Tera reflected on the bulletpoints she had notated on her digital notepad. She couldn’t help but feel like this was a complete waste of her time. There was no chance they would find the guy who robbed her, especially since he’s an installed intelligence. There was even less chance of recovering the money, the gun, or the drugs. Tera was only here because no one wanted to babysit her, and they didn’t trust her with an actual case.
Tera started to sigh, but caught herself.
“Is there anything else, Camila?” she asked. She prayed to God that she’d say “no.” She wanted to be out of that disgusting dwelling as soon as possible.
How does someone spend a whole day in this place, let alone their lives? she wondered.
“Well, I guess not,” the motel replied. “Are you gonna catch the guy? I’d love to have a few minutes alone with him without his sick-fuck pills.”
Tera looked down into her lap. “Honestly, Camila, I don’t think so,” she said. She had no idea why she felt the urge to be frank, but she could see the woman across from her was not pleased by it.
“What do you mean?” the human asked.
“I mean that if you didn’t let creeps like this use your body like some sort of communal toilet paper, you wouldn’t have this issue,” Tera said. The logic in her brain was telling her to shut up, but it was too late. The floodgate was open. “There are people out there with real problems that I could be helping right now, real problems that they didn’t create, Camila. And instead, I’m here in this shithole listening to a whore lament about her missing dope. Do you see something wrong with this picture?”
The motel’s mouth was agape with shock. The look in her eyes said she hadn’t been talked to like this in some time. Then her expression folded into anger. Her lips pursed until they were white and her brow almost seemed to swallow up her eyes.
“Who the hell do you think you are, lecturing me like a god damn child in my home?” she cried. It almost looked like she was working up a lather on her lips. “You don’t know me and you don’t know my life! What the hell makes you think you can look down on me and tell me how to live? Just because you’re some ghost bitch in that lifeless shell, you think you’re better than me? Motherfucker, people pay me — pretty well for some human ‘whore’, mind you — just to live in my body and feel what I feel. I’ve got what you want, and you think you can talk down to me?”
Uh oh, Tera realized. I made a mistake.
She stammered a little. “Camila, I didn’t —”
The human’s eyes were starting to fill with tears a little. She jumped to her feet so she could loom over the cop as she yelled at her. Tera shrunk into herself like a frightened child.
“No!” Camila interrupted. “You don’t get to come in here and talk to me like that. You think my life is easy? You think I can just go out there and get a goddamn office job? If there was even such a thing, how would I make sure I didn’t get raped on my way to the interview? You would be sick to your robot stomach if you knew what some people had to do just to survive. You work in Slumside, but you don’t live in Slumside. In fact, you don’t live at all, do you? You are just like all the other progs out there: thinking you’re better than the same people you envy. Well, fuck you! Get the hell outta my house!”
Camila’s eyes looked like they might pop out of their sockets as she stared down at the I.I. Tera felt minuscule under her gaze. She couldn’t help but stare down at her metal feet, avoiding the motel’s stare.
After she stopped yelling, Camila froze in place and waited for the bodyshell to move.
“Sorry,” Tera said. Her voice was tiny.
“Get out!” Camila repeated.
It only took two steps for Tera to make it to the door of the shack, but she stopped and turned back to the human.
“I’ll do what I can,” she said.
“Like you care,” Camila spat.
Tera left, closing the door behind her.
Gauge
Ethan found it hard to focus on the lecture with his upcoming birthday on his mind. His brain was preoccupied with thoughts of the outside world, of being able to walk around with his mortal body. He found himself slipping into daydreams more and more often.
“Mr. Myler, if you wouldn’t mind paying attention, please,” the Kindly Professor said in between topics. He was part of the simulation, so he didn’t get upset or impatient with the students, but he did demand a certain etiquette. Any disruptions to class would be met with a calm stare and an awkward silence. The Kindly Professor could wait any amount of time for the children to quiet down without breaking down into a furious rage.
Ethan looked up at the old man — or, at least, the computer program that looked like one.
“Thank you,” it said, then resumed its lecture. “As I was saying, the nuclear fallout from World War III is the worst the planet has ever seen, excluding the radioactive periods of Earth’s existence before a full atmosphere developed.”
As the Kindly Professor monologued, a holographic rendering of the Earth’s surface swallowed the room. It wasn’t green and vibrant like Ethan had seen in other renderings. Instead, the surface was scorched and covered in a sickly yellow haze.
“Scientists predicted that the world would become inhospitable in just a few short years after the war’s end,” the instructor said. “Every human on the planet would die if they didn’t find some way to contain the contamination.”
The projection that filled the classroom showed some eye-level shots of ruined cities. There were
