Page 168

All Souls Day

Saturday, November 2, 2041 (Beck is 65, Isadora is 32)

Beck: I’m nervous, and I arrive too early. I sit on the front steps in the sun, between the famous bronze lions, watching people hurry along Michigan Avenue. The Art Institute opens, and I walk through its heavy glass doors, across the lobby, downstairs to the gallery that houses the Thorne Miniature Rooms. Isadora always liked the Thorne Rooms; she enjoyed resizing all the miniatures so the end result was a bewildering, nightmarish dollhouse full of abnormal furniture. She would march through Georgian drawings rooms and Tudor great halls in her black cat guise, swatting things with her enormous paws so they skittered like bowling pins, then reestablishing order so she could do it again.

Isadora’s invitation was terse, just a time and a place. When she walks through the gallery doors I am relieved. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Isadora alone since she and Lucinda returned from wherever they went—they refuse to tell us. Isadora walks toward me confidently. She’s wearing a sky-blue puffer jacket over a long red dress and suede boots; her hair is natural, a dark halo around her perfectly made-up face, her eyes shimmery with blue and gold eye shadow. We are the only ones in the gallery, but I hear children laughing and chattering in the hall outside the entrance. Isadora smiles and says, “Beck, I have missed you.” She hugs me.

I hold her hands, study her. “I’ve missed you, too, Isadora. Both of you. You look—amazing.”

“We are amazing,” she says. “We’re happy. Lucinda is doing much better.”

“Thank you for saving her,” I reply. “We were so worried.” We sit on the only bench in the gallery. All the tiny rooms are lit with different times of day, as though each room is aligned in time with a real room somewhere in the world.

“It took a lot of searching, but I found her, and here we are. It’s much more interesting in your world than I’d imagined. There are so many things I understand now. I thought I was only missing three senses—I didn’t know there were so many senses!” She is scolding me playfully, but she’s serious.

“What do you mean?”

“The sense of time passing, the sense of being stared at, proprioception, pain, hunger and—empathy. I couldn’t feel empathy before, but now I can. Yesterday we saw a squirrel get hit by a car, and I cried!” Isadora takes my hand again. Her nails are manicured in shiny silver polish, a tiny mirror on each finger. Everything about her is radiant. She smiles gently. “I know the world is delicate, and everything is vanishing. I’m glad I am here to see it. Your world was beautiful.”

“What are you saying? Isadora?”

“Nothing lasts; there is no backup. I thought my job was to save the vanishing things, but it’s not the same, is it? The Museum of Lost Souls is only made of the past—reflected light from before. The things that made the images, the real things, they are all gone now?”

“No, not all gone, Isadora.” I gesture at the miniature rooms behind glass, each one a tiny replica of a lost world. “The world is still here, most of it.”

“But the people? Jasper says we can’t keep the people, only their consciousness.”

I am shocked to my core. “Jasper says? I thought that Jasper was dead? You spoke with him?”

Isadora looks contrite. “I kept him for you, in the Museum. Is that not what you wanted?”

“In the Museum? No. He’s—malware, Isadora. Could you please contain him? Where did you find him?”

“In the Interstices. He wanted to talk with you,” she says. “I keep him in the Rothko Chapel. Contained.” I don’t know what to say. Isadora sees me struggling. “He can wait.”

“What do you think death is, Isadora?”

“I think it’s like being deleted, with no backup. All the files are lost.”

“But you are able to keep a person’s consciousness in the Museum? How?”

Isadora begins to recite lines of code. It sounds like an incantation, a prayer. I close my eyes, to see it better. The style is very familiar; I realize almost immediately who the programmer is. Jasper always had some unconventional naming conventions.

It’s not a long script. It’s elegant and concise. You might think that cyberimmortality would require infinite code, but it doesn’t, apparently. “It’s beautiful,” I tell Isadora. “And very strange.”

“Will you remember it?” Isadora asks anxiously. “Do you want to write it down?”

“Oh—I guess I’d better.” I rummage in my purse until I find a notebook and pen. I try to hand them to Isadora, but she motions for me to write. She dictates. Then I show her what I’ve written and she makes a few corrections, laboriously, pressing the pen too hard into the paper. I put the notebook back in my purse. I’ll lock it in our safe-deposit box. Maybe I should insert some spaghetti code, just to prevent accidents? I sit and worry for a moment, chewing my lip, until Isadora squeezes my hand, gently.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asks. “You aren’t happy with me?”

“You’ve done so well, my darling. You are a true Wild Thing, wild and free. What will you do now?”

“Lucinda wants to find Caralora,” Isadora replies.

“And you?”

She tilts her head, pleased. “I’d like that, too.”