I finally worked up the courage to answer: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”
“Of all the hoary clichés… Just tell me what happened!”
Glaring past the distraction of the magnetic car’s holographically enhanced dash, I narrowed my eyes at the “driver.” She was busy swiping through her…I had to grant…truly impressive research results. The mag car drove itself.
“Context,” I continued, dripping sarcasm so acidic I imagined we’d soon be looking at thin air through the holes it left in the floor, “is de rigueur if one actually wishes to understand what one researchs…”
Predictably, she rolled her eyes.
I gulped. Even my not-inconsiderable disdain for her was inadequate shelter. Did I really, finally, have to tell someone this…thing…that happened all the way back in 2020?
“Def stalling,” she spat. “Let’s make it simple: Did you, or did you not, kill your previous wife?”
“What diff can it make now?” escaped me before I could catch myself.
Mistake. She even stopped swiping long enough to nail me with those impossibly, unrealistically green eyes.
“I mean…” Fuck. Without the advantage of my far, far superior grasp of nuances about which she was utterly clueless, how could I make her see? “You have to understand the time and place…and circumstances. I know this can be hard for you but…”
“Yes or no!”
“Well… Yes. But you have to understand!”
“Understand what?”
I looked down from those impossibly green eyes. Sure, she was gorgeous; I was about to pay a fortune for an android of the very highest quality. Goddamn all those android-rights do-gooders that granted her any fucking choice in the matter!
“Understand what?” she repeated.
Finally I just shrugged. “My previous wife… She voted for Trump.”
