Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

That may have been the last straw. When I brought in her clothes she just shrugged off the pale blue hospital gown. She didn't have anything on underneath. There were eight or ten people in the waiting room.

I was thunderstruck. My dignified Amelia?

The receptionist was a young man with ringlets. He stood up. "Wait! You ... you can't do that!"

"Watch me." She put on the blouse first, and took her time buttoning it. "I was kicked out of my room. I don't have anyplace to – "

"Amelia – " She ignored me.

"Go to the ladies' room! Right now!"

"Thank you, no." She tried to stand on one foot and put a sock on, but teetered and almost fell over. I gave her an arm. The audience was respectfully quiet.

"I'm going to call a guard."

"No you're not." She strode over to him, in socks but still bare from ankles to waist. She was an inch or two taller and stared down at him. He stared down, too, looking as if he'd never had a triangle of pubic hair touch his desktop before. "I'll make a scene," she said quietly. "Believe me."

He sat down, his mouth working but no words coming out. She stepped into her pants and slippers, picked up the gown and threw it into the 'cycler.

"Julian, I don't like this place." She offered her arm. "Let's go bother someone else." The room was quiet until we were well out into the corridor, and then there was a sudden explosion of chatter. Amelia stared straight ahead and smiled.

"Bad day?"

"Bad place." She frowned. "Did I just do what I think I did?"

I looked around and whispered, "This is Texas. Don't you know it's against the law to show your ass to a black man?"

"I'm always forgetting that." She smiled nervously and hugged my arm. "I'll write you every day from prison."

There was a cab waiting. We got in fast and Amelia gave it my address. "That's where my bag is, right?"

"Yeah ... but I could bring it over." My place was a mess. "I'm not exactly ready for polite company."

"I'm not exactly company." She rubbed her eyes. "Certainly not polite."

In fact, the place had been a mess when I went to Portobello two weeks earlier, and I hadn't had time to do anything but add to it. We entered a one-room disaster area, ten meters by five of chaos: stacks of papers and readers on every horizontal surface, including the bed; a pile of clothes in one corner aesthetically balanced by a pile of dishes in the sink. I'd forgotten to turn off the coffeepot when I'd gone to school, so a bitter smell of burnt coffee added to the general mustiness.

She laughed. "You know, this is even worse than I expected?" She'd only been here twice and both times I'd been forewarned.

"I know. I need a woman around the place."

"No. You need about a gallon of gasoline and a match." She looked around and shook her head. "Look, we're out in the open. Let's just move in together."

I was still trying to cope with the striptease. "Uh ... there's really not enough room...."

"Not here." She laughed. "My place. And we can file for a two-bedroom."

I cleared off a chair and steered her to it. She sat down warily.

"Look. You know how much I'd like to move in with you. It's not as if we hadn't talked about it."

"So? Let's do it."

"No ... let's not make any decisions now. Not for a couple of days."

She looked past me, out the window over the sink. "I, you think I'm crazy."

"Impulsive." I sat down on the floor and stroked her arm.

"It is strange for me, isn't it?" She closed her eyes and kneaded her forehead. "Maybe I'm still medicated."

I hoped that was it. "I'm sure that's all it is. You need a couple of days' more rest."

"What if they botched the operation?"

"They didn't. You wouldn't be walking and talking."

She patted my hand, still looking abstracted. "Yeah, sure. You have some juice or something?"

I found some white grape juice in the refrigerator and poured us each a small glass. I heard a zipper and turned around, but it was only her leather suitcase.

I brought her drink over. She was staring intently, slowly picking through the contents of the suitcase. "Think something might be missing?"

She took the drink and set it down. "Oh, no. Or maybe. Mainly I'm just checking my memory. I do remember packing. The trip down. Talking to Dr., um, Spencer." She backed up two steps, felt behind her, and sat down slowly on the bed.

"Then the blur-you know, I was sort of awake when they operated. I could see lots of lights. My chin and face were in a padded frame."

I sat down with her. "I remember that from my own installation. And the drill sound."

"And the smell. You know you're smelling your own skull being sawed open. But you don't care."

"Drugs," I said.

"That's part of it. Also looking forward to it." Well, not in my case. "I could hear them talking, the doctor and some woman."

"What about?"

"It was Spanish. They were talking about her boyfriend and ... shoes or something. Then everything went black. I guess it went white, then black."

"I wonder if that was before or after they put the jack in."

"It was after, definitely after. They call it a bridge, right?"

"From French, yeah: pont mental."

"I heard him say that – ahora, el puente – and then they pressed really hard. I could feel it on my chin, on the cushion."

"You remember a lot more than I did."

"That was about it, though. The boyfriend and the shoes and then click. The next thing I knew, I was lying in bed, unable to move or speak."

"That must have been terrifying."

She frowned, remembering. "Not really. It was like an enormous ... lassitude, numbness. As if I could move my arms and legs, or speak, if I really had to. But the effort would have been tremendous. That was probably mood drugs, too, to keep me from panicking.

"They kept moving my arms and legs around and shouting nonsense at me. It was probably English, and I just couldn't decipher their accents, in my condition."

She gestured and I handed her the grape juice. She sipped. "If I remember this right... I was really, really annoyed that they wouldn't just go away and let me lie in peace. But I didn't say anything, because I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of hearing me complain. It's an odd thing to remember. I was really being infantile."

"They didn't try the jack?"

She got a faraway look. "No ... Dr. Spencer told me about that later. In my condition it was better to wait and have the first time be with someone I knew. Seconds count, he explained that to you?"

I nodded. "Exponential increase in the number of neural connections."

"So I lay in a darkened room then, for a long time; lost track of time, I suppose. Then all the things that happened before we... we jacked, I thought it was a dream. Everything was suddenly flooded with light and a couple of people lifted me and bit me on the wrists – the IVs-and then we were floating from room to room."

"Riding a gurney."

She nodded. "It really felt like levitation, though-I remember thinking, 'I'm dreaming,' and resolving to enjoy it. An image of Marty floated by, asleep in a chair, and I accepted that as part of the dream. Then you and Dr. Spencer appeared-okay, you were in the dream, too.

"Then it was all suddenly real." She rocked back and forth, remembering the instant we jacked. "No, not real. Intense. Confusing."

"I remember," I said. "The double vision, seeing yourself. You didn't recognize yourself at first."

"And you told me most people don't. I mean you told me in one word, somehow, or no words. Then it all snapped into focus, and we were ..." She nodded rhythmically, biting her lower lip. "We were all the same. We were one ... thing."

She took my right hand in both of hers. "And then we had to talk to the doctor. And he said we couldn't, he wouldn't let us ..." She lifted my hand to her breast, the way it had been that last moment, and leaned forward. But she didn't kiss me. She put her chin on my shoulder and whispered, voice cracking: "We'll never have that again?"