Obsolution ?

Chapter 10

Suspended tears magnified the beauty of Martine's eyes. Sam re-read the text, trying to make sense of it. She was near tears, too, angry tears. She resisted the urge to hug Martine. Instead, she did as instructed. She walked away.

"See ya, Sam!" Wallace called after her.

He saw Martine's blotchy face.

"What's wrong with you two girls?"

~*~

Basura, Damon thought.

He watched It fix Its hair in the mirror, and the action nearly made him laugh. Like a dog, preening.

"Going to work?" Damon stretched in bed, making of show of waking up, but having no intention of leaving bed until ten minutes before the start of class.

While re-arranging short curls, It responded, "Yeah."

The last few days, It had lost chutzpah. Instead of scathing remarks and tons of cursing, the thing moped around the house, muttering one-word replies to most questions. 

Could be the deterioration of its brain, he thought with fleeting fascination.

In class, Damon and another classmate argued moot issues, as they often did. Clones were today's topic, and Damon had a personal stake in the claim. He argued against rights for clones, and argued against the use of clones altogether. His classmate countered with the idea that all humans were essentially clones, off-shoots of other genes heaped upon more genes.

"We're all copies, of a sort," one girl said.

Damon rolled his eyes. "There's a difference between a creative re-write and a faxed copy. One is detailed, and one is a shitty reproduction. Why should we encourage shitty reproductions?"

"You're oversimplifying. Why does this topic get you so worked up?" 

"Haven't you met me?"

The class laughed, but he was serious.

Later, he got home and saw a note on his desk. The handwriting resembled Ty's, but differed ever so slightly. Ugh, the thing left me a note.

Thought you might need more fuel for the printer.

-S.

Nothing more. Damon expected the note to end with 'douchebag', at the very least. He was a bit disappointed, but that vanished when he noticed the brand new canisters of hydrogen propped up next to the printer. Fuel for the printer was expensive, and it's not as if It made a lot of money at Good Time.

I thought It hated me.

He picked up the canisters, unsure in his assessment of It for a brief moment.

Even a dog brings a bone to its owner once in a while.

~*~

Though Sam had returned to work, she was worlds from okay. Ty recognized that her apprehension stemmed from something apart from the forced Prominent meetings, but he didn't know the details. Life was too busy to initiate a quiet sit-down. Once they got home, he was physically and mentally exhausted. All of his energy reserves went towards taking care of Helia, and when his energy was gone, he had little motivation to begin a lengthy conversation.

Sam was hardly available outside of work anyway. Straight after her shifts, she attended two-hour Prominent meetings. Damon wasn't too tired to ask Sam about her gloomy attitude, but the only full answer she gave him was the middle finger.