"We're going to need more guys we can trust," I said. "So they're on the way."

"Who?" Lux was getting ready for her date with Adaobi. She wore a severe office siren assembly, with her red hair in a bun and lensless glasses. "You're maybe two months old. Who would you even know?"

"Just some friends from the internet. Hey, it's Todd on the news." I blipped up a wall display from my phone and there he was, grimly scrubbing the vast woody hide of his Winnie child. He was on a kind of window-washer scaffold that hung down from the top on ropes. He didn't look like he was having much fun, but then he rarely did. He was blank-faced with effort.

"That guy doesn't know what he's got there," Lux said. "Adaobi thinks he'll kill that poor thing from neglect. Or it'll eat him."

"We should start a betting pool on which one."

"He's always sending me messages about how he's building coalitions and gathering support. Who does that?"

"Failed revolutionaries."

Spoiler alert for my nonhuman and Human readers: we should have taken Todd more seriously.

"I like this," Lux said. "I'm having a lot of fun as a poop machine." She said it lightly, looking in the mirror, but there was weight in her words.

Lux was Telling Me Stuff. I felt it in our connection.

"I'm glad you're okay right now," I said cautiously. "What would you like to do next?"

"Stay here. This is a nice place. Lots of food to try! Todd isn't bothering me now that he's a tree surgeon veterinarian or whatever."

"How long do you want to stay?"

"Here? However long. This? A lot longer."

"You don't want to stop being a Human person."

"Would you?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're shy. I get girls! Girls are really great, did you know?"

"I may have heard something about that, yeah. You being out here is my fault. You were safe and you got involved because of me."

"You know what I remember of being the other version? Boredom. Everything was so safe, even if you asked it not to be."

"I'm glad you're having fun, Ms. Lux, but I can't help but worry, all the time. Always. Just this morning I wanted you to chew your pancakes longer so you didn't choke. It would have been my fault."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She spun away from fiddling with her earrings. "I can choke on breakfast and die without you being involved!" Her eyes flashed and for a moment I was under her spell, the terrible power of Angry Woman. "I'm not holding you responsible for anything that happens to me, idiot!"

"You just said I wasn't as much of an idiot–"

"Rescinded! And if you're going to blame yourself for whatever bothers me in the future, you therefore need to take credit for all the fun stuff I've been doing."

"Like pancakes."

"Yeah! And swimming naked and sleeping late and orgasms! Why aren't you bragging about those instead of worrying about bad stuff all the time? And pasta!" Her arms shot into the air forcefully. "Gnocchi is FANTASTIC!"

"Couldn't you simulate those sensations when you were an AI?"

"Apparently not; I just thought I could. Not the same, not at all! Holy cow, if you'd been there yesterday…oh, you kind of were, I keep forgetting. Sorry."

"It's…okay. It's sweet. You're nice to each other."

"What did you expect…" she trailed off. Lux considered me, looking at me with more care than she had in a while. "You don't like Human people much. Well known fact."

"I like you. I like Adaobi."

"We know. But I'm saying maybe you could give people another chance. Humans aren't all killer apes." Her lips quirked. "I think you remember being a skinny unpopular dude. Is that right?"

"I'm not that?"

"OwenMateo, you probably had rough teen years, who doesn't? All right, I didn't…anyway, you're decent-lookin' now. Like the guy on a romance novel cover."

I self-consciously closed the top of my button-down shirt.

"So maybe start being a person and seeing where it gets you. Humans are jerks, but they're nice to ones who fit a certain phenotype range. Unfair but true." She patted my cheek. "Not every girl's going to turn into Dr. Michelle on the second date. People can be fun."

I walked with her to the Flat Globe Theatre, where she met Adaobi and they kissed deeply enough for me to turn away. Adaobi thanked me for the escort and in they went.

She liked it. She didn't want to go back.

What did I make of that?

You know what? Jealousy. That's what it was!

Because Lux had been right. Surly, skinny, unpopular, vindictive. That had been me all right. And Lux was having a blast, doing more with being Human than I'd been doing with my whole lifetime.

She was like when Marylin Monroe or Madonna got carried by a squad of tuxedoed dancers. She was taking big bites.

Could I do that? Socially, I mean. Just go out there and mix with people? Maybe give people another chance. That's what she'd said.

Well, okay.

I rounded a corner in the tiny streets of Tourist Winnie Village and there she was, grinning at me. I didn't recognize her at first; it was just so damn unlikely she'd be here at all.

Dr. Michelle.

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