A New Start

by Morris Fenris

  I stopped, caught up by a crazy notion that, in truth, I only wanted to act upon in order to show off to you.

  Yep, that’s true I’m afraid...

  You had carried on a few steps and I called out to you. You turned around and came back to me, curious.

  “Mina,” I asked, “have you ever walked on damp grass?”

  “No, I haven’t,” came the expected reply.

  I brought a leg up, struggling to maintain balance as I struggled to pull off my shoe. The shoe won and I toppled clumsily onto my side and, rolling onto my back, I was unable to keep from laughing at myself. You looked down at me, confused, but obviously amused as well.

  “Then I think you should try it.”

  I continued pulling off my footwear and you looked down at your slight shoes for a moment, before kicking them off in a dainty way that highlighted my oafishness, while I strained a groin muscle disengaging my foot from the other shoe.

  My socks off as well, I strode out onto the grass, hiding a wince at the first few chilly steps. Turning back, you were stood on the edge of the path, your toes millimetres from the first blades of grass, and you were looking doubtfully at the green expanse before you.

  “Come on!” I encouraged. “It’s fine.”

  With that, you took your first tentative step, tensing visibly as your foot touched down. Your second step was more confident, and I could see the beginnings of a smile on your face.

  “Just watch out for the dog shit.”

  “What?”

  “...You know, poo... Um... excretions, stools. But from dogs.”

  “Yes, I know what dog shit is.”

  ****

  “You see our window,” I asked, “in the middle, on the left? The big one, that’s the lounge window.”

  You frowned as you looked up at it, then turned back to me and looked suspiciously round at the park as it stretched out beyond us. I wondered what you were thinking.

  My eyes flicked up and over your shoulder, to where I saw an adolescent Black Labrador bounding excitedly towards us. Seeing my eyes widen, you turned around just in time to receive a virtual body check from the excited animal. And, letting out a piercing scream which must have echoed around the park, you collapsed like a sack of bricks, squealing with terror.

  I started forward, remembering that thing about keeping your fingers tucked into a fist when approaching dogs that you don’t know. But the dog was just being friendly and trying to get a lick at your face.

  “It’s alright,” I tried to say, doing my best to restrain the powerfully built animal, but I’m pretty sure you were oblivious in panic.

  The owner – a large, sweaty guy who, by the look of him, had being chasing this dog all over the park – arrived, calling out the dog’s name (which was ‘Rudy’) between asthmatic gasps.

  “I-I’m so... s-orry,” he apologised to me as he attached a lead to the collar, then looked at you, staring wide-eyed at the dog like it had three eyes and had just hopped out of a spaceship. “Not a... dog person?”

  You didn’t reply, but sat up and slowly leaned closer to Rudy. After a moment, your left hand reached out towards the restless, panting dog, but you stopped short and looked up to the owner.

  “How old is it?” you asked.

  “He’s six months,” the man replied. “And he still doesn’t know how to behave around people yet.”

  Your hand carried on then, stroking the dog’s nose and letting him lick your palm. It seemed to fascinate you and you looked intently at it for a moment, before tilting your head to look Rudy in the eyes. “I know how you feel.”

  The man smiled, a little nervously. “Come on, Rudy,” he said, pulling the dog away and grinning at us in farewell.

  You looked back up to me from where you were on the ground.

  “That makes three of us,” I said, offering a hand to pull you up.

  Taking it, you got to your feet but kept hold of it once you were up. We were closer than we had yet been and you looked up at me, a serious expression on your face. I thought you were going to say something, but as the silence lengthened, I tried to remember what I had been planning to say, back when I had decided to go for a walk in the first place.

  “-Is that why you ordered me?” you asked suddenly, then looked mortified. “I’m sorry, that’s the last thing I’m supposed to ask. I’m a bad, bad person.”

  “It’s alright,” I laughed. “You can always ask me anything.” We started walking back towards the path, feet now acclimatised to the cool grass. “As for why I ordered you... That’s more the cause of the reason, than the reason. To be honest, I don’t think I could ever fully explain why I did it.

  “We’re supposed to find partners naturally – just let it ‘happen’. That’s what people are supposed to do. We expect, unequivocally, that this will happen. At least, that’s how I was brought up.”

  You frowned.

  “...My parents, my friends, society...” I explained, “That’s what they taught me. But no one ever says about the ‘what if’ – what if that doesn’t happen. Really, no one ever says.

  “You know, the only relationship I’ve had that’s lasted over two months was with a person I met in a virtual reality game. That’s just how much I suck at interacting with people. So...”

  Could I say this to you? And there I had been telling you to ask me anything. But, as much as in those early days you were like an adult-sized child, so green about the world that you had landed in, you were at moments so intuitive it scared me half to death.

  “...So, just for once, you needed a head start?”

  I just stood there for a moment, stunned and unsure what to say.

  “But you don’t have to love me if you don’t want to.” It was kind of idiotic, and I blurted it out like a hasty apology.

  We reached the path, which was comparatively warm under our feet.

  “I’m not sure I know what love is,” you said.

  “Snap.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Means ‘me too’.”

  “We have some things in common, then… That’s good, so I’m told.”

  I huffed a little laugh. “Yeah.”

  “You laugh a lot.”

  “Sorry, nervous thing.”

  “No, I like it. I’m glad you ordered me, and not just because Matt told me to say that.”

  “See, I knew he did. I’m glad you’re, you know... you. You’re so much more than I expected.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Have you ever seen the film ‘Killer Cyborgs of Titan’...? No, probably not. Anyway, I was only kidding.”

  “I do look young, don’t I?”

  “Huh? Oh... I hadn’t noticed.”

  I know, I know, you hate it when I don’t put the ‘I said’, ‘you said’ in. But it’s all about the delivery, woman. Timing, pacing... damn it, I’m working with amateurs!

  ****

  Later that night…

  “So… you want to?”

  You were stood in the doorway to the flat’s one and only bedroom wearing one of my t-shirts and nothing but panties (I hoped there were panties) underneath it.

  “Look, Mina-” I said, trying to marshal my tone so as not to upset you on your first day with me. But you obviously picked up on it.

  “-You don’t want me?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question for legal reasons…”

  “What?”

  “You… you look fifteen right now.”

  “But… I just thought…” You were tearing up. Damn it, I’d made you cry on your first day, I knew this would happen. “Aren’t we supposed to…?”

  And it clicked. “Is this what CyberG taught you?”

  Now sniffling and blinking through your tear-filled eyes, you nodded back.

  “Well, CyberG don’t know me,” I said. “Even if you’d reached your starting age I wouldn’t want to. And it’s not because I don’t… you know… legal reasons, legal reasons. I do. Or… I wo
uld.”

  “But you don’t.”

  I thought for a moment, trying to find a good way to put it: “It’s like; remember how much you said you liked dinner?”

  The smallest of nods came back my way.

  “Well, part of the reason you enjoyed it as much as you did was because you hadn’t eaten since this morning. Because you had waited so long to eat and were hungry, your body really wanted the food and, to let you know that, it made the food taste better.”

  You looked intrigued by what I was explaining. I wasn’t too sure whether that was the hunger thing or whether you were just wondering what the hell this had to do with sex. For some people, food has quite a lot to do with sex, but that sort of thing’s never really been my bag.

  “Right...” you prompted.

  “Well, relationships are a little like that… I think. Well, I wouldn’t really know for definite, I’ve not had that many, but I’m pretty sure that the longer you wait to… er, consummate a relationship, the better it will be when you do. You’ve, um… got to wait until you’re really hungry.”

  “So your body makes it taste better?”

  “And hopefully your heart does too.”

  You fidgeted self-consciously, stretching up onto tip-toes and twisting your body right and then left. It really made you look… well, as old as you looked.

  “Night, Mina,” I said.

  “Where are you sleeping?” you asked hurriedly.

  “I’ll be on the sofa for a little while.”

  I thought you were going to say something, but at the last moment seemed to stop yourself. You looked confused, lonely and scared, like you needed a hug. But I couldn’t do it yet, I didn’t know you well enough to be able to physically force myself to. As you know, I’m not the most tactile of people. Until I am, of course, then it’s like I can’t stop myself.

  Feelings of guilt and sadness surrounded me as I went back into the lounge and got my bed ready. In a way, you were so much better than hoped for. I could see real character in you and that was something I guess I hadn’t expected. Despite CyberG’s assurances to the contrary, I had been unable to imagine anything but some boring, compliant, somehow ‘generic’ person. But you had all the unpredictable qualities of youth.

  On the other hand, I wondered what the hell I had just let into my perfectly quiet life. What had I unleashed on myself? I was used to constantly walking the path of least resistance, but with you there, that path was lost. There was another person’s feelings to consider now and, in a way, that thought was as exhausting as it was exciting.

  And what if you really did never manage to love me? As much as I had meant what I said about you not having to love me, it would be just like my life if even my order-in cyborg partner came to think of me as ‘more like a brother’.

  Sounds funny now, doesn’t it? But a guy can only have so many pseudo-sisters before he starts to wonder if there’s something seriously wrong with him. The problem with pseudo-sisters is that, sooner or later, they will meet someone else, someone who they will put before you; and we all need someone who puts us first, someone that isn’t our mother, that is… Especially when said mother lives in Australia.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  It seemed more like two weeks before you hit your starting age than just the one that Matt had promised. Not that it really mattered, I suppose. It did make it easier just get to know you.

  Actually, that would be the wrong phrase to describe those first few weeks. I think it was more a case of you getting to know me and blossoming in response to that. The more I gave of myself, the more I opened up to you and tried to involve you in every thought and facet of my life, the more I saw that reflected back in your own burgeoning personality.

  It’s hard to describe, even with all the time that we’ve spent together, because you weren’t a female me or anything like that. Well, maybe there were a few small things, a few Tim-isms. Either way, if this was the way CyberG had made you then I had to hand it to them, because there aren’t too many things in this world more self-affirming than seeing someone grow and develop as a result of your own catharsis.

  You weren’t the first person I had been through this sort of experience with, but you were the first I had an outside chance of… you know. More than an outside chance, as it turned out. Heh-heh.

  Of course, I still had to work, so I couldn’t spend twenty-four-seven with you, as I would have liked. Despite my gentle encouragement, you weren’t too keen to leave the flat without me beside you and, as the weeks slipped by, this became more of a worry for me. To be honest, I was a little bit selfish about the whole thing. I could have taken you out more on the weekends, but instead enjoyed spending them just 'vegging-out' on the sofa, introducing you to the joys of the serialised television programme. It was an education of its own, I guess.

  You had been with me for nearly a month and were now a fully-matured twenty-one year old woman. You still had a fairly young-looking face, but had filled out a little around the hips and was starting to lose those rosy, round cheeks that had been such a feature of your adolescence. It was remarkable, really, how CyberG could make you so that you grew and aged so rapidly, then suddenly slowed to a more normal rate at a pre-determined point. Well, almost normal rate.

  It was Friday and I had come to realise how selfish I was being with the weekends, so had decided that we would do a few things away from the flat on Saturday and Sunday. I was planning to ask you if there was anywhere you wanted to go (within your habitation zone, of course), but knew that you still weren’t that great at making decisions, so had a few places in mind, including a picnic down near the River Exe and a Saturday morning trip up to the High Street Complex, having caught you several times staring out of the window in (apparent) fascination up towards the great structure in its place on the hill.

  But when I got home there was no sign of you. I instantly panicked, even at the same time as I was telling myself that you had finally got up the courage to go to the park by yourself and that this was a good thing... what I had been hoping for.

  I went to the window and looked out at the park. It was coming on for six in the evening and, although dusk was still about three hours away, it was fairly empty. I was pretty sure that you weren’t among the group of kids playing football over on the far side, and everyone else was close enough to be recognisably not you. Of course, you couldn’t see every square centimetre of the park from our window.

  It did occur to me at that point that it would have been a good idea to have added you as another user on my CyMobile contract. I always have those sorts of ideas at just the wrong moment.

  Y-e-a-h...

  So, I made my way down to the park, caught between the twin worries of something having happened to you and appearing like the over-protective, jealous… whatever-I-was-supposed-to-be, freaking out because you’d been gone for five minutes. But you weren’t in the park.

  There was a Spar shop up on the main road, and one thing I knew I had done, was link your own Efi Chip to my personal account, (with a credit limit that I hadn’t told you about – just until I was sure you were all good with the value of money). Maybe you had gone to the Spar. So I returned to the flat, assuming you’d be back already if you had only gone to the shop. You still weren’t there, and inside I really started to panic.

  Aside from the obvious shame of having to ring up CyberG and tell them that I’d lost you already, the thought of never seeing you again was terrifying. In fact, it was a truly fucking world-ending thought. I couldn’t not see you again.

  Crossing the threshold of opening myself up to appearing rash and possessive, I set a proximity message on the CyMedia Centre telling you that I had gone looking for you and to stay put if you came back, then I headed out of the door, taking the quickest, main route up towards the High Street Complex. I figured that if you had decided to make a break for freedom and headed the other way, there would be little chance of me finding you and avoiding our one-and-only
warning.

  At that time on a Friday most of the retail businesses were closed and the Complex was beginning to undertake its metamorphosis into ‘happening night spot’. For a brief time the respectable family people - those who only drank on special occasions, or who kept their drinking habits behind locked doors, like me - shared the same spaces with the brazen revellers, eyeing them fearfully like stray dogs that had wandered into their nice, ordered lives and might turn nasty at any moment. Which, sometimes, wasn’t the most inaccurate of analogies.

  I had to queue at the Fore Street entrance next to some girls who were already well on their way. For a moment I went through my usual fear of what might happen if they started talking to me: would they make fun of me, humiliate me? But thoughts of you quickly filtered back in and it was amazing how easily they trumped my ridicule fears. Nothing, including Zen Meditation, had ever trumped those fears, but now everything was insignificant and meaningless next to finding you.

  “You oughta try a chip, mate,” said the burly Complex security guard as I pushed my Efi Card into the reader. “Much easier. Won't be using cards much longer if ya ask me.” Different job, same party line.

  I wended my way past the stream of mothers, families, workers and senior citizens hastily exiting ground zero. Bars and clubs were situated all over the complex, but the second and third floors of the south west district held the greatest concentration and, as I was coming in right next to it, I thought about the possibility of you having popped out for a beer.