David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

“What gave you that right?” Craig seethed.

“I’m sorry, Craig. I just couldn’t bear to lose her. Anything that would make my resurrected Sam more like Sam was like gold to me. We’ve been together over half a century, and I have never regretted it, not for a moment.”

“Please don’t be angry, Craig,” Samantha spoke.

“Don’t…” Craig responded, shutting his eyes and holding his hand up. He let his shoulders relax and concentrated on his breathing. It had been a long time since anything had upset him so severely. He reminded himself of the hard-won experience he’d attained since.

“I thought…” Aldous began, before restarting, “I think it will be good for you if you speak with her alone. I know that what happened between you has always haunted you. I want to give you the opportunity to clear the air. I’ll leave you to speak. When you’re finished, Craig, the coordinates of your meeting place with James Keats will be uploaded to your mind’s eye.” He turned to leave the room but stopped for a moment and added, “It really was good to see you again, old friend.”

Craig blinked as the doors closed. He turned to Samantha, but he couldn’t open his mouth.

“It’s good for me to see you also,” Samantha said, a slight smile on her lips.

“I-I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I understand,” Samantha replied. She stood still, patiently waiting for Craig to absorb the reality of the situation, appearing like a vision from a dream, bathed in the fading light.

“Why?” Craig finally asked. “Why did you—”

“Leave you? Marry Aldous?”

“Yes.”

“Craig, I can’t speak definitively for your former wife—my memories from her life are a patchwork. But I do know she loved you. She really did. I can feel it now, even as I stand here with you.”

Craig’s throat seemed to close momentarily, but the nans immediately went to work, calming him.

“We can love different people in our lifetimes. Had you not died, I have no doubt Samantha would’ve remained loyal to you. When you died, however, she bonded with another compatible mate. She loved him, just as I love him now. Our bond is extraordinary, Craig. Not even death could break it.”

An overwhelming compulsion to leave the room suddenly gripped Craig. His eyes fell from hers to the chrome floor, where his reflection stared back at him, though blurred by the imperfections of the surface. “ I am fortune’s fool, ” he whispered before turning to leave, not daring to look back at the woman who, it seemed, would haunt him forever.

“Hey there, Old-timer. ”

Craig nearly stopped in his tracks as he stepped into the Martian terraforming control room and immediately heard the unexpected greeting from a man whose back was turned. “Excuse me?”

The young man, smooth-faced and still with the slight build of youth, turned with a warm, confident smile painted across his lips. “You are Craig Emilson, aren’t you? Ninety-four years old—not counting the fourteen years you spent in suspended animation, which would make you—”

“Don’t say it,” Craig winced. “Let’s just stick with ninety-four. The years I spent as a Popsicle don’t count.”

The young man laughed in return. “Fair enough, but you’re still the senior member of our team here, so it’s nice to meet you…Old-timer.” He crossed to the much taller man and extended his hand in a friendly, enthusiastic greeting. “My name is James Keats.”

“I figured,” Craig replied, happily shaking the younger man’s hand in return. “You’re not what I was expecting.”

“Why’s that? Too young?”

“No, they told me your age. Twenty, right?”

“Yep.”

“No, it’s not your age. It’s just—”

“Ah,” James nodded, smiling as he suddenly understood, “Told you I was a hot-head, did he?”

Craig nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Well, I think he’s an old stick in the mud and way too set in his ways,” James replied, “but hey, he did get me this gig, and there’s no better gig I could have.”

“No?”

“No,” James replied, turning to the giant windows out of which they observed the Martian landscape as it appeared, three-quarters of the way through the terraforming project. The clouds, though sparse, were getting thicker every day, and small sprouts of green were appearing on what was previously a desert landscape. “Building worlds—making bridges for humanity…what could have more meaning?”

“Bridges? That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

“Oh yeah, Old-timer. These are bridges. Every world we terraform is a giant step for humanity into the unknown universe.” James shook his head as his broad smile persisted. “Don’t get me started. I love my job too much.” He shifted gears, slapping Craig on the chest with the back of his hand with a familiarity that was surprising, but welcome. “Come on, let’s go for a tour! I want to show you what we’re up to here. You’re going to be blown away. Are you up for it?”

“Yeah,” Craig nodded, James’s smile infectiously spreading to him. “I’m up for it.”

WAKING UP was not something one had to work very hard to accomplish these days; like most things, it was done for you. The nanobots, also known as nans , were set to awaken their host at whatever time he or she desired. They would always, however, awaken their host just before the end of the most recent REM sleep so that the host would arise alert and feeling well rested. It was usually easy to remember one’s dreams, too, and recounting dreams to friends, loved ones, and co-workers had become a universal pre-noon activity; after noon was a different story, as by that point, it was considered a faux pas to continue discussing a dream—best just to let it go and focus on the real world. Sleep was hardly “death’s counterfeit” any longer, as Shakespeare had suggested, but rather, an important source of entertainment. Early-morning remembrances of fantastic dreams, in addition to one’s high level of alertness, made it difficult to wake up feeling anything other than optimistic—difficult, but not impossible.

James Keats opened his eyes and sat up in bed. He turned to his right, looked out his window, and saw that the sun had risen, yet the summer sky was blotted out by low-hanging gray clouds hovering like a dull blanket just above the skyline of the city. He turned to his left and saw his wife Katherine, still fast asleep. She wouldn’t awaken for another hour, just after he would’ve already left for work. She could’ve set herself to wake up with him. This was her plan—deafening silence. He wondered when his punishment would end, but part of him knew it never would. Their love was over.

James turned from her and sighed as he lifted the heated blanket from his legs and stepped out onto the heated carpet of his bedroom. Just a few short steps away were his bathroom and the promise of his morning shower. He opened his mind’s eye and selected a soft spray at a comfortable forty-five degrees Celsius. When he stepped into the shower, the spray hit him from four directions, and he relaxed against the kneading fingers of the water.

People in the industrialized world had been enjoying their morning showers for two centuries now, though there were more efficient ways of cleaning oneself; on Mars, James had used a microwave shower that detected foreign substances in a matter of a few seconds and removed them from the body. The process of removing dirt and oil was over just as quickly as it began, but James hated it. The technology had been available for years, but it had never caught on with the general population. A traditional shower was a luxury too valuable to give up. Even if it took a few extra minutes in the morning, the hot water and massaging jets were like an old friend to humanity.