Meeting
Online
This story grew out of a chance meeting
at a Lunacon science fiction convention sometime in the early 1990’s. I had
just finished a Disabilities and Science
Fiction panel, when I was approached for an interview by Joseph J. Lazzaro, a
writer working on his first book on adaptive technology -- Adapting
Technologies for Learning and Work Environments (American Library
Association, Chicago, 1993). Joe was
interested in some of the points I had been making, and like most writers, I
have no trouble talking about myself and I was happy to have an audience --
especially as I found myself exposed to some radical science fictiony hardware
and a real nice working dog. Joe happens
to be blind, and he was interviewing me with a sophisticated computer called a
Braill 'N Speak (Blazie Engineering).
This paper-back book-sized device has 64K of memory, a hard drive, and
uses just a few buttons and a spacebar to replace a full keyboard and with a
speaker (and a headphone jack for privacy) it can read stored files out loud.
Joe and his wife have become dear
friends, and we usually hook up at the same conventions, and through him I have
been sensitized to visual impairment issues.
And later, as I got active on the Internet, this story seemed a natural and
gave me a chance to add a blind character to my file of disability-related
stories. I forgot about the story after a few flattering rejections due to
other stories on the fire, but remembered it when planning my first book, People First (iUniverse, Bloomington,
2004) which included this and lots of other stories of mine, both previously
published and original, but each with a main character with some sort of a
disABILITY.
Hiding from the world is a common
response to sudden disabilities, and this character has lost his sight in an
automobile accident and has found a perfect place to hide by using the Internet
as his buffer against reality... until he meets a woman online with her own
secrets and reasons to hide...
* * *
Meeting
Online
by
© F.
Alexander Brejcha
I leaned closer to the microphone. "Who is online?"
"Abrent," my computer's
emotionless voice responded.
"Adman, b.ware, bullitt, cutie, darkman, eetee, ephemeral ‑‑"
I stopped the recital, curious. "Show résumé of ephemeral," I had
come across the name before, and it caught my ear. Every time I logged onto the electronic
bulletin board that had become my world the last five years, he or she was
always on. Day or night, it didn't
matter.
I sat back as I listened to the online
résumé.
"Ephemeral, Janet Starling, no
particular home city. Last on: Tue 31 May 13:30:14 2002. Carriage return. I am a traveling software consultant. I'm also a rather lonely hacker due to my job
and I like to spend time online to meet people and form a somewhat consistent,
if immaterial, group of friends. My
personal interests include poetry, music and art -- all manners of each. I'm not terribly particular, except that I
like my art distinguishable from garbage, and I only listen to music that has a
melody I can follow. I want to be able
to understand what I'm looking at and listening to. Oh, and while I like some lighter opera, keep
Wagner away from me. I don't like
pretentiousness. As for literature, I
like mysteries and science fiction for fun, and for mental exercises, I have
recently really become interested in books on reincarnation and soul
transmigrations and such. I have come to
believe in an after-life that is a bit different from what my Catholic school
upbringing taught me, although I don't buy all the mystical trappings of a lot
of the literature. Professionally, I am
interested in programming techniques and advanced adaptive technology for the
disabled. Particularly advanced
interfacing of user and computer to overcome disabilities. Carriage return." The computer chirped to let me know her
listing was done, and then prompted:
"Command?"
"E-Mail to ephemeral." What the hell? She sounded interesting.
"Subject?"
"Introduction and greeting."
"Enter text, end with period, carriage
return, carriage return," my computer prompted.
"Hi." I thought for a moment, and then began: "Your name caught my ear and your résumé
sounded interesting so I thought I would just drop a greeting. I was also curious about your interest in adaptive
technology. I'm in the adaptive.tech
conference and I've never seen you post anything there. Is there any special area that interests you? I'm blind and I use a 1,000 MHz Pentium-Elite
modified with a speech synthesizer and voice recognition. The latter because I'm lazy." I ended the message.
"Send, action?" my computer
asked.
"Send."
"Message 9949213 sent. Command?..." Silence.
"Command?"
I didn't say anything, thinking. Would she answer? Was her mail-call on, and did she know there
was a message in her mailbox? I was
curious. I asked for a replay of her
résumé while I waited. I liked its
breezy, irreverent tone. However, I was
interrupted by the beeping of my mail flag.
"Read mail," I prompted. Already?
It had only been a minute.
"Memo #9951993, from:
ephemeral. Date: Tue, 31 May 02 13:43:13
EDT. To:
t.jammer. Subject: Re:
Introduction and greeting. In
Reply To: memo 9949213. Carriage return. Dear Mr. Jameson -- may I call you Tom? And do call me Janet. It's always nice to make a new friend. To answer your questions first, I'm
especially interested in motor-impaired adaptations. Computers interfaced as directly as possible
with the user. Some of the clients I've
dealt with are quads at different functional levels. As for being lazy and using speech
recognition, don't feel guilty. I also
use full speech input and output. It
feels less cumbersome. Speaking of
which, no pun intended, instead using E-Mail and slowing things down, I would
love to talk 'personally'. Can you join
me on Band F, and we'll set up a private channel?" A longer pause, and then the computer
finished with, "Command?"
"Delete message, join Band
F." I moved into the real-time chat
area of my network, dying of curiosity as I asked: "Where ephemeral?"
Just like the old citizens' band radio,
the chat area had multiple channels, and even several bands, each with channels
of its own. It was possible to have a
communal chat, or to seal yourself off in private for a one-on-one conversation
where no one could listen in. I waited
for the computer to tell me where she was on Band F.
"Channel 27," my computer
replied. "Single user."
"Channel 27, private,
ephemeral." As I shut the
electronic door behind us, I was suddenly dying to learn more about Janet. I felt almost like a teenager on his first
date. Stupid, I knew. She was a total stranger. But it had been years since I had even talked
to a woman, except for the purpose of article research or business. I leaned closer to the microphone, waiting.
Her reply was immediate. "Hi, Tom. I'm glad you could join me. I checked your résumé and realized I sort of
know you already. I've used some of your
stuff out of the online library. But
hey, before we get started, may I offer you something? I was thinking that if you're using a speech
system, I probably sound like a real robot.
The Internet Phone is too staticky for my tastes, so would you like me to
transfer a speech program I have? It's
ready to send and has a digital sampling of my voice built in. It will work with most current
synthesizers. Compressed, it's about two
gigs and opens up to about a fourteen.
Do you have room and time? It
won't take long to transfer since you're on a cable modem, and I think you'll
like it."
"Sure." I was curious, and she had been right. It didn't take long to download, virus-check,
name, and file, and then I ran it. After
I let her know that I was done, a new voice spoke up.
"Hi, Tom. Now you're pretty much listening to
'me'. How do you like it?"
I sat back in surprise. This new voice sounded so... alive! It had a richness and inflection range to it
that was incredibly real. No wonder it
was such a large file. Suddenly I was
intensely conscious of sitting in front of my computer dressed only in boxer
shorts and a t-shirt.
"Janet, I'm impressed! Did you write this? It damn sure isn't on the market or I would
know about it. It's incredible!"
"Thank you." She actually sounded modestly
embarrassed. "I try my best. I used to work as a programmer, but the
company was taken over by a Japanese conglomerate, and I sort of got lost in
the shuffle. So, since I was okay
financially thanks to an inheritance, I quit and went into adaptive tech
consulting and worked on developing this program, aiming to sell it later. I got interested in adaptive tech because a
friend of mine is in a wheelchair. A
quad because of a car accident."
There was an awkward silence, but after a
minute, Janet spoke up again.
"Speaking of qualifications, you
have a pretty impressive résumé yourself, you know. Three fiction books, and
recently two dozen major articles on adaptive technologies. I've read all of your work and it's
good."
"Well, thanks, but it's not that
impressive. One of those books was
self-published, and everyone knows how many of those wind up on the New York
Times Best Seller list."
"The second book went through three
printings," Janet pointed out.
"And the third one is selling well."
I felt my face burning. If I had been a puppy I would have been
wriggling in delight over the ego-stroking.
I suddenly wondered what Janet 'looked' like. She sounded a lot like an occupational
therapist I had met while in the hospital after my accident, and whom I had
dated for a while after I had been discharged.
It had been difficult to get around in a suddenly invisible and hostile
world -- not that I had been a very gracious student. Even when I had finally forced myself to try
to meet someone, I had blown it.
It had been too soon. Patricia had broken things off after a short
while because I had still been too bitter and angry to appreciate her patience
and caring. But I would never forget
that one magic night when I used my hands and face to try to 'see' her.
The memory threatened to overwhelm me,
and I forced it down.
"Tom, are you okay?" I could have sworn I could hear concern in
the synthetic voice. "You haven't
said anything for a little while. I know
this isn't quite as good as real talk -- though depending on where you are,
it's sure cheaper -- but you were taking so long that I was wondering if you
were still with me."
"I'm sorry, Janet, I was just...
day-dreaming a bit." I felt my face
burn as I realized how her voice had affected me. I wished again that I knew what she looked
like.
"Let me guess, you haven't been
blind all your life, and you were wondering what I looked like?"
I sat up.
"How did you ‑‑"
"Relax. It's happened before. You're not the first man to get this program
as a test, and I know it's good. I
busted my ass on it for over a year.
I've gotten a number of veiled, or not so veiled, attempts at finding
out what I look like. Kind of
flattering, depending on the approach."
She actually laughed. "You
like that laugh? I have subroutines I
can trigger from my end that activate various non-speech vocalizations."
"Wow!" I shook my head. "I hope you have this program
patented! Are you going to market
it?"
A laugh again, a little different. So real!
Then she answered simply: "Thank you, you bet your ass, and
yes. I just sold distribution rights to
it and it should be out commercially in a month or so. The program also has generic male and female
voices that you can toggle in if you don't have a sample. Pull up the 'readme' file once you log off,
you'll see a list of control codes you can use to add emotional intonations and
effects that others can hear -- provided they have the same program. I suppose I should mention that. The program has to be installed on both ends." A sly laugh bubbled out of the speaker. "You see, you've just been drafted as a
salesman. Anyone you want to talk this
realistically to has to have my program.
And they have to buy it. Only I
can upload it to others. The protection
is built in."
I chuckled. "Well, consider me a happily recruited
member of your sales force. This program
is dynamite."
"Thanks... Look Tom, to change the subject: I hope you won't think I'm prying, but I was
curious about something. I gather I was
right in that you were blinded later in life.
When? What happened?"
"In '98. It was an accident. A tractor-trailer rammed me. I was in the hospital so long that I almost
feel naked without some plaster on me."
I forced myself to joke about it.
Too much of the old self-pity was lurking in the back of my mind, just
waiting for a chance to pop out.
"The blindness was the result of damage to both the eyes and the
optic nerve. A piece of metal tried to
go through my skull but only managed to go partway." Phantom pain lanced my brain briefly. "Not the best part of my life. I was a real PIA for a while... but that's
over and done with."
I wanted to change the subject. "What about you? What makes you tick?"
She didn't respond for a moment, and
then, "I'm a loner, too, because of my job. I'm online a lot, as you may have noticed,
because I move around so much. I never
really get a chance to make friends in the real world. But at least online I can interact with a
consistent group of people. As long as I
have a phone line and a reasonably local access number, I can log on from
anywhere and talk to people who are friends even if I've never met them. Which... sometimes can be comforting. There's a lot of security in the anonymity of
the online world."
"That sounds familiar!"
Her turn to change the subject.
"Tom, I just got a mail flag and I'm
expecting an important message from a client, so I've got to run. Can we talk again? And, would you mind sending me a digital
sample of your voice? Then I can modify
a speech file on my end so I can hear your voice when we talk next time. It'll be a lot nicer than reading emotionless
words on a screen or listening to a totally false voice."
"Sure."
"Great. Check with me tomorrow sometime. Bye."
"Bye... command quit
chat." I realized she had slipped
away without giving me a description, or much else, of herself. I leaned forward, deciding that it was time
to get some help.
"E-Mail to megabelch." The name still made me smile -- a little
self-mocking tribute to his fondness for beer.
"Subject?"
"Need help -- confidential!!!"
"Enter text."
"Greetings, Paul. I want to track down info on one of the
subscribers, Janet Starling, netname ephemeral.
I know you and your hacker friends.
It's nothing nasty or illegal.
I'm just curious. Can you try to
get some more bio-stuff on her for me?"
I sent the message and then logged off
for the day after uploading a speech sample of my voice to Janet's
mailbox. It would take Paul a while to track
her down, once he got the message. I
didn't know why I was suddenly getting so damn nosy, but it was weird. I felt connected to Janet somehow. Not just the voice, though that alone was
enough to really dig into my gut and grab me, but there was also something else
that I couldn't put my finger on. She
was hiding something. What was it?
I got up and went over to the window,
opening it to lean out a little. It was
early afternoon and I felt the sun warming my face. A little lighter, too. Dark and light... I could still see that
much. Just no more. Janet's voice rang in my ears and I
wondered. What do you... feel like,
Janet? Who are you?
I pulled back in and whistled. Gwynemere came running and bumped my legs
enthusiastically to release a familiar doggy smell. I rubbed her ears.
"Get the harness, walk."
She disappeared and after a moment
returned and sat down on my right while I reached down to get the harness that
she carried in her mouth.
"Good girl." I petted her for a minute and then slipped on
her harness. I could almost feel her
switch from dog-mode to guide-mode as I headed for the door. All at once, I needed to leave the apartment. To hear, smell and feel the world outside.
* * *
The next evening I logged on again. I had spent the day finishing the requested
rewrite on a short story. The editor had
liked the piece and thought I was making a smooth transition from articles to
fiction, but she had suggested trimming the first part a bit. "Too wordy and slow," had been her
comment. So I had cut a couple of
thousand words, and realized that she had been right. But with that out of the way, I thought I'd
check to see if Paul had turned up anything on Janet, yet.
Sure enough, no sooner had I logged on
than I found that there was a message waiting from him.
"Where did you find this
one?" The computer began to spit
out Paul's letter in a deep and life-like baritone. I had picked the male voice for Janet's
program this time and added in a speech sampling of Paul's voice I used when
'talking' to him. The difference was
amazing -- it sounded so real. Like him,
even without him having the program.
"She's a winner," he stated,
"but a little strange. I tracked
her down through her billing and credit information. I found out a few things, but there are some
weird gaps. Like a home address. She's active in the stock-market and does
on-line consulting, but everything is handled through a mail-drop address in
"And before you ask," he went
on, the address on the license is no good anymore. It's now a small deli. As for personal stuff, she was born in '63,
so she's only a couple of years older than you.
More than that will take time and more work. Let me know if you need it. Well, that's it for now. Let me know what happens. And you owe me many beers and a dinner the
next time I'm in
I downloaded the attachment and printed
her picture, figuring I'd get Bill Maxwell from next door to describe her to
me, and then deleted the letter.
I reached down to scratch Gwenny behind
the ears. She had flopped next to me as
usual. I felt her get up into a sitting
position and heard her pant as she dropped her head onto my knee. She sensed a chance to sucker me for a
dog-biscuit, and I laughed, grabbing one from the box that I kept in a drawer
of my desk.
"Okay, honey. Here."
She dropped back to the floor and crunched away happily. "So," I asked her, "how would
you feel about taking a trip?"
Nothing.
She had more important things on her mind. But I was a bit scared. I had not been away from
It was stupid.
What guarantee was there that she hadn't
just picked
*
* *
"...and in school I really got left
out of the social stuff," Janet said, her voice low and intimate-sounding
in the earphones. I didn't feel like
sharing her with the other passengers on the plane. "I was a girl with brains who asked
questions. And to make it worse, I
wasn't ugly, so a lot of the other girls didn't want me around, and the guys
would start by trying to hit on me, and then they ran scared because I was
bright... God, I sound so conceited!"
She laughed.
"Nothing wrong with being
honest," I typed quickly to keep our privacy, and I felt my fingers almost
caress the keys. I had a mental image in
my mind now.
Bill had come over the day after I had
gotten Janet's license picture from Paul, and he had looked over the color
laser printout with a soft, admiring whistle.
"Man, she's a stone fox. I'd love to meet her myself!" I had heard him drop onto my couch and study
the picture. "I'll start with the
basics. Dark brown hair, straight and
short, cut kinda' funky. Not punk, but...
styled-like. Looks good on her. The eyes are hard to tell though the license
says brown. But they're pretty eyes. Big.
Slim nose, full lips and high cheek-bones. It looks as if she might have some Eurasian
blood, but just a hint. The mouth
though. That's the grabber, man. Most of these pictures look like mug shots,
but she looks real natural, and she's got a killer smile, let me tell you. Wicked and sweet, all at once."
Brains and beauty. No wonder she had had a hard time in
school. Ironically, that had scared me
more than leaving home, and it had taken two more days to get up the nerve to
get a plane ticket and hotel reservations in Philadelphia. But a few more increasingly personal
conversations with her had convinced me:
I had to find her. So I had
finally bundled up my things and made arrangements for the flight.
I felt my ears pop and realized that we
were coming in for a landing.
"Will all passengers please
terminate all airphone calls and computing for our approach to
"I've got to go, Janet." I felt a surge of guilt wash over me as keyed
the words in. I had not told her what I
was doing, obviously, and for a moment I debated whether or not to tell
her. But I sensed a looming presence
next to me and caught the hint of perfume I had learned to associate with the
stewardess for this part of the plane. I
turned and tilted my head.
"I'm turning it off now," I
promised her as I logged off and closed up the computer, hearing the hard disk
spin down.
* * *
A long, expensive cab-ride later I
settled down in my hotel to review what I had learned. Janet's mail-drop address was an apartment
building up at 18th and Pine streets and consisted of a locked and silent
apartment and a larger than normal mail-box in the lobby. A neighbor had confirmed that the apartment
was empty except for Mondays and Tuesdays, when a young African-American woman
would come to collect the mail and let herself into the apartment rented under
Janet's name. Then, for most of Monday
and Tuesday, she would lock herself in the apartment, only coming out
occasionally.
I had a feeling I knew what she was
doing. I was willing to bet that there
was a computer, scanner, and modem in that apartment, and that on Mondays and
Tuesdays she was scanning all of Janet's mail into the computer. But why?
E-mailing it elsewhere?
I intended to ask that myself, on
Monday. But it was only Saturday. First I had something else to do. I had stopped at the phone company and
checked out some phone books going back several years. I had used my Porta-Scanner to go through the
S's, looking for Janet. And I had found
her. In '97 and earlier. At the same address as on her driver's
license. But nothing since '97... the
year of my acccident.
Five years ago.
I sat on the bed, thinking. Gwenny was flopped on the floor, draped over
my feet and snoring slightly, an occasional whine escaping as her feet twitched
from chasing something in her sleep.
I also felt like I was chasing an unseen
prey because Janet's house was indeed a
deli now. A phone call had confirmed
that it had been converted in the end of '97,
I took a sip from the bottle of juice I
had picked up.
Okay, she was a traveling consultant and
didn't need a home much. But no current
driver's license, either? That didn't
make sense unless she was cab and airline dependent. I needed some more answers.
I got up, startling Gwenny who rolled
over with a yip and then bumped me with the harness. She knew I was going out again and I laughed
as I put the leather straps on and headed back down towards the hotel lobby to
grab a cab. There had to be a few people
around Janet's old neighborhood who might remember her. I needed to find them and see what they
knew. Maybe they knew where she had gone
to.
*
* *
"Yea, sure I recognize her," a
hoarse smoker's voice stated positively as the now-worn picture of Janet was pushed
back into my hands. I could smell the
distinctive odor of strong tobacco hanging around the old man. Dave Meyers was an ex-neighbor of Janet's
whom I had found out trimming his hedges.
"Lived around here almost all her
life," he went on. "Bright girl. Cute, too.
Shame what happened."
As he spoke, I suddenly I remembered
Janet's 'friend', the quad, and Janet's interest in computers that interfaced
as much as possible with the user. I
froze, almost choking Gwenny as I had a new thought. What if there was no 'friend" and Janet
had been speaking about herself? What if
she wasn't a "traveling software consultant" at all, but a
quadriplegic trapped in some institution by her disability and using the
electronic net as her window on the world?
For her, a speech computer system would be as vital as to me. I couldn't see the screen. She couldn't use the keyboard.
It made sense.
I stroked Gwenny to apologize for jerking
her around, and then turned back to Meyers.
"The car accident?" I guessed.
"You know about it? I thought you said you didn't know what
happened to her." Suddenly his
voice was hostile and suspicious.
"I didn't know for sure. I only heard rumors." I tried to placate him even as I shook my
head sadly. I had been right. "Do you know where she is now?"
Silence.
"Please, I pressed. "I really care about her. She knows me and ‑‑"
"All right," he cut me off
brusquely. "Come back tomorrow and
I'll take you to see her. She's right
nearby and I've been meaning to visit."
I heard him turn and crunch away across
the gravel path and then heard his steps echo on a wooden porch about twenty
feet away. Gwenny whined briefly. I knew the sound. Obviously the man was giving off some major
angry vibes. I wondered what his problem
was. Was he going to go to warn her that
I was snooping around?
"Hey you!" I heard him call as
a screen door creaked open. I turned to
him. "Dress nice." The door slammed shut.
"Okay," I said to the empty
porch. He was gone, I was sure.
That night I didn't log on at all. I didn't want to talk to Janet. Was I afraid she might have found out about
my snooping and might be angry? If she
was a hot-shot consultant, I could understand her wanting some privacy. She might be afraid of loosing clients.
I also realized something else,
though. I had been hiding from the world
on the net and here she was: doing the
same. Coming here to find her had
finally shaken me loose. It was only
fair that I tried to do the same for her.
Still, how would she feel about me coming
here? I didn't know. I know I would have resented someone trying
to tell me I was hiding. What if I drove
her away? I was really starting to feel
close to her... the first time I had felt close to anyone in a long time. And now it turned out she was a quad. I thought about that and wondered how I would
handle someone else's disability if I got close to them.
I dug my hands into the scruff of
Gwenny's neck fur. She knew I was
feeling a little confused, because she jumped up on the bed and curled up next
to me hesitantly. I normally didn't let
her on the furniture, but at the moment I was grateful and let it go, leaning
down to hug her.
*
* *
The next morning I was back at Meyers'
house and knocked on the door. It opened
immediately and let loose a cloud of smoke as he came out.
"Let's go," he said gruffly and
grabbed my arm lightly to lead the way out to the sidewalk and down the
street. Gwenny growled lightly at first
but I shushed her and followed, straightening my tie self-consciously.
After a long walk, he stopped, and I
heard a metal gate swing open. I heard
birds and the wind in tree branches above.
He led me on, and suddenly I was walking on a lawn for a few feet until
he stopped me.
"In front of you. Reach out, about waist high."
I did as he asked and my fingers touched
cold, rough stone. A numb, confused fear
overwhelmed me as I ran my hands over the hard surface.
"Can you read an inscription?"
Meyers asked. His voice different all at
once. Hushed. Sad.
I nodded and moved my fingers down as I
realized what it was that I was touching.
A tombstone. Tears were burning
my eyes. There... letters. I moved my fingers over to the left, and then
traced the few simple lines of the inscription slowly:
Janet Starling
January 4, 1962 to March 7, 1997
I dropped to the ground, leaning against
the side of the stone; angry and confused.
The dew-wet grass beneath soaked my pants and the roughness of the stone
behind me was uncomfortable, but somehow that helped. After a while, I shifted.
"What happened?" I couldn't place Meyers' position, but I
didn't care.
A shadow fell over me as he blocked the
sun by stepping in front of me.
"The car accident. You said
you knew about it."
"But I didn't think it had killed
her!"
"It didn't. She was paralyzed from the neck down. She lived for almost a year in the
hospital. She finally died because of
injuries to her heart during the accident.
She was a poor transplant risk and they couldn't get a good matching
heart." A hand touched my
shoulder. "I'm sorry. You really do care." I heard him turn away.
Gwenny's wet and cold nose poked my face
sympathetically.
But I had just talked to her a couple of
days earlier! What the hell was going
on? My hands clenched, ripping out the
grass on either side of me as I sat there, trying to digest what my hands had
told me. After a long time, I got up and
grabbed Gwenny's harness, urging her towards the street. I guessed Meyers was long gone.
"You leavin' so quick?" His raspy voice startled me.
"Yes, I need to check on
something." I reached out in his
general direction, and felt a leathery hand join mine so I could shake it. "Thank you, Mr. Meyers. Really.
Could you flag me a cab, or call one, so I can get back to my
hotel?"
*
* *
I sat numbly at the small desk in the
hotel room. My computer was open and
booted, ready for me to log on and call Janet, but I was afraid. What was I going to say?
'Hi, how are you doing? By the way, I visited your grave today. Is there anything you maybe left out of your
résumé?'
Gwenny was perched uneasily on the edge
of the bed, shifting back and forth. She
knew how I felt, and it bothered her.
Finally I reached out and opened my
conference program.
I typed deliberately, to give me
time. "Who is online?"
"Adman," my computer's soft
voice responded, "asgard, bilbo, chaste, eetee, ephemeral ‑‑"
I cut it off. "Where ephemeral?"
"Chat, Band A, Channel 1."
"Private message to ephemeral."
"Enter text."
"Janet, please join me on Band F for
a private chat. Try channel
40." The last band and channel were
almost never used, and today was no exception, even if it was Sunday.
I waited.
It didn't take long. "Hi, Tom. I missed you yesterday. What's up?"
"Where are you?" I keyed the remote 'terse' command so she
would hear me sounding uptight.
For a long while there was no reply, and
then, "where are you?" Sad
tone.
"Philly."
"So you know."
"Mr. Meyers showed me a grave with
your name. Who's in it?"
"I am... well, my body is."
"What the hell are you talking
about?" I felt light-headed.
"You read my résumé. 'I've come to believe in an after-life that
is a bit different from what my Catholic school upbringing taught me, although
I don't buy all the mystical trappings of a lot of the literature.'" she
quoted herself roughly.
"Remember? Well, that pretty
much sums it up. I don't know what else
there might be after death, but I know that when I died, I was online. I've accessed the autopsy records in the
hospital computer, and apparently my death was extremely sudden and as near as
I can figure, my 'soul', 'essence', whatever you want to call it, got trapped
in the electronic online world. It was
already the most important thing in my life.
I was online almost every waking moment.
I had started the consulting business through my connections on the Web
and kept it going through E-Mail, and I was hooked into my bank and various
other databases, too. Of course at
first, I was typing letter by letter with an electronic head mouse and a
virtual keyboard. It didn't matter
online, except here in chat where I was too slow."
I felt almost dizzy as I realized that I
was talking... to a ghost? What could I call
it... her? "How did you keep
business going after you died?" I wondered and heard a cynical laugh.
"So what? I was already hooked into my bank and
lawyer's office. My parents died in a
plane crash the year before my own accident, and I had no other family and no
one was really notified of my death. As
long as I continued paying my bills and kept up correspondence, who cared that
I wasn't alive?"
"I guess you've got a
point." This was crazy! I typed hesitantly, "What does it
feel ‑‑"
"What does it feel like to be
dead?" she cut me off before I could even send my question. "And in case you wonder how I can
interrupt you when you haven't sent your message yet, the answer to that answers
your other question, too. It's as if I'm
everywhere at once. In every conference,
every topic, and in every program listing, all at once. And if I call my bank, I'm in the bank
computer, too. It's all connected. I focus on whatever catches my attention and
the rest just sort of becomes background noise.
I can even sense your input, because as you speak or type, it's online
in a buffer on your computer, even before it's actually 'sent'. It's a heady feeling of power and knowledge. The online world is seductive enough
normally, but for me, it's everything.
That's okay..." Suddenly she
sounded doubtful. "Most of the
time. But now... I periodically get this
sense that there is 'something' else out there and that I should let go, but
I'm afraid."
And it showed in her voice. Damn!
Her program was good.
"So that's why you're interested in
all the books on the afterlife and such.
You're trying to understand what's next?"
"Exactly. If I let go, I don't know if I'll just
dissipate, or if I'll transmigrate, get reincarnated, meet God, or what? I'm terrified! I'm not ready."
I leaned forward, a sense of loss growing
in my gut. A quad I might have been able
to handle. A living, breathing
woman. But this? My eyes were burning as I asked, "you
said you 'feel' something waiting? What
do you mean?"
"I don't know. It's as if there is something just out of
sight that I should be able to see, but every time I try to turn to get a look
at it, it's gone. It's starting to piss
me off! I feel like I'm on the brink of
answering questions humanity has been asking for thousands of years, but I'm
not allowed to look."
"Not allowed to look, or not allowed
to look and spill the beans?" I
tried to inject some humor by toggling 'tease'.
As much to try distract myself, as her.
"Maybe that's it," she answered
after a moment. "I'm so used to
recognition and being able to influence people that I can't stand the idea of
being this close to something important, and then not being able to share
it."
"Or take credit for the
discovery," I added. "That makes
sense."
"And I've been hiding."
My turn to be silent. That hit a little close to home.
She seemed to be psychic. "Sort of like you... Sorry to seem critical. I guess that I've been wondering about you
over the past few days. I've checked you
out, too, and between the time you spend online and undoubtedly hunched
over the computer, writing, you probably have less of a social life than I
do! And there's nothing wrong with
you. We're both hiding, you know." There was a pause. "Tell me something, why did you come
looking for me?"
Ouch.
Well, she had probably guessed.
"I wanted to meet you. We
really seemed to hit it off and I... I just wanted to meet you," I
finished weakly.
"And I wanted to meet you," she
admitted after a moment. "For the
first time, I miss not being alive. Even
as a quad, I had more life than I do now.
I never realized it before."
She was silent for a long time and I
sensed that she needed to think. But
finally she said, softly, "maybe ‑‑"
"Maybe what?" Suddenly I was scared.
"Maybe it's time to let go?"
NO! But I couldn't say it. She wasn't the only one to come to that
realization. A cold wet nose pressed
against my hand and I bent down to hug Gwenny tight.
"Yes, I think maybe it
is." Her voice was sad, yet somehow
expectant... curious as she added, after a long pause: "Goodbye Tom. I'll miss you."
"And I you." What else could I say without making it more
difficult for her? "Good bye,
Janet."
There was a faint buzz from the speaker,
and then, silence. Just that quickly,
she was gone.
I logged off, feeling numb. Finally, I shook myself and turned off the
computer resolutely as I reached down for Gwenny again. For a long time I just sat like that; bent
over and hugging her tight. Then I let
go and stood up.
"Come on, baby. Let's go for a walk. It's a nice day and there's all sorts of
people out there to meet, and things to do.
Maybe we can start by getting some flowers and making a stop at Janet's
grave?"
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