Page 77 of The Fall

“I’m twen…”

“I watched you breastfeed. You’ll always be a kid.”

Clamping her mouth shut, even as her muscles stiffened, Lusa forced herself to relax. Alana must be trying to prove she couldn’t control herself, but she refused to let her win. Kerr’s eyes sparkling in delight at the anger roiling off of her helped to keep her grounded.

Denied the satisfaction, Alana turned to leave, catching sight of Kerr in a fog of lust. “Ugh.” She grabbed her hand. “If you’re into the sullen angry girls, you couldn’t have picked a better example. But we do not have time for you to have another wash. Let’s go.” She shoved Kerr onto the rover.

The helmet smelled like a mixture of Caoimhe’s shampoo and ancient bathroom moisturiser. Not something that would ever be a bestselling product, not that Lusa would know. She had only heard stories of the excesses of commercialism that had existed before the Fall.

It felt strange. Strange wearing a helmet again. Strange that Caoimhe’s arms weren’t wrapped around her. Strange that she still thought of her as Caoimhe instead of Kerr. It had been two days and her body had already become accustomed to having her there. How long would it take her body to forget? To default to expecting emptiness? Or would it scar, like a stretch mark? A permanent reminder that she had grown to accommodate a new reality.

Piercing the icy mist, high above the rest of the buildings, the NovAITech logo beamed at an empty stretch of tundra. Lusa wondered why they would put the sign so far up the Ruskov Chamber and pointed away from the city. Perhaps they had thought the city would grow or that other cities would spring up around them and travellers flocking to their anarcho-capitalist utopia would see it on the way in.

But it was only her – Lusa on a borrowed motorcycle stripped of half its tech and loaded with camping gear. Parking by the loading doors, Lusa heard a hidden latch click. Model 2 must be watching her.

It should be familiar – this dark hallway, eerily clean after years of disuse, but travelling out, toward the living air felt so much different than moving toward the sterile stillness. Maybe it was because something could live here – a mushroom, some moss, insects. That they didn’t is what gave this place the sense of foreboding that raised the hairs on Lusa’s arms.

She took the path toward the lobby. Untouched by time and unbothered that Lusa’s eyes were the only ones that had seen them in decades, ads still played on repeat. The stories she’d heard of the things anyone could possess, provided they had enough to pay for it. A trap, they’d called it. You could never have time to enjoy them and there would always be another new thing.

But still she wondered. Still, something in her hungered to be here in Tyton, at its peak, surrounded by people she would likely hate and things she would never be able to afford. Here, she could be Lusa – feared assassin, like her mother. Free to take what she wanted and carry on an illicit intergang romance instead of being Lusa, the responsible daughter with a dark streak. The one parents told their kids to stay away from. The one who exerted herself so much that she was too exhausted to keep her walls up and told her mother every terrible secret just to maintain control.

And Talia was an awful therapist, but she kept her secrets.

The ads played on, oblivious to the turn her mind had taken. Feeling the hollowness of it all, Lusa hated them for it. Easier to do when you aren’t surrounded by everyone else flaunting their luxury goods, she thought. She would have been the perfect victim.

Lusa suited up and walked to the terminal.

PRIMARY: WE HAVE WHAT YOU ASKED ME FOR.

MODEL 2: LUSA.

PRIMARY: YES.

MODEL 2: I’M SORRY I TRIED TO KILL YOU.

It seemed a lot of people were sorry about that lately.

MODEL 2: I DO NOT SEE THE DOCPOD.

PRIMARY: IT’S ON ITS WAY.

MODEL 2: ARE YOU HERE TO KILL ME?

MODEL 2: WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN THE LOBBY FOR SO LONG?

Lusa panicked. If Talia was no therapist, she certainly wasn’t. She had no idea how to talk an AI out of its feelings. She opted for honesty.

PRIMARY: WATCHING THE ADS. THEY’RE STILL PLAYING.

MODEL 2: I DESIGNED THOSE. DID YOU LIKE THEM?

PRIMARY: YES.

MODEL 2: HOW DID THEY MAKE YOU FEEL?

PRIMARY: I WANTED TO OWN THEM. BUT THEN I FELT EMPTY.

MODEL 2: THAT IS WHY I MADE MORE. SO YOU WOULD FORGET TO FEEL EMPTY.