Jane Actually

hard? And why do you end up looking like somebody else every time we do this?”
    Mary waited for Jane’s reply, which was slow in coming. “Because I can’t quite remember what I looked like,” she said finally, which Mary relayed.
    “Oh! I … I uh, I hadn’t thought of that,” Melody said, all her frustration evaporated after that disclosure. “Hey, Barb, could you give us a minute alone?” she asked the computer artist, which was a bit of cheek for they were sitting in the woman’s cubicle.
    “No problem. You two … or three … work it out; I’m going outside for a smoke,” the young woman said, collecting her purse. She left them alone and Melody said, “OK, campfire,” and from her voluminous purse she pulled out the small speaker she carried to plug into her AfterNet terminal.
    Mary always felt uncomfortable about Melody’s campfires because by now she had become accustomed to acting as Jane’s avatar and felt a proprietary interest in being the author’s voice. She suspected that Melody similarly felt the loss of being Jane’s conduit, as evidenced by the fact that Melody still kept her own terminal to talk to Jane. However, if Melody insisted on addressing both her and Jane at the same time, perhaps the campfire was a good idea.
    “OK, so maybe you might have mentioned this at some point Jane?” Melody asked, still disconcertingly looking at Mary. Mary looked up at the ceiling to remind Melody that it was her decision to talk to Jane directly.
    “It isn’t … it’s something I hadn’t realized,” Jane replied through the speakers.
    “How can you not know what you looked liked?” Melody asked. Melody’s words were more blunt than she had intended, but she was truly annoyed at the time they had wasted.
    “I have not seen my face for almost two hundred years, Melody. And even when alive, I never saw my face reflected back to me with the frequency to which you’re accustomed. There were no photographs, no YouTube videos or facebook to remind me several times a day of my own appearance. And I only ever saw myself face on, in the mirror. Rarely did I ever see myself from the side. I am sorry for wasting your time.”
    Mary felt the ache of Jane’s words, even through the flat tone of the terminal’s digitized voice, and it was obvious Melody did as well.
    “I’m sorry, Jane. I should have realized. This explains your reluctance with the project,” Melody said.
    “No, it is not entirely … I tried to ignore my inability to recall my features and it … it may explain my dissatisfaction with Cassandra’s portrait. I truly do not know if it is accurate.”
    Jane fell silent, as did Melody. Melody obviously felt embarrassed that she had forced this admission from Jane. And Mary could only imagine how sad it must be to forget your own face. The silence continued uncomfortably.
    “Why don’t you just make something up then?” Mary suggested.
    “What?” Melody asked.
    “Just make something up. Part of the problem is that Jane is trying to recall something she can’t, so she’s just picking famous faces. So instead we ask your 3D artist to make up an attractive face with the appropriate dark, curly hair, hazel eyes and flawless complexion and we say that’s what you look like.”
    “How is this possible?” Jane asked.
    Mary was about to answer but Melody interrupted her. “That’s brilliant. You see it on cop shows all the time. They dig up a skull and some forensic artist makes a face from it. We could have Barb do the same thing.”
    “I do not relish the idea of digging up my skull.”
    “Sorry, that was a bad choice of words. I mean Barb just starts with a standard Northern European skull shape and works from there. We give her free rein.”
    “But wouldn’t it be a lie?”
    “Maybe a little, but who’s to know. And the only one who can really object to it is you. I mean do you?”
    “Well, I confess I am vain enough to not want to be represented in a poor light.”
    “Being your agent, I also would not want you to be hideous; it could negatively impact book sales. We just can’t make you too gorgeous.”
    When Barb returned, the concept was proposed to her. The 25-year-old tattooed computer artist with the spiky black hair seemed to listen with disinterest as they explained their proposal. With her right hand, she was doing something with her computer, apparently searching for a file, while with her left hand she was playing with the ring pierced through