‘Jane, I don’t like this. You don’t know this man at all. You don’t know if you can trust him.’
‘What else are we gonna do? We need fuel, and I need to not get caught. Or killed. Or thrown back in a factory. Whatever it is they’d do.’ She took another bite of stew. She was so sick of dog. Didn’t matter how she cooked it. ‘Besides, he wants out just as bad as we do. His life is shit, Owl. It’s as shit as mine is. Worse, maybe, because he’s still stuck in there. I’d be a giant asshole if I just took his fuel and left him behind.’ She sipped her cup of water, savouring it. Clean and cool. That, at least, she wasn’t sick of. ‘And, I mean, he seems nice. He can’t talk right. He wrote down most of his side of the conversation. But I think he’s nice.’
‘Nice.’
‘Yeah. He has a nice face.’
There was a faint whirring as Owl’s cameras zoomed in. ‘How nice of a face?’ Owl asked.
Jane paused in mid-bite, rolled her eyes, and shot the closest camera a look. ‘For fuck’s sake, Owl,’ Jane laughed. ‘Jeez.’
Owl laughed, too. ‘All right, I’m sorry. It was a fair question.’ Owl paused, her face thoughtful. ‘How was it seeing another person again?’
‘I don’t know. Weird. Good, once I realised he was okay. Mostly weird.’ She scratched her ear. ‘I was scared.’
‘Understandably. You’ve been alone a long time.’
Jane frowned at the screen. ‘No, I haven’t.’
Owl smiled in that warm, quiet way she did sometimes. ‘You know if you bring him, it’ll change the fuel calculations.’
‘I know. I thought of that. That’s fine. Trust me, they’ve got plenty.’
‘Food and water, too. You’ll need to ration them differently.’
Jane nodded, scraping as much as she could from the sides of the bowl. The remnants filled her spoon. Almost. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed, taking her last bite. She let the taste of food – boring as it was – linger until it faded into nothing. ‘We’re figuring on a thirty-seven-day trip, yeah?’
‘That was how long it took us to get here, yes.’
Jane leaned back into the couch, sucking the empty spoon, pressing her tongue into its cold curve. Thirty-seven days. They couldn’t do it on mushrooms alone. She’d need a lot of dog, but they were getting harder and harder to find. Maybe Laurian had access to food, too. She remembered the meal drinks back at the factory. Did he eat those? Maybe, maybe not, but the workers he watched over definitely did. What was in those things, anyway? Chock-full of vitamins and protein and sugars, probably. Maybe he could snag some of those. She felt like she’d be asking too much, but then again, she was bringing him home. A few meals for the road was not an unreasonable thing.
SIDRA
The shutters in Tak’s shop were closed, and the door was locked, too, but he did not look comfortable. He stared at the scrib being offered to him as if it might bite. ‘You’re serious,’ he said.
Sidra gave the scrib an encouraging little wiggle. The tethering cable attached to the back of the kit’s head bobbed in tandem. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’ll be easy. I’ll talk you through every step.’
Tak rubbed his eyes. ‘Sidra, if I fuck this up—’
‘It would be bad, yes. But I don’t think you will. I know exactly what to do.’
‘Why aren’t you asking Pepper to do this?’
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she said. ‘I can’t give you a clear answer, because I don’t know. I’m more comfortable asking you.’
‘She’s a tech, at least.’
‘Yes, but she’s not a comp tech, and she’s never been to school. She’s not fluent in Lattice. I am.’ Sidra made the kit look as reassuring as she could manage. ‘Tak, it’ll only take an hour. Maybe two. You’re acting like this is surgery.’
‘It is surgery. Explain to me how this isn’t surgery.’
Sidra moved the kit closer to him. ‘Look,’ she said, pushing the scrib his way. Crisp lines of code lay waiting on screen, a small snippet of everything she was made of. ‘Right there. Those six lines. That’s where we start. I will tell you where to cut them, what to enter in their place, and where to go from there.’
Tak’s cheeks simmered with indecisive grey. ‘I still don’t get why you can’t do this. You can tell me how to alter your code, but you can’t change it yourself.’
‘That’s right. I can’t edit my own code.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t edit my own code. That’s a hard rule.’
‘But you’re sitting here telling me to do it. Telling me how to do it. The end result is the same. That . . . doesn’t make sense.’
‘Sure it does. Possessing knowledge and performing an action are two entirely different processes.’ The kit smiled at him. ‘After we make these changes, you will never have to do this again. I’ll be able to edit my code by myself, if I want to. I just have to get a few protocols out of the way first, and for that, I need you.’ She set the scrib in the kit’s lap and took Tak’s hand. ‘I did a simulation of this exact thing for class, with a copy of my own code.’
Tak’s eyes widened. ‘You didn’t tell them that, did you?’