The next morning, I went to work.

And experienced full regret over staying out partying so late. But I guess that’s what young people are supposed to do, right? Work hard, play hard? I didn’t go out much in college, except to concerts where I’d stayed in the back and left early to avoid the rush at the end of a show. I’d definitely never been to an afterparty. The gigs I’ve had in the past did not involve afterparties. Or very many people in general.

Anyway, Sunday morning found me at the athleisure store with my head down on the counter optimistically attempting to catch a few extra minutes of sleep before a customer walked in.

Unfortunately, the kinds of people who wanted to purchase their yoga pants and tank tops in person tended to stop by Sunday mornings, after their morning runs and green detox smoothies. The automatic bell-tone rang a second after I put my head down. I jerked up with a start. “Welcome! How can I help you?”

“I just need a refill,” said the blonde, making a beeline over to our leggings section and grabbing a stack almost without looking. If she already knew exactly what she wanted, why didn’t she just buy them online?

“I was in the area and thought this would be faster than getting them delivered,” she explained as I scanned the pants. “Plus, it’s nice to interact with human clerks. Online ordering is so impersonal, don’t you think?”

“Mhm,” I muttered. “Your total is $172.88.”

Cierra was off, and Rhonda was in the back training a new hire on the stockroom and mail orders. So that just left me at the register for most of the day.

I couldn’t stop replaying last night in my head. Both the dizzying, thrilling positive moments: Talking to Glitch Princess! People cheering for my songs! Making cool new friends! And the pathetic, embarrassing moments: forgetting my cable, the whole curtain situation, accidentally making everyone at the afterparty think I’m some weirdo who talks to my Syren like she’s a person (which I do but not like that...) All of it pounded in my head like the sleep deprivation headache that had built up behind my eyes.

I stuck my head into the back room. “Rhonda, can I go for a coffee run? I’ll get you a macchiato. And uh, whatever the newbie wants.”

The newbie in question craned her neck around a stack of shoeboxes to look at me. She had a ponytail similar to the customer that had just left and bright blue circle lenses in her eyes that reminded me of Naya’s unnatural irises. “I’m Cary and I’ll take a sparkling pink lemonade, if you’re going to the place down the street.”

“I am,” I told her. “Sparkling pink lemonade and a macchiato coming right up.”

“I’ll cover the register for you,” Rhonda told me. “Cary, you getting the hang of things back here?”

“Yes ma’am.”

So I went to the coffeeshop down the street (It called itself “Bean There, Done That,” which is why we all referred to it as “the place down the street” instead) and got us drinks. The guy at the register, a man about my age with a scraggly beard and gauges in his ears, squinted at me for a bit before saying, “Did you play at The Sparkplug last night?”

“Whoa, small world,” I said awkwardly. “Yeah, I was the opener. Did you go?”

“Yup. I’d never heard of you before, but I liked your Syren song! I followed you on SoundShare after.” His nametag said Gabe.

“Oh, thank you so much. I’ll post the Syren song on there soon, I’m actually on break from my day job at the shop down the street right now.”

“Oh wow, it really is a small world.” He tapped some buttons on his screen. “Your drinks will be ready in just a few moments. Which one’s for you?”

“The s’mores latte.”

“Gotcha.” And then, sliding the quad holder to the pick-up area a few minutes later, he whispered, “I put an extra shot of espresso in yours. Great job last night.”

My face felt like it was on fire. “Thank you so much!”

“Thank you!”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I returned to the store with a renewed sense of pride and purpose. As soon as I clocked out for the day, I was going to get back to my real work. I was going to go straight home and compose!

I did not do that.

I went home and passed out on my bed within moments of walking through the door. Decomposing instead of composing.

It had been a very long weekend, for me.

Anyway, after my immediate and somewhat involuntary nap, I got up to make dinner and found both of the robots I shared my residence with staring at me in concern.

“What?”

“Are you feeling alright?” Angelica asked. “The last time you took a nap was three months and four days ago, and you had a cold then.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night, as you well know.”

“Are you feeling better now, though?” Naya asked. “Because— we need to talk. About what we’re going to make next, and also that Cupid stuff you mentioned last night.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I can order a decal for you now.” I tapped the request into my phone. “And then maybe we should get a more neutral hair plate if you’re going to be pretending to be a Cupid.” Those were the expensive ones, I remembered suddenly. But Jax did send me a payment for playing the gig. Maybe I could spend some of that money on a new look for Naya.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” she asked.

“Why wouldn’t it be? You don’t want people to know you’re a Syren, but there’s no way to pass you off as a human and not a humanoid android, so this is the only real option.”

“I guess...” Naya trailed off, and looked out the window at the setting sun instead.

I checked my fridge for frozen stuff I could heat up without too much effort. I found some pizza bites deep in the back of the freezer. Perfect.

“You need to be eating vegetables, meow! What about the easy chicken and broccoli recipe I found for you last month?”

“I’m in recovery mode, which means pizza bites!”

I could feel the feline stare of judgment upon me, but I bravely ignored it and continued to shove pizza bites into my toaster oven.

The thing about making electronic music— Syren music— is that a lot of the activities involving it happened entirely online. Uploading songs, listening to other people's songs, discussing them in SuperBoard discussion threads or SoundShare comments. Live Syren concerts were niche, and not every venue was willing to host Syren performers. Plus, a lot of the concerts that did happen were way out of my budget. So I didn't really go to concerts all that often. And thus, was not fully prepared for the consequences of partying hard on a work night.

Consequences that required pizza bites.

I also made a cup of coffee, even though it was definitely later in the day than I should be drinking coffee, and I probably didn’t need it as badly now that I’d had a chance to nap.

“You and I,” I said to Naya, gesturing at her to help prove my point, “have work to do.”

“We do!” She sat down on the edge of my other stool. I remembered how awkward it felt to eat around someone who couldn’t eat with me. I almost offered her a pizza bite out of automatic politeness.

“Can Syrens ingest anything?”

“I can refill my coolant by drinking it through a straw, but that’s not the recommended way to go about it,” she answered after a moment. “The best way to refill it would be to open up the control panel on my stomach and just pour it in there. But at my current coolant usage rate, I won’t need a refill for at least another six months.”

“Ah.”

Eating while watching her not-eat made me feel like an animal. Like some kind of starving beast in thrall of her most basic impulses, while Naya was some enlightened, advanced creature who didn’t need food to survive. Except she wasn’t a creature at all, but a machine shaped like a person like me. And I was hungry, so I ate.

“Anyway. We need to start working on our next song as soon as possible,” I said, trying to push those thoughts out of my head. “And upload Ocean online.”

“Right. Yeah. I completely agree.” Naya nodded, her head moving up and down in an uncanny, jerky fashion.

“About the Cupid stuff…” It had seemed so essential the night before, that Naya go outside with me, and look normal doing so, but now that I’d gotten some sleep, I wasn’t sure why I wanted it so much. We’d spent most of the previous week with her sitting in my room and in my recording closet, and she’d seemed totally fine with it. “Can’t you just stay in my apartment when we don’t have gigs?”

“I need to be exposed to new input and new information so I can continue to evolve into the best possible version of myself. And I need to do that so we can take the music world by storm!” Naya smiled. “That’s what you want to do, right? That’s why you bought me off Marketplace?”

“Yes,” I said. I ate some more pizza bites. “Do you think that, with enough practice, you could go outside by yourself someday?”

Do you think you won’t need me anymore?

The thought ran through my head before I could stop it, and the pizza bite turned to sludge in my mouth.

“I don’t know. New model! Everything I’m doing is totally unprecedented for Syrens as a whole!” She sounded delighted by the very thought.

“Well then in that case,” I said, putting my empty plate in the sink, “we gotta make some totally unprecedented music together.”

She straightened up. “Now you’re talking.”

I drained my rapidly cooling coffee in a few gulps and put the cup in the sink for future me to deal with. “Are you ready?”

Naya grinned at me as she followed me into my bedroom. “I was, quite literally, made for this.”