Resonance: the Game is Life : Book 9 by Terry Schott

Author:Terry Schott [Schott, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

33

“A park bench?”

Chuck laughed softly as he reached into the paper bag and withdrew a handful of seeds. “Too cliché for you, Bells?”

The Eternal sat on the bench and leaned back, crossing one ankle over the other and letting her legs slide forward. A few birds scrambled out of the way at the sudden intrusion as her feet trespassed into their feeding ground, but they quickly got over it and rushed toward the fresh seed that flew from Chuck’s hand and sprinkled onto the hard-packed dirt. “I suppose you must feel an overwhelming urge to act your age every so often.” She locked her fingers together behind her head, closed her eyes, and turned her face toward the sky.

“Don’t you?” he asked.

“No way.” She chuckled. “Feeling old is the first step to getting old.”

“I thought the accumulation of years was the first step to getting old.”

“Maybe. I don’t really pay attention to the details about stuff like that. I leave it to my elders.”

Chuck laughed and tossed another handful of seeds. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Where else should I be?”

“Um, you have a full-time job babysitting Stanton so the kid doesn’t blow us all up.”

“Had a full-time job.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Whatever. This is better anyway.”

“What happened?”

She turned and one eye opened a crack as she met Chuck’s inquiring gaze. “He fired me.”

Chuck laughed.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Bells closed her eye and turned her face to the sky once more. “Laugh it up.”

“I’m sorry.” He put a hand over his mouth to stop, but failed to silence the chuckles coming from his stomach. “Tell me what happened.”

“Apparently, his boss wasn’t pleased that their results had pretty much disappeared.”

“They blamed you?”

“Mmhmm.” She sat up straighter and opened her eyes. “Maybe I slowed things down a bit too quickly.”

“Maybe?”

“He was playing with dangerous songs, Chuck.”

“I know.”

“In my defence, the tweaks I made to the computer systems were supposed to decay at a much slower rate than they did.” She rolled her eyes. “Figured computer makers would have designed some better stuff by now, but nope.”

Chuck laughed.

“Ah well,” she sighed. “Stanton still loves me. He felt pretty bad about the whole thing, actually.”

“Good. It’d be a shame if that relationship went sour.” Chuck reached into the bag and drew out another handful of seeds. “There’s no chance he’ll cause any trouble, then? Without you watching over his shoulder?”

Bells watched the seeds scatter to the ground. “No chance at all. I’ve fixed it so that Stanton will spend the rest of his life piddling around with the Melody, trying to use it to discover big things and failing. And we’ll make sure we keep on top of it from here on out.”

“Perfect.” Chuck passed the bag to Bells. “There were a few times over the years I thought we’d made a mistake teaching him the language.”

“I’m with you on that.” Bells took a pinch of seeds and looked at them. Then she tipped her head back and dropped them into her mouth, chewing slowly. “He was a dynamo, though.

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