“Please make her stop,” the sim implored.
“Next,” said Anne. The next file was High School Graduation. “Delete file. Next.” The next was labeled only Mama.
“Anne,” said Ben, “why don’t we come back to this later. The house says dinner’s ready.”
She didn’t respond.
“You must be famished after your busy day,” he continued. “I know I am.”
“Then please go eat, dear,” she replied. To the room she said, “Play Mama.”
The media room was overlaid by a gloomy bedroom that Ben at first mistook for their own. He recognized much of the heavy Georgian furniture, the sprawling canopied bed in which he felt so claustrophobic, and the voluminous damask curtains, shut now and leaking yellow evening light. But this was not their bedroom, the arrangement was wrong.
In the corner stood two placeholders, mute statues of a teenaged Anne and her father, grief frozen on their faces as they peered down at a couch draped with tapestry and piled high with down comforters. And suddenly Ben knew what this was. It was Anne’s mother’s deathbed sim. Geraldine, whom he’d never met in life nor holo. Her bald eggshell skull lay weightless on feather pillows in silk covers. They had meant to cast her farewell and accidentally caught her at the precise moment of her death. He had heard of this sim from Cathy and others. It was not one he would have kept.
Suddenly, the old woman on the couch sighed, and all the breath went out of her in a bubbly gush. Both Annes, the graduate and the naked one, waited expectantly. For long moments the only sound was the tocking of a clock that Ben recognized as the Seth Thomas clock currently located on the library mantel. Finally there was a cough, a hacking cough with scant strength behind it, and a groan, “Am I back?”
“Yes, Mother,” said Anne.
“And I’m still a sim?”
“Yes.”
“Please delete me.”
“Yes, Mother,” Anne said, and turned to Ben. “We’ve always thought she had a bad death and hoped it might improve over time.”
“That’s crazy,” snapped the young Anne. “That’s not why I kept this sim.”
“Oh, no?” said Anne. “Then why did you keep it?” But the young sim seemed confused and couldn’t articulate her thoughts. “You don’t know because I didn’t know at the time either,” said Anne. “But I know now, so I’ll tell you. You’re fascinated with death. It scares you silly. You wish someone would tell you what’s on the other side. So you’ve enlisted your own sweet mama.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Anne turned to the deathbed tableau. “Mother, tell us what you saw there.”
“I saw nothing,” came the bitter reply. “You cast me without my eyeglasses.”
“Ho ho,” said Anne. “Geraldine was nothing if not comedie.”
“You also cast me wretchedly thirsty, cold, and with a bursting bladder, damn you! And the pain! I beg you, daughter, delete me.”
“I will, Mother, I promise, but first you have to tell us what you saw.”
“That’s what you said the last time.”
“This time I mean it.”
The old woman only stared, her breathing growing shallow and ragged. “All right, Mother,” said Anne. “I swear I’ll delete you.”
Geraldine closed her eyes and whispered, “What’s that smell? That’s not me?” After a pause she said, “It’s heavy. Get it off.” Her voice rose in panic. “Please! Get it off!” She plucked at her covers, then her hand grew slack, and she all but crooned, “Oh, how lovely. A pony. A tiny dappled pony.” After that she spoke no more and slipped away with a last bubbly breath.
Anne paused the sim before her mother could return for another round of dying. “See what I mean?” she said. “Not very uplifting, but all in all, I detect a slight improvement. What about you, Anne? Should we settle for a pony?” The young sim stared dumbly at Anne. “Personally,” Anne continued, “I think we should hold out for the bright tunnel or an open door or bridge over troubled water. What do you think, sister?” When the girl didn’t answer, Anne said, “Lock file and eject.” The room turned once again into the media room, and Anne placed the ejected chip by itself into a tray. “We’ll have another go at it later, mum. As for the rest of these, who needs them?”
“I do,” snapped the girl. “They belong to me as much as to you. They’re my sim sisters. I’ll keep them until you recover.”
Anne smiled at Ben. “That’s charming. Isn’t that charming, Benjamin? My own sim is solicitous of me. Well, here’s my considered response. Next file! Delete! Next file! Delete! Next file!” One by one, the files blinked out.
“Stop it!” screamed the girl. “Make her stop it!”
“Select that file,” Anne said, pointing at the young Anne. “Delete.” The sim vanished, cap, gown, tassels, and all. “Whew,” said Anne, “at least now I can hear myself think. She was really getting on my nerves. I almost suffered a relapse. Was she getting on your nerves, too, dear?”
“Yes,” said Ben, “my nerves are ajangle. Now can we go down and eat?”
“Yes, dear,” she said, “but first…select all files and delete.”
“Countermand!” said Ben at the same moment, but his voice held no privileges to her personal files, and the whole directory queue blinked three times and vanished. “Aw, Annie, why’d you do that?” he said. He went to the cabinet and pulled the trays that held his own chips. She couldn’t alter them electronically, but she might get it into her head to flush them down the toilet or something. He also took their common chips, the ones they’d cast together ever since they’d met. She had equal privileges to those.
Anne watched him and said, “I’m hurt that you have so little trust in me.”
“How can I trust you after that?”
“After what, darling?”
He looked at her. “Never mind,” he said, and carried the half-dozen trays to the door.
“Anyway,” said Anne, “I already cleaned those.”
“What do you mean you already cleaned them?”
“Well, I didn’t delete you. I would never delete you. Or Bobby.”
Ben picked one of their common chips at random, Childbirth of Robert Ellery Malley/02-03-48, and slipped it into the player. “Play!” he commanded, and the media room became the midwife’s birthing suite. His own sim stood next to the bed in a green smock. It wore a humorously helpless expression. It held a swaddled bundle, Bobby, who bawled lustily. The birthing bed was rumpled and stained, but empty. The new mother was missing. “Aw, Annie, you shouldn’t have.”
“I know, Benjamin,” she said. “I sincerely hated doing it.”
Ben flung their common trays to the floor where the ruined chips scattered in all directions. He stormed out of the room and down the stairs, pausing to glare at every portrait on the wall. He wondered if his proxy had found a suitable clinic yet. He wanted Anne out of the house tonight. Bobby should never see her like this. Then he remembered the chip he’d taken from Bobby and felt for it in his pocket — the Wedding Album.
The lights came backup, Anne’s thoughts coalesced, and she remembered who and what she was. She and Benjamin were still standing in front of the wall. She knew she was a sim, so at least she hadn’t been reset. Thank you for that, Anne, she thought.
She turned at a sound behind her. The refectory table vanished before her eyes, and all the gifts that had been piled on it hung suspended in midair. Then the table reappeared, one layer at a time, its frame, top, gloss coat, and lastly, the bronze hardware. The gifts vanished, and a toaster reappeared, piece by piece, from its heating elements outward. A coffee press, houseputer peripherals, component-by-component, cowlings, covers, and finally boxes, gift-wrap, ribbon, and bows. It all happened so fast Anne was too startled to catch the half of it, yet she did notice that the flat gift from Great Uncle Karl was something she’d been angling for, a Victorian era sterling platter to complete her tea service.