Mindscan

He took a bead with his gun, then fired. There was no sound, but the gun obviously discharged with a sizable kick, judging by the way Quentin's hand jerked back. A metal spike flew silently into the rock. Quentin tested it to see that it had lodged securely, and threaded a rope through it. "Simple as that," he said.

"How many pitons does it hold?"

"Eight. But there are oodles more in each of our pouches, so don't worry."

"It, ah, looks like it packs quite a kick," I said, gesturing at the gun.

"Depends on the force setting," said Quentin. "But, on maximum — which you'd use for granite, and such…" He adjusted a control on the gun, and fired away from the crater wall. The spike shot across the intervening vacuum and sent up a cloud of moondust where it hit.

I nodded.

"All right?" said Quentin. "Let's go!"

We started climbing the rocky face, climbing ever higher, climbing toward the light.

It was exhilarating. I was outdoors, and the lack of walls made it seem, at least for a time, like I was no longer a prisoner. We made our way to the top of the crater rim and—

—and fierce sunlight lanced into my eyes, triggering another headache before the helmet darkened. God, I wish my brain would stop hurting…

We walked around for a while on the gray surface, which curved away to a too-near horizon. "Magnificent desolation," Chandragupta had said, quoting somebody or other. It certainly was. I drank in the stark beauty while trying to ignore the pain between my ears.

Eventually, a warning started pinging over the helmet speakers, a counterpoint to the agonizing throbs: our air would soon be running out.

"Come on," said Quentin. "Time to go home." Home, I thought. Yes, he was right.

The bloody moonbus engineer was right. It was time to go home, once and for all.

Deshawn and Malcolm had spent the entire recess researching and conferring, and, as we returned to the courtroom, I heard Deshawn tell Karen he was "as ready as I'll ever be." Once Judge Herrington had arrived, and we were all seated again, Deshawn dove into his cross-examination of the Yale bioethicist, Alyssa Neruda.

"Dr. Neruda," he said, "I'm sure the jury was fascinated by your discussion of the gerrymandering of the line between personhood and nonpersonhood."

"I would hardly accuse the highest court of the land of gerrymandering," she replied coldly.

"Perhaps. But there's a glaring oversight in your commentary on people becoming more than one individual, isn't there?"

Neruda regarded him. "Oh?"

"Well, yes," said Deshawn. "I mean, human cloning has been technically possible since — when? Twenty-twelve or so?"

"I believe the first human clone was born in 2013," said Neruda.

"I stand corrected," said Deshawn. "But isn't cloning taking one individual and making it into two? The original and the copy are genetically identical after all, and yet surely they both have rights and are people?"

"You should take my course, Mr. Draper. That is indeed a fascinating theoretical issue, but it's not relevant to the laws of the United States. First, of course, no sensible person would say that they are the same people. And, second, human cloning has always been banned here — it's even banned up in Canada — and so American law has had no need to incorporate the concept of human clones into its definitions of personhood." She crossed her arms in a so-there gesture.

"Individuation still stands as the law of the land."

If Deshawn was crestfallen, he hid it well. "Thank you. Doctor," he said. "No further questions."

"And we'll call it a day," said Judge Herrington. "Jurors, let me admonish you again…"

It had been some time since I'd connected with another instantiation of me, but it happened that evening, while I was watching the Blue Jays play. They were doing so badly, I guess I was letting my mind wander. Maybe my zombie was willing to watch them get slaughtered, but the conscious me couldn't take it, and—

And suddenly there was another version of me inside my head. I told the wall screen to turn off, and strained to listen.

That's strange…

"Hello!" I said. "Hello, are you there?"

What? Who?

I sighed, and went through the rigmarole of explaining who I was, ending with, "And I know you think it's 2034, but it's not. It's really 2045."

What are you talking about?

"It's really 2045," I said again.

Of course it is. I know that.

"You do?"

Of course.

So it wasn't the same instantiation with the memory problem I'd encountered earlier.

Christ, I wondered just how many of us there were. "You started by saying something was strange."

What? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is.

"What is?"

I dropped a pen I was using.

"So?"

So I managed to catch it before it hit the floor.

"Well, there's no slow, chemical component to your reaction time anymore," I said.

"Now, it's all electric — happening at the speed of light"