013 — Lessons From Sense

They stayed at the Smarts' until fifteen minutes past eleven. And, even when they'd gone, life remained in the party. Dr Smart and Orla had disappeared to bed, exhausted. The back patio remained active and talkative for another hour, with laughter and felicity so often absent from Ro and Zee's past. But when Ro began to droop, and let out her first yawn, Zee insisted on departure. Nat, the host in his father's place, showed them out, and a wave of farewells swept over them from Aubrey, Colette, and Darien. Ro remembered to thank their host only when Zee did. Once inside the car Zee heard Nat say they'd be in touch. The rest of the night passed as nights often do for Zee: long and seeped with unprecedented calculations as to their overall welfare and happiness, all the while Ro slept away fatigue. He'd tried to tell her that tomorrow she'd wake up a whole year older, to which Ro mumbled something incoherent and slipped over to her opposite side, asleep almost immediately.

At the first silvery plume on the eastern horizon, hidden behind an empiric sylvan line, Zee left for the wilderness behind the motel. For a while, he followed a narrow footpath, traipsing around slowly and listening to the birds, watching the flora enrich its fecundity, and the fauna, in the form of squirrels, scamper away to high treetops and vainly twitch their plumose tails. He had been away twenty minutes when the sun ripened the tops of the trees in the pinkish-yellow glow that indicated a beautiful day had just begun. The woods came to an oval clearing, armed only by a single, old tree—a yew tree. Its gallant branches spiked mercy over the decaying tops of ancient headstones. Bent at the knees, Zee read some of the names—all the same surname, all from late in the nineteenth century to the early twentieth—and knew it to be an ancient family plot, probably of a farming family. Immobile in the cruelty and avarice of death, a snapping twig captured his attention. In a second he spotted the source: a lone buck moved from the woods and cautiously entered the clearing. Mesmerized by the appearance of so graceful a creature, on such a morning, Zee held still and observed. He felt like a spy regarding something too beautiful and sacred for him to behold. The buck noticed him, as an out-of-place shape among the wilds. Zee did not move his eyes away; he held his gaze on that of the buck. Animals, he'd learned, even from Cassidy and Carney, the Smarts' dogs met the night before, always look a person in the eye. How do they know to do this? He'd asked Ro about it once, and she said it had something to do with a person's soul being in the eyes, and Zee later termed it 'the spark of humanity'. Then he went on, ever befuddled by the concept, and asked Ro if dogs have souls. She didn't know how to answer at first, but later said that most people thought so, yet the credos of almost all basic religions thought the idea blasphemous—only humans were allowed to have souls, a fact based on the Holy Trinity. And that train led Zee on a wild chase of misunderstanding, looking into the Holy Trinity himself, the study culminating in a disbelief in it, for he couldn't fathom how a spirit could have a soul while someone's favoured pet could not. . . Cassidy and Carney looked straight at Zee's eyes like they did any other human present—as did the brown buck.

Zee hadn't thought of it until right then, had thought very little to actually possessing some semblance of a soul himself. He tried asking the buck if it was there, somewhere hidden inside. But the buck steered down his long neck, nibbled at the grass then stepped on, the king of the woods. Zee let his hands fall to the tall weeds and crab grass cloaking the patriarch's grave and felt his fingers tighten into the soft earth, repelling the drops of dew. Though the buck had gone, his hooves marking an almost silent trail through the thicket, Zee felt a thousand eyes on him. After throwing around glances, and seeing nothing, no one, he rose hastily and returned to the broken path he'd made. Still, he felt eyes on him. Hideous, reproachful gazes of five hundred soulless men, reaching out from the beyond to take him away, to punish him for wanting to belong so badly to a material plane, for making Ro believe in him absolutely. . . .

He stumbled his way out of the woods and immediately bee-lined for the sanctity of his room. Around the corner, at a jutting arbutus, Zee froze. On the kerb directly in front of his room sat a young man with lightened brown hair pulled back into a springy ponytail, donned in a calf-length green canvas coat. His chin was in an upturned palm, and he had his eyes closed. Gathering fortitude, Zee's steps resumed, void of caution and the feeling he was being watched. When his feet skidded across the sabulous cement, the kid awoke from the doze with a start. Now standing, the kid held Zee's gaze for a lasting moment, and a warm, somewhat sad smirk touched his finely-formed mouth. Their gladness burst open, resulting in a tight hug and a gleeful set of chuckles. They broke apart, Bucky still holding to Zee's forearms, almost fearful of letting go, to find he'd be swept away.

'I—' Bucky started explaining, but Zee lifted a silencing hand. Instead of going into his room, right next to Ro's, he led Bucky into the cosy front lobby. The chatelaine would still be in the kitchens preparing breakfast with her small staff, and the lobby was empty. A coffee pot stood ready on a side table, and Bucky helped himself to some, drinking it black. Comfortable in the oversized seating, Bucky folded his legs beneath him and started again.

'It took me all night to get here.'

'I figured,' Zee said. 'I'm overwhelmed to see you. It's a pleasant surprise. But—why did you come?'

Bucky had to stretch the truth. He'd really come to talk to Zee about the things Ro had sprung upon him Friday. 'Ro's birthday. I mean—eighteen. God, did you ever think, ever really stop and think, that she'd ever live so long? Some days I wondered. And I wonder if I'll reach eighteen.'

'Of course you will. You have as much determination as Ro—perhaps more in some areas of your life. I haven't talked to you so it must be Ro who's told you where we are.'

'I talked to her Friday,' Bucky said with a nod. 'You were out. She didn't mention her birthday or anything—it never came up. Figuring you guys were still here, I managed to smuggle myself into the state, as you're witnessing the results of my effort. Any big plans for the day?'

'We were out late last night. I'm sure Ro will want to sleep in for a while.' Zee explained, all he could, about Dr Smart, Andrea Donoso, and the two scientists' request for the renegades to remain in town indefinitely. Bucky had only a soft laugh in response. Mustering brevity, Zee told of the dinner party, of Dr Smart's engaging family, even the dogs. Bucky liked the sound of the Smarts but displayed more caution than care in his advice to Zee. That was when Zee entreated Bucky to his room and pointed out the holographic emitter, still sitting on the edge of the bed, unmoved from yesterday.

Bucky lifted it, weighing it, and turned it around in his hands. 'Does it work?'

'Yes. I tested it. Its base solidity is ninety-five percent. And its transition from one hologram to the next is almost completely seamless. The improvement over my own basic model is incalculable.'

'Imagine that. Why won't you use it?'

'Something could go wrong at installation.'

'Something can go wrong with you just standing there, too, Zee,' Bucky philosophised.

Zee examined the ceiling as though he expected it to fall on him.

'Do you want me to help you install it?'

'Would you?'

'I know a thing or two about your schematics, Zee—much more than anyone else willing to help you out. And you said Ro wouldn't be up for a while. With this thing,' he held it again in his hands, his watery chestnut eyes affixed, 'you can stand in the sunshine and feel its warmth, you can stand in the wind and feel its power, you can stand in the ocean and feel its eternity.'

Zee was quiet for a moment, sullen, leaded by possibility. 'I'd . . . I'd considered that.'

Bucky arched a brow. 'You'd like that, wouldn't you? To become more elemental, material, textile.' Finally, he felt like the time had come to let out a thread of Ro's confession. 'Ro told me about the fascinations you've acquired lately.'

'Ro knows?'

'You don't give her enough credit, Zee. She's been in your company practically every day—every hour—for the last thirty months! That's long enough for a percipient girl like Ro Rowen to fathom changes in her best friend. Trust me on this. She knows.'

'What did she say?' Zee plopped to the edge of the bed, unsure of his feelings, whether it might be described as panic or annoyance. Or, more than likely, it was a combination. 'Was she bothered?'

'Bothered? Not exactly.' Bucky gave Zee the emitter and pulled up a chair from the little table beside the window. Angled to face Zee, their knees touching in closeness, Bucky did one final sweeping gesture over his hair. 'Take off your hologram. Let's get this touchy-feely party started.' Bucky winced and rubbed his eyes as the brightness of Zee's emitter brightened up the room like lightning in a hurricane. 'Ah, dammit! Right in my eyes! How is Ro not blind yet?'

In his skeletal titanium frame Zee removed a panel from his back and set it carefully aside. It was easiest for Bucky to work while Zee lay on his stomach vertically on the bed. But Bucky, curious and philanthropic about his two closest friends, tried to keep Zee talkative during the fitting.

'Not to sound blunt and tactless or anything—I'd hate to be a throwback to the brat I used to be—but what exactly is your fascination with Ro? She wouldn't talk about it much. She only knew you were gaping at her an awful lot lately. Is it just a general interest—or are you staring openly at her breasts? I should warn you that women really hate that. Really, they do. I think I still have some scars to prove it.'

Zee remembered instantaneously the painting he'd seen in the Columbus art gallery, and how his awe of the world sprang from its inspirations. He related this to Bucky, speaking carefully, his words chosen in proportion to his orating ability. Listening intently to this story he'd heard from Ro, now in Zee's perspective, Bucky worked diligently on removing the small wires connected to the internal emitter. Almost ready to extract it, Bucky gave a little shake of his head.

'Ro isn't a painting, Zee. She's, you know, alive.'

'I know. All I've wanted to do, ever since that day, is feel her, the flesh and bone of her. Is that normal?'

Bucky lifted a shoulder and grunted. 'Sounds frustrating. Because you can't. Feel her, I mean.'

'It's more than that, more than the shape and warmth of her. It's more a desire to know her, find out what it is that illuminates her from the inside to the outside.'

'Well, I'm betting it's not her holographic emitter. Maybe it's her legs. Never seen nicer legs on a woman, ever—and I've been privy some really fine women, Zee.'

Zee imitated a pale laugh. He felt another wire plucked from his back. The sensitivity to his emitter had been shut down, otherwise his system would be screaming malfunctions at him. 'That's not really what you think, though, is it?'

'No,' Bucky answered flatly. 'No, it isn't. Zee, I don't know anything about a synthoid's apparent carnal appetites, but you're not acting that much differently than I would—than any person would—when attracted to someone.' Bucky leaned away, blinking. 'All right, let's get this thing out of you. Ready?'

Zee looked into the carpet below the table. He heard a crunch, a scrape of metal against metal, then quiet. The removed emitter took place next to the new. Bucky quickly compared the two, saw the new emitter's improvements, then lifted it into his cupping hands. Carefully, slowly, he lowered the mechanism into the dorsal cavity. The serial port slipped into place and locked.

'Now comes the hard part.' Bucky pulled sunglasses from the pocket of his coat and put them over his eyes. He borrowed Zee's internal soldering gun, changed the tip size to the smallest available, and went about soldering the wires into place on seven emitter chips and one neurowafer. Several tiny sparks flew up but died almost immediately, overwhelmed by the air.

'Doing okay?' enquired Bucky, unable to see Zee's expressionless pate.

'Yes, thank you.'

'Good. Almost done. So what are you going to do—about Ro?'

'I don't know. Will it pass?'

'No idea. It may. Do you want it to?'

'Meaning?'

'Meaning . . . not sure . . . What if she has the same curiosity towards you? Then what?'

Bucky wasn't convinced he was leading Zee into false, foolish hope, suggesting that Ro might feel the same. She'd never expressed it to Bucky, but she'd never told him otherwise. That left plenty of open space for opportunity. And if Zee acted, Ro not feeling the same way, at least Zee would know. Ro and Zee's friendship transcended everything; it had survivability. Bucky didn't worry the two would ever be apart by choice.

The sunglasses were removed and the soldering gun returned to Zee. The synthoid lifted his chest to put the gun away, then restored the panel to the six-inch gaping hole in his lower back.

'How am I supposed to know what Ro thinks or feels?'

'Well, here's a radical idea: Ask her!'

'I can't,' Zee said, standing.

'Then get inventive. Find a way. Manipulate her, if you must. You two have been together too long to suddenly find out that you're incompatible, and fly off your separate ways.'

'That isn't likely.' If Zee had any foresight at all, about the days after tomorrow, it never included having Ro leave him because they found their friendship suddenly discordant. He rose his inutile hands again, then found Bucky in the dim of the room. 'Does this seem strange to you?'

'If you mean to ask whether I thought we'd ever have this conversation, that answer might surprise you: yes. I knew you'd want to know about explicit love sooner or later. I just thought you'd find out from Ro. She'd explain it a little more bluntly than I ever could. Maybe not well—what does she know of love?—but, hell, at least she'd tell you.'

'I tried asking her once about the heart. But that was a long time ago.'

'How long ago?'

'Almost immediately after we met.'

'Zee, she's eighteen.'

The synthoid marked him with a white, unblinking gaze. 'What does age have to do with this?'

'Ro matures.'

'She looks exactly the same as when we met.'

'I won't tell her you said that—she's very sensitive about the size of her chest, in case you haven't noticed. And I don't mean physical maturity—I'm talking about mental maturity. Love changes, it evolves, as people get older, learn more about life, and have more opportunities to explore love. I know this because I've gone through the same thing. When you met me, I didn't care about anyone but myself. Now I care more about my uncle and cousins, you and Ro, even Casey MacCurdy to a certain extent, than I ever could about myself. Love not only changes in perception and philosophy, but it changes whoever it resides in. And, sooner or later, you're going to have to trust yourself, and trust someone else too.'

Bucky said this all very vehemently, passionately, but void of the drama of impetuous youth. His often humorous gaze was now filled by an elite earnestness. Zee had to believe him. There was no other option while staring so into a galaxy of certainty. Bucky inhaled, aware of what he'd said, having never spoken so openly with anyone before, yet remained unembarrassed. He put the chair back and stood before his friend.

'Ready?'

'I just might be.'

Bucky removed himself one yard from Zee in the off chance a small explosion occurred. In less than a second the normal shape of Zee Smith was in the synthoid's place. There'd been no flash of teal, no static sound, no whirring, nothing but a timid grey-white mist, as the core of a pearl might look. Bucky swerved past Zee and held open the room's door. He bowed and gestured, like a servant, and felt the wind rush by as Zee escaped to the raw elements.

Zee noticed a change instantly. The morning mist had gone, leaving the density of humidity behind. And he could feel the oppressiveness of the humidity as he waded across the parking lot. There he waited, for whatever magical knowledge would soon come to him, and held out his hands to receive it from the invisible deities of the earth, light, and air. Smiling and laughing to himself, Zee gave his face over to the rising sun and let it warm him as a blessing.

Overjoyed at the sight, Bucky banged a shoulder, as a rap, on Ro's door. She appeared a second later, groggy, half-asleep. Hair swathed across her eyes, she hardly noticed it was Bucky. Upon this realisation, she was startled.

'Bucky! What—?'

'Ro! Come out! Come out and see! It's extraordinary!'

Ro let herself be tugged, careful of her bare feet across the cool cement. By Bucky's will, Ro halted at the end of the kerb. He was pointing to Zee's figure thirty feet ahead, nearer the silent road, his back to them. The image was hardly striking awe into a sleepy Ro. She didn't understand why she'd been dragged out of the haven of her room for this.

'I'm going back to bed,' she grumbled, already pivoting for the welcome darkness of her room. Predictably, Bucky gripped her arm and held tightly.

'Zee!' Bucky hollered, indicating Ro's presence with a vigorous gesture.

Ro had her arms crossed and yawned. She flung open unwilling eyes hearing Zee's galloping feet. Ro reacted to Zee's enthusiastic embrace with a glottal 'Whoomp!' She was spun in circles, three of them, in the centre of the parking lot, her hands grasping Zee's shoulders, afraid he might let go. 'Zee, what are you doing? Put me down!' She pounded a fist against the top of his head, a useless gesture. He seemed to strengthen his hold in response. 'If you don't let go, at least stop spinning—I think I might be sick.' The request was granted with reluctance. Ro slipped to the ground, sure of it by the pebbles beneath her toes. She looked into his eyes with a thousand questions to ask, none verbalised. 'You weren't so excited on my seventeenth birthday! So what's—'

'I—I forgot,' he stammered, and really had forgotten in the uprising of such gloriousness. 'Your birthday.' Her shining cheeks, brightened pink by the spinning, tempted his caresses. The softness of her skin was always as he'd imagined, perhaps even better. 'Happy birthday.'

Ro's brow wrinkled. 'Thanks.'

Bucky came to them, first glancing at Zee, then Ro. 'We installed that stylish new emitter this morning. Clearly it must be working.'

'The new emitter?' Astounded, Ro seized Zee's wrist and held it before her. His palm was smooth and warm beneath her fingertips. His fingers twitched in reaction to her touch. 'You can feel this.' She suddenly dropped her hand, replaying last night's unfavourable conclusion, still thinking she was poison to him. 'You came all the way out here just to help a hunk of hardware install a yet another hunk of hardware?'

Bucky's hands were pinned up defensively. 'No, completely unrelated, I swear! I wanted to celebrate your birthday with you two. And, anyway, it's been months since we were together. But I'm leaving tonight. Yeah, don't look so chagrined, you're breaking my heart. I have this thing I need to do early tomorrow night with the Fringe. Sorry I can't stay. What do you have planned? It's your day, Ro, and I say all the plans should fall to you, while Zee and I merely execute and escort. How about it?'

'A very gentlemanly offer,' she said, patting him on the arm as she retreated into her room. 'I'll have to think about it.'

Then the door shut. Bucky stared at Zee.

'That didn't go very well. Maybe she wasn't happy to see me.'

'No, I'm sure she is happy to see you, Bucky. There's no ungratefulness in her.'

Bucky snorted. But, after analysing her reaction to him, she did seem outwardly pleased, with a fair twinkle in her eyes. Bucky amused her. 'Must be that she's not a fan of birthdays.'

'It's more likely she's thinking of whether or not we should stay. She'll have to come to a decision, and I won't be making this choice entirely on my own.'

Knowing that Ro had never faced a challenge like the present one, Bucky refrained from commenting. Perhaps she had thought about it once, years and years back, when she'd first run away. She had the choice now of no longer running, of staying put, and seeing what happens when one stands still. But, as Zee so adequately deduced, it was their decision; Bucky knew he had no right to voice his opinion, however welcome it may be to a stressed Ro Rowen.

'Well, back into your room, then. We'll watch mindless syndicated television shows until Ro decides she wants our amicable company.'

Bucky let the door close behind them while Zee busied himself for a moment opening the drapes. Zee was captive to nature, his gaze out the window and into the distant treetops. It struck Bucky then, with an accurate empathy, of what it must be like to finally feel, to be made of the earth and finally know what that meant.

'How was it?' the kid asked. He removed his coat and threw it recklessly into the chair. 'The wind and all that—everything you'd imagined?'

Zee blinked slowly, recapturing that experience. 'Better.'

'And Ro?'

'Like a goddess of all the elements combined. Pure. Inviolable. And probably beyond all other meagre words. Ineluctable like the hands of time.' He pretended to draw in a breath, as men do when perplexed. 'One thing confuses me.'

'Really, just the one?'

'How droll. I had supposed my software to be incompatible with the new emitter, but it does not seem to be.'

'You thought you'd have to update your allocation software. Ah-ha, I see. Guess not.'

'Why?'

'You did say that Dr Selig meant for you to have that emitter not too long after you went renegade. Perhaps your software updated before, after one of your last missions. But without the fancy hardware you never knew the difference.'

'That is most likely, yes.'

They discussed life, a broad range of topics, for the next hour and forty minutes. Bucky openly spoke of his life in the Tech Underground, the strange business he did with his uncle and three cousins, to the strange places he'd lived, to the oddity of finding Zee and Ro still in Ohio. He'd never thought that the three of them should meet again, not under such an amiable circumstance, let alone within the perimeters of a state so mocked for its backwardness, its being a legitimate 'vertebrae in the backbone of America', its rednecks, hicks, and failing collegiate and professional sports teams.

When Ro appeared, attired for the day in a long white and pink sundress with a smocked bodice, her hair down and loose, she tried to give Bucky's opinion of Ohio a chance of re-evaluation.

They took him to the haunted house and the covered bridge, and he begrudged the objects a simple beauty, but did not see that they were purely Ohio, and so his opinion remained. They whisked him away, and by mid-afternoon had gotten lost amid the fresh farm fields to the east and south of Yellow Springs. Ro tapped their chauffeur once on his shoulder, Zee taking masked pleasure in the feel of her fingertips, and pulled the car to the side of the two-lane road. Bucky did not require goading to view the sight before him. He stood with Ro, linking their elbows, tightening their hands together. Zee came beside Ro, and Ro slinked her fingers between his. The three of them stood, hand in hand, companions forever, and soaked in the view of a little hilltop. Below them, in rich yellows and greens of endless dales, far into the misty knolls, stretched a glebe of blossoming sunflowers.

Bucky squeezed Ro's hand, brought up to his mouth, and kissed the top of it, in sport of gratitude. 'You win,' he said, debasing himself with a sly smirk. 'I'll never make fun of this damn state again.' He turned back to the sunny glow, certain it wasn't just a vision he'd dreamed of once, brought to time by a cunning fairy's ruse. But it wasn't. 'Just don't make a habit of proving me wrong. It's murder on the ego.'