Author: Rachel Geman

“So, yes, I can go? Mom! Hello!” Lara looked at Kate expectantly.

“Where?” Kate asked.

“Upstate. The mushroom hunt. You promised. Everyone is going. You SAID I could go.”

Kate fiddled with the slime-covered handle of the lilac mug. A second ago she could have sworn it was corporate branded.

“YOU said I could go.”

Giving in felt pre-ordained

“You said I could GO!” Lara softened. “Please, it would make me so happy.”

Kate relented.

** ** **

“She wants to read the line three different ways to decide. That ok?”

“Long as no overtime, and please don’t let her steal the mug.”

** ** **

That weekend Kate took a friend’s advice to travel as well. A metallic taste reminded her of pregnancy. Kate arrived at “Tandem” at twilight to bike with the last group. At a market during an unplanned rest—one rider’s inflammation level was in zone orange—Kate selected a water box and some protein. She wondered whether Lara was hydrating and whether Kate’s own adventurousness would make Lara more careful in subconscious preservation of parent-child balance.

At dark, the bikers had to decide: continue, make camp, or split the bike four and four. Kate feared choices.

“I’m so very sorry in a way that our words cannot express, but the time to choose is now.”

Who said that? Kate demanded, heart pounding, before the night swallowed her.

** ** **

She woke up to the strong sun, among a group of four, re-closing her eyes as a couple described a diner to the man who needed the rest. The voices deepened. With all the new elements, was there a balloon that was the opposite of Helium?

“We’ll get more work done.”

“I’d love some air.”

“Someone needs to monitor these clients, we’re down a person.”

Four, Kate, mentally corrected, they were down four people. The metal was back.

** ** **

“He mined the profits. Company’s in receivership. We have orders to stand by. Diner?”

“We’ll get more work done with delivery.”

“True, though I’d love some air.”

“As long as the diner, fine.”

“Someone needs to monitor these clients, we’re down a person.”

** ** **
The foursome arrived at a fruit and bug stand in front of a field of gleaming corn. No one was around. A loud rustling made Kate’s throat tighten. Two people emerged from the field, one swatting flies, his hands propeller like, the other still even in forward movement, her hands by her sides. Lara.

“Lara?” CRISIS, Kate thought, there was a crisis, and Lara had come to find her. But that was not how things worked, was it, the child finding the lost mother?

Lara remained inert. Kate feared the worst, travel with a strange man, trauma-based inversion.

“Mayday. Cut it,” she heard, then her phone beeped. A video call, Lara, fluid and relaxed. And far away. “Mom, you look weird!”

Kate looked from the phone to the Lara right in front of her, confused. Her vision blurred, then nothing but a sea of metal and buzzing.

** ** **

During the children’s pandemic, some spent their life savings for even one year in the virtual machine. A baby who died at one would be two. Lara died at 11. Kate, wealthy enough, selected the indefinite option.

A former child model with an extensive digital footprint, Lara was ripe for desperate copying by the Loss Prevention department as company assets disappeared

Kate was offered three children as a settlement, but opted to die a quick death in a freak biking accident when Lara was 16.