Chapter Eight - Theme From…

For once, I did not lag behind in the morning. Instead of waking up and finding Livia in the kitchen, I woke up together with her. Again, I marvelled at how my body would now just instantly switch on instead of starting slowly.

We went into the bathroom together, holding hands on the way. Half way, I remembered we were not alone, but at this point, I had nothing to hide anymore. In the bathroom, Livia plunked down on the toilet while I started brushing my teeth.

“Need to, too? I can scoot over.”

“Nah. Woke up before dawn again. Third day in a row,” I squeezed around my toothbrush. Taking the time to take it out, I added, “And you do remember how that ended the last time we tried?”

“That was three years ago, and now we have super-powered agility.”

“Four, I think.”

“Could be.” She wiped and stood up, then stepped to me at the sink. I handed her her toothbrush, which sat on my side of the sink, but she waved me off. “Pill first,” she said and started digging through the drawer. I sighed. This was one of her quirks that irked me. How can any woman not remember where she put those the day before? And not just once, but each and every morning?

“Just forget it,” I said.

“What?” She sounded like I had called her a horse.

“Forget the pill and trust in your racial abilities. Full fertility control, I think it was called?”

“Indeed. ‘Control’. Not ‘automatic infertility unless disabled’. I need to control that, and I have neither any experience with it nor an idea how to do it. And until I have that, I’m taking the pill. Period.”

“Fine, you’re right.” She had a good point. I should look into this myself; I would need it soon. I felt inside myself while mechanically moving the toothbrush, trying to read the RSDF in parallel, looking for a new sensation.

I had no idea why I did that instead of browsing my menus; maybe it was because people without menu access had that ability, too? In any case, it was the right thing to do. I found three new spots of sensation, and they all had something like muscles I could control. Two ovaries and a uterus? Felt about right, location-wise.

The muscles there felt like they were pumping, but very slowly. Four weeks for the bigger central one and 8 for the two small ones, maybe? I willed them to just relax and sit there idly instead. It took some concentration, but it seemed to work. Time would tell if it stuck.

“You know the white needs to stay on?” Livia interrupted by concentration.

“Huh?”

“Your teeth. You’ve been scrubbing them for fifteen minutes like a madwoman. I had time to take a shower and dry off.”

“Oh,” I spat out what little of the toothpaste remained in my mouth and rinsed. Specks of pink plastic and a couple of white bristles littered the sink. When I checked the toothbrush, I saw it had suffered greatly. Oops? “Sorry, I was deep in thought.”

“So deep, your glamour slipped a couple of times, I noticed. Use mine tomorrow.” Livia gave me a peck on the cheek. “And now get into the shower; you’re starting to smell desperate.”

“Oh, so I look like one of those pimple-faced virgin boys to you?”

“Only with my eyes closed. Now, hush!” She slapped me on the arse to get me moving, then left.

She was right. It had been three days since I had taken my last shower at the cheap hotel in London. What was up with that? While I wasn’t taking daily full showers at home to save on water, I hopped into it with a washcloth every morning without fail. Having a landlord who gouges you on utilities is great for the environment. You can get really nicely clean with just a couple of seconds of running the water.

Not that I had to keep that habit here. I could now stand under the hot water for an hour if I wanted. It would cost us, what, about a pound in water? No idea about the heat, though. There was no gas boiler in the bathroom, so it was something central. Or maybe electrical inside the wall?

Whatever it was, it must have been on the frizz today. I adjusted the temperature until I had the cold one turned off completely, and the water still felt just barely warm to me. At least it wasn’t cold. Only after I was done and couldn’t see the other side of the room from all the steam did I consider me being the problem. I yanked open the door to relieve the little overworked exhaust fan, and a big cloud of steam escaped into the kitchen.

“What?” Livia exclaimed.

“Sorry, misjudged the water temperature,” I told her while standing in the doorway, waiting for the air humidity level to drop to a point where drying off started making sense.

“You’re impossible.”

“Took you long enough to notice.”

“In my defence, you seemed perfectly normal while I was high.”

“Ditto.”

We laughed. Oh, what had I missed this little banter.

“By the way, how are your urges? The AIs said something about them not carrying over to your digital body well? I was supposed to tell you I worked a bit of magic to help you Thursday night as a cover-up, but we never got to that…”

“Um, now that you say it… It’s been very low level. Not quite gone, but not as distracting as before. I should have become nervous when Lessie texted that wine glass emoji, but I didn’t react at all. Nice.”

“Great!” I gave her the thumbs up and grabbed a towel.

“Shoo! Close that door if you want your breakfast edible,” she chided me.

🙚⚜🙘

I finished in the bathroom, putting on one of the bathrobes that had accumulated there over the years. Four people who all were bad about planning ahead for the trips between their bedrooms and the single bathroom in one flat…yeah, that adds up over time. It had bothered me massively in the beginning, not being used to seeing anyone naked at all. Oh my, running into Ernest in the middle of the night when we both were in the nude was a major trauma moment for me. Nowadays, I’d just suggest making the flat a nudist zone. I may need to if Gamma stayed for any amount of time.

I flushed the toilet before I left. At some point last year, Livia had stopped flushing after her small business, after I had told her I did that to save water at home. It served no purpose here, yet it seemed to have become a habit.

🙚⚜🙘

Sunday breakfast was the Hameswood traditional. Beans on toast, sausages, grilled tomatoes, fried black pudding, topped with bacon and a drizzle of honey. It was heavenly. Especially because each bite was accompanied by the sight of Livia enjoying her portion and a shimmering sparkle every time the stone in her ring caught the light. Had she noticed it yet? I wasn’t sure, but how could she not? I wouldn’t bring it up…

“So, what’s up today,” I asked after we were done putting away the dishes. The extra portions Livia had made for Gamma and Alessandra sat in a covered bowl on the counter. There was no telling when those two would be up.

“Plans.”

“Good, I’m good at planning plans.”

“And that’s where it ends. You make plans for days, but they fall apart somewhere around step 1.”

“No plan survives contact with the enemy!”

“That’s why I don’t make battle plans but peacetime ones.”

She picked up the little notebook that sat there on the microwave for as long as I could remember. “Let’s see. Vacuum the living room, Saturday morning, Ernest. You want that one?”

“Sure, I can do that.”

“Clean the ceiling lamps, 1st Saturday each month dry, March moist, Ernest?”

“Nope. They’ve been gone for ages. Downspots don’t need cleaning.”

“Right, then strike that.”

“Dishwasher cleaning cycle, monthly. Ok, I’ll take that one. Cleaning the hair from the shower drain? Mom did that weekly?”

The morning dragged on and turned into noon as we went through the hundreds of small and large chores her parents had collected over the years. We could strike plenty, like “changing the baby” or “keeping light bulbs stocked”, but we also added some. Elisa never had made it a family chore to keep tampons stocked but had just done it. And with that, Livia developed a blind spot—apparently, she had run out twice in four months. I didn’t know how that worked, considering how many were in one pack, but that didn’t matter. So, I suggested that chore and assigned it to myself. I had to keep track of those for myself for the last ten years, no help from my mom there.

We were through with it and were only thinking up nonsense items when the door to the master bedroom opened, and two bedraggled ladies, ok one lady and a girl-shaped AI, emerged. “Morning already?” Alessandra asked, looking around intently. From the way she stood, her legs pressed together, I guessed she was looking for the bathroom. It was easy to miss, the door being in the kitchen, looking like a pantry door. I pointed her to it. Gamma just followed her, looking more asleep than awake.

“We’re officially a nudist colony now, aren’t we?” I whispered to Livia.

She nodded thoughtfully. “I see no other solution than to accept that…” she whispered back.

“New chore. Inform guests about this policy. On demand. Gamma.”

“Shush! She will take you seriously!”

“Yeah, so?”

“You’re—“

“Impossibly sexy?”

“Impossibly childish.”

“That, too.”

“Self-acknowledgement is the first step towards improvement.”

“Where did you read that? Sounds big-brained.”

“A YouTube video about German everyday idioms…”

“That’s why they lost the war. Too much self-reflection, not enough action.”

“Which one?”

“The 30-year one, of course. The Swedish wiped them off the map, basically.”

She buried her face in her hands, trying to hide a chuckle. “Sometimes,” she managed to say, “I forget you actually do know stuff…”

“A levels aren’t higher education either, Miss Glass House.”

“Ever thought about getting them now you’re no longer hardpressed for money?”

“Maybe. Let’s wait until shite has stabilised. Can’t build on a house during an earthquake.”

“True.”

“Could we move to the living room?”

“Why?” Livia asked, confused by the sudden change in topic.

“I can hear them banging in the bathroom…”

“Oh.”

🙚⚜🙘

We did just that and then turned the TV on to a global news channel. News are great if you just need some noise to tune out your house guests. You don’t have to actually follow a story, and if something does grab your attention, it’ll be over after 30 seconds.

“A flying girl has been spotted in San Francisco, as thousands of phone videos flooding the internet show. The authorities have refused to comment as the world puzzles at what we are seeing.”

Then they showed the footage of a girl in her late teens with flowing ginger hair in a very pink superhero costume that looked more like painted on than actual cloth. The TV station must think the same, and they had placed censor bars across her chest and groin.

“Looks like Atomic Eve,” Livia commented.

“Who?”

“A video game character.”

“So someone with magic is playing out their fanboy fantasies, you think?”

“Why magic? And why fanboy and not fangirl?”

“Magic because I doubt the AIs would connect superpower-San-Francisco with magic-Liverpool, boy because no girl without brain damage would wear that . And in public.”

“It isn’t that revealing in the game.”

I grabbed the remote and navigated to the X app. Videos of the girl showed up as trending directly on the start page. I clicked on one that looked like it had a good picture quality and played it full screen.

“I take it back.”

“What?” Livia asked.

“The part about wearing that. That person isn’t wearing a costume, that’s either painted on or a skin colouration.”

“I think you’re right. Still think it’s a boy?”

“Did you notice how they spread their legs for the camera? That is a boy.”

🖹

You’ve got a shard-wide announcement from SOL-GB-Liverpool-39-Alpha: “To all initiated: Due to the low number of shards running supernatural settings, shards with different settings have been connected for purposes of global communication. Please be aware that events from other places may or may not conform to your setting’s rules.” Reply with a private message? (1) Yes. (2) No.

“So much for the ‘using magic to fake superpowers’ guess,” Livia commented drily.

“On the other hand, so far, our setting hasn’t shown anything that would be incompatible with superpowers.”

“Sure. But would you want to have a couple of supers running around, smashing buildings downtown?”

“Nope, thank you very much. I can live without that.”

“What do you think? How many initiated are there?”

“Two.”

“No speculations on others?”

“Nope. Alpha was quite clear I was an anomaly. Once gamification is up, there will be more people with system access, but ‘initiated’ means we know about being in a digital world. They want to keep that under wraps as long as possible.”

“Hey, look at this,” Livia pointed to a new video that had popped up. “She’s fighting some goons.”

The video suddenly stuttered, then disappeared. Livia reloaded the page but only got a “this post is unavailable” message. “What happened?” she asked.

“My guess is something bloody. That one goon had a gun. Guess she may not be bullet-proof…”

Going back to the trending feed confirmed my dark suspicion. Apparently, the Atomic Eve impersonator had gone down hard from a bullet through the head.

I grabbed the remote from Livia’s hand and pressed the off button. “Enough of that. Let’s concentrate on not following her example.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“By knowing our setting and what we will face. That Eve girl probably thought she was in a comic book setting, where nobody ever gets really hurt, just knocked out. Fatal mistake.”

“We know we aren’t. We’re not assuming that at all.”

“Yes, but what do we assume? That monsters, or whatever we will fight, are push-overs like in a video game? That the system will carefully match us with enemies that match our levels?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Let’s don’t count on it, ok?”

“Feels weird.”

“What?”

“Having to be concerned about surviving. Fights and stuff, I mean. Not drugs and traffic.”

“Does it? I can see that, but to me, let’s just say it feels more familiar?”

“The gang?”

I nodded in silence. That was nothing I wanted to talk about. I wasn’t even sure why I had brought it up yesterday. There had been no real reason to do so. Sure, Gamma’s comment had put some pressure on me regarding my high skill values, but I could have explained that away as system bullshit instead of confessing to the one thing I had sworn to myself never to reveal to Livia.

“Good. Then I’ll trust your instincts.”

“My instincts tell me we’re going to go down hard, even against easy enemies. We have zero coordination, never used our magic, not even in a training fight, you have zero experience fighting anyone, and so on. We should train.” I looked around the living room, gauging if there was enough space if we put the furniture aside.

“There’s a gym in the basement,” Livia said. “We could go there.”

“A gym?”

“Yes. A couple of ancient machines, a sauna, and a shower room. It’s not big, but it has some open space.”

“And next, you tell me there’s a concierge service, too?”

“Nope, we’re not that fancy. The gym is part of the old factory locker room. Dad said the space was set aside for a building maintenance shop, but that was never put in. Instead, he made it a gym back when he still needed to be fit himself.”

Had that always been there, or was this an AI addition? I couldn’t tell. Also, why did her Dad have to be fit?

“Sure, let’s have a look at the place.”