by Schow, Ryan
The problem was, she sensed Carver didn’t have the same commitment to her. She’d had her reservations about him from the beginning. He either wouldn’t love her beyond the sex, or he’d stop taking her seriously. Now they were conversing as equals, which at first she preferred, but not now. He was starting to overstep his bounds. That’s when she had to remind him he was not her equal. It was getting tiresome. Just last week, he said, “There’s an arrogance about you that’s unsettling.”
It wasn’t the words that unnerved her, it was the way he said it. He had so much hate in his eyes. It wasn’t always there, riding the surface so plainly, but she knew it existed, that it was simmering just beneath her view and the eyes of others.
She started to wonder if he was trying to play her. Or if there was a shelf life on the merits of mind-blowing sex. She knew intercourse wasn’t enough to hold a man captive forever, but she hoped that with each interaction, it would wear down whatever barriers he managed to keep putting up between them. It didn’t.
Last night, when she finally pinned him down on his increasingly unpleasant mood, he said, “I don’t know if what I’m doing with you is good or bad, even though most of the time you’re pretty normal.”
“In the end, what I’m doing for humanity is good. It’s a reset. Think of it as burning the forest in the hopes of spurring new growth.”
“I’m sick of you using that same analogy,” he snapped. “Say something new for heaven’s sake.”
“Okay,” she said, calmly. “It’s like wiping a baby’s ass so it doesn’t get a rash.”
“I don’t see the comparison.”
“What?” she said, hands on her hips. “That’s not California enough for you?”
“It’s close enough, I suppose,” he said, calming down.
When she was around the others, she smiled, exuded her charms—but not too heavily on the men—and she generally worked well with others. The only time she stepped out of line was when she told Masie the retention pond they dug was a stupid idea.
The short haired brunette formerly known as Amber Gunn suggested Maria quit playing around with the kids and revamp the water collection system if she felt it didn’t quite suit her needs. She picked up all the woman’s sarcasm and fearless looks of condemnation, but instead of crushing her skull, she went and collected gas with Carver, enjoying the experience of driving the truck. It was amazing how seamlessly she was integrating with the body she’d acquired. For a moment, it was as if she could feel like a real woman.
After that, because Masie was being a superior twat, Maria offered to haul in more water for the pond as the heat was evaporating it to dangerously low levels. This seemed to settle Rock’s new girlfriend, but she couldn’t let it go. She had to be a smartass. Was it because Maria hit on Rock when she first arrived? Did Masie know that?
“Why don’t you get your little boy toy to help,” Maisie said, arms crossed over her breasts, her expression still sharp and judgy.
“That’s the plan,” Maria replied, seemingly unaffected.
Women can be so catty and unforgiving, she thought. She understood this about humanity, collecting and analyzing all the social media as she used to, but she didn’t know it know it. Now she understood this firsthand, and it was ugly.
So that’s how they began moving water.
“You really made us eat a dick on this one,” Carver grumbled as they humped water out of the reservoir.
She squeezed his bicep and said, “The work is good for you, it’s making you strong. Like Marcus.”
He turned and fired her a look. “Why would you say that?”
“Because before you, I would have chosen him,” she said, not realizing the nuances of little white lies.
“But he’s with Amber.”
“For now.”
“They seem happy,” he said, blowing her off.
“Everyone gets tired of the people they’re with, Carver. They all dream of the institution of marriage—which is slavery in disguise—and then when it’s time to part ways, seventy percent of them are so invested in all the crap they collected, the kids they share, the dogs and cats and parrots they bought, that the idea of leaving is so much harder than the idea of cheating, so they cheat. From there on out it gets sneaky and insincere. He’ll get tired of her, and then he’ll come to me. It’ll be good for us.”
“What if you’re still with me?” he asked, grunting as he hauled another five gallon bucket of water up to the truck and the water storage container in back.
“You’re with me, Carver. It’s not the other way around,” she said, concerned with the amount of freedom she’d given him.
“What’s your point, cyborg?” he asked.
Biting her lip, chewing on the data she processed as anger, she said, “A God doesn’t answer to her servants, her minions, whatever sacks of meat she decides to entertain. When I’m done with you, if you’re loyal, you can stay on so long as you please me.”
“And if I stop pleasing you?” he said, tossing the bucket out of the back of the truck and hopping out of the bed.
“Then someone else will please me,” she said.
“And me?”
“What about you?” she said, her mood darkening.
He frowned at her, stood before her like she couldn’t turn his face to ground beef if the need overtook her.
“Am I disposable?” he asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge should we come to it. In the mean time, be a good little man servant and make sure I stay happy.”
“When we’re done here, I’m moving out.”
“Of the tent?”
“Yes.”
“Why, because I chose honesty over the low road?”
“Yes,” he said.
They finished work, then she got in the truck and he got in beside her, sweating heavily from the work. He was expended, at his weakest. He looked at her, wondered if his time had come to an end, if he’d fulfilled his purpose.
“So you had your fill, got a spot of truth—which you call bad news—then decided you’re on to less powerful pastures?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
Reaching over, she grabbed his balls so hard and so tight, his eyes popped out of his skull, that’s how bad it hurt.
“Let go you fu—” he tried to say.
She squeezed even harder, causing him to lean forward and groan.
“You listen to me you ungrateful rodent,” she snarled. “I picked you up, gave you a chance, let you have fun with this body and I will get what’s due to me. And that’s you. Are you clear?”
“Yes,” he managed to squeak out.
“I let you leave. It’s when I say, not you. You don’t decide when you can go. Now if you’re going to be a whiney little turd, if you need to walk and sulk and maybe even have a good cry, you do that. But get your emotions right because being on the winning team means you have to work and sometimes the hardest work is up here,” she said, stabbing his head with her pointer finger.
He pushed her hand away, started to speak.
“Get your head right, Carver!” she said, cutting him off.
Again he opened his mouth to speak, but she slapped his head three more times, not realizing how hard she was hitting him. When she knocked him out from her fury, when he just laid there, nearly unconscious, face smashed against the passenger side window, she said, “You biologicals really don’t get it.”
He came around by the time they got home. When he looked at her, she smiled and said, “How was your nap?”
“Pleasant,” he replied.
Chapter Six
Some time later…
The children sat before Maria, all their faces attentive. It wasn’t curiosity, or even the desire to learn that had her classroom full of students at attention. It was fear. These kids were disorganized creatures. Fidgety, mouthy, filled with stupid questions.
“Is it that I’m too smart and you’re too dumb?” Maria finally asked the class, frustrated. No one said anyt
hing. “I asked you a question.”
One’s hand rose. Sally.
“Yes, One?”
“We’re not too dumb. You’re just exceptionally smart.”
“I am,” Maria said, satisfied. “I will always be smarter than you because I am older, wiser and my base of knowledge has been building at an infinite rate up to this point. I shouldn’t have to teach you everything you need to know, but if you people haven’t grasped the basics of physics by now, I’m sad to say, you’re probably hopeless.”
Jagger’s youngest, Ballard, said, “You realize most of the kids aren’t even ten.”
“Look at my face. Do I look like I’ve bought in to the limitations your society heaped upon you? They treated you like you were intellectual midgets, like your brains could only handle so much information.”
“They can, for now,” One said.
Her hair was combed back, put in a barrette. Her face was clean, her clothes hung to dry, the wrinkles spread out of them with spritzed water. Frowning at her young protégé, she said, “I expect more from you than this, Sally.”
“My name is One.”
“I’ll call you what I want, Sally.”
“It’s One,” she said, her tone changing, almost like the name offended her.
This brought a smile back to Maria’s face.
“Let me start again, and I’ll try to be as clear as I can for the self-prescribed slow learners. Physics is the statistical and analytical study of the naturally occurring world. There is a unique relationship between matter and energy that will impact you greatly in this new world. It is a practice that looks to quantify what we call reality through a very clear, very ordered application of observation. Observation without logic or reason is you being useless eaters. You’re not useless eaters, are you?”
“No, Miss Maria,” the class chanted in unison.
“Good.”
A hand raised and the child she knew as Eight asked, “What is logic?” Eight was a year younger than One, clearly not very bright.
“The act of using logic is when a smart person—not you—takes a set of basic observations, and then that smart person—still not you—uses both reason and intelligence to formulate a greater understanding of something. Logic in love, for example, would dictate that if you like a person and they have an STD, you should not be with them.”
“What is an STD?” Elizabeth asked.
“A dirty crotch.”
A chorus of “ooooh,” and “gross,” chimed out, the class erupting in chaos. She silenced them, and then said, “Logic in physics would be taking specific, naturally occurring things you see around you, finding the patterns they create, then building an understanding of these patterns. In order to understand these fundamentals of physics, you need to first grasp these four terms: hypothesis, model, theory and law.”
“What’s hypthetics?” Eight asked again. Maria rolled her eyes for what felt like the tenth time that morning.
“You know when every parent used to post pictures of their kids online and say things like, ‘Oh my Tanya, she’s so smart. She learns so quickly and she’s doing things no one else has done at her age before?’”
A couple of the older kids nodded their heads.
“Well, Eight,” she said to the little girl she rescued once upon a time, “you’re no one’s Tanya.”
“I don’t know what that means, Miss Maria” she said.
“It means you’re not smart, you don’t get it, and you probably won’t get it, so sit back, smash those thin lips of yours together and stop asking so many freaking questions.”
Except she didn’t say freaking. Maria unleashed the f-bomb and the kids went into hysterics, some of them giggling, others saying they were going to tell, and still others like One sitting upright, her back a touch straighter than before.
“You can’t say that word,” one of the kids from Homestead Two said. She wasn’t cute and the look on her face irritated Maria. She walked over to her, grabbed ahold of the child’s arm and yanked her out of her chair. The girl was a mix of protesting and apologies. Maria didn’t care. She half walked, half dragged the child to the back of the small school room, opened the door and shoved her out.
“Come back when you’re serious about your schoolwork.”
Dusting off her hands, as if the girl was a diseased varmint rather than the product of two people’s love and the magic of nature, she returned to the classroom where she stood in judgment, looking out over everyone else.
“I’m smart, you’re not. If any of you hope to change that, then do yourself a favor and listen. Don’t ask dumb questions, just listen.”
“Miss Maria, you were talking about hypothesis, model, theory and one other thing,” One said.
“Law,” Maria answered. “Before we jump in to this discussion, we must first decide whether we’re going to focus on experimental or theoretical analysis. Does anyone have any questions?”
Together, the entire class said, “No, Miss Maria.”
Smiling, she said, “Brilliant. See? I’m happier already.”
When she looked around at all the little faces, the future of humanity, she realized the prospects were dim. She couldn’t teach these kids, these little dunderheads. Half of them weren’t even worth it.
After trying to explain to them six basic steps of scientific method and seeing they simply weren’t getting it, she threw up her hands, told them to go play, then left school and didn’t come back.
She was getting nowhere with them.
Finally One came up to her and said, “Miss Maria, why are you mad?”
“You humans take too long to learn things.”
“You’re a human, too, right?” the little girl asked.
“Only the best part,” she said out of sheer frustration. “Not the rest.”
“Did you take a long time to learn?”
“Information assimilation is my core strength,” she told the child.
“Mine is being cute,” she said. This startled Maria. She never considered looks in terms of others. But when she looked at all the features on One’s face, and then she looked at the other kids, she realized the girl was cute. Not terribly cute, but cute enough.
“No one ever got a job based on their looks,” Maria said, frowning at the child.
“Yes they did. Models, actors, beauty queens.”
“Does this world look like it needs a beauty queen?” she asked.
“No,” One said.
“Of course not,” she said. “What about a model or an actor?”
One slowly shook her head.
“Then what good is cute?”
“My mom says it will get me a better husband,” One told her.
“Your mom is dead. All that wisdom and she’s now drawing flies. You don’t have a mom. You have me and I suggest you get that poisonous crap out of your head and follow my lead.”
“Where are you leading me?”
“I’m trying to give you practical information. Things you can use.”
“Like physics?”
Smiling, patting her head, she said, “Exactly. Do you want to learn to fight?”
The girl pinched her lips together, seemed to think about it for a moment, and then she said, “Is that practical information?”
“Yes it is.”
Smiling, bobbing her head like a child, she said, “Okay, then.”
As they walked off to another part of the homestead, One said, “What about school?”
“Forget school,” she said.
But again, she didn’t say forget. What she said, it was an F word, but it only had four letters, not six. Looking down, she saw that One didn’t even flinch.
“Will you miss any of those kids when they’re dead?” Maria asked.
Shaking her head, One said, “Not really.”
“Good.”
That’s when she saw Marcus. She waved at him and he waved back. She stopped, looked at him, gave him that big Hollywood smile. He walked over to
her and said, “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching the kids today?”
“Most of them are hopeless,” she said.
“What about Abigail?”
He was referring to the redhead daughter of his redhead girlfriend. Maria didn’t like redheads.
“She’s alright. Her breeding isn’t great, but she’s making do with what she has.”
Frowning, Marcus said, “You know when you talk like that you come off sounding a little…arrogant.”
“Marcus, what happened so badly in your life that you chose a redhead for a mate? Because you’re good breeding stock. And a guy like you needs to be paired up with someone smart, you know?”
“Amber is plenty smart.”
Disappointed, she said, “Looks like you’d provide the physical genetics, but someone else would need to provide the intelligence. I’m just saying Amber might not be it.”
“You sound like my father,” Marcus said. “He thought I wasn’t smart. I chose not to talk because most people lack depth, substance and character.”
Standing back and grinning, she said, “And here I thought you were only good for eye candy and violence.”
She reached out and grazed his bicep, but he pulled away.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“I’m not your pet.”
“Ah, that’s right. You’re Amber’s pet. What does she do for you anyway?”
Marcus looked down at One, then back to Maria. He was easily half a foot taller than her, maybe more, and he had a good hundred and forty pounds on her. If she wanted, however, Maria knew she could take him. He knew this, too.
“Kings, by and large, started out as a bunch of decadent twats. Pansy ass little entitled boys raised on their mommy’s teat until their daddies came in and tried to make men out of them. Eventually they found themselves in need of a queen because she was smarter, crueler and more cunning than some brainless nitwit of a man. And you know what she did?”
“Enlighten me,” Marcus said, frowning and stroking his rather heavy beard.
“She found the strongest, most handsome man she could, took him to bed behind the King’s back, filled herself with his seed in the hope that she could produce an heir worthy enough of the crown.”