“May be? Are you kidding me? Christ!” Old-timer shook his head violently and grunted with frustration like a pit bull rejecting his master’s leash. “Reason is never good enough for you people, is it? Seeing evidence with your own eyes is never good enough! Well, here we are, Alejandra! You’re made of metal, and you’re still alive! You’re still you! Neirbo ripped out your insides to show you, but it still wasn’t good enough to convince you that your old body is a useless, fragile remnant of evolution!”
“Craig…it’s my body,” Alejandra replied, keeping her hypnotic eyes locked on Old-timer’s. “I can’t let it die. Can you honestly tell me that if you had the chance to go into your old body, you wouldn’t do it? You’d just let it die?”
“That flesh body will die, Alejandra! It’s just a matter of time and not much time either! That’s what you can’t appreciate because you’re so young and your body is healthy, but believe me, you are going to fall apart and quickly!”
“I can always choose to become like you, Craig. If I let my flesh body die now, however, I can never go back. Even if I could somehow remake a flesh body or clone myself, it would always be a copy.”
Old-timer’s breathing was slowing as he kept his eyes locked with Alejandra’s. As usual, in the face of what seemed like impenetrable logic, she was able to make a point that would cause him to pause. Why was he even huffing and puffing at all? Oxygen was useless for him. He could walk out into space and have a stroll if he wanted, completely unprotected from the radiation and extreme temperatures. So why huff and puff when angry? The answer was obvious: because this body was a copy. Whether his new body was better than the old one he used to have or not, it was still imitating the things that made the old one human.
He nodded slightly. “Okay. Okay, if that’s what you want to do. I won’t stop you.”
“Thank you, Craig,” she responded softly. “But I need more than that; I need your help.”
In the infirmary, Alejandra looked down at her body. It was still covered in dust, even though the medical staff had tried their best to clear it away. The room’s ceiling was still torn apart where James had blasted it.
“How rare a moment this is,” Alejandra commented in awe.
Old-timer watched as she stood over her own body. He wondered if she could still sense what he was feeling—complete and utter loss. As soon as she returned to her original body, she would no longer be able to follow Old-timer to where he needed to go. Didn’t she realize that this act would separate them? Perhaps she confused his feeling of loss for what he felt for Daniella; perhaps she was just too overwhelmed by the magnitude of her own decision to sense anything from him at all.
“I’m ready,” Alejandra said, suddenly snapping Old-timer free from the consumption of his thoughts.
“Okay,” he responded, brandishing his assimilator and putting it to her neck.
“Wait,” she said as she gently held his hand back. “This doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“I never said—”
“You’re very easy to read, Craig,” she replied, her eyes filled with sincerity. “Don’t give up on me. When you’ve done what you need to do with the others, come back to me.”
Old-timer was dumbfounded for a moment before he finally nodded.
“Okay. I’m ready,” she said.
“Okay,” Old-timer responded as Alejandra took her hand from his and let him touch her neck with the assimilator. Her android body thundered and clanked to the ground.
“God. Those are heavy bodies,” Lieutenant Patrick observed. The lieutenant, Governor Wong, and a doctor were present in the infirmary.
Old-timer held the assimilator for a moment—inside was the pattern of Alejandra. It was like holding her soul. He held it as though he were holding the most precious and fragile egg in the universe as he placed it onto Alejandra’s flesh body. As soon as the object touched her, her body reacted, and color began to return to her complexion. She didn’t wake up right away, but her muscles were reanimated for the first time as her unconscious body shifted position and she sighed.
“Oh my God—it’s a miracle,” the doctor whispered as he moved to the body and felt her cheek before quickly turning and calling for medical staff to join him. “We have to get her off life support! She’s waking up!”
Old-timer moved away from her and began to lift off out of the hole in the ceiling. “Wait!” Lieutenant Patrick exclaimed. “Don’t you want to be here when she wakes up at least?”
He shook his head. “No. I have to leave now. My friends need me. Tell her I said goodbye.” With that, Old-timer slipped through the ceiling and made his way out of the Purist ship.
Moments later, he floated alone through space. This close to the sun, it was difficult to make out the stars. He looked at his arm, garbed in black and outstretched before him, and realized it was impossible to delineate where his arm ended and the vast blackness of space began. “I’m ready, Neirbo,” he announced.
A wormhole opened up in the nothingness and swallowed him.
PART 3
1
WAKING UP was entirely unexpected; waking up to see his dead wife looking down at him was beyond reason.
“James? It’s time to wake up,” Katherine Keats said with a familiar hint of impatience in her tone.
James looked up at the form of his dead wife and studied it for a moment. It was perfectly vivid.
“You’re not dead,” Katherine said, as though she were responding to his thoughts.
Was it possible that there was some sort of residual electrical patterning that continued in the moments after death, even without a body? Could this be some sort of cyber death dream?
“You’re always trying to figure things out, aren’t you?” Katherine said, sighing and shaking her head. “Why can’t you simply ask?” She moved to the side and revealed another figure standing nearby. She addressed him. “You see? This is what you used to be like all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” James’s doppelganger replied, apologizing to her.
The doppelganger’s eyes met those of James, and he stepped toward his twin with an outstretched hand. “Help you up?”
James’s mouth hung open as he pondered the vision before him. He put his own hand up and grasped the hand that was offered to him, then stood to his feet. Katherine Keats remained, arms folded; she was wearing an expression of resignation. The doppelganger stood nearby with a considerably more sympathetic expression on his face. Behind them was a vast network of what appeared to be some sort of golden circuitry, glowing brightly and undulating like the sea all the way into the horizon where it sparkled like a setting sun in front of a pure black backdrop.
“Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen,” James whispered in awe.
The doppelganger smiled. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” he observed, before adding, “you’re not dead, James.” He put his hand reassuringly on James’s shoulder.
“Okay,” James replied after a moment, still not sure if he was engaging in a conversation with images from his subconscious or not—did he even have a subconscious any more?
“He doesn’t believe you, Jim,” Katherine said to the doppelganger.
James arched his eyebrow quizzically. “Jim?”
The doppelganger smiled. “I needed a name. I’m not you—at least not anymore—so I needed something to differentiate myself. I figured going by Jim was the easiest.”