her sister’s feeble excuse for a hard drive in that moment. How she was keeping herself entertained and enriched in such a flat world so devoid of stimulation. Dust clouded the air, Joey could smell it. It was worse than before the cleaning had begun.
Jeanette took a long, fortifying breath. “Ready for the big show?”
“Sure am,” Joey said.
“You don’t have to go through with it, you know.”
Joey’s light fizzled. “I think we both know it’s for the best.”
Jeanette hummed in assent and went back to cleaning. Joey hadn’t been speaking much in the past week, didn’t seem to care whether she was taken along to Jeanette’s work or left alone at home. She didn’t even provoke Milton much anymore, and had ceased her furtive late-night requests and abrupt, screaming dreams. Jeanette had almost begun to take her silence as a matter of course.
“I just hope it works,” Jeanette said quietly, as if to herself. She rose and started to unfold the chairs and arrange them around the room.
After most of the chairs were out, Joey said, “Jean. Let’s call Dad.”
“What for?”
“Just real quick. Hold on, I’ll do it.”
Joey opened up LifeMedia’s voice chat client and dialed their father’s phone number. One speaker played the dial tone as Jeanette finished with the chairs. She stood in place when the task was done, one arm hanging off the seat back, her eyes not meeting the Box.
“Hullo?” their father said.
“Dad,” Jeanette called, “It’s Jean. And Joey. Hi.”
“Hi Dad.” Joey added.
“Well, hey girls!” he was surprised but untroubled. “What can I do you for?”
“We wanted to see how you’re doing,” Joey said.
“Oh. Well isn’t that nice. Doing good…just buying some fertilizer for the spring garden, you know. Supposed to be a real bang-up year, from what the almanac says.”
“Oh yeah? What’re you growing?” Jeanette asked.
They heard him pull away from the phone and speak to someone else. The ambient noise of the garden center piped in from Joey’s speaker. A woman’s voice could be heard explaining something complex in tones too hushed for the sisters to understand.
“Well,” the father continued, “I’m gonna start doing a bit of a crop rotation. It’s getting so hot up here that you can grow some southern plants, on account of that global warming, you know. I’m thinking fruit trees…oranges, pluots.”
“Pluots?”
“Yeah, you know the plum-apricot thingies. Hybrids. Ask your sister, she can wiki it for ya.”
The female voice in the background sounded impatient. Jeanette glanced at Joey and made a small O with her mouth.
“What are you girlies up to?”
“Well, we’re starting a bit of a support group…for other BrightBox uploadees and their families,” Jeanette said.
“That’s wonderful…I bet that’ll do you both a world of good. And hey, don’t let what people say about this whole thing get you guys down.”
“What do you mean?”
He swallowed audibly. “I been seeing things about it on the local news and the public access. People are saying all types of godawful things about those boxes, calling it unnatural and immoral and whatnot. I mean, they just don’t understand what you been through.”
“Jeanette’s co-worker is like that,” Joey said.
“Yeah. Well I would’ve said the same thing when I was ignorant about it. Gave me the spooks at first. But now that it’s my own daughter, I get it. Of course it’s a little unnatural. But to have you alive, Josephine, I promise you is worth any sacrifice in the world. If I could give my own busted-up body to save you, I would. Lord knows I would.”
“Maybe someday,” Joey replied.
Jeanette approached the Box and ran a finger along it. Dust had accumulated on Joey’s sides from the cleaning. She pinched the filth and rubbed her index finger against her thumb in a slow, methodical motion.
“It hasn’t been perfect, to tell you the truth, Dad,” she said. “But we’re working on getting it all fixed up.”
He sighed and smacked his lips. “Oh come on, some things don’t fix up. It’s not the end of the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well like, your mom broke me down, and not in any way I could ever fix up. That car accident in ‘92 busted me up, and my hip’s just always gonna click from it. Hell, you two gave me more than your fair share of gray hairs.”
Jeanette chuckled politely. “I take your point. But,”
“But nothing. Eventually the bad things that happen to you become a part of you. They don’t disappear, they just get absorbed into the bloodstream.”
“Jesus, thanks for that,” Jeanette said. She rolled her eyes at Joey. “That’s really uplifting.”
The woman with him spoke. Something about not having much time, and needing to be rung up.
“Listen, I got to go,” he said.
“That’s fine,” said Joey. “Thanks for talking to us.”
“Bye, Dad,” Jeanette said, distractedly opening a package of plastic cups.
“I love you,” Joey said as the line clicked off. Then, to Jeanette, “Sounds like he has a girlfriend.”
She shook her head and threw curls into her face. “I hope we don’t end up having to meet that creature.”
“Oh, you can handle it,” Joey chided. “If it makes him happy.”
Jeanette stopped stacking the cups. “If it makes him happy, then what? Then it’s good? Then it’s something we have to deal with?”
“Please. You see him twice a year. You won’t have to deal with anyone he’s banging.”
Jeanette cracked a sad-looking smile and said, “At least he can bang, right?”
Lily messaged.
Aloud, Joey said, “At least he can do something we didn’t expect.”
Joey could feel the floor beneath her vibrating. Footsteps were coming from the hall, growing closer. Soon Jeanette heard them too and went for the door. Joey could sense that Lily and her family was several miles away, that Edwidge’s mother was already on the train, that Andrea was searching in vain for street parking with Carlton in the passenger’s seat. Even Thompson’s ex-wife was considering dropping by; she’d posted on the LifeMedia message board saying something to that effect.
The newcomers were advancing on the apartment too. Children uploaded by parents. A lonely, futurist bachelor who’d been struck by a car. A marathon runner and philanthropist who’d been slowly offed by bone cancer. A former drug addict who, in the deepest throes of an acid flashback, had pointed a shotgun at his chest. A high school football player with a shattered knee and who had lost interest in having a body.
They were coming in droves from throughout the city and the surrounding area. Lily knew all their names and service numbers, had whispered in all their expectant, confused, lonely minds.
But it was Milton at the door. He came in with a box of wires and a large, black external hard drive with a flaming orange light on its side. He kissed Jeanette on the cheek and stepped in with purpose.
“Jean,” Joey said as he came in.
“Yeah?”
“Remember the time with the willow tree?”
34.
“Oh, the willow tree incident. Dad was so pissed at you!”
Milton sat the box of equipment on the coffee table. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, just one time Joey climbed up this tree in our back yard. This big, big willow,” Jeanette reached for the ceiling as she spoke, her belly escaping her shirt, “And she stayed up there through this nasty rainstorm.”
“And you stayed with me.”
“I was panicked! I thought you were gonna plummet to your death if I didn’t look out!”
Jeanette laughed, and Milton gave her shoulders a light squeeze. She leaned into it and closed her eyes.
Lily said.
said Edwidge.
“Hey guys I’m still here,” Joey called. It broke their spell. Jeanette and Milton pulled away from one another.
“Joey, how have you been feeling?”
“Like shit.”
Milton stared into the box of cables. “Oh.”
Carlton messaged. He was getting better at it.
Lily replied,
Joey asked.
Lily had adopted the habit of addressing people by their LifeMedia account numbers.
said Thea.
Milton was fumbling with the cables. He pulled his blazer off, revealing a LifeMedia shirt that was tight in the chest. Joey shared her view with the rest, letting them know the external hard drive and hookups were almost in place. They caught her gaze wandering.
Lily intoned, pulling Joey’s attention away.
Edwidge giggled. Joey could sense that her mother was approaching the apartment, Edwidge’s green-glowing box in tow, headed up the train station’s steps.
Lily said,
Thea asked.
Joey felt warmth in her lower abdomen. The room became dim and fell out of sight. She could feel