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doing.
    Her life had been
spent in research, and now, standing in front of the audience, she
had the vaguest sensation of having misspent her years. There was
something missing. She cleared her throat and motioned for the last
question from the audience.
    “I get how
digital intelligences can think,” the student said, adjusting
her sweater as she spoke into the microphone. “But how can they
love?”
    The doubt that had
edged into Chal’s mind with the entrance of the protestors now
bore down in full force and for a moment she simply stood there,
hearing the echoes of a question that so many others had asked
before.
    How can they
love?
    She heard her mind
answer back, only half-sarcastically: How can I?
    Standing in the
light, the audience waiting for an answer, she thought of the last
man she had thought she might love. It hadn’t worked out –
they never worked out. She was alone, with only her research. A
hermit. A mad scientist.
    A laugh bubbled up
in her throat before she remembered herself, remembered where she
was. It must have been the protestors that had thrown her off of her
game.
    To the student she
gave a glib response about the research still needed before her work
was truly done. It was nonsense, but it sounded all right. Chal
thought idly to herself that she might make a good politician one
day.
    Questions finished,
she moved out into the crowd, thanking the appropriate people and
making sure to say hello to a few of the more eager students and
computer science professors. The philosophy department pointedly
ignored her, and she was happy to ignore them right back. They had
strawberry cake, after all, and she was much more interested in the
dessert than in talking about the hopelessness of her field with a
bunch of self-important assholes. She hadn’t eaten all day, and
she managed to make the rounds while forking cake savagely into her
mouth.
    Finally she managed
to extricate herself from the lecture hall, and she walked toward the
raised parking garage behind the tall building. She couldn’t
wait to get back to the hotel for at least a few hours’ sleep.
She yawned, one hand clutching her presentation materials, and
pressed the elevator button.
    The elevator whirred
quietly to the fourth floor, and she stepped out on the top of the
garage. The night air was brisk, and she pulled her jacket tight
around her as she walked through the dark lot, passing student cars.
The sky was dark, moonless, and the dim yellow light of the garage
lights only just barely illuminated her rental car parked on the
other side of the lot.
    There was a movement
in the corner of her eye, and she turned her head toward it
instinctively.
    “Hello?”
she said. “Who’s there?”
    There was no answer,
but Chal had the unnerving sensation that somebody was watching her.
She heard a whispering sound and spun around, but it was just a piece
of crumpled paper being blown softly across the garage floor.
    She fished her keys
out of her purse and clutched them in one hand, moving quickly toward
her rental car and cursing herself for not having remembered to put
the pepper spray back in her purse. She had had to take it out for
the flight to California and it sat now uselessly in a pocket of her
suitcase on the hotel room floor. Her past self was always causing
problems for her future self.
    “Wait!”
    The voice made her
spin, her pulse immediately speeding up. A man in a suit had stepped
out from behind the line of cars twenty feet away in the dim shadows.
She heard an engine roar to life on the second floor of the parking
structure, and tires squealed. She continued walking to her car.
There was something in the way he stood that made her heart pound.
    “I’m
sorry, can’t talk,” she said. “I’m late.”
Her voice had a panicked edge to it but she didn’t care. What
kind of person would accost her late at night after a lecture, in an
empty parking lot? Either a creep or a nut, and she didn’t want
to talk to