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They fell into silence.
“Would you like to see the mainland?” Luciano asked.
His question startled her. “Sure. Really, I’d like to see something that’s not the dome. When I saw Diego’s gun, after I got over the initial shock, you know, of what he was, I thought—and this is so stupid, but I thought that I’ve never seen anything outside the dome.” She laughed, hard and bitter.
Luciano frowned. “You’ve really never seen outside the dome?”
Eliana sighed. “Technically I have. Once. It was when I was a kid. There was a program that would take us out on the boats so we could see what the sun was like and all that.” She lay her head on her knee. Luciano didn’t ask her for anything more—he seemed trained (programmed, she reminded herself) to listen only to what she wanted to say, all his questions carefully selected. It would be u
“It was in the summer,” Eliana said. “You know, when the sun never sets? You can’t tell from the dome, of course, but we learned about it. I remember we were all crowded onto the boat, bundled up in our emergency parkas. All families have them. Did you know that? In case of disaster? They started selling them again when the electricity began flickering.”
“I did know that. I’m sure we have some of our own here in the park.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Eliana leaned back in her chair. “God, it was something to see, this huge ball of fire in the sky. They told us not to look straight at it, but of course everyone did, until we couldn’t anymore.” Eliana smiled and remembered how her eyes had stung and watered, and little black splotches had appeared in her vision. She’d thought she was going blind. And maybe she had, momentarily.
She was thirteen on that trip, and she had stood at the bow of the icebreaker with her head thrown back, promising to herself that someday she would live in a place where she could see the sun all the time.
Christ, she hadn’t thought about that in years.
“It sounds lovely.” Luciano paused. “I’ve never seen the sun myself, at least not directly.”
Eliana looked at him. He wore the same unflappable expression as always, but he was watching her closely.
“Really?”
“Yes. I was produced in Brazil, of course. We didn’t spend much time there before we were shipped to Antarctica. They deactivated us for the journey.” He went quiet. Eliana didn’t know what to say.
“I did see a rainstorm, though,” he said, after a time.
“A rainstorm!” Eliana had seen rainstorms on television programs—gentle ones where the rain rustled through the trees, and wild thrashing ones that ripped the trees from the ground. She could never fathom such a thing happening in real life, though. She couldn’t imagine water falling freely from the open sky without freezing. The closest Hope City had to rainstorms were the fire extinguishers that activated whenever the maintenance drones detected smoke.
“What was it like?” Eliana sounded more excited than she’d intended to.
“It’s difficult to describe. But I can show you.”
“Show me?” Eliana frowned. “Oh, did you, um, record it?”
“I record everything.” A brief smile passed over Luciano’s lips. “But I am quite discreet, so you don’t need to worry. And after a year has passed, a subroutine purges all u
Eliana nodded. Her skin prickled. This all felt vaguely transgressive, talking to a robot about those things that separated him from being human. And watching one of his recordings—
She felt uncomfortable with the idea. But that discomfort excited her at the same time.
“Okay,” she said. “You can show me.”
Luciano smiled. “Exciting! We’ll have to go to the robodeon. It’s on the third floor of the palace.” He paused, and his eyes seemed to twinkle. “Sofia won’t like it. She hates the idea of us doing any of the things we did in the park. But we won’t have to tell her, will we?”
Eliana laughed and nodded. She and Luciano left the sunroom and walked together through the hallways. They didn’t speak, and Eliana wondered if Luciano felt the awkwardness of their silence. Would his programming dictate something like that? She wasn’t sure. He was so much more complex than the maintenance drones. Their jobs were obvious. But robots like Luciano and Sofia left her not knowing what to think. And Luciano keeping secrets from Sofia—Eliana didn’t know what to think of that, either.
Their footsteps echoed as they walked up the stairs. Eliana had never been to the third floor, but it looked the same as the rest of the palace, everything faded and dusty.
“Here we are.” Luciano stopped in front of a pair of wooden doors, carved with the swirling art nouveau women that had been so popular during the park’s heyday. He pushed them open. Eliana had been expecting a cinema, like the one on Lucia Avenue, but there was no big blank screen or velvet curtains. Even the seats were arranged differently. They sat in pairs, facing each other.
“When the park was open, there was an entire fleet of robots who worked in this room.” Luciano gestured for her to enter, and she did. “They were programmed with hundreds of different scenarios to choose from.” He sounded like he was reciting from a travel brochure. Eliana wondered if he used to give this speech to his guests. “The guest sits in one chair; the robot sits across from her. They co
It definitely sounded like a travel brochure. Eliana sat down on the cleanest, least ripped of the chairs. She could vaguely recall older people talking about this, the robodeon at the amusement park, although she had never been clear how it worked. Luciano disappeared behind a paper screen for a few seconds and emerged carrying a hat trailing cables. Eliana frowned at it.
“Wait,” she said. “You mean we’re going to do it like they did in the park?”
Luciano stopped. “How else would we do it?”
“I don’t know. I thought you’d—project—the memory—”
Luciano tilted his head. “But that would be the same as seeing it on television, and you wanted to experience it, correct?”
Eliana hesitated. She thought she’d been humoring him, letting him show her his rainstorm.
“I can experience it?” she finally said, feeling stupid.
“Yes, of course.” Luciano sat down in the chair across from her and handed her the hat. “It’s quite safe. Thousands of people participated every year.” He smiled, his eyes glinting. “And Marianella would be extremely upset if anything happened to you.”
Eliana wasn’t so sure about that anymore. She looked down at the hat. It was a fearsome thing, not a hat so much as a helmet, with blacked-out goggles and a bronzed metal exterior. She knocked on it, listening to the sound reverberate inside.
“I swear to you,” Luciano said, “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
Eliana felt suddenly warm. She looked up at him. He was staring at her, unblinking. She thought of all the times Diego had said that. She’d always believed him, and she couldn’t anymore.
But she believed Luciano. She had to believe someone wanted to keep her safe.
“All right,” she said, and she slipped the helmet on. The goggles blocked out her vision. She was aware of Luciano’s hands fiddling with the wires, looping them over her head, pressing something cold against the top of her spine.
“Luciano?” Her voice echoed, amplifying her nervousness.
“I’m here.” The helmet covered her ears, and so his voice was muffled. “Can you see anything? Any light, anything?”
“No.” Her answer trembled against the inside of the helmet.
“Good. You aren’t supposed to.” He fell silent. She resisted the urge to reach over and feel for him, to put her hand on his knee, to make sure he was there.