After Mind Read Free

right through her.
    “I asked you a question,” she yelled.
    Daniel swiped his hand in the air and his code scooted away. “The problem is he doesn’t know who he is. But it’s him. And he wants to play computer.”
    “How do you know it’s him?” Terri asked. “Last time it thought it was a dying squid.”
    Daniel smiled. He finally saw her and leaned with his knuckles upon his desk. “Because he thinks his name is Packet.”
    The green lights of the cooled and brushed metal cabinet flickered, but to Terri, they could have meant anything from the outside.
    “Can you do it?” Daniel asked. “Can you try it again? Once more?”
    The LED panel of the cabinet signaled that the servers ran warm above seventy-six degrees. Normal operation. But to her arms, the air felt cold as ice.
    “Absolutely,” she said, and then turned back to Daniel on the screen. “I don’t know.”
    Daniel glared, eviscerated her doubt. “And he refused to drink water.”
    She ran her hand along the cheek of the cabinet and cupped her fingers along its edge. The tiny bumps on her arms stayed raised in the room’s cocoon of chilled air. “Then yes,” she said, but unsure. “Absolutely. Whatever it takes. One last time.”
    Daniel’s few steps to his right took him out of view of her screen. A simple, wooden door at the left side of the wall’s CRAC buzzed and unlocked at its frame. Daniel entered the data hall and held out his hands in an offering of peace. “I set him up in a hospital room, a safe environment for him. He’s accepted it so far, free form.”
    The tall metal cabinet was waiting, its processors churning inside.
    “Are you ready to go inside? Do you want to see him?” Daniel asked, finding a way to lift a tiny smile.
    Terri thought of every reason to say no, but then found an ember of “yes” that trumped them all. “Only if he can see me.”
     

 
    TWO
    NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS
     
    C ESSINI MADDEN WAS twelve when the family bumped up the Tasmanian central highland hill in a Jeep. His father, Daniel, drove with an exaggerated bounce in his seat as he kept to the road. Robin Elion Blackwell wrung her hands in the front passenger seat. Her preteen daughter, Meg—short for Margaret Theresa—lowered her window to its final quarter and finger-cupped its top for a view of the construction. The bumps would soon be over, or so the sandbagged signs said.
    Bouncing his feet on his rear-seat mat, Cessini thought that this place could be different, or better. The refreshed Tungatinah Hydroelectric Power Station wasn’t far from the place they had recently started calling home, but they had been driving around the island of Tasmania for most of the day. The plan was simple: to get to like their new homeland that placed them forever and a mile from where they had come.
    Cessini caught the wind through his window, the sweet smell of the world. “Hey, Dad,” he said, “you and me, we could fix this road. Give us a shovel and a couple of machines, and it’s fixed in no time flat. This is the best place ever already. You’re going to love it. All two hundred megawatts of power. Pesky water doesn’t stand a chance.” He bounced his feet on the mat. This was going to be great.
    Tungatinah revealed its industrial self as they cleared the final switchback in the road.
    Meg looked at him, shook her head, and then went back to her window.
    “Okay, so what’s it look like to you?” he asked. “’Cause the sun’s shining on my side for sure this time.”
    “Hope,” she said. Then, with the side of her head on her window, she laughed at the height of the sun, obviously still on her side of the car.
    “Hmm, hope,” he said. If Meg said it, then it must be true. He poked her and she scooted farther away.
    He reached for the ScrollFlex case in the netting attached to the back of Daniel’s seat. He unrolled the soft clear screen from its suede capsule case and swiped by a picture of him and Meg traveling halfway across