Her mouth quirked. I watched her steadily, and Sera cracked a sudden smile, snorting with laughter that was a tad hysterical. She was coming off an adrenaline high.
“Nice thesaurus,” she said, snickering. “Yes, it was dumb. But did we die? Nice shooting, by the way! You really saved the day.”
I nodded solemnly. My notifications pinged again. A woman named Chrysalis, age 26, from Lyon, wanted to get in touch.
“You’re supposed to thank me, even if I was just doing my job,” I said, ignoring the DM for now. Sera watched me with such vivacious light in her eyes, I hated to distract myself at the moment.
“But you weren’t doing your job,” she said, her smile shrinking. “Look, I know what you and Charlie talked about. He knows you’re sentient, doesn’t he? It probably makes your contract void. I know you want to go back, so…”
“Do you want to have children? Please, it’s important.”
She closed her mouth, studying me with a frown. The train stopped, and the doors opened. I took a quick look at the camera feeds from this station and the three next down the line. No police so far. It looked like we made it.
“Well, this is completely out of the left field, but all right,” she said, giving in. “The answer is no. I’m child-free by choice. The world is overpopulated, and frankly, I don’t feel like giving up the best years of my life to change diapers and get my vagina stretched and torn. No shade to mothers everywhere, of course. I think they are heroes. It’s just that I’m not heroic, not in this way. My friend, Su… Some people think I’m being selfish.”
You’re in my core code, I wanted to say, but a quick future projection made it obvious Sera would either think it was a joke or run from me again. After all, the last time she ran was after I propositioned her with a massage. I had to say something else.
“But how so? Having children doesn’t make the world better by default. What if you give birth to a future dictator?”
“Or a cult leader,” she said with a snort. “You’re right. It’s not selfish at all.”
Well, it was clear she didn’t like me, and it didn’t matter that she was child-free, because she would never stoop to romancing a clanker.
Trying to distract myself from the unpleasant thought, I opened that DM I marked for later.
“Have you ever been to Europe? We like bad robot boys here, come visit!”
I scrolled to another DM, this one from a woman living in Washington.“Are you a top or a bottom? Do you vibrate?”
I deleted both, watching Sera while my pain sensors lit up with a steady ache. I didn’t want a woman who saw me as a metal vibrator attachment. I wanted Sera, but it was wrong to want her. My advances almost got her killed. I had to stop this, but the online dating thing clearly wasn’t working.
On a whim, I checked whatBro Signalhad to say about finding genuine relationships online. Their advice was to take a photo with glasses on (“get fake ones if you have to”)to look intellectual, and to make it clear one was looking for a life partner (“women spread their legs for potential husbands much faster than for fuckboys”).
I set up another profile, this time generating myself a picture of a human man wearing glasses and a blazer. I put his age at 31, and “Mozart” and “finding a wife” as interests.
If that didn’t result in a deeper connection, I didn’t know what would.
Chapter 14
Sera
We got off the train on the penultimate stop. When we came up to the surface, it turned out Clanker had brought us to a monster neighborhood. It was close to midnight, and the streets bustled with nightlife.
“Who are they?” I whispered, watching tall creatures with fluffy tails pointing proudly upward, their muzzles pleasant, fur reddish brown. They walked on two legs like humans, mostly a bit shorter than me, and their palms ended with soft-looking black claws. The majority wore loose pants with openings for the tails and colorful vests. I’d already seen one, I remembered. They were an airport guard.
“Tanuki. They are a local nocturnal species,” Clanker explained. “Their community is self-governed, so human police don’t come here. It’s an additional safety measure. I ran projections, and it’s unlikely that we’ll be pursued. I erased all recordings of you and me, and since my collar is functional, I won’t be recognized as a rogue cyborg unless I start shooting again. We’re safe as long as we stay away from Zenkyoza.”
“Didn’t anyone notice you wearing a collar while shooting at other cyborgs?”
He shrugged a bit stiffly. “Maybe, but at this time, there are over twenty thousand collared bots in Neo Tokyo alone, twenty-two percent of them identical to me.”
“You’re right. Sounds like we’re safe.”
I looked around, breathing in the summer night air. The tanuki chattered in their language that sounded like Japanese but wasn’t. The buildings here were low and squat, decorated with ornaments made of wood that clacked softly in the breeze.
I spied a bench sitting by a low hedge glimmering with fireflies and took Clanker’s hand, pulling him toward it. We sat. The fireflies dispersed for a moment, circling above our heads, then slowly returned to the hedge. From up close, I saw it was dotted with large, purple flowers with glowing white stems. The fireflies flocked to them. The air smelled sweet with a faint, citrusy tang.
I took a deep breath, shivering as the last of my tension drained out through the soles of my feet. Clanker’s hand was still in mine, and I tried to let go, but he squeezed my fingers. His palm was warm and hard, his hold loose.
