Chapter Thirteen

 "Hello?" Bitsy said, breathlessly. (Because, she realized, she'd stared at the phone ringing for a good half-minute with her mouth hanging open and her heart pounding and somehow forgot to breathe the whole time).

Cord's image came on the screen though Bitsy had left her own chat camera off (having absolutely no idea what her hair might look like right now). His expression didn't look like that of someone delighted to make a phone call, which worried her even more than her possibly disastrous hair. "Bitsy?"

"Yes! Yes, it's me." She hit her forehead, then hoped it hadn't made a sound loud enough for him to hear. "Sorry my vid isn't on. I think my hair is probably a mess ... I've woken up so late!"

On the phone screen, Cord's mouth bent with an ambiguous twist. "I really wish I didn't have to tell you this, and don't be alarmed, but I already knew that."

Bitsy blinked several times. Then several more times for good measure.

"What?"

"I already knew that you woke up late. There are certain pieces of information that, if revealed to someone outside dream-feed management, we're required to report. That allows an assessment to be made on whether the recipient of the information can be trusted to keep it secret. I take my job very seriously, so I felt obligated to file the required datawork about our conversation at coffee yesterday morning. That automatically put you on a heightened dream-feed monitor setting, and when I came in to work this morning, they informed me that the system never registered a connection with you last night."

"Oh, Loj!" she gasped. "Have I gotten you in trouble? Ack, have I gotten me in trouble too?"

Cord sighed. "I almost wish that's why I was calling."

Bitsy's circulator turned over in her chest. "Oh my baud. I'm not glitching am I? Did I fall asleep on the couch and now I'm one of those magnitude-whatever something-or-others?"

"No, no, no," he said hurriedly. Then he grimaced and briefly pinched the bridge of his nose before going on to shake his head. "Look. Bitsy, I know you're concerned about your appearance, and I don't want to embarrass you, but could you  please put your vid on? This is a very awkward conversation for me, and it would really help a lot to see your face."

After a few quick flickers, Bitsy realized her eyes had gone back into blink mode. Stop that! she ordered them. She took several deep breaths, raked a hand through her hair a few times, decided that was useless, carbon-fibered herself, and touched her camera icon.

"Please tell me my hair is worse than whatever trouble I've stirred up for you."

He looked at her calmly through the screen before replying. His face seemed to settle itself. "Not remotely. I'm sure you'd rate it very differently yourself, but I could look at you all day with your hair in that condition."

More blinking on Bitsy's part.

"Unfortunately," Cord went on, "I'm going to have a very busy shift the rest of the day at work, so I'll need to be hanging up soon. Before I do, though, I need to ask you two things, one of them in a very awkward and probably confusing way, and the other in an only slightly less awkward but hopefully also less confusing way."

"Um ...." She found she hadn't a thought to even start, much less complete.

"All right. The first thing I can't give you an explanation for because it's related to my work. I don't actually want to ask it of you, and you should entirely feel free to say no. In fact, for a number of reasons, I would almost prefer you do so."

"Well, it didn't do any good for you to warn me about it being awkward and confusing, because that's one of the most confusing things I've ever been asked." She stopped for a moment, opened her mouth, closed it again, concentrated very hard on keeping her eyes from blinking, and went on, "Actually, I don't even know if I have been asked. Am I just supposed to say yes or no now? Or is there more to the question than that?"

Cord laughed, looking relieved, she thought, at being able to.

"There is more," he said after re-composing himself. "All right. Here it is, then. I am asking you, for reasons I can't let you in on, to stop using the dream-feed until I let you know otherwise."

Not only did Bitsy not blink in response, she found herself entirely frozen in place. She wondered if a single servo anywhere in her body still worked. On the phone screen, Cord waited patiently.

Did he really ask that? Why? Wouldn't it be terribly disturbing or even dangerous? How could I possibly do that? And he said I could say no, so I really ought to, oughtn't I? I mean, that would be crazy. It might even make me literally crazy!

Unable to even approach an answer, she shook herself and decided to procrastinate in the only way she could imagine.

"So ... then ... what's the second thing?" she asked, hoping the question would take him even longer than the first one had and give her time to think.

But when he asked it, the second question had an even more dramatically petrifying effect.

"Purely on a personal level, nothing to do with any of the rest of this ... would you please go to dinner with me tonight?"