Night Owl(52)

"Right," I said. "So... I'll give it a read?"

"That's the idea." Pam lingered. "Oh, it's... by a local lady. She has this marvelous habit of not putting her name on her manuscripts."

Pam leaned over and scribbled JANE DOE on the top page.

I stared at her in disbelief. Holy f*ck, was Pam actually letting me read a manuscript by one of her authors? This was a far cry from the slush pile. This was real agent work.

"Pam, I—"

She held up a hand.

"Don't imagine your opinion is vital here. Just read the manuscript. I need confirmation of what I already know to be true."

Pam breezed out.

Okay. Confirmation... of what she already knew to be true. That sounded bogus. I flipped the title page aside.

One of two things had to be happening here. Either Pam wanted to bump me up to the next level of work (and didn't know how to be nice about it), or Pam actually needed a second opinion on this manuscript (and didn't know how to be nice about it).

Either way, I would view this as a test and not let my head explode.

Two hours later, I was still reading the manuscript. My other paperwork was shoved aside. I slouched in my chair and propped my feet on the desk. And I was definitely not reading at work-pace. I was reading at pleasure-pace, lost in the story.

The Surrogate told the story of a future Earth where, for the right price, people could escape life's pain. Exams, divorce, jail time, dental work, messy breakups, anything—no one had to live through it, thanks to The Isaac Project.

The project began as a medical breakthrough in palliative care, and it ended as the most revolutionary venture since the World Wide Web. A client simply downloaded his consciousness into a sleeping cell and uploaded the consciousness of a surrogate, a professional who lived in his body for the duration of the pain. Once the assignment was complete, the client returned to his body and carried on with a pain-free life.

Really, the novel told the story of one particular surrogate—a jaded workaholic who'd spent more time in the bodies of others than in his own eighty-year-old body. The surrogate had no personal life to speak of. He was hollow.


That is, until one job changed everything.

The surrogate was uploaded into the body of a wealthy executive. His assignment was to confront his client's wife with his affair and desire for divorce.

Except the surrogate couldn't do it.

He looked through his client's eyes, saw his wife, and...

...Knew that he wouldn't hurt this woman for any price. Never before had the pain of his clients—cowards and escapists, all of them—contained such wonder as she possessed.

This beauty would haunt him.

I flew into Pam's office.

"This—" I blinked and cleared my throat, lowering the pages I was brandishing.

Pam was giving me a death glare.

"Hi Hannah, thank you for knocking."

"Sorry, I—"

"Go on." Pam sat back in her chair and sighed, gesturing with her pen. "Let's hear it, since you can't seem to contain your zeal."

I smoothed my skirt and took a breath. I was stunned. Damn, I had just barged into Pamela Wing's office like I owned the place. That wasn't what shocked me, though.

For the first time in nearly two months, I had forgotten my misery.

I had forgotten my hollowness.

I needed more of this story.

"This is..."

"As ever, Hannah, your eloquence astounds."

"It's very partial," I stammered.

"Keenly observed. The author assures me she has another twenty pages on the way."

"I'd like to read them. If that's alright with you." I gazed out the window. If I met Pam's eyes, she would see my desperation. "The... protagonist. It seems obvious he'll hijack the body of his client, you know? And..."

I could feel Pam's eyes on me.

"And that's an interesting quandary. So much is unstated here." I swallowed. "The cultural commentary on our attitude toward pain and escape. And consumerism. The Thoreau epigraph about desperation is pretty perfect, too. This feels really relevant. I mean, people do lead lives of quiet desperation, until something or someone comes along and—"

I clamped my mouth shut.

Fuck. Okay, how did this become me spilling my guts to my boss?

Pam raised a brow. She looked curious, not deadly.

"I think you're right," she conceded. "It's relevant. We'll talk more about it when we've read the next pages."

I turned to go, pausing outside my door.

"Ms. Wing?"

"Hm?"

I lifted the manuscript.

"You don't really represent speculative fiction, do you?"

"No, but I make exceptions for my established authors."

Established authors.

So it was true; Pam was letting me read something remotely important.

For the first time since Matt and I parted ways, I imagined how it would feel to be a partner with Pam and Laura. That was my dream. At least, it was the old Hannah's dream.

"It's not without flaws," I said after a beat. "Mostly small conceptual oversights that need explanation. But it's..."

I glanced at the manuscript. Did my subjective opinion mean anything here?