She gave me a bothered frown, probably annoyed I was being glib while she was trying to apologize. “He is good at what he does, at least. The manufacturing side, anyway. I’m sure there’s a better way to install these things.” She studied the hand, stopping on the index finger. Weirdly, I could feel all of it the same as I’d felt my human hand. “Where’s your laser thing?” She squinted. “There’s a little… like a door.”
I pulled my hand over and stared down at it. A small polymer iris had closed shut over the laser hole. It would have been difficult to spot at a cursory glance.
“How do I open it?”
She shrugged.
“Well, super. I have an insanely powerful laser finger that I have no idea how to operate.” I sighed. “I guess on the positive, I have a working hand. And hey! We have more in common.”
Marine managed a half smile at that. “You’re practically a machine now. Laze…” The smile parts disappeared. “I’m sorry.”
“Jesus, Marine, don’t be such a blubbery cunt about it. You’re really making my sacrifice seem like it was all your doing. Oh, I lose my hand and I get a badass robot hand from an old psychopath, but crybaby Marine liked my old hand better so boo hoo hoo.”
“I was trying to be… fucking… I don’t know. Appreciative maybe. Or… conciliatory. Prick.”
“Yeah, well save it for the other babies at the baby store. I mean look at this thing. You know how good I’m going to be able to finger chicks with this? I bet I could write a guaranteed orgasm program for it. Wouldn’t even have to do any work.”
“Of course that’s what you want to do with it.”
“Now you’re mad that I’m looking on the bright side of saving your face from demon alien semen. All because I’m going to be a cervix melting master of fingerblasting.”
“More likely you’re going to melt a cervix with the ridiculous finger cannon you chose to have installed on your stump. And then you’re going to get fingerblasted in jail. Forever.”
“And all because I saved your life. Where’s the appreciation, Marine.”
“Gruh, you shit… fuck… dick… I was trying to express some of it and you called me a blubbery cunt.”
She kicked me in the shin and so I hopped around grabbing my shin because she had kicked me there and it hurt.
“Well,” I said, still hopping. “Where are we going next?”
She looked away from me, pouting. “Such an asshole.”
“You like it.”
“Sometimes.” She whispered the word, but I heard it. She unfolded her arms and turned back around. “You know that guy Doc didn’t want me to go see?”
“Gravy?”
“Do not call him that. I’m serious. He’ll kill you. You’ll die. Really.”
“So that’s not his name?”
She sighed, annoyed. “It’s Graver.”
“But I was close.”
“I mean, sort of. But not… you can’t call him that. Promise me you will not say the word gravy when we get there. Under any circumstances.”
“What if he offered me mashed potatoes and a topping of my choice?”
“Then you will fucking ask him for a savory sauce made of meat drippings and thickened with some form of flour or starch and you will not say the fucking word gravy. Laze I am being serious now you have to promise me.” She said it all as one long, hypnotic sentence before refilling her lungs and staring at me.
“Fine. Honest injun.”
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“It was in a cartoon I was watching.”
A CleanlyCar with a faded livery pulled up and I just stared at it. There was no one inside, or so the light on the outside indicated. The doors popped open and Marine moved to get into the car. I followed assuming she had called it at some point when I wasn’t paying attention. It was an old model, with vinyl seats and it smelled worse than the commercials had led me to believe that it would. The inside of the car was a wrap-around screen that tended to show peaceful scenery and you could watch a couple of channels that had paid for the privilege of being shown in the cars. More channels were free on long term trips, but that was technically a different company. Seats in those reclined. Real next-level stuff.
You ever hear that thing? The thing about showing someone from the distant past some piece of technology and they’d think you were a witch? I was always sort of bothered by that idea. I mean, really you have to qualify a lot of substatements to make that entirely meaningful in my book. People say it sagely, too. As if you’re supposed to suddenly be impressed that you have the ability to make a phone call even though that’s been a thing since back when we cured women of hysteria. You know, the very real disease that was women being driven insane by a lack of orgasms.
I guess the core of it was this concern that maybe I should have been freaking out about Marine being a trashcan who got the Pinocchio treatment. I wonder if she knows about Pinocchio.
I looked at her. Stared maybe. “Do you know about Pinocchio?”
She didn’t look away from the screen, which was showing some news thing about news things. “Yeah. Why?”
“I mean there’s parallels.”
She turned to me, feigning excited interest. “Which ones? The one where I was magicked to life by a fucking fairy? Or the one where I had to live in a whale? Oh, or maybe the one where I got turned into a donkey on an island for ill-behaved androids? Don’t be stupid.”
Stupid was a bit harsh, but I guess maybe the connection was questionable.
“You seem really touchy about the android thing.”
She huffed and her shoulders slumped. “I know. I don’t know how to act about it. Like, if… if I just let there be jokes about it something bad will happen. Or you’ll start thinking about me like I’m not the same person… which I
