Blindsight | Page 7

me
understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black. Stars,
and--
--nothing else.
What did you expect? I chided myself. An alien mothership hanging off
the starboard bow?
Well, why not? We were out here for something.
The others were, anyway. They'd be essential no matter where we'd
ended up. But my own situation was a bit different, I realized. My

usefulness degraded with distance.
And we were over half a light year from home.
"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
--Emerson
Where was I when the lights came down?
I was emerging from the gates of Heaven, mourning a father who
was--to his own mind, at least--still alive.
It had been scarcely two months since Helen had disappeared under the
cowl. Two months by our reckoning, at least. From her perspective it
could have been a day or a decade; the Virtually Omnipotent set their
subjective clocks along with everything else.
She wasn't coming back. She would only deign to see her husband
under conditions that amounted to a slap in the face. He didn't complain.
He visited as often as she would allow: twice a week, then once. Then
every two. Their marriage decayed with the exponential determinism of
a radioactive isotope and still he sought her out, and accepted her
conditions.
On the day the lights came down, I had joined him at my mother's side.
It was a special occasion, the last time we would ever see her in the
flesh. For two months her body had lain in state along with five
hundred other new ascendants on the ward, open for viewing by the
next of kin. The interface was no more real than it would ever be, of
course; the body could not talk to us. But at least it was there, its flesh
warm, the sheets clean and straight. Helen's lower face was still visible
below the cowl, though eyes and ears were helmeted. We could touch
her. My father often did. Perhaps some distant part of her still felt it.
But eventually someone has to close the casket and dispose of the
remains. Room must be made for the new arrivals--and so we came to
this last day at my mother's side. Jim took her hand one more time. She

would still be available in her world, on her terms, but later this day the
body would be packed into storage facilities crowded far too efficiently
for flesh and blood visitors. We had been assured that the body would
remain intact--the muscles electrically exercised, the body flexed and
fed, the corpus kept ready to return to active duty should Heaven
experience some inconceivable and catastrophic meltdown. Everything
was reversible, we were told. And yet--there were so many who had
ascended, and not even the deepest catacombs go on forever. There
were rumors of dismemberment, of nonessential body parts hewn away
over time according to some optimum-packing algorithm. Perhaps
Helen would be a torso this time next year, a disembodied head the
year after. Perhaps her chassis would be stripped down to the brain
before we'd even left the building, awaiting only that final
technological breakthrough that would herald the arrival of the Great
Digital Upload.
Rumors, as I say. I personally didn't know of anyone who'd come back
after ascending, but then why would anyone want to? Not even Lucifer
left Heaven until he was pushed.
Dad might have known for sure--Dad knew more than most people,
about the things most people weren't supposed to know--but he never
told tales out of turn. Whatever he knew, he'd obviously decided its
disclosure wouldn't have changed Helen's mind. That would have been
enough for him.
We donned the hoods that served as day passes for the Unwired, and
we met my mother in the spartan visiting room she imagined for these
visits. She'd built no windows into the world she occupied, no hint of
whatever utopian environment she'd constructed for herself. She hadn't
even opted for one of the prefab visiting environments designed to
minimize dissonance among visitors. We found ourselves in a
featureless beige sphere five meters across. There was nothing in there
but her.
Maybe not so far removed from her vision of utopia after all, I thought.
My father smiled. "Helen."

"Jim." She was twenty years younger than the thing on the bed, and still
she made my skin crawl. "Siri! You came!"
She always used my name. I don't think she ever called me son.
"You're still happy here?" my father asked.
"Wonderful. I do wish you could join us."
Jim smiled. "Someone has to keep the lights on."
"Now you know this isn't goodbye," she said. "You can visit whenever
you like."
"Only if you do something about the scenery." Not just a joke,