She kissed me once, outside the store, under the overhang between the propped-open door and a curtain of rain. I remember wondering if she really meant it or if she was just stoned and making bad decisions. This was when you could still be out late, when there were still shows to go to, contact highs to acquire, munchie runs to execute.
When everything shut down I didn’t see her for months. When finally I ran into her, she had that stupid uniform on and that vacant smile plastered across her face and the smartwatch on her wrist, recording everything she said and did and anyone else in her vicinity to boot. “When are you coming in to the Center?” She asked like it was a foregone conclusion. You’ll give in. I know you.
“Not sure. Maybe soon.”
“I hope so.” It was half a threat. “What about Bobby?”
They’d been looking for Bobby. He’d said the wrong thing to the wrong people. A squad had been to his mother’s house, twice, three times now. Once they’d come before sunrise. “Haven’t seen him.”
Her eyes drilled into me, trying to decide if I was lying. “Call me if you do.”
SF Drabble #501: "The Editor"
I walked up behind Ordinelli, shot him in the back of the head, tapped the return button and was back in the lab. Two hundred years, just like that. But nothing had changed: the world outside the observation window was still a barren wasteland, dusty, grey, dead.
“Maybe it wasn’t him.”
“It was him.”
“No, I mean maybe it wasn’t him who invented the thing. Maybe he took credit for someone else’s work?”
“Maybe he had a grad student.” There was a future to be had, a better one; it was just a matter of figuring out who to kill.
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