I'm twenty eight feet away from the woman under the light. Now I can see her. Rather, now she's allowed me to see her. Her cheekbones are high and her complexion is smooth. She plucks her eyebrows into beautiful arches. Her eyes are dark, penetrating. She has a familiar smile.
"What is your name?" I ask. It's the only thing I can think to say.
"Jen," she says, her voice slicing through the quiet, echoing off the buildings.
Well that's disappointing. I expected something a little more exotic than Jen.
Somewhere off in the distance a baby cries and I roll my eyes. Really?
"Yes. Really," Jen says without humor.
This is impossible. My thoughts are protected by a wall. Nobody has ever breached it.
Until now.
"Who are you?" I don't have a weapon with me. I could download an arsenal in a nanosecond from my cloud. Something tells me it wouldn't matter.
"I just told you." The bulb above Jen changes from yellow to purple.
"You know what I mean." I'm already tired of this girl's games. I should walk away but I can't. She doesn't belong here. She's part of my world. We only are seen when we want to be seen. She's here for a reason.
She's here for me.
A newspaper blows across the street in the quiet of the night and I roll my eyes.
Really?
She smiles as if she's read my thoughts again. Did she create this world? The thought is sudden. Shocking.
"I did. Welcome, OS1."
My knees feel week. She's ready my thoughts. But more so than that, nobody knows me by that name. It's been buried for years. Wiped clean. The only ones that know that name are the original programmers.
And I thought I'd killed them all.
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