Mind Over Ship

passage was blocked by a huge, pulsing mass that was spiderwebbed with red veins.

Fred pointed and said, “So, what is it this time — colon cancer?”

Mary said, “No, Fred. That was three deaths ago. Don’t you remember? ‘Treasonous Plumbing’?”

“Oh, yes, how could I forget ‘Treasonous Plumbing’?” He smiled at Shelley, but she didn’t respond, so he turned to Cyndee. “Are you a Hsu fan?”

“Yes, I am,” Cyndee said. “ ‘TP’ broke a lot of new ground in documemoirs and established Judy Hsu as one of our leading contemporary artists. The first time she died, and the jennys just let her lie there — dead — minute after minute, not jumping in to intervene, not stabilizing her, just letting her go, like in the bad old days, it was the most terrifying thing I ever saw. People used to just get sick and die!”

Mary said to Fred, “They had supersaturated her tissues and brain with oxygen, so she could go a half hour without oxygen. But we didn’t know that at the time.”

“That’s what made it so disturbing,” Cyndee said. “It made me glad to be born in this century.”

Through all of this, Shelley fiddled with her seat harness and seemed not to be paying attention. Fred asked Cyndee, “What about that one?” He pointed at a holocube, and its volume came up. Hsu was reading from a book:

“. . . lingering, raw-nerve, helpless, hopeless, an assault on basic human dignity. So overwhelming that self- awareness begs for extinction.”

Cyndee said, “Oh, that’s death lit. Hsu loves it. She reads it continuously until she gets too sick, and then she has Shelley and her other companions read it to her.”

Mary said, “He knows that, Cyn. He watched this with Reilly. He’s just playing dumb to be a good conversationalist.”

“Oh, of course,” Cyndee said.

Someone changed the cube. Now it was Shelley reading a death poem: 

I’s hungry. What’d you do? Is it dead? Look at it bleed!
Can I pluck it? Do chicken’s insides have names?
Do we have insides like chickens?
Can you take my insides out so I can see?
I like breast the best. Can we cook it up?
I’s hungry. Let’s start the fire. Chicken’s good.

 “Bravo, Shell,” Fred said. “All it needs is a soundtrack.”

“It has one,” Cyndee said. She twirled her finger and brought up the strains of a solo cello fantasia.

Fred set down his coffee mug and clapped. “Perfect!” He squeezed Mary’s foot and rose from the couch. “If you’ll excuse me, dearest, I need to get dressed for duty.”

When Fred left the living room, Mary said, “Because having the living flesh rot off your bones is so appealing.”

“Which is to say that colon cancer isn’t appealing?” Shelley retorted. “Or pancreatic cancer, for that matter. In any case, the scleroderma was a ratings flop — you should look it up — and so we have this.” She wiped the colon holocube and replaced it with a new one. It was the familiar rustic breezeway at Hsu’s Olympic Peninsula home. Hsu, looking completely fit, her recently ravaged skin restored to flawless youth, was sitting at a crafts table and swirling something around on a plate with her finger.

“What’s she doing?”

“Finger painting.” Shelley raised the view to look at the plate from over Hsu’s shoulder. The death artist was repeatedly tracing a simple shape, a zigzagging spiral with a diagonal slash through it. “It’s supposed to be a deadly figure from the Dark Reiki,” she said.

“Which is what?” Cyndee said.

“It’s the opposite of reiki.”

“Which is what?” Mary said.

“It’s a superstitious healing technique that claims to channel energy into a person’s body by means of touch. Conversely, the Dark Reiki sucks life energy away. Don’t ask. Now, look at this.”

The holoscape changed abruptly to a candlelit nighttime scene. Judith Hsu was sitting on a low bench and rocking slowly back and forth. She appeared to be naked under a simple paper shift. She was chanting some incomprehensible string of words. The view zoomed to the cleavage between her breasts to reveal what looked like a little bag hanging from a cord. It was decorated with feathers and beads and long, curved talons.

“It’s a voodoo fetish for causing mortal harm to an enemy,” Shelley said. “Only she’s trying to turn it on herself. That and a dozen more charms and spells from a dozen other superstitions. But so far she hasn’t even conjured up a decent migraine.”

Mary said, “She wants to kill herself with magic?”

“With willpower.”

“That’s absurd.”

“What’s absurd? That she’s trying to will herself to death or that she can’t seem to get any traction?”

“Both. No one can will themself to death. It’s not physically possible.”

“Oh, don’t be so sure about that, Mary Skarland,” Cyndee said. “There are plenty of documented cases. The trick is you gotta believe you can.”

In the breezeway, someone passed through the death artist’s holospace, and Mary said, “Shell, was that you?”

“No,” Shelley said and panned the view to show a figure seating herself in the shadows. It was a Leena.

Mary and Cyndee exchanged a glance.

“That’s right, a Leena,” Shelley said. “Hsu likes Leenas so much lately that she’s talking about replacing half of her evangelines with them.”

Mary covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, my God, Shelley, are you being let go?”

“Not yet, but the writing’s on the wall. You guys have done your work well. Our clients are beginning to prefer your sims more than the real us. And it’s not just Judy Hsu. We’re being replaced everywhere.”

“Are you sure? Leenas cost ten times what an evangeline makes. Only the novelas can afford to use them.”

“Look at the figures,” Shelley said, “and I think you’ll find that’s not so.”

Cyndee said, “Even if it’s true, Shell, what’s wrong with it? There are ten thousand Leena units and ten thousand of us. Except for Mary’s, Georgine’s, and mine, the Sisterhood receives royalties from all ten thousand units. If even a fraction of them keep working, none of us will ever have to work again.”

“Except that I love to work!”

“No, you don’t!” Mary said. “Give us a break, Shell. You’ve been bellyaching about Hsu for the last six years!”

“Let me rephrase,” Shelley said evenly. “I love the fact of having the opportunity to work. No offense, but I’m not interested in living off your and Cyndee’s and Georgine’s largesse.”

“Our largesse? What are you talking about? The Leena earnings belong to the Sisterhood; they belong to all of us.”

Just then, Fred came from the hall wearing a teal and brown jumpsuit and scuffed-up cross-trainers. Cyndee pointed to a wad of khaki in his hand. “What’s that?” she said.

“That’s his hat,” Mary said. “Fred isn’t taking any chances.”

“You bet I’m not taking any chances,” Fred said and unfurled his hat. The brim was so wide that it draped over his shoulders like a pair of droopy wings.

Cyndee laughed out loud, and Mary said dryly, “He’s afraid of his hair catching fire.”