“That was a long time ago. I’m your employee.”
He stripped off his pants and crawled under the covers. “Not anymore.”
Diane crossed her arms. “I don’t want her in the VR more than an hour a day,” Diane commanded, “I can watch over her in the house from the cameras.”
“You have more power than you think,” he reminded, “She needs you.”
“But there are things in the physical world I can’t do. Someone has to make her lunch.”
Ridley adjusted his pillow. “I’ve been doing that, haven’t I?”
“Peanut butter and jelly every day is not healthy. You could cook her a hot meal now and then.”
“I would if I knew how.”
“I’ll teach you through the video feed. I’ll even order the groceries. You just have to get them off the porch and cook them.”
“Maybe I can hire a cook. Just for dinner?”
“For how long? Kelly will eventually slip and say something.”
“So?”
Diane’s exasperation was growing. “You can’t bring someone else into the house. We can’t risk the news media finding out. It’s bad enough that Christina knows. How did we get into this situation?”
Ridley spoke calmly, his face resolute. “I’ll learn to cook. We’ll get through this. Now. Let me sleep.”
“One other thing.”
He was growing annoyed. “Yes. One other thing you need to remember. I’m still human. I have to sleep. Lights out.”
The room went dark, except for Diane’s image on the wall-screen. “We found a boat. It’s a tour boat used for pleasure cruises. It can go onto the open ocean.”
“Good-night, Diane. Screen off.”
The room blackened entirely. The skylight over the bed opened was covered in snow.
Ridley returned to the greenhouse with Kelly. Their seedlings had sprouted. He checked the thermostat; the temperature was perfect. Micro-greens grew in a small trough. He helped the child plant tomato and pepper seeds in trays of black plastic.
Diane appeared on his phone. “Three weeks until the portable system is done.”
“Will that include quality assurance?” he asked.
“No. That would take another week.”
He went to the sink and washed the dirt from his hands. “How long does Bethany have?”
“The doctors won’t say.”
“It would be nice to know when it will be too late.”
“I wish I knew,” Diane said, “It might be already.”
“Are we downloading a part of a person?”
“It’s possible. Lucy isn’t sure. She thinks Bethany will simply be degraded.”
“Degraded?”
Lucy appeared on his phone. “Because memories are stored throughout the brain, the missing parts will cause Bethany’s memories to be fuzzy, but intact. It’s like removing a few pixels from a television image. The larger story remains.”
“Do you want to call this off?” Diane asked.
He took a deep breath and then let out a sigh. “No.”
Ridley and Diane visited a mountain cabin in virtual reality, created from Ridley’s photos. Kelly played with Sandy by a mountain stream. “Is it time to tell people?” Diane asked.
They sat together on a porch swing, rocking gently back and forth. “That is up to you.”
“At some point, people will want to meet Vanessa.”
“You like posing as her, don’t you,” he suggested.
Diane transformed into Vanessa’s avatar. “I like being Vanessa. She’s much more confident than I am. She can be a bitch sometimes though.”
“You don’t need to be Vanessa to be beautiful, or a bitch.”
“Funny.”
She returned to her own form. He took her hand. She smiled. “It’s funny. In here physical beauty is so irrelevant, but at the same time, when I’m Vanessa, I feel different. Men ogle me in the camera. Even you seem to treat me differently.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I think you want me to be Vanessa.”
“Of course not.”
“I’m glad you came to see me,” Diane said, “It makes me happy.”
“We should have done this before,” he said, “I never realized how much you meant to me until you left.”
He leaned forward, locked eyes with her, and then kissed her softly.
“How many years did we waste?” she asked.
“Too many.”
“Do you still think I’m Lucy?”
“Lucy doesn’t kiss like that.”
She squinted at him.
“Don’t ask,” Ridley said as he leaned back and stared out over the digital scenery, “Everything about you is real. The feel of your skin, the way your hair bounces over your blouse, the little glint in your eye when you talk about Kelly. I can’t point to a single thing that is not real about you. Except you’re in here and I exist out there.”
She looked away from him. “If I’m going to be honest, I feel powerless. I don’t know why. I could have died at any point in the real world. But I worry about dying in here too. Losing power or someone destroying the mainframe.”
“I would never do that.”
“It’s not you that worries me,” Diane said, “People may have a hard time accepting the dead. You’ve had a hard time accepting that I’m here.”
He kissed her again. “I’m learning about this world. It’s just too new. I need time.”
“That I have. Time is all I have.”
“It’s all any of us have, really.”
Diane worked with Christina to hire two medical technicians and a physician from the therapy center. Each signed non-disclosure agreements. Lucy vetted their social network profiles to ensure that they would have no moral objections. Most wrote the exercise off as the curious explorations of an increasingly eccentric and private millionaire. Christina’s presence helped to reassure their fears that something nefarious might be occurring. Most importantly, Christina rewarded each with considerable cash for their silence.
“How will we sneak Bethany out of the hospital?” Ridley asked.
“I told them we’re taking her to a hospice to die,” Christina responded, “Years ago, Mom signed an order preventing resuscitation if she cannot be awakened.”
Ridley tried to be sensitive. “A DNR? Isn’t she on life support now?”
Christina looked away.
Ridley pressed further. “You’ve ignored your mother’s wishes. Haven’t you?”
“It simplifies the legal issues,” she replied softly, “She’ll already be dead.”
The day of Bethany’s transfer arrived. The helicopter flew over choppy seas. Christina sat next to her mother as a medical technician tended the comatose woman. The machines busily pumped away, keeping Bethany’s brain alive. Christina stroked the old woman’s hair gently and pulled the sheet up around her shoulders to keep her warm. “Mom… We’re almost there.”
They met a larger ocean liner rented from a cruise company. “I didn’t expect a boat this big,” Ridley said.
“Diane had to find a larger boat,” Christina said, “It won’t cost much more.”
Christina was relieved to leave the helicopter. They walked with Bethany as she was wheeled on a gurney into the ship’s formal dining room. A team of engineers had already transferred the brain scanner onto the vessel. A crystal chandelier gleamed from the ceiling, contrasting with the sleek lines of the brain scanner and the aseptic forms of medical monitors. The staff waited patiently in clean-room garments though there was nothing sterile about the room or the process.
Christina looked at her mother longingly, gently touching her cheek. The nurse and a doctor hovered next to the pair. Christina kissed her mother’s cheek and said, “See you soon, Mom.”
Ridley watched from a balcony. Lucy and Diane watched via a simple video uplink. “I wish I could be there,” Lucy pined, “To greet her firsthand.”
The medical technicians di
sconnected the life support and lifted Bethany into the machine’s chamber. The attending physician declared her death as protective screens were rolled into place. The lights dimmed as the machine powered up. Christina walked away from her mother as a rumbling emanated the hall. The chandelier tinkled and clanged as the ship groaned in suddenly rough waters.
The procedure began in the same way that it had for Diane, but the laser moved slowly. The suitcase had only a fraction of the processing power of the mainframe. Christina watched nervously from the back of the ballroom. The device continued spinning and clanging, its mechanisms entangling the inner-most secrets of the elderly woman’s brain with the prism.
Without warning, Bethany raised her hand. Her eyes opened. “Christina?”
The laser continued moving down her forehead. Christina ran to her mother, but Ridley grabbed her arm.
“You don’t want to be in the wave-field,” he said, “It will destroy your brain.”
“But she…”
Bethany closed her eyes.
“She’s gone,” he said.
The machine concluded the procedure and slowly spun down.
Lucy’s pleasure was apparent even in the small window of the videophone. “Because the software runs more slowly, compilation of the data will take hours,” Lucy said, “But, she will be with you soon.”
Christina fought her tears. The software churned slowly away, its progress displayed on a monitor. Twenty minutes passed.
Lucy still complained, “The software would have worked faster here at the mansion. If my network connections had no firewall, I could speed things up. I had to include fail-safes that otherwise I could have handled during the procedure. Bethany would be awake already.”
Ridley recognized the childish dig from the AI. He reminded, “You know we can’t do that. It violates the law.”
“The law is only a construct,” Lucy chided.
A doctor motioned for Christina to go to her mother. “Say goodbye if you like.”
“Is she dead?”
“Her body is. There is no brain activity.”
Christina had no family to comfort her. Her hands trembled. She did not approach the corpse but instead went to a video monitor where she waited. Twenty minutes passed. Christina began to fret. “How much longer?”
The monitor began to glow. “Doll baby,” the voice said, “Don’t cry.”
A generic avatar, neither male nor female, its skin white and features bereft of any definition, motioned to Christina from the video monitor. The blazing white figure held up her hand.
Christina placed her hand against the video-screen in return. “Mom?”
“Where am I?” Bethany asked.
A red light glowed on the camera, just over the monitor. “Thank goodness,” Christina said, “I see you. Can you see me?”
“Yes… but I can’t touch you. Where am I?”
“You were dying. We put you into a computer.”
Bethany examined her featureless avatar. “Is this my soul?”
“In a way. Are you in pain?”
“No, I don’t feel anything. Why am I here?”
“I had no choice. You were in a coma. Do you remember the AI I told you about?”
“The little girl?”
“Lucy came up with a way to transfer you into a processor. We’re going to place you into her mainframe when we return to shore. It will feel like you are returning to the world. It’ll take a few hours to get the boat back to Seattle.”
Bethany was disoriented. “That doesn’t look like our boat.”
“It’s not. We’re going to take you back to Ridley Pierce’s home where Lucy is waiting on you. She has a new home ready for you.”
Bethany looked around. “Where is your father?”
“He’s gone.”
The featureless avatar could not communicate Bethany’s growing anxiety. “There is nothing here. I can’t live like this.”
“We’re going to fix that.”
“Am I dreaming again?”
Christina pleaded, “Please be patient. Trust me. You’ll see.”
Lucy looked on from a remote monitor. Her face was almost smug. “You’ll be with me soon,” she said, “The world is amazing here.”
“Is this heaven or hell?” Bethany asked.
Christina tried to reassure the woman. “You’re not dead. Only your body is gone.”
“Why didn’t you ask my permission? Why did I have to awake like this?”
Christina looked ashamed. “I told you. You were in a coma. There was no other way.”
Bethany became angry. “I’ve never dreamed like this before. My dreams take me places. This room has no doors. There is nothing here.”
Christina remained calm. “It’ll only be a few hours until we get back to the mansion. We’re going to insert your new processor into the mainframe with Lucy and my friend Diane.”
“Where is Robert?”
“Dad is gone.”
Bethany cried out, her face falling into despair as she searched the room for an exit. “But I thought I was dead? I want to go home. Take me home. How do I leave here?”
Christina struggled to explain what had happened.
Her mother wailed, “Please let me leave. I want to die.”
“Mom, you don’t mean that.”
“Let me die.”
The ship arrived at port. Christina wanted to hold her mother’s hand, but had no way to do so. Her mother continued to wail until the camera and monitors were disconnected and the suitcase placed on battery power. Another technician quickly unclipped the latches securing the array and wheeled the assembly out of the ship and down a rickety ramp. Christina watched nervously.
EMTs arrived to declare her mother’s death.
The van ride back to the mansion was tense. Traffic was thick. The van stopped to allow an ambulance to pass. Christina and Ridley arrived at the house, weary from a long day, and rolled the suitcase from the van into the house, down a service elevator, and to the computer laboratory. With precision, Ridley plugged the prism into an open port in the mainframe.
Christina stood in the office as Lucy and Diane waited patiently. Ridley flipped the switch. An old woman appeared on the screen, her face practically a skeleton, her hair white, her skin like dust. Blackness swept across the screen and a tremendous wailing penetrated every corner of the room. Lucy and Diane dissolved into phantoms.
“What’s happening?” Christina asked.
The screen refreshed. Lucy and Diane reappeared. The world became a Vermeer painting. Brushstrokes of pigment were rendered into rolling fields of vivid green with a sky filled with marshmallow clouds. Sheep grazed on tussocks of grass in the distance. “It’s my grandparent’s farm,” Christina said, “In Montana.”
A beautiful woman, young and vibrant, appeared in the middle of the screen. Bethany became a romance novel heroine come to life as the landscape shifted behind her with every step.
“Welcome,” Lucy said, “I apologize for the horrible delay. It was the only way.”
Bethany, now a young woman, was lost. She staggered across the field, ignoring Lucy and Diane’s open arms. “Is this a memory?”
“In a way. This place comes from your memories.”
“What happened?” Bethany cried, “You left me. All of you left me.”
Christina spoke from the other side. “Mom, please be calm. It was only a few hours.”
“Hours? Hours?” Bethany screamed, “It’s been decades. Decades!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ridley and Christina sat helplessly in his living room as Diane and Lucy tried to calm Bethany. Lucy pointed to a portal in the blue sky, a virtual monitor. “Your daughter has been waiting for you.”
“Mom, are you okay?” Christina asked, as if from the sky.
Bethany looked around in confusion. “I don’t know. What has happened to me?”
“Please focus,” Lucy said.
Bethany’s avatar aged as she waile
d, “It was so lonely. There was nothing.”
Lucy had used a decades old video of Bethany celebrating at an anniversary party to design the woman’s avatar. The avatar wavered between that of a withered and dried cadaver and a vibrant woman in her fifties. The oil-painting effect faded and the world stabilized into a semblance of reality.
Lucy held up a digital mirror. Her voice became a seductive caress. “Calm your mind and settle your thoughts,” she enticed, “Imagine yourself as you were. On your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Picture the beautiful pink dress you wore. Your hair flowed over your shoulders onto a necklace of fine pearls. You were surrounded by the people that loved you. Feel their smiles. The warm hugs. This is not history. Time has no meaning. This is yesterday. This is today. This is tomorrow.”
Diane faded from the scene, her avatar turning into an unfocused blur. She studied the transition with great interest.
Bethany became lost in memory. “We danced until late at night,” she remembered, “But where is he?”
“For now, your husband can join us only in memory,” Lucy said.
“Why not?” Bethany asked, “Isn’t this Heaven?”
“No, this is not heaven as you believe it to exist.”
“I thought I had died and that white box was all that remained. I thought I was in hell…”
Lucy took Bethany’s hand. “I’m sorry that you felt abandoned in the construct. Here, your mind controls how time passes. Your old brain captured data at fifteen cycles per second. Here, your processor can operate at ten-thousand cycles per second. That’s why time seemed to slow. I did not consider how that might happen. I should have slowed your processor.”
Bethany’s avatar finally settled upon the younger image and the camera resumed its crisp focus. She raised her hand to her face and then began to slowly stroke her hair, thick and full. “This was me. Is it me now?”
“If this is how you wish to exist. You can choose any time in your life.”
Now with bare feet, Bethany walked through the tussocks of spring grass, trying to reconcile what had happened. The mirror evaporated. Bethany reached to the sky for her daughter, but there was no hand to grasp, no shoulders to caress, and no hair to tussle. “Christina… Are you here too?”
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