I was still irritated. “Another movie no one ever saw?”
“Not a movie. History. My people’s history. In the southern U.S., it used to be that facilities were segregated, and, of course, the good facilities were for whites only. Well, in 1960, four black college students sat down in the whites-only section of the lunch counter at Woolworth’s—that was a department store—and asked to be served. They were refused, and told to leave the store. They didn’t; they started a sit-in, and it spread to other whites-only lunch counters all over the South.”
“And?”
Malcolm sighed, appalled at my ignorance, I guess. “They won through peaceful protest. The lunch counters were desegregated, and blacks were given the same rights that other people had had all along. The boycotters forced the people in power to recognize that you can’t push someone around just because of their skin. Well, you are nothing but a skin, my friend—a shed skin. And maybe you do deserve rights. But, like those brave young men, if you want them, you’re going to have to demand them.”
“How?”
“Find some place to occupy, and refuse to budge until you get what you want.”
“You think that’d work?” I asked.
“It’s worked before. Of course, don’t do anything violent.”
“Me? Never in a million years.”
CHAPTER 18
Karen and I spent four days in Georgia, seeing the sights, and then we flew north to Detroit, so that Karen could take care of a few things.
Detroit. Hardly where you’d expect to find a wealthy novelist who could make her home anywhere. In the previous century, most Canadians lived as close as possible to the U.S. border—but it wasn’t out of fondness for our American neighbors. Rather, we simply went as far south into the warmth as we could without leaving our own country. And now the reverse was true. Trying to escape the heat, Americans came as far north as possible without actually departing the land of the free and the home of the brave; that’s why Karen lived here.
Of course, she had a fabulous mansion, filled with trophies for her writing, copies of her books in over thirty languages, and even some props and set pieces from the movies made of her work.
It was also filled with things reflective of her last husband, Ryan, who had died two years ago. Ryan had collected fossils. Unlike most nature-based hobbies, that one had actually gotten easier of late: all the extra runoff and erosion caused by the polar caps shrinking apparently exposed lots of new material. Or so Karen told me. Anyway, Ryan had shelves of trilobites—the only invertebrate fossil I could identify on sight—and many other wonderful things.
The most important reason for stopping in Detroit was so that Karen could see her son Tyler, who also lived in this city. She’d spoken to Tyler several times on the phone since undergoing the Mindscan process, but had opted to do it as voice-only calls. She’d told me she wanted him to see her new face directly, not over some hardware that would make it appear even more cold and remote.
Around 6:00 p.m., Karen’s doorbell rang. The living-room wall monitor immediately changed to show the peephole-camera view. “That’s Tyler,” said Karen, nodding. He was, I knew, forty-six. His hair was light brown, and had receded a fair bit. Karen got up from the couch and headed for the entryway. I followed. The light there was dim. Karen unlocked and opened the front door, and—
“Hello,” said Tyler, sounding surprised. “My name’s Tyler Horowitz. I’m here to see—”
“Tyler, it’s me,” said Karen.
He froze, his jaw hanging slack. I did some quick math: Tyler was born in 1999; Karen’s new face was based on the way she’d appeared when she was thirty, back in 1990. Even as a boy, Tyler would never have seen his mother looking quite like this.
“Mom?” he said, softly, disbelieving.
“Come in, son, come in.” She stepped aside, and he entered the house.
Karen turned now to face me. “Jake,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my son Tyler. Tyler, this is the new friend I was telling you about.”
Even in the dim light, Tyler must have seen that my body was artificial: he looked at my proffered hand as though I’d extended some hideous mechanical claw. He did finally take my hand, but he shook it with no enthusiasm. “Hello, Tyler,” I said, bringing all the warmth I could to my electronic voice.
He was clearly Karen’s son, although he looked almost twenty years older than she did now. But his basic facial structure was highly similar to hers: broad, with a smallish nose and widely spaced green eyes. “Hello,” he said, his voice ironically sounding flat and mechanical.
I smiled and he looked away. I knew that my smile appeared slightly wrong—but, for Pete’s sake, his mother’s old smile had been the lopsided smirk of a stroke victim. “I’m glad to meet you,” I said. “Karen has told me a lot about you.”
A brief wince; maybe he didn’t like me calling his mother by her first name.
Karen led us into the living room, and I took a seat on the couch, crossing my legs. Tyler continued to stand. “Your mother tells me you’re a history professor,” I said.
He nodded. “At the University of Michigan.”
“What’s your specialty?”
“American history. Twentieth century.”
“Oh?” I did want him to like me, and people usually warmed to talking about their work. “What topics do you cover?”
He looked at me, trying to decide, I guess, whether to accept this olive branch. Finally, he shrugged. “All sorts of things. The Scopes Trial. The Great Depression. WWII. JFK. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Vietnam. Apollo. Watergate. Iran-Contra.”
Apollo had gone to the moon, and WWII and Vietnam were wars—but I didn’t have a clue what the others were. Jesus Christ, the twentieth century. Karen’s century.
“I’ll get you to tell me about those some day,” I said, still trying to ingratiate myself. “It all sounds fascinating.”
He looked at me. “You must remember some of them,” he said. “I mean, I know you’ve chosen to look young now, but …”
Karen glanced at me, and I shrugged a little. It had to come out at some point. “This new face is only a little bit more youthful-looking than my original.” I paused. “I’m forty-four.”
Tyler blinked. “Forty-four? God, you’re younger than I am!”
“Yup. I was born in 2001—on the first of January, as a matter of fact. I was the—”
“You’re younger than I am,” repeated Tyler, “and you’re dating my mother.”
“Tyler, please,” said Karen. She took the seat next to me on the couch.
His eyes drilled into her, emerald lasers. “Well, that’s what you said on the phone—you wanted me to meet the man you’re dating. Mother, you’re eighty-five, and he’s barely half that.”
“But I don’t feel eighty-five,” said Karen. “And I don’t look it anymore.”
“It’s all fake,” said Tyler.
“No, it’s not,” replied Karen firmly. “It’s real. I’m real, and I’m human, and I’m alive—more alive than I’ve been in years. And Jake is my friend, and being with him makes me happy. You do want me to be happy, don’t you, Tyler?”
“Yes, but …” He looked at his mother. “But, for God’s sake …”
Karen frowned, something she rarely did. There was a strange bunching of her plastiskin between her lower lip and her chin when she did so; she’d have to get Dr. Porter to fix that. “‘For God’s sake,’” repeated Karen, and she shook her head. “You want me to be dating someone my own age—someone who’s about to die? Or would you rather I wasn’t dating at all?”
“Pop would—”
“You know I loved your father—I loved Ryan Horowitz totally and completely. This has nothing to do with him.”
“He’s only been dead two years,” said Tyler.
“It’ll be three in November,” said Karen. “And besides …”
“Yes?” said Tyler, as if daring her to elaborate. I knew what Karen wasn’t saying: that
Ryan had had Alzheimer’s for years before his body had finally given up, that Karen had essentially been alone for much longer than just since he’d died. But Karen wasn’t about to be sucked into that trap. Instead, as was her wont, her gift, her raison d’être, she told a story.
“When I was nineteen, Tyler, I fell in love with Daron Bessarian, a nice non-Jewish boy. Now, you barely remember your grandfather, I’m sure, but he was a Holocaust survivor, and he didn’t want me dating somebody who wasn’t a Jew. He kept saying to me, ‘If they come for us again, this boy—he would hide you? When they try to take your home, he would stand up for you?’ And I said, ‘Of course he would. Daron would do anything for me.’ But my father didn’t believe it, and when Daron and I got married, he refused to come to the wedding. Now, yes, Daron and I eventually divorced, but that was for our own reasons. But I didn’t let my father dictate who I should be with back then, and I’m not going to let my son dictate it now. So, mind your manners, Tyler, have a seat, and enjoy the evening.”
Tyler took a deep breath and let it out noisily. “All right.” He looked around, found the chair furthest from me, and plopped himself in it. “When do we eat?”
I dropped my gaze to the floor.
“Oh, right,” said Tyler. “When do I eat?”
“Whenever you want to, my dear,” said Karen. “I thought we’d order you a pizza. You …”
I was sure she’d been about to say something like, “You always liked pizza,” but had presumably thought better of it. Too much like an elderly mother lamenting that her little boy was all grown up now.
Tyler nodded after a moment. “Pizza is fine. Do you have a good local place? A mom-and-pop?”
I thought I could build on this. “You don’t like big chains, either?”
Tyler regarded me. He seemed almost offended that I was trying to find a common ground between us. But, after a moment, he said, “Yeah. I hate them. Did your folks run a small business?”
“Well, it was a family business …” I said.
Tyler narrowed his green eyes suspiciously. “Meaning what?”
“They’re in the beer business.”
“How so? Some little microbrewery?”
This had to come out at some point, too. “No. Not a microbrewery,” I said. “My last name is Sullivan, and—”
“Sullivan?” snapped Tyler. “As in Sullivan’s Select?”
“Yes. My father was a vice-president, and—”
Tyler nodded as if I’d just handed down an indictment. “Nepotism,” he said. “Rich old fat cat.”
I was going to let it go, but Karen had had enough. “Actually, Jake’s father suffered severe brain damage when he was thirty-nine. He’s been in a vegetative state for getting on thirty years now.”
“Oh,” replied Tyler, softly. “Um, I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“So … ah.” Tyler was perhaps thinking of all the chronological absurdities here. Him older than me, my father incapacitated at an age around our own, a man in his forties dating a woman in her eighties, a woman who grew up in the last millennium with a man who grew up in this one.
“Look,” I said, “I know this is awkward. But the fact of the matter is that Karen and I are together. And it really would make both of us happy if you and I could get along.”
“Who said anything about not getting along?” replied Tyler, sounding quite defensive.
“Well, no one, but …” I stopped, tried another tack. “Let’s start over, shall we?” I got up, walked over to where he was now sitting, and stuck out my hand again. “I’m Jake Sullivan. Pleased to meet you.”
Tyler looked as though he was contemplating whether to go along with this rebooting of things. But, after a moment, he took my hand and shook it. But he wouldn’t go so far with the charade as to introduce himself again.
“Now,” said Karen, “why don’t you order that pizza? Try Pappa Luigi’s. I couldn’t eat pizza these last few years, but people said they were good.”
“Phone,” Tyler said, into the air, “call Papa Luigi’s.”
The phone did so, and Tyler placed his order.
I sat down again, this time taking a straight-back wooden chair that I would have found uncomfortable had my body been subject to fatigue. We all talked awkwardly for a while. Tyler had lots of questions about the Mindscan process, and Karen answered them.
The pizza was supposed to be here in thirty minutes or it would be free; I’d have paid a lot to get it here even faster than that to put an end to the strained conversation, but at last the doorbell rang again. Karen insisted on paying, over Tyler’s protests. (“You’re not going to have any, after all.” “But I did invite you for dinner.”) She carried the box into the kitchen, and set it on top of the stove. She then got Tyler a plate, and he helped himself to a steaming slice. The cheese pulled away in strings that he had to sever with his fingers. The toppings—pepperoni, onions, and bacon—looked perfectly decadent: the disks of pepperoni curling up at the edges, creating little artificial lakes of oil; the crisp bacon strips crisscrossing the flat Earth of cheese; the onions concentric semicircles darkened almost to black at their tips.
It looked fabulous but …
But I couldn’t smell it at all. The olfactory sensors I’d been provided with were geared to those things that were crucial for safety: the odors of gas leaks, of burning wood. The meat, the onions, the tomato sauce, the warm bread of the crust—none of it registered.
But they were clearly registering on Tyler. I’m sure he wasn’t doing it to be cruel, but I could see him inhaling deeply, drawing in the wonderful—they must be wonderful, I knew they were wonderful—smells. A look of anticipation grew across his face, and then he bit into his piece, making that glorious grimace that suggested the roof of his mouth was burning.
“How is it?” I asked.
“Mmmmfph …” He paused, swallowed. “Not bad at all.”
It was decadent indeed—but, then again, with over-the-counter drugs that dissolved arterial plaque, and others that prevented fat from accumulating, it really wasn’t that much of an indulgence … for him. But for me, it was something I’d never enjoy again.
No, not never. Sugiyama had said this version of the body was only the current state-of-the-art. It was infinitely up-gradeable. Eventually …
Eventually.
I watched Tyler eat.
After Tyler left, Karen and I sat on her living-room couch, talking. “So, what did you think of Tyler?” Karen asked.
“He doesn’t like me,” I said.
“What kid does like the man who’s dating his mother?”
“I suppose, but …” I trailed off, then, a moment later, continued. “No, I shouldn’t complain. I mean, at least he seems more accepting of you now that you’ve uploaded than my mother was of me—or than my friends were, for that matter.”
She asked what I meant, and I told her about my disastrous visit to my mother’s place. Karen was terrifically warm and supportive, holding my hand as I talked. But I guess I was in a pissy mood, because before I knew it, we were arguing—and I hate, hate, hate arguing with people. But Karen had said, “It doesn’t really matter what your mother thinks.”
“Of course it does,” I snapped. “Can you imagine how difficult this is for her? She carried me in her womb. She gave birth to me. She breast-fed me. Except that none of those things happened to this me.”
“I am a mother myself,” said Karen, “and I did all those things with Tyler.”
“No, you didn’t,” I replied. “The other Karen did.”
“Well, yes, technically, but—”
“It’s not just a technical point. It’s not hair-splitting. Man, I get so tired of this—of being stared at, of people treating me like some kind of thing. And maybe they’re right. Hell, even my dog doesn’t recognize me.”
“Your dog is dumb; all dogs are. And your friends and your mother are wrong. They’re just being stupid.”
“They’re
not stupid. Don’t call them that.”
“Well, the attitude they’re taking certainly is. I presume all those people you mentioned are younger than me. If I can come to grips with this, they should be able to, as well, and—”
“Why? Because you say so?” My, I was in a bad mood. “Because the great novelist would write the story so that it had a happy ending?”
Karen let go of my hand, but, after a moment, she spoke. “It’s not that. It’s just that people should be more understanding. I mean, think of all the money we’ve spent. If they—”
“What difference does it make how much this cost? You can’t buy acceptance.”
“No, of course not, but—”
“And you can’t force people to feel about you the way you want them to.”
I was sure Karen was getting angry, although the usual physiological signs—reddening of the face, a change to the vocal timbre—were absent. “You’re wrong,” she said. “We’re entitled to—”
“We’re entitled to nothing,” I said. “We can hope all we want, but we can’t demand.”
“Yes, we can. If—”
“That’s just wishful thinking,” I said.
“No, it’s not, damn it.” She’d crossed her arms in front of her chest. “It’s our right, and we’ve got to make others see that.”
“You’re dreaming,” I said.
And now her voice did distort, the words getting a fuzzy edge to them. “I am not dreaming. We have to be firm on this.”
I was getting quite worked up, too. “I don’t—” I cut myself off. I was feeling enormous anxiety, just as I always did when I got into an argument. Looking away, I said, “Fine.”
“What?” said Karen.
“You’re right. I concede. You win.”
“You can’t just fold like that.”
“It’s not worth fighting about.”
“Of course it is.”
I was still feeling anxious; indeed, it felt almost like panic. “I don’t want to fight,” I said.
“Couples fight, Jake. It’s healthy. It’s how we get to the bottom of things. We can’t just stop with the issue unresolved.”