Chapter 9
Future people, as she calls them, fascinate Electra, and there were tons of them for her to observe from her bench across from him in the roller-boat. So, they spent one afternoon with her “future people watching” and excitedly detailing her observations to him.
“Look at that man over there,” she’d said. He followed her gaze. “Does that man have two manupartners?” The man in question did in fact have two CheapDate off-brand manupartners, if his guess was correct. “Look! Those people appear to be building some sort of shrine.”
He looked as instructed to see MSP’s famous feline cult assembling a five-foot-tall scratching post. “I believe they’re trying to show the”—he cleared his throat—“cats they worship that the world is a safe and hospitable place for them to return to.”
Her dark eyes went wide and full of wonder as she observed them. Fortunate, since his eyes remained glued to her. “Really?” she asked, and he nodded. “That is so messed up.”
He actually agreed with her, though she seemed more intrigued than horrified. “Especially considering the atmosphere isn’t remotely hospitable.”
She nodded. “That’s what I was thinking.”
She was so elated from their experience, she didn’t retreat to her—technically his—room until after dinner.
That bolstered his mood so much that instead of reviewing the sales report in his inbox the next morning, he planned their next excursion—the private food-building workshop. That didn’t go quite as well, but she seemed amused.
What he really needs to do is figure out her thoughts about his efforts without her knowing.
He rolls over, trying to get comfortable.
The new bed he ordered for his spare room isn’t as inviting as the one in his room.
When he finishes the Jerme project, he’ll relocate her to this room and she and Jerme can share it.
Or maybe he’ll exchange it for a different bed and let them keep his bedroom.
He doesn’t entirely feel comfortable sleeping in his bed since her scent probably permeates his mattress the way it does his nostrils every time they’re near.
Like during the horseback riding, how she leaned back into him.
The smell that tantalized his olfactory receptors was torture—some sort of amber rose.
Vanilla musk. He isn’t a perfumer, and he didn’t ask the shopgirl to add it to her items. Nor did he ask her to add the pink Electra had taken to wearing on her cheeks or that glossy stuff on her lips, either.
Honestly, who goes above and beyond in this day and age?
He flips over, burying his face in the pillow. This is precisely why he needs Jerme as a buffer. The ridiculous, teasing woman. Obviously, she wouldn’t know the teasing reminds him of his brother, which gives him a warm feeling that he’s problematically beginning to associate with her.
Jerme could make light of moments like their birth mother dropping them off for the year at Best Young Citizens School for the Especially Gifted and not returning for two years.
Well, Jerme had handled it with levity at first, joking, Mummy’s gone mad!
But then she only stayed for a week before leaving again for another two years, and the reality of their situation set in.
If he recalls correctly, which due to him being ten at the time he may not, the note she sent said, Raising two troublesome boys makes Mummy so sad, so Mummy needs a break.
By the time her last note came, Res6 was in an advanced internship under MSP’s leading bioengineer and supporting both himself and Jerme, who had followed him to the municipality.
His brother had been between jobs at the time.
He remembers getting home to their modest unit, finding Jerme passed out on the couch.
Beside him was the tablet containing the note, still unlocked.
I hear my good boy Res6 is doing big things! So proud of you for taking care of your little brother and making it so Mummy can share her big news!
The next line said, Be happy, Mummy is moving back to the isle of France!
Res6 quit reading after that. He’d seen the medication bottles in the cabinet when they visited, though he was never really sure if they had been the cause of her instability or what kept her from toppling over the edge. Either way, he never really thought much about her after that.
Jerme, on the other hand, seemed to always be trying to fill his Mummy-shaped hole.
Again, which is why delicious-smelling Electra will be the perfect companion for him.
Once he connects them, he’ll have two problems solved: Jerme’s happiness and the Electra temptation.
Then he’ll get himself a manupartner and get on with being CHOICElover’s owner and public representative. He flops to his opposite side.
“Is everything okay?” In the pitch dark of the spare room, he can’t make out the manupartner in the chair in the corner.
“Shhh, go back to sleep.” He turns back over to face the wall.
Why can he still smell her? It’s like an echo of her presence that his nose can’t seem to let go of.
Zorg, he needs to fumigate his unit and come up with a long-term solution.
He can hardly spend the rest of his days with her prancing around his unit in too-big, shoulder-exposing sweaters smelling like that.
It could be worse. He could be fantasizing about how supple her hips felt in his hands.
He bolts upright. She’s corrupting his mind.
The manupartner takes a sharp inhale. “What is it?” it whispers.
His device says it’s 03:09. Surely there’s something productive he can do if he can’t sleep. Something to solve his Electra problem. He activates his device with a thought, trailing over the apps. DumBot—no. NewNews—no. DailyDataDump—no. Scrawl—
Scrawl? His finger hovers over the app. In the tablet’s glow, he can see his manupartner body double staring at him.
Its eyes widen. “What happened? Did another one of your experiments fail?”
He winces. There was no way to run the activation in his unit while also keeping it secret from both his body double and Electra.
He chose the simpler variable he could control.
Plus Electra would judge him, which would ruin all their progress.
It didn’t matter what the overly moral manupartner thought.
“Not that. It’s nothing.” His response earns a frown, which is his fault for selecting intuitive. While he is on this third Jerme trial using the synthetic DNA, his failures aren’t what’s bothering him.
“Would scanning the unit in the closet help you sleep?” it asks, clearly not believing him.
The current Jerme trial is 62 percent through activation, with good markers according to his pre-bed scan.
Sure, in ten days, he’s already had two trials show early signs of DNA corruption.
He expected as much, so he didn’t allow himself to get overly upset.
Science was a process. He’ll succeed eventually.
“It’s the woman again,” he says, regretting ever having brought it up. “I’ve been taking her on outings to help her acclimate, and I think it’s helping, but I want to know for sure.”
“You could ask her,” it suggests.
He shakes his head. “No. She can’t know that I want to know.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.” Res6 groans at the manupartner’s raised brow. “My brother will be here soon, and I’m going to set them up. I don’t want her to get the wrong idea and think my interest is romantic.”
“And you don’t have romantic feelings toward her?” it prods.
“Absolutely not.” His device goes to sleep, plunging the room into darkness.
“As your manupartner, it may not be my place, but I believe you’re not evaluating yourself accurately.”
“I’m perfectly clear about my feelings. The woman is completely off-limits to me.” He taps the screen back on.
The manupartner blinks twice, and for a moment, he thinks it might be glitching. Finally, it says, “Why?”
He huffs out a breath. When two of the most important people in your life don’t value you enough to stick around, it sends a message.
You’re not worth sticking around for. So they leave, and you have to pick up the pieces.
Same thing happened to Jerme, which made one thing very clear: relationships aren’t worth the risk.
Hence manupartners. “We’ve been over this.
I own CHOICElover. I can’t be seen in public with a real human woman. ”
The unit sighs, and it’s clear it doesn’t fully buy his reasoning. “So how are you going to find out what she thinks of your outings, then?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, debating. “She’s been making entries in the Scrawl app daily. Maybe she wrote about it in one of them?”
It frowns accusingly. “I’m not sure reading them is a good idea.”
“They aren’t labeled Private or Journal Entry,” he argues.
“How are they labeled?”
“Only the date and Dear Reader.” He hovers his finger over the most recent entry and waits for . . . what, permission?
The manupartner grins. “Oh! Then that means she wants people to read it. You’re in the clear.”
Relieved, Res6 sits back against the pillows, taps the file, and starts reading.
“What seems to be the problem now, sir?” Tommy asks, glancing up from his workstation to address Res6 over his screen later that morning.
“I think I’ve been taking her on dates, not outings,” he whispers, glancing around at the technicians going about their work in other parts of the lab.
He nods to his office, and Tommy follows. Lextr pokes his head out from around the corner, joining their march. “How do you know?” Lextr adds, also whispering.
When they’re safely behind the closed door of his office, Res6 says, “She makes Brain Dumps in the Scrawl app to that effect. When I first saw them, I was curious, but I decided it was best to ignore them to keep a much-needed boundary between us. I’m not trying to get to know her.”
Lextr snorts. “That’s wise. You’re just managing her livelihood until she can be re-homed.”
“She’s not a pet otter,” Tommy interjects, shaking his head.