And so it was that their conversation went, intermingling stories about Michelle’s multitude of oft tragi-comic relationships and lovers compared wi...th Janet’s relatively stable domestic setup. They’d had a good time, they’d laughed lots (mostly due to Michelle’s indefatigable wit), and right now, there sat in the sun-refracting glass of the coffee-shop window, they’d had a momentary conversational lull. Michelle had been the one to break the silence, stirring the dregs of coffee that remained. Sometimes they just let them go when they were too crowded or if the higher command decided the political climate was not favorable to enforcing the law."Si, Senora, what you need? Cut the grass, clean out garage. Diego does it all. $25 for half day and $50 for all day."Amy looked at the little man from behind her shaded lenses. He seemed innocuous enough and she was pretty good at reading people after her years in captivity. His English seemed passable if not grammatical and he looked like he. Knowledge about the XD exploded in my head. Where controls were. How to fly. How to shoot. How to kill. How to die. It was the sense memories of who knows how many pilots, unfurling into my brain and fusing to my neurons. I didn’t know how the Machines knew about them – the sensations were ghostly and ephemeral. They lasted only long enough to impart their knowledge, and to leave a clammy aftertaste on my tongue. I had the ghost memory of what it felt, to have scorching flames from an exploding. I am going to start tonight to get everything ready for our little game. I think for the game I will pretend to be an employee of his. He has a small company and he has treated me (this pretend employee) like dirt for about a year. I am a single woman that has a night job also to make ends meet and he has taken advantage of my situation at the office by giving me all the crap assignments. He doesn’t know what I do for my night job; I am a professional Dominatrix and carter to discrete clients.