IEEE Spectrum June, 2014 - 82

But I was, all at once, beyond restraint.
I turned on him. "And Jake didn't marry
me for sweetness, either. Who wants
to go to bed with a lump of marzipan-
he used to say that to me! And he didn't
leave me for lack of sweetness, either, or
he wouldn't have chosen...what does she
have that I don't?"
My voice had risen to a shout. The three
other people in the waiting room, two of
whom were holo-masked, stared. I twisted
my hands together and spoke more softly.
"He's just erased me from his life. That's
what I really can't stand-that he acts like
I never existed at all."
Trevor put his arms around me. I collapsed against his thin chest and narrow
shoulders-delicate frames were hot just
now with gays-and sobbed quietly. The
man sitting two chairs away moved to
four chairs away.
After I finally blew my nose, I said,
"Trevvy, I have to know. Jake was the love
of my life."
"Jake is a cheating and lying bastard, and
anyway, I'm the love of your life."
"Not carnally."
"Overrated."
"You don't believe that."
"Well, no." He held me at arm's length.
"You look like a dead spot in the ocean.
Go put on some makeup. Obsession is
not a good look for you. Anyway, Becky
should be the love of your life."
His expression stopped my remaining
sniffles. Trevor always smiles and he is
never, ever critical of me. Not seriously.
I said, "She is."
He didn't bother to correct the lie. But
he looked away from me, and something
in my neck went cold. I'd lost my soonto-be-ex husband. If I lost Trevor, too....
"I'm here, Amanda. Always. And no,
I don't need sweetness from you. I just
need-"
My wristband brightened and said,
"Ms. Rydder, the surgery went fine, and
you can see Rebecca now. First door to
your left."
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no pain, no cloudiness in
her iris.
You couldn't tell that anything had been done to her
at all.

U s i n g t h e s o f t wa r e
was as uncomplicated as
the implant itself. What was
hard was setting it up. The
manufacturer doesn't do
that for you, understanding more than anyone the
absolute necessity of customized, unhackable encryption on dedicated and
shielded computers. Most
wearers of Opti-Cam implants are not six-month-old
infants. Last month alone,
six major mobsters were indicted and an Asian dictator
assassinated using information from Opti-Cams.
Trevor set up my system.
It was pretty minimal: receiver, screen, retransmitter, basic encryption. He
protested the retransmitter. "This data isn't something you should view
on anything but this one
screen here in your bedroom, off-line for all the
Internets. Don't retransmit
to your wrister or, quod di
prohibeant, to any screen anywhere at
your job. Do I have to remind you that
this whole setup is illegal?"
"Just get it working. And drop the Latin-
it's pretentious."
"You never did have any sense of verbal
fashion, Mandy. No, don't touch that...
wait a minute...there."
The screen brightened to an expanse
of white. I was about to protest that the
system didn't work when I realized: Becky
was staring at the ceiling.

"i ran the
camera
images
of Jake as
becky saw
him until
i found a
good one"
I charged through the door. Becky lay
in a smartcrib, watching a holo-mobile
two feet above her. Bright, nonexistent
shapes twisted and flowed in the air.
Becky's plump little hands reached for
them until she saw me. She crowed with
delight, and I picked her up and cuddled
her, studying her right eye.
It was clear, stained-glass green with
thick, dark lashes. Just like Jake's eyes.
No scars on the smooth baby skin.
No grogginess from the anesthesia,

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2014
