Chapter 110: 110 Broken Things, Part Three

California

The line for coffee was so long that Angharad drifted off into reminiscing as she slowly shuffled forward.

Her mind was on the night of the roof top picnic, the way Mnemosyne and Maria met her outside the door of the hospital to stop Niall and 1090 trying to talk to her. Freya and Sophie had huddled together as they walked, with Josephine dawdling behind them, Eleanor by her side. If only Angharad had realised how much time Josephine spent looking at her earlier, they could have saved so much time.

By the time she stopped getting distracted by memory she was halfway through her coffee order, mumbling about soy and decaf.

She only noticed the girl at the cash register fluttering her eyelashes at the moment the girl said, "It's kind of annoying how long you're taking to make this order, but I'll forgive you because you're cute, and I'll add my number as a special side bonus."

"Me? You're flirting with me?" Angharad asked.

The girl laughed and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, obviously. You're not very smart, are you?"

Angharad hadn't even considered the idea of flirting with someone for months. It wasn't like she and Josephine made each other any promises. She could date if she wanted. She could just hook up with randoms like a normal person if she wanted.

She wasn't sure what she wanted.

"That's not really convincing me you're worth my while," Angharad said.

The girl bit her lip and looked serious for a moment. "Have you got someone else on your mind?"

As if that was the only reason Angharad might turn her down. Angharad found it kind of reassuring whenever girls were as arrogant as boys. What should she say?

She thought about what Tsuyoshi would do. Angharad leaned back just so she could look down at the other girl and said, "You'll do."

*

Sophie picked up on the first ring.

"So, I might have accidentally scored a date with someone both hot and mean. I'm not entirely sure this is a great idea. What are you thoughts?" Angharad asked.

Sophie gasped. "But what about Josephine?"

"Well, I mean, she's not here. So what does that have to do with anything?"

"How could you say that? After everything that happened between you, and now you're just letting her go!"

Angharad looked out the window and sighed. The day was annoyingly bright but ought to have been as grey and blurry as everything felt inside her head.

"I mean, I didn't technically ever have her. She wasn't ever my girlfriend. I didn't tell her to wait for me."

Sophie huffed, sort of the same way a fluffy little kitten does. "Maybe you should have."

Angharad tried to imagine that, a different version of her in the past making promises, locking things down. She could imagine Josephine's smile, the way her her hands moved, but she couldn't put those words in their mouths, and the more she tried the less the fantasy came into focus. "Yeah, maybe."

Sophie was silent for a moment, but Angharad waited for her to figure out what it was she wanted to say.

"In that case, I still don't think it's a good thing to date someone mean. I didn't think Angharad liked that sort of thing," Sophie said.

"I don't really, but, I don't know..."

"If it makes you feel better, then that would be okay."

Angharad felt formless, more than anything. She couldn't imagine a date fixing that, either.

"Yeah, I mean, then probably not. How are you? Are you okay? I know we've emailed and stuff but I want to know everything."

There was an answer in Sophie's soft breathing over the phone. "At least I'm home."

"That's kind of how I feel."

"Only kind of?"

"It's like I always say, home is where my family is. It's not really a place. Like, we used to move about all the time but that didn't feel bad or anything. I kind of miss travelling. It's sort of weird to be stuck here. And, like, if I could have chosen I wouldn't have chosen America, but daddy did and he doesn't really want to let me out of his sight. All the schools have security cameras and armed guards."

"I wouldn't choose America, either," Sophie said, voice huffy.

A laugh burst out of Angharad. "What about France? What's France like? I've never been there."

"Well," Sophie said, and then set off complaining about every part of the country she called home.

Later, when they finished talking, Angharad texted Freya, too worried about the time difference to call: 'Asked out by someone hot but terrible. Should I go for it?'

The reply came quicker than she expected.

Freya: 'Yes. Go on one hot and terrible date then tell me all the details.'

*

Back at her father's office, she put the coffee down on the desk – one for him for when he came by, black with a truly disgusting amount of sugar, and one for her, soy decaf unsweetened – and looked at the economic information on her tablet.

She sighed, annoyed at the impossibility of completely secure communications even if it was working in their favour for once, and made a call to Freya.

They dispensed with the pleasantries at great speed.

"Okay, so, if I look at what we have here, if I look at what gets sent through the different gates, there might be a pattern but I don't feel like I can narrow it down yet. Maybe if I look at the ongoing information for a few more years. And, like, I'm not really qualified to make any statements on this stuff. But I think maybe we need to isolate the people-moving data and remove that so we can look at just what other stuff gets moved through the gates. You know, like plant and equipment, and foodstuffs, and stuff like that."

"You think removing information about who moves through the gates will help?" Freya asked.

Angharad imagined her raising a sceptical eyebrow as she did so.

"Yeah, maybe. Like, maybe sort the information into two separate piles, and that can be one pile we maybe go back to later, and everything else can be the other pile. Because, like, we already know who the people were that moved through the gate to Zapville. That was us, and it happened over ten years ago, and how that worked has kind of been obscured. So even if we look at who moves through the gates now that doesn't really help us because... I mean, if Zapville has underground support staff or whatever it's not like we knew who they were."

"Sure, I get you," Freya said. "And that's a reasonable argument to expand the time range within which we obtain data from."

"I mean, I'm not a data analyst or whatever."

"I'll get Jin to pre-sort the information for you so he can have something to do with his spare time. He needs a hobby," Freya said.

Angharad laughed, imagined Jin sitting at a desk going over all the stuff she didn't yet know how to interpret and grouchily re-organising it.

What did they have there, anyway? It wasn't like looking at what food was shipped where would help her. She spent most of her time in Zapville not eating the food. And as for the goods passing through the gates, how would she know which things where like what they had on Zapville and which were not? She felt completely out of her depth.

She switched to a different set of data, of the mess of things that James and her father had managed to make of the family business. "I could fix this," she said, already thinking of the changes she could make to make the business consistently profitable again, like it had been when her mother and Moshe were alive. "But only if they let me."

But her father expected her to get a university education first. Would the business even be alive once she was done with a degree?

*

Six months later her father drove her to the airport, deflecting all her questions about the business with his questions about her love life.

"I worry that you won't settle down," he said.

She scoffed. "I have, like, years before you have to worry about that. And anyway, what does it matter if I don't? Not everyone has to."

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"I don't want you to be alone after I'm gone."

She rolled her eyes. "You're not that old and you're not dying. I don't see why you have to be so dramatic."

"It's okay if what you want in life is something more unconventional." The car rolled to a stop in front of the international departures area. "I know I haven't always been the greatest example for you. You must think that I'm a hypocrite."

"I really just want you to open the back so I can get my bags."

If he went on like that he'd start apologising and crying over nothing like he kept doing lately. She didn't have the energy to deal with it.

His eyes started to look damp. He leaned forward over the steering wheel. "I went back into the closet because I saw the way the wind was blowing and I didn't want my image to damage the company, but I just wish I could have told the world I loved Moshe, too."

"Okay, great," she said, and leaned over to press the boot unlock button on his keys. "I'll get my bags by myself."

*

Japan

By the time she reached Tokyo Angharad felt guilty for snapping at him.

She looked out the window of the train from the airport as they passed the architecture of depression, and wondered why she couldn't be any more grateful under her father's rule than she could in Zapville.

When she arrived at the cheap business hotel, Angharad smiled at the only person working at the reception desk as she got all her documents from a clear display folder in her bag, then made her way up to the room on the 11th floor where she was planning to spend the week. For an hour or so she lay on the bed in that quiet room, the ceiling her only view.

The room was small, tidy. She didn't understand why she was so fond of small rooms after all that time trapped in Zapville.

"Maybe I just want to choose my own trap?" she asked the room. Of course, nobody answered.

Calling Jin was better than talking to herself.

He answered with an angry, "Who is this?"

"I'm using a rental phone," Angharad said, sure he would recognise her voice.

"I should be used to you calling from different numbers by now. I should get a series of burner phones and start doing the same to you."

"You should. Talk to your ex-boss about the benefits of keeping your enemies guessing."

His laugh was sharp at first, then faded to something soft as breath.

*

A day later Angharad turned around on the street, completely lost, hoping a kind stranger would give her directions if she looked confused enough. She knew she should have turned on the GPS to find the hotel she was looking for instead of struggling with a printed out map.

Finding her way from there took multiple strangers and a lot of bowing but she arrived at the hotel she was looking for, which was much fancier than the hotel she was staying at.

She patted her hair flat, went in and up the stairs, and tried to look like she belonged there.

Most of the staff in and on the way to the hotel bar were robots, but there was a human bartender taking people's orders with a gentle customer service smile. A real cute guy with hair that fell across his face and dark eyes. Angharad blushed and stuttered through ordering a cup of coffee, barely able to remember how to say please, and the bartender smiled and asked her if she would like to order in English.

When she sat down at a table and looked around the room, framed by a window that looked onto nearby streets, she tried to look like a nervous, overwhelmed tourist. Which she was.

The television in the corner of the room seemed to be playing the same program she'd seen at Freya's family home.

Angharad was startled out of her distraction by a person putting a hand on back of the empty chair next to her and saying, in a soft and gentle voice, "Can I sit next to you?"

Which more than anything made Angharad aware of her lack of talent for surveillance and spy work.

She looked up to see a dark-haired and dark-eyed woman wearing an elegant, simple dress. The woman smiled and pushed up her glasses. Angharad nodded, too aware of how fussy and outdated her own outfit was.

"Sure, I mean, I'm not waiting for anyone."

The woman offered vague information about what she was doing there, but Angharad got distracted by the glow of her skin and the elegant way she moved her hands. They exchanged small talk until the conversation was interrupted by Jin's number lighting up Angharad's phone. "Um, I don't want to be rude, but, like, I have to take this. Business, you know?"

The woman nodded like she did know. Angharad escaped to the near empty hallway.

"Why are you calling me? I'm doing stuff, like, important stuff," she said on answering, no greetings as preamble.

"I could have been doing important stuff when you called me," Jin said.

"You weren't, though. You never are."

"What are you in Japan for?" he asked, his voice sharp and demanding.

"I can have holidays without having to explain all my choices to you," she said. "Let me shop for vintage clothes, cute stuffed toys and grape Fanta in peace."

He cleared his throat. "Okay. Have fun."

"Sure. I will." She sighed and leaned her head back against the wall. From there she could hear the faint noise of human voices and glasses clinking. "I think maybe a woman at this bar is hitting on me. That's weird, right?"

"It's never weird when people find you hot."

"I mean, like, I'm not lacking in confidence or whatever, but she looks maybe older and sophisticated. Why would she want to talk to me? Maybe she thinks foreigners are slutty. I'm not against that but I've never..."

"You should go for it. Enjoy the one night stand. You deserve to have that."

She laughed, even more unsure than before. "Okay."

He hung up without a goodbye, either. She walked further into the corridor with its rich, dark wood panel walls, and tried to remember what she was really there for.

In the hallway Angharad slumped against the wall and let her body slide down to the carpet. She couldn't see anyone watching, but that said nothing about the placement of security cameras. And if someone did watch she hoped they would assume she was drunk and tired.

On the floor next to her, the wall and floor bot made a whirring sound as it cleaned the ugly carpet.

She recognised that model. It was one of theirs, in production before she even considered leaving on that summer camp trip. At least 15 years old and still working, still cleaning as well as ever, even if it no longer kept as silent as it once had. Maybe there weren't as many hotels in the world anymore, but there was no reason they couldn't have kept doing good business even with choosing to focus on the cleaning robots.

She pushed herself up from the floor, stumbled in her too high shoes, and made her way back to the bar.

The woman from the bar reached her before she got back to the table where her half drunk cup of coffee waited undisturbed.

She tilted her head with a gentle smile and said, "Would you like to go somewhere private?"

"I would like that," Angharad said.

*

In the quiet of a hotel room the woman moved close and—

—Angharad tried not to think about cameras and being watched, tried not to think about electric punishment. Nobody is watching this. Nobody will punish me for this, she thought as loud as she could, even as the other woman's hands on her shoulders made the panic wind up and steal the breath from her lungs. Normal people can do this.

Angharad closed her eyes to stop the room shaking around her.

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