Free Player One: What Is to Become of Us by Douglas Coupland Page A

about Eternals looking backwards. No. Once you’re gone, you’ll never find out who won the World Series, who wore what to the Oscars, or whether your kids went on to cure cancer or murder Girl Guides. Luke is on the cusp of ordering another round of drinks for himself and Rachel when Leslie Freemont enters the building.
    Rachel turned to look at Leslie Freemont. “I’ve seen that man on TV.”
    “It’s that fraud — Freeman . . . Freemont — what the hell is he doing here?”
    “Being on television would make him a good genetic donor, would it not? And his skin is tanned. He must be a sportive outdoors type.”
    Luke was surprised by how angered he was that Leslie Freemont had become a threat to his potential hookup with Rachel. “Suntan? That’s fake-and-bake, trust me, and the TV thing? It’s infomercials for some quack self-help cult.”
    “He seems confident and virile.”
    “He’s a complete hoax.”
    Yet, of course, the two continued watching as Leslie seduced the western side of the bar. They even participated in a toast with the man. And after the briefest of visits, capped by a quickie snapshot, Leslie and his assistant were gone.
    Rachel
    Rachel is trying to establish whether Luke might be a suitable father for her child — a man with a wad of cash in his pocket who recently stopped believing in religion. Religion strikes Rachel as reproduction-neutral, but Luke says he once had a vision of a spaceship headed heavenward — perhaps he is a poet? Neurotypical people are an endless source of puzzles. Religion is one of the biggest.
    In any event, when oil hits $250 a barrel, Rachel’s brain senses a threat to her body, making her amygdala kick in to create a duplicate recording of her cocktail lounge experience, which, afterwards, she will be able to scan for data that she can learn from, to protect herself in a similar situation. Her brain’s double recording of the event will make it feel as if it happened in slow motion. The doubling of neural information simulates the lengthening of time, and because Rachel is different, she is able to keep dual recordings of intense events running far longer than neurotypicals. Thus, Rachel will be able to revisit the arrival and departure of Leslie Freemont and his assistant, Tara.
    Rachel is grateful for Leslie’s cocoa butter tan and white outfit and white hair, as it gives him distinctive non-facial characteristics that allow her to recognize him without having to resort to eyes, ears, and mouth. She has no idea how the rest of the world can tell each other apart. What would be wrong with everyone wearing name tags? It wouldn’t be difficult or expensive — and yet nobody is interested.
    Rachel is also relieved that nobody in the cocktail lounge makes laughing noises when she announces that she breeds white mice for a living. She received a lot of the laughing noises back in high school, when she first went into business. As she walked past other students, they’d say, “ Squeak-squeak ” — a bad imitation of the noise white mice make, which is, in fact, almost no noise at all. The laughing noise usually means her day is going to be just that much harder.
    Once Leslie leaves, the group of five clusters around the truly dreadful computer in search of news. Warren seizes control of the keyboard. Nobody else seems to care, but Rachel can tell that Warren isn’t actually that good with computers. “Fricking hell, it’s asking me to download some kind of patch.” Warren’s tone reminds Rachel of her father and thus her mating mission.
    Her current situation may be bewildering and slightly scary, but Rachel presses forward, saying, “Push CONTROL -4 to override that request.”
    It works.
    Karen says, “Go to CNN.com. Hurry! Hurry!” But Warren is klutzy and hits the wrong keys, triggering a cluster of frozen windows.
    Rick asks Rachel, “You — what’s your name?”
    “My name is . . . Rachel.”
    “Rachel, take over from this guy.”
    Warren