A Lil Creepy

“—which is why if one bites you, you shouldn’t panic. Either you’re fine, or it is a venomous one and, hey, you might as well relax for your last few minutes.” Mae fiddled with her console and music emanated from inside her booth. “Anyway, let’s get back to what you all tuned in for, and it wasn’t to hear me talk.”

Lavinia, in her still-rare visits to Ivy Tower Radio, always marveled at Mae’s performance. And how different it was from Mae in-person. With the music playing, she slid her headphones off and stepped out of the book. Another woman—one of her “interns”—was on her way in to fill in.

They stopped a moment to talk about… something. All that radio stuff didn’t make any sense to Lavinia, who awkwardly stood by. But the intern went into the booth and Mae went over to Lavinia.

“Hey, you,” Mae said with a smile. “Hope you weren’t waiting too long.”

“Me? Nah, I left early anyway. Things have been a li’l…” Lavinia trailed off, and Mae knew why.

“C’mon, let’s get to Vic’s.”

It wasn’t too long a walk from Ivy Tower Radio to the tavern, but it was quiet. The makeup of Seventy-Seven was far from uniform. People drifted in and settled into whatever homes were suitable for themselves, their families, lives, or hobbies, resulting in some patches full of people and some deserted areas like Lavinia’s home. And the direct path to Vic’s from the radio station, which gave Lavinia and Mae time to talk to each other without interruption.

“Things not working out with your new guest?” Mae asked. “It’s been, what, two or three days now since she moved in?”

Lavinia nodded. “I mean, she hasn’t tried hurting me or Arlo. Sometimes she seems like just a regular girl, but other times she’s… creepy.”

“Creepy how?”

“Alright, so, first off she doesn’t blink. Like, ever. But Arlo blinks, and he’s a mecha too, so I dunno if it’s because she’s a different kind of mecha or she chooses not to.” Lavinia shuddered some, “And then she sneaks up on me, and she is so quiet. I’ll be coming out of my room, or look up from a repair job, and she’s standing there watching me. Usually it’s because she wants to ask me something, but other times she’ll just walk off without saying anything once I notice her.”

“That’s a little creepy,” Mae admitted.

“That’s not all, either. So last night we were watching a movie—me and Arlo’ve been doing that every now and then since I got this old DVD player from the ruins working again—and there ended up being a little more violence than I expected. A guy gets stabbed, and I’m not too worried because Arlo’s old enough to know movie stuff was all fake. But when it happens, Mira giggles and says ‘That’s not the noise they make’.”

“Okay, that’s really creepy.”

Lavinia slumped down some, almost reaching Mae’s height. “I dunno if that’s all just something I’ll have to get used to… She doesn’t seem all that dangerous, but I’m starting to not wanna go home anymore because of what she might do next.”

“There’s always room with me,” Mae said. Then her cheeks flushed, “Y’know, if you ever want to do it. S-Stay with me, I mean! At my place, I wasn’t trying to say we should—”

At that point, she stopped trying and buried her face in her hands. Her face was as brilliant red as the current dyed color of her hair.

“I’m just gonna curl up and die over here on the side of the road, go onto Vic’s without me.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Lavinia said, despite blushing herself. She put her arm around Mae. “And I appreciate the… offers… but I don’t wanna leave Arlo alone.”

“Do you think that Mira girl’s going to try and hurt him?” Mae asked after a few moments of composing herself.

Thankfully, for her sake, Lavinia was as ready to move on from the slip as she was.

“She hurt him before, a long time ago. Still gotta see about fixing his shoulder up, too. But… I dunno, maybe things’ll be different this time. Maybe…”

Their talk died out as they continued on. Lavinia knew how unsure she sounded in her assessment, even with Mae abstaining from mentioning it. But maybe she didn’t need Mae’s opinion on it. Vic’s was coming into view, and they walked towards it with Lavinia’s arm still around Mae’s shoulder. It was the longest sustained physical contact they’d had yet, but neither shied away from it. If anything, Mae leaned into her embrace.

Vic greeted them when they went in, glancing at their closeness in a failed attempt at subtlety. They sat at the bar, ate, talked and laughed with each other and Vic. But all the while, Lavinia couldn’t escape a twinge of dread in the back of her mind. Maybe it was Mira’s general oddness, but something wasn’t right with her.

Disconnect

Lavinia was, regrettably, on her way home after her lunch date with Mae. Even though Mae invited her back to Ivy Tower, she knew she had to get back to Arlo. He always did get a little anxious and clingy whenever she was away for too long. She would have preferred the awkward standing around at the radio station, though. And she would have enjoyed the offer of going back to Mae’s place even more… But being a parent meant being responsible.

She walked on autopilot for the last few streets, her mind preoccupied with Mira. Just because she’s some ancient mecha who tore Arlo’s arm off, left him for dead under a collapsed building, and then tracked him down again after all those years didn’t necessarily mean she was dangerous.

Anymore…

Sure, some of the things she did were weird. But, if anything, she was like a human-ish cat. The way she snuck up on her and stared at her, at least. Really though, just because Mira was a little odd didn’t mean she was, oh, planning to stab her in the neck with a fork when she was sleeping. That’d be… unlikely. Hopefully.

A crow’s caw from a nearby roof made Lavinia jump, unaware of how far she’d slipped into her own thoughts. She was just up the road a little way from her home. Turning ahead, she saw a young boy walking up towards her, a scrawny kid with dark, shaggy hair.

“Excuse me, are you Ms. Lavinia?” he asked.

“It’s just Lavinia, actually. And you’re… Felix, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, it’s nice to finally meet you! Arlo told me about you and your little bird friend,” she said, glancing over at the crow watching them. “Are you two gonna go play?”

The boy frowned. “I wanted to, but… Is Arlo okay?”

“Uh. He should be.” Her smile faded, “Why?”

“Well, I haven’t seen him in a few days since that upset girl showed up. So I came to see if he wanted to play, but then the girl was in your house and said he was busy. Then she told me to go away…”

Lavinia furrowed her brow. “She did, huh?”

The boy nodded.

“Well, we’ll see about that. C’mon, let’s go talk to Arlo.”

“Really?” Felix asked.

“Mhm.” She pursed her lips, “I wanna see exactly what he’s so ‘busy’ with that Mira had to tell you instead.”

Lavinia strode towards the house with Felix following close behind her. Normally, she didn’t like jumping to conclusions about people. Near about everybody she’d met living in Seventy-Seven and every traveler what came through town were all decent folk. She always tried giving people the benefit of the doubt. But that girl, well… she was a special case. Even if Lavinia did try to hope she’d be different than first impressions suggested.

She went into her home with the boy still behind her, after he instructed Capri to wait outside. When the two got upstairs, they found Arlo engaged in his usual self-imposed dusting around the living room. That much was normal. Mira was hanging upside-down over the couch, and glared at Felix when she saw him behind Lavinia.

“Welcome home, Ms.—erm, Lavinia,” Arlo corrected. That little politeness slip-up was normal too.

“Yeah, hi,” Mira curtly added.

“Hey, kiddo,” Lavinia said. “It’s real nice outside, why don’t you put a hold on dusting and go play?”

Felix smiled a bit, moving awkwardly and stiff with the girl’s gaze still on him.

“No, I’m fine doing this,” he said.

“But—” Felix started, before Mira cut in.

“He said no, so go home already.”

Lavinia went over to Arlo. “Heck, I’ll finish the dusting for you. I’ve been out all day anyhow, now it’s your turn. Your friend’s even come over to see you.”

Felix nodded from the doorway and Arlo glanced at the boy again. But instead of going over, he only stared at the boy for a few seconds. Then he frowned in blatant confusion and looked up at Lavinia.

“Erm… Who is that?”

Kid Stuff – After Lavinia Left

After his first attempt at opening his faceplate ended with him and Mira laughing on the floor, Arlo felt confident to try it again. It was the first time he’d genuinely been able to lower his defenses around her. Before then, he’d constantly been on edge around her, a sensation as if his entire body was constricted and rigid. It was something he hadn’t even realized until that very moment.

Before she found him again, Arlo’s only memories of her were of her watching him in that dingy apartment. Her return unlocked fragmented images of when she left him buried. Reconciling that memory—of her cold eyes as he fell into darkness—with the girl sitting beside him on the rug in a fit of laughter was odd, to say the least. Once he heard the click of Lavinia’s bedroom door as she went inside, he turned to Mira.

“Alright, I think I’m ready to try again,” he said.

Mira leaned forward. “It’s not too hard. Opening your faceplate is built into you, so just relax. Like how you remembered my name before!”

Arlo closed his eye. When she did it, it started with her jaw splitting to release her… face… He shivered; it was a seriously unpleasant thing to witness. That’s partially why he didn’t try again until Lavinia left. But as he focused, with his eyes closed, he heard a click before his own jaw split open.

It startled him at first; he could feel the movement, or anything else. His vision cut out next as he heard his face open and lift up, casting him into a sensory void broken only by his audio receivers. He couldn’t even tell he was still sitting on the itchy knit rug anymore. He wasn’t sure what opening his head was going to feel like, but the nearly complete sensory deprivation wasn’t it.

“See?” Mira asked. “That wasn’t so hard.”

“This feels weird…” he heard his voice say from somewhere else.

“Yeah, that’s probably why they’d shut us down before doing it.”

“… What?”

“Nothing!”

Mira looked into the boy’s central processor and his storage drives. She’d seen that view countless times Back Before in other mechas, but there was something delightfully uncomfortable about seeing it in Arlo. It was like she was prying into something meant to be forbidden.

Looking around all the blue chips, she could see there was still dust lining the different rows that she tried to brush out. Besides that mess, the tech inside was in surprisingly good shape. All except for a cracked chip in the Sense of Smell region that was flickering so low she thought it was broken.

“Wait, no, that’s the memory section…” she muttered. Then she paused. “Hey, remember Luisa and Anne yet?”

The cracked chip flickered more, but still weakly.

“The… people I lived with before?” Arlo asked.

“Yeah, them.”

“No. I still don’t remember anything about them, besides what you said.”

“Hmm. Oh, what’s the name of your little friend with the bird?” she asked. That time, his chip glowed.

“That’s Felix, and the crow is Capri,” he said. “Why?”

“No reason. Okay, just one more question: who am I?”

“What?”

“Who am I?” she repeated.

“Uh. You’re Mira,” he said. A different, intact chip glowed. “What’s with all the weird questions?”

“No reason,” she said, as a grin spread over her face.

Mira looked up and glanced around; Arlo’s new owner was still in her room and the intruder woman who saw his arm fall off was already gone. Whoever she was, she could be dealt with another time. But right then, in that moment, they were alone. Arlo couldn’t see or feel anything. She’d never get a better opportunity.

She reached out and plucked the cracked chip in one swift motion, pulling her hand out as Arlo tensed and his faceplate began to retract. His head returned to normal, and he rubbed the side of it.

“Did you do something…?” he asked. “I feel… a little weird…”

“I brushed some dust out of your head, that’s all. Maybe you need to recharge?” she suggested.

“Maybe…”

She smiled at him. “You can go nap if you want! I’ll stay out here. Oh, or I could watch you if you want.”

“I’d really prefer if you didn’t,” Arlo said.

He stood up on wobbly legs and stumbled around the couch back to his room. Mira smiled at him and watched as he went. Once the door shut behind him, she opened her hand and looked down at his cracked memory chip. She crushed it in her fist and let the tiny pieces fall down to the floor.

“Goodbye, Anne. And goodbye bird boy,” she said as she swept the remnants of the chip under the couch. “Now I’m his friend.”