Sequence Six: Seen Again

"You've been going to that 'specialist' for two years now," sniffed Viola. "Is he actually helping you? Or by 'specialist,' should I take it you mean a professional with less than a medical degree but more than a massage license?"

There was no trace of a leer on her face as she said this, but it was all there in her tone of voice - and in the contemptuous way her hand brought the long ivory cigarette holder to her ruby lips.

Painted whore, Caduceus Trimble thought, glaring across the mahogany expanse of his desk at his sister. She should talk, with her tennis coach and her yoga instructor and her spiritual advisor, and the entire stable of residential servants - all of them young, fit, beautiful, and... if my nose doesn't deceive me... in perpetual rut.

Trimble only assumed that the pheromones swirling through the household weren't something new, and that his newly keen sense of smell was increasingly able to discern the musk of raw sensuality emanating from so many healthy, vigorous animal bodies. All his senses were sharper now, and so was his memory - the latter being what had driven him to the secretive clinic in the first place. It was this generalized improvement that told Trimble he really was benefiting from the therapy he'd been receiving.

"I am fitter than a fiddler, thank you," he said, dryly. "Now don't you have some place to be?"

Viola gathered herself up and rose from the expensive sofa where she so loved to perch and irritate him with her catty remarks. Characteristically, she couldn't simply retire - she had to work in one final swipe. "Well, then, dear brother, fiddle on," she tossed over her shoulder as she sashayed out, coruscating layers of silver and black making her long, sumptuous dress resemble some sort of secretive, deep sea mollusk. "Rome is burning, after all."

The door shut behind her, and Trimble smiled. Rome, in fact, was not burning - his corporate holdings were secure and his network of enterprises holding steady. That, too, was an indication that Trimble was regaining his health... and his appetite.

Reaching for the intercom, Trimble turned his thoughts to the day's menu and his lunch. He hesitated: For a moment, he felt as if he'd performed the exact same motion in the exactly same way, only a short while before. Had he already called for lunch? But no - he had felt the sense of familiarity even as he was performing the movements. It was nothing more than d�j� vu, he decided. He didn't know for sure, but Trimble chose to believe that this, too, was a sign of renewed mental vigor, his thoughts regaining their suppleness and his ability to observe, and recall, taking on the old, sharp edge once again.

***

There, Trimble thought, as the silver geltab rolled unevenly across his desk. And: There! And: There! The geltab had awkwardly crashed into two others that lay waiting. He knew that configuration of tabs, he knew the wobbles and shudders that disturbed them. He'd seen it before. In this same room? In a dream?

The sense of d�j� vu kept coming back with greater frequency. At first, it had been like a drop of water falling from a hazy sky; now, it was like a summer shower.

Everything seemed to trigger it. A sense of overwhelming familiarity flickered through Trimble as he cast his gaze around his home office: The way May sunlight spilled across his desk. The way Millie, his cat, sat on an armchair across from his desk, grooming a paw. The way Millie stopped, suddenly, and looked over at his, her curious green stare an unblinking query. Then her grooming resumed, and that, too, seemed familiar.

Didn't they say that d�j� vu was simply the visual cortex getting confused somehow? Misfiring the memory cortex or something? But there was more to this sense of having seen things before. Or was there? The intensity of the feeling was not evidence that there was anything unusual about it. But...

Trimble tugged open his desk drawer and rooted around for a roll of wintergreen mints. Popping one onto his tongue and drawing in the wintergreen's aroma soothed him in times of stress or anxiety. It was a habit from childhood... a very old habit, given that Trimble's childhood lay so far in the past. As he neared his centenary, Trimble had felt himself losing his faculties. As a young man, he'd enjoyed keen senses - colors were vibrant, textures sent sparks through his fingertips that lit up his entire nervous system, and his ability to parse taste afforded him endless gustatory pleasure.

Put all that together with his eidetic memory - what they used to call a photographic memory, but in his case was an ability to recall any blend of sensory input in exact detail - and Trimble had long enjoyed a rare ability to re-live his own memories. A few moments of focus and he could record any experience with absolute clarity, using nothing but his own innate capability. Trimble had never needed sketchbooks or cameras in his youth; nor had he required that sinister new invention, the cerebrex, to capture and re-live treasured moments. The same sort of concentration that allowed him to create such vivid and precise memories had also allowed him to replay them in his mind. All he had ever needed was some peace and quiet, a place to lean back and shut his eyes.

Until a few years ago, that is. Trimble could still recall the memories he'd made in his youth, but the fidelity had deteriorated. And making new memories had become next to impossible. There had been a time - he could barely envision it now - when Trimble could barely remember what his personal chef had served him for supper the night before.

That was when Trimble's years of investment in NeroNexus had paid off. Trimble Ventures had infused the fledgling company with hundreds of millions. It was an investment that paid off handsomely when he needed a return, not in cash but in capability.

The sense of d�j� vu was disquieting, but not entirely unexpected. Dr. Anam had warned Trimble that this might happen. But he didn't say anything about predicting the immediate future, and that was starting to happen, too.

For instance: The way he knew Viola was about to enter the room. And here she came now, her black crenocrylic shawl fluttering around her shoulders. To look at her, you'd think she was in mourning for a beloved spouse. It was some sort of act, put on for effect; the bitch had never been married.

"You are planning to be at the meeting with the Henrick people?" she asked in her haughty voice.

"Of course I am," Trimble snapped.

"I just thought I should ask, given the state of your memory these last few years," she returned. Then, eyes riveting toward the trio of geltabs on his desk, she added, "But maybe the new medicine is working after all. Hm? After onnnly three years?"

"I'm feeling better all the time," Trimble growled, sweeping the tabs into his hand and then swallowing them one after the next with long draws of water from a cut crystal drinking glass.

"Exactly what is in those shiny pills?" Viola demanded. "Mercury? Sea minerals? I think the good doctor is duping you. You've been insisting for a whole year now that the therapy is doing you good, but I don't see any changes."

"You don't have to," Trimble told her. "I have to. And I do. That's enough to tell me that the good doctor's treatment actually works."

"Yes," Viola said absently, tugging at a long glove and loosening it finger by finger. She was already bored with the conversation. The glove slid free with a susurration of synthetic silk.

"Which means," Trimble said with relish, "at this point it's you, and not I, who are wasting company money. You don't need that lawyer, Vi. You have no case, and nor will you have a case. The company remains mine to direct. I'm in control - as always."

Viola fixed him with a frigid glare. "Yes," she said again, sounding less bored this time. In fact, she sounded furious. Trimble smiled at her.

"Now let's make sure everything's ready for the Hendrick people," Trimble suggested. "I know I've been forgetful, and not been too good about tracking the finer points. But you never even knew what those points were or should be. You may sit in on the meeting, of course, but do me a favor and keep quiet unless you've actually been over the briefing documents. And I mean been over them thoroughly," he added.

She looked black venom at him but said nothing more.

***

The d�j� vu kept on as the weeks went by. Trimble had frequent checkups with Dr. Anam.

"How frequent did you say this feeling is?" Dr. Anam asked.

"Every day. All day. Very frequent," Trimble replied. "But you said it was normal?"

"I said we wouldn't be surprised to see it. We would't be surprised to see any number of side effects -- vivid dreams, anxiety atttacks..."

"I've had none of that," Trimble said. "Only..." He stopped himself from mentioning the episodes of precognition. The doctor would never believe it, and might even consider withdrawing the medicine if he thought Trimble's mental state might be tipping into some sot of delusion.

And was that what was happening after all? Trimble hesitated, his breath catching in a moment of fearful hesitation. But, no: No, he was feeling better all the time, and his memory and thinking were demonstrably better now. Far better. Dr. Anam's own tests had proven that.

"Remember, Mr. Trimble, that this is still a very new treatment. There is no 'normal' here. We're gratified to see the process working so well, but anything could turn out to be a warning sign, so we want to keep track, as carefully as we can, of... To be honest, of everything. Have you had any difficulty with coordination, or understanding visual information, as your memory has improved?"

"None," Trimble responded.

"Any narcolepsy? Or cognitive dissonance?"

"I'm not sure what that is, but I have been feeling much sharper than I was," Trimble said. "I like it."

"Any sense of depersonalization? That is, do you have a feeling that what's happening to you is happening not to you, but to someone else?"

"No," Trimble said.

"Have you experienced any sensation of unreality? Or irreality?"

"Again, I don't know what that means. But I don't feel different. Just... better."

"Well, that is certainly encouraging," the doctor said, making notes on his dataglas. "We thought it possible that those might also be side effects. But aside from an early increase in sensory acuity, so far all you're noticing is a sense of d�j� vu?"

"Well, yes, and..." Again, Trimble hesitated. Should he speak up? If he really were so confident that the episodes of precognition were happening, it might mean something important. He didn't worry that it was a side effect with dangerous consequences; rather, Trimble -- always something a science geek -- was increasingly excited at the idea that precognition might actually be possible, b=might even be something that science could gift a human being.

To prove such a thing existed! It could change that world... But that, too, was something Trimble needed to approach with circumspection. At the moment, Trimble alone had the gift of seeing into he immediate future. He had yet to grasp the gift, master it, and use it to his advantage -- but, ever the businessman, he fully intended to. In time, the sensation would stop startling him so, he'd grow used to it, he's think quickly enough to make the phenomenon work for him.

A new tool in his kitbag of competencies would be a welcome thing. Think of the business opportunities; the shortcuts; the money! His company had suffered during his decline, and Viola had made things worse in her off-putting and incompetent manner. It was time to right the ship. Trimble had worked his way back to maybe 96% of the sheer mental prowess he'd had at his peak - but he was going to need all of his old ability, and maybe a little more. He'd need it as fast as he could get it.

The doctor had paused. "Yes? Something?" he asked.

"No, it's trivial," Trimble said. "It's just that the sensory improvement came on so early and so strong - and then it seemed to plateau and, frankly, fall somewhat short of how acute my senses used to be. For instance, I wonder if the treatment could have affected my palate. I am a wine connoisseur, you know, and my best bottles aren't tasting as pyrotechnic to me as I would want them to."

Dr. Anam was already back to his dataglas. "Have you seen a regenerative specialist?" he asked. "Loss of sensory acuity of all sorts is a very common problem in patients of your age."

"So you think it's simply a matter of my tongue aging," Trimble said.

The doctor half shrugged without looking up. "I just don't see how it could be connected to the treatment," he said.

"And my mental acuity? My memory? Will those things plateau before I want them to?"

Now the doctor set his dataglas aside and began to feel along both sides of Trimble's jawline with gloved fingers. Trimble had the sense this palpating the doctor did had no actual diagnostic value - it was either a nervous tic or a means of distracting him when he got too demanding.

"Well, Mr. Caduceus," the doctor murmured, focusing intently on his task, "only time will tell."

***

"Damn you, Viola," Trimble cried, slapping the desk top with the flat of his hand. The slap stung. Trimble had had bone regen done, but for a moment he feared he might have fractured a metacarpal. He rubbed his hand, but his tirade went on without interruption.

"There are things you can do as an officer of the company," he berated her, "and things that do not lie in your power. Especially not over male employees - especially not over male managerial staff! Do you want the hassle of a complaint filed under the gender laws? If you really must boss our managerial staff around, do it through me. The Bible rewards strong patriarchs. So does the law of the land."

"Frankly," Viola said, lifting a hand to examine her glossy nails and sparkling rings, "I don't see why we have to follow the same laws as the little people. They're all just property, after all."

"Not in our company they aren't," Trimble retorted. "Nor will they ever be - not on my watch!"

"That's another reason our bottom line has grown so thin," Viola said. "If you employ your work force, you have to pay them. But if you own them, all you have to do is provide for them. And the law sets the provision standards very reasonably."

"You mean it allows companies to enslave non-citizens and force them to live in squalor," Trimble barked. "You need to leave my office right now."

His sister sashayed toward the door, wreathed in the blaze of red and orange lumentic fiber weave. She paused. "Sooner or later," she announced, "this company will move into the 21st century." She exited Trimble's office.

Trimble shook out his aching hand. His heart was racing, and he felt a little dizzy. Dr. Anam had told him that his mind was coming along just fine, but he would need some regen done on his heart. Trimble intended to - as soon as he had a little more time for it. The company needed his full attention right now, and he figured his old ticker could wait.

But the way things were going, it was starting to become a strain. Trimble had read the latest changes in the Ownership Laws that morning. The new provisions angered him. Trimble had always been an advocate of the free market, but he drew the line at redefining human beings as goods to be bought, sold, and owned.

Even now, as he mulled the legal documents he'd accessed on his datastation, Trimble saw pages of text scroll by in his mind. The vile gall of those horrifying Theopublicans! Then Trimble stopped and, despite his outrage, he smiled. The treatment clearly was working! The new laws were revolting, but his memory of the documents was crisp and complete, and as he considered what the new legislation meant for Trimble Ventures his thoughts raced fluidly through the conceptual matrices of labor law and the company's many layers of management, its complicated operations, and its always-complex politics.

"Enter the 21st century?" he chuckled. "Perhaps. But not before the 22nd century gets here. Or maybe even the 23rd!"

Still feeling a little out of breath and light headed, Trimble filled his water glass. It was time for his next dose. After more than five years of therapy, he was approaching the end of the prescribed course of treatment. Another battery of tests lie in the months ahead, and they would tell the tale of his success - Caduceus Trimble, vanquisher of age, victor over time and malady. Time regained? Trimble thought to himself. Marcel Proust has nothing on me! He shook three geltabs into his hand, then reached for his cut crystal water glass...

But the motion was interrupted by a surge of familiarity, and dread. Trimble stared at the geltabs, how they clustered in his hand as he stood at his desk. He glanced at his water glass and his decanter. The light gleamed just so on the cut crystal. One of the geltabs had a black line, a meaningless imperfection in its casement.

"There," he said. "I've seen this. I've seen this... just before..."

The pain. In just a moment, it would hit him.

Trimble thought to reach for his intercom, but before he could move the agony he'd anticipated blazed from his chest and down his left arm. Gasping, Trimble collapsed back into his chair, the geltabs scattering to the desk and floor.

He actually heard his heart's arrhythmia. He heard the moment when his heart stopped. And then for the next two hours, as his body cooled and he lay motionless on the floor, he heard only the sounds of his office - holoscreen chimes and signals, the air cleansing system, the distant thrum of the estate generators. His PCD pinged - Viola, maybe, or his secretary, looking for him and wondering why he wasn't at this afternoon's meeting with the Hendricks people. The meeting he's been looking forward to, the meeting when he would have tested his precognitive ability in a business setting. If he'd still been treating, Trimble would have heaved a sigh.

Curious that he was no longer feeling afraid. No longer feeling anything, for that matter. His world was now that of death; his single remaining sense that of hearing, but didn't they always used to say that hearing went last?

How long would Trimble continue to hear the world around him?

Hours went by and the pings repeated on his PCD, but no one came to find him in person... not until Trimble heard his personal chef entering the office with his dinner on a tray. Then he heard the tray crash to the floor, the sound of flatware scattering and china shattering, the man's cries of panic and fear.

***

There was time, and nothing but time to cast his mind over the situation he found himself in. Trimble was dead, and yet his thoughts continued. No blood flowed; rather, the blood settled and thickened in his veins and arteries. No oxygen circulated in his bloodstream to replenish his brain, but his brain no longer needed oxygen.

With so much time to reflect and consider, Trimble had worked it all out. The fact that he could still hear what was happening around him was due to his brain's newly formed proto-sensory system. Doctor Anam had never explained why the people at NeroNexus thought such a thing was necessary, but Trimble supposed it was a sort of fringe benefit - an accessory to enhance his natural senses. What he heard was muffled, but the range of his hearing now extended to incredible high and low frequencies. He could hear a dog whistle - he could hear the sonorous grind of the Earth's plates deep underfoot. Along with this extended hearing came a vibratory sense, and an electromagnetic sense, and... well, something else, something he didn't yet understand. Was this supposed to happen, or was it an unexpected side effect of the new technology?

What he couldn't do was see, so Trimble supposed the very idea of déjà vu -- the word meaning "to see again" - was now moot. But he still had a sense of definite familiarity with the things he heard - the conversation of the police officers who came, the sounds of transport to the hospital and then the morgue, and the heart rending noises... if his fatally damaged heart could still be rent... of his corpse being prepared for burial, flesh incised and punctured, blood and spinal fluid drained, bowels vacuumed empty. Then came an influx of preservative fluid - an influx that wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to his still-operational mind, even as it changed his flesh to a durable semi-plastic.

"The change will be so gradual you'll never even notice it, " Dr. Anam had told him three years earlier, when Trimble had first begun the treatments. "With every infusion of neuro-nits, a little more of you brain tissue will be replaced. Bit by bit, like stone taking the shape of a bone and creating a fossil, your memories and your identity will be replicated in the brand-new storage system of a synthetic brain. The wonderful thing about this gradual approach is that you won't even feel it happening - you will still be yourself. Your mind will inhabit the neuro-nits the same way your conscious identity has preserved itself across the decades. Identity," Dr. Anam has summarized grandly, "is continuity - and by the time you are finished with this course of treatment, your synthetic brain will have come to host your genuine living mind!"

It was a cunning strategy, Trimble realized, as Dr. Anam went on to explain that identity was not something concrete and changeless; if anything, it was an illusion, fluid and given to accepting just such a replacement of worn-out neurological tissue.

"You surely don't think you are the same man as you were at age 24?" Dr. Anam had asked him rhetorically. Trimble did think so, in fact, but Dr. Anam explained how wrong that conception was. "Why, the very atoms in your body change over every couple of years," he exclaimed. "New atoms take their place, and the overall shape remains the same... well, not the same, it's always shifting, gradually transforming into something else, but that is an organic process and not the result of the atomic changeover. The point is, you never notice a difference.

"This will be much the same," Dr. Anam went on. "Your organic brain cells will be replaced, billions of them, by transcarbon that will take the same shape and function as your pre-existing neurological structures. It will be a few million synapses each day that are replaced, and that sounds like a lot... but not when you consider the four hundred billion synapses we are replacing!"

"A few million each day does sound like a lot," Trimble had agreed, looking at the geltabs he was supposed to ingest. Three geltabs, twice each day. The sparkling contents of those tabs were neuro-nits, more than half a million of them in each tab... molecule-sized machines that would link up into a computational network and create a brain as powerful as the natural one he'd had at the peak of his mental powers...

And now that Trimble's body had died, that fantastic brain was about to be stowed underground forever. It was too exasperating, and yet Trimble wasn't able to summon any real anger over it - only the idea of anger. Of course, he thought, anger was hormonal, a surge of chemicals in the blood... and he had no more blood. What he had was the memory of blood, the memory of physical and emotional sensation...

Memory, and thought. If they had cremated him, his now-artificially contained consciousness would have been incinerated. But he was to be interred in the family mausoleum in accord with Trimble tradition, buried in stone and darkness and time... He'd have nothing but time... time to ponder and peruse his own recollections...

Trimble had never really wanted to be buried... had never cared one way or the other, actually, and so he had but never specified against it, content to go along with family tradition. Ground burial was an incredibly privileged tradition that only Owners could afford and Viola, of course, ever conscious of social standing, would have the disposition of his remains (and hers, when the evil bitch finally died) handled no other way. She took charge of the memorial, the viewing of the body, the funeral, the entire affair.

That didn't surprise Trimble. What did surprise him was what she had to say late one night as he lay in state.

"Ready for a heart to heart with your grieving sister, dear Caduceus? I know you can hear me," she told him. They were alone in the room. He's known it was her when she entered, clued in by the rustle of her clothing and accessories, a mélange of synthetics and organics like wool and leather. Those organic materials were more examples of the rare and privileged commodities in which she reveled.

Trimble was momentarily surprised that he wasn't surprised at the way Viola was talking to him. She'd never been a sentimental sort. Even if she had been, she'd never have wasted her words talking the the corpse of a brother she despised. It occurred to Trimble that he might try consciously to generate something akin to surprise in his array of transcarbonic networks, but before he could try it she spoke again.

"I had a friendly chat with the doctors at NeroNexus," Viola told him. "They were very concerned that you not be cremated or buried. They seemed to think that fancy new brain of yours could still be put to good use. They even talked about uploading your mind into some sort of cyber-plexus, or autoconstruct shell, or something.

"But I told them to forget it, and I mean forget it," Viola went on, her voice taking on a gloating quality. "Their continued financial relationship with Trimble Ventures depends on instant and total amnesia about your shiny new mind. If they should happen to remember how their treatments shifted your consciousness from rotting meat into the virtual immortality of clean and enduring transcarbon... well... what a shame that Trimble Ventures would simply have to exercise its confiscation clause and wipe them out. Oh, and the gag clause is very convenient, too.

"Surprised that I know all the details?" Viola trilled, pausing to let him answer silently. In truth, nothing about her devious ways surprised him, but he was certain that in her own mind he was positively reeling with shock and horror. "Ah, I know what you think of me," Viola resumed. "All frippery, all luxury, not a bone for business in her body. But I was never as vacant as you liked to think - and you were never so clever. I was onto you within the first year of your treatment, Caduceus, and your Dr. Anam is so proud of his work, and so talkative... Not that he violated any doctor-patient confidentiality. But then, he didn't have to. I know you, brother mine, and I know how the world looks through your eyes."

Caduceus heard Viola light up another of her disgusting cigarettes. She was addicted to the kind that came laced with that new narcotic. What did they call it on the street? Trimble's mind supplied the answer at once: Bliss Jismn. He almost wished of the sort of sardonic pleasure he should have gotten from the crude name. Surely Viola would hate to think of anything called Bliss Jismn passing her vain, painted lips.

"But let's not talk about them," Viola went on, her words carried on a rush of exhaled smoke. "Little people, so craven and pleading, so fragile. So very vulnerable to money and all its promises... and threats. So drab in their panic... so easily cowed. Not like you. And you know, I will miss you." He heard her puff again. Her draw and then expulsion of smoke sounded pensive.

"So, beloved brother, what will you be thinking about as your bones turn to dust six feet under?" Viola resumed. "I hope you keep me in mind. Think of me every day. We have such a special relationship. Will you miss me the way I'm going to miss you?"

Impossible words, and impossibly vicious. And yet, as she spoke them, that sense of familiarity came back and grew stronger. Trimble could have spoken her last lines aloud with her, had he retained the ability to speak. The precognitive ability was only getting stronger. Another irony, since soon enough there would be no more events in Trimble's world to anticipate or foresee. Just stillness, silence... the silence of the tomb. Eternity, with Trimble listening for its slow, slow enunciations.

He heard her rise and leave the room without another word.

***

So familiar: The funeral, with its speeches; the movement of the coffin as six strong men carried it across a plush lawn of siliconic grass; the cascading sound of soil falling over the coffin. Then silence, except for the Earth's own deeply grinding thrum, and faint fluctuations in his electromagnetic sense. And then...

He woke as if from a dream. And it was a dream, of sorts - a dream lasting years on end, a dream consisting not of subconsciously invented symbolism, but rather of memory. His synthetic brain had replayed those last three years of his life - the years it had been capable of recording in such flawless fidelity that to recall those memories was to live them afresh.

That vague, unnamed sense he'd discerned just after the death of his body had turned out to be a sense for time: His new brain was equipped with its own faultless chronometer. Upon coming out of his memory's replay mode, Trimble knew at once that he'd been engaged in his recollections for a total of two years and nine months. The same as always. The same as the other eleven times he'd re-lived those memories.

His brain's power source was good for an estimated forty-two years. He had about ten years of power left: Good for three more complete replays, and much of a fourth.

With nothing else to occupy him, Trimble sank back into those eidetic memories, reliving the same sequence of thoughts, actions, and days, starting from he beginning -- the moment when his transcarbon brain had flickered into operation, a moment he had not discerned when it happened, but which now marked and re-marked the threshold of his rebirth. And it was into those memories that he was born once more, as so often: Hearing again, tasting again... seeing again...

"You've been going to that 'specialist' for two years now," sniffed Viola. "Is he actually helping you? Or by 'specialist,' should I take it you mean a professional with less than a medical degree but more than a massage license?"

As Trimble's thoughts whirred through the same sense and thought patterns still another time, the glossily varnished interior of his casket caught the deep blue glow of his synthetic brain, a glow that seeped through his ears and nostrils and around the edges of his sunken, withered eyes... a glow that lit the narrow confines of his casket, within which pulsed the gleaming silver universe he occupied.