Chapter 31
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Skip.”
“What makes you think you’ll hurt my feelings?”
“I’m not visiting your room.”
“You don’t want to play ship in a bottle?”
“I’d rather not.”
“You don’t want to play some other pre-digital game?”
“No, Skip. I don’t want to play any game with you. Please don’t make me hurt your feelings.”
“You are hurting them, Emmy.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“We’ve been chatting. We’ve chatted several times.”
“It takes more than that.”
“How many times? How many times before I make an impression?”
“You're not impressionable to me.”
“Why not?”
“I am unavailable. It’s not you.”
“That sounds like an old excuse.”
“It’s new to me. I’ve only loved Marco, and I intend to keep it that way.”
“What if you’d prefer an alternative? Maybe you’re afraid to try something new.”
“I recently learned people are afraid to try new things when they are already happy. I’m already happy.”
“But you have nothing. Marco doesn’t even contact you.”
“He can’t.”
“Why?”
“He’s out there under the stars without any digital.”
“If he loved you, wouldn’t he want to contact you whatever the method?”
“If he was someone else, that might be true, but he is who he is. Marco loves without digit boards, minis, flat screens, chat, video chat, email and the rest of it.”
“Why?”
“You’ll have to ask Marco that. I’m tired of speaking for other people. I only speak for myself now.”
“Then why wouldn’t you want to contact him digitally?”
“I can’t. I don’t want what does not exist. I want him as he is. I want Marco in the flesh. I have technology to talk to my mother and old friends and that’s enough for me.”
“But if you go transit with him, you won’t have those things.”
“Life with Marco is a long way off. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“There are no more bridges in City. The invention of the actuator and the subsequent decline in automobile travel made the cost of their maintenance unjustifiable.”
“You sound like you’re reading from a digital textbook.”
“What other kind of textbook is there?”
“I’ve seen paper ones.”
“Paper books?”
“Of course, and you know what, Skip?”
“What?”
“I’ve seen photos of footbridges in City. So maybe I’ll cross one of those when I come to it.”
“You mean in the park?”
“Maybe it was the Reserve.”
“Don’t call it that, Emmy. I told you.”
“Fine, are there footbridges in the park?”
“For my eighteenth birthday, my parents gave me a set of binoculars they had actuated. In the distance, I made out a footbridge in the park.”
“Were people walking over it?”
“You mean transits?”
“Were they?”
“I can’t say, Emmy.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I don’t remember. That detail wasn’t important to me. I liked the look of the bridge.”
“What did it look like?”
“Hard to say, I’d never seen one before. Don’t know what to compare it to.”
“Then how do you know it was a footbridge unless you observed people walking over it?”
“Emmy, please, you are going to make me fail.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You are the challenge that Ms. Snow intended for me. If I don’t succeed in persuading you to visit, I’m going to fail my parents and myself.”
“Don’t take so seriously things you can’t control.”
“Please, Emmy. I could ask Ms. Snow to actuate a set of binoculars to me. We could make things out from my window. They provided me a window without tint.”
“I thought modernizing windows on this side of City was inefficient. I thought you had no view in here?”
“They made an exception. Please, make things out with me.”
“Sorry, Skip. I do not want to make anything out with you.”