“The way San Francisco is now, you would perhaps find it very … challenging to remain together. People would not be cruel, necessarily, but you’d be stared at wherever you went. It would be difficult. Very difficult. I tried to convince them to let you stay together, if you choose, but they wouldn’t agree to it. And I can’t do it alone, not even with the help of drones. I’ll leave you to discuss, but there isn’t much time. We need to operate, and soon.”

He nodded at us and left, closing the door behind him.

“We have to do it,” Taema said.

“I don’t think we have to do anything.”

“The team won’t operate if we opt to stay together. They just won’t do it. But they won’t let us die, either. That doctor made it seem like a choice, but I don’t think it’s really a choice at all.” She saw through it all.

“Do you want to separate?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. Not really. Or I wish we had more time to decide. We don’t. I do know I want us both to live.”

She made it sound so simple. “OK then.”

“Yeah?” She seemed as scared as I was.

We sat in silence, holding hands, until the doctor returned. We told him our decision. He seemed relieved—he could pretend it was our choice instead of taking it away from us.

The doctor explained what they’d do to us—give us new, mechanical hearts, restructure our sternums and part of our ribs and chest (despite everything, I still remember being excited by the thought of finally having proper boobs), straighten my spine because it was a little crooked. We didn’t have time to process it much, because they hauled us into surgery right away, put us under, and then I woke up alone.

I remember that part so clearly. I spoke about it with Taema, sometimes. How very wrong it’d seemed, to wake up and not have anyone else in the room. How alien. I couldn’t take the silence, so I’d worked myself out of the foreign machines and found my way to her.

We always find our way to each other. The first thing I did when I woke up from the surgery was find my other half.

This time, Taema will find her way back to me.

31. Taema

THIRTY-ONE

TAEMA

When I wake up, I think I’m in the Chair.

I thrash against the covers, crying out. The machines around me beep. I have the fuzzy, floating feeling associated with pain medicine. I realize that I’m not in a Zeal or brainload Chair, but I still can’t place it. Hospital? The last time I was in a hospital was ten years ago, when I woke up alone for the first time in my life.

I’m alone again.