The sensation that rushed through Sal felt like it was going to knock her off her feet, a confusing mess of mixed feelings that she couldn't even put a name to. Grateful as well, she stepped back, holding the door open. "If you don't mind, I could use the help," she admitted. "But please, don't feel obliged. Stop whenever you want to..."
"Sure, sure. It's fine, don't worry."
Sal tried to push down on the sense of relief. The situation hadn't changed just because Clara was here—but at least getting things cleaned up would go more quickly. Sal managed to dig up some leftover paint from the back room, grateful that the walls were painted and not papered; Clara took down the paintings on the wall that had been spray-painted over and helped tape up the edges to keep the fresh paint from dripping into other areas.
"Do you want to open a window?" Sal asked, as she started to pry the lid off the old tub, hoping there was enough left to work with. "This will probably smell, and I don't want you to have any distress..."
"I'll get it, yeah." Clara, sleeves rolled up, pushed her dark bangs back from her face. Sal noticed that they'd fallen out of her braid already. Clara glanced back at Sal as she headed to the window, and Sal looked down at the paint tub to make sure it didn't flick drops anywhere as she got the lid up. "It must be pretty depressing," Clara added.
"What? Oh..." Sal put the lid carefully to one side, dipped the edge of the stiff brush in. "A little."
"Just a little?"
Sal pressed her lips tightly together for a moment. It was hard to find the words to express these feelings fully. They churned around and were only peripherally focused on the words she was here to paint over.
"It's not... as if I'm unaware that I am a thing," she said slowly. "And that I'll eventually break. It hurts to read because they intended it to hurt. The same thing is less painful when it's just self-awareness. I am already to the stage that I should probably seek out repairs soon, although I don't want to. But the shop is also a thing."
"I think it's a little different..."
"Yes. But what they came in and trashed was the shop. They did it to hurt me, but they hurt it too. Unlike me, it doesn't have any feelings. But I have feelings for it," Sal said. "I was—everything in me is meant to take care of it. I was registered to Karinne, and she tasked me with taking care of it."
Clara let out a soft whistle, righting a chair and checking over the kicked-in leg to see if it could be reattached securely. "So it's not just personal attachment, it's your programming?"
"Yes. Of course, I'm emotionally attached to it too," Sal said. "I've been here for hundreds of years. I've managed this business for nearly that long, I've spent every day in it, I've replaced broken things and done everything I can to keep it going." Now that the words had started to come out, she could hardly stop them. "Karinne wanted it to last three hundred years if it couldn't last forever. We're so close to that time now. And yes, I'm scared for myself. I'm scared of breaking down. I'm scared people like that will track me down successfully sometime and break me beyond recovery, and I won't see that dream through. Even without their actions, I'm slowly breaking down. If it's up to them, it won't be a slow process." Her brush laid out regular, steady strokes on the wall, but she could hear her voice starting to tremble. "But even if they don't get me, this place being ruined will ruin me. If they come in and break it to the point that my low profits can't sustain repairs. If they do damage I can't repair. If—anything like that."
Clara had stopped working, was watching her, and she found herself avoiding eye contact.
"I'm terrified," she said finally. "It's so easy to see Karinne's dream fail. Karinne's already gone. If I lose this shop... I might as well have broken back then, because all this would be pointless. There's nothing left for me besides it."
"Sal..." Joanie said from a nearby tabletop, her tone sympathetic. "Yeah. It's kind of your master, isn't it? The shop is."
"But... does it have to be?" Clara asked after a moment. There was no denying the heavy concern in her voice. "You don't have to have a registration to a person any more. That could be removed. Then—I mean, seeing a dream through to the end is admirable. It is. And doing what you want is important. But I'm sure Karinne wouldn't like to see you without any choice about it."
"That's—" She cut herself off, biting her lower lip briefly in a strange impulse to shut herself up, to stop her automatic protest. Clara was right. She had always been a person to Karinne—or, if not always, at least since fairly shortly after Karinne had acquired her. She could remember the pressure of Karinne's hand in hers in those precious last few moments.
Karinne had said, "I want you to live out our dream," our dream, always ours, never just Karinne's, because she knew how deeply she'd shared it with Sal. "But Sal, I want you to be happy. I want you to grow and change and become everything you've wanted to be..."
But there was the problem, wasn't it? What she wanted to be. She knew what she was, she knew what she did, she knew how she lived—as much as the term applied—day in and day out. But everything else was a void. Everything inside her centered around her purpose, her programming, bound tight around the knot that was property of Karinne Anders carved onto her heart. She was a satellite orbiting Karinne's wishes, Karinne's hope, Karinne's love. Even with thoughts and feelings of her own, they found their expression through that center. She wanted to abandon it as much as a sea captain would want to abandon his compass, his maps. Without any guide, the ocean would become a directionless mass. She understood the thought behind Clara's words—that with a heart and mind of her own she could learn to use the stars to navigate instead—but the idea was terrifying.
"It's what I'm used to," she said finally.
The two of them worked in silence for a few moments. Sal didn't quite look at Clara, focused on her brush, the steady shhk-shhk-shkk of it as she dragged the paint over the wall.
"You said you were slowly breaking down?" Clara said softly, as the moment began to drag on.
Sal finally glanced over at her again, watching as Clara studiously unscrewed the back of an old photograph that the spray paint had crossed over. That was good thinking. It could go into another frame easily enough. "I have been having memory errors lately," she said finally. "That's the main problem. I had charging errors for a while too, but a new battery seems to be doing the job."
"Mm. Do you want me to have a look?"
The thought was almost dizzying. She'd thought before of finding someone who could help her out, replace the parts that were wearing out, fix memory leaks and the rest. But finding someone who could take care of someone like her would be hard at best, and it would cost so much money, and... well, it wasn't like she could trust most people. Even though they'd just approach her as something to fix, she wasn't comfortable with entirely thinking of herself the same way. It had been easy to get upgrades when Karinne was alive. Having a master meant trusting her master's judgment and not letting herself think about the risk. Without one, the idea of letting someone tinker around inside her... It felt safer to just let herself slowly wind down. That was more of a known element. She was used to the errors, the slowness, the blanks where her recall should be.
But, she thought, she could trust Clara.
She almost chided herself at that, forcing herself to look away from Clara and painting a few strokes almost violently. She liked Clara fine, yes. They got along well. She knew that Clara took pride in her work and wanted to promote a sense of personality—Joanie was proof of that. She believed in Clara firmly, but intellectually, she was aware that she didn't yet know Clara well enough to justify that faith.
Karinne had always been big on trusting one's instincts.
Sal sighed. "I... I don't know if I could afford it."
"For free," Clara said. She waved off Sal's immediate protest. "Friends help friends. Don't worry about it. I like you, and... I mean obviously I won't do anything you're not comfortable with, but I don't want you to not get what you need to keep going just becau
se you don't have the money."
It was hard to keep moving the brush, so she dropped it back into the paint bucket, tried to calm herself. "Thank you," she said.
She heard Clara get up from the table she was seated at and come over. "Sal..."
"I'm so scared," Sal said, and maybe there really was something wrong with her, because she hadn't meant to say it at all. It had just slid out of her mouth like something too-oiled, and she shuddered at the sense of pain throbbing through her. It wasn't a physical sensation, but was pain nonetheless.
There was a sense of pressure, and she looked up as Clara slid an arm around her shoulders. It was a firm presence, a solid thing, reliable, and something seemed to crack in her chest.
She hadn't held anyone for so long, but her body remembered it. Her arms slid around Clara, and she pressed her face into the soft curve between shoulder and neck, into that taut warm skin, and shuddered. She couldn't cry, but Clara didn't seem to expect her to; she soothed Sal as if she were spilling tears anyway, one hand rubbing in circles on her back, rocking her lightly, holding her close.
*~*~*
It took about a month to get in all the supplies that Clara thought she might need. It was better to have too much than too little with something like this, replacements and a variety of chips and a number of other things. Without knowing what exactly would fit properly and securely, it was hard to guess what might be necessary, and she didn't want to leave Sal waiting. Opening her up multiple times to figure it out also felt invasive. It wasn't like it hurt to have more supplies on hand—worst case scenario, she could give Amber anything she couldn't take with her when she inevitably moved on.
It was a nice month—a busy month, but a nice one. She alternated between work and the Tea Shop as if it were home more than the apartment she was renting. She'd finish with work and go over to help Sal set up, to help sort through the new plates and cups as they arrived in boxes, to hang pictures, to generally keep things going so that Sal could run the shop properly. Sal apologized constantly for not being able to pay her for the help, let alone for the planned technical aid, but Clara brushed it aside. Sal no longer charged her for food or tea, but gave her them whenever she wanted it, and that was as good as getting paid, she said.
Besides, she liked the company.
Winter had fully set in to Seattle, a wet affair with a constant blowing drizzle that occasionally dropped into temperatures low enough for thin damp flakes to fall, hit the pavement, and melt. Snow didn't really stick much there. The constant wetness wasn't bad and was what she'd come here for, but she thought that after it, she might like something new again. Dryness and heat for a while. In this part of the world, fall meant rain, winter meant rain, spring meant rain. Summer had its bright days, but also rain. A rainy winter was what she had wanted—a rainy spring, probably less so.
Normally, the itch to move on wasn't a problem. She had complained to Joanie as much once, foolishly.
"Never had anything you couldn't take with you, huh?" Joanie asked impishly, which wasn't true, exactly. She'd left her family behind, after all. But it was still mostly true. As with her family, knowing Sal was going to stay in one place meant she could always come back for visits. But she was fine with putting off seeing her family again, dismissing her parents' emailed complaints until it felt like time to wander back that way again. In uncomfortable contrast, she wanted to see Sal more and more, a desire almost as strong as her desire to see the world. She felt that probably wouldn't change by the time winter was over. Even if she pushed against herself and stayed put through spring, it probably wouldn't change.
Clara didn't like the thought that she might leave, lose contact, lose interest in Sal as distance made their interactions less frequent. She didn't want to think it possible, but she'd lost touch with enough good friends over time. The idea of starting out messaging her, then those messages getting put aside as they both had work to do, just never picking back up...
But there was no helping it. She'd keep moving, and Sal would stay here. Sal belonged to the shop in her old owner's place—what was her name, Karen? No, Karinne—and even inviting Sal over to Clara's apartment had made Sal nervous. How long had it been since Sal had even left the premises?
But once the supplies were in, Sal agreed to come over, and Clara spent a few fruitless hours tidying in some strange impulse to impress Sal. Sal liked her place pristine, after all, the picture of some charming quaintness. Clara, who never owned enough to worry much about where everything was, had difficulty even remembering to do the dishes regularly, especially now that she ate out at the Tea Shop so often. But she more or less got everything done and put away by the time a light knock came on her door.
Right on time; 6:00 p.m. on the dot.
Despite expecting it, Clara jumped a little, found her breath stuttering in her throat, and squeezed her fingers into fists to force herself to calm down. It felt different somehow with Sal coming to visit her in her own home instead of the strangely proper way their spaces were defined when she was at the Shop, even if she'd moved more to assistant than customer. But it was just Sal, she reminded herself; they were friends now, they were close enough for this, and having shaky hands would absolutely be a bad idea.
She wiped her hands off on her jeans and opened the door.
"There she is, the guest of honor," Joanie said, sly, and Clara felt herself relax, letting out a laugh she didn't mean to voice.
"Come on in," Clara said.
Sal was standing on her doorstep, wearing, surprisingly, something other than the usual uniform-like dress she wore every day at the tea shop. It was certainly out of fashion, a loose frock in a creamy pink color that came to her knees. A carousel horse design circled near the hem of the dress, and small ruffles sat at her throat and wrists. It had been clearly bought some decades ago, but there was no way it was old enough to have been purchased for her by her previous owner. It wasn't decayed, showed little sign of damage. Her expression was as undefined as always, but Clara had found it easier to read of late. The lenses of her eyes had tightened to pinpricks, some kind of hyper-focus, and her fingers were wound together. Probably nervous, Clara thought.
"Hello," Sal said. "Sorry to intrude..."
"Not at all. You're invited." Clara stepped aside, holding the door for her. "That's a really pretty dress."
"Thank you," Sal said. "I... I purchased it for the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary. I threw a little celebration. I don't have any other. I don't go out much."
"Do you go out at all?"
The lenses of her eyes widened and tightened again—and then she dropped her head and let out a soft, musical laugh. "No. I don't go out at all."
"Getting here must have been hard."
"People stared. It was fine. Nobody stopped me." Sal stepped in finally, looking around. "Oh, your place is—oh."
"Is?" Clara felt her stomach knot again. "Sorry, I tried to clean up. I can be a little messy. I guess I've been spending all my cleaning energy on your place—"
Sal shook her head, the wisps of her hair drifting around the strong lines of her cheeks. "No, it's fine. It's just... you don't seem to own very much."
True; with all her focus on cleaning to make it tidy enough, Clara might have overlooked the bigger discrepancy between their homes. The shop was filled with items, with photographs and curios and china and lace everywhere, with antiques that had been purchased to give the place its atmosphere. Even after the recent damage to it, it was still full of them, with more available to be brought out from the back—items that had been put away due to tarnish, or replaced with newer and more interesting ones. In comparison, Clara still had little more than what she could travel with.
"I move around a lot," Clara said. "I'm kind of... I like seeing the world."
"You move—?"
Sal's gaze flicked to her face, and there was some kind of disappointment there, a shock. Clara felt her own stomach clench in return, and fought the sudden urge to make some
kind of excuse. It wouldn't be true. "I like seeing different cities," she said. "I mean, I'm not planning to move right away! I just got here."
"I see..." Sal said.
"And... I can always come back to a place I like!"
"Yes," Sal said, quiet. She knotted her hands together. "Shall we begin?"
Clara swallowed; she couldn't overcome the sense that she had hurt Sal somehow, but it was just how she was. There was no changing her own nature, and she'd never been one to stifle herself. She tried to push forward, to get past this awkward start. "That quickly? Sure you don't want me to get you anything first?"
"No, I mean—" Sal's thin lips turned up in a smile, finally relenting, as if she was pushing away whatever mood had overcome her. "We might as well get this over with. We can always do other things after. Isn't that right?"
Joanie opened her beak to make some kind of commentary and, without looking, Clara reached out to bop her with a fingertip. It wasn't the time for jokes, and she was sure that was what Joanie was about to do. Joanie's personality contrasted her own; that's how she'd made her.
"Yeah," Clara said. She drew a deep breath and let it out, trying to calm her nerves. She'd worked on hundreds of AIs before, she'd studied the old robotics—she could do this. There was no need to be nervous, and letting herself feel intimidated might make things harder. "Please lie down on the bed. Can you enter some kind of administrative mode?"
Sal spread her skirts around her, lying down, then rolled on her front to show the nape of her neck. With it exposed like that, Clara could make out the outline of her main access panel. "I can," Sal said, and then seemed to hesitate. "Clara...?"
"Yes?"
"If you see me in that mode, you won't think any differently of me?"
A warm sympathy flooded her chest, and she came over, put a hand gently on Sal's upper back as she sat beside her. "I won't," she said. "I understand. You're inside this. Showing another mode doesn't make you less you. Okay?"
The Cybernetic Tea Shop Page 5