“What if that changed, though? What if one year, five, ten, thirty down the line—I started using it? And found the real one? Or tried to delete it?”
His smile wasn’t the same. “Sometimes, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
Forty-Six
Through mid-November, I bought several things. A new brace that strapped above and below my kneecap, which I gingerly tested on walks and then runs until it proved it was supportive enough to cushion my flare-ups; a pair of tweezers that delivered a promise to be painless (it, like Wells, failed to follow through on its potential); a journal I filled with entries of everything that had happened since July. It took me a few weeks to realize everything I was buying had the intention of eliminating pain. I congratulated myself, then promptly stopped buying those sorts of things. I broke my social media hiatus only once, and this time wasn’t to post: It was to use a tutorial to cut my own hair into a bob. Caleb helped fix it after.
Days before Thanksgiving, I bundled into my old parka, bound by daughterly duty to retrieve the cranberry-almond-brown butter special-edition cookies my mother had requested after seeing them featured onTODAY. Consider her influenced.
Across the street from Levain, I pulled off my gloves to check my phone, promptly dropping one into a grotesquely-colored puddle. I swore. I could probably keep my hand in my pocket, but one peek at the bakery entrance told me that Thanksgiving errands would equate with a long wait. I sighed and crossed the street. I’d buy a pair of functionally overpriced gloves from the newsstand on the corner by Levain. While I waited to pay, I read the headlines.
TABLE LOOKING DIFFERENT THIS YEAR? TABLESCAPES FOR THE NEWLY-MATED
APP PROMISES TO PREDICT PRESCHOOLERS’ SOULMATES
FROM HITCHED TO DITCHED AND BACK AGAIN: MARRIAGE SINCE THE SUMMER OF SOULMAIL
Bank account aside, I missed none of this.
An hour and seventeen minutes later—I screenshotted the timer and sent it to my mom to prove my loyalty—I exited Levain, a single box of cookies wedged in my arm.
“Olivia?”
I pasted a smile on my face. I wasn’t recognized as much now, since being off-air and off-media, and especially since my new haircut. But then I was the one doing the recognizing. “Alanna Sorensonn,” I said. “You here for these cookies, too?”
Per Diem’s government expert curved her lips. “With the masses,” she said.
We spent a few minutes catching up. Phoebe’d leveraged my departure with a nice salary bump. Josef’s Marco had foregone Soulmail and come back to him, and they were re-making a go of it for the twins.
“Well, good to see you,” I said. The tip of my nose was close to freezing.
“One second. I’m glad I ran into you, actually.” Alanna steered me toward an alcove, away from the bakery line. Her face grew serious. “Since you quit so spectacularly, there’s something I’ve been meaning to reach out to you about.”
I frowned. “What’s up?”
“I’ll be brief. There’s a government-funded coalition investigating the source of Soulmail. A panel of technology and issue-driven experts beyond our wildest dreams.”
I stilled, the cookies warm against my side. “There is no identifiable source of Soulmail. Unless I’ve been lied to this entire time.”
Her smile was wry. “True. And if we could guarantee nothing else would come about, perhaps we’d leave it alone.” She stepped back, glanced around, and then moved toward me, her voice urgent. “We believe that while the idea of Soulmail was human-created, maybe with the intent of good, the intent to restore peace, develop unity and harmony—happier people live longer, as you know—thereleaseof Soulmail appears to be the work of an accident. The threat is enough to make the powers that be worry.”
“Why would our government fund this?”
“Because the US government isn’t behind Soulmail. Can you imagine how much that scares them?” She pulled a blank card from her pocket and wrote a number down on it. “Given your insider expertise—and your recent availability, we think you’d be a great consultant.”
“Me?”
“What do you say?”
There it was. The unanswerable, the whispered, the thing that the researcher in me could get lost in. Istillwanted to know. The knowledge felt like a possible cure to all my ailments.
Three months ago, I might’ve done it. Now, even the sheer suggestion of returning to something adjacent to that world made my neck squeeze with tension. I couldn’t sacrifice my whole life to feed the curiosity cat.
“I’m all set,” I said slowly. “But thanks.”
She eyed me. “Okay, then. This is a protected conversation?” She lifted one perfect eyebrow.
I nodded.
