“Yes. I think I can.”
“And are you not appalled?” she mused, laying the chopsticks down on the edge of her mat, over-played surprise on her face. “It is obscene.”
“Many things are obscene — what makes this your battle?”
“Ah, I see — may I not simply have a cause? Environmentalists protest against climate change, and yet Arctic meltwaters haven’t hurt their puppies yet.”
“You won’t tell?”
“Will you tell me why you stole the Chrysalis diamonds?”
“I wanted to fuck up some spoilt rich people. I wanted them scared and humiliated. My friend — she wasn’t my friend — had Perfection, and was very alone, and I didn’t spot it, and she died, and they didn’t give a fuck and I thought… fuck them. It was a momentary lapse in my professionalism.”
“It sounds like a cause to me.”
“It wasn’t; it simply wasn’t. You won’t tell me?”
Byron picked at a piece of kimchi with the end of her chopsticks and didn’t answer.
I sat back in my chair, arms folded. The USB was between us, and for a moment I considered walking out, throwing it into the sea, see if that wiped the smile from her face.
Neither of us moved. At last I said, indicating the stick with my chin, “What will you do with the information on this?”
“Imagine.”
“No. I have spent a lot of time imagining. Sometimes fantasies need to stop.”
“I will sabotage Perfection, destroy it from within. I will show humanity that it is obscene, and no one will forget.”
I flinched, and she saw the motion, didn’t understand it, a flicker of a frown. I licked my lips, looked down and to the side, asked the floor, “Will people die?”
“Perhaps.” The USB stick between us, the base-code of Nirvana, heaven without doubt, a world without fear. Her head, tilted slightly to one side, eyebrows raised. “Is that a problem?”
“Perhaps. I think… yes.”
“To destroy Perfection, I must destroy Rafe’s ability to sell it. To prevent people seeking treatments of their own accord, the damage must be significant.”
“There are ways to achieve that which don’t involve corpses.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps not.”
Silence. I opened my mouth to say this is obscene, all of it, laughable, obscene, unworthy, we, unworthy, we ourselves unworthy, to judge, to be, to speak, a killer and a thief, ridiculous, of course, simply ridiculous.
No words came.
Instead, our hostess. Ceramic bowls full of broth and noodle, cabbage and strips of fried tripe, fish balls and, of course, more kimchi, to burn the taste away.
Byron was good with chopsticks. Held the bowl up with both hands to blow steam away from the surface. Slurped down soup, no need for spoons.
I said, “Can you replicate the treatments?”
“If this contains all of Tokyo’s data? Yes.”
“Can you strip out Rafe’s programming?”
“Why?”
“There are parts of Filipa’s design that deserve to survive. You said it began as speech therapy, as a treatment for depression…”
“Once you start attempting to reprogram the human brain from without, there’s no stopping it,” she retorted, harder and sharper than I think she’d meant.
“Hasn’t that always been the argument against all science? Gene therapy, retrovirals, plant modification, atomic energy…”
“From which we have the potential to cure cancer, crops that can sustain a human population in the billions, drug-resistant bacteria and the nuclear bomb,” she snapped. “I am no Luddite, but if the history of humanity has taught us anything it is that we are children, and this is not a toy we should use.”
“I think you’re wrong,” I replied. “I think there is something within Filipa’s treatments that could help me. I agree with you on practically everything you’ve said — I agree that they are obscene, and what they have become is vile. But the fundamental technology, as Filipa intended it, is neither good nor bad, merely a tool. I think it will help me become something I haven’t been for a very long time, and I need to know if you have the ability to unpack that information, or if I need to go back to Filipa to get what I need.”
Surprise, whole and true, a flash across her face. My voice had risen, our hostess was staring from across the room. Byron put the bowl down, chopsticks to one side, took a moment to gather her thoughts, at last breathed, “Do you want treatments?”
I let out a breath that had been cramping somewhere at the bottom of my stomach, and said, “Yes.”
“In the name of God, why?” Horror, indignation, incomprehension, of me, of herself. Could she think she had begun to know me and now discovered that she had been so wrong?
“Because people forget me,” I replied. “And I’ve been lonely for too long. And it was fine. I was doing fine. I had my… my rules. Run, count, walk, speak, knowledge, always, knowing things, filling up that place where… where there should be other things, things like… like work or friends or… but I was fine. I was doing fine. Because that’s what had to be done, it was… and then I saw Parker. The one and only Parker of New York, remembered the words, remembered writing them, reading them — didn’t remember him. He’s had treatments, though. And I remember him now.”
Byron, pressing her chopsticks flat together, then lifting both her hands and gently interlacing the fingers, a conscious act, a physical reminder to herself to be something, or not to be something else. Neuro-linguistic programming; a rubber band around the wrist. Swish and I am something else, swish and I am calm. She was calm; she was calmness.
Swish swish. Whatever I do, in this moment, I am terrified.
Slowly, comprehending/not comprehending, eyebrows down, lips tight: Byron, considering.
To consider: to turn over in one’s mind. To think carefully.
Does knowledge hold back tears? “Consider”, poem, Christina Rossetti, b.1830, d.1894, does knowledge drown out the place where fantasy should be, imagination, dreams of friends and love? Does breath fill the void where I should have humanity, grown and nurtured by human experience, experience of humans? Am I nothing more than this?
(Google search: perfect woman. Lips like celebrity x, hair like celebrity y, husband, car, house, diamond ring, young, white, child, maybe two — there was a time when I wanted to be perfect, nothing stood in my way because there was no one around me, behind me, with me, only myself, only my will, Nietzsche, will to power, Christianity, the triumph of weakness, words always words and thoughts and words and shut up shut up shut up!!)
Then she said, “To be forgotten is to be free, you know that, don’t you?”
Easy, an easy thing, a tiny part of a greater argument, I heard the words and my hands hit the table so hard and fast that soup sloshed over the side of her bowl, cutlery tinkled, she jumped and I screamed, “I have never been free!”
My voice, loud enough to make the hostess duck, loud enough to frighten all other noise, so that the silence, when now it came, had the room to itself, deafening.
I am my breath. I am my ragged, gasping breath. I am rage. I am my tears — when did they come? I am injustice. I am damnation. I am here, I am real, remember me, remember this, how could anyone forget? How can you look on my red eyes and my blotched face, hear my voice, and forget me? Are you even human? Am I?