Everyone In Silico | Page 2

hadn't been positive she had enough for a coffee - she threw her stuff at a table near the window and went up to the counter. As the machine filled her cup, she watched the people bustling by. Spring was all over their faces, as obvious and gleeful as strawberry jam.
Nicky put sugar and two Milkbuds into her coffee and watched the door. Mostly tourists, since the kids from the Drive favoured the outlet she had passed by. The steam from her cup curled around and coalesced briefly into the Starbucks logo, then dissipated.
An older masked couple came in and tentatively looked around the café. Nicky rifled through her watch for something to read. She found an article on using EasyCut for amphibious splicing and got her watch to project it on the table instead of her retina. After a minute, she checked the couple out over the rim of her coffee cup. They were at the counter, waiting for a couple of boys to finish filling their soup-tureen mugs. They were as noisy as their clothes.
The boys finally touched their watches to the payplate, bouncing them off it in a perfunctory way.
"Next time, ask him where's his body at!" the kid said on his way out the door, and his red-capped friend exploded in a honk-laugh that made the masked man step back briefly, place a hand to secure his mask, then square his shoulders and pretend he was rubbing his face.
Nicky strained to hear what the man was saying to the woman in his quiet voice, noticed that he touched his bare fingers to the payplate. Nicky smiled inside. Loaded. Only the utterly destitute and the fabulously wealthy did without watches.
After casually pressing a black pellet onto the surface of the table next to her, Nicky leaned away from it and absorbed herself in her article. The woman stood for a second with the classic lattes, holding them well away from her white smock, and surveyed the room before nodding the man towards the table next to Nicky. Good, Nicky thought, tapping a protein DNA graphic in her article and pretending to watch it unravel.
There was a movement from her backpack, and Nicky's heart rate suddenly spiked. Moving her legs slowly, she placed one of her feet on the opening of the bag, then the other one. She could feel pushing against the side of her shoe. Settle down, you little shit, Nicky thought, you're not the only one who's hungry. She nervously glanced at the couple as they draped their coats over their chairs, but they seemed comfortable. The man even took off his mask despite the woman's disapproving clucking. He had a square jaw and full lips, which he pressed against her ivory fingers. She had had her nails coated in mirror, and he pretended to stare at himself in them. She hit him and giggled.
Nicky, not looking up, lifted her foot. For a second, nothing, and then, just as she was considering kicking the bag, a brown blur. It had crawled up the man's leg and launched itself onto their table before the couple registered what was happening.
Luckily the woman's mask muffled her scream, because even then it bored into Nicky's ears. Nicky snatched the brown animal to her chest and surreptitiously slipped a black pellet into its mouth. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I don't know how it got out, my bag was closed..."
The man's mask was back on his face, and a halo was starting to generate around the two of them. Nicky stroked the head of the tiny pug-faced little bulldog with a single finger and murmured reassurances to it. The animal, however, was fully pacified by the pellet and stared at the couple with honey-liquid eyes.
"Oh, what a beautiful little... creature," the woman said, holding out her hand. "Turn off that silly thing, Alex," she said.
The halo disappeared. "Sorry," Alex said, to both Nicky and the woman. "It's just..."
Nicky looked down, kept petting the bulldog.
"It's just nothing. He's paranoid," the woman said, reluctantly taking her eyes off the bulldog to look at Nicky. "He's been watching the news too much. I apologize for his rudeness." She looked back at the bulldog. "Can I..."
Nicky glanced at her. Go on, beg.
"May I... hold him?" she said.
"Her," Nicky stated firmly, as if she cared.
The woman leaned back, a little beaten. Nicky noticed the lines around her eyes and worried she'd pushed too hard.
"May I hold... her?" she said, finally. Nicky paused for effect, looked down at the little critter, and then slowly extended her hands.
"Oh... oh, she's a frisky... oh!" the woman said, her exclamations echoing in her mask. The little bulldog was trying to climb out of her hand and up her smock, its little paws gripping the red cross design printed there.
"Heh heh, careful