“Let’s let Theo decide what he needs, okay?” Leah said.
The doctor made for the door, stopping just inside Leah and Mallery’s personal space bubble. “If he’s going to decide, I need to at least be there.”
“Give them a minute to sort things out, then you can go out there and break things off like a responsible adult.”
“Actually, do you swing both ways? I’ve got an ex out here. I think you’d get along fabulously,” Leah said, remembering a preppy lawyer from the online dating reports they’d run.
“I don’t need to be set up. I need you to step aside so I can save Theo from making the wrong decision and ruining his life.”
Mallery looked sideways to Leah, as if to ask telepathically, “Think she’s worked up enough?”
Before Leah could answer, Shirin’s all-clear came through the comms. Leah nodded.
“Why don’t you go back out there and see what’s really happening?” Mallery said.
The doctor pushed past the pair and shoved the door open, heading back into the restaurant.
“Are we done?”
Mallery flipped back to her normal accent. “Assuming the doc doesn’t actually haul off on someone, I think so,” she said, offering a hand to Leah. “Sorry about your shoes and tights.”
“We do what we must. Besides, it’s not like I get to keep the clothes when we go home.”
Mallery winked. “Well, we’re not supposed to.”
“Oh, really?” Leah said as the pair returned to the dining room.
They turned the corner and Leah saw all she needed to see.
Theo and Anna, kissing, arms wrapped around one another. A bling-tastic ring shone from Anna’s left hand. The doctor stood by, fuming.
Mallery reached out a hand to the Doc’s shoulder, conciliatory. “I’m sorry, hon. It’s like we said.”
The doctor looked over her shoulder, started a snarl, then gave up. Sniffing back a tear, she made a beeline for the door, snatching her coat from the coat rack on the way out.
Leah crossed her arms. “Now I kind of feel bad. She was a controlling witch, but…”
Mallery nodded. “She wasn’t evil. Just not the One. I changed my mind. She should look up the Brooklyn conceptual artist. Like you said. Study in opposites.”
“Wrap it up,” King said through the comms.
Mallery paused for a second. “Roger that. They’re kissing, and she’s wearing the engagement ring. I think we’re clear here. I’m going to do an exit formula, and then let’s head back to the condo and wait for the all-clear.”
“Roger that,” Shirin said.
Mallery headed for the hostess. “I’ll get the bill; you see if you can catch Anna’s attention to wave goodbye.”
Mallery set off toward the hostess’s stand, hips swaying, every bit the perfect social manipulator.
Leah took her eyes off of Mallery and walked up to Anna and Theo, who had come up for breath.
“We’ll leave you two,” Leah said. “I assume you’ve got some catching-up to do?”
Their goofy smiles told her all she needed to know.
Anna gave Leah a big happy sobby hug. “Thank you, thank you both. I wouldn’t have come inside if not for you.”
Theo extended a hand. “Thank you.”
“It’s our pleasure. Susan fancies herself something of a matchmaker.”
“Susan” returned and they had another round of hugs, Theo looking on, half-dazed with surprise and joy.
Mallery squeezed Anna’s hand. “You have my card. Don’t hesitate to email. Anytime.”
Leah added, “She’s not great at answering the phone.”
“Guilty as charged. Take care, you two. And so nice to meet you, Theo.”
Another few minutes of circling a conversational ender, Anna and Theo never out of physical contact for more than a few seconds, Mallery and Leah left the restaurant and high-fived outside.
And all around them, the world exploded into pheremone bombs and mete-cutes.
Two storefronts down, a pair of Latinas kissed beneath a lawn umbrella.
A Native American man in a suit ran down the street, tie loosened, stopping in front of a Black man in a tux. They melted together into a joyful embrace.
Doctor Thorsson walked down the street, despondent, then bumped right into a tired-looking but gorgeous white man in scrubs looking at his phone. They picked themselves up together, and when their eyes met, Leah could swear she heard fireworks.
In the restaurant above, an Eastern European man in a blazer knelt beside his table, holding a ring out to a Middle-Eastern man, who started crying tears of joy.
Across the street, two white men and a Korean woman, each following an Airedale terrier, each with their nose buried in a book, crossed paths. Their dogs circled and barked themselves into a knot, entangling their owners as well. As they got the dogs in order, their hands touched for a moment, electricity passing between each, first in one pair, then another, then all three watched one another with starry eyes.
All around, the world exploded into Rom-Com moments, like it’d been bottling it up for a week and was now bubbling over everywhere.
A car passed Leah and Mallery, Just Married scribbled on the back windshield.
Mallery sidestepped to the curb, getting ready to hail a cab. “I think we can call that the all clear.”
“Can I try this time?” Leah asked.
“Of course.”
Leah stepped up to the curb, brought a hand up, whistled, then waved her hand.
Not three seconds later, a cab turned the corner and rolled right up.
“I could get used to this,” Leah said as they climbed into the cab.
Epilogue
An Extended Denouement
The five Genrenauts raised glasses with amber liquor, shot-glass pours from King’s victory flask.
“To another successful mission.” King raised a toast around the condo’s dinner table. They’d all changed into their fancy clothing to celebrate.
Leah decided to sip her drink this time. Roman and Mallery slammed theirs, movements synced with the air of ritual.
“If HQ has given the all clear, why not head home tonight?” Leah asked.
King shrugged. “Dimensional disturbance. Preeti says the storm will have passed by morning.”
“Well, that’s convenient for us. Another night in the big city!”
“Another night here, at least,” Shirin said. “With the mission done, we don’t have any need to leave the condo.” She leveled a look at Mallery. “Don’t want to cause any more ripples than we have by running roughshod over the city for the last few days.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was all for the mission,” Mallery said.
Leah asked, “Do missions on story worlds that match up with Earth Prime’s time frame usually involve this much felony wiretapping and cybercrime?”
Roman nodded. Mallery shrugged.
Shirin answered, “Not always. We use whatever tools are available to fix the breaches. Chances are, no one will ever know we did all of this.”
Mallery winked. “I’m very good at covering my tracks.”
“Which for a chatterbox is quite impressive,” Shirin said.
“It helps that my approach in ‘covering my trail’ is actually to DDoS every system I’ve touched by dumping terabytes of Lorem Ipsum on them.”
“Really?” Leah asked. She saw Mallery’s look and knew the answer. No, not really.
A thought struck Mallery, and she set her drink down. “Before everyone gets too trashed, we need to put the place back in order for the next mission. Reset tasks are in your inboxes.”
They finished their drinks and set about the packing. The schedule from King said they would be out of the condo at six AM, which was cruel, though Leah knew she could expect the chance to sleep all day once they got back.
This Genrenaut thing was wreaking havoc on her sleep schedule.
The last task on her prep li
st was to sort out the wardrobes with Mallery. The mission leader stood out on the balcony, loose robe rippling in the wind, a glass of wine in one hand.
“You did well, newbie,” she said as Leah closed the door behind her.
“Thanks. Privacy concerns aside, this was really fun.”
“Living the high life on the job certainly never hurts.”
“No, it really doesn’t. Is it like this on other worlds—Action, Thriller, Crime?”
“Action sometimes, not as much with the others.” Mallery continued looking out at the city.
“Are you okay?”
Mallery turned. “It’s fine. I just have the silly problem where I miss a place before I leave it.”
Leah walked over to join Mallery on the balcony. The moon illuminated the city in grayscale, assisted by the thousands of lights atop buildings, in the park, and beyond. Central Park West buildings faced her on one side, and the skyscrapers and office buildings in Midtown loomed to her left. To her right, the city sloped down from giant scale into Harlem and beyond.
“It really is pretty magical.”
“You’ll do marvelously in this job, once you get used to the way we do business. Your hands aren’t always clean, your life is never boring, but we’re literally saving worlds and tend to do so while having more fun than any other job that has a claim to such heroics.”
“So, King won’t be benching or dismissing me now that you’re back in action?”
“Was that what you were thinking would happen? He’d been considering you for weeks. We need all hands right now. You keep doing the job, and you’ll be fine.”
One worry down. Zillions to go, she thought.
“Does it ever get lonely?” Leah asked. “It seems like it’d be hard to keep a relationship going with this job. Shirin can do it, but I don’t know how I could.” Leah studied Mallery, whose gaze was fixed on the park.
“You get used to it. The team is like a family. Doesn’t leave a lot of time to yourself, though. There’s always another book to read, film to re-watch, or report to absorb.”
Leah stepped up beside Mallery, taking the view in for herself. “That why you’re taking the time now with this?” She waved to the city.
“How could I not?” Mallery took a big breath of night air. “The most romantic city in any world, glittering on a chilly night. The perfect time to curl up with someone.”
“Are you offering?” The words came out before Leah could even know what she was saying. She hadn’t even been thinking it.
Leah’s breath quickened and time slowed as Mallery processed what had been said.
Mallery leaned over and kissed Leah on the cheek, then took a half-step back. “Let’s try this conversation again when we’re back on Earth Prime and don’t have the universe pushing on us.”
“Yeah. That’s. Uh. Probably for the best.”
Office romances were one thing when you worked for an insurance company. When you spent sixty-plus hours a week together and had to be counted on to save one another’s lives in alternate dimensions, it was entirely different and wow, remember how great of a kisser she was and is that cinnamon? Leah thought.
“I don’t know what came over me,” Leah said. “We were talking, and it just came out.”
“The rules of the story world don’t just apply to the folks who were born here. Part of the reasons why we don’t stay on-world too long at any one go.”
Leah walked back into the bedroom. “We should get to packing. Or I, yeah, I can pack.”
“It’s okay. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Try to get some rest when you’re done. You did good work here. It’s been fun.”
Mallery nodded, tying her robe closed and crossing to leave the room.
After the door shut, Leah stopped and just breathed for a minute, getting her composure back. When that didn’t happen, she got to work anyway as all the feelings came rushing back again—embarrassment and excitement and affection and uncertainty. Ten minutes of mental chatter and thinking in circles later, she had the bags packed. She assumed Mallery’s position on the balcony, looking out on the city and trying to focus on the parts that made sense, the things that worked.
They’d succeeded in their mission. She’d learned about another world, the technology they used to find breaches and speculate how to fix them. She’d found, diagnosed, and patched a story breach all on her own.
And possibly complicated her job forever, all in one impulsive sentence that she had absolutely zero memory of clearing at her mental checkpoint of approved speech.
She’d never expected Romance World to be one of the dangerous ones.
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Acknowledgments
This episode was born from my life-long love of romantic comedies. Through my teens and into my twenties, the ridiculous and hopeful antics of movies such as Hitch, Love, Actually, Valentine’s Day, The Baxter, Going the Distance and TV shows like How I Met Your Mother helped me weather the storms of a rocky love life with hope that something better was around the bend.
As I’ve gotten more mature, my relationship to these movies and shows has changed, so much of the reason I knew I wanted to write a Rom-Com for the Romance episode in this season was that it would provide the chance for me to re-evaluate my relationship to the sub-genre, to pick out what I loved about it while dealing with or setting aside the elements I found objectionable. It was entirely too much fun, and I hope you enjoyed the results.
It takes a village to make a book, and this one is no different.
Well, this one is a little different.
This time, I’m not just the town bard, I’m also the mayor.
Part of being the mayor is that if there are any screw-ups, they fall on me, and reflect my failures, not those of any of these lovely people who have helped along the way.
With that said, here’s the village:
Many thanks to Lee Harris, Irene Gallo, Katharine Duckett, and the whole Tor.com Publishing team for their great support in launching the series, and for giving their blessing as I take over the reins.
Big props to my beta readers Beth Cato, K8 Walton, A. Jarrell Hayes, and Michelle Jones, who provided great support and valuable insights.
I’m very grateful to get to work with Bryon Quertermous as my editor on this novella. Bryon helped me step up my game and clarify the story for new readers. He also called out all my crappy jokes.
Richard Shealy provided excellent copy editing notes in a supportive, informative style.
Sean Glenn stepped up to design a new cover for this episode, continuing the series style designed by Peter Lutjen.
Big thanks to Bradley P. Beaulieu, Cassie Alexander, Gregory A Wilson, and Jay Swanson for their advice as I prepared to make my move into the world of indie publishing.
As I write this, the Kickstarter for the Genrenauts Complete Season One Collection has just hit its funding goal, halfway through the campaign. I’ve been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from friends, colleagues, readers, and people brand new to the series. Thanks to the project’s backers, the future of Genrenauts is brighter than ever!
And last, but never least, my eternal thanks to Meg White Underwood, my first reader, she of the laser-eyes, my partner in life and love.
Michael R. Underwood
May 23rd, 2016
Baltimore, MD
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The Cupid Reconciliation Genrenauts Episode Three Page 10