“An artificial intelligence. What you people would call a SPUD,” replied Haley. “Didn’t you know? How many humans can do what I do?”
Lena grinned. Ray’s logic had been turned on its head. The reddening of his face and neck betrayed that he’d come to the same conclusion.
On the way home, Lena couldn’t help but rub it in. “So SPUDs can’t be as creative as people. Do you still believe that?”
“OK, Lena. I get it,” Ray said. “I’m going to have to rethink a lot of what I believe. Be patient with me. I’m still a work in progress.” He flashed her a grin. She smiled back. “So what are you planning to write?”
“Her story is remarkable even if she weren’t a SPUD,” answered Lena. “She’s not secretive about it, but I kind of think that people will appreciate the magic more if they think she’s human. It’s like she said. She doesn’t want to upstage her work. Neither do I.”
Ray was grateful to be sharing this part of Lena’s life. They were at ease together for the first time in years, possibly for the first time ever. Intimacy, both emotional and physical, was seeping into their still fragile relationship. As they walked together hand in hand, he realized that Lena’s walks in the park had stopped months ago. Whatever needs her friend had fulfilled Ray was now satisfying, and at least for now he was enough.
21
RAY OPENED HIS eyes and saw the mountainside streaking past on the left and the open expanse of water far below the road’s edge to his right. He heard the roar of the engine that was propelling him forward on wheels that picked up the irregularities of the road’s surface and made his body vibrate and his teeth chatter. His right foot was pressing on a pedal that made the sound of the engine louder and the vibrations more intense.
He instinctively let up the pressure and shifted his foot to the brake pedal, but the car continued to careen with increasing speed along a curving path with nothing between him and a precipitous drop to the sea below. Most gasoline powered vehicles like this one from the early 21st century were now in museums and the fuel that powered them was scarce. He hadn’t driven a car like this for nearly two decades and had no idea how he came to be behind the wheel of this one.
He gripped the wheel tightly, concentrating on the turns, as he searched for a way to stop the car. He reached momentarily to turn off the ignition, but was terrified that it would disable the steering. He resumed his death grip on the wheel as he heard the pulse in his ears ramp up to a pace that seemed to track the vehicle’s speed.
Years before, he’d once found himself driving on a deserted road miles from home after taking a sleeping pill before going to bed and had no idea how he’d gotten there. But at least then he was on level ground and driving at an ordinary pace. And he’d heard of others having similar experiences with the same drug. That was the last time he’d ever used a sedative. And back then, he lived alone. There was nobody around that night to stop him and nobody to help him retrace his steps.
How had he been able to leave his fortress of a home with the alarm system fully armed and Lena sleeping by his side? Could one of his many enemies have breached his defenses and put him in this fix?
The sound in his ears intensified as the car sped closer and closer to the cliff’s edge with each turn. His hands were frozen to the wheel, but no longer seemed to be controlling the wheels of the car. And then he was airborne. He felt a crushing sensation across his chest. The beating in his ears made a last crescendo, then sputtered randomly and went quiet.
The next sounds Ray heard were cheers. He was standing on a platform looking out upon a sea of faces, both arms raised above his head. And the sensations that fed back the position of the muscles in his face told him that he was smiling. The crowd was still cheering and clapping as he felt an arm encircle his shoulders.
“Incredible speech,” came a familiar voice from behind him. “Listen to how they adore you.”
He was still trying to place the voice when a tall, regal woman strode to the podium, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss was brief, but soft, conveying as much tenderness and affection as was seemly for a public display. The roar of the crowd rose again and the woman turned forward, holding his hand in hers and raising them in a victory sign.
She looked into his eyes. “You were wonderful, darling,” she mouthed silently. Her face was a perfect oval with features so sculpted and refined that her bald head set them off to breathtaking advantage.
The identity of the first voice now came to him. It was the president’s. He’d heard it many times before but never in person.
Ray struggled to orient himself as the cheering subsided and the crowd began to disperse. As tall as the woman was who stood beside him, he was half a head taller than she was. He stretched out his arms and looked at his hands. They were large and powerful and covered tightly with smooth, flawless, and hairless skin. He passed his right hand over the top of his head, which was as bald as hers. She was leading him down from the podium by the hand.
“You were spectacular tonight,” she said, this time aloud. “Now it’s time to get you home.”
“Marcus,” the president’s voice again came from behind them. Ray turned to face him. “We’ll meet tomorrow morning at ten in the Oval Office. We’ve got a lot of work still to do.”
“Sure, Mr. President. I’ll be there.”
“Zachary, Marcus, Zachary. Why so formal?” The president clasped his shoulders with both hands.
“We’re still in public. Seemed proper,” Ray covered.
So I died in the car, after all,” thought Ray, “and the exchange happened exactly as Terra said it would. But I’m not prepared. I have no idea how to be him.”
Ray and Corinne reached the limousine. The Secret Service man opened the door. They got in and were whisked away. How was he going to pull this off? How could she miss the differences in his gestures and speech and in the ways he would touch her, aside from how limited his knowledge was of their lives together? As the vehicle slid silently and frictionlessly over the roadway that encircled the city, Corinne’s eyes closed and Ray was grateful for some time to think.
While the totality of Ray’s knowledge and experience accompanied him in the exchange, Marcus’s body was still implanted with the MELD chip that had been his conduit of knowledge and training. Ray focused his attention on joining his consciousness with the device that would give him access to Marcus’s world. He felt the channel open and sensed the flow of data as it poured into his awareness.
His surroundings became increasingly familiar and he began to anticipate what would appear around the next bend. He could envision their mansion, their kitchen, and their bedroom. And visions began to form of moments together, starting from the present and stretching increasingly back toward the past.
The words of the speech that he’d just delivered that evening came to him first. It was about freedom and equality and stressed the rights of SPUDs to participate as equals in the affairs of state. Not a position that Ray readily embraced, even in the light of his recent encounter with Haley Sellica. That could be a problem.
Then he was back home in the bedroom with Corinne, getting dressed for their appearance. He was watching her slip the french blue dress over her head and down over her long, sleek, hairless body until it hugged the tight curves of her breasts and hips. As he felt the stirring of movement between his legs, he wondered whether these feelings of arousal belonged to him or to Marcus.
When they reached the house, it was dark except for some light in the kitchen window toward the rear of the house. The driver let them out of the car and led them to the door. Ray willed the lights to go on in the foyer and the hallways and the house lit up. He was getting the hang of running Marcus’s programs, many of which were similar to his.
As they entered the house, another woman approached them in the hall, appearing somewhat younger than Corinne. Her skin was lustrous, almost polished in texture, a shade or two lighter than Corinne’s, and perfect except for a splas
h of freckles scattered evenly over the bridge of her nose. Like Corinne, her body was hairless, but a tight spray of straight black hair sprouted from the top of her head and covered it to just behind her ears. Shiny lavender pants and a white pullover top clung snugly to a body that was as shapely as Corinne’s but somehow lacked its sensuality.
“It’s all ready for you, Corinne,” she said as she passed them. “Good evening, Mr. Takana.”
“Good evening, Photina,” Ray said, pulling her image from his new database, “and thank you.”
“You’re both welcome,” Photina said as she moved into the cold night air, seeming oblivious to the chill.
“Photina was kind enough to make dinner for us tonight,” said Corinne as she led him toward the back of the house. “She’s made all your favorite things. I thought we’d celebrate after your speech.”
“Mushroom and squash risotto?” Ray lied. His favorite meal was filet mignon and he’d resumed his meat-eating ways once the grazing lands were restored and cattle farming had come roaring back to life. But Marcus and Corinne had remained vegetarians, just as they’d continued other aspects of their lifestyle from the days when water and agronomic products had been scarce.
“Yes, to begin with,” she said, “and I’ve planned a very special dessert.”
“Where’s Nat?” asked Ray, drawing again upon his new database.
“She’s at a sleepover with a friend. And Photina won’t be back until morning. I thought it would be nice if we could be alone tonight.”
The dining room lights were dim and candles lit the table, their reflections dancing on the surface of the goblets, each filled halfway with ruby red wine. The vineyards had only begun over the past several years to recover sufficiently to produce palatable wines. A few wineries had managed to age their last few vintages enough to create exceptional wines reminiscent of the days before the scourge. One such bottle graced their table.
“Make yourself comfortable and sip some wine,” she said, sitting him down and kissing him softly on the back of the neck. “I’ll be back in just a bit.”
Ray breathed deeply and lifted the goblet to his lips. He swirled the liquid in the glass, watching the reflection of the candlelight in the moving liquid and inhaling deeply. The aroma was rich and earthy. He took a sip and let it linger on his tongue. It was round and mellow. He took a longer swallow. “At least in wines,” he thought, “Marcus’s taste agrees with mine.”
When Corinne returned to the room, she took his breath away. In place of the tight blue dress was a flowing translucent gown that reached all the way to the floor. In the candlelight, Ray could make out the outlines of her body through the material as she stood framed by the doorway. The exposed skin of her forearms, hands and face shined with the glossiness left by the surfactant wash that Corinne and Marcus had continued to use even after the water shortage eased. The satiny texture that it left on the skin had a luscious sensuality that had become both familiar and exciting.
Corinne took her place at the table and lifted her wine glass. The candlelight playing on her face through the liquid made her face look like a Gothic ivory masterpiece. In this light, the slickness of her head seemed a particularly fitting enhancement to her exotic features. At closer quarters, he could see the curve of her breasts through the gauzy material and could make out the outlines of her nipples. The wine was beginning to relax him, but he was also starting to become light-headed. Intense and conflicting emotions swirled in his head, each leaving trails like the wine swirling in his glass.
“To us.” She held her glass toward him until he touched it with his own, making both glasses ring.
“To us,” he repeated, struggling to make sense of his role in this duet. Before him was one of the most exquisite women he’d ever laid eyes upon. And she was his for the taking. But was she? She’d been Marcus’s wife and lover. Could she possibly love the new entity residing in her husband’s body? His face flushed warmly in response to a combination of the wine, the excitement, and a nagging sense of embarrassment. Soon he’d make love to another man’s wife. Or was she? Marcus no longer existed. So how could this be betrayal? And could taking Marcus’s wife be any more of a betrayal than taking his body?
And what of Lena? He’d thought little about her in the flurry of events that led to this moment, but now he wondered whether he owed her fidelity from the other side of this divide. What effect would his death have upon her? Did she even know by now that he was dead or had he simply gone missing? And what happened to her that night? Was she left safe and sound in their bed when he was spirited away on his fatal ride or had whoever was responsible taken her as well?
As they ate, Ray let the wine numb his senses and erode the sharp edges of his compunction. When they’d finished the last morsel of dark chocolate soufflé, Corinne rose from her seat, took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom. He smelled the sweet scent of jasmine on her body. She placed both hands on the back of his head and pulled his face to hers. He felt their lips melting together, then just an instant of hesitation on her part that made his heart skip and she was back, exploring his mouth with her tongue and undressing him.
The wine was doing its job. Ray felt the rigidity spreading into his penis. He could feel the throbbing of his pulse between his legs and the pulsations also rose in his ears, for a moment reminding him of the sensation that had accompanied the terror of his death only hours before. But the passion of the moment prevailed as they fell together on the bed in deep embrace. He closed his eyes and felt himself sink into the moist, warm cleft between her thighs.
22
MARCUS FELT A tight band around his chest as the car sailed silently over the void. The silence was broken by a loud thump that seemed to come simultaneously from the pit of his stomach and his ears. At the same time, the tightness released like a broken rubber band and he drew a deep breath. He had no idea how he’d gotten there, but the acceleration of the plunging vehicle reminded him of the thrill of the daredevil days he left behind when he’d accepted his Faustian bargain.
Through the windshield he saw the water’s surface rapidly approaching and braced himself for the impact. He had no idea from what height his fall had begun.
The nose of the car broke the water’s surface and he was surrounded by churning surf, but the vehicle bobbed back toward the surface, buoyed by the air still trapped within the cabin and the air in the tires. The roof and half the windshield cleared the surface before the car started to sink back toward the depths. Marcus groped for the window controls and managed to trigger them, but the windows lowered just a few inches before the electrical system cut out.
He released his seat belt and scanned the passenger compartment for something he could use to break a window. His eyes went to the knob on the gearshift. He tried to unscrew it, but it wouldn’t budge. His hands were clumsy and weak. When he held one of them before his eyes, it was soft and pudgy. He brushed a hand across his face and it was rough with stubble. His head was covered with thickly matted hair. And when he looked into the rearview mirror, there was the ridged and mottled face of a stranger.
He fought back panic as the possibilities began running through his mind. The last thing he remembered before this nightmare began was the rise of applause at the end of his speech in front of the Capitol steps. Corinne had been walking toward him to join him on the dais and in the next instant he was plunging from a height in an antiquated car within an aging body. He’d been in lots of tight spots before, some worse than this one, and had always managed to prevail, but something unfathomable was now occurring that reeked of doom.
Water was beginning to seep over the edges of the cracked open windows and the passenger compartment was starting to fill. Marcus braced his arms against the passenger side door and kicked his left foot back against the driver’s side window at its front edge where it should have been weakest. It didn’t give. He kicked back with his right foot against the window’s rear edge, but still it wouldn’t break. He’d
performed this maneuver before and had managed to handily smash similar windows. He could usually press hundreds of pounds with his legs, but now it felt as though all the strength was drained from his body.
He pushed against the driver’s side door, but the water pressure was too strong. The door wouldn’t budge. The front of the car was nosing down as it continued to sink. He climbed into the back seat to get to the small pocket of air that remained only there and slowed his breathing to conserve the remaining oxygen. And as he waited for the car to take him to the ocean floor, it dawned on him that he must be there because he was already dead. The exchange had occurred. The owner of the contract must have died in the plunging car and was now in possession of Marcus’s body. And he was in this body to conclude its death and fulfill his destiny. His awareness that death was inevitable brought with it an unexpected calm. Time seemed to stop as the rest of the cabin filled and the car glided soundlessly to the bottom.
Marcus held his breath and waited for the thud of the impact. His survival instinct prevailed. As soon as the car was at rest, he pushed on the rear door, which now gave way easily, placed one foot on the threshold and thrust himself toward the surface. This time, the pudgy body that he now commanded provided an advantage, buoying him easily to the top. Once at the surface, he drew a few gasping breaths, flipped onto his back, and floated until his breathing slowed to normal.
His whole body ached. Clearly, his alter ego hadn’t been taking care of his body as well as Marcus had taken care of his and wasn’t accustomed to the kind of exertion to which it had just been subjected. Nonetheless, he seemed to be alive, at least for now. If he managed to survive, Marcus now wondered, would he be destined to live out the remainder of his days in this alien and pathetic incarnation? And who the hell was this guy, anyway?
His body began to chill in the frigid water. If he were to survive, he would have to choose between the insulating effect of the clothing that clung loosely to his body and the superior speed of an unencumbered form. Shoes were a no brainer and he kicked them off first. He next stripped off the waterlogged trousers, but kept on the briefs and t-shirt. He surveyed his surroundings and could see in the distance the shoreline where the sea abutted the base of the cliffs.
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