* * * *
In his dream, Uriah had prophesied that he would awake to find himself at the mercy of his master’s whims.
In reality, he didn’t discover his body in his waking room at all. He had no headache.
“You didn’t do it,” he said in calm shock.
Sabrina made no eye contact. Her voice was stoical. “I’m sorry, Dennis, but I had to. Think of it this way. Now you’re safe from mind-mod – if the Zookeeper wanted you dead it would’ve stopped me from doing this – and you won’t bleed to death, you can’t get drunk again, and that’s one fewer mouth to feed.”
“But don’t I still need water?”
“There’s a week’s supply built into the Libertas.”
“And after that?” He grimaced.
“Same thing that would’ve happened to us anyway. You’re better off dehydrated than hypovolemic or drunk enough to kill yourself.” Sabrina was still wearing the utterly humorless expression she’d had at his waking. “I can’t believe I left you there even for a few seconds near that broken glass.”
Uriah heaved a bitter sigh as he sat up. There was something unreal and incredibly disorienting about experiencing all this around him, like having every sense subjected to that feeling of putting on asymmetrical eyeglasses. “How long have I been out of it?”
“It’s Tuesday, if that answers your question.”
The windows showed it was dark out. “Tuesday night?”
“Hey, it takes a while to do a Libertas transplant, and I needed some sleep.”
“How’d you even know how to make the switch? And where’d you get the bot at all?”
Sabrina nodded toward a closet near the stairs and took a bite out of an apple he’d only just noticed existed. “Don’t worry, I … tested some of it on a rat.” He shuddered. “No drugs or poison as far as I can tell, and it’s got water in it to boot. Anyway, you know how you ‘just knew’ where that room would be in the first place?” Her eyes darted to the bookshelf, then the ground. “I had that same sense.”
“Why did you trust it?”
“Because it helped me perform the transplant.” She gave a shrug of total apathy. “Dennis, I’m sick of waiting around for this puppeteer to kill us off. If I’m gonna die, it might as well be because I took a chance and told that monster that I’m not gonna follow its rules. This is my game as much as it is its, or yours.”
Uriah didn’t know this woman. He shook his head. “You have no idea how crazy that is to me, do you?”
“What, because you’re a coward?”
“Because I don’t wanna die, imagine that! Not when I live in the one generation that just might have a shot at immortality.”
“Right, go ahead and contradict your hatred of Libertas bodies.”
“Sabrina, people can change!” Uriah escaped the bed without asking if this was safe in his condition. “Why is that so difficult for you to believe?” Deep down he knew it was difficult for him to believe, too, but having said otherwise to her made it easier to resolve that he would give the finger to stagnation.
“A simple ‘thank you for saving my life’ would work, you know,” she hissed. She rested her chin on her hand and looked toward the moon.
“Well how exactly d’you think I feel? Not like it’s just hunky-dory to find out how much of a helpless waste of everybody’s time and oxygen I am!”
“Oh, have some cheese with that whine. You know damn well your life is worth living. If anyone else had found themselves in your situation, back when the world went to pieces, chances are they couldn’t’ve cared less about those animals you tried to save. They would’ve sold my liberty for ‘humanity’s future.’”
He waved this away and walked off so that he couldn’t see her.
“You set out to stop a dangerous man from making the world burn, when you could’ve easily popped the blue pill on that machine at Goodsprings. And you gave Jane some real dignity, where lesser men would’ve treated her like a machine at best.”
Sabrina stepped up close enough to grasp Uriah’s shoulder, turn him around, and jab a finger at the middle of his chest. “Don’t you tell me you’re a waste of oxygen.”
“You are so full of it!” He swatted off her hand with more force than he would’ve liked to admit. “Those poor creatures are dying because of me, you’re a slave to Livingston because of me, and he’s still out prepared to turn the rest of the human race into his drugged-up puppets because of me! Because of my failures.”
He could see the pained look of Sabrina’s despising him, fearing him, but most of all, being disappointed in him. Yet he couldn’t care in his rage.
“Even if we were winning against this, this – devil, it sure as hell isn’t any product of my compassion. This is my battle for life, for a universe that, at last, isn’t gonna take every step it can to ruin me. Not for anyone else except Pat … and you.” He left Jane unmentioned.
“Fine then, if you think you’re such a screw-up, then do something about it!” She said this in such a shaky manner, but this was nonetheless the greatest stand he’d seen her take. “I don’t have any patience for self-pity. You know why? Because you’re just using it as an excuse to stay in the comfort of your own misery.”
Uriah knew not how to reply to this, except to suspect based on her slight hesitation that she wasn’t being entirely honest. She took a seat by the wall, and minutes passed in silence.
At last he approached her, sitting. “You miss life up there, don’t ya?”
“Mostly. What was your first clue?”
He opted for feigned ignorance of her sarcasm. “Probably it was that story you told me about your dream. I hope you didn’t take that too seriously, Sabrina. I like to pretend I’m some elitist realist, but at the end of the day I can respect anyone’s hopes. Mine’s pretty pie-in-the-sky.”
She didn’t reject his arm around her waist.
“Your dad sounds like a great man. I hate TV, too.”
“He was,” she said without tears. “If it weren’t for him, I never would’ve lived in Luna. I wouldn’t’ve lived at all after last Thursday.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know humans lived on Earth, back in Everett.”
She looked him in the eyes, contemplating with an unshakable solemnity. “I did, didn’t I? Must’ve been off my rocker.” After a pause in which she looked away with some embarrassment, she asked, “What’s it like in there?”
“Surreal. Like a normal body, but without all those minor discomforts that you wonder how you lived with at all. No itches, no pain from unusual positions, no annoying eyelash meshing, no clogged ears, and no hunger. Come to think of it, why didn’t you get one of these? You must’ve been wealthy enough if you went to the moon.”
Sabrina took a few seconds to reply, her gaze moving off to the side even though the DIY helmet blocked her vision there. “I don’t know. I just had too much attachment to this body, ‘warts and all.’ I’ve experienced everything through this meat puppet, you know what I mean?”
Livingston was good. It was as if Sabrina had always been this way.
“Sorta.” He glanced at the fruit in her hand. “You all right? What with the apple and all.”
“Perfectly fine.” Sabrina was about to rest her head on his shoulder, but she became aware of the quilt around her head and laughed sardonically. “Sorry. I must look like a sultan, huh?”
“Go ahead.” No woman besides Pat had been in such a position with him, and he wasn’t sure how to keep her from getting the wrong idea. Uriah hesitated. “Was I horrendous? While drunk, I mean.”
“Let’s just say I’m really glad you’ll never act like that again,” she said hoarsely. “I’m sorry I ever suspected you, Dennis, I just –”
“Say no more. You more than made up for it. Wait …”
Uriah eased her off him and started to check around the basement. “Did ya find any other robo-bodies?”
br /> “Nope.”
He looked at her with such guilt. “You gave me the only Libertas here?”
“Don’t make me a bighead martyr.”
Wish granted. “Do I wanna know where my body is?”
“That’s something only you can answer. It’s in the closet, though.”
He did want to know. Not stopping to dwell on the fear, he stepped up to the door, turned the knob, and pulled.
There was no brainless corpse. What did occupy the small room was a smudged, gunky, old-fashioned mirror. The visage staring back at him was that of an unmistakable celebrity of the southern Nevada area: Marshall Patterson.