And I think about Ethan and Allys and even Dane,
and I wonder
has it ever been their own question, too?
Environment
‘I’m leaving to pick up your father. I’ll be back soon,’ Claire calls from the bottom of the stairs.
I hear her leave. The house is empty. Lily has gone to Sunday Mass. I have never been left home alone before. Are they beginning to trust me? I look out the window at the veranda below. The railings have all been replaced and the brick walls repaired. The Cotswold is beginning to look more like a house and less like a ruin. Claire’s magic is working. Day by day, it improves. The upstairs rooms remain empty, but they are at least clean now, the spiderwebs all swiped away.
I’ve been cleaning my own room today. Claire does not employ housekeepers anymore, not like she did in Boston. She does not want prying eyes or ears. When a workman must come inside, she follows him and hovers. Not a minute is given for free wandering.
There is not much to clean. My room is still sparse. ‘It is life near the bone where it is sweetest,’ I say to the walls. I amuse myself with my cleverness. I run a cloth over my desk and chair and I am done.
I pick up my copy of Walden, now uploaded word for word into my biochips, but there is still something different about opening a real book, the scent that emerges, seeing one word at a time and soaking in its shape and nuance. I wonder about things like the sounds and scents that surrounded Thoreau as he wrote each sentence and paragraph.
Turning pages, feeling the paper, I wonder if any of the trees from Thoreau’s forest are still alive and wonder what Thoreau would think today if he could visit my small pond and eucalyptus grove. I wonder if, unlike Thoreau, two hundred years from now I might still be able to visit my pond and forest. When I turn the pages of the book and read the words and the spaces between, I have time to think about these things. Thoughts like these are not written down or uploaded into my Bio Gel. These thoughts are mine alone and no one else’s. They exist nowhere else in the universe but within me.
I’m stopped by this new thought. What if I had never had the chance to collect and build new memories? Before I can think what I am saying, I hear myself whispering ‘thank you’ to the air. I am thankful, grateful, in spite of the cost, to be here. Have I forgotten the hell I traveled, or are these new memories a cushion softening its sharpness?
I return Walden to the center of my desk and take my dust cloth to my closet to drop it in the laundry bin. Claire will probably be home soon. I glance at the corner of my closet. The key. Almost forgotten. I am chilled again, remembering Father’s face when I mentioned it. I bend down and pull back the corner of carpet. It’s still there and I snatch it into my fist like it might disappear. I walk to the top of the stairs and lean over the banister.
‘Claire? Lily?’
Here! Jenna! I startle, almost dropping the key. I freeze on the landing. Listening. But the house is quiet. Was it only a voice I remember?
I grip the key, stepping on the first stair. I already know what is in Mother’s closet. Only computers. But it was dark. Maybe there was something else I didn’t notice. What would Father be afraid for me to see? Something pounds within me, something at my core, but I know it is not a heart. I take another step, and another, until I am standing at Mother’s door.
After the strides we have made, the tender moments we have shared, is this betrayal? I look over my shoulder, back down the long empty hallway. ‘Mother?’ My voice is strung tight. Hearing it deepens the pounding within. The walls of the hallway pulse with the stillness. I push open her door.
The room is bright, airy, nothing to be afraid of. I walk in, hearing the awkward shuffle of my feet on the floor. Jenna. I stop. My breath catches again, and my nails dig into my palm. I step closer to the closet. I remember the worried flash of Father’s eyes again, and I thrust the key into the lock, turning the bolt, throwing the door open.
The table is still there.
And the computers.
And the faint green glow.
This time I find the light switch on the outside wall and I push it on. I walk in. The room is ordinary. The walls plain. I look at the floor, the ceiling, under the table. There is nothing else in here but the three computers. Mine is still in the middle, one of the bolts still loose. I step forward and almost touch it but pull back.
I don’t remember having my own computer in Boston. But I must have had one because my name is clearly marked on the side panel. The computer is large and oddly shaped, not like any I have ever seen, a six-inch square with two ports, both unused. There is no monitor. This has to be it. This is what they don’t want me to see.
I stand there, staring, trying to decide. Trust them. Or trust a whisper inside of me.
If I could get it loose, I could connect it to my Netbook upstairs and see what it contains. I reach down and touch my fingertips to my name. JENNA ANGELINE FOX. My fingers tingle. Why here?
The other two don’t have labels. Maybe they are mine, too? I lay my hand on the first one. Now! Hurry!
I jerk away. My head pounds. I touch the second computer, wondering at its purpose, and then I squat.
There are labels. Faint and hastily scrawled with a pen.
L. JENKINS, and K. MANNING.
What?
My knees buckle and I fall to the floor. What are—How—Why did—My thoughts trip and cut one another off. I stand up and step back, looking at the three oddly shaped boxes. Why would Mother and Father have their computers? I run from the closet down the hallway to the kitchen, where Lily keeps a drawer of basic tools. I rummage through for a screwdriver. There is no question now. I know who to trust. I find a large flat screwdriver and run back across the house to Mother’s room. Mine first. Then the others. I’ll connect them all to my Netbook. I’ll upload the contents and see for myself. I’ll upload—
I stop midway down the hallway. I see Father’s eyes. Mother’s desperate glance. A dark locked closet and hidden key. Upload.
We cracked the code, Jenna.
The screwdriver slips from my fingers.
Nanobots the size of blood cells are injected, sometimes even without a person’s knowledge.
My feet stumble forward.
Think of a glass ball twirling on your fingertip…
The walls sway. Mother’s door looms.
The mind is an energy that the brain produces…
I grip the frame of the closet door to steady myself.
You have to keep it spinning or it falls and shatters…
I stare at the three humming boxes.
… we upload those bits of information into an environment that allows that energy to keep spinning…
Correction. Environment. I stare at three humming black environments. Hell.
Hurry, Jenna. Come.
I can’t.
I back away.
Backups. Of course.
And I run.
Shared Thoughts
The floor of the forest is damp. The blanket of eucalyptus leaves rustles beneath me. I have been lying here for hours, listening to the sounds. There are few. The leaves swishing beneath me when I turn my head or move a leg. The sighing creak of branches and limbs when the breeze pushes them farther than they want to go. The occasional hollow caw of one raven to another. The faint desperate cry of Claire calling Jenna, wondering where I have gone.
I hold my hands above me, my fingers fanning out in a delicate performance, my palms coming together, warm and smooth. It is real skin. Real movement. The structure listens to my neurochips. When I think clap, my hands obey, and the frenzied claps echo through the forest. My brain. I do have ten percent. The butterfly, Mother called it. My winged bit of humanity. A few ounces at most. If I believe in such a thing as a soul, did it take flight with a glistening handful of tissue? Does the soul cling to the last vestige of humanity until there is no more? If a soul can reside in a fistful of embryo, why not in a fistful of white matter?
I cup my
palm, imagining a butterfly landing in it, feeling the flutter and life, and I go to a sleeping, remembering dreamworld. I dream of golden-winged butterflies, red skirts, lopsided cakes, and Ethan’s mouth on my own.
When I wake, the rickrack of sky visible above the canopy has gone from cerulean to black. The tops of the trees are barely visible, only a sliver of moon to light their edges.
‘Jenna!’ Mother’s distant searching voice is pitiful.
I have to go back. Eventually. But not until I understand one thing. Which is the real me? The one in the closet or the one here on the forest floor?
Backup
They are sitting on the veranda as I emerge from the forest. Leaving the back door open as I ran out must have given them a clue to my direction. In another time, Mother would have called the police by now, but that is not an option anymore. Mother is the first to see me. She begins to stand, but Father reaches out and she sits again. Lily sips a glass of wine.
Walking toward them, I feel like I am interrupting a candlelit dinner party instead of a frightened vigil. Lily passes Mother a platter of stuffed mushrooms. I feel an annoyed ruffle run through me.
‘It’s a little late, don’t you think?’ Father says casually. He takes a bite of cheese and then nonchalantly washes it down with a swig of wine. His eyes are angry, glassy, but his movements are practiced restraint.
‘Not too late,’ I answer.
‘We can’t keep living this way, Jenna,’ Mother blurts out.
Father shoots her a glance. Lily rolls her eyes.
‘Welcome home, Father,’ I say. I reach out for a mushroom and before anyone can stop me, I pop it in my mouth.
All three stare at me, the impervious Jenna Fox, at the center of attention once again. Where are the cameras? I play the scene with an exaggerated bow.
‘Dammit, Jenna!’ Father slams his hand down on the glass tabletop, rattling the dishes. ‘You’re not the first person in the world to have to deal with a disabling accident!’
‘I know, Father.’ I sit down in the chair opposite him. ‘There’s those three people in the closet, too. The ones in the black boxes? Now that’s what I call a disability.’
Lily grunts. ‘Touché.’ And she downs the rest of her wine.
‘Jenna, we have to talk about these things,’ Mother says. ‘You can’t just run off and worry us every time you hit a bump.’
‘I didn’t hit a bump. You both hid it from me.’
‘They aren’t people,’ Father says.
‘Have another,’ Lily offers, holding out the platter of mushrooms to me.
‘We didn’t hide it from you,’ Mother says.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Behind a locked door is hidden.’
‘Shall I open another bottle?’
‘What do you expect when you’re acting like this?’
‘Stop!’ I yell. I can’t keep up with the tangled conversation.
‘I’ll open another,’ Lily says. She shuffles off to the house while we sit at the table, using the silence to regroup. Mother lifts her hair off her shoulders and blows at the wisps on her forehead. The shifting Santa Ana winds have made it unseasonably warm for March. Father turns his glass, suddenly so interested in his wine, his brows creasing, his concentration holding his emotions back. I see his lips pull tight, like a seam within him is splitting.
‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ Mother says softly. ‘What were you doing in my closet?’
‘Let’s start more at the beginning,’ I say. ‘Why is there a computer in your closet with my name on it?’
‘It’s a backup, Jenna,’ Father says, in his usual cut-the-crap voice. ‘We had to save the original upload.’
I can hardly see Father as he continues to explain. I can only remember a place with no dimension, no depth, no heat, no cold, but immeasurable amounts of darkness and solitude. Another Jenna is still there.
‘We already told you that this is uncharted territory. We don’t think anything will go wrong, but if it does, we have a backup just in case. But it can’t be a part of any Network. It’s too risky. So we keep the bioenvironment completely independent of all Networks and shared power sources.’
I stand, holding my arms, walking in circles, shaking my head.
‘Jenna—’
‘What are you doing? You have another me trapped in that environment! And Kara and Locke!’
Father shifts in his seat. His shoulders hunch awkwardly. ‘It’s not another you or them, and trapped isn’t a good word to use. It’s only bits of infor—’
‘It’s a mind. You said so yourself.’
‘But it’s a mind without any sensory input. It’s like limbo or a dreamworld.’
‘Trust me, it’s not a dreamworld. Not by a long shot. It’s more like a nightmare.’ I collapse back into my chair and close my eyes.
‘Jenna, it’s only been a few months,’ Claire says. ‘Give us some time to work this out. We’re still trying to think it through ourselves. That’s all we ask. Just give us some time.’
She is not listening. Neither of them are. They don’t want to believe that the place I occupied for eighteen months was anything less than a dreamy waiting room. And time is all I’ve given them. Time. Months. Years. A lifetime of being theirs. Will a time come when I can ever say no? Do I even have time? I need a backup because something could go wrong? I am suddenly aware of my quivering hands and the tremor in my leg.
‘What could go wrong?’ I ask. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could suddenly blink into nothingness like a crashed computer with not even two years used up on my shelf life. That two years seems so precious now—a lifetime. I don’t want to be … gone. My insides tighten and I feel breathless. Breathless from someone who has no lungs. Should I laugh or cry?
I feel Father grab my hands in his, and I open my eyes. ‘We don’t think anything will go wrong, Angel. But we don’t have any long-term data for a project of this magnitude. The Bio Gel has only been in use for eight years and then it’s only been used for isolated organ transplants, not as an entire nervous system. The problem might be if there are conflicts between your original brain tissue and the Bio Gel, signals that might create almost an antibody effect, with one trying to override the other. We haven’t seen it yet and we don’t expect to, but scenarios like that are why we have backups. Just in case.’
Blink. Gone.
I don’t want to blink out of existence. Images flash through me. Ethan’s stormy eyes. Mr Bender’s sparrows. Allys smiling. Claire holding her arms out to me. The forest and sky that mesmerized me for hours. New images from my new life. Images that are not in my backup. That’s a different Jenna. I want to keep the Jenna I am now.
‘Here we go.’ Lily plops another bottle of wine down on the table and places an extra glass in front of me.
‘Have you lost your mind, Lily?’ Father says.
‘It’s not like she can get drunk.’
‘But it still—’
‘Leave it, Matt,’ Mother says.
‘Pour up, Lily,’ I say, lifting my glass.
She does, and Father doesn’t say another word.
I don’t get drunk, but I do feel it warm my insides. However primitive my digestive system may be, it seems to appreciate Lily’s effort, even if the wine is tasteless.
‘Why are there backups for Kara and Locke?’ I ask.
‘It was me,’ Mother says as she rubs her temple. She takes another sip of her wine and looks out across the pond. ‘We had already scanned you. We had hope. But a few days after we moved you, I had to go back to the hospital to retrieve some of your belongings and I saw Kara’s and Locke’s parents and the agony they were going through. I begged your father to scan them, too, in case they didn’t make it.’ She sighs and looks back at me. ‘So he did.’
I’m ashamed as I look at the pain etched on Mother’s face, and yet angry, too, because of a missing scar on my chin and two lost inches and a perspective I will never see from again. The angry m
e overrides the shamed one. I am entitled, after all, the entitled Jenna. I mix in some sarcasm, too, so I get the full value I have coming to me. ‘And where are their new-and-improved bodies?’
‘There are none,’ Father says. ‘Right after I scanned them, the police report on the accident came back and their parents wouldn’t even talk to us, much less let us get close to Kara and Locke. Locke died a few days later, and we couldn’t even get something as simple as a skin sample. They cremated his body. Same thing with Kara. She was moved to another facility, and we weren’t allowed access. We don’t even have any original DNA. Nothing to build from. They will never have new bodies.’
I feel sharpness, like a razor is slicing through me, cutting one part away from another, a part that can never be stitched or put back together. Kara and Locke, forever not here or gone. ‘How long do you plan on keeping them?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘As long as we can.’
‘As long as charges—’
‘Indefinitely.’
‘At least until—’
‘There may come a time when we can use their scans.’
‘For the accident. Something they know might help. We have to keep them as long as there is a possibility—’
‘Witnesses?’ I say. ‘You’re keeping them as witnesses?’
‘Not them, Jenna. It’s only uploaded information.’
Is that all I was? All those months, my thoughts crammed into a formless world? Only bits of information? And if that’s all I was then, am I any more than that now? I just have better packaging. Does the ten percent of original brain really matter? My whole brain was scanned and uploaded. The fleshy human handful seems more like a sentimental token. Or does it really communicate my humanity to the neural chips in mysterious ways even Father doesn’t understand?
Only uploaded information. Kara and Locke in that dark world forever. Can I live with that?
‘Something they know might hurt me, too,’ I say. No one comments. We all know that opportunity would never transpire. Anything bad Kara and Locke might have to say about Jenna would never be heard. They are being saved only in case they could help me. I reach out to refill my glass, and Lily stops me.