“In that case, it’s just cruel. Trapping one moment or feeling inside someone and then leaving them to expire when the feeling runs its course.”

Ettie had taken back her cigarette and quickly inhaled from it a few times before stamping it out.

“Come on. We’ll be late for the show.”

Once the program ended, I returned to my dormitory. Ettie would go home in the morning, not to return for three full days. But Camille would soon be here and she was dotingly maternal in a way Ettie wasn’t. In fact, she would be here in the morning, and I couldn’t decipher precisely why thinking of one should make me think about the other—perhaps a Mem like me had capacity enough for only so much affection. Perhaps I had a finite capacity for friendships that confirmed our shared identity and that would offend real people if they could hear my thoughts. I tried to settle my restless mind with endless logical explanations and hypotheses but only succeeded in keeping myself awake. So I withdrew from the world around me, from the sterility of the Vault where smells lacked texture and every sound was hollow. I comforted myself by remembering the carol of the city streets and the collective laughter one both hears and feels burrowed deep in the cocoon of a theater’s plush seats. I remembered the world I’d honestly believed was my home and the way I’d enjoyed observing the endless varieties of real people.

It was Walter Gordon, his hunched figure crowding my doorframe, that brought me back to the Vault. My shoulder crashed into the headboard at the sight of him, my back climbing the hard wood as I quickly sat up. Even the hall light seemed terrified, trembling behind the young man, the false moonlight from my artificial windows falling between us so that I couldn’t make out his face.

“You thought you were different, didn’t you?” In the darkness, his voice was rough as gravel and it rumbled low in the space between us. Walter Gordon stepped into the room and a chill blossomed under the perspiration already beading my forehead and collarbone.

“What do you want?”

Had they not already evaporated in the still air, my words would have turned tail and hurried back to me at the sound of his growl. He took two long strides to the center of my room and I let out something resembling a horse’s whinny.

“Walter, stop!” I cried, though the helplessness I felt seemed confirmation that he wouldn’t.

When he reached my bed, Walter’s Mem sat beside me, his eyes boring into mine and his hands pressing into the board on either side of my head so that I was penned in.