Glasshouse

As for me, I don't have to fight anymore. I've got the best of my surrendered self's wishes, without any of the drawbacks. And I've been so lucky that thinking about it makes me want to cry.

I have a daughter. Her name's Andy—short for Andromeda. She swears she wants to be a boy when she grows up; she isn't going to hit puberty for another six years, and she may change her mind when her body starts changing. The important thing is we live in a society where she can be whatever she wants. She looks like a random phenotypic cross between Reeve and Sam, and sometimes when I see her in the right light, just catching her profile, my breath catches in my throat as I see him diving off that cliff. Did he know I was already pregnant when he carefully made sure I was out of harm's way, then jumped? It shouldn't be possible, but sometimes I wonder if he suspected.

Andromeda was delivered—surprise—in the hospital, by the nice Dr. Hanta. Who no longer needs a gun pointing at her head all day long, since Sa

It's late, now, and Andy is sleeping upstairs. I've been writing this account down longhand on paper, to help fix these events in my memory, like the letter someone wrote to me so long ago that I can barely remember what it was like to be him. Even without memory surgery, we are fragile beings, lights in the darkness that leave a trail fading out behind us as we forget who we have been. I don't actually want to remember much about what I was, before the war. I'm comfortable here, and I expect to live here for a long time to come, longer than my entire troubled life to this point. If all I remember of the first half of my life is a thick pile of paper and Sam's conflicted love for me, that will be enough. But there's a difference between not remembering and deliberately forgetting. Hence the stack of paper.

One last thought: My wife is dozing on the sofa across the room. I have a question for her, which I'll wake her up for. "What do you think Sam was thinking when he walked down that tu

Oh. That's useful. She yawns, and says, "I wouldn't know. I wasn't there."

"But if you had to guess?"

"I'd say he was hoping for a second chance."

"Is that all?"

She stands up. "Sometimes the truth is boring, Robin. Go on, put that in your memoir."

"Okay. Any other comments before I finish up here? I'm going to bed in a minute."

"Let me think . . ." Kay shrugs, an incredibly fluid gesture that involves four shoulder joints. "No. Don't be long." She smiles lazily and heads for the staircase, swinging her hips in a way that suggests she's got something other than sleep in mind. She's been a lot happier since she stopped being Sam, which she did very shortly after the panicky last-minute backup in the library basement. And so, you may be assured, am I.

Good night.

Acknowledgments

Thanks due to: James Nicoll, Robert "Nojay" Sneddon, Cory Doctorow, Andrew J. Wilson, Caitlin Blasdell, David Clements, Sean Eric Fagan, Farah Mendlesohn, Ken MacLeod, Juliet McKe

"This apparatus," said the Officer, grasping a co

—"In the Penal Colony," Frank Kafka

Who still talks nowadays about the Armenians?

—Adolf Hitler, 1939

Note

The polities descended from the Republic of Is do not use days, weeks, or other terrestrial dating systems other than for historical or archaeological purposes; however, the classical second has been retained as the basis of timekeeping.

Here's a quick ready-reckoner:

one second

One second, the time taken for light to travel 299,792,458 meters in vacuum

one kilosecond

Archaic: 16 minutes

one hundred kiloseconds (1 diurn)

Archaic: 27 hours, 1 day and three hours

one megasecond (1 cycle)

Ten diurns. Archaic: eleven days and six hours

thirty megaseconds (1 m-year)

300 diurns. Archaic: 337 Earth days (11 months)

one gigasecond

Archaic: approximately 31 Earth years

one terasecond

Archaic: approximately 31,000 Earth years (half age of human species)

one petasecond

Archaic: approximately 31,000,000 Earth years (half elapsed time since end of Cretaceous era)