Hellene was smiling. “Well?” she said. She just didn’t get it.
“Now it’s your turn to do something for me.”
For a flicker of an instant, she looked disappointed. But it didn’t last.
“What is it?”
“It’ll be morning soon,” I said. “I want you to come to Mass with me.”
Hellene looked at me as if I’d invited her to wallow in feces. Then she laughed. “Will I have to eat human flesh?”
It was like a breath of wind on a playing-card castle. All the emotional structures my assemblers had been putting together collapsed into nothingness. I didn’t know whether I should be glad or sad. But I knew now that I would never—could never—love this woman.
Something of this must have showed in my expression, for Hellene quickly said, “Forgive me, that was unspeakably rude.” One hand fluttered by the side of her skull. “I’ve grown so used to having a mediator that without it I simply blurt out whatever enters my head.” She unplugged the adapter and put it back in her purse. “But I don’t indulge in superstitions. Good God, what would be the point?”
“So you think religion is just a superstition?”
“It was the first thing to go, after I was optimized.”
Sophia had said much the same thing, the day of her optimization. It was an outpatient operation, in by three, out by six, no more complicated than getting your kidneys regrown. So she was still working things out when she came home. By seven, she’d seen through God, prayer, and the Catholic Church. By eight, she had discarded her plans to have children, as well as a lifelong love of music. By nine, she’d outgrown me.
Hellene cocked her head to the side in that mannered little gesture optimized businesspeople use to let you know they’ve just accessed the time. “It’s been lovely,” she said. “Thank you, you’ve been so very kind. But now if you’ll excuse me, I really must go. My children—”
“I understand.”
“I face a severe fine if I don’t see them at least twice a month. It’s happened three times so far this year, and quite frankly, my bank account can’t take it.”
On the way out, Hellene noticed the portrait of Sophia by the door. “Your wife?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“She’s exquisite.”
“Yes,” I said. “She is.” I didn’t add that I’d killed her. Nor that a panel of neuroanalysts had found me innocent by virtue of a faulty transition function, and, after minor chemical adjustments and a two-day course on anger control techniques, had released me onto the street without prejudice.
Or hope.
That was when I discovered the consolation of religion. Catholics do not believe in faulty transition functions. According to the Church, I had sinned. I had sinned, and therefore I must repent, confess, and atone.
I performed an act of true contrition, and received absolution. God has forgiven me.
Mind you, I have not forgiven myself. Still, I have hope.
Which is why I’ll never be optimized. The thought that a silicon-doped biochip could make me accept Sophia’s death as an unfortunate accident of neurochemistry and nothing more, turns my stomach.
“Goodbye,” I said.
Hellene waved a hand in the air without turning around. She disappeared in the direction of Queen Street Station. I shut the door.
From Hill Street, which runs the height of Glasgow’s Old City, you can stand at an intersection and look down on one side upon Charing Cross and on the other upon Cowcaddens. The logic of the city is laid clear there, and although the buildings are largely Victorian (save for those areas cleared by enemy bombings in World War II, which are old modern), the logic is essentially medievaclass="underline" The streets have grown as they will, in a rough sort of grid, and narrow enough that most are now fit for one-way traffic only.
But if you look beyond Cowcaddens, the ruins of the M8 Motorway cut through the city, wide and out of scale, long unused but still fringed by derelict buildings, still blighting the neighborhoods it was meant to serve. A dead road, fringed by the dead flesh of abandoned buildings.
Beyond, by the horizon, were the shimmering planes and uncertain surfaces of the buildings where the new people lived, buildings that could never have been designed without mental optimization, all tensengricity and interactive film. I’d been in those bright and fast habitats. The air sings within their perfect corridors. Nobody could deny this.
Still, I preferred the terraces and too-narrow streets and obsolete people you find in the old city. The new people don’t claim to be human, and I don’t claim that being human is any longer essential. But I cling to the human condition anyway, out of nostalgia perhaps, but also, possibly, because it contains something of genuine value.
I sat in the straight-back Charles Rennie Macintosh and stared at the icon. It was all there, if only I could comprehend it: the dark dimensions of the human mind. Such depths it holds!
Such riches.
