While it pains us greatly to make this announcement, the tragically busy artists and writers here at Oscar Moreau will be taking a much-needed break over the coming months to recuperate and improve your comic-reading experience. We’ll be back this summer (we really really will be) with an updated podcast, a special surprise video segment, and even more beautiful pages of our heroes attempting heroism! Stick with us until then and in the meantime, we’ll be promoting and reviewing other webcomics and works featuring a diverse cast in a science fiction/fantasy setting.
7:45 and the alarm goes off. Bernard is already awake and dressed, straightening her already-pristine suit. Her cane hangs off the dresser, bone white wood polished and seamless. By the bedroom door, her heels lie where she threw them the night before. The alarm switches over from insistent beeps to the radio, and the sound of oldies fills the room. She gives her reflection one last glance, smooths out her lapels one last time, and heads to the kitchen.
8:45 and her holographic girls are talking over each other like it’s their own organization at stake. They’re learning faster these days, and sometimes the ideas they come up with are even new, these days - something resembling opinions and actual creative ideas. She considers reporting this to someone, but R&D’s got their hands full, and there’s no good way to explain frequent “meetings” with the images of four vintage starlets, when it comes down to it.
Outside the door, someone knocks, and she sits up in her chair. “Exit program,” she says, and the girls’ conversations fade, their images flickering out. Louder, she says, “Come in.”
It’s Ilona. “They’re ready for you in the meeting room. Johnson will arrive in—“ she checks her watch, “Ten minutes, unless Sanderson manages to severely mess up her timing.”
“You’re still having her run interference?” Bernard asks.
Ilona shrugs.“It’s good practice for her.”
“It’s a waste of her skills. She’s a good infiltrator. Or she will be, if you take her out of the office and give her some field training.”
“...I’ll see what I can do.” Ilona says, that tiny strained line marring her forehead. She makes an illegible note on the datapad in front of her, and the program corrects it to tiny, equally illegible text in a flash.
Bernard glances away, down at her watch. “Anything else?”
“Kris cancelled at the last minute, personal reasons. Which means your afternoon is free, after the meeting.”
Smoothing over her suit jacket one last time, she hefts herself up, ignoring the pop in her spine, forcing her limbs into fluidity as she heads for the door. “We’ll see about that.”
That ugly line is heavy as ever between Ilona’s brows, and her eyes seem hard. Focused and hard - very slightly brighter. Concern. Bernard pointedly ignores it, brushing past her.
12:00 and her back hurts.
The meeting has dragged on for almost three hours with Johnson refusing to budge when she says, “Excuse me for a minute, gentlemen,” and strides out. She figures she has about ten minutes before the rabble tries to dissolve company ties and establish a new civilization. Sometimes she thinks the war was more enjoyable than this. No, that’s a lie. This is a different kind of war, one whose battles she knows and enjoys. At least then there are no unfortunate distractions.
Ilona is waiting for her outside with a fresh cup of tea that Bernard can tell just by looking has much too much honey in it. She takes a polite kiss of a sip anyway before setting it down and sitting back, stretching in an arch hopefully without making it obvious. “We need to move this along.”
Ilona raises her eyebrows. “Again? Really?”
“I don’t need to waste my whole day in talks to know we’re not making any headway. Just be ready when I call you in.” She forgets about the tea and sucks down a normal, impolite gulp, grimaces, and heads back toward the meeting room. A thought occurs to her, and she turns back to look at Ilona. “Oh, and be sure to look intimidating. Though that shouldn’t be hard.”
1:30 and she’s got Johnson staring up at her with ill-founded surprise, his eyes locked on the gun she’d just pulled out of her purse.
“Now,” she says, “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind.”
“Is this—“ he starts, but she cuts him off.
“However, there are a few things I’d like you to consider.” As she speaks Ilona steps into the room, and Bernard hands her the gun. Ilona makes a point of making sure it’s loaded, and flicking off the safety and resting one pearly, manicured nail against the trigger guard. “Your goal, like ours, is to protect the community. I think we can all agree that it would be much harder for you to do that if our negotiations didn’t end amicably.”
Johnson had stopped moving when the gun came out. He is only gleaming, now, face a shallow mask of calm, eyes unblinking. “Look here, Bernard, if you think you can invite me here and then threaten my person—and after one of your assistants nearly ruined my shoes after spilling her coffee—“ At this, Bernard tunes him out long enough to raise an eyebrow at Ilona, who rolls her eyes in a gesture that Bernard assumes means, I’ll talk to Sanderson about that later.
“It’s not just your person,” she says, turning her attention back to Johnson. “I mean - I’m surely not going to just approach you unarmed; that’s just a professional give-in. I mean - considering what I’ve heard about your company’s dealings...”
“Ah, so we’re going to be operating off of rumors, then—“ he begins to rise from his chair, but Ilona’s hand is on his shoulder, and she sees those nails bite into the fabric of his suit, and he doesn’t make a sound or show too much on his face, but he sits back down.
Bernard smiles, letting her head fall a little to the side, chin tilting over in her palm. “I know you’re in a difficult position right now, so allow me to make things easier for you.” She leans in. “Take this deal. Do what you need to. Tell your superiors Rep&Red was extremely persuasive. We have persuaded you, haven’t we?”
Johnson nods far too quickly. His face is all calm old white man, pristine and untouchable, but his soul rolls dirty and sniffling over, in the speed of that nod. The taste of his fear pinches her throat, making her smile pinchy, too.
“Good.” She lowers her hand graciously, presenting the door. “A pleasure doing business with you, as always.”
He mumbles, “Likewise.” Tries to make it flippant with his eyebrows and his face. Tries to make this an inconvenient joke - the idea of her overpowering him. But he shakes as he gets up, on pained bones. His limbs quiver like a cowering animal. She keeps smiling at him until he leaves, the tip of her tongue poised against her teeth.
Out in the hall, it’s just reaching 2:00. “Find Sanderson and explain to her why spilling coffee is not a good method of distraction. Then reassign her, really, we need her elsewhere.” Bernard pinches the bridge of her nose. “When does Kris get back? Tomorrow?” Ilona nods. “And Drake is returning from Maine tomorrow? We need to do something about that.”
“It’s being taken care of,” Ilona says. “Go on ahead. I know you have other people’s business to stick your nose in.”
Bernard grins. “You do know me.” Ilona grins back at her, and Bernard can’t help but wonder how soon it will be before the two of them really clash. The tools she’s saved against Ilona are beginning to build up into a clutter. She wonders if it’s the same, behind that other grin.
She hopes it is. That would be mildly exciting.
4:00: ???
9:00 PM and she’s sitting by one of the tall windows overlooking the city. Her shoes have fallen off the foot of the bed and now sit in a pile on the floor, where they will no doubt continue to rest until tomorrow morning. Her cane sits in the chair across from her, and she glances over at it.
Other Characters: Marge, Malik Garza, Nasirah Faraj, Jay Oliver, Sark
CW: Discussions of grief/death, body image, racism, classism
-
The first place Regina went on her new bike was up above.
Not all the way to the skyscrapers - that she wouldn’t have gotten away with. You needed to swipe a residence card just to get to the front desk, which always seemed a little weird to her, like - how did new residents come to say they were thinking of moving in? She guessed they all did that shit on gsurf. But that was weird, because how could the landlord decide whether or not they were shady? Profile pictures didn’t reveal much. Regina’s was a close-up of the infected nose stud she’d had for a week before it started smelling a weird smell all the time, right in her nostril, so she’d taken it out. And they just all trusted their landlord wasn’t shady? Money did not exclude people from a sneaky reality.
Either way - the forbidden ground she traversed was actually the markets just between the real markets down below and the skyscraper mall-market world up above. The place for people who couldn’t afford the scraper lifestyle but still made too much to associate too closely with the Shanty.
Biking along past restaurants and bright, sterile shops, the only thought that really stuck was that all the warnings she’d heard about coming up here were a bit dramatic. There seemed to be nothing expressly dangerous about these streets. Aadila was probably exaggerating. Jay was doubtlessly to some extent being dramatic. Maybe everybody just didn’t know, too - no one was giving her a death glare. In fact, everyone seemed rather aggressively happy. She didn’t ruin their happiness, either. Quite a few people smiled directly at her out there, riding along on her bike with the cars sneaking politely around her rather than blaring their horns like the few vehicles that operated down in Marina Shanty did when she was dawdling in their way. Which like - honestly that was sort of creepy. Sort of rude, in the way that being overly-polite was rude. But it’s not like anyone was scaring her. Just making her feel very uncomfortable every now and then.
Everything was very clean, too. Very bright. It was sort of ugly, in her opinion, and she wondered if that was a big part of why there’d been so many warnings. She could get that. There was something friendlier about mess. Homeier. Litter mucking up the streets was no good, of course, but the intentional messy parts - the riots of color in painting, the old signs still up out of nostalgia for a parent’s business, the fact that people talked to each other, ok, that was another thing - none of these people were talking. They were all just rushing about. No one was really dressed very nicely either. Like, their clothes were clean. But they were also largely all the same cut and style. This was also the most white people she’d ever seen not gathered together to protest healthcare or whatever. Lots and lots of white people, not in a crowd, just going about their days, smiling pointedly at her like they were trying to prove something.
There really was no litter, though. Despite the fact that she literally saw more than one person throw a coffee cup out a car window. A few people also threw trash over the side of the streets, into the Shanty, which she knew happened but made her blood positively boil all the same. But also just isolated littering - littering out their car windows, dropping stuff as they went, not caring about it, but still nothing in the streets. She was thinking hard about how this could possibly work when she noticed the bots.
They were relatively small. A strange mixture of sleek but clunky, wheels barely visible beneath a rubber coat, orange egg-shaped top with a big cube of a caboose trailing along behind. There were two chugging along the side of the road, and Regina saw them both drive over a to-go cup, but it didn’t bump off to the side. She could only assume it’d been somehow consumed.
Regina pedaled harder, bringing herself up to the side of them and peered down.
To her shock, the one closest blinked great huge pixelated eyes up at her. She shrieked, veering to the left, and then for the first time heard a rude horn blare as the car behind her slammed to a halt. She flung herself back to the right, almost colliding with the bots as she toppled. Luckily, however, they both stopped, giving her a wide crashing berth as she slammed into the street, managing to catch her hand on the pavement in time to stop her head from clunking.
She stared up at them from the ground. They blinked at her. “Do you require assistance?” twin voices suddenly chirped, and Regina let out a helpless coo, swinging up onto her knees.
“Oh babies, nooo, I’m fine! Don’t you worry about me. Are you alright, though? You slammed down on your brakes pretty hard and fast, there.”
“Do you require assistance?” they said again. And the screen that had showed their big, adorable, cartoonish eyes loaded up a list of emergency service buttons.
“Oh.” Regina said, “Oh, ok, you’re not sentient. Less cool, I guess. But like, still pretty cute. You two are real cute, actually. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Adorable.”
She touched one of their screens lightly, and then when there was no blaring alarm she patted its little head like a puppy. And then, well - she didn’t think about it. Later she’d consider what was going through her head when she reached into her fanny pack and pulled out her miniaturized tool case, plugging one end into her constantly-scattering identicuff, the other oh so gently into a charging port beneath the screen in front of the little guy.
There was a blip, static, and then the screen went blank.
The other one chirped. A soft whirr emitted from it as Regina knew it was searching for its buddy - she flung off her jacket quickly, heart hammering in her throat as she threw it over the one she’d de-activated and unlatched it from its little compactor trailer. She hugged it close to her chest, hefting it up and starting off the street before remembering her bike and doubling back, awkwardly grabbing at the handlebars and tugging it after her as the whirring stopped and the lonely cleaner chirped decidedly.
“Should I contact emergency services?” the little bot asked. Its voice was clear, its voice was gentle. It didn’t match the enormity of the threat.
“No!” she hissed back at it as she hobbled away, dashing around the corner before tripping back into an alley. Which, by the way, didn’t even have the typical hide-e alley stuff - she ended up on a brick patio under a soft puff of stark white sun-umbrella, the windows into someone’s large, rustic kitchen open and a radio voice - not hers, of course - speaking softly about numbers and figures and climate change as it related to adorable wild animals, because apparently that was a faster way to get into peoples’ hearts than “look down, the people who live on the ground level of your city are literally being swamped out.” Which is what she’d said about climate change last week.
Regina crouched down low beneath this window, hands shaking a little as she set the bot down in front of her on its back. It was sorta oval-shaped - the screen was almost its whole front. The back was a bright, traffic cone orange, a little antene rising out its head probably more for aesthetic reasons than anything else. Under a sharply cut rubber mudflap the smoothless of it broke into functionality, quadruped legged-wheels with rough, multi-terrain traction, the metal of its inner legs splaying out before coming down, the shape sort of reminiscent of the underbelly of a cricket. Then there was a little scoop where the vacuum went - she could see through this to where she’d detached it from the compressing trunk. Small brush tools at the front on either side hung limp.
She touched one little wheeled foot. What an ugly little beauty.
Regina dumped her backpack, shoving the little bot in and then trying to put as much back as she could, managing to salvage her sweatshirt and her notebook, but if she wanted to zip it shut that left no hope for her lunch or the large disorganized chunk of accumulating papers she’d been meaning to sort through for the past six months. There was a plot of weak flowers beside her, though, and she dug a few up into her hands guiltily, trying to preserve the roots. Then she dug into the mulch, down until she hit the concrete bottom of the yard’s bed, and here she buried her microwave burrito and paper mess like her own little murder victim, covering it in damp mulch before arranging the lopsided flowers back on top. There was still quite a bit of mulch left when she was done, however, so she dug a further away hole hastily, wood splintering against her stubby fingernails and the bandages on her left-hand warts and burns getting mucky. She scattered the leftover mulch around here, hoping to make it look like a dog or something, or at the very least make them look here instead of there if anyone even thought to consider the dug up yard.
She didn’t quite know if she was being too cautious or flippant about what she was doing. She knew that it was just a burrito, just some papers, just a single cleaner bot - not even expensive to them up here. And she also knew that shanty kids even younger than her had died doing less.
Regina zipped up her bag, slinging it over her shoulders. The bot was a round pressure on her spine, tighter when she slung one leg over her bike and gripped her handlebars, waddling out onto level terrain before she pushed off.
She noticed a few blocks later that she was being followed.
A robocop in transport form - looking like a lone unicycle teetering along at exactly her speed. She stopped quickly at a quiet streetlight she’d been planning on running, fingers gripping the handles, thumb digging into the grippy stripes of them. Shut her eyes and brought her mind up, up up - until everything was unfolded, until there was only a bigger picture, until she had her map.
Then, shakily back in reality, she followed it around to the legal entrance to the Marina Shanty, a wide, circling 22 blocks away - her breathing coming harder as she fought to keep up with the cars, go the speed limit without pause. The robocop stayed in her rear-view mirror the whole time, sliding effortlessly along behind her. She imagined she could see the gleam of its weapon out of the corner of her eye. Imagined she could feel a soft tickle like a finger, where it must already be resting its tired aim, just in case. Where, if Nasirah’s theory was true - someone somewhere was watching her, controlling what was supposed to be an objective vessel of justice uninfluenced by personal prejudice or drive. She could feel the cleaner bot’s antenna sticking up out of her bag - she hadn’t been able to zip that up and had figured it didn’t matter much. It tugged a bit at her hair when she arched her back, and she hoped her ponytail was hiding it.
The robocop did not follow her down to the shanty. She let out a big breath as is sped ahead, stopping her bike against a wall and getting out, sinking to the ground on shaking, aching legs.
There was the danger. She’d been thinking like this was TV, but all the times she’d heard of someone being accidentally made dead up there, the stories never included ‘and everyone knew it was coming, because it was a logical flow of events.’ No one ever knew stuff like that was coming. Nothing ever felt like danger to the one who got fucked over up there, right? Because to them it wasn’t. There had been two different realities going on as she wove lazily through those streets. One - girl rides bike around, takes in sights. Takes a risk and fears repercussions specific to that risk. Two - whatever they had seen her as. And they hadn’t even seen her as the person who took that risk, who stole that little bot. Otherwise, without a doubt, she would’ve been stopped. She was just someone they thought they had to follow. She wondered if any of the people who had smiled and waved had called her in - black child on bike, suspicious character. Set a gun so quietly behind her, follow her until she leaves. Not that this is a threat! Not that she’s being lead out! Just set it behind her. Just follow her. Just in case. Until she leaves.
(She’ll know what it means.)
This could have ended differently. This could’ve ended differently so easily.
-
So she was cautious about it, conversationally. Decided right away not to mention that last part, with the robocop. It wasn’t important. No need to cause stress when she could totally de-stress with a tale of her roaring success.
She planned on bringing up her find over dinner. It hadn’t been an official-business SFB-1 dinner meeting because she wasn’t allowed to attend those, yet, still being in their junior program. It had just been dinner. All of them crowded around the table, speaking so familiarly, letting her become familiar, too. Jay had made some kind of thick bean-barley stew thing, Regina had brought bread from her sister Imani’s bakery, and there was a sloppy, delicious smelling pie courtesy of Nas and Sark’s combined efforts cooling on the stove behind the table. They’d all been digging in, relieved to have something of sustenance that didn’t have the tinny tang of synthetic foodstuffs. Faerie lights strung up above the table and everyone cramped shoulder, a few dogs snuffling around their feet.
She’d waited until they naturally started talking about work. She was new here; she couldn’t afford to be the one that killed moods. They started in discussing vandalism though, which had to already be darker than ‘litter,’ so Regina felt confident enough to go for it during a lull.
“You know,” she said, munching on a dipped crust, “Up just one level, they have these adorable little trashbots. The babies just putt along, compressing all the trash. I mean, I hear they also contact emergency services if something goes wrong in the streets, but that could easily be programmed out of them, if, for instance, we were to acquire one.”
Silence. Then Jay, “You went up above?”
“Um. Yeah,” Regina said, voice wavering a little, “I biked around a bit.”
“Regina, dear,” Nas said, “Do you realize how dangerous that was?”
“It was fine.” She muttered, ducking her head.
“It was fine because you were lucky,” Jay snapped at her, and Regina felt a kind of irked betrayal swoop up through her, “I mean, do you even realize what you avoided, here? Do you realize what you look like to them?”
“Plucky?” she said back, waggling her eyebrows.
“No!” Jay said, his voice rising to squeaky octaves. Regina’s smile vanished, “You look dangerous. They like their life to be all neat and contained, they like their people to look like them, clean-cut and -”
“White,” Marge cut in flatly.
“Exactly,” Nasirah said, and her voice was somehow both cold and sing-song.
“But, I mean, it totally worked out!” Regina said, and then took a deep breath before divulging what she was quickly realizing was gonna be the kicker of dangerous info, “I mean, I even stole one of the cleaner bots. It was hella easy - they for sure aren’t expecting anyone with skill to go after them. So… it’s double-fine.”
Dead silence. And then an explosion of judgement - Nasirah dropping her silverware down and starting in on her, Jay going off on a spiel, Marge staring coldly, not speaking, just staring.
“Oh, come on though!” Regina whined, “You guys do dangerous shit all the time. I thought you’d be happy about this.”
“Are you not hearing anything?” Marge asked. She didn’t yell, didn’t even change her voice from normal. But frankly - she hadn’t ever really spoken to Regina before. She did in passing, but it was always in an awkwardly dismissive fashion. She carried with her the distinct air of someone who was ‘bad with children,’ here meaning socially confused by the concept of youth being paired with intelligent thought. But now she was speaking plainly, soft Cuban accent rounding out her quiet syllables.
“I’m hearing you.” Regina mumbled.
Marge looked closely at her, and around the table everyone was still - even Jay was just silent. Regina sat up straighter, folding her own stubby-fingered hands in polite mimic of Marge’s long dark ones on the table. When Marge spoke again, her voice was the same volume, but seemed louder in the quiet. “No one here ‘does dangerous shit.’ They do what is necessary. There is no needlessness, no waste of risk. Every life legitimately devoted to this city is of too much value to be squandered on reckless antics. There should be no risk without planned, carefully wrought gain. The risk is not the point.”
“I, I understand,” she said clear as she could, “I won’t do it again, but -”
“But?” Marge cut in, voice rising a little.
“Um! Just, I did end up with some gain. Admittedly I didn’t, like, have it in mind when I went up there. But I think - I mean, I could definitely reprogram the bot. I’ve removed tracking and I think I could disguise it from sweepers pretty easy. And then just set it out in the Shanty. It’d solve the litter problem you guys complain about pretty well.” She raised her eyebrows at them all, nodding.
There was quiet. Exchanged glances. Maybe people were waiting for Marge to respond, but she just took a sip of wine, squinting with a sudden, intense disinterest around the table at the rest of them. After a moment Jay said, “And you could do this? You’re sure?”
“Where is the bot?” Sark asked quietly, voice hoarse from disuse. Those nearest to him jumped, and Regina blinked, taken aback. That was two people who normally didn’t speak to her speaking to her today.
“Here, but -” Regina started, but then they were off, chairs shoved back and dogs barking, perking up alarmed at the abruptness. The only one of them who didn’t jump into action was Marge, and she sipped quietly at her wine, peering at Regina over the rim. Regina sat frozen, locked in her impassive stare for an embarrassingly long moment before she squeaked, shoving back from the table and making a beeline down to her workshop, where everyone was predictably huddled around the half-gutted thing on the table, staring intently. For basically no reason, as not a one of them had any kind of skill in this arena - that’s why they needed ole Regina, ok.
“I scattered, extracted, and then totally destroyed the shit out of the tracker,” Regina said, boredly. It was a strange mixture of thrilling and sad to see her little bot laid out like this - all its organs out, an empty orange shell to the side. All ripe and ready for the revamping.
“Extracted and destroyed before entering the premises?” Sark asked quickly.
Regina hesitated, “Yes? Uh, yes. Yes.”
Nasirah threw her a shrewd look and Sark made a nervous whining sound that was spookily reminiscent of the noise his dogs made when taken over by similar emotions. He whipped out his comp, scanning through security info.
“I swear! I did it right, ok! Everything according to protocol. Even better than, really, because I know better than y’all when it comes to this kinda shit.”
“How did you destroy the pieces after?” Sark asked.
“Your little matter-annihilation shredder thingy. Stepped into your office to do it - sorry. I promise I didn’t touch anything.”
Sark rounded on Nasirah, eyes wide, “I told you the particles at the bottom looked denser than last time!” he said.
“Alright, so this has been handled rather adequately, I suppose,” Nasirah said.
“See!” Regina spoke, ecstatic. “So come on, all I’m asking for is the chance. The chance to, uh, get this gain myself. As maybe a pre-real mission. Since next year I’ll be 18 anyway, and I’ll be going on the, the real missions. And I’ve already done like, all of the hard part, so you might as well let me do the rest for you.” She pegged that last part on in a rush.
Silence. Silence and lot of eyes on her, and with a zinging thrill all the way up her spine Regina realized it was being considered, the idea of her doing anything important at all was legitimately being considered. She perked up, staring wide-eyes around, which had always worked before when asking for something because her eyes were totally sparkly dark pools of like, elegant mischief or some lovely adjective like that, they were the thing that kept her from getting too self-deprecating in mirrors, when everything else about her body seemed too soft and messily shaped, not quite hers.
Unfortunately however, batty-eyelash big-eyes was apparently not the best look to send around when asking for professional adult responsibility. Almost immediately the gazes dropped and Nas and Jay exchanged a look, all judgemental adult authority. She was about to be so shut down, she knew, when Sark’s hoarse voice unexpectedly spoke up from the other end of the table, very quiet even in the silence.
“I mean,” he faltered for a second as everyone looked back, pale eyes darting around, “So long as it’s scattertech-equipped.”
“Yes! Yes, of course it is,” Regina said quickly.
“And unrecognizable to other bots.”
“Easy!”
“And actual human cops,” Sark quickly added.
That gave Regina pause. Sark’s eyes narrowed, and she spoke fast, “I mean, that’s a little more difficult, but I could make it so they avoid cops. Like a little alert’ll go off in their brains and they’ll hide or something.”
“How will they be able to recognize cops?” Sark asked quickly.
“Mmm… I dunno, I’ll probably end up making them be constantly scanning for tuffak or something.”
Silence. “Tuffak? You know? The shit their helmets are made of?” Regina added. “They’ll just… avoid it. And if someone in the shanty has tuffak around… oh well, that section isn’t getting cleaned. We’ll still be better off than if we didn’t have a little bot.”
“Why haven’t we set our things up to alert us when scans show tuffak?” Sark mumbled to Nasirah, and Regina felt a preening grin stretch across her face.
“Because I haven’t suggested it yet! See, I’m very helpful.”
“We know that, dear,” Nasirah said, “No one is contesting that.”
“I’m just saying!” Regina whined, and when Jay raised his eyebrows at her she stood up straighter, “I’m just saying that I could be a huge value to this group and that my skills are being underutilized. I’m just saying a way they could be over utilized!”
“Hey now macher, we don’t wanna over-utilize your skills. We’re just trying to hit the nail on the head, here. Don’t wanna waste our expert.” Jay said, nudging her arm, and she grinned brilliantly up at him.
“You’ve just all been so under-utilizing them, though. I don’t think it’s possible to over-utilize. They’re all saved up. I mean, this here,” she squished her own cheeks, “This is a genius brain, up behind this face, and it is not getting the workout it should be getting,” Jay bit the inside of his cheek, looking away, and she smirked.
They stared in silence at her work for a few moments more. And then, “If we’re the ants, at least it feels like a one-up on the boots.” Jay mumbled.
“Indeed. We have to think, though, that it’s just the boots. And an altercation with the ants, no matter how small, won’t make them happy. That kind of thing puts us too close. Never mind that they couldn’t be farther away - that’s practically the point. Even the boots are really very far away. But they would rather be associated with the chaps than with the ants,” Nasirah said.
“Boots do have spurs,” Jay conceded.
“Is this a code?” Regina asked with hushed reverence, “Are you guys speaking in code? Is there an official SFB-1 code? When do I get to learn it?”
Sark let out a sigh. “Ignore them, they’re playing things silly, again. But they mean that you can do this. Try this. You can try.”
“HELL YEAH!” Regina yelled, pumping the air with one solid, freshly band-aided fist.
“And, uh. You gotta tell me what you meant. When you said you know more about defending this place from electronic influence,” he added, “Maybe… help us out, with that?”
Every potential was just a bright golden bubble in Regina’s soul, all of it fizzing over popping and bright. “Alright!” she said, head spinning.
-
“The world is a big jerk in huge boots. They want to make sure we know that they’re the boots, because someone else is the pants and they feel bad when that someone else sees them. So we’re supposed to feel bad. Because we’re not even the boots - we’re the ants. They wanna step on us. They like it. They’re into it. And it’s all because they don’t have any cows to herd, and because cowboys are sadists.”
Malik stared at her, eyes wide, “I thought cowboys were cool,” he said, “And you know, Aadila says most of them were brown or black and that we just think they’re white because Hollywood is a white-washing-machine. And I’m brown and black. So I’m, like. Double cowboy. And I’m cool, so cowboys are definitely cool.”
Malik smiled dreamily. Regina took a deep, steadying breath, trying to avoid an outright groan. It was easy up here - they’d canoed out to the half-sunken amusement park and climbed up the smaller ferris wheel. Not as great a view as the big one, but there were always people her age and older up there, and sometimes they were fucking or doing other inappropriate stuff, and Malik was basically still a baby and she’d decided she was going to try to work harder at being a better big sister to him. And that probably meant not taking him up into the big kid sex spot ferris wheel.
The view from here was still spectacular, anyway. They were in the funland graveyard, as it was colloquially called - rusted amusement park rides poked out of the dark water all the way back to a strip of bloated old boardwalk. Then there was a stretch with swamped out, mostly collapsed building shells before the real boardwalk, the new one they’d built for functional purposes as part of SFB-1’s community rebuilding project. Beyond that was the oceanfront bar she knew her adult coworkers frequented and beyond that, the lovely golden glow of the market at night. All the buildings huddled up together like they were cuddling. And the big cold skyscrapers rising out of it all, missing out.
“I suppose the cowboy could be cool.” She conceded to Malik. “But only in like, a really twisted way. Like how villains are cool. Like he thinks he’s cool for these reasons, but he’s not cool for those same reasons, but he’s sad. Kinda pathetic. So the ants are like ‘ahaha! We have a cleaner bot.’”
“I’m gonna tell Aadila you called me pathetic.” Malik whined.
“I didn’t call you pathetic, dumbass!” She kicked out at him, but he was grinning, joking, and she grinned back.
“I dunno what you’re talking about, though. This is too many drugs for me.”
“Ugh, don’t say stuff like that. Only people who’ve like, maybe once seen a single particle of THC say stuff like that. Plus, I’m not even high right now.”
“Oh, you’re high alright,” Malik said in sing-song, “High… up!” he spread his arms wide, grinning. Regina narrowed her eyes at him and he collapsed into a fit of his own self-congratulatory hellish pun giggles. She let out a sigh and turned back to her work, smirking a little - a mess of robot blood vessels hooked into a robot brain, a precious little life made of plastic and metal in her hands.
After he quieted there was a companionable silence as she worked before Malik took a careful, deep breath and she knew before he spoke that what he said would ruin it, “But for real, you probably shouldn’t smoke so much.”
“What.” Regina said, delicately putting the drive down so she wouldn’t throw it.
Malik visibly shrank back away from her, “I mean, that’s what Imani said!”
“Imani - Imani sells the shit I smoke! Her bakery is literally called ‘Kookies & Kush,’ where the fuck does she get off -”
“She says she’s just worried you’ll mess up your head! She didn’t even - she didn’t ask me to tell you this, or anything!” Malik finished, voice going up high, which with anyone else would normally mean they were straight up lying right to her face, and badly, too. But she unfortunately knew him, and knew that he was really just scared she’d think he was lying when he wasn’t. “She just says you’re so brilliant, and that it messes up your memory, especially if you’re like, not an adult yet, and you’re, uh, technically speaking not, so…” He stopped talking then. A smart choice.
Regina ripped out an unneeded connection, tugging the whole thing away and shoving the spare part in her pocket. She didn’t say anything for a while. Then in a quiet, sneering mumble, “She’s forgetting everything she used to be before Mama died, you know? And she’s making us forget it, too.”
Malik shrugged. He looked away, sad but unconcerned. Scratched his knee.
Malik didn’t know.
Imani and them hadn’t exactly had a normal sibling relationship before - there were too many years between them, with Imani almost done being a teenager while they were both still believing hardcore in Santa Claus. But there had been differences before. Malik just straight-up didn’t remember them these days, but she knew that Imani used to spray them with water from the sink when they bothered her until they were giggling, drenched and still fighting back and forth, whatever made her angry in the past now with the circles of revenge. She used to make them big sloppy nutella sandwiches for lunch instead of her current well-balanced meals, she used to hog the tv whenever they could afford to power it up, watching this one ridiculous show about disabled mermaids on repeat, and Mama always sided with her and let her get her way because there weren’t that many deaf-kid shows and Waterbound’s consistent signing was apparently monumentally important to Imani’s spiritual and psychological well-being. Not that pre-collapse Imani had seemed like she needed something for her spiritual and psychological well-being - she’d been the slow burning version of Dominique’s roaring fire, their Mama always said. The two sisters had been the closest in age out of all of them and attached at a the hip, wreaking havoc together.
Now Dominique and Mama were both dead and Imani was official. Parental. The surviving eldest beyond Yesmin, and Yesmin’d never really been the oldest, not in her head - she hadn’t even come back home, except briefly for the funerals. So it fell to Imani to make them eat nutritious food and to let them have the TV and to tell them not to get their heads wet or else they’d get sick. Their dad had stayed around for a while after Mama’s death and still came back frequently - their parents had divorced years before though, amicably but still with the customary not-living-together situation after that. He’d gone back home to Belize to work in his family’s hospital after the divorce and would return a few times a year with presents and big smiles and the kind of frothy, over-the-top love only the parent you don’t live with can ever really muster for you. He’d offered her and Malik a place with him and his partner in Belize after everything, but leaving what was left of the family house hadn’t seemed like an option, at the time.
To this day, Regina couldn’t understand why Imani couldn’t have just kept going with the sloppy nutella and fights over the TV. Why they needed ‘structure,’ when it seemed to come at even more cost than what they’d already paid. That was Imani, though. She never realized stuff like that. And that was Imani’s wife, too. Aadila. Always there to help her realize the wrong thing.
“What’s that gonna be when you’re done it?” Malik asked.
“A new friend.” she retorted coyly, happy for the distraction.
“What kinda friend? Desk buddy?”
“Nah. I’m done with those for now. I like clunky bots best, I think.”
“What’re you gonna build the body outta?”
“I already have the body! I’m just giving it a brain transplant.”
“Brain transplant?” Malik asked.
She nodded. “Yep! Transplanting in a whole new brain. One I basically made, too. So I guess I’ll really be this one’s Mama, since I made its brain. Just not the bod’s Mama. The bod is adopted. So like. Just the brain is what I gave birth to. And I’ll stick that birth in an already formed shell.”
Regina worked in happy silence for a moment, Malik staring at her as she prodded apart the wire-veins. “Gross.” he whispered.
-
After Mama died in the house collapse, Nas had started acting like Regina was always maybe a hair’s width away from cracking disturbed and done down the middle. Which was a real shame, as before that she’d seemed almost ready to start viewing Regina as an adult. Of all the people at SFB-1 Nas had been the one to speak to her seriously, always. But there was a serious voice that she reserved for children - a little doting but controlled, strict. A sweet melodic ‘obey me, darlings’ implied behind whatever she said. She’d only just started to lose that with Regina when the remains of the Garza family combusted, and now it was different. Regina had skipped right over Nasirah’s ‘adulthood’ voice and into her ‘patient’ voice. And while most of her patients were adults, there was something distinctly juvenile about being disturbed. She’d said this and Nas had argued, obviously a little miffed though trying to hide it, but Regina thought she’d won at the end. And how could she not - as a messed up sad person you’re not trusted with any real responsibilities - you’re doted on and punished more extremely for your achievements and faults, and someone must be paid to take care of you. It sounded distinctly like youth to Regina, and she was far beyond ready to move past that lifestyle.
So Nas didn’t try to shrink-ify her. She just spent lots of time pointedly discussing Regina’s life and problems with her in a civilized and adult conversational fashion, as Regina had conceded was alright. To help the conversations remain un-shrinky, Regina always helped by asking a few very grown up questions herself, normally when things got a little close to the bone.
“Why do you think it’s difficult for you to spend time at home?” Nas asked. She was holding a damp towel and mopping up little smears of paint when Regina accidentally splattered. Which was pointless, but whatever made her happy, man.
“Because of her. I can’t believe you’re asking that.” Regina whined.
“Your sister in-law?”
Aadila had married Imani a mere few weeks after Dominique’s death. Which had sort of screamed suspicious in Regina’s book, but had been fine so long as they were living across the shanty, in their own little Deaf Women (and their families) group home thing that she could visit sometimes when she wanted free snacks. After Mama’s death and everything that followed that, they had moved back home to ‘help.’ “Yeah! That bitch will not ever leave me alone.”
“Honey, you know how I feel about gendered sl- ”
“Sorry! I mean - that asshole will never leave me alone.” Regina amended hurriedly. Nas smiled small and tired at her - all with that kind of hopeless affection Regina’d begun to recognize as specifically reserved for her and the other members of SFB-1. Regina's bones were glowing soft and bright in her chest, stirring up warm air for her lungs. “But for real - she needs everything to be this way, that way, everything the way she wants it - well, her and Imani, but Imani’s different now, too. Imani’s different because of her. Doesn’t matter that the house’s always had things done another way and done fine. I mean, mostly fine, but yeah - you get it. Doesn’t matter that this is my house - or it was my house, anyway, I guess.” her fingers faltered for a moment. A shiny blob of pink paint dripped down onto the table and Nas moved forward with her towel, mopping it up in careful little pats. “She’s changing Malik up, too. He’s not gonna be -” She stopped.
“Malik’s not going to be…?” Nas asked when she didn’t continue, tone light.
“Not gonna be… what he’s supposed to be, I mean.”
“What he’s supposed to be?”
“Yeah. Like - what was planned for him. What he would’ve been if no one had died or left or changed.” The words were nonchalant. So nonchalantly spoken, non-cha-lant. Not chalant at all. Regina put the brush in the water and blew on the finished stone, willing it to dry faster.
“And what was that? Was there a specific job set out for him? A role in the family business?”
“No. No, Mama never really cared whether or not we took over.” Regina said.
“Ah. So I should be thinking you mean bigger. More about his identity, perhaps?” Regina said nothing, shrugging and making brief eye-contact. She touched one finger to the stone to see if it was dry yet, but the finger came back purple. “How do you know the person he’s turning into isn’t what he was supposed to be?”
“Cuz. It’s not. He was supposed to be what he would’ve been if Mama’d been raising him.”
“But he’ll never become that person.” Nas said quickly, and Regina flinched. Nas saw it, and when she spoke again her voice was gentler, “The plans have to be rearranged. Now, it’s just my belief, but I don’t really think there’s a ‘meant to be’ with these kinds of things.”
Regina let out a big huff, trying to dispel that weight, “You’re right,” she said, “you’re so right - this is it and we just gotta deal! This isn’t what was supposed to happen and the other Malik is dead and never going to be, so he just has to make his own life with who he is and what he’s got.” She said.
Nasirah’s eyebrows shot up. “Well. I mean, I didn’t exactly say that.” She mumbled and Regina giggled, holding up the now dry stone.
“Nas,” she said, speaking quick as Nas looked like she was about to drop another weight on the emotional shoulders of this conversation, the potential of it too much, she was already hunched under all of this, it happened so easily these days, “Nas, what do you think of souls?”
Nas smiled a tired smile. Spoke soft, “I don’t really know, sweetheart. What do you think of souls?”
“I think… well, I think they probably look different than this, but that this’ll work.” Regina replied. The stone was warm in her hands from being held. They both looked at it - it had a sloppy pink heart and little stars all around. Too many colors at once, a bright little weight made of minerals just like the rest of her bot, but rougher, like a soul should be. She always made one for her little friends. A painted little stone, locked tight in. Just in case souls were real, and she managed to grant sentience to something.
Regina swiveled her chair around, popping open the bot and nestling the stone carefully in the little box she’d built for it. Closed it up, drilled it shut, and wheeled the thing around on the table.
She’d cut away the mudflap - it’d really only gotten in the way of cleaning and was probably just there to make the thing look sleek, but that wasn’t necessary anymore. Without the rubber blocking it, the thing’s bristled mustache-teeth looked distinctly expressive, even without the eyes lit up above. Regina always expected bots to look like they were sleeping when they were off, or maybe dead, but they never did. It was more like they were frozen. Motion was missing, but the potential was always there.
She switched this one on and the cartoonish pixels lit up in a flare. Closed eyes - with eyelashes now, like she’d programmed! They opened with a drowsy blink. Peered up at her as the mechanics whirred, accepting the new brain she’d made for it, the new purpose for its new home.
Regina tipped her head against the mock forehead, grinning, “Hey buddy,” she whispered.
It spoke in the cutest little voice, sticking a little on the end of the word but the little hiss gave it life, gave it originality, made it just really, really cute,
