Claire Has No Friends

The machinist was in the diner again. While she previously thought he was a bit frightening, his presence was now a mix of two contradictory feelings. He still seemed like an odd man. Not just odd, but dangerous, fiery, yet somehow broken. He seemed very calm, but his sudden eruption into violent action the other day seemed oddly sincere. She remembered the look on his face, as if he was angry, yes angry more than determined. It seemed in that instance that he would have continued shooting, blowing the aggressing robots to pieces, but the moment they left, he seemed almost nonchalant once again. The change was sudden enough that she could easily picture him rising up and pulling his weapon now. She hadn’t noticed it before, but she could see it there tucked into his pants. Hidden, but not perfectly so.

She brought him his coffee. Dark roast, extra strength, served black. She decided, possibly against her better judgement, to make conversation. Besides, she had an excuse — something to ask about.

Claire: How’s Rachel?

Brick: Who?

Clair: The robot, erm, gynoid, or, construct lady.

Brick: Good as new. Well, not far off anyway.

Claire: That’s good.

She realized, with regret, that she had no way to continue the conversation, so after lingering almost too long, she walked away. As she did so she could feel him watching her. He knew I was trying to make conversation, that i was acting weird, she thought. She shook her head. I’m just imagining it.

Claire was young, arguably stylish, articulate, intelligent, and cute. This combination caused people to assume that she probably had a great many friends. The truth is, she had none.

This was a circumstance that sort of creeped up on her. She had friends in high school, at least, people she talked to every day. When she moved to Vermilion she assumed she would make new friends there, and probably retain the ones from high school. Neither happened. As people from her school went on to larger cities to pursue promising career paths, they all but stopped contact, as well. No doubt caught up in the bustle of places like Haut.

Claire was not one to complain, nor one to let on that she had no friends, so the illusion continued. And while there are certain people who take it upon themselves to befriend the apparently friendless people, Claire was never assumed to be friendless, so no one made the effort.

How was she to make friends anyway? Literally the only human she interacted with on a daily basis was Seth. And that was not much of an interaction. They were trains passing in the night. Besides, the idea of being friends with him wasn’t especially appealing.

When she thought of it, she realized that he had extended an invitation to her exactly once. It went like this.

Claire was just arriving to take over Seth’s shift. He was outside smoking. This was a habit peculiar to Seth, as generally only Constructs smoked. They did it as a social thing, it seemed. But she secretly suspected it was a way to keep humans away. Like Miasma down below, flooded with toxic smog, a room filled with cigarette smoke was enough to keep humans away unless they had some particular business in the room.

She wasn’t sure about other places, but in Vermilion at least, smoking was so prevalent among constructs that if you saw someone in the distance smoking — saw that orange glow of the burning cigarette - you could assume that person was a construct. Humans knew all too well that smoking killed you, so no one did it, except at times rebellious teens who went through a brief phase of poisoning themselves, only to give it up in a month. This gave an extra air of edginess to their behavior since, although smoking wasn’t illegal, many places would refuse to sell to humans, even older ones, with something along the lines of “that’ll kill you, idiot.”

Seth took a long drag of the cigarette, looked at her thoughtfully for just a bit too long in a way that made her uncomfortable, then said. “Hey.” after another long pause, “my friend’s throwing a rager down in Miasma later. If you wanna come.”

Claire: What kind of party?

Seth shrugged.

Seth: people, booze, music.

Claire hesitated, but not for long. Uh, no thanks. You enjoy though.

With that, Seth simply shrugged, looked away, flicked his cigarette into the dark, and walked away. She might have thought he was offended, but this is how Seth usually started and ended conversations. No greeting, no goodbye. Just say something, ignore your response, then walk away.

Though she hated to admit it, she did enjoy these non-conversations. Probably because they were the only conversations she had with a human. The only other person she talked to was Rachel. Though she didn’t have much in common with a construct, something about Rachel’s presence was relaxing.

Since she declined the party, Seth never made any attempt to invite her to anything. She almost felt bad about it. But there were two important reasons she declined.

One, Miasma was a place to get poisoned by the very air, thus its name. The idea of throwing a party there was absurd. What, did everyone wear gas masks? Did they managed to filter a room? Or did everyone just gag on fumes the whole time? The wasn’t sure she wanted to gather in such a place.

Besides, she had heard things about the kind of humans who venture down there. Mainly stupid teens of course. But she’d heard that the toxic fumes, which probably damage the human brain over time, had the effect of giving one a euphoric high for a time. It also made some people (so she’d heard) docile and weak, almost to the point of incapacitation. Passing out in a basement full of sketchy strangers was not a thought she relished.

The other reason was along the same lines, but simpler: Who the hell was this Seth guy anyway? What did she really know about him? That he always looked tired and out of it, that he barely knew how to have a conversation, that he smoked despite being a human, that he had a crappy job. That was it. Although, she realized with regret, most of those things could probably be said of her as well.

Besides, any human who lived in Vermilion was a questionable character by default. The rumor was that most of the humans who settled here were criminals. Though there was officially a police presence, in practice it proved to be a place far from the eye of law enforcement, and from public scrutiny in general. If anyone brought up the crime rate or lack of infrastructure in vermilion, they would simply say “just move out” and “why would anyone live in that godforsaken trap?” and “haven’t they torn that place down already? gives me the creeps, i’ll tell you what.”