Universe 2 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Ashes,” Isabel said, with emphasis.

  “It looked like Detroit after the union nuked Ford,” Phil said. “Only much, much worse. Whole mountains were melted. The oceans were dried up. Everything was ashes.” He shuddered and took a joint from Mike. “Isabel was crying.”

  “The things with one leg,” Isabel said. “I mean, they must have all been wiped out.” She began to sob. Stan comforted her. “I wonder why it’s a different way for everyone who goes,” he said. “Freezing. Or the oceans. Or the sun blowing up. Or the thing Nick and Jane saw.”

  “I’m convinced that each of us had a genuine experience in the far future,” said Nick. He felt he had to regain control of the group somehow. It had been so good when he was telling his story, before those others had come. “That is to say, the world suffers a variety of natural calamities, it doesn’t just have one end of the world, and they keep mixing things up and sending people to different catastrophes. But never for a moment did I doubt that I was seeing an authentic event.”

  “We have to do it,” Ruby said to Mike. “It’s only three hours. What about calling them first thing Monday and making an appointment for Thursday night?”

  “Monday’s the President’s funeral,” Tom pointed out. “The travel agency will be closed.”

  “Have they caught the assassin yet?” Fran asked.

  “They didn’t mention it on the four o’clock news,” said Stan. “I guess he’ll get away like the last one.”

  “Beats me why anybody wants to be President,” Phil said.

  Mike put on some music. Nick danced with Paula. Eddie danced with Cynthia. Henry was asleep. Dave, Paula’s husband, was on crutches because of his mugging, and he asked Isabel to sit and talk with him. Tom danced with Harriet even though he was married to her. She hadn’t been out of the hospital more than a few months since the transplant and he treated her extremely tenderly. Mike danced with Fran. Phil danced with Jane. Stan danced with Marcia. Ruby cut in on Eddie and Cynthia. Afterward Tom danced with Jane and Phil danced with Paula. Mike and Ruby’s little girl woke up and came out to say hello. Mike sent her back to bed. Far away there was the sound of an explosion. Nick danced with Paula again, but he didn’t want her to get bored with him before Tuesday, so he excused himself and went to talk with Dave. Dave handled most of Nick’s investments. Ruby said to Mike, “The day after the funeral, will you call the travel agent?” Mike said he would, but Tom said somebody would probably shoot the new President too and there’d be another funeral. These funerals were demolishing the gross national product, Stan observed, on account of how everything had to close all the time. Nick saw Cynthia wake Henry up and ask him sharply if he would take her on the end-of-the-world trip. Henry looked embarrassed. His factory had been blown up at Christmas in a peace demonstration and everybody knew he was in bad shape financially. “You can charge it,” Cynthia said, her fierce voice carrying above the chitchat. “And it’s so beautiful, Henry. The ice. Or the sun exploding. I want to go.”

  “Lou and Janet were going to be here tonight too,” Ruby said to Paula. “But their younger boy came back from Texas with that new kind of cholera and they had to cancel.”

  Phil said, “I understand that one couple saw the moon come apart. It got too close to the Earth and split into chunks and the chunks fell like meteors. Smashing everything up, you know. One big piece nearly hit their time machine.”

  “I wouldn’t have liked that at all,” Marcia said.

  “Our trip was very lovely,” said Jane. “No violent things at all. Just the big red sun and the tide and that crab creeping along the beach. We were both deeply moved.”

  “It’s amazing what science can accomplish nowadays,” Fran said.

  Mike and Ruby agreed they would try to arrange a trip to the end of the world as soon as the funeral was over. Cynthia drank too much and got sick. Phil, Tom, and Dave discussed the stock market. Harriet told Nick about her operation. Isabel flirted with Mike, tugging her neckline lower. At midnight someone turned on the news. They had some shots of the earthquake and a warning about boiling your water if you lived in the affected states. The President’s widow was shown visiting the last President’s widow to get some pointers for the funeral. Then there was an interview with an executive of the time-trip company. “Business is phenomenal,” he said. “Time-tripping will be the nation’s number one growth industry next year.” The reporter asked him if his company would soon be offering something beside the end-of-the-world trip. “Later on, we hope to,” the executive said. “We plan to apply for Congressional approval soon. But meanwhile the demand for our present offering is running very high. You can’t imagine. Of course, you have to expect apocalyptic stuff to attain immense popularity in times like these.” The reporter said, “What do you mean, times like these?” but as the time-trip man started to reply, he was interrupted by the commercial. Mike shut off the set. Nick discovered that he was extremely depressed. He decided that it was because so many of his friends had made the journey, and he had thought he and Jane were the only ones who had. He found himself standing next to Marcia and tried to describe the way the crab had moved, but Marcia only shrugged. No one was talking about time-trips now. The party had moved beyond that point. Nick and Jane left quite early and went right to sleep, without making love. The next morning the Sunday paper wasn’t delivered because of the Bridge Authority strike, and the radio said that the mutant amoebas were proving harder to eradicate than originally anticipated. They were spreading into Lake Superior and everyone in the region would have to boil all drinking water. Nick and Jane discussed where they would go for their next vacation. “What about going to see the end of the world all over again?” Jane suggested, and Nick laughed quite a good deal.

  <>

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Science fiction writers have suggested a wide variety of methods for preserving people from being lost to death: immortality drugs, gland transplants, cryogenics, cloning and others. Gerard Conway’s system of recording a man’s memories and putting them into a robot simulacrum is another idea that’s been suggested before; but Conway goes beyond that basic idea to investigate some possible consequences. Just what is a memory, anyway?

  FUNERAL SERVICE

  by Gerard F. Conway

  He received the notice to pick up his father just before dawn on a grainy Monday morning. He was moving by memory as he punched in the hold button on the video; it took him another two or three minutes to wake up (a process expedited by a handful of cold water), and then he went back to the screen and checked the time. 3:44. Earlier and earlier. It was a while before the words made sense; he’d spent three years waiting for this moment, and now that it had come, it was as though someone had shaken him awake from a particularly narcotic dream.

  YOUR FATHER WILL BE READY ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH THE EIGHTEENTH, AT SIX-THIRTY A.M., CENTRAL TIME.

  PLEASE BE PROMPT, AND BRING YOUR BLUE CHIT WITH YOU.

  Jake cleared the screen and sat for a moment in the darkness, letting twenty-four years of memory seep in on him. He looked up at the hologram of his family; the images were fading slightly, but the definition was still fairly strong. His mother, his sister, himself, and his father; his father, staring out at an angle to the others, looking at something beyond the camera that had made the piece. Six years ago it had all seemed simpler, somehow. They were a family, and ageless. The hologram said so.

  He looked back at the screen. It still glowed, faintly. His father had been dead for three years, and now he was coming home again, and maybe, just maybe, Jake would be able to say the things he hadn’t said before. And maybe, just maybe, it would all be all right Again.

  * * * *

  He spent Tuesday morning cleaning up, setting the house in order and calling Anne. His sister seemed confused. She’d never really understood the Recall process, didn’t understand it now. Jake told her patiently, “Don’t think about it, just be here tomorrow. I’ll pick you up. He’s
coming back, and he’s going to need both of us. I’m going to need you, too, Anne.”

  Her soft features softened further, the lines of her brow disappearing as she smiled. “You never were very good with Father, Jake. Okay, I’ll be there.” Then she frowned again. “Will he remember us? Three years. . . .”

  “They taped his memories, Sis. He’ll be just as he was, the day he died.”

  “Just as he was ... ?”

  “A few changes, I imagine. Not so old, I suppose. Not so sick.”

  She nodded, her hair coming unknotted by her ear, a curl of it swinging around to her cheek.

  “You should have been there that night, Jake. The book couldn’t have been that important; he wanted you to be there. I could tell.”

  “I know.”

  She bit her lip, pushed the hair back into place with the heel of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You know...”

  “Yes,” said Jake, again, “I know.”

  * * * *

  He spent an hour before the recorder, trying to think of something to say. Nothing came. He felt dry and empty, and for the thousandth time wondered if the book would ever be completed. And wondered if he really wanted to complete it. The money was no problem; the dole kept him alive, and his father’s money had supplied him with enough luxuries. He shut the recorder off and leaned back against the couch; he knew he’d be unable to work, now. Opening his eyes, he saw the hologram on the edge of the video, and for the first time he noticed the angle of his father’s eyes—where they were directed. Perhaps it was an illusion of some sort, there in the shadowed room, but Jake felt sure that the eyes were staring, and had always been staring, directly at him.

  * * * *

  He didn’t know what to buy. The circular from the Recall people had told him that the newly-recalled were unable to eat organic food. Liquids were permitted, though unnecessary. Jake hadn’t considered that before. He wanted to give his father dinner, but now . . . He bought a bottle of wine, hoping it would do. All the way back to the apartment complex he kept the package tight to his chest, protecting it, in his mind alone, from the rain of little gray leaves of ash. He felt furtive, and he wouldn’t have been able to explain why.

  Tuesday evening he sat listening to the piped music, not thinking at all, not even remembering. He sat alone in the small apartment, waiting for something to happen to him, some emotion to come to him other than the deepening sense of guilt. Nothing did. He never changed.

  An hour passed, and he went to bed early, setting the screen to wake him at five. He lay awake for a long time, staring at the pattern of shadows criss-crossing the ceiling, listening to the distant sounds of the traffic on the roadstrips thirty-four stories below.

  * * * *

  The reception room was crowded. Jake felt uneasy, and he found himself a relatively uncluttered area by the water fountain, from which point he could watch the others in the room. The room was tastefully decorated in cool blues and browns; there were strands of an artificial palm towering a bit over the heads of the people lined by the far wall, the topmost leaf just brushing the ceiling. The palm was up-lighted, a light green glow that, in the relative dimness of the room, stood out, making the plant look fresh and almost alive. The room smelled new; it smelled of fresh plastic. The people in the room ranged from middle-aged to old; there was only one other person obviously Jake’s age, a timid looking girl with straight black hair pulled into a braid along her back. Near him, there was a clot of four elderly women, and one, a short, dimpled woman in a conservative brown jumpsuit, saw Jake looking at her, and bustled over.

  “Are you early, too?” she asked him. Her voice was loud, high-pitched. She blinked up at him, her head barely coming up to his chest. He shrugged.

  “The notice said six-thirty.”

  “It’s almost that, isn’t it?” She looked around, then bent back towards Jake, and lowered her voice a notch. “There are so many. I never thought there’d be so many. None of the literature said how many had bought their loved ones a place in Recall.” She said that last quickly, as though quoting from the advertisements; Jake smiled.

  “About a hundred here, I imagine.”

  “Is that al/?” She blinked. “I would have thought there were more than that.”

  “No.”

  “Is it a relative or a friend?” she asked then, abruptly.

  Jake was startled. “Who? Oh.” Then, “Yes, a relative. My father.”

  “Mines my husband, Thomas. He signed the papers himself, all his money, over to this. Barely a pension for me.” She shook her head. “Myself, I don’t see the point in it all. It seems indecent... somehow.”

  “What?”

  “The Recall, of course. Of course. Why would anyone want them back? I mean, I love Thomas—but it’s not going to be the same, you know what I mean.” She cocked her head a bit to peer at Jake from another angle. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze, and glanced away from her, out across the room, trying to understand why she’d chosen him to latch onto.

  “Maybe some people don’t think that way,” he said.

  “But what’s the point? They don’t grow. They’re not alive. They’re over, and everything’s gone. They’re dead.”

  “No they’re not. Recall brings them back.”

  She shook her head, her lips locked firmly together. She said, “No, no, don’t you believe a word of it. That’s just what they say in those papers. It won’t be the same. I know. I’ve talked with some friends of mine who’ve worked on the project; they know. They say it’s only, well, only like he was on that last day. Thomas was a tight old . . . well, he was pretty tight. He won’t change. He won’t even remember being dead. What’s the point in that? Get yourself a picture, do as much. You’ll see.”

  “I suppose I will,” Jake said, tightly.

  She looked at him oddly.

  “You really expect—” Then she broke off, smiling a bit, as though to herself. “I’m sorry. I talk too much. I really am sorry. Really.” She touched his arm. Her fingers were dry and felt brittle against his wrist. “He’s your father?” Jake nodded. “And you love him, and you want everything to be all right between you, don’t you? I know; my son was the same way, exactly.”

  “Please, lady. How did this whole thing get started?”

  Her grip loosened, but she didn’t let go. She smiled again, a touch sadly now.

  “How did Recall get started, you should ask” She blinked. “People just try, I guess, to do the right thing. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.” She paused, let her hand fall away, pressed it against her jumpsuit, smoothing the folds. “I thought you looked lonely, and that you’d want to talk, because I felt lonely too, and maybe a little afraid. I’m sorry.” She broke off and giggled. “I say that too much. Thomas says—said—I say that too much. He’s right.”

  Smiling again, this time a distracted smile, she backed away from Jake, into the young girl with the black braid. The old woman jumped, her hands going out to steady herself against the girl’s arms. She started to say “I’m sorry,” and then she halted, giggled, and moved away, back into the crowd. Jake watched her leave, feeling something shift inside him, another feeling rise almost to the surface, but break before it could be realized. The thought came that he should try to meet the black-haired girl, but then the memory of another girl pushed its way into him, and he closed his eyes, rested back against the wall, waiting for his number to be called.

  * * * *

  He could never seem to get moving. He’d wanted that girl, the long, lanky girl with blue eyes and soft brown hair, he’d wanted her to marry him, and he’d had plans for his life, delicate plans that would prove his worth as a writer and as a man. He wanted her, and would have married her, but something held him back; he didn’t really know, couldn’t really be sure, that she’d take him. And he didn’t want to ask, not so long as he’d have to return to his father, and try to explain yet another failure.

  This memory stung. All the memories stung. He felt
paralyzed by his memories; each of them acted on him and told him about himself, and set the precedents for his life. He was bound, and he moved only by inertia. As he was moving now. Along and along and along; down a very familiar path.

  * * * *

  The black girl behind the narrow desk smiled up at him, a carefully professional smile, and accepted the blue chit he offered her. She slipped it into the terminal on her desk, studied the numbers flashed across the small blue screen, made a note on the square before her with her stylus.

  “Mr. Grant will be right with you, sir,” she said, and gestured towards an archway. “Through there and to the right.” She turned away from him to the next person, just behind.

  Jake waited a moment, expecting something more. She ignored him, and after a pause, during which he tried to think of something to say, he went past her, into the corridor, and down the soft pink hall at its furthest end.