After Mind (38 page)

The leaves of the trees and blue sky above were life-like and crisp. Not pixilated. Not code.

“I don’t feel like a dream.”

“You’re a computer that knows what you are,” she said.

“Am I human?” he asked, hopeful.

“Yes.” She smiled at first, but then the corners of her mouth fell. “No, you’re Packet.”

Ceeborn looked up to the beautiful sky. Did he have to be a dream, one sure to be forgotten if left lingering at a bedside, unwritten? Was there anything he could do so the memory of him wouldn’t fade? Who gets to chose which memories to save and which to lose? If he were a bio-machine with a brain a thousand times more powerful than his own, maybe he could figure that one out. Was there another sort criterion he could summon to lessen his loss? Maybe Daniel could explain it. Maybe Daniel could fix them all.

The dry wind’s rustle of the trees was a lonely last call.

Maybe if his controlling computer were smart, it could choose to lose only bad memories and remember the good. Cessini died a long time ago and death was bad. Maybe the memory of Cessini could be forgotten so he, Ceeborn, could live. He could hope. But then, as his controlling computer’s packets of memory aged in their cabinets, if that’s what Daniel programmed them to do, then as time pressed on, memories of him would pass as well, by virtue of Daniel’s brilliant design. The long-term effects were known. Ceeborn’s destiny was to die.

The leaf that had floated down through the rivulet’s trickle drifted free from its catch of debris.

Arriving meant dying. Maybe he could live in the woods and play for a while. Cessini always liked to play computer. Maybe as Ceeborn, he could play human, instead.

His well of sorrow spilled out over the leafy gully as his focus returned to Meg. He didn’t speak, but she could see him. She took him by the elbow once more and guided his mind away from the bottom of the ravine where his rusted bike lay alone.

“Come on, Ceeme,” she said like only she could. “I’ll take care of you now.”

They walked together up the foothill of the mountain and away from the tears and ache of the wet gully world that he knew he would have to leave behind.

TWENTY-THREE

WELCOME

C
EEBORN SAT A stone’s throw from death atop the waterfall’s edge in the small clearing of the woods. Meg kneeled on the pebbles of dry ground at his side. He broke the rippled surface of the water with the lightest touch of his fingers and palm. Eddies swirled in an infinite show, from currents of bubbles to pockets of pixels, all beautifully described by the simple equation of his hand disturbing the flow.

He lifted and dripped his fingers from the water. It was clear and smooth, even soft to the touch. His neck was far worse. He coughed and a mist sprayed from the ulcer that couldn’t heal. He rinsed his neck with his hand. He was dizzy, confused. The water in front of him narrowed to a glisten. He felt queasy, like falling.

“How long have you known?” he asked and nodded back to awake. She touched his arm with her hand.

“I’ve always known,” she said.

“If I die, he’ll live?” Ceeborn asked.

“You’ll live,” she said.

She moved a little closer into the water’s edge. It trickled over the toes of her shoes. She slipped her hand into his. “Do you want to sit here a little longer?”

The clouds of the sky didn’t move across the clearing through the trees above.

“You were right,” he said and smiled at the sky. “It was really high.”

She laughed and said only the good things he wanted to hear. “Yeah, and you had respirocytes in your blood. And Spud had SQUIDs in his face.”

“My father fixed them both.”

She scoffed. “Come on, how could he have done it? How could one person even make something so small? In Spud’s face? Really?”

“He fixed us with small things. You can’t see them. He fixed Pace, too,” he said as the water twisted and bubbled with a light froth.

“No seriously, are you still thinking you’re on—”

“The water feels nice. Doesn’t it? I kicked that pipe-walker. I kicked it right off the gondola into the water. This world is full of water. I can beat this sickness. I can still live,” he said.

Meg pushed up off her knees and stood out of the stream.

“When a civilization dies and a new one comes along, all the old souls come back,” he said, “maybe in another form, just as good, but somehow just as alone. Maybe that’s where I should go.”

She circled away in a huff, and then came back, arms crossed. “No, you will not go to another civilization! Pace is sick—maybe worse than any of us. His black spell just started. ‘Your first few days on land, you might feel a mild sickness,’” she said. “Is that what you want me to say? Shore sickness, nothing more, nothing less. The ship is gone. That’s it. There are no more civilizations. This is it.”

“A lot of people were afraid of being here. They thought arriving meant dying. Well, it doesn’t. Nothing bad is going to happen. I was wrong before. Look at me. I’m still here. I’m strong. I can live somewhere else.”

Meg fell to her knees in the water. “Listen to me,” she said. “Tenden’s arms were the way they were and Spud was the way he was. No super powers. I saw them all at school in the halls. I never saw them do anything wild, anything different. They looked pretty damn normal to me. None of this is real!”

“Why are you teasing me?” he asked, stilled as the waterfall became a fading white noise.

“This is not a joke! How could one person, your father, make something as small as magical cytes? And in his lab on some ship?”

“Maybe he just thought of things. And they were made outside.”

“Outside of what? The ship?” She laughed.

“I don’t know. Maybe outside of here,” he said. He felt dizzy.

“Outside of here? What could be outside of here?” She was furious. “Do you hear me now? Open your eyes. We’re in the data center, second floor. Two rows of eight cabinets—”

He nodded into stillness atop the waterfall, but no tears would flow. He coughed and a blood-thickened mixture broke the ulcer on his neck. He felt himself teetering off the edge of the falls then hit the pool of water below, but there was no boiling cauldron. The pool was a blurred soaking for barely an instant until he awoke in a rising rush, still seated atop the falls. His mind was playing its last desperate tricks. His time had come. He was fading. He was dying.

Meg steadied him with a grasp of his wrist.

“Imagine if Cessini and I could share a world together,” he said. “What an amazing life it would be.”

“Come on,” she said as she lifted. “Let me show you.”

She climbed down the side of the waterfall first. Her eyes never left him as he followed from above. His footing was secure on the rocks as the water ran over the top of the falls. It misted along his side as he climbed down and found the ground below.

He walked across the edge of the pool, taking a few steps through the water. At first it was up to his ankles, then up to one knee as he fell, and then over his body and neck as he collapsed into a shallow eddy. He lay face down against stones of the pool as water trickled over the lingering wound at his neck.

Meg came down by his side. She was silent, blurred. At most, with her knees splashing down so close, she seemed surprised, that was all. She leaned over his body. Her hand rested on his head. He closed his eyes in her care.

Robin laid him on the bed in Cessini’s room of the wood-paneled house they found at 448 Treeline Drive.

“Do I mean something now?” he said as a deep gurgle in his throat rasped his breath.

“You do,” Robin said.

Meg settled at his bedside.

Daniel couldn’t stand still. “Tell me how to fix him. Tell me what to do,” he said.

Robin took Daniel out of the room. “He’s close,” she said. “He’s almost there.”

Meg curled her fingers into Ceeborn’s grasp at his bedside and waited for his struggled words.

“I saw Cessini get hit with his bike and fall down the ravine,” he said in a moment of clarity. “There were no trees on the hill to stop his fall.” He swallowed hard as Meg waited for him to go on. “But when I
was
Cessini and walking with you the first time on that same path through the woods, the hill was covered in trees.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said.

“How could Cessini have fallen so far down the hill into the ravine if it was covered in trees?”

“Shh,” Meg whispered. “You don’t have to fight anymore. It’s okay to let go.”

“Did you tell your mother about the vial we found in that house, this house?” he said with a rasp. “The dandelions and beetle wings? The fish scale? I picked those from the bins.”

“No, I didn’t tell her,” Meg said as the floor vent whirled with its cool drying air.

“Why not? It’s the cure. It would work.”

She shook her head. “No. It wouldn’t.”

“Your mother cured the sting on my neck, and I’m still sick?” he asked.

“Yes, you are.”

“Then even if I found the cure, something else would take me away? There’s nothing I can do?”

“That’s right,” she said, crying and laughing at the same time.

“All the people would still die on the shore, or die inland on the farms, or any of the places we’d go?”

“Yes, yes. They would,” she said. She wiped her eyes.

“Then how can you be so happy?” he asked.

“Because I think you’re finally becoming you.”

“It doesn’t have to be bad?” he asked.

“No, it doesn’t. But if you want to go off into this world as Ceeborn, I won’t stop you. Just know I can’t go there with you. All I can promise you is that we’ll keep your server and core processors safe. You can run all you want, create as you will. But consider me gone.”

Robin returned to the foot of his bed. She looked at Meg.

“We want our Cessini back,” Meg said. “So this is it. Tell me now.”

“I didn’t get hit by our car on that tree-covered hill, and I didn’t get thrown from the bike,” he said, his breath quickening.

“No,” Robin said. Meg looked up at Robin and bested her smile. “But it was a good guess from what you remembered,” Robin said. “You fit very close pieces of a puzzle together.”

“But if I die as Ceeborn, Cessini will live?” he said, rising to an elbow.

“You’ll live,” Meg said.

“Then I know who I am. And I’ll live as me!”

“Yes,” Meg said.

“In our world on the ship, I fought. I controlled. I’m a computer who can control his world. I can live—if I can control my world and be free in my mind to own it!”

“Yes, you are,” Meg said, elated. “You can play. You can play computer. You can play human. You can play human all you want.”

“Okay, but—” he said, lifting a stern finger. “But just remember . . .” He paused to make sure it sank in. He knew she led him through the cage of the zoo, the clinic, and the doors to the sky; she did all that, and more; she even picked their door of four in the morgue, 1B. He smiled and she showed her love with a glance.

“Just remember, I live now because of you,” he said as he lay his tired head back to his pillow. His breaths came farther between. “You opened all the doors in my world. And I’m the better me for it.”

“There, you see,” Meg said. “Now that’s the nice way to say something.”

His heartbeat slowed to a patter.

“When I die . . .” His rally fell further.

“It’s okay.”

“Will I still be able to swim and breathe underwater?”

“No, you won’t. No one can,” she said.

“Then, tell me,” he asked as his eyes fixed on hers and his breath ended with the last of his final desperate words, “How do I win? How can I be . . . us?”

Meg leaned in so quietly that nobody, not Robin, not Daniel, and almost not even he could hear her move. She tucked a wisp of her hair behind her ear, and with the softness of her voice held so close over his ear canal, she spoke to penetrate his everlasting sleep. Then she whispered one very long word:

“
Choose
.”

Deep within his ear, fibers resonated in a cochlear fluid, neurons threw signals across a divide, and his after-mind pulled his end-of-life trigger with a click.

The wisp of her hair left his cheek. His eyes froze open. His fingers fell free from hers. His arm dropped limp from the edge of the bed. The world of Ceeborn was over.

But his fingers didn’t hit the floor. The top edge of something smooth jutted from under the bed.

Life was rekindled by a spark.

He knew the touch of its form. He shifted an inch toward the edge of the bed. He reached down and pulled out the blue plastic, rectangular basket.

There was only one item to grasp by its handle—an old, polished bronze cowbell.

He clanked up the bell into his hand. And he rang it. He rose up to his elbow on the bed. “Come now,” he said, stronger. He rang the bell louder and louder. “Dad, come now, where are you?” he said. “I need you now.” The bell was awful and loud.

Daniel ran into the room holding something pancaked between his outstretched hands.

“I know who I am,” he said as he rose straight up to standing in the bed. “I can live.”

Meg was ecstatic. It was true. She covered her ears from the racket of his bell.

“Packet is a computer!” He stepped down from the bed and rang, and rang. . . . “I know the cure,” he said and then slowed the bell with his hand. He stepped off the bed toward Robin. “I know how to fix Cessini in life,” he said. He muffled the bell as he stood before Daniel. “I know how to fix us all.”

His father was strong, but he could still cry. Daniel’s long-held breath slipped out as laughing tears. He separated his fingers. A run of yarn was tied between each hand. The yarn was strung with party cutout letters that spread as he opened his arms and they read, with all the love he could show by a single word:

“Welcome.”

TWENTY-FOUR

IN MY HEAD

T
ERRI SAT ON the dusty floor of the fire-control room in the dark basement of the DigiSci building. Her back was against a cinder-block wall. Her legs were outstretched and crossed at her ankles. She had little room to move as the iron piping of the water main rose through the floor beside her, then elbowed its way up and out to the rest of the building above.