by Nolan Edrik
She pictured Austin waking up, his bioframe sneering at her for disobeying his wishes. He’d leave her or blow his brains out. Her only option was to let him go.
Her reflection stared up at her from the pond, beckoning her to jump in. Not to drown, but to feel the shock of the cold, to let the wetness envelope her, to feel anything other than the knot inside her throat.
A voice called from across the pond. Nora looked up to see Louise waving.
*
Nora and Louise had reserved spots in the solarium to receive their monthlies. People who feared needles took their treatments in a darkened room and got knocked out for the two-hour visit. But Nora had read that watching the medicine drip from the IV bags into her veins and imagining the rejuvenation occurring inside her body made the process more effective. Louise preferred any scenario that allowed her to keep talking.
“Again, I’m so sorry about Austin,” Louise said. She guided her IV tower behind her chaise lounge to clear her view of Nora. “I’ve heard that the week of waiting for their bioframes is the hardest.”
“Mmm hmm,” Nora said. She sipped her tea and tried not to make eye contact.
“And I’ve heard there’s some rockiness after they come back. The men always get super sulky after learning they’ve died. They start flying gliders or enlist in VR wars. Or they run off with new women or… I mean, not that Austin would do that. He’s not—”
“I know what you mean.”
Louise’s cheeks and ears had flushed pink. “A lot of the time, most of the time, everything’s fine when they come back. Plenty of marriages survive your situation.”
Louise picked at the tape holding the IV tube to her arm.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Any of that.”
Nora put her hand on Louise’s.
“It’s OK. You’re telling me what you know. I appreciate it.”
They sat in silence for a long moment. Louise opened her mouth to apologize again, and closed it when Nora’s attendant approached. The man disconnected Nora’s empty IV bags from her arm and led her to the NeuroStim pods for naptime.
*
After an afternoon with Louise chatting her brain numb, Nora had expected she’d enjoy the tranquility of her home. But the house without Austin was too quiet. Even when they weren’t together, she could always hear his whistling through the walls, his music murmuring from the woodshop, the floorboards squeaking under his weight.
To drown out the silence, she put on her new Andean pan flute album and read the oral history of the Windhoek Waifs. The stories of the poor dispossessed children who rebuilt their own orphanage engaged the part of her that otherwise would have mourned Austin, keeping her occupied until dinner.
When her growling stomach wouldn’t let her sit any longer, she opened the refrigerator and fished out a package of leftovers from the Ethiopian restaurant they’d eaten at four days earlier. Atop the clumps of stews sat a piece of injera that Austin had bitten. Staring at the ridged crescent his teeth had left in the spongey bread, she broke down sobbing.
*
After laying in bed for an hour, her ricocheting thoughts preventing her mind from coming to rest, Nora threw off the covers and retrieved the fireproof-safe from their spare bedroom. She unlocked it with her fingertip and pulled out the shoebox-sized quantum drive that held their home version of Austin’s backup. He’d always said they were foolish to pay for the duplicates. The servers at the corporation’s main facility were protected in a vault a million times more secure than their mail-order safe, he’d argued. She’d always liked the idea of having one at home. Just in case.
She carried the sleek black box into the bedroom, placed it on the pillow next to her, and sank into a leaden sleep.
*
The tears flowed as soon as she awoke and continued throughout the morning. His coffee cup, the bottle of hot sauce he put on his eggs, every artifact of his existence punctured the membrane she tried to build around her grief.
*
On the way to the vault, she wondered how to break the news to his family. Should she send the video without explanation? Should she apologize for not showing it at the memorial?
No. He’d made this decision. He’d have to justify it himself.
*
After the DNA verifications, the retinal scan, and the full-body backscatter search, Nora entered the lobby of InCase Technologies’ local vault.
Black slate lined the floors and walls of the cavernous entrance hall. Cameras peered down from all corners, and a pair of armed guards flanked the steel door offering the lone entrance to the building’s interior. The sole hint of life was a quaking aspen growing through the floor by the waiting area, soaking up the sunlight that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling ballistic-glass windows.
Nora approached the concierge, conscious of her puffy red eyes.
“Hello, Miss. Please place your finger on the pad right here to sign in,” the concierge asked. He was handsome and clean cut. Nora thought he might be a bioframe.
She pressed the fingerpad and adjusted the strap on her shoulder bag. The quantum drive with Austin’s backup had grown heavier with time.
“Thank you, Mrs. Brown,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”
“I’m, uh…” The words caught in her throat. To avoid crumbling into tears, she dug into her bag to find Austin’s testimonial. She’d play it for the man, and he’d understand. But the quantum drive had pinned the document to the bottom and she had to wiggle it out.
“Would you like to undergo an early upload?” the attendant said as she struggled to free the sheet. “Our records show that you performed your last update only five months ago.”
The attendant’s brow furrowed.
“I see your husband is quite overdue.”
Nora’s hand froze in the bag.
“He’s what?”
“He’s a full year overdue for an upload. He missed last year’s appointment and never rescheduled. So the most recent session we had with him was two years ago.”
Nora’s pulse quickened and the floor went fluid under her feet.
“You should try to get him in,” the concierge said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Hold on a minute. I need to make a phone call.”
She staggered to the waiting area and set herself down on a couch. The room spun as anger and hurt and joy swirled in her head.
If he missed last year’s upload, then the Austin on file is the Austin of two years ago. Before all the Naturalist nonsense.
She remembered the day of that upload. They’d gone in for their sessions together, then went out for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon hiking. Midway through the walk, they stopped to rest on a log bridge over a stream. He talked about having their child finally, in five more years. He was ready, he’d said.
Sitting in the InCase lobby, Nora felt her anguish evaporate. She took a deep, easy breath and gazed into the aspen’s branches. This early in the spring, its leaves were pale green, tiny and wrinkled like a newborn’s fingertips.
*
The bioframe deliveryman arrived twenty minutes late, which to Nora was inexcusable. The adrenaline from her annoyance heightened her nervousness. Through the curtains, she watched the man walk to the door alone, carrying only his tablet.
Behind him was an all-white van. Somewhere inside that vehicle was her husband.
The InCase worker didn’t look up at her when she opened the door.
“How do you want to do this, Mrs. Brown?” he said. He appeared to have locked in his body young, in his early twenties, yet his voice carried the weariness of someone who’d been doing the same job for decades.
“What do you mean? You’re the technician,” she said, surprised at the bite in her tone.
“I mean, do you want me to boot him up right in front of you? Do you want me to turn him on somewhere out of sight, and then he can walk into the room? Some people like to leave and come home and find their perso
n hanging around the house like they’ve never left.”
She couldn’t imagine leaving the house and letting Austin wake up to an empty room, wondering if he’d gone crazy. She didn’t want to watch him twitch and stutter as his consciousness downloaded, either.
“The second one,” she said. “In our bedroom. Have him come out when he’s ready.”
The delivery man walked back to the truck and wheeled the person-sized box into the house on a hand cart. The box had a clear plastic window through which Nora could see Austin’s face. The delivery guy handed her his tablet and pen.
“Look through here and confirm that this is your husband,” he said. “Then sign here.”
Austin’s eyes were shut and his head tilted to the side. She signed the tablet, and the technician explained that the startup could take a while. Before Austin’s consciousness is connected to the body, a codebot will explain to him that his natural life has ended and that he is a backup consciousness implanted in a bioframe.
“As you can imagine, this can be a difficult situation to grasp, so we give them some time to work through it,” the worker said. “When they say they’re ready, the codebot connects the brain and body. Then, for them, it’s like they’re waking up in the middle of a dream. But he’ll see me, so he’ll know it’s real.”
Nora nodded. “Yes. That all sounds reasonable.”
“What they do after that is up to them. They’re legally a person at that point, and our work is done.”
“I understand.”
“Any questions?”
Nora shook her head and sat on the couch, attempting to read the news.
Half an hour later, she heard the bedroom door open and shut. The delivery man walked past, wheeling the empty box behind him.
“Austin said he’d come out in a minute. Have a nice day.”
“You too.”
He shut the door, leaving the house silent.
Nora set down her tablet and folded her hands in her lap.
Five minutes later, Austin came into the room, wobbling with his arms out as if he was treading through a darkened room. She stifled a giggle at his awkwardness, and he noticed her smile.
“I know, right?” Austin said. “Like I’m coming home from a party drunk.”
He sat next to her on the couch with a semi-controlled fall. He exhaled, his breath redolent of fresh plastic. Nora remembered how early models hadn’t allowed the backups to breathe or have pulses, and how the absence of those physical sensations had unsettled the consciousnesses.
“You look great,” she said. She wanted to leap into his arms, but settled for putting her hand on his knee.
“Thanks. It feels like I’m walking on stilts right now. And my skin is floating an inch off my body. It’s hard to describe.”
He looked around the room, at Nora, and wiggled his fingers in front of his face.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, trying to fight back tears.
He saw her struggling.
“I’m sorry for leaving you. I won’t do that again. I promise.”
*
Nora knew that their new means of intimacy, like everything else, would take time to get used to. Austin’s coordination had been off, and the bioframe’s synthetic skin couldn’t quite match the real thing. But his affection had been unrestrained, and his caresses felt as tender as ever. He had seemed to enjoy himself as well.
She emerged from the bathroom, flushed and damp from her shower, to find him sitting up in bed and flipping through a book, his bottom half under the sheets. For all his general boldness, he always turned so modest after sex, covering up right after they’d finished.
She slid in next to him, rested her head on his shoulder, and shut her eyes. His skin, even if it was little too smooth, still radiated a comforting heat. She traced her fingers along his arm and reveled in the simultaneous joys of starting over and returning to a familiar routine.
He kissed the top of her head and turned the page in his book.
“Weird,” he said, followed by a noise that contained equal parts grunt and chuckle.
She opened her eyes to see what he was reading. In his hands was the Naturalist Manifesto, the margins teeming with his handwriting.
Projection
NASA Director Imani Carter stood across from President Ashton Wythe in the Oval Office waiting for a response. She’d just told him that an alien spaceship had been spotted in low-Earth orbit and that the craft was humming with enough radiation to sublimate the oceans right off the planet. That seemed like the sort of news that should spur the president of the United States to comment. Or to at least ask a follow-up question.
Instead, he sat behind his desk, hands in his lap, staring into space, lips pursed to the side. He was reacting with the embarrassed fear of a man who’d lied to his date about being a doctor, only to have a woman in the restaurant go into labor. This was not a situation he’d foreseen encountering in his time in office.
“Mr. President,” Dr. Carter said gently, as if rousing him from a nap, “is there any message you would like us to impart to the visitors?”
The president glanced at her, then resumed pursing and staring with even greater intensity.
At this, the room’s only other occupant, General Mark Majerus, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, spoke up.
“Sir, we need to send a forceful message to these trespassers. We must show them that we will give them the fight of their lives if they try to invade. We need to aim every missile in our arsenal at them and put flashing red lights on top of those missiles to let them know what we’re doing.”
The president’s hands rose from his lap and formed a tent in front of his face. Dr. Carter couldn’t help but think that he’d rehearsed this gesture.
“Mr. President, General Majerus, with all due respect, I would caution against making our first message to extraterrestrial intelligence one of thinly veiled belligerence. That could provoke the very response we’re hoping to avoid. We need to extend an invitation to a peaceful, mutually beneficial relationship. ”
The president’s eyes glazed over. She decided to try again, with smaller words.
“If we talk nice, they might be nice to us.”
“Honey,” Majerus said, “these Martians, or whatever they are, didn’t come halfway across the galaxy to play nice. They came here to take something.”
“Oil?” the president said, finally finding himself on familiar ground. “Or do they just want to rule us?”
Dr. Carter sighed.
“We don’t know,” she said. “They haven’t said anything yet. But we have a longstanding protocol for first contact. On your command, I can implement it.”
“Sir, we need to project strength,” Majerus said, pounding his fist into his palm.
The president’s eyes bounced between them.
“Let’s do them both,” the president said. “A little ‘good cop, bad cop.’”
“But aren’t we the same cop?” Dr. Carter said.
“Exactly,” the president said. He leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile spreading across his face. “Good work, you two. Let’s have this resolved by the end of the week. I’ve got a tee time at Pebble Beach on Friday.”
*
One of the main reasons voters had re-elected Wythe was his supposed grace under pressure. During the debates, his opponent had railed red-faced against everything he’d done, especially his annexation of Cuba, which Wythe claimed had forced America to invade it with its hostile rhetoric.
Wythe always received these denunciations calmly, his blandly handsome face unmoving until his opponent finished speaking. Then he delivered a crisp, poll-tested platitude to hearty applause.
Dr. Carter, back in the Oval Office two days later, now suspected that Wythe’s serenity was actually a failure to understand anything being said around him.
She’d just told him that NASA had determined that the alien ship was immaterial, composed of a roiling brew of electromagnetic fiel
ds, and that any attempts to fight it with conventional weapons would prove futile. She’d also mentioned that it had parked itself in a geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Northwest. She’d even informed him of the mysterious sonar blasts from the Mariana Trench, the abnormal whale migrations, and the continued absence of any communication from the ship.
And yet Wythe’s face wore only its default smirk. She couldn’t decide whether he was mentally hibernating or off on some distant golf course in his head, practicing his chip shot.
“Sir, we are sending the entire Pacific fleet into position off the West Coast, in case these little pricks try to land,” Majerus said. “And we’re moving all of our land-based assets there as well. If this turns into a fight, that’s going to be the main front.”
The president’s brow furrowed.
“The whole West Coast, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wythe turned to the director of the Secret Service.
“Ned, can we still make Pebble Beach happen?” the president said.
“Possibly, Mr. President. We will need to construct an adequate bunker to hide you in if fighting breaks out. I’ll have to check if we can accomplish that in two days’ time.”
Wythe slapped the desk and swiveled his chair around to face the windows.
“Why are they so bent on messing up my weekend?” he said. “It has to be on purpose. They know my plans. That’s why they’re out on the West Coast. If I was playing Sawgrass, I bet they’d be parked above Florida.”
Dr. Carter considered reminding him that NASA had found no evidence that the ship was monitoring their communications. It hadn’t even interfered with nearby satellites. Then again, she’d told Majerus five times that the craft didn’t appear to have weapons, but that hadn’t seemed to sink in.
The president turned back toward them.
“Anyway, let’s get me out to Pebble Beach if we can,” Wythe said. “I think it will show leadership. Show the people we’re not scared.”
He smiled again. Dr. Carter could almost hear him thinking, “We’re not scared. Yeah, that’s it. Leadership. America.”