I hadn’t noticed my face clenching. I shook my head and said, “Sorry. It’s, uh. Painkillers are w-wearing off.”
Brother.
“I’ll get the doctor.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll call her myself. Don’t worry.”
“Sorry I can’t stay longer. I have a lot to take care of before tomorrow, and I have to sleep before I start making mistakes.”
“Don’t worry,” I repeated, half-choking. “Go finish the tests.”
You smiled one last time as you ran off.
I hauled myself up and knelt on the bed, pulling all the tubes in my arm painfully taut to push the window ajar and peek through the crack. From two floors above, I could just make out your conversation.
“—not easy for either of us. But the only remotely reasonable option is for Luther and me to go first, before we try unifying more than two minds. Minimize the risks. Look, we both went into this relationship knowing the project would complicate it. And vice versa, for that matter.”
Jackson responded, “I know. But I just . . . are you so sure?”
“About undergoing an untested, irreversible, and fundamentally consciousness-altering procedure, you mean? I know the risks, but we’re talking about advancing the evolution of consciousness. We can’t be squeamish. I thought you understood that—”
“No, I do. That’s not what I meant.”
“What then?”
He hesitated. “It’s just that Luther is . . . I don’t know how to say it. He is a bit rough around the edges, don’t you think? I’m not trying to be mean. He’s my friend too, and God knows I admire him as much as you do. It’s just . . . sometimes he comes off as kind of a tortured soul. I’ve picked up some strange feelings from him during our tests.”
You sighed. You held Jackson’s hands and said, “I know. I’ve felt them too.”
“Like you just said, unity is irreversible. If it works, the gestalt consciousness will be as much him as it is you, forever, and we have no way of knowing . . . all of what comes with that. I just thought we’d be taking this a lot slower. I thought we’d be performing the first unity in incremental steps over a period of days or weeks, so we could suss out the full range of effects and adjust or abort as necessary. Not all at once like this.”
“You’re right,” I heard you say. “This is all light-years away from the ideal, but he doesn’t have time for us to sit on our hands and play it safe. They just gave him forty-eight hours. I know it’s a risk, but if it’s our only chance to save his mind? I don’t feel like we have a choice. I have to take that chance. I have to.”
“I didn’t mean to fall for you, you know,” Jackson told you. “But, shit. I see your conviction, and your selflessness, and I don’t know how to help myself. You’re incredible. I feel . . . very lucky that I got to know you.”
There was a pause, and then you kissed him. So softly, but with such feeling: a hand in his hair, another on his neck. My whole body ached to watch it. One of the needles popped out of my arm when you leaned in to him and said, “You know it’s mutual, and I won’t stop feeling that. Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ll love you as much as I do now. This isn’t really goodbye.”
“We won’t be together anymore, though. Not like this.”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s impossible to know what it will be like. I’ll need time to process what I’ll have become, and how emotions work as a gestalt consciousness. But please believe I don’t want to lose you. I need to know you’ll be there to help us both through this.”
“I will be, I promise. Every step of the way.” He paused. “Are you sure you’re sure? You still look like something’s on your mind.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that this is sort of . . . the last day of my life in which I’ll still be me. Tomorrow everything I am will become part of something completely new, transcending the body. I don’t know how to say this, but I just want . . . .” You looked around to see if anyone else was in earshot, as if you didn’t know my window was directly above you, and said, “I want one last memory of being fully in this body.”
Jackson replied, “That’s understandable.”
You kissed him yet again, this time much more deeply. I closed my eyes, but I could still make out the sound of your lips and his. Two different pitches of breath. The faintest trace of a moan.
You must have known, Sybil. You must have known I could see and hear you and Jackson through that narrow crack—and that means you were doing it just to remind me of who I was. Of what I was. Defective.
I ripped off the sensors and left the machines beeping their panic in my wake. I hobbled into the elevator before the staff could come running. I knew they’d make me lie back down. They’d tell me I was robbing myself of what little time I had left—but as I ran away from there, I was in total control of my flesh, and I would not grant it permission to die. Not yet.
I watched you and Jackson walk off hand in hand. I turned against the wind and hurried the other way, thankful it was the weekend and none of the other students would see me in hospital clothes. I went to the workshop. I pored over all of your notes and schematics. There was something you hadn’t said, Sybil, though you must have known it too: the high-bandwidth interface we were waiting for was only necessary to mediate a two-way link. A simple transcription could be accomplished using all the parts we had on hand. It would be a different device, admittedly. Not a unifier at all. I thought of it
