Mindscan

Mindscan by Robert J. Sawyer

We cannot expect to have certain, universal agreement on any question of personhood, but we all are forced to hold an answer in our hearts and act upon our best guess.

JARON LANIER, The Journal of Consciousness Studies

PROLOGUE

March 2018

There wasn't anything special about this fight. Honest to God, there wasn't. Dad and I had argued a million times before, but nothing awful had happened. Oh, he'd thrown me out of the house a couple of times, and when I was younger he used to send me to my room or cut off my allowance. But nothing like this had ever occurred. I keep reliving the moment in my mind, haunted by it. It's no consolation that he isn't haunted by it, that he probably doesn't even remember it. No consolation at all.

My father's grandparents had made a fortune in the brewing industry — if you know Canada at all, you know Sullivan's Select and Old Sully's Premium Dark. We'd always had a shitload of money.

"Shitload." That's the way I talked back then; I guess remembering it is bringing back my old vocabulary. When I'd been a teenager, I didn't care about money. In fact, I agreed with most Canadians that the profits made by big corporations were obscene. Even in supposedly egalitarian Canada, the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer, and I'd hated it. Back then, I'd hated a lot of things.

"Where the hell did you get this?" my dad had shouted, holding the fake ID I'd used to buy pot at the local Mac's. He was standing up; he always did that when we fought. Dad was scrawny, but I guess he felt his two meters of height were intimidating.

We were in his den at the house in Port Credit. Port Credit was what you came to if you continued west along Lake Ontario from Toronto; it was a classy neighborhood, and even then — this would have been, what?, 2018, I guess — it was still mostly white. Rich and white. The window looked out over the lake, which that day had been gray and choppy.

"Friend of mine made it," I said, without even looking at the ID card.

"Well, you're not seeing that friend anymore. Christ's sake, Jake, you're only seventeen." The legal age for buying alcohol and marijuana in Ontario, then and now, was nineteen; the legal age for buying tobacco is eighteen. Go figure.

"You can't tell me who I can see," I said, looking out the window. Seagulls were pirouetting above the waves. If they could get high, I didn't see why I couldn't.

"Hell I can't," snapped my father. He had a long face and a full head of dark hair, graying at the temples. If this was 2018, that would have made him thirty-nine. "So long as you live under my roof, you'll do as I say. Jesus, Jacob, what were you thinking? Presenting a false ID card is a major offense."

"It's a major offense if you're a terrorist or an identity thief," I said, looking across the wide teak desk at him. "Kids get caught buying pot all the time; no one gives a damn."

"I give a damn. Your mother gives a damn." Mom was out playing tennis. It was a Sunday — the only day Dad wasn't normally at work — and he'd gotten the call from the police station. "You keep screwing up like this, boy, and—"

"And what? And I'll never end up like you? I pray for that." I knew I'd hit home. A vertical vein in the middle of his forehead swelled up whenever he was really pissed.

I used to love it when I got the vein.

His voice was trembling. "You ungrateful little bastard."

"I don't need this shit," I said, turning toward the door, preparing to stalk out.

"Damn you, boy! You're going to hear this! If you—"

"Fuck off," I said.

"—don't stop acting—"

"I hate this place anyway."

"—like an idiot, you'll—"

"And I hate you!"

No reply. I turned around, and saw him slumping backward into his black leather chair. When he hit it, the chair rotated half a turn.

"Dad!" I hurried behind the desk and shook him. "Dad!" Nothing. "Oh, Christ. Oh, no. Oh, God…" I lifted him out of the chair; there was so much adrenaline coursing through my veins from the fight that I didn't even feel his weight. Stretching out his gangly limbs on the hardwood floor, I shouted, "Dad! Come on, Dad!"

I kicked aside a waste basket with a shredder attached; paper diamonds scattered everywhere. Crouching next to him, I felt for a pulse; he still had one — and he seemed to be breathing. But he didn't respond to anything I said.

"Dad!" Totally out of ideas, I tried slapping him lightly on each cheek. A string of drool was hanging out of the corner of his mouth.

I quickly rose, turned to face his desk, hit the speakerphone button, and pounded out 9-1-1. Then I crouched down beside him again.

The phone rang three excruciating times, then: "Fire, police, or ambulance?" said a female operator, sounding small and far away.

"Ambulance!"