"Don't worry. It may surprise you to know that there are some humans who can be rational about this whole thing. Only one clade from your model that went weird, and they're in another state. I'm not scared." She smiled. "I'm Melissa, by the way."
"Am…" Don't give her your real name, you idiot! "Amanda."
Melissa shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, Amanda."
Together, they tugged the rolling jugs up a little rise in the road and into a campsite set far off from the others. Melissa explained that these sites were intended for RVs a long time ago, but that people had stopped buying them when they got too expensive to maintain. "We greened ours, but the thing sucks off the battery faster than a Tijuana–" Melissa stopped abruptly. "Well. Pretty fast, anyway. You know?"
"Sure," Amy said, though she really didn't.
The RV itself looked big enough to drain several batteries at once. It was all sharp angles and blocky shapes, not like the new trucks that looked like they'd been sculpted from marshmallow. Beside it sat a sandy-haired man in a lawn chair under an awning, reading something on a glowing scroll that reminded Amy uncomfortably of her prison guard. He clutched a beer in his other hand.
"You hear about this missing submarine?" he asked, not looking up. "Damnedest thing."
"I brought home a stray," Melissa said. "Amanda, this is Rick. Rick, Amanda. Amanda's boyfriend – wait, was it a boy?"
"Um… yes."
"Right. Well, like they say, assumptions make an ass out of u and me. Anyway, he's being a real jackass because of that whole failsafe thing, so she's going to be spending some time with us until he cools down."
Rick put the scroll down and looked from Amy to his wife. "Is this because I wouldn't buy you a puppy?"
"Deal with it, bookworm."
Amy put her hands up. "You don't have to–"
"Just do as she says," Rick said. "Trust me. It's easier in the long run."
"I heard that," Melissa said from inside the RV. "Now will you top up the water tank, please?"
"See what I mean?" Rick downed the last of his beer and put it on the ground. He stood. He looked vaguely athletic, standing up – broader across the shoulders than Amy remembered her dad being. He nodded at the RV. "Go ahead on in. Melissa can show you where everything is."
Rick looked at the water barrels, then into the trees. Only now did Amy notice the total absence of either fire or ashes, or even the drying clothes and ice chests and speaker sets that she'd seen at the other campsites. The site looked so clean, by comparison. Rick and Melissa hadn't been here long enough to spread out, or create much waste.
Something's wrong.
Amy glanced at the RV. Its door yawned open, drifting almost shut in a hot breath of breeze before opening again, briefly exposing the cramped spaces within. They would have an interface in there. She imagined thumbing in the numbers and letters and hearing her parents' voices. Hadn't her mom always said that if Amy were ever in trouble, she would drop everything and come get her? That it didn't matter what time it was or how far apart they were, she would still show up? Charlotte drilled it into Amy's mind before she started school. No matter what, if Amy was scared or hurt or if one of the human kids got mean, she could always call and come home. "That's true now and it'll be true when you have your own daughter," her mom had said. "There's no such thing as a bad time for you to call me."
"I can't," Amy said.
"Sorry?" Rick asked, frowning.
"I can't," Amy repeated, stepping away from the RV.
"You sure about that, now?" Rick asked, almost like he knew she was lying.
Amy forced herself to nod. "Yes. I'm sure." She ducked her head. "Thanks for the offer. I have to be going, now."
"Come back anytime," he said.
Amy had already turned around and found the road. She paid little attention to her direction or how long she walked. Instead, she watched her white prison slippers slapping the black asphalt, its progress occasionally broken by treacherous roots or lightning forks once split by earthquakes, as she moved farther and farther away from Rick and Melissa's RV. Maybe she couldn't trust Javier with her cash, but he was right: her parents' tubes probably were under surveillance. And she couldn't involve strangers in this – especially nice strangers.
"You have a nice pout?" Javier asked when he returned to the campsite. He'd been gone by the time Amy had made it back. She spent the next hour trying to absorb more sunlight and quiet the hunger still whining through her bones.
"I wasn't pouting."
He smiled. "That lower lip of yours is telling me a different story."
Amy folded her arms. "Where were you?"
Javier lightly tossed Junior in the air and caught him. Briefly, Amy worried about Javier's missing thumb, but his fingers looked just as capable as ever. "Playground."