I should have known Auden would recognize the name. He knew everyone in politics; he actually cared. Yet another weirdness.
“He was here to—Well, it doesn’t matter. But he said…” I didn’t know why it was so hard to talk about. Maybe because the guy had made a pretty good argument. And maybe once Auden heard it, he wouldn’t disagree.
“Everything that guy says is a joke,” Auden said. “You should ignore it on principle.”
“Is that what your mother would have done?” As soon as it was out I wanted to take it back.
“She believed, but she wasn’t a Faither,” he said in a monotone. “And I’m not her.”
“He said I wasn’t human, okay? He said I was just programmed to think I was human, but humans had free will, and all I had was programming.” It sounded even worse out loud than it had echoing in my head.
Auden raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, like, Is that all? “So what?”
“So… what if he’s right?”
“Do you feel like you’re programmed to act in a certain way?”
“Well… no,” I admitted. “But he said that didn’t matter. That I could be fooled into thinking I was free, but really I’m not.”
“He’s right.”
I’d thought I had prepared myself for the worst, but when it happened, I knew I’d been wrong. Auden kept going.
“But it’s true for him too. And for me. How do you know that I have free will? How do I know that I have it? Yeah, I feel like I make my own decisions, but who knows? He’s the one who thinks God is in charge. How does he know God isn’t jerking him around like a puppet? How does he know we aren’t all just machines made out of blood and guts and stuff?”
“It’s not the same.” I knocked the side of my head. “There’s no blood in here. No guts. Just a computer. It’s not the same.”
“No, it’s not the same,” Auden agreed. “But maybe it’s better.”
“Yeah, how?”
“You mean aside from the whole immortality thing?”
“Aside from that.” Why did no one seem to get that living forever was only a good thing if life didn’t suck?
Except you uploaded last night, an annoying voice in my head pointed out. And the night before that. No matter how crappy my life got, it was still my life. And sometime in the last couple weeks—sometime after meeting Auden, I tried not to think—life had become worth preserving again. Maybe even worth living. Too bad I still wasn’t sure I could call it that.
If even I wasn’t sure this counted as life, how could I expect anyone else to be?
“All that stuff you complain about,” he said slowly. “Not feeling things the same way? Maybe it’s a good thing. You don’t have to get so screwed up by how you feel, like the rest of us do.”
“‘Us’ humans, you mean?”
“I mean, maybe it’s not a bad thing to have some control over your emotions. To be able to think once in a while instead of just act on animal instinct.”
Human instinct, I thought but didn’t say. Computers think; humans feel.
But he was trying to help.
“You think I don’t get it,” he said. When I was actually thinking how weird it was that he got me so well. “So maybe you should talk to someone who does.”
“I am not going back to that so-called support group.” I’d told him all about Sascha and her little losers club. “No way.”
“I wasn’t talking about the support group. Not the official one, at least.”
“Oh.” I’d told him about the rest of it too. The girl with the blue hair and the boy with the orange eyes. The silver skin. The house filled with living machines who wanted me to be just like them. But I hadn’t told him everything. I hadn’t told him about the knife. “Not there, either.”
“You have to go back sometime,” he said.
“Why?”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Not really.”
“Okay.” But I could tell he knew I was lying. “But I don’t think that’s why you’re staying away.”
“Tell me you’re not shrinking me again.”
“I think you’re scared.”
“Am not,” I said like a little kid.
“Are so,” he said, playing along.
“Am not.”
“If you say so.” He shrugged, and then turned to the screen. “You want to get started?”
“What?”
“Signing up for a new account with a different corp. Creating a new zone. Building a new av. Isn’t that why I’m here?”
I flopped back on the bed. “What’s the point? They’ll probably just come up with some excuse to take it away from me again.”
“You know what av stands for?” Auden asked weirdly.
“Avatar. I’m not stupid.”
“Yes, but do you know why it’s called that?”
“I’m guessing you’re going to tell me,” I said. More old stuff. Like the past ever helped anyone make it in the future.
“It’s Sanskrit for—”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A dead language,” he said. “Really, really old. And ‘avatar’ is Sanskrit for ‘God’s embodiment on Earth.’”
“So?”
“So maybe, if you think about it, you’re kind of like an avatar,” he stammered. “Like, the ultimate avatar. You know? This incredible body that’s been created as a vessel for Lia Kahn. Your embodiment on Earth.”
“So you think my body’s incredible?” I asked, smirking. Sometimes I went on autoflirt. Force of habit.
He blushed so hard I thought his blood vessels might actually burst. “That’s not—”
“I know,” I said quickly. “It was just…” Tempting to imagine that someone could still think of me that way. Even if it was only Auden. “Let’s do it,” I said. “New zone. New av. New everything.”
13. JUMP
“I’ll go with you,” Auden offered the next time we had what I soon began to think of as the Conversation.
“No, you won’t,” I said, “because I’m not going.”
“Stop saying I’m scared!” I insisted for the hundredth time the following week. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
But all that got me was a smug smile. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”
“It’s not like I need more friends,” I tried later. “I’ve got you, don’t I? That’s enough.”
“Your flattery is embarrassingly transparent,” he said. “Don’t think it’s going to work.” But I could tell by the pink glow on his cheeks that it had.
“Why do you care so much?” I finally asked after one Conversation too many.
“Because I know, deep down, you want to go.”
“Except I don’t,” I pointed out. “So try again.”
“Okay… Maybe, deep down, I want to go.”
That was a new one. “Why?”
“Aren’t I allowed to be curious?” he asked. “You keep telling me I can never understand what it’s like to be a mech-head without actually being one. Fine. But maybe this is the next best thing.”
“You’re serious?”
He crossed his arms and nodded firmly.
“You really want me to go, just so that you can go?”
He nodded again. “Consider it a personal favor.”
I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or if this was just his way of letting me change my mind without admitting that, deep down, I couldn’t stop wondering about the house of freaks and their fearless freak leader.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll go. But only because you asked nicely. And because I’m sick of you asking at all.”