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Like most things he says, this isn’t plucked out of the air but based on hard data. In the 1950s a plastic surgeon called Maxwell Maltz recorded how long it took facial reconstruction patients to get used to the results of their surgery. He published his findings in a book called Psycho-Cybernetics that became one of the bibles of Tim’s industry.
For three weeks, therefore, Tim plans to stay home, helping you adjust. He starts with the simplest things, bringing you objects from the yard—a curiously shaped stone, a leaf, a bird’s wing—or reading you articles from newspapers. His pleasure when he finds something your brain has missed, like the oranges—something he can teach you—is infectious.
As if you’re a child, he limits your time online, and vets the sites you visit. Too much information at once, he believes, may be more than your new brain can handle. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality. You know you once knew who wrote that, but it’s gone. Your memories are piecemeal, dependent on what happens to have been included in the uploads Tim made before you woke up. Or booted up, as he sometimes refers to it.
Then—clunk—it comes to you, plucked from the cloud. T. S. Eliot.
For the same reason, he still won’t talk about the circumstances of your death. The closest he comes is a brief reference to the accident before clamming up. No human being has ever been in a position to recall their own annihilation before, he explains. It might be unbearably painful. Mind blowing, even.
But you suspect it’s not only for your benefit that he avoids the subject. Revisiting that period would clearly be painful for him, as well. And Tim was never one to dwell on past defeats. Now he’s got you back, he’d rather behave as if the intervening years never happened.
You try to imagine what he’s been through, what those last five years must have been like. In some ways, you realize, you had it easy. You simply died. He’s the one who suffered. You see it in the deep lines on his face, the thinning hair, the small junk-food belly that juts from his once marathon-running frame: remnants of the terrible grief and loneliness that drove him on, night after night, in the obsessive quest to create you. Already he’s hinted at near-breakdowns brought on by overwork, arguments with his investors, employees walking out. The first cobots were abject failures, apparently: million-dollar experiments that went nowhere. But he refused to give up, and around about the fifth or sixth attempt it started to come together. “But I didn’t want to make you until I’d gotten the technology right. I couldn’t bear to have you come back as some half-assed beta.”
“So what am I? A prototype?”
He shakes his head. “Much more than that. A quantum leap. A paradigm shift. And, most important, my wife.”
Sometimes he just sits and stares at you, drinking you in. As if he can’t quite believe he’s actually done it. As if he’s succeeded more than he ever thought possible. Then you smile at him, and he seems to come out of a trance. “Hey. Sorry, babe. It’s just so good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” you tell him.
And gradually, slowly, you almost come to believe it.
7
He’s tried to minimize the differences between this body and your old one, you discover. Your chest rises and falls, just as if you breathe. You shiver when it’s cold, and if it’s warm have to take off a layer of clothing. You blink, sigh, and frown in ways you can’t always control. And at night you go to a guest bedroom, so as not to disturb him, and sleep; or rather, enter a low-power mode, during which you recharge your batteries and upload more memories. Those are the best times. Somehow your dreams seem infinitely richer than the waking world.
During one of those sessions, you find yourself remembering the day after he proposed to you. You’d traveled east to the Taj Mahal, where he’d paid a fortune for a private tour without the crowds. You were in a daze of fuzzy euphoria the whole way, leaning against him in the back of the air-conditioned Mercedes, occasionally stealing glances at the enormous red diamond on your finger.
Later, the guide who showed you around explained how the palace was actually built as a funeral monument for the shah’s favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
“If I die before you, I’ll expect at least a palace,” you informed Tim mock-seriously.
“I won’t let you die before me.” Even in the upload, you can hear the absolute conviction in his voice.
* * *
—
On the fourth day, some paints arrive.
“I hope these are all right,” he says as he unpacks them. “You were very particular about which brands you used.”
Were you? You don’t remember that, either. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
But what to paint? You feel no desire to create anything. It so clearly matters to Tim, though, that you force yourself to try.
The oranges, you decide eventually. A still life. You take the bowl upstairs and set it in your art room.
Four hours later, you’re almost done. You go to show Tim.
“That’s incredible,” he says encouragingly. “See? You’ve kept all your talent.”
You look at the canvas doubtfully. It seems to you that what you’ve retained is technique, not talent. Your painting is as accurate, and as devoid of personality, as a photograph.
But Tim is delighted. He gets you to sign it. Abbie Cullen-Scott. The swooping, confident signature looks like yours. But it’s a forgery, whatever anyone says. A digitally generated facsimile. Just like the rest of you.
* * *
—
Next he orders a selection of gym equipment. Not to burn calories—your weight will be forever fixed at 160 pounds—but to make your movements more natural. There’s even a Wii. It’s difficult at first, and more than once you crash to the floor playing Dance Party on the lowest setting. But with every session you become a little less awkward.
You braid your hair the way it was in the self-portrait upstairs. You even experiment with makeup. You barely used it before, but this new face requires a more hands-on approach. It’s a good thing you’re an artist, you think: Gradually, you work out how to soften these blank, rubbery features with highlights and shadows, until they could almost pass for the real thing.
At Tim’s suggestion, you try yoga. You’re surprised to find you can do all the poses, even the most advanced—the King Pigeon, the Peacock, the Tittibhasana. He watches with quiet pride. Your body is as perfectly engineered as a racing car, you realize. You just have to learn how to drive it.
His third gift is an Olympic-sized trampoline. Watching the deliverymen assemble it on the lawn, you have a sudden memory of one of the first dates he ever took you on, to House of Air, the indoor trampoline park near Golden Gate Bridge. That was when you’d realized that, as well as being ferociously driven, Tim could also be fun.
Afterward, you’d walked the Bay Trail together to Fort Point, where you sat looking out over the ocean, holding hands.
“We should go to Fort Point again,” you say now, suddenly nostalgic for that time. “I loved that date.”
Tim hesitates. “That’s a good idea. But not just yet.”
“Why not?”
“Going outside might be difficult right now.”
You look at him, puzzled. “You mean I can’t leave the house?”
“Soon, yes,” he says quickly. “We just need to…prepare you, that’s all.”
When the deliverymen are done, he kicks off his shoes and climbs aboard the trampoline. “Ready?” he says, holding out his hands.
Gingerly, you get on. It’s hard to balance at first, and he keeps a tight hold of you, bouncing you gently to build up momentum.
“That’s it,” he says encouragingly. “You’re getting it.” He does an impression of a NASA countdown, timing it to his bounces. “T minus twelve and counting…eight, seven, six, five…Main engine start. Liftoff!”
As he says Liftoff he gives one last, harder push. You feel your knees bend, one-two-three, and then suddenly everything falls into place and you’re airborne. He lets go of your hands and you’re soaring, higher and higher with every bounce, your braids flying, legs scissoring, the two of you laughing and shouting as you leap together, pulling absurd shapes in the air.
And for the first time since he brought you home, you feel it—the joy that’s indistinguishable from love; the happiness that only comes from being happy with one particular person, the person you trust to protect your happiness with his life. I love you, you think ecstatically. Tim, I love you. And though what comes from your mouth as you tumble through the air is just a wild shriek of exultation and delight, you can tell from his huge grin he understands.
8
On Saturday, Danny has time off from his therapy. You find him sitting on the side of his bed, aimlessly bouncing himself up and down. It gives you an idea.
“Shall we play on the trampoline, Danny?”
