by Paul Hawkins
*
At nights Blaise went home to the mansion. A certain lovely girl greeted him at the end of every day. In fact, she had greeted him the first day he’d turned up on that tilting mansion’s steps to shoo them off. He had heard Eurotrash music thumping from inside as he knocked on the door. This young dark girl with eyes like cenotes had answered.
"You look like Maria," he said.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s she?"
But he had his first suspicion about the Eurotrash. Someone had made her up to look like her, he thought. Someone knew him.
“You know the experiments won’t work,” he said.
“Who said anything about experiments? We’re just trying to live a communal life. We work on software, we pay our bills, we live by our rules, and we never bother anybody else. Why don’t you just quit worrying for a while? You’ve been through so much. We run a tidy ship here. Here you can just relax.”
Good enough. It had been so long since he had close companionship. He did what she said and just let himself rest. She took him to a room where they could be together. He could still hear the music thumping through the walls, but at least he could not see them. He slept with her that night.
