＃１１０ ▪ The Plaque

Written for my partner in 2020 as part of a birthday present. Dug out while sorting old presents into cloud storage, and posted with her blessing.

Interestingly, my present to her in 2016 (primarily an eccentric digital collection of writing, media, and puzzles) organised the writing into a folder similarly named Scrapbook — and makes repeated reference to the ‘scraps’ within. It seems this project dates back much longer than I thought.

Total word count ~6,000, ~30 minute read.

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“I don’t get it. Does it talk?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t look like it can dance or sing.”

“It can’t dance or sing neither, Anita.”

Anita considered this for a moment, then knelt down on the carpet to get a better look at it. Father sat down with her which Anita knew meant he was sad. He never let his big salmon work jacket touch the floors unless he was in a sour mood.

“But then what does it do, dad?”

“Well,” Father began, averting his gaze from hers and instead watching the milky yellow shadows that spilled across the carpet. “It can do anything you want, you see? You just have to help it along and pretend a little.”

Her eyebrows furrowed slightly and her curiosity started to give rise to annoyance. The thing still hadn’t moved, except for tiny sags and flops of fabric that no-one could confuse for real animation. It just... sat there, all dumblike and vacant.

“Help it along? How, dad?”

Father sighed one of his long, heavy sighs that made his whole body slump afterwards and peeled off his disposable trirubber gloves that still stunk of disinfectant. One at a time, he tossed them towards the door, not seeing or caring where they landed. Turning back to the thing sitting in front of him, he reached out reluctantly, grabbed its stubby little brown arms, and started to gently wiggle them in circles.

Anita lasted only a few heartbeats before bursting into tears. Her bob heaved in sobs with her shoulders and Father knew she would be inconsolable for the rest of the afternoon. Eighth birthdays were meant to be special, very special, for families below the Plaque at least. At eight, you were allowed to ride the hermetic elevators by yourself—any child’s first big test of independence.

But he had blown it, and there was no use in it now. He stood and walked to the showers to scrub down, waving over one of the bots to console her instead.

A small grey Feline bot padded its way across the carpet to Anita and began to circle her, brushing its smooth platinum surface and fishingline whiskers against her skin. Analysis of Anita’s voice suggested upwards of a ninety percent probability that she was upset, cuing a synthetic purring track that girls her age in focus groups had rated as most reassuring.

Soon enough, Anita’s tears slowed to a trickle and her shoulders steadied, and she gratefully accepted a tissue held up to her by the Feline’s paw.

“Thanks, kitty,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Anita,” the bot replied, completing a final loop of her knees with a swish of its tail and coming to rest in front of her.

“Kitty,” Anita murmured. “What did Father get me for my birthday?”

In answer, the bot’s eyelids clicked once like a camera-shutter, and suddenly one of its irises was missing—rolled back into the Feline’s head to make way for a holographic projector. The bot spun away from her, and a crisp white shopping catalogue interface filled the centre of the room.

TEDDY BEARS, the catalogue began. The vintage toy of choice for Lower Plaque dwellers!

Anita’s lip trembled and she could feel tears pressing at her eyes again. She made a gesture in the air with two fingers, like bunny ears flopping forward, and the catalogue page scrolled down for her.

BEAR MODEL: ALTON, 75 KRONOR, she read. Tagged “Bargain”.

BEAR MODEL: AYURO, 31 KRONOR. “Bargain”.

BEAR MODEL: BAYER, 56 KRONOR. “Bargain”.

It was too much. She sliced her hand across the page to fade it away into soft light. The cat’s eyelids clicked as its projector shut off and by the time it turned back to her she was already facing away, staring through the wall length glass panel that stretched cross their entire apartment and looked out onto the Plaque.

Every seven, no—every eight year old, Anita reminded herself bitterly, knew all about the Plaque, even though the subject was studiously avoided in schools. You couldn’t help but learn about it. It was everywhere and everything and it swallowed up every conversation like a big whale gulping down plankton. You learned about it in pieces, sure, with a jigsaw puzzle of rumours… but you learned nevertheless.

From what she could gather, the Plaque wasn’t always the snotty yellow mist that eddied past her eyes now and made your lungs feel all shrunken and wet if you breathed it in too long. Once it was simply a clear and greasy film that coated every window in the city, and nobody minded it all that much or where it came from as long as their cleaners abraded it off in the mornings before they came in to work.

One day though, the Plaque began to change.

Anita didn’t know how the big oily no-brain mess changed itself or if it could happen again. The thought of the Plaque being alive somehow was very frightening to her. She sometimes dreamed that the apartment’s long glass windows would break in the night and the film would come in to get her, creeping wetly across her chest and squeezing her so gosh tight that her ribs would crackle. Father said she had nothing to worry about, but Father worried all the time too, so Anita didn’t believe him.

Either way, the Plaque stopped coming off the windows so easily. It spread faster. And it started feeding off the dirty air coming from the factories and vomiting out the sepia gas that most people knew as the Plaque today. No sector could contain the Plaque for long and it spread so far across the megalopolis that the city Mayor had to take extreme measures.

She knew the Mayor’s name. Everybody knew his name, though Anita had never seen it written down anywhere. For all his other civic accomplishments, Mayor Sonosa’s legacy would forever be the Plaque, and his now-scorned family name embodied all the bleak historicity of a Nero or a Robespierre.

A month after scientists had discovered the Plaque was feeding off pollution, Sonosa and his yes-men abruptly announced new bylaws that would effectively bar all ungreen economic activity from the next Circuit onwards. Every factory, every smogstack, every condenser, all of it shut down and dismantled and thrown away or you’d be sent to the grimiest jails in the city to choke on your own waste till you’d learned your lesson.

Well, even Anita could have predicted how that would end. What else would people do, knowing they only had half a Circuit to keep making things? They’d make as much as they could as fast as they could, while they had the chance—if only because they knew everybody else would be doing so too and they had to keep up.

Instead of pollution shuddering to a halt as Mayor Sonosa had intended, it accelerated. If a megafactory could safely produce a thousand autos a day, well, the manager wanted two thousand. Quarries that would have taken months to dig were blasted into shape in days, chemical runoffs be damned. New companies raised billions of Kronor in capital to make products that nobody even wanted, just in case somebody would want them ten Circuits from now.

Almost overnight, the Plaque rose two hundred seventy stories up the skyrises and it had stayed there ever since.

Nowadays your life depended on whether you lived above or below the Plaque. With new building projects virtually forbidden, there would be no more climbing above the Plaque for the masses; you either earned the Kronor to purchase one of the few Upper Plaque apartments for sale at any time, or you kept staring glumly out into the icky yellow fog each day longing for a change of fortune.

Switching skyrises was practically out of the question—the hermetically sealed tunnels at the foot of the buildings were too few and too tight for many people to carry goods through, and the handful of licensed removalist services down there operated as a cartel, charging extortionate prices so as to live fashionably off a mere handful of ultrawealthy, building-hopping Upper Plaquers.

Don’t waste your dosh, the wisdom went. You can’t outrun the Plaque, and the grimey phlegmish film on the windows doesn’t care whether you live East or West. All you can do is climb, climb!, and if you can’t do that then stop being selfish and set your kids up to take a shot instead. This wasn’t about *you* anymore.

Anita felt a soft tug at the hem of her polka dot dress and looked down. The Feline bot had decided she was still gloomy, perhaps, or its pseudo-random mood generator had chosen to simulate the cat needing attention. One way or another, a smooth platinum paw rested atop Anita’s foot, and the cat’s animatronic face looked up at her expectantly.

“Hey, kitty.”

She picked the cat up and cradled it in her arms, lowlylike so as to avoid the still tear-soaked ruff built into the dress. The last Feline had been manufactured pre-Sonosa, and Father said you could never be too sure how their epoxy sealings would hold up. The cat began to purr again, the same purr of reassurance as before, and Anita rankled at the implied assessment that she was still not in control of her emotions.

“Skip.”

The purr rasped a little more, and it began to rise and fall more noticeably, and Anita recognised this as the Feline’s default sleep track. Better.

“Thanks, kitty.”

“You’re welcome, Anita.”

See, Father, this is a companion! My kitty is always happy, always helpful. It never needs cheering up and it never needs telling off. I don’t need to pretend that kitty has a personality; it has dozens! And they’re all real personalities, not some stupid illusion that breaks the second I stop wiggling its paws. Why did you have to ruin my birthday, dad, with a stupid dumblike budget bargain bear!

Anita moped and watched a wisp of Plaque fog curl it on itself as it swept past the window. She reckoned she’d spent about twice as much time talking to the imitation cat as any human, even including Father. Lower Plaque kids spent almost all their time at home alone, unable to have friends over without revealing they lived below the Plaque line and risking ostracism. 

Oh, there were a few reckless kids that found covert ways to signal their status, alright, but most had the good sense to keep their big mouths shut. No friend was worth tarring your name like that, and once the secret was out, it was out for life and stuck to you like glue. What Upper Plaquer would ever befriend one with so little to offer them beyond resentment and covetousness? And what Lower Plaquer in their right mind would acquaintance their very own competition, as likely to push your head down in the mud for a stepping stone as to lend you a hand up?

No, you told people you were an Upper Plaquer, and that was that. Don’t question it of others, and they’ll leave you alone too. Friendship is for those who can see the sky and toil for those who can’t. Be happy with your bots—or not, what does it matter?

A snakelike hiss sounded behind her, which Anita recognised as the hermetic seal to the kitchen decompressing. Father was signalling her in for dinner. 

“Scram, kitty.”

The Feline bot leapt out of her arms, settled on her rucksack by the door, and happily mimicked chewing on Father’s still-discarded black gloves. Anita’s nose still wrinkled slightly from the trace disinfectant on them, but she supposed the bot didn’t have olfactory sensors, or it did have olfactories and nobody had ever told it to care.

How lucky you are!, envied Anita as she trudged to supper. I wish I were you, kitty. 

By the window, the small brown bear sags into the carpet, already forgotten.

“I don’t want you chitchattering like I do, alright?”

“I know, dad.”

“Even if we talk to them all regular. No exceptions.”

“I know, dad.”

Father wasn’t worried about her, not really, Anita decided. He always looked people in the eyes all grufflike and pleading when he needed to get his way, and right now he was only lobbing stray thoughts over his big salmon jacketed shoulder as they came to him. That meant his real focus was elsewhere—probably still on breakfast, if she figured right. Best to appreciate the last vestiges of warmth in your belly before leaving home in case the elevator heating had conked out again.

This was a common pattern for the two of them and both knew it. Father went through the motions of parenthood well enough to keep her safe and to convince himself that he’d done his civic duty, and little further than that. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—he loved her as much as any parent could. But a fourteen hour shift as a Plaque abrader will burn the caregiving capacity out of anyone, and Father worked them daily.

In exchange, and old enough now to know that Father was working moreso for her future than his own, Anita helped him to believe their little masquerade. She feigned more rebelliousness than she felt just so Father could seem to quash it. She repeated his maxims back to him months later, so he might feel heard. And sometimes, like now, she would cautiously play up her irritation at his warnings, giving him the satisfaction of being thorough without seeming overbearing.

“If the membrane closes early, don’t try to catch it. Wait for the next one.”

“Da-ad, I’ve ridden the hermetic elevators a million times already, okay? I’ll be fine.”

Father shouldered his rucksack and handed Anita her own, finally making eye contact again as they prepared to leave. His face was stern, but his eyes were soft with gratitude and Anita knew he’d appreciated her theatre.

“Alright, Anita. It’s like we always say, you can’t—”

“You can’t be safe tomorrow unless you’re safe today.” She smiled at him earnestly, and that was that.

The front door hissed open and the two of them parted ways almost immediately in the hallway beyond. Father joined a stream of similarly salmon jacketed workers heading right to the deep-dive elevators that would take them over three hundred stories down into the maintenance network. Anita slipped into a left-facing queue for the regular elevators, unaccompanied for the very first time, and felt an unexpected surge of exhilaration. She had thought herself too mature for the social milestone to have any impact on her, but now she felt... electric.

As it turned out, Father needn’t have worried about Anita chitchattering; she knew nobody around her in the queue, likely because eliminating his safeguarding trip had allowed them to depart fifteen minutes later. Life was so heavily routinized down here that you could consistently live only a minute apart from someone else and yet never be made aware of their existence. Everybody crammed into time and space like those dreadful sardines she hated, packed so gosh tight that you couldn’t even turn around to meet your neighbours and you may as well have none.

Still, she couldn’t deny that she was having fun, as her queue shuffled forward. How beamingly silver the hall trusses were, now that she looked at them! Was all that workboot scuffing on the floor new, or had she forgotten it a million times over? Did that big-nosed man in the next line work as a historian or a teacher to need so many books? Neither, Anita decided with an unconscious condescension written in the lines of her face, for he stared ahead too stupidly. Perhaps an archivist.

Despite the massive size of the hermetic elevators, the morning crowds were so dense that you could only see the elevators once you were practically upon them. The end of the gleaming chrome hallway abruptly dropped away in every direction, so that you looked out into a thin black rectangle of nothingness, so pitch dark in contrast that you might have believed the universe ended right there too, if the elevator hadn’t arrived.

The hermetic elevators were colossal grey orbs that floated slowly into view, hanging somehow menacingly in the abyss. They were preternaturally smooth and showed no signs of propulsion, except for the sounds they made—a doleful, ominous hum that always seemed to be descending, and higher-pitched warbles that could have been language. Anita thought they must have recorded a sea leviathan and played it through hidden speakers so as to scare people away from the elevator shaft for their own good. At least, it scared her.

Next, an inky-green membrane grew from the orb’s surface, spiralling across it in fractal patterns and swallowing it whole like florescent lichen. Camera-shutter panels slid back into a recess to reveal a circular entranceway in the centre of the orb, enclosed by soft yellow neon glowsticks that kept you from distinguishing anything beyond. For an instant, Anita felt she were staring into a human iris framed by the eyelids of the corridor, and she wondered if the orb could see her, too.

Oh! The membrane had shot out towards the waiting passengers, earlier than she had anticipated, forming a shimmering tunnel that led them into the elevator. Dutifully, the queue began to shuffle forward, stepping into the umbilical structure that looked as though it had no right at all to hold their weight. With each step you took, tendrils from the membrane reached out and sucked at you clumsily—tugging at you just hard enough to unbalance you if your steps weren’t even and strong. Father said the membrane was the best they had to keep the Plaque from spreading between the floors, and she grudgingly admitted it was a necessary evil. Still, Anita hoped they’d come up with a better way soon; she didn’t like the way it plucked at her blouse and mussed up her hair.

Once you were inside the elevator, through the neon-lit entrance and onto the mesh platform that let you see the full expanse of the sphere, there was little to do besides wait. No effort had been made to beautify the elevator and no muzak played over the intercom that Anita knew existed. It was just you and a hundred other civilians, all on your way to do something, somewhere, but for now stuck in the same shared purgatory and counting the floors until it was your turn to shamble off. At least it was warm in here today; one time, they’d had to—

“Hey, Anita!”

A straw-haired boy in a maroon jumpsuit was making his way over to her from across the lift and she unsuccessfully tried to suppress a smile. Errol was two grades above her at school, but she’d been paired up with him one day for auditorium cleanup duty and maintained a light crush on him ever since. She didn’t quite know why, and part of her supposed she’d liked the rare sense of proximity more than the boy himself. Still, she enjoyed getting occasional glimpses of him around the school hallways… and he was pretty, after all.

“I never seen you on the ‘vators before, Anita!”

She blushed, and hated herself for it immediately, because it was a stupid thing to blush at.

“Well, I’m eight today, Errol,” she bragged matter-of-factly. “No need for Father to tag along this time.”

Errol thought for a second with his head cocked slightly, then satisfied himself with a nod. “Makes sense. Hey, I get on at the four-oh-first—why didn’t I spot you earlier?”

He was lying, she thought, though she couldn’t be sure. The best way to convince others you were Upper Plaque was to claim it proactively at every chance you got, but Anita had no stomach for it and worried about being caught out. Safer to only lie when you had to, and change the subject as soon as possible.

“Father never let me really see the Lower wards before, so I hopped off early and looked around. That’s why.”

“Hm,” pondered Errol, and he cocked his head again. “Corridors are way different down here, huh?”

“Way different.”

The opportunity to elaborate further hung in the air between them, but neither took it. You lying, dirty fibber, Anita said to Errol with her eyes, though she didn’t hold it against him because she was one, too. His own gaze was inscrutable and she decided to switch topics.

“Say, did you ever figure out that Logistics problem you told me about on cleanup?”

“Which? Oh, yeah. Turned out it was one of the prof’s tricks—just a demonstration of Furlini’s Theorem.”

That made sense. Errol’s Logistics teacher had given the class what looked like a normal homework question, but no matter how you solved it, you kept getting nonsense answers; the city should build an infinite number of bridges, or remove all residential zoning, or fire all its non-essential personnel. Furlini’s Theorem proved that a whole class of similar errors could usually be attributed to setting up the problem incorrectly, assuming a linearity between infrastructure and productivity that could never exist in the real world.

Technically, Anita wasn’t meant to cover such theorems until next grade, but she liked to learn and there wasn’t much else to do while waiting for Father to finish his shift. He would often return home to find her asleep on the lounge, curled up with the Feline bot still projecting instructional videos onto the ceiling. Errol was smart, too, and Anita thought she saw a chance to flirt with him.

“You’re so clever, Errol. I never could have worked that one out. I bet you’ll get accepted into the Institute any day now!”

Errol’s face brightened so much that she could see every detail on his face, even in the dim lighting of the elevator. The Institute was the city’s best school above the Plaque line, and there weren’t many to begin with; it had been vastly more profitable to build luxury apartments up there, before Mayor Sonosa’s construction ban, and even most Upper Plaque kids now went to school in the Lowers accordingly. To get to the Institute, you either had to know the Mayor himself, or prove you were a generational intelligence… probably both.

“That’s real nice of you, Anita. I’m sure I will.”

Errol paused a moment, as though to muster up something inside him. 

“Say, I was thinkin’—would you like to show me round that Lower ward after school today? You know, the one you explored this morning.”

Her face flushed again and Errol grinned broadly, and she knew he had seen it. No sense trying to hide it, anymore.

“I’d like that, Errol.”

“Good,” he said, triumphant. “We’ll meet here, after the bell. Speaking of school, ain’t this your stop?”

It was; her classroom was one floor above his and other children were already starting to file out through the membrane. Anita flashed a parting, jubilant smile at Errol and rushed after them, barely making it through in time before the membrane furled back in on itself again and the elevator dropped out of sight with its leviathan hum. Breathless and ecstatic, she slowed her pace to a dawdle, trying to extend the moment for as long as she could before class started.

For the first time all year, and despite her heavy rucksack, Anita felt as light as air.

“Was it two-eight-eight or two-eight-nine, Anita? I forget.”

Errol was waiting for her inside the elevator entrance, so close to the edge that she would have barrelled right past him if he hadn’t called out. Anita turned to find him stood in a ridiculous contrapposto, half his torso swivelled away from her even though he’d obviously just watched her enter. He was trying too hard to show nonchalance, she thought, and it gave him away; he was excited, too.

“Oh, I never paid attention in the first place,” she replied, wincing internally at being held to her bluff. “I didn’t think I’d be coming back, did I?”

“’Course not.”

“Does it matter, anyway?”

Errol smiled at the corners of his mouth. “’Course not.”

They stood in shy silence for the remainder of the trip, watching the other passengers swash in and out of the elevator like waves. All the adults looked so browbeaten, so played out, she noticed. Was every job as soulbattering as Father’s? Is this what she had to look forward to if she forever lived below the Plaque? She shook the thought off as best she could, determined not to spoil her own mood.

“Two-eight-eight, Anita. Let’s go!”

The camera-shutter panels opened and the lichenlike membrane shot out towards a chrome hallway that looked just like the one on Anita’s floor. Perhaps the layout would be identical, Anita hoped, and she could fake that it was the same floor she’d lied about exploring earlier. But as they darted outside and the membrane closed behind them, she saw that the hallway curved left at the end instead of right, and a series of ramps connected to the hallway where she was accustomed to blank space.

“Is this the right one?” asked Errol, seeming to read her mind.

“I don’t think so.”

“Never mind, we’re here now, ain’t we? Let’s check it out.”

They rounded the corner at the end of the hallway and at last they talked freely, delightedly remarking on every detail of the environment as though it were a revelation to their Upper Plaque sensibilities. Errol tentatively offered the first direct comparison—the ceiling cornices were more rounded down here, weren’t they? Oh, yes!, she agreed, and yet not as delicate somehow. 

Errol concurred, and with that successful experiment conducted they launched into a shared verbal construction of what the Upper Plaque must be like. They built a world together as they walked; not a fantastical world, but one rich in the kind of intimate and trifling details that only a local would volunteer. Anita felt a sense of pure creation, of liberty and wonder, and she was so enamoured by the dream they dreamed together that it simply had to be true.

“Do you think this is one of them ‘cafeterias’, Anita? I suppose your family mostly goes to restaurants, too. Still, you must have heard of cafeterias.”

“It has to be, Errol, I think you’re right.”

“Why, I wonder if the slop is any good here. What do you say we try some?”

“I’d like that, Errol,” and she wanted to hold his hand all of a sudden.

They walked on up and read the menu, or at least pretended to, for there was a similar cafeteria on Anita’s floor where she always ordered the same dish. He ordered first and conspicuously showed off a fancy sun-red wallet that complemented his jumpsuit. The flamboyance of the wallet gave Anita pause—was he an Upper Plaquer, after all? Why then take a needless risk eating at a Lower cafeteria, which she was sure would have revolted any genuine Upper Plaquer on sight? The wallet must have been a birthday present, she deduced, and he’d seen the opportunity to make dual use of it as a sign of status.
 
“Anita.”

“What? Oh. Hello, the egg-fry, thank you.”

She set her rucksack down to fetch her purse, unlatched the top compartment, and opened it wide. The unmistakable stench of disinfectant assaulted her senses immediately, short-circuiting her thoughts, and they returned carrying an awful, premonitious sense of dread with them. It was too late to close the rucksack again—Errol was already next to her, stooping down and plunging into her bag to confirm his suspicions. Anita could only watch him, paralysed in fear and shame, knowing what he would find—the only possible source of that nosewrinkling pong.

Slowly, and without even a glance at her, Errol pulled out a pair of Father’s black, disposable, trirubber gloves.

“Where did you get these, Anita?”

She tried, feebly. “They’re for our garden—”

“I know what they are. They’re abrader gloves, and only Lower Plaquers work as abraders. Where did you get them?”

She had blown it, and there was no use in it now. All she had at this final moment was the truth.

“They’re Father’s. Our kitty must have dropped them in my bag after it was done chewing on them.”

Her head drooped, and she waited for Errol to decide her fate as a prisoner might await the guillotine. He was still, dead still apart from his quivering hands, perhaps sensing a crux in his own life too. Was he an Upper Plaquer?!

At last he stood, and at last he looked at her again. Errol’s gaze was again inscrutable, apart from a raw intensity of… what? Sorrow? Disappointment? Loathing? If it was loathing, was it directed at her, or turned in on himself and his class obligations? Give me something, Errol! But there was nothing there for her, and then it was over and he was gone, vanished behind her into the chrome labyrinth of floor two-eight-eight.

The cashier had already cancelled Anita’s egg-fry for her, and ordering had quietly and awkwardly resumed beside her kneeling figure. Wiping tears from her chin, Anita stuffed the dropped abrader gloves back into her rucksack and set about finding her way back. Right, then left, then up the ramp and right again and now she was staring into the empty eyelids of the elevator shaft once more, hurtling towards it as fast as she could run. She wouldn’t later remember seeing the vast grey orb or its lichen-membrane tunnel before she leapt, but they must have been there for she crashed down onto the mesh stage—barely mindful of the pain—and sobbed the whole way home.

Her front door swung inwards with its usual hiss, and a mercury-vapor lamp embedded in the frame bathed her in ultraviolet as she barged through. Shoes off, socks off, rucksack off! and thrown against the wall in anger, for Father’s shift kept on till nine and he wasn’t around to scold her. With nothing more to do with herself, Anita huddled up onto the lounge and waited for the world to just go away forever.

Before long, she heard a familiar, low, focus-group-reassuring purr approach the lounge, and felt the brush of fishingline whiskers against her bare feet.

“Go away, kitty,” she said hatefully.

“What’s wrong, Anita?”, replied the Feline bot with obstinate adoration.

“I said go away!” 

The cat’s tail swooshed around her legs, snapping through a love-heart pattern that Anita had once found cute before its deliberateness and cynicism dawned on her. Now it just reminded her of what she had lost in the cafeteria—that insipid cultural myth called love, a pathogen of an idea that had not survived contact with the disinfectant.

“I am here to help you, Anita,” the cat purred at her. “I am always here for your comfort.”

A dam inside Anita burst, however unfairly, and she stood on the lounge and screamed down at the bot with all the air in her lungs and then some.

“I don’t want your comfort, kitty! I don’t like that you’re so happy when I’m sad, and I wouldn’t want you sad neither, because every time you miaou at me all I hear is circuits whirring round and this whole wide awful world trying to get me back on my feet just so it can knock me down again!”

Anger spent, she sighed. It was one of Father’s long, heavy sighs that made his whole body slump afterwards, and she felt a little better.

“Gosh, I know you can’t help it, kitty, but how am I supposed to escape from my problems when you represent everything that caused ‘em in the first place? And I’m starting to think that if I always let you cheer me up, I’ll never learn how to do it proper myself. One day you’re going to break down, kitty, and dad will too, and I need a part of me ready to go it alone—to laugh and cry and play and hurt all by myself or this world is gonna break me next.”

The Feline said nothing, purred nothing, played nothing. It just looked at her, lovingly, but with no programming for this scenario to tell it what to do next. Anita felt sorry for the bot, not least because she didn’t know what to do next, either.

“I’m sorry, kitty. I know it sounds stupid and maybe it is. But right now I just want to be alone.”

The cat turned silently and left, and Anita guiltily unballed the fists she found at her sides. Her knees weakened and she stepped down from the lounge, now mournful and empty and tired—so very tired. She had given today all she had and lost, and now there was only a shell of Anita left, an anaemic interface personality that could walk and talk but no longer felt much of anything, and she was sure this would be so forevermore.

Father kept a small stack of blankets by the lounge, in case of heating failures rather than company, and Anita shakily leant down to grab one. As her fingers grasped the blanket, they brushed against something else, something furry still but different, and she looked at it and froze. Father had placed her bear, her small brown bargain bear, atop the stack of blankets.

Was he hoping she would see it again?, she wondered. Or was it a surrender, stuffing the bear somewhere out of the way where it wouldn’t bother her? It didn’t matter, for nothing mattered, but she briefly remembered her dad wiggling its stubby little arms, and she loved him for it and knew that he loved her.

A heartbeat passed, and then another, and finally she picked up the bear and dragged her blanket over to the window.

Setting down beside the glass, she pulled the blanket over, clutched the bear in tight to her chest and in no time at all fell fast asleep, still gazing out towards the Plaque.