Corpus Callosum

yes, I’m sure it was a tough period. I know it was for me. It’s the same thing. There’s a well-documented tendency toward anhedonia and a sense of a, well our research team calls it a ‘dislodged sense of self’.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “Ha, yeah it sounds like a gastrointestinal problem, doesn’t it? Ha, ha. So— I think you can see what I’m saying here— it’s not unique to being uploaded to BrightBox. We all endure unpleasant changes and transitions in life. Not that being in BrightBox is unpleasant— ”

  “I get it. But what do I do to make it easier for her?” Jeanette said.

  “Just follow our transition guidelines, like in the FAQ.”

  Jeanette knew the tips. Treat the uploadee normally, vary their placement and their routine, and expose them to a variety of sights, lightings, sounds, smells. Keep up regular activities. But what was Jeanette to do if Joey liked to run and arm wrestle and perform CPR and fight fires? What to do if Joey didn’t want her friends to know she was alive, not in the state she was? And what if she loathed the activities she was supposed to be taking part in for her sanity’s sake? Was Jeanette supposed to force her? What kind of a life was that for either of them?

  “Miss Porter,” Milton said, “Are you still there?”

  She could hear that he was pressing his mouth against the receiver, probably dotting it with spit from his perfectly bowed little lips.

  “I’m here,” Jeanette said, but her voice betrayed her by wavering.

  “Miss Porter, I really wouldn’t be too worried about it. Speaking as a regular guy here, not as a representative of LifeMedia. There are things you just have to let take their own course; I’m sure you’re on top of it and doing all you can. It really shows.”

  “—So I’m a micromanaging psycho?”

  “Ha, no! Ha, ha of course not.” His laughs came out like sheep’s bleats. “And if you think you’re crazy, you should hear what some of the other relatives call me about.”

  Jeanette hugged herself tight and leaned against the greenhouse’s glass. Her reflection was startlingly pallid, gaunt at the cheekbones. Her hand automatically wandered to her scalp for a hair-check. It seemed soft enough. Jeanette was finding it hard to eat or drink much with Joey around, her all-seeing camera eyes scanning over food she couldn’t ingest. The injustice of it killed Jeanette’s appetite.

  “Tell me something the crazy relatives do?” she asked creakily.

  She could hear Milton rocking in his chair, considering whether or not to violate company policy. Jeanette wondered, was he still wearing scrubs, the baby blues that hugged his ass and cinched in at his waist, the high-v neck with swirls of brown chest hair spilling over the edge? Or was he in office attire, something buttoned tight across his shoulders and rolled halfway up his arms? His chair squeaked and he clicked his pen furiously.

  He said, “A man emailed about his cousin. She, the cousin, was uploaded after she got sick and died; she was very old. He’s very, very old too. But he told me there’d always been ‘a thing’ between the two of them.”

  “A thing?”

  “He said they almost consummated their ‘thing’ in nineteen sixty-five, in a barn in Kentucky where the cousin’s father raised chickens. But they balked at the last minute and regretted it ever since.”

  “The cousin told him that?”

  “No,” Milton said, easing back from the mouthpiece, “The guy said it was always unspoken, hanging in the air. A meaningful glance over the Christmas ham; a hand that strayed a few inches up his arm when she passed him wine or Andes mints after supper; like that.”

  “But ohhh— there was an unspoken smolder in those mints!” Jeanette said.

  “Ha, ha. Fires of passion— oops, I mean. Sorry.”

  Jeanette thought it was cute, how he shied away from joking about fire.

  “It’s okay. Go on.” She lifted a cigarette butt from the ground and held it to her nose.

  “Ok. Uh, so ok. This guy thinks his cousin is watching him. That she’s inhabiting all the electronics in his house. The guy tells me he can feel his cousin’s ‘spirit’ lurking in all the CCTV cameras at the mall, in the microphone on his apartment buzzer, even in the webcam his grandniece bought him.”

  “Spooky.”

  “No! He— get this, it’s crazy— he loves it. He says he can feel his cousin with him everywhere he goes. He waves at the security cameras. He exposes himself to them. He wrote me, Jeanette, telling me he touches himself in front of his computer’s web camera and talks to her. Pretends they’re still children making out some barn back in 1965.”

  “Woah,” Jeanette said. “So what was the problem he was calling you about?”

  “There wasn’t one! He just keeps emailing me, saying he saw his cousin’s face in the reflection of his old SLR camera, or in his microwave, and then he asks is there any risk of standing next to the microwave in the nude too long, and does the microwave need to be turned on to sync with her!”

  “What does the cousin say about all this?”

  “She doesn’t know how to get online, for Christ’s sake! I doubt she’s transmitting herself into inanimate, unplugged objects; she can’t send a freaking tweet!”

  Milton laughed for real after saying this, a series of explosive guffaws punctuated by airy snickers. Jeanette found herself giggling back.

  “So,” he said, “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

  Jeanette dropped the cigarette butt and consulted her reflection. “Yeah. Thank you.”

  “Really, what I find most concerning are the dreams your sister’s been having.”

  Jeanette could hear Milton striking papers against a hard surface, maybe lining up neat stacks of forms on his desk. She pictured a novelty wall calendar and a cup of expensive pens. She imagined him in a tie the color of a suburban pool.

  Milton continued, “It sounds like she’s pretty disturbed by them, which we take very seriously… and then, she’s waking up with information she didn’t download herself…That’s a little worrisome. It suggests maybe someone’s attempting to access her hard drive without her permission.”

  “Should I be scared? Is she gonna be hacked?”

  “It’s probably nothing. Our internal security is loaded up with safeguards, so the BrightBox user’s mind is just, just totally impenetrable. But we do like to keep abreast of potential threats so we can track ‘em down and neutralize them, obviously.”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyway,” Milton drummed on the side of the phone, “I’d love it if you’d stay in touch with us, keep us updated.”

  “Oh I will,” Jeanette said, swinging her hips, “I’ll keep you abreast.”

  “And um. So, now I’m in the awkward position of hoping something minor goes wrong so I can hear from you again,” he said.

  “Aw, don’t wish that.” The wind had numbed Jeanette’s cheeks to near immobility, and the sun was beginning to dive beneath the skyscrapers.

  Milton said, “I’m sorry. Ha. That was bad. I’m the worst.”

  “No, I mean don’t wish that. Joey’s been through enough.” Jeanette scrunched her hair into a ball at the top of her head. Squinting at her reflection, she wondered how closely she’d resemble her twin if she cropped her hair and grew a little softer in the cheeks. Would a clean-cut white boy like him enjoy that more, or less?

  “Besides,” she added, “You can see me.”

  “Hm?”

  “Let’s get dinner. Do you work downtown when you’re not busy cramming brains into boxes?”

  “Ha, ha. Yep! Ha! Do you?”

  “Sure do.” She chewed her lip.

  “Want to eat at Baroque’s maybe? Maybe Friday?”

  “Perfect.”

  She let her hair fall and reached for the door to the greenhouse. Lunch had long since ended, and the office was probably filling back up with sour-breathed people. Louis was probably tearing his hair out airbrushing a plus-sized model and breaking his fillings on shards of ice. Jeanette reminded herself that
the sooner she got back to work, the sooner she could get home and share the news with her sister. Things were looking up for both of them.

  “Let’s say sixish,” Jeanette said. “You make the reservation, I’ll bring the booze. And Joey.”

  13.

  Baroque’s was a small BYOB restaurant under the train tracks with walls covered in faux-regency-era headboards and enameled paintings, which served fare advertised as “Roman-Asian Fusion”. It was dim and windowless, lit only by ornate wall sconces and antique candelabras that struck Jeanette as anachronistic (which Joey was able confirm with a quick image search).

  Jeanette found Milton in the back, sitting in a booth below a pale pink recreation of the Ecstasy of Teresa made of plaster. The angel was holding a platter of pork buns over the orgasmic Teresa instead of an arrow. The saint, for her part, was wearing a kimono rather than a habit, and sporting a severe case of titty hard-on. Milton was squinting toward the entrance when Jeanette approached, though he only recognized her and rose to pull her chair out when she was less than a yard away.

  Jeanette was bundled up in a wool jacket, with a thick scarf and an oversized crocheted hat. She was spotted with melting snow, her face blushed red from the cold. She slumped Joey’s box onto the table, along with a half-drunk bottle of Rumchata, throwing her jacket back and huffing. As she threw her jacket, gloves, scarf, and hat onto an empty seat, she slowly revealed more and more of a slinky dress the color of dried blood.

  “Oh, that’s lovely,” Milton said. Jeanette absent-mindedly brushed slush from the bottom of the