Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

And there was someone special in my life, a woman I cared about deeply, and who, I think, felt the same way about me. Rebecca Chong was forty-one, just a little younger than me. She was a bigwig at IBM Canada, worth a lot of money in her own right. We’d known each other for about five years, and saw each other often socially, although mostly with a few other friends. But there was always something special between just the two of us.

I remember the party last New Year’s Eve. Like many of our little group’s get-togethers, this one was held at Rebecca’s place, a luxury penthouse at Eglinton and Yonge. Rebecca loved to entertain, and her home was central for everyone in our group—and her building had direct access to the subway.

I always brought Rebecca flowers when I visited. She loved flowers, and I loved giving them to her. On New Year’s Eve, I took her a dozen red roses—I asked the guy in the flower shop to make sure the color was perfect, since I couldn’t tell myself. When I arrived, I gave Rebecca the flowers, and, as was our habit, we kissed on the lips. It wasn’t a long kiss—we were, at least overtly, just good friends—but it always attenuated a bit more than it needed to, our lips pressed against each other’s for a lingering few seconds.

I’d had lots of sex in my life, but those kisses truly excited me more. And yet—

And yet, Rebecca and I had never gone any further. Oh, her hand would occasionally rest on my arm, or even my thigh—gentle, warm touches in response to a joke or a comment or, sometimes, best of all, to nothing at all.

I did so want her, and I think—no, I knew : I did know it, beyond any doubt—that she wanted me, too.

But then…

But then I’d go with my mother to see my father again.

And it would break my heart. Not just because my mother’s life had been ruined by what had happened to him. But also because it was likely that I was going to have the same thing happen to me … and I couldn’t allow a situation to develop between Rebecca and me in which she’d end up like my mother, burdened with someone whose mind was damaged, having to put her own wonderful, vibrant life on hold to look after the husk of what had once been me.

Isn’t that what love’s all about, after all? Putting the needs of the other person before your own?

And yet, last New Year’s Eve, when the pot had been plentiful and the wine had been flowing freely, Rebecca and I had snuggled more than usual on the couch. Of course, midnight on New Year’s Eve is always special to me—it precisely marks my birthday, after all—but this one was fabulous. Our lips locked at the stroke of twelve, and we kept kissing and petting for long after that, and once Rebecca’s other guests all had left, we adjourned to her bedroom, and finally, after years of flirting and fantasizing, we made love.

It had been spectacular—everything I’d imagined it might be—kissing her, touching her, caressing her, being inside her. Even in January, Toronto is never that cold anymore, and we lay in each other’s arms with the bedroom window open, listening to the revelers on the street far, far below, and I for the first and only time in my life had some sense of what heaven must be like.

New Year’s Day this year had fallen on a Sunday. The next day, I’d gone with my mother to see my father, and it had been very much like this afternoon’s visit had been.

And even though, ever since January, I thought about Rebecca constantly, and wanted her more than I would have believed possible, I’d let things cool between us.

Because that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Be more concerned about that other person’s happiness?

That’s what you’re supposed to do.

I looked around my living room one last time.

Of course, one version of me would return here. But for the other—the biological original—this would be its final chance to see it.

I lived alone these days, except for Clamhead, my Irish setter. There’d been a few—all right, two—women who’d moved in and out of my life, and my various homes, over the years. But no one shared this particular house. Even the guest bedroom had never been used.

But it was my home, and it reflected me. My mother, on the rare occasions she came here, always shook her head at the lack of bookcases. I loved to read, but did it with ebooks. Still, no bookcases meant no spaces on the shelves in front of the books for knickknacks, which was just as well, because I couldn’t be bothered to dust them, and yet—yeah, yeah, I’m anal, I know—whenever the Molly Maids came in, I was always upset that all the little things that did have to be dusted got rearranged in the process.

No bookcases also meant that I had lot of exposed walls, and those, in the living room, were covered with baseball jerseys, mounted behind glass. I was a demon at electronic auctions, and baseball memorabilia was what I collected. I had every permutation of Toronto Blue Jays jersey—including the lamentable ones from the zeros, when they’d temporarily dropped the “Blue” from their name; blue was one of the few colors I saw, and I liked the fact that the rest of the world and I apparently agreed on what the team’s name meant.

My pride and joy, though, was an original Birmingham Barons jersey that had actually been worn by Michael Jordan in his brief stint in baseball; he’d joined the White Sox, but they’d bumped him down to their minor-league team as number 45.

Jordan had signed the jersey on the right sleeve, between two of the pinstripes.

I had a suitcase open on the couch, containing some clothes. I was supposed to fill it with things that I wanted to take with me to the moon, but I found myself torn. Yes, this biological me was going to head to the moon tomorrow, never to return. But another me—the Mindscan version—would come back here in a few days; this house would be its— my —home. Anything the old me took from here would be missed by the new me—and the new me would have decades (I still couldn’t easily think “centuries” or “millennia") to enjoy it, while the old me…

That was the one thing that I had packed. It wasn’t a perfect solution, since if I did end up a quadriplegic or in a vegetative state, I wouldn’t be able to administer it myself. But the little vial of drugs in that small unlabeled box would finish me off if need be.

People sometimes wondered why I didn’t leave Canada and move to the States, a land with lower taxes for the rich. The answer was simple: physician-assisted suicide was legal here, and my will specified the conditions under which I wanted to be terminated. In the States, ever since the Buchanan administration—Pat, not James—doctors were legally obligated to keep me alive even if I had severe brain damage or couldn’t move; they’d keep me alive despite my wishes.

But, of course, on the moon, there were no national laws to worry about; there were just a few scientific outposts and private-sector manufacturing facilities there. Immortex would do what I wanted. They had every client swear out an advance directive, describing precisely what to do in case they became incapacitated or ended up in a persistent vegetative state. If I could do it myself, I would, and the kit I’d packed, a kit that had lived in my night-table drawer for years, would do the trick.

It was the one item I knew the artificial me wouldn’t miss.

I set up the robokitchen to take care of feeding my dog while—well, I was about to say, “While I was gone,” but that’s not quite right. But it would feed her during the changing of the guard…

“Well, Clamhead,” I said, scratching the old girl vigorously behind the ears, “I guess that’s it. You be a good girl, now.”