Mindscan

I was in a bizarre sensory state. In most ways, I was under stimulated: I wasn't conscious of any smells, and although I could tell I was now sitting up, which meant I had some notion of balance, there wasn't any great downward pressure on the back of my thighs or my rear end. But my visual sense was overstimulated, assaulted by colors I'd never seen before. And if I looked at something featureless — like the wall — I could just make out the mesh of pixels that composed my vision.

"How are you doing?" asked Porter.

"Fine," I said. "Wonderful!"

"Good. Perhaps now is a good time to tell you about the secret missions we're going to send you out on."

"What?!"

"You know, bionic limbs. Spying. Secret-agent cyborg stuff."

"Dr. Porter, I—"

Porter's eyebrows were dancing with glee. "Sorry. I expect I'll eventually get tired of doing that, but so far it's been fun every time. The only mission we have is to get you out of here, and back to your normal life. And that means getting you on your feet. Shall we give it a try?"

I nodded, and felt his arm under my elbow. Again the sensation wasn't quite like normal pressure against skin, but I was certainly conscious of exactly where he was touching me. He helped me rotate my body until my legs dangled over the side of the gurney, and then he helped hoist me to a vertical position. He waited until I nodded that I was okay, and then he gingerly let go of me, allowing me to stand on my own.

"How does it feel?" Porter asked.

"Fine," I said.

"Any dizziness? Any vertigo?"

"No. Nothing like that. But it's weird not breathing."

Porter nodded. "You'll get used to it — although you may have some momentary panic attacks: times when your brain shouts out, 'Hey, we're not breathing!'" He smiled his kindly smile. "I'd tell you to take a deep calming breath in those circumstances, but of course you can't. So just fight down the sensation, or wait for it to pass. Do you feel panicky now because you're not breathing?"

I thought about that. "No. No, it's all right. Strange, though."

"Take your time. We're in no rush here."

"I know."

"Do you want to try taking a step?"

"Sure," I said. But it was a few moments before I put word to deed. Porter was clearly poised to act, ready to catch me if I stumbled. I lifted my right leg, flexing my knee, swinging my thigh up, and letting my weight shift forward. It was a lurching first step, but it worked. I then tried lifting my left leg, but it swung wide, and—

God damn it!

I found myself pitching forward, completely off balance, the tiles, whose color was new to me and I couldn't yet name, rushing toward my face.

Porter caught my arm and pulled me upright. "I can see we have our work cut out for us," he said.

"This way please, Mr. Sullivan," said Dr. Killian.

I thought about making a run for it. I mean, what could they do? I'd wanted to live forever, without a fate worse than death hanging over my head, but that was not to be. Not for this me, anyway. Me and my shadow: we were diverging rapidly. It — he, he — was doubtless somewhere else in this facility. But the rules were that I could never meet him. That was not so much for my benefit as his; he was supposed to regard himself as the one and only Jacob Sullivan, and seeing me still around — flesh where he was plastic; bone where he was steel — would make that feat of self-delusion more difficult.

Those were the rules.

Rules? Just terms in a contract I'd signed.

So, if I did make a break for it—

If I did run outside, into that sweltering August heat, and took my car, and raced back to my house, what sanction could be brought against me?

Of course, the other me would show up there eventually, too, and want to call the place his own.

Maybe we could live together. Like twins. Peas in a pod.

But, no, that wouldn't work. I rather suspect you had to be born to that. Living with another me — I mean, Christ, I am so particular about where things are and, besides, he'd be up all night, doing God knows what, while I'd be trying to sleep.

No. No, there was no turning back.

"Mr. Sullivan?" Killian said again in her lilting Jamaican voice. 'This way, please." I nodded, and let her lead me down a corridor I hadn't seen before. We walked a short distance and then we came to a pair of frosted-glass sliding doors. Killian touched her thumb to a sca

I nodded.

"You know, I envy you," she said. "Getting away from — from everything. You won't be disappointed, Mr. Sullivan. High Eden is wonderful."

"You been there?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said. "You don't just open a resort like that cold. We had two weeks of dry-runs, with senior Immortex staff playing the parts of residents, to make sure the service was perfect."

"And?"

"It is perfect. You'll love it."

"Yeah," I said, looking away. There was no sign of an escape route. "I'm sure I will."

7

I was sitting in a wheelchair in Dr. Porter's office, waiting for him to return. I wasn't the first Mindscan to have trouble walking, he said. Perhaps not. But I probably hated being in a wheelchair more than most — after all, that was how they moved my father around. I'd been trying to avoid that fate, and instead had ended up echoing it.

But I wasn't brooding too much about it. Indeed, the combined excitement of getting a new body and seeing new colors was overwhelming, so much so that I was only dimly aware of the fact that the original me must now have started on his journey to the moon. I wished him well. But I wasn't supposed to think about him, and I tried not to.

In some ways, of course, it would have been easier just to shut that other me off.

Fu

But the law would never stand for that — not even here in Canada, let alone south of the border. Ah, well, I'd never see the other me again, so what did it matter? I — this me, the new-improved, in-living-color Jacob Paul Sullivan — was the one and only real me from now on, until the end of time.

Finally, Porter returned. "Here's someone who might be able to help you," he said.

"We've got technicians, of course, who could work with you on your walking, Jake, but it occurred to me that she might be better able to give you a hand. I think you already know each other."

From my position in the wheelchair I looked at the woman who had just entered the room, but I couldn't place the face. She was plain, perhaps thirty, with dark hair sensibly short, and—

And she was artificial. I hadn't realized it until she moved her head just so, and the light caught her in a certain way.

"Hello, Jake," she said, with a lovely Georgia drawl. Her voice was stronger than before, with no quavering. She was wearing a beautiful sun dress with a floral print; I was still sulking in my terry-cloth robe.

"Karen?" I said. "My goodness, look at you!"

She spun around — apparently she was having no difficulty controlling her new body. "You like?" she said.

I smiled. "You look fabulous."

She laughed; it sounded a bit forced, but that was surely because it was generated by a voice chip, rather than that the mirth was insincere. "Oh, I've never looked fabulous. This" — she spread her arms — "is what I looked like in 1990. I'd thought about going younger, but that would have been silly."