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The ad agency didn’t throw a party every time a campaign launched, but when they did, they had plenty of local connections to help stretch their budget. Even the introverts showed up for the lavish spread; and the workaholics trickled in before even half of it had been consumed.
Once the party hit its likely peak attendance, the senior member of the team gave a dramatic recital of all the team had endured in reaching this day of celebration: the obstacles overcome, the regulatory red tape, the client’s inconsistencies and resistance to serving its own interests. Those who had drifted away on their private thoughts, or had resumed contemplating work left undone, pulled their attention back to her when she raised her voice to herald an announcement.
“Just as this has been a groundbreaking campaign, it comes with groundbreaking benefits for those who made it happen—in fact, for everyone in the agency. The client is offering accounts at substantially reduced cost. Sign up before they change their minds! Then you can make appointments for the various baseline readings and examinations at your leisure.”
A buzz of conversation arose. Anyone looking around the room would have seen a wide range of expressions: confusion, among those who had not taken part in the campaign and were hazy about its details; from those better informed, emotions from excitement to nervousness to pensive absorption; and from the busier and more cynical, amusement about the supposed availability of leisure.
By the time the last to leave pitched in to clean up the mess, all the bottles and platters were empty, and the livelier folks had moved on to a favorite local dive. The tall girl who had shaped the campaign and the round gentleman who had served as DA had neither stayed to clean nor followed the crowd, and were instead tangled in the sheets of a nearby motel.
Among the first societal sectors to grapple with the new storage technology: hospitals and lawyers. Not to mention hospital lawyers.
Hospital administrators and legal departments worried at first that patients they were unable to save would carry the grudge into their digital “lives,” and be more likely to sue for malpractice as a result. It would take time for the data to show whether that was happening. Something else happened first. Grieving families started suing because no one had offered their loved ones the option to be digitized.
The hospitals settled the cases they could and, when they couldn’t, prepared for the long haul through the courts. Ethicists struggled over issues of informed consent. Was such consent necessary before an ailing patient could sign the contract? Or was it necessary before the patient’s medical decline? And who should inform patients of the possibility, and at what stage of treatment, and in what terms?
Financial planners and probate lawyers were inundated with requests for wills, trusts, and savings plans that would ensure the availability of funds for the process. The lawyers prepared for the inevitable disputes between executors and the deceased parties whose estates they were supposed to be administering.
Religious leaders tended to disapprove. The intensity of that disapproval, and the willingness to take direct action against those who recommended or provided digitization, varied considerably. The adherents of “singularity” ideas, on the other hand, were enthusiastic boosters of the new technology. A few sects, such as the Unitarians, left the matter to the conscience of the individual congregant. An entirely new religion, invented, publicized, and monetized by a software engineer with indirect ties to the technology’s proprietors, posited that the digital state constituted a modern purgatory, essential for eventual salvation.
The funeral industry dithered: should they oppose the technology as making funerals less important? Should they attempt to co-opt it, restructuring services to include the participation of the deceased, providing weather-resistant interaction stations beside the grave?
And then there were the political implications. These did not immediately become apparent.
* * * * *
“Did you take your sun pill? I hate it when you get burned and I can’t touch you for days.” Thea bustled about, packing up her kits for the sand art competition and the surfing afterward. Max watched her with amusement and some admiration. She could not exactly be called efficient in her movements, but her energy and speed got the job done in record time. And she had energy to spare.
“Is it OK with you if I under-dose a bit? I’d like to get a bit darker. Give the ladies that smoldering-Italian thrill.”
Thea blew him a kiss and tossed him a beach towel. “It’s your sweet body, love. Smolder away—metaphorically speaking. Where’s my mix tape?”
“The chip’s on our dresser next to your lucky sand dollar.” Max swallowed a lump in his throat. That his artist lover allowed him to choose her inspiration music for every competition, and even to surprise her with it when they got to the beach, never ceased to move and amaze him.
“Race you to the van!” While he’d been woolgathering, Thea had bundled everything together except the surfboard waiting in the garage. She slipped by him, her lithe figure disappearing through the doorway and her hoot of laughter ringing in the hall. He dashed after her, bumping the doorway and rattling the door in his haste.
Of course she got there first. She almost always did. He didn’t mind.
They were early enough that Max was able to get a spot looking down at Thea’s assigned area, with enough room for the surfboard and all Thea’s gear, and high enough up that he could also turn and watch the waves. Thea ran off to find out the competition’s theme; Max sat cross-legged on the blanket, his head back to let the sun warm his face, the view behind his closed eyes a deep red-orange. The waves rumbled and hissed, breaking and receding, and the breeze brought him the smell of salt and sun-heated sand, and the squawking cries of the gulls.
Soon he heard Thea’s footsteps pattering closer. He opened his eyes and looked up at her, beaming, the sun behind her lighting her hair in a halo. “It’s perfect! The theme today, it’s dragons! Like the tattoo you designed for me last year! This is going to be my day!”
Max worked to control his expression. It always made him nervous when people, even Thea, said things like that. But while she would be indulgent about his superstitious pangs, she was far too logical to feel the same, and he had no desire to distract her or dampen her glow. He focused on her shining eyes and was able to smile back at her. “It’s your kind of day, baby. Now go make it yours.”
She dropped down on the blanket beside him, threw her arms around him in a quick firm hug, kissed his cheek hard enough to almost knock him over, then sprang back up again and ran to start her sculpture. Max watched her, relishing the pumping of her legs and buttocks. . . . His pill! He hadn’t taken it yet. He scrambled in his bag for the bottle and dry-swallowed the capsule. No way did he want to be too sore for them to tumble and grapple and roll when he finally got her to bed tonight.
He glanced at the waves again, tumbling and rolling into shore, and took a few deep breaths before he turned to watch Thea haul buckets full of damp sand up the beach to her site.
* * * * *
Thea paused to dribble more water on her growing sculpture, then stood, stretched, and looked up the hill to where Max was sitting. He saw her movement and waved, then wiped his hand dramatically across his forehead. She laughed. Okay, it was hot out! She grabbed her water bucket, stepped away from the sculpture, and dumped the water over her head, then grinned up at Max as she shook the water out of her hair. She couldn’t be sure of his expression from that distance, but she thought he looked wistful at the thought of cooling down. She pointed to the ocean, then back to him, then to the ocean again; but he shook his head. He would stay and watch and root for her until she was done.
* * * * *
“First place! First place! YES!!!” Thea jumped up and down, waving her arms, looking incongruously like a cheerleader, while Max whistled and clapped. He took yet another picture of Thea’s completed sculpture: twin dragonets hatching out of the same egg and looking toward each other, the mother’s intricately patterned tail a barricade curled around them. Meanwhile, Thea, not content with the actual trophy, quickly sculpted a sand replica next to the trophy itself. Max photographed that as well, then grabbed Thea and hoisted her into the air, squeezing her tight before setting her down again. She grinned ear to ear, then grabbed him as soon as her feet touched the sand and hoisted him in turn. She carried him a few steps up the hill before dropping him and running ahead to her board. All those hours of concentration, with only a quick pause for a sandwich, and she still had energy to spare.
He caught up with her as she lifted it onto her head; she put it down again to grab his hand and pull him close for a kiss, then asked, “Do you want to ride with me for a bit? I’ll take it easy.”
“Naah, I’ll just body-surf with the other land creatures. You go out and rule the waves.”
* * * * *
Thea rode the crest of the wave—a beautiful big wave—almost all the way to shore, then jumped off and grabbed the board to head out again, letting the receding water take her along. She lay on the board and paddled out farther, to give herself an even longer ride next time. The sun beat down, but the water was cool, the breeze cooler. All the temperatures and sensations and sounds and smells blended together in a perfect cocktail of sensation. If she could bottle this day, she’d douse herself with it over and over.
Had the digital storage company made any progress lately with its environmental simulations? And should she respond to the RFP for software contractors to join that effort? Working on music so much had been terrific, and it was something she could share with Max, but her computing skills needed some exercise as well.
Time to pay attention! After a few waves not worth bothering about, here came a good one—not monstrous, but worth the trip. She scrambled up on her board —
For a moment, she thought her board had somehow struck her in the head, but she could still feel it beneath her feet. Had another surfer ridden into her? But along with the piercing pain in her head came a horrible nausea, worse than the flu, worse than the time she and Max had eaten that chowder . . . .
Something terrible was happening.
* * * * *
Max scanned the waves, looking for Thea—paddling out, waiting for a wave, riding it in—and couldn’t find her. Just how far out had she gone?
Then he saw her board. Just her board, gliding on in as if it had decided it could do without its rider.
He raced down to the water, tripping and stumbling on sand, shouting her name, whipping his head left and right.
And then he saw something tumbling and bobbing and, finally, bumping onto the wet sand.
Thea, crumpled in a ball, gasping and moaning.
Max dropped to his knees and put his arms under her shoulders and knees. He had to get her out of the surf before she breathed in any—any more?—water, but what if moving her did more damage than whatever had already happened?
To his unutterable relief, he saw lifeguards converging on them, two with a stretcher, one with a standard medical kit, and another holding some less familiar device., They slid Thea onto the stretcher with smooth swift motions while one gabbled something into the phone on his wrist. Then the man holding the strange device fastened it somehow to the top of Thea’s skull.
An ambulance came rumbling along the beach, people in swimsuits scrambling out of the way. The guards handed Thea over to the EMTs and practically threw Max in after her, and they screamed away down the beach.
“ . . . an aneurysm. I don’t see any indication of external injury, no impact with a surf board or anything of that kind.”
Max had been sitting in the waiting room long enough to imagine an entire lifetime without Thea, day by day, year by year, his birthday, her birthday, making music alone, turning to share with her and finding no one there. . . . When he could bear no more, he relapsed into memories of their life together: high school, the final blissful release from high school, college apart, his quitting college, his joining her, college together, quitting together, finding the first miserable apartment, finding the next apartment, setting up the studio, getting a client, losing the client, getting more clients, panic that Thea might be pregnant, excitement that Thea might be pregnant, blank deflation when Thea wasn’t pregnant . . . passing a wedding chapel and abruptly running in to get married, then making it up to their friends—if not so successfully to their families—with a truly epic reception party . . . Thea and her computers, music and more music, the succession of birthday tattoos . . . Would he ever be able to give her the next tattoo?
And finally, the weary middle-aged doctor had come to talk to him, sitting in the faded orange chair beside his own, and he was too stunned and exhausted to ask the right questions.
“How bad is an aneurysm?”
She had that almost-neutral sober expression they must practice in medical school. “Most of them are bad. Some of them are worse. This is one of the very bad ones.”
Max stared at her, dimly aware that he had forgotten how to breathe. He managed to gasp in some air. “I don’t know what to ask. Tell me what you’d answer if I asked the right questions.”
Maybe she did. But he couldn’t concentrate. A few words got through: surgery . . . poor prognosis . . . odds against survival . . .
His face felt frozen. And he had stopped breathing again.
Had Thea stopped breathing? Was that why he couldn’t seem to breathe?
“Are you saying she’s going to die?”
“I’m afraid that outcome is likely.”
Max started to his feet and walked away from the words, toward the window, or the door, or anywhere except next to this doctor who was saying something utterly unacceptable. But as he moved away, he thought he caught another word, a hideously incongruous one: “ . . . lucky . . .”
He must have misheard. He would assume he had misheard, and not ask her to repeat it. Because if she had said that he was lucky, or that Thea was lucky, no matter what the reason, then he would probably try to kill her with his bare and trembling hands.
Instead, he turned, slowly, and asked as steadily as he could, “Were you trying to explain something to me just now?”
His expression must have warned her. She paused, looking for the first time like a vulnerable human being; then said, in carefully measured tones, “I was trying to explain how important it was that your wife has already been recorded.”
He stared at her some more. “Recorded? What does that mean?”
And then, suddenly, he understood.
Like the flutist.
Because alive was better, no matter what. That’s what she’d told him. Had she already gone and done it, that morning? If he’d been more understanding, if he’d put aside his own feelings and listened, would she have told him more?
He stood over the doctor, probably too close, looming over her. “Tell me. Tell me what it means. Tell me what happens now.”
The doctor looked to Max’s left, then to his right; and Max, following her gaze, realized that the room had other people in it. They had probably been there all along. And now, some of them were obviously craning to hear the conversation. The doctor stood up, moved her hand as if to place it on his shoulder, then visibly thought better of it. She took a step toward the door through which she had come. “Please follow me to my office, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
The chair in the doctor’s office was a lot more comfortable than the ones in the waiting room, and he could smell something like cinnamon instead of the waiting room’s antiseptic odor. Was that supposed to compensate somehow for the news to be delivered?
Max had not managed to ask many questions, but the doctor ran through the sequence of events, and that answered a few.
When he and Thea first got the ad agency job, there had been something in the paperwork about a chance to make baseline recordings at a substantial discount. Thea had taken them up on it. His guess was almost right: she’d had the recordings made right after, rather than before, the two of them had talked about stored people and the quality of their existence. And Max’s attitude probably explained why Thea hadn’t told him what she’d done.
Had she had some sort of premonition? Probably not. He was the superstitious one; she was simply thorough. She made contingency plans, and did it for both of them. When would she have gotten around to suggesting that he get a recording done?
Should he do it now? He shuddered and shook his head to throw off the idea. The doctor paused in mid-sentence, puzzled. He felt himself flush. “Sorry. Please go on. Did she get any more recordings made?”
“Not exactly. Not until today.”
Of course. How dumb could he be? That’s what that weird device had been, at the beach. Did the lifeguards do that for anyone in bad enough shape, or had she had some sort of info, an embedded chip or something, to let them know?
Not that it mattered. “So what got recorded today?”
The doctor looked uncomfortable for—surprisingly—the first time so far. “I don’t know all about the process. My, um, educated guess is that the equipment confirmed that the basics were unchanged, then recorded new memories since the last time. The devices are networked, so her previous files would have been available.”
Max might not be the computer expert Thea was, but that didn’t sound good. “If they’re networked, could someone with that portable gizmo read her files?”
The doctor took a visible deep breath. He should lighten up. None of this was her fault. He made a feeble attempt at a smile and gave up on it. “Never mind. That’s not what we’re here for you to tell me.”
The doctor nodded slightly, almost-smiling back. “As I was saying, her memories up until the accident have been mostly or entirely preserved. The damage from the aneurysm affected many critical areas, I’m afraid, making Thea’s prognosis very poor indeed.” She paused, probably because Max had finally burst into tears. He shoved back his chair and hid his head in his hands. The doctor placed a box of tissues in front of him—she must have them handy every time she brought someone in here for this sort of talk. He didn’t much care whether he wiped tears and snot on his sleeve, but he grabbed a tissue and blew his nose. He looked around, but failed to see any waste basket. The doctor must be human and fallible after all. . . . He stuck the used tissue in a pants pocket, then looked up at the doctor, biting his lip. “You can go on now.”
“The damage, severe as it is, hasn’t—at least, not so far—affected the areas where we know that memory gets stored. Of course, we’re learning more about the brain all the time, but it’s likely that any damage would affect redundancies rather than unique memory information.”
That must have been the luck the doctor had started to talk about.
But now what?
Max noticed a pain in his hands. He looked down and saw that he was gripping the arms of the chair so hard that his knuckles were white. He forced his fingers to relax and folded them together. “So what happens now? Do you just go ahead and . . . reboot her in some computer somewhere?”
The doctor tapped a button on her wristband. Max heard the smooth whir of a printer, though he couldn’t see one. It must be built into the desk somehow. In a moment, the doctor was sliding papers across the desk. “What happens next, Mr. Cooper, is actually up to you.”
“What?”
“Ms. Lee—Thea—hasn’t signed an agreement for actual storage and all that goes with it. She was planning to leave that decision for some while later. But in the event she hadn’t decided when something happened to her, an untimely event like this aneurysm, she left the decision up to you.”
Max couldn’t move. He could barely speak. He couldn’t think. And all he could feel was the overpowering feeling that none of this was happening. He would wake up any minute, and Thea would be there, maybe sleeping and looking the way angels would look if they could sleep, or maybe snoring with her mouth open. . . .
The doctor was talking again. “It’s not as strange as it may sound. The —” The doctor strangled some word before finishing it, a word starting with an “n.” Max’s stomach clenched as he filled in the blank: next of kin. “A patient’s loved ones are often called upon to decide whether we should perform high-risk surgery, or how long a patient should be maintained on life support.”
“And this is a high-tech form of life support.”
The doctor cocked her head and looked faintly reproving. “As I understand it—and I don’t claim to be an expert—it’s significantly more than that. It’s a chance to continue a fully conscious existence, and to interact with those who remain alive in the more conventional sense.”
It didn’t make sense. “I know that’s how she thought of it. She told me. Even though she didn’t tell me what she was doing, she told me that much. So why would she leave it up to me?”
The doctor sighed. “You can probably answer that better than I. But could it be that she didn’t want to survive if you wouldn’t want to be part of her, ah, her new life? That she wanted to live, but not to live without you?”
Max grabbed another tissue, managing to bring it to his face before he started sobbing again. It went on longer this time. When he glanced up, his chest still in spasms, he saw that the doctor had disappeared somewhere. There was a door in the back of her office: she must have gone through it to give him some privacy.
Good. He could cry himself out. Except he couldn’t imagine that would ever happen. Not without Thea.
What would she do to comfort him, if she were—here and not here? If she couldn’t touch him, couldn’t put her arm around him, couldn’t haul him to the couch or the bed and hold him close until he recovered?
She would still know him well enough to find the right words. She would have woven a spell with her voice —
Would she still have her own voice?
He would have asked the doctor, but he couldn’t face trying to track her down. And even if she wouldn’t sound like herself, that wasn’t important enough to make the difference. He couldn’t let something like that be the deal-breaker.
He’d known almost since he first knew Thea that under the logic and the formidable intellect, she was as romantic—or almost as romantic—as he was. If he’d had any doubts, she’d proved it to him, here, while she was lying in a coma or whatever —
Was she? Or was she awake? Surely if she was awake and could talk to him, they would have taken him to her instead of just putting him in an office and making him decide all by himself?
He had to get answers to some of these questions. In a minute, when he’d pulled himself together, he’d go find the doctor. And he’d try to figure out whether the answers she gave him were what Thea had known, or had expected, when she went as far as she’d already gone down this strange, strange road.
And then he would sign the damn papers. What else could he do? Tell the doctor to let her die—die completely, die forever? With no chance to change his mind later, or for her to change hers?
He would have to sign.
