The Bridge | Bots 'R Us

Chapter 12 | How We Cope

WASHINGTON CITY, NORTH AMERICAN COUNCIL
THE WHITE HOUSE MESS
THE DAY AFTER

"What the hell are you eating?" Simone asked me.

"It's very energetic, helps you slim down and build muscle," I answered with my lips 'glued' to the wide straw. "It's a mush Oscar formulated for me."

"And you asked the Mess's staff to put this thing together for you?" she said, frowning at the muddy content of my cup.

I nodded, sucking on my straw.

"People will do anything for you, I guess," Simone said with a shrug. She always teased me in a seductive way for all the things I could get away with my 'good looks and charm.' "I don't do mushies!" she added with her cute pinched smile, planting her fork in the bit of red meat she'd just cut off her steak.

"You're eating grown meat! That's not much more wholesome than my mush!" I pointed out to her. After Sarah's decadent dinner the night before, I started to worry about my physical shape if and when we would transfer. The terms of The Bridge were that we would stay as we come, for the rest of our Andro time—save for any illnesses. I was worried I would have to keep the little fat I had on my stomach forever.

"You're so vain, David," she said with a giggle. "That Wong is nutty enough to only live on mushes. I don't know what our next diet will be if we go on that road, and I will enjoy every human delicacy I can until then!"

"Ay, ay, to that, Simone!" said a colleague at the table behind us who had overheard her vow.

Simone leaned towards me, lowering her voice. "Talking about delicacies, I see why you were hiding Jonah from me. He is gorgeous, smart, and fun, and I think he likes me! We should hang out, the three of us." She leaned back with a dare in her smile.

And just like that, between a steak and a mush, Simone opened one of the strangest and most intense chapters of my life. Simone, Jonah, and I became a seamless threesome, striving to make the most of our remaining days as humans. At least for Simone and I, since Jonah would decide, like Sarah, to share the fate of those who wanted no part of this and help. Ironically, that short episode made my long life with Simone that much more loving and resilient. Her foresight and generous heart brought us closer.

Sarah had left early in the morning, back to Hawaii and her secret endeavors. I understood she would be hitting the hinterlands and Oregon on her way for her farewell tour. I left home with a heavy heart and found the office in chaos. Media requests were coming from all around, and a press conference was scheduled for 14:00 hours. Councilor Chavez looked exhausted and lost. Simone confirmed that the Councilor had barely slept that night, holoconferencing for hours with counterparts on every continent after her worldwide announcement. Reactions had spanned from practical interest to complete panic. "The End of the World!" was the expression you could most often catch from the White House's halls to the community feeds. Even GINI seemed algorithmically worried for our mental health.

I walked through the day like a zombie. I couldn't tell anyone about my loss and what it meant for most families around the world. For my colleagues, I was in shock, like most people, because of Chavez's speech. They'd come to me with questions like, "Is it true Wong is, in fact, a robot?" "Does it hurt to be transferred?" "Did anyone in the Council try it?" "Have you?" "Do you know who's going first?" "Will there be a ceremony?" "Aren't you excited? We're all gonna live forevah!" Forever, without my mother and other loved ones who would reveal themselves throughout the coming weeks.

Two months later, overwhelming majorities in most councils approved this new covenant we'd called The Bridge. Still, a small but non-negligible portion of the world's population had rejected the program. So we drafted plans to accommodate their survival outside of the CS. Soon after our vote, Wong Industries ramped up their nanobot production and broke ground on new facilities. The first Transfer Centers were supposed to open shortly after the New Year 135, and more plans were in the works to dispose of in record time of billions of 'empty vessels'—the official euphemism for our corpses. With the Holidays around the corner, everybody wanted to dedicate this time to reflect on The Bridge's impact on their lives and relationships with friends and family.