The Cybernetic Tea Shop

by Meredith Katz

  She didn't answer, suspecting he was mostly worried that she'd try to get in the back way. Maybe wander off somewhere.

  As if she could leave. She felt as if she couldn't move her limbs at all.

  Clara came, bundled in a coat over her pajamas, Joanie perched in the mess of her hair. "Oh," she said, standing next to Sal, staring at the wreckage.

  "Mm."

  Clara sat, and Sal couldn't quite bring herself to unwrap her arms from around herself to draw closer to her. Clara, too, just braced her arms on her legs. The two of them sat side by side, not quite touching, gazing at the smoke and char up the street.

  "This is the third time it's been destroyed," Sal said, finally finding her voice from somewhere inside herself. Words spilled out in short, choppy sentences, like she couldn't process well enough to make it flow, to make it pleasing to the ear. "The first time was the earthquake. Karinne was alive then. We rebuilt. The second time was only seventeen years ago. A small homemade bomb. It was much the same as it was now. I rebuilt, and ran low on savings. My insurance went up, and I gave up on it. I don't have any now. My patronage has gone down. I can't afford to rebuild it completely again. I don't have the money. I've been barely scraping by on payments, on keeping from going too far in the red, on fixing the smaller messes from harassment. There's nothing left here. I'd have to build from the ground up, and I can't."

  Clara leaned over finally, wrapped an arm around Sal's shoulders and pulled her closer. It hurts inside, Sal thought. She went quiet and limp, and leaned her head on Clara's shoulder.

  They stayed in silence a little while longer. Clara was shivering in the cold. Sal wished she could warm her, but that was impossible.

  "I'll stay in town," Clara said abruptly. "I make good money when I'm not blowing it on taking time off and traveling. My parents are doing fine, last I heard—they don't need me sending anything back home right now. It might take some time, and I don't know if you'll be able to reopen in this exact spot, but we can build up a nest egg so you can start again somewhere."

  Something threatened to split inside Sal, and she let the lenses in her eyes widen, go loose and blurry, so she wouldn't have to look at anything. "I want to go home," Sal said.

  "C'mon, let's go," Clara said, in a tone like she was grasping at anything that might help. "I'll... tell that officer you're leaving. We'll leave your contact info, so I don't see why you'd need to stay here. They'll know where to find you."

  That wasn't what she meant, but she didn't try to correct Clara, just watched with blurry vision as Clara pulled away and went to talk to Hyeon. The home she wanted to go to wasn't Clara's. That was a place she was a guest. A welcome guest, but a guest. Home was here, but here was gone, and home was nowhere.

  Clara came back, offered her an arm up, and she took it.

  "You're gonna be okay, Sal," Joanie said. She fluttered along Clara's arm to Sal's shoulder, tucked her small body in there. "You're strong, okay?"

  That hurt too. "I'm not strong," Sal said, frustrated. "I haven't demonstrated any strength."

  "That's—"

  "Not right now," Clara said, probably to both of them. "That won't help right now."

  Sal let Clara lead her back to Clara's small apartment and sat on Clara's bed. She watched Clara move back and forth around the place, taking her coat off, getting a warm drink on. It was tea, something Clara would drink and Sal couldn't even though Clara was making it out of the desire to comfort her. Clara had so many bags of her shop's teas here, all lined up on her counter, and that was something, at least. The last of it could be enjoyed by someone who mattered.

  Sal curled and uncurled her fingers, drew a breath in around the destruction churning inside her, and said, "Clara?"

  "Yes?"

  "I can't fix this." It felt like giving up.

  Clara bit her lip, pouring hot water, her face turned away and shoulders hunched. Her tone was almost cautious. "We can—"

  Sal didn't let her finish. She'd already heard Clara's plan. "You'd be miserable doing that!"

  "I'd be happy to see you be happy." Clara wrapped her hands around a hot cup, steam curling up around her face like gentle fingers as she turned to face Sal, expression soft.

  Looking at her, at how much of an offer she was making, at her willingness to change, Sal felt something inside herself straining. She wished she could cry like humans did, could just get it out. "Clara?"

  "Yes?"

  "I am physically incapable of moving on. Of letting go." Even just saying that much felt like a loss.

  Clara let a breath out. It disturbed the steam, sending it dancing in agitation. "I know," she said, calm. Patient.

  The tangled mess of emotions churning inside of Sal were like those when Karinne had died. The urge to follow her had only been defeated by overwriting her registration with the shop, by making the shop into a still-existing version of Karinne. When the bombing had happened, she at least had money then, along with the insurance. Now, it felt worse than that time. It had been bad enough then, but there had been something she could still do.

  The idea sitting unspoken on her tongue was anathema to her, felt like it would be poisonous to voice. It might destroy her capacity to attach to things at all, she thought. She might wake up on the other side numb and no longer feeling this deep nostalgic love that had sustained her all these years.

  But the building would need to be condemned. She wouldn't see three hundred years with it no matter what she did, and perhaps it was better to let go and feel nothing.

  "Clara?" she asked hesitantly.

  "Yes?"

  Giving up. Giving up. "Will you remove my registration?"

  The look Clara gave her was long and serious, but she nodded. "Yeah. Of course. If that's what you want." She wasn't showing her reaction. Deliberately, Sal thought. She was trying not to influence her.

  It felt like she was trying to justify herself. Guiltily, she pushed on. "I can't leave that place, but there's nothing there."

  "I know," Clara said, still careful. "I'll fix it, if that's what you want."

  "Do you want to put yourself in her place?" Sal asked, looking down at her own unmarked fingers, flexing and loosening.

  A sigh. "No," Clara said firmly. Her calm tone had shifted, leaving no room for doubt. She hated that idea. "I don't. I'll leave it empty if you want, but I won't put myself in there."

  Perhaps it was for the best. She wanted something or someone to belong to, but perhaps the only thing she could do was let go—even if it turned out to be letting go to everything after all. Even if she would have nothing left of herself afterward. "Okay."

  "Right now?" Clara asked.

  "Yes." Sal kept looking at her hands, not at Clara.

  A brief pause, and then Clara made a quiet, agreeable sound. "Let me finish my tea. I don't want to make any mistakes."

  It was so absurd. Sal didn't care about any mistakes. But she shrugged her shoulders. "Okay," she said, and lay down to wait for Clara to be ready.

  She'd been in this bed just an hour earlier, she thought, and it had felt so much nicer then. Everything had seemed to have potential. Why did things have to change? She couldn't stop her memory from replaying, over and over again, the moment when she'd seen the shop burning.

  It didn't seem like much time had passed, but she felt the pressure of Clara's hand land on the back of her neck. "Sal, please reboot into administrative mode."

  "Yes," she said, grateful for the ability to leave.

  She shut down—

  —She started back up: a moment of non-existence and then drawing breath and she felt—

  She felt different.

  Not empty, not lacking love, not lacking grief. Everything was still fresh and everything still hurt, everything was change and loss and confusion and the warmth of being able to trust this person sitting beside her, and rather than feeling less, as she'd thought she might, it was more like she was feeling everything all at once.

  Confused, a little
alarmed, she thought of the shop, thought, what should I do about it?

  And thought, there's nothing I can do about it. I'll have to move on.

  And that hurt. It hurt deeply, it hurt terribly, but she could think it. The thought could occur to her as a reality instead of as a conceptual understanding of something she couldn't do.

  The shop didn't own her. She owned the shop, and it was gone now, like Karinne was gone. That was just how things were.

  "Sal?" Clara asked, quiet.

  She couldn't cry, and despite that, she heard herself make the sound, a shaky breath, a sob, and she flung her arms around Clara and just held on as she tried to find her own center, tried to find a way to understand herself that wasn't defined in contrast to anyone else.

  Clara held her tightly. Sal knew she had to pull herself together, had to allow herself to reassure Clara; she must be worried. She'd done this to help and it was probably hard for her to be able to tell what Sal was feeling. It was hard for Sal to tell what she was feeling. But she gave herself this moment anyway, this moment to be overwhelmed and relieved and a whole being in and of herself.

  Slowly she steadied enough to be able to pull back; she touched Clara's face and smiled at her. "Sorry," she said. "I'm okay."

  She didn't really feel okay, not yet. She felt lonely. There was a hole inside her that she'd never had before, an empty spot where a sense of belonging-to had previously been. An empty field was meant to be filled in, and had been left empty for its own sake. She felt a little scared, and very unsure of where things were going to go. But she also felt like she would be okay eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later. She felt like there was potential in front of her, even if she had very little to hold onto right now.

  Cathartic. That was the term.

  She explained as much once it occurred to her, awkward, stumbling a little over her words, and Clara's face creased into a smile as well, eyes bright. "Good," she said, and her voice trembled. "About the shop—"

  "There's no helping it."

  "About the shop," Clara continued insistently, "don't make any decisions while you're so worked up. I can stay here. I can help. You can do other things to make money, too. It can reopen." She squeezed Sal's firm hand. "We can do this together."

  "I won't make any immediate decisions," Sal promised, though she felt that she knew, already, where this would go.

  She kept her promise. Days passed; she became more stable, more comfortable with her realizations and her growth, her possibilities. She stayed home and cooked for Clara, kept the place tidy.

  Weeks passed. The hearing for the people who had attacked the shop was scheduled. She had little interest in it—she had already been strongly advised to not attempt a civil suit to sue for damages, as her shaky legal standing would work against her. The prosecutor would instead try the case, to no gain for her but with a much higher chance of the arsonists being brought to justice. She accepted it for what it was, though she disliked that she had to appear in court regardless of any possible return. She'd been through it before; court proceedings meant constant attacks on her personhood. But due process was due process.

  She showed up on the date of the hearing and endured what she needed to. They put in a guilty plea.

  After that mess was over with, she mostly wanted to occupy herself. She was too used to working, had been created to work—not doing so made her feel directionless, uncomfortable. But it was difficult to get hired. It was one thing to run her own business, but it was bad press for others to hire a robot instead of a human—and enough people had heard about what happened to her shop that they didn't want to take the risk.

  She continued to place orders for teas, made her own blends as always, but started to sell them online instead of through a store front. It kept her occupied, anyway, and Clara was always willing to taste them.

  Months passed, and the rain began to be broken up by sunnier days. The cherry trees began to blossom, lost petals to the ground. One day, Clara came back with them stuck to her shoes and a screen floating next to her with her credit listing on it. "We can probably get out a loan to open up a store front," Clara said lightly. "If you want to."

  Sal looked the sum over, then pushed Clara's screens away and looked up at her instead. "You don't want to stay here. It's been months. You want to travel, don't you?"

  "It's not just about me," Clara said, voice awkward. "The shop's important to you. I want to do something that's important for us."

  Sal shook her head. "I don't want to run a shop anymore," she said. It wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't entirely wrong. She didn't want to run one now; it felt too soon, too painful. Besides, Clara would be gone soon, and she wanted to spend what time she had now enjoying just being around her. Everything else could wait. "Selling my teas online is fine. I don't need a shop for that."

  "Then..." Clara hesitated, then took up Sal's hands in her own. Sal looked down at them, at their contrast—her own unlined hands against Clara's lined ones, unnaturally pale and synthetic against Clara's warm brown skin. "Then I do want to keep moving."

  It hurt a little. Sal knew it wasn't abandonment, just parting. That would happen eventually for them regardless of what they did. But it still set up a stinging in her chest, sharp sparks of loss. Too soon again. "I understand," she said anyway.

  "Will you come with me?"

  The earnest tone of Clara's voice shocked her, and she jerked her gaze up to Clara's face again, contracting the lenses in her eyes until she could make out, she thought, every pore. "You'd want that?"

  "Of course I want that. I want to keep moving and seeing the world, but why would I want to do it alone?"

  "Hey," Joanie protested, from the back of a nearby chair. "You aren't alone. What's that about?!"

  Clara cracked a smile. "Yeah. I mean, Joanie's here too, but why would I want to do that without you? I love you. You don't need a shop to sell your teas—you can do that from anywhere, right?"

  Slowly, hesitantly, Sal curled her fingers around Clara's, wound them together. She'd never left Seattle before; she'd never even wanted to. But with the suggestion put to her like this, she found the desire already there inside her. Seeing new sights, experiencing things that she hadn't been able to before. She'd been too caught up in an arbitrary deadline to consider living any other way.

  "Can we? Where would we go?" she asked. And, almost laggy, embarrassed that she'd been distracted from it, "I love you too."

  Clara smiled brightly, squeezing her hands in gentle acknowledgment. "It's been a long time since I've been home," she answered. "I was thinking that we could go to New Mexico. Your whole situation with Karinne... I've had it in my head how my parents won't live forever. You know, I kind of miss them."

  It was true—they wouldn't. Clara wouldn't either, Sal thought. Even Sal herself wouldn't, though she'd likely last a lot longer than Clara or her parents, would keep on going as long as her parts kept moving, until her code deteriorated to the point that she was no longer Sal.

  "I'd like to introduce you to them," Clara murmured, eyes downcast.

  The sparks in her chest exploded into something else, something she couldn't put a name to. She smiled around the force of that impulsive, giddy feeling.

  It was fine. She'd have this as long as she could have this, and after... well, she wasn't registered to anyone or anything anymore. If she found traveling to her fancy, she could keep traveling, keep moving on as long as she lasted. If she didn't, she could settle down. There might be other people in the future; there might not. There might be other shops in the future; there might not. It wasn't an endless future, and it wasn't one with a clearly defined goal, but maybe that was what living actually felt like.

  And anyway, Clara was in front of her right now. Everything else could wait.

  "I'd like that," Sal said.

  FIN

  About the Author

  Meredith Katz started writing around the same time she started to walk, a 6 page ‘book’ called �
��The Baby Dragon” (spoilers, there was an egg, it hatched, and then there was a baby dragon). She hasn’t stopped since, and after many years of writing slash and femslash fanfiction, she is only too excited to share her original fiction. She lives in beautiful BC, Canada with her gorgeous fiancee and adorably nerdy cat.

  Tumblr: http://king-of-katz.tumblr.com