by Neal Jones
Laura nodded. "You're right. It's time to focus." She took off the faded pair of blue sweatpants and opened her closet. "There's something I need to do first, and then I'll be right back here for dinner and movies."
Jeanette sighed. "You're going to talk to Marc, aren't you?"
"Yes. I need to apologize to him for my behavior at dinner the other night, and it's past time that he and I had some closure."
Jeanette watched her mother dress, a skeptical look on her face. Suddenly her eyes widened. "You're going to tell him about my birthday."
"Yes. He deserves to know the truth, and..." Laura paused as she pulled on her blouse and straightened her hair. "And...well, it's time we got it all out in the open," she finished hurriedly. "Give me half an hour, okay?"
"Okay."
( 3 )
Laura pressed the door chime for the third time, but there was still no answer from the other side. She sighed and pursed her lips as she contemplated her next move. Marc was either not home or passed out on his couch. She waited for another second or two, and then pressed a different button on the door's panel.
"Computer, what is the location of Marcus Gabriel?"
"Commodore Marcus Gabriel is in Hiver-3."
"Thank you."
Laura debated with herself for a couple minutes, and then decided that this was too important to leave until tomorrow. She would rather not interrupt Marc's recreation time, but this was important, and the sooner she started it, the sooner it would be over.
But the doctor hesitated once more outside the entrance to Hiver-3. Good manners dictated that one not interrupt another's holographic simulation for the sake of privacy, and Laura glanced at the section of the com panel where a privacy lock would be displayed. There was none. That, in itself, didn't mean that the operator wanted to be disturbed, but most people who enjoyed using the Hivers for sexual fantasies always made sure to engage the privacy lock after entering. This ensured that no one could enter the simulation without the door being unlocked from the inside.
Laura tapped her commlink. "Doctor Sysko to Commodore Gabriel." No response. She repeated the request. Still no response. "All right, fine," she muttered. "Marc, I hope to god you're not naked." She pressed the command to open the door.
On the other side was a front hall, a rather nice one at that, with a ceramic tiled floor, and a large mirror hanging above an oak side table. On the table was a vase of roses, and a hand carved coat rack hung on the wall beside the mirror. Laura stepped into the hall and peered to the right. The living room was as nice as the hall, and the bay windows offered a lovely view of the sea coast at sunset.
"Mars," Laura murmured. "I don't believe it."
"Hi mom!" Laura's head whipped to the left, and she gasped at the sight of Jeanette, but not Jeanette as she was now. This girl was eight, or maybe nine, and while she didn't look exactly as Jeanette had appeared at that age in real life, this holographic simulation was so close that Laura almost reached out a hand to smooth back those few errant strands of her daughter's hair that had always fallen into her eyes.
"Mom, what's the matter? And did you change clothes after dinner?"
"What?" Laura finally managed. "Uh...yes, I did. I spilled some coffee on my shirt. Where's your father?"
"He's in his office."
"Mom, is it okay if I play my game for another half hour? My homework's all done, I promise. You can check it if you want." This was a boy's voice. He appeared at the end of the hall behind Jeanette, and Laura gave another gasp.
"Who are you?" she blurted.
"Um...is that a trick question?"
"Mom, it's Jackson," Jeanette said. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"Who's Jackson?"
The boy laughed. "Mom, you're hilarious. So can I?"
"What? Yes, sure. Whatever." Laura's head was starting to spin, and she searched for a chair.
Jeanette guided her into the living room, and Laura sank onto the sofa. Jackson had turned on the HT and was preparing to fight alien monsters.
"I'll go get dad," Jeanette said.
No sooner had the girl left the room than Laura's holographic counterpart appeared from another doorway to the left of the sofa. She glanced at Laura on the couch, and then both women did a double take.
"What the hell?" holographic Laura exclaimed.
The real Laura stood and faced her double. "So this is what he's been up to. Figures."
"What's going on?"
The two women turned as Marc stepped into the living room, followed closely by Jeanette.
"Whoa!" Jackson exclaimed, turning his attention away from his HT game. His character on screen was promptly slaughtered by a two-headed monster. "Cool! Mom has a twin!"
"Computer, freeze program." Marc started towards Laura but then hesitated. He could feel his cheeks reddening, and he didn't know what to say.
Laura found Marc's embarrassment amusing. "Quite a lovely family you have here. Nice house too."
"Computer, delete holo-"
"No, stop. Marc, it's all right. I'm not angry." She walked over to Jeanette and smoothed back the holographic strands of hair that had fallen across the child's forehead. "How old is she?"
"Almost ten."
"And the boy? What's his name?"
"Jackson. He's seven. We also have another son named Logan. He's three."
Laura nodded, looking around the living room. "This is a nice house. Why don't you give me a tour?"
"You're serious?"
"Yes," she replied, matter-of-fact. "This is a Franklin Gable, right? Twenty-third century?"
"Yes." Marc smiled as he led her into the hall and up the stairs. "I remembered that you said once you always wanted to live in a Franklin Gable house."
"I did. I started saving for it in college. The down payment was going to be a reward to myself after I graduated grad school."
"Is this what you live in now, back on Mars?"
"Not quite, but it's damn close. Is this Logan's room?"
"Yes. He's asleep right now, or, well, he would be if the program wasn't suspended."
Laura smiled as she peeked inside. "He looks like you."
"Thanks." Marc cleared his throat. "Our bedroom is there at the end of the hall, on the right."
"In my house it's at that end, on the left." Laura pointed over her shoulder. When she entered the bedroom she made a face. "These colors are hideous. You must have designed this."
Marc laughed. "No, I didn't, but I had no access to your psych profile, so the computer had to guess at your personality and your likes and dislikes."
"You should have known me well enough to know that blue is not my favorite color."
"Really? You said it was green."
"I don't like either."
"Oh." Marc followed her out of the bedroom and back down the hall to the stairs. "Do you want to see the back patio?"
"Sure." Laura descended the stairs. "Is that the kitchen through there?" She pointed to the door on the left.
"Yes. But you don't cook. I do remember that much. I'm actually the one who puts on a chef's hat every now and then."
"Really?" Laura smiled over her shoulder. "What all can you make?"
"Tonight we had fettuccini with shrimp alfredo."
"Mmmmmm. I remember that dish. And is this my study?" They were now at the end of the hall past the stairs.
"Yes." Marc pointed to the right. "Mine is at that end, opposite the door that goes out to the patio. The back yard is large enough for a swimming pool, but I haven't installed one yet."
"And what is it you do for a living in this world, Marc?" Laura peeked into his study.
"I'm a financial systems analyst."
"And that is..."
Marc laughed. "To be honest, I have no idea. I've actually done some research on what that job is, but I still don't quite understand it. It has something to do with money markets and banking, as well as stocks and bonds. I know that I'm employed by a bank, but that's about all I know
for sure."
Laura chuckled as she shut the door, shaking her head. "And I assume that I'm an anthro-tech engineer with FCE?"
"That's right."
Laura stepped out onto the patio. The sun had completely set, and three moons were already visible in the starry sky. But there was no sound of the tide along the coast, and the air was completely still. "It's beautiful out here."
"Summer is the best season on Mars. Computer, resume program, but suspend the characters Laura, Jeanette, Jackson and Logan from this program."
The computer obeyed, and a cool breeze wafted from the coast, seasoning the night air with scents of the ocean. The waves from the tide splashed upon the beach in soothing, comfortable rhythm.
Marc sat in one of the deck chairs and opened a nearby cooler. He tossed a beer to Laura as she sat beside him. "This is where I was when you arrived."
Laura didn't respond, instead taking a long pull from her beer as she looked out across the beach and the ocean beyond. "So this is what our life would have been like together," she said at last.
"Yes," Marc replied.
She looked at him. "And you can honestly tell me that this would have made you happy?"
"Yes."
Laura shook her head. "Describe to me again the job of a financial systems analyst."
Marc scowled and looked away.
"That's what I thought. You don't even know what that is."
"I would have attended a business school here on Mars," he said, turning back to her. "I would have learned everything I needed to know about that job!"
"And you would have been happy? Really, truly happy with your life? With our life??"
"Yes! Yes, I would! What about you? You did go to Mars, you live right now in a house like this one, and you married Alec. You raised Jeanette. None of that made you happy?"
Now it was her turn to look away.
"That's what I thought. So it was just living that life with me that wouldn't have made you happy?"
"No," she said after a moment, her voice so low that he almost didn't hear her. She turned to face him, and tears glistened in her eyes. She blinked and wiped them away, and then took another long swallow of beer. "It was supposed to have been with you, Marc, except I didn't realize that until it was too late. But I was already engaged to Alec, and you were already on your first assignment on the other side of the quadrant."
"I would have come back," he said quietly. "I would have left everything for you."
"Really?" Laura laughed. "After I ended the engagement and disappeared from your life overnight, you would have come back to me if I had written you a letter begging for your forgiveness and confessing my true love for you?"
Marc wasn't smiling. "Yes."
Laura's expression hardened. "Don't be ridiculous, Marc. After what I did to you, you would have been crazy to believe anything I said ever again."
"You don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?" She reached for another beer.
"I have been in love with you since that night that we met at that bar twenty-five years ago. It was when I walked you to the transport kiosk, and you did that thing you do with your lip whenever you get nervous, and you said goodnight to me. I didn't stop thinking about you all that week until our next date." He paused to finish his beer and reached for another. "For the two years that we were off and on, I never stopped thinking about you, and somewhere along the way I realized that I was in love with you, and I didn't care about anything else in the world – not my family, not my career in the navy, not my future – none of it mattered except you. So yes, even after leaving me a note and vanishing from my life that last time, I would have dropped everything and come running back to you if you had asked me to. That's what love is, Laura. It makes you do crazy, stupid things, and to everyone else it would have seemed utterly stupid and crazy of me to leave a promising career in EarthCorps for a woman who had broken my heart twice, but none of that would have mattered."
Laura blinked again, but this time she couldn't stop the tears, and she let them fall as she sipped her beer. After a minute or two of silence, she wiped her eyes and said, "I love you, Marc. I wanted to write that letter, and I almost did several times, but I couldn't believe that you would truly come back to me. It seemed ludicrous, and so I buried my feelings for you, and I pushed on with my life." She looked at him, but it was hard to make out his face in the dark. "You should know why I left you that last time."
"I already know why. You got scared."
"Yes, but not because you were willing to leave EarthCorps for me. That was part of it, but that wasn't the only reason." She hesitated, and she could feel his gaze through the dark, watching her and waiting. "Jeanette told you her birthday is February 24th, right?"
"Yes."
"It's actually January 24th." Laura waited, watching Marc's shadow, knowing the expression that was slowly crossing his face.
"You knew before I proposed."
"Yes. Almost three weeks." She expected fresh anger from him, but all she heard was a faint sigh and the swish of beer in the bottle as he raised it to drink.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
They had come to it at last. Laura hesitated, playing once more in her mind the speech she had carefully rehearsed on her way here tonight. But all she said was, "I didn't want to turn out like my mother?"
"What?"
"No, that's not what I meant." Laura stood and paced to the edge of the deck where she leaned on the railing and face Marc's outline. "I never told you a lot about my family. You know that my parents divorced when I was in college, a couple of years before you and I met, in fact. What I never told you was how badly that affected my mother. If it hadn't been for my brother Liam I probably would have ended up dropping out of school for a year to take care of her.
"The problem was my mother had no sense of independence. She came from a wealthy New England family, and she was one of those clichéd rich girls that ends up attending an ivy league school and marrying some rich boy who will take care of her for the rest of her life. Except that, like so many other clichés, her rich husband found some girl fifteen years later who was younger and better looking than my mother, and he ran off with her instead. And my mother was suddenly left with no career and two children still living at home, and she had no fucking clue how to take care of herself. My father at least left her the house in the divorce, but because of some legal loophole he got most of the money.
"She was devastated, Marc, and while my mother has always been a little on the melodramatic side, she really went overboard after the divorce. And all I could during the many screen calls I had with her during that year was think of how foolish she'd been to not see this coming. She was so naïve in so many ways, and instead of simply picking up the pieces and moving on, all she could do was whine and moan about how useless her college degree was, and how none of her girlfriends on the Garden Society Board or the Rotary Club were there to help her in her time of need, and what would she do for money now, and on and on and on."
Laura paused, looking down at her empty bottle. "These are holographic, too, right?"
"Nope. They're real. Are you feeling buzzed?"
"A little, yeah. Toss me another."
"Do you want some light?"
"No." Laura returned to her deck chair. "It's a little easier this way. Where was I?"
"You mother was complaining about the lack of help from her rich friends and her useless college degree."
"Oh, right. So, anyways, it was around that time that I promised myself I would never, ever turn into my mother. I wasn't going to pin all my hopes and dreams of happiness on someone else, much less a man, and my career would come first, family second."
Marc nodded. "And then you met me."
Laura gave a rueful laugh. "Yes. I hated you from the moment I met you because all I could do was think about you and that night we met at the bar. It was so cute the way you kept fidgeting with your uniform, and how you spent the whole night telling me
about your classes at the academy and your dream of commanding a starship someday. You never even asked me for my last name."
Marc laughed softly. "I remember. It was one of the best nights of my life."
Laura swallowed the lump in her throat, blinking back more tears, and she sipped her beer as she composed herself once more. "Yes, it was one of my favorites, too. And then we had our second date, and that went even better than the first –"
"-though it didn't go at all according to plan," Marc interjected.
"No, none of our dates ever went exactly as we planned. And that was even worse, because no matter what happened, I could never stop thinking about you. And then I realized I was probably falling for you, and it scared me."
"That's why you slept with Casen."
Laura cleared her throat, wiping her eyes as she said, "Yes." She choked back another sob and continued, "I hated it afterwards. I hated myself for doing that, and I tried to blame it on the fight you and I had had the week before, but that was just an excuse. I was scared of what I felt for you, Marc, and I was scared of where our relationship was headed –"
"Stop," he said. "I've heard enough."
"No, I need to tell you about that night you proposed. You need to know the truth."
"I can already guess it," he sighed. "You found out you were pregnant three weeks before that, and you kept it from me because, all of a sudden, you saw yourself turning into your mother. You were in love with me, you were pregnant with our child, and you were sure that you were going to have to drop out of grad school and follow me to my first assignment after my graduation from the academy. Have I got it right so far?"
Laura nodded, sniffling.
"And because you like to play the passive-aggressive game, you waited to see what my next move would be. And sure enough, I proposed three weeks later. And you said yes. And we fucked each other that night five times."
Laura was sobbing by now, and Marc felt a twinge of guilt for the sharpness of his words, but he reminded himself that she had wanted to continue this discussion. She had started all this.
"And the next morning we both left for class, and then I never saw you again after that. All I came home to that night was a note on my computer, and the ring sitting there beside it. Do you know what I felt then, Laura?"