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  “Late?” Sheba cut him short. He followed her voice with a chuckle, to their kitchen. “This show doesn’t play without the both of us. You’re never late.”

  “I’d consider myself lucky to be your stagehand,” Chris laughed. Then he turned the corner, saw her, and the words ran right out of his head. Her dark, smooth skin shone a mixture of silver from the Fusion tube lighting overhead and orange from the candle on the table. When she stood, dark curls spun around the, rich golden-brown rings in her eyes. She gave Chris a spin of her fierce ruby dress. The fabric swept up to flash her full thighs. She opened her arms to the chair pulled out for him.

  “Oh Sheba, you didn’t have to…” Chris struggled to find anything he could say to feel he deserved this.

  “Of course I did! We never had our proper engagement dinner!” said Sheba, “Now sit. I’m sure you’re starving, and I’m itching to get out of this dress.” Another wink was all it took to pin Chris to his seat. He wasn’t even sure what it was she’d made, with how quickly he inhaled it. It was delicious, though.

  Around him and Sheba was a vortex of colliding worlds. This was a newer apartment complex, wired with Fusion tubing for all the modern commodities a young couple could want, in 2350. After relocating to an office to get an apartment away from the barracks, though, Chris and Sheba could only just afford furniture and decorations. The two found themselves unexpectedly grateful for the storage locker of collectibles Chris’ father had left them. His love for antiques had passed to his son but created a jarring visual as decor in their apartment. Silver food storage units defrosted and froze food in seconds, beside an old clock that still ticked. An oven could cook a piece of meat through in four blinks while a deep-cushioned rocking chair creaked in the living room. Anything beat the barracks, though. Over these past months, Chris and Sheba had even come to love it - differences had never been an obstacle for them.

  “I hope you aren’t too tired,” said Chris, when at last he wiped the corner of his mouth.

  “Not if you’re willing to do most of the work, after your long day,” said Sheba, red-lipped smile glistening. He’d been excited since he walked in, enthralled since he saw that dress; Chris couldn’t wait another second. Sheba leaned back in her chair, feigning the helpless damsel. “Oh, Major General, please whisk me away,” she moaned. Chris hoisted her up in both arms and carried her to their bedroom.

  “Consider yourself whisked,” he whispered. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass panes of a window on the way. His hazel eyes jumped out from the sharp lines of his face. His tufts of auburn hair swayed across his tan skin, already glinting with a certain thrill. The briefest thought crossed his mind: what did I do to deserve this? He followed the teal glass tubes of Fusion lights down the hall and laid his fiancée on their bed, beside another candle. He flipped the lights.

  Chris crawled over her and slipped his smile between hers. Warmth bound them together, then wetness. Their lips locked, loosened, and grazed. Sheba’s legs slid apart so Chris could take a knee between them, like he’d taken a knee for her in their favorite park. He worked his mouth down her neck, feeling the pores prickle alive. He kissed the ridge of her breast, her stomach, all the way down to those dark thighs. With her heat still on his face, he slipped the skirt of her dress up. The arch of Sheba’s shoulders to help get it off told him she was ready. She snapped up and seized his clothes into two claws of long nails. She tore them off and tossed them away with deft grace. Sheba’s arms locked around his neck and pulled him down. She reached for the pulsing muscle between his legs, and put it against her. Chris pushed gently inside.

  Chris and Sheba let out a deep breath together. The next minutes, hours, bled together in a churning sea of emotion and physical sensation. Tense muscles. Warm skin. Lips. The graze of fingers across nipples. Sheba crossed her legs behind Chris’ hips to take him in as deep as she could. She arched her back again and clasped her fingers with his. Their love yanked the bed from the wall before Chris gave five last deep rocks and the two shared moments of climax, seconds apart. Bursts of colors played behind the closed eyes of concentration while they gasped and throbbed and groaned. Almost immediately, Chris collapsed beside his fiancée.

  “Amazing…” mumbled Sheba, legs still trembling with aftershocks of pleasure.

  “I know… and I don’t even have to try,” Chris joked, to a slap on the arm. He rolled over on his side, to gaze into big brown eyes. He and Sheba worked together to unwrinkle the sheets over them both.

  “Are you… excited?” asked Sheba, to break the amorous silence.

  “Not quite so much as I was minutes ago,” said Chris. Sheba’s eyes went wide with disbelief, but he had to get it out somewhere. The others at Chris’office were hardly the humorous type, at least around the Major General.

  “About the wedding, Chris!” said Sheba, which of course, he knew.

  “You mean the wedding planning. And as a matter of fact, I am,” Chris assured her. He sat half up when he realized his mistake. “Not that that means we have to figure it all out tonight.” Sheba laughed at the honest panic in his voice. He knew they could, too, if he gave Sheba the reins. Two of her favorite things: planning and a wedding, especially her own? But Chris wanted to be part of it, too.

  “How about a location?” Sheba prompted. Her eagerness was irresistible.

  “How… specific do we need to get?” said Chris.

  “Let’s start with which planet,” said Sheba. Though he’d grown in a life with two worlds, Chris had never left Earth, and so the notion was still a culture shock for him. When he and Sheba were dating, and she first told him she hailed from the big red marble, rather than the blue one, he couldn’t believe it. She seemed so human - more than that; charming, provocative. Before he met her, Chris had believed his father’s old prejudice that people born in Mars’ colonies would be more… alien.

  “What do you think?” said Chris, “No matter where we plan it, one of our families will have to cross the SkyLine to get there.”

  “Maybe we should have it somewhere out there, then?” said Sheba. Chris snorted.

  “On the SkyLine? Please, I don’t need to seem any more like an Earthlocked tourist than I already do,” Chris waved it off. Sheba’s eyes glossed over.

  “Then… you’d go to Mars? You’d drag your whole family out there?” said Sheba.

  “If you were set on having the wedding there.” Chris knew it was so much easier said than done. His father’s prejudice against Cold Fusion technology, the resultant AI-driven robots, and just about everything else that came from the mines on the red planet, ran deep in their veins.

  “Chris… I love you. I don’t know if I can ever tell you how much,” said Sheba, “Which is why we’ll do it on Earth. Your family might be more… receptive on their own turf.”

  “I love you, too,” smiled Chris. They leaned for a kiss just before the shrill ring of their ancient phone rattled its hook. Chris had to have a special port installed for the land-line they inherited from his dad, since affording Fusion phones was entirely out of the question for them now. Chris would have let it ring itself out, but for the fact that there were only two other places connected to their house on the archaic line. It was either his job, or a job offer for Sheba. “Hello?” he sighed into the receiver.

  “Who is it?” murmured Sheba, while Chris’ face darkened.

  “WCC,” he whispered, still listening. Each word seemed to yank his heartstrings tighter. “I… are you sure? Yes, I know you wouldn’t call if you weren’t… yes… I understand…” Chris reached for his pants.

  “Good Lord, what is it, Chris?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Chris said, before clicking the phone back down. His eyes fell heavy on Sheba. “I have to go to the WCC consulate… there’s been an attack.”

  Chapter Two: Dark Developments

  “An attack?” Sheba blurted, almost laughing at the absurdity. It was almost ten o’clock, and they called to tell Chris ab
out an attack? “I’m sure there has been. In the mountains, in the fields. Far, far away from Beijing, I’m sure there’s been plenty of attacks. Isn’t that what the WCC supplies Precincts for? Chris… what?” Sheba shifted upright when she saw true distress sink into the lines on his face. She’d seen them rarely, even when they lived at the barracks. As it always had, the look preceded Chris unlocking the case under the bed, to retrieve his dad’s old pistol.

  “The attack was on one of the Precincts. 117, in Shanghai,” said Chris. Unprecedented as something like that was, since the widespread distribution of Squires, Sheba breathed herself into a calm.

  “That is peculiar… but aren’t there other Precincts nearby that can help? What makes it a WCC concern?” she tried, tears welling in her eyes. The pistol in his belt was never a good sign.

  “The Squires the WCC sent there turned on their partners,” Chris told her.

  “My God… Chris…” Sheba mumbled. She hugged the sheets up around her while Chris shouldered his jacket and holstered his pistol, a six-chamber revolver as polished as the day his dad had given it. He faced her, as disappointed as she was, but the sudden shift of her expression disarmed Chris. It wasn’t just disappointment. It wasn’t just anger. Sheba looked terrified. “Please don’t go.”

  “Sheba…” Chris whispered, swooping to the edge of the bed beside her. Never once in their five years together had she demanded that of him. “What is it?” Her eyes went wide again at the question. “Sheba…” She ran through every reasonable response in her mind, anything but the truth. She didn’t need to worry him more.

  “It’s… I’ve just been having trouble sleeping. Been thinking about the wedding and all… I really need you here,” pleaded Sheba. Tears poked up in the corners of her eyes. Chris’ hand flung to brush them away, but she turned her head to do it herself.

  “Sheba, I’m sorry… I need to be here, too. I’m so sorry I can’t be, just tonight. This is that rare time when I have to answer,” Chris reassured her.

  “I know, I know… I’m sorry,” Sheba turned back to him, smiling. She’d known from the moment the phone hung up that he was going. Not even she could stop him, and she’d opened a dangerous door. Sheba had been having trouble sleeping of late, but it had nothing to do with the wedding. “You have to go, I understand.”

  “I wish you didn’t have to… Sheba, is that really all? I’ve never seen you like this, not over work,” Chris raised an eyebrow of true, wounding concern.

  “That’s really all, Chris. I promise. Now you go. It’d be selfish for me to keep you here for myself, when you’ve got a job to do,” she smiled her way into another long, wet kiss. “Go keep us all safe. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Chris replied, like he wasn’t just as concerned. He lingered by the door to their bedroom when it closed behind him. He waited to hear anything, any small hint to what could really be plaguing Sheba so deeply she would keep it from even him. All he heard were sobs. When Chris wanted nothing more than to go back through their bedroom door, he zipped his jacket and headed outside.

  -

  Sheba wanted so badly to keep it together, for Chris. She had to, she told herself. That minor breach was almost too much. If there really had been a malfunction so profound in the AIs, he had enough on his plate. He didn’t have to know about her dreams. Not yet. It wasn’t like she was full-blown 3D… not yet.

  Still, when she lay in the dark, eyes too wide for tears, she remembered how her uncle had started the same way. Dreams. He dismissed it, like most did, that worked the mines on the red planet where she grew. Cases of dragon dissociation disorder have plummeted since the shallow mine movement in 3200, after all. But there was always a reason for a movement like that. In this case, it was the sheer number of Martian miners succumbing to delusion. The elements under Mars’ crust were the heart of Cold Fusion technology, the heart of human survival, but so too the cause of rampant hallucinations.

  Even after hours in the mines, an unidentified whisper or flash of light could manifest. After days, miners heard voices speak in tongues they could not. Weeks of prolonged exposure meant nightmares, like the ones Sheba was having now. Months without a vacation from the Martian Fusion Mines could be downright paralytic. People were tormented, asleep or awake. What caused such radical change in practice, and earned the condition the monicker 3D, was the nature of the delusions. Every miner, and even some technicians, were haunted by the same image. Fearsome beasts glowering in the dark. Scales in place of skin. Yellow glow behind glassy lenses, with a flash of claws instead of hands or feet. They looked closest to what old Earthlocked legends called Dragons. Giving them a name, though, was little consolation for the people who heard and saw them nonstop. For decades, Mars saw a massive spread of asylums and a migration of psychologists to treat the sufferers of dragon dissociation disorders. Sheba figured she must be the only one who made the pilgrimage in reverse, but she just had to get away from all of that.

  Sheba never worked the mines, but her uncle did. He was a lifetime resident at Red Star Asylum now, but once, he’d lived with her and her dad. She shuddered at the possible connection between that, and her dreams. She never once thought the end of his road might be hers too, but then she never thought spending time around the residue from the mines could give her nightmares all these years later. Perhaps it was even genetic? Just last night, Sheba saw the yellow eyes in the dark of sleep. She woke up with the whispers still in her ears. She thought about telling Chris more than once, but the excitement of their engagement was still so new. Sheba would never forgive herself if she quenched the fire of that with ungrounded worry.

  They were just dreams, she told herself, alone in the dark. Still, Sheba lay awake, long after Chris went. She stared into the ceiling, trying to chase out the image of yellow gemstone eyes. Sheba let out a shaky breath. Just dreams.

  -

  “Ow! Rookie mistake, Tim,” he whispered to himself, shaking out the finger he’d just nicked. It was all the company he had to talk to- well, himself, and his patients. By the time he was done with what he always thought was important work, those patients might just be able to answer him. For now, Tim just counted himself lucky to have found a company willing to invest in him. Months ago, Tim Carver had been another shut-in with a workshop in his mom’s basement. Now, he was a shut-in with a garage workshop and a startup contract, in his own apartment on the wrong side of Beijing. “We can both do better, can’t we?” he whispered to his current patient.

  Tim fell back from the lamplight on a patiently sitting robot, and flicked on another to find the bandages. He wrapped his bleeding finger, which immediately stained the cloth. Tim sighed into a laugh. He was more intimately familiar with the insides of a Fusion Operation System than some men twice his age, and his scarred hands showed it. FOS design, for the most part, took more strength of will and mind than muscle, but some pain tolerance was necessary. Especially when fatigue set in. Tim hadn’t fumbled a tool so hard in years. But that was how important this project was, to him at least. Tim might not have been in the part of town he wanted, or the country, or planet, but at least he had these projects. Nanoverse had given him a path to purpose, he reminded himself.

  He’d been working on this particular home-service model for two weeks. It wasn’t so different from WCC’s Squires, but shrunken to the size of a child. Tim had been tasked with teaching the model something its human counterpart could never hope to: how to develop its own intelligence beyond the scope of its FOS, its AI, its brain. Thus far, the problem-solving software had melted down sixteen times, in sixteen tests. Tim had spent the better part of four days with his long spine arched over a screen, twisting and stretching various elements of the model’s AI. Now it was time to test it. He just needed to create the problem, which is where the scalpel he cut himself on came in. One more careful swipe carved a sufficient slice. Tim took a step back from the robot, and said,

  “TE-Les, on.” The onyx child’s face lit with a red be
am of awareness. A single infrared beam swept across TE-Les’ ocular slit, taking in the room and its master. Tim preferred the term doctor. He had to believe a deeper, more complex relationship was possible between them than designer and object, servant and master. It was the whole premise of his work at Nanoverse.

  “Hello, Tim,” said the robotic voice of a child. He’d designed the vocal range of this particular in-home-service model himself. The default deep, mature voice was too jarring from so small a body.

  “How do you feel tonight, TE-Les?” posed Tim.

  “Positively splendid,” said TE-Les. Tim raised an eyebrow.

  “Even though you know what I’m going to ask you to do? Even though it hasn’t worked so well before?” Tim prodded. TE-Les gave a laser-flashing nod. At least the gesture training was working.

  “Yes. I can feel that something is… different. It may not work this time, but perhaps the results will be interesting,” said TE-Les, in a voice that almost sounded like a faceless smile.. Interesting. Tim had muttered just that to himself at the end of countless hours at this very workbench. TE-Les must have picked it up from him..

  “You feel it, huh? I think you could be right,” said Tim, knowing that emotional matrices were still in beta, and not in any Nanoverse models. He poked his bandaged finger at the slice he’d carved himself in the model’s chest. “TE-Les, you’ve been damaged. Repair yourself,” Tim said. Even after the first sixteen attempts, he still winced at this part. In previous trials, he had seen every reaction from mortified screams to sparks, smoke, and rampant form-changing. This time, TE-Les’ visual laser swept over Tim’s wounded hand, then her own chest. In his pipedream hope the TE-Les project would move on to some personality matrix work - he had customized the model as a “she”.

  “I cannot. My nanotech self-repair protocol’s have been disabled,” TE-Les realized, puzzled. Tim couldn’t help himself. He let an exhausted cackle through his laced fingers. Never once had she made it past realizing her systems were tampered with. She’d never been able to say it.