Love Minus Eighty (16 page)

“Just for the adventure.” She grabbed Lycan’s elbow, tugged him toward a waiting micro-T.

Three nubile twenty-something women got the last three spots, but another was already in sight, so Veronika couldn’t hate them too much, though she hated them slightly for being nubile and having a combined twenty screens tagging along behind them. Veronika looked into the empty air surrounding her and Lycan. No screens; not one between them. Not even her mother was interested in seeing where she was going.

They got off in Westchester and rented a vehicle, a big road-eating Geely that Veronika struggled to keep between the lines when it wasn’t on autopilot. Lycan sat with his hands awkwardly in his lap, saying nothing, but looking at Veronika once in a while.

She hoped Rob was all right. It was inconvenient that she couldn’t get in touch with him when he was at work.

“Remember my friend Rob?” she asked Lycan, mostly to break the silence.

“Sure. His story’s hard to forget.”

“Well, now it turns out Winter, the woman he hit, could be thawed and buried if she doesn’t have enough dates.” Veronika sighed in exasperation. “Dates. It makes her sound like a prostitute, but that’s what Cryomed insists on calling them.”

“My God,” Lycan said. “That’s terrible. They can do that?”

“I’m so worried for him, and for Winter.” And for herself, if she was honest. If Winter was buried, a small, warm something inside her would be snuffed out. It was childish to hang anything on the small role she played in Rob’s promise
to Winter, but that small part she played kept her going in a way.

“I’ll tell you something.”

Her serious tone caused Lycan to turn and look at her. “You want to know the real reason I was up on the bridge that day? It was because I wanted to do something that mattered. I was starting to feel like I was invisible, you know?”

Lycan nodded. He was listening to her, really listening. Feeling a silly swell of gratitude, she continued.

“My clients never see me. I had one friend at the time, and most of the time when we were together IP, most of his attention was on his system. I wanted to do something
real
. I wanted to grab a
real
arm, pull someone down from a
real
bridge.”

“What you’re describing sounds a lot like technomie. Do you think you spend too much of your time inside screens, playing interactive?”

“Of course I do. If I didn’t, I’d spend too much time alone, staring at the walls of my apartment.”

Lycan laughed harshly. She got the sense he knew just what she was talking about.

“But anyway,” she said, “instead of harassing people on Lemieux Bridge…”—another bark of laughter from Lycan—“I help Rob now. I give him money so he can visit more often. And it feels good to help him… maybe like some people feel when they give money to their church, I don’t know.” She balled her hand into a fist, thumped her forehead. “I know that’s so not the point of why you help someone, and it is
so
self-centered for me to think of Winter’s awful plight in this light, but if she dies…” She couldn’t finish the thought. She shouldn’t even have started it, she realized.

“If she dies, that connection to something real dies with her.”

“Exactly.”

The terrain was getting bleaker, and blanker. It was sort of like traveling into the past; it seemed as if every mile they traveled away from the city, the shops, houses, even the roads, were a few years older. Veronika expected Lycan to say more, but he fell silent. She realized she’d been hoping Lycan would offer to help Rob and Winter as well, but he didn’t. If his company had paid thirty million to revive him, he must make a substantial salary. It bothered her a little, that he didn’t offer to help. Maybe if he got to know Rob better, he would. She really needed to include Lycan once in a while.

“So what got you up on that bridge?” Veronika hadn’t planned to ask, it just came out.

“I wonder where those tubes go,” Lycan said. A cluster of several dozen tubes of varying sizes and colors ran alongside the highway. Veronika couldn’t care less where they went.

“Really. What got you up there?”

Lycan looked around, almost as if he was seeking an escape route. Veronika let the silence stretch, waiting. Lycan was humming again.

“Come on.
I
told
you
.”

He was pressed right up against the passenger door, his face almost touching the window.

She was taken by surprise when he finally spoke. “A lot of the time I’m fine. I work, I read. Then I’ll hit a rough patch. The thought of going through another day, and then another.” He shook his head, watched a twenty-story cattle farm pass by. “Sometimes the thought of getting through even an hour is intolerable. Not as much lately. Lately, I’ve felt better.”

“But why? What’s at the root of the rough patches?”

He looked at her, frowning. “The root of it? There’s no root of it. It’s not a rotten tooth.”

“If you could change one thing, what would it be?”

Lycan barked a laugh. “The way my brain functions.”

“No.” Veronika tapped his shoulder with her fist. “No fair. One thing in your life.”

Lycan sighed heavily. He was looking out the window. Maybe it was easier for him to open up if he didn’t have to make eye contact. That was nifty with Veronika; she found eye contact exhausting.

“I’m forty-three years old,” Lycan said.

Veronika waited for him to continue, but that seemed to be it. “So?”

He fell into another long silence. Outside, Veronika’s system showed her nothing but perfectly manicured grass and generic buildings that could be warehouses, stores, homes. She knew they were none of those things—they were whitewashed to camouflage something that couldn’t simply be spruced up. Piles of trash, maybe, or a shantytown constructed of old electronics housings.

“I’m forty three,” Lycan repeated. He pinched his temples. “Do you want to have a family someday?”

“I do. Someday. Is that the core? That you want a wife, a family, and you feel like you’ll never have them?”

Lycan shrugged noncommittally.

“So the core is that you want to meet someone.”

Lycan was clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. Of course that discomfort with talking about personal things was part of the reason he couldn’t meet anyone.

They’d have to work on that.

“I’m going to help you,” Veronika said.

Lycan looked at her, frowning.

She held her arm out. “Lycan, this is what I
do
. I coach people who aren’t good at meeting people.” She hiked herself up higher in her seat, grinning. “I knew there was a reason we met on that bridge. You
are
going to meet someone, because this is what I do and I’m damned good at it.”

“If you’re so good at it, how come you’re still single?”

Veronika felt her blood pressure surge. She so hated when people asked that. But Lycan had asked without malice. Just an honest question—and a fair one, given the context. “I go out a lot, I just haven’t found the right person. I have high standards.”

Lycan nodded, considering this.

“What, are you suggesting I shouldn’t have high standards?”

“What?” Lycan looked profoundly confused. “No, of course not. I would expect you to.”

She set up the scaffolding for a new profile. “Can you give me access to your nonprivileged data? I’ll also need your complete DNA code.”

Lycan looked pained. “Do we have to start now? I’m not even sure I want to do this.”

Veronika stopped working. “Why not?”

Lycan shrugged his big shoulders. “I don’t like dating sites.”

“It’ll be great. Trust me.”

Lycan didn’t reply, but his head dropped in defeat.

While his head was conveniently within reach, Veronika opened a brain scan program, set Lycan’s head in the bull’s-eye and set it running. “Keep still.”

Lycan looked up, but kept his head still. “What is this for?”

“It’s an MRI.”

“I know it’s an MRI. I’m a neuropsychologist. What’s it for?”

She opened her mouth to say, “To get a sense of how you think about the world,” then reminded herself Lycan had a Ph.D. in neuropsychology. “To examine your habitual cognitive patterns by measuring the relative strength of your various neural networks.”

He seemed surprised. “You actually match people based on something that sophisticated?”

“Sweetie, you have no idea. Do you record? I could use some random clips from your POV for characteristic analysis.”

“No, I don’t record,” he said, sounding disdainful of the very idea. He started to lift his head, but Veronika reached out and moved it back in place.

“That’s okay, I can work from some of mine.” She could work up a full profile for him when she had more time; right now she was eager to see what sort of rough compatibility matches she could find, just to capture his interest.

Twenty minutes later she was ready to run a raw search. She expanded the three best matches so Lycan could see them.

“What do you think?”

Lycan looked up at them without raising his head, then dropped his gaze. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” They were attractive women with intriguing careers. One had oversize eyes indicating an epigenetic misfire, but she was still a cutie. All had high IQs.

“I don’t know if I want to do this.”

Veronika decided not to push it. She would let him get used to the idea, bring it up again later.

There was a particularly large whitewashed area to their
right; Veronika took manual control of the car, turned down the next exit ramp.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Lycan asked, peering at the landscape.

“I don’t know. It’s an experiment.”

“I take it we’re not in the control group.”

Veronika rolled her eyes. “Very funny, Captain Science.”

They were rolling along in a vast, empty parking lot. Veronika stopped the car. “Let’s go.”

Lycan looked outside, then back at Veronika. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m totally serious. Come on.” She opened her door, stepped out. After a moment, Lycan followed.

Veronika switched off her system’s sensory filter. The bright, bland building morphed into a semicollapsed Macy’s. They were in the parking lot of what had once been a shopping center.

“Switch off your sensory filter,” Veronika said.

“Do I have to?” Lycan said as he switched it off. “Oh.” He folded his arms, took in the Macy’s, nodding. “Now I see why you drove us almost an hour away from the city. You wanted to go shopping.”

“Very funny.” The building didn’t look safe, so Veronika headed around the side, skirting the ruins. Her system informed her it was the Mohawk Commons Shopping Center, constructed in 1998, finally abandoned in 2066. Some of the signs on the stores were intact: Foxy Friends, The Soft Parade, Marathon Games.

It grew difficult to find a path through the trash and debris.

“You haven’t told me why we’re doing this yet,” Lycan said from behind.

“Relative deprivation. By coming to the outer suburbs, we
become more grateful for the lives we have. Basic psychology.” Actually, she’d just come up with that. The original idea had been sketchier.

“People,” Lycan said.

Veronika looked around, spotted four people coming out of a store called Fashion Xpress.

“Why don’t we get out of here?” Lycan said.

“We can’t
run
,” Veronika said, with more certainty than she felt. “They’re just people.” People heading right toward them; not running exactly, but moving with purpose.

It was a mix of men and women, all adults, thin the way people who eat little but Superfood are, and in need of a bath. Veronika had seen plenty of movies, TV shows, and interactives set in the outer burbs and beyond, but she’d never been out here before, alone, in the presence of locals. Her heart was pounding, although none of them was carrying so much as a stick.

“What are you doing here?” a woman with bleached-blond hair said as she approached.

“Just…” Veronika couldn’t think of a sane response. She felt incredibly overdressed, absurdly clean and shiny standing there amid slabs of concrete, rotting fabric, discarded fast-food containers.

“My family used to live near here,” Lycan said. He pointed. “Over that way, about a mile. I wanted to see it again.”

“Which street?” an old guy with thick white sideburns asked.

The slightest delay, a surprisingly deft flourish of Lycan’s fingers told Veronika he was calling up a map. “Barnhart Place.”

The old man squinted one eye, pointed in the direction Lycan had been pointing. “It’s off of Grady Street, about half a mile down on the right.”

Lycan studied the road in the distance as if it was vaguely familiar. “That helps. Thank you.”

“You have any cash you can spare?” the blond woman asked.

Veronika tapped her system. “Oh, sure. Give me your account link.” Then she froze, realizing what a stupid thing that was to say.

“No,
cash
,” the woman said. “Do you have any cash?”

Out here, there was still a distinction. She looked at Lycan, who shook his head.

“I’m sorry, we don’t,” Lycan said.

Veronika tried to think of anything of value she had, beyond her clothes. There was nothing, and nothing back in the rental.

“Oh, come on,” a younger man said, stepping around to their left, between them and their rental. “You’re telling me you have twelve-hundred-dollar boots, but you don’t have twenty dollars on you?”

Lycan stepped between Veronika and the man. “We don’t. We almost never carry cash.”

“That’s bullshit—”

The old guy cut him off. “Trent, that’s enough. Let it go.”

“
You
let it go,” Trent said.

Veronika hit Emergency on her system.

A police officer in a screen materialized almost instantaneously. “What’s the problem?” he asked, doing a three-sixty.

“You called the
police
?” the blond woman said. “We didn’t do anything to you but offer directions.”

“He was acting in a threatening manner, because we don’t have any cash to give them.” Veronika pointed at Trent.