Daniel’s eyes were wide, pleading with her. They glanced over her shoulder toward the exit.
Melanie wondered what she’d expected. Awkward silence, perhaps. An organized shunning, at worst. Or maybe one person she hardly knew saying something rude, and the rest of the country’s elite and mighty feeling ashamed for the worst example among them.
But Chloe?
The empty chair at her old table would likely be filled by the time they returned from their honeymoon. Melanie could see another potential calendar of court dates looming as Beaufort’s attempted to refuse them service. Daniel had been right about this being a mistake.
But he was wrong to think it’d be much different at Devo’s. She’d seen the looks from the court stenographer and the bailiff bots. There’d been plenty of androids in the gallery as advanced as he, each of them far more flesh than machine. And not all of them were pulling for change.
It was a lesson Melanie absorbed from experience: you can’t be hated without learning to hate back. The system fed on itself. The tension as jobs were lost turning into ire on both sides. Defensive hatred turned into offensive hatred. Tribes turning on each other. They were all programmed this way.
Daniel was mouthing his silent plea once more as the chorus of derogatory remarks grew louder. She nodded her resignation and leaned forward to push her chair away. The sudden movement prevented the attack from landing square—the wine streaked through the back of her hair and continued in its crimson arc, splashing to the carpet beyond.
There were gasps all around, more from the anticipation of what might come next than at the outrage of the attack. Several men slapped their palms flat on the table, expressing their approval. China sang out as it resonated with the violent applause.
Daniel was out of his chair in an instant, rushing to Melanie. He slid one arm around her while the other went to the crowd, palm out. He was defending the next attack before it started. Several larger inebriated men took the defensive posture as an invitation. The gesture of peace was a vacuum pulling violence toward it.
Someone grabbed a corked bottle of wine and held it with no intention of drinking it.
Chloe was the closest. She would have landed the first blow, if she could. But Melanie’s rage gave the mob pause.
“Enough!” she yelled. “ENOUGH!” She screamed it as loud as she could, her voice high and cracking and her hands clenching into little fists with the effort. She glared at Chloe, who still seemed poised to lash out. “How am I hurting you?” she asked her old friend. She spun around as much as Daniel’s grip on her would allow. “How am I hurting any of you?”
“It’s not natural!” someone yelled from the back, the crowd giving him courage.
“He’s a machine,” Susan said. “He’s nothing but a—”
“Does your vibrator hold the door open for you, Susan?” It felt good to say this out loud. She’d thought about it hundreds of times when the relationship first started. Always wanted to bring it up. Melanie switched her glare to Linda. “How many times have I heard you bragging about how good your ‘little friend’ is?”
“We aren’t marrying our dildos, you bitch.” Chloe was visibly shaking with rage.
Melanie nodded, her jaw jutting as she clenched and unclenched her teeth. “That’s right,” she said. “You married a man forty years older than you. And how much of him is original, huh? We sit here every week and listen to you bitch and moan about your inheritance being wasted, on what? Replacement hips? New knees? A mechanical ticker? Dialysis machines and breathing machines and heart-rate monitors?” Melanie pointed to Chloe’s bulging blouse. “Is it unnatural for the old bastard to love those? Does he kiss your collagen-injected lips and marvel at how real they feel?”
She pulled herself out of Daniel’s protective embrace and whirled on the crowd of ex-friends and old colleagues. She placed her hand flat on her chest. “You people think I chose this?” She turned to her fiancé. “You think I could stop loving him if I just tried hard enough? Could any of you choose to fall in or out of love by force of will? Do you really think you’re in control?”
Daniel reached for her again, trying to comfort her. Melanie grabbed his hands and forced them down, but didn’t let them go. “We’re staying,” she said softly.
“We’re staying.” Louder. For the crowd. “And we’re eating. And you can hate us for being the first, but we won’t be the last. You can go get your surgeries and implants, you can medicate yourselves according to some prescription-language program, and you can all go to hell with your hypocrisy.”
The crowd swayed with the attack, held at bay even if it would take years—generations—for them to become convinced. Daniel guided Melanie to her seat, willing to stay if she was.
“Things are going to change,” she said to herself.
“I know, sweetheart,” Daniel said.
Melanie leaned to the side to scoop up her napkin, which was fringed with the red wine it wicked from the carpet. Daniel reached it first and handed it to her, careful to fold the stains away where they couldn’t spread any further.
“It’s coming,” Melanie repeated. “And if they didn’t hear it today, they need to check their hearing aids.”
Mouth Breathers
Cort eyed the school’s entrance warily; its double doors were gaped, swallowing children like krill.
He really didn’t want to be one of them.
“Mom—”
“We’ve been over this, son.” Melanie adjusted the strap on his breathing pack, jerking his torso around as she cinched it up.
“It’s not a parachute,” Cort said, frowning.
“Don’t talk with your mouth,” she told him. She tugged on the other strap, then lifted his chin to make him look at her. “You need to work extra hard to get along, okay?”
Cort grumbled but pushed his breathing tube back in his mouth. He tucked a thumb into one of the straps and tried to wiggle some circulation through to his shoulder. Behind him, the pack whirred purposefully, as if doing something. But it was just a prop to help him fit in.
He nodded to his mom, then waved goodbye to his dad, who sat in the car, his mouth a flat line. He didn’t feel like trying to communicate with the machine. He hadn’t been practicing like he should.
Cort turned to the hungry building and sulked off, trying to merge with the flow of Martian kids, blending in before they were all swallowed whole. It took every ounce of effort in his ten-year-old body to look straight ahead. They’d only been on-planet for three weeks, so he still had a tendency of walking around like a tourist, gazing up at the ruddy sky beyond the habidome.
It’s my last year of middle grades, he reminded himself. Next year will be even worse. Somehow, that made him feel better.
He jostled against a few other kids as the wide column squeezed past the hinged teeth and into the maw. The kids pushed against each other, wading forward, eager to be digested. Cort fought the urge to spit out his stupid tube; he found it hard to breathe through his nose while he was concentrating on it.
He tried to focus on the kid’s backpack ahead of him, forgetting about the breathing so he wouldn’t panic. Beneath a plastic grille, he could see a large fan spinning, just like his. The only difference was: this one wasn’t for show. It actually pushed oxygen somewhere, mixing it with proteins and fluids before circulating the slurry through the kid’s lungs.
Cort felt bile rise up in his throat just thinking about it. He quickly accosted himself for being judgmental, remembering what his mom had said—
Something hit the back of his heel, nearly pulling his shoe off. Cort stumbled, hopping on one foot, and knocked into the kid ahead.
The one behind shoved him. “Watch where you’re going, freak!”
The kid’s voice was perfect. Deep, gruff, and enunciated with crisp precision. Cort didn’t dare turn around and try to reply. It would just make things worse.
When the flow of kids started branching, Cort concentrated on moving with the fewer number, trying to find air, some room to breathe. He used his thumb and finger to pull the saliva away from the corner of his mouth, then wiped his chin with the back of his sleeve. He really wanted to tear the plastic tube out, but, impossibly, he was able to resist.
He needed to get in a pod before his head exploded.
Cort followed the masses down another hall, this one lined with individual learning units. He scanned ahead for “unoccupied” lights, but each one was grabbed by one of the other kids, usually a bigger one.
As the crowd thinned, Cort could see an end to the agony—a line of pods with green lights. Two kids wrestled with each other after choosing the same one. Cort slid past and grabbed the next one, practically falling inside before ripping the tube out of his mouth. He sucked in huge lungfuls of glorious air, nearly hyperventilating himself with relief. It had been like a kilometer-long swim underwater, blending in with the fishes.
He bent over, both elbows resting on his knees, and tried to take slower, deeper breaths. Sweat—partly from effort, partly from nerves—dripped off his nose. He rubbed his hands up his face and wiped them off on his thighs.
There was no way he could do this twice a day. Every day.
He wanted to go back to Earth.