Page 30 of Captain Santiago and the Sky Dome Waitress
Me. He doesn’t want me.
~ 11 ~
When Lucie woke, very early the next morning, she was starving. So much for losing all appetite under stress the way the heroines of the historical novels did. She dithered over the breakfast menu on the printer, then sighed. “Who are you kidding? Just order it, Lucie Jelen!” She stabbed at the Emperor’s Mess item.
She didn’t like the silence that was her company while she ate. It was so early that few people were up and about in Celestial, and the usual village noise that reached her from over the walls of the house were absent.
“Barney, are you busy?” she said, lifting her voice a little.
A few seconds later, Barney said from the speaker; “Good morning.” His tone was the super-polite one he had used with Elijah, the one time Lucie had heard them interact.
“I’m not mad at you,” Lucie said.
“You…don’t sound upset, either.”
“I’m not,” Lucie said. What she was, was tired. Despite the marathon sleep. “I have a request to make to the city-mind, Barney.”
“Recording,” Barney said, in the flat tone all official records used.
“I want to register my legal intention to change my body and open bidding from any interested institutions.”
“A list of fees for the procedure will be provided. They will include a transmission fee for retrieval of any and all documents and registered re-filing with central records. What change do you want to make?”
“I want different DNA. With tailored gene expression.”
Silence. Then, “Luce, are yousure?”Barney asked, in his normal voice. “Thecost!You don’t have that sort of money.”
“No, but I’ve got nearly a decade of earning history. I’ll qualify for a mortgage, now.” She said it calmly, even though she didn’t feel calm at all.
“What does it matter, now?” Barney pressed. “You’ll be gone in three days, more or less—”
Lucie smiled at his very human imprecision.
“—and anywhere else but here, it doesn’t matter what body you’re using.”
“It matters to me.” She gripped her spoon harder than she should. “This body doesn’t belong to me.”
“Yes, it does. I’m looking at the records,” Barney said.
“I know what the legalities say,” Lucie said. “But there’s in here, too.” She touched her chest. “And in here, I feel like I don’t deserve this body. I’m not…good enough.”
“You’re tired,” Barney said, very gently. “Give this some thought.”
“I have,” Lucie said. “This is what I want.”
“You’ll be drowning in debt for a century! The interest rates alone will kill you.”
“Just get the process going, please, Barney.”
He sighed.
?
Lucie worked listlessly, that morning. Any energy she could scrounge up was instantly depleted when she realized that Elijah had not arrived at usual. Or perhaps he had chosen to sit back in the hidden corner once more. She was too afraid to check around the corner. If she saw him there, it would mean he didn’t want to talk to her.
Better to not know.
But his absence sat in the back of her mind, pinging away whenever she wasn’t talking to a customer.
