Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) (7 page)

“If you give yourselves a chance, I think
you’ll really enjoy this assignment.

“Here’s what I want you to do:  Choose
an ancestor of yours—make it a minimum of, oh, five generations
back. Then find out all you can about the time and place your
ancestor lived in. Finally, I want you to get creative. I want you
adopt your ancestor’s persona. In other words, pretend that you are
your multi-great grandparent. Then I want you to write a letter or
a diary entry or some kind of day-in-the-life narrative that will
reflect your ancestor’s life and times. We’ll read your papers
aloud and discuss them in class.”

Twenty pairs of eyes stared at Rayna in
horrified silence. A moment later, a buzz of uncertain comments and
questions began building into a roar of indistinguishable
voices.

“When’s it due?” Emilio’s plaintive cry rose
above the din. Somehow, he managed to make the question sound
almost like a prayer for mercy.

“I want you to give this a lot of thought.
How about four weeks from today?  That ought to give you
enough time.”

Another roar from the class.

“I’m not even sure I can find out who my
ancestors from five generations back were!” Emilio complained.

“Sure you can. You all can. You’re sitting in
front of the greatest boon any genealogist has ever known!”

Rayna patted her computer terminal. “Over the
last three decades, every existing paper record in the world has
been transferred to the limited-access files of the Consolidated
Data Network. So have all microfilm, microfiche and every other
type of record. The originals are stored in environmentally
controlled warehouses in case of a computer failure, but the data
are available to anyone with voiceprint clearance for the
information requested. Since all computers these days are
automatically hooked into the network, all you have to  do is
ask the computer for your family tree going back five generations,
and Voila! you have it. I’ve done traces on some historical figures
for research purposes, and it’s really quite simple.”

The students looked uncertainly at one
another and then at Rayna.

“Still not convinced?  Okay. I’ll show
you how to do a genealogy trace right now. That ought to get you
started. Let’s go through it step by step.”

Rayna waited as the students cleared their
work areas and activated their terminals.

“Okay, now. The first thing you do is punch
in the CDN program code. That’s G-E-N-T-R-A-C. The program will
begin by asking you how many generations you want traced. There.
It’s coming up on my terminal now. I’ll put this all on ‘demo’ in
case you want to watch what I’m doing before trying it on your own
terminals.”  Rayna pressed the appropriate keys as her
students set their terminals to a “demo-receive” mode.

“All right. Now I answer the question. Let’s
make it a five-generation trace. You can make it longer than that
if you wish simply by telling the computer how far back you want it
to go.

“This next prompt asks whether you want to
follow natural parentage or adopted family lines. It’s simplest if
you start out with a trace on natural lines only. If it turns out
there’s an adoption in the family tree, the computer will let you
know, and you can request adoption information for that stage of
the trace. If you enter ‘adopted’ first, though, you’ll just get
the official records as they stand. The computer will ignore the
distinction between natural and adoptive lines, and it won’t alert
you to adoptions in your family history. That’s because of our
privacy laws. Many adoption records used to be completely sealed.
Some still are. The only way the government would authorize the
GENTRAC program to use the Central Data Network was on condition
that traces involving adoptions would require a specific request
and voiceprint clearance.

“Anyway, the next step is to tell the
computer who you are. Just type in your name...” Rayna did so as
she spoke “...and key in a voiceprint test. Then state your
name—slowly and clearly—into the ID mike.”

Rayna removed a small microphone from the
clip that held it unobtrusively against the right side of the
computer’s keyboard.

“Rayna Joanne Kingman,” she stated
carefully.

“Now all you have to do is press the ‘run’
key,” she  said, looking up and smiling at the class as they
watched their terminals with intense interest.

“Hey, Miss Kingman, if this is so doggone
easy, why isn’t anything happening?” Rick taunted.

“Huh?”  Rayna returned her attention to
her own terminal and stared in surprise. Her name was displayed on
the screen in blinking capital letters. She must have made a
mistake in initiating the program. Unless something was wrong with
the terminal. But she’d used the terminal earlier in the day, and
it had worked correctly. Furthermore, she had done a trace on John
Martin Roberts just last week as part of her research for a new
paper she was preparing on major political figures of the late 20th
century. That, too, had run flawlessly. No, it must have been user
error. But how could...?  She cut off the unsettling thought
and tried to ignore an insistent flutter in her stomach.

“Well, I never said I was perfect,” she said,
grinning sheepishly. “Even teachers are capable of hitting the
wrong key sometimes. Linda, why don’t you try to do a trace, and
I’ll monitor it as you go. Do you remember the steps?”

Linda nodded and began punching the
appropriate keys—and receiving the appropriate responses—each step
of the way.

“Now I do the voiceprint test?” Linda
asked.

The student’s voice interrupted Rayna’s
apprehensive reflection.

“Hmmmm?  Oh!  Yes. Very good,
Linda. Now just press the ‘run’ key. That’s it.”

In a sudden burst of activity, Linda’s
terminal screen filled with moving lists of names linked by lines
indicating family relationships.

“I think I need a hard copy,” Linda said.

“Yes. Sure. That’s fine,” Rayna said
abstractedly. “You know how to do that.”

Rayna forced her attention back to the
class.

“You all know the process now. It’s just five
minutes till the end of school. You may as well go home now. You
might want to get started while the technique is still fresh in
your minds. You should be able to run GENTRAC on any home
terminal.”

Twenty young bodies eagerly made their way
out the classroom doors to the school’s Trans-Mat pods. There, they
would re-form into smaller groups of friends and head for the
Trans-Mat centers nearest each of their destinations.

Silence settled on the classroom like a cloud
as Rayna anxiously turned back to her terminal and ran through the
procedure for the GENTRAC trace once more. Same result:  Her
name blinked at her mockingly. Her heart hammered out its cadence
with a vengeance, and emotion clutched at her throat. The
explanation was now clear. She didn’t want to believe it, but it
was the only remaining possibility. It would mean that for 35
years, she had been living a lie. It would mean.... 

She had to be sure. She pressed a slightly
different series of keys, repeated the voiceprint check, and pushed
the “run” key.

Her flashing name didn’t light up the screen,
but no mad computer dance ensued, either. Instead, the words below
her name read: 

“RECORDS SEALED. TRACE CANNOT BE
COMPLETED.”

Her eyebrows jerked upward in surprise. The
rational, problem-solving part of her personality struggled to
remain calm despite the vague sense that she was tumbling headlong
into an abyss.

Sealed!  It was even worse than she
thought. Not only had her parents deceived her, but the sealed
records prevented her from getting at the truth.

Know thyself, she thought bitterly. A piece
of ancient wisdom. But how can you know yourself when you don’t
even know your name?  When you’ve only just found out that you
don’t know your name? 

 
She
never meant for it to be a confrontation. She’d simply wanted to
clear things up. Against all the evidence, she’d still hoped that
it was just some computer foul-up—that Bill and Ann Kingman really
hadn’t
been lying to her all these years.

Even if it turned out to be true that she was
adopted, she told herself, the Kingmans were still the only parents
she’d ever known. They’d shared the ups and downs of her growing
years. They’d offered support and love during the tough times when
her marriage to Frank was slowly crumbling. Afterward, they’d
helped her to overcome the hurt and self-doubt that had settled in
Frank’s wake, despite the amicable nature of the divorce. They
couldn’t have treated her better. Except for one small item. They
had neglected to tell her who she really was.

“Why does it matter so much?” Bill Kingman
had asked. “Whether you were adopted or born to us, you’re still
our daughter, and we’re still your parents.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t matter, Dad, if you’d told
me the truth years ago.”

After that, the talk grew increasingly
acrimonious. Rayna’s emotions wavered from anger over what she
perceived as a breach of trust to fear over losing the love she
still felt for the couple she’d always known as Mom and Dad—from a
sense of betrayal to a sense of loss. Her pain had the sharp edge
of a fine knife, but along with the pain, there was a swirling fog
of other feelings that confused and frightened her.

Now, riding through the city on a hoverbus
tour, she found herself replaying parts of that painful
conversation in her mind. The tour was a diversion she’d used
before when she wanted to think. The movement of the vehicle was
somehow soothing, and the guide’s patter gave others on the bus
something to think about, thereby reducing chances that a
well-meaning stranger might try to intrude on her mental
solitude.

“We couldn’t tell you,” her mother had said,
her tone almost begging for understanding. “We couldn’t tell
anyone. It was part of the deal. If we told anyone, the adoption
agreement would have been cancelled. And we didn’t want to lose
you!”

“I came of age a long time ago,” Rayna
reminded them. “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

Bill Kingman looked away, then at his wife,
then back at Rayna. “By that time,” he said softly, “you were so
much a part of our lives that we never thought about the adoption
anymore.”

Kingman had been assigned to his firm’s
British division in 1985 and 1986. It wasn’t too difficult for the
couple to return to Los Angeles with a new baby that would be
accepted as their biological offspring.

 “
Not even your grandparents knew
the truth,” Ann whispered, her eyes moist.

“Oh?  How did you manage that?” Rayna
demanded. “Grandma G must’ve been in a positive uproar. How could a
Gianelli girl give birth without letting her own mother be present
for the blessed event?  I can hear her now:  ‘Thank the
Lord your father isn’t alive to see this day.’” 

Ann Kingman cringed at Rayna’s mocking
words.

“And Baba and Grandpa, what about them? 
All of a sudden, you show up with a baby. No letters or phone calls
beforehand to prepare them, either, I’ll bet. Just a
fait
accompli
in swaddling clothes.”  Rayna was glaring at her
father by then. “You’ve always told me it took Baba and Grandpa a
long time to get over the shock that it was you and not Aunt Vickie
who married a gentile. After all, you were the
bar mitzvah
boy—the one who seemed so concerned about keeping the faith. And
you were always
so
dependable. Aunt Vickie was the wild one,
the free spirit. From her, they might have expected the unexpected.
Right?  But not from you. Or was all that a lie, too?”

Bill Kingman’s eyes narrowed. “Stop it,
Rayna,” he demanded in a low voice. “I don’t like your tone one
little bit. I know all this has been a shock, but—”

“A shock?  You can’t begin to
understand—”     The round-faced man with the
aquiline nose and the bald pate cleared his throat loudly and tried
to explain.

“Please understand. We had to do things the
way we did. Your grandparents were pretty angry with us, too, but
somehow, we managed to smooth things over with them, and there was
this kind of unspoken agreement not to bring the subject up again.
They just accepted you as our natural child.”

With long, delicate fingers, Ann Kingman
reached out to touch Rayna’s cheek. “We never meant to deceive you,
honey,” she murmured. “We loved you so much.”

Once, when Rayna was about 5, her parents had
considered telling her the truth. She’d been with them so long, the
Kingmans had reasoned, that surely no one could object now. They’d
been reading up on how they might approach the subject. Visitors
must have wondered why they had a stack of books on the topic. Al
Frederick even asked them once if they were planning to adopt.

But before they had the chance to tell Rayna,
they received a letter from the lawyer who had arranged the
adoption. The letter reminded them that the terms of the original
agreement remained binding, in accordance with the wishes of the
child’s (Rayna’s) natural next of kin.

Rayna glanced out the bus window. The
highlights of the city registered only on her subconscious. Then,
suddenly, there were the spires of the carefully preserved Watts
Towers, awash in the afternoon sun. The ride was nearly over. A
veteran of the tour, she knew the route by heart. Strange how
things stay with you, even if you’re not aware of them, she
thought. In all the times she had taken this tour, she had never
paid much attention to its sights  or sounds. Yet, she was
certain she could conduct the tour herself.

“Hope you’ve enjoyed our little trip,” the
driver announced in a deep baritone as he pulled the bus up to a
debarkation platform beneath a large sign that read “Hover-Tours,
Inc:  Your Key to the City.”