Love Minus Eighty

43 Rob

Staring down at his system, Rob willed Winter to ping. She was out there somewhere.

Rising from the edge of his bed, Rob retrieved his lute from the closet, went out back, brushed dried leaves and silt from an old porto-seat, and sat down. He let his fingers glide over the polished wood of the lute, then began playing “Polymnia,” an ancient piece he rarely played unless he was providing dinner music at a swanky restaurant.

She wasn’t going to call. If she were, she would have done so by now.

Two weeks was more than enough time.

He paused midsong. Maybe he should leave one more message? No. What could he say that he hadn’t said the first three times? Leaving a fourth message would only make him seem more pathetic. He carried on with the song.

His chest ached at the thought of Winter alive, laughing, living, with him no part of her life. Where was she, right now? On Red’s estate? In an ultralight copter? Rob looked up at the sliver of sky visible below the roof of Percy Estate, saw a copter flitting its way to somewhere. Winter could be in it.

It was time to move on. No more calls. How sick was it for him to persist, if she didn’t want to speak to him? She owed him less than nothing.

Let her go. That’s what Veronika had said. His dad, too.

“Polymnia” gave way to “Laura Soave,” an aching melody, without Rob’s awareness. Everything was skintight. He would go back to hanging out with his friends.

He played a modern tune by Arctic Ice, plucking the strings with a vigor that bordered on abuse, his thoughts flitting across the conversations they’d had, seeking something, some explanation. On that last visit, when she told him she might be getting out, there had been such a sense of intimacy between them. Maybe not love, but a deep, close connection.

“You ready, Eddie?” Lorne called through the door.

“Yeah.” He’d forgotten they were going to the tubes for dinner. Rob stopped playing and headed up the back stoop.

The benches at the tubes were packed with diners. It was Saturday night, Rob realized. Once upon a time Rob had known exactly what day of the week it was, but when you worked every day, the distinctions became less crucial.

He had no idea why he was still working at the reclamation center. The money was decent, but so what? Maybe it was because he didn’t want to play for other people, and no other options for work had presented themselves.

His dad talked an Asian family into scooting down so they could squeeze onto the end of their table, then he dug right into his burger, making appreciative grunts as he chewed. Rob’s stomach was tight, wasn’t welcoming of food, but he ate anyway. His dad deserved to enjoy himself. Rob forced a smile.

“Where do you think she is right now?” Lorne asked.

“I try not to think about it,” Rob answered.

“All you do is think about it.” When Rob didn’t reply, he asked, “What’s the rich guy’s name again?”

“I’m pretty sure the guy’s name is Redmond.”

Lorne lifted his cup of water, held it there until Rob finally relented and followed suit. “Here’s to Redmond. God bless his filthy rich ass.” They drank. Lorne lifted his cup again. “And to my son, who, against god-awful odds, figured out how to save the damsel in distress.”

Rob smiled wanly. “By posting naked pictures of her.”

Lorne burst into loud, easy laughter. The young girl squeezed in beside Lorne looked up at him, then laughed as well. The laughter spread down the bench.

Someone pinged Rob; he was still so unused to wearing a system again that the sound startled him. He looked to see who it was.

There was nothing but plain, unadorned text in the upper right corner of his vision. Nothing but a name.

Winter West.

Rob leaped from the bench. “Be right back.” He trotted out toward the big tubes, which were inactive at this time of day.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” She sounded, what? Reluctant? Apologetic? Certainly not excited. The connection was voice-only; he wished he could see her.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay. I just got back from my honeymoon a few days ago.”

That explained her delay in getting in touch. Part of it, anyway. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it.”

“I’m alive.”

He waited for more.

“Are you free? Can we meet?” he finally blurted, trying not to sound as eager as he felt.

“Right now?” Her tone was like a lead weight in his gut. She sounded uneasy, as if she was trying to think of an excuse to decline. “I guess. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to stay long. Red’s coming home from a trip around eight.”

“That’s okay.”

“All right, then.” Again, she sounded almost pained.

“Great.” Once they were face-to-face, the awkwardness would melt away. They would fall into that comfortable intimacy they’d enjoyed in the cryocenter.

“Where?” she asked.

“Somewhere in Low Town? Stain’s Coffee?” Rob didn’t know where Winter was living, but thought it safe to assume it was in High Town.

“I don’t want to meet too close to where I used to live; it would be strange, bumping into people I used to know.”

He started to ask why that would be strange, then got it. She’d already contacted her closest friends. Others would be shocked to see Winter alive. Winter would have to explain how she managed to get revived, then there’d be an awkward exchange where the former acquaintance would convey to Winter that it was okay to be a bridesicle, that she had nothing to be ashamed of.

“I understand.” He didn’t care where they met; he just wanted to see her.

“Somewhere outside? It’s hard for me to be inside, since the crèche. When Red is away, sometimes I sleep on the roof,” she laughed.

“No, I understand. How about Central Park? There’s a bridge with beautiful ironwork on the West Side—”

“I know which one you mean. Give me an hour?”

“See you then.” He didn’t want to give her an hour; he wanted to see her that very moment. She would be walking, moving her arms, breathing.

He trotted back to the bench, saw that Lorne was about three-quarters of the way through his dinner. Rob sat, made a show of eating some banana fries, though his heart was racing and he had zero appetite.

“Who was it?” Lorne asked, studying Rob.

“It was Winter. I’m meeting her in an hour.” Saying it, he felt a stupid swell of pride.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Lorne shook his head in wonder. “Be sure you record this. This is really something.” He looked down the bench, as if contemplating sharing the story with someone, then he clapped Rob on the back. “Go on, get going. I’ll see you at home.”

Rob sprung from the bench and jogged off.

44 Rob

Rob spotted the bridge ahead, a graceful curve of weathered steel spanning nothing but a walking trail, the railing decorated with ornate steel clover shapes. He stopped at the center, pressed his palm to the cool steel railing. He and Penny had broken up on this bridge. Under it, actually, on the walk that ran beneath. From where he was standing, Rob could see the little orange fire hydrant he’d propped his foot on while they talked.

He was twenty minutes early; he scanned for Winter in case she was early as well. He wanted to spot her when she was still far off, so he could watch her move without her being aware he was watching.

Rob wiped his sweaty palm on his thigh and set it back on the railing. What should he say as she approached? When he and Penny used to play romantic-comedy interactives with the scoring enabled, Rob always won, was always better at snapping off those pithy romantic lines that racked up points. Now his mind was blank.

He watched an ultralight copter flit over the lake in the distance. Maybe he should say nothing, just wait until she was standing beside him at the rail, the two of them enjoying the view in silence.

The copter rose over the trees along the trail. Rob expected it to continue rising and fly away, but it paused, then touched down on the trail a hundred yards away.

Winter stepped out. She waved to the pilot as the copter lifted off, then turned toward the bridge.

She spotted Rob, lifted a hand. He waved back. She let her fingers drop, but kept her hand raised. She was simply beautiful. Coils of deep burgundy flowed across her bare shoulders; her lips were drawn in a half smile. She dropped her head and walked toward him, in no hurry.

Rob’s mouth was dry, his heart racing, as she joined him on the bridge. She was small—smaller than she’d seemed in the crèche and in the videos. There was a light dusting of freckles on her arms.

“It’s good to see you, Rob.” She made no move to hug him, only joined him at the railing, looking toward the spot where the copter had deposited her.

“It’s good to see you, too.” Not a line that would have racked up points in a rom-com interactive. “You did it. I can’t believe it.”

She chuckled, glanced at him, beautiful eyelashes rising over lively green eyes. “I did it? I could barely move my face, and I sounded like a swamp harpy. You and your musketeers did it. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have waited this long to thank you.”

It was another fine moment for an embrace that didn’t come. They watched a goose launch itself off the lake, honking enthusiastically.

“So what’s your life like?” Rob asked.

She rubbed her forehead, smiling, considering the question. “I wake up, tell a drone what I want for breakfast, take a bath in a tub the size of a swimming pool.” She shrugged. “It’s an easy life. Red warned me that he’s going to be gone a lot. Three of his kids live on the island—”

“The island? You live on one of those three-legged estates on the water?” All this time he’d been picturing her in a penthouse in High Town, when she’d actually been on an estate, a hundred feet above the water.

Winter nodded. “Out in the upper bay, close to the ocean. Along with Red’s extended family—kids, grandkids, nephews, nieces.”

“Nice people?”

“No.” She said it flippantly, as if it didn’t matter.

Rob frowned. “What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Mostly they ignore me, as if I’m a pet Labradoodle Red brought home.” She shrugged. “There are worse things.”

“Do they think you’re horning in on their inheritance?”

Winter guffawed. “Are you kidding? I don’t inherit anything; it’s all spelled out in the contract. You’re not in a strong negotiating position when you’re in a coffin. They just see me as a low person, someone to look nice at Redmond’s side at public events, and for him to fuck.”

Rob winced, trying to mask his reaction. “You’re on Red’s insurance now, though, aren’t you?”

Winter nodded absently. Rob assumed she was having a second conversation on her system, then realized she wasn’t working her system, she was simply fidgeting with an emerald embedded in it. Her mind was elsewhere.

“What’s it like, knowing you’re guaranteed to live to a hundred and fifteen or twenty?”

The question drew Winter from her reverie. She looked at Rob, really looked at him with those green eyes, her face so very alive. “I’m not sure yet.” She dug at the emerald like she was trying to pry it loose. “I haven’t had time for it to sink in. It’s been hard enough adjusting to being alive again. I’ve been in touch with other women who’ve been through this; they’re the only people who can understand what’s happened to me. That’s been helpful.”

Rob nodded. “Have you been in touch with Idris?”

“Oh, sure. We went shopping after I got out. I didn’t have a thing to wear. Some inconsiderate person gave away all my clothes when I died.” She dropped her head, thinking; her hair gliding down to frame her face. Rob wanted to reach out and touch that hair, soft across his fingers. Instead, he laced his fingers and clenched his hands together on the railing. “It’s been a little awkward, trying to reconnect with Idris. She wants to pick up right where we left off, like it never happened. Like nothing’s changed.”

“I guess it’ll take both of you time to adjust.”

“I guess.” She was biting her lip, gone again. If Rob hadn’t watched hours and hours of Winter’s previous life, he might have thought this was who she was. Maybe it wasn’t surprising she wasn’t the same, after all she’d been through, married now to an old man she barely knew. Rob hated that old man, utterly despised him even though they’d never met. He only hoped Winter despised Red as much as he did. If she liked him, if somehow she learned to love him… he was afraid to ask, but he had to know.

He tried to sound casual. “So, what’s he like?”

“Redmond? I haven’t seen him since the honeymoon. He works, spends time with his kids. He’s been married five times. He spends most of his free time building his video game collection.” She laughed, but dryly—not the infectious laugh he’d heard so often from her past life. “Did I mention Red has one of the largest early video game collections in the world?”

“You did not. How exciting.” He tried to match her droll, mock-cheery tone.

“He does. One day you’ll have to visit the island and let Red show it to you. For hours and hours.”

Rob laughed, but Winter only shook her head. It seemed like he’d never get to hear her wonderful laughter.

“Big sigh,” she said.

That got Rob laughing again. “You do realize your lungs work now? You could, you know, actually make a sighing sound.”

Winter broke into a reluctant smile, but went on looking at her hands. “While I was dead, I kind of got used to describing my affects rather than actually carrying them out. Much easier. In fact, I’m thinking about narrating all of my movements and just sitting still most of the time. ‘I stand, I walk to the window. Put my hands on my hips.’”

“Just don’t try to eat that way.”

“Good point.”

Winter craned her neck, looking toward the underside of High Town, thick with shadows, buttresses crisscrossing the framework. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see that roof. I always found it oppressive, but now it’s comforting.”

Rob eyed the strings of apartments dangling below the ceiling. He could pinpoint Lorelei’s if he wanted, the place where all of this had started, leading to this moment.

He looked at Winter, the pinkness rising in her cheeks in the cool evening, the barely perceptible flutter of a pulse in the hollow of her neck. “This is incredible, being able to spend time with you without that timer hanging over us,” he said.

“Head nod,” Winter whispered, and for the first time, Rob felt as if he was standing next to the woman he’d grown so close to. Her eyes grew soft and teary, and he could see she was with him, fully.

Then she turned, looked off toward the lake. “Let’s go on a trip. My treat. Or Red’s treat, if you want to get technical.”

For a moment, against all reason, he thought she meant a trip in a car, or a train, and his heart leaped at the thought of packing a bag and spending two or three days, alone with Winter. Of course, that wasn’t what she meant. She was working her system. “Where do you want to go? Anywhere in the world. Pick somewhere expensive.” She’d gone back to looking through him as much as at him, the feeling of connection vanished.

“Won’t he be upset if you take a friend on an expensive trip?” For some reason Rob couldn’t bring himself to say Red’s name. It hurt every time Winter said it. Rob wished she’d call him something else. Preferably “the impotent old bastard.”

Winter laughed dryly. “He won’t notice. Here, look at this.” She moved her readout into the air so he could see it. It included her account balance: almost a half million dollars. “That’s what’s left of my allowance for the month.”

Rob couldn’t take his eyes off the readout. “That’s hard to believe.”

“I know. When I died, I was twelve thousand dollars in debt, and it seemed like so much money.” She closed the readout. “Come on, let’s go everywhere.”

They spent five minutes in Paris, soaring over Notre Dame, popping into the Louvre long enough to see the Mona Lisa; two minutes hovering beside Mount Everest, watching two climbers scale an ice wall; one minute inside the dead city of Bangkok with its eighty-foot-high walls, where no living thing had walked in forty years, thanks to the nanopocalypse. Their last stop was an open-air virtual bazaar on the moon, where screens examined virtual merchandise set on virtual tables that was being hawked by other screens. Not one particle of moon dust was disturbed, because none of it was really there.

“Wow,” was all Rob could say when they returned to the relative ordinariness of Central Park.

“I know.”

“How much did that cost?”

Winter checked, raised her eyebrows. “Something like eleven thousand. Not bad, really.”

Almost all of it would be toll fees, set to limit the number of screens surrounding attractions like Big Ben and the Sphinx at any one time. From what Rob understood, opening a screen on the other side of the Earth cost the provider no more than opening one a foot away from you, yet for some reason the farther away you opened a screen, the more you were charged.

Eleven thousand, for a few minutes’ entertainment. Rob thought of how hard he had had to work to raise nine thousand to visit Winter for five minutes.

He caught Winter looking at him. When she saw him notice, she closed her eyes, smiled a neutral, unreadable smile. He sensed that the next words out of her mouth would be that she had to get going, that it had been nice seeing him, and maybe they could do it again at some other undetermined time.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” he said before she had time to say it, “but you don’t seem like the same person I used to look so forward to visiting.”

Winter worked her system, as if checking on something she’d just thought of.

“Did I do something wrong?” Rob asked.

“You mean, besides running me over?”

The comment stung, even though her tone was light and ironic. “Besides that, yes.”

Her fingers stopped tapping. She let them drop to her sides. “Besides that, you worked yourself to the brink of exhaustion every day for almost two years to keep a promise to a stranger, then for an encore you did the impossible—you figured out how to get her out of there.” She lowered her voice to a near whisper. “No, Rob, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He had no idea how she’d found out about his work schedule. Maybe just an educated guess. “Then why are you acting like you hardly know me?”

Winter covered her mouth, looked at the ground. She didn’t answer.

“When you were in there, sometimes I imagined what it would be like, the moment we met out in the world. I thought—” His voice hitched; he cleared his throat. “I thought it would be incredible, the best moment in my entire life. That we’d run toward each other laughing. We’d jump up and down, screaming, ‘We did it, we did it.’”

Three screens drifted by on the trail below, likely joggers running on treadmills at home.

“Close your eyes,” Winter said.

“What?”

“Close your eyes.”

Rob looked at her, questioning, then closed his eyes.

“Now imagine us jumping up and down.”

“Okay.”

“Where am I, in relation to you?”

Rob opened his eyes. Winter held her palm in front of his eyes. “Keep them closed.”

He closed them. “Where are you? I don’t know, you’re standing right in front of me, I guess.”

“Where are my hands?”

He almost opened his eyes again. Her hands were in his, but he didn’t want to say that. “You’re clutching my wrists.”

“Okay,” she said, though she sounded dubious. “Now roll the scene forward. We’re saying, ‘We did it, we did it.’ What comes next? We stop jumping, and…?”

What came next was Winter melting into his arms, the embrace he’d imagined a thousand times. And if she let him, he would go on holding her until all was silence and there was nothing in the world but the two of them, and he could feel her heart beating against his chest.

“What comes next is we fall into each other’s arms,” Winter said.

Rob opened his eyes. She was watching his face, searching for his reaction. He opened his mouth to disagree, but nothing came.

Her eyes were suddenly bright with tears, her mouth tight. “The thing of it is, I’m married, Rob. I signed an irrevocable life contract. Irrevocable, as in, nothing is ever going to change it. That was the price I paid. I paid it willingly, and I would do it again.” She turned to go. “I can’t fall into anyone’s arms but Red’s.”

“I understand that.” He spoke quickly as she moved away. “I just want us to be friends, like we were when I was visiting you. I miss those visits.”

She paused, wiped under one eye with the back of her wrist. “I do, too. More than you can imagine. But it’s a bad idea.” She scrunched her eyes, seemed to be imploring Rob to understand, then she turned and hurried away. As she stepped off the bridge, Rob heard her add, “I’m sorry.”

45 Veronika

Sunali looked up when Lorelei and Veronika entered, made a sound to indicate mock surprise. It appeared as if the meeting of the Former Bridesicle Liberation Army, or whatever they called themselves, was already under way. Lorelei and Veronika were fifteen minutes early, so Sunali must have given Lorelei the wrong time.

“This is my good friend Veronika,” Lorelei said as they took seats at the table, several hundred of Lorelei’s cohort taking up residence in the air behind her. It was a dining room table, in Sunali’s dining room—this was clearly not a big operation, nor a particularly well-funded one.

Sunali introduced them to the four other women sitting at the table. All were beautiful, of course, because they were ex-bridesicles. They ranged in age from young to quite old.

Veronika listened to them for a while, trying to get up to speed. Their idea was to do another break-in event in the air over High Town, this time using a recorded plea for help from a bridesicle still trapped in the minus eighty. They would have to make the recording secretly, since Cryomed didn’t allow customers to use recording devices inside their facility. Veronika thought it was a decent idea, but Lorelei clearly didn’t. She rolled her eyes and sighed heavily as the bridesicle league worked out details.

What? Veronika sent Lorelei.

Their idea is lame.

Well, tell them!

“Your idea is lame,” Lorelei nearly shouted. Five heads swiveled to look at her. “A big dead face in the air, doing a PSA.” She waved her hands in the air. “Ooooh, how modern. That’s not going to get anyone interested. It won’t get passed on, won’t get picked up by the micros, let alone the macros.”

Sunali raised one eyebrow. “Well. Thanks for your input. Can you guess what painfully obvious question I’m going to ask now?”

Veronika could. Do you have a better idea? she sent to Lorelei.

“No, I don’t have a better idea,” Lorelei said, propping a knobby bare knee on the table. “But what you’re planning is a waste of time.”

Sunali made a show of rearranging the specs suspended in the air beside her seat. “We’re paying a consultant who has data that says you’re wrong. We’re not as out of touch as you might think, sweetie.” She swept long bangs out of her eyes, turned back to her committee.

“Wait, I know.” Lorelei leaned forward, pressing her palms on the table. “Don’t do one big one, do ten thousand little ones! And not in the sky, at ground level. Have the bridesicle go right up to people in the streets, pleading for help.”

“Then they’d be nothing but ads,” the oldest woman, probably in her midsixties, said. “No one would even see them; their systems would filter out the ads.”

Lorelei shook her head. “Who said anything about screens. Full figures.”

Veronika winced. The league of ex-bridesicles chuckled merrily at Lorelei’s naïveté.

“Do you have any idea what that would cost?” Sunali asked. “First, we’d have to pay a rogue programmer to engineer ten thousand illegal full-body projections, then we’d have to pay ten thousand fines of eight hundred dollars each, in advance! Plus lawsuits, because the projections are bound to cause injuries, wandering into the streets. People could die.”

“You’re talking about tens of millions,” one of the other ex-bridesicles chimed in.

Lorelei clicked her tongue in annoyance. “You could program them to stay off the streets.”

“It’s still way beyond our operating budget,” Sunali said.

Lorelei leaned back, folded her arms. “Fine. Then put a big frozen face in the air.”

Still, it was a chilling image: ten thousand frozen, blue-skinned women wandering the streets, pleading for help. Lorelei was creative, at least. Or maybe it had been Parsons’s idea.

46 Veronika

Low Town. Streets crowded with people, some of them up from Undertown, smelling dank and edgy. Vehicles untethered, at the mercy of drivers. Old, straight, square buildings. All of it set in the mottled shade of High Town. Veronika loved coming to Low Town; the grittiness of it felt exciting, a little dangerous.

She kept hoping Nathan would pop in and ask her what she was up to, just so she could say she was hanging out with Lycan again. So he knew she wasn’t sitting at home playing Wings of Fire.

A flashing green arrow appeared in her visual field, directing her down Houston Street. They were meeting on Spring Street in the heart of Greenwich Village, at Lombardi’s, the oldest pizzeria in the city.

It wasn’t romantic. She didn’t want it to be romantic, but she wouldn’t mind if Nathan thought it was. Which was pathetic—she knew Nathan couldn’t care less if her relationship with Lycan was romantic or not. Still, she’d like him to know.

As she turned onto Spring Street, she finally gave in to temptation and pinged Nathan.

What’s up? he sent.

Nothing. Having pizza in the Village. Just thought I’d check in.

Excellent. Who you with?

Just Lycan. She tried to sound casual.

Is that becoming something?

I don’t know. It’s in that blurry area.

I know it well. Have fun.

Veronika closed the link. Mission accomplished. Yeah, he’d sounded devastated. She spotted Lycan through the window of Lombardi’s, sitting at a table, sort of wringing his hands. He stood when she stepped inside. He looked… distressed.

“Are you okay? You look a little…” she trailed off, reluctant to label how he looked.

“Panic attack,” he said, and gave a “What are you going to do?” shrug.

“I just love anxiety. Any idea what set it off? Work?”

Lycan shrugged. “They just happen.”

Veronika certainly knew how that was. “What do you usually do to cope?”

“Usually? I row.”

“You row.”

Lycan nodded. “I have a rowing machine. I pick a place, maybe the Nile, or the Amazon, and I row until I’m exhausted.”

Veronika broke into a grin. How many times had she passed the lagoon around Central Park and vowed to rent one of those antique fiberglass rowboats and paddle around? A quick check told Veronika there were a few available. She reserved one.

“Come on, let’s get our pizza to go,” she said, standing.

“Is it helping?” Veronika asked.

“A little, yes. I always feel better when I have something to do with my hands.” Lycan pulled on the oars. He seemed less awkward, less a goofy brain, now that he was pulling on oars. Veronika reclined in her seat, a slice of pizza in one hand, enjoying the sweet smell of cut grass in the air. It was delightful—the breeze created by the boat’s movement, the dribble of water off the oars as they lifted out of the water, the plunge as they dug back in. She watched the oars trace an oval, Lycan’s biceps and triceps alternately bunching and relaxing. The baggy clothes Lycan wore gave the impression that he was more plump than powerful, and his atrocious posture reinforced that misperception, but he was actually a muscular guy.

“I have a theory about anxiety and exercise,” Lycan said between heavy breaths.

“Yeah?” Veronika tossed a piece of crust into the water; almost immediately, the water swirled and a fish plucked it away.

“I’m guessing you know that physiologically, all emotion is nothing but elevated autonomic nervous system activity—elevated heart rate, skin conductance, blood pressure?”

“Sure.”

Lycan smiled, nodded. “So, emotion is just the label you place on that arousal. If someone is pissing you off, that beating heart is ‘anger’; if you’re giving a speech, it’s ‘terror’; if you’re in a horse-drawn carriage with a beautiful woman, it’s ‘love.’”

Another rower came into view to their left. Veronika glanced at him; he looked like he was rowing for his life.

“I think rowing alleviates my anxiety because it provides a plausible explanation for my pounding heart and sweating palms. It tricks that primitive part of my brain where the fear is originating. It’s not ‘anxiety’ I’m feeling; my heart is pounding because I’m ‘exercising.’”

“Misattribution of the arousal. There’s a tried-and-true method dating coaches use based on that principle: Get a couple on a roller coaster and get their hearts racing. Often they’ll attribute their thumping hearts to physical attraction instead of fear.” Veronika sat up, considering. “You’ve come up with a clever application of the theory.”

“I find the key is that I have to hit a level of intensity in my exercise that matches the arousal my anxiety is creating, to fool the caveman in the back of my head.”

Veronika chuckled at the analogy. To their left, the other man was rowing with all his might. He glanced back, pulled even harder.

“What’s that about?” Veronika asked. She queried her system. Virtual boats appeared, along with a dozen lanes delineated by red strips perched a foot above the water. “Oh, he’s racing.” Evidently the other boats were in other bodies of water.

“Interesting,” Lycan said, consulting his own system. “The program corrects for variations in wind conditions and water flow, so the racers are on even footing.” They watched as the live rower finished third, then, huffing, slowly made his way toward shore, passing Lycan and Veronika.

“Excuse me,” Veronika said as he passed, “can anyone participate?”

“You have to belong to the International Rowing Club,” the guy said. He raised his eyebrows. “You want to race one-on-one? IP is always better, and I could use the extra work.”

Veronika looked at Lycan, who was already shaking his head. “I’m not a racer.”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun. So he creams you, so what?” It was weird and wonderful, playing the role of the carpe-diem free spirit. Normally Veronika would be whining for them to go back to the coffee shop, that she was damp from the spray of the oar. “This is a perfect opportunity to get out of your comfort zone.”

“I left my comfort zone when I stepped out of my apartment this morning,” Lycan said.

Veronika reached over and sent a spray of water at Lycan.

“Hey,” he laughed. He swung one of the oars, shooting a veritable wave into the boat and over Veronika’s lap. She leaped out of her seat, screeching from the cold, then leaned over the boat and splashed him a couple more times.

“How about it?” the rower called.

“Come on,” Veronika goaded. “Let’s race.”

Lycan shrugged. “Okay, why not? Seize the day.”

The rower, whose name was Russell, created two lanes and a countdown clock with his system. Lycan struggled to get their boat into the lane and relatively motionless as tiny waves nudged them. Russell used his oars to compensate for the waves, keeping his boat firmly in place. The clock hit zero.

With smooth, easy strokes, Russell pulled ahead almost immediately. But once Lycan got going, Russell didn’t pull any farther away; he and Veronika hung on, about twenty feet back.

“Faster!” Veronika called. Laughing through gritted teeth, Lycan rowed faster. With each stroke, the front of the boat lifted slightly out of the water, then crashed back down onto the lake. They were moving, really moving, a stiff breeze whistling in Veronika’s ears, her hair blown back in the cool blast. Veronika closed her eyes, laughed out loud. “Faster!”

She opened her eyes and looked at Lycan, who was looking right at her, grinning and grimacing simultaneously, pulling on the oars with all his might, seemingly oblivious to Russell, who was only a dozen or so feet ahead.

Veronika clapped her thighs. “You’re gaining on him.”

Glancing at Russell over his shoulder, Lycan found another gear. His hands were a blur, his rowing smooth. Veronika saw Russell react, picking up his own tempo a notch, his forehead rippled with creases.

She’d always been a little skeptical of the evidence supporting technomie, had always suspected it was mostly trumped-up bologna created by people nostalgic for a simpler time, the same people who had once argued that picture books were wonderful for your child, but if the picture moved, it would rot her brain. How different was it, really, to talk to a screen instead of a live person? Wasn’t a virtual landscape still a kind of landscape? But this—racing in a boat—might force her to rethink her position.

“How’s that panic attack?” Veronika asked.

“Gone,” Lycan shouted over the crashing of the oars.

They were a boat’s length behind Russell. Ahead, Veronika could see the finish line—a blue line bisecting the spot where the lanes ended. “Another hundred meters. Give it all you’ve got—leave it all on the field.”

They closed a few inches with each stroke as the finish line grew closer, closer…

Russell broke the virtual tape about four feet ahead of them, but Veronika whooped anyway. Lycan squeezed his eyes closed and laughed as their boat cruised along on momentum.

“Another twenty yards and you would have had me,” Russell called, paddling alongside them. “Wow, you just don’t tire.”

Russell asked Lycan if he’d ever rowed competitively, invited him to join the rowing club, shot him a link.

“See?” Veronika said as Russell rowed off. “See?”

“Yes,” Lycan said, smiling at Veronika, blinking away the sweat trickling down his brow. “I see.”

Reading people was part of Veronika’s job, and what she thought she read was that Lycan was developing a crush on her. That would do wonders for her shrunken, pathetic ego—for a genius to have a crush on her, but it also made her uneasy. It was possible she was feeling a slight reciprocal crush, but for some reason, whenever she tried to imagine herself holding Lycan’s hand, or lying in bed with him, it felt wrong. Odd. Maybe because it felt like she was cheating on Nathan, and how neurotic was that? Chances were decent that Lycan would never move beyond harboring a secret crush, if that’s what it was, so hopefully it would never be an issue.

47 Rob

The drone lowered another load of electronic crap into Rob’s bin.

“Thank you, kind drone,” Rob said. The drone wandered off, not equipped with a mouth. Or ears.

About twice a day, Rob decided to quit. When four a.m. had come the day after his meeting with Winter in Central Park, he’d found himself up and preparing for work. He’d just allowed his body to go through the motions out of habit, let his feet carry him to the reclamation center, let his hands pluck the color-coded electronic treats. He had no desire to touch his lute, less desire to reconnect with long-neglected friends, sipping beer, discussing the issues of the day.

The exception to his utter lack of interest in others’ company was, for reasons he didn’t fully understand, Veronika. He felt comforted by her. Maybe it was because she didn’t mind that he was morose, often uncommunicative. She seemed at her best when faced with that kind of sadness, maybe because she lived it, pining for Nathan. If only Rob were in love with Veronika. But he wasn’t.

He tossed the husk he’d just picked clean into the plastic chute and pulled his next victim toward him—one of those drone vacuums you see in old comedies, running over people’s toes and bumping into shins.

Eventually he would get over Winter. Until then, best to stay busy, to be so tired at night he fell asleep before his mind could get working.

When his shift ended, he put one foot in front of the other until he was standing at his front door. He quietly let himself in.

His father was in the bedroom, speaking in low tones to Rob’s “mom,” telling her about his day, maybe updating her on the news. Dinner was on the stove, some sort of stew, stingy bits of meat on round socket bones. It was definitely not vat grown; something had screamed and bled so meat could make this relatively rare appearance at their table. Rob wasn’t hungry, but he pulled a bowl from the dispenser and ladled in some stew. His dad had gone to the trouble of making it, some sort of animal had given its life, the least he could do was eat some.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” Dad got himself a bowl, filled it with stew, and sat across from Rob at the aluminum folding table. “How you doing?”

“Good, Dad. Good.”

Dad ate noisily while Rob cast about for some innocuous topic of conversation to break the silence. His mind rebelled, unable to generate any topic except Winter.

“You’re doing good, huh?” Dad said, eyeing him over his raised spoon.

Outside, a neighbor’s dog barked hoarsely.

“No, Dad. Not good. Miserable. Wretched.”

“Let me ask you something,” Dad said through a mouthful of stew. He waved his fork at Rob. “If you’d met Winter at a bar—if she happened to be sitting in the seat next to you and you got talking—you really think you’d feel the same?”

Rob smiled sadly, the meat suddenly dry in his mouth. Lorne was suggesting it was their situation, not Winter herself, that caused the flame to be so hot. “I know I would.”

“I just don’t see that you have much in common.” Lorne reached up and wiped the corners of his mouth with his fingers. “Penny and you had more in common, and you didn’t even seem bothered when that ended.”

“Yeah. If only we could control what we feel, and who we feel it for.” Rob looked out the windows, at the tall yellow grass and the big mound of dirt in the backyard. He sighed, looked at Lorne. “Let me turn the question around. Would it have mattered how you met Mom? Wouldn’t you have known, no matter what?”

Lorne set his spoon down. He loved to talk about the days when he was courting Rob’s mom. “When I saw her for the first time, walking into town with her family, guiding an old broken-down four-legged drone that was carrying everything they could heap on it, it was like recognizing someone I already knew. It was like, ‘Oh, there you are. Where’ve you been?’”

Rob laughed. “That’s a nice way to put it. That’s exactly how I feel. It’s as if the universe made a mistake and forgot that we’re supposed to be together.” A lump grew in his throat. He tried to eat some stew to give it time to relax, but it was as if his chest and throat were clamped shut. It was so painful to think about Winter, yet she was all he could think about. No matter how he tried to wrestle his mind toward another topic, it fought its way back.

Lorne was staring out the window, his mouth set in a familiar tight line of grief. Rob had brought up his mom, now Lorne was off on his own loop of painful, useless thoughts.

“I know Mom felt the same about you. I think of you two and it gives me faith that two people can be in love their entire lives.”

Lorne surprised Rob by responding with a dry, bitter laugh. “It’s never that simple, except in stories.”

“What do you mean?”

Lorne studied Rob for a moment, then folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Let me tell you a story about true love.”

Lorne took a moment, evidently considering how best to begin. Rob couldn’t imagine. “Let me tell you a story about true love?” The words sounded so strange coming from his father’s lips. It just wasn’t something he’d say. “Never turn away a customer,” sure, or “We’ll get along just fine.” Not “Let me tell you a story about true love.”

“Remember when you lent me that voice-analysis thing, where you could tell when someone was lying?” Lorne asked.

“Sure. Then almost immediately it became obsolete.” A week after the lie-detector system app was released, someone came out with a tone-scrambling application, so whenever someone tried to use the vocal-stress application as a lie detector, the target’s system scrambled their vocal tones. “What about it?”

Lorne stood, picked up his and Rob’s bowls, and turned to the sink. “You let me borrow it to see whether Shorty Pepper was watering the fuel he was selling me, and it turned out he was.” Spoons clinked as Lorne washed them in the bucket of water sitting in the sink, his back to Rob. “The problem was, I kept the damned thing running when I came back into the house.” He shrugged. “Forgot I had it on.”

Rob had no idea where this was going, but his father’s distress in telling it was so obvious, Rob could barely breathe.

“Me and your mom talked for a minute about what I found out about Shorty and the fuel. Then I said, ‘I love you’ like I did fifty times a day, and she said she loved me too, like she always did, only—” He stopped messing in the sink, turned to face Rob, braced his hands on the countertop. “Only she was lying.”

Rob shook his head emphatically. “No, Dad, you can’t assume the readout was accurate. There are a hundred other possible explanations.” Frantic, he tried to generate some, stammered for a moment before his brain kicked into gear. “Maybe something else was bothering her, and the stress came through in her voice when she answered.”

Lorne shook his head. “The thing is, it was bothering me so much, I asked her about it, and she admitted it.” Rob wanted to tell his father he didn’t want to hear this, that most of the other pilings that kept his life steady had already torn loose, and he needed the few that remained. But it was clear Lorne needed to tell this, maybe more than Rob needed to believe his parents’ love was true and perfect.

“She said she cared about me, but never felt that thump-thump that I feel for her.” Lorne turned around, grabbed a towel off the rack. “We had a rough time for a while after that. Finally, she said she could only feel what she felt, and that it was enough for her. Always had been. And she hoped it was enough for me.” Lorne cleared his throat, then cleared it again, violently, as if there was something barbed down in there. “In the end I decided it was. But it was a hard lesson.”

Rob wasn’t sure what to say. He looked down the hall, at the closed door to his parents’ room. His parents’ love for each other had always been something so tangible he could almost point to it, almost roll it around in his hand, feel how smooth and perfect it was.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

His dad considered. “We tried to keep things simple for you, but nothing’s simple now. I thought you might as well know the truth. It’s never as clear as it seems, no matter who you are. No matter who she is.”

Lorne rose, disappeared down the hall for a moment, returned carrying Rob’s lute. He handed Rob the lute. “You worked hard for your music. Harder than I’ve ever seen anyone work for anything. Now play, damn it. You can’t have Winter, no matter how hard you work.” He went into his bedroom, leaving Rob clutching his lute.

48 Veronika

I slimmed you down by twelve pounds, Veronika sent to her client, whose name was Harmonia. Any more than that and men will know the clips are altered once you go IP.

I have a state-of-the-art system, and I’m good with it. I’ll make sure they see the skinnier me IP, Harmonia sent back.

For thirty years? And will you insist he wear his system during sex? You’ve got to think ahead.

Someone pinged her, and her hierarchy of hopefulness kicked in as she checked who it was. She’d only recently become aware that there was a clear hierarchy as to whom she hoped was pinging her. It was Rob, who was tied for second in her hierarchy.

She pinged back, and Rob opened a screen in her apartment. It was so much more convenient to be friends with Rob now that he had a system again.

“Where are you?” Veronika asked, while keeping up the consultation with her client.

“I’m just coming out of a Zen Buddhist service.”

“Can I ask why?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can we meet IP?”

“Pick a place,” Veronika said.

She could barely see the priest from their seats, which were way up in the nosebleed section, two hundred feet above, and a hundred away, from the dais. They had the whole section to themselves, well out of earshot of other worshippers, even with the cathedral’s outstanding acoustics.

“Can I trust you to keep this to yourself?” Rob asked.

“If that’s a condition for hearing what this is all about, I have no choice but to say yes. I must know what’s going on.” Everyone knelt on the little cushions set on the floor. Rob and Veronika followed suit. “What is it about?” she added.

Rob shrugged, his head bowed. “It’s about love.”

For an instant, Veronika thought Rob might be about to profess his love for her, then realized how dumb that thought was. “Transfer a dollar to me.”

Rob looked confused. “Why?”

“Because I’m a professional. Contract me to give you relationship advice and I’m obligated to keep it confidential.”

Rob seemed amused by this, but he made the transfer. “So now it’s official?” He took a deep breath, as if he was going to say something else, then stalled.

“Go ahead, spit it out. I’ve heard it all.”

Rob smiled wanly. “You haven’t heard this one.”

Now she was curious. She waited patiently while Rob worked out what he wanted to say. “I’m here because I’m hoping I’ll bump into Winter. She goes to a different religious service each week.”

Veronika groaned. “How could I have missed it?” She was slipping—how had she not picked up on it sooner? All the pain Rob was going through when it looked like Winter was going to be buried. How ironic. How perfectly, achingly romantic. How utterly hopeless. “Does she know?”

They rose and returned to their seats along with the rest of the congregation.

“I think so. I told her I loved her, that day I thought I was seeing her for the last time.”

“That might have tipped her off.”

“She told me she can’t ever see me again.” He looked crestfallen.

Veronika reached out and rubbed his back for a second. “Shit, Rob, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Do you want my advice, or just a sympathetic ear?”

He looked at her, eyes like a wounded puppy. “I might as well hear your advice. I paid for it.”

“Yes, you did.” She folded her hands as if in prayer. “So here it is. Two thoughts. First, I think it’s possible some of what you’re feeling is situational. She was totally reliant on you, totally helpless. You were her knight in shining armor. It would be surprising if some transference and countertransference hadn’t occurred.”

Rob stared at the vaulted ceiling, arms folded. “I promise you, what I feel isn’t because she needed me. And stop using words I have to look up to understand.”

“Sorry. I’m not suggesting your feelings aren’t real. I’m saying the situation magnified them.”

“What’s number two?”

“Hopefully this one will be worth the whole buck, right?” Veronika waited for a laugh, didn’t get one. “This is a mess. There’s nothing ahead for you but pain. Move on. Find someone else, even if you’re not—” Veronika stopped, because Rob was squeezing his palms over his ears. “What?”

“Don’t even suggest it. There’s no way I could be with someone else.”

“Rob, you don’t have a choice. Things can’t possibly work out, even if she feels the same as you. Do you even know if she does?”

“No. And I understand what you’re saying—I know we can never be together. All I want is to be friends with her.”

Organ music swelled, filling the church. Everyone rose for the second hymn.

“Being friends with her would just make you more miserable.”

“Does being friends with Nathan make you miserable? Maybe you’d be happier if you cut off all contact with him?” Rob asked, his eyebrows raised.

“It’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

She struggled to answer, knowing it was different, but not able to pinpoint why. When the answer came, it startled her, because she hadn’t fully realized it until that moment. “Because I don’t really want to fall in love. Nathan is safe because he’s unattainable.”

“So is Winter,” Rob countered. “If the best I can hope for is to be friends with her and love her in secret, I’ll take it.”

Rob had her. He’d run circles around her logic. Either he was right, and he was better off pursuing a hopeless half measure with Winter than being without her, or Veronika’s friendship with Nathan was making her miserable. She could take her pick. It was a strange and terrifying thought, that her life would be better without Nathan in it. She was not sure she wanted to travel any farther down that road.

“But what can you do?” she asked. “Winter told you not to contact her. You don’t want to become a creepy stalker, hanging out in places where, if you did bump into her, you’d struggle to explain what the hell you were doing there.” She gestured emphatically at the cathedral surrounding them.

“No, I don’t. I know. But I also don’t want to never see her again. So where does that leave me?”

Rob was waiting for an answer, but Veronika didn’t have one. It wasn’t like she could contact Winter and try to intervene; she’d only met Winter a couple of times while she and Nathan were together. On top of that, Veronika was fairly sure Winter’s decision to make a clean break from Rob was a wise one. Winter might well be the only emotionally healthy person in this whole situation. Veronika wished she could spend more time with her, maybe get her take on Veronika’s situation with Nathan.

Then she remembered Winter had gone out with Nathan, and went running late at night to try to forget him when they broke up. Clearly, she’d had a thing for Nathan. Maybe she wasn’t all that emotionally stable after all.

Veronika did feel a strong connection to her, though, after creating the profile that helped free her. Come to think of it, a lot of people had pitched in to help Winter, including Rob. A lot of people had contributed money to her cause in those frantic months. Everyone would probably enjoy a chance to bask in the success of their effort, to break bread with the prisoner they helped free. How could Winter say no to that?

The question was, wasn’t it in Rob’s best interest to allow Winter to keep her distance? What good would it do to get them together in a room?

Rob was watching her carefully, reacting to her facial expressions with tilts of his head. Shit. She was overthinking things. It would make her friend happy.

Veronika smiled at Rob. “Here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to throw Winter a welcome-back-to-life party.”

Rob tilted his head farther, as if he’d misheard her. “We’re going to what?”

“We’re going to throw her a party. Or actually, I’m going to throw it. You think she’d come?”

Rob thought about it. “I guess. I mean, how could she say no? She knows the part you played in saving her life.”

The music rose to crescendo; people began to file out. Evidently the service was over. Rob and Veronika stood. “Do you want me to do this? I will if you want me to.”

Without hesitation, Rob said, “Yes. I want you to do it.”

“All right, then. I’ll start sending out the invitations.” A thrill went through her, imagining all of them there together.

As soon as they were outside, she pinged Nathan.

Nathan materialized via screen, followed an instant later by Lorelei.

“Salud,” Nathan said. “What’s the context?”

“I’m throwing a welcome-back party for Winter, and you’re both invited.”

Nathan’s screen bobbed into the air. “Holy shit, what a great idea!” Veronika had no doubt that before the words were out of his mouth, he was already working his system, spreading the word to his friends before they heard it from someone else. Lorelei was probably following suit, though most of her friends would have heard themselves. Did Veronika detect a flicker of envy on Lorelei’s perfectly symmetrical face? How badly did she wish this was her idea, so she could be the queen of the ball? Too late, sweetie.

49 Rob

Since the theme of the party was freedom, Veronika had decorated the space with blue sky and fluffy white clouds. All of the inner walls in her apartment were retracted, and to anyone with a system (which was everyone present) the perimeter of the apartment dropped off into empty sky.

Rob watched Winter from across the crowded room as she laughed with a crowd of well-wishers, who pressed around her, basking in the glow of the moment’s celebrity.

A familiar-looking woman approached Rob, her hand out. “I guess I was wrong about you.” Now Rob recognized her: Winter’s friend, Idris. “I’m sorry I was so terribly mean to you.”

“No, you had every right. I appreciate you providing me with Nathan’s name. If I hadn’t made that connection, Winter might still be in the minus eighty.”

Smiling warmly, Idris thanked him and moved on. Across the room Winter spun, turned in the opposite direction from Rob as Veronika got her attention and introduced her to Lycan, who simultaneously shook her hand and sort of bowed, smiling his big shy smile. If there was ever a gentle giant, it was Lycan. Now that Rob had more time in his life, he wanted to get to know Lycan better. Veronika said he was probably the smartest person in the entire city, which was difficult to fathom.

It took all of his willpower to resist following Winter like a lost puppy as she mingled. He’d considered the possibility that his father and Veronika were right, that his feelings were the result of her total reliance on him while she was in the bridesicle place, and of his desperate guilt-driven desire to please her. When Rob tried peeling all of that away, all he found beneath it was a glowing certainty that he would be in love with her no matter how they’d met. And why was it so unlikely that you could meet your soul mate by hitting her with your vehicle? Why was it more likely you’d meet her at your cousin’s wedding?

The door opened, and Lorelei made her entrance, surrounded by her hovering entourage, her arm draped in Nathan’s. Rob could see Winter’s smile tighten when she saw Nathan. He and Lorelei went right over to Winter, and she graciously shook their hands in turn. Lorelei put her hand on Winter’s shoulder, whispered something in her ear. Winter nodded.

“Let me stand here so it’s not so obvious you’re staring.” Veronika, holding a pink drink in a pouch, took up a position just to the right of his line of sight on Winter.

“It’s too obvious?”

“You’re standing all alone. Your face screams, ‘I’m pining for that woman over there.’ Yes, too obvious.” She sipped her drink. “You don’t have to talk to me.” She waved the back of her fingers at him. “Just go on staring. Move your mouth once in a while so it looks like we’re talking, in case she looks over.”

Rob laughed, despite the weight lodged in his chest.

“Are you going to talk to her, after I went to all this trouble?” Veronika asked.

“I want to. I just don’t know what to say.”

“Want me to feed you lines?” Veronika asked, deadpan.

Nathan and Lorelei turned away. Winter looked right at Rob. Rob smiled, nodded a greeting, his heart pounding.

“Did you just nod at her? Is she looking this way? I don’t want to turn around; it would be too obvious.”

“Yeah, we just said hello.”

Winter put her head down and made her way toward him. “She’s coming over.” His heart thumped slow and hard against his chest as she crossed the room.

“Hi, Rob.” Winter turned to Veronika, squeezed her forearm. “Thank you again for doing this; it’s an incredibly kind gesture. I’m truly touched.”

Veronika patted Winter’s elbow. “It’s nothing.” She pointed across the room. “I need to go talk to Eric. Excuse me.”

And suddenly they were alone.

“So, how are you?” Winter asked.

“Pretty good. Working. Playing my lute. Working on my defensive-driving skills.”

Winter burst out laughing, went on laughing perhaps a bit too long, and then fell silent.

“Listen,” Rob said, “I think I gave you the wrong impression the last time we were together. The only expectation I had was that we might stay friends. There’s nothing more to it.” It was a lie that came easily, because Rob would never ask for more. What he felt inside was irrelevant.

Winter looked out at the faux-blue sky, the clouds drifting by. She sighed heavily, looked at Rob. “Do you want to take a walk?”

“Absolutely.”

They headed for the door, which was the only break in the cloud-festooned illusion.

Outside, Winter turned left. Rob was barely aware of the vehicles whirring by, the people. So much of his attention was focused on Winter, right there beside him, a vague half smile on her lips.

She glanced down at her pistachio-and-white High Town shoes, gliding on the pavement. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to these shoes.”

“I know.” He didn’t want to talk about shoes; he doubted they were going to get much time alone before Winter felt she had to return to the party.

At the corner of Chan, they turned left.

“Remember early on, when you asked if I had any visitors besides you, and I said I did, but I never got to be myself with them?” Winter asked.

Rob nodded. He remembered pretty much every word either of them spoke during those visits. Not that there had been many.

“I wasn’t being myself with you at first, either,” Winter said. “I hated you at first, but I couldn’t say it because I was afraid if I did, you wouldn’t come back. And I resented having to rely on you—on you, the person who killed me.” She looked toward the sky, clearly trying to keep powerful emotions in check. “I tried to stay angry, but little by little, it became so painfully obvious you were a good person who had made one incredibly stupid mistake.” She was walking quickly, so quickly Rob had to make an effort to keep up. “No, not a good person, you’re a fucking saint. When you came to visit, the pain you felt was all over your face.” Winter wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Rob pulled a tissue from his pocket and offered it to her. Winter laughed as she accepted it. “See? How could anyone hate you?”

“You have every right to hate me.” Rob wasn’t sure where Winter was going with this, but he suspected she was letting him down gently, again.

To Rob’s surprise, Winter led him onto the elevator to Low Town. They rode in silence, admiring the lights below. There were millions of lights in the city; they grew fewer and fewer stretching toward the horizons.

“Where are we going?” Rob asked.

Winter gave him a hooded glance. “You’ll see.”

They stepped out into Jefferson Park, along the Harlem River. Winter pointed toward a black six-sided tower set beside the river, a few hundred yards away. “That way.” She picked up her pace again, their shoes clicking on the pavement now, no longer gliding.

“I didn’t realize you had a destination in mind.”

“I didn’t either, until we started walking.”

The tower turned out to be a forty-story mausoleum. They entered a wide, arched doorway to the hollow center. Winter led him onto the elevator.

“Twenty-two,” she said. The elevator shot up, intensifying the butterflies in Rob’s stomach.

On the twenty-second-floor landing, Winter led him through a short tunnel, out to the railed catwalk overlooking the river. Instead of admiring the view, she turned toward the wall, which was divided into rows and rows of brass plates, marking the cremated remains set inside the honeycomb of spaces that comprised this vertical graveyard. It reminded Rob of the bridesicle place in miniature.

“There.” Winter pointed at a plate about eight feet up the wall, which was illuminated by the lights of Low Town, reflecting off the river. It read WINTER WEST, 2103–2133. “My friends chipped in and bought it before Cryomed swooped in.”

Rob stared at her name. How close she’d been to being ashes in a wall. “That must be chilling, seeing your name there.”

Winter laughed. “I spent two years dead in a box, with only my face working.” She raised her eyebrows. “You want a chill? That’ll give you a chill.”

Rob nodded, but Winter had already turned back to look at the plaque, so she probably didn’t see.

“You know, the first time you came to visit, you were twenty-five, and I was thirty.” Winter smiled, as if reminiscing about a fond memory. “Now you’re, what, twenty-seven?”

“Almost twenty-eight.”

“And I’m still thirty.” She turned toward the river, took a deep breath of the cool air. Her sleeves were flapping in a mild breeze. “I know I can trust you when you say you only want to be friends. You’re a fucking saint, after all. You would never go back on your word, you would never manipulate me.” Still gazing out at the water, set in the shadow of High Town, she closed her eyes. “The problem is, I’m not a saint.” She opened her eyes, looked at Rob. “I can’t be just friends with you, and”—she shrugged—“I can’t be more. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

A lump filled Rob’s throat. He nodded, lifted her hand from the railing, held it in both of his.

She studied their hands for a moment, then gently shifted hers. He loosened his fingers to let her withdraw it, but she surprised him by lacing her fingers between his and closed her hand.

It was cool. It fit perfectly in his.

“There were so many times when you came to visit that I wanted you to hold my hand,” she said. “Then you finally did.”

“I reached out to take your hand one other time, then remembered they’d kick me out if I did it.”

She tilted her head. “When was that?”

“The third or fourth visit. The last few seconds were ticking down, and you were so scared. You said you didn’t think you’d ever get used to dying.”

“I remember that. I didn’t see you reaching. One’s field of vision is so limited—it was always the same circle, mostly of the ceiling and someone’s face.” She squeezed Rob’s hand. The pressure sent a thrill through him. “Except for the day you brought the mirror. You have no idea what that meant to me. Not just getting to see the sky, but the kindness of that act.” She blinked back more tears. “It made me feel I had someone on my side. I wasn’t all alone in that box. It’s horrible, being in that place. You can’t imagine.”

Rob was so aware of her hand in his. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to pull her close and kiss her and tell her he’d always be there for her. She was right there, so close, so alive, her bright eyes on him.

Her face moved closer, and for a moment he thought it was a trick of the light. Then her lips touched his—lightly, not much more than a soft brush—and for an instant, everything was perfect, the world was perfect.

Winter pulled away, looked at her hands. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m glad you did. Even if it never happens again.”

Winter pressed her fist to her mouth, her face twisting. Again, Rob resisted a screaming urge to hold her in his arms. He was afraid he might scare her away.

“I get lost in these fantasies, of how things might have turned out if we’d met under different circumstances,” Winter said.

“Tell me.”

She looked down, toward the sidewalk that ran along the river, lined with benches.

“I was heading for that park when you hit me. I was planning to sit on one of the benches down there and stare at the river. If you’d parked your Scamp, instead of running me over with it, and come here too, you might have ended up on the next bench over.”

“I used to come here all the time. I can see myself coming here on that particular day.”

Winter looked at him. “Where were you going? I never asked.”

Rob shrugged. “No idea. Just getting away from Lorelei. Maybe I was coming here. Go on.”

Winter pressed a finger along the bridge of her nose. “I’d be sitting there”—she pointed to one of the benches—“and you’d sit down. There.” She pointed to the next bench over. “You notice my puffy red eyes and say something like, ‘Let me guess, you broke up with someone too?’”

“And you look at me, and see my eyes are red, too, and you laugh, and say, ‘Of course. Isn’t this where the support group for people who just got dumped meets?’”

Winter pulled a tissue from her pocket, blew her nose. “You say, ‘If it would help to tell someone about it, I’d be happy to listen. I could use the distraction, actually.’ I invite you to join me on my bench, and we trade stories. You tell me I was too good for Nathan. I ask what you were doing with a narcissistic giantess in the first place. Before we know it, it’s getting dark. You ask if I’m hungry, and I am, which surprises me.”

“I suggest Luigi’s. Comfort food.”

Winter threw a hand in the air; her tissue fluttered in the breeze. “See, and I love Italian. I’ve eaten at Luigi’s at least fifty times.”

Rob laughed. “I wonder if we ever ate there at the same time. Maybe you were at the next table.”

“Why didn’t you come up and talk to me?” Winter whispered.

They watched a squirrel, out late, digging at the ground beside the jogging trail. A screen cruised by.

Rob’s head was spinning, with love, with joy, with grief. She loved him, too. That made it so much better. So much worse. “What happens then?” Rob asked.

“I’m in a T-shirt and sweaty from my run—”

“Good point,” Rob said. “Luigi’s isn’t that casual.”

“So we arrange to meet at Luigi’s in an hour, and we eat a shitload of ziti and drink a bottle of wine. Then you walk me home. We’re both suddenly, miraculously over our breakups, wondering why we’d been so miserable in the first place, because we realize Nathan and Lorelei were just dim shadows, compared to the people we’re with now, standing at the walk-up to my apartment building. But neither of us says that out loud, because we’ve just met.”

“I ask if you want to go for a run tomorrow—”

“And I tell you I’ll meet you by our support-group bench at four.”

“And I can barely sleep, because I’m already falling in love with you.” As soon as the words were out, Rob knew he’d made a mistake.

Winter went on staring at the bench. A boat somewhere out of sight on the river sounded a deep, belching, mournful whistle that was the perfect punctuation to this painful silence.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Rob said.

Suddenly Winter looked tired, defeated. “I think we’ve let ourselves get into dangerous territory.” She lifted her head and looked at him, her eyes achingly beautiful. “I should have told Veronika I couldn’t make it, but I wanted to see you again. It was a stupid, impulsive thing to do.”

“Veronika and I came up with the whole party idea so I could see you again without looking like a stalker.”

Winter threw back her head and laughed. “Seriously. And here I was thinking you’re incapable of guile.”

Rob shrugged. “I was desperate. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep.”

Winter studied Rob’s face, maybe looking for signs he was kidding. “I should not have come. We have to say good-bye, before we get ourselves into serious, serious trouble.”

“Can’t we just—”

He was going to say, “…be friends,” but Winter was shaking her head.

Her voice was low, trembling. “Rob, don’t.” She leaned toward him, kissed his cheek tenderly, and stood. “Good-bye.”

Numb, he watched her disappear through the tunnel. A moment later she was on the sidewalk below, heading back the way they’d come. As she disappeared behind a copse of trees, he saw her lift the tissue to wipe away tears.

There was nowhere to go, nothing to do but stand there. It seemed impossible that Winter had been standing right beside him just now. Already, it seemed impossible she had ever been that close, had ever brushed her lips against his. Rob kept very still, as if by doing so he could put off the anguish that would soon wash over his numb shock.

An old man passed below, walking a black German shepherd. The man was wearing a leg boost that squealed every time it straightened.

Rob looked off at the spot where Winter had been when he last glimpsed her, willing that she be there again, heading toward him. But she wasn’t. He would never see her again, he knew that with a cold certainty.

What was he going to do now?

He pinged Veronika, sending a single word of text. Help.

Veronika appeared in-screen in a matter of seconds. “Oh, sweetie.” She pulled in to get a closer look at him. “You look absolutely crushed. I wish I could give you a hug. Tell me what happened.”

Rob told her, and as the numbness wore off, it was replaced by pain so acute it felt like he’d been slashed by a blade.

50 Veronika

“I don’t get it. It’s nothing but an empty room,” Lycan said, looking all around for the exhibit.

Veronika suspended the art-exhibit feed on her system, looked around the exhibit hall. It was the exact same room. She reactivated the feed, looked around again.

“Is the feed broken?” Lycan asked.

“I’m guessing no. I think the artist is making a point about the relationship between art and reality.” Veronika tried to call up the artist’s statement, but the artist’s statement read, in its entirety, “Artist’s Statement.”

Lorelei pinged Veronika.

Can’t talk, busy, Veronika subvocalized.

“How profound,” Lycan said. He was getting better at sarcasm. Veronika mused that he must be spending too much time with her.

This can’t wait, Lorelei sent.

Later. I’ll contact you asap, Veronika sent.

Lorelei materialized via screen, an entourage of at least two thousand screens squeezed behind her. “Bonjour, Lycan. Vee, we need to talk.”

“I told you, I’ll contact you as soon as I’m done here. Some privacy, please?” She was the rudest woman Veronika had ever met, a complete and utter narcissist.

“Go ahead,” Lycan said, waving. “I’ll be fine.”

“No, she’ll be fine.”

“Kilo is dead,” Lorelei said. “As in, Do Not Revive. Not coming back. And do you know who’s getting all of his money?”

Veronika froze. “It’s not Sunali, is it?”

“Bull’s-eye. Not Sunali.”

“Kilo told her she wasn’t getting anything.”

“Yes, he did,” Lorelei said. “And he kept his word. Do you want to know who he left every last dollar to?”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t you,” Veronika said, “or you’d sound more excited and less bitter.”

“Bridesicle Watch.” Lorelei injected each syllable full to bursting with disdain. “Sunali’s fucking charity. Save the fucking bridesicles.”

“What?” Veronika and Lycan shouted in unison.

“Sunali can’t touch a dime,” Lorelei said. “It’s all in trust to the charity.”

“Why would he do that?” Lycan asked.

“He didn’t say,” Lorelei said.

“Because he felt shitty for leaving Sunali in the minus eighty all that time,” Veronika said. “This is his repressed way of saying he’s sorry, that he was wrong.”

Lorelei guffawed dryly. “Right. More likely he did it to torment us, leaving all that money just out of our reach.”

Veronika was reminded of something Kilo had said, the time she’d been at his deathbed. She burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Lorelei asked.

“‘I’m giving it all to my favorite charity.’”

“What?” Lorelei asked.

“That’s what Kilo said to Sunali. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” Lorelei said.

“This is good,” Veronika said. “You’re part of that charity. Holy shit, you could pull off any protest you dream up.” Veronika didn’t want to come right out and mention Lorelei’s idea—the march of the ten thousand bridesicles—in front of a thousand witnesses. If Sunali actually tried it (and now she had the money to do so), Veronika didn’t want to be hit with complicity fines.

Lorelei waved impatiently. “I guess.” She turned, looked up. “None of this is why I really pinged you, though. I came to tell you I’ll no longer be needing your services.”

Veronika tried not to show how stunned she was, but she knew it was written all over her face. Lorelei had just outed her, in front of a crowd, and she’d done it via screen.

“What services?” Lycan asked.

“Ask Veronika,” Lorelei said, and vanished.

“What services?” Lycan repeated.

Several hundred of Lorelei’s viewers stayed behind to watch.

“Wait. Give me a second.” Veronika tried to sort out what had just happened. Parsons must have decided it was time to shake things up. She thought she’d made herself too valuable for Parsons to throw her under the bus, but evidently she’d miscalculated. Maybe Parsons saw her as a threat; he might be afraid Lorelei would begin to rely more on her than on him. So it was time to out Veronika in dramatic fashion.

Then, for an encore, they would tell Nathan.

“Shit.” She opened a screen on Nathan. He was blocked—in the bathroom of Stain’s Coffee Shop. She turned to Lycan, blurted, “I have to go, I’m really sorry, I’ll explain later,” and took off toward the exit.

She headed toward the micro-T station, running as fast as she could, because having this conversation via screen would be very wrong. Come to think of it, Lorelei might be rude enough to fire Veronika via screen instead of IP, but she wouldn’t tell Nathan that Veronika had been coaching her via screen. She had to wait until she could see Nathan in person. Which meant Veronika needed to get to the coffee shop first. As she ran, Lorelei’s spin-off viewers were drifting effortlessly beside her. Her life was suddenly a spin-off of Lorelei’s—what a revolting prospect.

By the time she reached the micro-T station, she could barely breathe. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a second woman Nathan knew died while running?

She was almost to Stain’s when Nathan finally unblocked. She set a baffle to keep Lorelei’s followers from tracking her, then popped open a screen as Nathan exited the loo.

“Hey, I’m on my way to see you. Meet me halfway?”

Nathan seemed amused by her breathless condition. “No prob. Toward the micro-T station?”

“Right.”

“What’s going on? Why are you out of breath?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

Screens began popping up around Nathan—Lorelei’s viewers, guessing correctly that Veronika would go straight to Nathan. Still no sign of Lorelei, though.

Huffing hard, Veronika spotted Nathan up ahead, half a block from the coffee shop. “Is your vehicle around?” It was the closest location where they could escape Lorelei’s spin-off viewers.

Nathan nodded, gestured down Thirty-Fifth Street.

Still no sign of Lorelei. Maybe Lorelei was intentionally letting Veronika speak to Nathan first, to build tension in her grand performance.

“So what was important enough to get you to sprint? You know, you’re pretty quick.”

“I’m quick. Yes, thank you. That’s exactly what I am.” Nathan’s Chameleon opened and Veronika slid into the passenger seat. “Put up a block?” Nathan shrugged; the screens that had followed them right into the vehicle vanished.

“So here’s the thing,” Veronika began, as soon as they were alone. She was still out of breath, and the topic of conversation was doing nothing to calm her elevated heart rate. She took a deep breath, let it out. “Lorelei has been employing me as a coach on your face-to-faces with her.”

Nathan laughed. “That’d be the day. As if she needs a coach.”

“Nathan”—Veronika moved her face close to his—“I’m not joking. A lot of the things Lorelei said were lines I fed her.”

Nathan tilted his head slightly, as if trying to hear her better.

“I’m surprised you didn’t recognize my rapier wit.”

“You’re serious?” He laughed, but stiffly.

“Deadly serious. She asked me to do it, and I had reservations, but in the end, I didn’t see the harm, and she was willing to pay well.”

“She was willing to pay well,” Nathan parroted. He bit his thumbnail, thinking. “It didn’t occur to you that it might make me look pretty foolish, a dating coach out with someone who was making heavy use of a dating coach?” Nathan gestured at the screens hovering outside the one-way glass. “With a couple thousand people watching?”

“You know Lorelei did it just to ramp up the drama. That’s the price you pay for going out with a screen whore.”

“You could have said no. Evidently you don’t mind the drama all that much, either.” His tone was controlled, but he was angry. Veronika couldn’t remember ever seeing Nathan angry.

“She already has a full-time coach, so it wouldn’t have changed anything if I said no.”

Nathan blinked in surprise, waited for her to elaborate.

She’d been anticipating this moment, she realized; she knew it would come eventually, and in her fantasy it had played out just like in Cyrano de Bergerac. Nathan would recognize that it was the person who’d spoken the words that he loved, not the vapid package parroting them.

Veronika propped one foot on the dashboard. “Maybe I’m just tired of playing the role of the buddy. I thought it would be nice to play a different role, even from behind the scenes.”

Nathan sighed, rubbed the dark stubble on his cheek. “If you’re suggesting I’ve been playing with your emotions, I don’t think that’s fair. I’ve always been up-front with you. I’ve never messed with your head.”

“Yes, you have.”

The sun was low in the sky, casting a blinding circle of reflection on each vehicle parked along the street. The shadows of pedestrians stretched almost to the end of the block as they glided along.

In the distance, a long, lithe figure stepped out from a side street and headed in their direction, thronged by thousands of screens. “Oh, Christ.” Heads turned to watch this incredibly tall, incredibly popular woman. Who was she? She must be famous. Of course she was. If you had that many screens following you, you were de facto famous. And Lorelei knew it; she moved with the easy, confident grace of someone who was no longer striving to be famous, but simply was.

“Here she comes.”

“Here she comes,” Nathan agreed.

“Are you going to storm out of the car and confront her for making you look foolish, a dating coach going out with someone using not one but two dating coaches?” Veronika knew the answer, but wanted to make him say it.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love her, and if I want to be in her life, I have to accept her lifestyle.”

It hurt to hear him say it. He barely knew her; how could he love her? “Those sound like her words, not yours.”

What was this scene to be, Veronika wondered? Maybe Lorelei would claim the whole thing was Veronika’s idea? That seemed fairly pedestrian, unworthy of the (Veronika ran a count of the screens congregating outside) thirty-seven thousand six hundred forty-four people taking time away from their own pathetic lives to watch Lorelei live hers. What would Veronika recommend, if she were still on the inside? She’d go with a tearful apology. Nathan, love, I was so afraid you wouldn’t like me for me, so I asked someone who knows you well to help me.

“Wow, that’s a lot of screens,” Nathan said.

“Yup. And it’s showtime.” Veronika opened her door and stepped out. A real, live crowd of people had formed on the sidewalk, drawn by all the screens. They were leaning this way and that, trying to see what was going on.

When Nathan stepped out to meet Lorelei, the look of bright-eyed love on his face devastated Veronika. He and Lorelei embraced on the sidewalk, Lorelei turning her head as she squeezed him tight. With traffic whooshing by, and the live crowd muttering, Veronika couldn’t hear Nathan when he spoke. Sighing in frustration, she opened a screen among Lorelei’s fans rather than sidle over and appear nosy.

“—had me fooled,” Nathan was saying.

“Well, I didn’t mean to fool you,” Lorelei replied. “I didn’t employ her as a coach in the traditional sense. She served as kind of an adjunct—advising and arranging more than guiding.”

Oh, what complete bullshit. And, irony on top of irony, they weren’t her own words—Parsons was obviously feeding them to her.

“Hey, modern life,” Nathan said, shrugging. He looked around. “Do you want to grab a bite? Maybe we could invite Vee.”

Lorelei canted her head, smiling sort of wanly. “The thing is, Nathan, I fired Veronika partly because I don’t think things are working out between us. I’m just not feeling it, you know?”

A dozen conflicting emotions coursed through Veronika as Nathan reacted, his mouth tightening into an involuntary grimace. Lorelei put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Nathan said. “That’s fine. Sure.”

Joy. Anger. Relief. Sympathy. Veronika had never felt so conflicted. Break up with him—Veronika hadn’t considered that one, maybe because she couldn’t imagine breaking up with Nathan. But, yes, that would ramp up the drama.

Lorelei gave Nathan a big, fat consolation hug, still sporting that sympathetic-yet-smug half smile.

Anger. Veronika decided it was definitely mostly anger she was feeling. Well, shit, if Lorelei wanted drama, Veronika would give her some drama.

“Do you even know what ‘adjunct’ means?” Veronika asked, sauntering over.

“I’m sorry?” Lorelei said.

“You told Nathan you were employing me as a sort of adjunct, and I’m wondering if you know what it means, or if you simply parrot the exact words Parsons feeds you, with no idea what you’re saying.”

Lorelei rolled her eyes, just like the mean girls in high school used to. “You think you know me. You think you know why I live a public life. Why I went out with Nathan. Why I’m breaking up with him.” Her fingers flew for a few seconds—a graceful, lightning-quick flourish of systemwork Veronika was certain was for her benefit. “I may not be as transparent as you think.”

Veronika folded her arms. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think Parsons just fed that entire speech to you. I bet he fed you this line as well…” She worked her system, painfully aware of her own lack of grace and style, until she located the recording she wanted—from the argument she’d had with Lorelei the first time they’d met—and enlarged it so everyone could see and hear Lorelei self-righteously proclaim, “And just for the record, all of my lines are my own material.”

No one reacted. No one seemed to care that Lorelei had lied through her teeth, to all of them.

“Who’s Parsons?” Nathan asked.

“Parsons is her other coach. Excuse me—her director. He feeds her every syllable that comes out of her smarmy little mouth.” Veronika made a show of looking around. “Maybe he’s in the crowd right now.” She worked her system, enlarged a picture of him in the air. “Here he is. Has anyone seen this man?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Lorelei said. “I was going to explain, but you didn’t give me a chance.”

“Oh, you were going to explain?” Veronika folded her arms. “Why don’t you explain?”

She turned to Nathan. “I have been working with an adviser. Again, not a coach in the traditional sense, but someone to help me navigate the complexities of living a public life, and… I’ve fallen in love with him.” She turned toward the crowd. Parsons stepped out, head down, hands in pockets. His grand entrance.

Veronika turned her face to the sky.

51 Veronika

Veronika retrieved a pebble by her feet. She leaned far over the railing so she could see the choppy water far below, centered the pebble just below her face, and let it drop.

It seemed a long, long time before it made a tiny splash.

Turning away from the water, she leaned against the railing, closed her eyes, listened to vehicles whoosh by. She never thought she’d come back to this spot, but since Lycan was alive and well, it still felt like her sanctuary—a place to reflect, more than a place of tragedy.

Veronika had prayed for Lorelei and Nathan to split, but now that they had, she didn’t feel the elation she’d anticipated. She felt angry, and sad for Nathan, who was taking it much worse than Veronika would have guessed. Mostly, though, she felt petty and frustrated that she cared so much about all of this, that her life revolved around petty crap.

This was not the life she wanted to lead, but somehow she couldn’t pull herself out of it and lead a life of consequence. A life like Sunali’s. Veronika didn’t care much for Sunali’s abrasiveness, but she admired Sunali’s guts. She respected Sunali, who lived for something larger than herself. You could psychoanalyze her motives—she was clearly driven by a profound rage at being abandoned by her son in the bridesicle center—but her actions were pure, and honest, and worthy of respect. And now she had the resources to do even more. No more meetings in her living room. Learning about the contents of Kilo’s will was the important event from yesterday, not Lorelei’s childish antics.

Ironically, Sunali could now execute Lorelei’s idea of unleashing ten thousand bridesicles on the city if she chose to, although Lorelei herself seemed to have lost interest in Bridesicle Watch. Maybe Veronika should continue volunteering, although she doubted Sunali would offer her a seat at the strategy meetings now that the group was well funded enough to attract seasoned professional protesters. Still, there was no shame in serving in the trenches for a cause you believed in. And she most surely believed in this cause. Seeing what Winter had gone through, and continued to go through, talking to Winter at the party about what it had been like to be in that crèche… it had moved Veronika deeply. If only everyone could speak to Winter. If only everyone could feel what Winter had felt.

Veronika’s eyes snapped open. She spun back toward the river, clutched the railing, her mind suddenly racing.

If only everyone could feel what Winter had felt.

“Oh,” she said aloud. “Oh, that would be incredible.”

Was it possible, though?

She pinged Lycan. He popped up in a screen almost instantaneously.

“Your new technology… is it far enough along to be used now, if it’s for a good cause?”

52 Mira

Mira was glad when she saw it was Sunali again. Then again, who else would it be? No men were going to visit the oldest woman in the place. She was both twenty-six and one of the oldest people on Earth. It was hard to reconcile.

Maybe Sunali would be willing to wake Jeannette again. She wondered if there was any way Sunali could arrange it so they could speak directly. The possibility filled her with such intense longing she almost blurted it out. Better to wait for the right moment.

“It’s good to see you again. I would have fixed the place up if I knew I was going to have a visitor.”

Sunali smiled. “It’s good to see you, too, Mira. I think about you.”

It was comforting, to know there was someone out there who knew she was in here.

Sunali started to say something, then caught herself, rolled her eyes. “I have to keep checking myself, to avoid falling back on phrases that are nonsensical in here. Like, ‘I won’t take up much of your time.’ So let me just tell you why I’m here. I could use your help again.”

“I’ll do anything I can.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” It was hard to believe Sunali had once been like her. She was so fully, vitally alive. “What I need is simple, really. I just want you to imagine you’re talking to everyone in this city. Pretend they’re all listening to you right now. What do you want to say to them?”

“What do I want to say to them?” Mira repeated, because she couldn’t think what else to say.

“That’s right. Take all the time you need.”

Mira almost asked Sunali if she could take a year. If she did take a year, would she age a year? She doubted it. The dead don’t age.

What did she want to say to the people out there? That she missed splitting a Peterman’s Double Chocolate Stout with Jeannette at the Green Leaf, and playing keep-away with Gordon, their slate-blue borzoi, in Crotona Park. That she missed bickering with Jeannette about who did more of the housework, missed seeing her wander past in a baseball cap and antique PF Flyer sneakers. She would give anything for five minutes with Jeannette. Just five minutes, and after that they could lock her away in this freezer for eternity. She would take that deal, if someone offered it. But no one was offering deals.

She looked at Sunali and said, “Please help me. Please, I’m afraid. I’m so lonely and afraid. I don’t want to be in this box anymore. Can’t you please get me out of here?”

Sunali fiddled with something beneath the midnight-blue blazer she was wearing. She was beaming. “That’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.” She stood. “Mira, I can’t thank you enough.”

It took Mira a moment to understand. Sunali hadn’t realized Mira was talking to her.

Sunali reached toward Mira, closed her hand around the air over the space where Mira’s hand must be. “This is going to help us more than you know. I can’t say how, but I’ll come back and tell you… after.” She raised her eyebrows. It reminded Mira of the way that first man who woke her—Alex—had raised his eyebrows. “I’d better go.”

She wanted to ask Sunali if she could talk to Jeannette, but was suddenly afraid. Sunali had promised to come back, and she was Mira’s only hope of being waked again. If she asked too much, Sunali might not return.

“All right,” Mira said. Though it was far from all right.

53 Rob

Walking the streets of Low Town, past the pizza joints and dream parlors, everything reminded him of Winter. It was as if they’d walked these streets together a thousand times, and each corner, each stingy strip of green lined with benches, was stamped with a memory they shared. Maybe it felt that way because Rob found himself having silent conversations with an imaginary Winter as he wandered, his lute case dangling from his left hand. He kept thinking of things he wanted to tell her, funny stories he wanted to share. He wanted to revel in his newfound freedom, wanted to feel happy for Winter, but all he could do was brood.

Crossing the gray steps in front of the Museum of Natural History, he found himself wishing things were back the way they’d been, with Winter in her crèche, the two of them packing so much into five-minute conversations. It was a sick thought. He needed to get out of his head.

Maybe a change of scenery would give him a new mind-set. It was time he moved back to the city. He could probably rent a cube in a marginal neighborhood for two thousand a month. His dad probably preferred he keep living at home (though he’d never say that out loud), but Rob was twenty-seven. He belonged on his own.

Rob crossed into the park, past banks of sunlamps set on enormous T-shaped posts that kept the foliage alive in the shade cast by High Town. He picked a bench set across from a fountain that reminded him of the fountain inside Cryomed, even though they looked nothing alike, took out his lute and began to play.

It was impossible to make the lute play what he felt. It was not a sad instrument; its sound was inherently cheery. Which was probably why Rob had been drawn to it in the first place. He tried playing songs with sad, forlorn lyrics, at least, tried unsuccessfully to pour every drop of his heart and mind into them, so there was nothing left to devote to Winter.

When that didn’t work, he decided to compose a song for Winter. He tried to capture her staccato laughter, the way she scrunched her lips to one side when she was thinking, her slightly knock-kneed walk, the flecks of gold in her eyes.

There was a woman across the lawn, heading toward Rob. Rob squinted, trying to make her out. She was bent forward, moving stiffly, clearly in distress.

Rob dropped his lute. “Hang on.” He ran to help her.

As he drew closer, it became clear that something was very wrong with her. Her face was bone white, her lips midnight blue. She reminded Rob of Winter, dead and frozen in her crèche.

“Please, help me,” the woman said as Rob drew closer. “Please, I’m afraid.” There was so much need in her voice, such aching desperation.

Rob reached out to help her, but his hand passed through her arm as if it was so much smoke…

Suddenly he was terrified, and felt utter, bleak despair like he’d never known. She had no hope; she would be dead again in just a few seconds, and she knew it. She was trapped in a coffin, her living face attached to a corpse. Rob sank to his knees, sobbing. It was intolerable.

And then it passed, and Rob was all right.

“I’m so lonely and afraid,” the projection said, panting with fear. “I don’t want to be in this box anymore.”

Rob stepped back, examined the image—a screen without the screen. Someone was going to get a hefty fine.

“Please, help me…”

Rob turned toward the voice—it was the same voice, but coming from behind, and farther away.

Outside the park, on the sidewalk across from the museum, the same projection was telling a woman she was afraid, so lonely and afraid. The woman was covering her face with her hands, muffling a wail of despair. On the steps of the museum, two more projections climbed the stairs toward people coming out. Rob couldn’t hear them, but knew they were asking for help because they were lonely and afraid and didn’t want to be in a box anymore.

As soon as they were finished begging for help, each of the women moved on, toward another person.

Rob laughed out loud. The explanation was suddenly so obvious. It had to be Sunali. How was she generating those terrible emotions, though? Rob had never felt anything like it; they had felt so utterly, horribly real.

Rob ran back to the bench to retrieve his lute, then hurried toward the streets, wanting to see it unfold.

Movement caught his eye: a body, falling from High Town, plunging toward the roofs of Low Town, arms spread, loose dress flapping wildly. His breath caught for an instant before he realized it was another projection of the bridesicle.

He spotted another, falling toward the river. Then another.

Out on the street, traffic was at a standstill, drivers standing beside open doors, staring at the falling bodies, at the ghostly white women limping painfully from person to person, begging for help.

“Brilliant,” Rob said under his breath.

He probably should see if there was anyone who needed help, but instead he returned to his bench to finish composing the song for Winter—not just about Winter, but for Winter—as the bodies rained down from High Town.

When he finished, he played it through, flawlessly, as if he’d been playing it for years. He sent an audio recording of the performance to Winter, with a simple text message: I wrote this for you.

54 Veronika

“I think we’re on the cusp of a new age, of awesome changes.” There was a drop of foam on the end of Lycan’s nose.

Veronika swept at it with a napkin. “Yet you jumped off a bridge. When I hear you talk about your work, so excited… I don’t know, there’s such a disconnect.”

“Work and life are different things. If I could work all the time, I’d be happy all the time.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Lycan thought about it. “I don’t know. It gets lonely.”

Veronika barked a laugh. “What you need is a wife. Then you could work all the time, comforted by the knowledge that you have a neglected wife at home.”

Lycan didn’t laugh. “If I had a wife, she would always come first.”

He was such an earnest soul. He and Rob were similar in that way—incapable of sarcasm, unable to laugh at others. The complete opposite of Nathan. And her.

Lycan cleared his throat, which he seemed to do almost incessantly when he was nervous. “By the way, assuming everything goes well, do you want to do something to celebrate? Maybe a celebration dinner at my place?”

“Sure, that sounds great.” Veronika looked around for Nathan. He’d sent a message nine minutes ago saying he’d be there in five or six.

Lycan checked the time. “It won’t be long now.” He stuck his hands under his arms and squeezed, leaning forward in his chair. “I’m nervous. If something goes wrong, it could end my career.”

It had taken Veronika a while to convince Lycan to help them. When Lycan explained just how enormous a risk he’d be taking if he helped, Veronika had been sure he’d refuse, given that he hadn’t even been willing to donate money to help Winter. But in the end he’d surprised her, and once he’d agreed, he worked tirelessly.

Lycan was peering up at the thousand-story buildings that surrounded the massive Liberty Med Courtyard. He looked down at the hole that opened onto an expansive view of Low Town. Their seats were impressively close to the doughnut hole, providing them with the full, dizzying effect. Greenery bloomed among the tables, warmed inside an invisible containment barrier. It made nearby trees, with their naked winter branches, look dead.

“I should come to places like this more often. You get into patterns, going to the same places all the time.” He shrugged. “Or to no places at all, besides home and work.” He checked the time again, licked his lips.

“Hey, hey.” Nathan pulled up the third seat at their table, looked from Veronika to Lycan. “Just call me rueda de tres.”

He was not snapping back from the breakup with Lorelei in typical Nathan fashion. There were dark circles under his eyes, and maintaining the roguish smile appeared to be taking a great deal of effort. Referring to himself as the third wheel insinuated that she and Lycan were a couple. Veronika let it go.

There were four or five bumps under Nathan’s shirt, at the shoulder. He was doing bugs to ease his pain.

“How are my two geniuses today?” Nathan asked.

“I’m peachy.” Veronika checked the time. Any minute. Nathan had no idea what was about to happen; Sunali’s people had been deadly serious about leaks, and understanding just how important the element of surprise would be, Veronika had told no one, not Nathan, not Rob, not her sister. It would be fascinating to watch Nathan’s reaction. To watch everyone’s reaction, for that matter.

Lycan gasped, wide-eyed.

Veronika followed his shocked stare and spotted a woman approaching their table. Only it wasn’t a woman, it was the projection. The bridesicle was shivering, her skin white with a blue tinge, her hair caked with ice. Nathan lurched to his feet, his chair clattering to the floor as he hurried to help the woman, who looked about to collapse.

“What’s the matter with you?” Veronika asked Lycan, who was all but trembling, his face gray.

“I know her,” Lycan said.

“Please, help me,” the woman said. “Please, I’m afraid.”

Nathan reached for her outstretched hand; his own hand passed through it. He sank to one knee, like he’d been punched, his breath rattling.

“I’m so lonely and afraid,” the bridesicle pleaded. “I don’t want to be in this box anymore.”

“Oh, that is magnificent,” Veronika said as the bridesicle limped toward her. She glanced at Lycan, who was shaking more than Nathan. He was making a keening sound in the back of his throat. Veronika went over, shooshed like a mother. “Why are you so upset?”

Lycan’s attention was drawn by something a few tables away. Veronika followed his gaze, toward another copy of the same bridesicle, making the same desperate plea to another patron. Lycan seemed mesmerized by the sight of her. “Of all the women to choose from, they chose Mira.”

Lycan’s answer to her previous question suddenly registered. “Wait, did you just say you know her?”

That got Nathan’s attention as well.

“You recognize her?” Nathan said.

Lycan nodded, his eyes fixed on the apparition.

“From where?” Veronika asked. She watched, fascinated, as six or seven bridesicles wandered the courtyard. The nearest one turned, headed toward Lycan. Lycan leaped from his seat and hurried toward the arched exit.

“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?” Nathan asked Veronika.

“Yes. But we were sworn to secrecy.” She raised her voice, called, “Lycan, wait,” but he kept going. She opened a screen beside him.

A bridesicle wandered around a corner, stepped right into Lycan’s path. Lycan skittered around the image, away from her outstretched hands, her bluish fingertips. He was acting like he was seeing a ghost, like she was haunting him alone, rather than the entire city. Yet if the bridesicle had been someone Veronika knew who had died, she might react similarly.

“How did you know her?” Veronika asked Lycan, who was heading for the micro-T station.

“We dated.”

Veronika studied one of the wraiths as she stepped around a chair. She was beautiful, her tousled hair midnight black, her eyes almond shaped. “You dated this woman?” She tried not to sound dubious.

“At the bridesicle place. I was curious…”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Lycan, stop. Please.”

Lycan slowed.

“Okay, you visited her. Why are you so upset?”

This seemed to calm Lycan, but he still looked miserable as he leaned against a wall. “I did an awful thing. I lied to her, got her hopes up, and then I dashed them. It was right after that when I jumped off the bridge.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Veronika signaled to Nathan that she was leaving, then headed toward the exit. “Stay right there, I’m coming.”

Lycan nodded, wiped his nose on his sleeve.

Now it made sense. He dashed a dead woman’s hopes of escaping from hell, then the woman shows up at his table, pleading for help. Yeah, that could rattle anyone.

What didn’t make sense was why, of all the women at the center, Sunali and Lycan had chosen the same one.

Lycan greeted her with a fierce hug, as if it had been years since they last saw each other, not five minutes.

“Come on, I’ll take you home. You need a double shot of Blue Devil.”

“I don’t like the supercharged stuff.” He sniffed.

“You can make an exception this one time,” Veronika said. She jolted in surprise as a bridesicle slammed to the ground a dozen feet from them. She landed with a convincing thud, and lay unmoving as blood bloomed around her face. “Shit, that startled me. Imagine if you had no idea what was happening.”

Veronika opened a half-dozen screens at random locations around High Town and Low Town. There were bridesicles everywhere. Not ten thousand, as Lorelei had originally suggested, more like a hundred thousand. They were incredible. So haunting, so terrifying and beautiful.

Bridesicles leaped from sky bridges, from rooftops, from micro-T tubes. They rained down on Low Town like pale, lovely snowflakes. Never in the streets, though; they’d taken Lorelei’s advice on that front as well.

“Can I ask why you chose this particular woman, out of all of them?”

Lycan shrugged. “Because she’d been there the longest. I thought that would make her different from modern women. Simpler.”

“Sunali must have picked her for the same reason—the longest-suffering bridesicle.” In fact… Veronika used her system to check the info cloud that had been dispersed to support the event, and tapped into one nearby. One of the first things it mentioned was the bridesicle’s status as the “longest-serving detainee.”

As they walked in silence, Lycan now relatively calm, something else clicked into place. “That was why you refused to visit Winter. You didn’t want to go back.”

“I’m never going back to that place,” Lycan answered.

55 Rob

Rob leaned his lute against the wall by the door, marked his clothes and shoved them down the storage tube, unpacked a box of toiletries, a couple of photos, and he was finished moving in. The place was beyond tiny; eighty square feet wasn’t much, especially when you had no windows to help open things up. Maybe a few floor-to-ceiling mirrors would help.

He put in a reservation for the rotating kitchen he shared with three adjoining rooms, then grabbed his lute and went out for a walk. The apartment was small, but the city was large.

A passing businesswoman carrying a boxed lunch dropped a two-dollar coin into his case. Rob nodded thanks, went on singing “Song for Winter.” He played it every third or fourth song, but no one stayed around long enough to notice how repetitive his playlist was.

Off in the distance a juggler was working the granite steps of the Museum of Natural History, but she was too far away to catch more than snippets of his music.

He was beginning to think of this as his bench. It was nice, to have a bench. It wasn’t a busy part of the park, so not the most lucrative location for a busker, but that was all right. Rob enjoyed the solitude.

He was hungry, he realized. Rob didn’t want to go back to his apartment to eat, so he decided to visit the Biryani cart across from the museum. He reached down to pluck some coins out of his case, then froze, startled by an envelope sitting in the case. He picked it up, turned it over to find his first name written on the front. How had it gotten in there? He thought he would have noticed someone dropping something as old-fashioned as an envelope into his case, unless they dropped it from behind him. He slid his finger along the seal, drew out a folded sheet of light-blue paper.

Rob read the note over and over, trying to glean every scrap of meaning from the words, wishing there were more of them.

56 Mira

Mira was sitting beside her father in a movie theater. She was four years old, waiting impatiently for the commercials to end and the movie to begin. It was a Disney movie, but she couldn’t remember which one. The scene was remarkably vivid, but Mira knew it wasn’t real. It was a dream, or a memory, or something in-between.

“Four years old today. What a big girl,” Dad said. “Four is when memory begins.” He was rubbing her little back as he talked; she loved when he did that. “When you’re all grown up, this could be your oldest memory. Us, sitting here right now. This is a good day. Try to remember this one.”

“Daddy,” Mira croaked. She struggled to open her stiff eyelids.

“Hello again, Mira.” It was Sunali.

Mira smiled, her head clearing somewhat. “I was just remembering something my father said to me when I was little.”

“Did you have a good father?”

“I did. I miss him.”

Mira expected Sunali to say she missed hers, too, but she didn’t. Instead she took out a flat screen the size of a pack of gum, held it where Mira could see. “I want to show you what we accomplished with your help.”

Mira drew in a breath, startled by how different the city looked in the recording. It was still recognizable as High Town, probably during rush hour, but the pedestrians were gliding along the sidewalk with careless ease. Vehicles small and large threaded among each other in a dizzyingly complex dance. Dozens of colorful tubes lined the buildings, crossing high over the streets. Still more vehicles glided along the outsides of the tubes. There were scores of drones hurrying about, resembling big plastic bugs.

Then Mira spotted herself on the sidewalk, her skin ghostly white, her lips as blue as a bruise, her hair and eyelashes frosted with ice. She walked up to a man sitting on a bench sipping coffee from a pouch, and said, “Please help me. Please, I’m afraid. I’m so lonely and afraid. I don’t want to be in this box anymore.” Then she reached out toward the man. Her hand passed through him, and the man gasped. Gaping at her, he said something that Mira didn’t hear, because her attention was on another Mira approaching a small crowd waiting for a micro-T. “Please help me,” this Mira said. “Please, I’m afraid. I’m so lonely and afraid.”

“My God, What are they?” Mira asked.

“They’re just images.” Sunali put the screen away. “I’m sorry, I forget how long you’ve been in here, even though I went through it myself. They’re only images, but people are fooled, because it’s illegal to display full-body images like these in public. And for added impact, whenever the images came into contact with someone, we made it so the person felt what you were feeling when you made this recording.”

Mira wondered if she would even be able to function in a world like that, if ever she did get out. “Did you get into trouble for doing this?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sunali, sounding nonchalant. “I’ve been slammed with huge fines, a few injury lawsuits, although my foundation paid all medical bills resulting from the event. Prison isn’t out of the question, but I can probably buy out my sentence instead.” She waved it away. “I don’t care. No one was badly injured or killed, so I’m happy.”

Mira wasn’t sure what to say.

“Everyone is talking about it, Mira. There’s a dialogue going on, from micro to macro channels, about bridesicles.” Sunali reached out as if to touch Mira, her fingers brushing close to Mira’s shoulder. “Everyone is talking about you. The whole world knows who you are.”

“You gave them my name?”

Sunali shook her head. “They used your likeness. It matched a photo of you from the US Army archives.”

“Does that mean I might get out of here?”

Sunali ran a hand through her hair, which was clumped into big strands that reminded Mira of Medusa. “It’s hard to say. But it’s possible. It’s possible.” She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. “Anyway, I wanted to show you what we’ve accomplished, you and I.”

Mira had grown sensitive to summing-up words that meant she was about to be dead again. Words like anyway. As far as she could tell, Sunali had no reason to visit again, so it might be years, or decades, before Mira was next revived. The thought of her body lying frozen in this wall, with her not asleep, not unconscious, but simply nonexistent, was intolerable. “Please don’t go yet. Can I have just a few more minutes?”

“Sure. Of course.” Sunali waited, eyebrows raised.

Mira didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want these minutes to talk about her plight, she just wanted to be for a few more minutes. More than that, she wanted to see Jeannette, missed Jeannette so badly it burned. What it would mean to hear her voice, just once.

“I miss her so much,” she said aloud.

“Who?” Sunali asked.

“Jeannette.”

Sunali nodded understanding.

“Please, can you wake her again? Can you tell her I’m thinking about her?” Mira searched Sunali’s eyes, desperate. “You know what it feels like to be where I am. You know what it must mean to me, don’t you?” She still wasn’t used to begging people for things, things as basic as being alive, or seeing the woman she loved.

Sunali nodded. “Yes, I do.” She thought for a moment, then stood, her screen clutched in both hands. “Hold on. I doubt Cryomed is going to like this, but fuck them.” Then she was gone, without ending Mira’s session first.

Mira was elated to have time to be awake, time to think. She wondered why Sunali had left her alive this time, and what Cryomed wasn’t going to like. Surely they didn’t care if she and Jeannette communicated through Sunali. She couldn’t wait to hear what message Jeannette would send to her, wished she’d had time to think of a message more profound to send to Jeannette than “I’m thinking of you.”

A vivid, three-dimensional image sprang to life above Mira: a gray face, looking down at her from inside a crèche like hers.

“Mira?” The voice was a croak, but the face—the face was—

“Jeannette? Oh my God, Jeannette.” She was older, but otherwise hadn’t changed much. She was still so beautiful. Mira wanted to say a thousand things at once; they piled together and left her mute.

Jeannette’s eyes crinkled, her lips forming a stiff smile. “You look awful.”

They laughed and laughed, because what else could they do? Mira understood that these moments, these few, incredibly precious moments, were an utter fluke, more than she could have dared hope for, and she understood that when they were over, she would never see Jeannette again.

“I missed you, when you died,” Jeannette said. “I missed you so much. You were the best part of life.”

“Miss Van Kampen,” a disembodied voice cut in, “facility regulations prohibit the use of communication devices of any kind. Please disable your screen immediately.”

Mira heard Sunali’s shouted response loud and clear through the screen. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Yeah, go fuck yourself!” Jeannette shouted, as loud as the air tube would allow, her eyes never leaving Mira’s.

“Go fuck yourself,” Mira chimed in, then giggled like a child who knows she’s being naughty, but doesn’t care. Male voices, speaking urgently, drifted from below. They were coming to get the screen.

“I love you,” Mira said.

“I love you, too, Speedy.”

Mira opened her mouth to laugh, surprised and delighted to be reminded of the nickname Jeannette had given her the first time they met. Then everything went black.

57 Rob

There was an assertive thump on the floor—the resident below Rob pounding on his or her ceiling. Rob stopped playing, set his lute aside and drew one knee up to his chest.

All he wanted to do was play. It was strange: after killing Winter he hadn’t been able to look at his lute. This new flavor of pain left him unable to do anything but play. The problem was, he didn’t particularly want to play for an audience, although he’d have to get some gigs before too long, or go back to working at the reclamation center. He was burning through what little money was left in his account, after returning that final anonymous donation.

He wondered what Winter was doing at this moment. Was she on the island? Maybe off at some important function with Red? Her note had said, “no more,” but the last thing she wrote was, “I miss you.” Would she get angry if he tried to contact her, if he sent something to tell her he missed her, too?

There was a knock at his door. For a single, irrational second he thought it might be Winter, but beyond all of the other reasons it couldn’t be her, it wasn’t a ping through his system, it was an old-fashioned knock. Someone who didn’t know him, maybe a neighbor looking to bum a beer. He struggled to one knee, then to his feet, crossed his apartment in three strides, and opened the door manually, just a crack.

It was Winter, in a screen.

He yanked the door open. “Hi.” His lungs felt empty; he couldn’t seem to get any air into them.

Winter floated in without a word, eyes downcast.

“Are you all right?” Rob asked.

“I don’t know. Not really, no.”

Rob took a step toward her, then hesitated, irrationally afraid that she’d bolt if he got too close, even though she was nothing but a screen.

Her screen rotated to take in the apartment. “Not much of a place. You must be one of those guys who spends all of his money on irresponsible things.”

“Mostly on women. I went out with this woman who bled me dry.”

She rotated to face him. “You were going out with her, were you?”

Rob shrugged. “It felt like it. After a while.”

“Yes, it did.” She bit her bottom lip, a gesture that had become so endearing to him. “The song is beautiful. You’re going to be famous one day.”

A screen acted much like a crèche, Rob realized. They could speak, but there could be no physical contact. “I wish you were really here.”

“That would be a very bad idea. A terrible idea.”

“I don’t care. I still wish you were here.”

“All right.” The voice came from behind him. Rob spun around: Winter—the real, flesh-and-blood Winter—was standing in his doorway.

“Hi,” she said. She took a step into the room, looked around again, then brushed her hair back behind her ear as Rob stood there, speechless. “This can only end horribly. For me that doesn’t matter much; I’m in a pretty unpleasant situation as it is. But for you…” She let the implications hang there in the three feet that separated them.

Rob closed the distance between them. He touched her shoulder, which was bare, and pale from three years hidden from the sun. He slid his palm behind the back of her neck, felt her hair brush softly against the backs of his fingers. Winter melted against him, rested her head on his shoulder, her lips a whisper from his neck.

The world went silent. There was nothing but this embrace, nothing to think or worry about, nothing that possibly needed to be done, nowhere to go. As he inhaled, he felt Winter exhale, tickling the hairs on his neck. He exhaled, felt Winter draw air through parted lips. With this woman in his arms, he could solve any problem.

“Can we stay just like this for about a month?” Rob said.

Winter drew back, out of his arms. “No.” She reached up, released the clasp on her shirt, and let it slide off.

When he woke, Winter was sitting on the edge of the bed, sliding on a boot that probably cost a month of Rob’s pay. Winter saw he was awake, smiled wanly. “Got any suggestions for a good lie I can tell Red, if he asks where I’ve been? I don’t have much experience with lying. I’m guessing you don’t either.”

Rob thought of the card from Penny he’d kept hidden from Lorelei. That had been more deception than lie.

“I guess I should feel guilty about this, but I don’t,” Winter said. She was finished dressing. “Before I died and went to bridesicle hell, maybe I would have.”

Rob bunched the sheets across his lap, sat up. “Do you have to go? I could get some coffee delivered.”

“That sounds lovely, but I should get back.”

“Just don’t tell me this was a onetime thing and that I can never see you again. I don’t think I can stand to hear that again.”

Winter folded her arms and sighed. “That’s what I was planning to say, but I would just be fooling myself. Again.”

Rob stood, wrapped his arms around Winter. “Can we plan something? This way I can look forward to it.”

“I wish we could go out to dinner, but… too risky.”

“Dinner here, then. I’ll get a delivery from Luigi’s.”

“You’ll get it? Rob, I’ve got money coming out of my ears. Dinner’s on me.”

58 Veronika

Veronika rode past Lemieux Bridge. It stretched toward the river, the high sweep of its expanse like a harp with golden strings. She smiled.

Just go through the motions until it stops hurting, she subvocalized, then took a sip of the blueberry coffee she was holding. It’s old advice, but it’s all I’ve got. For an instant Veronika forgot she was addressing Nathan, because she’d said the same thing to Rob just yesterday. She may have used the exact same words.

I know everyone thinks this, Nathan sent, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get over her. This—He stopped, trying to regain his composure.

It was weird being the whole one, the shoulder to be cried on. It was also weird that suddenly her happiest male friend was Lycan. As Rob and Nathan agonized over their respective lost loves, Lycan was finding himself. Veronika thought she deserved at least a smidgen of credit for that particular turnaround.

I wish I knew how to help you, she sent. She took a swig of her coffee.

Rob pinged her. Great, heartbreak in stereo. She invited him to join her.

I appreciate you listening, Nathan sent. I know I’m saying the same things over and over. I’ll let you go.

Rob’s screen popped into the passenger seat as Nathan signed off. Rob looked… surprisingly good. Happy. Beaming, even.

“What happened to you? Ten hours ago you looked ready to ask Lycan for tips on bridge diving.”

“This is borderline rude, not waiting to tell you this in person, but I can’t wait. Winter came to my apartment last night.”

“No way.” Veronika bounced in her seat, unable to control herself. “She just showed up? In person?”

“Yup.”

“What happened?”

Rob smiled. “She loves me.”

“God, I hope you guys know what the hell you’re doing.” If Red caught them, the legal consequences would be devastating. Beyond that, the research indicated that affairs almost always ended badly, leaving nothing but pain and regret in their aftermath.

“Well, under normal circumstances I’d never think of being with a married woman, but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“No, they’re not. Normally you’re not risking the wrath of a billionaire.”

“Where are you headed?” Rob asked.

“To Lycan’s for dinner.”

“Let’s talk more, when we can do it IP?” Rob said. “You’ve been such a good friend, I wanted to tell you as soon as possible, even if that meant via screen. It’s just between us, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

They signed off, and Veronika was alone in her silent car. Veronika envied Rob’s earnestness, how deeply he trusted his own emotions, even if that trust was probably misguided in the case of Winter. It seemed obvious that Rob’s obsession with Winter sprang out of his need to take care of her. He’d sacrificed everything to keep his promise to her, and when you make someone the center of your life like that, she’s going to end up on a pedestal.

As Veronika’s Scamp swung into the garage under Lycan’s apartment complex, it occurred to her that she could get a sense of how compatible Rob and Winter really were, just to satisfy her own curiosity. She’d constructed a profile for Rob months ago, but never used it. She retrieved it now, ran it against the profile she and Nathan had constructed for Winter, minus the parts that were fabrication, and…

Her coffee pouch slipped from her fingers, plopping to the seat. “You’re kidding me.” Point nine-seven. If Veronika had tried to find a match for Rob, and started from a sample of ten thousand prospects, she would have been lucky to find one match that good.

With a sigh, she climbed out of her Scamp, stepped into the lift. Rob had run over a woman who was all but perfect for him, making it impossible to ever be with her. What a mess.

In the hall, she pinged Lycan to let him know she was there; the door to his apartment swirled open. She stepped inside, yelped, took an involuntary step backward.

Lycan’s place had become a sumptuous dining room, complete with chandelier, high-backed brass chairs, antique drone servants. It was instantly familiar to Veronika as a scene from Wings of Fire. Lycan was sitting at the table, foot crossed over knee, dressed in the signature twenty-first-century garb of her secret, embarrassing crush—Peytr Sidorov. Blue jeans and a layered white banquet shirt, his shiny white shoes rounded at the tips.

Hand trembling, obviously nervous, Lycan rapped on the dining table. “It’s all real. Not an interactive.”

And to think just a moment ago Veronika had been thinking about how grounded Lycan was becoming. The door to the kitchen had been replaced by gold curtains; they swished open and a drone entered, carrying a silver tray. It held out the tray to Veronika, offering little crab-shaped appetizers. She took one, held it between two fingers. “What is going on?”

Lycan grinned. “It’s a surprise. Remember a few months ago, when you left me in your living room and invited me to play an interactive to pass the time while you worked?”

“Yes,” Veronika said uneasily.

“Out of curiosity, I checked which you played the most. Then I bought my own copy.”

Veronika took a good look around Lycan’s living space. There were vases filled with flowers everywhere, frescoes of maidens in billowing dresses on the walls. “And then you had your home decorated to match it?”

Lycan swallowed, nodded.

This was too bizarre for words. Veronika resisted the urge to back out of the room and run away. They’d been treading that odd ground between friendship and intimacy for some time, and Veronika had been comfortable there. But this…

“Lycan this is… a little over the top, don’t you think?”

This was not a dinner planned for a good friend, or even for someone you were treading that odd middle ground with.

Lycan only shrugged, his big hands gripping the ornately carved arms of his chair, his foot dangling over his big knee, looking ridiculous in that white shoe.

She tried to entertain the possibility that that dopey shoe was on the foot of a man she could love. But she was in love with Nathan, and Nathan was single again, so there was hope.

Trying to set that aside, she imagined sitting in her kitchen drinking tea with Lycan on a Sunday morning. Or the two of them in bed on a Friday evening, Veronika’s hair brushing Lycan’s face.

No fireworks; pulse slow and steady.

Hey, hey, Nathan sent, interrupting her reverie. What are you up to? Free for dinner? On me.

Veronika felt a thrill, then surveyed the sumptuous spread the drones were laying on Lycan’s giant banquet table. The candlesticks on it were freaking works of art. Were they authentic eighteenth century? They sure looked it. Of course she had to stay, after Lycan had gone to all this trouble. The prospect of dinner with Lycan didn’t fill her with the mad, crazy excitement she felt at the prospect of eating with Nathan. On him? They always paid for their own meals. Had Nathan finally recognized what had been right in front of him all this time?

Can’t, she subvocalized. Having dinner with Lycan tonight. She knew what his reply would be: Bring him along. Make it a party. The more the merrier.

Can’t you reschedule? She was surprised. Nathan wanted it to be just the two of them. Definitely not like him.

Can’t do that.

She took the seat across from Lycan, lifted her spoon.

“Acorn Squash and Raspberry Soup,” Lycan offered.

It was terrific, though her attention was primarily on trying to sort things out rather than on the soup. She’d been the one who pushed Lycan to be bold, to take chances. Well, this was bold. Weird, but bold.

“Have you seen what’s going on with Bridesicle Watch?” Lycan asked. His forehead was sweating, his voice a stress-induced octave higher than normal.

“I haven’t checked the feeds in the past few hours. Anything new?”

“They’ve got ten thousand screens parked outside every entrance to the dating center, heckling anyone who goes inside—customers and employees alike. They’re ID’ing them, spreading their photos and info all over. Only guys wealthy enough to own copters can visit unmolested.”

“Sooner or later they’re going to have to agree to Sunali’s reforms. Skintight. And you deserve a lot of the credit. It took guts, what you did.” Veronika lifted her glass, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Lycan scooped up his as well.

He was a strange mix. He’d actually patronized the bridesicle center, yet he was risking everything to reform it. He’d been reluctant to help Rob visit Winter, yet he’d spent a fortune to impress Veronika with this dinner.

Across the table, Lycan ate his soup. Their spoons clinked in the silence. She should say something chatty and pleasant, but now that she was thinking about the Rob-and-Winter thing, it was niggling at her.

“Can I ask you something?” It was rude, but she had to ask. “When the rest of us kept pitching in to help Rob visit Winter, you never did, until I asked you. Was that because of your bad experience at the dating center or something?”

Lycan looked incredibly uncomfortable, as if the soup was caught in his throat. “No. I just, I don’t know.”

She studied Lycan. His eyes were pleading for something. Forgiveness. Understanding.

She smiled. Decided she should just let it be. “I’m sorry, that was rude. You’ve done more than anyone could possibly expect, and more.”

They ate their soup, talked about Bridesicle Watch, his research, her work. There was no witty repartee, no crackling insights about the relationship between cryogenics and existential terror.

They started on a vegetable soufflé.

Lycan cleared his throat, turned his head from side to side, as if he was trying to loosen it. “I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression with all of this. I just…”—he struggled for words—“wanted to thank you for being such a good friend.”

Damage control. He sensed she was uneasy, and was trying to walk it back. How many times had she done that with Nathan, tossed something flirtatious out there and then laughed it off?

“No, no. I get it. It’s wonderful, it’s an absolutely wonderful gesture.”

Lycan smiled uneasily, nodded.

She didn’t love him. Not the way she loved Nathan. She kept checking herself for a spark, for that feeling she got on the first warm day after a cold winter, but all she felt with Lycan was… comfortable. Safe.

As the drones cleared away the dessert dishes, she hugged Lycan good-bye, squeezing tighter than normal, trying to convey her appreciation, to signal that everything was okay between them. She couldn’t help but see the disappointment in his eyes as the door swirled shut.

Is your invitation still open? she sent to Nathan as she rode the lift down. I’ve had dinner, but maybe drinks?

Absolutely, he replied.

She headed toward her Scamp, the first twist in Rainbow Tower almost directly overhead.

Lycan pinged her. She opened a screen back in his apartment. “What’s up?”

“I want to tell you something, but you have to promise you won’t ever tell Rob, or Nathan.”

“Sure, I promise.”

“I did give money to Rob. I’m not cheap, and I’m not selfish, I just have my own way of doing things.” There was a hitch in his voice. Her thoughtless question at dinner had wounded him deeply.

“I’m so sorry I asked about that. I know you’re not selfish. Not after what you did—” She stopped, considered what he’d just said. “Wait, you did give money to Rob?” She stopped walking, glided a few feet on her momentum before sliding to a full stop. “You were the anonymous donor?”

“Yes.” He sounded almost defensive.

“Holy shit. I thought it was Sunali. Why didn’t you say something?” Veronika felt as if she had something caught in her throat. Lycan’s stinginess toward Rob had always seemed unlike him. Now everything slid neatly into place.

“Then it wouldn’t be anonymous, would it?”

“Why did it have to be anonymous?”

“I don’t know. I don’t like to draw attention to myself. The old guy with the money. I wanted to fit in with you and your friends.”

Only half aware of what she was doing, she turned, headed back toward Lycan’s building. “You gave Rob, like, fifty thousand dollars.”

“It’s just money.”

The front door to Lycan’s building let her in. In the lobby, she stepped into one of the capsules and headed up.

“You’re a good person. Do you know that?”

Maybe she should give him a chance. She didn’t love him the way she loved Nathan, but maybe that wasn’t the only way to love someone. Maybe what she’d always thought of as “settling” was just a different sort of love. Maybe she undervalued feeling safe and comfortable. Maybe she undervalued kindness, and overvalued wit and poise.

She knocked on Lycan’s door, the old-fashioned way.

The door swirled open.

“Hi.” Lycan sounded overjoyed to see her.

Veronika collapsed her screen. “Hi. I came back because I wanted to say this IP.” Suddenly she felt nervous. She actually had no idea what she’d come back to say.

Lycan waited, his eyebrows raised.

“You’re a good guy, and I like you.” Veronika cringed inside. What a line. Pathetic. “And—and I’d like to reciprocate. I’d like to invite you to dinner at my place. I can guarantee you it won’t be nearly as elaborate as the meal you planned—”

“No,” Lycan interrupted, stepping on her last few words, “that doesn’t matter. I’d love to come. Thank you.” He wriggled his nose, one of his other nervous habits.

“Great.”

“Great.”

Once again, Veronika headed into the street, wondering if she could ever be happy with someone like Lycan. She laughed out loud at the thought. When had she ever been happy, anyway?

Lycan pinged her. Laughing at the absurd circularity of this evening, she opened a screen in Lycan’s living room again.

“Do you remember when we met in that pizza place, and I was having a panic attack?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“You asked why I was having it, and I said I didn’t know.” He cleared his throat. “I did know—I was just embarrassed to say. It was because I was going to see you.”

A warmth washed over Veronika, like she was standing on a beach, soaking in the sun.

59 Mira

For the first time, Mira found no one looking down at her when she woke. There was nothing to see but the ceiling far above, and part of the wall. She waited, expecting a face to appear. Had Sunali waked her, then been called away, or left to use the bathroom? Surely it was Sunali.

“Hello?” Mira called.

Nothing but the faint echo of her own horrible graveyard voice. Maybe there had been some technical error in her crèche that accidentally woke her? That would be wonderful; she’d have time to herself until someone noticed.

“Mira Bach,” a woman’s voice said.

Mira waited for a face to appear, then realized the voice had come from farther above, where the warning had come from when Sunali let her speak to Jeannette.

“Yes?”

“Do you recall saying the following during your last meeting with Sunali Van Kampen?”

A brief pause, then she recognized her own terrible dead voice, on the verge of hysteria: “Please help me. Please, I’m afraid—”

She was in trouble. Although, she wondered, what else could they possibly do to her. Put her in prison? Beat her with a stick? “Yes, I remember.” How could she forget? It wasn’t as if she got the opportunity to speak very often.

“What were your intentions in saying it?”

Did they record everything that went on in here? It was probably safe to assume they did, that they’d already reviewed Sunali’s visits. “I was speaking to Sunali; I was upset. I didn’t know she was going to use my words the way she did.” Mira was trying to recall what she’d said to Sunali leading up to her outburst. Did she come across as complicit?

“Congruent with Cryomed policy,” the voice said, “we have revived you to inform you of a change in your status. You’re to be relocated to the main storage facility, where you’ll be preserved for the remaining five hundred forty-four years stipulated in your insurance policy.”

“Wait. I didn’t do anything wrong.” She wouldn’t have the slightest chance of speaking to Jeannette again, or of being revived.

“The decision is not contestable,” the voice said.

“But I didn’t—”

She wasn’t given a chance to argue.

60 Rob

Through the window of the train, Rob watched a micro-T descend from High Town, dropping almost vertically, and wondered if Winter might be on it. It was headed to Grand Central, so it was possible. But it was too far away, and moving too fast, for him to make out individual faces.

Six o’clock, you said? Veronika sent, and Rob replied by sending a thumbs-up.

He wiped his palms on his pants. They were slick with sweat, not from nervousness, but just because he was flat-out excited. He had no doubt his dad and Winter would hit it off. Winter would be able to relax out in the suburbs, where there was little chance of a camera catching them together. It would be nice to be able to hold Winter’s hand in public, or put his arm around her waist. In the city, that was only possible in his room.

The train stopped at Grand Central. Rob hopped out, located the wall with the giant clock in it, and found Winter already waiting, one foot propped against the wall. As they’d planned, Rob kept walking, knowing Winter would follow. He boarded a train to the suburbs, spotted Winter boarding two cars down.

When the train pulled out, he crossed through the car separating them, took the seat behind her.

“Hey, you,” Winter said, turning sideways in her seat.

Rob grinned. “Hi. Hope you like Superfood.”

“Veronika’s bringing something as well. But even if she didn’t, I grew up eating Superfood.”

“Your whole childhood?”

“It depended on who Mom was married to. At times we were pretty well off, then she’d get bored with whoever she was married to and leave him, and we’d be in the streets. I got whiplash from all the change. Mom thrived on it.”

Rob nodded, thinking how different her upbringing had been from his. He’d been poor, but always just somewhat, and everyone else in the neighborhood was poor too, so it felt normal.

“So, were the times you were homeless the worst part of your life? Besides being dead, of course.”

A man a few rows away glanced at them, then looked away.

Winter laughed. “Being dead isn’t part of life, so it doesn’t count.” She thought for a moment. “I’d have to say the low point was Ty.”

“Ty?”

“My boyfriend in college. He broke up with me, but neither of us could afford to move out, so we went on living together as roommates. Pretty soon he was going out with someone new, one of those women who dress like clowns? Bright red hair, colored face paint?”

“Oh, I know them.” There had been a clique of clowns in his school. Liz Faircloth, who lived down the road from him, had become one, showing up for the walk to school one day wearing bright, primary colors, with blue corkscrew hair.

“Soon she was pretty much living with us, and I was sleeping in a corner of the living room while they had loud sex in the bedroom, with her laughing her crazy fake-clown laugh—” Winter broke into laughter herself. “When did people start doing that, where their whole identity is tied to some look?”

“No idea.”

Two boys, maybe twelve years old, burst into their car, giggling like mad. Rob watched as they ran past, hit the door on the far end, and disappeared into the next car.

“Life with my mom wasn’t all bad. I don’t want to give you that impression,” Winter said, when it was quiet again. “Once mom opened a day-care business in our apartment. She just kept packing kids into the place.”

“Hold on. These were the good times?” Rob laughed.

“It was chaos, but it was like having twenty brothers and sisters. Mom was utterly incompetent as a caregiver, so we were free to do whatever we wanted, as long as we stayed in the house.”

“How long did the day-care business last.”

Winter shook her head sadly. “Maybe three months. Mom met husband number three, and we moved into his house.”

They talked nonstop to the burbs. Rob wished the ride would go on for hours, but soon they were at the end of the line, on the walk to Dad’s house, in the shadow of Percy Estate.

“That’s where I worked, while you were in the minus eighty,” Rob said, pointing to the reclamation center.

Winter squinted, trying to make out details of the facility. “Looks depressing.”

Rob shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad.” Memories of those grueling, soul-wrenching days flashed through his mind. Back then this landscape had looked so different, so much filthier and smellier, without a system filtering his senses.

Rob disabled his system, surveyed the suburbs in the raw. They were passing an old, partially collapsed motel his system had edited out entirely, including the mother bathing her children with water dabbed from a rusty frying pan.

“What are you doing?” Winter asked, watching him.

“I disabled the sensory filters on my system. I spent so long seeing this place in the raw that I’m kind of used to seeing it that way. I think I prefer it.”

Winter tapped her own gorgeous, wildly expensive system, then looked around, inhaling deeply. “Wow. I see what you mean. It’s a completely different place.” She nodded. “I’m going to keep mine off too, so we’re seeing the same things.”

To say nothing of smelling the same things. The air was rife with a pungent industrial odor.

“I can’t help thinking of my brother, out there somewhere living a Raw Life,” Winter said. “I miss him. I didn’t always agree with him, but I respected his conviction.” She looked at Rob. “In a lot of ways he reminds me of you.”

Rob smiled, basking in the compliment. “Did you ever think you might want to go find him? Were you ever tempted by the Raw Life?” He tried to make the question sound like casual curiosity, but it was more than that, really. If she ever decided to bolt, if they ever decided to bolt, a raw community would be a possible destination.

Winter sighed, a little wistfully. “Not really. I like the pace of the city. I would miss being connected to everyone, to everything.”

Rob nodded, though he felt slightly disappointed. He wanted to ask if she thought she could at least tolerate a Raw Life, if it meant the two of them could be together, but it wasn’t fair to ask. The risk would be enormous for her, much greater than for him.

“Don’t be thrown if Dad introduces you to the image of my mom that he’s got wandering the house.”

“Do I pretend she’s a live person, or how do I treat her?”

“He won’t expect you to play along or anything. Maybe just comment that she was pretty, or something. He’d like that.”

It was so strange, to think Winter and his dad were about to meet. Rob couldn’t help wondering about the significance of it. Did Winter see it as coming home to meet the parents? Again, he reminded himself of Winter’s situation. They couldn’t ever be a couple in the typical sense. Unless they ran away and disappeared.

“This is it.” Rob pointed to his house, second on the right on Appleby Street. Part of him wished Winter hadn’t disabled her sensory filter, so the house would appear less dilapidated than it was.

“It has a good feel to it. A warmth.”

Dad opened the side door before they had a chance to knock. He grinned at Winter, spread his arms, and when Winter hugged him, he squeezed her tight, rocked her back and forth. When he finally broke away to look at her, there were tears in his eyes, as if he’d been reunited with an old, dear friend. It wasn’t until Winter sniffed that Rob realized she was crying too.

Dad put an arm across Rob’s shoulder, and led them both into the house. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, but to Rob’s surprise, Dad didn’t introduce her to Winter. Instead, he went to the cabinet, lifted out a pot.

“Do you want some tea?” he asked.

“I’d love some.” Winter approached Rob’s mom almost reverently, studied her for a moment. “Your wife was beautiful, Mr. Mashita.”

His dad turned, smiling a little sadly. “That’s kind of you to say, and I must agree. And call me Lorne. We’ve known each other for two years, even if you didn’t know it.”

“Oh, I did.” Winter peeked into Lorne’s business room. “May I?”

“Sure,” Lorne said. “I usually charge six dollars for the tour, but I’ll give it to you for free.” Lorne flipped on the lights.

Winter walked around, arms folded. She lingered for a long time at the Wall of Fame, studying photos, especially the old ones, chuckling at some of the goofy poses.

Finally, she turned to face Lorne. “This is a good place. You can feel it, just standing here.”

There was a tap on the front door. Rob half expected it to be a customer looking to get an after-work haircut, but it was Veronika, Nathan, and Lycan. Each was carrying a stay-fresh food container.

They had dinner, the six of them—seven if you counted Mom—and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time except Nathan, who was polite but distracted, and hollow-eyed.

Veronika had told Rob a few days earlier that her friendship with Lycan had morphed into something more. Not a romance, she insisted, but an NPMC—a “nonplatonic monogamous companionship.” Seeing them together, you wouldn’t know anything had changed, except that instead of mostly looking at his hands, Lycan mostly looked at Veronika. He also spoke more, seemed more connected to the group, even cracked a couple of jokes. Nathan, on the other hand, spent most of the evening looking off into space. Evidently Lorelei’s new romance was popular with her viewers. Rob imagined it was difficult, hearing about everything your ex-girlfriend was doing on the microfeeds.

Lorne was showing everyone the expression Rob had made the day Peter sauntered in and asked if someone was interested in information about a bridesicle, when Rob was pinged.

It was from Peter, a text-only message. Cryomed was going to announce the closing of their facilities in the morning.

Rob leaped from his seat. “Holy shit.” He enlarged the message so everyone could see it.

“Holy shit,” Winter echoed as they gaped at the message.

Cryomed was closing their bridesicle facilities. All of them. They weren’t reforming their practices, they were simply pulling the plug on the entire program.

“Why would they do that?” Veronika asked. “Bridesicle Watch wasn’t demanding they close the whole thing down, just make the process more humane.”

Why would they do that? Rob sent to Peter.

The reply came promptly. Rob posted it for all to see.

The program was not a huge revenue source for Cryomed. Easier to shut it down than to institute the reforms. Plus, this way they go out on their own terms, appear stronger.

Rob shot back a quick subvocalized reply. I know that’s exactly what you wanted to happen. Your wife is at peace. Thank you. He’d gotten what he wanted, but sitting beside Winter, Rob couldn’t help feeling guilty.

“Good. Good for Sunali,” Winter said, fighting back tears.

Rob wondered if it was good. Fewer women would now have a chance to be revived. If not for the program, Winter wouldn’t be sitting next to him, squeezing his hand.

“That’s right,” Veronika said. “Good for Sunali. She did it.” She patted Lycan on the back. “With some help.”

“With a lot of help,” Rob said. “From both of you.” He raised his glass. “Vee and Lycan, congratulations.”

Lycan, who had been staring at the news feed, didn’t lift his glass. “What about the women who don’t have insurance, though? What happens to them?”

“Surely they have to move them to the main facility,” Veronika said. “After the black eye they took over the way they were treating them.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Winter said. “Either way, they’re better off.” She looked around the table. “I know I owe my life to that place, but believe me, they’re better off.”

Lorne nodded, thoughtful. “No one would know better than you.”

Winter rode back to the city with the others while Rob took the train. They met back at Rob’s apartment and made love in his pullout bed.

Afterward, they lay clutching each other, as if anticipating a hurricane that would pull them apart.

“I wish I could feel happier, after what happened today,” Winter said. “All I keep thinking is, it doesn’t affect me at all. I’m still an indentured servant.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’m glad the dating center is closing, but I was hoping the protests would force the government to outlaw lifetime-marriage agreements.”

Winter nodded. “I guess I should work on being grateful. By all rights I should be ashes right now.”

Rob turned his head and kissed her temple. “I’m definitely grateful that’s not the case.”

“Maybe you should send Red a thank-you card.”

She clearly meant it to be a joke, but the words stung.

“I want this to be my life,” Winter said.

Rob kissed her temple again. They stared up at the yellowing plastic ceiling.

“So why did you decide to become a teacher?” Rob asked.

Winter rolled on her side, propped her head with her hand. “I’d be lying if I said I went into it because I wanted to make a difference. The truth is, it was one of the few degrees I could afford, one of the few doors I could find out of poverty. I specialized in English because it was the cheapest teaching degree they offered. Once I was in the classroom, all that cold-eyed pragmatism melted away. I got to know the students, all of their stories, and it stopped being about me.”

“I pulled up a recording of you teaching, when we were doctoring your profile. You’re pretty awesome. Do you have any plans to go back?”

“I can’t. I have to be available when Red needs me, for luncheons and stuff.”

Rob only nodded. By silent assent, they’d both stopped railing against the unfairness of Winter’s situation. It only served to make their time together less pleasant.

“Your father is a wonderful man,” Winter said into Rob’s neck. “There’s so much love in him. It’s as if he’s ready to burst, he loves so much.”

“That’s a good description of him.” Rob thought of what his father had learned about Mom with the lie-detector application. “I think the hard part is, he loves so much he never gets as much love back as he gives. As much as I love him, I’m not capable of returning all the love he gives me.”

Winter leaped from the bed like she’d been goosed. “Shit. Red just pinged me.”

Rob jumped up to help her find her clothes as she frantically pulled on her panties.

“He never contacts me when he’s out of town.”

“We need to come up with a good answer, when he asks why there was a long delay in lifting your block.”

Winter pulled her system on, grabbed the sock Rob was holding out to her, pulled it on while hopping on one foot. “Shit. He’ll want to know what I’m doing in Low Town, in a residential area.”

“Did you know anyone who lives around here, before you died?”

“No,” she said. “Yes. Keener Piven. He taught history. Assuming he still lives in the same apartment.” Her fingers flew across her system; a map with a flashing red dot materialized. “Yes.” She pulled her boot on and sprinted for the door; it opened just before she plowed into it. She disappeared down the hall.

Moving more slowly, Rob went into the hallway, took the catwalk to the window at the front of the building so he could watch her leave.

Winter slowed as soon as she hit the sidewalk. A screen opened beside her an instant later. From his angle, Rob couldn’t see Red very well, but even so, the sight of him sent a prickling mixture of disgust and dread through Rob. Not for the first time, he wished the old man would die, once and for all. But that was unlikely; with revivification he was almost guaranteed to live another twenty years at least, unless he was run over by a train, or his island collapsed on him.

61 Veronika

Veronika wasn’t sure what to do with herself while she ate.

She watched the news for a while. They were still talking about the great bridesicle protest, and Cryomed’s announcement. There was an entire documentary about the woman whose likeness had been used in the protest—Mira Bach—although they didn’t know much about her beyond where she had lived, that she had been employed by the US Army, that she died in an industrial accident. Veronika wondered why no one had gone to the bridesicle place to interview her. It wouldn’t officially close for another three weeks. Maybe Cryomed wouldn’t allow anyone to see her.

A rap on the door startled her. She popped a screen outside to see who it was, saw it was Nathan, and opened the door.

“Hey, hey,” he said. “Have you eaten yet? I brought Sishwala.”

One of Veronika’s favorites. “Wow, I was going to eat a sandwich.”

Her drone set out dishes, and they talked about the closing of the bridesicle program, and about Rob and Winter. Nathan didn’t bring up Lorelei at all. He seemed less morose than he’d been, but rather than being his old upbeat self, he seemed preoccupied, on edge.

“So how are you feeling?” Veronika finally asked.

“I’m feeling stupid,” Nathan answered, as if it were a perfectly legitimate response.

“Oh? How so?”

Nathan set his fork down, looked at Veronika, and cleared his throat. “I think I let the perfect woman slip through my fingers.”

“Lorelei didn’t slip through your fingers, sweetie, she bit them off.”

“I’m not talking about Lorelei.” He took a sip of water. “I’m talking about you.”

“Me?” Veronika almost dropped her fork.

Nathan nodded. “I’ve been thinking about my life, the choices I’ve made, my trouble with relationships. Through all the ups and downs, all the shit, the one constant good thing has been you.”

Veronika wasn’t sure what to say. For the past four years she’d been waiting for Nathan to say exactly this. Handsome, charming Nathan. He was talking fast, probably hopped up on bugs and caffeine.

“I didn’t realize just how much I enjoyed having you around until you weren’t around anymore.” Nathan closed his mouth, waited for Veronika to say something.

Veronika studied his face, his firm jaw, his smoky-brown eyes under perfectly manicured eyebrows. She knew every curve, every line, the placement of every whisker on that face.

Nathan set the fork down, evidently finished, although he’d only eaten half of his lunch. “It’s funny. Friendships are Catch twenty-twos when you’re single and in your thirties. Friends are your life rafts. You try to help each other meet people, you confide in each other, you spend Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, all those emotional land-mine holidays together. But sooner or later one of you is going to meet someone and be gone into the world of couples.”

This wasn’t about her, she realized. Not really. He wanted to hang on to a lifestyle that was disappearing, and she represented that lifestyle. He was terribly lonely. He had lots of friends, but no one he could talk to besides her. His other friendships were wafer-thin.

“I’ll always have time for you. I’ll always be your friend.”

He lifted his fork, studied it for a moment, as if there might be an answer caught between the tines. “I know. And I’m glad you’re happy, I really am.”

Happy? Probably not the word she would use, but she let it go. Maybe she was selling Nathan, and herself, short. Maybe she didn’t represent the lifestyle Nathan was clinging to, maybe she was his Lycan. Safe and kind. Comforting, if not capable of quickening the pulse.

Veronika wished she had a time machine, to send this moment back to herself at a point when it would have put her right over the moon. It was a shame, really. “I really do mean it. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know. But you’re not going to want to go out much. It’s just the reality of not being single.” He leaned back in his chair, folded his arms. “It’s funny, I never outgrew the things I loved when I was twenty. I still love crowded bars, prowling the streets on Friday night, looking for the places where things are happening. Stopping in for a slice. But you stop fitting in—”

Suddenly, they had company. Lorelei had popped into the room via screen, unannounced.

“Sorry, I thought you’d be alone,” Lorelei said. In a downbeat tone, she added, “Hi, Nathan.”

“No, I actually have friends,” Veronika said. She had to admire how incredibly adept Lorelei was at the subtle insult. “What can I do for you, Lorelei?”

“Nothing, just popped in to say hello.” Without her entourage? Unlikely.

“So how you doing, Nathan?” Lorelei said. “Good to see you again.”

“You, too.”

Veronika guessed Nathan’s heart was hammering. He was holding a big grin in place, overdoing it a little.

“I wanted to apologize for springing everything on you so suddenly. I didn’t give you much warning.”

“No, I appreciate you being direct. It’s one of the things I admire about you.”

Lorelei smiled brightly. “Thank you. Not everyone appreciates that quality.”

Somehow Veronika got the sense that comment was a swipe at her, but she didn’t see how it applied. Maybe it was her innate paranoia—a trait almost no one appreciated.

“I wanted to congratulate you,” Nathan said. “Your idea brought the mighty Cryomed to its knees. Very impressive. Creativity—there’s another of your admirable traits.”

You’re laying it on a little thick, Veronika sent to Nathan.

I’m not laying it on at all, he shot back.

Poor Nathan. It was hard to believe that a few minutes earlier he’d been professing his love for Veronika.

Then Lorelei pinged her privately. This is all very awkward. Can you get rid of him? We need to talk.

What about? Veronika sent, as Lorelei and Nathan continued to chat.

Parsons and I broke up. We had a dazzling view of the city as a backdrop. Close to a quarter of a million viewers.

That surprised Veronika, although it probably shouldn’t have. Congratulations, she sent.

The thing is, I’m not sure if the argument was real or not. If it’s just for drama, and we’re going to get back together, that’s skintight, because it played well. If it’s real-real, then, I liked him, you know? Plus, I lost my director.

Another surprise. Lorelei could be hurt by someone. I’m sorry. What do you need from me? It was also hard to believe Parsons would bail at this point. Lorelei’s star was rising; she was doing interviews on the macros, taking all the credit she could for bringing down the bridesicle program. Not that she didn’t deserve some of the credit.

I want to talk about employing you, full-time.

Veronika stifled a laugh. Nathan glanced her way, puzzled, before refocusing his attention on Lorelei.

Full-time? Veronika could be the new puppet master, steering Lorelei to even greater heights. She could build on Lorelei’s notoriety as one of the architects of Bridesicle Watch’s victory, create a new, more socially conscious persona, use Lorelei’s fame to do good things in the world.

Sorry, not interested, Veronika sent. Can’t drop my clients like that, plus, it’s outside my area of expertise.

Across the table Nathan was laughing, his eyes bright, probably thinking he had most of Lorelei’s attention, hoping he was winning her back, unaware that his rival wasn’t Parsons, it was Lorelei’s lifestyle. Nathan had no chance with Lorelei because getting back together with him would be a rerun. Lorelei had to keep her material fresh.

62 Rob

A black corrugated-steel grate rattled as he stepped on it and passed back onto the gum-stained sidewalk. Old-fashioned storefronts lined the streets, with doors and windows instead of the wide-open look of the modern stores in High Town, where invisible containment barriers kept the heat and cold out.

Moving kept the anguish at bay. Moving among old, solid things was especially therapeutic. Seeing Winter occasionally was better than the hopelessness of thinking he’d never see her again, but it was more painful than he’d thought. He’d never been the affair type, had never even gone out with a woman who was supposed to be exclusive with someone else.

He lived for any word from Winter, though they were few, because Redmond might get suspicious if he checked her communications and found a bunch of text messages or screen visits to Rob. They’d risked going to a virtual movie together the night before, in an old 1920s-art-deco setup to see a flat black-and-white film from that time, but it wasn’t the same. Moving those silly avatars around, pretending the squeeze he felt inside his glove was Winter’s fingers on his.

God, he hated Redmond, hated his entire family for how they treated Winter. He recalled the story Winter had told him last night, how Red’s son Lloyd made her sit down and finish a berry wrap she’d left half-eaten, because she had no right to waste their food.

Rob cut down a cobbled side street. He needed to get out of his head. All day, he thought the same pointless, repetitive thoughts. He couldn’t banish them even for ten minutes, couldn’t drive them out with music or conversation or drugs—

He jolted to a stop as Winter popped up in a screen directly in front of him. She was crying.

“Red found out about us. He’s going to have me interred in a debt camp.”

Of course he found out. At some level Rob knew he would. He suspected Winter had as well. “Run. I’ll meet you—”

Winter shook her head. “I’m trapped. There’s no way off this fucking island-on-stilts. I’m a hundred feet above the water.”

Rob headed toward the Christopher Street Pier a block away, with Winter’s screen gliding beside him. He could steal a boat.

“How did he find out?”

“He got suspicious, so he had a winged camera the size of a fly following me. It was in your apartment with us.” Winter looked behind her, as if she was afraid someone might be eavesdropping. “I begged Red to release me from my contract. I told him I loved you, that I could never love him. He recorded it all as evidence.”

Heart pounding, Rob slowed to a jog as he reached the wharf. He leaned over the railing separating the walk from black water. There were dozens of old wooden boats creaking in the shallow waves, moored with rotting ropes or plastic cord. He trotted down corroded concrete steps, unmoored one of the boats that had oars.

“What are you doing?” Winter asked.

“Tell me how to get to you.” He climbed into the boat, grasped the oars, then paused. The boat was probably some poor guy’s livelihood. He pulled off his High Town shoes and tied them to the mooring rope, as compensation.

“Rob, stop. There’s no way down to the water. I just wanted to say good-bye, to tell you I love you.”

“There must be a maintenance ladder. Something.”

“There’s no ladder.”

Rob was swinging the boat around, aiming the nose toward open water.

“Rob, listen to me, there’s no way down. I’d have to jump—”

She went silent. Rob stopped rowing. He worked his system.

“How high up are you?”

“Rob, even if it’s possible, we can’t do this. You’d never be able to live in the city again. Any city. You’d never see your father again, or Veronika, or any of your friends.”

His face would be in the criminal database. Any time his likeness was caught by a public camera, the authorities would be alerted automatically.

“I knew what I was getting myself into when I came to your apartment that night,” Winter said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay. Debt camp will probably be an improvement.”

“Just tell me how high up the estate is.”

Pause. “It’s a hundred eighteen feet.”

A quick query told Rob it was possible to drop up to one hundred fifty-eight feet without sustaining serious injury, if you landed just right—feetfirst, with your head tilted back to minimize the likelihood of your neck breaking on impact. Then again, a drop of forty feet could kill you if you hit the water wrong. If you drifted too far forward, your ribs would puncture your aorta on impact; too far back and your spine was snapped.

“Tell me how to find you.”

“No. I can’t do that.”

Rob huffed, frustrated. They were wasting time. “Winter, I’m glad Red caught us. I don’t want to have a few hours with you once or twice a week, hiding in my apartment. I want to be with you all the time. The only reason I didn’t ask you to run away with me before this was because it wasn’t fair. You’d be taking most of the risk. Now that’s not an issue. So let’s go, let’s run away while we still can.”

After a long pause, a red light appeared on the horizon, to the left of the Statue of Liberty. “I’m two point six miles from you, in the upper bay.” Another pause. “It should take an amateur rower an hour and forty-four minutes.”

“I’m guessing that estimate is for people not rowing for their lives,” Rob said. The nose of the little skiff lifted out of the water on each pull. If he still had the soft hands of a musician, he probably would be looking at savage blisters after this trip. Hopefully the long hours at the reclamation center would pay off, not only in calluses but in endurance.

“Where are you now?” he asked.

“In my room. I’m not locked in.” She shrugged. “Where would I run?”

Rob was terrified, but also excited. His belly felt like he was in an elevator, falling swiftly. They had no choice now—they were going to be together, unless they were caught. It would be hard, but they’d be together. That was all he wanted.

“Do me a favor?” Rob said. “Connect me with my dad.” He didn’t want to take his hands off the oars even for an instant.

As he rowed past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Rob said good-bye to his father. Lorne told him he was doing the right thing. Rob promised to get word to him when they were safe, somehow. He didn’t even know where they were going. It would be safest to get out of the country, but they had no way to pay for transport. Their accounts would be frozen as soon as Winter was discovered missing.

Rob also said good-bye to Veronika, and left it at that. The rest of his friends would have to hear it from Lorne or Veronika.

After an hour of rowing, the nose of the boat was no longer lifting out of the water. His fingers were raw. The oars rubbed in places that lifting and moving and plucking things did not. Rob had no idea how long they had before the authorities came for Winter. He couldn’t help imagining there was a copter in the air at this very moment, on its way to get her. He glanced over his shoulder. The estate island was glowing red, maybe half a mile away. Rob clung to the oars and tried to push with his legs to make up for the stiff, exhausted state of his arms.

Tiny waves lapped the sides of the boat, tilting it this way and that as Rob stared up at Redmond’s estate. Now that he saw how high a hundred and eighteen feet was, it seemed far, far too high.

Winter’s screen, which had accompanied him during the entire trip, was tilted up to take in the height as well.

“I don’t know about this,” Rob said.

“No, me neither.”

They stared up in silence. Rob looked each of the pillars up and down carefully, hoping Winter had missed some important detail. There were no details to miss; they were nothing but slick gray-carbon fiber. Likely Winter had opened a screen and examined each one up close.

“I’m coming,” Winter said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m out of my room.”

Rob’s heart began to pump faster. She was really going to do it. When she got to the edge, would she change her mind? Possibly. He couldn’t imagine climbing over the low fence that surrounded the estate and jumping from that height.

“I’m in the elevator. Oh, crap.” Her screen disappeared.

“What is it? Winter?” No reply. Rob was tempted to open a screen up there to find out what had happened, but that could only make things worse. So he waited, his mouth dry, his heart hammering, wondering what he would do if he didn’t hear from her again. What could he do? Row back to shore.

Winter’s screen reappeared. “I’m here. I bumped into Lloyd’s wife, Kidra. I told her I was going to see Red, to beg him to reconsider. I’m outside. There’s no one in sight.”

Rob thought he caught a glimpse of movement above.

“I can see you,” Winter said. “Okay. I can do this.” Feeling like his heart was going to explode, Rob watched her climb over the fence, then turn and face the water. “Oh, God, I don’t know.”

“Keep your head back, hands at your sides.”

“I’m so scared. I don’t know if I can do this.”

Maybe it would be best to convince her to go back inside and wait for the authorities. Better she live in a debt camp than drown. She was right there, though. So close. In a few seconds she could be in the boat.

“I’m going to count to three,” he said. “On three, you jump. Don’t think, just jump. On three. One. Two—”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Three.”

She jumped.

Suddenly she was falling, her clothes billowing, her red hair like the tail of a comet. Her hands were pinned to her sides, her feet together, head back. Rob had a flash of that other bridesicle, falling in ten thousand places at once. But she hadn’t been real—no bones that could break, no aorta to puncture.

Winter hit the water. Without waiting for her to surface, Rob rowed frantically toward the spot where she’d hit, leaving her still-open screen behind after catching one quick glimpse of her—her face barely visible in the dark water, obscured by bubbles, eyes wide.

When he reached the spot, she wasn’t there. He stood up in the boat, looked all around.

She wasn’t there.

“Winter? Winter?” The boat rocked dangerously as he bent over and peered into the dark water, trying to catch a glimpse of her, wondering if he should dive in, swim down, and try to feel around for her.

Desperate, he looked at her screen, still hovering a hundred feet away, hoping to get some clue as to where she was. Instead he caught a glimpse of movement in the water, fifty feet beyond the screen, almost in the shadow of the estate. It was Winter, thrashing in slow motion, her face disappearing as each swell passed over her.

“Winter,” he shouted. He dove in, the cold water a shock that left him spluttering as he swam, calling her name, urging her to hang on.

She was under water when he reached her, her face a blur receding into darkness. Rob dove, grasped her by the shoulder, and drew her up until they broke the surface together.

Her eyes were open; Rob didn’t think she was breathing, but he wasn’t sure. Treading water, he pulled her face to his, held her nose and blew into her mouth.

Nothing. He tried again. It didn’t feel like the air was going in. He had to get her into the boat.

He swam on his side, doing his best to hold Winter’s head above water. The boat was drifting away from them. It had been a hundred feet away when he left it, now it was three times that. He redoubled his effort, tried to flatten out so he could kick on the surface of the water, but he couldn’t manage it while holding Winter.

Winter vomited water into his face.

“That’s it, love. That’s it,” Rob said. He turned her so she was facedown, tried to thump her back. She vomited again. “That’s right. Get it all out.”

Winter fell into a coughing fit, her chest and stomach spasming. She took a long, squealing breath and coughed more.

“We have to get to the boat,” Rob said, nearly shouting. “Can you hang on around my neck?” He spun around, wrapped Winter’s hands around his neck, squeezed them together. “Hold on tight, as tight as you can.” Winter dug her fingers into his collarbone. “That’s right.”

Rob swam a breaststroke. It was easier now, but the boat seemed impossibly far away, drifting toward the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which separated the bay from the ocean.

“What happened to the boat?” Winter asked, so soft Rob could barely hear.

“It’s drifting away on the current.”

Winter’s legs started thrashing. It took Rob a moment to realize she was trying to kick, to help. They were feeble kicks, but it was nice to see she could move her legs.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re not hurt?”

“Don’t talk. Swim.”

So Rob swam, struggling to keep his face above water while bearing Winter’s weight on his shoulders.

Soon the boat was noticeably closer.

And closer still. As they closed in, the boat seemed to be flying across the water, intent on staying out of Rob’s grasp.

Rob kept swimming.

63 Veronika

Veronika wiped her eyes, but the tears kept coming.

She wanted to open a screen over the bay to see how Rob and Winter were doing, but it was too risky. If she watched, there was a risk of inadvertently giving away their location to the authorities. The moment Rob tossed their systems into the bay, Veronika closed the screen she’d been watching from, high above the bay, knowing she’d never set eyes on either of them again.

Across the big banquet table, she caught Nathan’s eye. He smiled.

It’s sad, but still a happy ending, no? he sent.

I’m happy for them, terribly sad for me, she sent.

Nathan nodded. He stood, gestured for everyone’s attention. It was a large gathering, mostly Bridesicle Watch people, but also some of Winter and Rob’s friends, whom Veronika had invited after the news of their disappearance became public. The room quieted.

“Before the formal festivities begin, I’d like to propose a toast to my two friends.” Nathan raised his glass of champagne, originally intended to toast the demise of the bridesicle program. That could wait. “To Rob and Winter. Wherever you are, wherever you end up, you’re where you belong. Together at last.”

Veronika stifled a sob as she drank. Lycan reached out, patted her back. “I’m sure they’ll be all right.”

Sunali got everyone’s attention and gave a little speech. She lavished praise on Veronika, and Lycan, and even on Lorelei, although the latter was clearly an effort. They toasted the fall of the dating center.

“Now I want to tell all of you something firsthand, before it leaks,” Sunali said, after the toast. Veronika was struck by the woman’s presence, the sense of power and purpose she exuded. “Cryomed is going to announce that it is returning all of the ‘salvage’ bridesicles to their families for burial.”

Sounds of surprise and outrage rose; Sunali raised her hands for quiet. “They want to make Bridesicle Watch seem responsible for these deaths, that we forced the closing of the dating program, now look at the terrible price these poor women and their families must pay.”

Veronika couldn’t help thinking that if the closing had occurred a few weeks earlier, Winter would have been one of those women.

“Right after their announcement, we will announce that Bridesicle Watch will revive all of these women.”

“All the bridesicles?” Lycan asked. Veronika was startled by his voice; it wasn’t like him to speak in front of so many people. His graduate student was handling all of the interviews surrounding the rollout of his emotion system app, because he was too nervous to speak in front of the camera.

“No, Lycan, unfortunately we don’t have the funds to revive everyone in the program, only those who’d otherwise be buried. It will drain most of our remaining funds, but with the dating program closed, Bridesicle Watch doesn’t have much reason to exist anyway. So, we’re going out with a bang.”

“What about Mira?” Lycan asked.

Sunali nodded. “Mira will be first. My plan is for her to be at my side at the press conference, if she’s willing. And we’ll revive a few other women who’d otherwise go back to the main facility, to repay favors owed.”

Lycan nodded, went back to looking down at his hands.

“I want to talk to Sunali for a minute,” Lycan said as people were filing out of the banquet.

“About what?” Veronika asked, but Lycan was already halfway across the room. Nathan motioned to her; Veronika held up a finger and hurried after Lycan, who strode up to Sunali like someone mustering his courage for a confrontation.

“I want to be the one to tell Mira she’s being revived,” Lycan said.

“Wait a minute,” Veronika said, before she could stop herself.

Sunali ignored Veronika, canted her head at Lycan. “I don’t understand. Why would you want to be the one to tell her?”

Lycan was looking at Veronika, surprised by her outburst.

“Can’t you let Sunali do it?” Veronika asked. “You can speak to Mira once she’s out.”

Lycan shook his head. “It wouldn’t be the same. This is important to me, that I do this.”

“You know her?” Sunali asked.

Lycan explained, haltingly, clearly uncomfortable to be confessing his bridesicle sin to the founder of Bridesicle Watch.

When he finished, Sunali looked at Veronika. “And you’re uneasy about this because of their past?”

Veronika nodded.

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Sunali said.

It was a remarkably patronizing thing to say, as far as Veronika was concerned. Of course Veronika was being foolish. Of course a woman as stunning as Mira wouldn’t be interested in Lycan, unless she was dead and trapped in that unholy hell. But to come right out and say that? Her hackles up, Veronika asked, “And why is that, Sunali?”

“Because Mira is gay.”

Already prepared with a comeback for what she’d expected Sunali to say, Veronika swallowed it, let out a stunned peep in its place.

“How do you know?” Lycan asked, looking beyond surprised.

Sunali explained. Mira had asked her to pass a message to a woman in the main facility, whose name was Jeannette. Jeannette told Sunali that she and Mira had been partners. Mira never mentioned that to Sunali, evidently afraid of being pulled from the bridesicle program if anyone found out she wasn’t hetero. After doing some digging, Sunali had discovered that in the early days of the dating program, Cryomed had simply plucked longtime residents of the minus eighty without much effort at screening the women, orienting them, or getting their consent.

“I really want to be the one to tell her,” Lycan said. “Please.”

64 Rob

The night air was chilly, but rowing kept him warm, even though he was shirtless after tossing his system overboard. He’d been happy to discover Winter was wearing a shirt underneath hers. Smart girl.

She was still sleeping, curled in the bottom of the boat.

The boat rose on a particularly high wave, plunged down the far side. He was getting used to it somewhat, no longer convinced the boat was going to capsize each time they went over a big wave.

Without his system, he had no idea how long he’d been rowing; all he knew was he needed to get about thirty miles up the coast to ensure they weren’t caught by any surveillance cameras. It was going to be hard, adjusting to having no access to information like that, now that he was systemless.

“You know, it’s still not too late.” Winter was awake, looking up at him. “Take me up the coast, drop me ashore, row back. There’s no evidence you were the one who helped me.”

Rob almost laughed. “Like I told you, I’m glad we got caught. It’s you and me now.”

Moving gently, cautiously, Winter worked her way into the seat across from him. “Head nod. You and me.”

The lights along the coast were growing sparser. A good sign. “That was quite a jump you made.”

“Relax, then follow the bubbles.”

“Come again?”

“I paid a cliff diver for a consult before the jump. He said the key was to relax as much as possible right before impact, and then to remember to follow the bubbles back to the surface, because I’d end up deep underwater.”

“I wish he’d mentioned that you weren’t going to surface anywhere near where you went under.”

“That would have been useful information.”

Rob looked up. The dark sky was beautiful.

“So, where are we heading?” Winter asked.

“Up the coast, then inland. I was thinking we could try to find a raw community that will take us in.”

Winter took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Sounds good.”

“Do you have any idea where your brother might be?” It would be nice to have someone they knew, out in the raw lands.

“The last time I heard from him, he was heading toward Montana.”

“That would be a long walk.” Rob rowed just with the left oar for a moment, trying to bring the boat back parallel with the shoreline. “I’m worried about how we’re going to buy food.” He looked at his bare chest. “And a shirt.”

Winter grasped a chain around her neck, drew out a small pouch dangling from it. “Jewelry. Not much, but it’s quality stuff.”

“You are incredible.”

“Hopefully it will keep us fed for a while, but eventually we’re going to have to figure out something else. Have you thought about what it will be like, to live like this?”

Of course he had. It was going to be hard. No friends, no family, no access to Superfood as a last resort. On top of that, the thought of having no remote communication, ever, was almost inconceivable to him. Not even an outdated handheld? It would be like having one of his senses amputated. But it was a tradeoff. He’d be with Winter.

“I’ll be with you,” he finally said. “If that means not getting to watch my favorite shows…” He shrugged. “I can live with that.”

Winter grinned. “I’m going to miss Purple Daydreams and Tempest. Those are my favorite shows, by the way—if you hate them we might have a problem.”

The swells were getting higher. Rob looked over his shoulder; in the distance white crests topped many of the waves.

“You know why I’m sure we’ll be okay?” Rob asked.

“Why?”

“Because we’re used to hard times.”

65 Mira

“Mira? Can you hear me?” The voice came from a billion miles away, from another galaxy.

Where was she? She waited for the disorientation to clear; she could barely string thoughts together.

“It’s me. Lycan,” the voice said.

Lycan. She could picture him. He’d been… someone important to her.

Then it came back to her, in layers, beginning with Sunali, her removal from the program, then speaking to Jeannette, then Lycan. She opened her eyes.

Lycan was leaning over her, smiling. “I’ve got awfully good news.”

“Good news,” she said. The words felt strange on her lips, as if she was speaking in a foreign language.

“Yes. You’re getting out of here. Sunali is paying for it, but my research helped make it possible. You remember Sunali?”

“I do,” Mira heard herself say. She thought she must be imagining this conversation. Maybe this was her true death. Maybe her time in the minus eighty had ended, and they were pulling her from the crèche, and this was some final spark of light that came before true death.

But how would a soul know the difference between true death and the death of the crèche? Surely it couldn’t.

“I wanted to be the one to tell you. After what I did to you, I wanted to tell you the good news.”

Her mind had cleared enough to be certain she wasn’t imagining this, or dreaming it. Lycan was here. And she was in a different place—the walls and ceiling were less ornate, more hospital than palace. This must be the main facility, where Jeannette was.

“Sunali can really do that? She can afford to get me out of here?”

Lycan grinned. “She really can. She inherited a fortune. Her organization did, anyway.”

“Can you give Sunali a message for me? Tell her I want her to revive Jeannette instead of me. She’ll know who I mean. Can you do that?”

Lycan was grinning. “It’s all taken care of. I’m going to revive Jeannette for you.”

This wasn’t making sense. Mira wondered if Lycan was delusional. This was real, but they were only words, spoken by a man she didn’t know. “Are you sure?”

Lycan tapped in the air for a moment, and words appeared above her face, partially blocking Lycan. “That’s a legal document.” He pointed out a line near the bottom. “My DNA-coded signature. I borrowed most of the money against my future earnings.”

For the first time, Mira dared allow a sliver of hope to break through. Lycan reached to remove the document, and Mira said, “Wait. Please. Let me read what it says.”

It said Jeannette was going to live, to breathe, to speak in her own beautiful voice again.

“Satisfied?” Lycan asked when she’d finished.

“Yes. Thank you. So much.”

“You can thank me the next time I see you. We want to have you and Jeannette over for dinner as soon as you’re both able. ‘We’ is me and my girlfriend. Her name is Veronika.”

It was inconceivable to Mira, she and Jeannette walking into a room together, sitting down, eating.

All Mira could think to say was, “I’d like that.”

“Good. I’m glad. I’m glad you’re not angry at me. I’ll see you soon, then.”

“Yes. Soon.” Although still, she couldn’t quite believe it.

Lycan reached up.