CD Chapter Thirty-Eight (Patreon)

Ava swung her legs out of the car and stood, brushing at her fitted gray slacks, though their expensive fabric refused to wrinkle or crease. Turning back to the driver, she smiled politely and tapped her screen, adding a twenty percent tip to the bill. The girl, who looked to be barely old enough to drive, grinned and thanked her before driving off.

Ava turned to the square, unprepossessing building in front of her, wiping her sweaty palms on her slim suit jacket before frantically checking to make sure she hadn’t left some kind of mark on the material. Thankfully, it seemed to be fine.

“Are you sure this is it?” she subvocalized. Amythyst was listening in and, apparently, watching through Ava’s ocular implants as well. That was more than a little intrusive, but given the circumstances, Ava had allowed it, though she made Amythyst promise never to do it without letting her know. In response, the AI made a tiny icon of her face appear in the upper left corner of Ava’s vision, and whenever it was there, Ava knew Amythyst was watching and listening.

“Yep,” Amythyst assured her breezily. “See the plaque?” Ava’s vision zoomed in on a gold metal square inset into the brownstone, and she read, Trine Employment, LLC.

“Don’t do that,” Ava hissed, blinking until her view was under her control again. She glanced around, but no one else was near enough to have heard or seen her strange behavior.

“Sorry,” Amythyst said, actually sounding contrite. “I was just trying to help.”

“My eyes are not the same as my screen,” Ava mumbled, lifting a hand to press the small brass button next to the heavy wooden entry doors. “We’ve talked about this.”

Amythyst remained silent as a tinny voice came through the old-fashioned speaker grille, asking for Ava’s name. Ava gave it, barely remembering that her last name was now Shaw. A harsh, rasping buzz sounded, and the voice told Ava she could enter.

“Carl loves tradition and anything that reeks of old money,” Amythyst said in Ava’s ear. The AI had mentioned this more than once during their preparation for the interview, but she had to be just as nervous as Ava. After all, if Ms. Bayles didn’t recommend Carl Landon hire Ava, everything they’d done to prepare was pointless.

As Ava entered, the receptionist looked up with a professional smile that warmed slightly as his eyes swept over Ava’s figure, settling on her eyes. She was wearing a disposable contact lens that made both of her eyes a matching blue, and it was disconcerting having someone focus directly on them. Ava wasn’t used to people meeting her eyes so comfortably, and it made her feel like the man must be able to tell that only one eye was its natural color.

“Ms. Shaw,” he said, “Ms. Bayles is expecting you.” He pushed back his chair and stood, and she saw him frown slightly as he realized that he was shorter than her by a good inch. He glanced down at her feet, saw that she was wearing flats, and when he looked back up, his smile was just a hair stiffer, and Ava relaxed. This, she was used to.

He walked down the hall, his footfalls muffled by the thick carpet, and knocked, once, on the third door. A gold nameplate announced that this was the office of Devorah Bayles. A woman’s voice replied, and the receptionist opened the thick wooden door. “Ms. Shaw to see you, ma’am,” he said respectfully, then nodded slightly to Ava and walked back down the hall, presumably to return to his desk.

Ava walked in, clutching the small briefcase that B.T. had left on her bed next to the suit that morning. It contained printed copies of her false documentation, just in case she needed it, though the recruiters already had the digital versions.

Devorah Bayles looked just like her photo, though her hair was perhaps a bit more gray, and the lines around her mouth a bit deeper. Ava edged her estimate of the woman’s age up by a decade, and firmed her own mouth into a serious expression, rather than the friendly smile she had intended to offer. Something about Ms. Devorah Bayles told Ava that there would be no camaraderie or humor during this interview.

“Sit,” Ms. Bayles said, removing the slim, gold-framed glasses that perched on her nose. Carefully, she folded the arms and sat the glasses on a small, velvet-covered pedestal clearly made for them. Ava entered and sat, silently setting her briefcase precisely next to her chair. She crossed her ankles and waited, back stiff and eyes watchful.

The brown eyes assessing her might have flickered with a hint of approval, but if so, it was gone before Ava could be certain. Ms. Bayles folded her hands on her desk and leaned forward all of an inch. “Ms. Shaw,” she said, not even glancing at the single piece of paper beneath her hands. “You are twenty-five, correct?”

Ava didn’t flinch. “Of course.” She offered the friendly smile now. “I have good genes.” This was true. Her mother had carefully selected her male genetic donor from over a hundred who had met her original requirements. Apparently, the nurse at the fertility clinic, though she hadn’t been able to give Molly any personal information, had said he looked like, ‘Thor, the Thunder God.’

“Hmm,” Ms. Bayles said, resuming her original position. “I see. You do know we’re looking for an applicant with at least five years prior experience, correct? You just graduated last year, and have only one year of experience, plus your practical classes.”

Ava drew in a breath. They had known this was coming, and had decided to use the truth to their advantage, no matter how painful it was. “My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer when I was seventeen. I was her primary caretaker until she passed away when I was nineteen.” Barely nineteen. Nineteen and two days, and the ink still wet on her high school diploma. She’d spent her birthday at home, in a room that looked like it belonged in a hospital, holding her dying mother’s hand.

The impassive eyes softened slightly, but Ms. Bayles just said, “I’m sorry for your loss, but even if we count that, it doesn’t add up to five years.”

Ava’s shoulders tensed at having her grief dismissed so easily, but they’d known this would probably happen. The woman sitting across from her looked slightly different from the appearance Amythyst had donned during their practice sessions, but…

“It’s okay,” Amythyst murmured in her ear. “You’ve got this.”

Releasing a slow breath, Ava forced herself to nod. “True, but I meet your requirements in every other way, and, if I may say, I suspect you’ll have difficulty finding anyone older than me with extensive experience playing Veritas Online. It only came out when-” she broke off. Not, ‘when I was a senior in high school’. That would put the lie to her claim that she was twenty-five. “When I was in college,” she finished smoothly. “It’s a recent game, and anyone older than me wouldn’t have had the time and, possibly, the interest, to play it extensively.”

Raising her interwoven hands, Ms. Bayles steepled her fingers beneath her chin, considering Ava. “I see,” was all she said, but she pulled her fingers apart and flipped over the paper on her desk, revealing a page full of black words. Amythyst made Ava’s ocular implant snap a photo of the paper, flipped it, and placed it unobtrusively to the side of Ava’s vision. It was a series of questions, and even as Ms. Bayles started to ask the first one, Amythyst was murmuring the answer in Ava’s ear.

Ava smiled slightly and repeated Amythyst’s words.

Back out on the street, Ava drew in a deep breath. She was deep downtown, and it used to be that the air would have smelled of exhaust fumes, but now that electric vehicles were the norm, the strongest scents were the dust lifted into the air by passing cars, and a mixture of perfumes and body odor as people bustled by. It was lunchtime now, and it seemed that every building around her had disgorged a thousand people, all of whom were hurrying to go somewhere, anywhere, else.

“You did it,” Amythyst chortled into her ear. “You wonderful girl. She’s calling Carl’s assistant right now, and she’s making you sound like pure platinum. I bet we’ll get a call from him by the end of the day.”

Ava looked around, then started walking in the direction that didn’t put the sun in her eyes. She had no idea what was nearby, but she needed to move. She felt as if Ms. Baylor, mantle of professionalism momentarily put aside, might suddenly walk out of the building behind her, and she couldn’t bear the thought of the awkward interaction that would follow.

“Okay,” she murmured, wishing she was in the game, where her thoughts could become words. If she spoke out loud now, one of the nameless hordes around her might hear, and though rationally she knew they didn’t care about her any more than she cared about them, she still didn’t want them even thinking about her. Anonymity was her best defense, no matter what VaVa said.

“A car is on the way. Just keep walking that direction. You’ll come to a load/unload zone in front of a bank. The car is a red Dynamo. This is the driver.” A head-shot of a woman with short, curly black hair and hazel eyes flashed across Ava’s vision.

Strides long and confident, Ava continued down the sidewalk, but she laughed softly under her breath. “Two female rideshare drivers in one day. What are the odds?” Women were more likely to work as a gig delivery driver, rather than for a rideshare service.

“Low,” Amythyst replied, a little snark in her voice, “thanks to the fact that they still don’t feel safe around strangers. Unless, of course, you have an all-powerful AI picking them for you. Women have better safety ratings for a reason.”

Ava shook her head, dodging a small crowd of chattering people who were taking up the entire sidewalk. “The car does the driving, not them.”

Amythyst sniffed. “There’s a reason the driver is still required to be paying attention. Accidents happen.”

Since Amy Landon had been killed - or at least severely injured - in a hit and run, Ava decided not to argue. It was understandable if Amythyst was a little sensitive on the matter.

There was a pause as Ava found the bank, and climbed into the little red econobox driven by the young woman whose picture Amythyst had flashed up in Ava’s view. Then Amythyst’s tense voice sounded in Ava’s ear again. “They’re not wasting any time. Carl’s assistant is calling. Do you want to answer, or shall I?”

Ava glanced at the driver and shook her head slightly, muttering, “You do it.”

The call played over Ava’s auditory implant. Her own voice answered in a calm, professional tone that Ava doubted she could have managed at the moment.

“Hello? Ava Shaw speaking.”

A smooth tenor flowed into Ava’s ear. “Hello, Ms. Shaw. I’m Liam Jones. Ms. Devorah Bayles just reached out to my employer about your interview. She was quite impressed, and suggested we proceed with an interview of our own. Are you available tomorrow? My employer’s home is about an hour outside city limits, so you’ll need a way to get here.”

“That’s not a problem,” ‘Ava’ responded. “What time would be best?”

“How does two-thirty sound?” Liam asked.

“Perfect. What’s the address?”

“I’ll send it to this number, if that’s all right?” Liam asked. “And I’m afraid that you’ll need to sign an NDA before you arrive. My employer is quite well known and also values their privacy highly. They must be certain you won’t mention their name or where they can be found.”

“That’s fine,” Amythyst said in Ava’s voice, and polite goodbyes were exchanged before the silence shifted.

“Done,” Amythyst said, sounding triumphant. “Done and done. Just a few more days, Ava, and we’ll know.”

Ava nodded, rubbing her clammy hands against her thighs. This time she didn’t care if she left sweat-marks behind.

Just a few more days.