LA GIOCONDA
IT’S JULY 4, 2148. We’re in Florence, just leaving the Uffizi art museum. Second honeymoon, take two—eleventh-anniversary edition, and the first time I’m acting as cruise director. Okay, I cheated a bit and asked Julie for help in finding the places most likely to overlap with our needs, but the planning and booking were all me. I even splurged on the rooms.
There’s a bittersweet smile on my wife’s face, possibly echoing my own. We’re happy. Do I care if I’m impressing some glass-half-full bullshit upon her, or on me? We’re having a moment, so, no.
We’re talking about a bunch of stuff as we stroll onto the Ponte Vecchio, the old stone bridge that spans the Arno. The Sun has just dipped below the horizon, giving the bridge shops a burnished copper glow.
Sylvia notes we’ve been standing outside for a full two minutes and I haven’t complained about the rain. I tell her that seeing the Mona Lisa reminded me of Superman. She laughs and demands an explanation. I say I’ve been wondering about the glacier. How Honeycomb was like the Phantom Zone in the Superman comic series: a prison dimension used by Kryptonians as a more humane form of incarceration. Although the zone was a barren wasteland, people trapped in it could never get old or die.
“Except that was someone’s idea of a dark, dystopian future. Not a desirable outcome,” she says.
I respond, “I don’t know. Does that really sound any more dystopian than uploading people to the glacier for arbitrary periods of time?”
“It might sound that way, but maybe it’s because we’re not ready for it now.” Her voice loses its brightness. “I don’t think it’s fair to say we’ll never need it. Eventually Earth will stop supporting life and we’ll need to find someplace else to live.”
She’s getting upset. I’m losing points. My gut tells me to keep up the argument, to remind her that that’s not even the problem. That it’s not okay to back up people without their permission. My gut wants to win. My gut is an idiot.
I realize I shouldn’t have brought it up, but I also feel like getting it out will start the healing. Neither of us has talked much about what happened on this day a year ago. That particularly painful part of our past. Maybe this is Joel3 thinking—the new, mature Joel. A derivative of two previously failed prototypes, a superior version of me who recognizes and owns up to a mistake when he’s made one. I’d like that.
I place a hand on the bump in her belly. “Let us look forward, not back,” I intone. “I feel like that’s a quote from someone. Although, about four months from now, we might wish we could—”
“We’ll be fine.” She smiles, putting her hand over mine. “People have been doing this for millennia.”
“And look how humanity turned out,” I can’t help but snark.
She rolls her eyes.
We stop at an open spot in the bridge. The sky sparkles here and there as floating LEDs are calibrated.
“Weird,” I remark, taking off my hat. “The raindrops feel like they’re getting bigger. Can we go watch the show inside somewhere? One slip on these stones and I go straight into the Arno. Then you’re a grieving widow and a single mom, all because of an oversized mosquito bladder.”
“Aaaand there it is,” she said, apparently stopping a timer on her comms. “Two minutes and forty-seven seconds. A new record.”
“Syl, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who can avoid thinking about the fact that they’re getting pissed on by mosquitoes every time they step outside, and those who can’t. You should know conclusively by now that you married a man of the latter variety.”
She plants a quick kiss on my lips, assuring me there are no hard feelings. “Actually, I think there’s a third group: those of us who are cognizant of the rain and its provenance but are ambivalent about it. I mean, it really is just water. Who cares if it’s coming from the bladder of an insect?”
“I do. I know we need bugs to breathe, but I don’t want to think about it. Just like I also know that almost all of our protein comes from bugs, but I could never be one of those entomophagists. I like my grasshoppers and mealworms molded and flavored to taste like meat, not wriggling and hopping on my plate, thank you.”
“You know that eating cattle is what nearly destroyed the ozone in the first place.”
“Exactly! But I still need to maintain my suspension of disbelief. I just wish we could do something similar with the skeeters.” A mosquito lands on the back of my hand. I raise my arm so Sylvia can see it. “Look,” I say, staring contemplatively at the living steam reformer. “Millions of years of evolution have led her to instinctively know that she wants to be on my hand. Sure, she’s getting all the energy she needs from the carbon fumes emanating from my skin, but I can tell there’s part of her, somewhere deep in her DNA, that just desperately wants to poke me and eat my blood.”
The mosquito flies off into the glowing darkness.
Sylvia bumps me with her shoulder, smiling. “I think more likely there’s part of her that instinctively knew you were thinking of smashing her. Anyway, even if she somehow managed to get a bloodmeal, it would kill her.”
“Huh. Well, it’s nice to see you smile, even if it means we have to talk about bloodmeals.”
“We wouldn’t be talking about bloodmeals if you would have just let me enjoy my fireworks.”
“Where would be the fun in that?”
She rolls her eyes again. I’m really pushing my luck, I know it. “Can’t you just shut up and enjoy the moment? Look, they’re starting!”
Indeed, the LEDs hovering above the Arno start their Technicolor animated display while synchronized audio explosions match their movements.
I shrug, having never really cared for pyrotechnics. “Another thing I’ve always wondered about is where all the dead mosquitoes go.” I point at the centuries-old cobblestones of the Ponte Vecchio. “Shouldn’t the ground be covered by millions of dead skeeters?”
“I never really thought about that,” Sylvia says as she looks up. She bites her lip in contemplation. “Maybe the wind just blows ’em all over the place?”
“Or maybe they all get eaten by birds and mosquito hawks?”
Sylvia grins, shaking her head. “Mosquito hawks don’t eat mosquitoes.”
“What?” I ask, genuinely surprised.
“Yeah, they’re actually called crane flies. They really don’t eat much of anything after they emerge from their pupae.”
“You’re blowing my mind right now! In fact, I just had to look it up because I thought you were messing with me. I can’t believe it.”
“Yup. It’s the world’s smallest identity crisis.”
I don’t respond. Instead I drop my shoulders, suddenly overcome with sadness.
As we gazed upon the Mona Lisa earlier, I realized something. The charm of the masterpiece was never due to the beauty of the sitter—a woman experts seem to agree was Madonna Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine merchant. Nor was it due to da Vinci’s masterful brushstrokes or composition. The painting’s magic was in the itch she made us scratch, that one eternal, unanswerable question: What’s behind that smile?
The Mona Lisa’s mystery only grew when we lost her. Had we lost a water lily or starry night, we would have moved on. We wouldn’t have scoured the world and found an earlier version that we could claim was the real her, igniting a debate that took the mystery from What’s behind her smile? to Which Mona Lisa was real? We would not look at her and ponder, Who was she? or in my case, Who am I?
After our ordeal last year, I got prints of both Lisas and hung them on our bedroom wall. I stared at them endlessly at night while Sylvia slept. Which one was me? Was I the Isleworth Lisa rather than the vanished Lisa, the earlier and less interesting of the two, only achieving my authenticity through the destruction of my other, better self?
I hoped, in coming here to look her in the eye, that I could figure out what made this version different from her predecessor. I hoped I might find an end to my own enduring existential pain. Ultimately, I realized it didn’t matter which one I was. I was real, like the Giaconda was real, not because we were the originals, but because we were here.
Sylvia notices my sudden change of temperament and pokes me in the arm. “What’s wrong?”
I peer down at the dark river. “You look at me and you think, ‘That’s my husband, Joel Byram.’ But is that who I am?”
“What are you talking about?” she asks, concern building in her eyes.
I scratch my cheek uncomfortably. “I used to think it was incredibly vain of the Gehinnomites to believe we can mess with our souls. That we could…”
But I trail off as Sylvia’s expression quickly morphs from concern to terror. A look I haven’t seen since that night. She’s not looking at me anymore; she’s looking through me. Her neck tilting back as she looks to the heavens.
Suddenly my comms fill with urgent updates. #LookUp is trending.
Are you watching this, guys?
What the hell?
Lame. Bring back the fireworks!
Are they doing commercials now?
I look up.
The LEDs in the sky, which moments ago had been projecting a beautifully choreographed fireworks display, have instead converted the heavens into a giant POV stream of someone making their way through a TC. As they stand before the vestibule, the streaming person puts their hands out in front of them, fingers wrapped tightly together, bowing their head up and down. There are about six other people, also wearing LED-lined robes, clasping their hands together and standing around the Punch Escrow chair. A strand of glowing hair enters the frame.
Like embers in a flame.
“They’re praying,” Sylvia utters.
The captions beneath the stream confirm her assessment: the words BEHOLD GOD’S WILL appear beneath the clenched hands. The camera pans sideways briefly, and I spot the International Transport logo above the conductor’s blood-splattered console.
“It’s the R and D vestibule at IT headquarters,” Sylvia says, real fear in her voice.
I remain silent.
The camera pans back to the empty chair. There’s a familiar white flash, momentarily blinding the POV stream. The camera lens adjusts to reveal a human sitting in the Punch Escrow chair. A naked male figure. His silhouette is familiar. He rises and walks toward the camera, balding and pudgy and coming into focus as the chanting around him increases. A smile splits his newly printed face.
It’s him. He’s back.
“Don’t look!” I urgently say to Sylvia. I try shielding her eyes, but she shoves me away.
The stream goes white and the caption PULSA D’NURA appears, illuminating the night sky like a thunderbolt from the heavens.
Fuck.