Get ready for a thrilling ride into a future where robots and humans clash for control in RoboNomics, the updated and refreshed version of the 2013 sci-fi classic.
In Toronto, elementary school teacher Andrea Anderson's world crumbles when she's rep...
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A week comes and goes by the time I hear from Chris again. It's first thing in the morning on a Monday, as I stand in the shower letting the low-pressure water trickle down onto my head with my eyes firmly closed. An alien feeling pushed against my thoughts, and I open my eyes to a notification in my message center.
He's asking to meet at the Movement building as soon as possible.
I crank the handle in the shower stall, and the warm water goes from a trickle to a drip. My pulse trips over itself as I towel off, dry my hair and pull on some clothes.
He wants to strategize, no doubt. He wants to share some plan he's cooked up to best the bots. It's all business.
But he wants to share, and he wants to share with me. As I bundle up and walk to the streetcar stop, I picture the day the two of us spoke, all alone, in the Movement's meeting room, and the way he looked at me.
I stare out the window of the streetcar as the snowy streets pass by. I lean my head on the window of the automated vehicle and recall his blue eyes looking me up and down.
Lust crawls through my body like a virus. I hate the feeling.
I hated it even when I was single: the feeling of being off kilter, of thinking so often of a person that I can no longer tell what is real and when I'm daydreaming. I assumed unresolved, unrequited desire would disappear once Austin and I were engaged.
But boys and men of every sort still look at me the way he looked at me last week. Is it some animal pheromone that draws them to me? Am I more attractive than I believe?
It all started with Jonny Wong back in Mississauga. He was my friend in junior high, when no one else would talk to me. We'd hang out in the computer lab, laughing and talking. Programming pranks that would pop up on the teacher's smartphone in his office. We hung out in his bedroom, too, after school. Playing video games.
Then he had to ruin it by trying to kiss me.
Next came my biggest regret: Matt. We were in the same department in university. We dated for a long time and stumbled through losing our virginity together.
But we had to part ways. I stopped playing video games because of Jonny. I stopped poking at the guts of computers because of Matt.
Then came Austin. And I thought that would be the end of men for me.
But now Chris looks at me with lust. Even though he's arrogant and stubborn – even though I should be disgusted, I can't deny that I like it.
I can't look at Chris with all this need coursing through my veins. This little bit of nothing, this shed of hope that I cling to. I'm afraid that if I look at him, he'll know what I'm thinking. I'll try to avoid his eyes, knowing that I won't be able to.
