Mindscan

I nodded knowingly. "Ah, okay. You don't want to say. Afraid he'll sue, eh?"

The old woman frowned. "No, it's nothing like that. Prince Scales doesn't exist, isn't real, isn't based on anyone real, isn't a portrait or a parody. I just made him up."

I looked at her, but said nothing.

"You don't believe me, do you?" Karen asked.

"I wouldn't say that, but—"

She shook her head. "People are desperate to believe writers base our characters on real people, that the events in our novels really happened in some disguised way."

"Ah," I said. "Sorry. I — I guess it's an ego thing. I can't imagine making up a publishable story, so I don't want to believe that others have that capability. Talents like that make the rest of us feel inadequate."

"No," said Karen. "No, if you don't mind me saying so, it goes deeper than that, I think. Don't you see? The idea that false people can just be manufactured goes to the heart of our religious beliefs. When I say that Prince Scales doesn't really exist, and you've only been fooled into thinking that he does, then I open up the possibility that Moses didn't exist — that some writer just made him up. Or that Mohammed didn't really say and do the things ascribed to him. Or that Jesus is a fictional character, too. The whole of our spiritual existence is based on this unspoken assumption that writers record, but they don't fabricate — and that, even if they did, we could tell the difference."

I looked around the waiting room, here at this place where they mated android bodies with scanned copies of brains. "I'm glad I'm an atheist," I said.

5

Three more people arrived while we were waiting: others who'd decided to upload.

But the receptionist called for me first, and I left Karen chatting with her fellow very senior citizens. I followed the receptionist down the brightly lit corridor, enjoying the swaying of her youthful hips, and was taken to an office with walls that looked gray to me — meaning they could have been that color, or green, or magenta.

"Hello, Jake," said Dr. Porter, rising from his chair. "Good to see you again."

Andrew Porter was a tall bear of a man, sixty or so, slightly stooped from dealing with a world populated by shorter people. He had squinty eyes, a beard, and hair combed straight back from a high forehead. His kindly face was home to eyebrows that seemed constantly in motion, as if they were working out, in training for the body-hair Olympics.

"Hello, Dr. Porter," I said. I'd seen him twice before now, on previous visits here, during which I'd undergone various medical tests, filled out legal forms, and had my body — but not yet my brain — scanned.

"Are you ready to see it?" asked Porter.

I swallowed, then nodded.

"Good, good." There was another door to the room, and Porter opened it with a theatrical flourish. "Jake Sullivan," he declared, "welcome to your new home!"

In the next room, lying on a gurney, was a synthetic body, wearing a white terry-cloth robe.

I felt my jaw dropping as I looked down at it. The resemblance was remarkable.

Although there was a touch of department-store mannequin to the general appearance, it still was, without a doubt, me. The eyes were open, unblinking and unmoving. The mouth was closed. The arms lay limply at the sides.

"The boys and girls in Physiognomy tell me you were a cinch," said Porter, grinning.

"Usually, we're trying to roll back the clock several decades, recreating what a person had looked like when they were in their prime; after all, no one wants to upload into a body that looks like it's on its last legs. You're the youngest person they've ever had to do."

It was my face, all right — the same long shape; the same cleft chin; the same thin lips; the same wide mouth; the same close-together eyes, the same dark eyebrows above them. Crowning it all was thick dark hair. All the gray had been removed, and — I craned to look — the duplicate had no bald spot.

"A few minor touch-ups," said Porter, grinning. "Hope you don't mind."

I'm sure I was grinning, too. "Not at all. It's — it's quite amazing."

"We're pleased. Of course, the underlying synthetic skull is identical in shape to yours — it was made with 3D-prototyping equipment from the stereo x-rays we took; it even has the same pattern of sutures, marking where the separate skull bones fused together."

I'd had to sign a release for the extensive x-rays used to produce the artificial skeleton. I'd received a big enough dose in one day to increase my future likelihood of cancer — but, then again, most Immortex clients were going to die soon, long before any cancers could pose a problem.

Porter touched the side of the simulated head; the jaw opened, revealing the highly detailed mouth within.