TESS: What? No. Of the Prime?

JON: You are!

TESS: Am I supposed to not notice she’s being nicer to that thing than to me?

JON: It’s your father she’s being nice to.

TESS: It is not my father.

(Short pause.)

JON: It’s true, she could be a little more openly appreciative / sometimes, but you—

TESS: That’s not what / I’m saying—

JON (Continuous): . . . know you can’t sit around waiting for a gratitude dance.

TESS: I don’t need a dance.

JON: She took care of you, now it’s your turn to take care of her.

TESS: Oh, she “took care of me”

JON: Of course

TESS: You weren’t there.

(Pause.)

JON: Think how hard, to move out of the house you were in for what, forty / years—

TESS: Fifty years.

JON: And give up your autonomy—

TESS: I know, I know. (Lightly, almost wistfully) Jon good, Tess bad.

(Short pause.)

JON: Maybe if you told it a few things. It could be a way to connect with her, indirectly.

TESS: What would I tell it?

JON: Things your father would know. (Tess starts to shake her head) Things you want her to remember. Then when she talks to it, she’ll remember she had an interesting life, she had all these suitors lining up for her.

TESS: She only needed one.

JON: The cool part is it can look stuff up. It can talk to other Primes, for practice. (Tess shivers silently; he doesn’t notice) It’s like a child learning to talk, only it does it so quickly—that’s how we think we’re talking to a human, because it listens so well. It even studies our imperfections, to seem more real: It can use non sequiturs. It can, you know . . . misplace modifiers . . .

TESS (As if adding to his list): It can run out of steam when it’s listing things . . .

JON: It’s company. It’s no different from what we do for her, only it can be there all the time.

TESS: Really. It’s no different from us.

JON: I can already see the change in her. Just to have eight or nine stories to hold on to. New things are already coming to the surface.

TESS: New things.

(Pause.)

JON: The other day she said—out of nowhere she said: “Why did they have to tease him so much?”

(Pause.)

TESS: You think it was Damian?

(Jon shrugs: “Who else?”)

TESS: What did you say?

JON: Nothing. She was drifting in and out.

TESS: I thought she’d forgotten. I guess I sort of hoped.

JON: But we have to remind her, right?

TESS: Do we?

(Short pause.)

To have a little peace. That was her life for so many years.

Partly it was the way it happened.

JON (?): She blamed herself.

TESS: She blamed everyone. Anyone who made him feel—not normal.

(Beat.)

JON: Was he normal?