Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

Now that I have a new body, I don’t miss sweating, or sneezing or being tired, or being hungry. I don’t miss stubbed toes, or sunburns, or runny noses, or headaches. I don’t miss the pain in my left ankle, or diarrhea, or dandruff, or charley horses, or needing to pee so bad it hurts. And I don’t miss having to shave or cut my nails or put on deodorant. I don’t miss paper cuts, or farting, or pimples, or having a stiff neck. It’s nice to know that I’ll never need stitches, or angioplasty, or a hernia operation, or laser surgery to reattach a retina—the damage Clamhead did to my arm had been fixed up in a matter of minutes, good as new; just about any physical damage could likewise be repaired, without anesthetic, without leaving scars. And, as they said at the sales pitch, it’s comforting not having to worry about diabetes or cancer or Alzheimer’s or heart attacks or rheumatoid arthritis—or God-damned Katerinsky’s syndrome.

Plus I can read for hours. I still get bored as easily as before; the book has to hold my interest. But I don’t ever have to stop reading just because of eye fatigue, or because trying to make out words in dim light is giving me a headache. Indeed, I haven’t read this much since I was a student.

Are there things I do miss? Of course. All of my favorite foods—Jalapeno peppers and popcorn and Jell-O and stringy cheese on pizza. I miss the way I used to feel after a really good yawn, or the invigorating sensation of splashing cold water on my face. I miss being ticklish and the feeling of silk and laughing so hard it’s actually painful.

But those things aren’t gone for good. A decade or two from now, the technology will exist to give me all those sensations again. I can wait. I can wait forever.

And, yet, despite having all that time, some things seemed to be progressing awfully quickly. Karen had given up her suite at the Royal York, and moved into my house. It was temporary, of course—just a convenience, since she had to stay in Toronto for a while longer, seeing Porter for check ups and adjustments two or three times a week.

Me, I still intended to live here in North York for the foreseeable future. And so I was trying to decide what to do with the kitchen. It seemed pointless to devote so much space to something I’d— we’d —never use, and, frankly, it was an unwelcome reminder of the pleasures we’d given up. Of course, I had to keep bathrooms for visitors, but a wet bar and coffee urn were all I really needed to entertain a bit, and, well, the kitchen was huge, and had wonderful windows looking out over the landscaped yard. It was much too good a room to avoid. Maybe I’d turn it into a billiards room. I’d always wanted one of those.

While I was mulling this over, Karen, as she often did, was sitting in a chair, reading from a datapad. She preferred paper books, but for catching up on news she didn’t mind using a datapad, and—

And suddenly I heard her make the sound that substituted for a gasp. “What’s wrong?” I said.

“Daron is dead.”

I didn’t recognize it in time. “Who?”

“Daron Bessarian. My first husband.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I haven’t seen him for—God, it’s been thirty years. Not since his mother died. She’d been very good to me, and we’d kept in touch, even after Daron and I divorced. I went to her funeral.” Karen paused for a moment, then said decisively, “And I want to go to Daron’s funeral.”

“When is it?”

She looked down at her datapad. “The day after tomorrow. In Atlanta.”

“Do—do you want me to go with you?”

Karen considered this, then: “Yes. If you wouldn’t mind.”

Actually, I hated funerals—but had never been to one of somebody I didn’t know; maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. “Um, sure. Sure, I’d be”— happy to didn’t seem the right way to end that sentence, and for once I caught my first thought before it got out into the air—“willing to.”

Karen nodded decisively. “It’s settled, then.”

I had to do something about Clamhead. She needed human companionship, and apparently no matter how hard I tried, she wasn’t going to accept me—or Karen, as it turned out—in that capacity. Plus, Karen and I were going away to Georgia, and had decided to stop at her place in Detroit on the way back. It wasn’t fair to Clammy to leave her with just a robokitchen for an extended period.

And, well, damn it all, but I’m an idiot. I can’t leave well enough alone; I can’t resist trying one more time, testing the waters yet again. And so I called Rebecca Chong.

I thought maybe if I selected audio only on the phone, things might go better. She’d hear my voice, hear its warmth, hear the affection in it—but not see my plastic face.

She knew it was me calling, of course; the phone would have told her. And so, the mere fact that she answered … “Hello,” came her voice, formal and stiff. I had that purely mental sensation that used to accompany my heart sinking. “Hi, Becks,” I said, trying to sound cheerful, chipper.

“Hello,” she said again, still not using my name. It was right there in front of her, a string of pixels on her call-display unit, an electronic identification, but she wouldn’t use it.

“Becks,” I said, “it’s about Clamhead. Can you—would you be willing to look after her for a while? I’m—she—”

Rebecca was brilliant; that was one of the reasons I loved her. “She doesn’t recognize you, does she?”

I was quiet for longer than you’re supposed to be in phone conversations, then: “No. No, she doesn’t.” I paused again, then: “I know you’ve always loved Clamhead. Does your building allow pets?”

“Yeah,” she said. “And, yeah, I’d be happy to look after Clamhead.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Maybe all this talk about a dog had moved her to throw me a bone. “What are friends for?”

I was sitting in the living room of my lunar apartment, reading news on my datapad. Of course, the selection of stories displayed was based on my keywords, and—

Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

Could it be true?

I thumbed the article open and read it—then read it again.

Chandragupta. That was a name I hadn’t heard before; this couldn’t really be his area, or else—

Hyperlinks; his bio. No, no, he’s the real deal, all right. And so—

My heart was pounding and my vision was blurring.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Maybe I should email him, but—

But, God damn it, I couldn’t. We were allowed to monitor Earth news here—I never would have come if I couldn’t have continued to follow the Blue Jays—but we weren’t permitted any form of communication with people back on Earth.

Christ, why couldn’t this have happened a few weeks ago, before I spent all this money on the Mindscan process and on coming here to the moon? What a waste!

But that was beside the point, really. It was only money. This was way more important.

This was huge.

This changed everything.

I re-read the news to be sure I wasn’t mistaken. And I wasn’t. It was real .

I was excited and elated and thrilled. I left my apartment, practically bouncing over to the Immortex offices.

The chief administrator at High Eden was a man named Brian Hades: tall, early fifties, light-colored eyes, silver-gray hair gathered into a ponytail, white beard. We’d all met him upon our arrival; I’d quipped that he had a hell of a name—and although his tone never veered from its habitual the-customer-is-always-right smoothness, his bearded jaw clenched in a way that suggested I’d not been the first one to make that joke. Anyway, there wasn’t much bureaucracy here; I just walked through his office door and said hello.