Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

I waited for the two-plus seconds to pass. But the android me just stood there, looking off camera. Presumably he would be in Toronto, and so there was a good chance the person off-camera was Dr. Andrew Porter. But Porter had said he didn’t follow baseball.

“I asked you how the Blue Jays are doing,” I said again, and waited.

“Umm, they’re doing fine. They just beat the Devil Rays.”

“No, they didn’t. They’re doing terribly. Haven’t won a game in two weeks.”

“Um, well, I haven’t been following…”

“Which past president just died?” I asked.

“Um, you mean an American president?”

“You don’t know, do you? Hillary Clinton just passed on.”

“Oh, that —”

“It wasn’t Clinton, you lying bastard. It was Buchanan.” Of course Smythe had stopped him from answering when I’d asked him what a field of grass looked like.

This android had never seen one. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “You’re not the me that’s out in the world. You’re a—a backup .”

“I—”

“Shut up. Shut the hell up. Smythe! ”

The camera changed to show Smythe. “I’m here, Jake.”

“Smythe, don’t fuck with me like that again. Don’t you dare .”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to do.”

“It was damn near fatal thing to do. Get the copy of me that’s out and about on Earth. I want to see him, face to face And have him bring a hardcopy of…” What the hell newspaper still had hardcopies? “Of the New York Times , showing the date he left Earth—that would at least prove someone had come up from there. But he’s still going to have to prove to me that he’s the one with the legal rights of personhood.”

“We can’t do that,” said Smythe.

My head was pounding. I rubbed my temples. “Don’t tell me what you can and cannot do,” I said. “He’ll have to come here eventually, anyway. You heard what I want, and I’m going to get it. Have him come here—bring him to the moon.”

Smythe spread his arms. “Even if I agreed to ask him, and he agreed to come, it would take three days to get him to the moon, and most of another day to bring him via moonbus from LS One.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hades starting to get up from his seat. I aimed the piton gun at him. “Don’t even think about it,” I said. Then I turned back to the image of Smythe: “Send him on a cargo rocket,” I said. “High-powered acceleration for the first hour. He doesn’t need life support, right? And he can pull lots of gees, I’m sure.”

“That will cost…”

“A whole heck of a lot less than if I blow up this moonbus and take out half of High Eden.”

“I need to get authorization.”

“Don’t do it!” I swung around. Hades was shouting. “Gabe, do you hear me? I’m ordering you not to do that!”

Gabe sounded flustered, but he said, “I’ll see what I can manage.”

“Damn it, Gabe!” shouted Hades. “I’m the senior Immortex official on the moon, and I’m telling you not to do this.”

“Shut up,” I said to Hades.

“No,” said Gabe. “No, it’s all right, Jake. I’m sorry, Brian—really, I am. But I can’t take orders from you just now. We’ve got advisors from Earth on the line, as you can imagine, and I’m tied into various resources. And they all say the same thing on this point. A hosta—a detainee’s orders are not to be followed, no matter how senior they are, since the orders are obviously given under duress. You’re going to have to trust my judgment.”

“Damn it, Smythe,” said Hades. “You’re fired!”

“Once I’ve gotten you out of this mess, sir, if you still want to do that, you’ll be able to. But right now, you simply aren’t in a position to fire anyone. Mr. Sullivan—Jake—I’ll do what I can. But I’ll need time.”

“I’ve never been a patient man,” I said. “Maybe that’s related to living under a death sentence, and I haven’t quite gotten used to my change of circumstances. In any event, I don’t expect to wait. A cargo rocket can fly here in twelve hours; I give you another twelve to take care of logistics, and getting the other me to a rocket-launch site. But that’s all. If I’m not talking face-to-face to the android that’s usurped me in twenty-four hours, people will begin to die.”

Smythe blew out air. “Jake, you know I’m a psychologist, and, well, I’ve been reviewing your file. This isn’t you. This isn’t like you at all.”

“This is the new me,” I said. “Isn’t that the whole point? There’s a new Jake Sullivan.”

“Jake, I see a note here that you recently had brain surgery—nanosurgery, to be sure, but…”

“Yes. So?”

“And you were having trouble balancing neurotransmitter levels after that. Are you still taking the Toraplaxin? Because if you’re not, we can—”

“Right. Like I’d take any pills you’d offer.”

“Jake, you’ve got a chemical imbal—”

I slammed my fist against the OFF switch.

Judge Herrington called it a day, and Karen and I went home. I was still seething from the way Lopez had attacked Karen on the stand. That Karen wasn’t too upset herself helped, but not enough. Although my plastiskin couldn’t turn different shades, I felt livid—and the feeling wasn’t dissipating on its own.

It used to be that if I was angry, I’d walk it off. I’d go outside, and stroll around the block a couple of times. But now I could walk for miles—a unit I only used figuratively, but that Karen actually had a feeling for—without it in the slightest changing my mood. Likewise, when I was depressed, I used to rip open a bag of potato chips and a thing of dip, and stuff my face. Or, if I was really feeling like I couldn’t face the day anymore, crawl back into bed and have a nap. And, of course, nothing was better for relaxing than a nice cold Sullivan’s Select.

But now I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I couldn’t sleep. There were no easy ways to modify my moods.

And I did still have moods. In fact, I remember reading once that “mood” was one of the definitions of human consciousness: a feeling, a tone, a flavor—pick your metaphor—associated with one’s current self-awareness.

But now I was wicked pissed—“wicked pissed,” that’s what one of my friends liked to say whenever he was angry: he liked the sound of it. And it certainly had enough harshness associated with it to do justice to my feelings.

So, what was I supposed to do? Maybe I should learn meditation—after all, there are supposed to be time-honored techniques for achieving inner peace without recourse to chemical stimulants.

Except, of course, everything that affects our feelings, at least in our biological instantiation, is a chemical stimulant: dopamine, acetylcholine, serotonin, testosterone. But if you become an electrical machine instead of a chemical one, how do you mimic the effects of those substances? We were the first generation of transferred consciousnesses; there were still bugs to be worked out.

It was raining outside, a cold relentless rain. But that isn’t going to have an effect on me; I’d only be aware of the coolness as an abstract datum, and the rain would just roll off. I went out the front door and started down the walkway that led to the street.

The sound of fat drops hitting my head beat out an irritating tattoo. Of course, no one else was walking in our neighborhood, although a few cars did pass by. There were earthworms out on the sidewalk. I remembered their distinctive smell from my childhood—funny how little walking in the rain we do as we get older—but my new olfactory sensors weren’t response to that particular molecular key.