The Dreams of the Black Butterfly

by Mark James Barrett

  “You’re going to pay for this, neighbour.”

  “Good morning it is, Mr. Schema. Just confirm by opening your new eyes upon your new first day.”

  Daniel rubbed his eyes. “Aren’t I the lucky one?”

  After his physical checks and breakfast, he was summoned for an assessment.

  “How are you feeling today?” Dr Gene-Mart asked, looking over her horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Great! What’s the point of them?” Daniel gestured at the glasses.

  “Just image reinforcement; they subconsciously reassure patients of my intellectual capacity.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you ever get tired of being so awkward, Mr Schema?”

  “Yes I do actually, which is why I want to be dead.”

  “I’m sorry, but we are contractually obliged to keep regenerating you. Your parents are very concerned, not to mention embarrassed.”

  “How would you know?”

  “We discussed–”

  “Why would they discuss anything with a bronze?”

  The doctor sighed. “It’s a top policy, you really should be grateful.”

  “For what? Dragging me back from heaven?” He regretted the words instantly.

  “Heaven was disproved twenty-five years ago, Mr Schema, thanks to what we learned from the Malaysian black butterfly. Unless you have something momentous to offer us after your experiences?”

  Daniel glared at her.

  “I didn’t think so. Well, if you consent, we can alter your neuroses so that you don’t want to die anymore.”

  “Maybe it’s not where it used to be.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Heaven. All the souls may have left it and moved on to someplace we can’t find.”

  Gene-Mart sniggered. “Forgive me, Mr Schema. Where did you download such absurdity?”

  He put his head into his hands. “I didn’t; my grandfather thinks … It doesn’t matter.” He looked up again suddenly. “Have I changed since my first regeneration? I mean, am I still the old Daniel?”

  “Of course you are. The problem of continuity of consciousness is really just a philosophical one, Mr Schema. Aren’t we recreated every moment into a new moment, a new experience and a new existence?”

  “I had strange thoughts in my original,” he whispered.

  “When?”

  “The first time I disconnected. I think I lost something in regen. I think we all do.”

  Dr Gene-Mart sighed. “We are a little nonplussed at your behaviour. Hopefully Bioinformatics will yield some answers. We think it may be a nonsense mutation in your DNA sequence, one we haven’t encountered before.” She smiled. “Of course, it may be that you are simply over energising your thinking. Most people cannot afford a second chance, let alone a third. You’re a Goldtint living in the age of enlightenment. Enjoy yourself.”

  Daniel sat up again, feeling a little dizzy. “I’d like to kill you physical,” he said and was rewarded with an involuntary stiffening of the doctor’s posture.

  “You could pay for a clone?”

  “Not a clone: you, Gene-Mart.”

  “Killing me would not benefit you in any way. I have a comprehensive policy and after regeneration I would be authorised to have you transplanted” – She pointed a beautifully lacquered finger at his head – “into an animal of my choice.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. He knew she was scared despite her display of calm. Pain was pain after all and she couldn’t be sure the room would bring him down in time if he did decide to move on her. It was all there in her eyes, for just a second. Daniel leaned forward and she flinched. “My policy provides for five regenerations I understand.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then I need only have this conversation three more times.”

  Dr Gene-Mart switched off her file and stood up. “Have a nice day, Mr Schema.”

  “As short as I can make it.”

  She left him with the pre-life tutorial burning his retinas. It was another three days before they allowed him to leave.

  He had forgotten all about the giraffe.

  “Bugger!” he shouted as his house went into operation. “How long have you been waiting?”

  There was a brief pause in which he could see something in the animal’s tiny eyes, searching for an appropriate answer.

  “Thirteen weekth,” it slobbered.

  “I say, you’ve got a terrible lisp there.”

  “What ith a lithp?”

  “Never mind. Let’s have a look at your room.” He followed the ungainly animal through to a room that reeked of coconut. Daniel surveyed the new room for a few moments. It was filled with dwarf acacias and equipped with a cleansing hole to suck away the animal’s scented waste.

  “You have opened your bowels it seems.”

  “What ith–?”

  “Forget it. Acacia trees sweet enough for you?”

  “Yeth, very nith.”

  “Well, watch those thorns, they look dreadfully sharp.”

  Natalie was waiting for him in the living area. She didn’t sing for him.

  “I have booked the vacation for this Wednesday. Please make sure you are here for it. I now have other offers I think would suit you.” She was still bristling from their previous encounter. She spoke curtly, her South African accent heavier than usual. It made her even more attractive.

  “Why do you never ask me about how I feel, about why I keep–?”

  “That is not within my remit, Daniel. You know that.”

  “Do you really love me?”

  Natalie’s face softened. “Of course. Why else would I be here?”

  Daniel downloaded the recording of his latest demise and watched it a dozen times. He found it quite funny. His parents would not, however. This time, apart from the damage to their Brandname, he had also cost them credit rather than made some. He spent an hour in his sexroom, which had received a scheduled upgrade while he had been away. He used some of the sex experience he had negotiated with Nurse Amber. Full immersion virtuality allowed him to relive one of her sexploits through the retinas of a bull of a man, Nordic-looking, who had got too emotionally involved and done some un-negotiated damage to one of her clones. It was simultaneously quite exhilarating and depressing. He wanted the real Natalie, wanted to treat her better than that.

  Natalie tried to sell him a sample from the new range of Screen Idols when he came back. It was poor timing. The advertisement jumped into sharp focus in the centre of his living space. His nose was filled with aromas of bergamot and orange blossom as the idols sauntered towards him holding hands. They were the Classics Stable: Monica Bellucci, George Clooney, Clive Owen and Angelina Jolie; fifteen vouchers or five hundred thousand dollars a night and twenty thousand for the pre-teen range. He looked across at his housemate, who was standing, hands on hips, watching him intently. The giraffe had joined them.

  “I don’t want this,” he protested.

  Natalie pointed for him to continue watching. George Clooney asked Daniel some intimate questions and he was not forthcoming. It faded out early after a few more torturous minutes.

  “How embarrassing,” Natalie said.

  “I don’t want Hollywood clones.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you.”

  “You have me, Daniel.”

  “I want a family.”

  “With me? That’s out of your price range and unethical besides. Miss Gallo, I mean I … never had children. I was murdered, remember?”

  “I know … It’s authentically sad.”

  Natalie shrugged. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, chosen by the housing developer after they had recorded Daniel’s reactions to a million stimuli. He w
as not alone in that regard. She was the most popular female housemate in the country, had been for close on three seasons, since she had been classified as the most beautiful woman ever by Time Home Management. It wasn’t fair; Daniel had always had a Natalie, even when there had been such a craze on Emmanuelle Béart two years ago. One hundred and twenty million other people having Natalie as their housemate somehow made her slightly less attractive. Just recently, Daniel had found himself wondering if the original Gallo had been different to the twenty clones now under licence. Now, he had an overwhelming urge to get away from her for a while. He decided to visit his grandfather. While he waited for a cab, he ordered some mountain air for his neighbour, Levi: an apology for dying on the man’s property.

  Within half an hour he was at The Perpetual Evening Retirement Home. A porter led him down a long, grey corridor of closed doors. The whole building seemed to be made up of corridors. Finally, the porter stopped at a door and ushered him in.

  The sky was cloudless. Daniel carefully made his way down into the steep-sided quarry, avoiding spreads of moss and occasional tufts of wild grass. Here and there, the roots of dead trees hung out of the chalk. He shaded his eyes with his hand as he looked across the deep, still pond that lay a few yards in front of him. His grandfather sat on the other side on an old wicker basket, a fishing rod perched on two rests beside him. Daniel waved. The old man gave an almost imperceptible nod and Daniel made his way over.

  “Hi, Grandfather. How are you?”

  “Grandfather? I told you before, don’t come down here spouting that bullshit to me.”

  Daniel adjusted his teller to match the old man’s vernacular.

  “Sorry, Gramps. How are you?”

  “Dead, and you?”

  “I’m fine. You’re hardly dead, Gramps.”

  “Oh yes, I’m retired aren’t I?”

  They always started with this. His grandfather needed to get it all off his chest before they could speak of anything else.

  “I voted for another regeneration, you know that?”

  “I also know your parents outvoted you and had me retired after two regens – as soon as they could do so by law in other words. Yet your dad’s had six and that bitch he married must be into double figures.”

  “Eight this June.”

  Daniel watched the tip of the float slide away into the dark water. The old man, who had been holding his hands over the rod like a jaded gunslinger at his holsters, now lifted the rod swiftly and the tip of it began to quiver. A dirty, green tench was soon in his hands. He unhooked it and flung it on the dirt beside his basket, where it flapped listlessly.

  “Aren’t you going to put it back?”

  “Why?” the old man laughed.

  “I don’t know. It seems cruel is all.”

  He watched the fish’s glistening sides began to matt as it flipped and gasped in the dust.

  “Eight? That is a goddamn disgrace. How do they bypass the law like that?”

  “With a special dispensation because of the company’s contributions to society.”

  “Ha! Special dispensation my ass! That’s always been a euphemism for a big fat bribe. I started that company, ran it when it was respectable. Now it’s just a way of making people want whatever shit you happen to be peddling this season.”

  Daniel couldn’t remember if his grandfather had been this cantankerous before retirement. Maybe, but he wasn’t supposed to be now, not according to his retirement policy. It was a good thing Daniel’s mother never visited her father-in-law; she would have certainly had some alterations made. Of course he had never been a lovable old curmudgeon either, more a ruthless businessman, but the stereotype in the program was agreeable to Daniel.

  The old man hooked another maggot and flung the line across the water. Daniel sat down on the chair next to him. It was the only other physical object in the room.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yep!” he never took his eyes off the water.

  “What was it like before?”

  “Before what?”

  “The Neural Web.”

  “I don’t know, quieter I guess.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Pretty much.” He gave Daniel a quizzical look and smiled. “I bet you’ve got a hundred people badgering you right now haven’t you?”

  The wind got up a little, pulling the line out across the water. The old man turned the reel and tightened the line.

  “Aggie was here again.”

  Daniel thought about the attempt the retirement home had made at recreating his grandma from the family’s memories. It had been a complete disaster. “Gramma died before this new procedure came along. You know that?”

  “Well, I see her out the corner of my eye sometimes, just wandering around … She cries a lot.”

  “How can she be here?”

  “I’m guessing she has nowhere else to go.”

  After a while, he stood and reeled his line in. “Come on; we’ll try under the willows. I reckon they’ll be headed for the shade now.”

  Daniel folded his chair. His grandfather went ahead with the basket on his back and the rod in his hand, planting his feet carefully on the uneven ground as he made his way around the pond. Daniel flicked sweat away from his forehead as he walked. They sat in the shade of the willow trees for an hour, but didn’t get another bite.

  “I might not be back to see you again,” Daniel said.

  “Found a way out?”

  “I think so.”

  “Where are you going, son?”

  Daniel knew that what stood in front of him at that moment was merely a free-thinking composite programme based upon everything that was ever recorded of his grandfather, but occasionally it felt like something more.

  “I don’t know, Gramps. Heaven I hope.”

  The representation smiled grimly. “I think you already tried that. The last time I saw Aggie around here, you were with her.”

  An envelope was waiting for Daniel back at reception. A message from the badly tinted man again. He read the handwritten note, but his mind was on what his grandfather had said.

  “Today’s the day,” he said, staring at the paper. He fired the pump into his arm and hurried home, feeling a strange detachment to any action he chose now.

  As he entered his house, the Biometrics warned him he was showing acute anxiety. His Harmoniser compensated, taking the edge from his panic as he went to work. He followed the precise instructions on the note. Natalie, unable to read his thoughts, became suspicious. She came out naked to see what he was up to.

  What are you doing, Daniel? Look at me. Why are you censoring?

  Daniel did not look at her, but it was so difficult. He could see the graceful lines of her body out of the corner of his eye. He stood in the centre of the room, staring at the note, his eyes blinking rapidly as he negotiated the lengthy and numerous procedures needed to turn his home off. The walls of his house darkened and a deep, tremulous music played as he thought his way through checks, queries, warnings and veiled threats from his utility suppliers.

  “Stop this, please! We can be together, Daniel! I can negotiate it!” Natalie insisted, forcing a smile.

  He looked into her raw, blue eyes, flashing between melancholy and mischief. “Physical,” he demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “But I still won’t know what she was really like … the original I mean: the girl who wrote those songs, who died for her beliefs.”

  Natalie opened her arms. “That’s me, Daniel.”

  “No, the original is unique.” He clenched his fists. “You lose something when you first die, something you can’t replace. I threw it all away.”

  “Threw what away?”

  “The old me … the real me. I didn’t kno
w what I had because it was drowned out by all this shit.” Daniel smacked the side of his head savagely. He went back to the note and continued its instructions. Natalie sent him some images: the two of them were in a log-built house by the edge of a wood. They were playing with a boy and a girl who looked just like them.

  “You lie!” he screamed.

  “Look, a family!” she sobbed. “Please, Daniel … I love you!”

  She had never said that before. He put his hand out and pointlessly tried to wipe away her tears. “The real Natalie wouldn’t love me.”

  Twenty minutes later, he let the note fall from his trembling hand. The house was quiet and colourless. Natalie was gone; she had blinked out mid-scream some five minutes previously. For a few seconds, he simply listened to his own breathing while the sweat dripped from his nose. He called in the giraffe. The creature sat in front of him nervously.

  “Would you like oral or intercourth?”

  “Neither,” Daniel instructed. “I want to ask you some questions.”

  The giraffe nodded its patchwork head.

  “Many years ago, your ancestors lived freely in Africa. Do you know of this?”

  The giraffe thought for a moment. “What ith Africa?”

  “It’s a dead country.”

  “What ith anthethtors?”

  “Never mind. Are you happy here?”

  “I am happy with you.”

  “You’ve no dignity.”

  “What ith dignity?”

  “It’s just a word I guess.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Somebody’s knocking at my door. Isn’t that quaint, Miss Giraffe? I just thought … Do you have a name? Am I supposed to name you?”

  “My name ith–”

  “Doesn’t matter! Come in, come in, whoever you are!”

  A man came into the house and paused in the living room doorway. He admired the giraffe. “I’ve always wanted a Cleverpet.”

  Daniel recognised the man who had given him the note in the street. “Who are you?”

  “Mr Link. You were led to me a year ago through some intermediaries. You asked me to arrange a permanent.”

  Mr Link slid into the room, stopping by the giraffe to pat its head. The animal turned away from his attentions.