It pained her that she could remember Zhi’s first words to her but not his last. He had become both one of her ghosts and one of her demons, and she felt suffocated by his memory. God, how she missed him.
She felt her skin prickle as the refresh began, and her vision hollowed. The last thing she remembered was Laleh telling her that she would check in on her in a few hours.
Then came darkness.
CHAPTER FOUR
As Con clawed her way up the gray tunnel toward awareness, she knew something was very wrong. The hangover effect after refreshing her upload was rarely pleasant, but it had never been this bad before. Not even close. Her head felt waterlogged, and a steady pressure was building against her temples. Drip, drip, drip. Her brain felt as if it had been crammed into a soggy matchbox. No, not her brain. Her mind. And it wanted out, bad.
She yawned uncontrollably. That much was normal. Even though a refresh bore a superficial resemblance to slow-wave sleep, it wasn’t restful. They’d explained it during orientation—how suppressing the prefrontal cortex simulated sleep while the rest of the brain lit up like a slot machine hitting a million-dollar jackpot. Which was why it felt less like waking up and more a guided tour of the world’s largest tequila distillery.
When she opened her eyes, her eyelashes were crusted shut as though she’d been crying. It happened. Palingenesis called it autonomic emotional response, a side effect of the intense stimulation of the hippocampus. Con just called it draining. Though the lights were dimmed, their glare cut into her retinas like rescue flares. She raised her hand to shield her eyes, but her arm didn’t respond. She couldn’t even feel it. As if nothing at all existed below her shoulder. She tried to lift her head to confirm that she still had arms, but her neck wouldn’t obey either. A terrible thought occurred to her. There’d been a malfunction. They’d fried her somehow. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remain calm.
Palingenesis billed uploads as routine outpatient procedures. Sure, there had been mistakes in the early days that had left smoking vegetables in the chair—cut and paste instead of copy and paste. But Palingenesis claimed it had resolved those issues and that the latest generation had upload errors of less than 0.0000004536 percent. Con had memorized the number because there was comfort in its infinitesimal smallness. There was a better chance of a shark attack on a mountaintop than of a neural lobotomy during a refresh. Or so Palingenesis assured its clients.
The sound of voices encouraged her to reopen her eyes. A man and a woman came gradually into focus. Con didn’t recognize either of them, but more ominously, neither was Laleh Askari. Worse still, both wore white lab coats over hospital scrubs. No one dressed like a doctor at Palingenesis. Ever. It was part of their shtick to distract clients from thinking about where they were. That alone frightened Con more than how bad she felt. She opened her mouth to ask what had gone wrong, but all that came out was a low, grinding moan. Wonderful. The lab techs glanced briefly at her, then returned to their LFDs. Con decided to give establishing first contact one more shot.
“Where is Dr. Qiao?” she croaked. Not pretty, but progress.
The female tech looked at her partner questioningly.
He explained, “Qiao used to work here. Left before you hired on.”
The female tech made an alarmed face. “How far back does this one go?”
“Eighteen months.”
“No,” the female tech said. “That’s not possible.”
“That’s what her time stamp says.”
“That’s insane. Who authorized this?”
“The process is automated,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, but there are safety checks in place.”
“Well, someone screwed up,” he agreed. “Royally.”
Con hated being talked about like she wasn’t even there. “Hello,” she said. “Hello!”
The two techs fell silent.
“Would one of you explain what the hell is going on? What did you do to . . . ? Why can’t . . .” She stuttered over her next word like a hiccup. “。 . . move? Where’s Dr. Qiao?” They’d said he’d left the company, but she must have misunderstood.
The male tech glanced at his partner before answering. “Dr. Qiao doesn’t work here anymore.”
“What are you talking about? . . . saw him this morning. Where is he?” Con demanded.
“He took a job in California.”
“In the last six hours?” Her voice growing stronger by the word. Maybe she wasn’t completely screwed.