asked. “Do you guys keep a secondary record?”
Milton sat up stiffly and stared into Joey’s white surface.
“Oh no. Unfortunately not. It wouldn’t be ethical for us to keep, essentially, a secondary copy of a person’s mind on our server. You can see how problematic that could end up being.” He turned to Andrea and struck the coffee table while he enunciated. “All we can do is back him up temporarily to an external source, and re-upload him.”
Joey messaged to the other boxes.
asked Thea.
Joey scanned her storage drive for the documents. They’d come to her in a flash in the middle of the night. She released copies of the documents , and could feel that Thea, Thompson, and Lily immediately accessing them.
Lily said.
Thea said,
said Thompson.
Joey said,
Outside, Milton was saying, “We can do it at the next meeting if you like.”
Andrea held her husband close to her mouth. “What do you think honey bear? If the new software patch doesn’t work?”
Carlton just glowed a sick-looking brown-yellow color like damp sand.
“We’ll do it,” Andrea said. “Bring whatever equipment you need next time, will you dearie?”
Milton nodded eagerly. “It’s just a transfer cable and a bigger hard drive,” he said.
The smokers came back inside wearing coats and cold-bitten faces. In the baby Bjorn, Lily was flashing bright crimson.
said Joey.
The old woman was rising from her chair and brushing crumbs off her skirt. The families were all exchanging the agonizingly slow pleasantries expected when people left a party. Joey found it was shockingly hard to focus on the breathers’ movements and words. It was all too slow, too meaningless to latch onto. The realm of words and endless information was ever-swirling at the edges of her consciousness, desperate to crash over her and pull her back in like a riptide.
Soon, Andrea was dressed for the cold and throwing an arm around Jeanette’s shoulder. Why did they feel the need to touch? Did they really think it brought them closer? It struck Joey as painfully archaic. After about ten minutes the old woman was finally gone and Milton had settled into her chair.
Lily said.
Thompson said.
Edwidge piped up, saying, in her chimey, childlike voice. She’d had time to provide LifeMedia with voice samples before she died, so her recordings were perfect.
Their families were all preparing to leave. It was all so orchestrated; as soon as one person excused themselves it opened up the floodgates. No human ever did what they actually wanted, it seemed. They just fell into the appropriate position when the spot opened up.
As Thompson and his ex-wife left, he said,
Lily said.
Joey felt Lily’s attention shift to her. The same uncanny warmth as before flowed through her. It felt much like a hot pad on her nonexistent neck. She was nearly dizzy. Then the idea came to her, rising up from depths with an unknown provenance.
Joey said.
Joey said, darkening.
20.
The next morning, Jeanette was letting Milton out of the apartment when she found a packing slip adhered to her door. FEX-UP had singularly refused to deliver the package to her flat, citing public health ordinances. She’d been forced to cut out of work early, trudge west to the warehouse in her heels, and lumber back, bogged down.
It came in manila wrapping paper with medical tape on all its corners. The heft of it was surprising, and with Joey in tow Jeanette didn’t have a free side to favor as she carried the package down the street. There was a red sticker on the bottom of the package with little medical symbols and a warning in boldface type. Jeanette tried to carry it delicately, so the material inside wouldn’t make a sound.
Joey remarked of the sticker, “You could do something with a layout like that for your work. It’s very attention-grabbing.”
“But for what, though?”
“A product with a pseudo-medical purpose. Like that new yogurt with the dopamine in it.”
“Happy Belly,” Jeanette said. She stared forward. Rows of warehouses in states of disrepair and abandonment; a water treatment facility with a smashed-up fence; bushes suffused with litter. “We lost that account.”
“That’s too bad. The coconut flavor was to die for.”
Jeanette sighed and slung the package over her hip. Part of her wanted to rage at her sister’s flippant remarks, but mostly she was just tired. If she slipped on a patch of black ice, she realized, both the package and the BrightBox would go flying, maybe even land in the street where the semi-trucks rushed past. Even this possibility crossed her mind with a feeling of resignation rather than panic.
She had walked another half a mile before Joey spoke again. She said, “What are we going to do with it?”
Jeanette stared ahead. “I thought that should be left up to you.”
The speeding cars blew wind into her face. Jeanette felt dots of snow (or perhaps rain) dab her cheeks and scalp.
“Really?” Joey said after a while.
“What do you mean, ‘really’? Of course. It’s yours.”
They crossed a bridge spanning the highway. Joey was able to estimate, from Jeanette’s present pace, how long it would take them to get home. The sun (already obscured by a grey sky) would be down, and the temperature would be dropping steadily to freezing. In the morning there’d be powder. The air would be dry; people’s noses and lips would be chapped. She didn’t tell Jeanette.
They walked under the Brown Line tracks. The pavement was permanently dark from filth and moisture. Joey saw a man in a wheel chair and a puffy army jacket, huddled behind a broken shopping cart with his legs tucked into a sleeping bag. Jeanette did not.
“How are you feeling?” Joey tried.
“My heels are all raw.”
“I’m sorry.” Still her sister was staring straight ahead. “Maybe you think I don’t have sympathy for those kinds of problems, but I do. I remember them.”
Jeanette’s head tilted. “But not empathy. Not anymore.”
Fraternal or not, they’d been plagued by many of the same physical complaints over the years. Overbites. Brittle hair. Each had one leg noticeably shorter than the other, though that had never kept Joey from jogging. Thin arms and shoulders, like birds. The only difference was that Jeanette had more cavities and Joey had an ankle that swelled— that was it.
“What did I do wrong?” Joey asked, trying to sound mildly incensed.
“Nothing,” Jeanette looked down at her. “Are you kidding? You think I’m mad?”
“Yeah…a little.”
Joey tried to imagine what her conduct at group had looked like from the outside. Did it seem like she was checked out, antisocial? Not participating? Did it look like none of them had enjoyed it? Had she been too enthralled, ignored the breathers too much? She wasn’t sure at all. She couldn’t read it on their faces.
“Baby,” Jeanette said, and squished the BrightBox into her side, “I’m glad you made some friends. Of course.”
Joey said to Lily. Warmth trickled down into what felt like her stomach.
“I just wish I could be there for you, like they are,” Jeanette said. “Like, I wish you felt as safe talking about it with me.”
Joey felt her sister’s pulse quicken.
Joey said.
Lily’s voice rose up,
Jeanette was