Inhabited - chapter 9 (with images) (Patreon)

Wednesday begins with the wail. A high, thin siren cutting through the dark before the physical dimensions of the room have even settled.

She pushes up off the dipping mattress. The letdown sensation runs through her breasts, a short, violent circuit of biology overriding conscious thought. Then the damp cold spreads across the front of the large t-shirt. A cloying wetness clings to the skin.

She strips it off before she reaches the crib, leaving the wet cotton in a crumpled pile on the linoleum.

She lifts Mia. The dense warm weight is expected now. Sturdy and frantic in the dark. She sits in the wooden glider chair. The latch, the pinch - she knows these now. The letdown comes and takes her shoulders with it. The thirst follows. She reaches for the glass of water she had thought to leave on the floor beside the chair last night.

When the baby finishes, the rhythm of her small swallows slowing to a halt, she burps her against her shoulder. She lays her back down in the crib.

She reaches under the desk for the gray canvas bag.

She hooks herself up to the clear plastic tubing. The hard funnels press tight against the skin.

Whir-suck. Whir-suck.

The mechanical yanking is just as invasive, just as clinical, but she has the routine down. She drinks a tall glass of tap water while the machine empties the left breast, watching the pale streams pool in the bottle below. She counts the ounces. Two and a half. She caps the bottle and labels it with the time, using the marker hanging from the bag on a piece of string, which she did not know was there until her hand found it.

The morning manages itself. She gets Jacob dressed in faded jeans and a sweatshirt - fever down for twenty-four hours now, school's clear. She gets him out the door to the yellow bus without grabbing the wrong shoes first. The cold air in the stairwell bites at her ankles.

Back upstairs. Mia rides the shelf of her hip, the spine adjusting around the weight. She logs into the NovaSphere support queue and runs the scripts with a flat, efficient rhythm.

"NovaSphere support, my name is Ruth. How can I help you today?"

The hours go by in reset codes and firmware complaints.

By two o'clock, the apartment is quiet. Mia is asleep in the crib. The queue is paused.

She walks into the bedroom and locks the heavy brass deadbolt.

She needs to go back to the basement room.

She lies on the bed. Slides the halo array over her temples. Pulls the heavy visor down.

The white-out. The digital architecture renders around her.

She spawns near the entrance of the unlisted community board. The rough gray-green walls. The submerged lighting.

There are fewer avatars today. Maybe fifteen. Philippa is there, standing near a cluster of gray blocks, talking to a man in a default skin.

She walks directly toward them.

She isn't Diane today. She is Ruth, and Ruth belongs here. Ruth has social capital in this space. The confidence is borrowed but undeniable.

The man finishes talking and walks away. Philippa turns her head as she approaches.

"Hey," Philippa says.

"Hey," she says. She keeps Ruth's voice low, steady.

"You look like you need a week off." Said the way Philippa says everything - even, weighed, as though she'd been holding the observation a moment before letting it out. The system translates Ruth's physical fatigue into a subtle slump in the avatar's shoulders.

The body has noticed it. A small, pointless warmth somewhere under the sternum. Probably Philippa pays everyone this kind of attention. Probably this is just what Philippa is.

"I need a month off." She leans against the wall next to Philippa. "The queue is a mess. The new firmware is hanging on the startup sequence."

"I heard." Philippa crosses her arms. "They're rolling back the patch tonight. Or trying to."

She nods. She waits a beat. She has to do this carefully. The approach cannot feel like an interrogation.

"I saw something weird in the raw logs yesterday," she says. She keeps her tone conversational, the way a support tech might complain about a glitch to a colleague. "A ticket came in about a dissociation event. Really detailed. Then it got stripped before it hit my queue. Rerouted to a null bucket."

Philippa doesn't move. Her digital face is perfectly still.

"They hardcoded a drop at the intake server," she continues, pressing gently. "Any ticket with the keywords gets bounced. Bypasses Tier-2 entirely."

Philippa looks at her. "You pulled the raw input log?"

"I was bored."

Philippa stays quiet for a long moment. The silence in the digital room feels heavier than the silence in the physical apartment.

"There's a guy who was looking into that," Philippa says finally. Her voice drops a fraction.

The adrenaline spikes in her chest. Nothing to do with lactation. Nothing to do with exhaustion. Something she recognizes from before, though she cannot place when.

"A journalist," Philippa says. "He was in here a couple of weeks ago asking pointed questions about the dissociation events. Knew enough to be working from the inside of the architecture, not just describing the symptoms."

"What was he working on?"

"He didn't say outright. He had a theory about the handshake protocol failing during high-load transitions. He was trying to confirm it."

She remembers the cached forum thread from Cara's apartment. The deep, obsessive technical dive. The vulnerability.

"What's his name?"

"Michael Osei. He had a byline at one of the trade outlets." Philippa watches a group of avatars near the center of the room. "He pinged me last week to set up a follow-up call. Then he didn't show. He hasn't been on this subnet since either."

"Last week."

"Yeah. Maybe nine, ten days. I figured he was chasing a different lead. But someone else came around on his thread two days ago - different account, asking if anyone had heard from him. Apparently he missed a meeting with a source on Friday." Philippa shrugs. "Could be nothing. People go quiet for all kinds of reasons."

Michael Osei. Something in the name catches at her, and she can't say why.

"You think they got to him?" she asks.

"I don't have evidence of anything."

She nods slowly.

"Don't go digging in the raw logs anymore, Ruth," Philippa says, her tone shifting back to the moderator's. "They track admin access. We need you on the inside."

"I know."

"And don't ask after him by name. Not in here. Not on a support call. If he turned something up, the people he turned it up against are listening."

"Understood."

Philippa watches her for another second. Then her attention shifts past her to someone approaching from the other side of the room, and the conversation is over.

She brings up the menu and hits disconnect.

The white-out. The stained ceiling fades back in.

She pulls the visor off. Her heart is beating fast. She has a name. He went dark about a week ago, a little more. The same week she did.

She sits up. The right breast is throbbing - not urgent yet, but building. She has maybe two hours. She ignores it.

The afternoon relay race starts.

Jacob bursts through the door at three-thirty. He drops his backpack with a heavy thud.

She peels him a banana. He takes it without looking at her, climbs onto the sofa, and eats it in four bites with a focused, animal efficiency. A small arc of banana lands on his chin. He doesn't notice. She reaches over and wipes it away with her thumb, and he tilts his face toward her hand for a half-second before he's already looking back at the television, already somewhere else. She pulls her hand back. Something in that half-second lands in her chest.

The apartment walls feel close today. The trapped, vibrating energy of the five-year-old bouncing off the peeling paint. She decides they need air.

She packs them both into the double stroller. It is a massive, unwieldy piece of plastic and canvas that requires kicking a latch three times before it finally locks into shape. Mia fusses as the straps go over her shoulders.

The walk to a nearby park takes twenty minutes. The stroller is heavy. The front left wheel catches on every uneven crack in the pavement, sending a jarring shock up her forearms. The cold air bites through the large sweatshirt. The breasts are swinging, heavy and gorged, the bra doing very little to brace the weight. The skin of her chest feels stretched tight.

She reaches the park. Largely empty, just a few scattered figures braving the chill.

She parks the stroller near the edge of the playground.

She unbuckles Jacob, and he immediately sprints toward a rusted climbing structure. She sits down on a cold wooden bench. Mia stays swaddled in a thick fleece blanket in the second seat of the stroller, quiet.

She sits there alone. The cold seeps through her jeans.

She has the name. Michael Osei. It is sitting in her head doing nothing - she cannot touch it tonight, the baby will need feeding in an hour and Jacob will need to eat. Across the playground, another mother stares at her phone while pushing a swing with one hand. Neither of them looks over. The silence between the two benches is a kind of agreement.

The right breast is throbbing with a dull, insistent rhythm. The body demanding her return to the apartment.

She stands to call Jacob. As she does, her coat falls open. She can feel it: the bra shifts under the sweatshirt, the weight and shape of what's underneath suddenly visible to her in the cold air in a way it isn't when she's indoors. A man walking a dog passes the edge of the playground. She doesn't look at him directly. She pulls the coat closed.

"Jacob." He looks up. His face turns red with the sudden grievance of leaving the playground. She bribes him into the seat with a crushed granola bar found in the bottom of her coat pocket.

She pushes the heavy stroller back to the walkup.

When they get back inside, she sheds the heavy coats. The apartment is warm. Comfortable.

She braces for the evening. The noise, the demands, the physical stamina required to keep these two small humans alive until bedtime.

But Jacob doesn't run screaming down the hallway. He sits on the area rug in the living room and dumps a plastic bin of building blocks onto the floor.

She watches him for a second. The exhaustion is still there, pooling in her joints, but something else surfaces.

A quiet softening in the chest.

She doesn't go to the desk. She sits down on the floor next to him.

Jacob looks up, surprised. She doesn't usually sit on the floor.

"What are we building?" she asks. Her voice is Ruth's, but the tone is different. Gentler.

"A garage," Jacob says seriously. He hands her a green square block. "For the police car."

She takes the block. She starts snapping pieces together. The plastic edges are sharp, the colors loud. They build a lopsided, structurally unsound square. Jacob drives a small plastic car through the opening, making a low humming noise in the back of his throat.

It is peaceful. The frantic buzzing in the back of her skull slows to a crawl.

Mia is on the floor nearby. Twelve months old. She has been crawling with a frantic, uncoordinated speed for weeks, pulling herself up on the edge of the sofa and crying when she gets stuck.

Right now, she is pulling up on the edge of the cheap MDF television stand. Sturdy little legs bowing slightly under the thick padding of the diaper. Her small hands grip the faux-wood finish.

She sits on the carpet, her back against the lower edge of the sofa, watching. Jacob is crashing the police car into the green blocks.

Mia stands there, gripping the edge. Then she lets go with one hand.

She wavers. The diaper makes her bottom-heavy.

She lets go with the other hand.

She stands entirely unsupported, swaying slightly. Her arms go out for balance.

The room stops. Jacob stops making the car noise.

Mia takes a step.

The small bare foot comes down flat and hard on the linoleum. The knee locks.

Then she brings the other foot forward.

Something in the chest breaks. Not letdown — this is different, sharp and up instead of down. Her throat closes. Her eyes sting. She gasps out loud before she knows she is going to.

It is Ruth's feeling. She reaches her arms out.

Mia takes a third step, wobbles violently, and pitches forward.

She catches her. The solid warm weight falls into her hands and she crushes the baby to her chest.

She is laughing. She presses her face into the soft curls on top of Mia's head, smelling baby shampoo and warm skin. Jacob cheers loudly from the blocks, clapping his hands. For ten minutes she isn't doing anything else. She is a mother on a rug, holding a child who just learned how to walk.

The euphoria lasts through dinner. It softens the edges of the bath time. She kneels on the damp towel on the graying grout, but her back doesn't seem to scream as loudly.

By eight-thirty, she gets Jacob into pajamas and reads him the dinosaur book again. He falls asleep against her shoulder, his breathing evening into a deep, rhythmic pull.

She puts Mia down in the crib. The baby doesn't fight it tonight. She rolls onto her stomach and is gone.

She walks out to the living room.

The gray canvas bag is sitting under the desk.

She knows she should pump. The breasts are filling, the skin tight and hot. But she looks at the plastic tubing, the hard funnels, the motor block, and feels a sudden revulsion. The mechanical yanking. The indignity of being tethered to a machine.

She doesn't want to do it. She wants to be done.

She pushes the bathroom door closed behind her. There is no novelty left in this room. The first morning, the mirror had been a shock - the unfamiliar architecture of the face, the hair loose around it. Tonight, she doesn't even look up at the glass.

She strips off the large sweatshirt. The collar is stained with a faint smear of dried apple juice. The sweatpants follow, dropping to the graying linoleum. She reaches behind to unhook the bra. The thick elastic has dug deep, angry red trenches into her ribcage. When the clasp gives, the sudden lack of restriction is both a relief and a different kind of punishment. The breasts drop. They are heavy, the weight of them aching up into her shoulders.

She turns the shower handle. The showerhead spits out a stream of scalding water.

She steps under it. The heat hits her shoulders and triggers the biological tripwire. The letdown is not a surprise anymore; it is just a weary inevitability. A dull rushing ache. She looks down, watching the thin pale streams of milk leak from her nipples, mixing with the body wash and swirling down the drain. It is just plumbing now.

She leans her forehead against the cold, wet tile. Her thighs are trembling, a faint uncontrollable vibration left over from pushing the heavy stroller all the way to Hamilton Park and back. Three days catching up at once.

She stays under the spray until the hot water begins to thin out, turning lukewarm against her skin.

She dries off, avoiding rubbing the cotton across her chest. The nipples are raw, hypersensitized from the friction of the pump and the baby's frantic latching. The slightest graze feels like sandpaper. She pulls on a pair of pajama shorts and a loose tank top.

The hallway is dark. She stops in the doorway of Jacob's room. He is sprawled diagonally across his twin bed, the blankets kicked off, one foot dangling near the floor. His breathing is a soft, wet saw in the quiet room. She watches his small chest rise and fall.

She moves to the master bedroom. The crib is a cage of shadows in the corner. Mia is asleep on her stomach, her knees tucked up under her, her small fists curled near her face.

She climbs into the bed. The mattress groans and dips, catching her in its sagging divot.

She lies flat on her back. The ceiling, the faint yellow ring of old water damage. Her lower back is a knot of tight wire. Right alongside the fatigue: the phantom weight of the baby on her chest. The echo of the joy.

Michael Osei. The name is sitting there in her memory. The same week. She has the lead. She has the routing rule syntax. But lying here in the dark, NovaSphere feels distant. Irrelevant. It is entirely eclipsed by the flat smack of a baby's bare foot on the linoleum.

She reaches down. She slips her hand inside the waistband of the shorts.

There is no frantic rubbing this time. No clinical detachment. She is too tired to fake anything, too worn down to force the machinery into compliance. The wetness greets her, slick and immediate. Her fingers find the spot and settle into a slow, lazy rhythm. She closes her eyes.

She isn't chasing anything. The body is too tired to be chased. The warmth gathers under her hand and stays there, and stays there, and stays there. Slow weather.

She thinks, briefly, of yesterday morning. Her body offering itself before she had asked it for anything. The hand at the side of the breast, the heat under it. The shape of what had been gathering before Jacob came through the door.

She doesn't fight it. She doesn't chase. She lets the part of her that has been watching from the outside all day — the part that noticed the routing rule, the part keeping score, the part holding the name Michael Osei and turning it over — go quiet.

A slow contraction starts pulling inward, somewhere behind her hip bones. Her back arches a little against the mattress. The breasts fall heavy to the sides, hot and full, the skin alive against the tank top.

She brings her free hand up and lays it flat against her sternum, between the breasts, where she can feel her own heart beating fast under the thin cotton. She doesn't touch the nipples. She knows what they would do.

The heat builds. Slow. Then not slow.

It takes her. She doesn't hear the room for a long second. There is a pressure that closes the room out. Her jaw clenches. Her eyes squeeze shut. The pull is deep and slow, not sharp, and it goes on for longer than she had been ready for, the body taking its time about a thing it has earned.

A small ragged breath comes out of her. She has not been this tired and this undone in any body.

The floor gives way.

The orange streetlamp light snaps to black. The dipping mattress ceases to exist.

The white-out takes the room.