I felt myself grow flush with excitement. “Wendy!”
The image remained still, but I tingled at the sound of that single, lyrical voice emanating from the robot’s twin speakers. “Hello, Carl.”
“Wendy, darling—” I shook myself. “No. It can’t be you.”
“It is me, Carl.”
“But it’s been a hundred and forty years since—since I left you. You’re…dead.”
“I was one of the first to transcend into the computer.” She paused, ever so briefly. “I didn’t want to lose you again. I would’ve tried almost anything.”
“You waited over a century for me?”
“I would have waited a millennium.”
“But how do I know it’s really you?”
The voice laughed. “How do I know it’s really you?”
I set my jaw. “Well?”
“You always wear your pajamas inside out.”
“That damn robot even knew the name of my dog. Tell me something no one else could possibly know.”
She paused for a moment. “Remember that night in High Park—”
New tears dissolved the yellow crystals String’s passing had left at the corners of my eyes. “It is you!”
The voice laughed again. “In spirit if not in body.”
But I shook my head. “How could you do this? Give up physical existence?”
“I did it for you. I did it for love.”
“You weren’t this romantic when I left. We used to fight.”
“Over money. Over sex. Over all the things that don’t matter anymore.” Her tone grew warmer. “I love you, Carl.”
“We said our goodbyes a long time ago. You didn’t say ‘I love you’ then.”
“But in your heart you must have known that I did. It would have been unfair for me to tell you how deeply I felt before you left. You were like String, your head in the stars. I couldn’t ask you to give up the thing you wanted most: your one chance to visit another world.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “If you love something, set it free…”
She’d sent me a card with that inscription once. Somehow it had hurt at the time: it was as if she was telling me to leave. I didn’t understand then. But I did now. “If he comes back, he’s yours…”
“If he doesn’t, he never was.”
“I love you, too, Wendy.” I lightly touched the robot’s image cube.
“Join with me,” said the beautiful voice from the speakers.
“I—”
“Carl…”
“I’m—afraid. And…”
“Suspicious?”
“Yes.” I turned from the image. “I’ve been chased all over and warned against you by the only living soul I’ve seen.”
“The robots followed you for your own protection. String’s warnings were those of a worn-out mind.”
“But why did you try to—absorb—me without my consent?”
“You’ve seen what none of us have seen,” said Wendy. “Other intelligent beings. We crave your memories. In our enthusiasm to know what you know, to feel what you have felt, we erred.”
“You erred?”
“’Tis human.”
I looked deep into the image tank. “What if I choose not to transcend into the world computer network?”
“I’ll cry.”
“You’ll—cry? That’s it? I mean—I have the choice?”
“Of course. You can live the life of a scavenger, like String.”
“What if I want to go back to Zubenelgenubi? Back to the liquid lights?”
Her voice was stiff. “That’s up to you.”
“Then that is what I choose.” There was silence for a moment, then Wendy’s image slowly began to break up into colored cubes. The little robot started to roll away. “Wait! Where are you going?”
It was the multitude of voices that answered. “To help prepare your ship for another journey.”
I followed behind. Wendy, dear, sweet Wendy…
The cube rounded out onto the landing platter. A variety of robots—flatbeds, info cubes, and some kinds I hadn’t seen before—were already at work on the Foxtrot; others were rolling in from various places around the starport. I looked at the ship, its sleek lines, its powerful engines. I thought of the giant, lonely Terry Fox up in orbit. I thought and thought and thought. “Stop,” I said at last.
The robots did just that. “Yes, Carl?” said the multitude.
I hesitated. The words weren’t easy. But they were the truth. “I—I just had to see for myself that it was my choice; that I still had my free will.” I cleared my throat. “Wendy?”
The tank on the nearest info robot became transparent. Interference-pattern cubes coalesced into the pretty face within. “Yes, darling?”
“I love you.”
“You know I love you, too, Carl.”
I steeled myself. “And I’m staying.”
Her voice sang with joy. “Just relax, darling. This won’t hurt a bit.”
Her image was replaced by dancing and whirling prismatic lights. I was aware of a new image forming in the tanks of the other info robots, an image growing more and more refined as cubic pixels divided and subdivided: an image of the two of us, side by side, together, forever. I let myself go.
I was home at last.
Lost in the Mail
Finalist for the Aurora Award
for Best Short Story of the Year
Author’s Introduction
A writer is usually too modest to mention his own reviews, but I have a reason in this instance, so please bear with me: “Among the full-length stories in TransVersions #3, the standout is ‘Lost in the Mail’”—Tangent; “This great and gimmicky story almost makes the whole package worth it all by itself”—Scavenger’s Newsletter; “Excellent, imaginative, and well-written, further evidence of Sawyer’s talents”—NorthWords; “If there is any justice in the world, Sawyer should win the Aurora Award for the emotive ‘Lost in the Mail’”—Sempervivum.
Not too shabby, eh? And although I didn’t win the Aurora—Canada’s top honor in SF—that year (Robert Charles Wilson’s fabulous “The Perseids” did), I did come in second. But the story in question was rejected seventeen times before it sold—which just goes to show that a writer shouldn’t give up if he or she believes in a particular piece of work.
“Lost in the Mail” is not autobiographical—although I can see how people giving it a cursory read might think that it is. Like Jacob Coin, I used to want to be a paleontologist. And, again like him, I spent many years as a nonfiction writer. But Jacob is a sad man, and I am not. He decided not to pursue his dream, and instead settled into an uninteresting, uneventful life. Me, I did go after one of my dreams—being an SF writer. I’m pleased—and, frankly, a little surprised—that such a quiet, introspective, personal tale struck a responsive chord with so many people.
Lost in the Mail
The intercom buzzer sounded like a cardiac defibrillator giving a jump-start to a dying man. I sprang from my chair, not even pausing to save the article I was working on, threw back the dead-bolt, and hurried into the corridor. My apartment was next to the stairwell, so I swung through the fire door and bounded down the three flights to the lobby, through the inner glass door, and into the building’s entry chamber.
The Pope was digging through his bag. Of course, he wasn’t really the Pope—he probably wasn’t even Catholic—but he bore a definite resemblance to John Paul II. The underarms of his pale blue Canada Post shirt were soaked and he was wearing those dark uniform shorts that made him look like an English schoolboy. We exchanged greetings; he spoke in an obscure European accent.
A hole in the panel above the mailboxes puckered like an infected wound. John Paul inserted a brass key into it. The panel flopped forward the way a pull-down bed does, giving him access to a row of little cubicles. He began stuffing the day’s round of junk mail into these—a bed of fertilizer for the first-class goodies. He left my mailbox empty, though, and instead
dealt out a full set of leaflets and sale flyers onto the counter that jutted from the wall.
For most people the real mail amounted to one or two pieces, but I got a lot more than that—including a copy of the Ryerson Rambler, the alumni magazine from Ryerson Polytechnic University. When he was finished, the Pope scooped up my pile and handed it to me. As usual, it was too much to fit comfortably into the box. “Thanks,” I said, and headed back into the lobby.
I’d promised myself that I’d always take the stairs up to the third floor—one of these days I’d lose that spare tire—but, well, the elevator was right there, its door invitingly open…
Back in my apartment I sat in the angle of my L-shaped couch with my feet, as always, swung up on the right-hand section. The mail contained the usual round of press releases, several bills, and the Ryerson Rambler. The cover showed an alumnus dressed in African tribal gear. According to the caption on the contents page, some relative of his had abdicated as chief of a tribe in Ghana and he was off to take his place. Amazing how people’s lives can change completely overnight.
I was surprised to find a second magazine stuck to the back of the Rambler. University of Toronto Alumni Magazine, it said. Down in the lower-right corner of its blue-and-white cover were three strips of adhesive partially covered with a frayed paper residue. Its address label must have torn off and the glue had stuck onto the back of my magazine.
Intriguing: I’d been accepted by U of T after high school, but had decided to go to Ryerson instead. If I’d stayed with U of T, I’d be a paleontologist today, sifting through the remains of ancient life. Instead, I’m a freelance journalist specializing in the petrochemical industry, a contributing editor of Canadian Plastics, an entirely competent writer, and the only life I sift through is my own.
I began thumbing through the magazine. Here, in thirty-two glossy pages, was my past that could have been but wasn’t: graduation ceremonies at Convocation Hall, an article about the 115th year of the campus paper, The Varsity; a calendar of events at Hart House…
If I’d gone to U of T instead of Ryerson, the photos might have stirred nostalgic laughter and tears within me. Instead they lay there, halftone shadows, emotionless. Fossils of somebody else’s life.
I continued leafing through the magazine until I came to the final pages. There, under the heading “Alumni Reports,” were photos of graduates and blurbs on their careers and personal triumphs. I was surprised to find a paleo grad—it was such a small program—but at the bottom of page 30 there was an entry about a man named Zalmon Bernstein. The picture was hokey: Bernstein, a toothy grin splitting his features, holding up a geologist’s pick. He’d finished his Ph.D. in 1983, it said, the same year I would have likely finished mine had I gone there. Doubtless we would have known each other; we might even have been friends.
I read his blurb two or three times. Married. Now living in Drumheller, Alberta. Research Associate with the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. Working summers on the continuing excavations in Dinosaur Provincial Park.
He’d done all right for himself. I felt a twinge of sadness, and put the magazine aside. The other mail was nothing urgent, so I ambled back to my computer and continued poking at my article on polystyrene purification.
The next day, John Paul greeted me with his usual “Morning, Mr. Coin.” As always, I felt at a disadvantage since I didn’t know his name. When he’d begun this route two years ago, I’d wanted to ask what it was. I fancied it would be a mysterious, foreign-sounding thing ending in a vowel. But I’d missed my opportunity and now it was much too late. Anyway, he knows far more about me than I could ever hope to know about him. Because my bank insists on spelling out my name in full, he knows that my middle initial—which I use in my byline—stands for Horton (yuck). He knows what credit cards I have. He knows I’m a journalist, assuming he’d recognize a press kit when he saw one. He knows I read Playboy and Canadian Geographic and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He even knows who my doctor is. He could write my biography, all based on the things of mine he carries around in his heavy blue sack.
As usual, he was placing my mail in a separate pile. He topped it off with a thin white-and-orange book sealed in a polyethylene bag. I gathered my booty, wished him good day, and headed back. The elevator was only on two, so I called it down. I did that occasionally. If it was on three, I hardly ever waited for it and if it was on the top floor, well, once in a blue moon I might use it.
Someday I’m going to lose that spare tire.
As I rode up, I glanced at the white-and-orange book. It was a scholarly journal. My step-uncle, a university professor, had hundreds of such publications making neat rows of identical spines on the shelves of his musty den. This one looked interesting, though, at least to me: The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
For some reason I swung my feet up to the left instead of the right on my L-couch. The Journal’s table of contents was printed on its cover. I recognized some of the words in the titles from my old interest in dinosaurs. Ornithischian. Hadrosaurs. Cretaceous.
I glanced at the piece of tractor-feed paper that had been slipped into the mailing bag: my name and address, all right. Who would have sent me such a thing? My birthday was rolling around—the big four-oh—so maybe somebody had got me a subscription as a semi-gag gift. The poly bag stretched as I yanked at it. Having written 750,000 words about plastics in my career, you’d think I’d be able to open those things easily.
Subscription rates were printed inside the journal’s front cover. Eighty-five American dollars a year! I didn’t have many friends and none of them would shell out that much on a gift for me, even if it was meant as a joke.
I closed the book and looked at the table of contents again. Dry stuff. Say, there’s an article by that U of T guy, Zalmon Bernstein: A New Specimen of Lambeosaurus lambei from the Badlands of Alberta, Canada. I continued down the list of titles. Correlations Between Crest Size and Shape of the Pre-Orbital Fenestra in Hadrosaurs. “Pre-orbital fenestra.” What a great-sounding phrase. All those lovely Latin and Greek polysyllables. Here’s another one—
I stopped dead. Scrobiculated Fontanelle Margins in Pachyrhinosaurs and Other Centrosaurinae from the Chihuahuan Desert of Mexico, by J. H. Coin.
By me.
My head swam for a moment. I was used to seeing my byline in print. It’s just that I usually remembered writing whatever it was attached to, that’s all.
It must be somebody with the same name, of course. Hell, Coin wasn’t that unusual. Besides, this guy was down in Mexico. I turned to the indicated page. There was the article, the writer’s name, and his institutional affiliation: Research Associate, Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada.
It came back in a deluge of memory. The ROM had undertaken a dig in Mexico a few summers ago. A local newspaper, The Toronto Sun, had sponsored it. I remembered it as much because of my dormant interest in dinosaurs as because it seemed so out-of-character for the tabloid Sun—best known for its bikini-clad Sunshine Girls—to foot the bill for a scientific expedition.
I was disoriented for several seconds. What was going on? Why did I even have a copy of this publication? Then it hit me. Of course. All so simple, really. There must be someone at the ROM with the same initials and last name as me. He (or she, maybe) had written this article. The Journal had somehow lost his address, so they’d looked him up in the phone book to send a contributor’s copy. They’d gotten the wrong J. H. Coin, that’s all.
I decided I’d better return the guy’s Journal to him. Besides, this other Coin would probably get a kick out of the story of how his copy had ended up with me. I know I would.
I phoned the Royal Ontario Museum and spoke to a receptionist who had a pleasant Jamaican accent. “Hello,” I said. “J. H. Coin, please.”
“Can you tell me which department?” she asked.
He can’t have made a big name for himself if the receptionist didn’t know where he worked. “Paleonto
logy.”
“Vert or invert?”
For a second I didn’t understand the question. “Oh—vertebrate.”
“I’ll put you through to the departmental assistant.” I often had to contact presidents of petrochemical firms for quotes, so I knew that how difficult it was to get hold of someone could be a sign of how important he or she was. But this shunting struck me as different. It wasn’t that J. H. Coin had to be shielded from annoying calls. Rather, it was more like he was a fossil, lost in layers of sediment.
“Vert paleo,” said a woman’s voice.
“Hello. J. H. Coin, please.”
There was a pause, as though the departmental assistant was momentarily confused. “Ah, just a second.”
At first I thought that she, too, hadn’t heard of J. H. Coin, but when the next person came on I knew that wasn’t it. The voice seemed slightly alien to me: deeper, less resonant, more nasal than my own—at least than my own sounds to me. “Hello,” he said, politely, but sounding somewhat surprised at being called at work. “Jacob Coin speaking.”
Jacob and Coin. Sure, some names go together automatically, like John and Smith, or Tom and Sawyer or, if you believe the Colombian Coffee Growers’ commercials, Juan and Valdez. But Jacob and Coin weren’t a natural pair. I was named after my mother’s father. Not some literary allusion, not some easy assonance, just a random line of circumstances.
I wanted to ask this Jacob Coin what his “H” stood for. I wanted to ask him what his mother’s maiden name was. I wanted to know his birth date, his social insurance number, whether his left leg gave him trouble when it was about to rain, whether he was allergic to cheese, if he had managed to keep his weight under control. But I didn’t have to. I already knew the answers.