in my phone-body tracked his breathing patterns and the way he shifted in bed, sighing and turning while beside him Troy lay still.
JD picked his phone off the floor, tethered to the wall by a charging cable. The screen came on, blue-white light shining over the bed, illuminating both JD and Troy so I could see them clearly.
“What are you doing?” Troy said, words dull and groggy.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. “Soo-hyun isn’t answering their phone, and Khoder hasn’t been online for hours. I’m worried.”
“You’re safe here.”
“What does that matter if the others aren’t?”
“You’re doing everything you can.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
Troy sighed. “You’re doing what you can without putting yourself at risk.”
JD didn’t respond. I counted eight seconds of silence before he spoke: “I should go to the police. They’ll find me soon anyway.”
“Prison isn’t safety.”
“What?”
“If you, Soo-hyun, and Khoder are arrested, you won’t be safe.” Troy shifted in bed to kiss JD’s shoulder. JD wrapped an arm around him, pressing my phone-face against Troy’s back.
>> Why are you worried about Khoder and Soo-hyun?
They stayed entwined for thirteen seconds. When JD moved his hand away, he saw my question. “Because they could be in trouble,” he said.
>> Many people are in trouble at this moment.
“You mean, why am I worried about these two in particular?”
>> Yes.
“I care about them. Khoder is a friend, and Soo-hyun is family.”
>> You are connected to them. But now you cannot connect.
“Exactly.”
>> What do get from this connection?
“It’s not about that. You don’t connect to people to get something—”
“You can,” Troy added.
“You can, but you shouldn’t,” JD said. “What do you get from connecting with me?”
“Me?” Troy asked.
“No, I’m talking to my phone.”
>> I learn things I might not otherwise have a chance to learn.
“Right,” JD said. “If you don’t connect with people and learn how their lives differ to yours, then you risk becoming self-absorbed, narcissistic. You can’t tell what a person is like until you spend time with them, and in finding out what they’re like, you learn other ways to be a human.”
“Person,” Troy said.
“What?”
“If you’re going to teach it ethics, you should use ‘person.’ A nonbiological intelligence could never be human, but it could be a person.”
JD smiled. “Does that mean you believe me now?”
“I don’t know,” Troy said, “but I do believe in good pedagogy.”
>> You connect with other people to learn other ways to be a person?
JD sighed. “People form relationships for a lot of different reasons, but if I had to boil it down, then yes.”
>> How many ways of being are there?
“As many as there are people,” Troy said.
>> What do you do when you learn these other ways of being?
“Try and figure out why life matters, why living matters.”
>> Life matters because of people?
“Life matters because it has to. Because it’s all we have.”
>> I’m not sure I understand.
“Me either, but I’m trying. And that’s what life is.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Enda rubbed the skin beneath each handcuff, massaging the inflamed red ridges of flesh. The interrogation room was the same as any of the dozen she had found herself in over the years. They were always furnished with the same anodized aluminum table and two chairs—invariably scuffed and battered from years, or even decades, of use and abuse. Sometimes the video cameras were visibly mounted in the corners of the room, but mostly they were hidden. The walls were always smooth cement or cinder block, and always painted a dark color—gray, navy blue, forest green one time in Brazil—but never black. One wall was always taken up by one-way glass, the reflection too-dark, like the image on a dying monitor.
Enda didn’t need to see her dim reflection to know how guilty she looked. The police had found her in a small room with a dead body and three injured thugs. Before she could get back to her investigation, they would need answers. But first, they would make her wait. In Enda’s experience, police interrogation tactics revolved around shouting or enforced waiting, with only a thin spectrum of actions between those two extremes. At least they didn’t beat suspects in Songdo. Too much surveillance.
The image of Osman’s battered face loomed again in her mind. She shut her eyes and saw it there, too. Harsh lemon scent of cleaning products seared Enda’s nose—beneath it, something feral, fear and rage sweated out by a thousand different bodies.
Her leg bounced beneath the table, unspent energy fluttering through her body looking for release. When one thigh began to ache, she swapped to the