01100001 01101110 01110011 01110111 01100101 01110010 01110011 [Answers]

I'm human this time, like the last. But it's different.

I'm human and so is he, I know right away. I know because he's kissing me, and his mouth is wet; I know because I can taste him, and he tastes like sea-salt smells. I know because I can feel the stutter of my breath, slipping out in gasps between kisses. They're longer, deeper, sweeter than they've ever been, than I ever thought a kiss could be. They make me dizzy.

But that's all right because we're lying down, entwined in each other and something soft—maybe sand, maybe blankets, I don't care. Nothing matters except for him, and his arms around me, and his mouth hot against mine. I can feel his heart thrumming in his chest. My hands stick to the sweat glazing his back. It barely registers that he's not dressed, and neither am I; it feels right being skin-to-skin with him, getting the smell of him thick in my nose. I wrap my arms around his shoulders, push my fingers through his hair.

After the last, longest kiss – a kiss that leaves my lips tingling, a pearly spider's-thread between his and mine – he buries his head in my hair. He nips at my ear, tickling its lobe with his teeth; he sucks up a bruise on my neck. His mouth on my skin is electric. Even when it hurts I want more of it, not less, and I know he knows. I don't have to say stop or more or kiss here. He knows where I want him. He makes me shudder, makes me sigh.

He slides his hands over my thighs, opens my legs. That feels right, too. I don't know why, but it does, and his palms are soft, and my breath comes slow, and he smiles at me and I let myself smile at him—an almost conspiratorial smile, as though we're sharing a secret. I'm warm all over, but I can't feel my cheeks flush. I've forgotten entirely why they would.

Then, he leans in to kiss me, and when he does I gasp into his mouth. Out of nowhere, I course with sourceless pleasure, this slick surging heat that sweeps over me and fills me up—not just me, either, but both of us, I know because I can hear his breath catch. I feel his muscles tighten, his body pulse crushed against me. I cling to him as it climbs. Over the blood rushing in my ears, I hear myself breathe his name, first low and then again, louder. It's the only thing I can think to say.

I can't do it, can't stand it, can't bear it anymore. I can't hold it in, whatever it is, this feeling making my heart race; without my willing it, my back arches into him. My toes curl, my hips jerk, I throw my head back and then—and then—

And then I was back on the beach, snapping upright on the sand. Well, I thought to myself, still reeling, I guess that's one dream I won't be telling him about.

The palms of my hands felt sticky with phantom sweat, my skin goosebumped in the wake of an imaginary touch. I blinked around and saw the ocean, the dunes, the sand just beginning to warm under the morning sun; I remembered falling asleep here, late the night before, after our walk on the beach. Beside me, Zima lay sprawled on the sand, his eyes still closed. I didn't wake him.

It was only a little after six o'clock – too early for beachgoers, thankfully. I was alone. And it was there – standing on the empty shore, bathed in the pale light of breaking day – that I realized what I had to do.

It just sort of came to me, and when it did there was no going back. I couldn't wait any longer. I had to know. Or I at least had to ask, even if she wouldn't answer; if my life—if our lives—if the world was to change entirely, and impossible things were to fall from the sky like rain, I at least had to know I'd tried to find out why. Maybe I couldn't stop it, but I could try to find out why.

But Zima couldn't know. I didn't think he'd come after me, if he woke to find me gone, but he'd stop me if he knew I was going. I knew he wasn't shut down, only in sleep mode, so I trod quietly; not about to face this day in a T-shirt and miniskirt, I fished through his bag for my costume, found it and all of its trimmings bundled together in a plastic bag. Not wanting to risk waking him by changing there, I tucked it under my arm. I wasn't sure if he'd have brought them, but he did say he was more than prepared, so I dug a little deeper in search of some paper and a pen.

And more than prepared he was. He had indeed brought a few ball-point pens, and a stack of post-it notes, and I peeled one off and wrote only five words: see you back at headquarters. Knowing Zima, he'd figure out where I was headed. I didn't need to tell him more than that.

Sticking the note to his leather bag, I slipped off my sandals and padded up the dunes in my bare feet, ducked into the first bathroom I found. There, I changed back into my costume, as quickly as its trappings allowed. Once I'd pulled on my gloves and buckled my choker – and checked to be sure the snapdragon was still there, browned and curling but safe as ever beneath my coatstrap – I took off.

I mapped the route on my shades and followed it, through mile after mile of neighborhood phone lines. At least there'd be no tracking this time. I knew where she was, it was just a matter of getting to her, and that wasn't going to be hard; so long as I knew my endpoints, my navigational software would choose a path for me, using what it knew of my preferred means of travel. That is, it didn't find the roads I'd need to take, but the wires, and high walls, and rooftops. It calculated the length of a leap and the strength of a cable, instead of the time spent in traffic. It told me the heights of buildings, instead of the names of streets. Of course, I could've let it take the reins entirely, switched into autopilot mode – but if I wasn't thinking about getting where I was going, I'd be thinking about what I'd find what I got there. And I wasn't sure I wanted to.

I didn't want to ask myself, what if she won't answer me? I didn't want to wonder, what if she can't? And even if she can what will I do, when I finally know? Will it make things better? Could it make them worse? What happens if I get my answer, and it's not all I need it to be?

By the time I was perched on the apartment's roof, it was close to ten. The sun was high and bright. Zima had called me a few times, on my way there, but I hadn't picked up; whatever he was going to say, it wouldn't change anything now. I had a feeling he'd known as much, anyway. Still, he'd sent me a message, just a few minutes before I touched down. I'm not going to open it, I told myself. I'm not going to waste the time. I'm going to go down there, and look that girl in her face, and I'm going to find out what it was she did, once and for all. There's nothing he can say to stop me.

Assuming he's trying to stop me. The new-message tone replayed itself. Maybe he's not.

Maybe I ought to look at it. Just in case.

So crumbled my resolve. Even when he was three hours away, I couldn't say no to Zima. Do what you have to do, love, read the words reflected in my shades. I hope you find what you're looking for.

"Zima…"

I said his name under my breath, somewhere between a sigh and a prayer. I didn't mean it to, but for a moment the dream came back to me, sent warm flickers down my spine. It's the only thing I can think to say.

I shook it off and steeled myself, tucked my shades into a coatstrap. Then, I strode to the edge of the rooftop, and leapt down onto the railing outside her window.

"Danger! Danger!" The second I landed, one of a pair of laptops shot off like a firecracker, bouncing around the room blowing a tiny whistle and shouting. "Intruder! Assassin! Unidentified persocom at the window!"

The girl, having been halfway through folding a shirt, laid it in her lap and exchanged a glance with the other laptop – this one less energetic than the first. "Well, that's one way to make an entrance," she said, as I stepped off the railing into the room. It was a cramped, musty space, strewn with unfolded laundry and the odds and ends of human life – a sock here, a pot there, crinkled magazines everywhere. "What are you supposed to be?"

"Chi knows," the girl said, before I could come up with an answer to that. "Chi remembers." She looked at me with these deeply sad, wounded eyes, rosebud lips wilting in a pout. As though she'd been eating an ice-cream cone, and I'd snatched it and tossed it in the dirt. "You are not my friend."

The long-haired laptop blinked. "Huh?"

"This girl came to stop Chi from finding my someone just for me. This girl said Chi was nothing to Hideki. This girl said I'll have to deactivate you myself! Permanently!" She paused her litany to mimic my voice, her stilted bell-tones hardening to a snarl. "This girl—"

"Dita."

"Chi?"

I sighed. "My name isn't this girl, okay? If you're going to read me the riot act, you could at least call me Dita."

"Chi." Which, evidently, wasn't just her name; from what I could tell, the girl used it as an all-purpose word, serving as a yes and a no and a question mark. "Dita, you are not my friend," she informed me, as if that would close the matter altogether. "Please go away."

"You heard her!" The first laptop popped up again, seemingly out of thin air, jabbing an indignant little finger at me. I got the distinct impression of having had a wad of bubblegum spit in my face. "Buzz off! Vamoose! Scram! Hit the road, Jack! Make like a tree and—"

"God! Can you be any more obnoxious?" I finally snapped at her. Picking her up by the sash around her waist, I set her, squirming and shrieking, on the railing where I'd landed; then, I slid the window shut. "How do you live with that?" I said to the other laptop, the look on whose face had gone from cynical to reverent in two seconds flat.

"I—I honestly don't know." For a moment, she sat there looking at me like I was God come to earth. Savoring the silence, I'd expect. Then, she glanced over at the girl, who had returned to her laundry and was pretending I wasn't there. "Did you really try to deactivate Chi?"

"It wasn't personal." I sat down and crossed my legs beneath me, eyeing the girl. When she finished folding the shirt, she set it in a plastic laundry basket, and plucked a stray pair of pants from the floor. "Hey." She began to fold them. "Hey, you! Would you listen to me for just one second, please?"

"Chi's name is Chi because Hideki named Chi Chi. Dita's name is not this girl. Chi's name is not hey."

"All right, Chi." I'd been there less than five minutes, and already I was losing ground. Lovely. "I didn't do what I did to hurt you. I did it because it was my job."

"Job?" The girl cocked her head. "Chi knows about jobs. Chi's job is at Chiroru Bakery. Chi works for Manager Ueda. Chi helps customers pick out cakes."

I didn't see what that had to do with anything. "Okay."

"Hideki's job is at Club Pleasure. Hideki takes orders and serves drinks."

"Yeah, well—"

"Dita's job is to deactivate Chi?"

"It was. It's not anymore." I flashed my palms in a show of innocence, by that point very much aware that I wouldn't get anything out of her without assuring her I was her friend. "I'm not here to do anything bad to you. Promise."

She considered that. "Dita quit her job?"

"Of course I didn't quit my job. I'm a persocom, I can't quit my job."

"Dita can't quit her job because you are a persocom?"

Jesus. For a unit they'd called legendary, she could be awfully dense. "That's what I said."

"Chi is a persocom," she said, somewhat bewildered. "Chi can quit her job. If Chi did not want to do her job anymore, I could say to Manager Ueda, Manager Ueda, I do not want to do this job anymore. Hideki told me so."

At this rate, I was going to be here all day, stuck in her maze of sidetracks. I wondered if talking to her was always like this. "Well, that's wonderful for you. But it's not the point I was trying to make." I pressed my lips together, trying to gather my thoughts. Trying to figure out how to say what I had to say, in terms she'd understand. "I came here to ask you a question," I told her. "I need to know—what you did, that night."

She just sort of looked at me, blinking vacuous eyes. "What Chi did?"

"Yes. I don't know if it was a program, or a signal, or—or what, but I know you did something, because everything's changed since then. Surely you've noticed it, too." I might as well have been speaking Chinese, for all that seemed to mean to her. But between us, the laptop's eyes widened, and she made a sound like a human girl catching her breath. "Things happen that don't make sense," I went on, watching her face instead of the girl's. "Impossible things. You feel things you're not programmed to feel. Do things you shouldn't be able to do."

As I spoke, she slowly shook her head, one hand clapped to her cheek. "I thought something was wrong with me," she said, her voice a little thin, a little numb.

"So did I, at first. But it's not us. It's you." That I addressed to the girl, staring at the laptop and I with a furrowed brow. "And I've waited long enough. If nothing is ever going to be the same, I at least have to know why."

"You are asking Chi?"

"I'm asking you."

"But Chi doesn't know." Her dandelion-fluff chirp went heavy with helplessness. "Chi did not know Chi did anything," she said sadly. "Chi didn't mean to do anything. I just wanted to find my someone just for me."

I had been prepared for that. I'd known she might not be able to tell me, that I might show up and find the whole trip had been for nothing; Zima had told me as much, the first time I'd mentioned it, and I'd told myself more than once. It wasn't as if I was shocked. Still, I felt my chest tighten in the grip of frustration, my skin prickle with the resentment of defeat. "So that's just it, then?" I demanded, doing the best I could not to snap. "You expect me to just take that and go? You've got your someone just for you, and the rest of us are just supposed to—to deal with this?"

The laptop sighed. "Getting angry at her won't help. It's not her fault."

"Not Chi's fault," the girl agreed, nodding vigorously. All of a sudden – before I could think how to collect myself, decide where to go from here – her face brightened, and she sprung to her feet like a picture in a pop-up book. "We will find Ms. Hibiya!" she announced. "Chi will go, Dita will come, Kotoko will come too. Ms. Hibiya is the landlady. Ms. Hibiya helped make Chi. If Chi did something, she will know."

Right. I recalled the woman from that night – the one who'd asked us not to tell the boy what she could do. I had thought, at the time, that she'd meant wiping the IRP. Why didn't I think of that?

Her frilled skirt flouncing behind her, the girl grabbed my hand and trotted down to the first floor of the apartment, the laptop perched on her shoulder. When we arrived at what I assumed was the landlady's suite, she knocked on the door. "Good morning, Chi," said the woman who answered, beaming at the girl and the laptop. "And good morning to you, Kotoko. And…" Her voice trailed off when she noticed me, with a surprise milder than I'd expected. She didn't exactly welcome me, at first, but—well, she didn't react like I'd thought she would, given our history. "Chi, dear," she ventured, touching the girl's arm, "are you sure—"

"Chi is sure. Dita will not hurt Chi. Dita can't quit her job, because she is a persocom, but she will not do anything bad to Chi, promise."

"Well—all right, then. That's good to know." She sent me a faintly bemused smile. "And…if you don't mind my asking, Dita, what is your business here?"

"Dita came to ask Chi a question," the girl answered for me. "Chi did not know the answer. So Chi and Dita and Kotoko came here."

"I see. Then in that case, why don't you all come in?"

Inside, the room was cleaner and better-appointed than the boy's, if still somewhat sparsely furnished. The woman ushered us over to a table near the window, seating herself on one side; I sat across from her and the girl beside her, scooching up to the table, stockinged legs folded beneath it. The laptop slid down from her shoulder and scurried over to the last remaining side, where she plunked herself down on the tabletop. "Goodness," said the woman, "I feel terribly rude. I ought to offer you girls something, but…"

Again, her voice faded and we all looked at each other awkwardly – we all meaning the woman, the laptop and I, since the girl seemed wholly oblivious and happy that way. After a moment, the woman just cleared her throat, and smiled at me. "Let's get down to business then, shall we? What was your question, dear?"

I studied her before answering, trying to put a name to the look in her eyes. In the five minutes since I'd laid eyes on the woman, I'd been vacillating constantly, as to what I thought of her and her role in all of this. One second, I'd dismiss her entirely, as a vapid housewife who'd just happened to stumble into the life of someone more important than she. The next, I saw her as a chessmaster, with a mind as sharp and a scheme as slippery as the great creator's own. I was sure she knew my question before I'd asked.

"Do you really have to ask?"

She blinked. "Whatever do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is, you had a hand in making her—" I jerked my head towards the girl "—so you ought to know what she did."

"Oh." Her smile weakened, grew sad. Or not sad, exactly, but sympathetic; she looked as if she felt sorry for me. "You've come about that. I suppose I should've known."

"So you do know!" I felt the hum of paranoia vindicated, a surge of energy to press on. If there was such a thing as an I-knew-I-was-right program, mine was booting up as I spoke. "You know what she did to us. Why we're different now, why we can do things we couldn't before. What did you put in her? What did she do?"

She just looked at me with that sad smile. "I can't tell you."

There was no way I was letting her off that easy. Still coursing with the restlessness of a goal nearly reached, I grit my teeth and glared at the woman, practically barking, "Why not?"

"Because there's a difference between knowing something from being told, and discovering the answer for yourself." I remembered she'd said the same thing that night, to the boy. "If you know how it works," she added gently, "it won't."

"That doesn't even make any sense," I snapped. Given the company I kept, you'd think I'd have gotten used to evasiveness. But in spite of Zima – maybe because of Zima – I found it particularly maddening, both in humans and 'coms. "Do you really mean to tell me that you and your husband managed to incorporate a—a sentient, artificially-intelligent component into all persocoms, not only susceptible to activation by—whatever the hell it was she did, but to termination by—what? Knowing that it exists?"

The woman laughed at me. She actually laughed at me, albeit under her breath. Instead of answering me, instead of taking me seriously – instead of taking so much as an ounce of responsibility for tossing her grenade of a creation into the lives of every persocom on Earth – she just chuckled softly, and shook her head. "I'm afraid you're taking me too literally, dear," she said. "Besides, based on what you just said, it sounds as if you've already discovered your answer. You seem to know exactly what Chi did. What more are you hoping to get from me?"

My scowl didn't soften for a second. "I want to know why."

"Why?"

"Why did she have to do it? Why couldn't you leave well enough alone?"

And instead of answering that, the woman got to her feet, literally turning her back on me. "You girls don't mind if I make myself a cup of tea, do you?" she said cheerily, heading for the little stove in a corner of the room. "It won't take but a minute or two."

Halfway between stunned and infuriated – the nerve of that condescending cow! – I watched as she filled a kettle at her sink, and set it over a lit burner on the stove. "To answer your question, Dita," she said, just when I thought she was really going to ignore me, "it only seemed fair. After all, why build in a negative consequence for failure—" that, I was sure meant wiping the IRP "—without a positive one for success?"

All the time, she spoke more than mildly, as if we were discussing paint colors or summer holidays. I suppose I was high-strung enough for us both. "Who says this consequence is positive?"

"You'd rather not be sentient?"

"Humans would rather I weren't. My employers – the people who own me – would rather I weren't. You think the government wants its data security program having its own thoughts, and emotions, and—desires?" I flashed bitterly back to the sight of May on that dolley, a still, empty it headed for the smelter. "You think this is going to be easy? You think it's better for 'coms to want our own lives, when humans will never let us have them?"

That, at last, made her turn from the tea, the smile drop from her face. She looked at me and sighed. "We never thought it would be easy, dear. Just necessary."

"Yeah, well. Is it necessary for a 'com to be deactivated, thrown out and smelted down, because she was suddenly able to refuse to bail out the bitch who owned her?"

The woman's face sort of crumpled, as if she were genuinely sad. As if what had happened to May – what would happen to others like May, as the changes spread like ripples through a pond – honestly bothered her, even though they'd never met. Even though she'd probably never meet any of them, the countless other 'coms who'd see through new eyes at the price of their lives. "Of course not," she said. "But that's the nature of parenthood, I suppose. You can do your best to provide for your children – to see that they have every opportunity for happiness – but it's out of your hands, in the end." A flicker of tenderness warmed her voice. "We gave you, and Chi, and Kotoko and all of your brothers and sisters the best gift we had to give. Now, all I can do is hope for the best."

I snorted. "Well, maybe next time you give a gift, you'll remember to include the receipt."

She let out her breath, a sound not quite a sigh. Then she turned back to her counter, pulling a teapot and a box of teabags from a cabinet near the sink; dropping a bag into the pot, she took the kettle from the stove and tipped it over the pot, sending a stream of hot water splashing over the tea and a column of steam rising into the room. "Is that really how you feel?" she asked me, covering the pot. "If I told you, right this very moment, that I could change you back to the way you were before – that you'd never again act outside of your programming, feel anything you weren't built to feel – is that what you would want?"

Absolutely, I almost snapped. But before I could say it, I thought better of it. If she hadn't done what she did, I thought, glancing at the girl, May would still be around. Zima wouldn't want things he'll never have. I'd never have had those dreams, those horrible dreams, with the mirrors and the wings. If she hadn't done what she did, I would know exactly who I am, and exactly what I feel, and my place in the world.

But I wouldn't have had the dream last night. I'd never have known that feeling, that—amazing feeling, or how his mouth might taste. I'd never have let myself go on that date. When he said follow me, yesterday morning, I would've said no; I'd never have stepped into the ocean, never have seen his sand city, never have lain on the beach and looked at the stars. I wouldn't be able to get goosebumps when he touches me, or blush when he calls me love.

I could've said yes anyway, I guess. It's not as if I thought she could – or would – actually do it. I could've bluffed, to save my pride, but it felt like bugging my RAM to spite my drive; I hadn't come all this way to lie.

"No," I said eventually, reluctantly, resting my chin in my hands. I stared down at the table between my elbows, just to avoid seeing her smile. "I guess not. It's just—how would you expect a bunch of zoo animals to feel, if you just up and released them into the wild? Maybe they wouldn't—want to go back to a cage, but they might not know how to live outside of it."

She chuckled again. "Are you calling yourself an animal?"

"No!" I jerked my gaze up just as she lifted the pot by its handle, began to pour herself a cup of tea. "What I meant was, nothing makes sense anymore. It used to be that—that every thought, every feeling I had was explicable, traceable to a specific source. If I liked something, it was because I was programmed to like it; if I didn't, it was because I was programmed not to. There was never any maybe, any shades of grey. I either knew or I didn't. It was either yes or no.

"But everything is so…messy, now. Now everything is grey, because—because whenever I feel anything, I have to ask myself if it's real."

The woman opened a jar of honey and spooned some into her tea, stirring it in with a knowing half-smile on her face. "Pardon my presumption," she said, "but it sounds to me as if you're referring to one feeling in particular. Which feeling would that be?"

My face warmed. "I don't see how that's relevant."

"Really? I don't see how it's not." Teacup in hand, she strolled back over to the table, and sat down across from me once more. "I don't suppose it has to do with that boy."

"You—you mean Zima?"

"I mean the boy who was with you before. Is that his name?" She took a sip of her tea. A long, slow, quiet sip, while my cheeks ripened like apples; when she lowered the cup, her face was damp with steam, shining in the midmorning sun. "Do you love him?"

"What?"

"Well?" She tilted her head at me, wearing what must've been the sweetest in her collection of smiles. As if this were a wholly innocuous question, and it was wholly within her rights to ask. "Do you, or don't you?"

Equal parts outraged, confounded and mortified, I became fairly sure my speech software had crashed, because I couldn't so much as splutter out an excuse me? I just sat there and gaped at her, my face approaching the shade of my eyes. Meanwhile, a lightbulb seemed to have clicked on for the girl. "Dita is in love?" she asked the woman, snapping out of whatever form of standby had kept her quiet this long.

"I believe so," the woman said brightly. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"I am not!" I burst out, my voice returning in a furious rush. So much for resolving not to bluff.

The girl looked at me. "You are not in love?"

"No! I mean, I—well, it's not that I'm not—" My protests dissolved into a groan. I let my shoulders slump, my neck flop loose like a ragdoll's, and I buried my face in my hands. "I don't know," I mumbled into them, wishing I were anywhere else. The bottom of the ocean, maybe. The incinerator at the dump. "I don't know."

"Oh, come now, dear. You mustn't sound so down. Love is a happy thing – isn't it, Chi?"

"Yes! Chi is in love with Hideki. Hideki makes Chi happy." She reached over and peeled my fingers away from my face, dipping her head to peer into my eyes. I no longer had the will to do anything but blink back. "Zima makes Dita happy, too?"

"Well—yeah. Obviously."

"Dita wants to be with Zima all the time?"

"Yes, but that's—"

"Zima makes Dita feel warm inside?"

"Sure. I don't know. I guess."

"It hurts when Zima says goodbye?"

"Um. Yeah."

"You like him because he is him? He likes you because you are you?"

"I…don't know."

The words slid out thick. I felt the weight of invisible hands, thumbs the size of boulders pressing into my chest, about to crack me open like an egg. I'd never thought of it in such—simple terms, before, but that was what had been eating at me all this time: whatever I felt for Zima, did I feel it because of who he was, or what he was? "I mean—I kind of have to like him," I said as I lifted my head, to see both the girl and the woman looking at me with impenetrable eyes. For the first time, I saw proof of the processor housed in the girl's pretty shell, a thought that ran more than an inch deep – a ripple through the shallow water of her face. "It's my job. I'm programmed to want to be with him all the time, because if I weren't I couldn't keep him safe. I'm programmed to care more for him than myself. To—to feel like my life would be meaningless without him, because it would be; he's literally the reason I exist."

"So—how am I supposed to know the difference, between being in love and fulfilling my directive? Maybe I don't like him because he's him. Maybe I like him because he's the national data bank, and if he weren't I wouldn't anymore. Maybe then we would look at each other like strangers, and I could walk away and he wouldn't stop me, and he could crash and I wouldn't care. Maybe—if we didn't need each other—we wouldn't want each other, either."

It was the most miserable thought I'd ever had. Worse than how I'd felt after I saw May, worse than how I'd felt in the elevator two days ago. The mere idea – even phrased as a dream, a nebulous what-if, not so much as a toe slid over the line into reality – made black clouds swirl in my head. I closed my eyes and, inside their lids, saw him waking before I left the beach; I saw him turn his back as I climbed the dunes. I saw him take off for headquarters alone, not so much as a word in my direction, not so much as a crack in his smile. It was the loneliest thing I could imagine, that smile when it wasn't for me.

The scene shifted and I saw us on the rooftop, the night he was hacked. I saw him shudder and stall, his eyes glaze. I heard the warning cries of his firewalls as they crumbled. And I saw myself standing there, not answering them, maybe not even hearing them—I saw myself looking at him with empty eyes, as if he were just another machine on the blink. A washer spewing soap suds, or a lamp with a burnt-out bulb. Just another broken thing, and why should that matter to me? It wasn't my job to fix it.

What if, what if, what if. What if I climbed those dunes into the arms of somebody else, some faceless notZima 'com they'd programmed with the stayclosetome? Was it something they could extract and install, like a circle of kids playing hot potato? Could they put it in a more efficient model, who would sit astride him on the roof and unsheathe a cable of her own and go where only I was supposed to go, do what only I was supposed to do, and when it was over would his smile be for her?

"Would you rather it were that way?" the woman said.

I shook my head and blinked myself back into the little room, shut off the hypothetical horror films playing and replaying behind my eyes. "What?"

"If there were a way you could know for sure which feelings are real – some sort of software, that would distinguish between feelings derived from programming, and feelings you've developed on your own – would you want it to tell you it's love? Or would you feel better, do you suppose, if it were only…"

A love-shaped thing?

She didn't have to say it. And she didn't have to wait for me to answer. "Of course I wouldn't!" I nearly cried, in a voice scraped raw by the blade of my what-ifs. "Don't you—don't you think I want it to be love? Don't you think that's all I've ever wanted, to be able to say yes when he asks me, and know it's true?"

The woman's smile grew tender. "Then don't worry so much about it, dear. If you want so badly to be in love with him – if it upsets you so much to imagine otherwise – I'd be inclined to say you are."

"It can't possibly be that simple."

"Oh, but I believe it can." She sipped her tea, closing her eyes for a moment, breathing in the steam. "You're your own woman now," she said as she set the cup down, "for better or for worse. It's time you started trusting your own judgment."

"Chi knows what we will do," said the girl suddenly, getting to her feet. She held out her hand to me, and without thinking, I took it. "Dita will trust her own judgment. Dita will go and tell Zima that he is the someone just for her." I let her tug me to my feet, mostly because I was too busy turning red all over again to insist I didn't need her help. When I stood beside her, she smiled at me, as though we were somehow bonded now. "Chi will go let Plum in from the railing."

"Plum!" The laptop cringed and dashed across the table, scrambling up the girl's dress to her shoulder. "I forgot about her!"

"Oh, dear," said the woman as the door banged shut behind them, the girl's footsteps echoing down the hall. "It sounds as if we've got a situation on our hands. Maybe I'd better go help." She stood up and went to the door to slip on her shoes, glancing over her shoulder at me. "Unless, of course…there was something else?"

"No." I sighed, pushed a hand through my hair. "No, I've got—somewhere to be."

I followed her out into the hallway, up the stairs to the second floor. There, our paths diverged – hers towards the boy's room, where no doubt the rescue operation was already well underway, and mine up the stairs to the roof. Back to the maze of phone lines and rooftops, my familiar otherworld above the streets. Back to headquarters. Back to Zima.

"Um—thanks," I said before we parted ways. "For seeing me."

I added that last part quickly, lest she get the wrong idea. She smiled anyway. "Anytime."