Binary: I’m aware.
Mercury: Are you? Because that question is about three steps away from “what’s your deepest desire” and we have rules about that sort of thing.
Binary: We do. But you can answer abstractly. Hypothetically.
A long pause. He watched the typing indicator appear, disappear, appear again.
Mercury: Honestly? I think I’d be doing exactly this. Talking to you. Just... maybe with better tea. And possibly that roast beast we discussed.
Binary: That’s your ideal scenario? Conversation and unspecified meat products?
Mercury: Don’t undersell it. It’s conversation with YOU and unspecified meat products. There’s a significant difference.
Lincoln stared at the screen. The words sat there, simple and devastating in their simplicity.
Binary: Mercury.
Mercury: Too much?
Binary: No. Just... processing.
Mercury: Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.
And there it was—the thing that undid him, every time. She was patient. She gave him space to think, to feel, to find his way to a response without pressure or expectation. She didn’t demand immediate reciprocity or fill the silence with anxious chatter.
She just waited. Like she had all the time in the world for him.
Binary: I find myself looking forward to these conversations more than is probably wise.
Mercury: Probably. But wisdom is overrated. I’d rather be foolish and happy than smart and lonely.
Binary: Is that a poem?
Mercury: No. That one’s just me.
Binary: I like the ones that are just you.
Another pause. When her response came, it arrived slowly, each word appearing like she was choosing them with care.
Mercury: “The cold wind doth blow, and we shall have snow, and what will poor robin do then?” That’s not just me. That’s Mother Goose. But I think about it every winter. Those little birds with nowhere warm to go.
Binary: Robins migrate. They’re generally fine.
Mercury: Way to ruin the metaphor, Binary.
Binary: I apologize. The metaphor stands. Concern for vulnerable creatures in winter is valid regardless of ornithological accuracy.
Mercury: “Ornithological accuracy.” I’m putting that on a t-shirt.
Binary: Please don’t.
Mercury: Too late. It’s already designed in my head. Maybe a little cartoon bird with glasses looking at a thermometer.
Binary: This is why we can’t have nice things.
Mercury: No, this is why we HAVE nice things. Our nice thing is this. Ridiculous tangents about Seuss and robins and hypothetical t-shirts. I wouldn’t trade it.
Neither would Lincoln. He wouldn’t trade any of it—not the poetry quotes he didn’t always recognize, not the tangents that went nowhere, not the silences that somehow said more than words.
