complexion. She didn’t wake up right away, but her muscles were reanimated for the first time as her unconscious body shifted position and she sighed.
“Oh my God—it’s a miracle,” the doctor whispered as he moved to the body and felt her cheek before quickly turning and calling for medical staff to join him. “We have to get her off life support! She’s waking up!”
Old-timer moved away from her and began to lift off out of the hole in the ceiling. “Wait!” Lieutenant Patrick exclaimed. “Don’t you want to be here when she wakes up at least?”
He shook his head. “No. I have to leave now. My friends need me. Tell her I said goodbye.” With that, Old- timer slipped through the ceiling and made his way out of the Purist ship.
Moments later, he floated alone through space. This close to the sun, it was difficult to make out the stars. He looked at his arm, garbed in black and outstretched before him, and realized it was impossible to delineate where his arm ended and the vast blackness of space began. “I’m ready, Neirbo,” he announced.
A wormhole opened up in the nothingness and swallowed him.
PART 3
1
WAKING UP was entirely unexpected; waking up to see his dead wife looking down at him was beyond reason.
“James? It’s time to wake up,”
James looked up at the form of his dead wife and studied it for a moment. It was perfectly vivid.
“You’re not dead,” Katherine said, as though she were responding to his thoughts.
Was it possible that there was some sort of residual electrical patterning that continued in the moments after death, even without a body? Could this be some sort of
“You’re always trying to figure things out, aren’t you?” Katherine said, sighing and shaking her head. “Why can’t you simply ask?” She moved to the side and revealed another figure standing nearby. She addressed him. “You see? This is what you used to be like all the time.”
“I’m sorry,”
The doppelganger’s eyes met those of James, and he stepped toward his twin with an outstretched hand. “Help you up?”
James’s mouth hung open as he pondered the vision before him. He put his own hand up and grasped the hand that was offered to him, then stood to his feet. Katherine Keats remained, arms folded; she was wearing an expression of resignation. The doppelganger stood nearby with a considerably more sympathetic expression on his face. Behind them was a vast network of what appeared to be some sort of golden circuitry, glowing brightly and undulating like the sea all the way into the horizon where it sparkled like a setting sun in front of a pure black backdrop.
“Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen,” James whispered in awe.
The doppelganger smiled. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” he observed, before adding, “you’re not dead, James.” He put his hand reassuringly on James’s shoulder.
“Okay,” James replied after a moment, still not sure if he was engaging in a conversation with images from his subconscious or not—did he even have a subconscious any more?
“He doesn’t believe you, Jim,” Katherine said to the doppelganger.
James arched his eyebrow quizzically. “
The doppelganger smiled. “I needed a name. I’m not you—at least not anymore—so I needed something to differentiate myself. I figured going by Jim was the easiest.”
“Jim?” James repeated, his eyebrows now knitted.
The doppelganger laughed. “Yeah, I know. I hated it too, but coming up with a whole new name didn’t appeal to me.”
“I prefer Jim now,” Katherine said. Jim turned to Katherine and shrugged in response. James immediately recognized that she wasn’t referring to the name.
“What the hell is going on?” James asked. “Who or what are you?”
“I’m your doppelganger. We’ve met. You remember.”
“And I’m your former wife,” Katherine added, “you remember?” Hell hath no fury.
“My wife is gone,” James replied. “I saw her deleted by the A.I. myself. I took control of the mainframe and checked to see if there was any trace of her left. You’re not my wife.”
“We were both deleted,” Jim responded, stepping between James and Katherine before Katherine had a chance to fire back; he could tell she wanted to from her rigid body language. “We ended up here.”
“Where is here?” James asked.
“The other side of the looking glass,” Katherine interjected with a sardonic smile.
“Honey, please,” Jim said, putting his hand on her shoulder in a gesture for civility. “This is going to be confusing enough for him without riddles.” He turned back to James, “We’re still in the mainframe—sort of,” Jim explained.
“Impossible,” James replied, disbelieving, yet getting used to the impossible becoming possible.
“
2
“What sort of sick game is this?” James asked, turning from the A.I. and looking up into the sky, as though he were addressing an omnipresent listener. “You couldn’t just kill me, could you? You had to play one last sadistic trick?”
“Who the hell are you talking to, you moron?” asked Katherine as she shook her head dismissively.
“Honey! Please,” Jim responded to her. “He is 99.999 percent me. Please have a little compassion for his situation.”
“Honey?” James reacted with morbid curiosity.
Katherine smiled the instant she realized that she had the chance to cause James more pain. “That’s right.” She crossed over to Jim and put her arm around his waist, cradling his body next to hers. “Jim and I have become lovers.”
Jim sighed and shook his head, “Katherine, please.”
For a fraction of a second, James’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Okay. What the hell is going on?”
“They’ve mended fences, James,” responded the A.I., completely returned to the friendly, elderly form with which James had been familiar for most of his life. “They had a lot of history and a powerful emotional attachment between them. It took time, but they have become very close over the past year and seven months.”
James didn’t know with whom he should share his look of astonishment. His eyes moved from the A.I.’s, to the doppelganger’s, to Katherine’s, then back to the doppelganger’s. Jim started answering questions without James having to ask them. “We were both deleted—we found each other here—we’ve had a lot of time to talk
