A mind transplant? Cloning, copying of thought processes…let’s see how it all went, shall we? Memories aren’t perfect…all seems well. But, how does the lover of the original person feel about all of this? Difficult to say, but even though you’re cloned, you’re basically the same person…or are you?
Roger
10 October 2078
He sat in the sunroom, on a soft cushioned wingback, in bright golden light, forest ahead, mountains tipping the horizon.
It was a false image, but a pleasant one. The temperature just-so, the room flush with soothing infrared, the barely discernable chirping of birds, a faint fragrance of cut grass. It was a late-spring version of the world outside. Designed for ease. For nice open conversations.
It was, in fact, freezing outside. The roads were icy and slippery and beckoned death, the sky was chilly, a threatening gunmetal of drizzle and fog.
But that was not what he needed. Having woken in a new body just eight days ago. He was feeling tender, and needed light and lightness and beauty and warmth, and I made sure he got that.
‘Good morning,’ I said.
He jumped a little, looked around awkwardly. ‘I thought we’re meeting in person,’ he said, which wasn’t very bright, since there was just the one chair in the room.
‘I have sessions all over the world,’ I said. ‘This is quite common. Someone should have told you. I’m sorry.’ I had clear sight of his face, and of data points showing his body temperature and heartbeat and blood pressure and so on. He fidgeted. He was not feeling comfortable. But, even though this was only my first session with him, I knew he would stay. I knew he needed someone to talk to.
They always do.
‘How do I know you’re a person?’ he asked.
‘I am,’ I said. ‘But I can project my image if you like.’
He shook his head. I don’t think he really cared whether he spoke to a person or an AI. These days, it was fashionable to be critical of AIs. I suppose he felt obliged to ask. Employment politics. Fear of being replaced.
‘No point,’ he said. ‘An AI can fabricate that, too.’ Which was true enough.
‘Shall we continue?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘I’ll refer to you as Roger,’ I said. ‘For purposes of our interviews. To protect your identity and privacy. In case someone wants to listen to the recordings down the line.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been feeling like myself lately. A new name won’t make much of a difference.’
‘Just for the interviews,’ I said.
‘Got it,’ he said, grinned broodingly, shifted his weight.
‘Do you know why you’re here?’ I asked.
‘For you to check up on me,’ he said, screwed up his face, clearly not a fan of my discipline. ‘To make sure I’m fine,’ he said. ‘To make sure my mind’s properly embedded in my new body; that I’m properly cloned, my brain properly copied. All that.’ Then he gave a listless shaky little laugh. ‘Even though, in my case,’ he said, ‘we know that didn’t happen. I’m a bloody mess,’ he said. Which was not an unreasonable way of looking at the situation, I knew.
‘Let’s start with your body,’ I said, thinking I should ease him into it, get him talking for a while before we get to the serious stuff.
‘The body’s great,’ he said. ‘I love it. It’s perfect. It’s me when I was twenty-five. Everything works. Everything feels good, looks good. Nothing hurts. Nurse said I’m handsome,’ he said, smiled absently. ‘He even flirted. That was nice. It took me a while to remember how easy everything comes when you’re young.’
Like I said, the easy part. ‘I’m happy to hear that,’ I said. No one ever complained about being young again.
No one.
Ever.
‘And your old body?’ I asked. ‘The one still in cryo. Some people have difficulty letting go of that old version of themselves. They can’t seem to disassociate.’ I had to ask. Company policy. We need to move the old bodies out. Make space for the new. We would ask for his consent soon. I had to prepare the way.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘No attachments. It’s served its purpose. If you can’t recover the data you lost, why hold on to it?’
‘You know they’re still trying to fix that,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. The upload had many problems. It doesn’t happen often, but it does. I’m really sorry about that,’ I said. ‘I know it must be difficult.’
And I meant it, for what it’s worth. I’d also been reconstituted. Years ago. The idea of losing so much of myself terrified me, made me question whether I should do it again.
He laughed humorlessly. There was a lot of sadness in that laugh. A lot of nuances that made me think of cautionary notes for future gun-license applications. He pulled his face into a tight grim grin, and there was a cynicism in it one would not expect to see in the face of a twenty-something.
‘I died when I was seventy-two,’ he said. ‘Everything from two days after my thirty-fourth birthday is gone. Everything. That’s more than half my life. Probably the best part. The company offered compensation,’ he said. ‘And it’s good. A lot of money. Like winning the lottery, actually. But it’s difficult to lose so much of oneself. And it’s most difficult,’ he said, ‘not to be sure what exactly you’ve lost. It might have been something really special,’ he said, and his gaze drifted longingly inward.
‘I really hope they manage to recover it,’ I said. Which sounded flat and insincere. Even to me. Like something the company would say. He had many conversations with the technicians, I knew. And with management. All the way to the top. Then came the lawyers. Predictably. Ours and his. Etcetera. To-and-fro.
The nanos had failed to reconstruct all his neural pathways. That was the bottom line. It was a mess, but it happens. Copying trillions and trillions of synapses was no mean feat. I’m still amazed we can do it.
But he’d agreed to the waivers when he’d signed up. And those were watertight. The company was not worried about lawsuits. It was worried about bad press.
Hence the settlement. And the ironclad non-disclosure. And me. The therapist. To make sure he kept his marbles, retained the mental fortitude to keep his side of the bargain. The same was true for Mike. Even though Mike was an entirely different kettle of fish.
‘And your husband?’ I asked, and saw him flinch. ‘I refer to him as Mike,’ I said. ‘For the record. Not to use his real name.’
He sighed. The sigh seemed heavy and tired. ‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ he said. ‘Except to say he’s with me all the time. It’s like he thinks I’ll remember. Like in one of those romantic comedies.’ He gave a strangled, stillborn laugh. ‘He knows my memory loss is not like that. He knows the data’s gone. There’s nothing to recover. Not in this head,’ he said, and tapped his right temple.
‘It’s difficult for him,’ I said. ‘When you signed up, the two of you asked to be brought back together. You died four years before him,’ I said, ‘and he was alone and had to wait. And now you’re back, and you can’t remember anything about the two of you, and you’ve been married thirty-six years,’ I said.
His voice crackled with emotion. ‘I know all this,’ he said, and he was angry. ‘It doesn’t help me. I don’t know the man! I don’t recognize him. He’s a stranger,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it to be this way. It’s just the way it is.’
I gave him some time to relax, added a calming pheromone to the room, to help take the edge off. I didn’t think he was wrong to get angry. Of course, he knew all that. I felt I blundered a bit. That I’ve been insensitive.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked, after a while. An asshole-shrink cliché question.
‘I feel like I’m expected to be someone I cannot be,’ he said, without thinking about it, like he’d been thinking about it a long time. ‘I’m sure he loves me,’ he said, ‘but I don’t love him. How can I love a man I don’t know? And yet,’ he said, ‘in his wordless way, making me meals he says are my favorite, showing me photos, telling me stories, he’s just piling on the pressure, like he’s hoping I’ll fall in love with him, just because we’d been in love… apparently.’
‘Apparently?’ I asked, because I could sense that he really needed to say that.
He grimaced like he was sitting on a nail. ‘Of the self I can remember,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing that makes me think I would have fallen in love with a man like that.’
‘But you have.’
To which he gave a dour chuckle. ‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘Everyone says that. Sometimes, I think everyone’s lying to me. That it’s all made up. Like an elaborate hoax from some psychologic-thriller sci-fi movie.’
He looked straight at me. Or rather, looked directly into the interface. But it felt like he was looking straight at me.
‘One can create a whole world in my mind that’s never existed,’ he said. ‘A whole world that’s no more than someone else’s notion of how things were, or should have been.
‘How would I know the difference?’ he said.
Mike
12 October 2078
‘He doesn’t remember,’ Mike said, clenching his hands, staring unseeing into the false sunlight. His new young-man-head, full of thick black hair, seemed heavy on his shoulders. His body was young, but there was something about how he carried himself that seemed old and tired. Like he still thought of himself as frail.
His vitals were in a state. Even worse than the first time I saw him. He needed to get some sleep. He needed something to lower his blood pressure. If he had the body of an older man, I would have been very worried indeed.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just fine.’
‘Your new body? Still good?’
‘No issues,’ he said. ‘It’s fine.’
Right. Not the best start. Not giving me a lot to work with.
‘You seem angry,’ I said, because he was glaring ahead as though he wished to scorch the air with his gaze.
‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m so angry it feels like my head can explode. I want to throw something through that bloody window, with its lies of a world outside that doesn’t exist.’
‘Why don’t you do that?’ I asked. Which was not some sort of test. I thought it might help him to break something. Something that can shatter and make a lot of noise. To release some of the pressure. Having failed him as it had, having lost the essence of his beloved, the company could pay for a broken window, it seemed to me.
He laughed. A bit shakily. Not quite enough to make me wonder about his sanity. But not exactly far from that point, either.
‘Because I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in this body ten days now, and it feels like I’ve done nothing but argue and weep. And I’m scared,’ he said.
‘What are you scared of?’ I asked. Not because I didn’t know. After our first session, I had a pretty good idea. But I wanted him to say it.
He took his time. There was a lot in his body language that made me think he did not really want to talk. It was like he’d given up. Or like he was toying with the idea of giving up. Getting a feel for it. Getting a sense of how he liked it.
Which I understood. Because he’d really been trying for days now. Trying to get some sort of rapport with Roger. Anything. Not for Roger to remember, exactly. I thought he understood that that was not going to happen. Not unless they managed to recover the lost data from Roger’s predecessor body.
But maybe, it seemed to me, he was looking for just the tiniest little spark that may suggest a future for the two of them, since their past together was completely gone.
‘Before I died, I feared death,’ he said. ‘Yet, this is like a kind of death, except that I’m alive to experience it. We were supposed to have this second chance together,’ he said. ‘And now he’s here, with me, but he’s no longer mine, and it’s like he’s never been, and it’s like our whole life together never really happened.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It sounds horrible.’
He wept. I didn’t get the impression he knew he was weeping.
‘He asked me why I’m doing this,’ he said. ‘Yesterday. Can you believe it? I made ravioli. His favorite. Hot chili, sweet Italian tomatoes. I fry it a bit so it’s not soggy. It’s not traditional, but it’s the way he likes it. I wanted to give him something that would make him feel better,’ he said, ‘because he’s suffering, too. And then, he asked me why I’m bothering. Like he was saying it won’t make a difference, it won’t bring him back. Like he was angry at me.’
‘It’s difficult for him, too,’ I said. ‘He feels like he’s lost most of his life. I can’t promise anything,’ I said, ‘but maybe things will get better. Maybe he’ll let down his guard and let you in. And then the two of you can start over. You’re both young again. Barring the unforeseen, you’ve got many decades ahead. You can build a new life together. Make new memories.’
‘And then he started shouting,’ he said, like he hadn’t heard me at all. Like he was lost in his head, replaying a scene from a movie. He squirmed. His eyes twitched. I made notes and worried.
‘He said I cannot make him feel what he doesn’t feel,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘That’s not what I’m trying to do. It’s really not. I’m just trying to be there for him,’ he said. ‘I love him. He’d died before me. I was alone for four years. I missed him,’ he said, ‘and now I can’t even hold him, can’t kiss him, nothing…
‘He said…’ said Mike, so softly I could hardly hear the words, like he was afraid to say them out loud, to hear them said. ‘He said he doesn’t remember,’ said Mike. ‘He said he doesn’t feel anything, and I can’t expect him to. He said I’m just a man he met a week ago.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You’re all sorry. Everyone’s sorry. No one can do a thing to make it better, but at least you’re sorry.’
‘We need to start thinking about what lies ahead if we can’t recover the memories,’ I said, ignoring his acerbity, his perfectly fair hostility.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and he shrugged. It seemed like his figure was getting smaller and smaller in the chair, like he was trying to disappear into it. ‘I can’t force him to like me,’ he said. ‘I can’t force him to try. In just five days, we return to the world, to live whatever life we choose. And I have no idea,’ he said, ‘whether he has any intention of coming with me.’
‘What if the memories remain lost forever?’ I asked, because I felt it was a question that may soon need an answer.
And now his gaze turned further inward still. I did not like the look of it.
‘Even if he never remembers,’ he said. ‘Maybe he will love me again. Maybe we will be together again. Maybe there’s something deeper holding us together,’ he said.
He lifted his hand, looked at the scratched-up wedding ring on his twenty-something finger.
‘Or maybe not,’ he said.
Roger
16 October 2078
‘Not much has changed since our last talk,’ he said, even though he seemed more relaxed, like he’d made some decisions. I worried about that. For Mike’s sake. And he’d spiked up his hair, shaved it on the side. Very cool. Very age-appropriate. Like all the other young guns.
‘Considering how much was unresolved last time we spoke, that worries me,’ I said.
‘The situation, I mean,’ he said. ‘With Mike. With how I feel about the whole thing. How I feel about him. That hasn’t changed. I still don’t remember, of course. A tech came by yesterday, sat me down, said they don’t think they’ll be able to recover. What she meant, though,’ he said, winking, like he was telling an amusing story, ‘is that she knows they’ll never recover the data. That, whatever had gone wrong, had gone wrong badly. The data’s gone. I accept that. I have to accept it. There’s nothing for it.’
‘You do?’ I asked, incredulously. Seemed like he had gotten around to acceptance rather quickly. Losing all those decades of memories was akin to losing a loved one, said the textbooks. It’s not just memories. It’s a life. It’s a large part of who you are, of your self.
‘I’m not happy about it,’ he said, sounding like a man trying to convince himself of something. ‘But seems to me the sooner I move on, the better. She said they’ll maintain my neuro-preservation for a while. She said they’ll try something new. Something about inferring the positions of the damaged synapses from molecular interrelations. But they’re waiting for some super-super-computer to try and calculate that, they said. Everything she told me,’ he said, ‘sounded exactly like a nice way of saying I’m screwed. That half my life’s gone, and I must deal with it,’ he said.
‘As long as you don’t ignore the loss,’ I said. ‘As long as you face it and deal with it meaningfully,’ I said. ‘What you lost is not unimportant.’
He laughed. It was a remarkably relaxed laugh. That he had changed from when we had our first session was clear. He’d settled into the tendencies of a younger self. Confidence bordering on arrogance. Levity and charm. It made sense. The young part of him was the only part he remembered.
Unlike Mike. They may have similar young bodies, but their minds were very different.
‘How can I face what I do not know, what I do not remember?’ he asked. ‘If it’s a loss,’ he said, ‘it’s an academic one. And it helps that I’m young again,’ he said. ‘That I have an entire life ahead of me. Probably many lives. It makes the loss seem less significant.’
‘That’s one way to see it,’ I said. And it was. Had to give it to him. He could remake a life, a person, a self. There was a lot of freedom in that. Like a blank canvas. Why would I deny him that, if it could help him move on?
But I had to ask about Mike. I worried more about Mike than Roger. Roger had that land-on-your-feet kind of demeanor about him. He did not carry the weight of remembering thirty-six years of togetherness. Unlike Mike, he did not know what he’d lost.
So I asked, and he shrugged in a dismissive way I did not like at all. Like he felt a dark pleasure in the answer. ‘We had an argument,’ he said. ‘Two days ago. I told him I don’t like him. I told him I can’t imagine being with him,’ he said.
‘That seems brutal,’ I said. That’s something else that comes easier to the young, it occurred to me. In full display here. Cruelty.
‘I felt it was better to make sure he gets it,’ he said. ‘That there are no gray areas. I thought the sooner he knows how I feel, the sooner he can start moving on.’
No reason to piss on his soul! I thought.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘from Mike’s perspective, the person that had told him all that is a person he’d shared his life with for nearly forty years. He’s a stranger to you,’ I said. ‘I get that. But you’re no stranger to him.’
‘I thought it would be unkind to be ambiguous,’ he said, but that was a lie. He wanted to be unkind, I thought. He wanted to lash out, to burn bridges. He’d been feeling weak and on the backfoot, having to accept other people’s versions of reality, of him. And this was a way to assert himself. To push back. To make it clear he’ll pursue his own path.
‘And I had a visitor,’ he said. ‘Someone I remember. That was nice. Seeing someone I remember.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Who was it?’
‘A friend,’ he said. ‘An ex. I was told we’d broken up, but last I can remember, we were still together. It seems to me like yesterday. And it feels like we’re still a couple. It’s confusing. Everything I think and feel about him seems fresh and real and now.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Oh dear! I thought.
‘It was quite a heady affair,’ he mused, and stared off into a digital interpretation of the distance, where clouds sat fat and gently on a blue horizon. ‘He’d also been reconstituted. Two years ago. And I can really see the two of us together,’ he said. ‘At least that matchup makes sense.’
‘I’m sure if you remembered Mike, that would have made sense as well,’ I said. ‘I wonder whether this is a good time to think of hooking up,’ I said, knowing I was stepping into it. ‘Maybe you should give it some time.’
This made him angry. He face flushed red, his blood pressure spiked, his fingers bit into the chair.
‘I don’t remember Mike,’ he said, like he thought I might have forgotten that. ‘I’ll never remember him. I must work with what I have. With the memories I have. Besides,’ he said, ‘I’m not hooking up, and if I do, I think it’ll be good for me. It may help me move along, to get going again, to live. That’s the point of all this, isn’t it?’
Which was fair, I knew. But hearing that nevertheless made my heart ache for Mike.
‘You’re leaving tomorrow?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘You’re not going with Mike?’ I asked, thinking I already knew the answer.
He shook his head, no.
‘You’re going with your friend?’ I asked, rhetorically, thinking how petty and predictable young men could be. ‘Your ex, I mean.’
‘He offered,’ said Roger. ‘And I felt more comfortable with that. At least I know him,’ he said. ‘And I like him. And he doesn’t freak me out.’
‘And that’s also why you argued?’ I said. ‘You and Mike.’
He stayed quiet for a long time.
‘You know what I do know,’ he said, ‘without having to remember. I know what I feel,’ he said. ‘It’s all I know, really, from all my lost decades. It’s what I have,’ he said. ‘For all its inadequacies, it’s mine, and I must trust it.’
Mike
17 November 2078
‘I can’t,’ said Mike. ‘I don’t think it’ll work to tell him what he’d told me. And he told me everything,’ he said. ‘About the two of them, and what happened, and why they broke up. I don’t think he’ll believe me,’ he said. ‘Last he can remember, they were together and in love, and I think he will believe that,’ he said.
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘Some things one should learn for oneself.’ But this is cold comfort, I thought, wishing I could offer him something more. Something useful. He sat slouched, his hands palms up and limp on his knees like wilted flowers. He looked utterly despondent. His vitals were better, more relaxed. I could see he’d been sleeping. I’d prescribed something for his anxiety, and that also seemed to have worked. But, now, with the anxiety gone, depression seemed to have found a way in.
In my work, there’s always a demon waiting to fill a gap.
‘And also,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell him. Physically, I mean. I haven’t seen him since we left the facility a month ago. I’ve tried calling him, and he just ignores me,’ he said. ‘I think that says everything about where we’re at. Absolutely nowhere. I’m not really sure I exist for him in any meaningful way,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided to stop trying. To give him space. To let him decide when he’s ready to speak.’ He sighed and added, ‘If ever,’ and it seemed to me like those two words echoed with foreboding, a reluctant seedling of acceptance of things to come.
Right then, he was a real paradox, full of conflicts. His cheeks were rosy, and his skin smooth and tight and beautiful. I was getting old enough, even in my newest incarnation, to feel envious of his youth. On the surface, he looked strong and healthy. Yet, there was something sad and ancient about him. Something that had nothing to do with age. A great dead weight of things gone for good. Things beyond repair or recovery. The absence of hope.
‘This whole thing,’ said Mike. ‘The cryopreservation, reconstitution, all this. It was supposed to keep us together,’ he said. ‘That was the whole idea. We were so excited when we signed up. We felt we were cheating death, doing something special. We’ve put aside some money. We’ve made good investments. We were lucky and happy, and looked forward to being young again. Together.
‘That was the vision,’ he said. ‘To enjoy our youth and our wealth. To travel and have beautiful experiences together. We planned for our love to continue,’ he said. ‘It’s why we did all this. If I knew this would happen,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I would have done it. It would have been better to die.’
He closed his eyes. A memory, something happy and light, flitted across his face, pulled at the corners of his lips. Maybe a vision of the world as it could have been.
‘Have you ever thought of moving on?’ I asked. ‘If you had to. Dating, I mean. Seeing other people.’ I asked, even though I knew he was nowhere near ready to do that. But I wanted to stir the idea. I wanted to get him thinking of the possibility of life without Roger. Because it had never really been my sense that he and Roger would find their way back to each other.
What exactly had gone wrong between them, in the days after they’d woken here, was hard to say. But I knew it was bad and dark, and went deep. For Roger, it was a first impression. A really bad one. For Mike, a betrayal. Of everything.
‘No,’ said Mike, as from a distance. ‘You know we met in church?’ he said. ‘Growing up, I never thought I would meet my husband in church,’ he said, and gave an uncomfortable little laugh. ‘It just wasn’t the space for that. God and gays, you know.
‘He started going because he was really heartbroken about that man,’ he said. ‘The very same one he’s now returned to. He’d never been religious before that. At the time, I think, he felt he was missing out on something, that whatever he’d been doing was not working, that he wanted to try something different. And when the two of us started getting serious,’ he said, ‘he ditched all that church-stuff, and so I supposed I was, somehow, that something different he was looking for. Which was pretty flattering, I admit. I’ve always considered myself out of his league,’ he said. ‘I admit that, too, even though it hurts to say it, especially now.’
‘But you continued going?’ I asked, deciding to park the low self-esteem issues for later. ‘To church, I mean. Did you go alone?’
‘On occasion,’ he said. ‘I was almost ashamed to. He teased me for what he called my superstitions. Which was pretty hypocritical since we’d met there, and he was very much into it when he was feeling broken and empty and hurt.’
‘A crutch until he felt strong enough to walk on his own again,’ I suggested, thinking Mike could also benefit from some sort of crutch, just for a while.
‘Something like that,’ said Mike. ‘I’m telling you this because I realized something,’ he said. ‘I realized that when we met, he needed something, whatever it was, and that I somehow filled that gap, and that that happenstance connection by some miracle grew into our relationship, and our marriage. And whether it makes sense to him now, looking at me, or not,’ he said, ‘what we had was good and real. I loved him,’ he said, and his chest swelled with emotion. ‘I mean, I still do. I still love him. I want to be with him. I miss him. It fucking hurts. It’s like my heart’s bleeding.
‘But now there’s no gap for him,’ he said. ‘Nothing for me get a hold on, so he can see my heart, just for a second. Because he can’t remember the things that had made the gap. The things that had hurt him so badly. As far as he’s concerned, those things had never happened. Even if I were to tell him,’ he said, ‘he won’t be able to remember what it felt like, how much it hurt, how soundly he slept in my arms when he told me about it.’
He opened his eyes. They looked like mirrors. Reflecting water in their blues. And sadness and an unimaginable loss. A loss ever the worse because the thing lost was right there, tangible, a phone call, a short drive away.
Yet, forever out of reach.
‘And I feel guilty,’ said Mike, ‘that now my greatest wish is for those bad things to happen again. So he’ll hurt. So he might come back to me. Back to church. So I might fill the gap.
‘For us to become what we were.’
Roger
2 August 2079
‘It’s not what I want,’ said Roger. ‘I never wanted this. What I wanted was for him to go on and live a good life and be happy, and find someone to love and all that. So, I don’t think I should feel guilty, or that it was my fault, or that there’s something wrong with how I’m processing all this,’ he said, even though I couldn’t imagine anyone suggesting he should feel or think any of those things.
I nodded and grunted encouragingly, to prompt him to go on, even though I felt I’d read this script some time ago, knew it by heart, that my part in this particular play had come to an end.
This was not good. My antagonism toward him.
I’ve chosen sides, it seemed. I shouldn’t have, but there you have it. Very unprofessional of me. It would be just a matter of time before Roger picked up on that.
Seems I’m all for Mike. Rooting for Mike. Dead fucking Mike.
Idiot Mike that didn’t take his meds like I’d told him.
But at least, the man had a heart.
‘In fact, I’m angry at him,’ said Roger, through what I now thought of as his Hollywood-tears. And he certainly looked it. Hollywood-angry. I was not surprised to learn he thought this was a reasonable way to feel about dead Mike.
Angry.
‘I think he was an asshole,’ said Roger. ‘To do it, and to do it so he can never be reconstituted, his entire body gone,’ he said. ‘It feels like he’s trying to punish me for not loving him, like he’s trying to take the joy out of my new life. All this, even though I did not know him, even though he was a stranger to me.
‘It’s like he’s trying to put it all on me,’ said Roger. ‘The greatest fucking guilt trip ever.’
Not to mention the inconvenience, I thought, darkly. That you have to deal with this. That you have to pretend to give a shit, while you just want to go to the beach, drink cocktails, fuck around. But what I said was: ‘None of this is on you. He stopped coming for therapy. He stopped taking his drugs. He’d given up, even though every opportunity was extended to him. These were choices he made,’ I said. ‘He could have made others. He was hurting. But that was not because of you. The thing that happened with your memories is not your fault. You know that,’ I said.
Not really what I was thinking. I was thinking how selfish he was. I was thinking what a nasty bastard he’d been to Mike. How little it would have taken to be kind, and how he chose not to. How he could have tried to find a connection, try to see what he’d once seen in the man.
Or, at the very least, to let Mike down softly. Slowly. To give him some time. To break the fall. Even just a little bit.
But there was no point saying these things. Not now. It would serve no purpose. Mike was gone. For good. And I had my instructions. I understood what was expected of me.
I’m here for the living, whether I like them or not.
The company wanted Roger happy. Mike was dead. Mike can’t sue. Mike had no family. No one cared. Except, long ago, his beloved, now this empty facile imbecile.
So it goes.
‘But I can fix it now,’ said Roger, with a bitter laugh.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Fix what?’
‘The memories,’ he said. ‘That they’d managed to reconstitute. I can have it uploaded. I can remember, if I want to.’
‘But we talked about that,’ I said. ‘And you decided not to. If you loved him, you said, what’s the point of remembering now that he’s gone. You said it’ll make things worse, that it’s already bad enough without having to remember what the two of you once had.’
‘It’s a total fuck up,’ said Roger. ‘If I only had the choice two months ago, when he was still alive,’ he said.
‘What would you have done?’ I asked, and the way he glared at me answered my question. And it was a loaded question, I admit. It was a statement, really. He saw through that.
‘I was still with Alex then,’ he said. ‘Things were going well. I don’t think I would have wanted to remember. Not then.’ Which, to his credit, I thought, was true and honest.
‘And also not now,’ I said.
‘People expect me to mourn him,’ said Roger. ‘They look at me like I’m some monster,’ he said. ‘Which makes sense. We’ve been together thirty-six years, and I stood dried-eyed at the wake. I don’t even know why I went. It was a bad idea. I didn’t belong there. I had nothing to say. I just listened to other people telling me what a great guy he was, how much they’ll miss him. And to me, he was just a dead guy who wanted to make me feel things I couldn’t, who killed himself to show me what an asshole I am,’ he said.
‘I don’t think that’s why he did it,’ I said, trying to hide how much that annoyed me, how unfair I thought that statement was. ‘I think he was sad, that’s all. I think he felt he’d lost too much,’ I said. ‘And I think he was lonely and didn’t want to start over again.’
‘That doesn’t help,’ said Roger. ‘It doesn’t make me feel better.’
I wanted to tell him I don’t give a fuck about making him feel better. Instead, I asked, ‘And Alex?’ Another one of those questions I sort of knew the answer to.
‘That’s over,’ he said, sneered and laughed. ‘Suppose I should have seen it coming,’ he said. ‘Didn’t work out the first time. Don’t know why I thought it would this time.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said. I wasn’t.
‘I think I held on to him because he was known,’ he said. ‘When I woke, he was the only familiar thing there. I almost wept with the joy of seeing someone I knew.’
‘I get that,’ I said.
Then we sat quietly, out of words. Together, but a thousand miles apart.
In more than just the physical sense.
I thought about Mike, and felt sad he was gone and, predictably, told myself I should have done more. And I wondered what Roger was thinking, and whether he would ever have any sense of having had any responsibility for Mike.
And I thought maybe it’s better if I never know for sure.
‘What’s next for you, Roger?’ I asked. ‘Will you be OK?’
But he was young, and couldn’t remember ever having been old, and so he said, ‘I think so,’ but meant, ‘Sure, I’ll be just fine.’
END
