Mick looked at the numbers again. They began to talk to him. He thought he knew what they meant.
“…always fucking wins,” Joe repeated.
SUNDAY
Andrea was there when they brought Mick out of the medically induced coma. He came up through layers of disorientation and half-dream, adrift until something inside him clicked into place and he realized where he had been for the last week, what had been happening to the body over which he was now regaining gradual control. It was exactly as they had promised: no dreams, no anxiety, no tangible sense of elapsed time. In a way, it was not an entirely unattractive way to spend a week. Like being in the womb, he’d heard people say. And now he was being born again, a process that was not without its own discomforts. He tried moving an arm and when the limb did not obey him instantly, he began to panic. But Joe was already smiling.
“Easy, boyo. It’s coming back. The software’s rerouting things one spinal nerve at a time. Just hold on there and it’ll be fine.”
Mick tried mumbling something in reply, but his jaw wasn’t working properly either. Yet it would come, as Joe had promised. On any given day, thousands of recipients went through this exact procedure without blinking an eyelid. Many of them were people who’d already done it hundreds of times before. Nervelinking was almost insanely safe. Far safer than any form of physical travel, that was certain.
He tried moving his arm again. This time it obeyed without hesitation.
“How are you feeling?” Andrea asked.
Once more he tried speaking. His jaw was stiff, his tongue thick and uncooperative, but he managed to make some sounds. “Okay. Felt better.”
“They say it’s easier the second time. Much easier the third.”
“How long?”
“You went under on Sunday of last week. It’s Sunday again now.” Joe said.
A full week. Exactly the way they’d planned it.
“I’m quite hungry,” Mick said.
“Everyone’s always hungry when they come out of the coma,” Joe said. It’s hard to get enough nourishment into the host body. We’ll get you sorted out, though.”
Mick turned his head to look at Joe, waiting for his eyes to find grudging focus. “Joe,” he said. “Everything’s all right, isn’t it? No complications, nothing to worry about?”
“No problems at all,” Joe said.
“Then would you mind giving Andrea and me a moment alone?”
Joe held up his hand in hasty acknowledgement and left the room, off on some plausible errand. He shut the door quietly behind him.
“Well?” Mick asked. “I’m guessing things must have gone okay, or they wouldn’t have kept me under for so long.”
“Things went okay, yes,” Andrea said.
“Then you met the other Mick? He was here?”
Andrea nodded heavily. “He was here. We spent time together.”
“What did you get up to?”
“All the usual stuff you or I would’ve done. Hit the town, walked in the parks, went into the hills, that kind of thing.”
“How was it?”
She looked at him guardedly. “Really, really sad. I didn’t really know how to behave, to be honest. Part of me wanted to be all consoling and sympathetic, because he’d lost his wife. But I don’t think that’s what Mick wanted.”
“The other Mick,” he corrected gently.
“Point is, he didn’t come back to see me being all weepy. He wanted another week with his wife, the way things used to be. Yes, he wanted to say goodbye, but he didn’t want to spend the whole week with the two of us walking around feeling down in the dumps.”
“So how did you feel?”
“Miserable. Not as miserable as if I’d lost my husband, of course. But some of his sadness started wearing off on me. I didn’t think it was going to…I’m not the one who’s been bereaved here—but you’d have to be inhuman not to feel something, wouldn’t you?”
“Whatever you felt, don’t blame yourself for it. I think it was a wonderful thing you agreed to do.”
“You, too.”
“I had the easy part,” Mick said.
Andrea stroked the side of his face. He realized that he needed a good shave. “How do you feel?” she asked. “You’re nearly him, after all. You know everything he knows.”
“Except how it feels to lose a wife. And I hope I don’t ever find that out. I don’t think I can ever really understand what he’s going through now. He feels like someone else, a friend, a colleague, someone you’d feel sorry for…”
“But you’re not cut up about what happened to him.”
Mick thought for a while before responding, not wanting to give the glib, automatic answer, no matter how comforting it might have been. “No. I wish it hadn’t happened…but you’re still here. We can still be together, if we want. We’ll carry on with our lives, and in a few months we’ll hardly ever think of that accident. The other Mick isn’t me. He isn’t even anyone we’ll ever hear from again. He’s gone. He might as well not exist.”
“But he does. Just because we can’t communicate anymore…he is still out there.”
“That’s what the theory says.” Mick narrowed his eyes. “Why? What difference does it really make, to us?”
“None at all, I suppose.” Again that guarded look. “But there’s something I have to tell you, something you have to understand.”
There was a tone in her voice that troubled Mick, but he did his best not to show it. “Go on, Andrea.”
“I made a promise to the other Mick. He’s lost something no one can ever replace, and I wanted to do something, anything, to make it easier for him. Because of that, Mick and I came to an arrangement. Once a year, I’m going to go away for a day. For that day, and that day only, I’m going somewhere private where I’m going to be thinking about the other Mick. About what he’s been doing; what kind of life he’s had; whether he’s happy or sad. And I’m going to be alone. I don’t want you to follow me, Mick. You have to promise me that.”
“You could tell me,” he said. “There doesn’t have to be secrets.”
“I’m telling you now. Don’t you think I could have kept it from you if I wanted to?”
“But I still won’t know where…”
“You don’t need to. This is a secret between me and the other Mick. Me and the other you.” She must have read something in his expression, something he had hoped wasn’t there, because her tone turned grave. “And you need to find a way to deal with that, because it isn’t negotiable. I already made that promise.”
“And Andrea Leighton doesn’t break promises.”
“No,” she said, softening her look with a sweet half-smile. “She doesn’t. Especially not to Mick Leighton. Whichever one it happens to be.”
They kissed.
Later, when Andrea was out of the room while Joe ran some more post-immersion tests, Mick peeled off a yellow Post-it note that had been left on one of the keyboards. There was something written on the note, in neat, blue ink. Instantly he recognized Andrea’s handwriting: he’d seen it often enough on the message board in their kitchen. But the writing itself—SO0122215—meant nothing to him.
“Joe,” he asked casually. “Is this something of yours?”
Joe glanced over from his desk, his eyes freezing on the small rectangle of yellow paper.
“No, that’s what Andrea asked—” Joe began, then caught himself. “Look, it’s nothing. I meant to bin it, but…”
“It’s a message to the other Mick, right?”
Joe looked around, as if Andrea might still be hiding in the room or about to reappear. “We were down to the last few usable bits. The other Mick had just sent his last words through. Andrea asked me to send that response.”