In the darkness, the wailing overpowered every other sound. All motion was relative to her: her pained breathing, her minute twitches, her faint heartbeat. When she refused to speak, the only thing left was the wailing, primal and indefinite.
And all at once, it ended.
The colorful covers of their magazine library shined at Anne Heathers with vibrant pizzazz, but each was the same. Dull, unimaginative, boring. She returned the latest copy of Vogue off her phone and leaned back in the waiting room chair. There was nothing else for her to do while her android assistant was being serviced. “Routine checkups” they called them, but every single time, something else seemed to pop up and the service would drag on. Heathers sighed before returning to her phone to check her email.
A hundred more telemarketers had managed to sneak past her spam filter in the last hour. She had thoroughly engrossed herself in deleting her pointless emails when a new patron walked into the Eon Corporation Repair Centre waiting room.
The woman was in her early twenties, commanding, and she almost instantly captured the attention of every person in the room. It took Heathers quite a few seconds to realize that a young, brown-haired man had followed her.
“Jeremy, I don’t care what their excuses were on BBC World News,” the woman said. “It’s not morally right and it never will be." Her voice was quiet yet commanding, compelling you to quiet down just to hear her words. They had an unmistakable flow to them, a special tone that was even more dynamic than the way she held herself.
“Carlyle, you know why they do it. They have clear and logical reasons for the changes." Jeremy was quiet for quiet’s sake, much less pompous than his companion was.
Almost as an afterthought, Carlyle turned. With that motion, the whole world seemed to concentrate itself into that moment, and out of it, Carlyle’s gaze landed on Heathers. Carlyle’s eyes lightened, pleasantly amused.
“Jeremy,” she whispered, her voice barely audible, “let’s go talk to her." Carlyle pulled Jeremy over to the waiting area and sat down beside Heathers.
“Hello,” she smiled at Heathers, warm, unmistakably familiar yet unknown.
“Um, hi…” Heathers mumbled, breaking eye contact with the sanguine woman. She busied herself with her email only to see that her next piece of spam concerned discounted cocaine. She frowned, returning her gaze to the mysterious redhead.
“I’m Carlyle. This is Jeremy. Are you waiting for a service?”
At that moment, the illusion fell. Heathers’s eyes widened and she almost choked. “Oh. Well. Yes… Um, I’m Dr. Heathers."
Either Carlyle didn’t notice Heathers’s distress or she didn’t care. The woman leaned in closer, her minty breath mingling with Heathers’s.
“Do you know that your android assistant’s personality is reprogrammable?”
Heathers bounced perhaps half a meter away from Carlyle’s face. “What?” It took her a moment to steady her breathing.
Jeremy adjusted his glasses. “I’m afraid it’s true, Dr. Heathers." This was the first time that he had spoken since they sat down. “The Eon CEO made a public statement on BBC this morning."
“I don’t watch BBC,” Heathers said. She slid her seat back, but not quite as close as before.
“Do you understand the implications of this?” Carlyle continued, softly but passionately. “Eon just admitted to tampering with the base personality of their androids, but they have been messing with us this whole time and we didn’t even know!”
“Yeah, that is disconcerting… wait, what?” Heathers stopped, going over Carlyle’s words in her mind again. “Are you two… androids? Where’s your supervisor?”
“We’re gen8s. We don’t need supervisors,” Jeremy explained.
“I haven't really been reading up with the new regulations,” Heathers admitted.
“And besides, Kay is such a chill dude that he’d probably let us roam even if we were 7s,” Carlyle whispered.
Jeremy frowned. “That’s illegal."
Carlyle ran her hand through her vivid red hair. “Don’t worry about it." She turned back to Heathers, completely captivated by her. “What model is your assistant?”
“My Isidore is a gen5."
Carlyle frowned. “That’s too bad. The leaked documents stated that most of the gen5s have software limiters installed on them."
“Limiters?” Heathers asked, her interested irresistibly piqued.
Jeremy sighed. “They change the range of functionality of the older models to get customers to upgrade."
“We know what upgrade really means,” Carlyle chuckled cynically. “Buy a new android and scrap the old one. It’s as easy as notifying a scrap-yard for a pickup." Her voice uncharacteristically rose in volume.
“I’d never do that to Isidore,” Heathers said quickly. Carlyle almost visibly relaxed.
Suddenly, Heathers’s phone buzzed. Isidore’s “routine check-up” was finally over. “Excuse me,” she said. Carlyle’s smile gave her a sense of confidence and she left her jacket in the sitting area with the two gen8s.
The clerk at the desk reassured Heathers that Isidore’s knees were in fact repaired properly and there was no cause for alarm other than the slightly startling repair bill. When she returned to the waiting area, Carlyle was standing, Heathers’s jacket in hand.
“Oh, thanks,” Heathers said, taking her jacket in her right hand. “This is Isidore. Isidore, meet Carlyle and Jeremy."
“Which one is which?” he asked, his eyes wide and child-like.
Heathers laughed. “This is Carlyle,” she said, pointing, “and this is Jeremy." Isidore looked back and forth between them as if trying hard to commit their names to memory. He nodded.
“I loved talking to you, Dr. Heathers,” Carlyle said. Either she didn’t notice Isidore’s awkwardness or she didn’t care. “Would you like to go out to lunch with us? I’m sure Kay won’t mind paying."
“Kay?” Isidore cut in. “Like Mr. Robert Kay, vice president of marketing at Eon Corporation?”
“Yes, Isidore. He’s our owner,” Jeremy said, smiling for the first time since Heathers had met him. “You’re something special, aren’t you?”
There was a beat, and then Heathers realized they were waiting for her response. “Oh, I would love to go to lunch with you." Something about Carlyle captivated her, and she wanted to know more about the gen8 who belonged to Eon’s VP of marketing yet stood up for android’s rights.
Carlyle rewarded Heathers with another intangible smile. “So it’s set. There’s a quaint lunch place about a block from here…”
“You mean Tucker's?” That was Heathers’s regular lunch place.
“Yeah, that one,” Carlyle said, casually throwing her flaming red hair over one shoulder. “Let’s meet up there." In her eyes was all the hopefulness of the world, concentrated just on Heathers. It was as if Carlyle understood everything about Heathers and yet she accepted her as she was.
“I like lunch,” Isidore proclaimed a little too loud.
The moment Carlyle turned away, something sacred was broken, as if the world had gone back to being lonely, dark, and loud. “Yeah, me too. See you there." She disappeared past the repair center’s revolving door, leaving Heathers with her overactive curiosity on overdrive.
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