Page 22 of Scion

It’s not a great deal, to the extent that Old Woman’s questions have a tendency to be weird and uncomfortable. But it’s better than the alternative.

“Fine.”

“Lovely.” She settles back immediately into her annoyingly chirpy demeanour, the lack of cushions apparently forgotten. “Let’s resume from last time. Favourite memory.”

“Smashing your aquarium.” She looks at me primly. “Fine. Fine. Favourite memory. Let me think. I suppose…” I trail off.

“Yes?”

“I was a kid.” The container vibrates and growls around us as we swing hard into another corner. “Maybe… twenty years ago, now? My dad had somehow gotten us access to Bio 3. The one with the forests. Probably not that impressive to you, but I’d never seen anything like it. It was like another world. And then we were eating lunch—just junk, you know those cheap D-bars they used to make?—and there was the announcement that Resolution Ten-O-Ten had passed in Crius. Eighty-two percent, verified.” I let out a soft chuckle. “There were people cheering for the rest of the day.”

Old Woman is listening with a vague frown. “So… your favourite memory is when killing lifers became legal?”

“No. I mean, yes. Sure. But that’s not…” I shake my head. “That was the last time I saw my father smile. The last time I remember him happy.”

I end softly. So lost in the recollection that I forget, just for a moment, why I’m having it.

“What happened to him?” She says it gently, but the words are a reminder. I come back to the present. Scowl.

“He died.”

“How?”

I examine the cross-shaped scar on the back of my left hand, virulent in the light. “An AMRoN outbreak.”

Old Woman just studies me, not reacting. She’s not surprised. No. Worse. She damned well knew.

“Your mother?”

“Same. But when I was six.” Flat and hard. I had an i-holo of her, years ago. Of both of them. Always kept it on me. It helped me keep their faces clear in my mind.

I don’t have it any more.

“Favourite food?”

“What?”

“Favourite food,” Old Woman repeats, as if the question wasn’t entirely anachronistic to me explaining to her the tragic, slow deaths of my parents to the necrovirus. Her eyes glint blue in the light as they fix on me.

“K-bars.”

“I said no lies.”

“Seriously. It’s K-bars. I actually get ill thinking about eating anything else, these days.”

She grimaces. “Alright. Favourite food before your insular cortex got irreparably damaged.”

I think. “Choks. Those crunchy chocolate balls—”

“I know what Choks are,” Old Woman interrupts. “Really?”

“Really.”

“K-bars and Choks. Good God.”

“Not all of us grew up on meat and fresh produce,” I observe, a little defensively.

“True.” She nods absently. “Favourite holo?”