#
I had two more seizures before the interface finally gave up and shut
itself down. I remember the first, a confusion of vision-occluding
strobes and uncontrollable thrashing and the taste of copper, but the
second happened without waking me from deep unconsciousness.
When I came to again in the infirmary, Dan was still there. He had a
day's growth of beard and new worrylines at the corners of his newly
rejuvenated eyes. The doctor came in, shaking his head.
"Well, now, it seems like the worst is over. I've drawn up the consent
forms for the refresh and the new clone will be ready in an hour or two.
In the meantime, I think heavy sedation is in order. Once the restore's
been completed, we'll retire this body for you and we'll be all finished
up."
Retire this body? Kill me, is what it meant.
"No," I said. I thrilled in my restraints: my voice was back under my
control!
"Oh, really now." The doc lost his bedside manner, let his exasperation
slip through. "There's nothing else for it. If you'd come to me when it
all started, well, we might've had other options. You've got no one to
blame but yourself."
"No," I repeated. "Not now. I won't sign."
Dan put his hand on mine. I tried to jerk out from under it, but the
restraints and his grip held me fast. "You've got to do it, Julius. It's
for the best," he said.
"I'm not going to let you kill me," I said, through clenched teeth. His
fingertips were callused, worked rough with exertion well beyond the
normal call of duty.
"No one's killing you, son," the doctor said. Son, son, son. Who knew
how old he was? He could be 18 for all I knew. "It's just the opposite:
we're saving you. If you continue like this, it will only get worse. The
seizures, mental breakdown, the whole melon going soft. You don't want
that."
I thought of Zed's spectacular transformation into a crazy person. _No,
I sure don't_. "I don't care about the interface. Chop it out. I can't
do it now." I swallowed. "Later. After the rehab. Eight more weeks."
#
The irony! Once the doc knew I was serious, he sent Dan out of the room
and rolled his eyes up while he placed a call. I saw his gorge work as
he subvocalized. He left me bound to the table, to wait.
No clocks in the infirmary, and no internal clock, and it may have been
ten minutes or five hours. I was catheterized, but I didn't know it
until urgent necessity made the discovery for me.
When the doc came back, he held a small device that I instantly
recognized: a HERF gun.
Oh, it wasn't the same model I'd used on the Hall of Presidents. This
one was smaller, and better made, with the precise engineering of a
surgical tool. The doc raised his eyebrows at me. "You know what this
is," he said, flatly. A dim corner of my mind gibbered, _he knows, he
knows, the Hall of Presidents_. But he didn't know. That episode was
locked in my mind, invulnerable to backup.
"I know," I said.
"This one is high-powered in the extreme. It will penetrate the
interface's shielding and fuse it. It probably won't turn you into a
vegetable. That's the best I can do. If this fails, we will restore you
from your last backup. You have to sign the consent before I use it."
He'd dropped all kindly pretense from his voice, not bothering to
disguise his disgust. I was pitching out the miracle of the Bitchun
Society, the thing that had all but obsoleted the medical profession:
why bother with surgery when you can grow a clone, take a backup, and
refresh the new body? Some people swapped corpuses just to get rid of a
cold.
I signed. The doc wheeled my gurney into the crash and hum of the
utilidors and then put it on a freight tram that ran to the Imagineering
compound, and thence to a heavy, exposed Faraday cage. Of course: using
the HERF on me would kill any electronics in the neighborhood. They had
to shield me before they pulled the trigger.
The doc placed the gun on my chest and loosened my restraints. He sealed
the cage and retreated to the lab's door. He pulled a heavy apron and
helmet with faceguard from a hook beside the door.
"Once I am outside the door, point it at your head and pull the trigger.
I'll come back in five minutes. Once I am in the room, place the gun on
the floor and do not touch it. It is only good for a single usage, but I
have no desire to find out I'm wrong."
He closed the door. I took the pistol in my hand. It was heavy, dense
with its stored energy, the tip a parabolic hollow to better focus its
cone.
I lifted the gun to my temple and let it rest there. My thumb found the
trigger-stud.
I paused. This wouldn't kill me, but it might lock the interface
forever, paralyzing me, turning me into a thrashing maniac. I knew that
I would never be able to pull the trigger. The doc must've known, too --
this was his way of convincing me to let him do that restore.