The Forever Watch (52 page)

Eventually, my dear, wounded Leon finds a measure of healing. In the restoration of the Habitat. In his clumsy attempts at gardening. In the love of a young woman he meets in a corner café.

Sometimes though, he looks over his shoulder and sees a figure out of the corner of his eye. Familiar maybe in the tilt of her head, the length of her stride. He loses her in a crowd, or around a street corner, or through the door of a shop. Each time, I tell myself it is the last time.

For the rest of my friends who survive, I've been erased from their lives. I am the classmate that they cannot quite recall, the coworker that got transferred away, a blur, an anomaly in their Implant data, smoothed over with psychological triggers planted by Behavioralists.

Women give birth in their sleep to monsters, which are taken from them and contained, entombed in the dark. G-0 children are born in the Necropolis and brought back to the Habitat to be raised by Keepers. They get their Implants, go to school, grow up. They do their jobs. They perform maintenance throughout the ancient structures of the Noah. They clean the streets under a false sun. They grow crops in the giant greenhouses. They buy new shoes and dresses and suits and entertain themselves with concerts and dances and movies. Some commit crimes and others try to stop them. They sleep and dream. They know nothing of aliens or the doom that waits for them.

The mission, the simulated economy, culture, politics, it all just goes on. The same as before.

Except for me. I am the difference. Never again will anyone discover dangerous data on the Network. When a crewman descends into the symptomatic end stage, it is always caught in time, witnessed only by top-clearance Ministry of Health specialists and ISec Retirement staff with the proper clearance. No more G-1 creatures escape far enough to make it to the sewers and tunnels under the Habitat. I am nowhere; I am everywhere. I cover over mistakes in the system, fill in the cracks, perfect the deception of Utopia.

I am not lonely or bored. I have Archie. I have the dreams of the lost Builders, still locked up deep in the ship's computers.

Sometimes, I make a body, just to have a cup of tea and watch the Keepers in the park, playing not with the next generation, but the one after that. I take walks. I watch people. Sooner or later, they too Retire. I am there for each of them when it happens.

In my child's dreams, he is not a monster. He is a boy, running through grassy fields and white beaches, splashing in the surf, while his mother watches and laughs.

I put out my arms and close them around him.

And I regret nothing at all.