Drought Hawks

Chapter One

"Regina Carmine?"

Reggie furrowed her brow as if she had just heard something distasteful. She shook her head but said, "Yes." Then, coolly meeting the man's gaze, she said, "I must be dead."

"I'm Darren Durbin. Friends call me, Rendur," he said.

"How did I die?" she asked.

"You don't remember." It was a statement, not a question and although his expression didn't change, she thought there was a tinge of disappointment in his tone.

He didn't look like family. The boy was pretty, but he certainly didn't mirror her freckled skin and auburn hair. And no one in her long lineage of West Coast blood spoke with a soft English accent. She had been told that only family would be able to provide the appropriate permissions to bring her consciousness back, if being a computer simulation really meant being back.

She reached for a memory, but the last thing she remembered was being at home, packing to go to Nevada. None of this made sense.

"Darren," she started, snapping each syllable of his name with irritation.

"My friends call me, Rendur." He answered smoothly, and his expression remained unchanged.

"I'm dead." She said. "How can we be friends?"

A smile snuck onto his face and he leaned his head back in a mild gesture of defeat. "This won't work if I tell you things that happened after your life," he said. "But, I don't know how you died. No one does."

So he was an investigator then. This would have broken her mother and her father would be furious. Her murder would probably be the only thing that could make him more furious at the world than he already was.

Maybe it was too hard for her family to talk to her yet. Or maybe they didn't know about the Project. Posthumous Recreated Interactive Consciousness. It sounded ridiculous, but it was a good payout and she had always made a point of not worrying about what happened after she died.

Maybe the project administrators had only told the police. She was a beta subject, after all. They wouldn't have thought all these possibilities through yet. What were the legal responsibilities if a "recreate" had been murdered? What if one committed suicide? Wouldn't bringing her back be implicitly against her will?

She hadn't thought all the possibilities through either. And she hadn't committed suicide. It was just that she hadn't thought the science would work. And yet she didn't feel dead. Shouldn't she feel dead? In fact, suddenly, she was shot through with a sensation that was supposed to be reserved for the living, anxiety.

"My animals," she demanded. "How long before they found me?" When he stared at her blankly she repeated, "My animals."

Rendur chewed on his lip, but other than the slight gnaw, he didn't twitch a muscle. The thin square of metal that was balanced on his lap didn't quiver. The tiny stylus resting between his thumb and forefinger remained poised above it.

"Rendur. How I long have I been dead?"

"Regina."

"Reggie," she said. "My friends called me Reggie."

"Right. I knew that," he said, but it still sounded like he was stalling. There was a long pause and Reggie continued to glare at him.

"Reggie." As he tried out her name, some tenuous resolve he had been clutching slipped. He looked uncomfortable and then unequivocally sad. "Reggie. It's been 200 years."

"Shit," she said.