Rosetta knelt to look at the stump in the corner of her client’s bedroom. It had the likeness of a ten-year-old boy, four feet tall, dressed in an oversized shirt and suspenders, and its features were flawless, from the newsboy’s cap cocked on its tight curls, to its pupil-less eyes fringed with long eyelashes.
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Today, in a small, quiet room near the centre of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, I went into the cold darkness of sleep and when I returned to the warm light of consciousness, I had become a god.
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“Shit,” Charlotte Berry whispered as the fog of sleep began to clear. She heard Arthur fumbling in the bathroom cabinet and saw his reflection in the mirror, salt-and-pepper hair and a small bald spot as he hunched over, a medicine bottle close to his face. She wanted to pretend he only needed reading glasses. But it was far worse than that.
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At sunfall, the sellward, the spellcaster, and the wyrmrider paused at the foot of a dune and peered at the sun wester across the Sahael, the sea of sand. They had walked thirty days and were yet to come upon an oasis, caravan, or waykeep. At this rate, even a quick death seemed impossible.
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When the Clausens got to the voting place, most of the town had already arrived. Clausen was tired from work, and tired of voting, but he tried to smile as he held Claudia’s hand and Jenny and Jimmy went up the steps in front of them.
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I stand backstage, anxious. My cognitive implant, fed by a recursive code, tells me this is a bad idea. It tells me this decision is, as humans would say, impulsive. I am desperate. Desperate to make a good entrance. Desperate to make a point. Much of what has happened in the last few weeks would come to fruition today. The future of the droids in front of me depends on how I make this entrance. It could be good, or it could be bad. It could be so much worse.
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Well. Look at you, Mary Ann Nichols, drinking in the Frying Pan.
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Jesus Christ is dropping f-bombs again.
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This one was made of glass. He wasn’t all that similar to my son, but he was sweet with a high, gentle voice like wind blowing across branches. I had gathered all the glasses my son had once drunk from, cartoon characters emblazoned in cheap heat transfers, which I had to pull out of the crush before melting. I gathered memories of gentleness, breathed my nostalgia and love into the vessel as it cooled.
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