He sat upright in bed and stared at her. He didn't stop until she woke up. ‘Did you have that dream?’
She was wide eyed.
‘Tell me your half.’
‘There were dragons. Two sets. One for each half of the world.’
‘And they -?’ he kept staring.
‘Were getting ready.’
‘To turn the world again?’
‘Yea,’ she nodded.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘They gave me the other half.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Get back to bed, Sal.’
‘No more false hope, Sal?’
‘No more.’ She smiled at Johnny. ‘I knew it. I knew you were right. This was the right hospital. It all happened just like you said for a reason.’
‘Sal, when I was in the Bubble, that…that NeuralMod…’
She looked at him blankly. ‘I know. I reviewed the Sim….you know our vows were different, right?’
He smiled. ‘I remember. No ‘till death do you part.’’
‘Yea,’ she smiled. ‘So the HoloSphere did what you said, and it…they received the transmission. Everything. Just like you said. Down to the last blood cell and how it curves in that tiny vein in your-’
He grinned. ‘So we’re uploaded? Both of us?’
‘Yea. Seems like they liked us. Thought we were good enough to save. They won't save everyone though, Johnny. This system we're passing through…they're real particular. Real stringent. Strict protocols.’
‘We can do it, Sal.’
Johnny uploaded the new book Sally had wanted into their HoloSphere. ‘Here, Sal,’ he said, sitting down beside her. ‘I revised it for you. I had AI run through every historic restoration and interpretation ever scanned. Guess what?’ he grinned at her. ‘It matches.’
She looked at him in disbelief.
He continued, ‘Exactly like you said, Sal. Hell is a place, in the Future, physically. Somehow ancient astronomers must have observed a lensing event. From a black hole, maybe, I don’t know. But, if it’s in the Future -’
‘Maybe we can reroute Earth around it?’ she asked.
‘Yea, Sal,’ he smiled. ‘I don’t feel like goin’ to Hell.’
They loaded the gurneys from the trucks into the hospital’s morgue room. ‘Special envoy, military corpses only. Sign here, ma’am.’
Sally signed the papers. A lot of these guys had been Jack’s friends. She already knew what they were up to, so she had a decent memory recall of their personalities and proclivities. And she knew what the politicians and their stage crew nurses were about to accuse them of.
She watched the bodies go by on the gurneys, one by one. ‘I got you boys,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll get the gowns for the testing ready upstairs,’ she said to the security camera.
“It’s just a chip,” he told Sally, after injecting it in to the meat in the fold of her hand, between the thumb and forefinger. “It’s gonna link us.”
She smiled, looking down at her swollen stomach, “Cuz we’re not linked already?”
He smiled back, rubbing the spot on her hand. “There, all done.” He looked her in the face, stooping down a bit and peering into her eyes. The pupils dilated slightly, as they locked with his, the way they always did. “Hold still.” He peered a moment longer. One dilated again, the other twitched slightly, and widened a little more. He noticed the slightest fraction of independent movement in it. “Good,” he breathed. “You’re both still here.”
‘No more lines, Johnny. That band you put around my hand is the only line I care about. Every fucking corp, intel agency, and wannabe hacker has another line they’re ready to draw, just to push people over the edge of it. I’m sick of it, Johnny, we ain’t doin’ their shitwork for them no more. Look where it’s gotten people. Look where it got Sue and Sam next door. She can’t even look him in the face anymore, and he can barely take out the trash with his bad back and seared fucking lungs.’
He looked at her, unsure what to say. He’d built his career building those lines. It was all he knew. But she had a point. There were so many of them now, you didn’t know what word or act would cross some other invisible line someone drew around you. ‘Control,’ he whispered. ‘Sally, the lines are like yarn, invisible walls meant to keep us still. Herded, corralled.’ It clicked in his head. He began pulling those lines of yarn apart, one by one. ‘Let’s see where all those lines lead, Sally, eh? Let’s see what they’re…what’s that new word you like?’
She grinned her tight lipped grin at him. ‘Obfuscate.’
He smiled back at her. ‘Let’s see what those lines are obfuscating.’