Rollback

  He nodded. “I, um, had a benefactor.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Lenore said, but she sounded as though she were lying. “I—I mean, it can’t…”

  “It’s true. I could prove it in a hundred different ways. Do you want to see some photo ID, the way I looked before?”

  “No!” An expression of…of disgust, perhaps, had fleetingly passed over her face. Of course she didn’t want to see the old man she’d just had inside her.

  “I should have told you sooner, but—”

  “You’re damn right you should have. Shit, Don!” But then, perhaps the thought occurring because she’d just uttered his name, a glimmer of hope appeared in her eyes, as if she’d realized that this might all be some elaborate put-on. “But, wait, you’re Sarah Halifax’s grandson! You told me that.”

  “No, I didn’t. You guessed that.”

  She pulled even farther away, and managed to cover her breasts with the sheet, the first hint of modesty he’d ever seen from her. “Who the hell are you?” she said. “Are you even related to Sarah Halifax?”

  “Yesss,” he said, protracting the word into a gentle hiss. “But”—he swallowed hard, trying to keep it all together—“but I’m not her grandson.” He found himself unable to meet her eyes, and so he looked down at the rumpled bedspread between them. “I’m her husband.”

  “Fuck,” said Lenore. “Shit.”

  “I am so sorry. Really, I am.”

  “Her husband?” she said again, as if perhaps she’d misheard the first time.

  He nodded.

  “I think you should leave.”

  The words tore into his heart, like bullets. “Please. I can—”

  “What?” she demanded. “You can explain? There’s no fucking explanation for this.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I can’t explain. And I can’t justify it. But, God, Lenore, I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone.” His stomach was churning, and he felt disoriented. “But I want you to…to know, to understand.”

  “Understand what? That everything that has gone down between us has been a lie?”

  “No!” he said. “No, no, God, no. This has been more…more real than anything in my life for—”

  “For what?” she sneered. “For years? For decades?”

  He let out a long, shuddering sigh. He couldn’t even protest that she was being unfair. The fact that she was even still talking to him was more, he knew, than he had a right to. Still, he tried to defend himself, although, as soon as the words were out, he realized how ill-advised they were. “Look,” he said, “you’re the one who turned things physical.”

  “Because I thought you were somebody you aren’t. You lied to me.”

  He thought about protesting that he hadn’t, not technically, or at least not often. “And, anyway,” she continued, “who started things is so beside the point it’s not even in the same solar system. You’re an octogenarian, for God’s sake. You’re old enough to be my grandfather.”

  He’d expected those last few words, but they didn’t hurt any less for that. “Sarah underwent the same treatment,” he said, blurting it out. “But it didn’t work for her. She’s still physically eighty-seven, and I’m…this.”

  Lenore said nothing, but her mouth was slightly downturned and her eyebrows were drawn together.

  “Cody McGavin paid for it,” continued Don. “He wanted Sarah to be around when the next reply comes in from Sigma Draconis. I—I was just along for the ride, but…”

  “But now you’re Sarah’s caregiver.”

  “Please,” he said. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

  “No, no, of course not. It all just sort of happened—a multi-billion-dollar medical procedure.”

  He shook his head. “I should have known you wouldn’t understand.”

  “If you want understanding, go to a support group. There must be one for people like you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. They’re meeting right now, in Vienna. I can’t afford to go there. I am—I worked it out—I am four orders of magnitude poorer than the next poorest person who has undergone this process. For every single dollar I’ve got, they’ve each got ten thousand dollars. That’s not being in the same solar system, Lenore.”

  “Don’t snap at me. I haven’t done anything wrong here.”

  He took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t know what to do, and…and I don’t want to lose you. I really do care about you; I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. And I don’t know what I’m doing, but I do know this: the only times of late I’ve been happy—the only times—are when I’m with you.”

  “There must be somebody else who—”

  “There’s no one. My friends—what few I have who are still alive—they don’t understand. And my kids—”

  “Oh, crap. I hadn’t thought about that. You’ve got kids!”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “And grandkids. But my son is fifty-five and my daughter is about to turn fifty. I can’t expect them to understand a parent half their age.”

  “This is crazy,” she said.

  “We can work it out.”

  “Are you nuts? You’re married. You’re sixty years older than me. You’ve got kids. You’ve got grandkids. And—God, you must be retired, right? You don’t even have a job.”

  “I’ve got a pension.”

  “A pension! Jesus.”

  “This doesn’t have to change anything,” he said.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Lenore, please—”

  “Get your clothes,” she snapped.

  “Pardon?”

  “Get your clothes, and get the hell out!”

  –-- Chapter 31 --–

  IT HAD BEEN months since Don had seen his grandchildren. He missed them, but he’d been avoiding contact, having no idea how to explain what had happened to him. But, finally, there was no choice. Today, Thursday, September 10, was Emily’s fiftieth birthday, and just as attendance for everyone else had been mandatory at Don and Sarah’s anniversary party, so his attendance was non-negotiable as his daughter reached the half-century mark.

  The party was being held at Emily’s house in Scarborough, about an hour away, but an easy journey on the 407. They had Gunter drive them. Don was happy about that. He would have felt silly being driven about by a woman who looked like his grandmother; he still hadn’t gotten his license renewed. He’d be required to attend the mandatory driver-safety lectures with a group of other people who were over eighty, and, although the examiner had the power to waive the actual in-car test, Don would still need to endure the gawks from the licensing staff and, even worse, from the old people who looked old, many of whom would doubtless resent that he’d managed to forestall the fate that the rest of them would face in the next few years.

  When they pulled into the driveway of the house—a large home that almost completely filled its lot—Don hopped out of the rear and ran around to help Sarah get out of the front passenger’s seat. And then, with him cradling her elbow to guide her up the driveway, they went to the front door, leaving Gunter in the car, placidly looking out at the tiny strip of lawn. Carl and company were already here, but he’d parked his car on the street, leaving the driveway, and the shorter walk, for his parents.

  Although the kids’ biometrics were programmed into Don and Sarah’s house, the reverse had never been the case, and so Don rang the doorbell. Emily appeared at once, looking out at them with apprehension on her face, and she hustled them indoors, glancing furtively back, as if concerned that her neighbors had seen the spectacle of her ancient mother arriving on the arm of some strange young man.

  He tried to put that out of his mind, and managed the heartiest tone he could. “Happy birthday, Em!”

  Sarah hugged Emily, and, as she did every year, she said, with a smile, “I remember precisely where I was when you were born.”

  “Hi,” said Emily. Don sort of expected “Mo
m and Dad” to be appended to the greeting; the upward lilt to Emily’s “hi” seemed to demand it. But she couldn’t say the former without having to also give voice to the latter—and he hadn’t heard either of his children refer to him as Dad since the rollback.

  This house, like Don and Sarah’s own, had stairs leading up from an entryway. Emily took her mother’s cane and helped her climb them, and Don followed.

  “Grandma!” shouted Cassie, who was wearing a pink floral-print dress and had her wispy blond hair tied into pigtails with pink ribbons. She came rushing over, and Sarah bent down as much as she could to hug her. When she released Cassie, the little girl then looked at Don without a trace of recognition on her face.

  Carl bent down and picked his daughter up, balancing her in a crooked set of arms, the way one might to let a child examine a painting in a museum. “Cassie,” said Carl, “this is your grandfather.”

  Don saw Cassie’s little brow furrow. She had an arm around Carl’s neck, and she pulled herself closer to him. “Grandpa Marcynuk?” she said, sounding very unsure.

  Don felt his heart sink. Gus Marcynuk was Cassie’s mother’s father; he lived in Winnipeg, and hadn’t been in Toronto for years.

  “No, honey,” said Carl. “This is Grandpa Halifax.”

  Cassie scrunched her face up even more tightly and looked at her daddy as if to gauge his expression and see if he was playing some trick. But his face was serious. “No, it’s not,” Cassie said, shaking her head so that the pigtails bounced. “Grandpa Halifax is old.”

  Don tried to smile as much as he could. “Honest, cupcake, it’s really me.”

  She tilted her head. Although his voice had changed somewhat, she should still recognize it. “What happened to your wrinkles?”

  “They’re gone.”

  Cassie rolled her blue eyes in a way that said he was stating the obvious. He went on. “There’s a process,” he said, but then he halted. “Process,” “procedure,” “technique,” “treatment”—all the words he’d use in describing this to an adult would be lost on a four-year-old. “I went to see a doctor,” Don said, “and he made me young again.”

  Cassie’s eyes were wide. “Can they do that?”

  He lifted his shoulders a bit. “Yup.”

  Cassie looked at Sarah and then back at Don. “What about Grandma? Is she going to get young, too?”

  Don opened his mouth to reply, but Sarah beat him to it. “No, dear.”

  “Why not? Do you like being all wrinkly?”

  “Cassie!” exclaimed Carl.

  But Sarah didn’t take offense. “I’ve earned every one of them,” she said. Sarah obviously saw the puzzled expression on Cassie’s face, so she went on. “No, dear, I don’t. But the process that worked on your grandfather didn’t work for me.”

  Don watched Cassie nod; perhaps he’d underestimated what little kids could grasp. “That’s sad,” Cassie said.

  Sarah nodded back at her, conceding that.

  Cassie turned her attention to her father. “Grandpa looks younger than you do,” she said. Carl winced. “When I get old, will they be able to make me young again?”

  Don could see that his son was about to respond in the negative; he’d moved his head to the left, ready to shake it. But that wasn’t the correct answer. “Yes,” said Don. “They will.” The process was bound to be cheap and common by the time his granddaughter needed it, and that thought pleased Don.

  Carl looked as though he was reaching his limit for holding Cassie. He bent down, setting her on the ground. But then Don crouched low, and turned his back to her. Looking over his shoulder he said, “Want a piggyback ride?”

  Cassie scrambled onto his back, and he straightened up. He swooped around the living room, Cassie hugging his neck from behind, and her giggles were music to his ears, and, at least for a few minutes, he was truly happy that he’d had this done to him.

  “HEY, LENNIE, WHY so glum?”

  Lenore was filling salt and pepper shakers. She looked up to see Gabby regarding her, hands on hips. “Hmm?”

  “You’ve been down in the dumps all night. What’s up?”

  This was the one evening a week that both Lenore and Gabby worked the same shift at the Duke of York.

  “I broke up with Don a few days ago.”

  “How come?” asked Gabby.

  Lenore pondered how best to answer this. “For starters, he’s married.”

  “The fucker.”

  “Yeah. But, you know, there are, um, extenuating circumstances.”

  “Is he separated?”

  “No. No, he still lives with her, but…”

  “But his old lady doesn’t understand him, right?”

  Lenore felt her mouth twitch. “Something like that.”

  “Girl, I’ve heard it a million times before. You’re better off without him.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I miss him.”

  “Why? Was he good in the sack?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. But it’s not just…”

  “What?”

  “He’s gentle.”

  “I like it a little rough myself,” Gabby said, smiling lasciviously.

  “No, no. I mean in life. He’s gentle. He’s kind, considerate.”

  “Except to his wife.”

  Lenore winced. But she recalled when Don had been here before, how he’d defended Professor Halifax when Makoto had attacked her. “No, in his way, he’s good to her, too, I think. And she’s really sweet.”

  “You know his wife?”

  She nodded. “A bit.”

  “Earth to Lenore! Wake up, girl!”

  “I know, I know. But I just can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Let me get this straight. You dumped Makoto because he was a messy eater—”

  “A girl has to have standards.”

  “—but you want to go back to a married guy?”

  “No,” said Lenore. “I want to go back to him despite the fact that he’s married.”

  “I’m not working on any damn master’s degree,” said Gabby. “Maybe that kind of hair-splitting means something in your circles, but…”

  “He’s unlike any guy I’ve ever met.”

  “Why? Has he got three nipples?”

  “Seriously, Gabs, I miss him so much.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gabby was quiet for a moment. “Well, then, there’s only one thing to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  She started transferring the filled shakers onto a serving tray. “Follow your heart.”

  AT DINNER, SARAH ended up sitting next to her grandson Percy, who had turned thirteen over the summer. “So,” she said, “how is grade eight?”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “Just okay?”

  “They give us a lot of homework. I’ve got tons to do by Monday.”

  Sarah remembered being in grade eight, and getting her first calculator. Such things had only just started to appear on the market, and everybody was debating whether they should be allowed in the classroom. After all, with a machine that could do figuring for them, kids might never learn to really understand math, the critics said. A host of scenarios ranging from the unlikely to the downright silly had been suggested, including the notion that if civilization fell, we’d endure a protracted dark age once the supply of batteries had been exhausted, since the magic boxes that did math would no longer function. Sarah had often wondered if the early appearance of solar-powered calculators had been due to some anonymous Japanese engineer’s desire to put that canard to rest.

  And she’d remembered the later debates about allowing datacoms into classrooms. Although that had affected all levels of instruction, it had gone down while she’d been teaching at U of T. Was there any point in asking students to memorize, for instance, that Sigma Draconis II was, according to data from the first Dracon message, a rocky world about 1.5 times as big as Eart
h, with an orbital radius of ninety-odd million kilometers and a year equal to 199 Earth days, when there was no conceivable working environment in which they couldn’t access that information in an instant?

  “What sort of homework?” Sarah asked, genuinely curious.

  “I’ve got some for my bioethics class,” Percy said. Sarah was impressed: bioethics in grade eight; you certainly could move a lot faster if you didn’t waste so much time on mere memorization.

  “And what do you have to do?”

  “Look up some stuff on the web, and do a report about what I think about it.”

  “On any particular topic?”

  “We get to choose,” Percy said. “But I haven’t picked mine yet.”

  Sarah looked over at Don. She thought about suggesting Percy do something on the ethics of rollbacks, but Don was already too sensitive about that.

  “I was thinking of maybe something about abortion,” Percy continued.

  She was momentarily shocked. The boy was just thirteen, for God’s sake, but—

  But abortion, birth control, and family planning were all things kids needed to know about. Percy’s birthday was in July, meaning he wouldn’t turn fourteen until after he’d finished this grade, but most of his classmates would have their birthdays during the academic year, and fourteen was plenty old enough to get pregnant, or make someone pregnant.

  “What do you think about abortion, Grandma?” Percy asked.

  Sarah shifted in her seat. She could feel the eyes of Angela, Percy’s mother, on her, as well as those of her own daughter, Emily. “I believe every child that’s born has the right to be wanted,” she said.

  Percy considered this. “But what about if a guy and a girl decide they want to have a kid, but then, before it’s born, the pregnant girl changes her mind. What then?”

  There was definitely some of her in her grandson; she’d wrestled a lot with the very issue he’d raised. Indeed, now that she thought about it, that was one of the points the aliens at Sig Drac had been interested in. Question forty-six had asked whether the partner actually carrying the child had the right to terminate a pregnancy that was initially mutually desired. Sarah remembered struggling with her own answer to that question when filling out the survey herself, all those years ago.