“I wonder if Dr. Abbey cared.”
“There’s always that. I—” My sentence went unfinished as I hit the brakes, causing my seat belt to cut painfully into my shoulder. Becks yelped as she was flung forward.
“Shaun! What the fuck?”
I didn’t answer her aloud. I just raised my hand, pointing at the shaggy hulk that was standing at the end of the dirt road. Becks turned to follow my finger, her eyes going wide.
“Shaun. Is that… is that a bear?”
“Yeah,” I said, not quite managing to keep the glee out of my voice. “You ever killed a zombie bear before?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Maybe we’ll be going back to use their showers after all.” I unbuckled my seat belt, moving slowly. “First one to get the headshot gets first shower.”
“Deal,” said Becks, and grabbed her gun.
Please make it back alive. Please make it back alive. Please make it back alive. Please make it back alive. Please make it back…
—From Dandelion Mine, the blog of Magdalene Grace Garcia, July 26, 2041. Unpublished.
My dearest Nandini;
You will only see this letter if I die during the fool’s errand I am about to undertake—one more foolish quest in a life that has been defined by them. Do you ever regret that you chose a husband who would forever be leaving you to chase some elusive platonic ideal of the truth? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Please, consider this letter my blessing, and remarry when you’re ready. Find an accountant or a computer programmer—a nice, stable profession that won’t lend itself to this breed of madness.
Oh, but I loved you. Maybe not at first, when our parents brought us together and said we should marry, but it didn’t take me as long as some thought it would. I am truly sorry I have not been the husband you deserved. You were always more wife than I was worthy of. I love you, my Nan. Believe me, even if you believe nothing else I have ever said. I love you, and I am blessed beyond all words that you were willing to take a risk, and marry me.
—Taken from an e-mail composed by Mahir Gowda, July 26, 2041. Unsent.
Eleven
Dr. Thomas smiled indulgently across the table separating us. “Now, Georgia, I know things have been very stressful for you these past few weeks—”
“Boredom and stress aren’t the same thing,” I said. “You can check the dictionary if you want. I’ll wait.”
He made a note on his tablet. “Inappropriate humor is a defense mechanism, isn’t it?”
“No, Shaun was a defense mechanism. Since he’s not here, I have to fill in.” I took a breath, trying to look miserable. It wasn’t easy. I’ve never had to worry about what my eyes were doing. People say the eyes are windows to the soul, and I was accustomed to having blackout curtains over mine. Without my retinal KA, they might be giving me away without my even knowing it. “Are you ever going to tell me what happened?”
“When your system is ready to stand the stress,” said Dr. Thomas, making another note on his tablet. “Dr. Shaw says you were very cooperative with her tests, and confirms your story about the haircut. I’m sorry to have doubted you.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrugged, trying to look frustrated and innocent at the same time. The frustration was easy. The innocence wasn’t. “I’ve never been much of a liar.”
That little dig hit home; Dr. Thomas winced. I made my reputation as a Newsie based on my refusal to lie—a refusal that got me fined several times early in my career, when I was found in places I wasn’t supposed to be and couldn’t come up with an even half-decent excuse for what I was doing there. I never got better at making excuses. I just got better at refusing to let Shaun talk me into climbing over fences marked NO TRESPASSING.
My memories of those early escapades were fuzzy, like I’d reviewed them so many times that the edges had begun to blur. A lot of my earlier memories were like that, and had been since I’d woken up. I’d been trying to figure out what that meant. Given what Gregory had shown me the night before, I was pretty sure I finally knew.
The memories weren’t fuzzy because the things I remembered happened a long time ago, or because there was a glitch in the process that transferred my consciousness into a freshly cloned body. The memories were fuzzy because the things I remembered never happened at all—not to me, anyway. I was “remembering” an implanted incident extracted from the mind of a dead woman. A certain loss of fidelity was only to be expected.