DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Soon the room full of men would know Leon was a liar.
A voice beside him: “Down two levels.”
Another: “Won’t work. Too far gone.”
Yet another: “Bullshit, Adrian said–“
“Shut up, Bent.”
Soon the room full of men would want answers.
Meat locker curtains behind Leon brought the stink of plastic.
Apt.
The vital readouts composed of everchanging numerical values opposite the surgical table and Clara’s dead body mimicked the dawn of a dying sun as Leon’s tinted spectacles slid to the end of his nose. He had to open his mouth to breathe. He tasted plastic.
“What did I tell you?”
“It’s time.”
“Can’t be.”
A stretch of silence, then the digital clatter of numbers changing.
“Let me try.”
“Rem, just don’t, okay. Just don’t.”
“Another D-99, you think? Might jumpstart the–“
“No, no, no. She’s not gone. She’s not–“
Dead. Clara wasn’t. She stood across the dark ballroom in a gown the color of a neon evening behind a sheet of rain dyed the color of synthetic jazz. It’s what played now. What played him to her. Her to him.
Their bodies met on the vacant dance floor. Connected. Electric. He took her hand. She let him, then he let her lead. Sluicing through the dingy volumetric pillar radiating from the ceiling, capturing their breath, the smoke drifting in from outside, the smell of the rain that was the color of her dress.
She smelled real. Was real.
“When are you going to trim that silly thing?” she asked.
He was too close, too soon, so he erected his posture.
She looked into his eyes, and he into hers. They were striking. He looked for a flaw there, because she had to have flaws. Everyone did. He did.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Our time is running out here. We take a cab back to my place, and I clean that up for you?” She sustained her last word drawing her finger down his mustache, and he swore he saw sparks.
He smiled. The ends of his mustache were observers in the corners of his eyes.
The music stopped. The light above dimmed while others in the darkness around the room swelled to illuminate the downcast expressions of men at tables nursing amber drinks. All eyes on them. On her.
Blood filled Leon’s face. “We should go.”
She noticed the eyes, and gave them what they wanted, uncaring of the danger. She trilled a chord with parted lips and a tongue pressed behind her front teeth. They all leaned forward, as if one.
Leon dragged her to the exit, which was blocked by a man the size of a door, who spoke on a stream of cigar smoke. “ID, please.”
“You let me in,” Leon said. “We were supposed to be alone.”
The darkness moved where the man’s eyes should have been. “Just started my shift.”
Leon rolled up his sleeve. “Fine. Here.”
The man held a strobing purple light above the number on Leon’s forearm.
“The lady?”
Leon waited for the scan to register. So he could blink. So he could think. So his blood would continue pumping oxygen through his system. So he wouldn’t–
“Mr. Young,” the man said. “Forgive me, sir. I had no idea. Clearance five. Understood. Please, sir, I hope you–“
Leon pushed past him, Clara in tow. “You can’t do that,” he said to her.
“Do what?”
“What you did. Back there.”
“No harm.”
“You don’t understand.”
She wrapped herself around him. “I do.”
He held her at arm’s length. “No, you don’t.”
What her raincloak didn’t hide, his umbrella did, and what that didn’t, the night would.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “What it’s like.”
“If we’re caught, then what? Would that be better? Than what we have?”
“There is no we in this. There is me hidden away in an apartment, only able to come out at night like some freak. Do you think I’m a freak?”
A cab passed by in a spray of water. Leon turned his back to shield her. The water clung to his coat. “No.”
“Then why?” she asked. “They don’t know. They can’t know. You did everything perfectly.”
“Did I?”
She smiled and pushed back a clump of hair the rain had plastered to his forehead. “You do everything perfectly.”
The ends of his mustaches sagged down the sides of his face.
“Except that.”
He looked into her eyes again for the flaw he knew was there, because she was real. Then movement drew his gaze over her shoulder.
The crowd of men from the bar that shouldn’t have been there.
A voice behind her: “Hey!”
Another: “Didn’t you recognize us?”
Yet another: “Wanted it to be a surprise.”
The traffic, the rain, the buzz of neon turned their voices to static. He didn’t recognize any of them.
They had women on their arms as well, those perfect eyes reflecting the night like a pack of wolves. They showed their teeth.
Clara went to turn, but Leon held her face, held her eyes with his gaze. There it was.
“Let me buy you a drink. You and the lady. After all, it’s your–” The man tripped and fell into Clara, who pushed Leon to the ground, and she rolled over him onto the street, right into the high beams of an oncoming cab, her hand still in his.
Clara lay on a surgical table, far from the drenched street. Tubes coming out of her chest. Tubes Leon had feigned to attach to not alert the room full of men, who were his friends, who would turn him in, if they knew.
Her vitals would soon be meaningless and give him away. Her smell. But for now the air was heavy with the scent of plastic and condolences, as the room full of men treated this like any other android repair job. They argued about parts and procedures that would not save the last woman on Earth while Leon held her cold hand.
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