“I’ve never done this with anyone. Well, with Evan for a little while, but even with him I didn’t give him full access to everything at the same time.”
Lin nods, her beautiful dark eyes serious. “I appreciate the demonstration of confidence.”
I double check that the wifi card and antenna are missing from the customized tablet. The USB port is also gone, replaced with the custom port that I plug the cable into. I hand the tablet to Lin and insert the other end of the cord into the side of the satchel housing my processing appliance.
DEBUG INTERFACE INITIALIZED
READ/WRITE FILE PERMISSION GRANTED
Lin taps the tablet’s screen until the live feed shows up on the display. A smile creeps across her lips.
“You think I have beautiful eyes!”
“Of course. I’ve told you that before.”
“But you really think it. It’s right here in your thoughts that you write down.” She lowers the tablet and looks up at me. “It’s really true. You do write down everything you see, hear, and think. How do you write all this so fast?”
“Lots of practice. Also possibly some neural specialization that costs me a little bit of my standard humanity.”
She looks back at the tablet, smiling as the words appear in front of her. “Standard humanity is clearly overrated. You, my handsome boyfriend, are much better than standard. You are exceptional.”
She scrolls back through my memories of the day as I look on, smiling at a few things. Her lips turn down into a frown as she reaches this morning. “Who is this Maria Hall? She seems very friendly.”
I vaguely remember having a conversation with someone with that name, but it’s been too long to recall any details. My index entry for her pops into my overlay. Lin’s tablet screen still just shows the console logs. I think we could mirror the whole overlay with some additional work, but this is probably fine for now. “Deputy Chief of the Critical Technology Task Force,” I read to her. “She’s our point of contact with the government’s task force in charge of stuff like nanotechnology.”
Lin scans through the whole conversation from this morning. Her frown fades. “Oh, she wasn’t flirting with you. She’s a Chadette.”
I don’t know that word, and the only thing that comes up when I search my index for it is a reference to a joke we made about what Keeya and Lucie might have named Chad’s unborn baby if he had been a girl.
“A what now?”
“You know, one of those women who worship your late brother Chad on the internet.”
“I didn’t know that was a thing.”
“Of course you didn’t. You haven’t spent years honing your skills in the fine art of lurking in the dark corners of social media and discussion boards where extreme fans idolize the heroes of the Butler Institute.”
“And you did? Are you secretly one of these Chadettes?”
“Certainly not.” She lets out a trilling peal of laughter. “I’m a Noan for life. Obviously.”
“Please tell me that’s not what my fans call themselves.”
She shakes her head. “Sorry. At least it’s better than the Evies or the Markers.”
I groan. “Those can’t be real things.”
“Oh, they are. The Chadettes are the most numerous group, of course, with all the press appearances he did with his work in Africa, but it all started with the Tommies. They’ve been around forever, perhaps twenty years.” Tommies? Ew. Father’s PR team must have manufactured that as part of their image boosting efforts. There’s no way that fandom could have come about naturally. “Then after all those pictures and videos came out from the trip to East Africa that you all took, quite a few of Tom Butler’s lady fans split off to venerate each of his sons. I mean, can you blame them? You are a very attractive bunch of young men. There were even a few Jeffies, although I think they essentially disappeared after the stories came out about your father’s untimely demise.”
Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
“I suppose my sisters have something comparable?”
“They most certainly do. Do you not know about the Church of Louise and the Andrean Cult websites?”
“I don’t think I want to.”
“You probably don’t. The art on those forums is, um, very creative? I don’t know a nice way to say it. They like to edit pictures so that they—”
“I’ll take your word for it and let’s never talk about that again.” I shudder. “There are things I just don’t want to know about.”
She runs a finger across the tablet. “We could always delete this whole conversation, right?”
I laugh. “No, let’s not do that. The last time I did major revisions to what I decided to remember, it didn’t end well for me. That wasn’t very long before we met. I’ll let you read all of that later if you’re ever feeling too happy and want to bring things way down.”
“Oh. Hmm. Well, what about this?” Her fingers tap across the touch screen.
Can I just put thoughts right into your head?
“Well, I suppose you can. I didn’t think about that, but you’ve got full access so yeah, I guess so.”
Oh how wonderfully delightful. I am Noah and here’s what I think about: I so love this amazing and beautiful and fascinating woman who I have fully committed to loving forever and will never ever get tired of. And also I would never dream of cheating on her because she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
I laugh again. “If you’re going to do that, you could at least make an effort to write like me. Maybe go take a lesson from Evan. I think he nailed my voice when he helped me get back my memories from after I met him but before the implant was installed.”
She lowers the tablet and lays it on the desk next to my satchel. She takes a step toward me and entangles my arms in hers. The warmth of her body presses against mine. “Or you could just write that sort of thing yourself. Then I wouldn’t have to.”
“Honestly, I’m not far off of that in a few places,” I say between kisses. “I’ll let you read through the whole thing before you start making requests for new fake memories for me to put in my head.” I slide my hand down her back and past the curve of her waist. “Of course, we could always make some real memories that would be better reading if the ones I have now aren’t quite romantic enough for you.”
She smiles and doesn’t remove my hand like she usually does when it lingers there too long. “Maybe we could.” She kisses my neck again. “Although I reserve editorial privileges. I would want the memories to be absolutely perfect.”
“Sure,” I say dreamily, bringing my other hand down, brushing the side of her face, running my fingers along her slender neck and then down lower to start unbuttoning her blouse. “Whatever you want.”
She pulls her hand down from where it had been caressing my shoulder and holds back my fingers before they can finish undoing the clasp at the front of her bra. I almost finish the job with my bots before I manage to stop myself.
“Lin, I…”
I step back and untangle my arms from hers.
“I just…”
I can’t make myself say the words. How do you explain to the person that you love that you’re afraid you’ll do more than what they want, that you’ll take what they aren’t willing to give, and that you know that afterwards you won’t even feel guilty about it. I’m trying so hard to be the kind of man that Mom would have wanted me to be, but I just don’t know if I can. Not with my broken mind. Not with all this power that I’m having more and more trouble not using to just take what I want.
And I want Lin. I want her so badly. I want her now. I want her forever. And I know that she won’t want me anymore if she knows how much I want to do what her delicate little hands keep stopping me from doing. What if I can’t stop myself anymore?
Maybe you won’t need to. That was quite romantic enough.
I look up and see Lin with the tablet in her hands again. My face goes bright red. I got so caught up in the moment that I forgot that my whole console is mirroring itself onto her screen.
“I think I might be ready, Noah. Not tonight, but very soon I think.” She smiles shyly at me as her fingers tap across the surface again.
You wanted me to help write you a new conscience. Let’s start with this. You know how hard it is to talk about any of this, to say yes or no to anything while we’re in the moment, but I think if it’s all written into the code, I will find it all more comfortable. I’ll define what you can and can’t do with me. What you can and can’t do to me. As long as you don’t do what your own electronic part of your brain is telling you not to do, we can make this work.
“If you’re sure,” I tell her. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”
“Then let me start coding. This may take a bit, but I promise I will make it worth it to you. I’ll put my utmost effort into it. I want this to work forever as much as you do.”