"We’re sleeping together. If something happens to you during this, they’re going to ask me about it."
You can do better than this, man, one of his friends had said. Maybe, he said. He’d made playlists for her, sending them in casual emails. The sex had gotten better. Way better. It had been amazing this evening, so amazing he’d assumed she might be leaving him or just preparing him for some bad news when she started to pull at the wires.
She liked astronomy, she’d told him. She liked science fiction. She liked living what had once been science fiction. She could seem perfectly normal when she wanted to. It was part of the point. She loved music.
He stomped off and opened a bottle of wine, poured out two glasses and returned, offering her one. "If you’re going to do this you should probably be drunk."
"The nanowire structures prevent any influence from alcohol."
"Humor me."
"I don’t have time."
He drank down both glasses of wine.
By that time she had accumulated a tiny, neat stack of coiled wires, and was beginning to work on the other arm. The one that wasn’t.
"Come to bed," he said.
"No."
"I’m going to bed."
She was usually the one to lead them both to bed. She monitored his heart rate—it was automatic, she explained; part of her enhanced senses, part of her training—and probably other things as well. She knew precisely how tired, how stressed he was. How happy he was. How drained he was. How everything he was. It couldn’t just be the heartbeats; it had to be something else. She knew when he needed to sleep.
She never knew when he just needed the touch of her skin. Both skins.
"Sleep well."
"Can you just tell me why?"
"I am trying not to be lost."
He’d never taken a picture of her. Never asked for any of the pictures she had of him. Of them. She wasn’t going to change, after all. He would change. He might lose her. He didn’t need pictures of that.
She had a million images of him, a trillion, saved in her wires.
"You’re pulling wires out of your arm. How much more lost can you be?"
"Sleep well."
"Fuck you."
He went to bed, but not to sleep.
When he finally got up, hours later, to hunt down coffee, she was still in his living room, sitting quietly on the floor. Her left arm—the one that was entirely, completely, not real, even though it looked like an arm, moved like an arm, felt like an arm—was neatly beside her on the floor, as was her right leg. He had no idea how she was keeping herself seated upright. Five small coils of wire were stacked in front of her in a neat line. She had always been neat. Always. It was one of the things he most hated about her.
"My neural pattern synapses are failing," she said.
"I need coffee."
She’d detached her leg and her arm and put it on the floor. He needed a lot more than coffee, but he needed the coffee first.
"If no one’s arrived in two hours, you may need to call 911."
"God, you think?"
"They have probably already been alerted. There are—warning systems for something like that."
"So the fucking military is going to come here."
"No," she said quietly. "Just my employers."
Fuck these coffee pods. How the hell was he fucking supposed to get them into the machine before he’d had his coffee. And what the fuck was the deal with having to put in two pods for the damn coffee, three pods for the milk. She always asked for just one milk, but he liked his creamy, milky, sugary. Girly, he told himself, laughing that she took her coffee blacker than his. His fingers were shaking. His whole body was shaking.
"… illegally downloaded…"
His hands were covered in the sticky syrup from the coffee pods. Damn it. He went over to the kitchen sink, turned both taps on, hard, put his hands under the water. She kept talking. Fucking coffee.
"… saved in the wires…"
He kept the water running even after he pulled his hands away from the sink and put five more pods in the coffee maker. He pulled out three pods for her, putting them on the counter. Idiot. She wouldn’t be able to lift the cup. Fucking coffee. It took forever to brew. He needed a new machine. He pulled out the cup, took a sip, turned off the water.
He wasn’t sure she’d even noticed he was gone.
"I do not want you to be lost."
If he could have, he would have tossed her out just then for that. But he knew her remaining leg and arm, though original and organic, were enhanced. Could still break every bone in his body. God, he knew. His memory chose that moment to remind him of just how he knew. He felt sick.
"Please."
A sharp knock on the door.
She had never begged him. Never. Not even when he’d gotten drunk two months ago and begged her, begged her to tell him what she wanted from him in bed, tell him everything. Everything she could tell him that wasn’t wrapped up in some damn security agreement. She looked up at him, flickered her glance at the neat piles of wires, then up at him again, her eyes wide, blank. And then empty. Gone.
He opened the door.
The removal—he thought of other terms, repressed them—was swift, quiet. They handed him a few papers that he immediately tossed into the recycle shaft. No goodbyes, no tears. He’d had plumbers come by with more drama. They did not ask about the wires. He did not tell.
He hadn’t even needed to call anyone.
Friends.
When the email arrived from her, three weeks later, he almost deleted it.
It was almost certainly spam. Almost. Someone had hacked into her account, or her employers were using this as one last attempt to set up an interview with him. (He’d said no at least six times already; their last missive had assured him that legal measures would be necessary.) It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her. He could still see her, her parts detached and on the floor, the neat rolls of wires before she was taken away to be—what? Melted? Reused? Buried? She’d said something. He hadn’t done a damn thing. Hadn’t listened. Hadn’t heard.
He’d lost her.
He hadn’t had much to lose.
He’d put the wires up on a shelf in the living room, where he could touch them, to remind himself just why he needed to forget her, to forget everything about her.
His chest hurt. He clicked open the email.
I should have let you help.
He placed his head in his arms for a long time.
N.
Six hours later, the wires were out of his house.
A month later, he told himself he’d forgotten her. Forgotten everything. Especially forgotten the image of her sitting on his floor, pulling out the wires from her arms, pulling out the things—he was not going to remember that email, not going to think about it—where she’d downloaded every fucking memory of them both. He’d moved on. Already put up a new profile on dating sites. Had signed up for kempo lessons. Was thinking about getting a dog.
He was on his third drink of the night when the knock came on the door. He ignored it. The knock came again. And again. He swore. One call from the neighbors and he’d be right back talking to authorities again. Damn it.