Mindscan

One wall was a smart window — and a first-rate one, too. You couldn't make out the individual pixels, even if you put your face right up against it. The current image was Lake Louise, near Banff, Alberta — back before the glacier had mostly melted and flooded the whole area. I rather suspect it was a computer-generated image; I don't think anybody could have made a high-enough resolution scan back then to produce this display. Gentle waves were moving across the lake, and blue sky reflected in the waters.

All in all, it was a cross between a five-star hotel suite and a luxury executive condo; very well-appointed, very comfortable.

Nothing to complain about.

Nothing at all.

It's a modern myth that the majority of human communication isn't verbal: that much more information is conveyed by facial expression and body language, and even, some would say, by pheromones, than by spoken words. But as every teenager knows, that's ridiculous: they can spend hours talking on a voice-only phone, hearing nothing but the words the other person is saying, and interact totally. And so, even though my new artificial body was somewhat less expressive in non-verbal ways, I still had no trouble making even my most subtle nuances understood.

Or so I'd kidded myself into believing. But, the next morning, still in Karen's hotel suite, as I looked again at her plastiskin face, at her camera eyes, I found myself desperate to know what she was thinking. And if I couldn't tell what was going on inside her head, surely others couldn't tell what was going on inside mine. And so I resorted to the time-honored technique. I asked: "What are you thinking?"

We were still lying in bed. Karen turned her head, looking away. "I'm thinking that I'm old enough to be your mother." I felt something I couldn't quite quantify — it wasn't like anything else. After a second, though, I recognized what it was an analog of: my stomach tightening into knots. At least she hadn't said she was old enough to be my grandmother — although that was technically true, as well.

"I'm thinking," she continued, "I have a son two years older than you."

I nodded slowly. "It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

"A woman my age with a man your age? People would look askance. They'd say…"

I told my voice box to laugh, and it did — rather unconvincingly, I thought. "They'd say I was after your money."

"But that's crazy, of course. You've got lots of money of your own … um, don't you? I mean, after the transfer procedure, you still have lots left, no?"

"Oh, yes."

"Honestly?"

I told her how much was in my stock portfolio; I also told her how much real estate I owned.

She rolled her head again, facing me, smiling. "Not bad for a young fellow like you."

"It's not that much," I said. "I'm not stinking rich."

"No," she said, with a laugh. "Just a bit redolent."

"Still…" I said, and let the word hang in the air.

"I know," said Karen. "This is crazy. I'm almost twice as old as you are. What can we have in common? We grew up in different centuries. Different millennia, even."

It was true beyond the need to comment.

"But," said Karen, still looking away from me, "I guess life isn't about the part of the journey that's already done; it's about the road ahead." She paused. "Besides, I may be 200% of your age now, but a thousand years from now, I'll be less than 105% of your age. And we both expect to be around a thousand years from now, don't we?"

I paused, considering that. "I still have a hard time wrapping my head around what the word 'immortality' really means. But I guess you're right. I guess the age difference isn't so big a deal, when you put it that way."

"You really think?" she said.

I took a moment. If I wanted out, this was the perfect opportunity, the perfect excuse. But if I didn't want out, then we needed to put this issue behind us, once and for all. "Yeah," I said. "I really do think."

Karen rolled over, facing me. She was smiling. "I'm surprised you know Alanis Morissette."

"Who?"

"Oh," said Karen, and I could see her plastic features go slack. "She was a singer, very popular. Canadian, now that I think about it. And" — she imitated a husky voice that I'd never heard before—" 'Yeah, I really do think' was a line from a song of hers called 'Ironic.' "

"Ah," I said.

Karen sighed. "But you don't know that. You don't know half the stuff I know — because you've only lived half as long."

"Then teach me," I said simply.

"What?"

"Teach me about the part of your life I missed. Bring me up to speed."

She looked away. "I wouldn't know where to begin."

"Start with the highlights," I said.

"There's so much."

I stroked her arm gently. "Try."

"Wellllll," said Karen, her drawl attenuating the word. "We went into space. We fought a stupid war in Vietnam. We turfed out a corrupt president. The Soviet Union fell. The European Union was born. Microwave ovens, personal computers, cell phones, and the World Wide Web appeared." She shrugged a bit. "That's the

Reader's Digest version."