01110000 01101000 01100001 01101110 01110100 01101111 01101101 [Phantom]

The third day found us back on the rooftop, nestled against our favorite vent. It wasn't an exciting life we led, those three days, but it sure was a good one.

"So, Dita," he said at some point, when we'd both lost track of time. "Were you ever going to tell me about your dreams?"

Ugh. And just when I was drifting off, too. "Why should I?" my answer slid out, half-mumble and half-groan. I didn't bother to push up my shades.

"Well, I don't suppose you knew this," he told me, "but humans tend to ascribe quite a bit of meaning to dreams. There are a thousand different ways to do it, but most everyone interprets their dreams at one point or another; they believe it'll tell them something about themselves." He chuckled softly. "I have no idea if that's true. But it could be fun to take a crack at yours."

"I have a better idea. Let's not and say we did."

Again, I heard his laughter above me. Having been curled up with my head in his lap, I rolled over onto my back, to get some sun on the other side. "How about this? You tell me about your dreams now, and I'll let you nap for the rest of the day." He leaned over me and lifted my shades. Before I could gripe at him, he kissed the sour from my mouth. "Promise."

"All right, fine," I sighed. "But at least give me back my shades."

He slid them back over my eyes and the sunlight was soft again, the sky the color of honey. Our shades served as a lot of things, but I'd always liked them best as just that: shades. "I had the first one two weeks ago. The last day of our last mission – after you shut me down." That being the function of my shades I liked least. "It wasn't a scenario, so much as a…sensation. I was in this place, this—this warm, lightless place, and it was sort of wet. I could feel it moving. And there was this sound, like a heartbeat—and I—and I felt this pain." I could almost feel my chest pulse at the memory, even two weeks out. I had no record of it – of any of the dreams – but I remembered them all crystal-clear. "This awful, squeezing pain. Like a weight on my chest. And then I woke up."

"Mm." As he processed that, he began stroking my hair. The rhythm soothed the phantom ache from my chest. "Classic birth dream."

"What?"

"A birth dream. I mean, come on—a warm, wet place with a heartbeat? Sounds like a womb to me."

I didn't know a great deal about human reproduction, but I knew enough to find the whole thing thoroughly repulsive. I'd never even considered that. "That's disgusting. I think I might actually be sick."

"Computers don't get sick," he said, in a tone of voice that made it clear he was mocking me.

"Yeah, but what you said was so incredibly vile, I honestly believe I could transcend the boundary between humans and persocoms, just so I could eat lunch and then lose it."

"Well then, what do you know? We're getting somewhere after all." I wrinkled my nose, and he laughed. "Come on. You have to admit it makes sense. What better time to have a birth dream, than while the creator's daughter is rebirthing us all?"

"I thought you said you didn't know what she did!"

"I don't. I was speaking theoretically, love." It took a moment to unknit my brow. The mere suggestion—that my dream could've been about that—! When I didn't say anything, Zima poked me. "Are you going to tell me about the next one?"

"I don't know," I grumbled. "I'm not so sure I like where this is going."

"Hey, we made a deal, remember? Besides, we're already a third of the way done. You said you'd only had three, right?"

"Yeah." At least the second dream wouldn't be too hard to recount. After all, he had the same memory I did. And of the three dreams I'd had so far, it was the only one that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called 'good.' "I had the next dream the night after the first one. When you were in maintenance, and I was in my pod. But it wasn't like the first dream. It wasn't a dream at all, really—it was a memory."

"A memory can be a dream, too. So long as it happens while you're sleeping."

"You mean while you're shut down."

"Right. Shut down. So which memory was it?"

I closed my eyes and let it wash over me – the memory, the dream. The tile in the launch lab, antiseptic white. The soft drone of the pod. My hand in his for the first time, like a lily adrift on a black sea. "My first memory. From when I woke up in the launch lab—to when you gave me my shades."

The light shifted as he bent over me, his silhouette blocking out the sun. Pushing back my bangs, he kissed me on the forehead. "You never answered me, you know."

"Never answered you about what?"

"If you wanted to be my bodyguard."

I reached up to lower his shades just a little bit, so I could look him in the eyes. "Maybe I'm still trying to decide."

He grinned and kissed the tip of my nose. Then, he straightened up, sitting back against the vent; sunlight broke the dam of his shadow. "To approach the point," he said, "that's basically another birth dream. First you had a human birth dream, and even if your mind—" he raised his hand, quashing a protest I wasn't yet sure I'd bother to make "—or processor, or whatever you feel most comfortable calling it – wasn't quite conscious of that, a part of you was. A part of you recognized it as a birth dream, and decided that it was wrong. So it attempted to rectify its mistake, by replaying the memory of the closest thing you know to birth."

I thought about that. "I never thought I'd say this to you, Zima," I answered after awhile, "but aren't you taking this a little too seriously?"

"Yes, but that's how it's done, love. The whole point of interpreting a dream is to take it much too seriously." He folded his arms behind his head. "Okay, one more. I'm on a roll."

"I had the third dream two days ago – the night after all of that nonsense on the terrace." I still couldn't quite bring myself to call it a date, out loud. "In that one, I was…outside myself. I could see myself, or at least my body. It was strung up on a bunch of wires, like marionette strings, and I had these—these wings, as weird as that sounds. These huge metal wings, just kind of hanging there. And then I saw myself start to fall apart, a little at a time; my chest cracked, and my face peeled off, and I could see how I looked inside but it wasn't how I should have. I mean, I didn't look human, but I didn't even look like a 'com. I was all full of springs and bulbs and fans, like—like those robots from the old movies."

I had to swallow a shudder at the word. To me, a robot was the worst thing one could call a persocom, because to me a robot was a thing; the very word persocom had a human element, even if the short form didn't. A robot was just a machine. "Then the wires snapped, and I just…collapsed. I hit the floor and a few seconds later, crumbled to dust."

He nodded. "Seems appropriate enough. Two birth dreams and a death dream. Maybe the next one will be a death dream too." Count on Zima to act as if another dream was something I should want, especially another dream like the third. "Machines," he mused, "if we have fears, fear obsolescence. Humans fear senescence. One might grow old and fall out of use, or grow old and die; either way, it's all about the passage of time. We all fear it. None of us can stop it. Eventually, everyone – and everything – dies."

I frowned. "That's cheery."

"Isn't it, though?"

He glanced down and tossed me a smile, bright as ever. As if he'd just been reading the weather forecast, instead of waxing philosophic on death. "But what about the wings?" I asked. "I don't suppose you have an answer for that."

"Dita, you know me better than that. I have an answer for everything." That much was definitely true. "If we're going with the theory that it was a death dream, it makes sense that you'd have had wings. You know what an angel is, right?" I answered with a nod. Like reproduction, religion wasn't my strong suit, but I knew enough about it to get by. "So I'd say they were angel wings. But then again, that's hardly surprising; I see angel wings every time I look at you."

"Sure you do. Because you're insane."

"No." Without warning, he took my shades again, holding them up out of my reach. I swiped at them, and groused at him, and when he wouldn't give them back I finally sat up – which was, of course, playing right into his hands. Literally. As soon as my eyes were level with his – before I could crane up to grab the damn shades – he took me by the chin, and kissed me. "Because you're my guardian angel. Remember?"

I snatched my shades and got to my feet. Turning my back on him, I headed for the other side of the roof, as though I had some business there – as though my cheeks weren't fire-engine red, and if they were I wouldn't have cared if he saw. As if I weren't going to rest my elbows on the railing, and bury my face in my hands, and hope I'd simmer down before he followed me.

Through my fingers, I blinked down at the world forty floors below, the streets and the cars and the rooftops of smaller buildings. It wasn't as if I could see it all perfectly, but even this high up the image was sharp; since we were classified as, among other things, recon 'coms, Zima and I had better vision than humans did. Better hearing, too. I stood at the south edge of the building, beneath which lay the shipping and delivery bay, and I could see the logos painted on the parked trucks. I could see the rusted rows of dumpsters, though I couldn't – as if I'd want to – make out what was in them. I could pick out the grind of the garbage truck, as it pulled up, above the white noise of the city all around it. I could even see the driver haul himself out of the truck's cab, and waddle his way into the bay.

And I could see the woman coming out to meet him, wheeling…something on a dolly. Something human-shaped. Is that—Ms. Kano?

"Zima!" Suddenly, I had a bad feeling. A rubber-band snap of intuition, tightening my voice when I called to him. "Look down there," I said when he appeared beside me, pointing to the figures in the south bay. "Does that look like Ms. Kano to you?"

He said what I'd been afraid to. "And May." As easily as if I were a rag doll, he grabbed me and hoisted me up onto his shoulders, so that my legs hung down over his chest. "Let's find out."

He leapt over the railing and down the side of the building, with me clinging to his shoulder straps. Our coattails thrashing in the wind, we surfed the steel girders that ran between windows, so fast that his boots sent up sparks; it was a sheer, mirrored drop most of the way, save for the terrace, and a few deftly-dodged columns of bay windows. When we'd reached the fifteenth floor – low enough for a good view of the south bay, but not low enough to be seen – Zima skidded to a stop atop one of those columns. He landed in a crouch and I slid down beside him, both of us peering down over the edge.

Sure enough, it was May strapped to the dolly, wearing nothing but a couple of layers of plastic wrap. I recognized her ears, glistening in the sun. And I recognized Ms. Kano, too; looking straight down, I couldn't see her face, but there was no mistaking that voice. "What do you mean, you won't take it?" she snapped. "Why not?"

The truck driver's voice wafted up thick and gravelly, as he pushed a hand through his thinning hair. "Look, I'm sorry, but these things aren't exactly biodegradable. It'll sit in the dump forever. We're not even allowed to pick 'em up anymore, so there's really nothing I can do."

"Well then what the hell am I supposed to do with it?"

"Take it to a smelting plant. Or call one, they'll come pick it up."

"I've never even heard of a smelting plant."

"Then you oughta get out more." Before Ms. Kano could go off on him, he thumped his chest with one fist and hacked like a cat with a hairball, drowning out any comeback she might've made. "Anyway," he went on, "they'll break it down for you there, recycle whatever they can. Get out the plastic and metal and stuff. There should be one in the city, they're pretty much everywhere now – they were building 'em all over the place, a couple of years back. After all the dumps turned into 'com graveyards, you know?"

"You'd better not tell me I have to pay for it."

"Well, yeah, there's a fee. It's a private business, right? But before you get your panties in a wad—" again, he coughed and she recoiled, which I have to admit impressed me in spite of everything "—nobody ever told anybody these things were cheap. You gotta pay to get it, you gotta pay to maintain it, you gotta pay to throw it out. And if you don't, you're gonna get fined, which I guarantee is gonna cost more than whatever the plant'll charge to smelt it."

Ms. Kano let out a whine, crossing her arms and stamping one foot. For a second, I thought she might actually throw a tantrum, right there in the shipping bay. "I can't believe this! You can't just take it this once?"

"Hey, I said I was sorry. But it is what it is, lady." He looked over her shoulder at May, adding, "Of course, if you can find someone else who wants it, you won't have to pay anything. Might even get paid."

She snorted. "Fat chance."

"Why's that? It looks fine to me. Why don'tcha just sell it, instead of throwing it out?"

"Are you kidding me? I can't sell this piece of junk. It's ten years old, and for another thing, it's—broken." I didn't have to see her face to hear the wrinkle in her nose. She spat the word as if it were dirty, an insult to her instead of May. Or…what had been May, anyway. "They uninstalled and reinstalled the OS three different times, and every time it started glitching again within a day. It's just spare parts now."

"Well, that's a damn shame." He hitched up his pants and headed back towards his truck, tossing her a backwards wave. "Good luck."

We didn't stay to watch her struggle with the dolly, trying to push May's shell back inside. And Zima didn't pull me onto his shoulders again. He just held me against him, with one arm, and took off for the terrace; when he set me down, just inside the railing, it was all I could do to stay on my feet. All I could do to stand, to process, to go on drawing power under this sudden weight. My knees felt as if they might buckle beneath me. My head swam, my eyes stung, and all the while my sensors registered nothing – no stimulus, no sensation, no reason I should feel this way. Like the ache I'd felt in my chest, telling Zima about the first dream, it was a phantom pain. No source. No terminus.

And yet it was as clear as daylight, sharp as an axe. If I didn't know better, I'd have said I could taste it, bitter on my tongue. "Is this what she wanted, Zima?" I said before he could speak, without looking up at him. Without quite meaning to, either. As if I weren't moving my own lips. "Is this what you were hoping for?"

"Dita—"

"Is this what we're supposed to let happen?"

And for that – for once – Zima had no answer. At least not one he could give me.