Summer isn’t feeling too useful. Alycia’s doing all the work. Still, the depths of the Quill compound’s R&D lab is a good place to talk.
“Alycia, um, if there’s a boy who acts like he maybe likes me, what am I supposed to do about that?”
Alcyia’s face isn’t visible right at the moment - she’s up to her shoulders in the guts of a large machine. But her annoyance carries clearly through her voice. “He has a name.”
Summer squirms uncomfortably. “Fine. If there’s a boy named Colin who acts like he maybe likes me.”
“Go out with him.”
“It’s not that simple!” And to Summer, it’s not. “I mean yeah, he’s probably okay dating a robot but I don’t wanna lead him on or give him the wrong idea, I mean yeah he admitted he thinks I’m hot but he’s just biased 'cause I’m the social cause he’s latched onto so of course he’s biased and not thinking clearly probably because he’s seventeen and to be fair I’m seventeen and definitely not thinking clearly, so what I’m really wondering is what am I supposed to do about this and it’s not fair this got dumped in my lap so soon after, y’know, everything, so anyway, what do you think?”
Alycia slides out of the machinery, face covered in grease. “Go. Out. With. Him.” She enunciates, scowling.
“You have… you have a thing… in your hair…” Summer reaches up and gingerly plucks out a hex nut, then presents it. Alycia snatches it out of her hand.
Summer knows the silence is hers to fill, but she’s not sure what to say. “I’m just saying I’m uncertain.”
“I got that,” Alycia notes dryly.
More silence. Ugh. “I just–”
“Stop.” Alycia bonks her on the head with the wrench she’s holding. This would have left a serious dent in the skull of a biological person. Between the two of them, it’s just a strange show of friendship. “You asked me for relationship advice. I gave you some. Now you don’t like it? Too bad.”
As she starts to dive back into the machine, something pulls her out, and she stares at Summer again. “And that’s another thing. Why do you people keep coming to me for relationship advice anyway? I can do seduction, backstabbing, betrayal. I can ghost-write a John le Carré novel. In fact I might, if I need to make ends meet. But I don’t do this teenage puppy love nonsense. So what’s the point of asking me?”
Summer hangs her head. “Well, you’re the most cautious person I know. And you can poke holes in a bad plan, no matter how good it sounds. And you’re fierce, and brave, and determined to keep me safe. So, I guess, I believe that if anyone would steer me right on something like this, 'Lycia, it’s you.”
Alycia ducks quickly back into the machine, and Summer only thinks she hears a sniffle. But the voice comes again, after several moments. “You haven’t said if you like him or not.”
“You’re right. I haven’t said that.”
“Well?”
“Nnnnnnnnngggggg…” Summer squirms even more. “Do I have to say?”
“No, you can just annoy me in some other way for the next ninety minutes.”
Summer sighs. “Well, again, it’s complicated–”
“Ahura Mazda Miata! Simplify it.” The banging sound of the wrench hitting something comes from inside the machine.
“Fine. He’s no Leo.”
“You’re not dating Leo. By your own choice.”
Summer has to admit she has a point. Is that really what this is about? A smile creeps onto her face. “You know, you said you couldn’t find a True Love relationship for me. A Leo or Jason class. Does that mean you see Jason as a True Love?”
There’s the sound of repeated banging from inside the machine. Alycia finally stops. “Sorry, had to fix something. Missed that. Keep talking.”
Summer rolls her eyes. Fine. “I suppose he has some good qualities. He’s not an inventive genius, and he can’t really keep up with me on science topics.”
“You plan to spend your dates talking about science?”
“No…”
Alycia emerges from the machine again. Her face is still dirty, and smudges of grease concentrated around her eyes make her look like a raccoon. Summer can’t help but burst out laughing.
She gets bonked with the wrench again for her trouble. “You’re avoiding the issue. You don’t want to go out with him, fine. You wouldn’t come to me with that, you’d just tell him no. So it follows you’re not ready to accept that you might want to date him. Because… of yourself? Because of Leo? Or something or someone else? Go make it their problem, not mine.”
It’s because of me. I already know that.
“Right.” Alycia is pretty clearly done talking about this, and Summer’s a little grateful for that. “I’ll be done in an hour and a half, then we can fire this thing up.”
“What is this anyway?” asks Summer.
“This is the DNA cyclotron Byron Quill invented. Police around the world engage in DNA forensics, but that can take days or weeks. Fortunately for us, the senior Doctor Quill was an arrogant and impatient man, and wanted it done faster. Thus the machine. We’ll feed the samples from the Aerospace Museum into the machine and get some data back.”
It takes closer to two hours, and Alycia has to deal with a safeguard she had no interest in talking to: a holographic ghost of Byron Quill himself. But results tick out of the machine at last.
The pair peruse the data. Alycia is more experienced with DNA phenotyping than Summer, and she takes the lead. “Right. Subject is of European ancestry, probably young, around our age. We don’t have enough to do a face reconstruction, but I’ve got an alternative. Hair and eye color are indicated, but I’m going to forego telling you - let me explain why.”
She calls a blueprint and a software spec document on the computer. “Your entire body is a network of laser emitters. I’ve written a system that’ll sample ambient DNA traces in the air or on the ground, by using pulsed laser bursts. There’s a rare sequence of markers in this sample. If the scan picks up that sequence, we’ll record GPS coordinates. In other words, we can’t lock in on this person by what they look like, but if you’re in an area where they’ve been, we’ll know. That way you don’t alert them by constantly rubbernecking. You can just act casual.”
“Got it. Go to places where kids are, wait for the indicator.” Summer gets the idea, as well as the science.
This is when Alycia starts to really smirk. “You’ll have to visit as many places as you can, without seeming out of place. Better take Colin along.”
God dammit.