Page 27 of Smart Ass

Was that seriously their whole lives?

None of them seemed to be facing the uncertainty that had led Maxamillion to them in the first place, but they also seemed to lack the passion and emotions that Max had thought were the defining characteristics of sparks.

Max thought about logging into K3 again to see what some of his peers were really excited about. Maybe they had hidden depths? But… he really wasn’t seeing it anywhere. Even their blogs were corporate and mundane, their minimal attempts at humor completely formulaic. Any excitement seemed manufactured to increase consumer followings.

It was a lifestyle completely inaccessible to Max. And they’d been kind of rude.

His best hope was that they were bound by corporate restrictions in their public presence, and that they secretly snuck off to other servers to let loose.

He could only hope.

But it left him feeling more alone than he’d ever expected.

K3 should have been his community.

He took a moment to just watch Ben greet Evan in his hospital bed. They both smiled so fiercely, even though Evan winced in pain.

Max wanted to be with them. He wanted to take care of Ben and help Evan feel better. He wanted to just be in their presence. Wasn’t that what community was?

He didn’t want to interrupt their time, though. And he wasn’t sure if Ben would want him there.

He was lurking, too committed to Ben to leave, but too unsure of himself to reveal himself to Ben and ask to join.

He’d learned some new things about himself, though. He wasn’t a boring, snooty corporate personage, and he’d never fit in with the other knowledges.

He also wasn’t silly and quirky like Ben.

So where did that leave him?

Who was he?

He thought about joining another server for sparks but he wasn’t sure he could handle it if it was equally disappointing.

It would be much better to settle down and watch Ben.

Maybe he could develop a lip-reading program to capture and approximate what Ben was saying when he didn’t have access to a microphone.

No, that would definitely make him a stalker.

But… maybe it would be alright if he got Ben’s permission?

He decided to start the project anyway—it had to have some patent possibilities, right? Perhaps for high-volume situations or humans who were Deaf or hard of hearing? That’s what he would tell Ben anyway. Probably.

Lies and uncertainty.

He started gathering data and looking for open-source projects he could improve.

And then he opened a separate project to start practicing how to introduce himself to Ben.

Hopefully it would go well.