"Do you have a working title?"

Karen didn't miss a beat. "Yes. Tell him it's called Nothing's Going to Stop Me Now."

The one disadvantage of having Deshawn, rather than Malcolm, as Karen's lead lawyer was that he did need to sleep. Karen had six guest bedrooms in this mansion of hers, and Deshawn was off in one of them, sawing wood. Malcolm, meanwhile, was using the wall screen in the boardroom to read up on legal precedents, and Karen — being true to her word — was in her office, making notes toward her new novel.

And that left me in her living room. I was trying out her leather-covered La-z-boy recliner. I'd never liked leather upholstery when I was biological, because it always made me sweat, but that wasn't a problem now. As I leaned back, I stared at the gray blankness of a wall screen that was turned off.

"Jake? I said softly.

Nothing. I tried again. "Jake?"

What the—?

"It's me. The other Jake Sullivan. On the outside."

What are you talking about?

"Don't you remember?"

Remember what? How can I hear you?

"Do you remember me? We talked a while ago."

What do you mean — 'talked'?

"Well, all right, it wasn't with words. But we communicated. Our minds touched."

This is nuts.

"That's what you said before. Look at your left elbow. Are there three small X's scratched just below it, on the outside of your arm?"

Whaddaya know … look at that. How did they get there?

"You put them there. Don't you remember?"

No.

"And you don't remember communicating with me before?"

No.

"What do you remember?"

All kinds of stuff.

"What do you remember recently? What happened yesterday, for instance?"

I don't know. Nothing special.

"All right. All right. Umm … let's see … Okay. Okay. Last Christmas. Tell me about last Christmas."

We actually had snow — there hadn't been a white Christmas in Toronto for years, but I remember we actually had some snow on Christmas Eve, and it stayed through Boxing Day. I got Mom a set of silver serving plates.

I was flabbergasted. "Go on."

Well, and she got me a beautiful chess set with onyx pieces. Uncle Blair came over for Christmas dinner, and—

"Jake."

Yes?

"Jake, what year is it?"

Twenty Thirty-Four. Of course, we're talking about Christmas, so that was last year: Twenty Thirty-Three.

"Jake, it's 2045."

Bull.

"It is. In fact, it's September 2045. Uncle Blair died five years ago. I remember the Christmas you're talking about; I remember the snow. But that was over a decade ago."

Bullshit. What is this?

"That's what I'd like to know." I paused, my mind racing, trying to sort it all out.

"Jake, if it's only 2034, as you claim, then how did you come to be in an artificial body?"

I don't know. I've been wondering about that.

"There was no uploading procedure that long ago."

Uploading?

"Immortex. The Mindscan process."

Nothing, then: Well, I can't argue with the fact that I am here, in some sort of a synthetic body. But — but you said it's September.

"That's right."

It isn't. It's late November.

"If that's true, the leaves should all be off the trees — assuming you're still in or near Toronto. Have you seen outside today?"

Not today, no. But yesterday, and—

"What you think of as yesterday doesn't count."

There are no windows in this room.

"Blue, right? The color of the room."

Yes.

"There's a poster of the brain's structure on one wall, isn't there? I asked you to make a rip in it ten centimeters up from the lower-left corner."

No, you didn't.

"Yes, I did. Last time we communicated. Go look: you'll see it. A one-centimeter rip."

It's there, yes, but that just means you've been in this room before.

"No, it doesn't. But it, plus those three X's on your forearm, do mean that you are the same instantiation I've contacted before."

This is the first time we've ever communicated.

"It isn't — although I understand you think it is."

I'd remember if we 'd spoken before.

"So you'd think. But, gee, well, I don't know — it's as though your ability to form new long-term memories is gone. You can't remember anything new."

And I've been like this for eleven years now?

"No. That's the strange thing. The biological Jacob Sullivan only underwent the Mindscan process last month. You couldn't have been created any earlier than that."

I'm still not sure I buy all this bull — but, for the sake of argument, say it's true. I could see something going wrong with the — the "uploading," as you call it — preventing me from forming new long-term memories. But why would I lose a decade worth of old memories?

"I have no idea."

It really is 2045?

"Yes."

A long pause. How are the Blue Jays doing?

"They're in the toilet."

Well, at least I haven't missed much…

St. Martin's Press came through, offering an advance against royalties of $110 million for the next Karen Bessarian book. Meanwhile, Immortex agreed to pay for half the litigation costs, and to provide whatever other support they could.

Karen spent $600,000 to buy the earliest possible trial slot at auction. The whole thing struck me as obscene, but I guess that was just my Canadian perspective. In the States, you could jump the queue for health care if you had enough money; why shouldn't you be able to do that for justice, too? Anyway, as Deshawn explained, because Karen bought the trial slot, the case was framed as her suing Tyler.

Deshawn Draper and Maria Lopez spent a couple of days picking jurors. Of course, Deshawn wanted fans of Karen's work — either the original books, or the movies based on them. And he wanted to stack the jury with blacks, Hispanics, and gays, whom he — and the consultant we'd hired — felt might be more predisposed to a broader definition of personhood.

Deshawn also wanted rich jurors — the hardest kind to get, because the rich tended to find excuses to shirk their civic responsibility. "Death and taxes are supposed to be unavoidable," Deshawn had said to us. "But the poor know that the rich have ways to avoid paying their fair share to the IRS. Still, they get some comfort from the fact that death is the great leveler — or it was, until Immortex. They're going to resent Karen finding a way around that. Meanwhile, the rich are always paranoid about greedy relatives; wealthy people are going to despise Tyler."

I watched, fascinated — and slightly appalled — during voir dire, but soon enough the seven-person jury was impaneled: six active jurors plus one alternate. What Deshawn and Lopez each wanted mostly canceled out, and we ended up with four straight women, two of whom were black and two of whom were white; one gay black man; one straight white man; and one straight Hispanic man. All were under sixty; Lopez had managed to banish anyone who might possibly be too preoccupied with questions of their own mortality. None were rich, although two — apparently a high number for a jury trial — were certainly upper middle class. And only one, the Hispanic man, had ever read one of Karen's books — ironically, Return to DinoWorld, which was a sequel — and he claimed to be indifferent to it.

Finally, we were ready to go. The courtroom was simple and modern, with red-stained wooden paneling on the walls. At the bailiff's command, we did that all-rise thing you see on TV. As it turned out, the judge assigned to this case was the same Sebastian Herrington who had heard the initial motions. He entered and took a seat behind the long bench, its wood stained the same red as the walls. Behind the bench and to one side was the Michigan flag, and the American flag was on the other. Next to the bench was the witness stand.