sensory deprivation. "What a deal."
"Nevertheless." Wounded, the calendar attempted to justify itself, exactly as it had before. "Our programmed responses are generated from the database screens that you and your husband filled out. Where you are listed as Mr. and Mrs. Niemand. You can call yourselves Rick Deckard and Rachael Tyrell-or Sarah, if that's what you prefer-but we can't. That's just the way it is."
She knew all that. To be lectured by machines, that was what life had come to. Life as we know it , Sarah mused bitterly. What was worse, she also knew the autonomic calendar was right; it would confuse things too much for her to insist upon being called by her real name. She wasn't even completely sure what that name was anymore. Mr. and Mrs. Niemand were the aliases that Deckard had picked for them so they could travel with all the other emigrants leaving Earth and set up housekeeping-such as it was-in the U.N. transit colony on Mars. Without being apprehended by the authorities; after what had happened on Earth, back in Los Angeles-not what had merely happened , but what she herself had willed into being, the agent of her own destruction and the apocalypse of the Tyrell Corporation-after all that, the police and the U.N. security forces wouldn't even bother bringing any charges against her.
Even for murder-there must have been dozens who'd died in the flaming, explosives-driven collapse of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters buildings. Maybe hundreds; the way people tended to die in L.A., anonymously and forgotten, it was hard to keep track of these things. But though she had made it come about, the fulfillment of her own intent and desires deeper and more driving than anything held in consciousness, she hadn't been alone. The faceless entities at the U.N. had actually been the ones to push the red button, or whatever trigger was used to reduce the Tyrell Corporation to a ziggurat of twisted girders and smoldering rubble with dead flesh beneath its weight.
"That's why Sarah Tyrell had to die." She spoke aloud, to the room's empty spaces. Head pressed back against the pillow, watching the blackness behind her eyelids. When Deckard wasn't here with her, this was her main occupation. Perhaps the only one: sorting through the past, sifting its charred, ashen fragments through her fingers, as though she might be able to find pieces of her own splintered bones. The official line was that Sarah Tyrell had died in the corporation's fiery collapse; if the authorities suspected otherwise, they wouldn't be motivated to say so-the blood was on their hands as well. "That's why I'm not Sarah Tyrell anymore ..."
"True." The room wasn't empty; the calendar had heard these musings before.
"But you're not Rachael, either." It had a penchant for accuracy, due to its number-based existence. "That was a lie. That was always a lie."
Right as usual; she nodded slowly in agreement. The real Rachael-if the word real could be applied to a replicant- was also dead. Really and truly dead, as a child might say. Rachael, the duplicate of which Sarah Tyrell had been the original, had been dying when Deckard had fallen in love with her. A fool of a blade runner, to love someone-something-whose intrinsic nature was to die; replicants had only four-year life spans. More like insects, bright ephemeral creatures that lasted a day or two, than humans, who generally took longer in their dying . . . unless you killed them.
"But I wasn't lying." She let her voice become soft and wounded as a child's. "Not really." That word again, just as if it had any meaning at all. "When I told him I was Rachael. Because I'm the same as her . . . aren't I? They made her from me, to be the same as me." She meant her uncle, the late-and murdered-Eldon Tyrell, and all the forces of the Tyrell Corporation that had been under his command when he'd still been alive. "There was no difference between her and me."
"Except," said the calendar, "that he loved her. Mr.
"Nevertheless." Wounded, the calendar attempted to justify itself, exactly as it had before. "Our programmed responses are generated from the database screens that you and your husband filled out. Where you are listed as Mr. and Mrs. Niemand. You can call yourselves Rick Deckard and Rachael Tyrell-or Sarah, if that's what you prefer-but we can't. That's just the way it is."
She knew all that. To be lectured by machines, that was what life had come to. Life as we know it , Sarah mused bitterly. What was worse, she also knew the autonomic calendar was right; it would confuse things too much for her to insist upon being called by her real name. She wasn't even completely sure what that name was anymore. Mr. and Mrs. Niemand were the aliases that Deckard had picked for them so they could travel with all the other emigrants leaving Earth and set up housekeeping-such as it was-in the U.N. transit colony on Mars. Without being apprehended by the authorities; after what had happened on Earth, back in Los Angeles-not what had merely happened , but what she herself had willed into being, the agent of her own destruction and the apocalypse of the Tyrell Corporation-after all that, the police and the U.N. security forces wouldn't even bother bringing any charges against her.
Even for murder-there must have been dozens who'd died in the flaming, explosives-driven collapse of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters buildings. Maybe hundreds; the way people tended to die in L.A., anonymously and forgotten, it was hard to keep track of these things. But though she had made it come about, the fulfillment of her own intent and desires deeper and more driving than anything held in consciousness, she hadn't been alone. The faceless entities at the U.N. had actually been the ones to push the red button, or whatever trigger was used to reduce the Tyrell Corporation to a ziggurat of twisted girders and smoldering rubble with dead flesh beneath its weight.
"That's why Sarah Tyrell had to die." She spoke aloud, to the room's empty spaces. Head pressed back against the pillow, watching the blackness behind her eyelids. When Deckard wasn't here with her, this was her main occupation. Perhaps the only one: sorting through the past, sifting its charred, ashen fragments through her fingers, as though she might be able to find pieces of her own splintered bones. The official line was that Sarah Tyrell had died in the corporation's fiery collapse; if the authorities suspected otherwise, they wouldn't be motivated to say so-the blood was on their hands as well. "That's why I'm not Sarah Tyrell anymore ..."
"True." The room wasn't empty; the calendar had heard these musings before.
"But you're not Rachael, either." It had a penchant for accuracy, due to its number-based existence. "That was a lie. That was always a lie."
Right as usual; she nodded slowly in agreement. The real Rachael-if the word real could be applied to a replicant- was also dead. Really and truly dead, as a child might say. Rachael, the duplicate of which Sarah Tyrell had been the original, had been dying when Deckard had fallen in love with her. A fool of a blade runner, to love someone-something-whose intrinsic nature was to die; replicants had only four-year life spans. More like insects, bright ephemeral creatures that lasted a day or two, than humans, who generally took longer in their dying . . . unless you killed them.
"But I wasn't lying." She let her voice become soft and wounded as a child's. "Not really." That word again, just as if it had any meaning at all. "When I told him I was Rachael. Because I'm the same as her . . . aren't I? They made her from me, to be the same as me." She meant her uncle, the late-and murdered-Eldon Tyrell, and all the forces of the Tyrell Corporation that had been under his command when he'd still been alive. "There was no difference between her and me."
"Except," said the calendar, "that he loved her. Mr.
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