[ID]entity

by PJ Manney

  As a lapsed Catholic, Peter Bernhardt had always held a grudging respect for the Jesuits. They were the religious order that had never forsaken intellectualism, observing and recording reality while still engaged in their evangelical mission. No matter how discordant the concepts, many Jesuits were capable of holding the often contradictory pursuits of knowledge and faith separate and equal. Dr. Who had helped Major Tom design the ultimate Jesuit sanctuary for himself: a recreation of the Admont Abbey Library in Austria. A baroque delight for the mind and the senses, it was the largest monastic library in the world. Over its ivory and gold-curlicued walls and bookcases, its seven baby-blue and pink-domed ceilings depicted the journey of human understanding in paintings by the Baroque master Bartolomeo Altomonte. Beginning with thought and speech, they progressed through the sciences and arts, finally culminating in divine revelation in the central cupola. Major Tom’s idea of the divine did not correspond to that of the Jesuits occupying this splendid space, but he appreciated the effort to reconcile different kinds of knowledge with a most imperfect human understanding.

  Veronika’s avatar gasped in wonder. “I can’t even . . . Dude, this is so . . . ”

  “Weird? Wonderful?”

  “Yeah! And, like, fabulously elitist. Why would you ever leave?”

  He tried to see it through her fresh eyes. “I never spent much time here. Now I might stay.”

  A song played. He hadn’t programmed it. Bouncy and peppy. Women’s voices. Veronika bopped and grooved around the open space, dancing in her quirky, long-limbed way. Even as an elegant avatar, her uniqueness was apparent.

  A quick audio search brought the revelation: The Veronicas’ “Revolution.” “Seriously?”

  “Hey, listen and maybe you’ll learn something about the optimism of women.” She danced up to a bookshelf and pulled out a couple of volumes of sixteenth-century natural history. She opened one. It was in Latin.

  “Do you keep any of your own files here?” she asked.

  “No. This was intended as pure escapism. That would defeat the purpose.”

  “You should think about it.” She put the book back and stopped short. Next to the shelves was a gruesome yet exquisite statue: Josef Stammel’s Death. One of a series of The Four Last Things that included Hell, Heaven, and Resurrection, it stood adjacent to the central bookshelves. A winged skeleton wielded a drained hourglass in one hand and a dagger in the other as it dived down upon a helpless old monk, ready to stab the mortal and send him on his eternal way.

  She studied the statue. The music faded out. “What’s it like to die?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure I ever did.” Tom touched the old man’s hand, which held a walking stick. In his mind, it had as much mass and immutability as the real thing. So how real is anything? If he could replicate reality here and convince himself it was enough, could he stay forever?

  Veronika watched his avatar, his mind lost in thought. She snapped her fingers in his face. “Hey, dude! Stay present!”

  “Sorry! I mean, my body did die technically, but . . . You can’t compare my experience to others. I think most just . . . end.”

  “Unless you can upload.” She caressed the cheek of a putto, a chubby baby angel, holding a soap bubble at the old man’s feet. Forever on the brink of dissolution, the bubble’s impermanence haunted him. He struggled to stay engaged. “In my experience, if done right, death is an illusion preceded by love. If you’re lucky. Just like life.”

  Veronika took off her top hat and draped goggles, levitated heavenward, and placed it on top of Death’s head. It made the skeleton look jaunty. Satisfied, she floated back down. “So Carter never knew this place existed?”

  “No. At least, I hope not.”

  “Why?” asked Veronika.

  “I needed something he can’t influence. I don’t understand how or why we’re linked. But we are. Until one or the other of us is destroyed. Maybe both. And now I need a place to hide. I just wish I could forget.” He sat on the marble parquet floor, at Death’s feet, and rocked back and forth. “But you won’t let me forget, will you?”

  Veronika ignored his question, sat next to him, and said with great irony, “I think he’d love this place.”

  Tom found it difficult to talk. “Probably . . . He’d say, ‘Pete, you finally acquired some taste.’ Fucking asshole.”

  She could see he was close to tears. “Why did you stop, like, helping people when you uploaded?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, like, you were some weird ghost flitting around the web. You never interacted beyond singing in TCoMT. Never touched down. Until I contacted you.”

  Tom wondered how she knew. How far had she followed him online? As a fan, or a stalker, or something else? With all that had happened, he had set aside his concerns about her honesty, her agenda, her identity. As with Talia in his past life, he was deeply involved with someone he didn’t really know. Was he that desperate for companionship? Or to be understood?

  “You mean, until now,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m a scientist and an engineer,” said Tom. “I study, then fix things. I wanted to make machines to save people’s memories, their sense of self. Like my pop. And I did. But so much happened. So many people died. Some of them were innocent, like my pop. And the people of 10/26. Others were horrible and deserved it. And some . . . got caught up in things they didn’t understand.” He rocked more. “I want to get out of this alive, whatever that means. With everyone I care about. But Steve’s gone. And so many others. And I can’t fix anything. Or anyone.” He gave up controlling his emotions and wept, but he wasn’t sure if, as a digital creature, he would feel an emotional release or not.

  Veronika reached over and wiped away his tears. “Not true. You’re a hero.”

  Her touch reminded him of Talia’s, when she had wiped his tears in a hospital bed once. When Steve had saved his life. “You have an inflated view of me,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “But you do. See, there’s a sickness at the heart of the world. It shapes all of us. We’re wet clay, until the world tests us, molds us, burns us to its purpose. Into . . . its avatars, I guess. In the fire, good men become petty and weak. Bad men commit heroic acts. All of us are batted from one threat to another, trying to find moments of happiness, before the next blow strikes our hearts and we’re forced to act. We’re all sick and trying to survive.”

  Veronika reached out and held his hand. “Dude. That was righteous.”

  “Not righteous. Even the enlightened suffer, until the day they die.”

  “Or don’t, in your case.” She let go of his hand.

  “Or don’t. As a scientist, I couldn’t believe in reincarnation, but I’m living proof,” Tom said. “Except I remember past lives and how I fucked up each time, and I still can’t seem to get it right. Welcome to my special ring of hell.”

  “It’s not such a bad place.” She sidled next to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and took both his hands in hers.

  Grateful for a friend, he kissed the top of her head.

  After a quiet minute, she pulled up her bustled skirt and straddled him, her long legs wrapping around his waist. Then she wrapped her arms around his back.

  He was stunned. “What . . . are you doing?”

  “Shhh,” she whispered in his ear. “I think you need this.” She squeezed him harder, kissed one cheek and then the other. Then his mouth.

  He had never felt so vulnerable and grateful at the same time.

  He could feel the soft pressure of her lips and tongue contrast with the harder pressure of her pelvis on his jeans and genitals. His avatar—which Veronika had constructed with a surprising level of detail and anatomical accuracy—was connected to both a fully simulated body in a server and a physical flesh-body back in his bunk. She could make him feel what she did, but she could only experience this moment through her MR glasses, without the feedback of muscula
r pressure or the sensation of touch. She was a voyeur in her own fantasy.

  He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her back. “I wish you could feel this.”

  She caught her breath, then smiled dreamily. “I can.”

  “How?”

  “Trust me,” she said. And she hugged him back.

  He ran his hands around her body. Over her delicate shoulders. Down her long, lean back, where he could feel each vertebra like piano keys. Up the front to cup her breasts and kiss the lace of her Victorian blouse. Her head lolled back in delight, and he kissed her long, arched neck. With an instant shift of pixels, his clothes disappeared. She was beautiful, naked and astride him, kissing him, her tongue exploring the soft contours inside his mouth. She worked her way to his right ear, licking it in constricting spirals. He moaned. She nibbled his collarbone. Somewhere, in a bunk on the Zumwalt, his nineteen-year-old body’s testosterone production went into high gear. The sudden rush of androgens made him woozy.

  He couldn’t believe she wanted him, in spite of who he was and what he had done.

  “I can be anyone you want,” she breathed into his ear between kisses. Her figure morphed into different bodies, an athlete wearing only cleats, a dancer in a tulle tutu, an equestrian in boots with a riding crop. “Who do you want me to be?”

  “Stop,” he choked out. “You. I want you to be you.”

  No one had ever said that to her before. Except Winter. And the bitch hadn’t meant it. Veronika moaned, switched back to her own avatar, and ground him harder, running her fingernails through his hair, nibbling his nipples. He sped up his run time so he could program a soft mattress. It appeared in 5.3 seconds. It looked like a stale piece of sliced bread and felt like sandpaper.

  She stopped moving and arched an eyebrow. “Not your talent, dude.” She kissed his forehead, then made the bed disappear. “We don’t need it.”

  “But the floor is cold,” he said, shifting his ass uncomfortably on the marble.

  “Oh, poor baby,” she teased.

  The books and bookcases around him seemed to sink. Below them, the floor slipped away as they rose above the parqueted stone. Soon, their heads were even with the angel of death in Veronika’s top hat.

  “Newton’s third law,” he said. “Zero-g sex won’t work . . . ”

  Veronika put her index finger against his lips and pouted seductively. “Programmer makes the rules. And you’re, like, way too literal. Shut. Up.” She kissed him hard to make it so.

  They floated out to the middle of the central cupola, now equidistant from Death, Hell, Heaven, and Resurrection. Above them, in the fresco of Divine Revelation, robed religious archetypes floated in a blue-and-pink sky. The central figure, Divine Wisdom, was a woman. The men, including Moses and the four great Latin fathers, Saints Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome, listened to her.

  Maybe he should start listening to Veronika.

  Veronika flipped herself around like a circus acrobat, her head hovering over his erect cock, and her ass floating near his face. Slowly . . . so slowly . . . she lowered her lips around his shaft, then plunged his cock deep into her mouth. His body jerked in shock. She began a languorous rhythm.

  He figured turnabout was fair play, so he grabbed her ass and maneuvered her clitoris to his mouth. He licked gently . . . Her ass vibrated with desire.

  They spun delicately through the air, which supported them like the feathers of the angels’ wings depicted around them. A distant part of him knew she was still the ultimate fangirl, having the ultimate fantasy. He didn’t care.

  She stopped, released his cock, and turned her head around. “Still cold?”

  He spun her around, face-to-face. “Don’t tease!” he roared, then grabbed her ass, threw her legs around him, and drove his cock inside her.

  She screamed. It echoed off the wedding-cake walls. She rode him vigorously in the air, meeting each thrust of his with her own, making sure he knew that he was not the boss here, even in his most secret place.

  They thrust faster and faster, deeper and deeper, until he lost track of where he ended and she began. She fused their avatars, creating one sexual being, a beast with two backs, part biology and part fantasy, their bodies locked in thrusts that seemed never-ending.

  They climaxed in unison, screaming. The statues trembled.

  After the echo died away, they floated limp in the air, then drifted down like angel feathers to the cold, marble floor. Their bodies separated. They became individual beings once again.

  “That . . . ,” he gasped. “That was unreal.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, nuzzling her head into his neck.

  While he enjoyed their acrobatics and physiological release, there was no forgetting. No oblivion as he had had in his past life with Talia. He still felt like shit. And he didn’t forget the questions he had about Veronika when they entered the Admont Library.

  Veronika saw his expression change. She caressed his face. “Dude, what’s wrong?”

  “What do you want?” Tom asked.

  “I think that’s obvious.”

  “No. Not sex. Not some fangirl fantasy. What is it you really want?”

  She shifted off him. Staring at the floor, tracing the parquet with a finger, she said, “I want to be like you. You know, like, an upload with a body. All the bells and whistles.”

  Years ago, he had offered Talia the same brain-computer interfaces he had implanted in Thomas Paine, the chance to be like him, to share their minds and feelings. She had been horrified. He had at first assumed that she thought the intimacy would be too much for her, the stakes too high if something happened to either of them. Only later had Talia admitted that even though she loved him, she was frightened of what he was. But here was a woman who wasn’t scared. He should have been thrilled to have found someone who would join him forever, in whatever form they took. And yet her eagerness concerned him.

  “I’m not a real boy,” he said. “I’ve still got strings.”

  “I know what you are,” she said.

  “That’s why you’re here? With me? You want me to give you that?”

  “I mean, look at this place! We could live here. We don’t need TCoMT. And this is who I want to be. I could make this—”

  “We’re not the same,” he said. “Back on the Zumwalt, you mentioned the Joni Mitchell song ‘Both Sides Now.’ I told you that it related to me, and you said nothing. But you had a reaction. Why say it?”

  Her face fell. She had played her cards too early. “I get all of this. I get change. And abandonment and isolation. Better than you know. This is me, too. I wanted you to know I understood. I’m like you.”

  “No,” he said. “You’re not. I’m using tech to upload and download and manipulate what living means, because I’m so far gone, I can’t care what happens. I’m not a me. I’m the biggest lab rat in the world. You’re using technology to become the real you. There’s a difference.”

  “But I could help so much more! And, like, I just want to be with you . . . uhhh!” She slammed her hand on the floor in frustration. The library shook.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t give you that.”

  She slipped farther away and hugged her knees into her chest. “So you go back to real life.”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “I could turn my back on everything and live here forever.”

  She looked confused. “But, you said to me in the car you had no choice. There was no one else like you.”

  He turned away from her. “But there is. Carter.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not the same. And only you can stop him.”

  “Once again, you have greater faith in me than I do. Carter’s been more than a step ahead since I met him back in college.”

  Ruth interrupted with a text message for them both: Wake up. And look at this. Now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  He opened his eyes in real space to find Veronika wrapped around him. They were in his tiny s
hip bunk. Their clothes were still on. She wore a haptic bodysuit under her T-shirt and long cotton skirt, the same body-sensation unit that the Companibots owner had worn. Their bodies still shivered from the physical expression of their digital experience. His crotch was wet and cold. She still looked upset.

  Ruth’s news was another video from an anonymous and encrypted source. Amanda stood at an antique wooden conference table. Her hair was cut in a sleek, attractive bob and dyed the same shiny black that it had been before her pregnancies and the troubles. Her copper-toned features were enhanced with tasteful makeup. Her once bushy eyebrows were plucked into graceful arches. She was dressed in a chic, form-fitting suit and projected a vision of feminine power and authority that he had never seen in her before.

  It appeared that a meeting had just broken up. He noted the hastily abandoned glasses of water and cups of coffee, the heavily upholstered chairs around her, the antiques, the classical molding around the ceiling, and a single-paneled door leading into the room. There were no windows.

  She stared with confidence into a camera. “Hi, Pete. I think you need to see this.” She gestured to a large HOME screen behind her.

  News clips ran. Major Tom, a.k.a. Thomas Paine, had committed an act of war on the sovereign Southern States of America, killing tens of thousands of the homeless waiting at Port Everglades for help from President Conrad. Tom had whipped the homeless into a rebellious fervor, then slaughtered them. Conrad was denouncing Tom as a terrorist, and he and his comrades as dangerous coconspirators. A consortium of nations was banding together to eliminate Major Tom, and the SSA would crack down on anyone caught helping the fugitives. Martial law would be instituted.

  Amanda’s smile contained a touch of pity. “Pete, you can see, can’t you, that there’s no way out? Carter’s way is the only way. I don’t want to see you or him hurt anymore. I can’t stand it. Come help us, instead. We can be the Three Musketeers again. Please, Pete. Come back.”

  As freshmen at Stanford, Amanda and Carter had both called the three of them The Three Musketeers. Back then, they had indeed stood all for one and one for all, even if Amanda and Peter had paired off and married. But this didn’t seem like Amanda. She wasn’t as soft in her movements, nor as angry or pricking to his ego. Amanda knew how to get under his skin in an indirect way—like when she had wanted to get pregnant, or when she had miscarried, or when he had visited her as a robot—and she was not doing it now. Her most potent weapon was going unused. Carter had rarely seen their fights. They reserved that behavior for each other in private. Tom saw no evidence in her mannerisms indicating how much both men’s actions had devastated her. She would have used that, too.