“Your wife?” I asked.
“She passed away five years ago.” He was holding his wineglass in his left hand; he still wore a ring.
“I’m sorry.”
“What about you?” asked Devon. “Any family?”
I shook my head. We were quiet a while. I was wondering what color his wife had been.
“A lot has changed in sixty years,” I said, breaking the silence.
He looked over toward the entrance, perhaps hoping somebody else would arrive so he could beg off. “A lot,” he agreed. “And yet…”
I nodded. And yet, there still hadn’t been a black president or vice-president.
And yet, the standard of living of African-Americans was still lower than that of whites—not only meaning a shorter natural life expectancy, but also that far fewer of them could afford the array of treatments available to the rich.
And yet, just last week, they’d picked the person who would be the first to set foot on Mars. Of course it was a man, I’d thought bitterly when the announcement was made. Perhaps Devon had greeted the news with equal dismay, thinking, Of course he’s white.
Suddenly I heard my name being called. I turned around, and there was Madeline Green. She was easy to recognize; she’d clearly had all sorts of treatments. Her face was smooth, her hair the same reddish-brown I remembered from her genuine youth. How she’d recognized me, though, I didn’t know. Perhaps she’d overheard me talking to Devon, and had identified me by my voice, or perhaps just the fact that I was talking to Devon had been clue enough.
“Why, Madeline!” I said, forcing a smile. “How good to see you!” I turned to Devon. “You remember Devon Smith?”
“How could I forget?” said Madeline. He was proffering his hand, and, after a moment, she took it.
“Hello, Madeline,” said Devon. “You look fabulous.”
It had been what Madeline had wanted to hear, but I’d been too niggardly to offer up.
Niggardly. A perfectly legitimate word—from the Scandinavian for “stingy,” if I remembered correctly. But also a word I never normally used, even in my thoughts. And yet it had come to mind just now, recalling, I supposed, what Madeline had called Devon behind his back all those years ago.
Devon lifted his wineglass. “I need a refill,” he said.
The last time I’d looked, he’d still had half a glass; I wondered if he’d quickly drained it when he saw Madeline approaching, giving him a way to exit gracefully, although whether it was me or Madeline he wanted to escape, I couldn’t say. In any event, Devon was now moving off, heading toward the cafeteria table that had been set up as a makeshift bar.
“I bought your albums,” said Madeline, now squeezing my hand. “Of course, they were all on vinyl. I don’t have a record player anymore.”
“They’re available on CD,” I said. “And for download.”
“Are they now?” replied Madeline, sounding surprised. I guess she thought of my songs as artifacts of the distant past.
And perhaps they were—although, as I looked over at Devon’s broad back, it sure didn’t feel that way.
“Welcome back, class of Nineteen Sixty-Three!”
We were all facing the podium, next to the table with the portable stereo. Behind the podium, of course, was Pinky Spenser—although I doubt anyone had called him “Pinky” for half a century. He’d been student-council president, and editor of the school paper, and valedictorian, and on and on, so he was the natural MC for the evening. Still, I was glad to see that for all his early success, he, too, looked old.
There were now perhaps seventy-five people present, including twenty like Madeline who had been able to afford rejuvenation treatments. I’d had a chance to chat briefly with many of them. They’d all greeted me like an old friend, although I couldn’t remember ever being invited to their parties or along on their group outings. But now, because I’d once been famous, they all wanted to say hello. They hadn’t had the time of day for me back when we’d been teenagers, but doubtless, years later, had gone around saying to people, “You’ll never guess who I went to school with!”
“We have a bunch of prizes to give away,” said Pinky, leaning into the mike, distorting his own voice; part of me wanted to show him how to use it properly. “First, for the person who has come the farthest…”
Pinky presented a half-dozen little trophies. I’d had awards enough in my life, and didn’t expect to get one tonight—nor did I. Neither did Devon.
“And now,” said Pinky, “although it’s not from 1963, I think you’ll all agree that this is appropriate…”
He leaned over and put a new disk in the portable stereo. I could see it from here; it was a CD-ROM that someone had burned at home. Pinky pushed the play button, and…
And one of my songs started coming from the speakers. I recognized it by the second note, of course, but the others didn’t until the recorded version of me started singing, and then Madeline Green clapped her hands together. “Oh, listen!” she said, turning toward me. “It’s you!”
And it was—from half a century ago, with my song that had become the anthem for a generation of ugly-duckling girls like me. How could Pinky possibly think I wanted to hear that now, here, at the place where all the heartbreak the song chronicled had been experienced?
Why the hell had I come back, anyway? I’d skipped even the fiftieth reunion; what had driven me to want to attend my sixtieth? Was it loneliness?
No. I had friends enough.
Was it morbid curiosity? Wondering who of the old gang had survived?
But, no, that wasn’t it, either. That wasn’t why I’d come.
The song continued to play. I was doing my guitar solo now. No singing; just me, strumming away. But soon enough the words began again. It was my most famous song, the one I’m sure they’ll mention in my obituary.
To my surprise, Madeline was singing along softly. She looked at me, as if expecting me to join in, but I just forced a smile and looked away.
The song played on. The chorus repeated.
This wasn’t the same gymnasium, of course—the one where my school dances had been held, the ones where I’d been a wallflower, waiting for even the boys I couldn’t stand to ask me to dance. That gym had been bulldozed along with the rest of the old Cedar Valley High.
I looked around. Several people had gone back to their conversations while my music still played. Those who had won the little trophies were showing them off. But Devon, I saw, was listening intently, as if straining to make out the lyrics.
We hadn’t dated long—just until my parents found out he was black and insisted I break up with him. This wasn’t the song I’d written about us, but, in a way, I suppose it was similar. Both of them, my two biggest hits, were about the pain of being dismissed because of the way you look. In this song, it was me—homely, lonely. And in that other song…
I had been a white girl, and he’d been the only black—not boy, you can’t say boy—anywhere near my age at our school. Devon had no choice: if he were going to date anyone from Cedar Valley, she would have had to be white.
Back then, few could tell that Devon was good-looking; all they saw was the color of his skin. But he had been fine. Handsome, well muscled, a dazzling smile. And yet he had chosen me.
I had wondered about that back then, and I still wondered about it now. I’d wondered if he’d thought appearances couldn’t possibly matter to someone who looked like me.
The song stopped, and—
No.
No.
I had a repertoire of almost a hundred songs. If Pinky was going to pick a second one by me, what were the chances that it would be that song?
But it was. Of course it was.
Devon didn’t recognize it at first, but when he did, I saw him take a half-step backward, as if he’d been pushed by an invisible hand.
After a moment, though, he recovered. He looked around the gym and quickly found me. I turned away, only to see Madeline softly singing this
one, too, la-la-ing over those lyrics she didn’t remember.
A moment later, there was a hand on my shoulder. I turned. Devon was standing there, looking at me, his face a mask. “We have some unfinished business,” he said, softly but firmly.
I swallowed. My eyes were stinging. “I am so sorry, Devon,” I said. “It was the times. The era.” I shrugged. “Society.”
He looked at me for a while, then reached out and took my pale hand in his brown one. My heart began to pound. “We never got to do this back in ’63,” he said. He paused, perhaps wondering whether he wanted to go on. But, after a moment, he did, and there was no reluctance in his voice. “Would you like to dance?”
I looked around. Nobody else was dancing. Nobody had danced all evening. But I let him lead me out into the center of the gym.
And he held me in his arms.
And I held him.
And as we danced, I thought of the future that Devon’s grandchildren would grow up in, a world I would never see, and, for the first time, I found myself hoping my songs wouldn’t be immortal.
Shed
Skin
In the summer of 1982, I worked at Bakka, Toronto’s science fiction specialty bookstore (and now the oldest surviving SF shop in the world). The then-owner, John Rose, encouraged me enormously in my writing, which was just beginning back then, and we remain great friends.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one he nurtured. After my stint at Bakka, a bunch of other people who went on to be professional SF or fantasy writers worked there, and all of us were encouraged by John: Tanya Huff, Michelle West, Cory Doctorow, and Nalo Hopkinson among them.
In 2002, to commemorate both John’s retirement and the thirtieth anniversary of the store, he asked all his past and present employees who’d gone on to writing careers to each contribute a story to a limited-edition anthology. I wrote this story for that book, and—in a rare turn of events—managed to interest Analog Science Fiction and Fact in reprinting it.
I found the themes and ideas in this story echoing in my head long after I finished writing it. Indeed, I gave a copy of the story to my novel editor at Tor, David G. Hartwell, saying I’d like a contract to revisit the same subject matter at novel length; my agent Ralph Vicinanza, of course, intervened, adding that Rob wanted more money than he’d ever been paid before for a book to do this. Tor said okay, and my novel Mindscan was born. I think it’s one of my best books (and it won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year)—and it has its roots here.
“Shed Skin” was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and won Analog magazine’s “AnLab” award—the annual Analytical Laboratory readers’ choice poll.
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Shiozaki, as he leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at the middle-aged white man with the graying temples, “but there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“But I’ve changed my mind,” said the man. He was getting red in the face as the conversation went on. “I want out of this deal.”
“You can’t change your mind,” said Shiozaki. “You’ve moved your mind.”
The man’s voice had taken on a plaintive tone, although he was clearly trying to suppress it. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Shiozaki sighed. “Our psychological counselors and our lawyers went over the entire procedure and all the ramifications with Mr. Rathburn beforehand. It’s what he wanted.”
“But I don’t want it anymore.”
“You don’t have any say in the matter.”
The white man placed a hand on the table. The hand was flat, the fingers splayed, but it was nonetheless full of tension. “Look,” he said, “I demand to see—to see the other me. I’ll explain it to him. He’ll understand. He’ll agree that we should rescind the deal.”
Shiozaki shook his head. “We can’t do that. You know we can’t. That’s part of the agreement.”
“But—”
“No buts,” said Shiozaki. “That’s the way it has to be. No successor has ever come back here. They can’t. Your successor has to do everything possible to shut your existence out of his mind, so he can get on with his existence, and not worry about yours. Even if he wanted to come see you, we wouldn’t allow the visit.”
“You can’t treat me like this. It’s inhuman.”
“Get this through your skull,” said Shiozaki. “You are not human.”
“Yes, I am, damn it. If you—”
“If I prick you, do you not bleed?” said Shiozaki.
“Exactly! I’m the one who is flesh and blood. I’m the one who grew in my mother’s womb. I’m the one who is a descendant of thousands of generations of Homo sapiens and thousands of generations of Homo erectus and Homo habilis before that. This—this other me is just a machine, a robot, an android.”
“No, it’s not. It is George Rathburn. The one and only George Rathburn.”
“Then why do you call him ‘it’?”
“I’m not going to play semantic games with you,” said Shiozaki. “He is George Rathburn. You aren’t—not anymore.”
The man lifted his hand from the table and clenched his fist. “Yes, I am. I am George Rathburn.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a skin. Just a shed skin.”
George Rathburn was slowly getting used to his new body. He’d spent six months in counseling preparing for the transference. They’d told him this replacement body wouldn’t feel like his old one, and they’d been right. Most people didn’t transfer until they were old, until they’d enjoyed as much biological physicality as they could—and until the ever-improving robotic technology was as good as it was going to get during their natural lifetimes.
After all, although the current robot bodies were superior in many ways to the slab-of-flab ones—how soon he’d adopted that term!—they still weren’t as physically sensitive.
Sex—the recreational act, if not the procreative one—was possible, but it wasn’t quite as good. Synapses were fully reproduced in the nano-gel of the new brain, but hormonal responses were faked by playing back memories of previous events. Oh, an orgasm was still an orgasm, still wonderful—but it wasn’t the unique, unpredictable experience of a real sexual climax. There was no need to ask, “Was it good for you?,” for it was always good, always predictable, always exactly the same.
Still, there were compensations. George could now walk—or run, if he wanted to—for hours on end without feeling the slightest fatigue. And he’d dispensed with sleep. His daily memories were organized and sorted in a six-minute packing session every twenty-four hours; that was his only downtime.
Downtime. Funny that it had been the biological version of him that had been prone to downtime, while the electronic version was mostly free of it.
There were other changes, too. His proprioception—the sense of how his body and limbs were deployed at any given moment—was much sharper than it had previously been.
And his vision was more acute. He couldn’t see into the infrared—that was technically possible, but so much of human cognition was based on the idea of darkness and light that to banish them with heat sensing had turned out to be bad psychologically. But his chromatic abilities had been extended in the other direction, and that let him see, among other things, bee purple, the color that often marked distinctive patterns on flower petals that human eyes—the old-fashioned kind of human eyes, that is—were blind to.
Hidden beauty revealed.
And an eternity to enjoy it.
“I demand to see a lawyer.”
Shiozaki was again facing the flesh-and-blood shell that had once housed George Rathburn, but the Japanese man’s eyes seemed to be focused at infinity, as if looking right through him. “And how would you pay for this lawyer’s services?” Shiozaki asked at last.
Rathburn—perhaps he couldn’t use his name in speech, but no one could keep him from thinking it—opened his mouth to protest. He had money—lots of money. But, no, no, he’d signed all that awa
y. His biometrics were meaningless; his retinal scans were no longer registered. Even if he could get out of this velvet prison and access one, no ATM in the world would dispense cash to him. Oh, there were plenty of stocks and bonds in his name…but it wasn’t his name anymore.
“There has to be something you can do to help me,” said Rathburn.
“Of course,” said Shiozaki. “I can assist you in any number of ways. Anything at all you need to be comfortable here.”
“But only here, right?”
“Exactly. You knew that—I’m sorry; Mr. Rathburn knew that when he chose this path for himself, and for you. You will spend the rest of your life here in Paradise Valley.”
Rathburn was silent for a time, then: “What if I agreed to accept your restrictions? What if I agreed not to present myself as George Rathburn? Could I leave here then?”
“You aren’t George Rathburn. Regardless, we can’t allow you to have any outside contact.” Shiozaki was quiet for a few moments, and then, in a softer tone, he said, “Look, why make things difficult for yourself? Mr. Rathburn provided very generously for you. You will live a life of luxury here. You can access any books you might want, any movies. You’ve seen our recreation center, and you must admit it’s fabulous. And our sex-workers are the best-looking on the planet. Think of this as the longest, most-pleasant vacation you’ve ever had.”
“Except it doesn’t end until I die,” said Rathburn.
Shiozaki said nothing.
Rathburn exhaled noisily. “You’re about to tell me that I’m already dead, aren’t you? And so I shouldn’t think of this as a prison; I should think of this as heaven.”
Shiozaki opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again without saying anything. Rathburn knew that the administrator couldn’t even give him that comfort. He wasn’t dead—nor would he be, even when this discarded biological container, here, in Paradise Valley, finally ceased to function. No, George Rathburn lived on, a duplicated version of this consciousness in an almost indestructible, virtually immortal robot body, out in the real world.