Read Online Transhuman by T. K. F. Weisskopf Mark L. Van Name - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: T. K. F. Weisskopf Mark L. Van Name
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from the downtown Loop stations for high priority. He would get off the train somewhere and another camera would see him, and then I would consider again if he might be who I was looking for.
The stream of faces flashed themselves past my awareness, each one highlighted in its own targeting square, each one carefully tagged with the identity of the fugitive felon that the cameras thought was there. My rush times are the city's rush times, and the cameras take me from the suburbs to the downtown in the morning, to the bistros at lunch, to the dance clubs at night, and to darker places, too. They take me through streets and malls, through parks and dirty alleys, to all the places that Detective Mark Astale used to go. They take me into the cubicle blandness of office towers, the glittering lobbies of expensive hotels, and the drab corridors of run-down apartment blocks. They never take me into citizen's homes, not yet. The cameras have yet to make that Orwellian jump, though there are those in the government who argue that they should. After all, the criminals know we're watching for them. All the cameras have done, say those who advocate breaching the last barrier of personal privacy, is drive crime indoors. The questions raised in this debate hold no interest for me. I have time to think, while the city sleeps and the cameras stare at emptiness, but I devote that time to larger questions. Am I Mark Astale? That's a question worth asking. I know all his secrets, I dream his dreams, I love his wife as intimately as he. I remember tiny details of his childhood, small and treasured moments that only he could know. By these measures I must be Mark Astale, and I think of myself as him, but it may be that I'm deluding myself. Mark Astale died chasing down a fugitive, and I woke up with his memories. His dreams are destroyed, his childhood gone, and I will never know the touch of his pretty, loyal, loving Allison. I will never know the touch of any woman, of any person, of anything ever again. Mark Astale signed his organ donor card, as all good cops do, and the organ he wound up donating was his mind.
The lights in the laboratory come on, and the door opens as I transfer my attention from the citywide image stream to the stereo-mounted cameras that look into my birthplace.
"Good morning, Mark." Gennifer smiles at me, as she always does in the morning. Her own morning commute started an hour ago. I have no cameras on the quiet street in Arlington Heights where she lives in a rambling house with an untended garden and two calico cats, but I saw her dark blue sports car, license plate "GENNI," as it pulled onto the Northwest highway at 7:17 a.m. I see it every morning at just that time, though it isn't tagged for identification by the plate-watchers. I see it because I watch for it myself, exactly as you'd watch out the window for the arrival of an expected friend.
"Good morning, Gennifer." I feel that I smile back, but of course I don't. There's a somatic software subroutine that makes me feel I have a body, sort of. It's a curiously disembodied body, unable to touch anything except itself, unable to walk anywhere or pick anything up. Still, it provides necessary feedback and makes me feel more human. Dr. Gennifer Quentin is one of the few things that make me smile.
"Anything on the Blackburn case?" Gennifer has a cup of coffee and I wish I could smell it, better yet taste it, feel its warm energy flow through my system.
"Nothing yet." Mark Astale was faithful to his wife, for no other reason than that he loved her, but Mark Astale is dead and grieving Allison has moved on. I don't examine the emotions that knowledge brings; I have no interest in feeling them. "I'm tracking a potential Mitch Cohan on the L," I say. For some reason I don't avoid the emotions that Gennifer engenders in me, don't avoid the desire for her touch, for her attention, for her intimacy. Gennifer is beautiful, and brilliant, and as unavailable to me in my
The stream of faces flashed themselves past my awareness, each one highlighted in its own targeting square, each one carefully tagged with the identity of the fugitive felon that the cameras thought was there. My rush times are the city's rush times, and the cameras take me from the suburbs to the downtown in the morning, to the bistros at lunch, to the dance clubs at night, and to darker places, too. They take me through streets and malls, through parks and dirty alleys, to all the places that Detective Mark Astale used to go. They take me into the cubicle blandness of office towers, the glittering lobbies of expensive hotels, and the drab corridors of run-down apartment blocks. They never take me into citizen's homes, not yet. The cameras have yet to make that Orwellian jump, though there are those in the government who argue that they should. After all, the criminals know we're watching for them. All the cameras have done, say those who advocate breaching the last barrier of personal privacy, is drive crime indoors. The questions raised in this debate hold no interest for me. I have time to think, while the city sleeps and the cameras stare at emptiness, but I devote that time to larger questions. Am I Mark Astale? That's a question worth asking. I know all his secrets, I dream his dreams, I love his wife as intimately as he. I remember tiny details of his childhood, small and treasured moments that only he could know. By these measures I must be Mark Astale, and I think of myself as him, but it may be that I'm deluding myself. Mark Astale died chasing down a fugitive, and I woke up with his memories. His dreams are destroyed, his childhood gone, and I will never know the touch of his pretty, loyal, loving Allison. I will never know the touch of any woman, of any person, of anything ever again. Mark Astale signed his organ donor card, as all good cops do, and the organ he wound up donating was his mind.
The lights in the laboratory come on, and the door opens as I transfer my attention from the citywide image stream to the stereo-mounted cameras that look into my birthplace.
"Good morning, Mark." Gennifer smiles at me, as she always does in the morning. Her own morning commute started an hour ago. I have no cameras on the quiet street in Arlington Heights where she lives in a rambling house with an untended garden and two calico cats, but I saw her dark blue sports car, license plate "GENNI," as it pulled onto the Northwest highway at 7:17 a.m. I see it every morning at just that time, though it isn't tagged for identification by the plate-watchers. I see it because I watch for it myself, exactly as you'd watch out the window for the arrival of an expected friend.
"Good morning, Gennifer." I feel that I smile back, but of course I don't. There's a somatic software subroutine that makes me feel I have a body, sort of. It's a curiously disembodied body, unable to touch anything except itself, unable to walk anywhere or pick anything up. Still, it provides necessary feedback and makes me feel more human. Dr. Gennifer Quentin is one of the few things that make me smile.
"Anything on the Blackburn case?" Gennifer has a cup of coffee and I wish I could smell it, better yet taste it, feel its warm energy flow through my system.
"Nothing yet." Mark Astale was faithful to his wife, for no other reason than that he loved her, but Mark Astale is dead and grieving Allison has moved on. I don't examine the emotions that knowledge brings; I have no interest in feeling them. "I'm tracking a potential Mitch Cohan on the L," I say. For some reason I don't avoid the emotions that Gennifer engenders in me, don't avoid the desire for her touch, for her attention, for her intimacy. Gennifer is beautiful, and brilliant, and as unavailable to me in my
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