Echea

Ronald did not act improperly toward me then or thereafter, although he often looked at me with a sadness I did not reciprocate. My husband was relieved. He always insisted on having the best, and because my husband was squeamish about brain work, particularly that which required chips, lasers, and remote placement devices, he preferred to let me handle the children’s interface needs.

Even though I no longer wanted it, I still had a personal relationship with Ronald Caro. He did not treat me as a patient, or as the mother of his patients, but as a friend.

Nothing more.

Even my husband knew that.

Still, the afternoon I made the appointment, I went into our bedroom, made certain my husband was in his office, and closed the door. Then I used the link to send a message to Ronald.

Instantly his response flashed across my left eye.

Are you all right? He sent, as he always did, as if he expected something terrible to have happened to me during our most recent silence.

Fine, I sent back, disliking the personal questions.

And the girls?

Fine also.

So, you linked to chat? Again, as he always did.

And I responded as I always did. No. I need to make an appointment for Echea.

The Moon Child?

I smiled. Ronald was the only person I knew, besides my husband, who didn’t think we were insane for taking on a child not our own. But I felt that we could, and because we could, and because so many were suffering, we should.

My husband probably had his own reasons. We never really discussed them, beyond that first day.

The Moon Child, I responded. Echea.

Pretty name.

Pretty girl.

There was a silence, as if he didn’t know how to respond to that. He had always been silent about my children. They were links he could not form, links to my husband that could not be broken, links that Ronald and I could never have.

She has no interface, I sent into that silence.

Not at all?

No.

Did they tell you anything about her?

Only that she’d been orphaned. You know, the standard stuff. I felt odd, sending that. I had asked for information, of course, at every step. And my husband had. And when we compared notes, I learned that each time we had been told the same thing-that we had asked for a child, and we would get one, and that child’s life would start fresh with us. The past did not matter.

The present did.

How old is she?

Seven.

Hmmm. The procedure won’t be involved, but there might be some dislocation. She’s been alone in her head all this time. Is she stable enough for the change?

I was genuinely perplexed. I had never encountered an unlinked child, let alone lived with one. I didn’t know what "stable" meant in that context.

My silence had apparently been answer enough.

I’ll do an exam, he sent. Don’t worry.

Good. I got ready to terminate the conversation.

You sure everything’s all right there? he sent.

It’s as right as it always is, I sent, and then severed the connection.

That night, I dreamed. It was an odd dream because it felt like a virtual reality vid, complete with emotions and all the five senses. But it had the distance of VR too-that strange sense that the experience was not mine.

I dreamed I was on a dirty, dusty street. The air was thin and dry. I had never felt air like this. It tasted recycled, and it seemed to suck the moisture from my skin. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold either. I wore a ripped shirt and ragged pants, and my shoes were boots made of a light material I had never felt before. Walking was easy and precarious at the same time. I felt lighter than ever, as if with one wrong gesture I would float.

My body moved easily in this strange atmosphere, as if it were used to it. I had felt something like it before: when my husband and I had gone to the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago on our honeymoon. We explored the Moon exhibit, and felt firsthand what it was like to be in a colony environment.

Only that had been clean.

This wasn’t.

The buildings were white plastic, covered with a filmy grit and pockmarked with time and use. The dirt on the ground seemed to get on everything, but I knew, as well as I knew how to walk in this imperfect gravity, that there wasn’t enough money to pave the roads.