And Martin Holtzmann. What a disaster. God, to think that he’d appealed to her once. He’d seemed so smart and distinguished.

Yeah, when I was twenty-five. Before I figured out what a slime-bag he was.

Lisa sighed as she closed the door behind her. A nightlight illuminated hardwood floors, a carpet she’d brought back from Turkey, vibrantly colored paintings she’d picked up on trips through Central America. She quietly crept down the hall to the bedroom and peered in. Alice was fast asleep in the bed they shared. Across the room, in the crib, little Dilan slept soundly. Lisa went quietly over to him, looked down at the rise and fall of his small chest, the impossible frailty of his tiny clenched fists and scrunched eyes. Their son, now. Their adopted son. Their very very special adopted son.

Did he and Alice dream together even now? Was his infant mind enveloped in the caressing thoughts of one of his mothers?

How could this be wrong? How could anyone look at this tiny, precious, helpless baby, and see anything but sweetness?

Oh, there were so many good reasons to embrace Nexus. The progress against Alzheimer’s, the incredible strides with autism, the scientific breakthroughs that Nexus-enhanced researchers – their minds deeply intertwined – might make.

But there was no reason as good, as heartfelt, as true, as the touch of the ones she loved.

Lisa pulled herself away from the bedroom by force of will. In the kitchen, she emptied a shelf of the refrigerator, reached into the back, and slid away the hidden panel, retrieving the vial stored there. Carefully she put everything back the way it had been, and then padded into the office.

She slid the illegal connector card into her home slate, navigated its interface to find her most recent backup. Her finger hovered over the button. How long could she keep this up, backing up her data and purging herself every time she traveled, putting up with the aches and confusion and disorientation as the Nexus nodes decoupled from her neurons and broke into their component parts, smelling the metallic tang of Nexus each time she pissed for days, then spending hours redosing herself and restoring from backup each time she came home?

It was frustrating. It was time-consuming. It was a risk.

I could stop, Lisa Brandt thought. Give up Nexus altogether.

Then she thought of the minds of her wife and her son in the next room, of the solace of touching them, and she knew she’d keep doing this as long as she had to.

Lisa Brandt tilted her head back and poured the metallic silvery liquid dose of Nexus down her throat. She entered the command that told her slate to restore her Nexus apps and data from before this trip. Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and waited to touch the ones she loved most.

Chapter 6: Q & A

6

Q & A

Thursday October 18th