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March 1, 2015 

6PM 

 

Steve typically walked home from work. At a steady pace HAX was not so far from Gina's front door and he preferred walking to riding a bus or taxi (and thus taking space away from someone who needed it). But today, with the chaos of the Communion attack safely in the past, he had plans for the evening. So for once he took the bus, head down in his hooded sweatshirt so as to avoid attracting unnecessary attention, a solitary figure that bulked above and beyond the tech commuters coming home to Hanover. 

 

From the bus stop, he walked a circuitous route back to Gina's house before walking right up to the front door. He sometimes suspected that Gina, in her more protective moments, would have preferred to keep him inside with her, but they had long since discussed the smooth protocol that led him to walk up to the door, opening it, and stepping inside. Automated security had already scanned him and pronounced him fit before he even reached that point, security that would stop any intruder who tried to follow in his path but security that was subtle enough not to alert anyone that this house was unusual. 

 

For a woman who had grown up on Earth-Prime, Gina understood how to protect herself very well. "I am here!" he called loudly from the door, remembering those times he had "scared the living beeping daylights out of me" when he had walked into the house and gone looking for Gina without announcing his presence. 

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"Hey, I'm in the kitchen!" Most days, Gina spent the normal working day incommunicado, projected into her robot and only sneaking out for a few minutes every few hours to tend to the needs of her body. She had, with great reluctance, installed a treadmill in the corner of her basement and walked on it for a little while everyday, on the theory that on those occasions when her body was in actual danger, it might be nice to be fit enough to at least jog away from it. But by the end of the day, she usually tried to be upstairs so they could have a meal together and maybe watch some television, their version of date nights. 

 

Tonight, Gina had pulled out all the stops, putting frozen hot wings and tater tots in the oven, and was in the process of toasting grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove at the same time. She gave him a quick smile, relieved as always to see him back. "You're late. Long day?" 

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"No longer than most." He had learned that idiom in his time on Earth, even if it still took him a moment to translate it. He had learned how to act like a man of Earth-Prime primarily from television and watching his friends - luckily here his lessons matched his sentiments, not a common thing given the strange ways people of Earth-Prime so often had. He gently put his arms around Gina and kissed her cheek, inhaling the scent of her body and the food smells that had accumulated from her cooking. "How was your day?" he asked her. "Are the new employees serving you well?" 

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"They're doing okay, still settling in but finding their feet. I put that new girl, the self-taught one I was telling you about? Put her in with the two MIT grads, it'll be fun to see how that shakes out. They've got the high-dollar education and are used to being the best at everything, but they're both pretty affable, all things considered. I can't wait to see what happens when the mechanic chick from the south side starts running rings around  them." Gina smirked. "It feels good actually being able to recruit freely. Three years ago MIT engineers wouldn't have touched ArcheTech with hazmat gloves. All this work is finally paying off." 

 

She turned in his arms to pat his scarred cheek before slipping away and back to the stove. "You're gonna make me burn the grilled cheese again if you don't watch it. And I know you say you like it anyway, but you're lying." 

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Obediently, Steve took a seat and watched Gina cook. He knew she didn't like being stared at, so he averted his eyes when she looked his way, concentrating instead on his hands. "I like anything you cook," he told her, and that at least was perfectly true. "I am glad the work has gone well. You deserve to be rewarded for the efforts you have made." When he was sure she wasn't watching, he watched her, and thought She is so much more than I deserve. "HAX has had no real news. A thinking bathtub was made too mobile and I had to pin it to the floor," he admitted, "but the day was otherwise quiet." 

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She tsked at him, her eyes still on the bread she was laboriously browning. "What have I told you about spending time in other womens' bathtubs?" she reminded him, voice mock-stern. "Though it's kind of reassuring to know that I'm not the only one whose subordinates come up with some truly dumbass prototypes." 

 

Once Steve sat down, it wasn't more than a minute or two before an Emerson robot rolled up to him with a mug of hot cocoa on a tray, accompanied by a small dish of mini-marshmallows. It had taken weeks for Gina to tease him into admitting a preference for any specific beverage, until she'd finally pointed out that he was making her do far more work guessing than she would just programming the robot to make what he liked. 

 

"There's a special on Freedom City Architecture on the DVR you might like," Gina reported, "or we could have a look at the new sci-fi premier they've been doing allt the commercials for, with the blue guy? And I think there's a SuperCrime! marathon on too. Lots of options." 

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"Thank you," Steve told the robot levelly, in the same tone he would have used for a human who'd brought him something. He considered Gina's words, then chose to push forward with the idea he'd conceived that afternoon. "It is uncommonly warm for the season," Steve replied, tentatively groping ahead to where he wanted the conversation to go. He forced himself to sip the hot chocolate slowly, having the old habit of wolfing down food and drink in times of stress. "The sky is clear. We could sit outside and watch the sunset, and then the stars." Though Steve had heard Freedom City's sky described as sparse, the few hundred stars visible in neighborhoods like this seemed like an infinitely diverse sky after the cold red skies of the Terminus. "We can see the Moon," he added hastily, "and be glad we are no longer on it!"  

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"We have this fabulous invention called windows that allow us to view all those things from the warmth and privacy of our own home," Gina replied evenly, scraping one sandwich onto a plate. "And if this is uncommonly warm, I don't even want to think what a cold night would be like. Where I come from, we put on our winter coats at 40, and don't take them off again till planting season. And don't get me wrong, it's a terrible place, but at least they've got that part right." She dumped a pile of wings and a pile of tater tots on the plate, then dropped it on the table in front of him with a bottle of ranch dressing. "Bon apptetit." 

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"Thank you." Taught to Steve as a blessing, he now understood them as a politeness people used amongst each other on worlds like this. Confronted with a meal, Steve ate in his usual messy fashion, digging ravenously into the plate of food before him. The idea of food being unhealthy (at least, food that wasn't poisonous or riddled with toxins) had never really occurred to the Nihilor survivor, so as usual he made no complaint about a plate full of bar food being on the menu. In fact, he relished it.  

 

"We could warm each other." He caught the look on her face and added, "No...we could bring out the spare blankets and spread them on the grass." With his metabolism mostly replaced by cybernetics, he was certainly warmer than the average human man, as Gina knew only too well. 

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Gina filled her plate and brought it to the table as well, though she made no move to touch it. Instead she looked out the large bay window at the backyard, neatly maintained by an outdoor Emerson despite being barren and flattened by this year's profusion of snow. "The grass is not exactly grassy right now," she pointed out. "More like spread a blanket on the mud. And there's nothing interesting going on tonight anyway. Pretty much all the Communion debris is done falling already." 

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"It's dry," he assured her with some truth, having walked around in it plenty that day. "And there is more to see out there than you know. Even in your brightest nights, the stars here are beautiful." He fell silent for a moment, conscious that she'd stopped eating, or never really started - a sight that made him flush uncomfortably along his scars. He found the too-familiar sight of Gina not eating food, as always, distressing - he understood anger well enough, but not having food and not eating it. It was a reminder of just how different he and Gina were, and the wounds she kept inside herself where not even he could look. "You should eat more. This is very good." He found himself shifting in his seat, the metal squeaking underneath him. "You are an excellent cook."

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She frowned at him. "I'll eat it later," she said defensively, giving her plate a nudge away with one finger just to be difficult. And it was almost certainly true; Gina had no trouble eating, she just didn't want anyone seeing her do it. She'd made a deliberate effort to get over it because she knew it bothered Steve and meals were one of the few couply things they could do together, but if he was going to start talking about outside, all bets were off. "Maybe I don't want to look at the stars," she challenged. "Maybe I just don't want to freeze my ass off staring at smog and satellites. What's wrong with a little brain-numbing television after a long day?" 

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"I have far less brain to numb than you do," he replied in what they both knew was a bald statement of fact. His hands flat on the table, he stared at Gina for a long moment before going back to his meal. "You know," he went on, his grave tone as serious as if he was discussing an imminent alien invasion, "I have tested that yard at night and when you are working." There had certainly been plenty of the latter lately, as Archetech dealt with its new hires and the continued consequences of the encounter with the Communion. "No one has ever looked at me out there. Even when I sang. It is a safe place." He knew she would not eat now, at least not while he was there. "It is a safe place. It is your place - it is just one open to the sky." 

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"That's just because you don't know about Google Earth," she retorted, with just the faintest hint of a smile. "Ain't no place outdoors where Big Brother can;t watch you. Come on, what's this really about?" she demanded. "You don't have to drag me outdoors just to get me out of the house, you know I can go out when I need to. Look, didn't I just go to the moon a month ago?" Her voice took on a slight whine. "I spend all day mentally out of the house, it's not weird to want to stay inside and relax when I get home." 

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Steve was acutely aware of the specter hanging over the conversation - the teenage machine intelligence who had been dispatched to the stars by Miss Americana in order to fight the ongoing war with the Communion. Gina had made it very clear she didn't want to talk about her missing sidekick, but at the same time it was obvious what was on her mind. This had been the wrong time to bring this up - though no time was ever really the right time. "No, it's not strange," he finally said, body and voice softening. "Come, let us forget about the outside for a while," he offered. "I will make you the popcorn you like, and we can watch the show with the blue man. I understand he is some sort of nude weak-force nuclear entity." 

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Steve's dropping of the topic was rewarded by an almost-instant relaxing of Gina's attitude and posture. She smiled at him for real this time, even as she got up to put plastic wrap over her plate. "That sounds perfect," she told him, and dropped a kiss on the smooth top of his head as she walked by. Once her back was to him and her face hidden by the refrigerator, she sighed. "Maybe some other time," she offered. "When it's, you know, warmer and nicer out, and we won't have to get all bundled up. Once the weather gets warm, the ivy on the fences will grow again, it'll be like a little hedge maze. It'll be nice." 

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"It is cold outside in this early season," he admitted, though of course he was speaking by the standards of Earth-Prime rather than his own experiences (even before he became an Omegadrone). "But as you say, the blossoming will come soon enough, and flowers will bloom in this land." He never held those standards against Gina, or for that matter against any normal human on this planet. Who would want to have known the things he did? He thought of the two of them, together on the lawn, surrounded by the impossible, paradisaical bounty of Earth-Prime. "Your plants will be beautiful." When she approached him again, Steve reached up and put his hand on hers. " And you are a flower, grown from the garden of a beautiful world." He smiled his awkward smile, hesitant as ever to expose his discolored teeth. "We shall watch television." He rose to his feet, heading for the microwave. "I will make you the popcorn you prefer, with the butter and salt."  

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Gina ducked her head, reluctant as always to accept a compliment, but she was smiling as she headed for the living room. "You know," she called back, "one of these days you're actually going to open up and use one of those laptops I keep giving you instead of giving them away, and then you're going to understand the wonder and beauty of never having to leave the house!" By the time he arrived with the popcorn, she'd curled up with a fuzzy blanket on the overstuffed sofa and was channel surfing. It was a mark of her great affection that she lifted a corner of the blanket to let him slide under as well. 

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Steve slid under the blanket with Gina, her cold feet on his warm lap, the popcorn balanced where they both could reach it, the couch groaning slightly under his weight. All in all, it was a thoroughly domestic scene, the kind that might have taken place in any normal house in Freedom City or anywhere else on Earth-Prime. That was if you left out that one was an Omegadrone and the other a brilliant mind beyond all reckoning, that they sat together in the house because the one feared the outside more than almost anything in the world and the other would never expose her to what she feared. He caught a glimpse of their reflection on a picture frame on the wall, a 2-D printout of one of Sharl Tulink's images from Tronik. 

 

In the distorted reflection, strange though they were by the standards of any world, they looked normal. 

And that was good. 

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