We call these tales of indomitable spirit. Each speaks of hope, strength, courage, and perseverance, whatever the circumstance, showing a vision of how the humanity present in us today shall flower unbowed on the morrow.
When she died, his wife turned into a flock of starlings. She loved the exhilaration of flight, and it was an easy setup to maintain. The birds grew Link seeds to feed to their chicks, and the old and sick could simply be de-linked. It made her hard to talk with, but that was nothing new with Maureen.
Decades later, when Jeffrey’s original body finally became too painful and expensive to keep going, he knew that option wasn’t for him. After a final get-together with friends, he’d shut the tired old thing down. All its memories and patterns had long since been duplicated in the cloud, so he didn’t lose anything important, but now he needed a new sensorium.
After four months of searching, he hadn’t yet found a satisfactory replacement. “I have no center,” he complained to Schel. He’d rented a gibbon to meet an old friend at an outdoor cafe in Sydney. “I miss the consistency. I miss the routines.” His lips didn’t move, since a gibbon’s vocal equipment wasn’t up to producing human speech, but a Link call worked just as well across a table as across the world. “I liked sleeping.”
“You always were a stodgy old thing.” Schel had also worn a gibbon for the occasion, a female. She was usually more of a dog person, so perhaps she was plotting to get him into bed.
Jeffrey had mixed feelings about that. It had nothing to do with Maureen – they hadn’t spoken in years, and their marriage had legally ended with the death of her OB. And he had no objection to Schel as a partner; they’d slept together a few times while her OB was alive, and a couple of times after her spaceplane accident, when she was living in a mech.
No, it was mostly that he’d never done it using a body other than the one he’d thought of as his own. Thinking about being with Schel now, in these bodies, made him uneasy; it seemed perverse.
“I guess I’m a traditionalist,” he said, answering her as well as commenting on his own thoughts. He took a slice of apple—he’d always had scones with his tea, but the fruit on a nearby table had smelled delicious, and was. Schel smelled nice, too. The sun was warm, the cobblestones wet from a recent rain, and the streets uncrowded, with 95% of humanity in sim. Wasting their time, in Jeffrey’s view, playing with bits instead of engaging with the real world.
Schel scooted a little closer on the curved bench that circled their table. “You could be a human again. The latest bodies will last centuries, with very little maintenance.”
Jeffrey sighed. “They take so long to grow, though. I should’ve started one years ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She put a hand on his back, sifting through the long hairs there. Jeffrey tensed for a moment, but it felt wonderful, so he didn’t move away. “I don’t know. I never was comfortable running multiple bodies, and it’d be annoying to be a baby and have to be cared for. The times I did rentals, I felt like I wasn’t really me. And maybe I was in denial. I thought I’d have longer.” If only it were possible to get a human body already grown… but of course, it would have a personality of its own, a complex enough mind to expand into the cloud when Linked, not serve as a peripheral. Maybe in a century or two, mechs would be good enough, but not today.
Schel’s other hand joined the first on his back, and she pulled the band of his shorts down a little to access more area. “Lots of people get along fine with just rentals. Including me. There’s always a new experience, and travel is a breeze. In fact, I’m toying with the idea of emigrating to 82 Eridani. If you do decide to commit to raising a new body, you could wait and do it there. We’d have to be offline for twenty-five years, but if we get together a group to go, at least there’d be people we knew once we got there. We’d bring culture to the Dannies.”
“I’m sure the colony’s created plenty of their own culture by now.” Still, it was an interesting idea. Jeffrey shifted to bring a new portion of his back into her reach. The Eridani colonies probably could use a little adult supervision—from the infant he would become when he arrived. There was useful work to do there. “I’ll think about it.”
“No rush. In three or five years. I haven’t used up this solar system yet.” Schel reached out a long arm for her cup, raised her head and pursed her lips to drain it, then held it to her face to lick the inside. “Nice tea. I could come back here. Are you almost done with yours?”
There was a little left in the pot, but Schel seemed to be getting restless. “I can be done.”
“There’s a lovely park a little way down the road. Lots of trees. Have you ever brachiated?”
“Have I ever…?” He recognized the Latin root, but the cloud supplied the definition before he had to think further. “Swung from trees?”
“It’s like flying, except you don’t have to be a bird-brain to do it.” Schel hopped down and reached for him. “You’ll love it. And there are lots of private places in the branches. We can talk more up there.”
Jeffrey hesitated a moment, then reached out and let her draw him gently to the ground. She kept hold of his hand as they walked down the sidewalk, bow-legged, past a duck pond, a small farm tower, an op-con place in a narrow storefront, an art supply depot. At their slow pace, mechs strode past, towering over them. Jeffrey, feeling cheerful, waved to a group of kangaroos going the opposite direction. They didn’t wave back, but maybe there was no-one inside.
“Have you been a dolphin?” Schel asked suddenly.
“No.”
“No, you’ve just been sitting in the cloud getting stale, haven’t you? All right for some, but not for us. Dolphin, definitely. My treat. If I do go to Eridani, first I want to try some things that aren’t available there yet, and it’s nice to have someone to try them with.”
“You’re trying to corrupt me.”
“I’m helping you make an informed choice. Come on.” She squeezed his hand. “Death has a lot to offer.”
