“Ask me something only I would know.”
You say this to your wife because you know you’re human. You can feel it in the familiar ache in your back, and the fear writhing in your guts. You feel it in the cold seeping into your bare feet from the kitchen floor. You know you’re real because you remember.
In the primary memory i carry, it is June 29, 1993 and, I, Beston Barnett, am nineteen years old. I am lying in my sleeping bag on the ground beside River Road, eleven kilometers northeast of Moab, Utah, USA, Earth, Solar System, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster. A woman is there beside me in her own sleeping bag. Her name is Ann Surmelian, and she is two years older than me. We are listening to Patsy Cline’s greatest hits.
Other students have neural implants from companies like Gigabrain or CloudMind, but as Mirae’s mother has told her at length, not all cybernetic companies are created equal.
“Dónde estámos?” Mateo asks, wiping the wetness out of his hair. We’re both sopping wet. Charcos may get you there fast, but it’s not the cleanest way to travel.
The open sea seemed empty since forever, even if the holomaps and nanocompasses indicated the presence of the continent over there, behind the last waves.
Another escape pod of a stellar wreck. Different, older, but human-made, of an unusual yellow color. Its thrusters were working and it was closing in on yours.
We looked out over the water, Saga and I. The surface was grey and a little agitated, as if the lake itself felt unsettled by the eerie green of the sky and the dark winged things wheeling in the distance. It could be anxious for both of us, then. I was reeling hard enough from having Saga here, when I hadn’t seen her in the flesh for nearly eight months.
