But now I don’t know.
If someone gave me a script, if someone whispered in my ear and told me how to act, what to say, what to do, if I could be their puppet and they could pull the strings, that would be easier. That would, maybe, be okay. But I have no script and no off-screen directions, and I sit frozen, watching the screen, waiting to know what to do.
Whatever else has changed, at least my av is still the same.
There was a time when I changed it every day—new eyes, new hair, bunny whiskers one day, cat ears the next—but that was before. That was kid stuff. Now my av is me, the virtual Lia, the better Lia, the Lia that would exist in a world without limits. Purple hair so dark it looks black, until you see it shimmer in the light. Violet eyes; wide, long lashes pooling across half the head, like in the animevids. Pouty blue lips. The morning of the accident, I gave her a pink boa and spray-on mini, like the one I’d just seen a pop-up for but knew I probably wouldn’t have enough credit to buy, because that’s another of my father’s favorite lines: “We’re not rich. I’m rich.” The credit is mine to ask for; his, depending on his mood, to deny. Now I wonder whether I am the virtual Lia, while my av is real. There is nothing left of what I used to be.
But she is exactly the same.
I didn’t get in touch with Walker, not that night or any of the nights that followed. Even after I got my voice back—a voice, at least, although it would never sound like mine—I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what I would say. I didn’t want to know what he would.
“I still think it might be good for you to meet with one of our other clients,” Sascha said. “She’s your age.”
That meant nothing. All the skinners were my age. The procedure wouldn’t work on adults—something about how their neural pathways weren’t malleable, couldn’t adjust to an artificial environment—and it hadn’t been approved for anyone younger than sixteen. If I’d had the accident a year earlier, I’d be dead right now. All dead, instead of… whatever this was.
“So what?”
“So I think you two have a lot in common,” Sascha said. “It might help to share your experiences, get her perspective on things. Plus she’s eager to meet you.”
“All we have in common is this.” I looked down at the body. My body. “And you keep telling me that this doesn’t mean anything.”
“You don’t want to meet her.”
Sascha’s brilliant intuitive powers never ceased to amaze. “No.”
“Maybe we should talk about why.”
“Maybe not.”
Sascha crossed her arms. I wondered if I’d finally managed to break through the professional placidness, if Sascha was about to prove she had an actual personality, one that could get irritated when a bitchy “client” pressed hard enough.
Not a chance.
“Let’s try something new,” she said with an I-have-a-secret-plan smile. “Why don’t you tell me what you want to talk about.”
“Anything?”
“Anything. As long as it’s something.”
I didn’t want to talk. That was the point. Now that I had my voice back, I had nothing to say.
“Running,” I said. It was the first thing that popped into my head. Maybe because I thought about it all the time. How it would feel to run in the new body. Whether I would be slower or faster, whether I would find a new rhythm. What it would mean to run without getting out of breath; whether I could run forever. They told me the body would simulate exhaustion before it had reached its limits, a gauge to prevent total system failure, but no one knew exactly what those limits would be.
“You’re a runner?” Sascha asked, faux clueless. It was her default mode; at least when she wasn’t acting the all-knowing wisdom dispenser. She knew I was a runner, because she had a file that told her everything I was. Everything she thought mattered, anyway.
Was a runner.
I nodded.
“Do you miss it?”
I shrugged.
“You run on an indoor track or…”
“Outside,” I said immediately.
Sascha leaned forward, as she always did when she thought she was about to crack my code. “That’s unusual,” she said. “Someone your age, spending so much time outside.”
“It’s required.” But that wasn’t true, not really. Yes, we were all forced to spend a few hours a week outdoors, but for most people, that was the end of it. Five whiny hours shivering in the grayish cold, then back inside. It was one way I’d always been different. The only way.
“What do you like about it?” Sascha asked. “Running.”
“I don’t know.” I paused. She waited. “It felt good. You know. Especially a long run. You get an adrenaline high. Or whatever.”
“Have you tried it? Since the procedure?”
I shook my head. There was supposedly a track somewhere in the building, but I hadn’t bothered to find it.
“Why not?”
I looked down. The hands were sitting in my lap. I stretched one of them out along my thigh. It felt good to be able to move again. After almost a month of rehab, I didn’t even need to think about it most of the time; the hands clenched themselves into fists when I wanted them to, the fingers closed around balls and hairbrushes and tapped at keyboards just like real fingers. They registered the fabric on my legs—standard issue, hideously ugly BioMax thermo-sweats. Not that I needed thermo-regulation now, not when I had it built in, but that’s what they had, so that’s what I wore, because it was easier than buying all new clothes, and my old clothes no longer fit.
“What would be the point?” I said finally.
“The point would be to feel good.”
In my head I laughed. The mouth spit out something harsh and scratchy. Laughing was tricky.
“You disagree?” Sascha asked.
“I guess it depends on your definition of ‘feel.’”
“You’re processing emotional and physical sensation differently now; that’s natural,” Sascha said, oozing understanding. Not that she could ever actually understand. “But your programming is designed to emulate the neurotransmitters that stimulate emotional response. Your emotions are the same, even if they don’t feel that way.”
“I feel the same, even if I feel different? Is that supposed to make sense?”
My father would kill me if he ever knew I was talking to an authority figure like this, even a figure with such questionable authority as Sascha.
“When I get angry, my stomach clenches,” Sascha said. “I feel sick. When I’m upset, my hands tremble. Sometimes I cry. What happens when you’re upset?”
I said nothing.
Which was pretty accurate.
“Without a somatic response, it’s natural that the emotions will seem weaker to you,” she said. “More distant. But the stronger the emotion, the more ‘real’ it may feel, partly because you’ll be too consumed with the powerful emotion—or sensation—to analyze all the things you’re not feeling. And as your mind relaxes into old patterns and finds new ones, as it will—”
“I’ll be my old self again. Right.”
“Lia, haven’t you been able to find any advantages to your new body?”
That had been my “homework” from the other day: design a pop-up for the download process, complete with catchy slogan, and a list of fabulous advantages available to every download recipient. Sascha thought it would tap into my creativity skills.