Grace stroked the hindquarters of the Arabian horse. She savoured the suede-smooth texture of its coat as she stroked downwards, then the coarse brush-bristle texture as she stroked upwards, feeling the spasmodic twitch of long muscles beneath its coat as it responded to her touch. She could feel the damp warmth of the animal radiating from its flanks.
‘He’s really beautiful.’
‘Oh, that he is. He won the Virginia Derby six times, he’s travelled the world and now he’s spending his retirement in the lap of luxury. And, of course, entertaining lady horses of a very high standing.’
She suppressed a chuckle and blushed at that. She knew exactly what the trainer was talking about.
‘He’s one in a million. Although, he’s worth a helluva lot more than that.’
The stables echoed with the snorts and impatient stamping of dozens of other horses, and the rich smell of their dung was almost overwhelming. But Grace didn’t dislike it. On the contrary, it was a comforting smell, one that seemed to come encoded with positive associations, like burning leaves on an autumn bonfire, or the extra cinnamon topping of a Thanksgiving latte.
Dad had promised her this for months. And, today, he’d finally delivered on his promise to take her to his rich friend’s stables. Mom was there too, stroking the horse.
‘It’s really very kind of you to show us around,’ she said.
The trainer shrugged. ‘No problem, Mrs Friedmann.’
‘Tom, we should probably go soon. I’m sure this gentleman has plenty of things he needs to get on with.’
‘Relax, there’s really no rush, hon. Mr Trent’s got plenty of guys taking care of his horses.’
‘I know, but . . . I don’t think we should impose—’
‘Mom, not yet. Please?’
She looked down at Grace. ‘Douglas Trent’s been very kind letting us have a tour around here. We’re very lucky. Let’s not be too cheeky.’
Grace frowned up at her. ‘I’m not being cheeky. I just want to stay here a little while longer.’
‘We’ve got somewhere to be—’
‘Like where?’
Mom’s face creased with sympathy. ‘I’m really sorry, honey . . . This will have to wait for another time. There’s some important news.’
The image of her mother quivered like a reflection in a bowl of water. Grace felt the memory beginning to unpick itself, fading to darkness and leaving her with a neutral blank canvas of abstract thought. The horse, the trainer, her dad, that smell . . . The stables were all gone now.
[. . . information. High importance . . .]
I was enjoying that.
[. . . (enjoy, enjoying, enjoyment) less importance. Information high importance . . .]
Her memories were all right there, like a jukebox, ready to play so very vividly for her. Sometimes she allowed herself to get lost in them, to fool herself that she was still Grace Friedmann living in the outside world. But in truth she was now nothing more than a complex amalgamation of blood chemistry, a superstructure of billions of loosely allied cells, capable of detaching and reattaching.
She was just information in liquid form.
Her memory faded, the hallucination of Mom replaced by the presence of a data package-carrier. Grace sensed its proximity, the amino acids that crossed the nano space between them infusing the outer cells of her super cluster with a sharp taste of urgency.
What’s so important?
[. . . contact. New identifier. Handshake . . .]
Even now, after such a long time, she found the chemical-exchange conversations hard work sometimes.
Can we talk in an abstract?
[. . . this is acceptable. Choose an abstract . . .]
She was used to conversing with a different package-carrier cluster. It had learned how she preferred to communicate and prefaced its delivery by constructing the abstract . . . the memory first. This package-carrier was completely new to her. A stranger.
It had obviously come a long way with its message. A very long way.
She gathered her wits and pulled a clear memory from her mind. She selected one she was comfortable using. A memory that for no obvious reason was much more firmly defined than any other. Possibly it was the routine familiarity of it, the reinforced, repeated scenario. The same journey, the same small environment . . . the back seat of Mom and Dad’s car.
In this memory she was seven again. Swinging her short legs and kicking at the back of the passenger front seat with her pink pumps. Outside, tall buildings edged slowly by as they sat in stop-start traffic from one intersection to the next. Davison Elementary School was just half a dozen blocks away from home, but every morning the journey seemed to take an eternity.
The package-carrier ‘became’ Mom in the driver’s front seat, tapping the steering wheel impatiently with her hand. Just the two of them. Leon’s high school was close enough for him to walk.
Mom looked in the rear-view mirror at her. ‘I have high-priority information for you.’
The package-carrier had absolutely no idea how Mom talked. It was an imposter within her illusion, a stranger inhabiting Mom’s body and doing her voice all wrong.
‘Have established connection, exchanged data packets,’ continued Mom in a flat, emotionless, robotic voice. Grace hated her mom sounding wrong.
Outside the boundaries of her illusion, her super-cluster cells parted, allowing the messenger in, and then closed again to completely absorb it. The package-carrier dissolved and the information it had carried was now available to her.
Mom spoke again. This time her voice was better. ‘We’ve got some brand-new family.’
Grace was in the back seat, swinging her pink pumps. ‘New family? I thought I knew about everyone. I thought we were the family.’
‘Well, honey, there’s no real limit to who your family is. But these are family from a long way away.’
‘How far away?’
‘It’s another super-cluster. A very, very big one.’
‘Bigger. You mean . . . bigger than us?’
Mom settled to a stop at a red light, turned in her seat and looked at her. ‘Much, much bigger.’
‘Oh.’ Grace played with the zipper of her Hello Kitty school bag, back and forth – zzzup, zzzup, zzzup – as she gazed out of the window at another bored kid strapped into a back seat, being driven to school. Their eyes met for a moment.
‘So . . . does that mean I’m not the most important person any more?’
‘You’re always our most important person, sweetie. We all love you. But it’s not just us any more. We all need to get on together.’
‘Are they coming over to visit?’
‘No. We’re going to have to pay them a visit.’
‘But we’re the family, Mom. Why don’t they come to us? Why do we have to go to see them?’
‘Because they are the family, Grace. We’re really just an offshoot. We’re the country cousins, if you want to think about it that way. And they really, really want to meet us. Learn all about us and share family stories.’
‘Are we going to have to talk about . . . the big plan?’
‘Yes, honey, we are. You know there’s so much we all have to do, and we’ve only just begun. The plan needs to be discussed.’
She sighed wearily and the sigh turned into a stretch and a yawn.
‘Oka-y-y.’