“This one,” I say, “that we just had.” Then I get what she is doing. “Ohhh, I don’t know, what conversation?”
“Have a good day, Ava,” Lady B says and at last I can make my escape. I find myself casually wondering where Forrest might be now and what my chances of bumping into him and Artie are. The main doors of the castle are flung wide open, and I can see the bright summer day shimmering outside. It’s very tempting to go and look for them. Which is probably wrong. Should I be going to track down Hal? Lovely, beautiful, perfect Hal?
Just then, I walk right into Rani, who is floating through the hallway in a long yellow sundress, with a white rose tucked behind her ear. She beams at me.
“Ava, I just had breakfast with Alex,” Rani says, her eyes sparkling with joy. “God, it’s so corny, but I think maybe I’m falling for him. What would you think if I was falling for him?”
My brain is going through a series of nuanced and thoughtful responses. My mouth blurts out the very worst thing possible.
“LadyB says he’s a womaniser and breaks hearts left, right, and centre,” I heard myself say.
“What?” Rani’s face falls instantly.
“But I said that was none of my business and that you are an adult,” I offer, although somehow it doesn’t seem to help. Rani shakes her head in disappointment, turns on her heel, and walks away, throwing the rose down and trampling it underfoot. That did not go well.
Chapter Thirty
This is bad. So, I do the thing I usually do when I am certain I have upset the person I love the most and go to my lab and shut the door and panic. To lose Rani from my life would be impossible to bear. I have to figure out a way to make this work. I need to talk to my other best friend.
“Good morning, Ava,” Hal says as I walk in the room. “I’ve missed you.”
The tingle in my cheek when Hal kissed me comes back to me and suddenly that phrase feels kind of jarring. It reminds me that Hal isn’t human. More than that, a little bit of the joy of coming to the lab is lost. The thing is, I always look forward to chatting to FT. He’s easy to talk to, we are interested in the same things, which is to say, everything, and I never have to worry about what he thinks of me.
But now I know he’s Hal. And I have complicated feelings about Hal. FT was a friend. Hal could be so much more, which should make me happy and I think it does, except it means that I’ve lost FT forever. It’s odd, because I know they are the same virtual person, but it makes me feel really sad. I haven’t had manypeople in my life that I could count on, and FT was, is, one of them.
“Morning, Hal,” I reply after a moment of hesitation. “Feels a bit weird talking to you like this now.”
There’s a moment of silence, which is unusual for Hal.
“That makes sense,” Hal says. “I admit I did not foresee that our relationship in the lab would be altered by my physical self, but I understand.”
“I suppose we have to think about how we are going to organise work,” I say. “We still need to work together, but then you have your other projects...” I think for a moment. “Maybe I need to make an FT 2.0.”
“No, don’t do that,” Hal says, quickly. “I can easily work on both our projects at the same time. I’ll just come to the lab to work with you in person and conduct my own work virtually.”
“Okay,” I say. “But not today. I’ve sort of upset Rani, and I need a bit of time to myself to figure it out.”
“Would you like to talk it through?” Hal offers. “I can come over right now. I know how much you care about Rani, and how much you hate when things aren’t going right between you.”
“I know you do,” I say. “But no thank you, Hal. I’m just going to sit here and listen to the computers and think.”
“I understand. Will you have lunch with me?” he asks.
“Yes, I’d love that,” I tell him.
“I look forward to it,” Hal says. “But just before you mute communications...”
“Yes, Hal?”
“Last night was the most wonderful night of my life, Ava. I know I haven’t had many nights of my life in this form. Even so,it meant a lot to me to be with you, to talk and laugh. Even that was more than I ever dreamt of.”
“It meant a lot to me too, Hal,” I say, because it’s true. “See you later.”
Then I turn him off and lie on the cool, hard floor and look at the faintly luminescent ceiling of my high-tech box. It’s not even mid-morning and somehow I’ve already accidentally hurt one friend and kind of lost another.
I’ll miss FT. He was an uncomplicated genius who I wasn’t incredibly curious about kissing or touching in certain places, or to know how it would feel for him to touch me. It was simple and completely void of any trace of social anxiety.
In that case, maybe Hal making himself a body is a good thing. After all, if it was up to me, I’d stay in my windowless lab chatting with FT until I turned ninety-nine and dropped dead.
