by Kyle Harris
In the master bedroom, Libby hovered her hands over the desk to bring it out of standby. She typed in her username and password and stepped aside. “Do you know what you’re looking for?”
Chaz took the seat, the screen sliding up in front of her. Lionel OS with a custom blue-and-silver palette. “If we’re lucky,” she said, “it’s just a peripheral device; just gotta look at the list of what’s connected to the desk.”
“Okay. I think if you go to the options menu and—”
Too slow. Chaz pressed the keyboard shortcut to open the control panel list of integrated devices. The content was divided into halves—devices that were hardwired and devices that were networked. Her attention went to the second category.
Sure enough, pressed between JACKSON HOME SECURITY ALL-IN-ONE and MILLENNIUM THERMOSTAT HUB was the Panasonic subdermal. Chaz was momentarily surprised that Fuckturd hadn’t even changed the name for it. Then again, why would he need to? Libby wasn’t the nosy brat who would fuck around in her daddy’s desk. Even if she did, she hadn’t known about the implant.
“It was really here all this time,” said Libby.
Chaz anticipated a word from God or the Bible about the ethics of this, but nothing was said. A hand squeezed her shoulder, and that was all.
No password was required to access the subdermal. The Lionel OS treated it like any other auxiliary drive, displaying the contents as files and folders. Chaz’s eyes were drawn to an administrator file at the top, CONFIG.INFO. She opened it. It was a plaintext document with a single yes-or-no statement:
ENABLE_CONVERSION_FUNCTIONS=1
;enable subdermal run-time
That was it. Just one variable flag. Everything else was probably hard coded to prevent any smoothasses from fucking it up. She replaced the 1 with a 0, saved the changes, and closed the file.
“Is that it?” asked Libby, her voice noticeably shrill.
“Yeah, I think that’s it,” said Chaz.
“Should I feel anything? Because I didn’t feel anything.”
“Don’t think so.”
But she would be feeling something in a few minutes. It just wouldn’t be from that fucking thing in her neck.
Chaz was about to close out of the file directories and put the desk back to sleep, and then Libby said something that made her heart leap into her throat.
A word. The word.
“Wallflower.”
“What? Where?” Chaz said it with too much excitement, but Libby didn’t notice.
“There.” A finger pointing.
Fucking hell. It was a folder, right there on the desktop hub. Chaz’s eyes had performed a cursory sweep as they always did when invading hostile territory, but it hadn’t jumped out at her.
Okay, keep your fucking head on your shoulders.
It said the total file size of the folder was a little over twenty-one gigabytes. Not a lot of yolk, whatever it was. But that was irrelevant. Once she didn’t have Libby lurking over her shoulder, she could transfer a copy to her tasker. Job over.
“I didn’t know that this was where he kept it,” said Libby.
“What is it?” asked Chaz.
“Open it.”
“Alrighty.” She tapped the folder.
Photos, thousands of them. From the first small sampling of the gallery came an evident motif: a good-looking blonde woman who was always somewhere in the frame. Here she was on a boat, maybe a ferry, with the Statue of Liberty standing tall over her shoulder. Big, happy grin. Next, at the beach with two toddlers that might have been her sons—they were wearing snorkel masks. Scrolling down, the same boys were now eligible to attend grade school. Once they were old enough to club-hop, they stopped showing up in the photos. Then it was just the pretty blonde woman again, along with a man her age. The powers of presumption—and the wedding snaps—identified him as her husband. Farther down, the years wrinkled her beauty and took away her blonde hair, but she held on to the smile.
“That’s what my grandfather called my grandmother. Wallflower. Because she was the shyest girl he had ever known. She didn’t seem so shy in the videos I’ve seen, but the name stayed. I think it’s sweet.”
“They still around? Your grandparents?”
“I think they are. When my parents migrated, they remained on Earth—I was born here, so I never got to meet them. Everything I know about them is from pictures and videos. I would love to talk to them, to know them better, but it takes years to send messages back and forth.”
In her head, Chaz had a much different question: Why in the fuck does Kennedy want photos of Pruitt’s mother? It didn’t affect her ability to do the job. But still. She had never expected Wallflower to be this.
“Chaz, we should find out if what you did worked,” said Libby. The implicity was heavy enough to have a gravitational pull. “Come on.”
Before they reached Libby’s bedroom, Chaz patted herself down and said she’d forgotten her tasker. Back at the desk, she pulled it out of her inner coat pocket, transferred a copy of the folder’s contents to its drive, and logged off.
Easy as that.
Oh yeah, they banged.
It started slow. Gentle. Mainly with just the lips. Sometimes a hand hunting for a tit or a thigh. Their clothes were off, but it wasn’t quite sex; it was more like making out in the nude. Chaz could sense that Libby was still hesitant about her body. She’d been there when the subdermal had been switched to a dormant mode, but it wasn’t so simple to undo the years of conditioning.
Chaz showed her she didn’t have to be afraid, and all that was required to do that were a couple fingers.
Libby’s hands flew out and grabbed fistfuls of the sheets, twisting until the knuckles were bone white. Hanging on. To her, everything from here on out was uncharted. Like someone who had seen a hill and was sure that no natural formation could be any higher, only to then lay eyes on a mountain.
Watching her writhe, Chaz found herself longing for a testosterone jump again. This girl shit took its goddamn time. What she missed most were the chemical boners. The arousal was instant, like microwaving noodles—they came out hot and ready in two minutes. Estrogen, on the other hand, was like baking a fucking cake. Pour, mix, add a little heat, and maybe, maybe—if you followed all the directions correctly—you might get something edible.
Then Libby’s spine reached for the clouds; her hips bucked and thrashed. But Chaz didn’t quit. Only when Libby whipped away hard enough did the fingers slip out.
When it was over and she was catching her breath, she gasped, “Oh. So that’s what it feels like. I’m glad I got to know.”
Chaz lay beside her, hypnotized by the rising and falling of her sweat-dotted breasts.
Then Libby laughed. “I feel so sorry for anyone who abstains from this.” She looked over at Chaz. “Did you have one?”
Chaz shook her head. “I liked watching you.”
“No. You should have one too. You did all this for me. God would want me to show equal kindness to you.” She sat up, her hand already on the move.
“I didn’t know the Bible said anything about girls getting each other off. Damn, I guess I should read it sometime. Any hot scenes?”
Libby smiled. “Just relax.”
After, when she was dozing—hey, she’d earned it—Chaz peeled herself free of the tangle of limbs and picked her tasker up off the floor. She sent the good news to Kennedy:
|: I GOT WALLFLOWER. WHAT NOW?
Looking at her own words on the screen was when it finally set in: her job with Kennedy was about to conclude. Chaz looked over at Libby. It was hard to believe that their relationship had once been a pretense. And now? Chaz felt something. She couldn’t describe it or even pinpoint exactly where it was, but she felt something.
Libby murmured in her sleep.
The tasker vibrated. A reply from Kennedy:
|: EXCELLENT! SEND IT THROUGH NOW.
Chaz dispatched the folder with the photos of Libby’s grandmother to her employer. Sh
e waited. Part of her anticipated a harshly worded reply asking her if this was a joke. Maybe a polite threat that involved her kneecaps or the bones in her fingers if she didn’t keep the correspondence serious. Because surely this wasn’t what Kennedy was after.
Vibration. A notification from the bank account tied to her looker business.
2:23 P.M.—DEPOSITED $100,000
Holy fucking shit-balls.
Message from Kennedy:
|: THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS, CHAZ. I CANNOT EXPRESS IN THIS LIMITED SPACE HOW MUCH THIS MEANS TO ME. THIS MIGHT BE THE START OF A FRUITFUL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US.
Her attention fixed on that last part. She opened a reply box to tell him that she was done, but she didn’t finish it. Tomorrow’s problem.
Chaz slipped her tasker back into her coat pocket, laid her head on the pillow, and wondered what the hell she was going to do with all that moolah.
The Tran-Wong civvy behind the cart looked at her as if it recognized her. Hard to say since the pricks didn’t have eyes; only a narrow strip of imaging sensors. But Chaz liked to think it did know her. Somewhere on its network was her facial-rec data and some ones and zeros that warned it about her prior behavior, that she might sneak away with a candy bar or powdered juice without ponying up.
Not this time, metal brain, she thought, smiling back at it. I could buy a few of you now. Form my own gang of robot bitches.
Libby laid a bottle of tea and a protein bar in the blue-outlined purchase zone. Before she could transfer funds from her tasker, Chaz’s wrist swooped in across the scanner.
“Your service is welcome,” said the civvy, bowing in a gesture of thanks like its programmers. “Have a pleasant day.”
As they were walking away, Libby said, “You don’t have to do that, Chaz. I’m capable of paying for my own drinks.”
“Yeah, but where would the chivalry be?”
Neon glittered on the enamel of Libby’s teeth when she grinned. “Your chivalry is a projection of your selflessness, but what I mean is that I don’t want you to ever have that expectation. Your hard-earned money should stay with you. You never know when you’ll need it.”
“All right,” said Chaz. Then: “Getting tired of that, huh?”
“Of what?”
“Having everything bought for you.”
Cheers rose up from a cluster of fan-tan kiosks. Somewhere a dog was barking.
“Forgive me, Chaz. All you were trying to do was be sweet to me. I shouldn’t reject what is offered by gracious people, and you are very gracious.”
The sun was down, and the city was bright. The storm had moved on, but it hadn’t taken the cold with it, nor the persistent light flurries that glimmered under the lights. Even though it was afternoon, the streets were relatively free of traffic. Those that were out and about were bundled up from their toes to their ears.
Chaz didn’t know if Libby had a destination in mind. She didn’t ask. They seemed to be going wherever the street took them.
Libby said, “Growing up, all I heard was that I was fortunate, that our family’s wealth was a blessing from God. But I never believed that. The grace of God doesn’t take the form of money and possessions. To be wealthy, in a Christian sense, is to walk God’s path. To espouse the original virtues of Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ. But now I see the intention of God, why I was born into a wealthy family: it is His challenge to me.”
“Yeah,” said Chaz. “Being rich must be super hard.”
Even under the lights that played on her face, Libby’s cheeks visibly reddened. “I meant a challenge as in a test. The fortunes of my family were a blessing, and I didn’t understand this until recently. But the blessing wasn’t for me.” She reached for Chaz’s hand. “Do you believe in fate?”
“That everything that’s going to happen was meant to happen?” Her mind rolled a replay of the men coming into her apartment while she lay incapacitated on the floor. “No. And no offense, but God would be kind of a dick if bad shit was meant to happen.” She turned to Libby. “Do you?”
“In a way. I don’t believe predetermination tells us when to take a step or when to blink our eyes. Or when we should kiss. The forces of fate are not that meticulous. I think of fate as a river, and we’re pebbles caught in its current. Where the river leads is already settled, but we bounce and tumble and crash along the way. But the current steers us on the path we are meant to go.”
There were almost no people where they were now. No food carts, no open-all-day-and-night gambling houses. Not even a sound of the wind whistling between the buildings. It kind of reminded her of an entertainment booth sim—a detailed backdrop with everything else not yet loaded in.
“Our lives intersecting was because of that current,” Libby went on. “Don’t you see? I was born into a family of wealth, feeling nothing but shame when I looked upon people who had nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep. And then you showed me how to give that wealth to the people who need it. You and I were meant to be, Chaz. You have shown me how to give so much.”
Without any real warning, Chaz’s conscience felt like a bubble inside her chest, inflated with every lie she’d ever said. And to be honest, it hurt a little. As if it were a few more lies away from rupturing. “We didn’t meet by accident.”
“I agree.”
“No, not like that. It wasn’t fate, or whatever.”
They came to a stop.
Libby smiled like she knew all the universe’s well-hidden secrets. “I believe it was.”
Chaz shook her head and sighed. Libby was fucking serious, though. She could read it in her eyes, the true conviction and commitment to her word. Either that, or it was the thick glaze of Christian pigheadedness. But the lies, though. All the fucking lies. If what was between her and Libby was real, it shouldn’t be built upon those lies. Now that Kennedy’s job was completed, she should come clean.
“Libby.” Chaz gently grabbed her by the shoulders. “You need to know something. About me.” But any attempt at a confession came out as poorly muffled curses.
Flurries melted on Libby’s cheeks. “If God’s plans were perfect, we would never be challenged. We would never grow. Regardless of the course you took, you were meant to be here now.”
Chaz said nothing.
While she tried to work out how to spill the bombshell, her attention was drawn to a large advertisement billboard behind Libby. A cutaway diagram was showing the SUPER ABSORBENT TECHNOLOGY for a brand of leak-free tampons. Besides being really fucking happy to tell the city how her vagina blood wasn’t making her a downer at social outings anymore, the Hispanic woman had some nice cans.
The animation and testimonial looped every ten seconds. Chaz found herself captivated, the woman’s words having a riddle effect. Like some kind of mystery her brain had to solve: No more messes; my periods are under my control! No more messes; my periods are under my control!
Periods. Periods.
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck.” Her stomach twisted like someone had reached inside her abdomen and wrung it. “Oh fuck! Fuck!”
“Chaz, what’s wrong?”
She took a step back. It was the lights; she couldn’t look at the bright lights. And the air, something was wrong with the air too. The smell of it. It was all making her dizzy. And her eyes were tearing up because of the fucking estrogen. She wished she could reach inside her fucking belly and rip out her ovaries, rip out her whole goddamn uterus, hang it up and smash it like a fucking piñata.
Pruitt. He was the one who had done this. She was going to rip off his dick and balls and shove them down his throat. Then watch him choke. Watch him choke slowly.
After him, every other fucking man on this fucking planet. As many as she could kill. They were a fucking disease, and she was ashamed of herself for ever wanting to be one.
“Chaz? Please talk to me.”
Her eyes found Libby, and the world slowed a little from its out-of-control spin. “Yeah,” she whispered.
“What’s
wrong?”
What was wrong was that this planet wasn’t blown up into cosmic dust yet, that the Y chromosome wasn’t fucking extinct.
The truth.
“You remember that night when we ate with your parents?” asked Chaz.
“Of course.”
“I went straight home after. But your father followed me.”
Libby’s eyes widened. “What? Chaz, what happened?”
“He knocked on my door. I went and opened it, thinking it might be you. But it was him. He attacked me, pushed me to the ground. He drugged me so I wouldn’t fight back. He took off my clothes.”
Libby covered her mouth. Her eyes were huge. Huge.
“Then he went away. Other guys…they came in, while I was lying there. I think your father told them to. Maybe he paid them.” Chaz wiped away the tears as they came. “I couldn’t fight back.”
Libby’s arms came around her in a hug. Chaz didn’t know how long they stood there, holding each other. She tried to think what she would have done if Libby wasn’t here. Something shortsighted. Something stupid. Still. All she could think of was going back to the Platinum Regal and shooting that fuck in the head. She didn’t care if she was caught. Twenty years in the pen was worth it if Matthew Pruitt was wiped off the face of the planet.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Libby. Her voice was as soft as Chaz had ever heard it. “I’m here, Chaz. I’m never leaving your side.”
Chaz nodded against the hollow of Libby’s shoulder. “I think I’m…you know. I’m…” She couldn’t say the fucking word.
“Okay.”
“I need to go to a clinic. I have to—they’ll…they’ll do it. They’ll get it out. They have to get the fucking thing out of me.”
“Yes. They will.”
“Libby, I need to get it out.”
“I know.” Libby’s fingers slipped through Chaz’s hair. “You’re going to be okay.”
And then she started to hum, softly. Chaz had never heard her hum before. It was a beautiful noise. It brought to mind a mother rocking a child to sleep. The calm, the protection. The love. The lights didn’t seem so bright, and the air was easier to swallow. And like that child in their mother’s arms, she felt safe, like someone was watching over her.