by Pat Cadigan
"What about the Beater?" he asked.
She shrugged. "What about him?"
"But you're not really in two places at once," he said over the messy casserole dinner. Odds and ends in a dish, but not survivalist fare, at least. "Since they made an electronic copy, and you're here, it means the clone is just a sophisticated, intelligent program. But not conscious."
"If she wasn't conscious before," Sam said, "she is now. She's been merged with Markt. And Marly and Caritha."
He nodded once, shortly. Of course, he thought.
"Which reminds me," Gina said, watching his face. She reached into her shirt pocket and put some chips on the table.
He stared at them. The yellow ducks swam around him crazily for a few moments.
"Unaffected," Gina said. "Markt copied the programs, left the originals for you. They're yours again." The chips gleamed in the lamplight. She pushed them into the middle of the table and left them for him to pick up.
"And you're wrong," she added. "From Mark's point of view, I'm there for him. That's good enough for me. You want the stone-fucking-home truth, I couldn't have stayed. Mark was born to do that. I was just born." She grinned. "Only the embodied can really boogie all night in a hit-and-run, or jump off a roof attached to bungi cords."
Sam excused herself and went into the living room.
"I guess," he said. "Doing all that for the sake of pouring it into simulated reality. After being here for-I don't know, however long I've been here"-her face told him that she knew exactly how long it had been, to the day-"that doesn't make too much sense anymore. Doing all that just to simulate doing all that."
Gina burst out laughing. "Simulate my ass! I did video just so I could do all that shit!"
Sam dabbed at the corner of her eye with her little finger. "It got a little hard to watch. No. It got a lot hard to watch." She let out a breath. "Everything that was going on and the thing I thought about most was-oh, shit, it sounds so stupid-ass when you say your heart was breaking."
Sitting on the couch next to her, Gabe patted her shoulder, trying to think of something full of fatherly wisdom and comfort to say to her. "We do what we do," he said after a bit, "and we love because we can. Can't argue with it and can't stop it-" He gave a short laugh. "About all you can do sometimes is stand it."
"I've got a hack for anything," Sam said. "Any program anywhere. Even that fucking spike, I hacked that. But I got no hack for this."
Gabe nodded. "Welcome to the world."
Sam gave him a sideways look.
"I'm sorry," he said, shrugging, "But that's about it."
"I was afraid of that." She dabbed at the corner of her eye again.
"Oh, go ahead and cry," he said. "I won't tell anyone you're not cool."
"Thanks."
He put both arms around her. "No problem. What's a father for, anyway?"
– -
Sam had found him. As it turned out, he hadn't really been so hard to find, provided someone had been actively looking. There wasn't another independent simulation producer in a few hundred miles.
"Everyone else has pretty much gravitated to the center of the action," Gina told him as they strolled around the house together. It was night, the moon was up, and they hadn't stopped talking long enough to do anything else but start talking again. Talking and moving. It felt important to keep moving. "Even a lot of the St. Diz people. That old guy, Fez, he's consulting with some doctors and technologists they can trust. Mark's new existence is still pretty much a secret, but it opens up all new possibilities for healing brain damage, disorders, all that stuff."
"But you'd still need sockets," he said.
"Yah. You'd still need sockets." She paused. "There aren't that many socketed people around now certified safe. Not many people to help out with the new research." She almost went on, but something made her leave it at that, for the moment. He was relieved.
Some hours later she picked it up. The sun had come up, was already high in the sky. He didn't feel tired or sleepy; it was as if somewhere inside of him, some generator had come to life to turn out an endless supply of energy for him to run on as long as he liked. Not magic, of course.
"I couldn't keep doing it all by myself," Gina said. "Accessing them day in, day out, day-fucking-back-in again. I had to tell them to leave me the fuck alone for a while."
They had come to rest on the grass a little ways from the edge of the cliff.
"When they got insistent, I left. They want to revamp the new, inoculated net. I say that's good, that's a fucking good thing to do, but I ain't doing all the work."
"Inoculated," he said glumly. "I thought for sure they'd just ban sockets, and that would put paid to it. The end."
"No one's doing the procedure now," she said. "But that's temporary. Once they get the safeguards done right, they'll be back in business."
He frowned. "Who will be back in business?"
"Socket people. Socket doctors. The doctors are almost back in business as it is, certifying survivors. There aren't many, but there are more than anyone thought." Casually she pulled up a blade of grass and examined it. "I've been certified. Guess you haven't."
"No. And I don't want to be. The sockets should be banned."
"Forget Schrodinger. Yo, Pandora, how's your headache?" She grinned, and he couldn't help grinning back. "Mark knew. The door only swings one way. Once it's out of the box, it's always too big to get back in. Can't bury that technology. All we can do is get on top of it and stay the fuck on top."
He shook his head. "Appropriate technology. That's how I live."
"Yah?" She shifted position, leaning closer to him. "Think on this one. All appropriate technology hurt somebody. A whole lot of somebodies. Nuclear fission, fusion, the fucking Ford assembly line, the fucking airplane. Fire, for Christ's sake. Every technology has its original sin." She laughed. "Makes us original synners. And we still got to live with what we made."
Far out on the water, he could just barely discern a blip that must have been a dolphin breaking the surface. "Think on it," she said.
"I will." He turned to her. "But it's going to take an awful lot of thought for me. I'm still-" He paused, and then shrugged. "Maybe there isn't even a term yet for what I'm still. But whatever it is-" He spread his hands. "This is it."
"That's all right. Take all the time you want."
He frowned a little. "From the way you were talking, it sounded like you were in a hurry."
"I was in a hurry to be here," she said.
There was a long moment when he couldn't say anything. "Is this like any port in a storm?"
"You have to fucking ask me that? What are you, stupid?"
He threw back his head and laughed. "I just wanted to hear it. Is that too high up in the stupidsphere for you?"
"Nah," she said, grinning. "That's just stupid enough."
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