The Girl & the Machine Read Online Free Page A

he hadn’t been listening, had he? He had barely even looked at her. Because when he did, when he looked down at her terror-stricken face and deadened eyes…no. He had just looked away. Easier to not look, to just feel. If she hadn’t wanted it, if she hadn’t wanted him, she should have said no. She should have fought harder. It wasn’t rape. Rape was done by criminals who jumped from dark shadows. Rape was violent. It had just been sex. He had wanted it.
    But he had never really checked to make sure she had.
    “Okay, fine, I’m no saint,” Franklin said, his voice rising. He found he couldn’t meet Heather’s eyes. “Maybe that played out badly.”
    She didn’t answer him. The words hung between them. He could tell that she was disappointed in him, and it upset him in a way he hadn’t expected. When Heather described meeting the future version of him, it was noble. A man using his abilities for good, not just to get laid by a girl he didn’t even know.
    “Were there other girls?” Heather asked. “Other girls who didn’t know you would have ‘no consequences’ for whatever you did?”
    Franklin looked away. There had been. A dozen or more. He had learned—after trial and error—that the best method for him was to find the quiet girls, the ones who didn’t really seem to belong to the parties, the ones who followed him to the private places, the upstairs rooms or the dark backyards. He had learned to not look at them after he started. He had learned not to say much, to go straight to the action. And he had learned to disappear quickly after he finished, to leave them on the bed or in the damp grass, to walk out of sight and silently slip back to his own time. He had learned, he realized, to never even think the word “rape,” that it was only the word that made it true to him.
    “I’m not that kind of guy anymore,” Franklin said quietly. He didn’t need to be. Being with those girls had given him the confidence he needed to be more outgoing, to join a frat, to risk meeting girls in his own timeline, to not fear rejection.
    His abilities had turned him into the man he was now—confident, courageous, sure of himself and his potential.
    “I haven’t been the best guy I could be, I guess,” Franklin said. “Maybe I did use my powers greedily. But you met the future version of me. Clearly I can change. Clearly this is the point where I stop using my ability to benefit just myself and really try to do things that are better for other people.”
    Heather shot him a small smile. “I am sure that will be the outcome,” she said. She slapped her knees and stood up. “Are you ready to try?”
    Franklin stared at her. “Tonight?”
    Heather nodded. “Why not? It won’t take long to run just a simple trial.”
    Franklin wanted to say no, but there was really no reason to. “What will it do?” he asked. The steel and chrome and wires and glass seemed heartless and menacing.
    Heather took him by the hand and led him to the metal tube. Pushing a button, it opened with a hydraulic hiss. “You get in here,” she said. “The machine will read your genetic code—it will have to take a small sample of blood, but it won’t hurt—and it will use that to fuel the machine. Then you get out, stand on the platform, and go anywhere in time you want to go.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Just like that.”
    She pushed him gently toward the open tube. He stepped inside—it fit him perfectly, like a custom-made coffin. Heather leaned on her tip-toes, her breasts pressing into his chest as she pulled down a set of tubes from the top of the metal enclosure. At one end was a long needle.
    “Take your shirt off,” she said matter-of-factly.
    “I—really?”
    “Really.”
    Franklin pulled his t-shirt off and dropped it at Heather’s feet.
    “Okay, so this part may actually hurt just a little,” Heather said, holding the needle. “You should maybe shut your eyes.”
    “Where are you putting that thing?”