Read Online Siege by Mark Alpert - Free Book Online Page B

cold, but I’m also scared of what she’s going to say. Shannon means a lot to me, and not just because she’s my first and only girlfriend. Our relationship reminds me what it’s like to be human. Sometimes I think it’s the only thing keeping me from going completely crazy.
    I’m still standing there when the door opens. Shannon’s Diamond Girl stops in mid-stride, her sparkling hand clutching the doorknob. The video screen on her head is blank, but she’s clearly surprised. Her camera lenses swivel, and for a millisecond it looks as if she might launch one of her explosive charges at me. But she recognizes my Quarter-bot, and her defensive systems stand down. “Adam? What are you doing here?”
    I lower my hand. This isn’t a good start. “Uh, hey. Can I come in for a minute?”
    â€œI’m on my way to see DeShawn. To talk about his Swarm-bot.”
    Her voice is brisk, professional. There’s no emotion in it. She’s just making it clear she’s in a hurry. Shannon knows very well that I’d love to participate in any discussion about new Pioneer technology, but she doesn’t offer an invitation to join them. Instead, she takes a half step forward, suggesting in her gesture that I get out of her way.
    But I have to talk to her. “It’s important, Shannon. Please?”
    She makes me wait another three seconds, which is an eternity for an electronic mind. Then, synthesizing a sigh, she steps backward and lets me into the room. “Make it quick, Adam.”
    I’ve visited Shannon’s room dozens of times, so it’s comfortably familiar. It’s practically empty, just like my room—Pioneers don’t need beds, chairs, or bureaus—but the walls are covered with photographs, mostly family snapshots. During previous visits Shannon told me the stories behind the photos and identified all the people in them: her father, mother, grandparents, cousins. They’re posing at birthday parties, ball games, and barbecues. I recognize some of the locations because Shannon grew up in my hometown and we both went to Yorktown High School.
    Her father is a short, round man with a gray mustache, always grinning for the camera; her mother is also short and plump, but she has long, black hair. There are photos of Shannon too, nearly all of them taken before she got sick. She’s at a science fair, a track meet, a ballet class. She’s a petite, dimpled, feisty girl, with her mother’s black hair and her father’s big smile.
    My favorite picture, though, is the one that shows us together just before we became Pioneers. My father recruited Shannon to the Pioneer Project after he learned from her parents that she was dying, and we got to know each other pretty well in the days before we underwent the procedure. We had long, intense talks about illness and death and whether we’d still be the same people after we lost our human bodies. Shannon made me laugh and gave me the strength to go through with it.
    In the photo of us—Dad took it with his iPhone—I’m slumped in my wheelchair, leaning against the straps. Shannon stands behind the chair, pale and almost bald, her lips bunched to one side of her face because her tumor is pressing against the nerves. But despite all the pain, she’s still smiling. Her grin is lopsided but beautiful.
    It occurs to me that Shannon doesn’t need to hang any photos on her walls. I’m sure that all these images are stored in her circuits, where she can view them anytime, anywhere, just by retrieving the memories from her files. And yet she put the pictures on her walls anyway. I bet she stares at them every once in a while. It’s a human impulse, and in many ways we’re still human. That thought gives me courage.
    I step closer to her. “I think you can guess why I’m here. We haven’t been getting along so well lately.”
    Her Diamond Girl nods