“That they are, your honor,” said Deshawn, warmly. “That they are.”
“Very well,” said Herrington. “I suspect you take issue with Mr. Horowitz’s petition?”
“Absolutely, your honor,” said Deshawn. “Our position is simple. First, and foremost this is Karen Bessarian.” Karen, who was seated between Malcolm and me, was dressed in a very prim and attractive dark-blue woman’s business suit. Karen nodded.
Herrington looked down at a datapad. “It says here that Ms. Bessarian was born in 1960. This—this construct …”
“I’ve chosen a more youthful version of my own face,” said Karen. “I’m not vain, but …”
Herrington nodded at her. “Obviously, whether this is really Karen Bessarian is an issue that I want to reserve judgment on—although if you are, well, it’s a pleasure to meet you; I’ve very much enjoyed Karen Bessarian’s novels.” He looked back at Deshawn. “Do you have anything else, Mr. Draper?”
“It’s not what I have, your honor. It’s what Ms. Lopez doesn’t have.” Deshawn was clearly trying to not sound smug, but he was only partially succeeding. “You have before you a woman who says she is Karen Bessarian, alive and well. And surely in the absence of a death certificate, the court has to assume she’s telling the truth.”
Judge Herrington made that quizzical face again: eyes widening, eyebrow lifting. “I don’t understand,” he said.
Deshawn made his own version of a puzzled face. “Before probate begins,” he said, “either the physician in charge or the county medical examiner would normally issue a death certificate if in fact anyone had died. But since no death certificate has been issued, clearly—”
“Mr. Draper,” said Judge Herrington, “you seem to be confused.”
“I—” began Deshawn, but he got no farther before Maria Lopez stood up.
“Indeed he is, your honor,” she said, with great satisfaction. “We have a death certificate for Karen Bessarian right here.”
CHAPTER 21
“That damned death certificate changes everything,” said Malcolm Draper, pacing back and forth—even uploads liked to pace when they were thinking. We had retreated back to the boardroom at Karen’s house. “It puts a huge burden on us to prove that Karen isn’t dead.”
Karen had taken off the jacket of her suit—not that she could possibly be warm; I guess that, too, was another habit that survived uploading. She was sitting on my right, and Deshawn was on my left. She nodded grimly.
“But at least Judge Herrington agreed to a jury trial,” said Malcolm, “and I think we’ll do better with a jury than without one.” He paused as he came to the end of his pacing path, and turned around.
“What do we know about the other attorney?” I asked. “This Lopez?”
Deshawn had a datapad in front of him, but he didn’t consult it. “Maria Theresa Lopez,” he said. “She’s young, but very good. Probate is her specialty, so she may be out of her depth with some of the issues here, but I doubt it. She finished third in her class at Harvard, was on Law Review, and clerked for the Michigan Attorney General.”
Malcolm nodded. “I’ve always made it a policy never to underestimate the other side.”
“This is all going to take a lot of time,” I said, “and the judge did issue a temporary freeze on Karen’s assets.” Actually, Herrington had frozen all but five hundred thousand dollars; he’d left her access to enough to meet basic household expenses and legal disbursements.
“And I will need more funds than what the judge left free, won’t I?” said Karen. She pursed her plastic lips, then: “Well, let’s see what I can do about that.” She tilted her head up, spoke into the air. “Phone, call Erica.” Then, in an aside to us, “Erica Cole is my literary agent.”
“Erica Cole Associates,” said the male receptionist, whose face now filled one wall, but before Karen could speak, he went on. “Oh, it’s you, Karen. I’ll put you straight through.”
An idling pattern appeared on the screen for all of three seconds, then the face of a white woman of about fifty appeared. She was a study in circles: round head with ringlets of hair, round eyes behind round glasses. “Hello, Karen,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Erica, this is my friend Jake Sullivan, and these two gentlemen are my lawyers, Malcolm and Deshawn Draper.”
“Malcolm Draper?” said Erica. “The Malcolm Draper?”
Malcolm nodded.
“Wow, we should talk,” said Erica. “Are you represented?”
“For books? No.”
“We should most definitely talk,” Erica said, nodding decisively.
Karen made a mechanical coughing sound, and Erica’s eyes swung back to face her. “Sorry.”
“You know I’ve been toying with writing another book,” Karen said.
Erica nodded expectantly.
“Well, I’m ready—if the offer is good enough.”
“What did you have in mind? Another DinoWorld book?”
“Yes,” said Karen.
“Um,” said Malcolm, “ah, forgive me for interrupting, but …”
We all looked at him.
He lifted his shoulders apologetically. “Until all this is resolved,” he said, “you should stay away of any properties you might not have clear ownership of.”
For the first time ever, I saw rage on Karen’s face. “What? DinoWorld is my property!”
“What’s going on?” asked Erica.
Deshawn and Malcolm spent a couple of minutes filling Erica in about Tyler’s action, while I watched Karen fume. I didn’t think this was the time to tell Karen that, even if we lost our case, all she had to do was wait seventy years until DinoWorld was in the public domain; then she could write all the sequels she wanted, and no one could stop her.
“All right,” said Karen finally, arms crossed in front of her chest. “It won’t be a DinoWorld book. But it will be the first new novel by me in fifteen years.”
“Do you have an outline?” asked Erica. “Sample chapters?”
The thing about being the eight-hundred-pound gorilla is that you rarely had to remind people of that fact. “I don’t need them,” said Karen flatly.
I swung my eyes back to the wall screen in time to see Erica nodding. “You’re right,” she said. “You don’t.”
“What’s the biggest advance ever paid for a novel?” asked Karen.
“One hundred million dollars,” Erica said at once. “For the latest Lien book by Barbara Geiger.”
Karen nodded. “St. Martin’s still has the option on my next novel, right?”
“Right,” said Erica.
“Okay,” said Karen. “Call up Hiroshi there. Give him seventy-two hours to make a preemptive bid that exceeds a hundred million, or you’ll go to auction. Tell him I need fifty percent on signing, and I need it within a week of closing the deal. Once you get the check, I’ll have you disburse funds from it on my behalf as needed—but for starters, I should have some walking-around money, so get me a hundred thousand of it in cash.”
“How soon can you deliver the manuscript?” asked Erica.
Karen thought for a minute. “I don’t get tired anymore, and I don’t waste time on sleep. Tell him I’ll deliver it in six months; he’ll be able to have it in stores for Christmas 2046.”
“Do you have a working title?”
Karen didn’t miss a beat. “Yes. Tell him it’s called Nothing’s Going to Stop Me Now.”
The one disadvantage of having Deshawn, rather than Malcolm, as Karen’s lead lawyer was that he did need to sleep. Karen had six guest bedrooms in this mansion of hers, and Deshawn was off in one of them, sawing wood. Malcolm, meanwhile, was using the wall screen in the boardroom to read up on legal precedents, and Karen—being true to her word—was in her office, making notes toward her new novel.
And that left me in her living room. I was trying out her leather-covered La-z-boy recliner. I’d never liked leather upholstery when I was biological, because it always made me sweat, but th
at wasn’t a problem now. As I leaned back, I stared at the gray blankness of a wall screen that was turned off.
“Jake? I said softly.
Nothing. I tried again. “Jake?”
What the—?
“It’s me. The other Jake Sullivan. On the outside.”
What are you talking about?
“Don’t you remember?”
Remember what? How can I hear you?
“Do you remember me? We talked a while ago.”
What do you mean—‘talked’?
“Well, all right, it wasn’t with words. But we communicated. Our minds touched.”
This is nuts.
“That’s what you said before. Look at your left elbow. Are there three small X’s scratched just below it, on the outside of your arm?”
Whaddaya know … look at that. How did they get there?
“You put them there. Don’t you remember?”
No.
“And you don’t remember communicating with me before?”
No.
“What do you remember?”
All kinds of stuff.
“What do you remember recently? What happened yesterday, for instance?”
I don’t know. Nothing special.
“All right. All right. Umm … let’s see … Okay. Okay. Last Christmas. Tell me about last Christmas.”
We actually had snow—there hadn’t been a white Christmas in Toronto for years, but I remember we actually had some snow on Christmas Eve, and it stayed through Boxing Day. I got Mom a set of silver serving plates.
I was flabbergasted. “Go on.”
Well, and she got me a beautiful chess set with onyx pieces. Uncle Blair came over for Christmas dinner, and—
“Jake.”
Yes?
“Jake, what year is it?”
Twenty Thirty-Four. Of course, we’re talking about Christmas, so that was last year: Twenty Thirty-Three.
“Jake, it’s 2045.”
Bull.
“It is. In fact, it’s September 2045. Uncle Blair died five years ago. I remember the Christmas you’re talking about; I remember the snow. But that was over a decade ago.”
Bullshit. What is this?
“That’s what I’d like to know.” I paused, my mind racing, trying to sort it all out. “Jake, if it’s only 2034, as you claim, then how did you come to be in an artificial body?”
I don’t know. I’ve been wondering about that.
“There was no uploading procedure that long ago.”
Uploading?
“Immortex. The Mindscan process.”
Nothing, then: Well, I can’t argue with the fact that I am here, in some sort of a synthetic body. But—but you said it’s September.
“That’s right.”
It isn’t. It’s late November.
“If that’s true, the leaves should all be off the trees—assuming you’re still in or near Toronto. Have you seen outside today?”
Not today, no. But yesterday, and—
“What you think of as yesterday doesn’t count.”
There are no windows in this room.
“Blue, right? The color of the room.”
Yes.
“There’s a poster of the brain’s structure on one wall, isn’t there? I asked you to make a rip in it ten centimeters up from the lower-left corner.”
No, you didn’t.
“Yes, I did. Last time we communicated. Go look: you’ll see it. A one-centimeter rip.”
It’s there, yes, but that just means you’ve been in this room before.
“No, it doesn’t. But it, plus those three X’s on your forearm, do mean that you are the same instantiation I’ve contacted before.”
This is the first time we’ve ever communicated.
“It isn’t—although I understand you think it is.”
I’d remember if we’d spoken before.
“So you’d think. But, gee, well, I don’t know—it’s as though your ability to form new long-term memories is gone. You can’t remember anything new.”
And I’ve been like this for eleven years now?
“No. That’s the strange thing. The biological Jacob Sullivan only underwent the Mindscan process last month. You couldn’t have been created any earlier than that.”
I’m still not sure I buy all this bull—but, for the sake of argument, say it’s true. I could see something going wrong with the—the “uploading,” as you call it—preventing me from forming new long-term memories. But why would I lose a decade worth of old memories?
“I have no idea.”
It really is 2045?
“Yes.”
A long pause. How are the Blue Jays doing?
“They’re in the toilet.”
Well, at least I haven’t missed much …
St. Martin’s Press came through, offering an advance against royalties of $110 million for the next Karen Bessarian book. Meanwhile, Immortex agreed to pay for half the litigation costs, and to provide whatever other support they could.
Karen spent $600,000 to buy the earliest possible trial slot at auction. The whole thing struck me as obscene, but I guess that was just my Canadian perspective. In the States, you could jump the queue for health care if you had enough money; why shouldn’t you be able to do that for justice, too? Anyway, as Deshawn explained, because Karen bought the trial slot, the case was framed as her suing Tyler.
Deshawn Draper and Maria Lopez spent a couple of days picking jurors. Of course, Deshawn wanted fans of Karen’s work—either the original books, or the movies based on them. And he wanted to stack the jury with blacks, Hispanics, and gays, whom he—and the consultant we’d hired—felt might be more predisposed to a broader definition of personhood.
Deshawn also wanted rich jurors—the hardest kind to get, because the rich tended to find excuses to shirk their civic responsibility. “Death and taxes are supposed to be unavoidable,” Deshawn had said to us. “But the poor know that the rich have ways to avoid paying their fair share to the IRS. Still, they get some comfort from the fact that death is the great leveler—or it was, until Immortex. They’re going to resent Karen finding a way around that. Meanwhile, the rich are always paranoid about greedy relatives; wealthy people are going to despise Tyler.”
I watched, fascinated—and slightly appalled—during voir dire, but soon enough the seven-person jury was impaneled: six active jurors plus one alternate. What Deshawn and Lopez each wanted mostly canceled out, and we ended up with four straight women, two of whom were black and two of whom were white; one gay black man; one straight white man; and one straight Hispanic man. All were under sixty; Lopez had managed to banish anyone who might possibly be too preoccupied with questions of their own mortality. None were rich, although two—apparently a high number for a jury trial—were certainly upper middle class. And only one, the Hispanic man, had ever read one of Karen’s books—ironically, Return to DinoWorld, which was a sequel—and he claimed to be indifferent to it.
Finally, we were ready to go. The courtroom was simple and modem, with red-stained wooden paneling on the walls. At the bailiff’s command, we did that all-rise thing you see on TV. As it turned out, the judge assigned to this case was the same Sebastian Herrington who had heard the initial motions. He entered and took a seat behind the long bench, its wood stained the same red as the walls. Behind the bench and to one side was the Michigan flag, and the American flag was on the other. Next to the bench was the witness stand.
Deshawn and Karen sat at the plaintiff’s table, which was near the jury box. Tyler and Ms. Lopez were at an identical table, further along. In front of these two tables was a wide, open area covered with yellow tiles; this area, Malcolm told me, was referred to as the well.
I had no special status in this matter, so my seat was in the spectator’s gallery, which, unlike most courtrooms I’d see on TV, was off to one side, letting us see the faces of the plaintiff and the defendant, as well as those of the judge and witness. Malcolm Dra
per sat next to me. Also in the gallery were Tyler’s two daughters, ages twelve and eight, accompanied by Tyler’s rather prim wife. The children looked totally adorable; their presence was clearly designed to make the jury think us heartless at depriving them of their rightful inheritance.
Of course, the trial was being broadcast, and the rest of the seating area was packed, mostly with reporters. Also present were a bunch of people from Immortex, who had come here from Toronto.
“We’ll hear opening statements,” said Judge Herrington, a hand supporting his shoehorn chin, “beginning with the plaintiff. Mr. Draper?”
Deshawn rose. He was wearing a dark blue suit today, a light blue shirt, and a tie that was a shade in between the two. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said, “the Bible makes it plain: honor thy father and thy mother. That’s not a suggestion; it’s one of the Ten Commandments. Well, we’re here today because a man—a greedy man—has chosen to break that Commandment.” He moved behind Karen, and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’d like you to meet that man’s mother. This is Karen Bessarian, the famous writer. She’s worked very hard over the years, creating some of the most memorable characters in modem literature. She’s made a lot of money doing that—and well she should have. After all, that is the American Dream, isn’t it? Work hard, and you’ll get ahead. But now her son—that’s him, over there: one Tyler Horowitz—has chosen to dishonor his mother in the most extreme, the most severe, the most outrageous way. He says she’s dead. And he wants her money.
“You’ll come to know Karen Bessarian during this trial. She is loving, warm, generous, and kind. She’s not asking you to award her any monetary or punitive damages. All she wants is to stop her son from further attempts to execute her will, until if and when she actually does die.” Deshawn looked at each of the jurors in turn, making eye contact. “Is that too much for a mother to ask?” He sat down, and patted Karen’s hand.
Herrington nodded his shoehorn face. “Thank you, Mr. Draper. Your opening statement, Ms. Lopez?”
Maria Lopez rose. She had on a jacket that was a deep shade of red I’d never seen before—it was astonishing to still be encountering new colors. Her pants were black, and her blouse was dark gray. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this case isn’t about greed.” She shook her head, and smiled sadly. “It isn’t about money. It’s about a son laying his beloved mother to rest, about mourning, about getting on with things that need to be done.” She paused, and took her turn at the eye-contact-with-each-juror-in-turn thing. “Wrapping up the affairs of a deceased parent is one of the saddest duties a child ever has to perform. It’s heart-wrenching, but it must be done. The attempts by third parties to prolong poor Tyler’s agony are cruel. Karen Bessarian is dead, and we’ll prove it. She died on the surface of the moon. As for the … machine … sitting there that is claiming to be Ms. Bessarian, we shall show that it is an impostor, a thing falsely trying to claim money that it has no right to. Let Tyler bury his mother.