Mindscan

"Nineteen-ninety," I repeated. "So you would have been—"

"Thirty," Karen said, without hesitation. But I was surprised at myself; I knew better than to ask a woman her age; I'd intended to keep my little bit of mental math private.

She went on: "It seemed a sensible compromise between youth and maturity. I doubt I could fake how vacuous I was at twenty."

"You look great," I said again.

"Thanks," she said. "So do you."

I doubted my synthetic flesh was capable of blushing, but that's what I felt like doing. "Just a few touch-ups here and there."

Dr. Porter said, "I asked Ms. Bessarian if she would work with you for a bit. See, she's been through this in a way even our technicians haven't."

"Through what?" I asked.

"Learning to walk again as an adult," said Karen.

I looked at her, not getting it.

"After my stroke," Karen supplied, smiling.

"Ah, right," I said. Her smile was no longer lopsided; the stroke damage would have been faithfully copied in the nanogel of her new brain, I supposed, but maybe they had some electronic trick that simply made the left half of her mouth execute a mirror image of whatever the right half was doing.

"I'll leave you to it, then," said Porter. He made a show of rubbing his belly. "Maybe I'll grab a late lunch — you folks are lucky enough not to need to eat anymore, but I'm getting hungry."

"And besides," said Karen, and I swear there was a twinkle in one of her synthetic green eyes, "letting one Mindscan help another is probably good for both of them, right? Lets them both know that there are others like them, and gets them away from the alienating feeling of being poked and prodded by scientists."

Porter made an impressed face. "I could have sworn you didn't opt for the x-ray vision option," he said, "but you see right through me, Ms. Bessarian. You're a psychologist at heart."

"I'm a novelist," Karen said. "Same thing."

Porter smiled. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"

He left the room, and Karen appraised me, hands on hips. "So," she said, "you're having trouble walking."

She was reasonably small, but I still had to look up at her from the wheelchair.

"Yeah," I said, the syllable mixing embarrassment and frustration.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "You'll be fine. You can teach your mind to make your body obey it. Believe me, I know — not only did I have to deal with a stroke, but when I was a girl down in Atlanta, I used to dance ballet — you learn a lot about how to control your body doing that. So, shall we get started?"

My whole life, I'd been terrible at asking for help; I somehow thought it was a sign of weakness. But here I wasn't asking for it; it was being freely offered. And, I had to admit, I did need it.

"Um, sure," I said.

Karen brought her hands together in front of her chest in a clap. I remembered how swollen her joints had been before, how translucent her skin. But now her hands were supple, youthful. "Wonderful!" she exclaimed. "We'll have you back to normal in no time." She held out her right hand, I took it, and she hoisted me to my feet.

Porter had given me a dark brown, wooden cane. It was leaning against the wall; I gestured to it. Karen handed it to me, and I managed to make my way out of the room into a long corridor. Fluorescent light panels covered its ceilings, and I also spotted tiny camera units hanging down at intervals. Doubtless Dr. Porter or one of his minions was watching.

"All right," said Karen, standing in front of me and facing toward me. "Remember, you can't hurt yourself by falling; you're way too durable for that now. So, let's give it a try without the cane."

I propped the cane against the corridor wall, but no sooner had I done so than it fell to the floor; not an auspicious start. "Leave it," said Karen. I lifted my left foot, and immediately teetered forward, slamming it back into the ground as I did so. I quickly lifted my right leg, swinging it around stiffly, as if it lacked a knee. "Pay attention to exactly how your body is responding," said Karen. "I know walking is something we normally do subconsciously, but try to recognize exactly what effect you get with each mental command."

I managed a couple more steps. If I'd still been biological, I'd have been breathing deeply and sweating, but I'm sure there was no external indication of my exertion.

Still, it was enormously hard work, and I felt as though I was going to tumble over. I stopped, standing motionless, trying to regain my balance.

"I know it's hard," said Karen. "But it does get easier. It's all a question of learning a new vocabulary: this thought produces that action, and — ah! Look, see: your upper leg moved just fine that time. Try to reproduce that mental command exactly."

I tried again to move my left leg forward, putting my weight on it, then I tried moving my right leg. This time I got a little bending to occur at the knee, but it still swung widely as it came forward.

"There," said Karen. "That's right. Your body wants to do the right things; you just have to tell it how."

I would have grunted, but I didn't know how to make my new body do that yet, either. The corridor looked frightfully long, its sides converging at what might as well have been kilometers away.

"Now," said Karen, "try another step. Concentrate — see if you can keep that right leg more under control."

"I am trying," I said testily, lurching forward once more.

Her drawl was kind. "I know you are, Jake."

It was hard work mentally — like the frustration you feel when trying to recall a fact that's just out of reach, multiplied a thousand fold.

"You're doing great," she said. "Really, you are." Karen was walking backwards, a half-step at a time. I briefly wondered how many years it had been since she'd walked back-wards; an old woman, desperately afraid of breaking a hip or a leg, doubtless took small, shuffling steps most of the time, and forward — always forward.

I forced myself to take another step, then one more. Despite all of Immortex's best efforts to exactly copy the dimensions of my limbs, I was conscious that the center of gravity in my torso was higher up, perhaps due to my lack of hollow lungs. No big deal, but it did make me even more prone to falling forward.

And, at that moment, I realized I'd been thinking about something other than planting one foot in front of another — that my subconscious and conscious were now at least in some degree of agreement about the mechanics of walking.

"Bravo!" said Karen. "You're doing just fine." Beneath the fluorescent lights, she looked particularly artificial: her skin had a dry, plastic sheen; her eyes, not really moist, like-wise looked plastic — although, as I now could appreciate, they were a really lovely shade of green.

We continued on, lurching step after lurching step; I imagined if I looked back over my shoulder, I'd see the villagers chasing me with their torches.

"That's it!" said Karen. "That's perfect!"

Another step, and—

My right leg not moving quite the way I intended—

"God—"

My left ankle twisting to one side—

"—damn—"

My torso tipping farther and farther forward—

" — it!"

Karen surged forward, easily catching me in her outstretched arms, before I could fall flat on my face.

"There, there," she said, soothingly, her new body having no trouble supporting my weight. "There, there. It's okay."

I felt humiliated arid furious — at Immortex, and at myself. I pushed hard against Karen's arms, forcing myself back into a standing position. I didn't like asking for help — but I liked even less to fail when someone else was watching; indeed, it was doubly bad, since we were surely also being observed on closed-circuit video.