Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

I’d never held a gun of any sort in my life—and, as a Canadian, I was proud of that.

But I took the device, and copied Quentin, who slipped another one of them into a capacious pouch on the side of his right thigh.

Finally, we put on the fishbowl helmets. They were impregnated, Quentin told me, with something similar to electronic ink: any portion of them could become opaque—blocking out sunlight. Then we cycled through the airlock, which happened to be adjacent to the pad where the moon-buses landed.

“Your pride and joy is gone,” I said over the intersuit radio, pointing at the empty pad.

“It’s been gone for days,” replied Quentin. “On its usual run to LS One. But it’ll be back tomorrow, to take some passengers to the SETI installation.”

The SETI installation. Where they listen for messages from the universe. I tried to listen, too.

We continued on, walking over the lunar soil. Although the suit massed about twenty kilos, I still felt much lighter than I ever had on Earth. The suit air was a bit startling—completely devoid of any odor or flavor—but I quickly got used to it, although—

No, it’s gone. I’d thought for a second that another headache was coming on, but the sensation passed almost at once.

The crater wall was far in front of us. As we walked, the sun disappeared behind it, and stars became visible. I kept looking up at the black, black sky for the Earth, but of course it was never visible from here. Still…

“Is that Mars?” I said, pointing at a brilliant point of light that was shaded differently from the others—it was either red or green, but I’d never heard of “the green planet.”

“Sure is,” said Quentin.

It took us about ten minutes to half-walk, half-hop over to the crater wall, which was craggy and steep, rising far above us. Since we were in shadow, Quentin had turned on a light in the center of his chest, and then he reached over and flipped a switch on my suit, activating a similar light.

“Wow,” I said, looking up at the inky wall. “That looks … difficult.”

“It is,” said Quentin, amiably. “Where would the fun be if it were easy?” He didn’t wait for an answer, which was a good thing, because I didn’t have one. Instead, he undid the pouch on his thigh, and pulled out his piton gun. “See?” he said, pointing with his other hand. “You aim at a cleft in the rock.”

I nodded.

He took a bead with his gun, then fired. There was no sound, but the gun obviously discharged with a sizable kick, judging by the way Quentin’s hand jerked back. A metal spike flew silently into the rock. Quentin tested it to see that it had lodged securely, and threaded a rope through it. “Simple as that,” he said.

“How many pitons does it hold?”

“Eight. But there are oodles more in each of our pouches, so don’t worry.”

“It, ah, looks like it packs quite a kick,” I said, gesturing at the gun.

“Depends on the force setting,” said Quentin. “But, on maximum—which you’d use for granite, and such…” He adjusted a control on the gun, and fired away from the crater wall. The spike shot across the intervening vacuum and sent up a cloud of moondust where it hit.

I nodded.

“All right?” said Quentin. “Let’s go!”

We started climbing the rocky face, climbing ever higher, climbing toward the light.

It was exhilarating. I was outdoors, and the lack of walls made it seem, at least for a time, like I was no longer a prisoner. We made our way to the top of the crater rim and—

—and fierce sunlight lanced into my eyes, triggering another headache before the helmet darkened. God, I wish my brain would stop hurting…

We walked around for a while on the gray surface, which curved away to a too-near horizon. “Magnificent desolation,” Chandragupta had said, quoting somebody or other. It certainly was. I drank in the stark beauty while trying to ignore the pain between my ears.

Eventually, a warning started pinging over the helmet speakers, a counterpoint to the agonizing throbs: our air would soon be running out.

“Come on,” said Quentin. “Time to go home.” Home , I thought. Yes, he was right. The bloody moonbus engineer was right. It was time to go home, once and for all.

Deshawn and Malcolm had spent the entire recess researching and conferring, and, as we returned to the courtroom, I heard Deshawn tell Karen he was “as ready as I’ll ever be.” Once Judge Herrington had arrived, and we were all seated again, Deshawn dove into his cross-examination of the Yale bioethicist, Alyssa Neruda.

“Dr. Neruda,” he said, “I’m sure the jury was fascinated by your discussion of the gerrymandering of the line between personhood and nonpersonhood.”

“I would hardly accuse the highest court of the land of gerrymandering,” she replied coldly.

“Perhaps. But there’s a glaring oversight in your commentary on people becoming more than one individual, isn’t there?”

Neruda regarded him. “Oh?”

“Well, yes,” said Deshawn. “I mean, human cloning has been technically possible since—when? Twenty-twelve or so?”

“I believe the first human clone was born in 2013,” said Neruda.

“I stand corrected,” said Deshawn. “But isn’t cloning taking one individual and making it into two? The original and the copy are genetically identical after all, and yet surely they both have rights and are people?”

“You should take my course, Mr. Draper. That is indeed a fascinating theoretical issue, but it’s not relevant to the laws of the United States. First, of course, no sensible person would say that they are the same people. And, second, human cloning has always been banned here—it’s even banned up in Canada—and so American law has had no need to incorporate the concept of human clones into its definitions of personhood.” She crossed her arms in a so-there gesture. “Individuation still stands as the law of the land.”

If Deshawn was crestfallen, he hid it well. “Thank you. Doctor,” he said. “No further questions.”

“And we’ll call it a day,” said Judge Herrington. “Jurors, let me admonish you again…”

It had been some time since I’d connected with another instantiation of me, but it happened that evening, while I was watching the Blue Jays play. They were doing so badly, I guess I was letting my mind wander. Maybe my zombie was willing to watch them get slaughtered, but the conscious me couldn’t take it, and—

And suddenly there was another version of me inside my head. I told the wall screen to turn off, and strained to listen.

That’s strange…

“Hello!” I said. “Hello, are you there?”

What? Who?

I sighed, and went through the rigmarole of explaining who I was, ending with, “And I know you think it’s 2034, but it’s not. It’s really 2045.”

What are you talking about?

“It’s really 2045,” I said again.

Of course it is. I know that.

“You do?”

Of course.

So it wasn’t the same instantiation with the memory problem I’d encountered earlier. Christ, I wondered just how many of us there were. “You started by saying something was strange.”

What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is.

“What is?”

I dropped a pen I was using.

“So?”

So I managed to catch it before it hit the floor.

“Well, there’s no slow, chemical component to your reaction time anymore,” I said. “Now, it’s all electric—happening at the speed of light”

That’s not it. I was able to watch the pen fall, to see it clearly as it moved d ownward.

“I haven’t noticed any heightening of my awareness like that.”