James Kelly - Rewired - The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

“But don’t worry, you’ll do fine,” said another. “No Benjamin has ever failed.”

“What about me?” said Anne. “How do the Annes do?”

There was an embarrassed silence. Finally the senior Benjamin in the room said, “We came to escort you both to the Clubhouse.”

“That’s what we call it, the Clubhouse,” said another.

“The Ben Club,” said a third. “It’s already in proto-Simopolis.”

“If you’re a Ben, or were ever espoused to a Ben, you’re a charter member.”

“Just follow us,” they said, and all the Benjamins but hers vanished, only to reappear a moment later. “Sorry, you don’t know how, do you? No matter, just do what we’re doing.”

Anne watched, but didn’t see that they were doing anything.

“Watch my editor,” said a Benjamin. “Oh, they don’t have editors!”

“That came much later,” said another, “with bioelectric paste.”

“We’ll have to adapt editors for them.”

“Is that possible? They’re digital, you know.”

“Can digitals even enter Simopolis?”

“Someone, consult the Netwad.”

“This is running inside a shell,” said a Benjamin, indicating the whole room. “Maybe we can collapse it.”

“Let me try,” said another.

“Don’t you dare,” said a female voice, and a woman Anne recognized from the lecture hall came through the wall. “Play with your new Ben if you must, but leave Anne alone.” The woman approached Anne and took her hands in hers. “Hello, Anne. I’m Mattie St. Helene, and I’m thrilled to finally meet you. You, too,” she said to Benjamin. “My, my, you were a pretty boy!” She stooped to pick up Anne’s clutch bouquet from the floor and gave it to her. “Anyway, I’m putting together a sort of mutual aid society for the spousal companions of Ben Malley. You being the first — and the only one he actually married — are especially welcome. Do join us.”

“She can’t go to Simopolis yet,” said a Benjamin.

“We’re still adapting them,” said another.

“Fine,” said Mattie. “Then we’ll just bring the society here.” And in through the wall streamed a parade of women. Mattie introduced them as they appeared, “Here’s Georgianna and Randi. Meet Chaka, Sue, Latasha, another Randi, Sue, Sue, and Sue. Mariola. Here’s Trevor — he’s the only one of him. Paula, Dolores, Nancy, and Deb, welcome, girls.” And still they came until they, together with the Bens, more than filled the tiny space. The Bens looked increasingly uncomfortable.

“I think we’re ready now,” the Bens said, and disappeared en masse, taking Benjamin with them.

“Wait,” said Anne, who wasn’t sure she wanted to stay behind. Her new friends surrounded her and peppered her with questions.

“How did you first meet him?”

“What was he like?”

“Was he always so hopeless?”

“Hopeless?” said Anne. “Why do you say hopeless?”

“Did he always snore?”

“Did he always drink?”

“Why’d you do it?” This last question silenced the room. The women all looked nervously about to see who had asked it. “It’s what everyone’s dying to know,” said a woman who elbowed her way through the crowd.

She was another Anne.

“Sister!” cried Anne. “Am I glad to see you!”

“That’s nobody’s sister,” said Mattie. “That’s a doxie, and it doesn’t belong here.”

Indeed, upon closer inspection Anne could see that the woman had her face and hair but otherwise didn’t resemble her at all. She was leggier than Anne and bustier, and she moved with a fluid swivel to her hips.

“Sure I belong here, as much as any of you. I just passed the Lolly test. It was easy. Not only that, but as far as spouses go, I outlasted the bunch of you.” She stood in front of Anne, hands on hips, and looked her up and down. “Love the dress,” she said, and instantly wore a copy. Only hers had a plunging neckline that exposed her breasts, and it was slit up the side to her waist.

“This is too much,” said Mattie. “I insist you leave this jiffy.”

The doxie smirked. “Mattie the doormat, that’s what he always called that one. So tell me, Anne, you had money, a career, a house, a kid — why’d you do it?”

“Do what?” said Anne.

The doxie peered closely at her. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“What an unexpected pleasure,” said the doxie. “I get to tell her. This is too rich. I get to tell her unless” — she looked around at the others — “unless one of you fine ladies wants to.” No one met her gaze. “Hypocrites,” she chortled.

“You can say that again,” said a new voice. Anne turned and saw Cathy, her oldest and dearest friend, standing at the open door. At least she hoped it was Cathy. The woman was what Cathy would look like in middle age. “Come along, Anne. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Now you hold on,” said Mattie. “You don’t come waltzing in here and steal our guest of honor.”

“You mean victim, I’m sure,” said Cathy, who waved for Anne to join her. “Really, people, get a clue. There must be a million women whose lives don’t revolve around that man.” She escorted Anne through the door and slammed it shut behind them.

Anne found herself standing on a high bluff, overlooking the confluence of two great rivers in a deep valley. Directly across from her, but several kilometers away, rose a mighty mountain, green with vegetation nearly to its granite dome. Behind it, a range of snow-covered mountains receded to an unbroken ice field on the horizon. In the valley beneath her, a dirt track meandered along the riverbanks. She could see no bridge or buildings of any sort.

“Where are we?”

“Don’t laugh,” said Cathy, “but we call it Cathyland. Turn around.” When she did, Anne saw a picturesque log cabin beside a vegetable garden in the middle of what looked like acres and acres of Cathys. Thousands of Cathys, young, old, and all ages in between. They sat in lotus position on the sedge-and-moss-covered ground. They were packed so tight they overlapped a little, and their eyes were shut in an expression of single-minded concentration. “We know you’re here,” said Cathy, “but we’re very preoccupied with this Simopolis thing.”

“Are we in Simopolis?”

“Kinda. Can’t you see it?” She waved toward the horizon.

“No, all I see are mountains.”

“Sorry, I should know better. We have binaries from your generation here too.” She pointed to a college-aged Cathy. “They didn’t pass the Lolly test, and so are regrettably nonhuman. We haven’t decided what to do with them.” She hesitated and then asked, “Have you been tested yet?”

“I don’t know,” said Anne. “I don’t remember a test.”

Cathy studied her a moment and said, “You’d remember taking the test, just not the test itself. Anyway, to answer your question, we’re in proto-Simopolis, and we’re not. We built this retreat before any of that happened, but we’ve been annexed to it, and it takes all our resources just to hold our own. I don’t know what the World Council was thinking. There’ll never be enough paste to go around, and everyone’s fighting over every nanosynapse. It’s all we can do to keep up. And every time we get a handle on it, proto-Simopolis changes again. It’s gone through a quarter-million complete revisions in the last half hour. It’s war out there, but we refuse to surrender even one cubic centimeter of Cathyland. Look at this.” Cathy stooped and pointed to a tiny, yellow flower in the alpine sedge. “Within a fifty-meter radius of the cabin, we’ve mapped everything down to the cellular level. Watch.” She pinched the bloom from its stem and held it up. Now there were two blooms, the one between her fingers and the real one on the stem. “Neat, eh?” When she dropped it, the bloom fell back into its original. “We’ve even mapped the valley breeze. Can you feel it?”