Automaton by C. L. Davies

Author:C. L. Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2011-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Dean woke up before Lily, and so he spent the half hour before she stirred thinking and watching her sleep. She breathed slowly and rhythmically, and he imagined the baby within her sleeping too, a little smile on its face, just as Lily had. He wondered whether it would be a boy or a girl. Lily was convinced it was a girl. He thought that he would really like a boy, so he could teach him football and take him fishing. In truth it didn’t matter either way, it would be a baby, their baby, and it would be theirs forever more.

But he had no right to either Lily or the baby, and he knew that. This beautiful woman whom he loved was carrying his child, and yet he had been sleeping with someone else. Lily had said it wasn’t all his fault, and yet her amazing understanding and seeming forgiveness made it all the more awful somehow — Lily was so pure and good. He knew Lily wasn’t capable of doing anything so vile and horrible.

And there it was, an absolute glimmering in the morning light — he had to find a way to get away from the Law Enforcers and the cameras and the sleep-masks and the oppression. He had to take Lily and the baby and somehow protect them from the horrors of the world. They had to make a fresh start somewhere. But how? Where? Everyone knew that this was the way life was, and there was no other way it could be. But what if there was? he thought. What if there was another way, a way without sleep-masks and terminations and rules. Yet his mind was black and empty, as if he was faltering on the edge of a void. He couldn’t imagine this other place because the world he lived in was the only world he had ever known. There were no books to tell him of distant shores, no WV to show him other walks of life. No boats to sail or planes to board. He knew nothing of any of these things. And yet in the black despair of knowing there was nothing, his mind still echoed the thought, what if?

Lily began to wake, and Dean stroked the hair back from her forehead. In a moment of sheer terror, Dean imagined that she might wake up and scream at him to get away from her, to leave her alone and never return. Oh my god what if she says that, what if … She removed her sleep-mask, opened her eyes, and smiled at him. OK, so it wasn’t the happiest of smiles, but it was a smile. And a smile was just fine by him, a universe more than he deserved.

“Lily,” he began, but she stopped him in his tracks.

“No, don’t,” she pleaded, “don’t talk about it, I don’t want to know. I just want to forget all about it. I believe you are sorry. We’re having this baby and we are going to be happy.

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