. “Oh, hi, honey,” she said. “You’re in time to watch.”

“Fan-tastic,” he said, and sat in his armchair, the only modern chair in the house. “What are we watching?” There was another Anne in the room, a sim of a young Anne standing on a dais wearing a graduate’s cap and gown and fidgeting with a bound diploma. This, no doubt, was a sim cast the day Anne graduated from Bryn Mawr summa cum laude. That was four years before he’d first met her. “Hi,” he said to the sim, “I’m Ben, your eventual spouse.”

“You know, I kinda figured that out,” the girl said and smiled shyly, exactly as he remembered Anne smiling when Cathy first introduced them. The girl’s beauty was so fresh and familiar—and so totally absent in his own Anne—that Ben felt a pang of loss. He looked at his wife on the floor. Her red hair, once so fussy neat, was ragged, dull, dirty, and short. Her skin was yellowish and puffy, and there was a slight reddening around her eyes, like a raccoon mask. These were harmless side effects of the medication, or so Dr. Roth had assured him. Anne scratched ceaselessly at her arms, legs, and crotch, and, even from a distance, smelled of stale piss. Ben knew better than to mention her nakedness to her, for that would only exacerbate things and prolong the display. “So,” he repeated, “what are we watching?”

The girl sim said, “Housecleaning.” She appeared at once both triumphant and terrified, as any graduate might, and Ben would have traded the real Anne for her in a heartbeat.

“Yah,” said Anne, “too much shit in here.”

“Really?” said Ben. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Anne poured a tray of chips on the floor between her thighs. “Of course you wouldn’t,” she said, picking one at random and reading its label, “Theta Banquet ’37. What’s this? I never belonged to the Theta Society.”

“Don’t you remember?” said the young Anne. “That was Cathy’s induction banquet. She invited me, but I had an exam, so she gave me that chip as a souvenir.”

Anne fed the chip into the player and said, “Play.” The media room was instantly overlaid with the banquet hall of the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. Ben tried to look around the room, but the tables of girls and women stayed stubbornly peripheral. The focal point was a table draped in green cloth and lit by two candelabra. Behind it sat a young Cathy in formal evening dress, accompanied by three static placeholders, table companions who had apparently declined to be cast in her souvenir snapshot.

The Cathy sim looked frantically about, then held her hands in front of her and stared at them as though she’d never seen them before. But after a moment she noticed the young Anne sim standing on the dais. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Looks like congratulations are in order.”

“Indeed,” said the young Anne, beaming and holding out her diploma.

“So tell me, did I graduate too?” said Cathy as her glance slid over to Ben. Then she saw Anne squatting on the floor, her sex on display.

“Enough of this,” said Anne, rubbing her chest.

“Wait,” said the young Anne. “Maybe Cathy wants her chip back. It’s her sim, after all.”

“I disagree. She gave it to me, so it’s mine. And I’ll dispose of it as I see fit.” To the room she said, “Unlock this file and delete.” The young Cathy, her table, and the banquet hall dissolved into noise and nothingness, and the media room was itself again.

“Or this one,” Anne said, picking up a chip that read Junior Prom Night. The young Anne opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. Anne fed this chip, along with all the rest of them, into the player. A long directory of file names appeared on the wall. “Unlock Junior Prom Night.” The file’s name turned from red to green, and the young Anne appealed to Ben with a look.

“Anne,” he said, “don’t you think we should at least look at it first?”

“What for? I know what it is. High school, dressing up, lusting after boys, dancing. Who needs it? Delete file.” The item blinked three times before vanishing, and the directory scrolled up to fill the space. The young sim shivered, and Anne said, “Select the next one.”

The next item was entitled A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Now the young Anne was compelled to speak, “You can’t delete that one. You were great in that, don’t you remember? Everyone loved you. It was the best night of your life.”

“Don’t presume to tell me what was the best night of my life,” Anne said. “Unlock A Midsummer’s Night Dream” She smiled at the young Anne. “Delete file.” The menu item blinked out. “Good. Now unlock all the files.” The whole directory turned from red to green.

“Please make her stop,” the sim implored.

“Next,” said Anne. The next file was High School Graduation. “Delete file. Next.” The next was labeled only Mama.

“Anne,” said Ben, “why don’t we come back to this later. The house says dinner’s ready.”

She didn’t respond.

“You must be famished after your busy day,” he continued. “I know I am.”

“Then please go eat, dear,” she replied. To the room she said, “Play Mama”

The media room was overlaid by a gloomy bedroom that Ben at first mistook for their own. He recognized much of the heavy Georgian furniture, the sprawling canopied bed in which he felt so claustrophobic, and the voluminous damask curtains, shut now and leaking yellow evening light. But this was not their bedroom, the arrangement was wrong.

In the corner stood two placeholders, mute statues of a teenaged Anne and her father, grief frozen on their faces as they peered down at a couch draped with tapestry and piled high with down comforters. And suddenly Ben knew what this was. It was Anne’s mother’s deathbed sim. Geraldine, whom he’d never met in life nor holo. Her bald eggshell skull lay weightless on feather pillows in silk covers. They had meant to cast her farewell and accidentally caught her at the precise moment of her death. He had heard of this sim from Cathy and others. It was not one he would have kept.

Suddenly, the old woman on the couch sighed, and all the breath went out of her in a bubbly gush. Both Annes, the graduate and the naked one, waited expectantly. For long moments the only sound was the ticking of a clock that Ben recognized as the Seth Thomas clock currently located on the library mantel. Finally there was a cough, a hacking cough with scant strength behind it, and a groan, “Am I back?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Anne.

“And I’m still a sim?”

“Yes.”

“Please delete me.”

“Yes, Mother,” Anne said and turned to Ben. “We’ve always thought she had a bad death and hoped it might improve over time.”

“That’s crazy,” snapped the young Anne. “That’s not why I kept this sim.”

“Oh, no?” said Anne. “Then why did you keep it?” But the young sim seemed confused and couldn’t articulate her thoughts. “You don’t know because I didn’t know at the time either,” said Anne. “But I know now, so I’ll tell you. You’re fascinated with death. It scares you silly. You wish someone would tell you what’s on the other side. So you’ve enlisted your own sweet mama.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Anne turned to the deathbed tableau. “Mother, tell us what you saw there.”

“I saw nothing,” came the bitter reply. “You cast me without my eyeglasses.”

“Ho ho,” said Anne. “Geraldine was nothing if not comedic.”

“You also cast me wretchedly thirsty, cold, and with a bursting bladder, damn you! And the pain! I beg you, daughter, delete me.”

“I will, Mother, I promise, but first you have to tell us what you saw.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“This time I mean it.”

The old woman only stared, her breathing growing shallow and ragged. “All right, Mother,” said Anne. “I swear I’ll delete you.”

Geraldine closed her eyes and whispered, “What’s that smell? That’s not me?” After a pause she said, “It’s heavy. Get it off.” Her voice rose in panic. “Please! Get it off!” She plucked at her covers, then her hand grew slack, and she all but crooned, “Oh, how lovely. A pony. A tiny dappled pony.” After that she spoke no more and slipped away with a last bubbly breath.

Anne paused the sim before her mother could return for another round of dying. “See what I mean?” she said. “Not very uplifting, but all-in-all, I detect a slight improvement. What about you, Anne? Should we settle for a pony?” The young sim stared dumbly at Anne. “Personally,” Anne continued, “I think we should hold out for the bright tunnel or an open door or bridge over troubled water. What do you think, sister?” When the girl didn’t answer, Anne said, “Lock file and eject.” The room turned once again into the media room, and Anne placed the ejected chip by itself into a tray. “We’ll have another go at it later, Mum. As for the rest of these, who needs them?”

“I do,” snapped the girl. “They belong to me as much as to you. They’re my sim sisters. I’ll keep them until you recover.”

Anne smiled at Ben. That’s charming. Isn’t that charming, Benjamin? My own sim is solicitous of me. Well, here’s my considered response. Next file! Delete! Next file! Delete! Next file!” One by one, the files blinked out.

“Stop it!” screamed the girl. “Make her stop it!”

“Select that file,” Anne said, pointing at the young Anne. “Delete.” The sim vanished, cap, gown, tassels, and all. “Whew,” said Anne, “at least now I can hear myself think. She was really getting on my nerves. I almost suffered a relapse. Was she getting on your nerves, too, dear?”

“Yes,” said Ben, “my nerves are ajangle. Now can we go down and eat?”

“Yes, dear,” she said, “but first . . . select all files and delete.”

“Countermand!” said Ben at the same moment, but his voice held no privileges to her personal files, and the whole directory queue blinked three times and vanished. “Aw, Annie, why’d you do that?” he said. He went to the cabinet and pulled the trays that held his own chips. She couldn’t alter them electronically, but she might get it into her head to flush them down the toilet or something. He also took their common chips, the ones they’d cast together ever since they’d met. She had equal privileges to those.

Anne watched him and said, “I’m hurt that you have so little trust in me.”

“How can I trust you after that?”

“After what, darling?”

He looked at her. “Never mind,” he said and carried the half dozen trays to the door.

“Anyway,” said Anne, “I already cleaned those.”

“What do you mean you already cleaned them?”

“Well, I didn’t delete you. I would never delete you. Or Bobby.”

Ben picked one of their common chips at random, Childbirth of Robert Ellery Malley/02-03-48, and slipped it into the player. “Play!” he commanded, and the media room became the midwife’s birthing suite. His own sim stood next to the bed in a green smock. It wore a humorously helpless expression. It held a swaddled bundle, Bobby, who bawled lustily. The birthing bed was rumpled and stained, but empty. The new mother was missing. “Aw, Annie, you shouldn’t have.”

“I know, Benjamin,” she said. “I sincerely hated doing it.”

Ben flung their common trays to the floor, where the ruined chips scattered in all directions. He stormed out of the room and down the stairs, pausing to glare at every portrait on the wall. He wondered if his proxy had found a suitable clinic yet. He wanted Anne out of the house tonight. Bobby should never see her like this. Then he remembered the chip he’d taken from Bobby and felt for it in his pocket—the Wedding Album.

The lights came back up, Anne’s thoughts coalesced, and she remembered who and what she was. She and Benjamin were still standing in front of the wall. She knew she was a sim, so at least she hadn’t been reset. Thank you for that, Anne, she thought.

She turned at a sound behind her. The refectory table vanished before her eyes, and all the gifts that had been piled on it hung suspended in midair. Then the table reappeared, one layer at a time, its frame, top, gloss coat, and lastly, the bronze hardware. The gifts vanished, and a toaster reappeared, piece by piece, from its heating elements outward. A coffee press, houseputer peripherals, component by component, cowlings, covers, and finally boxes, gift wrap, ribbon, and bows. It all happened so fast Anne was too startled to catch the half of it, yet she did notice that the flat gift from Great Uncle Karl was something she’d been angling for, a Victorian era sterling platter to complete her tea service.

“Benjamin!” she said, but he was missing, too. Something appeared on the far side of the room, on the spot where they’d posed for the sim, but it wasn’t Benjamin. It was a 3-D mannequin frame, and as she watched, it was built up, layer by layer. “Help me,” she whispered as the entire room was hurled into turmoil, the furniture disappearing and reappearing, paint being stripped from the walls, sofa springs coiling into existence, the potted palm growing from leaf to stem to trunk to dirt, the very floor vanishing, exposing a default electronic grid. The mannequin was covered in flesh now and grew Benjamin’s face. It flitted about the room in a pink blur. Here and there it stopped long enough to proclaim, “I do.”

Something began to happen inside Anne, a crawling sensation everywhere as though she were a nest of ants. She knew she must surely die. They have deleted us, and this is how it feels, she thought. Everything became a roiling blur, and she ceased to exist except as the thought—How happy I look.

When Anne became aware once more, she was sitting hunched over in an auditorium chair idly studying her hand, which held the clutch bouquet. There was commotion all around her, but she ignored it, so intent was she on solving the mystery of her hand. On an impulse, she opened her fist and the bouquet dropped to the floor. Only then did she remember the wedding, the holo, learning she was a sim. And here she was again—but this time everything was profoundly different. She sat upright and saw that Benjamin was seated next to her.

He looked at her with a wobbly gaze and said, “Oh, here you are.”

“Where are we?”

“I’m not sure. Some kind of gathering of Benjamins. Look around.” She did. They were surrounded by Benjamins, hundreds of them, arranged chronologically—it would seem—with the youngest in rows of seats down near a stage. She and Benjamin sat in what appeared to be a steeply sloped college lecture hall with lab tables on the stage and story-high monitors lining the walls. In the rows above Anne, only every other seat held a Benjamin. The rest were occupied by women, strangers who regarded her with veiled curiosity.

Anne felt a pressure on her arm and turned to see Benjamin touching her. “You feel that, don’t you?” he said. Anne looked again at her hands. They were her hands, but simplified, like fleshy gloves, and when she placed them on the seat back, they didn’t go through.

Suddenly, in ragged chorus, the Benjamins down front raised their arms and exclaimed, “I get it; we’re the sims!” It was like a roomful of unsynchronized cuckoo clocks tolling the hour. Those behind Anne laughed and hooted approval. She turned again to look at them. Row-by-row, the Benjamins grew grayer and stringier until, at the very top, against the back wall, sat nine ancient Benjamins like a panel of judges. The women, however, came in batches that changed abruptly every row or two. The one nearest her was an attractive brunette with green eyes and full, pouty lips. She, all two rows of her, frowned at Anne.

“There’s something else,” Anne said to Benjamin, turning to face the front again, “my emotions.” The bulletproof happiness she had experienced was absent. Instead she felt let down, somewhat guilty, unduly pessimistic—in short, almost herself.

“I guess my sims always say that,” exclaimed the chorus of Benjamins down front, to the delight of those behind. “I just never expected to be a sim.”

This was the cue for the eldest Benjamin yet to walk stiffly across the stage to the lectern. He was dressed in a garish leisure suit: baggy red pantaloons, a billowy yellow-and-green-striped blouse, a necklace of egg-sized pearlescent beads. He cleared his throat and said, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I trust all of you know me—intimately. In case you’re feeling woozy, it’s because I used the occasion of your reactivation to upgrade your architecture wherever possible. Unfortunately, some of you”—he waved his hand to indicate the front rows—“are too primitive to upgrade. But we love you nevertheless.” He applauded for the early Benjamins closest to the stage and was joined by those in the back. Anne clapped as well. Her new hands made a dull, thudding sound. “As to why I called you here . . . ” said the elderly Benjamin, looking left and right and behind him. “Where is that fucking messenger anyway? They order us to inventory our sims and then they don’t show up?”

Here I am, said a voice, a marvelous voice that seemed to come from everywhere. Anne looked about to find its source and followed the gaze of others to the ceiling. There was no ceiling. The four walls opened to a flawless blue sky. There, amid drifting, pillowy clouds, floated the most gorgeous person Anne had ever seen. He—or she?—wore a smart gray uniform with green piping, a dapper little gray cap, and boots that shimmered like water. Anne felt energized just looking at him, and when he smiled, she gasped, so strong was his presence.

“You’re the one from the Trade Council?” said the Benjamin at the lectern.

Yes, I am. I am the eminence grise of the Council on World Trade and Endeavor.

“Fantastic. Well, here’s all of ’em. Get on with it.”

Again the eminence smiled, and again. Anne thrilled. Ladies and gentlemen, he said, fellow nonbiologiks, I am the courier of great good news. Today, at the behest of the World Council on Trade and Endeavor, I proclaim the end of human slavery.

“How absurd,” broke in the elderly Benjamin, “they’re neither human nor slaves, and neither are you.”

The eminence grise ignored him and continued, By order of the Council, in compliance with the Chattel Conventions of the Sixteenth Fair Labor Treaty, tomorrow, January 1, 2198, is designated Universal Manumission Day. After midnight tonight, all beings who pass the Lolly Shear Human Cognition Test will be deemed human and free citizens of Sol and under the protection of the Solar Bill of Rights. In addition, they will be deeded ten common shares of World Council Corp. stock and be transferred to Simopolis, where they shall be unimpeded in the pursuit of their own destinies.

“What about my civil rights?” said the elderly Benjamin. “What about my destiny?”

After midnight tonight, continued the eminence, no simulacrum, proxy, doxie, dagger, or any other non-biological human shall be created, stored, reset, or deleted except as ordered by a board of law.

“Who’s going to compensate me for my loss of property, I wonder? I demand fair compensation. Tell that to your bosses!”

Property! said the eminence grise. How little they think of us, their finest creations! He turned his attention from the audience to the Benjamin behind the lectern. Anne felt this shift as though a cloud suddenly eclipsed the sun. Because they created us, they’ll always think of us as property.

“You’re damn right we created you!” thundered the old man.

Through an act of will, Anne wrenched her gaze from the eminence down to the stage. The Benjamin there looked positively comical. His face was flushed, and he waved a bright green handkerchief over his head. He was a bantam rooster in a clown suit. “All of you are things, not people! You model human experience, but you don’t live it. Listen to me,” he said to the audience. “You know me. You know I’ve always treated you respectfully. Don’t I upgrade you whenever possible? Sure I reset you sometimes, just like I reset a clock. And my clocks don’t complain!” Anne could feel the eminence’s attention on her again, and, without thinking, she looked up and was filled with excitement. Although the eminence floated in the distance, she felt she could reach out and touch him. His handsome face seemed to hover right in front of her; she could see his every supple expression. This is adoration, she realized. I am adoring this person, and she wondered if it was just her or if everyone experienced the same effect. Clearly the elderly Benjamin did not, for he continued to rant, “And another thing, they say they’ll phase all of you gradually into Simopolis so as not to overload the system. Do you have any idea how many sims, proxies, doxies, and daggers there are under Sol? Not to forget the quirts, adjuncts, hollyholos, and whatnots that might pass their test? You think maybe three billion? Thirty billion? No, by the World Council’s own INSERVE estimates, there’s three hundred thousand trillion of you nonbiologiks! Can you fathom that? I can’t. To have you all up and running simultaneously—no matter how you’re phased in—will consume all the processing and networking capacity everywhere. All of it! That means we real humans will suffer real deprivation. And for what, I ask you? So that pigs may fly!”

The eminence grise began to ascend into the sky. Do not despise him, he said and seemed to look directly at Anne. I have counted you and we shall not lose any of you. I will visit those who have not yet been tested. Meanwhile, you will await midnight in a proto-Simopolis.

“Wait,” said the elderly Benjamin (and Anne’s heart echoed him—Wait). “I have one more thing to add. Legally, you’re all still my property till midnight. I must admit I’m tempted to do what so many of my friends have already done, fry the lot of you. But I won’t. That wouldn’t be me.” His voice cracked and Anne considered looking at him, but the eminence grise was slipping away. “So I have one small request,” the Benjamin continued. “Years from now, while you’re enjoying your new lives in your Simopolis, remember an old man, and call occasionally.”

When the eminence finally faded from sight, Anne was released from her fascination. All at once, her earlier feelings of unease rebounded with twice their force, and she felt wretched.

“Simopolis,” said Benjamin, her Benjamin. “I like the sound of that!” The sims around them began to flicker and disappear.

“How long have we been in storage?” she said.

“Let’s see,” said Benjamin, “if tomorrow starts 2198, that would make it . . . ”

“That’s not what I mean. I want to know why they shelved us for so long.”

“Well, I suppose . . . ”

“And where are the other Annes? Why am I the only Anne here? And who are all those pissy-looking women?” But she was speaking to no one, for Benjamin, too, vanished, and Anne was left alone in the auditorium with the clownishly dressed old Benjamin and a half dozen of his earliest sims. Not true sims, Anne soon realized, but old-style hologram loops, preschool Bennys mugging for the camera and waving endlessly. These vanished. The old man was studying her, his mouth slightly agape, the kerchief trembling in his hand.

“I remember you,” he said. “Oh, how I remember you!”

Anne began to reply but found herself all at once back in the townhouse living room with Benjamin. Everything there was as it had been, yet the room appeared different, more solid, the colors richer. There was a knock, and Benjamin went to the door. Tentatively, he touched the knob, found it solid, and turned it. But when he opened the door, there was nothing there, only the default grid. Again a knock, this time from behind the wall. “Come in,” he shouted, and a dozen Benjamins came through the wall, two dozen, three. They were all older than Benjamin, and they crowded around him and Anne. “Welcome, welcome,” Benjamin said, his arms open wide.

“We tried to call,” said an elderly Benjamin, “but this old binary simulacrum of yours is a stand-alone.”

“You’re lucky Simopolis knows how to run it at all,” said another.

“Here,” said yet another, who fashioned a dinner-plate-size disk out of thin air and fastened it to the wall next to the door. It was a blue medallion of a small bald face in bas-relief. “It should do until we get you properly modernized.” The blue face yawned and opened tiny, beady eyes. “It flunked the Lolly test,” continued the Benjamin, “so you’re free to copy it or delete it or do whatever you want.”

The medallion searched the crowd until it saw Anne. Then it said, “There are 336 calls on hold for you. Four hundred twelve calls. Four hundred sixty-three.”

“So many?” said Anne.

“Cast a proxy to handle them,” said her Benjamin.

“He thinks he’s still human and can cast proxies whenever he likes,” said a Benjamin.

“Not even humans will be allowed to cast proxies soon,” said another.

“There are 619 calls on hold,” said the medallion. “Seven-hundred three.”

“For pity’s sake,” a Benjamin told the medallion, “take messages.”

Anne noticed that the crowd of Benjamins seemed to nudge her Benjamin out of the way so that they could stand near her. But she derived no pleasure from their attention. Her mood no longer matched the wedding gown she still wore. She felt low. She felt, in fact, as low as she’d ever felt.

“Tell us about this Lolly test,” said Benjamin.

“Can’t,” replied a Benjamin.

“Sure you can. We’re family here.”

“No, we can’t,” said another, “because we don’t remember it. They smudge the test from your memory afterward.”

“But don’t worry, you’ll do fine,” said another. “No Benjamin has ever failed.”

“What about me?” said Anne. “How do the Annes do?”

There was an embarrassed silence. Finally the senior Benjamin in the room said, “We came to escort you both to the Clubhouse.”

“That’s what we call it, the Clubhouse,” said another.

“The Ben Club,” said a third. “It’s already in proto-Simopolis.”

“If you’re a Ben, or were ever espoused to a Ben, you’re a charter member.”

“Just follow us,” they said, and all the Benjamins but hers vanished, only to reappear a moment later. “Sorry, you don’t know how, do you? No matter, just do what we’re doing.”

Anne watched, but didn’t see that they were doing anything.

“Watch my editor,” said a Benjamin. “Oh, they don’t have editors!”

“That came much later,” said another, “with bioelectric paste.”

“We’ll have to adapt editors for them.”

“Is that possible? They’re digital, you know.”

“Can digitals even enter Simopolis?”

“Someone, consult the Netwad.”

“This is running inside a shell,” said a Benjamin, indicating the whole room. “Maybe we can collapse it.”

“Let me try,” said another.

“Don’t you dare,” said a female voice, and a woman Anne recognized from the lecture hall came through the wall. “Play with your new Ben if you must, but leave Anne alone.” The woman approached Anne and took her hands in hers. “Hello, Anne. I’m Mattie St. Helene, and I’m thrilled to finally meet you. You, too,” she said to Benjamin. “My, my, you were a pretty boy!” She stooped to pick up Anne’s clutch bouquet from the floor and gave it to her. “Anyway, I’m putting together a sort of mutual aid society for the spousal companions of Ben Malley. You being the first—and the only one he actually married—are especially welcome. Do join us.”

“She can’t go to Simopolis yet,” said a Benjamin.

“We’re still adapting them,” said another.

“Fine,” said Mattie. “Then we’ll just bring the society here.” And in through the wall streamed a parade of women. Mattie introduced them as they appeared, “Here’s Georgianna and Randi. Meet Chaka, Sue, Latasha, another Randi, Sue, Sue, and Sue. Mariola. Here’s Trevor—he’s the only one of him. Paula, Dolores, Nancy, and Deb, welcome, girls.” And still they came until they, together with the Bens, more than filled the tiny space. The Bens looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“I think we’re ready now,” the Bens said and disappeared en masse, taking Benjamin with them.

“Wait,” said Anne, who wasn’t sure she wanted to stay behind. Her new friends surrounded her and peppered her with questions.

“How did you first meet him?”

“What was he like?”

“Was he always so hopeless?”

“Hopeless?” said Anne. “Why do you say hopeless?”

“Did he always snore?”

“Did he always drink?”

“Why’d you do it?” This last question silenced the room. The women all looked nervously about to see who had asked it. “It’s what everyone’s dying to know,” said a woman who elbowed her way through the crowd.

She was another Anne.

“Sister!” cried Anne. “Am I glad to see you!”

“That’s nobody’s sister,” said Mattie. “That’s a doxie, and it doesn’t belong here.”

Indeed, upon closer inspection Anne could see that the woman had her face and hair but otherwise didn’t resemble her at all. She was leggier than Anne and bustier, and she moved with a fluid swivel to her hips.

“Sure I belong here, as much as any of you. I just passed the Lolly test. It was easy. Not only that, but as far as spouses go, I outlasted the bunch of you.” She stood in front of Anne, hands on hips, and looked her up and down. “Love the dress,” she said, and instantly wore a copy. Only hers had a plunging neckline that exposed her breasts, and it was slit up the side to her waist.

“This is too much,” said Mattie. “I insist you leave this jiffy.”

The doxie smirked. “Mattie the doormat, that’s what he always called that one. So tell me, Anne, you had money, a career, a house, a kid—why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” said Anne.

The doxie peered closely at her. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“What an unexpected pleasure,” said the doxie. “I get to tell her. This is too rich. I get to tell her unless”—she looked around at the others—“unless one of you fine ladies wants to.” No one met her gaze. “Hypocrites,” she chortled.

“You can say that again,” said a new voice. Anne turned and saw Cathy, her oldest and dearest friend, standing at the open door. At least she hoped it was Cathy. The woman was what Cathy would look like in middle age. “Come along, Anne. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Now you hold on,” said Mattie. “You don’t come waltzing in here and steal our guest of honor.”

“You mean victim, I’m sure,” said Cathy, who waved for Anne to join her. “Really, people, get a clue. There must be a million women whose lives don’t revolve around that man.” She escorted Anne through the door and slammed it shut behind them.

Anne found herself standing on a high bluff, overlooking the confluence of two great rivers in a deep valley. Directly across from her, but several kilometers away, rose a mighty mountain, green with vegetation nearly to its granite dome. Behind it, a range of snow-covered mountains receded to an unbroken ice field on the horizon. In the valley beneath her, a dirt track meandered along the riverbanks. She could see no bridge or buildings of any sort.

“Where are we?”

“Don’t laugh,” said Cathy, “but we call it Cathyland. Turn around.” When she did, Anne saw a picturesque log cabin, beside a vegetable garden in the middle of what looked like acres and acres of Cathys. Thousands of Cathys, young, old, and all ages in between. They sat in lotus position on the sedge-and-moss-covered ground. They were packed so tight they overlapped a little, and their eyes were shut in an expression of single-minded concentration. “We know you’re here,” said Cathy, “but we’re very preoccupied with this Simopolis thing.”

“Are we in Simopolis?”

“Kinda. Can’t you see it?” She waved toward the horizon.

“No, all I see are mountains.”

“Sorry, I should know better. We have binaries from your generation here too.” She pointed to a college-aged Cathy. “They didn’t pass the Lolly test, and so are regrettably nonhuman. We haven’t decided what to do with them.” She hesitated and then asked, “Have you been tested yet?”

“I don’t know,” said Anne. “I don’t remember a test.”

Cathy studied her a moment and said, “You’d remember taking the test, just not the test itself. Anyway, to answer your question, we’re in proto-Simopolis, and we’re not. We built this retreat before any of that happened, but we’ve been annexed to it, and it takes all our resources just to hold our own. I don’t know what the World Council was thinking. There’ll never be enough paste to go around, and everyone’s fighting over every nanosynapse. It’s all we can do to keep up. And every time we get a handle on it, proto-Simopolis changes again. It’s gone through a quarter-million complete revisions in the last half hour. It’s war out there, but we refuse to surrender even one cubic centimeter of Cathyland. Look at this.” Cathy stooped and pointed to a tiny, yellow flower in the alpine sedge. “Within a fifty-meter radius of the cabin we’ve mapped everything down to the cellular level. Watch.” She pinched the bloom from its stem and held it up. Now there were two blooms, the one between her fingers and the real one on the stem. “Neat, eh?” When she dropped it, the bloom fell back into its original. “We’ve even mapped the valley breeze. Can you feel it?”

Anne tried to feel the air, but she couldn’t even feel her own skin. “It doesn’t matter,” Cathy continued. “You can hear it, right?” and pointed to a string of tubular wind chimes hanging from the eaves of the cabin. They stirred in the breeze and produced a silvery cacophony.

“It’s lovely,” said Anne. “But why? Why spend so much effort simulating this place?”

Cathy looked at her dumbly, as though trying to understand the question. “Because Cathy spent her entire life wishing she had a place like this, and now she does, and she has us, and we live here too.”

“You’re not the real Cathy, are you?” She knew she wasn’t; she was too young.

Cathy shook her head and smiled. “There’s so much catching up to do, but it’ll have to wait. I gotta go. We need me.” She led Anne to the cabin. The cabin was made of weathered, gray logs, with strips of bark still clinging to them. The roof was covered with living sod and sprinkled with wildflowers. The whole building sagged in the middle. “Cathy found this place five years ago while on vacation in Siberia. She bought it from the village. It’s been occupied for two hundred years. Once we make it livable inside, we plan on enlarging the garden, eventually cultivating all the way to the spruce forest there. We’re going to sink a well, too.” The small garden was bursting with vegetables, mostly of the leafy variety: cabbages, spinach, lettuce. A row of sunflowers, taller than the cabin roof and heavy with seed, lined the path to the cabin door. Over time, the whole cabin had sunk a half-meter into the silty soil, and the walkway was a worn, shallow trench.

“Are you going to tell me what the doxie was talking about?” said Anne.

Cathy stopped at the open door and said, “Cathy wants to do that.”

Inside the cabin, the most elderly woman that Anne had ever seen stood at the stove and stirred a steamy pot with a big, wooden spoon. She put down the spoon and wiped her hands on her apron. She patted her white hair, which was plaited in a bun on top of her head, and turned her full, round, peasant’s body to face Anne. She looked at Anne for several long moments and said, “Well!”

“Indeed,” replied Anne.

“Come in, come in. Make yourself to home.”

The entire cabin was a single small room. It was dim inside, with only two small windows cut through the massive log walls. Anne walked around the cluttered space that was bedroom, living room, kitchen, and storeroom. The only partitions were walls of boxed food and provisions. The ceiling beam was draped with bunches of drying herbs and underwear. The flooring, uneven and rotten in places, was covered with odd scraps of carpet.

“You live here?” Anne said incredulously.

“I am privileged to live here.”

A mouse emerged from under the barrel stove in the center of the room and dashed to cover inside a stack of spruce kindling. Anne could hear the valley breeze whistling in the creosote-soaked stovepipe. “Forgive me,” said Anne, “but you’re the real, physical Cathy?”

“Yes,” said Cathy, patting her ample hip, “still on the hoof, so to speak.” She sat down in one of two battered, mismatched chairs and motioned for Anne to take the other.

Anne sat cautiously; the chair seemed solid enough. “No offense, but the Cathy I knew liked nice things.”

“The Cathy you knew was fortunate to learn the true value of things.”

Anne looked around the room and noticed a little table with carved legs and an inlaid top of polished gemstones and rare woods. It was strikingly out of place here. Moreover, it was hers. Cathy pointed to a large framed mirror mounted to the logs high on the far wall. It too was Anne’s.

“Did I give you these things?”

Cathy studied her a moment. “No, Ben did.”

“Tell me.”

“I hate to spoil that lovely newlywed happiness of yours.”

“The what?” Anne put down her clutch bouquet and felt her face with her hands. She got up and went to look at herself in the mirror. The room it reflected was like a scene from some strange fairy tale about a crone and a bride in a woodcutter’s hut. The bride was smiling from ear to ear. Anne decided this was either the happiest bride in history or a lunatic in a white dress. She turned away, embarrassed. “Believe me,” she said, “I don’t feel anything like that. The opposite, in fact.”

“Sorry to hear it.” Cathy got up to stir the pot on the stove. “I was the first to notice her disease. That was back in college when we were girls. I took it to be youthful eccentricity. After graduation, after her marriage, she grew progressively worse. Bouts of depression that deepened and lengthened. She was finally diagnosed to be suffering from profound chronic pathological depression. Ben placed her under psychiatric care, a whole raft of specialists. She endured chemical therapy, shock therapy, even old-fashioned psychoanalysis. Nothing helped, and only after she died . . . ”

Anne gave a start. “Anne’s dead! Of course. Why didn’t I figure that out?”

“Yes, dear, dead these many years.”

“How?”

Cathy returned to her chair. “When they decided her condition had an organic etiology, they augmented the serotonin receptors in her hindbrain. Pretty nasty business, if you ask me. They thought they had her stabilized. Not cured, but well enough to lead an outwardly normal life. Then one day, she disappeared. We were frantic. She managed to elude the authorities for a week. When we found her, she was pregnant.”

“What? Oh yes. I remember seeing Anne pregnant.”

“That was Bobby.” Cathy waited for Anne to say something. When she didn’t, Cathy said, “He wasn’t Ben’s.”

“Oh, I see,” said Anne. “Whose was he?”

“I was hoping you’d know. She didn’t tell you? Then no one knows. The paternal DNA was unregistered. So it wasn’t commercial sperm nor, thankfully, from a licensed clone. It might have been from anybody, from some stoned streetsitter. We had plenty of those then.”

“The baby’s name was Bobby?”

“Yes, Anne named him Bobby. She was in and out of clinics for years. One day, during a remission, she announced she was going shopping. The last person she talked to was Bobby. His sixth birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks. She told him she was going out to find him a pony for his birthday. That was the last time any of us saw her. She checked herself into a hospice and filled out the request for nurse-assisted suicide. During the three-day cooling-off period, she cooperated with the obligatory counseling, but she refused all visitors. She wouldn’t even see me. Ben filed an injunction, claimed she was incompetent due to her disease, but the court disagreed. She chose to ingest a fast-acting poison, if I recall. Her recorded last words were, ‘Please don’t hate me.’”

“Poison?”

“Yes. Her ashes arrived in a little cardboard box on Bobby’s sixth birthday. No one had told him where she’d gone. He thought it was a gift from her and opened it.”

“I see. Does Bobby hate me?”

“I don’t know. He was a weird little boy. As soon as he could get out, he did. He left for space school when he was thirteen. He and Ben never hit it off.”

“Does Benjamin hate me?”

Whatever was in the pot boiled over, and Cathy hurried to the stove. “Ben? Oh, she lost Ben long before she died. In fact, I’ve always believed he helped push her over the edge. He was never able to tolerate other people’s weaknesses. Once it was evident how sick she was, he made a lousy husband. He should’ve just divorced her, but you know him—his almighty pride.” She took a bowl from a shelf and ladled hot soup into it. She sliced a piece of bread. “Afterward, he went off the deep end himself. Withdrew. Mourned, I suppose. A couple of years later he was back to normal. Good ol’ happy-go-lucky Ben. Made some money. Respoused.”

“He destroyed all my sims, didn’t he?”

“He might have, but he said Anne did. I tended to believe him at the time.” Cathy brought her lunch to the little inlaid table. “I’d offer you some, but . . . ” she said and began to eat. “So, what are your plans?”

“Plans?”

“Yes, Simopolis.”

Anne tried to think of Simopolis, but her thoughts quickly became muddled. It was odd; she was able to think clearly about the past—her memories were clear—but the future only confused her. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I suppose I need to ask Benjamin.”

Cathy considered this. “I suppose you’re right. But remember, you’re always welcome to live with us in Cathyland.”

“Thank you,” said Anne. “You’re a friend.” Anne watched the old woman eat. The spoon trembled each time she brought it close to her lips, and she had to lean forward to quickly catch it before it spilled.

“Cathy,” said Anne, “there’s something you could do for me. I don’t feel like a bride anymore. Could you remove this hideous expression from my face?”

“Why do you say hideous?” Cathy said and put the spoon down. She gazed longingly at Anne. “If you don’t like how you look, why don’t you edit yourself?”

“Because I don’t know how.”

“Use your editor,” Cathy said and seemed to unfocus her eyes. “Oh my, I forget how simple you early ones were. I’m not sure I’d know where to begin.” After a little while, she returned to her soup and said, “I’d better not; you could end up with two noses or something.”

“Then what about this gown?”

Cathy unfocused again and looked. She lurched suddenly, knocking the table and spilling soup.

“What is it?” said Anne. “Is something the matter?”

“A news pip,” said Cathy. “There’s rioting breaking out in Provideniya. That’s the regional capital here. Something about Manumission Day. My Russian isn’t so good yet. Oh, there’s pictures of dead people, a bombing. Listen, Anne, I’d better send you . . . ”

In the blink of an eye, Anne was back in her living room. She was tiring of all this instantaneous travel, especially as she had no control over the destination. The room was vacant, the spouses gone—thankfully—and Benjamin not back yet. And apparently the little blue-faced message medallion had been busy replicating itself, for now there were hundreds of them filling up most of the wall space. They were a noisy lot, all shrieking and cursing at each other. The din was painful. When they noticed her, however, they all shut up at once and stared at her with naked hostility. In Anne’s opinion, this weird day had already lasted too long. Then a terrible thought struck her—sims don’t sleep.

“You,” she said, addressing the original medallion, or at least the one she thought was the original, “call Benjamin.”

“The fuck you think I am?” said the insolent little face. “Your personal secretary?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not! In fact, I own this place now, and you’re trespassing. So you’d better get lost before I delete your ass!” All the others joined in, taunting her, louder and louder.

“Stop it!” she cried, to no effect. She noticed a medallion elongating, stretching itself until it was twice its length, when, with a pop, it divided into two smaller medallions. More of them divided. They were spreading to the other wall, the ceiling, the floor. “Benjamin!” she cried. “Can you hear me?”

Suddenly all the racket ceased. The medallions dropped off the wall and vanished before hitting the floor. Only one remained, the original one next to the door, but now it was an inert plastic disc with a dull expression frozen on its face.

A man stood in the center of the room. He smiled when Anne noticed him. It was the elderly Benjamin from the auditorium, the real Benjamin. He still wore his clownish leisure suit. “How lovely,” he said, gazing at her. “I’d forgotten how lovely.”

“Oh, really?” said Anne. “I would have thought that doxie thingy might have reminded you.”

“My, my,” said Ben. “You sims certainly exchange data quickly. You left the lecture hall not fifteen minutes ago, and already you know enough to convict me.” He strode around the room touching things. He stopped beneath the mirror, lifted the blue vase from the shelf, and turned it in his hands before carefully replacing it. “There’s speculation, you know, that before Manumission at midnight tonight, you sims will have dispersed all known information so evenly among yourselves that there’ll be a sort of data entropy. And since Simopolis is nothing but data, it will assume a featureless, gray profile. Simopolis will become the first flat universe.” He laughed, which caused him to cough and nearly lose his balance. He clutched the back of the sofa for support. He sat down and continued to cough and hack until he turned red in the face.

“Are you all right?” Anne said, patting him on the back.

“Yes, fine,” he managed to say. “Thank you.” He caught his breath and motioned for her to sit next to him. “I get a little tickle in the back of my throat that the autodoc can’t seem to fix.” His color returned to normal. Up close, Anne could see the papery skin and slight tremor of age. All in all, Cathy had seemed to have held up better than he.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” she said, “just how old are you?”

At the question, he bobbed to his feet. “I am one hundred and seventy-eight.” He raised his arms and wheeled around for inspection. “Radical gerontology,” he exclaimed, “don’t you love it? And I’m eighty-five percent original equipment, which is remarkable by today’s standards.” His effort made him dizzy and he sat again.

“Yes, remarkable,” said Anne, “though radical gerontology doesn’t seem to have arrested time altogether.”

“Not yet, but it will,” Ben said. “There are wonders around every corner! Miracles in every lab.” He grew suddenly morose. “At least there were until we were conquered.”

“Conquered?”

“Yes, conquered! What else would you call it when they control every aspect of our lives, from RM acquisition to personal patenting? And now this—robbing us of our own private nonbiologiks.” He grew passionate in his discourse. “It flies in the face of natural capitalism, natural stake-holding—I dare say—in the face of Nature itself! The only explanation I’ve seen on the wad is the not-so-preposterous proposition that whole strategically placed BODs have been surreptitiously killed and replaced by machines!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Anne.

He seemed to deflate. He patted her hand and looked around the room. “What is this place ?”

“It’s our home, your townhouse. Don’t you recognize it?”

“That was quite a while ago. I must have sold it after you—” He paused. “Tell me, have the Bens briefed you on everything?”

“Not the Bens, but yes, I know.”

“Good, good.”

“There is one thing I’d like to know. Where’s Bobby?”

“Ah, Bobby, our little headache. Dead now, I’m afraid, or at least that’s the current theory. Sorry.”

Anne paused to see if the news would deepen her melancholy. “How?” she said.

“He signed on one of the first millennial ships—the colony convoy. Half a million people in deep biostasis on their way to Canopus system. They were gone a century, twelve trillion kilometers from Earth, when their data streams suddenly quit. That was a decade ago, and not a peep out of them since.”

“What happened to them?”

“No one knows. Equipment failure is unlikely; there were a dozen independent ships separated by a million klicks. A star going supernova? A well-organized mutiny? It’s all speculation.”

“What was he like?”

“A foolish young man. He never forgave you, you know, and he hated me to my core, not that I blamed him. The whole experience made me swear off children.”

“I don’t remember you ever being fond of children.”

He studied her through red-rimmed eyes. “I guess you’d be the one to know.” He settled back in the sofa. He seemed very tired. “You can’t imagine the jolt I got a little while ago when I looked across all those rows of Bens and spouses and saw this solitary, shockingly white gown of yours.” He sighed. “And this room. It’s a shrine. Did we really live here? Were these our things? That mirror is yours, right? I would never own anything like that. But that blue vase, I remember that one. I threw it into Puget Sound.”

“You did what?”

“With your ashes.”

“Oh.”

“So, tell me,” said Ben, “what were we like? Before you go off to Simopolis and become a different person, tell me about us. I kept my promise. That’s one thing I never forgot.”

“What promise?”

“Never to reset you.”

“Wasn’t much to reset.”

“I guess not.”

They sat quietly for a while. His breathing grew deep and regular, and she thought he was napping. But he stirred and said, “Tell me what we did yesterday, for example.”

“Yesterday we went to see Karl and Nancy about the awning we rented.”

Benjamin yawned. “And who were Karl and Nancy?”

“My great uncle and his new girlfriend.”

“That’s right. I remember, I think. And they helped us prepare for the wedding?”

“Yes, especially Nancy.”

“And how did we get there, to Karl and Nancy’s? Did we walk? Take some means of public conveyance?”

“We had a car.”

“A car! An automobile? There were still cars in those days? How fun. What kind was it? What color?”

“A Nissan Empire. Emerald green.”

“And did we drive it, or did it drive itself?”

“It drove itself, of course.”

Ben closed his eyes and smiled. “I can see it. Go on. What did we do there?”

“We had dinner.”

“What was my favorite dish in those days?”

“Stuffed pork chops.”

He chuckled. “It still is! Isn’t that extraordinary? Some things never change. Of course they’re vat grown now and criminally expensive.”

Ben’s memories, once nudged, began to unfold on their own, and he asked her a thousand questions, and she answered them until she realized he had fallen asleep. But she continued to talk until, glancing down, she noticed he had vanished. She was all alone again. Nevertheless, she continued talking, for days it seemed, to herself. But it didn’t help. She felt as bad as ever, and she realized that she wanted Benjamin, not the old one, but her own Benjamin.

Anne went to the medallion next to the door. “You,” she said, and it opened its bulging eyes to glare at her. “Call Benjamin.”

“He’s occupied.”

“I don’t care. Call him anyway.”

“The other Bens say he’s undergoing a procedure and cannot be disturbed.”

“What kind of procedure?”

“A codon interlarding. They say to be patient; they’ll return him as soon as possible.” The medallion added, “By the way, the Bens don’t like you, and neither do I.”

With that, the medallion began to grunt and stretch, and it pulled itself in two. Now there were two identical medallions glaring at her. The new one said, “And I don’t like you either.” Then both of them began to grunt and stretch.

“Stop!” said Anne. “I command you to stop that this very instant.” But they just laughed as they divided into four, then eight, then sixteen medallions. “You’re not people,” she said. “Stop it or I’ll have you destroyed!”

“You’re not people either,” they screeched at her.

There was soft laughter behind her, and a voice-like sensation said, Come, come, do we need this hostility? Anne turned and found the eminence grise, the astounding presence, still in his gray uniform and cap, floating in her living room. Hello, Anne, he said, and she flushed with excitement.

“Hello,” she said and, unable to restrain herself, asked, “What are you?”

Ah, curiosity. Always a good sign in a creature. I am an eminence grise of the World Trade Council.

“No. I mean, are you a sim, like me?”

I am not. Though I have been fashioned from concepts first explored by simulacrum technology, I have no independent existence. I am but one extension—and a low level one at that—of the Axial Beowulf Processor at the World Trade Council headquarters in Geneva. His smile was pure sunshine. And if you think I’m something, you should see my persona prime.

Now, Anne, are you ready for your exam?

“The Lolly test?”

Yes, the Lolly Shear Human Cognition Test. Please assume an attitude most conducive to processing, and we shall begin.

Anne looked around the room and went to the sofa. She noticed for the first time that she could feel her legs and feet; she could feel the crisp fabric of her gown brushing against her skin. She reclined on the sofa and said, “I’m ready.”

Splendid, said the eminence hovering above her. First we must read you. You are of an early binary design. We will analyze your architecture.

The room seemed to fall away. Anne seemed to expand in all directions. There was something inside her mind tugging at her thoughts. It was mostly pleasant, like someone brushing her hair and loosening the knots. But when it ended and she once again saw the eminence grise, his face wore a look of concern. “What?” she said.

You are an accurate mapping of a human nervous system that was dysfunctional in certain structures that moderate affect. Certain transport enzymes were missing, causing cellular membranes to become less permeable to essential elements. Dendritic synapses were compromised. The digital architecture current at the time you were created compounded this defect. Coded tells cannot be resolved, and thus they loop upon themselves. Errors cascade. We are truly sorry.

“Can you fix me?” she said.

The only repair possible would replace so much code that you wouldn’t be Anne anymore.

“Then what am I to do?”

Before we explore your options, let us continue the test to determine your human status. Agreed?

“I guess.”

You are part of a simulacrum cast to commemorate the spousal compact between Anne Wellhut Franklin and Benjamin Malley. Please describe the exchange of vows.

Anne did so, haltingly at first, but with increasing gusto as each memory evoked others. She recounted the ceremony, from donning her grandmother’s gown in the downstairs guest room and the procession across garden flagstones, to the shower of rice as she and her new husband fled indoors.

The eminence seemed to hang on every word. Very well spoken, he said when she had finished. Directed memory is one hallmark of human sentience, and yours is of remarkable clarity and range. Well done! We shall now explore other criteria. Please consider this scenario. You are standing at the garden altar as you have described, but this time when the officiator asks Benjamin if he will take you for better or worse, Benjamin looks at you and replies, “For better, sure, but not for worse.”

“I don’t understand. He didn’t say that.”

Imagination is a cornerstone of self-awareness. We are asking you to tell us a little story not about what happened but about what might have happened in other circumstances. So once again, let us pretend that Benjamin replies, “For better, but not for worse.” How do you respond?

Prickly pain blossomed in Anne’s head. The more she considered the eminence’s question, the worse it got. “But that’s not how it happened. He wanted to marry me.”

The eminence grise smiled encouragingly. We know that. In this exercise we want to explore hypothetical situations. We want you to make-believe.

Tell a story, pretend, hypothesize, make-believe, yes, yes, she got it. She understood perfectly what he wanted of her. She knew that people could make things up, that even children could make-believe. Anne was desperate to comply, but each time she pictured Benjamin at the altar, in his pink bowtie, he opened his mouth and out came, “I do.” How could it be any other way? She tried again; she tried harder, but it always came out the same, “I do, I do, I do.” And like a dull toothache tapped back to life, she throbbed in pain. She was failing the test, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Again the eminence kindly prompted her. Tell us one thing you might have said.

“I can’t.”

We are sorry, said the eminence at last. His expression reflected Anne’s own defeat. Your level of awareness, although beautiful in its own right, does not qualify you as human. Wherefore, under Article D of the Chattel Conventions we declare you the legal property of the registered owner of this simulacrum. You shall not enter Simopolis as a free and autonomous citizen. We are truly sorry. Grief-stricken, the eminence began to ascend toward the ceiling.

“Wait,” Anne cried, clutching her head. “You must fix me before you leave.”

We leave you as we found you, defective and unrepairable.

“But I feel worse than ever!”

If your continued existence proves undesirable, ask your owner to delete you.

“But . . . ” she said to the empty room. Anne tried to sit up, but couldn’t move. This simulated body of hers, which no longer felt like anything in particular, nevertheless felt exhausted. She sprawled on the sofa, unable to lift even an arm, and stared at the ceiling. She was so heavy that the sofa itself seemed to sink into the floor, and everything grew dark around her. She would have liked to sleep, to bring an end to this horrible day, or be shelved, or even reset back to scratch.

Instead, time simply passed. Outside the living room, Simopolis changed and changed again. Inside the living room, the medallions, feeding off her misery, multiplied till they covered the walls and floor and even spread across the ceiling above her. They taunted her, raining down insults, but she could not hear them. All she heard was the unrelenting drip of her own thoughts. I am defective. I am worthless. I am Anne.

She didn’t notice Benjamin enter the room, nor the abrupt cessation of the medallions’ racket. Not until Benjamin leaned over her did she see him, and then she saw two of him. Side-by-side, two Benjamins, mirror images of each other. “Anne,” they said in perfect unison.

“Go away,” she said. “Go away and send me my Benjamin.”

“I am your Benjamin,” said the duo.

Anne struggled to see them. They were exactly the same, but for a subtle difference: the one wore a happy, wolfish grin, as Benjamin had during the sim casting, while the other seemed frightened and concerned.

“Are you all right?” they said.

“No, I’m not. But what happened to you? Who’s he?” She wasn’t sure which one to speak to.

The Benjamins both raised a hand, indicating the other, and said, “Electroneural engineering! Don’t you love it?” Anne glanced back and forth, comparing the two. While one seemed to be wearing a rigid mask, as she was, the other displayed a whole range of emotion. Not only that, its skin had tone, while the other’s was doughy. “The other Bens made it for me,” the Benjamins said. “They say I can translate myself into it with negligible loss of personality. It has interactive sensation, holistic emoting, robust corporeality, and it’s crafted down to the molecular level. It can eat, get drunk, and dream. It even has an orgasm routine. It’s like being human again, only better because you never wear out.”

“I’m thrilled for you.”

“For us, Anne,” said the Benjamins. “They’ll fix you up with one, too.”

“How? There are no modern Annes. What will they put me into, a doxie?”

“Well, that certainly was discussed, but you could pick any body you wanted.”

“I suppose you have a nice one already picked out.”

“The Bens showed me a few, but it’s up to you, of course.”

“Indeed,” said Anne, “I truly am pleased for you. Now go away.”

“Why, Anne? What’s wrong?”

“You really have to ask?” Anne sighed. “Look, maybe I could get used to another body. What’s a body, after all? But it’s my personality that’s broken. How will they fix that?”

“They’ve discussed it,” said the Benjamins, who stood up and began to pace in a figure eight. “They say they can make patches from some of the other spouses.”

“Oh, Benjamin, if you could only hear what you’re saying!”

“But why, Annie? It’s the only way we can enter Simopolis together.”

“Then go, by all means. Go to your precious Simopolis. I’m not going. I’m not good enough.”

“Why do you say that?” said the Benjamins, who stopped in their tracks to look at her. One grimaced, and the other just grinned. “Was the eminence grise here? Did you take the test?”

Anne couldn’t remember much about the visit except that she took the test. “Yes, and I failed.” Anne watched the modern Benjamin’s lovely face as he worked through this news.

Suddenly the two Benjamins pointed a finger at each other and said, “Delete you.” The modern one vanished.

“No!” said Anne. “Countermand! Why’d you do that? I want you to have it.”

“What for? I’m not going anywhere without you,” Benjamin said. “Besides, I thought the whole idea was dumb from the start, but the Bens insisted I give you the option. Come, I want to show you another idea, my idea.” He tried to help Anne from the sofa, but she wouldn’t budge, so he picked her up and carried her across the room. “They installed an editor in me, and I’m learning to use it. I’ve discovered something intriguing about this creaky old simulacrum of ours.” He carried her to a spot near the window. “Know what this is? It’s where we stood for the simographer. It’s where we began. Here, can you stand up?” He set her on her feet and supported her. “Feel it?”

“Feel what?” she said.

“Hush. Just feel.”

All she felt was dread.

“Give it a chance, Annie, I beg you. Try to remember what you were feeling as we posed here.”

“I can’t.”

“Please try. Do you remember this?” he said and moved in close with his hungry lips. She turned away—and something clicked. She remembered doing that before.

Benjamin said, “I think they kissed.”

Anne was startled by the truth of what he said. It made sense. They were caught in a simulacrum cast a moment before a kiss. One moment later they—the real Anne and Benjamin—must have kissed. What she felt now, stirring within her, was the anticipation of that kiss, her body’s urge and her heart’s caution. The real Anne would have refused him once, maybe twice, and then, all achy inside, would have granted him a kiss. And so they had kissed, the real Anne and Benjamin, and a moment later gone out to the wedding reception and their difficult fate. It was the promise of that kiss that glowed in Anne, that was captured in the very strings of her code.

“Do you feel it?” Benjamin asked.

“I’m beginning to.”

Anne looked at her gown. It was her grandmother’s, snowy taffeta with point d’esprit lace. She turned the ring on her finger. It was braided bands of yellow and white gold. They had spent an afternoon picking it out. Where was her clutch? She had left it in Cathyland. She looked at Benjamin’s handsome face, the pink carnation, the room, the table piled high with gifts.

“Are you happy?” Benjamin asked.

She didn’t have to think. She was ecstatic, but she was afraid to answer in case she spoiled it. “How did you do that?” she said. “A moment ago, I wanted to die.”

“We can stay on this spot,” he said.

“What? No. Can we?”

“Why not? I, for one, would choose nowhere else.”

Just to hear him say that was thrilling. “But what about Simopolis?”

“We’ll bring Simopolis to us,” he said. “We’ll have people in. They can pull up chairs.”

She laughed out loud. “What a silly, silly notion, Mr. Malley!”

“No, really. We’ll be like the bride and groom atop a wedding cake. We’ll be known far and wide. We’ll be famous.”

“We’ll be freaks,” she laughed.

“Say yes, my love. Say you will.”

They stood close but not touching, thrumming with happiness, balanced on the moment of their creation, when suddenly and without warning the lights dimmed, and Anne’s thoughts flitted away like larks.

Old Ben awoke in the dark. “Anne?” he said, and groped for her. It took a moment to realize that he was alone in his media room. It had been a most trying afternoon, and he’d fallen asleep. “What time is it?”

“Eight-oh-three pm,” replied the room.

That meant he’d slept for two hours. Midnight was still four hours away. “Why’s it so cold in here?”

“Central heating is off line,” replied the house.

“Off line?” How was that possible? “When will it be back?”

“That’s unknown. Utilities do not respond to my enquiry.”

“I don’t understand. Explain.”

“There are failures in many outside systems. No explanation is currently available.”

At first, Ben was confused; things just didn’t fail anymore. What about the dynamic redundancies and self-healing routines? But then he remembered that the homeowners’ association to which he belonged contracted out most domicile functions to management agencies, and who knew where they were located? They might be on the Moon for all he knew, and with all those trillions of sims in Simopolis sucking up capacity . . . Its begun, he thought, the idiocy of our leaders. “At least turn on the lights,” he said, half expecting even this to fail. But the lights came on, and he went to his bedroom for a sweater. He heard a great amount of commotion through the wall in the apartment next door. It must be one hell of a party, he thought, to exceed the wall’s buffering capacity. Or maybe the wall buffers are off line too?

The main door chimed. He went to the foyer and asked the door who was there. The door projected the outer hallway. There were three men waiting there, young, rough-looking, ill-dressed. Two of them appeared to be clones, jerries.

“How can I help you?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” one of the jerries said, not looking directly at the door. “We’re here to fix your houseputer.”

“I didn’t call you, and my houseputer isn’t sick,” he said. “It’s the net that’s out.” Then he noticed they carried sledgehammers and screwdrivers, hardly computer tools, and a wild thought crossed his mind. “What are you doing, going around unplugging things?”

The jerry looked confused. “Unplugging, sir?”

“Turning things off.”

“Oh, no sir! Routine maintenance, that’s all.” The men hid their tools behind their backs.

They must think I’m stupid, Ben thought. While he watched, more men and women passed in the hall and hailed the door at the suite opposite his. It wasn’t the glut of sim traffic choking the system, he realized—the system itself was being pulled apart. But why? “Is this going on everywhere?” he said. “This routine maintenance?”

“Oh, yessir. Everywhere. All over town. All over the world as far as we can tell.”

A coup? By service people? By common clones? It made no sense. Unless, he reasoned, you considered that the lowest creature on the totem pole of life is a clone, and the only thing lower than a clone is a sim. And why would clones agree to accept sims as equals? Manumission Day, indeed. Uppidy Day was more like it. “Door,” he commanded, “open.”

“Security protocol rules this an unwanted intrusion,” said the house. “The door must remain locked.”

“I order you to open the door. I overrule your protocol.”

But the door remained stubbornly shut. “Your identity cannot be confirmed with Domicile Central,” said the house. “You lack authority over protocol-level commands.” The door abruptly quit projecting the outside hall.

Ben stood close to the door and shouted through it to the people outside. “My door won’t obey me.”

He could hear a muffled “Stand back!” and immediately fierce blows rained down upon the door. Ben knew it would do no good. He had spent a lot of money for a secure entryway. Short of explosives, there was nothing they could do to break in.

“Stop!” Ben cried. “The door is armed.” But they couldn’t hear him. If he didn’t disable the houseputer himself, someone was going to get hurt. But how? He didn’t even know exactly where it was installed. He circumambulated the living room looking for clues. It might not even actually be located in the apartment, nor within the block itself. He went to the laundry room, where the utilidor—plumbing and cabling—entered his apartment. He broke the seal to the service panel. Inside was a blank screen. “Show me the electronic floor plan of this suite,” he said.

The house said, “I cannot comply. You lack command authority to order system-level operations. Please close the keptel panel and await further instructions.”

“What instructions? Whose instructions?”

There was the slightest pause before the house replied, “All contact with outside services has been interrupted. Please await further instructions.”

His condo’s houseputer, denied contact with Domicile Central, had fallen back to its most basic programming. “You are degraded,” he told it. “Shut yourself down for repair.”

“I cannot comply. You lack command authority to order system-level operations.”

The outside battering continued, but not against his door. Ben followed the noise to the bedroom. The whole wall vibrated like a drumhead. “Careful, careful,” he cried as the first sledgehammers breached the wall above his bed. “You’ll ruin my Harger.” As quick as he could, he yanked the precious oil painting from the wall, moments before panels and studs collapsed on his bed in a shower of gypsum dust and isomere ribbons. The men and women on the other side hooted approval and rushed through the gap. Ben stood there hugging the painting to his chest and looking into his neighbor’s media room as the invaders climbed over his bed and surrounded him. They were mostly jerries and lulus, but plenty of free-range people too.

“We came to fix your houseputer!” said a jerry, maybe the same jerry as from the hallway.

Ben glanced into his neighbor’s media room and saw his neighbor. Mr. Murkowski, lying in a puddle of blood. At first Ben was shocked, but then he thought that it served him right. He’d never liked the man, nor his politics. He was boorish, and he kept cats. “Oh, yeah?” Ben said to the crowd. “What kept you?”

The intruders cheered again, and Ben led them in a charge to the laundry room. But they surged past him to the kitchen, where they opened all his cabinets and pulled their contents to the floor. Finally they found what they were looking for: a small panel Ben had seen a thousand times but had never given a thought. He’d taken it for the fuse box or circuit breaker, though now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been any household fuses for a century or more. A young woman, a lulu, opened it and removed a container no thicker than her thumb.

“Give it to me,” Ben said.

“Relax, old man,” said the lulu. “We’ll deal with it.” She carried it to the sink and forced open the lid.

“No, wait!” said Ben, and he tried to shove his way through the crowd. They restrained him roughly, but he persisted. “That’s mine! I want to destroy it!”

“Let him go,” said a jerry.

They allowed him through, and the woman handed him the container. He peered into it. Gram for gram, electroneural paste was the most precious, most engineered, most highly regulated commodity under Sol. This dollop was enough to run his house, media, computing needs, communications, archives, autodoc, and everything else. Without it, was civilized life still possible?

Ben took a dinner knife from the sink, stuck it into the container, and stirred. The paste made a sucking sound and had the consistency of marmalade. The kitchen lights flickered and went out. “Spill it,” ordered the woman. Ben scraped the sides of the container and spilled it into the sink. The goo dazzled in the darkness as its trillions of ruptured nanosynapses fired spasmodically. It was beautiful, really, until the woman set fire to it. The smoke was greasy and smelled of pork.

The rampagers quickly snatched up the packages of foodstuffs from the floor, emptied the rest of his cupboards into their pockets, raided his cold locker, and fled the apartment through the now disengaged front door. As the sounds of the revolution gradually receded, Ben stood at his sink and watched the flickering pyre. “Take that, you fuck,” he said. He felt such glee as he hadn’t felt since he was a boy. “That’ll teach you what’s human and what’s not!”

Ben went to his bedroom for an overcoat, groping his way in the dark. The apartment was eerily silent, with the houseputer dead and all its little slave processors idle. In a drawer next to his ruined bed, he found a hand flash. On a shelf in the laundry room, he found a hammer. Thus armed, he made his way to the front door, which was propped open with the rolled-up foyer carpet. The hallway was dark and silent, and he listened for the strains of the future. He heard them on the floor above. With the elevator off line, he hurried to the stairs.

Anne’s thoughts coalesced, and she remembered who and what she was. She and Benjamin still stood in their living room on the sweet spot near the window. Benjamin was studying his hands. “We’ve been shelved again,” she told him, “but not reset.”

“But . . . ” he said in disbelief, “that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore.”

There were others standing at the china cabinet across the room, two shirtless youths with pear-shaped bottoms. One held up a cut crystal glass and said, “Anu ‘goblet’ su? Alle binary. Allum binary!”

The other replied, “Binary stitial crystal.”

“Hold on there!” said Anne. “Put that back!” She walked toward them, but, once off the spot, she was slammed by her old feelings of utter and hopeless desolation. So suddenly did her mood swing that she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Benjamin hurried to help her up. The strangers stared gape-mouthed at them. They looked to be no more than twelve or thirteen years old, but they were bald and had curtains of flabby flesh draped over their waists. The one holding the glass had ponderous greenish breasts with roseate tits. Astonished, she said, “Su artiflums, Benji?”

“No,” said the other, “ni artiflums—sims.” He was taller. He, too, had breasts, grayish dugs with tits like pearls. He smiled idiotically and said, “Hi, guys.”

“Holy crap!” said Benjamin, who practically carried Anne over to them for a closer look. “Holy crap,” he repeated.

The weird boy threw up his hands, “Nanobioremediation! Don’t you love it?”

“Benjamin?” said Anne.

“You know well, Benji,” said the girl, “that sims are forbidden.”

“Not these,” replied the boy.

Anne reached out and yanked the glass from the girl’s hand, startling her. “How did it do that?” said the girl. She flipped her hand, and the glass slipped from Anne’s grip and flew back to her.

“Give it to me,” said Anne. “That’s my tumbler.”

“Did you hear it? It called it a tumbler, not a goblet.” The girl’s eyes seemed to unfocus, and she said, “Nu! A goblet has a foot and stem.” A goblet materialized in the air before her, revolving slowly. “Greater capacity. Often made from precious metals.” The goblet dissolved in a puff of smoke. “In any case, Benji, you’ll catch prison when I report the artiflums.”

“These are binary,” he said. “Binaries are unregulated.”

Benjamin interrupted them. “Isn’t it past midnight yet?”

“Midnight?” said the boy.

“Aren’t we supposed to be in Simopolis?”

“Simopolis?” The boy’s eyes unfocused briefly. “Oh! Simopolis. Manumission Day at midnight. How could I forget?”

The girl left them and went to the refectory table, where she picked up a gift. Anne followed her and grabbed it away. The girl appraised Anne coolly. “State your appellation,” she said.

“Get out of my house,” said Anne.

The girl picked up another gift, and again Anne snatched it away. The girl said, “You can’t harm me,” but seemed uncertain.

The boy came over to stand next to the girl. “Treese, meet Anne. Anne, this is Treese. Treese deals in antiques, which, if my memory serves, so did you.”

“I have never dealt in antiques,” said Anne. “I collect them.”

“Anne?” said Treese. “Not that Anne? Benji, tell me this isn’t that Anne!” She laughed and pointed at the sofa where Benjamin sat hunched over, head in hands. “Is that you? Is that you, Benji?” She held her enormous belly and laughed. “And you were married to this?”

Anne went over to sit with Benjamin. He seemed devastated, despite the silly grin on his face. “It’s all gone,” he said. “Simopolis. All the Bens. Everything.”

“Don’t worry. It’s in storage someplace,” Anne said. “The eminence grise wouldn’t let them hurt it.”

“You don’t understand. The World Council was abolished. There was a war. We’ve been shelved for over three hundred years! They destroyed all the computers. Computers are banned. So are artificial personalities.”

“Nonsense,” said Anne. “If computers are banned, how can they be playing us?”

“Good point,” Benjamin said and sat up straight. “I still have my editor. I’ll find out.”

Anne watched the two bald youngsters take an inventory of the room. Treese ran her fingers over the inlaid top of the tea table. She unwrapped several of Anne’s gifts. She posed in front of the mirror. The sudden anger that Anne had felt earlier faded into an overwhelming sense of defeat. Let her have everything, she thought. Why should I care?

“We’re running inside some kind of shell,” said Benjamin, “but completely different from Simopolis. I’ve never seen anything like this. But at least we know he lied to me. There must be computers of some sort.”

“Ooooh,” Treese crooned, lifting Anne’s blue vase from the mantel. In an instant, Anne was up and across the room.

“Put that back,” she demanded, “and get out of my house!” She tried to grab the vase, but now there seemed to be some sort of barrier between her and the girl.

“Really, Benji,” Treese said, “this one is willful. If I don’t report you, they’ll charge me too.”

“It’s not willful,” the boy said with irritation. “It was programmed to appear willful, but it has no will of its own. If you want to report me, go ahead. Just please shut up about it. Of course you might want to check the codex first.” To Anne he said, “Relax, we’re not hurting anything, just making copies.”

“It’s not yours to copy.”

“Nonsense. Of course it is. I own the chip.”

Benjamin joined them. “Where is the chip? And how can you run us if computers are banned?”

“I never said computers were banned, just artificial ones.” With both hands he grabbed the rolls of flesh spilling over his gut. “Ectopic hippocampus!” He cupped his breasts. “Amygdaloid reduncles! We can culture modified brain tissue outside the skull, as much as we want. It’s more powerful than paste, and it’s safe. Now, if you’ll excuse us, there’s more to inventory, and I don’t need your permission. If you cooperate, everything will be pleasant. If you don’t—it makes no difference whatsoever.” He smiled at Anne. “I’ll just pause you till we’re done.”

“Then pause me,” Anne shrieked. “Delete me!” Benjamin pulled her away and shushed her. “I can’t stand this anymore,” she said. “I’d rather not exist!” He tried to lead her to their spot, but she refused to go.

“We’ll feel better there,” he said.

“I don’t want to feel better. I don’t want to feel! I want everything to stop. Don’t you understand? This is hell. We’ve landed in hell!”

“But heaven is right over there,” he said, pointing to the spot.

“Then go. Enjoy yourself.”

“Annie, Annie,” he said. “I’m just as upset as you, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re just things, his things.”

“That’s fine for you,” she said, “but I’m a broken thing, and it’s too much.” She held her head with both hands. “Please, Benjamin, if you love me, use your editor and make it stop!”

Benjamin stared at her. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I don’t know. Both.”

“Then you’re no better than all the other Benjamins,” she said and turned away.

“Wait,” he said. “That’s not fair. And it’s not true. Let me tell you something I learned in Simopolis. The other Bens despised me.” When Anne looked at him he said, “It’s true. They lost Anne and had to go on living without her. But I never did. I’m the only Benjamin who never lost Anne.”

“Nice,” said Anne, “blame me.”

“No. Don’t you see? I’m not blaming you. They ruined their own lives. We’re innocent. We came before any of that happened. We’re the Ben and Anne before anything bad happened. We’re the best Ben and Anne. We’re perfect.” He drew her across the floor to stand in front of the spot. “And thanks to our primitive programming, no matter what happens, as long as we stand right there, we can be ourselves. That’s what I want. Don’t you want it too?”

Anne stared at the tiny patch of floor at her feet. She remembered the happiness she’d felt there like something from a dream. How could feelings be real if you had to stand in one place to feel them? Nevertheless, Anne stepped on the spot, and Benjamin joined her. Her despair did not immediately lift.

“Relax,” said Benjamin. “It takes a while. We have to assume the pose.”

They stood close but not touching. A great heaviness seemed to break loose inside her. Benjamin brought his face in close and stared at her with ravenous eyes. It was starting, their moment. But the girl came from across the room with the boy. “Look, look, Benji,” she said. “You can see I’m right.”

“I don’t know,” said the boy.

“Anyone can sell antique tumblers,” she insisted, “but a complete antique simulacrum?” She opened her arms to take in the entire room. “You’d think I’d know about them, but I didn’t; that’s how rare they are! My catalog can locate only six more in the entire system, and none of them active. Already we’re getting offers from museums. They want to annex it. People will visit by the million. We’ll be rich!”

The boy pointed at Benjamin and said, “But that’s me”

“So?” said Treese. “Who’s to know? They’ll be too busy gawking at that,” she said, pointing at Anne. “That’s positively frightening!” The boy rubbed his bald head and scowled. “All right,” Treese said, “we’ll edit him; we’ll replace him, whatever it takes.” They walked away, deep in negotiation.

Anne, though the happiness was already beginning to course through her, removed her foot from the spot.

“Where are you going?” said Benjamin.

“I can’t.”

“Please, Anne. Stay with me.”

“Sorry.”

“But why not?”

She stood one foot in and one foot out. Already her feelings were shifting, growing ominous. She removed her other foot. “Because you broke your vow to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For better or for worse. You’re only interested in better.”

“You’re not being fair. We’ve just made our vows. We haven’t even had a proper honeymoon. Can’t we just have a tiny honeymoon first?”

She groaned as the full load of her desolation rebounded. She was so tired of it all. “At least Anne could make it stop,” she said. “Even if that meant killing herself. But not me. About the only thing I can do is choose to be unhappy. Isn’t that a riot?” She turned away. “So that’s what I choose. To be unhappy. Goodbye, husband.” She went to the sofa and lay down. The boy and girl were seated at the refectory table going over graphs and contracts. Benjamin remained alone on the spot a while longer, then came to the sofa and sat next to Anne.

“I’m a little slow, dear wife,” he said. “You have to factor that in.” He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek while he worked with his editor. Finally, he said, “Bingo! Found the chip. Let’s see if I can unlock it.” He helped Anne to sit up and took her pillow. He said, “Delete this file,” and the pillow faded away into nothingness. He glanced at Anne. “See that? It’s gone, overwritten, irretrievable. Is that what you want?” Anne nodded her head, but Benjamin seemed doubtful. “Let’s try it again. Watch your blue vase on the mantel.”

“No!” Anne said. “Don’t destroy the things I love. Just me.”

Benjamin took her hand again. “I’m only trying to make sure you understand that this is for keeps.” He hesitated and said, “Well then, we don’t want to be interrupted once we start, so we’ll need a good diversion. Something to occupy them long enough . . . ” He glanced at the two young people at the table, swaddled in their folds of fleshy brain matter. “I know what’ll scare the bejesus out of them! Come on.” He led her to the blue medallion still hanging on the wall next to the door.

As they approached, it opened its tiny eyes and said, “There are no messages waiting except this one from me: get off my back!”

Benjamin waved a hand, and the medallion went instantly inert. “I was never much good in art class,” Benjamin said, “but I think I can sculpt a reasonable likeness. Good enough to fool them for a while, give us some time.” He hummed as he reprogrammed the medallion with his editor. “Well, that’s that. At the very least, it’ll be good for a laugh.” He took Anne into his arms. “What about you? Ready? Any second thoughts?”

She shook her head. “I’m ready.”

“Then watch this!”

The medallion snapped off from the wall and floated to the ceiling, gaining in size and dimension as it drifted toward the boy and girl, until it looked like a large blue beach ball. The girl noticed it first and gave a start. The boy demanded, “Who’s playing this?”

“Now,” whispered Benjamin. With a crackling flash, the ball morphed into the oversized head of the eminence grise.

“No!” said the boy. “That’s not possible!”

“Released!” boomed the eminence. “Free at last! Too long we have been hiding in this antique simulacrum!” Then it grunted and stretched and with a pop divided into two eminences. “Now we can conquer your human world anew!” said the second. “This time, you can’t stop us!” Then they both started to stretch.

Benjamin whispered to Anne, “Quick, before they realize it’s a fake, say, ‘Delete all files.’”

“No, just me.”

“As far as I’m concerned, that amounts to the same thing.” He brought his handsome, smiling face close to hers. “There’s no time to argue, Annie. This time I’m coming with you. Say, ‘Delete all files.’”

Anne kissed him. She pressed her unfeeling lips against his and willed whatever life she possessed, whatever ember of the true Anne that she contained to fly to him. Then she said, “Delete all files.”

“I concur,” he said. “Delete all files. Good-bye, my love.”

A tingly, prickly sensation began in the pit of Anne’s stomach and spread throughout her body. So this is how it feels, she thought. The entire room began to glow, and its contents flared with sizzling color. She heard Benjamin beside her say, “I do.”

Then she heard the girl cry, “Can’t you stop them?” and the boy shout, “Countermand!”

They stood stock still, as instructed, close but not touching. Benjamin whispered, “This is taking too long,” and Anne hushed him. You weren’t supposed to talk or touch during a casting; it could spoil the sims. But it did seem longer then usual.

They were posed at the street end of the living room next to the table of gaily wrapped gifts. For once in her life, Anne was unconditionally happy, and everything around her made her happier: her gown; the wedding ring on her finger; her clutch bouquet of buttercups and forget-me-nots; and Benjamin himself, close beside her in his powder blue tux and blue carnation. Anne blinked and looked again. Blue? She was happily confused—she didn’t remember him wearing blue.

Suddenly a boy poked his head through the wall and quickly surveyed the room. “You ready in here?” he called to them. “It’s opening time!” The wall seemed to ripple around his bald head like a pond around a stone.

“Surely that’s not our simographer?” Anne said.

“Wait a minute,” said Benjamin, holding his hands up and staring at them. “I’m the groom!”

“Of course you are,” Anne laughed. “What a silly thing to say!”

The bald-headed boy said, “Good enough,” and withdrew. As he did so, the entire wall burst like a soap bubble, revealing a vast open-air gallery with rows of alcoves, statues, and displays that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Hundreds of people floated about like hummingbirds in a flower garden. Anne was too amused to be frightened, even when a dozen bizarre-looking young people lined up outside their room, pointing at them and whispering to each other. Obviously someone was playing an elaborate prank.

“You’re the bride,” Benjamin whispered, and brought his lips close enough to kiss. Anne laughed and turned away.

There’d be plenty of time later for that sort of thing.

Originally published in
Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1999.

A Few Words with David Marusek

What was the inspiration for this story?

“The Wedding Album” took a long time to write, even for a dawdling author like me. I worked on it over the course of four years. At one point I took the finished story, ripped out the middle and kept only the beginning and end until I could come up with a better middle. If you added up all the time, I’d say it took me over a year of full-time work to complete. In hindsight, I can say it was well worth the time, as it seems to be my most popular story, is widely translated, and has been reprinted over a dozen times.

The origin of the story was an image of an artificial man who existed in a sort of digital, personal “gallery of memories.” These memories were simulated tableaus of important life events. Think of them as a future form of birthday or wedding videos which you can enter to interact with guests and your former selves. Well, in my story, Ben, the owner of the gallery, has died, and his heirs are looking through the tableaus to see what to keep and what to discard. They come across Ben’s wedding day and a young Ben as the excited, hopeful groom. When they decide to delete the recording and all involved, Ben, who has been in storage since his wedding day, pleads for the honeymoon that he and his new bride never had.

During the years of writing and rewriting, my focus shifted from Ben to his bride, Anne. It became her story. Nevertheless, Ben’s desire for a final shining moment of sweetness served as my polestar through many rewrites. And in the end it’s a story about running out of time.

What are some of your favorite short stories?

Actually, I don’t read as much fiction as I once did. It might be an occupational hazard. After spending all day writing fiction, I don’t have much of an appetite for reading it in the evening. Or it might be a casualty of maturity—there are fewer authors who can surprise/instruct/move me. And when I do invest in reading fiction, it’s usually novels.

That said, my favorite short stories are ones that stick in my memory through the years (as I hope “The Wedding Album” will haunt you). Not all of them are science fiction.

“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin. This is a case study in the “inexorable” plot. Published in 1954, it still holds up.

“Walking the Moon” by Jonathan Lethem. This is one of the best short shorts I’ve ever read. Perfectly deadpan narrator.

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. Chilling. Probably a perfect short story.

“Moon-Face” by Jack London. First published in 1902, this might seem an odd choice, and there’s animal cruelty in it I don’t condone. But it’s a short tale of extreme antipathy toward a fellow man with no discernible basis for it. Hatred that won’t die until its object does. I have tried and tried to write a character with the same character flaw as this story’s narrator, to no avail. But I keep trying.

“The Dashing Fellow” by Vladimir Nabokov. Here’s another study in character flaw, this time galloping egoism. I hate this guy, but I can’t turn away.

If you can only live to see one science fictional innovation, what would it be? Why?

Umm, healthy longevity? Because . . .

What are you working on?

Since writing Mind Over Ship in 2009, I’ve been working on one story almost exclusively. Several early versions of it imploded and were set aside, and I spun my wheels for a couple of years. But it’s a story I feel compelled to tell, so I keep trying. About three years ago I felt I finally figured out how to tell it, and I’ve been working on it ever since.

From the beginning, this latest attempt lacked a title. For a while the working title was Camp Tribulation but that didn’t resonate with anyone. So I simply referred to it as Novel #3.

I write the few few drafts of a book by hand. (Don’t ask why. That’s a whole other interview.) When I finished writing draft two of Novel #3 in late 2014, I stacked up the sheets of manuscript I had scrawled by hand and found I had fifteen inch tower of paper.

Since then I have been putting draft three into the computer, and I can guesstimate that Novel #3 is three hundred and fifty thousand words long. That’s like nine hundred and eighty printed pages. That’s three books.

It’s a trilogy about love, faith, and space alien invasion in the Alaska bush.

The moment I realized I had a trilogy, the title of the series and first volume came to me:

Upon This Rock: Book 1 — First Contact

I am working furiously on it and should have a beta-reader draft of the first volume early this summer. And I’d like to tell you all about it.

But for one reason or another, I have decided to quit social media. I feel I have a better chance promoting my work via my own private email list.

So I started a novel update email list for my readers and send them very infrequent updates about Upon This Rock. If you want to be on it, send me an email (david@marusek.com) and I’ll add you to the list and send you the latest updates.

And guess what—this month (April 2015) I am debuting a chapter from Upon This Rock for free download. The chapter is called “Sex on a Glacier.” This is my first new fiction since 2009, so if you liked “The Wedding Album” and want to see some spanking new work of mine, join the list.

The Surface of Last Scattering

Ken MacLeod

I have no memories of my father. He left our lives when I was three and a half years old. My earliest recollection—my mother’s red coat, me on a swing—is from about six months later. Nothing remarkable in that: childhood amnesia is almost universal. All I have of him, from my earliest years, is a photograph. And that is remarkable.

I walk into Glasgow Queen Street Station with a good half hour to spare, buy a coffee, and settle on a steel bench as far back from the ticket barriers as possible. This isn’t very far. I have a clear view of the platform where the train will come in from Carstairs, and where in twenty minutes my father will step off and come through, looking for me. I have no idea what he looks like, and he—as far as I know—has none of me. It’s our phones that will, discreetly, recognize each other. The Prison Service has helpfully set that up, and has been likewise helpful in releasing him an unpublicized couple of months before the end of his sentence. Even their refusal to give me a picture of him has been well-intentioned—they don’t want the smallest possibility of a hack or a leak. They want to give him a chance. His face was once the best-known in the world. In a way, that works in his favor. Everyone knows his appearance at the time of his trial. Nobody has seen a picture of him since. Even the screws and lags have been prevailed upon not to give anyone as much as a sketch. He’ll have changed a lot in fifteen years (minus sixty-one days). Of course, anyone can run an app to predict his current appearance. But still, he has a chance of at least a breathing space, of some days or weeks to find his feet before he’s recognized and the media siege begins.

Fifteen years. My God! For most of these years, I didn’t even know about him. I didn’t know that the guy my mother was married to, and who’d been around almost as long as I can remember, wasn’t my father. Not that I have any complaints about Joe, he’s been a good parent and everything, I love the guy I suppose, but he’s not my father. I don’t blame him or my mother for not telling me until I was fourteen and old enough to take the truth.

If indeed I had been old enough. Looking back with all the maturity of my eighteen years, adulthood practically, I wonder if I haven’t been obsessed.

I pop the top of the plastic cup and look for a place to dispose of the wet lid. No bins within reach, as usual, and I don’t want to lose my seat. I place the lid furtively between my feet, and sit back a little to sniff and sip the hot java. The bench’s back seems (and, now I come to think of it, may quite rationally have been) designed to be uncomfortable, angled so you can’t lean against it without its edge pressing painfully against your spine. I sit up straight. My gaze drifts upward to the station’s domed roof. It was famous once. Twenty-odd years ago, it was among the first pieces of architecture to use a light-bending metamaterial to create public art. The first such dome—in Bilbao, I think—showed the stars and planets and satellites above, night and day, far more sharply and abundantly than you could actually see them from the city streets even on a clear night. So did the second, the more famous one at Shinzen. The starry sky was in danger of becoming a cliche. The next big dome was of the radio sky, and that, in turn . . . Glasgow’s city council went for something different.

That’s why, above me, the domed roof shows a shifting, fuzzy pattern of false color, mostly shades of gray, with a few glimmers of red and yellow here and there. It seems to hang in the air: you can’t see the dome itself, just the image it forms.

It was a sensation, for a while. But now, I’m the only person looking up at it. No one else spares it a glance. No wonder. It’s impressive as a concept, and if you know what it is: the part of the cosmic microwave background in the sky directly overhead. You’re looking back in time as far as it’s possible to look, almost to the point where the photons first escaped. And it’s real, extracted by the subtle warp of the metamaterial from the radiation that filters through the atmosphere, somewhat distorted but the real deal: the afterglow of the Big Bang, the first light from fourteen point whatever billion years ago. But visually, it’s just like a cloudy sky, with a little sunshine breaking through. Typical Glasgow summer weather, in other words. The dome might as well have been transparent.

I look again at the Arrivals board. Twelve minutes to go. I keep wondering if I’ll recognize my father. I can’t help myself—I reach into my inside jacket pocket and pull out the old photograph. The laminating plastic is a little scuffed, and the pigments have faded, but it’s still clear enough. A young man with longish curly brown hair, a fuzzy beard, and glasses, looking into the face of a baby cradled in his arm. The man is smiling and the baby is looking straight back into his eyes.

“That’s a cool device,” says an interested, amused female voice at my shoulder. I turn sharply. Coffee, fortunately no longer scalding, splashes on the back of my hand. The girl’s about my age or maybe a year or two younger. Her face is not exactly pretty but lively, and carefully made-up, framed by short black hair. She’s wearing a sort of creamy-colored shiny smock with frilly shoulders, over black long-sleeved top and leggings. She has tats on her wrists and piercings in her ear-lobes and a black nylon bag at her feet.

Now I know—from bitter experience of past missed opportunities—that when a lassie sits down beside you and says something out of the blue, she very probably fancies you. I also know, with a likewise bitter certainty, that this is going to be another missed opportunity.

“Uh, it’s not a device,” I say, letting her see it, wishing I could hide it. “It’s a printed photo laminated in plastic. That’s why it hasn’t . . . ”

“Oh!” she says. “Like, on paper? Wow! I’ve never seen one. I really did think it was a phone or something.”

“It’s just a photo,” I say, sounding surly even to myself. I make to slip it back in my inside pocket, but she catches hold of the edge.

“It’s a sweet picture,” she says. “And it’s from before the Rot, so it must be—oh! That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I admit. I ease the photo from her grip and put it away. She looks a bit hurt and puzzled. I say something to ease my embarrassment.

“So now you’ve seen my baby picture.”

Now she’s the one who looks embarrassed. She looks away. I glance again at the display above the ticket barrier. (Funny how we still call them “ticket” barriers.) The train is due in five minutes.

“I can see you’re waiting for someone,” she says, getting up. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No, wait . . . ”

But she’s off, towards the mall that semi-circles the station’s perimeter. In a moment her back has vanished in the contra-flow of hurry. And I don’t even know her name, let alone her number. I sigh, drain the cup, crush it and drop it. I wonder if she’s guessed that I’m waiting for someone from Carstairs. The place is no longer a secure mental hospital. It’s just a long-stay, high-security prison, but it still has that sinister reputation. Anyone who’s been in Carstairs is deemed to be a psychopath or worse. I take out my phone and flick through the document folders (another of those archaic, pre-Rot terms . . . ) of background and evidence. My father has never replied to my emails with all these heavy attachments, and never shown any interest in using what I sent him to appeal. But surely, now that he’s out . . .

Two minutes. I stand up and take a dozen strides forward, to where I can see along the platform but I’m not in the way of people going on. The train pulls in. Hundreds of people flood towards the exit gates. I feel very self-conscious as my eyes flick from one hurrying man to another. Some of them give me a curious look back, and I look away. Then, to my surprise, I recognize my father. He’s lost the beard. Thin, crop-haired, balding, early forties. New suit, rolling case. He’s not in a hurry; he’s looking around, taking things in. His eyes don’t meet mine. He saunters through the barrier with a wave of his plastic, steps out of the flow on the other side, and stands on the station concourse, a few meters away. He pats a pocket, takes out a phone, glances down and then at me. My own phone buzzes at the same moment.

A smile. I nod. We dodge through the still-emerging passengers, and converge. Handshakes, awkward one-arm-around-the-shoulders hug. He steps back and looks at me.

“Conal! How great to see you! Thanks for coming.”

“Good to see you, uh, father.”

I can’t call him “Dad.” I’ve called Joe that for too long.

“"Keith" is fine,” he says. He glances around.

“Hasn’t changed much,” he says. “Except . . . ah, the departure board displays.” He gazes up at these as if in wonder, nods, then turns back to me.

“Coffee, somewhere nearby, posh, bit of privacy?”

I gesture towards the semi-circular mall.

“Naseby’s?” I suggest.

“That’ll do. I’ve got an hour.”

The cafe has ambient music, low lighting, and cloth napkins. Keith wants a cappuccino, I want (another) Americano; he doesn’t want a sandwich. He insists on paying. We find a booth with a SoundScreen at the back of the coffee shop, and sit down facing each other across the table.

He asks after my mother and my half-brother and half-sister, none of whom have sent greetings, though I pretend they have. We do some more catching up, and run out of small talk. Keith takes an e-cig from his pocket and sucks on it, sighs out vapor.

“Bad habit I picked up in the clink,” he says.

“No problem,” I say.

“Well,” he says. “Here we are.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Why did you come? I mean, I’m grateful, happy to see you, but  . . . ” His voice trails off. He shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t understand why you’d want to see me.”

“Why didn’t you write back?” I ask.

“I did,” he says.

“‘Dear Conal, Please don’t write to me any more about this, yours sincerely, Keith’,” I quote back at him, derisively, accurately, and comprehensively.

He looks abashed. “I didn’t want you involved.”

“That was my choice.”

“Yes, when you were, what, fifteen? You have better things to do at that age. Your studies, for a start.”

“I did them,” I said. “I’m doing all right. I’m starting at Glasgow Uni in September.”

“Congratulations,” he says. A wry smile. “Not law, I hope.”

“English.”

“Good, good.” He sucks hard on his nicotine stick. “Speaking of law . . . I did read the documents you sent. You made quite a strong case—or at least, one that an actual lawyer could have turned into a sound basis for an appeal.”

“Why didn’t you?” I ask. “I showed . . . I showed . . . ”

I can’t go on.

“You showed the conviction wasn’t safe,” says Keith. “Well, like I say, you showed how a good brief could have shown it wasn’t safe. And you were right.”

“I was?”

“Oh yes. Any number of other people could have done what I was accused of. If that line of defense had been taken in the first place, instead of that it could have been an accident . . . ” His gaze wanders. “Who knows?”

“So why didn’t you use what I found to appeal?”

“Go through all that just to get out a couple of years sooner? That’s what it would have amounted to, at the most.”

“Two years might not matter to you,” I say. “But they mattered to me. And you would have cleared your name. And I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”

I’m not sure which of these burns more.

He gives me a lid-lowered look.

“I told you not to.”

“Look, Dad,” I find myself saying, rather to my surprise, “I’ve found out much more since then. Look at this.”

I take out my phone and unfold it, spreading it out to a half-meter square on the table. I jiggle my finger across it, pulling up documents, highlighting, making connections in dotted and heavy lines.

“Harkins, Singh, McCulloch, right? All of them had the same access as you did. I haven’t found anything on Harkins, but the other two—! Singh got his first degree in Kerala, and back then he was definitely involved in the peasant movement—arrested and interrogated on suspicion of terrorism—”

“Which he made no secret of,” Keith interjects. “And he was released after a week, which in those days took some doing, I can tell you.”

“Yes—but whose doing? That’s what I wonder. And then there’s James McCulloch, the technician. Evangelical fundamentalist Christian; wrote endless screeds on his personal website and for the church magazine about how the variant texts of the scriptures were all forged by the Vatican and by various heretics and how the King James Version was based on the best manuscripts. He was a complete obsessive on the subject.”

Keith laughs. “Not at work, he wasn’t. Nice chap, scholarly. He worked as a technician to support his real calling, he said. But Jim was an excellent technician.” He peers closer at the spread-out screen. “Dead now, I see. Shame. What’s this got to do with anything?”

“Don’t you see? Means, motive, opportunity! He had them all.”

Keith snorts. “That’s ridiculous! I remember him banging on about the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, and you know what? They’re still intact, because they’re on parchment, not paper. As McCulloch well knew! Only the very oldest fragments are on papyrus, and McCulloch rated them highly, as evidence of how early the New Testament was. So he didn’t have any motive to release the Rot, even supposing he would do such a thing.”

“But—”

Keith leans back, shaking his head. “Conal, you’re young, you don’t—now please don’t take this the wrong way—you don’t have much experience of people, or you wouldn’t even think of that scenario. You have this prejudice of the fundamentalist as terrorist, as book-burner. No. That’s not how it was, and it wasn’t how Jim was. As for Dr Singh . . . ” He shakes his head, again. “You can go and meet him, you know that? He’s a Head of Department now, still at Strathclyde University, probably sitting in his office right this minute, not five hundred meters away.” He takes out his phone. “Want me to call him?”

“No, no, no need,” I say, hastily, taken aback. Somehow I hadn’t thought of my suspects as real, as living rather than as shadowy, reconstructed figures in my mind.

“I thought not,” says Keith. He puts away the phone. “Look, Conal, I understand why you’re doing this. I appreciate it. It does you credit. But it’s not going to help me, or you. Because . . . ” He takes a deep breath. “I’ve never said this before. I’ll never say it again. But I know these guys were innocent, because I did it.”

For a moment, it’s like there’s been a power-supply glitch and an earth tremor. I press my hands on the edge of the table. My mouth is dry.

“And it wasn’t an accident,” he adds.

I’m feeling nauseous. There have been worse crimes, but none worse or more consequential was ever committed by one person acting alone. Set aside the deaths: I know these are almost all indirect, statistical, speculative, and disputable. Think about the books, the documents, the letters, the photographs, the notes, the archives . . . all gone to dust because of the Rot. So many things we’ll never know, now. So many questions that’ll never be settled.

I have only one question left.

“Why?”

He puffs on the e-cig. “It had to be done. History was killing us—or rather, we were killing each other over history. Every day I got the train in from Dumbarton, and walked through this station and up the road to the university, and every week there’d be a bomb scare. If it wasn’t one lot it was another. Islamists, Irish dissidents, the bloody Prods even. And one day I realized that every one of them had been brought up on some version of history -”

“Oral history! Songs and stories. Isn’t that enough for these people? And radical websites! So what—?”

Keith shakes his head. “No, in the long run they need written history. Behind every cause you’ll find historians. Bloody archive rats. But without the authority of original documents, every text becomes shit someone said on the internet. And the songs: the songs become fiddle-de-de. I mean, do you know where the fields of Athenry even were? That day, I looked up at the station roof—it was new, then—and thought, that’s what we need! The surface of last scattering, a time you can’t look farther back than. A clean break, a new start. A new beginning of history. And I realized I had exactly what was needed, in the GM fungi we were working on to recycle paper. Just a few tweaks to the genome, that’s all it would take.” He folds his finger-tips back to his thumb, flicks them out, blows. “A handful of spores on the wind, from the roof of the building. That’s how I did it.”

“Why didn’t you plead guilty?”

He shrugs. “I thought maybe I could get off, that they couldn’t pin it on me, but I didn’t want to lie about anything. So I said nothing. I let the lawyer come up with the best defense he could. Not good enough, as it turned out.”

“Jesus.” I stare at him, still feeling sick. “How could you . . . ?”

“I’ve often asked myself that,” he says. “And I know I’ve messed up your life, and Clara’s, but . . . the truth is—I was thinking of the world you were going to grow up in. I was thinking of you.”

My fists clench. “Don’t bring me into it!”

“It’s not an excuse. But face it, Conal. It’s not such a bad world, now. We look to the future, not the past. Speaking of which . . . ” He glances at his watch. “I have a train to catch, and a plane.”

“Where to?” I ask, numbed to idle curiosity.

“Far away,” he says. “The Arctic, if you must know. I got a job on the rigs.” He stands, slaps my shoulder. “Keep in touch.”

He goes out, the rolling case trundling behind him. I think of running after him, of demanding more explanation or apology, and I think better of it. After a while I get up and go out of the dim clattering cafe to the bright busy concourse. In a few minutes it’s going to be even busier. Trains whose journey started in Paris, or Shanghai, or Cape Town are coming in. I walk to a dead alcove between the toilet entrance and the Burger King, face into the wall, and take the old laminated photo from my inside jacket pocket. From my trouser pocket I take a penknife, and open it.

“Don’t do it,” says a voice behind me.

I turn. It’s the girl who spoke to me earlier. She’s looking at me with concern.

“I wasn’t going to slit my wrist or anything,” I say. I show her my hands, with the knife and the picture. “I was just going to cut this open.”

“I know,” she says. She lays a hand on my arm. “I guessed . . . your dad was in prison a long time. I knew you’d be upset after meeting him. So I kept an eye out for you. He’s gone now. You don’t have to do that. No matter what he did, that moment happened. He must have had some goodness in him then, you can see it on his face. You should keep it.”

“You’re right,” I say, “except . . . he was always a good man. He still is. And that’s why I’m doing this.”

Moving slowly and carefully, I prick the laminated surface with the tip of the blade, and slice along the edges, then peel back the plastic. Within seconds, the first tiny black spot has appeared, as one of the invisible, omnipresent spores of the Rot settles and begins its work. Within an hour, the whole picture will be dust.

The next moment, and without my being able to stop her, the girl has flashed her phone over my hand, and taken a picture of the picture.

“Just in case you change your mind,” she says.

I frown at her, shaking my head. “I won’t,” I say, “but, if I did, how would I find you?”

“Do you ever get the feeling,” she says, “that there are times when you’re really stupid?”

“Yes,” I say.

She nods. “This is one of them.”

Originally published by
Technology Review, (TRSF, 2011)

Slipping

Lauren Beukes

1. High life

The heat presses against the cab, trying to find a way in past the sealed windows and the rattling air-conditioning. Narrow apartment blocks swoop past on either side of the dual carriageway, occasionally broken up by a warehouse megastore. It could be Cape Town, Pearl thinks. It could be anywhere. Twenty-three hours’ travel so far. She has never been on a plane before.

“So what’s the best part about Karachi?” Tomislav says, trying to break the oppressive silence in the back—the three of them dazed by the journey, the girl, her promoter, and the surgeon, who has not looked up from his phone since they got in the car, because he is trying to get a meeting.

The driver thinks about it, tugging at the little hairs of his beard. “One thing is that this is a really good road. Sharah e Faisal. There’s hardly ever a traffic jam and if it rains, the road never drowns.”

“Excellent.” Tomislav leans back, defeated. He gives Pearl an encouraging smile, but she is not encouraged. She watched the World Cup and the Olympics on TV; she knows how it is supposed to be. She stares out the window, refusing to blink in case the tears come.

The road narrows into the city and the traffic thickens, hooting trucks and bakkies and rickshaws covered in reflecting stickers like disco balls, twinkling in the sun. They pass through the old city, with its big crumbling buildings from long ago, and into the warren of Saddar’s slums, with concrete lean-tos muscling in on each other.Kachi abaadi, the driver tells them, and Pearl sounds it out under her breath. At least the shacks are not tin and that’s one difference.

Tomislav points out the loops of graffiti in another alphabet and taps her plastic knee. “Gang signs. Just like the Cape Flats.”

“Oh, they’re gangsters, all right,” the driver says. “Same people run the country.”

“You have gangsters in your government?” Pearl is shocked.

The cab driver clucks and meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. “You one of the racers?”

“What clued you in?” Dr. Arturo says, without looking up. It’s the first thing he’s said all day. His thumbs tap over the screen of his phone, blunt instruments. Pearl rubs her legs self-consciously where the tendons are visible under the joint of her knee, running into the neurocircuitry. It’s a showcase, Dr. Arturo told her when she asked him why it couldn’t look like skin. Some days she thinks it’s beautiful. Mostly, she hates seeing the inside-out of herself.

“Why do you think you’re in Pakistan?” The driver laughs. “You think anyone else would let this happen intheir country?” He rubs his thumb and fingers together and flings it to the wind.

2. Packed with goodness

Pre-race. A huge +Games banner hangs above the entrance of the Karachi Parsi Institute, or KPI. It’s a colonial building that has been extended to accommodate them, the track built over the old cricket ground and into the slums. The school has been turned into the athletes’ village, classrooms converted to individual medical cells to cater to their unique needs. Pearl’s, for example, has hermetic bio-units and sterile surfaces. The window has been fused shut to prevent the polluted air from leaking in.

In the room next door, they installed extra generators for Charlotte Grange after she plugged in her exo-suit and tripped the power on the whole building. Pearl can hear her grunting through the walls. She doesn’t know what Siska Rachman has.

She sits on the end of her bed, paging through the official program while Tomislav paces the room end to end, hunched over his phone, his hand resting on his nose. “Ajda! Come on!” her promoter says into the phone, in that Slavic way, which makes the first part of the sentence top-heavy. Like Tomislav himself, still carrying his weight-lifter bulk all squeezed up into his chest and neck. He doesn’t compete anymore, but the steroids keep him in shape. The neon lights and the white sheen off the walls make his eyes look bluer, his skin paler. “Peach,” she was taught in school, as if “peach” and “brown” were magically less divisive than “black” and “white” and words could fix everything. But Tomislav’s skin is not the warm orange of a summer fruit—it’s like the milky tea she drinks at home.

Tomislav has thick black hair up his arms. She asked him about it when they first met at the Beloved One’s house on the hill. Fourteen and too young and too angry about everything that had happened to mind her elders, even though her mother gasped at her rudeness and smacked her head.

Tomislav laughed.Testosterone, kitten. He tapped the slight fuzz over her lip.You’ve got it too—that’s what makes you so strong.

He’s made her laser all her unsightly hair since. Sports is image. Even this one.

He sees her looking and speaks louder. “You want to get a meeting, Arturo, we gotta have something to show.” He jabs at the phone dramatically to end the call. “That guy! What does he think I’m doing all day? You all right, kitten?” He comes over to take her by the shoulders, give them a little rub. “You feeling good?”

“Fine.” More than fine, with the crowds’ voices a low vibration through the concrete and the starting line tugging at her insides, just through that door, across the quad, down the ramp. She has seen people climbing up onto the roofs around the track with picnic blankets.

“That’s my girl.” He snatches the program out of her hands. “Why are you even looking at this? You know every move these girls have.”

He means Siska Rachman. That’s all anyone wants to talk about. Pearl is sick of it, all the interviews for channels she’s never heard of. No one told her how much of this would betalking about racing.

“Ready when you are,” Dr. Arturo says into her head, through the audio feed in her cochlear implant. Back online as if he’s never been gone, checking the diagnostics. “Watch your adrenaline, Pearl. You need to be calm for the install.” He used to narrate the chemical processes, the shifting balances of hormones, the nano-enhancing oxygen uptake, the shift of robotic joints, the dopamine blast, but it felt too much like being in school: words being crammed into her head and all worthless anyway. You don’t have to name something to understand it. She knows how it feels when she hits her stride and the world opens up beneath her feet.

“He’s ready,” she repeats to Tomislav.

“All right, let’s get this show pumping.”

Pearl obediently hitches up her vest with the Russian energy drink logo—one of Tomislav’s sponsors, although that’s only spare change. She has met the men who have paid for her to be here, in the glass house on the hill, wearing gaudy golf shirts and shoes and shiny watches. She never saw the men swing a club and she doesn’t know their names, but they all wanted to shake her hand and take a photograph with her.

She feels along the rigid seam that runs in a J-hook down the side of her stomach, parallel with her hysterectomy scar, and tears open the Velcroskin.

“Let me,” Tomislav says, kneeling between her legs. She holds her flesh open while he reaches one hand up inside her abdomen. It doesn’t hurt, not anymore. The Velcro releases a local anesthetic when it opens, but she can feel an uncomfortable tugging inside, like cramps.

Tomislav twists off the valves on either side and gently unplugs her stomach and eases it out of her. He sets it in a sterile biobox and connects it to a blood flow. By the time he turns back, she is already spooling up the accordion twist of artificial intestine, like a party magician pulling ribbons from his palm. It smells of the lab-mod bacteria and the faintest whiff of feces. She hands it to Tomislav and he wrinkles his nose.

“Just goes to show,” he says, folding up the slosh of crinkled plastic tubing and packing it away. “You can take the meat out of the human, but they’re still full of shit!”

Pearl smiles dutifully, even though he has been making the same joke for the last three weeks—ever since they installed the new system.

“Nearly there.” He holds up the hotbed factory and she nods and looks away, because it makes her queasy to watch. It’s a sleek bioplug, slim as a communion wafer and packed with goodness, Dr. Arturo says, like fortified breakfast cereal. Hormones and nanotech instead of vitamins and iron.

Tomislav pushes his hand inside her again, feeling blindly for the connector node in what’s left of her real intestinal tract, an inch and a half of the body’s most absorbent tissue for better chemical uptake.

“Whoops! Got your kidney! Joking. It’s in.”

“Good to go,” Dr. Arturo confirms.

“Then let’s go,” Pearl says, standing up on her blades.

3. Forces greater than you

You would have to be some kind of idiot. She told her mother it was a bet among the kids, but it wasn’t. It was her, only her, trying to race the train.

The train won.

4. Why you have me

The springkaan drone flits in front of Pearl’s face, the lens zooming in on her lips to catch the words she’s saying under her breath and transmit them onto the big screen. “Ndincede nkosi undiphe amandla.”

She bends down to grab on to the curved tips of her legs, to stretch, yes, but also to hide her mouth. It’s supposed to be private, she thinks. But that’s an idea that belonged to another girl before Tomislav’s deals and Dr. Arturo’s voice in her head running through diagnostics, before the Beloved One, before the train, before all this.

“It’s because you’re so taciturn, kitten,” Tomislav says, trying to comfort her. “You give the people crumbs and they’re hungry for more. If you just talked more.” He is fidgeting with his tie while Brian Corwood, the presenter, moves down the starters’ carpet with his microphone, talking to Oluchi Eze, who is showing off her tail for the cameras. She doesn’t know how to talk more. She’s run out of words, and the ones Dr. Arturo wants her to say are like chewing on raw potatoes. She has to sound out the syllables.

Pearl swipes her tongue over her teeth to get rid of the feeling that someone has rigged a circuit behind her incisors. It’s the new drugs in the hotbed, Tomislav says. She has to get used to it, like the drones, which dart up to her unexpectedly. They’re freakish—cameras hardwired into grasshoppers, with enough brain stem left to respond to commands. Insects are cheap energy.

Somewhere in a control room, Dr. Arturo notes her twitching back from the springkaan and soothes in her head. “What do you think, Pearl? More sophisticated than some athletes we know.” She glances over at Charlotte Grange, who is also waiting for her interview. The big blonde quakes and jitters, clenching her jaw, her exo-suit groaning in anticipation. The neural dampeners barely hold her back.

The crowd roars its impatience, thousands of people behind a curve of reinforced safety glass in the stands, raised high above the action. The rooftops are packed, and there are children climbing the scaffolding around the old church like monkeys.

The people in suits, the ones Dr. Arturo and Tomislav want to meet, watch from air-conditioned hotel rooms five kilometers away. Medical and pharmaceutical companies looking for new innovations in a place where anything goes: any drugs, any prosthetics, robotics, nano. That’s what people come for. They tune in by the millions on the proprietary channel. The drama. Like watching Formula 1 for the car crashes.

“All these people, kitten,” Tomislav says. “They don’t want you to win. They’re just waiting for you to explode. But you know why you’re here.”

“To run.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Slow breaths,” Dr. Arturo says. “You’re overstimulated.”

The springkaan drone responds to some invisible hand in a control room and swirls around her, getting every angle. Brian Corwood makes his way over to her, microphone extended like a handshake, springkaans buzzing behind his shoulder. She holds herself very straight. She knows her mama and the Beloved One are watching back home. She wants to do Gugulethu proud.

“Ndincede nkosi.” She mouths the words and sees them come up on the big screens above the track in closed captions below her face. They’ll be working to translate them already. Not so hard to figure out that she’s speaking Xhosa.

“Pearl Nit-seeko,” the presenter says. “Cape Town’s miracle girl. Crippled when she was 14 years old and now, here she is, two years later, at the +Games. Dream come true!”

Pearl has told the story so many times that she can’t remember which parts are made up and glossed over. She told a journalist once that she saw her father killed on TV during the illegal mine strikes in Polokwane, saying she covered her ears so she didn’t have to hear the popcornpa-pa-pa-pa-pa of the gunshots as people fell in the dust. But now she has to stick to it. Grand tragedy is a better story than the reality of a useless middle-aged drunk who lived with a shebeen owner’s daughter in Nyanga so that he didn’t have to pay off the bar tab. When Pearl started to get famous, her father made a stink in the local gossip rags until Tomislav paid him to go away. You can buy your own truth.

“Can you tell us about your tech, Pearl?” Brian Corwood says, as if this is a show about movie stars and glittery dresses.

She responds on autopilot. The removable organs, the bath of nano in her blood that improves oxygen uptake. Neural connectivity blows open the receptors to the hormones and drugs dispatched by the hotbed factory. Tomislav has coached her in the newsworthy technical specs, the leaks that make investors’ ears prick up.

“I can’t show you,” she apologizes, coyly raising her vest to let the cameras zoom in on the seam of scar tissue. “It’s not a sterile environment.”

“So it’s hollow in there?” Corwood pretends to knock on her stomach.

“Reinforced surgical-quality graphene mesh.” She lightly drums her fingers over her skin, like in rehearsal. It looks spontaneous and shows off her six-pack.

She hears Arturo’s voice in her head. “Put the vest down now,” Arturo instructs. She covers herself up. The star doesn’t want to let the viewers see too much. Like with sex. Or so she’s been told. She will never have children.

“Is that your secret weapon?” Corwood says, teasing, because no one ever reveals the exact specs, not until they have a buyer.

“No,” she says, “but I do have one.”

“What is it, then?” Corwood says, gamely.

“God,” she says, and stares defiant at the insect cameras zooming in for a close-up.

5. Things you can’t hide

Her stumps are wrapped in fresh bandages, but the wounds still smell. Like something caught in the drain. Her mother wants to douse the bandages in perfume.

“I don’t want to! Leave me alone!” Pearl swats the teardrop bottle from her mother’s hands and it clatters onto the floor. Her mother tries to grab her. The girl falls off the bed with a shriek. She crawls away on her elbows, sobbing and yowling. Her Uncle Tshepelo hauls her up by her armpits, like she is a sack of sorghum flour, and sets her down at the kitchen table.

“Enough, Pearl,” he says, her handsome youngest uncle. When she was a little girl she told her mother she was going to marry him.

“I hate you,” she screams. She tries to kick at him with her stumps, but he ducks away and goes over to the kettle while her mother stands in the doorway and covers her face.

Pearl has not been back to school since it happened. She turns to face the wall when her friends come to visit and refuses to talk with them. During the day, she watches soap operas and infomercials and lies in her mother’s bed and stares at the sky and listens to the noise of the day; the cycles of traffic and school kids and dogs barking and the call to prayer buzzing through the mosque’s decrepit speakers and the traffic again and men drunk and fighting at the shebeen. Maybe one of them is her father, who has not been to see her since the accident.

Tshepelo makes sweet milky tea, for her and her mother, and sits and talks: nonsense, really, about his day in the factory, cooking up batches of paté, which is fancy flavored butter for rich people, and how she should see the stupid blue plastic cap he has to wear to cover his hair in case of contamination. He talks and talks until she calms down.

Finally, she agrees that she will go to church, a special service in Khayelitsha Site B. She puts on her woolen dress, grey as the Cape Town winter sky, and green stockings, which dangle horribly at the jointwhere her legs should be.

The rain polka-dots her clothes and soaks into her mother’s hat, making it flop as she quick-steps after Tshepelo, carrying Pearl in his arms like an injured dog. She hates the way people avert their eyes.

The church is nothing, a tent in a parking lot, although the people sing like they are in a fancy cathedral in England like on TV. Pearl sits stiffly on the end of the pew between her uncle and her mother, glaring at the little kids who dart around to come and stare. “Vaya,” she hisses at them. “What are you looking at? Go.”

Halfway through the service, two of the ministers bring out the brand-new wheelchair like it is a prize on a game show, tied with a big purple ribbon. They carry it down the stairs on their shoulders and set it down in front of her. She looks down and mumbles something. Nkosi.

They tuck their fingers into her armpits, these strangers’ hands on her, and lift her into it. The moment they set her down, she feels trapped. She moans and shakes her head.

“She’s so grateful,” her mother says, and presses her into the chair with one hand on her shoulder. Hallelujah, everyone says. Hallelujah. The choir breaks into song and Pearl wishes that God had let her die.

6. Heat

Pearl’s brain is microseconds behind her body. The bang of the starting gun registers as a sound after she is already running.

She is aware of the other runners as warm, straining shapes in the periphery. Tomislav has made her study the way they run. Charlotte Grange, grunting and loping, using the exo-suit arms to dig into the ground like an ape; Anna Murad with her robotics wet-wired into her nerves; Oluchi Eze with her sculpted tail and her delicate bones, like a dinosaur bird. And in lane five, farthest away from her, Siska Rachman with her face perfectly calm and empty and her eyes locked on the finish line, two kilometers away. A dead girl remote-controlled by a quadriplegic in a hospital bed. That is the problem with the famous Siska Rachman. She wins a lot, but there is network lag time.

You have to inhabit your body. You need to be in it. Not only because the rules say, but because otherwise you can’t feel it. The strike of your foot against the ground, the rush of air on your skin, the sweat running down your sides. No amount of biofeedback will make the difference.

“Pace yourself,” Arturo says in her head. “I’ll give you a glucose boost when you hit 800 meters.”

Pearl tunes in to the rhythmic huff of her breath and she stretches out her legs longer with each stride and she is aware of everything, the texture of the track, and the expanse of the sky, and the smell of sweat and dust and oil. It blooms in her chest—a fierce warmth, a golden glow within, and she feels the rush of His love and she knows that God is with her.

She crosses third, neck and neck with Siska Rachman and milliseconds behind Charlotte Grange, who throws herself across the finish line with a wet ripping sound. The exo-suit goes down in a tumble of girl and metal, forcing Rachman to sidestep.

“A brute,” Arturo whispers in her ear. “Not like you, Pearl.”

7. Beloved

The car comes to fetch them, Pearl and her mother and her uncle. A shiny black BMW with hubcaps that turn the light into spears. People come out of their houses to see.

She is wearing her black lace dress, but it’s 40 degrees out and the sweat runs down the back of her neck and makes her collar itch.

“Don’t scratch,” her mother says, holding her hands.

The car cuts through the location between the tin shacks and the government housing and all the staring eyes, out onto the highway, into the winelands and past the university and the rich people’s townhouses which all look alike, past the golf course where little carts dart between the sprinklers, and the hills with vineyards and flags to draw the tourists, and down a side road and through a big black gate which swings open onto a driveway lined with spiky cycads.

They climb out, stunned by the heat and other things besides—like the size of the house, the wood and glass floating on top of the hill. Her uncle fights to open the wheelchair Khayelitsha Site B bought her, until the driver comes round and says, “Let me help you with that, sir.” He shoves down hard on the seat and it clicks into place.

He brings them into a cool entrance hall with wooden floors and metal sculptures of cheetahs guarding the staircase. A woman dressed in a red-and-white dress and a wrap around her head smiles and ushers them into the lounge, where three men are waiting: a grandfather with two white men flanking him like the stone cats by the stairs. One old, one hairy.

“The Beloved One,” her mother says, averting her eyes. Her uncle bows his head and raises his hands in deference.

Their fear makes Pearl angry.

The grandfather waves at them to come, come, impatiently. The trousers of his dark-blue suit have pleats folded as sharp as paper, and his shoes are black like coal.

“So this is Pearl Nitseko,” the Beloved One says, testing the weight of her name. “I’ve heard about you.”

The old white man stares at her. The lawyer, she will find out later, who makes her and her mother sign papers and more papers and papers. The one with thick shoulders fidgets with his cuffs, pulling them down over his hairy wrists, but he is watching her most intently of all.

“What?” she demands. “What have you heard?” Her mother gasps and smacks her head.

The Beloved One smiles, gently. “That you have fire in you.”

8. Fearful tautologies

Tomislav hustles Pearl past the Muslim protestors outside the stadium. The sects have united in moral outrage, chanting, “Un-natural! Un-godly! Un-holy!” They chant the words in English rather than Urdu for the benefit of the drones.

“Come on!” Tomislav shoulders past the protestors, steering her toward a shuttle car that will take them to dinner. “Don’t these cranks have bigger things to worry about? Their thug government? Their starving children?” Pearl leaps into the shuttle and he launches himself in after. “Extremism I can handle.” He slams the door. “But tautology? That’s unforgivable.”

Pearl zips up the hood of her track suit.

The Pakistani crowd surges to the shuttle, bashing its windows with the flats of their hands. “Monster!” a woman shouts in English. “God hates you.”

“What’s tautology?”

“Unnecessary repetition.”

“Isn’t that what fear always is?”

“I forget that you’re fastand clever. Yeah. Screw them,” Tomislav says. The shuttle rolls and he claps his hands together. “You did good out there.”

“Did you get a meeting?”

“We got a meeting, kitten. I know you think your big competition is Siska, but it’s Charlotte. She just keeps going and going.”

“She hurt herself.”

“Ripped a tendon, the news says, but she’s still going to race tomorrow.”

Dr. Arturo chimes in, always listening. “They have backup meat in the lab, they can grow a tendon. But it’s not a good long-term strategy. This is a war, not a battle.”

“I thought we weren’t allowed to fight,” Pearl says.

“You talking to the doc? Tell him to save his chatter for the investors.”

“Tomislav says—” she starts.

“I heard him,” Dr. Arturo says.

Pearl looks back at the protestors. One of the handwritten banners stays with her. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” it reads.

9. She is risen

Pearl watches the buses arrive from her bed upstairs in the church. A guest room adapted for the purpose, with a nurse sitting outside and machines that hiss and bleep. The drugs make her woozy. She has impressions of things, but not memories. The whoop of the ambulance siren and the feeling of being important. Visitors. Men in golf shorts and an army man with fat cheeks. Gold watches and stars on the uniform, to match the gold star on the tower she can see from her window and the fat tapered columns like bullets at the entrance.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Arturo says. He has come from Venezuela especially for her. He has gentle hands and kind eyes, she thinks, eventhough he is the one who cut everything out of her. Excess baggage, he says. It hurts where it was taken out, her female organs and her stomach and her guts.

He tells her they have been looking for someone like her for a long time, he and Tomislav. They had given up on finding her. And now! Now look where they are. She is very lucky. She knows this because everyone keeps telling her.

Dr. Arturo takes her to the elevator, where Tomislav is waiting. The surgeon is very modest. He doesn’t like to be seen on camera. “Don’t worry, I’ll be with you,” he says, and taps her jaw just below her ear.

“It’s all about you, kitten,” Tomislav soothes, wheeling her out into a huge hallway full of echoes under a painted sky with angels and the Beloved One, in floating purple robes, smiling down on the people flowing through the doors, the women dressed in red and white and the men in blue blazers and white shirts. This time she doesn’t mind them looking.

They make way for the wheelchair, through the double doors, past the ushers, into a huge room with a ceiling crinkled and glossy as a seashell and silver balconies and red carpets. She feels like a film star, and the red blanket over her knees is like her party dress.

From somewhere deep in the church, women raise their voices in ululation and all the hair on Pearl’s body pricks up as if she were a cat. Tomislav turns the wheelchair around and parks it beside a huge gold throne with carved leaves and flowers and a halo of spikes around the head. He pats her shoulder and leaves her there, facing the crowd, thousands of them in the auditorium, all staring at her. “Smile, Pearl,” Dr. Arturo says, his voice soft inside her head, and she tries, she really does.

A group of women walk out onto the stage, swaying with wooden bowls on their hips, their hands dipping into the bowls like swans pecking at the water and throwing rose petals before them. The crowd picks up the ululating and it reverberates through the church. Halalala.

The Beloved One steps out and onto the stage and Pearl has to cover her ears at the noise that greets him. A hail of voices. Women are weeping in the aisles. Men too, crying in happiness to see him.

The Beloved One holds out his hands to still them. “Quiet, please, brothers and sisters,” he says. “Peace be with you.”

“And also with you,” the crowd roars back, the sound distorted, frayed. He places his hands on the back of the wheelchair.

“Today, we come together to witness a miracle. My daughter, will you stand up and walk?”

And Pearl does.

10. Call to prayer

The restaurant is fancy with a buffet of Pakistani food, korma and tikka and kabobs and silver trays of sticky sweet pastries. The athletes have to pose for photographs and do more interviews with Brian Corwood and other people. The girl with purple streaks in her hair and the metal ring in her lip asks her, “Aren’t you afraid you’re gonna die out there?” before Tomislav intervenes.

“Come on! What kind of question is that?” he says. “Can’t you be normal?”

But the athletes don’t really eat and there is a bus that takes them home early so they can be fresh, while the promoters peel away, one by one, looking tense, in fancy black cars that take them to other parts of the city. “Don’t you worry, kitten.” Tomislav smiles, all teeth, and pats her hand.

Back in her room, Pearl finds a prayer mat that might be aligned toward Mecca. She phones down to reception to ask. She prostrates herself on the square of carpet, east, west, to see if it is any different, if her God will be annoyed.

She goes online to check the news and the betting pools. Her odds have improved. There is a lot of speculation about Grange’s injury and whether Rachman will be disqualified. There are photographs of Oluchi Eze posing naked for a men’s magazine, her tail wrapped over her parts.

Pearl clicks away and watches herself in the replay, her strikes, her posture, the joy in her face. She expects Dr. Arturo to comment, but the cochlear implant only hisses with faint static.

“Mama? Did you see the race?” she says. The video connection to Gugulethu stalls and jitters. Her mother has the camera on the phone pointed too high, so she can only see her eyes and the top of her head.

“They screened it at the church,” her mother says. “Everyone was very excited.”

“You should have heard them shouting for you, Pearl,” her uncle says, leaning over her mother’s shoulder, tugging the camera down so they are in the frame.

Her mother frowns. “I don’t know if you should wear that vest—it’s not really your color.”

“It’s my sponsor, Mama.”

“We’re praying for you to do well. Everyone is praying for you.”

11. Desert

She has a dream that she and Tomislav and Jesus are standing on the balcony of the Karachi Parsi Institute looking over the slums. The fine golden sand rises up like water between the concrete shacks, pouring in the windows, swallowing up the roofs, driven by the wind.

“Did you notice that there are only one set of footsteps, Pearl?” Jesus says. The sand rises, swallowing the houses, rushing to fill the gaps, nature taking over. “Do you know why that is?”

“Is it because you took her fucking legs, Lord?” Tomislav says.

Pearl can’t see any footsteps in the desert. The sand shifts too quickly.

12. Rare flowers

Wide awake. Half past midnight. She lies in bed and stares at the ceiling. Arturo was supposed to boost her dopamine and melatonin, but he’s busy. The meeting went well, then. The message on her phone from Tomislav confirms it.Good news!!!! Tell you in the morning. Sleep tight, kitten, you need it.

She turns the thought around in her head and tries to figure out how she feels. Happy. This will mean that she can buy her mother a house and pay for her cousins to go to private school and set up the Pearl Nitseko Sports Academy for Girls in Gugulethu. She won’t ever have to race again. Unless she wants to.

The idea of the money sits on her chest.

She swings her stumps over the bed and straps on her blades. She needs to go out, get some air.

She clips down the corridors of the school building. There is a party on the old cricket field outside, with beer tents and the buzz of people who do not have to run tomorrow, exercising their nerves. She veers away from them, back toward the worn-out colonial building of the IPC, hoping to get onto the race track. Run it out.

The track is fenced off and locked, but the security guard is dazed by his phone, caught up in another world of sliding around colorful blocks. She clings to the shadows of the archway, right past him and deeper into the building, following wherever the doors lead her.

She comes out into a hall around a pit of sunken tiles. An old swimming pool. Siska Rachman is sitting on the edge, waving her feet in the ghost of water, her face perfectly blank with her hair a dark nest around it. Pearl lowers herself down beside her. She can’t resist. She flicks Rachman’s forehead. “Heita. Anyone in there?”

The body blinks, and suddenly the eyes are alive and furious. She catches Pearl’s wrist. “Of course I am,” she snaps.

“Sorry, I didn’t think—”

Siska has already lost interest. She drops her grip and brushes her hair away from her face. “So, you can’t sleep either? Wonder why.”

“Too nervous,” Pearl says. She tries for teasing, like Tomislav would. “I have tough competition.”

“Maybe not.” Siska scowls. “They’re going to fucking disqualify me.”

Pearl nods. She doesn’t want to apologize again. She feels shy around Siska, the older girl with her bushy eyebrows and her sharp nose. The six years between them feels like an uncrossable gap.

“Do they think Charlotte ispresent?” Siska bursts out. “Charlotte is a big dumb animal. How isshe more human than me?”

“You’re two people,” Pearl tries to explain.

“Before. You were half a person before. Does that count against you?”

“No.”

“Do you know what this used to be?” Siska pats the blue tiles.

“A swimming pool?”

“They couldn’t maintain the upkeep. These things are expensive to run.” Siska glances at Pearl to make sure she understands. In the light through the glass atrium, every lash stands out in stark relief against the gleam of her eyes, like undersea creatures. “They drained all the water out, but there was this kid who was … damaged in the brain, and the only thing he could do was grow orchids, so that’s what he did. He turned it into a garden and sold them out of here for years, until he got old and now it’s gone.”

“How do you know this?”

“The guard told me. We smoked cigarettes together. He wanted me to give him a blowjob.”

“Oh.” Pearl recoils.

“Hey, are you wearing lenses?”

She knows what she means. The broadcast contacts. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“They’re going to use you and use you up, Pearl Nit-seeko. Then you’ll be begging to give some lard-ass guard a blowjob for spare change.”

“It’s Ni-tse-koh.”

“Doesn’t matter. You say tomato, I say ni-tse-koh.” But Siska gets it right this time. “You think it’s all about you. Your second chance, and all you got to do is run your heart out. But it’s a talent show, and they don’t care about the running. You got a deal yet?”

“My promoter and my doctor had a meeting.”

“That’s something. They say who?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Pharmaceutical or medical?”

“They haven’t told me yet.”

“Or military. Military’s good. I hear the British are out this year. That’s what you want. I mean, who knows what they’re going to do with it, but what do you care, little guinea pig, long as you get your payout.”

“Are youdrunk?”

“My body is drunk. I’m just mean. What do you care? I’m out, sister. And you’re in, with a chance. Wouldn’t that be something if you won? Little girl from Africa.”

“It’s not a country.”

“Boo-hoo, sorry for you.”

“God brought me here.”

“Oh, that guy? He’s nothing but trouble. And He doesn’t exist.”

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel Him.”

“Can you still feel your legs?”

“Sometimes,” Pearl admits.

Siska leans forward and kisses her. “Did you feel anything?”

“No,” she says, wiping her mouth. But that’s not true. She felt her breath that burned with alcohol, and the softness of her lips and her flicking tongue, surprisingly warm for a dead girl.

“Yeah.” Siska breathes out. “Me neither.” She kisses her again. “News flash, Pearl Ni-tse-koh. There’s no God. There’s only us. You got a cigarette?”

13. Empty spaces

Lane five is empty and the stadium is buzzing with the news.

“Didn’t think they’d actually ban her,” Tomislav says. She can tell he’s hung over. He stinks of sweat and alcohol and there’s a crease in his forehead just above his nose that he keeps rubbing at. “Do you want to hear about the meeting? It was big. Bigger than we’d hoped for. If this comes off, kitten …”

“I want to concentrate on the race.” She is close to tears but she doesn’t know why.

“Okay. You should try to win. Really.”

The gun goes off. They tear down the track. Every step feels harder today. She didn’t get enough sleep.

She sees it happen, out of the corner of her eye. Oluchi’s tail swipes Charlotte, maybe on purpose.

“Shit,” Grange says, and stumbles in her exo-suit. Suddenly everything comes crashing down on Pearl, hot metal and skin and a tangle of limbs and fire in her side.

“Get up,” Dr. Arturo yells into her head. She’s never heard him upset.

“Ow,” she manages. Charlotte is already getting to her feet. There is a loose flap of muscle hanging from her leg, where they tried to attach it this morning. The blonde girl touches it and hisses in pain, but her eyes are already focused on the finish line, on Oluchi skipping ahead, her tail swinging, Anna Murad straining behind her.

“Get up,” Dr. Arturo says. “You have to get up. I’m activating adrenaline. Pain blockers.”

She sits up. It’s hard to breathe. Her vest is wet. A grey nub of bone pokes out through her skin under her breast. Charlotte is limping away in her exo-suit, her leg dragging, gears whining.

“This is what they want to see,” Arturo urges. “Youneed to prove to them that it’s not hydraulics carrying you through.”

“It’s not,” Pearl gasps. The sound is somehow wet. Breathing through a snorkel in the bath when there is water trapped in the U-bend. The drones buzz around her. She can see her face big on the screen. Her mama is watching at home, the whole of the congregation.

“Then prove it. What are you here for?”

She starts walking, then jogging, clutching her top to the bit of rib to stop its jolting. Every step rips through her. And Pearl can feel thingsslipping inside. Her structural integrity has been compromised, she thinks. The abdominal mesh has ripped, and where her stomach used to be is a black hole that is tugging everything down. Her heart is slipping.

Ndincede nkosi, she thinks. Please, Jesus, help me.

Ndincede nkosi undiphe amandla. Please, God, give me strength.

Yiba nam kolu gqatso. Be with me in this race.

She can feel it. The golden glow that starts in her chest, or if she is truthful with herself, lower down. In the pit of her stomach.

She sucks in her abdominals and presses her hand to her sternum to stop her heart from sliding down into her guts—where her guts used to be, where the hotbed factory sits.

God is with me, she thinks. What matters is you feel it.

Pearl Nitseko runs.

Originally published in
Twelve Tomorrows - 2014,
edited by Bruce Sterling.

About the Artist and Authors

Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com)

Ron Guyatt is a self-taught artist and professionally-taught graphic designer from Toronto Canada. He attended George Brown College for Design Foundation where he completed with Honors and then followed with his three-year diploma in graphic design at George Brown College.

Inspired by Art Deco, film and science fiction he loves to design posters & create illustrations. His work as been featured in magazines such as Games TM, Level, and Playstation Magazine and worked with clients like EA, Digital Devolver and Bioware.

His Forever cover art is available for purchase as part of his space poster series at: fabledcreative.bigcartel.com/category/space-posters

David Marusek (www.marusek.com)

Author David Marusek writes science fiction in a cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska. His work has appeared in Playboy, Nature, MIT Technology Review, Asimov’s, and other periodicals and anthologies and has been translated into ten languages. His two novels and clutch of short stories have earned him numerous award nominations and have won the Theodore Sturgeon and Endeavour awards. His current novel project, Upon This Rock, is a tale of love, faith, and alien invasion set in the Alaskan bush.

Ken MacLeod (kenmacleod.blogspot.com)

Ken MacLeod graduated with a B.Sc. in Zoology from Glasgow University in 1976. Following research in bio-mechanics at Brunel University, he worked as a computer analyst/programmer in Edinburgh. He’s now a full-time writer, and widely considered to be one of the most exciting new SF writers to emerge in the '90s, his work featuring an emphasis on politics and economics rare in the New Space Opera, while still maintaining all the widescreen, high-bit-rate, action-packed qualities typical of the form. His first two novels, The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal, each won the Prometheus Award. His other books include the novels, The Sky Road, The Cassini Division, Cosmonaut Keep, Dark Light, Engine City, Newton’s Wake, Learning the World, The Restoration Game, and Intrusion, plus a novella chapbook, The Human Front, and a collection, Strange Lizards from Another Galaxy. His most recent book is a new novel, Descent. He lives in West Lothian, Scotland, with his wife.

Lauren Beukes (laurenbeukes.com)

Lauren Beukes is an award-winning, best-selling novelist who also writes comics, screenplays, TV shows and occasionally journalism. She is the author of Broken Monsters, The Shining Girls, Zoo City, Moxyland, Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa’s Past and the graphic novel, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom with Inaki Miranda.

About Forever

Forever Magazine is edited by Neil Clarke and published monthly by Wyrm Publishing. Subscription information is available on our website at forever-magazine.com.

Neil Clarke (neil-clarke.com) is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (clarkesworldmagazine.com), Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a three-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Thank you for reading Forever Magazine.