It didn’t matter. I’d seen through Myka’s plot and secured the data tab. I’d won.
Ryan found me in the garage the next morning. He was eating a massive breakfast burrito with another one in hand. The kid could eat a banquet.
“You got in late.” He kicked the 280 before sitting next to me and offering the second burrito. I took it.
“Ran into some trouble at the expo.”
Course, then he was curious, so I had to tell the whole story.
Okay, not the whole story. An abridged version.
Basically, I left everything related to Myka out of my rendition. That part wasn’t important. What was important was that I had the data tab.
“So the data tab is still in your stomach?” Ryan gaped at said stomach.
I pressed on my abdomen. “Probably the intestines now, actually.” I winced at the pressure at my side.
This led to Ryan discovering the gunshot wound. And my mangled hand. And my janky leg.
Basic upshot, he insisted I get a doctor to treat everything. I couldn’t afford a hospital, so I called a friend who’d been a medic during the war. She’d patched up my previous gunshot wound. Later that day found me leaning over our quickly de-cluttered kitchen table as she cleaned the injury. She’d already bandaged my right hand and whapped my left leg to make sure it was okay.
“Hey, Cha, if a person swallowed a data tab, how long would it take to come out the other end?”
She didn’t pause. “What the fuck type of question is that, El?”
“Practical question.”
I could almost hear the shrug. “Couple days, usually. Unless you got a gut condition or something.”
I hummed in acknowledgment.
The damn thing came out eventually, and I got the bastard cleaned up and plugged into a computer. Somebody powerful must’ve thought I was pretty okay because the data was good. It was my plans. Everything. My sketches, my notes, my research, my design schematics. I’d gotten everything back.
Ryan gave me the biggest hug I’d ever gotten. These were also his plans. I’d started the design before he came along, but he was essential for later iterations. Full junior partner. At the end of the day, though, this was my baby—the one thing that would make me somebody among the rich snobs of the Human Engineering Association.
I found an intellectual property attorney through a friend of a friend. Given the personal notes and extant correspondence included, I apparently had a strong case against Sev Tech. And Cadinoff if they came at me.
Yeah, of course this was going to court. Sev Tech wouldn’t surrender the design they’d publicly previewed to great fanfare. They’d spend planetfulls of money to claim ownership. They’d offer payoffs, launch PR campaigns to smear me, use arcane legal code or even outright bribery to get the design.
My attorney was down for battle, though. Not only that, once my dispute hit the news, allies emerged from the metaphorical tangle of cables in the corner. Previous collaborators, researchers I’d consulted, friends who’d seen sketches. I had to forward my comms to a secretarial service, otherwise I’d spend all day answering calls and responding to well-wishers.
A couple months after the expo—as the legal battle over the patent was gearing up—some friends arranged a celebratory get-together at a place called Offal Paradise. Aproned waiters and a menu full of food I didn’t understand. Would not have been my first choice.
But there were drinks. So it was okay.
I took the “guest of honor” spot in the booth, Ryan as my right-hand man and my attorney to the left. A medley of interested parties spilled over to neighboring tables, swamping the high-class restaurant with a gauche party atmosphere. I spotted Jaimie Ewing, a solar scientist that had advised me early on. Coleman Downs, who’d designed some of the first hybrid engines. Even Barbra Nguyen. She was a bar friend who’d giggled over my early sketches. How had she even heard about this?
All this to say, this was the broadest possible Elly Henderson reunion.
Across the table, a parts manufacturer and a janitor friend whispered in each other’s ears, flirty giggling at full blast. Beside me, Ryan explained the finer points of engineering to a waste disposal specialist, who struggled to follow through Ryan’s accent. My attorney had gotten side-tracked into a furious disagreement over some recent case that had been in the news. Everybody I cared about, celebrating my accomplishment, enthusiastic for what was to come. I’d only dreamt about something like this and now it was happening.
But all I saw when I closed my eyes was Myka’s adoring smile as she cuddled a puppy in a shitty holographic field. Myka strumming the guitar and making up a song on the spot to entertain a bunch of kids. Myka’s glare of put-out annoyance as she climbed the side of a building in a skirt and athletic shoes. Myka’s wide-eyed startlement as a lemur ogled our make-out session.
And then the tears in those beautiful eyes as I unleashed the most vicious words I could think of. The tense posture of her back as she left. The moment her mask came back on, and I lost the best parts of her—the real parts. Her detached voice telling me I’d won.
If I had won, why the fuck was I so miserable?
* * * *
That night wasn’t restful, and not just because of the drinking. Sleep had been elusive since the expo. The dreams were too unsettling. They weren’t all Myka dreams. Dad played a feature role in many with my mom as a supporting cast member. I also dreamed of Ryan getting hurt in so many different ways: getting crushed in a massive engine, overdosing on something in the Melkov district, being firebombed by Core forces, tripping
