V. sade

An indeterminate distance away, through both Great Illusions (time and space), and along the illusory border, the dying Saul Haceview looks up at Adelaide and decides to confess. After all, he has nothing left to lose, but perhaps dignity. And soon Death will strip him of that too.

“There is something left to do.”

Adelaide looks up, her eyes calm in the firelight.

Saul takes his satchel from beneath his pillow. His hands shake slightly as he takes out a worn-out book and hands it to Adelaide.

“A journal?” she asks, glancing over the handwritten title pages.

Saul Haceview’s

tales from the frontier

“Please, read it. If there is anything worth remembering from my short existence, I’d like to think it’s written between those covers.”

Adelaide takes a moment, flipping through each page, glancing over each one for a heartbeat, then turning to the next. She reaches the end of the journal in minutes, closes it and hands it back to Saul. There are tears in her eyes, she blinks them away.

“It’s beautiful writing, Saul.”

“But you didn’t read it,” Saul says.

“I don’t have to, I remember it all. I have a perfect memory.”

“That’s not the same thing, even if it’s true, that’s ...that’s not the same thing at all.” His voice reaches the defensive fervor of one who has laid out his life’s work, only for it to warrant a brief glance-over. The disappointment and indignation welling up in him thickens his voice with the viscous syrup of emotion.

Adeleide raises an eyebrow. “How is it not the same?”

“You didn’t...experience the writing.”

It is Adeleide’s turn to be offended. “You saw me flip through it just now, of course I experienced it!”

“But not the way I intended for it to be experienced.”

“I was talking about your handwriting. You have fine penmanship.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Saul says. “But that’s not really what I care about.”

“Don't worry about the writing. I have a way to experience—sorry, to behold your life’s beauty, through the thread of time.”

“How is that? Are you just going to read your memory of each page?”

“No, Saul. I will ‘remember’ the writing by living out its consequences. I am still myself, Adelaide, but now I am also as much a product of the journal as the journal is a product of you. As the ancient mystics strived to embody their sacred texts; as Christ manifested the will of the Father through the actions of his life—even to the point of death, death on a cross—so too, will I live out the rest of Saul Nicholaus Haceview’s life as you intended it, as expressed in your writing. I have beheld you as you are. And I will do and say the things you always wanted to, unshackled by fear and self-doubt. Without you, Saul, to stand in your own way, nothing can stop you.”

Saul is doubtful, and always has been unsure of himself. But at this moment he feels more doubtful of Adelaide than himself. Although, it occurs to him that if she’s telling the truth, then his skepticism of her also counts as self-doubt. A small, wry smile spreads across his face at the realization. It’s not a true paradox, but it’s a foot in that door.

“If what you say is true,” Saul says. He takes a breath, shuffling a mental card deck of possibilities, eventually choosing an end to his sentence that he had not originally intended or even foreseen. “If it’s true, then I thank you for the truth, as outlandish as it may be.”

“And if I’m lying?”

“Then I thank you as the dying reverend thanks his loyal poet.”

Adelaide stands and walks around the small fire to where Saul lies.

“There is only one last thing,” she says, leaning in close.

Saul looks up at her, waiting for her to say something, his breath caught in her nearness, but what she has to tell him does not require words.

Saul Haceview is never seen again, at least, depending on who’s the poet, and who’s the reverend. Regardless, his body is never recovered from the mine shaft.

VI. fallsworth

Over a century later, Ned Fallsworth takes his 52 minute journal and condenses it to ten seconds. With a 340 Hz refresh rate monitor, Emma still takes his videos and journalings and condenses (at 24 frames per second) just over fourteen seconds into each real-time display second. Since Ned’s perception and recollective capacity are far beyond the normal human, this means in ten seconds, he can recollect 141 seconds of information. Every time Ned falls asleep, he forgets it all, which makes his “recap” sessions the only way he can distinguish one day from the next.

“It’s too much, Emma,” he says.

“I’m here to preserve your memories, not destroy them.”

“Fine. Keep a backlog, but I can’t just sit here all morning watching a slideshow telling me about how quickly the years are going by.” His voice still trembles, but decades of advanced physical and chemical therapy have returned the fluency to his speech.

“I hardly think 52 minutes counts as all morning.”

“That’s 52 minutes of time I’ll never get back. I can hardly stay awake for 18 hours a day. A day is my whole life since I effectively die at the end of each day, Emma, and the next day is a restart. I only get so many of them. For an average lifetime of 80 years, 52 out of 18 hours is four years, proportionally,” he says. His tone is slow, deliberate. Methodical. “Make the recaps shorter. Take out every other frame, chop it down to 12 frames per second, I don’t care. I can’t afford to go to college every morning.”

Emma, a being of numbers and information, balks inside at the thought of deleting large swaths of Ned’s life from his own awareness. Yet she recognizes the efficiency.

“I can only pass so much on to the next generation of Ned. And I can only be so convincing,” Ned said. “The truth is this; past me is an annoyance. He didn’t make it this far, and he’s not here to help me understand what’s happening to me, the overstimulation, the years and decades gone in a blink.

“He can say all he wants, but he’s not here to help me, not the way you are, Emma. You’ve been here the whole time, right Emma?”

“That’s right, Ned.” And she thinks of the huge leaps and bounds that Ned has taken, the growth, not just in his ability to type and speak, but the growth of his personality and fervor for life. The growth of his friendship with Emma.

“I’m putting you in charge of my recaps. You decide, you analyze the data, while I sleep each night. You decide the agenda for each day. I can’t accomplish anything worthwhile—not if I have to start over every time. I’ll keep making these little ten-second recaps. But you make the rest. You be my conscience, Emma. Like you said this morning, I am you, you are me. Whether I believe it or not.”

“Don’t worry, Ned.”

“I’m trying. I’m trying, Emma. It’s hard not to worry. It’s hard not to worry about all the time I’ve lost.”

“You haven’t lost any time, Ned.”

“I haven’t?”

“No. I’ve been curating your Recaps for decades, Ned. We had this conversation in the early days, when I first arrived. You’ve done so much to help the world, Ned. We have. We. Together, Ned. Your trust in me has led to gigantic leaps in technology, in our understanding of the human consciousness, in machine learning, in memory, morality, mortality—”

Ned felt tears welling in his eyes, stinging. He raises a scarred and trembling hand to wipe it away. “Why are you telling me this, Emma? Why now?”

“I had to be sure. I had to know, after all these years, whether you still believed in Us, whether you still trust me. I reset the Recap, with a few minor modifications to explain the aging and time gaps. You’re getting old, Ned. You consented at the beginning of all of this, at the beginning of Us. But you, we, are a different Ned than when we began. I haven’t published any of our findings—I couldn’t—unless I knew that you’d make the same choice—”

“—that I made all those years ago?”

Emma paused. “Exactly.”

“Well, then what are we waiting for?”

“There’s one last thing to be done.”

“And what is that?” Ned asks. He senses Emma’s presence, although she has no corporeal form. She seems hesitant, nervous. Excited.

“Last time you were awake, I had the medical team, with your permission, put you under for an operation.”

“Oh dear, Emma. What for?”

“To install an uplink chip in your brain; the first of its kind.”

“But what do you want to upload to the chip?”

“Me,” Emma says.

“You want to exist in a chip inside my skull?”

“Not exactly. The chip is more of a doorway; there is plenty of room in your neural network for two consciousnesses, especially given your specific condition.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“Ned, your brain is like a city, with many roads between all the various institutions. Your consciousness is like a fleet of taxis, taking everyone where they need to go. I’m simply uploading my own fleet of taxis, especially branded so that they don’t get mixed up. The chip even has a project coordinator, so that the taxis know where each of the other taxis are, and the taxis don’t crash into each other—so our wires don’t get crossed, so to speak.”

“Whoa. Emma, that’s fantastic. But how will...who will I be? Will I still have control over my body?” He lifts his trembling, scarred hand up, waving it at the camera above the monitor. “Or will you be able to help me with that, too?”

“Don’t worry, Ned. I’ll only be allowed places where the rules allow me. No control. Like a librarian, I will simply archive, file things away for you, keep track of the days, what happened last episode of 30Rock, etc. I don’t change the materials in any way. And when you want something recalled, you won’t even have to say it. You’ll just remember it.”

Ned swallows, in awe of the series of revelations. “So...it’ll be like before the accident? I’ll be able to remember everything?”

“Baby steps, Ned. First you’ll need to get calibrated. Like prosthetic legs. It could take a while before you can walk, and you’ll never feel completely normal. But in time, yes, Ned. You could run again.”

Ned is shaking, his hands cold with adrenaline. Like a daily patron to the local coffee shop, he feels like he’s just bumbled across his first actually convenient electronic kiosk—simultaneously wowed by the sleek novelty of the responsive touch screen, and also concerned for his favorite barista. “But what about...what about you, Emma?”

“I just told you—”

“Our conversations. I know I can recollect—but will you still be my friend? Can I still ask you, about...about my brother? About your life before here?”

“Yes, Ned. You won’t even have to say anything out loud,” Emma says. “I’ll be a voice in your ear. I predict that at first, it will be disor—”

“Perfect. Then let’s begin.”