Unnatural

  * * * *

  “Marshall, is this really you in here, or is the person I’m talking to as fake as I am right now? I mean, when you said you ‘still live on’ without your second body, is this what you live as? Some kinda avatar?”

  He’d been kind enough to take her somewhere a little less mundane. In fact, it was an underwater park her mother had brought her to when she’d been in elementary school. Tense as her relationship with Cheryl McAllister had been – “I love your father, sweetie, but the day I take his last name is the day I move to London and use words like ‘jocosely’” – Sabrina would grow a Pinocchio nose if she denied that some of her fondest memories were tied to that day.

  “Who says you’re not an avatar right now? What else could you be?”

  He was being dodgy, but Sabrina had convinced herself to be as relaxed and non-confrontational as she needed to be. She had earned a break to admire the natural wonders she truly did want to preserve, after all. “Even heroes need a little time to recharge their sanity” – that was another nugget of Cheryl’s wisdom, ironically confirming itself now that it was too late for Sabrina to let her know it.

  Assuming you even are a hero, her superego told her as she gave Marshall another warm touch. But she hadn’t really caused the Strange disaster, and even if she had erred, in the best-case scenario she was going to amend that choice by breaking this circle of fear and extortion.

  Unfortunately, she’d never believed that good deeds could somehow counterbalance an evil past, and to do so now would be dishonest.

  “Sabrina? Did someone disconnect you?”

  Her eyes jerked upward, though she took care to keep the embrace intact. “What?”

  “You’re awfully quiet, is all.”

  “Oh, for a second I thought you were admitting you are an avatar in this place.”

  “You’re up to something. I know that much.”

  She followed his stare to a cuttlefish that blended in with a green reef. It was just as she remembered it, of course. “So are you, but I don’t mind. You could argue everyone is ‘up to something’ when they do anything, and people have gotten this far trusting each other no matter the ulterior motives.”

  “You sure know how to handle suspicion,” Marshall said as he faced her with a broad smile. “But we really oughta get to business.”

  Sabrina saw her reflection peripherally in the ample window space, and based on his look and what he seemed to have done with subtlety to her appearance, “business” was hardly his priority. “Is that right?” she said, stroking her hair.

  He stood and strode to the see-through wall with hands behind his back, leaving Sabrina more than a little embarrassed at the wasted effort. Peel back the layers. It’s your only hope.

  “I appreciate the gesture, Sabrina, I really do. It doesn’t take a genius to see what you’re doing, and were I a weaker man I would respond in kind to your advances even with that knowledge.”

  He stuck his hand through the glassy substance to feel the flow of the water. “But I’m not weak. I have a mission, part of which is to ensure that no human need ever sacrifice their brain or their virtues for their heart’s sake. You can understand, can’t you? As someone whose heart led you to hate your mother, even when you knew better than that, rationally and morally?”

  She averted her gaze. “Just how much do you know about me, Marshall?”

  “Only as much as you let me know. With your thoughts, I mean.”

  She let him continue, hiding her unease.

  “You think it’s creepy. Naturally. Humans have evolved to think in secret for so long, only divulging what thoughts we’ve desired to. I don’t mean to change that any more than I wish to crush the human heart. I only want to make it so that we all desire to share every thought that flits through our collective consciousness, to manufacture food for the heart that doesn’t poison its consumer. This is something else people denounce as foolish idealism, but that’s only because they’re human and they resist change, unless they think of it themselves.”

  So if he really does come to have faith in me, I’ll know it when he shares his thoughts with me.

  “Well, if it helps, I trust you with my thoughts. And …” She got up and turned him around by the shoulders. “I guess it’s no use hiding it from you.”

  “You were trying to get me to let you out of here by making me love you. It won’t happen.”

  “Right, because –”

  “You’re a lesbian. At least, you identify as one.”

  Sabrina looked to the side. “I was gonna say because you want to keep me in here, but yes. I wasn’t very convincing, was I?”

  Marshall smirked and led her back to the bench. “It made no difference to me, until I learned that your interest was fake. I won’t make you do something you’re uncomfortable with, especially when it won’t help you out anyway.” There was a look in his eyes.

  Pity.

  “I wish it didn’t have to be this way, Sabrina, I really do. You want to live a normal life again, to find a way to fill the hole your father’s death left in you. You’re afraid of the things I could do to you in this place. You hate me, you think I’m selfish.” His sympathy turned to a blank look of pure knowing. “You want to kill me.”

  She hid her face. “No, I don’t.”

  “Sure you do.” Marshall folded his arms, and his eyes seemed almost exhausted. “It doesn’t take a Mindscape to know what you feel sincerely. Whether anyone likes it or not, we live in an age where our sciences have collected so much information about the brain that one person can know another’s mind – better than she knows it herself.”

  “Then maybe we should change that.” Sabrina still avoided his stare in favor of her own face. It wasn’t vanity, but a compulsion to confront this artifice, that drew her to it. That’s not me. The image of Uriah in Marshall’s Libertas returned from the recesses of her memory. That’s not Dennis.

  “I suppose you think we should change our view of human bodies as mere homes for our minds, no?” A tattered book with a red ribbon bookmark popped into his palm. He held it so as to reveal the title – Godly Simplicity. “You found this after Uriah passed out. It must’ve pained you to perform the transplant, having read such a confirmation of the doubts you’ve always had about the robotic age. Why’d you hide it from him?”

  “The opportunity just never came up.”

  “You don’t say?”

  Sabrina and Uriah as they had appeared Tuesday night materialized in front of her. He said, “But I’ll need a wedge in case this works, for your sake.”

  Her phantom rejoined, “You’re a Transhuman, remember? You could out-box almost any Organic in the pro leagues.”

  As they disappeared, Marshall shook his head. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Sabrina. This little tome would’ve made a perfect doorstop.”

  Sabrina scowled, trying by this point to suppress every zygote of a hateful thought about this man who was not only confronting her about her beliefs, but who’d forced her to all but sell herself for some hope. “Okay, okay, I was just afraid of his judgment.”

  “And you hate that, just like you hate me even more for exposing your lies. That’s how it starts, like how a child hates learning valuable lessons from her meanie parents. Believe me, I know.” He laid his chin in his hand. “But it’ll get better. You’ll get used to it like humans do with everything else, and when you do, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without this level of trust – of liberating nakedness, so to speak. Not only that, but you’ll be ready to know my mind as intimately as I know yours.”

  Marshall approached the wall again. “I’m gonna sleep with the fishes. Literally. If you wanna get some rest, too, go right ahead. But considering you don’t need it, if there were ever a time for you to try to get out, this would be it. Take your time, and good luck.”