How old are you, really? I asked, speaking softly.
Two hundred and twenty years, she told me.
And youre not speaking through some kind of sim? You really look like this, in the flesh?
Yes, she said.
If she was telling the truth, I realized, I was a stranger in a very strange land. More must have changed in a thousand years than I could ever have anticipated. It was an uncomfortable thought but I was Madoc Tamlin, the spiritual descendant of one man who had been chained to a rock of sacrifice to fight the six champions of an alien land and one who had come back to Earth from Faerie, in spite of all that the Queen of the Fays had done to keep him and send him to hell.
I retreated to my chair, still moving gingerly. I sat down again, but I perched myself more stiffly and alertly than the posture I had been given when I was allowed to awake.
Does everybody look like you now? I asked.
Only in Excelsior, she told me. There are a great many human races. Some still look like you.
I was now in a state of psychological disarray, and I had to marshal my thoughts before I could frame another question. When my kind come crashing out of denial we tend to flip to the opposite extreme. No game , I thought. All real. A thousand fucking years. Some human races still look like me. Others obviously dont. Who did this to me? Why?
Wheres Damon? I asked, a little more harshly than I intended.
When she didnt reply I amplified the request. Damon Hart. Biological son of Conrad Helier, reared by his fathers accomplices in crime. Late recruit to the Hardinist Cabal, breaking his surviving foster mothers rebellious heart. Dont tell me he s not in your records, alive or dead.
Hes dead, said Davida Berenike Columella, after pausing to consult her inner resources. Everyone who was alive in your time is dead, except for a handful of individuals preserved, as you have been, in Suspended Animation. According to the available data, Damon Hart is not one of those. We cant be absolutely sure, because there are other repositories, but all the customary evidence of death is in place.
That was what they had said about Conrad Helier. Even Damon had believed it, until he learned better. I knew how easily all the customary evidence of death could be faked, even in the twenty-second century, because it was a business Id dabbled in more than once but that wasnt the issue my distraught mind seized upon.
Everyone? I echoed. What about the escalator to emortality? We all thought that the lucky ones, at least, would get to live forever.
The technologies of longevity available in your time were inadequate, she informed me, flatly. Nanotechnological repair and somatic rejuvenation had inbuilt limitations. The first true technologies of emortality didnt come into use until the twenty-fifth century. They required the extensive genetic engineering of fertilized egg cells, so the first emortal human species had to be born to that condition. The oldest currently living individuals who have been continuously active were born in the two thousand four hundred and eighties.
When did Damon die? I asked, not bothering to add the word allegedly.
She obviously had a covert data feed whispering incessantly into her inner ear. In the year two thousand five hundred and two, was the prompt answer.
Three hundred years! Hed left me where I was for three hundred years of his own protracted lifetime. Why hadnt he used his authority and influence to get me out? What on Earth had I done to deserve that kind of neglect?
All I ever did was hack into a few data stores, I said, my voice no more than a whisper. Steal a little information here, delete a little there, reconstruct a little here and there. I was working
for the government, for Gods sake. The real government, not the elected one. I really am innocent, by any reasonable standard. I never killed anyone, or even hurt anyone much who wasnt asking for it.
Can you be certain of that? my interlocutor asked, still probing.
Yes, I said. I am certain. Ive lost a few memories. I cant remember August twenty-two zero-two, let alone September. In June and July I was working for Damon, with Damon. Not just working playing too. Having a good time. Planning a little espionage. Nothing heavy, just run-of-the-mill low-level skulduggery. We werent even outlaws by then. We were on the inside, rubbing shoulders with the elite, playing in the big boys game, by their rules. I never killed anybody . I would remember. I remember what I did, what I was. Even if theyd added in every last one of all the things I could have been charged with in my youth but never was all the burglary, the smuggling, the dealing, the tax evasion, the so-called pornography, and all the rest of that penny-ante crap they couldnt have put me away for more than twenty years. Why on Earth would they throw away the fucking key?
Davida Berenike Columella didnt know the answer. Either she figured that I needed a little time to come to terms with it or she was avidly watching for signs of mental breakdown, because she kept quiet, letting me run with the train of thought.