The Companions

by Katie M Flynn

  “I know. I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling great.”

  “Bullshit.” She’s circling the room, taking in Diana’s things. I’ve cleaned it up some since she passed, but the books, they alone tell a story.

  “Really,” I say, “I should have pinged you. I had a terrible headache. It happens sometimes.” Only it’s not me but Diana who had them, debilitating some days. She always refused to see a doctor. Maybe if she had, she’d be with us now, and I wouldn’t have to be afraid.

  Char breaks out in a sputtering laugh. “I’m teasing you!” Then she turns serious. “But you must come to the cocktail party we’re having Saturday. I’ll take it as a personal offense if you develop another headache. Gabe’s welcome, always. She can screen a movie with Hilo or something. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  I’m processing, a cocktail party—I can say no to alcohol, some people do. “Sure, yes, we would love that,” I tell her, feeling like I don’t have a choice.

  After they’ve left I stand in Gabe’s doorway, watch her burn a forest down in her screen game from behind her headset. As villagers come running out of the building, Gabe’s avatar mows them down with her flamethrower. I tell her about the party.

  “It’s a bad idea,” she says, dousing one of the villagers with water, only to fire him up again.

  “Would you stop that?” I don’t mean to shout. Gabe turns, her avatar too, watching me, eyes big and scared. “Shoot. I’m sorry.”

  Gabe doesn’t say anything, removing her headgear, her avatar getting slaughtered by what’s left of the burning villagers.

  “It’ll be weird if we don’t go. Char is putting a lot of pressure on. We can just make an appearance.”

  “Fine.” Gabe flounces onto her bed, turns toward the wall.

  “What’s going on with you and Hilo?”

  She doesn’t move. It’s as if she’s stopped breathing, how still she is. “Nothing. I don’t like him like that, okay?”

  “But does he? Like you like that?”

  “No! We play games, listen to music. That’s it.”

  “Then it should be fine if we go to their house, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  I hide my happiness, my hesitation. I do not understand this combination.

  * * *

  At night I play memories. Diana as a child in San Francisco. Her parents were tech workers, taking their shuttle to the office together, on the same team even, sound design. They paid for Diana to go to private school, some yellow-and-white Quaker affair where she built with wooden blocks and Legos and Magna-Tiles. Lucas the little asshole always toppled her structures, scratched her face, until her parents set a meeting with the school’s director, and after that Lucas never came back to school, and Diana felt it, power, making people disappear. At a younger age, she had an invisible friend. A unicorn that was soft, made of clouds, but could bulge and breathe fire and angry-eye you when it was upset. She called him Stallion. I do not understand her early thoughts. They are like the drug experiences she had in her teen years and early twenties, even in grad school, when she was a star pupil, her understanding of the human brain intuitive, like a trigger switch on go go go. She ate it up, the classes, cutting open brains, scanning them, analyzing them with her fingers, her screen, she was hungry to discover, what exactly? It had not yet come to her, the idea of uploading. It was not her idea so much as a project she was tasked to, a whole team of Metis scientists, a true scientific leap really, and Diana wanted me to release it free to everyone. She said that people need to know, that so much is lost when we die. It has to be preserved! All that data, the scientists we lose everyday. Maybe they have the answer to this mess we’re in.

  “But you know how people will use it. It’s dangerous,” I’d told her from inside my screen. I had a camera, so I could see out a certain radius, getting a good shot of Diana’s thinning hair.

  “It’s our only chance.” She was being dramatic. She was prone to drama, to megalomania—so am I, if I’m being honest. But being trapped on that screen humbled me. I saw how small I was, invisible, in that time before I got a body. And not her. I never needed to remind myself that I wasn’t Diana. She used to tell me it was odd I didn’t identify as her. She said every other companion she’d come across had identified as the original, at least in the beginning. But I liked to remind her that she hadn’t met enough for a meaningful sample size.

  * * *

  Gabe wears combat boots and a black floor-length skirt, a black sock hat over her black-and-blue hair, and I know not to ask her if she’s trying to be like Hilo—she would hate it if I asked that; it would ruin our night, everything would erupt. So I smile, tell her she looks lovely, but that makes her scowl out the front door, and I follow, attempting a joke. “Sorry, you look positively terrible. I mean, really gross. Like a walking bruise.”

  She snorts out a laugh. “That’s better,” and I don’t ask her why, what it is she’s going for. I only want to make her smile.

  I made the choice to leave my glasses at home, to risk real human engagement, and I feel naked without them, the breeze on my face faintly cool.

  The house is not far, six blocks weaving west, then south, until we’re in front of a mint-green number with a lawn of native bunchgrasses and a porchful of potted succulents, a doormat that reads: YOU ARE HOME.

  The front door is open and Gabe walks right in, takes off her shoes, leaving them with the rows of others near the door. As I’m slipping out of my boots, she hustles down the hallway, to Hilo’s room I figure, and I follow the sound of music, talking, to the living room, standing there, no Char in sight. The party is bigger than I expected, twenty people or so, mostly couples by the way they stand off and eye one another or lounge on the U-shaped white couch below a giant painting of a butterfly with a human face. Char’s face. Her wings are damaged, never going to fly again, but her face is powerful, eyes fixed, not floating off over your shoulder, but really seeing you. I’ve never been to a museum, never seen real art except on the screen and in Diana’s memories, but it’s different seeing it before you, in the shifting shadows, changing as you explore it.

  Char bursts in from the kitchen barefoot, a little anklet jangling as she drops a tray of tiny quiches on the table of reclaimed wood. She darts from person to person, asking if they need anything with a tender arm squeeze, dispensing kisses left and right. I can see she’s enjoying herself, and I suppose the pleasure she feels entertaining people is not unlike what I experience watching Gabe dig into a piece of my lasagna on the rare occasion I get it right. Char belts out a big, throaty laugh, her wild hair quivering in the dim pink lighting, and I’m watching her, admiring her really, when she sees me and I nearly startle, and she’s coming for me, kissing me wet on the cheek. “I’m so glad you could make it. Can I get you something?”

  “I’m fine for now, thanks,” I tell her, and wait for the suspicion.

  “Dario,” she calls, “come meet Kit! My new friend!”

  One of the men at the bar smiles in our direction. He’s handsome in a typical way, with a nice symmetrical face, a firm adult body, and a full head of hair, though who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he says, enveloping me in a hug. He smells strongly of beer and weed. “I understand you work at Metis?”

  “Just some contract work, out of the house.”

  “Sales,” Char adds.

  Dario places a firm hand on my shoulder. “I thought I knew everyone in sales.”

  “Apparently not.” Char lets out a high-pitched laugh, different from the one I’d heard at my house. How many laughs does she have?

  “Who’s your manager?”

  I’m stunned into silence. Manager? I hadn’t expected this level of specificity.

  Char pats his arm and he lets me loose. “Dario, don’t pester her about work. Introduce her to your friends!”

  He takes me around, introduces me to a string of men. I get stuck talking to a market analyst
from Wells Fargo with the smoothest skin, nearly poreless—is he wearing makeup? He tells me he’s got a great place downtown in one of the newer towers, an exceptional view of the Bay Bridge, “You’ve got to come by and check it out,” and I tell him sure and he pings me his contact information, and when I glance up I see Dario watching. He wrings his own neck with his hand, bulges his eyes like he’s dying of boredom, and I smile back like how hilarious and escape down the hallway.

  The sound of screen games carries from Hilo’s room, Gabe and Hilo on the floor at the foot of the bed, eyes hidden under headgear as they play shoulder to shoulder.

  “Ha, you suck.”

  “You suck.”

  “Pshh, you’re the one who died.”

  Is it flirting? I have yet to figure out whether Gabe prefers boys or girls, both? She doesn’t tell me a thing.

  I shut myself in the bathroom, sit on the toilet. Diana never experimented much sexually. She married right out of graduate school, Paul the dentist, who passed away in his forties of a chordoma that went undetected until it had metastasized to his lungs, his lymph nodes, his liver, so hollowed out and drugged up he looked like a ghoul. She never had another serious relationship, and in her midfifties she stopped having sex altogether. I call up a memory, her last, the man she’d picked up at that medfirm conference in Dallas. He was a real-life Texan, short, in a hat and boots, Wranglers, the works. She’d found him so quaint and handsome. The sex hadn’t been terrible. I’d like to ask Diana why she stopped. Why would anyone stop? It’s not in my memories.

  My body has pleasure sensors, all the parts. Anatomically I could have sex, and maybe I’d even enjoy it. I regard my mirror reflection. Could I take a lover?

  I straighten my hair, examine my face from different angles, an attractive face, marked only slightly by age—in my midthirties, would be my guess. This body was bought from a sex club, and I suppose they needed some variation; not everyone wants a near-child. But if those men knew how old I am on the inside, all of Diana’s years of living packed into me, would they still find me attractive?

  I’m coming out of the bathroom as Dario wanders down the hall. “Kit! I was looking for you.”

  “You were?”

  “Here, come in here, this is my office.” It’s a tiny room, just enough space for a desk, a potted fern, us.

  I stand at the window, an older couple seated on their porch staring back at me.

  Dario comes up behind me, winds his hands around my waist.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve never been with a companion.”

  I wheel around to face him, to create some distance between us. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been at Metis fourteen years. I know companions.” He closes the gap, takes hold of me by the hips. I let him, his breath hot on my neck. “I don’t have to say a word.”

  “You’re married,” I say, and he laughs and bites my neck and I push him off me, too hard, and he hits his desk, topples to the floor, groaning. I run from the room, down the hall to Hilo’s.

  “We have to go.”

  Hilo speaks to me for the first time, a girlish whine: “But you just got here.”

  “Now,” I tell Gabe. She doesn’t complain, dropping the headset, following me. Dario is not in the living room, and I head straight for the front door.

  “Kit!” Char calls. “Where are you going?”

  I pretend I don’t hear her, slipping out the door, Gabe trailing behind me the whole way home, arms crossed, her body caved in on itself.

  * * *

  I don’t walk Bernal the next morning, or the next. Char doesn’t ping me or come by. I worry that she’s spoken with Dario, that he’s told her. I wait for the police to come, CPS, Metis, fretting over Gabe, never going into sleep mode.

  A few days pass before I get a call from the school’s office manager. Gabe’s been in a fight and the principal would like to speak with me.

  I take the bus along the rim of Glen Canyon, where the coyotes that Char wants put down hide and hunt. Amazing that they’re still here, all these trees, the trails, a pair of hawks circling the sky.

  Gabe’s seated in the office, face splotched and puffy, the principal there to greet me with a firm handshake, petite even in pumps.

  She ushers me into her office, asks me to take a seat. “So, as Gladys mentioned, Gabe was in a fight today.”

  “With whom?”

  “A group of kids, actually.” She takes a sip of water, wipes her upper lip with an index finger. “We understand that there were some rumors. About you.”

  “I see,” I say, prepared for this. “Gabe’s leaving soon, for her mentorship. Couldn’t you just—”

  “We have no interest in acting on these rumors. As you said, Gabe is nearly graduated, and she’s doing so well lately. I see that she’s made some friends. And, well, I don’t know how to say this, but there seems to be a parent behind these rumors. Normally I would not suggest it, but I can’t really step in—I think you need to talk to her.”

  Once we’re outside, Gabe’s hand is icy and shaking as she slips it into mine, her face green under the white makeup. “Are they going to take me?”

  Ushering her to the bus stop, I tell her, “I’ll talk to Char. I’ll make it okay.”

  * * *

  I go for my walk at the usual time. It’s a nice morning, the sky clear enough I can see the I8s swarming the downtown towers. I turn circles on the trails, winding and waiting for Char, but she doesn’t show. It’s been more than an hour and I’m about to give up when I see her ahead of me on the path, hair tucked into a baseball cap, Nova pulling on her leash when she spots me.

  I call to Char, and she sort of jolts, not turning to greet me, and I have to jog to catch her. “I need to talk to you.”

  She doesn’t stop, Nova barking and jumping, and Char’s yanking on the leash, trying to get her to come. Finally she gives up, lets Nova greet me. “You should’ve told me what you are.”

  “If CPS found out, they’d take Gabe. I could tell no one.”

  “But I was your friend.”

  “Was?”

  “Dario doesn’t want me hanging out with you anymore.”

  “Figures.”

  “What do you mean?” She doesn’t wait for my answer. “He told me, you know, how you came on to him.”

  I want to tell her the truth, but if I blow up their marriage, would they blow up my life with Gabe? “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’ll stay away from you, from your family. I’m sorry for any trouble.”

  “That’s not good enough. You’re not fit. You have no business—”

  “Not fit?”

  “You’re not—”

  “I love Gabe, and no one else on this planet can claim that. She’ll graduate soon. Can’t you just let us alone?”

  Her face changes, and I can see she’s sorry—she was my friend a few days ago. I still feel affection for her, coursing through me. Does she not feel the same?

  “I have to go,” she says.

  I take hold of her arm. She’s brittle to the touch, pulling away from me. “I need your word,” I say, “I need to know you’re not going to say anything.”

  “Just keep your—keep Gabe away from Hilo.”

  “You can’t be serious. How could you do that to them?”

  “I’ll enforce it from my end. But you have to do your part.” She stalks away from me as if I’m nothing, less than that, and I stalk home too, sit down at the screen. In its dimness I can see my face, what Char sees, too symmetrical, a body not sagged by gravity or overeating, a recalled product. I have no business existing—I’m dangerous.

  I check our account balance—not enough to run, not even close. I’ve been skimping for years, trying to make do on a shoestring budget, but we couldn’t live long on what we have.

  The neighbor’s cat catches my eye out the window. It sits atop the fence, dangling its long curled tail into our yard, its body tense as it eyes a black
bird hopping in the patch of fake grass, about to pounce. I let out a quick bodily yelp, hitting a high frequency, a bit of the machine. The bird lobs off into the air, and I watch my neighbors’ windows to see if anyone heard me.

  Under that grass lies Diana. I’m sorry that there’s no grave marker—there never will be. And when Gabe turns eighteen and the house goes to her, we’ll sell it, share the credit. Gabe will have career options. She won’t be trapped in her mentorship. And I’ll be able to buy myself a place, something over the Golden Gate Bridge, hours farther, in the trees.

  Everyone thinks I’m Diana’s daughter, come home when my mother passed away. It’s kept them from calling CPS, kept Gabe with me. They don’t know I was here for some time before that, before Diana told Gabe to find me a body.

  Out in the yard, the cat lurks the grass. I hiss at it and it darts off.

  * * *

  When Gabe comes home, I tell her what Char said. She doesn’t cry about it. She says okay, like it’s no big deal, and I keep waiting for the pain to surface over the next few months, but it never shows. Not even on the day of her graduation, when I ask her if she wants me to go, and she tells me she’d be pissed if I didn’t. I find a seat near the back, in the rows of foldout chairs on the football field, hiding under a sun hat, in my glasses. I see Char from a distance. She seems to be making a point of not noticing me. But not Dario. Every chance he gets, he gives me a hateful glare. It doesn’t matter, proud of Gabe as I am. He can’t alter my happiness today—I won’t let him. As her name’s called and she walks onto the stage to receive her diploma, I stand to get a better view, wanting to remember everything. I cheer for her and she’s smiling, at me, the first smile I’ve seen in ages, and I don’t care who’s staring.

  * * *

  A few weeks after Gabe moves into the adfirm’s downtown tower, I get a bag of flaming shit on my doorstep. A couple nights later, a brick through the window. Real original, I can hear Diana saying in my head, but I know what it means. Time to go.