this sound will carry us forward

Roger Smith preferred not to think ahead. That sort of thing could easily get him into trouble — that sort of thing had landed him with a rather dour-looking android whose penchant for excessive piano-playing in the early hours of the morning was grating increasingly on his nerves. One might even say purposefully grating.

“Dorothy,” he growled, striding into the drawing-room, “what did I say—”

She didn’t look up from the piano. “You have a visitor,” she said in that peculiar voice. (The fact that Dorothy could lie gave him little comfort; he was in a perpetual state of doubt when it came to her reports.)

But indeed he did.

A willowy figure stood by the window, golden hair tumbling around her shoulders. She was dressed in a pink coat and her cheeks held the flush of someone who had been out in the cold. Without turning, she said, “Hello, Roger.”

He squinted at her for a moment. “Angel. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

“Can’t a girl want to see you, Roger?” she said lightly. She looked at him and he was struck by her loveliness, the liquid color of her eyes. He wasn’t fooled by her pretty words, however. Things had shifted irrevocably since the fusion.

Since they had saved Paradigm.

Since Angel had sat staring listlessly at the computer screens, teary and silent. Blood is just blood, Roger had said with a gentleness that startled them both. The tough, beautiful girl he'd thought he knew had fractured, bit by bit.

(But here she was, every bit as strong and radiant as he remembered.)

“Some girls, yes. You, no.”

“You flatter me,” said Angel.

“And you drive a hard bargain,” Roger said, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m a negotiator, not a warmonger.”

Dorothy had stopped playing and was watching them both with those inscrutable eyes. Roger had a distinct feeling that Dorothy disliked Angel. He understood her suspicion — Angel always showed up at the most inopportune of times, in the most suspect of places — but could not bring himself to interrogate Angel further. Where she lived, who she worked for; how she appeared suddenly, then disappeared in the blink of an eye — none of it mattered anymore. She was no longer tied to Big Venus, to the simulation. She was ordinary now, if Angel were capable at all of being ordinary.

He was beginning to think robots were easier to understand than human women.

Was everything about her still so alluring? Angel seemed more like a man’s creation than stiff, quiet Dorothy. Tall and leggy and blonde, with curves that made his head spin and a smile that made his mouth dry. She was flirtatious but never too open, capable but never overbearing. Her name was Angel, for Christ’s sake. She had the scars on her back to match. (Did it matter that he wanted to run his hands along them for the thousandth time?)

“What did you know about the Union before the world fell apart, Roger Smith?” Angel asked, breaking him out of his reverie.

“Bits and pieces,” he said guardedly.

Dorothy stood. “I’ll start breakfast,” she said, and walked from the room.

“Edgy, isn’t she?” Angel remarked. Roger felt a jolt of protectiveness and opened his mouth to protest, explain.

Angel’s eyes sparkled. “I quite like her.”

He gave her the grin he reserved just for her, roguish and a touch serious. “You were saying?”

“Paradigm City was trapped inside a bubble,” she said. “We didn’t have any idea of what happens outside. What the outside even was.”

Roger studied her. “But you weren’t from Paradigm City.”

“Don’t you ever question how strange it was that no one seemed to care?”

“I don’t make a point of asking questions,” he answered. “Always seems to complicate things further.”

Angel leaned against the piano stool, a strand of golden hair falling in front of her face. Roger reached forward and smoothed it back behind her ear. She smiled, wry. “Was that an excuse to touch me?”

“Everything is an excuse to touch you,” he said softly.

“Do you remember when we went to the shore, Roger?”

He remembered all too well. The evening light, the stirring in his chest at her hand, so soft and small in his. How she tucked her lovely head into his shoulder. The lingering sensation of loss when she turned from him and ran into the darkness. His eyes burned.

“Yes, of course,” he murmured.

“I asked you why you were holding back. You told me not to make preposterous insinuations. If I'd stayed silent, what would you have done?”

Roger stepped forward and cupped her face in his hands. Angel’s dark eyes grew soft, and she trembled. “This,” he murmured, and kissed her deeply, savoring the cool sweetness of her mouth. She kissed him back, gripping the back of his neck. She was warm, her heart was beating in time with his, her breath mingling with his breath.

For the first time in a long time, Roger felt alive.

This was what he needed. Not the could-have-been, the in-another-life, the cold weight of a body in his arms and the mechanical voice of a child. No, he needed the woman who made him feel as if they were two of a kind. The woman who teased him, pushed him, kept him on his toes; the woman who made him smile to himself, who followed his lead as if they were syncopated. Her mystery and her sweetness. Her troublesome nature and her girlish foibles.

The woman from another universe, who never sought out a different man, who came for him in the pouring rain. The woman who drove him down an endless tunnel and sat across from him at a diner, who called herself a thousand names, the woman from his memory, Angel, Angel, Angel.

Roger had told Dorothy the truth. If she had been human, if they had met at different times, they might have fallen for each other. But then he wouldn’t have been himself, and she certainly wouldn’t be the Dorothy he knew. He would care for her in the only way he knew how. He would always provide her with a home. He was grateful to her for her humor, her loyalty.

But Roger had known from the moment Angel arrived — had known, in that underwater commune, with her cigarette smoke and movie-star voice and impatient pacing — he would break all his rules for her.

He pulled back to feel her smile against his lips. “I need you,” he breathed. “I need you to stay in Paradigm and kick my ass from time to time. You can keep my ego in check. You're the one I love, because you make me crazy and your smile spells trouble but no one’s hand fits in mine better. And in your spare time you can come live here with me. Until you get tired of me.”

“Ever the romantic, Roger Smith,” Angel said dryly, but her eyes were shining. “I suppose I love you too.”

Roger thought not of the past but of the future, and with Angel filling his memories to the brim, it felt breathtaking. He pressed his lips to her brow and said, “Then we have come to terms.”