Clay is terminally ill, but there are options. He and his wife, Laura, decide to make a back-up of his mind, and build a thoroughly functional duplicate body. And the scheme does go rather well ... until an unanticipated third party enters the relationship.
"One night he woke ... no, it was in the morning. He woke in the basement because his consciousness retreated to the basement whenever he slept -- a condition of his programming, thus completely natural. Why was he awake? He didn't know. Had something wakened him? Perhaps a microphone had caught something, or perhaps it was just a dream. Yet he found himself listening to the crickets outside and the little sad creaks of boards and nails, and he couldn't relax. Something had him on edge. Finally he migrated upstairs and into his body, and he climbed out of bed without being obvious, reasoning that if there was an intruder, it would be more intimidated by a figure of substance than a set of impulses running light-quick through the walls."
Robert Reed is the author of many published stories. "After All" was an early success. Reed won a Hugo Award in 2007, for his novella "A Billion Eves."
Genre: Science Fiction
"One night he woke ... no, it was in the morning. He woke in the basement because his consciousness retreated to the basement whenever he slept -- a condition of his programming, thus completely natural. Why was he awake? He didn't know. Had something wakened him? Perhaps a microphone had caught something, or perhaps it was just a dream. Yet he found himself listening to the crickets outside and the little sad creaks of boards and nails, and he couldn't relax. Something had him on edge. Finally he migrated upstairs and into his body, and he climbed out of bed without being obvious, reasoning that if there was an intruder, it would be more intimidated by a figure of substance than a set of impulses running light-quick through the walls."
Robert Reed is the author of many published stories. "After All" was an early success. Reed won a Hugo Award in 2007, for his novella "A Billion Eves."
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Robert Reed's After All