Maybe a half hour under the water. Maybe longer.
It didn’t matter. She was clean, and she floated on the bed.
Kerwen’s voice came up from memory. Sisters. It was a word that she had never thought would have meaning for her. She wasn’t sure exactly what it meant now. But there was a weight to it that she had never known. She’d had friends—well, she had a friend. Blip. She’d had pets. And now the bots of the Ecology—whatever they were to her, she was not certain.
But… Sisters.
She tried the word out, muttering softly, “Sisters.”
From the door, the tiny voice of Pigeon spoke. “Don’t believe them.”
Syn sat up and pulled the loose comforter over her naked body. Pigeon stood in the closed room. Syn hadn’t heard the door open. She hadn’t heard it close. She hadn’t heard the girl enter or breathe or step or anything.
“What are you doing in here?” Syn asked.
Pigeon put her hand on the door’s lock and flipped it open. “I just thought you should know.” She began to step out.
Syn leaped from the bed and slammed the door shut, blocking the thin girl’s exit. “Know what?”
Pigeon showed no fear and no worry. “Dinner is being brought out. You’re expected.”
“Is that what you came to tell me?”
Pigeon put her hand on the door knob. “Please, I must return.”
“Who are you?” Syn glanced at her own hand and at the hand of girl across from her. “Why do you look like me?”
Pigeon shook her head. “It’s not my place. Please.” Her eyebrows narrowed, and she bit her lower lip. Worry. The girl wasn’t frightened of Syn. But she was afraid of the others. Neci, perhaps. Taji, likely.
Pigeon opened the door and stepped through.
Syn mumbled, “I’ll be right there.”
Pigeon looked back and mouthed, “Don’t trust them,” before shutting the door.
Syn stood there alone, still dripping. A shiver ran through her, and she wasn’t sure if it was the cold air and her damp body or the creepy little copy of herself.
Perhaps both.
29
THE QUEEN OF OLORUN
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Syn’s expectation for family dinners were formed from movies. The father would sit at one end. The mother at the other. The dog sniffed between the children’s feet in hopes that one would start feeding him under the table. The kids would find subtle ways to jab at each other. What started as a still, awkward conversation would slowly grow to bickering and then an outright fight. Ultimately, one of them would stalk off from the dinner table. Usually, the teenager fulfilled this role, while the rest of the family stayed quiet until they heard the conclusive slamming of the bedroom door. Oh, there were other versions. In some, there would be shenanigans. The dinner wouldn’t be fully cooked. In one comedy, the turkey had come back to life and flapped around the kitchen, scattering feathers everywhere. In the more serious ones, there would be undertones of murder and rage. Perhaps someone would hint that they were going to brutally kill the other while they slept. Or maybe they’d suggest that they had deep levels of resentment for something that had happened far in the past and that only part of the family knew. Whatever the scenario, the dinner table was always the nexus of drama in the films.
Even though she had studied this scene countless times in movies while sitting in the darkened theater, Syn had never expected to actually experience a family dinner and had no clue how to act.
“No! That’s part of your problem. Not mine. I didn’t touch the cat at all when it snuck in the room.” Taji leaned back and laughed.
“What was the name of that cat?” Neci asked, picking through the charred meat in front of her.
The food wasn’t spectacular, but it was good and warm. The plates were clean. This wasn’t the spread Syn had seen in the movies. There was some type of meat that had been charred on the outside. There were some leaves chopped up as a vegetable. Were the round things cookies? Or crackers? She couldn’t tell from sight alone.
It didn’t matter. It was a dinner. With sisters.
Kerwen chewed and, between gulps of water, answered, “Cosmos?”
Pigeon whispered, “That was the gray one.”
“Oh, ya! That was the one you made me bury cause you thought it was dead!” Kerwen said.
Neci shook her head. “It looked dead.”
“Up until the part I started putting dirt on it. Woke up fast and scared me to death.”
“What was the name of the one that kept sneaking back in?” Neci said. She directed her question at Kerwen and Taji but ended it with a slight nod toward Pigeon.
Without any response, Pigeon pushed her chair back, picked up the jug of water and walked over to Neci. She took the other girl’s cup, filled it, then walked back and sat back down.
As this happened, Kerwen waved her fork in the air. “Docile. We had named that thing Docile!”
Neci smiled. “Yes. That was it. Docile.”
Pigeon picked up her fork and speared a piece of meat. “It was a sweet cat.”
“It had snuck its way in and pretended to be part of the rest of the cats,” Neci explained, “I’m still not sure how long it had been living here.”
“At least a week,” Kerwen took a gulp of water.
“Pretending to be normal. Pretending to be something it wasn’t.” Neci finished the last bit and leaned back in the chair. She smiled at Syn and then glanced at Syn’s plate. “You seem to not be hungry.”
Syn looked at the meat in front of her. She was hungry. She was aching of hunger. But she was distracted by the moment. Real people. Real conversations. “I’m hungry. I just…”
“Oh. There’s no insistence. You are free to eat or not,” Neci twirled her fork in the air, then stabbed it in Syn’s direction. “You seem a little shy.”
Syn stammered, “I just…”
“You just want an explanation for all this,” Neci waved around her. “For each of us?” She pointed her fork at each of the others around the table.
Syn nodded. “Yes.”
“Any specific question you’d like to start with?” Neci asked.
Syn fought with what to say. So many questions. Why do you all look like me? Where did you come from? How long have you been living like this? Were there others? Where are your companion bots? Where is Blip?