Idempotency

by Joshua Wright

  Church bells began to ring out, rudely cutting off Kane’s speech. The entire cloister ceiling darkened momentarily, then erupted into action, as a kilometer-wide vision of the underside of a bell lit up the media-enabled glass panels of the ceiling. The bell swung in unison to the ubiquitous sound reverberating around the guests. The bass shook Dylan’s innards. He guffawed as he craned his neck upward to take in the awesome spectacle.

  “I have never seen anything so grand,” Dylan remarked.

  Kane spoke again the moment the bells ended. “Well, I could discuss these details ad nauseam, but there’s plenty of time to do this the next few days. We’ll let the bells serve as my curtain call. I’ll let the two of you find your rooms, and we’ll meet at noon on the twenty-seventh-floor vista for lunch. It overlooks the external mountainside, rather than this courtyard. There are many alternate paths to arrive at your rooms, but I’d recommend taking the grand staircase on either side of us. At the top, you will find an open-air elevator that will take you up. At the bottom is park access. Any questions?”

  Dylan had hundreds. “Nope, not at the moment,” he responded.

  “Excellent.” Kane twirled, clicked something on his ear, began speaking to someone or something, and walked away using short and hurried steps.

  Dylan turned to look at Kimberly, who was staring back at him with a large smile. He shook his head and smiled back at her.

  “It’s a bit overwhelming the first time, right?” she asked.

  “You bet.” Again he chuckled as he looked around. “Just the ceiling alone—that giant bell—It’s insane. I can’t believe you—we—have done all of this.”

  “It’s a great thing we’re doing here,” she responded.

  “Yes, it’s a great thing,” Dylan responded in kind, still disturbed by the odd phrase.

  Kimberly grabbed her bags, told Dylan she looked forward to seeing him during dinner, and headed up to her room. Dylan grabbed his own bags and walked over to the edge of the gallery. He leaned on an ornate marble railing and stared at the massive indoor park.

  An anxious feeling crept over him, as if a spider were slowly scuttling down a web just beyond his periphery. He stared at a throng of people meandering around a gazebo near the entrance to the park below him. His eyes blurred, and he noted a person standing within the gazebo. She was standing perfectly still. His eyes focused, and he saw the expressionless woman staring at him.

  “Sabrina,” he whispered.

  His bags dropped to the floor and he took off running. He descended the grand staircase three steps at a time. He lost sight of her as he reached ground level, but sprinted toward her location. He began to call out her name, softly at first, but soon he was shouting. He shoved a few people out of the way and they looked back at him as if he was crazy.

  Maybe I am crazy, he thought as he reached the gazebo, only to find it empty.

  Chapter Thirty

  Kristina had become uneasy about Dylan’s trip to Mexico the instant he mentioned it to her over holoVid. At one point, she’d even asked him to consider quitting altogether. Dylan put on a confident smile and assured her that SOP would be watching his every step, but that assurance had rung hollow. Kristina had an uncanny knack of knowing when Dylan was lying. And he had been lying.

  After blowing Dylan a kiss good night, she hung up her holoVid and barely summoned the energy to step into the shower. Her short hair washed and dried fast, and within fifteen minutes she found herself in bed, trying to read herself to sleep.

  It wasn’t working.

  She waved aside the floating holoBook above her head and thought about Dylan. She wondered, as she had so many nights over the past few months, whether she was doing the right thing. Doubts crept in, as they always did. Could they really make a difference in the world? SOP had been trying for the better part of a decade and nothing ever seemed to change.

  A light knock fell upon her window, and her head swiveled in its direction. She held her breath, staring at the updated windows within the old brick, and just before she exhaled, the tapping came again.

  She bolted out of bed, crept to the side of the window, and risked a cautious glance outside. Sitting still on the ledge, a pigeon cocked its head and stared her in the eye. She asked her home to crack the window. Her home obliged, and the pigeon ducked inside the window and lowered its head.

  As she neared it, she realized it was mechanical and, more important, that a note was affixed to its lowered neck. She untied a piece of string and grabbed the rolled-up note. The android pigeon bowed, then flapped its polymer wings and was gone in an instant.

  Kristina unfurled the note, but it was full of hexidecimal gibberish ciphertext. She immediately recalled the key Simeon had made her memorize: Being aware of your fears will improve your life.

  She fed the key into several simple decryption algorithms. It took less than a second for the plaintext message to be discovered:

  You’re needed. Leave tonight. Hire a driver. Go to Laughlin, Nevada. Section 5, row 18, yurt 1. Plan on staying some time.

  Kristina’s heart raced, but not nearly as fast as her feet raced toward her closet door to pack.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Dylan sat on the edge of his bed panting loudly. His mind was a confused, warped lump of tissue. Memories from two different men swirled together as one. He tried to focus, pleading with his weathered brain to retrieve the proper data, just this once. But the dueling memories—the dueling lives of two different selves—were battling over a table for one.

  After finding the empty gazebo, Dylan had labored up the elevator shaft and into his room with the help of his companion. On his way upward, memories of Dalton’s life bombarded his brain. His face was flushed with anger toward Sabrina.

  What I wouldn’t give to give that bitch a piece of my mind! his head screamed to itself. This is madness. She’s not real. I am not Dalton! There is no Dalton, there is no Sabrina.

  Visibly shaken, he had apologized to the onlookers around the gazebo that he was feeling ill. They didn’t seem to care and soon went about their day. He had felt woozy to the point of passing out, as if he had just downed a bottle of vodka five minutes earlier. His steps had become sloppy, and he remembered thinking he was lucky to have the holoAssistants, as they helped direct him to his room. He remembered his door, the edge of his bed—breathing slowly. Then darkness, as a stressful sleep settled in.

  Dylan now held a damp washcloth in his right hand. It was the first thing he had done after waking up from a brief, twenty-minute nap. He raised the cloth to his brow every ten seconds, like clockwork. His mind raced as he tried to grapple with reality. Maybe he’d just seen someone who looked similar to Sabrina.

  No! The golden hair and green eyes—it had to be her.

  Tossing multifarious possibilities over in his mind only seemed to make the memories swirl closer together. Dylan glanced at the clock with trepidation—twenty more minutes before he had to meet Kane. Twenty minutes to pull himself together. He rubbed his eyes, then brushed his thick hair back several times while dabbing his forehead once more. His mind felt like a piece of flammable plastic thrown into a starving fire; it slowy twisted and became malformed as the fire burned more brightly every passing moment. And he felt its heat against his forehead.

  An antique clock ticked noisily behind him and Dylan turned to stare it down, but it was incorrigible. He gave up the battle and took notice of the room for the first time. The company had placed him in a suite on the top floor. The furnishings and decorations were impeccable and lavish. Dylan guessed that his bed’s headboard alone—an ornately hand-carved monstrosity—was worth more than all of his worldly possessions combined. The rest of the room followed suit: thick curtains laced with gold, a mirror hanging in a perfectly polished frame of silver, an armoire that must have been older than any living human. This was a room for a king, Dylan thought . . . or a pope.

  Potent—That was my signal to Simeon. My safe word, Dylan thought. If ever I
needed some help, this is probably it. He opened his BUI and typed up a quick text to Frank:

  Made it to Mex. Some potent sun down here, hoping the salsa is equally potent. Let’s grab a beer when I’m back.

  Dylan glanced at the clock. He had ten minutes to make it to the seventy-fifth floor for lunch with Kane. He exited his room and began walking back to the main hall, but as he rounded a corner, a holoPod sprung to life to his right, causing him to jump back in surprise. The image of a generic man’s torso and face floated atop a round base. The base was short, coming up to Dylan’s knee, which caused the entire holoPod to appear short, as the assistant’s holographic head only rose to Dylan’s mid-section. Under normal circumstances, Dylan found the devices off-putting; now, they were downright frightening.

  “Hello Mr. Dansby,” spoke the smiling holographic face, “I suggest you turn around and head in the other direction. It’s a shorter route to the seventy-fifth-floor overlook.”

  Dylan squinted at the wavering, generic-looking torso and head. He did as he was told and spun around. As he began walking, holoPods seemed to pop up out of nowhere, instructing to take lefts, rights, magLifts up, staircases down. Each subsequent holoPod that appeared seemed just a bit happier than the last one.

  In tandem, two holoPods guarding the entrance to a cavernous hallway popped up and spoke simultaneously, “Almost there, Mr. Dansby, just through this next hallway.”

  He entered, and the hallway seemed to darken with each step he took. The once stark white of the walls had, at some point—and Dylan couldn’t recall when it had happened—changed to a dark brown. There were no discernible doors or windows in this hallway, and it seemed to be narrowing without actually shrinking in size. Dylan shook his head, and just as he was about to ask the holoPods behind him, Are you sure I’m heading the right direction? he turned around and saw that the entrance had somehow disappeared. The hallway now appeared unending in both directions.

  A booming sound rang out around him as a brilliant flash of white light erupted in front of him. He began to back up slowly in shock and confusion, and as his eyes adjusted again to the low light, he saw a silhouette coming toward him.

  “Dalton, you are to come with me.” The female voice sounded familiar, as if he had known it for many years.

  The silhouette reached out toward Dylan, and in her hand was a stasis inducer. She pointed it at him and said, “Dalton, follow me.”

  I know this person, he thought. Of course I know my own wife. My own murderess wife.

  Dylan gritted his teeth, fighting back the urge to remember someone else’s memories.

  Or have they been my memories all along?

  “This isn’t real, Dalton, it’s all in your head. Now walk that way.” She motioned down the hallway with her stasis inducer.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I can shoot you and drag you with me. It’s your choice.”

  He started to walk, and as he passed her, he smelled her perfume and vowed that he would kill this woman, this murderer of children, the first chance he got.

  “Walk faster, Dalton,” she demanded.

  “My name is . . . it’s Dylan. I’m not—Dalton. What is going on?” Dylan’s head ached.

  She laughed. “You can be whoever you want to be, hon. I don’t give a damn. Go through the double doors.”

  Dalton looked over her shoulder at his once-dead wife. She motioned him forward. He turned around and opened the doors in front of him. A beam of white light erupted around them as he entered the room beyond. The door shut behind them.

  He felt water against his arms. A subtle mist was floating around them. He glanced backward and saw the closed door, standing upright with no support, alone, no walls, no ceiling. The door, his dead wife pointing a stasis inducer at him, and he (whoever he might be) stood alone on a sidewalk. A light rain danced around them. The air was chilled, but above freezing and there was no wind. In front of them were steps leading up to the Saint James Cathedral in downtown Seattle. This place was unknown to Dalton, as his deathTrip had ended the moment Sabrina had died.

  Sabrina slowly lowered her weapon, then tossed it into the street behind her.

  “Have you wondered, Dalton, what happened after I told you how I aborted your children? You wanted children so bad, and I ripped them out of myself with an old, rusty hanger. One little guy’s heart was still beating when I squished his little head—”

  Dalton lunged at his wife, wrapping his hands around her throat. He squeezed and she began to gasp, but she didn’t fight. The harder he squeezed, the more insane her smile became. Her body began to shake after sixty seconds. Still, she didn’t fight. Around the two-minute mark, her legs became limp, and then they fell as one onto the wet sidewalk at the base of the stairs; Dalton straddling Sabrina’s limp body.

  She spasmed and seemed to make a last-ditch effort to speak. He loosened his grip slightly and she choked out the following words: “You have it backward, sweetie. Dalton is the real person . . . Dylan is the deathTrip.”

  Dalton looked upon Sabrina, enmity lining the creases of his face, and he squeezed a final time. The life twitched out of her body.

  Dylan brought his hands up to his face and stared at them. He wondered what Kristina would think of him, and he began to cry.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Dalton stared at the corpse beneath him while Dylan simultaneously thought of Kristina.

  “Hello, Dalton,” spoke a raspy voice.

  Dylan/Dalton—Dylton—looked upward, toward the cathedral. As if he were an angel sent from the heavens, Rev. Edward Lee Coglin materialized at the top step of the cathedral.

  “Dalton, my name is Edward Lee Coglin. Do you recognize me?”

  Dylton was scrambled, confused, two selves entwined in one. He replied as such: “You . . . you’re an older version of Dalton. An older version of me—of him.”

  “That’s right, Dalton, I’m an older version of yourself. Have you ever wondered what happened after the evening Sabrina told you that she murdered our children?”

  “I have. He has,” replied Dylton.

  “Wonderful, then allow me to show you. I’ll show everything.”

  Rev. Coglin wore a comforting smile and held out his hand. Dylton was so confused at this point that he would have accepted help from the devil—which was, more or less, exactly what he was doing.

  [KyaOk@nrs.corp.mx 11:57:34] OK, Sabrina, put him down.

  Behind Dylan, Sabrina shot up from her recumbent position. She pointed her index finger at Dylan and fired a small needle into the back of his neck. Dylan collapsed onto the sidewalk.

  Coglin’s holoVid stared at Dylan with sympathy. He looked up at nothing in particular and said, “Keep me posted. As soon as you know anything, I better know it too.”

  “Yes, Reverend, I’ll keep you posted.”

  Dozens of floors above Dylan, Dr. Kya Okafor sat on an ergonomic standing stool, sick to her stomach, watching a holoVid of the interaction between Dylan and an EarthwideGamingCorp android modeled after Sabrina, the wife from Dylan’s deathTrip. Rather, the wife in the deathTrip had been modeled after the android, but who’s keeping track? thought Kya. She absently pulled at her lower lip as she watched intently.

  The Sabrina droid stood up, walked over to Dylan, and laid a hand on his forehead. A cornucopia of metrics blazed into holographic life around Dr. Okafor. She soaked up the information, forming quick theories and following up with dozens of further questions. She waved her long, tanned arms madly in front of her, desperate to find more meaningful metrics.

  One fact was screaming out through the noise of data: Dylan’s brain was confused. A war was raging between Dylan’s occipital cortex (the portion of the brain activated when using imagination) and his anterior medial prefrontal and posterior cingulated cortices (the areas of the brain that engage when dealing with reality). The data was definitive: Dylan had lost all sense of what was real versus imagined. His mind was now fungible.

  Dr
. Okafor’s three lab assistants buzzed around her as they readied monitoring and transfer-actuation equipment that surrounded a flat metal table, which was topped with a firm, form-fitting cushion that would soon be the final resting place of Dylan’s contorted body and mind.

  Without removing her eyes from the holoVid of Dylan and the Sabrina droid, she asked her assistants, “Are we ready?”

  Two different answers came back, neither of which satisfied Kya. With an emphatic zeal, she demanded they find a way to speed up their preparation.

  “Well, hurry up, please—Dylan’s mind is ripe for the . . .”

  Kya hesitated.

  Dr. Okafor hated hesitation.

  Fourteen universities had happily accepted Kya into their ranks with full scholarships, no less. A driven individual since childhood, Kya was raised by a single mother who had worked two jobs. Together the pair overcame insurmountable odds. Kya watched as her hero, her mother, slaved away during the days (and often the evenings, too) in jobs that were far below her intellect, simply to give Kya a proper home in a part of town that would ensure she received the best public education. They lived a middle-class lifestyle on lower-class wages. As Kya grew into an awkward teenager, she vowed to live up to her mother’s lofty work ethic and become the first of her family to graduate from university.