‘I don’t understand the question. What do you mean?’
‘I mean today. I was going to finish cleaning the scrap off the hull. That was my task. Can I do that in the rain?’ The water was coming down very fast now, falling in great big lines.
‘Yes, but I suggest staying inside today. The rain here can be quite heavy, and wet clothes aren’t fun. Plus, wet scrap is slippery. I don’t want you to fall.’
‘But . . .’ Jane started feeling wrong. ‘I don’t have another task.’ She needed a task. Without a task, her thoughts went places she didn’t want them to go. She didn’t want another bad behaviour day. She wanted to be okay today. She wanted to be okay, and if she didn’t have a task, then—
‘I have an idea,’ Owl said. ‘And actually, I think it would be a good idea even if it wasn’t raining. Jane, you need a day off.’
Jane blinked. ‘A day off of what?’
‘Of work. All Human beings need to take a break from work sometimes. You need to let your body rest, and your mind, too.’
No. No no no. She needed a task. ‘I don’t want to do nothing,’ she said, remembering that first morning in bed, when she’d tried to just lie there, and the couple days after that, when she couldn’t get out of bed at all and it was a real real bad time.
‘That’s not what I’m suggesting,’ Owl said. ‘I’ve been going through my old files, and I found something I think might be fun. It’s not a real task, but it will let you rest without doing nothing.’
Jane scrunched up her mouth. That sounded okay.
‘I’ll get it ready. I suggest eating your mushrooms before they get cold, then putting the wagon outside.’ Owl’s face did a happy wiggle inside the screen. ‘Oh, I hope you like it.’
SIDRA
Sidra settled into the piece of furniture beside Tak’s tool cabinet. It was an eelim, a sort of responsive chair that moulded itself around the body of the person using it. Sidra was fascinated as she watched the white material shift around the kit. She fought the urge to stand the kit up just so she could sit down and watch the eelim move again. But Tak was preparing his tools, and that was fascinating, too. He had a fresh pipe of tallflower, a full cup of mek, a gloved pair of hands. He loaded cartridges of colour bots into the industrial-looking needle pen, which looked a bit frightening, even in the hands of one so friendly.
‘It doesn’t use magnets, does it?’ Sidra asked, eying the hefty machine as calmly as she could.
It was an odd thing to ask, she knew, but Tak seemed to take it as nothing more than quirk. ‘Nope, just pumps and gravity. Why, you have implants you’re worried about?’
‘No,’ Sidra said, glad the question hadn’t been more specific.
‘Well, even if you did, no magnets here. But it is going to hurt. You know that, right?’
Sidra chose her words carefully. ‘I know that tattoos hurt, yes.’ That much was true. She left out the part about not being able to feel pain. She’d practised wincing the night before. Blue had said she’d got it down.
Tak loaded the final cartridge with a decisive snap. He lit his pipe and inhaled deeply, ribbons of smoke curling out his flat nostrils. He gestured over his scrib, bringing up the image he and Sidra had worked on so intently together. A crashing wave, teeming with all manner of sealife. The image moved, just as it would on the kit’s skin, fins and tentacles gently, gently pulsing forward and back, no faster than a sigh. The movement was noticeable, but not distracting. It’d take the bots a full minute to cycle through the image. ‘A subtle bit of background action,’ as Tak had put it. Sidra looked at it hungrily, trying to imagine how it would look on her housing. Her pathways practically vibrated with excitement.
Tak noticed her eagerness. ‘You ready to do this?’
Sidra leaned the kit back into the eelim. ‘I’m ready.’
Tak sat in his workchair, dragging it close as he could to her. He disinfected the surface of the kit’s skin with a small spray bottle, then shaved the fine hair away with a hand razor. Sidra hadn’t realised that would be part of the process. That hair would never grow back, and having a bald patch on the kit’s upper arm would look odd. She made a note to shave the rest of the kit’s arms at home. It would be less obvious that way.
Tak tapped the pen on. It was louder than Sidra expected, though maybe only due to its closeness. The needle touched the kit’s arm; she directed the kit to inhale softly. Tak pushed the needle through the skin; Sidra closed the kit’s eyes. The needle buzzed forward. She inhaled again, a little sharper, a little shorter, just as she and Blue had practised.
Tak pulled the needle back. ‘That’s how it feels. Is that okay?’