Anne arrived back at her apartment and turned on the lights. Tarasa was right; the place was boring. She had lived here for years, and still hadn't decorated or changed anything. The blank white walls stared back at her. What did it say about her, that she could live in one spot for so long and accumulate no clutter?
Her keys were placed in her pocket, and the jacket slung over the back of the couch. The only other pieces of furniture in the room were her computer desk and chair. No end tables, no coffee tables, no pictures, no anything. Just bare room and walls and floor. On impulse she finally shoved the couch against the wall, opening the floor.
It looked even worse; a big room echoingly empty. She sat down on the couch and looked out over the empty room, contemplating her life.
She had lived here for years, and it looked like she cold pick up and move on a moment's notice. Granted… she was prepared to do that. Much as she loved her life here, hanging around Effie and Mark only brought home to her how precarious her position was here.
They both truly hated plants. Effie had been the daughter of a plant engineer, visiting her father one day, when she was taken to a bulb. The plant angel had come down to look at her, intrigued. Others noticed, and wondered what she possessed that would intrigue a plant. She was subjected to a barrage of tests, and passed before every bulb to gauge the reactions of the plants. All of them were intrigued, and Effie began to feel like a freak. The tests found nothing abnormal, but the null result didn't stop the research, but instead made it more intrusive. The rest of her immediate family was also tested, but none of them produced the same reaction in the plants.
It took months before the scientists would admit defeat, and in that time her life was completely disrupted. Somehow word got out that she was an object of interest in plant research, and she was treated like some sort of freak for years, especially at school. Children can be cruel to the abnormal ones, and she was an easy target, a target made only easier by the added abnormality of her sexual orientation.
So she hated the plants for making her feel different, for singling her out and making her an object of ridicule. Anne had carefully looked into a couple things, and discovered that her grandmother happened to be a cousin of Legato Bluesummers. The poor child had rudimentary mental powers, powers she mostly ignored but could not completely discount. The plants had been intrigued by their ability to hear her, but she could not return the favor, could not focus enough to make her desires to be left alone known to them.
Sometimes Anne wondered if Effie liked her merely because she couldn't hear anything from her, not emotions or words. She'd have loved to help train her, to at least teach her how to defend her mind, but was unsure how to raise the topic. Hey, sweetie, noticed you're a bit of a freak? Want some help with that? Anne sighed. The best she could do was try to shield her when they were together, and pray that Effie wouldn't get too mad at her when she found out what she had been doing.
And Mark… she loved the guy, truly she did. As her best friend, as the guy who could manage to make her laugh no matter how badly her day might be going. Too bad he had been one of the men to go after Ace. Too bad she had killed his cousin; too bad she had crippled him. Some days, the guilt of what she had done, of what she had taken from this world almost overwhelmed her. From all accounts, his cousin had been a remarkable gentle man, loving and kind.
And shooting at her, true. But she hadn't meant to kill him, to leave his children parentless in this harsh, cruel world. She hadn't wanted to kill him, it had been an accident, but now… she found herself wishing that she had saved him, brought him back, no matter the cost to her later.
Poor Mark. He had lost his job. No longer able to lead the special strike force that lurked within the regular plant security forces. Instead, he was shunted off to a management position, him, who had gloried in physical movement confined by a chair and a cane. It was amazing that the man wasn't bitter over his disability, that he didn't curse fate on a daily basis. There were some days, when the pain was more than aspirin could handle, that he could get a bit snappish. But for the most part he was a very happy guy.
And he liked her. She couldn't help but try to figure out how many seconds that would take to change if he found out that she was the one that destroyed his life. And his family… they might like her now, but after finding out she had killed Kathryn's son, the girls' father? They would have every right to despise her.
And they were not the only ones who hated plants. There was an organization, the same one that had held Ace, she surmised. Their only object seemed to be the eradication of plants, but she wasn't sure that that was truly the case. Regardless, she didn't want to get on the bad side of the organization, as it seemed to be headed by the manager of the entire plant. She did her best to ignore the group altogether, and hoped that they would return the favor.
She sighed again, then shook her head and stood up. No use contemplating the yet-to-be; she had work to do now. She padded over to the computer desk and hooked the hand unit into the power source. She had been shocked to find a handheld computer in one of the storerooms at the lab. It was missing its battery pack, but a bit of judicious digging had found her a source she could plug into city power. Someone hadn't known just what is was they were letting her take home, that was sure, but given the opportunity she wasn't about to refuse. This little toy was even better than what she had used back in her own reality; amazing, considering that it was developed at least 150 years ago.
She switched the holographic monitor on, and began her daily ritual of reading through some of the information that was stored on the hard drive. Then she pulled up her model of the problematic circuitry, and tried to figure out what wasn't quite right.