The Forever Watch by David Ramirez Page B

the brushing of my teeth and the rest of the morning rites that typically consume an hour, completing them in a quarter of that time. I am already late.
    I message Hennessy that I will not be there quite yet, and to begin the morning briefing himself.
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    My team does not give me curious looks or ask inconvenient questions when I finally join them. The discussion about how many more hours of computation time we can get from the City Planning mainframe continues smoothly. An hour is spent around the additional material Dr. Savelyev from High Energy has sent over to the office.
    By the time lunch rolls around, I believe that nobody has noticed anything. Which is right when Hennessy joins me in my cube and offers to exchange half his homemade sandwich with half of my mass-production cafeteria number.
    I accept. He is quite the crafter of food eaten with the hands. Sushi, rolls, appetizers, wraps. He makes great big platters of them for workplace parties, and there are never leftovers.
    â€œYour hair was wet when you came in,” he notes. “And you smell different today.”
    â€œI did not have time to dry it is all. And, hey, James Hennessy, how do you know what I normally smell like?”
    I am staring right into his face, trying to ignore the great big metal eye peering into my soul. He cannot read me truly without a Behavioralist’s circlet, but his native talent adds a depth of perception that is more than natural. I pull up all the random memories of Minnow and of my schoolmates to the front of my head that I can manage.
    â€œIt is impolite to try to peek into your boss’s head,” I warn.
    He is grinning. Insufferably. “You got laid.”
    â€œJames!” There is just no way he can know that.
    â€œI have a knack for this sort of thing. Not a terribly useful manifestation of psionics, I know”—his fingers splay across his chest—“but I am never wrong.”
    â€œHennessy, it is none of your business. Don’t you dare.”
    â€œOh, come on,” he gushes. “Talk to me and I swear I won’t betray your confidence. But if I’m just guessing, I have no obligation to you not to speculate out loud.”
    I cannot help it. I am sure that I am bright red from my forehead to my neck, even through the darker pigmentation of my skin.
    â€œMy life is not that interesting.”
    â€œPlease. The team is full of stiffs.” His hand flicks sideways, as if shooing away flies. “Except for our fresh new trainee, who is still idealistic and so very young, they’re all ambitious blokes that just want to get ahead in the system and get bigger paychecks. I don’t get how people can live like that. Come on, my dear.” He sits on my desk and gleefully rubs his palms together. “What is he like? Is he any good?”
    It is three hundred years past the end of the world and Eugenics has still not bred the instinct to gossip out of us. We are doomed as a species, I guess.
    His sandwich is good. Spicy and sweet. Peppers, romaine, bean sprouts, tofu, rye bread, teriyaki sauce. He watches patiently while I try to get some bit of the prim and proper back, chewing and frowning, and trying hard to squint at him fiercely.
    â€œOh, do give it up, just a bit? I haven’t been with anyone in, oh, forever.”
    â€œGo buy a memory or something then. I’m the private sort, James. Why would that have changed in the years you’ve known me?”
    Hennessy does an excellent sniff of disdain. It is the high art of expressing contempt, without being gauche. No juvenile eye-rolling for him. It is all in the hundred little details of his posture and the twist of his lip, even the way his heel swings back and forth from the knee crossed over the other. “I do not believe in the veracity of borrowed memories. I’ll give you the rest of my lunch.”
    â€œBut you do in idle gossip? And, no! That’s not suitable