Noreen held me like that for over an hour, and didn't complain once. Nathan had left after about 10 minutes of uncomfortable silence that was occasionally broken by my dry crying. It had always struck me as fake when I had seen cyborgs cry like this; but, now that I had personal experience with it, I knew their crying wasn't fake at all. It just looked fake because of the lack of tears.

“Noreen, I...” I started to say and looked up at her. I saw her warm and comforting smile, reached up, and cupped the side of her face. “Thank you.”

“Oh, Jack.” Noreen said and leaned down a little and kissed me. “You just let me hold you as tightly as I wanted.” She said and tapped my chest. “I think I left my fingerprints in your skin.”

That made me laugh. “Even if you did, it was worth it.”

“You're too good to be true.” Noreen said as I sat up.

“Half of me still is, anyway.” I said.

“Jack, you...” Noreen sighed. “Don't look at this as a disability.”

“Noreen, I've lost a third of my life and almost half of my body.” I said. “I have no idea what else I'm not going to remember, that I use every day without thinking about it.”

Noreen picked up the display and activated it. “Amanda, enter Jack's password for him without showing it to me.”

The display beeped and Noreen looked at the virtual workspace.

“How can you have so many things open at once?” Noreen asked. “Mine slows down if I don't keep closing the things I'm not using.”

“It's heavily modified.” I said and she passed the display to me. “I was tired of the slowdown, too.”

“Then pick something and work on it.” Noreen said. “I'm going to sit right here beside you, and we'll see if you hit something that you can't remember.”

I opened my mouth to protest that it would be wasting her time to just sit there, and she put a hand over my mouth.

“No talking.” Noreen smiled. “Now get to work, you slacker.”

I stuck out my tongue and licked her palm, and she laughed and jerked her hand away.

“You slobbered on me!”

“And you can't go wash it off.” I smiled and opened a random program. “You have to stay right beside me while I work.”

“You...” Noreen looked at her wet palm, then at me. “You're really going to make me sit here with a wet hand?”

“I'm sorry.” I said and quickly took her other hand and licked it before she could pull it away.

“Hey!” Noreen exclaimed.

“Now they match.” I said and laughed.

“You did not just...” Noreen looked at her second wet hand for a moment, then the first hand I had licked, then back at me. “Jack!”

“Oh, the look on your face.” I said and put the display aside. “You can't decide if you want to slap me or thank me.”

“Both, dammit!” Noreen said, and I laughed again.

“I won't hold you to your promise to stay beside me.” I said. “You can go to the bathroom and wash my drool off.”

“Good god, Jack.” Noreen looked at her damp palms and then back at me. “I... I can't decide if I want to or not!”

“I'll take that compliment.” I said and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You should wash your hands, though.”

Noreen gave me an odd look, then shook her head and went to the bathroom. I put the display back on my lap and looked at the random program I had opened. My hands flittered over the keyboard as I reconstructed the missing part of the code. I saved my work and dropped it into the outgoing queue, then opened the next one. The System had been down two programmers for over two weeks, and the backlog of work had grown exponentially. I started on the little programs, the ones barely affected, and repaired them. Noreen had come out of the bathroom and snuggled up by my side on the bed and watched as I worked. We stayed that way until Nathan came in 3 hours later.

“The nurse called. Sandra's awake and is eating supper.”

“It's that late?” I asked.

“I'll grab an algenate disc for you.” Nathan said and came back from the dispenser with a brown one. I took it; but, I didn't open it.

“I have to go.” Noreen said, reluctantly.

“Tell her that I love her, and that I look forward to seeing her tomorrow.” I said.

“We'll be gone for several hours, but we'll be back right after.” Noreen said and hugged me. “Please don't overwork yourself.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

I laughed. “Overwork? What's that?”

Noreen shook her head. “Just pace yourself.” She said, kissed my cheek, and she left my apartment holding hands with her husband. I turned back to my work and was so glad that all my major coding experience was during my teenage years, and that I had barely done anything before then. There was still something that I was missing, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember.

I shrugged and kept working, and the System accepted the programs I modified and fixed, almost gladly. She had someone else check the work before implementing it of course; but other than that, I was allowed full access to her and her infrastructure. I wasn't sure if my diligence had successfully tricked her into a false sense of security or not; but nevertheless, I eventually opened the food processing plant and looked at the cybernetic supplement that was added to the algenate disc.

With a slight tweak here, and an additive that didn't change the color of the disc, I submitted the new recipe and waited. All the smaller programs had been dealt with, and I had altered the brown algenate disc only slightly. It was always so surprising what a tiny little bit of chemical can do to alter the taste of something. It took almost an hour for the modification itself to be approved, and I actually sighed in relief that it had been accepted and implemented so quickly. I just had to try it, so I carefully got up and hobbled over to the food dispenser with my awkward walk, and then hesitated before I hit the button.

“I really should wait for them to get filtered through the dispensary first.” I said, and went back to bed. “There was no way that it would go through all the brown algenate discs it already had so quickly.”

It would be a while before the new recipe would make it's way into the general distribution network. I picked up my display and kept working, and after a short while, I felt a woman's hand touch my chest. I looked up from my work and Noreen was there.

“Oh, hi.” I said. “I'm glad you're back.”

“I've been here for almost half an hour, Jack.” Noreen said and smiled at me.

“What?” I looked down at her hand on my chest, then back at her. “Why didn't you say anything?”

“You were lost in your work, and I didn't want to disturb you.”

“I'm sorry I didn't notice you.” I said, then pulled my unitard aside to expose the normal side of my chest and lifted my arm. “Cuddle in.”

“Jack, I don't want to bother you.” Noreen said, a bit sheepishly.

“It's not a bother, as long as you can get in close and I can get my arm around you.”

Noreen beamed a smile at me and slid in really close, and half-laid down beside me and rested her head on my chest. “What are you doing?”

“It's a niggling problem with the Tube system.” I said and reached around her to continue typing on my display. “The AI running it keeps getting an intermittent short in the secondary relay, and I can't trace the cause.”

“Would a second set of eyes help?” Noreen asked. “Nathan always asks me to check his work.”

I looked at her with wide eyes, and she smiled.

“I'm not just a pretty face, you know.” She said and smiled demurely.

“No, you aren't.” I said and nodded, and she focused her eyes on the screen as hundreds of lines of code scrolled down it.

“What am I looking for?” Noreen asked.

“Anything that looks out of the ordinary.” I said. “If you kind of just glance at it, it's like a pattern. Strings, variables, and statements that fit together like a big puzzle. If even one of those pieces has a piece of dirt on it, it won't fit together properly.”

“So, you're saying I should look for everything and nothing at the same time.”

I chuckled because she understood the problem.

“Okay, I'll do my best.” Noreen said as she rubbed my abdomen. She didn't restrict her hand to only touching my normal side, either. I wasn't sure if she was doing that on purpose or not, because she looked completely focused on the absurd task I had given her.

“Jack, I had a thought.” Noreen said an hour later, after we had gone through reams of data and solid blocks of code, and came up with nothing.

“That is not as big of a surprise as I thought it would be.” I said.

“Jack!” Noreen exclaimed and slapped my stomach.

I laughed. “Go ahead and tell me this thought of yours.”

“I don't want to now.” Noreen said and pouted. For a fourty-six year old woman, she was damn cute when she pouted.

“Hey, I was joking.” I said and stopped the flow of information on the display. I moved my hand from that and gave her a one arm hug as I rubbed her shoulder. “You have to know that I think you're brilliant.”

“You're just saying that.”

“It's the truth.” I said. “How else could you have raised such a great daughter as Sandra?”

“She's just a tour guide, Jack.” Noreen said.

“Only because you let her.” I said, and she looked at me with wide eyes. “I know her father wanted her to be an engineer like him, and had pushed her to go for the hard sciences.”

“She told you that?”

I nodded. “It was you, so firm in your resolve, that told Nathan to shove it; and that Sandra could be anything she wanted to be.” I said. “I admired that.”

Noreen ducked her head, and I could almost feel the heat of her blush.

“Jack, I...”

“Please, Noreen.” I said. “Show me that resolve, and tell me where to shove it!”

Noreen snorted a laugh. “It's not the same comparison.”

“Well, I'll have to resort to bribery then.” I said. “I'll let you rub my back.”

“Jack...”

“Bare.” I smiled, and her eyes twinkled.

“Oh, all right. It's a deal.” Noreen said, and then she helped me slide the hospital unitard down off of my shoulders. I sat forward slightly, and her hand slowly moved up and down my back as she caressed the skin.

“If it's not the code, then I'd say there's a physical short in one of the circuit boards, or out on the track itself.” Noreen said. “It's all electronically connected, so it shouldn't take long to search the rails or the subsystems.”

“You... are... brilliant!” I said, and her hand gripped my back as I kissed her on the lips. “I'll send out the auto-drones right away!”

The System took my submitted proposal for the physical search without question, and Noreen and I watched the display as the auto-drones scoured the tracks. I received a notification stating that workers had checked the servers that the programs ran on and found nothing, so everything hinged on the physical search of the tracks.

We watched as each successive track lit green as it was checked and nothing was found, and kept watching for half an hour. Neither of us spoke as the auto-drones approached the farthest reach of the Tube car system and still hadn't found any kind of error. The last track turned green, and Noreen sighed.

“I guess I was-”

The sound of a loud beep interrupted her as the returning auto-drones took different exit routes to clear the heavy traffic lanes, and one of them stopped at a junction. It had a malfunction in it's routing gear and wasn't quite touching the rail completely. When the AI was notified, it opened the junction and the camera showed what had been stuck between the rails.

It was a partially crushed and charred body.

It had been jammed between two adjoining rails that the junction would shunt cars onto the off ramp, and the cybernetics in the remains were only allowing partial signals to cross between them when the rails would jam together and didn't quite touch. Noreen started to cry, and I held her close.

“Noreen, I... I'm glad you helped find the fault.” I said. “I'm also very sorry.”

“I only hope it was... was an accident.” Noreen said between sobs.

“So do I.” I said and watched as a recovery vehicle arrived and robots were dispatched to pick up the body. “I really do.”