Flynn had walked the winding path into the overgrown estate gardens for about fifteen minutes before the female voice in his head spoke up.
Flynn turned a corner and faced a secluded patio hidden by yellow-green foliage. A stone bench was nestled, almost buried, in a nest of vines, facing a long-silent fountain. On the bench sat a young woman about 150 centimeters tall, with almond-shaped green eyes and straight black hair cut in an asymmetrical diagonal. She wore the same black leather jacket, pants, and boots she always wore. She looked up at him and said, “And you know I don’t like it when you call me Gram. It makes me feel old.”
Flynn shook his head distractedly. “Yeah, sure.”
She looked down at herself. “Do you mind? I waited until we were alone again.”
“No, Tetsami, you’re fine.” He sat down next to the apparition.
His experience in the Hall of Minds, as far as he could tell, was unique. It was supposed to be a melding, a merging of an elder’s knowledge and experience with your own. In most cases, it also meant the merging of those that elder had himself merged with, and so on, and so on . . . Achieving some sort of higher unified consciousness.
With Flynn, a combination of his own panicked resistance and his choice of Kari Tetsami manifested itself differently. Most people—most recordings of people, that is—downloaded from the Hall of Minds knew what was happening, expected it, understood it. Tetsami’s mind, the oldest one in the archive, had been stored before Salmagundi had established itself, and before the biannual rite at the Hall of Minds existed.
If anything, the event panicked Tetsami as much as Flynn, and she escaped into some distant part of his brain. They remained two separate individuals. Flynn, and his twenty-five-year-old great-great-great-great- grandmother.
“Look,” Flynn said, “I’m sorry if it sounded like I included you in that outburst.”
“I know.” Tetsami patted his hand, sort of. Her visual manifestation couldn’t actually touch him, though he felt it inside. “I’m in there with you.”
“Ever think it would have been better if the download went the way it was supposed to?”
“Hell, no. You know that creeps me out as much as it does you. I’m me, you’re you, and let’s keep it that way.”
Flynn shook his head. “I just don’t know how long I can keep this up.”
“Standing up to their stupid ancestor worship isn’t a crime.”
“Yeah, but it might cost me my job.”
Tetsami sighed. “I was kind of hoping that you didn’t notice Robert was there.”
“We were staring right at him, you know. Only one set of eyes between us.” Robert Sheldon was manager of the wilderness corps, Flynn’s employer, and about as conservative an example of Ashley high society as you could find. He was a lifelong colleague of Flynn’s father—he would hesitate to use the term friend—and probably only allowed Flynn to work there as a favor. Between his father’s death and his outburst, Flynn thought that Robert would have little reason to keep him employed.
“Come on, your father just died. Don’t you think that’s enough reason to cut you some slack?”
Flynn chuckled. “I know you’re old-fashioned, but you’ve seen enough of things to realize my people don’t see death quite the same way you do.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’ve seen plenty of religions that promise resurrection. Yours is the only one I’ve ever seen that delivers.” She leaned back and stared at the sky, even though Flynn knew the only thing she saw was what his own eyes were looking at. “You’d think my particular situation would make me a little more sympathetic to them.”
“So, any suggestion how to deal with this?”
She turned and looked at him. “Ignore it. Either Mr. Sheldon will hold it against you, or not. Worst thing that can happen, you find another job.”
