The gleam in his eye diminished, but still he responded enthusiastically, “Wow! Are you sure? You’re going to do it before the commercial launch of pssi? Can you do that?”
“We sure can. I’ve checked and rechecked everything—we can only stand to win if we go now. When Cognix goes ahead with pssi, we’ll get a double bump up the hill. Jimmy’s been helping me out. I do need to chat with Patricia quickly though, is that okay?”
David nodded glumly as he looked at the place settings. I squeezed his hand and pinged Patricia. Her head appeared a moment later floating in one of my display spaces, and she pulled me into her reality. Out of the corner of one multiplexed eye I could see David sulking and taking a sip of his wine. He got up to add more logs to the fire.
“So you’re sure you want to go ahead with this?” Patricia asked immediately.
“Absolutely!” I almost yelled out before noticing where I was.
Everyone in the pub turned and looked at me. I’d materialized sitting on what appeared to be a small, worn out church pew tucked in the corner of an old English pub. The crowd turned back to what they’d been doing and the hubbub returned.
“Okay, good. Well, I will press on ahead on my side, then. You’re keeping on top of the New York trials?”
“Yes, Aunt Killiam,” I responded, feeling like a child. “Of course I am.”
I smiled at Alan, one of Patricia’s old mentors, who was sitting across from me. He nodded back and smiled.
“Okay,” she replied, “perfect. I’ll start a campaign with the Board then.”
I was hardly able to contain my excitement, but I was now nervous as well. I realized that this was actually going to happen, that all my dreams were coming true. But there’d been another reason I had asked to speak with her as well.
Squinting slightly, I took a deep breath, not sure how to bring this up.
“There’s something else?” asked Patricia. She could sense me hesitating.
I sighed. “What’s going on with Uncle Vince?”
Reports were flooding in about him dying almost constantly, along with rumors of him selling off chunks of his vast, if haphazard, empire. He wasn’t my real uncle, but I’d known him all my life and he was a close friend of our family.
It was Patricia’s turn to sigh, her face clouding up. I thought she was about to share some terrible secret with me when she just said simply, “Nothing is going on with Vince, nothing at all.”
“What do you mean?” What was happening certainly didn’t count as nothing.
“He’s just, well, he’s just fooling around.”
Aunt Pattie shrugged, as if to say: What could one expect from a bored trillionaire? But her eyes said more. Whatever was going on, she wasn’t going to share it with me now, and I trusted her reasons, whatever they were.
“Okay,” I replied hesitantly, “if you say so. Just tell me what I need to do to help with the Board.”
“I will. Speaking of the Board, will we be seeing you at the Foreign Banquet tomorrow evening?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
Patricia hesitated. “Dr. Baxter said he may bring Bob along…”
She let the words hangs in the air.
“Well I think I’m going solo anyway,” I replied with a smile. “It’s an official function and those bore David to death.”
“I just thought I’d mention it.” Patricia smiled back. “Now you get back to your evening!”
My excitement bubbled back up, and I positively squealed as she faded away.
“That’s fantastic, Nance, that’s really good news,” said David on my return to him and dinner. He seemed a little uncertain now, hovering, but his love for me shone out in his eyes. Try as I might, though, my heart could never quite return it.
“Come here, my big bad boy,” I said lustily, trying to hide my uncertainty.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him across the side of the table and towards me. He took my cue, and met my lips with his in a strong, firm kiss, opening my mouth and meeting my tongue. I could feel one of his hands sliding down my back, gripping me, pulling me further into him, and our bodies pressed together.
We both flittered for a stimswitch almost at the same time, and I laughed, my mouth pressed against his, as my point of view switched into his and I felt the heat and strength and urgency in his body. I found myself staring into my own eyes with him staring back out from them into my gaze, our senses shimmering back and forth like two mirrors reflecting an image endlessly into each other.
“What about dinner?” I asked breathlessly as our bodies rocked together in rhythm and slid to the floor while we pulled off our clothes.
“This is dinner,” he gasped back.
He phase-locked our stimswitch so we simultaneously ghosted each other. I was him and he was me, our sensory channels now overlaid into and onto each other as we began our lovemaking.
While most of me was there, perhaps the most important part of me wasn’t. If you can’t be with the one you love, then you love the one you’re with.
At least, you do your best.
5
I’D HAD ANOTHER terrible night. With my splinter limit fixed at ten, I’d been forced to funnel more and more of my resources into the Phuture News Network. Combining my natural abilities with the reduced rates I’d managed to get from Vince through Bob, I was still beating the markets, but I wasn’t the star I used to be.
“Are we going to have breakfast together?” asked Brigitte, standing next to me in the bathroom that morning. She was brushing her teeth.
“Pumpkin,” I sighed, “I just don’t have time.”
I was staring at my face, lathering it for a shave. I enjoyed a real shave from time to time. It helped me reconnect with myself after nights spent shattered all over the multiverse.
“You could have Wally shave you,” she suggested meekly. “We haven’t sat down for breakfast together in more than a week.”
She was pouting.
“Jesus Brigitte, you know I just like to shave myself sometimes!” I snapped.
Her hurt expression reflected in the mirror. With a quick intake of breath I was about to apologize, but she’d already flitted off without another word. Bardot, her proxxi, sat staring back at me from Brigitte’s body, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. She spat out her mouthful of toothpaste into the sink, handing me the toothbrush, and left as well.
I sighed.
I felt bad, but I really just needed some more time to myself.
Rubbing away the condensation from the mirror, I focused on my face and began to shave. I felt an itch and erratically scratched my shoulder as I held the razor up. With a swipe of the razor across my lathered face, I thought, what the hell am I going to do? Things were just starting to work out for me, and now Nancy is ruining it all.
Goddamn it! My hand shot under my armpit to scratch something. What the hell? My neck was itchy too. I dropped the razor into the sink with a clatter and began to madly scratch at myself.
It felt like ants were crawling under my skin.
I managed to stop scratching for a second to inspect my arm, and was shocked to see a small bump under the skin. What was going on? Then it moved. I wildly scraped at it, ripping open the skin and blood oozed out. Looking into the mirror in horror, I saw my face seething and roiling with boils. My hands shot to my face, feeling a
