EDGE OF DAY

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"He's going to be tampering with my brain, and he's never done it before. Oh yeah, sorry about the pessimism."

The shikshak slapped his thighs. "I like her! People never want to be implanted with weak, self-doubting personalities. But there is something very authentic about it."

"Yes, it resembles nearly every human being on earth except for William here," she said, pointing her thumb. Will grinned.

"She is calling you William," the shikshak said, winking at Will. Day abstained from rolling her eyes and pursed her lips.

"Is it a good sign?" Will asked.

"It means the implant extraction will go exceedingly well!"

Will laughed.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Day muttered.

"Ah, here is our tea." The actress droid entered the vast lounge, reminiscent of a square in some quaint ancient village. She lay out a beautiful cup for each of them, an exquisitely designed t-pot and a jar full of leaves.

The shishak clipped open the jar and extracted a tea-leaf with a pair of tweezers. It would take ten minutes just to get the tea leafs into the strainer.

"Look, I'm sorry," Day said, slipping to the edge of her seat. "We really don't have time for this. There's a police droid crashed right in front of this building and a police helicopter was following us and I really think if we want to do this, we should do it now."

"All right, then," the shikshak said. He rose, and Day and Will followed him down a long hall into a concave room. The rounded half of the room had floor to ceiling windows. There were doors at both ends, and three transparent machines. One machine resembled a jellyfish with tentacles made from tubes of light that were sucked up inside its bell-shaped mold.

The shikshak noticed Day staring. "This is Sarah," he said moving to the jellyfish and placing a hand on top of it, which meant reaching up almost as high as his own head. "Sarah, this is Day."

Light pulsed inside the machine. "Hello, Day," an electronic voice said. The opaque fabric of the machine seemed to vibrate and though the voice sounded electronic it also sounded musical.

"Sarah is utterly unique," the shikshak said. "I designed her myself from some research and experiments I have been doing into foreign wave packs of energy altering our atmosphere."

A nurse droid in the corner of the room came to life. She walked to a hidden wall cabinet and took something out. "When you and Will came here six months ago," the shikshak continued, "I began extending Sarah's capacities so that not only could she go out into the atmosphere, identify and dissolve the malign, foreign electromagnetic wavelengths, but so she could delve into your mind and dissolve the foreign magnetic wavelengths of the personality implant."

The complicated science of his explanation was a difficult wall to climb, but where Day's attention really got stuck was on the fact that she and Will, or rather Monday and Will, had been here before.

For some reason it surprised her.

The nurse droid crossed the room and held out a pair of opaque pants and rubber bra-band. "You may come and change over here," she said.

A cylinder rose out of the ground forming a cubicle. One side of it opened. Day took the rubber knickers and bra-band from the droid, and stepped into the half circle, and it swished closed around her. Inside the cubicle, the opaque walls shone with soft light.

Day stared at the rubber knickers and bra-band. She might not have rushed things along if she knew this was what was waiting for her. This might be a tad embarrassing.