MAL AND THE MECHAN1CAL DREAM GIRL

A Written Creative Work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree

Master of Fine Arts

In

Creative Writing: Fiction

by

Ellen Marie Azevedo

San Francisco, California

May 2018 Copyright by Ellen Marie Azevedo 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read MAL AND THE MECHANICAL DREAM GIRL by Ellen

Marie Azevedo, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Fine Arts:

Creative Writing at San Francisco State University.

Andre~±fo%- Assistant Professor of Creative Writing

Carolina DeRobertis, MFA Assistant Professor of Creative Writing MAL AND THE MECHANICAL DREAM GIRL

Ellen Marie Azevedo San Francisco, California 2018

Mal and the Mechanical Dream Girl is a science fiction novel set approximately 50-100 years in the future. It is a retelling of Frankenstein and Pygmalion, in which Mal, a young doctor, has just been suspended from work for killing his first seven patients. In his misery, he decides to build himself a girlfriend from body parts he has engineered, purchased, and stolen from graves. When he brings Fran, his creation, to life, she is more human than he could have imagined. Mal becomes frustrated with Fran' s increasing interest in the outside world and grows violent toward her, forcing her to plan an escape into a world Mal has programmed her to be afraid of As she struggles to build a new life for herself, Mal attempts to track her down and put an end to his creation. The novel will be a feminist take on the classic tales, dealing with themes of domestic violence, autonomy, and ethics in technology.

I certify that the abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work

Chair, Thesis Com tee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my parents, Kim and Steve, for their endless love and support in this and all endeavors. I'd like to thank my partner, Taylor, for knowing me better than I know myself and encouraging me to pursue writing. I'd like to thank Andrew Joron and

Sasha Wright for being my readers and my cheerleaders. Without them this never would have been written. Finally, I'd like to thank my Grammy, the greatest artist I've ever known, for supporting me through my education even after she is gone and for blessing me with this wicked wicked sense of humor.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One ...... 1

Chapter One ...... 2

Chapter Two ...... 14

Chapter Three ...... 33

Chapter Four ...... 40

Chapter Five ...... 66

Chapter Six ...... 86

Part Two ...... 90

Chapter One ...... 91

Chapter Two ...... 112

Chapter Three ...... 118

Chapter Four ...... 13 5

Chapter Five ...... 146

Chapter Six ...... 165

Chapter Seven ...... 189

Chapter Eight ...... 191

Chapter Nine ...... 225

Chapter Ten ...... 228

Vl 1

Mal and the Mechanical Dream Girl

Part One 2

Chapter 1

The idea came to Mal during the calm before what was to be the worst hangover of his life. He awoke that morning, dehydrated and confused, sprawled across unfamiliar sheets. They were cream-colored and made of some sort of silky fabric that was not silk.

They were also imbibed with nearly all of the water his body contained the previous night. The room was extremely hot and as unfamiliar as the shiny sheets, and, it seemed worth noting, he was naked.

Mal peeled back the damp sheet that covered his lower half and began inventorying his body parts. All fingers, toes, feet, hands, legs, arms, and reproductive organs were accounted for. He reached up to his face. Eyebrows and lashes were still intact, as was his hair, so he knew he' d had no interactions with fire. This was a good sign because, historically, interactions with fire had not gone well for Mal. He ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth felt dry and furry in that all too familiar morning-after­ a-drunken-night way, but at least all of his teeth were still present. Where the hell was he?

A soft sigh coming from somewhere very near his left arm sent him bolt upright, clutching the not-silk sheet to his chest. A woman lay in the bed next to him, sound asleep. Her face was smooshed into the pillow and she was drooling a bit, but Mal thought she was quite pretty. She had very short, dark hair with a streak of purple running through it and freckled arms. The edge of a floral tattoo, half hidden by the sheet, peered up at Mal from the curve of her small, naked back. 3

It took him very little time to deduce what had happened. It wasn't the first time he'd met up with a girl he'd found on ClickMate, gotten black out drunk, and slept with her. It probably wouldn't be the last. He rose cautiously from the bed so as not to disturb the sleeping woman. Monicah? Melyssa? He was sure her name started with an "M", but discovered rather quickly that he didn't care. The transition from horizontal to vertical awoke the hangover. His stomach lurched and the room slid sideways on the diagonal. He blinked in attempt to moisten his eyes. Mal wasn't sure if he wanted to vomit or eat a large melon.

As he fought nausea and the legs of his pants, he silently cursed Therapist

Number Three. "You need to try to make a connection, and you can only do so by being vulnerable. Allow yourself to trust someone." Therapist Number Three was always spouting bullshit like that. Look where it had gotten him. Half dead from alcohol poisoning in a stranger's home. Mal hated Therapist Number Three.

Therapists Number One and Two had both killed themselves. Mal thought this generally to be a bad sign, but his mother ~imply smiled and exclaimed, "Third time' s the charm!" the light bouncing optimistically offthe beads and sequins of her sari. It always struck Mal as odd that his mother insisted on continuing to wear traditional Indian clothing. The saris were beautiful, of course, but such a relic of the past. It also struck him as odd that she did not seem to see any problem with the fact that her only son was on his third therapist. 4

"Why do you always hold yourself responsible for the world, Malcolm? It is not up to you to take care of everyone! These therapists, they were supposed to be caring for you. Not the other way around."

"And my patients?" Mal snapped, "Wasn't I supposed to care for them?"

"These things are not your fault. They are out of your control."

Mal sighed. He wanted to be angry with her, but truthfully it comforted him to have someone on his side. She sat across from him, confident and kind, her glossy black brows knit together in concern. What would he do without her? She had always stood by him. Always supported him and believed in him. When his father had passed away she raised him on her own, with no help from anyone. When, in his grief, he started getting in trouble at school, his mother never punished him. She had understood that he needed to grieve in his own way, even if his own way involved rigging VR filters on the windows of the classroom and tapping into the surround sound speakers in the ceiling, which then led to a prank in which Mal caused the teacher and all of the students to think the apocalypse had hit whereupon the teacher screamed that he did not want to die surrounded by a bunch of horrible little monsters. In the ensuing chaos the teacher kicked two of the students and three more of the children wet their pants, while a fourth had a somewhat severe asthma attack. Everyone except Mal cried. And when his teachers, after realizing Mal was responsible for the prank, requested conferences with his mother to discuss his behavior problems, she had always set them straight, telling them that he had a bright future and he just needed time to mourn the tragedy of losing his father so young. 5

Even now, in the wake of all of his failings, she saw what no one else seemed to see in him. She reached out and placed an elegant hand on his cheek.

"You just need to give this therapist a chance, my love. He will help you and all will be right. Have faith."

The problem with Therapist Number Three was that he didn't seem to understand why Mal was in therapy in the first place. Therapist Number One had understood. Mal came to Therapist Number One after attempting to kill himself via a Rube Goldberg machine involving a sledgehammer and several live doves (due to an unfortunate miscalculation, and a stroke of remarkable bad luck, the doves were all killed in a single blow and Mal suffered only a broken pinky). Ironically, Mal ' s story seemed to be the inspiration for Therapist Number One' s own, much more successful, Rube Goldberg suicide.

Mal had been on a merry-go-round of anti-depressants for a while leading up to his attempted suicide. And for good reason. He'd barely begun his medico-engineering career and already he found himself suspended from practicing. It wasn't really his fault that his first seven patients died on the operating table.

As he climbed into his AutoRyd, he thought back to his first patient. Sienna

Brown, an old name for an old lady. God, she' d been ancient. He remembered, with a sharp pain, the yellow-grey of her skin. It was ugly, mottled and thin, hanging from her plump body like wrinkled curtains. She was nice, though. She chuckled sweetly at a few nervous jokes he made. And she called him "Dear" just like his own Nani had called him . 6

Sienna was really excited for her operation, Mal remembered. He told her it was going to be his first time operating without supervision, as a real medico-engineer, and she patted his hand in that wise way old ladies do. That small gesture did so much to ease the wobbling of his knees and the hammering of his heart. If she had known what was coming she wouldn't have patted his hand like that, Mal thought.

He probably wouldn't have been blamed for her death if her family hadn't sued.

Synthetic skin replacements were risky procedures on young patients. And Sienna had been .... what, like, 115? Mal seethed as he replayed his defense in his head. It was unfair that his first seven patients had all been synth skin reps. The death rate for that procedure was high, everyone knew that. Synth skin was under-tested and over-advertised, just like mechanical liver replacements. The likelihood of a patient dying was one in 14. He' d reminded them of that at his suspension hearing. "Then you should have only lost V2 of a patient," they'd said. Mal dug though his pockets in search of his latest anti-depressant.

And then, of course, there was the loneliness, which Therapist Number Three so vehemently believed was the root of all Mal 's problems. It wasn't like Mal had trouble meeting women. He was no Jaxyn Ramirez-Schmidt, but he was nice enough looking.

And suspended or not, he was still a medico-engineer. That fact alone could get him any woman he met. The problem was he didn 't have much interest in any of the women he met.

Every date he went on seemed to go the same way. He'd get her flowers, take her to a nice restaurant, the same stupid song and dance. He'd ask her about herself, smile 7 and listen to her ramble on. Then she'd ask him about himself and as soon as he started talking he'd see it. She'd slap on the mannequin smile. Her eyes would slip out of focus and do the occasional little flick up when she thought he wasn't looking. It was always so obvious to Mal. Whenever this happened he just kept talking, barreling forward with his self-explanation because it would be too awkward to stop in the middle. But sometimes, as he spoke, he couldn't help but imagine what would happen if he just stopped mid sentence and flung the table to the floor, hurling their dishes sideways in an explosion of polished white porcelain and peanut sauce. Or, when it as particularly obvious that his date had stopped listening and disappeared into her phone chip, he occasionally imagined standing slowly and striding over to her. He imagined bending low to look into her vacant face and wrapping his hands around the supple skin of her throat. He imagined digging his fingers in there and shaking her until she looked him in the eye and really saw him.

Of course, it wasn't just the women he dated who did this, it was everyone.

Maybe other people really didn't notice. Maybe they just didn't care. But it drove Mal crazy. Was it so much to want someone to listen to him when he talked? To switch their phone chip into vision mode and resist the urge to scroll through their various social media feeds for the length of one mediocre conversation and meal? Not that the meals were mediocre. Mal never skimped on the meal part of the date. It was the only part he ever ended up enjoying. Actually, the sex was usually good too.

Mal paused as he entered his house. He felt the weight he always felt after a one night stand. The exhaustion. His hands hung limp at his sides and, though he breathed in deeply, he felt as though he could not quite get enough oxygen into his lungs to satisfy 8 the ache in his chest. Was there something wrong with him for wanting to talk- really talk- to someone? Why didn't other people seem to notice or mind when the person they spoke to tuned into their corneal screen? Was he so crazy for finding this disrespectful?

Perhaps he was too old fashioned. He reached into his pockets for another anti-depressant as he felt the familiar hopeless feeling that he did not belong in this world.

*

The idea flashed in Mal's brain for only a brief moment as he lay on those unfamiliar cream-colored sheets. For a while, aided by an endless supply of anti­ depressants and TV, Mal forgot about the idea. It didn't return to him until after he finally called Therapist Number Three to apologize for cussing him out and firing him again.

"Can I ask you, Mal, what exactly it is you're looking for in a significant other?"

Therapist Number Three asked.

The question brought the idea forcefully back into Mal' s mind. He was startled by it's reappearance. And strangely invigorated by it. As he lay on his floor like a gunned down starfish watching an endless string of episodes of The Nanny (Mal loved classic

TV), the idea bloomed into an obsession. He rolled it over and over in his mind. He couldn't really do it could he? Forget suspension, he'd lose his medico-engineering license if he were caught for this. But still ... It couldn't hurt to fantasize could it?

Therapist Number Two had told him fantasizing was healthy. Of course, Therapist

Number Two had also told him that the world was secretly being run by cyber pigeons. 9

Mal decided there was no harm in drawing up plans. Just for the hell of it, he told himself From his nightstand he dug out his iTablet and iSketch stylus. Therapist Number

One talked him into buying it when he first began his sessions. Therapist Number One said drawing something with his own hands would be more therapeutic than drawing with his mind. Mal never ended up actually doing this, but he thought the advice was sound enough that he bought the iTablet. He liked the classic arts. There was something solid about them, more tangible.

He started designing from the inside out, carefully drawing each piece of the titanium skeleton. He wanted the details of the design to be perfect, so he let his eyes drift out of focus and thought, "titanium skeleton." When the images appeared he scanned through them until he found a well-labeled and anatomically accurate one. He focused on it to select and enlarge it.

He started with the skull . He moved slowly, creating an outline first. He deleted lines and started over, adjusting the angles almost imperceptibly. He drew the skull several times from different perspectives. If he' d drawn it in his mind he could have made the whole thing three dimensional, but, for reasons Mal couldn't quite identify, this two dimensional image was more satisfying.

When he finally felt the outline of the skull was right, he began filling it in. He drew the squiggly, fused lines of the coronal suture, separating the frontal bone from the parietals; the sagittal suture, separating the parietals from each other; the lamboidal 10 suture, separating the parietals from the occipital; and all the other less popular little sutures.

Shading the zygomatics and maxilla took Mal the longest. He was not good at shading, he decided. He repeated this tedious drawing process with every bone in the body, carefully outlining, shading, and shaping every shaft and every foramen, actively working to make the skeleton gracile and beautiful.

Obviously a synth bone skeleton would be the better option long term, but if he were going to do this (which he clearly wasn't), he wouldn't be able to use a real lab. So growing a skeleton wasn't an option.

Next he drew and labeled the mechanical organs. Here he took his time as well.

He spent the most time on the heart. He never knew why a different shape had been created to represent the heart. Its natural shape was far lovelier.

Each organ served as a small adventure. Mal felt more connected to his own body with each line he drew. The design was like a journey through human evolution, rooting him and connecting him to the world more than he had been in years.

Still, not every organ was a joy to look at. He scowled as he drew the mechanical liver. The researchers really did a half-assed job creating that organ. He thought if he had access to a real lab he might want to try creating a better liver, improving upon the design the researchers spent so little time on. 11

It wasn't until Mal drew the synth muscles that he noticed he was smiling. He hadn't smiled since Sienna had patted his hand in the OR. Not really anyway. There was something very serene about drawing the long lines of the synth muscles, they way they arced and curved into one another, a harmonious team. As his hand trailed down in slow, rhythmic patterns, his mind felt at peace. Muscles, he realized, were very beautiful. Why had he never noticed before?

It was inevitable that Mal would give in to the desire to build his design. When he finished drawing it he spent days on end staring at it. He printed out multiple copies of all the drawings and covered his walls in them. Every inch of his room was papered with the perfection of his creation. It was so gorgeous on the page- brought him so much serenity just to stare at the gentle shape - how could he not? To his credit, he held out for two and a half weeks after he finished drawing, which is a long time for someone without a job and with access to a wide variety of prescription pills.

The parts for the titanium skeleton, mechanical organs, and synth muscles were easy enough to come by. He ordered most of them off the internet. Part of him felt guilty for dipping into his trust fund, for using the money his father had left him, for such an indulgent project. But was it really so indulgent? Wasn't he simply doing what everyone kept saying he needed to do to be healthy and happy?

He tried to put these thoughts out of his mind as he continued rounding up supplies. Drones dropped packages of body parts at his doorstep as he rummaged through the garage and under the bed in his guest room. He was surprised by how little he really 12 needed to purchase. He had quite a few of the necessary nuts and bolts lying around already. And he found an almost entirely complete mechanical pancreas in a box of old stufffrom medico-engineering school in his closet.

The flaw in his plan appeared when the time came to add the synth skin. Where was he going to get synth skin? It wasn't available on the internet. It hadn't even been around that long and it was remarkably complex. The medico-engineering researchers who'd designed it had spent decades creating the chemicals that would make synth skin look and feel real, that would give it the ability to stretch and grow without losing its elasticity. Yes, the patient would look young and beautiful and flawless ... if they lived,

Mal thought darkly. But the researchers hadn't bothered to take the necessary time to make sure the chemicals they ' d created were actually safe. They'd made billions offofit all the same. Synth skin was a luxury few could afford. Pulling that much from his trust fund would send up too many red flags. So how would Mal get his hands on it?

Black market? Mal realized he had no idea how anybody actually found black market items. His internet search got him nowhere, which then led to a long sidetrack speculation on how the black market actually operated if no one knew how to find it.

Then there was an unhelpful and extremely humorous anti-depressant fueled daydream about black market reps in black suits and black bowler hats going out and finding desperate people and saying things like, "Hello, we heard you've been Google searching synth skin. Can we interest you in any of (pulling open trench coat to reveal swatches of synth skin) these?" 13

If only he could have back all the synth skin from the patients he'd killed, he thought. And like all great and terrible things, that simple thought was how Mal ' s borderline illegal project became decisively illegal. 14

Chapter 2

Of all of the fortunate and unfortunate things to happen to Mal since he attempted to kill himself, the most fortunate was that he had been Catman for Halloween the previous year. This realization did not give him confidence in what he was about to do. It was fortunate that he had been Catman because it meant that he already had an appropriate outfit for grave robbing, so if everything went to hell in a handbasket at least they couldn't pull his bank records and say, "Can you explain why you bought this black ski mask and a black turtle neck and black pants and black gloves and black cat ears ALL

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE THE CRIME WAS COMMITTED?" Mal took three shots of bourbon before he left the house.

He was so nervous as he stepped out his front door, he was barely able to focus on requesting an AutoRyd. His hands were hot and damp and shaky. He struggled to even shift out of vision mode. Fortunately, the alcohol was beginning to enter his bloodstream and his phone chip automatically switched over to drunk mode. AutoRyd immediately popped up (and, he knew, all of his exes' phone numbers were immediately deleted from his contact list until his BAC returned to normal) and a voice in his head asked, "Home, bar, or other?" Mal thought "bar." The voice asked, "Preference?" Mal thought,

"Quinn' s" and a few moments later the driverless AutoRyd appeared.

Mal chose Quinn's because it was the closest bar he regularly frequented to the cemetery. He decided he would have a few drinks, start an argument, and get thrown out.

This shouldn't be too difficult considering he did it at least once a month. It was an 15 ironclad alibi . Stashing his Catman costume in a nearby bush, he switched into his best impersonation of his belligerently drunk self, and stumbled into Quinn' s. Exactly one hour later he was thrown into the bush that contained his Catman costume.

It was odd, he thought as he changed behind a tree, that all seven of his patients were buried in the same cemetery. Convenient, but very odd. Therapist Number Two would definitely have had something to say about that if he were still alive. "It' s all part of the cyber pigeon agenda," he would have told Mal.

Mal dug up Sienna first. He' d replaced a lot of her saggy old lady skin with synth skin and he wanted to make sure he started with the patients who had the most synth skin to be stolen, in case the plan had to be aborted.

Mal had seen a lot of shows and movies in which graves were robbed. The thing those shows and movies often left out was how fucking long it took. He hadn't even reached Sienna' s biodegradable coffin and-already he was exhausted. Not to mention his

Catman costume was thoroughly ruined. And the bugs! Mal had never seen so many damn bugs in his life. He was pretty sure he had a worm in his underpants by the time he reached Sienna' s coffin.

The shows and movies also didn't prepare him for the smell. He almost vomited, which would have been a nightmare. His DNA splattered all over the crime scene. Just what he needed. He removed the synth skin as quickly and carefully as he could, given the circumstances. 16

Looking at Sienna's mangled face, .he felt a wave of sorrow. She'd been a nice old lady and not only had he killed her, but now he was mutilating her corpse. If any sort of after life really did exist, and he met her there, she would definitely kick his ass. Looking at her body, he decided he'd let her. After all the synth skin was removed, Mal said a quick apology and wished Sienna peace. Then he filled in her grave. Not to cover his crime, they'd know the grave had been dug up whether he filled it in or not (it wasn't like he could make the grass grow back over it again), but to prevent Sienna from being further exposed. He figured it was the least he could do for her.

The time it took to fill in the grave, plus the amazingly long time it took to dig it, meant that Mal was done grave robbing for the night This was not good for two reasons.

First, he definitely didn't have enough synth skin to complete his design. Second, he could hardly come back another night Return to the scene of the crime? He'd seen crime shows. The next time he set foot in this cemetery again would be in a coffin, he thought

He realized that didn't make sense. The fact that all seven of his patients were buried in the same cemetery no longer seemed convenient "Cyber pigeons," Therapist Number

Two' s voice said in his head.

*

He stepped back He actually kind of liked it Sure it might not fit in with conventions, but there' s something about the product of one's own hard work and creativity. Mal thought it was perfect 17

Mal thought she was perfect. He decided to call her Fran, after the timeless beauty

Fran Drescher. There was something about the look of classic actresses from the 1990' s that ignited his passion. He even found a big, curly brunette wig that resembled the actress' s hair.

True, Fran' s synth skin was a bit. .. unusual. He had to sew the various pieces he'd pulled from Sienna together to cover Fran. She wasn't exactly shaped like Sienna.

He also didn't have as good of equipment in his house as he would have at the hospital, so the synth skin had sort of a patchwork quality from where the sutures were.

And there wasn't quite enough synth skin to cover all of her. Around her left eye, extending down her cheek and up her forehead, and down her right arm and hand, the metallic red of her synth muscles shone. To protect them he'd had to use a digital membrane, the kind typically used to protect underwater cables, so sparks of blue electricity shot up her arms and down her temple every so often. He' d also had to create a custom circulatory system to supply her synth skin with blood, since her titanium skeleton couldn't produce red blood cells. He created two shut off settings for her. One that would power down the computer that was her mind, and one that would shut her down completely, causing the blood that circulated through her mechanical heart to stop and settle. He never planned to use this one.

He made her petite. Classic actresses always seemed so delicate. Slender, with small hands and feet. Her narrow collarbones peaked out at him from beneath the satin straps of the dress he' d slipped over the soft curves of her shoulders. He had to construct 18 her lips from synth muscles, since he had forgotten to take Sienna' s synth lip skin. It gave

Fran the perpetual look of wearing glossy red lipstick. Or rather, glossy red lipstick with the occasional streak of blue lightning. A hint of a smile played on her resting lips like an invitation. He couldn't stop staring at her. She was the most beautiful thing Mal had ever seen. With shaking hands he activated her.

Mal was not technically a programmer, but like everyone his age, he had plenty of lessons on software creation during his education. And he' d always had an impressive amount of natural skill for programming. As a teenager, his teachers had strongly encouraged him to go into it as a career. They'd called him a prodigy even. But programming lacked glamour. Medico-engineering was far more prestigious.

Despite Mal ' s talent for programming, it had been awhile since he' d actually done it. He hoped he hadn't forgotten anything. His heart thrashed against his ribcage and his mouth felt like he'd wiped it dry with a napkin. He was so nervous during the final stages of his creation. His hands had been shaking the whole time. Fran might not turn out to be the brightest bulb in the bunch, but that didn't really matter to Mal.

"Hello," Fran said. Mal fainted.

He came to in Fran' s arms. Her warm brown mechanical eyes gazed down at him with concern.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yes," Mal struggled to his feet, "I'm fine. I just. .. wasn't prepared." 19

"For what?" Her eyes focused in on him. In not out. She was listening to him, responding - really responding - to the things he was saying. Of course, he knew that this would be the case. He'd programmed her to be a good listener. He'd programmed her to engage and communicate and love him. And, most importantly, he hadn't given her a phone chip. But he still wasn't prepared for it.

Mal spent so much time wishing for someone to talk to. Now he stood in his quiet house -becoming increasingly aware of just how deafening the hum of the refrigerator really was - with a woman literally made for exactly that and his mind drew blank.

"I. .. what, uh, what kinds of things do you like?" Jesus Christ, what was wrong with him?

Fran laughed. Mal blinked. Had he really programmed her to laugh like that? He didn 't think he was that good. Her laugh was like warm pavement against his cheek after a cold pool. It brought up into his heart a swelling, giddy, bubble. He was consumed by it. He laughed a yelping, fluttering laugh. Fran laughed at his laugh and they laughed together trapped in an endless joyful loop.·

Mal was in love as he had never been. Fran entranced him. The way she moved her hands, like leaves floating down to the earth, the broad pearly glitter of her smile, it all made his face flush with warmth. Was she so beautiful to him because he created her or had he really just created something so beautiful? He couldn't tell. When she casually mentioned that they'd been in bed for three days, Mal was shocked. It had only felt like a 20 few hours to him. He wasn't sure if he' d ever gone a full day without checking his phone chip or watching TV. Now he'd gone three. He knew there would be more days too.

Fran awoke something in him that felt instinctive. Like a hawk taking flight and realizing for the first time that it was a bird. She giggled while he stared at her and the cheek that was covered with synth skin blushed, which caused something in his chest to swell. He knew she thought he was crazy for staring so much, but now that he found the love he' d sought for so long it felt as though the world should stop and stare.

Falling asleep and waking up next to her was like living in a dream. Making love to her was a new kind of intimate connection he'd never experienced. He kept telling himself that he should go out and get some fresh air. He knew it was unhealthy to stay cooped up in the house day after day and night after night, but he was lost in the romance.

Each time he considered stepping outside his door, the thought ofleaving Fran' s side drew him back in .

He felt so overwhelmingly lucky. Here he was, lying in the arms of his dream girl, everything he'd ever wanted in a partner, and there were people out there still searching.

He felt sorry for them. He felt sorry for all of the people still scanning the ClickMate profiles that popped up along their social media feeds among the ads, matched by some soulless, data-mining algorithm. Mal also felt sorry for the people who were in relationships. He knew, looking into Fran' s halcyon mechanical eyes, caressing the velvety hills of scar tissue on the synth skin of her left arm, that no one had experienced a love as perfect and powerful as the one he experienced with Fran. 21

She surprised him, filled him with hope and excitement for the future. He wanted to burn every moment spent with her into his mind because each moment felt too flawless to be real. Someday, when he was old and spent, he would think back and remember the way Fran laughed at the stupid joke he made about penguins running for government offices as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. Her wig was tangled and slipping to the side and the quake of laughter caused her to miss her bowl and send cereal skittering across the counter top. Sunlight streaked in through the curtains and refracted off the visible synth muscles of her face, pulled taut with glee. He would remember that moment when his bones creaked and his skin sagged, he thought.

He wanted to show Fran everything, tell her everything, share with her everything about himself He bared his most intimate secrets to her, nose to nose under the safety of his fat maroon comforter. Their first few months together seemed entirely spent under that comforter. He instructed the house, which he'd named Niles, to bring up The Nanny on his smart wall so that Fran too would develop a love for the classics. And she did. She loved all the shows he loved. She watched voraciously, devouring season after season, swept up by it all.

Mal should have seen that this would inspire in her something he never intended.

She began talking about shopping, about cars, about friendship, about children. Her curiosity about the outside world grew insatiably with every question he answered. She wanted to know about Broadway, about school, and about the world. She asked him what the names of all the countries were. She asked him about the oceans. 22

Mal could not understand it. He did not think he had programmed her to be so curious. Though, after some thought, he realized that perhaps he had not been careful enough when he had been programming her to be curious about himself. It was possible that in his shoddy work he'd allowed fissures through which that curiosity was able to spread like water creeping along cracks in the sidewalk.

He grew irritated with her questions. Each one caused his teeth to grind and the muscles in his neck to tighten. They grated on his nerves and threatened to pop the bubble of happiness he had worked so hard to create. Her fascination with the outside world reminded him that what he had done was a crime -he' d mutilated a dead woman to build himself a girlfriend. His relationship with Fran would be seen as monstrous and he would be thrown in jail or a loony bin if anyone ever found out. How could he explain any of that to her? How could she ever understand that she could not go outside? He wanted back the Fran who was curious only about him. He wanted back the Fran who laughed at his jokes and spilled cereal.

Their first fight occurred after only two blissful months. Mal awoke to Fran sitting up next to him . Her legs were folded in front of her and her wig Jay haphazardly on the nightstand next to a forgotten, half-drunk cup of coffee. She wore one of his flannel shirts from when camping was briefly en vogue and a pair of the thermal leggings he'd bought for her before he' d even brought her to life, when she was just a half constructed body lying on his dining room table. She was bent over his iTablet completely absorbed in whatever she was reading. 23

It wasn't the first time he'd seen her stare at the iTablet like that and he felt an instant wave of anger and resentment wash over him. His heart rate sped up and his mind sharpened, the lingering shadows of sleepiness suddenly banished as each muscle tensed.

She'd found something new to bombard him with questions about, but it was way too early for him to have the patience to deal with her. He wanted coffee. He wanted eggs.

He wanted to sit with her and eat breakfast and have a conversation, not an interrogation.

Figuring he could fulfill at least two of these three desires, he pulled the comforter to the side and swung his feet to the floor. The movement broke Fran's concentration.

Mal's back was to her, so he was not sure if she turned to look at him or if her eyes were still glued to the screen in her lap, but he felt her hand come to land gently on his vertebrae. " Good morning, Sleepyhead!" she sang out.

Mal was still annoyed so he offered back only a moody grumble to convey his displeasure with her choice of morning activity. As he rose he felt her hand slide absently down his spine before it glided back to the iTablet. She was so consumed with whatever new curiosity she was cultivating that she had not even noticed his temper. Mal stomped to the kitchen in a more obvious display of anger and put on a cup of coffee, but it was not until he had a steaming mug in front of him that Fran finally trailed in.

She'd left her wig on the nightstand, something she never would have done two months ago. When he'd first activated her, she'd never let him see her without her wig on. She even showered with it on. She'd been so embarrassed of the scars running along her scalp. Mal remembered how funny and cute he' d thought that was, considering that 24 she didn't even have skin on a good portion of her body. Something about those scars, the ones the wig covered, she'd felt self-conscious about. But now she was comfortable with

Mal. She'd grown confident enough in the relationship to forget her insecurities. Mal was happy about this to an extent, but she wore the wig less and less, and he missed the way she looked in it.

She still held the iTablet, clutched tightly in her hands as though she thought that, perhaps if she held it firmly enough, she might get pulled in through the screen and deposited on the street of whatever new city she'd discovered. With eyes steadfastly locked on the images in front of her she addressed Mal.

"Sweetie, I found a school in Spain where you can go and learn Spanish! We should do this! It's in Barcelona, which is this amazing city with these wonderful, weird­ looking buildings! We could explore it together and learn Spanish! You don't already speak it do you?" She continued to stare at the screen scrolling through and tapping on photos of Barcelona.

Mal suddenly realized that he was right back where he started. Staring at some woman who was more interested in a screen than in him. He wanted to scream at Fran and throw his coffee into her face, watching as the scalding liquid turned the faux flesh a livid red. He wanted to smash the iTablet from her fingers and watch it shatter at her feet.

He could not believe that she was still so oblivious to his anger. He could not believe how selfish and rude she was being. 25

"And how exactly are we going to pay for that, Fran?" he snapped, summoning all ofthe bitterness and venom to his voice he could muster, "Things like that cost money.

Or have you not come across the concept of money yet in your addiction to that thing?"

He gestured impatiently at the iTablet on the last word.

The tone of his voice finally caught Fran' s attention and she looked up at him in surprise, which only served to fan the fire of his agitation.

"What's wrong?" she asked innocently.

"I just don't know how you think we're going to pay for all of these things you keep suggesting we do." It was fortunate that he had not told Fran about his trust fund, or she might have seen through him and realized how much he hated her in that moment. He wanted her to understand how she had treated him without having to spell it out for her.

"You haven't even looked at me in days because you're always staring at that stupid iTablet and now you're coming up with all of these crazy half-brained plans. Do you understand that I'm suspended from my job right now? Who' s going to pay for us to go on all of these ridiculous trips all over the world? Are you planning on paying for it?''

Mal was nearly shouting, but he couldn't help himself It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Fran was clearly blind-sided by the outburst. She blinked in surprise and confusion.

"I - I don't know. I wasn't- Maybe I could get a job," she stammered. 26

Mal was pleased with the scorn he managed imbue his laughter with. He could see three steps ahead ofFran in the bitter chess game of this argument. He knew he was being cruel. He knew the cruelty was unnecessary. But he also knew he was right. He knew that everything Fran wanted was impossible, and that he had to make her see this.

"Oh really? And what exactly are you qualified to do, Fran? What experience do you have? Who' s going to hire you?"

Fran' s eyes contracted sharply. For a brief moment, she looked more like a woman than she ever had before and, somehow, more like a machine too. Her synth skin flushed too deeply. Too evenly.

"Really? The guy who gets suspended the moment he starts his first real job is going to accuse me of being unemployable?" she spat. "I could get a job, Mal! I'm smart!

I'm capable! IfFran Fine can get a job as a nanny with no experience, then I can certainly find something I can do! "

Mal almost laughed again, but in actual amusement. "That's a TV show, Fran! It's not real life! Real life doesn't work like that! "

"Fuck you, I'll find a job right now! Watch mel " She lifted the iTablet she seemed to have forgotten she was holding back to her face and awoke the screen, but Mal jerked it from her grasp before she could do more.

"Give it back to me, you asshole!" Mal was already angry, but he' d never had a woman speak to him that way before. Maybe women on the street or in clubs, but not a 27 womanhood knew. Never a woman he cared about. He didn 't think he'd programmed her to speak like that - to be so aggressive. This was not the woman he had created.

That thought overwhelmed him . It blacked out his mind. He lost all sense of reason and gave in to inhibition -to instinct - to rage. His whole body burned and his jaw locked. Every muscle, every string of sinew, tightened. His nostrils flared out despite the fact that his breath seemed caught in his lungs, which were stretching his ribcage toward snapping. His vision blurred white-hot. He threw the iTablet on the ground, hoping the screen would shatter, but not taking the time to look to see if it had. He grabbed Fran' s wrist and yanked her around, pulling her back against him, twisting her arm around her almost as though they were dancing, but he was not about to spin her out again. She screeched in pain or anger and tried to pull free . Mal used the weight of his body to shove her forward, hard, into the island. He heard the strangled grunt she let out as the edge of the countertop knocked the wind out of her. He heard the half-scream half­ moan she emitted as he pushed the back of her head down, forcing her to bend at the waist, and smashing her face into the cold green-grey granite. Still using the weight of his body against her small form, he kept her pinned and reached his free hand up to the back of her neck. His hands shook. She writhed beneath him a he scratched back the hidden flap of synth skin that covered her power button. He pressed his thumb against it hard and held. It read his fingerprint and suddenly, anti-climactically, Fran went limp. The sound of her breath stopped. She was - abruptly and completely- quiet.

Mal sighed and took his weight off her. He gently lowered her body to the hardwood floor, laying her face up . She would have looked peaceful if her eyes weren't 28 open; pupils still pinpricks of fear and fury. Mal sighed again, more heavily, unable to regain any of the air that so recently had refused to leave his lungs. He needed to calm down and clear his head. Leaving Fran on the floor like a corpse, he wandered to the living room where he cast his own body on the carpet. He popped an anti-depressant for the first time since he'd created her, put the first show he found that was not The Nanny on his corneal screen, and tried to achieve the stillness of his inanimate lover.

For six hours he barely moved, barely thought, barely breathed. He felt he was back where he had started, alone and useless. He felt so hopeless that he even attempted to call Therapist Number Three. He wasn't sure what he would say to Therapist Number

Three, besides perhaps a few choice fragments of profanity, since he couldn't exactly talk about his problems with Fran.

Therapist Number Three's receptionist, Receptionist Number Three, answered

Mal' s call. He was a humanoid robot, a noid, like Fran, and yet not like Fran at all.

Receptionist Number Three had been mass-produced by Henderson Robotics. Just one of the many noids created to reduce the cost of labor for companies. Mal's mother often said that things were better when she was a girl, when real people did these kinds of jobs and you could talk to a real person if you had a question. Mal couldn't really imagine a human receptionist, but he believed that it would make for a better experience as a customer. Much like mechanical livers, the noids were created quickly and cost effectively, which left them full of bugs. They often froze in the middle of scheduling an appointment. There was nothing more maddening than a buffering receptionist. 29

Receptionist Number Three picked up with a flat "Hello", which Mal found odd since he usually delivered a chipper "Dr. Mortequine' s office! " The reason for his gloom was revealed when he promptly burst into "tears" after Mal said he needed to speak to

"The Idiot" (his pet name for Therapist Number Three). Mal never could figure out why

Henderson Robotics had given their noids the ability to cry, but had not given them the ability to produce actual tears. The effect was quite unnerving. And it was not helped by the fact that their patented nanotech skin, which they had appropriately named "Rubbesh"

(it was supposed to be short for rubber flesh), contorted the noid' s faces into grotesque, nightmarish mimicries of real human facial expressions. Mal could picture Receptionist

Number Three' s lifeless eyes weirdly wide and scrunched up at the same time. His mouth contracted into a hideous open frown, as he delivered the news in halting wails.

As it turned out, Mal could not speak to Therapist Number Three because he had, predictably, killed himself Now immune to this type of news, Mal rather insensitively asked how he'd done it, to which Receptionist Number Three bawled hysterically that he'd laid down in front of his horses and startled them into trampling him to death with an airhorn. Mal was surprised. He hadn't really thought of Therapist Number Three as being the type of guy who would own horses.

Mal sat quietly for a while after hanging up with Receptionist Number Three. A weight settled onto his shoulders like a rain soaked coat and his eyes meandered in and out of focus. His bones were heavy beneath his skin. His mind fell blank, too blank to even allow him to shed tears. A numbness had descended. He was miserable. He' d hated

Therapist Number Three, of course, but he still needed someone to talk to. How could he 30 be such a failure that he couldn't even create a companion? He had literally made the perfect woman and still she wasn't perfect. He understood her curiosities. He wasn't upset that she was curious. But how could he tell her that she was a monster? How could he ever make her see that she could not go outside? That, to the world, she would be seen only as his crime?

He also felt guilty for being so rough with her. He hadn't meant to hurt her. He just knew that they could not continue. He had to stop her from pursuing the idea that she could be a normal person. Still, it made him feel sick to think of the way he'd twisted her arm and shoved her. His stomach clenched and the blood drained from his face as he replayed the scene in his mind. Would she ever be able to forgive him? What was he going to do? He drank heavily as he pondered these last two questions.

It took everything Mal had not to call his mother and confess all to her. When he first got the idea to create Fran, he'd told his mother that he was going to go on a several­ month-long yoga retreat to find inner peace. He' d told her Therapist Number Three had insisted that it was necessary to his healing process and that he absolutely could not turn on his phone chip while he was away.

He hated lying to his mother. Bile welled up in his throat at the mere thought of it.

He'd always told her everything. But he couldn't tell her about Fran. It would implicate her in his crime. He couldn't put her at risk like that. And secretly he was afraid she wouldn't approve. He was afraid she' d be horrified and ashamed ofhim. Mal could not imagine anything worse than that. 31

But other fears had begun to creep into Mal's mind as well. Eventually he would have to call his mother. Eventually he'd have to see her. She'd want to come visit and stay in the guest room - "her room" as she called it- and what would Mal do with Fran then? Would he have to tum her off every time his mother came over? Would he have to grab her the way he had in the kitchen and.force her to let him turn her off? And then what? What would he do with her body? Stuff it in the closet and hope his mother didn't get an urge to "do a bit of tidying up" as she seemed to do every time she visited? The thought of his mother finding Fran' s body stuffed in a heap in his laundry hamper made

Mal cringe and made his vision swirl. A wave of nausea overwhelmed him, causing his mouth to water and his hands to grow slick with sweat.

His mother' s visits were not the only problem Mal faced. In a few months his suspension would finally be up and he could begin practicing as a medico-engineer again

(under supervision like he was some incompetent resident). He'd been dreading what he would do with Fran when he returned to work. How could he keep her inside? How could he keep her from being seen? He did not want to have to physically force her into submission so that he could tum her off every time he went to work anymore than he wanted to do so for his mother's visits.

As sad as it made him, Mal knew what he needed to do. He knew he could never keep her from trying to get out into the world by simply shutting her off He needed to keep her from wanting to try. He switched to vision mode and stared up at the ceiling of his living room, looking for patterns in the beige stucco. He stared for a long time at a patch that looked like a melancholy woman, feeling hollow and tired. The thought of 32 reprogramming Fran made him unbearably sad. Like the energy had been siphoned from all of his muscles and all he could do was lie on the fat, tan carpet and stare at the misshapen woman above.

He traced with his eyes the brushed part of the stucco that looked like her lank hair hanging forward limply from the roundish concavity that made up her head. Another larger indentation below formed her hunched torso. Mal tore his eyes away from the shape and tried to find something more cheerful in the patterns. He tried to find the patch he usually stared at - the one that looked like an excited dog - but for some reason he could not find it. He searched for other shapes, but found time and again that his eyes would land on the sad, misshapen woman. 33

Chapter 3

It took Mal another hour to work out what he needed to do and a few shots of bourbon to actually walk into the kitchen and do it. He stood at the edge of the carpet, feet sinking in obstinately, staring at Fran's body on the tile. She was exactly where he'd left her. Arms and knees bent, hands soft and graceful, like a ballerina's. Eyes wide and angry. He'd turned her off completely by accident. He needed to switch her to only half off so that her blood wouldn't coagulate while he reprogrammed her. The flush had already left her synth skin. She lay like fallen snow.

Mal lifted her gently from the floor and carried her to the dining room table, laying her on her side. Her hips and shoulders rose like mountains over the valley of her tiny waist. He softly kissed her back, took a deep breath, and got to work. He worked for days and nights straight, popping various prescriptions and sucking down vats of coffee.

He wanted to bring Fran back as quickly as possible. He missed her presence so much.

After five days of reprogramming, Mal finally felt that he'd covered all of his bases. He wanted to tum Fran back on the moment his work was complete, but he also knew he needed sleep. So he dragged himself to his bedroom, slipped into the soft grey sheets and pulled the maroon comforter up over his head. For how exhausted he was, it took a frustratingly long time for him to drift off He hovered on the brink of waking and sleep for hours, half thinking and half dreaming. His mind was preoccupied by Fran and the future he would have with her. 34

He couldn't stop thinking about Christmas. Ever since his father had passed away when he was eight, he and his mother had "Christmas Just the Two of Us" as his mother called it. They would tum off their phone chips completely, lock the doors, and shut the curtains. They'd stay inside all day watching classic movies and TV shows on the smart wall of their warm, dark living room . His mother only liked the classics. "It was a better time," she always said.

With their shows playing in the background, Mal would tell the house to turn on the fireplace, and his mother would begin cooking a feast just for them. Whatever food they wanted. Anything and everything. They' d open gifts and snuggle up under fluffy blankets. He always got his mother a new soft blanket for Christmas, so they'd bring them all out and build a nest.

Christmas was Mal 's favorite day of the year. He loved spending it with his mother, talking and laughing and eating themselves sick. But in the last few years she'd begun to ask when he'd be bringing a "nice girl" to their Christmas.

"Someday it will be 'Christmas Just the Three of Us,"' she'd say, smiling. "And then perhaps it will be ' Christmas Just the Two of You' or hopefully 'Christmas Just the

Three ofYou! '"

"Of Us, Mom. It wouldn't be Christmas at all without you."

Mal remembered the sad smile she' d given him the first time he' d said that. 35

"We will always have each other, Malcolm. We will always be together on

Christmas." She' d patted his cheek and stared at him a bit too long as she'd said that, her eyes sparkling up at him . He never quite understood what she' d meant.

Lying under his maroon comforter, a tear slid from the corner of his eye and freefell from the ridge of his nose to his pillowcase. How would his mother feel if he never brought someone home for Christmas? How would she feel if she knew she'd never have grandchildren? Mal could never bring Fran home to meet his mother. Fran could never be the third in "Christmas Just the Three of Us." His mother would never be able to know that he'd finally found love - that he was finally in a relationship with someone who listened and appreciated him . And he 'd never be able to spend Christmas with Fran. He'd have to leave her alone in their home, afraid.

*

Mal pressed his thumb gently against the power button twice, quickly closed the synth skin flap, and waited as Fran powered back on. His hands twitched slightly as he pulled them away. His knees wobbled like they were going to give out and a bead of sweat slid down along his spine. He was as nervous as he 'd been the first time he activated her. He felt as though he were m~eting her for the first time all over again.

She lay peacefully on the table, hands resting gently alongside her hips. Mal had put her wig back on, and to him she looked like a sleeping princess, waiting to be awoken by her prince. He leaned in to wake her - to give her what all princesses needed to be woken up - true love' s kiss. He pressed his warm lips against the cold membrane 36 covering her synth muscle lips, imbuing them with life. It was a short, soft kiss, and he pulled away slowly, taking in the beauty of her face as he moved. Her eyelashes fluttered.

She opened her eyes cautiously, as though for the first time, and they drew wide.

Mal looked down at her lovingly. There was nothing more perfect than the awe she had in that moment. She looked back at Mal and her eyes continued to widen. But now her brows began to pull together and her nostrils flared slightly. Her synth muscles flexed and she seemed to be attempting withdraw her body into the table. As her lips parted and she sucked in a deep breath, Mal realized with horror what was happening.

" HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-"

Fran let out the loudest, most ear-piercing scream Mal had ever heard in his life. It sent his heart shooting into his throat and in terror he began to scream too. He lurched backward, stumbling against a stool near the counter. Fran scrambled from the table, still screaming wildly, like an animal being chased by a monster. She fell to the floor and tried to run but everything appeared to be frightening her and she could not find a direction to move in. She turned in circles trying to keep the dangers on all sides in sight. She was still screaming and looking around wild-eyed as Mal ran to her, tore open the synth skin flap, and turned her off.

"Jesus fuckt " he swore into the sudden silence. His ears rang. He lifted Fran's limp body and carried her back to the dining room table. Ok, Mal thought, obviously that time he made her a bit too afraid. 37

He spent a few more days reprogramming her. When he turned her on again, he thought he'd succeeded in giving her the right amount of fear. He wanted her to feel safe in the house, but to be afraid of what lay beyond its walls. For four whole days he really thought he' d fixed her. But then he emerged from a relaxing, hot shower to find Fran crouched behind the kitchen island with a frying pan and a can ofbug spray.

"Get down!" she whisper screamed.

" ...... What. .. is happening?"

"There is a gigantic murderous insect out there! I got the spray but I don't think it's going to be enough!"

Mal had shown Fran the other day how to kill a fly using bug spray. He'd told her the fly was an insect and that insects came from the world outside the house. He thought it would be a good way to test whether or not he'd succeeded in making her afraid. He had not been disappointed by her reaction. She was clearly terrified of the fly and insisted that Mal stock the house with more bug spray, so he'd ordered an unnecessary supply.

"Oh god, I'm not ready to die! " Fran whispered in agony. "How do they kill you?

Is it quick? What is wrong with you?! Hi del"

Mal looked out the kitchen window. The curtains were closed, but he could see the shadow of an object and could hear it bumping gently against the glass. It was a drone trying to deliver the bug spray. 38

"There are so many things I never got to dol" Tears were now pouring down

Fran's cheeks. "I don't even know ifRoss and Rachel are ever going to get back

together," she sobbed. "I mean, I feel like they are because he' s her lobster, but now I'll

never know!"

Mal went to put on pants as Fran continued to mourn her unfinished life. After he

got dressed he passed through the kitchen to the front door to collect the drone's delivery.

"And what if I'd actually looked better as a blonde? I never got to try being a

blonde and that one movie says gentlemen prefer them! Maybe you would have preferred

me as a blonde!"

Mal opened the door.

"Baby, don't go out there! Don't be a hero!"

Mal took the package from the drone. It looked like it had gotten scratched up and bumped pretty hard. He wondered if a hawk had attacked it. He turned it away from the

window and gave it a push back out into the air, where it bobbed out of the front yard in a

dazed sort of way. He watched it go for a minute, enjoying the breeze against his skin. It

had been awhile since he' d gone outside. The fresh air felt nice.

He turned and stepped back inside. As he approached the island, setting the

package of bug spray atop it, Fran flung herself around his neck.

"Oh my god! You're alive! Did you kill it? Did it bite you anywhere? Are

werebugs a thing? Like werewolves? From that one movie, you - " 39

Fran went limp in Mal' s arms. He sighed. He realized he' d better make a list of what all he wanted her to be afraid of and what he didn 't want her to be afraid of He dumped Fran unceremoniously onto the dining table and went to find the iTablet. He' d gotten into the habit of using it with Fran, since she didn't have a phone chip. Once he found it he made a simple two-column table and labeled the left side "Scared" and the right side "Not Scared." The first item he added was on the right side. It said simply,

"drones." Mal thought for a moment and then added an item to the left side for good measure. It now read, "cyber pigeons." 40

Chapter 4

Mal was sure that, after making such a comprehensive list of fears for Fran, this time his programming would not be faulty . He'd spent hours creating the list. He'd thought of absolutely everything possible. The list of items in the "Scared" column ranged from cyber pigeons all the way to begonias. Mal despised begonias. The list of

"Not Scared" items ranged from drones to rakes, simply because he couldn't think of any reason why she should be afraid of rakes.

That unusually long meditation on the merits of rakes led Mal to another idea, which he thought might have been his best since the idea to create Fran. Before reprogramming and reactivating her, he ordered two enormous trellises, several large and impenetrable hedges to surround the perimeter fence of the backyard, wisteria, ivy, grape vines, a dozen rose bushes, three weeping willows, several bags of soil and fertilizer, 2 pairs of gardening gloves, trowels, and, of course, a rake.

They arrived in a huge driverless truck. Two inhumanly strong, and deeply annoying humanoid robots helped Mal to unload everything. He spent the next week turning his gigantic L-shaped backyard into a hidden garden. A space for Fran to be outdoors, but concealed and safe. He'd also ordered a few small pots and plants, which he left for her to care for. He thought it would be nice for her to have something to tend to ­ to keep her busy - when he went back to work. 41

By the time Mal reprogrammed Fran and turned her back on he was approaching the end of his suspension. Soon he would be practicing medico-engineering again and he'd be working long days and nights. The thought of it was keeping him awake.

He found his mind drifting while he was reprogramming Fran. Often he would pause and not realize he'd been daydreaming until hours later when he'd shake himself from the fantasy and get back to work.

Occasionally he found himself daydreaming about his professional life. He'd go back to work and perform flawless feats of medico-engineering. There' d be some sort of emergency and he'd have to step in and repair an impossible to repair malfunction on a mechanical heart. He'd rise to the occasion and save the day. They'd reinstate him fully, shaking their heads that they 'd ever been so foolhardy as to suspend him. He'd come home to Fran and tell her everything. And then bask in her admiration.

But more often, Mal 's fantasies were not about success, but about potential failures. They were waking nightmares more than fantasies. He imagined Fran becoming frightened by something - something he forgot to account for in the table, like the drone incident - and hiding for hours and hours terrified and confused. He imagined finding her sobbing under the bed or cowering in the closet. Or worse.

Often he imagined her becoming so frightened that she ran from the house and someone found her. What would someone do to her if they discovered a monster roaming the streets? What would they do to Mal if she gave them his name? 42

In one particularly terrifying daydream, Fran got frightened by something and came looking for him at the hospital. Mal imagined her wandering the halls screaming for him. He imagined doctors swarming her, assuming she was a synth skin patient who somehow woke up and escaped half way through her operation. But then they would see the heinous scars from the sutures. They would notice the blue sparks jetting across her exposed synth muscles. They would see what she was and they would know he had created her because still she'd be screaming his name. They would arrest him and his mother would see him being taken away in handcuffs. What would she think of him then?

*

Mal's fears subsided a bit after he reactivated Fran. She was so pleased with the garden. So excited about the plants he'd bought her. She seemed truly happy. She was curious about the garden and about all of the things that could be done to make their home even more perfect. But so far she didn't seem curious about the world beyond their private oasis, so Mal felt that perhaps he'd. finally managed to program her the way he always meant to.

Most importantly, she was still curious about Mal. He told her more about the things he loved and shared with her some of his worries about going back to work. He didn't share with her the worries that concerned her, only his worries that he might kill another patient or make some other mistake. She listened and soothed and reassured. 43

"You are a better medico-engineer than any of those quacks," she whispered into his hair. And Mal knew she was right. For the first time since their fight in the kitchen, he slept a full night's sleep.

Things carried on blissfully. Fran gardened enthusiastically while Mal would sit on the patio furniture and study medico-engineering journals. Whenever he came across an interesting fact, he'd read it to Fran and explain it. She would listen and smile up at him, occasionally exclaiming, "that's so interesting!" or "unbelievable!" as she packed , soil around her newest flower or shrub.

And Mal continued to sleep well. He slept better than he had in years. Each morning he woke up to a mug of hot coffee and Fran by his side. He had done it. He had really done it. Finally he had his dream girl. If only Therapist Number Three could have seen him. If he'd known that Mal achieved a real connection- found a true companion ­ perhaps he would not have taken that airhorn to the stables.

*

The day before Mal was scheduled to return to work finally arrived. It was a strange mix of feelings. Mal 's entire life had changed since his seventh patient died. He didn't feel like the same person anymore. He was excited to regain some of the person he'd been before the suspension. There was a point, before he' d killed Sienna, when he'd been on top of the world. When he was training to be a medico-engineer, everything had been easy. Back then he didn't want a companion. He had one of the hottest jobs in the 44 world and he was wealthy and young and handsome. He'd been a god then. And he was ready to be a god again.

Still, he wasn't heartbroken over all of the changes in his life. He wasn't so young anymore. He wanted a companion now, and he had one. The suspension, for all of its humiliating injustices, had brought him Fran, and for that he was grateful.

Now that he had reprogrammed her to be what he needed, he could go back to being a medico-engineering god. By day he'd be worshipped by his peers and by strangers. By night he'd be worshipped by the love of his life. He felt like, for the first time, he could really have it all. He almost laughed when he thought that there was a time when all he wanted was to die by the swing of a sledgehammer. If only then he could have seen how amazing his life would become.

Of course everything wasn't completely perfect yet. Mal still had to get back into the game at work. He would need to prove himself again. He was a bit nervous about that. He'd read some medico-engineering journals lately, but for most of his suspension he hadn't studied at all . If he was being honest, he'd never been much for studying. In school he'd always been able to do well enough with minimal studying. Even in medico­ engineering school he hadn't needed to work that hard to get by. But now he was going back to practicing and he' d be lying if he said that he wasn't worried he' d gotten a bit rusty. And it would look vety bad if he killed another person as soon as he returned. He could only hope he got something simple on his first day back. If he had to do a synth skin rep he would be screwed. 45

He told Fran about his worries again over take out that night. They'd ordered his favorite in honor of the occasion.

''I'm just scared they're going to give me another synth skin rep, you know?" Mal said as he plucked different types of dumplings from the various fold-pak containers.

"Well, you'll have someone supervising you for a while, right? If anything goes wrong it will be on that person."

"I guess so. It's so demeaning to have to work with a supervisor."

"It will only be for a little while," Fran responded as she inspected a wanton.

"Soon they'll see that everything that happened before wasn't your fault. You'll be back to practicing on your own again in no time. Everything will be fine. Just give it time."

Mal sighed. "I know. You're right. I'm just nervous, I guess."

"You'll be fine. Why don't we watch something? It will take your mind off it."

Fran helped him carry the food to the living room and Mal sat on the floor with his back against the couch. Fran dragged over a beanbag and dropped into it as Mal commanded Niles to tum on the smart wall.

"Do you want to keep watching 'Friends' ?"

"Yes," Fran wiggled in the beanbag to shape it to her body, "I have to see if Ross and Rachel get back together." She paused and an odd look crossed her face. "For some reason I feel like I was worried I wouldn't get to see that. .. " 46

Mal had Niles turn on the show on. "Don't worry. We have all the time in the world to finish this show."

*

It was odd to be back in the locker room of the hospital. He had been away for so long, it seemed like things should have changed, but as he pulled on his scrubs he couldn't help but feel as though he'd never left.

The locker room looked the same, down to the smudges on the locker doors. The same dings and nicks decorated the scuffed old benches. The tile floors were as ugly as they'd always been in the dingiest shade of white Mal had ever seen. The strange amalgamated smell of sterilizing chemicals and foot odor still lingered in the air. The bulletin board on the wall opposite the lockers still hung just slightly askew making Mal feel the same wave of violent frustration that he used to feel every time he entered the room.

Once he'd tried to fix it and the whole thing had come crashing down sending ancient flyers in every direction. Mal could never understand why the damn thing was there in the first place. It was a boring and unsightly relic of the past. He'd left it lying on the floor when it came crashing down, hoping someone else would find it and finally decide to chuck it out. But to his agonizing amazement the board was back in place the next day, the flyers, which were beginning to crumble to dust, delicately pinned in the exact same places they had been previously. That was the beginning of Mal's hatred for the hospital' s janitor noid who had OCD. 47

But it wasn'tjust the locker room that seemed untouched. Mal felt as though the people were equally unchanged by the time lapse. There were a few new faces, sure, and a few faces that had disappeared. But for the most part he recognized everyone. They came in, said "hello" and "welcome back," phones clearly not in vision mode, and then fell right back into the rituals and routines Mal had watched them enact every day for years. It was as though he had returned to a play he'd once performed in and the choreography hadn't changed.

Everyone arrived at the same times they always had. The late people were still late, the early birds were still annoyingly smug about their punctuality, taking the time to sit and leisurely sip a cup of coffee as the late people frantically tried not to put their scrub tops on inside out. Everyone still laced their shoes in the same way, the folks who wore extra strength deodorant still tried to apply it discreetly. They still failed to do so.

Everyone still shut their locker and took a step back as the janitor noid with OCD counted the lockers at a quarter past the hour, like they were doing the world's most mundane wave, then returned to what they were doing as though nothing had happened.

Mal wasn't sure ifthe monotony of all of this bothered him or comforted him. In some ways, he felt good to be back in the routine. It gave him faith that he could redeem himself and ri se to the top, because he belonged in the routine. He was a fundamental part of it.

He contemplated this as he emerged from the locker room and headed toward the

Chief Resident's broom closet of an office. He turned ri ght and ambled down the brightly 48 lit hall, passing the rooms of patients who were propped up and suspended in weird ways like some sort of modem art exhibit on capitalism in circuses. The orthopedics wing always threw Mal off so he usually switched out of vision mode as he passed through.

But today he decided to stay out of his phone chip. He was nervous and the last thing he needed was to trip over some rogue patient's broken leg and break his own leg. He did, however, try to avoid looking into patient rooms.

Instead he focused on the moving photos on the walls. They were large, cheaply framed, and completely eye-roll worthy. Each one depicted a distinctly healthy looking person with a caption underneath that said something like, "My new skin is synthly amazing!" The understatedly beautiful subject, who for whatever reason was always dressed in pale blue, would slowly break into a smile over and over again or bring their hand up to give a thumbs up in a never ending loop just long enough that it was meant to extend through the length of time that a patient would spend walking past it. But Mal could see the things coming from several yards away, so he watched the creepy photos like he was trapped in some Sisyphean dej~ vu nightmare. Eventually he reached the

ChiefResident's office, took a deep breath, and knocked.

"Come in! " a voice called brightly.

Mal stepped into the tiny office and looked down at the even tinier woman occupying it. He was surprised at how beautiful she was. Usually medico-engineers looked exhausted at best. But she looked immaculate. Her impossibly shiny black hair was pin-curled at her temples in accordance with the bizarre 1920's throwback that had 49 recently swept the fashion world. Her eyelids sparkled with a smoky colored glitter and

Mal wondered if her flawless onyx skin could possibly be real.

"Hey, Mal, welcome back!"

Mal blinked. She knew him?

She laughed. "You probably don't remember me. It's ok, our paths didn't cross too many times before you left."

Mal felt he would have remembered a face like hers but he kept the thought to himself

"Well anyway, welcome back! It's a new year, so let's put all that happened behind us and move forward! I know it must be strange to go from being an attending to essentially being a resident again, but we obviously know you're not a resident. You're still an attending. You're just going to be playing the part of a resident for a bit while you get back into the groove of things! Sound good?" She didn't pause for an answer.

"Alright, so you'll be working with Dr. Doddsen from now on! You can usually catch him in the lounge around this time. And remember you can come to me with anything!

I'm here to help you get back on your feet! "

With that she stood, walked the step and a half to the door, and gave Mal a beaming white smile.

He hated her. 50

Mal found Dr. Merle Doddsen in the lounge exactly where the Chief Resident

(whose name was Dr. Lyla LaFort as Mal learned from the ugly little name plate on the left side of her door) had said he would be. Dr. Doddsen had to be close to a thousand years old. His translucent, blue-white skin was the antithesis of synth skin and the tufts of snowy hair poking out of his ears were so thick and fluffy that they looked like whimsical little creatures. He was drinking a cup of coffee and holding an actual newspaper (where would he even havefound such a thing?) and looking thoroughly unsure of where he was or how he got there in the first place.

Mal approaching cautiously, fearing that he might unintentionally startle the old man and up his death toll before even returning to the OR.

"Excuse me .. . Dr. Doddsen?"

"CALL ME DOT!" Dr. Doddsen shouted deafly. Mal practically had a heart attack himself Of all of the medico-engineers they could have assigned him to work with, why on earth would they choose the one who could possibly be the world's very first medico-engineer? Were they trying to· get Mal to kill another patient?

"Right. Dot. Hi. I'm Dr. Arodnap. I'll be - "

"EH?"

''I'm - god - I'M DOC-TOR A-ROD-NAP," Mal shouted, exaggerating each syllable, "I'M GO-ING TO BE - " The old man started to doze off. 51

"Goddamnit. Dot! DOT! Over here! Hi! HI! I'M DOCTOR ARODNAP! I'LL BE

WORKING WITH YOU! "

"Eh? Oh . Well alright then let's go give someone a new kidney. Come on, boy, we don't have all day," he swayed dangerously to his feet, "What's your name then?"

Mal was sure Dot would die on the·way to the OR He wasn't altogether sure that the man hadn't died already. The line between "alive" and "dead" had never seemed less defined to Mal. He stood close to Dot, confident that at any moment the old doctor could collapse into a pile of dust.

But once he was on his feet, Dot turned out to be quite spry for his many many years. He moved quickly and gracefully down the hall, responding to turns and gurneys so reflexively that Mal began to wonder how long Dot had been working at this hospital in particular. He was like an ancient Jedi master, anticipating obstacles a second before

Mal saw them, his white coat billowing behind him wisely.

And he was equally dexterous in the OR Mal was surprised and impressed to see how quickly and precisely the old man could suture - his hands as steady and sure as

OCD janitor noid' s 4:15am scalpel stacking and un-stacking ritual. He narrated every nuance of the procedure to Mal as he worked, wheezing out the secrets of his flawless technique. Mal actually found himself half-listening to the elderly doctor and even thought he might have learned a trick or two by the time the mechanical kidney was filtering away toxins safe and sound inside its new, fairly tubby body. 52

After the surgery Dot took a nap, and Mal got into an argument with a vending­ bot over the nutritional value of his desired snack food. Mal watched Dot snore in a chair as he ate his hard earned Bugles. He wondered why Dot was not holding down a higher rank in the hospital. He was certainly the oldest medico-engineer in the place. And from what Mal had seen, he was unquestionably skilled. Mal couldn't imagine why Dot wasn't the chief of medico-engineering. He sucked a Bugle off his finger and crunched it loudly, not disturbing the old man in the slightest. Perhaps, he' d just been passed over when he was a bit younger, and now they felt he was simply too old. Or perhaps he built garbage mechanical organs that were only compatible with his patients half the time. The kidney today had been pristine, but maybe that was unusual for Doctor Dot. Mal narrowed his eyes at his sleeping companion and chewed another Bugle.

Their next replacement was a mechanical lung rep, and Dot told Mal he could take the lead this time. He was nervous as he scrubbed his hands, dropping the soap twice and nearly knocking a nurse over when he turned around too quickly and banged into her.

Beneath his scrubs, his knees were shaking and sweating. He knew he had no reason to be afraid, mechanical lungs were solid organs that had been well tested before making their way into hospitals. Mal reminded himself that he was a talented medico-engineer whose bright future had been marred by chance, nothing more. This was his time to show that he was not to blame for the deaths of those seven patients. With Dot at his heels, he entered the OR and set to work.

* 53

Mal knew he was talented, but this mechanical lung rep was a masterpiece. It made all previous mechanical lung reps its bitches. Even Dot's eyebrows found the energy to rise, he was so impressed. However, the facial expression seemed to exhaust him.

"I'M OFF FOR ANOTHER NAP. WAKE ME FOR OUR NEXT REP. I'LL BE

IN MY CHAIR. ONCE I FIND MY BLANKET, THAT IS." He glided away, a conundrum ofphysical precision and deterioration.

Mal shook his head and went to find an on-call room to lounge in. He couldn't wait to get horne to Fran. He wanted to tell her everything about the mechanical lung rep.

On some level, he felt that he had her to thank for how well it had gone. Mal hadn't realized it at the time, but building Fran had actually been excellent practice for his return to work. It was one thing to put a mechanical lung into a body already running, but to put it into a body made from mechanical and synth parts, a body that could not run unless everything worked together searnlessly, was a real feat of genius. Mal never felt more certain that the deaths of his first seven patients were pure bad luck. He was a medico­ engineering rockstar and Fran was proof He lay back against the sterile white pillowcase, arms linked above his black hair, and sighed contentedly. This was only the beginning of the redemption that would set him back on his path to greatness. For the first time in a long time, everything was right with the world.

* 54

He found Fran standing at the island, hunched over the iTablet when he returned horne after his first shift. For a moment he was frightened. Had she begun researching the world once again? Had his reprogramming failed? His heart launched into overdrive, rocketing into his throat and beating a frenzied message to his brain as though in Morse code.

Fran looked up as he closed the door. Her brows were knit together in worry.

"I think it's going to die."

"What is?" Mal was confused, but his panic subsided a fraction.

"My venus fly trap. It's turning black and I can't figure out why. I've done everything this plant care site says I'm supposed to do, but look at it."

Mal crossed the dining room to the kitchen, setting his bag on a stool as he passed, and pulled Fran into his arms. He kissed her forehead lovingly, and chuckled softly.

"Why is that funny?" She demanded.

"I'm sorry, Honey. You just looked so worried when I walked in, I got scared.

I'm just relieved that it's only a plant issue. But I am sorry about your plant. I'm sure you'll find a way to nurse it back to health."

She wrapped her arms around his lower back and nuzzled her face into his chest.

"How did work go?'' She asked. 55

"Well, they have me working with the world's oldest medico-engineer."

Fran pulled her head back and looked up at him with wonder, "Really?"

"No, not literally, Fran," he sighed in annoyance and pealed her arms away. It drove him crazy when she missed his subtler jokes. He moved to the fridge and began searching for something to snack on. "He' s extremely old, but I'm sure he's not actually the world's oldest medico-engineer."

"Oh. Well, was he nice to work with?"

"He's fine. I mean, he's a hell of a medico-engineer, but I just don't need anyone' s supervision. It' s completely unnecessary. I performed one of the best lung reps that hospital has ever seen yesterday. I don't need some old doctor hovering over my shoulder." Mal felt himself growing annoyed with the injustice of it all again and instinctively patted his pockets for an anti-depressant before remembering the bottle was on his nightstand. "What do you want for dinner?" he asked irritably.

"Anything is fine with me."

Mal let out another frustrated exhale. His patience was wearing thinner with each passing second. "Can you please just pick something?"

"Ok. How about Chinese?"

"Fine, whatever. Just order it." 56

"Maybe while we're waiting for it to arrive, I could show you the new plants I put in?" She asked cautiously.

"Fran, I've had kind of a long couple of days, can I just have a minute to sit down and relax?" Before she could answer he walked away into the living room and threw himself on the couch. He ordered Niles to put Seinfeld on the smart wall and didn't move until Fran brought the food in. She sat down on the floor beside the couch and they watched the show in silence until it was time for bed.

*

For an entire month Mal' s work in the OR was flawless. None of his patients died and he was finally starting to feel like himself again. Of course, he still hadn't attempted a synth skin rep, but with each passing day he felt more and more confident that when the time came, he'd perform the procedure as expertly as all the other reps he' d done. Mal felt that finally finally he was being given the opportunity to be the great medico-engineer he'd always known he would become.

So he was not surprised when he received an email from Lyla LaFort asking him to stop by her office. He left the locker room quickly, careful not to cut across OCD janitor's path, and practically skipped down the halls. The moving advertisements now seemed to be smiling and giving their thumbs up just for him. He grinned back at them, knowing the next time he passed he'd be fully reinstated. He would miss working with

Dot. He'd grown fond of the old doctor. Lately it bored him to tears to watch Dot work 57

(he often struggled to stifle his yawns), but Mal respected Dot. Perhaps he'd buy him a cup of coffee as a kind of goodbye.

Mal bounced a bit on his heels as he rapped his knuckles on Lyla's dingy door.

He could hardly contain his excitement. Lyla opened the door and gave him a small smile that did not show off her dazzling white teeth. Despite the somewhat less than warm welcome, Mal noticed that she looked particularly stunning. Her eyelids were swathed in gold this time and it only made her skin appear more flawless than ever.

"Come in, Mal. Have a seat." She gestured to the chair pulled tight to the front of her small desk and slipped into her own chair behind it. Mal sat down quickly, eager for the conversation to begin.

"So. How has your first month back been?" She sat with her hands folded on the desk in front of her. It was a pose that practically screamed, "I'm a doctor."

"Great! It' s been great." Mal felt impatient. He didn't care about this small talk crap, he just wanted her to get to the point and reinstate him already. Hadn't he waited long enough?

"That's good. I'm glad you' re feeling comfortable being back." She was staring hard at him, her eyes unwavering.

"Yeah. It's been great," he said again. Was she enjoying making him wait for this or something? 58

"The thing is, Mal, people are a bit concerned that you're having a tough time adjusting to being back."

"What?" What the fuck? What was she talking about?

"Well some of your colleagues have told me that you've been somewhat closed off. That you seem guarded. You're not discussing your reps with anyone, you're not taking any interest in the work of your peers. You haven't sat in and watched a single rep.

People are worried that you might be feeling a bit out of place. It's perfectly understandable that it might take you a while to get back into the swing of things after being away so long. I just want to remind you that you can come to me if you' d like to talk. I'm here to help you, Mal."

Mal was completely flabbergasted. He felt as though she' d walked up to him and kicked him out of nowhere. "My work has been flawless."

"Yes, your reps have been going fine. None of your patients have had any serious complications or died. That's great. But Dr. Doddsen tells me you seem a bit disinterested in learning from him. That you rarely have any interest in discussing what went right and what could have gone better with him. And he says you seem a bit bored when he's performing a rep. He says you don't seem very engaged when watching his work. We just want to make sure you're happy here, Mal. We want to help you transition back into your role as a medico-engineer."

Mal had no idea how to respond. He simply stared at her. 59

"Just remember that Dr. Doddsen and I are resources for you. Please reach out to us anytime."

"I need to get ready for my next procedure," Mal said with as much contempt as he could pack into each word. He rose from the chair and stormed out of the office leaving Lyla sitting there in her doctor pose looking concerned.

He loathed her. He despised her. He had never in his life detested anyone more.

She was just a resident and she had spoken to him like she was his superior. Who the hell did she think she was? She was no superstar medico-engineer. She was no one. "I'm here to help you," Mal thought, mockingly. As if she could ever be helpful to him. She ought to be sitting in and watching his reps. Maybe she'd learn something if she pulled her head out of her own ass long enough to look around.

And Dot. That two-faced bitch. Mal could not believe he'd told Lyla all of that crap. How in the hell could he possibly discuss his work with the old man? As soon as their reps were finished that walking corpse of a doctor dropped into a fucking coma.

How was he supposed to have a conversation with a three-thousand-year-old man who was asleep whenever he wasn't operating? Mal couldn't believe he'd actually thought of buying that saggy old coot a cup of coffee.

He found an on-call room and slammed the door behind him. He locked it. People could find other on-call rooms to sleep in. He climbed onto a bed and watched a movie on his corneal screen until he had to go perform another rep with Dot the Betrayer.

* 60

Under-appreciation was not the only problem Mal found himself contending with.

Since he'd returned to work, his mother now knew that he was "back in town" and she had been pushing to come see him. It wasn't that he didn't want to see his mother. He did. He missed her so badly he could hardly stand it. But he did not have the energy to come up with a solution to the "Fran problem" just yet.

For the time being he settled for simply calling his mother as often as possible, telling her that he was "just too swamped with work for a visit right now." Then she would ask about his job and he would regale her with stories of his surgeries. And in this way, at least, he felt that someone appreciated the incredible work he was doing.

Of course he had Fran as well, but lately she seemed less interested in hearing about his procedures. When he' d first gone back to work he would come home from a

48-hour shift and give Fran a full detailed description of each operation. Tell her how he'd perfectly attached an art art ("A what?" "An artificial artery!") or how he'd managed to repair an almost imperceptible flaw in a.mechanical heart. They would talk for hours as he told her all of the beautiful little nuances that made his work so spectacular. And she would lean in and listen, eyes wide and attention rapt.

They still had conversations like this after Mal's shifts, but now Fran didn't lean in when he spoke. She listened still, but she didn't seem excited anymore. Not the way she used to be. And more and more she just wanted to talk about her stupid plants. He was starting to regret ever getting her started with gardening. 61

She would drone on and on about this new flower or that new flower, about the time of day or year when it would bloom, and blah blah blah. With each passing day Mal struggled more and more to sit through her plant talk. Usually now when she started in, he'd just tune her out and fantasize about tripping Lyla and causing her to break her wrists. He'd find her weeping in the locker room over her ruined career and he'd pretend to comfort her so that he could seduce her. Then he'd leave her with her ruined career and the realization that she'd been in love with him all along, turned on by his medico­ engineering skills. But he would have no use for her because he would have Fran and his successful career. And she would be nothing. God, he hated her.

Or he'd fantasize about Dot becoming so befuddled during a rep that Mal had to step in and take over for him . Afterward Dot would thank him and admit that it was time to retire. The hospital would realize that Mal was a medico-engineering king and reinstate him immediately, exclaiming in wonder that they'd ever had Dot supervising him.

Mal was deep within one of these fantasies, as Fran rambled on about her oleanders or something, when a pale white glimmer appeared in the comer of his eye alerting him to a new text message. He let his eyes drift out of focused to awaken his corneal screen and checked his messages. It was from his mother.

Hello Malcolm! I know you've been quite busy with work, but I vvill be in town tomorrow visiting my friend Justine! Do you remember Justine? H er daughter Amanda was a few years older than you . She's a lawyer now and she lives in Seattle. Very nice, smart girl. So I was thinking that it would be lovely to stay with you after I visit with Jus tine. You don 't need to 62 worry! You won't have to entertain m e! You won't know I'm there at all! See you tomorrow my love!

Mal felt a wave of panic wash over him. What the fuck was he going to do? He switched back into vision mode.

"So I'm thinking about planting the delphinium -"

"Fran, I have to tum you off," Mal interrupted. He decided to just be blunt, since he could think of no better solutions.

"Wh-what?" She blinked and gave her head a very small shake as if to try to get the words Mal had just said to fall into the slots in her mind that could give them meaning. "What are you talking about?"

"Not for long. Just for tomorrow night. And possibly the next day."

"I don't understand." Now that words had settled in her mind, she was growing alarmed.

"Fran, you know I love you. If I tell you that I need to shut you off then you should be able to trust that I am doing it for your own good." He really needed to reprogram her to trust him more readily. He didn't want to have to argue with her about this.

"Why? Why do you have to turn me off? How is it for my own good? I don't understand." 63

Mal sighed in irritation. Of course she didn't understand. It was exhausting to have to constantly explain things to her.

"My mother is coming tomorrow, Fran."

"So? Why can't I meet your mother?"

"You know you can't meet people!"

"I know I can't go outside because it's awful out there and people are horrible.

But your mother's coming here! Where it's safe! And she's not horrible! You love your mother! You talk about how wonderful she is all the time! Don't you want me to get to know her too? Don't you want me to have a relationship with her?" Her voice was rising now. Mal did not like when she raised her voice. He couldn't help but shout in return.

"What do you think she would do if she saw you, Fran? Has that thought occurred to you? Of course it hasn't! You never think about things practically!"

"How am I not thinking practically? She's your mother! I'm your girlfriend! We should meet!"

Mal grabbed Fran's wrist and tried to drag her from the kitchen, but she fought to free herself.

"What are you doing? Let me go!" She tried to tear his hand away and her nails scraped against his skin. 64

Mal felt his temper flare. His ears buzzed and his blood surged. How could this be happening again? He thought he had programmed her to trust him more than this. He thought he'd programmed her to be less aggressive. His rage swelled higher. He yanked

Fran toward him, hard, and pulled her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms tight across her ribcage, pinning her upper arms to her sides, and half lifted and half dragged her toward the guest bathroom. She kicked her feet and flailed trying to break loose from his hold. She could bend her arms at the elbow and she tried to scratch him and hit him.

As she twisted and rocked in his grasp, screaming, her wig flew off and fell in a heap on the living room carpet. Mal finally managed to shove her into the bathroom and shout at

Niles to tum on the light.

He pushed her hips against the counter over the sink, forcing her to bend slightly at the waist. He grabbed her by the back of the neck and shoved her face even closer to the mirror in front of her. She was sobbing and screaming and Mal had to scream too, to make her hear him.

"Look at yourself! Don't you see what you are?! You' re a fucking monster! Look at your face! Look at your skin! You' re a fucking monster, Fran! My mother could never see you! No one can ever see you! You're hideous! You would frighten people! Don't you get that?!" He shook her hard and her head lolled back and forth as she continued to sob. "Look at yourself!!!" 65

Fran tried to gather herself She continued to sob, but more quietly. Slowly she lifted her face to look into the mirror. She fixed Mal with the most angry glare she could muster, tears and snot pouring down her face. She took a few shaky breaths.

"If I'm so hideous then why did you create me? If I'm a monster then what does that make you?"

Mal pushed her forward again hard, opened the synth skin flap at the back of her neck, and turned her off This time instead of lowering her gently to the floor, he left her as she was, bent over the counter of the bathroom, face pressed into the tile. He walked from the bathroom, leaving her there. As he crossed the living room to his bedroom, he heard the thud of her body slumping to the floor, and, as he popped an anti-depressant, he wondered coldly if synth skin bruised. 66

Chapter Five

"Malcolm! Oh how I've missed you!"

His mother threw her arms around his neck and kissed both cheeks. She wore an indigo sari embellished with delicate gold beads and sequins and her long, thick black hair was swirled into a fat bun atop her head, which she archaically referred to as a "top knot." He took the small purple suitcase she'd used his whole life and carried it to the guest room, making the same argument he'd been making for years as he went.

"Mom, why don't you get a suitcase from this century already? You can control it through your Bluetooth and then you wont have to drag it everywhere."

"I don't need to rely on this awful chip in my head any more than I already do.

Besides your father gave me that suitcase, you know that."

''I'm not saying you need to throw it away. Just make life easier for yourself."

She waved her hand dismissively, dissipating the conversation like smoke. "Tell me about your retreat. You've talked so much about work I haven't heard at all about your time away."

Mal slipped past her into the kitchen and occupied himself with getting them each a soda. He could feel her eyes on him and kept his back turned.

"We're not really supposed to talk about the experience. It's meant to be kind of a ... personal exploration thing, you know? But I feel a lot better. It really helped me work through stuff." 67

"Well good. You see, I was right, the third therapist was the charm! How are things going with your therapy sessions by the way?"

"Oh, he killed himself" Mal stated matter-of-factly.

"Oh." She paused for a moment and contemplated the news. "How' d this one do it?"

"Horse trampling."

"Well it's certainly unique, I'll give him that. Have you hired a new therapist then?"

"And inspire another suicide? I think I'll pass."

"These therapists are so unstable. That must be why they get into the profession in the first place. They probably think if they can solve other people's problems, then they'll be able to solve their own. I don't think you need to be seeing such unstable people. You have work now, you don't need any more therapy."

Mal lifted his glass to hers in agreement. "What would you like to watch? We can order anything for dinner that you' d like. We' ll have a night in."

"That sounds lovely."

She slipped off her shoes and walked barefoot toward the guest room to put them away, but instead of turning into the bedroom she walked straight to the French doors that led to the patio and stared out through the glass panes. 68

"Malcolm! Your backyard! It looks wonderful!"

Mal had forgotten how much it had changed since she last visited. He'd surrounded the fence in enormous hedges so that no one could peer in at Fran through the gaps in the wood. He'd also set up two trellises to form a right angle and covered them with ivy and wisteria. They created a canopy that protected the backyard from the prying eyes of any road mapping drones passing over the house. And then of course there were the willow trees he'd put in to create further cover in the corners and all of the many plants that Fran had potted and placed about the yard. It was a true paradise now, a jungle of privacy, where before there had simply been grass and a small set of iron patio furniture.

" ... Yes," Mal quickly gathered a lie, "I forgot to tell you. I've been doing a bit of gardening when I'm not at work. At the retreat they encouraged us to cultivate an outdoor hobby."

"You have a green thumb, my love! It looks beautiful!"

"Thanks. Tomorrow we can have breakfast out there if you'd like."

*

That night as Mal climbed into bed, he thought about how nice it had been to spend the evening with his mother. How easy it was. They'd watched moves and laughed and had a wonderful dinner. But the happiness he felt upon seeing her was tinged with sadness. He hated pretending that he "wasn't really looking to date anyone right now." 69

He knew all is mother wanted was for him to find someone to love, as she had loved his father, and he hated not being able to tell her that he had found love.

Mal sighed and leaned his upper body down over the side of the bed, lifting the bed skirt to peer into the space beneath. Fran's pale skin glowed out at him. He felt so guilty for having to stuff her under there, but he'd needed a place to hide her and he could not think of anywhere else. He reached out and caressed her arm and whispered softly to her.

"You won't remember any of this, but I'll make it up to you anyway. Goodnight,

Fran. I love you."

*

"I can't believe how much work you've done!"

Mal smiled weakly over his cup of coffee. He detested lying to her, but what other choice did he have? And he had to admit it was nice to provide her with some concrete evidence of how far he'd come since his suicide attempt. He knew how relieved she must be to see him doing well. And in a way, though the work on the garden wasn't technically his work, it was. He had created Fran. He had given her the plants and encouraged her to garden. And in turn she had helped him regain stability and security.

"I really think that retreat was just what you needed! It is important to spend time in nature, Malcolm! It' s very good for us! " 70

"Yeah. I'm finally starting to feel like my old self again." His mother smiled in a way that suggested she might start to cry. "Listen do you want me to make you breakfast or would you like to go out for something? There's supposed to be a great new restaurant that makes all different types of eggs benedict. Apparently the rabbit benedict is excellent."

"Whatever you would like! "

Mal showered anxiously and a bit too quickly for his taste, but he was terrified his mother would try to tidy his room in the extra time and find Fran. He half-expected to hear her scream as he haphazardly soaped his armpits. But as it turned out, his frantic grooming was unnecessary. His mother had returned to the garden to further admire the floral sanctuary.

The transformation really was breathtaking. Between the hedges and trellises and willow trees that he had put in, and the entire botanical kingdom that Fran had added, the backyard made The Secret Garden look like amateur hour. It was a mere tropical climate away from being officially declared a new rainforest.

It took Mal a full five minutes to find his mother in the overgrowth. It didn't help that she'd chosen to wear an emerald green sari that morning. She had managed to locate a small table and 2 matching chairs that Mal didn't even know Fran had purchased. Fran had enclosed the tiny seating area in a half-circle of rose bushes that grew right up into the yard' s perimeter hedges, which formed a sort of diameter. She left only a small gap to 71 enter through, but since this gap was almost entirely obscured by a curtain provided by one of the weeping willows, the table and chairs were almost completely concealed.

"You would find the most hidden spot in this whole backyard," Mal smiled at his mother as he passed through the willow curtain. She sat regally, back straight, hands folded in her lap. She had beautiful hands. Her long black braid was draped over her shoulder and rested dutifully in her lap beside her hands.

"You've created such a peaceful space. It's good for you, I think. It's good to get away from the world, from all of the noise and the people running into things because they can't turn off their phone chips. It was all that noise that made you feel lost in the first place. Everything is better now. You're showing those doctors what fools they were.

Everything is better." She was trance-like as she spoke. Her eyes focused on some far off thing in another time.

"Everything is better, Mom." Mal ' s words brought her back to the present. She blinked and turned her head to face Mal as though she hadn't known he was there or that they'd been having a conversation. She smiled, but there was something about the smile that Mal couldn't place. Something almost sad.

"You are perfect in every way, Malcolm. You make me so proud.

"I'm only as good as you raised me to be. Come one, let's go to breakfast."

The restaurant was crowded when they arrived. It was a fairly large establishment with a wide entrance that was protected by folding screens rather than glass or doors. It 72 seemed the restaurant owners had caught on to the growing trend of old Moroccan aesthetics in restaurants and bars and had decided to throw themselves face first into it.

The folding screens were pulled back all the way to open the front entrance to the world since it was a nice morning, and all over the covered front patio people sat on decadent poufs at low little tables, eating waffles and omelets and, of course, eggs benedict.

Opulent, diaphanous canopies hung down around them in shades of mauve and maroon, strategically placed to section off each table.

"Looks like we might have a wait before we can get seated," Mal said a pol ogeti call y.

"I don't mind."

Mal put in a request for a table and then sat down beside his mother on a long, cushioned wooden bench. They watched the restaurant bustle around them, as men in pleated pants and women in pillbox hats floated into or out of the restaurant.

"Everything seems to glitter these days."

"You fit right in," Mal joked as he gestured to the fragile gold beads stitched into her sari .

"No, I do not. I only stand out more," she said sadly.

As Mal considered how to respond to that, his eyes met another, very beautiful, set of eyes approaching. It took him a moment to register that he knew the eyes, and 73

another moment to register who they belonged to, and it was perhaps for this reason, that

he did not think to look away and pretend he hadn't seen her.

"Hi, Mal."

Lyla approached him giving a small polite wave. She was wearing a lilac dress in

some sort of soft lightweight fabric that floated playfully around her thighs. The dress

was another 1920s style ensemble with a drop waist, little ruffled cap sleeves, and a deep

v-neck that flattered her modest breasts. The style suited her, but Mal knew that as soon

as the trend changed she'd be wearing the next thing, some ridiculous new fad that didn't flatter her slender frame at all. She had no originality.

"Hello."

"Malcolm, is this a friend of yours?"

Mal considered how to politely convey the sentiment "fuck no."

"We work together actually," Lyla inteijected. "I'm Lyla." She held out her hand.

"Are you Mal's sister?"

Mal was annoyed by his mother's reaction to Lyla's obvious joke meant to flatter.

It was as if she really believed Lyla thought she was his sister. She laughed far too loud,

acting as though she was genuinely embarrassed by the suggestion.

"Oh, you are very sweet. I'm Mal' s mother!" 74

"It's very nice to meet you, Ma'am. It' s a real pleasure to work with your son.

You've raised quite a talented medico-engineer."

"He was born brilliant! It had nothing to do with me," She smiled at Mal who sat stunned by the conversation he was being forced to endure. "You're a medico-engineer as well then?"

"Yes, I'm in the last year of my residency."

"Your parents must be quite proud."

"Thank you! They certainly say they are," She laughed. "Well it was very nice to meet you, Mrs. Arodnap! Come by the hospital sometime! Mal it was nice to see you out in the real world! I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah ... "

"Great! Bye! "

They sat quietly as she walked away, dress swinging gaily. Mal could not believe she'd had the nerve to come speak to him - to speak to his mother! And what was all that crap about it being a pleasure to work with him? Oh sure such a pleasure to work with someone who' s having trouble adjusting to being back. What a two-faced bitch.

"She was lovely! Malcolm, you should be with a nice girl like her! "

"What?" What the fuck? 75

"Such a beautiful young woman! She looked so nice in that dress, didn't you think? And a medico-engineer! That's the kind of girl you need in your life. She seemed to really like you. You should take her on a date."

"You think Lyla is nice?"

"Of course! Don't you?"

"I guess .. . "

Lyla LaFort nice. What an idea. His mother' s mind was so easily swayed. A few brown-nosed remarks and Lyla was suddenly the nicest girl in the world. Couldn't his mother see through the act?

Though Mal couldn't deny that she did seem somewhat sincere when she said he was talented. Had she taken the time since their meeting to actually come see some of his work in action? Perhaps she was coming to see that Dot was, in fact, just an old fool.

Would she have come over and buttered up his mother if she really thought he didn't fit in at the hospital? She could have just pretended not to see him . She could have kept right on walking. Mal continued pondering Lyla's motivations through breakfast, as his mother went on and on about the garlic duck bacon eggs benedict.

*

By the time his mother had packed up her stuff and left it was late afternoon. Mal wouldn't have much time to reprogram Fran. Instead of taking her to the dining room table, he decided to just work on her in bed. He wouldn't be able to program her to trust 76 him more that night, but he vowed to program it in later. He was still surprised that she had fought him like that. He felt bad, of course, that he'd had to be rough with her again.

But he'd ordered her nearly a dozen new flowers to make it up to her. And when he got back from his shift he'd be sure to let her pick whatever she wanted for dinner.

He contemplated other ways he could make up for his nasty behavior toward Fran as he worked like mad to erase the memory of it from her mind. Maybe he should buy her some new outfits. She liked beautiful clothes. As much as he hated to admit it, the flapper clothes that Lyla wore were very attractive. Maybe he'd buy Fran a lilac dress like the one Lyla had worn. And maybe a new wig too. He could get her a short one with bangs or with curls that laid flat against her temples the way Lyla's did.

Mal barely had time to erase the memory from Fran's mind because he ended up spending so much time buying her new things. When he woke her up the next morning before work, he'd be able to shower her in gifts. He bought so many things that his house was starting to look like a hive for drones. They dropped off packages all evening and night. Mal was so excited to give everything to Fran. She'd be so happy. Her face would light up. It would be like Christmas. He loved to see her happy like that. He loved to spoil her.

After he'd finished erasing the memory, Mal changed Fran into her favorite soft pajamas and tucked her into the bed. He laid out one of the beautiful new dresses he' d gotten her and one of the wigs - a very short, sleek black wig - as well. Beside them he placed one of the new potted flowers, along with a note telling her how special she was to 77 him and how much he loved her and to have fun exploring all of her new stuff. He decided he'd set her on a timer in the morning when he left for work, so that she would wake up a few minutes after he was gone to find everything. He smiled as he fell asleep, imagining her excitement.

*

Mal was surprised to see the gallery so full. He had decided to watch one of

Lyla's surgeries, a synth ovary rep. It was a tricky procedure, so he guessed it wasn't too surprising that people had turned up to watch, but it had been so long since he'd sat in the gallery that he forgot other people still did it.

Lyla' s work was impressive. She had quick and steady hands and she was extremely patient in her work. Patience was necessary in synth reps. They were more fragile, like natural organs, and it was more important to do the procedure with restraint than to finish in record time. A lot of young medico-engineers made that mistake. They wanted to set records more than they wanted to save lives. But Lyla was calm. She made each move with purpose and when she finished the result was beautiful. The gallery broke into applause.

"That was a nice rep." Mal caught up with Lyla as she left the OR

"Well if it isn't Dr. Arodnap! You watched?"

"Yes. I was impressed." 78

"Thank you. I'm glad you've decided to start sitting in on some other reps. It's a good way to stay present and connected to the work and to our coworkers."

"Yeah. I enjoyed it."

"Good! Well I need to go shower and get changed, but I'm sure I'll see you in the gallery sometime! Good to see you, Mal!"

"You too."

Maybe she was right after all, Mal thought. It probably was good for him to spend more time watching other procedures. His work had been great, but if he really wanted to show those bastards who'd suspended him how stupid they had been, it wouldn't hurt to get even better. And it probably wouldn't hurt to stay on Lyla's good side too. She was talented and they' d made her ChiefResident. Eventually she'd probably have some pull.

He still thought she was condescending but whatever. He could put up with it if it meant getting back the respect he'd had before his patients all died.

For the first time since he' d gone back to work, Mal was disappointed when his shift ended and it was time to go home. He found that he' d actually enjoyed watching reps from the gallery. He must have watched ten of them during his down time. It was easy to get his paperwork done as he watched them and they were pretty entertaining.

Especially when a newer medico-engineer killed someone. He felt kind of bad for enjoying it, but talk about drama! 79

Despite the fact that he was disappointed to have to leave work, he was a bit excited to get home and find out how much Fran had enjoyed her surprise. He would definitely be getting laid and that was always something to look forward to. Though, now that he thought about it, he and Fran's sex life had gotten a bit routine lately. Maybe he could reprogram her to spice things up.

He considered the ways in which he could improve their sex life (maybe he could program her to know how to use a stripper pole? Why hadn't he thought of that before?) as his AutoRyd drove him home. He wondered what would be waiting for him when he got there. Would Fran be wearing one of the new outfits he'd bought her? Would she be wearing nothing but one of the new wigs? Part of him hoped it was the latter. He also hoped Fran had ordered something to eat. He was starving.

"Fran?" He called as he stepped in the front door. She emerged from the living room in one of the new dresses, a glittering dark indigo. And she had on the short black wig with the short bangs. She looked beautiful. And a little bit nervous. Mal smiled knowing she must be self-conscious. "You look lovely."

"Thanks. Thank you for the new stuff I really like this wig. It's really comfortable."

"It looks great on you."

"Thanks," She said again. She kept her eyes on her hands. Mal was surprised she looked so shaky, but she'd never really worn anything this glamorous before. He walked 80 over to her and pulled her into him. He tucked his hand under her chin and tilted her face up so he could kiss her.

"Really great." He smiled again and now she returned his smile, though still a bit meekly. "What would you like for dinner, sweetheart? We can have anything you want."

"Oh ... I don't care. Anything. Anything is fine."

He almost laughed. It was cute to see her feeling timid. "How about Thai?" Fran loved Thai.

"Sure. Thai sounds great."

"Can you order it while I go change into something nicer? We'll have a romantic evening in."

"Sure."

Mal kissed her gently on the cheek and crossed to the bedroom, humming as he went. He felt as though he'd just consumed five cups of coffee and popped an anti-jitter pill. He couldn't believe how well everything in his life was going. Who would think, looking at him now, with a great job and a beautiful girlfriend, that mere months ago he had been shopping for a harpoon online in a drunken suicidal rage to take down his third therapist.

He slipped on pin-striped pants, a button up shirt, and suspenders. He' d decided to embrace the current style trend as well. Fran looked so beautiful in her new clothes, he wanted to match her. He strolled back out of the bedroom, excited to see Fran's reaction 81 to his dapper new appearance. But when she saw him she still looked nervous. To help her relax, Mal uncorked a bottle of wine.

"Tell me what you've been up to the past two days, my love."

"Nothing! Nothing really," she paused, "You know, just gardening. Like usual."

Mal handed her a substantially full glass of merlot and she took a long gulp.

"That's nice."

"Yeah. Yeah I've been looking into planting some tomatoes. There are lots of different varieties you know!"

Mal felt like groaning. On the bright side, maybe talking about her plants would calm her down, but Mal just could not stand to hear her prattle on about another fucking shrub.

"So I ordered some tomatoes. Just so you know. So if you see a bunch of nightshades ... "

Mal wasn't really listening to her anymore. He was drinking his own wine and trying to come up with a new hobby for Fran. Maybe he' d buy her some sort of e-reader.

At least if she was telling him about books it would be different everyday. Or maybe he could reprogram her to be interested in cooking instead of gardening. Then he could just eat the results of her projects instead of having to hear about them. Besides it wouldn't hurt for one of them to know how to make a decent meal. Mal realized with a start that

Fran was still talking. 82

"-I think that would be the perfect spot to put them because they wouldn't get too much shade - "

"Yeah that sounds great. And then maybe you could try out some recipes that use tomatoes. You know, learn to make spaghetti sauce or something."

"I - Yeah .... That. .. "

Before she could pull together a response to this suggestion, the food arrived. Mal plated the pad thai and pad see ew while Fran busied herself with refilling their wine glasses. He pulled a couple small candles from the pantry and took them to the living room, setting them up on the low, iron coffee table and placing the plates of food on either end. As Fran brought in the wine he pulled up the shiny, silver beanbags for each of them to sit on. Beanbags didn't scream romance, but he thought there was something charming about them in this situation.

"So I actually sat in the gallery tod~y ." Mal' s suspenders did not agree with the beanbag as he sat down.

"Oh yeah?" Fran struggled to navigate her beaded dress through the lumpy terrain of her own beanbag.

"Yeah. It was actually really awesome," He struggled to pull his pants out of his buttcrack. The suspenders had pulled the pin-striped trousers halfway up to his neck and he snapped himself painfully with one in the ensuing scuffle, "Ow! Damn suspenders. 83

What was I saying? Oh right so the gallery was cool. I got to watch Lyla do this synth ovary rep. She did a great job. Synth reps aren't easy you know."

"Mmhm." Fran seemed to have finally found a position that was comfortable and began to dig into her food.

"Yeah they're pretty tricky procedures. Synth organs are just so fragile. They're more like natural organs than mechanical organs." Mal began to explain the way Lyla had expertly made her first incision. It was a beautiful cut.

Fran continued to eat and drink her wine as Mal spoke, occasionally adding a

"Mm." or a "Yeah." She was practically done with her food by the time Mal finished telling her about Lyla' s procedure and started to tell about one of his own procedures.

Mal had barely even touched his food.

It was becoming more and more obvious as he spoke that Fran wasn't paying attention. Her mind was somewhere else completely. Mal continued his story, but he was annoyed that Fran wasn't listening anymore. Why wasn't she more interested? What could she possibly be thinking about that would be more enthralling than a surgery?

Tomatoes couldn't be that exciting, even to her.

He was just going to have to reprogram her again sometime soon. He needed to make her interested in him again. He remembered with sadness their fight. He needed to make her trust him more too. He couldn't have her going crazy every time he had to shut her down. His mother would visit again and he'd need to be able to turn her off. There was a lot that needed to be fixed with Fran, he realized. 84

He'd finished telling his story and now he ate in silence as Fran sipped her wine

absently, still thinking of something far away. Mal's mind began to travel down an old

familiar route. What was he going to do about Fran and his mother? Was he just going to

let his mother believe he was alone for the rest of her life? Was he really never going to

give her a wedding or grandchildren? For the first time since he'd created her, the thought

occurred to Mal that he and Fran might not be destined to last. Maybe it wasn't going to

work. His chest tightened and he suddenly felt weary.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" Fran's words startled Mal back to reality.

"Sure."

*

For the next few weeks, the atmosphere at home remained melancholy. Mal felt

drained of energy. He was so bored every time Fran talked about her plants, and when he

would finally get his turn to speak, Fran rarely paid attention. And they' d all but stopped

having sex. Mal wondered if Fran could feel this distance as much as he could.

The only time Mal didn't feel completely despondent was when he was at work.

He found himself spending more and more time in the gallery, especially when Lyla was working. Watching her operate was mesmerizing. He usually waited for her after her

procedures, so that he could discuss them with her. These discussions often turned into

lively debates about the best techniques for removing a malfunctioning mechanical

pituitary gland or repairing a synth intestine. Mal barely slept during his shifts, he found

these debates so invigorating. 85

The more time he spent with Lyla, the less time he wanted to spend with Fran. He needed a girl like Lyla. A girl that his mother could meet and have breakfast with in a real restaurant. A girl that he could marry and have children with and bring to Christmas

Just the Two of Us.

Still, it made him ache to think of being without Fran. She was such an important part of his life. She'd pulled him out of his depression. She'd taught him so much about what he was capable of A tear rolled down his cheek and onto the sterile pillow of the on call room he lay in, as he thought about letting Fran go. Could he ever really do it? He sighed and rolled over. He didn't have to decide right then. 86

Chapter 6

Mal climbed slowly out of the AutoRyd. He was not looking forward to another night of playing house with Fran. In the last few weeks he had finally, devastatingly, come to terms with reality. He could no longer deny that he and Fran were unhappy. He could reprogram her, of course, and bring back the woman who excited him so much.

Bring back the woman who had made him feel a love he'd never really thought possible.

But did he want to do that? Wouldn't he just have to reprogram her again at some point? He could give her a new hobby, but it would inevitably turn into an obsession again since she couldn't ever leave the house. Eventually he'd grow tired of hearing about the next thing as well . And he was so tired of reprogramming her. It was why he'd been putting off doing it again since their last fight. Being a medico-engineer was a lot of work. It was too much to ask him to be a programmer on top of that.

He trudged slowly up the walkway as the AutoRyd glided away. Wasn't there some way he could keep Fran in his life, some way he could reprogram her perfectly so he wouldn't have to keep doing it? He'd been wracking his brain trying to think of a way to make his relationship work. He was afraid of giving up on it. Maybe he could devise a plan to steal more synth skin? Maybe he could make Fran look good enough to pass for an actual human?

But he didn't want to go through the process of stealing more synth skin. The first round of grave robbing had been harrowing enough and he had a lot more at stake now that he had his job back. He didn 't want to ri sk losing his career again. 87

Mal opened the door and stepped into the entryway. He tossed his things on a dining room chair and crossed to the fridge to grab a beer. He popped it open and took a long drink, standing next to the kitchen island enjoying the silence. After a few minutes of quiet drinking he decided to find Fran. He didn't want to talk about everything that was on his mind, but he was starving and he wanted to order dinner.

"Fran?" He called. He wandered into the bedroom, but didn't see her anywhere.

He figured she must be in the backyard. He opened the French doors and slipped out into the ,garden jungle.

"Fran?" He called again. "Where are you?" He sighed. She was probably knee deep in the dirt in one of the random hidden nooks she'd built into this thicket. Mal was much too hungry to tolerate this game of marco polo. "Fran!"

Where the hell was she? He scoured the backyard. He searched behind every hidden shrub and rosebush. He looked under all of the weeping willows and in the odd little enclosed sitting area where he' d found his mother. After what felt like a lifetime of searching he had to accept that she was not in the backyard.

Had she been in the shower? It was an odd time of day for a shower, but perhaps she'd gotten dirty gardening and wanted to rinse off? Mal headed back into the bedroom.

But as he passed through the closet to get to the bathroom, he noticed something odd. The closet seemed much emptier than usual. He paused and looked more carefully.

Realization hit him like a tidal wave. Fran's clothes were gone. All of her favorite things, the softest sweaters and the flannels she liked to sleep in and garden in. He pulled 88 open her drawers. All of her leggings and socks and underwear were gone. The only things that remained were the beautiful sparkling new clothes he'd bought her and all of her wigs.

How could this be happening? He had been careful. He had programmed her so carefully. He tore through the clothes that just a few weeks before he'd been so excited to surprise her with, ripping them off the hangers. Beads scattered like startled birds. His eyes had to be deceiving him. Or maybe she was doing some laundry. Maybe she was washing everything.

Mal ran to the mudroom, but the washer and dryer were empty. He ran back to the closet searching for something- something to explain to him what was going on ­ something to prove what he was seeing was wrong. As he stood in the closet staring in wonder and disbelief, he noticed that his duffel bag was missing. She' d taken her clothes

- none of the clothes he'd loved her in - she' d taken her clothes. She took them and she packed them up in his duffel bag and left. Fran left him.

How could this be? How? He'd made her afraid of the outside world. He'd made her so afraid. Why would she ever want to go out into it? Where would she go? Mal crossed to the bed in a daze. He noticed the iTablet lying on Fran' s nightstand and he snatched it up. Maybe she had left a trail. Maybe he could figure out where she would have gone.

He turned the iTablet on to tear through its history, but she had erased it. He could get it back, of course, but it would take hours. Mal swore and continued flipping through 89 the iTablet, trying to find some clue - any clue. But there was nothing. He opened the documents, hoping maybe she' d saved something - a list or journal entries- that could help.

As he scrolled though, he caught sight of the list he had made for Fran' s reprogramming. It was the list of things he' d made her afraid of and things he'd made her not afraid of Something about it gave him pause and he opened it, curious. He felt there was something in it that could be important, but he wasn't sure what.

He scanned the items in the column of things he'd made her not afraid of, but nothing there seemed like it could compel her to leave the safety of their home. He looked over the things he'd made her afraid of, and, halfway down the list, one item caught his eye. When he'd added it, he had done so just to give himself peace. Fran had been driving him crazy with all of her curiosities about the world. So he added it to the list without really thinking about it. He stared at it now in horror. He' d made her afraid to talk to him about the outside world. 90

Part Two 91

Chapter One

It was a beautiful day when I stepped out the front door, but the sounds of birds chirping

did little to assuage my terror. The sky was massive. Of course, I had seen bits of it

staring at me like blue eyes through the canopy of leaves in the backyard, but to see it

unleashed was something else entirely. It went on forever. Drones criss-crossed through it, turning it into a humming azure picnic blanket. I cowered beneath it, unable to move.

It took me a few minutes to gather the strength to step away from the front door.

Once I took the first step, the artificial glands above my mechanical kidneys sent adrenaline surging into my limbs and I nearly sprinted to the train station, praying no one would see me.

The station was large and grand. When I was researching it, I read an article which explained that it had once been a much shabbier establishment, filled with slow, miserable trains that were always stalling or breaking down. Bart trains, they'd been called. It was an acronym. Bay Area Rapid Transit. Rapid. I laughed for a full minute at that one. The station was remodeled thirty years ago to accommodate the much more efficient Hyloo - short for Hyperloop - trains that now ran. A commute that would have taken me an hour on Bart trains only took me about 10 minutes on the Hyloo trains. I was grateful for this. I don't know ifl could have survived more than ten minutes.

I tried to be confident as I waited for the train. I stood up straight, spine stiff with the effort to hide my panic. There were people everywhere. Mal told me people were bad.

He told me they were monsters. A part of me still believed him. But I knew, rationally, 92 that it couldn't be so. He said real life was nothing like in our shows. Friends and The

Nanny were created to help people cope with the hellish world we really live in. For a long time I believed him. Then I started looking through the hedges.

The world I'd seen beyond the hedges pushed me to stop believing Mal - to look things up and question what I knew- that world drove me from my home. I discovered it while I was planting delphinium. It was so quiet out. Nothing but the steady hum of the drones buffeted around by the balmy afternoon breeze. Mal was ten hours into a 48-hour shift and the garden was mine to enjoy. It was difficult to admit to myself, because I loved him with all of my being, but I was happiest when Mal was working and I had the garden to myself. He was many things, but he lacked a certain ... tranquility.

I found that tranquility in my solitude with the flowers. Sometimes I spoke to them, like friends. That day they waved gently at me as the air fluttered their petals, and I swore I heard one of the blossoms - a stunning, gossamer burst of violet - speak back. It said, "Oooo I'm not gonna make it to the shitter!"

This was startling for a myriad of reasons. Why on earth would a flower need to use the shitter? None of my research had ever indicated that flowers were capable of shitting. I eyed the dirt suspiciously. And then I heard a sound. I'd heard it before, many times, every day in fact, but I'd never really thought about what might be making the sound. It was a sort of thunk noise. Most similar, I realized, to the soft thud our shower door made when it was closed. 93

I stood, dusting the soil from my knees where it clung steadfastly. Cautiously, I crossed the small patch of earth to the large hedge that formed my protective barrier. I stood very still, holding in my breath and listening. My mechanical heart pumped my blood faster. It beat wildly against my ribcage like it was trying to escape to safety. There was nothing but my heart and the hum of drones, mingling together into an uninspiring song.

I mustered my courage and attempted to part the hedge, to see the fence behind it.

I could see a gap between the boards and I wanted to look through it. It was no easy feat.

The bush was hearty and it jostled about in a jolly sort of way as a grappled with it, as if it thought my attempts to rend it in two were delightful games. After a joyous struggle, I finally managed to climb inside the thing and smash my cheek against the warm planks of the fence. I stared through the gap with my right eye. My exposed synth muscles were sensitive despite their protective membrane, a fact Mal could never seem to comprehend when he kissed me, so pressing my left cheek to wood was not something I wanted to do if I could avoid it.

What I saw beyond the fence nearly caused me to fall out of the bush. There was another home, like ours, low and wide, its roof glittering like black fish scales in the sun.

The backyard was enormous and overgrown, filled with a bizarre assortment of whimsical stone creatures and moss-covered fountains. A small set of iron furniture sat near a glass sliding door, with a half-empty iced tea sweating on the table. I pushed my face closer and zoomed my eye in on the door, which was wide open. After a moment, an elderly woman appeared, slowly and cautiously lowering herself down onto the slate tiled 94 patio. She sighed heavily as she shuffled her pink slippered feet back to her chair and her beverage.

"It's a hot one today, Ira." I looked around her yard as well as I could, feeling panic rise like a wave in my chest as I struggled to see the nooks and crannies of the tangled garden through my small gap in the fence. Who was she talking to? There seemed to be no one around, and eventually I found myself wondering if she spoke to her iced tea, or perhaps one of the weather damaged gnomes, just as I spoke to my flowers. One ugly bearded little figure looked like it could be an "Ira."

After that I watched the old woman everyday. IfMal was right, and the world was really filled with awful people, then I should have been fearful of our neighbor. But mostly I found myself feeling sad as I watched her. It was a reaction I couldn't understand. All the woman did was sit in that chair, staring at the lawn ornaments and, very occasionally, speaking to "Ira." What was there to feel sad about?

There was a great rush of sound as the train blasted into the station. It nearly whipped the new wig I had purchased off my head. The veil that extended down from the little hat I wore flapped against my face violently and I barely managed to reach up in time to smash it down. It crumpled beneath my gloved hand. I didn't like the hat, but it helped hide the missing skin on my face just as the gloves helped to hide my hand. I held onto that hat for dear life as I squeezed my eyes shut tight behind my enormous sunglasses. The train was so loud I couldn't even hear the soft whir of my eyes contracting. I shook like a leaf as I stepped inside the compartment. 95

As I clung to a pole on the train, I looked around at the other passengers. I wanted to run screaming from them. Deep breathing did little to calm my nerves. At any moment

one of these people could kill me. Murders happened on trains. I'd read about it. I'd read all kinds of information on all kinds of crimes. Crimes were committed every day, in every possible location. The train grew more crowded and I fled deeper into it, trying to avoid anyone touching me. When I discovered all of the crimes, I'd made sure to catalogue them in my mind. All of them sat huddled together where I'd saved them. It was terrifying how vast the folder had grown. A big, heavily perfumed woman moved closer to me and I pushed myself tight against a wall. So many people. I reminded myself, like a mantra, that crimes were not that common, overall. I'd done the math.

People were not victimized daily, weekly, or even monthly, on average.

After ten minutes - though it felt like ten hours- the train glided smoothly to a halt and the doors opened wide. People rushed out like a dam bursting and I followed at the end of the crowd. The people ahead of me were much uglier than I'd expected them to be. Some were very fat, or far too skinny. Some had faces covered in blemishes, some wore dirty clothes, one man with long scraggly brown hair and pasty skin, smelled

horrible. It was nothing like what I'd seen in our shows. Only a few people were beautiful, like the tall, graceful man walking just ahead of me. He looked a bit like Mal,

tan with shiny black hair, a prominent nose, and thick eyelashes. I watched him intently

as we exited the train. Too intently. I stumbled on the red tiled floor and dropped my bag.

People turned to look. I gasped. Everyone was looking at me now and the

beautiful man turned toward me. He took a step back and leaned in. I could smell his 96 laundry detergent. He was going to rob me or stab me or worse and everyone was just going to watch. He reached down, grabbing my bag. Fine. He could rob me. He could take everything as long as he didn't reprogram me or kill me. I told myself losing the bag was nothing, but I couldn't help the strangled, fearful little noise that squeezed its way out of my throat as he rose up with it in his large hand.

"Here you go." He held the black duffel out to me impatiently, looking at me as though he regretted turning around. Was this a trap? What would he do ifl took the bag from him?

He pushed the bag gently toward my hand. I took it, terrified, as he turned around and continued walking. He glanced back at me once to give me a worried look, his thick glossy eyebrows knit together. He thought I was crazy. I felt crazy.

I kept walking, forcing one foot in front of the other, as I moved toward the stairs that would lead me up into the city. The City. San Francisco.

The light of it loomed above at the top of an escalator that seemed endless. All I could see at the top of it was that massive, grey-blue sky. Perhaps these steps just ascended right into the clouds and when I stepped out I'd fall back down to earth - to my death. I took a deep breath as I set my foot onto the first stair. I nearly fell backwards into the crowd of people behind me as the movement pulled me forward and up. The whole world seemed to sway and swirl as I rose. Don't look down, don't look down.

I stumbled as the shiny, golden steps spit me out of the tunnel onto the sidewalk.

People pushed past me to continue on their journeys, but I was paralyzed. I'd looked up 97

everything I could find on San Francisco before I left. I'd taken a virtual tour of the city,

scoured through pictures and facts, read reviews of the best places to see and the best

foods to eat. I felt like I knew this place, like I had a clear picture of it in my mind. I

thought I knew what to expect. But the virtual tours were cardboard cutouts compared to the real thing.

I spun in a slow circle. Everything was so incredibly loud. But not like when

Niles accidentally misadjusted the volume on a show. It was a different kind ofloud. It

stretched out all around me echoing and filling every space, bouncing off the massive

buildings that I stared open mouthed up at. How could anything be so colossal?

Light gleamed off the solar buildings, mirroring the world back to itself. They

seemed to extend all the way up into space. These newer buildings looked like they were

composed of clear, tropical water. The way the sky shined off of them, they even seemed

to possess a liquid like movement. They were mirages winking amongst the older

buildings, which had a beauty all their own.

Years ago the older buildings had all been solar retrofitted. The windows were

replaced with solar glass. The solar paint in between each veranda - and covering the

rain-collection sprinkler and drinking fountain pipes that formed a gilded trim along each

story - glittered magically. Fluffy trees nested on all the balconies amongst thick, languid

vines of ivy, creeping jenny, and morning glory cascading down or sneaking up the nooks

of every building. They were hydrated every so often by the sprinklers like an unnatural

rainforest. Some trees bore fruit. The Self-Sustaining City of Gold. 98

The city officials and designers and architects had really embraced that title. Gold was the paint color of choice. Every building sparkled. Even the AutoRyds that revved past- which came in every imaginable color- glimmered from the solar paint, blinking at the passersby, many of whom were clad in beaded flapper clothing so that they too shimmered in the streaks of sunlight.

A man pushed past me, shoving the front of his shoulder into the back of mine, causing me to stumble forward out of my reverie. But I remained in awe as I began walking down the street, unsure of where I was headed. It made me a little sick- staring up at the buildings trying to see where they ended, all of the sounds of the people and the

AutoRyds, the brightness of all that reflected light- it was almost too much to bear. It was frighteningly beautiful and I found myself longing for the safety and seclusion of my garden. For the warmth of my bed and the familiarity of Mal lying next to me.

I took a deep breath. I needed to find somewhere to rest for a moment. To calm down and sort out my plan. There was a coffee shop across the street that looked nice enough. It was lit dimly by hanging silver light fixtures that were designed to look like intricate cut-out lanterns. Short, swirling iron tables were scattered throughout the shop, surrounded by plum and magenta velvet couches, chairs, and cushioned stools. There were aureate tassels on everything and orange throw pillows distributed unevenly across the seating. The floors were dark wood. The walls indigo. 99

I sat down at an empty table, placing my bag at my feet. I pulled the new iTablet

I'd bought for myself out of my bag and opened up the doc I'd created titled, "New Life

Plan."

I'd already completed Step 1, which was to get a whole new look. Just before I left I bought myself a wig in "The Rachel" style, after Rachel's hair in the early seasons of

Friends. The long bangs covered most of the exposed synth muscle. I'd attempted to cover the exposed muscle with latex and make-up as well, but I still looked somewhat disfigured, so the bangs and veiled hat obscured the ugly lumps and lines. I'd ordered a bright red shade of lipstick as well. Mal always wanted me to wear pink. But it was so unlike my synth muscles, which were a deep scarlet. He said pink was the girliest lip color. So I bought bright, juicy watermelon red.

I bought myself new clothes too. I actually liked the flapper look, so really I probably could have just kept the stuff Mal bought me, but I wanted to choose it for myself. And I wanted to pick things that were less revealing and itchy. I wanted the soft, flowing long sleeved dresses that would hide my missing synth skin on my arm. I wanted stretchy, comfortable tights to wear under my dresses. I wanted fringe. I wanted things that moved and bounced and swished and floated. I wanted silky gloves and low cloche hats with big flowers or ribbons. For as long as I lived I never wanted to wear anything constricting again. 100

I had also completed Step 2 on my list, which was leaving the house and coming to San Francisco. I stared at Step 3. Find a job. I sighed. I was not looking forward to this one because it meant I'd finally have to talk to someone.

As of now the plan was to find a job the way Rachel or Fran had. I would try to get a job as a waitress in a coffee shop or as a nanny. I knew that I couldn't find a job as a nanny the way Fran had though, just knocking on a random person' s door. Fran had been lucky that the door she knocked on belonged to someone already in need of a nanny. I could end up knocking on doors for hours before finding such a family. I'd decided instead to look to see if I could find someone who needed a nanny online.

There were tons ofwebsites for nanny jobs. It took me awhile to apply to them.

I'd had to create an email first so that I could use the email to create an account, and then

I'd had to create a resume to upload to my profile.

I opened up the resume. It was full of lies and exaggerations of course, mixed in with a few truths. It was true that I could cook. It was an exaggeration that I had cooked for the mentally ill man I had cared for over the last year. It was a lie that I'd been paid a strong salary to be his live-in home aide arid that he also had a terminal illness that was related to his mental illness and that I was now seeking work because he'd died. But I figured all the family would care about in the end was that I could, in fact, cook.

Everything else I'd lied about - like knowing how to change diapers - I was sure I could learn from internet videos. I'd uploaded the resume to my various nanny website profiles, but so far I hadn't gotten any inquiries. I was starting to get worried. 101

As I stared down at my iTablet I heard quick, bouncy footsteps approaching me. I clutched the iTablet tightly and looked up with a jolt. A man in an apron was approaching me. He had the widest grin I'd ever seen spread across his face and he was looking me right in the eye.

"Hi there! LOVE your hat! Would you like to order anything?!"

There was something not quite right about the man. It wasn't just his extreme over-enthusiasm for life in general. There was something just a little bit unnatural about the way his skin moved and creased around his mouth. And though his eyes were shaped to an expression of excitement, their happiness seemed somehow vacant.

"Wow is that a iTablet?! Old school! I love a retro vibe! Or are you an artist?! I hear only artists use iTablets anymore! I love art! I love it! So what can I get for you?"

"Oh. Urn ... thanks ... I'll get an iced latte I guess?" I wasn't sure which, if any, of the questions required answers.

"I LOVE iced lattes. You have great taste!"

A man at the nearest table called out to the man taking my order.

"You love everything, Aidan."

Aidan's expression grew dark, the smile plummeting as his jaw clenched.

"Everything, but ABBA," Aidan said.

"Who's ABBA?" I asked. 102

"Well, they're certainly NOT musicians that's for sure." Suddenly the smile returned in full force. "I'll get that iced latte started for you! Love those gloves by the way!"

I sat stunned. I'd had my first conversation with a person out in the real world.

Was it always like that? It felt like a weird interaction, but I wasn't sure.

"He really does love everything but ABBA. Like literally everything."

"What?"

"Aidan. He literally loves everything except ABBA. I've tested it. I've asked how he feels about everything I can think of. Everything from aardvarks to zoetropes and he loves them all . I once asked him how he feels about genocide and he said he thought it was 'neat-o.' The only thing he doesn't like is ABBA and he hates them."

"That's .. . interesting." It sounded bizarre as all hell to me, but I still wasn't completely sure if it was all actually normal.

"That's what happens when you have algorithms programming humanoid personalities. If they want them to seem more human maybe they should have more human input." He stared at the bar as Aidan pulled espresso shots. "I don't know, sometimes I think maybe those Terminator people aren't so crazy. Maybe it would be better if people- real people - still did jobs like this."

A hundred questions flew across my mind. "Terminator people?" I asked. 103

"Yeah, you know, those people who are always shouting into megaphones that the machines are going to rise up against us and that we must ' terminate the noids before they terminate us' or whatever."

"Terminate?" I tugged my sleeves down over my wrists.

"You know I actually heard they started calling themselves that because of some old movie?" He laughed. "Maybe they don't have a point after all."

Aidan reappeared with my latte. I paid the shop's app and waited as his eyes did the same little flick that Mal 's did when he wasn't listening to me.

"Got it! You' re all good! Love your shoes! You have great taste! Let me know if you need anything else!" He bounced away.

At the nearby table, the man's eyes had gone out of focus and were doing the little flick, so I looked back to my iTablet. I pulled up the resume I'd made listing all of my waitressing experience. I deleted it. Apparently only noids were waiters and waitresses now.

I looked up at Aidan. Maybe I wasn't really human, but I was more human than

Aidan. I didn't want anyone thinking I was a noid. What if someone tried to reprogram me? What if someone wanted to see how I worked and took me apart and tinkered with my mind like some sort of machine? What if they tried to terminate me? I dragged my eyes from Aidan before he could catch them and come back to tell me more things he loved. Was I like Aidan? Would people be able to tell I wasn't really human? I 104 backlogged the questions in my mind, hiding them deep. I could still get a job as a nanny.

I just needed someone to respond to my listing.

I stayed in the cafe the rest of the day, creating more profiles for more nanny sites.

Not because I really felt like I needed to do so to find a job, but because I was afraid to go back out into the city. I knew I should be exploring it. I knew I should be brave and go out and see all of the sites, but I was terrified. Every time someone walked into the cafe I jumped, panicked that it would be Mal, or one of the Terminator people, or some sort of criminal proving that Mal was right and the world really was a horrible place.

I watched people come and go as I sat drinking coffee and avoiding catching

Aidan's attention. Women in faux fur trimmed coats and ankle-length, drop waist dresses or wide, pleated pants, with long sparkling strands of beads draped elegantly about their necks sipped espresso and laughed. Men in suspenders and bow ties or three-piece suits lingered at tables, chatting animatedly over iced teas. Though the people were far less attractive than I'd imagined they would be, they still managed to exude a kind of glamorous beauty as they came and went, orbiting my bubble of safety like irradiant moons.

There was only one person, in fact, who was inexcusably dull. It was strange, because her face looked as though it had once been lovely. But now her pale cream­ colored skin sagged and her lips were pinched and wrinkled. Her large brown eyes looked sad beneath the pile of messy, white-streaked brown hair that fell in pieces around her face. She was the only person who stayed in the cafe nearly as long as I did. She just 105 sat, nursing a cup of hot coffee between both hands. Aidan seemed to know her because he greeted her by name.

"Can I get you anything else, Dem! ? We have this muffin that I really love! It' s great, you should try it! "

"Sure, Aidan. A muffin sounds nice."

She ate the muffin slowly, picking at it unenthusiastically over the course of a few hours. Occasionally Aidan would return to check in on her.

"How are you doing, Gorgeous! ? Want a refill! ?"

"Yes, that would be nice. Thank you."

"Why do you seem so sad today, Dem! ? Did you not like the muffin! ? I love it! "

"The muffin is fine. It' s not that ... it's just ... She came back yesterday. But now she' s gone again ... I'm starting to think maybe I should just accept it. Just let her go."

"I love letting go! I say do it! Be right back with your coffee! "

She si ghed and went back to picking at the muffin. After two more cups and a handful of awkward interactions with Aidan, she left.

Not long after, I realized I should leave too. I couldn't put it off any longer. I needed to find a hotel. I needed to go out and be part of this city. I needed to face it. I needed to stop being afraid. I needed to get Mal' s voice out of my head. I gathered up my 106 things and waved goodbye to Aidan, who complimented the movements of my hand merrily.

It was still light out as I emerged onto the street. Streams of people were moving in both directions along the sidewalks. Every now and then one would break free of the current and dart across the street. I tried to slip into the flow of feet along concrete without interrupting the rhythm of it all, but I was out of sync and a man with a latte and a blank stare bumped into me, nearly knocking the coffee from his hand. His eyes lasered into focus.

"Watch where you' re going!"

I recoiled from his admonishment, stumbling into another person. They stopped my momentum with a gentle hand.

"Are you ok?"

I pulled my bag in tight to my armpit, as though it were a lifeline that could tow me out of the madness. The river of people had parted around the stranger and me, combining again a few feet ahead.

"Y-Yes. Yes, I'm ok."

"Ok."

They disappeared into the crowd. Slowly, I moved forward matching the pace. I scanned the street signs as they slid past, searching for the one I needed. The one where 107 the hotel I'd found online was located. When I saw O'Farrell Street, I cut left, nipping at the heels of a small group that had broken off to cross Mason Street.

The crowd thinned for a moment and I was able to slow my pace and take in the scenery around me. Now that I was off of Market, I noticed a strange contrast had set in.

Though the buildings here had the same golden hue as the ones I'd seen getting off the

Hyloo, the paint was coated in a fine layer of grime. The streets themselves seemed dirtier too. I passed a grouchy-looking noid spearing chunks of garbage and placing them into a bag. He had the distinct expression of knowing he was engaged in a fruitless endeavor. I continued past, noticing more piles of trash here and there.

As I approached one, I caught sight of something moving near it. Several somethings, in fact. They were small and inexplicably awkward. I moved closer and a wave of fear washed over me. I reeled back, gasping as they bobbed around the scraps hellishly.

"Cyber pigeons!"

I scrambled back trying to put as much distance between the little fiends and myself as possible. I slammed against something and started to fall back. Hands caught me and I turned to look up into a filthy, hairy face. The man it belonged to stared at me intensely. He smelled like stale urine and dirty laundry .

"How do you know about cyber pigeons?" 108

I yanked myself from his grasp and ran. My heart raged against my ribcage and air ripped through my lungs as my feet thundered against the pavement. I didn't stop until

I reached the hotel. I tore open the door to the lobby and tried to slow my pace as I burst into the building. The noid behind the front desk looked up at me bemusedly. I straightened myself up, adjusting my hat and pulling my bag back up my shoulder. A suspicious look crossed the noid's face.

"You 'ave a reservation, Madame''

The thick French accent threw me off for a moment.

"What name is zis reservation under?" He looked like he did not believe I had a reservation. He was right. I didn't.

"I. .. urn .. . I don't have a reservation. But I'd like to make one?"

"For 'ow many guests?"

"Oh. Urn. Just me. One."

"I see. Very well. Your email?"

I gave it to him. For a moment his eyes went out of focus.

"You should 'ave a confirmation email. Please accept eet now and pay ze initial charge. Ze final charge will be paid upon check out."

I pulled out my iTablet to confirm and pay. The sight of it clearly horrified the noid, whose name-tag read Aimon, as he audibly scoffed at the inexcusably out-dated and 109 pedestrian devise. I lifted my eyes up to look at him without raising my head from the screen. He had actually turned his nose up to the ceiling in disgust. I finished up quickly.

"You will be in room 704! 'Ere is your room key!" There seemed to be an implied

"you 'orrible peasant" at the end of this. I took it and turned to follow the finger Aimon had dramatically pointed at the elevators. Another noid ran up to me. She wore an overwhelming gold bellhop uniform.

"Let me take your bag!"

Her enthusiasm, like Aidan's, was disorienting. I felt frightened again. She reached toward my bag.

"It's ok. I've got it."

"Oh no no no no no! Guests must never carry their own bags!" She yanked the bag from my hand before I could protest further. I followed closely as she headed toward the elevators.

"I think you'll like your room! We have the nicest rooms here! You seem nervous! You don't need to bel I'm not one of those kinds ofnoids!"

I stared at her.

"What do you mean?''

She lowered her voice to a whisper. 110

"Noids are computers. We have computers in our heads. And the computers can read minds." She tapped her temple knowingly. "But not me. I can't read minds. Not like the others."

What the hell?

"Oh. Ok."

She smiled too wide under her bellhop hat. The result was frightening and I was happy when the doors of the elevator dinged open. She led me to my room, taking the key from me to open up the door. She followed me into the room, setting my bag on a small shelf in the tiny closet. I wanted her to leave. I didn't like being alone in the room with her. My shoulders felt tense.

After explaining to me how to call the front desk and where I could find various things I had no interest in finding, she finally told me to have a nice stay and let herself out. I went to the door after it slammed shut, leaning the full weight of my body against it. I peered out through the peephole, watching the bellhop disappear into the elevator.

Once she was gone, I sank to the carpet and cried.

I pulled my knees up into my chest and sobbed into them, soaking the hem of my dress. I hated myself for being so afraid. For not being able to exist comfortably in the world. For feeling safe for the first time when the door at my back had closed. For missing Mal and our home and our quiet lives. I felt like a failure. I let my body quake with tears until there was nothing left. 111

I was nothing like Rachel. Nothing like Fran. How had they gone out into the world with such confidence? Why couldn't I do it too? I hummed the theme song to

Friends between dry sobs, rocking myself gently on the itchy, scarlet carpet.

"So no one told you life was gonna be this waaay. Your job' s a joke you're broke, your love life' s D.O.A. It's like you're always stuck in second geeear. When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your yeeear, but I'll be there for youuuu.

When the rain starts to pour. I'll be there for youuuu. Like I've been there before. I'll be there for youuuu, 'cause you're there for me toooo. Doo doo dalee doo doo doo doo dooo."

I stood up slowly. My face felt puffy and raw. I went into the bathroom and drew a bath. Tomorrow would be another day. 112

Chapter 2

He stared at the iTablet, willing it to show him more. It sat resolutely on the

Amazon orders page. Mal glared at the iTablet at the top of the list, but it refused to tell him anything beyond that it had been delivered. Fran had been gone for two weeks and all he knew was that she'd gotten herself a new iTablet before she left, and that before she'd bought it she'd been researching everything from plants to U.S. cities to medico­ engJneenng.

He pulled up the articles she' d read on synth skin. The titles blared out at him like maledictions. "Synth Skin: Epidermis or Epi-dangerous?" "Sag-re Bleu! Synth Skin

Letting People Down! " They all essentially said the same things. Synth skin had a tendency in some patients to go slack a few weeks after surgery. For reasons researchers did not yet understand, in these cases, when the synthetic blood vessels and nerve endings of the synth skin were attached to the patient's real blood vessels and nerve endings, the synth skin would lose its oomph and droop down, killing many of the patient's nerve endings and causing the patient to look like a melted candle. Hideous photos accompanied the articles.

They also explained that synth skin was the cause of many patient deaths across the country. Again, for reasons researchers did not yet understand, synth skin sometimes caused an even more violent reaction in which both nerve endings and blood vessels were killed immediately upon attachment, causing them to necrotize, sending the patient into shock, and usually killing them. But this was not an extremely common occurrence, and 113 there seemed to be some evidence suggesting it was more likely to happen if the nerve endings and blood vessels were improperly attached. Mal threw the iTablet across the room.

At least he understood why Fran had left. She thought it was his fault those patients had died. She believed he was responsible, just like the people who'd suspended him. All the nights she'd comforted him and told him it wasn't his fault she was lying.

"Turn on some music!" he shouted at Niles.

"Ok. What would you like to listen to?'' The voice was gentle and slightly robotic under the delicate English lilt.

"Urban Leopard Hunt!" He wanted something loud and raw. The familiar staccato of the cello blasted through the living room. Mal took an anti-depressant and closed his eyes. Desperate vocals ripped the speakers open. Mal loved Urban Leopard Hunt. He always forgot how much.

He hadn't left the house since Fran had disappeared. The day after she left he called in to work and told them he'd come down with a particularly enthusiastic case of mononucleosis. Then he went out into the backyard with a chainsaw and destroyed all of the plants. He hacked the hedges into ugly geometric monstrosities that were a slap in the face to all things symmetrical. He cut down the willow trees. Then once he'd chainsawed everything he could chainsaw, he began tearing at the surviving plants with his bare hands. He tore vines from the trellises and flowers from the earth. He smashed the patio furniture and kicked the lawn ornaments over. And when there was nothing left to 114 destroy, not a petal left unstomped, he came inside, threw himself on the floor and washed down an antidepressant with a bottle of tequila. He woke up the next day on the carpet with scabbed hands and a weak desire to continue living.

But after the anger had subsided a bit, he realized he needed to find Fran, so he began the tedious process of restoring the iTablet's history. And what had it gotten him .

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He wanted to scream. He wanted to set fire to the withered mound of leaf litter that had so recently been Fran' s precious garden. He wanted a drink.

Unfortunately he'd consumed all of the alcohol in the house. He could order more of course, but he wanted to leave. He wanted to get away from all of the reminders ofFran.

The whole house was branded with her like an advertisement for his suffering. He looked up nearby bars.

He was still supposed to be bed-ridden with mono, so he found a dive bar so seedy even he had never set foot in it before. It was one of those locations that looked as though it was designed specifically for illicit discretion. As if the owner of the bar thought to themself, "You know what this town needs? More crime." Mal was surprised to discover, upon entering the establishment, that the bartender was completely blind.

Mal stared.

"Stop staring at me! What do you want to drink?!"

Mal nearly fell over from shock.

"Hurry upl I don't have all day! " 115

"I .. . teqm·1 a sunnse. .. .?".

The bartender grunted.

Mal sat down at a small, heavily dented and uneven table. Someone had carved

"SWIZZLE DICK" into it in large sharp letters. The bartender emerged from behind the bar and set a glass of what turned out to be gin and coke in front of Mal. It actually wasn't as bad as he would have thought.

He scanned the room as he sipped his drink. An old woman in leather and a polyester shirt that must have been fashionable when polyester was in style in her youth sat rotting against the comer of the bar. She looked like she'd fallen asleep there 40 years earlier and had yet to wake up. A sharp dressed man sat in a dark booth tucked away at the opposite end of the establishment nervously looking up at the door every few seconds. A few drunk old men were playing pool loudly, shouting at each other in such a way that made it unclear if they were arguing or simply enjoying themselves. Next to the terrifying looking restrooms, a jukebox wailed loudly, filling the entire room with some dreadful oldies rap song. Something Mal's mother would have called "real music."

The door of the bar opened and sunlight streaked in unwelcomely, as though it wanted to talk to them about The Bible. A couple slinked in, clearly trying to go unnoticed. The smaller of the two men made a beeline for one of the darker booths. As he moved, something about him caught Mal's attention. Something was off slightly. His gait was swift, but simultaneously halting. The bend of his knees just a tiny bit too jerky. He was a noid. Mal tried not to stare, but his eyes kept darting back to the slender noid now 116

hunched quietly over the table. There wasn't any legislation against having sex with a

noid, but it was certainly controversial.

The man he was with joined him at the table with two wildly over-filled drinks,

one of which was a nauseating shade of puce. The man was older and oddly

proportioned. His lower body was wide and wobbly, while his torso and neck were bony

and frail. It was as if two people had been cut in half at the waist and put back together

wrong. Mal snorted involuntarily imagining what the person who got the other two body

halves would look like.

After a moment his eyes returned to the noid. He couldn't stop looking at its

rubbesh. It was incredible how it could be so close to human skin and yet so far away.

The man traced a fingertip feather-light down the noid' s scrawny bicep. On a human it

might have illicited goosebumps. Mal grimaced. There was a bad taste in his mouth that

had nothing to do with his gin and coke.

Fran was nothing like a noid. She was more human than these monstrosities could

ever be. He thought of her satin patchwork skin and the graceful way she moved through

the house like a gauzy curtain dancing on a faint breeze. He thought back, suddenly, to

the morning when Fran had spilled the cereal across the counter. He remembered, with a jolt, the music of her laugh.

"Do you want another drink or not?!" 117

Mal jumped. He hadn't seen the bartender approach. On a different day, in a different moment, he might have paused to appreciate the irony in that. But the thought of

Fran' s laugh had made him want to run home as fast as his feet could carry him.

"No. I'll close out my tab."

"Well hurry up 'n pay then!"

Mal focused into his corneal screen to pull up the bar' s payment app. He'd almost forgotten that the place was called Seeing Double. He wondered briefly if the bartender was also the bar owner. As he focused on selecting the "pay tab" option, a thought

suddenly occurred to him. Payment. Wherever Fran was, how was she paying for things?

"Got it. Your tab ' s settled. Get out''

"Thanks." Mal wasn't paying attention. He needed to get home. He needed to

shower and change his underpants. He needed to go find Fran. And he finally knew how. 118

Chapter 3

I threw my bag down on the little table so hard it shook in fright. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry and curse and break that innocent little table in half I wanted to make it feel the same unfairness I felt. To make it understand that the world didn't care about it anymore than it cared about me. Aidan appeared at my side with a soft whir.

"You seem mad today! I love itt Want a latte?!"

"Yeah," I exhaled in a growling sigh to try to calm myself, "a latte would be good."

"Fran, over here!"

Dem was returning to a table tucked into the comer near the back of the cafe. She waved me over, pulling an extra chair up and fluffing a defeated looking orange pillow against the back of it. I grabbed my purse and walked toward her.

"How' d it go?"

"Not good." I sat down draping my small beaded bag over the chair unceremoniously. "They said there' s no possible way for me to set up my own bank account without an J.D. and the DMV said there's no possible way for me to get an J.D. without any proof of who I am . So basically I'm shit out of luck."

"That's horrible! Did you tell them your story? Did you tell them that you' d escaped an abusive relationship and that your abuser burned all of your personal documents?" 119

"Yes."

"And they still wouldn't do anything? That's really awful! I honestly just can't believe that. What about the social security office? Could they help you?"

"Maybe. I don't know." I did know. Of course they couldn't help me. No one could help me. I wasn't a real person. I could never be a real person. I was Mal's toy and

I'd never be able to exist without him.

"It's so unfair that the ability to survive in this world depends so much on these small pieces of docum~ntation . I still have all of Cora' s information. Her I. D. and social security card and all that. .. in case she ever comes back ... but what about people whose parents never kept that information? What about kids who grew up without parents who prepared for their future? I mean what if your parents were drug addicts and they sold off all of your information for drug money and someone was just out there using your identity? How could you ever get a job? Open a bank account? Set up your pay app?

Why don't we have a better system?"

Dem didn't really seem to be speaking to me so much as to herself She fell quiet and I knew she'd started thinking about her daughter again. About Cora. Cora had run away and joined the Terminator cult when she was seventeen. She' d met some older guy who'd convinced her that noids would be the downfall of humanity, and that they needed to commit their lives to enlightening the people and spreading the word that the noids must be destroyed. 120

Dem had searched for Cora after she'd disappeared. But Cora only appeared when

she wanted to. Only visited Dem once every few years to impress upon Dem that she needed to prepare for the impending collapse of society. Then she' d disappear again,

slipping through Dem' s fingers like sand, and Dem would descend back into her quiet mourmng.

"I don' t know why I keep all of Cora's documents," she whispered, again it seemed only to herself. "I don ' t know why I've kept them all neat and tidy in that stupid file box under her vanity, like she' s going to come back for them. She doesn' t even call herself Cora anymore. I don't know why I've kept any of her things at all. Why I've kept her room the same. Kept her silly little stuffed giraffe tucked into her comforter. All of her old clothes organized by color in her closet. If she came back they'd all be outdated.

She probably wouldn't even want to wear them. They're clothes for a seventeen year old.

But she' s twenty-six now. She's a grown woman. If she came back she'd want to dress like a grown up." She paused for so long I wondered ifl should try to talk to her. Ifl should try to say something, but then, with a sad soft little crack in her voice she said conclusively, "But she's never coming back."

I stared at her. I couldn't understand her pain. I could imagine it. The intensity of it. The ache of it. But I'd never experienced anything like it, and I had no words in my memory that seemed like they might provide her any kind of comfort. I reached out and

placed my hand on hers. She squeezed my hand back. 121

I walked her home after we left the cafe. I needed the air. I still had no idea what I

was going to do about setting up a bank account. I'd been offered a nanny job. I wanted to take it. But ifl couldn't give them a way to pay me, I knew they' d get suspicious and

wouldn't want to hire me anymore.

I said goodbye to Demon the steps of the large yellow Edwardian she lived in with her Pug, Doug. Doug was very old and extremely fat. He lay snoring thunderously in the foyer as I waved goodbye to Dem, her presence doing nothing to stir him. I wondered if he'd gone deaf in his old age. All Dem had really told me about Doug was that she'd gotten him nine years ago as a rescue, just after Cora had left, because she couldn't sleep in an empty house. She'd also told me Doug really liked cheese and really hated the gardener noid. Doug and the gardener noid were at war with one another. Dem never left Doug in the backyard for fear that the gardener noid would show up early and

Doug would bite him. Not that Doug was a biter, she'd assured me. He certainly didn't look like a biter.

I walked back to my hotel slowly. An idea had occurred to me, in the cafe with

Dem, but it made my skin crawl and I tried to push it to the back of my mind. I tried to bury it under other thoughts. Other ideas. Other options. But the truth was I had no other ideas or options. I couldn't go to the social security office. I couldn't plead with anyone, couldn't prove anything. I could never give them anything at all to confirm my identity, because I had no identity. I wasn't a person, not really. But maybe I could be. 122

It wasn't as if she was using it, I reasoned. Dem herself had said she would probably never use it. But I knew, instinctively, that I could not ask Dem for this. Asking for Cora's documentation, to become Cora, would be a confirmation of what Dem had said. It would be someone else acknowledging that Cora was not coming back. I couldn't do that to Dem. I couldn't ask her to let go of Cora for me. I couldn't ask to be her daughter, even if it was just a formality.

But if she never knew ... If she never knew that Cora' s info was missing ... I knew she never went into Cora' s room anymore, knew that it hurt Dem too much to see her not in it, to see the dust collecting. If the documents weren't in that file box anymore, Dem would never even know. I stopped mid-stride. The store window next to me had caught my eye. It was a costume shop and one of the costumes featured in the window reminded me of an episode ofthe Nanny, when Fran gets kidnapped. The kidnappers were dressed all in black as they waited for the ransom. Criminals always seemed to wear black in shows. I walked into the shop.

*

I offered to walk Dem home again the next day . Meeting for coffee had become our afternoon routine over the past week, since neither of us really had anything else to do. Dem said it was amazing how quickly we' d become friends, but I didn' t really have much of a reference point. Dem was my first friend. But I suspected that she was right.

Perhaps we'd become friends quickly because we both needed a friend so desperately. 123

When we got to her house, I asked to use her restroom. I didn' t really need to go, but I'd come up with a plan. Once I got inside, I was going to find a window to open that

I could sneak back in through later that night. Dem's backyard was accessible through a narrow side gate, which I knew she kept unlocked for the gardener noid, much to Doug's dismay.

"Let me give you the tour! " She said, waving me inside.

It was an amazing home. The foyer opened up to a beautiful, wide wooden staircase on the left and a warm, comfortably furnished living room on the right. Beyond that was the light filled kitchen. Ferns hung in pots from the ceiling alongside the cream­ colored cabinets. Eclectic mugs hung from hooks above the sink. A dented copper kettle sat on a gas burner. Dem led me through the kitchen to a small sunroom and from there onto the back patio. A small set of weatherproofed, wooden outdoor furniture was nestled into the corner of the patio amongst several fluffy potted plants. A short, very wide set of steps led down to the rectangular backyard, which had roses all around the perimeter. The yard was minimalistic, but immaculate and lovely. I stood at the railing of the patio, taking a brief moment to close my eyes and inhale the scent of roses and grass and earth.

I'd almost forgotten how much joy a garden could bring me.

Back inside, Dem showed me to a bathroom off the kitchen with a small window near the edge of the patio, which would be perfect to climb in through from the patio

railing. I left it open only a millimeter. Not wide enough for anything more than the 124 whisper of a cool Bay breeze to get in until I carne back and could slide it open all the way. I prayed Dern wouldn't notice before that night and close it.

"I'd give you a tour of the upstairs, but it's just the bedrooms and they're not particularly exciting."

"Oh." Damn. I'd been hoping to see the bedrooms so I would know which one was Cora' s. I tried to think quickly. "Does your bedroom, urn, face the backyard? It must be really ... quiet. .. if it does ... the hotel can get so much street noise, I mean ... "

"My room faces the street actually, but it's a pretty quiet neighborhood, for the city at least. Cora' s room and the guest bedroom face the backyard. I've thought about switching, but I like being closer to the master bath. I don't like to have to find my way if

I need to tinkle in the night." She smiled. "Would you like a cup of tea or anything?"

"Sure, that would be nice." I didn't want to go back to the hotel. I knew I would be too nervous, sitting around by myself, waiting for it to get late enough to return.

Dern had a vast collection of teas. She said she liked to try different flavors. The names of the teas always made them sound so good, but inevitably the only kind she ever liked was plain old earl grey. I decided to try a vanilla chai. She served me mine in a mug that looked like an elephant, with the elephant's trunk curling back into its body to create the mug's the handle. The one she chose for herself was an oversized teacup with a spider on it.

"I like spiders too," I said, gesturing to her cup. 125

"Not a lot of people do. I actually studied spiders. I was an arachnologist. My research helped to develop a stronger version of the synthetic spider silk that's used to make bulletproof vests. I retired early though. After Cora left."

"Do you miss it? Your work, I mean?"

"At first I didn't. I was so consumed with getting her back, you know. It was all I thought about. But now ... now that so much time has passed ... now that I know I can't convince her to leave that awful group and get some help - some professional help - I don't know. I guess I do miss it. I miss having a passion. I miss having a reason to get up in the morning. I miss the spiders. They're such incredible creatures. But I've made friends with a few around the house and out here in the yard."

"What's your favorite kind of spider?"

"Oh, I could never choose. But look." She held out her hand to me, dancing the middle finger to draw my attention to the small band of sunshine colored fabric encircling her long elegant finger. "It' s golden orb weaver silk. It's worth a lot, because it's so strong and so beautiful. My advisor gave it to me as a gift when I completed my PhD."

"It' s incredible."

"I wanted to pass it down to Cora." She looked at it sadly. "I don't know what will happen to it now."

The guilt of what I planned to do rose like acid in my throat. I tried to wash it down with a gulp of my tea, which was rapidly growing cold in the dimming tangerine 126 light of the evening. What kind of person was I? Dem had been so kind to me. The acid and the tea seemed to have formed a pit in my throat, which pushed on my synth esophagus and made me ache. Moisture rimmed my eyes like the fog that was beginning to collect on the petals of all the roses. I swallowed hard and sipped my tea again, trying not to meet Dem' s gaze as Doug serenaded us with his chain saw massacre snores.

*

I tried not to look suspicious as I walked past Aimon through the lobby. He glared at me as I went by, but I reminded myself that he always glared at me because he thought

I was a peasant. Still the black costume couldn't be helping.

A million scenarios raced through my mind as I walked toward Dem's house. I imagined what would happen if she woke up and caught me. Was there anything I could say to explain myself? Would she believe that I sleepwalked? That I'd left something in her house and didn't want to wake her? I imagined her screaming at me, telling me to leave and never come near her again. If that happened, I wouldn't just lose my chance at an identity, I'd lose my only friend.

I felt like I'd swallowed a billiard ball as I moved through the damp, chilly night.

The moisture from the dense fog collected in my wig and formed miniature crystal balls over the fabric of my turtleneck. I shivered and walked faster.

As I slowly eased Dem ' s gate open, the muscles of one side of my face contracted involuntarily, pinching up as though I was about to be struck, bracing myself for an ear­

splitting squeal. But the gate must have been well oiled, because it swung wide without a 127

sound. I hurried across the backyard, my movements muffied by the wet grass, and

tiptoed up the steps to the patio.

I tried to take a long, deep breathe through my mouth to steady my nerves, but I

was shaking like fern in an earthquake. I climbed catlike up onto the railing and reached

around to the bathroom window. I nearly wept with relief to find it still opened. And then

nearly fell off the railing trying to budge it open more.

It was an old window and it clearly was not opened often. I tugged as best I could while trying to keep my balance but it refused to move more than a few more millimeters.

I readjusted my position so that I straddled the railing, and placed both hands on the sill. I gave one tremendous shove and the window flew open with a bang that stopped my heart and threw off my balance. I landed with a thud in the wet grass, certain that I'd left my heart floating in the air exactly where it had been before I fell.

Should I run? Should I hide in the rose bushes? I couldn't move. Had a broken my back? Would Dem find me, dressed in all black, paralyzed in her garden beneath her open bathroom window? I'd really have a tough time explaining that one away. I lay frozen in terror for what seemed like a lifetime, until the fear began to fade and my artificial adrenal glands stopped flooding my nervous system. Until I was simply frozen by the fog-licked grass.

I got up as quietly as I could and began to shiver harder than ever. Somehow it had been warmer down on the lawn. I mounted the railing once more and pulled myself 128 in through the window. I wanted to fill the bathtub with hot water and curl up inside it.

My skin felt like ice, but at least it was warmer inside.

Every movement I made sounded thunderous. Had I always breathed this loudly?

Did I really always stomp around like a tyrannosaurus rex learning to Irish step dance in

Dutch clogs? How was Dem sleeping through all of this?

I climbed the staircase like an escaped jackhammer. Doug lay outside a door to the left, which I knew had to be Dem's because it was the only one that could possibly face the street. Doug may have been the only thing in the world at that moment louder than me. It was astounding how much noise such a small animal could make just by breathing. And it was probably the only reason I hadn't already been caught. I stared at

Doug as he snored and made a mental note to remind Dem to take him to the vet before I crossed to the first door and slipped it open. It looked like a guest bedroom. Too tidy and lacking in personality to be a teenager's room. And it didn't look like it was coated in dust, though the darkness made it difficult to be sure.

"Cora? Coral"

Dem's voice behind me sent a shock down my spine. Without thinking I leapt into the guest room and tugged the door shut behind me. My mechanic heart was going lose a screw. It was going to burst. It couldn't take this. It was banging against my chest like an executioner drum. A light burst in through the crack under the door and I hurried to the closet and shut myself inside.

"Cora! Are you here?" 129

I heard Dem run past the guest room and open the door to her daughter's room.

"Coral Is that you?"

The footsteps hurried back toward me and my heart kicked into a higher gear. The

door to the guest room flew open.

"Cora!"

She would hear me breathing in this silence. She had to be able to hear me. I

clapped a hand over my mouth and held my breath. My lungs were like blimps. She had

to be able to hear my heart trying to escape from my body, from this closet, from this

house. The silence dragged on.

And then I heard the door shut. Quietly, just beyond it, I heard Dem walking back to Cora's room and shutting that door too.

"I thought she was back, Doug. I thought I heard her again."

I heard Doug wheeze in response and I lowered myself onto the carpeted floor of the closet. I lay on my back, trying to regain my calm as I listened to Dem return to bed.

Above me, winter coats hung patiently. I reached up and stroked a black faux fur coat in a pathetic attempt to stop the shaking of my hands and the painful thrum in my chest.

This was going horribly. And I was stealing from a woman who'd already lost so much.

A woman who'd been kind to me, who'd called me a friend when no one else ever had.

The first person to make me feel safe in this new city. The first person who made me feel like I could do it. 130

But she didn't have to know, I told myself for the thousandth time. Cora was not going to come back and Dem would never know any of her identification was missing.

As long as Dem didn't seem me, no one would get hurt. I just had to wait for her to fall back asleep. In the darkness, I fumbled to remove my shoes. Then counted to three hundred.

When I finally felt brave enough, I emerged from the closet like a puff of breath on a frosty night. I crossed the carpet and pressed my ear to the guest room door. All I could hear on the other side were Doug's snores. I took a deep breath and held it. I cracked the door.

]Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi ...

The carpet was soft between my toes. Savoring the plush threads for one final second, I squeezed through the door and out onto the chilly hardwood of the hallway.

Only ten more steps and I was there.

Nine, eight, seven, six, jive, jour, three, llvo ...

Cora's room was carpeted too, but the carpet here was gritty and stiff For a moment I was blown away by how dirty the room was, until my eyes adjusted and I realized it was only the decor. Everything was brown. The bedding was brown, the dresser was brown, the curtain was brown, the walls were a slightly lighter shade, but still, undeniably, brown. And all of these brown surfaces were emblazoned with the same eye-mangling image. In different positions - strutting, drinking water, lounging under a tree - was the same poppy orange giraffe wearing a green paisley pashmina. All fear of 131

being caught left me for a moment, replaced entirely by confusion and revulsion. The

color combination was nauseating, the giraffe baffiing.

A snuffie in the hallway from Doug brought me back to reality. Cora' s

documentation should be in a file box under her vanity. It took no more than ten seconds

to find . The file box was very organized. I grabbed everything I could find, trying not to

disturb the dust too much, andre-situated everything as I had found it. Nothing could be

out of place even a fraction of an inch. Dem could never know.

I crept back out of the awful room, pausing to look one last time at one of the

images of the giraffe, which was winking conspiratorially, as if to say, "Your secret's

safe with me."

As I crossed to the stairs, Doug's snoring suddenly stopped and shifted to a low,

moderately excited wheeze. He' d woken up and ambled over to me. Panic filled my throat once again. He was going to wake Dem up.

"Shhh Doug," I breathed down at the happy, wagging little pug.

He panted in reply and I began tiptoeing down the stairs. The synth muscles in my

neck tensed. I could barely breathe, and I hung my jaw open slightly to inhale and exhale through my mouth, praying it was quieter. It couldn't possibly be as loud as my heart, which was hitting my ribs so hard my body was actually pulsing from the force of it. I was almost as afraid as I'd been the day I left Mal's. Doug plopped down the stairs

arthritically alongside me, making more noise than a bear in a bookstore. 132

I tried to roll my feet heel to toe with each step through the living room, so my

gait wouldn't make a sound. Doug waddled along next to me snuffling until we finally

reached the bathroom window. I tucked the documents into the waistband of my pants

and pulled my shirt over them so they lay flat against my skin, which was slick with

sweat. I turned and patted Doug's head before pulling myself up onto the window ledge.

I looked back at Doug one more time. He tensed his whole body. His wheezing

had momentarily stopped and his tail was lifted slightly, alert. He was going to bark. He

was going to yip and howl and Dem would come running and find me halfway out her window with no explanation as to how I'd gotten there. Doug's body seemed to lift

slightly off the ground. I tensed in anticipation, ready to hurl myself out the window and

run.

PffffjjjjJJJJJJtttt. Doug let out a long, squeaky fart. Then relaxed and began

wagging and panting again.

"See you later, Doug" I whispered and pulled myself through the window.

I didn't remove the documents from under my clothes until I was back in the

safety of my hotel room. I pulled them out slowly, cautiously, like they were a bomb or

an antique heirloom.

In the packet I found Cora's birth certificate, signed in large, looping handwriting

by Dem, then a new mother, enveloped in the scent of her baby, the warmth of nurturing

a fresh, pure love. What kind of future had she been imagining for her daughter when

she' d written out her name, Cora, when she' d signed this document that made Cora real, 133

made her a whole person? What would she have done, if in the moment of her signing,

she'd suddenly known, with perfect clarity, where all of the roads of her life led? What

would she have done if she'd seen, pen poised to begin the swirl into the C of Cora, if

she'd discovered then that her peaceful child would fall into a cult, that she'd be so

consumed in agony at the loss of this child that she'd give up on her career, on her entire

life, until a desperate woman, a woman as desperate as herself because she was not a

woman at all but a noid, a soulless inhuman noid, would take advantage of her and steal

her missing child's identity? Would she ever have believed it?

A tear slipped down my cheek, getting caught in the grooves of the latex covering

my exposed synth muscle. Noids couldn't cry tears. I'd read that. But I could. I wasn't

quite a noid, even ifl wasn't human. I set down the birth certificate and continued on to the next documents. A plastic sleeve contained a driver's license, a social security card,

and a passport. I pulled out the passport and the driver's license, opening the passport to the photo.

Cora was young in the images. No more than sixteen. They were taken before

she'd first joined the cult. The passport was expired, but the driver's license was newer,

despite the old photo. Dem must have been reapplying for the license for Cora. In the

photos she was smiling. She looked happy. Her eyebrows were high and her eyes bright

with excitement. The comers of her mouth listed upward. She had wide brown eyes and

freckles across her nose. Her hair was curly and the color of warm honey. Her skin had

the same dark golden hue as her hair. She was beautiful. 134

I wasn't as beautiful as her. But I had a similar look. Our eyes weren't such a different shape, our skin nearly the same shade. I would need to order a wig that looked more like Cora's hair, but still could cover some of my face.

I pulled out my iTablet and searched for a new wig, finding one that was the right color. It was curly and shoulder length, with a bit of layering in the front that looked like it would hide some of my scars. But it would still all be a stretch. It was a gamble to use

Cora's identity, to try to pass myself off as her. What would happen if I were caught? A drone delivered the wig an hour later and I slipped it on, trying to will myself to become

Cora.

''I'm Cora!" I said into the mirror with a friendly smile.

''I'm Cora." I tried it again with a more serious, mature tone.

"Cora. That's me. Nice to meet you, I'm Cora" I stared at myself in the mirror.

''I'm Cora. I am Cora. I am Cora." I said it over and over, until the words lost all meaning and I could be Cora because Cora could be anything. 135

Chapter 4

I stood in line for what felt like hours. A cold nervous sweat soaked into the

underside of my bra and ran in beads down my spine. I gnawed my lip. It was all I could

do to keep from crying or wetting my pants or throwing up. The moving photos on the walls around me provided little distraction. Pretty people in plain clothes gently pushed

on their friends' faces at swanky restaurants, wagging their fingers to say "no no" before their own eyes slid out of focus. I think the idea was that they were telling their friends that they would cover the bill, but the whole thing was incredibly odd. I was used to the way it was done in the shows I'd watched. The characters would push money or credit

cards back at one another, not push on each other' s faces to draw the other person out of their corneal screen.

I'd seen this kind of face pushing happen once or twice in the cafe and I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. What if you accidentally poked the other person in the

eye? What if your hands were really sweaty? Or your friend had a massive pimple? It

seemed like a lot of things could go wrong.

I remembered with a renewed wave of sweat and lip gnawing how Dem had once

pushed on my face to tell me she wanted to pay for my coffee. She' d laughed at my

startled expression. "I forgot you're old school when it comes to tech. I guess I don't

really need to press on your forehead! " A lump settled in my throat. I hadn't been back to the cafe since I'd stolen the documents from Dem two days earlier. Her voice, fragile

with hope, calling out Cora' s name in the night, rang in my ears as though the file had 136 been converted to a loop. How could I look her in the eyes now that I'd created a job seeking profile under Cora's name? My new name. I wanted to tell her so badly that I'd gotten an interview. I wanted to tell her that I finally had a chance at a life of my own, free from Mal, independent. But I could never ask her to celebrate a potential success that came at her unwitting expense.

I imagined telling her. I imagined lying to her and saying I'd finally gotten the social security office to help me. That I'd reclaimed my identity as Fran and that I had an interview in a week and that I couldn't have done it without her support and encouragement. That part wasn't a lie. I really couldn't have done it without her friendship. But I also couldn't have done it without her blind trust in me, without her belief that I was a good person who would never take advantage of her, or that I was a person at all .

My feet ached. I'd worn heels to make my legs look longer under the wide slacks

I'd worn. The stiff faux leather of the shoes rubbed painfully against my skin as I sunk deeper into the soles. I adjusted the cloche hat I'd worn to try to hide as much of my face as possible. I'd done a pretty good job of covering my exposed muscle with latex and make up that morning, but there was only so much I could improve. I still looked scarred.

I resisted the urge to touch my face as I reached the front of the line.

"Next!"

My heart began to beat erratically. I approached the teller and took a deep breath.

"Hi. I want to open a bank account?" I hadn't meant to phrase it as a question. 137

The teller called to someone and told me to go wait in a chair in front of a sparsely furnished, wide cherry desk. I perched on the edge of the leather chair, my knees pressed tightly together and my hands in a fidgety ball in my lap. The only piece of decor on the desk in front of me was a simple silver picture frame that was cycling through a seemingly endless supply of photos. The only subjects of the photos were two little girls, one had the largest teeth I'd ever seen and the other was missing so many teeth she practically only had gums. The large-toothed child appeared to be slightly older and significantly more melancholy than the smaller, more disheveled toothless child.

A woman approached me with an outstretched hand. "Hello! I'm Wanda! I understand you're interested in opening an account with us?"

Wanda was plump and wore a drop-waist, long-sleeved dress in a shade of pink so bright I couldn't look directly at it. Her lipstick matched her dress. I offered my hand, thankful that my glove masked the clamminess of my palm . "Yes," I managed to squeak.

"Wonderful! " Wanda sat down in the chair behind the desk and swiveled a large monitor so that we could both see it. I returned to my perch on the edge of my chair as

Wanda explained the different types of accounts available. I'm not sure I really would have understood even ifl could have heard her over the thumping of my heart in my ears.

I ended up choosing what I hoped was the simplest account.

"Ok! This all looks great! I can get you all set up today, I just need to see your identification! Do you have your driver's license and social security card with you?" 138

My hands shook as I pulled the small cards that determined everything from my

purse. I handed them to Wanda. My shoulders tightened. She stared at the photo for a

moment then looked up at me. She knew. She could tell I wasn't Cora. It was written all

over my face. Silence extended between us. I tried to swallow but I had no saliva.

"Botched synth skin job," I croaked.

Wanda' s eyes narrowed. She reached toward my wrist and I inhaled sharply through my nostrils with a sound like a curtain being yanked across a rod.

"My sister-in-law had the same thing happen." She patted my wrist. "Those

doctors should know better than to keep performing that procedure what with the risks. If you ask me they're all a bunch of criminals"

She reached back to the screen and pulled it so that only she could see it. With light fingers she began entering Cora's information - my information - into the system.

"Could- could I have some water?" I gestured to a nearby cooler.

"Of course! Help yourself! This will only take me a minute."

I was afraid my legs would give out as I rose from the chair and walked to the

cooler. The water was so icy it hurt, but even after two paper cupfuls I didn 't feel

refreshed. My teeth felt like cheap wax. I tried to breath slowly and deeply, while still

appearing to be a casual, sane, but slightly thirsty human being. At the moment I didn't feel like any of these things. A knot in my stomach lurched like a sea cucumber and I thought of jell-o falling to the floor. How could I do this to Dem? I heard the soft whir in 139

my head of my pupils contracting and wondered if what I'd done meant I was more

human or more machine.

"Ok, Cora, you're all set! " I returned to the desk and Wanda. "Here is the

password to your app. Go ahead and log on and when you do it will ask you to change the

password. Make sure you make it something secure so no one can steal your

information!"

It seemed too sunny and bright out as I walked back to the hotel. San Francisco

was usually overcast. Where had this obnoxiously enthusiastic weather come from? It felt

almost as though it were mocking me. Union Square was packed with tourists and street vendors and I stared idly at colorful friendship bracelets and lumpy felted hats. A slender

artist in baggy sweatpants spray-painted landscapes across canvases. An older man

carefully wrote out the names of his customers on grains of rice, to be slipped into tiny glass vials like messages thrown into the sea. I was Cora now. I could have this man write my new name out for me in minuscule letters to be hung like a billboard around my

neck. But would that make me feel like Cora?

I stepped out of the bustling mass and rounded the corner onto the quieter side

street where the hotel was located.

All of the air left my lungs like bats fleeing a cave. The sidewalk churned beneath

my feet and I inhaled with a strangled whimpering sob. Time slowed. A pigeon took

fli ght on the other side of the street, its wings beating in time with the thumping of my

heart. 140

Flap.

Flap.

Flap.

My feet lost the ability to move. I was trapped in place, frozen like a statue, if statues trembled uncontrollably. He looked exactly as I remembered him - beautiful and terrible - like a malevolent god. The sun glinted off his obsidian hair as he turned toward me. His eyes glaring as sharp and cold as knives. Beneath the terror that surged through my blood like an electric current I felt my core programming, the coding that told me to love him above all else, the coding I'd worked so hard to suppress and unravel, rise to the surface of my mind like warm bath water.

It's not real it's not real it 's not real.

I needed to get away before he saw me. I needed to leave and never come back to this street. How had he found me? His eyes met mine and for a second reflected confusion, then uncertainty, and finally recognition. My legs worked again. I turned and ran as fast as my feet could move, sprinting back toward the crowds of Union Square.

He was faster than me. I was moving as fast as I could, but he was closing the distance I had on him. I could hear his feet slapping the pavement behind, getting closer and closer. I threw myself into the crowd of tourists, shoving people out of my way, hurling my body forward. Indignant squawks and profane exclamations rang out behind me but I didn't look back, I couldn't stop moving. Someone grabbed at my shirt and I 141 heard the fabric tear as I wrenched myself forward. The sharp smack of skin against skin echoed behind me and the screams and the tide of bodies crashed against me.

I broke free from the crowd like I was being shot from a cannon. I couldn't hear

Mal ' s footfalls yet as I fled down a street and rounded a corner. The world flipped upside down and I hit the ground, limbs entangled with someone else's body. I had run into someone. I tried to extract myself, to keep moving. I couldn't stop.

''I'm sorry I'm sorry!" I stammered as I struggled to free myself

"What the fuck?l "

"Fran! Don't you dare fucking run from me, Fran!"

I heard Mal's voice from around the corner and screamed as I frantically tried to pull away from the tiny woman I had steam-rolled. I began running and the woman chased after me.

"This way! " She yanked me left down an alley and jerked open a graffitied door.

"In! " She slammed the door behind us and dead bolted it, then pulled me up a flight of stairs. A loud thud shook the door.

"You can't run from me, you bitch! You can't fucking run! I know where to find you now! " I could hear him throwing his body against the door, kicking and beating it like a wave against the side of a cliff

The woman pulled me down a long hallway lined with doors and then down a staircase and out a side door. I couldn't hear Mal anymore, but we didn't stop running. 142

We could have gone three blocks or three hundred for all I knew, but eventually she stopped at an apartment building and swiped something small and round in front of the door before pulling it open and yanking me inside and into an elevator. She poked the button for the 41h floor.

I slid to the ground, letting my forehead drop into my hands and I sobbed. The elevator dinged and the woman stepped into the doorway. She held out her hand to me.

"Come on."

I looked up at her, still sobbing, and took her hand. She pulled me to my feet and led me to a door, unlocked it and shut it behind me. We were in a large, shabby apartment. Directly to my right was a narrow kitchen with scuffed wooden counter tops and faded and peeling purple cabinets. The sink was filled with chipped dishes, and a few cracked and stained mugs hung above the sink beneath a cluttered spice rack.

The kitchen opened up to low ceilinged living room stuffed with fat, mismatched couches of forest green velvet and indigo corduroy encircling a a low wooden coffee table covered in books and ash trays. An unlit hallway extended to the left.

"Do you want some tea?" The woman gestured toward the couches. I nodded, sat down on the corduroy couch, and pulled out a compact. Tears still ran from my eyes, but

I needed to make sure the make up covering the latex hadn't washed away.

The woman returned with a box of tissues and a mug with a sleeping cat on it and the words "feline pretty fucking tired." 143

"Thanks"

''I'm Andy by the way."

"I'm .. . Cora."

"And that guy was ... ?"

"My ex. He's ... " My voice cracked as more tears poured down my cheeks. "I've been trying to get away from him. I thought I had. But now he knows where I've been staying." I pulled a tissue and pressed it against my nose as I tried to suppress another sob.

He knew where I was staying. I couldn't go back. I couldn't go back for any of my stuff. Where would I stay? What was I going to do? I looked down at my hands and discovered my gloves were dirty and slightly torn from my collision with Andy. My hands began to ache, suddenly, as if they too hadn't realized they' d been injured. The faux silk of my blouse was torn as well, along the side seam, a small, tattered window to my shuddering rib cage.

The door to the apartment swung open and an extremely tall guy with a beard came in. He was wearing an oatmeal-colored, long sleeve shirt, grey plaid pants that extended just below his knees, and bright orange knee-high socks. He was carrying a bag of groceries and smoking a joint.

"Hey Andy!" He waved enthusiastically to her, then saw me and waved more shyly. "Who' s your friend?" 144

Andy ' s dark eyes met mine.

"This is our new roommate. Bummer meet Cora. Cora, this is Bummer."

"Oh sweet you're going to take over the room?" Bummer crossed the apartment in a single stride and held out an enormous hand.

I looked back at Andy. She was smiling at me. Her teeth were big and very white.

For the first time I noticed she had a ring in her nose and that she didn't really dress like anyone I'd seen before. She wore men' s suit pants and a men' s white undershirt with suspenders. Over this she wore a long black velvet duster. Originally I thought her hair was black too, but I saw now that it was actually a very dark shade of blue that had been cut into a mohawk. I shook Bummer' s hand.

"Yes. I'm going to take the room."

"We need your help with something though, Bummer." Andy stood up. She was only a few inches shorter than me, but she was more than a foot shorter than Bummer.

"Sure. What's up?"

"Cora's ex has been hanging around her old place and he's a real piece of shit.

Can you go pick up her stuff?" She turned to me. "Do you have a lot of stuff? Or do you think it's a one man job?"

Bummer glanced around the room. "I don 't really think we can fit another couch

in here." 145

"I don't have anything. Just a duffel bag with some clothes and make up and stuff

I've been staying in a hotel since ... since I left him. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to pack the duffel bag. Everything is sort of everywhere."

Andy and Bummer exchanged a glance, then Bummer turned to me and smiled.

"Hey just one bag is the easiest moving I've ever done. So what hotel you been staying in?" 146

Chapter 5

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck you! You fucking bitch!" Mal hammered his fists against the heavy steel door. He kicked it and wailed against it with his entire body, channeling all the rage he felt for Fran into his screams and his limbs. "You can't fucking run from me!

You can't fucking run! I will find you! "

He couldn't believe he' d let her get away again. He leaned his back against the door and let out one final scream, then attempted to catch his breath. His hand drifted up toward his eye and he touched the bruise that was blossoming there tenderly. He might have caught Fran if he hadn't been punched as he tried to fight through that crowd of fat, slavering tourists. Mal hated this city. It was always overflowing with hordes of mindless sightseers.

What was he going to do? He needed to be back at work tomorrow. He didn't have time to chase Fran all over the city. And who was that girl she'd run off with? Had

Fran told her what she was? How he' d made her? He switched out of vision mode and called an AutoRyd. Fran would have to return to the hotel at some point. And he would be waiting when she did.

It was only fi ve or six blocks back to the hotel, but the traffic was a nightmare. It took Mal a full 25 minutes to get back to the hotel, by which time his fury had reignited.

Fran could have come back, gotten her stuff and left already. He stormed into the lobby, pushing past an enormous bearded man in obnoxious orange socks. 147

"I have a room here, but I lost my key," he half-shouted at the desk noid, who responded to Mal ' s impoliteness with a withering glare.

"I do not recognize you, sir! " The noid spat in a ridiculous fake French accent.

Another noid scuttled over and fixed Mal with a beaming smile. The man in the orange socks slinked toward the elevators, eyes wide and locked on the scene unfolding at the front desk.

"My reservation is under Malcolm Arodnap, you stupid toaster. Look it up! "

The French noid' s eyes shifted out of focus unevenly. The man in the socks disappeared into an elevator, still wide-eyed, and the smiling noid leaned in close to Mal.

"You can never trust these toasters. But don't worry, I'm different." The noid winked at Mal in a way that was clearly meant to be conspiratorial, but was instead unsettling and grotesque thanks to the jerky, unnatural motion of the rubbesh.

The French noid' s eyes wobbled back into focus. "A woman checked in under zat reservation," the noid sniffed indignantly.

"Yes. My girlfriend. I'm ... I'm here to surprise her with a marriage proposal."

The lie came to Mal out of nowhere, but it was perfect. If he could catch Fran unaware in the privacy of a room, he could turn her off, reprogram her and get her home to deactivate her without anyone noticing. 148

The French noid looked Mal up and down, taking in his rumpled clothes and bruised eye. He grimaced. "I'm sure zat will be very ... romantic. We will need account verification before we can make you a key. I've sent a link to ze account."

Mal shifted out of vision mode and quickly verified. The French noid confirmed, then turned and programmed a key. He gave Mal one more long, scathing look before handing it to him . '"Ere."

"I'll show you to your room! " chirped the smiling noid. She bounced erratically along beside him toward the elevator. He wanted to tell her to fuck off but he knew better than to try to get rid of a noid against it's programming. The things were relentless. He scrolled through his feed as it chattered psychotically the whole way up.

They stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway, nearly running into the man in the orange socks, who dropped his duffel bag in surprise. The man gasped as the bag hit the ground and spilled open. Make up and dresses tumbled onto the floor. He began frantically gathering everything back into the bag. Mal could see the sweat dripping down his temples. It took everything Mal had not to laugh at the poor oaf. You just never know about people, he thought, and stepped over the mortified man' s satin gloves. At least someone had enjoyed their time in this godawful city.

"Here' s your room! " the noid trilled, guiding him toward a door.

"Great, go away." Mal waved the key in front of the lock and opened the door, then shut it in the noid' s face. The place was ransacked. Fran had clearly come and gone quickly. Mal' s throat tightened and his vision blazed white. 149

"Fuck fuck fuck!" he screamed as he grabbed a lamp and threw it at the wall. It exploded, sending ugly ceramic shrapnel in every direction. Mal ripped the sheets from the bed and kicked over a cheap chair. He flung himself onto the bed and thrashed his limbs and shrieked. He wished he had never made Fran. He wished could put his hands around her throat and shake her until her synth skin tore and her eyes burst from her skull. He vowed that when he finally found her he wouldn't just deactivate her, he'd dismantle her completely and hurl her into the ocean. He stuffed two anti-depressants into his mouth and knotted his fingers into his hair.

He would find her again. She couldn't hide from him now. She'd have to buy something soon and when she did he'd know exactly where she was hiding. It was only a matter of time he told himself He felt the medication wash over him like a cold compress on a fevered brow. Switching out of vision mode, he brought a show up on his corneal screen and I et his mind drift into the story.

He stayed like that for a few hours before the thought occurred to him that he might be able to find Fran in one of the other places she spent time. He pulled up his bank statement and scanned through it. The vast majority of the purchases she'd made were at a nearby cafe called Asteria. Why had she gone there so much? Had she been meeting someone? Why else would anyone spend so much time in a cafe? Panic and suspicion twisted together to form a knot in hi s stomach. If she had met someone, not only would she be cheating on him, but she might have revealed that she was not human. Mal switched to vision mode and leapt to hi s feet. He walked quickly to the elevators and practically ran through the lobby when the doors opened. 150

"Giving up on your 'fiancee?'" The French noid asked sarcastically.

"Fuck you, toaster! I'm checking out! " Mal shouted over his shoulder.

He could hear outraged exclamations behind him as he shot through the doors.

This time he didn't bother to call an AutoRyd. He wanted to get there as quickly as possible. He wanted to catch Fran in the midst of whatever form of betrayal she' d chosen to inflict on him. He wanted to see the horror and guilt in her eyes when she realized that he knew - really knew - what kind of person she was.

Asteria was a cramped, gaudy little cafe. Mal noticed immediately how dark it was inside. The perfect spot for an illicit affair, he thought. The place was essentially empty except for a chubby noidista and a haggard looking old woman, who might have been attractive when she was young, but now resembled a crumpled, white-cloth napkin.

The noidista zoomed over to him.

"Wow great shirt I love it can I get you something?!"

"Do you have a customer that comes in here named Fran?"

"Fran! Oh yeah, I love Fran she' s amazing! Always wears great hats! "

Mal noticed out of the comer of his eye that the old woman had sat up straighter and begun staring at him .

"When was she last here?" Mal asked. 151

"Aidan! " The old woman' s voice was shrill . Mal and the noidista both turned.

"Aidan ... I. .. I want to order something."

Mal approached her. She knew something. He could see it in her eyes. Her hands began to shake as he got nearer. He stepped close to her and placed a palm on the table, blocking her into the corner. He leaned down so his face was close to hers and she leaned back slightly.

"What do you know about Fran?" He said it softly. He didn't want the noidista to hear their conversation.

"1. .. I don't.. " The woman stammered.

"Listen to me. Fran is not right in the head. She has delusions. Maybe she told you some of them . Maybe you believed her. I need you to understand now that Fran is a very very sick woman and I must find her. Her doctors ... they wanted me to put Fran in a home. But I wanted to keep her with me. I thought I could take care of her. But she' s a danger. To herself and to others. Do you understand?"

The woman stared at him, baffled.

"I need to find her. Please help me. She needs me."

The woman' s eyes narrowed. "You know, it's interesting. It' s interesting to me that Fran never showed any signs of delusion when she was here. It's interesting that she never showed any signs of needing help or being ill or being confused." She leaned in now, pushing her face forward so that their noses nearly touched. "It' s especially 152 interesting because she told me that she escaped an abusive boyfriend and the whole

'she's crazy' story sounds exactly like something an abusive boyfriend would say, don't you think?"

Mal grabbed her by the throat and thrust her against the wall behind her. She gasped and let out a shocked squeak.

"I took care of that ungrateful little bitch! I gave her everything! Everything she has, everything she is, I gave her! She wouldn't exist without me!"

The woman clawed at his hand, digging her nails into his skin and choking for air.

A cold arm wrapped around Mal's neck, compressing his windpipe and throwing the room momentarily out of focus. He let go of the woman and felt himself being dragged backward. The noidista released him and he dropped to his knees.

"I love the enthusiasm but violence is no no! I'm going to have to ask you to leave!"

Mal shoved past the noidista and stormed out onto the sidewalk. He screamed and stuffed another anti-depressant into his mouth. So that's what Fran had been doing.

Telling people stories about him. Casting him as some sort of villain when it was she who had wronged him. She had walked out on him. Left him without a word! She hadn't tried to work anything out or talk to him or put any effort into their relationship. He made her.

He loved her. He bought her everything she ever wanted. Beautiful clothes and wigs.

He'd built her a garden. And she just gave up and left without a word. And now she was 153 telling people that he had abused her? Mal dug his nails into his palms. He turned and hit the wall of the cafe over and over until his knuckles bled.

When he'd finally worn himself out he sat down on the sidewalk and took another anti-depressant. The sun was beginning to set and the light reflected blindingly off all the golden paint, setting the city on fire. A chiil was setting in. Hell was freezing over, Mal thought.

He needed to get home. He had work in the morning. How was he supposed to perform his reps with all of this on his mind? He looked at his bloody hand. How would he explain that and the bruise on his eye? He shifted out of vision mode. He would have to figure it out when he got home. He called an AutoRyd to take him back across the bridge.

*

The next few days at work were a slog. Mal' s procedures were all simple and he found himself spacing out in the middle of them, thinking about Fran and what she was doing and who she might be doing it with. He was distracted during the time between his reps as well, lost in plans for how he could capture Fran now that she knew he was looking for her. He'd been keeping an eye on his bank statements, but it appeared that she had found a way to get by without using his account.

The only thing that drew him out of his contemplations of what to do about the

Fran problem was his interactions with Lyla. Somehow in the time he'd been away he had forgotten just how beautiful she was. He made a point to catch her after at least one 154 of her reps each day, and though he would be talking to her about her work, he couldn't help but stare at the perfect curve of her bottom lip.

It seemed unfair that he had met Lyla after he'd already created Fran. If he hadn't been unjustly suspended, he might have gotten to know her sooner. He might have realized that what he'd been looking for was right here waiting for him. Someone he could bring home to his mother. Someone his mother could meet, so she could be happy that her son had finally found the woman he deserved. Someone smart and kind and beautiful. If he' d been given the opportunity to meet Lyla, he never would have made

Fran. He wouldn't be caught in this awful situation. And he would be a star attending to boot.

He could imagine it perfectly. He and Lyla and his mother sitting around a crackling fire in his childhood home on Christmas Day. He pictured the way his mother' s eyes would light up as Lyla opened a small gift wrapped in white paper and shining gold ribbon, to match the shimmer of gold that sparkled on her eyes. She would unwrap it slowly, tugging the ribbon so that the bow pulled apart gently. Her delicate, manicured fingers would lift the lid off the box and her hand would fly to her mouth as she glimpsed what was inside. Tears would slip down her soft cheeks as she plucked the velvet jewelry box from its wrappings and his mother would begin to cry too. Tears of joy would flow simultaneously on the faces of both the women he loved as Lyla pulled open the lid of the ring box. For a moment Lyla would be confused, because she'd find the box empty. But when she looked up at Mal to ask what was going on, she'd find him on one knee before her, holding out a diamond that cost as much as a yacht and was nearly as large as one. It 155 would be the greatest day of his mother's life, seeing her only son down on one knee.

Knowing that he would be taken care of for the rest of his days. And when they returned to work, Lyla would want to show her ring to everyone, to brag that she had been chosen by the hospital' s star medico-engineer. Together they would make everyone jealous.

Mal smiled to himself It was a nice dream. And it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. He could still have this future with Lyla. He just needed to get rid of Fran.

Once she was gone he'd be free. But did he really want to wait to get started with Lyla? It could be weeks before he found Fran. What ifLyla began dating someone in that time?

He didn't want to miss his chance with her. Not again.

But how should he ask her out? It had been a long time since he' d asked anyone on a date and even longer since he'd asked anyone without the assistance of a dating app.

How did people approach the subject these days? Should he give her flowers? Or just. .. blurt it out as she passed in the hall? Maybe he should compliment her skin. Women liked to be complimented. He practiced under his breath.

"Hi Lyla. I wanted to tell you that I think you have beautiful skin and I'd like to take you out to dinner." Fuck. That made him sound like he was a serial killer. She was going to think he wanted to skin her and tum her into a coat or a pair of underpants or something. Maybe he should compliment her lips instead? Was that better?

"Mal?"

"Lyla!" He hadn't heard her approach and her name came out as a shrill yelp. He cleared his throat. "Hi . Hi, how' s it going?" 156

"Fine. Listen -"

"You have nice skin do you want to go out to dinner?" Fuck. That was not smooth. Why had he said the skin thing? He' d meant to sound casual.

"What?"

Mal cleared his throat. "Sorry. I just meant. .. I think you're beautiful and I really enjoy talking to you and I was wondering if you'd like to get dinner. Tomorrow. At eight.

With me."

"Oh. Urn, thank you. I appreciate the offer, but no. I'm sorry."

No? What the fuck? "Why not?"

''I'm sorry, Mal, I'm just not interested''

"What do you mean you' re not interested? We talk all the time. We have great chemistry. We have great conversations and share the same intellectual passions. Are you seriously trying to tell me you don't love it when I come talk with you about one of your reps?" Mal felt his neck and face flush . His palms went cold. "Are you really going to tell me our conversations aren't the best part of your day?"

Lyla' s eyes narrowed and she pulled her chin back, tilting her upper body slightly away from him, as though she was too close to properly see what she was looking at.

"The best part of my day? You think that when you come explain my own procedures to me- that when you come condescend to me and patronize me - you think that's the best 157 part~~ my day? God, I knew you were arrogant, but I didn't realize your ego was this inflated."

"You always flirt with me! You smile and say hello and compliment my work!

Are you just a tease? Do you just enjoy stringing men along?"

"It is my job to be nice to you, Mal. You are my coworker and I was assigned to help you get back into a routine after your absence. I'm a professional. I am polite to you because you are my coworker, not because I wanted you to ask me out. I have not flirted with you, I have merely been nice to you."

The blood was roaring in Mal's ears now. He should have seen her for what she was. She was the kind of woman who had to be wanted by everyone, but thought she was too good for anyone. She liked to lead people on to boost her own ego. How rich that she could accuse him of being egotistical. He should have seen it. He'd known women like this before. The kind who lived for attention. "You think I really needed your help to get back into work? You should have been asking me for help. I was trying to help you when

I talked to you about your reps. I was trying to help you improve as a medico-engineer. If you think I needed your help, then it's not me who has the ego problem."

Lyla took a deep breath and tried to regain her cold composure. "Thank you for reminding me, I came over to you to speak to you about something. The chief of medico­ engineering wants to see you in her office in an hour. She sent you an email but you never responded." 158

With that she turned and walked away, leaving Mal to seethe. How could he have been so blind? This is what beautiful women were like. He'd known it for years. They were all self absorbed and stuck up. It's why his ClickMate dates had never worked out.

All of those women had been too obsessed with posting pictures of themselves - and fishing for compliments on those pictures- to be interested in him. They all thought they were too good for him. They were probably just using him for a free meal. And Lyla was no different. Even Fran was the same. He'd made her to be too much of a real woman.

Without meaning to, he'd done too good of a job at making her human and she became one of these vain princesses. One of these gold digging whores. But she wasn't a real human. She was a noid. She was his noid. And if she was going to act like she was too good for him then he' d just have to find her and remind her of what she really was. A toy he never should have created.

Mal began thinking again about how he would find Fran as he waited outside the chief medico-engineers office for his meeting. He knew what the meeting was about. He was going to be reinstated. He should have been ecstatic, but all he could feel was the cold, white lightning bolts of hatred and anger that crackled in his chest. He could feel the storm spreading throughout his body. He' d let everything with Fran go on too long and that was why he had fallen prey to Lyla' s enchantments. His guard had been brought down by his troubles with Fran. But it was time to destroy her and move on with his life.

She was holding him back. She had always been holding him back. She was a distraction and he didn't need her anymore. 159

"Dr. Arodnap? Please, come in ." The chief medico-engineer stood at the door of her office looking impatient. How long had she been standing there? He hadn't even noticed the door open.

"Please, sit down." She was a frumpy woman. Short and pudgy with a dull hued bowl cut and muddy brown eyes. For the life of him, Mal couldn't remember her name.

He should have looked at the plaque on her door when he walked in.

Dr. Arodnap, I'm not going to draw this out. You know that you've been back on a trial basis after your suspension. We've been monitoring your performance closely since you've been back to determine ifyou're capable of handling the pressure of this career."

Mal wasn't really paying attention. He was trying desperately to remember her name. Could he get away with not addressing her at all?

"Since you've been back your work has been decent, but you've clearly been distracted and your superiors report that you've been disinterested, unengaged, and unwilling to reach out for advice or assistance of any kind."

What had she just said?

"And now you have returned from an extended absence during which you claimed to have been ill, but it is clear you've been in some sort of fist fight. You have a black eye and your hand is obviously injured, which you should have reported so that we could reassign your surgeries. It is dangerous and negligent to operate on patients with an 160 injured hand. Dr. Doddsen reports that your hand was shaking during a replacement yesterday and that you preceded with the replacement despite the risk this put your patient at. I'm sorry, Dr. Arodnap, but this is unacceptable. Medico-engineering is an extremely stressful field in which many people struggle to find success. The lives of our patients are in our hands and there is no room for error. It is our responsibility to give them our best everyday. We feel that medico-engineering may not be the right career for you and we are going to have to let you go. An HR representative is outside. I'm going to ask him to come in and speak with you about your severance. Good luck in your future endeavors, Dr. Arodnap."

Mal ' s stomach shot up into his ribcage like a runaway parade balloon. A buzzing drowned out the sound of the chief medico-engineer' s departure and the entrance of the

HR representative. He felt like he was full of a swarm of bees. A swarm of bees and a runaway parade balloon. And probably a few agitated feral cats as well. What was happening? Was he about to throw up? Was he having a heart attack?

"Please sign the eDoc, Mr. Arodnap."

Mal looked up. The HR representative was staring at him patiently.

"Doctor. It' s Dr. Arodnap."

"Of course." The man was looking at him in a strange way. Was it pity? "I've sent you the eDoc to sign, Dr. Arodnap. Please sign it now and send it back to me." 161

Mal unfocused his eyes and opened the eDoc on his corneal screen. He focused to sign it and then sent it back with a distracted and absent thought of"reply." What had he just signed?

"You just signed a notice of termination." A soft voice responded in his head.

"Did you mean to sign this eDoc? If not please send a "fraud" thought now and the email will be recalled."

Mal switched back to vision mode.

"Is there someone we can call for you, Dr. Arodnap?" The HR representative was still looking at him with that same pitying expression.

"No." Mal got up and left the office. He drifted down the hallway and crossed through OCD janitor noid's path, sending the machine into a screeching meltdown. Not that Mal really heard the noid's frantic wails. He gathered his things from his locker absently, unaware of any of his actions, and called an AutoRyd horne.

The overwhelming quiet of his house brought him back to reality. How had he gotten horne, he wondered. He didn't remember the ride back. He walked to the living room and lay face down on the carpet. Helplessly he dug for anti-depressants. He didn't care how many. He took whatever he grabbed. He put Seinfeld on his corneal screen and hoped he' d taken too many pills.

* 162

For two weeks Mal didn't move from his living room floor. He got up only for alcohol, to collect very rare orders of take out from delivery drones, and to use the bathroom. He lost ten pounds, according to the body monitor in his phone chip. He ignored his mothers calls. He sent her one message, telling her he'd gone on another yoga retreat, just to keep her from showing up at his door.

At one point he rebuilt his Rube Goldberg suicide device, but he lost the energy when it came time to set up the doves, and so he never went through with it. What was the point? Would being dead be any different than being alive?

A week after that, in his drunken, anti-depressant addled stupor, he ordered 500 lizards. When he opened the package they escaped everywhere and now the walls and lights of his home were gecko speckled. Sometimes the lizards would clump up on top of him when he passed out, so he' d wake up confused and hungover and covered in lizards.

He named them all Taylor. He began buying crickets for them and so sometimes he would wake up confused and hungover and covered in lizards and crickets. The days blurred together.

It slowly began to slip back into Mal's consciousness, during the fleeting moments that he was actually conscious, that Fran was the root of his failure with Lyla.

She had distracted him so much that he had asked out a woman completely undeserving of his affections. But she hadn't just distracted him in love. She'd also distracted him from his work. All the ni ghts he had spent reprogramming her because she couldn't just stay in the house, because she couldn't stop asking questions, because she couldn't stop 163 creating problems. How many nights of sleep had he lost on her? How may days had he gone into work tired and stressed because of her obsessive curiosities? If she hadn't constantly tried his patience and tested his sanity, would he still be a medico-engineer?

How different would his life be if he'd never created her?

These questions swirled across the surface of Mal's mind like oil spilled over water. He thought about everything that had happened in the last year, everything that

Fran had done to him, and the desire to find her and deactivate her swelled until, one evening, he finally lifted himself off his floor and took a shower.

It was time for him to formulate a plan. After he'd gotten himself cleaned up and eaten an actual meal he dropped into a bean bag and instructed Niles to bring up a map of

San Francisco on the smart wall . He had Niles circle Asteria and the hotel Fran had stayed in. He also traced the route he had chased her along before she escaped. The building she'd gone into was a nursing home. Mal did some research on the place and discovered that he'd been banging on the door of the back entrance. Fran could have just used the building as a pass through and fled out the front door. The back of Mal' s neck flushed hot. She could be anywhere. He screamed and flopped back against the bean bag, flailing his arms.

He took a few deep breaths and then instructed Niles to draw boundaries around each of the city's neighborhoods. He had time. He had no job and nowhere to be.

He would find her no matter how long it took. Even if he had to search for her one neighborhood at a time. 164

He'd lost her Downtown, so he' d start there. For the next two weeks he would scour every block. He'd walk up and down every street and go into every business to ask if anyone had seen Fran. If he didn't find her, he'd go to the Financial District. After that

Telegraph Hill and North Beach, Russian Hill and Nob Hill, and on and on until he found her. He instructed Niles to pull up the street view and began planning his route. 165

Chapter 6

Something hard and fire-engine red cracked across my forehead and I winced and cried out. What had hit me was, in fact, a fire engine. A toy fire engine that had been intentionally hurled at me by the four-year-old creature that was now cackling like a demon at my pain. The creature's name was Beel, but I'd taken to just calling him The

Creature in my head. I'd been The Creature' s nanny for three weeks now. Three horrible fucking weeks.

It was nothing like the show The Nanny. The Creature did not love me like his own parent. He didn't even like me. I was fairly certain he was trying to kill me. And it was way more work. I had to walk him to preschool and pick him up and walk him home and he bit my hand the whole way, but ifl let go he'd make a run for it. I had to prepare meals for him and tidy up the kitchen after and read to him and play with him and somehow keep him from destroying the house, which seemed to be his only desire in life.

He screamed and kicked and peed his pants and I had to deal with it all. There was no butler to help out. There was no rich, handsome father for me to fall in love with because

The Creature didn't even have a father. Just two mothers. And they seemed pretty into one another. Not that I was looking for a rich, handsome father to fall in love with. Or anyone to fall in love with, for that matter. But the differences between this job and the job Fran Fine had were seemingly never ending. Television was not like real life at all, apparently. 166

But it was worth it. It had all been worth it when I'd gotten my first paycheck and

I'd been able to give Bummer and Andy rent. I'd even had a little money left over to buy food, which was nice since the only meals I'd been getting were when I ate breakfast and lunch with The Creature. And I was getting a bit burnt out on duck nuggets. For a few days I'd experimented with not eating at all. Ifl wasn't human did I really need to eat?

The answer had turned out to be yes. It seemed the synth organs Mal used to create me needed at least a little bit of fuel to run . After just one day of not eating, I started to feel that same particular kind of tired, that same stabbing pain in my stomach, that I'd felt when I'd woken up in Mal's bed with no idea how I'd gotten there. That same feeling I'd felt when I'd met Mal for the first time. That feeling I'd at first thought was part of being in love, but now realized was simply hunger pain.

I tried not to think bout how long Mal had spent tinkering with my mind and not feeding me. I tried not to think about how many times I'd felt that intense hunger pain.

My organs needed fuel to run, but I knew from what I'd read that they would never rot.

How long could my body go without food? Could he have spent weeks messing with my mind? I took a deep breath and pushed the questions from my head.

The Creature was still throwing things, but now at the walls.

"Beel !" I called out in my sternest nanny voice. "You know we don't throw things." I'd heard his mothers talk to him like this, saying "we" when they really meant

"you." It seemed to work when they did it, but it only worked about half the time when I 167 tried it. I resorted to my fool proof method. I pulled a piece of candy from the candy jar his mothers kept on the counter out of his reach.

"I guess I'm the only one who gets a piece of candy today. Bee! cant have one because he's doing things he knows he shouldn't be doing."

The word "candy" caught his attention and his eyes locked onto me. I began unwrapping the treat slowly. Why was it you had to trick children in order to get them to act like decent human beings? Were all children this awful? I found myself wondering if

Mal had created me without any sort of maternal instinct programming, if perhaps I couldn't have children and so he had decided that I did not need the ability to mother.

*

The best part of my day was the part where I got home. It was always nice to chat with Andy and Bummer if they were around when I got in. I liked them and I liked spending time with them. But what I really loved was going into my room and putting on my pajamas. As soon as I shut the door to my room I'd stand still for a moment, sigh loudly, and then get to work removing my shoes, my pants or tights, my dress or top, and then finally and most importantly, my bra. I'd throw on my soft flannel and my fleece leggings. I'd lock the door and take off my wig, remove my eye make up and the latex covering my face. Then I'd curl up with one of the books I'd bought or borrowed.

I didn't have a bed yet, just the spare pillows and blankets Andy and Bummer had loaned me spread out on the carpet. But it was my room. I paid for it with money I'd 168 earned and it was no one's but mine. I could do anything I wanted in it. I felt safe when I was in it. No one could find me there. It was a kind of sanctuary and I was grateful for it.

The only difficult part of my new living situation was hiding my real face from

Andy and Bummer. It was helpful that my room was directly across the hall from the bathroom, so I could slip my wig on and dart into the shower with my head down without too much trouble. I'd been showering late at night as well, to try to avoid a chance encounter. But a few times they' d asked me if I wanted to share their dinner after I'd already taken off the latex and I was forced to make an excuse through the door. I felt guilty for this. Sometimes I was kept up at night by feelings of guilt and fear that they must think of me as rude and ungrateful. The worry climbed around in my body like a hungry dragon, shuddering it's scales against my heart and breathing fire into my belly.

On those nights I tossed and turned.

After such a night, it was particularly difficult to put up with The Creature' s headache inducing behavior. That day, he'd thrown a truly impressive tantrum when I made the apparent mistake of telling him that orange juice was, in fact, made from oranges. This, for reasons he was not able to articulate, was wholly unacceptable. He flung himself onto the floor and screamed like I had slit open his body and was using his guts to divine my future. For a full hour he sopped the carpet with snot and spit and tears as he shrieked. He kicked his feet and flailed his arms so furiously I couldn't even get close to him without taking a blow. Eventually I gave up trying to deal with him and just had their house, Lucy, put on one of the obnoxiously cheerful and repetitive shows he 169 liked in the hopes it would distract him from the trauma of the knowledge that orange juice came from oranges.

I felt exhausted as I walked home. The sun was just beginning to set and the red orange light made the gold of the city shine especially bright. A touch of warmth caressed my cheeks as I passed through one of the shimmering rays. Even on days like this, I couldn't help but appreciate the beauty of my new home. I took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, trying to send the tension of the day away on that puff of air. A man on the street wearing a strange outfit made eye contact with me and I smiled.

"Hit How's it going?"

I had been expecting him to say anything and for a second I wasn't sure he was talking to me. I couldn't help but stare at his bizarre clothing. He wore a long olive green trench coat and baggy, paint-stained pants that bunched at the ankles, and shoes that I generally only associated with people who were on their way to the gym. I had never seen anyone wear anything like this and yet there was a nagging feeling of familiarity about it. I shuffled through my memories of clothing, but my search for something similar didn't yield any real results, with the exception of the gym shoes. It was something subtler.

"Do you care about people?" This was also unexpected.

"What?" 170

"Do you care about people," he repeated. "Do you want life to be better for everyone?"

"Well ... yeah ... I guess so." I tried to sort out where this conversation could be going, but like the clothing, I could find no reference point for anything the man was saymg.

''I'm part of a group that meets and discusses ways we can improve the lives of people in this city and other cities all over the world. Can I tell you a little bit about it?"

"Oh ... sure ... " I didn't really want him to tell me about it. I wanted to go home and take off my wig and eat the bag of gummy snacks I'd stolen from The Creature.

"Awesome! My name is Kyle! What's your name?"

"Urn, Cora. My name is Cora."

"Cool! So Cora, I know you say you're interested in helping people and that's what we do in our group! We're really more of a community than a group." He laughed.

"And sometimes our meetings feel more like social gatherings than meetings! There's always great food, I don't know who we have catering those things!" He laughed again.

"Do you like meeting new people with the same compassionate interests as yourself,

Cora?"

"I - I don't know. I guess so."

"You should really come to one of our meetings! It' s a great way to meet some awesome people. Are you new to the city?" 171

"Yeah."

"Oh you definitely need to come then! It's a great way to get involved in your community and to meet people! Let me give you the information for our meeting tonight!

And I'll put you on our guest list! "

Kyle extracted a board with a piece of paper attached to it from his bag.

"I just need you to sign here and put your email down so I can get you on the list! "

He handed it to me. I'd never seen anything like it in real life. People used paper in the shows I'd watched with Mal, but I had never actually encountered it before. I ran my fingertips lightly over it. I wanted to take off my gloves so I could explore the texture of it. Kyle held out what I knew to be a pen. He pressed the top of it and it made a soft and satisfying click.

"You use it like a stylus," he explained with a smile.

The pen slid over the paper like a dragonfly gliding across a breeze. It was nothing like using a stylus. "Cora" spilled out of the pen in shining liquid black like so many beetles in a line.

He reached into the tattered bag he wore over his shoulder and pulled out another piece of paper. Across the top in big, pink block letters it read, "DO YOU CARE

ABOUT PEOPLE?" And below that in smaller, more friendly lettering, "Come to our meet and greet! Get to know like-minded, compassionate people in your community! 172

Together we can build a FUNdation for the future!" Beneath that it listed a date and time and an address not far from my apartment.

"Awesome! Well I can't wait to see you tonight, Cora! It's going to be a great time!"

I resumed my walk home, still slightly entranced by the pen and paper. Where had he gotten them? And should I really go to that meeting tonight? I wanted to be a part of my community. And I did wa{lt to help people, though I wasn't sure in what way Kyle's group helped people. Did they provide some sort of service? Now that I thought about it he hadn't really said much about what the meeting was actually for. Maybe he'd forgotten to mention it? I thought back to the way he'd laughed in certain moments, almost punctuating what he was saying with laughs. It all seemed sort of rehearsed.

I unlocked my front door. The apartment was dark and quiet. I knew Andy had class until ten, but I wondered where Bummer was. Usually he just liked to smoke weed in his bedroom and watch cartoons. No light was filtering under his door. I sat down on the couch. I'd never had the apartment all to myselfbefore. It was sort of lonely. There was something comforting about the chattering voices that poured out ofBummer's room and the flickering colored light of hi s smart wall that danced like fairies along the carpet at his door. Even if he never emerged and we didn't speak at all, I knew he was there and that I was not alone.

I went and grabbed my iTablet from my room and put on some music. Andy had introduced me to a new band, Flying Chaucer, who had mostly written songs about aliens 173 from various planets coming to earth. Andy was obsessed with their theremin player, who she referred to reverently as the greatest musician of the Artificial Age. I liked that it was different than anything I'd listened to with Mal. His music preferences had been so intense and stressful. But this was fluid and stirring. Bummer simply called it "trippy." I turned the volume up and swayed in circles around the living room and kitchen like a weirdo. Maybe having the house to myself wasn't all bad.

Eventually I decided to go to the meeting Kyle had given me the flyer for. I wanted to meet some people, make more friends, and this meeting sounded like a good way to do that. I combed my wig out and put on my nicest coat, a cocktail length black wool princess coat with a wide faux fur collar and satin brocade. I paired it with my red gloves for a pop of color.

It was chilly as I walked toward the building where the meetings were held. Fog swirled over the streets, beading the rain collection pipes with dew. The moon was full and bright and cast an eerie blue glow over everything, making the solar paint shimmer.

The heals of my boots echoed damply across the sidewalk and I couldn't help but imagine I was in a monster movie, with some dark creature stalking me from the hazy shadows. I shook a shiver down my spine.

The building the flyer directed me to was run down, with pealing paint and a hazardous looking fire escape. Several pigeons fluttered around a lit window, almost as if they were watching what was going on within. I hurried inside. It was dark in the building, with only a few dim bulbs providing assistance. I climbed a set of stairs with 174

wrinkled and stained navy blue carpeting, that were somehow even more treacherous

than the fire escape. I entered a hallway that was lined with pictures, but the pictures

weren't moving. The stillness seemed to amplify the silence of the dust choked hallway.

A paper sign taped to one of the walls said in the same overwhelming pink letters as the

flyer, "DID YOU TALK WITH SARAH OR KYLE? GO LEFT FOR THE

MEETING!"

I pushed through a creaking, faded door. A few nervous looking people in normal

clothes hovered near a table covered in unappetizing snacks, talking to excited people all

dressed in one of two outfits. From what I could tell, the men were all wearing the same

outfit Kyle had been wearing when I'd met him on the street. The women were dressed just as strangely, in black tank tops and baggy black pants with a seemingly unnecessary

amount of pockets. They also all wore their hair in ponytails. One of these women

approached me.

"Hi! Welcome! We' re so glad you could make it! "

"Hi . Urn . Thanks for having me."

"Please help yourself to some snacks! What's your name?"

"Cora?'' I didn't know why it came out as a question. My hands felt clammy as I

held one out to shake.

"Welcome, Cora! I'm Sarah!" She shook my hand wildly, gyrating my whole

arm . 175

"Oh. Like the sign. Neat." I'd never said neat before in my life, but Andy said it constantly.

She laughed and led me toward the table of snacks. I took a cookie to be polite and to have something to do with my hands.

"So do you live around here, Cora?''

"Urn, yeah, I live just a few blocks from here actually. Over on Eddy."

"Great! I think it's so great that you' re here and you want to help your community!"

"Yeah .. . how exactly do you guys do that? Help the community, I mean?''

"Well we'll get into it more in the meeting, but basically we just believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to find fulfilling work. But, as I'm sure you know, unemployment rates here in San Francisco, and throughout the country, are high. So we're working to combat that! "

"Oh. Ok. That sounds good."

I didn't really have much to say in response. I knew basically nothing about unemployment. When I'd been talking to Dem about my identification issues, she'd briefly mentioned something about unemployment. What was it she' d told me?

Something about the basic living wage being too meager? I didn't feel like pulling the memory. Maybe I could just say that? 176

"The basic living wage is too meager."

"Exactly! That's exactly right, Cora! And really we shouldn't even have to have a basic living wage. We never used to have one and people got along just fine! They were able to work to make a living! "

"But now they can't? Because of the unemployment?"

"Exactly! You're going to fit in just fine in our group. You've really got the right priorities for this kind of work." She winked at me conspiratorially.

"Oh. Neat. Thanks."

Someone at the front of the room called out to the strangely dressed men and women.

"Connorians! Please come gather for the start of the meeting!"

Sarah gave me a quick smile and made her way toward the front. I chose a cracked plastic chair a few seats down from a small, balding man in ill-fitting clothes. He smiled meekly at me and I returned a slightly less meek smile. I was beginning to feel like I'd made a good choice in coming. Sarah had seemed nice and, while I knew virtually nothing about unemployment, it seemed like a cause I could become interested in if it helped me make some more friends. And what she' d said about people being able to work to make a living seemed to make a kind of sense. She certainly appeared to know what she was talking about anyway. 177

One of the Connorians stepped forward to begin the meeting. I wondered what the name meant; Connorians. Did it have to do with some specific policy?

"Hi everyone! Thanks for coming tonight! We're excited to see so many new faces! My name is Kyle and I'm going to be leading the meeting!"

I frowned. This guy' s name was Kyle too? That seemed like an odd coincidence.

The tiny hairs on my arms prickled slightly against the fabric of my gloves and the sleeves of my dress. I swept my eyes over the group behind this Kyle. Though they were all dressed exactly alike, one woman' s face, toward the back, caught my attention. She looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't place her. I stared for a moment at her wide brown eyes and her golden cheeks. Her hair was nearly the same shade as her skin. Where had I seen her before?

"If you don't already know, we' re essentially a group dedicated to improving the lives of the people in our communities. We have chapters throughout the U.S. and one of the things we hope to do is lower the unemployment rate! We believe everyone deserves jobs!"

The meek man clapped meekly. The rest of us gave a few uncertain claps out of obligation.

"For this first meeting though, we really just want to give everyone time to get to know one another! So please enjoy some cookies and refreshments and let's all just mingle! Sound good?" 178

The meek man clapped again, and again the rest of us followed suit. The group members dispersed, spreading themselves along the snack table and seeping between the chairs. I stood, unsure of what to do or who to talk to.

"Excuse me?" Someone tapped on my shoulder.

I turned around and found myself face to face with the meek man. He cleared his throat and stared past me, limply lifting his index finger to point to a spot beyond my right hip. After a moment I realized I was trapping him in the row of chairs.

"Oh. Oh! Sorry!" I walked to the end of the row and stepped out.

"No no its fine! Sorry, I don't mean to bother you!"

"No! You' re not bothering me at all! I'm sorry I was the one blocking the way!"

We apologized back and forth a few more times before exchanging names and shaking hands. I realized as I told him my name that I'd already forgotten his. Shit. I hoped I wouldn't need to use it.

"So ... " he laughed nervously, "how did you find out about this?"

"Oh, uh, I got a flyer from a guy on the street. Named Kyle. But not that Kyle." I pointed to the guy who'd started the meeting.

"Oh yeah I got stopped by Sarah."

"Oh I met her! She seemed nice." 179

"Yeah."

"Everyone seems nice ... It seems like a good cause?"

"Yeah I think so too. Jobs are important."

"Yes. Very important."

We stared at one another.

"Well ... I guess I'll ... "

"Do you think you'll come to the next one?" he asked at the same moment.

"Oh! Sorry I didn't mean to -" he sputtered.

"No no I'm sorry! I interrupted you! "

We apologized back and forth again until I gave up. We settled into another awkward pause. How could I politely get away?

"So, do you?".

What was he talking about? "Do I what?"

"Sorry! Do you think you'll come to the next meeting?

"Oh! Urn, I don't know. Maybe. Do you?'

"Yeah. You know, it's a good cause and - and I care about the community ... " 180

"Yeah, that's true. Yeah ." We were saying yeah a lot. How many times had we said yeah? It was going to bug me now.

"Yeah'' He chuckled awkwardly "I guess I ' care about people."' He sort of sang the last part.

"What?"

"You know ... the flyer ... " His cheeks and neck flushed pink.

"Oh . Right. Yeah." Goddamnit.

Kyle appeared like a life raft at my shoulder.

"How' s it going over here! Looks like you two are hitting it off! " Meek Man' s neck shifted from pink to red. "That's great! An important part of the work we do isn 't just about the community out there," he gestured widely, "its about nurturing our community in here too! We're going to do better work for the people in our community if we work together, if we support each other and foster our human connection. We've got to stick together." His tone shifted from bright and cheery to serious. I shifted my weight toward Meek Man and caught his eye.

"We care about people," he offered to Kyle. The sparkle of a laugh glinted in his eyes and I looked away quickly.

"EXACTLY! You guys really should come to our next meeting. I think you're going to be a great addition to our cause! " The cheery tone had returned. "We'll see you at the next one, right?" 181

"Yeah. I'd like to come."

They looked at me. "Oh ... yeah. Yeah I'll come to the next meeting."

"Awesome!"

I stayed for another half hour. Sarah eventually joined Kyle, Meek Man, and me, and we had the same conversation over again about how Meek Man and I would be a good ' addition to the cause.'

When I got home Andy was sprawled across the couch. He eyes were out of focus, occasionally flicking up, so I knew she was entrenched in ZoetroPics, watching videos of her friends, slide by slide.

"Ugh he would." She murmured.

"Hey, Andy !" I set my keys on the counter and her eyes shot into focus ."Sucked into ZoetroPics?"

"Oh hey! " She laughed. "Yeah I was watching my idiot friend try to fit as many peppercorns in his mouth as possible. Have you heard about this?"

"What? No! Why would anyone want to do that?"

"It's this stupid new thing people are posting videos of themselves doing. It never goes well. It's mostly just teenagers doing it, but this friend is a total liken."

"Liken?" 182

"Yeah like he's desperate for likes, you know? He clings to likes? You've never heard that term?"

"No." I shook my head.

Andy squinted at me for a moment. "You're not really techy are you? You're not on like, any form of social media."

"No. I guess not. I don't even have a phone chip."

Her eyes grew to the size of bagels. "Really?"

"Yeah. I just use my iTablet for everything." I laughed to try to cover the heat spreading across my skin.

"Oh I just thought you carried one of those because you were an artist! That's cool though. It's good to get off the grid a bit. I need to work on not disappearing into my screen. It's not good for my attention span, you know?"

"I don't know ... I might like to be a little bit more connected."

"Do you want to make a ZoetroPics? The app is probably available for iTablets."

She smiled. "We could send each other dumb videos when we're bored at work."

"Ok that sounds fun! Let me throw my stuff in my room!"

I hurried to the back of the apartment and dropped my stuff on the floor. From the living room Andy shouted that she' d get us beers and put on some music and a moment 183 later Flying Chaucer was echoing down the hallway. I kicked off my shoes and dug my iTablet out of my gigantic purse.

I flopped onto the couch next to Andy and she bounced slightly. She was the only person beside The Creature who ever made me feel big. I woke the device up and downloaded the app.

"What are you going to make your handle? Like are you into just doing your name or do you like, want to do something clever? Like a pun or something?"

"My handle?"

"Haha I forget how untechy you really are. It's the name you' ll go by on the account."

"Oh. I don 't know. What' s yours?"

"Oh my god I need to change mine it's so embarrassing. It's 'Andelirious' I created it when I used to party a lot more." She laughed.

"I like that. Maybe I want to do something clever too. Like .. . "

"Coragi ous?''

I laughed this time. "No, that's awful! What about An cora?"

"I don't get it. "

"Like angora?" 184

"As your friend and roommate I cannot let you make Ancora your handle. What about Corapture?"

"That's worse than Ancora!"

Andy howled and kicked her feet and beer nearly shot out my nose, which only caused her to laugh harder. We went back and forth making puns out of my name and drinking for what felt like hours.

"Ok ok, what about this," she lifted her chest high and spread her arms grandly,

"Flora!"

"Flora?"

"Yeah you said you really like plants, right? You saved that pathetic tree Bummer left to die on the counter over there. It's actually starting to look like it might not be completely dead." She pointed to the tree on the counter and I had to admit that it did look very pathetic. But less pathetic than it had a couple weeks ago.

"Flora is perfect''

"Neat!"

I typed it in and it turned red.

"Oh fuck it's taken. What year were you born? We could just put that at the end and see if it's available."

"Urn ... " 185

"Or if you have a lucky number or something ... "

"Twenty-two! It- it's my lucky number." It was the first thing that came to my mind. I needed to memorize Cora's - my - birthdate.

She laughed. "Well yeah I figured it wasn't the year you were born."

I typed in Flora22 and it turned green.

"Perfect' Ok now you need a profile pic!"

"Oh .. . I don't have any pictures."

"What do you mean?''

I froze. Was it weird to not have pictures? "Urn ... " My throat felt dry. I reached for my beer and took a long sip. "Mal ... my ex .. . he didn't like for me to take pictures.

And then ... you know .. . the botched synth skin ... " I couldn't stop looking at my knees. I knew hidden just under the fabric of my leggings there was a long scar twisting over my thigh and down the back of my calf

Andy took my hand gently. "You always look great. You look so put together all the time. I wish I could have your style. I don't know how you find time for it. Let's just take a quick pic together right now? We can do a cheers?" She held up her beer and jiggled it. I lifted mine too.

Andy opened the camera on my iTablet and flipped it to face us. She held her beer close in front of her chest and leaned her head toward me, grinning so big I could see all 186

of her teeth. I leaned into her too, letting my head touch hers, and put my arm around her

back. I found myself smiling as big as she did. I nudged my beer against hers.

"Wait can you hit the button, I can't do it while I'm holding it!"

We laughed, rearranged, and took a picture.

I stared at the screen. I watched Andy and myself tap beers together, scrunch our

faces up into even bigger smiles, squeeze each other a little bit tighter. I'd never seen a

picture of myself before. Never seen myself move or laugh or even smile genuinely. I

looked like everyone else. Just like everyone else I'd ever seen move and laugh and

smile. For a moment I forgot I wasn't human. I forgot I wasn't just a thing Mal made to

play with and torture like a child pulling the legs off a bug.

"I thought about killing him once." I hadn't meant to whisper it.

"What?"

"Mal. I thought about killing him. I used to garden a lot. It was the only thing he

ever let me do. And I ordered all of these plants that can be used to make poisons. I'd

sneak out of our room at night while he slept and spend hours looking up different plants

and where they came from and what they could be used for. Mal didn't like for me to use the iTablet too much. He didn't like when I asked questions. So I had to hide it from him.

And then one night I came across a plant that was used to make all of these different

poisons that had killed all of these famous people throughout history, and I don't know why but I just ... bought it. And I found more poisonous plants and bought more of them. 187

I don't think I ever really would have done it, but I think that's why I kept buying the plants. I think I wanted to kill him."

I could feel Andy staring at me, but I kept my eyes on the photo of us.

"It sounds like he was really abusive."

"Yeah."

It stung, to think about him. I couldn't help but remember his smile when he sprang into my mind. It was always the same. Whenever my thoughts turned to him the same image filled my head, taking up all of me. Mal lying in bed, facing me, head on the pillow, so close his breath warmed my lips. His perfect mouth curved into the softest smile. His eyes fiery and gentle with the passion and intimacy of the moment. His skin awash with love. Love for me. He loved me so much in that moment. But I knew he'd programmed me to be overloaded by that image of love whenever I thought of him. So whenever it came I forced myself to remember that morning when I'd woken up in our bed with no idea how I'd gotten there.

We were in the kitchen. He' d come home from work and we were catching up. I was telling him about the changes I'd made to the garden. His eyes had gone out of focus and I could see him looking at something on his corneal screen. I knew he wasn't paying attention, but that was nothing new. He' d been paying less and less attention to me when

I spoke. I remembered I was just beginning to tell him about my plans to order delphinium and suddenly his eyes shot back into focus and he looked panicked, terrified.

And then I woke up. I woke up in our bed. I woke up sore and frightened and confused to 188 a whole wardrobe of beautiful new clothes and a love note that any other time would have swallowed me up in its romance. But beneath the sweet words that note felt sinister and it swallowed me up like a monster instead.

I'd shivered in my pajamas, pajamas that I had not been wearing when we stood in the kitchen. I felt like I was being watched. I climbed into the shower and cried, trying to make myself as small as possible, sifting through my memories, trying to find what was lost. But I knew it was gone. Mal had done something to me. He' d reprogrammed me and I had no idea why but my muscles felt bruised beneath my skin. I already knew at that point that he hadn't been completely honest with me about the outside world. I'd already begun watching the old woman on the other side of the fence. I'd already starting reading medical journals. But for the first time, on the floor of the shower, unable to get warm, that was the first time I was afraid of Mal.

"What made you decide to finally leave him?"

"I can't remember." 189

Chapter 7

Mal hated parrots. He never used to hate parrots, but now he really fucking hated parrots. Telegraph Hill was crawling with the screeching little sky rats. Why would anyone choose to live here? And there were so many stairs! Mal had never walked this much in his entire life. You could hardly get an AutoRyd up here. He felt like he was in the damn jungle.

He heard voices so he put his phone chip into binocular mode. The transition was a bit nauseating but if it was Fran he didn't want her to see him and run, so he'd hidden farther from the path in a tree. This may have been a mistake in hindsight, because the parrots did not seem to appreciate his presence.

He placed his hands in circles around his eyes to block out everything in his periphery and focused on the path as the voices drew nearer. A fat man and woman in gym clothes came down the steps holding hands. They looked like idiots. What were they doing wandering around in gym clothes? Did they really think walking through this bird infested hellhole was going make them less blubbery? Mal switched back out of vision mode so he didn't have to look at them anymore. He considered shouting "Go to a gym!" but before he could decide if he actually wanted to do it or not a parrot bit his arm and he was distracted by the searing pain. He flailed an arm at the vicious beast and it squawked loudly as it departed.

He only had three more days of patrolling this neighborhood before he could move on. It had been nearly six weeks since he'd lost Fran in Union Square and he had 190 nothing to show for it. He' d shown a picture he'd drawn of her in cafes and restaurants, he'd hid in bushes and trees watching high foot traffic areas, he'd stopped strangers on the street. Nothing. He'd been asked to leave two different hotels already for smashing the furniture in his rooms. He was losing patience. On that nights that he didn't stay up and stalk the streets, he drank and daydreamed about tearing Fran apart piece by piece, just as he'd built her.

He would start by removing her heart, since she' d broken his. Then her eyes. He woul smash the computer that acted as her brain with a hammer and yank out every last synth organ. When he' d reduced her to nothing more than a titanium skeleton and mechanical organ, he'd throw her in a bag and take her to a recycling center. He' d drink a bottle of Blue Ivy Tequila and watch as the she was crushed into scrap metal. Then, he' d be free. He could find a new job and get his life back together. He could start fresh. On the nights Mal indulged in these fantasies he usually ended up getting into a bar fight.

A parrot shat on his shoulder. Mal sighed and wondered if he should just give up and move on to North Beach. He climbed down from the tree. His limbs were stiff from being cramped amongst the branches all afternoon. He pissed on the tree has a final goodbye to the parrots and made his way down the path. There were better bars in North

Beach anyway. And better food. Fran would have to be insane to want to live in this pseudo-tropical nightmare. 191

Chapter 8

"It's beautiful."

To celebrate two months of living together, Andy and Bummer had taken me to

Coit Tower at the top of Telegraph Hill.

"Yeah, like a hundred years ago someone let a bunch of parrots go and they bred like crazy," Bummer explained as we watched a small flock of the birds chatter at one another in the branches of a tree. "I like to come here sometimes, smoke, watch 'em do their bird stuff Calms me down."

I nodded. I like spending time with Bummer. He was like a slow wave rolling across the sand. Steady. I still sometimes had to fight moments of fear when I was out in the world. In big crowds I still felt the inklings of terror that crept up from the back of my mind. I knew Mal had hard wired them into me, and I tried to erase them when they came up, but sometimes they were too quick and sneaky, or he'd embedded them in multiple lines of code so that they were not so easily dismissed. When something new caught me off guard, acid would rise in my throat and I'd feel dizzy for a moment. But if Bummer or

Andy was with me it wasn' t as bad. They were like anchors to the person I was trying to become, holding me down so that I didn't get sucked back up into who Mal had tried to make me.

Bummer pulled out a small iTablet and began to sketch the birds. Andy and I watched over his shoulders and sipped our coffee. Recently Andy had introduced me to a place that made unbelievably good iced coconut mochas. It was incredible to me how 192 familiar both she and Bummer were with our neighborhood. Everywhere they went they seemed to know people. They knew the people who worked in the coffee shop and in every bar and restaurant. They knew where to get the best of everything too. They'd introduced me to "the best banh mi in the Tenderloin" last week and I hadn't even had the worst banh mi . I had no idea what it was going to be. For all I knew we were about to get massages. But they were sandwiches and they were incredible and I'd eaten one everyday since, though I didn't tell either Andy or Bummer that for fear of looking like a

"square." Which I'd learned was someone who was not neat.

''I'm going to scout ahead! " Andy bounced to her feet and began wandering down a path. She was too energetic for sitting and watching birds.

"How' s work going?" I asked Bummer. He worked at Black Cat, a jazz lounge near our house, and he'd just been promoted to manager. It was hard to tell how he felt about this though because of his general reticence.

"It' s alright."

I waited. Sometimes ifl gave him time he said more.

"I'm not sure how much I like being manager. .. "

"How come?''

"It's so much ... managing."

"I've heard it can be like that," I offered with a smile. 193

"It's fine. It's just like, I don't want to decide who gets to take a holiday off, you know? Like no matter what I choose somebody's going to be mad at me. I don't like being the bad guy. I like being the ... I don't know, the not there at all guy."

"We could switch jobs ifyou' d like."

"Creature is still a creature, huh?"

"I don't have much hope he'll change."

"Maybe when he' s in his 30' s."

"Oh someone will definitely kill him before he gets that old."

Bummer laughed. "Well what's he do that's so bad?'

"Last week, while I was cooking his lunch, he pooped his pants and then took them off and put them in my purse."

Bummer began laughing harder than I'd ever seen anyone laugh. His eyes pinched tight and welled with tears and he nearly dropped his iTablet.

"Holy shit that's so gross! What did you do?!"

"Well I strongly considered quitting!" Now I was laughing too. I couldn't help it.

Tears began to run down the sides of my cheeks too.

"So I'm guessing you don't want to be a nanny forever then? What do you want to do next?" Bummer asked after our laughter subsided. 194

I'd never thought of this. But Bummer was right. I didn't want to be a nanny forever. It was not a fun job. But I didn't really know what else was out there.

"I don't know. I guess I've never really thought about it."

"Well, what do you like doing?"

"Well. .. I like gardening ... and picking out my outfits in the morning ... Maybe I could do something in fashion. Like Rachel."

"Who?"

"Oh ... this character on this old show. I don't know I guess I identify with her.

She moved to the city to get away from a man she didn't love, got into fashion, made a life for herself"

"Hm. Well, you could try to get a job in fashion. You might need to go to school for it though."

"Did you go to school?" I watched as he drew the delicate curve of the parrot's beak. His movements were as even and sure as his voice.

"Bartending school. I tried to go to school for a couple other things before that but

I was awful at it."

"Why aren't bartenders noids?" The thought had just occurred to me. If waiters were noids, why weren't bartenders? It didn't make any sense. Bummer chuckled. 195

"Well back when service jobs first started being replaced with noids they tried to replace bartenders, but people practically rioted."

"I don't understand. What's the difference between having your coffee made by a noid and having your cocktail made by a noid?"

"Nothing. But people don't tell all their problems to noidistas. Can't have noids mixing drinks and acting as therapists for the down and out. People don' t trust noids.

Especially not the down and out."

I tugged my veil a little lower over my cheek. What would Bummer think of me if he knew who I was? Would he not trust me? Would he think I was a monster? The word

'monster' caught in my mind and tugged at something forgotten. Had I been called a monster before?

I imagined him and Andy catching a glimpse of my face, my real face, synth muscles shining like metal. I could see the looks of horror pass over their eyes. I could hear them yelling at me, feel their hands shoving me out the door, onto the floor, throwing my clothes and books out into the hall after me. I imagined Andy screaming at me to never come back, her voice shrill with fear, betrayal, disgust, loathing.

"You should look into classes at CCSF if you're interested in getting into fashion." Bummer' s voice, like warm honey, pulled me out of the terrifying daydream.

"That's where I got my bartending degree. They might have some night classes or online classes you could do after work." He finished the beak and began shading in the bird's eye. 196

"Why do you use an iTablet to draw and not your phone chip?"

He smiled. "Not good for me to spend too much time in my own head. It's a mess in there."

Andy came rocketing back up the steps. She panted for a moment grasping her ribs.

"I. .. found ... a ... swing ... It's got ... a view ... of the bridge ... " She took a long drink of her coffee. Her velvet duster was covered in leaves at the hem. She took a moment to catch her breath. "Come on! You've got to see it. It's so neat! It's like you're swinging from the clouds!"

Bummer tucked his iTablet into his pocket and we followed Andy down the steps.

We wound our way down through birds of paradise and flowering trees I didn't know the names of I took pictures to look them up later. Butterflies flitted across the path and dappled sunlight kissed our cheeks as we descended into the thicket. I could see houses tucked off to the sides, hidden amongst the foliage. What would it be like to live in this oasis?

After a few minutes Andy ducked off to the left and we followed her along a rough overgrown trail to a large tree. It had a few thick branches poking out over the edge of the hill and beyond it lay the sparkling golden city, tiny beneath us. Beyond that the water of the bay glimmered beneath the bridge that had made the city famous. To me it looked more burnt red than gold, but I never said that to anyone. The green cliffside of

Marin formed a backdrop. 197

Swaying in front of this scene was a swing made of thick robe, reinforced by chain that swirled around it like a candy cane stripe, and a stainless steel rectangle, which formed the seat. Andy climbed onto it and swung her feet, sending her body soaring out over the city. Her duster flew out behind her like a cape each time she shot out, and enveloped her like bat wings as she returned.

She skidded to a halt and told me to try it.

"Oh ... I don't know ... " I suddenly felt warm. The city looked so small below.

"You'll be fine, don't worry. This thing is really sturdy." She tugged the rope reassuringly.

I took a deep breath and stepped in front of the swing, lowering myself onto it slowly. I felt Andy give me a gentle push. I moved my legs as she had done, but it only caused me to jiggle around like a dying jellyfish.

"I guess I don't really know how to swing .. . " I kept my eyes on the ground but I knew my friends were exchanging looks of shock. This was supposed to be something I learned in childhood. I thought again of them throwing me out of the apartment. Would they eventually realize that I hadn't had a childhood? An abusive boyfriend couldn't explain away all of the gaps in my life experience.

"It's ok." Andy put her hands on my shoulders. "So you lean your body back as you kick your legs out." She pushed me back and I stuck my legs out. "Good. Now lean forward as you pull your feet toward your butt." She pushed me forward gently. 198

I switched back and forth between these movements and began to move. The wind slept along the sides of my face and my veil tickled my cheekbones. I was glad I'd taped my wig down that morning. I looked out at the view as it rushed forward and back

and felt my stomach lift up into my ribcage. I was light, a wisp of cloud passing through the cold breeze. My eyes watered and my fingers felt like frost, but I kept swinging

myself forward and back, flying higher. I was smiling so wide my cheeks hurt. My lungs fluttered and I laughed and screamed without meaning to as I rose up and up.

"This is amazing!" I cried back to Andy and Bummer and I heard them cheer in

response.

*

The Creature was in a particularly bad mood when I arrived at work Monday

mormng.

"I think he might have a cold," his mother offered as an explanation as the little

boy screeched and kicked. "He' s a bit fussy! " She had to shout this in order to be heard

over his shrieks.

I thought about suggesting that it might not, in fact, be a cold, just the demon that

possessed him showing it's face, and had they ever considered exorcism? But that did not

seem like a good way to get paid and I really really wanted to get paid again. I'd finally

been able to purchase a mattress after my last paycheck and the improvement to my sleep

and sanctuary was dramatic. I was finally starting to feel like I had a home. 199

"Don't worry," I forced a smile, ''I'll take good care of him today."

"What would we do without you?" She let out a sigh of relief, tried and failed to kiss her child goodbye, and left.

I thought about smothering The Creature as soon as his mother had left, but, once again, that seemed like a bad idea if I wanted to get paid.

"Beel, do you want some juice?"

The Creature shrieked louder.

"Do you want to watch Doodledeepoodle?"

Doodledeepoodle was a children' s show that The Creature enjoyed immensely and could watch for hours on end, which would be a blessing if more than five minutes exposure to the existentially disturbing ramblings of the Doodledeepoodles didn't make me feel like I was losing my mind. I had never done drugs, but I imagined, from what

Bummer had told me about them, that if one were to watch Doodledeepoodle while on drugs they would never recover and would be doomed to live a field for the rest of their life questioning whether or not the grass was real.

The Creature shrieked even louder and shoved the blankets and pillows off his bed in what I think was an attempt to trash the room . Doodledeepoodle wasn't going to be enough to save me from this tantrum.

I tried to bribe The Creature with candy after that and then simply sat on the other side of the room when that didn't work. My ears rang from his endless screams. I tried to 200 bring him a glass of juice but he hurled it across the room. I wanted to just leave it, let it grow sticky and rot as a punishment to his mothers for creating the little demon in the first place. As I cleaned it, The Creature contributed by throwing everything within his reach at me, until I gave up and locked myself in a different room where I took my own opportunity to exercise my lungs and cry.

When my throat was raw and my eyes burned out I sat quietly for awhile. I thought about what Bummer had said on Telegraph Hill. Maybe I should think about going to school. I couldn't do this job forever. I didn't know ifl could even do it for another year. I wasn't good at it. Bee! was a child. Just a little boy, but I felt such hatred for him. I tried to remind myself that he didn't know better no that it wasn't his fault that he was so awful. But I only felt an overwhelming anger toward him for making so many hours of my life unbearable.

I checked my internal clock. I still had five hours left. Time felt as though it moved more slowly in this house.

I went to the living room and fished my iTablet from my bag. The Creature had finally worn himself out and was sleeping, so I took the beautiful respite and made myself lunch and looked up CCSF, the local community college. They had two different fashion degrees; fashion design and fashion merchandising. I had no idea what the difference was so I looked that up too, which led me down a rabbit hole of research until, like the devil ascending from hell itself, The Creature awoke.

* 201

I continued my research when I got home, until it was time to go to my next community improvement meeting. At which point I still had no idea ifl was more interested in fashion design or fashion merchandising. I passed the pigeon laden balcony and headed into the building and up the stairs.

The Meek Man waved to me as I entered and I waved back. He was talking to

Kyle. It was amazing, he'd been to every meeting and I still didn't know his name. Every time he said it I somehow missed it. I was beginning to think I'd never learn it.

Sarah approached me. I usually talked to her or Kyle or the Meek Man at these meetings. They always seemed to find me first. But I didn't mind. Sarah and Kyle were fun to talk to about gardening, something both of them loved maybe even more than I did, and the Meek Man was nice if achingly awkward.

We weren't the only ones who were becoming regulars though. The meetings were growing more and more full each week as people returned. For the first time it seemed like there might be a full house, which made me feel a bit more excited about the start of the actual meeting. So far we'd just been doing the same mingle and get to know one another routine from the first week, but maybe now we'd actually be able to progress to what the meetings were actually about; helping people.

After a few minutes of chitchat we took our seats and the Connorians, in their matching outfits, gathered at the front of the room.

"Welcome everyone!" 202

Kyle had come to the front to speak as usual.

"We are so excited to have so many familiar faces in the audience! It seems like we've really found a dedicated group to join our cause! "

Behind him I could see Sarah, and near her, the familiar girl with the golden skin and hair. Every week she was there and every week I felt the same nagging sensation that

I knew her. But it wasn' t just a feeling that I knew her, there was something else about her. I felt an unease I couldn't identify. Every time she looked at me my pulse sped up a little bit.

"I think, since we have so many committed people now, it's time that we actually start talking about what we' re here to dol "

Was it just her general demeanor? The fact that she always looked annoyed?

Maybe the bitterness of her expression was simply off-putting?

"What do you guys think?! Should we get down to business?!"

The Meek Man applauded this question enthusiastically, and I added a few distracted claps of my own. But just as the Meek Man let out a meek 'yeah' the golden woman' s expression changed. She smiled wide, showing shining white teeth.

And I knew why I recognized her.

"Aright, so as we've told you guys, we' re here about community improvement!"

She was older now. Her face had grown more narrow and sharp. 203

"And a big focus of that improvement is centered around getting people back in the workforce!"

In the photo her hair had been curly, fluffed around her face in tight ringlets like a halo. Now it was straight and slicked back into a harsh ponytail.

"And how do we do that? How can we get more people working, making a living for themselves so that they can survive?"

The innocence was gone, but the smile was unmistakable. I recognized her because I'd been carrying around a photo of her for months, because I'd been pretending to be her for months. It was Cora.

"We get people back to working by getting rid of the noids. The noids are the beginning of the end of humanity."

"You're the Terminators," I whispered.

"What was that? Did we have a question?"

"You're the Terminators'" I shouted it this time. My heart banged against my ribs. I stood too fast, knocking my chair back.

"We are NOT the terminators. We are the HUMAN RESISTANCE. We follow word of John Connor, sent down to us in a dream given to the prophet James Cameron!

That one day we," he gestured to his fellow Connorians, "the Kyles and the Sarahs, will give birth to the future god so that he may deliver us from the oppression of the noids!" 204

His voice had gone hard as ice. All of the Connorians were staring at me with the same look in their eyes. A look of deepest outrage.

I tried to catch my breath but my chest was tightening like a noose. I reached for my bag and tried frantically to move out of my chair, out of my row, into the open space of the room. I wanted to run. The Meek Man jumped up to follow me.

"Cora, wait! Let's just listen to what they have to say!"

I reeled back toward the door, painfully aware that every eye in the room was on me.

"Cora!"

Every instinct was telling me to run, to get as far away as possible and I turned as the Meek Man reached me. I felt him catch the tips of my fingers as he reached out to me and I knew what was happening but it was all moving too fast and I had no power to stop it. His grip locked onto my fingers and I felt the satin of my glove shudder down my arm and slip away from me.

Gasps filled the space like poltergeists then disappeared, leaving the room too quiet. I tried to hide my arm in the folds of my dress but it was too late. I knew everyone had seen. For just one second they' d seen the electrical charges running up my arm, they'd seen the metallic sheen of my muscles contract as I moved, they'd seen what I was. I turned back and it was all there, written in their eyes. I saw the look of horror on 205 the Meek Man's face. He stood frozen, a step behind me, my glove hanging limp from his hand. Behind him the Connorians wore looks ranging from fear to horror to hatred.

"She's a noid!" One shouted at last. "SHE'S A SPY!"

"Sarahs, Kyles, grab her!"

I ran without looking back, leaping down the stairs and charging out the door of the building. I could hear their feet pounding behind me like drums of war. As I ran beneath the fire escape the pigeons panicked and flocked behind me and I heard the screeches of the Connorians as they became entangled with the agitated birds. I ran faster, my heart thundering in my throat. I wanted to run home but I didn't want them to find me so I headed the opposite direction toward Union Square, hoping there would be tourists, hoping the crowds might be my salvation once again.

I remembered suddenly the alley Andy had pulled me down and I skidded around a corner making a sudden break for it. I knew I was throwing a Hail Mary, I knew the door might be locked, I knew I might not make it.

The door was just ahead and I reached for it and yanked it open. One of the

Connorians was just a few paces behind me.

They were reaching for the door.

Their fingers just a foot away.

I threw my weight back as I slammed the door shut. I felt a tug but I felt tight and flipped the lock. The thuds of bodies and arms hitting the door, combining strength to try 206 to tear it open sent a jolt of terror down my spine and I ran again, along the route Andy had shown me, out the secret door like a dove bursting from a cage, back toward home.

There were no footsteps behind me· but I looked back before turning onto my street. I couldn't see any of them so I hurled myself into the elevator and pressed the number four button.

For the second time I wept on the floor of the elevator. I sobbed with my whole body and crawled from the elevator when it reached our floor like a hunted animal. But I knew I needed to stop before I went in. I needed to act like everything was normal because I needed to hide my arm from Andy and Bummer as I went in. I needed them not to notice me or stop me to ask any questions because if they saw ...

If they saw what I really was nowhere would be safe.

*

I called in sick to work for the next week and barely left my room. I was terrified that any moment the Connorians would come to bang down our door and drag me away.

They'd flooded my email in the days following the meeting, sending me every kind of insult and death threat. The subject lines ran the gambit of frightening. Some made terrifyingly simple and direct statements like "We know where you are" while others said longer but equally scary things like "YOU WILL NOT STOP THE HUMAN

RESISTANCE OUR TIME HAS COME ALL HAIL JOHN CONNOR THE HOLY

HUMAN GOD WHO SAVES US ALL FROM THE DESTRUCTION OF THE

MACHINES" while still others said things like "Die noid whore die." Each time I 207 received one I felt like my chest would explode from the racing of my heart and I wept uncontrollably. I hated myself for giving in to fear. I hated myselffor letting each tear fall. I wanted to be stronger than this.

Eventually I deleted my email and created an entirely new one. This time I used only my first initial and last name, which I'd never told them. Thank god I hadn't. Surely

Sarah-Cora would have noticed me much sooner had she learned that another Cora Stein was sitting in the room. Perhaps it would have made her suspicious. Perhaps they would have known I wasn't human before I knew what they were. Perhaps they would have caught me. I shook in my bed all day imagining what they would have done to me had they found out sooner.

I struggled to fall asleep at night. And whenever I finally did, I had the same dream. The Connorians burst through my door and ripped me from my bed. Andy and

Bummer tried to stop them, fighting tooth and nail, until the Connorians tore off my gloves. They yanked off my wig and scratched the latex and makeup from my eye and with looks of horror on their faces Andy and Bummer stopped fighting. And then I realized that Andy and Bummer were wearing the same outfits as the Connorians and when I called out their names they told me those weren't their names anymore. They told me their names were Sarah and Kyle now. And with looks of cold hatred they held me down and began pulling at my limbs, trying to wrench them from my body, trying to dismantle me, like a machine. I woke up from this dream in a cold sweat each night and though I'd delete the memory of it, though I'd try to erase the file completely, it always came back. But this time I could not blame Mal for the memory's lingering presence. I 208 was the one keeping it around. I was the one tormenting me. I just didn't know how or why I was doing it.

I refused to let Andy or Bummer into my room for the duration of the week, telling them I had an awful flu and that I didn't want to get them sick, but I could tell they were worried about me. When I cried, I did my best to do so softly, but I suspected they could still hear me. They left soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and tea by the door for me every night. They sent me funny videos and cute pictures of animals every morning.

It wasn't until the sixth day of my quarantine that Bummer managed to draw me out of my room .

He knocked on my door and my heart raced.

"Cora? You gotta come out I have a present for you."

''I'm not dressed!" My voice was shrill and fragile.

"Ok well if you don't come out to get it in the next hour I'm coming in!"

My heart climbed a bit higher and sped to what I imagined was not a healthy rate.

"No no! Just let me get dressed! I'll come out, I promise!" I sounded like a frightened mouse.

"One hour! "

I spackled latex over my cheekbone and forehead with shaking hands, then turned on my small fan to dry it more quickly. My makeup routine was not something that could 209 be accomplished in a short amount of time. What would I do if Bummer came in before I was done?

Once the latex was dry I sponged foundation over my entire face and jawbone. I always layered it a bit heavy, figuring it was better to look like a human with bad makeup than a noid. Once I'd fanned the foundation dry I dabbed concealer over the latex, then powder, then doused it all with setting spray. Normally I would do eye makeup as well , but I need to be done before Bummer decided to come in, and also eye makeup would really make it obvious I wasn't sick. I taped on my wig, pulled on my least dressy gloves, and threw on a soft, casual dress and hat.

"I was just about to come get you! " Bummer smiled at me as I stepped cautiously into the living room, trying my best to look sick, though I had no idea how, having never actually been sick before. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh I'm ... " I let out a fake cough. ''I'm sick. Really sick." I coughed again. Was I coughing too much? How much did people typically cough when ill?

"Seems like it! We've been worried about you! "

"I really appreciate you guys bringing me food and stuff. That was so nice of you.

I owe you."

"Ah don't worry, we' ll get sick at some point and you can repay us then. But for now, look!" He gestured to the table, which had a small tree sitting on it. "It's a coffee tree! Apparently. That's what the tag said." 210

"It's so cute!"

"Yes and it needs to be repotted ifit's going to keep being cute so I'm going to make you leave this apartment and go out into the world with me to get it a new pot." He smiled wickedly, clearly proud of the plan he was executing.

"I- I don't think ... " I coughed for effect. "I don't think I'm really feeling well enough for that."

"You'll be fine. You need some sunshine and fresh air. And it's a nice day today so you actually might be able to get some sunshine. This is a rare day, Cora. There will only be fog after today. For the rest of your life probably."

"It's not foggy that often!" I said with a laugh. Then added another fake cough.

"Fuck yeah it is! Come on, you'll be fine. It'll be good for you. I'm not taking no for an answer."

I knew I couldn't hide in my room forever. I was going to need to go back to work ifl was going to make rent. But the thought ofleaving made my throat boil.

"Alright. But just to get a pot. Then we're coming right back."

"Deal!"

"Can I just do something a little different with my hair before we go? I promise it wont take too long."

"Sure." 211

I pinned my wig into a tight bun at the nape of my neck and wrapped a scarf over it and around my throat so that only my bangs were visible. I added a pair of oversized sunglasses and opted for a shade of lipstick I never wore because I thought it looked awful on me. It was a pale peachy pink, as opposed to my usual bright red. I also switched to a pair of fingerless gloves, which still hid the muscle on the back of my hand, but were a bit subtler than the satin ones I typically wore.

My bones rattled as we left the apartment building. I was glad I'd worn the giant sunglasses because the light felt especially bright after being indoors for a full week. I could hear the tiny aggravated whir of my eyes contracting and fighting to adjust.

There were people everywhere, strolling through the streets enjoying the rare influx of sunlight like basking reptiles. I leaned in to Bummer, staying tight to his arm, trying to be as small and invisible as possible. I couldn't focus on the our simple task of walking to the hardware store because I was so preoccupied with scanning the crowd, searching for an odd green coat or a tight ponytail.

"Why are you acting like a nervous goat?"

"What?"

"You're acting like a nervous goat."

"What does that even mean?''

"It means you' re acting nervous." 212

I stared at Bummer, confused enough to abandon my frantic crowd scanning for a moment. "I still have no idea what you' re talking about, but I'm not acting nervous."

"Whatever you say."

I tried to act more natural, but I couldn't remember how I behaved when I was behaving naturally. Was this how I always walked? It seemed too bouncy. Did I always walk with a bit of a bounce. I tried to walk more flatly.

"Hey look at those! " Bummer was pointing toward a street-side stand. His pace slowed and I felt my hear rate increase. I didn't want to stand still. I wanted to keep moving. I jerked my head around to look behind us down the street.

"Do you see those hats?"

"Yeah their nice. Let' s keep going though. One hour, remember? You promised."

"Hang on I want to look at those. Those are some nice fucking hats."

I could feel my pulse moving like a startled jackrabbit. I followed close to

Bummer as he moved through the hoards of people toward the stand. My eyes darted back and forth.

And then I saw them. Two of them. One Sarah and one Kyle. Moving toward us.

Lions stalking through the tall grass. I wanted to leap behind Bummer, hide myself behind his frame, but my body was frozen in place.

"Bummer," I managed to squeak, "Bummer let's go." 213

"Excuse me, how much is this hat?" Bummer was holding an orange fedora with a fan of pheasant feathers arching into the air from the band. It was so loud I was worried it was going to give us away.

"Bummer, please let's go'' My muscles regained the ability to move and I grabbed his arm and tugged frantically. They were getting closer, talking to one another as they wove through gawking clusters of tourists and people who' d gotten sucked into reading something on their phone chips and stood like statues mid-step. I hid myself behind Bummer, peaking around his ribcage to watch their approach. In my head a prayer for them not to see me played on a loop. They were only a few feet away now. I could hear their voices as they approached.

"I don't know why Sarah insisted that we patrol the neighborhood. That noid is long gone by now."

"But what if it's not? What if it's lair is somewhere around here. What if the factory where the Terminator noids are being developed and manufactured is right here in the Tenderloin? It could happen! "

"It was a spy, Kyle. A dirty filthy little noid spy. It's probably changed it's entire appearance by now. This patrol is a waste of time. We should be recruiting. The time of the resistance is clearly upon us."

I held my breath as they moved past, sliding around Bummer as he tried on his insane hat, keeping his body between me and the Kyle and Sarah. 214

"Well maybe you and I could ... you know ... try to bring John into the world. I mean, since it's time and all."

"Keep dreaming, Kyle."

I let out my breath in a slow hiss once they'd gone out of earshot. Bummer finished paying the woman who had presumably made his new hat.

"How nice is this hat? Can you believe how cheap it was? It was only 25 bucks!

For this beautiful masterpiece of a hat! ... Why are you crouching behind me?"

I stood up quickly. "Sorry. Sorry just ... it's nothing don't worry about it."

He looked at me quizzically and the feathers in his hat, which added a good four inches to his already remarkable height, wobbled in accusation.

"C'mon let's go to the Slippery Lizard."

"No, we' re just supposed to go to the hardware store! We're just getting a pot and then we' re going back! You promised! We're just getting a pot! "

"Oh I'll have some pot alright, but we' re getting you a drink."

He began walking in the direction of the bar, the new hat swaying above the

crowd like a flag. He was going to draw everyone' s attention. But I didn't want to ditch

him, to be without out hi s protection, so I followed after him like a hunted animal, jumping and contorting at every sound that might be one of them, all the way to the

Slippery Lizard. 215

*

The Slippery Lizard was a dive and probably ways had been. It was funny though because it looked like at some point they decided to try to class the place up and had purchase very nice light fixtures. The lanterns that hung from the ceiling were intricate lattice works of stained glass in shades of jade, sage, and viridian tangled between delicately carved wood. The soft light that emanated from them reflected off the scratched and burned emerald walls to give the entire establishment a weird jungle green glow. Unfortunately, it seemed as thought the budget had run out after the light fixtures were purchased and the bar owners had simply said fuck it. The ornate lanterns clashed violently against the tattered, radioactive green booths, the cracked cement floors, and dingy, vomit-green tables. Every time we came to the bar I was left wondering how the extreme multitude of overgrown plants didn't die from lack of natural light and tackiness.

When we arrived Andy was already set up at a booth with a martini. She wore her

usual outfit; velvet duster, white top, black suspenders and black men's pants. Her

mohawk had grown a bit long so that she had to brush it back into a pompadour shape.

Bummer went to order for us and I slipped into the booth opposite Andy.

"So you've got a secret." She said, sipping her martini casually.

"What?"

"Bummer said you were acting weird, which doesn't surprise me because you've

been acting weird all week. You ready to tell us what's up?" 216

We looked each other in the eyes for what felt like ten minutes. "I'm going to need my drink first. "

"Sounds reasonable." She grinned.

Bummer sat down next to me and handed me a vodka soda. I took a bigger sip than I normally would. Then took another for courage.

"Ok so ... you know those community improvement meetings I've been going to?"

"Yeah. Those sound super culty, by the way. I've been meaning to tell you that."

Andy swirled her martini gently.

"Oh yeah, super culty," Bummer agreed. " So were they a cult?"

I stared at them. "Yeah. Yeah they were the Terminator cult. How did you guys know? Why didn't you tell me sooner!?"

Andy laughed. " Sorry! I assumed you'd figure it out eventually."

"Yeah, well, I did. I found out during one of the meetings and I had to run for it and now they're all after me."

Bummer frowned. "After you? What do you mean after you?"

"They ... they don't like it when you leave. They think I'm some sort of spy. I think they're trying to kill me." 217

"Cora, they're not trying to kill you. I mean they're crazy, but they're not murderers. Just weirdos." Andy' s tone was reassuring, but I saw her exchange a worried glance with Bummer.

"Yeah," Bummer' s tone was equally reassuring, "I mean why would they think you're a spy anyway? It doesn't make any sense." He laughed, but it sounded forced.

"I don't know. They just do. I guess because I ran maybe or something. Either way, they' re looking for me. They've been sending me emails and stuff. Threatening emails."

"Cora ... maybe you should talk to the police." Bummer no longer tried to hide his worry. His brow was pinched tight and he'd begun tugging at his beard.

"No! No. They ... they wouldn't be able to do anything anyway. I mean, there' s a ton of those Terminator people. It's not like they could arrest all of them, right?"

"I guess ... "

"It' s ok. I'm ok. They'll probably forget about me after awhile. I'm just going to keep a low profile for a little while, that's all." I sipped my vodka, trying to look nonchalant.

Andy and Bummer exchanged another look and each took a long drink.

"Did you see Bummer' s new hat?" I asked Andy. 218

"Dashing." She seemed relieved by the change of subject. "You look like a hairy

Jaxon Ramirez-Schmidt.

"Thank you! That's what I was going for! "

"Who is Jaxon Ramirez-Schmidt?" I asked.

"This too-gorgeous-to-be-real actor. He's EVERYONE' S dream man." Andy fake swooned.

"He' s MY dream man."

"Bummer, and everyone else on the planet, is in love with him. Do you have your iTablet? Look him up. He' s exquisite''

"Yes do that, but include ' shirtless' in your search. Trust me." Bummer winked at me as he said thi s.

We spent the next hour looking up what was, without a doubt, the most attractive human being I'd ever seen. Then we discussed our perfect dates for awhile. Then Andy told us about how her classes and internship were going. She was studying to be a therapist, though Bummer always said she was " studying to save the world and every sad soul in it''

When he said this, I couldn't help but wonder if the statement included me. Andy had certainly saved me, taken me in when I had nothing and no one, but was I really a

"sad soul." I wasn' t sure I had a soul at all. When I was with my friends I felt like I had a soul. I felt alive. I felt real and warm and loved and full of love. But what if my ability to 219

love was just programming and nothing more? Could I be someone else entirely - a being utterly devoted to hatred instead oflove - if the wrong person got into my head? For a moment I saw myself as what the Terminators feared me to be. I saw myself as a machine of death and destruction. If the wrong person found out what I really was, how easy would it be for that to become my future? How easy would it be to make me hate the

people who sat beside me now? Could a few lines of code be the only difference between loving these people and wanting to kill them?

I leaned into Bummer and rested my head against his arm as we worked our way through a second round. I took in his smell. It was warm and earthy, smoky and salty. His

scent coated his bedroom and lingered on random items throughout the apartment,

mixing and blurring with Andy' s scent, which was lighter, sweet and citrusy. Together they created a smell I'd begun to associate with comfort and safety. So that when I walked into our apartment and it washed over me I felt that I was really home. Bummer

put his arm around me, squeezed, and finished his drink.

"One more round?" he asked.

"Bummer you know the rule of martinis." Andy replied.

"They're like tits. One' s too few, three' s too many. So what would you like

instead?"

"To hell with the rule! Bring me a third! "

"Your funeral." Bummer laughed and got up to order us another round. 220

When we stumbled home a few hours later, I didn't worry about the Connorians

at all. I was only aware of the tiny arm around my waist and the large arm over my

shoulders. They smell of home wrapped around me like a shield. A heavy, happy, wobbly

shield.

*

I was still afraid each time I left home. I kept my hair covered and wore large sunglasses whenever I wasn't in the apartment or at work. And though my dislike of the color hadn't changed I continued to apply the peach lipstick each day. I couldn't stand looking like someone other than myself, but if it kept me safe it was worth it. And I took other precautions as well. I'd been calling driverless cars to take me to and from work. It was slower than walking, but whenever I saw a Connorian I could duck down into my seat. My hope was that I wouldn't have to do this forever. That eventually the Connorians would give up . I hoped they would believe I'd left, that I really was a spy and could so easily disappear.

I tried to stay positive. I used the increased time I was spending hiding out in the apartment to think more about school. I spent hours reading up on the opportunities available in fashion design and fashion merchandising. And when I still couldn't choose between the two I started looking into other majors offered at CCSF. There was so much.

So many fields to learn about. For a week I toyed with studying botany. Then I thought

about horticulture.

"Why don't you just major in business," Andy asked me one night. 221

"Business?"

"Yeah. Then you could just have your own shop. You could sell clothes if you decided to go the fashion route. Or you could open a flower shop if you wanted to do plants stuff. Business is pretty broad."

The idea bloomed like a lily in my mind. What would it be like to have my own shop? I wouldn't have to take care of children. That would be a plus. I began looking at the shops I rode past each morning in a whole new light. How would I arrange the merchandise ifi owned that shoe store? How would I decorate that coffee shop if it was mine?

Andy was right. I could open any kind of store I wanted if I knew how to run a business. I could open a store that sold clothes and plants. Or home decor and plants. Or clothes and home decor and plants. I could be in charge completely. Every decision my own to make.

I spent hours imagi ning what my shop would look like. What kinds of items I'd

sell. It was energizing in a new way. Suddenly my hours with The Creature weren't so

unbearable because I had the shop I'd built in my head to retreat to. My fear of the

Connorians was pushed to the back of my mind because I was too excited to be afraid.

Like my room, I had something now that was entirely mine, but in a different way. My

room was a sanctuary, but my imaginary shop was something more than that. It was a

target to aim at. It buoyed me and pulled me forward, away from Mal and the pain I felt, 222 toward something brighter. For the first time I had a real goal. More than a goal. I had a dream.

I enrolled at CCSF and signed up for a night class called Business Basics that was scheduled to begin in a month. Andy and Bummer were enthusiastic when I told them I'd enrolled and insisted on taking me out for a drink so the next night we made our way up to a swanky bar in Russian Hill for a night of cocktails, fancy food, and jazz. I wore red lipstick for the occasion. I wanted to look beautiful for this celebration. I wanted to look like myself The Connorians seemed to have given up anyway. I only saw them every once in awhile now, and they usually looked bored and disinterested when I did.

Andy, Bummer, and I walk toward the bar arm in arm, clustered together against the cold. The fog had rolled in heavy that night and our clothes glimmered with it, growing damper with each block we crossed. In the streetlights the fog swirled slowly, shifting grey-white like anguished ghosts. Our thighs ached as we trudged up the massive hills. Andy told me the views from up here were typically incredible, but tonight they were obscured, shrouded by the wet night air. I shivered and squeezed Andy's arm tighter.

I felt a sense ofreliefwhen Andy told me the bar was just a few more blocks. The fog was beginning to dissipate, but I still felt frozen. I could hear voices ahead of us,

moving toward us, also complaining about the cold by the sound of it. The figures began

to take shape as they approached. I could make out a man's voice and a woman's, neither

of which sounded happy, and I wondered if it was a date that had gone wrong. And 223 before I could think of any other possible scenarios they were upon us, standing right in front of us, staring.

All five of us stopped. Three against two. The dampness settled in my lungs and I couldn't breath, the cold crystallized along my bones locking them in place.

"It's her. It's the noid spy! "

They moved forward and Bummer stepped up to meet them, putting his body between Andy and I and the Connorians, protecting us. Andy let go of my arm and moved forward to join him. But I needed to run. I needed to be far far away. I needed to escape. I needed to get home. My legs refused to respond.

"Cora, it's ok we wont -"

"Cora?'' The Sarah scoffed. "You' re still calling that noid by her fake spy name?

Are you machine sympathizers or just stupid?" Her voice was cold as the night air and mocking.

Run. Run. Run.

"She's not a spy or a noid, you crazy freaks! Go back to your commune!" Andy had taken another step forward and stood up taller, attempting to make her tiny stature more formidable.

"You think she' s human?!" The Sarah cawed. 224

Before anyone could stop him the Kyle darted around Bummer and grabbed me. I still couldn't move. My synth glands were in over drive and I was paralyzed. I felt the

Kyle's arms wrap tight around me, and as Bummer and Andy moved to pull him off he screeched triumphantly, "I'll show you what she really is! " and tore the glove from my hand.

It was as if all the worst moments of my life were doomed to repeat themselves and this would forever be my existence. I would never escape. I would never be free. It was happening all over again. But this time it would be so much worse.

My body regained the ability to function and I elbowed the Kyle hard and dropped my knees to slip out from his arms. It occurred to me as my glove floated to the ground, how such a small piece of fabric had protected me for so long, how delicate and thin my security had been all this time, how fragile and fine . I'd been living under the protection of a few threads.

Andy and Bummer stared at my naked arm, apparently as paralyzed as I had just been. I saw their eyes follow the sparks of electricity moving along my synth muscles.

But before they could travel higher up my arm, past my shoulder, up to meet my eyes, before I could see the betrayal that I knew I would find in their stares, I turned and ran. 225

Chapter 9

Mal opened the list of neighborhoods he kept in his phone chip. He' d already crossed offDowntown, FiDi, Telegraph Hill, North Beach, and Chinatown. Now he crossed off Nob Hill. Three months of searching and he had nothing. Nothing! What would his mother say if she could see him now? He'd hardly slept in the last two months.

He'd stopped shaving and his beard and hair were long and scraggly. He was practically living on the streets, never wanting to leave for fear of missing Fran. His clothes were filthy . He was a mere shadow of the star medico-engineer he' d once been.

But she was close. He could feel it. He was going to find her soon. She couldn't hide forever. She' d go out for coffee or to meet her new lover and then he'd have her.

She thought she could betray him but she would learn. He would show her what happens to unfaithful whores. He wouldn't waste time trying to be sly or sneaky he' d just grab her, rip open her skin flap, turn her off, and haul her away. No one was going to stop him from destroying the monstrosity he'd created. Fran was an abomination and he wouldn't be free until the world was wiped clean of her existence.

He walked up and down the streets, grunting as he climbed the hills. He was going to circle every block in this neighborhood then find a place to camp out and watch one of the streets for the night. Probably in a tree. He'd found trees to be an excellent vantage point for watching the streets. He imagined himself as a leopard, poised on a branch, silent and camouflaged, stalking his prey like the superior hunter he was. 226

Mal stopped into a liquor store to buy a bottle of tequila to accompany him on his hunt. He'd been drinking so much tequila lately that his phone chip had begun to ask him if he wanted it to call him an AutoRyd home. Then it had started asking if he wanted it to call him an AutoRyd to the hospital. After that it had just given up and started passive aggressively alerting him whenever he passed by an AA meet up location or a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.

He was sort of annoyed with how dramatic his phone chip was being. It wasn't like he normally lived his life this way. He' d cut back on his drinking after he killed Fran, but for now he needed something to help pass the time. Patrolling the streets wasn't the most exciting pastime.

As the day wore on and the fog rolled in, he began scouting trees. He tried to choose trees near bars, since he figured if Fran was out at night it would be to go to a bar.

Plus the people watching was just better outside ofbars. A few nights ago he'd seen two men dressed as penguins get into. Fist fight that ended with one of them being taken away in an ambulance and the other in cop car. Another night he' d seen to people get frisky in a dark alley. The nights were full of secrets and Mal loved to witness them.

People always thought they were safe in the dark.

He settled onto a somewhat less than stable branch and leaned his back against the trunk of the small but densely leaved apple he'd chosen. He plucked a piece of fruit and gnawed on it as bar patrons began filtering into the surrounding watering holes. He ranked the attractiveness of the women he saw on a scale of one to fifteen. He' d been 227 using a one to ten scale previously, but he felt it didn't offer a wide enough range for the city. A woman with an enormous nose approached the bar on Mal's right. He snorted.

"What a moose," he whispered. "That's a three if I've ever seen one." To his left he heard the faint sound of shouting and heavy footfalls. "This should be good." He took a gulp of tequila from his bottle and stared into the fading mist. A woman broke through, sprinting at top speed, bursting from the cloudy air as though she' d just teleported into existence. She was clearly terrified, she was moving so fast her feet hardly touched the ground. Mal sat upright, more alert than he'd been in months. She streaked past him, two people on her trail, calling a name that wasn't hers, two more people following the first, shouting threats and slurs. She was past him in and instant but he'd know those red lips anywhere. He' d stared at them a thousand times, kissed them more than any others, though the thought now repulsed him. He leapt from the tree, the bottle of tequila exploding on the sidewalk next to him, sending glass shrapnel in every direction, but Mal didn't stop to acknowledge the blast. He began running as fast as he could. She wouldn't get away from him this time. Whatever happened, Fran was going to die tonight. 228

Chapter 10

I could hear Andy and Bummer screaming my name just behind me as I tore through the streets. Bummer' s legs were longer than mine and I knew he must be gaining but I didn't slow down. I didn't stop. My heart felt like it was going to burst open. I had no idea where I was going. I wasn't running toward home. I didn 't even know ifl had a home anymore. I just knew I couldn't stop.

The street grew more crowded as I got closer to the wharf. I shoved people out of my way, forcing my body through. I was running out of street. I could see the bay ahead of me, sparkling with the light of boats and the the cities that lay beyond it waters. For a moment I considered hurling myself into those waters. Maybe I could make it. Maybe I could swim to the safety beyond this place and start over again. But I knew the water was too icy cold, too shark infested, too wind-stirred. I'd never make it.

My muscles were on fire as I rocketed past Ghirardelli Square. Screams echoed around as outraged tourists stumbled or were forced out of the way. I hit the chain link fence surrounding the old abandoned maritime museum so hard I bounced off of it. I looked back and saw Bummer and Andy fighting threw the throng of angry people.

"Coral " Bummer screamed to me.

It was all the encouragement I needed. I shoved my toe into the space between the links offence. The metal dug into my fingers but I hardly felt it. My breath was ragged in my throat as I rotated at the top of the fence and jumped backward. My knees buckled as my feet hit the pavement and I fell backward, my hands scraping against the rough 229 ground. A pain like lightning shot through my back and my arms. I rolled to my knees and pushed myself up and forward toward the doors of the museum. The glass was scratched, graffitied, and broken. I yanked at the doors, but they were locked. The metal of the fence clanged behind me and I knew they were coming over the fence, coming after me. I jammed my hand through the hole in the glass and fumbled for the lock.

"Cora, wait! Stop!"

!jerked the door open. There was a set of stairs to my right. I ran for it, up it, toward an open door. They were right behind me. I screamed as I tried to pull the door shut. A big hand caught it and pulled. I fought against him, but Bummer was so much bigger than me, so much stronger. I couldn't stop him. He threw the door open and I fell back from the force of it, landing hard on my back, barely missing a pile of trash and broken beer bottles. I tried to crawl away from him.

"Stay away from mel" I screamed. Tears began to pour down my cheeks. "Don't touch me! "

Andy came panting into the room and shoved the door shut behind her and quickly locked it. There was a heavy thud as someone hit the other side of it like a battering ram. I could hear the Connorians screaming just beyond the heavy wood. Andy leaned the weight of her back against the door as they rattled the handle and pounded like the hounds of hell.

"Cora," Bummer stopped a few steps away from me and lifted his hands to the sky, palms toward me, "We're not going to hurt you! " 230

"Yes you are!" I sobbed, panic shredding my voice. ''I'm a noid, a filthy machine,

I deserve to be hurt!"

"No, we're not. We don't want to hurt you. It's ok!"

"It's not ok! Nothings ok! I'm a monster! I shouldn't exist! I'm a monster!" I let go completely, giving in to the terror and the misery. I sobbed and screamed into my hands, shaking so hard I thought I might break from it.

"You're not a monster, Cora. We love you. You're not a monster."

Andy stepped away from the door, trusting that it would hold. She approached me cautiously and though I knew I couldn't bear to see what was in her eyes, I met them anyway.

"You're not a monster, Cora." She said it softly. More softly than anyone had ever spoken to me before. I stared at her, and my tears slowed. I thought I would find hatred. I thought I would see only disgust when I looked into her eyes, but instead there was sadness and something else. Something warm. I took a deep breath and caught a hint of citrus, of home.

Andy reached toward me and I looked down at her hand, which had my glove draped over it. I took it tenderly from her.

She glanced around the room and her eyes settled on a broken window. Then she turned to look at Bummer and he nodded. 231

"We'll lead them away. You wait for a moment and once they're gone, run straight home, ok? We'll meet you there. It's going to be ok."

I nodded, unable to form words. Andy squeezed my hand, then turned to

Bummer. He boosted her through then window then clambered through after her, glancing back at me once he was through.

"See you at home," he whispered, then turned away.

"Come on, Cora, this way! " I heard Andy shout as their footsteps pounded away from me. On the other side of the door I heard one of the Connorians shout, "They're getting away!" And then they're footsteps echoed into the distance as well.

I sat in the silence, holding my breath. After what felt like an hour I slipped my glove back on, climbed to my feet, and tiptoed to the door, pressing my ear against it. I couldn't hear anything beyond it, so I took a deep breath and turned the lock as slowly as possible, trying not to make a sound. As gently as I could, I eased the door open.

I gasped and stumbled backward, a scream catching in my throat.

"Hello, Fran."

Mal smiled like a shark as he moved through the door. He looked hideous and

crazed. His eyes bloodshot, his hair tangled and matted. A sour smell emanated from him.

I wondered frantically if he'd always been like this, if love had blinded me to his horrific

appearance when we were together.

I moved as far away from him as possible, pressing myself against the wall. 232

"You thought you could hide from me didn't you, you little bitch. Who was the guy you were in here with? Was that your new lover? You think you can just replace me like that!" He shouted so loud I flinched.

"I should never have created you. You were nothing but a disappointment. I was a rockstar before I made you! I was a god! I was headed for greatness and you destroyed me!"

I made a break for the window. I tried to pull myself through but I felt his hands on my shoulders. He pulled me backwards and threw me to the ground so hard my head snapped back against the floor. Pain ripped open my skull and my vision popped like lightbulbs burning out. I yelped loudly and tried to get up, to flee for the door. His weight hit me hard and I cried out as he dug his knees into my thighs.

"I should have killed you the second I turned you on! The second I saw what you were! You're nothing but a disgusting whore! A filthy little noid bitch!" He spat in my face and I tried to jerk free from him but he held my arms down. The smell of alcohol made me nauseous. I kicked my legs, rocking my hips trying to force him sideways off of me.

"Let me go! "

He slapped me hard, but before I could process the pain I felt his hands wrap tight around my throat. I clawed at his arms I could feel the pressure building in my face, in my eyes. I tried to cough but there was no air. I dug my fingers into his wrists and smashed my fists against every part of him but he didn't let go. The vision began to pop 233 again as I stared into his face. His eyes and face were flushed violently red, his teeth gritted, foamy spit forming at the corners of his mouth.

"You're a monster! You're a fucking monster! "

I groped my hands across the floor searching for something, anything. I felt cold smoothness and swung it upward at Mal' s face, missing and connecting with his neck.

He grabbed at his throat, releasing mine and I coughed for air like I'd swallowed needles. Mal writhed on the floor beside me clutching at himself.

I gripped the broken bottle tighter, ready to slash at his again. I thought of Andy and Bummer.

"You're the monster! " I screamed, tensing my muscles, ready to fight, but his movements were slowing. A shiny red halo was spreading out around him. I realized his fingers were smeared with blood. There was so much blood. It was fanning out, getting closer to me with every second and now Mal was barely moving. His eyes were wide and wild. And then he was still.

The door behind be hit the wall with a bang. I spun to face two police officers holding guns.

"Drop the weapon! Drop it! " A light hit my eyes and I realized suddenly I was

still crying. The tears were hitting the ground like rain. I let the bottle fall and it shattered.

I lifted my hands to the sky.

"He tried to kill me," I croaked. 234

"Keep your hands up! Hands up! Don't move!"

I felt them grab my hands, pull them behind me, and place handcuffs around my wrists. Then they forced me through the door, away from Mal' s lifeless body.

*

They'd placed me in a small concrete room. A woman had come in and asked me to explain everything that had happened, then she'd left. I couldn't tell how long I'd been sitting here since then, but it felt like a long time. I shivered and tucked my knees up against my chest. The room was freezing.

The door opened. The woman had returned. She sat down and looked at me.

"We' re going to let you go now. No charges will be pressed against you."

"What?"

"We're listing your actions as self-defense."

"Oh. I mean ... it was self-defense .. . but ... "

"You want to know why we believe you."

"Yes."

"We had a forensic scientist go over the scene. The evidence he found corroborates your story."

"Oh." 235

"We've also been building a case against the man you killed for awhile. We were already aware of his violent tendencies. We think he may have targeted you for your synth skin."

"My synth skin?" My breath caught and I coughed. My throat was still raw.

"I'm sorry. I don 't mean to be impolite." She glanced at my face and looked away. "You've had a synth skin replacement, is that correct?"

"Yes! Yes. It.. . didn't go well''

"We believe that Mr. Arodnap had ... a fetish for synth skin. He may have been collecting it for something."

"Coli ecti ng it?"

"Yes. We have evidence placing him at a grave robbery in which a dead woman was stripped of her synthetic skin. He also harassed a coworker and mad strange comments to her about her skin."

"My god ... "

"Yes. You're lucky to have gotten away from him alive, Miss Stein."

"Yes."

"Anyway. We can release you now. We didn't want you to go home alone so we contacted your mother. She was listed as your emergency contact on your I.D. She's waiting outside." 236

"My ... my mother?" Acid rose in my throat and I coughed again, even harder.

"I'm sorry we should have given you water. Your throat must be killing you. Are you sure you don't want a doctor to check you out?"

They had asked me when I'd come in if they could examine me. "No," I choked,

"No, I'm really fine."

"Ok." The woman looked skeptical, but stood and gestured for me to exit. My hands shook. I was almost free, what would happen when I went though that door. What would happen when she saw me.

I stepped into the bustling police station. The officer led me between workstations, toward the entrance. Dem stood, looking excited, and her eyes locked onto me.

"You can take your daughter home now, Ms. Stein."

Dem stared at me and I stared back. For a Monet she said nothing. Just looked at me. I could see comprehension wash over her. She turned to the officer and my heart leapt up in my chest. She was going to tell her I wasn't Cora. That I'd stolen her daughter' s identity. That I was a criminal and I shouldn't be trusted. They would decide it wasn't self defense. They'd put me in jail. They'd make me put on prison clothes and take off my gloves and then they'd know. They' d know what I was and then ... what?

What was going to happen to me?

"Thank you, Officer, for looking after my daughter. Come on, Cora." 237

I gave the officer a week smile and followed Dem out the door. I was surprised to see the sun was coming up over the building, casting a pink-gold halo around the skyline.

Dem and I walked down the street for a few blocks in silence. I wanted to say something to her, but I couldn't think of anything. What could I say to make her understand what I'd done? How could I ever earn her forgiveness for the harm I'd done to her? The hurt I'd caused her?

"I know Cora' s not coming back." She said it softly.

''I'm sorry, Dem."

"You had better do something good. Do better than she did."

"I will. I promise."

"Where are you staying now."

"I have an apartment. On Eddy Street."

"I'll walk you."

We walked in silence for a few more blocks.

"I got a nanny job. And I enrolled at CCSF. I'm going to study business."

"I'm proud of you." Her voice cracked and we continued on in quietly until we reached my building.

"Can I see where you live?" 238

"Sure."

We rode up to the fourth floor. I unlocked my door with shaking hands. What if she didn't like the apartment? What fi wasn't doing good enough? I opened the door.

"Cora! Cora oh my god you're ok! We were so scared!" Andy and Bummer buried me in a hug.

"Are you ok? What happened? Why didn't you come back?"

They pulled back and saw Dem.

"Who' s this?"

"This is my friend, Dem. I was going to show her the apartment. It's a long story."

Andy opened the door wide and Dem and I stepped inside. The smell of home enveloped me and I took a deep breath.

"I'll make some tea," Andy offered.

I smiled. "And I'll tell you all my story."