The eminence grise began to ascend into the sky. Do not despise him, he said and seemed to look directly at Anne. I have counted you and we shall not lose any of you. I will visit those who have not yet been tested. Meanwhile, you will await midnight in a proto-Simopolis.
“Wait,” said the elderly Benjamin (and Anne’s heart echoed him — Wait). “I have one more thing to add. Legally, you’re all still my property till midnight. I must admit I’m tempted to do what so many of my friends have already done, fry the lot of you. But I won’t. That wouldn’t be me.” His voice cracked and Anne considered looking at him, but the eminence grise was slipping away. “So I have one small request,” the Benjamin continued. “Years from now, while you’re enjoying your new lives in your Simopolis, remember an old man, and call occasionally.”
When the eminence finally faded from sight, Anne was released from her fascination. All at once, her earlier feelings of unease rebounded with twice their force, and she felt wretched.
“Simopolis,” said Benjamin, her Benjamin. “I like the sound of that!” The sims around them began to flicker and disappear.
“How long have we been in storage?” she said.
“Let’s see,” said Benjamin, “if tomorrow starts 2198, that would make it…”
“That’s not what I mean. I want to know why they shelved us for so long.”
“Well, I suppose…”
“And where are the other Annes? Why am I the only Anne here? And who are all those pissy-looking women?” But she was speaking to no one, for Benjamin, too, vanished, and Anne was left alone in the auditorium with the clownishly dressed old Benjamin and a half-dozen of his earliest sims. Not true sims, Anne soon realized, but old-style hologram loops, preschool Bennys mugging for the camera and waving endlessly. These vanished. The old man was studying her, his mouth slightly agape, the kerchief trembling in his hand.
“I remember you,” he said. “Oh, how I remember you!”
Anne began to reply but found herself all at once back in the townhouse living room with Benjamin. Everything there was as it had been, yet the room appeared different, more solid, the colors richer. There was a knock, and Benjamin went to the door. Tentatively, he touched the knob, found it solid, and turned it. But when he opened the door, there was nothing there, only the default grid. Again a knock, this time from behind the wall. “Come in,” he shouted, and a dozen Benjamins came through the wall, two dozen, three. They were all older than Benjamin, and they crowded around him and Anne. “Welcome, welcome,” Benjamin said, his arms open wide.
“We tried to call,” said an elderly Benjamin, “but this old binary simulacrum of yours is a stand-alone.”
“You’re lucky Simopolis knows how to run it at all,” said another.
“Here,” said yet another, who fashioned a dinner-plate-size disk out of thin air and fastened it to the wall next to the door. It was a blue medallion of a small bald face in bas-relief. “It should do until we get you properly modernized.” The blue face yawned and opened tiny, beady eyes. “It flunked the Lolly test,” continued the Benjamin, “so you’re free to copy it or delete it or do whatever you want.”
The medallion searched the crowd until it saw Anne. Then it said, “There are 336 calls on hold for you. Four hundred twelve calls. Four hundred sixty-three.”
“So many?” said Anne.
“Cast a proxy to handle them, “said her Benjamin.
“He thinks he’s still human and can cast proxies whenever he likes,” said a Benjamin.
“Not even humans will be allowed to cast proxies soon,” said another.
“There are 619 calls on hold,” said the medallion. “Seven-hundred three.”
“For pity sake,” a Benjamin told the medallion, “take messages.”
Anne noticed that the crowd of Benjamins seemed to nudge her Benjamin out of the way so that they could stand near her. But she derived no pleasure from their attention. Her mood no longer matched the wedding gown she still wore. She felt low. She felt, in fact, as low as she’d ever felt.
“Tell us about this Lolly test,” said Benjamin.
“Can’t,” replied a Benjamin.
“Sure you can. We’re family here.”
“No, we can’t,” said another, “because we don’t remember it. They smudge the test from your memory afterward.”
“But don’t worry, you’ll do fine,” said another. “No Benjamin has ever failed.”
“What about me?” said Anne. “How do the Annes do?”
There was an embarrassed silence. Finally the senior Benjamin in the room said, “We came to escort you both to the Clubhouse.”
“That’s what we call it, the Clubhouse,” said another.
“The Ben Club,” said a third. “It’s already in proto-Simopolis.”
“If you’re a Ben, or were ever espoused to a Ben, you’re a charter member.”
“Just follow us,” they said, and all the Benjamins but hers vanished, only to reappear a moment later. “Sorry, you don’t know how, do you? No matter, just do what we’re doing.”
Anne watched, but didn’t see that they were doing anything.
“Watch my editor,” said a Benjamin. “Oh, they don’t have editors!”
“That came much later,” said another, “with bioelectric paste.”
“We’ll have to adapt editors for them.”
“Is that possible? They’re digital, you know.”
“Can digitals even enter Simopolis?”
“Someone, consult the Netwad.”
“This is running inside a shell,” said a Benjamin, indicating the whole room. “Maybe we can collapse it.”
“Let me try,” said another.
“Don’t you dare,” said a female voice, and a woman Anne recognized from the lecture hall came through the wall. “Play with your new Ben if you must, but leave Anne alone.” The woman approached Anne and took her hands in hers. “Hello, Anne. I’m Mattie St. Helene, and I’m thrilled to finally meet you. You, too,” she said to Benjamin. “My, my, you were a pretty boy!” She stooped to pick up Anne’s clutch bouquet from the floor and gave it to her. “Anyway, I’m putting together a sort of mutual aid society for the spousal companions of Ben Malley. You being the first — and the only one he actually married — are especially welcome. Do join us.”