Chapter 7
James
“Here, breathe through this. It should help.” Kate holds out a little device that looks like an inhaler. “For your lungs. I’ll order some food.”
He takes it from her and draws in deep breaths through the mouthpiece.
As she goes to check an exterior delivery compartment in her wall she refers to as a smartwaiter, he rummages around in the refrigerator and finds a bottle of plain water.
After a few sips, the chalky taste from the inhaler vanishes.
He follows her into the other room with a million questions banging around the hollowed-out cavern of his mind.
The food she ordered arrived and she’s busy arranging two benign-looking boxes of what resembles fried rice on the coffee tables.
Seems like as good an opportunity as any to get started learning about the world now.
“You said New York City is under water. Why?”
“The Great Warming.”
“You mean climate change?”
“Yes. But it played out over a period of several hundred years due in part to the industrial and technological revolutions. From this historical vantage point, we can see it more clearly than you did in your time. Now it’s known as The Great Warming.”
“Does the United States exist anymore?”
“No. Out of necessity, the countries that existed then banded together under one centralized government called the Northern Hemisphere Organizational System, or NHOS. It’s run by the Board of Commanders, which includes three randomly selected representatives from each major population center.
They serve for ten years each, before the next lottery. ”
Kate must notice the melancholy washing over him because she says, “Paris still exists, though not as you would have known it. Mexico City is a big one. Let me see, Dallas–Fort Worth is coastal, and the air near the ocean is even more uninhabitable than it is here.”
“I see.” James takes a moment contemplating the state of the new world he finds himself alive in. He glances through the windows toward the grimy building across the street. “Wait, you mean to say the outdoors is uninhabitable everywhere? Not just here. What about plants and animals?”
Kate picks up the same remote she turned the screens off, pressing a few buttons. A tropical beach appears outside the window. When James’s nose wrinkles, she says, “Too much?” She settles on a cityscape that might have existed from a high-rise penthouse in any major western city.
“To answer your question, yes, to go outdoors anywhere on Earth now, a respirator is required. A full protective suit in some areas, or for people whose job regularly exposes them. Even that isn’t advisable for extended periods.
It’s common knowledge that planetary atmospheres change.
The emergence of life on Earth is one example.
The impact of human progress is another, though it happened many times before those two instances from modern history.
Maintaining an indoor equilibrium designed for human habitation is incredibly important.
Hence my line of work and how it affords me all this.
” She waves her hand around to her stark unit. The and you is implied this time.
Her space looks a little sterile to James, but he keeps the observation to himself. She doesn’t seem to see it that way. “No stock market, then?”
She shakes her head.
“Money?”
“Unicoin is distributed by the Centralized Worldbank.”
So, a government currency. “Is Worldbank owned by NHOS?”
Kate nods. “Owned isn’t really the right word. But it is run in cooperation with SHOS, the organizational system in the southern hemisphere. I’m not sure where your line of questioning is going, but I have a suspicion.”
Somehow, he doesn’t think that this new world will allow this reincarnated version of himself, a manupartner, to go on existing without it causing a stir, and he refuses to become the subject of an investigation, scientific or otherwise.
He elects to keep these thoughts to himself.
For now. He needs time to learn about this world and consider his options.
To come to terms with his new reality. “We can talk about it tomorrow. Is there somewhere I can stay for the night? A shelter, maybe?” The sound of that makes him as uncomfortable as she looks.
Kate’s brows don’t seem to be able to crease, but her expression suggests she is rife with concern. “A shelter?”
“It’s a place where people without a home can stay—”
“You can take the spare room for now. We’ll discuss what happens next in the morning.” She leaves no room for argument.
After cleaning up, she ushers him back to the bedroom he woke up in. She takes away the GROW Pad, then brings a pillow from her room and places it on the uninviting bed. Shows him where the bathroom is and how to operate the knobs and switches, then leaves him.
James crawls atop the bed fully clothed.
It’s only as he lies staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep, that he realizes this room wasn’t intended for him.
She expected him to sleep in her bed tonight.
Maybe she expected more than that after the staged meeting she referred to.
After all, she expected him to be a fully functional sex doll.
He closes his eyes, letting his mind wander.
He really should start thinking of a strategy to find an income—a methodical approach—but another question nags him.
Who is Kate, and why did she feel so desperate for a warm body that she needed to purchase a clone to be her lover?
The bed creaks as he flips to his side, considering moving to the couch. The closed door gives him space to think, however, so he stays put, letting his mind drift to the strange woman on the other side of the wall.
October 6, 2390, Day 82.
James doesn’t rise until long hours have passed.
Shuffling comes from the living room. Then clacking on the keyboard.
He hasn’t come to any definitive conclusions about Kate or a potential source of income.
A sense of bitterness at his rotten luck creeps in, but he’s never liked the taste of that emotion.
It serves no purpose. Especially when one has such a monumental task ahead.
Still, to come so far, to have worked so hard, for the sense of entitlement to have buried itself so deep in his psyche that a part of him wants to cling to the past .
. . How does a man cope with the news that he’d finally hit the billionaire milestone he’d been chasing since his youth, only to die in such an unexpected and tragic way?
For it to all be for nothing. He rubs at his temples.
There’s no point wasting time going down that road.
Despite the complete lack of control he feels, he needs to take action.
Overnight, he realized he has a lot to come to terms with.
Yet, in the fresh hours of the morning, if he considers his situation objectively, which plays to his strengths, he can see that he’s gotten a second chance for a new, more challenging rite of passage.
That is how he will think of it. Eventually, he’ll feel some semblance of control.
He only needs to find a path, make a plan, then follow the steps.
He’s done this dozens of times before. Sure, the process isn’t foolproof, but few people are more experienced at brokering difficult deals than James.
He will simply put those skills he learned in all his years of business into effect.
After relieving himself and freshening up in the compact bathroom, he emerges with a sense of determination.
Kate sits at the computer desk wearing the same black superhero catsuit as she did the day before.
She’s opening and deleting what look like emails on one screen.
On another, a browser displays the list of headlines.
A third shows some type of survey. The fourth, an email with a subject that reads:
URGENT: GROW SURVEY NOTICE.
James’s heart skips a beat. That means him. This can’t be good. “What is that?” He gestures to the offending email.
“It seems the manufacturer knows there’s been an issue with the latest production sequence.” Kate doesn’t so much as glance at him as her fingers dance over the keyboard.
He searches for the cursor, finding it on the survey. Words quickly form. Unit seems to have embedded memories from man named James Alexander Fletcher, year born 2000.
He scans the form. Above her damning answer, she’s checked Yes to the question “Has your GROW exhibited any unexpected behavior?”
Yes to the question “Do you have any reason to believe your GROW is faulty?”
Her emerging paragraph responds to “If yes, please explain.”
There isn’t a clicker and he can’t see how she’s moving the cursor around. He pokes at the screen, but his fingers go through the image without effect. At least the keyboard is familiar enough to recognize the enter and backspace keys.
“Make the cursor move to the last question,” he commands.
She does, and he watches to see how she’s controlling it. The cursor moves, but she hasn’t.
“What the—?”
She lifts a sheet of hair to show him the space behind her ear.
A small metal disk is embedded into her skull, almost flush with her skin and almost the same pale golden-brown.
“It’s a neuroelectric communications device called an m-volt synaptic transistor.
It connects to my device, too. For work, I like the tactile sensation of typing on a keyboard. Helps me think.”
Thank God for that. If it weren’t for the keyboard, he’d have no chance at controlling her computer. At this rate, he might as well add operating computers to his growing list of challenges. He reaches down, pressing the backspace key until her sentence disappears.
“Next one,” he directs.
“But—” she protests.
“Just play along.”