Mindscan

This hand was youthful, with clean unblemished skin, and silvery white nails. I noticed she wasn't wearing a wedding ring; she'd still been wearing one at the Immortex sales pitch. I guess maybe she'd let the biological original take it to the moon.

Still, that hand…

I shook my head slightly, trying to dispel the picture of her old biological appendage that my mind kept superimposing on the new, sleek, synthetic one.

I remembered taking a psychology course, years ago, in which the prof talked about intentionality — the ability of the mind to affect external reality. "I don't think about moving my arm," she said. "I don't work out the steps involved in contracting the muscles. I just move my arm!" And yet I realized what I did next would have enormous consequences, would define a road, a path, a future. I found myself hesitating, and—

There, my arm moved. I saw it twitch slightly. But I must have aborted the move, overriding my initial impulse, exercising that conscious veto Porter had spoken about, for my arm was almost immediately still again.

Just move my arm!

And, at last, I did, swiveling it at the shoulder, hinging it at the elbow, rotating it at the wrist, gently curving the fingers, placing my hand over hers.

I could feel warmth in my palm, and—

Electricity? Isn't that what it's called? The tingle, the response to the touch of — yes, damn it, yes — another human being.

Karen looked at me, her cameras — her eyes, her beautiful green eyes — locking on mine.

"Thank you," she said.

I could see myself reflected in her lenses. My eyebrows went up, catching, as always, a bit as they did so. "For what?"

"For seeing the real me."

I smiled, but then she looked away.

"What?"

She was silent for several seconds. "I … I haven't been a widow that long — only two years — but Ryan … Ryan had Alzheimer's. He couldn't…" She paused. "It's been a long time."

"It's like riding a bicycle, I suspect."

"You think?"

I closed my eyes and listened to Karen's voice, which, I had to admit, did sound warm and alive and human. "That's okay," she said, snuggling her body against mine. "We've got all the time in the world."

I smiled. "Sure."

And Karen smiled her perfectly symmetrical smile back at me. She had a luxurious two-room suite. We repaired — funny word, that — to the bedroom, and…

And I found nothing sexy about it, dammitall. I wanted it to be sexy, but it was just plastic and Teflon rubbing together, silicon chips and synthetic lubricants.

On the other hand, Karen seemed to be enjoying it. I knew the old joke about having a cherry sundae every day for years, and then suddenly not being able to have one anymore; you'd really want another cherry sundae. Well, after several years, I guess any cherry sundae tasted good…

Eventually, Karen came — if the term had any etymological validity in this context.

She closed her plastiskin lids over her glass eyes and made a series of increasingly sharp, and increasingly guttural, sounds as her whole mechanical body went even more rigid than it normally was.

I felt kind of sort of a bit close to coming myself while Karen was; I'd always felt more aroused, more sexy and sexual, when someone was orgasming thanks to me.

But it didn't crest, didn't peak, didn't last. I pulled out, my prosthetic member still rigid.

"Hi, stranger," said Karen, gently, looking into my eyes.

"Hi," I replied. And I smiled, doubting it was easy to tell a forced smile from a real one with these artificial faces.

"That was…" she said, trailing off, seeking a word. "That was fine."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I never used to come during intercourse. It took … um, you know."

She made a contented sound. "There must be some women working on Immortex's body-design team."

I was happy for her. But I also knew that the old saying was true. Sex didn't happen between the legs; it happened between the ears.

"What about you?" asked Karen. "How are you doing?"

"It's just…" I trailed off. "It's, ah, it's going to take some getting used to."

15

Karen and I talked for hours. She listened with such attention and compassion that I found myself sharing things with her I'd shared with no one else. I even told her about the big fight I'd had with my father, and how he'd collapsed right in front of my eyes.

But you can only talk for so long before running out of things to say, at least temporarily, and so we were just relaxing now, lying in the bed in Karen's suite at the Fairmont Royal York. Karen was reading a book — an actual, physical bound volume — while I stared at the ceiling. I wasn't bored, though. I enjoyed looking up at the ceiling, at the blank white space.