The Memory of You Lingers

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Also by Robert Jeschonek

  Title Page 2

  Story: The Memory of You Lingers

  About the Author

  Giveaway

  Novel Preview - Battlenaut Crucible

  The Memory of You Lingers:

  A Scifi Story

  by Robert Jeschonek

  THE MEMORY OF YOU LINGERS:

  A SCIFI STORY

  Copyright © 2016 by Robert Jeschonek

  www.thefictioneer.com

  Cover Art Copyright © 2016 by Ben Baldwin

  www.benbaldwin.co.uk

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in August 2013 by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.

  A Pie Press book

  Published by Pie Press Publishing

  411 Chancellor Street

  Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

  www.piepresspublishing.com

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  Also by Robert Jeschonek

  Battlenaut Crucible

  Beware the Black Battlenaut

  Day 9

  Scifi Motherlode

  Six Scifi Stories Volume 1

  Six Scifi Stories Volume 2

  Six Scifi Stories Volume 3

  Six Scifi Stories Volume 4

  Universal Language

  The Memory of You Lingers:

  A Scifi Story

  "Happy anniversary, Baird!" The old woman's voice whispered in his ear. "Congratulations, sweetheart!"

  Baird rolled over in bed without opening his eyes. He knew she was standing over him, watching for his reaction. She'd done it a million times before.

  Baird wasn't going to fall for her game anymore, though. He knew it wasn't his long-awaited anniversary. Not for one more day.

  He just wanted some damned sleep. Not that Frieda would give it to him.

  "Wakey wakey, darling boy," she said. "It's the first day of the rest of your life!"

  Baird opened his eyes. He didn't need to roll over to see Frieda, because she'd jumped into his line of sight.

  She crouched alongside his bed, beaming angelically at him, haloed in the morning sunlight streaming through her tiara of wispy white hair. There wasn't a hint of cruelty on her broad, flat face, not even a nasty twinkle in her bright blue eyes. She looked the same as always, right down to the sky-blue housedress with white polka pots. She spoke with complete sincerity and deep, heartfelt affection.

  "Welcome back to the world of the waking, dear sleepyhead!" said Frieda. "Don't want to miss your anniversary day, do you?"

  Baird coughed and sat up in bed. As he reached for a cigarette from the pack on the bedside table, he saw the time on the clock radio: 5:45 A.M. Too damn early, as always.

  He was exhausted but knew he was lucky. Frieda had gotten him up only twice during the night instead of the usual five or six times.

  "I have a surprise for you!" Frieda raised her white eyebrows and nodded. "She's waiting downstairs right now!"

  Baird lit the cigarette, drawing in his first lungful of the day. "Who's 'she?'"

  "A reporter!" Frieda clasped her hands against her chin and grinned. "She's doing a story on you!"

  Baird scratched the back of his head with the hand holding the cigarette. "Thank you, Frieda. I'll go talk to her right away."

  Never argue with Frieda. That was one of the things he'd learned in the one-day-shy-of-ten-years that he and Frieda had been together.

  *****

  "Good morning, Mr. Gilliam." The reporter hated him. Baird knew it in spite of her warm, sweet smile, because that was how everyone in the world felt about him. "I'm Libby Challenge, BNN Breaking News Network."

  "What do you want?" Baird lit a fresh smoke as he shuffled into the living room in his wife-beater t-shirt and ratty bluejeans.

  The girl had huge dark eyes and showed hundreds of teeth when she smiled. "An interview, of course." She smoothed the red blazer and tight black skirt over her slim, sexy figure. Baird guessed she was in her mid-to-late twenties, though it was getting harder to tell these days thanks to the magic of rejuvenating genetic therapies.

  "An interview." Baird wished he could say "no," but "no" wasn't part of the deal he'd cut with the federal attorney. Instead, he patted his wavy brown hair, tamping down the worst of the bed-head cowlicks, and hitched up the tattered jeans sliding off his scrawny frame. "Let's get it over with."

  The reporter tapped her right eyeball, which started to glow yellow. She'd activated her contact lens camera. "How does it feel to be the longest-living haunted con in history?"

  Baird took another drag from the cigarette and stroked the soul patch on his chin with his thumb. "No big whoop."

  "No other convicted criminal in the Forget-me-not Program has survived this long. Most kill themselves within the first eighteen months." Libby cocked her head to one side. "Yet here you are in Baltimore, alive and kicking after almost ten years. What's the secret of your success?"

  "I take it one day at a time." It was Baird's canned response. The deal said he had to do interviews, but it didn't say anything about how original his answers had to be.

  "So the implant hasn't bothered you?" said Libby. "You don't mind being haunted by the digital recreation of your victim?"

  Baird wondered where Frieda had gone. She wasn't in her usual place at his side; in fact, she was nowhere to be seen. "I've gotten used to it, I guess." He took a last drag and stubbed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray on the plywood-and-cinder-blocks coffee table.

  "And now you're one day away from freedom." Libby nodded slowly. "Do you think you can make it just one more day?"

  "I hope so," said Baird. "I'm praying on it."

  "Praying. Yes." Libby's mask of friendly sweetness slipped for just an instant, revealing a trace of a sneer. "Well, we have a real treat in store for our viewers today."

  Baird frowned. "What's that?"

  "We have a very special guest," said Libby. "Coming to us via live feed from your implant. This will be the first televised interview with a haunt-con and his digital spook side by side on camera at the same time."

  Suddenly, Frieda popped up beside Baird. For the first time he could remember, she was wearing a different outfit--a white dress with black trim--and she looked as if she'd put on fresh makeup and fixed her hair. She smiled serenely for the camera.

  "Frieda Baumgardner, welcome," said Libby.

  Frieda patted her hair. "Thank you very much, dear."

  "What's it been like?" said Libby. "Haunting the man who raped your flesh-and-blood predecessor?"

  "Well, I don't really know anything else," said Frieda. "It's what I was created to do."

  "So the fact that he raped the original Frieda Baumgardner means nothing to you?" said Libby.

  "I'm an electronic simulacrum of her," said Frieda. "My memories and feelings are not perfect replicas of hers."

  Libby pointed a finger at Baird. "The fact is, shortly after this man raped 85-year-old Frieda Baumgardner, she died. She never recovered from the emotional trauma!" Libby spread her arms wide. "Doesn't the simple fact of what he did fill you with outrage?"

  Frieda leaned toward Baird. Her shoulder, a digital construct visible only to Baird and the camera lens, seemed to pass through his elbow.

  Frieda smiled. "Malice is not part of my programming. I am content that he has paid for his crime."

  "Okay then." Libby smiled back at her. "Here's a question for both of you. Tomorrow at noon, you'll go your separate ways after spending every minute together for ten solid years. Will you miss each other?"

  "I don't know," said Frieda. "I haven't thought about it."

  "Me neither," said Baird.

  *****

  After the reporter had gone, Baird went for a walk in the park down the block. It was a weekday morning, and the suburban Baltimore neighborhood was quiet...as good a time as any for a sex offender with a well-known face to dare to visit public places.

  Frieda trotted alongside Baird, back in her everyday sky-blue housedress with white polka dots--a digital reproduction of the very outfit she'd been wearing when he'd raped her. The computer-generated spook kept pace as no real 85-year-old woman ever could.

  "What a beautiful day." She wasn't winded, of course. "Just look at all the lovely blossoms."

  "Uh-huh." Even as Baird acknowledged what she said, the rest of his mind chugged along in the background, in secret. It was the only way he could carve out some peace with the spook around.

  One more day. It was hard to believe that tomorrow, he would be free.

  So many times over the past ten years, he'd wondered if he should've turned down the deal. So many times, he'd wondered if taking early release as a haunt-con had been a mistake.

  Now, he knew he'd done the right thing. Instead of spending his life in prison, he'd been free on the streets for ten year
s, the only drawback being the digital spook the government had implanted in his head.

  And now, tomorrow, he would be free of her. That was the deal. He was going to win.

  As he walked along under the blossom-heavy trees, he inhaled deeply. The pink-and-white blossoms were so fragrant, their honey-sweet perfume broke through even his smoking-ravaged sense of smell.

  The little things in life. He'd come to appreciate them while serving his sentence.

  "Granny-raper!" That was what a teenage girl on roller blades said as she zipped past him. "Burn in hell!"

  Baird didn't answer. He got variations on the same treatment wherever he went in public. The implant in his head sent a signal tagging him as a Sex Offender to the people-screener software in every passerby's smart phone. At least the tagging would go away tomorrow, along with Frieda; all part of the deal.

  "That reporter got me wondering." Frieda jogged out ahead of him and turned, running backward to face him as she talked. "Will you miss me when I'm gone, Baird?"

  "Sure," said Baird. "What about you?"

  Frieda squinted and cocked her head. "What will happen to me when we separate? That's what I want to know."

  "Maybe you'll go to spook heaven," said Baird. "With all the other spooks."

  "Is there a spook heaven?" Frieda stared at the paved sidewalk as she kept jogging backward. "What would it be like, I wonder?"

  "What do you want it to be like?" said Baird.

  Frieda frowned and bit her lip. "I'll have to get back to you on that one."

  *****

  When Baird was halfway up the block on his way home from the park, he saw someone standing on the front porch of his bungalow. At first, he couldn't tell who it was.

  Then, as he got closer, he could. And he almost turned around and went back the other way.

  Frieda shaded her eyes with her hand (though she was digital and didn't need to) and gazed at the figure on the porch. "Is that who I think it is?"

  Baird sighed and produced a cigarette from the pocket of his red flannel shirt. "Yes."

  "Wayne!" Frieda ran ahead of Baird, straight for the bungalow. "Son!"

  The man on the porch, of course, could neither see nor hear the digital construct. He simply leaned against a support post and watched calmly as Baird shuffled toward him, lighting a smoke. "Hello, Baird."

  "What can I do for you, Wayne?" As unhappy as Baird was to see the visitor, he had to laugh at Frieda as she bounded up the porch steps and tried to throw her intangible arms around him. She tumbled right through, then tried--again in vain--to hug him from the other side.

  "I need to talk to you, Baird." Wayne pushed away from the post and dusted off the sleeve of his gray sportcoat. Baird could see he'd lost weight since his last visit; he looked like a scarecrow, six feet five inches tall without an ounce of fat or muscle padding his skeleton.

  "I'm a little pressed for time at the moment." Baird planted his foot on the bottom porch step and leaned his forearms on his knee. "Could you come back tomorrow after noon?"

  Wayne smiled and wagged a finger. "You'll be gone by then, won't you?"

  Baird nodded. "How could I forget?"

  "Listen." Wayne's expression turned grim. "Can we go inside? I really need to talk."

  "Aw, look at him, Baird." Frieda framed Wayne's face at brow and chin with the edges of her hands. "He needs help, I can tell. Don't you owe him, after raping and killing his mother?"

  "All right, all right." Baird walked up the steps and opened the front door. "What do you need to talk to me about?"

  "Well, it's not really you I need to talk to," said Wayne. "It's Mom."

  *****

  "I'm your new best friend." Those had been Wayne Baumgardner's first words to Baird when they'd first met ten years ago. "Best friend forever."

  Wayne had said it in the hall outside the courtroom before the trial. He'd said it so calmly and with such an intense stare, Baird had instantly feared he might kill him on the spot.

  "You and I are connected for life." Wayne had given him a wink. "However long that might turn out to be."

  Baird had sneered and laughed...even as a chill had raced up his spine. He'd sensed something dangerous in Wayne, something even more dangerous than a stoned rapist hiding in the shadows of an old woman's bedroom.

  He'd sensed stone-cold predictability. Dependability. Persistence.

  Commitment. Complete, unwavering commitment.

  And sure enough, Wayne had been there for the next ten years. He lived out of town, in Virginia, and worked in Washington, D.C., but he'd never missed a parole hearing. He'd testified again and again, opposing Baird's every appeal to shorten his sentence. Reminding everyone what an animal Baird was every time he'd gotten the chance.

  He'd shown up on Baird's doorstep at least once a month to make sure he was miserable. To give him a push. To urge him to kill himself.

  That was the only favor Wayne had asked for from Baird until today.

  *****

  "I want to hear what he says, Baird," said Frieda. "I do. But I hate to make you wait for your pep rally."

  "I can wait," muttered Baird. The "pep rally" was Frieda's daily recap--in excruciating clinical detail--of what Baird had done to her, how she had suffered, and how she had died because of him. Frankly, he'd heard it so many times, it didn't have much of an impact anymore...except as yet another grinding indignity in his wasteland of a life.

  "That was her, wasn't it?" Wayne's eyes widened. "You're talking to her right now, aren't you?"

  Baird frowned. Wayne had changed in more ways than gaining weight. The vibe he was giving off was much different from the usual pure hatred.

  "I need to talk to her," said Wayne. "I need you to talk to her for me."

  Baird pulled out a fresh smoke and lit it up. "What brought this on all of a sudden?"

  Wayne pushed a hand through the thin silver hair on his scalp. "I saw the interview this morning." He pointed at the beat-up green recliner across the room. "She was sitting right there."

  Frieda walked over to stand behind the recliner. "It's my favorite chair. Tell him, Baird."

  Baird snorted. He walked right through Frieda and smacked the recliner's vinyl headrest on his way to the kitchen. "She's computer-generated, Wayne. She's nothing but an artificial intelligence."

  "But she seemed so real," said Wayne.

  "I am real," said Frieda.

  "Tell me about it." Baird chucked open the refrigerator and pulled out a can of root beer. Alcohol was prohibited under his sentence; one of the first things he planned to do when he got free was get stinking drunk at the closest watering hole. "I've been living with her for ten years."

  Wayne folded his arms and leaned against the kitchen doorway. "And I always thought that was a punishment...you having to see the face of your victim day in and day out. Being constantly reminded of your crime.

  "They said it would be a punishment," said Wayne, "but it wasn't, was it?"

  Baird cracked open the can of soda and had a sip, considering his next words carefully. He was starting to wonder if Wayne was wearing a wire.

  "Sure it was." Baird closed the refrigerator. "I went through hell, and now I've done my time."

  "My mother didn't have a mean bone in her body," said Wayne. "Even an A.I. spook version of her could never be that cruel."

  Frieda poked her upper body through Wayne's chest from behind and pecked him on the cheek. "You tell him, baby boy."

  "I guess the programmers must've beefed her up some," said Baird.

  "I don't think programmers had anything to do with it," said Wayne. Baird tried to push past him into the living room, but Wayne wouldn't budge. "I think it's her."

  "'Her?'" Frieda, with her head still phased through Wayne's chest, looked up at him. "'Her' who?"

  "I took a long look at Mom on TV this morning," said Wayne. "I looked deep in her eyes, and I saw her. That was much more than a digital character, Baird. That was my mother in there."

  "That's so sweet." Frieda beamed and winced at the same time, as if she were about to burst into tears. "Oh, Baird, give him a kiss on the cheek for me, won't you?"