009 – Lessons From Patience

The next day came, dry and warm. Dust lingered along the kerbs of silent little streets, running off lazily into the cavities of the hillsides. Ro was awake before Zee came calling for her. She hadn't slept well through the night, sleep made unforgivably interrupted by countless, faded nightmares. Haggard and shredded as her appearance in the mirror was, Ro had the desire to go on as things always had. In the dull light of morning, before the sun had risen, her fears kept her awake for hours, fears of what might've happened if Bucky hadn't been around to supplant unease. Sunlight in the morning, its harsh rays deadened by a faraway haze that smocked the distant trees in grey and blue, had placated the final touches of apprehension. While she attained a face like the walking undead, standing in front of the mirror and pulling on her t-shirt, her spirits were improved.

And, anyway, if the day turned out to be uneventful, there was always the promise of a nap in the afternoon, during those torpid, droopy hours after lunch.

She headed towards the door out of the motel room, looping her belt around her waist, when her door came in on its own. Ro stepped back, momentarily surprised at Zee's arrival. He loitered in the open entryway.

'I heard you moving around.' He scanned her; Ro could tell when he was scanning her. 'You look absolutely ghastly. Didn't you sleep at all?'

'Off and on through the night. Is it too early to head to the university? I'd like to get this whole Dr Smart thing done with.' Mentally exhausted at the prospect of another dead end, Ro's arms dropped, demonstrating this. 'It'd be nice if we got more information. But what are the chances he'll actually know something we don't?'

'Slim, given our past record,' he said, following her into the morning.

Birds chirped in the gently swaying boughs, the forest running the sides of the motel's lot, with tulip trees dotting the front landscape. Sparrows hopped about among the branches, questioning their approach, ignoring them once they passed.

'Coffee first,' Ro said, hopping into the car. Zee joined her inside, the driver as usual. 'And then we'll go to the campus. I suppose I should've packed first.' She bit her lip in lively worry. 'In case he's a raving lunatic and immediately tries to turn us over to the feds.'

'Again, there's a slim chance of that happening.' Zee turned the car onto the main road, State Route 68, and headed north towards Yellow Springs. There were two coffee shops in town that would suit Ro's beverage requirements. Neither happened to be a Ground Wire, but Ro wasn't fond of their brew anyhow.

The car was a comforting, secure square to Ro. The short trip to town provided time enough to sit in Zee's presence, calculating the way it made her feel, and reminisce on the implications cultivated by Bucky the night before. Ro wanted to tell Zee she'd spoken with Bucky, just so Zee would know their friend was all right. But she didn't. Instead, she tried to engage Zee in conversation, asking him what he did through the night, if he'd finished that Dumas book, what he thought they'd do if they had to go running from Ohio. Banter with Zee let Ro study him for minutes together, unquestioned, unchallenged. He had a nice face, a friendly, honest face. It wasn't frank or horrid, ghastly or impure—it was a Zee face. Once, she'd asked him if he thought he'd ever be able to wear another hologram, be someone else for once instead of Zee Smith—and he looked at her and said he saw no reason to be. Zee was his avatar, his external self. It's who he saw shining back at him in rivers, streams, mirrors, that small reflective space in Ro's eyes. She watched his hands on the steering wheel, the way he held it, firm and controlling, and thought back to the times he'd held her hand like that, firm and controlling. Her mind slipped sideways, falling into the now unreal circumstance of yesterday's brilliant rainstorm, and the weight of him against her. Following the real impressions of the past came fruitless imaginings of what might have happened next, if she hadn't been so afraid to whimsically indulge his deprived senses. Being held by Zee had occurred many times before, usually when they were separated for some stressful amount of time then gloriously reunited, and Ro had never considered that he was unable to feel what he held, only knowing, through conceptual vision, that he held someone. To be held by Zee today may redefine the whole process. He'd be searching her for some sign of her shape in the pressure next to him. She wanted to be Ro to him, whenever he held her; she didn't want to be just another someone.

Ro was glad the morning went on and breakfast gradually ended. She hadn't eaten much, barely touched her coffee, and the two of them said fewer words to each other than they had in a long time, since the week following the demise of Knossos. The first one to reach the car when they left the café, Ro decided to drive to the campus. It was only about four city blocks away, but there was plenty of visitor parking available. Under the high cottonwoods, sycamores and maples, they followed the concrete paths, laden and speckled with seed pods of deciduous trees, lined occasionally by a yellow outpouring of wild daffodils, to the science building in the northwest corner of campus. It was a small building, as all of Antioch was done to a small scale, very old and distinguished-looking, fashioned of brick with limestone pillars at the front entrance. Lilac bushes, at the point of full bloom, rose on either side of the steps. In a little while, the area would be filled with their rich fragrance. For now, it smelled only of stone and earth—until the doors were opened. Ro realised it smelled as her old high school.

They found Dr Smart's office on the third storey, shared with two other science teachers. A large, corner room, drenched in south-west exposure, with a pretty prospect of the back of campus and a nearby copse. But the single professor at her desk had no other eye except for the computer in front of her. Ro quickly nudged Zee in the side. This he felt, if only vaguely, for he turned and saw what she indicated: Dr Smart's desk. His nameplate was fashioned to the front of it. Among piles of books and papers were all the other necessary utilitarian items: pencils, paperclips, a stapler, a printer, a cactus garden, a lamp. Dr Smart, however, was nowhere in sight.

'May I help you?' the other professor finally asked. She'd seen them gawking at Dr Smart's desk and thought them peculiar.

'We're looking for Dr Smart. Is he at class?' Zee posted the enquiry. He was often seen as more friendly than Ro.

'No, he's not, actually. He's on a freelance project right now. He won't be back to school until Monday. Did you want to speak to his substitute?'

'It's not important. I'll just wait for him to come back. Thank you for your help.' Zee, confused, went ahead and left the office, assuming Ro followed just behind. She did, but not after getting a closer look at Dr Smart's desk. She'd learned, by jutting in and out of businesses with Zee, that you can understand a lot by a man from the way he keeps his desk.

The news that Dr Smart wouldn't be back until Monday naturally dismayed the two of them. Ro, in step with Zee as they walked aimlessly through the village, suggested that they couldn't have expected any immediate gratification. After all, they had been living a rather idle existence lately, inventing time all on their own, ignoring the general rules of the world—and how could they expect that to change immediately? It seemed appropriate, to Ro, that they should meet with time playing with them, as they had been playing mercilessly with time—by ignoring it.

'Serves us right,' she concluded, 'we've been mean to it, and now it's getting back at us. Now we actually have to pay attention to it, every hour, until Monday comes around.'

Every minute, Zee thought, would feel like a prick of a pin to Ro. To Zee, whose patience were infinite, whose sense of time was not nearly as mentally consuming as Ro's, this stretch of two and a half days would seem as a moment, the closing of his eyes and the reopening of them. Time was not a concept that he would ever embrace as readily as Ro. It was an odd thing, the concept of time; invented by men and worn by them, as clothes, as seasons, and only ignored in idleness, indolence; only revered in pagan traditions and the tolling of sacring bells.

As the day dragged on, the hours of boredom merciless, Ro wondered how she would survive two and a half days of waiting. Zee inspired her to think as little about it as possible. Later, that same afternoon after visiting Dr Smart's office, they went on a long drive. They went far up into the north, got lost, then found their way south again—only to go farther south on Route 68 than they might have otherwise—and got lost for almost forty minutes. They drove along dirt roads, passing through sleepy villages nestled along the banks of rivers and creeks. They found odd country shops selling antiques and locally grown meats. They dived into a lush area southwest of Xenia, and found themselves among expansive houses whose charming names hung on wooden signs from post boxes, names like Midnight Meadowlark and Apple Blossom Horse Farm. Ro knew that they named plantation homes in the Deep South, where they had hardly spent any time—but to see this naming of homes in the countryside of Ohio was a pleasant, unexpected bit of enchantment.

That night, it was a visit to the cinema, and, afterward, Ro slipped into bed, exhausted. Zee stayed up most of the night, checking the online world for signs of their existence. If anyone in Yellow Springs recognised them as wanted fugitives, no word of it had yet popped up on certain internet sites. Bucky ran one message board about them, probably the most popular one, though no one knew it was Bucky who was administrator; he hid himself behind another name, and if anyone talked of him, he talked of himself in third person. The general perception of message board readers seemed to be that Zee and Ro were somewhere in the Midwest, or perhaps the South, as that geographic area had begun a summer permeation of tech conventions. This also led to the belief that Zee and Ro would soon return to California, in lieu that the American Society of Robotics Engineers was holding its prominent meeting and exposition in San Dimas. Lured by the thought of being around robotics scientists for three straight days in mid-July, Zee knew it would bore Ro to tears. And the thought of not being able to run into Dr Selig . . . It was too much. Zee posted a few messages, as himself, which titillated the followers, giving nothing away of his location, and putting up his ISP behind untraceable bands, to say that they were fine, and to comment on the coming San Dimas expo. With over nine hundred registered members on the message board, it was possible for Zee to sit there all night replying to messages; there was always someone online posting.

But he grew waylaid by the allure of night, and left the computer in favour of sitting on the kerb in front of his room, watching the stars in their slow turn as the earth moved, ever on and on, to dawn. Eventually, as four-thirty in the morning loomed, and a lively silver accessorised the eastern slope, he returned to his room and disengaged his hologram. He never recharged in it; using the hologram used more energy than active restoration of his energy levels. On the bed, which he'd taken to lately, his hatred of the flat plane all but vanished, he stared vacantly into the ceiling. Then, without thinking about it, he held up his hands in front of his lenses and scanned them with a critical eye. He thought them inutile, unable to tell him the things he wished to know so desperately, that desperation now a constant ache somewhere inside. But his skin was not skin, just metal plates bent and shaped, striped here and there with propylene fixtures, propylene joints, just as hard and impenetrable as titanium. At the beginning of this interest in textile sensations, he thought titanium and propylene were his biggest concerns: If he was hard on the outside, surely he'd feel nothing. He knew better now, after rigorous testing. Now he knew he'd have a better chance of feeling if he could allocate sensation into his hologram. Already, when in the light and element sheath, he had a general sense of weight and contour, shape and rigidity, temperature and texture, yet not to the extremity he so constantly wished for. If he could find some way to connect his holographic self with his software, he'd have a greater chance of understanding texture. He'd never know it for what it wasn't; he'd only ever know it as it existed. He'd never be able to close his eyes and not see what he was holding: on his internal display would be the calculated texture, presented as waves and temperature, and the balance of colour, saturation, light. Something like that would be better than guessing—better than never knowing at all.

Sunday proceeded much the same way as Saturday. The day-trippers headed west, having explored most of the east and south-east. They went as far as the Indiana state line, then headed back east and stopped to spend some money in the college town of Oxford. In a lot of ways, Oxford mimicked Yellow Springs, with a great emphasis on the younger populace, the teens and twenties; yet Yellow Springs claimed a broader perspective of lifestyle: people in Yellow Springs were what they were, who'd come to the little town from all walks of life. Ro rationalised that was why she liked it so much, because it was a town of outsiders joined together by their anomalies, fused into a complimentary existence. She didn't say it exactly like that, but Zee surmised it as such for his own personal records. Ro was not much of a philosopher, but she appreciated the artist's mind, the production of art for the sake of preserving the human spirit in an unlocked imagination.

When the evening hours came, they set off for the live theatre. The only cinema in town had just one screen, and Ro devalued the film they saw yesterday by stating it was hardly worth sitting through again. Luckily, Antioch College had a quality theatre department, and they were currently performing an original comedy written by one of the students. There was a matinee in the afternoon and a later evening performance. The latter, which Zee and Ro attended, was hardly full. Ro was glad for a little comedic distraction. Things had been rough on them lately. She'd always heard Mrs Hughes, Tiffany Morgan's grandmother, say that life was prone to throwing many lemons in one's face. Lemons there were. Loads of them. Bushels full. Ro didn't know how she retained use of her eyes, so disturbed and reddened by lemon juice as they were. After the show came another distraction: having to tell Zee what the play was about. They rarely saw live theatre, mostly because Ro disliked going, then having to explain it to poor Zee later. This night, however, he asked far fewer questions than normal. It never occurred to her that he was finally catching on to the subtleties of human nature. That was, in fact, close to the truth.

Ro lay stretched out on the bed in Zee's room. The pillow, squashed under her head, had a faint robotic scent to it, Zee's smell of ethereal ozone and earthly metal. She'd known for some time that he'd outgrown his fear of flat sleeping surfaces, but it still surprised her. Ro tried talking to him about it a little bit, what he felt about the room, the area, and received only uninvolved though intelligent replies. He thought the room beautiful and comfortable; the town was lovely and quaint; that he was pleased by it only because she was pleased by it. Had she found their situation irksome and uncomfortable, Ro would've made him leave. But she hadn't. She wondered why, her nose buried in the crisp white cotton linen, and came up with no satisfying answer.

'You should go to sleep,' Zee suggested, standing over her. Ro gave an indifferent gape to his knees, trying to imagine what they'd look like if they'd been real knees, not covered in the semblance of clothing.

'I'm not sleepy.'

He let his hand fall to her shoulder, his fingers bending at the appropriate curve. Ro didn't flip from him, but she wondered why he tried so often to touch her, and why the touch was different than it used to be. 'Not sleepy? That's a lie. Come on, I'll help you.'

Ro stumbled her way through the door that joined their rooms. Her bed had already been turned down, no doubt done by the ever meticulous Arlene, the motel chatelaine. After being practically the only guests at the motel, and staying longer than intended, the proprietors had become neighbourly and doting. There were even a few sprigs of fresh lavender and daisies next to Ro's bed, and Ro assumed that not every guest received the same treatment. She tumbled into the relaxing spot, feeling like a thousand cares flew, carefree, into the air with the dust. The clean sheets felt sensational against her legs, and she wiggled her toes in peaceful delight.

'Tomorrow, it'll be over,' Zee said, slipped the hems up to her chin and watch it flutter to a fall against her breast. 'We'll see Dr Smart and find out if he knows anything.'

'Don't worry, Zee; I'm sure he knows something important.'

'On Friday, your pessimism was stronger.'

She shrugged. 'That was Friday.'

'It wasn't so terrible, was it?'

'What?' She yawned again and reached for the light. Zee beat her to it. The room was flushed in darkness, and only Zee seemed illumed, as though he was made of moonlight and pearls and fireflies.

'The waiting.'

'No,' Ro eventually said, smiling slightly, hinting to a long wait that had nothing to do with Dr Smart, 'no, waiting wasn't so terrible.'