The Forever Watch Read Online Free PDF

more of exams ahead.
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    I didn’t make COS. None of my friends did either. But I was wretched for a good long while. I did not cry other than those first moments during Data Structures, but it felt as if I should have. The terrible three took me out and got me properly drunk in between bowls of ice cream. My first hangover was that morning after, in Lyn’s apartment, with the rest of them passed out around the couch and the air smelling very much as if something excessive happened the night before. It was not so bad really. The path of my life had been set. The three of us ended up going to the same training facility, and even if it was not on the path to a seat on the Noah’s Bridge or a high rank in one of the Ministries, it is still Type V training, the educational tier just under that of the top officers on the ship.
    Why do I care so much about a child I never saw, never touched? Women are not supposed to get depressed over this. There was no time for a personal connection. I was just an incubator. I wasn’t even awake for the months my womb was occupied.
    It is not like the aberration that what had happened with Holmheim. That secret trauma that’s got nothing to do with normal life. Or maybe I can say that now because Holmheim wasn’t nearly so valuable as his pride led him to believe and was discreetly Adjusted, those troublesome urges excised from his brain, his creative centers subtly locked down by incidental damage, his future prospects limited. Most of his coworkers probably did not notice the change in him.
    Just as mine never noticed the change in me, and I did change for all that I was not Adjusted.
    The ordinary drama of life on the Noah—messing up a test, Breeding Duty, recovering from all that—is something every woman is supposed to handle. I’m supposed to be stronger than this. Nobody but Barrens seems to understand that I’m having a tough time.
    This is this, and that was that.
    They glitter darkly, in the back of my thoughts, locked away. Subversive, dangerous desires, to hack my way through the system, find out what my baby looks like.
    I consider voluntarily setting up a follow-up with that Behavioralist from the post-Duty evaluation. There is not supposed to be any stigma from psych counseling, but everyone knows those sessions go into one’s career records, and an officer’s emotional-stability score is a significant factor in being evaluated for future promotions.
    After work, I watch streams on the Web. I watch the commercials. They let you taste, for just an instant, the sensation of having that product.
    A few of them are for clothes or food or drinks or shoes. But most of the ads are selling memories themselves.
    A memory can be shared with others for the sake of entertainment, or for educational purposes, or as testimony in the courts. They are bought and sold and spread on the Nth Web the way movies and music used to be when the networking of computation was new. If a crewman cannot afford to pay for the awesome experience of a real steak, he can at least buy the memory of someone who can.
    These days, the most desired of actors and actresses are not the most beautiful, or the most skilled. It is about authenticity. Success is about the emotional breadth of experience to move the minds of those who experience the scenarios one has acted through.
    There is an ad for a memory from a rich Behavioralist with a cat.
    I pay the fee and subscribe.
    For two minutes, I live inside her head.
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    Minnow’s fur is so soft. So soft. When I run the brush along his back, he arches against it and purrs. He is warm in my hands. He trusts me. I feel needed and loved, and content, kneeling on the plush velvety carpet, while I slide stroke after stroke of the stiff bristles against him.
    He is worth every credit it takes to pay for his keep. He is beautiful. His coat shines, glossy black dusted with ash gray. The white patches on his feet