24. Volt
Volt
Volt smiled as Wallace’s text flitted through his mind. I’m going to get a beer with Tony and Sati after work.
He sent back a slew of emojis, mostly hearts and smiles, with a few beers and celebratory icons thrown in. So proud of you, baby.
He’d seen the progress Wallace was making over the past couple months, and the new enjoyment that he’d found in some of his work. Tony was a developer on one of the teams and Sati was the manager, he was pretty sure, of the same team.
The fact that they’d invited Wallace out to drinks—and that he accepted—was a big deal. Especially because Wallace gotten smoothies with two colleagues on Tuesday and had lunch with one of his developers on Wednesday.
Remember that you can ask them to choose some place quieter, Volt added. Tell them that you’re hungry and you’d like to go somewhere that serves dinner.
They already chose the place, Daddy. It has burgers.
Good boy. Don’t be shy about ordering what you want to eat.
Should I pay for them?
You can offer when the check comes around. Just say “I’ve got this,” and pay. If they put up an argument, do what makes them most comfortable.
Thank you, Daddy. Wish me luck!
Good luck! He added another truckload of emojis.
Emojis had never really been his thing before, but he always had so many feelings around his boy that he felt like he was just bursting into little hearts.
Text me if you’re going to be out late, he added. And I want a picture of your dinner. Those weren’t part of their rules. Well, the part about being in bed on time applied, but mostly he was feeling greedy.
Those precious texts were what got him through all of the time when they were apart.
The times when he tangled himself up with love for his boy and his fears that he was failing Prism… and that without Prism, he didn’t know who he was or where he was going.
That one day Wallace would recognize that and leave him.
Part of him just wanted to bask in Wallace’s love all day. To be Wallace’s Daddy and guide. To be the one who made his pretty girl shine and revel in her happiness.
Part of him kept wondering how long it would last.
Right now, Wallace still needed his guidance. But for how long?
Wallace was blossoming, growing strong and courageous, more beautiful every day. He was reaching every goal Volt wanted for him, and more besides.
And Volt was stagnating.
Stuck.
Drowning in quicksand.
It was pathetic how much he wanted those devoted pictures, now that he knew that Wallace wouldn’t be coming over tonight.
He glanced at the clock, even though his internal chronometer made it impossible to truly ignore the time. He was just hoping that it would go faster. Or something like that.
Prism was technically open, but almost no one dropped by at four in the afternoon on a Tuesday. So Volt could go bother Angel, but he could do that just as well from where he was sitting.
He slouched in his chair, though his battery still had plenty of charge.
No, he was emotionally exhausted and sick of looking at the same thing over and over again.
The two new bots had helped since they went back into rotation, but they couldn’t make up the difference for Volt himself coming out of the line-up.
He’d followed Wallace’s advice and raised their rates every few months, but they’d had a four percent decrease in sales since their last price increase.
Was that random variation or a pattern? Wallace was suggesting even higher increases, but Volt was worried about pushing too far and losing customers.
Not that it ultimately mattered. Even if he doubled their rates today, he still wouldn’t be able to pay all the bills in three months.
This month was already impossibly tight.
Any loan he took out now, with Prism’s credit so bad, would have interest so high that they would be twice as screwed down the line.
Which meant that something had to give.
It was either sell off a bot to prolong the inevitable, declare bankruptcy, or…
God, he really didn’t want to ask Wallace for money. It might be one thing for a shiny new start-up with guaranteed returns, but this was just throwing money into a hole.
He’d talked through all of their sales and marketing with Wallace and mentioned some loans, but revealing the sheer extent of their debt, and their awful credit history, could change everything about how Wallace saw him.
What would Wallace think of a Daddy who was broke? Who couldn’t keep a basic business afloat?
He’d thought a dozen times about going down to service a customer himself—he brought in more money than the mindless droids—but the thought made discomfort register across all the tactile receptors in his skin, a slimy, sickening feeling.
Even if he hadn’t promised Wallace, he wasn’t sure he could make himself do it.
But he hadn’t figured out what to do with himself instead.
If he wasn’t a sexbot, who was he?
What was he supposed to do with all of these hours, when he was already superfluous to the business?
With a thought, he flicked open a different window on the screen. Dancers in vibrant colors were caught in mid-leap, their motions exquisitely choreographed while their bodies were gorgeously different. Humanly different.
He’d been looking up dance classes, and he’d found three that he thought he might try. He flicked over to the next tab, another tableau of bodies in motion, frozen by the camera as each of the dancers burst out of a complex construction of torsos and limbs.
He thought they would let him in, even as a bot. One explicitly said that all bodies were welcome.
He thought it might even be fun to dance with other people.
But the classes were expensive, and they would take him away from Magnolia and Angel in the evenings, eating away at the limited amount of time he could spend with Wallace.
Besides, where would dance classes get him in life?
And wouldn’t a mod do the same thing?
He thought often about those two bots in the orchestra, the cleaning bot with the spidery legs who swayed as he played bass and the white, plastic customer service bot on violin who executed each bow stroke with crisp perfection.
He’d learned their names from the program notes when he went with Wallace to the orchestra every few weeks.
KC3 and Miranda Wells. He’d poured over their bios and researched all of the fancy places where Miranda had studied, but KC3 hadn’t studied anywhere at all. Had he just downloaded a mod?
Wallace, Angel, and Magnolia had all told Volt at different times that he could dance professionally. It sounded… daunting. Fun, but scary. Was that what he wanted to do?
Was that who he was?
Frustrated, he switched off the monitor and started roaming the halls.
Angel raised one eyebrow when Volt trailed through the lounge with a watering can and a tiny pair of scissors. None of the plants truly needed water until tomorrow, and he’d already pruned them to perfection.
When he left a few minutes later, Angel sent him a video of a little bot walking around in a circle, watering the same flowers over and over again. There was a heart floating above it, and Volt figured he’d generated it on the spot.
He sent back a heart of his own.
Somehow, Angel seemed to be content with his life, booking people into rooms with the bots by night and watching over Magnolia by day.
Well, Volt sensed that there might be more beneath the surface for Angel, but he’d never heard his brother mention any desire for something more or different.
When he talked about closing Prism, it was more of a financial decision to free up money to take care of Magnolia.
If Angel had any dreams beyond that, he’d never shared them.
Volt, meanwhile, couldn’t sit still. He was caught in the quicksand of their debt, and his colossal failure in managing Prism, but he didn’t just want to stagger onto the shore.
He wanted to take off, like a bird into the sky, but where was he flying?
He checked over the stock in the bar then kept going up the hidden employee staircase until he came to the little sun room at the back of the third floor. Unbidden, a little smile snuck through.
He’d started clearing the room out last week, getting rid of old junk and decaying props from an era when Magnolia had put on weekly burlesque shows with herself as a star.
He’d bring her small things, sometimes, to hear her stories, but most of it was cracked or falling apart, clearly a room where she’d thrown things she didn’t want to deal with fixing even while she was well enough to manage it.
Really, what he’d wanted were the windows.
The room was at the back of the building where it caught the sun on two sides, and he’d gotten absolutely filthy wiping them down until they shone. He could have gotten some of the bots to do it, but what else did he have but time on his hands?
He’d kept a few of the tables and shelves that were in better shape, and now two of them were lined with his babies.
He crossed to one row of trays, a true grin tugging at his lips when he saw the first little leaves poking up from almost every tiny pot.
They were just the cotyledons, or seed leaves, two round, thick symmetric leaves poking up from the dirt without any distinguishing features to tell what plants they would grow into.
But they were going to become pansies, bright, bold flowers in every variety and hue.
It was the first time he’d ever grown anything from seed, and his excitement about them was truly out of proportion to their miniscule size.
He’d read everything he possibly could about their growing conditions—sun, water, soil pH, fertilizer—and it had all paid off. They looked delightfully happy, or at least as happy as tiny plants could be.
Maybe he was projecting.
The zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, and alyssum were already leaning toward the sun, their dark green leaves springing forth in jagged glory or willowy lengths.