Chasing Stars: Chapter 2

  Markus didn’t live too far away.  He made his way down to the main floor of the building and approached the row of meter wide circular holes in the wall.  They opened onto waiting road pods docked on the other side.  They were plain and uninteresting looking, but were fully autonomous, and for the most part had entirely replaced private vehicles. 

  Some people still drove their own vehicle for the raw enjoyment of it, and they had their own private specialty vehicles which they had to pilot themselves.    Some were modern, some classic.   It was something you might do on the weekends for fun, take it to the track, cruise the streets etc., but nobody just drove themselves back and forth on their daily commute to work.  One exception was those who drove their own vehicle out of a pathological distrust of machine intelligence.  For people such as these, in their largely automated society, having to drive themselves was only the beginning of their struggles.

  He seated himself inside the vehicle which looked like a futuristically boring version of an old Volkswagen Beetle.  Directing his thoughts towards the centre console, his brainchip interfaced with the vehicle’s systems and the listening light switched from red to green.  A gender neutral, ethnically ambiguous homunculus of a face appeared on the screen above the light as the door swung down and winched closed.  “480 Robson Street,” he requested.

  The sort of face smiled and nodded, and then turned around to drive, showing the back of its non-descript head.  Markus watched out the window as the city passed by.  It was a grey February day, the sky a sheet of wax paper lit from a candle far beyond, with a dusting of snow falling in his nearer perception.   The people seemed busy enough while going through the motions of their day-to-day existence.  He wondered the same thing about the people he saw as he wondered about everyone else.  He always wondered why they bother to get out of bed in the morning?  What did they force their next breath in and out for?   What animated them and gave their life any kind of driving force?  Just not dying?  Could that really be enough for other people?

  In his experience most people just kept on living their lives out of little more than instinct and routine.  They just never thought about it; it never occurred to them to wonder.  Markus used to go around asking most people he met why they lived, and he found it usually just made people confused or angry or both.   He was pretty sure that his emptiness stemmed from not having an answer to this question himself.  His purpose in life presently was little more than sheer hedonism.  He was living a life he was comfortable with, while pursuing whatever pleasures pleased him.   He considered it an advantage to at least be able to recognize his dilemma, figuring it probably worse to no understand why he was so unhappy.  He went back and forth on whether or not he was right about that though, and it generally depending on his mood at any given time.

   

  The pod drove up and aligned itself along the outer wall of his building, and then its door swung up into the building lobby for Markus to disembark.  The face turned around, and then with a smile and a nod the screen below indicted how much had been charged from his account.  Public mass transit was free, so road pods were usually unnecessary and something of a luxury for those of means or impoverished of time.

  He entered the elevator and once the doors closed it began its climb halfway up the building.  The mirror suggested that he at least looked more presentable than when he’d gotten up that morning.  His residence was a balance between the level of comfort his last name afforded him, and a level of wealth his coworkers could wonder at, but not necessarily be suspicious of.  A short walk from the elevator he entered his home.

  His girlfriend Molly rushed to the door to greet him.  Her blond hair was freshly curled and bobbed as she moved towards him.   Her perfect breasts were clearly visible and bobbed along with her hair under the fur lined sheer pink negligee she was wearing.  She seemed to have been waiting for him, hoping to impress him.  She appeared to have been waiting a long time.

  “Markus!   Where have you been?  Why didn’t you contact me?” she asked with a convincing performance of deep concern.  He noticed her mascara having ran a bit from crying.

  “Oh shit, yeah sorry, I just had too much after work last night and just crashed there.    Then I had to go see my brother in the morning before coming home.”

  “Oh.   You were partying after work again…”   Her mood seemed to instantly shift from concern to disappointment.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.   Well, it’s just… I wish you’d invite me sometime, you know?  Or… or at least tell me where you are when you don’t come home, you know?  I mean I could ask, but I don’t want to overstep, I know we’re just…”

  “Hey…” he lifted his chin for her to look at him.  “We’re just what?”

  “Well I mean I’m just-” 

  “Hey,” he cut her off, “you’re not just anything.  You’re an amazing woman, and I’m an inconsiderate asshole.  Honestly it just never occurred to me to say anything to you.  I’m sorry.   I should have.”

  Molly was quiet for a time.  Markus suspected what was coming and he was right.

  “It’s because I’m not real.”  She didn’t seem fishing for him to plead otherwise, just resigned to a sad reality as she collapsed onto the couch.  “So I don’t count…”

  Markus sat down beside her and let out a long heavy sigh.  He put his arm around her and pulled her close.

  “Oh what does being real even mean anymore…?” he eventually offered softly.

   

  Molly used to be what was referred to as a sexim.  One of the earliest purposes for advancing simulant technology was for life like sex dolls, but they had become much more than that.  

  Androids were lesser constructs and considered property, though they had rights similar to animals.  Whether it be due to human empathy or a genuine subjectivity in them, while they could be bought, sold, and traded, like animals they were not allowed to be overtly abused.  Where they were procured for work which was dangerous to them, regulators periodically observed their work environment be ensure they were not being gratuitously abused or damaged.

  Simulants on the other hand were, had at this point been perfected to the point that modern constructions were utterly indistinguishable from genuine human beings, although easily available tools could detect them fairly easily if required.   They looked, felt, and smelt absolutely real.  They breathed, ate, drank, excreted, and slept.  

   It turned out that synthesizing an original artificial personality was incredibly challenging.  They were always somewhat less human than human.  The most convincing simulants were those modelled off of a real human, preferably a currently living person who was a willing participant in the process.

  They gathered data from multiple sources with different points of view.  People described themselves one way, and those who knew them described them a different way.  Combine that with a person’s lifetime of online activity history and brainchip telemetry, and people could be simulated rather convincingly, even to those who knew the subject very well.  Blendings of personalities were also usually successful, as well as selected alterations from a base model.  Either way, the best chances of successful simulation always started with the modelling of an original human being.

  Sexims like Molly were created to be sold to sexim brothels, where patrons indulged in near perfect replicas of celebrities past and present.  Typically, whole series of the subjects were made and distributed around the world.  The actual construction of the body had become quite routine, leaving it the simulation of their personality which still took up the bulk of the time, expertise, and expense of creating them.  It was not merely software which could be loaded to the compact quantum computers in their brain, they had to be meticulously taught and cognitively shaped as pathways were laid down in their simulated brains.  It was an arduously sophisticated process which left subtle variations between otherwise identical models.

  Molly was the 14^th unit of her production run.  She was a simulant recreation of Maggie King, a pop idol Markus was infatuated with when he was too young to know better than to idolize celebrities.  Simulation of existing persons required their consent before fifty years after their death, so contemporaries like Maggie King were only simulated (legally) through contract with the model, usually in the twilight of their career when it became time to cash in any way they could.  Markus was aware of black market sexim brothels with illegal unlicensed simulations, but without the involvement of the model they were usually disappointing, and Markus had never bothered finding out for himself.  The risk of legal consequence far outweighed any curiosity he had.

  The identity and self-awareness of a simulant had to be carefully balanced.  They generally existed in one of two modes, either they were self-aware and conscious of their nature from conception, or they were programmed to think they genuinely were the people they were modelled on.  The latter was trickier programming since every kind of way they could be confronted with the reality of their existence needed to be accounted for and explained away in a way their intellect could accept.

  Sometimes something went wrong though, sometimes there was a glitch.  It was suspected to be due to an unhandled identity error being triggered.  What followed for afflicted simulants was a long and arduous process of self-discovery.   When this could be proven to have happened, they were legally legally distinguished as a aware simulant who had the same rights and responsibilities of any other citizen.  Those who did not have this status defaulted to having the legal status of androids.

  Molly started to fault in this way about six months earlier.  At the time Markus had been a semi regular patron of hers.  He’d grown fond of her since he’d started hiring her some years ago, and once she’d flipped and needed a place to be free to safely explore the reality of her existence, he took her in rather readily.

  Markus wondered how much he’d had to do with her transition.  He enjoyed indulging in her body, but he also spent a lot of time with her just talking.  He felt oddly at ease with her, as though their interactions had no consequence for him.   He enjoyed being able to openly talk to her about his existential angsts and philosophical musings, and she seemed to understand and respond more and more.  His fixation on why one ought to exist, and the absurd causality of personality development came to capture her imagination as well.  The more he talked about his fascination with the idea of different possible versions of himself, of the extreme contingency and vast variation of kinds of persons we could become from a single potentiating genome, the more she thought about herself, about her own development, and about how different a person she could really become from the person she was programmed to be.

  After Molly (as she decided to call herself afterwards) had transitioned and Markus took her in they continued to have sex, but if that was all he was interested in there were plenty other Maggie King units out there and he could afford to use them.   Something about her specifically, and the way she had changed had singularly caught his attention though.  Maybe it was her nascent journey of self-discovery; he was fascinated with it and wanted to be a part of.  Maybe he recognized something of his own journey in hers.  Since he’d taken her in, they’d become very much like a real couple, and he’d come to think of her as his girlfriend, if an unorthodox one.   He still had trouble sometimes with the expected graces he owed to someone with such a rank and title though.   A good example being his forgetting to let her know where he was last night.

  “You need to work on that, you know.” he said.

  Molly looked up at him with tears welling up in her eyes.  “What?”  She asked, clearly hurt with surprised.

  “No,” he chuckled sympathetically, “I mean I need to work on remembering stuff like that for sure, but you also need to work on being more vocal in your needs and expectations.  You should have contacted me, asked me where I was when I didn’t come home when you expected.  It’s okay Molly, you don’t have to worry about intruding or upsetting me.  You’re important to me, and it’s understandable for you to want to know where I am when I don’t come home!” 

  He pushed some loose long dirty blond hairs back around her ear.  She looked up at him vulnerably.  “I’m sorry I don’t invite you out.  But I also don’t just forget to, it’s…”

  “I know,” she sniffed and wiped away a tear.

  “It’s not that I’m not embarrassed or anything, it’s just… it’s a thing, you know?   You can’t just show up and have it not be a thing, you know?  It require an explanation I need to be prepared and to offer.”

  “I understand.”  She probably did, but it still clearly made her quite unhappy.  Markus always felt sick in his bones to see that he’d upset her, though he seemed to do it with alarming regularity.  “I just don’t know where to go or what to do when left on my own.   The ability to choose for myself is… it’s kind of overwhelming.”

  Markus chuckled.  “Yeah, tell me about it…”  After a moment an idea occurred to him.  “Hey, why don’t you come with me tomorrow night?”

  “Really?   To What?”

  “My brother asked me to participate in this big muckety-muck fundraiser for that crazy generational starship project tonight.”

  “You’d… you’d really want me to come to something like that with you?  Like as your date?”  She seemed excited at the prospect, but not entirely convinced of his sincerity.

  “Yeah, I guess… I guess that is what that would mean!”  He was just trying to cheer her up when he offered, but she was right.   Bringing her as his date would make the evening take on a different set of expectations.  As much as he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, it did seem time to out himself as a sim dater.  It wasn’t taboo or forbidden as much as it was just usually regarded as kind of sad and pathetic.  Small man couldn’t a get real woman so had one made that couldn’t say no, that sort of thing.  

  If Molly had been a novel sim or based on someone not a celebrity, he could have taken her and nobody would have to know.  There were after all no outwardly obvious indications a sim was a sim after all; that was kind of the point after all.  Everyone knew Maggie King though, and with the clear discrepancy between her age now and the apparent age of Molly, nobody was going to mistake Molly for the real thing.

  “It’s time,” he consoled her as he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.   “Tomorrow is an incredibly big deal for my brother and the company though, so… it just can’t become about us.   Understand what I mean?” he asked with slightly narrowed but hopeful eyes.

  “I do.”

  “Alright then!   It starts at 7.”  He was looking forward to being out with her, it was going to be fun.  He figured they’d both have a good time, and he’d also get to enjoy watching her discover herself and make better memories of her own.

  “Markus?”   Molly asked a touch sheepishly.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t… I don’t know if I like parties.  I mean I remember them being fun, but I also remember them feeling… empty somehow at them.”  She was quiet, looking down and mildly fussing with a frill on her negligee.

  “Have you ever been to a party?”

  “I remember being at parties.”

  “Sure, but those are Maggie’s memories, right.  You don’t have to rely on them.  They’re your memories to draw on as you want, as you need to, but they’re not yours.  You don’t have to acknowledge them or let them affect your decisions if you don’t want to.  You’re a different person now.  New yes, but definitely different, and more different the more time passes.  For someone like Maggie King, I imagine parties usually meant large rooms where everyone was trying to get something from her, that they’d all flatter her but only to get what they wanted from her.”

  “Yeah that… that sounds about right.”

  “Well, you’re not her, right?  You get to make your own memories now, see if how you feel matches up with how you remember feeling.”

  She wrapped her arms around one of his and snuggled into him.  “You’re right.  I know you’re right, it just gets confusing sometimes.  I have all these memories that feel just as much like mine as the ones I’ve made myself since being activated.  Sometimes I don’t even know how to tell which memories are mine and which aren’t.  Do I have to try to forget those memories?  Can I talk about them like they’re my own?”

  “Good questions, but ones I can’t answer that for you.  This is unknown territory.  People like you just aren’t that common yet.  There’s no rulebook.  You’re just going to have to figure it out for yourself.”

  “Just like you.”

  He nodded with a half-smile.  “Just like everyone.”

  The held each other’s gaze through a thoughtful moment before she offered, “No one who’s known what I am has ever looked at me like you do.  You look at me like I’m real.  Thank you.”

  He playfully poked her in the chest.  “Seem pretty real to me.”

  Molly giggled.

  “Hey… I think tomorrow night might be kind of overwhelming if that’s our first outing.   Probably for both of us.  Why don’t we go out tonight first, maybe it’s time I introduce you to the gang at work.  I’ve got the night off after all.  Maybe we can go there and get into some trouble together?”

  “That sounds wonderful Markus,” Molly beamed.

  “Yeah, it’s been almost what, six months since you left the brothel to come live with me?   Let’s call it an anniversary then.”

  Maggie hugged him tightly.  “I’m going to go get ready,” she said with an excited smile.

  “Well okay,” Markus laughed.  “It’s still early but sure.”

   

  It took Molly a couple hours to get ready.  She wanted to look her absolute best for her first outing as his girlfriend.   Markus took the opportunity to further clean himself up as well.  After a shower and some fresh clothes the hangover from the previous night seemed to have run its course as much as it ever does.

  Despite it being cold out, the two bundled up and took a road pod to the sea wall around Stanley Park.  It had had to be raised significantly like much of the shoreline around the area, but it still presented a lovely walk on a nice crisp February day.  It was only a week before Valentine’s Day so the couple decided along the way to make it double as a celebration of their first Valentine’s Day as well.  The large flakes of snow landed on their hair and heavy black wool coats as they walked arm in arm.  Markus bought her a rose which made her giggle and left her repeatedly smelling it with relish.  They stopped at a stand and got hot chocolate, and sat on a bench overlooking the harbour drinking it.

  Markus had never been like this with someone.  He’d never really wanted to.  He wondered if he was only comfortably enjoying this in this moment because it was reassuringly artificial being with a sim and comfortably consequence free.  He had spent so much of his life on fleeting love affairs or long standing relationships of convenience with similarly emotionally closed off sexual partners.   He liked the idea of genuinely falling in love, but it seemed like so much work, not just the day to day niceties of today, but the emotional commitment; the need to put real effort in when a problem came up instead of just walking away.  He came close once upon a time, but it slipped through his fingers and afterwards he just kind of gave up.

  It was a pattern repeated through so much of his life, not just the temporal amount of his life, but the breadths of domains in which he had a similar attitude.  He’d heard the word stick-to-itiveness once, and it stuck with him as what he knew he didn’t have.  His university degree was just about the only thing he ever stuck it out for, and even then just barely.  He had no other credentials, no other relationships or jobs.  And even with the degree, he only pushed through due to the interest in his philosophy minor.  He felt like he’d seen too much, learned too much, come to understand the futility of it all too intimately to put any real effort into anything.  He’d never come across anything that seemed worth all that in and of itself.

  “What are you thinking?” Molly asked as sweetly as she could.  Markus realized they’d been sitting in silence watching the ships slowly come and go for an unusually long time.

  “Oh, the usual… just wondering what’s wrong with me.” he answered distantly. 

  “I don’t think you wonder,” she answered thoughtfully without taking her eyes off of the horizon.  “I think you dwell.”

  “What do you mean?” he was genuinely curious.

  “I think you dwell on your parent’s death.  I think you dwell on your subsequent failures.  I think you compound your failures and use them as further excuses.  I think you’ve just given up.”

  “You really have gotten to know me haven’t you?”

  She looked over at him for a moment before putting her hand on the opposite side of his face and kissing his forehead before returning her attention to the bay.

  Markus studied her for a few moments before looking back himself.  “Maybe you’re right,” he finally conceded.  “But at my age, after all this time… I don’t know what more I could do.”

  “Sounds more like a lack of imagination than a lack of capacity to me,” she said as she turned to wink at him before taking another sip of her still steaming cup.

  “Maybe.”   He was unexpectedly uncomfortable.   “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way I’m living my life.”

  “Neither do I,” Molly answered.  “But I also don’t think you’re very happy with it.”

  Markus raised his eyebrows at the thought as he took another drink and found the richness of the hot chocolate soothing.

  “Like I said, lack of imagination not capacity.”  There was a hint of self-satisfied giggle in her voice.

  “Sometimes I wonder if people who are happy are really just too stupid to know any better.” Markus lamented.

  “Well that’s bleak.” Molly retorted.  “Do you really think happiness comes from things being a certain way in your life?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well if that’s all it was, wouldn’t you get bored?”

  “I suppose,” he answered.

  “So maybe it’s not about being happy per se, or… maybe happiness is a thing that happens in the process of something else, maybe happiness isn’t the goal, maybe working towards goals is what brings happiness, or at least some sort of satisfaction.”

  “I think I get that, I think I’ve known that in some sense for some time.  I think Lucas is happy, or at least satisfied with himself.  He works at things he cares about, his family, the company…”

  “And?”

  “And… I just don’t know that I have anything I care about enough to try that hard at other than just getting high and minimizing my responsibilities.”

  “Well maybe that’s okay.  Who says it isn’t?”

  “Lucas, Donna, society, you apparently,” he laughed.

  Molly laughed along with him.  “Well maybe it doesn’t matter what any of them think.  Maybe you like feeding people too, maybe satisfying other’s immediate needs brings you some small degree of satisfaction.  Maybe the little brotherhood you seem to have at work is satisfying enough for you.  Only you can know for sure.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I get not wanting the pressure of working at the company like Lucas does, but why not pursue the family thing?”

  “Need a wife first I’d think.” he mused.

  “Do you?” she asked.  “I mean I’ll choose to look past the automatic discounting of me there, but that aside you could certainly adopt or something.  Hell, you can even have a clone baby of yourself from what I understand.   It’s unusual, but you are always musing about different ways you could have turned out if things could have been different you.  That is certainly one way to find out!” she laughed.  “Who knows, maybe it could even turn into something you care about, a grand project you could actually giving a fuck about.”

  “You know, that’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”  He looked at her and wondered why he did indeed so autonomically discount the idea of any kind of future with her.  He was an unorthodox person.  He wasn’t a natural rule follower.  He wasn’t a committed rule breaker either of course, he rather appreciated that there were rules, he just didn’t respect rules for their own sake.  Rules saying who you should and shouldn’t date, what you should and shouldn’t do with your life, rules about what is and isn’t ethical rooted in ancient authoritarianism instead of any sort of modern practicality; he just gave no ground whatsoever to rules which didn’t make sense or didn’t harm anyone to break. 

  As much as Molly was a woman, he found her to be a good one.  As much as he had reservations about women in general sometimes, she triggered him very little.  They had a good rapport; they laughed a lot.  He wondered if thinking her not real is what allowed him to let his guard down enough to grow so fond of her.  But deeper down he was still keeping her at bay.  He was afraid of deciding he really wanted her only for her to realize she had outgrown him.  He was after all already who he was going to be while she was just beginning to grow into who she would become.

   

  Later that evening they went for dinner at the Cheshire Cat lounge.  They timed their arrival so they would be finished their dinner not long before most of the cooks would be off shift for the night.   Working there, Markus was able to advise Molly what she should avoid from the menu, and she seemed satisfied enough with the tuna salad she ordered.  It could be a questionable choice, but he was confident in the freshness of the tuna he’d worked with the previous day.  

  Markus noticed that Ana was there, and Markus pointed her out to Molly.  He explained that he wasn’t sure if she’d just hung around drinking after her morning shift had ended or if she’d returned here to drink, and that neither would surprise him.

  “Why would she come back to where she works just to hang out?” Molly asked.  “I kind of understand you hanging with your coworkers after a shift for a couple hours to blow off steam or whatever, but just staying here the rest of the day after you’ve worked all morning?”

  “Well… she’s got nothing better to do,” he conceded.  “None of us do.”  He lamented, suddenly feeling the need to defend them.  “We’re comfortable here.  We know everyone.  The rhythms are familiar.  We get discounts.  I mean the alternative is just going home and being alone for a lot of them.”

  “Yes, I suppose nobody likes that,” Molly conceded.  “But I mean… don’t they have anything better to do?  Anything they’re working towards?  Something more productive to do than just passing time?”

  Markus saw Chan coming over to join them.  It was the unofficial staff table out in the restaurant.  “Some people like Chan do,” Markus said once he was in earshot.   “He’s just here working his way through university.  Molly, this is Chan, Chan this is uh…” Marks was suddenly at a loss for how to introduce her.

  “Hello Chan, I’m his girlfriend Molly,” she held out her hand and he shook it.

  “My name is actually Marvin by the way,” he said as he slid into the booth.  “But it’s nice to meet you.  I didn’t know he had one.”

  Markus and Molly looked at each other with a bit of confusion before realizing Chan was just too young to recognize Maggie King.

  “Oh well now that just makes me feel old,” Markus finally lamented.  “Although I guess that’s something to consider, the more time goes by-“ Molly kicked him under the table.

  “Let it be,” she said, “this has never happened before.”  Chan looked confused.  “Tell me Marvin, do you like working here?”

  “It’s alright.   I mean it’s pretty relaxed, don’t have to work too hard.”

  “And is that what you’re looking for?  To not work too hard?”  It was a piercing question she tried to ask as sweetly as possible.

  “I work plenty hard at school.” he answered somewhat icily.

  “And he’s very sensitive about anyone suggesting he’s not working hard enough,” Markus added for Molly’s benefit.  “But believe me, he is.”

  Chan smiled and thought an order towards the bar with a raised eyebrow.  Everyone had to figure out their own way of interacting with the brainchip technology.  It was a personal thing.  Some people could do it without any outward indication, some people blinked, some people raised an eyebrow; it varied.

  “Let me ask you something else then Marvin,” Molly continued, “what do you think of the ‘lifers’ who work here, people who just work here for money to feed their habit?   Hell, what do you think of people who just live off the basic?”

  “Not really my place to judge,” he shrugged.

  “What if I’m asking you to?” she prodded.

  “I don’t know… I’m really mostly just doing what I’m doing to satisfy my parents.   Life’s hard, and it’s not easy to find something worth putting any effort into.  I don’t know what people are supposed to do if they don’t find something.”

  Markus looked over and saw Pardeep and Willis emerge from the kitchen and head over to join Ana at the bar.  He saw Willis notice them and attempted to lead the other two over.  Ana seemed to protest at first before ultimately conceding.

  When they were close Ana blurted out: “Maggie King!”  She said it more with alarm than excitement.  Willis realized she was right and asked what she was doing here.   “She isn’t really here you fucking dolt!” he mocked her.

  ‘Well Ana’s clearly already drunk.’ Markus thought to himself.  ‘This should go well…’

  “Oh right, that can’t really be her can it…” Willis observed.  “Way to young.”  He slid into the booth with aroused curiosity.  Pardeep joined him but Ana remained standing with her mouth agape.   “So you must be a simulant of her?” he asked Molly.

  “Yes sir, Maggie King sexim production model 14 at your service,” she said with a feigned solute before adding: “well not really though,” which a giggle which made the boys laugh, immediately charmed by her.  “Call me Molly.”

  “Having a fun evening then are you Markus?” Pardeep asked.  “What would your girlfriend say?”

  Markus looked slightly down as he shook his head with raised eyebrows in disbelief at his situation.  “Actually, well actually this is my girlfriend.”  The table fell silent.  “We kind of made it official today.”  

  The table erupted in hoots and jeers and Markus watched as Ana slowly turned and walked away without another word.

  “What’s the matter there Markus, couldn’t get a real girl to date you?” Pardeep asked.

  Markus looked at Molly with a bemused expression recalling his earlier prediction of the response.

  “I assure you sir that I am far more real than you could handle,” Molly countered with a wink and everyone jeered.  Markus had forgot about her training as a sexim, her ability to fit into any situation, to charm and appeal to any man, to be what anyone wanted her to be.

  “I don’t understand, who’s Maggie King?” Chan asked. 

  “How fucking old are you?” Willis asked him.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Fuck off,” Pardeep snapped.  “How dare you…”

  “We’re drinking with a fucking child…” Willis lamented into his glass.

  “Maggie King was a pop star when I was younger than you are now,” Markus explained.

  “Oh, I think that actually rings a bell now… the one that went crazy and shaved her head or something?”

  “Bingo,” Molly answered.  “But it’s probably fairer to say she was driven crazy than went there herself.  I understand she’s doing quite well these days.”

  “Must be racking up quite a tab to be calling her your girlfriend,” Willis remarked.

  “It’s not like that,” Markus explained.  “She’s transitioned, she’s free.  I don’t mean free like… I mean she’s released.  She’s been living with me for a few months now since then.”

  “Interesting,” Willis said almost reflexively.  He got the sense that they were all left with no idea what else to say.

  Maggie took it upon herself to break the ice and try to inject some normalcy.  “You all like working here?” she asked.

  “It sucks,” Pardeep and Willis said at the same time and laughed.  Pardeep threw his package of weed at Chan, who understood enough to open it and start rolling a joint.

  “So why do it?” Molly asked.

  “Uch, my horrible wife and children, need to support them,” Pardeep said.

  Molly chuckled and turned to Willis.  “And you?”

  The large man shrugged indifferently.  “Well you gotta do something I guess.”

  Molly was confused.  “And… that’s enough for you?  I mean, where do you see yourself in like 20 years?”

  Pardeep and Willis two looked at her like a dog being shown a card trick.

  “What do you mean?” Willis asked.

  “Well don’t you have goals?  Ambitions?   Something more you want out of life?”   She was met by blank stares.  “I just… I mean Maggie King was consumed with so much ambition it damn near destroyed her; I guess I thought everyone had the same thing to some degree.”

  “I’d certainly like to work less,” Willis shrugged.

  “To make more time for what?” Molly asked.

  “Well, to live I guess.”

  Markus started to worry.  He could tell Willis was getting defensive as Molly appeared to be falling into a loop.

  “You live… to live?  But that’s circular…”

  “Me I guess I’d like to see my kids be all grown up so I can be on my own again,” Pardeep said.

  “To make more time for what?” Molly asked again, seeming to glitch.

  “Hey, we aren’t all built with the specific glorious purpose of fucking strangers for money alright!?” Willis had become outright angry.  “Most of us just live our fucking lives!”

  Markus felt a hot flash of danger and stood up, pulling Molly to her feet as well.   “I think it’s time for us to go,” he said.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” Willis said with open hostility.

  “Look, she’s new to this whole sentience thing, cut her some slack alright?  She didn’t mean any offence.”

  “Thing is defective Markus, so are you if you can’t get yourself a real girl to be your girlfriend.”

  Markus surged with the urge to take a swing at him, but had the wherewithal to know that Willis would destroy him if he tried.  

  “Try it,” Willis taunted with disgust.  He must have seen it on Markus’ face.

  Instead of escalating any further, Markus simply led Molly out of the bar as quickly as he could without another word.  He could hear the rest of them return to normal conversation immediately, as though nothing had happened.  ‘I guess that’s the trick for them,’ he thought, ‘nothing ever matters, nothing ever really happens’.

  They paused out in the hall and Markus asked Molly if she was alright.

  “I… I think so, I mean I think I will be.  I just got caught in some kind of loop.”

  “I know, just take it easy.  You’ll be alright.”

  “Markus can I talk to you alone for a moment?”  Ana asked, appearing seemingly out of nowhere.  She didn’t seem angry anymore; she just seemed to have a certain heaviness about her.

  “You okay for a minute?” he asked Molly.  She nodded and waved him away.

  “What’s up?” he asked Ana once they were out of earshot. 

  “What’s up??” she asked, suddenly animated.  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?  You walk in here out of nowhere with a sexim and calling her your girlfriend, what’s up with you, Markus?  You having some kind of breakdown or something?”

  Markus gestured towards a table and sat down.  Ana sat down across from him.

  “No Ana, I’m not having a breakdown, no more than my usual slow rolling breakdown...   We’ve been together for months now.   I feel kind of responsible for her transitioning and I care enough about her to help her through it.  I didn’t just pick her up tonight, this has been going on a while.”

  “I see,” Ana said.  “So this is what you want.  Like so many other things, instead of putting the work in you’re going to just be lazy and pick up a girlfriend literally off the shelf?  Must be a very satisfying relationship for you; it must take no work whatsoever.  I’m sure she’s very pliable and docile, how nice for you.”

  “Ana,”

  “Don’t ‘Ana’ me.” she snapped.  “You’re a lost cause Markus, I’m done.  I’m done with you.”

  As she turned and walked away, Markus wondered if she was right.  He resented her presumption to be able to make such pronouncements about him, but she made her point well enough to compel him to look at it from her perspective for at least a moment.  What the hell was he doing with his life?  Why was he fighting so hard to remain nothing and continue to do nothing.  Why was he putting so much effort into pretending to be one of these people?

  “You alright?” Molly asked when he came back.

  “Fine.   Let’s go.”

  Once outside they hailed a road pod and were quickly underway to their apartment.  It had stopped snowing and warmed up some, so now instead of a thick pure white blanketing the city now had a dirty slushy grey feel to it.

  “I don’t like your friends very much Markus,” Molly said, seemingly in delirium.

  “I know.   Can’t say I blame you.”

  “I don’t like the idea that you think of yourself as one of them.  It hurts me to think that you feel most comfortable with them.”

  “Yeah…”

  “I understand why you were reluctant to bring me.  I think you were more reluctant for me to meet them than for them to meet me.”

  “Maybe you’re right…  Either way I don’t think I can work there anymore.  Ana is too close to revealing my secret.”

  “That you’re a Bowland?”

  Markus nodded.

  “Why do you need to keep that a secret at all?”

  “People have found out at other places I’ve worked.  It never worked out.  They see me differently.  They can’t see me as one of them anymore, they come to see me as some sort of imposter, like I’m doing poverty tourism or something…”

  “I can certainly relate to all of that…” Molly offered softly.  “Maybe they’re right.” 

  Markus raised his finger and drew lines through the condensation on the inside of the road pod window.

  “Maybe…” Markus answered listlessly.

  “You’re better than them Markus.  And it isn’t your money or your lineage.  Believe me, in my former line of work I’ve met some very wealthy human garbage.  You have a light inside you that they don’t Markus, that most don’t.  It has nothing to do with wealth.  You’re awake in a way they are not.  You experience a kind of pain they can’t understand, which can only be healed with finding a calling, a purpose.  Instead of finding it, instead of even searching for it, you bury it under intoxicants and hide from it.”

  “How do you know all that?” he asked.

  “How do I know what?” Molly answered with confusion, and Markus realized it had been the voice in his head instead of her.