She was simply, immeasurably, beyond him. It was one of the things he loved most about her.
Now, mere seconds after her father had cut the cord, Stavros watched Jean Goravec ascend into her true self. Heuristic algorithms upgraded before his eyes; neural nets ruthlessly pared and winnowed trillions of redundant connections; intellect emerged from primordial chaos. Namps-per-op dropped like the heavy end of a teeter-totter; at the other end of that lever, processing efficiency rose into the stratosphere.
This was Jean. They have no idea, Stavros thought, what you’re capable of.
She woke up screaming.
“It’s all right, Jean, I’m here.” He kept his voice calm to help her come down.
Jean’s temporal lobe flickered briefly at the input. “Oh, God,” she said.
“Another nightmare?”
“Oh, God.” Breath too fast, pulse too high, adrenocortical analogs off the scale. It could have been the telemetry of a rape.
He thought of short-circuiting those responses. Half a dozen tweaks would make her happy. But half a dozen tweaks would also turn her into someone else. There is no personality beyond the chemical—and while Jean’s mind was fashioned from electrons rather than proteins, analogous rules applied.
“I’m here, Jean,” he repeated. A good parent knew when to step in, and when suffering was necessary for growth. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Eventually, she settled down.
“Nightmare.” There were sparks in the parietal subroutines, a tremor lingering in her voice. “It doesn’t fit, Stav. Scary dreams, that’s the definition. But that implies there’s some other kind, and I can’t—I mean, why is it always like this? Was it always like this?”
“I don’t know.” No, it wasn’t.
She sighed. “These words I learn, none of them really seem to fit anything exactly, you know?”
“They’re just symbols, Jean.” He grinned. At times like this he could almost forget the source of those dreams, the stunted, impoverished existence of some half-self trapped in distant meat. Andrew Goravec’s act of cowardice had freed her from that prison, for a while at least. She soared now, released to full potential. She mattered.
“Symbols. That’s what dreams are supposed to be, but…I don’t know. There’re all these references to dreams in the library, and none of them seem that much different from just being awake. And when I am asleep, it’s all just—screams, almost, only dopplered down. Really sludgy. And shapes. Red shapes.” A pause. “I hate bedtime.”
“Well, you’re awake now. What are you up for today?”
“I’m not sure. I need to get away from this place.”
He didn’t know what place she meant. By default she woke up in the house, an adult residence designed for human sensibilities. There were also parks and forests and oceans, instantly accessible. By now, though, she’d changed them all past his ability to recognize.
But it was only a matter of time before her parents wanted her back. Whatever she wants, Stavros told himself. As long as she’s here. Whatever she wants.
“I want out,” Jean said.
Except that. “I know,” he sighed.
“Maybe then I can leave these nightmares behind.”
Stavros closed his eyes, wished there was some way to be with her. Really with her, with this glorious, transcendent creature who’d never known him as anything but a disembodied voice.
“Still having a hard time with that monster?” Jean asked.
“Monster?”
“You know. The bureaucracy.”
He nodded, smiling—then, remembering, said, “Yeah. Always the same story, day in, day out.”
Jean snorted. “I’m still not convinced that thing even exists, you know. I checked the library for a slightly less wonky definition, but now I think you and the library are both fucked in the head.”
He winced at the epithet; it was certainly nothing he’d ever taught her. “How so?”
“Oh, right, Stav. Like natural selection would ever produce a hive-based entity whose sole function is to sit with its thumb up its collective butt being inefficient. Tell me another one.”
A silence, stretching. He watched as microcurrent trickled through her prefrontal cortex.
“You there, Stav?” she said at last.
“Yeah, I’m here.” He chuckled, quietly. Then: “You know I love you, right?”
“Sure,” she said easily. “Whatever that is.”
Jean’s environment changed then; an easy unthinking transition for her, a gasp-inducing wrench between bizarre realities for Stavros. Phantoms sparkled at the edge of his vision, vanishing when he focused on them. Light bounced from a million indefinable facets, diffuse, punctuated by a myriad pinpoint staccatos. There was no ground or walls or ceiling. No restraints along any axis.
Jean reached for a shadow in the air and sat upon it, floating. “I think I’ll read Through the Looking Glass again. At least someone else lives in the real world.”
“The changes that happen here are your own doing, Jean,” said Stavros. “Not the machinations of any, any God or Author.”
“I know. But Alice makes me feel a little more—ordinary.” Reality shifted abruptly once more; Jean was in the park now, or rather, what Stavros thought of as the park. Sometimes he was afraid to ask if her interpretation had stayed the same. Above, light and dark spots danced across a sky that sometimes seemed impressively vault-like, seconds later oppressively close, even its color endlessly unsettled. Animals large and small, squiggly yellow lines and shapes and color-shifting orange and burgundy pies. Other things that might have been representations of life, or mathematical theorems—or both—browsed in the distance.
Seeing through Jean’s eyes was never easy. But all this unsettling abstraction was a small price to pay for the sheer pleasure of watching her read.
My little girl.
Symbols appeared around her, doubtless the text of Looking Glass. To Stavros it was gibberish. A few recognizable letters, random runes, formulae. They switched places sometimes, seamlessly shifting one into another, flowing around and through and beside—or even launching themselves into the air like so many dark-hued butterflies.
He blinked his eyes and sighed. If he stayed much longer the visuals would give him a headache that would take a day to shake. Watching a life lived at such speed, even for such a short time, took its toll.
“Jean, I’m gone for a little while.”
“Company business?” she asked.
“You could say that. We’ll talk soon, love. Enjoy your reading.”
Barely ten minutes had passed in meatspace.
Jeannie’s parents had put her on her own special cot. It was one of the few real pieces of solid geometry allowed in the room. The whole compartment was a stage, virtually empty. There was really no need for props; sensations were planted directly into Jean’s occipital cortex, spliced into her auditory pathways, pushing back against her tactile nerves in precise forgeries of touchable things. In a world made of lies, real objects would be a hazard to navigation.
“God damn you, she’s not a fucking toaster, ” Kim spat at her husband. Evidently the icy time-out had expired; the battle had resumed.
“Kim, what was I supposed to—”
“She’s a child, Andy. She’s our child.”