deal with, aren’t naturally designed for it. It literally changes your brain. You can see the difference between a Haden brain and an unaffected brain on an MRI.
The vertigo happens when your brain remembers it’s not supposed to be getting input from two separate bodies. The simple solution when it happens is just to look somewhere else.
I turned and focused on the other other me in the room: my previous threep, which was my primary threep until I got the 660. It was a Kamen Zephyr, now sitting on an inductive charger chair. A very nice model. The body was ivory with blue and gray limb accents—I did undergrad and got my master’s at Georgetown, and it seemed the thing to do at the time. My current threep was an understated matte ivory with subtle maroon pinstripe accents on the limbs. I vaguely wondered if I was letting down the alma mater.
“Here we go,” Jerry said, and held up a small bottle. “Lidocaine. Should do the trick for a couple of hours. That’ll get you through the dinner and then after that I’ll put some extra-strength ibuprofen into your system. As long as you stay sense-forward on your threep you should be fine.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Interesting that you don’t always stay fully sense-forward on your threep,” Jerry said, as he prepped the lidocaine.
“I don’t like how it feels,” I said. “If I can’t feel my body it feels … off. Adrift. Weird.”
Jerry nodded. “I can see that, I guess,” he said. “Not everyone does it that way. My last client was full sense-forward on her threep all the time. Didn’t like feeling what was going on with her body. Hell, didn’t like acknowledging she had a body. She found it inconvenient, I think is the best way of putting it. Which was ultimately ironic.”
“How so?”
“She had a heart attack and didn’t even feel it,” Jerry said. “She found out about it from an automated alert to her threep. We start working on her to save her and she calls in from her threep with this pissy sort of voice, telling us that we just had to get her up and running again, she had a three o’clock session with her shrink that she couldn’t miss.”
“Did she miss it?”
“Yup,” Jerry said. He put on a pair of gloves. “She dropped dead mid-sentence, still pissy. On one hand, she really didn’t feel it, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing. On the other hand, well. I think it came as a surprise to her that she could die. She spent so much time in her threep I think she believed it really was her.” He opened my mouth and I could feel my jaw stretch. “Okay. You might feel a poke here for a minute.”
* * *
Dad’s trophy room is impressive, but then, that’s the point. Marcus Shane isn’t the kind of person to tell you he’s more important than you. He’s happy to let his hardware make the point for him.
The west side of the room details his early basketball career. This includes his junior high and high school jerseys, the four DCIAA trophies he won for Cardozo High, and the acceptance letter he received to Georgetown University, full scholarship. Then follows a ridiculous number of photos of him in action with the Hoyas, with whom he reached the Final Four three times, taking the championship in his junior year. The picture of him weeping as he cuts down the net is up there, with a piece of the actual net inside the same frame. It’s surrounded by the Wooden, Naismith, and Robinson awards, which he won the same year, and his championship ring on a pillow. The sting of crashing out of the NCAA Finals in the semi-final round in his senior year was ameliorated by winning an Olympic gold medal. Everyone agreed that the gold medals for his Olympiad were even uglier than usual. On the other hand, it was an Olympic gold medal, so everyone could just shut up.
On to the south side of the room, and we have Dad’s professional career, all of it with the Washington Wizards, into which he was drafted after a particularly
The vertigo happens when your brain remembers it’s not supposed to be getting input from two separate bodies. The simple solution when it happens is just to look somewhere else.
I turned and focused on the other other me in the room: my previous threep, which was my primary threep until I got the 660. It was a Kamen Zephyr, now sitting on an inductive charger chair. A very nice model. The body was ivory with blue and gray limb accents—I did undergrad and got my master’s at Georgetown, and it seemed the thing to do at the time. My current threep was an understated matte ivory with subtle maroon pinstripe accents on the limbs. I vaguely wondered if I was letting down the alma mater.
“Here we go,” Jerry said, and held up a small bottle. “Lidocaine. Should do the trick for a couple of hours. That’ll get you through the dinner and then after that I’ll put some extra-strength ibuprofen into your system. As long as you stay sense-forward on your threep you should be fine.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Interesting that you don’t always stay fully sense-forward on your threep,” Jerry said, as he prepped the lidocaine.
“I don’t like how it feels,” I said. “If I can’t feel my body it feels … off. Adrift. Weird.”
Jerry nodded. “I can see that, I guess,” he said. “Not everyone does it that way. My last client was full sense-forward on her threep all the time. Didn’t like feeling what was going on with her body. Hell, didn’t like acknowledging she had a body. She found it inconvenient, I think is the best way of putting it. Which was ultimately ironic.”
“How so?”
“She had a heart attack and didn’t even feel it,” Jerry said. “She found out about it from an automated alert to her threep. We start working on her to save her and she calls in from her threep with this pissy sort of voice, telling us that we just had to get her up and running again, she had a three o’clock session with her shrink that she couldn’t miss.”
“Did she miss it?”
“Yup,” Jerry said. He put on a pair of gloves. “She dropped dead mid-sentence, still pissy. On one hand, she really didn’t feel it, which I suppose isn’t a bad thing. On the other hand, well. I think it came as a surprise to her that she could die. She spent so much time in her threep I think she believed it really was her.” He opened my mouth and I could feel my jaw stretch. “Okay. You might feel a poke here for a minute.”
* * *
Dad’s trophy room is impressive, but then, that’s the point. Marcus Shane isn’t the kind of person to tell you he’s more important than you. He’s happy to let his hardware make the point for him.
The west side of the room details his early basketball career. This includes his junior high and high school jerseys, the four DCIAA trophies he won for Cardozo High, and the acceptance letter he received to Georgetown University, full scholarship. Then follows a ridiculous number of photos of him in action with the Hoyas, with whom he reached the Final Four three times, taking the championship in his junior year. The picture of him weeping as he cuts down the net is up there, with a piece of the actual net inside the same frame. It’s surrounded by the Wooden, Naismith, and Robinson awards, which he won the same year, and his championship ring on a pillow. The sting of crashing out of the NCAA Finals in the semi-final round in his senior year was ameliorated by winning an Olympic gold medal. Everyone agreed that the gold medals for his Olympiad were even uglier than usual. On the other hand, it was an Olympic gold medal, so everyone could just shut up.
On to the south side of the room, and we have Dad’s professional career, all of it with the Washington Wizards, into which he was drafted after a particularly
Similar Books
