“Shouldn’t I remember where he’s from? I know that, don’t I?” Oft’-asked questions unremembered. She shook their potential threat from her shoulders as she would an uncomfortable, scratchy shawl. As always.
A chill—the cold, or not—set her to shaking. A splash of pale, straight hair fell across her face, and she flipped it up with an automatic toss of her head as she moved from tiny entryway to tiny living room/bedroom.
Aria adjusted the thermostat a notch higher. Resting against the wall, next to the unit, fingers pinching the slider/adjuster, her hand shook. She snatched it away and pressed it into her stomach to still the tremor. Outside, a strong gust shook the windowpane in its frame. It needed but a single step to feel the cold radiating from the glass. She spoke to her reflection there; she spoke to the sounds of her small city and to the creaks of the old two-story house upon which her attic apartment rested like a comfortable hat; she spoke to the pain battling the joy in her own soul, to her cat, Paris, stretched out on the floor, luxuriating in the warmth of today’s last sunlight.
“It’s not that you’re leaving,” she declared, “just that you need more space.” A short nod punctuated her declaration.
What a man he was! So confusing: proposing one day, and now saying wait. Aria didn’t understand him. Perhaps it was cultural, his upbringing.
She didn’t understand him, but oh! How she loved him. Still clenched against her stomach, her hand, her treacherous hand, trembled.
🍂
Aurelio blanked his mind and mentally dove for the opening portal. What a relief to be leaving Aria’s construct. He never suffered discorporeality gladly, and Aria had proved over and again that she was unable to get a handle on her own state. She would not be disabused of the notion that she was living in her old garret apartment in the Boston suburb of Malden.
Nodding at Sim, the weeks-old, white-coated Dr. Salson quarter-clone, Aurelio stood on shaky legs. The hydro-chair pulled at his sweat-drenched clothes. Always the same: The net always got tangled in his fine brown hair as he removed it, and—for reasons he couldn’t discern—his shoes always felt overlarge. Unbidden, the memory of a laughing Aria tugging a yellow plastic comb through his hair flashed in his mind.
Aurelio shook it away and stepped down from the chair with care, not wanting to lose the shoes that seemed about to slip from his feet. At the low counter by the door, he picked up the fingernail clippers that he carried in his pocket. No one had said that you couldn’t sit in the hydro-chair with metal in your pockets, but…Neither he nor Sim said a word as Aurelio put his hand on the visitor’s in/out log. The finger-shaped depressions glowed green and were cold beneath his already chilled flesh. The computer scanned his prints and sampled the oils trapped in the whorls and loops to verify his DNA sequence. At the beep, Aurelio snatched back his hand, as if it had been burned. The whole process had become progressively more distasteful in the last weeks.
He took a step toward the recessed rectangle that was the lab’s egress, paused, spoke without turning, “Is she happy, do you think?” The swish of the opening lock underlined his question.
“Happy?” As a quarter-clone, it supposedly could distinguish and feel limited emotions; still, it sounded confused at the question, as if the concept of happiness were an alien thing. It was much like the original DNA parent, in that respect.
Putting his slow-to-warm hands in the pockets of his sheepskin jacket, Aurelio turned to face Sim. On the other side of the open, soundproof lock, The Institute whispered, beeped, and whooshed. The room’s stale air brushed Aurelio’s neck like the kiss of a persistent lover.
“Happy—contenta, feliz…How is it for her? She used to be like a hummingbird in spring. Now…now she is there.” He removed a hand long enough to point at the small, flat black cube decorated only by input/output jacks and a single, pulsing green light. It occurred to him that she would rather the light demonstrating her viability be any color but green. She had hated—still hated?—green with a passion.
“Now she is there,” he repeated, finishing his thought with, “caged and bound.”
Sim’s low answer fought not at all to surmount the constant whisper of the environmental control unit. As far as it was able, it seemed to be speaking with compassion, though its attention never wavered from the complex S.R. board. Aurelio strained to hear the creature’s words.
“It is all relative, is it not?” it said. “Happiness? Even reality is as much a construct of the mind as any emotion. Or so we are taught in Culture De-shock.”
“I suppose.” Turning on his heel so fast that the old-fashioned and expensive leather soles squeaked, Aurelio strode into the quiet and non-busyness of the institute.
“But is she happy,” he whispered to himself, “re-living the same day for all eternity?”
Lights sparkled in the liquid underlining his eyes. Shaking his head, he pressed the heels of his hands to his eye sockets, striding—almost stomping—to the double-paned door marked EXIT, his shoes once again holding his feet in a close embrace.
🍂
Aria twisted a ringlet of softly shining blonde hair around her finger and stared through her apartment’s west-facing window. Fall had brought its new wardrobe; trees and lawns and the sidewalk below wore the colorful first layer. Later, when winter pulled on its heavy jacket, the world would be plain and unidentifiable until arrived the spring; then becoming as the hatted, overcoated stranger rushing for the comparative warmth of a subway entrance, all anxious to shed his protective garments.
This is the time of year to be most cherished, thought Aria, eternally changing; never the same way twice, yet always the same. The heater clicked on, seemingly triggered by a shiver that vibrated up her spine and straightened—for
a moment—her bowed shoulders. Born in Southern California, Aria had never fully acclimated herself to the deep cold of New England. No California autumn had ever been so spectacular though, and the riot of color on this, her tiny street, more than made up for the bone-chilling discomfort.
Behind her, Paris made a plaintive, “meow.” Aria swiveled and knelt. “Oh, poor baby, am I forgetting your dinny-time? I’m so sorry. Aurelio’s visit has me all mixed up.” She pressed her nose into the clean, sleek fur, happily inhaling the slightly sour but somehow comforting smell of cat. “I’m sorry, baby.”
She gathered him up and stood, hardly noticing his wriggling. Aria drifted back to the window, let her attention be captured by the shining multi-storied bank of windows across the street. Residents of the upper floors could see all the way into town, being able to look over the roof of her apartment. But she was content with her view: The street below bustled with life, offering as much entertainment as any vid. Her own small street—lane—was like a new-sprouting branch, delicate and with the vibrancy of life still in its future.
“Just think, Paris, you turn a single corner and it’s almost a different world.”
Delighted at the thought, Aria pirouetted and danced the three quick steps to her tiny kitchen. On the white refrigerator door hung a recipe for chemical-free chocolate cookies she’d been meaning to try for months now. The floor-level cupboard that housed Paris’s meals was cracked open.
“Oh, Paris! Did you think you could get your own dinner? Silly kitty!” Her laugh tinkled and glissed through the air like the notes from a harp’s brushed strings. The room around her welcomed the familiar sound as much as it welcomed the sparkle in her gray-green eyes.
Paris, wriggling enough now to escape her, jumped to the floor and nuzzled the row of squat cylinders lined up and stacked on the first shelf of the cupboard. “Meow?” he asked, looking up at Aria.
She bent, laughing, and retrieved a colorful container. While removing the seal, she asked Paris, “So what do you suppose is wrong with Aurelio? He seemed so distracted today.”
🍂
Excerpt of transcription from institute audio: Conversation between Dr. Kell Salson and visiting Dr. John Masters V, dated 6 June.
Dr. Salson: It’ll revolutionize the concept of (pause to cough and take a wheezing breath) death.
Dr. Masters V: But isn’t it slightly…inhumane. Would you let your daughter be one?
Dr. Salson: But of course! To be able to live forever in the setting of your choice; never wanting for anything you might wish into existence. It’s the next step beyond virtual reality. Perfect digital matrices that store a person’s very essence until the end of time. Why, it might be better than real life! (wheeze)
(Pause)
Dr. Masters V: Have you ever heard of records? LPs?
Dr. Salson: Of course; an antique form of storing analog audio signals, weren’t they? Very primitive. What about them?
Dr. Masters V: I read once in an old periodical that a great deal of controversy ensued when digitally encoded music first became available to the consumer.
Dr. Salson: Music crystals? But how could…
Dr. Masters V (interrupting): Before that, something called a “CD.” Audiophiles of the time claimed that the perfection of digital reproduction didn’t allow the warmth of a performance to come through. Its soul.
(Long pause)
Dr. Salson: So?…
🍂
Once there were two lovers. They lived in a perpetual haze that friends and other observers called silliness, and that the lovers called love.
From Peru, he had had an unusual upbringing for someone born into his time and place: Rather than feeling women were things, tools to be used at will, he had been taught to see that women—all people—were to be cherished. It was not a popular attitude. Once it became obvious that success would ever elude him in his homeland, he left it for a place where a belief in equality could be expressed without earning suspicious stares, or incredulous snorts, or both.
She, a spirit. A blithe beauty who found laughter and joy in the winds or in the way pasta slithers off your fork if you’re not careful. Her ease and cheer provided balance to his more sober and serious outlook.
They met in a whirlwind of coincidence and found themselves swept up along with all the (preprogrammed to be biodegradable) flyers promoting this weekend’s fantastic sale at SearsAmerica. Each danced into the other’s life, choking on the swirling dust of a busy train station. And he, unprepared for the vacuum-suck of the departing train, ran into her while chasing down the wool boina that his abuelita had knit him when he was a boy. And she, perhaps expecting a waltz rather than a Peruvian Marinera, stumbled to one knee.
He helped her gain her feet; she helped him over the loss of his favorite hat.
Together they soared on the day’s unseasonably high winds. Love at first kite.
After three years of the kind of heaven we hear about but rarely witness—more rarely experience—she was hit by an out-of-control AI Taxi and killed. That fast. With that much preparation.
(“I just had the new Sony AI-pilot installed. They said it was the best. State-of-the-art, couldn’t–”)
As a consulting psychologist for the Institute for Extended Living, Aurelio worked with the full range of clones—quarter through half—in order to help them integrate themselves into their new “lives.” It was interesting work, because of the varying legal states that could be bestowed by the original on the clone (heir, copy, sibling, et cetera).
Purely by chance, one of Aurelio’s colleagues had once whispered in tones of both awe and dismissal about the huge steps being made in the area of “Simulated Reality.” A Top Secret classification buys only so much privacy among gossipy professionals.
Immediately after the accident—and with no true understanding of the possible results of his actions—Aurelio arranged for an S.R. Recorder to be rushed to the Free Hospital of Boston. As Aria was D.O.A. with severe trauma
to the neck, head, and spinal column, the Emergency Room Mechnicians did not grant her priority—the chances of resuscitation and regeneration being slight. But Aurelio and an S.R. tech named Phil—twitchy face and body odor that had a better right hook than Aurelio did—found her easily; whatever you might say about the hospital’s triage, the support staff were aces in the organization department. The two of them, Aurelio openly sobbing into his hands (while surreptitiously trying to hold his nose), attached wires, pushed buttons, and left.
Had anyone else (besides security drones programmed only to respond to sounds of alarm and/or violent movement) been around, he or she (or it) would have heard the shorter of the two men comment, “Arri, old jeez, it’s pretty likely the brain damage will cause some gaps. I mean, she’s missing the whole left half of–”
“Just do it!” insisted Aurelio. The sobs threatened to spill—explode—from his eyes, nose, and mouth. A drone tracked him for a full minute before deciding that the strange grinding, choking sounds coming from his jaws and throat did not constitute an imminent threat.
🍂
Aurelio keyed off the vid-phone and felt the familiar pang of guilt. It seemed to ride him now, like a rodeo cowboy with legs of steel. And those legs squeezed. That I should be so happy, went the litany.
It had been only three years, a short time in most lives. Perhaps there would be a change in her constantly looping condition.
But there wouldn’t be; he knew it as much as he wanted to deny it. She still hadn’t changed from that first day. Not significantly. And how could he expect her to? It would be like expecting a digivid transfer of some twentieth century movie to spontaneously become scratch and hiss free.
That first time that he had waited for her to “awaken” in her box, he still remembered the fear. Gut-wrenching and cold. A formless place, lacking color, texture, temperature. Only the fact that he knew his real body lay resting on a reclining chair in a cheerless laboratory kept him from quick insanity. That and the pulse-quickening thought of seeing his one true love again. So naive. But how could he have known?
The garret apartment—the last place she had lived before they married—seeped into existence around him. It looked and felt as if someone were pouring the world from a bottle. And she, his love, she sat across the room on her garage-sale couch. Her cat, Paris, rested in her lap. Traffic sounds drifted up from the busy street below, seeping through the windows closed against the chill fall air.
Dr. Salson had warned him that her first conscious memory could be any place/event that she had ever seen or even imagined. Aurelio only now let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. At least they were someplace familiar to him.
Looking around, he saw a gap where one corner should be, with literally nothing beyond. The bookshelf seemed as he remembered it, stuffed with paperbacks and a few overflowing plants in tiny pots. The scent of patchouli—favored by both of them—filled the air.
She turned to look at him then, a puzzled half-smile on her elfin face.
He waited for some sign, afraid that her memory would not include an Aurelio. She parted her lips and gave a tiny, familiar laugh.
“Ay, mi vida,” he rushed in, forgetting in his need and desire what language he spoke, “Y pensar que yo iba a tener que vivir sin ti.” He stepped to her, gathering her up into his arms. She went willingly.
“Oh, Aurelio!” she whispered into his ear, “I’m so excited. I want to tell my parents as soon as possible! They’ll want to come out, of course.”
“Pardon? Tell them about what?”
“Why, that we’re getting married! Silly.”
Though a bit scary that first time, he had remembered the warning that her memory would inevitably be imperfect, that she might experience gaps. And he hadn’t felt bothered or frightened the second time either. A little confused that she hadn’t moved past that memory, but no more.
Three years later, and with the same conversation repeating with few variations, Aria’s ecstatic happiness at their “pending marriage” had worn at Aurelio. He felt stuck in a trap that would neither release him, nor even let him die.
🍂
Aria thought it might be her lover’s obvious preoccupation that had her worried. At first, as she watched Paris wolf down his dinner, her mind filled with the many signs of Aurelio’s tension: the nibbling of his upper lip, the way his arms seemed not to want to touch her, the way he stared out the window as they spoke, instead of into her eyes. But as she leaned against the cold wall of the refrigerator, feeling its electric hum each time the motor kicked in, she realized it was another thing entirely—something she couldn’t quite identify. She had a nagging feeling of omission, of not rightness. She couldn’t shake the sensation that the world was turning left while she continued blithely onward.
“Oh, don’t be a silly,” she said out loud as Paris licked the remnants of his dinner from the bright orange bowl. She and Aurelio were to be married. Hadn’t he asked her just yesterday? She thought about it and discovered that the attempt to recall the specific memory of him down on one knee brought her only a furled brow and a disconcerting emptiness. Striking a pose of deliberate memory, she fingered the oven mitt hanging on its hook next to the stove, tapping the red and white checks as if they were a keypad. Okay, she remembered slicing red peppers and an onion and disjointing a chicken for tallarines saltados—his favorite. She remembered the spirals of steam coming off his bowl and lit by the westering sun. She remembered hearing the sluggish roar of going-home traffic three floors below. She remembered…What?
Even with the tiny frown marring her perfect features, Aria possessed the kind of ageless beauty that left one slightly breathless. Petite and sensual by her very innocence, the only reason she had not left behind a string of broken hearts was that she had chosen well the first time. Aurelio—thirty-one to her twenty-one—was her first and only boyfriend. Soon he would be her first and only husband.
Her husband. Soon.
Soon?
🍂
They held hands. The summer sun falling on his cheek turned his dark skin pale; Aurelio shivered, still feeling the chill of the perpetual fall in the box.
“It seems wrong.” His face a perfect study of confused guilt, Aurelio led Jen to the terminal. They had decided she would take an LEO cruise for a few days while he did what he must. The muted thunder of a launching shuttle shook the waiting area. The unbidden memory of his and Aria’s first trip to Spain threatened to bring Aurelio’s guilt up and out. Jen, sensing his distress by the pressure of his hand clutching hers, let an inaudible sigh escape her lips.
“You have to live your life, Arri.” Having been introduced by one of his colleagues at an Institute party, she used the same diminutive of his name that they all did. It sounded sweet on her lips. “We do. And no matter how much you try to make it so, it isn’t your fault she was killed. It isn’t–”
“No,” he interrupted, “but it is my fault she’s ‘alive.’”
They had had this not-exactly-an-argument before. Jen sighed, audibly this time, kissed Aurelio on the cheek and lips, and turned to look at the growing line at the boarding gate. “I’ll be back in five days. I know it isn’t fair—making this an either/or sort of thing—I know that. But this hold she has on you isn’t fair to me, either. So, choose: Me or her.” She turned in time to miss the bleak look she knew would be there, then, halting, she spun back around and called across the small gap, “I love you, Arri; you love me. Is it really so complicated?”
“No,” he answered under his breath, “but doing what one must can be a terrible thing.”
Aurelio followed her progression down the boarding ramp, until her erect form could no longer be distinguished. He stalled as long as he could, watching a returning shuttle boom down the runway, watching the televised image of hers taking off and disappearing into the violet of low-earth orbit. Knowing the image was a computer enhancement made it no less breathtaking.
When finally he had no more excuses to linger, he left the terminal.
Aurelio joined the queue for a cab, having to wait only a minute or two before one pulled up in front of him. He climbed in, his long legs having the accustomed trouble folding properly into the small space. He said, “I need to go to the Institute of Extended Living,” simultaneously brushing his wrist against the payment strip.
The AI guiding the vehicle said, “Sure, doc, in a jiffy.” Low Boston accent. As if the AI were in reality a big, bluff Irishman with a woolen cap and a flask of whiskey under the seat. Aurelio sighed in relief without realizing he’d been holding his breath. The AI was programmed for Local/Friendly, instead of, say, Lebanese/Hostile. Aurelio thanked this small luck. “I don’t need any problems right now.”
“Doc?” returned the AI.
Aurelio waved his hand, “Nothing. Keep on.”
“Whatever you say, doc.”
As he rode, Aurelio remembered with a bitter smile those first days of AI cabs, when all of them were unfailingly courteous and knowledgeable about the city. No one could have imagined that they would fail—and so spectacularly.
A usage study showed a rapid and increasing loss of clientele to AI cabs and a significant boost in alternate forms of transportation. Some boy-genius in the Crazy Idea Department suggested they start randomly programming mood, nationality, level of competence, and differing degrees of “knowledge” of the city into the AIs. Of course, business picked right up. As did complaints. A second trial of the sweetness and light models resulted in no complaints, but the same customer erosion as before. Perhaps, mused Aurelio, people needed things to grumble about.
A question arrowed into his thoughts: What model was the one that had accidentally killed Aria? He winced to himself and rubbed two trembling fingers along the stained, faux-leatherette interior, and then wrapped his other hand around them to stop the shaking, to hide it.
The cab stopped, and the voice in front said, “Here ya are, doc, Institute of Extended Living. Hope you enjoyed your ride.”
Aurelio waited for the rear door to lift open, stepped out.
“Thanks,” he murmured automatically.
“Sure, doc. You have yourself a good day, now.” The door dropped closed, and the cab floated away with a hum of electronics.
Though it was a low, unimposing building, Aurelio viewed the Institute now with more trepidation than ever before. He had tried more than once to explain Aria’s condition to her. This would be the first time that he would do so with the closing statement, “I’m leaving now. You are only a simulacrum, and I must get on with my life.” He stepped forward.
At his approach, the double doors slid open, releasing a whoosh of warm air. Unconsciously squaring his shoulders, Aurelio took a deep breath and commanded his legs to carry him through, chiding himself, You need to be able to enter your place of employment without such dread.
🍂
From a speech by Dr. Martin Salson to the Association for Permanence:
…The growing perfection and concomitant reduction in cost for these cloning techniques in tandem with my illustrious colleagues’ breakthroughs in genetic manipulation will soon allow Average Citizen A to enjoy a second life. Not only will this life begin after his or her death, but it will also be a better, longer, more healthful one. With an option to renew, of course. (Laughter) We finally have the ability to grow Full Clones—healthy and without physical deformities—in under six months. Advances in my own SR technology allow full memory dumps. Science fiction made fact. As to the lengthening of lifespans, there is no telling the limit, or whether there is a limit.…Guess we won’t know ’til we get there, hmm? (Laughter, applause) At any rate…(Pause for a shouted question from the rear of the auditorium) What’s that? (Question is repeated) The existing SRs? Well, obviously that technology is now obsolete; a genetic sample is enough to regrow from the most damaged fatality. Why, I can foresee the time when the low cost, speed, and ease of the process will allow it to take the place of rejuvenating plastic surgery. In fact…
🍂
She tapped her watch with one of her medium-long, unpainted nails. The clicking of the clock seemed overloud in the quiet garret room. Heat stifled, closed her in. She opened the window a crack. The rich smell of the world outside rushed to her nose. I love the fall, she thought.
Paris wound around her ankles. She bent, picked him up, talked into his sleek, black fur, her nose tickling as she did. “I can’t imagine where Aurelio might be. It’s not like him to be late, and he did say he would be here right after work.”
Paris answered with a yawn and a contented “Mrrowll.”
Aria turned away from the window and walked to the couch, sat. Paris followed, jumping up onto the couch and pushing his flat head against her palm.
Smiling, she petted him behind the ears, saying, “And after proposing yesterday—” Joy welled from the depths of her being, consuming her in a nearly orgasmic shiver; she continued, “After his proposing, well, I can hardly wait to tell my parents!”
She scooped up Paris and hugged him to her breast.
“I just love him so much. I don’t know how I could ever live without him.”
🍂
She tapped her watch with one of her medium-long, unpainted nails. The clicking of the clock seemed overloud in the quiet garret room. Heat stifled, closed her in. She opened the window a crack. The rich smell of the world outside rushed to her nose. I love the fall, she thought.
Paris wound around her ankles…
