were kids,” Joey said. Her sister frowned down at the box, perplexed. “I always knew better and you never listened.”
Jeanette laughed and clutched the box. “It’s you, it sounds just like you. You’re actually okay. You’re here. Oh my God.”
They rocked back and forth in the office’s dim light, Joey’s glow casting a halo of blue on Jeanette’s face. The box was shockingly heavy for its size, but Jeanette didn’t let it bother her. She rocked, and murmured, and nearly fell asleep standing up, like a horse. It was Joey who broke the silence.
“Let’s get out here.”
Jeanette swayed. The box’s corner was making a red imprint in her cheek. Her legs were tired. Her head thudded from all the crying and sleepless nights. She wanted to ask Joey, why did moving matter? They were together. To spend even a moment fussing over transit or waiting for a cab in the snow would be a waste. It would pull themselves out of rapturous awareness of their good fortune.
She didn’t want to go home and clean the dishes. She didn’t want to fuss over the mail, the rent, the unsettled portion of the LifeMedia bill, or her dwindling checking account. She didn’t want to take a pain pill for her growing migraine, or eat, or clip the toenails that were scraping against the insides of her shoes. She didn’t want to go back to petty bodily concerns ever again. The box was so beautiful.
“Let’s get out of here. Please,” Joey said, and there was rising tension in her voice.
In life, Joey used to strain her voice like that when she was feeling cornered. She hated being told what to do. It used to signal that she was close to storming off.
“Shh, it’s fine,” Jeanette said. “Baby. It’s over. It must have been terrible, it must have been so horrible, I can’t even…It was terrible out here too. I kept thinking, I’m never going to talk to her again, I’m never going to have her around. It was like, what do I do now? But then they told me about the procedure. And now we don’t have to worry, okay?”
Jeanette pressed her lips to the box. It occurred to her that dying in this place must have been traumatic. It was maddening enough as a bystander to the carnage, powerless on the other side of the swinging doors.
“I want to get out of here, Jean,” Joey said again.
“Okay,” Jeanette patted the box. “Let’s go home.”
3.
In the cab, Jeanette held Joey’s BrightBox in her lap, stroking the sides like a cat. She stared down at it the whole drive, chatting amiably, but Joey didn’t reply.
“I just can’t wait to take a shower,” Jeanette said with a sigh, bringing her hand up to her greasy hair. ”Oh, shit, that was rude to say.”
“No skin off my teeth,” said the cab driver. He had a rich Somali accent and wore a porkpie cap that flapped when he spoke. ”I’m close to my quota for the day, then I can shower too.”
She pursed her lips. “What do you want to do when you get home?” she asked the box, lifting it to her mouth.
“Probably do some sit-ups, maybe fire up the View-Play,” the driver said, not comprehending. “I used to run outside, but it’s getting too dangerous out there.”
“Oh yeah?”
“So I fire up the View-Play. I can run along the Great Wall. Or across the bottom of the sea. Or the Antarctic tundra! Keeps me off these streets…I’m telling you, I’ve seen everything this town has to show a person, and a thousand times over too. And it’s getting worse. All these young guys out there playing with their guns, and the young white boys in uniform playing with their guns, too— they’re no different. These young guys, heads all exploding full of testosterone, don’t matter what side of the law they’re on.”
“Yeah. It’s a shame,” Jeanette said.
The driver took the long route through the park by her request. She lifted Joey up and tilted the box’s surface toward the window. The bare trees flashed by, their branches robed in fresh snow. It must have fallen while they’d been in the hospital. Hidden in the woods there were deer, and foxes, and the cardinals that this and every other Midwestern state called their state bird, but Jeanette couldn’t see any of them in the early morning haze.
”How are you doing?” she asked Joey.
“I’m okay,” the cabbie cut in, again. “Anxious all the time. I’m scared to go out at night now because I’m a family man! It didn’t use to scare me! I have to drive all day and into the night, bustin’ my ass, getting all fat like a pumpkin . Scare to go out, scared to keep enough bread on the table, scared of what all this work is doing to me...,” he made a wide turn. “I don’t want to die of a heart attack and never meet my grandbabies. Never bounce them on my knee. I don’t want to sit still all day in this tiny car and become a tub of lard.”
“There are worse things,” Jeanette said.
“So anyway, yeah, I run on the View-Play, you ever try it?”
“I think so, at parties. It’s cute,” Jeanette said distractedly.
“I wish I could run in fresh air. But it’s bad out there.”
“I think it’s worth the risk,” Joey piped up. “Novelty.”
The driver must have thought it was Jeanette speaking again, for all he said was, “Yup. You are probably on point with that. I ask myself sometimes: if you sit still and quiet all the time, are you even alive?”
“Yes,” Jeanette said. “Of course. You’re thinking.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m even doing that,” he said.
“Well, it all depends on how you define life,” Joey said, her light flashing.
“Oh, it sounds like you’re a bit conflicted on it too! Glad to hear I’m not the only one like this— afraid to die, afraid to live. Like my driving instructor said before I got my commercial license: Hesitation Kills.”
“Well,” Jeanette said, “technology can do a lot to fix that, I think—death isn’t so permanent—”
“What are you talking about? Cryogenic shit?”
Jeanette rose in her seat. She wanted to clarify things. Here was Lazarus sitting on her lap! The miracle of it needed to be acknowledged. Maybe it would give the cabbie courage to see how life could be prolonged. But before she could speak she noticed the top of Joey’s box flickering with a bright yellow X, so she stopped.
The driver parked at the door of Jeanette’s apartment and ran to the passenger’s side to let them out.
“Thank you! You didn’t have to do that!” Jeanette slipped cash into his hand and stood with Joey tucked under her arm.
“Please, any excuse to stretch!” he replied.
Then he noticed the BrightBox and his grin went slack.
“Oh. I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t realize..,” he trailed off, backing away and walking to the driver’s seat.
“What? No, it’s fine-”
He looked at her warily. “I’m sorry for your loss.” His ducked into his car, pulled out, and dissipated into the passing traffic.
Jeanette looked down at the BrightBox, puzzled. The lights had gone off. In the dim twilight it looked like it was made of ordinary white cardboard or paper. She rapped on the side of it.
“Joey? JOEY! Are you in there?”
“Calm down, I’m fine,” her sister said, the color rising back to her surface.
“Ohhhh thank God I was so worried..,”
“If there is an error, the box will turn black,” Joey said.
“Okay.” Jeanette pulled her face away. She looked down the street. “What was all that about?”
“He thought I was a box of cremains.”
Jeanette slapped herself in the forehead. “Oh. Oh! Haha, poor guy! But I was trying to tell him! Why didn’t you let me talk to him about it?”
“I didn’t want to explain it! Jesus, Jean, do you think I want to spend all my time in this thing acting like a Furby for people to play with?”
“I, no, of course not. I just thought-”
“I don’t feel like talking to every rando on the street about my pricey immortality, okay? This is all a lot to take in.”
“Okay.”<
br />
They climbed the stairs to Jeanette’s fourth-story flat, where the heat from the radiator was blazing and the TV droned on at full blast. There was a cup overturned and coffee leaked into a stack of books, shoes strewn about awkwardly, a blanket dangling from the couch to the floor—all the marks of someone having left very quickly. Jeanette sat Joey on the end table by the door and ran to turn the TV off. She tripped over a pile of clothes on the way over and again on the way back.
Holding a half-drunk bottle of Vitamin Water in a clenched fist, Jeanette sipped and said, “I just think, maybe it would have made him happy to hear about you. I mean, it’s a miracle.”
“No,” Joey snapped. “Think for a second! His family could never, ever afford a procedure like this.”
“Okay, maybe that’s how he’d see it. But he doesn’t need it yet; in a few years it’ll be way cheaper.”
“He was saying he has to drive the cab all day and night to feed his family, Jeanette, do you really think he could afford consciousness uploading? Do you think he even has health insurance? And even more than that, do you think his family could afford to just babysit him in that state?”
“Okayyy.” Jeanette flopped on the couch and stared at the BrightBox. “But what am I supposed to do, keep you a secret from everybody? I can’t just keep you cooped up in here and never talk to anybody about it.”
“No of course not,” Joey said testily. “I just…it’s weird, and people are going to be shitty about it. You should let me decide how to handle people, okay?”
“Alright.” She sipped and waved her hand in the air. “Can you see me