None of those systems had been dulled, of course. There’d be no cheating.
He grabbed another tissue and dabbed it across his forehead, removing the excess blood and grit. Before more could work its way out, he smeared a layer of skin adhesive over the rubble-filled canyon. He smiled at the warning on the first-aid tube—it prescribed, in several languages, the necessity of cleaning out the wound before applying. He worked the edges of the tan gel as it congealed, blending the fake skin into the real.
He surveyed his work. The lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes could be denser, but he’d save that for next week. He skipped to his hair, which was coming along nicely. He allowed himself a bit of fine-motor control for this part, removing 512 strands in a long-established pattern. Next week he’d ramp up to 1,024 hairs a session, he decided. Soon it’d be 2,048 follicles destroyed each week. He also needed to change the dye formula. Move past the snow-on-slate and begin a full bleaching.
Cosmetically, he was satisfied. He moved to his least-favorite portion of the ritual—the part he always saved for last.
Memory.
It was a routine within a routine. First, he culled specifics, sorting through his banks for two momentous occasions to completely erase. The pizza party in ’72 was still in there. He would miss it, but there were few easy choices left to make. He deleted the entire day without looking at it too hard. He had made that mistake too many times. He also took out something recent, a movie he’d watched a few months ago. Gone.
Next came the roughening-up. He still had plenty of good memories set aside for this process. He chose the honeymoon. It had only been hit twice before, so he could still recall most of the week. This wasn’t a full deletion—it was more like bisecting a holographic plate. You still had the entire image when you were done, but with half the detail.
He made the pass, wiping 1s and 0s from his protein memory at random. It was like shading his cheeks with blush, smoothing everything out and tapering it just so. He glanced briefly at the wedding night to see what was left, but it was hard to say without knowing what was gone.
The final step was the one he dreaded the most. Random memory deletion. It went against his primary programming, both the degradation of awareness and the arbitrariness of the maneuver. He triggered the routine with a grimace. He’d long toyed with the idea of changing the algorithm, making it so he wouldn’t even know what was being lost—but he never went through with it. He always wanted to know. Even if it was just a brief glimmer before it winked out forever.
Some of his best memories had been sacrificed in this way. They would flash like fish in shallow water, darting out of sight as he plunged after them. And he couldn’t help it; he always plunged after them.
This time—he got lucky. It was the day in Beaufort’s with Melanie. One of his few bad memories left. The details were already gone, but an overwhelming sense of disgust lingered, leaving a bad taste on his tongue receptors. Whatever that was—good riddance, he thought.
Daniel forced a smile at his reflection—the scar tissue around his eyes bunched up. Much better, he thought. Or worse, depending on how one looked at it. He continued factoring large primes and rose unsteadily to his feet. The mechanical linkage in his left leg had been built to take a pounding, but his arms had been even better designed to dish one out. He could feel the metal rods grinding on one another as they struggled to bear his weight. He had to lurch forward, shifting his bulk to his less-damaged leg as he shambled toward the door.
He fiddled with the knob and limped into the hallway. A flash of movement to one side caught his attention. It was Charles, one of the male nurse-bots, leaving Mrs. Rickle’s room. The android had a tray of picked-at soft foods in his grasp; the various mounds were swirled into a thick, colorful soup.
Synthetic eyes met and Charles smiled—raised his chin a little. “Big night tonight, Mr. Reynolds?” he asked.
“Hello, Charles. Yup. Scrabble night.”
“Scrabble tonight, huh? Well, I hope she goes easy on you, old fellow.”
Daniel smiled at the reference to his progressing age. It was kind of him to notice, to nurse along the ruse. “She never goes easy on me,” he replied in mock sadness.
Charles added the tray of half-eaten food to his cart and sorted some paper cups full of pills. “Would you mind delivering her medication for me? You know how Mrs. Reynolds feels about…” The android paused and looked at his feet. “…my kind,” he finished.
Daniel nodded. “She’s getting worse, isn’t she? About treating you, I mean?”
Charles strolled over to deliver the medication. “It’s fine. Like I always tell you, she’s done enough for my kind that I’ll stomach a little—unkindness.”
The nurse-bot turned back to his cart.
“Either way, I’m sorry,” Daniel called after him.
Charles stopped. Spun around. “You ever hear of a woman named Norma Leah McCorvey?” he asked.
Daniel leaned back on the wall so his bad leg wouldn’t drain his batteries. “Didn’t she pass away? She lived two halls over, right? The woman with—”
“No, no. That was Norma Robinson. Yeah, she passed away in ’32. Norma McCorvey lived, oh, over a hundred years ago. She was more famously known as Jane Roe.”
Daniel knew that name. “Roe v. Wade,” he said.
“That’s right. One of the biggest decisions before your wife came along…” The nurse-bot studied his shoes again. “And people remember her for that—for the decision. They remember her as Roe, not as McCorvey.”
“I don’t follow,” Daniel told Charles. He eyed his wife’s door and fought the urge to be rude.
“Well, most people don’t know, but years later—Norma regretted her part in history. Wished she’d never done it. Converted to one of the major religions of her day and fought against the progress she’d fostered. I just…” He looked back up. “I’ll always remember you and your wife for the right reasons, is all.” He turned to his cart without another word and started down the hall.
Daniel watched him go. One of the cart’s wheels spun in place; he wondered when Charles would finally get around to fixing that. Favoring his bad leg, he shuffled across the hall to Melanie’s door. It was shut tight, as usual. He knocked twice, just to be polite, before pushing it open. A familiar lump stirred on the bed, changing shape like a dune in a heavy gale.
“Who’s there?” a raspy voice croaked.
Daniel went to the sink and poured a cup of water. “It’s me. Daniel. Your husband.”
She rolled over, long white hair falling back to reveal a thin, weathered face. Wispy brows arched up in a look of surprise that had become her state of rest. “Daniel? Dear? When did you get here?”
“I live across the hallway, sweetheart.” He said it patiently as he crossed to her with the two cups.
“Of course. That’s right,” she said. “Why do I keep forgetting that?”
“Don’t worry. I forget stuff all the time. Here. Take these.”
Melanie labored to sit up straight, grunting with the effort.
“Honey, use the remote. Let me show you…” Daniel reached for the bed controls, but his wife waved a fragile arm at him, shooing his words away.
“I don’t trust the thing. And I don’t trust whatever that damned robot is wanting me to swallow.”
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed and held the first cup out to her. “He just delivers what Dr. Mackintosh prescribes, dear. Don’t take it out on the messenger. Now, swallow these; they’ll make you feel better.”
She shot him a look as she threw the pills on her tongue. “I don’t wanna feel better,” she spat around them.