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Chapter 4

Stewart was a selfish lover, Marci found out that night. Getting what he wanted, he plucked his clothes off the floor of her bedroom and crept away in the darkness, to conceal what they’d done from their other roommate.

She rolled onto her side after he closed the door and noticed the hollow pit in her stomach. She swore at it. Tried to scare it off with vicious language. Mocked it. Laughed at it. Called it childish names.

Rather than shriveling in shame, the pit grew until it forced her to tears in the darkness.

“Fuck you,” she said aloud, then, remembering that part of her motivation was to create a popular feed, she became as still as a startled deer in the forest. Her face froze and she remained quiet until she felt calm again.

She found her slate on her nightstand. When her eyes were adjusted to its light, she pulled up Ramone’s feed. She wasn’t sure where he was in the actual world: those details were obscured by the Editors, but she got the sense that it was west of her. He could be three hours behind her, and that would explain why he wasn’t in bed yet, it being two in the morning where Marci was.

Nothing was happening. Literally. A song played, but that was it. He sat in his home office—a location Marci was familiar with—and stared at the glowing white screen on his slate. The Editors had chosen a particularly haunting melody for this and the camera panned slowly around him as his eyes seemed to stare blindly at the slate. “What are you doing?” Marci asked, touching the velvet-smooth surface of her slate. The somber voice of the vocalist sang an aching tune that wrenched her heart. 

He blinked. A smile began to tug at his lips. She noticed his dark stubble and involuntarily imagined it brushing roughly against her brow as they embraced. The intimacy of the thought sent a flush through her.
What’s he smiling about?
she wondered, and then answered herself. “Blythe.” 

A new hole appeared in her chest. For the moment it pushed the other emptiness aside, demanding her attention.
You want Ramone,
it said in a mocking tone. “No,” she whispered. “No.”

*****

“This is weird,” Ghosteye muttered. His hands continued to edit though his attention drifted. The night was quiet in Ramone’s office; nothing was happening, so Ghosteye slipped in a gentle song with a mellow crescendo to imply movement. Something was happening inside Ramone’s head.

The bot program that Ghosteye usually turned things over to at night waited to take over, but Ramone was doing something unexpected and alarming: he was staring at his empty slate.

What are you doing?
he asked silently, leaning forward. He moved the main camera closer to Ramone’s face until the man’s eyes were visible. The pupils were dark velvet clouds absorbing green-brown irises almost entirely.

For a moment, the pupils swallowed Ghosteye. He felt as though he was falling in a spiral of night, disoriented and dizzy, clutching at the void around him, sinking toward a pool of black reflections. A shiver passed through him, all but feeling the cold water swallowing him, pulling him deeper into darkness. He jerked his eyes away.

It only lasted a few seconds—the sensation—and it didn’t come to him in words. But his hands froze and he stopped working. The image being broadcast to the feed hadn’t changed. Ramone continued to stare at his slate.

Returning to his senses, Ghosteye shook off the feeling of falling and resumed editing. He worked for only a few more minutes before breathing out a frustrated sigh. He switched control to the bot and sat back for a moment to ponder Ramone.

Something to do with the lawyer? The evidence corroborated that—Ramone’s physiological responses indicated as much: the dilated pupils, the faint smile touching his lips, his seclusion in the office. What? Was he fantasizing about her?

Ghosteye stood and paced the studio, rubbing his chin, thinking.

A poster hanging on the back wall beneath the track lights drew his eyes, and though he resisted looking, he found himself staring at the comically large owl eyes done in an art deco style. The copy surrounding it was in brown and gold letters: “By seeing everything, we free them…” Underneath the large type was contact information in case of suspected breaches or threats.

Sometimes the rationalization made Ghosteye a little queasy. But it was true. The answer wasn’t in more secrecy, more privacy: the answer had always been in eyes everywhere. No more threats to national security, and while they were at it, why not make it entertaining?

*****

Ramone knew it would work. There was a finished prototype in his head, the only place safe from prying Editors and corporations.

A bounce in his step jostled the keys in his pocket as he hurried into Blythe’s office. When he entered and closed the glass door quietly, she stood and went to the window, turning her back to him. He paused. She wanted him there, didn’t she? He rubbed his hands on the front of his corduroys and cleared his throat.

“Have a seat, Ramone.” She didn’t turn. He sat in the leather chair and studied the back of her neck. A few strands of her thick dark hair hung loose from the pony-tail gathered at the nape of her neck. He noticed that her shoulders were narrow and small beneath her white button-down blouse. The thought of how her body would feel against him pushed its way into his mind. He shoved back on the image, but its work was done. His face felt hot.

“Is everything alright?” he finally asked.

At last she turned and went to her black desk chair, self-consciously brushing her hands across her cheeks. “Sorry about that. Everything’s fine.” She avoided eye contact for a few more seconds, busied herself with her slate and shuffled papers around her mahogany desk.

Ramone adjusted his glasses and looked out the window, uncomfortable with the thought that there was something going on outside the little bubble around them. He couldn’t think of her personal life without a twinge of disbelief, though he knew she had a mother and father, a husband—perhaps even children—and a house somewhere, along with a smattering of hobbies. But none of that felt real to him.

“Now then, you have the plans?” she asked, suddenly looking up at him with an air of expectation.

He started, his eyes flicking to her face. All traces of anxiety were gone; she had an unruffled demeanor. “Well, no. That is, I have them, but I can’t give them to you.”

She blinked. “Why not?”

“They’re in my head. I haven’t done a rendering of them. You understand—that is, you do understand, don’t you?” He stared at her with a straight, unmoving expression.
The cameras,
he wanted to say. She returned his gaze steadily.

“I see. How do you expect me to file the patent?”

“If we can write the parts we need to write first—get everything else ready—then we’ll produce the drawings. You see why producing them first is undesirable?”

“Of course.” Her eyes remained still as she said it, but he could tell from the way her shoulder twitched that she wanted to cast a glance around the room, just as he did.

He let out his breath and nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose. “The drawing will be complex, but it should only take us a few hours at the most.”

“I don’t understand, Ramone. How do you know it will work with no prototype?”

He coughed into his fist and looked at his shoes before answering, feeling a confident smile creeping across his face. “Uh, that’s the thing. I know. I’ve seen it built in my head from start to finish. I know how every part fits together and how every part works within the whole. I know it will work.” 

Her eyes glittered as they went from his eyes to his legs and back to his face. He shifted under her scrutiny. “Amazing is the word for it, I suppose. I will have to believe you for now.” She riffled through a stack of papers, then pausing, said, “I thought we would be finishing the application today, but if we can’t do the drawings right now, we’ll have to work on the other sections. I don’t want to waste your time, you know, having you come all the way in here and then getting nothing done.” She gave him an apologetic smile.

“Oh it’s not a waste of time,” he said before he could stop himself. He said it too emphatically. She would know. He cleared his throat and crossed his leg.

“For two hundred dollars an hour, you should be getting something worthwhile from me,” she said without looking up from her slate. Her cheeks turned red.

Why is she blushing? Do her rates embarrass her?
The word
rates
echoed in his mind, a Rosetta stone.
She thinks she just called herself a prostitute.
He smothered a smile.
Pretend you didn’t catch it.
He suddenly wished he was more confident. Smoother. He wished he could adopt a personality that allowed him to do something with what she just said—comfort her, or make a joke, or . . . anything. Instead he was the sort of awkward fellow who resorted to ignoring it.

If he could trade in his personality for one that didn’t struggle in social situations, he could also ask her in an offhand way what had been bothering her when he arrived. Then, depending on what it was, he could offer comfort, his shoulder, advice, or sympathy. Instead he was glad she steered the conversation away from that topic.

“Ready?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes, are you?” he asked. The question baffled her. It was so unlike him, he guessed.

She blinked rapidly, began to say something, then laughed. “I’m always ready. Aren’t I?”

“I don’t know, are you?” he smiled. He had no idea what he was doing. Breaking out of his comfort zone? Trying to disarm her? For a moment he felt the startling sensation that he was not in his body, that he was watching from a distance.

She put her pen down. “Ramone,” she said. “Is everything ok?”

He wanted to explain himself. He wanted to make her understand that she could drop the professional front and surrender, be friendly like she’d been the other night at the coffee shop. That he could be whatever she thought he was. He didn’t want her to become scared just because he wasn’t doing what she expected. He wanted to
grow
for another person.

But what about Sue?

Once upon a time the two of them grew and changed for each other, adapting to what the other needed while stepping back when breathing room was necessary for some new sprouting branch of personality or alteration of opinions. For five years now they’d been treading water. Maybe it was the nanocameras and the invasion of their privacy, but maybe it wasn’t.

He chuckled and nodded, closing his eyes, crawling back into his shell. “Yes, sorry. I was—I was just horsing around. I’m sorry. I never do that.”

Blythe laughed. “So that’s what that was.” Ramone rubbed his forehead, stared at the ground, and wished he’d never tried to change himself, even for only a few seconds. “I liked it.”

“What?”

“Horsing around. I mean, maybe we need to focus on that, get you to loosen up just a bit. But I can work with that.”

Chapter 5

Marci planned to duck out of her business ethics class to watch Ramone’s meeting with Blythe. The auditorium was huge and because she sat in the back, leaving wouldn’t draw much attention. The majority of her classmates stared down at their desks, tapping notes into their slates with their fingertips, glancing up at the droning professor occasionally. He droned in Marci’s opinion. Everyone else seemed to find him entertaining. Maybe it was the subject that didn’t spark her interest.

A large flat-screen floated behind the short, squat figure of the professor at the front of the auditorium. He wore a tiny microphone on the collar of his T-shirt and moved in front of the glowing blue screen, controlling images on it with his own slate. “So then,” he said, as Marci gathered her things—one thing really, her slate; her sunglasses she kept on her head—and shoved them into her backpack. “Who said, ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’” The quote appeared on the screen behind him along with a hand-drawn portrait.

The hand of some over-achiever on the front row shot into the air and its owner began speaking before the professor could even call on them. “Adam Smith!”

“Right,” the professor said, turning and pointing at the person in possession of such a brilliant mind on the front row.

“Honestly,” Marci said quietly to the guy sitting next to her. “This class has got to be the most boring one in the entire universe.”

He smirked and shook his head. “I don’t even know why you’re a business major, Marci.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Have to prepare to take over daddy’s company when he dies, right?” She laughed, zipping up her pack.

“And who are the butcher, the brewer, and the bakers of our day?” the professor continued. A dozen other hands shot up around the auditorium. “Shout them out, no need to be shy.”

“I am
out
of here. I have some business with a butcher and a candlestick maker to attend to,” she said sarcastically to her classmate as the room erupted with exclamations of other modern professions.

“Whatever
that’s
supposed to mean,” he said, tilting a figurative top-hat at her.

Marci laughed and hurried down the row and up to the exit before the class quieted down. Once outside, she threw her jacket down on the grass of the quad and lay in the sun, using the bulk of her backpack to shade her slate.

The two feeds merged into one during the meeting, giving the program more variety of camera angles. Marci guessed each person had about three cameras with them at all times—more for the really popular subjects.

On the screen, Ramone closed his eyes and apologized for being weird. Marci smiled. She’d seen this kind of thing in the labs of the engineering departments. The boys were confident and arrogant around each other, throwing out sweeping arguments, battling verbally about operating systems, etymology, and robotics. Or whatever. But as soon as a girl was present, they stuttered, hemmed and hawed, and shut their eyes for long periods of time in a move reminiscent of an ostrich burying its head in the sand. It was hilarious, if not endearing.

Blythe laughed, “So
that’s
what that was.” Ramone’s eyes were still closed; he didn’t see Blythe’s expression soften. Marci’s heart jumped on his behalf. Blythe said, “I liked it.”

Ramone’s eyes opened. “What?”

She said something really promising then. “Horsing around. I mean, maybe we need to focus on that, get you to loosen up just a bit. But I can work with that.”
Finally,
Marci thought for the hundredth time.

She wanted this for them. She did. Still, a part of her felt empty about it. It felt like losing something precious.

Ramone seemed uncomfortable, like he didn’t know how to proceed. Blythe apparently sensed it and proceeded to work on the patent thing.

Get on with it,
Marci thought, bored with the business talk. After an hour of paperwork somehow made less boring by the Editors’ insertion of a muted soundtrack and camera work that highlighted the little telling gestures between them, plus the sparkling, almost overdone effects, Blythe stood as though to dismiss Ramone. She glanced at the elegant silver watch on her wrist and walked around her desk. As she handed Ramone a sheaf of papers—papers! She always laughed when people used real paper; they were explanations about how to produce the actual drawings for the patent, Blythe said—his fingers fumbled and trembled. Blythe let go before he had a firm grip and the stack scattered. He lurched from his chair to a kneeling position. His glasses slipped down his nose as he gathered the papers. Blythe crouched beside him, though she wore a business skirt and it hindered her movement.

This is it,
Marci exulted feeling her pulse flutter in her neck. This is their chance. Romantic comedies—the rules—predicted it in just this sort of scenario. It was inevitable.

Holding her breath, fists clenched tightly in anticipation, Marci squinted her eyes against the glare of the sun at its zenith, its heat on her scalp. She ignored it even as it started to itch.

Ramone stood as Blythe drew closer and collected the papers. They both laughed uncomfortably. “Pardon me,” he said, tapping his thigh with the fist of papers and straightening his glasses with the other hand.

Blythe pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and muttered something about her clumsiness.

“I can take care of this,” he said in a chivalrous tone.

“I wouldn’t hear of it. It’s my mess.”

Ramone knelt again.

It happened. They both reached for the same paper. Their hands collided. Ramone jerked his back, but Blythe’s fingers closed around it. His eyes flickered to hers. Marci noted how he looked like a frightened animal.

“Sorry,” Ramone said.

“Don’t be,” Blythe said.

Marci couldn’t tell who moved first, but suddenly they were kissing.

She howled in delight, forgetting herself. Other sun-bathers looked over at her—some of them scowled but one or two laughed and waved, shouting back a “woo-hoo.” Marci noticed for the first time since arriving that morning how the quad had become populated. Real life. A group of shaggy guys tossed a Frisbee, showing off for the scantily dressed girls lounging on blankets. Several of the loungers sat with their slates on their knees. A few resourceful frat-boys were in the process of carrying a sofa onto the bright grass. A cooler bounced precariously on the ragged cushions of the couch. Marci licked her lips, wondering if the cooler contained water.

She looked back at her slate somewhat reluctantly, experiencing a strange hesitation about watching Blythe and Ramone kiss, though she’d been waiting for it to happen for days and days.

“What?” she blurted. Ramone was gone. Blythe was smoothing the front of her skirt and adjusting her top. Then the feed split and Marci was seeing Ramone fumbling his car key into the lock. “Ramone! No! What are you doing?”

*****

Sue. Sue. Sue. Sue.
The thought pounded in his head. 

He drove. He experienced that feeling again of being outside his body, watching himself act independently of his mind. The stereo in his car blared a song loudly.

A lake came into view, dark water spreading beneath the early afternoon sun. Without thinking much about it, he parked and turned the car off. Blessed silence. A strange hum filled him; the roar of the quiet. His breathing was ragged.

Mallards bobbed on the ruffling swells of the lake. Sunlight glinted off the fractured surfaces of the tiny waves. It seemed cold and harsh—the light on the water—but he knew it was warm beyond the small shell of his vehicle. A few people walked along the shore, tossing torn bits of bread to the ducks. Here and there, spaced out in a surprisingly even manner, fishermen cast lines from lawn chairs. A young mother strolled near the water with a baby strapped to her chest and a small boy beside her, cocking his arm back as far as possible then throwing the bread with all his might. The birds swarmed upon the offerings, snapping them up before they even had time to settle into the water.

Ramone smiled, then recalled what he was running from. He hadn’t gone home. He was here at the lake. Touching his lips, he closed his eyes and sat back against the seat with a sigh. He could still feel the soft texture of her skin; a sweet flavor lingered on his mouth. The smell of her hair and face filled him. Moving his hand to his shirt he let his hand rest where the ache was.

Why did he let it happen? Why didn’t he leave before anything could occur? Why did he wish he was still there letting her touch him, touching her, breathing her, surrendering?

He furrowed his brow, feeling confused. Why did he think it was wrong to let something happen between them? Did his vows to Sue even matter today, after how the world had changed? The sacred was dead. And Sue, she was miles away from him. The chasm was so obvious in their conversation. In everything. Their touches. Their eyes. They were lonely islands amidst a flood and the flood had eroded everything. 

Before he knew it, he was on the shore of the lake, preparing to wade in. Resting against a dusty boulder, he rolled up his corduroys, took his black socks off and left them folded carefully beside the boulder, then put his shoes back on. The shore was rocky and the water just beyond it hid lures and discarded hooks. Even if he partially thought he deserved to drown, he was no glutton for punishment. 

An old man fishing from the shore glanced at Ramone dubiously. A thin wisp of smoke curled around his face, rising from the cigar stub clenched between his teeth. His bare forearms were covered in dirty, blurred tattoos and his head was protected by a dark blue baseball hat with some kind of seal on it. Ramone waved awkwardly when he noticed the man’s weighing gaze.

“Gonna scare the fish off,” the old man grumbled around his cigar.

Ramone shrugged. He didn’t feel like arguing. It was nearing noon anyway. The fish had probably all receded into their overhangs and the shadows deep under water. Before the old man could say anything more, Ramone pushed off the boulder and waded in. Cool water lapped at his bare ankles as he splashed through the shallows of the beach. His loafers slipped on small rocks and he stumbled. Righting himself, he pushed on.

Behind him, Ramone heard the old man shout, “Gonna ruin your pants!”

A few seconds more and the water was to Ramone’s chest. He felt his heels slipping from his shoes.
Who cares?
He let them float away. Soon the ground receded entirely and he was swimming, the mallards nearby scattered, quacking and bobbing away in small groups.

Ramone tread water for a few seconds, the cool water taking his breath away.

He sank, holding his breath, the water closing over his head. He kept his eyes open. His glasses floated away. Ramone grabbed for them even as he floated downward, his wet clothes pulling him under. Water filled his ears, its own kind of silence, closing in around him. The water here was clouded and dirty, he could only see a few feet around himself, except for toward the surface where the water glowed with the afternoon sunlight. There was something peaceful about the moment. It calmed him even as he continued to sink. He’d never been in this lake. How deep was it?

Ramone’s soul was weighed down. Sue. Blythe. His kids who never spoke to him anymore. They’d been gone a year, both of them, and as far as Ramone knew they could be dead. They talked to their mother. She relayed what was going on in their lives to him. Sometimes he thought it was enough, never wanting to get in their way, pester or bore them. But was it enough? He missed their voices, their laughter. That was all he knew for sure.

He sank further into cool darkness.

Sue. He missed being honest with her. Being able to touch her without wondering who was seeing it. He used to be spontaneous. Once upon a time he used to pull her close and whimsically kiss her, unconcerned about the ramifications because he knew she’d always love him. But now. Who might see it that didn’t understand him? He could only let Sue see the real part of him. And now. Did she even care?

The dark depths swallowed him.

Blythe. Before the kiss, she’d been an impossibility. A dream. She could never want Ramone, and so the fantasies were harmless. The longing was good enough for its own sake. And suddenly she was kissing him and it was his dream made flesh. Real. Too real. But it was also perfect. Ramone hadn’t felt electricity in years. His entire being ached for it.

The water surrounding him dulled the ache. It salved him. Reality was too much. Was he crying? Ramone doubted he’d ever cried underwater before. There was no evidence of it.

And the nanocameras. The weight of that was an iron anchor. He was plummeting to the lake floor. He belonged there. Didn’t he? 

Soon, thoughts of rotting at the bottom of the lake elbowed their way into his mind, pushing aside the peaceful feeling he’d managed to hold onto, despite the fact that his breath was running out. Were there big fish living in the lake that would nibble away his eyes? His nose?

His corpse would be decimated.

Too late, he began to struggle for the surface, fears of becoming trout food putting him into a panic. Daylight seemed miles away as he kicked and fought against the heavy pull of his clothes.