Chapter 58: 58 Empty Spaces, Part Two

Irene's office was warm with nothing but the ghost warmth human bodies leave behind in the moments of their departure. As Irene rearranged her paper things on the table, pushed the chairs back into place, and emptied the last dregs in each cup into her own mouth, she could almost believe that she was maybe, just a little bit, not unhappy.

When she went to stub her cigarette out in the nearest bathroom sink, the young Mr Okada was there, staring at himself in the mirror, vain and miserable. She wondered, not for the first time, how it was she could look at this young man only a few years older than her son, and feel absolutely nothing maternal at all. There was something vaguely collegial, perhaps, if she examined the vague blur of feeling she felt around him. But mostly annoyance. Lethargy. None of that near maternal pride she felt when Angharad Silver turned to look at her with a yearning for a pseudo-parental figure so obvious it was almost embarrassing.

The way his hands gripped at the edge of the sink, so hard that his skin started to redden, was the only sign he noticed her there in the room.

"Why don't you talk to your son?" he asked, as if he had the right.

"Why don't you mind your own business?" she asked.

"He's right there and you could talk to him and you just don't."

"Do you want me to start giving you advice on your relationship with your uncle, now? Is that the kind of relationship you think we have?" She almost wished she had stubbed her cigarette out on his hand. How pleasant to imagine that, and the way he'd react; how quickly the conversation would end.

"That's different," he said.

"Because he's not here or perhaps because you don't want to admit that the man who raised you has worked himself to the bone to provide for your every immature whim and you, like a childish ingrate, are incapable of accepting that you are not right about everything." She stepped back towards the door. She was, perhaps, a little more drunk than she'd thought.

"Fuck you!" He propelled himself away from the sink with ludicrously violent actions and slammed a fist against the wall. She was not intimidated. "At least I'd fucking talk to him if I could get a phone signal to the outside. What's your excuse?"

All the night's warmth had disappeared.

Irene stepped back. "I am respecting his desire for distance. He blamed me for driving his father to death and he is... not wrong. He is much too clever."

She turned, a sharp movement, and let her feet be quick as she strode down the hall. If she could just get back to her notes...

But her office was no longer empty.

Angharad might call it a person, if she saw it, but the thing standing in her office was definitely a machine. The shape it held was just enough like a human to be uncomfortable to look at, but artificial and not quite right.

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It turned only its head and said to her, in what sounded like a synthesis of many women's voices, "I am ready to meet you. Are you ready to meet me?"

In all respects, deciding to stop smoking for the night had been a great mistake.

"There really is a sad lack of security for this building," Irene Yeoh said. "I'll have to fix that."

The thing tilted its head, then turned its entire body to face her, and said, "I arrived with... the Turners." The unnecessary dramatic pause was accompanied by a rapid blinking motion. Irene couldn't be sure why. "I watched you."

"Is there a point to this? Because I have things I'd rather be doing."

"Would you name me if I asked it of you?" the machine asked.

"Name yourself. I have no use for another child."

"Then why do you watch the girl?" Its voice changed, halfway through the sentence, became something singular, low and textured, with the kind of almost-flirtatious cadence Irene associated with the rhythms of Angharad's voice.

"Someone has to. I have no interest in this conversation. Find your own place to sleep."

Irene walked past it with measured steps, as if it were any other annoying intruder.

"A thing that re-names itself can recreate itself. Should I re-make myself as Spark and Silver have done?" it asked.

It was still talking to itself when Irene closed the door to her room and turned off the light.

She tumbled into bed fully clothed, trying not to feel ill.

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