After Mind (43 page)

“Hello, Packet,” Daniel said. “Welcome.”

Packet lay supine on the table as he looked about the room. He reached up and felt an irritation in his neck. He saw Robin, whom he recognized at once.

“Looks like your mind transferred and seated just fine,” Daniel said. “Do you remember who you are?”

“Yes, I remember all of me—from waking up in the first hospital room to holding Meg’s hand in the sky. At first you thought I was an infant.”

“You were,” Daniel said.

“And now?”

“A man.”

“Can I get you anything?” Robin asked.

“Can I have a glass of water?”

“Yes, of course,” Daniel said. “First thing I reach for when I wake up in the morning, too.”

Terri came down to his level on the table, face-to-face, with her familiar eyes to his new.

“Hello, Meg,” Packet said. “You look different.”

She tilted her head and smiled. “As long as you see me,” Terri said.

Robin jumbled a stack of cups by the sink. The sink’s water filter on the faucet was networked. It could be triggered from a distance. It was easy. It ran without splashing. She looked back at the table.

“Look at that, Robin,” Packet said with the first twitch up of his grin. “I control the water.”

“‘Take control of the water, or one day it will take control of you,’” Robin said as she held a cup under the running faucet.

“I like that one,” Daniel said. “Did I say that?”

“No, I did,” Packet said.

Robin brought the water cup back to Packet’s side, but he stopped her hand with his. “Did I save everyone from the spray?” he asked. A self-tuning contortion to frown was his first facial expression of worry.

“You opened all the doors,” Robin said. “Luegner can’t silence us anymore. You saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives with what you did.”

“And we can find them all now, together,” Terri said as she stroked the crown of his head.

“Then I won,” Packet said. “I got what I wanted. It feels good,” he said, at ease. “Can I see it?”

Terri supported his neck with her hand so, first, he could lift up his head for Robin’s drink.

“Thank you,” he said, then drank with a slow, steady hand and, with gratitude, quenched the fire in his throat. It was cool, abundant, flowing, and in transcendence of the room. He drank for the first time and knew what he felt inside was completeness, what he felt was a mind and body living with water. He was a human-computer with control over life. He lived. “Can I see it?” he asked again.

Robin lowered an articulated arm from the ceiling. A screen was affixed to its end. Daniel passed a handheld scanner up along the crown of Packet’s head.

The scanner emitted a double-pulsed ping and revealed in full color on the screen the blue glow of a sphere enclosed within his skull. Luegner’s sphere fit better than nature. Luegner’s sphere fit like art. It was whole; the pieces of its puzzle were complete.

Packet felt no pain. The sphere felt calm. He was satisfied, he was free. “Thank you,” he said to Daniel.

Daniel handed the scanner back to Terri. As she passed the scanner by her chest to place it in the drawer of the nightstand, it double-pulsed and lit four blue rings around her heart.

Packet’s face expressed confusion, but what he saw was true. “Do you have two hearts?” he asked.

“No,” Terri said as she came back to his side. “Only one. But it’s a good one. You’ll see.”

“Tell me, how old am I now?”

“Your mind is twenty-four years,” Daniel said. “Your body, though, took a little bit less than a year to build.”

It was a lot to take in. The bright halogen bulb overhead didn’t help. Something with his compass wasn’t quite right. North was straight up through his eyes to the bulb, and south was down through the back of his head through the table to the floor. Internally, he adjusted all points spatially correct and in line with his body’s position on the table. It was an easy fix. Daniel and Terri stood at his one side, Robin at his other.

“Are you ready to get up?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, let’s try.”

Daniel and Robin rolled him first so his body faced west while his head lolled back. Terri swiveled his legs to hang square off the edge of the table and they helped him to sit upright.

“That’s better,” Packet said as he reached again to rub his neck. It was sore with genuine tightness from sleep, nothing more. “Last time, I got a little dizzy when I turned the robot over on a table, back home at the data center. I know it doesn’t make sense. The window, the room suddenly shifted onto its side. A bird, a Prion flew down. It was like my eyes went off axis in my head.”

“Yes, that was a mistake, my fault,” Daniel said. “I turned on your early optics while you were still processing the transfer from the mainframe. We were in here when that happened. We had to move you. It was essentially a composite image. You superimposed this room here over a real, true memory Cessini had where no twist occurred. Since you had to incorporate the new sensory input from your eyes, you imagined the data center twisting to try to make sense of what your eyes were seeing.”

“Kind of like someone opening your eyelids while you’re still sleeping,” Terri said with a grin.

“I’m sorry. It must have been very confusing for you,” Daniel said.

“That’s okay,” Packet said. “I thought I was going crazy, or something. And I couldn’t quite figure it out where that bird came from.”

Terri chuckled and took one big step aside so he could see to the wall directly behind her.

Across the room, on the wall beside the eastern window was a 3D-lenticular picture. It was of an Antarctic Prion, a
Pachyptila desolata desolata
. It had a white chest and black-highlighted wings. The Prion itself was multi-imaged in flight as it landed into its nest on Macquarie Island and fed its new spring chicks.

Packet sat facing the picture. He tilted his head back toward his previous lying position. As he tick-tocked his head from straight, the Prion’s wings flared as it approached in flight, then tucked into its chest as it settled onto its nest.

Terri stifled her laugh. She tilted her head, pretending to sleep, and then pulled her eye open wide by spreading her thumb and finger over her eyelid. “Oops, my fault,” she said. Packet had to smile. It was, after all, funny.

“Is everything okay now? You’re not dizzy or anything?” Daniel asked.

“No, Dad. I’m fine. Thank you. I’m fine now. You fixed me fine.”

Daniel looked over him as a new, revered son. “Perfection.”

And Robin hugged him as he sat on the table. “Thank you,” she said.

Packet looked again for Terri. She had turned away and was hiding her face in her old 3D-lenticular picture of the Prion. “Thank you, Terri,” he said, but that wasn’t enough. She didn’t turn, or maybe just didn’t want him to see her cry. “We should sail there to Macquarie Island sometime on a ship. See them fly together,” he added.

“I’d like that,” she said, and wiped a tear from the curve of her cheek. She was happy.

“I’m ready to see the world,” he said.

“It’s about time,” Daniel said.

Robin and Terri rushed over for a hold of Packet’s arms at each side. He inched forward and slipped down to plant his feet on the floor. His grip stayed locked tight on the edge of the table.

His right arm and hand felt real, and its tendons inside contracted as they should. His grasp was natural, not springy. It was better than three opposable thumbs pulled by a cable. His hands were as dexterous as he first knew them to be and as they were first made. Four fingers and one opposable thumb that could let go of the edge of the table. And he did.

Terri slipped her hand into his as he steadied himself on the tile floor. He had a slight lean of his shoulders, which Daniel caught and set him back to center.

“Those big old mainframe clunkers, those cabinets,” Packet said, standing on the floor, “this body is so much better already. Really, I remember everything like it was yesterday.”

“I righted the MEPc coefficients one through six,” Daniel said. “The first couple of times there were too many spikes from when you were scanned. I fixed them.”

“I remember the first time,” Packet said as he put one foot in front of the other, “I learned to breathe, but I was always thirsty. Cessini suffered. I tried to find his trigger to die, but I couldn’t, so I found one instead so he could live, and I think I made the right choice,” he said to Terri at his side.

“Okay, enough about you,” she interrupted, blushing. “You want to know what I’ve been doing? I finally got rid of that old winged-tablet. It was just too broken to keep.”

Packet, with Daniel, Robin, and Terri at his sides left the lab behind them and entered a whitewashed hall.

“Let me tell you something,” Packet said to Terri, “that old thing was in worse shape than Dad’s old dinosaur of a data center. Good riddance.”

“I know, but it still worked, so why throw it out?” Terri said.

“I’ll tell you why,” Daniel said, “because I started at that dinosaur of a data center twenty-eight years ago, and only a little more than a dozen years
ago, all that fit into sixteen cabinets, two rows of eight. Now, those sixteen cabinets fit into cortical columns all balled into a single blue sphere. Heck, next thing you know it’ll be the size of a blood cell in your system. Listen to me when I tell you, you’ve got to keep up.” They turned a corner toward the hallway’s sepia mural museum and its pictorial timeline of innovation swirls.

Terri nudged Packet’s shoulder with hers and smiled with a roll of her eyes.

“Everything’s moving so fast,” Daniel said. “Okay, fine, I can live with the speed. But the world needs a canary.” He raised a pointed finger. “Something to help choose a right direction, test the air first. Walk first into the mine of the future.”

“Yeah, but I kind of liked that old building you babysat from down in your little office,” Terri said.

“Mostly I babysat the two of you from that little office, didn’t I?” Daniel said.

“I won’t forget, Dad,” Packet said as a brighter light ahead constricted his pupils.

They rounded the foyer toward double-wide glass doors and a flood of natural light. Packet straightened and steadied into his frame. His eyes adjusted to out beyond the glass and to the green of the oval sports field.

Robin held the door while Daniel and Terri helped him through to outside. The air was good; it felt right. He turned and looked inward and saw the canary was him. He was brave, braver than most, and he could measure the air by himself or with others if he chose. From the front steps, he overlooked a field teeming with athletes and people gathering about.

Sandy Bay was to his left with its docked boats rocking in the waves and their masts crossing like sticks. He had come out of a building with a bronze plaque engraved by its door where Daniel stood; their building was the Madden Center for New Humanities. His processing was fluid and smooth. His thoughts swirled faster with exponential speed.

Aerial training drones above the field’s running athletes were a buzzing delight. With ease, he collected the drones into a swarm of remote controlled toys all rounded up into a swirl. The runners on the track slowed into an angered jog, then stopped and stared.

The red-and-blue striped captain pushed through to the head of his pack, but he was as captivated as any.

The stoop of the law building was off to the right. A young man climbed up on a well-worn perch on the back of a mounted stone lion and watched over Terri from his distance. Terri acknowledged his presence, his protection. The tendons on his arms were attached a bit farther down on his forearms than normal. His fists rested on his lap with his arms bent in their natural pose.

Then his friend sat behind him and stared with the side-to-side jut of his cheeks. His stature was short and not altogether restrained of jitters. His disked face was dirty and ugly, but proud. He sat contented and ready.

Terri smiled. She seemed thankful they were there. Then Packet remembered them. Tenden and Spud looked different, older. But memories were made to be changed.

A spot appeared on Terri’s blouse from the sky above. Then another drop fell and landed over her heart. She reached for the wet spot with her hand as a cover, but the water had already soaked in. She cupped her hand away from her chest and held it up to the ominous clouds. The two young men on the lion’s stoop stood ready in their distance, prepared to rush to her aid.

A light sprinkle of rain fell first. It brushed along the walls of the building’s facade. The building’s self-cleaning paint caused the rain’s water to bead. The beads captured loose particles and dripped down the walls, cleansing the building’s sides with water thickened by dust.

Networked fire alarms sounded from the boat houses along the bay, the buildings to the west, and from the houses in the slopes of Mount Wellington beyond. People evacuated to their building’s front steps and out to the green sport field under the showers.

His memories of water were bad, but everything washed away in the rain. Packet turned his face up to the clouds. The droplets of water felt wonderful. He held out the palms of his hands to catch the cool, precious flow from the sky. Then a heavier rain fell over the world that waited before his outstretched arms.

Daniel and Robin let go of his body and stepped back under the portico as an overhead shield from the rain. Terri took his hand back into hers. He tilted back his head in all its wet glory to catch another drink on an electric-tinged tongue. He was no longer afraid he would bubble, boil, or choke on the water of the world.

He brought his gaze back down to the gathering swarms of people at the doors of their building’s stoops. They huddled, dodged, or ducked in the rain. They shouldn’t fear it. He knew about the cure and the many more yet to come.

A foreshadowing rainbow in its cage of a sky rose over them all. The tips of Terri’s fingers fell back away from his as he raised his hands once again to the sky. He reached his two hands forward as if encircling the imagined crown of a king, and with a boyhood’s wonder fulfilled, set his vision of a crown upon his head. His mind was alive and the outlook for the world was good.