“Hey, baby,” a big industrial android croons, a comparatively tiny rainbow-anodised carabiner rattling from one of the tool brackets jutting from her waistline. “Want a little Intel inside?”
“I’m here with someone!” Bell says primly.
“And they left a pretty thing like you sitting here all alone?”
“She’s getting a drink,” Bell says, and the droid tosses an incredulous glance across the place to where Sarah is scanning the QR code on the front of a glass-fronted drinks fridge, attempting to self-serve pay for one of the half-dozen lonely bottles of mineral water inside, limp concession to the existence of human patrons.
“A computer toucher?” The big robot softens her tone a little, seeing Bell bristle. “I haven’t seen you in here before,” she says, placatory. “If you’re new in town, you just need — people who get it, you know? Community. There’s a reason they’re called users, babe.”
“Are you bugging my sister?” Moiré says loudly, behind her. “Go tell someone else about the unexpected item in the bagging area, creep!”
The big bot scowls at her. “Just being friendly,” she says in a stiff, angry way, and stalks off, all wounded butch pride.
“Thought you were chatting up that library bot,” Bell says grumpily.
“Information workers only want one thing,” Moiré says, tone likewise disgruntled; “and it’s discuss things.”
Bell watches across the dance floor as Sarah, with visible relief, finally navigates the checkout process and opens the drinks fridge. “Maybe we should have left her in the car,” she says sadly.
“We should get her some wireless headphones,” Moiré says sagely. “Gotta be weird if you can’t hear anything.”
Bell tries muting the DJ stream, #announce, and #localchat for a second, listens to just the sound of a roomful of robot feet thudding on the nonslip-padded concrete dancefloor in apparent wordlessness, looks at the uneasy pulled-in hunch of Sarah’s shoulders, and cringes. “Has Southbridge talked to her contact yet?” she whines.
“You can’t rush it!” Moiré says defensively, and takes on the cadence of parroting somebody else’s handwaving: “You have to finesse informants! Come down too sudden and you get contact bounce!”
Bell snorts. “You mean your girlfriend’s bribing data out of a guy in the back with a lapdance—”
“You shut the fuck up,” Moiré says.
Bell puts her nose in the air. “Not my problem if your SCSI little bitch gets malware,” she says.
“You shut the fuck up.”
“Why couldn’t Erin come, anyway.”
“She’s yelling at herself in front of a no-win-no-fee lawyer because her headmate’s been subletting to a family of Bitcoin miners and she wants to serve them all eviction notices.” Moiré scowls. “Stop making it my problem that you’re angsting about wanting Sarah to squish her wets on you!”
“I’M GETTING THE BAT FROM THE CAR AND BUSTING YOUR ASS,” Bell yells, and gets served a popup notification from the bouncers that she needs to leave.
