Lost Time: Part 1 [Second Skyn]

by Boyes, Damien

  I zig zag through the Skywalk’s open-air market and out the other side to Spadina, flag a passing Sküte. Someone’s paintbombed Skröt over the logo in bright pink letters. I hesitate when the door slides back, momentarily terrified about jumping straight back into the arms of an autopilot, but take a glance back at the immediate danger and swallow my fear. The passenger pod wobbles on its single wheel as I leap in and the gyros roll to compensate.

  “Where can I take you today?” it asks in its Monday-morning voice.

  “Twenty-three fifty-two Lakeshore West,” I say. I’m not even breathing hard.

  I pull away and the giant doesn’t follow.

  Now to get somewhere safe.

  Home.

  StatUS-ID

  [a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]

  SysDate

  [12:32:36. Wednesday, April 10, 2058]

  A bot clears the lunch tray and I talk to the new IMP on the livewall, killing time between visits from the endless pool of techs that wander into my room, consult their vizrs, make reassuring noises at me and then disappear, never to be seen again. It’s fine. I need the distraction.

  I’ve been up, pacing. Watching from my doorway as happy families parade by with glowing Say-Hi-To-The-New-You floaters trailing in their wakes or their fists full of breathlessly singing flowers. Octogenarians in healthy new bodies dancing down the antiseptic hallway looking younger than their children. Reunited couples holding hands, stepping back into lives exactly where some tragic death had put it on pause.

  Not all of them were sick when they came in, either. Some will have had perfectly healthy bodies but went through the restoration process anyway.

  Immortality sells itself.

  Well, fuck them.

  It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Not so soon.

  Connie figured I'd be ready first, a long time in the future as my body started to fail sometime in a lifespan well into three digits, and my DNA began shredding codons faster than the reJuv could patch it up. So with the kids and grandkids all gathered for the porting party, we'd drift off, hand in hand, surrounded by our family, and wake up in new, youthful versions of ourselves. Ready to start all over again.

  She was kidding herself, and I let her kid me too. I should have known better. Reality is never like the commercial.

  They said I wouldn’t know the difference. That the organic consciousness and digital psychorithm were indistinguishable. But I can tell. My head feels hollow, like my thoughts are racing around on the surface of nothing.

  I didn’t used to feel hollow.

  Maybe it’s just being stuck here. Maybe once I get home to the place we shared, to some familiarity. Maybe then I’ll feel more like myself.

  Maybe.

  Catching back up with the news sure hasn’t helped.

  I’ve already glanced at hundreds of the items the IMP flagged while I was dead. I’m six months behind on the world. There could have been a coup. Or aliens.

  But nothing’s changed. Not really.

  The IMP pulled the same stuff it always did, there’s just more of it. Mostly Military-related, a few Service issues, new bot models, vid previews, other stuff from my pref-list—but I’ve barely cleared any. There’s thousands of individual items left and none of them mean anything.

  I tell the IMP to wipe it all. Who cares who won the award for Best Dramatic Virt this year? The only items of any interest are twelve direct messages and the hundred and seven rep-hits mentioning Connie or I.

  There’s my IMP-generated obit. And the one Connie’s father wrote for her and had printed in the Star.

  Her funeral notice, my funeral notice. Not together.

  A Toronto Police Service Commendation for me. A Public Incident Report.

  Twenty-nine news stories about the accident—and each containing only just enough information to piss me off. The accumulated history of mankind at my fingertips but I still can't find what I want to know: the name of the man driving that van.

  No one filed a follow up story. No arrest was ever made.

  Somehow, not a single camera caught an image of the van. Not at the commuter lot where it originated or anywhere along its route. They found it at the bottom of a quarry three weeks later, the autonav tampered with, the pilot’s safety code overwritten, DNA evidence all washed away.

  The van belonged to a Woodrow Quirk, a migrant coder who’d been telecommuting from Lot Seventy-Two on the outskirts of the city. They found his bludgeoned body in the van’s empty parking spot. Time of death less than a half hour before mine.

  There a single article speculating the SecNet security data was tampered with, but nothing close enough to be evidence.

  I need to see the official reports, read through exactly what the investigating officers uncovered, but the Service AMP won’t grant me access. I have to wait on the Service re-cert, and I won’t get that until tomorrow when they send someone to tell me what they’re going to do with me.

  I won’t be the first Reszo in the force, but none of them are Homicide Detectives. I’m too visible. My being restored could sway public opinion, they’ll say. Affect the outcome of trials. Keep criminals on the streets. They can’t fire me, so they’ll want to hide me.

  And I know exactly what hole they’ll dump me in.

  I'm not looking forward to that conversation, but I'll worry about it tommorrow.

  There are more mentions of Connie than me, but most of those are stories about Marshall Tripp and the tragic loss of his daughter, heir to Trip Pharmaceutical.

  ‘Marshall Tripp, CEO of Tripp Pharma, loses daughter in tragic accident.’ ‘Tripp Family Mourns.’ ‘Tripp Pharma (TRP.NAX) stock price unaffected by loss of heir apparent.’

  As far as the link is concerned, Marshall Trip is the only one who suffered a loss.

  Not that I’ve lost everything. Far from it, I’m now a multi-millionaire. Connie’s trust and her life insurance all went to me. Marshall tried to fight it, but that was one battle he couldn’t win.

  I’m rich, never have to work again. It only took losing the one person I’d give up everything to have back.

  I never truly understood that until now. What I would give. I’d do anything. Sacrifice anything. Slit my own throat if it would bring her back.

  But nothing will. Not money. Not blood.

  Nothing can bring her back, nothing can erase the pain of her loss or the guilt that it wasn’t me instead, but I can do what no one else has bothered to.

  I can find the man who did this to her.

  ***

  SysDate

  [13:47:16. Wednesday, April 10, 2058]

  Lunch is percolating and I’m about to get up and try out the new plumbing when a bot rolls in and announces I have a visitor: Detective Ray Stone, from Homicide.

  My partner, come for a visit. Though they’ll have teamed him up with someone else by now. I wonder who he got stuck with?

  I feel myself lift a little, like something's put its back against the surface of the despair in my head and pushed. It'll be good to see a familiar face, someone who knew me before. Maybe he’ll be able to tell if I'm really me.

  “Send him in,” I tell the bot.

  I sit up in the bed, and a moment later the door slides open and Ray pokes his head around the doorframe.

  “Knock, knock,” he says then smiles, but weakly. Like it hurts. Dark pockets sag under his eyes. Crinkly white hairs jut from his usually well-kept moustache and his formerly thick hair has dwindled to cobwebs drifting from his skull.

  My stomach shrivels, releases a torrent of dread.

  No, not Ray. Not him too.

  I saw him before we left for Mom and Dad’s. Three days ago in my head—six months in the world—but it looks like he’s aged thirty years. A week ago he was my age, now we could pass for grandfather and grandson.

  “Ray—” I start, but lose the words as he walks in. I swing my legs out to come to him but he motions me back up to the bed.

  “Stay there,” h
e says, a wince cracking his grin. “I’ll come to you.”

  He slow-walks to the bed, eases himself down and perches on the edge.

  “Ray, what—?”

  “You look good,” he says, patting my leg.

  “You don’t.” His sunken skin looks like a fifth-grader grew it in a bathtub for science class then spread it over his skeleton with a putty knife.

  He snorts. “Sweet of you to say.”

  “Not—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus, Ray.” ReJuv Sickness. A death sentence.

  Everyone’s on the reJuv. Those that can afford it, anyway. Once a year, simply stop into to a walk-in clinic for a DNA scan, wait around a half an hour for a tech to formulate a genetic ‘reset’ cocktail—an injection specially formulated to repair any breaks or mutations, keep the telomeres to a healthy length—and escape another year of aging. Even set the clock back.

  Eternal youth, with only one downside: the one in ten thousand chance that the injection will fail and corrupt the DNA. Breed a hundred voracious cancers all at once.

  What do we expect, letting a kid with six-weeks training tinker with our genes?

  “What are they treating you with?” I ask. “Are you on leave?”

  “Hell, no—I’ve been saddled with Randee since…your accident. She’s outside now, didn’t want to pay for parking.” I wait for him to continue. Finally he rolls his eyes and says, “The doctor said heroic treatment—viral therapy, protein blockers, immune boosters, chemo—might give me a year, but I wouldn't be able to keep working. I’m eight months from hitting thirty-five and Fab and Marlo get my full pension, so I’m gonna make it eight months and a day.”

  “You’re not doing anything?” I can’t believe it. Ray isn’t one to give up.

  “I did at first. Drugs might as well’ve been chewable vitamins for all the good they did, and a re-sequence was only gonna make things worse. What good’s a few more months if I end up eating from one end of a tube and shitting into the other?”

  He has a family, people who love him. How could he not possibly exhaust every option to survive?

  “You have to try.” I sit up, grab his arm. “What about—” I tap my temple.

  “Dammit, Fin. Do you think I enjoy blood streaming from my asshole five times a day? I would if I fuckin' could, especially now that I seen you looking like you stepped out of your fuckin' grade school photos—” He chuckles and it devolves into a raspy cough.

  “I’ve got money. Connie’s money. You can have it.”

  He shakes his head, looks away. “Thanks, Fin, but I couldn’t.”

  I pull on his shoulder, force him to look me in the eyes. This is no time for stubborn pride. This is life or death. His death.

  “The hell you can’t,” I say. “It’s more than I’ll ever need and I don’t even want it. Take it, do something good with it.”

  “Thank you, Finsbury. I appreciate it,” He takes a breath. “But I’ve made my peace.”

  The hell he has. “You can’t give up—”

  He puts up a skeletal hand, tries to keep it from trembling. “You get one go around, Fin, and I had mine. It was a good one. Found someone who loved me. Had a wonderful kid. Made some great friends—”

  “Ray—”

  His voice hardens, as much as it can. “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Fin,” he says, his voice gentle.

  There’ll be no talking him out of this. Ray’s as stubborn as they come. My chest clenches and his face blurs. Tears I haven’t spilled for Connie.

  “Now dammit, Fin, knock that shit off. I didn’t come here to talk about my sorry life—I get enough of that at home. Goddamnit, Finsbury, I came here to say, I felt like I’d died when I found out about you and Connie. Worse than the cancer.”

  Ray was the only other person who really knew Connie and I, understood what she did for me. He used to say she was the one thing keeping me human, that she pulled me out of myself.

  “Fab and Marlo, they were both—” He leans forward with his arms open, pulls me in, and let him hug me for a moment. He sniffles as he pulls away.

  “Shit, look at me,” he says, wiping his eyes, “Randee’s gonna lay into me for crying.”

  “If she says anything, blame it on one of those tear gas lentil farts of hers.”

  “Heh, yeah,” he laughs, but there's no joy in it. “Nasty.”

  He takes a deep breath and the air rattles in his lungs. “Fin, I tried—”

  I know what he’s going to say. “I’m sure you did what you could.”

  “We wanted to find the guy. Lord knows we tried. We went at it and at it. But there was nothing there. Nothing to go on—a dead code monkey lying in a commuter lot and an abandoned van with a tampered nav. Then I got sick—”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “You two weren’t his only victims. He did five other people that day. There was just—”

  I want to be mad at him for not having caught the driver, but my anger is as useless as his apologies are. We both know that’s not how the job works. Some cases fall into place all by themselves. Witnesses come forward. Physical evidence is obvious and abundant. The suspect confesses.

  But some cases don’t give up so easily. They to be worked. Hour-by-hour, day-by-day. Reviewing evidence, canvasing neighbourhoods, and grinding through file after file until they finally give up their secrets.

  I have a feeling finding Connie’s killer is going to be one of those.

  “Ray,” I say. “Enough. I know you. You wouldn’t have quit if there was anything to work.”

  “It wasn’t enough…” His voice trails off.

  We sit together for a while, but something's changed. I've just come back from death and he's staring it down. We’re as far apart as two people sitting next to each other can be.

  I might not be the same person I was six months ago, but neither is Ray. He can't tell me who I am. No one can.

  I need to figure that out for myself.

  “We should get together,” I finally say. “Get a drink. I can plug one of those alcohol shyfts and you can order an isotope cocktail.”

  “Sounds good, buddy,” he says but we both know it isn’t going to happen. He wants my sympathy about as much as I’d want his. “Well, I better head—I got about sixty seconds before Randee starts carpet-spamming me. Just wanted to stop by, see how you turned out.”

  “Thanks for coming, Ray. It was good to see you. Give Fabio and the kid my love.”

  He waves my thanks away. “Call me about that drink.”

  “Soon,” I say, knowing we never will.

  Ray was a cop’s cop. Quick. Diligent. Compassionate. One of the best men I’d ever known.

  And now look at him.

  Connie. Ray. Everything goes to shit. Everything ends.

  Except me.

  I keep right on going whether I want to or not.

  ***

  SysDate

  [14:43:11. Wednesday, April 10, 2058]

  The COPA guy is in and out like a newlywed visiting a brothel—he doesn't look me in the eye and leaves the second he's done—but he certifies my Continuance of Personality, which means, not only am I human, I'm me.

  Except the old me couldn't stream the link directly to his brain.

  I reach back and trace the disc-shaped outline of the transfer port under my skin. The cuff is still on the side table, next to the assorted shyft samples.

  Apart from the cuff and shyfts, and the vase of flowers, the side table only contains one thing: my wedding ring, sealed in plastic film. They must have saved it from what remained of my body after the accident.

  I peel the ring loose, cradle it in my palm. It’s near indestructible, almost weightless. Still shines like the day we said ‘I do.’ It was meant to represent us: unbreakable.

  I slide it over the tip of my ring finger and let go. It wobbles right down to the base, like a hula-hoop around a flagpole. I upturn my han
d and it falls right off.

  The ring made it, we didn’t. Without Connie it’s just a metal band sized for someone else.

  I put it next to the cuff.

  It's still there when I leave.

  ***

  SysDate

  [16:26:51. Wednesday, April 10, 2058]

  They send a bot to do my final discharge. I guess all the people are busy. It gives me a new StatUS-ID—driver's license, citizenship, health card, and passport all in one, clearly showing I’m now a copy of the original, encoded with the same digital personality print that my new cranial hardware is transmitting—and tells me I can go.

  Just like that.

  I stand up and my legs are already stronger. I jam my naked toes into the blue and green Second Skyn-branded slippers and shuffle out into the walkway where a restoration team is waiting for the room to be cleared, another white-shrouded customer prone on a gurney.

  The bot ushers me into a waiting elevator and down to the sterile, white- and blue- and green-tiled underground parking garage, where a sinuous line of autonomous transport pods balanced on single wheels rock in place. Skütes, waiting to ferry people to their new lives.

  No fucking way I’m getting in one of those things.

  “I can make my own way home,” I tell the bot.

  “It’s company policy you don’t leave the premises under your own power, sir,” the bot tells me right back.

  “And if I decide I don’t give a shit about your company policy?”

  “It’s a liability issue, sir. Second Skyn is responsible for your safety while you are on its property.”

  “Who’s responsible for my safety when one of those things decides it wants to run me under a truck?”

  It’s silent for a moment, branching through tactics. “May I point out, sir, that you are wearing paper shoes?”

  I look down at my bare feet through the gauzy slippers. It’s got a point, I’m not going to win. Second Skyn’s fear of lawsuits will always trump my fear of helplessness, and I don’t want to stay here a second longer.