[jeepers, i hope that chapter number doesn't put me in some kind of creative bankruptcy! earlier chapters are linked below!
(Chapter Two)"Hello!" Bitsy said, and then covered her mouth immediately hoping she hadn't squawked it.
Cord laughed lightly on voice-only. "Well, at least it doesn't sound like you hate me for rushing off this morning!"
"Oh no, of course not." Why would he even think that? No, of course he wouldn't -- he was just making a joke. And now I've gone and sounded like I believed him instead of laughing back. Bitsy, you pea-processor ... say something clever to fix it! Or at least something nice. What, what, what -- oh! "I'm just glad you sound like you're in a better mood than when you had to go this morning. I guess you managed to stop the dream feed from crashing and sending everybody crazy today, or whatever the emergency was."
"Whoops, I'm in trouble now," he said. "Will you ever forgive me if I admit that it was only urgent, not actually an emergency?"
"No, but I will pretend that anything that would be an emergency to someone in dream feed management would be so secret it would have to be a quadruple-firewall-encryption-locked level secret, so you'd definitely have to lie and tell me it wasn't actually an emergency, or else have my memory erased. So instead of forgiving you I'm going to think I should thank you for protecting me from that."
He laughed again, a sound she had only known existed for two days now, but one she found herself anxious to hear as often as she might. "Now I'm trapped into being rude, though," he replied, "because I can't say, 'you're welcome,' without admitting I'm protecting you from getting memory-wiped, and if I admit that, we're right back where we started and I have to send the guys from Memory Control to erase everything anyway."
"Er ..." She wanted to laugh, but thought it would come out nervously. "Is there really a Memory Control?"
"Oh, fritz," he said. "Did I let that slip out? Well, you can expect them in about fifteen minutes now that you know about them. I'll call back once they're done and we can start this conversation over again."
She did laugh then, the warmth in his voice smoothing out her nerves.
"Don't hang up until they get here, though," she said. "If they're going to erase all of this, it means I have fifteen minutes to say whatever loopy thing wants to come out of my mouth without getting embarrassed about it. You know, since I won't remember any of it anyway."
"Honesty compels me to tell you that I just sent a 'false alarm' text to them, so they're not coming after all. If there's one thing I've picked up on already, it's that you get embarrassed pretty easily, and that you're adorable when you do. I certainly don't want to miss a helping of you getting that cute, anxious tilt in your voice."
She felt her flushed-cheeks subroutine start up at that. Thank goodness we're not on video where he could see that. Hmm -- but why aren't we on video? Maybe he's somewhere classified. Clearing her throat, she said, "Anyhow, you called at just the right time. I was actually going to crawl into bed not long from now, so if you'd called any later I might have been out."
"Ah, so I'm keeping you up?"
"No, no, I didn't mean --"
"Listen, if we're on the subject of you going to bed anyway, I have something to ask you that's a little odd."
She blinked and sat up a little straighter on the couch, but couldn't think of how to respond.
"Do you remember," he went on, "when I was kidding you about having a crush-routine going on this morning."
"So you really do want to make me feel embarrassed!"
That laugh of his again. Bitsy got a surge of thrill through her chest at bringing it out.
"What I mean is, I joked about that, and then I laid a whole bunch of potentially alarming stuff on you about dream feed management and variances outside of programming specs and what bad consequences that could end up having, and afterwards I got worried that I might have compounded any actual variance you might have had going on, giving you all that surprising information to take in."
"Well, but the dream feed will take care of it tonight, right? So even if you did, I'm sure I'll be fine."
"Absolutely. I would have called you earlier if I thought there was any chance of a real issue."
She found herself relieved but also puzzled -- maybe even unsettled; his voice had a resonance to it, a tinge of earnest energy underneath its comforting tone. "Then what ... ?"
"Because I felt anxious about possibly making you anxious, I wanted to do something to reassure you, and the more I thought about it, the more I felt like the thing to do would be to demonstrate to you just how entirely safe you are."
Bitsy's brows scrunched together. "I mean, I don't know that you really need to do that ... but ... how exactly would you?"
"By asking you do to something just a bit daring," he replied.
Nooo! I'm already so far past my buffer for being daring right now!
All she could do was wait, and into the pause that followed, Cord said, "I'd like you to sleep on your couch tonight. Where you won't be under the dream feed."
This time the pause went on a few beats more, before her tongue regained the ability to move.
"What?"
