Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

Ah, well. I’m sure I’d make the transition. After all, it’s supposed to be old people who are set in their ways, not guys like me. But no—that was unfair. They say you’re as young as you feel, and Karen certainly didn’t feel old now; maybe she never had.

Four others besides Karen and me had received new bodies today. I’m sure they’d all been at the same sales pitch I’d attended, but I hadn’t talked to anyone except Karen there, and these people now had faces so much younger than what I’d presumably seen then that I didn’t recognize any of them. We were all to spend the next three days here, undergoing physical and psychological testing ("hardware and software diagnostics,” I’d overheard one of the Immortex employees say to Dr. Porter, who had given the younger man a very stern look).

I was pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one who’d been having trouble walking. A girl—yes, damn it, she looked like a girl, all of sixteen—was using a wheelchair.

Immortex clients could choose just about any age to look like, of course. This reconstruction must have been based on 2D photos—if this girl were Karen, she’d have been sixteen in the mid-nineteen seventies—where, I think, hairstyles had been all fluffy, and blue eye shadow had been in vogue. But whoever this was wasn’t trying to regress: her hair was short and tightly curled, in today’s fashion, and she had a band of bright pink from temple to temple, across the bridge of her nose, the kind of makeup kids today liked.

Two of the others were also female, and three of them were white. Like Karen, they had opted to look about thirty—meaning, ironically, that all these minds that were much older than mine were housed in bodies that appeared substantially younger than even my new one did. The other upload was a black male. He’d adopted a serene face of perhaps fifty. Actually, now that I thought about it, he looked a lot like Will Smith; I wondered if that’s what his original had looked like, or if he’d opted for a new face.

Karen was chatting with the other women. She apparently knew at least one of them from philanthropic circles. I suppose it was natural that the four old women would spend time together. And, by default, that meant I ended up talking with the other man.

“Malcolm Draper,” the man said, extending a large hand.

“Jake Sullivan,” I replied, taking it. Neither of us were inclined to that silly male game of demonstrating how strong we were by squeezing too hard—probably just as well, given our new robotic hands.

“Where are you from, Jake?”

“Here. Toronto.”

Malcolm nodded. “I live in New York. Manhattan. But of course you can’t get this service down there. So, what do you do, Jake?”

The question I always hated. I didn’t actually do anything—not for a living. “I’m into investments,” I said. “You?”

“I’m a lawyer—do you call them solicitors up here?”

“Only in formal contexts. Lawyer, attorney.”

“Well, that’s what I am.”

“What kind of law?” I asked.

“Civil liberties.”

I gave the mental command that used to reconfigure my features into an impressed expression, but I really had no idea what it did to my face now. “How’s business?”

“In the present political climate? Lots of cases, damn few victories. I can see the Statue of Liberty from my office window—but they should rename the old girl the Statue of Do Exactly What the Government Says You Should Do.” He shook his head. “That’s why I uploaded, see? Not too many of my generation left—people who actually remember what it was like to have civil liberties, before Homeland Security, before Littler v. Carvey , before every dollar bill and retail product had an RFID tracking chip in it. If we let the good old days pass from living memory, we’ll never be able to get them back.”

“So you’re still going to practice law?” I asked.

“Yes, indeed—when interesting-enough cases come along, that is.” He reached into a pocket. “Here, let me give you my card … just in case.”

Weightlessness was wonderful!

Some of the old people were afraid of it, and stayed securely fastened in their ergo-chairs. But I undid my seat belt and floated around the cabin, gently pushing off walls, the floor, and the ceiling. We’d all had antinausea injections before takeoff, and, at least for me, the medicine was working perfectly. I found I could twirl along my head-to-toe axis at a great speed and not get dizzy. The flight attendant showed us some neat things, including water pulling itself into a floating ball. He also showed us how hard it was to throw something to another person: the brain refused to believe that throwing it in a straight line was the way to do it, and we all kept sending them up, as if in parabolic trajectories against gravity.

Karen Bessarian was enjoying weightlessness, too. The cabin walls were completely covered with little black foam pyramids, which I’d at first taken for acoustic insulation but now realized were really to prevent injuries when one went flying into them. Still, Karen was taking it fairly easy, not trying anything as athletic or adventurous as I was.

“If you look out the right-hand-side windows,” said the flight attendant, “you can see the International Space Station.” I happened to be upside down at that moment, so pushed off the wall and started drifting toward the left side. The flight attendant was deadpan. “The other right-hand-side, Mr. Sullivan.”

I smiled sheepishly, and pushed off again with my palm. I found a spot by one of the windows and looked outside. The International Space Station—all cylinders and right angles—had been abandoned for decades. Too big to crash safely into the ocean, it was occasionally given a boost to keep it orbiting. The last astronaut to depart had left the two Canadian-built remote-manipulator arms shaking hands with each other.

“In about ten minutes,” said the flight attendant, “we’ll be docking with the moonship. You should be strapped in for docking—but, don’t worry, you’ll get three full days of weightlessness on your way to the moon.”

On my way to the moon…

I shook my head.

On my way to the fucking moon.

It was well after midnight. Dr. Porter had long since gone home, but there were all sorts of Immortex staff still around to cater to our every need—not that we had many.

We didn’t eat, so there was no point in putting out a fancy buffet for us. I should have thought that through, should have had a special last meal just before uploading. Of course, Immortex hadn’t suggested we do so, I guess because a final meal was what the condemned, not the liberated, were supposed to enjoy.

More: we didn’t drink, so there was no point in having an open bar. Indeed, I realized with a pang of guilt that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a Sullivan’s Select … and now I never would again. My great grandfather—Old Sully himself—was probably spinning in his grave at the thought of a scion of his dynasty giving up beer for anything, even immortality.

And, most astonishing of all, we didn’t sleep. How often I’d said there were too few hours in a day! But now it seemed as though there were far too many.

We, this little band of new uploads, were to spend the night together in this party room; the first night was apparently very difficult for a lot of people. Two Immortex therapists milled about, as did someone who seemed to be the landlocked equivalent of a cruise director, coming up with activities to keep people occupied. Being up constantly, not getting tired, not needing to sleep, not wanting to sleep: it was going to be quite an adjustment, even for those who, in their old age, had slept lightly and had needed only five or six hours a night.