PENNY.
Andy was kind of the worst. Or he was the best. Whatever he was, everything he wanted to do was a horrendous idea.
When Penny climbed out of bed, she cursed him. Him and his stupid handsome face and the cathedral to orthodontia that was his mouth. At least he had great lips. She wondered if he was a good kisser. Penny checked her phone out of habit and sighed. There was so much free time now that she wasn’t sending a thousand texts an hour to someone who didn’t have feelings for her in the first place.
Penny wondered briefly if Sam was okay and then told herself to stop worrying about him.
She put on some sweats, grabbed her running shoes, and marched out. It was a cool morning for once. Instead of heading toward campus, Penny started west to the running trail by the water. It was early enough that it was mostly sleep-deprived parents with strollers and overzealous dog walkers.
Andy was already at their appointed meeting place of “the trash can by the first set of benches” when she arrived.
“You’re late,” he said. He was draped in swishy gray high-tech running clothes and wore matching graphite sunglasses.
“Jesus, you look like someone we’d send to repopulate a new galaxy.” She yawned. “What is this outfit?”
Andy stretched his arms above his head. “There’s an optimal set of clothes for every activity,” he said. “This is my running ensemble.”
“Spoken like the last remaining hope for human civilization.”
He smiled winningly.
“You know I’m not running, right?” confirmed Penny. “I’m accompanying you around the lake primarily to rob you for ideas.”
Andy touched his toes.
Penny tried to touch hers. She reached to just below her knees.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I need to mine your brain for information on the female psyche, so it’s quid pro quo.”
Penny chortled. “Good luck.”
Truthfully, Penny wasn’t above getting some exercise. Camped out at her desk tapping away at her keyboard, writing about people who were obsessed with the computer, was messing with her head. Her haunches were taking on the consistency of veal, and there was a permanent crease above her belly button from all the sitting.
Besides which, she enjoyed Andy’s company. Penny wondered if it was because he was Asian or because they were into the same things. After the party they’d settled into an easy camaraderie. He was good for her. She was getting better and better at interfacing with real-life humans on a near-daily basis.
After that night, Penny had quickly disabused Andy of the notion that she wore glamorous dresses and drank champagne regularly. A few days ago she’d met him in the library in pajamas and ate so much beef jerky she got meat sweats.
“Enough with this indoor-kid nonsense,” he’d said as she’d groaned in her protein overdose. “Next time we’re doing something less disgusting.”
Hence the attempted jogging.
“Okay, what do you want to know?”
Andy began pacing. His arms bent in angles by his sides, pumping purposefully as he walked at a brisk clip.
“Ask me about the female psyche,” she challenged.
“Where did you read up to?” Andy was writing a sprawling May-December romance set in the sixties between a septuagenarian French woman and man forty years her junior who was Vietnamese. It was a play on Marguerite Duras’s The Lover.
“Okay, so they met at the bar and Esmerelda’s married and it’s terribly fraught on the boat.”
“Right,” said Andy. “And it’s not a boat, Penny. It’s a ship. An ocean liner.”
“Fine.”
“Here’s what I want to know. . . . Good morning!” He nodded at a woman in a sun visor walking in the opposite direction. Then he waved at a couple similarly attired in expensive athleisure clothing. He was the goodwill ambassador of whatever ten-yard radius he occupied.
“Why would Esmerelda leave her husband?” Andy asked. “He’s rich. He’s in love with her. They’ve been in a relationship for decades. The sex, for what it’s worth, is okay.”
Penny tried to imagine sex between seventy-year-olds.
“What would the motivating factors be? She’s not in the market for it. Not explicitly anyway.”
“Well . . .” Penny thought about Vin, the younger guy. “Is he Esmerelda’s person? Does he say good morning to her in a way that’s reassuring? To where it feels as if he’s holding her hand for the entire rest of the day until he says good night? Would she be happy for him if his happiness meant that she couldn’t be with him?”
“Sure,” said Andy flippantly. “But Jackson’s loaded.” That was Esmerelda’s husband.
“You can be with the same person for a long time and have it be fine and meet someone else who instantly makes you see that it’s broken,” she said.
“Just like that?”
“Basically.”
“God, women are such fickle bitches.”
“It’s not women. It’s humans. It’s like a design flaw or something.”
“Right,” he said. “I guess that’s why your story’s as dismal as it is. Robots glamouring humans to kill their babies and put them in prison.”
“First of all, they got off,” she said. The parents had stood trial but not done considerable jail time. “And second, it’s only dismal from the family’s side of things. It’s actually quite triumphant from the machine’s point of view.”
Andy laughed. “The point of view you strongly identify with, I suspect.”
“Obviously.” Penny smiled.
Suddenly Penny knew why she wanted the Anima to win. The parents were real life. Their stories were fixed. Their mistakes were their own. The Anima’s future was unknown. And, unlike Penny, whose life-altering events had happened to her, the Anima shaped her destiny.
It is the fate of parents, of all creators, to want better for their children, their inventions. Penny wanted more for the Anima than she had had. Penny wanted to give the Anima a choice.
Penny wrote a quick note to herself on her phone, and Andy continued to talk.
The morning was beautiful. She thought about taking off running ahead of him in an explosive bout of enthusiasm, then changed her mind. She wasn’t a zany manic pixie dream girl or anything. She’d probably pass out from the exertion.
“You should let me take you out sometime,” Andy said. Penny stopped walking.
“What?” Penny was flabbergasted. “I thought you were dating Mariska or Misha or whatever her name was.” Andy was very forthright about his leggy exploits.
“I am,” he said, and then smiled. “Also who says ‘dating’? I’m hanging out with Mariska and I am not opposed to similarly hanging out with you.”
“What, like purchase for me a food unit in a romance-conducive setting?”
Andy scoffed. “Sure. Or watch with you a movie-unit in a comfortable area with flattering lighting conditions.”
Penny considered this. Andy was handsome, though his teeth were too uniform. He was funny, too. Whenever they talked, the back-and-forth crackled with something unspoken. They were birds presenting plumage and making guttural noise. If nothing else it seemed surreal that Andy could ask Penny out. Insane even.
“Can I think about it?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said, though he didn’t seem mad. “Here, let’s keep walking.”
They trudged in silence for a moment.
“Thing is, if you have to think about it, it means you’re not into it, and that’s difficult for someone like me to accept.” Andy gestured to his Adonis-approximating physique in his spaceman jogging outfit. “I can’t be into someone who isn’t into me.”
Penny smiled. “Fair,” she said, relieved he wasn’t upset. “It’s just that I’m hung up on someone.”
“Is that why when I asked you the definition of love you had thirty sappy platitudes at the ready and sounded as if you wanted to die?”
Penny nodded.
“That blows,” he said, and then, “God, I’ve been there.”