Frozen

10. LIFE SUPPORT

That was pretty much all it took to RIP my social life. Not that I did much resting in peace. More like resting in isolation and humiliation and doubt and regret. Just because you can’t take something back, doesn’t mean you don’t want to.

Just because you want to, doesn’t mean you try.

By the time I got home and linked in that night, I’d lost priv-access to Cass’s and Terra’s zones; I’d been blocked from Walker’s altogether. Everyone else followed their lead. I was untouchable, on and off the network. People still stared; they still whispered as I passed in the hall, with one big difference: They no longer bothered to shut up when I got close. Instead they got louder, so I could hear the words interspersed with the giggles. Freak. Robo-nympho. Skinner slut. Cass spread the word that I was a mechanical sex junkie, and her mouth breather threw in some spicy details about my tendency to go psycho when my lust was denied.

Walker didn’t say anything, I was sure of it. But it was obvious we were over. And rumors spread: I’d attacked him, torn his clothes off, tried to force him. I’d cheated on him with a toaster. I’d malfunctioned in medias res, blowing sparks in a deus ex machina coitus interruptus that saved him from a nasty mistake. I didn’t deny any of it.

Neither did he.

Here’s the part where I say that my friends were shallow bitches and I’m better off without them. That Walker wasn’t good enough for me—that if he’d really loved me, he wouldn’t have let me leave, not without giving at least a modicum of chase. That I learned a valuable lesson about true-blue friendship, or maybe that surviving on my own was more fulfilling than depending on people who, deep down, didn’t really care.

Wouldn’t it be nice to think so.

They were, in fact, shallow bitches. News flash: So was I. It didn’t make me miss them any less. As for Walker… Life with a boyfriend? Far superior to life without. I probably shouldn’t admit that, but what am I supposed to do? Lie? So my friends hated me. So my boyfriend hated touching me. So my life was one big game of let’s pretend. Was that any worse than being alone?

Maybe it was, and maybe that’s why I walked away. But I’m allowed to regret it.

“I don’t get why I have to go in person,” I complained. “Can’t I just link in? What’s the difference?”

My mother shook her head. “This is about growing comfortable with your new physicality, dealing with issues of disembodiment and bodily alienation. You can’t do that virtually.”

“Physicality? Bodily alienation?” That did not sound like my mother.

“That’s what the counselor said.” My mother twisted the edge of her shirt, which she did when she was nervous, at least until my father noticed and forced her to stop. “She thinks this is crucial to a successful readjustment.”

“Readjustment?” That was Sascha’s term too, and I hated it. As if I’d emerged from a factory needing just a few minor alterations before I could rejoin my life. As if anything about this was minor. “I take it you’re still quoting?”

My mother reddened.

My father, who’d been monitoring some board meeting as if we weren’t even there, looked up from his screen. “You’re going.”

I went.

The group met in one of those buildings where they used to store paper books until no one wanted them anymore. You could tell because the shelves were still there, sitting empty, waiting for the world to change its mind and start printing with ink again—like that was going to happen. There were a lot of places like this, empty buildings that survived long after their purpose had died. Why go out for art, for drama, for literature, for fashion, when you could stay on the couch, safe from germs, weather, overexertion, crowds, annoying small talk, and get it all up close, personal, and on demand? I knew the corps had snatched up most of the useless land, keeping it around just in case. But I didn’t know that I would be the just in case, me and all the mech-heads in a hundred-mile radius, forced to drag our not-quite-dead bodies to a not-quite-dead library and spill our souls. If we had any. Which, depending on who you asked, was seriously in question.

I was late. The other six were already there, their chairs aligned in a circle with an empty one waiting for me, right next to Quinn. Not my favorite person, but at least she didn’t completely suck, which was more than I could say for the familiar face on the other side of the circle. Sascha offered up her best patronizing smile as I slipped into the seat. “Now that everyone’s here, why don’t we go around and introduce ourselves, so that our new members will feel more at home?”

Quinn slid a hand across her mouth, camouflaging her whisper: “If this is home, does that make her our new mommy?”

I smirked. “Kill me now.”

“Lia, why don’t you begin?” Sascha said loudly. It clearly wasn’t a suggestion.

“Lia Kahn,” I mumbled.

“Could you maybe tell us something more about your history?”

I shrugged. “I was born seventeen and a half years ago, on a dark and stormy—”

“I mean your recent history,” Sascha said, all sweetness and light. “Is there anything you want to share about the circumstances that led you to be here today?”

“Circumstances.” That was almost as good as “readjustment.” Such a nice, neat word to sum up the smell of flesh crackling in a fire, the hours and days in the dark, the slices of frozen brain matter scanned in, tossed aside. Just a collection of unfortunate circumstances, nothing more. “You told my parents this was mandatory,” I said. “And they bought it.”

Sascha cleared her throat. “Okay… Quinn? Is there anything about yourself you’d like to share with the group?”

“Selected members of the group, maybe,” Quinn said, glancing at the girl to her right, whose pale skin looked nearly white against the long strands of indigo hair. “I have plenty to offer.”

Sascha moved on. Quickly.

The blue-haired girl was Ani, and had been a mech-head for almost a year. Judging from the effort she was putting into avoiding Quinn’s gaze, she wasn’t much into sharing. Aron and Sloane, who obviously knew each other—and, less obviously but still noticeably, played footsie beneath their folding chairs—were better behaved. Aron had traded in his disease-riddled, six-weeks-to-live body a few months ago; Sloane had tried to kill herself, but only half-succeeded, waking up immortal instead, courtesy of an ill-planned leap from a tall building that wasn’t quite tall enough. They’d met in rehab.

And then there was Len. Perfectly proportioned and handsome, in that plastic, artificial way that we all were, but his looks didn’t match the way he slumped in his seat, his limbs tucked into his body, his head dipping compulsively, flipping his hair back over his eyes every time it threatened to expose him. He slumped like an ugly boy nobody liked.

“Nobody likes me,” he concluded at the tail end of a ten-minute pity fest.

“Can’t imagine why,” Quinn murmured. I turned my snort of laughter into a fake cough, which was an embarrassingly feeble attempt at subterfuge when you consider the fact that I didn’t have any lungs.

“I hate this,” Len said. “I just wish I could go back.”

“But you’ve told us how much you hated your life before,” Sascha said. “How you felt confined by the wheelchair, how you always felt that people didn’t see you for who you are, all they saw was your body—”

“And this is supposed to be better?” Len exploded. “At least I had a body. At least when people stared at me, they were staring at me, not at”—he punched his fist into his thigh—“this.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Quinn murmured.

“At least it was your call,” said the wannabe suicide. “You got to make a choice.”

“You feel you weren’t given a choice?” Sascha asked. I wondered how much she got paid for serving as a human echo chamber.

“I made a fucking choice,” Sloane said. “This wasn’t it.”

Aron took her hand. “Please don’t.”

She pulled away. “What am I supposed to say? Thanks, Mom and Dad?” She scowled. “You know what happens if I try it again? They’ll just dump me into a new body. I’m all backed up now, safe in storage. Even if I don’t upload every night—They’d probably like that better, because then they get a clean slate. I wouldn’t even remember trying to off myself again. Fuck, for all I know, it already happened, and everyone’s just lying to me. They’d do it, too. They want me, they got me.”

“You sound angry,” Sascha said, always so insightful. “You blame your parents for not wanting to let their daughter die?”

Sloane rolled her eyes. “Wake up, Sascha. They let their daughter die. I’m just some replacement copy. And if I do it again, they’ll make another copy. You think that’ll be me? You think I’m her?”

“You are her,” Sascha said.

“I know I’m still me,” Aron said. “The same me I always was. I can feel it. But sometimes…”

Sascha leaned forward, eager. Hungry. “Go on.”

“This is better than before. I get that,” he said. “But… it’s not just the way people look at me. It’s like, I’m different now. My friends…” He shook his head.

Sloane shoved his shoulder. “I told you, they can’t handle it? Whatever. Forget them.”

“Yeah.” Aron took her hand again, and this time she let him. I reminded myself I wasn’t jealous. Two rejects seeking solace in each other. Nice for them, but it’s not like I was looking to cuddle up with some freakshow of my own. “Sometimes I just think they’re right. It’s not the same.”

“What’s not the same?” Sascha asked.

“I don’t know. Everything. Me. I’m not.”

“Damn right,” Quinn said, loud enough for everyone to hear her this time. “You’re better, haven’t you noticed? Or would you rather be lying around in a hospital somewhere, choking on your own puke and waiting to die?”

“I didn’t say—”

“You said plenty,” Quinn said. “You all did. Whining about wanting to go backward, like backward was some amazing place to be. Like you wouldn’t be sick and your girlfriend here wouldn’t be crazy and you”—she whirled on Len—“wouldn’t be lame. In every sense of the word.” Quinn stood up. “This is supposed to help?” she asked Sascha. “Listening to them whine about their issues?”

“What’s supposed to help is sharing your issues,” Sascha said. “And, yes, empathizing with everyone else’s.”

Quinn shook her head. “I don’t have issues. I have a life. Something I’d advise the rest of you to acquire.”

She walked out.

Quinn, I was starting to realize, had a thing for dramatic exits.

“Lia, you’ve been pretty quiet over there,” Sascha said. “Do you want to add anything here?”

Everyone turned to look at me. I fought the urge to slouch down in my seat and turn away. I wasn’t Len. I wasn’t any of them.

“What do you want me to say?” I finally asked.

“Whatever you’d like,” Sascha said. “You could weigh in on whether you wish you could go backward, as Quinn put it, or whether you’d rather look ahead.”

I just stared at her.

“Or you could talk about how it’s been being back at school. Any problems you might be having with your friends or… your boyfriend?” There was something about the way she said it that made me wonder what she knew.

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“When you were in rehab, you talked about—”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said louder. “And I don’t have any issues to discuss either.”

“So you would say you’ve had no trouble adjusting to your new situation?” Sascha said. “You’re happy? Nothing that’s been said today rings true for you at all?”

I looked around the circle and suddenly saw how it would all play out. I would open up, confess all my fears about the future, I would empathize with Aron about feeling different, with Sloane about losing my ability to choose, even, maybe most of all, with lonely Len. With Sascha’s help we would let down our guard, become friends, a ragtag group of survivors with nothing in common but our circuitry and our fear. We would go out in public, clumping together for strength in numbers, pretending not to notice the stares or the way crowds parted so as not to touch us—or maybe pressed closer, reaching out to oh-so-casually brush past so as to tell their friends they got a handful of real, live (so to speak) skinner. We would whine, we would confide, we would wish we could still cry, we would bond, we would hook up, make promises, break them, we would cheat and we would forgive, we would stick together, because we would know that we were all any of us had. And eventually we would tell ourselves we were happy. Well-adjusted.

“Something was true,” I admitted, standing up. “You all need to get a life.”

I prepared a story for my parents, something bright and shiny about how caring everyone had been, how wonderfully supportive—maybe so supportive that I’d been entirely readjusted and wouldn’t need to go back. But it was a story I never got the chance to tell. Because when I got home, there was a strange man sitting on the couch, across from my father. A man I’d seen before.

My father beckoned, indicating that I should join them.

“This is the Honored Rai Savona,” he said. “Leader of the Faith Party. He’s come out here to apologize for the incident earlier when you first came home. The man who accosted you on our property?”

I hadn’t told my father about the man in the woods—and I could tell from his look that he wasn’t happy about it. But I knew he would never have admitted his ignorance to a stranger, and if I let it slip, things would be even worse. So I sat down and kept my mouth shut. The man kept his dark eyes on my father. I recognized him from the protest: He’d been the one in charge, the one who finally called it off.

“As I say, M. Kahn, his actions were in no way endorsed by the party, and he has been disciplined. A well-intentioned but sorely misguided soul. I take full responsibility for his trespassing and any damage he may have inflicted on”—he glanced at me—“your property.”

“Are you talking about me?” I asked.

“Lia,” my father snapped. “Manners.”

“Because I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

My father glared. “I appreciate your coming,” he told the man. “And I trust you’ll be keeping your followers off the grounds from now on? And away from my daughter?”

“There will be no more trespassing incidents,” the man said. His voice was slow and rich, like honey poured out of a jar, the words pooling into a puddle of sickening sweetness. Except not so sweet. “And we’ll maintain a respectful distance from… the recipient of the download process.”

“By which you mean me,” I said. “His daughter.”

He took the challenge, finally turning to face me. “I’m sorry,” he said, and, to his credit—or maybe to his acting teacher’s credit—he sounded it. More than sorry. Heartbroken. “I bear you no ill will.”

“No, you just don’t think I’m a real person.”

“I think looks can be deceiving,” he said. “My reflection in the mirror may look exactly like me. Talk like me. Move like me. But that doesn’t make it anything more than a copy. Nothing beneath the surface.”

“Your reflection can’t think for itself. It can’t do anything you don’t do.”

“Just like you can’t do anything your programmers didn’t program you to do.”

“No!” He was wrong. He had to be wrong. “I’m not a copy. I’m not a computer. I’m a person.”

“A person is created by God,” he said. “Gifted with a natural body, a divine soul. A person thinks and feels, is born and dies. A person has free will. You, on the other hand, are a machine. Built by man. Programmed by man. You may look like a person and act like a person; you may even, in your own way, believe you’re a person. But, no, I don’t think you are.”

“I have free will.” I was, for instance, willing myself not to walk across the room and punch him in the face.

“You have a computer inside your head, a computer designed to operate within a set of man-made parameters. To react a certain way to one set of stimuli, a different way to another.”

“If I’m just a computer, reacting mindlessly to stimuli, how come I’m free to make any decision I want?” I picked up one of my mother’s glass miniatures, a crystal pig that was sitting on the coffee table, watching the argument play out. “I can decide to throw this at the wall or to put it back on the table. No one programmed me one way or another. I decide.”

“You’re arguing you have free will because you feel like you have free will?”

“Yes. Which proves my point. If I were just some mindless computer, how could I feel anything?”

“And how do I know you do?” he asked. “How do I know you’re not just programmed to act like you do, to act like you have thoughts and beliefs—the belief in your identity, the belief in your free will, the belief in your humanity?”

“Because I’m telling you, I do have those beliefs.”

“And that’s exactly what you’d say if you were programmed to behave as if you were human. You would be programmed to respond to questions such as mine with the assertion that you made your own choices. Even when logic dictates that it’s not true.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I hope not,” he said. “Because if you really can think in some way, feel in some way that I can’t fathom, my heart goes out to you. Nothing is more tragic than believing yourself to be something you’re not.” He turned to my father. “I apologize if I’m speaking out of turn, but this thing is not your daughter. It has your daughter’s memories, it emulates your daughter’s personality, it may actually believe itself to be your daughter. But, much as you want it to be so, it’s not. Your daughter is gone.”

“Get out of my house,” my father said quietly. You’d have to know him to recognize the tone as thinly masked fury.

“M. Kahn, I speak not to offend, but to help guide you to the truth about—”

“Out!” He grabbed the glass pig out of my hand and flung it against the wall, just over the Honored Rai Savona’s head. “Now!”

The Honored Rai Savona didn’t bother to duck. But he made a speedy exit, brushing glittering flakes of glass out of his hair as he left. Once he was gone, my father and I sat in silence.

“So, why do you think he calls himself that?” I asked. “‘The Honored.’” Not because I cared, but because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I didn’t want to leave. This was the first time we’d been alone together since the accident. My father had already turned back to his screen. If I didn’t fill the silence soon, the moment would end.

“He says it’s a sign of respect for his ‘flock,’” my father said, without looking up from his work. “Nondenominational, all-inclusive.” He snorted. “And, of course, a handy way to get respect in name if you can’t get it in deed.”

It was confirmation that my father didn’t respect the man who’d called me inhuman. Confirmation I shouldn’t have needed.

“We won’t tell your mother about this,” he said, like it should be obvious. Which it was.

“Of course.”

More silence.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked, thinking of the support group, of Sloane, the fabric of her skirt clenched in her fists. Sloane, who had wanted to die.

My father nodded.

“What if, hypothetically, something happened to me?”

He still didn’t look up. “What would happen?”

“I’m just saying, what if,” I said. “If I got… hurt.”

“Then they’d fix you,” he said brusquely. “I thought they explained all that to you. Nothing to worry about.”

I had to edge toward it slowly, to give myself time to back away if I lost my nerve. “But what if it was bad? What if it was something they couldn’t fix?”

“Then we’d get you a new body,” he said, like it was nothing. Something I’d done before; something everyone did. “If you’re worried about the expense, don’t. It’s all included in what we paid for the initial procedure.”

“No. No, it’s not that. I’m just… What if I didn’t want it? A new body?”

He looked up. “What does that mean?”

“Well, what if, when something happened—I mean, if something happened, I just wanted…” Not that I would want that. I wouldn’t, I told myself. It was the principle of the thing; it was knowing I had the choice. “What if I’d told you ahead of time. No new body. What if I just wanted this one to be it?”

“Then we’d get you a new body,” he said, with the same matter-of-fact inflection he’d used the first time.

“No, you don’t understand, I mean—”

“No, Lia. I do understand.” With my father it was always hard to tell the difference between disinterest and rage. Both were delivered in the same rigidly controlled voice, his lips thin, his face expressionless. “You’re underage. Which gives me legal control over your medical condition. And I would prefer said condition remain ‘alive.’ So, in your hypothetical scenario, you’d be overruled.”

It was just hypothetical. But he didn’t ask for reassurance on that front. “Until next year,” I said instead.

“Because?”

“I turn eighteen,” I reminded him. “Then it’s my call. Legally.”

He gave me a thin smile. “Legally. Yes. If one were to play by the rules.”

“You taught us to always play by the rules.”

He nodded. “Necessary. Until you’re in a position to make the rules. Which I am.”

“So you’re saying—”

“Lia, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to work.” He tapped the screen. “Which means I don’t have time for your ridiculous hypotheticals.”

“Sorry. Yeah, of course.” I stood up. Backed out of the room. “Later, maybe. Or, whatever.” So he didn’t want to talk to me. Even about this. So what?

But then he spoke again. Without looking at me. Barely loud enough for me to hear. “I’m saying I won’t let you die. Will not. Not again.”

Upstairs, I sat on the edge of my bed, alone again. I didn’t want to be dead, I knew that. Even living like this… It was living. It was something. I couldn’t imagine the other option. I tried, sometimes, lying in bed, thinking about what it would be like: nothingness. The end. Sometimes I almost caught it, or at least, the edge of it. A nonexistence that stretched on forever, no more of me, no more of anything. The part I couldn’t grip was all the stuff I’d leave behind, the stuff that would stay here and keep going when I was gone.

When I was a kid I used to wonder if, just maybe, the world existed only for me. If rooms ceased to exist when I stepped into the hallway and people disappeared once they left me, the rest of their lives imagined solely for my entertainment. Other times I used to wonder if other people thought—I mean really thought—the way I did. They said they did, and they acted like they did, but how was I supposed to know if it was true? It was like colors. I knew what red looked like to me, but for all I knew, it looked different to everyone else. Maybe to everyone else, red looked like blue, and blue looked like red. It was, I had to admit, just like the Honored Savona had said. How could you ever know what was really going on in someone else’s head?

What I’m saying is, when I was a kid, I knew I was real. I just wasn’t sure anyone else was. And even if I didn’t think that way anymore, I still wasn’t convinced that the world could go on without me.

I didn’t want to die.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was now I couldn’t. My father wouldn’t let me.

Zo peeked into the room, hesitating in the doorway. “I heard,” she said.

Big surprise. “That’s what happens when you eavesdrop.”

Zo scowled. “I wasn’t—whatever. Forget it.”

“I’m sorry.” Not that I was, not really. But I didn’t want her to go. “This day just sucks.”

“Yeah.” She looked like she didn’t know what to say. Neither did I. Zo and I had never talked much before, and now we didn’t talk at all.

“You think he’s right?” I finally asked.

“What, Dad?” She shrugged. “What’s the difference? You planning on another accident? Or should I say”—she curled her fingers into exaggerated quotation marks—“ accident?”

I wondered, again, why she seemed to hate me so much. But I couldn’t ask.

She might answer.

“Not Dad,” I said. “The Faith guy. About—you know. All of it.”

“There’s no such thing as a soul,” Zo said. “So I kind of doubt you have one.”

“But the rest of it? About me being just a machine, fooling myself into believing… You think he could be right?”

She hesitated. Too long. Great—another answer I didn’t want to hear.

“Forget I asked,” I said. “Of course he’s not right. I’m just—”

“I don’t think you’re fooling yourself,” Zo said slowly. “And I don’t think… I don’t think it’s true what he said. About it not being natural. What’s natural anymore? Besides…” She glanced toward the window. The fog—or smog or haze or whatever it was—was bad today, so thick you couldn’t even see the trees. “Nature sucks.”

I laughed. She flinched.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Zo shifted her weight. “I’m just not used to it yet.”

“My laugh.”

“Your whole… Yeah. Your laugh.”

“Remember when Mom decided she wanted to be a singer, and she made us sit through her rehearsal?” I didn’t know what had made me think of it.

A smile slipped onto Zo’s face, like she couldn’t help it. “And we just had to sit there while she butchered that stupid song over and over again. What the hell was it called?”

We both paused. Then—

“‘Flowers in the Springtime’!” Together.

She giggled. “Everything was going fine until you made me laugh—”

“I made you laugh?”

“You made that face!” she said accusingly. “With your cheeks all puffed up and your eyebrows scrunched….”

“Yeah, because I was holding my breath, trying not to laugh at you, looking like you were having some kind of seizure.”

“Okay, but how could you not laugh, when she kept singing that stupid song—”

“‘Flowers in the springtime, apples in the trees,’” I warbled in a falsetto. “‘Your hand in my hand, gone weak in my knees.’”

“She sounded like a sick cat,” Zo sputtered.

“Like psycho Susskind, that night we left him outside in the thunderstorm.”

Zo shook her head. “Like psycho Susskind, if we threw him out the window. Howling for his life.”

“And when you started laughing—”

“When you started laughing—”

“I thought she was going to kill us both.”

Zo grinned. “At least that was the end of her singing career.”

“Career,” I said. “Yeah, right. A bright future in breaking glasses and shattering eardrums.” I shook my head. “And remember when Walker showed up that night, I had to explain why I was grounded, but that just started me off laughing again, and then you started again, and we couldn’t get the story out? I wonder if I ever did tell him what that was about.”

“You did,” Zo said flatly. She’d stopped laughing. “You texted him later and told him.”

“Oh. Right, okay. How do you even remember that?”

“I have to go,” Zo said. It was like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. “I’m late.”

“Where are you going?”

“What do you care?” she snapped.

I didn’t say anything.

She sagged against the doorframe, just a little, not enough so most people would notice, but I was her sister. I noticed. “I’m going out with Cass, okay? Is that a problem?” But she didn’t ask like she really wanted to know.

“It’s fine,” I said. “She’s your friend now, right? Go.”

“I wasn’t asking for permission.”

“Fine,” I said again, even though it wasn’t.

“Fine,” she said. And she left.

I wanted to get into bed and shut down, forget the day had ever happened. But there were two messages waiting for me. That was bizarre enough, since pretty much no one was speaking to me anymore, not unless you counted the randoms I only knew from the network, and even if I did count them, they’d mostly faded away, since I wasn’t doing much zone-hopping these days. When you ignored the randoms for long enough, they tended to get a clue.

The most recent text was from Quinn.

I’m going. And so are you.

It didn’t make sense. Not until I saw the one that had arrived just before it, addressed to both of us. From an anonymous sender.

Congratulations, you passed the first test.

Then there was a time, a date, and an address.

Ready for phase two?