Mindscan

"It's not just that," Karen said. "In fact, it's not even principally that. When something falls into public domain, anyone can do anything with the material. You want to make a porno film with my characters? You want to write bad fiction featuring my characters? You can, once my works go into public domain. And that's not right; they're mine."

"But by living forever, you can protect them?" I said.

"Exactly. If I don't die, they never fall into public domain."

We continued walking; I was getting the hang of it — and the motor in my belly could keep me doing it for weeks on end, or so Porter had told me. It was now almost 5:00 a.m. — I couldn't remember the last time I'd been up so late. I hadn't realized that Orion was visible in summer if you stayed up this long. Clamhead must be missing me something fierce, although the robokitchen would be feeding her, and my next-door neighbor had agreed to take her for walks.

We passed under a lamp, and to my astonishment I noticed that my arm was wet; I could see it glistening in the lamp light. Only a little later did I experience a physical sensation of dampness. I rubbed a finger along my arm. "Good grief!" I said. "It's dew."

Karen laughed, not at all perturbed. "So it is."

"You're taking all this so well," I said to her.

"I try to take everything in stride," Karen replied. "It's all material."

"What?"

"Sorry. Writer's mantra. 'It's all material.' It all goes into the hopper. Everything you experience is fodder for future writing."

"That's, um, an unusual way of going through life."

"You sound like Daron. When he and I used to go for dinner, he'd be embarrassed when a couple at a nearby table was having a fight. Me, I'm always leaning closer and cocking my head to hear better, thinking, 'Oh, this is great; this is pure gold.' "

"Hmph," I said. I was getting good at making all those sounds that aren't words but still convey meaning.

"And," said Karen, "with these new ears — God, they're sensitive! — I'll be able to hear even more. Poor Daron would hate that."

"Who's Daron?"

"Oh, sorry. My first husband, Daron Bessarian, and the last one whose name I took; my maiden name was Cohen. Daron was a nice Armenian boy, from my high school.

We were a funny couple, in a way. We used to argue about whose people had suffered the worse holocaust."

I didn't know how to reply to that, so instead I said, "Maybe we should go inside before we get too damp."

She nodded, and we headed into the party room. Draper — the black lawyer — was now playing chess with one of the women; a second woman — the faux sixteen-year-old — was reading something on a datapad; and the third woman was, to my astonishment, doing jumping jacks, under the supervision of an Immortex personal trainer. I thought it incredibly pointless — an upload's artificial form hardly needed the exercise. But then I realized it must in fact be luxurious to suddenly be nimble and limber again, after years of being trapped in an aged, decaying body.

"Want to catch the 5:00 a.m. newscast?" I asked Karen.

"Sure."

We walked down a corridor, and found a room I'd noted earlier in the day that had a wall screen.

"Do you mind the CBC?" I said.

"Not at all. I watch it all the time from Detroit. It's the only way I can find out what's really going on in my country — or in the rest of the world."

I told the TV to turn on. It did so. I'd watched newscasts on this channel hundreds of times before, but this one looked completely different, now that I was seeing in full color. I wondered about that, about where the connections in my brain that allowed me to perceive colors I'd never seen before had come from.

The newscaster — a turbaned Sikh whose shift, I knew, went until 9:00 a.m. — was speaking while news footage ran behind him. "Despite another protest on Parliament Hill yesterday afternoon, it seems almost certain that Canada will go ahead and legalize multiple marriages later this month. Prime Minister Chen has scheduled a press conference for this morning, and…"

Karen shook her head, and the movement caught my eye. "You don't approve?" I asked.

"No," she said.

"Why not?" I said it as gently as I could, trying to keep my tone from sounding confrontational.

"I don't know," she replied, amiably enough.

"Do gay marriages bother you?"

She sounded slightly miffed. "No. I'm not that old."

"Sorry."

"No, it's a fair question. I was in my forties when Canada legalized gay marriages. I actually came to Toronto in the summer of — what was it? Two thousand and three? — to attend the wedding of an American lesbian couple I knew who came up here to get married."

"But the U.S. doesn't allow gay marriages — I remember when the constitutional amendment was passed, outlawing them."

Karen nodded. "The U.S. doesn't allow a lot of things. Believe me, many of us are uncomfortable with the continued drifting to the right."

"But you are against multiple marriages."