I point at the holographic woman. “That’s me.”
Her image dissipates, and the Titanic behind her transforms into a large building. Above the front entrance is the company name and slogan: 4MSKTR, Nanotechnology At Its Best.
A middle-aged woman resolves into view. Like Molly, she bears my family tattoo on the back of her hand.
“You’re not Greta,” I say to her. “You’re not Angela.”
“No, I’m not,” she says, her eyes bright with excitement. “But it’s lovely to see you again, Ms. Jayne.”
When I place my fingertips on her tattoo, I notice how drawn and wrinkled my skin has become, like parchment paper used for baking. I also see my bitten fingernails and the red and swollen cuticles. That part was real.
I wince at the pain in one finger, the one that I bit. I might need a splint.
A lot of memories click together in my head.
We created this company as a startup, my husband and I. When we first gained success, an unexpected feeling overwhelmed us both. A combination of pride in accomplishing what we wanted, as well as a need for protecting not only our fledgling family but the company that would support us.
But we couldn’t allow anyone to take away what we’d worked so hard to build from scratch, and our hearts began to harden. Fear followed to the point where we became like the people on Molly Brown’s lifeboat.
Once we shook ourselves out of that fear and saw what we had become, we vowed to never lose our humanity again.
Greta and Angela came up with the idea of our family tattoo, because they were reading Dumas. The Three Musketeers, who soon became four. All for one, and one for all. But instead of limiting the “all” to our little family unit, we use it to refer to all of humanity. As a way of committing to that idea, we renamed our company.
Resa Nelson is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. She is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. She has sold more than 20 short stories to magazines and anthologies, including Clarkesworld, Science Fiction Age, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXIII, Women of Darkness II, Future Boston, and 2041. She was the TV/Movie columnist for Realms of Fantasy magazine for 13 years and also wrote articles for SCI FI magazine. She has published 24 novels. Visit her website at resanelson.com.
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