I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.
Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two. She's buried in Harris Creek Cemetery, not more than a mile down the road from where I live and where we raised our family. Getting her into the cemetery was more difficult than perhaps it should have been; neither of us expected needing the burial, so neither of us made the arrangements. It's somewhat mortifying, to use a rather apt word, to have to argue with a cemetery manager about your wife not having made a reservation to be buried. Eventually my son, Charlie, who happens to be mayor, cracked a few heads and got the plot. Being the father of the mayor has its advantages.
So, the grave. Simple and unremarkable, with one of those small markers instead of a big headstone. As a contrast, Kathy lies next to Sandra Cain, whose rather oversized headstone is polished black granite, with Sandy's high school photo and some maudlin quote from Keats about the death of youth and beauty sandblasted into the front. That's Sandy all over. It would have amused Kathy to know Sandra was parked next to her with her big dramatic headstone; all their lives Sandy nurtured an entertainingly passive-aggressive competition with her. Kathy would come to the local bake sale with a pie, Sandy would bring three and simmer, not so subtly, if Kathy's pie sold first. Kathy would attempt to solve the problem by preemptively buying one of Sandy's pies. It's hard to say whether this actually made things better or worse, from Sandy's point of view.
I suppose Sandy's headstone could be considered the last word in the matter, a final show-up that could not be rebutted, because, after all, Kathy was already dead. On the other hand, I don't actually recall anyone visiting Sandy. Three months after Sandy passed, Steve Cain sold the house and moved to Arizona with a smile as wide as Interstate 10 plastered on his skull. He sent me a postcard some time later; he was shacking up with a woman down there who had been a porn star fifty years earlier. I felt unclean for a week after getting that bit of information. Sandy's kids and grand-kids live one town over, but they might as well be in Arizona for as often as they visit. Sandy's Keats quote probably hadn't been read by anyone since the funeral but me, in passing, as I move the few feet over to my wife.
Kathy's marker has her name (Katherine Rebecca Perry), her dates, and the words: BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER. I read those words over and over every time I visit. I can't help it; they are four words that so inadequately and so perfectly sum up a life. The phrase tells you nothing about her, about how she met each day or how she worked, about what her interests were or where she liked to travel. You'd never know what her favorite color was, or how she liked to wear her hair, or how she voted, or what her sense of humor was. You'd know nothing about her except that she was loved. And she was. She'd think that was enough.
I hate visiting here. I hate that my wife of forty-two years is dead, that one minute one Saturday morning she was in the kitchen, mixing a bowl of waffle batter and talking to me about the dustup at the library board meeting the night before, and the next minute she was on the floor, twitching as the stroke tore through her brain. I hate that her last words were "Where the hell did I put the vanilla."
I hate that I've become one of those old men who visits a cemetery to be with his dead wife. When I was (much) younger I used to ask Kathy what the point would be. A pile of rotting meat and bones that used to be a person isn't a person anymore; it's just a pile of rotting meat and bones. The person is gone—off to heaven or hell or wherever or nowhere. You might as well visit a side of beef. When you get older you realize this is still the case. You just don't care. It's what you have.
For as much as I hate the cemetery, I've been grateful it's here, too. I miss my wife. It's easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she's never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.
I didn't stay long; I never do. Just long enough to feel the stab that's still fresh enough after most of eight years, the one that also serves to remind me that I've got other things to do than to stand around in a cemetery like an old, damned fool. Once I felt it, I turned around and left and didn't bother looking around. This was the last time I would ever visit the cemetery or my wife's grave, but I didn't want to expend too much effort in trying to remember it. As I said, this is the place where she's never been anything but dead. There's not much value in remembering that.
Although come to think of it, signing up for the army wasn't all that dramatic either.
My town was too small for its own recruiting office. I had to drive into Greenville, the county seat, to sign up. The recruiting office was a small storefront in a nondescript strip mall; there was a state liquor authority store on one side of it and a tattoo parlor on the other. Depending on what order you went into each, you could wake up the next morning in some serious trouble.
The inside of the office was even less appealing, if that's possible. It consisted of a desk with a computer and a printer, a human behind that desk, two chairs in front of the desk and six chairs lining a wall. A small table in front of those chairs held recruiting information and some back issues of Time and Newsweek. Kathy and I had been in here a decade earlier, of course; I suspect nothing had been moved, much less changed, and that included the magazines. The human appeared to be new. At least I don't remember the previous recruiter having that much hair. Or breasts.
The recruiter was busy typing something on the computer and didn't bother to look up as I came in. "Be right with you," she muttered, by way of a more or less Pavlovian response to the door opening.
"Take your time," I said. "I know the place is packed." This attempt at marginally sarcastic humor went ignored and unappreciated, which has been par for the course for the last few years; good to see I had not lost my form. I sat down in front of the desk and waited for the recruiter to finish whatever she was doing.
"You coming or going?" she asked, still without actually looking up at me.
"Pardon me?" I said.
"Coming or going," she repeated. "Coming in to do your Intent to Join sign-up, or going out to start your term?"
"Ah. Going out, please."
This finally got her to look at me, squinting out through a rather severe pair of glasses. "You're John Perry," she said.
"That's me. How did you guess?"
She looked back to her computer. "Most people who want to enlist come in on their birthday, even though they have thirty days afterward to formally enlist. We only have three birthdays today. Mary Valory already called to say she won't be going. And you don't look like you'd be Cynthia Smith."
"I'm gratified to hear that," I said.
"And since you're not coming in for an initial sign-up," she continued, ignoring yet another stab at humor, "it stands to reason you're John Perry."
"I could just be a lonely old man wandering around looking for conversation," I said.
"We don't get many of those around here," she said. "They tend to be scared off by the kids next door with the demon tattoos." She finally pushed her keyboard away and gave me her full attention. "Now, then. Let's see some ID, please."
"But you already know who I am," I reminded her.
"Let's be sure," she said. There was not even the barest hint of a smile when she said this. Dealing with garrulous old farts every day had apparently taken its toll.
I handed over my driver's license, birth certificate and national identity card. She took them, reached into her desk for a handpad, plugged it into the computer and slid it over to me. I placed my hand on it palm down and waited for the scan to finish. She took the pad and slid my ID card down the side to match the print information. "You're John Perry," she said, finally.
"And now we're back where we started," I said.
She ignored me again. "Ten years ago during your Intent to Join orientation session, you were provided information concerning the Colonial Defense Forces, and the obligations and duties you would assume by joining the CDF," she said, in the tone of voice which indicated that she said this at least once a day, every day, most of her working life. "Additionally, in the interim period, you have been sent refresher materials to remind you of the obligations and duties you would be assuming.
"At this point, do you need additional information or a refresher presentation, or do you declare that you fully understand the obligations and duties you are about to assume? Be aware there is no penalty either for asking for refresher materials or opting not to join the CDF at this time."
I recalled the orientation session. The first part consisted of a bunch of senior citizens sitting on folding chairs at the Greenville Community Center, eating donuts and drinking coffee and listening to a CDF apparatchik drone on about the history of human colonies. Then he handed out pamphlets on CDF service life, which appeared to be much like military life anywhere. During the question and answer session we found out he wasn't actually in the CDF; he'd just been hired to provide presentations in the Miami valley area.
The second part of the orientation session was a brief medical exam—a doctor came in and took blood, swabbed the inside of my cheek to dislodge some cells, and gave me a brain scan. Apparently I passed. Since then, the pamphlet I was provided at the orientation session was sent to me once a year through the mail. I started throwing it out after the second year. I hadn't read it since.
"I understand," I said.
She nodded, reached into her desk, pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and handed both to me. The paper held several paragraphs, each with a space for a signature underneath. I recognized the paper; I had signed another, very similar paper ten years earlier to indicate that I understood what I would be getting into a decade in the future.
"I'm going to read to you each of the following paragraphs," she said. "At the end of each paragraph, if you understand and accept what has been read to you, please sign and date on the line immediately following the paragraph. If you have questions, please ask them at the end of each paragraph reading. If you do not subsequently understand or do not accept what has been read and explained to you, do not sign. Do you understand?"
"I understand," I said.
"Very good," she said. "Paragraph one: I the undersigned acknowledge and understand that I am freely and of my own will and without coercion volunteering to join the Colonial Defense Forces for a term of service of not less than two years in length. I additionally understand that the term of service may be extended unilaterally by the Colonial Defense Forces for up to eight additional years in times of war and duress."
This "ten years total" extension clause was not news to me—I did read the information I was sent, once or twice—although I wondered how many people glossed over it, and of those who didn't, how many people actually thought they'd be stuck in the service ten years. My feeling on it was that the CDF wouldn't ask for ten years if it didn't feel it was going to need them. Because of the Quarantine Laws, we don't hear much about colonial wars. But what we do hear is enough to know it's not peacetime out there in the universe.
I signed.
"Paragraph two: I understand that by volunteering to join the Colonial Defense Forces, I agree to bear arms and to use them against the enemies of the Colonial Union, which may include other human forces. I may not during the term of my service refuse to bear and use arms as ordered or cite religious or moral objections to such actions in order to avoid combat service."
How many people volunteer for an army and then claim conscientious objector status? I signed.
"Paragraph three: I understand and agree that I will faithfully and with all deliberate speed execute orders and directives provided to me by superior officers, as provided for in the Uniform Code of Colonial Defense Forces Conduct."
I signed.
"Paragraph four: I understand that by volunteering for the Colonial Defense Forces, I consent to whatsoever medical, surgical or therapeutic regimens or procedures are deemed necessary by the Colonial Defense Forces to enhance combat readiness."
Here it was: Why I and countless other seventy-five-year-olds signed up every year.
I once told my grandfather that by the time I was his age they'd have figured out a way to dramatically extend the human life span. He laughed at me and told me that's what he had assumed, too, and yet there he was, an old man anyway. And here I am as well. The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
You can't stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That's aging's trump card; they still can't replace brains.
Life expectancy climbed up near the ninety-year mark a while back, and that's where it's been ever since. We eked out almost another score from the "three score and ten" and then God seems to have put his foot down. People can live longer, and do live longer—but they still live those years as an old person. Nothing much has ever changed about that.
Look, you: When you're twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five or even fifty-five, you can still feel good about your chances to take on the world. When you're sixty-five and your body is looking down the road at imminent physical ruin, these mysterious "medical, surgical and therapeutic regimens and procedures" begin to sound interesting. Then you're seventy-five, friends are dead, and you've replaced at least one major organ; you have to pee four times a night, and you can't go up a flight of stairs without being a little winded—and you're told you're in pretty good shape for your age.
Trading that in for a decade of fresh life in a combat zone begins to look like a hell of a bargain. Especially because if you don't, in a decade you'll be eighty-five, and then the only difference between you and a raisin will be that while you're both wrinkled and without a prostate, the raisin never had a prostate to begin with.
So how does the CDF manage to reverse the flow of aging? No one down here knows. Earthside scientists can't explain how they do it, and can't replicate their successes, though it's not for the lack of trying. The CDF doesn't operate on-planet, so you can't ask a CDF veteran. However, the CDF only recruits on-planet, so the colonists don't know, either, even if you could ask them, which you can't. Whatever therapies the CDF performs are done off-world, in the CDF's own authority zones, away from the purview of global and national governments. So no help from Uncle Sam or anyone else.
Every once in a while, a legislature or president or dictator decides to ban CDF recruiting until it reveals its secrets. The CDF never argues; it packs up and goes. Then all the seventy-five-year-olds in that country take long international vacations from which they never return. The CDF offers no explanations, no rationales, no clues. If you want to find out how they make people young again, you have to sign up.
I signed.
"Paragraph five: I understand that by volunteering for the Colonial Defense Forces, I am terminating my citizenship in my national political entity, in this case the United States of America, and also the Residential Franchise that allows me to reside on the planet Earth. I understand that my citizenship will henceforth be transferred generally to the Colonial Union and specifically to the Colonial Defense Forces. I further recognize and understand that by terminating my local citizenship and planetary Residential Franchise, I am barred from subsequent return to Earth and, upon completion of my term of service within the Colonial Defense Forces, will be relocated to whatsoever colony I am allotted by the Colonial Union and/or the Colonial Defense Forces."
More simply put: You can't go home again. This is part and parcel of the Quarantine Laws, which were imposed by the Colonial Union and the CDF, officially at least, to protect Earth from any more xenobiological disasters like The Crimp. Folks on the Earth were all for it at the time. Funny how insular a planet will become when a third of its male population permanently loses its fertility within the space of a year. People here are less enthused about it now—they've gotten bored with Earth and want to see the rest of the universe, and they've forgotten all about childless Great Uncle Walt. But the CU and CDF are the only ones with spaceships that have the skip drives that make interstellar travel possible. So there it is.
(This makes the agreement to colonize where the CU tells you to colonize something of a moot point—since they're the only ones with the ships, you go where they take you anyway. It's not as if they're going to let you drive the starship.)
A side effect of the Quarantine Laws and the skip drive monopoly is to make communication between Earth and the colonies (and between the colonies themselves) all but impossible. The only way to get a timely response from a colony is to put a message onto a ship with a skip drive; the CDF will grudgingly carry messages and data for planetary governments this way, but anyone else is out of luck. You could put up a radio dish and wait for communication signals from the colonies to wash by, but Alpha, the closest colony to Earth, is eighty-three light-years away. This makes lively gossip between planets difficult.
I've never asked, but I would imagine that it is this paragraph that causes the most people to turn back. It's one thing to think you want to be young again; it's quite another thing to turn your back on everything you've ever known, everyone you've ever met or loved, and every experience you've ever had over the span of seven and a half decades. It's a hell of a thing to say good-bye to your whole life.
I signed.
"Paragraph six—final paragraph," the recruiter said. "I recognize and understand that as of seventy-two hours of the final signing of this document, or my transport off Earth by the Colonial Defense Forces, whichever comes first, I will be presumed as deceased for the purposes of law in all relevant political entities, in this case the State of Ohio and the United States of America. Any and all assets remaining to me will be dispensed with according to law. All legal obligations or responsibilities that by law terminate at death will be so terminated. All previous legal records, be they meritorious or detrimental, will be hereby stricken, and all debts discharged according to law. I recognize and understand that if I have not yet arranged for the distribution of my assets, that at my request the Colonial Defense Forces will provide me with legal and financial counsel to do so within seventy-two hours."
I signed. I now had seventy-two hours to live. So to speak.
"What happens if I don't leave the planet within seventy-two hours?" I said as I handed the paper back to the recruiter.
"Nothing," she said, taking the form. "Except that since you're legally dead, all your belongings are split up according to your will, your health and life benefits are canceled or disbursed to your heirs and being legally dead, you have no legal right to protection under the law from everything from libel to murder."
"So someone could just come up and kill me, and there would be no legal repercussions?"
"Well, no," she said. "If someone were to murder you while you were legally dead, I believe that here in Ohio they could be tried for 'disturbing a corpse.'"
"Fascinating," I said.
"However," she continued, in her ever-more-distressing matter-of-fact tone, "it usually doesn't get that far. Anytime between now and the end of those seventy-two hours you can simply change your mind about joining. Just call me here. If I'm not here, an automated call responder will take your name. Once we've verified it's actually you requesting cancellation of enlistment, you'll be released from further obligation. Bear in mind that such cancellation permanently bars you from future enlistment. This is a onetime thing."
"Got it," I said. "Do you need to swear me in?"
"Nope," she said. "I just need to process this form and give you your ticket." She turned back to her computer, typed for a few minutes, and then pressed the ENTER key. "The computer is generating your ticket now," she said. "It'll be a minute."
"Okay," I said. "Mind if I ask you a question?"
"I'm married," she said.
"That wasn't what I was going to ask," I said. "Do people really proposition you?"
"All the time," she said. "It's really annoying."
"Sorry about that," I said. She nodded. "What I was going to ask was if you've actually ever met anyone from CDF."
"You mean apart from enlistees?" I nodded. "No. The CDF has a corporation down here that handles recruiting, but none of us are actual CDF. I don't think even the CEO is. We get all our information and materials from the Colonial Union embassy staff and not the CDF directly. I don't think they come Earthside at all."
"Does it bother you to work for an organization you never met?"
"No," she said. "The work is okay and the pay is surprisingly good, considering how little money they've put in to decorate around here. Anyway, you're going to join an organization you've never met. Doesn't that bother you?"
"No," I admitted. "I'm old, my wife is dead and there's not much reason to stay here anymore. Are you going to join when the time comes?"
She shrugged. "I don't mind getting old."
"I didn't mind getting old when I was young, either," I said. "It's the being old now that's getting to me."
Her computer printer made a quiet hum and a business card–like object came out. She took it and handed it to me. "This is your ticket," she said to me. "It identifies you as John Perry and a CDF recruit. Don't lose it. Your shuttle leaves from right in front of this office in three days to go to the Dayton Airport. It departs at 8:30 A.M; we suggest you get here early. You'll be allowed only one carry-on bag, so please choose carefully among the things you wish to take.
"From Dayton, you'll take the eleven A.M. flight to Chicago and then the two P.M. delta to Nairobi from there. They're nine hours ahead in Nairobi, so you'll arrive there about midnight, local time. You'll be met by a CDF representative, and you'll have the option of either taking the two A.M. beanstalk to Colonial Station or getting some rest and taking the nine A.M. beanstalk. From there, you're in the CDF's hands."
I took the ticket. "What do I do if any of these flights is late or delayed?"
"None of these flights has ever experienced a single delay in the five years I've worked here," she said.
"Wow," I said. "I'll bet the CDF's trains run on time, too."
She looked at me blankly.
"You know," I said, "I've been trying to make jokes to you the entire time I've been here."
"I know," she said. "I'm sorry. My sense of humor was surgically removed as a child."
"Oh," I said.
"That was a joke," she said, and stood up, extending her hand.
"Oh." I stood up and took it.
"Congratulations, recruit," she said. "Good luck to you out there in the stars. I actually mean that," she added.
"Thank you," I said, "I appreciate it." She nodded, sat back down again, and flicked her eyes back to the computer. I was dismissed.
On the way out I saw an older woman walking across the parking lot toward the recruiting office. I walked over to her. "Cynthia Smith?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "How did you know?"
"I just wanted to say happy birthday," I said, and then pointed upward. "And that maybe I'll see you again up there."
She smiled as she figured it out. Finally, I made someone smile that day. Things were looking up.
Nairobi was launched from underneath us, and dropped away; we walked over to the side as if on a fast elevator (which is of course exactly what the beanstalk is) and watched the Earth begin its slide.
"They look like ants from up here!" Leon Deak cackled as he stood next to me. "Black ants!"
I had the strong urge to crack open a window and hurl Leon out of it. Alas, there was no window to crack; the beanstalk's "window" was the same diamond composite materials as the rest of the platform, made transparent so travelers could sightsee below them. The platform was airtight, which would be a handy thing in just a few minutes, when we were high enough up that cracking a window would lead to explosive decompression, hypoxia and death.
So Leon would not find himself making a sudden and entirely unexpected return to the Earth's embrace. More's the pity. Leon had attached himself to me in Chicago like a fat, brat-and-beer-filled tick; I was amazed that someone whose blood was clearly half pork grease had made it to age seventy-five. I spent part of the flight to Nairobi listening to him fart and expound darkly on his theory of the racial composition of the colonies. The farts were the most pleasant part of that monologue; never had I been so eager to purchase headphones for the in-flight entertainment.
I'd hoped to ditch him by opting to take the first 'stalk out of Nairobi. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd need a rest after busily passing gas all day. No such luck. The idea of spending another six hours with Leon and his farts was more than I could take; if the beanstalk platform had windows and I couldn't hurl Leon out of one, I might have jumped myself. Instead, I excused myself from Leon's presence by telling him the only thing that seemed to hold him at bay, which was by saying I had to go relieve myself. Leon grunted his permission. I wandered off counterclockwise, in the general direction of the rest rooms but more specifically to see if I could find a place where Leon might not find me.
This was not going to be easy to do. The 'stalk platform was donut-shaped, with a diameter of about one hundred feet. The "hole" of the donut, where the platform slid up the 'stalk, was about twenty feet wide. The cable's diameter was obviously slightly less than that; perhaps about eighteen feet, which if you thought about it hardly seemed thick enough for a cable several thousand miles long. The rest of the space was filled with comfortable booths and couches where people could sit and chat, and small areas where travelers could watch entertainment, play games or eat. And of course there were lots of window areas to look out of, either down to the Earth, across to other 'stalk cables and platforms, or up toward Colonial Station.
Overall the platform gave the impression of being the lobby of a pleasant economy hotel, suddenly launched toward geostationary orbit. The only problem was that the open design made it difficult to hide. The launch was not heavily subscribed; there weren't enough other passengers to hide by blending in. I finally decided to get something to drink at a kiosk near the center of the platform, roughly opposite of where Leon was standing. Sight lines being what they were, that's where I stood the best chance of avoiding him the longest.
Leaving Earth physically had been an irritating thing, thanks to Leon's obnoxiousness, but leaving it emotionally had been surprisingly easy. I had decided a year before my departure that, yes, I would join the CDF; from there it was simply a matter of making arrangements and saying good-byes. When Kathy and I had originally decided to join up a decade earlier, we put the house in our son Charlie's name as well as our own, so that he could take possession of it without having to go through probate. Kathy and I otherwise owned nothing of any real value, just the bric-a-brac that you pile up in a life. Most of the really nice stuff was dispersed to friends and family over the last year; Charlie would deal with the rest of it later.
Leaving people was not that much harder. People reacted to the news with varying levels of surprise and sadness, since everyone knows that once you join the Colonial Defense Forces, you don't come back. But it's not entirely like dying. They know that somewhere out there, you're still alive; heck, maybe after a while, they might even come and join you. It's a little what I imagine people felt hundreds of years ago when someone they knew hitched up a wagon and headed west. They cried, they missed them, they got back to what they were doing.
Anyway, I told people a whole year before I left that I was going. That's a lot of time to say what you have to say, to settle matters and to make your peace with someone. Over the course of the year, I had had a few sit-downs with old friends and family and did a final poking of old wounds and ashes; in nearly every case it ended well. A couple of times I asked forgiveness for things I didn't particularly feel sorry about, and in one case I found myself in bed with someone who otherwise I'd rather I hadn't. But you do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn't cost you much to do it. I'd rather apologize for something I didn't really care about, and leave someone on Earth wishing me well, than to be stubborn and have that someone hoping that some alien would slurp out my brains. Call it karmic insurance.
Charlie had been my major concern. Like many fathers and sons, we'd had our go-rounds; I wasn't the most attentive father, and he wasn't the most self-directed son, wandering through life well into his thirties. When he originally found out that Kathy and I intended to join, he'd exploded at us. He reminded us that we'd protested against the Subcontinental War. He reminded us that we'd always taught him violence wasn't the answer. He reminded us that we'd once grounded him for a month when he'd gone out target shooting with Bill Young, which we both thought was a little odd for a man of thirty-five to bring up.
Kathy's death ended most of our battles, because both he and I realized that most of the things we argued about simply didn't matter; I was a widower and he a bachelor, and for a while he and I were all we had left. Not long thereafter he met and married Lisa, and about a year after that he became a father and was re-elected mayor all in one very hectic night. Charlie had been a late bloomer, but it was a fine bloom. He and I had our own sit-down where I apologized for some things (sincerely), and also told him equally sincerely how proud I was of the man he'd become. Then we sat on the porch with our beers, watched my grandson Adam swat a t-ball in the front yard, and talked about nothing of any importance for a nice long time. When we parted, we parted well and with love, which is what you want between fathers and sons.
I stood there by the kiosk, nursing my Coke and thinking about Charlie and his family, when I heard Leon's voice grumbling, followed by another voice, low, sharp and female, saying something in response. In spite of myself, I peered over past the kiosk. Leon had apparently managed to corner some poor woman and was no doubt sharing whatever dumb-ass theory his beef-witted brain stem was promulgating at the moment. My sense of chivalry overcame my desire to hide; I went to intervene.
"All I'm saying," Leon was saying, "is that it's not exactly fair that you and I and every American has to wait until we're older than shit to get our chance to go, while all those little Hindis get carted off to brand-new worlds as fast as they can breed. Which is pretty damn quick. That's just not fair. Does it seem fair to you?"
"No, it doesn't seem particularly fair," the woman said back. "But I suppose they wouldn't see it as fair that we wiped New Delhi and Mumbai off the face of the planet, either."
"That's exactly my point!" Leon exclaimed. "We nuked the dot heads! We won that war! Winning should count for something. And now look what happens. They lost, but they get to go colonize the universe, and the only way we get to go is if we sign up to protect them! Excuse me for saying so, but doesn't the Bible say, 'The meek shall inherit the earth'? I'd say losing a goddamn war makes you pretty damn meek."
"I don't think that phrase means what you think it does, Leon," I said, approaching the two of them.
"John! See, here's a man who knows what I'm talking about," Leon said, grinning my way.
The woman turned to face me. "You know this gentleman?" she asked me, with an undercurrent in her voice that implied that if I did, there was clearly something wrong with me.
"We met on the trip to Nairobi," I said, gently raising an eyebrow to indicate that he wasn't my companion of choice. "I'm John Perry," I said.
"Jesse Gonzales," she said.
"Charmed," I replied, and then turned to Leon. "Leon," I said, "you've got the saying wrong. The actual saying is from the Sermon on the Mount, and it says, 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' Inheriting the earth is meant to be a reward, not a punishment."
Leon blinked, then snorted. "Even so, we beat them. We kicked their little brown asses. We should be colonizing the universe, not them."
I opened my mouth to respond, but Jesse beat me to the punch. "'Blessed are they which are persecuted, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven,'" she said, speaking to Leon but looking sidelong at me.
Leon gaped for a minute at the both of us. "You can't be serious," he said, after a minute. "There's nothing in the Bible that says we should be stuck on Earth while a bunch of brownies, which don't even believe in Jesus, thank you very much, fill up the galaxy. And it certainly doesn't say anything about us protecting the little bastards while they do it. Christ, I had a son in that war. Some dot head shot off one of his balls! His balls! They deserved what they got, the sons of bitches. Don't ask me to be happy that now I'll have to save their sorry asses up there in the colonies."
Jesse winked at me. "Would you like to field this one?"
"If you don't mind," I said.
"Oh, not at all," she replied.
"'But I say unto you, Love your enemies,'" I quoted. "'Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father who is in Heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.'"
Leon turned lobster red. "You're both out of your fucking gourds," he said, and stomped off as fast as his fat would carry him.
"Thank you, Jesus," I said. "And this time I mean it literally."
"You're pretty handy with a Bible quotation," Jesse said. "Were you a minister in your past life?"
"No," I said. "But I lived in a town of two thousand people and fifteen churches. It helped to be able to speak the language. And you don't have to be religious to appreciate the Sermon on the Mount. What's your excuse?"
"Catholic school religion class," she said. "I won a ribbon for memorization in the tenth grade. It's amazing what your brain can keep in storage for sixty years, even if these days I can't remember where I parked when I go to the store."
"Well, in any event, let me apologize for Leon," I said. "I barely know him, but I know enough to know he's an idiot."
"'Judge not, that ye be not judged,'" Jesse said, and shrugged. "Anyway, he's only saying what a lot of people believe. I think it's stupid and wrong, but that doesn't mean I don't understand it. I wish that there had been a different way for me to see the colonies than to wait an entire life and have to join the military for it. If I could have been a colonist when I was younger, I would have."
"You're not joining for a life of military adventure, then," I said.
"Of course not," Jesse said, a little scornfully. "Did you join because you have a great desire to fight a war?"
"No," I said.
She nodded. "Neither did I. Neither did most of us. Your friend Leon certainly didn't join to be in the military—he can't stand the people we will protect. People join because they're not ready to die and they don't want to be old. They join because life on Earth isn't interesting past a certain age. Or they join to see someplace new before they die. That's why I joined, you know. I'm not joining to fight or be young again. I just want to see what it's like to be somewhere else."
She turned to look out the window. "Of course, it's funny to hear me say that. Do you know that until yesterday, I'd never been out of the state of Texas my entire life?"
"Don't feel bad about it," I said. "Texas is a big state."
She smiled. "Thank you. I don't really feel bad about it. It's just funny. When I was a child, I used to read all the 'Young Colonist' novels and watch the shows, and dreamed about raising Arcturian cattle and battling vicious land worms on colony Gamma Prime. Then I got older and realized that colonists came from India and Kazakhstan and Norway, where they can't support the population they have, and the fact I was born in America meant that I wouldn't get to go. And that there weren't actually Arcturian cattle or land worms! I was very disappointed to learn that when I was twelve."
She shrugged again. "I grew up in San Antonio, went 'away' to college at the University of Texas, and then took a job back in San Antonio. I got married eventually, and we took our vacations on the Gulf Coast. For our thirtieth anniversary, my husband and I planned to go to Italy, but we never went."
"What happened?"
She laughed. "His secretary is what happened. They ended up going to Italy on their honeymoon. I stayed home. On the other hand, they both ended up getting shellfish poisoning in Venice, so it's just as well I never went. But I didn't worry much about traveling after that. I knew I was going to join up as soon as I could, and I did, and here I am. Although now I wish I had traveled more. I took the delta from Dallas to Nairobi. That was fun. I wish I had done it more than once in my life. Not to mention this"—she waved her hand at the window, toward the beanstalk cables—"which I never thought I would ever want to ride in my life. I mean, what's keeping this cable up?"
"Belief," I said. "You believe that it won't fall and it won't. Try not to think about it too much or we're all in trouble."
"What I believe," Jesse said, "is that I want to get something to eat. Care to join me?"
"Belief," Harry Wilson said, and laughed. "Well, maybe belief is holding up this cable. Because it sure as hell isn't fundamental physics."
Harry Wilson had joined Jesse and me at a booth where we were eating. "You two look like you know each other, and that's one up on everyone else here," he said to us as he came up. We invited him to join us and he accepted gratefully. He had taught physics at a Bloomington, Indiana, high school for twenty years, he said, and the beanstalk had been intriguing him the entire time we had been riding it.
"What do you mean physics isn't holding it up?" Jesse said. "Believe me, this is not what I want to hear right at this moment."
Harry smiled. "Sorry. Let me rephrase. Physics is involved in holding up this beanstalk, certainly. But the physics involved aren't of the garden variety. There's a lot going on here that doesn't make sense on the surface."
"I feel a physics lecture coming on," I said.
"I taught physics to teenagers for years," Harry said, and dug out a small notepad and a pen. "It'll be painless, trust me. Okay, now look." Harry began drawing a circle at the bottom of the page. "This is the Earth. And this"—he drew a smaller circle halfway up the page—"is Colonial Station. It's in geosynchronous orbit, which means it stays put relative to the Earth's rotation. It's always hanging above Nairobi. With me so far?"
We nodded.
"Okay. Now, the idea behind the beanstalk is that you connect Colonial Station with the Earth through a 'beanstalk'—a bunch of cables, like those out the window—and a bunch of elevator platforms, like the one we're on now, that can travel back and forth." Harry drew a line signifying the cable, and a small square, signifying our platform. "The idea here is that elevators on these cables don't have to reach escape velocity to get to Earth orbit, like a rocket payload would. This is good for us, because we don't have to go to Colonial Station feeling like an elephant had its foot on our chests. Simple enough.
"The thing is, this beanstalk doesn't conform to the basic physical requirements of a classic Earth-to-space beanstalk. For one thing"—Harry drew an additional line past Colonial Station to the end of the page—"Colonial Station shouldn't be at the end of the beanstalk. For reasons that have to do with mass balance and orbital dynamics, there should be additional cable extending tens of thousands of miles past Colonial Station. Without this counterbalance, any beanstalk should be inherently unstable and dangerous."
"And you're saying this one isn't," I said.
"Not only is not unstable, it's probably the safest way to travel that's ever been devised," Harry said. "The beanstalk has been in continuous operation for over a century. It's the only point of departure for colonists. There's never been an accident due to instability or matériel failure, which would be related to instability. There was the famous beanstalk bombing forty years ago, but that was sabotage, unrelated to the physical structure of the beanstalk itself. The beanstalk itself is admirably stable and has been since it was built. But according to basic physics, it shouldn't be."
"So what is keeping it up?" Jesse said.
Harry smiled again. "Well, that's the question, isn't it."
"You mean you don't know?" Jesse asked.
"I don't know," Harry admitted. "But that in itself should be no cause for alarm, since I am—or was—merely a high school physics teacher. However, as far as I know, no one else has much of a clue how it works, either. On Earth, I mean. Obviously the Colonial Union knows."
"Well, how can that be?" I asked. "It's been here for a century, for God's sake. No one's bothered to figure out how it actually works?"
"I didn't say that," Harry said. "Of course they've been trying. And it's not like it's been a secret all these years. When the beanstalk was being built, there were demands by governments and the press to know how it worked. The CU essentially said 'figure it out,' and that was that. In physics circles, people have been trying to solve it ever since. It's called 'The Beanstalk Problem.'"
"Not a very original title," I said.
"Well, physicists save their imagination for other things." Harry chuckled. "The point is, it hasn't been solved, primarily for two reasons. The first is that it's incredibly complicated—I've pointed out the mass issues, but then there are other issues like cable strength, beanstalk oscillations brought on by storms and other atmospheric phenomena, and even an issue about how cables are supposed to taper. Any of these is massively difficult to solve in the real world; trying to figure them all out at once is impossible."
"What's the second reason?" Jesse asked.
"The second reason is that there's no reason to. Even if we did figure out how to build one of these things, we couldn't afford to build it." Harry leaned back. "Just before I was a teacher, I worked for General Electric's civil engineering department. We were working on the SubAtlantic rail line at the time, and one of my jobs was to go through old projects and project proposals to see if any of the technology or practices had application to the SubAtlantic project. Sort of a hail-Mary attempt to see if we could do anything to bring down costs."
"General Electric bankrupted itself on that, didn't they?" I asked.
"Now you know why they wanted to bring down costs," Harry said. "And why I became a teacher. General Electric couldn't afford me, or much of anyone else, right after that. Anyway, I'm going through old proposals and reports and I get into some classified stuff, and one of the reports is for a beanstalk. General Electric had been hired by the U.S. Government for a third-party feasibility study on building a beanstalk in the Western Hemisphere; they wanted to clear out a hole in the Amazon the size of Delaware and stick it right on the equator.
"General Electric told them to forget it. The proposal said that even assuming some major technological breakthroughs—most of which still haven't happened, and none of which approach the technology that has to be involved with this beanstalk—the budget for the beanstalk would be three times the annual gross national product of the United States economy. That's assuming that the project did not run over budget, which of course it almost certainly would have. Now, this was twenty years ago, and the report I saw was a decade old even then. But I don't expect that the costs have gone down very much since then. So no new beanstalks—there are cheaper ways of getting people and material into orbit. Much cheaper."
Harry leaned forward again. "Which leads to two obvious questions: How did the Colonial Union manage to create this technological monstrosity, and why did they bother with it at all?"
"Well, obviously, the Colonial Union is more technologically advanced than we are here on Earth," Jesse said.
"Obviously," Harry said. "But why? Colonists are human, after all. Not only that, but since the colonies specifically recruit from impoverished countries with population problems, colonists tend to be poorly educated. Once they get to their new homes, you have to assume they're spending more time staying alive than they are thinking up creative ways to build beanstalks. And the primary technology that allowed interstellar colonization is the skip drive, which was developed right here on Earth, and which has been substantially unimproved for more than a century. So on the face of it, there's no reason why the colonists should be any more technologically advanced than we are."
Something suddenly clicked in my head. "Unless they cheat," I said.
Harry grinned. "Exactly. That's what I think, too."
Jesse looked at me, and then Harry. "I'm not following you two," she said.
"They cheat," I said. "Look, on Earth, we're bottled up. We only learn from ourselves—we make discoveries and refine technology all the time, but it's slow, because we do all the work ourselves. But up there—"
"Up there humans meet other intelligent species," Harry said. "Some of which almost certainly have technology more advanced than ours. We either take it in trade or reverse engineer it and find out how it works. It's much easier to figure out how something works when you've got something to work from than it is to figure it out on your own."
"That's what makes it cheating," I said. "The CU is reading off someone else's notes."
"Well, why doesn't the Colonial Union share what it's discovered with us?" Jesse asked. "What's the point of keeping it to themselves?"
"Maybe they think that what we don't know can't hurt us," I said.
"Or it's something else entirely," Harry said, and waved toward the window, where the beanstalk cables slid by. "This beanstalk isn't here because it's the easiest way to get people to Colonial Station, you know. It's here because it's one of the most difficult—in fact, the most expensive, most technologically complex and most politically intimidating way to do it. Its very presence is a reminder that the CU is literally light-years ahead of anything humans can do here."
"I've never found it intimidating," Jesse said. "I really never thought about it much at all."
"The message isn't aimed at you," Harry said. "If you were President of the United States, however, you'd think of it differently. After all, the CU keeps us all here on Earth. There's no space travel except what the CU allows through colonization or enlistment. Political leaders are always under pressure to buck the CU and get their people to the stars. But the beanstalk is a constant reminder. It says, 'Until you can make one of these, don't even think of challenging us.' And the beanstalk is the only technology the CU has decided to show us. Think about what they haven't let us know about. I can guarantee you the U.S. President has. And that it keeps him and every other leader on the planet in line."
"None of this is making me feel friendly toward the Colonial Union," Jesse said.
"It doesn't have to be sinister," Harry said. "It could be that the CU is trying to protect Earth. The universe is a big place. Maybe we're not in the best neighborhood."
"Harry, were you always this paranoid," I asked, "or was this something that crept up on you as you got older?"
"How do you think I made it to seventy-five?" Harry said, and grinned. "Anyway, I don't have any problems with the CU being much more technologically advanced. It's about to work to my advantage." He held up an arm. "Look at this thing," he said. "It's flabby and old and not in very good shape. Somehow, the Colonial Defense Forces are going to take this arm—and the rest of me—and whip it into fighting shape. And do you know how?"
"No," I said. Jesse shook her head.
"Neither do I," Harry said, and let his arm down with a plop onto the table. "I have no idea how they'll make it work. What's more, it's likely that I can't even imagine how they'll do it—if we assume that we've been held in a state of technological infancy by the CU, trying to explain it to me now would be like trying to explain this beanstalk platform to someone who's never seen a mode of transportation more complex than a horse and buggy. But they've obviously made it work. Otherwise, why would they recruit seventy-five-year-olds? The universe isn't going to be conquered by legions of geriatrics. No offense," he added quickly.
"None taken," Jesse said, and smiled.
"Lady and gentleman," Harry said, looking at the both of us, "we may think we have some idea of what we're getting into, but I don't think we have the first clue. This beanstalk exists to tell us that much. It's bigger and stranger than we can imagine—and it's just the first part of this journey. What comes next is going to be even bigger and stranger. Prepare yourself as best you can."
"How dramatic," Jesse said dryly. "I don't know how to prepare myself after a statement like that."
"I do," I said, and scooted over to get out of the booth. "I'm going to go pee. If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it's best to meet it with an empty bladder."
"Spoken like a true Boy Scout," Harry said.
"A Boy Scout wouldn't need to pee as much as I do," I said.
"Sure he would," Harry said. "Just give him sixty years."
"I don't know about you two," Jesse was saying to me and Harry, "but so far this really isn't what I expected the army to be."
"It's not so bad," I said. "Here, have another donut."
"I don't need another donut," she said, taking the donut anyway. "What I need is some sleep."
I knew what she meant. It had been more than eighteen hours since I left home, nearly all of it consumed with travel. I was ready for a nap. Instead I was sitting in the huge mess hall of an interstellar cruiser, having coffee and donuts with about a thousand other recruits, waiting for someone to come and tell us what we were supposed to do next. That part, at least, was pretty much like the military I expected.
The rush and wait began on arrival. As soon as we got off the beanstalk platform, we were greeted by two Colonial Union apparatchiks. They informed us that we were the last recruits expected for a ship that was leaving soon, so could we please follow them quickly so that everything could stay on schedule. Then one took the lead and one went to the rear and they effectively and rather insultingly herded several dozen senior citizens across the entire station to our ship, the CDFS Henry Hudson.
Jesse and Harry were clearly disappointed at the rush job, as was I. Colonial Station was huge—over a mile in diameter (1800 meters, actually, and I suspected that after seventy-five years of life, I would finally have to start getting used to the metric system) and served as the sole port of transport for recruits and colonists alike. Being herded across it without being able to stop and take it in was like being five years old and being hustled through a toy store at Christmas time by a harried parent. I felt like plopping down on the floor and having a tantrum until I got my way. I was unfortunately too old (or alternately, not nearly old enough) to get away with that sort of behavior.
What I did see on our speedy trek was a tantalizing appetizer. As our apparatchiks poked and prodded us along, we passed a huge holding bay filled to capacity with what I would guess were Pakistanis or Muslim Indians. Most were waiting patiently to gain entrance to shuttles that would take them to an immense colony transport ship, one of which was visible in the distance, floating outside the window. Others could be seen arguing with CU officials about one thing or another in accented English, comforting children who were clearly bored, or digging through their belongings for something to eat. In one corner, a group of men were kneeling on a carpeted area of the bay and praying. I wondered briefly how they had determined where Mecca was from twenty-three thousand miles up, and then we were pushed forward and I lost sight of them.
Jesse tugged on my sleeve and pointed to our right. In a small mess area, I caught a glimpse of something tentacled and blue, holding a martini. I alerted Harry; he was so intrigued that he went back and looked, much to the consternation of the trailing apparatchik. She shooed Harry back into the herd with a sour look on her face. Harry, on the other hand, was grinning like a fool. "A Gehaar," he said. "It was eating a buffalo wing when I looked in. Disgusting." Then he giggled. The Gehaar were one of the first intelligent aliens humans encountered, in the days before the Colonial Union established its monopoly on space travel. Nice enough people, but they ate by injecting their food with acid from dozens of thin head tentacles and then noisily slurping the resulting goop into an orifice. Messy.
Harry didn't care. He'd spotted his first live alien.
Our meander reached its conclusion as we approached a holding bay with the words "Henry Hudson/CDF Recruits" glowing from a flight display. Our group gratefully took seats while our apparatchiks went to talk with some other Colonials waiting by the shuttle gate door. Harry, who was clearly showing a tendency toward curiosity, wandered over to the bay window to look at our ship. Jesse and I wearily got up and followed him. A small informational monitor at the window helped us find it among the other traffic.
The Henry Hudson was not actually docked at the gate, of course; it's hard to make a hundred-thousand-metric-ton interstellar spacecraft move daintily in tandem with a revolving space station. As with the colony transports, it maintained a reasonable distance while supplies, passengers and crew were transported back and forth by rather more manageable shuttles and barges. The Hudson itself was stationed a few miles out and above the station, not the massive, unesthetically functional spoked-wheel design of the colony transports, but sleeker, flatter and, importantly, not at all cylindrical or wheel-shaped. I mentioned this to Harry, who nodded. "Full-time artificial gravity," he said. "And stable over a large field. Very impressive."
"I thought we were using artificial gravity on the way up," Jesse said.
"We were," Harry said. "The beanstalk platform's gravity generators were increasing their output the higher up we went."
"So what's so different about a spaceship using artificial gravity?" Jesse asked.
"It's just extremely difficult," Harry said. "It takes an enormous amount of energy to create a gravitational field, and the amount of energy you have to put out increases exponentially with the radius of the field. They probably cheated by creating multiple, smaller fields instead of one larger field. But even that way, creating the fields in our beanstalk platform probably took more energy than it took to light your hometown for a month."
"I don't know about that," Jesse said. "I'm from San Antonio."
"Fine. His hometown, then," Harry said, jerking a thumb toward me. "Point is, it's an incredibly wasteful use of energy, and in most situations where artificial gravity is required, it's simpler and much less expensive just to create a wheel, spin it and let that stick people and things to the inside rim. Once you've spun up, you only need to put minimal additional energy into the system to compensate for friction. As opposed to creating an artificial gravity field, which needs a constant and significant output of energy."
He pointed to the Henry Hudson. "Look, there's a shuttle next to the Hudson. Using that as a scale, I'm guessing the Hudson is 800 feet long, 200 feet wide and about 150 feet deep. Creating a single artificial gravity field around that baby would definitely dim the lights in San Antonio. Even multiple fields would be an amazing drain on power. So either they have a power source that can keep the gravity on and still run all the ship's other systems, like propulsion and life support, or they've found a new, low-energy way to create gravity."
"It's probably not cheap," I said, and pointed to a colony transport to the right of the Henry Hudson. "Look at the colony ship. It's a wheel. And Colonial Station is spinning, too."
"The colonies are saving their best technology for the military," Jesse said. "And this ship is just being used to pick up new recruits. I think you're right, Harry. We have no idea what we've gotten ourselves into."
Harry grinned, and turned back to look at the Henry Hudson, lazily circling as Colonial Station turned. "I love it when people come around to my way of thinking."
Our apparatchiks presently herded us up again and got us in line to board the shuttle. We presented our identity cards to the CU official at the shuttle gate, who entered us on a list while a counterpart presented us with a personal data assistant. "Thanks for being on Earth, here's a lovely parting gift," I said to him. He didn't seem to get it.
The shuttles did not come equipped with artificial gravity. Our apparatchiks harnessed us in and warned us that under no circumstances were we to try to unlock ourselves; to make sure that the more claustrophobic of us didn't do just that, the locks on the harnesses would not be under our control during the flight. So that solved that problem. The apparatchiks also passed out plastic hairnets to anyone with hair long enough to warrant them; in free fall, long hair apparently goes everywhere.
If anyone felt nauseated, we were told, they were to use the vomit bags in the side pocket of their seats. Our apparatchiks stressed the importance of not waiting until the last second to use the vomit bags. In weightlessness, vomit would float around and irritate the other passengers, making the original vomiter very unpopular for the rest of the flight and possibly the rest of his or her military career. This was followed by a rustling sound as several of our number readied themselves. The woman next to me clutched her vomit bag tightly. I mentally prepared myself for the worst.
There was no vomit, thankfully, and the ride to the Henry Hudson was pretty smooth; after the initial shit, I'm falling signal my brain shot out when the gravity gave way, it was more like a gentle, extended roller-coaster ride. We made it to the ship in about five minutes; there was a minute or two of docking negotiations as a shuttle bay door irised open, accepted the shuttle, and closed again. This was followed by another few minutes of waiting as air was pumped back into the bay. Then a slight tingle, and the sudden reappearance of weight; the artificial gravity had kicked in.
The shuttle bay door opened and a wholly new apparatchik appeared. "Welcome to the CDFS Henry Hudson," she said. "Please unlatch yourselves, gather your belongings, and follow the lighted path out of the shuttle bay. The air will be pumped out of this bay in precisely seven minutes—to launch this shuttle and allow another shuttle to dock—so please be quick."
We were all surprisingly quick.
We were then led to the massive Henry Hudson mess hall, where we were invited to have some coffee and donuts and to relax. An official would be along to explain things. While we were waiting, the mess hall had begun to fill up with other recruits who had presumably boarded before us; after an hour there were hundreds of us milling about. I had never seen so many old people in one place at one time. Neither had Harry. "It's like Wednesday morning at the world's biggest Denny's," he said, and then got himself more coffee.
Just about the time that my bladder was informing me that I had overdone it with the coffee, a distinguished-looking gentleman in Colonial diplomatic blues entered the mess hall and made his way toward the front of the room. The noise level in the room began to subside; you could tell that people were relieved that someone was finally there to tell them what the hell was going on.
The man stood there for a few minutes until the room was silent. "Greetings," he said, and we all jumped. He must have had a body mike; his voice was coming through speakers in the wall. "I'm Sam Campbell, Colonial Union adjunct for the Colonial Defense Forces. Although technically speaking I am not a member of the Colonial Defense Forces, I have been empowered by the CDF to manage your orientation on its behalf, so for the next few days, you can consider me your superior officer. Now, I know many of you have just arrived on the last shuttle and are anxious to get some rest; others have been on ship for up to a day and are equally anxious to know what comes next. For the sake of both groups, I will be brief.
"In about an hour, the CDFS Henry Hudson will break orbit and ready for her initial skip to the Phoenix system, where we stop briefly to pick up additional supplies before we head to Beta Pyxis III, where you will begin your training. Don't worry, I don't expect any of this to mean anything to you now. What you need to know is that it will take us a little more than two days to get to our initial skip point, and during that time, you will be undergoing a series of mental and physical evaluations at the hands of my staff. Your schedule is now being downloaded into your PDA. Please review it at your convenience. Your PDA can also direct you to every place you need to go, so you should never worry about getting lost. Those of you who have just arrived on the Henry Hudson will also find your stateroom assignments on your PDA.
"Other than finding your way to your staterooms, nothing is expected of you this evening. Many of you have been traveling for quite a while, and we want you to be rested for tomorrow's evaluations. Speaking of which, now is a good time to get you onto ship's time, which is on Colonial Universal Standard Time. It is now"—he checked his watch—"2138 Colonial. Your PDA is set for ship time. Your day begins tomorrow with breakfast mess from 0600 to 0730, followed by a physical evaluation and enhancement. Breakfast mess is not mandatory—you're not on military schedule yet—but you'll be having a long day tomorrow, so I do strongly suggest you attend.
"If you have any questions, your PDA can port into the Henry Hudson information system and use the AI interface to assist you; just use your stylus to write the question or speak it into your PDA's microphone. You will also find Colonial Union staff on each stateroom deck; please don't hesitate to ask them for assistance. Based on your personal information, our medical staff is already aware of any issues or needs you may have, and may have made appointments to see you this evening in your staterooms. Check your PDA. You may also visit sick bay at your convenience. This mess hall will be open all night tonight, but will begin normal operating hours as of tomorrow. Again, check your PDA for times and menus. Finally, as of tomorrow you should all be wearing CDF recruit gear; it is now being delivered to your staterooms."
Campbell stopped for a second and gave us all what I think he thought was a significant stare. "On behalf of the Colonial Union and the Colonial Defense Forces, I welcome you as new citizens and our newest defenders. God bless you all and keep you safe in what's to come.
"Incidentally, if you want to watch while we break orbit, we will be porting the video into our observation deck theater. The theater is quite large and can accommodate all recruits, so don't worry about seating. The Henry Hudson makes excellent speed, so by breakfast tomorrow the Earth will be a very small disk, and by dinner, nothing more than a bright point in the sky. This will probably be your last chance to see what was your homeworld. If that means something to you, I suggest you drop by."
"So, how is your new roommate?" Harry asked me, taking the seat next to me in the observation deck theater.
"I really don't want to talk about it," I said. I had used my PDA to navigate to my stateroom, where I found my roommate already stowing his belongings: Leon Deak. He glanced over, said, "Oh, look, it's the Bible freak," and then studiously ignored me, which took some doing in a room that was ten by ten. Leon had already taken the bottom bunk (which, to seventy-five-year-old knees at least, is the desirable bunk); I threw my carry-on onto the top bunk, took my PDA and went to get Jesse, who was on the same deck. Her roommate, a nice lady by the name of Maggie, bowed out of watching the Henry Hudson break orbit. I told Jesse who my roommate was; she just laughed.
She laughed again when she related the story to Harry, who sympathetically patted me on the shoulder. "Don't feel too bad. It's only until we get to Beta Pyxis."
"Wherever that is," I said. "How is your roommate?"
"I couldn't tell you," Harry said. "He was already asleep when I got there. Took the bottom bunk, too, the bastard."
"My roommate was simply lovely," Jesse said. "She offered me a homemade cookie when I met her. Said her granddaughter had made them as a going-away gift."
"She didn't offer me a cookie," I said.
"Well, she doesn't have to live with you, now does she."
"How was the cookie?" Harry asked.
"It was like an oatmeal rock," Jesse said. "But that's not the point. The point is, I have the best roommate of us all. I'm special. Look, there's the Earth." She pointed as the theater's tremendous video screen flickered to life. The Earth hung there in astounding fidelity; whoever built the video screen had done a bang-up job.
"I wish I had this screen in my living room," Harry said. "I'd have had the most popular Super Bowl parties on the block."
"Just look at it," I said. "All our lives, it's the only place we've ever been. Everyone we ever knew or loved was there. And now we're leaving it. Doesn't that make you feel something?"
"Excited," Jesse said. "And sad. But not too sad."
"Definitely not too sad," Harry said. "There was nothing left to do there but get older and die."
"You can still die, you know," I said. "You are joining the military."
"Yeah, but I'm not going to die old," Harry said. "I'm going to have a second chance to die young and leave a beautiful corpse. It makes up for missing out on it the first time."
"You're just a romantic that way," Jesse said, deadpan.
"Damn right," Harry said.
"Listen," I said. "We've begun pulling out."
The speakers of the theater broadcast the chatter between the Henry Hudson and Colonial Station as they negotiated the terms of the Henry Hudson's departure. Then came a low thrum and the slightest of vibrations, which we could barely feel through our seats.
"Engines," Harry said. Jesse and I nodded.
And then the Earth slowly began to shrink in the video screen, still massive, and still brilliant blue and white, but clearly, inexorably, beginning to take up a smaller portion of the screen. We silently watched it shrink, all of the several hundred recruits who came to look. I looked over to Harry, who, despite his earlier blustering, was quiet and reflective. Jesse had a tear on her cheek.
"Hey," I said, and gripped her hand. "Not too sad, remember?"
She smiled at me and gripped my hand. "No," she said hoarsely. "Not too sad. But even still. Even still."
We sat there some more and watched everything we ever knew shrink in the viewscreen.
I had my PDA set to wake me up at 0600, which it did by gently piping music through its little speakers and gradually increasing the volume until I woke. I turned off the music, quietly lowered myself off the top bunk and then rooted for a towel in the wardrobe, flicking on the small light in the wardrobe to see. In the wardrobe hung my and Leon's recruit suits: two sets each of Colonial light blue sweat tops and bottoms, two light blue T-shirts, two pairs blue chino-style drawstring pants, two pairs white socks and briefs-style underwear, and blue sneakers. Apparently we'd have no need for formal dress between now and Beta Pyxis. I slipped on a pair of sweat bottoms and a T-shirt, grabbed one of the towels that was also hanging in the wardrobe, and padded down the hall for a shower.
When I returned, the lights were glowing on full but Leon was still in his bunk—the lights must have come on automatically. I put a sweat top over my T-shirt and added socks and sneakers to my ensemble; I was ready to jog or, well, whatever else I had to do that day. Now for some breakfast. On the way out, I gave Leon a little nudge. He was a schmuck, but even schmucks might not want to sleep through food. I asked him if he wanted to get some breakfast.
"What?" he said, groggily. "No. Leave me alone."
"You sure, Leon?" I asked. "You know what they say about breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day, and all that. Come on. You need your energy."
Leon actually growled. "My mother's been dead for thirty years and as far I know, she hasn't been brought back in your body. So get the hell out of here and let me sleep."
It was nice to see Leon hadn't gone soft on me. "Fine," I said. "I'll be back after breakfast."
Leon grunted and rolled back over. I went to breakfast.
Breakfast was amazing, and I say that having been married to a woman who could make a breakfast spread that would have made Gandhi stop a fast. I had two Belgian waffles that were golden, crisp and light, wallowing in powdered sugar and syrup that tasted like real Vermont maple (and if you think you can't tell when you have Vermont maple syrup, you've never had it) and with a scoop of creamery butter that was artfully melting to fill the deep wells of the waffle squares. Add over-easy eggs that were actually over easy, four slices of thick, brown sugar–cured bacon, orange juice from fruit that apparently hadn't realized it had been squeezed, and a mug of coffee that was fresh off the burro.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Since I was now officially legally dead on Earth and flying across the solar system in a spaceship, I guess I wasn't too far off.
"Oh my," the fellow I sat next to at breakfast said, as I put down my fully-loaded tray. "Look at all the fats on that tray. You're asking for a coronary. I'm a doctor, I know."
"Uh-huh," I said, and pointed to his tray. "That looks like a four-egg omelet you're working on there. With about a pound each of ham and cheddar."
"'Do as I say, not as I do.' That was my creed as a practicing physician," he said. "If more patients had listened to me instead of following my sorry example, they'd be alive now. A lesson for us all. Thomas Jane, by the way."
"John Perry," I said, shaking hands.
"Pleased to meet you," he said. "Although I'm sad, too, since if you eat all that you'll be dead of a heart attack within the hour."
"Don't listen to him, John," said the woman across from us, whose own plate was smeared with the remains of pancakes and sausage. "Tom there is just trying to get you to give him some of your food, so he doesn't have to get back in line for more. That's how I lost half of my sausage."
"That accusation is as irrelevant as it is true," Thomas said indignantly. "I admit to coveting his Belgian waffle, yes. I won't deny that. But if sacrificing my own arteries will prolong his life, then it's worth it to me. Consider this the culinary equivalent of falling on a grenade for the sake of my comrade."
"Most grenades aren't soaked in syrup," she said.
"Maybe they should be," Thomas said. "We'd see a lot more selfless acts."
"Here," I said, sawing off half of a waffle. "Throw yourself on this."
"I'll launch myself face first," Thomas promised.
"We're all deeply relieved to hear that," I said.
The woman on the other side of the table introduced herself as Susan Reardon, late of Bellevue, Washington. "What do you think of our little space adventure so far?" she asked me.
"If I had known the cooking was this good, I would have found some way to sign up years ago," I said. "Who knew army food would be like this."
"I don't think we're in the army quite yet," Thomas said, around a mouthful of Belgian waffle. "I think this is sort of the Colony Defense Forces waiting room, if you know what I mean. Real army food is going to be a lot more spare. Not to mention I doubt we'll be prancing around in sneakers like we are right now."
"You think they're easing us into things, then," I said.
"I do," Thomas said. "Look, there are a thousand complete strangers on this ship, all of whom are now without home, family, or profession. That's a hell of a mental shock. The least they can do is give us a fabulous meal to take our minds off it all."
"John!" Harry had spied me from the line. I waved him over. He and another man came, bearing trays.
"This is my roommate, Alan Rosenthal," he said, by way of introduction.
"Formerly known as Sleeping Beauty," I said.
"About half of that description is right," Alan said. "I am in fact devastatingly beautiful." I introduced Harry and Alan to Susan and Thomas.
"Tsk, tsk," Thomas said, examining their trays. "Two more plaque attacks waiting to happen."
"Better throw Tom a couple bacon strips, Harry," I said. "Otherwise we'll never hear the end of this."
"I resent the implication that I can be bought off with food," Thomas said.
"It wasn't implied," Susan said. "It was pretty much boldly stated."
"Well, I know your roommate lottery turned out badly," Harry said to me, handing over two bacon strips to Thomas, who accepted them gravely, "but mine turned out all right. Alan here is a theoretical physicist. Smart as a whip."
"And devastatingly beautiful," Susan piped in.
"Thanks for remembering that detail," Alan said.
"This looks like a table of reasonably intelligent adults," Harry said. "So what do you think we're in for today?"
"I have a physical scheduled for 0800," I said. "I think we all do."
"Right," Harry said. "But I'm asking what you all think that means. Do you think today is the day we start our rejuvenation therapies? Is today the day we begin to stop being old?"
"We don't know that we stop being old," Thomas said. "We've all assumed that, because we think of soldiers as being young. But think about it. None of us has actually seen a Colonial soldier. We've assumed, and our assumptions could be way off."
"What would the value of old soldiers be?" Alan asked. "If they're going to put me in the field as is, I don't know what good I'm going to be to anyone. I have a bad back. Walking from the beanstalk platform to the flight gate yesterday just about killed me. I can't imagine marching twenty miles with a pack and a firearm."
"I think we're due for some repairs, obviously," Thomas said. "But that's not the same as being made 'young' again. I'm a doctor, and I know a little bit about this. You can make the human body work better and achieve high function at any age, but each age has a certain baseline capability. The body at seventy-five is inherently less fast, less flexible and less easily repaired than at younger ages. It can still do some amazing things, of course. I don't want to brag, but I'll have you know that back on Earth I regularly ran ten K races. I ran one less than a month ago. And I made better time than I would have when I was fifty-five."
"What were you like when you were fifty-five?" I asked.
"Well, that's the thing," Thomas said. "I was a fat slob at fifty-five. It took a heart replacement to get me serious about taking care of myself. My point is that a high-functioning seventy-five-year-old can actually do many things without actually being 'young,' but just by being in excellent shape. Maybe that's all that's required for this army. Maybe all the other intelligent species in the universe are pushovers. Presuming that's the case, it makes a weird sort of sense to have old soldiers, because young people are more useful to their community. They have their whole lives ahead of them, while we are eminently expendable."
"So maybe we'll still be old, just really, really healthy," Harry said.
"That's what I'm saying," Thomas said.
"Well, stop saying that. You're bringing me down," Harry said.
"I'll shut up if you give me your fruit cup," Thomas said.
"Even if we're turned into high-functioning seventy-five-year-olds, as you say," Susan said, "we'd still be getting older. In five years, we'd just be high-functioning eighty-year-olds. There's an upper limit to our usefulness as soldiers."
Thomas shrugged. "Our terms are for two years. Maybe they only need to keep us in working order for that long. The difference between seventy-five and seventy-seven isn't as great as between seventy-five and eighty. Or even between seventy-seven and eighty. Hundreds of thousands of us sign up each year. After two years, they just swap us out with a crew of 'fresh' recruits."
"We can be retained for up to ten years," I said. "It's in the fine print. That would seem to argue that they have the technology to keep us working for that period of time."
"And they've got our DNA on file," Harry said. "Maybe they've cloned replacement parts or something like that."
"True," Thomas admitted. "But it's a lot of work to transplant every single organ, bone, muscle and nerve from a cloned body to ours. And they'd still have to contend with our brains, which can't be transplanted."
Thomas looked around and finally realized he was depressing the whole table. "I'm not saying that we won't be made young again," he said. "Just what we've seen on this ship convinces me that the Colonial Union has much better technology than we ever had back home. But speaking as a medical doctor, I'm having a hard time seeing how they'll reverse the aging process as dramatically as we all think they will."
"Entropy is a bitch," Alan said. "We've got theories to back that one up."
"There is one piece of evidence that suggests that they'll improve us no matter what," I said.
"Tell me quickly," Harry said. "Tom's theory of the galaxy's oldest army is ruining my appetite."
"That's just it," I said. "If they couldn't fix our bodies, they wouldn't be giving us food with a fat content that could kill most of us within the month."
"That's very true," Susan said. "You make an excellent point, there, John. I feel better already."
"Thank you," I said. "And based on this evidence, I have such faith in the Colonial Defense Forces to cure me of all my ills, that now I'm going back for seconds."
"Get me some pancakes while you're up," Thomas said.
"Hey, Leon," I said, giving his flabby bulk a push. "Get up. Sleepy time is over. You've got an eight o'clock appointment."
Leon lay on his bed like a lump. I rolled my eyes, sighed and bent down to give him a harder push. And noticed his lips were blue.
Oh, shit, I thought, and shook him. Nothing. I grabbed his torso and pulled him off his bunk to the floor. It was like moving dead weight.
I grabbed my PDA and called for medical help. Then I kneeled over him, blew into his mouth, and pumped on his chest until a pair of Colonial medical staffers arrived and pulled me off of him.
By this time a small crowd had gathered around the open door; I saw Jesse and reached out to bring her in. She saw Leon on the floor and her hand flew to her mouth. I gave her a quick hug.
"How is he?" I asked one of the Colonials, who was consulting his PDA.
"He's dead," he said. "He's been dead for about an hour. Looks like a heart attack." He put the PDA down and stood up, glancing back down at Leon. "Poor bastard. Made it this far just to have his ticker crap out."
"A last-minute volunteer for the Ghost Brigades," the other Colonial said.
I shot a hard stare at him. I thought a joke at this moment was in terribly bad taste.
"Okay, let's see," the doctor said, glancing at his rather large PDA as I entered the office. "You're John Perry, correct?"
"That's right," I said.
"I'm Dr. Russell," he said, and then looked me over. "You look like your dog just died," he said.
"Actually," I said, "it was my roommate."
"Oh, yes," he said, glancing down at his PDA again. "Leon Deak. I would have been working on him right after you. Bad timing, that. Well, let's get that off the schedule, then." He tapped the PDA screen for a few seconds, smiled tightly when he was through. Dr. Russell's bedside manner left something to be desired.
"Now," he said, turning his attention back to me, "let's get you looked at."
The office consisted of Dr. Russell, me, a chair for the doctor, a small table and two crèches. The crèches were shaped for human contours, and each had a curving transparent door that arched over the contoured area. At the top of each crèche was an arm apparatus, with a cuplike attachment at the end. The "cup" looked just about large enough to fit on a human head. It was, quite frankly, making me a little nervous.
"Please go ahead and make yourself comfortable, and then we'll get started," Dr. Russell said, opening the door to the crèche nearest to me.
"Do you need me to take anything off?" I said. As far as I remembered, a physical examination required being looked at physically.
"No," he said. "But if it makes you feel more comfortable, go right ahead."
"Does anyone actually strip if they don't have to?" I asked.
"Actually, yes," he said. "If you've been told to do something one way for so long, it's a hard habit to break."
I kept my togs on. I set my PDA on the table, stepped up to the crèche, turned around, leaned back and settled in. Dr. Russell closed the door and stepped back. "Hold on one second while I adjust the crèche," he said, and tapped his PDA. I felt the human-shaped depression in the crèche shift, and then conform to my dimensions.
"That was creepy," I said.
Dr. Russell smiled. "You're going to notice some vibration here," he said, and he was right.
"Say," I said while the crèche was thrumming gently underneath me, "those other fellows who were in the waiting room with me. Where did they go after they came in here?"
"Through the door over there." He waved a hand behind him without looking up from his PDA. "That's the recovery area."
"Recovery area?"
"Don't worry," he said. "I've just made the examination sound much worse than it is. In fact, we're just about done with your scan." He tapped his PDA again and the vibration stopped.
"What do I do now?" I asked.
"Just hold tight," Dr. Russell said. "We've got a little more to do, and we need to go over the results of your examination."
"You mean it's done?" I said.
"Modern medicine is wonderful, isn't it," he said. He showed me the PDA screen, which was downloading a summary of my scan. "You don't even have to say, 'Aaahhhh.'"
"Yeah, but how detailed can it be?"
"Detailed enough," he said. "Mr. Perry, when was your last physical examination?"
"About six months ago," I said.
"What was the prognosis from your physician?"
"He said I was in fine shape, other than my blood pressure being a little higher than normal. Why?"
"Well, he's basically right," said Dr. Russell, "although he seems to have missed the testicular cancer."
"Excuse me?" I said.
Dr. Russell flipped the PDA screen around again; this time it was showing a false-color representation of my genitals. It was the first time I'd ever had my own package waved in front of my face. "Here," he said, pointing to a dark spot on my left testicle. "There's the nodule. Pretty big sucker, too. It's cancer, all right."
I glared at the man. "You know, Dr. Russell, most doctors would have found a more tactful way to break the news."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Perry," Dr. Russell said. "I don't want to seem unconcerned. But it's really not a problem. Even on Earth, testicular cancer is easily treatable, particularly in the early stages, which is the case here. At the very worst, you'd lose the testicle, but that's not a significant setback."
"Unless you happen to own the testicle," I growled.
"That's more of a psychological issue," Dr. Russell said. "In any event, right here and right now, I don't want you to worry about it. In a couple of days you'll be getting a comprehensive physical overhaul, and we'll deal with your testicle then. In the meantime, there should be no problems. The cancer is still local to the testicle. It hasn't spread to the lungs or the lymph nodes. You're fine."
"Am I going to drop the ball?" I said.
Dr. Russell smiled. "I think you can hold on to the ball for now," he said. "Should you ever drop it, I suspect it will be the least of your concerns. Now, other than the cancer, which as I say isn't really problematic, you're in as good a shape as any man of your physical age could be. That's good news; we don't have to do anything else to you at this point."
"What would you do if you'd found something really wrong?" I asked. "I mean, what if the cancer had been terminal?"
"'Terminal' is a pretty imprecise term, Mr. Perry," Dr. Russell said. "In the long run, we're all terminal cases. In the case of this examination, what we're really looking to do is to stabilize any recruits who are in imminent danger, so we know they'll make it through the next few days. The case of your unfortunate roommate Mr. Deak isn't all that unusual. We have a lot of recruits who make it to this point just to die before assessment. That's not good for any of us."
Dr. Russell consulted his PDA. "Now, in the case of Mr. Deak, who died of a heart attack, what we probably would have done would be to remove the plaque buildup from his arteries and provide him with an arterial wall-strengthening compound to prevent ruptures. That's our most common treatment. Most seventy-five-year-old arteries can use some propping up. In your case, if you had had advanced stage cancer, we would have trimmed back the tumors to a point where they didn't pose an imminent threat to your vital functions, and shored up the affected regions to make sure you wouldn't have any problems over the next few days."
"Why wouldn't you cure it?" I asked. "If you can 'shore up' an affected region, it sounds like you could probably fix it completely if you wanted to."
"We can, but it's not necessary," Dr. Russell said. "You'll be getting a more comprehensive overhaul in a couple of days. We just need to keep you going until then."
"What does 'comprehensive overhaul' mean, anyway?" I said.
"It means that when it's done, you'll wonder why you ever worried about a spot of cancer on your testicle," he said. "That's a promise. Now, there's one more thing we need to do here. Bring your head forward, please."
I did. Dr. Russell reached up and brought the feared arm cup down directly on the top of my head. "During the next couple of days, it's going to be important for us to get a good picture of your brain activity," he said, moving back. "So to do this, I'm going to implant a sensor array into your skull." As he said this, he tapped the screen on his PDA, an action I was learning to mistrust. There was a slight sucking noise as the cup adhered to my skull.
"How do you do that?" I asked.
"Well, right now, you can probably feel a little tickle on your scalp and down the back of your neck," Dr. Russell said, and I could. "Those are the injectors positioning themselves. They're like little hypodermic needles that will insert the sensors. The sensors themselves are very small, but there's a lot of them. About twenty thousand, more or less. Don't worry, they're self-sterilizing."
"Is this going to hurt?" I asked.
"Not so much," he said, and tapped his PDA screen. Twenty thousand microsensors slammed themselves into my skull like four ax handles simultaneously whacking my skull.
"God damn it!" I grabbed my head, banging my hands against the crèche door as I did so. "You son of a bitch," I yelled at Dr. Russell. "You said it wouldn't hurt!"
"I said 'not so much,'" Dr. Russell said.
"Not so much as what? Having your head stepped on by an elephant?"
"Not so much as when the sensors connect to each other," Dr. Russell said. "The good news is that as soon as they're connected, the pain stops. Now hold still, this will only take a minute." He tapped the PDA again. Eighty thousand needles shot out in every direction in my skull.
I have never wanted to punch a doctor so much in my life.
"I don't know," Harry was saying. "I think it's an interesting look." And with this, Harry rubbed his head, which like all our heads was now a dusty speckled gray where twenty thousand subcutaneous sensors sat, measuring brain activity.
The breakfast crew had reconvened again at lunchtime, this time with Jesse and her roommate Maggie joining the crowd. Harry had declared that we now constituted an official clique, branded us the "Old Farts," and demanded we begin a food fight with the next table over. He was voted down, in no small part due to Thomas noting that any food we threw we wouldn't get to eat, and lunch was even better than breakfast, if that was possible.
"And a damned good thing, too," Thomas said. "After this morning's little brain injection, I was almost too pissed off to eat."
"I can't imagine that," Susan said.
"Notice how I said 'almost,'" Thomas said. "But I'll tell you what. I wish I'd had one of those crèches back home. Would have cut my appointment times by eighty percent. More time for golfing."
"Your devotion to your patients is overwhelming," Jesse said.
"Fah," Thomas said. "I played golf with most of them. They would have been all for it. And as much as it pains me to say it, it helped my doctor make a much better assessment than I ever could have. That thing is a diagnostician's dream. It caught a microscopic tumor on my pancreas. There's no way I could have caught that back home until it was a hell of a lot larger or a patient started showing symptoms. Did anyone else have anything surprising?"
"Lung cancer," Harry said. "Little spots."
"Ovarian cysts," Jesse said. Maggie seconded.
"Incipient rheumatoid arthritis," said Alan.
"Testicular cancer," I said.
Every man at the table winced. "Ouch," said Thomas.
"They tell me I'll live," I said.
"You'll just be lopsided when you walk," said Susan.
"That's enough of that," I said.
"What I don't understand is why they didn't fix the problems," Jesse said. "My doctor showed me a cyst the size of a gumball, but told me not to concern myself with it. I don't think I'm cut out not to worry about something like that."
"Thomas, you're alleged to be a doctor," Susan said, and tapped her gray-shaded brow. "What's with these little bastards? Why not just give us a brain scan?"
"If I had to guess, which I do, since I really have no clue," Thomas said, "I'd say that they want to see our brains in action while we go through our training. But they can't do that with us strapped to a machine, so they're strapping the machines to us instead."
"Thanks for the cogent explanation of what I already figured out," Susan said. "What I'm asking is, what purpose does that sort of measurement serve?"
"I dunno," Thomas said. "Maybe they're fitting us for new brains after all. Or maybe they've got some way of adding new brain material, and they need to see what parts of our brains need a boost. I just hope they don't need to put in another set of the damned things. The first set nearly killed me from the pain."
"Speaking of which," Alan said, turning to me, "I hear you lost your roommate this morning. Are you okay?"
"I'm all right," I said. "Though it's depressing. My doctor said that if he had managed to make it to his appointment this morning, they probably could have kept him from dying. Given him a plaque remover or something. I feel like I should have made him get up for breakfast. That might have kept him moving long enough to make it to his appointment."
"Don't kick yourself about it," Thomas said. "There's no way you could have known. People just die."
"Sure, but not days from getting a 'comprehensive overhaul,' as my doctor was putting it."
Harry piped in. "Not to be too crass about this—"
"You just know this is going to be bad," Susan said.
"—but when I went to college," Harry continued, throwing a piece of bread at Susan, "if your roommate died, you were usually allowed to skip your finals for that semester. You know, because of the trauma."
"And oddly enough, your roommate got to skip them, too," Susan said. "For much the same reason."
"I never thought of it that way," Harry said. "Anyway, think they might let you sit out the evaluations they have planned for today?"
"I doubt it," I said. "Even if they did, I wouldn't take up the offer. What else would I do, sit in my stateroom all day? Talk about depressing. Someone died there, you know."
"You could always move," Jesse said. "Maybe someone else's roommate died, too."
"There's a morbid thought," I said. "And anyway, I don't want to move. I'm sorry Leon's dead, of course. But now I have a room to myself."
"Looks like the healing process has begun," Alan said.
"I'm just trying to move past the pain," I said.
"You don't talk much, do you," Susan said to Maggie, rather suddenly.
"No," Maggie said.
"Hey, what does everyone have next on their schedule?" Jesse asked.
Everyone reached for their PDA, then stopped, guiltily.
"Let's think about just how high school that last moment really was," Susan said.
"Well, hell," Harry said, and pulled out his PDA anyway. "We've already joined a lunchroom clique. Might as well go all the way."
It turned out Harry and I had our first evaluation session together. We were directed to a conference room where chairs with desks had been set up.
"Holy crap," Harry said as we took our seats. "We really are back in high school."
This assessment was reinforced when our Colonial came into the room. "You will now be tested on basic language and mathematic skills," the proctor said. "Your first test is being downloaded into your PDA. It is multiple choice. Please answer as many questions as you can within the thirty-minute time limit. If you finish before your thirty minutes are up, please sit quietly or review your answers. Please do not collaborate with other trainees. Please begin now."
I looked down at my PDA. A word analogy question was on it.
"You have got to be kidding," I said. Other people in the room were chuckling as well.
Harry raised his hand. "Ma'am?" he said. "What's the score I need to get into Harvard?"
"I've heard that one before," the Colonial said. "Everyone, please settle down and work on your test."
"I've been waiting sixty years to raise my math score," Harry said. "Let's see how I do now."
Our second assessment was even worse.
"Please follow the white square. Use only your eyes, not your head." The Colonial dimmed the lights in the room. Sixty pairs of eyes focused on a white square on the wall. Slowly, it began to move.
"I can't believe I went into space for this," Harry said.
"Maybe things will pick up," I said. "If we're lucky, we'll get another white square to look at."
A second white square appeared on the wall.
"You've been here before, haven't you?" Harry said.
Later, Harry and I separated, and I had some activities of my own.
The first room I was in featured a Colonial and a pile of blocks.
"Make a house out of these, please," the Colonial said.
"Only if I get an extra juice box," I said.
"I'll see what I can do," the Colonial promised. I made a house out of the blocks and then went into the next room, where the Colonial in there pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen.
"Starting from the middle of the maze, try to see if you can get to the outer edge."
"Jesus Christ," I said, "a drug-addled rat could do this."
"Let's hope so," the Colonial said. "Still, let's see you do it anyway."
I did. In the next room, the Colonial there wanted me to call out the numbers and letters. I learned to stop wondering why and just do what they told me.
A little later in the afternoon, I got pissed off.
"I've been reading your file," said the Colonial, a thin young man who looked like a strong wind would sail him off like a kite.
"Okay," I said.
"It says you were married."
"I was."
"Did you like it? Being married."
"Sure. It beats the alternative."
He smirked. "So what happened? Divorce? Fuck around one time too many?"
Whatever obnoxiously amusing qualities this guy had were fading fast. "She's dead," I said.
"Yeah? How did that happen?"
"She had a stroke."
"Gotta love a stroke," he said. "Bam, your brain's skull pudding, just like that. Good that she didn't survive. She'd be this fat, bedridden turnip, you know. You'd just have to feed her through a straw or something." He made slurping noises.
I didn't say anything. Part of my brain was figuring how quickly I could move to snap his neck, but most of me was just sitting there in blind shock and rage. I simply could not believe what I was hearing.
Down in some deep part of my brain, someone was telling me to start breathing again soon, or I was going to pass out.
The Colonial's PDA suddenly beeped. "Okay," he said, and stood up quickly. "We're done. Mr. Perry, please allow me to apologize for the comments I made regarding your wife's death. My job here is to generate an enraged response from the recruit as quickly as possible. Our psychological models showed that you would respond most negatively to comments like the ones I have just made. Please understand that on a personal level I would never make such comments about your late wife."
I blinked stupidly for a few seconds at the man. Then I roared at him. "What kind of sick, fucked-up test was THAT?!?"
"I agree it is an extremely unpleasant test, and once again I apologize. I am doing my job as ordered, nothing more."
"Holy Christ!" I said. "Do you have any idea how close I came to breaking your fucking neck?"
"In fact, I do," the man said in a calm, controlled voice that indicated that, in fact, he did. "My PDA, which was tracking your mental state, beeped right before you were about to pop. But even if it hadn't I would have known. I do this all the time. I know what to expect."
I was still trying to come down from my rage. "You do this thing with every recruit?" I asked. "How are you even still alive?"
"I understand that question," the man said. "I was in fact chosen for this assignment because my small build gives the recruit the impression that he or she can beat the hell out of me. I am a very good 'little twerp.' However, I am capable of restraining a recruit if I have to. Though usually I don't have to. As I said, I do this a lot."
"It's not a very nice job," I said. I had finally managed to get myself back into a rational state of mind.
"'It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it,'" the man said. "I find it interesting, in that every recruit has a different thing that causes him or her to explode. But you're right. It's a high-stress assignment. It's not really for everyone."
"I bet you're not very popular in bars," I said.
"Actually, I'm told I'm quite charming. When I'm not intentionally pissing people off, that is. Mr. Perry, we're all finished here. If you'll step through the door to your right, you'll begin your next assessment."
"They're not going to try to piss me off again, are they?"
"You may become pissed off," the man said, "but if you do, it'll be on your own. We only do this test once."
I headed to the door, then stopped. "I know you were doing your job," I said. "But I still want you to know. My wife was a wonderful person. She deserves better than to be used like this."
"I know she does, Mr. Perry," the man said. "I know she does."
I went through the door.
In the next room, a very nice young lady, who happened to be completely naked, wanted me to tell her anything I could possibly remember about my seventh birthday party.
"I can't believe they showed us that film right before dinner," Jesse said.
"It wasn't right before dinner," Thomas said. "The Bugs Bunny cartoon was after that. Anyway, it wasn't so bad."
"Yes, well, maybe you're not utterly disgusted by a film on intestinal surgery, Mister Doctor, but the rest of us found it pretty disturbing," Jesse said.
"Does this mean you don't want your ribs?" Thomas said, pointing to her plate.
"Did anyone else get the naked woman asking about your childhood?" I asked.
"I got a man," Susan said.
"Woman," said Harry.
"Man," said Jesse.
"Woman," said Thomas.
"Man," said Alan.
We all looked at him.
"What?" Alan said. "I'm gay."
"What was the point of that?" I asked. "About the naked person, I mean, not about Alan being gay."
"Thanks," Alan said dryly.
"They're trying to provoke particular responses, that's all," said Harry. "All of today's tests have been of pretty basic intellectual or emotional responses, the foundation of more complex and subtle emotions and intellectual abilities. They're just trying to figure out how we think and react on a primal level. The naked person was obviously trying to get you all worked up sexually."
"But what was that whole thing about asking you about your childhood, is what I'm saying," I said.
Harry shrugged. "What's sex without a little guilt?"
"What pissed me off was the one where they got me all pissed off," Thomas said. "I swear I was going to clobber that guy. He said the Cubs ought to have been demoted to the minor leagues after they went two centuries without a World Series championship."
"That sounds reasonable to me," Susan said.
"Don't you start," Thomas said. "Man. Pow. I'm telling you. You don't mess with the Cubs."
If the first day was all about demeaning feats of intellect, the second day was about demeaning feats of strength, or lack thereof.
"Here's a ball," one proctor said to me. "Bounce it." I did. I was told to move on.
I walked around a small athletic track. I was asked to run a small distance. I did some light calisthenics. I played a video game. I was asked to shoot at a target on a wall with a light gun. I swam (I liked that part. I've always liked swimming, so long as my head's above water). For two hours, I was placed in a rec room with several dozen other people and told to do whatever I wanted. I shot some pool. I played a game of Ping-Pong. God help me, I played shuffleboard.
At no point did I even break a sweat.
"What the hell sort of army is this, anyway?" I asked the Old Farts at lunch.
"It makes a little bit of sense," Harry said. "Yesterday we did basic intellect and emotion. Today was basic physical movement. Again, they seem interested in the foundations of high order activity."
"I'm not really aware of Ping-Pong being indicative of higher order physical activity," I said.
"Hand-eye coordination," Harry said. "Timing. Precision."
"And you never know when you're going to have to bat back a grenade," Alan piped in.
"Exactly," Harry said. "Also, what do you want them to do? Have us run a marathon? We'd all drop before the end of the first mile."
"Speak for yourself, flabby," Thomas said.
"I stand corrected," Harry said. "Our friend Thomas would make it to mile six before his heart imploded. If he didn't get a food-related cramp first."
"Don't be silly," Thomas said. "Everyone knows you need to power up with carbohydrates before a race. Which is why I'm going back for more fettuccine."
"You're not running a marathon, Thomas," Susan said.
"The day is young," Thomas said.
"Actually," Jesse said, "my schedule is empty. I've got nothing planned for the rest of the day. And tomorrow, the only thing on the schedule is 'Concluding Physical Improvements' from 0600 to 1200 and a general recruit assembly at 2000, after dinner."
"My schedule is finished until tomorrow, too," I said. A quick glance up and down the table showed that everyone else was done for the day as well. "Well, then," I said. "What are we going to do to amuse ourselves?"
"There's always more shuffleboard," Susan said.
"I have a better idea," Harry said. "Anyone have plans at 1500?"
We all shook our heads.
"Swell," Harry said. "Then meet me back here. I have a field trip for the Old Farts."
"Are we even supposed to be here?" Jesse asked.
"Sure," said Harry. "Why not? And even if we're not, what are they going to do? We're not really in the military yet. We can't officially be court-martialed."
"No, but they can probably blow us out an air lock," Jesse said.
"Don't be silly," Harry said. "That would be a waste of perfectly good air."
Harry had led us to an observation deck in the Colonial area of the ship. And indeed, while we recruits had never been specifically told we couldn't go to the Colonial's decks, neither had we been told that we could (or should). Standing as we were in the deserted deck, the seven of us stood out like truant schoolkids at a peep show.
Which, in one sense, was what we were. "During our little exercises today, I struck up a conversation with one of the Colonial folks," Harry said, "and he mentioned that the Henry Hudson was going to make its skip today at 1535. And I figure that none of us has actually seen what a skip looks like, so I asked him where one would go to get a good view. And he mentioned here. So here we are, and with"—Harry glanced at his PDA—"four minutes to spare."
"Sorry about that," Thomas said. "I didn't mean to hold everyone up. The fettuccine was excellent, but my lower intestine would apparently beg to differ."
"Please feel free not to share such information in the future, Thomas," Susan said. "We don't know you that well yet."
"Well, how else will you get to know me that well?" Thomas said. No one bothered to answer that one.
"Anyone know where we are right now? In space, that is," I asked after a few moments of silence had passed.
"We're still in the solar system," Alan said, and pointed out the window. "You can tell because you can still see the constellations. See, look, there's Orion. If we'd traveled any significant distance, the stars would have shifted their relative position in the sky. Constellations would have been stretched out or would be entirely unrecognizable."
"Where are we supposed to be skipping to?" Jesse asked.
"The Phoenix system," Alan said. "But that won't tell you anything, because 'Phoenix' is the name of the planet, not of the star. There is a constellation named 'Phoenix,' and in fact, there it is"—he pointed to a collection of stars—"but the planet Phoenix isn't around any of the stars in that constellation. If I remember correctly, it's actually in the constellation Lupus, which is farther north"—he pointed to another, dimmer collection of stars—"but we can't actually see the star from here."
"You sure know your constellations," Jesse said admiringly.
"Thanks," Alan said. "I wanted to be an astronomer when I was younger, but astronomers get paid for shit. So I became a theoretical physicist instead."
"Lots of money in thinking up new subatomic particles?" Thomas asked.
"Well, no," Alan admitted. "But I developed a theory that helped the company I worked for create a new energy containment system for naval vessels. The company's profit-sharing incentive plan gave me one percent for that. Which came to more money than I could spend, and trust me, I made the effort."
"Must be nice to be rich," Susan said.
"It wasn't too bad," Alan admitted. "Of course, I'm not rich anymore. You give it up when you join. And you lose other things, too. I mean, in about a minute, all that time I spent memorizing the constellations will be wasted effort. There's no Orion or Ursa Minor or Cassiopeia where we're going. This might sound stupid, but it's entirely possible I'll miss the constellations more than I miss the money. You can always make more money. But we're not coming back here. It's the last time I'll see these old friends."
Susan went over and put an arm around Alan's shoulder. Harry looked down at his PDA. "Here we go," he said, and began a countdown. When he got to "one," we all looked up and out the window.
It wasn't dramatic. One second we were looking at one star-filled sky. The next, we were looking at another. If you blinked, you would have missed it. And yet, you could tell it was an entirely alien sky. We all may not have had Alan's knowledge of the constellations, but most of us know how to pick out Orion and the Big Dipper from the stellar lineup. They were nowhere to be found, an absence subtle and yet substantial. I glanced over at Alan. He was standing like a pillar, hand in Susan's.
"We're turning," Thomas said. We watched as the stars slid counterclockwise as the Henry Hudson changed course. Suddenly the enormous blue arm of the planet Phoenix hovered above us. And above it (or below it, from our orientation) was a space station so large, so massive, and so busy that all we could do was bulge our eyes at it.
Finally someone spoke. And to everyone's surprise, it was Maggie. "Would you look at that," she said.
We all turned to look at her. She was visibly annoyed. "I'm not mute," she said. "I just don't talk much. This deserves comment of some kind."
"No kidding," Thomas said, turning back to look at it. "It makes Colonial Station look like a pile of puke."
"How many ships do you see?" Jesse said to me.
"I don't know," I said. "Dozens. There could be hundreds, for all I know. I didn't even know this many starships existed."
"If any of us were still thinking Earth was the center of the human universe," Harry said, "now would be an excellent time to revise that theory," Harry said.
We all stood and looked at the new world out the window.
My PDA chimed me awake at 0545, which was notable in that I had set it to wake me at 0600. The screen was flashing; there was a message labeled URGENT on it. I tapped the message.
NOTICE:
From 0600 to 1200, we will be conducting the final physical improvement regimen for all recruits. To ensure prompt processing, all recruits are required to remain in their staterooms until such time as Colonial officials arrive to escort them to their physical improvement sessions. To aid in the smooth function of this process, stateroom doors will be secured as of 0600. Please take this time to take care of any personal business that requires use of the rest rooms or other areas outside your stateroom. If after 0600 you need to use the rest-room facilities, contact the Colonial staffer on your stateroom deck through your PDA.
You will be notified fifteen minutes prior to your appointment; please be dressed and prepared when Colonial officials arrive at your door. Breakfast will not be served; lunch and dinner will be served at the usual time.
At my age, you don't have to tell me twice to pee; I padded down to the rest room to take care of business and hoped that my appointment was sooner rather than later, as I didn't want to have to get permission to relieve myself.
My appointment was neither sooner nor later; at 0900 my PDA alerted me, and at 0915 there was a sharp rap at my door and a man's voice calling my name. I opened the door to find two Colonials on the other side. I received permission from them to make a quick rest-room stop, and then followed them from my deck, back to the waiting room of Dr. Russell. I waited briefly before I was allowed entrance into his examination room.
"Mr. Perry, good to see you again," he said, extending his hand. The Colonials who accompanied me left through the far door. "Please step up to the crèche."
"The last time I did, you jackhammered several thousand bits of metal into my head," I said. "Forgive me if I'm not entirely enthusiastic about climbing in again."
"I understand," Dr. Russell said. "However, today is going to be pain-free. And we are under something of a time constraint, so, if you please." He motioned to the crèche.
I reluctantly stepped in. "If I feel so much as a twinge, I'm going to hit you," I warned.
"Fair enough," Dr. Russell said as he closed the crèche door. I noted that unlike the last time, Dr. Russell bolted down the door to the crèche; maybe he was taking the threat seriously. I didn't mind. "Tell me, Mr. Perry," he said as he bolted the door, "what do you think of the last couple of days?"
"They were confusing and irritating," I said. "If I knew I was going to be treated like a preschooler, I probably wouldn't have signed up."
"That's pretty much what everyone says," Dr. Russell said. "So let me explain a little bit about what we've been trying to do. We put in the sensor array for two reasons. First, as you may have guessed, we're monitoring your brain activity while you perform various basic functions and experience certain primal emotions. Every human's brain processes information and experience in more or less the same way, but at the same time each person uses certain pathways and processes unique to them. It's a little like how every human hand has five fingers, but each human being has his own set of fingerprints. What we've been trying to do is isolate your mental 'fingerprint.' Make sense?"
I nodded.
"Good. So now you know why we had you doing ridiculous and stupid things for two days."
"Like talking to a naked woman about my seventh birthday party," I said.
"We get a lot of really useful information from that one," Dr. Russell said.
"I don't see how," I said.
"It's technical," Dr. Russell assured me. "In any event, the last couple days give us a good idea of how your brain uses neural pathways and processes all sorts of stimuli, and that's information we can use as a template."
Before I could ask, A template for what, Dr. Russell continued. "Second, the sensor array does more than record what your brain is doing. It can also transmit a real-time representation of the activity in your brain. Or to put it another way, it can broadcast your consciousness. This is important, because unlike specific mental processes, consciousness can't be recorded. It has to be live if it's going to make the transfer."
"The transfer," I said.
"That's right," Dr. Russell said.
"Do you mind if I ask you what the hell you're talking about?" I said.
Dr. Russell smiled. "Mr. Perry, when you signed up to join the army, you thought we'd make you young again, right?"
"Yes," I said. "Everybody does. You can't fight a war with old people, yet you recruit them. You have to have some way to make them young again."
"How do you think we do it?" Dr. Russell asked.
"I don't know," I said. "Gene therapy. Cloned replacement parts. You'd swap out old parts somehow and put in new ones."
"You're half right," Dr. Russell said. "We do use gene therapy and cloned replacements. But we don't 'swap out' anything, except you."
"I don't understand," I said. I felt very cold, like reality was being tugged out from under my feet.
"Your body is old, Mr. Perry. It's old and it won't work for much longer. There's no point in trying to save it or upgrade it. It's not something that gains value when it ages or has replaceable parts that keep it running like new. All a human body does when it gets older is get old. So we're going to get rid of it. We're getting rid of it all. The only part of you that we're going to save is the only part of you that hasn't decayed—your mind, your consciousness, your sense of self."
Dr. Russell walked over to the far door, where the Colonials had exited, and rapped on it. Then he turned back to me. "Take a good look at your body, Mr. Perry," he said. "Because you're about to say good-bye to it. You're going somewhere else."
"Where am I going, Dr. Russell?" I asked. I could barely make enough spit to talk.
"You're going here," he said, and opened the door.
From the other side, the Colonials came back in. One of them was pushing a wheelchair with someone in it. I craned my head to take a look. And I began to shake.
It was me.
Fifty years ago.
"Now, I want you to relax," Dr. Russell said to me.
The Colonials had wheeled the younger me to the other crèche and were in the process of placing the body into it. It or he or I or whatever offered no resistance; they might as well have been moving someone in a coma. Or a corpse. I was fascinated. And horrified. A small little voice in my brain told me it was good I had gone to the bathroom before I came in, or otherwise I'd be peeing down my leg.
"How—" I began, and I choked. My mouth was too dry to talk. Dr. Russell spoke to one of the Colonials, who left and returned with a small cup of water. Dr. Russell held the cup as he gave the water to me, which was good, because I don't think I could have managed to grip it. He spoke to me as I drank.
"'How' is usually attached to one of two questions," he said. "The first is, How did you make a younger version of me? The answer to that is that ten years ago we took a genetic sample and used that to make your new body." He took the cup away.
"A clone," I said, finally.
"No," Dr. Russell said. "Not exactly. The DNA has been heavily modified. You can see the most obvious difference—your new body's skin."
I looked back over and realized that in the shock of seeing a younger version of me, I missed a rather obvious and glaring difference.
"He's green," I said.
"You're green, you mean," Dr. Russell said. "Or will be in about five minutes. So that's one 'how' question. The second one is, How do you get me into there?" He pointed to my green-skinned doppelganger. "And the answer to that is, we're transferring your consciousness."
"How?" I asked.
"We take the representation of brain activity that's tracked by your sensor array and send it—and you—over there," Dr. Russell said. "We've taken the brain pattern information we've collected over the last couple of days and used it to prepare your new brain for your consciousness, so when we send you over, things will look familiar. I'm giving you the simplified version of things, obviously; it's vastly more complicated. But it'll do for right now. Now, let's get you plugged in."
Dr. Russell reached up and began to maneuver the crèche's arm over my head. I started to move my head away, so he stopped. "We're not putting anything in this time, Mr. Perry," he said. "The injector cap has been replaced with a signal amplifier. There's nothing to worry about."
"Sorry," I said, and moved my head back into position.
"Don't be," Dr. Russell said, and fit the cap over my skull. "You're taking this better than most recruits. The guy before you screamed like a pig and fainted. We had to transfer him over unconscious. He's going to wake up young and green and very, very disturbed. Trust me, you're a doll."
I smiled, and glanced over to the body that would soon be me. "Where's his cap?" I asked.
"Doesn't need one," Dr. Russell said, and began tapping his PDA. "Like I said, this body's been heavily modified."
"That sounds ominous," I said.
"You'll feel differently once you're inside." Dr. Russell finished playing with his PDA and turned back to me. "Okay, we're ready. Let me tell you what's going to happen next."
"Please," I said.
He turned the PDA around. "When I press this button"—he indicated a button on the screen—"your sensor array will begin transmitting your brain activity into the amplifier. Once your brain activity is sufficiently mapped, I'll connect this crèche to a specialized computer bank. At the same time, a similar connection will be opened to your new brain over there. When the connections check out, we'll broadcast your consciousness into your new brain. When the brain activity takes hold in your new brain, we'll sever the connection, and there you are, in your new brain and body. Any questions?"
"Does this procedure ever fail?" I asked.
"You would ask that question," Dr. Russell said. "The answer is yes. On rare occasions something can go wrong. However, it's extremely rare. I've been doing this for twenty years—thousands of transfers—and I've lost someone only once. The woman had a massive stroke during the transfer process. Her brain patterns became chaotic and consciousness didn't transfer. Everyone else made it through fine."
"So as long as I don't actually die, I'll live," I said.
"An interesting way to put it. But yes, that's about right."
"How do you know when consciousness has transferred?"
"We'll know it through here"—Dr. Russell tapped the side of his PDA—"and we'll know it because you'll tell us. Trust me, you'll know when you've made the transfer."
"How do you know?" I asked. "Have you ever done this? Been transferred?"
Dr. Russell smiled. "Actually, yes," he said. "Twice, in fact."
"But you're not green," I said.
"That's the second transfer. You don't have to stay green forever," he said, almost wistfully. Then he blinked and looked at his PDA again. "I'm afraid we have to cut the questions short now, Mr. Perry, since I have several more recruits to transfer after you. Are you ready to begin?"
"Hell no, I'm not ready," I said. "I'm so scared my bowels are about to cut out."
"Then let me rephrase," Dr. Russell said. "Are you ready to get it over with?"
"God, yes," I said.
"Then let's get to it," Dr. Russell said, and tapped the screen of his PDA.
The crèche gave a slight thunk as something physically switched on inside it. I glanced over to Dr. Russell. "The amplifier," he said. "This part will take about a minute."
I grunted acknowledgment and looked over to my new me. It was cradled in the crèche, motionless, like a wax figurine that someone had spilled green coloring into during the casting process. It looked like I did so long ago—better than I did, actually. I wasn't the most athletic young adult on the block. This version of me looked like he was muscled like a competitive swimmer. And it had a great head of hair.
I couldn't even imagine being in that body.
"We're at full resolution," Dr. Russell said. "Opening connection." He tapped his PDA.
There was a slight jolt, and then it suddenly felt like there was a big, echoey room in my brain. "Whoa," I said.
"Echo chamber?" Dr. Russell asked. I nodded. "That's the computer bank," he said. "Your consciousness is perceiving the small time lag between there and here. It's nothing to worry about. Okay, opening connection between the new body and the computer bank." Another PDA tap.
From across the room, the new me opened his eyes.
"I did that," Dr. Russell said.
"He's got cat's eyes," I said.
"You've got cat's eyes," Dr. Russell said. "Both connections are clear and noise-free. I'm going to start the transfer now. You're going to feel a little disoriented." A PDA tap—
—and I fell
waaaaaaaaaaaaay down
(and felt like I was being pressed hard through a fine mesh mattress)
and all the memories I ever had hit me in the face like a runaway brick wall
one clear flash of standing at the altar
watching kathy walk down the aisle
seeing her foot catch the front of her gown
a small stutter in her step
then she corrected beautifully
smiled up at me as if to say
yeah like that's going to stop me
*another flash of kathy where the hell did i put the vanilla and then the clatter of the mixing bowl hitting kitchen tile*
(god damn it kathy)
And then I'm me again, staring into Dr. Russell's room feeling dizzy and looking straight at Dr. Russell's face and also the back of his head and thinking to myself, Damn, that's a neat trick, and it seems like I just had that thought in stereo.
And it hits me. I'm in two places at the same time.
I smile and see the old me and the new me smile simultaneously.
"I'm breaking the laws of physics," I say to Dr. Russell from two mouths.
And he says, "You're in."
And then he taps that goddamned PDA of his.
And there's just one of me again.
The other me. I can tell because I'm no longer staring at the new me anymore, I'm looking at the old me.
And it stares at me like it knows something truly strange has just happened.
And then the stare seems to say, I'm no longer needed.
And then it closes its eyes.
"Mr. Perry," Dr. Russell said, and then repeated it, and then lightly slapped me on the cheek.
"Yes," I said. "I'm here. Sorry."
"What's your full name, Mr. Perry?"
I thought about it for a second. Then, "John Nicholas Perry."
"What's your birthday?"
"June tenth."
"What was the name of your second-grade teacher?"
I looked directly at Dr. Russell. "Christ, man. I couldn't even remember that when I was in my old body."
Dr. Russell smiled. "Welcome to your new life, Mr. Perry. You made it through with flying colors." He unlatched the door to the crèche and opened it wide. "Come out of there, please."
I placed my hands—my green hands—on the side of the crèche and pushed outward. I placed my right foot forward and staggered a little bit. Dr. Russell came up beside me and steadied me. "Careful," he said. "You've been an older man for a while. It's going to take you a little bit of time to remember how to be in a young body."
"What do you mean?" I said.
"Well," he said. "For one thing, you can straighten up."
He was right. I was stooped slightly (kids, drink your milk). I straightened up, and took another step forward. And another. Good news, I remembered how to walk. I cracked a grin like a schoolboy as I paced in the room.
"How do you feel?" Dr. Russell asked.
"I feel young," I said, only a little joyously.
"You should," Dr. Russell said. "This body has a biological age of twenty. It's actually younger than that, but we can grow them fast these days."
I jumped experimentally and felt like I bounced halfway back to Earth. "I'm not even old enough to drink anymore," I said.
"You're still seventy-five inside," Dr. Russell said.
At that I stopped my little jumping and walked over to my old body, resting in the crèche. It looked sad and sagged, like an old suitcase. I reached out to touch my old face. It was warm, and I felt breath. I recoiled.
"It's still alive," I said, backing away.
"It's brain dead," Dr. Russell said quickly. "All your cognitive functions made the transfer. Once they had, I shut down this brain. It's running on autopilot—breathing and pumping blood, but nothing more and that only provisionally. Left on its own, it'll be dead within a few days."
I crept back to my old body. "What's going to happen to it?" I asked.
"We'll store it in the short term," Dr. Russell said. "Mr. Perry, I hate to rush you, but it's time for you to return to your quarters so I can continue my work with other recruits. We have quite a few to get through before noon."
"I have some questions about this body," I said.
"We have a brochure," Dr. Russell said. "I'll have it downloaded into your PDA."
"Gee, thanks," I said.
"Not at all," Dr. Perry said, and nodded toward the Colonials. "These men will escort you back to your quarters. Congratulations again."
I walked over to the Colonials, and we turned to go. Then I stopped. "Wait," I said. "I forgot something." I walked over to my old body again, still in the crèche. I looked over to Dr. Russell and pointed to the door. "I need to unlock this," I said. Dr. Russell nodded. I unlocked it, opened it, and took my old body's left hand. On the ring finger was a simple gold band. I slipped it off and slipped it on my ring finger. Then I cupped my old face with my new hands.
"Thank you," I said to me. "Thank you for everything."
Then I went out with the Colonials.
THE NEW YOU
An introduction to your new body,
for recruits of the Colonial Defense Forces
From the staff of Colonial Genetics
Two centuries of building better bodies!
[This was the splash page of the brochure waiting for me on my PDA. You'll just have to imagine the illustration, which echoed the famous da Vinci study of the human body, only with a nude green man where the other dude used to be. But let's continue.]
By now, you have received your new body from the Colonial Defense Forces. Congratulations! Your new body is the end result of decades of refinement by the scientists and engineers at Colonial Genetics, and is optimized for the rigorous demands of CDF service. This document will serve to give a brief introduction on the important features and functions of your new body, and provide answers to some of the most common questions recruits have about their new body.
NOT JUST A NEW BODY—A BETTER BODY
You've surely noticed the green skin tone of your new body. This isn't merely cosmetic. Your new skin (KloraDerm™) incorporates chlorophyll to provide your body with an extra source of energy and to optimize your body's use of both oxygen and carbon dioxide. The result: You'll feel fresher, longer—and better able to perform your duties as a CDF serviceperson! This is only the beginning of the improvements you'll find in your body.
Here are some others:
Your blood tissue has been replaced by SmartBlood™—a revolutionary system that increases oxygen-carrying capacity fourfold while it guards your body against disease, toxins, and death from blood tissue loss!
Our patented CatsEye™ technology gives you sight you have to see to believe! Increased rod and cone counts give you better imaging resolution than can be achieved in most naturally evolved systems, while specially designed light amplifiers allow you to see clearly in extreme low-light situations.
Our UncommonSense™ suite of sense enhancements allows you to touch, smell, hear and taste like you never have before, as our expanded nerve placement and optimized connections expand your perceptual ranges in all sense categories. You'll feel the difference from the first day!
How strong do you want to be? With HardArm™ technologies that boost natural muscle strength and reaction time, you'll be stronger and faster than you ever dreamed possible—so strong and fast, in fact, that by law Colonial Genetics can't sell this technology on the consumer market. That's a real "leg up" for you recruits!
Never be unconnected again! You'll never lose your BrainPal™ computer because it resides in your own brain. Our proprietary Assistive Adaptive Interface works with you so you can access your BrainPal™ your way. Your BrainPal™ also serves to coordinate nonorganic technologies in your new body, such as SmartBlood™. CDF servicepeople swear by this amazing piece of technology—and so will you.
BUILDING A BETTER YOU
You'll no doubt be amazed at how much your new body can do. But have you wondered how it was designed? You may be interested to know that your body is just the latest series in a line of advanced, improved bodies designed by Colonial Genetics. Through proprietary technology, we adapt both genetic information from other species and the latest in miniaturized robotic technologies to improve your new body. It's hard work, but you'll be glad we made the effort!
From our first improvements nearly two centuries ago, we've progressively built on our work. To introduce changes and improvements, we rely first on advanced computer modeling techniques to simulate the effects of each proposed improvement on the entire body system. The improvements that make it through this process are then tested on biological models. Then and only then are improvements incorporated into the final body design, integrated with the "starter" DNA you provide. Rest assured that each body improvement is safe and tested, and designed to make a better you!
COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR NEW BODY
1. Does My New Body Have a Brand Name?
Yes! Your new body is known as the Defender Series XII, "Hercules" model. Technically, it's known as CG/CDF Model 12, Revision 1.2.11. This body model is for use only by the Colonial Defense Forces. Additionally, each body has its own model number for maintenance purposes. You can access your own number through your BrainPal™. Don't worry, you can still use your given name for everyday purposes!
2. Does My New Body Age?
The Defender Series body is designed to provide the CDF with optimum performance its entire operating life. To do this, advanced regenerative techniques are employed at the genetic level to reduce natural entropic tendencies. With a basic maintenance regimen, your new body will remain in top condition as long as you operate it. You'll also find that injuries and disabilities are corrected quickly—so you can be up and running again in no time flat!
3. Can I Pass These Amazing Improvements to My Children?
No. Your body and its biological and technological systems are patented by Colonial Genetics and may not be passed on without permission. Also, due to the extensive nature of Defender Series improvements, its DNA is no longer genetically compatible with unmodified humans, and lab tests indicate that Defender Series mating creates incompatibilities lethal to the embryo in every case. Additionally, the CDF has determined that the ability to transmit genetic information is nonessential to its servicepeople's mission; therefore, each Defender model ships sterile, although other related functionality remains intact.
4. I'm Worried About the Theological Implications of This New Body. What Should I Do?
While neither Colonial Genetics nor the CDF maintains an official position on the theological or psychological ramifications of the transfer of consciousness from one body to another, we understand that many recruits may have questions or concerns. Each recruit transport comes equipped with clergy representing most of Earth's major religions and an additional complement of psychological therapists. We encourage you to seek them out and discuss your questions with them.
5. How Long Will I Stay in My New Body?
Defender Series bodies are designed for CDF use; so long as you stay in the CDF, you will be able to use and enjoy the technological and biological advancements of this new body. When you leave the CDF, you will be provided with a new, unaltered human body based on your own original DNA.
From all of us here at Colonial Genetics, congratulations on your new body! We know it will serve you well through your service in the Colonial Defense Forces. Thanks for your service to the colonies—and enjoy . . . Your New Body.
I set the PDA down, went over to the stateroom sink, and looked into the mirror at my new face.
It was impossible to ignore the eyes. My old body had brown eyes—muddy brown, but with interesting flecks of gold. Kathy used to tell me that she had read that flecks of color in the iris were nothing more than additional fatty tissue. So I had fat eyes.
If those eyes were fat, these were positively obese. They were gold from the pupil outward toward the rim, where they shaded toward green. The rim of the iris was a deep emerald; spikes of that color stabbed toward the pupils. The pupils themselves were slitted, drawn tight by the light directly above the mirror. I turned off that light and then turned the primary light off as well; the only light in the room was a small LED on the PDA. My old eyes would have never been able to see off of that.
My new eyes took only a moment to adjust. The room was undeniably dim, but I could make out every object clearly. I went back to the mirror and looked in; my eyes were dilated like someone with a belladonna overdose. I flicked the sink light back on and watched my pupils constrict with impressive speed.
I took off my clothes and took the first real look at my new body. My earlier impression of my form turned out to be correct; for lack of a better term, I was totally buffed out. I ran my hand down my chest and washboard stomach. I had never been this athletically fit in my life. I had no idea how they managed to make the new me this fit. I wondered how long it would take me to get it into the flabby shape I had been in during my real twenties. Then I wondered, given the amount of fiddling they had done with this body's DNA, if it was even possible for it to become flabby. I hoped not. I liked the new me.
Oh, and I was entirely hairless from the eyelashes down.
I mean, hairless—not a spare hair anywhere. Arms bare, legs bare, back bare (not that it had never not been bare before, ahem), private bits bare. I rubbed my chin to feel if there was a hint of stubble there. Smooth as a baby's bottom. Or my bottom, now. I looked down at my package; to be honest, without hair, it looked a little forlorn. The hair on my head was full but nondescript brown. That much hadn't changed from my previous incarnation.
I held my hand in front of my face to get a look at the skin tone. It was a shade of green that was light but not glaring, which was good; I don't think I could have handled being chartreuse. My skin was an even tone across my body, although my nipples and the tip of my penis were slightly darker. Basically, I seemed to have the same color contrast as before, just in a different hue. One thing I did notice, however, my veins were more noticeable, and grayish. I suspect that whatever color SmartBlood™ was (whatever it really was), it wasn't bloodred. I dressed myself again.
My PDA beeped at me. I picked it up. There was a message waiting.
You now have access to your BrainPal™ computer system, it read. Would you like to activate it at this time? There were buttons on the screen for YES and NO. I picked YES.
Suddenly, a deep, rich, soothing voice out of nowhere. I nearly jumped out of my new green skin.
"Hello!" it said. "You are interfacing with your BrainPal internal computer, with the patented Assistive Adaptive Interface! Do not be alarmed! Thanks to the BrainPal integration, the voice you are now hearing is being generated directly to the hearing centers of your brain."
Great, I thought. There's another voice in my head now.
"After this brief introductory session, you may turn off the voice at any time. We'll begin with some options you can choose by answering 'yes' or 'no.' At this point, your BrainPal would like you to say 'yes' and 'no' when directed, so that it may learn to recognize this response. So when you are ready, please say the word 'yes.' You may say it at any time."
The voice stopped. I hesitated, a little bit dazed.
"Please say 'yes' now," the voice repeated.
"Yes!" I said, a little jumpy.
"Thank you for saying 'yes.' Now, please say 'no.'"
"No," I said, and for a moment wondered if the BrainPal™ would think I was saying "no" to its request, get huffy and fry my brain in its own juices.
"Thank you for saying 'no,'" the voice said, revealing itself to be something of a literalist. "As we progress together, you will learn in time that you will not need to verbalize these commands in order for your BrainPal to respond to them. However, in the short term, you will probably wish to verbalize while you become comfortable communicating with your BrainPal. At this time, you have the option of continuing with audio, or switching to a text interface. Would you prefer to switch now to a text interface?"
"God, yes," I said.
We will now proceed with a text interface, a line of text read, floating directly in my line of sight. The text was perfectly contrasted against what I was staring at. I moved my head, and the text stayed dead center, the contrast changed to stay perfectly readable at all times. Wild.
It is recommended that during your initial text session, you remain seated to avoid injuring yourself, the BrainPal wrote. Please sit now. I sat.
During your initial sessions with your BrainPal™, you will find it easier to communicate by verbalizing. To aid the BrainPal™ in understanding your questions, we will now teach your BrainPal™ to understand your voice as it speaks. Please speak the following phonemes as you read them. In my field of vision, a list of phonemes unspooled. I read them right to left. The BrainPal then had me speak a number of short sentences. I did.
Thank you, the BrainPal wrote. Your BrainPal™ will now be able to take direction from the sound of your voice. Would you like to personalize your BrainPal™ now?
"Yes," I said.
Many BrainPal™ users find it useful to give their BrainPal™ a name other than BrainPal™. Would you like to name your BrainPal™ at this time?
"Yes," I said.
Please speak the name you would like to give your BrainPal™.
"'Asshole,'" I said.
You have selected "Asshole," the BrainPal wrote, and to its credit it spelled the word correctly. Be aware that many recruits have selected this name for their BrainPal™. Would you like to choose a different name?
"No," I said, and was proud that so many of my fellow recruits also felt this way about their BrainPal.
Your BrainPal™ is now Asshole, the BrainPal wrote. You may change this name in the future if you like. Now you must choose an access phrase to activate Asshole. While Asshole is active at all times it will only respond to commands after it has been activated. Please choose a short phrase. Asshole suggests "Activate Asshole" but you may choose another phrase. Please say your activation phrase now.
"'Hey, Asshole,'" I said.
You have chosen "Hey, Asshole." Please say it again to confirm. I did. Then it asked me to choose a deactivation phrase. I chose (of course) "Go away, Asshole."
Would you like Asshole to refer to itself in the first person?
"Absolutely," I said.
I am Asshole.
"Of course you are."
I await your commands or queries.
"Are you intelligent?" I asked.
I am equipped with a natural language processor and other systems to understand questions and comments and to provide answers, which often gives the appearance of intelligence, especially when connected to larger computer networks. Brain Pal™ systems, however, are not natively intelligent. For example, this is an automated response. This question is asked frequently.
"How do you understand me?"
At this stage I am responding to your voice, Asshole wrote. As you speak I am monitoring your brain and learning how your brain activates when you desire to communicate with me. In time I will be able to understand you without the need for you to speak. And in time, you may also learn to use me without conscious audible or visual cues.
"What do you do?" I asked.
I have a range of abilities. Would you like to see a formatted list?
"Please," I said.
A massive list appeared before my eyes. To see a list of subcategories, please select a top category and say, "Expand [category]." To perform an action, please say, "Open [category]."
I read down the list. Apparently, there was very little Asshole couldn't do. He could send messages to other recruits. He could download reports. He could play music or video. He could play games. He could call up any document on a system. He could store incredible amounts of data. He could perform complex calculations. He could diagnose physical ailments and provide suggestions for cures. He could create a local network among a chosen group of other BrainPal users. He could provide instantaneous translations of hundreds of human and alien languages. He could even provide field of vision information on any other BrainPal user. I turned this option on. I barely recognized myself anymore; I doubt I'd recognize any of the other Old Farts. Overall, Asshole was a pretty useful thing to have sitting inside one's brain.
I heard an unlatching sound at my door. I looked up. "Hey, Asshole," I said. "What time is it?"
It is now 1200, Asshole wrote. I had spent the better part of ninety minutes fiddling with him. Well, enough of that; I was ready to see some real people.
"Go away, Asshole," I said.
Good-bye, Asshole wrote. The text disappeared as soon as I read it.
There was a knock on the door. I walked over to open it. I figured it was Harry; I wondered what he looked like.
He looked like a knockout brunette with dark (green) olive skin and legs that went all the way up.
"You're not Harry," I said, incredibly stupidly.
The brunette looked at me and looked me up and down. "John?" she finally said.
I stared blankly for a second, and the name hit me—just before the ID floated ghostlike before my eyes. "Jesse," I said.
She nodded. I stared. I opened my mouth to say something. She grabbed my head and kissed me so hard that I was knocked back into my quarters. She managed to kick the door shut on our way down to the floor. I was impressed.
I had forgotten just how easy it was for a young man to get an erection.
I'd forgotten how many times a young man can get an erection, too.
"Don't take this the wrong way," Jesse said, lying on top of me after the third (!) time. "But I'm really not all that attracted to you."
"Thank God," I said. "If you were, I'd be worn down to a nub by now."
"Don't get me wrong," Jesse said. "I'm fond of you. Even before the"—she motioned with her hand here, trying to think of a way to describe a rejuvenating, full-body transplant—"the change, you were intelligent and kind and funny. A good friend."
"Uh-huh," I said. "You know, Jesse, usually the 'let's be friends' speech is to prevent sex."
"I just don't want you to have illusions about what this is about."
"I was under the impression that it was about magically being transported into a body of a twenty-year-old and being so excited about it that it was imperative to have wild sex with the very first person we saw."
Jesse stared at me for a second, then burst out laughing. "Yes! That's exactly it. Although in my case, it was the second person. I have a roommate, you know."
"Yeah? How does Maggie clean up?"
"Oh my God," Jesse said. "She makes me look like a beached whale, John."
I ran my hands over her sides. "That's a mighty fine beached whale, Jesse."
"I know!" Jesse said, and suddenly sat up, straddling me. She raised her arms up and crossed them behind her head, perking up her already marvelously firm and full breasts. I felt her inner thighs radiating heat as they wrapped around my midsection. I knew that even though I didn't have an erection at that very moment, one was coming right up. "I mean, look at me," she said, unnecessarily, because I hadn't taken my eyes off her from the moment she sat up. "I look fabulous. I don't say that to be vain. It's just I never looked this good in real life. Not even close."
"I find that hard to believe," I said.
She grabbed her breasts and pointed the nipples at my face. "See these?" she said, and wiggled the left one. "In real life, this one was a cup size smaller than this one, and it was still too large. I had a permanent backache from puberty onward. And I think they were this firm for one week when I was thirteen. Maybe."
She reached down, grabbed my hands, and placed them on her perfect, flat belly. "I never had one of these, either," she said. "I always carried a little pouch down here, even before I had babies. After two kids, well, let's just say that if I had ever wanted a third, it would have had a duplex in there."
I slid my hands behind her and grabbed her ass. "What about this?" I said.
"Wide load," Jesse said, and laughed. "I was a big girl, my friend."
"Being big's not a crime," I said. "Kathy was on the larger side. I liked it just fine."
"I didn't have a problem with it at the time," she said. "Body issues are foolish. On the other hand, I wouldn't trade now." She ran her hands over her body, provocatively. "I'm all sexy!" And with that, she did a little giggle and a head flip. I laughed.
Jesse leaned forward and peered into my face. "I'm finding this cat's-eye thing incredibly fascinating," she said. "I wonder if they actually used cat DNA to make them. You know, spliced cat DNA with ours. I wouldn't mind being part cat."
"I don't think it's really cat DNA," I said. "We're not exhibiting other catlike attributes."
Jesse sat back up. "Like what?" she said.
"Well," I said, and let my hands wander up to her breasts, "for one thing, male cats have barbs on their penis."
"Get out," Jesse said.
"No, it's true," I said. "It's the barbs that stimulate the female to ovulate. Look it up. Anyway, no barbs down there. I think you'd've noticed if there were."
"That doesn't prove anything," Jesse said, and suddenly sent her back part back, and her forward part forward, to lie directly on top of me. She grinned salaciously. "It could be that we just haven't been doing it hard enough to make them pop out."
"I'm sensing a challenge," I said.
"I'm sensing something, too," she said, and wiggled.
"What are you thinking about?" Jesse asked me, later.
"I'm thinking about Kathy," I said, "and how often we'd lie around like we're doing now."
"You mean, on the carpet," Jesse said, smiling.
I bopped her gently on the head. "Not that part. Just lying around after sex, talking and enjoying each other's company. We were doing this the first time we talked about enlisting."
"Why did you bring it up?" Jesse said.
"I didn't," I said. "Kathy did. It was on my sixtieth birthday, and I was depressed about getting older. So she suggested that we sign up when the time came. I was a little surprised. We'd always been antimilitary. We protested the Subcontinential War, you know, when it wasn't exactly popular to do that."
"Lots of people protested that war," Jesse said.
"Yeah, but we really protested. Became a little bit of a joke about it in town, actually."
"So how did she rationalize signing up with the Colonial Army?"
"She said she wasn't against war or the military in a general sense, just that war and our military. She said that people have the right to defend themselves and that it was probably a nasty universe out there. And she said that beyond those noble reasons, we'd be young again to boot."
"But you wouldn't be able to enlist together," Jesse said. "Unless you were the same age."
"She was a year younger than me," I said. "And I did mention that to her—I said that if I joined the army, I'd be officially dead, we wouldn't be married anymore and who knows if we'd ever see each other again."
"What did she say?"
"She said these were technicalities. She'd find me again and drag me to the altar like she had before. And she would have, you know. She could be a bear about these things."
Jesse propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me. "I'm sorry she's not here with you, John."
I smiled. "It's all right," I said. "I just miss my wife from time to time, that's all."
"I understand," Jesse said. "I miss my husband, too."
I glanced over to her. "I thought he left you for a younger woman and then got food poisoning."
"He did and he did, and he deserved to vomit his guts out," Jesse said. "I don't miss the man, really. But I miss having a husband. It's nice to have someone you know you're supposed to be with. It's nice to be married."
"It's nice to be married," I agreed.
Jesse snuggled up to me and draped an arm over my chest. "Of course, this is nice, too. It's been a while since I've done this."
"Lie on a floor?"
It was her turn to bop me. "No. Well, yes, actually. But more specifically, lie around after sex. Or have sex, for that matter. You don't want to know how long it's been since I've had it."
"Sure I do."
"Bastard. Eight years."
"No wonder you jumped me the minute you saw me," I said.
"You got that right," Jesse said. "You happened to be very conveniently located."
"Location is everything, that's what my mother always told me."
"You had a strange mother," Jesse said. "Yo, bitch, what time is it?"
"What?" I said.
"I'm talking to the voice in my head," she said.
"Nice name you have for it," I said.
"What did you name yours?"
"Asshole."
Jesse nodded. "Sounds about right. Well, the bitch tells me it's just after 1600. We have two hours until dinner. You know what that means?"
"I don't know. I think four times is my limit, even when I'm young and superimproved."
"Calm yourself. It means we have just enough time for a nap."
"Should I grab a blanket?"
"Don't be silly. Just because I had sex on the carpet doesn't mean I want to sleep on it. You've got an extra bunk. I'm going to use it."
"So I'm going to have to nap alone?"
"I'll make it up to you," Jesse said. "Remind me when I wake up."
I did. She did.
"God damn it," Thomas said as he sat down at the table, carrying a tray so piled with food that it was a miracle he could even lift it. "Aren't we all just too good-looking for words."
He was right. The Old Farts had cleaned up amazingly well. Thomas and Harry and Alan could all have been male models; of the four of us, I was definitely the ugly duckling, and I looked—well, I looked good. As for the women, Jesse was stunning, Susan was even more so, and Maggie frankly looked like a goddess. It actually hurt to look at her.
It hurt to look at all of us. In that good, dizzying sort of way. We all spent a few minutes just staring at each other. And it wasn't just us. As I scanned through the room, I couldn't find a single ugly human in it. It was pleasingly disturbing.
"It's impossible," Harry said, suddenly, to me. I looked over at him. "I looked around, too," he said. "There's no way in hell all the people in this room all looked as good as they do now when they were originally this age."
"Speak for yourself, Harry," Thomas said. "If anything, I do believe I am a shade less attractive than in my salad days."
"You're the same color as a salad these days," Harry said. "And even if we excuse Doubtful Thomas over here—"
"I'm going to cry all the way to a mirror," Thomas said.
"—it's well nigh impossible that everyone is in the same basket. I guarantee you I did not look this good when I was twenty. I was fat. I had massive acne. I was already balding."
"Stop it," Susan said. "I'm getting aroused."
"And I'm trying to eat," said Thomas.
"I can laugh about it now, because I look like this," Harry said, running his hand down his body, as if to present this year's model. "But the new me has very little to do with the old me, I'll tell you that."
"You sound as if it bothers you," Alan said.
"It does, a little," Harry admitted. "I mean, I'll take it. But when someone gives me a gift horse, I look it in the mouth. Why are we so good-looking?"
"Good genes," Alan said.
"Sure," Harry said. "But whose? Ours? Or something that they spliced out of a lab somewhere?"
"We're just all in excellent shape now," Jesse said. "I was telling John that this body is in far better shape than my real one ever was."
Maggie suddenly spoke up. "I say that, too," she said. "I say 'my real body' when I mean 'my old body.' It's as if this body isn't real to me yet."
"It's real enough, sister," Susan said. "You still have to pee with it. I know."
"This from the woman who criticized me for oversharing," Thomas said.
"My point, because I did have one," Jesse said, "is that while they were toning up our bodies, they took some time to tone up the rest of us as well."
"Agreed," Harry said. "But that's not telling us why they did it."
"It's so we bond," Maggie said.
Everyone stared. "Well, look who's coming out of her shell."
"Bite me, Susan." Maggie said. Susan grinned. "Look, it's basic human psychology that we're inclined to like people who we find attractive. Moreover, everyone in this room, even us, are basically strangers to each other, and have few if any ties to bring us together in a short time. Making us all look good to each other is a way to promote bonding, or will be, once we start training."
"I don't see how it's going to help the army if we're all too busy ogling each other to fight," Thomas said.
"It's not about that," Maggie said. "Sexual attraction is just a side issue here. It's a matter of quickly instilling trust and devotion. People instinctively trust and want to help people they find attractive, regardless of sexual desire. It's why newscasters are always attractive. It's why attractive people don't have to work as hard in school."
"But we're all attractive now," I said. "In the land of the incredibly attractive, the merely good-looking could be in trouble."
"And even now, some of us look better than others," Thomas said. "Every time I look at Maggie, I feel like the oxygen is being sucked from the room. No offense, Maggie."
"None taken," Maggie said. "The baseline here isn't each other as we are now, anyway. It's how we all appeared before. In the short term, that's reflexively the baseline we'll use, and a short-term advantage is all they'd be looking for anyway."
"So you're saying that you don't feel oxygen-deprived when you look at me," Susan said to Thomas.
"It's not meant to be an insult," Thomas said.
"I'll remember that when I'm strangling you," Susan said. "Speaking of oxygen-deprived."
"Stop flirting, you two," Alan said, and turned his attention to Maggie. "I think you're right about the attraction thing, but I think you're forgetting the one person we're supposed to be the most attracted to: ourselves. For better or worse, these bodies we're in are still alien to us. I mean, between the fact that I'm green and I've got a computer named 'Dipshit' in my head—" He stopped, and looked at us all. "What did you all name your BrainPals?"
"Asshole," I said.
"Bitch," Jesse said.
"Dickwad," said Thomas.
"Fuckhead," said Harry.
"Satan," said Maggie.
"Sweetie," said Susan. "Apparently, I'm the only one who likes my BrainPal."
"More like you were the only one who wasn't disturbed by having a voice suddenly appear in your skull," Alan said. "But this is my point. Suddenly becoming young and having massive physical and mechanical changes takes a toll on one's psyche. Even if we're glad to be young again—and I know I am—we're still going to be alienated from our new selves. Making us look good to ourselves is one way to help us get 'settled in.'"
"These are crafty people we're dealing with," Harry said with ominous finality.
"Oh, lighten up, Harry," Jesse said, and gave him a little nudge. "You're the only person I know who would turn being young and sexy into a dark conspiracy."
"You think I'm sexy?" Harry said.
"You're dreamy, sweetheart," Jesse said, and batted her eyes dramatically at him.
Harry cracked a goofy grin. "That's the first time this century anyone's said that to me. Okay, I'm sold."
The man who stood in front of the theater full of recruits was a battle-tested veteran. Our BrainPals informed us that he'd been in the Colonial Defense Forces for fourteen years and had participated in several battles, the names of which meant nothing to us now, but no doubt would at some point in the future. This man had gone to new places, met new races and exterminated them on sight. He looked all of twenty-three years old.
"Good evening, recruits," he began after we had all settled down. "I am Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Higgee, and for the remainder of your journey, I will be your commanding officer. As a practical matter, this means very little—between now and our arrival at Beta Pyxis III, one week from now, you will have only one command objective. However, it will serve to remind you that from this point forward, you are subject to Colonial Defense Forces rules and regulations. You have your new bodies now, and with those new bodies will come new responsibilities.
"You may be wondering about your new bodies, as to what they can do, what stresses they can endure and how you can use them in the service of the Colonial Defense Forces. All these questions will be answered soon, as you begin your training on Beta Pyxis III. Right now, however, our main goal is simply for you to become comfortable in your new skins.
"And so, for the remainder of your trip, here are your orders: Have fun."
That brought up a murmur and some scattered laughter in the ranks. The idea of having fun being an order was amusingly counterintuitive. Lieutenant Colonel Higgee showed a mirthless grin.
"I understand this appears to be an unusual order. Be that as it may, having fun with your new body is going to be the best way for you to get used to the new abilities you have. When you begin your training, top performance will be required of you from the very start. There will be no 'ramp-up'—there's no time for that. The universe is a dangerous place. Your training will be short and difficult. We can't afford to have you uncomfortable with your body.
"Recruits, consider this next week as a bridge between your old lives and your new ones. In this time, which you will ultimately find all too brief, you can use these new bodies, designed for military use, to enjoy the pleasures you enjoyed as a civilian. You'll find the Henry Hudson is filled with recreations and activities you've loved on Earth. Use them. Enjoy them. Get used to working with your new bodies. Learn a little about their potential and see if you can divine their limits.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we will meet again for a final briefing before you begin your training. Until then, have fun. I do not exaggerate when I say that while life in the Colonial Defense Forces has its rewards, this may be the last time you will be entirely carefree in your new bodies. I suggest you use this time wisely. I suggest you have fun. That is all; you're dismissed."
We all went insane.
Let's start, of course, with the sex. Everyone was doing it with everybody else, in more places on the ship than it is probably sensible to discuss. After the first day, in which it became clear that any semisecluded place was going to be used for enthusiastic humping, it became courteous to make a lot of noise as one moved about, to alert the conjugal that you were on your way in. Sometime during the second day it became general knowledge that I had a room to myself; I was besieged with pleas for access. They were summarily denied. I'd never operated a house of ill repute, and I wasn't about to start now. The only people who were going to fuck around in my room were me and any invited guests.
There was only one of those. And it wasn't Jesse; it was Maggie, who, as it turned out, had had a thing for me even when I was wrinkled. After our briefing with Higgee, she more or less ambushed me at my door, which made me wonder if this was somehow standard operating procedure for post-change women. Regardless, she was great fun and, in private at least, not in the least retiring. It turned out that she had been a professor at Oberlin College. She taught philosophy of Eastern religions. She wrote six books on the subject. The things you learn about people.
The other Old Farts also stuck to their own. Jesse paired up with Harry after our initial fling, while Alan, Tom and Susan worked out some arrangement with Tom in the center. It was good that Tom liked to eat a lot; he needed his strength.
The ferocity at which the recruits went for sex undoubtedly appears unseemly from the outside, but it made perfect sense from where we stood (or lay, or were bent over upon). Take a group of people who generally have had little sex, due to lack of partners or declining health and libido, stuff them into brand-new young, attractive and highly functional bodies and then hurl them into space far away from anything they ever knew and everyone they ever loved. The combination of the three was a recipe for sex. We did it because we could, and because it beats being lonely.
It's not the only thing we did, of course. Using these gorgeous new bodies only for sex would be like singing only one note. Our bodies were claimed to be new and improved, and we found it to be true in simple and surprising ways. Harry and I had to call off a Ping-Pong game when it became clear neither of us was going to win—not because we were both incompetent, but because our reflexes and hand-eye coordination made it damn near impossible to get the ball past the other guy. We volleyed for thirty minutes and would have gone longer if the Ping-Pong ball we were using hadn't cracked from the force of being hit at such tremendously high speeds. It was ridiculous. It was marvelous.
Other recruits found out the same thing we did in other ways. On the third day, I was in a crowd that watched two recruits engage in what was possibly the most thrilling martial arts battle ever; they did things with their bodies that simply shouldn't have been possible assuming normal human flexibility and standard gravity. At one point, one of the men placed a kick that launched the other halfway across the room; instead of collapsing in a pile of broken bones, as I'm sure I would have, the other guy did a backflip midflight, righted himself, and launched himself back at his opponent. It looked like a special effect. In a way it was.
After the battle, both men breathed deeply and bowed to his opponent. And then both of them collapsed onto each other, simultaneously laughing and sobbing hysterically. It's a weird, wonderful and yet troubling thing to be as good at something as you ever wanted to be, and then to be even better than that.
People went too far, of course. I personally saw one recruit leap off a high landing, either under the assumption that she could fly or, barring that, at least land without injury. My understanding is that she shattered her right leg, right arm, jaw, and cracked her skull. However, she was still alive after the leap, a state of affairs that probably wouldn't have existed back on Earth. More impressively, however, she was back in action two days later, which obviously spoke more to the Colonial medical technology than this silly woman's recuperative powers. I hope someone told her not to do such a stupid move in the future.
When people weren't playing with their bodies, they were playing with their minds, or with their BrainPals, which was close enough. As I would walk about the ship, I would frequently see recruits simply sitting around, eyes closed, slowly nodding their heads. They were listening to music or watching a movie or something similar, the piece of work called up in their brain for them alone. I'd done it myself; while searching the ship's system, I had come across a compilation of every Looney Tunes cartoon created, both during their classic Warner days and then after the characters were put into the public domain. I spent hours one night watching Wile E. Coyote get smashed and blown up; I finally stopped when Maggie demanded I choose between her and Road Runner. I chose her. I could pick Road Runner anytime, after all. I had downloaded all the cartoons into Asshole.
"Choosing friends" was something I did a lot of. All of the Old Farts knew that our group was temporary at best; we were simply seven people thrown together at random, in a situation that had no hope for permanence. But we became friends, and close friends at that, in the short period of time we had together. It's no exaggeration to say that I became as close to Thomas, Susan, Alan, Harry, Jesse and Maggie as I had to anyone in the last half of my "normal" life. We became a band, and a family, down to the petty digs and squabbles. We gave one another someone to care about, which was something we needed in a universe that didn't know or cared that we existed.
We bonded. And we did it even before we were biologically prodded to do so by the colonies' scientists. And as the Henry Hudson drew closer to our final destination, I knew I was going to miss them.
"In this room right now are 1,022 recruits," Lieutenant Colonel Higgee said. "Two years from today, 400 of you will be dead."
Higgee stood in the front of the theater, again. This time, he had a backdrop: Beta Pyxis III floated behind him, a massive marble streaked with blue, white, green and brown. We were all ignoring it and focusing on Lieutenant Colonel Higgee. His statistic had gotten everyone's attention, a feat considering the time (0600 hours) and the fact that most of us were still staggering from the last night of freedom we assumed we would have.
"In the third year," he continued, "another 100 of you will die. Another 150 in years four and five. After ten years—and yes, recruits, you will most likely be required to serve a full ten years—750 of you will have been killed in the line of duty. Three-quarters of you, gone. These have been the survival statistics—not just for the last ten or twenty years, but for the over two hundred years the Colonial Defense Forces have been active."
There was dead silence.
"I know what you're thinking right now, because I was thinking it when I was in your place," Lieutenant Colonel Higgee said. "You're thinking—what the hell am I doing here? This guy is telling me I'm going to be dead in ten years! But remember that back home, you most likely would have been dead in ten years, too—frail and old, dying a useless death. You may die in the Colonial Defense Forces. You probably will die in the Colonial Defense Forces. But your death will not be a useless one. You'll have died to keep humanity alive in our universe."
The screen behind Higgee blanked out, to be replaced with a three-dimensional star field. "Let me explain our position," he said, and as he did, several dozen of the stars burned bright green, randomly distributed across the field. "Here are the systems where humans have colonized—gained a foothold in the galaxy. And these are where alien races of comparable technology and survival requirements are known to exist." This time hundreds of stars blazed up, redly. The human points of light were utterly surrounded. Gasps were heard in the theater.
"Humanity has two problems," Lieutenant Colonel Higgee said. "The first is that it is in a race with other sentient and similar species to colonize. Colonization is the key to our race's survival. It's as simple as that. We must colonize or be closed off and contained by other races. This competition is fierce. Humanity has few allies among the sentient races. Very few races are allies with anyone, a situation that existed long before humanity stepped into the stars.
"Whatever your feelings about the possibility for diplomacy in the long run, the reality is that on the ground, we are in fierce and furious competition. We cannot hold back our expansion and hope that we can achieve a peaceful solution that allows for colonization by all races. To do so would be to condemn humanity. So we fight to colonize.
"Our second problem is that when we do find planets suitable for colonization, they are often inhabited by intelligent life. When we can, we live with native population and work to achieve harmony. Unfortunately, much of the time, we are not welcome. It is regrettable when this happens, but the needs of humanity are and must be our priority. And so the Civil Defense Forces become an invading force."
The background switched back to Beta Pyxis III. "In a perfect universe, we would not need the Colonial Defense Forces," Higgee said. "But this is not that perfect universe. And so, the Colonial Defense Forces have three mandates. The first is to protect existing human colonies and protect them from attack and invasion. The second is to locate new planets suitable for colonization, and hold them against predation, colonization and invasion from competing races. The third is to prepare planets with native populations for human colonization.
"As Colonial Defense Forces soldiers, you will be required to uphold all three mandates. This is not easy work, nor is it simple work, nor is it clean work, in any number of ways. But it must be done. The survival of humanity demands it—and we will demand it of you.
"Three-quarters of you will die in ten years. Despite improvements to soldiers' bodies, weapons and technology, this is a constant. But in your wake, you leave the universe as a place where your children, their children, and all the children of humanity can grow and thrive. It's a high cost, and one worth paying.
"Some of you may wonder what you'll get personally from your service. What you'll get after your term of service is another new life. You will be able to colonize and to start again, on a new world. The Colonial Defense Forces will back your claim and provide you with everything you'll need. We can't promise you success in your new life—that's up to you. But you'll have an excellent start, and you'll have the gratitude of your fellow colonists for your time of service to them and theirs. Or you can do as I have, and reenlist. You might be surprised at how many do."
Beta Pyxis III flickered momentarily and then disappeared, leaving Higgee as the sole focus of attention. "I hope you all took my advice to have fun in this last week," he said. "Now your work begins. In one hour, you will be transported off the Henry Hudson to begin your training. There are several training bases here; your assignments are being transmitted to your BrainPals. You may return to your rooms to pack your personal belongings; don't bother with clothing, it will be provided on base. Your BrainPal will inform you where to assemble for transport.
"Good luck, recruits. May God protect you, and may you serve humanity with distinction, and with pride."
And then Lieutenant Colonel Higgee saluted us. I didn't know what to do. Neither did anyone else.
"You have your orders," Lieutenant Colonel Higgee said. "You are dismissed."
The seven of us stood together, crowding around the seats in which we just sat.
"They certainly don't leave much time for good-byes," Jesse said.
"Check your computers," Harry said. "Maybe some of us are going to the same bases."
We checked. Harry and Susan were reporting to Alpha Base; Jesse to Beta. Maggie and Thomas were Gamma; Alan and I were Delta.
"They're breaking up the Old Farts," Thomas said.
"Don't get all misty," Susan said. "You knew it was coming."
"I'll get misty if I want," Thomas said. "I don't know anyone else. I'll even miss you, you old bag."
"We're forgetting something," Harry said. "We may not be together, but we can still keep in touch. We have our BrainPals. All we have to do is create a mailbox for each other. The 'Old Farts' clubhouse."
"That works here," Jesse said. "But I don't know about when we're in active duty. We could be on the other side of the galaxy from each other."
"The ships still communicate with each other through Phoenix," Alan said. "Each ship has skip drones that go to Phoenix to pick up orders and to communicate ship status. They carry mail, too. It might take a while for our news to reach each other, but it'll still reach us."
"Like sending messages in bottles," Maggie said. "Bottles with superior firepower."
"Let's do it," Harry said. "Let's be our own little family. Let's look out for each other, no matter where we are."
"Now you're getting misty, too," Susan said.
"I'm not worried about missing you, Susan," Harry said. "I'm taking you with me. It's the rest of these guys I'll miss."
"A pact, then," I said. "To stay the Old Farts, through thick and thin. Look out, universe." I held out my hand. One by one, each of the Old Farts put their hand on mine.
"Christ," Susan said as she put her hand on the pile. "Now I'm misty."
"It'll pass," Alan said. Susan hit him lightly with her other hand.
We stayed that way as long as we could.