DAY 7 8:12 A.M.
They were all clustered together on the other side of the room—Julia, Ricky, and now Bobby, as well. Vince was there, too, hovering in the background, but I could sometimes see through him, his swarm was slightly transparent. I wondered which of the others were only swarms now. I couldn’t be sure. But it didn’t matter now, anyway.
They were standing beside a bank of computer monitors that showed every parameter of the manufacturing process: graphs of temperature, output, God knows what else. But they had turned their backs to the monitors. They were watching me.
I walked calmly toward them, in measured steps. I was in no rush. Far from it. I must have taken a full two minutes to cross the fabrication room to where they were standing. They regarded me with puzzlement, and then with increasingly open amusement. “Well, Jack,” Julia said finally. “How’s your day going?”
“Not bad,” I said. “Things are looking up.”
“You seem very confident.”
I shrugged.
“You’ve got everything under control?” Julia said.
I shrugged again.
“By the way, where is Mae?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Bobby’s been looking for her. He can’t find her anywhere.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Why were you looking for her?”
“We thought we should all be together,” Julia said, “when we finish our business here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is that what happens now? We finish?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, Jack. It is.”
I couldn’t risk looking at my watch, I had to try and gauge how much time had passed. I was guessing three or four minutes. I said, “So, what do you have in mind?” Julia began to pace. “Well, Jack, I’m very disappointed in how things have gone with you. I really am. You know how much I care about you. I would never want anything to happen to you. But you’re fighting us, Jack. And you won’t stop fighting. And we can’t have that.”
“I see,” I said.
“We just can’t, Jack.”
I reached in my pocket and brought out a plastic cigarette lighter. If Julia or the others noticed, they gave no sign.
She kept pacing. “Jack, you put me in a difficult position.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ve been privileged to witness the birth of something truly new, here. Something new and miraculous. But you are not sympathetic, Jack.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Birth is painful.”
“So is death,” I said.
She continued to pace. “Yes,” she said. “So is death.” She frowned at me.
“Something the matter?”
“Where is Mae?” she said again.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the faintest idea.”
She continued to frown. “We have to find her, Jack.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Yes, we will.”
“So you don’t need me,” I said. “Just do it on your own. I mean, you’re the future, if I remember right. Superior and unstoppable. I’m just a guy.”
Julia started walking around me, looking at me from all sides. I could see she was puzzled by my behavior. Or appraising. Maybe I had overdone it. Gone too far. She was picking up something. She suspected something. And that made me very nervous. I turned the cigarette lighter over in my hands, nervously.
“Jack,” she said. “You disappoint me.”
“You said that already.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I am still not sure ...”
As if on some unspoken cue the men all began to walk in circles. They were moving in concentric circles around me. Was this some kind of scanning procedure? Or did it mean something else?
I was trying to guess the time. I figured five minutes had elapsed.
“Come, Jack. I want to look more closely.”
She put her arm on my shoulder and led me over to one of the big octopus arms. It was easily six feet across, and mirrored on its surface. I could see Julia standing next to me. Her arm over my shoulder.
“Don’t we make a handsome couple? It’s a shame. We could have such a future.”
I said, “Yeah, well ...”
And the moment I spoke, a river of pale particles streamed off Julia, curved in the air, and came down like a shower all over my body and into my mouth. I clamped my mouth shut, but it didn’t matter, because in the mirror my body seemed to dissolve away, to be replaced by Julia’s body. It was as if her skin had left her, flowed into the air, and slid down over me. Now there were two Julias standing side by side in front of the mirror. I said, “Cut it out, Julia.”
She laughed. “Why? I think it’s fun.”
“Stop it,” I said. I sounded like myself, even though I looked like Julia. “Stop it.”
“Don’t you like it? I think it’s amusing. You get to be me, for a while.”
“I said, stop it.”
“Jack, you’re just no fun anymore.”
I pulled at the Julia-image on my face, trying to tear it away like a mask. But I felt only my own skin beneath my fingertips. When I scratched at my cheek, the Julia-cheek showed scratches in the mirror. I reached back and touched my own hair. In my panic, I dropped the cigarette lighter. It clattered on the concrete floor.
“Get it off me,” I said. “Get it off.”
I heard a whoosh in my ears, and the Julia-skin was gone, sweeping into the air, then descending onto Julia. Except that she now looked like me. Now there were two Jacks, side by side in the mirror.
“Is this better?” she said.
“I don’t know what you are trying to prove.” I took a breath.
I bent over and picked up the lighter.
“I’m not trying to prove anything,” she said. “I............