IT WAS FRIDAY evening, and Watzahn Bakradi was doing the same thing he did every Friday. He was out at a bar.
Tonight’s bar of choice was called Helipad. The midTower clientele probably thought that was some kind of hilarious hipster irony, but Watt had another theory: It was called Helipad because no one had bothered to name it anything more creative.
Though Watt had to admit that this place was pretty cool. During the day it was a real, functioning helipad—there were actual skid marks on the gray carbon-composite floor, mere hours old—until every night after the final copter departure, when it transformed into an illicit bar.
The ceiling soared above them like a cavernous steel rib cage. Behind a folding table, human bartenders mixed drinks out of coolers: No one dared bring a bot-tender up here, because a bot would report all the safety violations. Dozens of young people, dressed in midriff-baring tops or flickering instaprinted T-shirts, clustered in the center of the space. The air hummed with excitement and attraction and the low pulse of speakers. Most striking of all, though, were the helipad’s main double doors—which had been thrown open jaggedly, as if an enormous shark had taken a bite out of the Tower’s exterior wall. The cool night air whipped around the side of the building. Watt could hear it beneath the music, an odd disembodied hum.
The partygoers kept glancing that way, their gazes drawn to the velvety night sky, but no one ventured too close. There was an unspoken rule to stay on this side of the red-painted safety line, about twenty meters from the gaping edge of the hangar.
Any closer and people might think you were planning to jump.
Watt had heard that copters did sometimes, unpredictably, land here at night, for patients with medical emergencies. If that happened, the entire bar would pick up and evacuate with four minutes’ notice. The type of people who came here didn’t mind the uncertainty. That was part of the appeal: the thrill of flirting with danger.
He shifted his weight, holding a frosted beer bottle determinedly in one hand. It wasn’t his first of the evening. When he began coming out like this, right after Leda broke up with him, he would skulk around the edges of whatever bar he’d come to, trying to conceal his hurt, which only made it hurt worse. Now at least the wound was scarred over enough for him to stand at the center of the crowd. It made Watt feel marginally less lonely.
Your blood alcohol levels are higher than the legal limit, reported Nadia, the quantum computer embedded in Watt’s brain. She projected the words over his contacts like an incoming flicker, communicating the way she always did when Watt was in a public setting.
Tell me something I don’t know, Watt thought somewhat immaturely.
I just worry about you drinking alone.
I’m not drinking alone, Watt pointed out mirthlessly. All these people are here with me.
Nadia didn’t laugh at the joke.
Watt’s gaze was drawn to a pretty, long-limbed girl with olive skin. He tossed his empty beer bottle into the recycle chute and started over.
“Want to dance?” he asked once he was standing next to her. Nadia had gone utterly silent. Come on, Nadia. Please.
The girl pulled her lower lip into her teeth and glanced around. “No one else is dancing. . . .”
“Which is why we should be the first,” Watt countered, just as the music abruptly switched tracks to a grating pop song.
The girl’s reluctance visibly melted away, and she laughed. “This is actually my favorite song!” she exclaimed, taking Watt’s hand.
“Really?” Watt asked, as if he didn’t already know. It was because of him—well, because of Nadia—that the song was playing. Nadia had hacked the girl’s page on the feeds to determine her favorite music, then hijacked the bar’s speakers to play it, all in less than a second.
Thanks, Nadia.
Are you sure you want to thank me? This song is garbage, Nadia shot back, so vehemently that Watt couldn’t help cracking a smile.
Nadia was Watt’s secret weapon. Everyone could search the i-Net on their computerized contacts, of course, but even the latest contacts operated by voice-command—which meant that if you wanted to look something up, you had to say it aloud, the way you sent a flicker. Only Watt could search the i-Net in surreptitious silence, because only Watt had a computer embedded in his brain.
Whenever Watt met someone, Nadia would instantly scan the girl’s page on the feeds, then determine what he should say in order to win her over. Maybe the girl was a tattooed graphic artist, and Watt would pretend to love old 2-D sketches and small-batch whiskey. Maybe she was a foreign exchange student, and Watt would act urbane and sophisticated; or maybe she was a passionate political advocate, and Watt would claim to espouse her cause, whatever it was. The script always changed, but in each case, it was easy to follow.
These girls were all looking for someone like them. Someone who echoed their own opinions, who said what they wanted to hear, who didn’t push them or contradict them. Leda was the only girl Watt had ever met who didn’t want that, who actually preferred to be called out on her bullshit.
He forced away the thought of Leda, focusing on the bright-eyed girl before him.
“I’m Jaya,” she said, stepping closer and draping her arms around Watt’s shoulders.
“Watt.”
Nadia provided him with a few conversation starters, questions about Jaya’s interests or her family, but Watt wasn’t in the mood to make small talk. “I have to leave soon,” he heard himself say.
Wow, really jumping the gun tonight, aren’t you? Nadia remarked drily. He didn’t bother to reply.
Jaya startled a little, but Watt quickly forged ahead. “I’m fostering a rescue puppy from the shelter,” he said, “and I need to go check on him. I have one of those pet-minder bots, but I still feel weird leaving it with him. He’s so young, you know?”
Jaya’s expression had instantly softened. Her dream was to be a veterinarian. “Of course I understand. What kind of puppy?”
“We think he’s a border terrier, but we aren’t totally sure. Apparently he was found alone in Central Park.” For some reason the lie tasted rancid in Watt’s mouth.
“No way! I have a border terrier rescue too! His name is Frederick,” Jaya exclaimed. “They found him under the old Queensboro Bridge.”
“What a coincidence,” Watt said flatly.
Jaya didn’t seem to notice his lack of surprise. She looked at him through her thick fluttering lashes. “Want me to come help? I’m really good with rescues,” she offered.
It was exactly what Watt had been fishing for, yet now that Jaya had suggested it, he was shockingly uninterested. He felt as if nothing or no one would surprise him ever again.
“I think I’ll be okay,” he offered. “But thanks.”
Jaya recoiled. “Okay, then,” she said coolly, and stalked away.
Watt ran a hand wearily over his face. What was wrong with him? Derrick would never let him hear the end of it if he knew Watt was rejecting cute girls who invited themselves over. Except that he didn’t actually want any of those girls, because none of them could erase the memory of the one he’d lost. The only one he had ever really cared about.
Instead of heading for the exit, Watt found himself walking the other direction. His toes edged against the painted safety line. The stars glittered far up in the sky. To think that their light was careening wildly toward him at three hundred million meters per second. But what about darkness? How fast did the darkness rush toward you after a star died and its light went out for good?
No matter how fast light traveled, Watt thought, the darkness always seemed to have gotten there first.
Inevitably, his thoughts turned back to Leda. This time he didn’t even try to distract himself.
It was his fault. He should have watched Leda more closely, those first few weeks after Dubai. She had insisted that she needed some time alone, after everything that happened. Watt tried to respect her wishes—until he learned that she had overdosed and was going back to rehab.
When she got home several weeks later, Leda didn’t seem all that eager to see him.
“Hey, Watt,” she’d said woodenly, holding open the front door. She was wearing an oversized charcoal sweater and black plasticky shorts, her feet bare on the hardwood floor of her entryway. “I’m glad you came by. We need to talk.”
Those four words filled Watt with a shiver of foreboding. “I—I was so worried about you,” he’d stammered, taking a step forward. “They wouldn’t let me talk to you at rehab. I thought that you were . . .”
Leda abruptly talked over him. “Watt, we need to stop seeing each other. I can’t be with you, not after everything I’ve done.”
Watt’s heart thudded. “I don’t care,” he assured her. “I know what you’ve done and I don’t care, because I—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Leda cried out. “Watt, Eris and I shared a father. I killed my half sister!”
Her words reverberated in the air. Watt felt his throat close up. Everything he wanted to tell her now seemed inadequate.
“I need to start over, okay?” Her voice was shaking, and she seemed determined not to meet his eyes. “I can’t get better with you around. You’re one of my triggers—the worst of my triggers—and as long as I’m with you, I’ll keep turning back to my old behaviors. I can’t afford to do that.”
“That isn’t true. You and I make each other better,” he tried to protest.
Leda shook her head. “Please,” she begged. “I just want to move on. If you care about me at all, you’ll leave me alone, for my own good.”
The door shut behind her with a definitive click.
“Hey, step back!” someone shouted. Watt realized in a daze that he had wandered past the painted safety line, toward the gaping maw of the helipad.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and retreated a few steps. He didn’t even attempt to explain. What would he tell those people, exactly? That there was something soothing about looking out over the edge? That it was a sharp reminder of how small and insignificant he was, surrounded by this vast city? Of how little his pain mattered in the scheme of things?
Finally Watt turned and walked away from the bar, just as he had forced himself to walk away from Leda all those months ago.