Golden Fleece

TWENTY-FOUR

It’s funny to see the world as a human sees it. For one thing, it’s so information-poor. The colors are muted and limited to the narrow span they arrogantly refer to as visible light. Heat radiation can’t be seen at all, apparently, and sounds are dull. I look at Aaron’s old apartment aboard the Argo and I see garish patterns in ultraviolet on the petals of the flowers, see the dull glow of the hot-water pipes behind the walls, hear the gentle hum of the air conditioner, the throbbing of the engines, the rustling of the springtime-yellow fibers of the seasonal carpeting as Aaron walks across them.

Aaron, apparently, senses none of those things. To him, the petals are simply white; the walls, uniform beige. And the noises? He has the required biological equipment to detect most of them, but he seems to use some sort of input mask to keep them from registering on his consciousness. Fascinating.

Of course, I’m not seeing through his eyes. Rather, I’m looking in on his memories, on the patterns of recollection stored in the interlinkings of his neurons. It’s disorienting enough trying to deal with Aaron’s different sensory perceptions. But what’s even more difficult to work with is his tendency not to remember clearly. He recalls some things in great detail, but other parts are generalized beyond recognizability.

Take his apartment for instance. When I look at it through my cameras, I see it precisely. It measures sixteen meters, ninety-seven centimeters by twelve meters, zero centimeters, by two meters, fifty centimeters, and is divided into four rooms. But Aaron doesn’t know that. He doesn’t even know that the ratio of the apartment’s length to its width is one to the square root of two, and that’s probably the most aesthetic thing about his home, given what a slob he is.

Further, it’s obvious to me that the living room is half the size of the whole apartment; the bedroom is half the size of the living room; and the remaining quarter is split evenly between the bathroom and tiny office.

But Aaron doesn’t see those proportions. He thinks, for instance, that the bedroom he shared with his wife Diana is tiny, claustrophobic, a trap. He sees it as only about two-thirds of its actual dimensions.

“You see, but you do not observe,” Sherlock Holmes said to Dr. Watson. Aaron certainly doesn’t observe. Oh, he recalls that there are some framed holographic prints on the walls of the apartment, but he doesn’t even remember how many there are over the couch. He has five fuzzy rectangular dabs of color in his memory, when in fact there are six such pictures hanging. And as for what the pictures represent—a chalice, a pewter tea service, an intricate mechanical clock, two different Louis XIV chairs, and an astrolabe, all from Diana’s collection of antiques left back on Earth—he recalls nothing, at least not in this set of memories.

Most revelatory of all is the way he sees himself. I’m surprised to find that many of his memories contain visions of him as if seen from a short distance away. I never record anything except from my camera’s point-of-view, and I only ever see part of myself in my memories if one camera’s field of vision happens to overlap another, so that I can look myself in the eyes. But Aaron does see himself, does visualize his face, his body.

Does that mean these are memories of memories? Scenes he has replayed in his mind over and over again, each repetition, like an analog recording, adding new errors, new fuzziness, but also new conjecture? Intriguing, this wetware memory. Fallible, yet editable.

Subjective.

The way he sees himself has only a passing connection with reality. For one thing, he has himself backward, flipped along his axis of symmetry, short, sandy hair parted the wrong way. I wonder why—of course: he usually only sees himself as a reflection in a mirror.

He also sees his nose as disproportionately big. Now it is a bit of a honker by statistical overall averages, but it’s hardly the monstrous appendage he thinks it is. Interesting. If it bothers him so much, I wonder why he hasn’t had it surgically altered? Ah, there’s the answer, hidden in a complex webbing of neurons: plastic surgery is vain, he thinks, only for movie stars, perverts, and—oh, yes—reconstruction after an accident.

He sees his head as larger than it really is compared to his body, and his face as a disproportionately significant part of his head. He’s also not aware of just how crummy his posture is.

What’s just as fascinating is how he views Diana. He sees her as she was two years ago. He’s unaware of the tiny reticulum of lines that has begun to appear at the corners of her eyes. He also tends to see her hair as breaking over her shoulders, even though for over a year she has kept it trimmed so that it barely touches them. Does that mean he’d stopped looking at her, stopped really seeing her? Incredible: to see without seeing. What does he feel as he gazes at her from across the room? What is he thinking? Accessing …

Nothing lasts forever. Is that a rationalization? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just the truth. My parents—my adopted parents, that is—broke up when I was eleven. Two-thirds of all marriages don’t last. Hell, even a quarter of limited-duration marriage contracts end up being breached.

I look at Diana and I see everything I should want. She’s beautiful and intelligent. No, she’s intelligent first, and then beautiful. Put it in that order, you pig. Christ, is that what this is all about? Hormones run amuck? If it is just about sex, then … then I’m not the man I thought I was. Diana is pretty—is beautiful, damn it. But Kirsten, Kirsten is gorgeous. Stacked. And her hair. It’s like a chocolate waterfall, cascading over her shoulders, down her back. Every time I see her, I want to reach out and touch it, stroke it, wrap it around my penis, make love to it, to her. Flowing tresses. I finally understand what that phrase means. It means Kirsten Hoogenraad.

And brains? Diana is an astrophysicist, for Pete’s sake. She’s one of the brightest women—brightest people—that I’ve ever met. She can talk knowledgeably about almost anything. About great books that I’ve never read. About great works of art that I’ve never understood. About exotic places I’ve never been.

I wanted Diana so badly just eighteen months ago. I risked everything. My mother will never forgive me for marrying a goy, but then, my mother will be dead by the time we get back. She’ll carry that hurt, the pain of what I did, to her grave. And now I want to give up on Diana?

But eighteen months was an impossibly long time ago, and Earth is impossibly distant. Whatever I do now, my mother will never know—and what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.

But I’ll know. And what about Diana? If I do pursue Kirsten, how will Diana take it? Our marriage contract is up in six months. She hasn’t asked me yet if I want to renew it. She has no reason to think I won’t, I guess. Or maybe she’s just being pragmatic. She knows that no renewal is possible until ninety days before the expiration date.

Why don’t I just wait the six months? May, June, July, August, September, October. That’s nothing compared to the time we’ve already spent in this tin can. Patience, Aaron. Patience.

But I can’t wait. I don’t want to wait. Every time I see Kirsten I get this feeling, this hollowness inside, this hunger. I want her. God, how I want her!

Waiting for the marriage expiration is a formality anyway, isn’t it? The marriage is over now, really. Besides, who knows whether Kirsten will be available six months from now. It’s no secret that that ape Clingstone has the hots for her. Christ, the way he comes on to her. No finesse. But Kirsten doesn’t want him, can’t prefer him. He’s a moron, a shallow person. Oh, sure, he’s handsome in a Neanderthal sort of way, but looks aren’t everything.

Or are they? What do I really know about Kirsten besides the fact that she’s an absolute stunner? Those legs that just go on and on; those breasts, large and perfect and round and firm. And her face, her smile, her eyes. But what do I know about her? Well, she’s a doctor. Dutch. Trained in Paris. Never been married. I wonder if she’s a virgin. Oh, scratch that. Get real, Aaron.

But what else do I know? Christ, I don’t even know if she’s Jewish. That’s the first question my mom always asked. “Mom, I met a nice girl today.” “Oh,” she’d say, “is she Jewish?” I don’t give a fuck what her religion is. Of course, maybe she doesn’t want to have anything to do with a Jew.

Stuff that. God, the old teachings die hard, don’t they? She must know I’m a Jew—you don’t get a name like Aaron Ross-man anywhere else. So I’m a Jew and she doesn’t mind. She’s probably not a Jew, and that’s fine with me. Sorry, Mom, but it is. Anyway, she’ll find out soon enough. Circumcision has fallen out of favor among Christians, after all.

Soon enough? Sounds like I’ve made up my mind, doesn’t it?

But do I really want to do this? Diana and I, we’ve built a life together. We’ve got interests in common, share the same friends. Barney, Pamela, Vincent, I-Shin. What are they going to think?

Fuck them. It’s none of their damned business. This is between me and Diana. And Kirsten. Besides, I can be discreet. Hell, if that goddamned JASON can’t read me, I’m sure nobody else can—not even Diana. She’ll never know.