Kasey did as she was told, transmitting her rank, name, and residence via retina ID. The system approved her. Her Intraface downloaded Dr. Goldstein’s soonest appointment slot and suite number. She was good to go.
“Wait,” said the nurse, then reviewed Kasey’s info as well. Seemed to defeat the purpose of a secure retina feed, but Kasey kept that thought to herself. Maybe this was the extra attention people craved, so she said nothing. Did nothing as the nurse paused, mid-review.
And tapped the nurse to her left.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. The micro-conversation （It’s her—Who?—Kasey Mizuhara） conducted in a whisper, barely audible to the human ear, but human ears weren’t what Kasey was worried about.
Like clockwork, the first reporter holo-ed in, alerted by the geolocation alert on Kasey’s spoken full name. A dozen others followed, the public domain lobby a field day while Kasey, stuck in the flesh, couldn’t log out. The elevator bank, labeled as private domain by her Intraface, was her only escape. She made for it, cutting through the semitransparent horde.
“Kasey! Kasey!” Thankfully they couldn’t touch her—but then a question grabbed Kasey by the throat. “How are you feeling now that they’ve found the boat?”
She didn’t stop moving—didn’t change her outputted speed or expression.
The press excelled at extrapolating.
“KASEY MIZUHARA, LAST TO LEARN SISTER’S FATE,” one enunciated as others blinked at her, snapping pictures with their Intrafaces, still snapping—just from a distance—when Kasey reached the elevator bank. She punched the UP button. The elevator arrived. In the privacy of its enclosure, she opened her Intraface. Fifty-five new messages, mostly from Meridian. None from David; didn’t mean anything.
Kasey launched her daily news app. The headline glowed across multiple feeds.
BOAT WASHED ASHORE LANDMASS-660, BODY REMAINS MISSING
She waited to feel something, but felt nothing and realized this:
The boat did not matter.
The boat was inanimate.
The body did not matter. Found or missing, it’d be inanimate by now too, all because of the doctor in Suite 412.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Goldstein said after Kasey barged in, half an hour earlier than her appointment but he’d been seeing no one else. “A shame, what happened to your sister.”
“Why didn’t you treat her?” Kasey demanded.
“Ah.” Dr. Goldstein seemed to visibly shift gears, confusing Kasey. She’d thought they were on the same page. “I’m afraid Celia didn’t authorize disclosure to family members.”
And Kasey was afraid she didn’t care. “The Coles cured all cancers,” she blurted, then stared at Dr. Goldstein, daring him to ask her how she knew.
“Not the new ones,” Dr. Goldstein finally said. And then because Kasey must have appeared on the verge of hacking into the medical records herself, he went the extra kilometer. “Let me show you something.”
They took the elevator all the way down to G3, the floor pitch-black before the motion-sensing lights flickered on, illuminating a room filled with stasis pods.
“All medical grade,” Dr. Goldstein said as Kasey ventured in.
She knew without him saying so. She’d used them in her final science team competition, which was how she also knew what Dr. Goldstein would say next.
“What Celia had … it’s rare. But what disease haven’t we conquered? In fifty years, we might be able to transplant brains. In a century, we may reverse aging. All we need is time. And this”—Dr. Goldstein patted a stasis pod—“gives us just that. Time.”
Foreboding settled in Kasey’s belly. “How many years did you tell her?”
“Now, you must understand, there’s no exact—”
“How many?”
“A forecasted eighty, should the rate of innovation continue as is.”
Eighty. The number passed through Kasey like a shock wave, immobilizing her.
Dr. Goldstein took it upon himself to fill her silence. “She came at a terminal stage.” He assumed Kasey was in denial about the disease’s severity. “Hid the decline well, I’ll say.” He assumed she felt guilt for failing to detect it herself.
Wrong. The only thing Kasey felt was her stomach sinking to the ground. “She agreed?”
“Why, yes, of course.” He tapped the air with a finger and a holograph appeared.
The informed consent form.
The stasis pod sealing, scheduled mere days prior to Celia leaving for sea.