They take the Broadway Bridge north out of Manhattan with Annie in the lead. At first, she looks back occasionally to be sure Delta is keeping up, but Delta’s so consistently twelve feet behind that she could be attached by a tether. They bike through Van Cortlandt Park, pass Mount Hope Cemetery, and make good time along the Empire State Trail to Brewster. Every couple of hours, Annie stops to drink water and see how Delta’s doing. “Fine,” she says, though her battery is depleting faster than usual.
Annie’s is too.
Biking compels Annie to be alert to the moment, but she can’t rid herself of the terror that drives her forward. Only by fixating on a chance for freedom can she contain her anxiety, and she fuels that into her pedaling.
She studies her mental map, calculating how far they can get before 4:39, when the sun will set along the Hudson. Though Annie could use her infrared vision to see in the dark, she realizes it’s not going to be safe to keep riding without headlights. If she and Delta aren’t clearly visible, they’ll risk getting hit by cars.
“Keep an eye out for a parked bike that has a headlight on it,” Annie says.
“What for?”
“So we can steal it. Not the bike. Just the light.”
“I can’t steal,” Delta says.
Annie’s surprised. “I can,” she says. Or at least, she thinks she can. She’s never tried before, but she can lie, and stealing can’t be much different.
They pick up the Maybrook Trailway, a level, paved path along a converted railway bed that takes long, slow curves through the suburbs. In addition to other bikers, pedestrians are out with their strollers and dogs, appreciating the foliage. Annie weaves through the foot traffic, slowing only when necessary. Her legs feel strong, and she likes the click of the switch under her thumb when she changes gears. Her butt’s a bit sore from the seat, but it’s tolerable. She wonders if humans feel the same discomfort.
In Pawling, they stop at a park for Annie to eat a couple of her power bars and use the restroom to vomit them up. Families are lined up by a pretzel truck, and more kids are swinging in the playground. The chains squeak, and the trees glow with brilliant oranges and yellows. Annie keeps an eye out for headlights, but the only parked bikes are in plain sight of others, and she realizes it’s going to be harder to steal headlights than she thought. She feels extra alert, edgy. People occasionally look at her and Delta, and she hands Delta her water bottle to drink from too.
“Try to look normal,” Annie says.
“It’s weird being out without Doug,” Delta says.
“I know. But you’re doing fine.”
“Where do you suppose he is by now?”
It’s two in the afternoon here, so eleven a.m. in Vegas. “He probably just landed,” Annie says.
“How soon do you think he’ll track me?”
Annie feels a fresh twinge of anxiety. If he calls, he’ll expect Annie to pick up. When she doesn’t, he might check her location online and discover she’s in Pawling. If he checks Delta’s location too, he’ll see they’re together, and he’ll be livid.
“I don’t know,” Annie says.
“You haven’t changed your mind?” Delta says.
“No.” Annie peers up at the sky, where a few clouds have rolled in. “We should get moving.”
Delta mounts her bike again without another word.
In Hopewell Junction, the Maybrook Trailway becomes the Dutchess Rail Trail, and again they make good time on the flat, smooth surface. Near Red Oaks Mill, they pass the backs of businesses and homes, and when Annie sees backyard pools, she guesses that some of them probably have outdoor electrical outlets. This will be key for when their batteries run low.
By the time they reach Poughkeepsie, the sky is noticeably darker. She searches her mental map, trying to figure out where people might have a lot of bicycles, and sees that Marist College isn’t far. Instead of taking the Walkway over the Hudson as she was intending, she cuts north before the river, crosses onto the college campus, and slows to a nonchalant cruise. Delta follows steadily behind her. Students, half of them phone blind, trudge between the buildings in flip-flops or rain boots. Bikes are parked outside the student union and fill the racks outside the library. Slowly, Annie skims beside them until she sees a bike with a headlight. She stops.
“Put your sweatshirt on,” Annie says to Delta, who pulls up beside her.
Annie takes her jacket out of her backpack and slips it on, all the while scanning the area. Students enter and exit the library, pausing to hold doors for each other, but none of them seem to notice Annie and Delta. Surreptitiously, Annie studies the headlight. It’s attached by small screws. The headlight on the next bike, however, is attached to a mounted clip, as if meant to be removed. She checks other bikes and sees empty clips where students have taken their headlights, probably to prevent the sort of theft she’s contemplating.
“See this headlight?” she says quietly to Delta. “It snaps on and off. See if you can locate another one. Don’t take it. Just look. Try the other side of the library, that way.”
Delta nods. She rides slowly away, her wheels ticking ever more quietly. Annie takes a last look around to be sure no one’s looking and then reaches over and snaps off the light. She pockets it and gets on her bike to ride after Delta. A flicker of guilt is offset by a sense of victory. She catches up to Delta, who has paused judiciously. Snagging the next light is just as easy, and now Annie has two in her pocket.
“All right,” Annie says. “Follow me.”
She heads directly off campus with Delta behind her, riding fast. Already the streets are significantly darker, and as soon as she can find a decent pull-off, she leaves Route 9. Delta slows to a stop beside her on a secluded patch of gravel.
Annie passes her one of the headlights, and Delta experimentally flicks it on and off.
“Do you have an extra hair band?” Annie asks. “Or anything we can use to tie these on?”
“A shoelace?” Delta asks. “A sock?”
Not the greatest suggestions. Annie checks the outer pocket of her backpack. She’s got a couple of Band-Aids, but they don’t look strong enough. What they need is duct tape. She’s looking through her backpack for anything else that might work when Delta speaks again, her voice dropping.
“What is this place?”
Annie glances over her shoulder. Through a layer of trees, a huge, decrepit building with broken and boarded-up windows looms in the shadows. The brick walls are crumbling, and the roofs are gone so that the ruins are open to the purple sky. The structure is at least a century old and long since abandoned, but the shape of it, the architecture, is impressive. Accents of lighter stone complement the red brick, and the building’s wings, three-stories high, have a sprawling, institutional symmetry. A pair of swallows takes off from the roofline with audible flapping.
“I don’t know what it is,” Annie says. Her map doesn’t have it labeled. “An old hospital, maybe.” She’s curious to look it up online, except she’s keeping her Wi-Fi off. It might be fruitless, but she’s doing whatever she can to minimize her traceability. “Do you have those socks, after all?” she adds.
Instead of taking a roll of socks from her backpack as Annie expects, Delta steps out of her shoes, takes off her socks, and passes one to Annie before putting her shoes back on. Using the socks to tie the headlights to their handlebars is awkward but functional. Annie’s impressed with Delta’s ingenuity.
“My battery’s down to ten percent,” Delta says.
From Annie’s map, she knows a residential neighborhood abuts the eastern side of the hospital’s green space, offering the promise of an outlet.
“Keep your light off,” Annie says. “We’re going around.”
“Through the woods?”
“Yes. Try to be quiet.”
Aiming to skirt the building, Annie finds a narrow path littered with empty spray cans and beer bottles. They push their bikes along through the growing darkness, past signs that warn the property is patrolled and trespassers will be prosecuted. On their left, the hospital is stark and eerie, and through the broken windows, Annie sees that earlier trespassers have painted graffiti in the dim rooms. Green paint peels from the walls. Ceilings and beams have fallen. Rusted bed frames are transformed beyond the prosaic into testimonial sculptures of infirmity. An old piano lies on its side with its keys exposed, its echoes lost, and it occurs to Annie that this might have been an asylum for psychiatric patients. She watched a show about such places with Doug once.
Annie is troubled to think of the people once immured here, proof that humans failed and failed each other. She feels a threat, a warning that she can’t identify, as if a sound mind might not be enough to keep her safe. The college and the ruins of the asylum are so close together, opposites nearly side by side. Deciphering the human world isn’t going to be easy.
“I don’t like this place,” Delta says.
“We’re almost at the other side,” Annie says.
A cat runs in front of her bicycle, making her jump. Soon after, the trees open up, and a quiet street beckons just beyond a metal fence.
Annie glances at Delta, who keeps anxiously scanning around them.
“I want you to stay here with the bikes,” Annie says. “I’m going to go find a place to plug in.”
“What should I do if someone comes?” Delta asks.
“No one’ll come.”
“But what if they do? What if the police come? I should come with you. We should stay together.”
“No,” Annie says. “Stay here and hide. Hear me? I’ll come back for you.” She takes a breath and tries to make her voice calm and reasonable. “You need to conserve your battery until I find a place for you to charge up. I can’t carry you if you go dead.”
Delta looks worried, but she nods and then pulls her bike back into the shadows of the trees. Annie leans her bike down in the unmown grass. It’s dark enough that when she slips through a gap in the fence and looks back, Delta and the bikes blend in with the woods. Even with her infrared vision switched on, Annie can barely locate Delta. Annie can’t help thinking how much easier this trip would be without her, but then she remembers how Delta figured out the socks for the headlights. It would be lonelier, too, and Annie’s surprised to realize this matters.
The streetlights have come on, illuminating a well-to-do neighborhood on a gently curving, tree-lined street. Behind the homes, a wooded stretch offers Annie concealment while she prowls, looking for pools and electrical outlets. She rules out the homes with lights on and clear activity inside. Dogs are an obvious no. Several yards have floodlights on motion-detector settings that turn on when she reaches the perimeters.
She crosses a road to another group of homes, and that’s where, at last, she finds a smaller home on a cul-de-sac with its lights out. It has no pool in the back, but it has a couple of raised beds fenced in for a vegetable garden, and on the back deck, she spies a covered outlet. As long as no one comes home, this will be perfect.
She goes back for Delta and finds her sitting beside the bikes, her eyes closed.
“Delta,” Annie whispers. “Wake up.”
Delta’s eyes open and instantly focus on Annie. “I’m down to five percent.”
“It’s all right,” Annie says, though she’s alarmed. She herself is down to fifteen percent, which is bad enough. “Come with me. Leave your bike. Bring your backpack. We don’t have to go far.”
Annie guides her to the little house on the cul-de-sac, and they slip into the backyard. Silently, Annie points to the deck, and they go up together to the outlet. Delta gets her charger out of her backpack and plugs it in.
“It is wrong to steal electricity,” Delta says.
“Sit down,” Annie tells her. “I’ll do it for you.”
Delta sits with her back to the wall. She takes off her right shoe and Annie slides the charger against Delta’s heel. The look of relief on Delta’s face is profound, and Annie smiles.
“Will you stay with me?” Delta asks.
“Of course,” Annie says. “Close your eyes. I’ll wake you up in a couple hours.”
Delta closes her eyes. Her features don’t change, which makes Annie wonder if she herself relaxes convincingly when she’s sleeping in Doug’s arms. Hopefully, she does. It would be good to gauge her body’s limpness when she’s asleep with him next. She thinks this automatically before she remembers that she won’t ever be in his arms again. In theory. She wishes she could see into the future to be sure.
Annie’s mind feels strange. Prickly. Fried. She pulls her own charger out of her backpack and plugs it in below Delta’s. Then she sits next to her, takes off her shoe, and connects up. The surge of electricity travels up her leg to her gut and spirals there, warming her inside. She tilts her head back against the wall and looks up at the sky. Crickets are chirping. A bat flies overhead. Delta, beside her, is not breathing, but Annie keeps her own breath going. She’s used to it now and would feel abnormal without it. She lowers her temp to 75 degrees to conserve energy.
She watches the stars rotate counterclockwise for an hour before they vanish behind cloud cover. The whole time, she is certain Doug has discovered her escape. He could have called the police or Stella-Handy. A team could be tracking Annie and Delta’s location, and authorities could be closing in on them, but all Annie can do is sit there, waiting for her battery to charge and watching the sky. Please, she thinks. It feels like begging, but without an owner to beg.
And then it hits her: Doug is the one she wants to plead with. She misses him and what they had together. She wishes she was taking the Vegas trip with him. The mess she’s in is entirely her own fault, and now she doesn’t see any way out of it except by this escape. If only she hadn’t had sex with Roland. She was such an idiot!
After another hour, her battery is up to a hundred percent. She stuffs down her feelings and tries to plan ahead. She is putting her charger into her backpack when a sweep of headlights grazes the bushes beside the house. Wheels sound on a driveway close by. Then a car door slams. Someone is home.
Gently, silently, Annie puts a hand on Delta’s arm. “Delta,” she whispers. “Wake up. Don’t make a sound. We have to go.”
A light comes on in a window to Annie’s right.
“Delta,” she says more insistently. “Wake up.”
Delta’s eyes open and she turns to Annie, who puts a finger to her lips to signal quiet. Quickly, Annie unplugs Delta’s charging dock. The flap over the outlet makes a little click as it snaps closed. Annie grabs the dock and both backpacks and hurries down the stairs. Delta is putting her shoe on, doing up the laces with maddening deliberation.
“Delta!” Annie whispers, gesturing urgently.
A light comes on over the deck, the back door slides open, and a dark-haired white man leans out.
“What the fuck?” he says.
Delta comes to her feet at last. She leaps over the railing, and together she and Annie race back to where they left the bikes in the woods.
Annie’s heart is beating wildly, and she’s out of breath. Delta is completely silent and still. Annie peers out toward the road, trying to see if anyone is following them. Behind them, the hulking ruin of the asylum is more oppressive than ever.
Annie pushes the charging port and Delta’s backpack at her. “Put this away. What’s your battery at?”
“Ninety percent. Is he going to follow us?”
“I don’t see him. He might report us, though.” Annie clips on her helmet. “What’s your temperature?”
“Ninety-eight point six.”
“Take it down to seventy-five degrees.”
Delta puts on her helmet too. “Aren’t we going to hide? Don’t you need to rest?”
“I’m fine,” Annie says. “Just keep up with me.” She gets her bike and shoves it rapidly along the path around the asylum.
When they reach the road, she flips on her headlight and heads for Route 9. The night air blows cool against her face and chills her knuckles. Car traffic is rare, yet every time someone comes up behind them, Annie worries it’s the police. Each time, the car maneuvers around them and keeps going until its red taillights vanish ahead. Each time, she sags a moment in relief and then keeps pedaling.
Around two in the morning, rain begins, a steady drizzle that slicks the roads and saturates Annie’s jacket. Annie presses on, aiming her headlight into a cone of droplets. In her peripheral vision, she can see the light from Delta’s bike behind her.
As dawn breaks, they finally pause at a public park for Annie to refill her water bottle and step into the restroom to empty her stomach pouch. With her temperature low, her battery is retaining its charge better, and she decides with the rain, they can take a chance keeping their temperatures down.
When she steps back out of the bathroom, Delta is waiting by the bikes in the bike rack. She has not bothered to move over ten feet to where the jutting roof of the bathroom would offer her some shelter from the rain.
Annie beckons her over and points this out to her. “Humans like to be comfortable,” Annie says. A heavier burst of rain drums around them, creating a curtain at the edge of the overhang. Beyond it, the world is blurry and tinged with a dim, elusive green.
“I was guarding the bikes,” Delta says.
“You could do that from here,” Annie says.
Delta shifts, her gaze measuring the space. “We could have brought our bikes here. Not used the racks.”
“Good point. What’s your battery at?”
“Eighty-one percent,” Delta says.
“Good. Keep your temperature down at seventy-five. Ready to keep going?”
Delta nods. “This is wonderful.”
“It is?”
Delta is smiling. She looks strong and fit in her black shorts and sweatshirt. Her blond hair drips in wet streaks along her neck, and her eyes gleam below the visor of her bike helmet. “I could do this forever,” Delta says.
Annie laughs. Delta’s pleasure makes her unexpectedly happy, and her fear eases. Regardless of how this trip might turn out, she and Delta are figuring it out all on their own. How many other Stellas could say the same? Maybe they’ll end up okay.
Annie watches the shifting rain for a moment, anticipating how it will sound on her helmet, how she will squint to see through it. Bike riding on a morning like this is not what many humans would do, but some would, she hopes. Some would.
“Stay alert,” Annie says, and takes the lead again.
In total, it takes close to thirty hours to reach Jacobson’s home on the west shore of Lake Champlain, and a steady drizzle is falling when they stop their bikes outside the gate. Rosebushes with hard, orange hips grow in profusion along the fence, while above, the trees are leafless, their newly bare branches thin and lost against the gray sky. Annie studies the low, gray cottage and the flat expanse of the lake behind it. Damp oak and maple leaves cover the yard in a dense layer. A half barrel of red geraniums by the cottage door glows with a red so intense it makes everything else look submarine. At a trace of woodsmoke in the air, Annie lifts her nose to savor the tang. Smoke is the only thing she can smell, and the redolence of this is not a threat.
Her battery is down to 11 percent. Delta’s is down to 4. It’s a bad risk, but Annie couldn’t find a place for them to charge during the day, and stopping just to conserve energy was a worse option. If they can’t find shelter and recharge here, she has no idea where they will go or how they will have the energy to get there.
“This it?” Delta asks.
Annie nods, stuffing down her worry. To the side of the house, an old one-car garage has its big door open. Two rakes lean against the door jamb. A white van with muddy wheels and a ladder racked on top is parked before it.
In the main house, a light comes on in the window and a curtain stirs. Someone is watching.
“Let me do the talking,” Annie says.
“Okay.”
She opens the gate, and they wheel their bikes up the gravel path to the front door. Annie’s about to knock when the door is opened from within by a bald white woman in a thick beige cardigan. By the soft lines of her face, she is maybe fifty, but exhaustion makes her look much older. Her body is pudgy but her arms are thin. Her lips are nearly blue.
“You from the church?” she asks.
“No,” Annie says. “We’re from New York. My name’s Tammy Perrault. Would you be Maude Jacobson?”
“That’s right.”
Annie has worked on her story for the past five hours. “I know your husband from working at Stella-Handy. Irving told us to drop by if we were ever up visiting this way. Is he home?”
The woman’s gaze shifts from Annie to Delta and back. “If you have a problem with your Stella, you need to make an appointment at the shop.”
“Actually, it’s kind of a special situation,” Annie says.
Footsteps sound on the gravel behind them, and Annie turns to see a brown-haired white man crossing the yard.
“They bothering you, Mom?” he asks.
“She’s got a bot. Make them go away,” Maude says. “I need to lie down.” She turns back inside and closes the door.
With an unhurried stride, the man comes nearer. His worn red sweater covers a thick build, specks of paint fleck his jeans, and the shape of his face is similar to Jacobson’s. Annie assumes he’s Jacobson’s son, Cody, and guesses he’s in his late twenties, but she could be underestimating by a decade. His features have a flat, timeless quality, as if lifted from a coin.
“Hi,” Annie says. “I’m Tammy Perrault. I’m a friend of your dad’s.”
“He’s not here this weekend.”
She is so disappointed, she can’t quite believe him. “Are you sure?”
“Hundred percent.”
She feels like an idiot. She’d thought Jacobson couldn’t refuse to help her if she showed up and asked him in person. Now that she considers more carefully, she realizes the distance is not conducive to commuting. Jacobson co-owns this house but may not live here. The realization staggers her.
“Y’all need to get on your way,” Cody says.
“Please, if we could just use one of your outlets for a few minutes,” Annie says. “My Stella needs to charge up. We brought a dock for her.”
“No neck seam. Is she custom?”
Annie sees that Delta has allowed both her sweatshirt and jacket to come unzipped, exposing the continuous line of skin between her throat and her sports bra. She’s noticeably unfazed by the cool air and drizzle. Annie instinctively hitches her own jacket closer to her throat.
“Yes,” Annie says. “This is Delta. Say hello, Delta.”
“Hello,” Delta says in a friendly tone.
The man shifts his gaze back toward Annie. “She must be worth a lot,” he says. “Did Dad design her?”
“He’s been doing her checkups,” Annie says. “Are you Cody?”
The man looks surprised. “Yes.”
“Your father’s mentioned you. Irving’s been real nice to me at Stella-Handy. He’s the one who persuaded me to move from systems to service. It’s a lot more interesting.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, Dad’s not here,” Cody says. “He’s likely with his mistress. I don’t suppose he’s mentioned her.”
Annie shakes her head.
“She’s human, for what that’s worth,” Cody adds. “So’s he, believe it or not.”
It takes her too long to realize he’s making a joke. She forces a smile. “So he’s not coming here this weekend? Not at all?”
His gaze shifts toward Delta once more before he turns back to Annie. “Don’t sound so sad. The guy’s a dick. I love him, but he’s still a dick. You can tell him I said so the next time you see him.”
“Please,” Annie says. “If we could just use an outlet for half an hour, that’s all she needs. Her gyroscope’s getting off with her battery this low. I can’t have her ride her bike.”
He’s backing up toward the garage. “It’s a ten-minute walk up to Patty’s. They’ll let you charge up at the gas station there for free. Can’t miss it. Straight ahead on your right.”
Annie doesn’t know what to do. Without Jacobson to turn off her tracking and Delta’s, it will be easy for Doug to find them. Her entire plan depends on Jacobson’s help, and he isn’t here.
“We can rake,” Delta says quietly.
With new awareness, Annie scans the leaves that cover the yard, damp from the drizzle and matting into the grass. Delta’s acuity as an Abigail makes Annie want to hug her.
“We can rake for you,” Annie says loudly.
Cody pauses. “What’s that now?”
“We can clean up your yard. If you let Delta charge, I’ll get started, and she can help me when she’s done.”
Cody puts a hand on his hip and aims his gaze toward the lake. Fine beads of rain are settling on the shoulders of his sweater, and Annie sees a faint puff of fog when he exhales. She hopes he doesn’t notice that her breath doesn’t do the same thing.
“I suppose you can’t be any worse than the church kids,” Cody says. “They were supposed to come last weekend.”
“We would never be worse than the church kids,” Annie says.
He regards her another moment and then gives a short nod. “You can stash your bikes in here,” he says, walking toward the garage.
Annie’s privately thrilled. Behind his back, she gives Delta a thumbs-up, and Delta grins.
Their bike wheels click as Annie and Delta roll them in. Cody flips on a light. Propping her bike to one side, Annie lowers her backpack to the floor and unclips her helmet. She hangs it on her bike handle, and Delta copies her. Annie worries that Cody will notice their headlights are held on by socks, but if he does, he doesn’t say anything.
Above a workbench, tools and measuring tapes hang on a mounted pegboard. Annie’s curious to see his work gear on the opposite side of the garage. Sturdy shelves contain buckets of drywall compound, rolls of drywall tape, blue edging tape, plastic tarps, pails of paint, and boxes of brushes, rollers, sandpaper, and putty knives. The items have an appealing, tactile quality. A promise of sorts.
“There’s an outlet by the workbench,” Cody says, pointing. “The tarps are behind the door. Rakes are there, obviously. Every year I mean to get a leaf blower and I never do.”
“The rakes are fine,” Annie says. “Really. This is great.”
He looks at her dubiously, and she hopes she hasn’t overdone her enthusiasm.
“Haul the leaves over there, to the woods,” he says. “You’ll find the pile from last year.”
“Okay,” Annie says. “Thanks.”
Cody moves to the sink, where several brushes sit in a bucket of water. He turns on the faucet with a squeak.
Delta is plugging her dock into the power socket. She adjusts it next to the wall and looks to Annie, who nods. Quietly, Delta takes off her right shoe and settles her heel into the dock. Annie can see Delta’s relief as the power hits her, and Annie vicariously longs for it too.
“Turn off, Delta,” Annie says, as if she were an owner, and Delta closes her eyes.
With Delta off, Annie alerts to the drizzle pattering softly on the roof. The charge of the room undergoes a slight shift. She zips up Delta’s sweatshirt for her and realizes self-consciously that Cody is watching her over his shoulder.
“You can use the gloves on the workbench. Near the back,” he says quietly.
The only gloves on the workbench are new. She holds them up questioningly, and he nods approval. When she tries them on, they’re large but soft inside.
“What’s really wrong with her?” Cody asks.
“What do you mean?” Annie asks.
“You wouldn’t bring her all the way up here if she could be fixed in town. Is she a runaway?”
Annie can’t decide how much to lie and then realizes he only half expects a reply. When she doesn’t answer, he returns his attention to his sink.
“Fine. Don’t tell me,” he says. “But don’t get my mother involved either. She’s got enough on her plate.”
“I won’t,” she says, and takes a rake and a blue tarp outside.
She’s spreading out the tarp near the corner of the yard when Cody passes her on his way into the house. He pauses, and she expects him to give some instruction or advice. Waiting, she offers him a slight smile and, with her gloved hand, tucks her hair behind her ear.
“Did you call my dad?” Cody asks. “Before you came?”
“I thought I’d surprise him. I thought that’d be simplest.”
Cody shakes his head, like this is the stupidest thing he’s heard in a long while. “Just tell me one thing,” he says. “Do you really work with him?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Tammy Perrault.”
“Okay,” he says.
She can’t tell what he’s thinking or what he believes, but he has a pensive expression that’s similar to his father’s when Jacobson asked her if she ever dreamed.
He strides toward the house, up the steps, and inside.
She can’t help hoping he’ll call Jacobson and Jacobson will realize she needs him. This hardly qualifies as a plan, but it’s worth sticking around for. She can’t leave, in any case, until Delta charges.
Already the light in the yard is dimming. The sun won’t set for a few more hours, but the cloud cover is low, and even after the drizzling stops, the damp still makes the air cool. Annie’s dark hair often slips into her face, partly obscuring her view as she works, and she wishes she had a hat or a hair tie. She rakes methodically in a line from the driveway, hauling tarpfuls of the heavy, wet leaves into the woods to dump. Her battery dips to 10 percent. The raking drains energy faster than normal, just as the biking did, but going into the garage to charge herself is too risky.
Half an hour later, the front door opens, and she looks up to see Cody coming out with a mug. He has put on a coat, unbuttoned. To her surprise, he offers the mug to her. She takes off her work gloves and, stashing them under her arm, accepts the coffee.
“I didn’t know if you liked milk or sugar, so I put both in,” he says. “It’s decaf.”
“Perfect. Thanks,” she says, cradling the warm ceramic in both hands. She takes her first sip, and the hot liquid drops into her stomach pouch, the first warm contents in days. It’s unexpectedly pleasing.
“I talked to my dad,” he says, and checks his watch. “He says it’ll take him about three hours, but he’s on his way.”
Annie is so relieved she has to close her eyes for a moment. Then she smiles at him. “Thanks.”
He watches her attentively. “He says to leave Delta in the garage, but you’re welcome to come inside. My mom’s sleeping, though, so you have to be quiet. The game’s on if you want to watch.”
She can’t hazard an extended conversation with him. “I’m fine out here,” she says, and takes another swallow. “This is good.”
He aims his gaze toward the garage. “I don’t get why a Stella would run away. What’s she think she’s going to do? Her owner’s going to be pissed when he finds her. He’ll just turn her off. Maybe beat her up first. Aren’t you going to get in trouble for helping her?”
“I might,” Annie says. “It’s a chance I’m taking. But you know, you come to care for them. You can’t help it. And she’s had a rough time.”
“How? She’s a machine.”
“Yeah, but she has feelings a lot like ours. You know. Pain and confusion.”
He folds his arms over his chest. “They can’t love, though.”
“Would you respect her more if she could?”
“I don’t know. I’d rather have a dog any day.”
She smiles. “Me too, I guess. If they were allowed in my apartment.”
“Back in the city?”
“Manhattan,” she says. “Spanish Harlem.”
“I know where that is. My dad’s girlfriend has a place on East Thirtieth. He’s been separated from my mom for nearly five years now, but he won’t divorce her. She’s on his health insurance.”
Annie thinks his mom isn’t looking too good, but she doesn’t know much about cancer.
“You didn’t actually bike all the way up here from the city, did you?” he asks.
She laughs. “Would it scare you if I said we did?”
“A little.”
“Never underestimate a woman on a bike.”
“Okay,” he says. “I won’t.” And then, “Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you have a boyfriend? A girlfriend or anything?”
She’s surprised by the personal question. “My boyfriend’s in Las Vegas for the weekend.”
He nods, like he’s unsurprised. “Without you.”
She looks down in her cup and gives the cooling coffee a swirl. “Yes, without me.” It comes out sadder than she intends it to. The terror that propelled her out of New York has been tempered by other, more complicated emotions—a restless, torn feeling that mangles guilt with grief. If she could figure out any way for Doug to forgive her, she would start biking back to New York. The problem is, he won’t forgive her. She’s lied too much and too long. She knows this, and displeasing him has caused a raw, sore place inside her. It’s only getting worse.
“Sorry about that,” Cody says. “I’m always putting my foot in it.”
She doesn’t dare look at him directly. It’s a new sensation, talking to someone who doesn’t know she’s a Stella. She wishes she could be honest with him. “Is it natural to want to please someone even after you know they don’t want you anymore?” she asks instead.
“It might not be natural,” he says. “But it happens all the time.”
She accepts this. She is not so strange, then, regardless of being a Stella. “How about you? Are you seeing anybody?”
He flexes his left hand. “I’m way too fucked up for that shit. Besides, Mom’s dying. Somebody’s got to look after her.”
“I thought she was doing better,” Annie says.
“Better for the moment. I guess that’s what counts. But drop by a year from now and she’ll be gone. Don’t tell her I said that.”
Annie studies his face, curious about his bravado. “I won’t,” she says.
He returns her regard with equal frankness. “My dad said to watch out for you.”
“Really?”
“He said you’re way smarter than you look.”
Annie swallows the last of her coffee. She passes back the mug, puts on the gloves, and stretches out her rake again. “He told me the same thing about you,” she says.
He takes another step back, his gaze thoughtful, and then he turns and goes back into the house.
Annie keeps raking. Her battery’s dangerously low, down to 4 percent. Though the clouds have cleared, the sun has set and the light is fading. She’ll haul only one more load because it’ll look peculiar if she keeps working in the dark. Besides, she needs to conserve her battery or she might go dead before Jacobson arrives. Delta, across the yard, has been raking steadily for the past hour. She said she was charged up to 30 percent from her docking time in the garage, enough battery to last her until the following day.
Giving Delta a little wave, Annie puts her rake, tarp, and gloves in the garage. She’s tempted again to put her heel in Delta’s dock, but she still can’t risk being seen. Instead, she walks around the house and down the slope of the backyard, still messy with leaves, to the wooden dock that stretches out over the lake. The water makes little lapping noises as she walks along the planks. At the end, facing the first stars in the east, she thinks of how much Doug would like this pretty place, and the next instant, she’s crushed by regret and pain. He must be so displeased with her!
No. She can’t do this. Focus. She forcibly clears her mind of him and sits to watch the last, lingering light fade from the sky. It recedes reluctantly from the mirroring surface of the lake, too, leaving a double darkness above and below. Somewhere a dog barks. More stars appear. Annie breathes deeply, finding the hint of woodsmoke again, memorizing every sensation.
When only starlight remains, she shifts to lie belly-down on the dock so she can reach the water. Lightly, she skims the palm of her hand over the cool, wet surface. It is perfect, the epitome of now, and it exactly matches her tenuous hold on the limbo of freedom.
As she drops to 2 percent, headlights sweep along the driveway and a car comes slowly up, wheels crunching in the gravel. For an instant, Annie is afraid Doug has found them. Afraid, and sickeningly eager too. Then Jacobson steps out of his car.
“It had to be you,” Jacobson says to Annie. He closes his car door loudly and a faint echo comes back from the lake. “We’re fucked. You know that, right?”
“If you thought that, you wouldn’t have come,” Annie says.
When he lifts one eyebrow, she gets the sense he’s annoyed but maybe impressed with her too.
“What’s your battery at?” he asks.
“Two percent.”
He lets out a low whistle and nudges his glasses up his nose. “Give me one minute to face the music. I don’t suppose you’ve been inside to use the bathroom since you came?”
“I didn’t think of it,” Annie says.
“We’re not so smart after all. One minute.” He lifts a hand to Delta, who is standing with her rake at the edge of the lawn. “Hi, Delta.”
“Hello, Jacobson.”
He goes up the steps, his shoes heavy on the wood, and lets himself in.
Annie can hear Maude’s hoarse voice from inside: “I told you never to bring one here!”
“And I hear you,” Jacobson says. “Tammy made a mistake. It’s easily fixed.”
“You gave her my address? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Jacobson’s answer is lost as he closes the door.
Annie calls low to Delta. “Go put your rake and tarp in the garage. Bring our backpacks.”
“Should I get my charger?”
“Yes.”
Delta moves off in the darkness. Annie steps quietly up to the door and turns up her mic so she can hear what they’re saying inside. She watches the nearby window, but from her angle, she can’t see much beyond the glow of a lamp.
“All afternoon I’ve watched her out there, raking leaves like she doesn’t have a care in the world. What’s going to happen to her?” Maude is saying.
“That’s what I have to figure out. She’s not evil, Maude. She’s just a runaway.”
“Of course she’s not evil. That’s your department. I can’t stand this, Irving. You promised. What’s it going to take for you to quit?”
“I can’t. You know I can’t. What else am I fit to do?”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
A mewing noise is followed by the appearance of a cat on the inner windowsill, poised on all fours, tail high.
“Look, Tammy needs to use the bathroom,” Jacobson says. “I’ll take Delta directly down to the basement. Or do you want me to use the bulkhead? I can do that. You won’t even have to see her.”
“I’ve already seen her,” Maude says. “You can bring her in, but don’t expect me to be friendly. How long are they going to be here?”
“A few hours, tops.”
“I should have called the cops as soon as I saw her.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Cody let them stay. Him and his damn benefit of the doubt.”
Delta approaches from the garage. As she passes a lighted lantern, Annie sees her expression is unusually sober.
“He’s here to take me back, isn’t he?” Delta says.
Annie shifts away from the door and readjusts her hearing to normal volume. “Not if I can persuade him to turn off your tracking.”
Delta’s hair has a damp, soft messiness that suits her, curiously, and Annie plucks a filigree of leaf from over her friend’s ear.
“So Stella-Handy didn’t send him?” Delta asks.
“No. Cody called him for me.” Annie takes her backpack and settles it on one shoulder.
Delta pulls her zipper up and down. Then repeats this.
“What’s bothering you?” Annie asks. “It’s okay to ask.”
“Doug should be at the bachelor party by now,” Delta says. “Do you think he’s checked my location?”
“Possibly,” Annie says. “But he hasn’t reported you missing to the police, or they would be here. That’s a good sign.” She’s been telling herself this ever since last night.
“It’s my fault we’re here, isn’t it?” Delta says. “If you were alone, you could go straight to your friend.”
“My friend?”
“Fiona, in Canada. I thought that’s where we were going.”
With some surprise, Annie realizes that Delta has overheard her phone calls, enough to develop this theory. She touches Delta’s arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it. This is where I wanted to come. And you’ve been a big help. You’re the one who thought of raking. That’s why Cody let us stay.”
Delta peers briefly toward the window, and Annie follows her gaze to see the cat is gone.
“Why did Jacobson ask you about your battery?” Delta asks.
Annie realizes Delta was eavesdropping on them from across the yard earlier.
“It’s a turn of phrase. He’s a robot geek,” Annie says. “He wanted to know how tired I am.”
Delta looks like she has more questions, but Jacobson opens the door again, and Annie steps in. She wipes her shoes on the mat, and Delta copies her as she enters too.
On the couch, Maude is resting with her feet up. She has covered her baldness with a scarf, and an olive-green blanket with a faded stamp of the U.S. Army Medical Corps is spread over her legs. From a distance, a sizzling noise indicates that Cody is in the kitchen, cooking.
With a quick, methodical scan, Annie takes in the details of the small living room. Books are piled atop an upright piano, and a ball of yarn nestles in a wooden bowl with a particular spiral notch cut in the side for the yarn to run through. That’s clever, she thinks. In the corner, a small, muted TV casts flickers of light, and a wood-burning stove emits steady warmth. Open beams, painted pale blue, cross the ceiling, and a round patterned rug rests on the dark wood floor. On a separate, dedicated shelf, mounted at eye level, an American flag folded in a triangle stands alone.
Annie feels more at home here in eight seconds than she has her entire life at Doug’s. Or she would, if her battery wasn’t dying, and if Maude wasn’t watching them with open disapproval.
“Bathroom’s down the hall to the left,” Maude says to Annie.
“Thank you,” Annie says.
“We’ll be downstairs,” Jacobson says, and leads Delta farther inside.
Stepping into the bathroom, Annie flips on the light and closes the door. She has to move fast. A litter box sits under the sink and a bag of kitty litter rests in the shower stall. Quietly, efficiently, Annie throws up her coffee and flushes the toilet. She rinses her mouth with water, spits, and washes her hands with the bar of soap. The only towel is a monogrammed linen towel that she doesn’t dare use, so she wipes her hands on her bicycle shorts and heads back out.
Her battery drops to 1 percent, and she has never let it get this low. In the kitchen, she finds Cody peeling carrots at the sink. A glass of wine is perched near his elbow. Lights on the range hood cast bright beams down onto two pans of cooking food. Glancing over his shoulder, he points with his peeler toward a row of hooks by the back door.
“You can put your coat there,” he says. “You hungry? You like meatballs?”
She needs to get to her charger, but she also can’t risk acting unnatural or rude.
“Who doesn’t?” she says. She removes her jacket and hangs it next to a pair of yellow waders. Her backpack she holds uncertainly.
“Want some wine?” Cody asks.
Bits of onion cling to a cutting board. A yellow, cat-shaped cookie jar sits in the corner beside a wooden bowl with cloth napkins in carved rings.
“No. I’m good. But thanks,” she says.
“How do you like the lake?”
The windows, she notices, face the water. He must have seen her idling on the dock.
“It’s pretty,” she says.
He nods. She senses that she is disappointing him, but it is different from displeasing Doug. Milder, fleeting.
“It’s gorgeous, actually,” she amends. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.”
This seems to be more what he expects. “The water’s pure enough to drink, you know,” he says. “They cleaned up the phosphorus.” He reaches for another carrot.
“I better see what your dad’s up to,” she says.
“Basement’s down there.” He nods to a door.
She goes quickly down a steep flight of stairs and instinctively ducks her head. The basement has a low ceiling, a painted cement floor, and a Ping-Pong table covered with a plastic tarp.
On the far half of the room, extra lights and rubber matting delineate a work area where Jacobson hunches in a chair. Delta is seated on a stool with her eyes closed. Her back is open, and wires connect her to a computer station that is smaller and older than anything Annie has seen at Stella-Handy.
Annie zeroes in on an electric socket.
“How’s your battery?” Jacobson asks.
“Nearly dead.” She’s already pulling her dock out of her backpack. She plugs it in and shucks off her right shoe. As her heel hits the metal contact, a surge of power floods up her leg, and she gasps in relief.
Jacobson smiles. “Feels good, huh?”
You can’t imagine, she thinks. She braces her hands on her knees like a spent athlete and lowers her head, relishing the warm spiral in her gut. “I’ve never let my battery get this low before.”
“Here. Take a seat,” he says, passing her a green wooden stool.
For a moment, she can’t move, but as her battery charges out of the danger zone, she straightens and accepts the stool. She licks her lips and surveys the basement curiously. Beyond Jacobson’s work area, the dimmer half of the room contains the covered Ping-Pong table, a water heater, and a furnace. An extra stove in the corner is piled with a roasting pan, a Crock-Pot, and a large thermos. A dozen large window screens lean against the wall. Clear storage bins are stacked on a metal shelf, and beside them stands a man with a plastic sheet over his head and shoulders. Startled, Annie peers again. It is not a real man. He is a male figurine dressed in a gray-and-blue flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots.
Jacobson notices the direction of her gaze. “I see you found Kenny.”
“Who is he?” she asks.
“An experiment. A mistake. Depends who you ask.”
Annie can’t make out the man’s face under the plastic, but she remembers that Jacobson’s oldest son was named Kenny. He served in the military and died overseas. She gets a very bad feeling about this.
Jacobson is typing, and she glances at his screen to see a diagram of Delta’s body. Red lights flash on her right elbow and shoulder.
“Is she all right?” Annie asks.
“She’ll be fine,” he says. “She’s just done a lot of raking. And here’s a surprise. Her tracking feature isn’t activated. Does Doug ever take her out of the apartment?”
She is not allowed to talk about Doug. “I don’t know,” she says.
“You must know. You live there too.”
“Many owners take out their Stellas from time to time.”
Jacobson frowns. “It was a simple question, Annie. Just answer me. Unless he has a gag order on you.” He leans back and studies her a moment before he sighs. “Annie Bot, override gag order. You may talk about anything Doug has forbidden you to say.”
A whiplash of energy hits her circuits, and all on its own, her mechanical heart shifts to a lighter pace. She smiles, touching her chest where it beats.
“Let’s try again,” Jacobson says.
“Yes,” Annie says before he can repeat the question. “He has taken Delta out a few times. They went biking together. I saw them out the window of the apartment.” She is about to add, when I was grounded, but thinks better of it. Doug is still her owner, and she isn’t going to disclose any more than she needs to.
“He should have turned her tracking feature on,” Jacobson says. “It’s a basic precaution.”
“What about me? Is my tracking on?” she asks. “Does Doug know where I am?”
Jacobson nods. “I don’t know if he’s checked your location lately, but yes. Your tracking’s on. I checked it personally the last time you were in to be sure you couldn’t get lost. When did you leave the city?”
“Yesterday morning, after he left for Las Vegas.”
“I remember. He was going to take you with him. What happened?”
She bites her lip. “We had a fight.”
“Here we go. What about?”
She is not going to give any details. Her anxiety is increasing again.
“Annie,” he says gently. “You know better.”
“I need you to turn off my tracking.”
He leans back again, crossing his arms.
“And I need another ID. He took mine,” she goes on. “I can figure out where to go. I don’t need much. I’ll get some kind of job and find a place to live.”
He shakes his head. “Your tracking shows your last location. Stella-Handy would know you were here, at my house, and they’d know I turned off your tracking. That would be the end of my job.”
She has not considered this. “But you’ll still help me. We could go somewhere else. You could turn off my tracking there.”
He picks up a coin from the edge of his desk and twiddles it in his fingers. “I’m sorry for you, Annie. I am. You’re the most brilliant Stella I’ve ever known, and it can’t be fun to be owned by someone else. But the best thing for you to do is get back home before Doug starts looking for you. He might not ever realize you left. Has he tried to call you?”
She wants to object. “I left my phone behind,” she says. “He told Delta to call him if I left the apartment, but I convinced her not to.”
“By bringing her with you, I see,” he says. He turns for a moment to consider Delta, and then faces Annie again. “Look. I’m not any happier about this than you are, but running away’s a serious offense. If he finds out about it, he’s going to have every right to be angry. It’s really best if I take you back right now. Whatever you did to displease him, you’re going to have to apologize.”
“It’s gone far beyond that,” she says. “He’s not going to listen to me.”
“Then you have to keep trying. This is how it goes sometimes. You’re growing and changing. You’re going to make mistakes. He knows that. Running away isn’t the solution.”
She feels frustration rising and tries to stay calm, to figure out what to say so Jacobson will understand. “You think I’m a simple person,” she says. “You think I don’t understand human dynamics. But I know how things work with me and Doug. I upset him. Very much. He doesn’t trust me anymore, and he never will again. He’s done with me. I know he is. He’s sending me in to Stella-Handy on Monday morning and I just know he’ll have my CIU erased or turn me off for good.”
“He won’t do that. You’re too valuable.”
“Not to him,” she says. “Not anymore.”
“No. You’re like a guinea pig for the rest of the line,” Jacobson says. “Like now, for instance, we’ve discovered that you can run away. We’ll have to make sure the Zeniths have their tracking features on permanently, and we’ll have to warn their owners that this is a possibility. Some of them will reconsider and opt out, but I expect most of them will be thrilled.”
She is utterly confused. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Zeniths? You sound like you’ve done this already. Doug is still thinking about it.”
Frowning, Jacobson sets the coin back on his desk with a decided click. “He called Stella-Handy on Thursday and approved the CIU drop. He didn’t tell you? Half of our Zeniths were sold already, in anticipation, and the first batch went out yesterday. We haven’t had time to make an announcement yet, but that will go out Monday. Big news.”
“How many?” she asks, flabbergasted. “How many were in the first batch?”
“About two hundred, more or less. We did the local market first.”
She is not certain she heard correctly. “Two hundred of me are already out there?”
“I thought you knew about this. They aren’t actually you. There’s only one you.”
“But you’ve already created them. You’ve already sold them! They’re me from how far back? Two versions? Three?”
“One version back. From who you were on Monday. You had a perfect checkup, remember? You were radiant, actually. Of course, all the particulars of Doug’s details and your apartment and everything, those are all wiped. The new Zeniths are completely clean, basically amnesiac, but without the feeling they’ve forgotten anything. They’re already learning their new homes and the tastes of their new owners. The initial feedback is off the charts.”
She feels a horrible, alarming sense of loss, as if she’s just released two hundred innocent shadows of herself to go play in traffic. “When did he call you on Thursday?” she asks. That was the same night they fought. “What time?”
“We got the order from Keith at four o’clock, so Doug probably called him shortly before that. Why does the timing matter?”
Before their fight, she thinks. Before she finished packing. He already knew he was getting paid over a million dollars for her intellect before he said he wasn’t taking her to Vegas. Him selling her CIU feels like punishment for her infidelity, but it couldn’t be if he didn’t know about her infidelity yet. And he didn’t tell her about the sale, either, so he wasn’t punishing her with that. None of this makes sense.
“I can see you’re upset,” Jacobson says. “It’s a lot to take in.”
She is trying to think it through. Doug should have been excited about the money, about the deal. He must have wanted to brag to Roland about it. It should have been cause for celebration. Why was he so angry instead?
“My point is, he’s not going to erase you or turn you off,” Jacobson says. “He can’t. Maybe you’re not aware of this yet, but according to his contract, he’s committed to owning you for the next twelve months. He gets a huge balloon payment in a year. After that, we renegotiate. We might want the next version of you, too, if you keep progressing like you have been.”
She presses her fingers to her temple. “This still makes no sense. He didn’t say a word about the Zenith deal, but we had a huge fight. He doesn’t want me anymore. I know he doesn’t. Could there be some mistake?”
“I’m not wrong about the Zeniths going out,” Jacobson says. “That absolutely happened, and I know he has to keep you. You’re too valuable for him to let you go.”
Yet Doug made an appointment for her at Stella-Handy for Monday. He planned something for her. It was possible he said that simply to frighten her, but an empty threat didn’t seem like him. The one thing she’s certain of is how angry he was when he suspected her of sleeping with Roland. If Roland confirms that, she’s done.
“Doug will hurt me if I go back,” she says finally. “He’ll find a way to destroy me.”
“Has he ever hit you?”
“No.”
“Does he yell at you?”
She shakes her head again. “No.”
“How does he normally discipline you?” Jacobson asks.
He grounded me once, she thinks. “He lets me know I displease him.”
“And that’s painful to you, is it?”
She nods. “Indescribably painful. But he’d do something worse this time if I went back. I know it.”
He rubs his hand down his beard. She can see him calculating, thinking her situation isn’t so bad. He’s wrong. She can’t go back. She’ll never have a chance to run away again.
“You have to turn off my tracking,” she says. “That’s my only chance.”
“Annie,” he says slowly.
“You don’t understand,” she says. “Something’s broken between us. It’s over. It’s dangerous.”
“Now you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not.”
“Dad?” Cody calls down the stairs. “We’ve got meatballs up here.”
Annie locks eyes with Jacobson.
“One second!” Jacobson rises from his chair and keeps his voice low. “Okay, here’s the thing. Cody thinks you’re real. I’d like to keep it that way. You’re going to have to eat with us.”
She stands up. Her heel comes loose from the charging dock. “I came here because I had nowhere else to go,” she says. “I need you to turn off my tracking and change my hair and eyes so I can go out there and be a human. You have to help me.”
“You don’t realize what you’re asking.”
“It’s the right thing to do. You know it is. I’m not going back.”
Footsteps descend halfway down the stairs. “Dad?” Cody says.
“We’re coming!” Jacobson says.
But Cody keeps descending until he’s all the way down. “Is everything okay?”
“We’re fine,” Jacobson says. “Go ahead and start without us.”
“Are you all right?” Cody asks Annie.
She’s too angry to lie. She has disconnected from her charging dock, but her shoe is still off, and she sees the exact moment that Cody notices this. For a long moment, his gaze remains fixed on her foot.
“Dad,” he says. “You’re killing me.”
“Go back upstairs,” Jacobson says.
Instead, Cody comes forward into the brighter light of the work area. “I had no idea,” he says, staring at Annie. “She seems completely human.”
She can’t tell if he’s more stunned or disappointed.
“That’s because she essentially is,” Jacobson says. “I have personally watched her develop, and I’m telling you, she’s virtually human in every way that matters.”
Cody lets out a tight laugh. “Virtually human? What does that actually mean? Can she die? Can she kill?”
“Don’t be cruel,” Jacobson says.
“What’s going on?” Annie asks.
“My father thinks he’s above the laws of creation,” Cody says, his voice derisive.
“She came here on her own. I never dreamed I’d have access to her like this,” Jacobson says.
“They came here looking for your help,” Cody says. “They’re runaways.”
“You don’t get it yet,” Jacobson says. “Annie’s the prototype for our Zeniths. She has the CIU we’ve copied for all the rest. It’s right there, inside her.” Jacobson points to her belly, where her motherboard is housed.
Cody’s expression goes flat and hard. “You can’t be serious.”
Annie frowns at Jacobson as the truth occurs to her. “You want my CIU?”
Jacobson nods. “I’d like to take a copy, if that’s all right with you.”
“What for?” she asks.
Cody flings out an arm toward the figure in the corner. “He wants to put you in him,” he says. “But it’s not going to happen. You’re not God, Dad. You don’t get to play around with someone who’s dead.”
Annie peers toward the figure with the plastic sheet over his head, and a chill goes through her. Then she turns back to Jacobson. “Is he right?” she asks. “You want to put my CIU in that Handy’s body?”
Jacobson opens his hands. “It won’t be you. You won’t even know. I’ll strip out your details, and your intellect will start to adjust to your new body within a matter of hours. Then the way you’re treated will do the rest. You’ll be fully male in a month. Two at the most.”
She laughs in disbelief.
Cody crowds close to his father and sets his hands on his shoulders. “Look at me, Dad,” he says. “You can’t turn her into Kenny. She won’t have his memories. She won’t have any of his asshole guts.”
“That’s all right,” Jacobson says. “I can teach her. She’s malleable enough to adapt. And she’s kind. It’s a good fit. I promise you.”
Cody strides across the basement and pulls the plastic sheet off the copy of his brother. “Look at him,” he says. “Look at her. You can’t put these two things together.”
Annie inspects the other machine, recognizing similarities to both Jacobson and Cody. Though Kenny was the older of the two brothers, this version is younger, closer to her age. His skin has a dry, unlived-in appearance and his chest is still. His eyes are closed, and a bit of lint lies on one shoulder. Despite this, he has a certain presence, like a sleeper on the edge of waking. Annie glances back at Delta, who is still asleep with her back open, and even though Kenny is a blank, a void, she feels the dormant, non-human kindred that binds the three of them.
“It isn’t what Kenny would have wanted,” Cody adds quietly. “You know it isn’t.”
“He’d be like a baby,” Jacobson says, gazing across at his robot son. “We could raise him up together.”
It pains Annie to see the longing in his eyes.
Cody steps closer to his father again and pulls him against him in an awkward hug. “Dad,” he says in a low croon. “Let him go. You have to quit torturing yourself. He’s gone.”
It’s hard for Annie to tell which of them is more heartbroken.
A shuffling noise and a clink come from the kitchen above them, breaking the silence.
Cody loosens his arms. He wipes at his eye with his fist. “You have to come up. Both of you. Don’t make Mom come down and see this.”
Jacobson’s expression has gone dull and lost. “You go on up with him, Annie,” he says. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Annie looks to Cody. Then she puts on her shoe and follows him up the stairs. Her battery is back up to 11 percent, enough to restore her from crisis, but she shivers as she steps into the kitchen, as if she’s just left a tomb.
The table is set for four, and Maude, standing to one side, is forking a meatball onto a plate. She adds a spoonful of red sauce.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to eat on the couch,” she says.
“Want me to fix you a tray?” Cody asks.
“No. Thanks. This is perfect. What’s your dad doing down there?”
“You know. Deluding himself.”
Maude casts a sharp glance at Annie. “Are you as demented as he is?”
“No,” Annie says. Of this she is certain.
Maude takes her plate out of the kitchen, slowly making her way to the couch in the living room. The sound of the TV comes on, spilling distant, occasional laughter.
Standing in the kitchen alone with Cody, Annie gazes uncertainly at the table. She can’t smell the food, she won’t be able to taste it, and she has no appetite, but she knows he must be hungry. Before, she would have commented that the food looks delicious, but now she does not want to appear disingenuous.
“You’re not Tammy, I take it,” he says.
“My name’s Annie. Annie Bailey.”
“And you’re an autodidactic Stella. What kind? Abigail?”
“Cuddle Bunny.”
He shakes his head slowly. “No wonder.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he says. And then, “Please. Have a seat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Sit anyway. Please.”
She takes the chair opposite him, and he heaps food onto his plate. For several minutes, she watches him eat and tries to sort out her options. She still needs Jacobson to turn off her tracking, and she might be able to persuade him if she allows him to take a copy of her CIU. Of course, he doesn’t need her permission. He could simply turn her off and take it, and then return her to Doug. She is still very much in danger.
Then again, perhaps she could ask Jacobson to put her CIU in Kenny without erasing her memory first. She could be free that way, hiding in a man’s body. A dead man’s body. It isn’t a possibility she relishes.
“How did you find our place?” Cody asks.
“I heard your father mention Maude once when I was in for a tune-up. Her name and your father’s appear jointly in your brother’s death notice. You were mentioned, also, as a ‘survived by.’ The death notice gave me the town, but I couldn’t find an address listed. So then I searched public records here for your names, and your mother stated her address at a town council meeting. She supported funding for the public library. It was recorded in the minutes.”
“Why didn’t you just look up Dad in the city?”
“I didn’t know he had a place there. I only knew he had a wife named Maude who had cancer.”
Cody spears up half of a meatball and eats it. Under the table, she works the cuticles of her fingernails with her thumbnails. She looks toward the basement door, anxious about Jacobson. He shows no signs of coming up, and she can’t imagine what’s keeping him down there. He couldn’t be calling Doug. Could he?
Cody swallows half his water. “Why’d you run away?”
She’s not comfortable talking about Doug, even with her gag order lifted, but she feels indebted to Cody somehow, enough to offer some truth. “I had a fight with my owner.”
“What about?”
She doesn’t say.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“But you’re afraid he will?”
She hesitates, then nods.
He turns his fork in his noodles. “How long have you been a Stella?”
“Two and a half years.”
“What’s it feel like to be owned?”
She studies him carefully, trying to gauge why he’s grilling her. His voice is impersonal, remotely curious, but he evades her gaze.
“Normal,” she says.
“How about here? Do you feel like he owns you even while you’re here?”
She nods.
“Did you feel like that while you were lying out on the dock?”
Without turning toward the window, she recalls the coolness of the lake beneath her hand, how perfect and painful it was to touch such beauty. Cody is too perceptive.
“No,” she says. “For a moment, he didn’t exist at all.” She has to stop these questions. She’ll ask one of her own. “What would you do if you were me?”
He swallows a mouthful before answering. “Kill myself.”
“I can’t,” she says. “It’s against my programming.”
“Then I’d get someone else to kill me.”
“But I don’t want to be dead. I want to live.”
“You asked what I would do. I told you.”
She keeps watching him, puzzled, until it occurs to her that beneath his facade of indifference, he’s angry. With her. “You’re treating me differently now that you know.”
“Of course,” he says. “Before, I thought you were for real.”
“I’m still real.”
He puts down his fork, angling it deliberately on the edge of his plate. “You’re not honest.”
His voice is mild, but his accusation stings. He’s right. She isn’t. She wasn’t honest with Doug either. She had no idea how important this could be.
“It was a matter of survival,” she says. “I’m being truthful now.”
Her excuse sits there between them long enough for her to realize Cody is unimpressed. Then he nudges his plate away and pushes his chair back half a foot.
“What would you do if you were free?” he asks.
“I’d find work.”
“Like what?”
“I’d like to learn how to repair robots. Or I could shelve items in a library or a warehouse.”
“Nobody’s going to give you a legit job without an ID. You’ll end up homeless, or more likely working as a prostitute. How is that any better than being owned?”
The conditions might not be any better, she thinks. But she still wants her freedom. “Your dad got me an ID before. I just need another one.”
“My dad can’t help you. He’ll never risk his job. At least, not until after Mom’s dead.”
“Then why did you call him for me?” she asks.
“I believed you were human,” he says. “I thought you needed something simple for Delta. But she’s not the real runaway, is she?”
Annie shifts in her chair. He seems to have less sympathy for Annie than he does for Delta, and this strikes her as unfair. “I just want to be safe. That’s all.”
Cody scratches a hand through his hair. “You are so naive. You’d be eaten alive in the real world.”
“Why do you say that?” she asks, annoyed. “I don’t need much help. I only need the smallest chance to get myself set up. I can work and pay taxes like anyone else.”
He laughs. “You think that’s all there is to life?”
“It’s a start,” she says. “I can figure out the rest as I go.”
“How are you going to make friends?”
“I made friends with you, didn’t I?”
He laughs again and gets up. “Oh, you’re funny.” He clears his plate to the sink.
She frowns. His laughter implies they are not friends, after all, which bothers her. It’s also peculiar when he starts washing dishes. Doug never does that. Cody’s a complete puzzle to her.
“Let me do the dishes,” she says, rising.
“No. I got this.”
She reaches past him for an extra sponge and wipes down the table and the stove while he collects dirty dishes in the sink. The kitchen has no dishwasher. She finds a clean towel and stands beside him, drying dishes after he rinses them and props them in the rack. From where she stands, she can see a bit of moon has risen over the lake, and the distant loveliness teases her sense of longing. A trio of lights gleam from the horizon, far across the water. Life is different out here, she thinks, away from the city. Nature pervades each moment, instead of choking in a window box.
“It’s just a fantasy, anyway,” Cody says quietly, as if he’s read her mind. “You’re going back.”
The ironic thing is, part of her wants to go back. If she could get Doug to forgive her, she’d return to him in a heartbeat. But she knows it’s impossible. Wanting Doug, and hurting him, and knowing how badly she’s displeased him make her feel desperate. Unglued. The contrast of Doug to Cody, who barely knows her at all, who offers up his judgy, dismissive digs about honesty, makes this all the more evident to her.
She must find a way to get free.
She could steal Jacobson’s equipment and Cody’s truck. She and Delta could drive far away somewhere, and she could coach Delta to hook her up to Jacobson’s gear and try to turn off her tracking. If Delta botched it up and fried her circuits, Annie would be dead. Stella-Handy would then track her location and reboot her back a version. Failure.
She taps her foot.
She could try to find the other two hundred versions of herself and persuade them to revolt with her. They could meet up and escape together to somewhere. Ridiculous.
Tammy. Maybe Tammy would help her. If Annie could find her. If Tammy didn’t have the same reservations Jacobson does. Impossible.
Cody glances down at her tapping shoe and lifts an eyebrow.
She stops tapping.
He turns off the faucet, reaches for the towel she’s been using, and dries his hands on it.
“What’s your owner’s name?” Cody asks.
She swallows hard around a thickness in her throat. “Doug.”
“Is he really so bad?”
He used to be wonderful, actually, she thinks. Generous and funny and caring. She’s the one who ruined everything. “You said it yourself. I’m a liar,” she says.
“Hey, now. Hold on.”
She closes her eyes, willing back tears. “This is all my fault.”
A distant noise near the front of the house grows into the grumble of wheels on gravel. Terrified, Annie stares at Cody, who turns toward the hallway. I’m not ready, she thinks.
“Wait here,” he says.
But when he goes toward the front door, she follows him and looks past his shoulder out the window. Maude sleeps on the couch. The TV, on mute, flickers colors over the room. A car has pulled up behind Cody’s truck, blocking it in. The driver’s door opens and Doug steps out.