Chapter 55
“Hey, babe,” Sean’s cheerful, masculine voice crackled over the line. I groaned.
“No. Laurel, please, do not do this,” I begged. I would have gotten down on my knees if she’d even glanced in my direction, but she didn’t. She never did.
“Hi, Sean.” She didn’t look at his picture in the caller ID box, the one he’d sent her of him, standing against the backdrop of the coffee-shop where they’d met. “I’m really sorry for the late notice. Damn bureaucracy. Tim’s called me in to help out with this year-end inventory.”
“What?”
“I literally just got off the phone with him. I can’t make it tonight. I am so, so sorry.”
“Yeah. Okay, then. Well, I’ll talk to you later then.” The phone went dead in her hand. Call ended.
“That ship has sailed, girlfriend. He ain’t gonna call you back, not tomorrow and not never again. What do you have against him, seriously? You keep going back to Mikey for ex-sex or banging that intern down at the office instead of trying to work it out with someone you might possibly have a future with.”
“Oh, Derek,” she said to the mirror, eyes brightening. “Yeah, he usually pulls the weekend shift. The outfit’s not wasted after all.”
“No! No no no! I did not suggest banging the intern! I said you shouldn’t!” I facepalmed, then peeked at her between two fingers.
Laurel shook her head. “Not tonight. You need to just shut up.” From her small handbag, she pulled out the bottle. That bottle. God damn it. She twisted the top and dropped a small, white pill into her palm. She shuddered, then dry-swallowed it.
Instantly, I felt yanked from behind, pulled away. She could never get that far away from me; we were inextricably bound together, even if she didn’t realize. But from behind the white clouds of the anti-anxiety medication, she was beyond my reach. She wouldn’t hear me again, not until the medication wore off.
I sighed and looked down at my ash form. I looked like her, only smaller, somehow, and dingier. But all I ever wanted to do was help. Just help. Was it my fault that she was destroying her own life? Was it?
All I wanted to do was help.Download by Lynn Townsend
Remy sat on the sofa, arm around Charlene. Through his uplink to her quarters, he kept the air softly perfumed with lilac and jasmine, the circulating fan quiet, and checked on the reconstituted dinner that would serve as her evening meal. As for himself, he fluctuated his own body temperature from warm enough to snuggle with to just cool enough to keep her sweat from making the two of them sticky and uncomfortable.
He could sweat, of course, if it was necessary for some aesthetic. Charlie liked him to sweat when they made love. She said it made her feel more human, a metaphor that Remy understood to be entirely true for her, while making no sense whatsoever. Humans were prone to bisect logic, to make poetry with feelings and couple ground solid facts with the whispers of dreams.
Some of the ‘chinas had given great study to story, to poetry, to art and ephemera, all those things prized by humans, and some had even learned, as they were programmed to do. And yet there was a wildness in human work, in human art. A sovereign perfection of madness that stood out. Against that, the greatest of the machine-craft still fell short of the mark.
Charlie was tense. Remy ‘scanned her and then kissed the side of her mouth, flicking his tongue over the corner where her lips joined. She parted her lips in pleased surprise and kissed him back quickly, then returned her attention to the screen. Remy analyzed her saliva; no viruses or unusual bacterial growth. She was not, therefore, ill.
“What’s wrong?” He ran out a rapid gossip line, scanning hundreds of recordings of her interactions with her human co-workers and colleagues. Humans were incomprehensible sometimes with their imagined slights, their sensitive egos. Someone commenting on the wrong color of Charlie’s dress, for instance, could put her in a mood. It was the height of madness, and yet, what else could a ‘china do?
Wait, what was that? He chased the gossip, followed the video feed. Humans had no privacy, not in the cities, at least. Cameras and ‘china were everywhere, recording, knowing, watching, protecting. In the wilds, the barren places left on the planet, maybe there were pockets of hidden actions, but no one in their right mind left the city. Remy wasn’t sure a human could survive the number of vaccinations needed just to venture forth into that wasteland.
Charlie wasn’t that daft. But by the time she’d wet her lips to speak, by the time she’d dragged her attention away from the transmission screen on the wall to look at her ‘china, he already knew what she was going to say.