Penumbra (7 page)

His father laughed. ‘A simple bit of programming, boy. A simulacra circuit built up from all the vid-film and holograms I took of mother over the years.’ He paused, then called again: ‘Hey, Ella. Look who’s out here.’

‘No . . .’ Bennett said to himself. ‘Please, no.’

As the diminutive figure of his sister skipped from the dome and sketched a wave his way, Bennett felt a sudden pang of jealousy. Over the years he’d had Ella to himself in the memorial garden, had built a relationship that was as exclusive and private as it had been in reality all those years ago.

‘Hi, Josh. I’ve been playing rockets in the lounge. Want to come and join me?’

He found his tongue. ‘Some other time, Ella, okay?’

She beamed. ‘Sure,’ she said, smiling down at him.

‘Had the simulated identity hologram from the memorial garden copied years ago,’ his father explained. ‘Always intended to use it in my VR module, just never got round to it till now. Still, better late than never.’ He laughed. ‘Cute, eh?’

Bennett stared up at the image of his sister, aware that this copy could have no memory of their conversations over the years. This version of Ella’s ghost was a cheap imitation, with no knowledge of him and his pain.

He shook his head, as if to clear it. They’re just programs, he told himself - all of them, just expensive holographic projections and complex memory banks.

‘So you see, Josh, you see what I’m going to when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil!’

‘Praise be to God,’ his mother carolled.

‘Amen to that!’ Ella responded.

Bennett closed his eyes, blanking out the tawdry concoction of his father’s private Heaven.

‘Now Josh and me need a few private minutes together, mother. Joshua . . .’

When Bennett opened his eyes, his father was beckoning him away from the dome. Compliant, eager to get the conversation over with so that he could re-enter the real world, Bennett followed.

His father halted and turned to him. ‘I’m glad you’ve agreed to let me die, Josh. I’m an old man and I’ve had enough. I just want out. You’ve seen what’s awaiting me . . .’ He stared back at the dome, and a smile softened his features; then his gaze snapped back to Bennett. ‘When you get back, tell Samuels to go ahead with the process. And tell him - this is important, boy - tell him that I want to stay in here while he’s administering the drug. You got that? I don’t want to be dragged back to that antiseptic room and the wreck of my shrivelled body. Do you understand, Josh? Tell Samuels that I want to die with dignity.’

Bennett nodded. ‘I’ll tell him.’

‘I knew you would, Joshua.’ His father nodded. ‘Goodbye, son.’

Bennett regarded his father, wanting to say something final and fitting, but the words were impossible to find. He reached out a hand, intending to shake, before remembering that he wasn’t equipped for tactile sensation in VR. His father just stared at him, realising his son’s mistake. The impasse seemed fittingly symbolic of their life-long relationship. Bennett sketched an embarrassed, inadequate wave, and quickly ejected himself from Heaven by pulling the VR glasses from his face.

The sunlight in the small hospital room dazzled him, and when his eyes adjusted he found himself staring at the shrunken body of his father. In the drawn, collapsed face beneath the glasses he saw the merest lineaments of the man he’d spoken to in the VR world. From time to time the thin hands fluttered, and his lips twitched in a grotesque parody as his father smiled in Heaven.

‘Mr Bennett?’

He looked up. Samuels was staring down at him.

‘I know, it must have come as something of a shock.’

Bennett shook his head, clearing it of the visions. ‘I told him I agreed with his wishes,’ he said. ‘Are there forms I need to fill in?’

For the next couple of hours, as medics prepared the apparatus to administer the lethal injection, Bennett was introduced to his father’s legal representative and chaplain, who murmured platitudinous condolences and assured him that it was for the best. He signed a raft of various release forms, waivers and other legal documents, including arrangements for the funeral, and was finally left alone in the room with his father.

He considered switching off the VR module, trying to talk to his father as he had been unable to do so in the ersatz Heaven. He decided that he had little to say to the old man; he would let him pass his last few minutes in the Heaven bought with the money he had managed to save from his creditors.

At noon, Dr Samuels and two medics, his father’s representative and the chaplain, entered the room and gathered around the bed.

Bennett recalled his father’s wish to die while still in the VR site. ‘Dr Samuels, my father wanted to remain linked to the module.’

Samuels frowned and glanced at the legal representative. ‘State law dictates that a patient’s death must be monitored free from the artificial stimulus of VR linkages or similar,’ Samuels explained.

‘But surely it won’t make any difference? It was his last wish.’

‘Mr Bennett, I’ll ensure that your father is so sedated that he will have no way of knowing that he no longer occupies the site. If you’d care to tell me when . . .’

Bennett pulled the chair towards the bed and took his father’s hand. It was already cold, as if death was claiming him piecemeal. He nodded to Dr Samuels.

A medic slipped the glasses from his father’s face, and to his relief Bennett saw that his eyes were closed. Another medic deactivated the VR module. Dr Samuels nodded to Bennett and pressed a touch-pad on a monitor behind the bed.

As his father died, Bennett experienced a sudden and involuntary rush of images - a compendium of incidents from their shared time together - and wished that somehow it might all have been different.

He squeezed the cold hand in his, and at that second his father opened his eyes briefly and stared at him. Bennett could sense, from long and bitter experiences of his father’s moods, the old man’s silent articulation of betrayal.

Then his father’s eyes fluttered shut, and the cardiogram flatlined with a high, monotone note, and the chaplain at the foot of the bed began a hushed prayer.

* * * *

5

Bennett left the hospital just before one o’clock and boarded an electric shuttle to meet Julia at the Nova Luna restaurant.

He arrived early and sat at an outside table overlooking the lake. He ordered a beer and watched the swans upending themselves in the water. He was in no mood to face Julia, her complaints and criticisms. He decided he would make his excuses and get away as soon as possible.

He was on his second beer when Julia approached from around the lake. She smiled and waved, but Bennett knew from experience that her apparent good mood was no indication of what to expect: on every occasion in the past, when their meetings had descended into a minutely detailed catalogue of his faults, she had deployed a gambit of good cheer to hide her intent.

She ordered a coffee from the bar and carried it carefully across the lawn, a tall, tanned woman in her early thirties wearing a long red dress. She was barefoot, and Bennett wondered why this fact should nag at his memory. Then he remembered: Ten Lee Theneka went barefoot also. It was, he thought, the only similarity between the two women. Julia was a hard-headed pragmatist who believed exclusively in the here and now. At least she and Bennett had that much in common.

She sat across from him, meeting his gaze with a slight nod. ‘Josh.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve already eaten, Julia. Go ahead and order - I’m okay with this.’ He lifted his beer.

She ordered something called an Acapulco salad from the waiter.

‘So,’ she said, between minute sips of cappuccino, ‘how were things in high orbit?’

He shrugged. ‘As ever. No, I tell a lie. Perhaps even more monotonous than ever.’ He paused, then said: ‘Anyway, I’m seriously considering a change.’ As soon as he’d said it, he wondered why.

Something in her gaze, outwardly friendly so far, hardened. ‘And how many times have I heard that?’

‘No, I mean it this time. I was almost involved in an accident up there. I’m not happy with the safety standards.’

‘What did you tell me last time, or was it the time before that? Weren’t you up for promotion, some kind of liner job out of Mars?’

‘I didn’t get it, but I was shortlisted.’ The lie came easily, surprising him.

She sipped her coffee, eyeing him judiciously over the chocolate-sprinkled froth. ‘So, what are your plans?’

He lowered his gaze. ‘I haven’t got that far yet.’

Her salad arrived, and from her indulgent expression he guessed that she was calling a truce. She forked cubes of avocado and chewed, watching him. ‘How’s your father keeping, Josh? Have you had time to visit him yet?’

He nodded. There was no way he could talk to Julia about the morning’s events. ‘You know how he is.’

He ordered another beer, his third. Already he was feeling light-headed, abstracted from this ridiculous little scene with someone he could no longer bring himself to regard with any degree of affection whatsoever.

Julia paused, brie-loaded fork halfway to her lips. ‘Josh, you’ve visited Ella’s hologram since you’ve been back, haven’t you?’

He shrugged, surprised by the turn of conversation. ‘What if I have?’ he said, then: ‘How do you know?’

‘Because you’re always so . . . I don’t know, melancholy, I suppose, after visiting the SIH.’

Referring to Ella’s image as the SIH was Julia’s way of ridiculing his time spent in the memorial garden.

He nodded. ‘We talked. It was good to see her again. I haven’t seen her for over a month.’

‘It’s not a “her”, Josh, for Christ’s sake. It’s a computer program, a projection.’

‘I know that.’ He stared at her. ‘But apart from my memories, that’s all I’ve got of Ella.’

‘You should make do with your memories then, like most grieving people.’

‘But memories aren’t enough, Julia. I need more. I feel I have a relationship with her.’

Julia dropped her fork, theatrically, into her salad. ‘Jesus Christ.’

Bennett felt anger rise within him. ‘I do. I feel—’

‘Josh, you can’t have a “relationship” with a damned machine!’

‘I don’t know. I think I can. I relate to her. I respond. She responds to me.’

‘Let me put you right, Josh.’ She picked up her fork and used it to point at him. ‘A relationship is a two-way thing between two human beings. A transaction of feelings, emotion, concern. But of course you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? A machine is about all you’re able to feel anything for.’

His voice cracking, he said, ‘The program learns, stores what I say, remembers our conversation. It’s like talking with a real person, Julia, except that it’s impossible to touch.’

Julia was silent for a while, staring at him. She leaned forward and whispered with vehemence, ‘But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’d like to touch her, wouldn’t you?’ Her gaze was relentless. ‘Or let me put it another way: you’d like to fuck her.’

‘You bitch.’

He was overcome with the sudden urge to hit her, wipe the smug expression from her face. Then he thought he should walk away, just leave. But both options, he realised, would be craven.

‘I’m serious, Josh. I don’t know what went wrong after Ella died, but it screwed you up. It warped you so that you couldn’t relate.’