Mindscan

"Come on, make me see it."

"It's … it's … well, red is warm, you know? Especially the deeper shades, like maroon. And green — it's not quite like anything I can describe. It's not cold, the way blue is. Sharp, maybe. It looks sharp. And … I don't know. I like it, though — it's my favorite new color."

"What's a field of grass look like?"

"It's, ah…"

Smythe's voice, cutting in: "Forgive me, Jake, but surely we have more pressing matters to discuss."

I was still fascinated, but Smythe was right. The last thing I wanted to do was get emotionally involved with this bogus me. "Right, okay. Now, listen, copy-of-me.

You know exactly why we agreed to this copying process. We thought the biological me was going to die soon, or end up a vegetable, and now I'm not; I've got decades left."

Time delay. "Really?"

"Yes. They found a cure for what was wrong with me, and they fixed it. Dad's fate is not going to be my fate."

Time delay. "That's — that's terrific. I'm delighted."

"I'm tickled pink myself — say, what does pink really look like? No, never mind. But, look, we both know that I'm the real person, don't we?"

An interminable couple of seconds. "Oh, come on," said the other me. "You fully accepted the conditions of what we were doing. You understood that I — not you, I — was going to be the real us from now on."

"But you must have been watching the news, too. You nust know that there's a case involving Karen Bessarian going on right now in Michigan, where it's being argued that the upload is not really a person."

Time lag. "No, I didn't know that. And besides—"

"How could you not know that? We never miss the news."

"—it doesn't matter what they're doing in Mich…"

"How are the Blue Jays doing?"

"…igan. This isn't about what lawyers say, it's about what we agreed to."

I waited for the two-plus seconds to pass. But the android me just stood there, looking off camera. Presumably he would be in Toronto, and so there was a good chance the person off-camera was Dr. Andrew Porter. But Porter had said he didn't follow baseball.

"I asked you how the Blue Jays are doing," I said again, and waited.

"Umm, they're doing fine. They just beat the Devil Rays."

"No, they didn't. They're doing terribly. Haven't won a game in two weeks."

"Um, well, I haven't been following…"

"Which past president just died?" I asked.

"Um, you mean an American president?"

"You don't know, do you? Hillary Clinton just passed on."

"Oh, that—"

"It wasn't Clinton, you lying bastard. It was Buchanan." Of course Smythe had stopped him from answering when I'd asked him what a field of grass looked like.

This android had never seen one. "Jesus Christ," I said. "You're not the me that's out in the world. You're a— a backup."

"I—"

"Shut up. Shut the hell up. Smythe!"

The camera changed to show Smythe. "I'm here, Jake."

"Smythe, don't fuck with me like that again. Don't you dare."

"Yes. I'm sorry. It was a dumb thing to do."

"It was damn near fatal thing to do. Get the copy of me that's out and about on Earth. I want to see him, face to face And have him bring a hardcopy of…" What the hell newspaper still had hardcopies? "Of the New York Times, showing the date he left Earth — that would at least prove someone had come up from there. But he's still going to have to prove to me that he's the one with the legal rights of personhood."

"We can't do that," said Smythe.

My head was pounding. I rubbed my temples. "Don't tell me what you can and cannot do," I said. "He'll have to come here eventually, anyway. You heard what I want, and I'm going to get it. Have him come here — bring him to the moon."

Smythe spread his arms. "Even if I agreed to ask him, and he agreed to come, it would take three days to get him to the moon, and most of another day to bring him via moonbus from LS One."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hades starting to get up from his seat. I aimed the piton gun at him. "Don't even think about it," I said. Then I turned back to the image of Smythe: "Send him on a cargo rocket," I said. "High-powered acceleration for the first hour. He doesn't need life support, right? And he can pull lots of gees, I'm sure."

"That will cost…"

"A whole heck of a lot less than if I blow up this moonbus and take out half of High Eden."

"I need to get authorization."

"Don't do it!" I swung around. Hades was shouting. "Gabe, do you hear me? I'm ordering you not to do that!"

Gabe sounded flustered, but he said, "I'll see what I can manage."

"Damn it, Gabe!" shouted Hades. "I'm the senior Immortex official on the moon, and I'm telling you not to do this."

"Shut up," I said to Hades.