5 - DismissedTwenty-five days since the Undoer Incident.

  Doctor Nori's insufficiency at treating Liya (or even finding what to treat, to begin with), made Salih seek new counsel, including two other psychiatrists, two neurologists, and even a pseudo-scientific sortheist that recommended two to three hours a day of sungazing. Throughout these transitions, Liya was prescribed a series of medication she had never taken in her life (the only treatment she'd had prior to the Undoing being a vitamin B deficiency), and, besides nose bleeding, weight fluctuations, disruptions of the menstrual cycle, tremors, nausea, and mind-shattering headaches; she showed no particur reaction to any of them.

  They were desperate times, all marked by a sense of still trying to 'cure' her, even if the word 'cure' was never explicitly used. It was not used by Salih because she did not want to think her wife was struck by illness, and it was not used by her parents, who stopped answering Salih's calls after their one and only meeting after the undoing, because to think she can be 'cured' is to consider that woman is their daughter, when, to them, she is not a member of their bloodline at all, but a faker wearing her skin that they refused to address.

  Within the weeks of pharmaceutical experimentation performed on Liya Merebold, some weeks after the incident, was, too, an effort by Muias to get her 'back to work'. The well-intentioned move was supported only by himself, and, as such, he only had the assistance of a reluctant Psio Heggard to slowly acclimate this 'new Liya' (as he put it, although not in front of her, or at least, not loudly in front of her) to the work environment.

  "It was bad." Heggard concluded. Liya's re-first day at work ended with her leaving early and the two co-founders of the boratories meeting on Trekkos' office, informally, with enough beers to pcate the badness of it all. The bald man made dispy of hairy, blond arms through the rolled-up sleeves of a white shirt, showing signs of a weary day.

  "Like," Muias sipped the tall, amber can more noisily than ever, as if he needed the noise to provide an intermission to his sentence. "Normal bad? Intern bad? Or Liya bad."

  "A new bad." Psio's middle finger passed under his gsses to clean his right eye. "One I've never seen in her. She —"

  Muias interrupted him. He'd not been present today for reasons he deemed personal, but still had a burning, concealed need to know how Liya was doing. "Forgot everything she knows in particle physics? Her field of study? I assigned a pretty simple experiment to her."

  "No." Heggard said, having grown unfazed by his co-founder's interruptions. Muias, in turn, knew not to interrupt him further. "She actually showed a good knowledge of the experiment's subject. She could expin it to me and was not confused, per se. It was just..." As Heggard spoke, his fingers met those of the opposite hand, as he sought the kindest way of expining it. "She could not really go past that. The surface-level understanding. It was as if her critical thinking was locked. I could see her try, read the instructive I made for her, time and time again. She focused on it to the point where, when she gave it back to me, its borders had these wrinkles, as if she had clutched on the paper hoping it would speak to her more clearly." Despite having more to say, Heggard closed his sentence there, in a lighter note, hoping the man in front of him would, who knows, smile a bit for once.

  Trekkos' eyes were open tightly. His deeply troubled frown refused to make eye contact with him, and a drop of sweat ran down his face, passing by a channel next to his nose. "You're saying we didn't rip her of knowledge, just of critical skills?" He mumbled loudly.

  Psio breathed in slowly, then out quickly. "What do you mean 'we'? Neither of us forced her into the machine to begin with." Psio crossed his arms. "Did we?"

  Muias closed his eyes, and, before the emotions seeped into his face, he raised his brow. "No. We — as, I don't know. The company. We developed the machine, basically." His hands, well-opened, rubbed his face. "Definitely not we."

  Psio looked at him carefully, but, too, was too tired to inquire further. "Well, in any case, I wouldn't entirely dismiss your reading of her. Her current struggles definitely are more reted to her creativity, spontaneity, and adaptability. Core aspects of her, just ... gone."

  "You think we can try again tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, until she's good again?"

  Heggard pretended it was a good idea, by rubbing his chin, and responding with a voice of nearly-genuine interest. "I am not sure that it's quite the right strategy. I think today alone was quite stressful for her — might be better to take it slow?"

  He squints, then nods. "Yeah. Safer, too. Wouldn't be nice to bring even more press into this." Muias exhaled what seemed like a room's worth in air. "We've signed some good deals tely — there's a few, potential investors for the bio-telemate, we have some smaller-scale projects brainstormed, and the newly-hired are .. alright. Optimization of the bio-telemate has stagnated, but... we'll find something. I'm sure. As long as nothing leaks, we'll be fine." After speaking, he remembered the can his hand held, and sipped a little more of it. The taste was fittingly bitter.

  Heggard squinted, and he raised his chin, just a little, before leaving his can on the floor. "It worries me a little how unhappy you are with all this. I know you're concerned about Liya –we all are– I just remember the first Telemate being your dream, and how unhappy you were once it was carried out, and then how you wanted the Bio-Telemate to save you after your divorce (although it wasn't really about it, you said) but now it didn't really, even if it, basically, succeeded, and we haven't been able to smile in a while." His sentences, and words, dragged on. "You've always been the ambition. You created this company, and it took off thanks to your dreams."

  Muias watched him speak, and wondered whether just to stay silent and listen as he often does with Heggard in particur, but the beer pushed onward a little response. "You mean thanks to Liya. We were this close to liquidation when she arrived and got the telemate back on track." As he said 'this', his fingers were pinched together. "I just put in the initial investment."

  "It's your victory as much as hers." He leaned forward. "You know that, right?"

  Muias's face jerked strangely, first up, as if starting a nod, but then to the side. He leaned forward, as well, and his entire body arched as if gravely affected by gravity, and his head fell as if his entire body was supported by a rope tied around his neck.

  Sunset approached, and the two men remained silent, until bells chimed from within one's device. Muias barely eyed his phone's ringing before returning to his original position. The ringing sted an average time — the caller did not give up easily, but they definitely hung up themselves before it was done automatically.

  "Same one as always?" Asked Heggard.

  "Yeh," Muias did not move. "Every Friday. Calls at six."

  "If you know at which time she calls every day, and you don't pn to answer, why don't you just silence your phone?"

  Honesty was all he had left. "I enjoy leaving her on hold."

  "And she enjoys calling?"

  "Hell if I know." Muias' favourite part of drinking beer was not the beer itself but the part where it's over and he gets to ftten the can using both of his hands — a trick coincidentally taught by the same woman currently ringing his phone. When he does it today, it is not exactly seamless, but eventually the can becomes a thin crumple of tin with sharp edges lightly bruising his hand. "I haven't asked her."

  "How long has it been, now?" Heggard stands, and retrieves a fairly worn backpack he carries to work five days a week. "...since..."

  "It'll have been..." His face appeared again, tilting his head to the ceiling, in which time passed in reverse, so he can count every day that has passed since he touched her st ... "a year, in two weeks and four days."

  Psio approaches him, standing right in front of him when he extends a hand to helps him stand from that chair. "Does she call on Mondays? Maybe you can answer on that delightful anniversary of yours."

  His first answer was quick, said as he was pulled up by his fellow man. "Monday's... at 5:45, in the morning, twice. She knows it's when I get up." He had to think a little more of the second proposition. "Maybe." He said, shrugging, dishonestly. There was no way in hell he would ever answer that phone.

  Heggard wouldn't press the matter any further. It feels like they've been going through it, in circles. Once the two stood together, in front of the other — one's brown eyes glimmered in worry as they saw the other's dishevelled, miserable state. He wondered how much fixing a friend could do: they'd been brother in arms since college, surely it warranted such concern?

  The best he could do was be there and have a pack of beers when they were duly needed. "It's getting te," he says, pointing his body at the door. "time to lock the madhouse for the weekend."

  "Leave." Muias responded, ying himself back against his desk. He rescinded his acidic tone, knowing it was no way to speak to the one man who still tolerated him. "I'll stay for a bit longer." A piece of him hurt. "We'll go for a jog tomorrow, after I get some sleep. I don't think I have a walk home in me."

  Heggard nodded, and their hands joined in a handshake that, cking in firmness, contented itself in the strength of its oath.

  The door closed, suddenly, and Trekkos Muias was alone again. His brother's beer can, an item of his past presence, remained uncrushed, and he left it so, taking it to a safer pce next to the rest within a drawer. A parade of empty cans, most of which he could attribute to an outing, but suddenly one sticks out, in which he notices the markings of Liya's lipstick, a deathly red trace that brings a burning nausea to his senses, strong enough for his body to viscerally escape from the drawer, seek one of the hanged pictures on his wall, seek Liya within the picture, and then smash its frame on the floor with all his strength. Of course, it is not enough — the paper within the frame remains untouched and only a thin pane of gss has been obliterated. His eyes can still see the living, untouched girl smiling brightly next to her peers, of a time when machines committed no undoings. The wrath leaves not his body — and his fists, barely recovered from hitting metal weeks before, are thrown against his innocent wall, damaging it none, but releasing his agony into a simpler, primitive, physical pain which he could endure, letting it simmer in his palm as he fell where the scattered gss id over the picture, and crawled into the memories of better times, or times which he deemed better, although the misery was nearly the same.

  He sought the girl he met, employed, but never truly knew, and thought, for one moment, of what history had led her to the terror in which he put her.