Number 236 Alliance Road was by far the nicest place. It was a whole storey taller than the other places on the street. It had trellis on the outside with pretty roses and ivy, and nice pillars over the entrance and tall windows with shutters of wood with lichen growing on it. The only problem was Adam Turing was already in there, and Adam had to go.
I went inside to claim my prize, lighting the way with my org. I found the kitchen, stroked the empty fridge, the cold oven, the insinkerator, the hollow cupboards, a benchtop with a fruit bowl that just had a black stain on the bottom. I inhaled the plasticy aroma which told me the people who had fled here, with a mech bank coming to claim their belongings, hadn't lived here that long. They might've flushed out some previous people who went bankrupt. I stroked the windowsills. There was nothing on my fingertip. No skin cells, no hair. It reminded me, Mr Mo had us study this textbook called Our Final Invention, before the mechs decided Mr Mo was redundant. The reason they called mechs our final invention was–
'Eden. You look like you've never seen a kitchen before.' Adam came into view, lit up by the square hologram of his organiser. His face was a blue globe covered in continents of shadow. Big bouffy hair like a hot air balloon with that twig-body floating beneath it.
'God you spooked me! Listen, Watson said you saved this house for me, or something? Is that true?'
'You gave me bread and cabbage; I give you a home.'
I blurted laughter and had to catch my body by putting my hands on the breakfast bar. 'What movie's that from? Very romantic. Oi, if you want Maeve, she's lurking outside like a stray dog. She needs a boyfriend BAD.'
'I don't want Maeve.'
I wasn't afraid of Adam. The little orphan HAD to get out of my house.
'You don't have a boyfriend. You're "available," as they say.'
'How would you know?'
'I've studied you.'
'Umm, exCUSE me? Chan and me are complicated, okay.'
'I take it the complication you're referring to is Esther Wadlow.'
'That bitch ain't a threat to me. I'm just, um, I'm just lending her Chan til I'm ready.'
'Come. Sit.' He flicked his hand towards a pair of dining chairs.
'Where'd you get chairs?'
'I am resourceful,' he said, arms behind his back, strolling as he did his hard-out speech like one of those tech gurus launching a new Apple product. 'The people who fled these places when the Mech-controlled banks repossessed everything, they didn't have the capacity to take much more than a single stuffed car. They took their children, their heirlooms. Many people tossed furniture into the attic or inaccessible parts of the roof to make it difficult for the repo men.'
'You went all the way onto the roof to get me something to sit on?'
'I don't want my princess to feel her palace is empty.'
'That's… I guess there's something sweet about that.'
I leaned in to give him an air kiss, because no one was around to see, then I stopped and thought, What the hell?! Get a grip, Edie. Yeah this was a million dollar house, but my self-respect was worth a billion.
'Give me the tour,' I said, to break up the awkwardness. 'Then you can scram. Or stay, I guess. You got me the place, you could, um, you could bring me furniture? And drinks and stuff?'
Adam told me he'd found a rainwater tank and turned it on. The mechs could literally stop or start the rain in here, since they controlled the weather, but once the rain landed in a tank controlled by manual valves, they couldn't do anything. We went upstairs and toured the bedrooms. Adam made a big show of pointing out the "couples' bedroom," as he called it. Master bedroom, more like – and I was the master. We went in. I nosied in the cupboard. He brought me a glass of water from the gross roof tank then took me onto a balcony he'd discovered on a tiny ledge three floors up. This was definitely a worthy house for me.
Adam pulled the last can of bourbon and cola from his pocket. 'You deserve this,' he whispered.
The view from the balcony was soothing and I was exhausted. I was grateful Adam had found chairs for us to collapse into. I glugged my bourbon and Coke. I got woozy. It was buzzy, peering down a street populated by my friends. Everyone looked like fireflies, their organisers spilling a glow out the windows as they settled into their new homes. At number 11 we watched Anya practising big roundhouse kicks until she smashed the letterbox with her foot. We heard Eli rehearsing some sort of sermon, and noticed him bowing and waving and gesturing, obviously lining up something impressive for breakfast-time. We saw Fatima pacing around her balcony, pressing the canned laughter sound effect on her org, practising some stand-up comedy routine to an audience of chirping crickets. Our eyes grew used to the moonlight, how it made the colours change. At night the grass was brown, the hedges violet, the horizon purple, the stars pale blue. No dad staying up til 3am sweating over a presentation to impress some AI. No Mumshine throwing her lesson plans against the wall and sobbing that it's all useless and her days are numbered.
I sipped my can of sweet alcohol and thought: this is what our apocalypse will be like. No explosions –just a sleepy, silent takeover. It might've already begun.
Actually – it might already be over.
'That kiss, before,' Adam said, interrupting my trance, 'the er – how shall I say – almost-kiss. I want to thank you.'
'You can thank me by shutting the hell up about it.' I looked down into the neighbourhood. I hoped Chan was watching from number 8, the place with the ramp he'd wheeled Es up. Chan needed to witness my revenge on him, or pre-venge, really. Chan needed to know if he was going to miss his opportunity with me, that opportunity would go to somebody else.
'Thank me, thank me… Loverboy, you can thank me with, I don��t know… a hot tub? That'd be nice? But how would you go about that? Hmm. I like mosaics. Get me some mosaics.'
'Deal.' He seized my shoulders, cradled my head, and began sucking my neck. I flinched and wriggled him off. Then he started sucking again. Screw it. No one could see us. What was being offered wasn't Chan, but it wasn't bad.
He moved around and his lips crawled onto mine, and I didn't say no, and he waltzed me to a room with a bed with a mattress, and I told him he'd seriously better pay me back for all this, the thing that was about to happen.
NO, my brain flashed at me. You can say NO any time. Just say it.
Say NO.
Say NO and stay a virgin forever.
I gasped and pulled my neck away. 'If I go to bed with you, you don't say anything about it unless I let you. You don't tell no one. Got it?'
'If you so desire.'
'And don't tell Maeve, just tell her… I dunno. I'll think of something. Just get it over with. Has that bed even got anything on it? We need blankets and stuff, dude. We can't just do it out in the open.'
Adam put his finger on my lips and shushed me. It was so corny and I was so drunk I laughed, doubling over. Adam pulled one of the curtains off the window, the curtain hooks flicking off, ping-ping-ping, and he draped the curtain on the bed. Luckily it was a thick, fluffy velour curtain. He put the fluffy side over us as I pulled my pants down, littering the fitted sheet with dust from the dried mud on my knees.
'Are you cold? Do you need more warmth?'
'I don't need any warmth. Mahonyland feels air conditioned, have you noticed? We could sleep on the roof.'
'If that's your desire.'
'QUIT SAYING THAT. And don't kiss me so much, alright, Adam?'
In eight hours I was going to get a million bucks, but seeing Maeve's face when I told her I'd lost my V Card, and not telling her who I'd done it with, yeah. That'd be worth a billion. I thought of money as we did our thing on a cold king size bed belonging to people who could be anywhere, now. Dead. In a cult in the mountains. On Mars with that Luddite revolutionary cult rebuilding humanity from scratch after they lost the Battle of Silicon Valley and had to retreat.
I wondered about my parents' mortgage. I wondered about my millions. Then, just after Adam rolled off me, I wondered if there were any condoms in this place.