CHAPTER! TWELVE!

Bitsy woke up. It was morning.

It's morning! She sat up with a jolt.

I'M ON THE COUCH.

If there was one thing an android wasn't supposed to do when she thought she might be having system issues, it was fall asleep without her head on the dream-feed pillow. Bitsy couldn't believe she'd been so stupid.

Wait. No. I so totally can believe I'm that stupid.

Her phone sat on the coffee table nearby. She wondered if she should pick it up and immediately call for an appulance to come and give her an in-home scan.

Maybe I should call in sick to work first.

She looked around the room.

Everything looks so normal. Except maybe the sunlight's coming in a little steeper than if I'd woken up when I ought to. What if ... nothing's really all that wrong with me?

It wasn't like she'd never fallen asleep on the couch before. You weren't supposed to make a habit of it, but it happened. Especially if you ran a little too much drinkware at a party or something.

Cord said the odds of a magnitude whatever whatevermajig happening were only once in a decade or a century, didn't he? And he's an expert who works in dream-feed management. Does it really make sense he might be wrong about that, and I'm going completely fray-wired less than two days after I met him and started crushroutining over him?

Bitsy felt herself calming down.

Maybe I don't even need to call in sick. Maybe I just need to call in and say I'll be late.

She reached for her phone...

And it buzzed and lit up.

And the call ID field said Cord.