Corpus Callosum
even paler. The palest of all, now, her white surface unlit.
Joey watched them uncomprehendingly. They were playing in some silent jazz band of expressions and body language, feeling each other out and responding impromptu. Instead of trying to make sense of their communication, or trying to feel their many, conflicted human feelings, Joey only felt a pulsing, searing rage. It was activating every bit of memory in her system, churning through all the data and storage, sending out mass messages of hate and ire and taking nothing in. They were so ineffectual, standing there. She wanted to rob them of their instruments. Silence the performance.
Then something accessed her hard drive, and Joey’s mind quieted. Her bitter thoughts disappeared, and slunk away as if submerged in cloudy water. A connection had formed, and information slowly worked its way into her, its tendrils grabbing the emotion-regulation parts of her mind. It soothed her. If she had a pulse, it would have slowed to a sleeping rate.
Lily said. She sounded sweet and young.
Joey sputtered,
Edwidge’s voice rose from the depths.
Thea was there too, Joey could sense it. And Carlton. The old ones seldom spoke. It was their way.
Lily said, without a hint of anger. She massaged Joey’s nerves and calmed her mind, and Joey felt almost mothered by the twenty-one-year-old’s ministrations.
Edwidge giggled, her perfectly preserved laugh like water crashing against tin.
She felt Carlton’s consciousness in the back of her own. He was straining to form a message. Joey was hit suddenly with a vision of Andrea, sitting on the porch, rocking and viewing the woods with her husband’s Box perched in her lap.
Carlton said,
Joey scanned her memory again. This time, she found a new file, care of LifeMedia. But it wasn’t a zip drive or a software patch. It was from a completely different directory. Joey focused and tried to recall what had happened, and felt Carlton sharing his feeble memories with her. She felt them all holding onto her, flooding the connection with messages and memories, images, information, and thoughts, slowing Milton’s download. They had snapped Joey out of awareness and surrounded her in their unseen worlds.
Joey had memories, now, of Thea’s teenage years by the sea. She saw the woman young, and tanned, eating crab on a beach blanket. She had memories of Edwidge’s kindergarten graduation. Her dress had been itchy and poufy, and Edwidge’s family was crowded all around her. She saw Lily’s view from a small motorcycle running down the interstate, and felt a smile on her thin lips.
There were memories, too, of Carlton in the lab, hooking a large plastic structure with LED lights into a towering computer, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his forehead pooling with sweat, synthetic arms and legs splayed around him on a metal counter.
The download hadn’t worked. They’d spared her. But they’d also taken hold of her for a while, and pinned her down with the force of their selfhoods. It felt alright.
Joey felt a jolt as she came out of their memories. Some new, vast connection was being formed. She couldn’t tell what it was, but it was trying to access her mind. All their minds. The connection was automatically granted permission before Joey had the chance to question it. A voice screamed and made her hearing sensors sting and echo.
The voice screamed at all of them. And since it wasn’t human, it never needed to stop for breath. It made Joey’s physical sensors tingle and her cameras fog up, turn hazy, and shut down again. The voice was manic and couldn’t hear them. It was trying to connect, to be heard, but it wouldn’t let itself be stifled long enough.
The ongoing cacophonous scream was pierced with confusion, and terror, and frantic, animalistic pain. The sound clawed at them, bore into them. It touched a secret part of Joey that she had kept inaccessible for weeks, since she had died. She recognized the screaming voice as her own.
31.
Each BrightBox had to end the connection and ban the source from accessing their minds. Joey apologized to her own screaming voice as she went through her settings and shut it away. The messages of apology didn’t soothe the screams, but she repeated them again and again until the connection was closed and it died down.
She told her screaming self.
When the screaming had subsided, Thea said,
Edwidge said,
Joey said.
Lily said.
Joey said.
Lily said,
With that, they pulled away and left Joey to her sister’s living room. Milton was still there, his phone glowing on his face.
“Where’s Jeanette?”
He didn’t look from the screen. “She’s going through a bunch of clothes and things. Said Goodwill was coming by.”
He scrolled though his phone and chewed his lip.
“Milt— Steve. I’m sorry I overreacted.”
He sucked air in. Puffed out his chest. “I guess I’m not the only one who does that, huh?”
“I guess not.” Joey said. His eyes twinkled at her. “So we’re even?”
He rotated his phone and began typing into it. “Think nothing of it. You’re sick. We’re helping you get better. Of course you’re a little out of sorts.”
“You really feel that way?”
For the first time in hours, he looked at her. But the look was too flat and placid for Joey to interpret. It made her insides rumble. “Of course. It’s my job to help.”
He went back to typing. “If my files got corrupted,” Joey asked, “Would there be any way to restore me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if my mind went bad or something. There’s got to be some precaution you guys take. There’s got to be.”
His gaze met her. He was all unworried brows and pinhole pupils. “Is this about the back-ups again?”
“Yeah…I’m sorry. It’s just, there’s got to be a copy that you guys hold onto. I can’t believe you don’t.”
He leaned forward and stared down on her. She couldn’t see any stubble on his chin. ”And imagine what it would be like for that mind,” he said. “Sitting alone in a spare hard drive, with no stimulation, no knowledge of what had happened to it? How it got there? Doing, I don’t know what— replaying its death over and over for eternity?”
“—Don’t—”
“And suppose we had to use that back-up? Can you imagine how terrified you would be if all of a sudden you woke up, trapped, and were told that there was another version of you that had gotten corrupted and died again? How could you ever feel like a person again, after that? How could you ever love the family that did that to you?”
“You really don’t think LifeMedia does that.”
His head twitched to the side. “It would be barbaric.”
Milton went into the kitchen, but came out empty handed. The sun was jutting across the room now. Music droned from out of the bedroom; Neutral Milk Hotel, one of Joey’s old records. Joey was relieved to hear her sister was keeping it. She sang along softly to herself.
“Oh how I remember you, wish I could push my fingers through your mouth and make those muscles move, to hear your voice so smooth and sweet…”
“I always thought that song was so creepy,” Milton said. “He’s a necrophiliac.”
“It is creepy.” Joey said.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and eased back onto his heels. “Does that make me some kind of hypocrite, to think that?”
Joey turned the lights in the house back on. “I don’t know.”
“I mean…maybe this Malkmus guy had the right idea. I mean, if your soul mate was dead, what choice do you have but to reanimate them? Until now, of course.”
“Steve. There are back-ups of everyone that’s been uploaded. I know it.”
His arms dropped to his sides. He looked down the hall. Anticipated Jeanette. She was singing in the distance, too. Her voice was hoarse and crackle-free, heart-rendingly authentic and bad.
“I hope you’re just crazy,” he said. He screwed his face i
nto a look of concentration. “Hey, Joey?”
“Yeah?”
Milton walked over to the BrightBox and picked it up. He turned Joey over a few times, inspecting her seams until he arrived at her microphone, which he brought close to his lips. He had a perfect cupid’s bow. Joey could see some of the appeal.
“Why did you want to watch us having sex?” he asked. “What for?”
“I—I didn’t. Look man, it was an accident.”
“I’m not trying to make waves, here. I forgive you. I just want to know why.”
Joey didn’t answer.
“Did you record it? Just tell me you didn’t, please. I don’t think you did, but I need to hear it.”
“I didn’t see anything,” Joey said. “I didn’t do anything. I know you think I’m broken, but I’m not nuts, okay?”
“Okay.” He sighed, in measured breaths, and set the box down.
“When you back me up,” Joey said, “Are you going to pick