Inside the Fire

Chapter 11: Search

   Song to listen to: Peace of Mind

     I wear the clothes she gave me, the pants fit, but are a little long, the sweater swallows me, but I think that's the point. After arriving back into my room, I had tried to fall asleep again, but had instead spent the night scouring Tom's memories for any clue that had any idea who I was. When that had failed, I relooked over them to try to help me for my first day of work today. Fai had made it clear yesterday that I would be in some sort of customer service position, and I have no people skills. If I can't relate to even my new coworker, how am I supposed to interact well enough with people to put them at ease?
    She must be running late, or I think she might be. Even though I can read everyone's minds, I still don't have access to a clock. For the most part, peoples brains barely register time, all I'm able to observe, is that suddenly their heart will pick up tempo when they observe the numbers in whichever device they glance at. And hers had just begun beating an extra couple beats a minutes, along with her fingers clumsily finishing up what she was doing with her hair. Fai exits her room in a rush, and runs down the stairs, I can hear the hydraulics in her legs pumping, making up for time. She collects herself at the final stairs, her thoughts calming at another glance at her watch, she takes a steadying breath before opening the door.
    Relief flits through her eyes when she catches me waiting for her by the door. I try a friendly smile to help put her at ease, she is my ticket at getting better with interacting with other humans. She gives a courteous smile in return.
    "Are you ready to work?" She asks.
    'He really is very cute, management will be proud." She thinks.
    "Of course." It hurts to maintain the smile, of course all she cares about is her job.
    I follow her out of the door, despite her forced interaction with me yesterday, I don't think she likes conversation. We walk quietly together to her place of work, every once in a while she would point across a street we'd need to cross as she pause at the edge of side walk. Only once did she put her arm across my chest to keep me from crossing the street. Apparently normal humans don't cross until the lanes of through traffic have shifted. So the mildly suicidal thoughts of the ones who did cross while the occasional vehicle passed by were unusual individuals. Something in the way her arm shot out, an automatic response, and the expression that was both concern and rage. I think she's watched people die from stupid mistakes before. I could almost see their faces in her mind at the moment of contact, but there were so many, I can't be sure if I'm right or she has lead a very depressing life.

A dog runs across our path, large and well muscled, with pouches hanging off it's sides. She waits for it with mild impatience. After we've gone past from where it had interrupted our fast walk, I try for small talk.

    "What was that about?" I ask, gesturing towards the dog running into a building, the door opening automatically.

    "What was what?" She looks over her shoulder as the dogs tail disappears through the door.

    "The dog with the back packs, isn't that unusual?" I clarify.

    She glances at me at though I've said something strange, have I?

    "That was a delivery dog." Her eyebrows compress, and her mind is perplexed at having to explain this, "They were initiated again some time last year. We had them in place a few hundred years ago, but there was a lot of civil out cry about it, so the national program was shut down. Until recently, when studies had actually proven that dogs do need jobs." 

    Fai rolls her eyes,

    "So, the government put the program back into action. And it wasn't until last year that they started putting the dogs out, after training them to obey traffic laws, ect." 

    She says all this so matter-of-fact, like it was some dull news. How had Tom not heard of this. He does have vague memories of learning about the riots to stop using the dogs as free labor, but nothing of the reinstatement of them. Maybe I'm to blame for his lack of current knowledge, he was rather busy with watching me during that time frame, and when he wasn't at work, he was thinking about work.