A Cup of Joe

by Anita Ensal

  She shrugged. “The writing Teacher. She liked to talk about this a lot. Told me it was important to know. She repeated it so much I never forgot it.”

  “Where is she now, the writing Teacher?” he asked carefully.

  Delight shrugged. “They told me she got relocated. I wasn’t sorry to see her go…she made me miss a lot of Vid.”

  David gave her a weak grin. “Fair enough. So, you want me to do those thank you letters for you or you want to do them yourself?”

  She gave him her sweet girl smile, the one she used whenever they weren’t alone. “That would be so nice of you, David.” She giggled. “I’ll make it up to you in a year.”

  He clamped down on his feelings, which weren’t what they would have been the day before. He managed to appear to be looking forward to that day, took the paper and pens, along with the list of names to be thanked, and left, sliding them into his shirt before he went out Delight’s door. He headed to his quarters, trying to keep his heart from beating too quickly.

  Chapter 6

  David entered his rooms and looked around, feeling like he was being watched. He knew in the logical part of his experience that he couldn’t be observed unless he was linked into the Main System. But he knew that most of the Tower was linked in and he didn’t know how safe from observation he truly was in his rooms.

  He went to the bathroom and wrapped the writing paraphernalia up in a towel. Then he ran bathwater and undressed. One of the few areas where there were no links was this room, mostly due to the danger water created with electricity. It was considered a great honor that he and Delight both were allowed running water as opposed to the sonic showers which supposedly safely shook dirt off of a person’s body. No one else in the Towers was so honored.

  Normally David liked to luxuriate in the tub or under the shower. But tonight he wanted the safety to write his letter to Emily. He got into the tub and carefully took the pad of paper and one of the pens out of the towel. He tried to think about what to say.

  Dear Emily, he wrote slowly, realizing that it had been so long since he’d actually written anything by hand that it wasn’t coming naturally to him and his writing was hard to read.

  You were right, and I’m glad we discussed what to do. I think it worked. But you have to meet me as requested in my link – I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. But we also can’t talk like we did before – I know they’ll be watching. But I want to talk to you that way again. It’s the first time anyone’s ever spoken to me like you did. I don’t know how we’ll do that, but I want to, so much. Please come to meet me. I miss you.

  David.

  He read it over and wondered if he should try to write it differently, be more vague, just in case someone other than Emily got the letter. But he didn’t know how to code his words. He felt alone and stupid, and for a moment he wondered why he wanted to see anyone who made him feel like this.

  He thought about Emily’s smile and he carefully folded his letter and slipped it back into the towel.

  Then he checked Delight’s list and wrote a thank you note to the first name on it.

  Chapter 7

  David dreamed about Emily all night. He dreamed about writing letters to her, telling her all the things he’d never told anyone, all the things he’d never really allowed himself to think about all his life.

  He dreamed that she wrote to him, too, letters filled with interest in his thoughts and feelings, letters telling him that she cared about him and wanted to be with him.

  He dreamed about meeting her again and again, spending time with her, holding her hand, putting his arms around her, kissing her. He dreamed he was making love to her, of lying naked with her body held tightly next to his.

  But the dream didn’t end happily. He was meeting Emily in the Old Park – he could see her walking down a path towards him. He was waiting for her on the bench they’d sat on when he’d put his arm around her and wiped away her tears. She was waving to him, looking happy to see him, but before she could reach him a monster rose out of the lake and attacked her. It looked almost like a huge spider, but with a rectangular body and myriad legs all twitching and grasping at her, as they wrapped around her body and pulled her into its gaping maw.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t run to help her, because another monster like the one in the lake had him, wrapping its legs around him and binding him to the bench he was sitting on. He was screaming Emily’s name as he watched her being engulfed.

  Then the monsters disappeared and the lake and Park were both calm, as if nothing of any importance had just happened. He thought he was unscathed, but he looked down at his body and saw that there was a hole in his chest – the monster had taken his heart away. But he was still alive, and he didn’t feel any pain – he didn’t feel anything at all.

  David woke up shaking and covered in sweat, wondering why he’d dreamed this horrifying ending. He tried analyzing his dream while he worked to get his heartbeat back to something normal. He knew that the good part of his dream was obviously a manifestation of emotions and desires Emily had created in him. But the ending clearly showed that he feared she would be taken from him and that he would be helpless to save her.

  He thought about the monsters from his dream. They reminded him of something else, something other than spiders, now that he was thinking about them with his waking mind. He just couldn’t place what.

  It was the middle of the night but he got up and hooked into the Main System, looking for the monster he’d dreamed. He searched various myths and legends, but nothing was right. He started doing random searches based on different aspects of the monsters from his dream, but nothing appeared right.

  David was about to give up when he used the word “thread” in his search. As he was speeding through the results a word caught his eye: computer. He went back and followed that link, which took him to a basic description of how computers worked.

  He read it all, wondering when his subconscious had gotten smart enough to personify the evil that mankind had fallen into. Emily’s comments made more sense now that he read about the origins of computers, how they worked, what they’d originally been created for – and what their reason for being was now.

  David wiped out the search results and search histories, then disconnected from the System, and went back to bed. But he couldn’t sleep. His mind was whirling, from the dream and what he was trying to tell himself with it.

  He pondered this until morning came. Then he rose and began his daily routine, determined to get his letter to the mail drop in the Old Park today.

  Chapter 8

  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in how anyone dealt with him and David was careful to act as natural as he possibly could. He had two letters in his pocket, but if anyone thought to look, it would appear to be only one. He’d hidden his letter to Emily within the thank you letter.

  David wanted to run out of the Tower to the Old Park but he knew that someone, or something, was watching him for any signs that he was giving his encounter with Emily any thought, so he followed what he considered his lazy routine. He ate his breakfast slowly, taking his time with everything, and wandered to the gym, to do a leisurely workout. Then he showered, taking quite a while, dressed carefully, and wandered out onto the main floor.

  There he strolled around, watching the workers hustle and bustle about, sticking his head into meetings, and generally showing that he was bored. Finally it was mid-afternoon and David decided that he’d been obviously bored for long enough.

  He told the Security Programmer at the main entrance that he was going out for a walk and that he wasn’t sure when he’d be back. This was registered with little interest, just like every other day he’d said this, though the Programmer smiled at him like he was the most important man in the world. But David looked carefully at the man’s eyes and they weren’t really looking at him but at something within the man’s own mind.

  David wandered through the streets, following one of his norm
al routes, which happened to take him into the Old Park. He went to the Park frequently, so going there today shouldn’t cause too much interest for any watching him.

  He walked through the Park, trying not to feel that there were monsters lurking there but not succeeding. He’d finally come to understand that there were monsters everywhere.

  He reached the mail drop and now he wondered just what he was supposed to do. It was a simple metal structure, rusted with age and weather, a squat, rectangular shed with a counter, really.

  David looked inside it, but there didn’t seem to be any specific place to put anything other than the counter. He didn’t want to leave his letter to Emily on the counter, though. It could blow away and more importantly, it could be seen by anyone who was nearby. He suddenly wondered if he should have worked harder to figure out how to code his message.

  David took a deep breath and pulled out the thank you letter. Before he could extract his letter to Emily from it he heard a man’s voice behind him. “Mail for pick up?”

  He turned to see an older man in a cleaners uniform standing there. David felt frozen. The man raised his eyebrow and David was shocked to discover it was the same man from the coffeehouse.

  “Mail to be delivered, sir?” he asked respectfully. David nodded. “Wrong spot for it.” The old man smiled. “But, the right place is quite a ways away. If you’d allow me the honor, I’ll happily mail your letter for you.”

  David didn’t know what to do or say, but the voice in his mind told him that inaction was not the right choice. He handed the letter over to the old man. “It’s…it’s really from the Mother of the Next Generation,” he said suddenly. “She doesn’t like to write, and they’re making her for some stupid reason, so I thought I’d help her out. If the address is wrong, it’s not my fault, I’m using her list.”

  The older man nodded gravely. “Duly noted, sir. I’ll put her return address on it, just in case.”

  “Good,” David said, trying to sound pleased instead of terrified. “You…you will make sure it’s delivered properly?”

  “Absolutely, sir. It’s an honor to perform a service for not one but both of the Chosen Ones.” He bowed, then walked off in the direction he’d indicated.

  David felt almost unable to move, but he forced himself to wander through the Park some more before he headed back to the Tower. No one questioned him when he arrived but this made him more nervous for some reason.

  He entered his rooms but nothing seemed disturbed or out of the ordinary. He ate dinner and tried to watch the Vid but couldn’t stomach it.

  David was about to take another shower when the Mother Board came in. She looked radiant tonight, hair the color of honey, eyes a deep chocolate brown, her skin a rich color in between the two. “Did you have a nice day?” she asked him.

  He shrugged. “It was fine. Nothing special.”

  “Isn’t writing and mailing a letter special?”

  He swallowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do,” she said sweetly, as she glided to a couch and sat down. “You wrote a letter and then went to the ancient mail drop in the Old Park to send it. Who was the letter to?”

  David looked at the floor. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Of course you can,” she said, and her tone was just a little bit sharp.

  He shook his head, keeping it down. “I’ll get someone else in trouble if I tell you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure not,” she said, her voice dripping with sweetness. “Now, who were you writing to, David? That you couldn’t send a link to, which would have been so much faster and far more simple?”

  He didn’t look at her. “You promise you won’t get mad at her for what I did?” he asked, keeping his tone that of a child caught in the act of misbehaving.

  “Of course, David,” she replied, sounding shocked. “I would never harm a friend of yours.”

  David sighed and looked up, keeping his eyes on her face. “Delight has all these thank you letters that the Underwriter is insisting she do by hand. She didn’t want to and I didn’t want her to get into trouble, so I offered to write them for her. It’s hard work,” he added a bit plaintively, “and I only got one done last night. Then I realized that I didn’t know where to mail a paper letter. The only place I’d ever seen was that mail drop in the Park. So, since I was planning to walk there today anyway, I figured I should check and see if I could mail her thank you letters there.”

  The Mother Board looked slightly shocked and he knew she hadn’t been expecting this answer. “And, did you mail that letter?”

  He shrugged. “Sort of. There was an old man, a respectful one,” he added. “He figured out that I was trying to mail a letter and told me I was in the wrong spot by a long ways. He offered to take the letter and mail it so that I wouldn’t have to be bothered, so I gave it to him.” He put a slightly worried expression on his face. “Do you think that was the right thing to do?”

  “We’ll see,” she answered. She looked up now. “Bring me Delight immediately.” David knew this order wasn’t for him.

  Delight arrived quickly, looking confused and a bit scared. “Do you have thank you letters to complete which the Underwriter is requiring you to write by hand?” the Mother Board asked her without any preamble.

  Delight looked over at David with panic in her eyes. “Uh…yes,” she admitted, looking back at the Mother Board with obvious fear in her voice.

  “And, are you, in fact, writing them?” the Mother Board asked sternly.

  Delight shot David another panicked look, then she hung her head. “No,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Be-because David said he’d do them for me…as a favor,” Delight whispered.

  David was watching the Mother Board’s expression carefully, and he understood that this was truly not the answer she’d been expecting. “I…see,” she said now. She looked over at David. “Give me the list of names, please.”

  He went into the bathroom and pulled the list out, but not before noting that the towel he’d hidden the list and writing paraphernalia in had been moved – only slightly, but he was sure that someone had been in his quarters, searching, while he was out.

  He went back out and handed the Mother Board the list. She looked at it and he could tell she couldn’t make it out. She handed it to Delight. “Read the first name on the list to me,” she said imperiously. Neither Delight nor David looked at each other.

  “Mary Sullivan, grocer,” Delight read aloud. “Gift of elaborate fruit basket.”

  “I see,” the Mother Board said. She looked over at David. “That does correlate to the letter confiscated from the old man who took it from you at the Park.” She looked up at the ceiling again. “You may set him free, he was telling the truth.” David felt his stomach, already roiling, clench into a knot of cold, hard fear. But he kept his expression calm.

  The Mother Board looked over at Delight. “In the future, you should let me know when you don’t want to do something the Underwriter insists upon. I will be happy to help you.” Delight nodded. “You can go back to your quarters now, dear,” she said sweetly. Delight flashed David a hopeful look, then she left as quickly as she could.

  The Mother Board looked at him and sighed. “Your intentions were good, David, but please don’t try to keep something like that from me again. I have no problem with your writing Delight’s letters for her if it makes you feel happy. But you can have them delivered by one of the Operators.”

  He shook his head. “Then the Underwriter will know she’s not writing them herself and she’ll get into trouble.”

  The Mother Board smiled at him, and her teeth were perfect and white. “That’s a good point, David. What do you suggest?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Should I give them to Delight to mail?”

  She nodded. “That sounds like a good plan, David. Now,” she patted the couch next to her, “let’s watch the Vid together for a while.”

&nbs
p; Chapter 9

  David had the same dream again, night after night. And each time Emily died in it and his heart was taken away. He knew he was giving himself a warning, but he didn’t know what to do with this information.

  The week went by slowly. He was sleeping poorly and the Mother Board was spending a great deal of time with him. He used to find it flattering when she did so but now he knew he was being watched, that she distrusted him and was looking for him to slip up and say or do something which would allow her to know that he wanted to see Emily again more than he wanted anything else in the world.

  He couldn’t understand why this was so. He’d only spent a few hours with her, after all. Every night when he dreamed he tried to stop his dream when they were done making love, when their naked bodies were entwined together, to not reach the end. But he wasn’t able to stop the dream where he wanted to, and every night he saw Emily engulfed by what he now knew was the Mother Board as she really was.

  He ran into the Underwriter in the halls one day, confirming that they were watching him, since the Underwriter rarely if ever was seen out of the top levels of the Tower.

  The old man gave him a long look as David gave him a respectful bow. “Are you sleeping well, Chosen One?” he asked finally.

  David shrugged. “Normally. Why?”

  “You seem…tired,” the Underwriter said with a small smile. “As a suggestion, when you want to awaken, you can override your bad dreams with a simple numeric code.”

  “Oh?” David asked politely, wondering if the Master Computer was reading his dreams while he slept and worrying about Emily’s safety if this was so.

  “Yes,” the Underwriter said. “Here.” He handed David a piece of paper with an eight-digit number on it. “Memorize this. It will help you.” The old Programmer then turned and walked away, leaving David staring dumbly at the piece of paper in his hand, which looked as if it was very old, older than the papers he’d seen in the coffeehouse.