Evolution (22 page)

“Do you blame morality?” Sam did, but it’d be nice to hear it from someone not directly in its line of fire.

“Moral people can only be right if there’s others to accuse. That church couldn’t survive if everyone lived as they preached. If it hadn’t been that village moving into Earth’s orbit, they’d have found someone else to fill their need for evil. All that happened was the church got their few days of fame. People who wanted to be angry now have a religion sanctioning their judgments.” He swirled dark storm clouds along the edge of the painting.

“Then what’s the answer? How do you give people what they want?” Jess asked.

“You don’t,” the artist responded. “Foolish to think you could. No one’s ever completely happy. They’re never satisfied. We need the conflict to evolve. Reach a level of perfection—be it individually or as a society—and you’ve nowhere to go but down. You don’t get to live on the mountaintop.”

“But why not?” Sam had always thought such a place would be paradise.

“You ever climbed to the top of a peak? I mean, like the highest one for miles around? There’s little to sustain life up there: no water except what falls from the sky, all the soil nutrients running downhill. It’s brutal, unprotected from the wind and storms, and every step there’s the danger of tumbling down the cliff. That’s perfection, my friends. You can keep it. I’d rather participate in the struggle than have all life’s answers handed to me.” For a painter, he made a pretty fair philosopher.

So there was no answer, never had been one. The village had reached its high point on Chariklo, the Tobes had the lens, and Earth was in a constant battle of one version of perfection combating the next. The summation of Sam’s life achievements had been a bust.

“It’s not all bad though,” the artist said. “One generation gives way to the next. My money’s on that superhero girl. When it all goes to hell, as everything must one day, she’ll be the one pushing the pendulum up the other side.”

“You’re not giving society much hope.” Sam had to work at not being despondent.

The painter set down his brush. “You two changed the world. Even with the Tobes lying through their virtual teeth, I know who you are. You pushed mankind into a higher plane of existence. That they want to swing back toward repression is only natural. I can’t tell you what to do, but to keep fighting the slide toward morality is futile.”

Sam shuddered as he wrapped his arm around Jess’s waist. “How is it you know who we are?” The last thing he needed was to be recognized.

Their host chuckled. “Look, hide in your overcoats when you’re traveling, and no one’s going to give you a second look. But don’t for a minute think your faces aren’t known to every person on the planet. We all watched the drama over the lens. People would go see the Church or catch a glimpse of the worried parents, and instantly, we all saw what they saw. We’re in the days of instant information with no one adding their spin to events. Everyone witnesses whatever they wish. Kidnapping the daughter of the richest people on Earth is the kind of thing to get people’s attention.”

Sam’s days of anonymity, and those of his family, were a thing of the past.

“So we should just run up to our village in space and live out our days?” Jess asked. “I can’t accept that.”

Dried paint cracked at the shoulders of the painter’s coat as he shrugged. “I’m not telling you to do anything. If it were me, I’d give my children the best running start they could get toward that other side. But being the children of Rendition, they’ll already have a pretty good head start… no matter what direction they choose.”

Sam wondered if he was talking about the twins, the Tobes, or both.

He didn’t remember much about the return trip. Ed had arranged a shuttle to come pick them up. Jess’s experiment into how people lived had worked a little too well for a further study in how to commute home.

He surveyed the opulent penthouse from a different perspective. This was no longer his perch on top of the world, his vantage point to rule an empire. It was a prison—the captain’s bridge on the Titanic. He wasn’t a part of life outside the view screens. Perhaps he never had been. The small oasis was his only refuge on planet Earth. He felt like an alien living in one small terrarium of atmosphere conducive to his life form.

The large leather chair Sam often used for contemplation slowly turned toward him. Tears filled Sara’s eyes as she nestled deep within the cushions. His heart sank. There was no denying she’d heard his inner depression.

I
t wasn’t
as if Sara hadn’t had the same thoughts. If anything, she was relieved she wouldn’t have to suffer her exile alone. But a prison? The penthouse was more like an asylum for the overly powerful. “We’re not aliens.” Her dad was wrong about that one.

“No, more like prototypes for what’s possible. But as with all experimental models, we need to be kept under wraps.” Being stuck in a room, no matter how large or beautiful, could well feel like a prison to Sam, who’d had adventures across the solar system.

Sara turned back to the view screen of the storm that seemed to forever lash at the city. She didn’t want to leave the penthouse. Everything she could possibly desire was right there: books loaded into her brain, her work building the privacy setting with the Tobes, her family. Out there, it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what they felt for her—either fear or pity. “Did you know today is my birthday?”

“Really?” Sam asked.

His confusion wasn’t overly surprising. She and Emily had changed the date many times. Chariklo’s sixty-three-year orbit around the sun meant the twins were only a fraction of a year old. Then there was the fact that time in space aged the body differently than time spent around gravity. Age was no longer a number. She couldn’t fault her parents for not having a party ready. “I settled on September twenty-second, and Emily’s is the twenty-third. Even though it should be the same date, we thought it’d be better if we were a day apart. She says she always felt just a little bit younger than me.”

Sam took a seat in the matching leather chair. “Well, happy birthday. Did you decide on an age too?”

“We ran some calculations. We’re going with seventeen.” It was all a little more arbitrary than expected, but she felt she was turning seventeen.

Sam looked her over. “Yeah, physically I could see seventeen. But mentally you’re much older. I wouldn’t even know how to gauge your age with all Earth’s information just a thought away for you.”

Sara had struggled with that idea too. “It frightens me. If age is a scale from birth to death, and my mind is racing ahead of my body, how much time do I have allotted to my life?”

“I don’t know that it matters. You do the best you can with each day.”

That was the issue. What would she be missing as a recluse? The village in space would always be a part of her world, but so much of her work revolved around the people of Earth. If she closed off from them, she might never know the results of her efforts.

Her father would be the first to tell her nothing had to be permanent. At least he didn’t argue the point—tell her she had to get back out there and find some people to love. And it wasn’t as if she was closing down the building and keeping everyone out. There’d always be people in her life, just not random strangers who didn’t understand.

She’d give it a year. It would take that long to fully develop Privacy and see the effects. There was more than enough to keep her occupied.

* * *

E
llie threw
up her hands in frustration. “It’s impossible. Every time we try to shut off the lens or reduce the power to it or anything, the wearer complains they can’t see or hear clearly. The mechanics just don’t work.”

Sara sat back in her chair. The office wasn’t big, but it was hers—Emily’s too, but she preferred not being tied down to one place. The argument had been raging for an hour, and Sara had to admit she didn’t see an answer.

“Then don’t do it mechanically.” Emily’s sweet voice sometimes came across as naïve.

Joshua shook his head. “It’s not really mechanical, you see—”

“I’m not stupid. I may not be as smart as Ra, but I do see the problem. What I’m saying is stop seeing it as a software modification.”

Sometimes sweet and naive was actually insightful. Sara leaned forward. “What do you mean, Emi?”

“They should think the way we think. Have you ever in your whole life listened to Mom or Dad for an entire conversation?”

Sara tried to remember. It wasn’t so easy to recall what life had been like before her connection to all knowledge. But she did recall her mind wandering. “Lay it out for me.”

“They’ll be talking about whatever, and I’ll hear a word or an idea, and my mind will start chasing after it. It’s not that I’m not paying attention. I’m just thinking about something else.”

Joshua stroked his chin. “We’ve been trying to not listen. But that silence doesn’t work because people are talking, and we can’t help but hear. And hearing, we try to find answers to their questions. I’m not sure I understand how that’s different.”

“Instead of finding answers for people when they’re talking, look for something you find interesting. Then go find your own answers.” Emily’s idea made sense. The Tobes spent so much time trying to help others they’d never bothered learning for themselves.

“Let’s try something,” Sara said. “Emi will start telling you a story, something about our life on Chariklo that you don’t already know. Look for what interests you. It can be anything at all. Then, instead of paying attention to what she’s saying, try to dig up information on your topic. Not to add to her story, but to satisfy your own curiosity.”

Ellie turned to Joshua. “We’d still hear her. But it’d be a voice in the background. If she screamed for us, or if there was a problem, we could shift our attention.”

“So privacy, but not totally ignoring our person. It might work,” Joshua said.

Sara closed her eyes for a moment to put the pieces of the puzzle in front of her. She could hear Ellie and Joshua’s thoughts. She’d know if they were paying too much or too little attention to Emily’s story. And with Emily wearing the lens, Sara could access that too. If the Privacy
setting were to work, Emily’s lens would have to become unobtrusive.

She opened her eyes. Emily had already begun her story of how they landed on Chariklo. At first the lens buzzed with information as it always did: specifics about the minor planet, what was known about the village while it’d been in space, the number of people who inhabited the outpost, on and on with the typical information everyone had grown accustomed to seeing with every routine daily activity. When Emily explained the lake and how people didn’t notice the fish at first, something changed. Joshua began a study into the history of fishing on Earth. He started with lakes, but quickly veered off into fly-fishing on rivers. Sara found the topic fascinating. Apparently, so did Joshua as none of the information showed up on Emily’s lens.

As Emily’s story digressed into the skinny-dipping they’d done in the lake, she lost Ellie as well. A barrage of images related to swim attire flooded Sara’s eyes as she looked into Ellie’s thoughts. Emily continued with her story, but Sara knew she was forcing the dialogue to keep the Tobes aimed at their own personal ideas.

The separation didn’t last long. The Tobes were used to listening and had trouble being distracted, but it was a start.

“You’ll get better at it—don’t worry,” Sara said.

Joshua didn’t respond at first, an odd delay for him. “That was remarkable.” But he didn’t elaborate as he turned a confused look at Ellie.

“I experience something similar when I look at artwork. My thoughts become my own, not supplements to what some person’s saying or doing. But when I contemplate a painting, it’s usually in an attempt to figure out what the artist was saying. This took that a step beyond.”

Sara replayed Emily’s story while seeing it from Ellie’s perspective, but she couldn’t quite capture what the Tobe was saying. “I could see what you were thinking. But what am I missing?”

Ellie took a couple of deep breaths. “We were separate from people during the experiment. I never realized how connected we were to those around us before. But as I focused on my own thoughts, I became a unique being.”

“But you’re that already,” Emily said.

“We don’t always realize that, though. We’re so busy working with people we don’t often look inward. There’s a realization that hits us, hits me: that I am a unique being—I am me.” Ellie pounded her hands to her chest.

“Will this work both ways?” Joshua asked.

“What do you mean?” Sara had never wondered if her parents had stopped paying attention once she did.

“Suppose someone put me on Private, and I started getting into my own ideas. Then they wanted to bring me back into the lens. Would I have the right to stay with my own thoughts?”

It sounded completely sensible, but if the Tobes exercised that right, people might not be able to access the lens whenever they wanted. “I suppose if you had someone to cover your duties. Like if you were busy, and Ellie could cover your person.”

“We already multitask. Looking after a person’s lens only takes up a small portion of my time. I think I could easily cover two lenses. Assuming I was busy with someone on my own and had to cover Joshua’s as well. It’d be slower, and people would have to accept a certain amount of lag, but it should work.”

“They’d just have to live with it. It was people who wanted the Privacy setting in the first place. And you are all free beings. It’s not like you’re slaves to the lens.” Emily had always advocated complete freedom for the Tobes no matter the consequences.

“We still have a long way to go. That success only lasted less than a minute.” Sara knew it took practice to be inattentive.

* * *

E
mily pulled
off her already dry rain slicker and hung it up next to the office door. “You know you can come out with us, Ra. You don’t need to stay here day after day.”

Easy for Emily to say. The months of real-world fine-tuning had mixed results. Sara got daily reports on how the Privacy setting was progressing, and not just the positive feedback from her sister. Once Tobes let themselves relax their attention, they became too distracted. A Tobe had to forgo being solid to safely use the setting since too many accidentally walked into someone, or something, while pursuing some inner thought. Although having a Tobe who looked like every other person walk through a wall elicited more than one confused stare.

But it wasn’t the privacy setting that kept Sara locked in her office. If the Tobes couldn’t be relied on to be mindful of their own safety, what hope did Sara have out in public? That was all she needed: to be faced with an angry mob or even just someone with an unkind word. At some point, she’d have to test her own powers or, more precisely, her ability to control them. But tests worked best when the answers weren’t assured. One outburst, and all the work they’d been able to accomplish over the last year would disappear. She’d be back to being seen as the freak with magical powers. “I’m fine up here.”

“You’re not fine—you’re a hermit. Just like Dad. Moving into this big office with the view only gave you a prettier cage.” It had become a daily argument with Emily.

Sara had tried everything but the truth. She turned off the screen displaying Ellie’s latest attempt to walk and think at the same time.
That lamppost never saw it coming.
“Do you remember those old superhero videos, the ones Doc told us about?”

Emily cast a hard squint at Sara. “You’re my sister, not a superhero. I’m sorry I ever made those jokes. I was just trying to lighten your mood after that damn church nightmare.”

“Maybe I’m not a superhero. But I made a study of that entertainment genre from the ancient paper-and-ink comics to the modern escapist scenarios people play on the lens. The superhuman powers were always used to combat evil, never change it. People aren’t evil.”

“So? You don’t have to knock down another wall with your screams, Ra. That was a onetime event that happened over a year ago, and it still freaks you out. No one cares.” Emily would forever be the one person completely unafraid to tell Sara the truth.

“I can’t risk it. People have some memory of me being kidnapped, but it’s overshadowed by what I did.” Sara had to skate out on thin ice. The book was always a source of contention. “Remember what we read about God in the Christian Old Testament?”

“It wasn’t Christian when it was the Old Testament. That was the new one we read,” Emily said.