Across the way, Lulu and Rosita emerged from the house along with a few others. My sister eyed me and then pointed at the beehive. We started walking toward the double doors. With dismay, I saw through the window a few people talking and sitting on my bed. I sighed.
—
“Why am I still ‘Oliverfriend number three’ when you’re calling the honeybees by names now?” Sam asked as we crowded into the small control center. It was me, Roger, Lulu, Sam, Rosita, Mr.Gonzales, and a few other ranchers from nearby farms.
“Because that’s how I am programmed,” Roger said.
“My grandfather programmed it that way,” Lulu said at the same time, sliding into the seat across from the terminal. I didn’t object. I knew my way around the control center, but Lulu was the expert. “He thought it was funny. I’ve tried to turn it off, but I can’t without the admin password.”
I handed Rosita the bracelet, and she thanked me and put it on. She immediately started clicking on it.
“You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“I haven’t heard anything from my cousin,” she said worriedly. “I need to know how my nieces are doing. Damnit. No messages since we last talked. I was hoping maybe I missed something before the net went down.”
“It sounds like Roger has some ideas,” I said.
“I hope so.”
“But how can you change the names of the honeybees and not the people?” Sam was asking.
“Because I have admin access over the honeybee system,” Lulu said as she started to furiously type at the terminal. “Think of Rogeras an operating system that has a pair of programs loaded into his memory, and he’s running both at the same time. The first is for controlling all the honeybees, and that’s the only one Oliver and I have full administrative access over. That’s great, but he also has that Mary Poppins BS installed, which we can’t turn off. That’s the tutoring-and-discipline module. I can instruct Roger to make all the honeybee units line up and dance for us if I want, but if I try to bring a jug of vodka into the house, he’ll lose his mind.”
“That is not true,” Roger said. “There is no dancing during perimeter defense.”
“Wait, you can’t bring vodka into the house, but you can bring in a convent’s worth of sex toys and outfits? How does that…Ow!”
I kicked Sam in the leg before he could continue. Roger had a strange blind spot when it came to Lulu’s streaming activity in the computer room. Still, I didn’t want to rock the boat too much and force Roger to make a response. While I wasn’t a huge fan of my sister’s activities, I knew it made her happy. If Roger put a stop to it, she would spiral.
That, plus she was earning a significant amount of money. Money she wouldn’t be able to touch until the quarantine or embargo or whatever you wanted to call it was lifted in eight more years. For the moment, it was all sitting in a Republic bank, earning interest.
None of that money was mine, and I had no expectation I’d benefit from any of it, but it made me strangely proud that my little sister could do something like that all on her own. A few people who knew about her activities were pretty judgmental toward both her and myself. Just a few days back, we’d stopped at the town square bar—the Belly-Rubbed Pug—and Kitty Dominguez, a girl from Burnt Ends who’d moved south just a few years back, had called Lulu a whore to her face. That hadn’t ended well for Kitty.
I usually wore headphones when I knew Lulu would be online because that was the last thing I needed to hear, but Roger ignored it. I could stub my toe and silently curse in pain, and Roger would be atmy door in seconds demanding to know if I was okay. But when Lulu was locked away working, he didn’t say a word.
Lulu seemed to think it was something in Roger’s programming that made it so he ignored anything sexual. Still, Lulu had developed an online innocent-farm-girl personality designed not to raise Roger’s ire. Farm Girl Gigi.
“Golly, golly, golly, mister, golly!” was what she usually exclaimed, which was pretty funny. She always made sure I knew when she was streaming so I could put my headphones on or go outside, and she continued to offer to move to the barn or have the honeybees build her a whole new studio. But I insisted it didn’t bother me. And truthfully, it didn’t. Again, I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but when I really forced myself to think about it, my issues were more about what she wanted to do with her money once the quarantine was over. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel if she ever had a real sexual relationship with someone in the next room.
Her online persona was so different from the real Lulu that any ick-that’s-my-sister feelings were overridden by the sheer ridiculousness of it all. I’d once suggested her character was in violation of the anti-masking laws, which prohibited online filters on human faces.
Still, Lulu worked whenever she could. I didn’t know exactly how much she’d earned, but it was a lot. She had a goal. A home on Earth. An apartment in some place called Aruba. Once she became a property owner, she’d have access to UBI, and she wouldn’t have to work ever again.
She’d asked me more than once if I would go with her.
I’d said no, of course. The idea seemed ridiculous to me. Multiple generations of our family had given everything, including their lives, to make this planet their home, and the idea of just leaving the moment one could seemed so disrespectful. This was my home.Ourhome. And then I’d point out that we weren’t even certain she could live on Earth with the adjustment to our bodies that had been madein vitro. She’d have to grow her own food because it was possible everything grown on Earth would be toxic.
She’d get this look when I told her that. She’d set her lower jaw for just a second, and I couldn’t tell if she was about to cry or punch me, but all she would do was nod and then wait a few months before asking again, pretending like the conversation would go differently this time.
And I’d feel like complete shit afterward. I didn’t want her to leave. I didn’t want to be alone. But I didn’t want to be responsible for her being miserable, either.
That was how I felt, and I knew that was how I felt, so why didn’t I say that? Why did I always take the asshole route and just scoff at her and get mad when she brought it up?
Because she’ll stay if you tell her you’re afraid to be alone.
I turned my gaze back to Rosita, who was worriedly looking at something on her bracelet. Rosita, who was clear she wanted to spend her life with me. Rosita, who was constantly hinting that she wanted me to ask her to marry her. And me, again, afraid to offer her what she wanted.
But that was what I wanted, too. I loved her with everything I had. So why was I always keeping her at arm’s length?
