Factoring Humanity

She concentrated now on the premier of Ontario, Karl Lewandowski. It took a while, but she managed to come up with one of Cowles’s memories of him — and was shocked to find out just how much the Conservative Cowles hated the Liberal Lewandowski.

She concentrated hard, forcing another Necker translation.

And now she was inside Lewandowski’s mind.

And from there she Neckered into the mind of the Minister of Education.

And from there, to Donald Pitcairn, the slope-browed president of the University of Toronto.

And from there -

From there, at last, into the mind of Brian Kyle Graves.

28

Yes, it was Kyle.

Heather knew it at once.

First, there was the view Kyle’s eyes were currently seeing: his office at U of T. Not the lab, but his actual wedge-shaped office, down the hall from the lab. Heather had been there a million times; there was no mistaking it. On one wall was a framed poster from the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors. Another poster showed an Allosaurus from the Royal Ontario Museum. His desk was piled high with paperite, but peeking out above one stack was a gold-framed holo of Heather herself. Kyle saw colors with a bit more of a blue tinge than Heather did. She smiled at the thought — no one had ever accused her husband of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses.

Heather had thought she knew Kyle, but clearly what she knew was only the tiniest fraction, the tip of the iceberg, the shadow on the wall. He was so much more than she’d ever imagined — so complex, so introspective, so incredibly, intricately alive.

Images kept flickering in and out at the periphery of Kyle’s attention. Heather knew that the problem with Becky had been disturbing Kyle greatly, but she had no idea that it literally was constantly on his mind.

Kyle’s gaze dropped to his wristwatch. It was a beautiful Swiss digital; Heather had given it to him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Engraved on the backside, she knew, were the words:

To Kyle — wonderful husband, wonderful father.

Love, Heather

But no echo of those words passed through Kyle’s consciousness; he was simply consulting the time. It was 3:45 P.M.

My God! thought Heather. Was it really that late? She’d been inside the construct for a total of five hours. She’d completely missed her own two-o’clock meeting.

Kyle got up, evidently deciding it was time to leave for his class. The visual input bounced wildly as he stood, but it didn’t seem the least disconcerting to Kyle, although Heather, with access only to his consciousness and not to whatever unconscious balance signals his inner ear was relaying, felt rather tossed about.

It had been a sunny morning when Heather had entered the construct, and the forecast had called for sun to prevail for the rest of the day. But here, outside, on St. George Street, Kyle didn’t see the day as bright or beautiful. It seemed dingy to him; Heather had heard the expression “living under a cloud” before, but she had never appreciated how true it could be.

He continued along, past the carts and snack trucks pulled up to the curb selling hot dogs and knockwurst, or Chinese food — with, as if the cuisine could be uplifted thus, the bristol-board menus written exclusively in Chinese.

Kyle paused. He pulled out his wallet, removed his SmartCash card, and to Heather’s astonishment, walked up to a hotdog vendor.

Kyle had been eating heart-smart ever since his coronary four years ago; he’d given up red meat, he ate — even though he really didn’t like — lots of fish, he took aspirin every other day, and he’d replaced most of his beer with red wine.

“The usual?” asked a voice with an Italian accent.

The usual, thought Heather, chilled. The usual.

Kyle nodded.

Heather watched through Kyle’s eyes as a little man plucked from the grill a dark-red dog, thick enough around to be a section out of the handle of a baseball bat, and put it in a poppy-seed bun. He then used the same tongs he’d employed to move the dog to scoop up a mound of fried onions and pile them on top.

Kyle handed his card to the man, waited for the money to be transferred, pumped mustard and relish onto the dog, and then continued down the street, eating as he walked.

The thing was, though, it didn’t really give him any pleasure. He was disobeying his doctor’s orders — and, yes, Heather could detect the pang of guilt about what she herself would think, if she only knew — but it wasn’t making him any happier.

He used to eat that way, of course. Before the heart attack. Never thought it could happen to him.

But now… now he should care. He should be trying to look after himself.

The usual.

The thought was there, just below the surface.

He didn’t care anymore.

Didn’t care whether he lived or died.

The hot juice from the dog burned the roof of his mouth.

But the pain was lost against the constant background agony of Kyle Graves’s life.