David: I wanna get drunk.

  Lunacy: Why are you calling me, then?

  David: Because you’re an alcoholic.

  Lunacy: Suck my dick

  David: You have a penis, Lunacy?

  Lunacy: I’m going to fucking kill you.

  000

  I drank a gulp of my michelada and put it down on the table with a clink.

  Lucy, next to me, was nursing a glass of vodka, having taken a sip of it beforehand. She looked at me expectantly, waiting, like the predator that she was. Pretty sure she was older than me. Maybe she was a predator. Hah.

  “Why the fuck,” she said. “Are you dressed in a twenty-thou suit?”

  “Academy get-together,” I said. I took another long gulp of the michelada. “Cuz I’m the corpo cunt, right?”

  [Your inebriation has risen]

  David: Don’t sober me up unless it’s an emergency. I want to be less… here. Right now.

  [Less… present? Why]

  David: because reality is a shithole and I want to escape for a fucking second.

  [...Let me know when you are done running.]

  Bitch!

  Whatever.

  She was right. I was running. That was my strong suit, wasn’t it?

  “Something’s got you all hot and bothered,” she said. “Talk to me once you’ve finished that drink.”

  I up-ended the rest of the glass, ice and all, into my gullet. It was a stupid and an uncomfortable move, but it got the job done. “Fuck trust-fund babies.”

  She raised her glass. “Na zdrowie.”

  “Salud,” I said, raising my empty glass. I shot an order for tequila on the Net of Turing’s, fine with whatever they would give me. I never fancied alcohol to begin with. Just its effects. “Lucy, what do you even do?”

  “The fuck do you mean?”

  “When you’re not ‘Running for the crew. What do you do?”

  “I relax,” she said. “Because I’m not a mouth-breathing corpo that’s gotta nine-to-nine every day.”

  “You know what I do?” I asked.

  “Fraternize with people with a net worth ten times yours?”

  “Fraternize with people with a net worth one hundred times mine,” I corrected. “But it’s not just the fucking money. It’s the… listen, so I got this fifteen-year-old kid addicted to my BDs.”

  “You still sell BDs?” she asked. “Thought you—”

  “My BDs,” I corrected just as my tequila, double shot, arrived, and I downed it in one go. “D. Me. He’s my number one fan now. And I’m not above frying some gonk kid’s brains out if they’re rich enough to give me the clout needed to get some fucking respect, and I’m not going to lie to you, he is fucking rich.”

  “You’re a fucking ghoul, David,” Lucy said. “A fucking ghoul.”

  I ordered another double tequila and raised my empty glass, all the while ordering another one. “Salud!”

  She, obviously, didn’t return the cheer. I clinked her glass anyway.

  The tequila came quickly this time. I finished the glass again in one go, feeling queasy as I did.

  [David, you should seriously reconsider your course of action. You are poisoning yourself.]

  David: shut the fuckkkk upppp.

  “I used to think,” I said, and thought for a moment. “I used to think I was above that shit. Thing is, I wasn’t. I just… wasn’t able to handle it. Not the fucking workload, fuck that. You saw my grades, I’m a fucking star. It was… the people.” I looked her in the eyes now. “Lucy, if there is one thing I need from you, it’s to not tell me to drop out. I don’t need that shit. Please.”

  Lucy’s expression was ugly to behold, anger and disgust aplenty. But I could also make out an inch of… pity in there. She didn’t say anything, so I continued.

  “I’m finally to the point where I can handle the people, but they’re… so fucking gross. Everyone’s out to eat your liver raw. It’s… gross.”

  The next glass arrived, and as I was about to down it whole, Lucy’s hand reached to stop me. She took the glass, and… drank it herself.

  I frowned at her, but she returned the frown more intensely, and shook her head. “What did you expect, David?”

  “I expected less alcoholism from you,” I said.

  “Fuck off,” she muttered. “What did you expect? You’re a part of this world now. You gotta swim in these waters. No shit you’re gonna get dirty.”

  “It’s not even about that,” I realized, because truly, it wasn’t. It was… “I’m not shit to these guys. And my one shot of getting some relevance? Apparently, that got screwed over as well.”

  “And you came bitching to me about it?”

  I smiled. “What can I say? I’m a masochist.” I ordered another tequila, feeling my head getting woozier than ever before. “Roast me, I don’t care. I deserve it anyway.”

  “You didn’t ask me out to boost your confidence, did you?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “No, not really. Doesn’t need much boosting. I’m mostly running on capability, not hope. Confidence doesn’t figure into my game plan that much.” I gave her a small smile. “Maybe I just wanted to know how hard you could kick me while I’m down?”

  “That’s not a fair contest,” she said. “I need you up and full of yourself before I can deflate you.”

  “Hardy har har,” I said. “I’m… pathetic right now, yeah.”

  Should I just get Nanny to detox me?

  [That would be advisable, yes.]

  “David. Drop. Out.”

  Ah fuck.

  David: yeah, just sober me up

  I immediately felt a sudden change in my mind. Suddenly, I had gone from overly secure and shielded from any concept of risk, to aware. Yeah, definitely no getting drunk. “I need respect,” was all I said, because it was all that needed to be said of the entire situation. Nothing else mattered to me but that. And soon, I would get back into it with Nakajima and get the case comp perfected, and then I would be up there, a future rising star in truth.

  And maybe someday… an Arasaka CEO.

  Lucy snorted at me, then she raised my emptied tequila glass, and said “Na zdrowie.”

  I nodded towards her, since I didn’t have any drinks on me right now.

  “You’ve felt it, then,” Lucy said. “That cold indifference?”

  “It’s all I feel.”

  “The complete lack of compassion or understanding for your wellbeing? Total disregard—”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like… another Tuesday for me. Nobody batted an eye when my mom died. My bully still tried to beat me to shit. The principal didn’t give a fuck. The only reason I’m still enrolled is because I worked hard.” I looked at Lucy hard now. I must have looked positively murderous to her, but I needed her to understand what it meant for me to still be in this school. “Nobody talks to me during the day. The only time people ever address me, it’s to buy XBDs. Otherwise, I’m literally an island. I’m with this girl to spite my bully, who is apparently his fiancee, and she’s the only other person that treats me like a human being apart from this one underclassman of mine, who used me to gain clout from this son of an exec of the financial fucking department of Arasaka. And he’s the one I got hooked on my BDs, by the way. And I’m gonna use him as an elevator to get me to the top of Arasaka.”

  Lucy didn’t say anything at that. I didn’t need her to. Didn’t want her to.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s hella shaky. But it’ll get better. Once I finish my case competition, hella fucking hard to program, by the way, I’ll finally get some respect.”

  “You bitch!”

  I laughed. “What the fuck, Lucy? You thought I was going to ask you for help? I’ve got this shit on lock!”

  Her eyes glowed golden, and she shot me a call.

  Lunacy: Talk through comms. Show me what you’ve got. ‘Hard to program’? You just want help.

  I sent her my formulas, and the AI architecture.

  Lucy’s eyes raced through the document, and her face lit with disgust. “This algorithm is going to cost people jobs.”

  “All of them will,” I replied without hesitation. “No matter the category of competition you enter in, any winner solution is going to cost jobs. That’s what the best of them do. Save Arasaka money.”

  She kept looking through the document, until she finally closed her eyes, and opened them, irises bereft of that golden glow. “It’s good,” she said. “It’s fucking great. You… came up with it?”

  “Yeah!” I said, suddenly realizing that I did, didn’t I? Nakajima really wouldn’t have come this far without my calculations. Then my mood soured at the memory of Katsuo. “I need something better now, though.”

  “Jesus,” Lucy whispered. “David, if it’s money to retire that you want, you can get that without a corp job!”

  “That’s not what I want,” I said.

  “No, you want nothing. This is your mom’s dream.”

  “Yeah, well, I took it. For myself.”

  Lucy looked at me for several long seconds, likely wondering if I was joking.

  “If it’s not the money, then what?” Lucy asked.

  Then what?

  “Immortality,” I said, feeling the word resonate with a deep part of my soul. Yes. Immortality was right.

  I wanted to live forever. Either in flesh, or in the memories of all.

  Lucy sighed. “You’re being a dumbass.”

  She was right. So right.

  “True,” I said. “Honestly? I just… I want better things,” I said. I really did. I hated the slums. Hated the gangs. Hated that being a mercenary was such a lucrative job, despite how absolutely awful it was to your surroundings.

  If things were better, then people wouldn’t have to hurt each other so much.

  “You can do that,” Lucy said, and I couldn’t believe my ears for a moment. I looked at her, but her eyes were perfectly innocent, glowing with a supportive light. “I think you can,” she said, before I could ask her to repeat herself.

  “Really. You actually believe in me,” I replied with rolled eyes. “Fuck off, Lucy, I know—”

  “I do believe that,” she said. “If you put your mind to it, I doubt there’s anything you can’t achieve. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? What stops you from just being another power-hungry psycho like your classmate? Why can’t you become a Katsuo? You have it all right now—”

  I patted the bar counter at an exact amount of force loud enough to interrupt Lucy, but not enough to frighten her. “I won’t ever be like Katsuo, so kindly, shut the fuck up.”

  “Because you came from the bottom?” Lucy asked. “You’re a sleeper-Katsuo, so what? You still have it in you.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  How could she accuse me of such soullessness? How could she think me to be so evil?

  Was there no good that I had achieved in spite of her negative hopes for me?

  Two-hundred and thirteen corpses said no, but I wouldn’t let those corpses dictate my direction in life. I still had so much good to live for. Maine and his crew, Nakajima for taking a chance on me, and Fei-Fei, even though I had wronged her the most.

  “Because, Lucy,” I said. “I… feel that I like you guys. Maine’s crew. I like you guys. And I’ll do anything to protect those bonds. Anything.”

  And to me, there was no other truth but that. I would die before I let Maine or any of the others come to harm. I would kill to protect them. Had, already, and would once more, if given the chance.

  I didn’t need some overarching love for the rest of the universe to know that there was still so much here for me to work for.

  Lucy wasn’t convinced. Something about that bothered me immensely, though I didn’t want to unpack the feeling.

  [I, for one, don’t understand.]

  I frowned.

  David: I wouldn’t expect you to.

  [Despite your dismal expectations of my social ability, I do have the capability to compute situations rationally. Lucy’s problems with you involve morality, which makes no sense to me.] Wow, why was she being so feisty?

  David: She doesn’t make sense. What can I do?

  [Tell her?]

  David: See, there’s problems with that.

  [She despises you for being a prospective corpo. She deems these people to be evil, yet her line of work is far from morally pure, by any credible system of morals or ethics.]

  David: Sour grapes, maybe? Gutter trash hating on the fortunate isn’t exactly a new story.

  [Then why do you sit there and accept these aspersions cast on your character when she has every bit of the potential to cause harm as you do? In fact, your goals extend less towards causing harm, and more towards amassing wealth and power for yourself. I know that you do not disregard all humans as a matter of course, and though your lack of guilt at taking lives confuses me, I can sense that it is situational. Deep down, you do value your fellow man. Inasmuch as they don’t attempt to stand in your way.]

  I sighed. She was right. I couldn’t just sit here and let Lucy shit on me. That wasn’t fair, not just to me, but to Nanny, who was hitched to me. Whatever weird shit had happened to her core programming, I could tell hurt when I heard it. And despite our myriad differences, she was on my side. I couldn’t let her get hurt.

  “What you think doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I’m not going to force you to understand, or explain every inch of my motives, or convince you I’m not some big evil asshole. I know what I am, I know that what I’m working towards is valid. You need to figure out your hangups, because dealing with them ain’t my fucking responsibility,” I glared at her.

  Lucy’s head bent backwards in shock. “Yeah? You—”

  “I’m seventeen,” I said. The bartender had passed just as I had said that and frowned, but didn’t do anything about it. “It’s not crazy that I don’t have everything figured out, that I might be chasing other people’s dreams. The hell does that matter, anyway? I’ve still got time, still got options. That’s why I’m doing this shit: so I have options. Maybe once I graduate, I’ll decide to do something else? But at least I’ll have the fucking scratch to make the decision. Maybe I’ll even become some spiritual type or whatever, who gives a fuck? Point is,” I spread my arms around. “I’m hoarding options. So many options. So much freedom. Hell, maybe that’s my dream? Who cares? All I need to do is keep working, keep getting options, and in the end, maybe I’ll make up my damn mind, or maybe I’ll still be drifting, but rich enough that it won’t matter.”

  In the end, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

  I’d rather have mom be alive, definitely, but aside from that, things were working out perfectly.

  “The work is ugly,” I conceded. “On both sides. But in the end, that’s not gonna be enough to make me give up. All of this was just a minor blip,” I stood up. “I’ve got better shit to do than cry and moan about getting shit from some brat. Thanks for helping me realize that. I’m off.”

  “Oh wow, so you’re fucking off now that I hurt your feelings,” she said dryly. I chuckled.

  “Honestly, I’m grateful,” I said. “For your shit, that is. Helps me build a thicker skin. But I got work to do, and I doubt I’ll go to sleep tonight.”

  “The code you sent to me and Kiwi,” Lucy said. “I wanted to talk about that.”

  “What’s there to talk about? Either I’m right or I’m wrong. What do you think?” Despite her interest in an amicable conversation, I really did feel the pressure to go home and spend every hour that I could on research to figure out how to best finish this case competition.

  “Sit down for a bit, David,” Lucy said, her tone… sullen? I obeyed, albeit with a groan. “Here’s the thing, David: I hate corpos,” I wanted to butt in with a ‘shocker’, but honestly, I was more curious about where she was leading up to this. “And I don’t trust you in particular very much either, so there’s that to consider,” I squirmed a little as she laid her feelings out bare. Why did I care, anyway? I’d known this chick for almost a month now, and those facts couldn’t be more accurate. “But I think you’re different enough to tolerate. You’re reliable and great to work with.”

  “You don’t hate me?” I asked with an overdramatic tone.

  “Shockingly enough, no,” she said. “Anyway, you had a tough day at work. Ain’t right to tell you to quit on that account. Like I said, I’d rather not put you down while you’re feeling pathetic. So… sorry. Yeah.”

  Wait, what? “I didn’t catch that last part.”

  “Fuck off, you gonk.”

  Hah. “Apology accepted. I shouldn’t have to bitch to you about things that aren’t your concern, anyway, so I understand.”

  “Good, glad we understand each other,” she said. Then her eyes flashed gold, and I received a file transfer request. I opened it and saw a text file that was… questions. Wait, she didn’t understand some parts?

  Granted, a lot of it was pretty involved mathematics, and if our Graph Wars game was any indication, I had her beat there by miles. And that was before that Brainwipe and Nanny had overhauled my brain.

  “Okay,” I said, and launched into a long-winded explanation of my working. Lucy butted in every now and then with questions, and requests to take things slow so she could work through the problems herself. After about thirty minutes of this, she finally nodded.

  “Checks out,” she said. I looked at her blankly.

  “It checks out to you because I explained how it checks out to me,” I said. “Call me crazy, but I did want independent verification, you know.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “And if you were wrong at some point, I’d be able to tell.”

  Okay, if you say so.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Spooky, isn’t it?” I looked her up and down. “How much chrome do you have anyway that you haven’t edited?”

  “That’s… not a problem for me,” Lucy said. “I’m pretty light, all things considered. Haven’t chromed up in… yeah.” Lucy’s signature social ICE-wall erupted between us and I knew better than to try and breach it. I was good at actual hacking, but hacking people was a whole other ballpark.

  “Not trying to be a dick,” I said, backtracking from my little ego-trip. “Besides, it shouldn’t matter unless…”

  “Unless you’re a big black borg with anger issues,” Lucy said dryly. I chuckled mirthlessly at that. “It’s… yeah, between you and me, David, it’s not looking too good for him.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “He doesn’t show it, and he works well, but there are times, I hear, when he… sorta loses it. In small ways. Never violent or anything. Just… kinda fucked up. Dorio keeps him straight, but objectively speaking, he should already be speccing down and taking heavy-duty antipsychotics if he wants even a chance of a normal life. This sort of stuff isn’t just something that willpower gets rid of. It’s the beginning of the end.”

  “No,” I muttered. “No, Maine isn’t that stupid. He’s got it handled. Has to.”

  “Maine’s a chrome junkie.”

  “He’s got it handled,” I said.

  “You know that other chrome you klepped today?” Lucy asked. “It’s called a Chrome Compressor. Top of the line shit. Reduces neural strain by a ton, lets you chrome up more for less consequences.”

  “Oh!” I said. “That’s preem! Maine definitely needs that. I think it’ll—”

  “Yeah, whatever you’re thinking, Maine’s thinking it times ten. He’s hit paydirt, and he won’t stop with just the Sandy now. You know that, right? This thing… it only gives false confidence. Lets people like him run off the edge with a smile on their faces. The shit works, sure, but Maine’s not going to accept that the way it works means that he needs to never chrome up again, and maybe he’ll have a shot at not doing something terrible.”

  I growled. I was about to tell Lucy to shut up when Nanny interrupted.

  [Now she is speaking rationally and you are being the irrational one.]

  David: I can’t just let her say these things, it’s Maine!

  [Yes, the man that forced you to work for him, the man that has repeatedly done harm to your body, and is now refusing to consider the fact that reality does not care about his ambitions. Need I remind you that my specialty is biocyberization and the effects on the human body? Just from observation, I can tell that he needs to slow down, and from what your handling of his personality tells me, he won’t.]

  David: He’s maine!

  [I recognize the emotional needs of yours that he has fulfilled, but my assessment is that it is heavily outweighed by the possible consequences of further association with him.]

  “Maine will listen to us,” I said. “I floated him the idea of rewriting his soft exactly because of this, and I can. I did it with my own shit. With you and Kiwi backing me up, and the Chrome Compressor doing its thing, there’s definitely a shot.”

  Lucy laughed mirthlessly. “You don’t understand. It will only make him feel like it’s safer to chrome up!”

  “Then we’ll talk to him,” I said. “Lucy, I owe him.”

  “The fuck do you owe him?” Lucy asked. “A sandy? He has one! The money he put down for yours? He’s got that back plus way more just from having you work with us! You don’t owe him fuckall!”

  “I owe him for you guys!”

  Lucy’s expression looked genuinely concerned now.

  “Rebecca, Dorio, Kiwi, hell, even Pilar. And you. Falco, too. All you guys mean something to me,” I said. “And I have no one. You know that.”

  “You should rather live alone than die with the wrong sort,” Lucy said. “I like the crew, too. But it’s… it’s a big old wishing well. Every one of them’s got dumb and unachievable dreams, and Maine’s is even crazier than anything else. The only person I can imagine gets close to achieving anything is you.”

  “Lucy… are you thinking of quitting?” I asked.

  “...Three netrunners are a crowd, don’t you think?”

  “Lucy, don’t—”

  “Yeah, no,” Lucy said. “I’m not quitting. Not yet, at least. But it’s not like I’m planning to grow old with this bunch, either. And you’re the same, David. I can’t imagine you growing old with them, either.”

  “Forget all that for one second,” I said. “Seriously. I’ve only been here for a month, and I’ve got plans on my own, too. Fuck all that stressful shit for a second. I just came out of one frying pan.”

  Lucy raised a glass to that.

  “Let’s code review each other’s quickhacks,” Lucy said, and I raised an eyebrow at her. She had to be fucking kidding me.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked.

  “The catch is, I’m betting I’ll walk away with more than you will,” she said. “It’s a sign of respect, David. Ain’t that what you always wanted?”

  I felt my heart swell with pride. It was true, though, wasn’t it? Even if letting Lucy in on my playbook was disadvantageous if I was ever matched against her, the fact remained that she was also exposing her vulnerabilities to me. Not only that, she trusted me to be able to elevate her ability.

  Fuck.

  And Lucy was the real deal, too, wasn’t she? I remembered acutely what she did to access that corp limo. That was real skill. And the shit she pulled in that data fortress?

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “Deadly,” Lucy said. “Between you and me—again—Kiwi’s been halfassing your training. But you are in the big leagues, and it’s time you get treated that way.”

  Kiwi? Half-assing my training? Yeah, no shit. She was way worse than Nakajima. He was the one who actually taught me how to code. Well, not really. He did point me in the right direction for some productive self-study though, so I owed him that much at least. Kiwi, too, albeit to a lesser extent.

  “Thanks, Lucy,” I said with a chuckle.

  Fuck… this was really nice of her.

  000

  We spent the rest of the night in her house, caffeinated to high hell and working on each other’s code. Lucy’s stuff was preem. Better than anything they’d ever sell in some Net storefront, that was for sure. Her shit blew that Asimov BBS out of the water.

  We were each on our external cyberdecks, tapping away at the tablets—Lucy sitting in the window sill while I was lying upside down on her sofa, locked in. “Your Ping’s clever,” I muttered.

  She huffed. “You’re seriously on my Ping?”

  “I don’t get distracted by flashy things,” I said, scrolling through her text with my eyes. I had decided not to use the Sandy to speed this up. Didn’t make sense to, with Lucy doing her best in human speeds and all. “Fundamentals are good, too. Your Ping’s more thorough than mine.”

  “Yours is more powerful.”

  I chuckled. “You’re on my Ping, then?”

  “I don’t get distracted by flashy things,” she aped. “But to be fair, even your Ping is flashy. Just barely too heavy to take on a deck slot, but still pretty efficient.”

  After finishing reading her Ping and testing it out several times, I came to the conclusion that I seriously needed to redo mine. Lucy’s style wasn’t as polished as mine, but it was cunning. Clever. I was good at programming. She was good at hacking. Those two skill sets might sound the same, but they were not.

  If I wanted to up my game, I needed to be better, like she was.

  “Your Overheat’s weird,” she said. “Check out mine.”

  I did. And I could see why she thought that. Her approach was entirely different. More straightforward even. Wow. All that wasted effort.

  Anyway, two can play at that game. “Yours is good, but inefficient,” I said, as I started pouring in some comments. In the meanwhile, I explained to her what she did well and what she could do better.

  And so it went for almost four hours.

  Lucy had ordered takeout at some point, and we worked while we ate. Then she got bored and busted out some brosephs from the fridge. I didn’t allow myself to get buzzed as I drank. As much as it felt like what I was doing was the height of creativity and ingenuity when I was shitfaced, sober-me would destroy drunk-me ten times out of ten. It wasn’t even a competition at this point. There were no upsides to being drunk. It just left you vulnerable, weak, and gave you a stupid and false cheer that wasn’t even real.

  I noticed the slightest dip in the quality of Lucy’s comments going forward, and that only proved my point.

  Since my quickhack repertoire really wasn’t the longest, we ended up working on her stuff at the halfway point of my stay. I got to see her Short-Circ, Reboot Optics, Cyberware Malfunction and Weapon Glitch.

  All of it described Lucy to a tee: ruthless and deadly, but deep down quite clumsy and improvised. I was realistic enough to not put Lucy’s capabilities on a pedestal. It wasn’t arrogance. It really was just realism. If she really was the best, then she wouldn’t be living in this apartment, or hold such a grudge against the rich. She had places to grow, too.

  Maybe I could help her, the way she was helping me? Of course, no questions asked.

  As long as she gave me the respect I was owed, I’d return the favor as well. Nothing else to it.

  Lucy gave me some good starting lines for that array of quickhacks, but I sensed that as much as I was helping her improve her iterations, mine was going to be entirely different, from the ground-up. I would avoid her pitfalls and incorporate her strengths. In return for that, I made damn sure to clean up every inch of code I could find.

  “It’s disgusting to watch you work,” she said. “Makes me wanna chip in some boosterware.”

  I chuckled. “I had that same despair watching you work on boosting that car. I could barely follow you without using the Sandy.”

  She hummed. I turned my head to find her seated right next to me on the sofa, like she had for the last two hours, but I only know realized just how close to me she was.

  And how close we had become tonight.

  You didn’t show your ass to someone you hated. Didn’t show your code, either. She knew what I was capable of, and I knew the same. We had co-authored each other’s greatest weapons.

  You didn’t do that shit with someone you didn’t trust.

  Lucy trusted me.

  “I can… take a look at your chrome, too,” I said.

  She looked away from me abruptly to stare out the window, and I could tell that I shouldn’t have said that. Chrome was a touchy subject for her, wasn’t it?

  Her first piece wasn’t her choice. She had said as much the first time we hung out after I joined the crew. Then she’d told me about how her body had been taken from her by a corp. And if a corp had chipped her in, then it was unlikely that any of the pieces conflicted with each other.

  “You don’t need to have that shit chrome on you anymore,” I said. “You have the eddies, don’t you?”

  “David, stop,” she said. “Drop it.”

  Dropped.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Whatever. I’m… kinda tired.”

  “Heading home?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for tonight, Lucy. I learned a lot.”

  “Believe it or not, me too,” she said. “Might need to brush up on my programming, actually.”

  “Never hurts,” I said as I stood up.

  My brain buzzed with ideas of what to do that made no sense to me, and I elected to quiet those impulsive thoughts instead of acting on them. Tonight was a good night. No need to press my luck, especially now that I had gotten it conclusively proved that Lucy not only didn’t hate me, but actually trusted me a ton.

  No need to push the envelope.

  …Why did I even want to push things?

  Eh, whatever. Stupid, hormonal teenager gonk brain. Superintelligence couldn’t trump youth apparently.

  “You had a lot to drink,” Lucy said. “Sure you don’t wanna stay the night?”

  “Can’t,” I said. “Gotta make it to class in the morning, plus I’m able to sober up on command, so it’s really not that big a deal.”

  “Oh,” she muttered. “Alright then. See you.”

  “See you,” I said as I put on my blazer and made my way out her apartment.

  It didn’t occur to me until I was halfway home on my bike what Lucy had just asked of me.

  But I still refused to believe it. Couldn’t be anything else but friendly concern.

  Yeah.

  Just concern.

  000

  In the quiet of her apartment, Lucy finished the dregs of her beer, feeling profoundly unfulfilled.

  She didn’t know why. Her mind kept brushing up on one particular reason, but that never quite stuck.

  Maybe she just wanted to program more? Yeah. Made sense. David had shown her a lot. Inspired her, even. It was nice, working with him.

  Hopefully, the feeling would go away once she finished working on her code.