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And woke up alone.
Through the almost twenty-four hours when I couldn’t talk, I chomped at the bit, wondering where Juliette was. Had I miscalculated? Or had she changed her mind?
In a fever of expectation I waited, till I could ask, “Isn’t there a lady waiting for me? A Juliette Jones?”
The nurse who’d been adjusting my IV shook her head. Then she gasped, and her hand went to her mouth. “Juliette?” she asked. “Jones?”
She touched something on the side of my bed, and images-3D images-formed at the foot, floating in midair.
It was like a TV screen without the TV or the screen. And it was showing a blue vehicle erupting into flames.
“It was the first extrasolar expedition,” the nurse said. “They think the quantum engine malfunctioned on return to the solar system. It… exploded.”
I felt as if I were living a nightmare. They said you didn’t dream in cold sleep, but I wondered if it was true. This could not be happening again. Juliette could not be dead-again.
“Everyone died?” I asked, with a sinking feeling.
“Oh, no,” the nurse said. “Oh, no. They saved them all. But the injuries… You know, we don’t think they’ll be able to live till the regeneration of tissues is more advanced. It’s still in its infancy, just now.”
“So they’ll die.”
She looked at me as if I were insane. She had eyes the same molten-chocolate color as Juliette’s. “Of course not. They’ve been put into cold sleep till the technology can be developed.”
Ah. Cold sleep. “And how long do you think that will be?” I asked.
“Ten years or so.”
On the way down to restart the process-the nurse insisted on wheeling me, or rather propelling me in a chair that hovered three feet off the ground-the nurse told me Juliette had awakened six months ago and, once she was in shape again, had been accepted for the first extrasolar expedition. She was to be, the nurse said, the first cold-sleeper to go to space.
They wouldn’t let me see her, of course. I made my painful calculations. Perhaps science would be slower than we expected. I would allow twenty years.
“Is there any way to let her know exactly when I’ll awake?” I asked. “Can you let her know?”
“Only if it’s reciprocal,” the counselor said. She brought up what looked like tri-dimensional letters writhing in midair in front of her face.
“But she was put in cold sleep for medical reasons,” I said.
“She was conscious when she came in.” The woman looked at the computer some more.
Why would it be reciprocal, I wondered. I tried to imagine Juliette wounded, suffering. Only the greatest of loves would remember me in those circumstances. We’d pursued each other through time, but would we ever meet again?
“Oh, there it is,” the counselor said. “She has asked that if you go into cold sleep you ask to be awakened when she is.”
“And is that possible?”
“It is if both consent,” the woman-who could be a clone of the first counselor-said. And she handed me something.
It was a small note. It said, Dear Romeo, I’m writing this on paper-though they all think I’m crazy-because I want you to have something to hold onto when you go back in to wait for me. I asked this time that you be awakened when I am. We will meet again.
Two hours later, I was falling asleep with her note clutched in my hand. It was the winter of 2100 and I had not the slightest intention of forgetting.
I would meet my love again when I woke up.
BOYS by Dave Freer
‘You are all doomed!” shrieked the hairy, rag-clad consie leaning into my space on the pedway. He stank. Typical consie. They don’t wash because soap causes pollution. “The end is nigh! Repent! Turn your back on this technology. Humanity was not meant to to live cocooned…”
I stepped off the pedway and into the shelter of the lobby of a store. A mistake. I should have put up with the lunatic on the pedway a bit longer. I thought that I’d just wait for a few seconds and then step back out onto the pedway and head on to my comfortable size-three nu-home. Yeah, the robotics were nearly three months old, but really, I was used to them. And from the outside who could tell? A nu-home was a nu-home. I was single, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t like I had had anyone inside the place since I broke up with Marcus. He would have upgraded my nu-home every two weeks. He was a sucker for the livvy adverts.
I turned to step out onto the pedway again. I should have paid more attention. It was pretty subtle and pretty slick, I have to admit, I’d never even realized that the lobby had been quietly rotated under my feet and that I was stepping into the hands of the Ultrabiotics floorwalker.
“Welcome to Ultrabotics, madam.” On its broad chest the logo tickertape flickered across the display plate: “Ultrabotics, for the latest in every robotic luxury update for the discerning customer.”
I frantically reached into my pocket for my eye-shields as I ducked under the hypnospray. Alas, I wasn’t quick enough to avoid a retinal scan. Great! So now the store’s central computer would know my credit balance to last decimal, and the make, model and date of purchase of every appliance in my home. Of course it was strictly illegal, but all businesses did it, and what did you expect, coming into a shop without eye-shields? I should have just put up with that hairy Luddite on the pedway. It wasn’t like I didn’t have to deal with weirdos at work. It was one of downsides to working at an antique dealer’s.
The floorwalker’s eye-lights did a little flickering dance of glee. I groaned softly. There goes my credit balance, I thought, as the padded shackles slipped around my wrists. “Madam is so lucky to have come into Ultrabotics on the fifth day of our spring madness specials!” It frogmarched me along to the display units. Clipped my manacles onto the harness of a salesbot. “May we offer you a complimentary cup of coffee, madam?” said the salesbot pleasantly. “It will allow us to display some of the finest features of the new Ultrabotics fully integrated nu-home mark 7583 robo-kitchen-diner-bar and barbecue unit module.” The subharmonics playing “buy, buy, buy” were already sending my hands twitching for my credo-meter, and of course I couldn’t get to my earplugs. The robo-kitchen’s taped gurgle-gurgle percolator noises must have been carefully synthesized not to interfere with the sales pitch, which was why you could hear the instakoff powder crackling as it hit the water and started heating it. Moments later a fragrantly steaming cup of instakoff appeared in a bot hand extending out from the kitchen console. It smelled wonderful. But at all costs I had to avoid drinking that coffee. It would be so loaded with alkaloids, hypnotics, mood enhancers and free-will suppressants that I would be in debt for the next 100 years. “Coffee allergy,” I said, waving it off.
The bot-hand jerked back to avoid spilling coffee on me. A pity. A liability claim and I could have been home free. That was one of the problems we had to deal with in the antique trade. The failsafes on the old stuff were less intricate, and because the programming language had been so cumbersome before the new wave, the old hardware often had tons of mem-space. That was all very well, except for the machines built around changeover-still with old memory specs. All that space seemed to fill with random errors that could accidentally throw up some bizarre bits of code. We had been sued for a toaster that decided it wanted to dance the polka with its owner only a month ago. It put a whole new meaning to a hot date. Well, the nu-home had changed the meaning of “kitchen appliance,” or even “kitchen” for that matter, forever. Old machines just hadn’t been built to cope with a world where your home was your appliances. And your furniture. And your entertainment. Where the walls themselves could change to become… anything.