Chapter Fifty - A Date Among Ghosts

"The nice thing about VR dating is that it's a lot less about how you look and who you are physically, than it is about your personality, the way you present yourself.

It's not fair, sometimes, that some people are born ugly, or end up unattractive, but in the Mesh, you don't judge people based on the circumstances of their birth.

You judge them based on the fandom they picked their avatar from."

--Meshizen Interview, 2039

***

The meeting with See-Three continued for another half hour. Really, other than exploring the space, there wasn't that much to do. See-Three took some notes of what they'd need, but most of those things were still at the first clinic location. It would just be a question of moving things from one place to another, which anyone with a car could manage.

"If it's acceptable to start things without fully renovating the space," See-Three said. "Then I think we can open the clinic within a day or two... definitely leaning more towards two."

Two days was very acceptable.

See-Three and I shook over it all, and I told her that if she needed anything specific, she just had to let me know.

It would take a good long while to renovate the clinic properly, but with the amount the clinic would be charging for its services (basically fuck all) I expected that some of the people using it would be willing to pitch in to help a little.

We'd need chairs, benches, and a secretary. Further down the line, we'd need proper renovations too. Walling off some parts, fixing up the floors and ceiling lights. Normal maintenance shit too. Maybe a sign out front?

In any case, I expected that to kind of just happen organically.

The people we were serving were exactly the kind of people that wouldn't want to get served in a full-on corpo-chic place. Being a little scuffed up would probably reassure them a lot.

With that all taken care of, I decided to head back upstairs. I was starving, and I wanted to get back to work on the mech now that my fingers weren't threatening to freeze off.

I arrived upstairs via the elevator (man, this was unsafe. I needed to install an HMG or something by the entrance) and then almost ran into Lucy. "You're back!" she said.

"I never even left the building," I replied. On a whim, I wrapped my arms around Lucy's shoulders. "Did you miss me so much?"

"Mhm," she said. "I'm always worried. What if you decide you need a girlfriend on every floor, huh? What'll I do then?"

"Well, you'd still be the top... unless I get a food girlfri-- ow!" Lucy had pinched my skin on my side, and I let go of her to rub it. "That hurt," I whined.

"You deserved it," Lucy said. She tilted her head back, pretty little nose pointing haughtily at the ceiling. "We're going on a date," she said.

"A date?"

"Yeah. I need to get my evil hooks into you before any other desperate, wandering lesbian comes along," Lucy said.

I couldn't help the giggle that escaped. "Sure, because there are so many throwing themselves at me. I'd be more worried about you. Desperate, lonely housewife, all alone at home--besides her seventeen kids--with nothing to do. The neighbours are heavily repressed nuns, open to her evil predations..."

Lucy snorted, then climbed onto her tip-toes to give me a quick peck. "Date," she said. "I'm gonna get dressed, and you should do the same."

"Wait, really?" I asked.

"Ordered a taxi already," Lucy said as she ran off across the house with me walking after her. Of course, she almost tripped, and then she wasn't running, so much as walking fast.

I caught up with her changing in our rooms. It seemed as if she was serious about it, so I decided to do the same. A glance at what she was picking out to wear suggested that this wasn't anything too formal.

Not that we had anything to wear for formal type stuff.

I hopped into the shower, then dressed in cargo pants and a loose t-shirt. Lucy was dressed similarly, though with my old coat tossed on. Her shirt was just small enough to expose a bit of belly. "God, you're hot," I said.

Lucy smiled. It was hard to tell with the colour of her skin, but I could tell she was a little flushed. "We'll see what you think once you pay for the date," she said.

"Hey, I have to pay? You invited me," I complained as I walked next to her. She bumped me with her hip, and I laughed.

We made it outside--I grabbed a coat too, because I liked my skin unexposed to whatever the fuck was in the New Montreal rain--just as an autotaxi pulled up to the rooftop ramp. I opened the door for Lucy, then ran around to the other side before we took off. "You still haven't told me where we're going," I said.

"You'll see in a minute," Lucy teased. "Ah, but I don't know if you'll actually care for it."

"I'm sure it'll be fun," I said. I was with Lucy, after all.

The taxi flew us across a good tenth of the city. It wasn't a fast flight, not after it slipped into the low-priority aerial traffic. But it wasn't all bad. Lucy and I talked, then kissed, then talked some more. That had a tendency of making time pass a lot faster.

My first clue about where we were going was the taxi dipping out of traffic, then starting a holding pattern around a squat skyscraper. It had a large dome above it, all glass filled with greenery and several glowing blue forms.

Banner ads hovered around the building, calling it the Hologardens of New Montreal.

The taxi pulled into a drop-off zone a few floors below the top, then the doors locked while my augs got a ping from the taxi demanding that I pay up.

I rolled my eyes and allowed the transaction. There was a faint hitch as Myalis noticed some fucky surcharges, then insisted on contacting support to have them removed. Since it was all automated, I imagined her 'contacting' support was the equivalent of driving a tank through the wall of an office then waving the receipt around.

It was fixed in a second or two, and I leapt out of the taxi and ran around to help Lucy out of her side.

"Is this the place?" I asked. There were more ads here for the Hologardens, and I was faintly aware of more intrusive ads trying to get through my augs and bouncing like flies off of steel plating.

"Mhm!" Lucy said as she leaned against my side. "It's not much, really. I heard that it didn't pull in nearly as many people as they wanted. Bad timing and everything, but there's a nice walkabout, and there's a zoo!"

"A zoo?" I asked with a laugh. Actually, yeah, that tracked. Lucy had several terabytes of animal gifs with her at all times. It didn't surprise me that she'd want to see the cute animals up close, and I really didn't mind being with her while she coo'd and aww'd.

We walked in, then passed an automated gate that asked us to pay to enter. I almost winced at the price before remembering that I wasn't extraordinarily poor anymore. The entry cost was a pittance.

Lucy picked up the pace, tugging me along after her and up an escalator that brought us up and into the gardens proper.

The gardens were relatively large. Big trees flowing up, the ground around them covered in greenery, with wider, more open spots here and there. The crowd, as sparse as it was, was guided through the gardens via some walkways suspended a little bit over the ground.

"Look!" Lucy said as she pointed to a holographic animal. It was a... gorilla? My augs pinged on it, and I got a pre-packaged dataset courtesy of the holozoo. It said that the last silverback had died in captivity some ten years ago, but the wild ones died out when the Congo rainforest was burned down to wipe out some hives hidden within. "They're so big!" Lucy said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "There's some seals over there... seals don't live in jungles, do they?"

"I mean, maybe some of them?"

"I'm pretty sure none of them," I said as we walked past the seal enclosure. There was a sort of pond that the holograms would dive into. The effects with the water left a lot to be desired.

"There's a place to eat, up ahead," Lucy said. "It's a classic restaurant, with menus and everything."

"Huh, alright," I said. "I could eat."

Lucy beamed, and I grinned right back. This was a lot more fun than the dates we'd had before. Less stealing shit and running away, or 'dating' while hiding in a closet somewhere.

I think that this was quickly turning into the highlight of this vacation of mine.

***