They visited the other inner rooms, changing paradigms and marking foreign objects with stickers.
When they were finished with the inner rooms, Lyra said,
Cabinet laughed. No,
Lyra groaned.
Asynchronous Conversations
The Lagrangeian point L5, about which Trailing Earth swirled like a cork around a drain, was located 8.33 light-minutes from Earth. Even for the most patient person, a seventeen-minute round-trip time lag was a conversation killer, and most spacers resorted to using Frequently Updated Sims.
Mary cast her FUS during the morning hours when life still seemed possible, before recently apprehended reality set in.
Fred waited until after his workday was done to cast his. After checking everything off his to-do lists, after dinner with the dorises in the Wheel Nancy commissary.
“Have you given up our apartment like I suggested?” he asked. He asked because her FUS seemed always to be somewhere in the Starke Manse.
“No,” her FUS replied. “I want to keep it.”
“But you obviously never go there.”
The FUS shrugged, and Fred didn’t belabor the point; it was her credit to waste, after all. That is, if her Leena was still even working. He said, “A friend here tells me all of the Leenas are crashing. Is that true?”
Mary’s FUS seemed intrigued by his question, but not in the way he anticipated. “You’ve made a friend there, Fred?”
“Armando, from Cozumel. I met him on the ride up. I told you about him, remember?”
“Of course. Luisa, right?”
“Right, but what about your Leena? Is it all right?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“You
“Well, it’s in a coma, but Ellen and Clarity think it’s just acting, like the rest of them. Lingering Leenas are in high demand; all the major story mats have them.”
“They’re paying sims to just lie there pretending to be unconscious?”
“Why not? Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.”
Huh?
MARY AND GEORGINE sat in the gym where the nusses were trying to cajole Ellen from overexerting herself with exercise. The change in the girl was astonishing. She had emerged from her tank on her father’s birthday to visit his gravesite. Returning home, she ordered the nusses to drain the tank and move it to the basement. She refused to wear the neck brace anymore, and she wouldn’t let anyone carry her around. She ran races with Maxwell and Jaffe. She seemed to be eating something every waking minute. Voila, Dr. Rouselle had remarked from her hospital in Africa, she comes back from the dead.
Mary would have liked to tell Fred about this and about how Ellen Starke had donated her mentar to the Sisterhood, but Fred didn’t want to hear about the Starkes, so she didn’t mention it.
Instead, she asked his FUS, “Do you think of me when you masturbate?”
What kind of a question is that? thought Fred’s FUS. “Who says I masturbate?”
“It’s an educated guess. It’s either that or a prostitute. No, don’t say anything. What I want to know is if you notice any difference between watching a real woman take off her clothes, say, and a vid recording of the same? Do you find both equally stimulating?”
“I don’t know, Mary. Why don’t you tell me.”
“This is a serious question. The same neurons fire in much the same way whether the stimulus is real or imagined. Even pencil drawings can be as arousing as the sight of a real breast or ass. If that’s so, wouldn’t it follow that as far as the brain is concerned there’s no material difference?”
“And?”
“I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying what?”
“Let me put it another way. You know how they let a condemned man choose his last meal? Why bother? He’ll be dead in an hour. Here they’re about to take this man’s life away, and yet they consider it important that his last meal is pleas ur able?”
“I guess so. Again, your point?”
FRED GOT INTO a shoving match with another russ in the hub of the Admin Wheel. But shoving matches in zero-g can have unexpected results, and while Fred’s opponent landed up near a handhold, Fred found himself spinning aimlessly in the center of the large open area with nothing within reach. It happened to be a turbulent spot where the air that was pumped from the wheel rim was mixed, and not even his webbed gloves enabled him to break free of its eddies. He was buffeted about like a scrap of paper caught in a dust devil, and for a half hour, he provided free amusement to passersby. Fred was late for muster and took a demerit in his personnel file. As though mere demerits mattered much to him anymore.
_____
AFTER-WORK SHOWER LIST: remove visor cap and sidekick, place on shelf in wardrobe, remove shoes, place in shoe cubby, remove socks, place in trash, empty pockets of contents, place in appropriate receptacles, remove wand from belt mesh, place on shelf next to door, disrobe, place clothes in trash, open fresh towel, hang towel outside shower, check soap supply, enter shower stall, close door, set controls, make a quarter turn to face shower jets, soak/rinse, and so on and so forth. As Fred moved down the list, each checkmark provided another iota of relief.
FRED FOUND ANOTHER observation blister, one frequented by off-duty lovers and dreamers and no donalds. Fred floated there, unmoved by the majestic glory of the Milky Way, and attended to Mary’s FUS in his visor.
“A dog, I guess.”
