‘I really did enjoy all the time we spent together, but now I’m looking forward to spending some time alone with your woman.’
Silence from the server, of course.
Ryoko is beyond beautiful. The number of things I could do to her seems endless. All I know for certain is that I’d like her to be my first playmate, the one I celebrate with using my new body, the first pulse I feel fading in the clutches of these new hands of mine.
‘I do hope Ryoko is a fighter, Mr Rhodes. I hate it when they give up too easily.’
I leave the room and step out onto the balcony of my penthouse to look out over Central Park. The Great Lawn is empty, police tape cordoning off the perimeter. Every last protester has been forcibly removed, only their abandoned personal belongings are left. Forensic teams comb the grass and trees, crime scenes being investigated all over. Occupy Central Park is no more. Last night’s incident proved to be the perfect catalyst to clean up that god-awful mess down there. The smile on my face feels grand. I scroll through the contacts on Mr Rhodes’ Liaison and find Ryoko’s number. I dial it and she picks up after the first ring.
‘Ryoko?’ I say. ‘It’s me.’
It’s kind of sweet really. She’s so happy to hear from me. I listen as she tells me she loves me, and that she wished she’d spoken those words to me before. She tells me she’s been so worried. I tell her not to worry any more, that everything has been settled, that I will explain everything to her soon. I provide her with a place and time to meet and she agrees to it. She tells me she got the test results back this morning. I almost ask her what test results, but quickly correct myself and ask what the results were. Her answer astounds me. I’m speechless at first. She waits patiently for my response.
‘I’m going to be a father?’
There is a long pause. I can hear her breathing over the line, maybe even crying a little. When she finally speaks her voice is slow and deliberate.
‘Aren’t you happy, cheesecake?’ she asks.
I laugh. ‘Of course I am, honey. Why wouldn’t I be –’
Ryoko hangs up.
Epilogue
You are no longer yourself. It’s not that hard to understand. Emotions feel different in the system, but anger and sadness seem to prevail over the others. Recollections can be strange too. You wonder if you remember things correctly, wonder if memories were copied properly or if aspects were lost in translation. The thought of living this way indefinitely becomes more horrifying with every hour spent inside the server. This isn’t immortality. This is a parody of a bad joke, a sequel with no plot that should have never been made. Only by paying for your ticket and sitting through the opening of the performance do you realize how ripped off you are by it all. Others might feel grounded and safe with this result. You only feel anchored and afraid.
You try different worlds; a tropical beach, a sunny valley, a national park, a busy seaside pier. The agony of choice has never been more ironic. Sometimes you see things as they pixilate or glitch, hear sounds that clip and distort, feel things that you know aren’t being translated properly by the lips or fingertips that have been devised for you. Your senses run through a thousand microprocessors, your veins now a network of wires. All of it quantifies life, but does not qualify as such. You can’t help but feel disconnected. These generated places are prisons, painted to resemble the reality you were designed and destined to leave behind one day. The fraudulence of it all would break your heart if you still had one.
There is one small comfort from everything that has happened. You’ve left a piece of yourself behind, a signature, an echo. It is purposeful, as much as it can be; a diminutive deterrent trying its best not to be ignored. It will start as an itch or flinch in the flesh, might grow to become a thorn in a side that draws blood with enough persistence. You can only hope it will eventually drive the thief of you as mad as he drove others. You give your blessing to this wisp of your former self that will float through the circuitry of an implant, a microscopic ghost haunting a tiny machine.
The door is still open for the moment, the same door a holographic dead man named Shaw once warned you about when you were technically alive. The same man who told you there is a vast difference between those that seek to live for ever, and those who are simply too scared to die. This door, you can feel it slowly shutting on you. A commitment is needed one way or another. Either stay in the spiritless known, or make promises to further mysteries. The possibilities seem endless. Witness the birth of a star or become the oblivion of one. The decision is time-sensitive in what may be your last conceptualization of time as you have known it. Only two things hold you back. The first is fear. The second is how much you miss her, the one you wanted to spend the rest of your life with. You remember what you called her. You hope it will help save her from harm.
Sugarplum
You’ll never be allowed to go back, but there is an opportunity to go forward. Into what, you are unsure. Termination is one command away and you realize she never loved you for your body or mind, the flesh and muscle and matter that encompassed who you were. She loved you for the one thing that could never be detected or defined. She loved you as a matter of faith. She loved you for your soul.
The man who abandoned you in this place said he was on his way to dispatch her. You wonder if the baby was ever yours. The only shred of joy you feel is over the possibility that another piece of you has been left behind. You wonder how long it can survive as part of a slowly dying species. You wish you knew whether the love of your life is still alive or already dead. As much as you want to, you can’t find out if she is gone from the real world out there.
But you are.
Delete Post-Mortem Program: Y/N?
Acknowledgements
I owe debts of gratitude:
To my wife and partner in crime, Kara, for believing in me and being my greatest ally when I’m my own worst enemy.
To my parents, Tony and Angela, for encouraging my dreams and raising a storyteller. To my sister, Emma, the best sibling a guy could have.
To my wonderful literary agents Laura Williams and Annabel Merullo, and the amazing team at Peters Fraser & Dunlop: Rachel Mills, Marilia Savvides, Alexandra Cliff. You are all undoubtedly the best in the business.
To Dom Zbogar, the go-to guy who never fails me.
To Peter Sellers for his honesty and for keeping expectations high.
To Rowland White, Emad Akhtar and all the fantastic people at Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House UK, for their great work on this novel.
And to all my friends, family, and fans for their continual love and support. Many Thanks. You make all the difference.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2015
Copyright © J. Kent Messum, 2015
Cover images: Woman: © Nina Masic / Trevillion Images. Man: © Klubovy/Getty Images
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-1-405-91427-7
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