Futures Near and Far Read Free Page B

looked.
    Cheryl stood there, holding a handgun.
    It was one of those ancient models with a silencer — I never
remember the brand names. She must have gone to a lot of trouble to get it. I
don’t know of many nanoplayers that permit creation of firearms. Perhaps she’d
located an actual antique. The only time she
ever showed real initiative was when she was up to no good. At least she
wasn’t going to flaunt the local noise abatement ordinance.
    I ducked sideways. Too late. Three slugs tore into my chest.
I fell on the tile walkway and threw up blood all over the winery harvest scene I’d just coded into the mosaic. As
I tried to raise my head, I lost consciousness.
    I woke up hanging upside down from a pod. Healed but
disoriented, I slowly recognized the watercourse below and behind me as the confluence of the Willamette and the
Columbia. We were heading east at a frightening rate of speed.
    A rope held me tightly
around one ankle, hemp gnawing into the skin. The acceleration and drag
prevented me from reaching up to grasp it with my hands. I twisted around and
saw Mount Hood expand to fill the horizon.
    “Cheryl!” I screamed at the open pod door. “Stop it, Cheryl!
This isn’t going to get you anywhere!”
    Cheryl leaned out of the hatch. Wind blasted her hair to one
side of her face. She waved and cupped her hand
to her ear as if to say, “Sorry, Mom. Can’t hear you.”
    “Cheryl! I’ll give you five seconds to knock this off.
Otherwise I’m filing a complaint!”
    I was lying. If I filed a complaint, the cops might
interfere in ways Ellen Branson and I didn’t want them to. But it was the only
threat I could come up with on the spur of the moment.
    Mount Hood took over the
scenery. Snow turned to steam near the caldera. The pod slowed. I swung back
and forth on the cord, trying desperately not to lose my lunch again, assuming
the docs had put it all back in my stomach.
    The vivid orange tones of
the caldera spread across the landscape below me. The pod came to a
stop.
    “Oh, no. She wouldn’t,” I whispered. Sweat began to pop from
every crevice of my body. “Cheryl! Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare !”
    I could finally grab the cord. I started frantically
climbing hand over hand.
    Cheryl stuck her head out of the hatch of the pod, smiled,
and released the cord.
    I fell through surprisingly cool air toward the sea of lava.
I knew I wouldn’t just burn. I’d be vaporized. Sure enough. I landed, and that
was that.
    My ethereal self manifested high above the volcano. I
watched Cheryl’s pod fade toward the horizon.
    Below, my physical self
had not left even a dark spot on the molten rock. With it so thoroughly
eradicated, nothing hindered the death process. The Big White Light emerged
from a cloud and hung there like a second sun. It drew me upward.
    The characteristic, ineffable calm of death chased away all
concerns. The events of the life I was leaving rolled past me, memory upon
memory, but with a peculiar distance, a detachment. I was removed from all
worries, obsessions, emotional triggers.
    The Light took me away to wherever it is that dead folks go.
If anything happened to me on the other side, I can’t remember it now. One
instant I was rising toward the afterlife above a volcano, and in the next, I
awoke in my apartment.
    Naturally, as soon as the Net had verified that I didn’t exist anywhere in the civilized universe,
the nanomat in my bed had reconstituted me, using the scan it had
routinely taken of me during the night.
    I raised onto my elbows, serenaded by the sound of the mat’s water reservoir refilling. Now the emotions came.
    I put my hands over my
face and shook. This was worse than the axe. I curled into a fetal
position — an appropriate posture, all in all, considering that I had, in a
sense, been reborn. The old Monica was dead, dead, dead.
    Complete body annihilation is so rare in our culture that
people forget that being shifted into a duplicate isn’t quite the