He sighed. “I got your message.”
“You got my message?”
He glanced up. “You hadn't figured me out yet?”
Well, no. I hadn't. I'd been too caught up in weighing my future against the tiny green syringe in my kitchen drawer. I couldn't help but think how things might've gone differently at my apartment if I'd known. “Why didn't you tell me, like months ago?”
Part of the wall slid away when he touched a button, revealing a different set of machinery.
“Because I didn't realize you were lucid when I brought you here.” He typed green words onto an empty screen. I touched his shoulder. He looked up. “Are you upset?” he asked.
“About what?”
“That we've spent the night together.”
From the look on his face I could see he was embarrassed that he hadn't exactly been a gentleman when he'd rented me. Instead of answering, I leaned down and kissed him. I didn't linger, and when I straightened up I realized what was going on.
The computer setup in the room was a decoy. The setup hidden in the wall mimicked my lab at EnCryptagion in every way. Mozart-John didn't just have his own arc-phen transfer station, he had built my footbridge. I had access to the Aether.
Green numbers appeared in a long broken string as he typed. The end sequence was familiar. I knew where we were going.
BetaLife's ultimate goal was to figure out how to transfer human awareness from one body to another. Keep us alive a little longer. They thought arc-phens could help with that, and they were right of course. My expeditions into the Aether had proven that human consciousness could exist independently, with only a minimal tether to flesh, and the arc-phens understood how that worked better than anyone. Our research was going well.
But I didn't realize until this moment that they planned for me to be the first human to fully manifest inside someone else's body. I was about to be the guinea pig for one heck of an experiment.
As that sank in, I noticed the explosives lining the hollow in the wall. John entered a code on a small black box attached to them and a diode turned red. “What's happening?” I asked.
“I'm taking you through the Aether to BetaLife. A virus will wipe the drives. Then a little plastic will melt everything. Including these bodies.” He saw my horror. “Look this is the only way I can get you out of here. This org-av I've been using is a burn out. He doesn't have a mind of his own. And no big explosion. No raging fire. It'll be contained. I need the key to the footbridge.”
I hesitated.
John took my hand. “Your chip's alarm has gone off and soldiers will find us any moment.”
“But I've never missed a session.” The Department wouldn't be after me yet.
“You're KOS short-listed, didn't you know? The bulletin went out five minutes after you didn't show up for your session.” He punched some keys on the other computer and a government database site, the List, came up. The flashing red box behind my name meant I was an active target. Kill on sight. John rubbed his thumb over my fingers.
I didn't know if I could trust him. I wanted to, but I had to swallow to find my voice. “It's the stretto in the dona nobis pacem chorus. Mass in B minor.”
“Bach?”
I laughed at his surprise and shrugged. “Would you have guessed it?”
He shook his head, looking a little jealous as he grinned. “No.”
***
We arced into the Aether and transferred to flesh in Basel, Switzerland. I'd never let my body completely go before, and I think I shook hands with madness. I figured I would feel its destruction when the plastic blew, but I didn't. My new body felt awkward, yet it was also comfortable and lithe. She had drowned in an accident and her brain had been reconstructed over the last few months just for me. After four hours of observation, the scientists at BetaLife pronounced my transfer a success, and let me have a few minutes to myself.
But I had trouble adjusting to my new body. Trouble sleeping, night terrors. After a week, Mozart-John-Berend Ehrlichmann convinced me to move into his apartment in the personnel wing of the BetaLife compound, and waking up to him instead of the machinery in the medical observation lab helped me feel more settled.
I soon discovered the arc-phens had rescued me in order to enlist me as their ambassador. It was an odd position that I didn't know how to embrace. I was no politician. I had a new identity, so I wasn't sure if I was still technically a fugitive in the United States. My body, my US citizen body, was dead. I watched it burn on the news.
Over the next few months, our research and diplomacy hit several breakthroughs and hiccups, as such things are wont to do. The UN recognized the Aether as a nation and its citizens were accorded rights. DiversiFine figured out who I was and tried to data mine my mind for the secret of the footbridge. The Swiss government stood by us when a bunch of religious nuts tried to shut down BetaLife and brand the arc-phens as demonic entities.
Unfortunately, we were still working on the secret to successful human awareness transfer. There were times I left my body for days and no one knew where I went or why it happened. Or how.
Sometimes I thought I might be looking for my old self.
I returned from those episodes disoriented, having been lost somewhere other than the Aether and other than here, with only fleeting memories of my journey. In spite of the setback, I was determined to embrace my new life and leap the hurdles as they came. Switzerland was my second chance. The second future that had meant so much to me. It was the dream that had kept the syringe in the drawer.
I lived in a world of cheap victories and disposable ideals. Nanosecond fame. Faked friendships and intimacy.
But some things aren't destined to wind up as junk on the side of the road.
It took me awhile to see the difference.
I mused over this as I passed through the wintry courtyard of the BetaLife complex. A yellow disc hovered above all the steel and glass. Smoke gray clouds drifted across its face, filtering its light and obscuring the seas of Serenity and Tranquility. And for the first time in what seemed like a very long time, it was beautiful.
Like last year's moon.
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