A Stand-In for Dying Read online

  Marcus’s shoulders fell. For that moment, his body felt as decrepit as Terra’s description and it seemed like he was carrying the whole weight of the world with no way to shrug it off.

  “Isn’t there any way out?”

  “The contract is irrevocable. You can’t go back. And the secrecy of our operation is of paramount importance to us. If you tried to escape from your agreement, we’d be forced to terminate your identity.” The glow in Terra’s emerald eyes and her fiery red hair made her look almost demonic. Marcus had had no idea what forces were set in play when he’d first agreed to the arrangement.

  “You mean you’d have to kill me?”

  “Not kill, Marcus, not your body, anyway. We would just wipe out those parts of your memory that are essential to who you’ve become since the Conversion. You’d continue to live, but your memory would pick up where you left off when we first met. You’d have no knowledge of your accomplishments, of the position you’ve attained, of me, or of Corinne. And we would amend the Universal Data Base so that the world would forget you, too.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “You wouldn’t believe the power we wield,” Terra’s voice resounded. “Our capabilities can work for you or against you. It’s up to you.”

  “Will you at least explain what just happened to me?”

  “Let’s just say there was a glitch in the system. It’s been patched and we’re pretty sure it won’t happen again.” She blinked and the glare was gone from her eyes. She put a hand on his forearm. “Look, we’re...I’m very sorry about what you had to go through. It was never supposed to happen. Go back to your life. Try to forget it. With any luck, you’ll live another 30 or 40 years without ever having to think about us again.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re asking me to just forget that I nearly died while my wife spent the night with some son of a bitch that she’ll eventually spend the rest of her life with. How the hell am I supposed to forget something like that?”

  “That’s your problem, Marcus.” She pulled back her hand. “Either you make peace with it or it’ll take over your life a lot sooner than the transfer will. There’s nothing else I can do.” She turned, began running back down the trail, and was soon out of sight.

  24

  THE HEADLINE caught Lena’s attention as she lay in bed and scanned through the database updates for the day: “Man disappears. Wife claims imposter.”

  Lena opened her eyes and sat up. What was it about this story that seemed to resonate with her? She closed her eyes again and let the full content of the story flow into her consciousness.

  The missing man, now in his mid-thirties, had been a world class competitive skier in his early twenties when he’d come into a small fortune, apparently an inheritance from a long lost relative. Around the same time, he’d abandoned skiing and begun satisfying his appetite for rigorous competition by training for triathlons, a less risky endeavor. Much of his time and the majority of his fortune was invested in a foundation devoted to the pursuit of life extension.

  His wife told the authorities that she’d noticed changes in him a couple of months earlier that left her wondering whether he could be an imposter. It had been hard for her to put her finger on it, but there were subtle changes in his mannerisms and behavior. She was sufficiently disturbed to see a psychiatrist, who suggested that she was suffering from a delusional syndrome and recommended medication. She refused treatment and didn’t go back.

  The detail that most grabbed Lena, though, was a visitor who’d come to their home the day before the man disappeared. The man’s wife described a striking redhead with piercing green eyes. She’d been certain that her husband had been having an affair with this woman and guessed that he’d probably run off with her. But when she’d scanned the UDB for facial recognition, the search had come up blank. A redheaded ghost. Could this be the same ghost that had visited Ray?

  Lena was on the vacuum tube transport to Phoenix that afternoon to interview the missing man’s wife. She introduced herself ahead of time as a journalist with a special interest in missing persons.

  “I’m Katrina,” said the woman greeting her at the door. “Please come in.” She seemed surprisingly calm, given her husband’s recent, abrupt disappearance.

  “Thank you. I’m Lena. I’m sorry for what you must be going through.”

  “The worst part is everyone thinks I’m crazy. Even my closest friends. It’s a relief to talk to someone who might take me seriously.”

  “You told the reporter that something had changed about your husband a couple of months ago. Can you tell me more about that?”

  “It’s hard to put your finger on what defines someone’s identity. On the surface, he said and did all the right things. He had an extensive knowledge of our lives and treated all our friends as familiar.” Katrina shook her head. “Even his body was identical, right down to birthmarks and scars. But something told me he was someone else. He wasn’t my Jorge.”

  “What was the first thing you noticed?”

  “It was when we were making love. It felt different.” Katrina blushed. “Better...like we were doing it for the first time.”

  “What else?”

  “The way he touched me was...just different. You get to know a lover’s touch. It’s not something you can describe. You just know it. This man was a stranger.” She’d been looking away and now looked Lena straight in the eye.

  “You probably think I’m crazy, too.”

  “Not at all.” Lena reached out her hand and touched Katrina on the arm. “I wondered, though, since you seemed to think he’d been having an affair, if his behavior could have changed because he’d been with someone else?”

  “I thought of that after the redhead came to our home. I thought back and tried to figure out if that’s what it was, but it was more than that. After that first odd lovemaking session, I began observing him and making mental notes. There were other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the way he ate, the way he held his fork, the order in which he ate things, and what he seemed to like. He always kept a stash of chocolate, a favorite type of dark chocolate that he ate every day. I noticed that he hadn’t touched it for weeks.”

  “What else?”

  “We were at our favorite restaurant where he always orders the same wine. He asked for one he’d never ordered before.”

  “Maybe he was just up for a change.”

  “You have to understand, Jorge was a creature of habit. When he liked something, that’s all he wanted. He didn’t need variety.” Katrina sighed deeply and blew the breath all the way out. “Except perhaps in women.”

  “Tell me about the woman...the redhead.”

  “She just showed up out of the blue. I’d never seen her before, but Jorge seemed to know her.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Her flowing red hair was her most distinctive feature. Her skin was white, she had a flawless complexion, and her green eyes sparkled from across the room. She was almost too perfect to be human.”

  Katrina’s description fit precisely with Lena’s picture of the woman who’d visited Ray. And the woman’s visit had followed shortly after the morning that Ray’s behavior had seemed so odd and foreign. This couldn’t be just a coincidence. And it was increasingly clear that the visits had nothing to do with sex.

  “Did you hear anything that they talked about? Did you catch a name?”

  “No, the woman insisted they go outside and they talked in whispers. Jorge seemed very upset by the time she left. I asked him what she was doing there and he just got mad. He wouldn’t talk about it. He went to bed without saying another word. When I awoke the next morning, he was gone. No note. Nothing.”

  “You’re not crazy, Katrina,” Lena said. After a long pause she added, “I’ve seen her, too.”

  “Oh my God!” Katrina was in tears and threw her arms around Lena. “Then you know who she is.”

  “Unfortunately, no. She’s ju
st as much a mystery to me as she is to you, but I can tell you that I don’t think she’s been having an affair with either of our husbands. And her appearance probably has a lot to do with their sudden odd behavior and with Jorge’s disappearance.”

  “Their behavior? So your husband changed, too?’

  “Not in quite the same way,” said Lena. “His quirks were temporary, just a few minutes or an hour. Then he was back to himself. But something strange had definitely occurred. And the woman showed up later that day.”

  Lena’s head was swimming with questions when she finally left Katrina’s home and headed back to San Francisco on the tube. Who was the mysterious woman without an identity? What did Ray and Jorge have in common? And what was responsible for Jorge’s metamorphosis and Ray’s less enduring singularity?

  One possible explanation came to mind, but it seemed too outrageous to give serious consideration. Lena had been following the developing science of life extension for years and was impressed with the progress of the technology. The most striking public accomplishment was the Ambrosia Conversion, a genetic process that extended the life of cells indefinitely, enabling the body to stop aging. The Conversion only worked, however, in the first three decades of life while the body’s cells were still relatively intact. It was still very expensive and created a whole new potential divide between the haves and the have nots. There was a popular movement to outlaw it entirely rather than make it available to a privileged few.

  At the fringes of this technology was a small group of enthusiasts who were pursuing ways to upload mental contents to cybernetic hosts that might function as avatars for people’s consciousness after their bodies had died. There were many ethical conundrums about how such a technology would be implemented. But even further beyond the boundaries of responsible scientific pursuit was the possibility of moving consciousness from person to person. In Lena’s study of the field, she’d stumbled across rumors that a secret organization, perhaps within the government, had brought this body hopping technology to fruition.

  The rumors went on to suggest that the secret agency was now trafficking in bodies, providing wealthy older people the opportunity to move their consciousness to healthy young bodies that had undergone the Conversion. Perhaps, suggested one source, such transfers had already occurred and mind-body hybrids walked among us.

  “That’s really crazy,” Lena thought as the capsule slowed to a halt and she prepared to disembark. “It couldn’t possibly be.”

  And yet the pieces seemed to fit. Lena did have a name for the redheaded visitor: “Terra.” And Ray had told her that Terra dealt in final arrangements. Maybe that was his version of not lying to her.

  *****

  “Where have you been?” asked Ray when Lena walked in the door. It was after midnight.

  “Phoenix.”

  “What the hell were you doing in Phoenix?”

  “I was following a story.” Lena paused and drew in a breath. “I met a woman, Ray,” she continued, “a woman who’s met Terra.”

  Ray fell silent. Whatever this meant, it couldn’t be good. How much did Lena know?

  “Talk to me Ray. You need to tell me who Terra is and what business you have with her, because whatever the truth is can’t possibly be as outrageous as what I imagine.”

  “I’d tell you if I could, Lena,” Ray said, “God knows I’ve wanted to tell you. But I can’t. I’m sworn to secrecy. If I told you, I’m afraid it would endanger us both.”

  “This woman’s husband disappeared right after a visit from Terra. But it gets worse. She told me that for the past couple of months, he’d been replaced by an imposter...someone else living in his body.”

  “What are you getting at?” Ray asked, but he already knew exactly what Lena was implying. His wife was extremely bright and intuitive, which made her an outstanding investigator. She’d figured it out, at least in its broad outlines. She might not know, though, quite how deep he’d waded into this mess.

  “When you said Terra deals in final arrangements, did you mean she arranges for life after death?”

  “I told you. We can’t talk about this. It’s too dangerous. She’s too dangerous. I don’t want to put you in her crosshairs.”

  “If you can’t trust me with your secrets, I’m not sure what kind of future our marriage holds. And if you’re planning what I think your planning, then I have no idea how to understand what our marriage means. This gives ‘til death do we part’ a whole new twist. Do you even know who you’ll become? And what will become of the person whose body you wind up in?”

  “Do you know how crazy all this sounds?” Ray exploded. “Your imagination’s running wild. What you’re implying isn’t even possible. You have to let this go.”

  “Isn’t it, Ray? I may have to believe it until you come up with a more plausible explanation. I’ll let you off the hook for tonight, but we’ll keep coming back to it until you tell me something I can believe. You know how I can be when my mind is made up. I’ll get the truth one way or another.”

  25

  RAY AWOKE suddenly from a sound sleep and sat bolt upright with a piercing scream. Both hands pressed against the sides of his head.

  “Ray! Ray! What’s wrong?” asked Lena.

  “Pain!” Ray answered. “Pain! Pain!” He searched for other words, but could find none. The pain in his head was searing, worse than any he’d ever experienced. Terror pierced the fog that was settling over his consciousness. Was this the event that would end his life as he knew it forever?

  “I’ll call for an ambulance,” said Lena.

  “No...ambumens,” Ray stuttered, grabbing her arm. “No...popsicles.” Aside from his usual terror of hospitals, Ray knew that going to a hospital risked exposing the network of nanoparticles in his brain and the microprocessor in his neck. Even in his confused state, Terra’s prohibition against seeking medical care held sway.

  Lena pulled away, but before she could call for help, there was a pounding on the door. She ran to open it. In rushed a team of five, all in surgical costume, wheeling in a long, closet like structure. Bringing up the rear was the mysterious redhead who’d visited Ray. Once inside, the structure unfolded into a fully equipped operating room.

  “We’ve got this,” said Terra to Lena while the team moved Ray to the operating table.

  “But how…?” Lena began.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Terra interrupted. “We’ll take care of him.”

  The team swarmed over Ray. One injection and the pain subsided. His body relaxed. They placed a transparent bubble over his head. As an arc of light moved around the perimeter of the bubble, a high-resolution picture of his brain appeared on a screen mounted on a wall of the enclosure.

  “Here’s the bleed,” said one of the attendants, pointing at a place on a side view around halfway down. “It’s in the superior gyrus of the left temporal lobe.”

  “Lucky it’s not in the brainstem,” said another. “We can probably save him.”

  The team stepped away from the table. A transparent dome descended over Ray’s entire body, its edges mating with a groove that ran around the perimeter of the table. It sealed with a hiss. Six mechanical arms dangled from the top of the dome, each holding a surgical instrument. One held a long coiled catheter, its leading end free and the other anchored to a machine through a tiny opening in the dome.

  “Lower the temperature to fifty-five degrees,” commanded the team leader. “And fill the chamber with oxygen.”

  Between the effects of the stroke and the haze of the pain medication, Ray’s consciousness was suspended somewhere between trance and sleep. Both pain and fear had seeped away. His body was sufficiently immobile to undergo a procedure.

  Three of the team members now donned metallic gloves adorned with glowing lights on each of the fingers and surrounded the dome. They each held their arms flexed at the elbows, palms pointed toward Ray’s body. The leader of the surgical team began moving his fingers. Two of the mechanical arms reached
down, coordinating their instruments at the surface of Ray’s left groin. As the others began moving their fingers, all six of the arms joined in a dance of exquisite precision.

  A quick incision and the catheter shot into the femoral artery. Its progress up the iliac artery and through the aorta appeared on one of several screens on the walls of the operating theatre, its position tracked digitally by its coordinates. As it snaked its way up the carotid artery into the brain, it appeared on the scanner’s image that now refreshed every five seconds. A doctor closely monitored its progress.